The free energy principle is notoriously difficult to understand. In this paper, we relate the principle to a framework that philosophers of biology are familiar with: Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantics. We argue that: systems that minimise free energy are systems with a proper function; and Karl Friston’s notion of implicit modelling can be understood in terms of Millikan’s notion of mapping relations. Our analysis reveals some surprising formal similarities between the two frameworks, and suggests interesting lines of future research. We (...) hope this will aid further philosophical evaluation of the free energy principle. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is considered one of the most brilliant thinkers in the history of philosophy, although a number of myths have grown up about the character, also surrounded by many controversies. His works and thoughts have provided inspiration for humanists with a wide spectrum of most different interests. Nietzsche did not want to be regarded as a philosopher, but he has been living in the contemporary consciousness as a thinker nonetheless. According to the extraordinary style of Nietzsche’s works, however, he (...) also is considered a poet, one of the most distinctive stylists, even the most virtuoso writer in the history of German. What is more, the stylistic level of Nietzsche’s oeuvre leads to discourses upon its affinity with philosophical or literary studies. The aim of the present article is to review the question mentioned in the title, following the opinions of representative literary figures (such as Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Gottfried Benn, Stanisław Przybyszewski) and philosophers (e.g. Martin Heidegger, Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl Jaspers) as well. (shrink)

Drugs used to provide improvement of cognitive functioning have been shown to be effective in healthy individuals. It is sometimes assumed that the use of these drugs constitutes cheating in an academic context. We examine whether this assumption is ethically sound. Beyond providing the most up-to-date discussion of modafinil use in an academic context, this contribution includes an overview of the safety of modafinil use in greater depth than previous studies addressing the issue of cheating. Secondly, we emphasize two crucial, (...) but hitherto nearly overlooked, nuances to the issues: the potential for modafinil to decrease inequality and disadvantage in academic settings, and the fact that how modafinil is used dramatically impacts its effects on health, coercion, fairness, authenticity and effort. Finally, we explicitly defend the position that there are no qualitatively morally relevant differences between modafinil use and other enhancement modalities; any such differences are in degree,... (shrink)

In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, an incredibly sophisticated chatbot. Its capability is astonishing: as well as conversing with human interlocutors, it can answer questions about history, explain almost anything you might think to ask it, and write poetry. This level of achievement has provoked interest in questions about whether a chatbot might have something similar to human intelligence or even consciousness. Given that the function of a chatbot is to process linguistic input and produce linguistic output, we consider the (...) question whether a sophisticated chatbot might have inner speech. That is: Might it talk to itself, internally? We explored this via a conversation with ‘Playground’, a chatbot which is very similar to ChatGPT but more flexible in certain respects. We asked it questions which, plausibly, can only be answered if one first produces some inner speech. Here, we present our findings and discuss their philosophical significance. (shrink)

David Enoch, in Taking Morality Seriously, argues for a broad normative asymmetry between how we should behave when disagreeing about facts and how we should behave when disagreeing due to differing preferences. Enoch claims that moral disputes have the earmarks of a factual dispute rather than a preference dispute and that this makes more plausible a realist understanding of morality. We try to clarify what such claims would have to look like to be compelling and we resist his main conclusions.

Over the last fifteen years, an ambitious explanatory framework has been proposed to unify explanations across biology and cognitive science. Active inference, whose most famous tenet is the free energy principle, has inspired excitement and confusion in equal measure. Here, we lay the ground for proper critical analysis of active inference, in three ways. First, we give simplified versions of its core mathematical models. Second, we outline the historical development of active inference and its relationship to other theoretical approaches. Third, (...) we describe three different kinds of claim -- labelled mathematical, empirical and general -- routinely made by proponents of the framework, and suggest dialectical links between them. Overall, we aim to increase philosophical understanding of active inference so that it may be more readily evaluated. -/- This the final submitted version of the Introduction to the Topical Collection "The Free Energy Principle: From Biology to Cognition", forthcoming in Biology & Philosophy. (shrink)

