In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is for a degreed property to count as (...) class='Hi'>degrees of consciousness, and (4) applies the analysis to various theories of consciousness. I argue that whether consciousness comes in degrees ultimately depends on which theory of consciousness turns out to be correct. But I also argue that most theories of consciousness entail that consciousness comes in degrees. (shrink)

We regularly make graded normative judgements in the epistemic domain. Recent work in the literature examines degrees of justification, degrees of rationality, and degrees of assertability. This paper addresses a different dimension of the gradeability of epistemic normativity, one that has been given little attention. How should we understand degrees of epistemic criticizability? In virtue of what sorts of factors can one epistemic failing be worse than another? The paper develops a dual-factor view of degrees (...) of epistemic criticizability. According to the view, degrees of epistemic criticizability are (i) an inverse function of degrees of doxastic justification and (ii) a function of degrees of agent culpability. The paper develops an account of each factor, and explains how they should be weighted. The paper also addresses the importance of modelling degrees of epistemic criticizability in a broader context. I focus on the role that such a model can play in the ethics of epistemic criticism. (shrink)

What is the relationship between degrees of belief and binary beliefs? Can the latter be expressed as a function of the former—a so-called “belief-binarization rule”—without running into difficulties such as the lottery paradox? We show that this problem can be usefully analyzed from the perspective of judgment-aggregation theory. Although some formal similarities between belief binarization and judgment aggregation have been noted before, the connection between the two problems has not yet been studied in full generality. In this paper, we (...) seek to fill this gap. The paper is organized around a baseline impossibility theorem, which we use to map out the space of possible solutions to the belief-binarization problem. Our theorem shows that, except in limiting cases, there exists no belief-binarization rule satisfying four initially plausible desiderata. Surprisingly, this result is a direct corollary of the judgment-aggregation variant of Arrow’s classic impossibility theorem in social choice theory. (shrink)

Individuals come across extreme Uncertainty situations, feeling rounded–up 360 degrees, as if trapped inside Chakra Vyuha (wheel form strategy). For uncertainty is often related to future, the concept of Future Time perspective (FTP) is relied upon for attaining positive states. But FTP is a critical factor which works both positively and negatively depending on other factors intervening. For politicians and businessmen such states of being trapped in Chakra Vyuha, can mean end of their political life or business life. (...) In the current paper, the author describes the introspection of a Subject while he attempted to alter his Future Time perspective. This introspective report further gave clue for Merged Time Perspective or Seamless Time Horizon instead of FTP and also that Regulatory Focus and Resistance To Change need to be combined, coalesced and treated on a single continuum. Current author also has proposed a therapy outline to help businessmen and politicians to come out of devastating situations in which they feel rounded – up by opponents 360 degrees. (shrink)

The block universe theory of time is commonly said to be incompatible with temporal becoming. This confuses Maudlin who upholds both eternalism and passage. The aim of this paper is to answer Maudlin’s plea for clarification by distinguishing four degrees of temporal becoming. After discussing their respective compatibility with the block universe, I show that Maudlin asks much less from temporal becoming than most philosophers of time. Consequently, his form of becoming is compatible with the block universe, whereas the (...) stronger forms of becoming are not. (shrink)

Why is it good to be less, rather than more incoherent? Julia Staffel, in her excellent book “Unsettled Thoughts,” answers this question by showing that if your credences are incoherent, then there is some way of nudging them toward coherence that is guaranteed to make them more accurate and reduce the extent to which they are Dutch-bookable. This seems to show that such a nudge toward coherence makes them better fit to play their key epistemic and practical roles: representing the (...) world and guiding action. In this paper, I argue that Staffel’s strategy needs a small tweak. While she identifies appropriate measures of epistemic value, she does not identify appropriate measures of practical value. Staffel measures practical value using Dutchbookability scores. But credences have practical value in virtue of recommending actions that produce as much utility as possible. And while susceptibility to a Dutch book is a surefire sign that one’s credences are needlessly bad at this task, one’s degree of Dutch-bookability is not itself a good measure of how well they recommend practically valuable actions. Strictly proper scoring rules, I argue, are the right tools for measuring both epistemic and practical value. I show that we can rerun Staffel’s strategy swapping in strictly proper scoring rules for Dutch-bookability measures. So long as one’s epistemic scoring rule and practical scoring rule are “sufficiently similar,” there is some way of nudging incoherent credences toward coherence that is guaranteed to yield more of both types of value. (shrink)

