Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

Recently, bioethicists and the UNCRPD have advocated for supported medical decision-making on behalf of patients with intellectual disabilities. But what does supported decision-making really entail? One compelling framework is Anita Silvers and Leslie Francis’ mental prosthesis account, which envisions supported decision-making as a process in which trustees act as mere appendages for the patient’s will; the trustee provides the cognitive tools the patient requires to realize her conception of her own good. We argue that supported decision-making would be better understood (...) as a collaborative process, giving patients with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to make decisions in a respectful relationship with trusted others. We offer an alternative account of supported decision-making where the primary constraint is to protect the patient from domination by the trustee. This is advantageous in its preservation of the prospects for genuine collaboration, for the mental prosthesis approach ultimately reinforces a problematic ideal of isolated patient self-determination. (shrink)

We give two social aggregation theorems under conditions of risk, one for constant population cases, the other an extension to variable populations. Intra and interpersonal welfare comparisons are encoded in a single ‘individual preorder’. The theorems give axioms that uniquely determine a social preorder in terms of this individual preorder. The social preorders described by these theorems have features that may be considered characteristic of Harsanyi-style utilitarianism, such as indifference to ex ante and ex post equality. However, the theorems are (...) also consistent with the rejection of all of the expected utility axioms, completeness, continuity, and independence, at both the individual and social levels. In that sense, expected utility is inessential to Harsanyi-style utilitarianism. In fact, the variable population theorem imposes only a mild constraint on the individual preorder, while the constant population theorem imposes no constraint at all. We then derive further results under the assumption of our basic axioms. First, the individual preorder satisfies the main expected utility axiom of strong independence if and only if the social preorder has a vector-valued expected total utility representation, covering Harsanyi’s utilitarian theorem as a special case. Second, stronger utilitarian-friendly assumptions, like Pareto or strong separability, are essentially equivalent to strong independence. Third, if the individual preorder satisfies a ‘local expected utility’ condition popular in non-expected utility theory, then the social preorder has a ‘local expected total utility’ representation. Fourth, a wide range of non-expected utility theories nevertheless lead to social preorders of outcomes that have been seen as canonically egalitarian, such as rank-dependent social preorders. Although our aggregation theorems are stated under conditions of risk, they are valid in more general frameworks for representing uncertainty or ambiguity. (shrink)

According to the priority view, or prioritarianism, it matters more to benefit people the worse off they are. But how exactly should the priority view be defined? This article argues for a highly general characterization which essentially involves risk, but makes no use of evaluative measurements or the expected utility axioms. A representation theorem is provided, and when further assumptions are added, common accounts of the priority view are recovered. A defense of the key idea behind the priority view, the (...) priority principle, is provided. But it is argued that the priority view fails on both ethical and conceptual grounds. (shrink)

We provide conditions under which an incomplete strongly independent preorder on a convex set X can be represented by a set of mixture preserving real-valued functions. We allow X to be infi nite dimensional. The main continuity condition we focus on is mixture continuity. This is sufficient for such a representation provided X has countable dimension or satisfi es a condition that we call Polarization.

This paperback edition contains a new greatly expanded bibliography of Habermas's work.

One of the leading cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) proposes such experiences result from a disturbance in the process by which inner speech is attributed to the self. Research in this area has, however, proceeded in the absence of thorough cognitive and phenomenological investigations of the nature of inner speech, against which AVHs are implicitly or explicitly defined. In this paper we begin by introducing philosophical phenomenology and highlighting its relevance to AVHs, before briefly examining the evolving literature (...) on the relation between inner experiences and AVHs. We then argue for the need for philosophical phenomenology (Phenomenology) and the traditional empirical methods of psychology for studying inner experience (phenomenology) to mutually inform each other to provide a richer and more nuanced picture of both inner experience and AVHs than either could on its own. A critical examination is undertaken of the leading model of AVHs derived from phenomenological philosophy, the ipseity disturbance model. From this we suggest issues that future work in this vein will need to consider, and examine how interdisciplinary methodologies may contribute to advances in our understanding of AVHs. Detailed suggestions are made for the direction and methodology of future work into AVHs, which we suggest should be undertaken in a context where phenomenology and physiology are both necessary, but neither sufficient. (shrink)

