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)

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (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.

I argue that according to Socrates in the Phaedo we should not merely evaluate bodily pleasures and desires as worthless or bad, but actively avoid them. We need to avoid them because they change our values and make us believe falsehoods. This change in values and acceptance of falsehoods undermines the soul’s proper activity, making virtue and happiness impossible for us. I situate this account of why we should avoid bodily pleasures within Plato’s project in the Phaedo of providing Pythagorean (...) and Orphic ideas with clearer meanings and better justifications. (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 defends the view that having a language just is knowing how to engage in communication with it. It also argues that, despite claims to the contrary, this view is compatible and complementary with the Chomskyan conception of language on which humans have languages in virtue of being in brain states realizing tacit knowledge of grammars for those languages.

This essay articulates a kind of conservatism that it argues is the most fundamental and important kind of conservatism, viz. existential conservatism, which involves an affirmative and appreciative stance towards the given world. While this form of conservatism can be connected to political conservatism, as seen with Roger Scruton, it need not be, as seen with G. A. Cohen. It is argued that existential conservatism should be embraced whether or not one embraces political conservatism, though it is also shown that (...) existential conservatism imposes constraints on our political thinking. In particular, it is argued that Cohen's ‘luck egalitarianism’ stands at odds with his existential conservatism and that one should be a sufficientarian rather than an egalitarian with regard to economic justice. (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)

The purpose of this paper is to address a well-known dilemma for physicalism. If mental properties are type identical to physical properties, then their causal efficacy is secure, but at the cost of ruling out mentality in creatures very different to ourselves. On the other hand, if mental properties are multiply realizable, then all kinds of creatures can instantiate them, but then they seem to be causally redundant. The causal exclusion problem depends on the widely held principle that realized properties (...) inherit their causal powers from their realizers. While this principle holds for functional realization, it fails on a broader notion of realization that permits the realization of complex qualitative properties such as spatial and temporal patterns. Such properties are best seen as dependent powerful qualities, which have their causal roles in virtue of being the qualities they are, and do not inherit powers from their realizers. Recent studies have identified one such property—neural synchrony—as a correlate of consciousness. If synchrony is also partially constitutive of consciousness, then phenomenal properties are both multiply realizable and causally novel. I outline a version of representationalism about consciousness on which this constitution claim holds. (shrink)

-/- 在一系列《全球研究报告》的调研过程中,我们一直希望对亚洲地区的研究现状进行一个描述,不仅限于中国、日本和韩国这些持续发展且颇受关注的国家。 -/- 这份《全球研究报告》调查了被称为南亚和东亚（S&E Asia）的地区,包括东盟集团及更广泛的地区。 .

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)

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 this chapter, we argue that it’s possible to lose your faith in God by the actions of other people. In particular, we argue that spiritually violent religious trauma, where religious texts are used to shame a person into thinking themselves unworthy of God’s love, can cause a person to stop engaging in activities that sustain their faith in God, such as engaging in the worship of God. To do this, we provide an analysis of faith, worship, and love on (...) which to have faith in God is to have an attitude of worship to him; to have such an attitude of worship to God is to love him; and to love God is to desire union with him. We apply this analysis particularly to the case of LGBT Christians and their experience in the church today. (shrink)

I argue that Meno’s Paradox targets the type of knowledge that Socrates has been looking for earlier in the dialogue: knowledge grounded in explanatory definitions. Socrates places strict requirements on definitions and thinks we need these definitions to acquire knowledge. Meno’s challenge uses Socrates’ constraints to argue that we can neither propose definitions nor recognize them. To understand Socrates’ response to the challenge, we need to view Meno’s challenge and Socrates’ response as part of a larger disagreement about the value (...) of inquiry. (shrink)

