According to many accounts of faith—where faith is thought of as something psychological, e.g., an attitude, state, or trait—one cannot have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. According to other accounts of faith, one can have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. Call the first sort of account doxasticism since it insists that faith requires belief; call the second nondoxasticism since it allows faith without belief. The New Testament may seem to favor doxasticism over nondoxasticism. For it may (...) seem that, according to the NT authors, one can have faith in God, as providential, or faith that Jesus is the Messiah, or be a person of Christian faith, and the like only if one believes the relevant propositions. In this essay, I propose to assess this tension, as it pertains to the Gospel of Mark. The upshot of my assessment is that, while it may well appear that, according to Mark, one can have faith only if one believes the relevant propositions, appearances are deceiving. Mark said no such thing. Rather, what Mark said—by way of story—about faith fits nondoxasticism at least as well as doxasticism, arguably better. More importantly, the account of faith that emerges from Mark is that faith consists in resilience in the face of challenges to living in light of the overall positive stance to the object of faith, where that stance consists in certain conative, cognitive, and behavioral-dispositional elements. (shrink)

While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit to us, certain texts defy this assumption by functioning as training grounds for the capacities: in engaging with them, we stand to become not more knowledgeable or more virtuous but more skilled, whether at rational thinking, at maintaining necessary illusions, at achieving tranquility of mind, or even at religious faith. Instead of offering us propositional knowledge, these texts yield know-how; (...) rather than attempting to instruct by means of their content, they hone capacities by means of their form; far from seducing with the promise of instantaneous transformation, they recognize, with Aristotle, that change is a matter of sustained and patient practice. (shrink)

Any interpretation of the doctrine of the atonement has to take account of relevant biblical texts. Among these texts, one that has been the most difficult to interpret is that describing the cry of dereliction from the cross. According to the Gospels of Mathew and Mark, on the cross Jesus cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?‘ In this paper, I give a philosophical analysis of the options for understanding the cry of dereliction, interpreted within the (...) constraints of orthodox Christian theology; and I show the suggestiveness of this analysis for interpretations of the doctrine of the atonement. (shrink)

This paper combines both an exegetical and philosophical approach to the treatment of miracles in the Markan gospel. Using key insights developed by biblical scholars bearing on the problem of Mark’s treatment of miracles as a basis, I conclude that for the author of Mark, miracles are effects, and as such, signs and symbols of what occurs in the moral and spiritual order. I argue that Mark connects miracles with faith in Jesus, a faith qualified through (...) a grasp of the proper exercise of human power in the kingdom of God. The last section of the paper explores the ontological conditions for the possibility of miracles as they are portrayed in this gospel; there I argue that the best candidate for a theory that squares with Mark’s understanding of miracle is a different one from that found in the contemporary philosophical literature on miracles. (shrink)

Narratologists commonly draw a distinction between the story and those things that tell the story- the tellings, as I will call them here. Here is an example intended to highlight that distinction. The Parable of the Sower is a parable found in the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. Though the relevant pieces of text in the Gospels are remarkably similar, no two of the four are identical. The verses (...) in Matthew, Mark and Luke, have been translated and paraphrased, along with the rest of the Bible, into literally thousands of different languages and versions, all of which include the The Parable of the Sower. (shrink)

I argue that Hegel and Wittgenstein, each in their own specific way, used the idea of God at the beginning of creation as a complex analogy for other kinds of beginning, most notably the beginning of philosophical thought. Hegel’s Logic describes God’s mind before the creation of the world, i.e. God’s pure thinking. For a philosopher, beginning afresh means resolving to consider this kind of abstraction from the existence of the world. Wittgenstein, by contrast, says that the idea of a (...) creator of the world does not explain anything. It marks the terminus ad quem of asking for explanations; we must not ask further who created the creator of the world. Wittgenstein generalizes this for any kind of reasoning: “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” (Philosophical Investigations: §1) Any sort of explanation must eventually arrive at its terminus ad quem, which means only that any kind of reasoning must have its logical beginning. (shrink)

The best writing of Mark Pettinelli, about cognitive psychology, cognitive science, etc.

