This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (project number CS170100008); the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science; and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. ACOLA collaborates with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi to deliver the interdisciplinary Horizon Scanning reports to government. The aims of the project which produced this report are: 1. Examine the transformative role that artificial intelligence may play in (...) different sectors of the economy, including the opportunities, risks and challenges that advancement presents. 2. Examine the ethical, legal and social considerations and frameworks required to enable and support broad development and uptake of artificial intelligence. 3. Assess the future education, skills and infrastructure requirements to manage workforce transition and support thriving and internationally competitive artificial intelligence industries. (shrink)

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the second of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the moral status of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I look at objections to the doctrine such as James’ Rachels’ Wicked Uncle Case and (...) Jonathan Bennett’s argument that any acceptable analysis of the distinction leaves it implausible that the distinction is morally relevant. I consider putative defences of the Doctrine from Philippa Foot and Warren Quinn. I argue that neither Foot not Quinn provides a satisfactory justification of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, but that the idea of self-ownership discussed by Quinn can be developed to provide a justification of the doctrine. (shrink)

Let serious propositional contingentism (SPC) be the package of views which consists in (i) the thesis that propositions expressed by sentences featuring terms depend, for their existence, on the existence of the referents of those terms, (ii) serious actualism—the view that it is impossible for an object to exemplify a property and not exist—and (iii) contingentism—the view that it is at least possible that some thing might not have been something. SPC is popular and compelling. But what should we say (...) about possible worlds, if we accept SPC? Here, I first show that a natural view of possible worlds, well-represented in the literature, in conjunction with SPC is inadequate. Though I note various alternative ways of thinking about possible worlds in response to the first problem, I then outline a second more general problem—a master argument—which generally shows that any account of possible worlds meeting very minimal requirements will be inconsistent with compelling claims about _mere possibilia_ which the serious propositional contingentist should accept. (shrink)

Brauer (2022) has recently argued that if it is possible that there is nothing, then the correct modal logic for metaphysical modality cannot include D. Here, I argue that Brauer’s argument is unsuccessful; or at the very least significantly weaker than presented. First, I outline a simple argument for why it is not possible that there is nothing. I note that this argument has a well-known solution involving the distinction between truth in and truth at a possible world. However, I (...) then argue that once the semantics presupposed by Brauer’s argument is reformulated in terms of truth at a world, we have good reasons to think that a crucial semantic premise in Brauer’s argument should be rejected in favour of an alternative. Brauer’s argument is, however, no longer valid with this alternative premise. Thus, plausibly Brauer’s argument against D is only valid, if it is not sound. (shrink)

In this article, I set forth a theory of propaganda explaining what it is, how it relates to marketing, and the nature and types of ideology. I discuss the criteria by which we can judge the rationality or deceitfulness of propaganda. I defend the view that while propaganda can be perfectly rational, it rarely is, and I explain why that is the case. I finish by explaining why the question of the rationality or deceitfulness of propaganda is different from the (...) question of the morality of propaganda. I give two quick examples of how an ethicist might argue that deceptive propaganda might be ethical to use, and perfectly rational propaganda might be immoral to use. I conclude with the notion that the question of the ethics of marketing and propaganda is complex, and should be handled in a separate paper. (shrink)

I sketch out a specific form of vice epistemology that I call critical character epistemology.

In this paper, we do two things. First, we provide some support for adopting a version of the meaningless strategy with respect to the liar paradox, and, second, we extend that strategy, by providing, albeit tentatively, a solution to that paradox—one that is semantic, rather than logical.

