By definition, pain is a sensory and emotional experience that is felt in a particular part of the body. The precise relationship between somatic events at the site where pain is experienced, and central processing giving rise to the mental experience of pain remains the subject of debate, but there is little disagreement in scholarly circles that both aspects of pain are critical to its experience. Recent experimental work, however, suggests a public view that is at odds with this conceptualisation. (...) By demonstrating that the public does not necessarily endorse central tenets of the “mental” view of pain (subjectivity, privacy, and incorrigibility), experimental philosophers have argued that the public holds a more “body-centric” view than most clinicians and scholars. Such a discrepancy would have important implications for how the public interacts with pain science and clinical care. In response, we tested the hypothesis that the public is capable of a more “mind-centric” view of pain. Using a series of vignettes, we demonstrate that in situations which highlight mental aspects of pain the public can, and does, recognize pain as a mental phenomenon. We also demonstrate that the public view is subject to context effects, by showing that the public’s view is modified when situations emphasizing mental and somatic aspects of pain are presented together. (shrink)

New research suggests that a healthy democracy requires intellectual humility. When citizens are intellectually humble, they are less polarized, more tolerant and respectful of others, and display greater empathy for political opponents. But a flourishing democracy also requires people with political convictions. If the electorate were apathetic, they would not participate in democratic decision-making. Do these two democratic ideals conflict? The standard view in philosophy and psychology is that intellectual humility and political conviction are compatible. In this paper, we challenge (...) the standard view. We appeal to empirical and theoretical work indicating that intellectual humility can result in political apathy or lack of conviction. We conclude by suggesting that there are different varieties of intellectual humility, some aligned with conviction and engagement, and others of a more quietist character. To illustrate this, we sketch a kind of ‘political quietism’ modelled by philosophical thinkers such as Burke and Oakeshott. (shrink)

I argue that misanthropy is systematic condemnation of the moral character of humankind as it has come to be. Such condemnation can be expressed affectively and practically in a range of different ways, and the bulk of the paper sketches the four main misanthropic stances evident across the history of philosophy. Two of these, the Enemy and Fugitive stances, were named by Kant, and I call the others the Activist and Quietist. Without exhausting the range of ways of being a (...) philosophical misanthrope, these four suffice to justify my main claim that misanthropy should not be seen specifically in terms of hatred and violence. We should attend to the varieties of philosophical misanthropy, especially since doing so reveals a deeper phenomenon I call the misanthropic predicament. (shrink)

This article focuses on a particular issue under machine ethics—that is, the nature of Artificial Moral Agents. Machine ethics is a branch of artificial intelligence that looks into the moral status of artificial agents. Artificial moral agents, on the other hand, are artificial autonomous agents that possess moral value, as well as certain rights and responsibilities. This paper demonstrates that attempts to fully develop a theory that could possibly account for the nature of Artificial Moral Agents may consider certain philosophical (...) ideas, like the standard characterizations of agency, rational agency, moral agency, and artificial agency. At the very least, the said philosophical concepts may be treated as signposts for further research on how to truly account for the nature of Artificial Moral Agents. (shrink)

In the field of machine consciousness, it has been argued that in order to build human-like conscious machines, we must first have a computational model of qualia. To this end, some have proposed a framework that supports qualia in machines by implementing a model with three computational areas (i.e., the subconceptual, conceptual, and linguistic areas). These abstract mechanisms purportedly enable the assessment of artificial qualia. However, several critics of the machine consciousness project dispute this possibility. For instance, Searle, in his (...) Chinese room objection, argues that however sophisticated a computational system is, it can never exhibit intentionality; thus, would also fail to exhibit consciousness or any of its varieties. This paper argues that the proposed architecture mentioned above answers the problem posed by Searle, at least in part. Specifically, it argues that we could reformulate Searle’s worries in the Chinese room in terms of the three-stage artificial qualia model. And by doing so, we could see that the person doing all the translations in the room could realize the three areas in the proposed framework. Consequently, this demonstrates the actualization of self-consciousness in machines. (shrink)

