Within contemporary philosophy of mind, it is taken for granted that externalist accounts of meaning and mental content are, in principle, orthogonal to the matter of whether cognition itself is bound within the biological brain or whether it can constitutively include parts of the world. Accordingly, Clark and Chalmers (1998) distinguish these varieties of externalism as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ respectively. The aim here is to suggest that we should resist the received way of thinking about these dividing lines. With reference (...) to Brandom’s (1994; 2000; 2008) broad semantic inferentialism, we show that a theory of meaning can be at the same time a variety of active externalism. While we grant that supporters of other varieties of content externalism (e.g., Putnam 1975 and Burge 1986) can deny active externalism, this is not an option for semantic inferentialists: On this latter view, the role of the environment (both in its social and natural form) is not ‘passive’ in the sense assumed by the alternative approaches to content externalism. (shrink)

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “the radical Enlightenment,” i.e. a kind of underground Enlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)

The new Chomskian orthodoxy denies that our linguistic competence gives us knowledge *of* a language, and that the representations in the language faculty are representations *of* anything. In reply, I have argued that through their intuitions speaker/hearers, (but not their language faculties) have knowledge of language, though not of any externally existing language. In order to count as knowledge, these intuitions must track linguistic facts represented in the language faculty. I defend this idea against the objections Collins has raised to (...) such an account. (shrink)

►JOHN CORCORAN AND IDRIS SAMAWI HAMID, Two-method errors: having it both ways. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150, USA E-mail: [email protected] Philosophy, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1781 USA E-mail: [email protected] Where two methods produce similar results, mixing the two sometimes creates errors we call two-method errors, TMEs: in style, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, implicature, logic, or action. This lecture analyzes examples found in technical and in non-technical contexts. One can say “Abe knows whether Ben draws” in two other (...) ways: ‘Abe knows whether or not Ben draws’ or ‘Abe knows whether Ben draws or not’. But a stylistic TME occurs in ‘Abe knows whether or not Ben draws or not’. One can say “Abe knows how Ben looks” using ‘Abe knows what Ben looks like’. But syntactical TMEs are in ‘Abe knows what Ben looks’ and in ‘Abe knows how Ben looks like’. One can deny that Abe knows Ben by prefixing ‘It isn’t that’ or by interpolating ‘doesn’t’. But a pragmatic TME occurs in trying to deny that Abe knows Ben by using ‘It isn’t that Abe doesn’t know Ben’. There are several standard ways of defining truth using sequences. Quine’s discussions in the 1970 first printing of Philosophy of logic [3] and in previous lectures were vitiated by mixing two [1, p. 98]. The logical TME in [3], which eluded Quine’s colleagues, was corrected in the 1978 sixth printing [2]. But Quine never explicitly acknowledged, described, or even mentioned the error. This lecture presents and analyses two-method errors in the logic literature. [1] JOHN CORCORAN, Review of Quine’s 1970 Philosophy of Logic. In Philosophy of Science, vol. 39 (1972), pp. 97–99. [2] JOHN CORCORAN, Review of sixth printing of Quine’s 1970 Philosophy of Logic. In Mathematical Reviews MR0469684 (1979): 57 #9465. [3] WILLARD VAN ORMAN QUINE, Philosophy of logic, Harvard, 1970/1986. (shrink)

The following pair of claims is standardly endorsed by philosophers working on group agency: (1) groups are capable of irreducible moral agency and, therefore, can be blameworthy; (2) groups are not capable of irreducible moral patiency, and, therefore, lack moral rights. This paper argues that the best case for (1) brings (2) into question. Section 2 paints the standard picture, on which groups’ blameworthiness derives from their functionalist or interpretivist moral agency, while their lack of moral rights derives from their (...) lack of sentience. In Section 3, I add support to a recent argument that this standard picture needs alteration: groups’ blameworthiness requires something akin to sentience, which groups acquire from members. Section 4 discusses rights: if groups acquire sentience from members, as Section 3 argues, then can groups have moral rights? I argue that they can, but that groups have only a limited range of moral rights, whose existence depends on (without being ontologically or justificatorily reducible to) the attitudes and actions of humans. (shrink)

This is a response to the critial comments by Anne Schwenkenbecher, Olle Blomberg, Bill Wringe and Gunnar Björnsson.

