An overview of hyperintensionality is provided. Hyperintensional languages have expressions with meanings that are more fine-grained than necessary equivalence. That is, the expressions may necessarily co-apply and yet be distinct in meaning. Adequately accounting for theories cast in hyperintensional languages is important in the philosophy of language; the philosophy of mind; metaphysics; and elsewhere. This entry presents a number of areas in which hyperintensionality is important; a range of approaches to theorising about hyperintensional matters; and a range of debates that (...) attention to hyperintensional constructions has generated. (shrink)

Previous research in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) suggests that a main aim of explainability approaches is to satisfy specific interests, goals, expectations, needs, and demands regarding artificial systems (we call these “stakeholders' desiderata”) in a variety of contexts. However, the literature on XAI is vast, spreads out across multiple largely disconnected disciplines, and it often remains unclear how explainability approaches are supposed to achieve the goal of satisfying stakeholders' desiderata. This paper discusses the main classes of stakeholders calling for explainability (...) of artificial systems and reviews their desiderata. We provide a model that explicitly spells out the main concepts and relations necessary to consider and investigate when evaluating, adjusting, choosing, and developing explainability approaches that aim to satisfy stakeholders' desiderata. This model can serve researchers from the variety of different disciplines involved in XAI as a common ground. It emphasizes where there is interdisciplinary potential in the evaluation and the development of explainability approaches. (shrink)

Previous simulation models have found positive effects of cognitive diversity on group performance, but have not explored effects of diversity in demographics (e.g., gender, ethnicity). In this paper, we present an agent-based model that captures two empirically supported hypotheses about how demographic diversity can improve group performance. The results of our simulations suggest that, even when social identities are not associated with distinctive task-related cognitive resources, demographic diversity can, in certain circumstances, benefit collective performance by counteracting two types of conformity (...) that can arise in homogeneous groups: those relating to group-based trust and those connected to normative expectations towards in-groups. (shrink)

Moral debunking arguments are meant to show that, by realist lights, moral beliefs are not explained by moral facts, which in turn is meant to show that they lack some significant counterfactual connection to the moral facts (e.g., safety, sensitivity, reliability). The dominant, “minimalist” response to the arguments—sometimes defended under the heading of “third-factors” or “pre-established harmonies”—involves affirming that moral beliefs enjoy the relevant counterfactual connection while granting that these beliefs are not explained by the moral facts. We show that (...) the minimalist gambit rests on a controversial thesis about epistemic priority: that explanatory concessions derive their epistemic import from what they reveal about counterfactual connections. We then challenge this epistemic priority thesis, which undermines the minimalist response to debunking arguments (in ethics and elsewhere). (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments abound, but it is widely assumed that they do not arise for our perceptual beliefs about midsized objects, insofar as the adaptive value of our object beliefs cannot be explained without reference to the objects themselves. I argue that this is a mistake. Just as with moral beliefs, the adaptive value of our object beliefs can be explained without assuming that the beliefs are accurate. I then explore the prospects for other sorts of vindications of our object (...) beliefs—which involve “bootstrapping” from our experiences as of midsized objects—and I defend bootstrapping maneuvers against a variety of objections. Finally, I argue for an explanatory constraint on legitimate bootstrapping and show how some attempts to respond to debunking arguments run afoul of the constraint. (shrink)

Philosophy of biology is often said to have emerged in the last third of the twentieth century. Prior to this time, it has been alleged that the only authors who engaged philosophically with the life sciences were either logical empiricists who sought to impose the explanatory ideals of the physical sciences onto biology, or vitalists who invoked mystical agencies in an attempt to ward off the threat of physicochemical reduction. These schools paid little attention to actual biological science, and as (...) a result philosophy of biology languished in a state of futility for much of the twentieth century. The situation, we are told, only began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a new generation of researchers began to focus on problems internal to biology, leading to the consolidation of the discipline. In this paper we challenge this widely accepted narrative of the history of philosophy of biology. We do so by arguing that the most important tradition within early twentieth-century philosophy of biology was neither logical empiricism nor vitalism, but the organicist movement that flourished between the First and Second World Wars. We show that the organicist corpus is thematically and methodologically continuous with the contemporary literature in order to discredit the view that early work in the philosophy of biology was unproductive, and we emphasize the desirability of integrating the historical and contemporary conversations into a single, unified discourse. (shrink)