Provides an overview of Mark Sharlow's philosophical work with summaries of his positions. Includes references and links to his writings.

Research notes of Mark Pettinelli about cognitive science, cognitive psychology.

This collection of articles is almost all of the psychological writings of Mark Pettinelli.

Unfortunately, many people today see the regulation of lies, disinformation, hate speech, and fake news as an infringement of free speech, at least when such speech is ‘political,’ despite the damage that such speech can do. But this very protective attitude toward speech rests on a mistaken understanding of the role of free speech in a liberal society. The right to free speech is based on the liberal value of freedom, and as such can be no broader than freedom itself. (...) And freedom has always been subject to reasonable limits in a liberal society. Indeed, while the principles of toleration and neutrality are often cited as supporting a broad interpretation of the right to free speech, they also tell us that certain limits apply to that right. We need not tolerate speech that encourages intolerance, and while government should be neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good, it need not be neutral between reasonable and unreasonable conceptions. These ideas form the framework of liberal society, and as I shall show, also provide a guide for understanding what kind of speech is protected in a liberal society and what it is not. (shrink)

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We (...) Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)

The Neurological Disease Ontology (ND) is being developed to provide a comprehensive framework for the representation of neurological diseases (Diehl et al., 2013). ND utilizes the model established by the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) for the representation of entities in medicine and disease (Scheuermann et al., 2009). The goal of ND is to include information for each disease concerning its molecular, genetic, and environmental origins, the processes involved in its etiology and realization, as well as its clinical presentation (...) including signs and symptoms. (shrink)

Some objects we value because they afford a felt connection with people, events, or places connected with their past. Visiting Canterbury cathedral, you encounter the place where, in 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered by four knights of Henry II. Knowing that you are standing in the very place where Becket’s blood was spilled gives the past event a sense of tangible reality. One feels ‘in touch with’ the past; history seems to ‘come alive’. In this paper, I propose an (...) explanation for the phenomenology of such experiences in terms of an imaginative activity that represents what an object is historically connected with as part of the object in the present. One imagines of the site of Becket’s murder Becket being murdered. According to my account, objects that embody their histories are representations in Kendall Walton’s sense: they have the function of serving as props in games of make-believe. (shrink)

The replication crisis has caused researchers to distinguish between exact replications, which duplicate all aspects of a study that could potentially affect the results, and direct replications, which duplicate only those aspects of the study that are thought to be theoretically essential to reproduce the original effect. The replication crisis has also prompted researchers to think more carefully about the possibility of making Type I errors when rejecting null hypotheses. In this context, the present article considers the utility of two (...) types of Type I error probability: the Neyman–Pearson long run Type I error rate and the Fisherian sample-specific Type I error probability. It is argued that the Neyman–Pearson Type I error rate is inapplicable in social science because it refers to a long run of exact replications, and social science deals with irreversible units that make exact replications impossible. Instead, the Fisherian sample-specific Type I error probability is recommended as a more meaningful way to conceptualize false positive results in social science because it can be applied to each sample-specific decision about rejecting the same substantive null hypothesis in a series of direct replications. It is concluded that the replication crisis may be partly due to researchers’ unrealistic expectations about replicability based on their consideration of the Neyman–Pearson Type I error rate across a long run of exact replications. (shrink)

This article is one of the final works of Mark Pettinelli and discusses feelings, emotions and cognitive psychology.

Report on Dagstuhl Seminar 07132, Schloss Dagstuhl, March 27-30 , 2007.

An archive of Mark Sharlow's two blogs, "The Unfinishable Scroll" and "Religion: the Next Version." Covers Sharlow's views on metaphysics, epistemology, mind, science, religion, and politics. Includes topics and ideas not found in his papers.

