In recent years, the science and the philosophy of consciousness has seen growing interest in structural questions about consciousness. This is the Editorial Introduction for a special volume for Philosophy and the Mind Sciences on “Structuralism in Consciousness Studies.”.

The requirements of rationality are fundamental in practical and theoretical philosophy. Nonetheless, there exists no correct account of what constitutes rational requirements. This paper attempts to provide a correct constitutive account of ‘rationality requires’. I argue that rational requirements are grounded in ‘necessary explanations of subjective incoherence’, as I shall put it. Rationality requires of you to X if and only if your rational capacities, in conjunction with the fact that you not-X, explain necessarily why you have a non-maximal degree (...) of subjective coherence. (shrink)

Can we employ the property of rationality in establishing what rationality requires? According to a central and formal thesis of John Broome’s work on rational requirements, the answer is ‘no’ – at least if we expect a precise answer. In particular, Broome argues that (i) the property of full rationality (i.e. whether or not you are fully rational) is independent of whether we formulate conditional requirements of rationality as having a wide or a narrow logical scope. That is, (ii) by (...) replacing a wide-scope requirement with a corresponding narrow-scope requirement (or vice versa), we do not alter the situations in which a person is fully rational. As a consequence, (iii) the property of full rationality is unable to guide us in determining whether a rational requirement has a wide or a narrow logical scope. We cannot resolve the wide/narrow scope debate by appealing to a theory of fully rational attitudes. This paper argues that (i), (ii) and (iii) are incorrect. Replacing a wide- with a corresponding narrow-scope requirement (or vice versa) can alter the set of circumstances in which a person is fully rational. The property of full rationality is therefore not independent of whether we formulate conditional requirements of rationality as having a wide or a narrow logical scope. As a consequence, the property of full rationality can guide us in determining what rationality requires – even in cases where we expect a precise answer. (shrink)

This paper discusses whether rationality, morality or prudence impose process-requirements upon us. It has been argued that process-requirements fulfil two essential functions within a system of rational, moral or prudential requirements. These functions are considered to prove the existence of process-requirements. First, process-requirements are deemed necessary to ensure that rationality, morality or prudence can guide our deliberations and actions. Second, their existence is regarded as essential for the correctness of our ordinary explanations of why a person possesses a certain degree (...) of morality, rationality or prudence. However, I argue that these two functions are unable to show the existence of process-requirements. Instead, I propose a different essential function for process-requirements: they are necessary for attributing the correct degree of rationality, morality or prudence to a subject who is not entirely rational, moral or prudent. This function, I argue, necessitates the existence of process-requirements. (shrink)

A main goal of the neuroscience of consciousness is: find the neural correlate to conscious experiences (NCC). When have we achieved this goal? The answer depends on our operationalization of “NCC.” Chalmers (2000) shaped the widely accepted operationalization according to which an NCC is a neural system with a state which is minimally sufficient (but not necessary) for an experience. A deeper look at this operationalization reveals why it might be unsatisfactory: (i) it is not an operationalization of a correlate (...) for occurring experiences, but of the capacity to experience; (ii) it is unhelpful for certain cases which are used to motivate a search for neural correlates of consciousness; (iii) it does not mirror the usage of “NCC” by scientists who seek for unique correlates; (iv) it hardly allows for a form of comparative testing of hypotheses, namely experimenta crucis. Because of these problems (i–iv), we ought to amend or improve on Chalmers's operationalization. Here, I present an alternative which avoids these problems. This “NCC2.0” also retains some benefits of Chalmers's operationalization, namely being compatible with contributions from extended, embedded, enacted, or embodied accounts (4E-accounts) and allowing for the possibility of non-biological or artificial experiencers. (shrink)

This paper argues that practical reasoning is a mental process which leads a person from a set of existent mental states to an intention. In Section 1, I defend this view against two other proposals according to which practical reasoning either concludes in an action itself or in a normative belief. Section 2 discusses the correctness of practical reasoning and explains how the correctness of instrumental reasoning can be explained by the logical relations that hold between the contents of the (...) mental states. In Section 3, I explore the correctness of normative practical reasoning. I conclude with the sceptical view that correct practical reasoning cannot require us to intend to do what we believe we ought to do. (shrink)

