Results for 'Austen Clark'

471 found
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  1.  45
    Comments on Bill Lycan, "More Layers of Perceptual Content". [REVIEW]Austen Clark - unknown
    I'm very happy here to be sandwiched between Lycan and Millikan, two of the living philosophers from whom I've probably learned the most, and to whom I am the most grateful. Plus the intermediary position is appropriate for someone commenting on intermediary representations in vision. There's much to like in Bill 's account of "layering" in visual representation. For one, it makes explicit and publicizes the notion that there are multiple layers of representation involved even in the seemingly simple achievement (...)
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  2. Phenomenology of Fundamental Reality.Nino Kadić - 2022 - Dissertation, King's College London
    Panpsychism, the view that consciousness is present everywhere at the fundamental level of reality, has established itself as an increasingly popular option in the philosophy of mind. Situated between substance dualism and reductive physicalism, panpsychism aims to capture the intuitions behind both, integrating consciousness into the physical world without explaining it in terms of purely physical facts. In this thesis, I offer a defence of panpsychism. -/- First, I examine influential arguments against physicalism, such as Thomas Nagel’s (1974, 1979) perspective-based (...)
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  3. ONT.Paul Bali - manuscript
    contents -/- ONT vol 1 i. short review: Beyond the Black Rainbow ii. as you die, hold one thought iii. short review: LA JETÉE -/- ONT vol 2 i. maya means ii. short review: SANS SOLEIL iii. vocab iv. eros has an underside v. short review: In the Mood for Love -/- ONT vol 3 i. weed weakens / compels me ii. an Ender's Game after-party iii. playroom is a realm of the dead iv. a precise german History v. short (...)
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  4.  54
    Loving Your Enemy.Austen McDougal - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion.
    This paper begins by bringing love and hate into tension via the ideal that you ought to love your enemy. The trouble with loving your enemy is that they may seem to merit hate instead, especially in cases of serious injustice. I develop this simple thought into a challenge for loving your enemy: that you cannot be required to do what makes no sense to you. This challenge is not adequately met by extant explanations for why you ought to love (...)
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  5. When a Free Act Costs a Motive: Clearing Consequentialism of Conflict.Austen McDougal - 2023 - Utilitas 35 (1):25-39.
    Consequentialist theories that directly assess multiple focal points face an important objection: that one right option may conflict with another. Robert Adams raises an instance of this objection regarding the possibility that the right act conflicts with the right motives. Whereas only partial responses have previously been given, assuming particular views of the relation between motives and acts, an exhaustive treatment is in order. Either motives psychologically determine acts, or they do not – and I defend direct consequentialism on each (...)
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  6. Still guilty.Randolph Clarke - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (8):2579-2596.
    According to what may be called PERMANENT, blameworthiness is forever: once you are blameworthy for something, you are always blameworthy for it. Here a prima facie case for this view is set out, and the view is defended from two lines of attack. On one, you are no longer blameworthy for a past offense if, despite being the person who committed it, you no longer have any of the pertinent psychological states you had at the time of the misdeed. On (...)
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  7. Sleeping Beauty, Read.Clark Glymour - manuscript
    Elga's presentation of The Sleeping Beauty Problem is often misread, with analyses that impute extra premises and derive false answers to the problem as Elga presented it. Here it is shown that hewing to the text requires that the Sleeping Beauty's degree of belief in a coin flip upon her first awakening is 1/2.
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  8. The Source of Responsibility.Randolph Clarke - 2023 - Ethics 133 (2):163–188.
    Although we are morally responsible for things of various kinds, what we bear direct responsibility for are certain exercises of our agency (and perhaps some omissions of these). Theorists disagree about what kind of agency is in this respect the source of our responsibility. Some hold that it is agency the exercises of which are actions. Others say that it is agency exercised in forming reasons-responsive attitudes on the basis of our take on reasons (or value). With attention to the (...)
