Over the past three decades, Vietnam has transitioned from an agrarian-based, centrally planned economy to a mixed economy with emerging market status. Additionally, projections indicate that Vietnam will be one of the world’s largest economies by 2050 if growth is sustained at present rates. The evolution of the financial sector, which began with the Doi Moi reforms in the mid-1980s, has been central to facilitating this growth. As the economy has expanded, Vietnam has maintained a gradualist approach to developing market-based (...) mechanisms of resource allocation. However, financial markets are still in an embryonic stage and substantial reform is required if the economy is to meet the expected rates of development. Against this backdrop, this dissertation critically evaluates trends and dynamics in Vietnam’s journey of financial development over the past three decades, with a particular emphasis on the experiences of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on quantitative analysis, secondary data and interviews conducted with a range of firms and stakeholders, I argue that financial development in Vietnam has had positive effects in terms of increasing access to funding for SMEs. As the financial system has developed, allocative efficiency has improved to the benefit of SMEs. However, some informants criticised the progress made to date, arguing that a funding mismatch still exists. Specifically, weak corporate governance, state-owned enterprises and a lack of derivatives have prevented effective capital market development. Given Vietnam’s high level of political corruption, this paper concludes that policy makers must place more attention on the political-economic structures of Vietnam if achieving middle-income status is to occur. Specifically, a tighter and more controlled effort to dismantle corporate bureaucracy and nepotism would allow better access to funding for Vietnamese SMEs. (shrink)

[Author note: There is a video explainer of this paper on youtube at the new work in philosophy channel (search for surname+deepfakes).] -/- It is widely thought that deepfake videos are a significant and unprecedented threat to our epistemic practices. In some writing about deepfakes, manipulated videos appear as the harbingers of an unprecedented _epistemic apocalypse_. In this paper I want to take a critical look at some of the more catastrophic predictions about deepfake videos. I will argue for three (...) claims: (1) that once we recognise the role of social norms in the epistemology of recordings, deepfakes are much less concerning, (2) that the history of photographic manipulation reveals some important precedents, correcting claims about the novelty of deepfakes, and (3) that proposed solutions to deepfakes have been overly focused on technological interventions. My overall goal is not so much to argue that deepfakes are not a problem, but to argue that behind concerns around deepfakes lie a more general class of social problems about the organisation of our epistemic practices. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that Hume, given his theory of causation, is committed to an implausibly thin account of what it is like to act voluntarily. Others suggest, on the basis of his argument against free will, that Hume takes no more than an illusory feature of action to distinguish the experience of performing an act from the experience of merely observing an act. In this paper, I argue that Hume is committed to neither an unduly parsimonious nor a sceptical account (...) of the phenomenology of agency. (shrink)

An influential objection to the epistemic power of the imagination holds that it is uninformative. You cannot get more out of the imagination than you put into it, and therefore learning from the imagination is impossible. This paper argues, against this view, that the imagination is robustly informative. Moreover, it defends a novel account of how the imagination informs, according to which the imagination is informative in virtue of its analog representational format. The core idea is that analog representations represent (...) relations ‘for free,’ and this explains how the imagination can contain more information than is put into it. This account makes important contributions to both philosophy of mind, by showing how the imagination can generate new content that is not represented by a subject’s antecedent mental states, and epistemology, by showing how the imagination can generate new justification that is not conferred by a subject’s antecedent evidence. (shrink)

The Visiting Scholars Programme talk for high school students on the question of why God allows suffering. The Exemplarist Theodicy is proposed in this talk as a solution to the problem.