What is a normative reason for acting? In this paper, I introduce and defend a novel answer to this question. The starting-point is the view that reasons are right-makers. By exploring difficulties facing it, I arrive at an alternative, according to which reasons are evidence of respects in which it is right to perform an act, for example, that it keeps a promise. This is similar to the proposal that reasons for a person to act are evidence that she ought (...) to do so; however, as I explain, it differs from that proposal in two significant ways. As a result, I argue, the evidence-based account of reasons I advance shares the advantages of its predecessor while avoiding many of the difficulties facing it. (shrink)

It is commonly said that some standards, such as morality, are ‘normatively authoritative’ in a way that other standards, such as etiquette, are not; standards like etiquette are said to be ‘not really normative’. Skeptics deny the very possibility of normative authority, and take claims like ‘etiquette is not really normative’ to be either empty or confused. I offer a different route to defeat skeptics about authority: instead of focusing on what makes standards like morality special, we should focus on (...) what makes standards like etiquette ‘not really normative’. I defend a fictionalist theory on which etiquette is ‘not really normative’ in roughly the same way that Sherlock is ‘not really a detective’, and show that fictionalism about some normative standards helps us explain the possibility of normative authority. (shrink)

Conversational exculpature is a pragmatic process whereby information is subtracted from, rather than added to, what the speaker literally says. This pragmatic content subtraction explains why we can say “Rob is six feet tall” without implying that Rob is between 5'0.99" and 6'0.01" tall, and why we can say “Ellen has a hat like the one Sherlock Holmes always wears” without implying Holmes exists or has a hat. This article presents a simple formalism for understanding this pragmatic mechanism, specifying how, (...) in context, the result of such subtractions is determined. And it shows how the resulting theory of conversational exculpature accounts for a varied range of linguistic phenomena. A distinctive feature of the approach is the crucial role played by the question under discussion in determining the result of a given exculpature. (shrink)

This paper explores various subtleties in our ordinary thought and talk about normative reasons—subtleties which, if taken seriously, have various upshots, both substantive and methodological. I focus on two subtleties in particular. The first concerns the use of reason (in its normative sense) as both a count noun and as a mass noun, and the second concerns the context-sensitivity of normative reasons-claims. The more carefully we look at the language of reasons, I argue, the clearer its limitations and liabilities become. (...) The cumulative upshot is that although talk of reasons is intelligible and useful for the purposes of communication, we should be wary of placing much weight on it when engaging in substantive normative inquiry. By way of illustration, I consider some potential pitfalls of taking our talk of reasons too seriously, explaining how careful attention to the language of reasons undermines the main argument for moral particularism, Mark Schroeder’s recent defense of Humeanism about practical reasons, and the “reasons-first” program in metanormativity. (shrink)

The available resources for global health assistance are far outstripped by need. In the face of such scarcity, many people endorse a principle according to which highest priority should be given to the worst off. However, in order for this prioritarian principle to be useful for allocation decisions, policy-makers need to know what it means to be badly off. In this article, we outline a conception of disadvantage suitable for identifying the worst off for the purpose of making health resource (...) allocation decisions. According to our total advantage view: the worst off are those who have the greatest total lifetime disadvantage; advantage foregone due to premature death should be treated in the same way as other ways of being disadvantaged at a time; how badly off someone is depends on the actual outcomes that will befall her without intervention, not her prospects at a time; and all significant forms of disadvantage count for determining who is worst off, not just disadvantage relating to health. We conclude by noting two important implications of the total advantage view: first, that those who die young are among the globally worst off, and second, that the epidemiological shift in the global burden of disease from communicable to non-communicable diseases should not lead to a corresponding shift in global health spending priorities. (shrink)

When we say that what two people feel for each other is 'true love,' we seem to be doing more than simply clarifying that it is in fact love they feel, as opposed to something else. That is, an experience or relationship might be a genuine or actual instance of love without necessarily being an instance of true love. But what criteria do people use to determine whether something counts as true love? This chapter explores three hypotheses. The first holds (...) that the ordinary concept of true love picks out love that is highly prototypical. The second, that it picks out love that is especially good or valuable. The third, that people distinguish between psychological states that are 'real' or not, and that it picks out love that is real. Two experiments provide evidence against the first hypothesis and in favor of the second and third. Implications for real-life disagreements about love are also discussed. (shrink)

