We suggest that there is confusion between why consciousness developed and what additional functions, through continued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent past events, it seems like a terrible system—prone to forgetting and false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory developed to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good system. We (...) argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accomplish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound implications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in general. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness. Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contributes to this conscious memory system. (shrink)

For decades scholars thought they knew Hume's position on the existence of causes and objects he was a sceptic. However, this received view has been thrown into question by the `new readings of Hume as a sceptical realist. For philosophers, students of philosophy and others interested in theories of causation and their history, The New Hume Debate is the first book to fully document the most influential contemporary readings of Hume's work. Throughout, the volume brings the debate beyond textual issues (...) in Hume to contemporary philosophical issues concerning causation and knowledge of the external world and issues in the history of philosophy, offering the reader a model for scholarly debate. This revised paperback edition includes three new chapters by Janet Broughton, Peter Kail and Peter Millican. Contributors: Kenneth A. Richman, Barry Stroud, Galen Strawson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John P. Wright, Simon Blackburn, Edward Craig, Martin Bell, Daniel Flage, Anne Jaap Jacobson, Rupert Read, Janet Broughton, Peter Millican, Peter Kail. (shrink)

While the topic of assertion has recently received a fresh wave of interest from Peirce scholars, to this point no systematic account of Peirce’s view of assertion has been attempted. We think that this is a lacuna that ought to be filled. Doing so will help make better sense of Peirce’s pragmatism; further, what is hidden amongst various fragments is a robust pragmatist theory of assertion with unique characteristics that may have significant contemporary value. Here we aim to uncover this (...) theory, and to show that assertion for Peirce is not a mere corollary of pragmatic conceptions of truth, judgement, and belief, but is rather a central aspect of his philosophy. (shrink)

Proponents of corporate moral responsibility take certain corporations to be capable of being responsible in ways that do not reduce to the responsibility of their members. If correct, one follow-up question concerns what leads corporations to fail to meet their obligations. We often fail morally when we know what we should do and yet fail to do it, perhaps out of incontinence, akrasia, or weakness of will. However, this kind of failure is much less discussed in the corporate case. And, (...) where it is discussed, the view is that corporations are less prone to weakness. Here, I argue that proponents of corporate responsibility should say that corporations can and often do instantiate weakness of the will, and that this is important to recognize. Weakness of the will requires certain capacities that these proponents typically take corporations to have. And once this is appreciated, we can assess how corporate weakness might proceed differently than how it does for individuals. We can also begin a conversation about how best to meet the distinctive challenges for recognizing and correcting corporate weakness, using a number of resources from management scholarship. (shrink)

Abstract: Proponents of the this-universe objection to fine-tuning arguments for a multiverse claim that while the multiverse hypothesis raises the probability that some universe is fine-tuned for life, it fails to raise the probability that this one is. Because that is so, they further argue, those who take the fine-tuning of this universe as evidence for the multiverse hypothesis are guilty of a probabilistic fallacy. I argue that a proper evaluation of the this-universe objection requires the development of a general, (...) formal framework for reasoning probabilistically with evidence statements expressed using indexical terms (such as the statement This universe is fine-tuned). I proceed to develop such a framework and then to apply it to the this-universe objection. While my primary aim is to defend the this-universe objection from recent rebuttals, a secondary aim is to exhibit the utility of the framework itself, which has the potential for wider application. (shrink)

While it is widely acknowledged that knowledge can be acquired via testimony, it has been argued that understanding cannot. While there is no consensus about what the epistemic relationship of understanding consists in, I argue here that regardless of how understanding is conceived there are kinds of understanding that can be acquired through testimony: easy understanding and easy-s understanding. I address a number of aspects of understanding that might stand in the way of being able to acquire understanding through testimony, (...) focusing on understanding ’s paradigmatic form and what it means to say that in order to understand something you need to “grasp” some information or the relationship between bits of information. I argue that in cases of both easy and easy-s understanding, no aspect of understanding stands in the way of it being able to acquire it through testimony. As a result, while not all understanding be acquired through testimony in all instances and for all subjects, this failure of acquisition is only a product of the complexity of the relevant information or one’s unfamiliarity with it, and not a product of the epistemic relationship of understanding. (shrink)

Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley used abductive reasoning to draw conclusions about the ionic basis of the action potential. Here we build on that initial proposal. First, we propose that Hodgkin and Huxley’s constitutive abductive reasoning has four features. Second, we argue that Hodgkin and Huxley are not alone in giving such arguments. Tolman, 1948, and Baumgartner, 1960, also gave such arguments. The implication is that such arguments are common enough in science that philosophers of science should pay more attention (...) to them. Third, we propose that constitutive abduction describes a method that scientists use to confirm constitutive hypotheses that is an alternative to the mutual manipulability approach that is familiar in the New Mechanist literature. (shrink)