The overuse of social media, including the growing mistrust of mainstream news outlets has impacted the increasing influence of online disinformation. Social media has been a powerful tool in Philippine elections because of social media algorithms used by political parties to deploy fake news and damage their rivals. Political fake news on social media began last 2016 and became rampant in the 2022 presidential election when the candidates for the presidency were all victims of trolling. Mainstream media debunked fake news (...) but because of political partisanship, the effort has been useless due to different political beliefs and parties. The methodology involves content analysis to systematically examine social media posts related to political disinformation during the 2022 presidential election specifically focused on identifying two reactions, the emotion-driven and reason-based comments. Most of the comments were emotional and contained sarcasm, threats, slander, and mockery. People’s logical thought processes are influenced by their emotions. Users are frequently looking for information to confirm their existing views and reject or ignore information that contradicts them or is biased in favor of one political party over another. Educating the critical analysis key to both students and social media users is one of the advocacies to avoid spreading fake news in the next generations. In conclusion, emotional responses, such as anger and sarcasm, dominated the discourse, overshadowing reasoned discussions. Media mistrust and political partisanship shaped users’ reactions, leading to reject the fact-checked information especially when it conflicted with their political beliefs. (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.

Conflict is an inherent aspect of every organization, a rising naturally from human interactions, differing opinions, and the complex nature of work. This research aims to assess the impacts of conflicts within a department by examining various aspects of departmental conflict, including its types, sources, and consequences. The study employs a quantitative correlational research design to better understand conflicts within organizations. It focuses on selected municipalities in the first district of Batangas, specifically the towns of Balayan, Nasugbu, and Tuy. The (...) researchers use a combination of stratified and convenience sampling methods. This approach involves categorizing the population into distinct strata based on their departments and then sampling proportionally from each stratum. The respondents are public sector employees from the Human Resources, Finance, Marketing, Operations, and Accounting departments within the selected municipalities. Statistical tools, such as weighted mean and ranking, are used to analyze the data for each research question. The findings reveal a significant correlation between the effects of conflicts within a department and the approaches employed by HR managers to address them. The researchers recommend that human resource managers regularly assess conflict levels within their departments and implement strategies for conflict resolution. Establishing a clear structure for conflict resolution is essential to improving cooperation in the workplace and mitigating the negative effects of conflicts within departments. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the research field of machine ethics and how it relates to a technological singularity—a hypothesized, futuristic event where artificial machines will have greater-than-human-level intelligence. One problem related to the singularity centers on the issue of whether human values and norms would survive such an event. To somehow ensure this, a number of artificial intelligence researchers have opted to focus on the development of artificial moral agents, which refers to machines capable of moral reasoning, judgment, and decision-making. (...) To date, different frameworks on how to arrive at these agents have been put forward. However, there seems to be no hard consensus as to which framework would likely yield a positive result. With the body of work that they have contributed in the study of moral agency, philosophers may contribute to the growing literature on artificial moral agency. While doing so, they could also think about how the said concept could affect other important philosophical concepts. (shrink)

Abstract Reading proficiency is crucial for academic success, yet many students struggle with comprehension, do not engage in independent, self-motivated reading, and lack confidence in their reading abilities. The absence of a reading culture in Nigeria threatens the knowledge economy, as those who lack reading proficiency are incapable of producing, accessing, or transmitting knowledge. Purpose of the study: This study examined the potential of structured debate as an instructional strategy to address the reading outcomes of secondary school students in Calabar, (...) Cross River State, Nigeria. Methodology: A quasi-experimental design was employed with two groups: an experimental group engaged in structured debate activities and a control group following traditional reading instruction. Data on reading proficiency, reading anxiety, and reading autonomy was collected through standardized tests and surveys before and after the intervention. Three hypotheses were tested using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), while the pre-test scores were used as covariates. Results: The findings revealed that structured debate significantly improved students' reading proficiency and autonomy compared to the control group. However, no significant impact on reading anxiety was observed. (shrink)

A review of Rebecca DeYoung's book, "Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies", 2nd ed.

Thousands of texts discuss Egytpain cosmology and cosmogony. James Allen has selected sixteen to translate and discuss in order to shed light on one of the questions that clearly preoccupied ancient intellectuals; the origins of the world.

The entry provides an overview of the type-token distinction, including a comparison to other nearby distinctions.

