In a recent article Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins, and B. J. Strawser argue that in order for a decision in war to be just, or indeed the decision to resort to war to be just, it must be the case that the decision is made for the right reasons. Furthermore, they argue that this requirement holds regardless of how much good is produced by said action. In this essay I argue that their argument is flawed, in that it mistakes (...) what makes an agent morally good for what makes an act morally good. I argue that the main thrust of Purves et al.’s argument in fact undermines the conclusion they wish to draw, and that the reasons for one’s action do not make an in principle difference to the morality of actions in war. I further argue that this position undermines the traditional ad bellum just war constraint of right intention, and that the morality of actions in war is, at core, only concerned with outcomes. I conclude by clarifying that one’s reasons for action do in fact matter when deciding to enter war or kill in war, but only because one’s reasons significantly impact the way in which one acts. The purpose of this paper is to clear the theoretical space by showing why intentions/reasons do not in principle matter when assessing the morality of war (or killing), but this should not be taken as an argument that we should ignore intentions/reasons altogether. (shrink)

Our gender identity is our sense of ourselves as a woman, a man, as genderqueer, or as another gender. Our gender is the property we have of being a woman, being a man, being non-binary, or being another gender. What is the relationship between our gender identity and our gender? Recently, much work has been done on ameliorative accounts of the gender concepts that we should accept and on the metaphysics of gender properties. From this work 4 views of the (...) relationship between having gender identity G (e.g. having a female gender identity) and being a gender G (e.g. being a woman) have emerged. A first, the no connection view, says that gender identity and gender are entirely distinct; Sally Haslanger’s ameliorative account of gender, as well as Theodore Bach’s account of gender properties, are instances of this view. A second, the gender-identity-first view, says that all there is to our gender is our gender identity; this view is at least similar to views that Talia Bettcher and R.A. Briggs and B.R. George have argued for. A third, contextualist view, says that in some contexts and relative to certain standards, our gender identity determines our gender, and that in others it does not; Ásta and Robin Dembroff have proposed and defended views along these lines. A fourth view, the two gender properties view, says that there are two properties that can make it the case that one is gender G (in any context), one’s having gender identity G and one’s being socially classed as a G; Katharine Jenkins and Elizabeth Barnes have proposed views along these lines. This article explains these 4 different views and spells out their prospects, and the problems they face, as both ameliorative and as metaphysical views. (shrink)

In Boghossian's 1997 paper, 'Analyticity' he presented an account of a prioriknowledge of basic logical principles as available by inference from knowledge of their role in determining the meaning of the logical constants by implicit definitiontogether with knowledge of the meanings so-determined that we possess through ourprivileged access to meaning. Some commentators (e.g. BonJour (1998), Glüer (2003),Jenkins (2008)) have objected that if the thesis of implicit definition on which he relieswere true, knowledge of the meaning of the constants would (...) presuppose knowledge of the very logical principles knowledge of which the account purports to explain. Aconsequence would seem to be that implicit definition is incompatible with privilegedaccess. I argue that whilst it is possible for Boghossian to defend against theseobjections the form of argument he proposes does exhibit a subtle form of questionbegging such that it exhibits a transmission of warrant-failure. (shrink)

Perception provides us with access to the external world, but that access is shaped by our own experiential histories. Through perceptual learning, we can enhance our capacities for perceptual discrimination, categorization, and attention to salient properties. We can also encode harmful biases and stereotypes. This article reviews interdisciplinary research on perceptual learning, with an emphasis on the implications for our rational and normative theorizing. Perceptual learning raises the possibility that our inquiries into topics such as epistemic justification, aesthetic criticism, and (...) moral knowledge should include not only an examination of cognition but also of perception. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences are not immediately responsive to reasons. You see a stick submerged in a glass of water as bent no matter how much you know about light refraction. Due to this isolation from reasons, perception is traditionally considered outside the scope of epistemic evaluability as justified or unjustified. Is perception really as independent from reasons as visual illusions make it out to be? I argue no, drawing on psychological evidence from perceptual learning. The flexibility of perceptual learning is a (...) way of responding to new epistemic reasons. The resulting perceptual experiences are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified. (shrink)

