The different approaches of the mind-body problem a fortiori have implications on the foundations of Psychology, Psychopathology and Psychiatry, leading to many clashing theories about the determinants of "normal" human behavior, as well of the mental illnesses. These schools of research on the human mind may on a first approach be divided in two main branches: 1) the neurogenetic ones; 2) the psychogenetic ones. This paper sprang up from a lifelong pondering on its subject by its author, while working as (...) a Clinical Psychiatrist and conducting a Ph D in Philosophy. (shrink)

As philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism continue to gain traction, we are likely to see a fundamental shift in the way people think about free will and moral responsibility. Such shifts raise important practical and existential concerns: What if we came to disbelieve in free will? What would this mean for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and the law? What would it do to our standing as human beings? Would it cause nihilism and despair as some (...) maintain or would it rather have a humanizing effect on our practices and policies, freeing us from the negative effects of belief in free will? In this chapter we consider the practical implications of free will skepticism and argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe. We argue that prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for example, would not be threatened. On treatment of criminals, we argue that although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, preventive detention and rehabilitation programs would still be justified. While we will touch on all these issues below, our focus will be primarily on this last issue. -/- We begin in section I by considering two different routes to free will skepticism. The first denies the causal efficacy of the types of willing required for free will and receives its contemporary impetus from pioneering work in neuroscience by Benjamin Libet, Daniel Wegner, and John-Dylan Haynes. The second, which is more common in the philosophical literature, does not deny the causal efficacy of the will but instead claims that whether this causal efficacy is deterministic or indeterministic, it does not achieve the level of control to count as free will by the standards of the historical debate. We argue that while there are compelling objections to the first route—e.g., Al Mele (2009), Eddy Nahmias (2002, 2011), and Neil Levy (2005)—the second route to free will skepticism remains intact. In section II we argue that free will skepticism allows for a workable morality, and, rather than negatively impacting our personal relationships and meaning in life, may well improve our well-being and our relationships to others since it would tend to eradicate an often destructive form of moral anger. In section III we argue that free will skepticism allows for adequate ways of responding to criminal behavior—in particular, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alternation of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justified and sufficient for good social policy. We present and defend our own preferred model for dealing with dangerous criminals, an incapacitation account built on the right to self-protection analogous to the justification for quarantine (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014a; Caruso 2016a), and we respond to recent objections to it by Michael Corrado and John Lemos. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to briefly present the philosophy of Hans Wagner (1917-2000) as belonging to the last phase of the development of the German transcendental philosophy. Hans Wagner’s philosophy is presented as an attempt to synthesize earlier positions developed on the basis of this tradition, namely the synthesis of (a) neo-Kantianism with post-neo-Kantianism, (b) Kant's philosophy with Hegel's philosophy, (c) neo-Kantian transcendentalism with Husserl's transcendentalism, (d) the philosophy of transcendental subject (Kant, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology) with the (...) philosophy of empirical subject (Hönigswald, Heidegger, Sartre). The main theoretical figure of Hans Wagner’s philosophy is the problem of two aspects of human thinking: its absoluteness and finiteness. According to Wagner development of the philosophical reflection, which we can observe on the example of the evolution of - originating from Kant - transcendental philosophy, leads to an explanation of the possibility to reconcile these two aspects of human thinking, and thus to answer the very question: how is it possible that our thinking can be both absolute and finished, and what are the consequences of this fact for the status of all cultural products of human thinking, such as science, morality or law. (shrink)

