Does faith that p entail belief that p? If faith that p is identical with belief that p, it does. But it isn’t. Even so, faith that p might be necessarily partly constituted by belief that p, or at least entail it. Of course, even if faith that p entails belief that p, it does not follow that faith that p is necessarily partly constituted by belief that p. Still, showing that faith that p entails belief that p would be (...) a significant step in that direction. Can we take that step? In this essay, I assess, and reject, seven reasons to think we can. Along the way, I discuss having faith in a person, being a person of faith, believing something by faith, and believing a person. (shrink)

I make a proposal about what wondering is and how it differs from other mental phenomena like curiosity. I argue that, though it's tempting to analyze wondering as a desire to know the answer to the question one wonders about, that would be wrong, since wondering is an activity rather than a state, i.e., something we do. I also argue that wondering about a question needn't even essentially involve a desire to know the answer to that question, even as a (...) necessary part of what rationalizes the wondering. Instead, on my account, to wonder about a question is to consider various possible answers as possible answers, guided by mechanisms whose function is to make the subject epistemically better off with respect to those answers, and which considering ceases at least when a person is consciously certain of the answer to their question. This allows wondering to not be objectionably metacognitive, and allows us to make sense of cases in which the motivating desire isn't to know an answer but just to wonder itself. (shrink)

I investigate when we can (rationally) have attitudes, and when we cannot. I argue that a comprehensive theory must explain three phenomena. First, being related by descriptions or names to a proposition one has strong reason to believe is true does not guarantee that one can rationally believe that proposition. Second, such descriptions, etc. do enable individuals to rationally have various non-doxastic attitudes, such as hope and admiration. And third, even for non-doxastic attitudes like that, not just any description will (...) allow it. I argue that we should think of attitude formation like we do (practical) choices among options. I motivate this view linguistically, extending "relevant alternatives'' theories of the attitudes to both belief and to the other, non-doxastic attitudes. Given a natural principle governing choice, and some important differences between doxastic and non-doxastic "choices'', we can explain these puzzling phenomena. (shrink)

Teleology has a complicated history in the biological sciences. Some have argued that Darwin’s theory has allowed biology to purge itself of teleological explanations. Others have been content to retain teleology and to treat it as metaphorical, or have sought to replace it with less problematic notions like teleonomy. And still others have tried to naturalize it in a way that distances it from the vitalism of the nineteenth century, focusing on the role that function plays in teleological explanation. No (...) consensus has seemed possible in this debate. This paper takes a different approach. It argues that teleology is a perfectly acceptable scientific notion, but that the debate took an unfortunate misstep some 2300 years ago, one that has confused things ever since. The misstep comes in the beginning of Aristotle’s Physics when a distinction is made between two types of teleological explanation. One type pertains to artifacts while the other pertains to entities in nature. For Aristotle, artifacts are guided by something external to themselves, human intentions, while natural entities are guided by an internal nature. We aim to show that there is, in fact, only one type of legitimate teleological explanation, what Aristotle would have considered a variant of an artifact model, where entities are guided by external fields. We begin with an analysis of the differences between the two types of explanation. We then examine some evidence in Aristotle’s biological works suggesting that on account of his natural-artifactual distinction, he encountered difficulties in trying to provide teleological accounts of spontaneous generation. And we show that it is possible to resolve these difficulties with a more robust version of an artifact model of teleology, in other words, with an externalist teleology. This is McShea’s model, in which goal-directed entities are guided by a nested series of upper-level fields. To explain teleological behavior, this account invokes only external physical forces rather than mysterious internal natures. We then consider how field theory differs from other efforts to naturalize teleology in biology. And finally, we show how the account enables us to grapple with certain difficult cases – genes and intentions – where, even in biology today, the temptation to posit internal natures remains strong. (shrink)

I argue that we can reason not only to new beliefs but to basically any change in attitude we can think of, including the abandonment of belief (contra John Broome), the acquisition of non-belief attitudes like relief and admiration, and the elimination of the same. To argue for this position, which I call generalism, I defend a sufficient condition on reasoning, roughly that we can reason to any change in attitude that is expressed by the conclusion of an argument we (...) can be convinced by. I then produce examples of such arguments, and argue that they are indeed arguments. To produce such examples of the elimination of non-doxastic attitudes, I develop the idea of a state of attitudinal constraint acceptance, and show how it is useful for solving this problem, and useful in other parts of philosophy as well. (shrink)

