I provide an opinionated overview of the literature on the relationship of contextualism to knowledge norms for action, assertion, and belief. I point out that contextualists about ‘knows’ are precluded from accepting the simplest versions of knowledge norms; they must, if they are to accept knowledge norms at all, accept “relativized” versions of them. I survey arguments from knowledge norms both for and against contextualism, tentatively concluding that commitment to knowledge norms does not conclusively win the day either for contextualism (...) or for its rivals. But I also suggest that an antecedent commitment to contextualism about normative terms may provide grounds for suspicion about knowledge norms, and a debunking explanation of some of the data offered in favor of such norms. (shrink)

This paper tries to do three things. First, it tries to make it plausible that correct rules of reasoning do not always preserve justification: in other words, if you begin with a justified attitude, and reason correctly from that premise, it can nevertheless happen that you’ll nevertheless arrive at an unjustified attitude. Attempts to show that such cases in fact involve following an incorrect rule of reasoning cannot be vindicated. Second, it also argues that correct rules of reasoning do not (...) even correspond to permissions of “structural rationality”: it is not always structurally permissible to base an attitude on other attitudes from which it follows by correct reasoning. Third, from these observations it tries to build a somewhat positive account of the correctness of rules of reasoning as a more sui generis notion irreducible to either justification or structural rationality. This account vindicates an important unity of theoretical and practical reasoning as well as a qualified version of the thesis that deductive logic supplies correct rules of reasoning. (shrink)

I argue, contrary to the consensus of most contemporary work in ethics, that there are no (fundamentally, distinctively) prudential reasons for action. That is to say: there is no class of reasons for action that is distinctively and fundamentally about the promotion of the agent’s own well-being. Considerations to do with the agent’s well-being can supply the agent with reasons only in virtue of her well-being mattering morally or in virtue of her caring about her own well-being. In both of (...) these cases, the way that such prudential considerations supply reasons for action is a way that the well-being of others can supply reasons for action too. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of the meaning of `ought', and the distinction between weak necessity modals (`ought', `should') and strong necessity modals (`must', `have to'). I argue that there is nothing specially ``strong'' about strong necessity modals per se: uses of `Must p' predicate the (deontic/epistemic/etc.) necessity of the prejacent p of the actual world (evaluation world). The apparent ``weakness'' of weak necessity modals derives from their bracketing whether the necessity of the prejacent is verified in the actual world. (...) `Ought p' can be accepted without needing to settle that the relevant considerations (norms, expectations, etc.) that actually apply verify the necessity of p. I call the basic account a modal-past approach to the weak/strong necessity modal distinction (for reasons that become evident). Several ways of implementing the approach in the formal semantics/pragmatics are critically examined. The account systematizes a wide range of linguistic phenomena: it generalizes across flavors of modality; it elucidates a special role that weak necessity modals play in discourse and planning; it captures contrasting logical, expressive, and illocutionary properties of weak and strong necessity modals; and it sheds light on how a notion of `ought' is often expressed in other languages. These phenomena have resisted systematic explanation. In closing I briefly consider how linguistic inquiry into differences among necessity modals may improve theorizing on broader philosophical issues. (shrink)

At the heart of John Broome’s research program in the philosophy of normativity is a distinction between reasons, on one hand, and requirements of rationality, on the other. I am a friend of Broome’s view that this distinction is deep and important, and that neither notion can be analyzed in terms of the other. However, I also think there are major challenges that this view is yet to meet. In the first part of the paper, I’ll raise four such challenges, (...) and programmatically indicate how I think such challenges might be headed off. In the second part of the paper, I’ll discuss a third normative notion that Broome is interested in: that of (rules of) correct reasoning. On Broome’s view, correct reasoning is closely tied to requirements of rationality. More particularly, every rule of correct reasoning corresponds to a “basing permission”, which states that it’s rationally permissible to base one attitude on one or more other attitudes. I’ll argue that this proposal can’t be made to work. If I’m right, this suggests that the same kind of pulling-apart that Broome has effected so persuasively with respect to reasons and requirements of rationality needs to be effected again to separate rules of correct reasoning from both of those other categories. (shrink)