There are numerous theoretical reasons which are usually said to undermine the case for mental causation. But in recent years, Libet‘s experiment on readiness potentials (Libet, Wright, and Gleason 1982; Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl 1983), and a more recent replication by a research team led by John Dylan Haynes (Soon, C.S., Brass, M., Heinze, H.J., and Haynes, J.-D. [2008]) are often singled out because they appear to demonstrate empirically that consciousness is not causally involved in our choices and (...) actions. In this paper, an alternative interpretation of these studies is offered; one which is in accordance both with the empirical evidence and also with the phenomenology of the will, demonstrating that the two opposing views of agency – both the ones that deny the reality of free will and the ones that affirm it – are equally compatible with the outcomes of these two experiments. On this basis, it is shown that the claim that the results on the timing of readiness potential tip the scales in favour of one or the other view cannot be justified - neither from a neurological, nor from a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Conceived in the last days of August 1888 - the last summer of his lucid life – in Sils Maria (Switzerland), "Magnum in parvo: A philosophy in compendium" is a work that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) projected as a synthesis of his ill-fated capital project "The will to power" and in which the key themes of his thought are addressed. Nevertheless, a sudden change of opinion determined that this work saw the light not in the planned unitary form, but dissolved and (...) mixed with other materials in two different books: "Twilight of the Idols" (1889) and "The Antichrist" (1894) (a). Professor Joaquín Riera has scientifically and painstakingly reconstructed, translated to Spanish, introduced and carefully annotated this Nietzsche’s book project using the posthumous nietzschean fragments or Nachgelassene Fragmente (b) and the original Nietzschean manuscripts of the published books (c) critically edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. In this regard, the title chosen for the reconstruction of the work is the last one Nietzsche wrote down in his postumous fragment 19 [3] of September 1888 (d) and the names of the chapters that allow the reconstruction of its content were also wrote down by the German philosopher in the Nachgelassene Fragmente 19 [4] of the same date (e). Specifically, the content of the lost book has been recovered from the indications Nietzsche left in the head of the chapters or sections of the orignal manuscripts of "Twilight of the Idols" (1889) and "The Antichrist" (1894) (f) . In short, this edition of “Magnun in parvo” has recovered a noteworthy work of Nietzsche as he designed it, allowing the Nietzschean schoolars to acces to a piece of a remarkable philosophical and literary value, more rounded, overall, than what its two offspring would become. -/- Notes: -/- (a) Mazzino Montinari: Nietzsche lesen. De-Gruyter-Studienbuch, 1982. -/- (b) Friedrich Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, VIII 3. Nachgelassene Fragmente Anfang 1888 bis Anfang Januar 1889. De Gruyter, Berlin et New York, 1972. -/- (c) Friedrich Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, VI 3. Der Fall Wagner. Götzen-Dämmerung. / Nachgelassene Schriften (August 1888-Anfang Januar 1889): Der Antichrist. Ecce homo. Dionysos-Dithyramben. / Nietzsche contra Wagner, De Gruyter , Berlin,1969. -/- (d) “Magnum in parvo: Eine Philosophie im Auszug”. Friedrich Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, VIII 3. Nachgelassene Fragmente Anfang 1888 bis Anfang Januar 1889. De Gruyter, Berlin et New York, 1972 and Mazzino Montinari: Nietzsche lesen. De-Gruyter-Studienbuch, 1982. -/- (e) “1. Wir Hyperboreer; 2.Das Problem des Sokrates; 3.Die Vernunft in der Philosophie. 4. Wie die wahre Welt endlich zur Fabel; 5. Moral als Widernatur; 6. Die vier großen Irrthümer; 7. Für uns—wider uns; 8. Begriff einer Décadence-Religion; 9. Buddhismus und Christenthum; 10. Aus meiner Aesthetik; 11. Unter Künstlern und Schriftstellern; 12. Sprüche und Pfeile”. Friedrich Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, VIII 3. Nachgelassene Fragmente Anfang 1888 bis Anfang Januar 1889. De Gruyter, Berlin et New York, 1972 and Mazzino Montinari: Nietzsche lesen. De-Gruyter-Studienbuch, 1982. -/- (f) Friedrich Nietzsche Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe, band 14, Kommentar zu den Bänden 1-13., Walter de Gruyter, Berlín/Nueva York/Múnich, 1988 and Mazzino Montinari: Nietzsche lesen. De-Gruyter-Studienbuch. (shrink)

O presente ensaio tem como objetivo mostrar consequências teóricas de uma tensão latente entre a noção de tragédia no Nietzsche d’O nascimento da tragédia e a compreensão schopenhaueriana da música. Tal tensão se dá não apenas no âmbito de interpretações estéticas das referidas artes por parte dos filósofos mencionados, mas demonstra disparidades fundamentais no pensamento do jovem Nietzsche em relação à metafísica de O mundo como Vontade e Representação. A hipótese é que essas disparidades culminariam num ponto de cesura entre (...) as filosofias de Schopenhauer e Nietzsche, bem como no fenecimento da amizade deste com Richard Wagner. The following essay aims to show the theoretical consequences of a latent tension between the notion of tragedy in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and the Schopenhauerian comprehension of music. This tension occurs not just within the aesthetics interpretations of the mentioned arts by the philosophers cited, but it demonstrates fundamental disparities in the young Nietzsche’s thought in respect to the metaphysics of The World as Will and Representation. The hypothesis is that these disparities would culminate in a caesura point between the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as well in the decline of the friendship of this one with Richard Wagner. (shrink)

What is the human body? Both the most familiar and unfamiliar of things, the body is the centre of experience but also the site of a prehistory anterior to any experience. Alien and uncanny, this other side of the body has all too often been overlooked by phenomenology. In confronting this oversight, Dylan Trigg’s The Thing redefines phenomenology as a species of realism, which he terms unhuman phenomenology. Far from being the vehicle of a human voice, this unhuman phenomenology (...) gives expression to the alien materiality at the limit of experience. -/- By fusing the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, and Levinas with the horrors of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and H.P. Lovecraft, Trigg explores the ways in which an unhuman phenomenology positions the body out of time. At once a challenge to traditional notions of phenomenology, The Thing is also a timely rejoinder to contemporary philosophies of realism. The result is nothing less than a rebirth of phenomenology as redefined through the lens of horror. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have identified a number of moral and psychological harms associated with the attention economy (Alysworth & Castro, 2021; Castro & Pham, 2020; Williams, 2018). Missing from many of these accounts of the attention economy, however, is what exactly attention is. As a result of this neglect of the cognitive science of attention, many of these accounts are not empirically credible. They rely on oversimplified and unsophisticated accounts of not only attention, but self- control, and addiction as (...) well. Of note are accounts of the attention economy that rely on the ‘brain disease’ rhetoric of addiction and subsequent control failures (Aylsworth & Castro, 2021; Bhargava & Velasquez, 2021), accounts that rely on a strict dichotomy of top-down vs. bottom-up attention (Williams, 2018; Aylsworth & Castro, 2021), and accounts that construe attention as a limited resource (Williams, 2018). -/- Drawing on recent work from the neuroscience and psychology of attention, I demonstrate the shortcomings of these accounts and sketch a way forward for an empirically grounded account of the attention economy. These accounts tend to uphold strict dichotomies of voluntary control (e.g., compulsion versus choice, dual-process models of self-control, and top-down versus bottom-up) that cannot account for the complexities of attentional control, mental agency, and decision-making. As such, these empirically and conceptually impoverished accounts cannot adequately address the current so-called crisis of attention. To better understand the harms associated with the attention economy, we need an empirically responsible account of the nature and function of attention and mental agency. (shrink)

