We examine that both science and religion were original products of the human imagination. However, the approaches taken to develop these two explanations of life, were entirely different. The precepts of evolution are well established through the scientific method. This approach has led to the accumulation of immense amounts of evidence for biological evolution, and much scientific progress has been made to understand the pathways taken for the appearance of organisms and their macromolecular constituents. The existence of spiritual beings has (...) not and presumably cannot be documented via a scientific approach, no more than a fairy tale or a myth. However, science, education and knowledge coupled to proper actions are exactly what are needed to make the correct decisions so as to preserve and improve our common, shared biosphere which is currently confronted with two immense problems: human population growth and climate change. (shrink)

Is there a possible biological explanation for religion? That is, is there a genetic basis for believing in mystical, supernatural beings when there is no scientifi c evidence for their existence? Can we explain why some people prefer to accept myth over science? Why do so many people still accept creation and refuse to embrace evolution? Is there an evolutionary basis for religious beliefs? It is certainly true that religions have been part of human civilization throughout most of its recent (...) history, at least for the last 5,000 years, and probably for much longer. Even great nonmystical philosophers such as Confucius, Buddha, and Lao Tzu have had their teachings evolve into mystical religions with spiritual ancestors, gods and reincarnation. On the other hand, religion is largely absent in modern Chinese culture, and of diminishing importance in Japanese and European cultures. In all cultures, the degrees of education gained by individuals correlate inversely with attachments to mystical deities. Atheists abound although they may be reluctant to come out of the closet and affi rm their rational convictions. In this article, we seek explanations for human irrationality. (shrink)

In this article we offer a perspective on the immense number of problems and challenges confronting humanity in our common biosphere. As our human population grows and urbanization increases globally, billions of humans with diverse beliefs and opinions are living in large urban areas without the basic needs of life. The way forward in our biosphere is not violence and disrespect. It is working to maintain and improve our common biosphere and solve our common global problems. Religion and religious believers (...) will need science, so humans can survive and sustain our biosphere. (shrink)

Etiquette and other merely formal normative standards like legality, honor, and rules of games are taken less seriously than they should be. While these standards are not intrinsically reason-providing in the way morality is often taken to be, they also play an important role in our practical lives: we collectively treat them as important for assessing the behavior of ourselves and others and as licensing particular forms of sanction for violations. This chapter develops a novel account of the normativity of (...) formal standards where the role they play in our practical lives explains a distinctive kind of reason to obey them. We have this kind of reason to be polite because etiquette is important to us. We also have this kind of reason to be moral because morality is important to us. This parallel suggests that the importance we assign to morality is insufficient to justify it being substantive. (shrink)

There has been considerable debate in the literature as to whether work in experimental philosophy actually makes any significant contribution to philosophy. One stated view is that many X-Phi projects, notwithstanding their focus on topics relevant to philosophy, contribute little to philosophical thought. Instead, it has been claimed the contribution they make appears to be to cognitive science. In contrast to this view, here we argue that at least one approach to X-Phi makes a contribution which parallels, and also extends, (...) historically salient forms of philosophical analysis, especially contributions from Immanuel Kant, William James, Peter F. Strawson and Thomas Nagel. The framework elaborated here synthesizes philosophical theory with empirical evidence from psychology and neuroscience and applies it to three perennial philosophical problems. According to this account, the origin of these three problems can be illuminated by viewing them as arising from a tension between two distinct types of cognition, each of which is associated with anatomically independent and functionally inhibitory neural networks. If the parallel we draw, between an empirical project and historically highly influential examples of philosophical analysis, is viewed as convincing, it follows that work in the cognitive sciences can contribute directly to philosophy. Further, this conclusion holds whether the empirical details of the account are correct or not. (shrink)

