Results for 'Isaac Kisiangani'

203 found
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  1. Technology and Epistemic Possibility.Isaac Record - 2013 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie (2):1-18.
    My aim in this paper is to give a philosophical analysis of the relationship between contingently available technology and the knowledge that it makes possible. My concern is with what specific subjects can know in practice, given their particular conditions, especially available technology, rather than what can be known “in principle” by a hypothetical entity like Laplace’s Demon. The argument has two parts. In the first, I’ll construct a novel account of epistemic possibility that incorporates two pragmatic conditions: responsibility and (...)
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  2. Explanatory circles.Isaac Wilhelm - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 108 (C):84-92.
    Roughly put, explanatory circles — if any exist — would be propositions such that (i) each explains the next, and (ii) the last explains the first. In this paper, I give two arguments for the view that there are explanatory circles. The first argument appeals to general relativistic worlds in which time is circular. The second argument appeals to special science theories that describe feedback loops. In addition, I show that three standard arguments against explanatory circles are unsuccessful.
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  3. (1 other version)Conceptual Engineering: A Road Map to Practice.Manuel Gustavo Isaac, Steffen Koch & Ryan Nefdt - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (10):1-15.
    This paper discusses the logical space of alternative conceptual engineering projects, with a specific focus on (1) the processes, (2) the targets and goals, and (3) the methods of such projects. We present an overview of how these three aspects interact in the contemporary literature and discuss those alternative projects that have yet to be explored based on our suggested typology. We show how choices about each element in a conceptual engineering project constrain the possibilities for the others, thereby giving (...)
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  4.  80
    Letters: Edition, Translation and Introduction.Isaac Abravanel & Cedric Cohen-Skalli - 2007 - De Gruyter. Translated by Cedric Cohen-Skalli.
    This first critical edition of Isaac Abravanel’s correspondence opens a window into the cultural, political and commercial world of one of the first Jewish humanists of the quattrocento. Jewish leader of the expelled Sephardim after 1492, commentator of the Bible, Abravanel is a legendary figure of the Sephardic history. The edition of the letters along with the introductive essay that reconstructs their cultural background intends to connect the legendary figure of Abravanel to the major reason of his remarkable career: (...)
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  5. How To Conceptually Engineer Conceptual Engineering?Manuel Gustavo Https://Orcidorg Isaac - 2020 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-24.
    Conceptual engineering means to provide a method to assess and improve our concepts working as cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering still lacks an account of what concepts are (as cognitive devices) and of what engineering is (in the case of cognition). And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach, with no overall grip on its target domain. The purpose of this (...)
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  6. (1 other version)Which Concept of Concept for Conceptual Engineering?Manuel Gustavo Https://Orcidorg Isaac - 2021 - Erkenntnis: An International Journal of Scientific Philosophy 88 (5):2145-2169.
    Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. However, little has been written about how best to conceive of concepts for the purposes of conceptual engineering. In this paper, I aim to fill this foundational gap, proceeding in three main steps: First, I propose a methodological framework for evaluating the conduciveness of a given concept of concept for conceptual engineering. Then, I develop a typology that contrasts two competing concepts of concept that can be used in conceptual (...)
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  7. People, posts, and platforms: reducing the spread of online toxicity by contextualizing content and setting norms.Isaac Record & Boaz Miller - 2022 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (2):1-19.
    We present a novel model of individual people, online posts, and media platforms to explain the online spread of epistemically toxic content such as fake news and suggest possible responses. We argue that a combination of technical features, such as the algorithmically curated feed structure, and social features, such as the absence of stable social-epistemic norms of posting and sharing in social media, is largely responsible for the unchecked spread of epistemically toxic content online. Sharing constitutes a distinctive communicative act, (...)
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  8. Centering the Everett Interpretation.Isaac Wilhelm - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (4):1019-1039.
    I propose an account of probability in the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. According to the account, probabilities are objective chances of centered propositions. As I show, the account solves a number of problems concerning the role of probability in the Everett interpretation. It also challenges an implicit assumption, concerning the aim and scope of fundamental physical theories, that is made throughout the philosophy of physics literature.
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  9.  72
    Bohmian Collapse.Isaac Wilhelm - 2024 - In Angelo Bassi, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka & Nino Zanghi (eds.), Physics and the Nature of Reality: Essays in Memory of Detlef Dürr. Springer. pp. 63-70.