We might be tempted to think that, necessarily, if God unsurpassably loves such created persons as there may be, then for any capable created person S and time t, God is at t open to being in a positively meaningful and reciprocal conscious relationship with S at t, where one is open to relationship with another only if one never does anything (by commission or omission) that would have the result that the other was prevented from being able, just by (...) trying, to participate in that relationship. I argue that we should resist the temptation. (shrink)

I develop and argue for a kind of externalism about certain kinds of non-doxastic attitudes that I call policy externalism. Policy externalism about a given type of attitude is the view that all the reasonable policies for having attitudes of that type will not involve the agent's beliefs that some relevant conditions obtain. My defense primarily involves attitudes like hatred, regret, and admiration, and has two parts: a direct deductive argument and an indirect linguistic argument, an inference to the best (...) explanation of some strange ways we use certain conditionals. The main thought throughout is that attitudes we reason with, like belief, are very different from attitudes we don't reason with, in a way that constrains the former but not the latter. Finally, I investigate some consequences of policy externalism, including that it secures the possibility of genuine conditional apologies. (shrink)

This paper defends Priorianism, a theory in the philosophy of time which combines three theses: first, that there is a metaphysical distinction between the present time and non-present times; second, that there are temporary propositions, that is, propositions that change in truth-value simpliciter over time; and third, that there is change over time only if there are temporary propositions. Priorianism is accepted by many Presentists, Growing Block Theorists, and Moving Spotlight Theorists. However, it is difficult to defend the view without (...) appealing to premises that those who reject the view find controversial. My aim in this paper is to defend Priorianism in a way that largely avoids appealing to such premises. I do three things: first (Section 1), I describe the component theses of Priorianism and the relations between them. Next (Section 2), I show how Priorians can respond to the argument that the B-theory implies that there are temporary propositions, and therefore satisfies the Priorian condition for there being change over time. Finally (Section 3), I defend the Priorian thesis that there is change over time only if there are temporary propositions against an alternative principle of change defended by Ross Cameron (The Moving Spotlight, 2015). (shrink)

What is commonly referred to as the Adoption Problem is a challenge to the idea that the principles of logic can be rationally revised. The argument is based on a reconstruction of unpublished work by Saul Kripke. As the reconstruction has it, Kripke extends the scope of Willard van Orman Quine's regress argument against conventionalism to the possibility of adopting new logical principles. In this paper we want to discuss the scope of this challenge. Are all revisions of logic subject (...) to the Adoption Problem? If not, are there significant cases of logical revision that are subject to the Adoption Problem? We will argue that both questions should be answered negatively. (shrink)

I consider difficult data involving the interaction of attitudes and conditionals, specifically non-doxastic attitude expressions like 'regret'. I first show that felicitous attitude conditionals in "ignorance contexts", where the relevant person doesn't know the antecedent is true, give rise to a number of difficult problems given widely held assumptions in semantics. I then argue that, even so, we should expect these conditionals to be true and reasonable to utter in ignorance contexts, given certain other kinds of attitude construction that tend (...) to involve free relatives like `whatever'. I then use that observation to explain many of the more puzzling aspects of these conditionals, and to show that we should treat felicitous doxastic attitude conditionals differently from felicitous non-doxastic ones. I leave explaining felicitous doxastic attitude conditionals for future work, but offer constraints on a satisfying explanation of them. (shrink)

