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.

I develop several new arguments against claims about "cognitive phenomenology" and its alleged role in grounding thought content. My arguments concern "absent cognitive qualia cases", "altered cognitive qualia cases", and "disembodied cognitive qualia cases". However, at the end, I sketch a positive theory of the role of phenomenology in grounding content, drawing on David Lewis's work on intentionality. I suggest that within Lewis's theory the subject's total evidence plays the central role in fixing mental content and ruling out deviant interpretations. (...) However I point out a huge unnoticed problem, the problem of evidence: Lewis really has no theory of sensory content and hence no theory of what fixes evidence. I suggest a way of plugging this hole in Lewis's theory. On the resulting theory, which I call " phenomenal functionalism", there is a sense in which sensory phenomenology is the source of all determinate intentionality. Phenomenal functionalism has similarities to the theories of Chalmers and Schwitzgebel. (shrink)

Formula One isn’t very important. You can't care about it too much. The refugee crisis is more important. You can care about it much more. In this paper we investigate how important something is. By ‘importance’ we mean how much it is fitting to care about a thing. We explore a view about this which we call Proportionalism. This view says that a thing’s importance depends on that thing’s share of the world’s total value. The more of what matters there (...) is, the less you can care about each thing in particular. The less of what matters there is, the more you can care about each thing in particular. We argue that, in many respects, Proportionalism is superior to its competitors. It captures some intuitions they leave out and it has a powerful motivation. So, we suggest, you should keep things in proportion. (shrink)

In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.

The descriptions and theoretical laws scientists write down when they model a system are often false of any real system. And yet we commonly talk as if there were objects that satisfy the scientists’ assumptions and as if we may learn about their properties. Many attempt to make sense of this by taking the scientists’ descriptions and theoretical laws to define abstract or fictional entities. In this paper, I propose an alternative account of theoretical modelling that draws upon Kendall Walton’s (...) ‘make-believe’ theory of representation in art. I argue that this account allows us to understand theoretical modelling without positing any object of which scientists’ modelling assumptions are true. (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)

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)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about visual appearance. There are certain necessary constraints on how things can visually appear. The puzzle is about how to explain them. I have no satisfying solution. My main thesis is simply that the puzzle is a puzzle. I will develop the puzzle as it arises for representationalism about experience because it is currently the most popular theory of experience and I think it is along the right lines. However, everyone faces a (...) form of the puzzle, including the naïve realist. In §1 I explain representationalism about experience. In §§2-3 I develop the puzzle and criticize a response due to Ned Block and Jeff Speaks and another response based on a novel form of representationalism (“sensa representationalism”). In §4 I argue that defenders of “perceptual confidence” (Morrison, Munton, my earlier self) face an instance of the puzzle. In §5 I suggest that everyone faces a form of the puzzle. (shrink)

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)

That about sums up what is wrong with Clark's view.

Human rights have a rich life in the world around us. Political rhetoric pays tribute to them, or scorns them. Citizens and activists strive for them. The law enshrines them. And they live inside us too. For many of us, human rights form part of how we understand the world and what must (or must not) be done within it. -/- The ubiquity of human rights raises questions for the philosopher. If we want to understand these rights, where do we (...) look? As a set of moral norms, it is tempting to think they can be grasped strictly from the armchair, say, by appeal to moral intuition. But what, if anything, can that kind of inquiry tell us about the human rights of contemporary politics, law, and civil society — that is, human rights as we ordinarily know them? -/- This volume brings together a distinguished, interdisciplinary group of scholars to address philosophical questions raised by the many facets of human rights: moral, legal, political, and historical. Its original chapters, each accompanied by a critical commentary, explore topics including: the purpose and methods of a philosophical theory of human rights; the "Orthodox-Political" debate; the relevance of history to philosophy; the relationship between human rights morality and law; and the value of political critiques of human rights. (shrink)

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)

There seem to be many kinds of moral duties. We should keep our promises; we should pay our debts of gratitude; we should compensate those we’ve wronged; we should avoid doing or intending harm; we should help those in need. These constitute, some worry, an unconnected heap of duties: the realm of commonsense morality is a disorganized mess. In this paper, we outline a strategy for unifying commonsense moral duties. We argue that they can be understood in terms of contact (...) with value. You are in contact with a value when you are manifest in it or when it is manifest in you. You have reason to get in contact with the good and avoid contact with evil. And when you’re in contact with a value, the weight of the reasons it grounds are amplified for you. These ideas, we argue, can bring order to the chaos of commonsense morality. (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)

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 .