Our perceptual systems are not stagnant but can learn from experience. Why is this so? That is, what is the function of perceptual learning? I consider two answers to this question: The Offloading View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to offload tasks from cognition onto perception, thereby freeing up cognitive resources (Connolly, 2019) and the Perceptual View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to improve the functioning of perception. I argue that the Perceptual (...) View better explains data from infants and animals, and better accounts for learned tasks that only perception could perform. (shrink)

Do epistemic and aesthetic values ever conflict? The answer might appear to be no, given that background knowledge generally enhances aesthetic experience, and aesthetic experience in turn generates new knowledge. As Keats writes, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ (Keats, 1996). Contra this line of thought, I argue that epistemic and aesthetic values can conflict when we over-rely on aesthetically enhancing background beliefs. The true and the beautiful can pull in different directions, forcing us to choose between flavours of normativity.

This thesis brings together two concerns. The first is the nature of inference—what it is to infer—where inference is understood as a distinctive kind of conscious and self-conscious occurrence. The second concern is the possibility of doxastic agency. To be capable of doxastic agency is to be such that one is capable of directly exercising agency over one’s beliefs. It is to be capable of exercising agency over one’s beliefs in a way which does not amount to mere self-manipulation. Subjects (...) who can exercise doxastic agency can settle questions for themselves. A challenge to the possibility of doxastic agency stems from the fact that we cannot believe or come to believe “at will”, where this in turn seems to be so because belief “aims at truth”. It must be explained how we are capable of doxastic agency despite that we cannot believe or come to believe at will. On the orthodox ‘causalist’ conception of inference for an inference to occur is for one act of acceptance to cause another in some specifiable “right way”. This conception of inference prevents its advocates from adequately seeing how reasoning could be a means to exercise doxastic agency, as it is natural to think it is. Suppose, for instance, that one reasons and concludes by inferring where one’s inference yields belief in what one infers. Such an inference cannot be performed at will. We cannot infer at will when inference yields belief any more than we can believe or come to believe at will. When it comes to understanding the extent to which one could be exercising agency in such a case the causalist conception of inference suggests that we must look to the causal history of one’s concluding act of acceptance, the nature of the act’s being determined by the way in which it is caused. What results is a picture on which such reasoning as a whole cannot be action. We are at best capable of actions of a kind which lead causally to belief fixation through “mental ballistics”. The causalist account of inference, I argue, is in fact either inadequate or unmotivated. It either fails to accommodate the self-consciousness of inference or is not best placed to play the very explanatory role which it is put forward to play. On the alternative I develop when one infers one’s inference is the conscious event which is one’s act of accepting that which one is inferring. The act’s being an inference is determined, not by the way it is caused, but by the self-knowledge which it constitutively involves. This corrected understanding of inference renders the move from the challenge to the possibility of doxastic agency to the above ballistics picture no longer tempting. It also yields an account of how we are capable of exercising doxastic agency by reasoning despite being unable to believe or come to believe at will. In order to see how such reasoning could amount to the exercise of doxastic agency it needs to be conceived of appropriately. I suggest that paradigm reasoning which potentially amounts the exercise of doxastic agency ought to be conceived of as primarily epistemic agency—agency the aim of which is knowledge. With inference conceived as suggested, I argue, it can be seen how to engage in such reasoning can just be to successfully exercise such agency. (shrink)

What kinds of mental states can be based on epistemic reasons? The standard answer is only beliefs. I argue that perceptual states can also be based on reasons, as the result of crossmodal interactions. A perceptual state from one modality can provide a reason on which an experience in another modality is based. My argument identifies key markers of the basing relation and locates them in the crossmodal Marimba Illusion (Schutz & Kubovy 2009). The subject’s auditory experience of musical tone (...) duration is based on the reason provided by her visual representation of the length of the musician’s gesture and other stored perceptual principles. (shrink)

This paper considers how cognitive architecture impacts and constrains the rational requirement to respond to reasons. Informational encapsulation and its close relative belief fragmentation can render an agent’s own reasons inaccessible to her, thus preventing her from responding to them. For example, someone experiencing imposter phenomenon might be well aware of their own accomplishments in certain contexts but unable to respond to those reasons when forming beliefs about their own self-worth. In such cases, are our beliefs irrational for failing to (...) respond to our own reasons? Or are they excused on grounds of the reasons’ inaccessibility? I argue that in such cases, the rational status of the belief that fails to respond to reasons is modulated by the degree of encapsulation of the system that produces it. Yet because our cognitive systems are rarely perfectly encapsulated, our failures to respond to reasons are almost always irrational to some degree. (shrink)

We argue that the core social being system is unlike other core systems in that it participates in frequent, widespread learning. As a result, the social being system is less constant throughout the lifespan and less informationally encapsulated than other core systems. This learning supports the development of the precursors of bias, but also provides avenues for preempting it.