Aristotle presents a formal logic in the Prior Analytics in which the premises and conclusions are never conditionals. In this paper I argue that he did not simply overlook conditionals, nor does their absence reflect a metaphysical prejudice on his part. Instead, he thinks that arguments with conditionals cannot be syllogisms because of the way he understands the explanatory requirement in the definition of a syllogism: the requirement that the conclusion follow because of the premises. The key passage is Prior (...) Analytics I.32, 47a22–40, where Aristotle considers an argument with conditionals that we would consider valid, but which he denies is a syllogism. I argue that Aristotle thinks that to meet the explanatory requirement a syllogism must draw its conclusion through the way its terms are predicated of one another. Because arguments with conditionals do not, in general, draw their conclusions through predications, he did not include them in his logic. (shrink)

We argue that genuine modal realism can be extended, rather than modified, so as to allow for the possibility of nothing concrete, a possibility we term ‘metaphysical nihilism’. The issue should be important to the genuine modal realist because, not only is metaphysical nihilism itself intuitively plausible, but also it is supported by an argument with pre-theoretically credible premises, namely, the subtraction argument. Given the soundness of the subtraction argument, we show that there are two ways that the genuine modal (...) realist can accommodate metaphysical nihilism: (i) by allowing for worlds containing only spatiotemporal points and (ii) by allowing for a world containing nothing but the null individual. On methodological grounds, we argue that the genuine modal realist should reject the former way but embrace the latter way. (shrink)

I argue that the technique Socrates describes in the Meno at 86e-87c allows him to make progress without definitions, even while accepting that definitions are necessary for knowledge. Some contend that the technique involves provisionally accepting a claim. I argue, instead, that it provides a secure biconditional that one can use to reduce the question one cares care about to a new question that one thinks will be easier to answer.

A striking feature of the latest version of Dennett’s ‘big picture’ of the evolution of life and mind is frequent reference to ‘affordances’. An affordance is, roughly, a possibility for action for a creature in an environment. Given more than one possibility for action, a good question is: what will the creature actually do? I argue that affordances pose a problem of selection, and that a good general solution to this problem of mind-design is to implement a system of preferences.

In this article, I argue that if tacit knowledge of grammar is analyzable in functional‐computational terms, then it cannot ground linguistic meaning, structure, or sound. If to know or cognize a grammar is to be in a certain computational state playing a certain functional role, there can be no unique grammar cognized. Satisfying the functional conditions for cognizing a grammar G entails satisfying those for cognizing many grammars disagreeing with G about expressions' semantic, phonetic, and syntactic values. This threatens the (...) Chomskyan view that expressions have such values for speakers because they cognize grammars assigning them those values. For if this is true, semantics, syntax, and phonology must be indeterminate, thanks to the indeterminacy of grammar‐cognizing (qua functional‐computational state). So, the fact that a speaker cognizes a grammar cannot explain the determinate character of their language. (shrink)

This paper argues that the problematic of rule following in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Heidegger's analysis of anxiety in Being and Time have analogous structures. Working through these analogies helps our interpretation of both of these authors. Contrasting sceptical and anti-sceptical readings of Wittgenstein helps us to resolve an interpretive puzzle about what an authentic response to anxiety looks like for Heidegger. And considering the importance of anxiety to Heidegger's conception of authenticity allows us to locate in Wittgenstein's later philosophy (...) a covert appeal to something resembling Heideggerian authenticity. (shrink)

Sider’s Writing the Book of the World gives an account of fundamentality in terms of his central ideological notion ‘structure’. Here I first argue against Sider’s claim that to be fundamental to a degree is to be structural to a degree. I argue there’s a pair of properties, P1 and P2, such that P1 is the more fundamental, but Sider is committed to counting P2 as the more structural. I then argue that if relative structure and relative fundamentality can come (...) apart in this way, then Sider is likely also wrong to identify being absolutely structural with being absolutely fundamental. (shrink)

