As moral injury is a still-emerging concept within the area of military mental health, prevalence estimates for moral injury and its precursor, potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs), remain unknown for many of the world’s militaries. The present study sought to estimate the prevalence of PMIEs in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), using data collected from CAF personnel deployed to Afghanistan, via logistic regressions controlling for relevant sociodemographic, military, and deployment characteristics. Analyses revealed that over 65% of CAF members reported exposure (...) to at least one event that would be considered a PMIE. The most commonly PMIEs individuals reported included seeing ill or injured women and children they were unable to help (48.4%), being unable to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants (43.6%), and finding themselves in a threatening situation where they were unable to respond due to the rules of engagement under which they were required to operate (35.4%). These findings provide support for both the presence of exposure to PMIEs in CAF members and the need for formal longitudinal data collection regarding PMIE exposure and moral injury development. (shrink)

Moral abolitionists claim that morality ought to be abolished. According to one of their most prominent arguments, this is because making moral judgments renders people significantly less tolerant toward anyone who holds divergent views. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that morality’s tolerance-decreasing effect only occurs if people are realists about moral issues, i.e., they interpret these issues as objectively grounded. We found support for this hypothesis (Studies 1 and 2). Yet, it also turned out that the intolerance associated (...) with realism is mediated by moral conviction and perceived consensus. People tend to feel more strongly about those moral issues they ground objectively and, in doing so, are more prone to display the vice of moral smugness toward those who disagree with them. The remedy for this that has been recommended is humility which we found (Study 3) is indeed related to reduced intolerance, in part by predicting a reduction in realism, but also in part through a direct connection to intolerance. These results put pressure on abolitionists’ “argument from intolerance.”. (shrink)

Critics across the political spectrum have worried that ordinary uses of words like 'racist', 'sexist', and 'homophobic' are becoming conceptually inflated, meaning that these expressions are getting used so widely that they lose their nuance and, thereby, their moral force. However, the charge of conceptual inflation, as well as responses to it, are standardly made without any systematic investigation of how 'racist' and other expressions condemning oppression are actually used in ordinary language. Once we examine large linguistic corpora to see (...) how these expressions are actually used, we find that English speakers have a rich linguistic repertoire for qualifying the degree to which and dimensions along which something is racist, sexist, homophobic, and so on. These facts about ordinary usage undermine the charge of conceptual inflation. Without awareness of facts about ordinary usage, theorists risk making linguistic prescriptions that are unnecessary or counterproductive. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

Many epistemologists use intuitive responses to particular cases as evidence for their theories. Recently, experimental philosophers have challenged the evidential value of intuitions, suggesting that our responses to particular cases are unstable, inconsistent with the responses of the untrained, and swayed by factors such as ethnicity and gender. This paper presents evidence that neither gender nor ethnicity influence epistemic intuitions, and that the standard responses to Gettier cases and the like are widely shared. It argues that epistemic intuitions are produced (...) by the natural ‘mindreading’ capacity that underpins ordinary attributions of belief and knowledge in everyday social interaction. Although this capacity is fallible, its weaknesses are similar to the weaknesses of natural capacities such as sensory perception. Experimentalists who do not wish to be skeptical about ordinary empirical methods have no good reason to be skeptical about epistemic intuitions. (shrink)

In the philosophical literature on mental states, the paradigmatic examples of mental states are beliefs, desires, intentions, and phenomenal states such as being in pain. The corresponding list in the psychological literature on mental state attribution includes one further member: the state of knowledge. This article examines the reasons why developmental, comparative and social psychologists have classified knowledge as a mental state, while most recent philosophers--with the notable exception of Timothy Williamson-- have not. The disagreement is traced back to a (...) difference in how each side understands the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and belief, concepts which are understood in both disciplines to be closely linked. Psychologists and philosophers other than Williamson have generally have disagreed about which of the pair is prior and which is derivative. The rival claims of priority are examined both in the light of philosophical arguments by Williamson and others, and in the light of empirical work on mental state attribution. (shrink)