This commentary considers Audi’s treatment of four fundamental topics in the epistemology of perception: inference, the basing relation, the metaphysics of reasons and grounds, and the relationship between knowledge and justification.

There are two central kinds of epistemological mistakes: believing things you shouldn’t, and failing to believe things that you should. The knowledge-first program offers a canonical explanation for the former: if you believe something without knowing it, you violate the norm to believe only that which you know. But the explanation does not extend in any plausible way to a story about what’s wrong with suspending judgment when one ought to believe. In this paper I explore prospects for a knowledge-centering (...) account of positive epistemic norms that describe epistemic duties to believe. (shrink)

We consider the complex interactions between rape culture and epistemology. A central case study is the consideration of a deferential attitude about the epistemology of sexual assault testimony. According to the deferential attitude, individuals and institutions should decline to act on allegations of sexual assault unless and until they are proven in a formal setting, i.e., a criminal court. We attack this deference from several angles, including the pervasiveness of rape culture in the criminal justice system, the epistemology of testimony (...) and norms connecting knowledge and action, the harms of tacit idealizations away from important contextual factors, and a contextualist semantics for 'knows' ascriptions. (shrink)

There is a New Idea in epistemology. It goes by the name of ‘knowledge first,’ and it is particularly associated with Timothy Williamson’s book Knowledge and Its Limits. In slogan form, to put knowledge first is to treat knowledge as basic or fundamental, and to explain other states—belief, justification, maybe even content itself—in terms of knowledge, instead of vice versa. The idea has proven enormously interesting, and equally controversial. But deep foundational questions about its actual content remain relatively unexplored. We (...) think that a wide variety of views travel under the banner of ‘knowledge first’ (and that the slogan doesn’t help much with differentiating them). Furthermore, we think it is far from straightforward to draw connections between certain of these views; they are more independent than they are often assumed to be. Our project here is exploratory and clarificatory. We mean to tease apart various ‘knowledge first’ claims, and explore what connections they do or do not have with one another. Our taxonomy is offered in §2, and connections are explored in §3. The result, we hope, will be a clearer understanding of just what the knowledge first theses are. We conclude, in §4, with some brief suggestions as to how we think the various theses might be evaluated. (shrink)

The book develops and synthesises two main ideas: contextualism about knowledge ascriptions and a knowledge-first approach to epistemology. The theme of the book is that these two ideas fit together much better than it's widely thought they do. Not only are they not competitors: they each have something important to offer the other.

To many, the idea of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) killing human beings is grotesque. Yet critics have had difficulty explaining why it should make a significant moral difference if a human combatant is killed by an AWS as opposed to being killed by a human combatant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of various deontological concerns with AWS and to consider whether these concerns are distinct from any concerns that also apply to long-distance, human-guided weaponry. We (...) suggest that at least one major driver of the intuitive moral aversion to lethal AWS is that their use disrespects their human targets by violating the martial contract between human combatants. On our understanding of this doctrine, service personnel cede a right not to be directly targeted with lethal violence to other human agents alone. Artificial agents, of which AWS are one example, cannot understand the value of human life. A human combatant cannot transfer his privileges of targeting enemy combatants to a robot. Therefore, the human duty-holder who deploys AWS breaches the martial contract between human combatants and disrespects the targeted combatants. We consider whether this novel deontological objection to AWS forms the foundation of several other popular yet imperfect deontological objections to AWS. (shrink)

Introduces contextualism about knowledge ascriptions, and provides a brief summary of the contributions to the Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism.

