Results for 'Ben Woodard'

502 found
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  1. Mad Speculation and Absolute Inhumanism: Lovecraft, Ligotti, and the Weirding of Philosophy.Ben Woodard - 2011 - Continent 1 (1):3-13.
    continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...)
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  2.  28
    Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas.Matteo Pasquinelli (ed.) - 2015 - Lüneburg: Meson Press.
    What does thinking mean in the age of Artificial Intelligence? How is big-scale computation transforming the way our brains function? This collection discusses these pressing questions by looking beyond instrumental rationality. Exploring recent developments as well as examples from the history of cybernetics, the book uncovers the positive role played by errors and traumas in the construction of our contemporary technological minds. With texts by Benjamin Bratton, Orit Halpern, Adrian Lahoud, Jon Lindblom, Catherine Malabou, Reza Negarestani, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, (...)
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  3. Three conceptions of group-based reasons.Christopher Woodard - 2017 - Journal of Social Ontology 3 (1):102-127.
    Group-based reasons are reasons to play one’s part in some pattern of action that the members of some group could perform, because of the good features of the pattern. This paper discusses three broad conceptions of such reasons. According to the agency-first conception, there are no group-based reasons in cases where the relevant group is not or would not be itself an agent. According to the behaviour-first conception, what matters is that the other members of the group would play their (...)
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  4. Bad Sex and Consent.Elise Woodard - 2022 - In David Boonin (ed.), Handbook of Sexual Ethics. Palgrave. pp. 301--324.
    It is widely accepted that consent is a normative power. For instance, consent can make an impermissible act permissible. In the words of Heidi Hurd, it “turns a trespass into a dinner party... an invasion of privacy into an intimate moment.” In this chapter, I argue against the assumption that consent has such robust powers for moral transformation. In particular, I argue that there is a wide range of sex that harms or wrongs victims despite being consensual. Moreover, these cases (...)
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  5. Rationality and the Unit of Action.Christopher Woodard - 2011 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2 (2):261-277.
    This paper examines the idea of an extended unit of action, which is the idea that the reasons for or against an individual action can depend on the qualities of a larger pattern of action of which it is a part. One concept of joint action is that the unit of action can be extended in this sense. But the idea of an extended unit of action is surprisingly minimal in its commitments. The paper argues for this conclusion by examining (...)
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  6. A puzzle about fickleness.Elise Woodard - 2020 - Noûs 56 (2):323-342.
    In this paper, I motivate a puzzle about epistemic rationality. On the one hand, there seems to be something problematic about frequently changing your mind. On the other hand, changing your mind once is often permissible. Why do one-off changes of mind seem rationally permissible, even admirable, while constant changes seem quintessentially irrational? The puzzle of fickleness is to explain this asymmetry. To solve the puzzle, I propose and defend the Ratifiable Reasoning Account. According to this solution, as agents redeliberate, (...)
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  7. The Ignorance Norm and Paradoxical Assertions.Elise Woodard - 2022 - Philosophical Topics 49 (2):321-332.
    Can agents rationally inquire into things that they know? On my view, the answer is yes. Call this view the Compatibility Thesis. One challenge to this thesis is to explain why assertions like “I know that p, but I’m wondering whether p” sound odd, if not Moore-Paradoxical. In response to this challenge, I argue that we can reject one or both premises that give rise to it. First, we can deny that inquiry requires interrogative attitudes. Second, we can deny the (...)
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  8. Classifying theories of welfare.Christopher Woodard - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (3):787-803.
    This paper argues that we should replace the common classification of theories of welfare into the categories of hedonism, desire theories, and objective list theories. The tripartite classification is objectionable because it is unduly narrow and it is confusing: it excludes theories of welfare that are worthy of discussion, and it obscures important distinctions. In its place, the paper proposes two independent classifications corresponding to a distinction emphasised by Roger Crisp: a four-category classification of enumerative theories (about which items constitute (...)
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  9. (1 other version)Why Double-Check?Elise Woodard - 2022 - Episteme:1-24.
    Can you rationally double-check what you already know? In this paper, I argue that you can. Agents can know that something is true and rationally double-check it at the very same time. I defend my position by considering a wide variety of cases where agents double-check their beliefs to gain epistemic improvements beyond knowledge. These include certainty, epistemic resilience, and sensitivity to error. Although this phenomenon is widespread, my proposal faces two types of challenges. First, some have defended ignorance norms, (...)
