This paper examines the interplay of semantics and pragmatics within the domain of film. Films are made up of individual shots strung together in sequences over time. Though each shot is disconnected from the next, combinations of shots still convey coherent stories that take place in continuous space and time. How is this possible? The semantic view of film holds that film coherence is achieved in part through a kind of film language, a set of conventions which govern the relationships (...) between shots. In this paper, we develop and defend a new version of the semantic view. We articulate it for a pair of conventions that govern spatial relations between viewpoints. One such rule is already well-known; sometimes called the "180° Rule," we term it the X-Constraint; to this we add a previously unrecorded rule, the T-Constraint. As we show, both have the effect, in different ways, of limiting the way that viewpoint can shift through space from shot to shot over the course of a film sequence. Such constraints, we contend, are analogous to relations of discourse coherence that are widely recognized in the linguistic domain. If film is to have a language, it is a language made up of rules like these. (shrink)

Gabriel Vacariu (2020) Unbelievable similarities - selected authors (Sean Carroll, Frank Wilczek, Carlo Rovelli, Kastner, Kauffman et all, Lee Somlin, Markus Gabriel) from much bigger manuscript (Gabriel Vacariu, (June 2020 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE SIMILARITIES between the ideas of some people (2011-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!) here -/- (During last 4 years, I have sent this updated manuscript to (...) thousands of people from many countries in each year! They have no chances!!!) All my main ideas (the mind-brain problem, main problems of cognitive science and quantum mechanics, Einstein’s relativity vs. quantum mechanics, etc.) from my Springer’s book (2016) can be found in my PhD thesis (2007), UNSW (Sydney, Australia, officially posted on university’s website, FREE, by the university’s Staff in 2007) . (shrink)

The volume contains 11 contributions of the best experts on the topics of fate, fortune and free will, in reference to Ancient Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Plotinus.

Defences of perspectival realism are motivated, in part, by an attempt to find a middle ground between the realist intuition that science seems to tell us a true story about the world, and the Kuhnian intuition that scientific knowledge is historically and culturally situated. The first intuition pulls us towards a traditional, absolutist scientific picture, and the second towards a relativist one. Thus, perspectival realism can be seen as an attempt to secure situated knowledge without entailing epistemic relativism. A very (...) similar motivation is behind feminist standpoint theory, a view which aims to capture the idea that knowledge is socially situated, whilst retaining some kind of absolutism. Elsewhere I argue that the feminist project fails to achieve this balance; its commitment to situated knowledge unavoidably entails epistemic relativism (though of an unproblematic kind), which allows them to achieve all of their feminist goals. In this paper I will explore whether the same arguments apply to perspectival realism. And so I will be asking whether perspectival realism too is committed to an unproblematic kind of relativism, capable of achieving scientific goals; or, whether it succeeds in carving out a third view, between or beyond the relativism/absolutism dichotomy. (shrink)

Gabriel Vacariu (November 2018) UNBELIEVABLE similarities between Ferraris’s ideas (2012) and my ideas (2002-2008).

Me, Gabriel Vacariu, professor at Department of Theoretical Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Bucharest University, Romania, I declare that I have had the worst promotion during my entire career at this department even if I have had the best CV during my career (since 1998). With this memorandum, I want to find the criteria for the promotion at my department and faculty (from Bucharest University). From what I know, my promotion depends on the will of the chief of the department and (...) of my colleagues. If my colleagues do not want my promotion, I will never be promoted! I emphasize that, in relationship with my colleagues, I have had the worst promotion even if I have had the best CV. (shrink)