This paper examines whether Socrates provides his interlocutors with good reasons to seek knowledge of what virtue is, reasons that they are in a position to appreciate. I argue that in the Laches he does provide such reasons, but they are not the reasons that are most commonly identified as Socratic. Socrates thinks his interlocutors should be motivated not by the idea that virtue is knowledge nor by the idea that knowledge is good for its own sake, but rather by (...) the idea that knowledge is needed to recognize what to aim at. His argument reaches the potentially life-altering conclusion that we should all seek knowledge of what virtue is. It is powerful precisely because it relies on uncontroversial premises that his interlocutors could be expected to accept. In laying out this argument, I distinguish different ways in which someone could count as a teacher of virtue. At the end of the article, I situate the argument within the debate about whether virtue is teachable. (shrink)

This article argues that the Phaedo is written as a new sort of story of how a hero faces death; this story provides an alternative to existing tragedy, as understood by Plato. The opening of the Phaedo makes clear that two features that Plato closely associates with tragedy, pity and lamentation, are inappropriate responses to Socrates’ impending death, and that tuchē (chance) did not affect his happiness. This is the first step in the dialogue’s sustained engagement with tragedy. Tragedy for (...) Plato falls under the category of stories about heroes and gods. Plato wrote the Phaedo so that we would see Socrates as a philosophical hero, a replacement for traditional heroes such as Theseus or Heracles. I argue that in fact the Phaedo meets every requirement in Republic Books 2–3 for how to tell stories about heroes and gods and so belongs to the same broad category as tragedy. Within this framework, it tells its new story of how the true hero faces death. (shrink)

The appeal to ordinary language is a central feature of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy: he reminds us that our words find meaning in the ordinary practices and forms of life in which they are used. This emphasis on the ordinary may seem to clash with Heidegger’s claim that average everyday understanding is marked by inauthenticity: is Wittgenstein’s emphasis on ordinary language fundamentally inauthentic? On the contrary, I argue, Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the ungroundedness of our ordinary practices parallels Heidegger’s discussion of anxiety (...) and uncanniness, suggesting that we can unearth something like a Heideggerian appeal to authenticity in Wittgenstein’s appeal to ordinary language. (shrink)

According to the most popular theories of intentionality, a family of theories we will refer to as “functional intentionality,” a machine can have genuine intentional states so long as it has functionally characterizable mental states that are causally hooked up to the world in the right way. This paper considers a detailed description of a robot that seems to meet the conditions of functional intentionality, but which falls victim to what I call “the composition problem.” One obvious way to escape (...) the problem (arguably, the only way) is if the robot can be shown to be a moral patient – to deserve a particular moral status. If so, it isn’t clear how functional intentionality could remain plausible (something like “phenomenal intentionality” would be required). Finally, while it would have seemed that a reasonable strategy for establishing the moral status of intelligent machines would be to demonstrate that the machine possessed genuine intentionality, the composition argument suggests that the order of precedence is reversed: The machine must first be shown to possess a particular moral status before it is a candidate for having genuine intentionality. (shrink)

In two papers, Ned Block has argued that representationalists have trouble with the empirical discovery that differences in the degree of visual attention to an object can lead to a difference in h...

Philosophers of language have drawn on metamathematical results in varied ways. Extensionalist philosophers have been particularly impressed with two, not unrelated, facts: the existence, due to Frege/Tarski, of a certain sort of semantics, and the seeming absence of intensional contexts from mathematical discourse. The philosophical import of these facts is at best murky. Extensionalists will emphasize the success and clarity of the model theoretic semantics; others will emphasize the relative poverty of the mathematical idiom; still others will question the aptness (...) of the standard extensional semantics for mathematics. In this paper I investigate some implications of the Gödel Second Incompleteness Theorem for these positions. I argue that the realm of mathematics, proof theory in particular, has been a breeding ground for intensionality and that satisfactory intensional semantic theories are implicit in certain rigorous technical accounts. (shrink)