I argue for the existence of imaginative beliefs: mental states that are imaginative in format and doxastic in attitude. I advance two arguments for this thesis. First, there are imaginings that play the functional roles of belief. Second, there are imaginings that play the epistemic roles of belief. These arguments supply both descriptive and normative grounds for positing imaginative beliefs. I also argue that this view fares better than alternatives that posit distinct imaginative and doxastic states to account for the (...) same phenomena. Along the way, I demonstrate the theoretical significance of imaginative beliefs by showing how they pose a challenge for standard taxonomies of the mind, clarify the sense in which imagination is occurrent and voluntary, explain the justificatory role of the imagination, and point to a deep but underappreciated symmetry between imagistic and non-imagistic thought. (shrink)

As I have explored elsewhere, the Birmingham Philosophy Guild, which my former students and I re-founded in 2012, is a team of community members who engage in theoretical discussion, support group self-cultivation, and community activism. To further promote the guild as a catalyst for progressive social change, the present article connects it to both the popular cultural phenomenon of the “X-Men” – to make the guild more appealing to students and laypeople – and to the cutting-edge contemporary French philosophy of (...) Étienne Balibar – to make the guild more appealing to professors and culture workers. Moreover, the article connects these low- and high-brow phenomena to each other as well, thereby illustrating the political relevance of the lower, as well as a weakness in the higher, pursuant to social justice activism today. (shrink)

The main message of Neuroethics is that neuroscience forces us to reconceptualize human agency as marvelously diverse and flexible. Free will can arise from unconscious brain processes. Individuals with mental disorders, including addiction and psychopathy, exhibit more agency than is often recognized. Brain interventions should be embraced with cautious optimism. Our moral intuitions, which arise from entangled reason and emotion, can generally be trusted. Nevertheless, we can and should safely enhance our brain chemistry, partly because motivated reasoning crops up in (...) everyday life and in the practice of neuroscience itself. Despite serious limitations, brain science can be useful in the courtroom and marketplace. Recognizing all this nuance leaves little room for anxious alarmism or overhype and urges an emphasis on neurodiversity. The result is a highly opinionated tour of neuroethics as an exciting field full of implications for philosophy, science, medicine, law, and public policy. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers have been skeptical that the imagination can justify beliefs about the actual world. After all, how could merely imagining something give you any reason to believe that it is true? However, within the past decade or so, a lively debate has emerged over whether the imagination can justify empirical belief and, if so, how. This paper provides a critical overview of the recent literature on the epistemology of imagination and points to avenues for future research.

We are reliable about logic in the sense that we by-and-large believe logical truths and disbelieve logical falsehoods. Given that logic is an objective subject matter, it is difficult to provide a satisfying explanation of our reliability. This generates a significant epistemological challenge, analogous to the well-known Benacerraf-Field problem for mathematical Platonism. One initially plausible way to answer the challenge is to appeal to evolution by natural selection. The central idea is that being able to correctly deductively reason conferred a (...) heritable survival advantage upon our ancestors. However, there are several arguments that purport to show that evolutionary accounts cannot even in principle explain how it is that we are reliable about logic. In this paper, I address these arguments. I show that there is no general reason to think that evolutionary accounts are incapable of explaining our reliability about logic. (shrink)

Many think that a specific aspect of phenomenal consciousness—valenced or affective experience—is essential to consciousness’s moral significance (valence sentientism). They hold that valenced experience is necessary for well-being, or moral status, or psychological intrinsic value (or all three). Some think that phenomenal consciousness generally is necessary for non-derivative moral significance (broad sentientism). Few think that consciousness is unnecessary for moral significance (non-necessitarianism). In this paper, I consider the prospects for these views. I first consider the prospects for valence sentientism in (...) light of Vulcans, beings who are conscious but without affect or valence of any sort. I think Vulcans pressure us to accept broad sentientism. But I argue that a consideration of explanations for broad sentientism opens up possible explanations for non-necessitarianism about the moral significance of consciousness. That is, once one leans away from valence sentientism because of Vulcans, one should feel pressure to accept a view on which consciousness is not necessary for well-being, moral status, or psychological intrinsic value. (shrink)

Contributions to COVID-19 vaccination programmes promise valuable collective goods. They can support public and individual health by creating herd immunity and taking the pressure off overwhelmed public health services; support freedom of movement by enabling governments to remove restrictive lockdown policies; and improve economic and social well-being by allowing businesses, schools, and other essential public services to re-open. The vaccinated can contribute to the production of these goods. The unvaccinated, who benefit from, but who do not contribute to these goods (...) can be morally criticised as free-riders. In this paper defends the claim that in the case of COVID-19, the unvaccinated are unfair free-riders. I defend the claim against two objections. First, that they are not unfair free-riders because they lack the subjective attitudes and intentions of free-riders; second, that although the unvaccinated may be free-riders, their free-riding is not unfair. (shrink)

