Psychopathic individuals are characterized by impaired affective processing, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, poor planning skills and heightened aggressiveness with poor self-regulation. Based on brain self-regulation studies using neurofeedback of Slow Cortical Potentials (SCPs) in disorders associated with a dysregulation of cortical activity thresholds and evidence of deficient cortical functioning in psychopathy, a neurobiological approach seems to be promising in the treatment of psychopathy. The results of our intensive brain regulation intervention demonstrate, that psychopathic offenders are able to gain control of their brain (...) excitability over fronto-central brain areas. After SCP self-regulation training, we observed reduced aggression, impulsivity and behavioral approach tendencies, as well as improvements in behavioral-inhibition and increased cortical sensitivity for error-processing. This study demonstrates improvements on the neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective level in severe psychopathic offenders after SCP-neurofeedback training and could constitute a novel neurobiologically-based treatment for a seemingly change-resistant group of criminal psychopaths. (shrink)

This article intends to shed new light on the impressive series of “war writings,” in which Hermann Cohen developed the idea of a possible messianic collaboration of German imperial ambitions and a modern Jewish Diaspora regenerated by German Spirit (from Russia to America). My paper pays special attention to two lecture tours planed by Cohen in the year 1914, one to Petersburg, Moscow, Riga, Vilna and Warsaw in May 1914, a few weeks before the outbreak of WWI; the (...) other a propaganda trip to America imagined at the beginning of WWI (Autumn 1914) by Cohen and a group of Jews linked to the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens – a plan which failed and turned only into the publication of an article in several American newspapers in German, English and Yiddish in early 1915. The article brings into consideration new archival material concerning the political background of these two initiatives. The article demonstrates how Cohen’s writings and activities during WWI were deploying a new Jewish and Imperial politics – which sought to pave the way for a messianic integration of Jewish Diaspora in the Imperial project of Germany, understood as the political realization of German Idealism. (shrink)

Phenomenology questions the centrality that Kant attributes to the “I think.” It claims that on the pre-reflective level experience is selfless as unity is given. I call this the “unity argument.” The paper explores the significance of this claim by focusing on the work of Edmund Husserl. What interests me is that although the unity argument claims that we can account for the unity of experience without appealing to the an “I think,” Husserl agrees with Kant that experience must be (...) owned. Moreover, he endorses Kant's dictum that ‘the “I think” must be capable of accompanying all my presentations’. The aim of the paper is to explore how Husserl can consistently appeal to Kant's account of the “I think” and at the same time contend that on the pre-reflective level experience is selfless. The thesis I wish to advance is that although the unity argument acknowledges that experience is necessarily mine, it reveals that it is a necessary feature of self-reference that I have never taken absolute ownership over my experience. This may explain why our sense of self can often be out of tune with the way we live our lives. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to extract from Kant's writings an account of the nature of the emotions and their function – and to do so despite the fact that Kant neither uses the term ‘emotion’ nor offers a systematic treatment of it. Kant's position, as I interpret it, challenges the contemporary trends that define emotions in terms of other mental states and defines them instead first and foremost as ‘feelings’. Although Kant's views on the nature of feelings have (...) drawn surprisingly little attention, I argue that the faculty of feeling has the distinct role of making us aware of the way our faculties relate to each other and to the world. As I show, feelings are affective appraisals of our activity, and as such they play an indispensable orientational function in the Kantian mind. After spelling out Kant's distinction between feeling and desire, I turn to the distinction between feeling and cognition and show that while feelings are non-cognitive states, they have a form of derived-intentionality. §4 argues that what feelings are about, in this derived sense, is our relationship to ourselves and the world: they function as affective appraisals of the state of our agency. §5 shows that this function is necessary to the activity of the mind insofar as it is orientational. Finally, §6 discusses the examples of epistemic pleasure and moral contentment and argues that they manifest the conditions of cognitive and moral agency respectively. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend the claim that epistemic autonomy plays a central role in Kant’s account of epistemic normativity. Just as the formula of autonomy ought to regulate the activity of the will, I argue that our epistemic activity, and in particular our beliefs (‘holding to be true’, Fürwahrhalten) ought to be regulated by an epistemic version of this formula. To support this claim, I show that while believing and willing are different kinds of activities, they (...) are subject to the same normative demands. Thus, contrary to what is often assumed, the demand for autonomy applies to cognitive as well as moral agency. However, there are many reasons to be suspicious of the application of Kant’s notion of autonomy to the epistemic realm, so the final section focuses on three objections that question its soundness. I conclude that the analogy between epistemic and moral autonomy turns out to be a lot more robust than is usually thought. (shrink)

