Does the capacity to think require the capacity to sense? A lively debate on this topic runs throughout the history of philosophy and now animates discussions of artificial intelligence. Many have argued that AI systems such as large language models cannot think and understand if they lack sensory grounding. I argue that thought does not require sensory grounding: there can be pure thinkers who can think without any sensory capacities. As a result, the absence of sensory grounding does not entail (...) that large language models cannot think or understand. I also consider to what extent quasi-sensory grounding can at least boost the performance of a language model. (shrink)

This study aims to use the Asian knowledge model “APO” as a determinant for performance excellence in universities and identifying the most effecting factors on it. This study was applied on Al-Azhar University in Gaza strip. The result of the study showed that (APO) model is valid as a measure and there are four dimensions in the model affecting significantly more than the others (university processes, KM leadership, personnel, KM outputs). Furthermore, performance excellence produced though modernizing the means of education, (...) curriculum development, technology and flexibility in the organizational structure. The study recommends expanding the usage of (APO) model, enhancing the role of knowledge leadership, technology, organizational flexibility, sharing culture and incentive systems that encouraging innovation. (shrink)

Empirical evidence suggests that people naïvely represent time as dynamical (i.e. as containing robust temporal passage). Yet many contemporary B-theorists deny that it seems to us, in perceptual experience, as though time robustly passes. The question then arises as to why we represent time as dynamical if we do not have perceptual experiences which represent time as dynamical. We consider two hypotheses about why this might be: the temporally aperspectival replacement hypothesis and the moving open future hypothesis. We then empirically (...) test the moving open future hypothesis. According to that hypothesis, we represent the past as objectively fixed and the future open. And we represent that this objective openness moves as events that were open become fixed, such that in doing so, we represent a privileged moving present. We found no evidence for the moving open future hypothesis, which suggests that further investigation of the temporally aperspectival replacement hypothesis is called for. Our results also shed further light on our understanding of the respects in which we represent the future to be open, which, in turn, has implications for our theorising about the open future. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Uniqueness Thesis, a core thesis in the epistemology of disagreement. After presenting uniqueness and clarifying relevant terms, a novel counterexample to the thesis will be introduced. This counterexample involves logical disagreement. Several objections to the counterexample are then considered, and it is argued that the best responses to the counterexample all undermine the initial motivation for uniqueness.

Many philosophers have thought that our folk, or pre-reflective, view of persistence is one on which objects endure. This assumption not only plays a role in disputes about the nature of persistence itself, but is also put to use in several other areas of metaphysics, including debates about the nature of change and temporal passage. In this paper, we empirically test three broad claims. First, that most people (i.e. most non-philosophers) believe that, and it seems to them as though, objects (...) persist by enduring rather than perduring. Second, that most people have a view of change on which enduring but not perduring objects count as changing. Third, that one reason why the folk represent time as dynamical is because it seems to them, and they believe that, they endure through time. We found no evidence to support these claims. While there are certainly plenty of ‘folk’ endurantists in the population we tested, there are also plenty of ‘folk’ perdurantists. We did not find robust evidence that a majority of people believed that, or it seemed to them as though, objects endure rather than perdure. We conclude that many arguments in favour of endurantism that appeal to folk beliefs about, or experiences of, persisting objects and change rest on views about those beliefs and experiences that are empirically unsupported. There is no evidence to suggest that endurantism is the folk friendly view of persistence, and so we should stop treating it as such without argument. (shrink)

