What is the ontology of collective action? I have in mind three connected questions. 1. Do the truth conditions of action sentences about groups require there to be group agents over and above individual agents? 2. Is there a difference, in this connection, between action sentences about informal groups that use plural noun phrases, such as ‘We pushed the car’ and ‘The women left the party early’, and action sentences about formal or institutional groups that use singular noun phrases, such (...) as ‘The United States declared war on Japan on December 8th, 1941’ and ‘The Supreme Court ruled that segregation is unconstitutional in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education’? 3. Under what conditions does it make sense to speak of a group doing something together, and what, if anything, is a collective action? In this paper, I argue that a) understanding action sentences about groups does not commit us to the existence of group agents per se, but only to the existence of individual agents; b) there is no difference in this regard between sentences which attribute actions to informal groups on the one hand and institutional groups on the other; c) collective action can be both intentional and unintentional; d) any random group of agents each of whom does something is also a group which does something together; e) while there is a sense in which groups per se perform no primitive collective actions, and therefore no actions at all, f) there is a sensible extension of talk of actions to groups, though it should be treated strictly speaking, like talk of group agents, as a façon de parler, for g) the only agents per se are individuals and the only actions are theirs. -/-. (shrink)

The term 'covert mixed quotation' describes cases in which linguistic material is interpreted in the manner of mixed quotation — that is, used in addition to being mentioned — despite the superficial absence of any commonly recognized conventional devices indicating quotation. After developing a novel theory of mixed quotation, I show that positing covert mixed quotation allows us to give simple and unified treatments of a number of puzzling semantic phenomena, including the projective behavior of conventional implicature items embedded in (...) indirect speech reports and propositional attitude ascriptions, so-called 'c-monsters,' metalinguistic negation, metalinguistic negotiation, and 'in a sense' constructions. (shrink)

This chapter presents an overview of the life, work, and philosophical contributions of Śāntarakṣita (c. 725–788), who is known for his synthesis of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka with elements of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti tradition of logic and epistemology. His two most important independent treatises, the Compendium of True Principles (Tattvasaṃgraha) and the Ornament of the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra), are characterized by an emphasis on the indispensable role of rational analysis on the Buddhist path as well as serious and systematic engagement with competing Buddhist (...) and non-Buddhist schools of thought. Śāntarakṣita employs a pedagogical-rhetorical device of provisionally adopting what he deems to be successively more rational views to reject less rational ones. Using this approach, in the Ornament of the Middle Way, he recommends a gradual path to arrive at an understanding of the Madhyamaka ultimate truth by incorporating Yogācāra idealist ontology into his presentation of conventional truth. In this same text, he presents an influential iteration of the neither-one-nor-many argument for the Madhyamaka ultimate truth, the emptiness of intrinsic nature—i.e., the universal negation of ontologically independent being—leaving a lasting and significant impact on both Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy. (shrink)

Dharmakīrti’s (c. seventh century) Examination of Relations (Sambandhaparīkṣā) is unique in the Indian Buddhist canon for its being the only extant root text devoted entirely to the topic of the ontological status of relations. But the core thesis of this treatise—that relations are only nominally real—is in prima facie tension with another claim that is central to Dharmakīrti’s epistemology: that there exists some kind of “natural relation” (svabhāvapratibandha) that reliably underwrites inferences. Understanding how Dharmakīrti can consistently rely on natural relations (...) to prop up his presentation of inferential reasoning while at the same time advancing an anti-realist account of relations is critical for making sense of his system of logic and epistemology, which came to be nearly universally adopted in Tibetan Buddhism cutting across traditions. Chomden Rikpé Reldri (1227–1305), who was perhaps the most prolific commentator on logic and epistemology in the history of Tibetan philosophy, composed two texts commenting on the Examination of Relations, neither of which have received any scholarly attention to date. In this paper, I provide an introduction to Chomden Reldri’s two commentaries and consider how they may illuminate Dharmakīrti’s text and also what they reveal about the understanding of Dharmakīrti’s account of relations in early Tibetan scholasticism. I then present a translation of Dharmakīrti’s Examination of Relations together with Chomden Reldri’s commentary, Annotations and Topical Outline of the Examination of Relations (’Brel pa brtag pa’i mchan dang sa bcad gnyis). (shrink)