According to many interpreters, Socrates in the Euthyphro thinks that an answer to ‘what is the holy?’ should pick out some feature that is prior to being holy. While this is a powerful way to think of answers to the ‘what is it?’ question, one that Aristotle develops, I argue that the Euthyphro provides an important alternative to this Aristotelian account. Instead, an answer to ‘what is the holy?’ should pick out precisely being holy, not some feature prior to it. (...) I begin by showing how this interpretation allows for a straightforward reading of a key argument: Socrates’ refutation of Euthyphro’s proposal that the holy is the god-loved. Then I address considerations that seem to favor the Aristotelian account. I end by explaining how answers to ‘what is f-ness?’ questions are informative on this account, even though they do not identify anything other than f-ness. (shrink)

Virtual environments engage millions of people and billions of dollars each year. What is the ontological status of the virtual objects that populate those environments? An adequate answer to that question requires a developed semantics for virtual environments. The truth-conditions must be identified for “tree”-sentences when uttered by speakers immersed in a virtual environment (VE). It will be argued that statements about virtual objects have truth-conditions roughly comparable to the verificationist conditions popular amongst some contemporary antirealists. This does not mean (...) that the virtual objects lack ontological standing. There is an important sense in which virtual objects are no less real for being mind-dependent. (shrink)

A spirited reading of Derrida’s view of ethics as transcendental and performative.

Failure to recognize the "realistic" motivations for Putnam's commitment to internal realism has led to a widely shared misunderstanding of Putnam's arguments against metaphysical realism. Realist critics of these arguments frequently offer rebuttals that fail to confront his arguments. Simply put, Putnam's arguments --the brains in a vat argument as well as the model-theoretic argument -- are "reductios" that are intended to show that "metaphysical realism itself is not sufficiently realistic". If that claim can be substantiated then Putnam can go (...) on to argue that his own view is, by comparison, more realistic than metaphysical realism. (shrink)

8000 Word annotated bibliography on the Phaedo, with roughly 70 entries. Note that the subscription version is a bit easier to navigate. The hyperlinks work in this pdf, but you can not as easily jump to the different sections.

Over recent decades, pain has received increasing attention as – with ever greater sophistication and rigour – theorists have tried to answer the deep and difficult questions it poses. What is pain’s nature? What is its point? In what sense is it bad? The papers collected in this volume are a contribution to that effort ...

Aristotle’s Motivation for Matter Why does Aristotle make matter so central to his account of the natural world, making it a principle of nature and one of the four causes? Although there is considerable interest in how Aristotle conceives of matter, scholars rarely investigate why he thinks of it as fundamental to the natural world. Some simply ask why Aristotle thinks there must be matter. Other interpreters do not even agree that we should ask this question; they claim that Aristotle (...) does not give reasons for needing matter because matter is an everyday notion we need not motivate. I think that in Physics I Aristotle gives us good reasons – perhaps even compelling ones – for thinking that matter is necessary for any understanding of the natural world. We, as interpreters, can use these reasons to understand what matter is for Aristotle, making progress where scholars have offered many incompatible interpretations. The first chapter of the dissertation presents my basic account of why Aristotle needs matter and what it is. I argue that Aristotle makes matter central to his natural philosophy because it is needed in order to understand change. Specifically, in order for there to be change, there must be something whose very nature is to undergo change. This is what matter is for Aristotle: the thing whose very nature is to undergo change. Since matter is picked out by its role in change, the very same thing will be matter and other things, based on what other roles it has. Just as the same person can be a doctor and a builder, so the same person can be a doctor and matter. This chapter also highlights the strength of my account by arguing against a rival interpretation of Aristotle’s motivation for matter, according to which matter is needed so that something persists through change. The second chapter argues for my interpretation through a close reading of Aristotle’s Physics I. (shrink)

This essay considers three case studies of Aristotle’s use of matter, drawn from three different scientific contexts: menstrual fluid as the matter of animal generation in the Generation of Animals, the living body as matter of an organism in Aristotle’s On the Soul (De Anima), and the matter of elemental transformation in Generation and Corruption. I argue that Aristotle conceives of matter differently in these treatises (1) because of the different sorts of changes under consideration, and (2) because sometimes he (...) is considering the matter for one specific change, and sometimes the matter for all of a thing’s natural changes. My account allows me to explain some of the strange features that Aristotle ascribes to the matter for elemental transformation in Generation and Corruption II. These features were interpreted by later commentators as general features of all matter. I argue that they are a result of the specific way that Aristotle thinks about the transmutation of the elements. (shrink)