According to desire satisfactionism, well-being consists in getting what you desire. Recently, several theorists have suggested that this view should be extended to claim that ill-being consists in getting what you are averse to. I argue that both of these paradigmatic claims are false. As I show, desire and aversion are indeed both relevant to well-being and ill-being—in fact, perhaps surprisingly, each attitude has unique effects on both our well-being and ill-being. However, these effects are a matter of the unique (...) feelings desire and aversion produce. The paradigmatic desire satisfactionist approach—and, I argue, a surprisingly wide variety of desire satisfactionist views—cannot properly capture the relevance of these feelings, and thus the relevance of desire and aversion, to well-being and ill-being, and should therefore be abandoned. (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)

Hubert Dreyfus has argued that cases of absorbed bodily coping show that there is no room for self-awareness in flow experiences of experts. In this paper, I argue against Dreyfus’ maxim of vanishing self-awareness by suggesting that awareness of agency is present in expert bodily action. First, I discuss the phenomenon of absorbed bodily coping by discussing flow experiences involved in expert bodily action: merging into the flow; immersion in the flow; emergence out of flow. I argue against the claim (...) that flow experience does not involve an awareness of agency for each of these features, while conceding that fluent agency does not involve self-awareness in the thetic sense. I challenge the assumption that the awareness of fluent agency must be understood in terms of a thetic awareness of agency. Instead, I develop an Anscombean account of the awareness of fluent agency in terms of the phenomenal character of knowing one’s aims. I respond to the challenge that if an Anscombean account of the awareness of agency is to succeed, then agents must be able to answer Anscombean questions. I consider the objection that awareness of agency is not a form of self-awareness by outlining an account of self-awareness as self-synthesis that is distinct from self-perception and self-ascription, but which makes room for self-awareness in expert bodily action. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

Jennifer Hawkins (2024) offers two cases that challenge traditional accounts of decision-making capacity, according to which respect for a medical decision turns on an individual’s cognitive capacities at the time the decision is made (Hawkins 2024; Appelbaum and Grisso 1988). In each of her described cases (involving anorexia nervosa and grief, respectively), a patient makes a decision that—although instrumentally rational at the time—does not reflect the patient’s longer-term values due to being in a particular psychological state. Importantly, this state does (...) not impair the patient’s cognition, but rather predisposes them to make a decision that conflicts with their own broader values, beliefs, or desires. (shrink)

This paper considers two competing views of the relationship between preference and desire. On what I call the “preference-first view,” preference is our most basic form of conative attitude, and desire reduces to preference. This view is widely assumed, and essentially treated as orthodoxy, among standard decision theorists, economists, and others. I argue, however, that the preference-first view has things the wrong way around. I first show that the standard motivation offered for this view—motivation underlying foundational work in decision theory (...) and economics—leaves the view with unacceptable psychological implications. I then introduce an alternative view—the “desire-first view”—on which desire is our most basic form of conative attitude, and preference reduces to desire. On the desire-first view I propose, preferences, as comparisons, are best understood as comparisons of the extents to which alternatives are desired. I show that this desire-first view is simple, ecumenical, and explanatorily powerful. (shrink)

Recently, Simon Goldstein and Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini have argued that certain existing AI systems are capable of well-being. They consider the three leading approaches to well-being—hedonism, desire satisfactionism, and the objective list approach—and argue that theories of these kinds plausibly imply that some current AI systems are capable of welfare. In this paper, I argue that the leading versions of each of these theories do not imply this. I conclude that we have strong reason to doubt that current AI systems (...) are capable of well-being. (shrink)

Are beautiful things beautiful because they are valuable, or valuable because they are beautiful? Most theories of aesthetic value assume the former. I argue for the latter. This implies that no theory of aesthetic value can explain what makes aesthetically valuable things aesthetically valuable; instead, it can only tell us which value is the aesthetic one. I propose a theory that does.