The is-ought gap is Hume’s claim that we can’t get an ‘ought’ from just ‘is’s. Prior (“The Autonomy of Ethics,” 1960) showed that its most straightforward formulation, a staple of introductory philosophy classes, fails. Many authors attempt to resurrect the claim by restricting its domain syntactically or by reformulating it in terms of models of deontic logic. Those attempts prove to be complex, incomplete, or incorrect. I provide a simple reformulation of the is-ought gap that closely fits Hume’s description of (...) it. My formulation of the gap avoids the proposed counterexamples from Prior and offers a natural explanation of why they seem compelling. Moreover, I show that my formulation of the gap is guaranteed by standard theories of the semantics of normative terms, and that provides a more general reason to accept it. (shrink)

On the shared-­ends account of close friendship, proper care for a friend as an agent requires seeing yourself as having important reasons to accommodate and promote the friend’s valuable ends for her own sake. However, that friends share ends doesn't inoculate them against disagreements about how to pursue those ends. This paper defends the claim that, in certain circumstances of reasonable disagreement, proper care for a friend as a practical and moral agent sometimes requires allowing her judgment to decide what (...) you are to do, even when you disagree with her judgment (and even when her judgment is in fact mistaken). In these instances, your friendship can make it the case that you may not act on your own practical and even moral judgments because, at those times, you have a duty as her close friend to defer to her judgments. As a result, treating your friend properly as a responsible agent can require that you assist her in committing what may in fact be serious moral wrongs. (shrink)

A standing challenge in the theory of counterfactuals is to solve the “deviation problem”. Consider ordinary counterfactuals involving an antecedent concerning a difference from the actual course of events at a particular time, and a consequent concerning, at least in part, what happens at a later time. In the possible worlds framework, the problem is often put in terms of which are the relevant antecedent worlds. Desiderata for the solution include that the relevant antecedent worlds be governed by the actual (...) laws of nature with no miracles; that the past in those worlds before the antecedent time matches the actual past; that the account is compatible with determinism, and that many of our ordinary counterfactual judgments are correct, and would be correct even given determinism. Many theorists have compromised on one or more of these desiderata, but this paper presents an account employing impossible worlds that satisfies them all. (shrink)

Curry's paradox for "if.. then.." concerns the paradoxical features of sentences of the form "If this very sentence is true, then 2+2=5". Standard inference principles lead us to the conclusion that such conditionals have true consequents: so, for example, 2+2=5 after all. There has been a lot of technical work done on formal options for blocking Curry paradoxes while only compromising a little on the various central principles of logic and meaning that are under threat. -/- Once we have a (...) sense of the technical options, though, a philosophical choice remains. When dealing with puzzles in the logic of conditionals, a natural place to turn is independently motivated semantic theories of the behaviour of "if... then...". This paper argues that the closest-worlds approach outlined in Nolan 1997 offers a philosophically satisfying reason to deny conditional proof and so block the paradoxical Curry reasoning, and can give the verdict that standard Curry conditionals are false, along with related "contraction conditionals". (shrink)

The U.S. election in November 2016 raised and amplified doubts about first-past-the-post (“plurality rule”) electoral systems. Arguments against plurality rule and for alternatives like preferential voting tend to be consequentialist: it is argued that systems like preferential voting produce different, better outcomes. After briefly noting why the consequentialist case against plurality rule is more complex and contentious than it first appears, I offer an expressive alternative: plurality rule produces actual or apparent dilemmas for voters in ways that are morally objectionable, (...) and avoidable under preferential voting systems. This expressive case against plurality rule is both simpler and more ecumenical than its consequentialist counterpart, and it provides strong reasons to prefer alternatives to plurality rule. Moreover, it suggests a distinct way of evaluating different alternatives like preferential voting. (shrink)