This paper studies Lamarck's scientific method both from the point of view of his methodological discourse and according to his scientific praxis. Lamarck's methodology is compared to Condillac's as well as to that of the idéologues - a group in which Lamarck is usually included. The analysis of this paper shows that Lamarck's methodological discourse is very similar to Condillac's, but his scientific praxis does not follow this view. Instead of following an empiricist approach, Lamarck's work is grounded upon general (...) metaphysical principles concerning nature. Thus, from the ideologues's point of view, Lamarck's work should have been rejected -and that is what really happened - as being a mere metaphysical system grupo no qual se costuma incluir o próprio Lamarck. Mostra-se que o discurso metodológico de Lamarck assemelha-se ao dos ideólogos; no entanto, sua prática científica não se coaduna com esse enfoque. Em vez de seguir uma abordagem empirista, a obra de Lamarck se fundamenta em princípios metafísicos gerais sobre a natureza. Sob o ponto de vista dos ideólogos, seu trabalho deveria ser rejeitado - o que de fato ocorreu - como um mero sistema metafísico - no sentido pejorativo utilizado pelos seguidores de Condillac. No entanto, o presente artigo argumenta que esse é justamente um importante e inovador aspecto da obra de Lamarck, que permitiu a eclosão do evolucionismo moderno. (shrink)

The success of the mission of the school based largely on teachers, it is important to understand exactly how they see their role in the actualization of this mission. So this article initiates a reflection on how secondary school teachers in Quebec think their educational mission. More specifically, we analyze how the educational mission takes shape in their professional practice. La réussite de la mission de l’école reposant en grande partie sur les enseignants, il importe de cerner avec précision comment (...) ces derniers conçoivent leur rôle dans l’actualisation de cette mission. Ainsi cet article amorce une réflexion sur la manière dont les enseignants du secondaire au Québec, pensent leur mission éducative. Plus particulièrement, nous analysons ici comment cette mission éducative prend forme dans leur pratique professionnelle. (shrink)

Cases of inexact observations have been used extensively in the recent literature on higher-order evidence and higher-order knowledge. I argue that the received understanding of inexact observations is mistaken. Although it is convenient to assume that such cases can be modeled statically, they should be analyzed as dynamic cases that involve change of knowledge. Consequently, the underlying logic should be dynamic epistemic logic, not its static counterpart. When reasoning about inexact knowledge, it is easy to confuse the initial situation, the (...) observation process, and the result of the observation; I analyze the three separately. This dynamic approach has far reaching implications: Williamson’s influential argument against the KK principle loses its force, and new insights can be gained regarding synchronic and diachronic introspection principles. (shrink)

The traditional view in epistemology is that we must distinguish between being rational and being right (that is also, by the way, the traditional view about practical rationality). In his paper in this volume, Williamson proposes an alternative view according to which only beliefs that amount to knowledge are rational (and, thus, no false belief is rational). It is healthy to challenge tradition, in philosophy as much as elsewhere. But, in this instance, we think that tradition has it right. In (...) this paper we defend our version of the traditional view and argue against Williamson’s alternative. (shrink)

While much has been written about the functional profile of intentions, and about their normative or rational status, comparatively little has been said about the subjective authority of intention. What is it about intending that explains the ‘hold’ that an intention has on an agent—a hold that is palpable from her first-person perspective? I argue that several prima facie appealing explanations are not promising. Instead, I maintain that the subjective authority of intention can be explained in terms of the inner (...) structure of intention. In adopting an intention the agent comes to see herself as criticizable depending on whether she executes the intention. This allows us to explain in first-personal terms why the agent becomes disposed to act and deliberate in ways that are characteristic of intention. As intention-formation involves profound changes to reflexive evaluative attitudes, this is the ‘Self-Evaluation’ view of the subjective authority of intention. (shrink)

