Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in (...) public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly— even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed.. (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)

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)

Placeholder essentialism is the view that there is a causal essence that holds category members together, though we may not know what the essence is. Sometimes the placeholder can be filled in by scientific essences, such as when we acquire scientific knowledge that the atomic weight of gold is 79. We challenge the view that placeholders are elaborated by scientific essences. On our view, if placeholders are elaborated, they are elaborated Aristotelian essences, a telos. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments (...) used by traditional essentialists—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2), acquired traits (study 3) and inferences about offspring (study 4)—we find support for the view that essences are elaborated by a telos. And we find evidence (study 5) that teleological essences may generate category judgments. (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)

This paper develops the Diachronic Self-Making View, the view that we are the non-accidentally best candidate referents of our ‘I’-beliefs. A formulation and defence of DSV is followed by an overview of its treatment of familiar puzzle cases about personal identity. The rest of the paper focuses on a challenge to DSV, the Puzzle of Inconstant ‘I’-beliefs: the view appears to force on us inconsistent verdicts about personal identity in cases that we would naturally describe as changes in one’s de (...) se beliefs. To solve this problem, the paper defends the possibility of overlapping people, and addresses a number of objections to this idea. (shrink)

What happens when someone acts? A familiar answer goes like this. There is something that the agent wants, and there is an action that he believes conducive to its attainment. His desire for the end, and his belief in the action as a means, justify taking the action, and they jointly cause an intention to take it, which in turn causes the corresponding movements of the agent's body. I think that the standard story is flawed in several respects. The flaw (...) that will concern me in this paper is that the story fails to include an agent-or, more precisely, fails to cast the agent in his proper role. (shrink)

Many philosophers think all abstract objects are causally inert. Here, focusing on novels, I argue that some abstracta are causally efficacious. First, I defend a straightforward argument for this view. Second, I outline an account of object causation—an account of how objects cause effects. This account further supports the view that some abstracta are causally efficacious.

The agent portrayed in much philosophy of action is, let's face it, a square. He does nothing intentionally unless he regards it or its consequences as desirable. The reason is that he acts intentionally only when he acts out of a desire for some anticipated outcome; and in desiring that outcome, he must regard it as having some value. All of his intentional actions are therefore directed at outcomes regarded sub specie boni: under the guise of the good. This agent (...) is conceived as being capable of intentional action—and hence as being an agent—only by virtue of being a pursuer of value. I want to question whether this conception of agency can be correct. Surely, so general a capacity as agency cannot entail so narrow a cast of mind. Our moral psychology has characterized, not the generic agent, but a particular species of agent, and a particularly bland species of agent, at that. It has characterized the earnest agent while ignoring those agents who are disaffected, refractory, silly, satanic, or punk. I hope for a moral psychology that has room for the whole motley crew. I shall begin by examining why some philosophers have thought that the attitudes motivating intentional actions involve judgments of value. I shall then argue that their conception of these attitudes is incorrect. Finally, I shall argue that practical reason should not be conceived as a faculty for pursuing value. (shrink)

A story does more than recount events; it recounts events in a way that renders them intelligible, thus conveying not just information but also understanding. We might therefore be tempted to describe narrative as a genre of explanation. When the police invite a suspect to “tell his story,” they are asking him to explain the blood on his shirt or his absence from home on the night of the murder; and whether he is judged to have a “good story” will (...) depend on its adequacy as an explanation. Can we account for the explanatory force of narrative with the models of explanation available in the philosophy of science? Or does narrative convey a different kind of understanding, which requires a different model and perhaps even a term other than ‘explanation’? (shrink)

In introducing the reactive attitudes “of people directly involved in transactions with each other,” P. F. Strawson lists “gratitude, resentment, forgiveness, love, and hurt feelings.” To show how our interpersonal emotional practices of responsibility could not be undermined by determinism’s truth, Strawson focused exclusively on resentment, specifically on its nature and actual excusing and exempting conditions. So have many other philosophers theorizing about responsibility in Strawson’s wake. This method and focus has generated a host of quality of will theories of (...) responsibility. What I show in this paper is that if Strawson—and his followers—had focused on hurt feelings instead of resentment, not only would quality of will theories of responsibility be disfavored, but none of our other theories of responsibility could adequately account for them. I conclude by exploring what a conundrum this poses for our methods and starting points in theorizing about responsibility. (shrink)