An infuential twenty-first century philosophical project posits a central role for knowledge: knowledge is more fundamental than epistemic states like belief and justification. So-called “knowledge first” theorists find support for this thought in identifying central theoretical roles for knowledge. I argue that a similar methodology supports a privileged role for more specific category of basic knowledge. Some of the roles that knowledge first theorists have posited for knowledge generally are better suited for basic knowledge.

Feminist analyses of gender concepts must avoid the inclusion problem, the fault of marginalizing or excluding some prima facie women. Sally Haslanger’s ‘ameliorative’ analysis of gender concepts seeks to do so by defining woman by reference to subordination. I argue that Haslanger’s analysis problematically marginalizes trans women, thereby failing to avoid the inclusion problem. I propose an improved ameliorative analysis that ensures the inclusion of trans women. This analysis yields ‘twin’ target concepts of woman, one concerning gender as class and (...) the other concerning gender as identity, both of which I hold to be equally necessary for feminist aims. (shrink)

This chapter will consider three themes relating to the significance of intuitions in contemporary philosophy. In §1, I’ll review and explore the relationship between philosophical use of words like ‘intuitively’ and any kinds of mental states that might be called ‘intuitions’. In §2, I’ll consider the widely-discussed analogy between intuitive experience and perceptual experience, drawing out some interesting similarities and differences. Finally, in §3, I’ll introduce the recent movement of ‘experimental philosophy’, and consider to what extent its projects are tied (...) up with questions about the role of intuitions in philosophy. My primary aim will be to survey and explain; I will make no effort, however, to hide the fact that I’m a philosopher and a partisan to some of these debates. So there will be some arguments for controversial points of view, too—hopefully these will be easily perceptible, and my opponents fairly represented. Limitations of space demand a rather superficial treatment of most of our topics; endnotes will direct the reader to more comprehensive discussions. (shrink)

In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this (...) article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting. (shrink)

The Philosophy for Children in Schools Project (P4CISP) is a research project to monitor and evaluate the impact of Philosophy for Children (P4C) on classroom practices. In this paper the impact of P4C on the thinking skills of you children aged 10 is examined. Standardised tests indicated the children had below-average reading ages. The pupils were video recorded while engaged in discussion of questions they had formulated themselves in response to a series of texts in preparation for a community of (...) philosophical enquire. Group discussions were analysed, paying attention to verbal and non-verbal communication. We argue that reading scores do not necessarily indicate inability to engage in literate thinking. When dialogic approaches are used and pupils are given opportunities to work in small group to formulate their own questions and evaluate their potential for generating enquiry, they demonstrate their ability to use higher-order language skills. Dialogic approaches can challenge the hegemonic impact of standardised testing that dominates modern schooling A dialogic approach to teaching listens to pupil voice and has the potential to change how adults view children and contribute to an epistemological paradigm shift away from positivism towards dialogism. (shrink)

One of the more visible recent developments in philosophical methodology is the experimental philosophy movement. On its surface, the experimentalist challenge looks like a dramatic threat to the apriority of philosophy; ‘experimentalist’ is nearly antonymic with ‘aprioristic’. This appearance, I suggest, is misleading; the experimentalist critique is entirely unrelated to questions about the apriority of philosophical investigation. There are many reasons to resist the skeptical conclusions of negative experimental philosophers; but even if they are granted—even if the experimentalists are right (...) to claim that we must do much more careful laboratory work in order legitimately to be confident in our philosophical judgments— the apriority of philosophy is unimpugned. The kinds of scientific investigation that experimental philosophers argue to be necessary involve merely enabling sensory experiences. Although they are not enabling in the sense of permitting concept acquisition, they are enabling in another epistemically significant way that is also consistent with the apriority of philosophy. (shrink)

As robots slip into more domains of human life-from the operating room to the bedroom-they take on our morally important tasks and decisions, as well as create new risks from psychological to physical. This book answers the urgent call to study their ethical, legal, and policy impacts.