John P. Burgess is the John N. Woodhull Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Logic and Methodology program at the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of Jack H. Silver with a thesis on descriptive set theory. He is a very distinguished and influential philosopher of mathematics. He has written several books: A Subject with No Object (with G. Rosen, Oxford University Press, 1997), Computability and Logic (with G. Boolos and R. (...) Jeffrey, 5th ed., Cambridge University Press, 2007), Fixing Frege (Princeton University Press, 2005), Mathematics, Models, and Modality (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Philosophical Logic (Princeton University Press, 2009), Truth (with A. G. Burgess, Princeton University Press, 2011), Saul Kripke: Puzzles & Mysteries (Polity Press, 2012), Rigor & Structure (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Set Theory (Cambridge Elements, Forthcoming). In this interview, Professor Burgess talks about how his interests in mathematics and philosophy developed and relate to each other. He then answers questions about specific themes of his philosophical work, with a focus on issues pertaining to philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Die Moralphilosophie des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts hat mit Konsequentialismus, Deontologie, Kontraktualismus und Tugendethik nicht nur höchst einflussreiche Theorieparadigmen produktiv weiterentwickelt, sondern auch eine Reihe wichtiger neuer Probleme aufgeworfen. Der vorliegende Band versammelt zentrale Beiträge der analytischen Moralphilosophie, u. a. von David Gauthier, Shelly Kagan, Frances Kamm, Thomas Nagel, Michael Slote, Christine Swanton und Susan Wolf, die für ein Verständnis gegenwärtiger Diskussionen in der normativen Ethik unabdingbar sind. -/- Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort Einleitung: Analytische Moralphilosophie der Gegenwart -/- 1. Konsequentialismus Shelly (...) Kagan: Ein Plädoyer gegen die Alltagsmoral Peter Railton: Entfremdung, Konsequentialismus und die Anforderungen der Moral -/- 2. Deontologie Thomas Nagel: Ethik William David Ross: Was macht richtige Handlungen richtig? -/- 3. Kontraktualismus David Gauthier: Warum Kontraktualismus? Thomas Scanlon: Die Struktur des Kontraktualismus -/- 4. Tugendethik Christine Swanton: Eine tugendethische Theorie des richtigen Handelns Michael Slote: Akteursbasierte Tugendethik -/- 5. Moralische Aggregation John Taurek: Zählt die Anzahl? Frances M. Kamm: Aggregation und zwei moralphilosophische Methoden -/- 6. Das Prinzip der Doppelwirkung Jonathan Bennett: Vorhergesehene Nebenwirkungen vs. beabsichtigte Folgen Ralph Wedgwood: Zur Verteidigung der Lehre von der Doppelwirkung -/- 7. Moralische Rechte H. L. A. Hart: Gibt es natürliche Rechte? Joseph Raz: Über die Beschaffenheit von Rechten -/- 8. Moralischer Zufall Thomas Nagel: Moralischer Zufall Susan Wolf: Die Moral des moralischen Zufalls. (shrink)

Viele unserer Bewusstseinszustände sind dadurch charakterisiert, dass es irgendwie für uns ist (Nagel 1974), in diesen Zuständen zu sein. In der Philosophie des Geistes werden derartige Zustände als ‚phänomenale Zustände‘ bezeichnet. ‚Phänomenale Begriffe‘ sind nun spezielle Begriffe, mittels derer wir uns auf phänomenale Zustände beziehen. Paradigmatische Beispiele für phänomenale Zustände, von denen wir einen phänomenalen Begriff besitzen können, sind das bewusste Erlebnis, die Farbe Blau zu sehen, den Klang einer Violine zu hören oder Schmerz zu fühlen. Zentral ist, dass (...) sich phänomenale Begriffe auf besondere Art und Weise auf diese Zustände beziehen – sie konzeptualisieren sie anhand ihrer subjektiven, phänomenalen Eigenschaften (d.h. anhand ihrer ‚Qualia‘). (shrink)