It is our contention that an ontological commitment to propositions faces a number of problems; so many, in fact, that an attitude of realism towards propositions—understood the usual “platonistic” way, as a kind of mind- and language-independent abstract entity—is ultimately untenable. The particular worries about propositions that marshal parallel problems that Paul Benacerraf has raised for mathematical platonists. At the same time, the utility of “proposition-talk”—indeed, the apparent linguistic commitment evident in our use of 'that'-clauses (in offering explanations and making (...) predictions)—is also in need of explanation. We account for this with a fictionalist analysis of our use of 'that'-clauses. Our account avoids certain problems that arise for the usual error-theoretic versions of fictionalism because we apply the notion of semantic pretense to develop an alternative, pretense-involving, non-error-theoretic, fictionalist account of proposition-talk. (shrink)

Many draw the distinction between truth in, and truth at, a possible world. The latter notion purportedly allows for propositions to be true relative to worlds even if they do not exist relative to those same worlds. Despite its wide application, the distinction is controversial. Some think that the notion of truth at a world is unintelligible. Here, I outline and discuss the most influential argument for the unintelligibility of truth at a world, The Picture Thinking Argument. I outline and (...) defend a neglected strategy to respond to this, arguing that if we take seriously the idea that possible worlds represent total ways the world could be, the distinction can be drawn intelligibly. (shrink)

Stegenga (forthcoming) formulates and defends a novel account of scientific progress, according to which science makes progress just in case there is a change in scientific justification. Here we present several problems for Stegenga’s account, concerning respectively (i) obtaining misleading evidence, (ii) losses or destruction of evidence, (iii) oscillations in scientific justification, and (iv) the possibility of scientific regress. We conclude by sketching a substantially different justification-based account of scientific progress that avoids these problems.

It is often assumed that neural representation, with content that is in principle detachable from the flow of natural-factive information, is necessary to perceptually experience an object. In this paper we present and discuss two cases challenging this assumption. We take them to show that it is possible to experience an object with which you are interacting through your sensory systems without those systems constructing a representation of the object. The first example is viewing nearby medium-sized groups of objects. The (...) second is hearing objects through misbound sounds. These cases bring out two different ways object representation can fail while object experience persists, suggesting that object experience requires only that the object be revealed through sensory information, not full-blown representation. Constructing object representations is one way sensory systems reveal objects, but it is not the only way. Object representation in neural sensory systems is relatively demanding, rare, and fragile; object experience is relatively easy, pervasive, and robust. We conclude that even minimal forms of neural phenomenal internalism are false. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

The mental health crisis and loneliness epidemic have sparked a growing interest in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots as a potential solution. This report examines the benefits and risks of incorporating chatbots in mental health treatment. AI is used for mental health diagnosis and treatment decision-making and to train therapists on virtual patients. Chatbots are employed as always-available intermediaries with therapists, flagging symptoms for human intervention. But chatbots are also sold as stand-alone virtual therapists or as friends and lovers. (...) There is evidence that these uses of AI and chatbots can provide better quality service, improve accessibility, and lower costs. The systems can reduce the stigma and shame of sharing their problems and leverage a mass of biometric and behavioral data to supplement self-reports. As the systems' intelligence rapidly improves, they will need to be rigorously tested for the accuracy and precision of their diagnoses and the quality of their interactions with patients. As chatbots become indistinguishable from humans and leverage their superhuman capacity to detect affect and draw on knowledge of a patient’s life, patients will be drawn to attribute personality to and relationship with the chatbot. Consequently, it will be essential to study what the “therapeutic alliance” with an actual human counselor provides and the risks of patients attributing such a relationship to a one-sided or “parasocial” relationship. (shrink)

Propositional contingentism is the thesis that there might have been propositions which might have not have been something. Serious actualism is the thesis that it is impossible for a property to be exemplified without there being something which exemplifies it. Both are popular. Likewise, the dominant view in the metaphysics of modality is that metaphysical possibility and necessity can be understood – in some sense – in terms of possible worlds, i.e. total ways the world could have been. Here, I (...) argue that, given some minimal assumptions, the conjunction of propositional contingentism and serious actualism entails that worlds are modally fragile – every world is ontologically dependent on every proposition. I then show that such a consequence is inconsistent with the claim that propositions true at all possible worlds are necessary. (shrink)

