The Euthyphro dilemma is widely deployed as an argument against theistic accounts of ethics. The argument proceeds by trying to derive strongly counterintuitive implications from the view that God is the source of morality. I argue here that a general crudeness with which both the dilemma and its theistic targets are described accounts for the seeming force of the argument. Proper attention to details, among them the distinction between the good and the right, reveals that a nuanced theism is quite (...) unscathed by it. (shrink)

According to authoritative Christian teaching, Jesus Christ is a single person existing in two natures, divinity and humanity. In attempting to understand this claim, the high-scholastic theologians often asked whether there was more than one existence in Christ. John Duns Scotus answers the question with a clear and strongly-formulated yes, and Thomists have sometimes suspected that his answer leads in a heretical direction. But before we can ask whether Scotus‘s answer is acceptable or not, we have to come to (...) a clear understanding of what his answer is. And before we can ask what his answer is, we have to come to a clear understanding of what question or questions he is trying to answer. In this paper I begin by explaining that the question about Christ‘s existence is ambiguous, i.e., that there are actually two questions hidden behind one formulation. Next I look at Scotus‘s writings on the topic in order to determine which question he is really trying to answer, and I argue that he is trying to answer both of them, even though he does not make this clear. Third, I provide an initial look at the answers that he gives. Fourth, I explain why these answers might seem problematic, especially from a Thomistic perspective. Fifth, I explain Scotus‘s answers in more detail and show that they are not problematic in the way that some Thomists have held. Indeed, at least some of Scotus‘s ideas are the very same ideas that Thomas spells out in one of his works. (shrink)

John Rawls’s use of the “fully cooperating assumption” has been criticized for hindering attempts to address the needs of disabled individuals, or non-cooperators. In response, philosophers sympathetic to Rawls’s project have extended his theory. I assess one such extension by Cynthia Stark, that proposes dropping Rawls’s assumption in the constitutional stage (of his four-stage sequence), and address the needs of non-cooperators via the social minimum. I defend Stark’s proposal against criticisms by Sophia Wong, Christie Hartley, and Elizabeth Edenberg (...) and Marilyn Friedman. Nevertheless, I argue that Stark’s proposal is crucially incomplete. Her formulation of the social minimum lacks accompanying criteria with which the adequacy of the provisions for non-cooperators may be assessed. Despite initial appearances, Stark’s proposal does not fully address the needs of non-cooperators. I conclude by considering two payoffs of identifying this lack of criteria. (shrink)

Unlike his theory of justice as fairness, John Rawls’s political liberalism has generally been spared from critiques regarding what is due to the disabled. This paper demonstrates that, due to the account of the basic ideas of society and persons provided by Rawls, political liberalism requires that the interests of numerous individuals with disabilities should be put aside when the most fundamental issues of justice are settled. The aim is to accommodate within public reason the due concern for the (...) disabled while upholding political liberalism. To achieve this aim, a revision of the basic ideas of persons and society is proposed. The idea of persons should be regarded as more fundamental than that of social cooperation, and persons should be defined in terms of minimal moral powers. (shrink)

We are living through an era of increased robotisation. Some authors have already begun to explore the impact of this robotisation on legal rules and practice. In doing so, many highlight potential liability gaps that might arise through robot misbehaviour. Although these gaps are interesting and socially significant, they do not exhaust the possible gaps that might be created by increased robotisation. In this article, I make the case for one of those alternative gaps: the retribution gap. This gap arises (...) from a mismatch between the human desire for retribution and the absence of appropriate subjects of retributive blame. I argue for the potential existence of this gap in an era of increased robotisation; suggest that it is much harder to plug this gap than it is to plug those thus far explored in the literature; and then highlight three important social implications of this gap. (shrink)

This chapter argues that scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the living world requires that we abandon a metaphysics of things in favour of one centred on processes. We identify three main empirical motivations for adopting a process ontology in biology: metabolic turnover, life cycles, and ecological interdependence. We show how taking a processual stance in the philosophy of biology enables us to ground existing critiques of essentialism, reductionism, and mechanicism, all of which have traditionally been associated with (...) substance ontology. We illustrate the consequences of embracing an ontology of processes in biology by considering some of its implications for physiology, genetics, evolution, and medicine. And we attempt to locate the subsequent chapters of the book in relation to the position we defend. (shrink)

