Results for 'Delia Murphy'

119 found
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  1. Beyond the Death-Drive: Psychoanalysis and Social Critique.Delia Popa & Iaan Reynolds - forthcoming - In Dustin Byrd & Seyed Javad Miri (eds.), Sigmund Freud as a Critical Social Theorist: Psychoanalysis and the Neurotic in Contemporary Society. Leiden: Brill.
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  2. Names Are Predicates.Delia Graff Fara - 2015 - Philosophical Review 124 (1):59-117.
    One reason to think that names have a predicate-type semantic value is that they naturally occur in count-noun positions: ‘The Michaels in my building both lost their keys’; ‘I know one incredibly sharp Cecil and one that's incredibly dull’. Predicativism is the view that names uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are predicates (...)
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  3. (2 other versions)Shifting sands: An interest relative theory of vagueness.Delia Graff Fara - 2000 - Philosophical Topics 28 (1):45--81.
    I propose that the meanings of vague expressions render the truth conditions of utterances of sentences containing them sensitive to our interests. For example, 'expensive' is analyzed as meaning 'costs a lot', which in turn is analyzed as meaning 'costs significantly greater than the norm'. Whether a difference is a significant difference depends on what our interests are. Appeal to the proposal is shown to provide an attractive resolution of the sorites paradox that is compatible with classical logic and semantics.
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  4. A problem for predicativism solved by predicativism.Delia Graff Fara - 2015 - Analysis 75 (3):362-370.
    Consider the following sentences: In every race, the colt won; In every race, John won.John Hawthorne and David Manley say that the difference between these two sentences raises a problem for Predicativism about names. According to the currently more standard version of Predicativism, a bare singular name in argument position, like ‘John’ in , is embedded in a definite description with an unpronounced definite article. The problem is supposed to be that permits a covarying reading that allows for different races (...)
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  5. ‘You're changing the subject’: An unfair objection to conceptual engineering?Delia Belleri - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    Conceptual engineering projects are sometimes criticized for ‘changing the subject’. In this paper, I first discuss three strategies that have been proposed to address the change of subject objection. I notice that these strategies fail in similar ways: they all deploy a ‘loose’ notion of subject matter, while the objector can always reply deploying a ‘strict’ notion. Based on this, I then argue that at least current formulations of the change of subject objection (together with the response strategies just mentioned), (...)
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  6. On Pluralism and Conceptual Engineering: Introduction and Overview.Delia Belleri - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-19.
    Pluralism is relevant to conceptual engineering in many ways. First of all, we face the issue of pluralism when trying to characterise the very object(s) of conceptual engineering. Is it just concepts? Could concepts be pluralistically conceived for the purposes of conceptual engineering? Or rather, is it concepts and other representational devices as well? Second, one may wonder whether concepts have only one function in our mental life (representation) or, rather, a plurality of functions (including non-representational ones). Third, it is (...)
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  7. Downplaying the change of subject objection to conceptual engineering.Delia Belleri - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Conceptual engineering projects have been criticized for creating discontinuities of subject-matter and, as a result, discontinuities in inquiries: call this the Change of Subject objection. In this paper, I explore a way of dealing with the objection that clarifies its scope and eventually downplays it. First, two strategies aimed at saving subject-continuity are examined and found wanting: Herman Cappelen’s appeal to topics, and the account in terms of concept function. Second, the idea is introduced that one can begin an object-level (...)
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  8. Dear haecceitism.Delia Graff Fara - 2009 - Erkenntnis 70 (3):285–297.
    If a counterpart theorist’s understanding of the counterpart relation precludes haecceitist differences between possible worlds, as David Lewis’s does, how can he admit haecceitist possibilities, as Lewis wants to? Lewis (Philosophical Review 3–32, 1983; On the Plurality of Worlds, 1986) devised what he called a ‘cheap substitute for haecceitism,’ which would allow for haecceitist possibilities while preserving the counterpart relation as a purely qualitative one. The solution involved lifting an earlier (Journal of Philosophy 65(5):113–126, 1968; 68(7):203–211, 1971) ban on there (...)