This essay explores a theory of panoramas put forward by the experimental postwar German novelist and translator Arno Schmidt. Schmidt claims that panoramas were so pervasive in the visual culture of the nineteenth century that they unconsciously influenced writers of the period, so that when they wanted to describe vast landscapes they unthinkingly framed their descriptions by drawing on experience with specific panoramas. He primarily expounds the theory in his longest work of fiction, Zettel’s Traum (1970), translated as Bottom’s Dream (...) (2016), where he supports it with evidence from Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne. He also promoted the theory in later interviews, and regarded it not just as part of his fiction but as a significant discovery in its own right. This essay extracts Schmidt’s theory from its fictional context and illustrates how he thought it could be used hermeneutically to uncover submerged panoramas in the works of nineteenth century authors. We conclude by locating the theory as part of the contemporary reception history of panoramas. (shrink)

In this essay, I want to explore one of the most ironic episodes in the history of propaganda, the attempt by various federal agencies to moderate American WWII anti-Japanese propaganda films. My texts will be four films, two produced by the military, and two by Hollywood: December 7th (1943), directed by Gregg Toland and revised by John Ford; Air Force (1943), directed Howard Hawks; Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945), directed by Frank Capra; and Betrayal for the East (1945), directed by (...) William Berke. As all of these films are readily available on YouTube, I will be brief in my description of them. Instead, I will focus on how they served to intensify racial hatred of Japanese in general and Japanese-Americans in particular, and how the federal government tried to control that propaganda—but was limited by its own policies regarding Japanese-Americans. (shrink)

Many people report that reading first-person narratives of the experience of illness can be morally instructive or educative. But although they are ubiquitous and typically sincere, the precise nature of such educative experiences is puzzling—for those narratives typically lack the features that modern philosophers regard as constitutive of moral reason. I argue that such puzzlement should disappear, and the morally educative power of illness narratives explained, if one distinguishes two different styles of moral reason: an inferentialist style that generates the (...) puzzlement and an alternative exemplarist style that offers a compelling explanation of the morally educative power of pathographic literature. (shrink)

According to Quine’s indispensability argument, we ought to believe in just those mathematical entities that we quantify over in our best scientific theories. Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment is part of the standard indispensability argument. However, we suggest that a new indispensability argument can be run using Armstrong’s criterion of ontological commitment rather than Quine’s. According to Armstrong’s criterion, ‘to be is to be a truthmaker (or part of one)’. We supplement this criterion with our own brand of metaphysics, 'Aristotelian (...) (...) realism', in order to identify the truthmakers of mathematics. We consider in particular as a case study the indispensability to physics of real analysis (the theory of the real numbers). We conclude that it is possible to run an indispensability argument without Quinean baggage. (shrink)

The term ‘propaganda’ is normally taken in the pejorative sense of deceitful messaging. Propaganda is considered dubious if it is produced by a government agency, especially by a ministry of war or propaganda. In this article, I apply the theory of propaganda I sketched in a prior piece in these pages, under which propaganda is simply messaging intended to persuade others to do something or to support something. Under this theory, propaganda is reasonable if but only if it is evidence-based, (...) truthful, broadly logical, not coercive, targeted at mentally competent adults, and transparent—meaning that the audience should be aware that the message is intended to persuade them to do or support something. I then examine three WWII-era government propaganda films, one—A Defeated People (1946)—produced by the British military, and two—The Negro Soldier (1944) and Teamwork (1947)—produced by the American military. I explain first why I chose these particular films. I then analyze these films in some detail and show that while they were not perfectly rational, they all effectively conveyed the persuasive message that the respective militaries wanted to convey. And they did this by meeting all of the criteria for propaganda to be rational. (shrink)

In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in this volume engages with some (...) particular aspect of Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion. Contributors include Michael Bergman, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, Peter VanInwagen, Thomas P. Flint, Eleonore Stump, Dean Zimmerman and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The volume also includes responses to each essay by Bas van Fraassen, Stephen Wykstra, David VanderLaan, Robin Collins, Raymond VanArragon, E. J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, and Donald Smith. (shrink)

I discuss the relationship of epistemic corruption to non-ideal epistemology. A symposium on Robin McKenna's book "Non-Ideal Epistemology".