If a robot sends a deceptive signal to a human user, is this always and everywhere an unethical act, or might it sometimes be ethically desirable? Building upon previous work in robot ethics, this article tries to clarify and refine our understanding of the ethics of robotic deception. It does so by making three arguments. First, it argues that we need to distinguish between three main forms of robotic deception (external state deception; superficial state deception; and hidden state deception) in (...) order to think clearly about its ethics. Second, it argues that the second type of deception – superficial state deception – is not best thought of as a form of deception, even though it is frequently criticised as such. And third, it argues that the third type of deception is best understood as a form of betrayal because doing so captures the unique ethical harm to which it gives rise, and justifies special ethical protections against its use. (shrink)

Soon there will be sex robots. The creation of such devices raises a host of social, legal and ethical questions. In this article, I focus in on one of them. What if these sex robots are deliberately designed and used to replicate acts of rape and child sexual abuse? Should the creation and use of such robots be criminalised, even if no person is harmed by the acts performed? I offer an argument for thinking that they should be. The argument (...) consists of two premises. The first claims that it can be a proper object of the criminal law to regulate wrongful conduct with no extrinsically harmful effects on others. The second claims that the use of robots that replicate acts of rape and child sexual abuse would be wrongful, even if such usage had no extrinsically harmful effects on others. I defend both premises of this argument and consider its implications for the criminal law. I do not offer a conclusive argument for criminalisation, nor would I wish to be interpreted as doing so; instead, I offer a tentative argument and a framework for future debate. This framework may also lead one to question the proposed rationales for criminalisation. (shrink)

Do aesthetic reasons have normative authority over us? Could there be anything like an aesthetic ‘ought’ or an aesthetic obligation? I argue that there are no aesthetic obligations. We have reasons to act certain ways regarding various aesthetic objects – most notably, reasons to attend to and appreciate those objects. But, I argue, these reasons never amount to duties. This is because aesthetic reasons are merely evaluative, not deontic. They can only entice us or invite us – they can never (...) compel us. Beauty gives us goods without shoulds. (shrink)

The analysis of desire ascriptions has been a central topic of research for philosophers of language and mind. This work has mostly focused on providing a theory of want reports, that is, sentences of the form ‘S wants p’. In this paper, we turn from want reports to a closely related but relatively understudied construction, namely hope reports, that is, sentences of the form ‘S hopes p’. We present two contrasts involving hope reports and show that existing approaches to desire (...) fail to explain these contrasts. We then develop a novel account that combines some of the central insights in the literature. We argue that our theory provides an elegant account of our contrasts and yields a promising analysis of hoping. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker's original presentation of Hermeneutical Injustice left open theoretical choice points leading to criticisms and subsequent clarifications with the resulting dialectic appearing largely verbal. The absence of perspicuous exposition of hallmarks of Hermeneutical Injustice might suggest scenarios exhibiting some – but not all – such hallmarks are within its purview when they are not. The lack of clear hallmarks of Hermeneutical Injustice, moreover, obscures both the extent to which Fricker's proposed remedy Hermeneutical Justice – roughly, virtuous communicative practices – (...) adequately addresses the injustice, and the accuracy of criticisms suggesting that Hermeneutical Justice is insufficient to the task. In what follows, after briefly defending necessary and sufficient conditions for what I take to be the best candidate interpretation of Hermeneutical Injustice, I build on recent work on moral responsibility to construct and defend a rigorous explication of Hermeneutical Justice. (shrink)

In previous articles, it has been shown that the deductive system developed by Aristotle in his "second logic" is a natural deduction system and not an axiomatic system as previously had been thought. It was also stated that Aristotle's logic is self-sufficient in two senses: First, that it presupposed no other logical concepts, not even those of propositional logic; second, that it is (strongly) complete in the sense that every valid argument expressible in the language of the system is deducible (...) by means of a formal deduction in the system. Review of the system makes the first point obvious. The purpose of the present article is to prove the second. Strong completeness is demonstrated for the Aristotelian system. (shrink)

Country music has not gotten much attention in philosophy. I introduce two philosophical issues that country music raises. First, country music is simple. Some people might think that its simplicity makes country music worse; I argue that simplicity is aesthetically valuable. The second issue is country music’s ideal of authenticity; fans and performers think that country should be real or genuine in a particular way. But country music scholars have debunked the idea that country authenticity gets at anything real; widespread (...) ideas about country authenticity are rooted in a racist and fabricated picture of country music. In discussing these two issues, I highlight the importance of community in country music. (shrink)