Many philosophers in the field of meta-ethics believe that rational degrees of confidence in moral judgments should have a probabilistic structure, in the same way as do rational degrees of belief. The current paper examines this position, termed “moral Bayesianism,” from an empirical point of view. To this end, we assessed the extent to which degrees of moral judgments obey the third axiom of the probability calculus, ifP(A∩B)=0thenP(A∪B)=P(A)+P(B), known as finite additivity, as compared to degrees of beliefs on the one (...) hand and degrees of desires on the other. Results generally converged to show that degrees of moral judgment are more similar to degrees of belief than to degrees of desire in this respect. This supports the adoption of a Bayesian approach to the study of moral judgments. To further support moral Bayesianism, we also demonstrated its predictive power. Finally, we discuss the relevancy of our results to the meta-ethical debate between moral cognitivists and moral non-cognitivists. (shrink)

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! -/- There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain (...) property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. -/- An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. -/- What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. -/- Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. -/- Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze? (shrink)

It is well-known that in the fifth of his Cartesian Meditations, Husserl puts forth a theory of intersubjectivity. Most commentators of Husserl have read his Cartesian Meditations as presenting a theory of intersubjectivity whose basis is empathy, in the form of a process of constituting the sense of “other” in one’s own experience, as the primary origin of the intersubjective layer of experience. In this paper, I claim that the structure of intersubjectivity as Husserl presents it in the Cartesian Meditations (...) is articulated as being governed by a logic of parts and wholes rather than that of a phenomenology of empathy, and that the articulation of this logic demonstrates that the transcendental ego is intrinsically intersubjective. My main philosophical claim in this regard is that the way Husserl’s account of transcendental empathy unfolds in the Cartesian Meditations implies a prior fundamental mereological structure of which the individual transcendental ego is only a part. That is, the transcendental ego has an eidetic a-priori intersubjective structure, in the sense of being a moment of an intersubjectively structured transcendental whole. In this sense, rather than being a singulare tantum, it is more fitting to say that transcendental subjectivity is actually a plurale tantum. (shrink)

In this short comment on Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, I concentrate on the permissible extent of interference by a liberal state in a community within that state when such interference aims to protect individuals within that community from it. He and I both value individuals and want them protected, of course. This shared value, however, leads us to different conclusions. On any liberal view, individuals must be allowed to act as they wish subject only to specific sorts of justified limitations. In (...) the mainstream approach that Cohen-Almagor accepts, these will include limitations necessary to not merely protect but also to promote autonomy. On my own view, by contrast, it is protection alone that justifies interference. I thus spell out Cohen-Almagor’s view about the need for interference with non-liberal groups within a liberal state and indicate my disagreement. (shrink)

The sentence "The boss fired the employee who is always late" invites the defeasible inference that the speaker is attempting to convey that the lateness caused the firing. We argue that such inferences cannot be understood in terms of familiar approaches to extrasemantic enrichment such as implicature, impliciture, explicature, or species of local enrichment already in the literature. Rather, we propose that they arise from more basic cognitive strategies, grounded in processes of coherence establishment, that thinkers use to make sense (...) of the world. Attention to such cases provides a richer and more varied landscape of extrasemantic enrichment than has been appreciated to date. (shrink)

In this paper we present an account of practical rationality and weakness of will in terms of rational capacities. We show how our account rectifies various shortcomings in Michael Smith's related theory. In particular, our account is capable of accommodating cases of weak-willed behaviour that are not `akratic', or otherwise contrary to the agent's better judgement. Our account differs from Smith's primarily by incorporating resolve: a third rational capacity for resolute maintenance of one's intentions. We discuss further two ways to (...) explain the importance of resolve to practical rationality: one based on Richard Holton's recent work, and an alternative, non-consequentialist account. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical debates surrounding toleration have revolved around three issues: What is toleration? Should we tolerate and, if so, why? What should be tolerated? These questions are of central importance to social and political thought.