The eponymous dialogue presents the sophist as a figure who defies definition, and those difficulties are attributed to the conception of the image. Ultimately, the sophist is defined as a species of image maker. The image, however, which is important throughout the Platonic corpus as a metaphor, an analogy, and a metaphysical concept as well, receives in the Sophist little clarification or definition apart from whatever may be inferred from the division of image making arts. In the Sophist, the sophist (...) escapes definition as in no other dialogue, rendering even the concluding division one that makes the distinction of the sophist from the philosopher problematic, if not impossible. The paper explores how the dialogue problematizes and rethinks the metaphysics of the image, as compared to its use in dialogues such as the Phaedo and the Republic, pointing to a refinement in understanding the relation of judgment to knowledge and appearance to reality. (shrink)

Mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit wird die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) am 24. September in den Bundestag einziehen. Jüngste Umfragen legen nahe, dass sie sogar drittstärkste Partei werden könnte. Warum findet die AfD so viele Unterstützerinnen und Unterstützer? Mit welchen Argumenten wirbt die AfD für ihren Einzug in den Bundestag? Das Wahlprogramm der AfD zeigt nicht nur, wofür die Partei steht, sondern auch welche Strategie sie bei der Bundestagswahl und darüber hinaus verfolgt. Aus diesem Grund habe ich es argumentationstheoretisch analysiert und die (...) darin enthaltene Argumentation im Detail rekonstruiert. Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse umfassen: Erstens, aus einer rein logischen Perspektive ist die Argumentation der AfD außergewöhnlich klar und stringent. Dies gelingt ihr deshalb, weil sie sich gezielt auf Annahmen stützt, die vereinfachend oder konstruiert sind. Zweitens, das zentrale Thema der „Flüchtlingskrise“ zieht sich beinahe durch die gesamte Argumentation. Es taucht in Argumenten über den Verlust der Leitkultur oder den Verfall der inneren Sicherheit genauso auf wie in Argumenten über die Folgen der Globalisierung oder den demographischen Wandel. Drittens, und dies ist das zentrale Ergebnis der Analyse, die AfD argumentiert nach dem folgenden Muster: Es gibt eine Bedrohung. Nur die AfD kann uns davor bewahren. Also muss die AfD an die Macht kommen. Dies nenne ich das „Kernargument des Populismus“. (shrink)

Comments and replies from the 2021 Eastern APA book symposium on Jill North's Physics, Structure, and Reality.

According to most scholars, in the Parts of Animals Aristotle frequently provides explanations in terms of material necessity, as well as explanations in terms of that-for-the-sake-of-which, i.e., final causes. In this paper, I argue that we misunderstand both matter and the way that Aristotle explains things using necessity if we interpret Aristotle as explaining things in terms of material necessity. Aristotle does not use the term “matter” very frequently in his detailed discussions of animal parts; when he does use it, (...) he typically identifies blood as matter. I argue that this is because blood is, for Aristotle, what properly nourishes and grows the other parts of the body and he views nourishment and growth as types of coming-to-be. The second half of the paper turns to necessity as a cause in the Parts of Animals. I argue that in the Parts of Animals Aristotle is not interested in distinguishing between what Aristotle elsewhere treats as very different types of necessity. (shrink)