The A-theory and the B-theory advance competing claims about how time is grounded. The A-theory says that A-facts are more fundamental in grounding time than are B-facts, and the B-theory says the reverse. We argue that whichever theory is true of the actual world is also true of all possible worlds containing time. We do this by arguing that time is uniquely groundable: however time is actually grounded, it is necessarily grounded in that way. It follows that if either the (...) A-theory or the B-theory is actually false, then it is necessarily false. (shrink)

Argumentations are at the heart of the deductive and the hypothetico-deductive methods, which are involved in attempts to reduce currently open problems to problems already solved. These two methods span the entire spectrum of problem-oriented reasoning from the simplest and most practical to the most complex and most theoretical, thereby uniting all objective thought whether ancient or contemporary, whether humanistic or scientific, whether normative or descriptive, whether concrete or abstract. Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and function of argumentations are described. Perennial philosophic (...) problems, epistemic and ontic, related to argumentations are put in perspective. So much of what has been regarded as logic is seen to be involved in the study of argumentations that logic may be usefully defined as the systematic study of argumentations, which is virtually identical to the quest of objective understanding of objectivity. (shrink)

Many real-world agents recognise that they impose harms by choosing to emit carbon, e.g., by flying. Yet many do so anyway, and then attempt to make things right by offsetting those harms. Such offsetters typically believe that, by offsetting, they change the deontic status of their behaviour, making an otherwise impermissible action permissible. Do they succeed in practice? Some philosophers have argued that they do, since their offsets appear to reverse the adverse effects of their emissions. But we show that (...) they do not. In practice, standard carbon offsetting does not reverse the harms of the original action, nor does it even benefit the same group as was harmed. Standard moral theories hence deny that such offsetting succeeds. Indeed, we show that any moral theory that allows offsetting in this setting faces a dilemma between allowing any wrong to be offset, no matter how grievous, and recognising an implausibly sharp discontinuity between offsettable actions and non-offsettable actions. The most plausible response is to accept that carbon offsetting fails to right our climate wrongs. (shrink)

In July 2014, the roboticist Ronald Arkin suggested that child sex robots could be used to treat those with paedophilic predilections in the same way that methadone is used to treat heroin addicts. Taking this onboard, it would seem that there is reason to experiment with the regulation of this technology. But most people seem to disagree with this idea, with legal authorities in both the UK and US taking steps to outlaw such devices. In this paper, I subject these (...) different regulatory attitudes to critical scrutiny. In doing so, I make three main contributions to the debate. First, I present a framework for thinking about the regulatory options that we confront when dealing with child sex robots. Second, I argue that there is a prima facie case for restrictive regulation, but that this is contingent on whether Arkin’s hypothesis has a reasonable prospect of being successfully tested. Third, I argue that Arkin’s hypothesis probably does not have a reasonable prospect of being successfully tested. Consequently, we should proceed with utmost caution when it comes to this technology. (shrink)

According to QBism, quantum states, unitary evolutions, and measurement operators are all understood as personal judgments of the agent using the formalism. Meanwhile, quantum measurement outcomes are understood as the personal experiences of the same agent. Wigner’s conundrum of the friend, in which two agents ostensibly have different accounts of whether or not there is a measurement outcome, thus poses no paradox for QBism. Indeed the resolution of Wigner’s original thought experiment was central to the development of QBist thinking. The (...) focus of this paper concerns two very instructive modifications to Wigner’s puzzle: One, a recent no-go theorem by Frauchiger and Renner, and the other a thought experiment by Baumann and Brukner. We show that the paradoxical features emphasized in these works disappear once both friend and Wigner are understood as agents on an equal footing with regard to their individual uses of quantum theory. Wigner’s action on his friend then becomes, from the friend’s perspective, an action the friend takes on Wigner. Our analysis rests on a kind of quantum Copernican principle: When two agents take actions on each other, each agent has a dual role as a physical system for the other agent. No user of quantum theory is more privileged than any other. In contrast to the sentiment of Wigner’s original paper, neither agent should be considered as in “suspended animation.” In this light, QBism brings an entirely new perspective to understanding Wigner’s friend thought experiments. (shrink)

After a short preface, the first of the three sections of this paper is devoted to historical and philosophic aspects of categoricity. The second section is a self-contained exposition, including detailed definitions, of a proof that every mathematical system whose domain is the closure of its set of distinguished individuals under its distinguished functions is categorically characterized by its induction principle together with its true atoms (atomic sentences and negations of atomic sentences). The third section deals with applications especially those (...) involving the distinction between characterizing a system and axiomatizing the truths of a system. (shrink)

