While anthropogenic species extinctions can be considered morally problematic for a range of reasons, they can also be described as a problem of interspecies justice. That is the focus of this paper in which we argue that human-caused species extinctions can be integrated within a non-anthropocentric account of reparative justice that is significantly similar to how reparation is understood within political theory at large. An account such as this faces a series of difficulties, such as how to make right past (...) injustices against victims that do not exist any longer and which belonged to species now extinct. For that purpose, we offer an argument in favour of symbolic forms of reparation in the form of, amongst other things, the preservation and restoration of habitat to materially repair the interspecies justice relationship; as well as monuments and education to honour the nonhuman dead. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate composition models of incarnation, according to which Christ is a compound of qualitatively and numerically different constituents. We focus on three-part models, according to which Christ is composed of a divine mind, a human mind, and a human body. We consider four possible relational structures that the three components could form. We argue that a ‘hierarchy of natures’ model, in which the human mind and body are united to each other in the normal way, and (...) in which they are jointly related to the divine mind by the relation of co-action, is the most metaphysically plausible model. Finally, we consider the problem of how Christ can be a single person even when his components may be considered persons. We argue that an Aristotelian metaphysics, according to which identity is a matter of function, offers a plausible solution: Christ's components may acquire a radically new identity through being parts of the whole, which enables them to be reidentified as parts, not persons. (shrink)

Relational approaches are gaining more and more importance in philosophy of tech-nology. This brings up the critical question of how they can be implemented in applied ethics, law, and practice. In “Extremely Relational Robots: Implications for Law and Ethics”, Nancy S. Jecker (2024) comments on my article “Not Relational Enough? Towards an Eco-Relational Approach in Robot Ethics” (Puzio, 2024), in which I present a deep relational, “eco-relational approach”. In this reply, I address two of Jecker’s criticisms: in section. 3, I (...) deal with the connection of personhood and human identity with relationality, and in section. 4, I discuss the consequences of relational approaches for practical ethics and law. Unlike Jecker, I am strongly convinced that relational approaches can and should be implemented in applied ethics and law. (shrink)

Do the new sciences of well-being provide knowledge that respects the nature of well-being? This book written from the perspective of philosophy of science articulates how this field can speak to well-being proper and can do so in a way that respects the demands of objectivity and measurement.

‘The Union of Cause and Effect in Aristotle : Physics III 3’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 32, pp. 205-232, May 2007.: I argue that Aristotle introduced a unique realist account of causation, which has not hitherto been appreciated in the history of philosophy: causal realism without a causal relation. In his account, cause and effect are unified by the ectopic actualization of the agent’s potentiality in the patient. His solution consists in the introduction of a property that belongs to (...) one subject but is realized in another subject on whose state this realization depends. I identify and analyze the multiple ontological dependencies between the causal state of the agent and that of the patient during their causal activity. (shrink)

Ways of Scope Taking is concerned with syntactic, semantic and computational aspects of scope. Its starting point is the well-known but often neglected fact that different types of quantifiers interact differently with each other and other operators. The theoretical examination of significant bodies of data, both old and novel, leads to two central claims. (1) Scope is a by-product of a set of distinct Logical Form processes; each quantifier participates in those that suit its particular features. (2) Scope interaction is (...) further constrained by the semantics of the interacting operators. The arguments are developed using Minimalist syntax, Generalized Quantify theory, Discourse Representation Theory, and algebraic semantics. The contributors (Beghelli, Ben-Shalom, Doetjes, Farkas, Gutiérrez Rexach, Honcoop, Stabler, Stowell, Szabolcsi and Zwarts) make tightly related theoretical assumptions and focus on related empirical phenomena, which include the direct and inverse scope of quantifiers, distributivity, negation, modal and intensional contexts, weak islands, event-related readings, interrogatives, wh/quantifier interactions, and Hungarian syntax. An introduction to the formal semantics background is provided. Audience: Linguists, philosophers, computational and psycholinguists; advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in these fields. (shrink)