The vividness of mental imagery is epistemically relevant. Intuitively, vivid and intense memories are epistemically better than weak and hazy memories, and using a clear and precise mental image in the service of spatial reasoning is epistemically better than using a blurry and imprecise mental image. But how is vividness epistemically relevant? I argue that vividness is higher-order evidence about one’s epistemic state, rather than first-order evidence about the world. More specifically, the vividness of a mental image is higher-order evidence (...) about the amount of first-order information one has about its subject matter. When vividness is sufficiently low, it can give one reason to doubt the epistemic basis of the mental image and thereby act as a defeater. This account has important implications for theorizing about the epistemic roles of memory, imagination, mental imagery, and phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

To take an empirical approach toward belief, I suggest thinking of belief as a putative kind within the domain of cognitive science. Adopting realist, naturalist, and non-reductionist account of kinds according to which kinds are clusters of causal properties, I argue that a plausible place to begin an inquiry on belief is the architecture of human reasoning. I offer the Sound Board Account of Human Reasoning (S-BAR) (in contrast to Dual Process Theory), according to which there is one reasoning system, (...) which can operate consciously or unconsciously, automatically or controlled, concretely or abstractly, and inductively or deductively. I then argue that, on this architecture, belief will have two properties: inferential promiscuity and settling state. In the final section, I argue that wishful thinkings are beliefs, acceptance and belief are distinct, and argue for a disambiguation of implicit measures. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has been dogged by the objection that it lacks the ability to provide adequate action-guidance, that it is agent-centered rather act-centered. Virtue ethics has also been faulted for devolving into moral cultural relativism. Rosalind Hursthouse has presented an action-based, naturalistic theory of virtue ethics intended to defuse these charges. Despite its merits, I argue that Hurthouse’s theory fails to successfully solve the problems associated with action guidance and relativism precisely because her attempt to provide a non-cultural basis for (...) virtue ethics undermines the possibility of using virtue ethics to derive useful action-guidance. The action-guiding power of virtue is derived from culture; seeking to avoid the cultural grounding of virtue merely brings one back to the problem of how virtue ethics can provide action-guidance. (shrink)

Necessarily, if S lacks the ability to exercise control, S is not an agent. If S is not an agent, S cannot act intentionally, responsibly, or rationally, nor can S possess or exercise free will. In spite of the obvious importance of control, however, no general account of control exists. In this paper I reflect on the nature of control itself. I develop accounts of control ’s exercise and control ’s possession that illuminate what it is for degrees of control (...) —that is, the degree of control an agent possesses or exercises in a given circumstance—to vary. Finally, I demonstrate the usefulness of the account on offer by showing how it generates a solution to a long-standing problem for causalist theories of action, namely, the problem of deviant causation. (shrink)

It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in a permanent vegetative state, debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness, controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia, and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, (...) though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and those with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

I argue that the neural realizers of experiences of trying are not distinct from the neural realizers of actual trying . I then ask how experiences of trying might relate to the perceptual experiences one has while acting. First, I assess recent zombie action arguments regarding conscious visual experience, and I argue that contrary to what some have claimed, conscious visual experience plays a causal role for action control in some circumstances. Second, I propose a multimodal account of the experience (...) of acting. According to this account, the experience of acting is a temporally extended, co-conscious collection of agentive and perceptual experiences, functionally integrated and structured both by multimodal perceptual processing as well as by what an agent is, at the time, trying to do. (shrink)