Mathematicians often speak of conjectures as being confirmed by evidence that falls short of proof. For their own conjectures, evidence justifies further work in looking for a proof. Those conjectures of mathematics that have long resisted proof, such as the Riemann hypothesis, have had to be considered in terms of the evidence for and against them. In recent decades, massive increases in computer power have permitted the gathering of huge amounts of numerical evidence, both for conjectures in pure mathematics and (...) for the behavior of complex applied mathematical models and statistical algorithms. Mathematics has therefore become (among other things) an experimental science (though that has not diminished the importance of proof in the traditional style). We examine how the evaluation of evidence for conjectures works in mathematical practice. We explain the (objective) Bayesian view of probability, which gives a theoretical framework for unifying evidence evaluation in science and law as well as in mathematics. Numerical evidence in mathematics is related to the problem of induction; the occurrence of straightforward inductive reasoning in the purely logical material of pure mathematics casts light on the nature of induction as well as of mathematical reasoning. (shrink)

In How We Get Along, philosopher David Velleman compares our social interactions to the interactions among improvisational actors on stage. He argues that we play ourselves - not artificially but authentically, by doing what would make sense coming from us as we really are. And, like improvisational actors, we deal with one another in dual capacities: both as characters within the social drama and as players contributing to the shared performance. In this conception of social intercourse, Velleman finds rational grounds (...) for morality, though not a rational guarantee. He maps a middle course between skepticism and rationalism, arguing that practical reasoning is 'pro-moral' without requiring moral action. The result is what he calls a 'Kinda Kantian metaethics'. How We Get Along is the summation of Velleman's thinking to date, incorporating and unifying previous work on agency, the self, the emotions, narrative and Kantian moral theory. (shrink)

This paper examines the prospects for an expressivist theory of prudential thought and discussion, or thought and discussion about what is good for us or what makes our lives go well. It is becoming increasingly common to view prudential thought and discussion as a kind of normative thought and discussion. If this is right, then expressivism, like any other meta-normative view, must be able to explain prudential thought and discussion. However, existing expressivist theories offer no such explanation and lack the (...) resources to construct one. I argue that the best strategy for expressivists is to adopt a fitting attitudes account of prudential concepts. More specifically, I propose that expressivists adopt the rational care theory of well-being, according to which claims about what is good for a person are equivalent to claims about what it is rational to want for that person insofar as one cares for them. In doing so, I defend the rational care theory against its most pressing objection and argue that the view provides an independently attractive account of prudential thought and discussion that fits well with the expressivist’s aim to explain normative thought and discussion in terms of its distinctive practical function. (shrink)

This article outlines the debate between realists and nominalists concerning linguistic kinds or types. It also discusses the questions of how many linguistic kinds should we be committed to (if any), and whether the distinction between kinds of linguistic objects, and kinds of linguistic properties.

Sentences with impersonal pronouns, like 'You do it like this', seem to make both statistical and prescriptive claims, that a certain way of behaving is common and that it is prescriptively good. We argue that these kinds of sentences are closely related to another kind of sentence, namely, indefinite singular generics, like 'A person does it like this'. We propose that there is a single underlying mechanism that allows both kinds of sentences to express mixed statistical/prescriptive readings. We then provide (...) a compositional semantic analysis of these sentences and explain how, together with this single underlying mechanism, it accounts for this phenomenon. (shrink)

Hume held that we have no rational justification for our inductive beliefs. A more radical view is that we have no rational justification for any of our beliefs. This dissertation has two goals pertaining to this more radical view. // The first goal is to find a basis for constructive epistemology that is consistent with this view. This goal is first sought by considering externalist theories of knowledge since these do not require rational justification for knowledge. Externalist theories are defended (...) against the usual objections, partly via a strategy of immunizing them from counterexample-based objections by arguing that epistemologies can be successful even if they fail to explicate ordinary epistemic notions. But a new objection to externalist theories is then brought to light. The objection begins as an attack against a dogma of contemporary epistemology, that the chief benefit of possessing knowledge is having a true belief. It is argued that there are many other benefits to having knowledge , and that externalist theories are defective because externalist knowledge lacks these benefits. A mixed internalist/externalist theory, bilevel reliabilism, is then presented as a solution to this difficulty. //The second goal is to provide an explanation of the function and origin of human epistemic practices that is consistent with the no-rational-justification view. Providing such an explanation is problematic for holders of this view because, if it is correct, it seems, prima facie, that there is no reason to have epistemic practices. This goal is achieved by arguing that epistemic practices, despite appearing to have rational justification as their goal, chiefly function to promote the existence of bilevel reliabilist knowledge, a very useful type of belief that is not rationally justified. It is then argued that the explanation of the origin of epistemic practices is that they arise from natural human inductive tendencies. (shrink)