In a well-known paper, Nick Bostrom presents a confrontation between a fictionalised Blaise Pascal and a mysterious mugger. The mugger persuades Pascal to hand over his wallet by exploiting Pascal's commitment to expected utility maximisation. He does so by offering Pascal an astronomically high reward such that, despite Pascal's low credence in the mugger's truthfulness, the expected utility of accepting the mugging is higher than rejecting it. In this article, I present another sort of high value, low credence mugging. This (...) time, the mugger utilises research on existential risk and the long-term potential of humanity to exploit Pascal's expected-utility-maximising descendant. This mugging is more insidious than Bostrom's original as it relies on plausible facts about the long-term future, as well as realistic credences about how our everyday actions could, albeit with infinitesimally low likelihood, affect the future of humanity. (shrink)

Automated influence is one of the most pervasive applications of artificial intelligence in our day-to-day lives, yet a thoroughgoing account of its associated individual and societal harms is lacking. By far the most widespread, compelling, and intuitive account of the harms associated with automated influence follows what I call the control argument. This argument suggests that users are persuaded, manipulated, and influenced by automated influence in a way that they have little or no control over. Based on evidence about the (...) effectiveness of targeted advertising as well as empirical results about the nature of attentional control, I provide reasons to reject this argument. In turn, I use C. Thi Nguyen’s theory of value collapse to develop a new account of the harmfulness of automated influence. (shrink)

I argue for the conditions that eco-sabotage (sabotage involving the protection of animals or the environment) must meet to be a morally permissible form of activism in a liberal democracy. I illustrate my case with Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya’s oil pipeline destruction, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s whale hunt sabotage, and the Valve Turners’ pipeline shut-off, climate necessity-defense. My primary contention is that just as it is permissible to destroy an attacker’s weapon in self- or other-defense, it is permissible (...) to engage in some forms of eco-sabotage. Taking inspiration from just war theory, I use the conditions of just cause, reasonable chance of success, proportionality, necessity, and discrimination to both conceptualize eco-sabotage as defense and illustrate the justificatory burden the eco-saboteur must meet. Often eco-sabotage is doubly pro-tanto wrong because it is illegal and involves property destruction. Overcoming these hurdles is particularly difficult because in seemingly bypassing democratic means of dispute resolution, the eco-saboteur seemingly coerces the other members of society by forcing idiosyncratic views upon them. Non-anthropocentric eco-sabotage grounded in defense of animal rights has mixed results regarding the democratic objection just described. I argue that anthropocentric eco-sabotage, grounded in defense of human rights, has the best chance of overcoming this objection, provided a persuasive case can be made for its reasonable chance of success. Passing a reasonable chance of success also causes problems for non-anthropocentric eco-sabotage grounded in species defense, while non-anthropocentric eco-sabotage grounded in defense against animal suffering has a lighter justificatory burden. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of the Earth plays a pivotal role in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking in two ways. First, the concept assumes a special importance in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Husserl via the fragment known as “The Earth Does Not Move.” Two, from this fragment, the Earth marks a key theme around which Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy revolves. In particular, it is with the concept of the Earth that Merleau-Ponty will develop his archaeologically oriented phenomenology. To defend this claim, (...) the paper unfolds in three stages. First, I provide a preliminary reading of Husserl’s fragment, focusing in particular on the co-constitution of body and Earth. Two, I turn to Merleau-Ponty’s interpretations of this fragment, especially in the lectures on nature and then in the later lectures on Husserl. From these varying interpretations, the germs of Merleau-Ponty’s archaeological phenomenology are conceived. Accordingly, in the final part of the paper, I claim that Merleau-Ponty’s account of the Earth is Husserlian insofar as it reinforces the primordial “ground (sol) of experience” but at the same time marks a departure from Husserl insofar as the Earth registers a brute or wild layer that resists phenomenology. (shrink)