This paper aims to determine whether we can locate temporal passage in a non-dynamical (block universe) world. In particular, we seek to determine both whether temporal passage can be located somewhere in our world if it is non-dynamical, and also to home in on where in such a world temporal passage can be located, if it can be located anywhere. We investigate this question by seeking to determine, across three experiments, whether the folk concept of temporal passage can be satisfied (...) in our world if it is non-dynamical, and, if it can, what sort of thing in our world satisfies that concept. In particular, we focus on the question of whether that concept (if satisfied) is satisfied by something mind-dependent or something mind-independent. In other words, we ask, is temporal passage something that is at least partially in the mind, or is it entirely external to the mind? We find, contrary to what is often assumed by dynamists and non-dynamists alike, that the folk concept of temporal passage is satisfied in our world conditional on it being non-dynamical, and that the concept is satisfied by something mind-independent. This provides further ammunition for recent deflationary accounts of temporal passage that attempt to locate passage somewhere in our non-dynamical world. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to identify the requirements of computerized Management Information Systems and their role in improving the quality of administrative decisions in the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education. The authors used the descriptive analytical method and the questionnaire method to collect the data. (247) questionnaires were distributed on the study sample and (175) questionnaires were collected back with a recovery rate of (70.8). The study showed a number of results, the most important of which (...) are: There exist a role for computerized management information system requirements in improving the quality of administrative decisions in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education. This result is due to the existence of the support and attention by the senior management in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education by 65.06%, the physical requirements available for the use of computerized Management Information Systems are available by (72.19%), and the software requirements for the use of computerized Management Information Systems are available at 67.74%. The results found that the human requirements available for the use of computerized Management Information Systems are available at (68.33%). The results showed that the organizational requirements that assist in the use of information systems are available at (64.19%). There are no statistically significant differences between respondents' responses to the role of computerized management information system requirements in improving the quality of administrative decisions in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education attributable to the variables(Gender, academic qualification, age, career level), while there are statistically significant differences in the role of computerized management information system requirements in improving the quality of administrative decisions in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education due to variable years of service. The study concluded that the Ministry of Education and Higher Education is able to cope with the external environmental changes rapidly and the limited time available for the collection and analysis of information. This means that administrative information systems should be used by increasing the approval of senior management on Management Information Systems in making their decisions, and to involve the employees in making any change and keep abreast of technical developments and try to use external bodies to advise in the field of computerized information systems, and work to increase coordination between the different departments of the ministry. (shrink)

The ability to perceive the shapes of things as enduring through changes in how they stimulate our sense organs is vital to our sense of stability in the world. But what sort of capacity is shape constancy, and how is it reflected in perceptual experience? This paper defends a pluralist account of shape constancy: There are multiple kinds of shape constancy centered on geometrical properties at various levels of abstraction, and properties at these various levels feature in the content of (...) perceptual experience, governing patterns of apparent shape similarity. I propose that the varieties of shape constancy are subserved by the syntactic complexity of perceptual shape representations. By assigning discrete constituents to various abstract shape parameters, these representations attune us to the preservation of certain abstract shape properties through changes in more determinate shape properties. Finally, I draw broader lessons concerning the nature and function of perceptual constancy. (shrink)

Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive states of affairs to be located in the future not the past, and for negative states of affairs to be located in the past not the future. Three explanations for future-bias have been posited: the temporal metaphysics explanation, the practical irrelevance explanation, and the three mechanisms explanation. Understanding what explains future-bias is important not only for better understanding the phenomenon itself, but also because many philosophers think that which explanation is (...) the correct one has implications for our evaluation of the normative status of future-bias. In this paper we focus on the connection between future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry. The latter refers to the fact that people tend to assign more value to a state of affairs when it is located in the future, as opposed to being equidistant in the past. All three candidate explanations offered for future-bias proceed by explaining the temporal value asymmetry, and then supposing that future-bias is simply a manifestation of that asymmetry. Recently, however, it has been argued that the conditions under which people display the temporal value asymmetry and future-bias are different, and that this is reason to doubt that the latter is a manifestation of the former. In this paper we empirically test one response to this argument against the manifestation thesis—the simulation response—according to which once we control for the degree to which people can simulate the object of their preference, we find that people display future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry in the same conditions. We find no evidence in favour of the simulation response. Moreover, our results support some previous research that suggests that the temporal value asymmetry is less robust than previously thought, and this in itself casts doubt on the idea that future bias is just a manifestation of this asymmetry. (shrink)

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, such as semaglutide, and dual GLP-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonists, such as tirzepatide, have been found to be effective for treating obesity and diabetes, significantly reducing weight and the risk or predicted risk of adverse cardiovascular events. There is a global shortage of these medications that could last several years and raises questions about how limited supplies should be allocated. We propose a fair-allocation framework that enables evaluation of the ethics of current (...) practices and could guide governments, professional societies, and physicians in allocation decisions. (shrink)

