A ‘duality’ is a formal mapping between the spaces of solutions of two empirically equivalent theories. In recent times, dualities have been found to be pervasive in string theory and quantum field theory. Naïvely interpreted, duality-related theories appear to make very different ontological claims about the world—differing in e.g. space-time structure, fundamental ontology, and mereological structure. In light of this, duality-related theories raise questions familiar from discussions of underdetermination in the philosophy of science: in the presence of dual theories, what (...) is one to say about the ontology of the world? In this paper, we undertake a comprehensive and non-technical survey of the landscape of possible ontological interpretations of duality-related theories. We provide a significantly enriched and clarified taxonomy of options—several of which are novel to the literature. (shrink)

We are quickly passing through the historical moment when people work in front of a single computer, dominated by a small CRT and focused on tasks involving only local information. Networked computers are becoming ubiquitous and are playing increasingly significant roles in our lives and in the basic infrastructure of science, business, and social interaction. For human-computer interaction o advance in the new millennium we need to better understand the emerging dynamic of interaction in which the focus task is no (...) longer confined to the desktop but reaches into a complex networked world of information and computer-mediated interactions. We think the theory of distributed cognition has a special role to play in understanding interactions between people and technologies, for its focus has always been on whole environments: what we really do in them and how we coordinate our activity in them. Distributed cognition provides a radical reorientation of how to think about designing and supporting human-computer interaction. As a theory it is specifically tailored to understanding interactions among people and technologies. In this article we propose distributed cognition as a new foundation for human-computer interaction, sketch an integrated research framework, and use selections from our earlier work to suggest how this framework can provide new opportunities in the design of digital work materials. (shrink)

In many diagrams one seems to perceive necessity – one sees not only that something is so, but that it must be so. That conflicts with a certain empiricism largely taken for granted in contemporary philosophy, which believes perception is not capable of such feats. The reason for this belief is often thought well-summarized in Hume's maxim: ‘there are no necessary connections between distinct existences’. It is also thought that even if there were such necessities, perception is too passive or (...) localized a faculty to register them. We defend the perception of necessity against such Humeanism, drawing on examples from mathematics. (shrink)

Many people report that reading first-person narratives of the experience of illness can be morally instructive or educative. But although they are ubiquitous and typically sincere, the precise nature of such educative experiences is puzzling—for those narratives typically lack the features that modern philosophers regard as constitutive of moral reason. I argue that such puzzlement should disappear, and the morally educative power of illness narratives explained, if one distinguishes two different styles of moral reason: an inferentialist style that generates the (...) puzzlement and an alternative exemplarist style that offers a compelling explanation of the morally educative power of pathographic literature. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. (shrink)

While the consequences of mathematically-based software, algorithms and strategies have become ever wider and better appreciated, ethical reflection on mathematics has remained primitive. We review the somewhat disconnected suggestions of commentators in recent decades with a view to piecing together a coherent approach to ethics in mathematics. Calls for a Hippocratic Oath for mathematicians are examined and it is concluded that while lessons can be learned from the medical profession, the relation of mathematicians to those affected by their work is (...) significantly different. There is something to be learned also from the codes of conduct of cognate but professionalised quantitative disciplines such as engineering and accountancy, as well as from legal principles bearing on professional work. We conclude with recommendations that professional societies in mathematics should sponsor an (international) code of ethics, institutional mission statements for mathematicians and syllabuses of ethics courses for incorporation into mathematics degrees. (shrink)

Experiments are presented showing that visual search for Mueller-Lyer (ML) stimuli is based on complete configurations, rather than component segments. Segments easily detected in isolation were difficult to detect when embedded in a configuration, indicating preemption by low-level groups. This preemption—which caused stimulus components to become inaccessible to rapid search—was an all-or-nothing effect, and so could serve as a powerful test of grouping. It is shown that these effects are unlikely to be due to blurring by simple spatial filters at (...) early visual levels. It is proposed instead that they are due to more sophisticated processes that rapidly bind contour fragments into spatially-extended assemblies. These results support the view that rapid visual search cannot access the primitives formed at the earliest stages of visual processing; rather, it can access only higher-level, more ecologically-relevant structures. (shrink)

