“Applying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to 21st Century Art” was delivered to the 2009 Congress of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) in Dublin as a guide to critical thinking through a paradigm shift. This new paper uncovers a new critical theory in the form of a formula that has been successfully applied to a universal appraisal of arts across all boundaries, whether they be gender, discipline or culture. The configuration predicted by Pauli as arising from under the collapsed (...) quantum wave is sourced in an ancient icon: the hieros gamos. As her functional role as newspaper critic shifted to a more esoteric passage as performance artist/curator/blogger, the author spent 14 years theorizing; and another 14 years applying a new critical theory to contemporary art. Her (R)evolution series for the Huffington Post places the containment of the hieros gamos at the forefront of contemporary art practice. The goal is the embodiment of Jean Gebser’s 360-degree aperspectival awareness, whereas the shadow is contacted and absorbed into the very body of art. This paper will reveal the strategy for determining holistic art forms containing the 21st century icon that Pauli understood would arise from under the collapsed quantum wave. (shrink)

Both Immanuel Kant and Paul Guyer have raised important concerns about the limitations of Lockean thought. Following Guyer, I will focus my attention on questions about the proper ambitions and likely achievements of inquiry into the natural/physical world. I will argue that there are at least two important respects, not discussed by Guyer, in which Locke’s account of natural philosophy is much more flexible and accommodating than may be immediately apparent. On my interpretation, however, one crucial source of a (...) too-limited vision of natural philosophy remains in Locke, where he is appropriately criticized by both Kant and Guyer. My method will be to begin with a distinction that Locke draws in the very first draft of the Essay, between what he calls “the sensible object” and, on the other hand, “the uncertain philosophical cause.” I believe that Locke’s notion of “sensible object,” as opposed to uncertain philosophical cause, retains a central place in his thought in the published Essay, despite the fact thateven though this contrast is never made explicitly there. Tracing the evolution of these two concepts in his thought will allow us to track and better understand his developing views about the relation between the project of the. (shrink)

Both Immanuel Kant and Paul Guyer have raised important concerns about the limitations of Lockean thought. Following Guyer, I will focus my attention on questions about the proper ambitions and likely achievements of inquiry into the natural/physical world. I will argue that there are at least two important respects, not discussed by Guyer, in which Locke’s account of natural philosophy is much more flexible and accommodating than may be immediately apparent. On my interpretation, however, one crucial source of a (...) too-limited vision of natural philosophy remains in Locke, where he is appropriately criticized by both Kant and Guyer. My method will be to begin with a distinction that Locke draws in the very first draft of the Essay, between what he calls “the sensible object” and, on the other hand, “the uncertain philosophical cause.” I believe that Locke’s notion of “sensible object,” as opposed to uncertain philosophical cause, retains a central place in his thought in the published Essay, despite the fact thateven though this contrast is never made explicitly there. Tracing the evolution of these two concepts in his thought will allow us to track and better understand his developing views about the relation between the project of the. (shrink)

In his 2016 book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, Paul Bloom argues that “if we want to be good caring people, if we want to make the world a better place, then we are better off without empathy.” I’ve specifically chosen this formulation of Bloom’s position because it gets at the issue I will most directly challenge him on - that we would, or even could, be better off without empathy. The position I will defend is that (...) our empathy plays an indispensable role in the development of our moral conscience, and an ongoing role in the cultivation of our moral concepts, that would be compromised by suppressing our empathy. On this understanding, I argue that we would generally be better served by cultivating our empathy to mitigate and overcome its shortcomings, rather than suppressing our empathy as Bloom recommends. (shrink)