Moral arguments against the consumption of animal products from factory farms are traditionally categorical. The conclusions require people to eliminate from their diets all animal products (veganism), all animal flesh (vegetarianism), all animals except seafood (pescetarianism), etc. An alternative “reducetarian” approach prescribes progressive reduction in one's consumption of animal products, not categorical abstention. We articulate a much-needed moral defense of this more ecumenical approach. We start with a presumptive case in favor of reducetarianism before moving on to address three objections—that (...) it falls short of our obligations to address such an egregious practice, is a rationalization of the status quo, and cannot fix systemic injustices in animal agriculture. We conclude that reducetarianism is a defensible approach for many people and is a promising route to moral progress on factory farming. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion note on Isaacs et al. (2022), who have claimed to offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities, based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurability. In this note, I clarify some consequences of their proposal. In particular, I show that if their proposal is applied to a bounded 3-dimensional space, then they have to reject at least one of the following: (i) If A is at most as probable as B and B is at most as (...) probable as C, then A is at most as probable as C. (ii) Let A ∩ C = B ∩ C = ∅. A is at most as probable as B iff (A ∪ C) is at most as probable as (B ∪ C). But rejecting either statement seems unattractive. (shrink)

Consciousness-based approaches to non-human moral status maintain that consciousness is necessary for (some degree or level of) moral status. While these approaches are intuitive to many, in this paper I argue that the judgment that consciousness is necessary for moral status is not secure enough to guide policy regarding non-humans, that policies responsive to the moral status of non-humans should take seriously the possibility that psychological features independent of consciousness are sufficient for moral status. Further, I illustrate some practical consequences (...) of calling consciousness-based views into question. (shrink)

A consequence relation is strongly classical if it has all the theorems and entailments of classical logic as well as the usual meta-rules (such as Conditional Proof). A consequence relation is weakly classical if it has all the theorems and entailments of classical logic but lacks the usual meta-rules. The most familiar example of a weakly classical consequence relation comes from a simple supervaluational approach to modelling vague language. This approach is formally equivalent to an account of logical consequence according (...) to which α1, ..., αn entails β just in case □α1, ..., □αn entails □β in the modal logic S5. This raises a natural question: If we start with a different underlying modal logic, can we generate a strongly classical logic? This paper explores this question. In particular, it discusses four related technical issues: (1) Which base modal logics generate strongly classical logics and which generate weakly classical logics? (2) Which base logics generate themselves? (3) How can we directly characterize the logic generated from a given base logic? (4) Given a logic that can be generated, which base logics generate it? The answers to these questions have philosophical interest. They can help us to determine whether there is a plausible supervaluational approach to modelling vague language that yields the usual meta-rules. They can also help us to determine the feasibility of other philosophical projects that rely on an analogous formalism, such as the project of defining logical consequence in terms of the preservation of an epistemic status. (shrink)

This article focuses on providing a new a priori argument for the veracity of the doctrine of the Incarnation. This new argument, called the Subjectivity Argument, will be formulated in light of the concept of "omnisubjectivity," as proposed by Linda Zagzebski, and an "emotion," as conceptualised by the "somatic feeling theory," posited by Jesse Prinz. Doing this will provide a specific argument that provides strong grounds for affirming the necessity of the Incarnation, without, however, being subject to the primary objections (...) that can be raised against other a priori arguments for the Incarnation in the contemporary literature. (shrink)

This article aims to formulate a philosophical problem that is grounded upon the Pan-Abrahamic nature of early Islam, focusing on the implications that this has for understanding the identity of the contemporary Islamic community. This philosophical problem—termed the Pan-Abrahamic Problem—is structured around the examination of Prophet Muhammad’s leadership and the inclusivity of the early Islamic community, as proposed by Fred Donner in the form of the Pan-Abrahamic Thesis. The formulation of this philosophical problem is presented through the lens of the (...) philosophical criteria of continuity and connectedness of aims (doctrine) and organisation, as proposed by Richard Swinburne. This philosophical problem will, thus, offer a challenge against traditional exclusivist narratives within Islam, ultimately aiming to emphasise the inclusive and pluralistic foundation of the religion and the significance of this for the contemporary Islamic identity. (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people’s ordinary capacities for understanding the world make use of much the same methods one might find in a formal scientific investigation. A series of recent experimental results offer a challenge to this widely-held view, suggesting that people’s moral judgments can actually influence the intuitions they hold both in folk psychology and in causal cognition. The present target article distinguishes two basic approaches to explaining such effects. One approach would be to say that the (...) relevant competencies are entirely non-moral but that some additional factor (conversational pragmatics, performance error, etc.) then interferes and allows people’s moral judgments to affect their intuitions. Another approach would be to say that moral considerations truly do figure in workings of the competencies themselves. It is argued that the data available now favor the second of these approaches over the first. (shrink)

I present an intractable puzzle for the currently popular view that belief is weak—the view that expressions like ‘S believes p’ ascribe to S a doxastic attitude towards p that is rationally compatible with low credence that p. The puzzle concerns issues that arise on considering beliefs in conditionals. I show that proponents of weak belief either cannot consistently apply their preferred methodology when accommodating beliefs in conditionals, or they must deny that beliefs in conditionals can be used in reasoning.