If the reliability of a source of testimony is open to question, it seems epistemically illegitimate to verify the source’s reliability by appealing to that source’s own testimony. Is this because it is illegitimate to trust a questionable source’s testimony on any matter whatsoever? Or is there a distinctive problem with appealing to the source’s testimony on the matter of that source’s own reliability? After distinguishing between two kinds of epistemically illegitimate circularity—bootstrapping and self-verification—I argue for a qualified version of (...) the claim that there is nothing especially illegitimate about using a questionable source to evaluate its own reliability. Instead, it is illegitimate to appeal to a questionable source’s testimony on any matter whatsoever, with the matter of the source’s own reliability serving only as a special case. (shrink)

Self-verifying judgments like _I exist_ seem rational, and self-defeating ones like _It will rain, but I don’t believe it will rain_ seem irrational_._ But one’s evidence might support a self-defeating judgment, and fail to support a self-verifying one. This paper explains how it can be rational to defy one’s evidence if judgment is construed as a mental performance or act, akin to inner assertion. The explanation comes at significant cost, however. Instead of causing or constituting beliefs, judgments turn out to (...) be mere epiphenomena, and self-verification and self-defeat lack the broader philosophical import often claimed for them. (shrink)

According to a traditional Cartesian epistemology of perception, perception does not provide one with direct knowledge of the external world. Instead, your immediate perceptual evidence is limited to facts about your own visual experience, from which conclusions about the external world must be inferred. Cartesianism faces well-known skeptical challenges. But this chapter argues that any anti-Cartesian view strong enough to avoid these challenges must license a way of updating one’s beliefs in response to anticipated experiences that seems diachronically irrational. To (...) avoid this result, the anti-Cartesian must either license an unacceptable epistemic chauvinism, or else claim that merely reflecting on one’s experiences defeats perceptual justification. This leaves us with a puzzle: Although Cartesianism faces problems, avoiding them brings a new set of problems. (shrink)

In ‘Forgiveness, an Ordered Pluralism’, Fricker distinguishes two concepts of forgiveness, both of which are deployed in our forgiveness practices: moral justice forgiveness and gifted forgiveness. She then argues that the former is more explanatorily basic than the latter. We think Fricker is right about this. We will argue, however, that contra Fricker, it is a third more minimal concept that is most basic. Like Fricker, we will focus on the function of our practices, but in a way that is (...) informed by research in ethology (research which seeks to explain the function of animal behaviour and determine how these behaviours evolved). (shrink)

This article examines who or what should be the target of feminist criticism. Throughout the discussion, the concept of memes is applied in analyzing systems such as patriarchy and feminism itself. Adapting Dawkins' theory on genes, this research puts forward the possibility that patriarchies and feminisms are memeplexes competing for the limited energy and memory space of humanity.

Ce texte propose une définition de la conscience de soi et explique en quoi cette capacité naît du monde social. Il est postulé que ce dernier permet un mouvement de recul - une «distanciation » - par rapport à soi, et que le cerveau reproduit ce mouvement grâce à certains processus cognitifs qui en ont été imprimés. Parmi ceux-ci, on retrouve le langage intérieur, qui, par analogie, agirait comme un miroir interne capable de confronter l'expérience subjective à elle-même; de cette (...) confrontation naîtrait le soi. Un argument est présenté en faveur de la supériorité du langage intérieur sur d'autres processus cognitifs impliqués dans la conscience de soi. Le problème de la conscience de soi chez les primates est abordé, et l'article conclut sur diverses réflexions ayant trait à la schizophrénie, la prière, la méditation, et les drogues psychodysleptiques.This text proposes a definition of self-awareness and explains its social origin. It is postulated that the social milieu permits a movement to a more objective perspective for self- perception, and that this movement is then reproduced in the brain by specific cognitive processes. It is suggested that inner speech represents one such cognitive processes, which acts like a mirror to reflect subjective experience back upon itself-, the self would be generated by this reflective activity. It is argued that inner speech has a pre-eminent position among the cognitive processes implicated in self-awareness. The problem of self-awareness in primates is discussed, and the article concludes with ideas concerning schizophrenia, prayer, medi- tation, and psychodysleptic drugs. (shrink)