This paper briefly describes process metaphysics, and argues that it is better suited for describing life than the more standard thing, or substance, metaphysics. It then explores the implications of process metaphysics for conceptualizing evolution. After explaining what it is for an organism to be a process, the paper takes up the Hull/Ghiselin thesis of species as individuals and explores the conditions under which a species or lineage could constitute an individual process. It is argued that only sexual species satisfy (...) these conditions, and that within sexual species the degree of organization varies. This, in turn, has important implications for species' evolvability. One important moral is that evolution will work differently in different biological domains. (shrink)

Prior Analytics by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) and Laws of Thought by the English mathematician George Boole (1815 – 1864) are the two most important surviving original logical works from before the advent of modern logic. This article has a single goal: to compare Aristotle’s system with the system that Boole constructed over twenty-two centuries later intending to extend and perfect what Aristotle had started. This comparison merits an article itself. Accordingly, this article does not discuss (...) many other historically and philosophically important aspects of Boole’s book, e.g. his confused attempt to apply differential calculus to logic, his misguided effort to make his system of ‘class logic’ serve as a kind of ‘truth-functional logic’, his now almost forgotten foray into probability theory, or his blindness to the fact that a truth-functional combination of equations that follows from a given truth-functional combination of equations need not follow truth-functionally. One of the main conclusions is that Boole’s contribution widened logic and changed its nature to such an extent that he fully deserves to share with Aristotle the status of being a founding figure in logic. By setting forth in clear and systematic fashion the basic methods for establishing validity and for establishing invalidity, Aristotle became the founder of logic as formal epistemology. By making the first unmistakable steps toward opening logic to the study of ‘laws of thought’—tautologies and laws such as excluded middle and non-contradiction—Boole became the founder of logic as formal ontology. (shrink)

This book treats ancient logic: the logic that originated in Greece by Aristotle and the Stoics, mainly in the hundred year period beginning about 350 BCE. Ancient logic was never completely ignored by modern logic from its Boolean origin in the middle 1800s: it was prominent in Boole’s writings and it was mentioned by Frege and by Hilbert. Nevertheless, the first century of mathematical logic did not take it seriously enough to study the ancient logic texts. A renaissance in ancient (...) logic studies occurred in the early 1950s with the publication of the landmark Aristotle’s Syllogistic by Jan Łukasiewicz, Oxford UP 1951, 2nd ed. 1957. Despite its title, it treats the logic of the Stoics as well as that of Aristotle. Łukasiewicz was a distinguished mathematical logician. He had created many-valued logic and the parenthesis-free prefix notation known as Polish notation. He co-authored with Alfred Tarski’s an important paper on metatheory of propositional logic and he was one of Tarski’s the three main teachers at the University of Warsaw. Łukasiewicz’s stature was just short of that of the giants: Aristotle, Boole, Frege, Tarski and Gödel. No mathematical logician of his caliber had ever before quoted the actual teachings of ancient logicians. -/- Not only did Łukasiewicz inject fresh hypotheses, new concepts, and imaginative modern perspectives into the field, his enormous prestige and that of the Warsaw School of Logic reflected on the whole field of ancient logic studies. Suddenly, this previously somewhat dormant and obscure field became active and gained in respectability and importance in the eyes of logicians, mathematicians, linguists, analytic philosophers, and historians. Next to Aristotle himself and perhaps the Stoic logician Chrysippus, Łukasiewicz is the most prominent figure in ancient logic studies. A huge literature traces its origins to Łukasiewicz. -/- This Ancient Logic and Its Modern Interpretations, is based on the 1973 Buffalo Symposium on Modernist Interpretations of Ancient Logic, the first conference devoted entirely to critical assessment of the state of ancient logic studies. (shrink)