I argue that there is methodological space for a functional explanation of the nature of law that does not commit the theorist to a view about the value of that function for society, nor whether law is the best means of accomplishing it. A functional explanation will nonetheless provide a conceptual framework for a better understanding of the nature of law. First I examine the proper role for function in a theory of law and then argue for the possibility of (...) a neutral functional theory, addressing issues raised by Leslie Green, Stephen Perry, Michael Moore and John Finnis. (shrink)

In this chapter, we defend an explanationist version of proper functionalism. After explaining proper functionalism’s initial appeal, we note two major objections to proper functionalism: creatures with no design plan who appear to have knowledge (Swampman) and creatures with malfunctions that increase reliability. We then note how proper functionalism needs to be clarified because there are cases of what we call warrant-compatible malfunction. We then formulate our own view: explanationist proper functionalism, which explains the warrant-compatible malfunction cases and helps to (...) block the above objections. We also advance a positive argument for explanationist proper functionalism. (shrink)

There have been many discussions recently from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists about group polarization, with online and social media environments in particular receiving a lot of attention, both because of people's increasing reliance on such environments for receiving and exchanging information and because such environments often allow individuals to selectively interact with those who are like-minded. My goal here is to argue that the group epistemologist can facilitate understanding the kinds of factors that drive group polarization in a way (...) that has been overlooked by the existing research. Specifically, I argue that polarization can occur in part because of the ways that members of a group treat the group itself (as opposed to an individual member within that group) as a source of information, and in doing so makes their own position, as well as that of the group, more extreme. I refer to this as a structural factor in driving polarization, and argue that such factors can contribute to explanations of polarization that occurs specifically in an important subset of groups, namely online and social media groups in which little is known about other members within the group, what I refer to as anonymous, semi-anonymous and pseudonymous (ASAP) groups. (shrink)

Groups behave in a variety of ways. To show that this behavior amounts to action, it would be best to fit it into a general account of action. However, nearly every account from the philosophy of action requires the agent to have mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Unfortunately, theorists are divided over whether groups can instantiate these states—typically depending on whether or not they are willing to accept functionalism about the mind. But we can avoid this debate. (...) I show how a more general view of action captures what is central to action without mentioning mental states, and I argue that a group’s members can fulfill the role in group action that mental states play in our actions. Group behavior is explicable in terms of reasons, regardless of whether the group itself cognizes those reasons. After discussing the kind of reasons at issue and arguing that groups can act in light of them without minds, I assess how this account bears on the question of group responsibility. (shrink)

The problem of multi-peer disagreement concerns the reasonable response to a situation in which you believe P1 … Pn and disagree with a group of ‘epistemic peers’ of yours, who believe ∼P1 … ∼Pn, respectively. However, the problem of multi-peer disagreement is a variant on the preface paradox; because of this the problem poses no challenge to the so-called ‘steadfast view’ in the epistemology of disagreement, on which it is sometimes reasonable to believe P in the face of peer disagreement (...) about P. After some terminology is defined (§1), Peter van Inwagen's challenge to the steadfast view will be presented (§2). The preface paradox will then be presented and diagnosed (§3), and it will be argued that van Inwagen's challenge relies on the same principle that generates the preface paradox (§4). The reasonable response to multi-peer disagreement will be discussed (§5), and an objection addressed (§6). (shrink)

Schiller says that “it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” Here I attempt to defend a claim in the same spirit as Schiller’s but by different means. My thesis is that a person’s autonomous agency depends on their adopting an aesthetic identity. To act, we need to don contingent features of agency, things that structure our practical thought and explain what we do in very general terms but are neither universal nor necessary features of agency (...) as such. Without these things, the question of what to do for any individual would be underdetermined. The problem is that adopting such a contingent form of agency amounts to a restriction on what we can do, and so it is a prima facie threat to our autonomy. I will argue that one way, and indeed the only way, of meeting this challenge lies in aesthetic experience. Granting our capacity for aesthetic pleasure the authority to determine the particularities of our agency is compatible with autonomy because doing so means identifying with one’s capacity for pleasure in free and creative activity. Doing this allows us to be both particular sorts of agents and creatures regulated by the universalizing demands of reason. (shrink)

Take pragmatic encroachment to be the view that whether one knows that p is determined at least in part by the practical consequences surrounding the truth of p. This view represents a significant departure from the purist orthodoxy, which holds that only truth-relevant factors determine whether one knows. In this chapter I consider some consequences of accepting pragmatic encroachment when applied to problems of political knowledge and political ignorance: first, that there will be cases in which it will not be (...) practically rational to acquire political knowledge when the stakes surrounding one’s political actions are high; second, that political knowledge can be more easily acquired when one values the welfare of others less; and third, that pragmatic encroachment may fail to account for a form of epistemic injustice when it comes to evaluating the political knowledge of members of marginalized groups. I argue that while these consequences are undesirable, the extent to which the pragmatic encroacher is committed to them depends both on the details of the theory, as well as the extent to which one considers political knowledge to be important. (shrink)