Is a phenomenal pain a conscious primitive or composed of more primitive phenomenal states? Are pain experiences necessarily or only contingently unpleasant? Here, I sketch how to answer such questions concerning intra-phenomenal metaphysics using the example of pain and unpleasantness. Arguments for a symmetrical metaphysical independence of phenomenal pain and unpleasant affect are presented, rejecting a composite view like the IASP definition and dimensional views. The motivating intuition of these views is explained by common binding mechanisms in consciousness and characterized (...) as fallacious if generalized. There are, however, underlying commonalities between pain perception and unpleasant affect, e.g. formal content or evolutionary ancestry. (shrink)

Does a coherentist version of rationality issue requirements on states? Or does it issue requirements on processes? This paper evalu- ates the possibility of process-requirements. It argues that there are two possible definitions of state- and process-requirements: a satisfaction- based definition and a content-based definition. I demonstrate that the satisfaction-based definition is inappropriate. It does not allow us to uphold a clear-cut distinction between state- and process-requirements. We should therefore use a content-based definition of state- and pro- cess-requirements. However, a (...) content-based definition entails that ra- tionality does not issue process-requirements. Content-based process- requirements violate the principle that ‘rationality requires’ implies ‘can satisfy’. The conclusion of this paper therefore amounts to a radical re- jection of process-requirements of rationality. (shrink)

Within the debate concerning reason and rationality, instrumental incoherence was for a long time conceived of as the paradigm of irrationality. However, with the emergence of the so-called ‘bootstrapping objection’ and the debate concerning the ‘scope’ of rational requirements, the innocuous status of the normative significance of (instrumental) coherence became subject to. This led to a paradigmatic shift in how to understand the relationship between rational requirements and normativity. While there now exists considerable doubt that rational requirements are normative, it (...) is commonly agreed that one’s normative point of view is a key feature of one’s rationality. Here the question is not only if one can hold a particular normative judgement and still be rational; what is significant too is whether your normative outlook coheres appropriately with your motivation. In fact, it is now commonly agreed that rationality requires us to intend to make the world fit with our first-personal ought beliefs. Enkrasia (i.e. coherence between your normative views and your motivation) is thus seen as a rational ideal and as a source of rational requirements. Nevertheless, many elementary questions regarding the application, content, and significance of an enkrasia-requirement remain unanswered, or subject to debate. This special issue on ‘The Nature of the Enkratic Requirement of Rationality’ aims to answer some of these fundamental questions. (shrink)

Suppose rationality requires you to A if you believe you ought to A. Suppose you believe that you ought to A. How can you satisfy this requirement? One way seems obvious. You can satisfy this requirement by A-ing. But can you also satisfy it by stopping to believe that you ought to A? Recently, it has been argued that this second option is not a genuine way of satisfying the above requirement. Conditional requirements of rationality do not have two ‘symmetric’, (...) but only one ‘asymmetric’ satisfaction condition. This paper explores the consequences of this argument for a theory of the requirements of rationality. I seek to show that thisview conflicts with another powerful intuition about the requirements of rationality, i.e. ‘rational consistency’: if rationality requires you to X, then it is not the case that rationality requires you to not-X. I shall conclude that ‘asymmetric’ satisfying is based on a misleading intuition, for which we should not sacrifice ‘rational consistency’. (shrink)

Hussain claims that ethical consumers are subject to democratic requirements of morality, whereas ordinary price/quality consumers are exempt from these requirements. In this paper, we demonstrate that Hussain’s position is incoherent, does not follow from the arguments he offers for it, and entails a number of counterintuitive consequences.

There is tension between commonly held views concerning phenomenal imagery on the one hand and our first-person epistemic access to it on the other. This tension is evident in many individual issues and experiments in philosophy and psychology (e.g. inattentional and change blindness, the speckled hen, dream coloration, visual periphery). To dissolve it, we can give up either (i) that we lack full introspective access to the phenomenal properties of our imagistic experiences, or (ii) that phenomenal imagery is fully determined, (...) or (iii) that phenomenal imagery does not exist. Which option is preferable? I explore the feasibility of option (ii) in more details by distinguishing between di erent kinds of indeterminacy. One of the most often proclaimed versions of indeterminacy is tied to Representationalism. However, I argue that in this context, Representationalism appears to be the least satisfying option, for which I give ten reasons. By abduction, we should reject Representationalism in favour of (i) or (iii)—the most parsimonious option being eliminativism, and the most conservative being the rejection of privileged access. The decision between these two, however, should be made on a case-by-case basis, depending on which is most adequate given the data. I illustrate this with the comparison between visual agnosia and Charles-Bonnet-Syndrome. (shrink)