    I present and explain the Bohmian account of collapse in quantum mechanics.
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  10. Pluralities, counterparts, and groups.Isaac Wilhelm - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (7):2133-2153.
    I formulate a theory of groups based on pluralities and counterparts: roughly put, a group is a plurality of entities at a time. This theory comes with counterpart-theoretic semantics for modal and temporal sentences about groups. So this theory of groups is akin to the stage theory of material objects: both take the items they analyze to exist at a single time, and both use counterparts to satisfy certain conditions relating to the modal properties, temporal properties, and coincidence properties of (...)
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  11. The Evolution of Retribution: Intuitions Undermined.Isaac Wiegman - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (2):490-510.
    Recent empirical work suggests that emotions are responsible for anti-consequentialist intuitions. For instance, anger places value on actions of revenge and retribution, value not derived from the consequences of these actions. As a result, it contributes to the development of retributive intuitions. I argue that if anger evolved to produce these retributive intuitions because of their biological consequences, then these intuitions are not a good indicator that punishment has value apart from its consequences. This severs the evidential connection between retributive (...)
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  12. Updating without evidence.Yoaav Isaacs & Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2023 - Noûs 57 (3):576-599.
    Sometimes you are unreliable at fulfilling your doxastic plans: for example, if you plan to be fully confident in all truths, probably you will end up being fully confident in some falsehoods by mistake. In some cases, there is information that plays the classical role of evidence—your beliefs are perfectly discriminating with respect to some possible facts about the world—and there is a standard expected‐accuracy‐based justification for planning to conditionalize on this evidence. This planning‐oriented justification extends to some cases where (...)
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  13. Centering the Principal Principle.Isaac Wilhelm - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (6):1897-1915.
    I show that centered propositions—also called de se propositions, and usually modeled as sets of centered worlds—pose a serious problem for various versions of Lewis's Principal Principle. The problem, put roughly, is that in scenarios like Elga's `Sleeping Beauty' case, those principles imply that rational agents ought to have obviously irrational credences. To solve the problem, I propose a centered version of the Principal Principle. My version allows centered propositions to be objectively chancy.
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  14. (2 other versions)Broad-Spectrum Conceptual Engineering.Manuel Gustavo Https://Orcidorg Isaac - 2021 - Ratio: An International Journal for Analytic Philosophy 34 (4):286-302.
    Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. On its ‘broad-spectrum’ version, it is expected to be appropriately applicable to any of our representation-involving cognitive activities, with major consequences for our whole cognitive life. This paper is about the theoretical foundations of conceptual engineering thus characterised. With a view to ensuring the actionability of conceptual engineering as a broad-spectrum method, it addresses the issue of how best to construe the subject matter of conceptual engineering and successively (...)
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  15. Post-Truth Conceptual Engineering.Manuel Gustavo Https://Orcidorg Isaac - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (1):199-214.
    Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. Some have recently claimed that the implementation of such method in the form of ameliorative projects is truth-driven and should thus be epistemically constrained, ultimately at least (Simion 2018; cf. Podosky 2018). This paper challenges that claim on the assumption of a social constructionist analysis of ideologies, and provides an alternative, pragmatic and cognitive framework for determining the legitimacy of ameliorative conceptual projects overall. The upshot is that one should (...)
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  16. Multiple Universes and Self-Locating Evidence.Yoaav Isaacs, John Hawthorne & Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2022 - Philosophical Review 131 (3):241-294.
    Is the fact that our universe contains fine-tuned life evidence that we live in a multiverse? Ian Hacking and Roger White influentially argue that it is not. We approach this question through a systematic framework for self-locating epistemology. As it turns out, leading approaches to self-locating evidence agree that the fact that our own universe contains fine-tuned life indeed confirms the existence of a multiverse. This convergence is no accident: we present two theorems showing that, in this setting, any updating (...)
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  17. Tractability and laws.Isaac Wilhelm - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-17.
    According to the Best System Account of lawhood, laws of nature are theorems of the deductive systems that best balance simplicity and strength. In this paper, I advocate a different account of lawhood which is related, in spirit, to the BSA: according to my account, laws are theorems of deductive systems that best balance simplicity, strength, and also calculational tractability. I discuss two problems that the BSA faces, and I show that my account solves them. I also use my account (...)