Who are the best subjects for judgment tasks intended to test grammatical hypotheses? Michael Devitt ( [2006a] , [2006b] ) argues, on the basis of a hypothesis concerning the psychology of such judgments, that linguists themselves are. We present empirical evidence suggesting that the relevant divide is not between linguists and non-linguists, but between subjects with and without minimally sufficient task-specific knowledge. In particular, we show that subjects with at least some minimal exposure to or knowledge of such tasks tend (...) to perform consistently with one another—greater knowledge of linguistics makes no further difference—while at the same time exhibiting markedly greater in-group consistency than those who have no previous exposure to or knowledge of such tasks and their goals. (shrink)

Do we apply higher epistemic standards to subjects with high stakes? This paper argues that we expect different outward behavior from high-stakes subjects—for example, we expect them to collect more evidence than their low-stakes counterparts—but not because of any change in epistemic standards. Rather, we naturally expect subjects in any condition to think in a roughly adaptive manner, balancing the expected costs of additional evidence collection against the expected value of gains in accuracy. The paper reviews a body of empirical (...) work on the automatic regulation of cognitive effort in response to stakes, and argues that we naturally see high- and low-stakes subjects as experiencing different levels of ‘epistemic anxiety’, and anticipate different levels of cognitive effort from them for this reason. If unresolved epistemic anxiety always bars an ascription of knowledge, then we can explain our responses to cases involving shifting stakes without positing any variation in the standards of intuitive knowledge ascription. (shrink)

Why do our intuitive knowledge ascriptions shift when a subject's practical interests are mentioned? Many efforts to answer this question have focused on empirical linguistic evidence for context sensitivity in knowledge claims, but the empirical psychology of belief formation and attribution also merits attention. The present paper examines a major psychological factor (called ?need-for-closure?) relevant to ascriptions involving practical interests. Need-for-closure plays an important role in determining whether one has a settled belief; it also influences the accuracy of one's cognition. (...) Given these effects, it is a mistake to assume that high- and low-stakes subjects provided with the same initial evidence are perceived to enjoy belief formation that is the same as far as truth-conducive factors are concerned. This mistaken assumption has underpinned contextualist and interest-relative invariantist treatments of cases in which contrasting knowledge ascriptions are elicited by descriptions of subjects with the same initial information and different stakes. The paper argues that intellectualist invariantism can easily accommodate such cases. (shrink)

Intersectionality has become the primary analytic tool that feminist and anti-racist scholars deploy for theorizing identity and oppression. This paper exposes and critically interrogates the assumptions underpinning intersectionality by focusing on four tensions within intersectionality scholarship: the lack of a defined intersectional methodology; the use of black women as quintessential intersectional subjects; the vague definition of intersectionality; and the empirical validity of intersectionality. Ultimately, my project does not seek to undermine intersectionality; instead, I encourage both feminist and anti-racist scholars to (...) grapple with intersectionality's theoretical, political, and methodological murkiness to construct a more complex way of theorizing identity and oppression. (shrink)

Jennifer Uleman on the phenomenology and reality of reason.

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

Drawing on the work of Charles W. Mills and considering the case of reparations to Black Americans, this article defends the “structural turn” in the philosophical reparations scholarship. In the Black American context, the structural turn highlights the structural and institutional operations of a White supremacist political system and a long chronology of state-sponsored injustice, as opposed to enslavement as a standalone historical episode. Here, the question whether distributive justice is more appropriate than reparative justice is particularly pressing, since structural (...) racial inequalities form part of the basis for reparations. Derrick Darby’s pragmatic argument for non-race-specific redistributive policies and Tommie Shelby’s principled defense of distributive justice are both considered, as well as the challenge to the structural turn that comes from Carlton Waterhouse’s argument for reparations for enslavement rather than “legacy of slavery” reparations. (shrink)

Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. Devitt ([2010]) replies that, in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability and grammaticality, we misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, and fail to see how our empirical results can be squared with his position. We reply in this note. Inter alia we argue that Devitt's focus (...) on grammaticality intuitions, rather than acceptability intuitions, distances his discussion from actual linguistic practice. We close by questioning a demand that drives his discussion—viz., that, for linguistic intuitions to supply evidence for linguistic theorizing, a better account of why they are evidence is required. (shrink)

In the past few years there has been a turn towards evaluating the empirical foundation of epistemic contextualism using formal (rather than armchair) experimental methods. By-and-large, the results of these experiments have not supported the original motivation for epistemic contextualism. That is partly because experiments have only uncovered effects of changing context on knowledge ascriptions in limited experimental circumstances (when contrast is present, for example), and partly because existing experiments have not been designed to distinguish between contextualism and one of (...) its main competing theories, subject-sensitive invariantism. In this paper, we discuss how a particular, "third-person", experimental design is needed to provide evidence that would support contextualism over subject-sensitive invariantism. In spite of the theoretical significance of third-person knowledge ascriptions for debates surrounding contextualism, no formal experiments evaluating such ascriptions that assess contextualist claims have previously been conducted. In this paper, we conduct an experiment specifically designed to examine that central gap in contextualism’s empirical foundation. The results of our experiment provide crucial support for epistemic contextualism over subject-sensitive invariantism. (shrink)

Kant’s most canonical argument against suicide, the universal law argument, is widely dismissed. This paper attempts to save it, showing that a suicide maxim, universalized, undermines all bases for practical law, resisting both the non-negotiable value of free rational willing and the ordinary array of sensuous commitments that inform prudential incentives. Suicide therefore undermines moral law governed community as a whole, threatening ‘savage disorder’. In pursuing this argument, I propose a non-teleological and non-theoretical nature – a ‘practical nature’ or moral (...) law governed whole – the realization of which morality demands. (shrink)

You and I have been colleagues for ten years, during which we have tirelessly discussed the reasons both for and against the existence of God. There is no argument or piece of evidence bearing directly on this question that one of us is aware of that the other is not—we are, then, evidential equals1 relative to the topic of God’s existence.2 There is also no cognitive virtue or capacity, or cognitive vice or incapacity, that one of us possesses that the (...) other does not—we are, then, also cognitive equals relative to the question at issue.3 Given this evidential and cognitive equality, combined with the fact that we have fully disclosed to one another all of our reasons and arguments relative to this topic, we are epistemic peers with respect to the question whether God exists.4 Yet despite the symmetry of our epistemic positions, we deeply disagree about the answer to this question. What response does rationality require in such a case, where epistemic peers disagree over a question despite there being no apparent asymmetries between them?5 There are two main answers to this question in the recent literature. First, there is the view of the nonconformists, who maintain that one can continue to rationally believe that p despite the fact that one’s epistemic peer explicitly believes that not-p, even when one does not have a reason independent of the disagreement itself to prefer one’s own belief.6 Otherwise put, nonconformists argue that there can be reasonable disagreement among epistemic peers. There are two central explanations of the nonconformist response to peer disagreement.7 On the one hand, there is the egocentric view, which holds that I am justified in giving my belief extra weight8 in the face of peer disagreement because the belief in question is mine.9 On the other hand, there is the correct reasoning view, according to which I am justified in giving my belief extra weight in the face of peer disagreement because the belief in question is in fact the product of correct reasoning.10 Despite these.... (shrink)

After a fatal police shooting in the United States, it is typical for city and police officials to view the family of the deceased through the lens of the law. If the family files a lawsuit, the city and police department consider it their legal right to defend themselves and to treat the plaintiffs as adversaries. However, reparations and the concept of “reparative justice” allow authorities to frame police killings in moral rather than legal terms. When a police officer kills (...) a person who was not liable to this outcome, officials should offer monetary reparations, an apology, and other redress measures to the victim’s family. To make this argument, the article presents a philosophical account of non-liability hailing from self-defense theory, centering the distinction between reasonableness and liability. Reparations provide a non-adversarial alternative to civil litigation after a non-liable person has been killed by a police officer. In cases where the officer nevertheless acted reasonably, “institutional agent-regret” rather than moral responsibility grounds the argument for reparations. Throughout the article, it is argued that there are distinct racial wrongs both when police kill a non-liable black person and when family members of a black victim are treated poorly by officials in the civil litigation process. (shrink)