Contemporary forms of Kantian constitutivism generally begin with a conception of agency on which the constitutive aim of agency is some form of autonomy or self-unification. This chapter argues for a re-orientation of the Kantian constitutivist project towards views that begin with a conception of rationality on which both theoretical and practical rationality aim at forms of understanding. In a slogan, then, understanding-first as opposed to autonomy-first constitutivism. Such a view gives the constitutivist new resources for explaining many classes of (...) reasons, while also offering a new way of understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason. The chapter concludes by arguing that the resulting view is best understood, not so much as an alternative to autonomy-first constitutivism, but as a complement to it. (shrink)

Hutto and Myin claim that teleosemantics cannot account for mental content. In their view, teleosemantics accounts for a poorer kind of relation between cognitive states and the world but lacks the theoretical tools to account for a richer kind. We show that their objection imposes two criteria on theories of content: a truth-evaluable criterion and an intensionality criterion. For the objection to go through, teleosemantics must be subject to both these criteria and must fail to satisfy them. We argue that (...) teleosemantics meets the truth-evaluable criterion and is not required to meet the intensionality criterion. We conclude that Hutto and Myin’s objection fails. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish several interconnected points. First, a particular interpretation of the mathematical definition of information, known as the causal interpretation, is supported largely by misunderstandings of the engineering context from which it was taken. A better interpretation, which makes the definition and quantification of information relative to the function of its user, is outlined. The first half of the paper is given over to introducing communication theory and its competing interpretations. The second half explores three consequences of (...) the main thesis. First, a popular claim that the quantification of information in a signal is irrelevant for the meaning of that signal is exposed as fallacious. Second, a popular distinction between causal and semantic information is shown to be misleading, and I argue it should be replaced with a related distinction between natural and intentional signs. Finally, I argue that recent empirical work from microbiology and cognitive science drawing on resources of mathematical communication theory is best interpreted by the functional account. Overall, a functional approach is shown to be both theoretically and empirically well-supported. (shrink)

The teleosemantic indeterminacy problem has generated much discussion but no consensus. One possible solution is to accept indeterminacy as a real feature of some representations. I call this view “indeterminacy realism.” In this paper, I argue that indeterminacy realism should be treated as a serious option. By drawing an analogy with vagueness, I try to show that accepting the reality of indeterminacy would not be catastrophic for teleosemantics. I further argue that there are positive reasons to endorse indeterminacy realism. I (...) end the paper by arguing that indeterminacy realism need not generalize viciously to the case of propositional attitudes. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer attempts to present a coherent view of panentheism that eschews Pickwickian senses of “in” and aligns itself with, and builds upon, familiar diagrammed portrayals of panentheism. The account is accordingly spatial-locative and moreover accepts the proposal of R.T. Mullins that absolute space and time be regarded as attributes of God. In addition, however, it argues that a substantive parthood relation between the world and God is required. Pfeifer’s preferred version of panpsychism, viz. panintentionalism, is thrown into the (...) mix as an optional add-on. On this account, God is conceived of as a “spiritual field” whose nature can be made more intelligible by regarding “God” as having a mass-noun sense in some contexts. Pfeifer closes with the suggestion that we look to topology and mereology for further development of the position outlined in his paper. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer argues against Searle's "Connection Principle" which requires that unconscious intentional mental states must be in principle accessible to consciousness.

This article establishes grounds on which attributions of information and encoding in animal signals are warranted. As common interest increases between evolutionary agents, the theoretical approach best suited to describing their interaction shifts from evolutionary game theory to communication theory, which warrants informational language. The take-home positive message is that in cooperative settings, signals can appropriately be described as transmitting encoded information, regardless of the cognitive powers of signalers. The canonical example is the honeybee waggle dance, which is discussed extensively (...) in the second and third sections. The take-home negative message is that signals are not always a consequence of coadaptation. The communication theory approach is just one end of a continuum explored more thoroughly by evolutionary game theory. The fourth and fifth sections explore this wider framework, as well as overturning some widely held misconceptions about information theory. (shrink)

A brief account of karma and transmigration is followed by an introduction to Indian ways of assessing arguments. The body of the work canvasses the systems of Nyaya Vaisesika, Buddhism, Jainism, Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta.