Despite their shared origins, medicine and dentistry are not always two sides of the same coin. There is a long history in medical philosophy of defining disease and various medical models have come into existence. Hitherto, little philosophical and phenomenological work has been done considering dental caries and periodontitis as examples of disease and illness. A philosophical methodology is employed to explore how we might define dental caries and periodontitis using classical medical models of disease – the naturalistic and normativist. (...) We identify shared threads and highlight how the features of these highly prevalent dental diseases prevent them fitting in either definition. The article describes phenomenology and the current thought around the phenomenology of illness, exploring how and why these dental illnesses might integrate into a phenomenological model. We discover that there are some features particular to dental caries and periodontitis: ubiquity, preventability and hyper-monitorablility. Understanding the differences that these dental diseases have compared to many other classically studied diseases leads us to ethical questions concerning how we might manage those who have symptoms and seek treatment. As dental caries and periodontitis are common, preventable and hyper-monitorable, it is suggested that these features affect the phenomenology of these illnesses. For example, if we experience dental illness when we have consciously made decisions that have led to it, do we experience them differently to those rarer illnesses that we cannot expect? Other diseases share these features are discussed. This paper highlights the central differences between the classical philosophical notion of disease in medicine and the dental examples of caries and periodontitis. It suggests that a philosophical method of conceptualising medical illness - phenomenology - should not be applied to these dental illnesses without thought. A phenomenological analysis of any dental illness is yet to be done and this paper highlights why a separate strand of phenomenology should be explored, instead of employing those that are extant. The article concludes with suggestions for further research into the nascent field of the phenomenology of dental illness and aims to act as a springboard to expose the dental sphere to this philosophical method of analysis. (shrink)

Consciousness is targeted by both philosophers and neuroscientists; but different methodological premises and even different conceptions about what conscious experience is and how the challenges and potential problems associated with consciousness research should be formulated underlie the different approaches. Namely, whereas empirical data and the constant refinement of experimental procedures to expand and modify this body of empirical data and resulting empirical theories are crucial to neuroscience, the significance of empirical knowledge to philosophy is less clear: Although empirical data certainly (...) can influence philosophical concepts, the latter are nonetheless prerequisites of empirical research itself and thus may themselves not be empirically testable. The present paper elaborates from a multidisciplinary, neuroscientist-philosopher’s perspective the relation of philosophical concepts and empirical research on consciousness, drawing on two exemplary controversies from the philosophy of mind – on the ontological status of experiential properties and on free will. Consequences from both the scientific and the philosophical standpoint are discussed. (shrink)

León and Zahavi (2023) have made a compelling case for the necessity of philosophy — and not only neuroscience — for investigating consciousness. In particular, they argue that any theory of consciousness cannot avoid philosophical enquiry and thus only can choose between good or bad philosophy. Also, the topics of self-consciousness and selfhood are highlighted as problems of consciousness sui generis next to the mind–body problem. I will try to elucidate a bit more the specific approaches to consciousness that philosophy (...) and neuroscience take and thus elaborate why the philosophy and the neuroscience of consciousness are complimentary rather than mutually exclusive. (shrink)

In this paper, I lay the groundwork for a new account of progress in metaphysics, the ‘tool building approach’. The account is born out of a response to the problem of theory-change for naturalistic metaphysics. Kerry McKenzie (2020) makes clear the problem of theory-change for naturalistic metaphysics. She argues that naturalistic metaphysical theories cannot make progress on the back of scientific theories because metaphysical theories cannot be approximately true. First, I apply a well-known account of scientific progress, the truthlikeness account (...) of progress, to theories in metaphysics in order to show that metaphysics can make progress on such an account. This account, however, will not fully address the issue of radically changing theories over theory-change. Then, I offer a new account of progress in metaphysics, the tool building approach, that specifies the progress metaphysics makes even if our best naturalistic theories in metaphysics radically change. (shrink)

Peter Carruthers argues that the global workspace theory implies there are no facts of the matter about animal consciousness. The argument is easily extended to other cognitive theories of consciousness, posing a general problem for consciousness studies. But the argument proves too much, for it also implies that there are no facts of the matter about human consciousness. A key assumption of the argument is that scientific theories of consciousness must explain away the explanatory gap. I criticize this assumption and (...) point to an alternative strategy for defending scientific theories of consciousness, one that better reflects the ongoing scientific practice. I argue there are introspectable inferential connections from phenomenal concepts to functional concepts that scientists can use to individuate the global workspace in terms of capacities that animals and humans share. (shrink)

Recent experimental studies indicate that epistemically irrelevant factors can skew our intuitions, and that some degree of scepticism about appealing to intuition in philosophy is warranted. In response, some have claimed that philosophers are experts in such a way as to vindicate their reliance on intuitions—this has become known as the ‘expertise defence’. This paper explores the viability of the expertise defence, and suggests that it can be partially vindicated. Arguing that extant discussion is problematically imprecise, we will finesse the (...) notion of ‘philosophical expertise’ in order to better reflect the complex reality of the different practices involved in philosophical inquiry. On this basis, we offer a new version of the expertise defence that allows for distinct types of philosophical expertise. The upshot of our approach is that wholesale vindications or rejections of the expertise defence are shown to be unwarranted; we must instead turn to local, piecemeal investigations of philosophical expertise. Lastly, in the spirit of taking our own advice, we exemplify how recent developments from experimental philosophy lend themselves to this approach, and can empirically support one instance of a successful expertise defence. (shrink)

David Chalmers has distinguished the “hard” and the “easy” problem of consciousness, arguing that progress on the “easy problem”—on pinpointing the physical/neural correlates of consciousness—will not necessarily involve progress on the hard problem—on explaining why consciousness, in the first place, emerges from physical processing. Chalmers, however, was hopeful that refined theorizing would eventually yield philosophical progress. In particular, he argued that panpsychism might be a candidate account to solve the hard problem. Here, I provide a concise stock-take on both the (...) empirical-neuroscientific and philosophical-conceptual progress on consciousness. It turns out that, whereas empirical progress is indisputable, philosophical progress is much less pronounced. While Chalmers was right, I argue, in distinguishing distinctive types of problems of consciousness, his prediction of progress on the hard problem was overly optimistic. Empirical progress and philosophical progress are essentially uncoupled; a more skeptical perspective on progress in philosophy in general is appropriate. (shrink)

By introducing the concept of “mental data,” Palermos (2023) highlights an underappreciated aspect of data ethics that policymakers would do well to heed. Sweeping artificial intelligence (AI) legi...