Over the last two centuries, the relationship between philosophy and science has completely broken down, so the question we are confronted with is: How can we develop a new philosophy, which will influence science decisively? The physicists of the last century rejected their contemporary philosophy. They considered that “philosophy today is dead” (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010). However, we believe that the great scientific problems are always philosophical, and only philosophical problems. Therefore, these problems can be solved only by philosophers and (...) scientists who operate at the greatest level of thinking: that of the “paradigm of thinking”. In fact, these great scientific problems can usually be solved by changing the “paradigm of thinking” for scientists. This book furnished more applications of the “epistemologically different worlds” (that replaced the “world”/”universe” – in their previous books (2008, 2010, 2011, etc.), the authors indicated that the notion of the world/universe is wrong). Following Aristotle’s “Prime Mover” (or the “Unmoved Mover”), we stop the regress ad infinitum by discovering the first EW, the EW0 (the Hypernothing). Even if one EW does not exist for any EDW, the Hypernothing was the first EW and all other EDWs correspond to the EW0. Chapter 2 is about the “Hypernothing”. The other chapters continue our works of applying the EDWs to different concepts/areas of Physics: quantum mechanics, elementary particles, thermodynamics (with its main notion, “entropy”), etc. In the last chapter, knowing that Einstein’s special and general theory of relativity are very correct (but in a book 2016 we showed that “spacetime” cannot ontologically exist), we re-write both theories without “spacetime”. Content, Introduction and Chapter 1, FREE at https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gabriel+vacariu&rh=i %3Aaps%2Ck%3Agabriel+vacariu . (shrink)

It is well-known the UNBELIEVABLE similarities between markus gabriel’s ideas from his book 2013 and my ideas (2002, 2005, 2008, etc.) (see my article or my manuscript). Not amazing, markus gabriel (mg) publishes (2017) more UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas (2002, 2005, 2008)! So, let me investigate mg’s ideas from his last book 2017: -/- Markus Gabriel (2017) I am not a brain. Philosophy of Mind for the Twenty-First Century, Polity Press -/- I draw the attention that markus gabriel (...) has never written an article on the Philosophy of Mind! However, we see now even in the title of his book that he talks about the Philosophy of mind for 21th Century! (shrink)

Mainstream epistemologists don’t tend to discuss feminist epistemologies. They often don’t mention them in introductory courses or textbooks, and they almost invariably don’t take themselves to work on them. This is probably due to a suspicion that ‘feminist’ epistemologies are clouded by political motivations. In this paper I will argue two things. First, that this suspicion is misguided – a number of ‘mainstream’ epistemologists (specifically, hinge epistemologists), are in fact doing work which is entirely compatible with feminist epistemologies, and the (...) ‘extra ingredient’ required to turn a hinge epistemology into a feminist epistemology needn’t involve political motivations. And second, that bringing feminist epistemologies into the mainstream can benefit hinge epistemologies – by adding the extra ingredient which turns a hinge epistemology into a feminist epistemology, hinge epistemologists increase the motivations they can appeal to in support of their responses to scepticism. (shrink)

Since 2015, incredible many have published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas published between 2002-2008!!! There were others who published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas even earlier (since 2008, in general), but the number has an incredible jump after 2014. Why? In 2014, I have sent emails to thousands of people (many countries, many domains (Physics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science)) regarding the UNBELIEVABLE similarities between my ideas (2002-2008) and Markus Gabriel’s ideas (his book from 2013). Is it this a (...) coincidence? I don’t believe so… Why so many people from so many countries from so many domains on so many topics have published UNBELIEVALBE similar ideas to my ideas (2002-2008 and later)? Because I have changed EVERYTHING! (shrink)

Feminist epistemologies hold that differences in the social locations of inquirers make for epistemic differences, for instance, in the sorts of things that inquirers are justified in believing. In this paper we situate this core idea in feminist epistemologies with respect to debates about social constructivism. We address three questions. First, are feminist epistemologies committed to a form of social constructivism about knowledge? Second, to what extent are they incompatible with traditional epistemological thinking? Third, do the answers to these questions (...) raise serious problems for feminist epistemologies? We argue that some versions of two of the main strands in feminist epistemology – feminist standpoint theory and feminist empiricism – are committed to a form of social constructivism, which requires certain departures from traditional epistemological thinking. But we argue that these departures are less problematic than one might think. Thus, (some) feminist epistemologies provide a plausible way of understanding how (some) knowledge might be socially constructed. (shrink)