Wie ist es wohl, eine Fledermaus zu sein? Wäre ein rein physikalisches Duplikat von mir nur ein empfindungsloser Zombie? Muss man sich seinem Schicksal ergeben, wenn man sich unfreiwillig als lebensnotwendige Blutwaschanlage eines weltberühmten Violinisten wieder findet? Kann man sich wünschen, der König von China zu sein? Bin ich vielleicht nur ein Gehirn in einem Tank mit Nährflüssigkeit, das die Welt von einer Computersimulation vorgegaukelt bekommt? Worauf beziehen sich die Menschen auf der Zwillingserde mit ihrem Wort 'Wasser', wenn es bei (...) ihnen gar kein H2O gibt? -/- Diese und weitere seltsame Fragen sind das tägliche Brot vieler professioneller Philosophen. Die abstrusen Umstände, die dabei geschildert werden, nennt man "Gedankenexperimente". -/- Was soll die Erörterung dieser Szenarien, die sich so weit von unserem alltäglichen Leben, z.T. außerhalb der Grenzen unserer Wirklichkeit abspielen? Welche Rolle spielen diese "Gedankenexperimente" in der philosophischen Methodologie? Ist diese Rolle überhaupt berechtigt? -/- Das vorliegende Buch gibt Antworten auf diese Fragen. Es stellt sich heraus, dass diese seltsamen Gedankenexperimente nicht nur berechtigte, sondern überaus wichtige Instrumente philosophischen Forschens darstellen. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 24 Accounts of non-naturalist moral perception have been advertised as an empiricist-friendly epistemological alternative to moral rationalism. I argue that these accounts of moral perception conceal a core commitment of rationalism—to substantive a priori justification—and embody its most objectionable feature—namely, “mysteriousness.” Thus, accounts of non-naturalist moral perception do not amount to an interesting alternative to moral rationalism.

We should not be creating conscious, humanoid agents but an entirely new sort of entity, rather like oracles, with no conscience, no fear of death, no distracting loves and hates.

We argue that supererogation cannot be understood just in terms of reasons for action. In addition to reasons, a theory of supererogation must include prerogatives, which can make an action permissible without counting in favor of doing it.

Some Presentists—according to whom everything is present—identify instants of time with propositions of a certain kind. However, the view that times are propositions seems to be at odds with Presentism: if there are times then there are past times, and therefore things that are past; but how could there be things that are past if everything is present? In this paper, we describe the Presentist view that times are propositions ; we set out the argument that Presentism is incompatible with (...) the view that times are propositions ; and then we describe three possible responses to that argument on behalf of Presentists who identify times with propositions. We argue that each of these responses comes with significant costs. Finally, we describe a fourth possible response—according to which times are irreducibly higher-order entities—which appears to avoid the costs of the other three. We also describe and respond to two objections to the higher-order strategy. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept a response constraint on normative reasons: that p is a reason for you to φ only if you are able to φ for the reason that p. This constraint offers a natural way to cash out the familiar and intuitive thought that reasons must be able to guide us, and has been put to work as a premise in a range of influential arguments in ethics and epistemology. However, the constraint requires interpretation and faces putative counter-examples due (...) to Julia Markovits, Mark Schroeder, and others. This paper develops and motivates an interpretation of the response constraint that avoids the putative counter-examples. (shrink)

Say that the Moving Spotlight Theory (MST) combines the following three theses: A-THEORY : There is an absolute distinction between present and non-present time.

According to John Mackie, moral talk is representational but its metaphysical presuppositions are wildly implausible. This is the basis of Mackie's now famous error theory: that moral judgments are cognitively meaningful but systematically false. Of course, Mackie went on to recommend various substantive moral judgments, and, in the light of his error theory, that has seemed odd to a lot of folk. Richard Joyce has argued that Mackie's approach can be vindicated by a fictionalist account of moral discourse. And Mark (...) Kalderon has argued that moral fictionalism is attractive quite independently of Mackie's error-theory. Kalderon argues that the Frege-Geach problem shows that we need moral propositions, but that a fictionalist can and should embrace propositional content together with a non-cognitivist account of acceptance of a moral proposition. Indeed, it is clear that any fictionalist is going to have to postulate more than one kind of acceptance attitude. We argue that this doubleapproach to acceptance generates a new problem -a descendent of Frege-Geach -which we call the acceptance-transfer problem. Although we develop the problem in the context of Kalderon's version of non-cognitivist fictionalism, we show that it is not the noncognitivist aspect of Kalderon's account that generates the problem. A closely related problem surfaces for the more typical variants of fictionalism according to which accepting a moral proposition is believing some closely related non-moral proposition. Fictionalists of both stripes thus have an attitude problem. (shrink)