If updating with E has the same result across all epistemically possible worlds, then the agent has no uncertainty as to the behavior of the update, and we may call it a transparent update. If an agent is uncertain about the behavior of an update, we may call it opaque. In order to model the uncertainty an agent has about the result of an update, the same update must behave differently across different possible worlds. In this paper, I study opaque (...) updates using a simple system of dynamic epistemic logic suitably modified for that purpose. The paper highlights the connection between opaque updates and the dynamic-epistemic principles Perfect-Recall and No-Miracles. I argue that opaque updates are central to contemporary discussions in epistemology, in particular to externalist theories of knowledge and to the related problem of epistemic bootstrapping, or easy knowledge. Opaque updates allow us to explicitly investigate a dynamic form of uncertainty, using simple and precise logical tools. (shrink)

While it is well known that Kant’s transcendental idealism forbids the transcendent use of reason and its ideas, what had been underexplored until the last decade or so is his account of the positive use of reason’s ideas as it is expounded in the “Appendix” of the Critique of Pure Reason. The main difficulty faced by his account is that while there is no doubt that for Kant we need to rely on the ideas of reason in order to gain (...) knowledge of the empirical world, the justificatory grounds for our use remain unclear. Commentators have suggested various ways of addressing this worry. Some emphasize that reason’s demand for systematicity is purely methodological; others that the assumption that nature itself is systematically unified is transcendentally necessary. Some simply deem Kant’s account “extremely self-contradictory.” What is clear is that if neither the presupposition of nature’s systematic unity nor the command to seek this unity have any justification, reason’s regulative function, which plays a crucial role in Kant’s account of cognition, also lacks justification. This would be a disastrous result, for it would threaten the very possibility of cognition and its progress. This chapter proposes to tackle this problem from a new angle by exploring the role of reason’s feelings in Kant’s account. While the relationship between practical reason and feeling has been explored at length in the literature, the relationship between theoretical reason and feeling has not, and my aim is to suggest that doing so can shed new light on reason’s cognitive activity. For focusing on the fact that theoretical reason’s need manifests itself as a feeling will enable me to reassess how this need is met through reason’s regulative use of its ideas. (shrink)

This paper argues that contrary to what is often thought, virtue for Kant is not just a matter of strength of will; it has an essential affective dimension. To support this claim, I show that certain affective dispositions, namely moral feelings and desires, are virtuous in the sense that they are constitutive of virtue at the affective level. There is thus an intrinsic connection between an agent’s practice of virtue and the cultivation of her affective dispositions.

Well‐functioning agents ordinarily have an excellent epistemic relationship to their intentional actions. This phenomenon is often characterized as knowledge of what one is doing and labeled “practical knowledge”. But when we examine it carefully, it seems to require a particular kind of understanding ‐ understanding of the normative structure of one's action. Three lines of argument are offered to support this Necessity of Understanding thesis. The first appeals to the nature of intentional action and the second to our everyday reasons (...) explanation of action. The final line of argument draws on a practical amnesia case in which an agent forgets her overall goal while acting. Implications of the Necessity of Understanding thesis for the widely endorsed non‐observational view of practical knowledge are briefly discussed. It is argued that support for the non‐observational view is weaker than has been appreciated. (shrink)

As one would expect, Kant believes that there is a tension, and even a conflict, between our bodily humanity and its ethical counterpart: ‘Inclination to pleasurable living and inclination to virtue are in conflict with each other’ (Anthropology, 185-86 [7:277]). What is more unexpected, however, is that he further claims that this tension can be resolved in what he calls an example of ‘civilised bliss’, namely dinner parties. Dinner parties are, for Kant, part of the ‘highest ethicophysical good’, the ultimate (...) resolution of the conflict between our physical body and our moral powers, which consists in finding the right proportions for the ‘mixture’ between our partly ‘sensuous’ and partly ‘ethicointellectual’ nature. The aim of this paper is not only to explain Kant’s account of the ideal proportions of ethicophysical good in dinner parties, but also, and more importantly, to argue that dinner parties are in fact the ultimate experience for us, human beings. (shrink)

It has been widely accepted that intentional actions are “the actions to which “a certain sense of the question ‘why?’ is given application” (Anscombe 1957/2000: 9). But there are robust reasons for thinking that this claim is false. First, there are intentional actions for which such questions are unsound. We have good reasons for thinking that the questions are not “given application” in these cases. Second, when these questions are “given application” this is best explained, it is argued, not in (...) terms of a necessary link between intentional action and this type of enquiry, but in terms of the fact that this is an enquiry that we pursue when we take an agent to have exercised certain of their rational capacities. (shrink)