One question pursued in Buddhist studies concerns the classification of Buddhist ethics. Damien Keown has argued that Aristotelian virtue ethics provides a useful framework for understanding Buddhist ethics, but recently other scholars have argued that character consequentialism is more suitable for this task. Although there are similarities between the two accounts, there are also important differences. In this paper, I follow Keown in defending the aretaic interpretative model, although I do not press the analogy with Aristotelian ethics. Rather, I argue (...) that Buddhist ethics corresponds to a more generic, act-centered virtue ethics. Buddhist moral reasoning is often strikingly consequentialist, but I argue that this does not support the consequentialist interpretation. Analyzing the concept of right action must be distinguished from providing a justification for living a moral life and from formulating a procedure for making moral decisions. (shrink)

Can we find necessary and sufficient conditions for a mental state to be a pain state? That is, does pain have a nature? Or is the term ‘pain’ ambiguous? I argue here that our expression ‘pain’ lacks necessary use conditions if one considers a range of contexts. As use conditions constrain the reference class, I argue that ‘pain’ does not refer to a natural category, but binds together a bunch of loosely resembling phenomena. This leads to problems for scientific and (...) clinical discourse. To solve these, a method of explication is suggested, based on a discursive combination between analysis of first-person reports and theories of natural science. Lastly, I consider the ethical implications of this ambiguity that lead to a reformulation of the goal of pain science: Not alleviation of all pains ought to be our goal, but only manipulation of conscious and negatively emotionally charged pains. (shrink)

One popular line of argument put forward in support of the principle that the right is prior to the good is to show that teleological theories, which put the good prior to the right, lead to implausible normative results. There are situa- tions, it is argued, in which putting the good prior to the right entails that we ought to do things that cannot be right for us to do. Consequently, goodness cannot (always) explain an action's rightness. This indicates that (...) what is right must be determined independently of the good. In this paper, I argue that these purported counterexamples to teleology fail to establish that the right must be prior to the good. In fact, putting the right prior to the good can lead to sets of ought statements which potentially con- flict with the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. I argue that no plausible ethical theory can determine what is right independently of a notion of value or goodness. Every plausible ethical theory needs a mapping from goodness to rightness, which implies that right cannot be prior to the good. (shrink)

In Morals from Motives, Michael Slote proposed an agent-based approach to virtue ethics in which the morality of an action derives solely from the agent’s motives. Among the many objections that have been raised against Slote’s account, this article addresses two problems associated with the Kantian principle that ought implies can. These are the problems of “deficient” and “inferior” motivation. These problems arise because people cannot freely choose their motives. We cannot always choose to act from good motives; nor can (...) we always avoid acting from bad ones. Given this, Slote’s account implies that we sometimes cannot do what we ought to do, contrary to Kant’s principle. In this article, I propose an alternative agent-based account which, I argue, circumvents these problems. While people cannot choose their motives, they can choose their intentions. By characterizing virtuous action, as I do, in terms of good intentions rather than in terms of good motives, the conflict between what people can do and what they ought to do is resolved. (shrink)

Davidson famously contended that all actions are movements of the agent's body. It has been objected, however, that Davidson's view is incompatible with his own definition of primitive actions. This paper argues that this objection is based on an incorrect reading of Davidson's argument. I will show that by reading "movements", in "all actions are bodily movements", transitively, Davidson's definition of primitive actions ceases to conflict with his thesis that all actions are bodily movements.

In their account of theory change in logic, Aberdein and Read distinguish 'glorious' from 'inglorious' revolutions--only the former preserves all 'the key components of a theory' [1]. A widespread view, expressed in these terms, is that empirical science characteristically exhibits inglorious revolutions but that revolutions in mathematics are at most glorious [2]. Here are three possible responses: 0. Accept that empirical science and mathematics are methodologically discontinuous; 1. Argue that mathematics can exhibit inglorious revolutions; 2. Deny that inglorious revolutions are (...) characteristic of science. Where Aberdein and Read take option 1, option 2 is preferred by Mizrahi [3]. This paper seeks to resolve this disagreement through consideration of some putative mathematical revolutions. [1] Andrew Aberdein and Stephen Read, The philosophy of alternative logics, The Development of Modern Logic (Leila Haaparanta, ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, pp. 613-723. [2] Donald Gillies (ed.), Revolutions in Mathematics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992. [3] Moti Mizrahi, Kuhn's incommensurability thesis: What's the argument?, Social Epistemology 29 (2015), no. 4, 361-378. (shrink)

Der Arktikel beschreibt die Logik des "eingefrorenen" Konflikts zwischen der Republik Moldau und der selbsternannten „Pridnestrowische Moldauischen Republik“ ("Transnistrien"). Bezugnehmend auf die strategischen Optionen der beteiligten Akteure wird erklärt warum der seit 1992 bestehende Konflikt zu keiner Lösung findet.