It is often argued that oppression reduces freedom. I argue against the view that oppression is wrong because it reduces freedom. Conceiving oppression as wrong because it reduces freedom is at odds with recognizing structural cases of oppression, because (a) many cases of oppression, including many structural ones, do not reduce agents’ freedom, and (b) the type of freedom reduction involved in many structural instances of oppression is not morally objectionable. If the mechanisms of oppression are sometimes indistinguishable from benign, (...) or even ineluctable, processes of social shaping, arguments that oppression is objectionably freedom-reducing risk implausibly suggesting that socialization itself is objectionably freedom-reducing. I show how three strategies for explaining how oppression reduces freedom either fall into the trap of overgenerality, or end up appealing to values other than freedom to avoid it. I conclude by suggesting that oppression might be better thought of as an affront to equality. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts denying that temporal passage is an objective feature of reality face an explanatory challenge with respect to why it appears to us as though time passes. Recently, two solutions have surfaced. Cognitive illusionism claims that people experience the passage of time due to their belief that time passes. Cognitive error theory claims that we do not experience the passage of time, but hold the belief that we do, which we have acquired through making an inference from the prior (...) belief that time passes. These approaches suppose that belief and passage experience are explanatorily connected, and they depend on the claims that people who experience the passage of time or at least believe that they do also believe that time passes. To test these claims, we probed the beliefs of populations of individuals with depression and schizotypy, thus conditions that are strongly associated with alterations in temporal phenomenology. Depression was assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and schizotypy with the short Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (O-LIFE). While cognitive illusionism and inferentialist cognitive error theory would predict a strong association between BDI and O-LIFE scores and beliefs about time passage, our study found no such association. The experience of passage does not seem to be explanatorily connected to beliefs about the passage of time. (shrink)

Philosophers have long noted, and empirical psychology has lately confirmed, that most people are “biased toward the future”: we prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. At least two explanations have been offered for this bias: belief in temporal passage and the practical irrelevance of the past resulting from our inability to influence past events. We set out to test the latter explanation. In a large survey, we find that participants exhibit significantly less (...) future bias when asked to consider scenarios where they can affect their own past experiences. This supports the “practical irrelevance” explanation of future bias. It also suggests that future bias is not an inflexible preference hardwired by evolution, but results from a more general disposition to “accept the things we cannot change”. However, participants still exhibited substantial future bias in scenarios in which they could affect the past, leaving room for complementary explanations. Beyond the main finding, our results also indicate that future bias is stake-sensitive and that participants endorse the normative correctness of their future-biased preferences and choices. In combination, these results shed light on philosophical debates over the rationality of future bias, suggesting that it may be a rational response to empirical realities rather than a brute, arational disposition. (shrink)

Samuel Alexander was a central figure of the new wave of realism that swept across the English-speaking world in the early twentieth century. His Space, Time, and Deity (1920a, 1920b) was taken to be the official statement of realism as a metaphysical system. But many historians of philosophy are quick to point out the idealist streak in Alexander’s thought. After all, as a student he was trained at Oxford in the late 1870s and early 1880s as British Idealism was beginning (...) to flourish. This naturally had some effect on his philosophical outlook and it is said that his early work is overtly idealist. In this paper I examine his neglected and understudied reactions to British Idealism in the 1880s. I argue that Alexander was not an idealist during this period and should not be considered as part of the British Idealist tradition, philosophically speaking. (shrink)

Different authors offer subtly different characterizations of naïve realism. We disentangle the main ones and argue that illusions provide the best proving ground for naïve realism and its main rival, representationalism. According to naïve realism, illusions never involve per- ceptual error. We assess two leading attempts to explain apparent perceptual error away, from William Fish and Bill Brewer, and conclude that they fail. Another lead- ing attempt is assessed in a companion paper, which also sketches an alternative representational account.

In recent years, philosophers have identified a number of moral and psychological harms associated with the attention economy (Alysworth & Castro, 2021; Castro & Pham, 2020; Williams, 2018). Missing from many of these accounts of the attention economy, however, is what exactly attention is. As a result of this neglect of the cognitive science of attention, many of these accounts are not empirically credible. They rely on oversimplified and unsophisticated accounts of not only attention, but self- control, and addiction as (...) well. Of note are accounts of the attention economy that rely on the ‘brain disease’ rhetoric of addiction and subsequent control failures (Aylsworth & Castro, 2021; Bhargava & Velasquez, 2021), accounts that rely on a strict dichotomy of top-down vs. bottom-up attention (Williams, 2018; Aylsworth & Castro, 2021), and accounts that construe attention as a limited resource (Williams, 2018). -/- Drawing on recent work from the neuroscience and psychology of attention, I demonstrate the shortcomings of these accounts and sketch a way forward for an empirically grounded account of the attention economy. These accounts tend to uphold strict dichotomies of voluntary control (e.g., compulsion versus choice, dual-process models of self-control, and top-down versus bottom-up) that cannot account for the complexities of attentional control, mental agency, and decision-making. As such, these empirically and conceptually impoverished accounts cannot adequately address the current so-called crisis of attention. To better understand the harms associated with the attention economy, we need an empirically responsible account of the nature and function of attention and mental agency. (shrink)