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 (Section 1), I discuss the incentives driving three different groups of agents to bullshit: politicians, the media, and voters (Section 2). I then examine several existing proposals to combat bullshit in politics, arguing that each will fail because they ignore the relevant underlying incentives (Section 3). I conclude somewhat pessimistically that a certain amount of bullshit in politics is inevitable (Section 4). (shrink)

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

Although much has been written on the dead-donor rule in the last twenty-five years, scant attention has been paid to how it should be formulated, what its rationale is, and why it was accepted. The DDR can be formulated in terms of either a Don’t Kill rule or a Death Requirement, the former being historically rooted in absolutist ethics and the latter in a prudential policy aimed at securing trust in the transplant enterprise. I contend that the moral core of (...) the rule is the Don’t Kill rule, not the Death Requirement. This, I show, is how the DDR was understood by the transplanters of the 1960s, who sought to conform their practices to their ethics—unlike today’s critics of the DDR, who rethink their ethics in a question-begging fashion to accommodate their practices. A better discussion of the ethics of killing is needed to move the debate forward. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that martial arts training is maladaptive, contributes to psychological illness, and provides a social harm, whereas others argue that martial arts training is adaptive, contributes to psychological wellness, and provides a social benefit. This debate is important to scholars and the general public since beliefs about martial arts training can have a real impact on how we evaluate martial artists for job opportunities and career advancement, and in general, how we treat martial artists from different cultures in (...) our communities. This debate is also important for children and adults that have considered enrolling in martial arts training programs but remain uncertain about potential outcomes of training due to the lack of research in this area. This article therefore contributes to the literature on martial arts by (1) outlining a framework that characterizes psychological well-being in terms of five elements, (2) discussing how results from empirical research support the hypothesis that Muay Thai training can contribute to psychological well-being by contributing to all five component elements, (3) discussing the psychological benefits of martial arts training from the perspective of an Everlast Master Instructor, and (4) discussing how martial arts training involves the cultivation of combat-relevant affordances. (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)

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.

My aim in this paper is to assess the viability of a perceptual epistemology based on what Anil Gupta calls the “hypothetical given”. On this account, experience alone yields no unconditional entitlement to perceptual beliefs. Experience functions instead to establish relations of rational support between what Gupta calls “views” and perceptual beliefs. I argue that the hypothetical given is a genuine alternative to the prevailing theories of perceptual justification but that the account faces a dilemma: on a natural assumption about (...) the epistemic significance of support relations, any perceptual epistemology based on the hypothetical given results in either rationalism or skepticism. I conclude by examining the prospects for avoiding the dilemma. One option is to combine the hypothetical given with a form of holism. Another is to combine the view with a form of hinge epistemology. But neither offers a simple fix. (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)

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)

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)

Part of a special issue, Ontologies of Living Beings, guest-edited by A. M. Ferner and Thomas Pradeu.