We naturally evaluate the beliefs of others, sometimes by deliberate calculation, and sometimes in a more immediate fashion. Epistemic intuitions are immediate assessments arising when someone’s condition appears to fall on one side or the other of some significant divide in epistemology. After giving a rough sketch of several major features of epistemic intuitions, this article reviews the history of the current philosophical debate about them and describes the major positions in that debate. Linguists and psychologists also study epistemic assessments; (...) the last section of the paper discusses some of their research and its potential relevance to epistemology. (shrink)

Alasia Nuti’s important recent book, Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress, makes many persuasive interventions. Nuti shows how structural injustice theory is enriched by being explicitly historical; in theorizing historical-structural injustice, she lays bare the mechanisms of how the injustices of history reproduce themselves. For Nuti, historical-structural patterns are not only shaped by habitual behaviors that are or appear to be morally permissible, but also by individual wrongdoing and wrongdoing by powerful group agents like states. (...) In this article, I extend Nuti’s rich analysis, focusing on two questions that arise from her theory of historical-structural injustice: Beyond being blameworthy for wrongful acts themselves, are culpable wrongdoers blameworthy for contributing to structural injustice? Does historical moral ignorance mitigate moral responsibility for past injustice? Regarding, I distinguish between the local and societal structural effects of wrongdoing. Though I think this distinction is well-founded, it ultimately leads to tensions with structural injustice theory’s idea of ordinary individuals being blameless for reproducing unjust structures. Regarding, I argue that even though it is natural for the question of historical moral ignorance to arise in considering past wrongdoing, at least in the case of powerful group agents, we should not overlook forms of cruelty which present-day moral concepts are not needed to condemn. (shrink)

Most adult persons with anorexia satisfy the existing criteria widely used to assess decision-making capacity, meaning that incapacity typically cannot be used to justify coercive intervention. After rejecting two other approaches to justification, Professor Radden concludes that it is most likely not possible to justify coercive medical intervention for persons with anorexia in liberal terms, though she leaves it open whether some other framework might succeed. I shall assume here that the standard approach to assessing decisionmaking capacity is adequate.1 The (...) question then is whether we can justify—within a liberal framework—coercive intervention with the decision of a competent... (shrink)

Defeat cases are often taken to show that even the most securely-based judgment can be rationally undermined by misleading evidence. Starting with some best-case scenario for perceptual knowledge, for example, it is possible to undermine the subject’s confidence in her sensory faculties until it becomes unreasonable for her to persist in her belief. Some have taken such cases to indicate that any basis for knowledge is rationally defeasible; others have argued that there can be unreasonable knowledge. I argue that defeat (...) cases really involve not an exposure of weakness in the basis of a judgment, but a shift in that basis. For example, when threatening doubts are raised about whether conditions are favorable for perception, one shifts from a basis of unreflective perceptual judgment to a basis of conscious inference. In these cases, the basis of one’s knowledge is lost, rather than rationally undermined. This approach to defeat clears the path for a new way to defend infallibilism in epistemology, and a new understanding of what can count as the basis of any instance of knowledge. (shrink)