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  10. What's Wrong with Partisan Deference?Elise Woodard - forthcoming - In Tamar Szabó Gendler, John Hawthorne, Julianne Chung & Alex Worsnip (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Vol. 8. Oxford University Press.
    Deference in politics is often necessary. To answer questions like, “Should the government increase the federal minimum wage?” and “Should the state introduce a vaccine mandate?”, we need to know relevant scientific and economic facts, make complex value judgments, and answer questions about incentives and implementation. Lay citizens typically lack the time, resources, and competence to answer these questions on their own. Hence, they must defer to others. But to whom should they defer? A common answer is that they should—or (...)
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  11. Consequentialism and Reasons for Action.Christopher Woodard - 2020 - In Douglas W. Portmore (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism. New York, USA: Oup Usa. pp. 179–196.
    Consequentialist theories often neglect reasons for action. They offer theories of the rightness or the goodness of actions, or of virtue, but they typically do not include theories of reasons. However, consequentialists can give plausible accounts of reasons. This chapter examines some different ways in which such accounts might be developed, focusing on Act Consequentialism and Rule Consequentialism and on the relationship between reasons and rightness. It notes that adding claims about reasons to consequentialist theories may introduce a welcome kind (...)
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  12. Group-based reasons for action.Christopher Woodard - 2003 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (2):215-229.
    This article endorses a familiar, albeit controversial, argument for the existence of group-based reasons for action, but then rejects two doctrines which other advocates of such reasons usually accept. One such doctrine is the willingness requirement, which says that a group-based reason exists only if (sufficient) other members of the group in question are willing to cooperate. Thus the paper argues that there is sometimes a reason, which derives from the rationality of some group action, to play one's part unilaterally (...)
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  13. (1 other version)Hybrid Theories.Christopher Woodard - 2015 - In Guy Fletcher (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being. New York,: Routledge. pp. 161-174.
    This chapter surveys hybrid theories of well-being. It also discusses some criticisms, and suggests some new directions that philosophical discussion of hybrid theories might take.
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  14. Epistemic Atonement.Elise Woodard - 2023 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 18. Oxford University Press.
    When we think about agents who change a long-standing belief, we sometimes have conflicting reactions. On the one hand, such agents often epistemically improve. For example, their new belief may be better supported by the evidence or closer to the truth. On the other hand, such agents are often subject to criticism. Examples include politicians who change their minds on whether climate change is occurring or whether vaccines cause autism. What explains this criticism, and is it ever justified? To answer (...)
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  15. The Common Structure of Kantianism and Act-Utilitarianism.Christopher Woodard - 2013 - Utilitas 25 (2):246-265.
    This article proposes a way of understanding Kantianism, act-utilitarianism and some other important ethical theories according to which they are all versions of the same kind of theory, sharing a common structure. I argue that this is a profitable way to understand the theories discussed. It is charitable to the theories concerned; it emphasizes the common ground between them; it gives us insights into the differences between them; and it provides a method for generating new ethical theories worth studying. The (...)
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  16. What's wrong with possibilism.C. Woodard - 2009 - Analysis 69 (2):219-226.
    Argues (1) that the debate between actualists and possibilists in deontic logic distorts what is really at issue, and (2) that reframing the debate as being about reasons strongly suggests that those with possibilist sympathies should adopt more moderate claims (which may nevertheless be distinct from actualism).
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  17. Reasons for Rule Consequentialists.Christopher Woodard - 2022 - Ratio (4):1-10.
    This paper explores what a Rule Consequentialist of Brad Hooker's sort can and should say about normative rea- sons for action. I claim that they can provide a theory of reasons, but that doing so requires distinguishing dif- ferent roles of rules in the ideal code. Some rules in the ideal code specify reasons, while others perform differ- ent functions. The paper also discusses a choice that Rule Consequentialists face about how exactly to specify rea- sons. It ends by comparing (...)
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  18. A New Argument Against Rule Consequentialism.Christopher Woodard - 2008 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (3):247-261.
    We best understand Rule Consequentialism as a theory of pattern-based reasons, since it claims that we have reasons to perform some action because of the goodness of the pattern consisting of widespread performance of the same type of action in the same type of circumstances. Plausible forms of Rule Consequentialism are also pluralist, in the sense that, alongside pattern-based reasons, they recognise ordinary act-based reasons, based on the goodness of individual actions. However, Rule Consequentialist theories are distinguished from other pluralist (...)