ABSTRACT:Organismal superposition holds that the same individual both is and is not an organism, as a consequence of organismal pluralism. When coupled with the assumption that death is the cessation of an organism, this entails that there is no unique answer as to whether brain death is biological death. This essay argues that concerns about organismal pluralism and superposition do not undermine a theory of biological death, nor entail any metaphysical indeterminacy about the biological vital status of a brain-dead individual.

In “A Tension in the Strong Program: The Relation between the Rational and the Social”, Shahram Shahryari (2021) advances the following thesis: In his Strong Program in the sociology of science, David Bloor blames traditional philosophy of science for adopting a dualist strategy in explaining scientific developments, as it employs rational explanation for successful science and social explanation for flawed science. Instead, according to Bloor, all scientific developments should be explained monistically, i.e. in terms of social causes. This is also (...) referred to as the Symmetry Principle, and it is a key tenet in the Strong Program. The author detects a tension here, as Bloor apparently asserts that traditional philosophy of science deploys two kinds of explanation, and simultaneously insists that there is only one kind, i.e. social explanation. (shrink)

Theorists of democratic multiculturalism have long-defended individuals’ religious exemptions from generally-applicable laws. Examples include Sikhs being exempt from motorcycle helmet laws, or Jews and Muslims being exempt from humane animal slaughter laws. This paper investigates religious exemptions for organisations. Should organisations ever be granted exemptions from generally-applicable laws in democratic societies, where those exemptions are justified by the organisation’s religion? The paper considers four arguments for this, which respectively rely on: the ‘transferring up’ to organisations of individuals’ claims to autonomy (...) or recognition; organisations’ own claims to autonomy or recognition; organisations’ status in the accountability-community; and organisations’ procedural constraints. The paper concludes that only the last argument works—and then, only with caveats. (shrink)

Organizations do moral wrong. States pursue unjust wars, businesses avoid tax, charities misdirect funds. Our social, political, and legal responses require guidance. We need to know what we’re responding to and how we should respond to it. We need a metaphysical and moral theory of wrongful organizations. This book provides a new such theory, paying particular attention to questions that have been underexplored in existing debates. These questions include: where are organizations located as material objects in the natural world? What’s (...) the metaphysical relation between organizations and their members? Can organizations be blameworthy for attitudes and character traits, as well as for actions? What about feelings of guilt, remorse, and shame—can organizations feel these emotions and why does this matter? How and why are members implicated in organizations’ wrongs? How should organizations’ reparative costs be apportioned among members? The book answers these questions. It argues that organizations are material objects with humans as material parts—much like how a pizza is a material object with slices as material parts. This picture helps us make sense of organizations’ blameworthiness, including blame for organization-level actions, attitudes, and character traits. The book argues that organizations can experience moral self-awareness—a crucial component of guilt, remorse, and shame. Members can be implicated in organizations’ actions in numerous ways—and, it is argued, members’ level of implication should determine their share of organizations’ reparative burdens. (shrink)

David Estlund has recently asked: how can structural injustice warrant resentment and indignation, given that it cannot fully be traced to culpable conduct? This article answers Estlund’s question. I propose that a social structure is an object that persists through time and is materially constituted by humans in relation. I use accounts of the point of blame to vindicate attitudes of resentment and indignation that target social structures themselves, without necessarily targeting their human constituents.

In this chapter, I argue that care ethics offers useful resources for developing alternative models of responsibility for of structural injustice. I begin in Section 2 by providing an overview of what 'structural injustice' is and of the ‘forward-looking’ models of responsibility that have been developed for dealing with it. In Section 3, I give an overview of (my interpretation of) care ethics. This will reveal several points of resonance between care ethics and existing forward-looking theories of responsibility for structural (...) injustice. In Section 4, I weave these two threads together, explicitly enumerating several care ethical insights that can be brought to bear on forward-looking theories of responsibility for structural injustice. (shrink)

A plausible thought about vagueness is that it involves semantic incompleteness. To say that a predicate is vague is to say (at the very least) that its extension is incompletely specified. Where there is incomplete specification of extension there is indeterminacy, an indeterminacy between various ways in which the specification of the predicate might be completed or sharpened. In this paper we show that this idea is bound to founder by presenting an argument to the effect that there are vague (...) predicates which cannot be sharpened in such a way as to meet certain basic constraints (of penumbral connection and public accessibility) that must be imposed on the very notion of a sharpening. (shrink)