Revista Intelligence Info este o publicație trimestrială din domeniile intelligence, geopolitică și securitate, și domenii conexe de studiu și practică. -/- Cuprins: -/- EDITORIALE / EDITORIALS -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Considerații privind necesitatea educării și formării resursei umane pentru intelligence–ul național Considerations regarding the need to educate and train human resources for national intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Epistemologia activității de intelligence Epistemology of intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Rolul serviciilor de informații în război The role of the intelligence agencies in a war Nicolae SFETCU (...) Evoluția inteligenței artificiale în domeniul securității naționale The evolution of artificial intelligence in the field of national security -/- INTELLIGENCE / INTELLIGENCE -/- Ovidiu BOUREANU O scurtă istorie a spionajului: spionajul modern de la Războiul Rece la Războiul împotriva terorii A Brief History of the Spy: Modern Spying from the Cold War to the War on Terror Ioana PĂIUȘ, Tiberiu TĂNASE Securitate și informații într-o lume în schimbare Security and intelligence in a changing world Nicolae SFETCU Activitatea de intelligence - Ciclul intelligence Intelligence Activity – Intelligence Cycle Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul asupra Intelligence –ului Control over Intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Informația și nevoia de gestionare a resurselor informaționale Information and the need to manage information resources Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul parlamentar al serviciilor de informații Parliamentary control of intelligence services Tiberiu TĂNASE Mecanisme de control democratic al activității serviciilor de informații Mechanisms of democratic control of the activity of intelligence agencies Nicolae SFETCU Analiza informațiilor Intelligence Analysis Bogdan-George RĂDULESCU Cum ar trebui să fie utilizată analiza intelligence pentru a contracara războiul cognitiv? How should intelligence analysis be utilized to counter cognitive warfare? -/- ISTORIE / HISTORY -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Biroul de Informații al Secției Militare din Transilvania și rolul său în campania pentru apărarea României Mari The Intelligence Office of the Transylvanian Military Section and its role in the campaign for the defense of Greater Romania Stan PETRESCU Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard și românii Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard and the Romanians Tiberiu TĂNASE Contracararea de către SSI a activităților informative și acțiunilor Serviciilor Germane și Sovietice de Informații implicate în evenimentele din 21 - 23 ianuarie 1941 Countering by the SSI of the informational activities and actions of the German and Soviet Intelligence Services involved in the events of January 21-23, 1941 Tiberiu TĂNASE Alexandru Ioan Cuza, fondatorul Intelligence-lui statului modern românesc Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Founder of the Intelligence of the Modern Romanian State Tiberiu TĂNASE, Bogdan MUSCALU Puncte de vedere privind tradițiile romane în istoria intelligence-lui Viewpoints on Roman traditions in history intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Istoria Serviciului Român de Informații – serviciu de intelligence competitiv, și strategiile de intelligence History of the Romanian Intelligence Service – competitive intelligence service, and intelligence strategies Rodica LISEANU Reformele serviciilor secrete de la Mihail Moruzov la Eugen Cristescu, între inovație și decadență Secret service reforms from Mihail Moruzov to Eugen Cristescu Rodica LISEANU Take Ionescu – O biografie vectorială în istoria partidelor politice și în semantica diplomației Take Ionescu - A Vectorial Biography in the History of Political Parties and the Semantics of Diplomacy Remus MACOVEI Trădători și trădători Traitors and traitors -/- GEOPOLITICA / GEOPOLITICS -/- Antoaneta AVRAM Pandemia de COVID-19 și consecințele ei în peisajul anului 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences in the landscape of 2022 Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Ioan MANCI Analiza conflictului ruso-cecen din perspectivă militară Analysis of the Russian-Chechen conflict from a military perspective Lisa-Maria ACHIMESCU Apusul universalismului european The decline of European universalism Emilian M. DOBRESCU Hegemonia chineză în producția de pământuri rare Chinese Hegemony in the Production of Rare Earths Ionuț-Daniel GORGOVAN ”Descurajarea integrată”. Analiză asupra strategiei SUA în Pacific "Integrated deterrence". Analysis of US Pacific Strategy Tiberiu TĂNASE, Violeta Ioana NAGÂȚ Conflictul arabo-israelian. Percepții privind cauzele și natura conflictului. Repere istorice și actualitate The Arab-Israeli conflict. Perceptions of the causes and nature of conflict. Historical landmarks and current affairs -/- SECURITATE / SECURITY -/- Tănase TIBERIU Minighid de pregătire și protecție contrainformativă Counterintelligence preparation and protection mini-guide Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ ISIS - Jocul morții - Martiri, asasinate și fascinație The Killing Game - Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS Traian OSTAHIE Abordări generale ale conceptului de cultură de securitate For a 21st century realism Dalia Elena SILAGHI Terorismul cibernetic: o formă contemporană de terorism Cyber Terrorism: A Contemporary Form of Terrorism Paul Alexandru HELER Conflictul asimetric și consecințele sale în securitatea Asiei Asymmetric Conflict and Its Consequences in Asian Security Daria-Maria TÂRNĂVEAN Confruntarea informațională și repercusiunile sale asupra mediului actual de securitate The Information Confrontation and its Repercussions on the Current Security Environment Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ Analiza atacurilor cibernetice, precum APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) și ransomware Analysis of cyber attacks such as APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) and ransomware Daniela Georgiana GOLEA, Oana Ștefania COȘA Nevoia de adaptare managerială a noilor probleme de securitate modernă The need for managerial adaptation to new modern security issues Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Corneliu PREJA Implicarea NATO în domeniul apărării cibernetice NATO's involvement in cyber defence Alexandru CRISTIAN Paradigme în mediul internațional de securitate Paradigms in the international security environment Alexandru CRISTIAN Schimbarea paradigmelor în mediul internațional de securitate Changing paradigms in the international security environment Dan D. FARCAȘ Adevăr și dezinformare în fenomenul OZN Truth and disinformation in the UFO phenomenon Alexandru CRISTIAN Un nou mediu de securitate A new security environment -/- ȘTIINȚA INFORMAȚIEI / INFORMATION SCIENCE -/- Oana Ștefania COȘA Rolul structurilor de intelligence medical în atingerea obiectivul de consolidare a sistemului de sănătate The role of medical intelligence structures in achieving the objective of strengthening the health system Nicolae SFETCU Preocupări legislative în mineritul datelor Legislative concerns in data mining Nicolae SFETCU Utilizarea analiticii rețelelor sociale în intelligence Using social network analytics in intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Ingineria cunoașterii în colectarea informațiilor Knowledge Engineering in Intelligence Gathering -/- ISSN 2971 – 9089 ISSN-L 2821 – 8159, DOI: 10.58679/II26972. (shrink)