In the literature of collective intentions, the ‘we-intentions’ that lie behind cooperative actions are analysed in terms of individual mental states. The core forms of these analyses imply that all Nash equilibrium behaviour is the result of collective intentions, even though not all Nash equilibria are cooperative actions. Unsatisfactorily, the latter cases have to be excluded either by stipulation or by the addition of further, problematic conditions. We contend that the cooperative aspect of collective intentions is not a property of (...) the intentions themselves, but of the mode of reasoning by which they are formed. We analyse collective intentions as the outcome of team reasoning, a mode of practical reasoning used by individuals as members of groups. We describe this mode of reasoning in terms of formal schemata, discuss a range of possible accounts of group agency, and show how existing theories of collective intentions fit into this framework. (shrink)

The diagnostic category of borderline personality disorder (BPD) has come under increasing criticism in recent years. In this paper, we analyze the role and impact of epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial injustice, in relation to the diagnosis of BPD. We first offer a critical sociological and historical account, detailing and expanding a range of arguments that BPD is problematic nosologically. We then turn to explore the epistemic injustices that can result from a BPD diagnosis, showing how they can lead to experiences (...) of testimonial injustice which impede patient engagement in meaning-making activities, thereby undermining standard therapeutic goals. We conclude by showing how our arguments bolster ongoing efforts to replace the diagnostic category of BPD with alternatives such as complex post-traumatic stress disorder. (shrink)

In this paper I make the case for a feminist hinge epistemology in three steps. My first step is to explain hinge epistemologies as contemporary epistemologies that take Wittgenstein’s work in On Certainty as their starting point. My second step is to make three criticisms of this literature as it currently stands. My third step is to introduce feminist epistemologies, which argue that social factors like race and gender affect what different people and groups justifiably believe, and argue that developing (...) a feminist hinge epistemology is both plausible and desirable. (shrink)

When I read this paragraph about her book: -/- In Form, Matter, Substance, Kathrin Koslicki develops a contemporary defence of the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism. According to this approach, objects are compounds of matter (hule) and form (morphe or eidos) and a living organism is not exhausted by the body, cells, organs, tissue, and the like that compose it. Koslicki argues that a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects is well equipped to compete with alternative approaches when measured against a (...) wide range of criteria of success. However, a plausible application of the doctrine of hylomorphism to the special case of concrete particular objects hinges on how hylomorphists conceive of the matter composing a concrete particular object, its form, and the hylomorphic relations which hold between a matter-form compound, its matter and its form. Koslicki offers detailed answers to the questions surrounding this approach to the metaphysics of concrete particular objects. As a result, matter-form compounds emerge as occupying the privileged ontological status traditionally associated with substances, despite their metaphysical complexity, due to their high degree of unity. (shrink)

Cursul va contine patru parti pe urmatoarele filme si lucrarile: I. Andrei Tarkovski: “Solaris”, “Calauza”, “Nostalghia”, “Sacrificiul” - Friedrich Nietzsche si “eterna reintoarcere” - Mircea Eliade si “eterna reintoarcere” II. Wong Kar-wai: “In the mood for love”, “2046” III. Cristi Puiu: “Sieranevada” IV. Constantin Brancusi: Ansamblul de la Targu Jiu + sculpturile principale (Pasarea in zbor, Mlle Pogany, etc.).

Mentionez ca, in raport cu colegii mei, la acest departament si facultate, eu am avut am avut cea mai slaba promovarea de-a lungul carierei mele, desi CVul meu a fost, inca de la inceput, cel mai bun raportat la cei din generatia mea sau apropiati de generatia mea. La ora actuala, raportat la criteriile INTERNATIONALE, CVul meu este cel mai bun de la aceasta facultate.

In this paper I explore the relationship between social epistemology and relativism in the context of feminist epistemology. I do this by focusing on one particular branch of feminist epistemology - a branch known as standpoint theory - and investigating the connection between this view and epistemic relativism. I begin by defining both epistemic relativism and standpoint theory, and by briefly recounting the standard way that the connection between these two views is understood. The literature at the moment focuses on (...) an aspect of standpoint theory called the epistemic advantage thesis, and on an aspect of relativism which has been called equality. I then show that the connection between relativism and standpoint theory actually turns on a different aspect of standpoint theory, known as the standpoint thesis, and on an aspect of relativism which has been called non-neutrality. I argue that shifting our attention to these other aspects reveals that standpoint theory is clearly and unavoidably relativist, but that this isn’t a problem - standpoint theory can capture everything that it set out to, even on a relativist understanding of the view. (shrink)