Does low mood have intentional content? If so, what is it? Philosophers have tried to answer both questions by appealing to low mood’s phenomenal character. However, appeals to phenomenology have not settled this debate. Thus, I take a different approach: I tackle both questions by examining low mood’s complex functional role in cognition. I argue that if we take this role into account, we have excellent reason to believe that low mood a) has content, and b) has the following indicative-imperative (...) content: Good events are, on average, less likely to occur than bad events & Limit [the subject’s] resource expenditure! (shrink)

Hylomorphism provides an explanation of material composition: the material parts, the Xs, will compose a whole, a Y, belonging to a given natural kind, when those parts are characterized by a substantial form. While there are a number of those who hold that each human person is identical with a human animal – ‘animalists’ – most of these are not hylomorphists. One could worry that hylomorphism contributes little unique to debates about personal identity, collapsing into either a form of property (...) dualism or substance dualism. What I aim to do is apply a robust and classical hylomorphic account of persons (derived from Thomas Aquinas) to two contemporary problems, illustrating the way in which hylomorphic metaphysics can offer elegant solutions to tricky situations posed against animalists. Specifically, I will propose that hylomorphic animalism can help provide principled resolutions to worries that seem to undermine animalist intuitions which are raised by ‘brain transplant’ or ‘remnant person’ scenarios. Hylomorphism can capture the advantages of ‘hybrid’ animalist responses without the cost of denying a singular, biological criterion of personal identity. Further, hylomorphism provides a distinctive upshot for Christian theologians and the moral positions that they want to affirm by rendering morally anodyne apparent epistemic difficulties in identifying personal identity over time. (shrink)

Buddhists point to the soteriological value not only of the dispelling of ignorance, but the arising of insight or wisdom which constitutes the salvific goal of practice. Madhyamaka’s unique conception of the ultimate nature of reality makes this cognition of what is metaphysically ultimate distinct from other kinds of knowledge, as these soteriologically valuable cognitive states aim at something unlike anything else so known: the lack of ‘own- being,’ or emptiness, of all reality. After considering and rejecting some popular interpretations (...) of the Madhyamaka Buddhist tradition regarding this soteriologically valuable epistemological state, I propose that a Thomistic conception of the Gift of Wisdom might provide a model that explains the unique nature of such insight into ultimate reality and its soteriological value. In short, wisdom involves a direct nonjudgmental veridical self-awareness arising from a good moral character, which is therefore also indirectly a direct nonjudgmental awareness of what ultimate reality is like. The final part will address the obvious dissimilarities between Christian and Buddhist metaphysics which might be thought to undermine these epistemological parallels and show, by contrast, that Christians are uniquely placed among theists in sharing many relevant features of Madhyamaka metaphysics that undergird parallels even in soteriological aims. (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 chapter first gives a rough outline of the reasoning behind the division of this collection of essays, one part focused on particular issues and the second on more universal ones. It then works out that reasoning in more detail through an examination of the historical development of the relationship between storytelling, as represented by myth and poetry, and history in the Western tradition from Hesiod through Hegel. The thesis is that Aristotle’s philosophical preference for poetry over history is overturned (...) in modernity, an overturning that culminates in Hegel in such a way that the pre-Aristotelian difficulties of determining the differences between stories and histories return. With that in mind, the introduction then summarizes and links the two parts of the collection and the essays collected. Finally, it defends the range of topics in and the multidisciplinary nature of the collection by thinking through the meaning of juxtaposition in relation to Aristotle’s differentiation of luck and chance, concluding with an attempt to show the connections between the topics covered made possible by their respective positions within the collection. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy brings empirical methods to philosophy. These methods are used to probe how people think about philosophically interesting things such as knowledge, morality, and freedom. This paper explores the contribution that qualitative methods have to make in this enterprise. I argue that qualitative methods have the potential to make a much greater contribution than they have so far. Along the way, I acknowledge a few types of resistance that proponents of qualitative methods in experimental philosophy might encounter, and provide (...) reasons to think they are ill-founded. (shrink)