In this essay, I look at more or less sympathetic portrayals of egoists in film. I start by explaining some basic concepts: psychological egoism; ethical egoism; default egoism; rational egoism; egotism; cynicism; narcissism; and psychopathy. I then review in-depth two excellent WWII films, Stalag 17 and The Bridge on the River Kwai. I note that the key protagonist in both pictures is the same type of character—both played by the same fine actor, William Holden. The main protagonist in both is (...) a soldier in a POW camp, who appears completely egoistic; however, in both cases, the movie shows that he is just a man acting for self-preservation, but within moral limits. The character in both cases is certainly not an egotist, nor a narcissist, much less a psychopath. (shrink)

In this essay, I look at two films as possible exemplars of the Nietzschean view of egoism. Compulsion is based on the infamous 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case. In the movie, two arrogant young men—one of whom admires Nietzsche and preaches the (apparently Nietzschean) view that the strong and superior don’t need to follow conventional morality—kill a boy to prove they can outsmart the unter-menschen police. For a different take on what Nietzsche may have had in mind as “the (...) Overman,” I also look at the film The Moon and Sixpence. Here the protagonist isn’t violent or aggressive, but a completely self-absorbed artist, who paints with genius but uses others without feeling any gratitude or friendship, let alone love. (shrink)

In this essay, I briefly review ten of the best bio flicks of artists. After laying out my criteria for assessing biographical films about artists, I review my ten choices. These films are: The Agony and the Ecstasy; Frida; Local Color; The Moon and Sixpence; Girl with the Pearl Earring; Pollock; Rembrandt; Moulin Rouge; Modigliani; and Lust for Life. For each film, I try to explain the ways in which the directors were able to show the artist’s creative processes and (...) personal challenges. (shrink)

Aesthetic internalism claims a link between judgement and motivation: aesthetic judgements bring with them motivations to act in characteristic ways. Critics object that there is a difference between merely liking something and judging it to be aesthetically good, and that it is our likings, not our aesthetic judgements, that motivate us. This paper develops a version of aesthetic internalism that can respond to this criticism. Wholehearted aesthetic judgements are characterized by stability, attention, and motivation. Making such judgements is an important (...) part of a good life, and so at least some aesthetic judgements are motivating. So we have reason to think that this version of aesthetic internalism is true. This paper defends wholehearted aesthetic internalism against objections, and assesses an argument from aesthetic internalism to aesthetic non-cognitivism. While wholehearted aesthetic internalism can only offer qualified support to non-cognitivism, it nonetheless offers a number of fruitful avenues for further work. (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)

How is ethical knowledge possible? One of the most promising answers is the moral sense view: we can acquire ethical knowledge through emotional experience. But this view faces a serious problem. Emotions are unreliable guides to ethical truth, frequently failing to fit the ethical status of their objects. This threatens to render the habit of basing ethical beliefs on emotions too unreliable to yield knowledge. I offer a new solution to this problem, with practical implications for how we approach ethical (...) decision-making. I argue that an agent can have a reliable belief-forming habit despite having unreliable emotions, so long as she is suitably attentive to defeaters. In moderately virtuous agents, unfitting ethical emotions are frequently accompanied by warning signs, such as negative metaemotions, epistemic feelings, moods, and social cues. An agent who cultivates the attentional skill of noticing these signs can prevent many of her unfitting emotions from translating into false beliefs. For a moderately virtuous agent with this skill, the habit of basing ethical beliefs on emotions will be reliable. The upshot is that emotion-based ethical knowledge is possible even for people whose emotions are unreliable, but only if we cultivate the skill of spotting defeaters. (shrink)

Conscious recollection, of the kind characterised by sensory mental imagery, is often thought to involve ‘episodically’ recalling experienced events in one’s personal past. One might wonder whether this overlooks distinctive ways in which we sometimes recall ordinary, persisting objects. Of course, one can recall an object by remembering an event in which one encountered it. But are there acts of recall which are distinctively objectual in that they are not about objects in this mediated way (i.e., by way of being (...) about events in which they featured)? This question has broad implications, not least for understanding the nature and role of imagery in remembering, the requirements of memory-based singular thought about objects, and the sense in which remembering involves ‘mental time travel’ through which one ‘relives’ past events. In this paper, I argue that we sometimes do recall objects from our past without remembering events in which they featured. The positive view of such cases I go on to propose draws on a wide body of empirical work in its support and accommodates a more nuanced picture of the role of imagery in remembering. In a slogan: remembering might essentially involve a kind of ‘re-experiencing’, but it need not involve ‘reliving’. (shrink)