Demonstrative logic, the study of demonstration as opposed to persuasion, is the subject of Aristotle's two-volume Analytics. Many examples are geometrical. Demonstration produces knowledge (of the truth of propositions). Persuasion merely produces opinion. Aristotle presented a general truth-and-consequence conception of demonstration meant to apply to all demonstrations. According to him, a demonstration, which normally proves a conclusion not previously known to be true, is an extended argumentation beginning with premises known to be truths and containing a chain of reasoning showing (...) by deductively evident steps that its conclusion is a consequence of its premises. In particular, a demonstration is a deduction whose premises are known to be true. Aristotle's general theory of demonstration required a prior general theory of deduction presented in the Prior Analytics. His general immediate-deduction-chaining conception of deduction was meant to apply to all deductions. According to him, any deduction that is not immediately evident is an extended argumentation that involves a chaining of intermediate immediately evident steps that shows its final conclusion to follow logically from its premises. To illustrate his general theory of deduction, he presented an ingeniously simple and mathematically precise special case traditionally known as the categorical syllogistic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Drawing inspiration from Fred Dretske, L. S. Carrier, John A. Barker, and Robert Nozick, we develop a tracking analysis of knowing according to which a true belief constitutes knowledge if and only if it is based on reasons that are sensitive to the fact that makes it true, that is, reasons that wouldn’t obtain if the belief weren’t true. We show that our sensitivity analysis handles numerous Gettier-type cases and lottery problems, blocks pathways leading to skepticism, and validates (...) the epistemic closure thesis that correct inferences from known premises yield knowledge of the conclusions. We discuss the plausible views of Ted Warfield and Branden Fitelson regarding cases of knowledge acquired via inference from false premises, and we show how our sensitivity analysis can account for such cases. We present arguments designed to discredit putative counterexamples to sensitivity analyses recently proffered by Tristan Haze, John Williams and Neil Sinhababu, which involve true statements made by untrustworthy informants and strange clocks that sometimes display the correct time while running backwards. Finally, we show that in virtue of employing the paradox-free subjunctive conditionals codified by Relevance Logic theorists instead of the paradox-laden subjunctive conditionals codified by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. (shrink)

In order to determine whether current (or future) machines have a welfare that we as agents ought to take into account in our moral deliberations, we must determine which capacities give rise to interests and whether current machines have those capacities. After developing an account of moral patiency, I argue that current machines should be treated as mere machines. That is, current machines should be treated as if they lack those capacities that would give rise to psychological interests. Therefore, they (...) are moral patients only if they have non-psychological interests. I then provide an account of what I call teleo interests that constitute the most plausible type of non-psychological interest that a being might have. I then argue that even if current machines have teleo interests, they are such that agents need not concern themselves with these interests. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, current machines are not moral patients. (shrink)

This paper considers the formulation of the moral requirement against hypocrisy, paying particular attention to the logical scope of ‘requires’ in that formulation. The paper argues (i) that we should prefer a wide-scope formulation to a narrow-scope formulation, and (ii) this result has some advantages for our normative theorizing about hypocrisy – in particular, it allows us to resist several of Daniela Dover’s (2019) recent arguments against the anti-hypocrisy requirement.

Time in electromagnetism shares many features with time in other physical theories. But there is one aspect of electromagnetism's relationship with time that has always been controversial, yet has not always attracted the limelight it deserves: the electromagnetic arrow of time. Beginning with a re-analysis of a famous argument between Ritz and Einstein over the origins of the radiation arrow, this chapter frames the debate between modern Einsteinians and neo-Ritzians. It tries to find a clean statement of what the arrow (...) is and then explains how it relates to the cosmological and thermodynamic arrows, representing the most developed and sophisticated attack yet, in either the physics or philosophy literature, on the electromagnetic arrow of time. (shrink)

Sex is an important part of human life. It is a source of pleasure and intimacy, and is integral to many people’s self-identity. This chapter examines the opportunities and challenges posed by the use of AI in how humans express and enact their sexualities. It does so by focusing on three main issues. First, it considers the idea of digisexuality, which according to McArthur and Twist (2017) is the label that should be applied to those ‘whose primary sexual identity comes (...) through the use of technology’, particularly through the use of robotics and AI. While agreeing that this phenomenon is worthy of greater scrutiny, the chapter questions whether it is necessary or socially desirable to see this as a new form of sexual identity. Second, it looks at the role that AI can play in facilitating human-to-human sexual contact, focusing in particular on the use of self-tracking and predictive analytics in optimising sexual and intimate behaviour. There are already a number of apps and services that promise to use AI to do this, but they pose a range of ethical risks that need to be addressed at both an individual and societal level. Finally, it considers the idea that a sophisticated form of AI could be an object of love. Can we be truly intimate with something that has been ‘programmed’ to love us? Contrary to the widely-held view, this chapter argues that this is indeed possible. (shrink)