It is natural to think that our ordinary practices in giving explanations for our actions, for what we do, commit us to claiming that content properties are causally relevant to physical events such as the movements of our limbs and bodies, and events which these in turn cause. If you want to know why my body ambulates across the street, or why my arm went up before I set out, we suppose I have given you an answer when I say (...) that I wanted to greet a friend on the other side of the street, and thought that my arm's going up would be interpreted by him as a signal to stop for a moment. This widely held view might be disputed, but I shall not argue for it in this paper. I want to start with the view that our beliefs and desires and other propositional attitudes are causally relevant, in virtue of their modes and particular contents, to our movements, in order to investigate the consequences for analyses of thought content. For this purpose, I argue, in sec. II, for three necessary conditions on causal relevance: (a) a nomic sufficiency condition, (b) a logical independence condition, and (c) a screening-off condition. In sec. III, I apply these conditions to relational and functional theories of thought content, arguing that these theories cannot accommodate the causal relevance of content properties to our behaviour. I argue further that, on two plausible assumptions, one about the dependence of the mental on the physical, and the other about the availability in principle of causal explanations of our movements in terms of our non-relational physical properties, content properties can be causally relevant only if they are nomically type-correlated, relative to certain circumstances, with non-relational physical properties of our bodies. In sec. IV, I respond to a number of objections that might be advanced against this conclusion. (shrink)

Longchen Rabjampa (1308–64), scholar of the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma tradition, presents a novel doxographical taxonomy of the so-called Svātantrika branch of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, designating the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta (c. 7th/8th century) as the exemplar of a Svātantrika sub-school which maintains that appearance and emptiness are metaphysically distinct. This paper compares Longchenpa’s characterization of this “distinct-appearance-and-emptiness” view with Śrīgupta’s own account of the two truths. I expose a significant disconnect between Longchenpa’s Śrīgupta and Śrīgupta himself and argue that the impetus (...) for Longchenpa’s doxographical innovation originates not in Buddhist India, but within his own Tibetan intellectual milieu, tracing back to his twelfth-century Sangpu Monastery predecessors, Gyamarwa and Chapa. (shrink)

A review essay on Peacocke's book A Study of Concepts. Raises questions about the role of the concept of finding an inference primitively compelling and questions of detail about the basic framework, its application to the systematicity of thought, the response to potential objections in the chapters on the metaphysics of concepts and naturalism, and the treatment of the concept of belief.

Previously in Futures, I discussed a word that we use to form an abstract futures concept: “millennium” [1]. In its most common current usage, “millennium” is an example of a word that provides, and one might even say controls, a future orientation for us. In the present essay, I am taking a different approach to the role of the word that I will be discussing. This word is not an example of a future-orientation; rather it is more of an example (...) of language about future-orientation. The word is “expectation”. To make this distinction clearer, it may help to borrow some of the terminological distinctions made by the American logician, C.S. Peirce. First of all, for Peirce, and indeed for my present purposes, signs include words. More specifically, in a paper dated 1867, May 14th, and published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Science (Boston), VII (1868) [2] Peirce divided signs into three categories based upon their relationship to their object—Icons, Indices, and Symbols. (Peirce himself used the convention of capitalising the words.) He defined “Icon” as a sign determined by its object “by virtue of its own internal nature”. In comparison, he defined “Index” as a sign determined by its object “by virtue of being in real relation to it”, such as when smoke is a sign of fire. A Symbol, according to Peirce, is a sign determined by its object “only in the sense that it will be so interpreted”. A Symbol thus depends upon conventions or habits. (shrink)

Wall, G. Locke's attack on innate knowledge.--Harris, J. Leibniz and Locke on innate ideas.--Greenlee, D. Locke's idea of idea.--Aspelin, G. Idea and perception in Locke's essay.--Greenlee, D. Idea and object in the essay.--Mathews, H. E. Locke, Malebranche and the representative theory.--Alexander, P. Boyle and Locke on primary and secondary qualities.--Ayers, M. R. The ideas of power and substance in Locke's philosophy.--Allison, H. E. Locke's theory of personal identity.--Kretzmann, N. The main thesis of Locke's semantic theory.--Woozley, A. D. Some remarks (...) on Locke's account of knowledge.--Laudan, L. The nature and sources of Locke's views on hypotheses. (shrink)

