What constitutes a “good” life—not necessarily a morally good life, but a life that is good for the person who lived it? In response to this question of “well-being," philosophers have offered three significant answers: A good life is one in which a person can satisfy their desires (“Desire-Satisfaction” or “Preferentism”), one that includes certain good features (“Objectivism”), or one in which pleasurable states dominate or outweigh painful ones (“Hedonism”). To adjudicate among these competing theories, moral philosophers traditionally gather data (...) from thought experiments and intuition. In this chapter, we supplement that traditional approach with a pair of experimental studies that examine whether the three theories reflect laypeople’s intuitions about well-being. The empirical studies yield two primary findings. First, they provide evidence for lay "well-being pluralism": laypeople treat desire satisfaction, positive objective conditions, and happiness as all constitutive of well-being. Second, the studies provide evidence of "hedonic dominance": laypeople evaluate an individual’s happiness as more important to an individual’s overall well-being than desire satisfaction or objective conditions. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How do we recognize distinct types of emotion in music?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What counts as cognitive penetration?

This report highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012: 1. How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development? 2. What are the origins of multimodal associations? 3. Does our representation of time provide an amodal framework for multi-sensory integration? 4. What counts as cognitive penetration? 5. How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: Does our representation of time provide and amodal framework for multi-sensory integration?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What are the origins of multimodal associations?

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

Embedding ethics modules within computer science courses has become a popular response to the growing recognition that CS programs need to better equip their students to navigate the ethical dimensions of computing technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics. However, the popularity of this approach has outpaced the evidence of its positive outcomes. To help close that gap, this empirical study reports positive results from Northeastern’s program that embeds values analysis modules into CS courses. The resulting data suggest (...) that such modules have a positive effect on students’ moral attitudes and that students leave the modules believing they are more prepared to navigate the ethical dimensions they’ll likely face in their eventual careers. Importantly, these gains were accomplished at an institution without a philosophy doctoral program, suggesting this strategy can be effectively employed by a wider range of institutions than many have thought. (shrink)

We seem perfectly able to perceive fine-grained shades of colour even without possessing precise concepts for them. The same might be said of shapes. I argue that this is in fact not the case. A subject can perceive a colour or shape only if she possesses a concept of that type of colour or shape. I provide new justification for this thesis, and do not rely on demonstrative concepts such as THIS SHADE or THAT SHAPE, a move first suggested by (...) John McDowell, but rejected by Christopher Peacocke and Richard Heck among others.1. (shrink)

In the last 70 years there has been an explosion of philosophical and theological work on the nature of virtue and the process of virtue formation. Yet philosophers and theologians have paid little attention to the phenomenon of temptation and its role in developing virtue. Indeed, little analytic work has been done on the nature of temptation. This study aims to fill this gap in moral philosophy and theology by offering an analytic moral conception of temptation and explicating its connection (...) to the development of virtue. This project deploys a new iteration of an older methodology of integrating philosophy and theology that may now appropriately be called “analytic moral theology.” In discerning the nature of temptation and its role in virtue formation, theological sources provide foundational guidance. Analytic moral philosophy provides illumination, coherence, and conceptual robustness to the theological foundation. The argument developed follows in the footsteps of John Hick’s soul-making theodicy by contending that the development of virtue requires a world that permits of experiences of temptation. This conclusion is substantiated by a close moral analysis of the nature of temptation that builds on key works done in philosophical moral psychology, philosophy of action, and philosophical theology. The emerging conceptualization of temptation is then compared and contrasted with the closely related moral phenomenon of akrasia and weakness of will, and finally interfaced with a neo- Aristotelian conception of virtue development. In the end, Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of infused virtue is employed as a theological test of the thesis and conditions the scope of the thesis. In light of this constructive analysis of the nature of temptation and its argument for temptation’s role in acquiring moral virtue, this project makes a contribution to philosophical Christian ethics. (shrink)