We report the results of four empirical studies designed to investigate the extent to which an epistemic closure principle for knowledge is reflected in folk epistemology. Previous work by Turri (2015a) suggested that our shared epistemic practices may only include a source-relative closure principle—one that applies to perceptual beliefs but not to inferential beliefs. We argue that the results of our studies provide reason for thinking that individuals are making a performance error when their knowledge attributions and denials conflict with (...) the closure principle. When we used research materials that overcome what we think are difficulties with Turri’s original materials, we found that participants did not reject closure. Furthermore, when we presented Turri’s original materials to non-philosophers with expertise in deductive reasoning (viz., professional mathematicians), they endorsed closure for both perceptual and inferential beliefs. Our results suggest that an unrestricted closure principle—one that applies to all beliefs, regardless of their source—provides a better model of folk patterns of knowledge attribution than a source-relative closure principle. (shrink)

Hegel defends the reality and the priority of immanent teleology. He does so by accepting Kant’s analysis of immanent teleology, but arguing against Kant’s subjectivist position. Key to Hegel’s argument is the idea that a general kind—in Hegel’s terms, a “concept” of a form of life—can be the substance or nature of the individual organism, or determine what it is to be that organism. In some ways Hegel here follows his own interpretation of Aristotle, while also trying to turn modern (...) arguments against immanent teleology to his own opposing purposes. And we can approach in these terms the way in which Hegel tries to build his broader metaphysics around teleology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Central to both James’s earlier psychology and his later philosophical views was a recurring distinction between percepts and concepts. The distinction evolved and remained fundamental to his thinking throughout his career as he sought to come to grips with its fundamental nature and significance. In this chapter, I focus initially on James’s early attempt to articulate the distinction in his 1885 article “The Function of Cognition.” This will highlight a key problem to which James continued to (...) return throughout his later philosophical work on the nature of our cognition, including in his famous “radical empiricist” metaphysics of “pure experience” around the turn of the century. We shall find that James grappled insightfully but ambivalently with the perceptual and conceptual dimensions of the “knowledge relation” or the “cognitive relation,” as he called it—or what, following Franz Brentano, philosophers would later call our object-directed thought or intentionality more generally. Some philosophers have once again returned to James’s work for crucial insights on this pivotal topic, while others continue to find certain aspects of his account to be problematic. What is beyond dispute is that James’s inquiries in this domain were both innovative and of lasting significance. (shrink)

Immoralists hold that in at least some cases, moral fl aws in artworks can increase their aesthetic value. They deny what I call the valence constraint: the view that any effect that an artwork’s moral value has on its aesthetic merit must have the same valence. The immoralist offers three arguments against the valence constraint. In this paper I argue that these arguments fail, and that this failure reveals something deep and interesting about the relationship between cognitive and moral value. (...) In the fi nal section I offer a positive argument for the valence constraint. (shrink)

We cannot imagine two straight lines intersecting at two points even though they may do so. In this case our abilities to imagine depend upon our abilities to visualise.

This essay is my review of economist Mark Skousen’s book, The Big Three in Economics. In it, he discusses the economic work of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. He gives even-handed treatments of the major contributions of each, for example, Smith’s reputation refutation of mercantilist policies and Smith’s crucial insight into the role that division of labor plays in economic growth. My only complaint is that Skousen doesn’t adequately explain his choice of Marx as a great economist. (...) What enduring contributions did he make to the field? Why name him rather than (say) David Ricardo? (shrink)