Two or more attitudinal states are incoherent if and only if, necessarily, under conditions of full transparency, you are disposed to give up one of them. This is roughly the account of incoherence that has recently been put forward by Alex Worsnip (2018). In this paper, I argue that Worsnip’s account of incoherence is incorrect. Not only does it fail to be fully general (i.e., it does not allow us to assess the coherence of all combinations of attitudes), but it (...) also implies that an agent is necessarily incoherent just in virtue of being in one attitudinal state. (shrink)

I argue that the understanding of "pain" as presented in the official medical definition by the IASP is ambiguous and likely a cluster concept.

In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is for a degreed property to count as degrees of consciousness, (...) and (4) applies the analysis to various theories of consciousness. I argue that whether consciousness comes in degrees ultimately depends on which theory of consciousness turns out to be correct. But I also argue that most theories of consciousness entail that consciousness comes in degrees. (shrink)

Animal rights activists are often accused of caring more about animals than about human beings. How, it is asked, can activists condemn the use of animals in biomedical research—research that improves human health and saves human lives? In this article, I argue that even if animal experimentation might eventually provide cures for many serious diseases, given the present state of the world, we are not justified supporting this research; rather, we ought to devote our limited resources to other forms of (...) humanitarian assistance. (shrink)

Unter einigenWissenschaftlern ist die Vorstellung verbreitet, dass Paradoxien Anzeichen von Fortschritt sein können. Es ist jedoch unklar, wie dies zu deuten ist. Dieser Essay stellt ein subjekt-relatives Verständnis von Paradoxikalität vor, das Paradoxien als »Dissonanzen der Zustimmung« (Rescher 2001) charakterisiert und dadurch erlaubt, sie als Katalysator wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts zu rekonstruieren: Durch ihre Struktur haben Problemstellungen in Form von Paradoxien wenigstens fünf fortschrittsfördernde Eigenschaften, die sie Problemstellungen in Form von Fragen voraushaben. Dadurch können Paradoxien als Angelpunkte theoretischen Fortschritts gesehen werden. Dies (...) legt eine Forderung nahe: Wenn wir theoretischen Fortschritt in den Wissenschaften fördern wollen, so sollten wir den Bau von Paradoxien aktiv verfolgen, gemäß dem Credo: Progress by Paradox! (shrink)

This paper develops a theory of analog representation. We first argue that the mark of the analog is to be found in the nature of a representational system’s interpretation function, rather than in its vehicles or contents alone. We then develop the rulebound structure theory of analog representation, according to which analog systems are those that use interpretive rules to map syntactic structural features onto semantic structural features. The theory involves three degree-theoretic measures that capture three independent ways in which (...) a system can be more or less analog. We explain how our theory improves upon prior accounts of analog representation, provides plausible diagnoses for novel challenge cases, extends to hybrid systems that are partially analog and partially symbolic, and accounts for some of the advantages and disadvantages of representing analogically versus symbolically. (shrink)

Most elpistologists now agree that hope for a specific outcome involves more than just desire plus the presupposition that the outcome is possible. This paper argues that the additional element of hope is a disposition to focus on the desired outcome in a certain way. I first survey the debate about the nature of hope in the recent literature, offer objections to some important competing accounts, and describe and defend the view that hope involves a kind of focus or attention. (...) I then suggest that this account makes sense of the intuitive thought that there are moral and pragmatic norms on hope that go beyond the norms on desires and modal presuppositions. I conclude by considering some key questions. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according to (...) which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

