Applied ontologies have been used more and more frequently to enhance systems engineering. In this paper, we argue that adopting principles of ontological realism can increase the benefits that ontologies have already been shown to provide to the systems engineering process. Moreover, adopting Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), an ISO standard for top-level ontologies from which more domain specific ontologies are constructed, can lead to benefits in four distinct areas of systems engineering: (1) interoperability, (2) standardization, (3) testing, and (4) data (...) exploitation. Reaping these benefits in a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) context requires utilizing an ontology’s vocabulary when modeling systems and entities within those systems. If the chosen ontology abides by the principles of ontological realism, a semantic standard capable of uniting distinct domains, using BFO as a hub, can be leveraged to promote greater interoperability among systems. As interoperability and standardization increase, so does the ability to collect data during the testing and implementation of systems. These data can then be reasoned over by computational reasoners using the logical axioms within the ontology. This, in turn, generates new data that would have been impossible or too inefficient to generate without the aid of computational reasoners. (shrink)

Intellectualists claim that knowing how to do something is a matter of knowing, for some w, that w is a way to do that thing. However, standard accounts fail to account for the way that knowing how sometimes seems to require ability. I argue that the way to make sense of this situation is via a ‘subject-specific’ intellectualism according to which knowing how to do something is a matter of knowing that w is a way for some relevant person to (...) do that thing, but who the relevant person is can change from context to context. If it is the utterer themselves, then knowing how will require ability, but otherwise it will not. (shrink)

Certain commentators on Russell's “no class” theory, in which apparent reference to classes or sets is eliminated using higher-order quantification, including W. V. Quine and (recently) Scott Soames, have doubted its success, noting the obscurity of Russell’s understanding of so-called “propositional functions”. These critics allege that realist readings of propositional functions fail to avoid commitment to classes or sets (or something equally problematic), and that nominalist readings fail to meet the demands placed on classes by mathematics. I show that Russell (...) did thoroughly explore these issues, and had good reasons for rejecting accounts of propositional functions as extra-linguistic entities. I argue in favor of a reading taking propositional functions to be nothing over and above open formulas which addresses many such worries, and in particular, does not interpret Russell as reducing classes to language. (shrink)

In their correspondence in 1902 and 1903, after discussing the Russell paradox, Russell and Frege discussed the paradox of propositions considered informally in Appendix B of Russell’s Principles of Mathematics. It seems that the proposition, p, stating the logical product of the class w, namely, the class of all propositions stating the logical product of a class they are not in, is in w if and only if it is not. Frege believed that this paradox was avoided within his philosophy (...) due to his distinction between sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung). However, I show that while the paradox as Russell formulates it is ill-formed with Frege’s extant logical system, if Frege’s system is expanded to contain the commitments of his philosophy of language, an analogue of this paradox is formulable. This and other concerns in Fregean intensional logic are discussed, and it is discovered that Frege’s logical system, even without its naive class theory embodied in its infamous Basic Law V, leads to inconsistencies when the theory of sense and reference is axiomatized therein. (shrink)

Modern rationalism transformed the modern homeland to a discursive space and time by means of institutes governing the modern society in all its walks. Based on the Newtonian and Kantian conception of space and time the discursive field is just a scene wherein any human individual adopts stewardship to create progress by reducing landscape and non-human life to auxiliary items for human’s benefit. In contrast, Aldo Leopold considered humans, non human life and the landscape as mutually influencing participants and enlarged (...) ethical care to all living participants and the landscape, called ´the land´. Integrity and autonomy of the homeland are the central topics of Leopold’s land ethics. Baird Callicott suggested to complete it with new metaphysical conceptions of space and time. -/- We formulated a metaphysical background for Leopold’s land ethics by phenomenology of space and time based on the Leibnizian conception of space-time. The latter is constructed by particular places and events called ´ecotopois´ embracing all human participants, locals and foreigners in a varying symbolic temporal and spatial field of dynamic process of identification and self consciousness. Adopting Warwick Fox´ transpersonal identification idea non-human life and landscape enriches these processes. Finally, it is not a matter of conquering the land, it is matter of making a community. -/- Though landscape and participants are particular, integrity and autonomy of the homeland claim the universal status of the land. Adopting Gadamer hermeneutical way of understanding, we reject mutual and equally understanding. Only acceptance of mutual prejudice makes room for asymmetric praxis between locals and foreigners as well as between humans and non-humans. What is more, Gadamer´s hermeneutics makes an ontological status of the foreigner possible and recognizes the interest of homeland’s particularity. This universal status is guaranteed as a priori space-time that links subject’s tradition and that of the land to actual contact with the foreigner. Transpersonal identification is a consequence of converging hermeneutical understanding of foreigner’s particularity and that of the landscape. Ethics of the land evolves from the ethical status of any foreigner in the own homeland. -/- . (shrink)