This paper explores how transformative experience generates decision-making problems of particular seriousness in medical settings. Potentially transformative experiences are especially likely to be encountered in medicine, and the associated decisions are confronted jointly by patients and clinicians in the context of an imbalance of power and expertise. However in such scenarios the principle of informed consent, which plays a central role in guiding clinicians, is unequal to the task. We detail how the principle’s assumptions about autonomy, rationality and information handle (...) transformative experiences poorly, appealing to several difficult cases for medical decision-making to illustrate the resulting problem, and we consider how the existing literature on complications with consent fails to offer a resolution. We argue that recognition of the problem has a role to play in achieving a more effective response to transformative decisions. In Sect. 1 we introduce several representative cases of challenging patient decision-making that clinicians might face. In Sect. 2 we detail how transformative experience has been analysed in the recent literature, before outlining in Sect. 3 the theoretical basis of the principle of informed consent, which plays a central role in how clinicians are expected to support decision-making. In Sect. 4, having laid the groundwork for a clear description, we return to the cases given in Sect. 1 to confirm how their transformative nature presents a problem: either clinicians treat the decisions faced by these patients as ‘normal’, encouraging them to focus on information provision that patients may be unable to act on, or they treat them as transformative, in which case they lack the resources to recognise whether they are helping patients make (subjectively) good decisions. In Sect. 5 we argue that the existing literature does not offer any escape from this problem. We close in Sect. 6 by noting the significant impact that appreciating the problem of transformative experience could have on supporting transformative decisions in medicine and briefly suggesting how we might aim to develop new approaches to dealing with these. (shrink)

Consider the opening sentence of Tolkien’s The Hobbit: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. By writing this sentence, Tolkien is making a fictional statement. There are two influential views of the nature of such statements. On the pretense view, fictional discourse amounts to pretend assertions. Since the author is not really asserting, but merely pretending, a statement such as Tolkien’s is devoid of illocutionary force altogether. By contrast, on the alternative make-believe view, fictional discourse prescribes that (...) the reader make-believe the content of the statement. In this paper, we argue that neither of these views is satisfactory. They both fail to distinguish the linguistic act of creating the fiction, for instance Tolkien writing the sentence above, from the linguistic act of reciting it, such as reading The Hobbit out loud for your children. As an alternative to these views, we propose that the essential feature of the author’s speech act is its productive character, that it makes some state of affairs obtain in the fiction. Tolkien’s statement, we argue, has the illocutionary force of a declaration. (shrink)

We propose a pluralist account of content for predictive processing systems. Our pluralism combines Millikan's teleosemantics with existing structural resemblance accounts. The paper has two goals. First, we outline how a teleosemantic treatment of signal passing in predictive processing systems would work, and how it integrates with structural resemblance accounts. We show that the core explanatory motivations and conceptual machinery of teleosemantics and predictive processing mesh together well. Second, we argue this pluralist approach expands the range of empirical cases to (...) which the predictive processing framework might be successfully applied. This is because our pluralism is practice-oriented. A range of different notions of content are used in the cognitive sciences to explain behaviour, and some of these cases look to employ teleosemantic notions. As a result, our pluralism gives predictive processing the scope to cover these cases. (shrink)

Prominent views about representation share a premise: that mathematical communication theory is blind to representational content. Here I challenge that premise by rejecting two common misconceptions: that Claude Shannon said that the meanings of signals are irrelevant for communication theory (he didn't and they aren't), and that since correlational measures can't distinguish representations from natural signs, communication theory can't distinguish them either (the premise is true but the conclusion is false; no valid argument can link them).