There is an ethics of blaming the person who deserves blame. The Christian scriptures imply the following no-vengeance condition: a person should not vengefully overtly blame a wrongdoer even if she gives the wrongdoer the exact negative treatment that he deserves. I explicate and defend this novel condition and argue that it demands a revolution in our blaming practices. First, I explain the no-vengeance condition. Second, I argue that the no-vengeance condition is often violated. The most common species of blame (...) involves anger; anger conceptually includes a desire for vengeance; and there are many pleasures in payback. Third, I clarify that it is possible to blame non-vengefully in anger and highlight three good uses for anger in non-vengeful blame. Fourth, I offer two reasons that justify the divine command prohibiting vengeance, and I note that the Christian God is merely sufficient to make non-vengeance morally obligatory. Fifth, I defend the no-vengeance condition against four biblical objections. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Public reason liberals expect individuals to have justificatory reasons for their views of certain political issues. This paper considers how groups can, and whether they should, give collective public reasons for their political decisions. A problem is that aggregating individuals’ consistent judgments on reasons and a decision can produce inconsistent collective judgments. The group will then fail to give a reason for its decision. The paper considers various solutions to this problem and defends a deliberative procedure by showing how it (...) incentivizes information sharing and leads to outcomes most acceptable to the group members. (shrink)

Robert Audi’s Seeing, Knowing, and Doing argues that knowledge does not entail justification, given a broadly externalist conception of knowledge and an access internalist conception of justification, where justification requires the ability to cite one’s grounds or reasons. On this view, animals and small children can have knowledge while lacking justification. About cases like these and others, Audi concludes that knowledge does not entail justification. But the access internalist sense of “justification” is but one of at least two ordinary senses (...) of the term. On a broader or looser sense, “justification” means “being in the right” where that involves meeting a standard or norm. I argue that the beliefs of animals and small children can then meet standards or norms associated with truth and knowledge such that their beliefs may count as justified in this broader or looser sense. I then question whether knowledge fails to entail justification on this broader sense. (shrink)

This paper proposes to reorient the philosophical debate about peer disagreement. The problem of peer disagreement is normally seen as a problem about the extent to which disagreement provides one with evidence against one's own conclusions. It is thus regarded as a problem for individual inquiry. But things look different in more collaborative contexts. Ethical norms relevant to those contexts make a difference to the epistemology. In particular, we argue that a norm of mutual answerability applies to us when we (...) engage in shared inquiry with others, and precludes us from treating one another's conflicting judgments as evidence relevant to the dispute. From this it follows that standard philosophical accounts of peer disagreement—e.g., the Equal Weight View and the Total Evidence View—presuppose that the disagreeing parties are in a sense alienated from one another. It's doubtful that such forms of alienated disagreement should be treated as the central case. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the volume The Epistemology of Group Disagreement (Routledge, forthcoming), (eds.) F. Broncano-Berrocal and J.A. Carter.

A prominent view holds that perception and memory are distinguished at least partly by their temporal orientation: Perception functions to represent the present, while memory functions to represent the past. Call this view perceptual presentism. This chapter critically examines perceptual presentism in light of contemporary perception science. I adduce evidence for three forms of perceptual sensitivity to the past: (i) shaping perception by past stimulus exposure, (ii) recruitment of mnemonic representations in perceptual processing, and (iii) perceptual representation of present objects (...) as possessing past properties. I argue that forms (i) and (ii) are consistent with perceptual presentism, while form (iii) poses a genuine threat to the view. While the empirical case for form (iii) remains inconclusive, I suggest that the most serious challenges to perceptual presentism derive from representations that integrate mnemonic and present-tensed elements in the performance of canonical perceptual functions, such as perceiving object continuity over time. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Kant has a far more communitarian theory of aesthetic life than is usually acknowledged. I focus on two aspects of Kant’s theory that might otherwise be taken to support an individualist reading, namely, Kant’s emphasis on aesthetic autonomy and his characterization of judgments of taste as involving demands for agreement. I argue that the full expression of autonomy in fact requires being a member of an aesthetic community and that within such a community, judgments (...) of taste are issued as invitations to others to engage their faculties towards the goal of shared aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