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  9. Metaphysical and absolute possibility.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 8):1861-1872.
    It is widely alleged that metaphysical possibility is “absolute” possibility Conceivability and possibility, Clarendon, Oxford, 2002, p 16; Stalnaker, in: Stalnaker Ways a world might be: metaphysical and anti-metaphysical essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, pp 201–215; Williamson in Can J Philos 46:453–492, 2016). Kripke calls metaphysical necessity “necessity in the highest degree”. Van Inwagen claims that if P is metaphysically possible, then it is possible “tout court. Possible simpliciter. Possible period…. possib without qualification.” And Stalnaker writes, “we can agree (...)
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  10. Modal Objectivity.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2017 - Noûs 53 (2):266-295.
    It is widely agreed that the intelligibility of modal metaphysics has been vindicated. Quine's arguments to the contrary supposedly confused analyticity with metaphysical necessity, and rigid with non-rigid designators.2 But even if modal metaphysics is intelligible, it could be misconceived. It could be that metaphysical necessity is not absolute necessity – the strictest real notion of necessity – and that no proposition of traditional metaphysical interest is necessary in every real sense. If there were nothing otherwise “uniquely metaphysically significant” about (...)
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  11. How to Knit Your Own Markov Blanket.Andy Clark - 2017 - Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    Hohwy (Hohwy 2016, Hohwy 2017) argues there is a tension between the free energy principle and leading depictions of mind as embodied, enactive, and extended (so-called ‘EEE1 cognition’). The tension is traced to the importance, in free energy formulations, of a conception of mind and agency that depends upon the presence of a ‘Markov blanket’ demarcating the agent from the surrounding world. In what follows I show that the Markov blanket considerations do not, in fact, lead to the kinds of (...)
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  12. Set-theoretic pluralism and the Benacerraf problem.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (7):2013-2030.
    Set-theoretic pluralism is an increasingly influential position in the philosophy of set theory (Balaguer [1998], Linksy and Zalta [1995], Hamkins [2012]). There is considerable room for debate about how best to formulate set-theoretic pluralism, and even about whether the view is coherent. But there is widespread agreement as to what there is to recommend the view (given that it can be formulated coherently). Unlike set-theoretic universalism, set-theoretic pluralism affords an answer to Benacerraf’s epistemological challenge. The purpose of this paper is (...)
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  13. Free Will and Agential Powers.Randolph Clarke & Thomas Reed - 2015 - Oxford Studies in Agency and Moral Responsibility 3:6-33.
    Free will is often said—by compatibilists and incompatibilists alike—to be a power (or complex of powers) of agents. This paper offers proposals for, and examines the prospects of, a powers-conception of free will that takes the powers in question to be causal dispositions. A difficulty for such an account stems from the idea that when one exercises free will, it is up to oneself whether one wills to do this or that. The paper also briefly considers whether a powers-conception that (...)
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  14. The explanatory virtue of abstracting away from idiosyncratic and messy detail.Christopher Clarke - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (6):1429-1449.
    Some explanations are relatively abstract: they abstract away from the idiosyncratic or messy details of the case in hand. The received wisdom in philosophy is that this is a virtue for any explanation to possess. I argue that the apparent consensus on this point is illusory. When philosophers make this claim, they differ on which of four alternative varieties of abstractness they have in mind. What’s more, for each variety of abstractness there are several alternative reasons to think that the (...)
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  15. Investigating what felt shapes look like.Sam Clarke - 2016 - I-Perception 7 (1).
    A recent empirical study claims to show that the answer to Molyneux’s question is negative, but, as John Schwenkler points out, its findings are inconclusive: Subjects tested in this study probably lacked the visual acuity required for a fair assessment of the question. Schwenkler is undeterred. He argues that the study could be improved by lowering the visual demands placed on subjects, a suggestion later endorsed and developed by Kevin Connolly. I suggest that Connolly and Schwenkler both underestimate the difficulties (...)