The paper addresses the nature of seemings in light of their role in inquiry. Seemings are mental states or events with propositional content that have a specific phenomenology often referred to as “felt truth”. In epistemology, seemings are mainly discussed as possible (non-inferential) justifications for belief. Yet, epistemology has recently taken a zetetic turn, that is, a turn toward the study of inquiry. I will argue that the role of seemings in epistemology should be re-assessed from the perspective of inquiry (...) and deliberation. Seemings may fall short of justifying beliefs, but there is an important role for seemings in the zetetic realm, which may also explain why seemings lack direct justificatory force for beliefs. Seemings, so I will suggest, can provide normative reasons for performing certain zetetic tasks, but they cannot provide normative reasons for making up one’s mind about the inquired question. In this sense, the zetetic role of seemings can be described as guiding rational inquiry. I will suggest that a modified version of the so-called Taking Evidence View about the nature of seemings is best fitted to accommodate their zetetic role. Yet, contra existing versions of the Taking Evidence View, my modified account acknowledges that seemings are genuine experiences (of one’s evidential standing during inquiry) that are accompanied by the characteristic phenomenology of what is called a “feeling of truth”. By doing so, my modified version of the Taking Evidence View incorporates the (as I take it) most important feature of the rival Experience View of seemings. (shrink)

The idea that there could be spatially extended mereological simples has recently been defended by a number of metaphysicians (Markosian 1998, 2004; Simons 2004; Parsons (2000) also takes the idea seriously). Peter Simons (2004) goes further, arguing not only that spatially extended mereological simples (henceforth just extended simples) are possible, but that it is more plausible that our world is composed of such simples, than that it is composed of either point-sized simples, or of atomless gunk. The difficulty for these (...) views lies in explaining why it is that the various sub-volumes of space occupied by such simples, are not occupied by proper parts of those simples. Intuitively at least, many of us find compelling the idea that spatially extended objects have proper parts at every sub-volume of the region they occupy. It seems that the defender of extended simples must reject a seemingly plausible claim, what Simons calls the geometric correspondence principle (GCP): that any (spatially) extended object has parts that correspond to the parts of the region that it occupies (Simons 2004: 371). We disagree. We think that GCP is a plausible principle. We also think it is plausible that our world is composed of extended simples. We reconcile these two notions by two means. On the one hand we pay closer attention to the physics of our world. On the other hand, we consider what happens when our concept of something—in this case space—contains elements not all of which are realized in anything, but instead key components are realized in different features of the world. (shrink)

Given the fact that many people use Wikipedia, we should ask: Can we trust it? The empirical evidence suggests that Wikipedia articles are sometimes quite good but that they vary a great deal. As such, it is wrong to ask for a monolithic verdict on Wikipedia. Interacting with Wikipedia involves assessing where it is likely to be reliable and where not. I identify five strategies that we use to assess claims from other sources and argue that, to a greater of (...) lesser degree, Wikipedia frustrates all of them. Interacting responsibly with something like Wikipedia requires new epistemic methods and strategies. (shrink)

The popularity of theodicy over the past several decades has given rise to a countermovement, “anti-theodicy”, which admonishes attempts at theodicy for various reasons. This paper examines one prominent anti-theodical objection: that it is hubristic, and attempts to form an approach to theodicy which evades this objection. To do so I draw from the work of Eleonore Stump, who provides a framework by which we can glean second-personal knowledge of God. From this knowledge, I argue that we can derive a (...) theodicy which does not utilise the kind of analytic theorising anti-theodicists accuse of intellectual hubris. (shrink)

In this issue, Ahmadi1 reports on the practice of hymenoplasty—a surgical intervention meant to restore a presumed physical marker of virginity prior to a woman's marriage. As Mehri and Sills2 have stated, these women ‘want to ensure that blood is spilled on their wedding night sheets.’ Although Ahmadi's research was carried out in Iran specifically, this surgery is becoming increasingly popular in a number of Western countries as well, especially among Muslim populations.3 What are the ethics of hymen restoration?Consider the (...) role of the physician. Two of the doctors interviewed by Ahmadi reported being in ‘a perpetual state of guilt because of the surgery's inherent aim at deceiving the groom’ and noted their ‘personal conflict’ at being involved in this deception. Yet: "None of the doctors believed that the surgery was unethical, arguing that the girl could be ‘abused’ and ‘can even die’ if she is discovered not … ". (shrink)