Is volitional conceptual change feasible? Answering that question requires a theory of semantic change, which is sometimes thought elusive. Fortunately, much is known about semantic change as it occurs in the wild. While usage is chaotic and complex, changes in a word’s use can produce changes in its meaning. There are several under-appreciated empirical constraints on how meanings change that stem from the following observation: word use finely reflects equilibrium between various communicative pressures. Much of the relevant work in linguistics (...) has employed the methods of empirical pragmatics and diachronic semantics. In this way, the study of meaning change can be brought to bear on the conceptual engineer’s normative project. The picture that emerges tells against the sorts of engineering projects most likely to appeal to philosophers. Some may stand to succeed, but they have significantly different contours than the typical ones. (shrink)

This paper gives an account of proxy agency in the context of collective action. It takes the case of a group announcing something by way of a spokesperson as an illustration. In proxy agency, it seems that one person or subgroup's doing something counts as or constitutes or is recognized as (tantamount to) another person or group's doing something. Proxy agency is pervasive in institutional action. It has been taken to be a straightforward counterexample to an appealing deflationary view of (...) collective action as a matter of all members of a group making a contribution to bringing about some event. I show that this is a mistake. I give a deflationary account of constitutive rules in terms of essentially collective action types. I then give an account of one form of constitutive agency in terms of constitutive rules. I next give an account of status functions—of which being a spokesperson is one—that also draws on the concept of a constitutive rule. I then show how these materials help us to see how proxy agency is an expression of the agency of all members of the group credited with doing something when the proxy acts. (shrink)

This chapter looks for “continuity and convergence” between Davidson’s and Wittgenstein’s work, identifies common themes and family resemblances, as well as disagreements, especially in the theory of meaning. I take up in turn: -/- (1) their shared rejection of the utility of an ontology of meanings; (2) a convergence on the idea that we must show rather than say what an expression means; (3) the similarities and differences between them on meaning as use and the sense in which rule following (...) is essential for meaning; (4) the publicity of language, first in connection with radical interpretation; and (5) then with Davidson’s later work on triangulation in securing objective thought. (shrink)

Recently, bioethicists and the UNCRPD have advocated for supported medical decision-making on behalf of patients with intellectual disabilities. But what does supported decision-making really entail? One compelling framework is Anita Silvers and Leslie Francis’ mental prosthesis account, which envisions supported decision-making as a process in which trustees act as mere appendages for the patient’s will; the trustee provides the cognitive tools the patient requires to realize her conception of her own good. We argue that supported decision-making would be better understood (...) as a collaborative process, giving patients with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to make decisions in a respectful relationship with trusted others. We offer an alternative account of supported decision-making where the primary constraint is to protect the patient from domination by the trustee. This is advantageous in its preservation of the prospects for genuine collaboration, for the mental prosthesis approach ultimately reinforces a problematic ideal of isolated patient self-determination. (shrink)

Some authors have recently suggested that it is time to consider rights for robots. These suggestions are based on the claim that the question of robot rights should not depend on a standard set of conditions for ‘moral status’; but instead, the question is to be framed in a new way, by rejecting the is/ought distinction, making a relational turn, or assuming a methodological behaviourism. We try to clarify these suggestions and to show their highly problematic consequences. While we find (...) the suggestions ultimately unmotivated, the discussion shows that our epistemic condition with respect to the moral status of others does raise problems, and that the human tendency to empathise with things that do not have moral status should be taken seriously—we suggest that it produces a “derived moral status”. Finally, it turns out that there is typically no individual in real AI that could even be said to be the bearer of moral status. Overall, there is no reason to think that robot rights are an issue now. (shrink)