John McDowell’s debates about concepts with Robert Brandom and Hubert Dreyfus over the past two decades reveal key commitments each philosopher makes. McDowell is committed to giving concepts a role in our embodied coping, extending rational form to human experience. Brandom is committed to defining concepts in a way that helps make rationality distinct. And Dreyfus is committed to explaining how rational understanding develops out of lesser abilities we share with human infants and other animals (I call this “Dreyfus’s (...) challenge”). These commitments appear irreconcilable. I argue to the contrary that they are, in principle, reconcilable, provided we give up their shared “rationalist” commitment to the idea that the rational use of language is necessary for having concepts. First, I exploit Brandom and McDowell’s debate to motivate abandoning the rationalist commitment. Next, I exploit Dreyfus and McDowell’s debate to establish the need for a broader notion of concepts to answer Dreyfus’s challenge. I turn to Elizabeth Camp’s broader notion of concepts as spontaneously, systematically recombinable representations, and establish that it lacks resources for distinguishing human rationality. To resolve that weakness, I integrate Camp’s notion of concepts with John Haugeland’s theory of objectivity, which does make rationality distinct. Finally, drawing my integration of Camp and Haugeland, I propose a way to answer Dreyfus’s challenge, which I call “relaxed holism.” The core of relaxed holism is a cumulative, developmental sequence of three related cognitive abilities: representation, concepts, and metacognition. I argue that relaxed holism also reconciles both McDowell’s commitment to giving normatively governed concepts a role in embodied coping, and Brandom’s commitment to defining concepts in a way that helps make rationality distinct. (shrink)

The relations between Searle, Derrida, CP and phenomenology are complex. The writings of Derrida, the most influential figure within CP, are inseparably bound up with phenomenology and with the transformation of phenomenology effected by Heidegger. Indeed a large part of CP grew out of phenomenology. It has often been claimed that Searle's own contributions to the philosophy of mind advance claims already put forward by the phenomenologists, and Searle himself has given his own account of phenomenology, in particular of the (...) role of idealism in phenomenology. In what follows I argue that the preoccupations of early phenomenology are often those of later analytic philosophers - a point that remains invisible so long as phenomenology is looked at from the point of view of what phenomenology became - but that Searle's philosophy of mind differs on most central points from that given by Husserl. On the other hand, Searle's criticisms of Derrida and of the philosophical parts of postmodernism do indeed have much in common with the criticisms put forward by the early phenomenologists and by Husserl himself of what they saw as phenomenology's gradual transformation and degeneration and of related irrationalisms. A grasp of these similarities will suggest the beginnings of an answer to the question why Searle's anti-Derridas and anti-postmodernisms are such splendidly isolated examples of the genre. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications devoted at least in part to Aristotle’s logic. Sections I–IV list 20 articles, 43 abstracts, 3 books, and 10 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article that antedates Corcoran’s Aristotle’s studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated with endnotes connecting them (...) with other work. In addition, Section V “Discussions” is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 22 in the 1980s, 39 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 65 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is annotated with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. As is evident from the Acknowledgements sections, all of Corcoran’s publications benefited from correspondence with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in consultation with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. (shrink)

JUNE 2015 UPDATE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY: JOHN CORCORAN’S PUBLICATIONS ON ARISTOTLE 1972–2015 By John Corcoran -/- This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications relevant to his research on Aristotle’s logic. Sections I, II, III, and IV list 21 articles, 44 abstracts, 3 books, and 11 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article from Corcoran’s Philadelphia period that antedates his Aristotle studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic (...) article from his Buffalo period first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated as listed or with endnotes connecting them with other work and pointing out passages that in-retrospect are seen to be misleading and in a few places erroneous. In addition, Section V, “Discussions”, is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 23 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 69 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is also annotated as listed or with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. Section VI, “Alternatives”, lists recent works on Aristotle’s logic oblivious of Corcoran’s research and, more generally, of the Lukasiewicz-initiated tradition. As is evident from Section VII, “Acknowledgements”, Corcoran’s publications benefited from consultation with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, Roberto Torretti, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in collaboration with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. -/- REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. Also, let me know of passages I should comment on. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications relevant on Aristotle’s logic. The Sections I, II, III, and IV list respectively 23 articles, 44 abstracts, 3 books, and 11 reviews. Section I starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article—from Corcoran’s Philadelphia period that antedates his discovery of Aristotle’s natural deduction system—and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article—from his Buffalo period first reporting his original results. It ends with works published in (...) 2015. Some items are annotated as listed or with endnotes connecting them with other work and pointing out passages that, in retrospect, are seen to be misleading and in a few places erroneous. In addition, Section V, “Discussions”, is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 10 items published in the 1970s, 24 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, 60 in the 2000s, and 70 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is also annotated as listed or with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. Section VI, “Alternatives”, lists recent works on Aristotle’s logic oblivious of Corcoran’s research and, more generally in some cases, even of the Łukasiewicz-initiated tradition. As is evident from Section VII, “Acknowledgements”, Corcoran’s publications benefited from consultation with other scholars, most notably George Boger, Charles Kahn, John Mulhern, Mary Mulhern, Anthony Preus, Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, Roberto Torretti, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in collaboration with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. (shrink)