Can a group be morally responsible instead of, or in addition to, its members? An influential defense of corporate responsibility is based on results in social choice theory suggesting that a group can form and act on attitudes held by few, or even none, of its members. The members therefore cannot be (fully) responsible for the group’s behavior; the group itself, as a corporate agent, must be responsible. In this paper, I reject this view of corporate responsibility by showing how (...) it pays insufficient attention to individual agency. By accounting for group members’ strategic behavior, we shall see how they control collective attitude formation and are therefore responsible for their group’s behavior. (shrink)

While the epistemic significance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and (...) 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a specific proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logical disagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (officially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peer disagreement and argues that the epistemic significance of central principles from the literature are at best deflated in the context of logical disagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deep disagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logical disagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reflections on the potential epistemic significance of convergence in logical theorizing. (shrink)

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

We investigate the causal manipulability hypothesis, according to which what partly explains (a) why people tend to prefer negative events to be in their further future rather than their nearer future and positive events to be in their nearer future rather than their further future and (b) why people tend to prefer that negative events be located in their past not their future and that positive events be located in their future not their past, is that people tend to discount (...) the value of events they are less able causally to manipulate. If people discount the value of events they are less able to causally manipulate, then since often temporally nearer future events are more causally manipulable than further ones, and since future events are manipulable whereas past ones aren’t, this could explain both (a) and (b). In turn, if the causal manipulability hypothesis is correct, this might suggest that insofar as people’s preferences are explained in this manner, those preferences are rationally permissible, since relative causal manipulability is normatively relevant. Thus, ascertaining whether the causal manipulability hypothesis is true may shed light on the normative status of such preferences. We investigate the cognitively mediated version of the causal manipulability hypothesis, according to which people’s consciously held beliefs about the relative causal manipulability of events explains (a) and (b). Contrary to expectations, we found no evidence in favour of this view. We suggest that either relative causal manipulability plays an explanatory role, but one that is not cognitively mediated, or that it does not play any role, even if it is sometimes associated with other factors, such as probability, that may play a role in explaining some time biased preferences. (shrink)

While many aspects of cognition have been shown to be shared between humans and non-human animals, there remains controversy regarding whether the capacity to mentally time travel is a uniquely human one. In this paper, we argue that there are four ways of representing when some event happened: four kinds of temporal representation. Distinguishing these four kinds of temporal representation has five benefits. First, it puts us in a position to determine the particular benefits these distinct temporal representations afford an (...) organism. Second, it provides the conceptual resources to foster a discussion about which of these representations is necessary for an organism to count as having the capacity to mentally time travel. Third, it enables us to distinguish stricter from more liberal views of mental time travel that differ regarding which kind(s) of temporal representation is taken to be necessary for mental time travel. Fourth, it allows us to determine the benefits of taking a stricter or more liberal view of mental time travel. Finally, it ensures that disagreement about whether some species can mentally time travel is not merely the product of unrecognised disagreement about which temporal representation is necessary for mental time travel. We argue for a more liberal view, on the grounds that it allows us to view mental time travel as an evolutionarily continuous phenomenon, and to recognise that differences in the ways that organisms mentally time travel might reflect different temporal representations, or combinations thereof, that they employ. Our ultimate aim, however, is to create the conceptual framework for further discussion regarding what sorts of temporal representations are required for mental time travel. (shrink)

Molyneux’s question asks whether a person born blind who has learned to identify shapes by touch could, if suddenly granted sight, immediately identify shapes visually. This question has often been used to structure discussions of whether there is a “rational connection” between sight and touch—whether it is possible to rationally doubt whether the same shape properties are both seen and felt. I distinguish two questions under this general heading. The first concerns, roughly, whether the visual and haptic perception of shape (...) is rationally connected in normally sighted perceivers. The second concerns, roughly, whether the visual and haptic perception of shape is rationally connected in all possible perceivers. I argue that real-world implementations of Molyneux’s question are irrelevant to the first question, but potentially relevant to the second. However, I also argue that the second question does not have the philosophical significance it is sometimes claimed to have. In particular, it cannot be used to adjudicate debates about whether the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is primarily determined “externally” by the worldly properties we perceive, or “internally” by physiological or functional properties of our brains. (shrink)