Can the best arguments for a privation theory of evil be parodied, with equal plausibility, as arguments for a privation theory of good? The privation theory of evil claims that evil has no positive existence, and it is but a privation of good. The privation theory of good claims the opposite. I approach this topic as one element in the so-called evil-God Challenge. Stephen Law has argued that the epistemic support for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect God (...) (theism) is on a par with the epistemic support for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, but completely evil-God (maltheism). In fact, he concludes, the arguments for an evil God are symmetrical with, and isomorphic to, those for a good God. The privation theory of evil has often been used to defend theism against the argument from evil. Thus, part of the evil-God Challenge is to evaluate arguments for the privation theory of evil for their vulnerability to maltheist parody. I consider a broad range of arguments for the privation theory of evil, and I argue that most of them are vulnerable to parodic neutralization. Furthermore, I argue that although the thesis of the convertibility of being and goodness is often held to entail the privation theory of evil, or to be entailed by it (or to be equivalent to it), it is independent of the privation theory. I do find that David Oderberg’s recent argument for the privation theory of evil resists any easy maltheist parody, but I argue that it has a defect. I sketch an argument according to which his good-as-fulfillment account is compatible with a perfectly evil god. My tentative conclusion is that the privation theory of evil enjoys little more plausibility than does the privation theory of good. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on the moral responsibility of organized groups in light of historicism. Historicism is the view that any morally responsible agent must satisfy certain historical conditions, such as not having been manipulated. We set out four examples involving morally responsible organized groups that pose problems for existing accounts of historicism. We then pose a trilemma: one can reject group responsibility, reject historicism, or revise historicism. We pursue the third option. We formulate a Manipulation Condition and a (...) Guarding Condition as addendums to historicism that are necessary to accommodate our cases of group responsibility. (shrink)

Many governments are failing to act sufficiently strongly on climate change. Given this, what should motivated affluent individuals in high-consumption societies do? This paper argues that social norms are a particularly valuable target for individual climate action. Within norm-promotion, the paper makes the case for a focus on anti-fossil fuel norms specifically. Section 1 outlines gaps in the existing literature on individuals’ climate change obligations. Section 2 characterises social norms. Section 3 provides seven reasons why social norms are a particularly (...) worthy target for individual climate actors. Section 4 asks which social norms individuals should emphasise, arguing that anti-fossil fuel norms have advantages over emissions reduction and offsetting norms. Section 5 outlines the pathways and mechanisms individuals might exploit to promote anti-fossil fuel norms. (shrink)

Vices are often attributed to corporations. We hear that casinos are ‘greedy,’ mining companies are ‘ruthless,’ or tobacco companies are ‘dishonest.’ This chapter addresses two questions. First, are such corporate vices reducible to the vices of individual role-bearers? Second, which traits of corporations are properly labelled ‘vices’? The chapter argues that corporate vice is sometimes irreducible to the vices of role-bearers: corporations can be vicious ‘over and above’ the traits of role-bearers. It further argues that different corporations should be held (...) to different standards: what it means for a casino to be ‘vicious’ is different from what it means for a mining company to be ‘vicious,’ for example. (shrink)

Realist theories of legislative intent can be divided between aggregative theories (on which legislative intent is what some proportion of legislators intend) and common intent theories (on which legislative intent is a unanimous intent among legislators). In this paper, we advance and defend an alternative realist conception of legislative intent: the Rational Unity Account. On this account, the legislature is an agent with a distinctive ‘rational point of view’—a concept we adopt from social ontology. The legislature’s rational point of view (...) is shaped by its procedures and structures, in ways not determined by either a common intention held by legislators or an aggregation of the intentions of legislators. We explain how our view improves on existing accounts. We then apply it to three cases to demonstrate its implications for legal interpretation. Importantly, on the proposed account, legislative intent can depart from what individual legislators think or know. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on personal relationships is focused on dyads: close relationships between just two people. This paper aims to characterise the value of looser and larger relational networks, particularly from the perspective of liberal political theory. We focus on relational networks' value vis-a-vis the important good of felt security. We begin by characterising felt security and analysing how felt security is produced within dyads. We highlight the ambivalent nature of dyadic relationships as a source of felt security. We then (...) theorise relational networks, explaining how they too can provide felt security. We explore three unappreciated benefits that arise when felt security is garnered from a network, rather than from a dyad. These benefits take liberal political theory as their starting point. We close by considering the implications - for both individual action and institutional design - of using relational networks as a source of felt security. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals.