How radical is the idea that reasons are factive? Some philosophers consider it a dramatic departure from orthodoxy, with surprising implications about the bearing of the external world on what credences it’s reasonable to have, what beliefs are epistemically appropriate, and what actions are rational. I deny these implications. In the cases where external matters imply differences in factive states, there will inevitably be important weaker factive states in common. For example, someone who knows it is raining has many factive (...) states in common with someone who has a Gettiered belief that it is raining, or one who falsely but justifiably believes that it is raining. The factive reasons denied to subjects in Gettier cases or skeptical scenarios are in an important sense redundant; appropriate belief or action supervenes on internal states, even if reasons must be factive (and even if appropriate belief and action supervenes on reasons). The degree to which the strategy is applicable depends substantively on epistemic assumptions about basic or foundational knowledge. I argue that even given a significantly externalist approach to the latter internalist intuitions about rational credence, belief, and action can be vindicated. (shrink)

According to a traditional picture, perception and belief have starkly different epistemic roles. Beliefs have epistemic statuses as justified or unjustified, depending on how they are formed and maintained. In contrast, perceptions are “unjustified justifiers.” Core cognition is a set of mental systems that stand at the border of perception and belief, and has been extensively studied in developmental psychology. Core cognition's borderline states do not fit neatly into the traditional epistemic picture. What is the epistemic role of these states? (...) Focusing on the core object system, the author argues that core object representations have epistemic statuses like beliefs do, despite their many prototypically perceptual features. First, the author argues that it is a sufficient condition on a mental state's having an epistemic status as justified or unjustified that the state is based on reasons. Then the author argues that core object representations are based on reasons, through an examination of both experimental results and key markers of the basing relation. The scope of mental states that are subject to epistemic evaluation as justified or unjustified is not restricted to beliefs. (shrink)

In recent years, some defenders of traditional philosophical methodology have argued that certain critiques of armchair methods are mistaken in assuming that intuitions play central evidential roles in traditional philosophical methods. According to this kind of response, experimental philosophers attack a straw man; it doesn’t matter whether intuitions are reliable, because philosophers don’t use intuitions in the way assumed. Deutsch (2010), Williamson (2007), and Cappelen (2012) all defend traditional methods in something like this way. I also endorsed something like this (...) line in Ichikawa (2014a). -/- In this contribution, I will follow up on this sort of defence of traditional philosophical methods in three ways. In §1, I will rehearse and extend some of my reasons for challenging the idea that traditional methods depend on intuitions in an evidential role. (My reasons are very different from those discussed in (Cappelen, 2012).) I will also engage with some recent more sophisticated attempts to establish the idea that intuitions play evidential roles in philosophy, such as that of Chudnoff (2013). In §2, I will consider and argue against a dismissive response to such positions from experimental philosophers, who consider the question of philosophical reliance on intuitions to be irrelevant to the experimentalist critique. But in §3, I will argue that it would also be a mistake to conclude (as Herman Cappelen does) that the critique is rendered totally irrelevant by the denial of the evidential role of intuitions; I defend a more moderate view on which the bearing of experimental studies of philosophical intuitions is relevant for philosophical methodology, but only in a relatively limited way. (shrink)

This report highlights and explores five questions that arose from the multisensory integration workshop at the University of Toronto on May 9th and 10th, 2014: 1. What Is Multisensory Integration? 2. Do Multisensory Percepts Involve Emergent Features? 3. What Can Multisensory Processing Tell Us about Multisensory Awareness? 4. Is Language Processing a Special Kind of Multisensory Integration? 5. What Is the Purpose of Multisensory Integration?

While the idea that philosophy requires self-transformation is historically pervasive, it exerts considerable influence on the post-Kantians who first aim to systematize Kant’s idealism by grounding it on a first principle. In the 1790s, Fichte and Schelling offer competing accounts of the self-transformation that they regard as essential to positing a first principle. Their accounts raise two central questions. First, what makes this kind of self-transformation possible? Second, are there different possible expressions of philosophical self-transformation? In what follows, I will (...) articulate the Fichtean and Schellingian answers to these central questions. For Fichte, the one who summons me to posit a first principle makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has an exclusively idealist expression in that I can only genuinely posit the I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation depends on mutual recognition and vindicates precisely one philosophical system (Section 1). For Schelling, a brute act of will makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has either an idealist or a realist expression in that I can genuinely posit either the I or the not-I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation does not depend on mutual recognition and vindicates one of two possible philosophical systems (Section 2). Thus, whereas Fichtean self-transformation is recognitive and non-pluralistic, Schellingian self-transformation is pluralistic and non-recognitive. I conclude with a discussion of how Jacobi poses a challenge to Fichte’s and Schelling’s answers to the two central questions (Section 3). (shrink)