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  18. The co-evolution of virtue and desert: debunking intuitions about intrinsic value.Isaac Wiegman & Michael T. Dale - 2024 - Synthese 204 (4):1-18.
    Thomas Hurka’s recursive account of value appeals to certain intuitions to expand the class of intrinsic values, placing concepts of virtue and desert within the realm of second and third order intrinsic goods, respectively. This is a formalization of a tradition of thought extending back to Aristotle and Kant via the British moralists, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross. However, the evidential status of such intuitions vis a vis the real, intrinsic value of virtue and desert is hostage to (...)
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  19. Intrinsicality and Entanglement.Isaac Wilhelm - 2022 - Mind 131 (521):35-58.
    I explore the relationship between a prominent analysis of intrinsic properties, due to Langton and Lewis, and the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. As I argue, the analysis faces a puzzle. The full analysis classifies certain properties of entangled particles as intrinsic. But when combined with an extremely plausible assumption about duplication, the main part of the analysis classifies those properties as non-intrinsic instead. I conclude that much of Lewis’s metaphysics is in trouble: Lewis based many of his metaphysical views—his thesis (...)
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  20. Evidential Decision Theory and the Ostrich.Yoaav Isaacs & Ben Levinstein - 2024 - Philosophers' Imprint 24 (1).
    Evidential Decision Theory is flawed, but its flaws are not fully understood. David Lewis (1981) famously charged that EDT recommends an irrational policy of managing the news and “commends the ostrich as rational”. Lewis was right, but the case he appealed to—Newcomb’s Problem—does not demonstrate his conclusion. Indeed, decision theories other than EDT, such as Committal Decision Theory and Functional Decision Theory, agree with EDT's verdicts in Newcomb’s Problem, but their flaws, whatever they may be, do not stem from any (...)
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  21. Taking iPhone Seriously: Epistemic Technologies and the Extended Mind.Isaac Record & Boaz Miller - forthcoming - In Duncan Pritchard, Jesper Kallestrup‎, Orestis Palermos & J. Adam Carter‎ (eds.), Extended ‎Epistemology. Oxford University Press.
    David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended mind thesis by meeting the criteria ‎that he and Andy Clark established in their well-known 1998 paper. Andy Clark agrees. We take ‎this proposal seriously, evaluating the case of the GPS-enabled smartphone as a potential mind ‎extender. We argue that the “trust and glue” criteria enumerated by Clark and Chalmers are ‎incompatible with both the epistemic responsibilities that accompany everyday activities and the ‎practices of trust that enable users to discharge them. Prospects (...)
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  22. Payback without bookkeeping: The origins of revenge and retaliation.Isaac Wiegman - 2019 - Philosophical Psychology 32 (7):1100-1128.
    ABSTRACTCurrent evolutionary models of revenge focus on its complex deterrent functions. Nevertheless, there are some retaliatory behaviors in nonhuman animals that do not appear to have a deterren...
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  23. Counting Your Chickens.Yoaav Isaacs, Adam Lerner & Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (3):675-692.
    Suppose that, for reasons of animal welfare, it would be better if everyone stopped eating chicken. Does it follow that you should stop eating chicken? Proponents of the “inefficacy objection” argue that, due to the scale and complexity of markets, the expected effects of your chicken purchases are negligible. So the expected effects of eating chicken do not make it wrong. -/- We argue that this objection does not succeed, in two steps. First, empirical data about chicken production tells us (...)
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  24.  90
    Centering the Born Rule.Isaac Wilhelm - 2023 - Quantum Reports 5 (1):311-324.
    The centered Everett interpretation solves a problem that various approaches to quantum theory face. In this paper, I continue developing the theory underlying that solution. In particular, I defend the centered Everett interpretation against a few objections, and I provide additional motivation for some of its key features.
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  25. Applied Philosophy of Social Science: The Social Construction of Race.Isaac Wiegman & Ron Mallon - 2016 - In Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy. Malden, MA: Wiley. pp. 441-454.
    A traditional social scientific divide concerns the centrality of the interpretation of local understandings as opposed to attending to relatively general factors in understanding human individual and group differences. We consider one of the most common social scientific variables, race, and ask how to conceive of its causal power. We suggest that any plausible attempt to model the causal effects of such constructed social roles will involve close interplay between interpretationist and more general elements. Thus, we offer a case study (...)