The paper analyses in some depth the distinction by Paul Humphreys between "epistemic opacity" —which I refer to as "weak epistemic opacity" here— and "essential epistemic opacity", and defends the idea that epistemic opacity in general can be made sense as coming in degrees. The idea of degrees of epistemic opacity is then exploited to show, in the context of computer simulations, the tight relation between the concept of epistemic opacity and actual scientific (modelling and simulation) practices. As (...) a consequence, interesting questions arise in connection with the role of agents dealing with epistemically opaque processes such as computer simulations. (shrink)

While some form of loss of control is often assumed to be a common feature of the diverse manifestations of addiction, it is far from clear how loss of control should be understood. In this paper, I put forward a concept of decrease in control in addiction that aims to fill this gap and thus provide a general framework for thinking about addictive behavior. The development of this account involves two main steps. First, I present a view of degrees (...) of control as the degree to which an agent would be responsive to potential or counterfactual sufficient reasons to do otherwise. Second, I sketch an account of the relevant control-undermining factors in addiction that is consonant with my proposed view of degrees of control. Being a high-level functional property, reasons-responsiveness is particularly well suited to frame an account of control-undermining factors that is doubly pluralistic: it encompasses the contribution of factors both internal and external to the agent, and it is consistent with various proposals as to the precise nature of the anomaly taking place in the psychology of addiction. (shrink)

This essay outlines a hierarchical framework of Reality that allows for degrees of Reality. I use Reality (with a capital “R”) to designate reality in a primitive, metaphysical sense. Reality, grounding, and essence are the key elements of the framework presented here. I assume that Reality must have a fundamental level and all fundamental phenomena must be Real. Moreover, I postulate that everything non-fundamental is ultimately grounded in the fundamental Real. But what about the Reality of the non-fundamental? I (...) argue that it is possible for non-fundamental phenomena to be Real, Unreal, or Semi-Real. The framework developed here accommodates these possibilities and illuminates them using the notion of essence. I argue that the essential nature of a phenomenon determines its degree of Reality. The framework does not assume that Reality must have degrees but only that it may have degrees. Its theoretical attractiveness consists in its ability to accommodate many diverse intuitions about grounding, help us better understand and classify theories about grounding, and illuminate Reality and its possible degrees. (shrink)

Agents are often assumed to have degrees of belief (“credences”) and also binary beliefs (“beliefs simpliciter”). How are these related to each other? A much-discussed answer asserts that it is rational to believe a proposition if and only if one has a high enough degree of belief in it. But this answer runs into the “lottery paradox”: the set of believed propositions may violate the key rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure. In earlier work, we showed that this (...) problem generalizes: there exists no local function from degrees of belief to binary beliefs that satisfies some minimal conditions of rationality and non-triviality. “Locality” means that the binary belief in each proposition depends only on the degree of belief in that proposition, not on the degrees of belief in others. One might think that the impossibility can be avoided by dropping the assumption that binary beliefs are a function of degrees of belief. We prove that, even if we drop the “functionality” restriction, there still exists no local relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs that satisfies some minimal conditions. Thus functionality is not the source of the impossibility; its source is the condition of locality. If there is any non-trivial relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs at all, it must be a “holistic” one. We explore several concrete forms this “holistic” relation could take. (shrink)

According to the recent Perceptual Confidence view, perceptual experiences possess not only a representational content, but also a degree of confidence in that content. The motivations for this view are partly phenomenological and partly epistemic. We discuss both the phenomenological and epistemic motivations for the view, and the resulting account of the interface between perceptual experiences and degrees of belief. We conclude that, in their present state of development, orthodox accounts of perceptual experience are still to be favoured over (...) the perceptual confidence view. (shrink)

People often act in ways that appear incompatible with their sincere assertions. But how might we explain such cases? On the shifting view, subjects’ degrees of belief may be highly sensitive to changes in context. This paper articulates and refines this view, after defending it against recent criticisms. It details two mechanisms by which degrees of beliefs may shift.

Degrees of belief are familiar to all of us. Our confidence in the truth of some propositions is higher than our confidence in the truth of other propositions. We are pretty confident that our computers will boot when we push their power button, but we are much more confident that the sun will rise tomorrow. Degrees of belief formally represent the strength with which we believe the truth of various propositions. The higher an agent’s degree of belief for (...) a particular proposition, the higher her confidence in the truth of that proposition. For instance, Sophia’s degree of belief that it will be sunny in Vienna tomorrow might be .52, whereas her degree of belief that the train will leave on time might be .23. The precise meaning of these statements depends, of course, on the underlying theory of degrees of belief. These theories offer a formal tool to measure degrees of belief, to investigate the relations between various degrees of belief in different propositions, and to normatively evaluate degrees of belief. (shrink)