Our question is this: What makes an act one of entrapment? We make a standard distinction between legal entrapment, which is carried out by parties acting in their capacities as (or as deputies of) law- enforcement agents, and civil entrapment, which is not. We aim to provide a definition of entrapment that covers both and which, for reasons we explain, does not settle questions of permissibility and culpability. We explain, compare, and contrast two existing definitions of legal entrapment to commit (...) a crime that possess this neutrality. We point out some problems with the extensional correctness of these definitions and propose a new definition that resolves these problems. We then extend our definition to provide a more general definition of entrapment, encompassing both civil and legal cases. Our definition is, we believe, closer to being extensionally correct and will, we hope, provide a clearer basis for future discussions about the ethics of entrapment than do the definitions upon which it improves. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to a fundamental problem for a version of the tracing strategy defended by a number of theorists in the current literature (Rosen 2004, Fischer and Tognazzini 2009). I argue that versions of the tracing strategy that require reasonable foreseeability are in tension with the view that blameless ignorance excuses. A stronger version of the tracing strategy is consistent with the view that blameless ignorance excuses and is therefore preferable for those tracing theorists who wish to continue (...) maintaining that it does. (shrink)

Kripke’s Wittgenstein is standardly understood as a non-factualist about meaning ascription. Non-factualism about meaning ascription is the idea that sentences like “Joe means addition by ‘plus’” are not used to state facts about the world. Byrne and Kusch have argued that Kripke’s Wittgenstein is not a non-factualist about meaning ascription. They are aware that their interpretation is non-standard, but cite arguments from Boghossian and Wright to support their view. Boghossian argues that non-factualism about meaning ascription is incompatible with a deflationary (...) theory of truth. Wright argues that non-factualism about meaning ascription is incoherent. To support the standard interpretation, I’ll respond to each argument in turn. To the degree that my responses are successful, Byrne and Kusch have an unmotivated interpretation of Kripke’s Wittgenstein. Wilson provides a factualist interpretation that is not based on Boghossian and Wright’s arguments. Miller argues for a non-factualist interpretation against Wilson, but I’ll show that Miller’s interpretation faces a dilemma. Miller’s argument cannot be maintained if a coherent interpretation of the skeptical solution is to be provided. I’ll show how this dilemma can be avoided and provide an independent argument against Wilson so that a non-factualist interpretation of the skeptical solution can be maintained. (shrink)

The dominant approach in privacy theory defines information privacy as some form of control over personal information. In this essay, I argue that the control approach is mistaken, but for different reasons than those offered by its other critics. I claim that information privacy involves the drawing of epistemic boundaries—boundaries between what others should and shouldn’t know about us. While controlling what information others have about us is one strategy we use to draw such boundaries, it is not the only (...) one. We conceal information about ourselves and we reveal it. And since the meaning of information is not self-evident, we also work to shape how others contextualize and interpret the information about us that they have. Information privacy is thus about more than controlling information; it involves the constant work of producing and managing public identities, what I call “social self- authorship.” In the second part of the essay, I argue that thinking about information privacy in terms of social self- authorship helps us see ways that information technology threatens privacy, which the control approach misses. Namely, information technology makes social self- authorship invisible and unnecessary, by making it difficult for us to know when others are forming impressions about us, and by providing them with tools for making assumptions about who we are which obviate the need for our involvement in the process. (shrink)

While those who take a "structuralist" approach to racial justice issues are right to call attention to the importance of social practices, laws, etc., they sometimes go too far by suggesting that antiracist efforts ought to focus on changing unjust social systems rather than changing individuals’ minds. We argue that while the “either/or” thinking implied by this framing is intuitive and pervasive, it is misleading and self-undermining. We instead advocate for a “both/and” approach to antiracist moral education that explicitly teaches (...) how social structures influence ideas about race and how ideas about race shape, sustain, and transform social structures. Ideally, antiracist moral education will help people see how social change and moral progress depend on the symbiotic relations between individuals and structures. We articulate a conception of “structure-facing virtue” that exemplifies this hybrid approach to illuminate the pivotal role moral education plays in the fight for racial justice. (shrink)

The expressivist advances a view about how we explain the meaning of a fragment of language, such as claims about what we morally ought to do. Critics evaluate expressivism on those terms. This is a serious mistake. We don’t just use that fragment of language in isolation. We make claims about what we morally, legally, rationally, and prudentially ought to do. To account for this linguistic phenomenon, the expressivist owes us an account not just of each fragment of language, but (...) of how they weave together into a broader tapestry. I argue that expressivists face a dilemma in doing so: either they fail to explain the univocality of terms like 'ought', or they fail to explain when normative statements are and aren't inconsistent. (shrink)

We argue that generic generalizations about racial groups are pernicious in what they communicate (both to members of that racial group and to members of other racial groups), and may be central to the construction of social categories like racial groups. We then consider how we should change and challenge uses of generic generalizations about racial groups.