Empirical evidence suggests that a majority of people believe that time robustly passes, and that many also report that it seems to them, in experience, as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists deny that time robustly passes, and many contemporary non-dynamists—deflationists—even deny that it seems to us as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists, then, face the dual challenge of explaining why people have such beliefs and make such reports about their experiences. Several philosophers have suggested the stable-self explanation, according to which (...) what partly explains one or both of the explananda is that people believe themselves to have a stable persisting self which is imagined either as moving through time, or as being stationary, with time moving around it. This paper empirically investigates this explanation. We found, however, no evidential support for the stable-self explanation, leaving the non-dynamist but also, we will argue, the dynamist, with an extant explanatory challenge. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists largely agree that fake news is not just necessarily untruthful, but necessarily insincere: it’s produced either with the intention to deceive or an indifference toward its truth. Against this, I argue insincerity is neither a necessary nor obviously typical feature of fake news. The main argument proceeds in two stages. The first, methodological step develops classification criteria for identifying instances of fake news. By attending to expressed theoretical and practical interests, I observe how our classification practices (...) turn on worries about fake news’s unique political-epistemic risks. From this, I argue (i) theories of fake news should capture independent mechanisms that realise these risks and (ii) the manifestation of them suffices for classifying a news story as fake news. The second step applies the classification criteria to bad science journalism. I argue the systematic epistemic faults in bad science journalism manifest the same political-epistemic risks we see in fake news, which suffices to justify classifying it as fake news. But since such faults aren’t plausibly attributed to its propagators being insincere, insincerity doesn’t function independently as a mechanism for realising fake news’s political-epistemic risks. Thus, I conclude, we should exclude insincerity from our accounts of the phenomenon. (shrink)

David Lewis is typically interpreted as a class nominalist. One consequence of class nominalism, which he embraced, is that the reduction of ordered pairs, triples, etc to unordered sets of sets is conventional. The reaction by his Australian counterparts D.M. Armstrong and Peter Forrest was that Lewis was not being ontologically serious. This chapter evaluates this debate over serious ontology. It is argued that in one sense Lewis is ontologically serious, but that his additional commitment to structuralism about classes should (...) push him to adopt a trope-theoretic account of naturalness, which opens up another way to respond to the charge of not doing serious ontology. This conclusion is supported by certain remarks he makes in his correspondence, thus revealing how his thinking about properties appears to have evolved from property-egalitarianism to a sparse theory of tropes. (shrink)

In the present study, we tested whether civic identity consisting of moral and political identity via the bifactor model of civic identity with the Stanford Civic Purpose dataset. Previous research in youth development proposed that civic identity consists of two closely related identity constructs, i.e., moral and political identity. Given the bifactor model in factor analysis assumes the presence of both the general and specific factors, we hypothesized that the bifactor model would better fit the data than conventional alternative models. (...) Thus, we compared the candidate models, including the bifactor model, with confirmatory factor analysis. To address the concern about the potential overfitting of the bifactor model, we additionally conducted cross-validation and measurement invariance tests across different gender groups and time points. The analysis results supported our hypothesis that the bifactor model better fitted the data. Both the cross-validation and measurement invariance test results suggested that the overfitting issue was not a significant concern. In the present study, we empirically demonstrated that the bifactor model of civic identity consisting of moral and political identity, which was supposed to be more consistent with the theoretical and conceptual framework of civic identity, better fitted the data than conventional alternative models. (shrink)

Biodiversity loss is an immense ecological crisis of our time. But while “biodiversity” has become a buzzword in media and policy, conservationists have found it difficult to build a common understanding on the nature and severity of biodiversity loss and the means to tackle it. Perhaps surprisingly, many biologists and philosophers have proposed that biodiversity might be best defended with reference to its aesthetic value. This article explores whether aesthetic values could provide strong support for biodiversity conservation. By exploring the (...) question from the viewpoints of species diversity, ecosystem diversity, and genetic diversity, we argue that there is a mismatch between apparent and real biodiversity and that aesthetics can, at best, give only limited support for biodiversity conservation. (shrink)

It is now widely expected that climate change will be serious enough that a very large number of people will be displaced from their homes because of events relating to or resulting from climate change. Such events may include rising sea levels (and resulting increased salination of ground water), stronger hurricanes and tropical storms, drought, floods, increased and more intense wildfires, and other extreme or (previously) unusual weather events. Although estimates vary widely, it seems very likely that many millions of (...) people—perhaps hundreds of millions if sufficient precautions are not taken—will be forced from their homes by these events related to climate change. In the public imagination, much of the attention has been on ‘climate refugees’, where this is taken to mean people who have crossed borders. However, there is good reason to believe that a very large percentage—probably a significant majority—of displacement resulting from climate change will be, or could be, internal. In this chapter I argue that there are likely to be a large number of cases where internal displacement related to climate change is of international concern, and where, therefore, states have significant moral reasons to provide assistance, either directly to those displaced, or else to the state in which the displacement has taken place. My claim is that internal displacement arising from climate change is of international concern and so grounds a duty of aid by states able to provide it, when this displacement threatens the basic human rights of those displaced, and when the local or domestic government cannot or will not take the necessary steps to meet the needs and protect the rights of those who are displaced. (The uploaded version of this paper is an uncorrected proof. Please cite and refer to the published version.). (shrink)