One way to determine whether a mental condition should be considered a disorder is to first give necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a disorder and then see if it meets these conditions. But this approach has been criticized for begging normative questions. Concerning autism (and other conditions), a neurodiversity movement has arisen with essentially two aims: (1) advocate for the rights and interests of individuals with autism, and (2) de-pathologize autism. We argue that denying autism’s disorder status (...) could undermine autism’s exculpatory role in cases where individuals with autism are charged with a crime. Our argument raises a dilemma for the neurodiversity movement: advocating for the rights and interests of individuals with autism may require viewing autism as a condition that can be inherently disabling (at least for some individuals). If this is right, autism’s disorder status might be maintained (again, at least for some individuals) without deriving this result from any general account of disorder. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that the fact that our universe is fine-tuned for life favors both a design hypothesis as well as a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis. The claim that the fine-tuning of this universe supports a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis has been forcefully challenged however by Ian Hacking and Roger White. In this paper we take this challenge even further by arguing that if it succeeds, then not only does the fine-tuning of this universe fail to support a multiverse hypothesis, but (...) it tends to favor a single-universe hypothesis instead. (shrink)

This paper examines Pierre Hadot’s philosophy as a way of life in the context of race. I argue that a “way of life” approach to philosophy renders intelligible how anti-racist confrontation of racist ideas and institutionalized white complicity is a properly philosophical way of life requiring regulated reflection on habits – particularly, habits of whiteness. I first rehearse some of Hadot’s analysis of the “way of life” orientation in philosophy, in which philosophical wisdom is understood as cultivated by actions which (...) result in the creation of wise habits. I analyze a phenomenological claim about the nature of habit implied by the “way of life” approach, namely, that habits can be both the cause and the effect of action. This point is central to the “way of life” philosophy, I claim, in that it makes possible the intelligent redirection of habits, in which wise habits are more the effect than simply the cause of action. Lastly, I illustrate the “way of life” approach in the context of anti-racism by turning to Linda Martín Alcoff’s whiteness anti-eliminativism, which outlines a morally defensible transformation of the habits of whiteness. I argue that anti-racism provides an intelligible context for modern day forms of what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises” insofar as the “way of life” philosophy is embodied in the practice of whites seeing themselves seeing as white and seeing themselves being seen as white. (shrink)

In their responses to my article “Epistemically Pernicious Groups and the Groupstrapping Problem” (Boyd, 2018), Bert Baumgaertner (“Groupstrapping, Boostrapping, and Oops-strapping: A Reply to Boyd”) and C. Thi Nguyen (“Group-strapping, Bubble, or Echo Chamber?”) have raised interesting questions and opened lines of inquiry regarding my discussion of what I hope to be a way to help make sense of how members of groups can continue to hold beliefs that are greatly outweighed by countervailing evidence (e.g. antivaxxers, climate-change deniers, etc.). Here (...) I respond to these arguments and suggestions by providing three new reasons to believe that groupstrapping as I describe it occurs in epistemically pernicious groups. (shrink)

C.S. Peirce held what is nowadays called a “commitment view” of assertion. According to this type of view, assertion is a kind of act that is determined by its “normative effects”: by asserting a proposition one undertakes certain commitments, typically to be able to provide reason to believe what one is asserting, or, in Peirce’s words, one “takes responsibility” for the truth of the proposition one asserts. Despite being an early adopter of the view, if Peirce’s commitment view of assertion (...) is mentioned at all in contemporary discussions it is only in passing. His view is, however, far more complex and nuanced than he has been given credit for. My primary goal here, then, is to get a better understanding of Peirce’s version of a commitment view of assertion. I also argue that figuring out the details of Peirce’s theory of assertion can also provide us with a viable way to respond to problems that contemporary commitment views of assertion face. (shrink)

I examine the impact of the presence of anarchists among key legal officials upon the legal positivist theories of H.L.A. Hart and Joseph Raz. For purposes of this paper, an anarchist is one who believes that the law cannot successfully obligate or create reasons for action beyond prudential reasons, such as avoiding sanction. I show that both versions of positivism require key legal officials to endorse the law in some way, and that if a legal system can continue to exist (...) and function when its key officials reject the reason-giving character of law, then we have a reason to re-examine and amend legal positivism. (shrink)

Recently, there has been growing concern that increased partisanship in news sources, as well as new ways in which people acquire information, has led to a proliferation of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers: in the former, one tends to acquire information from a limited range of sources, ones that generally support the kinds of beliefs that one already has, while the latter function in the same way, but possess the additional characteristic that certain beliefs are actively reinforced. Here I argue, (...) first, that we should conceive of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers as types of epistemically pernicious groups, and second, that while analyses of such groups have typically focused on relationships between individual members, at least part of what such groups epistemically pernicious pertains to the way that members rely on the groups themselves as sources of information. I argue that member reliance on groups results in groups being attributed a degree of credibility that outruns their warrant, a process I call groupstrapping. I argue that by recognizing the groupstrapping as an illicit method of forming and updating beliefs we can make progress on some of the open questions concerning epistemically pernicious groups. (shrink)