This paper studies the cooperation of theology in the new evangelization in societies of ancient Christian tradition which are suffering an advanced process of secularization. It begins with Spain, where a recent debate on the influence of Christian intellectuals on social life suggests the ineffectiveness of ecclesiastical resources in transmitting the rich Catholic doctrinal heritage. Then the author deals with the idiosyncrasy of contemporary man, which lies near the one of the immediate future’s man: an uprooted subject who does not (...) believe that life has any meaning, is deeply marked by emotivism and attaches little significance to truth. The theology of tomorrow cannot feed this emotivism but must be proactive in its own way. The proclamation of the Gospel is not different from the exposition of the Church’s doctrine. To detach evangelization from the teaching of Christian doctrine cannot help the encounter with Christ. In order to succeed in transmitting this doctrine by making it suggestive, theologians should work together with experts in communication. (shrink)

The growth of individuals and society heavily relies on education. Certain hindrances may prompt some students to halt their academic pursuits temporarily. This is known as "Balik-aral." The exploration of the quality of life, lived experiences, and challenges of grade 12 Balik-aral students was undertaken by the authors to break their silence and help them by developing recommendations that could be presented to the school's key stakeholders. A phenomenological approach was used to understand the phenomenon in a study involving five (...) grade 12 balik-aral students from different strands currently enrolled in a public school in Cebu City, Philippines. A structured interview was used to collect data, and significant themes emerged during data analysis using Colaizzi's method. The study revealed several sub-themes, including age disparities and pressure to obtain the diploma while maintaining quality of life. Additionally, key informants emphasized the sense of community and an immersive learning environment in their lived experiences as balik-aral students. Finally, competing priorities and scarcity of resources emerged as significant challenges for those involved in the study. Consequently, the investigation has determined that balik-aral students must be treated equitably to foster their engagement with their peers and enhance their self-assurance, ultimately leading to academic success. (shrink)

This chapter puts to rest for all of eternity the self-undermining charge against conciliationism.

Allow me to rehearse a familiar scenario. We all know that which ends you have has something to do with what you ought to do. If Ronnie is keen on dancing but Bradley can’t stand it, then the fact that there will be dancing at the party tonight affects what Ronnie and Bradley ought to do in different ways. In short, (HI) you ought, if you have the end, to take the means. But now trouble looms: what if you have (...) dreadful, murderous ends? Ought you to take the means to them? Seemingly not. But fortunately, an assumption made by deontic logics1 comes to the rescue. Since ‘‘ought’’, according to this assumption, is a sentential operator, HI must really be ambiguous. It could be read either as (Narrow) You have the end ! O(you take the means) or as (Wide) O(you have the end ! you take the means). Now if Narrow is true, then you really ought to take the means to your murderous ends. But this doesn’t follow from Wide. All that follows from Wide is that you ought to either take the means to these ends or else give them up. Conclusions: (1) Since HI is on some reading true, but Narrow isn’t, Wide is true. (2) Wide accounts for the relationship between your ends and what you ought to do. This elegant scenario repeats itself in many other domains in which it seems like something can have a bearing on what some particular agent ought to do. Does what you know affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs about what you ought to do affect what you ought to do? Do your promises affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs affect what you ought to believe? On each of these counts, the intuitive answer is ‘‘yes’’. And so each of these questions leaves something for the moral philosopher or the epistemologist to investigate. On each count, it seems that what we all know, is that (Account) you ought, if p, to do A. But on each count, the Narrow-scope reading of the ‘‘ought’’ in this claim yields unintuitive consequences. So since Account is true, it must be true on the Wide-scope reading.. (shrink)

This article discusses various areas of cognitive psychology and cognitive science.

An account of distinctively mathematical explanation (DME) should satisfy three desiderata: it should account for the modal import of some DMEs; it should distinguish uses of mathematics in explanation that are distinctively mathematical from those that are not (Baron [2016]); and it should also account for the directionality of DMEs (Craver and Povich [2017]). Baron’s (forthcoming) deductive-mathematical account, because it is modelled on the deductive-nomological account, is unlikely to satisfy these desiderata. I provide a counterfactual account of DME, the Narrow (...) Ontic Counterfactual Account (NOCA), that can satisfy all three desiderata. NOCA appeals to ontic considerations to account for explanatory asymmetry and ground the relevant counterfactuals. NOCA provides a unification of the causal and the non-causal, the ontic and the modal, by identifying a common core that all explanations share and in virtue of which they are explanatory. (shrink)