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

There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the “stakes” or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to “low” stakes cases are compared with responses to “high stakes” cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary properties—they are scalar: whether a situation is “high” or “low” stakes is a matter of degree. So far, no experimental work has investigated the (...) scalar nature of stakes effects on knowledge: do stakes effects increase as the stakes get higher? Do stakes effects only appear once a certain threshold of stakes has been crossed? Does the effect plateau at a certain point? To address these questions, we conducted experiments that probe for the scalarity of stakes effects using several experimental approaches. We found evidence of scalar stakes effects using an “evidence seeking” experimental design, but no evidence of scalar effects using a traditional “evidence-fixed” experimental design. In addition, using the evidence-seeking design, we uncovered a large, but previously unnoticed framing effect on whether participants are skeptical about whether someone can know something, no matter how much evidence they have. The rate of skeptical responses and the rate at which participants were willing to attribute “lazy knowledge”—that someone can know something without having to check—were themselves subject to a stakes effect: participants were more skeptical when the stakes were higher, and more prone to attribute lazy knowledge when the stakes were lower. We argue that the novel skeptical stakes effect provides resources to respond to criticisms of the evidence-seeking approach that argue that it does not target knowledge. (shrink)

A fundamental entity is an entity that is ‘ontologically independent’; it does not depend on anything else for its existence or essence. It seems to follow that a fundamental entity is ‘modally free’ in some sense. This assumption, that fundamentality entails modal freedom (or ‘FEMF’ as I shall label the thesis), is used in the service of other arguments in metaphysics. But as I will argue, the road from fundamentality to modal freedom is not so straightforward. The defender of FEMF (...) should provide positive reasons for believing it, especially in light of recent views that are incompatible with it. I examine both direct and indirect routes to FEMF. (shrink)

Harman’s lottery paradox, generalized by Vogel to a number of other cases, involves a curious pattern of intuitive knowledge ascriptions: certain propositions seem easier to know than various higher-probability propositions that are recognized to follow from them. For example, it seems easier to judge that someone knows his car is now on Avenue A, where he parked it an hour ago, than to judge that he knows that it is not the case that his car has been stolen and driven (...) away in the last hour. Contextualists have taken this pattern of intuitions as evidence that ‘knows’ does not always denote the same relationship; subject-sensitive invariantists have taken this pattern of intuitions as evidence that non-traditional factors such as practical interests figure in knowledge; still others have argued that the Harman Vogel pattern gives us a reason to abandon the principle that knowledge is closed under known entailment. This paper argues that there is a psychological explanation of the strange pattern of intuitions, grounded in the manner in which we shift between an automatic or heuristic mode of judgment and a controlled or systematic mode. Understanding the psychology behind the pattern of intuitions enables us to see that the pattern gives us no reason to abandon traditional intellectualist invariantism. The psychological account of the paradox also yields new resources for clarifying and defending the single premise closure principle for knowledge ascriptions. (shrink)

Do epistemic intuitions tell us anything about knowledge? Stich has argued that we respond to cases according to our contingent cultural programming, and not in a manner that tends to reveal anything significant about knowledge itself. I’ve argued that a cross-culturally universal capacity for mindreading produces the intuitive sense that the subject of a case has or lacks knowledge. This paper responds to Stich’s charge that mindreading is cross-culturally varied in a way that will strip epistemic intuitions of their evidential (...) value. I argue that existing work on cross-cultural variation in mindreading favors my position over Stich’s. (shrink)

Most theories of parenthood assume, at least implicitly, that a child will grow up to be an independent, autonomous adult. However, some children with cognitive limitations or psychiatric illness are unable to do so. For this reason, these accounts do not accommodate the circumstances and responsibilities of parents of such adult children. Our article attempts to correct this deficiency. In particular, we describe some of the common characteristics and experiences of this population of parents and children, examine the unique aspects (...) of their relationships, review several philosophical accounts of parental obligations, consider how these accounts might be extrapolated to semiautonomous adult children, and provide suggestions about parental obligations to promote autonomy and independence in adult children with cognitive limitations or psychiatric illness. In extending accounts of parental responsibilities to the case of semiautonomous adults, we find that the parental role includes the duty to continue to provide care—indefinitely if necessary—while cultivating autonomy and independence. (shrink)

Do laypeople and philosophers differ in their attributions of knowledge? Starmans and Friedman maintain that laypeople differ from philosophers in taking ‘authentic evidence’ Gettier cases to be cases of knowledge. Their reply helpfully clarifies the distinction between ‘authentic evidence’ and ‘apparent evidence’. Using their sharpened presentation of this distinction, we contend that the argument of our original paper still stands.