What methodological approaches do research programs use to investigate the world? Elisabeth Lloyd’s Logic of Research Questions (LRQ) characterizes such approaches in terms of the questions that the researchers ask and causal factors they consider. She uses the Logic of Research Questions Framework to criticize adaptationist programs in evolutionary biology for dogmatically assuming selection explanations of the traits of organisms. I argue that Lloyd’s general criticism of methodological adaptationism is an artefact of the impoverished LRQ. My Ordered Factors Proposal extends (...) the LRQ to characterize approaches with sequences of questions and factors. I highlight the importance that ordering one’s investigation plays in approaches at the level of adaptationism by analyzing two research programs in community ecology: competitionists and neutralists. Competitionists and neutralists take opposed starting points and use explanatory and developmental heuristics to consider more factors in due time. On the Ordered Factors Proposal, these approaches are not only the ecological factors they are open to considering but also the order in which they will consider them. My disagreement with Lloyd’s over how to characterize methodological approaches reflects different views about methodological monism and pluralism. (shrink)

A discussion of a number of ways that information can be present in a computer program without being explicitly represented.

We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. The representational contents of the states induced by these mechanisms that are available to a (...) type of awareness called phenomenal awareness constitute the phenomenal content of experience. The phenomenal content of perception contains the existence of objects as separate things that persist in time and time, spatiotemporal information, and information regarding relative spatial relations, motion, surface properties, shape, size, orientation, color, and their functional properties. (shrink)

In this paper, multi attribute decision making problem based on grey relational analysis in neutrosophic cubic set environment is investigated. In the decision making situation, the attribute weights are considered as single valued neutrosophic sets. The neutrosophic weights are converted into crisp weights. Both positve and negative GRA coefficients, and weighted GRA coefficients are determined. Hamming distances for weighted GRA coefficients and standard (ideal) GRA coefficients are determined. The relative closeness coefficients are derived in order to rank the alternatives. The (...) relative closeness coefficients are designed in ascending order. Finally, a numerical example is solved to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach. (shrink)

Extension is probably the most general natural property. Is it a fundamental property? Leibniz claimed the answer was no, and that the structureless intuition of extension concealed more fundamental properties and relations. This paper follows Leibniz's program through Herbart and Riemann to Grassmann and uses Grassmann's algebra of points to build up levels of extensions algebraically. Finally, the connection between extension and measurement is considered.

There are conflicting intuitions concerning the status of a boundary separating two adjacent entities (or two parts of the same entity). The boundary cannot belong to both things, for adjacency excludes overlap; and it cannot belong to neither, for nothing lies between two adjacent things. Yet how can the dilemma be avoided without assigning the boundary to one thing or the other at random? Some philosophers regard this as a reductio of the very notion of a boundary, which should accordingly (...) be treated a mere façon de parler. In this paper I resist this temptation and examine some ways of taking the puzzle at face value within a realist perspective—treating boundaries as ontologically on a par with (albeit parasitic upon) extended parts. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is often interpreted as claiming that opportunities for action are directly present in perceptual experience. However, he does not provide much evidence for how or why this would occur, and one can doubt that this is an appropriate interpretation of his phenomenological descriptions. In particular, it could be argued the Merleau-Pontyian descriptions mistakenly attribute pre-perceptual or post-perceptual elements such as allocation of attention or judgment to the perceptual experience itself. This paper argues for the Merleau-Pontyian idea that opportunities (...) for action are present in perceptual experience. It further argues that the phenomenological descriptions can be supported and explained via reference to contemporary research on motor imagery. In particular, it will be argued that non-conscious, covert motor imagery is used to prepare for and regulate skilled actions, and that it is plausible that this imagery combines with perception (likely vision) to create a single experience of the environment as enabling action. The paper will also show that contemporary views on motor imagery are broadly compatible with Merleau-Ponty’s aims. (shrink)

The standard argument to the conclusion that artificial intelligence (AI) constitutes an existential risk for the human species uses two premises: (1) AI may reach superintelligent levels, at which point we humans lose control (the ‘singularity claim’); (2) Any level of intelligence can go along with any goal (the ‘orthogonality thesis’). We find that the singularity claim requires a notion of ‘general intelligence’, while the orthogonality thesis requires a notion of ‘instrumental intelligence’. If this interpretation is correct, they cannot be (...) joined as premises and the argument for the existential risk of AI turns out invalid. If the interpretation is incorrect and both premises use the same notion of intelligence, then at least one of the premises is false and the orthogonality thesis remains itself orthogonal to the argument to existential risk from AI. In either case, the standard argument for existential risk from AI is not sound.—Having said that, there remains a risk of instrumental AI to cause very significant damage if designed or used badly, though this is not due to superintelligence or a singularity. (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)