Some contemporary states are morally culpable for historically distant wrongs. But which states for which wrongs? The answer is not obvious, due to secessions, unions, and the formation of new states in the time since the wrongs occurred. This paper develops a framework for answering the question. The argument begins by outlining a picture of states’ agency on which states’ culpability is distinct from the culpability of states’ members. It then outlines, and rejects, a plausible-seeming answer to our question: that (...) culpability transmits from a past state’s action to a present state just if the two states share a numerical identity, for example as determined by international law. I advocate a different answer: culpability transmits from a past action to a present state to the extent that the present state ‘descends from’ the aspects of the past state that underpinned the past action. One potential upshot is that some present-day settler-colonies (such as Australia) are culpable for the centuries-ago invasion of their lands by European powers—even though these states did not perform these invasions and indeed did not exist at the time. (shrink)

Moral duties are regularly attributed to groups. Does this make conceptual sense or is this merely political rhetoric? And what are the implications for these individuals within groups? Collins outlines a Tripartite Model of group duties that can target political demands at the right entities, in the right way and for the right reasons.

This paper investigates agents’ blameworthiness when they are part of a group that does harm. We analyse three factors that affect the scope of an agent’s blameworthiness in these cases: shared intentionality, interpersonal influence, and common knowledge. Each factor involves circumstantial luck. The more each factor is present, the greater is the scope of each agent’s vicarious blameworthiness for the other agents’ contributions to the harm. We then consider an agent’s degree of blameworthiness, as distinct from her scope of blameworthiness. (...) We suggest that an agent mostly controls her degree of blameworthiness—but even here, luck constrains what possible degrees of blameworthiness are open to her. (shrink)

A collective duty gap arises when a group has caused harm that requires remedying but no member did harm that can justify the imposition of individual remedial duties. Examples range from airplane crashes to climate change. How might collective duty gaps be filled? This paper starts by examining two promising proposals for filling them. Both proposals are found inadequate. Thus, while gap-filling duties can be defended against objections from unfairness and demandingness, we need a substantive justification for their existence. I (...) argue that substantive justification can be found in the normative force of commitments individuals make to others with regard to ends. Along the way, I argue that gap-filling duties must be conceptualized differently in group agents, as compared to non-agent groups: in the former, gap-filling duties can be understood as duties to “take up the slack”; in the latter, this would be a category error. (shrink)

The foundational principles of representative democracy are under attack globally. What we desperately need are enlightened and persuasive public intellectuals who can help us see through the fog of our fear, anger, and disillusionment, to find our rational political commitments again. One of these public intellectuals is undoubtedly Yuval Noah Harari, the bestselling author of three recent books – Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Harari is also a frequent contributor in the popular press, and a (...) guest on shows, podcasts, panels, and as a keynote speaker. Add to all this that Harari is acting on his lofty academic ideals through ‘Sapienship’, a multidisciplinary organization he cofounded that advocates for global responsibility, clarifies the global conversation, and focuses attention on the most important global challenges. I single out Harari because I presume many readers will be familiar with his work. He is certainly one of the fastest rising stars of public intellectualism. Unfortunately, his work is undercut by the philosophical positions he put forth in his first bestselling book, Sapiens. In this review/critique I wish to show that in order for Harari advance a coherent political or ideological argument, he must first shore up his philosophical commitments. (shrink)

Philosophers often talk as though each ability is held by exactly one agent. This paper begins by arguing that abilities can be held by groups of agents, where the group is not an agent. I provide a new argument for—and a new analysis of—non-agentive groups’ abilities. I then provide a new argument that, surprisingly, obligations are different: non-agentive groups cannot bear obligations, at least not if those groups are large-scale such as ‘humanity’ or ‘carbon emitters.’ This pair of conclusions is (...) important, since philosophers who endorse large-scale non-agentive groups’ abilities almost universally endorse their obligations. More importantly, the twin arguments (one for abilities, one against obligations) make the following novel contribution: abilities imply agency-involving explanations, while obligations imply action-guidance. This general conclusion should be of interest beyond social ontology. (shrink)

In this chapter, Marie Collins Swabey critiques naturalism and defends a rationalistic conception of knowledge.