We raise various puzzles about the relationship between God and the meaning of life. These difficulties suggest that, even if we assume that God exists, and even if God’s existence would entail that our lives have meaning, God is not and could not be the source of the meaning of life. We conclude by discussing implications of our arguments: these claims can be used in a novel argument for atheism; these claims undermine an extant argument for God’s existence; and they (...) suggest that atheism is consistent with our lives having meaning. (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)

It has been suggested that intuitions supporting the nonvacuity of counterpossibles can be explained by distinguishing an epistemic and a metaphysical reading of counterfactuals. Such an explanation must answer why we tend to neglect the distinction of the two readings. By way of an answer, I offer a generalized pattern for explaining nonvacuity intuitions by a stand-and-fall relationship to certain indicative conditionals. Then, I present reasons for doubting the proposal: nonvacuists can use the epistemic reading to turn the table against (...) vacuists, telling apart significant from spurious intuitions. Moreover, our intuitions tend to survive even if we clear-headedly intend a metaphysical reading. -/- . (shrink)

Sobel sequences have had a huge impact on the discussion of counterfactuals. They can be composed of conditionals and mere descriptions. What is especially puzzling about them is that they are often felicitously uttered when their reversal is not. Up to now, there is no unified explanation. I examine two strategies. We might begin with conditionals and proceed to descriptions. Or we might begin with descriptions and proceed to conditionals. I argue for the latter variant and outline a universal theory (...) of Sobel sequences in terms of presuppositional anaphora. One relevant result is that the phenomenon neither counts against nor in favour of the simplified standard account of counterfactuals à la Stalnaker-Lewis. (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)

In August of 2000, Firestone executives initiated the second largest tire recall in U.S. history. Many of the recalled tires had been installed as original factory equipment on the popular Ford Explorer SUVs. At the time of the recall, the tires and vehicles had been linked to numerous accidents and deaths, most of which occurred when tire blowouts resulted in vehicle rollovers. While Firestones role in this case has been widely acknowledged, Ford executives have managed to deflect much of the (...) attention away from themselves, mainly by claiming that the Firestone tires were not its product, and therefore not its responsibility. In this paper, we examine the extent to which Ford can be held morally responsible for the incidents at issue. In so doing, we develop an approach for determining when an item is a product in its own right, as opposed to a component of another product. We argue that such an analysis not only provides a better understanding of this case, but also more properly accounts for the extent to which evolutions in technology and business relationships can affect issues of moral responsibility in business contexts. (shrink)

Recent advances in the Super Linguistics of pictures have laid the Super Semantic foundation for modelling the phenomena of narrative sequencing and co-reference in pictorial and mixed linguistic-pictorial discourses. We take up the question of how one arrives at the pragmatic interpretations of such discourses. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (i) the discourse composition problem: how to represent the joint meaning of a multi-picture discourse, (ii) observed differences in narrative sequencing in prima facie equivalent linguistic vs pictorial discourses, (...) and (iii) the phenomenon of co-referencing across pictures. We extend Segmented Discourse Representation Theory to spell out a formal Super Pragmatics that applies to linguistic, pictorial and mixed discourses, while respecting the particular ‘genius’ of either medium and computing their distinctive pragmatic interpretations. (shrink)

Recently, Piccinini and Craver have stated three theses concerning the relations between functional analysis and mechanistic explanation in cognitive sciences: No Distinctness: functional analysis and mechanistic explanation are explanations of the same kind; Integration: functional analysis is a kind of mechanistic explanation; and Subordination: functional analyses are unsatisfactory sketches of mechanisms. In this paper, I argue, first, that functional analysis and mechanistic explanations are sub-kinds of explanation by scientific (idealized) models. From that point of view, we must take into account (...) the tradeoff between the representational/explanatory goals of generality and precision that govern the practice of model-building. In some modeling scenarios, it is rational to maximize explanatory generality at the expense of mechanistic precision. This tradeoff allows me to put forward a problem for the mechanist position. If mechanistic modeling endorses generality as a valuable goal, then Subordination should be rejected. If mechanists reject generality as a goal, then Integration is false. I suggest that mechanists should accept that functional analysis can offer acceptable explanations of cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

