This book presents an analysis of the correlation between the mind and the body, a complex topic of study and discussion by scientists and philosophers. Drawing largely on neuroscience and philosophy, the author utilizes the scientific method and incorporates lessons learned from a vast array of sources. Based on the most recent cutting-edge scientific discoveries on the Mind-Body problem, Tomasi presents a full examination of multiple fields related to neuroscience. The volume offers a scientist-based and student-friendly journey into medicine, (...) psychology, artificial intelligence, embodied cognition, and social, ecological and anthropological models of perception, to discover our truest self. -/- Introduction The Exact Science of the Hard Matter Between Psyche and Mind Medicine on, of and off the Brain Brain, Culture, Society Perception and Cognition Conclusion: Philosophy as Basic Approach Toward Neuroscience . (shrink)

David Tomasi presents new, groundbreaking research on the science and application of Mind-Body Medicine strategies to improve clinical outcomes in inpatient psychiatry settings. Much more than a list of therapeutic recommendations, this book is a thorough description of how Mind-Body Medicine can be successfully applied, from a therapeutic as well as from an organizational, cost-effective analysis viewpoint, to the full spectrum of psychiatric treatments. Furthermore, this study examines the role of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary treatment teams, with a special (...) focus on the profession and the role of psychotherapists and group therapists, thereby providing solid scientific evidence of the benefits of patient-provider therapeutic alliances. In this sense, this book serves as a guide for professionals and institutions both in the private and the public sphere, to learn effective treatment and management strategies. About the Author Psychotherapist, Researcher, and Philosopher Dr. David Låg Tomasi is the author of Medical Philosophy (ibidem, 2016) and the co-author of Positive Patient Response to a Structured Exercise Program Delivered in Inpatient Psychiatry (Global Advances in Health and Medicine, 2019), the most-read research item from the University of Vermont (Researchgate, 2019). A member of several national and international Academies of Sciences, Dr. Tomasi works in the Inpatient Psychiatry Unit at the UVM Medical Center, and teaches at the University of Vermont and the Community College of Vermont. ---- Ibidem / Columbia University Press. (shrink)

Authors: Joseph M. Eble, John A. Di Camillo, Peter J. Colosi. --- NEWS RELEASE For Immediate Release February 27, 2024 Contact: Joseph M. Eble, MD Corresponding author 919-667-5206 -/- The statement, Catholics United on Brain Death and Organ Donation: A Call to Action (HTML), was published on February 27, 2024. It was prepared by Joseph Eble, a physician and President of the Tulsa Guild of the Catholic Medical Association; John Di Camillo, an ethicist of The National Catholic Bioethics Center; and (...) Peter Colosi, a philosophy professor at Salve Regina University. -/- Catholic United explains that the criteria for brain death establish only partial loss of brain function. This is now abundantly clear based on scientific studies, a recent effort to lower the legal standard for death, and updated brain death guidelines issued in October 2023. -/- Catholics United bridges a divide among faithful Catholics about whether the concept of brain death aligns with Church teaching. Some Catholics hold that brain death represents true death when there is complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity, often called whole brain death. Others hold that brain death does not represent true death. Since the existing criteria establish only partial loss of brain function, all the endorsers—whether they accept or reject whole brain death as true death—agree that “the current brain death criteria in widespread use do not provide moral (prudential) certainty of death.” -/- Catholics United calls on health care professionals and institutions to cease organ harvesting that relies on the inadequate criteria, noting that 70% of all donors are declared dead using brain death criteria. “Given the lack of moral certainty of death whenever the current brain death criteria are used,” the statement affirms, “a clear majority of vital organ donors can be presumed alive at the time of organ harvesting.” Since the Catholic Church forbids removing vital organs when this would kill the patient, “it is therefore wrong to remove organs from patients declared dead using these inadequate criteria.” . (shrink)

Questa conferenza, in diretta dagli Stati Uniti (11/11), rappresenta la versione italiana della ricerca, precedentemente pubblicata in inglese dall'Accademia Tiberina, nel 2022.