In this article I explore various facets of Nozick’s famous thought experiment involving the experience machine. Nozick’s original target is hedonism—the view that the only intrinsic prudential value is pleasure. But the argument, if successful, undermines any experientialist theory, i.e. any theory that limits intrinsic prudential value to mental states. I first highlight problems arising from the way Nozick sets up the thought experiment. He asks us to imagine choosing whether or not to enter the machine and uses our choice (...) (or rather the choice he assumes most people will have) as evidence against experientialist theories. But for this strategy to succeed it must be possible to distinguish between self-interested and non-self-interested reasons for declining to enter the machine, and there is no obvious way to do this without begging the question against the hedonist. In successive sections I then (a) consider a common misconception of Nozick’s conclusion (that he thinks machine life is the worst life), (b) consider different intuitions about what is important to well-being but missing from machine life, and finally (c) explain what “the experience requirement” is, and describe its relationship to debates about experientialist theories. (shrink)

Both patients and clinicians frequently report problems around communicating and assessing pain. Patients express dissatisfaction with their doctors and doctors often find exchanges with chronic pain patients difficult and frustrating. This chapter thus asks how we could improve pain communication and thereby enhance outcomes for chronic pain patients. We argue that improving matters will require a better appreciation of the complex meaning of pain terms and of the variability and flexibility in how individuals think about pain. We start by examining (...) the various accounts of the meaning of pain terms that have been suggested within philosophy and suggest that, while each of the accounts captures something important about our use of pain terms, none is completely satisfactory. We propose that pain terms should be viewed as communicating complex meanings, which may change across different communicative contexts, and this in turn suggests that we should view our ordinary thought about pain as similarly complex. We then sketch what a view taking seriously this variability in meaning and thought might look like, which we call the “polyeidic” view. According to this view, individuals tacitly occupy divergent stances across a range of different dimensions of pain, with one agent, for instance, thinking of pain in a much more “bodycentric” kind of way, while another thinks of pain in a much more "mindcentric” way. The polyeidic view attempts to expand the multidimensionality recognised in, e.g., biopsychosocial models in two directions: first, it holds that the standard triumvirate— dividing sensory/cognitive/affective factors— needs to be enriched in order to capture important distinctions within the social and psychological dimensions. Second, the polyeidic view attempts to explain why modulation of experience by these social and psychological factors is possible in the first place. It does so by arguing that because the folk concept of pain is complex, different weightings of the different parts of the concept can modulate pain experience in a variety of ways. Finally, we argue that adopting a polyeidic approach to the meaning of pain would have a range of measurable clinical outcomes. (shrink)

The author advocates for teaching about varieties of ignorance with a psychoanalytic sensibility as one strategy with which to engage the emotional investments that sustain apathy and the ignorant refusal to care in this new era of suffering and spectatorship. Ignorance, here conceived, is complex, far from consisting only in some passive lack of knowledge. It is understood multidimensionally, as activity, rarely innocent, always inevitable, and entirely ineradicable; it is a powerful agent in the maintenance of oppression, but it is (...) also an important resource on which we can draw to promote curiosity and less defensive encounters with difficult knowledge and different Others. In diagnosing different forms of ignorance, we can distinguish between the varieties that are culturally produced and disseminated for profit from those forms which might serve as impetus for investigation. (shrink)