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  9. Critical Phenomenology and Phenomenological Critique.Delia Popa & Iaan Reynolds - 2021 - Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai Philosophia 66 (1):7-20.
    Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics (...)
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  10. (1 other version)Descriptions with adverbs of quantification.Delia Graff Fara - 2006 - Philosophical Issues 16 (1):65–87.
    In “Descriptions as Predicates” (Fara 2001) I argued that definite and indefinite descriptions should be given a uniform semantic treatment as predicates rather than as quantifier phrases. The aim of the current paper is to clarify and elaborate one of the arguments for the descriptions-aspredicates view, one that concerns the interaction of descriptions with adverbs of quantification.
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  11. Towards a unified notion of disagreement.Delia Belleri & Michele Palmira - 2013 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 88 (1):139-159.
    The recent debate on Semantic Contextualism and Relativism has definitely brought the phenomenon of disagreement under the spotlight. Relativists have considered disagreement as a means to accomplish a defence of their own position regarding the semantics of knowledge attributions, epistemic modals, taste predicates, and so on. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, we argue that several specific notions of disagreement can be subsumed under a common “schema” which provides a unified and overarching notion of disagreement. Secondly, we avail (...)
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  12. Conceptual Engineering Between Representational Skepticism and Complacency: Is There a Third Way?Delia Belleri - 2023 - Topoi 42 (4):1051-1062.
    Conceptual engineering has been linked by Herman Cappelen to a position called “representational skepticism”, described as one’s refusal to uncritically take over the conceptual representations one is handed. This position is contrasted with an uncritical attitude, called “representational complacency”. Arguably, neither position, or a hybrid of the two, is rationally sustainable. This paper therefore proposes an alternative option, called “critical concept conservatism”, stating that having a concept makes it rational (in a suitable sense of “rational”) for one to retain it, (...)
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  13. Desires, Scope, and Tense.Delia Graff - 2003 - Philosophical Perspectives 17 (1):141-163.
    According to James McCawley (1981) and Richard Larson and Gabriel Segal (1995), the following sentence is three-ways ambiguous: -/- Harry wants to be the mayor of Kenai. -/- According to them also, the three-way ambiguity cannot be accommodated on the Russellian view that definite descriptions are quantified noun phrases. In order to capture the three-way ambiguity of the sentence, these authors propose that definite descriptions must be ambiguous: sometimes they are predicate expressions; sometimes they are Russellian quantified noun phrases. After (...)
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  14. Ambivalent Identifications: Narcissism, Melancholia, and Sublimation.Delia Popa & Iaan Reynolds - 2022 - Consecutio Rerum: Rivista Critica Della Postmodernità 11 (6):161-186.
    Beginning with Freud’s treatment of identification as an ambivalent process, we explore identification’s polarization between narcissistic idealization and melancholic division. While narcissistic identification can be seen as a strategy adopted by the ego to avoid the educational development of its drives and to maintain itself either in whole or in part in an infantile state, melancholic identification activates a tension between the ego-ideal and the real ego at the expense of the latter. After discussing the ambivalence of identification, we review (...)
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  15. Form and Content: A Defence of Aesthetic Value in Science.Alice Murphy - 2023 - Philosophy of Science:1-26.
    Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between the content (...)
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  16. Ontological disagreements, reference, and charity: A challenge for Hirsch's deflationism.Delia Belleri - 2022 - Theoria 88 (5):982-996.
    Eli Hirsch argues that certain ontological disputes involve a conflict between “equivalent” languages, and that the principle of charity compels each disputant to interpret the other as speaking truly in their own language. For Hirsch, a language’s semantics maps sentences (in context) onto sets of possible worlds but assigns no role to reference. I argue that this method leads to an overly uncharitable portrayal of the disputes at issue – whereby ontologists who speak “equivalent” languages can only argue about syntax. (...)
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  17. Why Semantic Unspecificity is not Indexicality.Delia Belleri - 2014 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 10 (1):56-69.
    In this paper, I address the idea that certain sentences suffer from what is generally called semantic unspecificity: their meaning is determinate, but their truth conditions are not. While there tends to be agreement on the idea that semantic unspecificity differs from phenomena such as ambiguity and vagueness, some theorists have defended an account which traces it to indexicality, broadly construed. Some authors have tried to vindicate the distinction between unspecificity and indexicality and, in this paper, I pursue the same (...)