Karl Pfeifer revisits Wittgenstein’s parenthetical allusion in the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ to the Grimms’ fairytale “The Golden Lads”, confirming that it does not work well as an illustration of the notion of “internal identity” that figures in Wittgenstein’s picture theory. He then proposes alternative ways of understanding the relationship of identity apparent in “The Golden Lads”.

A number of logicians and philosophers have turned their attention in recent years to the problem of developing a logic of interrogatives. Their work has thrown a great deal of light on the formal properties of questions and question-sentences and has led also to interesting innovations in our understanding of the structures of performatives in general and, for example, in the theory of presuppositions. When, however, we examine the attempts of logicians such as Belnap or Åqvist to specify what, precisely, (...) a question is, or what it is to ask or raise a question, then what we are offered is somewhat less illuminating. Two alternative reductionist accounts seem in particular to have gained most favor: questions are identified either as special sorts of statements, or as special sorts of requests. As we hope will become clear in what follows, neither of these accounts is even nearly adequate; and matters are not improved if questions are identified, by force majeure, as combinations of statements and requests. (shrink)

I consider a complaint about Kantian ethics that has become increasingly prominent in contemporary debate. This worry centers on the idea that Kantian ethics cannot do full justice to the social or intersubjective dimensions of human life – that, unlike Fichte, Hegel, or Marx, Kant remains trapped within a fundamentally individualistic perspective on practical or moral questions, which cannot satisfactorily account for the intersubjective dimensions of moral normativity. In this way, the objection continues, Kantian ethics ultimately leaves the Kantian moral (...) agent fundamentally alienated from those around them, and from the larger community of which they are one part. As we will see, such concerns are not unnatural. But I argue that they rest on a fundamental mischaracterization of where the most serious problems in this region for Kant lie. Far from being too individualistic, the real worry about Kantian moral theory here is that it may not be individualistic enough. Thus, if there is a worry for Kantian ethics in this region, it has a very different shape that many contemporary critiques of Kant or Kantianism assume. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer argues against the view that an aesthetic experience must be a uniquely special kind of experience by means of an analogy with sexual experiences. Nonetheless, he leaves open the possibility that some aesthetic experiences might still be of a special kind.

Karl Pfeifer distinguishes between humor used extraneously in the delivery of philosophical content and humor intrinsic to the content itself: “Enlivening the delivery isn’t the same as enlivening the content of the delivery.” Using examples from topics in philosophy of mind and moral philosophy he illustrates how humor can be used to make certain ideas more engaging and memorable for students. He also gives an example of what to avoid.

Historical research has recently made it clear that, prior to Austin and Searle, the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach (1884-1917) developed a full-fledged theory of speech acts under the heading of what he called "social acts". He we consider a second instance of a speech act theory avant la lettre, which is to be found in the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Reid’s s work, in contrast to that of Reinach, lacks both a unified approach and the detailed analyses of (...) pertinent examples. But his writings leave no doubt that he is acutely aware of the very problems concerning language structure and use out of which contemporary speech act theory has evolved and that he goes a good way towards solving these problems in the spirit of the modern theory. (shrink)

Teleosemantics has an indeterminacy problem. In an earlier publication, I argued that teleosemanticists may afford to be realists about indeterminacy, pointing to the phenomenon of vagueness as a case of really-existing semantic indeterminacy. Here, I continue that project by proposing two criteria of adequacy that a semantically indeterminate theory should meet: a criterion of theoretical adequacy and a criterion of extensional adequacy. I present reasons to think that indeterminate versions of teleosemantics can meet these criteria. I end by discussing vagueness, (...) concluding that it most likely is not the same kind of phenomenon as the semantic indeterminacy afflicting teleosemantics. (shrink)

According to internalism about rationality, the ir/rationality of a subject depends only on how things appear from her subjective perspective. According to culpabilism, rationality is a normative standard such that violations of rationality are (at least sometimes) blameworthy. According to a classical line of reasoning, culpabilism entails internalism. I argue that, to the contrary, culpabilism entails that internalism is false. The internalist cannot accommodate the possibility of culpable irrationality.