Human freedom is in tension with nomological determinism and with statistical determinism. The goal of this paper is to answer both challenges. Four contributions are made to the free-will debate. First, we propose a classification of scientific theories based on how much freedom they allow. We take into account that indeterminism comes in different degrees and that both the laws and the auxiliary conditions can place constraints. A scientific worldview pulls towards one end of this classification, while libertarianism pulls (...) towards the other end of the spectrum. Second, inspired by Hoefer, we argue that an interval of auxiliary conditions corresponds to a region in phase space, and to a bundle of possible block universes. We thus make room for a form of non-nomological indeterminism. Third, we combine crucial elements from the works of Hoefer and List; we attempt to give a libertarian reading of this combination. On our proposal, throughout spacetime, there is a certain amount of freedom that can be interpreted as the result of agential choices. Fourth, we focus on the principle of alternative possibilities throughout and propose three ways of strengthening it. (shrink)

A central question in contemporary ethics and political philosophy concerns which entities have moral status. In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of the view that moral status comes in degrees. I argue that degrees of moral status can be specified along two dimensions: (i) the weight of the reason to protect an entity’s morally significant rights and interests; and/or (ii) the rights and interests that are considered morally significant. And I explore some of the complexities that (...) arise when we link degrees of moral status to the weight of reasons to protect bundles and/or the content and size of these bundles, in particular regarding the attribution of moral status to nonparadigmatic entities (e.g. people with severe cognitive disabilities, children, embryos and foetuses, robots, non-human animals, ecosystems, and rivers). (shrink)

We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical and philosophical consequences for the ontological (...) status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology. (shrink)

F.A. Hayek argued that the sciences of complex phenomena, including (perhaps especially) economics, are limited to incomplete “explanations of the principle” and “pattern predictions.” According to Hayek, these disciplines suffer from (what I call) a data problem, i.e., the hopelessness of populating theoretical models with data adequate to full explanations and precise predictions. In Hayek’s terms, explanations in these fields are always a matter of “degree.” However, Hayek’s methodology implies a distinct theory problem: theoretical models of complex phenomena may be (...) underspecified so that, even were all the data available, a full explanation could not be inferred from the model. Where the sciences of complex phenomena are subject to both the data and theory problems, explanations and predictions will be of even lesser “predictive degree.” The paper also considers how to interpret Hayek’s claim that pattern predictions are falsifiable. (shrink)

Schwitzgebel (2001) — henceforth 'S' — offers three examples in order to convince us that there are situations in which individuals are neither accurately describable as believing that p or failing to so believe, but are rather in 'in-between states of belief'. He then argues that there are no 'Bayesian' or representational strategies for explicating these, and proposes a dispositional account. I do not have any fundamental objection to the idea that there might be 'in-between states of belief'. What I (...) shall argue, rather, is that: (I) S does not provide a convincing argument that there really are such states; (II) S does not show, as he claims, that 'in-between states of belief' could not be accounted for in terms of degrees of belief; (III) S’s dispositional account of 'in-between states of belief' is more problematic than the 'degree of belief' alternative. (shrink)

Ordinarily, we take moral responsibility to come in degrees. Despite this commonplace, theories of moral responsibility have focused on the minimum threshold conditions under which agents are morally responsible. But this cannot account for our practices of holding agents to be more or less responsible. In this paper we remedy this omission. More specifically, we extend an account of reasons-responsiveness due to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza according to which an agent is morally responsible only if she is (...) appropriately receptive to and reactive to reasons for action. Building on this, we claim that the degree to which an agent is responsible will depend on the degree to which she is able to recognize and react to reasons. To analyze this, we appeal to relations of comparative similarity between possible worlds, arguing that the degree to which an agent is reasons-reactive depends on the nearest possible world in which given sufficient reason to do otherwise, she does so. Similarly, we argue that the degree to which an agent is reasons-receptive will depend on the intelligibility of her patterned recognition of reasons. By extending an account of reasons-responsiveness in these ways, we are able to rationalize our practice of judging people to be more or less responsible. (shrink)

I applaud recent improvements upon previous guidelines for the assessment of pain in non-human species and the application of their framework towards decapod crustaceans. Rather than constituting a mere intermediate solution between the scientific difficulty of settling questions of animal consciousness and the need for a framework for the purposes of animal welfare legislation, I will argue that the longer lists of criteria for animal sentience should make us realize that animal sentience is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that must be studied (...) with a plethora of methods in order to assess its diversity across the tree of life. (shrink)