Enjoying great popularity in decision theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science, Bayesianism as understood here is fundamentally concerned with epistemically ideal rationality. It assumes a tight connection between evidential probability and ideally rational credence, and usually interprets evidential probability in terms of such credence. Timothy Williamson challenges Bayesianism by arguing that evidential probabilities cannot be adequately interpreted as the credences of an ideal agent. From this and his assumption that evidential probabilities cannot be interpreted as the actual credences of human (...) agents either, he concludes that no interpretation of evidential probabilities in terms of credence is adequate. I argue to the contrary. My overarching aim is to show on behalf of Bayesians how one can still interpret evidential probabilities in terms of ideally rational credence and how one can maintain a tight connection between evidential probabilities and ideally rational credence even if the former cannot be interpreted in terms of the latter. By achieving this aim I illuminate the limits and prospects of Bayesianism. (shrink)

Difficulty is often treated as blame-mitigating, and even exculpating. But on some occasions difficulty seems to have little or no bearing on our assessments of moral responsibility, and can even exacerbate it. In this paper, I argue that the relevance (and irrelevance) of difficulty with regard to assessments of moral responsibility is best understood via Quality of Will accounts. I look at various ways of characterising difficulty – including via sacrifice, effort, skill and ‘trying’ – and set out to demonstrate (...) that these factors are only blame-mitigating where, and to the extent that, they complicate ascriptions of insufficient concern. Matters become more complex, however, when we turn to difficult circumstances that seem to generate such objectionable attitudes. This is arguably the case with epistemic difficulty and certain instances of moral ignorance. Here I argue that certain difficult circumstances diminish the sense in which false moral beliefs are genuinely revelatory of the agents who hold them. In particular, I draw on the distinction between difficulty that generates objectionable attitudes, and objectionable attitudes that generate difficulty. I argue that the former, but not the latter, can plausibly be viewed as blame mitigating, and that this would apply to (limited) cases of moral ignorance. (shrink)

Thick concepts, namely those concepts that describe and evaluate simultaneously, present a challenge to science. Since science does not have a monopoly on value judgments, what is responsible research involving such concepts? Using measurement of wellbeing as an example, we first present the options open to researchers wishing to study phenomena denoted by such concepts. We argue that while it is possible to treat these concepts as technical terms, or to make the relevant value judgment in-house, the responsible thing to (...) do, especially in the context of public policy, is to make this value judgment through a legitimate political process that includes all the stakeholders of this research. We then develop a participatory model of measurement based on the ideal of co-production. To show that this model is feasible and realistic, we illustrate it with a case study of co-production of a concept of thriving conducted by the authors in collaboration with a UK anti-poverty charity Turn2us. (shrink)

Perceivers generally show a poor ability to detect changes, a condition referred to as “Change Blindness” . They are, in addition, “blind to their own blindness”. A common explanation of this “Change Blindness Blindness” is that it derives from an inadequate, “photographical” folk-theory about perception. This explanation, however, does not account for intra-individual variations of CBB across trials. Our study aims to explore an alternative theory, according to which participants base their self-evaluations on two activity-dependent cues, namely search time and (...) perceived success in prior trials. These cues were found to influence self-evaluation in two orthogonal ways: success-feedback influenced self-evaluation in a global, contextual way, presumably by recalibrating the norm of adequacy for the task. Search time influenced it in a local way, predicting the success of a given trial from its duration. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is to provide substantial motivation for exploring an Acquaintance account of phenomenal consciousness, on which what fundamentally explains phenomenal consciousness is the relation of acquaintance. Its secondary goal is to take a few steps towards such an account. Roughly, my argument proceeds as follows. Motivated by prioritizing naturalization, the debate about the nature of phenomenal consciousness has been almost monopolized by representational theories. Among them, Self-Representationalism is by far the most antecedently promising. However, on (...) thorough inspection, Self-Representationalism turns out not explanatorily or theoretically better than the Acquaintance account. Indeed, the latter seems to be superior in at least some important respects. Therefore, at the very least, there are good reasons to take the Acquaintance account into serious consideration as an alternative to representational theories. The positive contribution of this paper is a sketch of an account of consciousness on which phenomenal consciousness is explained partly in representationalist terms, but where a crucial role is played by the relation of acquaintance. (shrink)

In this Introduction we introduce the central themes of the Evaluative Perception volume. After identifying historical and recent contemporary work on this topic, we discuss some central questions under three headings: (1) Questions about the Existence and Nature of Evaluative Perception: Are there perceptual experiences of values? If so, what is their nature? Are experiences of values sui generis? Are values necessary for certain kinds of experience? (2) Questions about the Epistemology of Evaluative Perception: Can evaluative experiences ever justify evaluative (...) judgments? Are experiences of values necessary for certain kinds of justified evaluative judgments? (3) Questions about Value Theory and Evaluative Perception: Is the existence of evaluative experience supported or undermined by particular views in value theory? Are particular views in value theory supported or undermined by the existence of value experience? (shrink)