Early in the history of liberalism, its most important proponents were concerned with freedom of religion. As polities and individuals now accept a dizzying array of religions, this has receded to the background for most theorists. It nonetheless remains a concern. Freedom of speech is a similar concern and very much in the foreground for theorists looking at the current state of academia. In this essay, I argue that inappropriate limits to freedom of religion and inappropriate limits to freedom of (...) speech—especially in the form of de-platforming on college campuses—both have, as one of their effects, what I call harms of silence. This means we ought not have those limits, so should seek to change them where they exist. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has fruitfully exploited formal resources to shed considerable light on the nature of knowledge. In the paper under examination, Williamson turns his attention to Gettier cases, showing how they can be motivated formally. At the same time, he disparages the kind of justification he thinks gives rise to these cases. He favors instead his own notion of justification for which Gettier cases cannot arise. We take issue both with his disparagement of the kind of justification that figures in (...) Gettier cases and the specifics of the formal motivation. (shrink)

I draw upon Helen Steward's concept of agential settling to argue that freedom requires an ability to change the truth‐value of tenseless future contingents over time from false to true and that this ability requires a metaphysically open future.

Attempting to settle various debates from recent literature regarding its precise nature, I offer a detailed conceptual analysis of toleration. I begin by isolating toleration from other notions; this provides us some guidance by introducing the eight definitional conditions of toleration that I then explicate and defend. Together, these eight conditions indicate that toleration is an agent’s intentional and principled refraining from interfering with an opposed other (or their behavior, etc.) in situations of diversity, where the agent believes she has (...) the power to interfere. This non-normative definition can serve as a preliminary to normative discussions of toleration. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring to light the anthropological dimension of Kant’s account of cognition as it is developed in the Lectures on Anthropology. I will argue that Kant’s anthropology of cognition develops along two complementary lines. On the one hand, it studies Nature’s intentions for the human species – the “natural” dimension of human cognition. On the other hand, it uses this knowledge to help us realise of our cognitive purposes – the “pragmatic” dimension of human (...) cognition. Insofar as it is intended for us as embodied human agents whose cognition takes place in the empirical world, it is concerned with the knowledge of the natural subjective conditions that help or hinder our cognition. Yet the idea that Kant’s anthropology of cognition has a pragmatic dimension turns out to be problematic. For whilst pragmatic anthropology is defined as ‘the investigation of what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself’ (A 7:119), by contrast with acting, cognising seems to be beyond the realm of voluntary action. However, I will show that Kant’s account of cognition makes room for a form of epistemic control that is sufficient to account for the possibility of its pragmatic dimension. Therefore, far from portraying human beings as disembodied pure minds, Kant’s account not only acknowledges the empirical, contingent and messy features of our cognition, it helps us become better, more efficient knowers by recommending how we can improve upon the subjective features that further or hinder our cognitive perfection. I will conclude by drawing the implications on my interpretation for our overall understanding of Kant’s account of cognition. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that we are answerable in a special way for our intentional actions. And it is also widely accepted that we are thus answerable because we perform intentional actions for reasons. The aim of this chapter is to argue against this ‘reasons’ view of such answerability. First, reasons are distinguished from practical standards. Then, it is argued that the best interpretation of the practices in which we treat agents as answerable is that they fundamentally concern practical standards (...) rather than reasons. This view shows that we are answerable, not just because we are deliberators, but because we are executive agents whose complex executive capacities open us to criticism. (shrink)

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics is about whether counterfactuals of freedom concerning what an agent would freely do if they were in certain circumstances even partly determines that agent’s obligations. This debate arose from an argument against the coherence of utilitarianism in the deontic logic literature. In this chapter, we first trace the historical origins of this debate and then examine actualism, possibilism, and securitism through the lens of consequentialism. After examining their respective benefits and drawbacks, we argue that, contrary (...) to what has been assumed, actualism and securitism both succumb to the so-called nonratifiability problem. In making this argument, we develop this problem in detail and argue that it’s a much more serious problem than has been appreciated. We conclude by arguing that an alternative view, hybridism, is independently the most plausible position and best fits with the nature of consequentialism, partly in light of avoiding the nonratifiability problem. (shrink)