If we define tradition too hastily we leave to one side the question of what the relevance of tradition is for us. Here the concept of tradition is opened up by considering the different views of it taken by Hannah Arendt, Michael Oakeshott and Alasdair MacIntyre. We see that each has put tradition into a fully developed picture of what our predicament is in modernity; and that each has differed in their assessment of what our relation to tradition is or (...) should be. Arendt sees tradition as something which no longer conditions action, Oakeshott sees tradition as something which conditions all action, and MacIntyre sees tradition as something which should condition right action. In each case, the view of tradition is clearly one element in an attempt to see how the most important constituent elements of human existence – variously called the human condition, human conduct, or human virtue – should be understood in a modernity which is ours because it has put the traditional concept of tradition into question. (shrink)

The adequacy of similarity to prototype as an account of categorization in natural concepts was assessed by analyzing the monotonicity of the relation between typicality of an item in a category and the probability of a positive categorization response using data from McCloskey and Glucksberg (1978). The analysis revealed a strong underlying similarity-based threshold curve, with systematic deviations. Further data collection showed that deviations from the curve could be attributed to the effects of unfamiliarity and non-categorial associations on typicality judgments, (...) as well as differences between the perceptual appearance of an item (which tended to boost typicality) and its underlying nature (which tended to boost categorization). The results are discussed in terms of the different presuppositions and task constraints involved in rating typicality as opposed to performing a categorization. (shrink)

Modal epistemologists parse modal conditions on knowledge in terms of metaphysical possibilities or ways the world might have been. This is problematic. Understanding modal conditions on knowledge this way has made modal epistemology, as currently worked out, unable to account for epistemic luck in the case of necessary truths, and unable to characterise widely discussed issues such as the problem of religious diversity and the perceived epistemological problem with knowledge of abstract objects. Moreover, there is reason to think that this (...) is a congenital defect of orthodox modal epistemology. This way of characterising modal epistemology is however optional. It is shown that one can non-circularly characterise modal conditions on knowledge in terms of epistemic possibilities, or ways the world might be for the target agent. Characterising the anti-luck condition in terms of epistemic possibilities removes the impediment to understanding epistemic luck in the case of necessary truths and opens the door to using these conditions to shed new light on some longstanding epistemological problems. (shrink)

Warren Zevon’s musical career, though brilliant throughout, is particularly notable for its ending: diagnosed with a terminal illness, Zevon refused a potentially debilitating medical treatment to put his remaining energy into recording another album. The resulting record –2003’s 'The Wind' – was in many ways the perfect farewell: songs of dirty, dark, uncompromising, country-tinged rock, blistering guitar solos, all mixed with intelligent, black-as-coal gallows humour. But it was also a moving farewell to his fans, a heartfelt, personal reflection on his (...) life and impending death: it begins with the words “sometimes I feel like my shadow’s casting me” and ends with “keep me in your heart for a while”. 'The Wind' ranks among Zevon’s very best and belongs in the same category as albums like David Bowie’s 'Blackstar' and Leonard Cohen’s 'You Want It Darker': works of great artists that knew the end was coming and made that knowledge musical. But though it had a particular force towards the end, death had always featured as a prominent theme in Zevon’s music. In fact, the albums that preceded his terminal diagnosis – especially 2000’s 'Life’ll Kill Ya' – have a marked preoccupation with death and dying, and many of his song’s characters (gunmen, gangsters, boxers, murderers of all stripes) either dealt death out, died, or both. -/- In this chapter, I argue that Zevon’s music and speech in his late public appearances personify an idea in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy called ‘authentic being-towards-death’. In his landmark text 'Being and Time', Heidegger undertakes a painstaking analysis of human existence. One of its conclusions is that to live a fully authentic life, we must reckon with our mortality, come to terms with it and allow this reckoning to have a transformative effect on how we live and how we think about our existence. This results, Heidegger argues, in a distinct way of being that he calls ‘being-towards-death’ and ‘anticipatory resoluteness’ in the face of death. Authentic being, which involves properly taking ownership of our lives and their meaning, cannot be adequately achieved without a serious confrontation with the fact that we will one day die. I claim that Warren Zevon’s music, with its continual engagement with death which culminates in 'The Wind', is one of the great musical manifestations of exactly this type of project. Heidegger’s writing is often notoriously abstract, but it pertains to the most fundamental issues about what it means to be human. Engaging with it alongside Zevon’s music provides a fruitful opportunity to make it concrete, better able to understand its most important aspects while providing an interesting conceptual toolkit to apply to the music of one of the great songwriters of death. (shrink)