Wenn man heute Instagram öffnet, begegnen vielfältige Beiträge zu Gendervielfalt, sexueller Aufklärung, Umweltengagement und Körperoptimierung. Auf Instagram gibt es Queerness ebenso wie neue Lebensformen, ein neues Verhältnis zur Umwelt, veränderte Selbstverständnisse, eine breite Varianz von Formen der Selbstdarstellung und Körperinszenierung. Die hier gezeigten veränderten Lebenswirklichkeiten und Selbstverständnisse der Menschen legen nahe, dass diese neuen Entwicklungen in eine zeitgenössische Anthropologie, die sich mit dem menschlichen Selbstverständnis wissenschaftlich auseinandersetzt, aufgenommen werden müssen. Der Aufsatz nimmt die Social-Media-Plattform Instagram als Anlass, um Perspektiven für (...) eine zeitgenössische Anthropologie aufzuzeigen. Dazu wird untersucht, durch welche Perspektiven die Anthropologie ergänzt werden muss und wie die theoretischen Ansätze des Neuen Materialismus dafür fruchtbar gemacht werden können. Im ersten Schritt wird in die Themen auf Instagram sowie den Zusammenhang von Instagram und Anthropologie eingeführt (2). Davon ausgehend werden drei Themen für eine zeitgemäße Anthropologieuntersucht: Technik (Technikanthropologie), Körper und Körperoptimierung sowie Umwelt und die Beziehungen zu nichtmenschlichen Entitäten (3). Anschließend werden der Neue Materialismus (4) vorgestellt und dazu die Ansätze von Donna Haraway und Karen Barad skizziert, sodass daraus Schlüsse für eine zeitgemäße Anthropologie gezogen werden können (5). Dies mündet in einen Ausblick auf die weitere anthropologische Forschung (6). (shrink)

Digitalisierung und technologischer Fortschritt verändern das menschliche Selbstverständnis. Während sich der Mensch in Abgrenzung zu Tier und Natur als kultiviertes und autonom handelndes Wesen definiert, steht er angesichts der zunehmenden Technologisierung nun vor der Frage: Was bedeutet Menschsein vor dem Hintergrund der neuen Technologien? Wie verändern sich die menschliche Lebenswelt, Verantwortungsstrukturen und Identitätskonzepte? Was können Menschen, was Technologien nicht können? Was macht den Menschen aus und wo wird er in Frage gestellt? Der Band bietet einen umfassenden Blick auf diese Fragestellungen. (...) Im ersten Teil befassen sich Beiträge aus der Philosophie und Anthropologie mit dem Spannungsfeld Mensch-Maschine. Die anschließenden Beiträge eröffnen interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf die technisierte Lebenswelt des Menschen in den Bereichen Kultur, Kommunikation und Bildung. Im letzten Teil des Bandes wird schließlich als Kontrapunkt das Menschsein in einer technisierten Welt aus der Perspektive von Spiritualität und Pflege in den Blick genommen. (shrink)

Richard Bradley and others endorse Reverse Bayesianism as the way to model awareness growth. I raise a problem for Reverse Bayesianism—at least for the general version that Bradley endorses—and argue that there is no plausible way to restrict the principle that will give us the right results. To get the right results, we need to pay attention to the attitudes that agents have towards propositions of which they are unaware. This raises more general questions about how awareness growth should be (...) modelled. (shrink)

The scalar approach to negative polarity item (NPI) licensing assumes that NPIs are allowable in contexts in which the introduction of the NPI leads to proposition strengthening (e.g., Kadmon & Landman 1993, Krifka 1995, Lahiri 1997, Chierchia 2006). A straightforward processing prediction from such a theory is that NPI’s facilitate inference verification from sets to subsets. Three experiments are reported that test this proposal. In each experiment, participants evaluated whether inferences from sets to subsets were valid. Crucially, we manipulated whether (...) the premises contained an NPI. In Experiment 1, participants completed a metalinguistic reasoning task, and Experiments 2 and 3 tested reading times using a self-paced reading task. Contrary to expectations, no facilitation was observed when the NPI was present in the premise compared to when it was absent. In fact, the NPI significantly slowed down reading times in the inference region. Our results therefore favor those scalar theories that predict that the NPI is costly to process (Chierchia 2006), or other, nonscalar theories (Giannakidou 1998, Ladusaw 1992, Postal 2005, Szabolcsi 2004) that likewise predict NPI processing cost but, unlike Chierchia (2006), expect the magnitude of the processing cost to vary with the actual pragmatics of the NPI. (shrink)