Wie wäre es mit einer anderen Ausg. der Reichen und Berühmten? Zuerst das Offensichtliche – die Harry-Potter-Romane sind primitiver Aberglaube, der Kinder dazu ermutigt, an Fantasie zu glauben, anstatt Verantwortung für die Welt zu übernehmen – natürlich die Norm. JKR ist genauso ahnungslos über sich und die Welt wie die meisten Menschen,aber etwa 200 Mal so destruktiv wie der durchschnittliche Amerikaner und etwa 800 Mal mehr als der durchschnittliche Chinese. Sie war verantwortlich für die Zerstörung von vielleicht 30.000 Hektar Wald, (...) um diese Müllromane zu produzieren, und die ganze Erosion, die sich daraus ergibt (nicht trivial, da esmindestens 6 und vielleicht 12 Tonnen/Jahr Boden in den Ozean für alle auf der Erde oder vielleicht 100 Tonnen pro Amerikaner ist, und so etwa 5000 Tonnen/Jahr für Rowlings Bücher und Bewegungenundihre 3 Kinder). Die Erde verliert jedes Jahr mindestens 1% ihres Oberbodens, so dass der größte Teil ihrer Nahrungsmittelanbaukapazität weg sein wird, wenn sie sich dem Jahr 2100 nähert. Dann gibt es die riesige Menge an verbranntem Brennstoff und Abfall, die gemacht werden, um die Bücher und Filme, Plastikpuppen usw. herzustellen und zu vertreiben. Sie zeigt ihren Mangel an sozialer Verantwortung, indem sie Kinder hervorbringt, anstatt ihre Millionen zu verwenden, um familienplanerisch zu sein oder den Regenwald aufzukaufen, und indem sie die konventionelle liberale Dummheit der Vorherrschaft der Dritten Welt fördert, die Großbritannien, Amerika, die Welt und die Zukunft ihres Nachkommen zerstört. Natürlich unterscheidet sie sich nicht so sehr von den anderen 7. 8 Milliarden ahnungslos - nur noiser und zerstörerischer.. Es ist das keine kostenlose Mittagessen Problem schreiben groß. Der Mob kann einfach nicht sehen, dass es nichts gibt, wie einer Person zu helfen, ohne anderen zu schaden. Rechte oder Privilegien, die Neuankömmlingen in einer überfüllten Welt gewährt werden, können die Rechte anderer nurvereist enden. Trotz der massiven ökologischen Katastrophen, die sich jeden Tag überall vor ihnen abspielen, können sie sie nicht an die hemmungslose Mutterschaft der "Vielfalt" heften, die für den größten Teil des Bevölkerungszuwachses des letzten Jahrhunderts und all das in diesem jahr erklärt. Ihnen fehlt eine Kombination aus Intelligenz, Bildung, Erfahrung und Gesunden, die erforderlich sind, um die täglichen Angriffe auf die Ressourcen und das Funktionieren der Gesellschaft auf den letztendlichen Zusammenbruch der industriellen Zivilisation zu extrapolieren. Jede Mahlzeit, jede Fahrt mit dem Auto oder Bus, jedes Paar Schuhe ist ein weiterer Nagel im Sarg der Erde. Es ist ihr wahrscheinlich nie in den Sinn gekommen, dass ein Sitz in einem Flugzeug von London nach San Francisco etwa eine Tonne Kohlenstoff produziert, der etwa 3 Quadratmeter Meereis schmilzt, und als eine der Überprivilegierten hat sie wahrscheinlich Hunderte solcher Flüge geflogen. Nicht nur die Reichen und Berühmten, sondern fast jede öffentliche Persönlichkeit überhaupt, einschließlich praktisch aller Lehrer, werden unter Druck gesetzt, politisch korrekt zu sein, was in den westlichen Demokratien heute sozialdemokratisch(neomarxistisch – d.h. verwässerte Kommunisten) bedeutet, dass die Supremacisten der Dritten Welt für die Zerstörung ihrer eigenen Gesellschaften und ihrer eigenen Nachkommen arbeiten. Diejenigen also, deren Bildung,Erfahrung, Intelligenz (und der grundlegende gesunde Menschenverstand), die ihnen verbieten sollten, überhaupt öffentliche Erklärungen abzugeben, völlig alle Medien beherrschen und den Eindruck erwecken, dass die Intelligenten und Zivilisierten Demokratie, Vielfalt und Gleichheit begünstigen müssen, während die Wahrheit ist, dass dies die Probleme und nicht die Lösungen sind und dass sie selbst die Hauptfeinde der Zivilisation sind. Siehe my Suicide by Democracy 2nd ed (2019) und andere. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that all expressions for abstract objects are meaningless. My argument closely follows David Lewis’ argument against the intelligibility of certain theories of possible worlds, but modifies it in order to yield a general conclusion about language pertaining to abstract objects. If my Lewisian argument is sound, not only can we not know that abstract objects exist, we cannot even refer to or think about them. However, while the Lewisian argument strongly motivates nominalism, it also undermines (...) certain nominalist theories. (shrink)

I argue that certain species of belief, such as mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs, are insulated from a form of Harman-style debunking argument whereas moral beliefs, the primary target of such arguments, are not. Harman-style arguments have been misunderstood as attempts to directly undermine our moral beliefs. They are rather best given as burden-shifting arguments, concluding that we need additional reasons to maintain our moral beliefs. If we understand them this way, then we can see why moral beliefs are vulnerable (...) to such arguments while mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs are not—the very construction of Harman-style skeptical arguments requires the truth of significant fragments of our mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs, but requires no such thing of our moral beliefs. Given this property, Harman-style skeptical arguments against logical, mathematical, and normative beliefs are self-effacing; doubting these beliefs on the basis of such arguments results in the loss of our reasons for doubt. But we can cleanly doubt the truth of morality. (shrink)

Factive mental states, such as knowing or being aware, can only link an agent to the truth; by contrast, nonfactive states, such as believing or thinking, can link an agent to either truths or falsehoods. Researchers of mental state attribution often draw a sharp line between the capacity to attribute accurate states of mind and the capacity to attribute inaccurate or “reality-incongruent” states of mind, such as false belief. This article argues that the contrast that really matters for mental state (...) attribution does not divide accurate from inaccurate states, but factive from nonfactive ones. (shrink)

