This is a conjecture about the conditions and operating structures that are required for the phenomenality of certain mental states. Specifically, full-blown phenomenality is assumed, as contrasted with constrained examples of phenomenal experience such as sensations of color and pain. Propositional attitudes and content, while not phenomenal per se, are standardly concurrent and may condition phenomenal states (e.g., when tied to false beliefs). It is conjectured that full phenomenality natively arises in coherent processes of situated sensory synthesis and representation (with (...) conceptual content) that are looped, mereologically whole and multi-dimensional. And that phenomenal states are typically phase-states within a parameterized conjoint structure of world and experiencer processes that are causally modulated across Markov blankets (which are conditionally independent and may be nested: cf. M. Kirchoff, et. al., 2017, 2018; and T. Burge, 2010, re: anti-individualism). Though they may, it is not accepted that phenomenally conscious states must be targets of higher-order representations (cf. A. Byrne, 2004). (shrink)

This is a sketch of the basis and role of consciousness and the minimally required elements and constraints of any setting that may produce consciousness. It proposes that consciousness (as we know it) is a biologically-mediated product of evolved recursive and hierarchically nested representational systems that obey information theoretic principles and Bayesian (probabilistic) feedback and feedforward predictive modeling processes.

The central claim here is that the self is an emergent experiential, information processing and behavioral system that arises reflexively in the conscious subject and a body setting that is organized and primed with many of the required processes in place. These processes and their associated functions represent our world as coherent and temporally unified within the construct of a developing and roughly continuous experiencer-agent, or self. These representations are not, however, copies of the external world. In this way, selves (...) develop as temporal subjects; as active and complex informational, dispositional, belief-driven and memory-driven configurations of mental states with unique (personal) properties that interact. They are robust and pivotal subsystems of our global mental organization and are suffused with the phenomenality of perception. As constructs in internal and external time, selves have histories, memories, beliefs, skills, cognitive capacities, attitudes, standpoints, social and emotional equities, pre-dispositions and default responses. Yet they are neither causally nor ontologically reducible to their embodied physical states. They are, rather, implemented in them. The body, I maintain, is a necessary but insufficient condition for the occurrence of a self. (shrink)

Timelines is an inquiry into the nature of time, both as an apparent feature of the external physical world and as a fundamental feature of our experience of ourselves in the world. The principal argument of Timelines is that our coventional ideas about time are largely mistaken and that what we think of as independent physical time is actually our calibration of a certain relation between events. Namely, the relation between time-keeping events and the causal sequential differences of physical processes (...) which are real and independent of us. (shrink)

One of the more obscure arguments for Rawls’ difference principle dubbed ‘the Pareto argument for inequality’ has been criticised by G. A. Cohen (1995, 2008) as being inconsistent. In this paper, we examine and clarify the Pareto argument in detail and argue (1) that justification for the Pareto principles derives from rational selfinterest and thus the Pareto principles ought to be understood as conditions of individual rationality, (2) that the Pareto argument is not inconsistent, contra Cohen, and (3) that the (...) kind of bargaining model required to arrive at the particular unequal distribution that the difference principle picks out is a model that is not based on bargaining according to one’s threat advantage. (shrink)

It is observed that most development modalities employed over the years for achieving community development in Africa have not leaved up to expectation in terms of involving the majority of people in the quest for national transformation and development; rather, these modalities tend to complicate the very problems they are set out to solve. The situation is mostly like this because the adopted development strategies have not taken adequate cognizance the essence of effective communication methods and the importance of people’s (...) perspectives and peculiarities in these processes. Mostly, the so-called outsiders and experts in development matters who are physically and socially separated from the people think for them and about their development. This situation is inimical to genuine and sustainable development. It is important therefore to note that development can only be meaningful and sustainable when it is people generated; involving people’s real needs and their participation in the process of achieving them. It is at this point therefore that community theatre can come handy as it has the potentials to bring people together to discuss issues that disempowered them and participatorily proffer solutions to the negatives. Community theatre can be explored to work with rural and urban people; mostly the rural dwellers who are mostly disempowered. In view of this therefore, this paper posits that community theatre is a method of participatory communication towards achieving social change. (shrink)

An interview with Ed Casey where we discuss the intersections of his philosophical work with current political issues, including the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Kierkegaard defended romantic motives for marriage at a time in European culture when marriages were still usually arranged for family convenience, status, and social position. The Judge's underappreciated first letter in Either/Or II views romantic love as a bildungs-process that can lead towards neighbor-love, mediating the sharp contrasts that are stressed in his later signed Works of Love.