In in this paper, I make use of an “doxastic planning model” of epistemic evaluation to argue for a form of epistemic internalism. In doing so, I begin by responding to a recent argument of Schoenfield’s against my previous attempt to develop such an argument. In doing so, I distinguish a variety of ways that argument might be understood, and discuss how both internalists and externalists might make use of the ideas within it. Then I argue that, despite these complexities, (...) the doxastic planning model continues to support a modest form of epistemic internalism. I conclude by showing that, far from conflicting with “anti-luminosity” arguments in epistemology, this form of internalism is best understood as a natural reaction to these arguments. (shrink)

In this article I offer an opinionated overview of the central elements of Kant’s philosophical methodology during the critical period. I begin with a brief characterization of how Kant conceives of the aims of human inquiry – focusing on the idea that inquiry ideally aims at not just cognition (Erkenntnis), but also the more demanding cognitive achievements that Kant labels insight (Einsehen) and comprehension (Begreifen). Then I explore the implications of this picture for philosophy — emphasizing Kant’s distinction between critical (...) and doctrinal phases of philosophical inquiry, with the first of these playing both a negative and a positive role with respect to the second. Then, I will argue that this positive role is possible, according to Kant, only insofar as philosophy follows what I call a “capacities-first” methodology – that is, one that treats basic cognitive capacities (such as reason) and their self-conscious activities as fundamental (in both a cognitive sense and in an explanatory sense) for the sort of philosophy human beings are capable of. It is this methodology, I will argue, that allows Kant to introduce the first principles that philosophy in its doctrinal phase requires in a manner that is neither arbitrary nor (at least obviously) incompatible with Kant’s own critical restrictions on cognition. I conclude by discussing some of the implications of this methodological picture – including the methodological significance of self-consciousness and regressive or “transcendental” arguments, Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic methods in philosophy, and Kant’s conception of reason as autonomous. (shrink)

The article discusses the conditions under which can we say that people enter the economic system voluntarily. “The Need for an Exit Option” briefly explains the philosophical argument that voluntary interaction requires an exit option—a reasonable alternative to participation in the projects of others. “The Treatment of Effective Forced Labor in Economic and Political Theory” considers the treatment of effectively forced interaction in economic and political theory. “Human Need” discusses theories of human need to determine the capabilities a person requires (...) to have an acceptable exit option. “Capability in Cash, Kind, or Raw Resources” considers what form access to that level of capability should take—in cash, kind, or raw resources, concluding that a basic income guarantee is the most effective method to ensure an exit option in a modern, industrial economy. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers - including Joshua Gert, Douglas Portmore, and Elizabeth Harman - have argued that there is a sense in which morality itself does not treat moral reasons as consistently overriding.2 My aim in the present essay is to develop and extend this idea from a somewhat different perspective. In doing so, I offer an alternative way of formalizing the idea that morality is modest about the weight of moral reasons in this way, thereby making more explicit (...) the connections between this thesis and similar issues in the epistemic sphere. In addition, I discuss how these ideas can transform our thinking about familiar questions in ethics such as the nature of self-effacement, the significance of reflective endorsement, the weight that moral reasons ought to be given in all things consideration, and the plausibility of “indirect” moral theories. Finally, I show that these ideas are compatible even with pictures of morality – such as Kant’s – on which morality might seem to anything but modest about its own importance. In doing so, I stress that it is possible to see morality as modest about the weight of specifically moral reasons, while also seeing all practical reasons as grounded in morality more indirectly – namely, by seeing morality as determining the weight that both moral and non-moral considerations deserve to have in all things considered deliberation. (shrink)