One important foundation of Buddhist ethics is a commitment to nonviolence. My aim in this paper is to work out the implications of this commitment with regard to the treatment of offenders. Given that punishment involves the intentional infliction of harm, I argue that the practice of punishment is incompatible with the principle of nonviolence. The core moral teaching of the Buddha is to conquer evil with goodness, and it is reconciliation, rather than punishment, that conforms to this teaching. I (...) argue that a commitment to nonviolence requires not only that we refrain from inflicting intentional harm, but that we refrain from inflicting unnecessary harm, and that this has important implications concerning the practice of incapacitation. I analyze the concept of harm and argue that the Buddhist understanding of this notion leads to the conclusion that none of the standard justifications for punishment are compatible with the principle of nonviolence, properly understood. (shrink)

This paper is a review and critical discussion of John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning. In particular, it engages critically with Broome’s view on the independence of normative reasons and rationality, his construal of the capacity, property, and requirement senses of “rationality”, and his account of reasoning as a conscious, rule-following operation on mental contents.

Some philosophers think that life is worth living not merely because of the goods and the bads within it, but also because life itself is good. I explain how this idea can be formalized by associating each version of such of a view with a function from length of life to the value generated by life itself. Then I argue that every version of the view that life itself is good faces some version of the following dilemma: either (1) good (...) human lives are worse than very long lives wholly devoid of pleasure, desire-satisfaction, knowledge, or any other goods, or (2) very short lives containing nothing but suffering are worth living. Since neither result is plausible, we ought to reject the view that life itself is good. On the view I favor, any given life may be worth living because of the goods that it contains, but life itself is neutral. (shrink)

Andrews argues for a pluralistic folk psychology that employs different kinds of practices and different kinds of cognitive tools (including personality trait attribution, stereotype activation, inductive reasoning about past behavior, and ...

Empirical evidence shows that people have multiple time-biases. One is near-bias; another is future-bias. Philosophical theorising about these biases often proceeds on two assumptions. First, that the two biases are _independent_: that they are explained by different factors (the independence assumption). Second, that there is a normative asymmetry between the two biases: one is rationally impermissible (near-bias) and the other rationally permissible (future-bias). The former assumption at least partly feeds into the latter: if the two biases were not explained by (...) different factors, then it would be less plausible that their normative statuses differ. This paper investigates the independence assumption and finds it unwarranted. In light of this, we argue, there is reason to question the normative asymmetry assumption. (shrink)

Deflationists hold that it does not seem to us, in experience, as though time robustly passes. There is some recent empirical evidence that appears to support this contention. Equally, empirical evidence suggests that we naïvely represent time as dynamical. Thus deflationists are faced with an explanatory burden. If, as they maintain, the world seems to us in experience as though it is non-dynamical, then why do we represent time as dynamical? This paper takes up the challenge of investigating, on the (...) part of the deflationist, one candidate explanation. We hypothesise that people’s belief that the future is what we call deliberatively open partly explains why they represent time as dynamical. In a series of two experiments we test this hypothesis. We find no evidence that beliefs about deliberative openness explain why people represent time as dynamical. Hence there remains an explanatory burden for the deflationist to discharge. (shrink)

This paper is a review and critical discussion of John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning. In particular, it engages critically with Broome’s view on the independence of normative reasons and rationality, his construal of the capacity, property, and requirement senses of “rationality”, and his account of reasoning as a conscious, rule-following operation on mental contents.

This paper examines the idea of "objective phenomenology," or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we might conclude that they are irrational. This paper investigates one hypothesis, according to which future-bias (...) is explained by our having a phenomenology that we describe, or conceive of, as being as of time robustly passing. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found no evidence in its favour. Our results present a puzzle, however, when compared with the results of an earlier study. We conclude that although robust passage phenomenology on its own probably does not explain future-bias, having this phenomenology and taking it to be veridical may contribute to future-bias. (shrink)

This paper argues that phenomenal consciousness is what makes an entity a welfare subject. I develop a variety of motivations for this view, and then defend it from objections concerning death, non-conscious entities that have interests (such as plants), and conscious entities that necessarily have welfare level zero. I also explain how my theory of welfare subjects relates to experientialist and anti-experientialist theories of welfare goods.