We argue that definite noun phrases give rise to uniqueness inferences characterized by a pattern we call definiteness projection. Definiteness projection says that the uniqueness inference of a definite projects out unless there is an indefinite antecedent in a position that filters presuppositions. We argue that definiteness projection poses a serious puzzle for e-type theories of (in)definites; on such theories, indefinites should filter existence presuppositions but not uniqueness presuppositions. We argue that definiteness projection also poses challenges for dynamic approaches, which (...) have trouble generating uniqueness inferences and predicting some filtering behavior, though unlike the challenge for e-type theories, these challenges have mostly been noted in the literature, albeit in a piecemeal way. Our central aim, however, is not to argue for or against a particular view, but rather to formulate and motivate a generalization about definiteness which any adequate theory must account for. (shrink)

Just War Theory (JWT) replaced an older "warrior code," an approach to war that remains poorly understood and dismissively treated in the philosophical literature. This paper builds on recent work on honor to address these deficiencies. By providing a clear, systematic exposition of "Honor War Theory" (HWT), we can make sense of paradigm instances of warrior psychology and behavior, and understand the warrior code as the martial expression of a broader honor-based ethos that conceives of obligation in terms of fair (...) competition for prestige. Far from being a romantic and outmoded approach to war, HWT accounts for current conflicts and predicts moral intuitions that JWT either rejects or cannot comfortably accommodate. So although it is not recommended as a replacement for JWT, there is good reason think that a fully mature, realistic, and yet properly normative theory of war ethics will incorporate a variety of insights from HWT. (shrink)

What is consciousness and why is it so philosophically and scientifically puzzling? For many years philosophers approached this question assuming a standard physicalist framework on which consciousness can be explained by contemporary physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. This book is a debate between two philosophers who are united in their rejection of this kind of "standard" physicalism - but who differ sharply in what lesson to draw from this. Amy Kind defends dualism 2.0, a thoroughly modern version of dualism (...) (the theory that there are two fundamentally different kinds of things in the world: those that are physical and those that are mental) decoupled from any religious or non-scientific connotations. Daniel Stoljar defends non-standard physicalism, a kind of physicalism different from both the standard version and dualism 2.0. The book presents a cutting-edge assessment of the philosophy of consciousness and provides a glimpse at what the future study of this area might bring. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the framework for the compositional relations of properties in the sciences, or "realization relations", offered by Ken Aizawa and Carl Gillett (A&G) in a series of papers, and in particular on the analysis of "multiple realizations" they build upon it. I argue that A&G's analysis of multiple realization requires an account of levels and I try to show, then, that the A&G framework is not successful under any of the extant accounts of levels. There is consequently (...) a real concern tha thte A&G framework for realization may not be viable. (shrink)

One of the most basic methods of philosophy is, and has always been, the consideration of counterfactual cases and imaginary scenarios. One purpose of doing so obviously is to test our theories against such counterfactual cases. Although this method is widespread, it is far from being commonly accepted. Especially during the last two decades it has been confronted with criticism ranging from complete dismissal to denying only its critical powers to a cautious defense of the use of thought experiments as (...) counterexamples. One of the strongest criticisms of the method of thought experimentation is "modal skepticism" as explicated and defended by Peter van Inwagen. Van Inwagen argues that the philosopher's notion of logical possibility is confused and that its epistemology is dubious. I argue that van Inwagen's skepticism is unwarranted. There is a sufficiently clear notion of logical possibility and a sufficiently straightforward way of getting to know what is logically possible. In the remainder of the paper I show how that connects with the methodology of thought experimentation in philosophy. (shrink)