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre struggled for the whole of their philosophical careers against one of modern Western philosophy's most pervasive concepts, the Cartesian notion of self. A notion of self is always a complex of ideas; in the case of Beauvoir and Sartre it includes the ideas of embodiment, temporality, the Other, and intersubjectivity. This essay will show the considerable part that gender, especially Beauvoir's position as a woman in twentieth-century France, played in the development, presentation and reception (...) of the couple's alternative formulation. (shrink)

I have argued that like Harry Frankfurt, Augustine implicitly distinguishes between first-order desires and higher-order volitions; yet unlike Frankfurt, Augustineheld that the liberty to form different possible volitional identifications is essential to responsibility for our character. Like Frankfurt, Augustine recognizes that we can sometimes be responsible for the desires on which we act without being able to do or desire otherwise; but for Augustine, this is true only because such responsibility for inevitable desires and actions traces (at least in part) (...) to responsibility for our volitional identifications, which in turn has leeway-libertarianconditions. However, David Hunt has interpreted Augustine’s account of divine foreknowledge as implying a type of source-incompatibilism that does not require alternative possible actions or intentions. Moreover, while Eleonore Stump’s account of Augustine on sanctification supports my interpretation, Augustine’s position on predestination in his latest writings may be incompatible with liberty of the higher-order will. I will argue against Hunt’s interpretation but admit that the leeway-libertarian has to reject the ‘no autonomy’ model in some of Augustine’s late writings. (shrink)

Imprecise probabilities are often modelled with representors, or sets of probability functions. In the recent literature, two ways of interpreting representors have emerged as especially prominent: vagueness interpretations, according to which each probability function in the set represents how the agent's beliefs would be if any vagueness were precisified away; and comparativist interpretations, according to which the set represents those comparative confidence relations that are common to all probability functions therein. I argue that these interpretations have some important limitations. I (...) also propose an alternative—the functional interpretation—according to which representors are best interpreted by reference to the roles they play in the theories that make use of them. (shrink)

The standard representation theorem for expected utility theory tells us that if a subject’s preferences conform to certain axioms, then she can be represented as maximising her expected utility given a particular set of credences and utilities—and, moreover, that having those credences and utilities is the only way that she could be maximising her expected utility. However, the kinds of agents these theorems seem apt to tell us anything about are highly idealised, being always probabilistically coherent with infinitely precise degrees (...) of belief and full knowledge of all a priori truths. Ordinary subjects do not look very rational when compared to the kinds of agents usually talked about in decision theory. In this paper, I will develop an expected utility representation theorem aimed at the representation of those who are neither probabilistically coherent, logically omniscient, nor expected utility maximisers across the board—that is, agents who are frequently irrational. The agents in question may be deductively fallible, have incoherent credences, limited representational capacities, and fail to maximise expected utility for all but a limited class of gambles. (shrink)

I identify an assumption that the students should not rely on: if the teacher believes that the exam would not be a surprise on a certain day, the teacher will not give the exam on that day. The reason I present for not making this assumption does not involve doubting the moral goodness of the teacher. But it does involve making a value judgment.

I present a sense of the term “ideal theory” based on Joseph Raz’s response to the situation of a lifeguard faced with three drowning on one side and two on the other and unable to save all. From what is of value, such a theory builds up a conception of an ideal political state or an aspect of it which we have reason to realize, but ignoring whether it is possible for us to realize this.