In the epistemology of testimony it is often assumed that audiences are able to reliably recover asserted contents. In the philosophy of language this claim is contentious. This paper outlines one problem concerning the recovery of asserted contents, and argues that it prevents audiences from gaining testimonial knowledge in a range of cases. The recovery problem, in essence, is simply that due to the collective epistemic limitations of the speaker and audience speakers will, in certain cases, be insensitive to the (...) ways in which they may be misinterpreted. As a result audiences’ beliefs will often fail the safety and sensitivity conditions on knowledge. Once the problem has been outlined and distinguished from several related problems in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of testimony, a series of responses are considered. The first response holds that audiences possess defeaters in recovery problem cases, and thus wouldn’t form beliefs. The second response holds that the beliefs audiences form are very coarse grained, meaning they are not very vulnerable to failures of safety and sensitivity. The final response holds that the objects of speaker meaning are not propositional. All three responses are found to be unsatisfactory. (shrink)

This three-part chapter explores a higher-order logic we call ‘Classicism’, which extends a minimal classical higher-order logic with further axioms which guarantee that provable coextensiveness is sufficient for identity. The first part presents several different ways of axiomatizing this theory and makes the case for its naturalness. The second part discusses two kinds of extensions of Classicism: some which take the view in the direction of coarseness of grain (whose endpoint is the maximally coarse-grained view that coextensiveness is sufficient for (...) identity), and some which take the view in the direction of fineness of grain (whose endpoint is the maximally fine-grained theory containing all distinctness claims compatible with Classicism). The third part introduces some techniques for constructing models of Classicism, and uses them to prove the consistency of many of the extensions of Classicism introduced in the second part. (shrink)

Buddhism teaches that ‘self’ as a substantial, enduring entity is an illusion. But for self to be an illusion there must be something in our experience that is misinterpreted as self. What is this? The notion of an experiential self plays an important role in phenomenological investigations of conscious experience. Does the illusion of self consist in mistaking a purely experiential self for a substantial self? I argue against this and locate the source of the illusion in time-consciousness. It is (...) the essence of consciousness to flow, but the flow of consciousness presupposes an experiential present. The experiential present — an abiding sense of ‘now’ — is the dimension through which experiences are experienced as streaming. It is this, I argue, that is misinterpreted as an enduring self. I support my account by arguing that the synchronic and diachronic unity of consciousness can be accounted for in terms of impersonal, temporal experience, and that conceiving of consciousness as the presence-dimension rather than as the I-dimension affords a solution to the brain-bisection puzzle. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept both of the following claims: (1) consciousness matters morally, and (2) species membership doesn’t matter morally. In other words, many reject speciesism but accept what we might call 'sentientism'. But do the reasons against speciesism yield analogous reasons against sentientism, just as the reasons against racism and sexism are thought to yield analogous reasons against speciesism? This paper argues that speciesism is disanalogous to sentientism (as well as racism and sexism). I make a case for the following (...) asymmetry: (a) some non-humans clearly have interests, but (b) no non-conscious entities clearly have interests. This asymmetry, I argue, renders sentientism resistant to the standard argument against speciesism. (shrink)

For Kant, knowledge involves certainty. If “certainty” requires that the grounds for a given propositional attitude guarantee its truth, then this is an infallibilist view of epistemic justification. Such a view says you can’t have epistemic justification for an attitude unless the attitude is also true. Here I want to defend an alternative fallibilist interpretation. Even if a subject has grounds that would be sufficient for knowledge if the proposition were true, the proposition might not be true. And so there (...) is sometimes still rational room for doubt. The goal of this paper is to present four different models of what “certainty” amounts to, for Kant, each of which is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

Much has been written about the free energy principle (FEP), and much misunderstood. The principle has traditionally been put forth as a theory of brain function or biological self-organisation. Critiques of the framework have focused on its lack of empirical support and a failure to generate concrete, falsifiable predictions. I take both positive and negative evaluations of the FEP thus far to have been largely in error, and appeal to a robust literature on scientific modelling to rectify the situation. A (...) prominent account of scientific modelling distinguishes between model structure and model construal. I propose that the FEP be reserved to designate a model structure, to which philosophers and scientists add various construals, leading to a plethora of models based on the formal structure of the FEP. An entailment of this position is that demands placed on the FEP that it be falsifiable or that it conform to some degree of biological realism rest on a category error. To this end, I deliver first an account of the phenomenon of model transfer and the breakdown between model structure and model construal. In the second section, I offer an overview of the formal elements of the framework, tracing their history of model transfer and illustrating how the formalism comes apart from any interpretation thereof. Next, I evaluate existing comprehensive critical assessments of the FEP, and hypothesise as to potential sources of existing confusions in the literature. In the final section, I distinguish between what I hold to be the FEP—taken to be a modelling language or modelling framework—and what I term “FEP models.”. (shrink)

Birch sketches out an ingenious account of how the psychology of social norms emerged from individual-level norms of skill. We suggest that these individual-level norms of skill are likely to be much more widespread than Birch suggests, extending deeper into the hominid lineage, across modern great ape species, all the way to distantly related creatures like honeybees. This suggests that there would have been multiple opportunities for social norms to emerge from skill norms in human prehistory.