Since the publication of Kenneth Howard’s 2017 article, “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity,” there has been an increasing demand to understand the root causes and historical foundations for why institutional Christianity is in a state of de-institutionalization. In response to Howard’s research, a number of authors have sought to provide a contextual explanation for why the religion singularity is currently happening, including studies in epistemology, church history, psychology, anthropology, and church ministry. The purpose of (...) this article is to offer a brief survey and response to these interactions with Howard’s research, identifying the overall implications of each researcher’s perspective for understanding the religion singularity phenomenon. It explores factors relating to denominational switching in Jeshua Branch’s research, social memory in John Lingelbach’s essay, religious politics in Kevin Seybold’s survey, scientific reductionism in Jack David Eller’s position paper, and institutional moral failure in Brian McLaren’s article. (shrink)

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect the full (...) set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) -/- Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement -/- Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) -/- Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) -/- Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) -/- Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) -/- Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild -/- Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) -/- Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) -/- Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) -/- Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) -/- Part III - Online Public Consultation -/- Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) -/- Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) -/- Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) -/- Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) -/- Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) -/- Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations -/- Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) -/- Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) -/- Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) -/- Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) -/- Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) -/- Part V - Online Facilitation -/- Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) -/- Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) -/- Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) -/- Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) -/- Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) -/- Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) -/- Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools -/- Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) -/- Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) -/- Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) -/- Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) -/- Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) -/- Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) -/- Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). -/- For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of how we do things with music—that is, the way that we use music as an esthetic technology to enact micro-practices of emotion regulation, communicative expression, identity construction, and interpersonal coordination that drive core aspects of our emotional and social existence. The main thesis is: from birth, music is directly perceived as an affordance-laden structure. Music, I argue, affords a sonic world, an exploratory space or nested acoustic environment that further affords possibilities for, among other (...) things, (1) emotion regulation and (2) social coordination. When we do things with music, we are engaged in the work of creating and cultivating the self, as well as creating and cultivating a shared world that we inhabit with others. I develop this thesis by first introducing the notion of a musical affordance . Next, I look at how emotional affordances in music are exploited to construct and regulate emotions. I summon empirical research on neonate music therapy to argue that this is something we emerge from the womb knowing how to do. I then look at social affordances in music, arguing that joint attention to social affordances in music alters how music is both perceived and appropriated by joint attenders within social listening contexts. In support, I describe the experience of listening to and engaging with music in a live concert setting. Thinking of music as an affordance-laden structure thus reaffirms the crucial role that music plays in constructing and regulating emotional and social experiences in everyday life. (shrink)

Is moral responsibility essentially historical, or does an agent's moral responsibility for an action depend only on their psychological structure at that time? In previous work, I have argued that the two main (non‐skeptical) views on moral responsibility and agents’ histories—historicism and standard structuralism—are vulnerable to objections that are avoided by a third option, namely history‐sensitive structuralism. In this paper, I develop this view in greater detail and evaluate the view by comparing it with its three dialectical rivals: skepticism about (...) moral responsibility, historicism, and standard structuralism. Each comparison includes discussion of new work on moral responsibility and agents’ histories, and along the way I offer new arguments for preferring history‐sensitive structuralism, paying special attention to the view's explanatory power. (shrink)