Tomasi, D. 2024. Psychotherapy: Essence, Experience, and Examination. Foreword to Adler, D. 2024. What we really need – Experiences of a psychoanalyst. New York, NY: Ibidem Verlag / Columbia University Press, Original: Adler, D. 2023. Was wir wirklich brauchen: Erfahrungen eines Psychoanalytikers. Stuttgart, D: Schattauer / Klett-Cotta Verlag -/- Psychotherapy: Essence, Experience, and Examination Foreword to Dieter Adler: What we Truly Need – Experiences of a Psychoanalyst. -/- In any serious, scientific, and ethically justified healthcare profession, the focus should (...) be always on the overall health, treatment, improvement, and amelioration of the patient. What clinical and professional background should therefore a mental health professional have? In his book, Adler does not want to simply offer a quick guide to self-help. In fact, he is clear about the fact that this is not the purpose of the book: “Maybe I’ll write one sometime: How you can reliably become independent of self-help books.” In fact, this book is a reflection on a 30-year-long professional career in which the author has learned to ask questions, to listen attentively, and to help shed light on some of the most complex and hidden aspects of what makes us human. To be sure, this does not mean that this book does not present a practical approach to well-being, quite the contrary. The author lists a series of areas the patient can focus on, in order to achieve a higher state of balance, healing, and happiness. Amongst these we find socialization, upbringing, and community, making friends, understanding and working on one’s emotions and the emotions of others, staying physically and mentally active, finding a sense of security and confidence, maintaining a sense of curiosity, finding a work-life balance and rediscovering peace and calmness, having goals, purposes, and meaning in life, and of course, understanding those negative, self-sabotaging mechanisms and processes which hinder such developments. (shrink)

When approaching the nature and etiology of psychophysical problems in a given population, it is important to understand the causal relations, the mechanisms, and the processes which underlie given problems, issues, and disorders. This examination attempts to investigate the connection between neural pathophysiology and proprioceptive ontology of olfactory and visual cortical circuitry on the basis of the current scientific evidence indicated by the results of studies in which subjects underwent a series of therapeutic modalities focused on the improvement of overall (...) wellbeing with the utilization of devices and technologies to stimulate multiple motor vs. somatosensory processes. More specifically, the studies at the centers of this analysis incorporated physical movement and virtual reality interactions, with the supplement of olfactory stimulation. In this examination, such research is also investigated from a theoretical standpoint, with the ultimate goal to better determine which interventions are justified under the premise of a mutual support between empirical values (through laboratory examination) and logical deduction (via philosophical investigation). (shrink)

Preface: The following article is an adaptation of an open letter sent by the au- thor to the local U.S. Elementary School Administration on October 14, 2022, in response to the introduction of Transgender Literature in grades 2 and above (starting age 7) in the local US elementary school attended by the author’s children. More specifically, children have been introduced to three books: I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings; Jacob’s New Dress, by Ian Hoffman and Sarah Hoffman; (...) and Born Ready. The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, by Jodie Patterson. As part of this, children have been asked to join discussion in class to talk about the contents of each book and other related literature. Of note, several meetings with the administration and the school board have followed, but no changes have been made to the administration and content of the literature presented to children, with the exception of parents’ voluntary exclusion, per direct request, of their children from class time in which the books above and related new literature will be discussed in the future. Furthermore, these topics have also been discussed as part of a recent Lecture the author presented at the Academy of Sciences of Rome with the title “Science or Ideology?” in November 2022. (shrink)

An examination of Sex and Gender under the most recent scientific discoveries in the areas of neuroscience, endocrinology, biology, psychology, medicine, and linguistics. Presented as part of the Conference "Gender: Ideology or Science?" at the "Accademia Tiberina," Rome, Italy, November 25, 2022.

Understanding the role of (human) Free Will is a necessary premise and substantial process for the appropriate application of any healing art, starting with psychotherapeutic approached focused on the amelioration and improvement of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral elements in the suffering person, and more generally in the path toward healing and truth every person embarks on. This article examines the three interconnected areas of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to explore what the existence and activation of Free Will represents in the (...) life of human beings, from its clinical-medical-therapeutic outcomes to its implications to identity, community, and society. (shrink)

This brief essay examines the basic parameters of the neuroscientific and philosophical understanding at the basis of emotional and cognitive processes in the broader context of Embodied cognition. More in detail, the discussion follows a series of areas of investigation, structured via responses to basic questions, namely: A) Impact of mind-body dualism in everyday life, B) Possible Preferred Perspective (PPP) under the lenses of Emotional Intelligence, C) Simulation-Theory vs. Theory-Theory D) Neuropsychological paired-deficits vs. Physiological Investigations E) Influence of social distancing (...) on the ability to recognize and understand emotions F) Conclusion. (shrink)

Human decision-making process are the result, as in many other psychological processes, of theinteraction of nature and nurture. A solid understanding of the neuroscientific underpinning ofsuch processes, in combination of a well-grounded anthropology of the human person, help shedlight on the role, the phenomenology and the outcomes of such decisions in developmentalconsiderations and everyday life behavior .

Olfactory Virtual Reality (OVR) for Wellbeing and Reduction of Stress, Anxiety and Pain - Journal of Medical Research and Health Sciences.