Kant’s third question (“What may I hope?”) is underdiscussed in comparison to the other two, even though he himself took it to be the question that united his efforts in theoretical and practical philosophy. This is largely his own fault: in his discussion of the question he moves quickly from talking about rational hope to discussing the kind of Belief or faith (Glaube) that grounds it. Moreover, the canonical statements of his own moral proof do not seem to give hope (...) any essential role to play. In this chapter I first consider the ways in which pre-Kantian authors muddied the distinction between what we would call “hope” and “expectation.” I then look at how Kant’s views about hope evolve to the point where, by the time of the “End of All Things” essay of 1794, he seems to endorse a kind of hopeful pessimism about our this-worldly situation, at least. I then examine a version of Kant’s moral proof that succeeds in locating a role for hope that is distinct from that of Belief, expectation, optimism, and so on. Finally, I turn to some contemporary work in two very different arenas – Anthropocene scholarship and Christian eschatology – in order to look at how the concepts of hope and optimism are deployed in those contexts. We will see that although some of the recent discourses about the “Good Anthropocene” slip beyond hope into full-blown optimism, most authors working on ecological and environmental topics are careful to keep the attitudes distinct. By contrast, there is a tendency among contemporary theologians to follow earlier Christian authors in slipping beyond mere hope to optimistic faith, and even to full-blown certainty. (shrink)

Conscious experiences are characterized by mental qualities, such as those involved in seeing red, feeling pain, or smelling cinnamon. The standard framework for modeling mental qualities represents them via points in geometrical spaces, where distances between points inversely correspond to degrees of phenomenal similarity. This paper argues that the standard framework is structurally inadequate and develops a new framework that is more powerful and flexible. The core problem for the standard framework is that it cannot capture precision structure: for example, (...) consider the phenomenal contrast between seeing an object as crimson in foveal vision versus merely as red in peripheral vision. The solution I favor is to model mental qualities using regions, rather than points. I explain how this seemingly simple formal innovation not only provides a natural way of modeling precision, but also yields a variety of further theoretical fruits: it enables us to formulate novel hypotheses about the space and structures of mental qualities, formally differentiate two dimensions of phenomenal similarity, generate a quantitative model of the phenomenal sorites, and define a measure of discriminatory grain. A noteworthy consequence is that the structure of the mental qualities of conscious experiences is fundamentally different from the structure of the perceptible qualities of external objects. (shrink)

This paper argues that the theory of structured propositions is not undermined by the Russell-Myhill paradox. I develop a theory of structured propositions in which the Russell-Myhill paradox doesn't arise: the theory does not involve ramification or compromises to the underlying logic, but rather rejects common assumptions, encoded in the notation of the $\lambda$-calculus, about what properties and relations can be built. I argue that the structuralist had independent reasons to reject these underlying assumptions. The theory is given both a (...) diagrammatic representation, and a logical representation in a novel language. In the latter half of the paper I turn to some technical questions concerning the treatment of quantification, and demonstrate various equivalences between the diagrammatic and logical representations, and a fragment of the $\lambda$-calculus. (shrink)

What makes a certain consideration an aesthetic reason rather than a reason of some other kind? Is it a solely a matter of the kind of attitude or activity that the reason supports? How fundamental or structural are such reasons? Do they contrast in a natural way with epistemic or practical reasons? Is skilled aesthetic achievement, whether interpretative or creative, a matter of recognizing the aesthetic reasons we have for a given response, and correctly according with such reasons? In this (...) paper, I offer a preliminary discussion of these topics. I argue that our account of aesthetic reasons should respect the fact that they play an important regulative role, over and above directly supporting aesthetic response. Such a role allows aesthetic reasons to moderate a wide range of practical and epistemic activities, but not by adding or substituting distinctively aesthetic ends or purposes for such activities. I then go on to argue against the view that skilled aesthetic achievement consists in correct recognition of and accord with aesthetic reasons, adapting a recent argument of Timothy Williamson’s. (shrink)