In the present article we attempt to show that Aristotle's syllogistic is an underlying logiC which includes a natural deductive system and that it isn't an axiomatic theory as had previously been thought. We construct a mathematical model which reflects certain structural aspects of Aristotle's logic. We examine the relation of the model to the system of logic envisaged in scattered parts of Prior and Posterior Analytics. Our interpretation restores Aristotle's reputation as a logician of consummate imagination and skill. Several (...) attributions of shortcomings and logical errors to Aristotle are shown to be without merit. Aristotle's logic is found to be self-sufficient in several senses: his theory of deduction is logically sound in every detail. (His indirect deductions have been criticized, but incorrectly on our account.) Aristotle's logic presupposes no other logical concepts, not even those of propositional logic. The Aristotelian system is seen to be complete in the sense that every valid argument expressible in his system admits of a deduction within his deductive system: every semantically valid argument is deducible. (shrink)

The A-theory and the B-theory advance competing claims about how time is grounded. The A-theory says that A-facts are more fundamental in grounding time than are B-facts, and the B-theory says the reverse. We argue that whichever theory is true of the actual world is also true of all possible worlds containing time. We do this by arguing that time is uniquely groundable: however time is actually grounded, it is necessarily grounded in that way. It follows that if either the (...) A-theory or the B-theory is actually false, then it is necessarily false. (shrink)

One innovation in this paper is its identification, analysis, and description of a troubling ambiguity in the word ‘argument’. In one sense ‘argument’ denotes a premise-conclusion argument: a two-part system composed of a set of sentences—the premises—and a single sentence—the conclusion. In another sense it denotes a premise-conclusion-mediation argument—later called an argumentation: a three-part system composed of a set of sentences—the premises—a single sentence—the conclusion—and complex of sentences—the mediation. The latter is often intended to show that the conclusion follows from (...) the premises. The complementarity and interrelation of premise-conclusion arguments and premise-conclusion-mediation arguments resonate throughout the rest of the paper which articulates the conceptual structure found in logic from Aristotle to Tarski. This 1972 paper can be seen as anticipating Corcoran’s signature work: the more widely read 1989 paper, Argumentations and Logic, Argumentation 3, 17–43. MR91b:03006. The 1972 paper was translated into Portuguese. The 1989 paper was translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Persian. (shrink)

The relation between body and mind is one of the oldest riddles that has puzzled mankind. That material and mental events may interact is accepted even by the law: our mental capacity to concentrate on the task can be seriously reduced by drugs. Physical and chemical processes may act upon the mind; and when we are writing a difficult letter, our mind acts upon our body and, through a chain of physical events, upon the mind of the recipient of the (...) letter. This is what the authors of this book call the 'interaction of mental and physical events'. We know very little about this interaction; and according to recent philosophical fashions this is explained by the alleged fact that we have brains but no thoughts. The authors of this book stress that they cannot solve the body mind problem; but they hope that they have been able to shed new light on it. Eccles especially with his theory that the brain is a detector and amplifier; a theory that has given rise to important new developments, including new and exciting experiments; and Popper with his highly controversial theory of 'World 3'. They show that certain fashionable solutions which have been offered fail to understand the seriousness of the problems of the emergence of life, or consciousness and of the creativity of our minds. In Part I, Popper discusses the philosophical issue between dualist or even pluralist interaction on the one side, and materialism and parallelism on the other. There is also a historical review of these issues. In Part II, Eccles examines the mind from the neurological standpoint: the structure of the brain and its functional performance under normal as well as abnormal circumstances. The result is a radical and intriguing hypothesis on the interaction between mental events and detailed neurological occurrences in the cerebral cortex. Part III, based on twelve recorded conversations, reflects the exciting exchange between the authors as they attempt to come to terms with their opinions. (shrink)

The chapter introduces the edited collection Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications. It proposes a definition of the term 'sex robot' and examines some current prototype models. It also considers the three main ethical questions one can ask about sex robots: (i) do they benefit/harm the user? (ii) do they benefit/harm society? or (iii) do they benefit/harm the robot?

David Builes presents a paradox concerning how confident you should be that any given member of an infinite collection of fair coins landed heads, conditional on the information that they were all flipped and only finitely many of them landed heads. We argue that if you should have any conditional credence at all, it should be 1/2.