Conciliationism holds that disagreement of apparent epistemic peers often substantially undermines rational confidence in our opinions. Uniqueness principles say that there is at most one maximally rational doxastic response to any given batch of total evidence. The two views are often thought to be tightly connected. This paper distinguishes two ways of motivating conciliationism, and two ways that conciliationism may be undermined by permissive accounts of rationality. It shows how conciliationism can flourish under certain strongly permissive accounts of rationality. This (...) occurs when the motivation for conciliationism does not come from taking disagreement as evidence of one's own rational failings. However, divorcing the motive for conciliating from worries about rationality does not remove a feature of conciliationism that some find troubling: that conciliationism can lead to cases of “rational toxicity,” in which the most rational response to one's evidence involves violating some rational ideal. (shrink)

Jerome Wakefield has argued that a disorder is a harmful dysfunction. This paper develops how Wakefield should construe harmful in his harmful dysfunction analysis. Recently, Neil Feit has argued that classic puzzles involved in analyzing harm render Wakefield’s HDA better off without harm as a necessary condition. Whether or not one conceives of harm as comparative or non-comparative, the concern is that the HDA forces people to classify as mere dysfunction what they know to be a disorder. For instance, one (...) can conceive of cases where simultaneous disorders prevent each other from being, in any traditional sense, actually harmful; in such cases, according to the HDA, neither would be a disorder. I argue that the sense of harm that Wakefield should employ in the HDA is dispositional, similar to the sense of harm used when describing a vile of poison: “Be careful! That’s poison. It’s harmful.” I call this harm in the damage sense. Using this sense of harm enables the HDA to avoid Feit’s arguments, and thus it should be preferred to other senses when analyzing harmful dysfunction. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

We often get evidence concerning the reliability of our own thinking about some particular matter. This “higher-order evidence” can come from the disagreement of others, or from information about our being subject to the effects of drugs, fatigue, emotional ties, implicit biases, etc. This paper examines some pros and cons of two fairly general models for accommodating higher-order evidence. The one that currently seems most promising also turns out to have the consequence that epistemic akrasia should occur more frequently than (...) is sometimes supposed. But it also helps us see why this might not be a bad thing. (shrink)

The terms `endurance' and `perdurance' are commonly thought to denote distinct ways for an object to persist, but it is surprisingly hard to say what these are. The common approach, defining them in terms of temporal parts, is mistaken, because it does not lead to two coherent philosophical alternatives: endurance so understood becomes conceptually incoherent, while perdurance becomes not just true but a conceptual truth. Instead, we propose a different way to articulate the distinction, in terms of identity rather than (...) temporal parts: an object endures if its identity is determined at every moment at which it exists. We make precise what it means for the identity of an object to be determined at a moment. We also discuss what role the endurance / perdurance distinction, so understood, should play in the debates about time, material objects and personal identity. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to develop an argument against metaphysical debates about the existence of human races. I argue that the ontology of race is underdetermined by both empirical and non-empirical evidence due to a plurality of equally permissible candidate meanings of "race." Furthermore, I argue that this underdetermination leads to a deflationist diagnosis according to #hich disputes about the existence of human races are non-substantive verbal disputes. $hile this diagnosis resembles general deflationist strategies in contemporary metaphysics" I (...) show that my argument does not presuppose controversial metametaphysical assumptions. (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)