(...) However, whether we chose a weak or strong approximation, the set would not make any sense at all, if (once more) this choice would not be justified in either temporal or spatial sense or given the context of possible applicability of the set in different circumstances. This would obviously represent a dualism in itself as we would (for instance) posit and apply a full identity-equality-equivalence of x and y when applying Newtonian physics to certain observations we make (it would (...) be the case of neural correlates), and we would posit and apply a non - identity-equality-equivalence of x and y when applying Quantum mechanics to other observations. Following this dualism in and of theories, the same sate would need to be slightly modified: U2:(x~y)∪(x≈y); U3:(x~y)∩(x≈y); U4a:(x~y)⊆(x≈y) vs. U4b:(x~y)⊇(x≈y). (shrink)

Background: The complexity of diagnostic presentations of an inpatient psychiatry population requires an integrative approach to health and well-being. In this sense, the primary need of this research aims at developing clinical strategies and healthier coping skills for anger, anxiety, and depression; promoting self-esteem, healthier sleep, and anxiety reduction; as well as enhancing mood and emotional–behavioral regulation via exercise and nutrition education. Objectives: The primary objective is to promote exercise, fitness, and physical health in inpatient psychiatry patients. The secondary objective (...) includes therapeutic management of depressive symptoms and patient-centered approach to mania, angry outbursts, and generalized disruptive behavior. The tertiary objective is promoting research in the psychophysiological effectors of exercise and nutrition education in combination with psychotherapy. Method: Monitoring self-reported changes in mood and general well-being via administration of surveys and questionnaires pre- and postexercise sessions. Results: The research yielded positive outcomes in all areas investigated, suggesting the positive effects of exercise and mind–body strategies in the context of psychotherapy in inpatient psychiatry. Conclusion: Physical exercise may be a helpful way to reduce mental health disorders in the context of inpatient psychiatry by targeting anxiety, depression, anger, psychomotor agitation, and muscle tension and addressing stressors and triggers and to develop a more balanced and integrated sense of self. (shrink)

Background: As part of a consistent effort to examine and provide integrative medical approaches to the therapeutic offering for psychophysical health, this study investigates the utilization of Olfactory Virtual Reality (OVR) in an inpatient psychiatry unit, more specifically in the Shepardson 3 Inpatient Psychiatry Unit at the University of Vermont Medical Center, in Burlington, VT, USA. Objectives: The purpose of this protocol is to explore the therapeutic value of olfactory virtual reality (OVR) in the above described population, and to collect (...) statistically significant data to determine the feasibility of potential future OVR studies. Method: Direct subject observation and monitoring in the context of Olfactory Virtual Reality (OVR) sessions and Qualitative data collection via the administration of subject surveys, subdivided in: a) Pre-OVR experience, b) Immediate post-OVR experience, and c) 1-to-3-hour post-OVR experience questionnaires. Results: The research yielded positive outcomes in all areas investigated, despite challenges related to the utilization of the device itself, issues in individual olfactory threshold, and COVID-19 restrictions and limitations. Conclusion: The outcome of this study indicates that the utilization of olfactory virtual reality technologies is a safe and effective integrative approach to target several aspects of psychological and physical health such as anxiety, stress, and pain, in combination with the psychotherapeutic and pharmacological standards of care in inpatient psychiatry. (shrink)

A precise overview of pediatric emergencies would require taxological considerations around the differences between strictly neurological factors, as modulated both via neuroanatomical differentiation in the context of normal vs. abnormal biological development, and underlying neurofunctional mechanisms, and the connection with such processes with the neuromodulated activation of digestive processes. Furthermore, an important distinction between nephrological considerations and urological considerations is necessary, more specifically, by focusing on the treatment of diseases affecting the kidneys and their ability to function in the first (...) case, and on the treatment of diseases affecting the urinary tract in the latter. In this paper, we will present a general overview of the most important aspects of each category, starting with the brief description of neurological emergencies as indicating a general (system-based vs. localized) deterioration of mental capacity, with added possible partial or full loss of cognitive capacities and/or impaired perceptual modalities and consciousness, with or without response to stimuli. (shrink)

Mental health challenges can be described via the application of multiple lenses, from clinical-medical perspectives, to social and community-based, to further understandings in the context of public health. While these challenges can represent multiple issues to the scientific community at-large, especially because of the translational issues attached to the application of research and practice to the sphere of community services, it is useful to understand that the triad ethics, evidence, and experience can be instrumental in navigating the complexity of the (...) issue-at-hand. Furthermore, the work of researchers and practitioners is rooted in a solid understanding of the specific needs of psychiatric patients, particularly from the perspective of possible misunderstandings, ostracization, and stigmatization of psychiatric issues and related presentation, affect, and behaviours. Years of research have indicated how a proper interaction between resources at the level of scientific research and the community is a fundamental cornerstone for a practice rooted in both science and true care for individuals affected by mental health disorders. In this presentation we will discuss the case of the Centro Salute Mentale (Mental Health Centre, CSM) of Verona. (shrink)