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  26. Angry Rats and Scaredy Cats: Lessons from Competing Cognitive Homologies.Isaac Wiegman - 2016 - Biological Theory 11 (4):224-240.
    There have been several recent attempts to think about psychological kinds as homologies. Nevertheless, there are serious epistemic challenges for individuating homologous psychological kinds, or cognitive homologies. Some of these challenges are revealed when we look at competing claims of cognitive homology. This paper considers two competing homology claims that compare human anger with putative aggression systems of nonhuman animals. The competition between these hypotheses has been difficult to resolve in part because of what I call the boundary problem: boundaries (...)
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  27. The Typical Principle.Isaac Wilhelm - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    If a proposition is typically true, given your evidence, then you should believe that proposition; or so I argue here. In particular, in this paper, I propose and defend a principle of rationality---call it the `Typical Principle'---which links rational belief to facts about what is typical. As I show, this principle avoids several problems that other, seemingly similar principles face. And as I show, in many cases, this principle implies the verdicts of the Principal Principle: so ultimately, the Typical Principle (...)
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  28. Mystical Rationality.Isaac Wilhelm - 2022 - In Helen De Cruz & Johan De Smedt (eds.), Avatar: The Last Airbender and Philosophy: Wisdom From Aang to Zuko. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 88–97.
    In this chapter, we explore some ways in which reasoning based on mysticism can be rational, focusing on the episode “The Fortuneteller,” in which Aang, Katara, and Sokka save a village from a volcanic eruption. Throughout this episode, Sokka advocates a purely empirical approach to reasoning. The villagers, however, believe that no source of knowledge is more reliable than Aunt Wu, the local fortuneteller. At several points in the episode, Sokka claims that the villagers’ reliance on Aunt Wu is irrational. (...)
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  29. Worlds are Pluralities.Isaac Wilhelm - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (1):221-231.
    I propose an account of possible worlds. According to the account, possible worlds are pluralities of sentences in an extremely large language. This account avoids a problem, relating to the total number of possible worlds, that other accounts face. And it has several additional benefits.
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  30. The Responsibility to Protect from Terror: The Ethics of Foreign Counter-terrorist Interventions.Isaac Taylor - 2022 - Global Responsibility to Protect 14 (2):155-177.
    The use of military force abroad is a significant part of some states’ counter-terrorist efforts. Can these operations be ethically justified? This paper considers whether the underlying principles that philosophers have put forward to justify humanitarian interventions (which may underlie the international norm of the responsibility to protect (R2P)) can also give support for foreign counter-terrorist interventions of this sort. While it finds that the limits to international action that are imposed by the need to respect state sovereignty do not (...)
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  31. Wrong on the Internet: Why some common prescriptions for addressing the spread of misinformation online don’t work.Isaac Record & Boaz Miller - 2022 - Communique 105:22-27.
    Leading prescriptions for addressing the spread of fake news, misinformation, and other forms of epistemically toxic content online target either the platform or platform users as a single site for intervention. Neither approach attends to the intense feedback between people, posts, and platforms. Leading prescriptions boil down to the suggestion that we make social media more like traditional media, whether by making platforms take active roles as gatekeepers, or by exhorting individuals to behave more like media professionals. Both approaches are (...)
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  32. Divine Retribution in Evolutionary Perspective.Isaac Wiegman - 2016 - In Wm Curtis Holtzen & Matthew Nelson Hill (eds.), In Spirit and Truth. CST Press. pp. 181-202.
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  33. Justified Belief in a Digital Age: On the Epistemic Implications of Secret Internet Technologies.Boaz Miller & Isaac Record - 2013 - Episteme 10 (2):117 - 134.
    People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered Internet ‎sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing ‎subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users’ reliance on ‎Internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about ‎the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns ‎within standard theories of knowledge and justification. (...)
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  34. Divine Forgiveness and Mercy in Evolutionary Perspective.Isaac Wiegman - 2017 - In Matthew Nelson Hill & Wm Curtis Holtzen (eds.), Connecting Faith and Science. Claremont Press. pp. 189-220.
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  35. What Should Conceptual Engineering Be All About?Isaac Manuel Gustavo - 2021 - Philosophia: A Global Journal of Philosophy 49 (5):2041-2051.
    Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable (...)