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  16. Beyond the icon: Core cognition and the bounds of perception.Sam Clarke - 2020 - Mind and Language 37 (1):94-113.
    This paper refines a controversial proposal: that core systems belong to a perceptual kind, marked out by the format of its representational outputs. Following Susan Carey, this proposal has been understood in terms of core representations having an iconic format, like certain paradigmatically perceptual outputs. I argue that they don’t, but suggest that the proposal may be better formulated in terms of a broader analogue format type. Formulated in this way, the proposal accommodates the existence of genuine icons in perception, (...)
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  17. Naïve realism and phenomenal similarity.Sam Clarke & Alfonso Anaya - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (5):885-902.
    It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterises the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The problem is: naïve realism, broadly construed, doesn’t make (...)
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  18. Debunking Arguments: Mathematics, Logic, and Modal Security.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2017 - In Michael Ruse & Robert J. Richards, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
    I discuss the structure of genealogical debunking arguments. I argue that they undermine our mathematical beliefs if they undermine our moral beliefs. The contrary appearance stems from a confusion of arithmetic truths with (first-order) logical truths, or from a confusion of reliability with justification. I conclude with a discussion of the cogency of debunking arguments, in light of the above. Their cogency depends on whether information can undermine all of our beliefs of a kind, F, without giving us direct reason (...)
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  19. Definite Knowledge and Mutual Knowledge.Herbert H. Clark & Catherine R. Marshall - 1981 - In Aravind K. Joshi, Bonnie L. Webber & Ivan A. Sag, Elements of Discourse Understanding. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 10–63.
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  20. How to define levels of explanation and evaluate their indispensability.Christopher Clarke - 2017 - Synthese 194 (6).
    Some explanations in social science, psychology and biology belong to a higher level than other explanations. And higher explanations possess the virtue of abstracting away from the details of lower explanations, many philosophers argue. As a result, these higher explanations are irreplaceable. And this suggests that there are genuine higher laws or patterns involving social, psychological and biological states. I show that this ‘abstractness argument’ is really an argument schema, not a single argument. This is because the argument uses the (...)
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  21. Introduction: Scientific Realism and Commonsense.Steve Clarke & Timothy D. Lyons - 2010 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Steve Clarke, Recent Themes in the Philosophy of Science: Scientific Realism and Commonsense. Dordrecht: Springer.
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  22. (1 other version)Joint action goals reduce visuomotor interference effects from a partner’s incongruent actions.Sam Clarke, Luke McEllin, Anna Francová, Marcell Székely, Stephen Andrew Butterfill & John Michael - 2019 - Scientific Reports 9 (1).
    Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? We hypothesized that when joint action partners represent their actions as interrelated components of a plan to bring about a joint action goal, each partner’s movements need not be represented in relation to distinct, (...)
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  23. Free Will, Agent Causation, and “Disappearing Agents”.Randolph Clarke - 2017 - Noûs:76-96.
    A growing number of philosophers now hold that agent causation is required for agency, or free will, or moral responsibility. To clarify what is at issue, this paper begins with a distinction between agent causation that is ontologically fundamental and agent causation that is reducible to or realized in causation by events or states. It is widely accepted that agency presents us with the latter; the view in question claims a need for the former. The paper then examines a “disappearing (...)
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  24. The Strength of Knowledge in Plato’s Protagoras.Justin Clark - 2012 - Ancient Philosophy 32 (2):237-255.
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  25. Frege Puzzles and Mental Files.Henry Clarke - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2):351-366.
    This paper proposes a novel conception of mental files, aimed at addressing Frege puzzles. Classical Frege puzzles involve ignorance and discovery of identity. These may be addressed by accounting for a more basic way for identity to figure in thought—the treatment of beliefs by the believer as being about the same thing. This manifests itself in rational inferences that presuppose the identity of what the beliefs are about. Mental files help to provide a functional characterization of a mind capable of (...)