Several quantitative surveys have been conducted internationally to gather empirical information about physicians’ general attitudes towards health care rationing. Are physicians ready to accept and implement rationing, or are they rather reluctant? Do they prefer implicit bedside rationing that allows the physician–patient relationship broad leeway in individual decisions? Or do physicians prefer strategies that apply explicit criteria and rules?

In this paper, I outline a heuristic for thinking about the relation between explanation and understanding that can be used to capture various levels of “intimacy”, between them. I argue that the level of complexity in the structure of explanation is inversely proportional to the level of intimacy between explanation and understanding, i.e. the more complexity the less intimacy. I further argue that the level of complexity in the structure of explanation also affects the explanatory depth in a similar way (...) to intimacy between explanation and understanding, i.e. the less complexity the greater explanatory depth and vice versa. (shrink)

What do normative terms like “obligation” mean in legal contexts? On one view, which H.L.A. Hart may have endorsed, “obligation” is ambiguous in moral and legal contexts. On another, which is dominant in jurisprudence, “obligation” has a distinctively moralized meaning in legal contexts. On a third view, which is often endorsed in philosophy of language, “obligation” has a generic meaning in moral and legal con- texts. After making the nature of and disagreements between these views precise, I show how linguistic (...) data militates against both rivals to the generic meaning view, and argue that this has significant implications for jurisprudence. (shrink)

Many philosophers have assumed, without argument, that Wittgenstein influenced Austin. More often, however, this is vehemently denied, especially by those who knew Austin personally. We compile and assess the currently available evidence for Wittgenstein’s influence on Austin’s philosophy of language. Surprisingly, this has not been done before in any detail. On the basis of both textual and circumstantial evidence we show that Austin’s work demonstrates substantial engagement with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. In particular, Austin’s 1940 paper, ‘The Meaning of a Word’, (...) should be construed as a direct response to and development of ideas he encountered in Wittgenstein’s Blue Book. Moreover, we argue that Austin’s mature speech-act theory in How to Do Things with Words was also significantly influenced by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Mandatory minimum sentencing provisions have been a feature of the U.S. justice system since 1790. But they have expanded considerably under the war on drugs, and their use has expanded considerably under the Trump Administration; some states are also poised to expand drug-related mandatory minimums further in efforts to fight the current opioid epidemic. In this paper I outline and evaluate three prominent arguments for and against the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs—they appeal, respectively, to proportionality, (...) consistency, and efficiency. I ultimately defend the view that the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs is unjust. -/- . (shrink)

Some have tried to make miracles compatible with the laws of nature by re-defining them as something other than interventions. By contrast, this article argues that although miracles are divine interventions, they are not violations of the laws of nature. Miracles are also not exceptions to the laws, nor do the laws not apply to them. The laws never have exceptions; they never are violated or suspended, are probably necessary and unchangeable, and apply also to divine interventions. We need to (...) reconsider not miracles but laws. The main claim of this article is that laws of nature do not entail regularities, and therefore that miracles do not violate the laws. We need a new theory of the laws of nature: the tendency theory. (shrink)

Although thought experiments were first discovered as a sui generis methodological tool by philosophers of science (most prominently by Ernst Mach), the tool can also be found – even more frequently – in contemporary philosophy. Thought experiments in philosophy and science have a lot in common. However, in this chapter we will concentrate on thought experiments in philosophy only. Their use has been the centre of attention of metaphilosophical discussion in the past decade, and this chapter will provide an overview (...) of the results this discussion has achieved and point out which issues are still open. (shrink)

Many Christian theodicists believe that God's creating us with the capacity to love Him and each other justifies, in large part, God's permitting evil. For example, after reminding us that, according to Christian doctrine, the supreme good for human beings is to enter into a reciprocal love relationship with God, Vincent Brummer recently wrote: In creating human persons in order to love them, God necessarily assumes vulnerability in relation to them. In fact, in this relation, he becomes even more vulnerable (...) than we do, since he cannot count on the steadfastness of our love the way we can count on his steadfastness.... If God did not grant us the ability to sin and cause affliction to him and to one another, we would not have the kind of free and autonomous existence necessary to enter into a relation of love with God and with one another.... Far from contradicting the value which the free will defence places upon the freedom and responsibility of human persons, the idea of a loving God necessarily entails it. In this way we can see that the free will defence is based on the love of God rather than on the supposed intrinsic value of human freedom and responsibility.1 And Peter van Inwagen recently put the same point this way. (shrink)