Current controversies about knowledge integration reflect conflicting ideas of what it means to “take Indigenous knowledge seriously”. While there is increased interest in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge in various disciplines such as anthropology and ethnobiology, integration projects are often accused of recognizing Indigenous knowledge only insofar as it is useful for Western scientists. The aim of this article is to use tools from philosophy of science to develop a model of both successful integration and integration failures. On the (...) one hand, I argue that cross-cultural recognition of property clusters leads to an ontological overlap that makes knowledge integration often epistemically productive and socially useful. On the other hand, I argue that knowledge integration is limited by ontological divergence. Adequate models of Indigenous knowledge will therefore have to take integration failures seriously and I argue that integration efforts need to be complemented by a political notion of ontological self-determination. (shrink)

In the first half of this paper, I argue that essential properties are intrinsic and that this permits a modal analysis of essence that is immune the sort of objections raised by Fine. In the second half, I argue that intrinsic properties collectively have a certain structure and that this accounts for some observations about essences: that things are essentially determinate; that things often have properties within a certain range essentially; and that the essential properties of things are their core (...) properties. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we justified in employing the rule of inference Modus Ponens? One tempting approach to answering this question is to claim that we are justified in employing Modus Ponens purely in virtue of facts concerning meaning or concept-possession. In this paper, we argue that such meaning-based accounts cannot be accepted as the fundamental account of our justification.

The aim of this article is to argue that ontological choices in scientific practice undermine common formulations of the value-free ideal in science. First, I argue that the truth values of scientific statements depend on ontological choices. For example, statements about entities such as species, race, memory, intelligence, depression, or obesity are true or false relative to the choice of a biological, psychological, or medical ontology. Second, I show that ontological choices often depend on non-epistemic values. On the basis of (...) these premises, I argue that it is often neither possible nor desirable to evaluate scientific statements independently of non-epistemic values. Finally, I suggest that considerations of ontological choices do not only challenge the value-free ideal but also help to specify positive roles of non-epistemic values in an often neglected area of scientific practice. (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)

In this paper, we consider Noël Carroll’s Content Theory (CT) (2015) and argue that a key problem with CT is that it can be interpreted in two distinct ways: as a descriptive theory of aesthetic experience and as a normative prescriptive theory. Although CT is presented as a descriptive theory of experience, much of what Carroll says implies that CT can also be understood as a theory about how one ought to look at artworks. We argue that when understood as (...) a descriptive theory, CT fails to qualify as a meaningful theory of aesthetic experience. We then interpret the theory prescriptively. Ultimately, this second interpretation is also found lacking: if the aim of the theory is to instruct one on how to view art, it is no longer an attempt to characterize the experience of art. We conclude by arguing that the main flaw in CT is its approach: we cannot meaningfully characterize an experience by enumerating the objects that supposedly cause said experience, and any theory that takes such an approach is likely to be unsuccessful. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds on the basis of contemporary ethnobiological research. I argue that ethnobiological accounts of taxonomic convergence-divergence patters challenge common philosophical models of the relation between folk concepts and natural kinds. Furthermore, I outline a positive model of taxonomic convergence-divergence patterns that is based on Slater's [2014] notion of “stable property clusters” and Franklin-Hall's [2014] discussion of natural kinds as “categorical bottlenecks.” Finally, I argue that this model (...) is not only helpful for understanding the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds but also makes substantial contributions to contemporary debates about natural kinds.to contemporary debates about natural kinds. (shrink)

Scholars working on Kant’s Anticipations of Perception generally attribute to him an argument that invalidly infers that objects have degrees of intensive magnitude from the premise that sensations do. I argue that this rests on an incorrect disambiguation of Kant’s use of Empfindung as referring to the mental states that are our sensings, rather than the objects that are thereby sensed. Kant’s real argument runs as follows. The difference between a representation of an empty region of space and/or time and (...) a representation of that same region as occupied by an object entails that, in addition to their extensive magnitude, objects must be represented as having a matter variable in intensive magnitude. Since it is the presence of sensation in a cognition that marks the difference between representing only the extensive magnitude of the object and the object as a whole, it is sensation that represents its intensive magnitude. (shrink)

Abstract creationism about fictional characters is the view that fictional characters are abstract objects that authors create. I defend this view against criticisms from Stuart Brock that hitherto have not been adequately countered. The discussion sheds light on how the number of fictional characters depends on authorial intention. I conclude also that we should change how we think intentions are connected to artifacts more generally, both abstract and concrete.