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  26. Some Theses on Desert.Randolph Clarke - 2013 - Philosophical Explorations 16 (2):153-64.
    Consider the idea that suffering of some specific kind is deserved by those who are guilty of moral wrongdoing. Feeling guilty is a prime example. It might be said that it is noninstrumentally good that one who is guilty feel guilty (at the right time and to the right degree), or that feeling guilty (at the right time and to the right degree) is apt or fitting for one who is guilty. Each of these claims constitutes an interesting thesis about (...)
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  27. Debunking and Dispensability.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2016 - In Uri D. Leibowitz & Neil Sinclair, Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics: Debunking and Dispensability. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press UK.
    In his précis of a recent book, Richard Joyce writes, “My contention…is that…any epistemological benefit-of-the-doubt that might have been extended to moral beliefs…will be neutralized by the availability of an empirically confirmed moral genealogy that nowhere…presupposes their truth.” Such reasoning – falling under the heading “Genealogical Debunking Arguments” – is now commonplace. But how might “the availability of an empirically confirmed moral genealogy that nowhere… presupposes” the truth of our moral beliefs “neutralize” whatever “epistemological benefit-of-the-doubt that might have been extended (...)
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  28. Assertion, Belief, and Context.Roger Clarke - 2018 - Synthese 195 (11):4951-4977.
    This paper argues for a treatment of belief as essentially sensitive to certain features of context. The first part gives an argument that we must take belief to be context-sensitive in the same way that assertion is, if we are to preserve appealing principles tying belief to sincere assertion. In particular, whether an agent counts as believing that p in a context depends on the space of alternative possibilities the agent is considering in that context. One and the same doxastic (...)
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  29. Causation, norms, and omissions: A study of causal judgments.Randolph Clarke, Joshua Shepherd, John Stigall, Robyn Repko Waller & Chris Zarpentine - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (2):279-293.
    Many philosophical theories of causation are egalitarian, rejecting a distinction between causes and mere causal conditions. We sought to determine the extent to which people's causal judgments discriminate, selecting as causes counternormal events—those that violate norms of some kind—while rejecting non-violators. We found significant selectivity of this sort. Moreover, priming that encouraged more egalitarian judgments had little effect on subjects. We also found that omissions are as likely as actions to be judged as causes, and that counternormative selectivity appears to (...)
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  30. The Multiple Realizability of Biological Individuals.Ellen Clarke - 2013 - Journal of Philosophy 110 (8):413-435.
    Biological theory demands a clear organism concept, but at present biologists cannot agree on one. They know that counting particular units, and not counting others, allows them to generate explanatory and predictive descriptions of evolutionary processes. Yet they lack a unified theory telling them which units to count. In this paper, I offer a novel account of biological individuality, which reconciles conflicting definitions of ‘organism’ by interpreting them as describing alternative realisers of a common functional role, and then defines individual (...)
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  31. Objectivity and Evaluation.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2019 - In Christopher Cowie & Rach Cosker-Rowland, Companions in Guilt: Arguments in Metaethics. Routledge.
    I this article, I introduce the notion of pluralism about an area, and use it to argue that the questions at the center of our normative lives are not settled by the facts -- even the normative facts. One upshot of the discussion is that the concepts of realism and objectivity, which are widely identified, are actually in tension. Another is that the concept of objectivity, not realism, should take center stage.
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  32. Are Credences Different From Beliefs?Roger Clarke & Julia Staffel - 2024 - In Blake Roeber, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup & John Turri, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
    This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the compatibility of (...)
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  33. Preferences and Positivist Methodology in Economics.Christopher Clarke - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (2):192-212.
    I distinguish several doctrines that economic methodologists have found attractive, all of which have a positivist flavour. One of these is the doctrine that preference assignments in economics are just shorthand descriptions of agents' choice behaviour. Although most of these doctrines are problematic, the latter doctrine about preference assignments is a respectable one, I argue. It doesn't entail any of the problematic doctrines, and indeed it is warranted independently of them.