Stump, Aquinas, and Dawkins & Company seem to think that objectual faith--"faith in"--is identical with propositional belief. I argue that they are wrong. More plausibly, objectual faith requires belief of the relevant proposition(s). There are other forms of faith: propositional faith, allegiant faith, and affective or global faith. We might conjecture that each of these forms of faith likewise require belief of the relevant propositions. More weakly, we might conjecture that at least one of them does. This latter thesis I (...) call the Stump-Aquinas-Dawkins Thesis (SAD). In this essay, I develop one reason against SAD and critique seven reasons for it. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption that B-theorists (according to whom there is nothing metaphysically special about the present moment in virtue of which it is present) should interpret the standard tense operators (‘it was the case that’, ‘it will be the case that’) as implicit quantifier-restrictors – so that, for example, an utterance at instant t of the sentence ‘It was the case that there are dinosaurs’ is true just in case there are dinosaurs located at some instant t* earlier (...) than t. However, it is easy to show that this interpretation of the tense operators creates serious problems for B-theorists when combined with certain other relatively uncontroversial B-theoretic assumptions. In this paper, I argue that the best way for B-theorists to respond to these problems is to treat the standard tense operators as redundant when the sentences in their scope are qualitative (i.e. not about any particular individuals). (shrink)

In some circles, faith is said to be one of three theological virtues, along with hope and agape. But not everyone thinks faith is a virtue, theological or otherwise. Indeed, depending on how we understand it, faith may well conflict with the virtues. In this chapter we will focus on the virtue of humility. Does faith conflict with humility, or are they in concord? In what follows, we will do five things. First, we will sketch a theory of the virtue (...) of humility. Second, we will summarize a common view of faith, arguably held by Thomas Aquinas among others, and we will argue that Thomistic faith is not an intellectual virtue and that it conflicts with humility in the domain of inquiry. Third, we will plump for an older view of faith, one that predates Aquinas by at least 1500 years, Markan faith. Fourth, we will argue that Markan faith is an intellectual virtue and it is in concord with humility in the domain of inquiry. Fifth, we will argue that Markan faith, unlike Thomistic faith, is a personal virtue and that it is in concord with humility in the domain of personal relationships, both human-human and human-divine. (shrink)

To say that a philosophical dispute is ‘merely verbal’ seems to be an important diagnosis. If that diagnosis is correct for a particular dispute, then the right thing to do would be to declare that dispute to be over. The topic of what the disputing parties were fighting over was just a pseudo-problem (thus not really a problem), or at least – if there is a sense in which also merely verbal disputes indicate some problem, for example, insufficient clarity of (...) terminology – this problem is not substantial, or not as substantial as the disputing parties believed their problem initially to be. In this paper I will try to clarify what it means if we diagnose that two arguing parties are having a merely verbal dispute. (shrink)

I formulate and tentatively defend the view that we cannot be rationally required to have one type of doxastic attitude (e.g., beliefs, credences, imprecise credences, etc.) because we have another type; in other words, we can only be required to have, say, given credences because we have some other credences already. I explore an argument that appeals to the idea that there is no good reasoning from one type to the other type. I consider some important possible responses, and conclude (...) by sketching a different argument for the same conclusion, appealing to the nature of inquiry and belief-formation. (shrink)

En este trabajo sostengo que la concepción mecanicista no captura la relevancia explicativa de la ley de polarización dinámica de Cajal. La relevancia explicativa de la ley se fundamenta en su rol como principio de diseño neuronal. Como tal, la ley nos brinda acceso epistémico a intervenciones ideales, conceptualmente posibles, sobre la localización de los diversos componentes de los centros nerviosos, y nos permiten evaluar el impacto de esas intervenciones sobre las condiciones de viabilidad del organismo.

Hobbs (2010) introduced ‘clause-internal coherence’ (CIC) to describe inferences in, e.g., ‘A jogger was hit by a car,’ where the jogging is understood to have led to the car-hitting. Cohen & Kehler (2021) argue that well-known pragmatic tools cannot account for CIC, motivating an enrichment account familiar from discourse coherence research. An outstanding question is how to compositionally derive CIC from coherence relations. This paper takes strides in answering this question. It first provides experimental support for the existence of CIC (...) via offline evidence that attributive (non-)deverbal adjectives can trigger the same causal inferences within clauses that their predicative counterparts can trigger across clauses, albeit more weakly. To explain the experimental results, we use tools in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), which allows us to show that causal inferences can be derived in various ways, depending on whether deverbal adjectives are used attributively or predicatively. If the former, they are presupposition triggers and the coherence relations Elaboration/Continuation compete with Background; if the latter, Explanation/Result compete with Background. These different competitions -- cashed out in terms of interaction between default axioms -- correlate with the difference in the relative salience of the causal inferences. (shrink)