It has been recently argued by a number of metaphysicians—Trenton Merricks and Eric Olson among them—that any variety of dualism that claims that human persons have souls as proper parts (rather than simply being identical to souls) will face a too-many-thinker problem. In this paper, I examine whether this objection applies to the views of Aquinas, who famously claims that human persons are soul-body composites. I go on to argue that a straightforward readingof Aquinas’s texts might lead us to believe (...) that he falls prey to Merricks and Olson’s objection, but that a more heterodox interpretation reveals a way to avoidthis problem. (shrink)

I draw upon the conceptual resources of the extended mind thesis to analyze empathy and interpersonal understanding. Against the dominant mentalistic paradigm, I argue that empathy is fundamentally an extended bodily activity and that much of our social understanding happens outside of the head. First, I look at how the two dominant models of interpersonal understanding, theory theory and simulation theory, portray the cognitive link between folk psychology and empathy. Next, I challenge their internalist orthodoxy and offer an alternative "extended" (...) characterization of empathy. In support of this characterization, I analyze some narratives of individuals with Moebius syndrome, a kind of expressive deficit resulting from bilateral facial paralysis. I conclude by discussing how a Zen Buddhist ethics of responsiveness is helpful for articulating the practical significance of an extended, body-based account of empathy. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a version of compatibilism against luck-related objections. After introducing the types of luck that some take to be problematic for moral responsibility, I consider and respond to two recent attempts to show that compatibilism faces the same problem of luck that libertarianism faces—present luck. I then consider a different type of luck—constitutive luck—and provide a new solution to this problem. One upshot of the present discussion is a reason to prefer a history-sensitive compatibilist account over (...) a purely nonhistorical structuralist account. (shrink)

Kevin Lynch's books are the classic underpinnings of modern urban planning and design, yet they are only a part of his rich legacy of ideas about human purposes and values in built form. City Sense and City Design brings together Lynch's remaining work, including professional design and planning projects that show how he translated many of his ideas and theories into practice. An invaluable sourcebook of design knowledge, City Sense and City Design completes the record of one of the (...) foremost environmental design theorists of our time and leads to a deeper understanding of his distinctively humanistic philosophy. The editors, both former students of Lynch, provide a cogent summary of his career and of the role he played in shaping and transforming the American urban design profession during the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. Each of the seven thematic groupings of writings and projects that follow begins with a short introduction explaining their content and their background. The essays in part I focus on the premises of Lynch's work: his novel reading of large-scale built environments and the notion that the design of an urban landscape should be as meaningful and intimate as the natural landscape. In part II, excerpts from Lynch's travel journals reveal his early ideas on how people perceive and interpret their surroundings—ideas that culminated in his seminal work, The Image of the City. This part of the book also presents Lynch's experiments with children and his assessment of environmental-perception research. The examples of both small-scale and large-scale analysis of visual form in part III are followed by three parts on city design. These include Lynch's more theoretical works on complex planning decisions involving both functional (spatial and structural organization) and normative (how the city works in human terms) approaches, articles discussing the principles that guided Lynch's teaching and practice of city design, and descriptions of Lynch's own projects in the Boston area and elsewhere. The book concludes with essays written late in Lynch's career, fantasy pieces describing utopias and offering new design freedoms and scenarios warning of horrifying "cacotopias.". (shrink)

Although convinced by Frankfurt-style cases that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise, semicompatibilists have not wanted to accept a parallel claim about moral responsibility for omissions, and so they have accepted asymmetrical requirements on moral responsibility for actions and omissions. In previous work, I have presented a challenge to various attempts at defending this asymmetry. My view is that semicompatibilists should give up these defenses and instead adopt symmetrical requirements on moral responsibility for actions and omissions, (...) and in this paper I highlight three advantages of doing so: first, it avoids a strange implication of the truth of determinism; second, it allows for a principled reply to Philip Swenson’s recent ‘No Principled Difference Argument’; third, it provides a reason to reject a crucial inference rule invoked by Peter van Inwagen’s ‘Direct Argument’ for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. (shrink)