Objectives Practitioners in contemplative traditions commonly report experiencing an awareness that is distinct from sensory objects, thoughts, and emotions (“awareness itself”). They also report experiences of a void or underlying silence that is closely associated with this awareness. Subjects who carry out the Headless Way exercises frequently report an experience of emptiness or void at the same time as other contents (void-like experiences). The goals of this study were to (1) assess the reliability of these methods in eliciting the recognition (...) of awareness and void-like experiences in participants who had no prior exposure to these techniques, (2) investigate the prevalence of these experiences in these tasks, and (3) to differentiate these experiences from closely related and potential precursor experiences. -/- Method Twenty adults participated in in-depth individual interviews in which they were guided through the Headless Way exercises. A thematic analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts. -/- Results Twelve of the participants reported a void-like experience, and five participants reported an experience of awareness itself. These experiences were respectively categorized as subsets of the more general categories of perceptual absences and the sense of not being person-like. Another novel finding was the real-time reports of awareness and void-like experiences during the exercises. -/- Conclusions Our findings provide preliminary evidence that the Headless Way exercises can effectively induce experiences of emptiness and awareness in participants without prior experience. The findings suggest that such experiences can be elicited outside of a traditional meditation context, including in non-meditators. Furthermore, the experience of not being person-like and of perceptual absences may be precursors and more general forms of recognizing awareness itself and the void-like nature of the mind. (shrink)

The physicalist credo is that the world is physical. But some phenomena, such as minds, morals, and mathematics, appear to be nonphysical. While an uncompromising physicalism would reject these, a conciliatory physicalism needn’t if it can account for them in terms of an underlying physical basis. Any such account must refer to the nonphysical. But won’t this unavoidable reference to the nonphysical conflict with the physicalist credo? This essay aims to clarify this problem and introduce a novel solution that relies (...) on a distinction between “circumstantial” facts that are based in the circumstances and “acircumstantial” facts that are not. This is used in two ways. First, physicalism is restricted to circumstantial facts: only they must have a physical basis that does not refer to the nonphysical. Second, facts accounting for the nonphysical are not restricted to the circumstantial: they may refer to the nonphysical if they are acircumstantial. Facts about how the physical accounts for the nonphysical therefore do not conflict with the physicalist’s credo. This provides a credible answer to what physicalism could be. (shrink)

People have sought ways to improve their physical and mental capabilities for thousands of years. For those of us who believe that human enhancement technologies include clothes, tools and weapons, the politics of enhancement started in prehistory. The norms of pre-industrial societies that only certain castes or genders could touch specific tools or wear certain clothes were preliminary politics of enhancement. Prosthetic limbs are thousands of years old, and by the 15th century, there were multiple experiments with vaccination around the (...) world. Although it would be appropriate to write a history of the various forms of empowerment that have taken place since the dawn of civilisation, this volume – that now we can present to the lectors – will be on the debates about human enhancement that began in the early 20th century, once modern medicine had begun to suggest actual technologies for human augmentation. Before examining the relationship between human enhancement and biopolitics (the subject of our work), it is helpful to say a few words about the series in which this volume appears, a series that bears the same title as this first text and which opens with contributions from the best scientific experts on the subject. (shrink)

Several philosophers have suggested that certain aspects of people’s experience of agency partly explains why people tend to report that it seems to them, in perceptual experience, as though time robustly passes. In turn, it has been suggested that people come to believe that time robustly passes on the basis of its seeming to them in experience that it does. We argue that what require explaining is not just that people report that it seems to them as though time robustly (...) passes, and that they believe that it does, but rather, the substantial variation (a) in people’s reports regarding whether it seems as though time robustly passes, and (b) their beliefs about whether time robustly passes. We empirically investigate the agentive explanation of (a), according to which variation in people’s agentive experiences explains variation in people’s reports regarding whether it seems to them as though time robustly passes. We also empirically investigate the experiential seeming explanation of belief, according to which variation in people’s beliefs about whether time robustly passes is explained by variation in their reports regarding whether it seems in experience as though time robustly passes. We found empirical support for the agentive explanation, but not for the experiential seeming explanation of passage beliefs. We consider the implications of our results for three views about temporal experience and temporal beliefs: dynamism, passage illusionism and deflationism. (shrink)