I distinguish two ways of developing anti-exceptionalist approaches to logical revision. The first emphasizes comparing the theoretical virtuousness of developed bodies of logical theories, such as classical and intuitionistic logic. I'll call this whole theory comparison. The second attempts local repairs to problematic bits of our logical theories, such as dropping excluded middle to deal with intuitions about vagueness. I'll call this the piecemeal approach. I then briefly discuss a problem I've developed elsewhere for comparisons of logical theories. Essentially, the (...) problem is that a pair of logics may each evaluate the alternative as superior to themselves, resulting in oscillation between logical options. The piecemeal approach offers a way out of this problem andthereby might seem a preferable to whole theory comparisons. I go on to show that reflective equilibrium, the best known piecemeal method, has deep problems of its own when applied to logic. (shrink)

What is common knowledge? According to the dominant iterative model, a group of people commonly knows that p if and only if they each individually know that p, and they furthermore each know that they each know that p, and so on to infinity. According to the integrative model proposed in this paper, a group commonly knows that p when its members are united in a state of mind of the type whose contents must be true. Epistemic integration within a (...) group is enabled by symmetrical signalling processes such as eye contact. In conversational dyads, symmetrical processing operates on pairs of signals produced by the two sides in a familiar format: speakers generate content for joint attention in main channel communication, and addressees evaluate that content in backchannel communication. Processes of reinforcement learning shape our pairwise signalling, driving the accumulation of common knowledge, both in response to extrinsic reward for coordinated action, and in response to the intrinsic reward of curiosity. Where the iterative model caps the epistemic performance of the group at the level of its weakest member, the integrative model of common knowledge shows how groups working together can outperform their strongest member working alone. (shrink)

This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false.

According to Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382), human beings, unlike all other animals, consist of two substances: a thinking substance and a sensing substance. This paper presents and explores the arguments Oresme uses to arrive at this position, which is unusual in medieval philosophical psychology and which at least superficially – though their methods are completely different – resembles what Descartes concluded about the nature of the human soul and body two and a half centuries later. The paper also considers some (...) moments of ambivalence in Oresme’s presentation, as well as unresolved difficulties, several of which have theological as well as philosophical implications. (shrink)

Is perception cognitively penetrable, and what are the epistemological consequences if it is? I address the latter of these two questions, partly by reference to recent work by Athanassios Raftopoulos and Susanna Seigel. Against the usual, circularity, readings of cognitive penetrability, I argue that cognitive penetration can be epistemically virtuous, when---and only when---it increases the reliability of perception.

This paper develops a form of moral actualism that can explain the procreative asymmetry. Along the way, it defends and explains the attractive asymmetry: the claim that although an impermissible option can be self-conditionally permissible, a permissible option cannot be self-conditionally impermissible.

This paper will seek firstly to understand Deleuze’s main challenges to phenomenology, particularly as they are expressed in The Logic of Sense and What is Philosophy?, although reference will also be made to Pure Immanence and Difference and Repetition. We will then turn to a discussion of one of the few passages in which Deleuze directly engages with Merleau-Ponty, which occurs in the chapter on art in What is Philosophy? In this text, he and Guattari offer a critique of what (...) they call the “final avatar” of phenomenology – that is, the “fleshism” that Merleau-Ponty proposes in his unfinished but justly famous work, The Visible and the Invisible. It will be argued that both Deleuze’s basic criticisms of phenomenology, as well as he and Guattari’s problems with the concept of the flesh, do not adequately come to grips with Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy. Merleau-Ponty is not obviously partisan to what Deleuze finds problematic in this tradition, despite continuing to identify himself as a phenomenologist, and is working within a surprisingly similar framework in certain key respects. In fact, in the more positive part of this paper, we will compare Merleau-Ponty’s notion of flesh, and Deleuze’s equally infamous univocity of being, as a means to consider the broader question of the ways in which the two philosophers consider ontological thought, its meaning and its conditions. It is our belief that through properly understanding both positions, a rapprochement, or at least the foundation for one, can be established between these two important thinkers. (shrink)

The paper offers a solution to the generality problem for a reliabilist epistemology, by developing an “algorithm and parameters” scheme for type-individuating cognitive processes. Algorithms are detailed procedures for mapping inputs to outputs. Parameters are psychological variables that systematically affect processing. The relevant process type for a given token is given by the complete algorithmic characterization of the token, along with the values of all the causally relevant parameters. The typing that results is far removed from the typings of folk (...) psychology, and from much of the epistemology literature. But it is principled and empirically grounded, and shows good prospects for yielding the desired epistemological verdicts. The paper articulates and elaborates the theory, drawing out some of its consequences. Toward the end, the fleshed-out theory is applied to two important case studies: hallucination and cognitive penetration of perception. (shrink)