Much contemporary ontological inquiry takes place within the so-called ‘Quinean tradition’ but, given that some aspects of Quine’s project have been widely abandoned even by those who consider themselves Quineans, it is unclear what this amounts to. Fortunately recent work in metaontology has produced two relevant results here: a clearer characterisation of the metaontology uniting the aforementioned Quineans, most notably undertaken by Peter van Inwagen, and a raft of criticisms of that metaontology. In this paper I critique van Inwagen’s Quinean (...) metaontology, finding that certain challenges, supplemented by pressure to reflect more closely Quine’s work, should drive Quineans to adopt a stronger metaontology incorporating more of Quine’s radical views. I conclude that while van Inwagen’s Quineanism is problematic there are prospects for a viable, more wholeheartedly Quinean, metaontology. (shrink)

This article argues the following points. The Hobbesian hypothesis, which we define as the claim that all people are better off under state authority than they would be outside of it, is an empirical claim about all stateless societies. It is an essential premise in most contractarian justifications of government sovereignty. Many small-scale societies are stateless. Anthropological evidence from them provides sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the hypothesis, if not to reject it entirely. Therefore, contractarian theory has not (...) done what it claims to do: it has not justified state sovereignty to each person subject to it by demonstrating that they benefit from that authority. To be justified in contractarian terms, states have to do something to improve the living standards of disadvantaged people under their rule. (shrink)

Neo-Kantianism is common conceived as a philosophy ‘from above’, excelling in speculative constructions – as opposed to the attitude of patient description which is exemplified by the phenomenological turn ‘to the things themselves’. When we study the work of Emil Lask in its relation to that of Husserl and the phenomenologists, however, and when we examine the influences moving in both directions, then we discover that this idea of a radical opposition is misconceived. Lask himself was influenced especially by Husserl’s (...) Logical Investigations, and Husserl, especially in his later writings, was in some respects closer to Kant than were the Neo-Kantians. The contrast between the two philosophers can be illustrated by looking at their view of the objects of judgment; for Lask, as for Kant, judgment can relate to the thing as such only in an indirect way. The world of judgment is a collection of ‘imitations holding a secondary position’. It is cut apart from the plain world of real things by what Lask calls a ‘chasm of artificiality and imagery’. For Husserl, in contrast, the object of judgment is a ‘Sachverhalt’ or state of affairs, something ontologically ‘positive’ in the sense that it is an entity in its own right and does not point beyond itself in the manner of a mere sign or proxy for something else. (shrink)

Starting from the problem of tolerance in a multicultural society, the author undermines the limits of a classical‐liberal foundation (negative tolerance) and suggests the need for a new meaning: a positive concern of tolerance implying appreciation of a variety of social cultures and value traditions. On an ethical level, positive tolerance can be grounded in the Discourse Theory, developing the classical Kantian deontological ethics in a transcendental‐pragmatic and in a transcendental‐hermeneutic sense. In this way, discourse ethics can answer two questions (...) posed by tolerance in a multicultural society: the duty to support all in the pursuit of their ideals and realize positive tolerance as well as its restrictions. (shrink)

With respect to the topic of “powers and abilities,” most readers will associate David Hume with his multi-pronged critique of traditional attempts to make robust explanatory use of those notions in a philosophical or scientific context. But Hume’s own philosophy is also structured around the attribution to human beings of a variety of basic faculties or mental powers – such as the reason and the imagination, or the various powers involved in Hume’s account of im- pressions of reflection and the (...) passions. Indeed, there is a clear case to be made that, despite his deflationary account of our concept of power, Hume continues to treat certain basic powers or faculties as forming the explanatory bedrock for his new “science of man”. In this essay, I will discuss how this apparent conflict between the “critical” (if not outright skeptical) and “constructive” aspects of Hume’s discussion of powers and abilities is best resolved – with special attention to the question of how this illuminates Hume’s place in the development of early modern conceptions of the proper method for philosophy. (shrink)

In this essay, I distinguish two different epistemological strategies an anti-realist might pursue in developing an "evolutionary debunking" of moral realism. Then I argue that a moral realist can resist both of these strategies by calling into question the epistemological presuppositions on which they rest. Nonetheless, I conclude that these arguments point to a legitimate source of dissatisfaction about many forms of moral realism. I conclude by discussing the way forward that these conclusions indicate.