Xenophobia is conceptually distinct from racism. Xenophobia is also distinct from nativism. Furthermore, theories of racism are largely ensconced in nationalized narratives of racism, often influenced by the black-white binary, which obscures xenophobia and shelters it from normative critiques. This paper addresses these claims, arguing for the first and last, and outlining the second. Just as philosophers have recently analyzed the concept of racism, clarifying it and pinpointing why it’s immoral and the extent of its moral harm, so we will (...) analyze xenophobia and offer a pluralist account of xenophobia, with important implications for racism. This analysis is guided by the discussion of racism in recent moral philosophy, social ontology, and research in the psychology of racism and implicit attitudes. (shrink)

I argue that some important elements of the current cosmological model are 'conventionalist’ in the sense defined by Karl Popper. These elements include dark matter and dark energy; both are auxiliary hypotheses that were invoked in response to observations that falsified the standard model as it existed at the time.

This is a story about three of my favorite philosophers—Donnellan, Russell, and Frege—about how Donnellan’s concept of having in mind relates to ideas of the others, and especially about an aspect of Donnellan’s concept that has been insufficiently discussed: how this epistemic state can be transmitted from one person to another.

In this paper, we present three necessary conditions for morally responsible animal research that we believe people on both sides of this debate can accept. Specifically, we argue that, even if human beings have higher moral status than nonhuman animals, animal research is morally permissible only if it satisfies (a) an expectation of sufficient net benefit, (b) a worthwhile-life condition, and (c) a no unnecessary-harm/qualified-basic-needs condition. We then claim that, whether or not these necessary conditions are jointly sufficient conditions of (...) justified animal research, they are relatively demanding with the consequence that many animal experiments may fail to satisfy them. (shrink)

Classical logic is usually interpreted as the logic of propositions. But from Boole's original development up to modern categorical logic, there has always been the alternative interpretation of classical logic as the logic of subsets of any given (nonempty) universe set. Partitions on a universe set are dual to subsets of a universe set in the sense of the reverse-the-arrows category-theoretic duality--which is reflected in the duality between quotient objects and subobjects throughout algebra. Hence the idea arises of a dual (...) logic of partitions. That dual logic is described here. Partition logic is at the same mathematical level as subset logic since models for both are constructed from (partitions on or subsets of) arbitrary unstructured sets with no ordering relations, compatibility or accessibility relations, or topologies on the sets. Just as Boole developed logical finite probability theory as a quantitative treatment of subset logic, applying the analogous mathematical steps to partition logic yields a logical notion of entropy so that information theory can be refounded on partition logic. But the biggest application is that when partition logic and the accompanying logical information theory are "lifted" to complex vector spaces, then the mathematical framework of quantum mechanics is obtained. Partition logic models indefiniteness (i.e., numerical attributes on a set become more definite as the inverse-image partition becomes more refined) while subset logic models the definiteness of classical physics (an entity either definitely has a property or definitely does not). Hence partition logic provides the backstory so the old idea of "objective indefiniteness" in QM can be fleshed out to a full interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The authors argue against direction of fit accounts of the distinction between belief and desire.

Mark David Webster ABSTRACT: Using qualitative methods, the author sought to better understand how philosophical assumptions about technology affect the thinking, and influence the decision making, of educational technology leaders in their professional practice. One of the research questions focused on examining whether assumptions of technological determinism were present in thinking and influenced the decisions that leaders make. The core category that emerged from data analysis, Keep up with technology (or be left behind), was interpreted to be a manifestation (...) of the technological imperative, an assumption associated with the philosophical perspective of technological determinism. The article presents a literature review and critique of philosophical issues surrounding technological determinism. Data analysis led to the conclusion that technology leaders working in K-12 education place weighted priority on the technological imperative, and there is philosophical tension between Keep up with technology (or be left behind), and a concurrently held perspective based on the logic of the instrumental view of technology. The findings suggest that different accounts of technological determinism, including Bimber’s three accounts of normative, nomological, and unintended consequences, are significant in the thinking of participants. School technology leaders placed priority on embracing technological change, sometimes adopting technology for its own sake. (shrink)