The Double Content view is the first comprehensive theory of art that is able to satisfactorily explain the nature of all kinds of artworks in a unified way — whether paintings, novels, or musical and theatrical performances. The basic thesis is that all such representational artworks involve two levels or kinds of representation: a first stage in which a concrete artifact represents an artwork, and a second stage in which that artwork in turn represents its subject matter. "Dilworth applies his (...) theory across the arts and to a variety of issues, demonstrating that it has far-reaching implications for our philosophical understanding of the nature of art.” - Stephen Davies, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Auckland.. (shrink)

All of us, including scientists, make judgments about what is true or false, probable or improbable. And in the process, we frequently appeal to concepts such as evidential support or explanation. Bayesian philosophers of science have given illuminating formal accounts of these concepts. This paper aims to follow in their footsteps, providing a novel formal account of various additional concepts: the likelihood-prior trade-off, successful accommodation of evidence, ad hocness, and, finally, consilience—sometimes also called “unification”. Using these accounts, I also provide (...) a new Bayesian analysis of how someone such as Charles Darwin hypothetically could have reasoned in favor of evolution over special creationism. Lastly, I explore how these accounts relate to other topics and accounts in philosophy, and I chart out some areas for further research. (shrink)

Rivka Weinberg advances an error theory of ultimate meaning with three parts: (1) a conceptual analysis, (2) the claim that the extension of the concept is empty, and (3) a proposed fitting response, namely being very, very sad. Weinberg’s conceptual analysis of ultimate meaning involves two features that jointly make it metaphysically impossible, namely (i) the separateness of activities and valued ends, and (ii) the bounded nature of human lives. Both are open to serious challenges. We offer an internalist alternative (...) to (i) and a relational alternative to (ii). We then draw out implications for (2) and conclude with reasons to be cheerful about the prospects of a meaningful life. (shrink)

If a person requires an organ or tissue donation to survive, many philosophers argue that whatever moral responsibility a biological relative may have to donate to the person in need will be grounded at least partially, if not entirely, in biological relations the potential donor bears to the recipient. We contend that such views ignore the role that a potential donor's unique ability to help the person in need plays in underwriting such judgments. If, for example, a sperm donor is (...) judged to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue to a child conceived with his sperm, we think this will not be due to the fact that the donor stands in a close biological relationship to the recipient. Rather, we think such judgments will largely be grounded in the presumed unique ability of the sperm donor to help the child due to the compatibility of his tissues and organs with those of the recipient. In this paper, we report the results of two studies designed to investigate the comparative roles that biological relatedness and unique ability play in generating judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases. We found that biologically related individuals are deemed to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue only when they are one of a small number of people who have the capacity to help. (shrink)

Contrary to common misconceptions, today's logic is not devoid of existential import: the universalized conditional ∀ x [S→ P] implies its corresponding existentialized conjunction ∃ x [S & P], not in all cases, but in some. We characterize the proexamples by proving the Existential-Import Equivalence: The antecedent S of the universalized conditional alone determines whether the universalized conditional has existential import, i.e. whether it implies its corresponding existentialized conjunction.A predicate is an open formula having only x free. An existential-import predicate (...) Q is one whose existentialization, ∃ x Q, is logically true; otherwise, Q is existential-import-free or simply import-free.How abundant or widespread is existential import? How abundant or widespread are existential-import predicates in themselves or in comparison to import-free predicates? We show that existential-import predicates are quite abundant, and no less so than import-free predicates. Existential.. (shrink)

It is proposed that conscious qualia arise when and only when the 'running' of physical processes takes a special, complex form. Running in general is the unified unfolding of processes through time, and is claimed to be an additional quality of physical processes beyond their state trajectories. The type of running needed for conscious qualia is reflexive in physically affecting and responding to itself. Intuitively, running is essentially the flow of causation, and the self-affecting/responding is a matter of causation bearing (...) a causal relationship to itself: that is, causation can itself be reflexive. The proposal potentially makes temporal qualia the most fundamental qualia, with others derivatively arising. The proposal is neutral about whether a conscious process occurs in a natural organism, in a physically implemented computational system, or in some other physical substrate, as long as the substrate involves the special reflexive runningness. (shrink)

Causal theories of perception typically have problems in explaining deviant causal chains. They also have difficulty with other unusual putative cases of perception involving prosthetic aids, defective perception, scientifically extended cases of perception, and so on. But I show how a more adequate reflexive causal theory, in which objects or properties X cause a perceiver to acquire X-related dispositions toward that very same item X, can provide a plausible and principled perceptual explanation of all of these kinds of cases. A (...) critical discussion of David Lewis's perceptual descriptivist views is also provided, including a defense of the logical possibility of systematic misperception or perceptual error for a perceiver, in spite of its empirical improbability. (shrink)