In his recent book, The Dimensions of Consequentialism, Martin Peterson puts forward a new version of consequentialism that he dubs ‘multidimensional consequentialism’. The defining thesis of the new theory is that there are irreducible moral aspects that jointly determine the deontic status of an act. In defending his particular version of multidimensional consequentialism, Peterson advocates the thesis—he calls it DEGREE—that if two or more moral aspects clash, the act under consideration is right to some non-extreme degree. This goes against the (...) orthodoxy according to which—Peterson calls this RESOLUTION—each act is always either entirely right or entirely wrong. The argument against RESOLUTION appeals to the existence of so-called deontic leaps: the idea is that endorsing RESOLUTION would not give each relevant moral aspect its due in the final analysis. Our paper argues that, contrary to Peterson, all moral aspects remain visible in what can properly be called the final analysis of a moral theory that involves RESOLUTION, moral aspects do not have to remain visible in judgements of all-things-considered rightness or wrongness, respectively, introduction of what Peterson calls verdictive reasons does not change the overall picture in favour of DEGREE. We conclude that multi-dimensional consequentialists should accept RESOLUTION rather than DEGREE. (shrink)

Physical systems can store information and their informational properties are governed by the laws of information. In particular, the amount of information that a physical system can convey is limited by the number of its degrees of freedom and their distinguishable states. Here we explore the properties of the physical systems with absolutely one degree of freedom. The central point in these systems is the tight limitation on their information capacity. Discussing the implications of this limitation we demonstrate that (...) such systems exhibit a number of features, such as randomness, no-cloning, and non-commutativity, which are peculiarities attributed to quantum mechanics (QM). After demonstrating many astonishing parallels to quantum behavior, we postulate an interpretation of quantum physics as the physics of systems with a single degree of freedom. We then show how a number of other quantum conundrum can be understood by considering the informational properties of the systems and also resolve the EPR paradox. In the present work, we assume that the formalism of the QM is correct and well-supported by experimental verification and concentrate on the interpretational aspects of the theory. (shrink)

The article proceeds upon the assumption that the beliefs and degrees of belief of rational agents satisfy a number of constraints, including: consistency and deductive closure for belief sets, conformity to the axioms of probability for degrees of belief, and the Lockean Thesis concerning the relationship between belief and degree of belief. Assuming that the beliefs and degrees of belief of both individuals and collectives satisfy the preceding three constraints, I discuss what further constraints may be imposed (...) on the aggregation of beliefs and degrees of belief. Some possibility and impossibility results are presented. The possibility results suggest that the three proposed rationality constraints are compatible with reasonable aggregation procedures for belief and degree of belief. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of the moral status of non-human animals, or the question whether sentient animals are morally considerable. The arguments for and against the moral status of animals are discussed, above all the argument from marginal cases. It is argued that sentient animals have moral status based on their having interests in their experiential well-being, but that there are degrees of moral status. Two interest-based approaches are presented and discussed: DeGrazia’s view that sentient animals have (...) interests in continuing to live, and that their interests should be granted moral weight; and McMahan’s TRIA which similarly postulates that animals have interests and that in a given situation we should compare the human and animal interests at stake. Finally, the paper concludes that the anthropocentric approach to animal ethics should be abandoned in favour of the biocentric ethics. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the fundamental ideas of a new theory of justification strength. This theory is based on the epistemological approach to argumentation. Even the thesis of a valid justification can be false for various reasons. The theory outlined here identifies such possible errors. Justification strength is equated with the degree to which such possible errors are excluded. The natural expression of this kind of justification strength is the (rational) degree of certainty of the belief in the thesis.

This paper focuses on physiological integration in multicellular systems, a notion often associated with biological individuality, but which has not received enough attention and needs a thorough theoretical treatment. Broadly speaking, physiological integration consists in how different components come together into a cohesive unit in which they are dependent on one another for their existence and activity. This paper argues that physiological integration can be understood by considering how the components of a biological multicellular system are controlled and coordinated in (...) such a way that their activities can contribute to the maintenance of the system. The main implication of this perspective is that different ways of controlling their parts may give rise to multicellular organizations with different degrees of integration. After defining control, this paper analyses how control is realized in two examples of multicellular systems located at different ends of the spectrum of multicellularity: biofilms and animals. It focuses on differences in control ranges, and it argues that a high degree of integration implies control exerted at both medium and long ranges, and that insofar as biofilms lack long-range control (relative to their size) they can be considered as less integrated than other multicellular systems. It then discusses the implication of this account for the debate on physiological individuality and the idea that degrees of physiological integration imply degrees of individuality. (shrink)