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  34. Epistemic Non-Factualism and Methodology.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2019 - In Michael Klenk, Higher Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology. New York: Routledge.
    I discuss methodology in epistemology. I argue that settling the facts, even the epistemic facts, fails to settle the questions of intellectual policy at the center of our epistemic lives. An upshot is that the standard methodology of analyzing concepts like knowledge, justification, rationality, and so on is misconceived. More generally, any epistemic method that seeks to issue in intellectual policy by settling the facts, whether by way of abductive theorizing or empirical investigation, no matter how reliable, is inapt. The (...)
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  35. The Mind Almost Works That Way.Clarke Murray - 2003 - Proceedings of the 1st Annual Hawaii International Conference on the Arts and Humanities.
    This paper proceeds in two parts. In the first part, I set out Fodor’s concerns about abduction in his recent books, The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way and In Critical Condition. In the second part, I attempt to meet these concerns by suggesting how - within the framework of the Massive Modularity Hypothesis - abduction functions, specifically in the context of means-end reasoning to connect Input Modules and Output Modules. My suggestion will be that natural selection is the Mother of (...)
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  36. The number sense represents (rational) numbers.Sam Clarke & Jacob Beck - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44:1-57.
    On a now orthodox view, humans and many other animals possess a “number sense,” or approximate number system, that represents number. Recently, this orthodox view has been subject to numerous critiques that question whether the ANS genuinely represents number. We distinguish three lines of critique – the arguments from congruency, confounds, and imprecision – and show that none succeed. We then provide positive reasons to think that the ANS genuinely represents numbers, and not just non-numerical confounds or exotic substitutes for (...)
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  37. Causality in medicine with particular reference to the viral causation of cancers.Brendan Clarke - 2011 - Dissertation, University College London
    In this thesis, I give a metascientific account of causality in medicine. I begin with two historical cases of causal discovery. These are the discovery of the causation of Burkitt’s lymphoma by the Epstein-Barr virus, and of the various viral causes suggested for cervical cancer. These historical cases then support a philosophical discussion of causality in medicine. This begins with an introduction to the Russo- Williamson thesis (RWT), and discussion of a range of counter-arguments against it. Despite these, I argue (...)
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  38. Knowledge and the Objection to Religious Belief from Cognitive Science.Kelly James Clark & Dani Rabinowitz - 2011 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 3 (1):67 - 81.
    A large chorus of voices has grown around the claim that theistic belief is epistemically suspect since, as some cognitive scientists have hypothesized, such beliefs are a byproduct of cognitive mechanisms which evolved for rather different adaptive purposes. This paper begins with an overview of the pertinent cognitive science followed by a short discussion of some relevant epistemic concepts. Working from within a largely Williamsonian framework, we then present two different ways in which this research can be formulated into an (...)
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  39. (1 other version)Is evolution fundamental when it comes to defining biological ontology? Yes.Ellen Clarke - 2017 - In Shamik Dasgupta, Brad Weslake & Ravit Dotan, Current Controversies in Philosophy of Science. London: Routledge.
    I argue for the usefulness of the evolutionary kind of biological individual.
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  40. Neuroeconomics and Confirmation Theory.Christopher Clarke - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (2):195-215.
    Neuroeconomics is a research programme founded on the thesis that cognitive and neurobiological data constitute evidence for answering economic questions. I employ confirmation theory in order to reject arguments both for and against neuroeconomics. I also emphasize that some arguments for neuroeconomics will not convince the skeptics because these arguments make a contentious assumption: economics aims for predictions and deep explanations of choices in general. I then argue for neuroeconomics by appealing to a much more restrictive (and thereby skeptic-friendly) characterization (...)
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  41. Agent Causation and the Phenomenology of Agency.Randolph Clarke - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3):747-764.
    Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one’s own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end a reconciliation can be worked out. Here it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of our (...)
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  42. Plant Individuality and Multilevel Selection Theory.Ellen Clarke - 2011 - In Brett Calcott & Kim Sterelny, The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. pp. 227--250.
    This chapter develops the idea that the germ-soma split and the suppression of individual fitness differences within the corporate entity are not always essential steps in the evolution of corporate individuals. It illustrates some consequences for multilevel selection theory. It presents evidence that genetic heterogeneity may not always be a barrier to successful functioning as a higher-level individual. This chapter shows that levels-of-selection theorists are wrong to assume that the central problem in transitions is always that of minimizing within-group competition. (...)
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  43. Origins of Evolutionary Transitions.Ellen Clarke - 2014 - Journal of Biosciences 39 (2):303-317.
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  44. Preface Writers are Consistent.Roger Clarke - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (3):362-381.
    The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which (...)
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  45. Adaptation, multilevel selection and organismality: A clash of perspectives.Ellen Clarke - 2016 - In Richard Joyce, The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy. New York: Routledge.
    The concept of adaptation is pivotal to modern evolutionary thinking, but it has long been the subject of controversy, especially in respect of the relative roles of selection versus constraints in explaining the traits of organisms. This paper tackles a different problem for the concept of adaptation: its interpretation in light of multilevel selection theory. In particular, I arbitrate a dispute that has broken out between the proponents of rival perspectives on multilevel adaptations. Many experts now say that multilevel and (...)
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  46. Cognitive penetration and informational encapsulation: Have we been failing the module?Sam Clarke - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (8):2599-2620.
    Jerry Fodor deemed informational encapsulation ‘the essence’ of a system’s modularity and argued that human perceptual processing comprises modular systems, thus construed. Nowadays, his conclusion is widely challenged. Often, this is because experimental work is seen to somehow demonstrate the cognitive penetrability of perceptual processing, where this is assumed to conflict with the informational encapsulation of perceptual systems. Here, I deny the conflict, proposing that cognitive penetration need not have any straightforward bearing on the conjecture that perceptual processing is composed (...)
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  47. Objectivity in Ethics and Mathematics.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2015 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society: The Virtual Issue 3.
    How do axioms, or first principles, in ethics compare to those in mathematics? In this companion piece to G.C. Field's 1931 "On the Role of Definition in Ethics", I argue that there are similarities between the cases. However, these are premised on an assumption which can be questioned, and which highlights the peculiarity of normative inquiry.
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  48. Numbers, numerosities, and new directions.Jacob Beck & Sam Clarke - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44:1-20.
    In our target article, we argued that the number sense represents natural and rational numbers. Here, we respond to the 26 commentaries we received, highlighting new directions for empirical and theoretical research. We discuss two background assumptions, arguments against the number sense, whether the approximate number system represents numbers or numerosities, and why the ANS represents rational numbers.
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  49. Mapping the Visual Icon.Sam Clarke - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (3):552-577.
    It is often claimed that pre-attentive vision has an ‘iconic’ format. This is seen to explain pre-attentive vision's characteristically high processing capacity and to make sense of an overlap in the mechanisms of early vision and mental imagery. But what does the iconicity of pre-attentive vision amount to? This paper considers two prominent ways of characterising pre-attentive visual icons and argues that neither is adequate: one approach renders the claim ‘pre-attentive vision is iconic’ empirically false while the other obscures its (...)
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  50. Absence Causation for Causal Dispositionalists.Randolph Clarke - 2018 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (3):323-331.
    Several theories of causation reject causation of or by absences. They thereby clash with much of what we think and say about what causes what. This paper examines a way in which one kind of theory, causal dispositionalism, can be modified so as to accept absence causation, while still retaining a fundamental commitment of dispositionalism. The proposal adopts parts of a strategy described by David Lewis. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the problem of the proliferation of causes.
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