ABSTRACT Many rhetorical theories of ethos mark their relationship with time by focusing on two temporal poles: the timely ethos and the timeless ethos. But between these two temporal poles, ethos is also durative; it lingers, shifts, accumulates, and dissipates over time. Although scholarship often foregrounds the kairotic and static senses of ethos popularized in Aristotle's Rhetoric, this article highlights how the chronic elements of ethos are no less important to rhetoric. By examining Xenophon's and Plato's representations of the trial (...) of Socrates, this article contends that these competing views about the temporalities of ethos have a storied history that predates Aristotle's writings. This analysis also expands received understandings of Plato's contributions to rhetoric by illuminating how his view of ethos is deeply intertwined with ongoing philosophical practice. The article concludes by arguing that rhetorical studies has much to gain by more closely attending to the cumulative aspects of ethos. (shrink)

When we say that ‘the government should be ashamed’, can we be taken literally? I argue that we can: organisations have duties over their emotions. Emotions have both functional and felt components. Often, emotions’ moral value derives from their functional components: from what they cause and what causes them. In these cases, organisations can have emotional duties in the same way that they can have duties to act. However, emotions’ value partly derives from their felt components. Organisations lack feelings, but (...) can have duties to increase the likelihood that their members have relevant emotions (with the right felt components), in virtue of and in accordance with their role in the organisation. To systematise these conclusions, I provide a taxonomy of organisations’ – and individuals’ organisationally situated – emotional duties. This taxonomy will enable scholars of electoral politics, international politics and public policy to systematically integrate emotions into the study of organisations. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the myriad ways that gender roles are interrogated within The Left Hand of Darkness and “When It Changed.” I first examine gender as science in §1, outlining the ways Le Guin and Russ consider and critique essentialist perspectives holding that gender roles are ‘natural’ phenomena driven by rigid biological differences between men and women. Then, in §2, I explore gender as fiction, analyzing how each text presents gender roles as discursively constructed and malleable. In §3, (...) I explicate these observations within a hybrid conceptualization of gender as science fiction and argue that this suitably describes the gender portrayals Le Guin and Russ make in their texts. (shrink)

In this paper, new evidence is presented for the assumption that the reason-relation reading of indicative conditionals ('if A, then C') reflects a conventional implicature. In four experiments, it is investigated whether relevance effects found for the probability assessment of indicative conditionals (Skovgaard-Olsen, Singmann, and Klauer, 2016a) can be classified as being produced by a) a conversational implicature, b) a (probabilistic) presupposition failure, or c) a conventional implicature. After considering several alternative hypotheses and the accumulating evidence from other studies as (...) well, we conclude that the evidence is most consistent with the Relevance Effect being the outcome of a conventional implicature. This finding indicates that the reason-relation reading is part of the semantic content of indicative conditionals, albeit not part of their primary truth-conditional content. (shrink)

Plausibly, only moral agents can bear action-demanding duties. Not all groups are moral agents. This places constraints on which groups can bear action-demanding duties. Moreover, if such duties imply ability then moral agents – of both the individual and group varieties – can only bear duties over actions they are able to perform. I tease out the implications of this for duties over group actions, and argue that groups in many instances cannot bear these duties. This is because only groups (...) with the right kind of structure – groups I call ‘collectives’ – have the agency to bear action-demanding duties. Yet neither can individuals bear these duties, assuming that individuals cannot perform group actions and that duty implies ability. This appears to leave us at a loss when assigning duties to perform some group actions. I argue we can solve this problem by assigning collectivization duties to individuals – duties to form a collective that then incurs a duty over the action. I give criteria for when individuals have collectivization duties and discuss the demands these duties place on their bearers. (shrink)

Is the state a collective agent? Are citizens responsible for what their states do? If not citizens, then who, if anyone, is responsible for what the state does? Many different sub-disciplines of philosophy are relevant for answering these questions. We need to know what “the state” is, who or what it's composed of, and what relation the parts stand in to the whole. Once we know what it is, we need to know whether that thing is an agent, in particular (...) a moral agent capable of taking moral responsibility for its actions. We have to know what it takes for it to be capable of moral responsibility, e.g., what the functional equivalents in groups are of knowledge, intention, foreseeability, recklessness, and so on. And once we've established that it is an agent, and is responsible for what it does, we have to explain whether and in what way this implicates members, i.e., whether state responsibility distributes to the members of states, whoever they may be. Answers to these questions come from metaphysics, social ontology, action theory, epistemology, political theory, and ethics. In what follows, we'll give an outline of some different ways of answering these questions. (shrink)