Die folgende Untersuchung nimmt eine informationsethische und anthropologische Perspektive ein und legt einen Schwerpunkt auf die Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) im Gesundheitsbereich. Zunächst beschreiben und problematisieren wir das Feld der Informationsethik, das im Wesentlichen heute als Ethik von umfassenden, digitalen Computersystemen als informationsprozessierenden Maschinen verstanden wird (Kap. 2). Im zweiten, anthropologischen Schritt untersuchen wir, wie informationelle Gesundheitstechnologien das menschliche Selbstverständnis beeinflussen (Kap. 3). Dies leitet über zur ethischen Fragestellung, die Überwachung, Kontrolle und Autonomie als Brennpunkte des Gesundheitsbereichs fokussiert (Kap. 4). (...) Zuletzt geben wir als Ausblick einige Hinweise, wie eine dezidiert theologische Perspektive auf die Herausforderungen aussehen kann (Kap. 5). -- Puzio, Anna/Filipovic, Alexander: Personen als Informationsbündel? Informationsethische Perspektiven auf den Gesundheitsbereich. In: Fritz, Alexis/Mandry, Christof/Proft, Ingo/Schuster, Josef (Hg.): Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion. Anthropologische und ethische Herausforderungen neuer Entwicklungen im Gesundheitsbereich (Jahrbuch für Moraltheologie, 5). Freiburg: Herder 2021, S. 89–114. (shrink)

Louise Brown's birth in 1978 heralded a new era not just in reproductive technology, but in the relationship between science, cells, and society. For the first time, human embryos could be created, selected, studied, manipulated, frozen, altered, or destroyed, outside the human body. But with this possibility came a plethora of ethical questions. Is it acceptable to destroy a human embryo for the purpose of research? Or to create an embryo with the specific purpose of destroying it for research? In (...) an attempt to construct ethical and legal frameworks for the new era of cellular reprogramming, legislators and ethicists have tried to distinguish between different kinds of biological entity. We treat cells differently depending on whether they are human or animal, somatic cells or gametes, and on whether they are embryos or not. But this approach to the ethics of cellular reprogramming is doomed to failure for the simple reason that cellular reprogramming in itself destroys the distinctions that the law requires to function. In this article, we explore the historical trajectory of cellular reprogramming and its relationship with ethics and society. We suggest that the early hype of embryo research has not obviously fulfilled expectations, but since new avenues of research are continuously opening, it is hard to say definitely that these promises have been broken. We explore the forthcoming challenges posed by the creation of DNA from scratch in the laboratory, and the implications of this for understandings of identity, privacy, and reproduction. We conclude that while ethics used to seek answers in biological facts, this is no longer possible, and a new approach is required. (shrink)

Introspective knowledge by acquaintance is knowledge we have by being directly aware of our phenomenally conscious states. In this paper, I argue that introspective knowledge by acquaintance is a sui generis kind of knowledge: it is irreducible to any sort of propositional knowledge and is wholly constituted by a relationship of introspective acquaintance. My main argument is that this is the best explanation of some epistemic facts about phenomenal consciousness and introspection. In particular, it best explains the epistemic asymmetry between (...) a subject who has never had a certain phenomenal state and one who has. I also consider two theoretical objections to my claim: an objection from disunity and an objection from mysteriousness. I show that these objections can be answered and that introspective knowledge by acquaintance being sui generis remains a live option on the table. (shrink)