Arguments have always played a central role within logic and philosophy. But little attention has been paid to arguments as a distinctive kind of discourse, with its own semantics and pragmatics. The goal of this essay is to study the mechanisms by means of which we make arguments in discourse, starting from the semantics of argument connectives such as `therefore'. While some proposals have been made in the literature, they fail to account for the distinctive anaphoric behavior of `therefore', as (...) well as uses of argument connectives in complex arguments, suppositional arguments, arguments with non-declarative conclusions, as well as arguments with parenthetical remarks. A comprehensive account of arguments requires imposing a distinctive tree-like structure on contexts. We show how to extend our account to accommodate modal subordination and and di fferent flavors of `therefore'. (shrink)

In response to the increasingly popular manipulation argument against compatibilism, some have argued that libertarian accounts of free will are vulnerable to parallel manipulation arguments, and thus manipulation is not uniquely problematic for compatibilists. The main aim of this article is to give this point a more detailed development than it has previously received. Prior attempts to make this point have targeted particular libertarian accounts but cannot be generalized. By contrast, I provide an appropriately modified manipulation that targets all libertarian (...) accounts of freedom and responsibility—an especially tricky task given that libertarian accounts are a motley set. I conclude that if manipulation arguments reveal any theoretical cost then it is one borne by all accounts according to which we are free and responsible, not by compatibilism in particular. (shrink)

It is widely thought that Atemporalism—the view that, because God is “outside” of time, he does not foreknow anything —constitutes a unique solution to the problem of freedom and foreknowledge. However, as I argue here, in order for Atemporalism to escape certain worries, the view must appeal to the dependence of God’s timeless knowledge on our actions. I then argue that, because it must appeal to such dependence, Atemporalism is crucially similar to the recent sempiternalist accounts proposed by Trenton Merricks, (...) Philip Swenson, and Jonathan Westphal, and I conclude by briefly sketching some implications of this result. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to bring some conceptual clarity to several key terms and foundational claims that make up Levinas's body-based conception of ethics. Additionally, I explore ways that Levinas's arguments about the somatic basis of subjectivity and ethical relatedness receive support from recent empirical research. The paper proceeds in this way: First, I clarify Levinas's use of the terms “sensibility”, “subjectivity”, and “proximity” in Otherwise than Being: or Beyond Essence . Next, I argue for an interpretation of Levinas's (...) thought that I suggest is buttressed by recent experimental work in both developmental psychology and neuroscience. I provide examples of research that I suggest opens up Levinas's phenomenological analysis in new and interesting ways. I also urge the importance of Levinas's phenomenological analysis in contextualizing the ethical significance of these empirical findings. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that it is open to semicompatibilists to maintain that no ability to do otherwise is required for moral responsibility. This is significant for two reasons. First, it undermines Christopher Evan Franklin’s recent claim that everyone thinks that an ability to do otherwise is necessary for free will and moral responsibility. Second, it reveals an important difference between John Martin Fischer’s semicompatibilism and Kadri Vihvelin’s version of classical compatibilism, which shows that the dispute between them is (...) not merely a verbal dispute. Along the way, I give special attention to the notion of general abilities, and, though I defend the distinctiveness of Fischer’s semicompatibilism against the verbal dispute charge, I also use the discussion of the nature of general abilities to argue for the falsity of a certain claim that Fischer and coauthor Mark Ravizza have made about their account. (shrink)

Propositional temporalism is the view that there are temporary propositions: propositions that are true, but not always true. Factual futurism is the view that there are futurist facts: facts that obtain, but that will at some point not obtain. Most A-theoretic views in the philosophy of time are committed both to propositional temporalism and to factual futurism. Mark Richard, Jeffrey King and others have argued that temporary propositions are not fit to be the contents of propositional attitudes, or to be (...) the semantic values of natural language utterances. But these discussions have overlooked another role that the A-theorist’s posits struggle to play: the role of facts in explaining other facts. Focusing on the case of action explanation by reasons, this paper presents the challenge that explanation poses for factual futurism. It then brings that challenge to bear against propositional temporalism and the A-theory more generally. My argument saddles the factual futurist with surprising commitments concerning reasons, facts and explanation. The futurist might accept those commitments and pay the price. The alternative – which I prefer – is to reject factual futurism, and with it the A-theory. (shrink)