This article examines how Quine and Sellars develop informatively contrasting responses to a fundamental tension in Carnap’s semantics ca. 1950. Quine’s philosophy could well be styled ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’; his assay of radical empiricism is invaluable for what it reveals about the inherent limits of empiricism. Careful examination shows that Quine’s criticism of Carnap’s semantics in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ fails, that at its core Quine’s semantics is for two key reasons incoherent and that his hallmark Thesis of Extensionalism (...) is untenable. The tension in Carnap’s semantics together with Quine’s exposure of the severe limits of radical empiricism illuminate central features of Sellars’s philosophy: the fully general form of the myth of givenness, together with Sellars’s alternative Kantian characterisation of understanding; the full significance of Carnap’s distinction between conceptual analysis and conceptual explication, and its important methodological implications; the specifically pragmatic character of Sellars’s realism; and Sellars’s methodological reasons for holding that philosophy must be systematic and that systematic philosophy must be deeply historically and textually informed. This paper thus re-examines this recent episode of philosophical history for its philosophical benefits and systematic insights. (shrink)

A perennial problem in social epistemology is the problem of expert testimony, specifically expert testimony regarding scientific issues: for example, while it is important for me to know information pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, Covid-19, etc., I may lack the scientific background required to determine whether the information I come across is, in fact, true. Without being able to evaluate the science itself, then, I need to find trustworthy expert testifiers to listen to. A major project in social (...) epistemology has thus become determining what the markers of trustworthiness are that laypersons can appeal to in order to identify and acquire information from expert testifiers. At the same time, the ways in which we acquire scientific information has changed significantly, with much of it nowadays being acquired in online environments. While much has been said about the potential pitfalls of seeking information online, little has been said about how the nature of seeking information online should make us think about the problem of expert testimony. Indeed, it seems to be an underlying assumption that good markers of trustworthiness apply equally well when seeking information from expert testifiers in online and offline environments alike, and that the new challenges and opportunities presented by online environments merely affects the methods by which we can acquire evidence of said trustworthiness. Here I argue that in making this assumption one risks failing to account for how unique features of the ways in which we acquire information online affect how we evaluate the trustworthiness of experts. Specifically, I argue for two main claims: first, that the nature of information-seeking online is such that the extent to which information is susceptible to manipulation is a dominant marker of trustworthiness; second, as a result, one will be more likely to seek out a particular kind of expert testifier in online environments, what I call a cooperative as opposed to preemptive expert. The result is that criteria for expert trustworthiness may look significantly different when acquiring information online as opposed to offline. (shrink)

The ‘limits of markets’ debate broadly concerns the question of when it is (im)permissible to have a market in some good. Markets can be of tremendous benefit to society, but many have felt that certain goods should not be for sale (e.g., sex, kidneys, bombs). Their sale is argued to be corrupting, exploitative, or to express a form of disrespect. InMarkets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski have recently argued to the contrary: For any good, as long as it (...) is permissible to give it for free, then it is permissible to give it for money. Their thesis has led to a number of engaging objections, and I leverage recent work on the nature of feasibility within political philosophy to offer a new challenge.I argue that feasibility offers a constraint on which markets can be permissibly implemented. Though it may be possible to create a morally acceptable version of an otherwise repugnant market, some of these markets may be infeasible, and so we are not permitted to implement them. After laying out this challenge, I consider several replies. They concern the relevance of feasibility, and whether any markets really are infeasible. This provides an opportunity to explore the dangers of pursuing the infeasible and with markets generally. I conclude by considering what might lead us to pursue these markets despite their infeasibility, or how knowledge of infeasibility may prove useful regardless. (shrink)

It is has been argued that there is a problem with moral testimony: testimony is deferential, and basing judgments and actions on deferentially acquired knowledge prevents them from having moral worth. What morality perhaps requires of us, then, is that we understand why a proposition is true, but this is something that cannot be acquired through testimony. I argue here that testimony can be both deferential as well as cooperative, and that one can acquire moral understanding through cooperative testimony. The (...) problem of moral testimony is thus not a problem with testimony generally, but a problem of deferential testimony specifically. (shrink)