It is commonly held that our intuitive judgements about imaginary problem cases are justified a priori, if and when they are justified at all. In this paper I defend this view — ‘rationalism’ — against a recent objection by Timothy Williamson. I argue that his objection fails on multiple grounds, but the reasons why it fails are instructive. Williamson argues from a claim about the semantics of intuitive judgements, to a claim about their psychological underpinnings, to the denial of rationalism. (...) I argue that the psychological claim — that a capacity for mental simulation explains our intuitive judgements — does not, even if true, provide reasons to reject rationalism. (More generally, a simulation hypothesis, about any category of judgements, is very limited in its epistemological implications: it is pitched at a level of explanation that is insensitive to central epistemic distinctions.) I also argue that Williamson’s semantic claim — that intuitive judgements are judgements of counterfactuals — is mistaken; rather, I propose, they are a certain kind of metaphysical possibility judgement. Several other competing proposals are also examined and criticized. (shrink)

This review provides an overview of the ethics of extinctions with a focus on the Western analytical environmental ethics literature. It thereby gives special attention to the possible philosophical grounds for Michael Soulé’s assertion that the untimely ‘extinction of populations and species is bad’. Illustrating such debates in environmental ethics, the guiding question for this review concerns why – or when – anthropogenic extinctions are bad or wrong, which also includes the question of when that might not be the case (...) (i.e. which extinctions are even desirable). After providing an explanation of the disciplinary perspective taken (section “Introduction”), the concept of extinction and its history within that literature are introduced (section “Understanding extinction”). Then, in section “Why (or when) might anthropogenic extinctions be morally problematic?”, different reasons for why anthropogenic extinctions might be morally problematic are presented based on the loss of species’ value, harm to nonhuman individuals, the loss of valuable biological variety and duties to future generations. This section concludes by also considering cases where anthropogenic extinctions might be justified. Section “How to respond to extinctions?” then addresses a selection of topics concerning risks and de-extinction technologies. Finally, the section on “Extinction studies” introduces other viewpoints on the ethics of extinction from the extinction studies literature, followed by the “Conclusion”. (shrink)

We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this m...

The psychological reality of an inner awareness built into conscious experience has traditionally been a central element of philosophy of consciousness, from Aristotle, to Descartes, Brentano, the phenomenological tradition, and early and contemporary analytic philosophy. Its existence, however, has recently been called into question, especially by defenders of so-called transparency of experience and first-order representationalists about phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I put forward a defense of inner awareness based on an argument from memory. Roughly, the idea is that since (...) we can only recall something if we were aware of it at the time of its occurrence, and since we can recall our own experiences, we must be aware of our own experiences at the time of their occurrence. The argument is far from new: it goes back to the Buddhist tradition and has been revived more recently in Buddhist Scholarship but also in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, in particular by Uriah Kriegel. However, I believe that, since it is the best extant argument for inner awareness, it deserves more extensive treatment. My goal is to strengthen the memory argument by making some conceptual distinctions as to the exact thesis about inner awareness that the argument is supposed to support, considering different ways the argument may be reconstructed depending on the exact thesis to be supported, and defending the argument from a new objection, raised very recently by Daniel Stoljar. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a new version of the acquaintance view of the nature of introspection of phenomenal states. On the acquaintance view, when one introspects a current phenomenal state of one's, one bears to it the relation of introspective acquaintance. Extant versions of the acquaintance view neglect what I call the phenomenal modification problem. The problem, articulated by Franz Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, is that drawing introspective attention to one's current conscious experience may modify (...) its phenomenology. Failing to take phenomenal modification into account affects the adequacy of extant versions of the acquaintance view. The purpose of this paper is to develop a better version, the integration account, that meets the phenomenal modification challenge while preserving the merits of other versions. (shrink)

An area of consensus in debates about culpability for ignorance concerns the importance of an agent’s epistemic situation, and the information available to them, in determining what they ought to know. On this understanding, given the excesses of our present epistemic situation, we are more culpable for our morally-relevant ignorance than ever. This verdict often seems appropriate at the level of individual cases, but I argue that it is over-demanding when considered at large. On the other hand, when we describe (...) an obligation to know that avoids over-demandingness at large, it fails to be sufficiently demanding in individual cases. The first half of this paper is dedicated to setting up this dilemma. In the second half, I show that it cannot be easily escaped. Finally, I suggest that this dilemma impedes our ability to morally appraise one another’s ignorance, and even our own. (shrink)

I will make the following two main claims: (4) a. Under syntactically specifiable conditions superlatives take sentential scope. b. Sentential scope superlatives are necessarily indefinite.