Decision theory explains weakness of will as the result of a conflict of incentives between different transient agents. In this framework, self-control can only be achieved by the I-now altering the incentives or choice-sets of future selves. There is no role for an extended agency over time. However, it is possible to extend game theory to allow multiple levels of agency. At the inter-personal level, theories of team reasoning allow teams to be agents, as well as individuals. I apply team (...) reasoning at the intra-personal level, taking the self as a team of transient agents over time. This allows agents to ask, not just “what should I-now do?’, but also ‘What should I, the person over time do?’, which may enable agents to achieve self-control. The resulting account is Aristotelian in flavour, as it involves reasoning schemata and perception, and it is compatible with some of the psychological findings about self-control. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate the UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas of Brukner’s article (2015) and my ideas (2002-2008) In this article, I investigate the UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas of Brukner’s article (2015) and my ideas (2002-2008) I emphasize that this paragraph is not from my works!! Instead of “objectivity of the ‘facts of the world’, I used EDWs! All the ideas from this paragraph (and the philosophical ideas referring to QM from this article, can be found in my works 2002-2008!

Are we ever morally permitted to do what is morally wrong? It seems intuitive that we are, but evidence for dissociations among judgment of permissibility and wrongness are relatively scarce. Across 4 experiments (N = 1,438), we show that people judge that some behaviors can be morally wrong and permissible. The dissociations arise because these judgments track different morally relevant aspects of everyday moral encounters. Judgments of individual rights predicted permissibility but not wrongness, while character assessment predicted wrongness but not (...) permissibility. These findings suggest a picture in which moral evaluation is granular enough to express reasoning about different types of normative considerations, notably the possibility that people can exercise their rights in morally problematic ways. (shrink)

Perceptual learning is characterized by long-term changes in perception as a result of practice or experience. In this paper, I argue that through perceptual learning we can become newly sensitive to basic perceptual features. First, I provide a novel account of basic perceptual features. Then, I argue that evidence from experience-based plasticity suggests that basic perceptual features can be learned. Lastly, I discuss the common scientific and philosophical view that perceptual learning comes in at least four varieties: differentiation, unitization, attentional (...) weighting and stimulus imprinting (Goldstone 1998, Connolly 2019). Becoming newly sensitive to basic perceptual features, I argue, does not fit into any of these categories. This paper’s contribution to the literature is twofold. First, I present a novel view of basic perceptual features which can be used in subsequent theorizing. Second, I show that learning basic perceptual features, since it does not fit into this standardized taxonomy, constitutes an underappreciated form of perceptual learning. This result has important implications for recent discussions in the philosophy of perception and epistemology. (shrink)

Trolley problems have been used in the development of moral theory and the psychological study of moral judgments and behavior. Most of this research has focused on people from the West, with implicit assumptions that moral intuitions should generalize and that moral psychology is universal. However, cultural differences may be associated with differences in moral judgments and behavior. We operationalized a trolley problem in the laboratory, with economic incentives and real-life consequences, and compared British and Chinese samples on moral behavior (...) and judgment. We found that Chinese participants were less willing to sacrifice one person to save five others, and less likely to consider such an action to be right. In a second study using three scenarios, including the standard scenario where lives are threatened by an on-coming train, fewer Chinese than British participants were willing to take action and sacrifice one to save five, and this cultural difference was more pronounced when the consequences were less severe than death. (shrink)

We explore the idea that a group or ‘team’ of individuals can be an agent in its own right and that, when this is the case, individual team members use team reasoning, a distinctive mode of reasoning from that of standard decision theory. Our approach is to represent team reasoning explicitly, by means of schemata of practical reasoning in which conclusions about what actions should be taken are inferred from premises about the decision environment and about what agents are seeking (...) to achieve. We use this theoretical framework to compare team reasoning with the individual reasoning of standard decision theory, and to compare various theories of team agency and collective intentionality. (shrink)

Time and modality show remarkable similarities. Each of the most discussed theories in philosophy of time finds an analogous counterpart in modal metaphysics, suggesting that the parallel between the two notions is metaphysically deep. This chapter offers a brief overview of their analogies. Section 1 addresses the analogy between presentism and actualism. Section 2 explores the analogy between non-presentist theories and possibilism. Section 3 discusses the analogy between temporal and modal persistence.