Scientists often adjust their significance threshold during null hypothesis significance testing in order to take into account multiple testing and multiple comparisons. This alpha adjustment has become particularly relevant in the context of the replication crisis in science. The present article considers the conditions in which this alpha adjustment is appropriate and the conditions in which it is inappropriate. A distinction is drawn between three types of multiple testing: disjunction testing, conjunction testing, and individual testing. It is argued that alpha (...) adjustment is only appropriate in the case of disjunction testing, in which at least one test result must be significant in order to reject the associated joint null hypothesis. Alpha adjustment is inappropriate in the case of conjunction testing, in which all relevant results must be significant in order to reject the joint null hypothesis. Alpha adjustment is also inappropriate in the case of individual testing, in which each individual result must be significant in order to reject each associated individual null hypothesis. The conditions under which each of these three types of multiple testing is warranted are examined. It is concluded that researchers should not automatically assume that alpha adjustment is necessary during multiple testing. Illustrations are provided in relation to joint studywise hypotheses and joint multiway ANOVAwise hypotheses. (shrink)

In Republic 8–9, Socrates describes four main kinds of vicious people, all of whose souls are “ruled” by an element other than reason, and in some of whom reason is said to be “enslaved.” What role does reason play in such souls? In this paper, I argue, based on Republic 8–9 and related passages, and in contrast to some common alternative views, that for Plato the “enslavement” of reason consists in this: instead of determining for itself what is good, reason (...) is forced to desire and pursue as good a goal determined by the soul’s ruler. (shrink)

Philosophers have come to distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reasons for belief, intention, and other attitudes. Several theories about the nature of this distinction have been offered, by far the most prevalent of which is the idea that it is, at bottom, the distinction between what are known as ‘object-given’ and ‘state-given’ reasons. This paper argues that the object-given/state-given theory vastly overgeneralizes on a small set of data points, and in particular that any adequate account of the distinction (...) between the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reason must allow state-given reasons to be of the right kind. The paper has three main goals, corresponding to its three main parts. In part 1 I set up the problem by introducing the right-kind/wrong-kind distinction, the object-given/state-given distinction, and the object-given/state-given theory, according to which the former distinction simply amounts to the latter. Part 2 presents the main argument of the paper: I argue against the object-given/state-given theory by showing that all of the earmarks of the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reason apply to reasons not to intend and not to believe, but that these cases can’t be captured by the object-given/state-given theory. Finally, in part 3 I use these arguments to motivate and explore a more general hypothesis about the rightkind/wrong-kind distinction, and explore some of the consequences of rejecting the object-given/stategiven theory. (shrink)

Hobbes emphasized that the state of nature is a state of war because it is characterized by fundamental and generalized distrust. Exiting the state of nature and the conflicts it inevitably fosters is therefore a matter of establishing trust. Extant discussions of trust in the philosophical literature, however, focus either on isolated dyads of trusting individuals or trust in large, faceless institutions. In this paper, I begin to fill the gap between these extremes by analyzing what I call the topology (...) of communities of trust. Such communities are best understood in terms of interlocking dyadic relationships that approximate the ideal of being symmetric, Euclidean, reflexive, and transitive. Few communities of trust live up to this demanding ideal, and those that do tend to be small (between three and fifteen individuals). Nevertheless, such communities of trust serve as the conditions for the possibility of various important prudential epistemic, cultural, and mental health goods. However, communities of trust also make possible various problematic phenomena. They can become insular and walled-off from the surrounding community, leading to distrust of out-groups. And they can lead their members to abandon public goods for tribal or parochial goods. These drawbacks of communities of trust arise from some of the same mecha-nisms that give them positive prudential, epistemic, cultural, and mental health value – and so can at most be mitigated, not eliminated. (shrink)

According to the Book of Common Prayer, we have sinned against God “in thought, word, and deed.” In this paper I’ll explore one way of understanding what it might mean to sin against God in thought—the idea that we can at least potentially wrong God by what we believe. I will be interested in the philosophical tenability of this idea, and particularly in its potential consequences for the epistemology of religious belief and the problem of evil.