Going about our daily lives in an orderly manner requires us, once we are aware of them, to dismiss many metaphysical possibilities. We take it for granted that we are not brains in vats, or living in the Matrix, or in an extended dream. Call these things that we take for granted “anti-skeptical assumptions”. What should a reflective agent who believes these things think of these beliefs? For various reasons, it can seem that we do not have evidence for such (...) anti-skeptical assumptions. Are anti-skeptical assumptions, then, beliefs that one may rationally hold without evidence for them – indeed, even in the face of a positive judgment that one lacks evidence for them? I survey and criticize some prominent answers to this question, and then offer a positive view that blends externalism about evidence with a mild, qualified kind of pragmatism. The view I offer aims to do justice to the sense that anti-skeptical assumptions are evidentially groundless while also maintaining that one cannot rationally believe something that one judges oneself to lack sufficient evidence for. (shrink)

Recent work on rationality has been increasingly attentive to “coherence requirements”, with heated debates about both the content of such requirements and their normative status (e.g., whether there is necessarily reason to comply with them). Yet there is little to no work on the metanormative status of coherence requirements. Metaphysically: what is it for two or more mental states to be jointly incoherent, such that they are banned by a coherence requirement? In virtue of what are some putative requirements genuine (...) and others not? Epistemologically: how are we to know which of the requirements are genuine and which aren’t? This paper tries to offer an account that answers these questions. On my account, the incoherence of a set of attitudinal mental states is a matter of its being (partially) constitutive of the mental states in question that, for any agent that holds these attitudes jointly, the agent is disposed, when conditions of full transparency are met, to give up at least one of the attitudes. (shrink)

I outline and defend two egalitarian theories, which yield distinctive and, I argue, complementary answers to why health-related inequalities matter: a brute luck egalitarian view, according to which inequalities due to unchosen, differential luck are bad because unfair, and a social egalitarian view, according to which inequalities are bad when and because they undermine people’s status as equal citizens. These views identify different objects of egalitarian concern: the brute luck egalitarian view directs attention to health-related well-being, while social egalitarianism focuses (...) on health-related capabilities that are central to a person’s status as a citizen. I argue that both views are correct and should jointly guide priority-setting in health. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that it is wrong for us to consume only, or overwhelmingly, media that broadly aligns with our own political viewpoints: that is, it is wrong to be politically “partisan” in our decisions about what media to consume. We are obligated to consume media that aligns with political viewpoints other than our own – to “diversify our sources”. This is so even if our own views are, as a matter of fact, substantively correct.

Despite the prevalence of externalization, much work in the ethics of immigration continues to assume that the admission of immigrants is determined by state immigration officials who decide whether to admit travelers at official crossings. This assumption neglects how decisions about entrance have been increasingly relocated abroad – to international waters, consular offices, airports, or foreign territories – often with non-governmental or private actors, as well as foreign governments functioning as intermediaries. Externalization poses a fundamental challenge to achieving just migration (...) policies. It reliably harms vulnerable people, prevents refugees from receiving protection, leads to human rights abuses, and dissipates blame and accountability, creating a serious lacuna in assigning moral responsibility. (shrink)

Many believe that we ought to save a large number from being permanently bedridden rather than save one from death. Many also believe that we ought to save one from death rather than a multitude from a very minor harm, no matter how large this multitude. I argue that a principle I call “Aggregate Relevant Claims” satisfactorily explains these judgments. I offer a rationale for this principle and defend it against objections.