Traditional medical Artificial Intelligence models, approved for clinical use, restrict themselves to single-modal data e.g. images only, limiting their applicability in the complex, multimodal environment of medical diagnosis and treatment. Multimodal Transformer Models in healthcare can effectively process and interpret diverse data forms such as text, images, and structured data. They have demonstrated impressive performance on standard benchmarks like USLME question banks and continue to improve with scale. However, the adoption of these advanced AI models is not without challenges. While (...) multimodal deep learning models like Transformers offer promising advancements in healthcare, their integration requires careful consideration of the accompanying ethical and environmental challenges. (shrink)

Research on intuitions about philosophical thought experiments shows a striking pattern. Often, there are powerful intuitions on one side and also powerful intuitions on the exact opposite side. A question now arises about how to understand this pattern. One possible view would be that it is primarily a matter of different people having different intuitions. I present evidence for the view that this is not the correct understanding. Instead, I suggest, it is primarily a matter of individual people having *conflicting (...) intuitions*. That is, it is primarily a matter of individual people having an intuition on one side and also having an intuition on the opposite side. (shrink)

An invited talk delivered at the Logos Institute of Analytic Theology at the University of St Andrews. The topic was on the coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation. I sought to introduce my solution to the logical challenge against the doctrine of the incarnation and also my own metaphysical model of the incarnation (called the transformational model). This talk summarises my article on this topic published previously in IJPR (termed 'On the metaphysics of the incarnation'). Handouts for the talk (...) are included in the file. (shrink)

Mill defines utilitarianism as the combination of a “theory of life” and a moral claim: only pleasure and freedom from pain are desirable as ends, and the promotion of happiness is the sole goal of moral action. So defined, utilitarianism is open to ad hominem pessimistic objection: a “theory of life” which entails the impossibility of happiness fits poorly with a morality centered on its promotion. The first two challenges Mill confronts in Utilitarianism share this pessimistic structure. Interestingly, however, these (...) challenges paint inverted pictures of the best utilitarian life: one suggests this life is satisfying but ignoble, the other that it is noble but unsatisfying. I explain Mill's treatment of both challenges as genuinely pessimistic interpretations of utilitarianism's “theory of life.” Read through the lens of Mill's engagement with pessimism, these challenges point to distinctive conceptions of dignity and satisfaction that play a significant role in Mill's ethics. (shrink)

The rise of experimental philosophy has placed metaphilosophical questions, particularly those concerning concepts, at the center of philosophical attention. X-phi offers empirically rigorous methods for identifying conceptual content, but what exactly it contributes towards evaluating conceptual content remains unclear. We show how x-phi complements Rudolf Carnap’s underappreciated methodology for concept determination, explication. This clarifies and extends x-phi’s positive philosophical import, and also exhibits explication’s broad appeal. But there is a potential problem: Carnap’s account of explication was limited to empirical and (...) logical concepts, but many concepts of interest to philosophers are essentially normative. With formal epistemology as a case study, we show how x-phi assisted explication can apply to normative domains. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we justified in employing the rule of inference Modus Ponens? One tempting approach to answering this question is to claim that we are justified in employing Modus Ponens purely in virtue of facts concerning meaning or concept-possession. In this paper, we argue that such meaning-based accounts cannot be accepted as the fundamental account of our justification.