John Tomasi's new book, Free Market Fairness, has been well-received as "one of the very best philosophical treatments of libertarian thought, ever" and as a "long and friendly conversation between Friedrich Hayek and John Rawls—a conversation which, astonishingly, reaches agreement". The book does present an authoritative state-of-the-debate across the spectrum from right-libertarianism on the one side to high liberalism on the other side. My point is not to question where Tomasi comes down with his own version of "market (...) democracy" as a remix of Hayek and Rawls. My point is to use his sympathetic restatements of views across the liberal spectrum to show the basic misframings and common misunderstandings that cut across the liberal-libertarian viewpoints surveyed in the book. As usual, the heart of the debate is not in the answers to carefully framed questions, but in the framing itself. (shrink)

Bioethics journals have lagged behind medical and science journals in exploring the threat of conflict of interest (COI) to the integrity of publications. Some recent discussions of COI that have occurred in the bioethics literature are reviewed. Discussions of what has been termed the ?Healy affair? unintentionally demonstrate that the direct and indirect influence of undisclosed COI may come from those who call for protection from the undue influence of industry. Paradoxically, the nature and tone of current discussions may serve (...) to dull sensitivities to what is indeed a serious set of issues facing bioethics. Some proposals are presented to address COI and other challenges to the integrity of bioethics and its journals. COI is too important a topic to be left to ideologues, and there is no substitute for readers' caution and skepticism as tools in dealing with the full range of biases that exist in published papers. (shrink)

The unpleasantness of pain motivates action. Hence many philosophers have doubted that it can be accounted for purely in terms of pain’s possession of indicative representational content. Instead, they have explained it in terms of subjects’ inclinations to stop their pains, or in terms of pain’s imperative content. I claim that such “noncognitivist” accounts fail to accommodate unpleasant pain’s reason-giving force. What is needed, I argue, is a view on which pains are unpleasant, motivate, and provide reasons in virtue of (...) possessing content that is indeed indicative, but also, crucially, evaluative. (shrink)

Accounts of the nature of unpleasant pain have proliferated over the past decade, but there has been little systematic investigation of which of them can accommodate its badness. This paper is such a study. In its sights are two targets: those who deny the non-instrumental disvalue of pain's unpleasantness; and those who allow it but deny that it can be accommodated by the view—advanced by me and others—that unpleasant pains are interoceptive experiences with evaluative content. Against the former, I argue (...) that pain's unpleasantness does indeed have noninstrumental disvalue; against the latter I argue both that my critics’ own desire-theoretic accounts of pain's unpleasantness cannot accommodate such disvalue, and that my evaluativist view can—either by appealing to “anti-unpleasantness” desires or by exploiting pain's perceptuality. (shrink)

Pain asymbolia is a rare condition caused by brain damage, usually in adulthood. Asymbolics feel pain but appear indifferent to it, and indifferent also to visual and verbal threats. How should we make sense of this? Nikola Grahek thinks asymbolics’ pains are abnormal, lacking a component that make normal pains unpleasant and motivating. Colin Klein thinks that what is abnormal is not asymbolics’ pains, but asymbolics: they have a psychological deficit making them unresponsive to unpleasant pain. I argue that an (...) illuminating account requires elements of both views. Asymbolic pains are indeed abnormal, but they are abnormal because asymbolics are. I agree with Klein that asymbolics are incapable of caring about their bodily integrity; but I argue against him that, if this is to explain not only their indifference to visual and verbal threat, but also their indifference to pain, we must do the following: (i) take asymbolics’ lack of bodily care not as an alternative to, but as an explanation of their pains’ missing a component, and (ii) claim that the missing component consists in evaluative content. Asymbolia, I conclude, reveals not only that unpleasant pain is composite, but that its ‘hedomotive component’ is evaluative. (shrink)

A natural view of testimony holds that a source's statements provide one with evidence about what the source believes, which in turn provides one with evidence about what is true. But some theorists have gone further and developed a broadly analogous view of memory. According to this view, which this essay calls the “diary model,” one's memory ordinarily serves as a means for one's present self to gain evidence about one's past judgments, and in turn about the truth. This essay (...) rejects the diary model's analogy between memory and testimony from one's former self, arguing first that memory and a diary differ with respect to their psychological roles, and second that this psychological difference underwrites important downstream epistemic differences. The resulting view stands opposed to prominent discussions of memory and testimony, which either, like the diary model, treat memory by analogy to what we naively wish to say about testimony, or which instead attempt to extend to testimony the epistemically preservative role of memory. (shrink)