A strongly independent preorder on a possibly in finite dimensional convex set that satisfi es two of the following conditions must satisfy the third: (i) the Archimedean continuity condition; (ii) mixture continuity; and (iii) comparability under the preorder is an equivalence relation. In addition, if the preorder is nontrivial (has nonempty asymmetric part) and satisfi es two of the following conditions, it must satisfy the third: (i') a modest strengthening of the Archimedean condition; (ii') mixture continuity; and (iii') completeness. Applications (...) to decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty are provided. (shrink)

Starting from two observations regarding nursing ethics research in the past two decades, namely, the dominant influence of both the empirical methods and the principles approach, we present the cornerstones of a foundational argument-based nursing ethics framework. First, we briefly outline the general philosophical–ethical background from which we develop our framework. This is based on three aspects: lived experience, interpretative dialogue, and normative standard. Against this background, we identify and explore three key concepts—vulnerability, care, and dignity—that must be observed in (...) an ethical approach to nursing. Based on these concepts, we argue that the ethical essence of nursing is the provision of care in response to the vulnerability of a human being in order to maintain, protect, and promote his or her dignity as much as possible. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism holds, roughly, that if it seems to S that P, then S has evidence for P. I argue for two main conclusions. The first is that phenomenal conservatism is better suited than is proper functionalism to explain how a particular type of religious belief formation can lead to non-inferentially justified religious beliefs. The second is that phenomenal conservatism makes evidence so easy to obtain that the truth of evidentialism would not be a significant obstacle to justified religious belief. (...) A natural objection to phenomenal conservatism is that it makes evidence too easy to obtain, but I argue this objection is mistaken. (shrink)

Guth provided a persuasive rationale for inflationary cosmology based on its ability to solve fine-tuning problems of big bang cosmology. Yet one of the most important consequences of inflation was only widely recognized a few years later: inflation provides a mechanism for generating small departures from uniformity, needed to seed formation of subsequent structures, by “freezing out” vacuum fluctuations to form classical density perturbations. This paper recounts the historical development of this aspect of inflation and puts it in context of (...) the development of ideas on structure formation in relativistic cosmology, before turning to the comparison between inflation and a competing account of structure formation based on topological defects. One aim is to assess in what sense inflation is empirically tested through its account of the formation of structure, in light of persistent debates among cosmologists regarding whether inflation is “falsifiable.”. (shrink)

The dignity approach to racist hate speech regulation maintains that hate speech ought to be regulated because it impugns targets’ dignity and poses a threat to their equal treatment. This approach faces the significant causal challenges of showing that hate speech has the power to erode its targets’ dignity and that regulations can successfully protect that dignity. My aim is to show how a friend of the dignity approach can resolve these challenges. To do so, I borrow insights from the (...) critical legal studies (CLS) approach to hate speech. Specifically, I argue that hate speech can erode its targets’ dignity 1) by constituting an act of discrimination, and 2) by enacting norms that call for treating targeted groups as inferior. Yet while I maintain that the CLS approach offers valuable resources for shoring up the dignity approach, I reject the CLS approach in favor of the dignity approach. (shrink)

Public arguments can be good or bad not only as a matter of logic, but also in the sense that speakers can _do_ good or bad things with arguments. For example, hate speakers use public arguments to contribute to the subordination of their targets. But how can ordinary speakers acquire the authority to perform subordinating speech acts? This is the ‘Authority Problem’. This paper defends a solution inspired by McGowan’s (Australas J Philos 87:389–407, 2009) analysis of oppressive speech, including against (...) concerns raised by McGowan (Just words: On speech and hidden harm, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019) herself. A _deflated_ kind of authority can be gained from the hate speaker’s standing in a norm-governed ‘activity of oppression’. We should be wary about engaging with such speakers in public argument. Even if we counter their arguments, we may still elevate their standing within that activity and so enable them to perform more pernicious speech acts than was previously possible. (shrink)

The article is a plea for ethicists to regard probability as one of their most important concerns. It outlines a series of topics of central importance in ethical theory in which probability is implicated, often in a surprisingly deep way, and lists a number of open problems. Topics covered include: interpretations of probability in ethical contexts; the evaluative and normative significance of risk or uncertainty; uses and abuses of expected utility theory; veils of ignorance; Harsanyi’s aggregation theorem; population size problems; (...) equality; fairness; giving priority to the worse off; continuity; incommensurability; nonexpected utility theory; evaluative measurement; aggregation; causal and evidential decision theory; act consequentialism; rule consequentialism; and deontology. (shrink)