There are at least two different aspects of our rational evaluation of agents’ doxastic attitudes. First, we evaluate these attitudes according to whether they are supported by one’s evidence (substantive rationality). Second, we evaluate these attitudes according to how well they cohere with one another (structural rationality). In previous work, I’ve argued that substantive and structural rationality really are distinct, sui generis, kinds of rationality – call this view ‘dualism’, as opposed to ‘monism’, about rationality – by arguing that the (...) requirements of substantive and structural rationality can come into conflict. In this paper, I push the dialectic on this issue forward in two main ways. First, I argue that the most promising ways of resisting the diagnosis of my cases as conflicts still end up undermining monism in different ways. Second, supposing for the sake of argument that we should understand the cases as conflicts, I address the question of what we should do when such conflicts arise. I argue that, at least in a prominent kind of conflict case, the coherence requirements take precedence over the evidential requirements. (shrink)

In response to our critics, we clarify and defend key ideas in the report Open and Inclusive: Fair Processes for Financing Universal Health Coverage. First, we argue that procedural fairness has greater value than Dan Hausman allows. Second, we argue that the Report aligns with John Kinuthia’s view that a knowledgeable public and a capable civil society, alongside good facilitation, are important for effective public deliberation. Moreover, we agree with Kinuthia that the Report’s framework for procedural fairness applies not merely (...) within the health sector, but also to the wider budget process. Third, we argue that while Dheepa Rajan and Benjamin Rouffy-Ly are right that robust processes for equal participation are often central to a fair process, sometimes improvements in other aspects of procedural fairness, such as transparency, can take priority over strengthening participation. Fourth, while we welcome Sara Bennett and Maria Merritt’s fascinating use of the Report’s principles of procedural fairness to assess the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, we argue that their application of the Report’s principle of equality to development partners’ decision-making requires further justification. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary work on the nature of borders and society has enriched and complicated our understanding of democracy, community, distributive justice, and migration. It reveals the cognitive bias of methodological nationalism, which has distorted normative political thought on these topics, uncritically and often unconsciously adapting and reifying state‐centered conceptions of territory, space, and community. Under methodological nationalism, state territories demarcate the boundaries of the political; society is conceived as composed of immobile, culturally homogenous citizens, each belonging to one and only one (...) state; and the distribution of goods is analyzed according to a stark opposition between the domestic and the international. This article describes how methodological nationalism has shaped central debates in political philosophy and introduces recent work that helps dispel this bias. (shrink)

This paper investigates how inquiry into normative language can improve substantive normative theorizing. First I examine two dimensions along which normative language differs: “strength” and “subjectivity.” Next I show how greater sensitivity to these features of the meaning and use of normative language can illuminate debates about three issues in ethics: the coherence of moral dilemmas, the possibility of supererogatory acts, and the connection between making a normative judgment and being motivated to act accordingly. The paper concludes with several brief (...) reflections on the theoretical utility of the distinction—at least so-called—between “normative” and “non-normative” language and judgment. Clarifying the language we use in normative conversation and theorizing can help us diagnose problems with bad arguments and formulate better motivated questions. This can lead to clearer answers and bring into relief new theoretical possibilities and avenues to explore. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of mood selection with attitude predicates in French. I start by examining the “contextual commitment” account of mood developed by Portner and Rubinstein Proceedings of SALT 22, CLC Publications, Ithaca, NY, pp 461–487, 2012). A key innovation of Portner and Rubinstein’s account is to treat mood selection as fundamentally depending on a relation between individuals’ attitudes and the predicate’s modal backgrounds. I raise challenges for P&R’s qualitative analysis of contextual commitment and explanations of mood selection. (...) There are indicative-selecting predicates that are felicitous in contexts where there isn’t contextual commitment ; and there are subjunctive-selecting predicates that involve no less contextual commitment than certain indicative-selecting verbs. I develop an alternative account of verbal mood. The general approach, which I call a state-of-mind approach, is to analyze mood in terms of whether the formal relation between the predicate’s modal backgrounds and an overall state of mind represents a relation of commitment. Indicative mood in French presupposes that the informational-evaluative state determined by the predicate’s modal backgrounds is included in the informational-evaluative state characterizing the event described by the predicate. The account provides an improved explanation of core mood-selection puzzles, including subjunctive-selection with emotive factives, indicative-selection with fiction verbs, indicative-selection with espérer ‘hope’ versus subjunctive-selection with vouloir ‘want’, and indicative-selection with commissives versus subjunctive-selection with directives. Subjunctive-selection with modal adjectives is briefly considered. The mood-selection properties of the predicates are derived from the proposed analysis of mood, independently attested features of the predicates’ semantics, and general principles of interpretation. (shrink)