This chapter offers a guide to reading Plato’s dialogues, including an overview of his corpus. We recommend first considering each dialogue as its own unified work, before considering how it relates to the others. In general, the dialogues explore ideas and arguments, rather than presenting parts of a comprehensive philosophical system that settles on final answers. The arc of a dialogue frequently depends on who the individual interlocutors are. We argue that the traditional division of the corpus (into Socratic, middle, (...) late stages) is useful, regardless of whether it is a chronological division. Our overview of the corpus gives special attention to the Republic, since it interweaves so many of his key ideas, even if nearly all of them receive longer treatments in other dialogues. Although Plato recognized the limits inherent in written (as opposed to spoken) philosophy, he devoted his life to producing these works, which are clearly meant to help us seek the deepest truths. Little can be learned from reports of Plato’s oral teaching or the letters attributed to him. Understanding the dialogues on their own terms is what offers the greatest reward. (shrink)

This essay argues for a concept of political identity that is fundamentally relational in nature contra more liberal accounts of identity that are atomistic. I consider John Rawls’ account of political identity in his Political Liberalism and provide a response stemming from Hannah Arendt’s account of political identity grounded in the existential condition of politics: human plurality. Using her concept of human plurality, I argue that political identity ought to be conceived as relationally individuated as opposed to atomistically so, meaning (...) that our identities only emerge in and through appearing before other political actors and not prior to it. The larger upshot is that conceiving of political identity as relational provides a more fruitful concept of the citizen and might allow progress to be made regarding some of the more entrenched political problems in American political culture, especially polarization and partisanship. (shrink)

In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates calls things like justice, piety, and largeness “forms.” In several of these dialogues, he makes clear that forms are very different from familiar objects like tables and trees. Why, exactly, does he think that they differ and how are they supposed to do so? This chapter argues that in the Phaedo Socrates does not assume that they are different, but rather, over five stages of the dialogue, provides an account of how and why they do so. (...) To fully understand the claims made in the first stage, one must look to the next stage, and so on until the final stage. Socrates' ultimate reason for distinguishing forms from ordinary objects does not depend on our intuitions about things like justice and largeness, nor on the distinction between universals and particulars. Ultimately, forms cannot be ordinary objects because the form of f-ness must cause every f-thing to be f, but no ordinary object could serve as such a cause. They cannot do so because they have multiple parts and are receptive of opposites; by contrast, the form of f-ness must be simple and unchanging, since it causes every f-thing to be f. (shrink)

The essay explores the intersection of the Theory of Mind (T.O.M.) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), emphasizing the potential for AI to emulate cognitive processes fundamental to human social interactions. T.O.M., a concept crucial for understanding and interpreting human behavior through attributed mental states, contrasts with AI's behaviorist approach, which is rooted in data-driven pattern analysis and predictions. By examining foundational insights from cognitive sciences and the operational models of AI, this analysis highlights the potential advancements and implications of integrating T.O.M.-like (...) capabilities into AI systems. The discussion pivots around three critical questions: whether AI should emulate T.O.M. to enhance human interactions if AI can maintain its data-driven model while integrating cognitive processes, and how AI can expand its capabilities in social contexts. The arguments suggest that incorporating T.O.M.-like processes could significantly improve AI's interaction quality without compromising its analytical strengths, pointing towards a future where AI not only predicts but also empathizes, offering more nuanced and culturally aware interactions. This synthesis of cognitive theories and computational strategies advocates for deeper integration of diverse datasets and advanced computing methodologies, aiming to transform AI into a more empathetic and effective participant in human social environments. -/- Keywords: Theory of Mind, Artificial Intelligence, Human-AI Interaction, Cognitive Processes, Data-Driven Analysis. (shrink)

This is an extended intellectual obituary for Hilary Putnam.

There is a dogma about metaphysical realism that is well nigh universal: "If one is a metaphysical realist about the external world, then one ought to be a semantic realist about external- world statements". I argue that this dogma should be rejected. It is possible for a metaphysical realist to be a "semantic dualist", holding that some middle- sized object statements receive a realist interpretation, but that most such statements require an antirealist interpretation. To show that a semantically dual language (...) is at least possible, I describe a possible world whose inhabitants speak a version of English that is syntactically dual. Further I argue that English in the "actual world" is itself semantically dual. (shrink)