Mark Murphy has argued that the relationship between a creator and their creatures is not a special relationship that generates new moral obligations for the creator. Murphy’s position is grounded, in part, on his claim that there are no good arguments to the contrary and that the creator-creature relationship is not a relationship between equals. I argue that there are good reasons to think that a creator and creature being equals is not required for such an obligation. I offer (...) an argument for such an obligation based on the moral significance of thrusting upon sentient or rational beings significant, unsought, and wholly new circumstances. More specifically, I argue that it is reasonable to conclude that a creator enters into a duty-generating special relationship with their creatures to promote their creatures’ well-being, when the creator is the voluntary source of the creatures’ wholly new and unconsented to circumstances from which to flourish or languish and it would cost the creator virtually nothing to promote the creatures’ welfare. (shrink)

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of philosophers’ other (...) commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

In August 2021, Froese et al. published survey data collected from 2,543 respondents on their subjective experiences living under imposed social distancing measures during COVID-19 (1). The questionnaire was issued to respondents in the UK, Japan, and Mexico. By combining the authors’ expertise in phenomenological philosophy, phenomenological psychopathology, and enactive cognitive science, the questions were carefully phrased to prompt reports that would be useful to phenomenological investigation and theorizing (2–4). These questions reflected the various author’s research interests (e.g., technology, grief, (...) time). Between April 7th and July 31st, 2021, a second questionnaire with the same question set was issued to respondents of the original who had agreed to do a follow-up. This was intended to capture subjective reports of life under social distancing measures a year after the initial survey. By this time–depending on their country of residence and health status–respondents had potentially lived with repeated and prolonged lockdowns and a variety of other restrictions on their social lives. When taken together, Survey I and Survey II provide a cross-cultural and longitudinal dataset that allows for analysis of longer-term impacts of imposed social distancing measures on people’s experiences. For researchers working in diverse disciplines, this dataset offers a rich resource that reflects people’s reactions to the imposition of different social restrictions in different countries and over different time periods. (shrink)

We have begun work on two separate but related ontologies for the study of neurological diseases. The first, the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND), is intended to provide a set of controlled, logically connected classes to describe the range of neurological diseases and their associated signs and symptoms, assessments, diagnoses, and interventions that are encountered in the course of clinical practice. ND is built as an extension of the Ontology for General Medical Sciences — a high-level candidate OBO Foundry ontology that (...) provides a set of general classes that can be used to describe general aspects of medical science. ND is being built with classes utilizing both textual and axiomatized definitions that describe and formalize the relations between instances of other classes within the ontology itself as well as to external ontologies such as the Gene Ontology, Cell Ontology, Protein Ontology, and Chemical Entities of Biological Interest. In addition, references to similar or associated terms in external ontologies, vocabularies and terminologies are included when possible. Initial work on ND is focused on the areas of Alzheimer’s and other diseases associated with dementia, multiple sclerosis, and stroke and cerebrovascular disease. Extensions to additional groups of neurological diseases are planned. The second ontology, the Neuro-Psychological Testing Ontology (NPT), is intended to provide a set of classes for the annotation of neuropsychological testing data. The intention of this ontology is to allow for the integration of results from a variety of neuropsychological tests that assay similar measures of cognitive functioning. Neuro-psychological testing is an important component in developing the clinical picture used in the diagnosis of patients with a range of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and following stroke or traumatic brain injury. NPT is being developed as an extension to the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations. (shrink)

Fisher criticised the Neyman-Pearson approach to hypothesis testing by arguing that it relies on the assumption of “repeated sampling from the same population.” The present article considers the responses to this criticism provided by Pearson and Neyman. Pearson interpreted alpha levels in relation to imaginary replications of the original test. This interpretation is appropriate when test users are sure that their replications will be equivalent to one another. However, by definition, scientific researchers do not possess sufficient knowledge about the relevant (...) and irrelevant aspects of their tests and populations to be sure that their replications will be equivalent to one another. Pearson also interpreted the alpha level as a personal rule that guides researchers’ behavior during hypothesis testing. However, this interpretation fails to acknowledge that the same researcher may use different alpha levels in different testing situations. Addressing this problem, Neyman proposed that the average alpha level adopted by a particular researcher can be viewed as an indicator of that researcher’s typical Type I error rate. Researchers’ average alpha levels may be informative from a metascientific perspective. However, they are not useful from a scientific perspective. Scientists are more concerned with the error rates of specific tests of specific hypotheses, rather than the error rates of their colleagues. It is concluded that neither Neyman nor Pearson adequately rebutted Fisher’s “repeated sampling” criticism. Fisher’s significance testing approach is briefly considered as an alternative to the Neyman-Pearson approach. (shrink)