The difference between the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons requires that there be a shift in the moral weight that we accord to changes in utility when we move from making intrapersonal tradeoffs to making interpersonal tradeoffs. We examine which forms of egalitarianism can, and which cannot, account for this shift. We argue that a form of egalitarianism which is concerned only with the extent of outcome inequality cannot account for this shift. We also argue that (...) a view which is concerned with both outcome inequality and with the unfairness of inequality in individuals‘ expected utilities can account for this shift. Finally, we limn an alternative view, on.. (shrink)

This paper elaborates and defends a familiar ‘transparent’ account of knowledge of one's own beliefs, inspired by some remarks of Gareth Evans, and makes a case that the account can be extended to mental states in general, in particular to knowledge of one's intentions.

The term ‘coherence’ (and its antonym ‘incoherence’) is used in a bewildering variety of ways in epistemology (and in philosophy more broadly). This entry attempts to bring some discipline to uses of the term by offering a taxonomy of notions of coherence (and incoherence), and then surveying which of the resulting notions is (or should be) at work in the various different contexts in which it is deployed.

A possible person’s conditional expected well-being is what the quality of their prospects would be if they were to come into existence. This paper examines the role that this form of expected well-being should play in distributing benefits among prospective people and in deciding who to bring into existence. It argues for a novel egalitarian view on which it is important to ensure equality in people’s life prospects, not merely between actual individuals, but also between all individuals who, given our (...) choices, have a chance of coming into existence. The paper argues that such egalitarianism for prospective people springs from equal concern for each person and has plausible implications. It further shows that it has a rationale in respect for both the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons. Finally, it defends this view against a key objection and shows it is superior to a rival view. (shrink)

Discussions of aesthetic reasons and normativity are becoming increasingly popular. This piece outlines six basic questions about aesthetic reasons, normativity, and value and discusses the space of possible answers to these questions. I divide the terrain into two groups of three questions each. First are questions about the shape of aesthetic reasons: what they favour, how strong they are, and where they come from. Second are relational questions about how aesthetic reasons fit into the wider normative landscape: whether they are (...) distinctive, what their normative status is, and how they interact with each other and with non-aesthetic reasons. This piece aims to provide a taxonomy to clarify and organise the burgeoning literature and to make a few concrete suggestions for avenues of future research. (shrink)

Research suggests that interventions involving extensive training or counterconditioning can reduce implicit prejudice and stereotyping, and even susceptibility to stereotype threat. This research is widely cited as providing an “existence proof” that certain entrenched social attitudes are capable of change, but is summarily dismissed—by philosophers, psychologists, and activists alike—as lacking direct, practical import for the broader struggle against prejudice, discrimination, and inequality. Criticisms of these “debiasing” procedures fall into three categories: concerns about empirical efficacy, about practical feasibility, and about the (...) failure to appreciate the underlying structural-institutional nature of discrimination. I reply to these criticisms of debiasing, and argue that a comprehensive strategy for combating prejudice and discrimination should include a central role for training our biases away. (shrink)

In some severely uncertain situations, exemplified by climate change and novel pandemics, policymakers lack a reasoned basis for assigning probabilities to the possible outcomes of the policies they must choose between. I outline and defend an uncertainty averse, egalitarian approach to policy evaluation in these contexts. The upshot is a theory of distributive justice which offers especially strong reasons to guard against individual and collective misfortune.

Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the only independent concrete object. The paper argues that, pace its proponents, Priority monism is in conflict with the dependence of any whole on any of its parts: if the cosmos does not depend on its parts, neither does any smaller composite.