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  18. What is left of irrationality?Kathleen Murphy-Hollies & Chiara Caporuscio - 2023 - Philosophical Psychology 36 (4):808-818.
    In his recent book Bad Beliefs and Why They Happen to Good People, Neil Levy argues that conspiracy theories result from the same rational processes that underlie epistemic success. While we think many of Levy’s points are valuable, like his criticism of the myth of individual cognition and his emphasis on the importance of one’s social epistemic environment, we believe that his account overlooks some important aspects. We argue that social deference is an active process, and as such can be (...)
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  19. The Aesthetic and Literary Qualities of Scientific Thought Experiments.Alice Murphy - 2020 - In Milena Ivanova & Steven French (eds.), The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding. New York: Routledge.
    Is there a role for aesthetic judgements in science? One aspect of scientific practice, the use of thought experiments, has a clear aesthetic dimension. Thought experiments are creatively produced artefacts that are designed to engage the imagination. Comparisons have been made between scientific (and philosophical) thought experiments and other aesthetically appreciated objects. In particular, thought experiments are said to share qualities with literary fiction as they invite us to imagine a fictional scenario and often have a narrative form (Elgin 2014). (...)
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  20. (1 other version)Gap Principles, Penumbral Consequence, and Infinitely Higher-Order Vagueness.Delia Graff Fara - 2003 - In J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on the Semantics of Paradox. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    Philosophers disagree about whether vagueness requires us to admit truth-value gaps, about whether there is a gap between the objects of which a given vague predicate is true and those of which it is false on an appropriately constructed sorites series for the predicate---a series involving small increments of change in a relevant respect between adjacent elements, but a large increment of change in that respect between the endpoints. There appears, however, to be widespread agreement that there is some sense (...)
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  21. Descriptions as predicates.Delia Graff Fara - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 102 (1):1-42.
    Although Strawson’s main aim in “On Referring” was to argue that definite descriptions can be used referentially – that is, “to mention or refer to some individual person or single object . . . , in the course of doing what we should normally describe as making a statement about that person [or] object” (1950, p. 320) – he denied that definite descriptions are always used referentially. The description in ‘Napoleon was the greatest French soldier’ is not used referentially, says (...)
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  22. Agency in Mental Illness and Cognitive Disability.Dominic Murphy & Natalia Washington - 2022 - In Manuel Vargas & John Doris (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. pp. 893-910.
    This chapter begins by sketching an account of morally responsible agency and the general conditions under which it may fail. We discuss how far individuals with psychiatric diagnoses may be exempt from morally responsible agency in the way that infants are, with examples drawn from a sample of diagnoses intended to make dierent issues salient. We further discuss a recent proposal that clinicians may hold patients responsible without blaming them for their acts. We also consider cognitively impaired subjects in the (...)
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  23. Why Delight in Screamed Vocals? Emotional Hardcore and the Case Against Beautifying Pain.Sean T. Murphy - 2024 - British Journal of Aesthetics 64 (4):625-646.
    Emotional hardcore and other music genres featuring screamed vocals are puzzling for the appreciator. The typical fan attaches appreciative value to musical screams of emotional pain, all the while acknowledging it would be inappropriate to hold similar attitudes towards their sonically similar everyday counterpart: actual human screaming. Call this the screamed vocals problem. To solve the problem, I argue we must attend to the anti-sublimating aims that get expressed in the emotional hardcore vocalist’s choice to scream the lyrics. Screamed vocals (...)
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  24. Imagination and Creativity in the Scientific Realm.Alice Murphy - 2024 - In Amy Kind & Julia Langkau (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity. Oxford University Press.
    Historically left to the margins, the topics of imagination and creativity have gained prominence in philosophy of science, challenging the once dominant distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’. The aim of this chapter is to explore imagination and creativity starting from issues within contemporary philosophy of science, making connections to these topics in other domains along the way. It discusses the recent literature on the role of imagination in models and thought experiments, and their comparison with fictions. (...)