Prominent non-speciesist attempts to determine the amount of moral standing properly attributable to conscious beings argue that certain non-human animals should be granted the highest consideration as self-conscious persons. Most of these theories also include a lesser moral standing for the sentient, or merely conscious, non-person. Thus, the standard approach has been to advocate a two-tiered theory—'sentience' or 'consciousness' and 'self-consciousness' or 'personhood'. While the first level seems to present little interpretative difficulty, the second has recently been criticized as a (...) rather obscurantist label. For it would seem, both on empirical and conceptual grounds, that self-consciousness/personhood comes in degrees. If these observations are at all revealing, they indicate that the two-tiered model is inadequate. This is the view I will support here, replacing the standard dichotomy with a more accurate seven-tiered account of cognitive moral standing adaptable to all three major perspectives of moral reasoning, namely, utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. (shrink)

Metaphysical emergence has often been used to help understand the relationship between the entities of physics and the entities of the special sciences. What are the prospects of using metaphysical emergence within physics, to help understand the relationship between three-dimensional physical entities, and the non-three-dimensional entities that have been recently posited in certain interpretations of quantum mechanics and quantum gravity? This paper explores Jessica Wilson’s (2021) analysis of certain cases of metaphysical emergence in terms of degrees of freedom and (...) raises several questions that need to be answered in order to better understand whether this analysis can be used to handle cases of metaphysical emergence within physics. (shrink)

Through analyzing policy and regulatory documents as well as in-depth interviews with experts, this study aims to address two research purposes. First, inspired by Europe's institutional autonomy scorecard, this study aims to introduce a similar one that appropriates to the Vietnam’s context. Vietnam's scorecard also has four dimensions as like the European one, these are: academic, organizational, staffing and financial. Nevertheless, the differences include: (i) the selection of specific indicators corresponding to each dimension of the scorecard; and (ii) the scoring (...) system of the autonomy level pertaining to each indicator. These differences reflect the local attributes of Vietnam which are dissimilar to the European context. Second, Vietnam's institutional autonomy scorecard would be adopted to measure the levels of autonomy regarding four types of universities in Vietnam: (i) Vietnam national universities; (ii) autonomous public universities; (iii) regular public universities; and (iv) private universities. Findings of this study does not only provide implications for Vietnamese policymakers and institutional leaders but also stakeholders in other countries. We encourage scholars in other countries to employ a similar approach to develop scorecards that are appropriate to their local contexts. (shrink)

In 2012, the politician Todd Akin caused a firestorm by suggesting, in the context of an argument about the moral permissibility of abortion, that some forms of rape were. This seemed to imply that other forms of rape must not be legitimate. In response, several commentators pointed out that rape is a and that there are. While the intention of these commentators was clear, I argue that they may have played into the very stereotype of rape endorsed by Akin. Such (...) a response, I claim, actually obscures a range of sexual harms, including some that may not rise to the level of being a crime. I also offer some thoughts on the moral psychology behind anti-abortion arguments of the kind advanced by Akin. (shrink)