We discuss the crucial, but easily missed, link between paternalism and incarceration. Legal paternalists believe law should be used to help individuals stay healthy or moral or become healthier or morally better. Criminal laws are paternalistic if they make it illegal to perform some action that would be bad for the actor to do, regardless of effects on others. Yet, one result of such laws is the punishment, including incarceration, of the very same actors—also clearly bad for them even if (...) meant to be rehabilitative. Therein lies an oddity: paternalist criminal law—and thepresumably rehabilitativepunishments that serve as responses to infringements of such laws—is meant to help the actor but in fact has the opposite effect on net. Incarceration is particularly problematic on this front as it harms the alleged criminal in ways that go beyond the harm they would have caused themselves. Incarceration also may undermine the actor’s ability to improve his decision-making abilities or his moral character. The effects of the punishment also drift to others—family and friends, as well as business associates, of the punished. Paternalists, inasmuch as they are motivated by beneficence or concern about moral character, must account for all of these costs as threats to well-being and the conditions for acting morally. Given the link between paternalism and incarceration, we propose that if we are to take seriously the problem of over-incarceration in the U.S., we must reconsider the use of paternalism in criminal law; we sketch several alternatives. We believe paternalists should support our resistance to incarceration and seriously consider these alternatives. (shrink)

In ‘The Epistemic Goals of the Humanities’, Stephen Grimm (2024) argues for epistemic continuities between the humanities, on one hand, and the social and natural sciences, on the other. This paper focuses on discontinuities. Drawing inspiration from Svetlana Alexievich’s literary non-fiction, I argue that if a reader is to gain a specific kind of understanding of the actions of the agents who appear in such work, they must engage in a rational evaluation of those agents’ reasons and actions. This epistemic (...) process may yield, not just understanding of another’s action, but a grip on the evaluative distance between the reader and the agents she reads about, together with a greater appreciation of normative matters. These epistemic gains are, I suggest, central to the value of the humanities, and play a key role in its corrective power. (shrink)

Within psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science, theory of mind refers to the cognitive ability to reason about the mental states of other people, thus recognizing them as having beliefs, knowledge, intentions and emotions of their own. In this project, we construct a natural language inference (NLD) dataset that tests the ability of a state of the art language model, RoBERTa-large finetuned on the MNLI dataset, to make theory of mind inferences related to knowledge and belief. Experimental results suggest that the (...) model struggles with such inferences, including after attempts for further finetuning. (shrink)

Decision theory requires agents to assign probabilities to states of the world and utilities to the possible outcomes of different actions. When agents commit to having the probabilities and/or utilities in a decision problem defined by objective features of the world, they may find themselves unable to decide which actions maximize expected utility. Decision theory has long recognized that work-around strategies are available in special cases; this is where dominance reasoning, minimax, and maximin play a role. Here we describe a (...) different work around, wherein a rational decision about one decision problem can be reached by ‘interpolating’ information from another problem that the agent believes has already been rationally solved. (shrink)

Observational learning can enhance the acquisition and performance quality of complex motor skills. While an extensive body of research has focused on the benefits of synchronous (i.e., concurrent physical practice) and non-synchronous (i.e., delayed physical practice) observational learning strategies, the question remains as to whether these approaches differentially influence performance outcomes. Accordingly, we investigate the differential outcomes of synchronous and non-synchronous observational training contexts using a novel dance sequence. Using multidimensional cross-recurrence quantification analysis, movement time-series were recorded for novice dancers (...) who either synchronised with (n = 22) or observed and then imitated (n = 20) an expert dancer. Participants performed a 16-count choreographed dance sequence for 20 trials assisted by the expert, followed by one final, unassisted performance trial. Although end-state performance did not significantly differ between synchronous and non-synchronous learners, a significant decline in performance quality from imitation to independent replication was shown for synchronous learners. A non-significant positive trend in performance accuracy was shown for non-synchronous learners. For all participants, better imitative performance across training trials led to better end-state performance, but only for the accuracy (and not timing) of movement reproduction. Collectively, the results suggest that synchronous learners came to rely on a realtime mapping process between visual input from the expert and their own visual and proprioceptive intrinsic feedback, to the detriment of learning. Thus, the act of synchronising alone does not ensure an appropriate training context for advanced sequence learning. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the possibility of developing a Kantian account of the ethics of belief by deploying the tools provided by Kant's ethics. To do so, I reconstruct epistemic concepts and arguments on the model of their ethical counterparts, focusing on the notions of epistemic principle, epistemic maxim and epistemic universalizability test. On this basis, I suggest that there is an analogy between our position as moral agents and as cognizers: our actions and our thoughts are subject to (...) the same rational norm. (shrink)

We live in a market system and witness much economic inequality. Although such inequality may not be an essential characteristic of market systems, it seems historically inevitable. How we should evaluate this inequality, on the other hand, is contentious. I propose that bleeding heart libertarians provide the best diagnosis and prescription.