A friend of my sent me the address where this paper has been posted by Adam Frank. Reading it, I realized that more than 90% of the main ideas of this paper (about the mind-brain problem, quantum mechanics (microparticles-wave relationship, Schrodinger equation, probabilities, “perceiving subject in physics”, the idea about consciousness and Nagel, etc. etc.) are UNBELIEVABLE similar to my ideas from my paper 2005 or my book 2008!!!

Many ideas from Georg Nortoff’s works (published one paper in 2010, mainly his book in 2011, other papers in 2012, 2103, 2014, especially those related to Kant’s philosophy and the notion of the “observer”, the mind-brain problem, default mode network, the self, the mental states and their “correspondence” to the brain) are surprisingly very similar to my ideas published in my article from 2002, 2005 and my book from 2008. In two papers from 2002 (also my paper from 2005 and (...) my book 2008), following Kant’s philosophy, I introduced the notion of the “observer” for the mind-brain problem. After 2010 (mainly his book 2011 and other papers after this book), Nortoff also uses Kant’s philosophy (even if his knowledge about Kant’s philosophy is very superficial!) and the notion of the “observer” for the mind-brain problem in a methodology very similar to my methodology. Moreover, instead of EDWs, Nortoff uses a kind of “transdisciplinary” view, quite close to parallelism – the closest approach to my EDWs! In his works until 2014, Northoff’s conclusion within the unicorn world was different than my conclusion. However, in his book 2014 (two volumes) using notions like “correlations” and even “correspondences” many times, his conclusion is very closed to my EDWs! This dramatic change of framework in 3 years is quite unbelievable!!! Incredible many ideas from this book are very similar to my ideas from 2005 and 2008! (shrink)

My two daughters would love to go tobogganing down the hill by themselves, but they are just toddlers and I am an apprehensive parent, so, before letting them do so, I want to ensure that the toboggan won’t go too fast. But how fast will it go? One way to try to answer this question would be to tackle the problem head on. Since my daughters and their toboggan are initially at rest, according to classical mechanics, their final velocity will (...) be determined by the forces they will be subjected to between the moment the toboggan will be released at the top of the hill and the moment it will reach its highest speed. The problem is that, throughout their downhill journey, my daughters and the toboggan will be subjected to an incredibly large number of forces—from the gravitational pull of any massive object in the universe to the weight of the snowflake that is sitting on the tip of one of my youngest daughter’s hairs—so that any attempt to apply the theory directly to the real-world system in all its complexity seems to be doomed to failure. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate affinities between Nietzsche’s early philosophy and some aspects of Kant’s moral theory. In so doing, I develop further my reading of Nietzschean wholeness as an ideal that consists in the achievement of cultural—not psychic—integration by pursuing the ennoblement of humanity in oneself and in all. This cultural achievement is equivalent to the procreation of the genius or the perfection of nature. For Nietzsche, the process by means of which we come to realize the genius in (...) ourselves is one in which our true content comes to necessarily govern or guide the shaping of our outer form (or our outward activities). Since this true content turns out to be our autonomy or free agency, I argue that this Nietzschean idea of necessitation parallels in important ways Kant’s notion of normative necessity. In particular, I claim that for Nietzsche the agent’s form becomes necessitated by his content as a result of the agent’s recognition of the duties that befall those who aspire to belong to a genuine culture and his resolve to guide his actions in accordance to them. These duties spring from the idea of humanity, from the image we have of ourselves as endowed with the capacity to be the helmsmen of our lives or to be more than mere animals or automata. The person who takes up this ideal of humanity turns his life into a living unity of content and form by organizing it around an aspect of his being that belongs necessarily, hence more truthfully, to him. He also participates in a collective project (that of the ennoblement of the human being) that can lend a certain coherence and imperishability to his individual life and through which he becomes necessarily connected to everyone else for all eternity. (shrink)