We argue that if there are laws of nature, then there must also be accidents. If the “laws” in a world suffice to determine the world’s entire history, then these “laws” cannot play various central roles characteristic of laws, and thus (we conclude) they are not laws at all. Many proposed accounts of lawhood (primitivist accounts, universals accounts, the Best System Account, the Package Deal Account, essentialist accounts) inappropriately permit worlds with laws but no accidents. We identify two otherwise dissimilar (...) accounts that correctly (on our view) deem such worlds impossible; one is Humean and the other is non-Humean. (shrink)

The stream of human consciousness appears to be interruptible, in that we can experience a sensation of ‘returning to ourselves after an absence of content’ (e.g. sleep, anaesthesia, full-absorption meditation). Prima facie, such evidence poses a challenge to simple applications of theories of consciousness based on electromagnetic or neural activity in the brain, because some of this activity persists during periods of interruption. This paper elaborates one of several possible responses to the challenge. We build on a previous theory in (...) which EM field topology delineates complex macrophenomenal experience. We first apply an analytic lens to identify different ways in which field topologies might generate sensations of ‘absence of content’. We then test the feasibility of a particular phenomenological approach for assessing those field topologies, powered by the unusual lucidity about cessation pathways induced via certain meditation practices and psychedelic dosages. We build computational simulations of these cessation pathways and test them on eight interviewees with various levels of experience in cessation states. We conclude that this approach can generate usable insight, but requires further formalisation to fulfil its potential. The findings tentatively support our claims but the theory remains speculative at this stage. We set out empirical tests with 11 specific predictions, both for further phenomenological research and for brain manipulation research. Although they align neatly, our ontological and cessation theories can also be separated. The paper describes how our theories can be consistent with other perspectives on consciousness, such as variants of predictive processing or global network theory. (shrink)

This chapter provides an account of what dogmatism is, why the term matters, and how it applies to withholding judgment. Roughly, a person is dogmatic about P when a certain problematic personal investment—a superiority complex, broadly construed—biases their judgment concerning whether P. The term dogmatism and its cognates matter because of their social function. To accuse you of dogmatism is to signal how you are to be treated: your judgment or behavior needs to be “brought down to earth,” so that (...) you have a more accurate view of yourself or so you stop treating others as less important or less than. Withholding judgment can be dogmatic in the same way that belief is dogmatic. Belief (withholding) is dogmatic just when the relevant problematic personal investment results in biases that keep a person stuck in that belief (withholding). (shrink)

Conditional willing of morally impermissible actions like adultery tells us something about the moral agent, as does the liability to will such actions in certain unrealised contingencies. However, I argue, a liability to will wrongful actions in some circumstances need not (though it might) affect the moral permissibility of the act intended here and now e.g. terms of going through a marriage ceremony or enjoying sexual acts with one's spouse. This chapter explores the issue of conditional, preparatory or contingent intentions (...) of spouses with critical reference to work of John Finnis in this area. (shrink)

One of the most intuitive views about the metaphysics of laws of nature is Tim Maudlin's idea of a Fundamental Law of Temporal Evolution. So-called FLOTEs are primitive elements of the universe that produce later states from earlier states. While FLOTEs are at home in traditional Newtonian and non-relativistic quantum mechanical theories (not to mention our pre-theoretic conception of the world), I consider here whether they can be made to work with relativity. In particular, shifting to relativistic spacetimes poses two (...) threats to FLOTEs. First, the lack of a privileged spacelike hypersurface in relativistic spacetime makes it unclear how to understand what produces what. A survey of several conceptions of the nomic production relation compatible with relativity reveals all of them to be lacking. Second, relativity motivates a four-dimensional block universe conception of time, according to which all events that will ever occur already exist. On such a view, it's unclear what work there is to be done by FLOTEs. I consider how a proponent of FLOTEs might respond, but conclude that these combined threats seriously undermine the prospects of a productive conception of laws. In short, if spacetime is relativistic, laws are not productive. (shrink)

Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or ‘I’ distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such ‘ego dissolution’ experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to which representations are bound. (...) Combining recent work on the ‘integrative self' and the phenomenon of self-binding with predictive processing principles yields an explanation of ego dissolution according to which self-representation is a useful Cartesian fiction: an ultimately false representation of a simple and enduring substance to which attributes are bound which serves to integrate and unify cognitive processing across levels and domains. The self-model is not a mere narrative posit, as some have suggested; it has a more robust and ubiquitous cognitive function than that. But this does not mean, as others have claimed, that the self-model has the right attributes to qualify as a self. It performs some of the right kinds of functions, but it is not the right kind of entity. Ego dissolution experiences reveal that the self-model plays an important binding function in cognitive processing, but the self does not exist. (shrink)