My aim in what follows is to expound and (if possible) resolve two problems in Spinoza’s theory of mind. The first problem is how Spinoza can accept a key premise in Descartes’s argument for dualism—that thought and extension are separately conceivable, “one without the help of the other”—without accepting Descartes’s conclusion that no substance is both thinking and extended. Resolving this problem will require us to consider a crucial ambiguity in the notion of conceiving one thing without another, the credentials (...) of Descartes’s principle that each substance has a principal attribute, and the prospect of neutral monism as a theory of the mind. The second problem is how Spinoza can maintain that each mental event is identical with some physical event (and conversely) while denying that there is ever any causal interaction between mental and physical events. If one mental event causes another and the first is identical with some physical event, must that physical event not cause the mental event? Resolving this problem will require looking into the reach of opacity in Spinoza’s philosophy and considering whether there are ever any legitimate exceptions to Leibniz’s Law. (shrink)

In order to fulfil their essential roles as the bearers of truth and the relata of logical relations, propositions must be public and shareable. That requirement has favoured Platonist and other nonmental views of them, despite the well-known problems of Platonism in general. Views that propositions are mental entities have correspondingly fallen out of favour, as they have difficulty in explaining how propositions could have shareable, objective properties. We revive a mentalist view of propositions, inspired by Artificial Intelligence work on (...) perceptual algorithms, which shows how perception causes persistent mental entities with shareable properties that allow them to fulfil the traditional roles of (one core kind of) propositions. The clustering algorithms implemented in perception produce outputs which are (implicit) atomic propositions in different minds. Coordination of them across minds proceeds by game-theoretic processes of communication. The account does not rely on any unexplained notions such as mental content, representation, or correspondence (although those notions are applicable in philosophical analysis of the result). (shrink)

According to the No Alternate Possibilities argument, if time passes then the rate at which it passes could be different. Thus, time cannot pass, since if time passes, then necessarily it passes at a rate of 1 second per second. One response to this argument is to posit hypertime, and to argue that at different worlds, time passes at different rates when measured against hypertime. Since many A-theorists think we can make sense of temporal passage without positing hypertime, we pursue (...) a different response. We describe several worlds that do not contain hypertime, but do contain differential passage: worlds where time passes at different rates in different subregions within the same world. Hence we argue that even if we focus just on the set of worlds that do not contain hypertime (whether this is all, or only some of the worlds) we find that not all these worlds are such that time passes at a rate of 1 second per second. Thus the No Alternate Possibilities argument fails even when restricted to just this set of worlds. (shrink)

Our pollution of the environment seems set to lead to widespread problems in the future, including disease, scarcity of resources, and bloody conflicts. It is natural to think that we are required to stop polluting because polluting harms the future individuals who will be faced with these problems. This natural thought faces Derek Parfit’s famous Non-Identity Problem ( 1984 , pp. 361–364). The people who live on the polluted earth would not have existed if we had not polluted. Our polluting (...) behaviour does not make these individuals worse off. It may therefore seem that we do not harm them by polluting. Parfit argues that we should replace person-affecting principles with an impersonal principle of beneficence, Principle Q ( 1984 , p. 360.). I argue that Principle Q cannot give an adequate account of our duties to refrain from polluting. I consider attempts to solve the Non-Identity Problem by denying that to harm someone an agent must make them worse off. I argue that such responses provide a partial solution to the Non-Identity Problem. They do show that we harm future individuals in a morally relevant sense by polluting. Nonetheless, this is only a partial solution. The Non-Identity Problem still suggests that our harm-based reasons not to pollute are less strong than we intuitively believe. Thus on its own an appeal to the claim that we harm future individuals is not able to give a fully satisfactory account of why we are required not to pollute. (shrink)

This paper provides a categorization of cross-modal experiences. There are myriad forms. Doing so allows us to think clearly about the nature of different cross-modal experiences and allows us to clearly formulate competing hypotheses about the kind of experiences involved in different cross-modal phenomena.