Organizations have neither a right to the vote nor a weighty right to life. We need not enfranchise Goldman Sachs. We should feel few scruples in dissolving Standard Oil. But they are not without rights altogether. We can owe it to them to keep our promises. We can owe them debts of gratitude. Thus, we can owe some things to organizations. But we cannot owe them everything we can owe to people. They seem to have a peculiar, fragmented moral status. (...) What explains this? Individualistic views explain this in terms of individualistic notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke any distinctive features of organizations. They just invoke the features of individual members of organizations. Collectivistic views, instead, explain this in terms of collective notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke the features of individual members of organizations. They just invoke the features of those organizations. We argue that neither approach works. Instead, one needs to synthesize the two approaches. Some individual interests, we think, are distinctively collective. We, as individuals, have a distinctive interest in playing a part in successful collective action. From this, so we argue, flows the apparently peculiar, fragmented moral status of organizations. (shrink)

This article provides a critical analysis of the situationist challenge against Aristotelian moral psychology. It first outlines the details and results from 4 paradigmatic studies in psychology that situationists have heavily drawn upon in their critique of the Aristotelian conception of virtuous characteristics, including studies conducted by Hartshorne and May (1928), Darley and Batson (1973), Isen and Levin (1972), and Milgram (1963). It then presents 10 problems with the way situationists have used these studies to challenge Aristotelian moral psychology. After (...) challenging the situationists on these grounds, the article then proceeds to challenge the situationist presentation of the Aristotelian conception, showing that situationists have provided an oversimplified caricature of it that goes against the grain of much Aristotelian text. In evaluating the situationist challenge against the actual results from empirical research as well as primary Aristotelian text, it will be shown that the situationist debate has advanced both an extreme, untenable view about the nature of characteristics and situations, as well as an inaccurate presentation of the Aristotelian view. (shrink)

Phenomenal intentionality is a singular form of intentionality. Science shows it is internally-determined. So standard externalist models for reducing intentionality don't apply to it.

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)

I relate plural quantification, and predicate logic where predicates do not need a fixed number of argument places, to the part-whole relation. For more on these themes see later work by Boolos, Lewis, and Oliver & Smiley.

G.E. Moore’s writings on external world skepticism show us, in broad outline, how to dispense with external world skepticism in a way that is satisfying, intellectually responsible, and yet avoids engaging in constructive epistemological theory-building altogether. His work thus reveals something very important about the relation between epistemology and ordinary life, and also about what it would take to reach a satisfying resolution of certain sorts of perennial philosophical problems.

Orthodox decision theory gives no advice to agents who hold two goods to be incommensurate in value because such agents will have incomplete preferences. According to standard treatments, rationality requires complete preferences, so such agents are irrational. Experience shows, however, that incomplete preferences are ubiquitous in ordinary life. In this paper, we aim to do two things: (1) show that there is a good case for revising decision theory so as to allow it to apply non-vacuously to agents with incomplete (...) preferences, and (2) to identify one substantive criterion that any such non-standard decision theory must obey. Our criterion, Competitiveness, is a weaker version of a dominance principle. Despite its modesty, Competitiveness is incompatible with prospectism, a recently developed decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences. We spend the final part of the paper showing why Competitiveness should be retained, and prospectism rejected. (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)

I outline and provide a solution to some paradoxes of ground.

In several recent contributions to the growing literature on slurs, Hedger draws upon Kaplan's distinction between descriptive and expressive content to argue that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content. The distinction between descriptive and expressive content and the view that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content has been widely acknowledged in prior work, and Hedger aims to contribute to this tradition of scholarship by offering novel arguments in support of his "pure expressivist" account of slurs. But the account (...) that PE offers is explanatorily inadequate, resting on suspect a priori intuitions which also commit one to denying many basic facts about slurs, such as that slurs largely display systematic differential application and that slurs can be used non-offensively between in-group speakers. In this article I provide clear reasons for rejecting PE, arguing particularly against Hedger as one of PE’s most explicit and recent proponents. In showing that PE is inadequate in at least 11 ways, I argue in favor of a mixed or hybrid approach. (shrink)

I criticize some armchair arguments against phenomenal externalism due to Block, Hawthorne, Kriegel, Levine, Shoemaker and others. I conclude by discussing an overlooked armchair argument: the argument from phenomenal localism.