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  19. Egalitarianism.Christopher Woodard - 2005 - Philosophical Books 46 (2):97-112.
    A survey of recent work on egalitarianism.
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  20. The Value and Significance of Ill-Being.Christopher Woodard - 2022 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 46:1-19.
    Since Shelly Kagan pointed out the relative neglect of ill-being in philosophical discussions, several philosophers have contributed to an emerging literature on its constituents. In doing so, they have explored possible asymmetries between the constituents of ill-being and the constituents of positive well-being. This paper explores some possible asymmetries that may arise elsewhere in the philosophy of ill-being. In particular, it considers whether there is an asymmetry between the contribution made to prudential value by equal quantities of goods and bads. (...)
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  21. What good is meaning in life?Christopher Woodard - 2017 - De Ethica 4 (3):67-79.
    Most philosophers writing on meaning in life agree that it is a distinct kind of final value. This consensus view has two components: the ‘final value claim’ that meaning in life is a kind of final value, and the ‘distinctness claim’ that it is distinct from all other kinds of final value. This paper discusses some difficulties in vindicating both claims at once. One way to underscore the distinctness of meaning, for example, is to retain a feature of our pretheoretical (...)
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  22. Pragmatism and teleology.Christopher Woodard - manuscript
    This paper connects two ideas. The first is that some common responses to ethical views are responses to their degrees of pragmatism, where a view’s degree of pragmatism is its sensitivity to ethically relevant changes in the actor’s circumstances. I claim that we feel the pull of opposing pro-pragmatic and antipragmatic intuitions in certain cases. This suggests a project, of searching for an ethical view capable of doing justice to these opposing intuitions in some way. The second central idea is (...)
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  23. War and Self-Defense.Christopher Woodard - 2005 - Mind 114 (454):453-457.
    A review of David Rodin's Book, War and Self-Defense.
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  24. Epistemic norms on evidence-gathering.Carolina Flores & Elise Woodard - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (9):2547-2571.
    In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...)
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  25. The concept of acquiescence.Christopher Woodard - 2000 - Journal of Political Philosophy 8 (4):409–432.
    Suppose a police car gives chase to some violent criminals, putting innocent bystanders at risk. The criminals have not threatened the police in any way; so we would not normally say that the police have been coerced into chasing. Nor are the police merely responding to natural circumstances, so they are not acting under necessity, in the usual sense. The case is different from one in which an ambulance speeds to hospital, putting innocent bystanders at risk, because the reason for (...)
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  26. Cohen and the Basic Structure Objection.Christopher Woodard - 2000 - Acta Politica 3:275-301.
    G. A. Cohen’s discussion of the incentives argument for inequality has made an important contribution to our understanding of the normative theory of justice. The incentives argument is particularly difficult for egalitarians to rebut, yet Cohen seeks to show how egalitarians can mount a general defence against it. This paper argues that Cohen’s critique has so far been construed too narrowly, and that this has resulted in the mistaken impression that his critique stands or falls with the refutation of the (...)
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  27. Egalitarianism, Responsibility, and Desert.Christopher Woodard - 2000 - In Patrick Grim, Kenneth Baynes, Peter Ludlow & Gary Mar (eds.), The Philosopher's Annual. Ridgeview. pp. 277-296.
    This paper discusses the roles of responsibility and desert in egalitarian theories of justice. It contrasts two main views of their relationship with justice: one according to which what justice requires depends on what people deserve (or are responsible for), and the other according to which what people deserve (or are responsible for) depends on what justice requires. The paper discusses how to interpret Rawls's remarks on desert in light of this distinction.
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  28. Thinking, Guessing, and Believing.Ben Holguin - 2022 - Philosophers' Imprint 22 (1):1-34.
    This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence (...)
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  29. A New Defense of Hedonism about Well-Being.Ben Bramble - 2016 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3.
    According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The Experience Machine, and The Resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right (...)
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  30. Introduction.Ben Eggleston & Dale E. Miller - 2014 - In Ben Eggleston & Dale E. Miller (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-15.
    The introduction (about 6,000 words) to _The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism_, in three sections: utilitarianism’s place in recent and contemporary moral philosophy (including the opinions of critics such as Rawls and Scanlon), a brief history of the view (again, including the opinions of critics, such as Marx and Nietzsche), and an overview of the chapters of the book.