In this paper, I will examine the notion of an epistemic dilemma, its characterizations in the literature, and the different intuitions prompted by it. I will illustrate that the notion of an epistemic dilemma is expected to capture various phenomena that are not easily unified with one concept: while some aspects of these phenomena are more about the agent in a certain situation, other aspects seem to be more about the situation as such. As a consequence, incompatible intuitions emerge concerning (...) the transparency of epistemic dilemmas as well as regarding the role that doxastic suspension plays in resolving cases of epistemic dilemma. I suggest to distinguish between the mental state of agents who find themselves in an epistemic dilemma and the normative situation that gives rise to a dilemma. I will refer to the agent’s mental state as epistemic conflict and will reserve the term epistemic dilemma for evidential situations in which epistemic principles either recommend incompatible doxastic responses or render all options impermissible. The concept of epistemic conflict not only captures the mental state of agents who find themselves in a genuine epistemic dilemma but also applies to agents who face difficult epistemic choices that they cannot resolve without substantial cognitive (and often pragmatic) effort, for example, via doxastic suspension. (shrink)

A large part of the contemporary phenomenology of medicine has been devoted to accounts of health and illness, arguing that they contribute to the improvement of health care. Less focus has been paid to the issue of prevention of disease and the associated difficulty of adhering to health-promoting behaviours, which is arguably of equal importance. This article offers a phenomenological account of this disease prevention, focusing on how we—as embodied beings—engage with health-promoting behaviours. It specifically considers how we engage with (...) oral hygiene regimens to prevent periodontitis and why we are not good at it. The article suggests that poor adherence to health-promoting behaviours can be explained with reference to the concept of the absent body, because prevention of disease is generally concerned with pre-symptomatic illness experience. The final section contains a discussion of some strategies for the improvement of disease prevention based on this viewpoint. (shrink)

The perception of reality by biosystems is based on different, and in certain respects more effective, principles than those utilized by the more formal procedures of science. As a result, what appears as random pattern to the scientific method can be meaningful pattern to a living organism. The existence of this complementary perception of reality makes possible in principle effective use by organisms of the direct interconnections between spatially separated objects shown to exist in the work of J. S. Bell.

In this paper, the relationship between the e-value of a complex hypothesis, H, and those of its constituent elementary hypotheses, Hj, j = 1… k, is analyzed, in the independent setup. The e-value of a hypothesis H, ev, is a Bayesian epistemic, credibility or truth value defined under the Full Bayesian Significance Testing mathematical apparatus. The questions addressed concern the important issue of how the truth value of H, and the truth function of the corresponding FBST structure M, relate to (...) the truth values of its elementary constituents, Hj, and to the truth functions of their corresponding FBST structures Mj, respectively. (shrink)

The “scarred villain” trope, where facial differences like scars signify moral corruption, is ubiquitous in film (e.g., Batman’s The Joker). Strides by advocacy groups to undermine the trope, however, suggest cinematic representations of facial differences could be improving with time. This preregistered study characterized facial differences in film across cultures (US vs. India) and time (US: 1980-2019, India: 2000-2019). Top-grossing films by country and decade were screened for characters with facial differences. We found that the scarred villain trope has actually (...) worsened with time, although in tandem with progress in also representing non-villainous characters with facial anomalies. Country of origin did not predict the presence of facial differences in villains or heroes. “Action” and “fantasy” movies were the most likely genres to depict villains with facial differences. Finally, villains’ facial differences crossed more facial subunits and were more likely to involve lips, chin, and mandible than when present in heroes. Our findings underscore the need for critical reflection on the role of cultural practices—even when seemingly innocuous—in shaping and maintaining negative biases against already stigmatized groups. (shrink)

When we ask what natural kinds are, there are two different things we might have in mind. The first, which I’ll call the taxonomy question, is what distinguishes a category which is a natural kind from an arbitrary class. The second, which I’ll call the ontology question, is what manner of stuff there is that realizes the category. Many philosophers have systematically conflated the two questions. The confusion is exhibited both by essentialists and by philosophers who pose their accounts in (...) terms of similarity. It also leads to misreading philosophers who do make the distinction. Distinguishing the questions allows for a more subtle understanding of both natural kinds and their underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

Cosmological inflation is widely considered an integral and empirically successful component of contemporary cosmology. It was originally motivated by its solution of certain so-called fine-tuning problems of the hot big bang model, particularly what are known as the horizon problem and the flatness problem. Although the physics behind these problems is clear enough, the nature of the problems depends on the sense in which the hot big bang model is fine-tuned and how the alleged fine-tuning is problematic. Without clear explications (...) of these, it remains unclear precisely what problems inflationary theory is meant to be solving and whether it does in fact solve them. I analyze the structure of these problems and consider various interpretations that may substantiate the alleged fine-tuning. On the basis of this analysis I argue that at present there is no unproblematic interpretation available for which it can be said that inflation solves the big bang model’s alleged fine-tuning problems. (shrink)

The accepted narrative treats John Stuart Mill’s Kinds as the historical prototype for our natural kinds, but Mill actually employs two separate notions: Kinds and natural groups. Considering these, along with the accounts of Mill’s nineteenth-century interlocutors, forces us to recognize two distinct questions. First, what marks a natural kind as worthy of inclusion in taxonomy? Second, what exists in the world that makes a category meet that criterion? Mill’s two notions offer separate answers to the two questions: natural groups (...) for taxonomy and Kinds for ontology. This distinction is ignored in many contemporary debates about natural kinds and is obscured by the standard narrative that treats our natural kinds just as a development of Mill’s Kinds. (shrink)