Many believe that the rational evaluation of actions depends on the rational evaluation of even basic desires. Hume, though, viewed desires as "original existences" which cannot be contrary to either truth or reason. Contemporary critics of Hume, including Norman, Brandt and Parfit, have sought a basis for the rational evaluation of desires that would deny some basic desires reason-giving force. I side with Hume against these modern critics. Hume's concept of rational evaluation is admittedly too narrow; even basic desires are, (...) despite their nonrepresentational nature, subject to rational evaluation. But this evaluation is not relevant to their tendency to generate reasons for action, and does not undermine the spirit of the Humean view of rational action. (shrink)

Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary —hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our so-cial practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?

One of the attractions of the Humean instrumentalist theory of practical rationality is that it appears to offer a special connection between an agent's reasons and her motivation. The assumption that Humeanism is able to assert a strong connection between reason and motivation has been challenged, most notably by Christine Korsgaard. She argues that Humeanism is not special in the connection it allows to motivation. On the contrary, Humean theories of practical rationality do connect reasons and motivation in a unique (...) and attractive way, though the nature of this connection has sometimes been misunderstood by both defenders and detractors of the theory. (shrink)

In previous work I have argued that talk about negative events should not be taken at face value: typically, what we are inclined to think of as a negative event (John’s failure to go jogging) is just an ordinary, positive event (his going to the movie instead); it is a positive event under a negative description. Here I consider more closely the difficulties that arise in those cases where no positive event seems available to do the job, as with putative (...) cases of causation by omission. In particular, I elaborate on Helen Beebee’s idea that not all causal explanations are reports of causation. When we mention John’s failure to turn off the gas as an explanans of why there was an explosion, we do not say what caused the explosion. We do not mention any of the relevant causes. We just remark that one sort of event that was supposed to occur, and whose occurrence would have prevented the explosion, did not in fact occur. (shrink)

That parthood is a transitive relation is among the most basic principles of classical mereology. Alas, it is also very controversial. In a recent paper, Ingvar Johansson has put forward a novel diagnosis of the problem, along with a corresponding solution. The diagnosis is on the right track, I argue, but the solution is misleading. And once the pieces are properly put together, we end up with a reinforcement of the standard defense of transitivity on behalf of classical mereology.

These essays draw on work in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and language, the development of concepts in children, conceptual..

The New Evil Demon Problem is supposed to show that straightforward versions of reliabilism are false: reliability is not necessary for justification after all. I argue that it does no such thing. The reliabilist can count a number of beliefs as justified even in demon worlds, others as unjustified but having positive epistemic status nonetheless. The remaining beliefs---primarily perceptual beliefs---are not, on further reflection, intuitively justified after all. The reliabilist is right to count these beliefs as unjustified in demon worlds, (...) and it is a challenge for the internalist to be able to do so as well. (shrink)

This paper investigates the prospects of Rodney Brooks’ proposal for AI without representation. It turns out that the supposedly characteristic features of “new AI” (embodiment, situatedness, absence of reasoning, and absence of representation) are all present in conventional systems: “New AI” is just like old AI. Brooks proposal boils down to the architectural rejection of central control in intelligent agents—Which, however, turns out to be crucial. Some of more recent cognitive science suggests that we might do well to dispose of (...) the image of intelligent agents as central representation processors. If this paradigm shift is achieved, Brooks’ proposal for cognition without representation appears promising for full-blown intelligent agents—Though not for conscious agents. (shrink)

Cognitive agents, whether human or computer, that engage in natural-language discourse and that have beliefs about the beliefs of other cognitive agents must be able to represent objects the way they believe them to be and the way they believe others believe them to be. They must be able to represent other cognitive agents both as objects of beliefs and as agents of beliefs. They must be able to represent their own beliefs, and they must be able to represent beliefs (...) as objects of beliefs. These requirements raise questions about the number of tokens of the belief representation language needed to represent believers and propositions in their normal roles and in their roles as objects of beliefs. In this paper, we explicate the relations among nodes, mental tokens, concepts, actual objects, concepts in the belief spaces of an agent and the agent's model of other agents, concepts of other cognitive agents, and propositions. We extend, deepen, and clarify our theory of intensional knowledge representation for natural-language processing, as presented in previous papers and in light of objections raised by others. The essential claim is that tokens in a knowledge-representation system represent only intensions and not extensions. We are pursuing this investigation by building CASSIE, a computer model of a cognitive agent and, to the extent she works, a cognitive agent herself. CASSIE's mind is implemented in the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. (shrink)