The study investigated the effect of cognitive restructuring on junior secondary school mathematics test anxiety in Oshimili south L.G.A of Delta State. Two research questions and two hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. Quasi-experimental research design was adopted for this study. The population for this study was a total of 1224 students. These comprised of all the JSS 2 students from Oshimili South Local Government Area of Delta State. Research sample consisted of 120 JSS 2 students (...) with high level of mathematics test anxiety selected through purposive sampling technique. The instrument adopted for this study was Maths anxiety rating scale-R. Data collected from the study were analyzed using mean and ANCOVA. Results obtained from the study indicated that Cognitive restructuring therapy (CRT) was effective on mathematics test anxiety of junior secondary school students. The results equally showed that Cognitive restructuring therapy was more effective on the female students’ mathematics anxiety than their male counterparts. Furthermore, the results indicated a significant difference in the post-test mathematics test anxiety mean scores of students treated with CRT and those in the control group. Also, there was significant difference in the post-test mathematics test anxiety mean scores of male and female students treated with CRT. Based on the findings of this study, some recommendations were noted. The researcher recommended, among others that Schools’ Guidance Counselors should be empowered to make good use of the cognitive restructuring technique, in counseling students who find it difficult to comprehend mathematics skills. (shrink)

Upon doing something generous for someone with whom you are close, some kind of reciprocity may be appropriate. But it often seems wrong to actually request reciprocity. This chapter explores the wrongness in making these requests, and why they can nevertheless appear appropriate. After considering several explanations for the wrongness at issue (involving, e.g. distinguishing oughts from obligation, the suberogatory, imperfect duties, and gift-giving norms), a novel proposal is advanced. The requests are disrespectful; they express that their agent insufficiently trusts (...) the hearer to recognize their own reasons to reciprocate, and the close relationship between them morally requires this kind of trust. This proposal is articulated and situated in the recent discussion of the normativity of requests. The chapter concludes by explaining how these requests may appear appropriate. Agents in these relationships often have standing to make requests, though the standing is lacking in these particular cases. (shrink)

This chapter considers Ernest Sosa’s contributions to philosophical methodology. In Section 1, Sosa’s approach to the role of intuitions in the epistemology of philosophy is considered and related to his broader virtue-theoretic epistemological framework. Of particular focus is the question whether false or unjustified intuitions may justify. Section 2 considers Sosa’s response to sceptical challenges about intuitions, especially those deriving from experimental philosophy. I argue that Sosa’s attempt to attribute apparent disagreement in survey data to difference in meaning fails, but (...) that some of his other, more general, responses to experimentalist sceptics succeed. (shrink)

Jennifer Windt’s Dreaming is an enormously rich and thorough book, developing illuminating connections between dreaming, the methodology of psychology, and various philosophical subfields. I’ll focus on two epistemological threads that run through the book. The first has to do with the status of certain assumptions about dreams. Windt argues that the assumptions that dreams involve experiences, and that dream reports are reliable — are methodologically necessary default assumptions, akin to Wittgensteinian hinge propositions. I’ll suggest that Windt is quietly pre-supposing some (...) sceptical assumptions, and that recent literature in epistemic externalism may bear in important ways on her arguments. The second thread involves the perennial sceptical worry that dreaming threatens ordinary knowledge. I’ll suggest again that Windt makes tacit sceptical assumptions one may wish to resist. (shrink)

We take it that we can exercise doxastic agency by reasoning and by making judgments. We take it, that is, that we can actively make up our minds by reasoning and judging. On what I call the ‘Standard View’ this is so because judgment can yield belief. It is typical to take it that judgments yield beliefs by causing them. But on the resultant understanding of the Standard View, I argue, it is unclear how judgment could play its role in (...) doxastic agency in the way we take it to. I therefore offer an alternative understanding of how judgment yields belief. Drawing on Ryle I argue that when one comes to believe by judging the event which is one's judging is token identical to the event which is one's coming to believe. This paves the way for version of the Standard View capable of explaining how we can actively make up our minds despite that we cannot believe or come to believe at will. (shrink)