In earlier work, I predicted that we would probably not be able to determine the colors of the dinosaurs. I lost this epistemic bet against science in dramatic fashion when scientists discovered that it is possible to draw inferences about dinosaur coloration based on the microstructure of fossil feathers (Vinther et al., 2008). This paper is an exercise in philosophical error analysis. I examine this episode with two questions in mind. First, does this case lend any support to epistemic optimism (...) about historical science? Second, under what conditions is it rational to make predictions about what questions scientists will or will not be able answer? In reply to the first question, I argue that the recent work on the colors of the dinosaurs matters less to the debate about the epistemology of historical science than it might seem. In reply to the second question, I argue that it is difficult to specify a policy that would rule out the failed bet without also being too conservative. (shrink)

This is an excerpt of a report that highlights and explores five questions that arose from the Network for Sensory Research workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of York in March, 2012. This portion of the report explores the question: What is perceptual learning?

Since its publication, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory and its revision (Lilien- feld & Andrews, 1996; Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005) have become increasingly popular such that it is now among the most frequently used self-report inventories for the assessment of psychopathy. The current meta-analysis examined the relations between the two PPI factors (factor 1: Fearless Dominance; factor 2: Self-Centered Impulsivity), as well as their relations with other validated measures of psychopathy, internalizing and externalizing forms of psychopathology, general personality traits, and antisocial (...) personality disorder symptoms. Across 61 samples reported in 49 publications, we found support for the convergent and criterion validity of both PPI factor 2 and the PPI total score. Much weaker validation was found for PPI factor 1, which manifested limited convergent validity and a pattern of correlations with central criterion variables that was inconsistent with many conceptualizations of psychopathy. (shrink)

In this paper, I use a comparative analysis of mysticism in Zen and the Abrahamic faiths to formulate a phenomenological account of mysticism “as such.” I argue that, while Zen Buddhism is distinct from other forms of mystical experience in important ways, it can still be fit into a general phenomenological category of mystical experience. First, I explicate the phenomenological accounts of mysticism provided by Anthony Steinbock and Angela Bello. Second, I offer an account of Zen mysticism which both coheres (...) with and problematizes these accounts, arguing that Zen demonstrates the inadequacy of these accounts as descriptions of mysticism as a universal religious category. Lastly, I use this investigation to propose that Zen mysticism does generally cohere with the mystical experiences of other religions, but only if we devise a new formula for speaking phenomenologically about mystical experience as such which captures this phenomenon in all of its manifestations. (shrink)

What are the effects of circumcision on sexual function and experience? And what does sex—in the sense related to gender—have to do with the ethics of circumcision? Jacobs and Arora (2015) give short shrift to the first of these questions; and they do not seem to have considered the second. In this commentary, I explore the relationship between sex (in both senses) and infant male circumcision, and draw some conclusions about the ongoing debate regarding this controversial practice.

In matters of personal taste, faultless disagreement occurs between people who disagree over what is tasty, fun, etc., in those cases when each of these people seems equally far from the objective truth. Faultless disagreement is often taken as evidence that truth is relative. This article aims to help us avoid the truth-relativist conclusion. The article, however, does not argue directly against relativism; instead, the article defends non-relative truth constructively, aiming to explain faultless disagreement with the resources of semantic contextualism. (...) To this end the article describes and advocates a contextualist solution inspired by supervaluationist truth-value gap approaches. The solution presented here, however, does not require truth value gaps; it preserves both logical bivalence and non-relative truth, even while it acknowledges and explains the possibility of faultless disagreement. The solution is motivated by the correlation between assertions’ being true and their being useful. This correlation, furthermore, is used not only to tell which assertions are true, but also to determine which linguistic intuitions are reliable. (shrink)

This essay is part of a doctoral dissertation presented to the Department of Philosophy, University of São Paulo, in 1993, named 'Genealogy of the Real' . Its core idea is a Nietzschean approach to a masterpiece among philosophical inspired movies, namely, Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, which surely touches deep groundings of the concept of truth and reality.

Event-causal libertarians maintain that an agent’s settling of whether certain states-of-affairs obtain on a particular occasion can be reduced to the causing of events (e.g., bodily motions, coming to a resolution) by certain mental events or states, such as certain desires, beliefs and/or intentions. Agent-causal libertarians disagree. A common critique against event-causal libertarian accounts is that the agent’s role of settling matters is left unfilled and the agent “disappears” from such accounts—a problem known as the disappearing agent problem. Recently, Franklin (...) (Philos Stud 170:413–432, 2014) has argued that an “enriched” event-causal account can overcome this problem. Franklin, however, doesn’t consider whether, as Pereboom (J Philos 99:499–531, 2015) argues, the agent as decider of “torn decisions” disappears from even enriched accounts. As I show here, Franklin’s enriched account takes some modifying if it is to overcome Pereboom’s torn decision problem—a special case of the disappearing agent problem. However, as I also show, there is a more fundamental problem facing event-causal libertarian accounts. It is implausible that an agent qua event or state simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes. The upshot is that events and/or states lack an ability essential to completely fulfilling an agent’s role qua settler. This isn’t a problem for agent-causal accounts like the one offered by Steward (A metaphysics for freedom. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012) because in as much as an agent qua substance settles whether her body moves in certain ways on certain occasions she simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes. As a consequence, event-causal libertarians face a dilemma, or rather several, that agent-causal libertarians do not. This may ultimately be explained by the irreducibility of causation by agents to causation by events. (shrink)