According to Duncan Pritchard, there are two kinds of radical sceptical problem; the closure-based problem, and the underdetermination-based problem. He argues that distinguishing these two problems leads to a set of desiderata for an anti-sceptical response, and that the way to meet all of these desiderata is by supplementing a form of Wittgensteinian contextualism with disjunctivist views about factivity. I agree that an adequate response should meet most of the initial desiderata Pritchard puts forward, and that some version of Wittgensteinian (...) contextualism shows the most promise as a starting point for this, but I argue, contra Pritchard, that the addition of disjunctivism is unnecessary and potentially counter-productive. If we draw on lessons from Michael Williams's inferential contextualism then it is both possible, and preferable, to meet the most important of Pritchard's desiderata, undercutting both closure-based and underdetermination-based sceptical problems in a unified way, without the need to resort to disjunctivism. (shrink)

Many people published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas, long time after I published my ideas at Synthese (USA, 2005) and Springer (2015) and posted FREE on different webpages!!!!

Many people (many countries, many domains, many topics) have published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas (published long time ago).

This chapter develops a semantic theory for maps and situates it within the broader geography of meaning and semiotic significance. The discussion focuses on three central aspects of map semantics: the use of space, line marking, and linguistic tags. It is argued that the treatment of space in maps must be based on geometrical projection from a viewpoint rather than the traditional analysis in terms of spatial isomorphism. The chapter then shows how to integrate the projection-based semantics of maps and (...) the symbolic semantics of markers and tags, within the framework of possible-world semantics. The resulting account addresses issues of accuracy, viewpoint, orientation, and exhaustivity. (shrink)

A framing effect occurs when an agent's choices are not invariant under changes in the way a decision problem is presented, e.g. changes in the way options are described (violation of description invariance) or preferences are elicited (violation of procedure invariance). Here we identify those rationality violations that underlie framing effects. We attribute to the agent a sequential decision process in which a “target” proposition and several “background” propositions are considered. We suggest that the agent exhibits a framing effect if (...) and only if two conditions are met. First, different presentations of the decision problem lead the agent to consider the propositions in a different order (the empirical condition). Second, different such “decision paths” lead to different decisions on the target proposition (the logical condition). The second condition holds when the agent's initial dispositions on the propositions are “implicitly inconsistent,” which may be caused by violations of “deductive closure.” Our account is consistent with some observations made by psychologists and provides a unified framework for explaining violations of description and procedure invariance. (shrink)

Loyalty is considered central to people’s moral life, yet little is known about how people think about what it means to be loyal. We used a prototype approach to understand how loyalty is represented in Colombia and the United States and how these representations mediate attributions of loyalty and moral judgments of loyalty violations. Across 7 studies (N = 1,984), we found cross-cultural similarities in the associative meaning of loyalty (Study 1) but found differences in the centrality of features associated (...) with loyalty (Study 2) and the latent structure of loyalty representations (Study 3). Colombians represent loyalty in terms of more general moral characteristics, while US participants represent loyalty in terms of interpersonal commitment, both in contrast with current approaches to loyalty. By comparing representations of loyalty and honesty, we establish that difference in loyalty conceptualizations reflect a different way of thinking about loyalty rather than morality more generally (Study 4). Further, Colombians attributed greater loyalty to individuals with general moral characteristics compared to participants from the United States sample (Study 5) and were more likely to classify non-loyal values as loyalty-related (Study 6). While the centrality of prototypical features predicts categorizing norm violations as loyalty-related, differences in prototypical structure account for differences in the severity of moral judgment for such violations (Study 7), which suggests that loyalty representations have similar functions even though these representations differ in structural characteristics. (shrink)

Are the real numbers rich enough to measure intelligence? We generalize a result of Alexander and Hutter about the so-called Legg-Hutter intelligence measures of reinforcement learning agents. Using the generalized result, we exhibit a paradox: in one particular version of the Legg-Hutter intelligence measure, certain agents all have intelligence 0, even though in a certain sense some of them outperform others. We show that this paradox disappears if we vary the Legg-Hutter intelligence measure to be hyperreal-valued rather than real-valued.