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  31.  91
    Humanity, Empathy, and the Self: Comments on Fleischacker’s Being Me Being You.Nir Ben-Moshe - 2024 - In Fonna Forman (ed.), The Adam Smith Review: Volume 14. Routledge.
    A critical assessment of the second chapter of Samuel Fleischacker’s Being Me Being You, where Fleischacker makes use of Smith’s account of empathy to develop a distinctive Smithian conception of ‘humanity’.
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  32. On Susan Wolf’s “Good-for-Nothings".Ben Bramble - 2015 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (5):1071-1081.
    According to welfarism about value, something is good simpliciter just in case it is good for some being or beings. In her recent Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association, “Good-For-Nothings”, Susan Wolf argues against welfarism by appeal to great works of art, literature, music, and philosophy. Wolf provides three main arguments against this view, which I call The Superfluity Argument, The Explanation of Benefit Argument, and The Welfarist’s Mistake. In this paper, I reconstruct these arguments and explain where, in (...)
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  33. Review of Tom Dougherty: The Scope of Consent[REVIEW]Elise Woodard - 2024 - Ethics 134 (3):402-407.
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  34. Vagueness and Family Resemblance.Hanoch Ben-Yami - 2017 - In Hans-Johann Glock & John Hyman (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 407-419.
    Ben-Yami presents Wittgenstein’s explicit criticism of the Platonic identification of an explanation with a definition and the alternative forms of explanation he employed. He then discusses a few predecessors of Wittgenstein’s criticisms and the Fregean background against which he wrote. Next, the idea of family resemblance is introduced, and objections answered. Wittgenstein’s endorsement of vagueness and the indeterminacy of sense are presented, as well as the open texture of concepts. Common misunderstandings are addressed along the way. Wittgenstein’s ideas, as is (...)
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  35. Some Further Concerns with Colburn's Autonomy-minded Anti-perfectionism.Ben Colburn - 2012 - Journal of Philosophical Research 37:243-248.
    In this rejoinder to Ben Colburn, I (1) further press, while modulating, my charge that his autonomy-minded anti-perfectionism is insufficiently novel, (2) articulate a new and distinct worry about the formal analysis that is at the center of his argument, and (3) enhance my criticism that the view Colburn defends is too permissive.
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  36. The Experience Machine.Ben Bramble - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (3):136-145.
    In this paper, I reconstruct Robert Nozick's experience machine objection to hedonism about well-being. I then explain and briefly discuss the most important recent criticisms that have been made of it. Finally, I question the conventional wisdom that the experience machine, while it neatly disposes of hedonism, poses no problem for desire-based theories of well-being.
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  37. Consequentialism about Meaning in Life.Ben Bramble - 2015 - Utilitas 27 (4):445-459.
    What is it for a life to be meaningful? In this article, I defend what I call Consequentialism about Meaning in Life, the view that one's life is meaningful at time t just in case one's surviving at t would be good in some way, and one's life was meaningful considered as a whole just in case the world was made better in some way for one's having existed.
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  38. The Passing of Temporal Well-Being.Ben Bramble - 2017 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    The philosophical study of well-being concerns what makes lives good for their subjects. It is now standard among philosophers to distinguish between two kinds of well-being: - lifetime well-being, i.e., how good a person's life was for him or her considered as a whole, and - temporal well-being, i.e., how well off someone was, or how they fared, at a particular moment in time or over a period of time longer than a moment but shorter than a whole life, say, (...)
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  39. The truth behind conscientious objection in medicine.Nir Ben-Moshe - 2019 - Journal of Medical Ethics 45 (6):404-410.
    Answers to the questions of what justifies conscientious objection in medicine in general and which specific objections should be respected have proven to be elusive. In this paper, I develop a new framework for conscientious objection in medicine that is based on the idea that conscience can express true moral claims. I draw on one of the historical roots, found in Adam Smith’s impartial spectator account, of the idea that an agent’s conscience can determine the correct moral norms, even if (...)
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  40. On Subtweeting.Eleonore Neufeld & Elise Woodard - forthcoming - In Patrick Connolly, Sandy Goldberg & Jennifer Saul (eds.), Conversations Online. Oxford University Press.
    In paradigmatic cases of subtweeting, one Twitter user critically or mockingly tweets about another person without mentioning their username or their name. In this chapter, we give an account of the strategic aims of subtweeting and the mechanics through which it achieves them. We thereby hope to shed light on the distinctive communicative and moral texture of subtweeting while filling in a gap in the philosophical literature on strategic speech in social media. We first specify what subtweets are and identify (...)