There is a need recognized by the National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research and the National Cancer Institute to advance basic, translational and clinical saliva research. The goal of the Salivaomics Knowledge Base (SKB) is to create a data management system and web resource constructed to support human salivaomics research. To maximize the utility of the SKB for retrieval, integration and analysis of data, we have developed the Saliva Ontology and SDxMart. This article reviews the informatics advances in saliva (...) diagnostics made possible by the Saliva Ontology and SDxMart. (shrink)

Critics of synergism often complain that the view entails Pelagianism, and so, critics think, monergism looks like the only live option. Critics of monergism often claim that the view entails that the blame for human sin ultimately traces to God. Recently, several philosophers have attempted to chart a middle path by offering soteriological accounts which are monergistic but maintain the resistibility of God’s grace. In this paper, we present a challenge to such accounts of the resistibility of grace, namely that (...) they imply that human beings are praiseworthy for omitting to resist God’s grace. Even if such views escape Pelagianism as it is typically defined, they fail to avoid the worry at the heart of prominent criticisms of Pelagianism concerning the praise for a human being’s salvation. At the end of the paper, we suggest three possible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate Kitarō Nishida's characterization of what he refers to as the 'self-contradictory' body. First, I clarify the conceptual relation between the self-contradictory body and Nishida's notion of 'acting-intuition'. I next look at Nishida's analysis of acting-intuition and the self-contradictory body as it pertains to our personal, sensorimotor engagement with the world and things in it, as well as to our bodily immersion within the intersubjective and social world. Along the way, I argue that Nishida develops a (...) rich and exceedingly current way of thinking through different facets of embodiment and interpersonal relatedness. I further argue that Nishida's work provides compelling reasons to foreground the mutually implicative, co-emergent nature of embodied self and world in our theorizing about the nature of self and experience. (shrink)

William James’s characterization of consciousness as a selecting agency can be used to develop and defend an externalist view of mind. The mind – including the content of phenomenal consciousness – is in an important sense distributed beyond the skin and skull of the subject, out into the world of people and things. Moreover, conscious experience is an action, and not simply something that happens to us. Consciousness, perception, and experience are activities – in other words, things that we do.

In this paper, I explore a possible convergence between two great twentieth century thinkers, Nishida Kitarō of Japan and Martin Heidegger of Germany. The focus is on the quasi-religious language they employ in discussing the grounding of human existence in terms of an encompassing Wherein for our being. Heidegger speaks of “the sacred” and “the passing of the last god” that mark an empty clearing wherein all metaphysical absolutes or gods have withdrawn but are simultaneously indicative of an opening wherein (...) beings are given. Nishida speaks of “the religious” dimension in the depths of one's being, that he calls “place,” and that somehow envelops the world through its kenotic self-negation. In both we find reference to a kind of originary space—the open or place—associated with quasireligious themes. I also point to their distinct approaches to metaphysical language in their attempts to give voice to that abysmal thought. (shrink)

Hobart’s classic 1934 paper “Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It” has been widely cited as an example of an argument for the view that free will requires the truth of determinism. In this paper, I argue that this reading of Hobart’s paper is mistaken and that we should instead read Hobart as arguing that an agent exercises their free will only if the proximate causes of the agent’s action deterministically cause their action. After arguing that Hobart’s view, (...) rightly understood, escapes the problems typically raised for Hobart’s compatibilism, I also argue that Hobart’s view is problematic for different reasons. Nevertheless, I argue that there is a crucial insight to be gleaned from Hobart’s paper—one that provides compatibilists with a new recipe for challenging libertarian accounts of free will. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim to employ intuitions in their philosophical arguments. Others contest that no such intuitions are used frequently or at all in philosophy. This article suggests and defends a conception of intuitions as part of the philosophical method: intuitions are special types of philosophical assumptions to which we are invited to assent, often as premises in argument, that may serve an independent function in philosophical argument and that are not formed through a purely inferential process. A series of philosophical (...) case studies shows that intuitions in these arguments contain the relevant features. The view has implications for philosophical method, offering a compromise between opponents on the divisive debate of the merits of experimental philosophy: experimental philosophy provides an especially useful role in philosophical assumption analysis. (shrink)