Evaluativism is best thought of as a way of enriching a perceptual view of pain to account for pain’s unpleasantness or painfulness. Once it was common for philosophers to contrast pains with perceptual experiences (McGinn 1982; Rorty 1980). It was thought that perceptual experiences were intentional (or content-bearing, or about something), whereas pains were representationally blank. But today many of us reject this contrast. For us, your having a pain in your toe is a matter not of your sensing “pain-ly” (...) or encountering a sense-datum, but of your having an interoceptive experience representing (accurately or inaccurately) that your toe is in a particular experience-independent condition, such as undergoing a certain “disturbance” or being damaged or in danger (Armstrong 1962; Tye 1995). But even if such representational content makes an experience a pain, a further ingredient seems required to make the pain unpleasant. According to evaluativism, the further ingredient is the experience’s possession of evaluative content: its representing the bodily condition as bad for the subject. In this chapter, I elaborate evaluativism, locate it among alternatives, and explain its attractions and challenges. (shrink)

This article reviews the notion of 'noûs' and the verb 'noein' in pre-Socratic philosophy: it brings together research carried out since Kurt von Fritz's famous articles of 1945-1946, taking into account 20th and 21th centuries studies, in particular the ones of James H. Lesher, Shirley D. Sullivan, Rossana Stefanelli and Favio Stella. This paper also focuses on the conception of 'noûs' in the thought of Xenophanes, who links it with divinity and thus anticipates the important contribution of Anaxagoras. Finally, it (...) examines the conception of 'noûs' and 'noein' in Parmenides, in whose Poem it is closely linked to his conception of Being. (shrink)

In this article, I defend an account of linguistic comprehension on which meaning is not cognized, or on which we do not tacitly know our language's semantics. On this view, sentence comprehension is explained instead by our capacity to translate sentences into the language of thought. I explain how this view can explain our capacity to correctly interpret novel utterances, and then I defend it against several standing objections.

Pain, crucially, is unpleasant and motivational. It can be awful; and it drives us to action, e.g. to take our weight off a sprained ankle. But what is the relationship between pain and those two features? And in virtue of what does pain have them? Addressing these questions, Colin Klein and Richard J. Hall have recently developed the idea that pains are, at least partly, experiential commands—to stop placing your weight on your ankle, for example. In this paper, I reject (...) their accounts. Against Klein, I use dissociation cases to argue that possession of ‘imperative content’ cannot wholly constitute pain. Against them both, I further claim that possession of such content cannot even constitute pain’s unpleasant, motivational aspect. For, even if it were possible to specify the relevant imperative content—which is far from clear—the idea of a command cannot bear the explanatory weight Klein and Hall place on it. (shrink)

This paper critically examines currently influential transparency accounts of our knowledge of our own beliefs that say that self-ascriptions of belief typically are arrived at by “looking outward” onto the world. For example, one version of the transparency account says that one self-ascribes beliefs via an inference from a premise to the conclusion that one believes that premise. This rule of inference reliably yields accurate self-ascriptions because you cannot infer a conclusion from a premise without believing the premise, and so (...) you cannot infer from a premise that you believe the premise unless you do believe it. I argue that this procedure cannot be a source of justification, however, because one can be justified in inferring from p that q only if p amounts to strong evidence that q is true. This is incompatible with the transparency account because p often is not very strong evidence that you believe that p. For example, unless you are a weather expert, the fact that it will rain is not very strong evidence that you believe it will rain. After showing how this intuitive problem can be made precise, I conclude with a broader lesson about the nature of inferential justification: that beliefs, when justified, must be underwritten by beliefs, when justified, must be underwritten by evidential relationships between the facts or propositions which those beliefs represent. (shrink)

Here, I put forth a construal of P. F. Strawson’s so-called reversal, his view that what it means to be morally responsible is determined by our practices of holding responsible. The “concern-based” construal that I defend holds that what it means to be morally responsible is determined by the basic social concerns of which our practices are an expression. This construal, I argue, avoids a dilemma that Patrick Todd has recently raised for the reversal.