We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unification of a scientifically inspired worldview. In showing how to recover an approximation to Russell's conclusion (...) while explaining scientists' continuing appeal to causal ideas (without violating naturalism by philosophically correcting scientists) we illustrate a general naturalist strategy for handling problems around the unification of sciences that assume different levels of naïveté with respect to folk conceptual frameworks. We do this despite rejecting one of the premises of Russell's argument, a version of reductionism that was scientifically plausible in 1913 but is not so now. (shrink)

In this paper I consider whether a powers ontology facilitates a reduction of causal relations to intrinsic powers of the causal relata. I first argue that there is a tension in the view that powerful causation is an internal relation in this sense. Powers are ontologically dependent on other powers for their individuation, but in that case—given an Aristotelian conception of properties as immanent universals—powers will not be intrinsic on several extant analyses of ‘intrinsic’, since to possess a given power (...) P requires the existence of other concrete particulars as bearers of the powers that individuate P. I suggest several ways for Aristotelians to resolve this tension, but all tenable options involve individuative type-level causal relations between powers. While these individuative relations between powers are internal in the sense that the powers are essentially related, this is a different sense of ‘ internal ’ to the one that entails reducibility. The proposed reduction of token-causal relations to powers succeeds only at the cost of irreducible type-level causal relations between the powers themselves. (shrink)

Many of us care about the existence of ethical facts because they appear crucial to making sense of our practical lives. On one tempting line of thought, this idea can also play a central role in justifying our belief in those facts. David Enoch has developed this thought into a formidable new proposal in moral epistemology: that the deliberative indispensability of ethical facts gives us epistemic justification for believing in such facts. This chapter argues that Enoch’s proposal fails because (...) it conflicts with a central fact about epistemic justification: that the norms of epistemic justification have the content that they do in part because of some positive connection between those norms and the truth of the beliefs that these norms govern. Alternatives to Enoch’s attempt to defend the idea that deliberative indispensability confers epistemic justification fail for parallel reasons. The chapter concludes that deliberative indispensability does not provide epistemic justification. (shrink)

Which role do concepts play in a person's actions? Do concepts underwrite the very idea of agency in somebody's acting? Or is the appeal to concepts in action a problematic form of over-intellectualization which obstructs a proper picture of genuine agency? Within the large and complicated terrain of these questions, the debate about know-how has been of special interest in recent years. In this paper, I shall try to spell out what know-how can tell us about the role of concepts (...) in action. I will argue that the fact that people possess and exercise know-how is indeed suited to deliver a number of important insights as to where and how concepts play a role in action. But I shall argue that these insights are limited in that they fail to cover the whole realm of relevant phenomena. (shrink)

Categorical logic has shown that modern logic is essentially the logic of subsets (or "subobjects"). Partitions are dual to subsets so there is a dual logic of partitions where a "distinction" [an ordered pair of distinct elements (u,u′) from the universe U ] is dual to an "element". An element being in a subset is analogous to a partition π on U making a distinction, i.e., if u and u′ were in different blocks of π. Subset logic leads to finite (...) probability theory by taking the (Laplacian) probability as the normalized size of each subset-event of a finite universe. The analogous step in the logic of partitions is to assign to a partition the number of distinctions made by a partition normalized by the total number of ordered pairs |U|² from the finite universe. That yields a notion of "logical entropy" for partitions and a "logical information theory." The logical theory directly counts the (normalized) number of distinctions in a partition while Shannon's theory gives the average number of binary partitions needed to make those same distinctions. Thus the logical theory is seen as providing a conceptual underpinning for Shannon's theory based on the logical notion of "distinctions.". (shrink)