This paper sought to state in a concise and comparatively informal, unsystematic, and more accessible form the more technical approach the author developed during a research fellowship in 1974-75 at the Max-Planck-Institut in Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● The ideas presented in this paper are more fully developed in later publications by the author which are listed in the two-page addendum to this paper. ●●●●● UPDATED NOTE TO THE READER - December, 2021 ●●●●● Readers will find a more fully developed position than (...) was formulated in this 1976 paper in the author's book-length study, CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning. ●●●●● The book is available in a printed edition, ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6, from online booksellers such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and through independent bookstores. The book is also available as a freely downloadable _corrected second edition_ eBook, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5458352, through PhilSci, PhilPapers, HAL, and other online archives. ●●●●● In addition to the above-mentioned book, readers may find "A Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5789848) to be useful as a guide to the nearly 900-page CRITIQUE. The primer is available as a free download through PhilPapers. ●●●●●. (shrink)

Although critics often argue that the new atheists are arrogant, dogmatic, closed-minded and so on, there is currently no philosophical analysis of this complaint - which I will call 'the vice charge' - and no assessment of whether it is merely a rhetorical aside or a substantive objection in its own right. This Chapter therefore uses the resources of virtue epistemology to articulate this ' vice charge' and to argue that critics are right to imply that new atheism is intrinsically (...) epistemically vicious, and it ends with some remarks about the rationality of allowing such intrinsically vicious doctrines to feature within public debate about important matters concerning science, religion, and politics. (shrink)

Central to Sellars’ account of human cognition was a clear distinction, expressed in varying terminology in his different works, “between conceptual and nonconceptual representations.” Those who have come to be known as ‘left-wing Sellarsians’, such as Richard Rorty, Robert Brandom, and John McDowell, have tended to reject Sellars’ appeals to nonconceptual sensory representations. So-called ‘right-wing Sellarsians’ such as Ruth Millikan and Jay Rosenberg, on the other hand, have embraced and developed aspects of Sellars’ account, in particular the central underlying idea (...) that human perceptual cognition involves a certain naturalistic ‘mapping’ correspondence or structural ‘picturing’ isomorphism between internal mental representations and the layout and behavior of objects in the surrounding environment. Sellars, despite his defenses of nonconceptual representational content throughout his career, has with no small irony come to be cited as one of the “founding fathers of conceptualism.” While recognizing the strong conceptualist elements in Sellars’ Kantian account of perceptual cognition, I argue that a central core of Sellars’ account of nonconceptual sensory contents does not by itself fall afoul of the philosophical worries raised by the left-leaning Sellarsians, and that in fact it has significant merits in its own right. (shrink)

In prayers lie the experiences, dreams, and identity of the individual. These strengthen faith while fortifying one’s character. This research examines the Dororo of the Ayta Ambala, a native prayer considered a convergence of the community’s experiences, aspirations, and faith. Using a Filipino-centric research approach (Maka-Pilipinong Pananaliksik), nine Dororo were gathered from Sitio Mampuweng, Olongapo City, Zambales, and classified into three types: Dororong Ritwal, a collective prayer for the community; Dororong Panganganito, a healing ritual; and Pansariling Dororo, personal prayers for (...) daily needs. Four themes emerged within the prayers: gratitude, protection, abundant harvest, and remembrance of the deceased. The Dororo reflects Ayta Ambala’s connection to nature, community, and spirituality. This research emphasizes the importance of documentation and knowledge transmission to preserve cultural heritage. The Dororo demonstrates the resilience of the Ayta Ambala amidst modernization and external religious influences while safeguarding their traditional identity. (shrink)

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the first of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the analysis of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I explore some of the most prominent attempts to analyse this distinction:. Philippa Foot’s sequence account, Warren (...) Quinn’s action/ inaction account, and counterfactual test accounts put forward by Shelly Kagan and Jonathan Bennett. I also discuss Jeff McMahan’s account of the removal of barriers to harm. I argue that analysis of the distinction has often been made more difficult by two mistaken assumption: (1) the assumption that when an agent does or allows harm his behaviour makes the difference to whether or not the harm occurs (2) the assumption that the distinction between doing and allowing and the distinction between action and inaction are interchangeable. I suggest that Foot’s account is the most promising account of the doing/allowing distinction, but that it requires further development. (shrink)