Causal selection is the cognitive process through which one or more elements in a complex causal structure are singled out as actual causes of a certain effect. In this paper, we report on an experiment in which we investigated the role of moral and temporal factors in causal selection. Our results are as follows. First, when presented with a temporal chain in which two human agents perform the same action one after the other, subjects tend to judge the later agent (...) to be the actual cause. Second, the impact of temporal location on causal selection is almost canceled out if the later agent did not violate a norm while the former did. We argue that this is due to the impact that judgments of norm violation have on causal selection—even if the violated norm has nothing to do with the obtaining effect. Third, moral judgments about the effect influence causal selection even in the case in which agents could not have foreseen the effect and did not intend to bring it about. We discuss our findings in connection to recent theories of the role of moral judgment in causal reasoning, on the one hand, and to probabilistic models of temporal location, on the other. (shrink)

This paper is about teaching philosophy to high school students through Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate. LD, also known as “values debate,” includes topics from ethics and political philosophy. Thousands of high school students across the U.S. debate these topics in class, after school, and at weekend tournaments. We argue that LD is a particularly effective tool for teaching philosophy, but also that LD today falls short of its potential. We argue that the problems with LD are not inevitable, and we offer (...) strategic recommendations for improving LD as a tool for teaching philosophy. Ultimately, our aim is to create a dialogue between LD and academic philosophy, with the hope that such dialogue will improve LD’s capacity to teach students how to do philosophy. (shrink)

One way that philosophers have attempted to defend free will against the threat of fatalism and against the threat from divine beliefs has been to endorse timelessness views. In this paper, I argue that, in order to respond to general worries about fatalism and divine beliefs, timelessness views must appeal to the notion of dependence. Once they do this, however, their distinctive position as timelessness views becomes otiose, for the appeal to dependence, if it helps at all, would itself be (...) sufficient to block worries about fatalism and divine beliefs. I conclude by discussing some implications for dialectical progress. (shrink)

Vogel, Sosa, and Huemer have all argued that sensitivity is incompatible with knowing that you do not believe falsely, therefore the sensitivity condition must be false. I show that this objection misses its mark because it fails to take account of the basis of belief. Moreover, if the objection is modified to account for the basis of belief then it collapses into the more familiar objection that sensitivity is incompatible with closure.

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)

This paper will aim to accomplish two things to show Luhmann’s and Hegel’s support of language and communication as dependent on culture, but also their differences with respect to how culture is formed in conjunction with the environment. This paper will firstly show how Hegel distinguishes between the imagination and reason in a different manner from Luhmann, as Hegel considers them logically connected while Luhmann considers them as coextensive. Secondly, this paper will show how reason and imagination create culture through (...) the environment via dialectical idealism in Hegel and a poly-contextural constructivist approach in Luhmann. (shrink)