English translation of an entry on pages 137–42 of the Spanish-language dictionary of logic: Luis Vega, Ed. Compendio de Lógica, Argumentación, y Retórica. Madrid: Trotta. -/- DEDICATION: To my friend and collaborator Kevin Tracy. -/- This short essay—containing careful definitions of ‘counterargument’ and ‘counterexample’—is not an easy read but it is one you’ll be glad you struggled through. It contains some carefully chosen examples suitable for classroom discussion. -/- Using the word ‘counterexample’ instead of ‘counterargument’ in connection with Aristotle’s (...) invalidity proofs leads to a misinterpretation of Aristotle’s intentions. The two relations expressed by these two words are drastically different—as explained in this essay. There is however a subtle overlap: Every argument that is a counterargument for a given argument is a counterexample to the universal proposition that every argument in the same form as the given argument is valid. The word ‘counterexample’ was coined in the 1800s. The word ‘counterargument’ was given this sense in the 1960s. Saying that one argument is a counterexample for another argument is bad English—taking the word ‘counterexample’ in its Standard English sense. The word ‘counterinstance’ is an exact synonym for ‘counterexample’. Which logic books define ‘counterinstance’ or ‘counterexample’? Who started using ‘counterinstance’ or ‘counterexample’ in the sense of ‘counterargument’? Did they note that they were not using the word in the Standard sense? Why did it catch on? -/- Also see: https://www.academia.edu/8840909/Argumentations_and_logic_1989_ . (shrink)

Predictable polarization is everywhere: we can often predict how people’s opinions, including our own, will shift over time. Extant theories either neglect the fact that we can predict our own polarization, or explain it through irrational mechanisms. They needn’t. Empirical studies suggest that polarization is predictable when evidence is ambiguous, that is, when the rational response is not obvious. I show how Bayesians should model such ambiguity and then prove that—assuming rational updates are those which obey the value of evidence—ambiguity (...) is necessary and sufficient for the rationality of predictable polarization. The main theoretical result is that there can be a series of such updates, each of which is individually expected to make you more accurate, but which together will predictably polarize you. Polarization results from asymmetric increases in accuracy. This mechanism is not only theoretically possible, but empirically plausible. I argue that cognitive search—searching a cognitively accessible space for a particular item—often yields asymmetrically ambiguous evidence, I present an experiment supporting its polarizing effects, and I use simulations to show how it can explain two of the core causes of polarization: confirmation bias and the group polarization effect. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAndrew Bacon, Matti Eklund, and Patrick Greenough have individually proposed objections to the project in my book, Replacing Truth. Briefly, the book outlines a conceptual engineering project – our defective concept of truth is replaced for certain purposes with a team of concepts that can do some of the jobs we thought truth could do. Here, I respond to their objections and develop the views expressed in Replacing Truth in various ways.

This paper presents the results of two corpus studies investigating the discourse surrounding conspiracy theories and genuine theories. The results of these studies show that conspiracy theories lack the epistemic and scientific standing characteristic of theories more generally. Instead, our findings indicate that conspiracy theories are spread in a manner that resembles the dissemination of rumors and falsehoods. Based on these empirical results, we argue that it is time for both re-engineering conspiracy theory and for relabeling "conspiracy theory". We propose (...) relabelling conspiracy theories as either "conspiracy stories" or "conspiracy narratives" to more accurately convey their true nature. (shrink)

Assertions are the centre of gravity in social epistemology. They are the vehicles we use to exchange information within scientific groups and society as a whole. It is therefore essential to determine under which conditions we are permitted to make an assertion. In this paper we argue and provide empirical evidence for the view that the norm of assertion is justified belief: truth or even knowledge are not required. Our results challenge the knowledge account advocated by, e.g. Williamson (1996), in (...) general, and more specifically, put into question several studies conducted by Turri (2013, 2016) that support a knowledge norm of assertion. Instead, the justified belief account championed by, e.g. Douven (2006), seems to prevail. (shrink)

Letter to the Editors in response to Alasdair Richmond's 'Time Travelers'.