Purpose of the Study. This study aims to develop and validate Contextualized Virtual Reality Tours as instructional materials for teaching ecology concepts to elementary students, focusing on enhancing students' conceptual understanding of ecological relationships and environmental awareness in a local context. Methodology. The study employed a descriptive-developmental research design and used the ADDIE model to create Contextualized Virtual Reality Tours. Tools included a 64MP mobile camera for video production, AI-generated voice narration, and a 4-point Likert scale assessment for validation. Data (...) analysis was performed with Microsoft Excel. Main Findings. The Virtual Reality Tours significantly improved students' conceptual understanding, moving their performance from low to mastery level. Expert evaluations indicated high validity across content, instructional, and technical quality, and students rated the tours as highly acceptable and effective in increasing their engagement and comprehension of ecology concepts. Novelty/Originality of this Study. This study introduces a localized, semi-immersive Virtual Reality Tour model for ecology education, making science concepts accessible to students without field trips. Integrating contextualized ecological elements addresses the gap in immersive science education tools for local environments, promoting relevant and cost-effective learning. (shrink)

I argue that dreams can contain perceptual elements in multifarious, heretofore unthought-of ways. I also explain the difference between dreams that contain perceptual elements, perceptual experiences that contain dream elements, and having a dream and a perceptual experience simultaneously. I then discuss two applications of the resulting view. First, I explain how my taxonomy of perception in dreams will allow “dream engineers”—who try to alter the content of people’s dreams—to accurately classify different dreams and explore creating new forms of perception (...) in dreams. Second, I consider the consequences of the view for the role of memory in dreaming and imagination. I argue that not every element of dreams or sensory imaginations must rely on memory. The resultant view of sensory imagination provides a counterexample to Hume’s account of sensory imagination, according to which sensory imagination must be built up from faint copies of sensory impressions stored in memory. (shrink)

In this essay, I look at more or less sympathetic portrayals of egoists in film. I start by explaining some basic concepts: psychological egoism; ethical egoism; default egoism; rational egoism; egotism; cynicism; narcissism; and psychopathy. I then review in-depth two excellent WWII films, Stalag 17 and The Bridge on the River Kwai. I note that the key protagonist in both pictures is the same type of character—both played by the same fine actor, William Holden. The main protagonist in both is (...) a soldier in a POW camp, who appears completely egoistic; however, in both cases, the movie shows that he is just a man acting for self-preservation, but within moral limits. The character in both cases is certainly not an egotist, nor a narcissist, much less a psychopath. (shrink)

The main aim of Lupyan’s paper is to claim that perception is cognitively penetrated and that this is consistent with the idea of perception as predictive coding. In these remarks I will focus on what Lupyan says about whether perception is cognitively penetrated, and set aside his remarks about epistemology. I have argued (2012) that perception can be cognitively penetrated and so I am sympathetic to Lupyan’s overall aim of showing that perception is cognitively penetrable. However, I will be critical (...) of some of Lupyan’s reasoning in arguing for this position. I will also call for clarification of that reasoning. First, I will discuss what is meant by cognitive penetration and, in light of this, the sort of evidence that can be used to establish its existence. Second, I will question whether Lupyan establishes that all cases of cross-modal effects are cases of cognitive penetration. In doing so, I will suggest a form of cognitive penetration that has heretofore not been posited, and give an example of how one might test for its existence. Third, I will question whether Lupyan puts forward convincing evidence that categorical knowledge and language affect perception in a way that conclusively shows that cognitive penetration occurs. Fourth, I will closely examine Lupyan’s reply to the argument against cognitive penetration from illusion. I show that his reply is not adequate and that he misses a more straightforward reply that one could give. Fifth, I briefly concur with the remarks that Lupyan makes about the role of attention with respect to cognitive penetration. And finally, sixth, I spell out exactly what I think the relationship is between the thesis that predictive coding is the correct model of perception and the thesis that there is cognitive penetration. (shrink)