Does immorality necessarily involve irrationality? The question is often taken to be among the deepest in moral philosophy. But apparently deep questions sometimes admit of deflationary answers. In this case we can make way for a deflationary answer by appealing to dualism about rationality, according to which there are two fundamentally distinct notions of rationality: structural rationality and substantive rationality. I have defended dualism elsewhere. Here, I’ll argue that it allows us to embrace a sensible – I will not say (...) boring – moderate view about the relationship between immorality and irrationality: roughly, that immorality involves substantive irrationality, but not structural irrationality. I defend this moderate view, and argue that many of the arguments for less moderate views turn either on missing the distinction between substantive and structural rationality, or on misconstruing it. (shrink)

In 'Rethinking the Good', Larry Temkin makes two core claims. First, the goodness of a distribution is sometimes ‘essentially comparative’ – it sometimes depends on which alternative distribution(s) it is compared to. Second, such cases threaten the transitivity of ‘all things considered better than’. I argue that the goodness of a distribution may indeed depend on what other distributions are feasible. But contrary to Temkin, I also argue that transitivity holds even when the goodness of a distribution depends on the (...) feasible set of which it is a member. (shrink)

It is controversial whether virtual reality should be considered fictional or real. Virtual fictionalists claim that objects and events within virtual reality are merely fictional: they are imagined and do not exist. Virtual realists argue that virtual objects and events really exist. This metaphysical debate might appear important for some of the practical questions that arise regarding how to morally evaluate and legally regulate virtual reality. For instance, one advantage claimed of virtual realism is that only by taking virtual objects (...) and events to be real can we explain our strong emotional reactions to certain virtual actions, as well as their potential immorality. This paper argues that emotional reactions towards, and wrongs within, virtual reality are consistent with its being merely fictional. The emotional and ethical judgments we wish to make regarding virtual reality do not provide any grounds for preferring virtual realism. (shrink)

Despite increasing prominence, ‘ought’-contextualism is regarded with suspicion by most metaethicists. As I’ll argue, however, contextualism is a very weak claim, that every metaethicist can sign up to. The real controversy concerns how contextualism is developed. I then draw an oft-overlooked distinction between “parochial” contextualism—on which the contextually-relevant standards are those that the speaker, or others in her environment, subscribe to—and “aspirational” contextualism—on which the contextually-relevant standards are the objective standards for the relevant domain. However, I argue that neither view (...) is acceptable. I suggest an original compromise: “ecumenical contextualism”, on which some uses of ‘ought’ are parochial, others aspirational. Ecumenical contextualism is compatible with realism or antirealism, but either combination yields interesting results. And though it’s a cognitivist view, it is strengthened by incorporating an expressivist insight: for robustly normative usages of ‘ought’, the contextually-relevant standards must be endorsed by the speaker. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that theories of perception that appeal to Helmholtz’s idea of unconscious inference (“Helmholtzian” theories) should be taken literally, i.e. that the inferences appealed to in such theories are inferences in the full sense of the term, as employed elsewhere in philosophy and in ordinary discourse. -/- In the course of the argument, I consider constraints on inference based on the idea that inference is a deliberate acton, and on the idea that inferences depend on the (...) syntactic structure of representations. I argue that inference is a personal-level but sometimes unconscious process that cannot in general be distinguished from association on the basis of the structures of the representations over which it’s defined. I also critique arguments against representationalist interpretations of Helmholtzian theories, and argue against the view that perceptual inference is encapsulated in a module. (shrink)

Although philosophers of art and aesthetics regularly appeal to a notion of ‘pictorial content’, there is little agreement over its nature. The present paper argues that pictures have propositional contents. This conclusion is reached by considering a style of argument having to do with the phenomenon of negation intended to show that pictures must have some kind of non-propositional content. I first offer reasons for thinking that arguments of that type fail. Second, I show that when properly understood, such arguments (...) can in fact be turned on their heads and shown to support the propositionalist position. (shrink)

How should governments balance saving people from very large individual disease burdens (such as an early death) against saving them from middling burdens (such as erectile dysfunction) and minor burdens (such as nail fungus)? This chapter considers this question through an analysis of a priority-setting proposal in the Netherlands, on which avoiding a multitude of middling burdens takes priority over saving one person from early death, but no number of very small burdens can take priority over avoiding one death. It (...) argues that there is some, albeit imperfect, evidence of substantial public support for such a policy. Furthermore, it provides a principled rationale for it in terms of respect for the person who faces the largest burden. (shrink)