Compare your pain when immersing your hand in freezing water and your pleasure when you taste your favourite wine. The relationship seems obvious. Your pain experience is unpleasant, aversive, negative, and bad. Your experience of the wine is pleasant, attractive, positive, and good. Pain and pleasure are straightforwardly opposites. Or that, at any rate, can seem beyond doubt, and to leave little more to be said. But, in fact, it is not beyond doubt. And, true or false, it leaves a (...) good deal more to be said: about the nature of sensory affect; its relations to perception, motivation, and rationality; its value; and the mechanisms underlying it. Much is said about these matters in the contributions that follow. Here, in this introductory essay, we map the dialectical landscape and locate our contributors’ papers within it. (shrink)

If the reliability of a source of testimony is open to question, it seems epistemically illegitimate to verify the source’s reliability by appealing to that source’s own testimony. Is this because it is illegitimate to trust a questionable source’s testimony on any matter whatsoever? Or is there a distinctive problem with appealing to the source’s testimony on the matter of that source’s own reliability? After distinguishing between two kinds of epistemically illegitimate circularity—bootstrapping and self-verification—I argue for a qualified version of (...) the claim that there is nothing especially illegitimate about using a questionable source to evaluate its own reliability. Instead, it is illegitimate to appeal to a questionable source’s testimony on any matter whatsoever, with the matter of the source’s own reliability serving only as a special case. (shrink)

I argue that, unlike your brain, you are not composed of other things: you are simple. My argument centers on what I take to be an uncontroversial datum: for any pair of conscious beings, it is impossible for the pair itself to be conscious. Consider, for instance, the pair comprising you and me. You might pinch your arm and feel a pain. I might simultaneously pinch my arm and feel a qualitatively identical pain. But the pair we form would not (...) feel a thing.1 Pairs of people themselves are incapable of experience. Call this The Datum. What explains The Datum? I think the following exhaust the reasonable options. (1) Pairs of people lack a sufficient number of immediate parts. (2) Pairs of people lack immediate parts capable of standing in the right sorts of relations to each other and their environment. (3) Pairs of people lack immediate parts of the right nature. (4) Pairs of people are not structures (they are unstructured collections of their two immediate parts). (5) Some combination of (1) – (4). Finally, (6) pairs of people are not simple. (shrink)

Eleanor Knox has argued that our concept of spacetime applies to whichever structure plays a certain functional role in the laws (the role of determining local inertial structure). I raise two complications for this approach. First, our spacetime concept seems to have the structure of a cluster concept, which means that Knox's inertial criteria for spacetime cannot succeed with complete generality. Second, the notion of metaphysical fundamentality may feature in the spacetime concept, in which case spacetime functionalism may be uninformative (...) in the absence of answers to fundamental metaphysical questions like the substantivalist/relationist debate. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

Is self-knowledge a requirement of rationality, like consistency, or means-ends coherence? Many claim so, citing the evident impropriety of asserting, and the alleged irrationality of believing, Moore-paradoxical propositions of the form < p, but I don't believe that p>. If there were nothing irrational about failing to know one's own beliefs, they claim, then there would be nothing irrational about Moore-paradoxical assertions or beliefs. This article considers a few ways the data surrounding Moore's paradox might be marshaled to support rational (...) requirements to know one's beliefs, and finds that none succeed. (shrink)

It is common for theorists, drawing on P. F. Strawson, to account for morally responsible agency in terms of the nature of the emotions and feelings that characterize our responsibility practices, in terms of the nature of the so-called “reactive attitudes.” Here, I argue against this attitude-based Strawsonian strategy, and I argue in favor of an alternative, which I call the “concern-based Strawsonian strategy.” On this alternative, rather than account for morally responsible agency in terms of the nature of the (...) reactive attitudes, one accounts for such agency in terms of the concern that leaves us susceptible to those attitudes in the first place. This, I believe, is a more promising way to develop the Strawsonian approach than the attitude-based strategy. The concern-based strategy allows us to better countenance the number and variety of the reactive attitudes that characterize our responsibility practices; it shares the attitude-based strategy’s virtues; and it seems to position us to better understand the distinctive social and moral significance associated with being and being regarded as a morally responsible agent. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ discussion of immortality in “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” has spawned an entire philosophical literature. This literature tends to focus on one of Williams’ central claims: if we were to relinquish our mortality, we would necessarily become alienated from our existence and environment—“bored,” in his terms. Many theorists have defended this claim; many others have challenged it. Even if this claim is false, though, it still isn’t obvious that we should choose to relinquish our (...) mortality, given the option. And this is puzzling. Death is generally regarded as an evil, meriting anxiety, dread, and avoidance. What is it about our mortality that makes us hesitant to relinquish it? In this paper, I aim to explain this hesitancy and to argue in its favor: we should be hesitant to relinquish our mortality. Further, I take my discussion to suggest that most of us probably shouldn’t take this option if we were given it. To make these points, I draw on Williams’ discussion of immortality, developing and extending his thought in order to better understand how mortality shapes the way we relate to our lives, particularly the commitments and values that make them meaningful. Our mortality, it seems, plays a crucial role in our lives standing for something. Relinquishing it thus means risking the loss of this value. (shrink)