I aim in this paper to provide defense of one way to look at what should be regulated in the market place. In particular, I discuss what should be tolerated and argue against corporate welfare. I begin by endorsing John Stuart Mill’s harm principle as a normative principle of toleration. I call strict commitment to the harm principle when considering the regulatory structure of markets market libertarianism and oppose that to promotionism, the view that endorses government interference to promote business (...) interests. I next discuss the widespread use of promotionist policies, arguing against them and for market libertarianism. I also consider problems for my view, recognizing that one of my responses may leave some thinking the paper is a reductio of the market libertarian view because of the sort of slow-growth state it endorses. Others will recognize it as a view promoted by some of the U.S. founding fathers and find it attractive in its own right. (shrink)

A commonly deployed signifier to render the political event of a riot intelligible, ‘chaos’ describes an affective condition of disorder and disarray. For some theorists of affect, such a condition of chaotic unpredictability suggests emancipatory potential. Recounting the 2018 May Day / May 1st protests in Paris, that both politicians and media declared to be a riot, this paper argues that to consider the riot as chaotic is to think and feel like a state. Critically interrogating the analytical purchase of (...) ‘chaos’ to describe a riotous assembly of bodies, this paper contends that ‘chaos’ is not only a theoretically impoverished concept to understand such political events, but also that sovereignty mobilizes ‘chaos’ as an affective infrastructure of governance to shore up attachment to the security state. Repudiating the sovereign logic of chaos, this paper presents a first-person encounter with a protest-declared-riot in order to explore the various affects that materialize around such events. Through ethnographic reflection, this paper outlines a series of affects that accompanied the day’s events, such as speculative optimism, fragility, suspicion, fear, boldness, and joy. In so doing, the paper develops an affective approach to theorize relations of political antagonism in the street, arguing that whereas the state weaponizes terror as a form of governance, the rioters weaponize joy as an affective means of resistance. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore Kant’s account of normativity through the prism of the distinction between the natural and the human sciences. Although the pragmatic orientation of the human sciences is often defined in contrast with the theoretical orientation of the natural sciences, I show that they are in fact regulated by one and the same norm, namely reason’s demand for autonomy.

Emily Chamlee-Wright is clearly right that self-censorship is an issue of concern within the academy. How much of a problem it is—how widespread and how bad it is when it occurs—is unclear and difficult to quantify. Administrators, faculty, and students all self-censor from time to time. Sometimes the self-censorship is just a matter of being polite or exercising pedagogical restraint, as Chamlee-Wright notes. The worry, of course, is that sometimes it prevents open and honest discussion about difficult topics and thus (...) stymies learning and truth-seeking. While I will keep these caveats in mind, I also want to help strengthen Chamlee-Wright’s case. I will also, though, point out a difficulty. (shrink)

A response to critical commentaries. Crookston begins her commentary by noting that my book would have been better with answers to “the following three questions: (1) Why is the harm principle the right principle upon which to base a theory of toleration? (2) How is Cohen thinking of the concept of volenti? (p. x ) Is interference (i.e., the abandonment of toleration) ever morally required by the harm principle?” (p. x ). She is right, and I address these questions (...) below in Sections 2, 3, and 4. That is the bulk of this essay. I then turn to Kelley's issues in Sections 6, 7, and 8; these have to do with “the link between toleration and relativism,” the way I distinguish “the concepts of toleration and endurance,” and a “question about moral toleration” (p. x ). Despite much agreement, there are points of contention and I try to make my position clearer in response . (shrink)

Wes Morriston contends that William Lane Craig's argument for the impossibility of a beginningless past results in an equally good argument for the impossibility of an endless future. Craig disagrees. I show that Craig's reply reveals a commitment to an unmotivated position concerning the relationship between actuality and the actual infinite. I then assess alternative routes to the impossibility of a beginningless past that have been offered in the literature, and show that, contrary to initial appearances, these routes similarly seem (...) to support the impossibility of an endless future. (shrink)