Phineas Gage’s story is typically offered as a paradigm example supporting the view that part of what matters for personal identity is a certain magnitude of similarity between earlier and later individuals. Yet, reconsidering a slight variant of Phineas Gage’s story indicates that it is not just magnitude of similarity, but also the direction of change that affects personal identity judgments; in some cases, changes for the worse are more seen as identity-severing than changes for the better of comparable magnitude. (...) Ironically, thinking carefully about Phineas Gage’s story tells against the thesis it is typically taken to support. (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)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s work of fiction can roughly be grouped into three distinct categories, each evoking a singular extraordinary state of mind. Poe-inspired tales of the macabre such as “The Tomb” (1917) and “The Statement of Randolph Carter” (1919) produce terror because of the atmosphere they convey and because of the particular end the main characters meet. Lovecraft’s later “Yog-Sothothery” or work in the Cthulhu Mythos tradition, including his signature pieces of weird fiction “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) and “The (...) Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931), inspires ‘horror’ because the life-worlds of the protagonists in these stories are utterly destroyed. However, the gentleman of Providence is also known for a different sort of fiction. His Dunsanian tales—among them short stories such as “The White Ship” (1919), “Celephaïs” (1920), and the three works“ The Silver Key” (1926), The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926–27), and “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (1932–33; with E. Hoffmann Price), centered on the exploits of Lovecraft’s recurring character and alter ego Randolph Carter—are epitomes to this feat. These prehistoric or dreamland tales do not inspire ‘terror’ or ‘horror’; rather, they predominately seek to evoke the extraordinary state of mind called ‘wonder. This article offers a preliminary exploration of Lovecraft’s relationship with wonder, highlights what wonder is, how Lovecraft was exposed to wonder at an early age, and argues that he developed a lifelong positive relationship with this particular state of mind. (shrink)

Many find it intuitive that having been manipulated undermines a person's free will. Some have objected to accounts of free will like Harry Frankfurt's (according to which free will depends only on an agent's psychological structure at the time of action) by arguing that it is possible for manipulated agents, who are intuitively unfree, to satisfy Frankfurt's allegedly sufficient conditions for freedom. Drawing resources from Greg Egan's "Reasons to Be Cheerful" as well as from stories of psychologically sophisticated artificial intelligence (...) (such as Isaac Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man"), I rebut this objection to "structuralist" accounts of free will, arguing that the very possibility of free will for persons like us requires that we admit that a person can be free even when lacking control over the character from which she acts. I conclude with some implications for the freedom and personhood of artificial intelligences. (shrink)

The personal identity relation is of great interest to philosophers, who often consider fictional scenarios to test what features seem to make persons persist through time. But often real examples of neuroscientific interest also provide important tests of personal identity. One such example is the case of Phineas Gage – or at least the story often told about Phineas Gage. Many cite Gage’s story as example of severed personal identity; Phineas underwent such a tremendous change that Gage “survived as a (...) different man.” I discuss a recent empirical finding about judgments about this hypothetical. It is not just the magnitude of the change that affects identity judgment; it is also the negative direction of the change. I present an experiment suggesting that direction of change also affects neuroethical judgments. I conclude we should consider carefully the way in which improvements and deteriorations affect attributions of personal identity. This is particularly important since a number of the most crucial neuroethical decisions involve varieties of cognitive enhancements or deteriorations. (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.

On the New Politics: an Introduction to Evolutionity (publ. in Polish). In this article I introduce a vision of the new politics that emerges from my recent book Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus. The Tractatus discusses a number of topics. To name just a few, these are: politics, human nature, the state, freedom, solidarity, democracy, civilization, family and marriage, power, international relations, war and peace. Also, it introduces new words, such as sophocracy, ennobled democracy; nativeculturalism, an alternative to multiculturalism; or parentsexuality, a privileged (...) form of sexuality. It addresses many issues that concern today’s political thinkers. The main objective of my work is to demonstrate the necessity of, and provide a guide for, the redirection of humanity. I argue that this paradigm shift must involve changing the character of social life and politics from competitive to cooperative, encouraging moral and intellectual virtues, providing foundations for happy societies, promoting peace among countries and building a strong international community. I try to show that the essence of politics is not a struggle for power, which can only be its derivative meaning, but rather the ability to organize society for cooperation and actualize a good life. Also, I try to remind humanity of its high task, which is moral and intellectual perfection, and to advance human evolution. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, Justin Capes and Philip Swenson and Michael Robinson have proposed new versions of the flickers of freedom reply to Frankfurt-style cases. Both proposals claim, first, that what agents in FSCs are morally responsible for is performing a certain action on their own, and, second, that agents in FSCs retain robust alternative possibilities—alternatives in which the agent freely omits to perform the pertinent action on their own. In this paper, I argue that, by attending to (...) the details of the omissions in question, it becomes clear that agents in FSCs lack robust alternatives of this sort, for in the alternative sequences such agents do not freely omit. Since the problem for these recent proposals arises from their attempt to show that agents in FSCs retain robust alternatives, I go on to consider whether the flicker theorist might be better off either revising or rejecting the robustness requirement on alternative possibilities. I argue that neither alternative is available to the flicker theorist, and yet I also point out that the reasons why these alternatives are unavailable serve to highlight what exactly is at issue in the debate between leeway and sourcehood theorists, namely the grounds of our freedom. (shrink)