One challenge in providing an adequate definition of physical disability is unifying the heterogeneous bodily conditions that count as disabilities. We examine recent proposals by Elizabeth Barnes (2016), and Dana Howard and Sean Aas (2018), and show how this debate has reached an impasse. Barnes’ account struggles to deliver principled unification of the category of disability, whilst Howard and Aas’ account risks inappropriately sidelining the body. We argue that this impasse can be broken using a novel concept: marginalised functioning. Marginalised (...) functioning concerns the relationship between a person’s bodily capacities and their social world: specifically, their ability to function in line with the default norms about how people can typically physically function that influence the structuring of social space. We argue that attending to marginalised functioning allows us to develop, not one, but three different models of disability, all of which—whilst having different strengths and weaknesses—unify the category of disability without sidelining the body. (shrink)

We naturally see ourselves as capable of being active with respect to the matter of what we believe – as capable of epistemic agency. A natural view is that we can exercise such agency by engaging in reasoning. Sceptics contend that such a view cannot be maintained in light of the fact that reasoning involves judgements, which are not decided upon or the products of prior intentions. In response, I argue that reasoning in fact can amount to epistemic agency in (...) virtue of its being aim-directed in a way that cannot be reconciled with the sceptics' conception of it. (shrink)

With the recent report of a live birth after use of Mitochondrial replacement therapy, sometimes called ‘Three-parent IVF’, the clinical application of the technique is fast becoming a reality. While the United Kingdom allows the procedure under regulatory scrutiny, it remains effectively outlawed in many other countries. We argue that such prohibitions may violate individuals’ procreative rights, grounded in individuals’ interest in genetic affinity. The interest in genetic affinity was recently endorsed by Singapore’s highest court, reflecting an emphasis on the (...) importance of biological ties found across the globe. We apply that reasoning to make the case for a right to ‘Three-parent IVF’. (shrink)

Williamson’s “anti-luminosity” argument aims to establish that there are no significant luminous conditions. “Far from forming a cognitive home”, luminous conditions are mere “curiosities”. Even supposing Williamson’s argument succeeds in showing that there are no significant luminous states his conclusion has not thereby been established. When it comes to determining what is luminous, mental events and processes are among the best candidates. It is events and processes, after all, which constitute the stream of consciousness. Judgment, for instance, is plausibly self-conscious. (...) If I am judging then plausibly I must know that I am. Similarly, deliberation is plausibly self-conscious. To be deliberating about some matter I plausibly must know that I am. That one is judging and that one is deliberating are thus plausibly luminous conditions. Furthermore, I argue, Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument fails to speak against this suggestion. This reveals that Williamson’s argument is more limited in scope than has been thought—something likely missed due to a misplaced focus on mental states in the luminosity debate as well as in epistemology and the philosophy of mind more generally. For all Williamson shows, there may be luminous events and processes of a sort apt to constitute a cognitive home. I conclude by considering how the anti-luminosity argument might be reinstated in the judgment case and argue that the natural way to do so fails. (shrink)

Reasoning is naturally understood as something which we actively do—as a kind of action. However, reflection on the supposed limits to the extent to which it is up to us how our reasoning unfolds is often taken to cast doubt on this idea. I argue that, once articulated with care, challenges to the idea that reasoning is a kind of action can be seen to trade on problematic assumptions. In particular, they trade on assumptions which could be used to rule (...) out paradigmatic actions from qualifying as such. Accordingly, no distinctive challenge to the idea that reasoning is a kind of action can trade on such assumptions. I suggest that it is a mistaken atomistic way of thinking about action which is the source of the relevant assumptions. Reasoning can unproblematically be maintained to be a kind of action. It is the atomistic way of thinking about action which ought to be rejected. (shrink)

Introduction to Special Issue of Review of Philosophy and Psychology. Overview of the central issues in cognitive architecture, epistemology, and ethics surrounding cognitive penetrability. Special issue includes papers by philosophers and psychologists: Gary Lupyan, Fiona Macpherson, Reginald Adams, Anya Farennikova, Jona Vance, Francisco Marchi, Robert Cowan.