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  25. ‘Fine, Invisible Threads’: Schopenhauer on the Cognitively Mediated Structure of Motivation.Sean T. Murphy - 2022 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 4 (1):1-22.
    The central claim of Schopenhauer’s account of human motivation is that ‘cognition is the medium of motives’. In light of motivation’s cognitively mediated structure, he contends that human beings are caused to act by ‘mere thoughts’, what he refers to metaphorically as ‘fine, invisible threads’. Despite this avowedly intellectualist handling of the subject, some commentators remain convinced that Schopenhauer is best read as accepting the ‘Humean truism’ that reason alone never motivates; rather, motivation always has its source in desire together (...)
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  26. Sensitivity Meets Explanation: An Improved Counterfactual Condition on Knowledge.Peter Murphy & Tim Black - 2012 - In Kelly Becker & Tim Black (eds.), The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 26-40.
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  27. Justified Belief from Unjustified Belief.Peter Murphy - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (4):602-617.
    Under what conditions is a belief inferentially justified? A partial answer is found in Justification from Justification : a belief is inferentially justified only if all of the beliefs from which it is essentially inferred are justified. After reviewing some important features of JFJ, I offer a counterexample to it. Then I outline a positive suggestion for how to think about inferentially justified beliefs while still retaining a basing condition. I end by concluding that epistemologists need a model of inferentially (...)
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  28. The Defect in Effective Skeptical Scenarios.Peter Murphy - 2013 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 3 (4):271-281.
    What epistemic defect needs to show up in a skeptical scenario if it is to effectively target some belief? According to the false belief account, the targeted belief must be false in the skeptical scenario. According to the competing ignorance account, the targeted belief must fall short of being knowledge in the skeptical scenario. This paper argues for two claims. The first is that, contrary to what is often assumed, the ignorance account is superior to the false belief account. The (...)
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  29. Libertarian Law and Military Defense.Robert P. Murphy - 2017 - Libertarian Papers 9:213-232.
    Joseph Newhard (2017) argues that a libertarian anarchist society would be at a serious military disadvantage if it extended the nonaggression principle to include potential foreign invaders. He goes so far as to recommend cultivating the ability to launch a nuclear attack on foreign cities. In contrast, I argue that the free society would derive its strength from a total commitment to property rights and the protection of innocent life. Both theory and history suggest that a free society would be (...)
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  30. Sontag on Impertinent Sympathy and Photographs of Evil.Sean T. Murphy - 2019 - In Colin Marshall (ed.), Comparative Metaethics: Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality. London: Routledge.
    This chapter corrects for Susan Sontag's undeserved neglect by contemporary moral philosophers by bringing awareness to some of the unique metaethical insights born of her reflections on photographic representations of evil. I argue that Sontag's thought provides fertile ground for thinking about: (1) moral perception and its relation to moral knowledge; and (2) the epistemic and moral value of our emotional responses to the misery and suffering of others. I show that, contrary to standard moral perception theory (e.g. Blum 1994), (...)
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  31. Using Gattaca to Teach Genetic Discrimination.Peter Murphy - 2009 - Film and Philosophy 1 (13):65-76.
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  32. Which Method(s) for Conceptual Engineering?Manuel Gustavo Isaac, Belleri Delia, Brun Georg, Decock Lieven, Koch Steffen, Pollock Joey & Reuter Kevin - 2022 - In Tomas Marvan, Hanne Andersen, Hasok Chang, Benedikt Löwe & Ivo Pezlar (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology. London: College Publications.
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  33. Paper: Parents' choices in banking boys' testicular tissue.Timothy Murphy - 2010 - Journal of Medical Ethics 36 (12):806-809.
    Researchers are working to derive sperm from banked testicular tissue taken from pre-pubertal boys who face therapies or injuries that destroy sperm production. Success in deriving sperm from this tissue will help to preserve the option for these boys to have genetically related children later in life. For the twin moral reasons of preserving access and equity in regard to having such children, clinicians and researchers are justified in offering the option to the parents of all affected boys. However, some (...)
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  34. So How Much Should I Give? Extending Class Coverage of SInger's Work on Poverty Ethics.Peter Murphy - 2015 - APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy 2 (14):7-14.