ABSTRACTConventional wisdom holds that there is no lucky knowledge: if it is a matter of luck, in some relevant sense, that one's belief that p is true, then one does not know that p. Here I will argue that there is similarly no lucky understanding, at least in the case of one type of luck, namely environmental luck. This argument has three parts. First, we need to determine how we evaluate whether one has understanding, which requires determining what I will (...) call understanding's evaluative object. I argue that as the evaluative object of knowledge is a belief in a proposition, the evaluative object of understanding is a mental representation of a relational structure. Next, I show that arguments that environmental luck is incompatible with understanding miss the mark by considering cases in which one has a belief in a proposition is lucky to be true, instead of ones in which one's mental representation of a relational structure is lucky to obtain. I agree, then, with those who argue that one can have understanding when one's beliefs are environmentally lucky to be true, but that this compatibility is not relevant when considering the question of whether one can have environmentally lucky understanding. I then present what I take to be a properly constructed case which shows the incompatibility of environmental luck with understanding. (shrink)

The primary aim of this chapter is to show that several missteps made by others in in their thinking about law as an artefact are due to misconceptions about the role of intentions in understanding law as an artefact. I first briefly recap my own contention that law is a genre of institutionalized abstract artefacts (put forth in The Functions of Law (OUP 2016) and subsequent papers), mostly following Searle’s understanding of institutions and Thomasson’s understanding of public artefacts. I highlight (...) the central place that this theory affords law’s functions, without requiring the theorist to say that possession or performance of the function is either necessary or sufficient for inclusion in the class of law. Some of the most common misunderstandings are exemplified in Brian Leiter’s paper ‘Legal Positivism about the Artifact Law’. He thinks that holding an intentionalist view of artefacts commits the theorist to privileging drafters’ intentions when interpreting law. (It doesn’t.) He also has confusions about the differences between artefact tokens and artefact types leading him to a problematically broad understanding of artefacts. Another problem can be seen in thinking that functional understandings of artefacts are vulnerable to the same problems that arise in functional explanations for biological systems. I go on to consider the work of Luka Burazin and Corrado Roversi, addressing worries that making intentionality central to artefacts implies too much conscious thought is required to make one, noting that several theories of intentionality do not require conscious thought in the execution of intentional action. While those who think a central place for intentionality threatens to leave us unable to explain customary law, this can be dealt with by noting the important distinction between customary rules and customary laws (where the latter requires a decision to enlist public aid in redressing violations). I claim that authors’ intentions are communicated requests for the artefacts’ audiences to see the artefacts as members of their putative kinds. Finally, I address the question of whether or not legal systems are themselves artefacts and institutions, given that they may or may not have been intentionally created. An early lawgiver might have created a legal system by accident in the process of handing down the first laws. I raise the possibility that we might want to impute intentionality to necessary by-products of artefact creation, seeing those by-products as artefacts as well. (shrink)

While social epistemologists have recently begun addressing questions about whether groups can possess beliefs or knowledge, little has yet been said about whether groups can properly be said to possess understanding. Here I want to make some progress on this question by considering two possible accounts of group understanding, modeled on accounts of group belief and knowledge: a deflationary account, according to which a group understands just in case most or all of its members understand, and an inflationary account, according (...) to which a group’s understanding does not depend solely on whether its members understand. I argue that both accounts face problems. The deflationary account has two such problems: aggregation problems that are familiar from discussions of group belief, and the problem of different bases, wherein members possess understanding for different but consistent reasons. The inflationary account faces what I call the problem of distributed grasping: while it is widely accepted that understanding requires a kind of “grasping”, it is hard to make sense of how this requirement could be met at the group level while not necessarily being met by any individual member. Despite its problems, I make a case for the inflationary account. This will require addressing the problem of distributed grasping: to do this, I propose a different way of thinking about the grasping relation at the group level, such that it is constituted by a dependency relationship between members. (shrink)

One prominent argument for pragmatic encroachment (PE) is that PE is entailed by a combination of a principle that states that knowledge warrants proper practical reasoning, and judgments that it is more difficult to reason well when the stakes go up. I argue here that this argument is unsuccessful. One problem is that empirical tests concerning knowledge judgments in high-stakes situations only sometimes exhibit the result predicted by PE. I argue here that those judgments that appear to support PE are (...) better interpreted not as judgments that the epistemic demands for knowing increase as one’s practical situation becomes more demanding, but instead as judgments reflecting a different kind of normative epistemic evaluation, namely whether one is acting in an epistemically responsible way. The general idea is that when someone treats a proposition as a reason for acting we can evaluate them epistemically both in terms of whether they know that proposition, as well as in terms of whether they are acting on their knowledge in the right kind of way. My charge against the PE proponent, then, is that she is interpreting judgments that are indicative of whether we are adhering to certain normative epistemic requirements generally as being indicative of whether we have knowledge specifically. There are, however, normative epistemic requirements that make demands of us that are indicative of something other than our possession of knowledge. (shrink)