Dozens of countries have established Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in the last decade or so, in the majority of cases employing those funds to manage the large revenues gained from selling resources such as oil and gas on a tide of rapidly rising commodity prices. These funds have raised a series of ethical questions, including just how the money contained in such funds should eventually be spent. This article engages with that question, and specifically seeks to connect debates on SWFs (...) with debates onglobaljustice. Just how good are national claims to the great wealth contained in SWFs in the first place? Using the example of Norway's very large SWF – derived from selling North-Sea petroleum – I show that national claims are at least sometimes very weak, with the implication that the wealth in many such funds is ripe for redistribution in the interests of global justice. I conclude by offering some guidance for how the money contained in such funds could best be spent, with the goal of advancing global justice. (shrink)

According to the thesis of doxastic wronging, we can wrong people in virtue of having certain beliefs about them. In this chapter, I motivate and defend a similar view, the thesis of suspensive wronging, that we can wrong people in virtue of bearing an indecision attitude towards certain questions that bear on certain people. I explore the extent to which the thesis of suspensive wronging fits with certain prominent conceptions of suspension of judgment, including the sui generis attitude, higher-order, and (...) credence views, and argue that it aligns with each of them. I then argue that reflection on cases of suspensive wronging reveals that the common characterization of suspension of judgment as a kind of ‘neutrality’ is nevertheless problematic, arguing that we should distinguish between attitudinal neutrality and property neutrality—i.e., neutrality on the truth of an answer to a question vs. the neutrality of the properties of the attitude that responds to a question, which accommodates the sense in which 'being neutral' in a debate can sometimes be unjust but also still a genuine sort of neutrality. Finally, I consider whether widespread views about the involuntariness of belief and the right-kind of reasons for belief refutes the suspensive wronging thesis, arguing that this is not the case, concluding with some reflections on the relationship between the suspensive wronging thesis and moral encroachment on suspension of judgment. (shrink)

What should we do when faced with powerful theoretical arguments that support a severe change in our personal beliefs and commitments? For example, what should new parents do when confronted by unanswered anti-natalist arguments, or two lovers vexed by social theory that apparently undermines love? On the one hand, it would be irrational to ignore theory just because it’s theory; good theory is evidence, after all. On the other hand, factoring in theory can be objectifying, or risks unraveling one's life, (...) fracturing one's identity or social relations. Sometimes, then, following the evidence where it apparently leads would mean not merely changing what we think but who we are. Some might say that there’s something right about the thought that theory can bear on what we ought to believe, it’s just that when we work with full beliefs, only then do we seriously risk having to substantially alter our doxastic economy when pressed by exceptional theoretical arguments. When we work with partial beliefs, however, this risk is greatly diminished. Others will say that we can advocate or champion revisionary positions whilst rationally retaining our pre-theoretical personal convictions. Still others will argue that we should adopt a Moorean posture towards the revisionary arguments. I argue that each response is inadequate, and argue instead that we are permitted to bracket certain kinds of theoretical evidence against our beliefs because of the personal and ethical risks born out of giving them serious consideration. In turn, some of philosophy's doxastic influence is constrained by its attendant ethical risks: the personal enjoys a partial insulation from the theoretical. I close by addressing what this means for practicing philosophers. (shrink)

One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humean laws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role of laws in scientific practice. The worry is roughly that if the laws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises if we fail to (...) distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanations. However, Lange (2013, 2018) has argued that scientific and metaphysical explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which would undercut Loewer's defense and re-ignite the circularity worry for the Humean. I argue here that the Humean has antecedent reasons to doubt that there are any systematic connections between scientific and metaphysical explanations. The reason is that the Humean should think that scientific and metaphysical explanation have disparate aims, and therefore that neither form of explanation is beholden to the other in its pronouncements about what explains what. Consequently, the Humean has every reason to doubt that Lange's transitivity principle obtains. (shrink)

This chapter explores whether and when experience can be evidence. It argues that experiences can be evidence, and that this claim is compatible with just about any epistemological theory. It evaluates the most promising argument for the conclusion that certain experiences (e.g., seeming to see) are always evidence for believing what the experiences represent. While the argument is very promising, one premise needs further defense. The argument also depends on a certain connection between reasonable belief and the first person perspective.