I attempt to make sense of Hume's enigmatic characterization of the standard of taste as "a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another." In particular, I take up the questions (a) how the standard could be both a rule and a decision, (b) why it is at least a decision if not a rule, and (c) why, if a rule, it may reconcile various sentiments rather (...) than merely confirm one and condemn another. (shrink)

Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts enjoy a transmission advantage over both intuitive and highly counterintuitive concepts, (2) that religions concern counterintuitive agents, objects, or events, and (3) that the transmission advantage of MCI concepts makes them more likely to be found in the world’s religions than other kinds of concepts. We hypothesized that the memorability of many MCI supernatural concepts was due in large part to other characteristics they possess, such (...) as their frequent and salient association with moral concerns and the alleviation of existential anxieties, and that without such characteristics they would fail to be memorable. We report the results of three experiments designed to test the relative contributions of minimal counterintuitiveness, moral valence, and existential anxiety to the memorability of supernatural ideas. We observed no main effects for minimal counterintuitiveness but did observe main effects for both moral valence and existential anxiety. We also found that these effects did not seem to stem from the greater visualizability of morally valenced concepts or concepts that concerned existential anxieties. These findings challenge important claims made by leading researchers regarding MCI concepts within the cognitive science of religion. (shrink)

This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (project number CS170100008); the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science; and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. ACOLA collaborates with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi to deliver the interdisciplinary Horizon Scanning reports to government. The aims of the project which produced this report are: 1. Examine the transformative role that artificial intelligence may play in (...) different sectors of the economy, including the opportunities, risks and challenges that advancement presents. 2. Examine the ethical, legal and social considerations and frameworks required to enable and support broad development and uptake of artificial intelligence. 3. Assess the future education, skills and infrastructure requirements to manage workforce transition and support thriving and internationally competitive artificial intelligence industries. (shrink)

This paper defends the usefulness of the concept of philosophical progress and the common assumption that philosophy and science aim to make the same, or a comparable, kind of progress. It does so by responding to Yafeng Shan's (2022) arguments that the wealth of research on scientific progress is not applicable or useful to philosophy, and that philosophy doesn't need a concept of progress at all. It is ultimately argued that while Shan's arguments are not successful, they reveal the way (...) forward in developing accounts of philosophical progress. (shrink)

One solution to the problem of moral knowledge is to claim that we can acquire it a posteriori through moral experience. But what is a moral experience? When we examine the most compelling putative cases, we find features which, I argue, are best explained by the hypothesis that moral experiences are emotions. To preempt an objection, I argue that putative cases of emotionless moral experience can be explained away. Finally, I allay the worry that emotions are an unsuitable basis for (...) moral knowledge. I conclude that those who believe in moral experience should hold that it consists of emotion. (shrink)

The default theory of aesthetic value combines hedonism about aesthetic value with strict perceptual formalism about aesthetic value, holding the aesthetic value of an object to be the value it has in virtue of the pleasure it gives strictly in virtue of its perceptual properties. A standard theory of aesthetic value is any theory of aesthetic value that takes the default theory as its theoretical point of departure. This paper argues that standard theories fail because they theorize from the default (...) theory. (shrink)

The pandemic significantly raised the stakes for the translation of bioethics insights into policy. The novelty, range and sheer quantity of the ethical problems that needed to be addressed urgently within public policy were unprecedented and required high‐bandwidth two‐way transfer of insights between academic bioethics and policy. Countries such as the United Kingdom, which do not have a National Ethics Committee, faced particular challenges in how to facilitate this. This paper takes as a case study the brief career of the (...) Ethics Advisory Board (EAB) for the NHS Covid‐19 App, which shows both the difficulty and the political complexity of policy‐relevant bioethics in a pandemic and how this was exacerbated by the transience and informality of the structures through which ethics advice was delivered. It analyses how and why, after EAB's demise, the Westminster government increasingly sought to either take its ethics advice in private or to evade ethical scrutiny of its policies altogether. In reflecting on EAB, and these later ethics advice contexts, the article provides a novel framework for analysing ethics advice within democracies, defining four idealised stances: the pure ethicist, the advocate, the ethics arbiter and the critical friend. (shrink)