There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring to someone involves preferring to make any decision (...) using their opinions instead of your own. In a slogan, deferring opinions is deferring decisions. Generalizing the proposal of Dorst (2020a), we first formulate a new principle that shows exactly how your opinions must relate to an expert’s for this to be so. We then build off the results of Levinstein (2019) and Campbell-Moore (2020) to show that this principle is also equivalent to the constraint that you must always expect the expert’s estimates to be more accurate than your own. Finally, we characterize the conditions an expert’s opinions must meet to be worthy of deference in this sense, showing how they sit naturally between the too-strong constraints of Reflection and the too-weak constraints of New Reflection. (shrink)

What is essential to language? Two thinkers active in Vienna in the 1930's, Karl Bühler and Ludwig Wittgenstein, gave apparently incompatible answers to this question. I compare what Wittgenstein says about language and reference at the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations with some aspects of the descriptive analysis of language worked out by Bühler between 1907 and 1934, a systematic development of the philosophies of mind and language of such heirs of Brentano as Martinak, Marty, Meinong, Landgrebe and Husserl. Y (...) a-Uil quelque chose qui est essentiel au langage? Deux penseurs actifs à Vienne dans les années trente, Karl Bühler et Ludwig Wittgenstein, donnent à cette question des réponses qui sont apparemment incompatibles. Je compare ce que Wittgenstein dit du langage et de la référence au début de ses Investigations Philosophiques avec quelques aspects de l'analyse descriptive élaborée par Bühler entre 1907 et 1934, un développement systématique des philosophies de l'esprit et du langage des héritiers de Brentano tels que Martinak, Marty, Meinong, Landgrebe et Husserl. (shrink)

Do people tend to be overconfident? Many think so. They’ve run studies on whether people are calibrated: whether their average confidence in their opinions matches the proportion of those opinions that are true. Under certain conditions, people are systematically ‘over-calibrated’—for example, of the opinions they’re 80% confident in, only 60% are true. From this empirical over-calibration, it’s inferred that people are irrationally overconfident. My question: When and why is this inference warranted? Answering it requires articulating a general connection between being (...) rational and being right—something extant studies have not done. I show how to do so using the notion of deference. This provides a theoretical foundation for calibration research, but also reveals a flaw: the connection between being rational and being right is much weaker than is standardly assumed, since rational people can often be expected to be miscalibrated. Thus we can’t test whether people are overconfident by simply testing whether they are over-calibrated; instead, we must try to predict the rational deviations from calibration, and then compare those predictions to people’s performance. I show how this can be done—and that doing so complicates the interpretation of robust empirical effects. (shrink)

Born 80 years ago, Continental Philosophy is on its last legs. Its extraordinary career has been helped along by an almost total absence of interest on the part of analytic or other exact philosophers in what the Australian philosopher David Stove calls "the nosology of philosophy" 1, the exploration of the manifold forms taken by bad philosophy. Stove points out that such an enterprise involves doing history. A nosology of Continental Philosophy is, at least in the first instance, inseparable from (...) the history of this strand in twentieth century philosophy, a history which would make clear the relations, philosophical and historical, between it and exact philosophy. Rorty is quite right to point to the absence of such a historical perspective. (shrink)

The Lockean Thesis says that you must believe p iff you’re sufficiently confident of it. On some versions, the 'must' asserts a metaphysical connection; on others, it asserts a normative one. On some versions, 'sufficiently confident' refers to a fixed threshold of credence; on others, it varies with proposition and context. Claim: the Lockean Thesis follows from epistemic utility theory—the view that rational requirements are constrained by the norm to promote accuracy. Different versions of this theory generate different versions of (...) Lockeanism; moreover, a plausible version of epistemic utility theory meshes with natural language considerations, yielding a new Lockean picture that helps to model and explain the role of beliefs in inquiry and conversation. Your beliefs are your best guesses in response to the epistemic priorities of your context. Upshot: we have a new approach to the epistemology and semantics of belief. And it has teeth. It implies that the role of beliefs is fundamentally different than many have thought, and in fact supports a metaphysical reduction of belief to credence. (shrink)