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

Kant is the philosophical tradition's arch-anti-consequentialist – if anyone insists that intentions alone make an action what it is, it is Kant. This chapter takes up Kant's account of the relation between intention and action, aiming both to lay it out and to understand why it might appeal. The chapter first maps out the motivational architecture that Kant attributes to us. We have wills that are organized to action by two parallel and sometimes competing motivational systems. One determines us by (...) way of motives that are sensuous, natural and given from without, the other by motives that are intellectual, rational, and given from within. Each set of motives belongs to a system of laws – natural motives to the laws of nature, rational motives to the laws of freedom. For Kant, all things, including actions, are what they are in virtue of the laws governing them; actions, qua actions, are always governed by laws that govern individual wills. These laws are Kantian maxims, 'or subjective practical laws.' Maxims, for Kant, thus make actions the actions they are. The chapter then maps out the implications of this motivational architecture for Kant's theory of value. Maxims always advert to or 'contain' both ends and means. Ends are always specifications of one of two ultimate ends. Actions have the moral value they have depending on which of two ultimate ends the maxim adverts to. The possibilities are 'happiness,' or gratification of desires with sensuous origins, and 'duty,' or accord with the moral demand to will in ways that respect free rational agency wherever it is found. Only actions aimed at the latter – actions with rational motives – have moral value. Actions aimed at the former – actions with natural motives – though not immoral in themselves, become so when pursuit works against rational motives. For Kant, actions aimed at happiness are ultimately allied with efforts to sustain our 'animal' existence, and so are governed by terms and conditions given by the natural world. Actions aimed at duty, in contrast, are ultimately allied with efforts to impose a rational form on nature, to make it over, so to speak, according to values not given by nature itself. Actions aimed at duty, therefore, create a specifically moral world, one in which mores and norms, formal and informal arrangements, institutions, policies, and so on, realize, harmonize, and promote free rational agency itself. Finally, the chapter addresses motivations for Kant's view. The architecture of will and the theories of action and value he proposes allow Kant to accommodate a host of intuitions and commitments. His view makes room for metaphysically free agency, and for the lived experience of motivational freedom from ever-changing natural desires. It makes room for conflicts within the will while still holding out hope that resolution is possible. It accommodates views that the best human lives engage 'higher' faculties in sustained ways. It identifies a stable, necessary, universal end amidst the evident contingency, pluralism, and instability of most ends. It makes us, and not God or nature, the authors of our moral lives. In the end, Kant's 'anti-consequentialism,' his focus on intentions, is a way of insisting on actions that take their character and value from what should matter most to us, namely individual and collective free rational agency, rather than only and always taking the character of reactive responses to circumstance. (shrink)

Philosophers concerned with what would be good for a person sometimes consider a person’s past desires. Indeed, some theorists have argued by appeal to past desires that it is in the best interests of certain dementia patients to die. I reject this conclusion. I consider three different ways one might appeal to a person’s past desires in arguing for conclusions about the good of such patients, finding flaws with each. Of the views I reject, the most interesting one is the (...) view that prudential value is, at least partly, concerned with the shape of a life as a whole. (shrink)

Because knowledge entails true belief, it is can be hard to explain why a given action is naturally seen as driven by one of these states as opposed to the other. A simpler and more radical characterization of knowledge helps to solve this problem while also shedding some light on what is special about social learning.

Desire is commonly spoken of as a state in which the desired object seems good, which apparently ascribes an evaluative element to desire. I offer a new defence of this old idea. As traditionally conceived, this view faces serious objections related to its way of characterizing desire's evaluative content. I develop an alternative conception of evaluative mental content which is plausible in its own right, allows the evaluative desire theorist to avoid the standard objections, and sheds interesting new light on (...) the idea of evaluative experience. (shrink)

Some philosophical theories of the nature of color aim to respect a "common sense" conception of color: aligning with the common sense conception is supposed to speak in favor of a theory and conflicting with it is supposed to speak against a theory. In this paper, we argue that the idea of a "common sense" conception of color that philosophers of color have relied upon is overly simplistic. By drawing on experimental and historical evidence, we show how conceptions of color (...) vary along several dimensions and how even supposedly "core" components of the contemporary "common sense" conception of color are less stable than they have been thought to be. (shrink)

Contribution to a book symposium on Tamar Gendler's Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 728-746, May 2022.