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  36. (6 other versions)Tolstoy's Christian Anarchism.Isaac Davis - manuscript
    In this paper I will analyze Lev (Leo) Tolstoy’s arguments for Christian Anarchism which is found in his book Царство Божие Внутри Вас (tr. The Kingdom of God is Within You). By analyzing his arguments, I will present why Tolstoy believes that Christianity inevitably leads to a belief and practice of pacifism and anarchism. In other words, Tolstoy is attempting to prove that capitalism and governments of any kind are incompatible with Christian ethics. Thus, what this paper attempts to achieve (...)
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  37. Which Method(s) for Conceptual Engineering?Manuel Gustavo Isaac, Belleri Delia, Brun Georg, Decock Lieven, Koch Steffen, Pollock Joey & Reuter Kevin - 2022 - In Tomas Marvan, Hanne Andersen, Hasok Chang, Benedikt Löwe & Ivo Pezlar (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology. London: College Publications.
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  38. Responsible Epistemic Technologies: A Social-Epistemological Analysis of Autocompleted Web Search.Boaz Miller & Isaac Record - 2017 - New Media and Society 19 (12):1945-1963.
    Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search ‎engines, which actively shape their epistemic surroundings. Yet, a satisfying account ‎of the epistemic responsibilities associated with them does not exist. We analyze ‎automatically generated search suggestions from the perspective of social ‎epistemology to illustrate how epistemic responsibilities associated with a ‎technology can be derived and assigned. Drawing on our previously developed ‎theoretical framework that connects responsible epistemic behavior to ‎practicability, we address two questions: first, given the different technological ‎possibilities available (...)
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  39. Anger and Punishment: Natural History and Normative Significance.Isaac Wiegman - 2014 - Dissertation, Washington University in St. Louis
    I argue that the evolutionary history of anger has substantive implications for normative ethics. In the process, I develop an evolutionary account of anger and its influence on action. First, I consider a prominent argument by Peter Singer and Joshua Greene. They conclude that evolutionary explanations of human cooperation debunk – or undercut the evidential value of – the moral intuitions supporting duty ethics (as opposed to utilitarian or consequentialist ethics). With this argument they aim to defend consequentialist theories. However, (...)
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  40. Does Schopenhauer accept any positive pleasures?Joshua Isaac Fox - 2023 - European Journal of Philosophy 31 (4):902-913.
    Schopenhauer repeatedly claims that all pleasure is negative, and this view seems to play key roles throughout his work. Nonetheless, many scholars have argued that Schopenhauer actually acknowledges certain positive pleasures. Two major arguments have been offered for this reading, one focused on the link between Schopenhauer's view of pleasure and Plato's, and one focused on Schopenhauer's distinction between two components of aesthetic pleasure. I argue that neither way of motivating the positive pleasure reading succeeds. Both overlook a key aspect (...)
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  41. Evaluating Ectogenesis via the Metaphysics of Pregnancy.Suki Finn & Sasha Isaac - 2021 - In Robbie Davis-Floyd (ed.), Birthing Techno-Sapiens: Human-Technology Co-Evolution and the Future of Reproduction. Routledge: Taylor & Francis. pp. Chapter 8.
    Ectogenesis, or “artificial womb technology,” has been heralded by some, such as prominent feminist Shulamith Firestone, as a way to liberate women. In this chapter, we challenge this view by offering an alternative analysis of the technology as relying upon and perpetuating a problematic model of pregnancy which, rather than liberating women, serves to devalue them. We look to metaphysics as the abstract study of reality to elucidate how the entities in a pregnancy are related to one another. We consider (...)
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  42. Infinite Prospects.Jeffrey Sanford Russell & Yoaav Isaacs - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1):178-198.
    People with the kind of preferences that give rise to the St. Petersburg paradox are problematic---but not because there is anything wrong with infinite utilities. Rather, such people cannot assign the St. Petersburg gamble any value that any kind of outcome could possibly have. Their preferences also violate an infinitary generalization of Savage's Sure Thing Principle, which we call the *Countable Sure Thing Principle*, as well as an infinitary generalization of von Neumann and Morgenstern's Independence axiom, which we call *Countable (...)