This is the commentary on John Baker, "H. P. Grice's Construction of Value", read at the 34th Annual Congress of the Canadian Philosophical Association, May 1990, Victoria, British Columbia.

The Sleeping Beauty problem—first presented by A. Elga in a philosophical context—has captured much attention. The problem, we contend, is more aptly regarded as a paradox: apparently, there are cases where one ought to change one’s credence in an event’s taking place even though one gains no new information or evidence, or alternatively, one ought to have a credence other than 1/2 in the outcome of a future coin toss even though one knows that the coin is fair. In this (...) paper we argue for two claims. First, that Sleeping Beauty does gain potentially new relevant information upon waking up on Monday. Second, his credence shift is warranted provided it accords with a calculation that is a result of conditionalization on the relevant information: “this day is an experiment waking day” (a day within the experiment on which one is woken up). Since Sleeping Beauty knows what days d could refer to, he can calculate the probability that the referred to waking day is a Monday or a Tuesday providing an adequate resolution of the paradox. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the relevance of the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer for contemporary feminist scholarship on epistemic injustice and oppression. Specifically, I set out to argue for the Gadamerian notion of hermeneutical openness as an important hermeneutic virtue, and a potential remedy for existing epistemic injustices. In doing so I follow feminist philosophers such as Linda Martín Alcoff and Georgia Warnke that have adopted the insights of Gadamer for the purpose of social and feminist philosophy. Further, this (...) paper is positioned in relation to a recent book chapter by Cynthia Nielsen and David Utsler in which they argue for the complementarity, and intersecting themes and concerns of Gadamer's hermeneutics and Miranda Fricker's work on epistemic injustice. However, Nielsen and Utsler solely focus on Fricker's conception of epistemic injustice and the two forms of epistemic injustice, testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice, that she identifies. In this paper I expand their analysis by considering other forms of epistemic injustice such as wilful hermeneutical ignorance and contributory injustice. Thus, this paper contributes to the budding literature on the relevance of Gadamer's work for the debates pertaining to epistemic injustice and oppression by expanding such analysis to other forms of epistemic injustice, and by further arguing for the strength of Gadamer's work in terms of offering relevant insights for the reduction and remedy of existing epistemic injustices. (shrink)

In manuscripts of 1930-1 Johannes Daubert, principal member of the Munich board of realist phenomenologists, put forward a series of detailed criticisms of the idealism of Husserl’s Ideas I. The paper provides a sketch of these criticisms and of Daubert’s own alternative conceptions of consciousness and reality, as also of Daubert’s views on perception, similar, in many respects, to those of J. J. Gibson.

The doctrine of mens rea can be expressed in this way: MRP: If A is culpable for performing phi, then A performs phi intentionally in circumstances in which it is impermissible to perform phi. The Sermon on the Mount suggests the following principle: SMP: If A intends to perform phi in circumstances in which it would be impermissible for A to perform phi, then A’s intending to perform phi makes A as culpable as A would be were A to perform (...) phi. MRP and SMP are principles representative of intentionalism, a family of views that emphasizes the importance of intention to judgments about culpability. This essay examines an intentionalist’s defense of MRP with respect to lying, strict criminal liability, and the distinction between intention and foreseeability, along with a defense of SMP with respect to failed attempts, and self-defense. (shrink)