This chapter addresses philosophical questions raised in contemporary work on cosmology. It provides an overview of the Standard Model for cosmology and argues that its deficiency in addressing theories regarding the very early universe can be resolved by introducing a dynamical phase of evolution that eliminates the need for a special initial state. The chapter also discusses recent hypotheses about dark matter and energy, issues that it relates to philosophical debates about underdetermination.

Frustration has been growing with mainstay epistemological methods of logical deduction and experimental falsification for assessing theories of consciousness. This paper explores one among several alternatives being proposed: the listed requirements epistemology. A literature search identifies five papers that explicitly list requirements for assessing consciousness theories. These five lists are analysed as a promising starting point, but as yet insufficiently comprehensive to do the method justice. The longest list has 11 items, but 19 unique items are identified across the five (...) lists and a taxonomic analysis by category further surfaces at least 30 potential candidates. Four limitations of the method are discussed, arguing that it is best treated as one practical tool as part of a broader strategy for rigorously assessing consciousness theories and identifying avenues for future research. The conclusion describes a workplan for a sufficiently complete working taxonomy to support the field’s collective endeavours. (shrink)

A "good" arguer is like an architect with a penchant for civil and civic engineering. Such an arguer can design and present their reasons artfully about a variety of topics, as good architects do with a plenitude of structures and in various environments. Failures in this are rarely hidden for long, as poor constructions reveal themselves, often spectacularly, so collaboration among civical engineers can be seen as a virtue. Our logical virtues should be analogous. When our arguments fail due to (...) being uncivil and demagogic, since we inhabit the arguments we build, we are all crushed beneath our flawed reasoning. This mixed metaphor takes us to a self-referential analysis of argumentation, analogy, and humor. I argue that good argumentation strives to collaboratively convince rather than belligerently persuade. A convincing means toward this end is through humorous analogical arguments, whether the matter at hand is ethical, logical, theological, phenomenological, epistemological, metaphysical, political, or about baseball. (shrink)

In this précis I summarise the main ideas of my book Philosophy of Psychedelics. The book discusses philosophical issues arising from the therapeutic use of “classic” psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD. The book is organised around what I call the Comforting Delusion Objection to psychedelic therapy: the concern that this novel and promising treatment relies essentially on the induction of non-naturalistic metaphysical beliefs, rendering it epistemically objectionable. I begin the précis by summarizing material from chapters two and three (...) of the book, which review evidence for the therapeutic efficacy of psychedelics, and the facts about their clinical use that prompt the Comforting Delusion Objection. I then summarize materials from chapters four and five of the book, which argue that psychedelic therapy works neither by experience-independent processes of neuroplasticity, nor by inducing non-naturalistic metaphysical ideations, but by altering mental representations of the self. Next, I summarise the specific, speculative account of how this might work that is developed in chapters six and seven of the book. This account is based on the predictive processing theory of brain function and the self-binding theory of self-representation. Chapters eight and nine of the book argue, on the basis of this account, that psychedelic therapy can have significant epistemic and spiritual benefits that are compatible with a naturalistic worldview. I summarize this material, and then, finally, the overall conclusions about psychedelic therapy drawn in the tenth and final chapter of the book. (shrink)

Haag’s theorem cries out for explanation and critical assessment: It sounds the alarm that something is (perhaps) not right in one of the standard ways of constructing interacting fields to be used in generating predictions for scattering experiments. Viewpoints as to the precise nature of the problem, the appropriate solution, and subsequently-called-for developments in areas of physics, mathematics, and philosophy differ widely. In this paper, we develop and deploy a conceptual framework for critically assessing these disparate responses to Haag’s theorem. (...) Doing so reveals the driving force of more general questions as to the nature and purpose of foundational work in physics. (shrink)

We present an abstract social aggregation theorem. Society, and each individual, has a preorder that may be interpreted as expressing values or beliefs. The preorders are allowed to violate both completeness and continuity, and the population is allowed to be infinite. The preorders are only assumed to be represented by functions with values in partially ordered vector spaces, and whose product has convex range. This includes all preorders that satisfy strong independence. Any Pareto indifferent social preorder is then shown to (...) be represented by a linear transformation of the representations of the individual preorders. Further Pareto conditions on the social preorder correspond to positivity conditions on the transformation. When all the Pareto conditions hold and the population is finite, the social preorder is represented by a sum of individual preorder representations. We provide two applications. The first yields an extremely general version of Harsanyi's social aggregation theorem. The second generalizes a classic result about linear opinion pooling. (shrink)