Trust is commonly defined as a metaphysically-hybrid notion involving an attitude and an action. The action component of trust is defined as a special form of reliance in which the trustor has: (1) heightened expectations of their trustee; and (2) a disposition to justifiably feel betrayed if their trust is broken. The first aim of this paper is to reject the view that trust is a form of reliance. -/- The second aim of this paper is to develop and defend (...) a non-reliance-based variation of Katherine Hawley’s commitment trust account. Roughly, on my variant account, if X trusts Y to ϕ, then X has a belief with the following counterfactual as its content: ‘if I were to rely on Y to keep a commitment to ϕ, then I believe that Y would keep that commitment to ϕ.’ I defend this account against the objection that non-reliance accounts cannot explain the intuition that trust involves heightened expectations, and that it elicits justified betrayal when broken. I also respond to the argument that such accounts can’t provide adequate explanations of therapeutic trust, which is taken to be a counterexample of belief trust insofar as it describes instances where trustors trust trustees despite not believing that they are trustworthy. (shrink)

A traditional idea is that moral judgment involves more than calculating the consequences of actions; it also requires an assessment of the agent's intentions, the act's nature, and whether the agent uses another person as a means to her ends. I survey experimental developments suggesting that ordinary people often tacitly reason in terms of such deontological rules. It's now unclear whether we should posit a traditional form of the doctrine of double effect. However, further research suggests that a range of (...) non-consequentialist factors influence moral judgment, including intentions, commissions, personal harm, and agent-centered commitments. Many, if not all, such factors appear to affect how involved the agent is in bringing about an outcome. (shrink)

The extensive involvement of nonconscious processes in human behaviour has led some to suggest that consciousness is much less important for the control of action than we might think. In this article I push against this trend, developing an understanding of conscious control that is sensitive to our best models of overt action control. Further, I assess the cogency of various zombie challenges—challenges that seek to demote the importance of conscious control for human agency. I argue that though nonconscious contributions (...) to action control are evidently robust, these challenges are overblown. (shrink)

It has been hypothesized that actors tend to attribute behavior to the situation whereas observers tend to attribute behavior to the person (Jones & Nisbett 1972). The authors argue that this simple hypothesis fails to capture the complexity of actual actor-observer differences in people’s behavioral explanations. A new framework is proposed in which reason explanations are distinguished from explanations that cite causes, especially stable traits. With this framework in place, it becomes possible to show that there are a number of (...) distinct actorobserver asymmetries in explanation, each stemming from a distinct psychological process by which explanations are generated. (shrink)

Closure for justification is the claim that thinkers are justified in believing the logical consequences of their justified beliefs, at least when those consequences are competently deduced. Many have found this principle to be very plausible. Even more attractive is the special case of Closure known as Single-Premise Closure. In this paper, I present a challenge to Single-Premise Closure. The challenge is based on the phenomenon of rational self-doubt – it can be rational to be less than fully confident in (...) one's beliefs and patterns of reasoning. In rough outline, the argument is as follows: Consider a thinker who deduces a conclusion from a justified initial premise via an incredibly long sequence of small competent deductions. Surely, such a thinker should suspect that he has made a mistake somewhere. And surely, given this, he should not believe the conclusion of the deduction even though he has a justified belief in the initial premise. (shrink)

This paper aims to expand the range of empirical work relevant to the extended cognition debates. First, I trace the historical development of the person-situation debate in social and personality psychology and the extended cognition debate in the philosophy of mind. Next, I highlight some instructive similarities between the two and consider possible objections to my comparison. I then argue that the resolution of the person-situation debate in terms of interactionism lends support for an analogously interactionist conception of extended cognition. (...) I argue that this interactionism might necessitate a shift away from the dominant agent-artifact paradigm toward an agent–agent paradigm. If this is right, then social and personality psychology—the discipline(s) that developed from the person-situation debate—opens a whole new range of empirical considerations for extended cognition theorists which align with Clark & Chalmers original vision of agents themselves as spread into the world. (shrink)