Most business ethicists maintain that corporate actors are subject to a variety of moral obligations. However, there is a persistent and underappreciated concern that the competitive pressures of the market somehow provide corporate actors with a far-reaching excuse from meeting these obligations. Here, we assess this concern. Blending resources from the history of philosophy and strategic management, we demonstrate the assumptions required for and limits of this excuse. Applying the idea of ‘the state of nature’ from Thomas Hobbes, we suggest (...) that corporate actors would be excused from duties if complying with them threatened their vital interests. We show how this excuse is not available for most individuals within firms; instead, it is an excuse perhaps available to firms themselves, but only given substantive assumptions about corporate personhood. For those willing to make these assumptions, we apply the competitive advantage construct to delimit the scope of this excuse. We suggest that firms are excused from fulfilling an obligation when complying leads to a competitive disadvantage, as this imperils the firm’s vital interests. After revealing why this excuse does not generalize, we conclude by considering when we should reform the market to avoid the legitimacy of this excuse. (shrink)

Astrology research has been using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the understanding of astrological properties and processes. Like the large language models of AI, astrology is also a language model with a similar underlying linguistic structure but with a distinctive layer of lifestyle contexts. Recent research in semantic proximities and planetary dominance models have helped to quantify effective astrological information. As AI learning and intelligence grows, a major concern is with maintaining its alignment with human values and intentions. Astrology has (...) an extensive background and theory on how different values and expressions of intelligence are resolved. As AI learns to interact with improved astrological models backed by evidence, the integration could produce a stable and insightful alignment of the two disciplines. (shrink)

The Causal Exclusion Problem is raised in many domains, including in the metaphysics of macroscopic objects. If there is a complete explanation of macroscopic effects in terms of the microscopic entities that compose macroscopic objects, then the efficacy of the macroscopic will be threatened with exclusion. I argue that we can avoid the problem if we accept that macroscopic objects are ontically vague. Then, it is indeterminate which collection of microscopic entities compose them, and so information about microscopic entities is (...) insufficient to provide a complete explanation of certain properties of macroscopic objects. After outlining this solution, I consider several objections. (shrink)

My aesthetic judgements seem to make claims on you. While some popular accounts of aesthetic normativity say that the force of these claims is third-personal, I argue that it is actually second-personal. This point may sound like a bland technicality, but it points to a novel idea about what aesthetic judgements ultimately are and what they do. It suggests, in particular, that aesthetic judgements are motions in the collective legislation of the nature of aesthetic activity. This conception is recommended by (...) its ability to explain some important but otherwise recondite features of aesthetic practice and, more importantly, by allowing us to ground the normativity of aesthetic judgement in the familiar normativity of practice. It also offers a more systematic way of understanding the rivalry between the ideals of aesthetic universality and diversity. (shrink)

Isaac Levi targets an implicit tension in C.S. Peirce’s epistemology, one that exists between the need to always be open-minded and aware of our propensity to make mistakes so that we do not “block the road of inquiry,” and the need to treat certain beliefs as infallible and to doubt only in a genuine way so that inquiry can proceed in the first place. Attempts at alleviating this tension have typically involved interpreting Peirce as ascribing different normative standards to different (...) areas of inquiry. I argue here that such “double-standard” interpretations face significant problems. I offer instead an interpretation of Peirce on which the differences between different areas of inquiry are descriptive rather than normative. Such a view resolves Levi’s tension while interpreting Peirce as consistently subscribing to one normative standard for all inquiry. (shrink)

Emergence is typically discussed in the context of mental properties or the properties of the natural sciences, and accounts of emergence within these contexts tend to look a certain way. The emergent property is taken to emerge instantaneously out of, or to be proximately caused by, complex interaction of colocated entities. Here, however, I focus on the properties instantiated by the elements of certain systems discussed in social ontology, such as being a five-dollar bill or a pawn-movement, and I suggest (...) that these properties emerge in a distinctive way. They emerge in part because of a system that is far beyond and typically before the object that instantiates them. I characterize how emergence occurs in these cases, juxtaposing it with how emergence is typically discussed. I then consider whether their emergence is best framed as weak or strong as these notions are characterized in the literature, and I reveal what debates are central to answering this question. Though I will not resolve these debates, I do show a collection of views that would vindicate these properties as strongly emergent and downwardly causing. (shrink)

This article proposes a role for aesthetic judgment in our practical thought. The role is related to those moments when practical reason seems to give out, when it fails to yield a judgment about what to do in the face of a choice we cannot avoid. I argue that these impasses require agents to create, but that not any creativity will do. For we cannot regard a response to one of these problems as arbitrary or capricious if we want to (...) act on it. We must instead regard that response as justified by the problem itself. I suggest that this combination of creativity and normativity is characteristic of aesthetic judgment and this makes it a promising candidate for making these very difficult choices. (shrink)

There is ample justification for having analogical material in standardized tests for graduate school admission, perhaps especially for law school. We think that formal-analogy questions should compare different scenarios whose structure is the same in terms of the number of objects and the formal properties of their relations. The paper deals with this narrower question of how legitimately to have formal analogy test items, and the broader question of what constitutes a formal analogy in general.

Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 and (...) 2004 ) and use our work to rebut recent objections to the long-standing claim that psychological properties are multiply realized. For we use scientific evidence, in combination with our more precise theoretical framework, to show that we have strong reason to believe that psychological properties are indeed multiply realized both at the biochemical and neuronal levels. (shrink)

There are many historical concerns about freedom that have come to be deemphasized in the free will literature itself—for instance, worries around the tyranny of government or the alienation of capitalism. It is hard to see how the current free will literature respects these, or indeed how they could even find expression. This paper seeks to show how these and other concerns can be reintegrated into the debate by appealing to a levels ontology. Recently, Christian List and others have considered (...) how the notion of levels could be relevant to the free will debate. Invariably, however, the focus is on the significance of facts at lower levels. The threats come from below, from fundamental physics or neuroscience. Here, I aim to show how we can frame many interesting concerns about free will in terms of threats from above. After arguing that determination from above is no less threatening, I catalogue such concerns that might constitute threats to our freedom. Doing this not only allows us to show how these concerns relate to those standardly discussed, but it pushes us to expand our conception of freedom. (shrink)

This chapter provides an explanation of precedent as a kind of artefact, in keeping with broader accounts of law that do so, specifically the author’s account of law as a genre of institutionalized abstract artefact. The chapter develops its explanation by responding to an argument by Dan Priel against seeing the common law as an artefact when understood to be a form of custom. The chapter shows that customs can themselves be artefacts but also that the precedential elements of common (...) law are not necessarily quite as customary as sometimes considered, showing that the common law built from precedents fits within a distributed design model of artefacts and that stare decisis has a wider systemic function of upholding certain rule of law principles. It ends with some considerations about the institutional nature of precedents, specifically that judicial decisions are most often both applications and developments of legal norms, but also determinations of legal validity. (shrink)

In 1705, Mary Astell and Damaris Masham both published works advocating for women's use of individual judgment in matters of religion. Although both philosophers advocate for women's education and intellectual autonomy, and both are adherents of the Church of England, they differ dramatically in their attitudes to religious authority. These differences are rooted in a deeper disagreement about the nature of epistemic authority in general. Astell defends an interpersonal model of epistemic authority on which we properly trust testimony when the (...) testifier is answerable for its truth. Masham holds an evidence model of epistemic authority on which testimony is treated as an ordinary piece of empirical evidence. Central to Masham's argument is her contention that religious beliefs based on the kind of authority recognized by Astell could never serve as a stable source of moral motivation. Because of their different theories of epistemic authority, Masham's defense of women's intellectual autonomy leads to a radical anti-clericalism, while Astell's defense is fully consistent with her insistence on deference to the established church. (shrink)

The article recovers the earlier meaning of event as found in Alfred North Whitehead’s works, Principles of Natural Knowledge and Concept of Nature. In the early Whitehead, the event is considered as the metaphysical ultimate; such that events are the metaphysical building blocks in order to account for the temporal and spatial extensiveness of reality. The recuperation of the pre-PR concept of event is expressive of a dynamic of extending over, or passing into, of one event to another. This dynamic (...) is explicitly absent in the actual occasion of Process and Reality, after Whitehead’s “turn to atomism.”. (shrink)

This Open Access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, (...) yoga, and bhakti paradigms serve as starting points for bringing Hindu--particularly Vaishnava Hindu--animal ethics into conversation with contemporary Western animal ethics. The author argues that a culture of bhakti--the inclusive, empathetic practice of spirituality centered in Krishna as the beloved cowherd of Vraja--can complement recently developed ethics-of-care thinking to create a solid basis for sustaining all kinds of cow care communities. (shrink)

In addition to being a founder of American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce was a scientist and an empiricist. A core aspect of his thoroughgoing empiricism was a mindset that treats all attitudes as revisable. His fallibilism seems to require us to constantly seek out new information, and to not be content holding any beliefs uncritically. At the same time, Peirce often states that common sense has an important role to play in both scientific and vital inquiry, and that there cannot (...) be any “direct profit in going behind common sense.” Our question is the following: alongside a scientific mindset and a commitment to the method of inquiry, where does common sense fit in? Peirce does at times directly address common sense; however, those explicit engagements are relatively infrequent. In this paper, we argue that getting a firm grip on the role of common sense in Peirce’s philosophy requires a three-pronged investigation, targeting his treatment of common sense alongside his more numerous remarks on intuition and instinct. By excavating and developing Peirce’s concepts of instinct and intuition, we show that his respect for common sense coheres with his insistence on the methodological superiority of inquiry. We conclude that Peirce shows us the way to a distinctive epistemic position balancing fallibilism and anti-scepticism, a pragmatist common sense position of considerable interest for contemporary epistemology given current interest in the relation of intuition and reason. (shrink)