Should one read T.H. Irwin’s three volume history of Western ethics, or parts of it? Here one might turn to reviews. The journal The Philosophical Forum uses the sensible strategy of getting different specialists to review different parts of the book. There are two chapters on Rawls, each one reviewed by a Rawlsian. I wish to register discontent with Steven Ross’s review.

Joseph Raz criticizes John Rawls for a procedure supporting a non-adaptable constitution. This paper considers how a non-adaptable constitution can seem not so counterintuitive and also when.

I present an intractable puzzle for the currently popular view that belief is weak—the view that expressions like ‘S believes p’ ascribe to S a doxastic attitude towards p that is rationally compatible with low credence that p. The puzzle concerns issues that arise on considering beliefs in conditionals. I show that proponents of weak belief either cannot consistently apply their preferred methodology when accommodating beliefs in conditionals, or they must deny that beliefs in conditionals can be used in reasoning.

This article asks: Is the human self, the stream of human consciousness, a single unique enduring actual entity or whole (like Alfred North Whitehead’s God) or a society of transient actual occasions (like Charles Hartshorne’s God)? It argues forcefully for the former and against the latter and concludes that both God and human selves are enduring but constantly developing actual entities who are constantly being enriched by new events, experiences, and activities in time.

Today's conflicts between religions are grounded largely in historical injustices and grievances but partly in serious conceptual disagreements. This essay agrees with Miroslav Volf that a nontritheistic Christian account of the Trinity is highly desirable. Three traditional models of the Trinity are examined. In their pure, unmixed form, two of them should logically be acceptable to Jews, Muslims, and strict monotheists who regard Christianity as inherently tritheistic, despite lip service to one God. In the social model, three distinct self-aware subjects (...) are unified by being in perfect harmony with each other. Despite Volf's best defense of this, to conceive of three gods, this is how one would go about it. In the psychological model, one divine subject has three psychological capacities—memory, understanding, and will. In the functional model, one subject relates to the world in three different ways—as creator, redeemer, and companion. These two are genuinely monotheistic. Finally, a monotheistic account of the unity of Jesus with God is proposed for consideration. (shrink)

How well do we understand our own societies? In this paper, I raise quite obvious puzzles for Diego Gambetta and Gloria Origgi’s depiction of Italy as a kakonomy and Kathleen Stock’s depiction of ordinary people.

This paper investigates the question of, and the degree to which, Newton’s theory of space constitutes a third-way between the traditional substantivalist and relationist ontologies, i.e., that Newton judged that space is neither a type of substance/entity nor purely a relation among such substances. A non-substantivalist reading of Newton has been famously defended by Howard Stein, among others; but, as will be demonstrated, these claims are problematic on various grounds, especially as regards Newton’s alleged rejection of the traditional substance/accident dichotomy (...) concerning space. Nevertheless, our analysis of the metaphysical foundations of Newton’s spatial theory will strive to uncover its unique and innovative characteristics, most notably, the distinctive role that Newton’s “immaterialist” spatial ontology plays in his dynamics. (shrink)

This paper engages two debates about trust, deriving from two distinct questions about the nature of trust. The first asks how to define trust. Does trusting B to φ involve anything more than relying on B to φ? The second asks about the normative structure of trust. Does trust most fundamentally embody a two-place or a three-place relation? I’ll defend a new position in the second debate that yields an equally new position in the first. The standard three-place model highlights (...) ‘A trusts B to φ.’ The two-place model prefers ‘A trusts B.’ On my new three-place model, both are less fundamental than ‘A φs through trust in B.’ We do, of course, trust people to do things. But the most fundamental form of trust lies in doing something through trust in a person. I call this the Assurance View of trust because I’ll argue that trusting involves accepting another’s invitation to trust – an assurance, in effect, that the other is relevantly trustworthy. Trust thereby differs from mere reliance by how it makes available a reason to rely on the trusted. In mere reliance, your reason to rely on B is exogenous to the reliance relation, emerging, for example, from B’s track record of relevant reliability. When you trust B, by contrast, you take yourself to have a reason to rely on B that is endogenous to your trust, a reason grounded not merely in B’s reliability, exogenously considered, but in B’s ongoing responsiveness to your relevant needs. The Assurance View’s key insight emerges, I’ll argue, from cases wherein trust is disappointed – the trusted does not do what you trusted her to do – yet not thereby betrayed. (shrink)