The answer I shall sketch is not mine. Nor, as far as I can tell, is it an answer to be found in the voluminous literature inspired by Kripke’s work. Many of the elements of the answer are to be found in the writings of Wittgenstein and his Austro-German predecessors, Martinak, Husserl, Marty, Landgrebe and Bühler. Within this Austro-German tradition we may distinguish between a strand which is Platonist and anti-naturalist and a strand which is nominalist and naturalist. Thus Husserl’s (...) account of what he calls “directly referring” uses of singular terms invokes senses or individual concepts, albeit simple, not descriptive senses. But the account of reference fixing and reference given by Landgrebe, Bühler and Wittgenstein rejects senses.1 I confine further reference to these writers to footnotes since my aim here is to develop and unify some of their suggestions, in particular by comparing them with more recent work (cf. Mulligan 1997). (shrink)

This book aims to develop certain aspects of Gottlob Frege’s theory of meaning, especially those relevant to intensional logic. It offers a new interpretation of the nature of senses, and attempts to devise a logical calculus for the theory of sense and reference that captures as closely as possible the views of the historical Frege. (The approach is contrasted with the less historically-minded Logic of Sense and Denotation of Alonzo Church.) Comparisons of Frege’s theory with those of Russell and others (...) are given. It is in the end shown that developing Frege’s theory in these ways reveals serious problems hitherto largely unnoticed, including those possibly rendering a Fregean intensional logic inconsistent even if his naïve class theory is excluded. (shrink)

Kevin Mulligan has examined in several papers and a book the conceptual relations between the descriptions of mind, language and colours in the philosophies of Brentano’s heirs and the descriptions given later by Wittgenstein. In Chapter 12, he looks at what Bühler and Wittgenstein have to say about the phenomenon of being guided by something and two of their favourite examples – reading and our relations to rules.

‘What is characteristic of every mental activity’, according to Brentano, is ‘the reference to something as an object. In this respect every mental activity seems to be something relational.’ But what sort of a relation, if any, is our cognitive access to the world? This question – which we shall call Brentano’s question – throws a new light on many of the traditional problems of epistemology. The paper defends a view of perceptual acts as real relations of a subject to (...) an object. To make this view coherent, a theory of different types of relations is developed, resting on ideas on formal ontology put forward by Husserl in his Logical Investigations and on the theory of relations sketched in Smith's "Acta cum fundamentis in re". The theory is applied to the notion of a Cambridge change, which proves to have an unforeseen relevance to our understanding of perception. (shrink)

This paper explores a case example of qualitative research that applied productive hermeneutics and the central concept, fusion of horizons. Interpretation of meaning is a fusing of the researchers’ and subjects’ perspectives and serves to expand understanding. The purpose is to illustrate an exemplar of qualitative research without establishing a rigid recipe of methodology. The illustration is based on in-depth observational and textual data from an applied anthropological study conducted in western Alaska with Yup’ik hunters and fishers and government agency (...) employees as they worked towards collaborative management. The metaphor of the hermeneutical circle is showcased to help the reader understand the philosophical underpinnings and the analytical processes used to realize a meaningful interpretation. A series of organizing systems for the interpretation is described, culminating in a final organizing system to communicate a fully realized understanding of collaborative management at the time. (shrink)

This paper details the content and structure of the folk concept of life, and discusses its relevance for scientific research on life. In four empirical studies, we investigate which features of life are considered salient, universal, central, and necessary. Functionings, such as nutrition and reproduction, but not material composition, turn out to be salient features commonly associated with living beings (Study 1). By contrast, being made of cells is considered a universal feature of living species (Study 2), a central aspect (...) of life (Study 3), and our best candidate for being necessary for life (Study 4). These results are best explained by the hypothesis that people take life to be a natural kind subject to scientific scrutiny. (shrink)