The chapter introduces and characterizes the notion of fittingness. It charts the history of the relation and its relevance to contemporary debates in normative and metanormative philosophy and proceeds to survey issues to do with fittingness covered in the volume’s chapters, including the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relations between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of issues to (...) do with fittingness that aren’t covered extensively by the volume’s chapters in order to indicate avenues for further research. (shrink)

It may seem that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons differently, because ties in practical rationality tend to generate permissions and ties in epistemic rationality tend to generate a requirement to withhold judgment. I argue that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons in the same way, but they have different "default biases". Practical rationality is biased toward every option being permissible whereas epistemic rationality is biased toward withholding judgment's being required.

Dale Dorsey’s wide-ranging A Theory of Prudence contains ideas and arguments worthy of our attention on quite a variety of self-interest-related normative topics. In this essay I focus on Dorsey’s theory of prudential rationality, which is designed to deliver a negative answer to this essay’s titular question. Dorsey’s negative answer may be more intuitive, but I believe the positive answer is more defensible. From the perspective of prudence, it is just as reasonable to change your desires to fit the world (...) as it is to change the world to fit your desires. (shrink)

Recent clinical trials show that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations. Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers, for months or even years. But these benefits seem to be mediated by "mystical" experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern: do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about (...) the metaphysical nature of reality? This book is the first scholarly monograph in English devoted to the philosophical analysis of psychedelic drugs. Its central focus is the apparent conflict between the growing use of psychedelics in psychiatry and the philosophical worldview of naturalism. Within the book, Letheby integrates empirical evidence and philosophical considerations in the service of a simple conclusion: this "Comforting Delusion Objection" to psychedelic therapy fails. While exotic metaphysical ideas do sometimes come up, they are not, on closer inspection, the central driver of change in psychedelic therapy. Psychedelics lead to lasting benefits by altering the sense of self, and changing how people relate to their own minds and lives-not by changing their beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality. The upshot is that a traditional conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism (the philosophical position that the natural world is all there is). Controlled psychedelic use can lead to genuine forms of knowledge gain and spiritual growth-even if no Cosmic Consciousness or transcendent divine Reality exists. Philosophy of Psychedelics is an indispensable guide to the literature for researchers already engaged in the field of psychedelic psychiatry, and for researchers-especially philosophers-who want to become acquainted with this increasingly topical field. (shrink)

This chapter will evaluate humor used with the specific intent to reveal glaring epistemic errors that lead to injustice; flaws in reasoning so transparent that straightforward logic, argument, and evidence seem ineffectual against them, and in some cases, just silly to think such tools would be needed. Laughter seems to be one of the only sane responses. In particular, I will assess how humor can combat conspiracy theories, propaganda, lies, and bullshit. The last one I view in Harry Frankfurt's sense (...) of a complete lack of concern for truth or reality, which I think sums up former President Donald Trump's epic lack of curiosity which has a trickle-down effect on his ardent followers. The sort of conspiracy theories I will focus on are an intermingling of propaganda, well defined and analyzed by Jason Stanley in his work How Propaganda Works, and the "new conspiracism", outlined by Muirhead and Rosenblum in A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and The Assault on Democracy. There are perils with this potency of pugilistic comedy. It is easy to punch up, humorously fume at the foibles and fantastical blunders of a world leader who seriously considers ingesting bleach to combat the plague, who also, without irony, regales us of his capacious mnemonic prowess in recalling the following words on a cognitive test: "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV." The self-proclaimed "stable genius" aced it. But when Trumpism and QAnon e.g., spreads among many who are impoverished and disempowered, the very people to whom Trump and others in his powerful orbit have incessantly lied, it becomes less clear how to wield truth-and justice-seeking wit. Are consciousness-raising comedians seeking to uncover and undermine obvious and dangerous falsehoods punching in the morally correct direction, and how can we tell? (shrink)