There is a significant debate going on long time about the existence of a theory of consciousness in Spinoza’s philosophical system of thought. This article, on the one hand, offers a different reading to alleviate the current debate, and on the other hand, it aims to bring together and analyze the main theses of this debate. In this matter, it is argued that a theory of consciousness can be deduced in Spinoza’s system of thought, and despite all its parallelism, the (...) possibility of conceptual thinking the “mind” independently from the “body” even if not in reality, is examined. In this context, first, the doctrine of “ideas of ideas” is put forward as the metaphysical basis of consciousness. Then, the “degrees of consciousness”, which are formed according to the mind’s ability to reach more “ideas” about the parts that make up the complex structure of the body, and to extract the “ideas of ideas” from these “ideas”, are determined as the epistemological aspect of consciousness. Depending on the degrees of ideas of the body’s affections by the mind and the kinds of knowledge, it is determined how the human mind reaches the consciousness of “self”, “God” and “other things”. The conclusion in the study is that in Spinoza, consciousness is built on “knowledge”; while “ideas” represents knowledge, the “ideas of ideas” represents consciousness. Thus, the unclear boundaries of the distinction between “conscious minds” and “un- conscious minds” and “conscious ideas” and “un-conscious ideas” in the human mind, which are at the center of almost all discussions, are tried to be clarified. In this sense, Spinoza’s theory of consciousness in its most general scope is based on the theory of mind and the theory of knowledge, which is a result of first. In Spinoza’s theory of mind, especially when it comes to the human mind, every change that occurs in the body, corresponds to an idea (parallelism) or is represented as an idea. The ideas that occur in the human mind are just representations of the affections of the body, that is, of the changes that occur in the body according to the effects it receives and influences as a result of the relations established by the body. While the human mind perceives some of these ideas in a “confused”, “fragmentary” or “inadequate” way, it grasps some of them “clearly” or “adequately”. Spinoza puts forward his theories of mind and knowledge on this basis. However, the human mind is not settled with only the ideas of the body’s affection that occur in it, but also constitute secondary ideas about these ideas, regardless of whether they are adequate or inadequate. These secondary ideas express awareness of primary ideas, whether they are adequate or inadequate. In the article, this constitution and awareness, that is, the “ideas of the ideas”, is tried to be revealed in detail as the basic ground or main line of the Spinozist theory of consciousness. Other results or outcomes of the theory of consciousness require first to understand this basic ground. Accordingly, the human body is a very complex structure that has the most parts or components in Nature compared to the others. The human mind, on the other hand, has the capability to reach ideas about each element and its change of the complex structure of the body. However, the content of these ideas is formed according to the degree to which the human mind recognizes its own body. The degree to which the human mind knows its own body also determines the degree of its consciousness. Spinoza states that non-human beings also have a certain “degree of animation”, and while stating that what he says is valid for other beings as well as human beings, he also tries to justify that the human body is superior to other bodies and the human mind to other minds. Spinoza sees the superiority of one body over the other as the ability of one to perform more actions on one’s own, compared to the other. The more parts a body has or the more different kinds of objects it contains, the more it is available to perform actions and influences or receives effects. Because when a body encounters or interacts with other bodies, each of its parts can be affected by this encounter or relationship. Therefore, the more complex the body has, the more ideas the mind can have. This is the reason why the mind of a person is superior to other minds because of whose body is superior to other bodies. Depending on the human mind’s ability to know its own body, there are “unconscious ideas” and “conscious ideas” between the two minds when compared to and between ideas in the same mind, as well as a difference degree in consciousness from a lower level to a higher level. This degree of difference is discussed in the article as the epistemological result or outcome of consciousness. The “self-consciousness” of human, which comes to the fore as a result of considering the metaphysical basis of consciousness and its epistemological result together, constitutes the last subject of the article. Keywords: Philosophy, Spinoza, Mind, Consciousness, Ideas of Ideas, Self- Consciousness, Panpsychism. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses existing accounts of the nature of difficulty, finds them wanting, and proposes a new account. The concept of difficulty is routinely invoked in debates regarding degrees of moral responsibility, and the value of achievement. Until recently, however, there has not been any sustained attempt to provide an account of the nature of difficulty itself. This has changed with Gwen Bradford’s Achievement, which argues that difficulty is a matter of how much intense effort is expended. But (...) while this account captures something important about the relationship between difficulty and achievement, it fails to account for the fact that part of what makes achievements great is that they are difficult in a moderately agent-neutral kind of way. Nor is this thought captured by any other extant account. I argue that to fill this gap we should think of difficulty in terms of low probability of success. (shrink)

The article presents the innovatory understanding of the nomadic strategy of human being in the transitional condition. The aim of the article is to determine the role of the nomadic being way in the social group of internal migrants. It is substantiated, that aims and actions of a nomad are directed on creating new ways of realization and conceptualization of variants of nomadic being. It is explained, that a nomad doesn’t go by the way, offered by traditional (...) types of activity, but searches innovatory ways of realization, doesn’t stop on deciphering of traditionally existing being senses, but produces them him/herself. A subject, living in a space of “boundaries” is deprived of the settled comfort, he/she searches for a possibility of balance and harmony, social recognition and improvement of own life conditions in the movement and change. The culture of choice, formed by the logic of the modern market, gives a nomad resources for regulating the own freedom degree. Nomadic instruments correspond to the migrants’ way of life. Digital nomadism creates stimuli for the active life and adaptation to new conditions of different groups of migrants. (shrink)

The investigation of the degree of amotivation and subsequent intervention towards the motivation of undergraduate vocational and technical education (VTE) students has not received the same amount of attention as other disciplines. Despite the negative impact of a lack of volitional drive on students' practical skills learning, there is scarcity of literature on amotivation among VTE undergraduate students. This study aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) in transitioning undergraduate students from a state of being amotivated to (...) motivated. The study utilized a quasi-experimental research design and selected 168 students in their penultimate and final years majoring in agricultural education, business education, computer education, home economics, and industrial technical education who met the study's inclusion criteria. The intervention consisted of eight weeks of treatment and four weeks of follow-up meetings. An existing academic motivation scale was adapted for use, and data was collected through a self-report questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted using independent sample t-tests, and paired sample t-tests. The findings revealed that the level of amotivation among the students was high, and PBL had a significant impact on transitioning VTE students from being amotivated to motivated in the treatment group compared to those in the control group. Furthermore, the positive gains were maintained by the treatment group at follow-up. The study suggests that a PBL program can effectively address students' lack of volitional drive to engage in academic activities among undergraduate students majoring in agricultural education, business education, computer education, home economics, and industrial technical in Nigeria. (shrink)

Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain-general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has (...) been largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain-specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. (shrink)

What is the role of pleasure in determining a person’s well-being? I start by considering the nature of pleasure (i.e., what pleasure is). I then consider what factors, if any, can affect how much a given pleasure adds to a person’s lifetime well-being other than its degree of pleasurableness (i.e., how pleasurable it is). Finally, I consider whether it is plausible that there is any other way to add to somebody’s lifetime well-being than by giving him some (...) pleasure or helping him to avoid some pain. (shrink)

Within the Computer Science community, many ethical issues have emerged as significant and critical concerns. Computer ethics is an academic field in its own right and there are unique ethical issues associated with information technology. It encompasses a range of issues and concerns including privacy and agency around personal information, Artificial Intelligence and pervasive technology, the Internet of Things and surveillance applications. As computing technology impacts society at an ever growing pace, there are growing calls for more computer ethics content (...) to be included in Computer Science curricula. In this paper we present the results of a survey that polled faculty from Computer Science and related disciplines about teaching practices for computer ethics at their institutions. The survey was completed by respondents from 61 universities across 23 European countries. Participants were surveyed on whether or not computer ethics is taught to Computer Science students at each institution, the reasons why computer ethics is or is not taught, how computer ethics is taught, the background of staff who teach computer ethics and the scope of computer ethics curricula. This paper presents and discusses the results of the survey. (shrink)

_The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings_ addresses the problems an Anselmian perfect being faces in contexts involving unlimited options. Recent advances in the theory of vagueness, the metaphysics of multiverses and hyperspace, the theory of dynamic or sequential choice, the logic of moral and rational dilemmas, and metaethical theory provide the resources to formulate the new challenges and the Anselmian responses with an unusual degree of precision. Almeida shows that the challenges arising in the unusual contexts involving unlimited options sometimes (...) produce metaphysical surprise. (shrink)

According to comparativism, degrees of belief are reducible to a system of purely ordinal comparisons of relative confidence. (For example, being more confident that P than that Q, or being equally confident that P and that Q.) In this paper, I raise several general challenges for comparativism, relating to (i) its capacity to illuminate apparently meaningful claims regarding intervals and ratios of strengths of belief, (ii) its capacity to draw enough intuitively meaningful and theoretically relevant distinctions between (...) doxastic states, and (iii) its capacity to handle common instances of irrationality. (shrink)

The increasing use of Generative AI raises many ethical, philosophical, and legal issues. A key issue here is uncertainties about how different degrees of Generative AI assistance in the production of text impacts assessments of the human authorship of that text. To explore this issue, we developed an experimental mixed methods survey study (N = 602) asking participants to reflect on a scenario of a human author receiving assistance to write a short novel as part of a 3 (high, (...) medium, or low degrees of assistance) X 2 (human or AI assistant) factorial design. We found that, for a human author, the degree of assistance they receive matters for our assessments of their level of authorship, creatorship, and responsibility, but not what or who rendered that assistance, although it was more important to disclose human rather than AI assistance. However, in our assessments of the assisting agent, human assistants were viewed as warranting higher rates of authorship, creatorship, and responsibility, compared to AI assistants rendering the same level of support. These results help us to better understand emerging norms around collaborative human-AI generated text, with implications for other types of collaborative content creation. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that reflection on the patterns of practical concern that agents like us exhibit strongly suggests that the same person relation comes in continuous degrees rather than being an all or nothing matter. We call this the SP-degree thesis. Though the SP-degree thesis is consistent with a range of views about personal-identity, we argue that combining desire-first approaches to personal-identity with the SP-degree thesis better explains our patterns of practical concern, and hence gives us (...) reason to endorse such an approach. We then argue that the combination of the SP-degree thesis and the desire-first approach are best modelled by a stage-theoretic view of persistence according to which temporal counterpart relations are non-symmetric relations that come in continuous degrees. Ultimately, we think that the overall appeal of this package of views provides reason to accept the package: reasons that outstrip the reasons we have to endorse any particular member of the package. (shrink)

This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to (...) deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals. (shrink)