In recent years, notable figures within the medical community have expressed concerns about the rate of medical progress, suggesting that the rapid advances of medicine’s ‘golden age’ are now giving way to an ‘age of disappointment’. While these pessimistic pronouncements about medical progress must–implicitly if not explicitly–appeal to some criteria for what medical progress would be, the task of explicitly defining medical progress has been notably neglected. We take up this task, drawing on insights from the philosophy of science concerning (...) both scientific progress and the aims of medicine. Among other things, we differentiate between medical scientific progress and progress in medical practice, and suggest that this distinction helps to evaluate the aforementioned concerns about the current rate of medical progress. While it is not our goal to draw conclusions relating to the state of medicine at the present time, we propose a unifying account of medical scientific progress according to which such progress leads, necessarily, to progress in medical practice, and show how this account both plausibly distinguishes between medical scientific progress and other (non-medical) instances of scientific progress, and does justice to the ‘dual character’ of medicine. (shrink)

Objections to the orthodox doctrine of an eternal hell often rely on arguments that it cannot be a person’s own fault that she ends up in hell. The paper summarizes and addresses three significant arguments which aim to show that it could not be any individual’s fault that they end up in hell. I respond to these objections by showing that those who affirm a classical picture of sin have Moorean reasons to reject these objections. That classical perspective holds that (...) all (serious) sin involves choosing eternal destiny apart from God and that no sin could possibly be caused by God. Consequently, it is necessary for ending up in hell that someone commit a serious sin, and it is sufficient for ending up damned that one persists forever in sin. Since the objections conflict with Moorean commitments central to the classical perspective, those who hold to such a classical perspective on sin would have good reason to reject all these arguments, which involve assumptions that would entail that such a perspective is false. (shrink)

According to the dogmatism puzzle, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then she’s entitled to be dogmatic about p, and so disregard any evidence against p, for she knows that (or is in a position to know that) that evidence is misleading. But this seems clearly problematically dogmatic. The standard solution to the dogmatism puzzle involves appealing to the view that acquiring new evidence (even misleading evidence) can undermine one’s knowledge that p. That’s why one (...) can’t rightly disregard any future evidence against p. This solution to the dogmatism puzzle has come to be called ‘the defeat solution’. Maria Lasonen-Aarnio has recently argued, however, that the defeat solution leaves unsolved a partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle, where some subject acquires weak misleading evidence against p, but, since it is weak, it doesn’t rob her of knowledge that p. Lasonen-Aarnio argues that solving this partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle requires those who endorse the defeasibility of knowledge to either go dogmatist or reject an extremely plausible principle that she calls ‘Entitlement’ (roughly, for any S and any e, if S knows that evidence e is misleading, then S can rightly disregard e). In this paper, however, I argue that defeasibilists face no such challenge from any version of the dogmatism puzzle, since the dogmatism puzzle, in both its original and partial defeat form, rests on an assumption that we have very good reason to think is mistaken. Specifically, the assumption that, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then S knows (or is in a position to know) that any evidence against p is misleading. I further argue that rejecting this assumption also yields a neat solution to the dogmatism puzzle involving intention originally proposed by Saul Kripke and recently adapted by R.E. Fraser. (shrink)

Hume is widely understood to believe that all virtues and vices are “durable principles of the mind,” and that durable principles of the mind are character traits. Several scholars therefore read him as a virtue ethicist. I argue that we should reject all such interpretations. I argue that Hume allows that some virtues and vices are simply single perceptions, such as a motivationally strong desire to help a stranger or to murder someone. Therefore, I argue, we should not read him (...) as a virtue ethicist. Hume is, however, a reductionist about character, who understands a character trait as simply a long-lasting but interrupted succession of perceptions. On my interpretation, a durable principle of the mind is an uninterrupted, relatively short-lived succession of different perceptions within an actor’s mind, of a kind that mainly interests Hume because he thinks it enables observers to associate a person’s action with her mind. (shrink)