The History of the Peloponnesian War of Thucydides is usually seen as an archetypal statement of power politics. Thucydides is regarded as a political realist who asserts that the pursuit of moral principles does not enter the world of international affairs. The article shows that, on the contrary, we find in Thucydides' work a complex theory. He supports neither extreme realism, in which morality is denied, nor utopian idealism which overlooks the aspect of power in international relations. He is profoundly (...) interested in ethical issues in domestic and international politics. One can see in the History the first example of realist-idealist debate and its conclusions are still valid for us. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that if it is possible to believe that p without believing that q, then there is some difference between the object of the thought that p and the object of the thought that q. This assumption is challenged in the present paper, opening the way to an account of epistemic opacity that improves on existing accounts, not least because it casts doubt on various arguments that attempt to derive startling ontological conclusions from seemingly innocent epistemic premises.

One of the vexed questions in the philosophy of wonder and indeed education is how to ensure that the next generation harbours a sense of wonder. Wonder is important, we think, because it encour- ages inquiry and keeps us as Albert Einstein would argue from ‘being as good as dead’ or ‘snuffed-out candles’ (Einstein 1949, 5). But how is an educator to install, bring to life, or otherwise encourage a sense of wonder in his or her stu- dents? Biologist Rachel (...) Carson suggests that exploring nature and specifically undertaking walks along the rocky coast of Maine would keep alive a person’s inborn sense of wonder (Carson 1984). Philosopher Jesse Prinz thinks that exposure to art will encourage wonderment because artworks, as he puts it, are “inventions for feeding the appetite that wonder excites in us” (Prinz 2013). Weird fiction (a subgenre of speculative fiction) – and in particular the work of one of its greatest exponents, the early-20th-century American author How- ard Phillips Lovecraft – is likewise a catalyst for wonder. The reason behind this is that Lovecraft’s ‘wonder-stories’ are densely packed with wonder per design; and in support of this claim I shall in what is to come 1) provide a brief introduction to Lovecraft and weird fiction; 2) present a working definition of wonder; and 3) clarify what is meant by something being ‘densely packed with wonder’ via bringing to the fore evidence of Lovecraft’s literary wonder- mongery. The paper ends with some reflections on the notion of ‘dark wonder’, why this peculiar label might be suitable for the kind of wonder we find in Lovecraft’s work, and why exposure to ‘dark wonder’ can be edifying, and in that sense educational. (shrink)

Recently, John Maier has developed a unified account of various agentive modalities. According to him, however, adopting the account provides an alternative framework for thinking about free will and moral responsibility, one that reveals an unacceptable instability in semicompatibilism. In this paper, I argue that Maier is mistaken about the implications of his account and sketch a semicompatibilist proposal that can, without countenancing any instability, accept Maier’s unified account of the agentive modalities.

Many current popular views in epistemology require a belief to be the result of a reliable process (aka ‘method of belief formation’ or ‘cognitive capacity’) in order to count as knowledge. This means that the generality problem rears its head, i.e. the kind of process in question has to be spelt out, and this looks difficult to do without being either over or under-general. In response to this problem, I propose that we should adopt a more fine-grained account of the (...) epistemic basing relation, at which point the generality problem becomes easy to solve. (shrink)