Against modal rationalism, Manolo Martínez argues that elementary bodily mechanisms allow cognizers to know possibility. He presents an exemplary behavioral mechanism adapted to maximizing expected outcome in a random game. The bodily mechanism purportedly tracks probabilities and related possibilities. However, it is doubtful that cognizers like us can know metaphysical modalities purely by virtue of bodily mechanisms without using rational capacities. Firstly, Martínez’s mechanism is limited. But knowledge of probabilities arguably has to cover a variety of probabilistic outcomes. One may (...) need an ability to calculate probabilities. Bodily mechanisms can realize such an ability, but this will presumably amount to instantiating rational capacities. Secondly, the purported connection between the items tracked by the bodily mechanism and genuine metaphysical possibilities is tenuous. There are points at which it may fail. Further, we would need to know by rational metaphysical considerations that the connection holds in order to bodily know possibilities. (shrink)

The aim of this paper lies in characterizing the explanations and models used in the field of evolutionary developmental biology throughout its history. While manipulative experiments in controlled conditions have been useful to set the bases of the discipline and are still routinely performed, this approach supposes a tension between the reliability and the representativity of the conclusions. Given the recent changes in the understanding of evolutionary phenomena, different authors currently emphasize the need of avoiding excessive simplifications in experimental approaches, (...) incorporating the complexity of the analyzed systems as a relevant trait in the study of biological diversity. On the other hand, the fragile and contingent nature of evolutionary processes and the impossibility of intervening some of these phenomena underscore the importance of non-manipulative models that allow the elucidation of how-possibly mechanisms. We argue that a pluralism characterized by the integration of different kinds of explanations, models and metaphors used in evo-devo allows to exploit their respective advantages, favours interdisciplinarity and can contribute to form a representative description of evolutionary processes without relinquishing the local and detailed study of actual mechanisms. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe express and communicate many attitudes beyond belief, such as amusement, joy, admiration, hatred, and desire. I consider whether there are any general norms that would cover all of these cases. The most obvious generalisation of the most popular norms for assertion, fittingness-based theories, fail in part because it is sometimes an intrinsic good to have certain kinds of mental states. I develop an alternative, rightness-based, approach, according to which it is appropriate to communicate a mental state to an interlocutor (...) when it is right to make the interlocutor have that mental state because of the speech act. This view arises naturally from conversational participants’ common interests, and it helps to make sense of linguistic phenomena like expressives. (shrink)

The model-theoretic argument known as Putnam´s paradox threatens our notion of truth with triviality: Almost any world can satisfy almost any theory. Formal argument and intuition are at odds. David Lewis devised a solution according to which the very stucture of the world fixes how it is to be divided into elite classes which determine the reference of any true theory. Three claims are defended: Firstly, Lewis´ proposal must be completed by an account of successful referential intentions. Secondly, contrary to (...) Catherine Elgin´s criticism of Lewis, natural properties corresponding to elite classes may play a role in sound scientific inquiry. Thirdly, despite Bas van Fraassen´s objection that the sceptic cannot consistently maintain doubts about reference, there is a promising sceptical strategy of exploiting Putnam´s results which is answered by Lewis´ account. (shrink)

I critically assess Stephen Yablo’s claim that cassinis are ovals is an a posteriori conceptual necessity. One does not know it simply by mastering the relevant concepts but by substantial empirical scrutiny. Yablo represents narrow content by would have turned out -conditionals. An epistemic reading of such conditionals does not bear Yablo’s claim. Two metaphysically laden readings are considered. In one reading, Yablo’s conditionals test under what circumstances concepts remain the same while their extensions diverge. As an alternative, I develop (...) a more literal metaphysical interpretation: Yablo’s conditionals draw on scenarios which are qualitatively identical to some original situation. None of these interpretations sustains Yablo’s core thesis. (shrink)