There is a long-standing debate in philosophy about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others and, if not, what is the moral principle underlying the prohibition. Hypothetical moral dilemmas are used in order to probe moral intuitions. Philosophers use them to achieve a reflective equilibrium between intuitions and principles, psychologists to investigate moral decision-making processes. In the dilemmas, the harms that are traded off are almost always deaths. However, the (...) moral principles and psychological processes are supposed to be broader than this, encompassing harms other than death. Further, if the standard pattern of intuitions is preserved in the domain of economic harm, then that would open up the possibility of studying behavior in trolley problems using the tools of experimental economics. We report the results of two studies designed to test whether the standard patterns of intuitions are preserved when the domain and severity of harm are varied. Our findings show that the difference in moral intuitions between bystander and footbridge scenarios is replicated across different domains and levels of physical and non-physical harm, including economic harms. (shrink)

Enclosed is a guidebook for philanthropists, advocates, and policymakers who want to do the most good possible. This book introduces the philosophy of “longtermism,” the idea that it is particularly important that we act now to safeguard future generations. -/- The future is vast in scale: depending on our choices in the coming centuries, the future could stretch for eons or it could dwindle into oblivion, and be inordinately good or inordinately bad. And yet future generations are utterly disenfranchised in (...) the world today: they cannot participate in our markets, our movements, or our civil society. This presents 21st Century philanthropists with a historically unprecedented opportunity to do good by protecting the long-term future. -/- The essays within are from the pioneers who have developed the intellectual foundations of longtermism, as well as the experts and advocates who are now putting it into practice. Readers will hear the case for longtermism from professors at the University of Oxford and Longview’s own founders; longtermist policy proposals from political philosophers, members of the House of Lords, and the All-party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations; the case for work on biosecurity, artificial intelligence, and climate change from leading experts; and the first ever essay on longtermist cultural change from the former Chief of Cabinet to the Finnish President. -/- Together, these essays chart the path forward toward maximising the good that we do for our grandchildren, our grandchildren’s grandchildren, and every generation beyond. (shrink)

In this article, I explore an important difference between circumstantial luck on the one side and resultant and constitutive luck on the other. In section 1, I argue that, in circumstantial luck, the object of luck and the object of moral judgment are different even though, in resultant and constitutive luck, they are the same. In section 2, I explain that this difference (1) has the potential to undermine the regress argument for moral luck; (2) makes viable the “selective moral (...) luck” argument strategy (affirming some species of moral luck but denying others); and (3) has implications for the heritability of luck. (shrink)

How does character information inform judgments of blame? Some argue that character information is indirectly relevant to blame because it enriches judgments about the mental states of a wrongdoer. Others argue that character information is directly relevant to blame, even when character traits are causally irrelevant to the wrongdoing. We propose an empirical synthesis of these views: a Two Channel Model of blame. The model predicts that character information directly affects blame when this information is relevant to the wrongdoing that (...) elicits blame. Further, the effect of character information on blame depends on judgments about the true self that are independent of judgments of intentionality. Across three pre-registered studies (N = 662), we found support for all three predictions of the Two Channel Model. We propose that this reflects two distinct functions of blame: a social regulatory function that encourages norm compliance and a pedagogical function that encourages personal improvement. (shrink)

Sometimes we make a decision about an action we will undertake later and form an intention, but our judgment of what it is best to do undergoes a temporary shift when the time for action comes round. What makes it rational not to give in to temptation? Many contemporary solutions privilege diachronic rationality; in some “rational non-reconsideration” (RNR) accounts once the agent forms an intention, it is rational not to reconsider. This leads to other puzzles: how can someone be motivated (...) to follow a plan that is contrary to their current judgment? How can it be rational to form a plan to resist if we can predict that our judgment will shift? I show how these puzzles can be solved in a framework where there are multiple units of agency, distinguishing between the judgments of the timeslice and those of the person over time, and allowing that the timeslice can “self identify”, taking the person over time as the relevant unit of agency and doing intrapersonal team reasoning (with a different causal role for intentions than RNR accounts). On my account, resisting temptation is compatible with synchronic rationality, so synchronic and diachronic rationality are aligned. However, either resisting or succumbing to temptation can be instrumentally rational, depending on the unit of agency that is identified with. In order to show why we ought to resist temptation, we need to draw on a non-instrumental rationale. I sketch possible routes for doing this. (shrink)