Can a reason to believe testimony derive from the addressee’s trust itself or only from reliability in the speaker that the trust perhaps causes? I aim to cast suspicion on the former view, defended by Faulkner, in favor of the latter – despite agreeing with Faulkner’s emphasis on the second-personal normativity of testimonial assurance. Beyond my narrow disagreement with Faulkner lie two broader issues. I argue that Faulkner misappropriates Bernard Williams’s genealogy of testimony when he makes use of Williams’s genealogical (...) argument in his own preferred assurance view of testimony. Though Williams doesn’t clearly articulate it, there is a deep reason why Williams’s genealogy cannot underwrite an argument for trust-based testimonial reasons. Can a genealogical argument underwrite any version of the assurance view? I sketch an assurance view of testimonial reasons that rejects Faulkner’s thesis that such reasons could be grounded in trust. Then I examine what it would take for that assurance view to receive genealogical vindication. (shrink)

This is my response to a premise-by-premise argument in Anca Gheaus’s “Biological Parenthood: Gestational, Not Genetic.”.

In this paper, I object to Michael Rush’s definitions of targeted and propositional gratitude.

In his Edifying Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled ‘The Unchangeableness of God’ in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century A.D. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as: He changes all, Himself unchanged. When everything seems stable and (...) in the overturn of all things, He remains equally unchanged; no change touches Him, not even the shadow of a change; in unaltered clearness He, the father of lights, remained eternally unchanged. 1. (shrink)

Robert Adams characterizes actualism regarding possible worlds as «the view that if there are any true statements in which there are said to be nonactual possible worlds, they must be reducible to statements in which the only things there are said to be are things which there are in the actual world, and which are not identical with nonactual possibles.» In this paper, I will briefly explain actualism about possible worlds, showing that an essential pillar of the theory is the (...) claim that truth is distinct from, and ontologically prior to, truth in a world. The rest of the paper is premised on the idea that an interesting philosophical defense of this claim calls for an analysis of truth itself, and is not intended as an objection to actualism, but rather to underscore the interest actualists should have in the question of what truth is. First, I will consider the idea, drawn from Adams and Alan McMichael, that truth differs from truth in a world in its being a matter of correspondence between a proposition and an independent object; that object being, in McMichael's words, the `concrete universe'. Then, I will show that, given such an analysis of truth, the truth conditions for propositions about non-actual possibilities violate the central tenet of actualism, as articulated by Adams. (shrink)

I propose a framework for comparative Islamic—Western ethics in which the Islamic categories "Islam, Iman," and "Ihsan" are juxtaposed with the concepts of obligation, value, and virtue, respectively. I argue that "shari'a" refers to both the obligation component and the entire structure of the Islamic ethic; suggesting a suspension of the understanding of "shari'a" as simply Islamic "law," and an alternative understanding of "usul al-fiqh" as a moral epistemology of obligation. I will test this approach by addressing the question of (...) reason in Islamic moral epistemology via an examination of an argument advanced by a founding usul scholar Muhammad bin Idrīs al-Shāfi'ī. (shrink)

This paper contests a point that Jacques Derrida and John Searle actually agree on, within their infamous debate: that a sign must be repeatable. I focus on a situation involving dissent when evaluating this claim.

This paper presents an attempt to solve Laura Valentini’s ideal theory paradox, in a way which makes me think of G.E. Moore but I shall leave the classification of the solution to the experts. I also discuss the claim that philosophy is so easy.

This paper presents a problem for a prisoner’s dilemma model according to which the state of nature would be a war of all against all, which I call “the close up problem.”.

This paper proposes a solution to a puzzle regarding when people switch from one skilled area of specialization to another, in which they have had little training. Certain analogies between the previous area and the area switched to enable this. I use Susan Carey as an example.