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)

(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 offers an analysis of work on human development in evolutionary anthropology from a Thomist perspective. I show that both fields view care for others as fundamental to human nature and interpret cooperative breeding as expression of the virtue of charity. I begin with an analysis of different approaches to the relationship between evolutionary anthropology and moral theory. I argue that ethical naturalism is the approach best suited to interdisciplinary dialogue, since it holds that natural facts are useful for (...) moral theory but do not encompass it. This forms the basis for a Thomist analysis of some key features of human evolution including bipedalism, higher encephalisation and extended childhood. In each case I explain how these parts of our nature contributed to the evolution of modern humans, and how each is reliant upon communal care. Finally, I offer three observations on these facts from a Thomist perspective. Firstly, that a good human life necessarily involves caring for others and being cared for ourselves. Secondly, that this is exemplified in the virtue of charity, which is the ground of all virtue. Finally, that the need for such care shows that human flourishing cannot be attained without divine aid. (shrink)

In “Flourish,” Martin Seligman maintained that the elements of well-being consist of “PERMA: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.” Although the question of what constitutes human flourishing or psychological well-being has remained a topic of continued debate among scholars, it has recently been argued in the literature that a paradigmatic or prototypical case of human psychological well-being would largely manifest most or all of the aforementioned PERMA factors. Further, in “A Neuroscientific Perspective on Music Therapy,” Stefan Koelsch also suggested (...) that “Music therapy can have effects that improve the psychological and physiological health of individuals,” so it seems plausible that engaging in practices of music can positively contribute to one living a more optimally flourishing life with greater psychological well-being. However, recent studies on music practice and participation have not yet been reviewed and integrated under the PERMA framework from positive psychology to further explore and explicate this possibility. This article therefore contributes to extant work by reviewing recent research on psychological well-being and music to offer support for the claim that music practice and participation can positively contribute to one living a flourishing life by positively influencing their emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. (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)

I argue that folk psychology does not serve the purpose of facilitating prediction of others' behaviour but if facilitating cooperative action. (See my subsequent book *The Importance of Being Understood*.

Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we (...) can genetically engineer factory-farmed livestock with a reduced or completely eliminated capacity to suffer. In as much as animal suffering is the principal concern that motivates the animal welfare movement, this development should be of central interest to its adherents. Moreover, I will argue that all people concerned with animal welfare should agree that we ought to replace the animals currently used in factory farming with animals whose ability to suffer is diminished if we are able to do so. (shrink)

Slurs such as spic, slut, wetback, and whore are linguistic expressions that are primarily understood to derogate certain group members on the basis of their descriptive attributes and expressions of this kind have been considered to pack some of the nastiest punches natural language affords. Although prior scholarship on slurs has uncovered several important facts concerning their meaning and use –including that slurs are potentially offensive, are felicitously applied towards some targets yet not others, and are often flexibly used not (...) only derogatorily to convey offense towards out-group members but also non-derogatorily to convey affiliation with in-group members– the literature remains largely focused on slurs that typically target African Americans, male homosexuals, and sexually active females. Since no account of slurs that typically target Hispanics or Mexican-Americans has so far been proposed, here I offer the first systematic and empirically informed analysis of these that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Importantly, this article reviews over a dozen Spanish stereotypes and slurs and explains how the descriptive attributes involved in a stereotype associated with a slur can contribute to the predication of certain content in the application of that slur toward its target in context. This article further explains how the psychological effects of stereotype threat and stereotype lift can be initiated through the application of a relevant slur towards its target in context as well. -/- ----- -/- Las expresiones peyorativas tales como spic (‘spic’), slut (‘zorra’), wetback (‘espalda mojada’) y whore (‘puta’) son expresiones lingüísticas que se entienden principalmente para minusvalorar ciertos miembros de un grupo sobre la base de sus atributos descriptivos (como la raza o el sexo). Se ha considerado que las expresiones de este tipo conllevan algunos de los puñetazos más desagradables que el lenguaje natural puede proporcionar. Aunque la literatura especializada sobre expresiones peyorativas ha descubierto varios hechos importantes en cuanto a significado y uso –entre los que se incluyen que tales expresiones son potencialmente ofensivas, apuntan efectivamente hacia unos objetivos pero no hacia otros, y con frecuencia se utilizan con flexibilidad no sólo despectivamente para ofender a miembros por fuera de un grupo, sino que también de forma no despectiva para afiliar con miembros dentro de un mismo grupo–, tal literatura sigue centrada en gran medida en las expresiones peyorativas que típicamente apuntan contra los afroamericanos (nigger ‘negro’), los homosexuales varones (fagot ‘maricón’), y las mujeres sexualmente activas (slut ‘zorra’). En tanto que no se ha propuesto al momento dar cuenta de expresiones peyorativas dirigidas contra hispanos o mexicano-americanos, en este trabajo se ofrece el primer análisis sistemático y empíricamente informado de tales expresiones, tanto en sus usos despectivos y de apropiación. Es importante destacar que en este artículo se revisan más de una docena de estereotipos y expresiones peyorativas en español, además de explicar cómo los atributos descriptivos que participan de un estereotipo asociado con una difamación pueden contribuir a la predicación de determinados contenidos en la aplicación de esa expresión hacia su objetivo en contexto. Asimismo, en este artículo se explica cómo comienzan los efectos psicológicos de la amenaza estereotipada y el realce estereotipado cuando se emplea una expresión peyorativa relevante contra un objetivo en contexto. (shrink)