Medical ethics would be better if people were taught to think more clearly about well-being or the concept of what is good for a person. Yet for a variety of reasons, bioethicists have generally paid little attention to this concept. Here, I argue, first, that focusing on general theories of welfare is not useful for practical medical ethics. I argue, second, for what I call the “theory-without-theories approach” to welfare in practical contexts. The first element of this approach is a (...) focus on examining important and relatively uncontroversial constituents of welfare as opposed to general theories. The second key element is a framework for thinking about choice in relation to welfare, a framework I refer to as “the mild objectivity framework.” I conclude with illustrations of the way in which the “theory without theories approach” can improve thinking in medicine. (shrink)

Action is not always guided by conscious deliberation; in many circumstances, we act intuitively rather than reflectively. Tamar Gendler (2014) contends that because intuitively guided action can lead us away from our reflective commitments, it limits the power of knowledge to guide action. While I agree that intuition can diverge from reflection, I argue that this divergence does not constitute a restriction on the power of knowledge. After explaining my view of the contrast between intuitive and reflective thinking, this paper (...) argues against the conclusions Gendler draws from empirical work on implicit bias. (shrink)

Betrayal trauma theory suggests that psychogenic amnesia is an adaptive response to childhood abuse. When a parent or other powerful figure violates a fundamental ethic of human relationships, victims may need to remain unaware of the trauma not to reduce suffering but rather to promote survival. Amnesia enables the child to maintain an attachment with a figure vital to survival, development, and thriving. Analysis of evolutionary pressures, mental modules, social cognitions, and developmental needs suggests that the degree to which the (...) most fundamental human ethics are violated can influence the nature, form, and processes of trauma and responses to trauma. (shrink)

Existence internalism claims that facts about human psychological responsiveness constrain the metaphysics of value in particular ways. Chapter 5 examines whether some form of existence internalism holds for prudential value. It emphasizes the importance of a modal distinction that has been traditionally overlooked. Some facts about personal good are facts about realized good. For example, right now it may be true that X is good for me. Other facts about goodness are facts about what would be good for me in (...) certain possible futures. These are facts about merely possible good. Philosophers should be internalists about realized good. The chapter defends a qualified version of the idea that a necessary constraint on something’s being good for a person at a time is that the thing in question elicits some kind of positive psychological response from the person at that time. However, philosophers should be motivational externalists about merely possible good. Facts about the superior future goodness of an option may ground reasons now to choose it. But we should not expect individuals to always recognize such facts, and so there is no reason to think such facts are always motivating. (shrink)

The Caribbean is a site where multiple cultures, peoples, waysof thinking and acting have come together and where new formsof philosophy are emerging. The promise of Caribbean philoso-phy lays in its ability to give shape to an intellectual tradition which is both true to and beneficial to Caribbean peoples whilesimultaneously being provocative enough to engage wisdom-seekers of various geographies and identities. I argue that onlyby pursuing a “New Dialogic” which engages the philosophicaltraditions of Africans, African Americans, and Native Ameri-cans can (...) we hope to assert a unique philosophy of value toCaribbean peoples and cultures. The highest form of Caribbeanphilosophy thus must be plural and dialogical. Unfortunately,dialogues in philosophy have been typically characterized bya fixation with Europe, and a lack of consideration of otherphilosophical traditions or sources. The “New Dialogic” thatI propose here involves a more dynamic model of dialogue toopen or intensify different and multiple avenues of conceptualelaboration. I provide general guidelines or principles for this“New Dialogic” and demonstrate the extent to which Caribbeanphilosophers can both contribute to the expansion of this projectand be aided by it in their formulations of the field. (shrink)

The central claim is that the semantic knowledge exercised by people when they speak is practical knowledge. The relevant idea of practical knowledge is explicated, applied to the case of speaking, and connected with an idea of agents’ knowledge. Some defence of the claim is provided.