On January 2023, I received an email from somebody regarding Velmans’s article 2008. After I took a look at the paper, I started to read his book 2000. Therefore, in this section, I will investigate Velmans’ works from 2000 and 2008. I emphasize that the main difference between Spinoza’s (Velmans) dual aspect theory and my EDWs approach is the framework of thinking: Spinoza, Velmans and everybody until me had been working within the unicorn world (the Universe/world), while my EDWs assumes (...) the rejection of the the universe/world; I replace this eternal and wrong notion with the EDWs. (see my previous works; my first five books and a book from 2022 and many of my articles are FREE on internet at my webpage and other pages). (shrink)

The chapter reviews recent theoretical and empirical developments concerning the theory of team reasoning in game theoretic interactions.

This Element, written for researchers and students in philosophy and the behavioral sciences, reviews and critically assesses extant work on number concepts in developmental psychology and cognitive science. It has four main aims. First, it characterizes the core commitments of mainstream number cognition research, including the commitment to representationalism, the hypothesis that there exist certain number-specific cognitive systems, and the key milestones in the development of number cognition. Second, it provides a taxonomy of influential views within mainstream number cognition research, (...) along with the central challenges these views face. Third, it identifies and critically assesses a series of core philosophical assumptions often adopted by number cognition researchers. Finally, the Element articulates and defends a novel version of pluralism about number concepts. (shrink)

‘Relativism’ is often treated as a dirty word in philosophy. Showing that a view entails relativism is almost always considered tantamount to showing that it is nonsensical. However, relativistic theories are not entirely unappealing – they have features which might be tempting if they weren’t thought to be outweighed by problematic consequences. In this paper I argue that it’s possible to secure the intuitively appealing features of at least one kind of relativism – epistemic relativism – without having to accept (...) any problematic consequences. I do this by defending what I call 'stratified relativism'. (shrink)

Different views on the connection between relativism and feminist epistemologies are often asserted but rarely are these views clearly argued for. This has resulted in a confusingly polarised debate, with some people convinced that feminist epistemologies are committed to relativism (and that this is a reason so be suspicious of them) whilst others make similar criticisms of anti-feminist views and argue that relativism has no place in feminist epistemologies. This chapter is an attempt to clarify this debate. I begin by (...) asking the question “are feminist projects and goals best served by relativism, or by absolutism?” I then sketch out four broad positions one could take on the answer to this question, and evaluate arguments for each one. In the end I conclude that feminist projects can, at least sometimes, be served by relativism, and that the claim they can be served by anti-relativism is under-supported. (shrink)

In her book Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology (2015), Annalisa Coliva puts forward an anti-sceptical proposal based on the idea that the notion of rationality extends to the unwarrantable presuppositions “that make the acquisition of perceptual warrants possible” (2015: 150). These presuppositions are commonly the target of sceptical arguments, and by showing that they are on the one hand unwarrantable, but on the other are constitutive components of rationality itself, she reveals that they are beyond rational doubt and thus avoids (...) scepticism. Part of Coliva’s defence of using extended rationality in this way involves distancing it from relativist interpretations, which she describes as “devastating” (2015: 120). She proposes two ways that someone might attempt to formulate epistemic relativism from her extended rationality view, and argues that both would be unsuccessful because they require describing alternative conceptions of rationality which are “unintelligible” (in the first case), or “inconceivable” (in the second). The superficial claim of this chapter is that Coliva’s arguments, as they stand, are insufficient to dismiss relativism. She fails to show that the conception of rationality needed for the first formulation of relativism is unintelligible, and overestimates the significance of the second formulation’s conception turning out to be inconceivable. But I also highlight a deeper problem: neither formulation follows a realistic blueprint for relativism, and so these were the wrong possibilities to consider in the first place. To address this issue, I propose a third, more plausible, way in which someone might attempt to formulate relativism on the basis of Coliva’s account. I leave open whether this strategy is successful, or whether a version of Coliva’s criticisms apply to it too. (shrink)