This book defends an account of justice to nonhuman beings – i.e., to animals, plants etc. – also known as ecological or interspecies justice, and which lies in the intersection of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. More specifically, against the background of the current extinction crisis this book defends a global non-ranking biocentric theory of distributive ecological/interspecies justice to wild nonhuman beings, because the extinction crisis does not only need practical solutions, but also an account of how it is (...) the outcome of large-scale injustice. This book not only provides a novel theoretical framework that supports such a claim, but it also develops the theoretical tools to find just compromises between the entitlements of intraspecies and intra-human global distributive justice to ecological space for the purpose of working towards a vision of just conservation. -/- Content: 1. Introducing Ecological Justice 2. Political Non-Ranking Biocentrism 3. The Community of Justice 4. The Currency of Distributive Justice 5. The Principles of Distributive Justice 6. Ecological Justice and the Capabilities Approach 7. Biodiversity Loss: An Injustice? 8. Who Owns the Earth? 9. Visions of Just Conservation 10. Outlook for Implementation . (shrink)

The 1994 US spectrum auction is now a paradigmatic case of the successful use of microeconomic theory for policy-making. We use a detailed analysis of it to review standard accounts in philosophy of science of how idealized models are connected to messy reality. We show that in order to understand what made the design of the spectrum auction successful, a new such account is required, and we present it here. Of especial interest is the light this sheds on the issue (...) of progress in economics. In particular, it enables us to get clear on exactly what has been progressing, and on exactly what theory has – and has not – contributed to that. This in turn has important implications for just what it is about economic theory that we should value. (shrink)

Within debates concerning responsibility for ignorance the distinction between moral and factual ignorance is often treated as crucial. Many prominent accounts hold that while factual ignorance routinely exculpates, moral ignorance never does so. The view that there is an in-principle distinction between moral and factual ignorance has been referred to as the “Asymmetry Thesis.” This view stands in opposition to the “Parity Thesis,” which holds that moral and factual ignorance are in-principle similar. The Parity Thesis has been closely aligned with (...) volitionist accounts of moral responsibility, whereas the Asymmetry Thesis has been closely aligned with Quality of Will accounts. Two central questions are at work here: how ignorance excuses, and whether it excuses in the same way for both moral and factual ignorance. I will argue that these questions have often been confused in the present debate, and once we have distinguished more clearly between them, it seems that Quality of Will accounts are compatible with the Parity Thesis. And more generally: that the distinction between moral and factual ignorance is far less important in debates about responsibility for ignorance than it has often appeared. (shrink)

Social media has transformed how individuals handle their illnesses. While many patients increasingly use these online platforms to understand embodied information surrounding their conditions, healthcare professionals often frame these practices as negative and do not consider the expertise that patients generate through social media. Through a combination of insights from social epistemology and ignorance studies, this paper problematizes the distinctive understandings of social media between patients and healthcare professionals from a different perspective. A total of four ideas are introduced: (1) (...) healthcare professionals see embodied knowledge that arises from patients’ social media practices as uncomfortable knowledge; (2) healthcare professionals engage in several behaviours to preserve their authority and power in front of embodied knowledge created through these online platforms; (3) failing to consider embodied knowledge can have consequences not only in terms of trust between patients and healthcare professionals but also in connection with epistemological populism and the transition towards patient-centred care; and (4) media and digital health literacy could help healthcare professionals enhance the uses of social media in healthcare. Adopting this framework allows not only to offer valuable insights into how healthcare professionals manage patients’ social media practices, but also opens new avenues to improve healthcare digitisation. (shrink)

Kant's radical criticism of the passions has a central but largely overlooked moral-psychological component: for Kant, the passions promote a kind of self-deception he calls ‘rationalizing’. In analysing the connection between passion and rationalizing self-deception, I identify and reconstruct two essential traits of Kant's conception of the passions. I argue (1) that rationalizing self-deception, according to Kant, contributes massively to the emergence and consolidation of passions. It aims to resolve a psychological conflict between passion and moral duty when in fact, (...) it does not resolve but perpetuates this conflict. I then argue (2) that rationalizing does not necessarily aim to devalue moral duty, as Kant seems to suggest in the Groundwork. It can also aim to revalue the ‘counterweight’. By analysing Kant's presentation of several individual passions in the Anthropology, I demonstrate that rationalizing here is concerned with elevating these passions and making them pass as morally (or at least prudentially) justified. (shrink)