In the recent literature on the issue, a number of commentators have argued that Kant’s aesthetic theory commits him to the position that nothing is ugly. For instance, in ‘Why Kant finds nothing ugly’, Shier argues that ‘within Kant’s aesthetics, there cannot be any negative judgments of taste’ (Shier (1998): 413). And in ‘Kant’s problems with ugliness’, Thomson claims that ‘Kant’s aesthetic theory precludes […] ugliness’ (Thomson (1992): 107). In other words, as it is presented in some of the literature, (...) Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment seems to preclude him from accounting for the possibility of ugliness. A number of reasons have been put forward to explain why there can be no ugliness for Kant. Some have to do with his account of experience in general. Others have to do with the very nature of the free play between imagination and understanding. Of course, the real source of the problem is that the Critique of Judgment does not actually discuss ugliness, so commentators are left with the task of filling in the gaps. This paper aims to argue that Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment commits him not only to the existence of the ugly, but to the distinction between two kinds of ugliness. To support this claim, I will start from the premise that if there is to be room for ugliness, it should be defined as the contrary of beauty. However, I will suggest that Kant’s account of beauty can be negated in two ways, one that gives rise to impure ugliness and the other to pure ugliness. I will examine them in turn, first by showing that impure ugliness is the contrary of beauty insofar as it contravenes our interests and produces a desire to dispose of it, whereas beauty is necessarily disinterested for Kant. In the second section, I will use Kant’s definition of judgments of pure beauty to carve a space for an account of pure ugliness. For, it should present all the characteristics that make it “pure” whilst replacing the characteristics that make it beautiful with the ones that make it ugly. On this basis, I will define pure ugliness as the disinterested displeasure caused by the experience of what I will call “foul play” between the imagination and the understanding. (shrink)

On my interpretation of Kant, feeling plays a central role in the mind: it has the distinct function of tracking and evaluating our activity in relation to ourselves and the world so as to orient us. In this article, I set out to defend this view against a number of objections raised by Melissa Merritt and Uri Eran. I conclude with some reflections on the fact that, despite being very different, Merritt and Eran’s respective views of Kantian feelings turn out (...) to have something potentially problematic in common: they blur the boundary between feelings and other kinds of mental states. (shrink)

In line with familiar portrayals of Kant's ethics, interpreters of his philosophy of education focus essentially on its intellectual dimension: the notions of moral catechism, ethical gymnastics and ethical ascetics, to name but a few. By doing so, they usually emphasise Kant's negative stance towards the role of feelings in moral education. Yet there seem to be noteworthy exceptions: Kant writes that the inclinations to be honoured and loved are to be preserved as far as possible. This statement is not (...) only at odds with Kant's general claim that education should not encourage feelings, but more importantly, it encourages a feeling that is in many ways paradigmatically un-Kantian. How are we to understand the fact that of all feelings, the love of honour should be preserved? To answer this question, I begin by clarifying the reasons behind Kant's negative stance towards feelings in moral education. I then turn to his account of the feeling of love of honour. After distinguishing between its good and its bad forms, I consider two ways of making sense of the positive role Kant assigns to it. The first, modest reading will suggest that the feeling of love of honour is morally useful because it has two functions: an epistemic one, and a motivational one. The second, more ambitious reading will suggest that the feeling of love of honour enables the child to experience her inner worth as bearer of value. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that for Kant, a combination of epigenesis and monogenesis is the condition of possibility of anthropology as he conceives of it and that moreover, this has crucial implications for the biological dimension of his account of human nature. More precisely, I begin by arguing that Kant’s conception of mankind as a natural species is based on two premises: firstly the biological unity of the human species (monogenesis of the human races); and secondly (...) the existence of ‘seeds’ which may or may not develop depending on the environment (epigenesis of human natural predispositions). I then turn to Kant’s account of man’s natural predispositions and show that far from being limited to the issue of races, it encompasses unexpected human features such as gender, temperaments and nations. These predispositions, I argue, are means to the realisation of Nature’s overall purpose for the human species. This allows me to conclude that man’s biological determinism leads to the species’ preservation, cultivation and civilisation. (shrink)

In debates about rationalizing action explanation causalists assume that the psychological states that explain an intentional action have both causal and rational features. I scrutinize the presuppositions of those who seek and offer rationalizing action explanations. This scrutiny shows, I argue, that where rational features play an explanatory role in these contexts, causal features play only a presuppositional role. But causal features would have to play an explanatory role if rationalizing action explanation were a species of causal explanation. Consequently, we (...) should conclude that action explanation is not a species of causal explanation. (shrink)