Our lives are guided by habits. Most of the activities we engage in throughout the day are initiated and carried out not by rational thought and deliberation, but through an ingrained set of dispositions or patterns of action—what Aristotle calls a hexis. We develop these dispositions over time, by acting and gauging how the world responds. I tilt the steering wheel too far and the car’s lurch teaches me how much force is needed to steady it. I come too close (...) to a hot stove and the burn I get inclines me not to get too close again. This feedback and the habits it produces are bodily. They are possible because the medium through which these actions take place is a physical, sensible one. The world around us is, in the language of postphenomenology, an opaque one. We notice its texture and contours as we move through it, and crucially, we bump up against it from time to time. The digital world, by contrast, is largely transparent. Digital media are designed to recede from view. As a result, we experience little friction as we carry out activities online; the consequences of our actions are often not apparent to us. This distinction between the opacity of the natural world and the transparency of the digital one raises important questions. In this chapter, I ask: how does the transparency of digital media affect our ability to develop healthy habits online? If the digital world is constructed precisely not to push back against us, how are we supposed to gauge whether our actions are good or bad, for us and for others? The answer to this question has important ramifications for a number of ethical, political, and policy debates around issues in online life. For in order to advance cherished norms like privacy, civility, and fairness online, we need more than good laws and good policies—we need good habits, which dispose us to act in ways conducive to our and others’ flourishing. (shrink)

The Alcibiades I concludes with an arresting image of an eye that sees itself by looking into another eye. Using the dialogue as a whole, I offer a detailed interpretation of this image and I discuss its implications for the question of self-knowledge. The Alcibiades I reveals both what self-knowledge is (knowledge of soul in its particularity and its universality) and how we are to seek it (by way of philosophical dialogue). This makes the pursuit of self-knowledge an inescapably social (...) pursuit. Yet as Socrates cautions us, our ability to gain self-knowledge—and indeed his very account of what it is—are limited. The dialogue is thus challenging us to take the inquiry further, thereby displaying the very matter being discussed. (shrink)

Recent debate in the literature on political obligation about the principle of fairness rests on a mistake. Despite the widespread assumption to the contrary, a person can have a duty of fairness to share in the burdens of sustaining some cooperative scheme even though that scheme does not represent a net benefit to her. Recognizing this mistake allows for a resolution of the stalemate between those who argue that the mere receipt of some public good from a scheme can generate (...) a duty of fairness and those who argue that only some voluntary action of consent or acceptance of the good can generate such a duty. I defend a version of the principle of fairness that holds that it is the person’s reliance on a scheme for the provision of some product or service that generates duties of fairness to share in the burdens of sustaining the scheme. And, on this version, the principle of fairness is politically significant: regardless of whether the citizen has a duty to obey the law, she will still have important political duties of fairness generated by her reliance on the various public goods provided by those society-wide cooperative schemes sustained by the sacrifices of her fellow citizens. (shrink)

Laurence BonJour observes that critics of foundationalism tend to argue against it by objecting to "relatively idiosyncratic" versions of it, a strategy which has "proven in the main to be superficial and ultimately ineffective" since answers immune to the objections emerge quickly (1985: 17). He aims to rectify this deficiency. Specifically, he argues that the very soul of foundationalism, "the concept of a basic empirical belief," is incoherent (1985: 30). This is a bold strategy from which we can learn even (...) if, in the end, as I shall argue, it fails. (shrink)

Methodological naturalism arises as a topic in metaethics in two ways. One is the issue of whether we should be methodological naturalists when doing our moral theorising, and another is whether we should take a naturalistic approach to metaethics itself. Interestingly, these can come apart, and some naturalist programs in metaethics justify a non-scientific approach to our moral theorising. This paper discusses the range of approaches that fall under the general umbrella of methodological naturalism, and how naturalists view the role (...) of science in ethics and metaethics. It discusses how naturalism interacts with the use of intuitions, using conceptual analysis, and reflective equilibrium methods. Finally, it discusses some ways using scientific investigation can make distinctive contributions to ethics and metaethics. (shrink)