The urgency of the problem of climate change calls upon us to investigate the climate duties of agents beyond the state. Individuals are the most salient candidate in this respect. In section I, I argue that the idea that individuals might have duties to reduce their emissions raises difficult issues about individual difference-making. The rest of the chapter, then, focuses on what I take to be the third most-salient duty-bearer: large for-profit corporations. These entities have largely been overlooked in philosophical (...) discussions of climate-related duties. In Section II, I consider two possible reasons for this neglect, and argue that neither are good reasons. In Section III, I give a positive case for weighty and demanding duties for corporations, to cut back their present and planned emissions and to offset their past emissions. In Section IV, I bring the discussion full circle: corporations’ duties always imply duties for corporations’ members, that is, for the individuals who constitute the corporation. Drawing on earlier work, I give an account of who corporations’ members are and how their duties are structured. In heavily-emitting corporations, members prominently include managers, shareholders, and rank-and-file employees. So a range of individuals are on the hook after all, because the corporations that they constitute bear duties. Additionally, even non-members may have duties to act upon corporations, from the outside, with a view to inducing corporate duty-fulfillment. (shrink)

Commentaires sur le débat nativisme-empirisme au XIXe siècle et la théorie des signes locaux de Lotze.

It is widely held that there are important differences between indicative conditionals (e.g. “If the authors are linguists, they have written a linguistics paper”) and subjunctive conditionals (e.g. “If the authors had been linguists, they would have written a linguistics paper”). A central difference is that indicatives and subjunctives convey different stances towards the truth of their antecedents. Indicatives (often) convey neutrality: for example, about whether the authors in question are linguists. Subjunctives (often) convey the falsity of the antecedent: for (...) example, that the authors in question are not linguists. This paper tests prominent accounts of how these different stances are conveyed: whether by presupposition or conversational implicature. Experiment 1 tests the presupposition account by investigating whether the stances project – remain constant – when embedded under operators like negations, possibility modals, and interrogatives, a key characteristic of presuppositions. Experiment 2 tests the conversational-implicature account by investigating whether the stances can be cancelled without producing a contradiction, a key characteristic of implicatures. The results provide evidence that both stances – neutrality about the antecedent in indicatives and the falsity of the antecedent in subjunctives – are conveyed by conversational implicatures. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the meaning and value of the criticism that Stumpf address to Husserl's phenomenology in Ideas I. My presentation is divided into four parts: I briefly describe the relationship between Stumpf and the young Husserl during his stay in Halle (1886-1901); then I will comment Stumpf's remarks on the definition of Husserl's phenomenology as descriptive psychology in his Logical Investigations; in the third part, I examine Husserl's notice in section 86 of Ideas I (...) where he compares his own terminology to that of Stumpf; finally I comment on Stumpf's criticism of Husserl's phenomenology in his last book Erkenntnislehre. (shrink)

The ethics of care has flourished in recent decades yet we remain without a succinct statement of its core theoretical commitment. This book uses the methods of analytic philosophy to argue for a simple care ethical slogan: dependency relationships generate responsibilities. It uses this slogan to unify, specify and justify the wide range of views found within the care ethical literature.

In this chapter, Stephanie Collins examines the idea that individuals can acquire ‘membership duties’ as a result of being members of a group that itself bears duties. In particular, powerful and wealthy states are duty-bearing groups, and their citizens have derivative membership duties (for example, to contribute to putting right wrongs that have been done in the past by the group in question, and to increase the extent to which the group fulfils its duties). In addition, she argues, individuals have (...) duties to signal their willingness to coordinate with others so as to do more good than the sum of what each could do on their own. Putting these two things together, Collins suggests, individuals’ duties in (for instance) matters of global poverty might be largely driven by such group-based considerations, leaving little room for the duties that would follow from more individualistic reasoning. (shrink)

Which kinds of responsibility can we attribute to which kinds of collective, and why? In contrast, which kinds of collective responsibility can we not attribute—which kinds are ‘gappy’? This study provides a framework for answering these questions. It begins by distinguishing between three kinds of collective and three kinds of responsibility. It then explains how gaps—i.e. cases where we cannot attribute the responsibility we might want to—appear to arise within each type of collective responsibility. It argues some of these gaps (...) do not exist on closer inspection, at least for some collectives and some of the time. (shrink)