Recent theories of remembering and of reference (or singular thought) have de-emphasised the role causation was thought to play in mid- to late-twentieth century theorising. According to postcausal theories of remembering, such as simulationism, instances of the psychofunctional kind _remembering_ are not, in principle, dependent on appropriate causal chains running from some event(s) remembered to the occurrence of remembering. Instead they depend only on the reliability, or proper functioning, of the cognitive system responsible for their production. According to broadly reliabilist (...) accounts of _singular thought_, such thought is not, in principle, dependent on causal chains running from the object(s) of thought to the occurrence of thinking. Despite this common trend, accounts of the two phenomena have been pursued separately. In this paper, we argue that the two lines of research can profitably converge to address a neglected question: what enables occurrences of remembering to _refer_ to particular events, and what determines _which_ event a given occurrence of remembering refers to? We motivate and present a reliabilist account of reference-fixing for postcausal theories of remembering, focusing in particular on simulationism. We then show that this account draws attention to the possibility of _referential mnemic confabulation:_ cases where the reliability requirement for reference is met despite the improper functioning of the episodic construction system. We suggest that this makes sense of some underdiscussed phenomena described in the empirical literature on confabulation and argue that our reliabilist account of mnemic reference-fixing accommodates these more naturally than could causal theories of remembering. (shrink)

This paper is about the similarity between the appreciation of a piece of art, such as a cherished music album, and the loving appreciation of a person whom one knows well. In philosophical discussion about the rationality of love, the Qualities View (QV) says that love can be justified by reference to the qualities of the beloved. I argue that the oft-rehearsed trading-up objection fails to undermine the QV. The problems typically identified by the objection arise from the idea that (...) love-worthy qualities could be coarse-grained, when in fact they must be fine-grained. The analogy with appreciation of aesthetic qualities helps to draw out this point. Once the fine-grained nature of love-worthy qualities is properly understood, it is clear that critics of the QV cannot rely on the trading-up objection to motivate its rejection. Moreover, the paper’s core argument helps to illuminate the persistently aesthetic nature of interpersonal affections. (shrink)

Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Published in Clifford, W.K. “L’ètica de la creença”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 129–150. // Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on William James’s “The Will to Believe”. Published in James, William. “La voluntat de creure”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 151–172. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Introducció. El debat entre W. K. Clifford i William (...) James”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 123–127]. (shrink)

One feature of language is that we are able to make mistakes in our use of language. Amongst other sorts of mistakes, we can misspeak, misspell, missign, or misunderstand. Given this, it seems that our metaphysics of words should be flexible enough to accommodate such mistakes. It has been argued that a nominalist account of words cannot accommodate the phenomenon of misspelling. I sketch a nominalist trope-bundle view of words that can.

If, as Richard Wollheim says, the Acquaintance Principle is ‘a well-entrenched principle in aesthetics,’ it would be surprising if there were not something true at which those who have asserted it have been aiming. I argue that the Acquaintance Principle cannot be true on any traditional epistemic interpretation, nor on any usability interpretation of the sort Robert Hopkins has recently suggested. I then argue for an interpretation of the principle that treats acquaintance as the end to which judgments of aesthetic (...) value are the means as opposed to the other way around. (shrink)

For Foucault, Hobbes is important for the transition from sovereignty to governmentality, but he does not always go into great detail how. In “Society Must Be Defended”, Hobbes’s reactions against the political historicism of his time lead him to an ahistorical foundation to the state. In Security, Territory, Population, his contract is emblematic of the art of government still caught in the logic of sovereignty. Management techniques, one of which being inheritance laws like primogeniture, inducing changes in a population’s milieu (...) so that its interest is properly directed allow the art of government to escape this logic. Hobbes supports primogeniture, but its historical position in the common law makes this support unexpected. This article examines the historical context of primogeniture and the reasoning for Hobbes’s support of it in light of Foucault’s claims about him in order to give more precision to those claims. The result is that primogeniture as a law of nature produces the family as an interested unit of the population. Yet this interest is itself historicized, so Hobbes’s attempt to de-historicize politics did not fully succeed. (shrink)