This paper concerns a puzzle about the interaction of epistemic modals and future tense. In cases of predictable forgetfulness, speakers cannot describe their future states of mind with epistemic modals under future tense, but promising theories of epistemic modals do not predict this. In §1, I outline the puzzle. In §2, I argue that it undermines a very general approach to epistemic modals that draws a tight connection between epistemic modality and evidence. In §3, I defend the assumption that tense (...) can indeed scope over epistemic modals. In §4, I outline a new way of determining the domain of quantification of epistemic modals: epistemic modals quantify over the worlds compatible with the information accumulated within a certain interval. Information loss can change which interval is relevant for determining the domain. In §5, I defend the view from some objections. In §6, I explore the connections between my view of epistemic modality and circumstantial modality. (shrink)

Failure of substitutivity of coreferential terms, one of the hallmarks of referential opacity, is standardly explained in terms of the presence of an expression (such as a verb of propositional attitude, a modal adverb or quotation marks) with opacity-inducing properties. It is thus assumed that any term in a complex expression for which substitutivity fails will be within the scope of an expression of one of these types, and that where there is an expression of one of these types there (...) will be failure of substitutivity for terms within its scope. I shall discuss a series of examples that have been thought to challenge this explanation by exhibiting failure of substitutivity of coreferential terms for positions not within the scope of any of the standard opacity-inducing expressions. If these examples are genuine, then the usual explanations of opacity are either incomplete – because there are sources of opacity other than those standardly identified, or completely mistaken – because the standardly identified expressions are not causes of opacity. I will argue, however, that the examples only exhibit failure of substitutivity of non-coreferential terms, and, hence, do not present a challenge to standard explanations of opacity. (shrink)

Plato claimed that morality exits to control conflict. Business people increasingly are called upon to resolve moral conflicts between various stakeholders who maintain opposing ethical positions or principles. Attempts to resolve these moral conflicts within business discussions may be exacerbated if disputants have different communicative styles. To better understand the communication process involved in attempts to resolve a moral dilemma, we investigate the "discourse ethics" procedure of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas claims that an individual's level of moral reasoning parallels the type (...) of communication which that individual typically uses in attempts to resolve conflict. Our research focuses upon the relationship between the communicative style used by participants attempting to resolve a particular moral dilemma involving workplace safety and the level of moral reasoning possessed by those participants. The results of our study suggest that, contrary to Habermas' views, participants with "higher" levels of moral reasoning do not use "discursive" communicative tactics more frequently than participants that possessed "lower" moral reasoning. (shrink)

Elimination controversies are ubiquitous in philosophy and the human sciences. For example, it has been suggested that human races, hysteria, intelligence, mental disorder, propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires, the self, and the super-ego should be eliminated from the list of respectable entities in the human sciences. I argue that eliminativist proposals are often presented in the framework of an oversimplified “phlogiston model” and suggest an alternative account that describes ontological elimination on a gradual scale between criticism of empirical (...) assumptions and conceptual choices. (shrink)

For Kant, any authentic moral demands are wholly distinct from the demands of prudence. This has led critics to complain that Kantian moral demands are incompatible with our human nature as happiness-seekers. Kant’s defenders have pointed out, correctly, that Kant can and does assert that it is permissible, at least in principle, to pursue our own happiness. But this response does not eliminate the worry that a life organized around the pursuit of virtue might turn out to be one from (...) which we cannot expect any of this (permissible) happiness. To address this worry, Kant would need to establish that there is a kind of harmony between virtue and our own happiness that can give us confidence that aiming at morality does not require us to abandon our hope for happiness in this life. This paper aims to show that Kant—building on insights from Rousseau that Kant identifies with Cynicism—does offer an account of such a harmony between virtue and worldly happiness. (shrink)

Suppose justice depends on some very unlikely good behavior. In that case the true (or correct, or best) theory of justice might have no practical value. But then, what good would it be? I consider analogies with science and mathematics in order to test various ways of tying their the value of intellectual work to practice, though I argue that these fail. If their value, or that of some political theory, is not practical then what is good about them? As (...) for political theory, I consider the question of what would even count as an answer to this question, and I conclude with the tentative proposal that it is valuable to come to understand something that is, itself, important. (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)