How should we understand validity? A standard way to characterize validity is in terms of the preservation of truth (or truth in a model). But there are several problems facing such characterizations. An alternative approach is to characterize validity epistemically, for instance in terms of the preservation of an epistemic status. In this paper, I raise a problem for such views. First, I argue that if the relevant epistemic status is factive, such as being in a position to know or (...) having conclusive evidence for, then the account runs into trouble if we endorse certain familiar logical principles. Second, I argue that if the relevant epistemic status is non-factive, such as is rationally committed to or has justification for believing, then a similar problem arises if we endorse the logical principles as well as a sufficiently strong epistemic “level-bridging” principle. Finally, I argue that an analogous problem arises for the most natural characterization of validity in terms of rational credence. (shrink)

A foundational issue for the science and philosophy of consciousness concerns the function(s) of consciousness – what consciousness does for any particular aspect of psychological or neural processing. In spite of progress in consciousness science, false assumptions and a lack of clarity regarding how best to approach the functions of consciousness represent an ongoing and serious roadblock to progress. Misguided approaches to the function(s) of consciousness have the potential to mangle explanatory priorities, and divert attention, effort, and funding away from (...) useful questions and experimental paradigms. In this paper we offer a way forward: the capacity-based approach to the function(s) of consciousness. This approach flows out of a general explanatory approach that is influential in the philosophy of science and psychology (but not consciousness studies), according to which the mind is understood in terms of a structured collection of capacities. And capacities are explained by empirically discovered facts that identify functions (causal roles) played by empirically identified parts of a system. After elucidating this capacity-based approach to the mind, we show how consciousness fits within it. We then argue that this approach avoids problems that plague theory-based approaches to identifying the function(s) of consciousness, avoids mistakes endemic to the common strategy of looking for the function(s) of consciousness by asking what consciousness is necessary for, and re-orients explanatory priorities in a way that better focuses consciousness science, and that suggests fruitful avenues for experimentation. (shrink)

In this article, I build on my recent conceptions of law as poetry and of justice as dance by articulating three new conceptions of the relationship between law and justice. In the first, “poetry-based justice”, justice consists of a rigid choreography to a kind of musical recitation of the law’s poetry. In the second, “dancing-based law”, justice consists of spontaneous, freely improvised movement patterns that the poetry of the law tries to capture in a kind of musical notation. And in (...) the third, “reciprocal-legal justice”, justice and law consist of a reciprocally determining artistic collaboration between the democratic dancing masses and the aristocratic poetising elites. Given that each of these predominates in one of three types of community, I then present a reclassification of right-leaning, centrist and leftist societies as dominated by “literalist”, “kinetic” and “mutualist” communities (respectively), and offer suggestions for legislators and activists working in each type. In conclusion, law and justice, qua poetry and dance, become more flexible, inclusive and open to creative improvising and collaboration, a new form that I name, after Astraea, Greek goddess of divine justice, “astral legal justice”. (shrink)

The Shape of Agency offers interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. The first part offers accounts of a collection of related phenomena that have long troubled philosophers of action: control over behaviour, non-deviant causation, and intentional action. These accounts build on earlier work in the causalist tradition, and undermine the claims made by many that causalism cannot offer a satisfying account of non-deviant causation, and therefore fails as an account of intentional (...) action. The second part turns to modes of agentive excellence—ways that agents display quality of form—providing a novel account of skill, including an account of the ways that agents display more or less skill. Shepherd discusses the role of knowledge in skill, and concludes that while knowledge is often important, it is inessential. This leads to a discussion of the way that knowledge of action and knowledge of how to act informs action execution. Knowledgeable action includes a unique epistemic underpinning: in knowledgeable action, the agent has authoritative knowledge of what she is doing and how she is doing it when and because she is poised to control her action by way of practical reasoning. (shrink)

Recent empirical research seems to show that emotions play a substantial role in moral judgment. Perhaps the most important line of support for this claim focuses on disgust. A number of philosophers and scientists argue that there is adequate evidence showing that disgust significantly influences various moral judgments. And this has been used to support or undermine a range of philosophical theories, such as sentimentalism and deontology. I argue that the existing evidence does not support such arguments. At best it (...) suggests something rather different: that moral judgment can have a minor emotive function, in addition to a substantially descriptive one. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to revolutionise the practice of medicine. Recent advancements in the field of deep learning have demonstrated success in variety of clinical tasks: detecting diabetic retinopathy from images, predicting hospital readmissions, aiding in the discovery of new drugs, etc. AI’s progress in medicine, however, has led to concerns regarding the potential effects of this technology on relationships of trust in clinical practice. In this paper, I will argue that there is merit to these concerns, since AI (...) systems can be relied on, and are capable of reliability, but cannot be trusted, and are not capable of trustworthiness. Insofar as patients are required to rely on AI systems for their medical decision-making, there is potential for this to produce a deficit of trust in relationships in clinical practice. (shrink)