This chapter explores the idea that causal inference is warranted if and only if the mechanism underlying the inferred causal association is identified. This mechanistic stance is discernible in the epidemiological literature, and in the strategies adopted by epidemiologists seeking to establish causal hypotheses. But the exact opposite methodology is also discernible, the black box stance, which asserts that epidemiologists can and should make causal inferences on the basis of their evidence, without worrying about the mechanisms that might underlie their (...) hypotheses. I argue that the mechanistic stance is indeed a bad methodology for causal inference. However, I detach and defend a mechanistic interpretation of causal generalisations in epidemiology as existence claims about underlying mechanisms. (shrink)

According to orthodoxy, perceptual beliefs are caused by perceptual experiences. The paper argues that this view makes it impossible to explain how experiences can be epistemically significant. A rival account, on which experiences in the “good case” are ways of knowing, is set out and defended.

In epistemology and in ordinary life, we make many normative claims about beliefs. As with all normative claims, philosophical questions arise about what – if anything – underwrites these kinds of normative claims. On one view, epistemic instrumentalism, facts about what we (epistemically) ought to believe, or about what is an (epistemic, normative) reason to believe what, obtain at least partly in virtue of our goals (or aims, ends, intentions, desires, etc.). The converse view, anti-instrumentalism, denies this, and holds that (...) the facts about what we ought or have reasons to believe are independent of our goals. In this chapter, I present the case for anti-instrumentalism. I lay out a well-known problem for instrumentalism, which is to say exactly what goal (or goals) grounds our epistemic reasons. For each possible answer, the view seems to generate problematic results. I consider some ways of trying to make the instrumentalist view more sophisticated to solve the problem and reject them. I then note a further problem for instrumentalism that applies regardless of what goal the instrumentalist says grounds our epistemic reasons. Finally, I sketch my preferred positive anti-instrumentalist view and argue that it is more theoretically virtuous than instrumentalism in several respects. (shrink)

When A utters a declarative sentence in a context to B, typically A can mean a proposition by the sentence, the sentence in context literally expresses a proposition, there are propositions A and B can agree the sentence literally expressed, and B can acquire knowledge from this testimonial exchange. In recent work on linguistic communication, each of these four platitudes has been challenged, and on the same basis: viz. on the ground that exactly which proposition the sentence expressed in context (...) is not discernible given the information provided by the context. I argue that, even if this is true, there will be propositional parts of the proposition expressed by the sentence in context which can be identified and that, consequently, the partial understanding afforded by the existence of such identifiable parts undermines the soundness of the arguments against the platitudes. (shrink)

This paper demarcates a theoretically interesting class of "evaluational adjectives." This class includes predicates expressing various kinds of normative and epistemic evaluation, such as predicates of personal taste, aesthetic adjectives, moral adjectives, and epistemic adjectives, among others. Evaluational adjectives are distinguished, empirically, in exhibiting phenomena such as discourse-oriented use, felicitous embedding under the attitude verb `find', and sorites-susceptibility in the comparative form. A unified degree-based semantics is developed: What distinguishes evaluational adjectives, semantically, is that they denote context-dependent measure functions ("evaluational (...) perspectives")—context-dependent mappings to degrees of taste, beauty, probability, etc., depending on the adjective. This perspective-sensitivity characterizing the class of evaluational adjectives cannot be assimilated to vagueness, sensitivity to an experiencer argument, or multidimensionality; and it cannot be demarcated in terms of pretheoretic notions of subjectivity, common in the literature. I propose that certain diagnostics for "subjective" expressions be analyzed instead in terms of a precisely specified kind of discourse-oriented use of context-sensitive language. I close by applying the account to `find x PRED' ascriptions. (shrink)

Should we understand implicit attitudes on the model of belief? I argue that implicit attitudes are (probably) members of a different psychological kind altogether, because they seem to be insensitive to the logical form of an agent’s thoughts and perceptions. A state is sensitive to logical form only if it is sensitive to the logical constituents of the content of other states (e.g., operators like negation and conditional). I explain sensitivity to logical form and argue that it is a necessary (...) condition for belief. I appeal to two areas of research that seem to show that implicit attitudes fail spectacularly to satisfy this condition—although persistent gaps in the empirical literature leave matters inconclusive. I sketch an alternative account, according to which implicit attitudes are sensitive merely to spatiotemporal relations in thought and perception, i.e., the spatial and temporal orders in which people think, see, or hear things. (shrink)