This paper develops a problem for conciliationism that is structurally similar to the self-undermining problem but which is immune to most of the solutions offered against it. A popular objection to conciliationism is that it undermines itself. Given the current disagreement among philosophers about conciliationism, conciliationism seems to require rejecting conciliationism. Adam Elga (2010) has influentially argued that this shows that conciliationism is an incoherent method. By recommending its own rejection, conciliationism recommends multiple, incompatible responses to the same body of (...) experience. Many have offered solutions to this problem, including Elga himself. However, there is another undermining problem. When a peer disagrees about their own peerhood, conciliationism can require the rejection of the peer’s peerhood. The result is that conciliationism recommends two incompatible responses to the same body of experience in a way that parallels the original self-undermining problem. But since many, if not all, of the proposed solutions to the original undermining problem depend on distinctive characteristics of conciliationism undermining itself, they cannot apply to a peer undermining themself. I illustrate this by dividing the solutions that have been offered against the self-undermining problem into two categories: self-exempting solutions and non-exempting solutions. I then show how the proposed solutions under each type do not extend to the peer-undermining problem. If that is right, then conciliationism is faced with a more difficult undermining problem than has been so far acknowledged. (shrink)

KK is the thesis that if you can know p, you can know that you can know p. Though it’s unpopular, a flurry of considerations has recently emerged in its favour. Here we add fuel to the fire: standard resources allow us to show that any failure of KK will lead to the knowability and assertability of abominable indicative conditionals of the form ‘If I don’t know it, p’. Such conditionals are manifestly not assertable—a fact that KK defenders can easily (...) explain. I survey a variety of KK-denying responses and find them wanting. Those who object to the knowability of such conditionals must either deny the possibility of harmony between knowledge and belief, or deny well-supported connections between conditional and unconditional attitudes. Meanwhile, those who grant knowability owe us an explanation of such conditionals’ unassertability—yet no successful explanations are on offer. Upshot: we have new evidence for KK. (shrink)

This paper is about guessing: how people respond to a question when they aren’t certain of the answer. Guesses show surprising and systematic patterns that the most obvious theories don’t explain. We argue that these patterns reveal that people aim to optimize a tradeoff between accuracy and informativity when forming their guess. After spelling out our theory, we use it to argue that guessing plays a central role in our cognitive lives. In particular, our account of guessing yields new theories (...) of belief, assertion, and the conjunction fallacy—the psychological finding that people sometimes rank a conjunction as more probable than one of its conjuncts. More generally, we suggest that guessing helps explain how boundedly rational agents like us navigate a complex, uncertain world. (shrink)

Of the dozens of purported solutions to the liar paradox published in the past fifty years, the vast majority are "traditional" in the sense that they reject one of the premises or inference rules that are used to derive the paradoxical conclusion. Over the years, however, several philosophers have developed an alternative to the traditional approaches; according to them, our very competence with the concept of truth leads us to accept that the reasoning used to derive the paradox is sound. (...) That is, our conceptual competence leads us into inconsistency. I call this alternative the inconsistency approach to the liar. Although this approach has many positive features, I argue that several of the well-developed versions of it that have appeared recently are unacceptable. In particular, they do not recognize that if truth is an inconsistent concept, then we should replace it with new concepts that do the work of truth without giving rise to paradoxes. I outline an inconsistency approach to the liar paradox that satisfies this condition. (shrink)

One popular conception of natural theology holds that certain purely rational arguments are insulated from empirical inquiry and independently establish conclusions that provide evidence, justification, or proof of God’s existence. Yet, some raise suspicions that philosophers and theologians’ personal religious beliefs inappropriately affect these kinds of arguments. I present an experimental test of whether philosophers and theologians’ argument analysis is influenced by religious commitments. The empirical findings suggest religious belief affects philosophical analysis and offer a challenge to theists and atheists, (...) alike: reevaluate the scope of natural theology’s conclusions or acknowledge and begin to address the influence of religious belief. (shrink)

Philosophers and linguists currently lack the means to reliably identify evaluative concepts and measure their evaluative intensity. Using a corpus-based approach, we present a new method to distinguish evaluatively thick and thin adjectives like ‘courageous’ and ‘awful’ from descriptive adjectives like ‘narrow,’ and from value-associated adjectives like ‘sunny.’ Our study suggests that the modifiers ‘truly’ and ‘really’ frequently highlight the evaluative dimension of thick and thin adjectives, allowing for them to be uniquely classified. Based on these results, we believe our (...) operationalization may pave the way for a more quantitative approach to the study of thick and thin concepts. (shrink)