Consequentialists often assume rational monism: the thesis that options are always made rationally permissible by the maximization of the selfsame quantity. This essay argues that consequentialists should reject rational monism and instead accept rational pluralism: the thesis that, on different occasions, options are made rationally permissible by the maximization of different quantities. The essay then develops a systematic form of rational pluralism which, unlike its rivals, is capable of handling both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory and the (...) unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory. (shrink)

In 2021, the men’s English national football team reached their first final at a major international tournament since winning the World Cup in 1966. This success followed their previous achievement of reaching the semi-finals (knocked-out by Croatia) at the 2018 World Cup. True to form, the defeats proved unfalteringly English; with the 2021 final echoing previous tournament defeats, as England lost to Italy on penalties. However, what resonated with the predictability of an English defeat, was the accompanying chant, ‘it’s coming (...) home’. A ubiquitous presence throughout the course of both tournaments—while chanted at England football matches, it was also repeated across social media, the press and commercial advertising—the chant originates from the 1996 single, Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home), performed by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds. In what follows critical attention will be given to examining how the song offers what will be argued is a melancholic outlook. By re-approaching examples of English nostalgia and hubris, this chapter will expose how illustrations of English melancholy offer the potential for promoting collective forms of expression, which, when contextualized alongside England’s lack of footballing success (for the men’s team, at least), can be offset against a melancholic mediation that is cognizant of the centrality of loss—both for the subject and our collective sporting endeavours. (shrink)

A natural suggestion and increasingly popular account of how to revise our logical beliefs treats revision of logic analogously to the revision of scientific theories. I investigate this approach and argue that simple applications of abductive methodology to logic result in revision-cycles, developing a detailed case study of an actual dispute with this property. This is problematic if we take abductive methodology to provide justification for revising our logical framework. I then generalize the case study, pointing to similarities with more (...) recent and popular heterodox logics such as naïve logics of truth. I use this discussion to motivate a constraint—logical partisanhood—on the uses of such methodology: roughly: both the proposed alternative and our actual background logic must be able to agree that moving to the alternative logic is no worse than staying put. (shrink)

The paper argues that Spinoza may have deepened his conception of poetry as not only a resource for the understanding but as the highest peak of the understanding. I begin by reviewing selected literature on Spinoza’s views on language and show how Spinoza’s presentation of his philosophy builds on a conception of what language can do. I then make a succinct case for a reading of Ethics Part 5 Proposition 24, where we find an attempt at a poetic expression of (...) thought, as Spinoza explores what he considers the highest form of knowledge: intuitive science. (shrink)

To what extent are cognitive capacities, especially perceptual capacities, informationally encapsulated and to what extent are they cognitively penetrable? And why does this matter? Two reasons we care about encapsulation/penetrability are: (a) encapsulation is sometimes held to be definitional of modularity, and (b) penetrability has epistemological implications independent of modularity. I argue that modularity does not require encapsulation; that modularity may have epistemological implications independently of encapsulation; and that the epistemological implications of the cognitive penetrability of perception are messier than (...) is sometimes thought. (shrink)

Stewart Cohen argues that much contemporary epistemological theorizing is hampered by the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ is a term of art and one that is never given any serious explication in a non-tendentious, theory-neutral way. He suggests that epistemologists are therefore better off theorizing in terms of rationality, rather than in terms of ‘epistemic justification’. Against this, I argue that even if the term ‘epistemic justification’ is not broadly known, the concept it picks out is quite familiar, and partly because (...) it’s a term of art, justification talk is a better vehicle for philosophical theorizing. ‘Rational’ is too unclear for our philosophical purposes, and the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ gets fleshed out by appeal to substantive, controversial theses is no obstacle to its playing the needed role in epistemological theorizing. (shrink)

Despite the widespread presence of public arts funding in liberal societies, some liberals find it unjustified. According to the Neutrality Objection, arts funding preferences some ways of life. One way to motivate this challenge is to say that a public goods-styled justification, although it could relieve arts funding of these worries of partiality, cannot be argued for coherently or is, in the end, too susceptible to impressions of partiality. I argue that diversity-based arts funding can overcome this challenge, because it (...) invests in non-excludable infrastructure that fosters cultural literacy. We all have some interest as citizens in living in a society which fosters cultural literacy, seeing as this helps others to understand us, supports us to understand ourselves, and helps alleviate confusion and alienation we feel toward social difference. While some of these benefits can be enjoyed by those who make and consume art, they are also gained by those who don’t, because arts funding affects the makeup of public spaces and the communicative practices we all use to make sense of the world. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem is supposed to show that straightforward versions of reliabilism are false: reliability is not necessary for justification after all. I argue that it does no such thing. The reliabilist can count a number of beliefs as justified even in demon worlds, others as unjustified but having positive epistemic status nonetheless. The remaining beliefs---primarily perceptual beliefs---are not, on further reflection, intuitively justified after all. The reliabilist is right to count these beliefs as unjustified in demon worlds, (...) and it is a challenge for the internalist to be able to do so as well. (shrink)

Seeking a decision theory that can handle both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory and the unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory, some philosophers recently have turned to ‘graded ratifiability’. However, the graded ratifiability approach to decision theory is, despite its virtues, unsatisfactory; for it conflicts with the platitude that it is always rationally permissible for an agent to knowingly choose their best option.