According to epistemic ideology critics, a belief or set of beliefs is ideological when it: (a) empowers those responsible for disseminating these beliefs and (b) lacks compelling independent justification. In their view, beliefs satisfying these criteria are defective and ought to be debunked. I contest this claim by showing how, under conditions of political crisis, it is often both epistemically unwarranted and pragmatically inadvisable to debunk seemingly ideological beliefs. I examine the types of beliefs that constitute what are commonly called (...) “emergency frames.” An emergency frame is a system of beliefs concerning the nature of a severe collective threat and the best way to combat that threat. I argue that, due to the uncertainty inherent in many crisis situations, emergency frames often lack independent justification. Because this lack stems from unavoidable epistemic constraints, it should not be seen as a flaw warranting the debunking of any given emergency frame. I begin by outlining the notion of epistemic ideology critique (Section 1). In Section 2, I explore how, when this notion is applied to emergency frames, they often appear ideological and thus seem to warrant debunking. In Section 3, however, I show why it is sometimes epistemically unwarranted and pragmatically inadvisable to debunk such frames. I conclude that, in certain cases, when confronted with ostensibly ideological emergency frames, an attitude of political trust is more suitable than one of radical critique. (shrink)

The most successful science on the Aristotelian model was geometry in the style of Euclid. As advocated in the Posterior Analytics, Euclid’s Elements laid out geometry as a structure of theorems deduced from definitions and axioms that were evident to reason. However, geometry deals with the category of quantity, whereas Aristotelian definitions are paradigmatically in the category of substance. This chapter argues that definitions in the category of quantity have fulfilled well the Aristotelian ideal of stating the essence of ‘what (...) a thing is’, in such a way as to support a superstructure of demonstrations about that thing. Euclid’s definition of circle is a prime example: it is philosophically satisfying and from the first theorem of the Elements proved itself very productive of theorems. As this chapter demonstrates, the definition of ratio was more difficult. Euclid stands at the end of a long search for a definition of ratio, one of the most central notions of mathematics, that is both philosophically satisfying and mathematically productive. The search was not wholly successful. (shrink)

Many philosophers and linguists have been attracted to counterpart theory as a framework for natural language semantics. I raise a novel problem for counterpart theory involving simple declarative sentences with proper names. To resolve this problem, counterpart theorists must introduce the notion of a counterpart in the semantics of the non-modal fragment of language. I develop my preferred solution: a novel theory of proper names as counterpart-theoretic individual concepts. The resulting view highlights a hitherto unnoticed fact: counterpart theorists should formulate (...) their theory, not by modifying the standard semantics for modal operators, but by modifying the standard semantics for names and variables. (shrink)

How is ethical knowledge possible? One promising answer is Moral Empiricism: we can acquire ethical knowledge through emotional experiences. But Moral Empiricism faces a serious problem. Our emotions are unreliable guides to ethics, frequently failing to fit the ethical status of their objects, so the habit of basing ethical beliefs on one's emotions seems too unreliable to yield knowledge. I develop a new, virtue-epistemic solution to this problem, with practical implications for how we approach ethical decision-making. By exploiting a frequently (...) overlooked connection between reliability and defeaters, I argue that an agent can have a reliable belief-forming habit despite having unreliable emotions. 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 noticing and responding to signs that a given emotion is unfitting. (shrink)

Paul Draper argues that given theism we should not expect the amount of pain and suffering we observe in the world. And since the prevalence of such evils is not surprising from a non-theistic perspective, we should reject the theistic hypothesis. But not all surprising observations are necessarily a demerit when it comes to the assessment of a given theoretical perspective. I propose that on Christian theism the prevalence of evil is a surprising feature that contributes to the overall aesthetic (...) merit of the theistic hypothesis. This element of surprise in the world, when considered as a divine drama, sets the stage for an even more surprising dramatic upswing where the work of God solves the central narrative riddle of human history, namely evil and how it can be conquered. (shrink)

It is a reasonable worry that God would not truly love us and want our salvation if He fixed a definite point after which He will no longer offer us the graces to repent of our sins. I propose that Thomas Aquinas succeeds in showing us that God would not be cruel or arbitrary in setting up a world where embodied agents end up after death in a state where they will inevitably fail to repent of their sins. Aquinas proposes (...) that being disembodied is to be in a state where a person cannot be mistaken about what they want, given that they know themselves perfectly. If the disembodied state were like this, it would not be surprising that being in that state makes repentance impossible, since a soul would become fully integrated around whatever one desired, without any conflicting desires that could prompt repentance. Thus, humans would persist in whatever desires they had at the moment of death and disembodiment. I conclude by arguing that, while this scenario stands in need of fuller theodicy, Aquinas’ scenario is helpful in defending a view that God is not cruel or arbitrary for creating a world in which post-mortem repentance is impossible. (shrink)