Alongside the direct parallels and contrasts between traditional narrative fiction and games, there lie certain partial analogies that provide their own insights. This article begins by examining a direct parallel between narrative fiction and games—the role of fictional reliefs and reality checks in shaping aesthetic engagement—before arguing that from this a partial analogy can be developed stemming from a feature that distinguishes most games from most traditional fictions: the presence of rules. The relation between rules and fiction in games has (...) heretofore been acknowledged but not examined in detail, giving an impression of a tension that is constant. However, the paired concepts of formal reliefs and representation checks, once introduced, allow us to explain how rules and fiction interact to alter the ways in which players engage with games in a dynamic but limited way. (shrink)

The focus of this chapter will be Kant’s understanding of Hume, and its impact on Kant’s critical philosophy. Contrary to the traditional reading of this relationship, which focuses on Kant’s (admittedly real) dissatisfaction with Hume’s account of causation, my discussion will focus on broader issues of philosophical methodology. Following a number of recent interpreters, I will argue that Kant sees Hume as raising, in a particularly forceful fashion, a ‘demarcation challenge’ concerning how to distinguish the legitimate use of reason in (...) (say) natural scientific contexts from the illegitimate use of it in (say) dogmatic metaphysics. I will then go on to argue that Kant sees Hume’s tendency to slide into more radical forms of skepticism as a symptom of his failure to provide a systematic or principled account of this distinction. This failure, I argue, can be traced (according to Kant) to Hume’s impoverished, non-hylomorphic account of our faculties – which both robs Hume of the materials necessary to construct a genuinely systematic philosophy as Kant understands this, and makes it impossible for Hume to clearly conceive of what Kant calls ‘Formal Idealism.’ In this way, the failings of Hume’s account of causation are (for Kant) symptoms of more fundamental limitations within Hume’s philosophy. I close by briefly discussing the similarities between Hume and Kant’s understanding of the relationship between, first, philosophical methodology and, second, the nature of our faculties. (shrink)

A brief introductory note to the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy on "Parts and Wholes", setting the background for the seven papers included in the rest of the issue (by K. Fine, H. Hudson, M. Johnston, K. Koslicki, C. Normore, P. M. Simons, and P. van Inwagen).

Proceeding on the basis of reports of a proposal in 2011 to criminalize public flatulence in Malawi, the normative significance of flatulence is considered from the respective standpoints of aesthetics, etiquette, and ethics, and it is indicated how aesthetics and etiquette may themselves also have ethical significance. It is concluded that etiquette and ethics may both require that certain violations of etiquette and ethics should sometimes be ignored.

This book is a general defence of Donald Davidson's and G.E.M. Anscombe's 'unifying' approach to the individuation of actions and other events against objections raised by Alvin I. Goldman and others. It is argued that, ironically, Goldman's rival 'multiplying' account is itself vulnerable to these objections, whereas Davidson's account survives them. Although claims that the unifier-multiplier dispute is not really substantive are shown to be unfounded, some room for limited agreement over the ontological status of events is indicated. Davidson's causal (...) criterion of event identity is then defended against charges of triviality or inadequacy. It is concluded that Davidson's criterion is not primarily a criterion for arriving at particular judgments of individuation, but a metaphysical standard for the correctness of such judgments, however arrived at. Contents: Unifiers vs. Multipliers - Davidson's individuation of events - Goldman's act generation - causal, 'by'-relational, and temporal problems - ontology and event constituents - Davidson's causal criterion. This book is unique in providing a detailed survey and analysis of the recent unifier-multiplier dispute, and will be of interest to all researchers in action theory, as well as those working more broadly in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This is the commentary on Richard C. Richards, "Humor and Happiness”, read at the Lighthearted Philosophers' Society 5th Annual Conference, 14 October 2011, Treasure Island, Florida.

The Darwin-Hecker hypothesis, viz. that laughter induced by tickling and humor share common underlying mechanisms, is so-called in part because of a quotation attributed to Ewald Hecker. However, a German counterpart of the quotation does not appear in the location cited. Some textual sleuthing is undertaken to find out what Hecker actually wrote and where he wrote it.