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  41. Trying without fail.Ben Holguín & Harvey Lederman - 2024 - Philosophical Studies (10):2577-2604.
    An action is agentially perfect if and only if, if a person tries to perform it, they succeed, and, if a person performs it, they try to. We argue that trying itself is agentially perfect: if a person tries to try to do something, they try to do it; and, if a person tries to do something, they try to try to do it. We show how this claim sheds new light on questions about basic action, the logical structure of (...)
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  42. Lying and knowing.Ben Holguín - 2019 - Synthese 198 (6):5351-5371.
    This paper defends the simple view that in asserting that p, one lies iff one knows that p is false. Along the way it draws some morals about deception, knowledge, Gettier cases, belief, assertion, and the relationship between first- and higher-order norms.
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  43. Death Penalty Abolition, the Right to Life, and Necessity.Ben Jones - 2023 - Human Rights Review 24 (1):77-95.
    One prominent argument in international law and religious thought for abolishing capital punishment is that it violates individuals’ right to life. Notably, this _right-to-life argument_ emerged from normative and legal frameworks that recognize deadly force against aggressors as justified when necessary to stop their unjust threat of grave harm. Can capital punishment be necessary in this sense—and thus justified defensive killing? If so, the right-to-life argument would have to admit certain exceptions where executions are justified. Drawing on work by Hugo (...)
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  44. Two Conceptions of Similarity.Ben Blumson - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (270):21-37.
    There are at least two traditional conceptions of numerical degree of similarity. According to the first, the degree of dissimilarity between two particulars is their distance apart in a metric space. According to the second, the degree of similarity between two particulars is a function of the number of (sparse) properties they have in common and not in common. This paper argues that these two conceptions are logically independent, but philosophically inconsonant.
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  45. Apocalypse Without God: Apocalyptic Thought, Ideal Politics, and the Limits of Utopian Hope.Ben Jones - 2021 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Apocalypse, it seems, is everywhere. Preachers with vast followings proclaim the world's end and apocalyptic fears grip even the non-religious amid climate change, pandemics, and threats of nuclear war. But as these ideas pervade popular discourse, grasping their logic remains elusive. Ben Jones argues that we can gain insight into apocalyptic thought through secular thinkers. He starts with a puzzle: Why would secular thinkers draw on Christian apocalyptic beliefs--often dismissed as bizarre--to interpret politics? The apocalyptic tradition proves appealing in part (...)
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  46. Making sense of Smith on sympathy and approbation: other-oriented sympathy as a psychological and normative achievement.Nir Ben-Moshe - 2020 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (4):735-755.
    Two problems seem to plague Adam Smith’s account of sympathy and approbation in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). First, Smith’s account of sympathy at the beginning of TMS appears to be inconsistent with the account of sympathy at the end of TMS. In particular, it seems that Smith did not appreciate the distinction between ‘self-oriented sympathy’ and ‘other-oriented sympathy’, that is, between imagining being oneself in the actor’s situation and imagining being the actor in the actor’s situation. Second, Smith’s (...)
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  47. Act Utilitarianism.Ben Eggleston - 2014 - In Ben Eggleston & Dale E. Miller (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 125-145.
    An overview (about 8,000 words) of act utilitarianism, covering the basic idea of the theory, historical examples, how it differs from rule utilitarianism and motive utilitarianism, supporting arguments, and standard objections. A closing section provides a brief introduction to indirect utilitarianism (i.e., a Hare- or Railton-style view distinguishing between a decision procedure and a criterion of rightness).
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  48. Is Death Bad for a Cow?Ben Bradley - 2015 - In Tatjana Višak & Robert Garner (eds.), The Ethics of Killing Animals. New York: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 51-64.
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  49. Mental Maps1.Ben Blumson - 2011 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2):413-434.
    It's often hypothesized that the structure of mental representation is map-like rather than language-like. The possibility arises as a counterexample to the argument from the best explanation of productivity and systematicity to the language of thought hypothesis—the hypothesis that mental structure is compositional and recursive. In this paper, I argue that the analogy with maps does not undermine the argument, because maps and language have the same kind of compositional and recursive structure.
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  50. Isabelle for Philosophers.Ben Blumson - manuscript
    This is an introduction to the Isabelle proof assistant aimed at philosophers and their students.
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