Honors Research: PPE @ UPenn | This thesis seeks to address some of the most central questions to the fields of political philosophy and political economy. How can social order and government develop from anarchy under standard economic assumptions of rationality, where all agents act strictly in their own interests? What are the deontological limits to the State’s use of force such that political legitimacy is maintained, and how do these ethical boundaries of government relate to moral obligations conferred upon (...) individuals? Finally, what sets of policies and social institutions ought the State implement to achieve the best welfare outcomes for a society, and is there a necessary conflict between policy consequentialism and deontological ethics? This thesis will first show that a laissez-faire capitalist social order spontaneously emerges from the State of Nature as a result of mutual self-interest between rational agents, with the institution of government being a mere product of market forces that is best modeled as a locally-monopolized, excludable, collective entity with global competition. Then, this thesis will defend a theory of natural rights on the basis that persons are normatively separate, before establishing that laissez-faire capitalism and its contractual form of government are uniquely in compliance with these universal moral standards of conduct that predate the institution of any state. Finally, it will be argued in this thesis that the key tenets of laissez-faire capitalism - strong individual rights to life, liberty, and property - produce maximal human welfare from both individualist and collectivist aggregations, before such conclusions are translated into a foundation for limited government. These arguments serve to solidify libertarianism as both the dominant political philosophy and the globally convergent equilibrium of political organization, while also demonstrating that laissez-faire capitalism is the optimal form of social order. (shrink)

Intuitions play an important role in the debate on the causal status of high‐level properties. For instance, Kim has claimed that his “exclusion argument” relies on “a perfectly intuitive … understanding of the causal relation.” We report the results of three experiments examining whether laypeople really have the relevant intuitions. We find little support for Kim's view and the principles on which it relies. Instead, we find that laypeople are willing to count both a multiply realized property and its realizers (...) as causes, and regard the systematic overdetermination implied by this view as unproblematic. (shrink)

Taking his critique of totalitarianizing conceptions of community as a starting point, this text examines Jean-Luc Nancy's work of an ‘ontology of plural singular being’ for its political implications. It argues that while at first this ontology seems to advocate a negative or an anti-politics only, it can also be read as a ‘theory of communicative praxis’ that suggests a certain ethos – in the form of a certain use of symbols (which is expressed only inaptly by the word ‘style’) (...) that would render the ontological plurality of singulars perceptible and practically effective. Finally, some recent texts by Nancy even sidestep the ontology of being-with and face the question of what politics, faced with demands of justice, could be and what a democratic politics could provide. Both of these aspects in Nancy's work, however, still remain to be spelled out more politically. (shrink)

Virtues, broadly understood as stable and robust dispositions for certain responses across morally relevant situations, have been a growing topic of interest in psychology. A central topic of discussion has been whether studies showing that situations can strongly influence our responses provide evidence against the existence of virtues (as a kind of stable and robust disposition). In this review, we examine reasons for thinking that the prevailing methods for examining situational influences are limited in their ability to test dispositional stability (...) and robustness; or, then, whether virtues exist. We make the case that these limitations can be addressed by aggregating repeated, cross-situational assessments of environmental, psychological and physiological variables within everyday life—a form of assessment often called ecological momentary assessment (EMA, or experience sampling). We, then, examine how advances in smartphone application (app) technology, and their mass adoption, make these mobile devices an unprecedented vehicle for EMA and, thus, the psychological study of virtue. We, additionally, examine how smartphones might be used for virtue development by promoting changes in thought and behavior within daily life; a technique often called ecological momentary intervention (EMI). While EMA/I have become widely employed since the 1980s for the purposes of understanding and promoting change amongst clinical populations, few EMA/I studies have been devoted to understanding or promoting virtues within non-clinical populations. Further, most EMA/I studies have relied on journaling, PDAs, phone calls and/or text messaging systems. We explore how smartphone app technology provides a means of making EMA a more robust psychological method, EMI a more robust way of promoting positive change, and, as a result, opens up new possibilities for studying and promoting virtues. (shrink)

This paper analyses the question concerning the scope, possibility and legitimation of critical discourse. For this we understand the kind of discourse in which a single individual or a minority group sustain claims against what is considered correct by a majority. We concentrate in a controversy where this problem receives a focal attention: the debate between Habermas and Gadamer. The problem with critical discourse there is its apparent paradoxical status. On the one side, it is questioned whether the conditions of (...) meaning elucidated by hermeneutics does not make critical discourse impossible. Hermeneutics replies asking whether the scope of critical discourse critical theory is committed to is not beyond the condition of any possible discourse. Our analysis of the dispute elucidates a common assumption to both perspectives: the similar role both attribute to implicit recognition (although understood in a very different material way) in the constitution of the symbolic domain. We take profit of the inscription of Wittgenstein in the debate in order to asses critically the controversy through the analysis of this assumption. (shrink)