Elijah Chudnoff’s case for irreducible cognitive phenomenology hinges on seeming to see the truth of a mathematical proposition (Chudnoff 2015). In the following, I develop an augmented version of Chudnoff’s case, not based on seeming to see, or intuition, but based on being in a state with presentational phenomenology of high-level content. In contrast to other cases for cognitive phenomenology, those based on Strawson’s case (Strawson 2011), I argue that the case presented here is able to withstand counterarguments, which attempt (...) to reduce cognitive phenomenology to sensory phenomenology. To support my argument, I present findings from Bowden and Jung-Beeman’s experiments with the Aha! Experience (Bowden & Jung-Beeman 2004), and argue that the Aha! Experience is a species of the experience of understanding presented here. I interpret the results of these experiments to provide further evidence for irreducible cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)

The outlines of a novel, fully naturalistic theory of perception are provided, that can explain perception of an object X by organism Z in terms of reflexive causality. On the reflexive view proposed, organism Z perceives object or property X just in case X causes Z to acquire causal dispositions reflexively directed back upon X itself. This broadly functionalist theory is potentially capable of explaining both perceptual representation and perceptual content in purely causal terms, making no use of informational concepts. (...) However, such a reflexive, naturalistic causal theory must compete with well entrenched, supposedly equally naturalistic theories of perception that are based on some concept of information, so the paper also includes some basic logical, naturalistic and explanatory criticisms of such informational views. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: The Reflexive Theory of Perception (RTP) claims that perception of an object or property X by an organism Z consists in Z being caused by X to acquire some disposition D toward X itself. This broadly behavioral perceptual theory explains perceptual intentionality and correct versus incorrect, plus successful versus unsuccessful, perception in a plausible evolutionary framework. The theory also undermines cognitive and perceptual modularity assumptions, including informational or purely epistemic views of perception in that, according to the RTP, any (...) X-caused and X-directed dispositions are genuinely perceptual—including affective, attitudinal, and immediately activated purely action-directed behavioral dispositions. Thus the RTP has the potential to provide the foundations for a broadly behavioral counter-revolution in cognitive science. (shrink)

Skeptical theism (ST) may undercut the key inference in the evidential argument from evil, but it does so at a cost. If ST is true, then we lose our ability to assess the all things considered (ATC) value of natural events and states of affairs. And if we lose that ability, a whole slew of undesirable consequences follow. So goes a common consequential critique of ST. In a recent article, Anderson has argued that this consequential critique is flawed. Anderson claims (...) that ST only has the consequence that we lack epistemic access to potentially God-justifying reasons for permitting a prima facie “bad” (or “evil”) event. But this is very different from lacking epistemic access to the ATC value of such events. God could have an (unknowable) reason for not intervening to prevent E and yet E could still be (knowably) ATC-bad. Ingenious though it is, this article argues that Anderson’s attempted defence of ST is flawed. This is for two reasons. First, and most importantly, the consequential critique does not rely on the questionable assumption he identifies. Indeed, the argument can be made quite easily by relying purely on Anderson’s distinction between God-justifying reasons for permitting E and the ATC value of E. And second, Anderson’s defence of his position, if correct, would serve to undermine the foundations of ST. (shrink)

This paper will investigate the basic question of the nature of perception, as theoretically approached from a purely naturalistic standpoint. An adequate theory must not only have clear application to a world full of pre-existing biological examples of perception of all kinds, from unicellular perception to conscious human perception, but it must also satisfy a series of theoretical or philosophical constraints, as enumerated and discussed in Section 1 below. A perceptual theory invoking _reflexive dispositions_--that is, dispositions directed toward the very (...) same worldly perceived objects or properties that caused them--will be defended as one legitimate such naturalistic theory. (shrink)

The artefacts produced by artists during their creation of works of art are very various: paintings, writings, musical scores, and so on. I have a general thesis to offer about the relations of artefacts and artworks, but within the confines of this article I shall mainly discuss cases drawn from the art of painting, central specimens of which seem to be autographic in Nelson Goodman's sense, namely such that even the most exact duplication of them does not count as producing (...) the same work of art. My view will be that an artwork (such as a painting) and its associated artefact are not identical, and nor is the artefact in any sense part of the painting in question,2 but that nevertheless it is still possible to maintain the view that paintings are autographic (which view I shall call l the autographic thesis). I shall proceed initially through presentation of some counter-examples to common assumptions as to the relations of artefacts and artworks, and then present an alternative 'representational' theory of their relations. (shrink)