According to a dominant view of stigma, a person is stigmatized within a community if sufficiently many people within that community hold a bad view of her. I call this the 'Bad View Model'. In this paper, I argue against the Bad View Model on the grounds that such beliefs are neither necessary nor sufficient for stigma, and that the account cannot explain the distinctive phenomenology of stigma, including certain vulnerabilities to shame. I then develop an alternative that explains these (...) features of stigma, which I call the 'Shaming Model'. On this view, a person is stigmatized within a community if she is shamed by members of that community, and this is explained by their belief that she has deviated from some social norm and/or standard. (shrink)

Inchul Yum (2024) argues that the widespread adoption of language agent architectures would likely increase the risk posed by AI by simplifying the process of aligning artificial systems with human values and thereby making it easier for malicious actors to use them to cause a variety of harms. Yum takes this to be an example of a broader phenomenon: progress on the alignment problem is likely to be net safety-negative because it makes artificial systems easier for malicious actors to control. (...) I offer some reasons for skepticism about this surprising and pessimistic conclusion. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of the logical form of plural action sentences that shows that collective actions so ascribed are a matter of all members of a group contributing to bringing some event about. It then uses this as the basis for a reductive account of the content of we-intentions according to which what distinguishes we-intentions from I-intentions is that we-intentions are directed about bringing it about that members of a group act in accordance with a shared plan.

Felix reaches up to catch a high line drive to left field and fires the ball off to Benji at home plate, who then tags the runner trying to score. For Felix to catch the ball and transfer it from his glove to his throwing hand, he needs to have a sense of where his hands are relative to one another and the rest of his body. This sort of information is subconsciously tracked in the body schema (or postural schema), (...) a representation of the current bodily posture that is updated on the basis of proprioceptive inputs. While the existence of the body schema in not in dispute, its origin is. After reviewing the competing proposals, I introduce the conceptual tools needed to move the debate forward and apply them to the question of the extent to which the body schema could be learned from perceptual input in utero. I argue that it could give rise to something recognizable as the body schema, though not quite rising to the level of the mature body schema. After considering the implications for further research on the origins of the body schema, I show how these results apply to other body representations, helping clarify the vexing question of the number, nature, and interactions among body representations in the brain. This theoretical work also promises to advance our understanding and treatment protocols for disorders affecting such body representations (e.g., anorexia nervosa). (shrink)

There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers like Śrīgupta (seventh–eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an unfounded illusion. In this paper, I present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s "neither-one-nor-many argument" against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning (...) is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses. (shrink)

How should we interpret the popular objection that stigmatised subjects are not treated as individuals? The Eidelson View claims that stigma, because of its connection to stereotypes, violates an instance of the general requirement to respect autonomy. The Self-Presentation View claims that stigma inhibits the functioning of certain morally important capacities, notably the capacity for self-presentation. I argue that even if we are right to think that stigma violates a requirement to respect autonomy, this is insufficient to account for the (...) full weight of the charge that stigmatised subjects are not treated as individuals. We need the Self-Presentation View to explain a special threat to agency. I then address the worry that focusing on a concern with being treated as individuals opens the door to the suggestion that treating as superior can be just as morally troubling as stigma. This objection is fatal for the Eidelson View. But the Self-Presentation View has a number of resources for deflating the worry. We should not exclude the possibility of a moral symmetry between some cases of stigma and some cases of treating as superior. Rather, we should provide a nuanced account of the circumstances in which either phenomenon is detrimental for self-presentation. (shrink)