It is trivially true that comedians make jokes and thus are not serious; they are “just playing.” But watching Louis CK, especially his performances in Chewed Up, Shameless, and Hilarious, it is evident that he has more in mind than simply getting his audience to frivolously guffaw. I will make the case that this is so given the content of some of his humor which centers on areas of socio-political-ethical tensions that can be uncomfortable when addressed in a direct, “bona-fide” (...) communicative mode. I will concentrate upon his playful, yet serious, account of issues surrounding race and privilege which, though not obvious center-pieces, can be found in almost all of his performances. These are complex areas that are not obvious fodder for humor, and it is clear that his comedic repertoire is broad enough that he is not including these issues for lack of funnier bits. I will argue that through his humor, he at once brings to consciousness hidden biases, challenges them in a subversive manner on behalf of those harmed by cultural stereotypes, e.g., and opens up an otherwise adversarial audience to the possibility that they harbor such unwanted stereotypes—a necessary element in consciousness-raising. My account will require a brief distinction between seriousness and playfulness, a defense of the claim that we are drawn to humor even when it is used to question our cherished presuppositions, and an interpretation of thought experiments that parallels Louis CK’s comedic mechanisms in his stand-up performances and episodes from Louie. In some cases he is explicit that he is just “making shit up” (Oh My God), or, as he cautions in the setup to a story in Shameless, “it doesn’t matter cus’ I’m gonna lie to you.” But that does not take away from my point that he is serious with his humor about social reality in the same way that philosophers have traditionally “made shit up” with thought experiments for serious purposes. Louis CK employs a similar device with his humor, and in many ways is more effective than philosophers in making the implicit explicit for his (much larger) audiences who then spread his word. (shrink)

Psychedelic ingestion and meditative practice are both ancient methods for altering consciousness that became widely known in Western society in the second half of the 20th century. Do the similarities begin and end there, or do these methods – as many have claimed over the years – share some deeper common elements? In this chapter I take a neurophilosophical approach to this question and argue that there are, indeed, deeper commonalities. Recent empirical studies show that psychedelics and meditation modulate overlapping (...) brain networks involved in the sense of self, salience, and attention; moreover, psychedelics can occasion lasting increases in “mindfulness-related capacities” for taking a non-reactive stance on one’s inner experience (e.g. Sampedro et al. 2017). The self-binding theory of psychedelic ego dissolution (Letheby and Gerrans 2017) offers a plausible explanation of these findings: by disrupting self-related beliefs implemented in high-level cortical networks, both psychedelics and meditation can “unbind” mental contents from one’s self-model, moving these contents along the continuum from phenomenal transparency to opacity (cf. Metzinger 2003). In other words, both psychedelics and meditation can expose and weaken our foundational beliefs about our own identity, allowing us to disidentify with these beliefs and see them as “just thoughts”. There are connections between these ideas and recent arguments suggesting that psychedelic use may have epistemic benefits consistent with philosophical naturalism (Letheby 2015, 2016, 2019). I conclude with a proposal: these connections may help in thinking about the putative epistemic benefits of meditation practice from a naturalistic perspective. (shrink)

In the 1960s, before the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, the Catholic philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe and Herbert McCabe OP debated whether there are convincing natural law arguments for the claim that contraception violates an exceptionless moral norm. This article revisits those arguments and critiques McCabe’s approach to natural law, concerned primarily with ‘social sin’ and not simply violations of ‘right reason,’ as one particularly ill-suited to addressing questions in sexual ethics and unable both to distinguish properly between certain forms of sexual (...) wrongdoing and more obviously social sins such as theft, and also to distinguish between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ sexual acts. Anscombe’s views, I argue, are closer to those of Thomas Aquinas and provide reasons for making the distinctions McCabe does not. An argument concerning the nature of the institution of marriage and the effects of non-marital acts on that institution is proposed as a way of strengthening Anscombe’s argument that contraception violates an exceptionless moral norm. (shrink)

Classical acquaintance theory is any version of classical foundationalism that appeals to acquaintance in order to account for non-inferential justification. Such theories are well suited to account for a kind of infallible non-inferential justification. Why am I justified in believing that I’m in pain? An initially attractive (partial) answer is that I’m acquainted with my pain. But since I can’t be acquainted with what isn’t there, acquaintance with my pain guarantees that I’m in pain. What’s less clear is whether, given (...) classical acquaintance theory, it’s possible to have non-inferential justification to believe something false. Classical acquaintance theorists try to make room for such a possibility, but I argue that the attempts of Richard Fumerton, Ali Hasan, and Evan Fales are inadequate. I’ll focus on introspective justification, but similar issues arise for a priori justification as well. (shrink)