This paper develops and motivates a unification theory of metaphysical explanation, or as I will call it, Metaphysical Unificationism. The theory’s main inspiration is the unification account of scientific explanation, according to which explanatoriness is a holistic feature of theories that derive a large number of explananda from a meager set of explanantia, using a small number of argument patterns. In developing Metaphysical Unificationism, I will point out that it has a number of interesting consequences. The view offers a novel (...) conception of metaphysical explanation that doesn’t rely on the notion of a “determinative” or “explanatory” relation; it allows us to draw a principled distinction between metaphysical and scientific explanations; it implies that naturalness and fundamentality are distinct but intimately related notions; and perhaps most importantly, it re-establishes the unduly neglected link between explanation and understanding in the metaphysical realm. A number of objections can be raised against the view, but I will argue that none of these is conclusive. The upshot is that Metaphysical Unificationism provides a powerful and hitherto overlooked alternative to extant theories of metaphysical explanation. (shrink)

The singularity hypothesis is a radical hypothesis about the future of artificial intelligence on which self-improving artificial agents will quickly become orders of magnitude more intelligent than the average human. Despite the ambitiousness of its claims, the singularity hypothesis has been defended at length by leading philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers. In this paper, I argue that the singularity hypothesis rests on scientifically implausible growth assumptions. I show how leading philosophical defenses of the singularity hypothesis (Chalmers 2010, Bostrom 2014) fail (...) to overcome the case for skepticism. I conclude by drawing out philosophical implications of this discussion for our understanding of consciousness, personal identity, digital minds, existential risk, and ethical longtermism. GPI Working Paper No . 19-2022. (shrink)

According to a traditional Cartesian epistemology of perception, perception does not provide one with direct knowledge of the external world. Instead, your immediate perceptual evidence is limited to facts about your own visual experience, from which conclusions about the external world must be inferred. Cartesianism faces well-known skeptical challenges. But this chapter argues that any anti-Cartesian view strong enough to avoid these challenges must license a way of updating one’s beliefs in response to anticipated experiences that seems diachronically irrational. To (...) avoid this result, the anti-Cartesian must either license an unacceptable epistemic chauvinism, or else claim that merely reflecting on one’s experiences defeats perceptual justification. This leaves us with a puzzle: Although Cartesianism faces problems, avoiding them brings a new set of problems. (shrink)

Humour is worthy of serious ethical consideration. However, it is often taken far too seriously. In this paper, it is argued that while humour is sometimes unethical, it is wrong much less often than many people think. Non-contextual criticisms, which claim that certain kinds of humour are always wrong, are rejected. Contextual criticisms, which take issue with particular instances of humour rather than types of humour, are more promising. However, it is common to overstate the number of contexts in which (...) humour is wrong. Various mistakes of this kind are highlighted and cautioned against. (shrink)

Knowledge is widely thought to entail belief. But Radford has claimed to offer a counterexample: the case of the unconfident examinee. And Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel have claimed empirical vindication of Radford. We argue, in defense of orthodoxy, that the unconfident examinee does indeed have belief, in the epistemically relevant sense of dispositional belief. We buttress this with empirical results showing that when the dispositional conception of belief is specifically elicited, people’s intuitions then conform with the view that knowledge entails (dispositional) (...) belief. (shrink)

In “Freedom and Resentment,” P. F. Strawson argued that our responsibility practices reflect a distinctive and natural way we’re oriented toward other people: the participant attitude. This idea has been influential. However, it is also widely acknowledged that Strawson’s account of the participant attitude is at best incomplete. In this paper, I argue that the lacuna in Strawson’s thought corresponds to a lacuna in the wider literature on the moral psychology of responsibility. This lacuna, I hold, limits our understanding of (...) both our responsibility practices and what it means to be responsible. I then develop a more determinate account of the participant attitude, one that, I argue, promises to fill this lacuna and provide a unifying and illuminating framework for thinking about the moral psychology of responsibility. (shrink)

Two separate research programs have revealed two different factors that feature in our judgments of whether some entity persists. One program—inspired by Knobe—has found that normative considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when the changes it undergoes lead to improvements. The other program—inspired by Kelemen—has found that teleological considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when it preserves its purpose. Our goal (...) in this paper is to determine what causes persistence judgments. Across four studies, we pit normative considerations against teleological considerations. And using causal modeling procedures, we find a consistent, robust pattern with teleological and not normative considerations directly causing persistence judgments. Our findings put teleology in the driver’s seat, while at the same time shedding further light on our folk notion of an object. (shrink)