The question of the unity of consciousness is often treated as the question of how different conscious experiences are related to each other in order to be unified. Many contemporary views on the unity of consciousness are based on this bottom-up approach. In this paper I explore an alternative, top-down approach, according to which (to a first approximation) a subject undergoes one single conscious experience at a time. From this perspective, the problem of unity of consciousness becomes rather the problem (...) of how we can distinguish a multiplicity of goings-on within our conscious experience at any time, given that it is unique. I will present three possible top-down approaches to unity of consciousness, which I call Priority unity monism, Existence unity monism, and Brentanian unity monism. Priority monism and Existence monism are defined in analogy with the homonymous metaphysical theories of object constitution. Brentanian monism retraces Franz Brentano’s view on unity of consciousness, and is defined by appeal to some of his mereological ideas. I will argue that the latter is the best top-down approach to unity of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like a (...) disease, the risk of getting pregnant can be reduced by using prophylactic measures. We address the question of whether the ‘normality’ of pregnancy, its current necessity for human survival, or the value often attached to it are reasons to reject the view that pregnancy is a disease. We point out that applying theories of disease to the case of pregnancy, can in many cases illuminate inconsistencies and problems within these theories. Finally, we show that it is difficult to find one theory of disease that captures all paradigm cases of diseases, while convincingly excluding pregnancy. We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel account of the contents of memory. By drawing on insights from the philosophy of perception, I propose a hybrid account of the contents of memory designed to preserve important aspects of representationalist and relationalist views. The hybrid view I propose also contributes to two ongoing debates in philosophy of memory. First, I argue that, in opposition to eternalist views, the hybrid view offers a less metaphysically-charged solution to the co-temporality problem. Second, I show how the (...) hybrid view conceives of the relationship between episodic memory and other forms of episodic thinking. I conclude by considering some disanalogies between perception and memory and by replying to objections. I argue that, despite there being important differences between memory and perception, those differences do not harm my project. (shrink)

On an evidentialist position, it is epistemically rational for us to believe propositions that are (stably) supported by our total evidence. We are epistemically permitted to believe such propositions, and perhaps even ought to do so. Epistemic rationality is normative. One popular way to explain the normativity appeals to epistemic teleology. The primary aim of this paper is to argue that appeals to epistemic teleology do not support that we ought to believe what is rational to believe, only that we (...) are permitted to do so. In arguing for that, I defend an epistemic teleological position that is radical in nature. It involves no commitment to aiming at the truth. I conclude by dispelling some worries that have been raised about my position. (shrink)

The Reflection Principle can be defended with a Diachronic Dutch Book Argument (DBA), but it is also defeated by numerous compelling counter-examples. It seems then that Diachronic DBAs can lead us astray. Should we reject them en masse—including Lewis’s Diachronic DBA for Conditionalization? Rachael Briggs’s “suppositional test” is supposed to differentiate between Diachronic DBAs that we can safely ignore (including the DBA for Reflection) and Diachronic DBAs that we should find compelling (including the DBA for Conditionalization). I argue that Brigg’s (...) suppositional test is wrong: it sets the bar for coherence too high and places certain cases of self-doubt on the wrong side of the divide. Given that the suppositional test is unsatisfactory, we are left without any justification for discriminating between Diachronic DBAs and ought to reject them all—including the DBA for Conditionalization. (shrink)

This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized quantifiers and Boolean semantics. It explains how the discovery of diverse scope behavior in the 1990s transformed the view of quantification, and how the study of the internal composition of quantifiers has become central in recent years. It presents different approaches to the same problems, and links modern logic and formal semantics to advances in generative syntax. A unique feature (...) of the book is that it systematically brings cross-linguistic data to bear on the theoretical issues, discussing French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Telugu (Dravidian), and Shupamem (Grassfield Bantu), and pointing to formal semantic literature involving quantification in around thirty languages. -- -/- 1. What this book is about and how to use it; 2. Generalized quantifiers and their elements: operators and their scopes; 3. Generalized quantifiers in non-nominal domains; 4. Some empirically significant properties of quantifiers and determiners; 5. Potential challenges for generalized quantifiers; 6. Scope is not uniform and not a primitive; 7. Existential scope versus distributive scope; 8. Distributivity and scope; 9. Bare numeral indefinites; 10. Modified numerals; 11. Clause-internal scopal diversity; 12. Towards a compositional semantics of quantifier words. (shrink)