This article provides an original account of slurs and how they may be differentially used by in-group and out-group speakers. Slurs are first distinguished from other terms and their role in social interaction is discussed. A new distinction is introduced between three different uses of slurs : the paradigmatic derogatory use, non-paradigmatic derogatory use, and non-paradigmatic non-derogatory use. I then account for their literal meaning and explain how a family-resemblance conception of category membership can clarify our understanding of the various (...) natural-language uses of slurs, -. The focus is restricted primarily to race-based and sex-based slurs used in the context of English speakers, and the article concludes with desiderata to be met by any subsequent analyses of slurs. (shrink)

Coreferentialism refers to the common assumption in the literature that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. For instance, Vallee recently writes that “If S is an ethnic slur in language L, then there is a non-derogatory expression G in L such that G and S have the same extension”. The non-derogatory expression G is commonly considered the nonpejorative correlate of the slur expression S and it is widely thought that every S has a coreferring G (...) that possesses precisely the same extension. Yet here I argue against this widespread assumption by first briefly introducing what slurs are and then considering four sources of supporting evidence showing that slurs and descriptors are in fact not coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. I argue that since slurs and descriptors differ in their extension they thereby differ in their meaning or content also. This article additionally introduces the notion of a conceptual anchor in order to adequately account for the relationship between slurs and descriptors actually evidenced in the empirical data, and further considers the inadequacy of common dictionary definitions of slurs. This article therefore contributes to the literature on slurs by demonstrating that previous accounts operating on the assumption that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with the same extension, and that they thereby have the same meaning or content, are inconsistent with empirical data and that an alternative account in accord with Croom better fits the facts concerning their actual meaning and use. (shrink)

I give reasons stemming from the nature of narrative thinking why two-antecedent conditionals, most naturally expressed as "Suppose A. Suppose moreover B. Then C" the two antecedents play different roles. I formalise this idea with a two-dimensional similarity relation between possible worlds.

The three target articles constitute a powerful and persuasive call for actively anti-racist bioethics and biomedicine. All three articles reject race as a biological category. Nevertheless, they share a common commitment to racial classification. At one point, Ruqaiijah Yearby writes that “social race, like biological race, is an illusion created to establish racial hierarchy,” but mostly she writes about “races” as though they were not an illusion, but a reality. In this commentary I critique the racial realism of the target (...) articles. I argue that the biomedical fight against racism is best served by a form of anti-realist reconstructionism about race, which says that there are no races, only racialized groups—groups misunderstood to be races. Note that I do not defend the color blindness that Clarence H. Braddock (2020) persuasively rejects. Because of the role of skin color in racialization and racism, color blindness is a misguided goal. One can reject color blindness, though, without accepting racial realism... (shrink)