An important moral category—dishonest speech—has been overlooked in theoretical ethics despite its importance in legal, political, and everyday social exchanges. Discussion in this area has instead been fixated on a binary debate over the contrast between lying and ‘merely misleading’. Some see lying as a distinctive wrong; others see it as morally equivalent to deliberately omitting relevant truths, falsely insinuating, or any other species of attempted verbal deception. Parties to this debate have missed the relevance to their disagreement of the (...) notion of communicative dishonesty. Communicative dishonesty need not take the form of a lie, yet its wrongness does not reduce to the wrongness of seeking to deceive. This paper therefore proposes a major shift of attention away from the lying/misleading debate and towards the topic of communicative dishonesty. Dishonesty is not a simple notion to define, however. It presupposes a difficult distinction between what is and is not expressed in a given utterance. This differs from the more familiar distinction between what is and is not said, the distinction at the heart of the lying/misleading debate. This paper uses an idea central to speech act theory to characterize dishonesty in terms of the utterer’s communicative intentions, and applies the resulting definition to a variety of contexts. (shrink)

I defend a neo-republican account of the right to have political rights. Neo-republican freedom from domination is a sufficient condition for the extension of political rights not only for permanent residents, but also for temporary residents, unauthorized migrants, and some expatriates. I argue for the advantages of the neo-republican account over the social membership account, the affected-interest account, the stakeholder account, and accounts based on the justification of state coercion.

Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The ‘structural representations’ that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition essentially involves the manipulation of (...) mental representations. Ramsey argues that although theories within the ‘classical’ tradition of cognitive science once posited structural representations, these theories are being superseded by newer theories, within the tradition of connectionism and cognitive neuroscience, which rarely if ever appeal to structural representations. Instead, these theories seem to be explaining cognition by invoking so-called ‘receptor representations’, which, Ramsey claims, aren’t genuine representations at all—despite being called representations, these mechanisms function more as triggers or causal relays than as genuine stand-ins for distal systems. I argue that when the notions of structural and receptor representation are properly explicated, there turns out to be no distinction between them. There only appears to be a distinction between receptor and structural representations because the latter are tacitly conflated with the ‘mental models’ ostensibly involved in offline cognitive processes such as episodic memory and mental imagery. While structural representations might count as genuine representations, they aren’t distinctively mental representations, for they can be found in all sorts of non-intentional systems such as plants. Thus to explain the kinds of offline cognitive capacities that have motivated talk of mental models, we must develop richer conceptions of mental representation than those provided by the notions of structural and receptor representation. (shrink)

Intentionalism about demonstratives is the view that the referent of a demonstrative is determined solely by the speaker's intentions. Intentionalists can disagree about the nature of these intentions, but are united in rejecting the relevance of other factors, such as the speaker's gestures, her gaze, and any facts about the addressee or the audience. In this paper, I formulate a particular version of this view, and I defend it against six objections, old and new.

An interview by Alex Thomson of UKColumn on Landgrebe and Smith's book: Why Machines Will Never Rule the World. The subtitle of the book is Artificial Intelligence Without Fear, and the interview begins with the question of the supposedly imminent takeover of one profession or the other by artificial intelligence. Is there truly reason to be afraid that you will lose your job? The interview itself is titled 'Where this is no will there is no way', drawing on one (...) thesis of the book to the effect that there will never be anything like the human will on the part of a machine. This is for mathematical reasons. AI is always and in every case a matter of algorithms; thus of applied mathematics. And algorithms are not the sorts of things that can want or desire or intend to do something. It is the human will of those who work at OpenAI or google or microsoft which have given rise to the new shiny objects of AI (ChatGPT and other Large Language Models). And it is the human will of the users of these shiny objects which gives them the resources and power to work their apparent miracles. (shrink)

An approach to implementing variational Bayesian inference in biological systems is considered, under which the thermodynamic free energy of a system directly encodes its variational free energy. In the case of the brain, this assumption places constraints on the neuronal encoding of generative and recognition densities, in particular requiring a stochastic population code. The resulting relationship between thermodynamic and variational free energies is prefigured in mind–brain identity theses in philosophy and in the Gestalt hypothesis of psychophysical isomorphism.