In proxy assertion an individual or group asserts something through a spokesperson. The chapter explains proxy assertion as resting on the assignment of a status role to a person (that of spokesperson) whose utterances acts in virtue of that role have the status function of signaling that the principal is committed in a way analogous to an individual asserting that in his own voice. The chapter briefly explains how status functions and status roles are grounded and then treats, in turn, (...) the case of a spokesperson for an individual and a group and the differences in the significance of what the spokesperson does in each case. Finally, it reviews complications introduced by spokesperson autonomy, where the spokesperson is given leave to represent her principal’s views or positions in her own words and to respond to questions on his behalf. (shrink)

Quotation marks in natural language that do not function straightforwardly as devices for securing reference to linguistic objects have generally been categorized as instances of either mixed quotation or scare quotation. I argue that certain uses of quotation marks in natural language resist assimilation to either of these two theoretical categories, as well as to the more familiar categories of pure and direct quotation. It follows that we must recognize a novel type of quotation in natural language, which I call (...) dummy quotation because it involves the contribution of semantically minimal `dummy meanings' to composition. I develop a semantic theory of dummy quotation and show that it is better able than rival proposals to account for the troublesome examples in question. (shrink)

Cooperation admits of degrees. When factory workers stage a slowdown, they do not cease to cooperate with management in the production of goods altogether, but they are not fully cooperative either. Full cooperation implies that participants in a joint action are committed to rendering appropriate contributions as needed toward their joint end so as to bring it about, consistently with the type of action and the generally agreed upon constraints within which they work, as efficiently as they can, where their (...) contributions are sensitive to information (where available) about how others are contributing in the sense that they adjust as needed their contributions in light of information about how others are contributing to ensure effective pursuit of their joint end, where this includes rendering aid to other participants if needed, insofar as they are able. Full cooperation entails those cooperating are engaged in a joint intentional action. Some prominent studies of joint intentional action focus exclusively on cases of full cooperation (notably that of Michael Bratman (2014)). But not all joint intentional action is fully cooperative. One example is the work slowdown. Another example is provided by competitive games like chess and football, or sports like boxing and wrestling, where participants are clearly not intending to contribute to the pursuit of all of the goals of the others engaged in the activity, even when those goals are internal to the type of activity in question, but instead intend actively to frustrate some of them. In this paper, I provide a taxonomy of forms of non-cooperative behavior within the context of behavior that is still to some degree cooperative, and I argue that the minimal conditions of joint intentional action define minimal cooperative behavior, that is, that minimally joint intentional action is per se minimally cooperative behavior. I define in precise terms what that comes to, and how it is possible in cases in which it seems that one or more participants are in one or more ways acting so as to frustrate the contributions of other participants to their joint action. (shrink)

The philosophy of AI has seen some changes, in particular: 1) AI moves away from cognitive science, and 2) the long term risks of AI now appear to be a worthy concern. In this context, the classical central concerns – such as the relation of cognition and computation, embodiment, intelligence & rationality, and information – will regain urgency.

A look at the dynamical concept of space and space-generating processes to be found in Kant, J.F. Herbart and the mathematician Bernhard Riemann's philosophical writings.

Matthew Leisinger (2020) argues that previous interpretations of John Locke’s account of akrasia (or weakness of will) are mistaken and offers a new interpretation in their place. In this essay, we aim to recapitulate part of this debate, defend a previously articulated interpretation by responding to Leisinger’s criticisms of it, and explain why Leisinger’s own interpretation faces textual and philosophical problems that are serious enough to disqualify it as an accurate reconstruction of Locke’s views. In so doing, we aim to (...) shed further light on Locke’s views on the various ways in which humans are prone to err in their pursuit of happiness. (shrink)

The inclusion problem for theories of gender arises when those theories inappropriately fail to include certain individuals in the gender categories to which they ought to belong. The inclusion problem affects both of the most influential traditions in feminist theorizing about gender: social-position accounts and identity accounts. I argue that the inclusion problem can be solved by adopting a structured theory of gender, which incorporates aspects of both social-position accounts and identity accounts. According to the theory I favor, an individual’s (...) gender is determined by their gender identity if they have one; otherwise, it is determined by their social position. My structured approach to gender offers a more direct solution to the gender inclusion problem than alternatives recently advocated by Barnes (2020), Jenkins (2023), and others. It also points the way to a simple solution to inclusion problems that arise at the level of gendered language. (shrink)