The AI ethics of statistical fairness is an error, the approach should be abandoned, and the accumulated academic work deleted. The argument proceeds by identifying four recurring mistakes within statistical fairness. One conflates fairness with equality, which confines thinking to similars being treated similarly. The second and third errors derive from a perspectival ethical view which functions by negating others and their viewpoints. The final mistake constrains fairness to work within predefined social groups instead of allowing unconstrained fairness to subsequently (...) define group composition. From the nature of these misconceptions, the larger argument follows. Because the errors are integral to how statistical fairness works, attempting to resolve the difficulties only deepens them. Consequently, the errors cannot be corrected without undermining the larger project, and statistical fairness collapses from within. While the collapse ends a failure in ethics, it also provokes distinct possibilities for fairness, data, and algorithms. Quickly indicating some of these directions is a secondary aim of the paper, and one that aligns with what fairness has consistently meant and done since Aristotle. (shrink)

This article offers a political reading of Mossmouth's UFO 50, a collection of 50 retro-style games that evoke the aesthetics and design principles of 1980s gaming. Drawing on Fredric Jameson's concepts of the ‘nostalgia mode’ and the ‘utopian impulse’, I argue that UFO 50's nostalgia is not a superficial longing for the past, but a political gesture that challenges the current state of the video game industry. By creatively appropriating the past, UFO 50 critiques the complacency of modern game production (...) and consumption, urging us to imagine alternative futures and reclaim the creativity and risk-taking that characterised earlier eras of game development. However, through its meta-narrative, the game also cautions against uncritically preserving the past, reminding us that, while we can learn from them, every historical period is flawed. Ultimately, UFO 50 is a critically nostalgic work that refuses to accept the present conditions of the gaming industry. (shrink)

Three accounts of effective realism (ER) have been advanced to solve three problems for scientific realism: Fraser and Vickers (forthcoming) develop a version of ER about non-relativistic quantum mechanics that they argue is compatible with all the main realist versions (‘interpretations’) of quantum mechanics avoiding the problem of underdetermination among them; Williams (2019) and Fraser (2020b) propose ER about quantum field theory as a response to the problems facing realist interpretations; Robertson and Wilson (forthcoming) propose ER to deal with the (...) dubious ontological status of the entities belonging to superseded theories. This paper argues for the unification of these proposals based on realism about modal structure and the idea of scale relativity of ontology developed by ontic structural realists. This solves problems some or all the accounts of ER face, especially that of making explicit in what way they are realist. Furthermore, we respond to a recent critique that has been raised against the ontic structural realist account of quantum mechanics that we employ. (shrink)

The alienation constraint on theories of well-being has been influentially expressed thus: 'what is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive …. It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone’s good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him' (Railton 1986: 9). Many agree this claim expresses something true, but there is little consensus on how exactly the constraint is to be (...) understood. Here, I clarify the sense in which the quote offers a basic constraint on theories of well-being—a constraint that should be adopted by (e.g.) hedonists, desire satisfactionists, and objective list theorists alike. This constraint focuses on affective engagement, or positive affective stances in connection with a proposed good. I show that the constraint explains a near-universal intuition, and rules out a number of well-known theories of well-being. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Hegel’s claim that purposiveness or teleology is, in his unusual terminology, “the truth of” mechanism. First, I defend several important insights about this from Maraguat’s book, True Purposes in Hegel’s Logic. Second, I argue that what follows from these insights is that there is an outstanding problem about Hegel’s account of teleology, not solved in this book, or other recent work on the topic; I conclude with reason to expect that a solution would have to involve (...) a radically idealist account of teleology. (shrink)

This essay shows how the Epicureans could have anticipated time dilation measurements precisely as our standard model predicts and precisely as we measure it today. Specifically, a mathematical equivalent of the velocity Lorentz transformation can be derived from the Epicurean atomist doctrine of isotakheia, which states that all (Epicurean) atoms have equal speed. The derivation is brief and classical, and it requires no mathematical concepts that would be foreign to the ancient Greeks. The significance of this derivation is addressed.