Critics have argued that human-controlled avatar interactions fail to facilitate the kinds of expressivity and social understanding afforded by our physical bodies. We identify three claims meant to justify the supposed expressive limits of avatar interactions compared to our physical interactions. First, “The Limited Expressivity Claim”: avatars have a more limited expressive range than our physical bodies. Second, “The Inputted Expressivity Claim”: any expressive avatarial behaviour must be deliberately inputted by the user. Third, “The Decoding Claim”: users must infer or (...) figure out the expressive meaning of human-controlled avatars’ behaviour through cognitively onerous processes. With the aim of critically assessing all three claims, we analyze data collected through observations of and interviews with expert players of the avatar-based video game League of Legends. Focusing on Daniel Stern’s (2010) notion of vitality, we analyze the participants’ descriptions of seeing and interacting with other avatars during performance. Our analysis shows that the informants experience human-based avatarial interactions as qualitatively different than interactions with bots, that the informants see the movements of other players’ avatars as having different expressive styles, and that the informants actively use and manipulate this avatarial expressivity during performance. The results of our analysis, we argue, provide reasons for loosening or resisting the three claims concerning the limits of avatarial expressivity. (shrink)

The Question of Iterated Grounding (QIG) asks what grounds the grounding facts. Although the question received a lot of attention in the past few years, it is usually discussed independently of another important issue: the connection between metaphysical explanation and the relation or relations that supposedly “back” it. I will show that once we get clear on the distinction between metaphysical explanation and the relation(s) backing it, we can distinguish no fewer than four questions lumped under QIG. I will also (...) argue that given some plausible assumptions about what it would take for a relation to back metaphysical explanation, many salient views about grounding allow us to give “easy” answers to these questions—easy in the sense that we can straightforwardly derive them from the respective conception of grounding without getting into the sorts of complexities that typically inform answers to QIG. The paper's main upshot is that we cannot expect to make much progress on QIG without first addressing the difficult issue of how exactly grounding is related to metaphysical explanation. (shrink)

It can seem natural to say that, when in pain, we undergo experiences which present to us certain experience-dependent particulars, namely pains. As part of his wider approach to mind and world, John McDowell has elaborated an interesting but neglected version of this account of pain. Here I set out McDowell’s account at length, and place it in context. I argue that his subjectivist conception of the objects of pain experience is incompatible with his requirement that such experience be presentational, (...) rationalizing, and classificatory. (shrink)

In recent years, metaphysics has undergone what some describe as a revolution: it has become standard to understand a vast array of questions as questions about grounding, a metaphysical notion of determination. Why should we believe in grounding, though? Supporters of the revolution often gesture at what I call the Argument from Explanatoriness: the notion of grounding is somehow indispensable to a metaphysical type of explanation. I challenge this argument and along the way develop a “reactionary” view, according to which (...) there is no interesting sense in which the notion of grounding is explanatorily indispensable. I begin with a distinction between two conceptions of grounding, a distinction which extant critiques of the revolution have usually failed to take into consideration: grounding qua that which underlies metaphysical explanation and grounding qua metaphysical explanation itself. Accordingly, I distinguish between two versions of the Argument from Explanatoriness: the Unexplained Explanations Version for the first conception of grounding, and the Expressive Power Version for the second. The paper’s conclusion is that no version of the Argument from Explanatoriness is successful. (shrink)

When our choice affects some other person and the outcome is unknown, it has been argued that we should defer to their risk attitude, if known, or else default to use of a risk avoidant risk function. This, in turn, has been claimed to require the use of a risk avoidant risk function when making decisions that primarily affect future people, and to decrease the desirability of efforts to prevent human extinction, owing to the significant risks associated with continued human (...) survival. I raise objections to the claim that respect for others’ risk attitudes requires risk avoidance when choosing for future generations. In particular, I argue that there is no known principle of interpersonal aggregation that yields acceptable results in variable population contexts and is consistent with a plausible ideal of respect for others’ risk attitudes in fixed population cases. GPI Working Paper No . 20-2022. (shrink)

The Problem of Overlappers is a puzzle about what makes it the case, and how we can know, that we have the parts we intuitively think we have. In this paper, I develop and motivate an overlooked solution to this puzzle. According to what I call the self-making view it is within our power to decide what we refer to with the personal pronoun ‘I’, so the truth of most of our beliefs about our parts is ensured by the very (...) mechanism of self-reference. Other than providing an elegant solution to the Problem of Overlappers, the view can be motivated on independent grounds. It also has wide-ranging consequences for how we should be thinking about persons. Among other things, it can help undermine an influential line of argument against the permissibility of elective amputation. After a detailed discussion and defence of the self-making view, I consider some objections to it. I conclude that none of these objections is persuasive and we should at the very least take seriously the idea that we are to some extent self-made. (shrink)