Cosmologists take the $\Lambda$CDM model to be a permanent contribution to our knowledge of the universe, based on the success of precision cosmology. Consistent, independent determinations of the parameters in this model encourage physicists to take it seriously. This stance incurs an obligation to resolve any discrepancies by reanalyzing measurements or adding further complexity. Recent observations in cosmology indicate a tension between “local” and “global” determinations of the Hubble constant. Here I argue that this tension illustrates one of the benefits (...) of taking the model seriously and consider the challenges to making a case for the permanence of $\Lambda$CDM. (shrink)

Philosophers often treat racist and sexist slurs as a special sort of puzzle. What is the difference between a slur and its correlates? In attempting to answer this question, a second distinction has been overlooked: that between slurs and insults. What makes a term count as a slur? This is not an unnecessary taxonomical question as long as ableist terms such as ‘moron’ are dismissed as mere insults. Attempts to resolve the insult/slur distinction by considering the communicative content of slurs (...) are not promising. A better solution is offered by speech act theory, and this paper develops a novel way to describe ordinary slurring utterances as oppressive speech acts. This can both explain the difference between slurs and insults, and challenge the dismissal of ableist terms. (shrink)

It is natural to think that many of our beliefs are rational because they are based on seemings, or on the way things seem. This is especially clear in the case of perception. Many of our mathematical, moral, and memory beliefs also appear to be based on seemings. In each of these cases, it is natural to think that our beliefs are not only based on a seeming, but also that they are rationally based on these seemings—at least assuming there (...) is no relevant counterevidence. This piece is an introduction to a volume dedicated to the question of what the connection is between seemings and justified belief: under what conditions, if any, can a seeming justify its content? (shrink)

This entry investigates the connections between neo-populism and neo-conspiracism in the USA. One central thread is the rhetoric of purity that fosters rigid dichotomies of thought about identities, contributing to both populism and conspiracism, eliciting a neologism: conspirapopulism.

This paper responds to a new objection, due to Ben Bramble, against attitudinal theories of sensory pleasure and pain: the objection from unconscious pleasures and pains. According to the objection, attitudinal theories are unable to accommodate the fact that sometimes we experience pleasures and pains of which we are, at the time, unaware. In response, I distinguish two kinds of unawareness and argue that the subjects in the examples that support the objection are unaware of their sensations in only a (...) weak sense, and this weak sort of unawareness of a sensation does not preclude its being an object of one’s attitudes. (shrink)

The (moral) permissibility of an act is determined by the relative weights of reasons, or so I assume. But how many weights does a reason have? Weight Monism is the idea that reasons have a single weight value. There is just the weight of reasons. The simplest versions hold that the weight of each reason is either weightier than, less weighty than, or equal to every other reason. We’ll see that this simple view leads to paradox in at least two (...) ways. We must complicate the picture somehow. I consider two candidate complications. The first, Parity Monism, is inspired by Ruth Chang’s suggestion that parity is a fourth comparative beyond the traditional three (>, <, =). This view complicates the single weight relation by allowing that the weights of reasons can be on a par. Unfortunately, Parity Monism resolves only one of the two paradoxes that afflict simple versions of Weight Monism. To resolve both paradoxes, we need our second candidate complication, Weight Pluralism. This view holds that reasons have at least two weight values (e.g., justifying weight and requiring weight) and these two values aren’t always equivalent. Parity is no substitute for Pluralism. (shrink)

This updated essay expands on the author's analysis of the complex social and psychological reasons for the inadequate response to the climate emergency. Recent reports by climate scientists quoted in the article suggest that the pace of climate change has already reached the point of irreversibility, triggering multiple tipping points with catastrophic implications for the future of life on this planet. Yet climate change denial, which as the author explains, takes many forms itself, both aggressive and passive, remains common at (...) all levels of human society, hindering effective action. Nevertheless, citing the growing number of legal cases being brought against both fossil fuel industries and state governments for not taking sufficient and verifiable measures for dealing with the crisis, the author finds positive signs that justice may be finally catching up with the culpable parties in both sectors. (shrink)

An in-depth critique of arguments of John Finnis, Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle and William May to the effect that contraception is necessarily contralife in the sense of exhibiting a will against a possible person.