In this essay, I look at two negative portrayals of egoism. I summarize in detail the superb All About Eve—which won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The movie is about the rise of a ruthlessly ambitious actress, and how she treats her main competitor. Eve Harrington worms her way into top theatrical actress Margo Channing’s inner circle by pretending to be an admirer, but she is really a schemer who wants to eclipse Margo’s star in the theater universe. However, (...) Eve runs into trouble when she attempts to manipulate tart-tongued theater critic, Addison de Witt. The movie portrays the New York theater industry as being full of narcissists. I then review the classic film noir The Third Man (1949), rated by the prestigious British Film Institute as the greatest film of the 20th century. The film centers around a charismatic, handsome criminal mastermind Harry Lime living in bombed-out post-War Vienna. Lime is a man of no conscience or empathy—a true psychopath. He cripples children by selling hospitals adulterated penicillin. But we (the audience) still feel sympathy for him. I end the piece by explaining the psychological mechanisms at work that give rise to our paradoxical sympathy. (shrink)

In this essay, I review the movie Good. Good tells the story of the moral corruption of its protagonist, a writer, who is seduced by blandishments and material rewards given to him by the Nazi regime. It is a nice illustration of corruption—the degradation of character wrought by the desire for wealth and fame—what Aristotle would call “pleonexia.”.

A combined psychological-epistemological study of the human blocks that stand in the way of the recognition of the sentience and legal rights of non-human animals. This is a German translation of the original paper, "Roots of Human Resistance to Animal Rights: Psychological and Conceptual Blocks," published by the Lewis and Clark law journal, Animal Rights, in 2002.

This is a review of the biopic of the great mathematician Ramanujan, 'The Man Who Knew Infinity'(2016).

A combined psychological-epistemological study of the human blocks that stand in the way of the recognition of non-human animal sentience and legal rights. This is a Portuguese translation of the author's paper, "Roots of Human Resistance to Animal Rights: Psychological and Conceptual Blcoks," originally published in the Lewis and Clark law review, Animal Righs, in 2002. The Portuguese version was presented in conjunction with the International Congress on Animal Rights, Salvador, Brazil, Oct. 8-11, 2008, and published in the Revista Brasileira (...) de Direito Animal. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical debates about the competing merits of neurological and phenomenological approaches to understanding both psychiatric illness and religious experience—and, indeed, the relationship, if any, between psychiatric illness and religious experience. In this chapter, I propose that both psychiatric illness and religious experiences - at least in some of their diverse forms - are best understood phenomenologically in terms of radical changes in a person's 'existential feelings', in the sense articulated by Matthew Ratcliffe. If so, explanatory priority should be assigned (...) to phenomenology and not to neurology. (shrink)

In this essay, I review an extraordinary bio flick, Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is a professor of animal science, and to achieve her distinguished career she had to deal with her autism. The film explores what it is to suffer this disease, but it also explores her extraordinary work involving making slaughterhouses more humane.

The distinction between doing and allowing appears to have moral significance, but the very nature of the distinction is as yet unclear. Philippa Foot's ‘pre-existing threats’ account of the doing/allowing distinction is highly influential. According to the best version of Foot's account an agent brings about an outcome if and only if his behaviour is part of the sequence leading to that outcome. When understood in this way, Foot's account escapes objections by Warren Quinn and Jonathan Bennett. However, more analysis (...) is required to show what makes a relevant condition part of a sequence. Foot's account is promising, but incomplete. (shrink)

L.A. Paul argues that interesting issues for rational choice theory are raised by epistemically transformative experiences: experiences which provide access to knowledge that could not be known without the experience. Consideration of the epistemic effects of pregnancy has important implications for our understanding of epistemically transformative experiences and for debate about the ethics of abortion and applied ethics more generally. Pregnancy is epistemically transformative both in Paul’s narrow sense and in a wider sense: those who have not been pregnant face (...) significant barriers to acquiring the knowledge made accessible through pregnancy. This knowledge is crucial for engaging with the ethics of abortion. The epistemically transformativeWIDE nature of pregnancy may require us to use new methods to try to partially grasp what pregnancy is like such as for example, significant engagement with narrative literature. Because pregnancy is also epistemically transformative in a narrow sense, we need to work out how to engage in ethical reasoning when relevant knowledge is not fully accessible to all. This argument has implications beyond the debate about abortion. Philosophers in many areas of applied ethics will need to work out how to respond appropriately to epistemically transformative experiences. (shrink)

It is a philosophy of patient care, and is therefore open to critique and evaluation.Using the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine Third Edition as their ...