‘Gender disappointment’ is regularly reported by those whose child’s sex does not match the sex that they, the parent, desired. With symptoms ranging from mere fleeting sadness to documented cases of serious depression, alienation from one’s child, and emotional suffering, it is clear that so-called ‘gender disappointment’ is a serious issue, that has, as yet, seen little philosophical attention (though see Hendl and Browne 2020). In this chapter I explore gender disappointment, not from the perspective of a parent who ended (...) up with the child of the wrong sex at birth, but rather, from the perspective of a different kind of gender disappointment: the transgender person who grew up and only then disappointed their parents by turning out to be the ‘wrong’ gender. This perspective, I argue, reveals a great deal about the shared gender essentialism at the heart of patriarchal and cissexist ideology. Moreover, I will argue that it reveals the underlying propertarian relationship of parents to their children under contemporary capitalism – a troubling relationship that legitimates the treatment of children as objects to be designed and controlled as commodities at the whims of parents. In this way I disagree with Whyman when he writes that “a preference for having a child of one sex over the other should be considered one of those irrational things of which some sense can nevertheless be made – like aesthetic taste” (Whyman 2021, 113-114). I argue, to the contrary, that the desire for a child of one particular gender is not akin to a mere unproblematic aesthetic preference. Instead, and following the rich feminist tradition of thinking about the patriarchal origins of sexual desire, I argue that we must see these desires as troubling reflections of dominant patriarchal and cissexist ideology, underwritten by a particular neoliberal capitalist mode of production. Moreover, we can seek to change those desires. (shrink)

This paper explores two related questions in late Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism. First, how can a philosopher contemplate the eternal Forms while engaging in practical agency in the world? Second, do Neoplatonists provide a consistent account of the philosopher’s progress through the ‘stages of virtue’ (βαθμοί τῶν ἀρετῶν), the conceptual structure that underpins late antique philosophical curricula and hagiography? These questions interact, I suggest, because later Platonists appeal to the stages of virtue and divine maniai (βαθμοί τῶν μανίων) to explain (...) the philosopher’s ability to alternate gracefully between contemplation and embodied agency, and even to engage in both activities at the same moment. I argue that apparently contradictory evidence for the highest stages of virtue can be reconciled satisfactorily, shedding light on two models of ethical and perceptual transformation that are consistent throughout later Neoplatonism. In the first, 'painterly' model, we alternate between a vision of the paradigmatic model and its expression in the media of place and time; in the second, 'dancerly' model, we contemplate in action all at once, like a dancer moving to the music. (shrink)

This chapter will discuss the relation of physicalism to social ontology, and explores problems that social ontology raises for physicalism. Physicalism is often understood to be the view that all facts—the social ones included—are physical facts, or at least are exhaustively determined by physical facts. While this view is widely endorsed, social phenomena challenge physicalism in several ways, both challenging the coherence of claims of physicalism and raising potential counterexamples.

While philosophical questions about health and disease have attracted much attention in recent decades, and while opinions are divided on most issues, influential accounts seem to embrace negativism about health, according to which health is the absence of disease. Some subscribe to unrestricted negativism, which claims that negativism applies not only to the concepts of health and disease as used by healthcare professionals but also to the lay concept that underpins everyday thinking. Whether people conceptualize health in this manner has (...) implications for medical care and public health, and so we set out to examine this claim in two studies. Participants were asked to assess and compare the health states of two people presented in two vignettes. We found that both lay people and medical students conceptualize health as something more than the absence of disease. We argue that our findings highlight a need to rethink unrestricted negativism and indicate a need to rethink the way the debate has traditionally focused on disease. (shrink)

In Wollstonecraft’s early writings, she articulates the foundational theological and philosophical principles that would underpin her work throughout her career. One difference between her early and later work lies in the way that the values to which she refers are combined. Whereas Wollstonecraft at first appeals to the separate ideals of independence, equality, and virtue, from the 1790s onwards she integrates these into a characteristic republican framework that was in common use amongst dissenting theorists at the time. The set of (...) values on which Wollstonecraft draws, and the version of the republican framework that she develops, closely resemble those of Richard Price with whose work she was familiar. Examining the structural similarities between their respective models, I argue, gives us an insight into the systematic manner of aspects of Wollstonecraft’s own thought. It also allows us to see how Wollstonecraft goes beyond the republicanism of Price and others as she develops her own feminist solutions to the problems of structural domination. (shrink)