Sometimes a fact can play a role in a grounding explanation, but the particular content of that fact make no difference to the explanation—any fact would do in its place. I call these facts vacuous grounds. I show that applying the distinction between-vacuous grounds allows us to give a principled solution to Kit Fine and Stephen Kramer’s paradox of ground. This paradox shows that on minimal assumptions about grounding and minimal assumptions about logic, we can show that grounding is reflexive, (...) contra the intuitive character of grounds. I argue that we should never have accepted that grounding is irreflexive in the first place; the intuitions that support the irreflexive intuition plausibly only require that grounding be non-vacuously irreflexive. Fine and Kramer’s paradox relies, essentially, on a case of vacuous grounding and is thus no problem for this account. (shrink)

In order to better understand the topic of hope, this paper argues that two separate theories are needed: One for hoping, and the other for hopefulness. This bifurcated approach is warranted by the observation that the word ‘hope’ is polysemous: It is sometimes used to refer to hoping and sometimes, to feeling or being hopeful. Moreover, these two senses of 'hope' are distinct, as a person can hope for some outcome yet not simultaneously feel hopeful about it. I argue that (...) this distinction between hoping and hopefulness is not always observed or fully appreciated in the literature and has consequently caused much confusion. This paper then sketches what theorizing about hope looks like in light of this clarification and discusses some of its implications. (shrink)

What is the phenomenology of hope? A common view is that hope has a generally positive and pleasant affective tone. This rosy depiction, however, has recently been challenged. Certain hopes, it has been objected, are such that they are either entirely negative in valence or neutral in tone. In this paper, I argue that this challenge has only limited success. In particular, I show that it only applies to one sense of hope but leaves another sense—one that is implicitly but (...) widely employed in the hope literature—untouched. Moreover, I argue that hope construed in this latter sense is inherently positively valenced. The paper concludes by discussing some of the implications of this defense of hope's positive phenomenology, including the ontological question of whether hope is an emotion. (shrink)

Philosophical debates about the metaphysics of time typically revolve around two contrasting views of time. On the A-theory, time is something that itself undergoes change, as captured by the idea of the passage of time; on the B-theory, all there is to time is events standing in before/after or simultaneity relations to each other, and these temporal relations are unchanging. Philosophers typically regard the A-theory as being supported by our experience of time, and they take it that the B-theory clashes (...) with how we experience time and therefore faces the burden of having to explain away that clash. In this paper, we investigate empirically whether these intuitions about the experience of time are shared by the general public. We asked directly for people’s subjective reports of their experience of time—in particular, whether they believe themselves to have a phenomenology as of time’s passing—and we probed their understanding of what time’s passage in fact is. We find that a majority of participants do share the aforementioned intuitions, but interestingly a minority do not. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann’s important new book on scepticism is attractively systematic and thorough. He places familiar ideas under an exceptionally bright spotlight, e.

This paper proposes a new framework for thinking about hope, with certain unexpected consequences. Specifically, I argue that a shift in focus from locutions like “x hopes that” and “x is hoping that” to “x is hopeful that” and “x has hope that” can improve our understanding of hope. This approach, which emphasizes hopefulness as the central concept, turns out to be more revealing and fruitful in tackling some of the issues that philosophers have raised about hope, such as the (...) question of how hope can be distinguished from despair or how people can have differing strengths in hope. It also allows us to see that many current accounts of hope, far from being rivals, are actually compatible with one another. (shrink)

Once symbolized by a burning armchair, experimental philosophy has in recent years shifted away from its original hostility to traditional methods. Starting with a brief historical review of the experimentalist challenge to traditional philosophical practice, this chapter looks at research undercutting that challenge, and at ways in which experimental work has evolved to complement and strengthen traditional approaches to philosophical questions.