Kerr coined the term ‘HARKing’ to refer to the practice of ‘hypothesizing after the results are known’. This questionable research practice has received increased attention in recent years because it is thought to have contributed to low replication rates in science. The present article discusses the concept of HARKing from a philosophical standpoint and then undertakes a critical review of Kerr’s twelve potential costs of HARKing. It is argued that these potential costs are either misconceived, misattributed to HARKing, lacking evidence, (...) or that they do not take into account pre- and post-publication peer review and public availability to research materials and data. It is concluded that it is premature to conclude that HARKing has led to low replication rates. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

Hypothesizing after the results are known, or HARKing, occurs when researchers check their research results and then add or remove hypotheses on the basis of those results without acknowledging this process in their research report (Kerr, 1998). In the present article, I discuss three forms of HARKing: (1) using current results to construct post hoc hypotheses that are then reported as if they were a priori hypotheses; (2) retrieving hypotheses from a post hoc literature search and reporting them as a (...) priori hypotheses; and (3) failing to report a priori hypotheses that are unsupported by the current results. These three types of HARKing are often characterized as being bad for science and a potential cause of the current replication crisis. In the present article, I use insights from the philosophy of science to present a more nuanced view. Specifically, I identify the conditions under which each of these three types of HARKing is most and least likely to be bad for science. I conclude with a brief discussion about the ethics of each type of HARKing. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the relationship between the idea of possible worlds and the notion of the beauty of God. I argue that there is a clear contradiction between the idea that God is utterly and completely beautiful on the one hand and the notion that He contains within himself all possible worlds on the other. Since some of the possible worlds residing in the mind of the deity are ugly, their presence seems to compromise God's complete and utter (...) beauty. (shrink)

This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that being is inescapably diverse in kind—is anchored in his argument for the existence of change. -/- Aristotle may be the only thinker to have given a noncircular definition of change. (...) When he gave this definition, arguing that change is real was a losing proposition. To show that it exists, he had to rework the way philosophers understood reality. His groundbreaking analysis of change has long been interpreted through a Platonist lens, however, in which being is conceived as unchanging. Offering a comprehensive reexamination of the relationship between change and being in Aristotle, Sentesy makes an important contribution to scholarship on Aristotle, ancient philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Real-world agents do not know all consequences of what they know. But we are reluctant to say that a rational agent can fail to know some trivial consequence of what she knows. Since every consequence of what she knows can be reached via chains of trivial cot be dismissed easily, as some have attempted to do. Rather, a solution must give adequate weight to the normative requirements on rational agents’ epistemic states, without treating those agents as mathematically ideal reasoners. I’ll (...) argue that agents can fail to know trivial consequences of what they know, but never determinately. Such cases are epistemic oversights on behalf of the agent in question, and the facts about epistemic oversights are always indeterminate facts. As a result, we are never in a position to assert that such-and-such constitutes an epistemic oversight for agent i (for we may rationally assert only determinate truths). I then develop formal epistemic models according to which epistemic accessibility relations are vague. Given these models, we can show that epistemic oversights always concern indeterminate cases of knowledge. (shrink)

Techniques from behavioral economics—nudges—may help physicians increase pediatric vaccine compliance, but critics have objected that nudges can undermine autonomy. Since autonomy is a centrally important value in healthcare decision-making contexts, it counts against pediatric vaccination nudges if they undermine parental autonomy. Advocates for healthcare nudges have resisted the charge that nudges undermine autonomy, and the recent bioethics literature illustrates the current intractability of this debate. This article rejects a principle to which parties on both sides of this debate sometimes seem (...) committed: that nudges are morally permissible only if they are consistent with autonomy. Instead, I argue that, at least in the case of pediatric vaccination, some autonomy-undermining nudges may be morally justified. This is because parental autonomy in pediatric decision-making is not as morally valuable as the autonomy of adult patients, and because the interests of both the vaccinated child and other members of the community can sometimes be weighty enough to justify autonomy-infringing pediatric vaccination nudges. This article concludes with a set of worries about the effect of pediatric vaccination nudges on parent-physician relationships, and it calls on the American Academy of Pediatrics to draw on scientific and bioethics research to develop guidelines for the use of nudges in pediatric practice and, in particular, for the use of pediatric vaccination nudges. (shrink)