How do you know what you want? The question is neglected by epistemologists. This paper attempts an answer.

This paper takes it as a premise that a distinction between matters of fact and of law is important in the causal inquiry. But it argues that separating factual and legal causation as different elements of liability is not the best way to implement the fact/law distinction. What counts as a cause-in-fact is partly a legal question; and certain liability-limiting doctrines under the umbrella of “legal causation” depend on the application of factual-causal concepts. The contrastive account of factual causation proposed (...) in this paper improves matters. This account more clearly distinguishes matters of fact from matters of law within the cause-in-fact inquiry. It also extends the scope of cause-in-fact to answer some questions currently answered by certain doctrines of legal causation—doctrines that, it is argued, are more naturally seen as applications of our ordinary causal concept than as noncausal liability-limiting devices. (shrink)

Public life abounds with examples of people whose beliefs—especially political beliefs—seem suspiciously convenient: consider, for example, the billionaire who believes that all taxation is unjust, or the Supreme Court Justice whose interpretations of what the law says reliably line up with her personal political convictions. After presenting what I take to be the best argument for the epistemological relevance of suspicious convenience, I diagnose how attempts to resist this argument rest on a kind of epistemological ideal theory, in a sense (...) to be made precise. And I argue that the ways in which this ideal theory can be deployed in defense of suspiciously convenient beliefs brings out the pernicious and distorting nature of such ideal theory in epistemology. (shrink)

Epistemologists typically assume that the acquisition of knowledge from testimony is not threatened at the stage at which audiences interpret what proposition a speaker has asserted. Attention is instead typically paid to the epistemic status of a belief formed on the basis of testimony that it is assumed has the same content as the speaker’s assertion. Andrew Peet has pioneered an account of how linguistic context sensitivity can threaten the assumption. His account locates the threat in contexts in which an (...) audience’s evidence under-determines which proposition a speaker is asserting. I argue that Peet’s epistemic uncertainty account of the threat is mistaken and I propose an alternative. The alternative locates the threat in contexts that provide factors that give audiences a mistaken psychological certainty or confidence that a speaker has asserted a proposition she has not. (shrink)

What can we do—and what should we do—to fight against bias? This final chapter introduces empirically-tested interventions for combating implicit (and explicit) bias and promoting a fairer world, from small daily-life debiasing tricks to larger structural interventions. Along the way, this chapter raises a range of moral, political, and strategic questions about these interventions. This chapter further stresses the importance of admitting that we don’t have all the answers. We should be humble about how much we still don’t know and (...) dedicate efforts to gathering as much knowledge as possible. Even so, we know enough now to start making a difference, and this chapter ultimately aims to chip away at the gap between our abstract commitments to treat people fairly and our lived habits and experiences, which continue to be shaped by implicit and explicit prejudices and stereotypes about race, gender, and other social categories. (shrink)

This chapter is centered around an apparent tension that research on implicit bias raises between virtue and social knowledge. Research suggests that simply knowing what the prevalent stereotypes are leads individuals to act in prejudiced ways—biasing decisions about whom to trust and whom to ignore, whom to promote and whom to imprison—even if they reflectively reject those stereotypes. Because efforts to combat discrimination obviously depend on knowledge of stereotypes, a question arises about what to do next. This chapter argues that (...) the obstacle to virtue is not knowledge of stereotypes as such, but the “accessibility” of such knowledge to the agent who has it. “Accessibility” refers to how easily knowledge comes to mind. Social agents can acquire the requisite knowledge of stereotypes while resisting their pernicious influence, so long as that knowledge remains, in relevant contexts, relatively inaccessible. (shrink)