I defend a theory of mental representation that satisfies naturalistic constraints. Briefly, we begin by distinguishing (i) what makes something a representation from (ii) given that a thing is a representation, what determines what it represents. Representations are states of biological organisms, so we should expect a unified theoretical framework for explaining both what it is to be a representation as well as what it is to be a heart or a kidney. I follow Millikan in explaining (i) in terms (...) of teleofunction, explicated in terms of natural selection. -/- To explain (ii), we begin by recognizing that representational states do not have content, that is, they are neither true nor false except insofar as they both “point to” or “refer” to something, as well as “say” something regarding whatever it is they are about. To distinguish veridical from false representations, there must be a way for these separate aspects to come apart; hence, we explain (ii) by providing independent theories of what I call f-reference and f-predication (the ‘f’ simply connotes ‘fundamental’, to distinguish these things from their natural language counterparts). -/- Causal theories of representation typically founder on error, or on what Fodor has called the disjunction problem. Resemblance or isomorphism theories typically founder on what I’ve called the non-uniqueness problem, which is that isomorphisms and resemblance are practically unconstrained and so representational content cannot be uniquely determined. These traditional problems provide the motivation for my theory, the structural preservation theory, as follows. F-reference, like reference, is a specific, asymmetric relation, as is causation. F-predication, like predication, is a non-specific relation, as predicates typically apply to many things, just as many relational systems can be isomorphic to any given relational system. Putting these observations together, a promising strategy is to explain f-reference via causal history and f-predication via something like isomorphism between relational systems. -/- This dissertation should be conceptualized as having three parts. After motivating and characterizing the problem in chapter 1, the first part is the negative project, where I review and critique Dretske’s, Fodor’s, and Millikan’s theories in chapters 2-4. Second, I construct my theory about the nature of representation in chapter 5 and defend it from objections in chapter 6. In chapters 7-8, which constitute the third and final part, I address the question of how representation is implemented in biological systems. In chapter 7 I argue that single-cell intracortical recordings taken from awake Macaque monkeys performing a cognitive task provide empirical evidence for structural preservation theory, and in chapter 8 I use the empirical results to illustrate, clarify, and refine the theory. (shrink)

When a liberal-democratic state signs a treaty or wages a war, does its whole polity do those things? In this article, we approach this question via the recent social ontological literature on collective agency. We provide arguments that it does and that it does not. The arguments are presented via three considerations: the polity's control over what the state does; the polity's unity; and the influence of individual polity members. We suggest that the answer to our question differs for different (...) liberal-democratic states and depends on two underlying considerations: the amount of discretion held by the state's officeholders; the extent to which the democratic procedure is deliberative rather than aggregative. (shrink)

Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...) change; they are not discrete, apportionable causes. Our objective here is to provide a definitive statement of the statistical position, so as to allay some confusions in the current literature. We outline four commitments that are central to statisticalism. They are: 1. Natural Selection is a higher order effect; 2. Trait fitness is primitive; 3. Modern Synthesis (MS)-models are substrate neutral; 4. MS-selection and drift are model-relative. (shrink)

Trust not only disposes us to feel betrayed, trust can be betrayed. Understanding what a betrayal of trust is requires understanding how trust can ground an obligation on the part of the trusted person to act specifically as trusted. This essay argues that, since trust cannot ground an appropriate obligation where there is no prior obligation, a betrayal of trust should instead be conceived as the violation of a trust-based obligation to respect an already existing obligation. Two forms of trust (...) are evaluated for their potential to ground such a second-order obligation. One form counts as a gift to the trusted person only because it does not involve an expectation of trustworthiness; the other form cannot count as a gift but confers an honor because it does include an expectation of trustworthiness. Only trust that confers an honor generates a second-order obligation whose violation would be a betrayal of trust. -/- . (shrink)

Modal epistemologists parse modal conditions on knowledge in terms of metaphysical possibilities or ways the world might have been. This is problematic. Understanding modal conditions on knowledge this way has made modal epistemology, as currently worked out, unable to account for epistemic luck in the case of necessary truths, and unable to characterise widely discussed issues such as the problem of religious diversity and the perceived epistemological problem with knowledge of abstract objects. Moreover, there is reason to think that this (...) is a congenital defect of orthodox modal epistemology. This way of characterising modal epistemology is however optional. It is shown that one can non-circularly characterise modal conditions on knowledge in terms of epistemic possibilities, or ways the world might be for the target agent. Characterising the anti-luck condition in terms of epistemic possibilities removes the impediment to understanding epistemic luck in the case of necessary truths and opens the door to using these conditions to shed new light on some longstanding epistemological problems. (shrink)