Many hold that aesthetic appreciation is sensitive to the authenticity or genuineness of an object. In a recent body of work, Carolyn Korsmeyer has defended the claim that genuineness itself is an aesthetic property. Korsmeyer’s aim is to explain our aesthetic appreciation of objects that afford a sense of being ‘in touch with the past’. In this paper, I argue that genuineness cannot explain our appreciation of these objects. There is no aesthetic experience of the genuine.

In this chapter, the frameworks of enactive cognitive science (e.g., Baran- diaran 2008, 2017; Di Paolo et al. 2018) and ontological design, particu- larly the work of Tony Fry (e.g., 2009), are synthesized to give a general account of how humans act toward change at multiple scales. According to this synthesis, design is understood as a spatiotemporally extended form of adaptive self-regulation, or adaptivity in the enactive vocabulary (Di Paolo 2005). When we design, we regulate ourselves in the local-present to (...) resource our future selves in ways that make certain regulations either possible or easier, and thus, desired outcomes more probable. Adaptivity, here, entails an ongoing redirection of the individuating tendencies of person-world systems either for maintaining some existing trajectories or for stabilizing new ones. This happens predominantly through modify- ing constraints at what Secchi and Cowley (2018, 2021) term the meso- scale of social organizing. This chapter considers diferent types of design (maintenance, habit, identity) operative across scales, from organisms to organizations. It concludes with some indications for how this perspective might be valuable in facing current ecological and environmental chal- lenges and the obvious demands they put on the need for change across all scales of human living. (shrink)

In Book I, part iv, section 2 of the Treatise, "Of scepticism with regard to the senses," Hume presents two different answers to the question of how we come to believe in the continued existence of unperceived objects. He rejects his first answer shortly after its formulation, and the remainder of the section articulates an alternative account of the development of the belief. The account that Hume adopts, however, is susceptible to a number of insurmountable objections, which motivates a reassessment (...) of his original proposal. This paper defends a version of Hume's initial explanation of the belief in continued existence and examines some of its philosophical implications. (shrink)

The ambiguity theory of “knows” is the view that knows and its cognates have more than one propositional sense—i.e., more than one sense that can properly be used in “knows that” etc. constructions. The ambiguity theory of “know” has received relatively little attention as an account of the truth-conditions for knowledge ascriptions and denials—especially compared to views like classical, moderate invariantism and epistemic contextualism. In this paper, it is argued that the ambiguity theory of knows has an advantage over both (...) classical, moderate invariantism and epistemic contextualism. This advantage is that it is the only one of these views that can account for “diverging knowledge responses without inconsistency” —i.e., cases in which, for the same subject S and proposition p, one and the same speaker says truly “S knows p” but instead could have truly said “S does not know p” and vice versa. This paper argues both for the existence of DRWI scenarios and the ability of the ambiguity theory of knows to best explain their existence. (shrink)

This paper is about whether shifts in attention can alter what it is like to think. I begin by taking up the hypothesis that attention structures consciousness into a centre and a periphery, following Watzl's (2014; 2017) understanding of the distinction between the centre and periphery of the field of consciousness. Then I show that introspection leads to divided results about whether attention structures conscious thought into a centre and a periphery -- remarks by Martin (1997) and Phillips (2012) suggest (...) a negative answer, whereas remarks by Maher (1923) and Chudnoff (2013) suggest a positive answer. Lastly, I argue that there is behavioural evidence that lends weight to the 'yes' side of the introspective dispute. My argument makes use of Garavan's (1998) study of forming and maintaining two mental counts at once. (shrink)