This paper presents a structural-functionalist solution to a paradox that historian of anthropology George Stocking dug up: from the point of view of parts of the Victorian middle class, Victorian society was highly evolved yet also contained savage components.

This paper offers a solution to Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory. A reason for idealizing assumptions is because otherwise the theory would be too complicated to be action guiding.

Donald Davidson denies that there are incommensurable scientific languages: languages which cannot be translated into our contemporary language. What about Derrida? What is his perspective on this matter? This paper presents a broadly Derridean objection to Susan Carey’s argument for incommensurability.

I present a solution to the paradox of the kalela dance based on the need for a contrast.

This paper presents a more holistic variety of liberalism than the Rawlsian kind, which involves judging that various things are not properly liberal, things which the Rawlsian would seek to avoid conflict with, e.g. “This is not liberal poetry,” “This is not liberal computer programming.” Such judgments seem to be based on an emotional, or aesthetic, sense of coherence.

This paper considers a paradox which the historian of anthropology George Stocking draws attention to: from the point of view of parts of the Victorian middle class, Victorian society was highly evolved yet also contained savage components. I clarify the paradox and propose a solution.

How old is the distinction between the genetic and the gestational parent? Anca Gheaus “suggests” it is quite new, but I believe people have made a distinction along these lines for centuries in their imaginations. I present a problem related to the distinction and to the Scottish enlightenment.

In De gravitatione, Newton contends that Descartes' physics is fundamentally untenable since the "fixed" spatial landmarks required to ground the concept of inertial motion cannot be secured in the constantly changing Cartesian plenum. Likewise, it is has often been alleged that the collision rules in Descartes' Principles of Philosophy undermine the "relational" view of space and motion advanced in this text. This paper attempts to meet these challenges by investigating the theory of connected gears (or "kinematics of mechanisms") for a (...) potential Cartesian method of positing the permanent reference frames necessary to uphold Descartes' conservation law for the quantity of motion. In particular, the insights gained from an examination of the kinematics of mechanisms will provide the Cartesian with much needed resources to counter the two threats posed above. (shrink)

One way of trying to justify the thesis of the underdetermination of scientific theories is by actual examples. In this paper, I present a paradox which arises from trying to justify the thesis in this way.

I introduce and examine an argument presented by American anthropologist Herbert S. Lewis against thinking that British anthropology played a significant role in supporting colonialist projects: the British empire was large and centuries old, so it seems very unlikely that two dozen anthropologists late on made much difference.

The paradox asserts “to be a decent human being, you have to treat people like they're special; but to be a decent sociologist, you have to remember they're not.” How then can a sociologist be a decent human being? I distinguish between rights and other things, such as beliefs or tastes, and draw attention to how respect for rights is compatible with a focus on the typical in research.

I present the concept of cross-disciplinary legitimacy: the fieldwork which an anthropologist has done is considered legitimate fieldwork in another discipline as well. Also, I present a puzzle regarding how the anthropologist untrained in another discipline can do such fieldwork and a response.

This paper presents a challenge to the coherence of social constructivism about science. It introduces an objection according to which social constructivism appeals to the authority of science regarding the nature of reality and so cannot coherently deny that authority. The challenge is how to avoid this incoherence.

In this paper, I present a response to the surprise exam paradox which may be of some use to someone. It is somewhat frightening for me.

Max Gluckman introduces us to if-I-were-a-horse arguments, but what is wrong with them? In this paper, I draw attention to an objection built-in to the terminology.

The dilemma I present for Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory concerns a theory which includes idealizations but also an account of how you apply the theory to less ideal reality. If this does not count as an ideal theory, then theories of justice need not be ideal. If it does, then ideal theories can be action guiding.

A review of some major topics of debate in normative decision theory from circa 2007 to 2019. Topics discussed include the ongoing debate between causal and evidential decision theory, decision instability, risk-weighted expected utility theory, decision-making with incomplete preferences, and decision-making with imprecise credences.