Assume that it is your evidence that determines what opinions you should have. I argue that since you should take peer disagreement seriously, evidence must have two features. (1) It must sometimes warrant being modest: uncertain what your evidence warrants, and (thus) uncertain whether you’re rational. (2) But it must always warrant being guided: disposed to treat your evidence as a guide. Surprisingly, it is very difficult to vindicate both (1) and (2). But diagnosing why this is so leads to (...) a proposal—Trust—that is weak enough to allow modesty but strong enough to yield many guiding features. In fact, I claim that Trust is the Goldilocks principle—for it is necessary and sufficient to vindicate the claim that you should always prefer to use free evidence. Upshot: Trust lays the foundations for a theory of disagreement and, more generally, an epistemology that permits self-doubt—a modest epistemology. (shrink)

We argue that philosophers ought to distinguish epistemic decision theory and epistemology, in just the way ordinary decision theory is distinguished from ethics. Once one does this, the internalist arguments that motivate much of epistemic decision theory make sense, given specific interpretations of the formalism. Making this distinction also causes trouble for the principle called Propriety, which says, roughly, that the only acceptable epistemic utility functions make probabilistically coherent credence functions immodest. We cast doubt on this requirement, but then argue (...) that epistemic decision theorists should never have wanted such a strong principle in any case. (shrink)

This essay attempts to recover the ancient Egyptian category of "maat" as a valuable resource for contemporary metaethics and particular attention is given to its affinity with versions of modern non-cognitivism.

Grounding pluralism is the view that there are multiple kinds of grounding. In this essay, I motivate and defend an explanation-theoretic view of grounding pluralism. Specifically, I argue that there are two kinds of grounding: why-grounding—which tells us why things are the case—and how-grounding—which tells us how things are the case.

Suppose you have recently gained a disposition for recognizing a high-level kind property, like the property of being a wren. Wrens might look different to you now. According to the Phenomenal Contrast Argument, such cases of perceptual learning show that the contents of perception can include high-level kind properties such as the property of being a wren. I detail an alternative explanation for the different look of the wren: a shift in one’s attentional pattern onto other low-level properties. Philosophers have (...) alluded to this alternative before, but I provide a comprehensive account of the view, show how my account significantly differs from past claims, and offer a novel argument for the view. Finally, I show that my account puts us in a position to provide a new objection to the Phenomenal Contrast Argument. (shrink)

You can perceive things, in many respects, as they really are. For example, you can correctly see a coin as circular from most angles. Nonetheless, your perception of the world is perspectival. The coin looks different when slanted than when head-on, and there is some respect in which the slanted coin looks similar to a head-on ellipse. Many hold that perception is perspectival because you perceive certain properties that correspond to the “looks” of things. I argue that this view is (...) misguided. I consider the two standard versions of this view. What I call the PLURALIST APPROACH fails to give a unified account of the perspectival character of perception, while what I call the PERSPECTIVAL PROPERTIES APPROACH violates central commitments of contemporary psychology. I propose instead that perception is perspectival because of the way perceptual states are structured from their parts. (shrink)

You have higher-order uncertainty iff you are uncertain of what opinions you should have. I defend three claims about it. First, the higher-order evidence debate can be helpfully reframed in terms of higher-order uncertainty. The central question becomes how your first- and higher-order opinions should relate—a precise question that can be embedded within a general, tractable framework. Second, this question is nontrivial. Rational higher-order uncertainty is pervasive, and lies at the foundations of the epistemology of disagreement. Third, the answer is (...) not obvious. The Enkratic Intuition---that your first-order opinions must “line up” with your higher-order opinions---is incorrect; epistemic akrasia can be rational. If all this is right, then it leaves us without answers---but with a clear picture of the question, and a fruitful strategy for pursuing it. (shrink)

Sosa, Pritchard, and Vogel have all argued that there are cases in which one knows something inductively but does not believe it sensitively, and that sensitivity therefore cannot be necessary for knowledge. I defend sensitivity by showing that inductive knowledge is sensitive.

In 1903, in _The Principles of Mathematics_ (_PoM_), Russell endorsed an account of classes whereupon a class fundamentally is to be considered many things, and not one, and used this thesis to explicate his first version of a theory of types, adding that it formed the logical justification for the grammatical distinction between singular and plural. The view, however, was short-lived; rejected before _PoM_ even appeared in print. However, aside from mentions of a few misgivings, there is little evidence about (...) why he abandoned this view. In this paper, I speculate as to what those reasons were, and evaluate them in light of recent work and interest in plural logic. (shrink)