How is human social intelligence engaged in the course of ordinary conversation? Standard models of conversation hold that language production and comprehension are guided by constant, rapid inferences about what other agents have in mind. However, the idea that mindreading is a pervasive feature of conversation is challenged by a large body of evidence suggesting that mental state attribution is slow and taxing, at least when it deals with propositional attitudes such as beliefs. Belief attributions involve contents that are decoupled (...) from our own primary representation of reality; handling these contents has come to be seen as the signature of full-blown human mindreading. However, mindreading in cooperative communication does not necessarily demand decoupling. We argue for a theoretical and empirical turn towards “factive” forms of mentalizing here. In factive mentalizing, we monitor what others do or do not know, without generating decoupled representations. We propose a model of the representational, cognitive, and interactive components of factive mentalizing, a model that aims to explain efficient real-time monitoring of epistemic states in conversation. After laying out this account, we articulate a more limited set of conversational functions for nonfactive forms of mentalizing, including contexts of meta-linguistic repair, deception, and argumentation. We conclude with suggestions for further research into the roles played by factive versus nonfactive forms of mentalizing in conversation. (shrink)

Can beliefs that are not consciously formulated serve as part of an agent's evidence for other beliefs? A common view says no, any belief that is psychologically immediate is also epistemically immediate. I argue that some unconscious beliefs can serve as evidence, but other unconscious beliefs cannot. Person-level beliefs can serve as evidence, but subpersonal beliefs cannot. I try to clarify the nature of the personal/subpersonal distinction and to show how my proposal illuminates various epistemological problems and provides a principled (...) framework for solving other problems. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception is the idea that what we see is influenced by such states as beliefs, expectations, and so on. A perceptual belief that results from cognitive penetration may be less justified than a nonpenetrated one. Inferentialism is a kind of internalist view that tries to account for this by claiming that some experiences are epistemically evaluable, on the basis of why the perceiver has that experience, and the familiar canons of good inference provide the appropriate standards by (...) which experiences are evaluated. I examine recent defenses of inferentialism by Susanna Siegel, Peter Markie, and Matthew McGrath and argue that the prospects for inferentialism are dim. (shrink)

This paper develops a view on which: (a) all fundamental facts are absolute, (b) some facts do not supervene on the fundamental facts, and (c) only relative facts fail to supervene on the fundamental facts.

To what extent should we trust our natural instincts about knowledge? The question has special urgency for epistemologists who want to draw evidential support for their theories from certain intuitive epistemic assessments while discounting others as misleading. This paper focuses on the viability of endorsing the legitimacy of Gettier intuitions while resisting the intuitive pull of skepticism – a combination of moves that most mainstream epistemologists find appealing. Awkwardly enough, the “good” Gettier intuitions and the “bad” skeptical intuitions seem to (...) be equally strong. This chapter argues that it is not a coincidence that these two types of intuition register with equal force: they are generated by a common mechanism. However, the input to this mechanism is interestingly different in the two types of case, and different in a way that can support the mainstream view that Gettier cases tell us something about knowledge where skeptical intuitions involve systematic error. (shrink)

This is an opinionated overview of the Frege-Geach problem, in both its historical and contemporary guises. Covers Higher-order Attitude approaches, Tree-tying, Gibbard-style solutions, and Schroeder's recent A-type expressivist solution.

Humans have distinctive powers of reflection: no other animal seems to have anything like our capacity for self-examination. Many philosophers hold that this capacity has a uniquely important guiding role in our cognition; others, notably Hilary Kornblith, draw attention to its weaknesses. Kornblith chiefly aims to dispel the sense that there is anything ‘magical’ about second-order mental states, situating them in the same causal net as ordinary first-order mental states. But elsewhere he goes further, suggesting that there is something deeply (...) misleading about reflection’s first-person view of cognition. This chapter takes a closer look at the conditions under which reflection is misleading. Even if humans are the only reflective animals, we are no longer the only creatures that can be questioned about their claims. Chatbots can also be asked to explain themselves, and by studying the conditions under which they produce clarification as opposed to confabulation, we can develop a non-skeptical account of the epistemic value of reflection. I argue that this capacity naturally supports the distribution of complex problem solving among multiple agents. (shrink)

Expressivists explain the expression relation which obtains between sincere moral assertion and the conative or affective attitude thereby expressed by appeal to the relation which obtains between sincere assertion and belief. In fact, they often explicitly take the relation between moral assertion and their favored conative or affective attitude to be exactly the same as the relation between assertion and the belief thereby expressed. If this is correct, then we can use the identity of the expression relation in the two (...) cases to test the expressivist account as a descriptive or hermeneutic account of moral discourse. I formulate one such test, drawing on a standard explanation of Moore's paradox. I show that if expressivism is correct as a descriptive account of moral discourse, then we should expect versions of Moore's paradox where we explicitly deny that we possess certain affective or conative attitudes. I then argue that the constructions that mirror Moore's paradox are not incoherent. It follows that expressivism is either incorrect as a hermeneutic account of moral discourse or that the expression relation which holds between sincere moral assertion and affective or conative attitudes is not identical to the relation which holds between sincere non-moral assertion and belief. A number of objections are canvassed and rejected. (shrink)