For one to simply think, philosophy as a rational investigation of truths and principles of knowledge, being, and conduct, that is, philosophy as a "science," is not required. For thinking, what requisite is a reason, a human endowment constitutive of one's intelligence. One only needs a mind to be able to think. But something more is exigent for one to think twice, is to think again, to reconsider and see something from a different perspective. To think things twice, one needs (...) a conscious apprehension of the notion of truth, a deliberate and critical engagement with principles, and a learned competency of habits of thinking that discloses the eternal freshness of reality. These are the elements that constitute philosophy not simply as a way of life, but as an academic discipline with methods and theories. Here lies philosophy's vocational relevance. Thinking things twice is not the mental disorder of indecisiveness or the unfortunate product of capriciousness. To think things twice is the stubborn instinct of human intelligence which remains restless in entrenched patterns of thought. The apprehension of the possibility of thinking things twice is the initial promise of liberation, the first step towards unshackling the mind and its powers from mental scripts that do not give birth to creativity. This explains why it is said that in the domain of philosophical discourses, questions always outlive their answers. Indeed, though philosophy, in its many faces and guises, has offered opinions, beliefs and sometimes divergent truths to the fundamental questions of life. The more important are the questions asked than the answers proffered. The convoluted transformations and shifting grounds in the history of ideas show to us how, philosophically considered, answers have no finality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although in recent years Christine Ladd-Franklin has received recognition for her contributions to logic and psychology, her role in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philosophy, as well as her relationship with American pragmatism, has yet to be fully appreciated. My goal here is to attempt to better understand Ladd-Franklin’s place in the pragmatist tradition by drawing attention to her work on the nature and unity of the proposition. The question concerning the unity of the proposition – namely, the problem (...) of how to determine what differentiates a mere collection of terms from a unified and meaningful proposition – received substantial attention in Ladd-Franklin’s time, and would continue to interest analytic philosophers well into the twentieth century. I argue that Ladd-Franklin had a distinct theory of the proposition and solution to the problem of the unity of the proposition that she developed over the course of her writings on logic and philosophy. In spelling out her views, I will also show her work interacted with and influenced that of the pragmatist who was her greatest influence, C.S. Peirce. (shrink)

Constitutivists believe that we can derive universally and unconditionally authoritative norms from the conditions of agency. Thus if c is a condition of agency, then you ought to live in conformity with c no matter what your particular ends, projects, or station. Much has been said about the validity of the inference, but that’s not my topic here. I want to assume it is valid and talk about what I take to be the highest ambition of constitutivism: the prospect of (...) grounding moral requirements in the conditions of agency. If this can be done, then we can show that everyone is bound by the demands of morality, and we can do so without the customary entanglements—queer normative entities, an implausibly powerful moral sense, or divine lawgivers. (shrink)

This chapter develops and defends an account of reason: to reason is to scrutinize one’s attitudes by consulting the perspectives of other persons. The principal attraction of this account is its ability to vindicate the unique of authority of reason. The chapter argues that this conception entails that reasoning is a robustly social endeavor—that it is, in the first instance, something we do with other people. It is further argued that such social endeavors presuppose mutual respect on the part of (...) those participating in them. The account therefore yields a form of Kantian constructivism: we have an unconditional duty of respect for persons because such a duty is implicit in the very nature of reasoning. -/- . (shrink)

Proponents of the no-miracles argument contend that scientific realism is “the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle.” Bas van Fraassen argued, however, that the success of our best theories can be explained in Darwinian terms—by the fact they are survivors of a winnowing process in which unsuccessful theories are rejected. Critics of this selectionist explanation complain that while it may account for the fact we have chosen successful theories, it does not explain why any particular (...) one of those theories succeeds. Against this I defend the claim that if selectionists manage to account for the former, they have no burden to account for the latter; the success of any particular one of our best theories might as well be an extraordinary coincidence. I refer to this enhanced selectionist reply as “coincidentalism” and argue that it is a serious but underappreciated response to the no-miracles argument. More generally, I argue the considerations raised in favor of this response show that versions of the no-miracles argument focusing on the success of particular theories are misguided. (shrink)

Proponents of the explanatory indispensability argument for mathematical platonism maintain that claims about mathematical entities play an essential explanatory role in some of our best scientific explanations. They infer that the existence of mathematical entities is supported by way of inference to the best explanation from empirical phenomena and therefore that there are the same sort of empirical grounds for believing in mathematical entities as there are for believing in concrete unobservables such as quarks. I object that this inference depends (...) on a false view of how abductive considerations mediate the transfer of empirical support. More specifically, I argue that even if inference to the best explanation is cogent, and claims about mathematical entities play an essential explanatory role in some of our best scientific explanations, it doesn’t follow that the empirical phenomena that license those explanations also provide empirical support for the claim that mathematical entities exist. (shrink)