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  35. Divine Rationality, Divine Morality, and Divine Love: A Response to Jordan.Mark C. Murphy - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (4):203-211.
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  36. In Defense of Sensitivity.Tim Black & Peter Murphy - 2007 - Synthese 154 (1):53-71.
    The sensitivity condition on knowledge says that one knows that P only if one would not believe that P if P were false. Difficulties for this condition are now well documented. Keith DeRose has recently suggested a revised sensitivity condition that is designed to avoid some of these difficulties. We argue, however, that there are decisive objections to DeRose’s revised condition. Yet rather than simply abandoning his proposed condition, we uncover a rationale for its adoption, a rationale which suggests a (...)
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  37. Are Strong States Key to Reducing Violence? A Test of Pinker.Ryan Murphy - 2016 - Libertarian Papers 8:311-317.
    This note evaluates the claim of Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature that the advent of strong states led to a decline in violence. I test this claim in the modern context, measuring the effect of the strength of government in lower-income countries on reductions in homicide rates. The strength of government is measured using Polity IV, Worldwide Governance Indicators, and government consumption as a percentage of GDP. The data do not support Pinker’s hypothesis.
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  38. Experimental Philosophy: 1935-1965.Taylor Murphy - 2014 - In Tania Lombrozo, Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 1. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK. pp. vol. 1, pp. 325-368.
    In the heyday of linguistic philosophy an experimental philosophy movement was born, and this chapter tells its story, both in its historical and philosophical context and as it is connected to controversies about experimental philosophy today. From its humble beginnings at the Vienna Circle, the movement matured into a vibrant research program at Oslo, and sought adventure at Berkeley thereafter. The harsh and uncharitable reaction it met is surprising but understandable in light of disciplinary tensions and the legacy of antipsychologism—sentiments (...)
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  39. Agency-First Epistemology of Psychedelics.Lisa Bortolotti & Kathleen Murphy-Hollies - 2022 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3.
    Letheby’s book is an engaging and crystal-clear exploration of the philosophical issues raised by the use of psychedelic drugs. In this paper, we focus on the epistemological issues Letheby examines in chapter 8 and argue that his analysis requires an agency-first approach to epistemic evaluation. On an agency-first approach, epistemic evaluation is about identifying the skills agents needs to acquire in order to pursue and fulfil their epistemic goals.
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  40. Gay Science: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Sexual Orientation of Children.Timothy F. Murphy - 2005 - Reproductive Biomedicine Online 10 (Sup. 1):102-106.
    There are no technologies at the present time that would allow parents to select the sexual orientation of their children. But what if there were? Some commentators believe that parents should be able to use those techniques so long as they are effective and safe. Others believe that these techniques are unethical because of the dangers they pose to homosexual men and women in general. Both sides point to motives and consequences when trying to analyse the ethics of this question. (...)
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  41. Complex mental disorders: representation, stability and explanation.Dominic Murphy - 2010 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6 (1):28-42.
    This paper discusses the representation and explanation of relationships between phenomena that are important in psychiatric contexts. After a general discussion of complexity in the philosophy of science, I distinguish zooming-out approaches from zooming-in approaches. Zooming-out has to do with seeing complex mental illnesses as abstract models for the purposes of both explanation and reduction. Zooming-in involves breaking complex mental illnesses into simple components and trying to explain those components independently in terms of specific causes. Connections between existing practice and (...)
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  42. A Thought Experiment in Life Prolongation: The Tortoise Transformation.Timothy F. Murphy - 2013 - Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 12 (4):645–649.
    The value of extending the human lifespan remains a key philosophical debate in bioethics. In building a case against the extension of the species-typical human life, Nicolas Agar considers the prospect of transforming human beings near the end of their lives into Galapagos tortoises, which would then live on decades longer. A central question at stake in this transformation is the persistence of human consciousness as a condition of the value of the transformation. Agar entertains the idea that consciousness could (...)
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  43. Divine Knowledge and Qualitative Indiscernibility.Daniel S. Murphy - 2016 - Faith and Philosophy 33 (1):25-47.