Reliabilists hold that a belief is doxastically justified if and only if it is caused by a reliable process. But since such a process is one that tends to produce a high ratio of true to false beliefs, reliabilism is on the face of it applicable to binary beliefs, but not to degrees of confidence or credences. For while beliefs admit of truth or falsity, the same cannot be said of credences in general. A natural question now arises: Can (...) reliability theories of justified belief be extended or modified to account for justified credence? In this paper, I address this question. I begin by showing that, as it stands, reliabilism cannot account for justified credence. I then consider three ways in which the reliabilist may try to do so by extending or modifying her theory, but I argue that such attempts face certain problems. After that, I turn to a version of reliabilism that incorporates evidentialist elements and argue that it allows us to avoid the problems that the other theories face. If I am right, this gives reliabilists a reason, aside from those given recently by Comesaña and Goldman, to move towards such a kind of hybrid theory. (shrink)

One bi-lingual - hungarian-ENGLISH - meditation and research about the Illness and the Living Being. Concentrated, of course, to the specific HUMAN reporting to them. The book investigates philosophically the issue of human illness and its organic pertinence to the meaning of human life starting from the recognition that the dangerous encounter with the experience of illness is an unavoidable – and as such crucial – experience of the life of any living being. As for us humans, there (...) is probably no mortal man who has never suffered of some – any! – kind of disease from his birth to the end of his life… Illness is therefore an experience or outright a danger of existence and its possibility, as well as a way of being that nobody has ever been and will ever be ontological or existentially exempted from. So, it may well be “arbitrary” or “accidental” which disease affects which being or person, when and to what degree, in what way, etc., but it is factually unavoidable that in the course of one’s entire life – from its very beginning to its very end – one would never fall ill in some respect. The paper discusses this issue by the ontological investigation of possibility. Together with the analyses about of the origins and history of the MEDICINE. -/- The english CONTENTS -/- Illness – A Possibility of the Living Being Prolegomena to the Philosophy of Human Illness ............................................. 127 -/- Excursus Sketchy considerations regarding the problems of Christian medicine and Christian healing ...................................................... 135 -/- A dialogue-attempt with Aristotle: Dynamis, energeia, entelecheia, and steresis ...................................................... 147 . (shrink)

According to evidentialist views, credence in a proposition p should be proportional to the degree of evidential support that one has in favor of p. However, empirical evidence suggests that our credences are systematically sensitive to practical factors. In this article, I provide a cost–benefit analysis of credences' practical sensitivity. The upshot of this analysis is that credences sensitive to practical factors fare better than practically insensitive ones along several dimensions. All things considered, our credences should be sensitive to practical (...) factors. (shrink)

This paper advances a new agentially undemanding account of the conditions of attributability, the Minimal Approval account, and argues that it has a number of advantages over traditional Deep Self theories, including the way in which it handles agents with conditions like addiction, Tourette syndrome, and misophonia. It is argued that in order for an agent to be attributionally responsible, the mental process that leads to her action must dispose her to be such that she would, upon reflec-tion, approve to (...) some minimal degree of being moved to action by the motive on which she in fact acts. (shrink)

In a recent issue of Bioethics, I argued that compulsory moral bioenhancement should be administered covertly. Alexander Zambrano has criticized this argument on two fronts. First, contrary to my claim, Zambrano claims that the prevention of ultimate harm by covert moral bioenhancement fails to meet conditions for permissible liberty‐restricting public health interventions. Second, contrary to my claim, Zambrano claims that covert moral bioenhancement undermines autonomy to a greater degree than does overt moral bioenhancement. In this paper, I rebut both of (...) these arguments, then finish by noting important avenues of research that Zambrano’s arguments motivate. (shrink)

I describe a way of handling comparative adjectives "a is P-er than b", in terms of degrees "a has P to degree d". I defend this approach against attacks due to C J F Williams in an article in the same issue of *Analysis*, by tracing his objections to the assumption that degrees must be linearly ordered. Since this abstract is written years later, I can mention that some of the ideas were taken further in my Hypercomparatives. Synthese (...) 111, 1997, 97-114 . (shrink)

When we speak of language we usually use the concept of a particular language. In this sense the concept denoted with the word language may vary from one language to another. Real language (=the language spoken) on the contrary is the reality lived by speakers thus encompassing complex and multifarious activities. Depending on the language spoken, the modes of thinking, modes of being in the conception of things, and systems of beliefs transmitted by means of particular languages, denote the (...) living reality of language with different grammatical categories. The concept “language” is expressed sometimes with a noun, thus denoting something existing in it; sometimes with a verb, thus denoting an action or an activity; and sometimes with an adverb, thus denoting the mode of an activity. The reality or degree of reality implicit in these grammatical categories involves a particular mode of thinking, prompted with a particular mode of being in the conception of things. Because of this it is necessary to distinguish the concept of language as something different from the reality of language. But first of all it is necessary to determine the reality or degree of reality of both the reality lived by speakers and the thing usually conceived of as language or a language. (shrink)