This article aims to provide an explication of a new conceptualisation of God's defeat of horrors (i.e., horror-defeat), and a successful solution to the Problem of Horrors—which we can term the ‘Reconciliation Account’. This specific conceptualisation will be formulated in light of the work of Marilyn McCord Adams, with an original extension of her work being made by utilising the work of Richard Swinburne and Robin Collins (amongst others), which, in combination, will provide us with a more robust solution to (...) the issue raised by horrors. (shrink)

This paper compares Joseph Rouse‘s perspective on the relation between naturalism, social normativity and ethics with the enactivist approaches of Shaun Gallagher and Hanne De Jaegher. Rouse and these enactivists draw from many of the same conceptual resources, including the philosophical insights of phenomenology , hermeneutics, the later Wittgenstein and feminist scholarship, in order to rethink naturalism in the direction of strong interdependence between the individual and their material and social environment. Rouse(2023) has expressed support for embodied, embedded, extended, and (...) enactive (4EA) approaches to cognition, saying his project “primarily intersects theirs in relations between organismic bodies and their developmental and selective environments.” Unlike Gallagher and De Jaegher, however, Rouse also incorporates the poststructuralist thinking of Nietzsche and Foucault. His proximity to the ideas of Foucault on power and subjectivity gives him a vantage on the radically socially situated nature of individual sense-making that is missing from enactivist writers’ accounts. Despite their emphasis on the primary role of intersubjectivity in the genesis and functioning of individual perceptual, affective and cognitive processes, the lingering vestiges of subjectivist volunterism and consequent reliance on individual moral blame inhabit their formulations of the ethics of social embodiment. Rouse has in the main applied his analyses to debates within philosophy of science and the post-analytic community (McDowell, Brandon, Haugeland, Rorty, Davidson, Sellars, Quine). In this paper I will instead direct Rouse’s poststructuralist articulation of naturalism toward a critical reading the recent forays into the terrain of ethics and justice by Gallagher and De Jaegher. (shrink)

The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where ‘theory of mind’ and moral judgment meet. Preschool children’s judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side-effect is brought about 'on purpose' when the side-effect itself is morally bad but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of ‘on-purpose’ (as opposed to purpose influencing moral judgment). Judgments of intentional action are usually (...) assumed to be purely factual. That these judgments are sometimes partly normative — even in preschoolers — challenges current understanding. Young children’s judgments regarding foreseen side-effects depend upon whether the children process the idea that the character does not care about the side-effect. As soon as preschoolers effectively process the ‘theory of mind’ concept, NOT CARE THAT P, children show the side-effect effect.idea.. (shrink)

In defending his interest-relative account of knowledge in Knowledge and Practical Interests (2005), Jason Stanley relies heavily on intuitions about several bank cases. We experimentally test the empirical claims that Stanley seems to make concerning our common-sense intuitions about these bank cases. Additionally, we test the empirical claims that Jonathan Schaffer seems to make in his critique of Stanley. We argue that our data impugn what both Stanley and Schaffer claim our intuitions about such cases are. To account for these (...) results, one must develop a better conception of the connection between a subject's interests and her body of knowledge than those offered by Stanley and Schaffer. (shrink)

We think of logic as objective. We also think that we are reliable about logic. These views jointly generate a puzzle: How is it that we are reliable about logic? How is it that our logical beliefs match an objective domain of logical fact? This is an instance of a more general challenge to explain our reliability about a priori domains. In this paper, I argue that the nature of this challenge has not been properly understood. I explicate the challenge (...) both in general and for the particular case of logic. I also argue that two seemingly attractive responses – appealing to a faculty of rational insight or to the nature of concept possession – are incapable of answering the challenge. (shrink)