Consent, on a standard theoretical framework, is a way of giving permission or waiving a right. Dougherty’s book is about the ‘scope’ of consent: which acts are permitted by a given act of consent? Along the way, Dougherty offers a view about what consent consists in and why it does its morally transformative work. The book is an exemplar of careful analytic philosophy. Philosophers working on consent in that tradition will find it essential reading. Following are more specific reactions that (...) will, I hope, convey a more specific sense of the book, and also engage and critique it and the tradition it exemplifies. (shrink)

Traditionally, those writing on blame have been concerned with blaming others, including when one has the standing to blame others. Yet some alleged problems for such accounts of standing arise when we focus on self-blame. First, if hypocrites lack the standing to blame others, it might seem that they also lack the standing to blame themselves. But this would lead to a bootstrapping problem, wherein hypocrites can only regain standing by doing that which they lack the standing to do. Second, (...) in addition to hypocrites, there may be hypercrites, who blame themselves more severely than others. Leading accounts for why hypocrites lack standing to blame others would also seem to imply that hypercrites lack the standing to blame others, but some may find this counterintuitive. We argue that neither of these problems from self-blame poses a unique threat to leading accounts of standing. (shrink)

This paper addresses debates in German idealism that arise in response to the modal shift in logic, proposed by Kant, from a logic of thinking to a logic of experience. With the Kantian logic of experience arises a problem of radical contingency or 'rhapsodic determination' for logic. While Fichte and Hegel attempt to resolve the problem of contingency by constructing rational systems aimed at established the grounds for logic, I show how Schelling brings into view, in a proto-existentialist movement, the (...) way in which the indeterminacy of the will undergirds rational system construction and, thereby, presents a limiting problem for the question of the value of system-building itself. (shrink)

Rolla (2021) argumentou que a prática de avaliar teorias epistemológicas com base em intuições geradas pela consideração de certos casos, como os cenários hipotéticos envolvendo cérebros encubados, clarividentes e anjos da guarda epistêmicos, é um erro. Um erro que, uma vez reconhecido, faria com que os problemas e métodos que ocupam a epistemologia mudassem significativamente. Neste artigo, defendo que a argumentação de Rolla não se sustenta: há falhas no modo como Rolla caracteriza o uso das intuições, as suposições de Rolla (...) podem gerar consequências implausíveis e há um contraexemplo para as alegações dele. Portanto, epistemólogos podem manter os problemas e a metodologia que Rolla critica. (shrink)

-- 04.08.2024 -- Intervention held at the XXV World Congress of Philosophy in Rome, Italy -- The aim of this paper is to propose an interpretation of philosophy’s tasks as those of a “critical theoresis”. The formula draws from both Plato’s utilisation of the word ϑεώρησις and Herodotus’ particular use of the verb κρίνω. While the former indicates a cultural dimension that in itself implies an active participation of subjects in the objective social world, the latter expresses an hermeneutical principle (...) that unites the concepts of “explanation” and “interpretation”. Therefore, I intend to use these key-concepts together in order to picture a type of philosophy that tries to underline the criteria of a normative theory that does not fail to assume a critical standpoint in interpreting social reality. (shrink)

Recientemente entre los defensores de la responsabilidad moral colectiva ha surgido una línea que defiende que los colectivos no sólo son moralmente responsables, sino que además pueden serlo aun si ninguno de los individuos que compone el colectivo es moralmente responsable. A esta posición se la puede denominar la tesis de la autonomía moral colectiva o TAMC. Creo que esta tesis no sólo es errada, sino que además es bastante peligrosa. El objetivo de este texto será mostrar que no hay (...) argumentos fuertes para sostener la verdad de la TAMC, más aún, que la TAMC requiere de una condición contradictoria para poder ser verdadera. Para ello comenzaré por mostrar, en la primera sección, una diferencia importante acerca de las acciones colectivas y por qué para algunos es plausible pensar que los colectivos son moralmente responsables. En las tres secciones siguientes reconstruiré brevemente las teorías de Peter French, Margaret Gilbert y David Copp, todos ellos defensores de la TAMC. En la sección cinco ofreceré las características básicas de la responsabilidad moral. En la sección seis presentaré un requisito que considero indispensable para el funcionamiento de la TAMC, pero mostraré que es imposible de obtener, para, en la última sección, mostrar cómo French, Gilbert y Copp, así como cualquier otra defensa de la TAMC, caen inevitablemente en el error de solicitar algo imposible. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of Mesmer's theory.