Two lines of evidence indicate that there exists a reciprocal inhibitory relationship between opposed brain networks. First, most attention-demanding cognitive tasks activate a stereotypical set of brain areas, known as the task-positive network and simultaneously deactivate a different set of brain regions, commonly referred to as the task negative or defaultmode network. Second, functional connectivity analyses show that these same opposed networks are anti-correlated in the resting state. Wehypothesize that these reciprocally inhibitory effects reflect two incompatible cognitive modes, each of (...) which may be directed towards understanding the external world. Thus, engaging onemode activates one set of regions and suppresses activity in the other.Wetest this hypothesis by identifying two types of problem-solving task which, on the basis of prior work, have been consistently associated with the task positive and task negative regions: tasks requiring social cognition, i.e., reasoning about the mental states of other persons, and tasks requiring physical cognition, i.e., reasoning about the causal/mechanical properties of inanimate objects. Social and mechanical reasoning tasks were presented to neurologically normal participants during fMRI. Each task type was presented using both text and video clips. Regardless of presentation modality, we observed clear evidence of reciprocal suppression: social tasks deactivated regions associated with mechanical reasoning and mechanical tasks deactivated regions associated with social reasoning. These findings are not explained by self-referential processes, task engagement, mental simulation,mental time travel or external vs. internal attention, all factors previously hypothesized to explain default mode network activity. Analyses of resting state data revealed a close match between the regions our tasks identified as reciprocally inhibitory and regions of maximal anti-correlation in the resting state. These results indicate the reciprocal inhibition is not attributable to constraints inherent in the tasks, but is neural in origin. Hence, there is a physiological constraint on our ability to simultaneously engage two distinct cognitive modes. Furtherwork is needed tomore precisely characterize these opposing cognitive domains. (shrink)

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are at last coming to be recognised as serious global public health problems. Nevertheless, many women with personal histories of DVA decline to disclose them to healthcare practitioners. In the health sciences, recent empirical work has identified many factors that impede DVA disclosure, known as barriers to disclosure. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology on testimonial silencing, we might wonder why so many people withhold their testimony and whether there is some kind of epistemic (...) injustice afoot here. In this paper, I offer some philosophical reflections on DVA disclosure in clinical contexts and the associated barriers to disclosure. I argue that women with personal histories of DVA are vulnerable to a certain form of testimonial injustice in clinical contexts, namely, testimonial smothering, and that this may help to explain why they withhold that testimony. It is my contention that this can help explain the low rates of DVA disclosure by patients to healthcare practitioners. (shrink)

I argue that the social dimension of alienation, as discussed by Williams and Railton, has been underappreciated. The lesson typically drawn from their exchange is that moral theory poses a threat to the internal integrity of the agent, but there is a parallel risk that moral theory will implicitly construe agents as constitutively alienated from one another. I argue that a satisfying account of agency will need to make room for what I call ‘genuine ethical contact’ with others, both as (...) concrete objects in the world external to ourselves and as subjects who can recognize us reciprocally. (shrink)

If there are vague propositions, then the question arises whether it is rational to care intrinsically about the vague. This paper argues—contra Bacon (2018), the most comprehensive defence of vague proposition to date—that it is. Some things, such as pain, may be rational to care intrinsically about only if precise, but some things, such as truth, are rational to care intrinsically about even if vague.

Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good—especially the first essay, “The Idea of Perfection”—is often associated with a critique of a certain picture of agency and its proper place in ethical thought. There is implicit in this critique, however, an alternative, much richer one. I propose a reading of Murdochian agency in terms of the continuous activity of cultivating and refining a distinctive practical standpoint, and I apply this reading to her account of moral progress. For Murdoch moral progress depends on (...) transcending egoism and achieving clear perception of a normatively-saturated reality, but it would be a mistake to think of egoism in terms of selfishness, or clarity in terms of altruism. Rather, I argue, Murdochian moral progress requires overcoming socially-conditioned and often ideological forms of alienation, and making the social conditions that inform our practical standpoints self-conscious. (shrink)

Much of the intuitive appeal of evidentialism results from conflating two importantly different conceptions of evidence. This is most clear in the case of perceptual justification, where experience is able to provide evidence in one sense of the term, although not in the sense that the evidentialist requires. I argue this, in part, by relying on a reading of the Sellarsian dilemma that differs from the version standardly encountered in contemporary epistemology, one that is aimed initially at the epistemology of (...) introspection but which generalizes to theories of perceptual justification as well. (shrink)