    This paper is about the nature of God’s pre-creation knowledge of possible creatures. I distinguish three theories: non-qualitative singularism, qualitative singularism, and qualitative generalism, which differ in terms of whether the relevant knowledge is qualitative or non-qualitative, and whether God has singular or merely general knowledge of creatures. My main aim is to argue that qualitative singularism does not depend on a version of the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles to the effect that, necessarily, qualitatively indiscernible individuals are identical. It (...)
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  44. Assessing capability instead of achieved functionings in risk analysis.Colleen Murphy & Paolo Gardoni - 2010 - Journal of Risk Research 13 (2):137-147.
    A capability approach has been proposed to risk analysis, where risk is conceptualized as the probability that capabilities are reduced. Capabilities refer to the genuine opportunities of individuals to achieve valuable doings and beings, such as being adequately nourished. Such doings and beings are called functionings. A current debate in risk analysis and other fields where a capability approach has been developed concerns whether capabilities or actual achieved functionings should be used. This paper argues that in risk analysis the consequences (...)
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  45. Rewriting the A Priori/A Posteriori Distinction.Peter Murphy - 2008 - Journal of Philosophical Research 33:279-284.
    The traditional way of drawing the a priori/a posteriori distinction, bequeathed to us by Kant, leads to overestimating the role that experience plays in justifying ourbeliefs. There is an irony in this: though Kant was in the rationalist camp, his way of drawing the distinction gives an unfair advantage to radical empiricism. I offer an alternative way of drawing the distinction, one that does not bias the rationalist/empiricist debate.
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  46. Closure failures for safety.Peter Murphy - 2005 - Philosophia 33 (1-4):331-334.
    Ernest Sosa and others have proposed a safety condition on knowledge: If S knows p, then in the nearest (non-actual) worlds in which S believes p, p is true.1 Colloquially, this is the idea that knowing requires not being easily mistaken. Here, I will argue that like another condition requiring a counterfactual relation between a subject’s belief and the world, viz. Robert Nozick’s sensitivity condition, safety leads, in certain cases, to the unacceptable result that knowledge is not closed under known (...)
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  47. A strategy for assessing closure.Peter Murphy - 2006 - Erkenntnis 65 (3):365 - 383.
    This paper looks at an argument strategy for assessing the epistemic closure principle. This is the principle that says knowledge is closed under known entailment; or (roughly) if S knows p and S knows that p entails q, then S knows that q. The strategy in question looks to the individual conditions on knowledge to see if they are closed. According to one conjecture, if all the individual conditions are closed, then so too is knowledge. I give a deductive argument (...)
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  48. Disagreement about the kind law.Muhammad Ali Khalidi & Liam Murphy - 2020 - Jurisprudence 12 (1):1-16.
    This paper argues that the disagreement between positivists and nonpositivists about law is substantive rather than merely verbal, but that the depth and persistence of the disagreement about law, unlike for the case of morality, threatens skepticism about law. The range of considerations that can be brought to bear to help resolve moral disagreements is broader than is the case for law, thus improving the prospects of reconciliation in morality. But the central argument of the paper is that law, unlike (...)
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  49.  91
    Towards a Philosophical Approach to Psychiatry. [REVIEW]Dominic Murphy & Alexander Pereira - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Review of Books 2021.
    The history of psychiatry does not inspire confidence, even among psychiatrists, and there has always been a cottage industry in medicine and psychology that wrestles with various conceptual problems around mental illness. It’s arguable that philosophers of science have not paid enough attention to this literature. Even if you aren’t interested in psychiatry, you might profit from the debates in psychometrics on the measurement of mental constructs, or look at the arguments over causation, reduction, and explanation that psychiatrists fight out (...)
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  50. Another Blow to Knowledge from Knowledge.Peter Murphy - 2013 - Logos and Episteme 4 (3): 311–317.
    A novel argument is offered against the following popular condition on inferential knowledge: a person inferentially knows a conclusion only if they know each of the claims from which they essentially inferred that conclusion. The epistemology of conditional proof reveals that we sometimes come to know conditionals by inferring them from assumptions rather than beliefs. Since knowledge requires belief, cases of knowing via conditional proof refute the popular knowledge from knowledge condition. It also suggests more radical cases against the condition (...)
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