This article investigates the challenges posed by the reliability of knowledge in neurophenomenology and its connection to reality. Neurophenomenological research seeks to understand the intricate relationship between human consciousness, cognition, and the underlying neural processes. However, the subjective nature of conscious experiences presents unique epistemic challenges in determining the reliability of the knowledge generated in this research. Personal factors such as beliefs, emotions, and cultural backgrounds influence subjective experiences, which vary from individual to individual. On the other hand, scientific knowledge (...) aims to uncover universal truths based on empirical observations and objective principles. Reconciling the subjective and objective realms presents a significant challenge in determining the reliability of knowledge generated through neurophenomenological research. This article aims to examine the inherent limitations and challenges of neurophenomenological research to shed light on the complexities involved in understanding the nature of knowledge itself. This article highlights that the ontological implications of the reliability of knowledge in neurophenomenology arise from the question of how subjective experiences relate to objective reality. Understanding the neural correlates and mechanisms behind subjective experiences can provide insight into the underlying ontological nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Although research on epistemic injustice has focused on the effects of prejudice in epistemic exchanges, the account of prejudice that emerges in Fricker’s (2007) view is not completely clear. In particular, I claim that the epistemic role of prejudice in the structure of testimonial justification is still in need of a satisfactory explanation. What special epistemic power does prejudice exercise that prevents the speaker’s words from constituting evidence for the hearer’s belief? By clarifying this point, it will be possible to (...) address two more general issues concerning the nature of prejudice: its resistance to counterevidence and the steps involved in overcoming prejudice. I propose a hinge account of prejudice, based on the recent perspective of hinge epistemology, to help clarify these aspects. According to the hinge account, prejudices share a fundamental feature with hinges: they work as norms of evidential significance, and as such, they determine what can and cannot count as evidence for belief. (shrink)

What forms of consciousness can the subject have of her body in action? This is a recurrent issue in contemporary research on skilled movement and expertise, and according to a widespread view, the body makes itself inconspicuous in performance in favour of the object or goal that the activity is directed to. However, this attitude to consciousness in bodily performance seems unsatisfying for an understanding of skilled action, and the work of several researchers can be seen as responding to this (...) view: Montero, Legrand, Ravn and others in the philosophy of expertise and of dance have developed various notions of consciousness and cognition to account for the mindful processes at play in performance. Two related questions can be distinguished here: 1. Is there an inherent conflict between skilled action and at least more than marginal awareness of that action, or is it possible – and even desirable – to reflect on our own performance without considerably impeding on it? 2. What forms of consciousness pertaining to the body in action must we distinguish in order to answer the first question? This paper gives an overview of this discussion, focusing on the second issue, although the first will come into play in so far as it is linked with the latter question. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of bodily reflection and on dancers’ descriptions, I show that there is, in phenomenological terms, a bodily level of reflection: a fully conscious and exploratory activity that is led by the skilled body, and that is explicitly aimed at by many performers. (shrink)

In everyday life and in science we acquire evidence of evidence and based on this new evidence we often change our epistemic states. An assumption underlying such practice is that the following EEE Slogan is correct: 'evidence of evidence is evidence' (Feldman 2007, p. 208). We suggest that evidence of evidence is best understood as higher-order evidence about the epistemic state of agents. In order to model evidence of evidence we introduce a new powerful framework for modelling epistemic states, Dyadic (...) Bayesianism. Based on this framework, we then discuss characterizations of evidence of evidence and argue for one of them. Finally, we show that whether the EEE Slogan holds, depends on the specific kind of evidence of evidence. (shrink)

The viability of a naïve realist theory of memory was a lively debate for philosophers of mind in the first half of the twentieth century. More recently, though, naïve realism has been largely abandoned as a non-starter in the memory literature, with representationalism being the standard view held by philosophers of memory. But rather than being carefully argued, the dismissal of naïve realism is an assumption that sits at the back of much recent theorizing in the philosophy of memory. In (...) this paper, we identify three reasons why philosophers of memory have felt compelled to outright reject naïve realism. We argue that none of those reasons are successful. Thus, far from being a non-starter, we argue that naïve realism is a theoretical perspective that needs to be given serious consideration in current philosophy of memory debates. (shrink)