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  43. Parental Obligations & the Non-Identity Problem.Jacob Isaac - manuscript
    Since its proposal in 1984, Derek Parfit’s ‘Non-Identity Problem’ has significantly influenced how social choice theorists understand existential harms and benefits. The ‘problem’ raises the question of whether parents act wrongly when they choose to create a child with a life barely worth living. It suggests that if the alternatives would have either resulted in a life not worth living or non-existence, then the parents are not liable for moral criticism. This article challenges Parfit’s premise by advocating for a Minimal (...)
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  44. Solving a Paradox of Evidential Equivalence.Cian Dorr, John Hawthorne & Yoaav Isaacs - 2021 - Mind 130 (520):1159–82.
    David Builes presents a paradox concerning how confident you should be that any given member of an infinite collection of fair coins landed heads, conditional on the information that they were all flipped and only finitely many of them landed heads. We argue that if you should have any conditional credence at all, it should be 1/2.
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  45. 'Ought Implies Can' and the Possibility of Group Obligations.Isaac Hadfield - 2020 - British Undergraduate Philosophy Review 1 (1):40-49.
    Positing group level obligations has come under attack from concerns relating to agency as a necessary requirement for obligation bearing. Roughly stated, the worry is that since only agents can have moral obligations, and groups are not agents, groups cannot have moral obligations. The intuition behind this constraint is itself based on the ability requirement of 'ought implies can': in order for a group to have an obligation it must have the ability to perform an action, but only agents can (...)
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  46. Two Pessimisms in Mill.Joshua Isaac Fox - 2021 - Utilitas 33 (4):442-457.
    Mill defines utilitarianism as the combination of a “theory of life” and a moral claim: only pleasure and freedom from pain are desirable as ends, and the promotion of happiness is the sole goal of moral action. So defined, utilitarianism is open to ad hominem pessimistic objection: a “theory of life” which entails the impossibility of happiness fits poorly with a morality centered on its promotion. The first two challenges Mill confronts in Utilitarianism share this pessimistic structure. Interestingly, however, these (...)
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  47. The Principle of Convergent Restraint: A Failed Framework of Public Reason.Jacob Isaac - 2023 - University of British Columbia.
    This essay undertakes a critical examination of Kevin Vallier’s Principle of Convergent Restraint (PCR) within the framework of public reason liberalism. The article begins by scrutinizing the PCR’s inaugural provision: intelligibility, advancing the argument that Vallier’s explication of intelligibility contradicts the requisites of public justification in liberal democracies. It argues that Vallier’s predilection for intelligibility over accessibility runs afoul of the fundamental principles underpinning public reason and pluralistic liberalism. It then provides an evaluation of the second provision, narrow restraint, asserting (...)
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  48. Justifying Prison Breaks as Civil Disobedience.Isaac Shur - 2019 - Aporia 19 (2):14-26.
    I argue that given the persistent injustice present within the Prison Industrial Complex in the United States, many incarcerated individuals would be justified in attempting to escape and that these prison breaks may qualify as acts of civil disobedience. After an introduction in section one, section two offers a critique of the classical liberal conception of civil disobedience envisioned by John Rawls. Contrary to Rawls, I argue that acts of civil disobedience can involve both violence and evasion of punishment, both (...)
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  49. What is Good for Spock? A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism.Isaac Shur - 2019 - Ephemeris 19:46-57.
    Attitudinal Hedonism is a theory of well-being which claims that welfare consists in states of attitudinal pleasure. Fred Feldman characterizes attitudinal pleasure as a state of consciousness similar to attitudes of hope and fear or belief and doubt. He employs the term, enjoyment for the relevant conscious state of attitudinal pleasure and disenjoyment for attitudinal pain. Attitudinal pleasures and pains contrast with sensory pleasures like sex or drugs and sensory pains like cuts or bruises which are felt with the senses (...)
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  50. Disassociation Intuitions.Bob Fischer & Isaac Wiegman - 2018 - Southwest Philosophy Review 34 (1):85-92.
    We should disassociate ourselves from wrongdoing. If Hobby Lobby is against LGBTQ rights, we shouldn’t shop there. If Old Navy sources their clothing from sweatshops, we shouldn’t buy them. If animals are treated terribly in factory farms, we shouldn’t eat the meat, eggs, and dairy products that come from them. Let’s call these disassociation intuitions. What explains the existence and force of disassociation intuitions? And based on that explanation, are they intuitions worth taking seriously? In other words, depending on the (...)
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