Textual entailment is a relationship that obtains between fragments of text when one fragment in some sense implies the other fragment. The automation of textual entailment recognition supports a wide variety of text-based tasks, including information retrieval, information extraction, question answering, text summarization, and machine translation. Much ingenuity has been devoted to developing algorithms for identifying textual entailments, but relatively little to saying what textual entailment actually is. This article is a review of the logical and philosophical issues involved in (...) providing an adequate definition of textual entailment. We show that many natural definitions of textual entailment are refuted by counterexamples, including the most widely cited definition of Dagan et al. We then articulate and defend the following revised definition: T textually entails H = df typically, a human reading T would be justified in inferring the proposition expressed by H from the proposition expressed by T. We also show that textual entailment is context-sensitive, nontransitive, and nonmonotonic. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager has received the attention of philosophers for centuries. Most of its criticisms arise from how the wager is often framed. We present Pascal’s wager three ways: in isolation from any further apologetic arguments, as leading toward a regimen intended to produce belief, and finally embedded in a larger apology that includes evidence for Christianity. We find that none of the common objections apply when the wager is presented as part of Pascal’s larger project. Pascal’s wager is a successful (...) argument in its proper place. However, the most interesting features of our first two presentations of the wager turn out to be either irrelevant or missing from our reading: infinite utility and the relativity of evidence. The successful wager is a boring wager. Still, this study shows us how the wager might profitably be incorporated into different apologetic contexts and why it often can’t. (shrink)

Analyzing the position of two philosophers whose views are recognizably divergent, W. O. Quine and M. Dummett, we intend to support a striking point of agreement between them: the idea that our logical principles constitute our principles about what there is, and therefore, that logic is metaphysics.

Knows-knows principles in epistemology say that if you know some proposition, then you are in a position to know that you know it. This paper examines the viability of analogous principles in ethics, which I call ought-ought principles. Several epistemologists have recently offered new defences of KK principles and of other related principles, and there has recently been an increased interest in examining analogies between ethics and epistemology, and so it seems natural to examine whether defences of KK and related (...) principles carry over to OO principles. In this paper, I introduce two OO principles, and I show how some arguments in favour of KK carry over to them. Then I show how these OO principles can be used to shed light on a much-discussed case in ethics, that of Professor Procrastinate. (shrink)

My central claim in this paper is that Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is governed by the basic aim to articulate a real dilemma, and to elicit its proper recognition as such. I begin by indicating how Kierkegaard’s works are shaped in general by this aim, and what the aim involves. I then show how the dilemmaticstructure of Fear and Trembling is obscured in a recent dispute between Michelle Kosch and John Lippitt regarding the basic aims and upshot of the book. (...) Finally, I consider two critical questions: Why does Kierkegaard present his dilemmatic reasoning in the form of a “dialectical lyric”? And why does he write a book that aims only to articulate a dilemma, and not also to resolve it? (shrink)

In this chapter we explain what experimental philosophy of science is, how it relates to the philosophy of science, and STS more broadly, and what sorts of contributions is can make to ongoing research in the philosophy of science.

That the world is awash with resentment poses a genuine question for educators. Here, we will suggest that resentment can be better harnessed for good if we stop focusing on people and tribes and, instead, focus on systems: those invisible norms that often produce locked-in structures of social interaction. A “systems lens” is vast, so fixes will have to be an iterative process of reflection, and revision toward a more just system. Nonetheless, resentment toward the status quo may be an (...) important element in keeping that otherwise tedious process going, with the caveat that resentment is only productive when it is combined with reason, and that, therefore, educators, rather than privileging participant reactive attitudes, ought, instead, to promote participant reactive reasoning, as the latter can be a genuine force for both personal and interpersonal growth, while the former might very well do the reverse. (shrink)

Disagreement over what exists is so fundamental that it tends to hinder or even to block dialogue among disputants. The various controversies between believers and atheists, or realists and nominalists, are only two kinds of examples. Interested in contributing to the intelligibility of the debate on ontology, in 1939 Willard van Orman Quine began a series of works which introduces the notion of ontological commitment and proposes an allegedly objective criterion to identify the exact conditions under which a theoretical discourse (...) signals an assumption of existence. I intend to present the concept of ontological commitment and the Quinean criterion, to expose and evaluate some of the many criticisms to which the criterion has subject and to situate it in the context of Quine’s philosophy. As a product of such analyses, I hope to contribute to the discussion on the application and relevance of the notion of ontological commitment. (shrink)