The increasing workplace use of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies has implications for the experience of meaningful human work. Meaningful work refers to the perception that one’s work has worth, significance, or a higher purpose. The development and organisational deployment of AI is accelerating, but the ways in which this will support or diminish opportunities for meaningful work and the ethical implications of these changes remain under-explored. This conceptual paper is positioned at the intersection of the meaningful work and ethical AI (...) literatures and offers a detailed assessment of the ways in which the deployment of AI can enhance or diminish employees’ experiences of meaningful work. We first outline the nature of meaningful work and draw on philosophical and business ethics accounts to establish its ethical importance. We then explore the impacts of three paths of AI deployment (replacing some tasks, ‘tending the machine’, and amplifying human skills) across five dimensions constituting a holistic account of meaningful work, and finally assess the ethical implications. In doing so we help to contextualise the meaningful work literature for the era of AI, extend the ethical AI literature into the workplace, and conclude with a range of practical implications and future research directions. (shrink)

The Gamer’s Dilemma refers to the philosophical challenge of justifying the intuitive difference people seem to see between the moral permissibility of enacting virtual murder and the moral impermissibility of enacting virtual child molestation in video games (Luck Ethics and Information Technology, 1:31, 2009). Recently, Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 has argued that the Gamer’s Dilemma is actually an instance of a more general “paradox”, which he calls the “paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly”, and he proposes a graveness resolution to (...) this paradox. In response, we argue for four key claims. First, we accept Luck’s expansion of the Gamer’s Dilemma to be applicable to a wider set of media, but give a novel recasting of this in terms of the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. Second, we develop a novel criticism of Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 graveness resolution to this broader paradox. Third, we argue that the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far helps to expose an implicit moralism in the Gamer’s Dilemma literature when compared to relevant nearby literatures about other forms of media. Fourth, we consider a range of non-moral, cultural and media conventions that plausibly help to dissolve the intuitive moral gap between non-sexual and sexual violence that is central to this paradox. (shrink)

Since the advent of media archeology, a deep-seated bifurcation has found one end of the field arguing for the interventionist and appropriative weaponization of media whereas the other side has championed a “total war” with technology itself, insisting that new media’s military-industrial roots inherently color its drivability. Here, I implore a moment within the cultural history of net.art and post-internet art to examine how contemporaneous queries about control after militarism and decentralization, as prognosticated by Paul Virilio and Gilles Deleuze, (...) are part of a more deeply entrenched discourse on neural nets, predictive processing algorithms and machine learning, which the current media theory and post-cinema literature has yet to rigorously respond to. Simultaneously parsing philosophical and media sociology corollaries to ground this overview, I push for more attention towards psychopower, autosurveillance and algorithmic governmentality while distancing critique from the standard Foucauldian discourse of biopower. (shrink)

In certain cases, people judge that agents bring about ends intentionally but also that they do not bring about the means that brought about those ends intentionally—even though bringing about the ends and means is just as likely. We call this difference in judgments the Kraemer effect. We offer a novel explanation for this effect: a perceived difference in the extent to which agents know how to bring about the means and the ends explains the Kraemer effect. In several experiments, (...) we replicate the Kraemer effect in a variety of non-moral and moral scenarios, and we find support for our new account. This work accords with a burgeoning area of action theory that identifies an important connection between know-how and intentionality. (shrink)

In this paper I shall defend the idea that there is an abstract and general core meaning of objectivity, and what is seen as a variety of concepts or conceptions of objectivity are in fact criteria of, or means to achieve, objectivity. I shall then discuss the ideal of value-free science and its relation to the objectivity of science; its status can be at best a criterion of, or means for, objectivity. Given this analysis, we can then turn to the (...) problem of inductive risk. Do the value judgements regarding inductive risk really pose a threat to the objectivity of science? I claim that this is not the case because they do not lower the thresholds scientifically postulated for objectivity. I shall conclude the paper with a discussion of under-appreciated influences of values on science, which indeed pose a serious threat to the objectivity of some scientific disciplines. (shrink)

According to proponents of the extended mind, bio-external resources, such as a notebook or a smartphone, are candidate parts of the cognitive and mental machinery that realises cognitive states and processes. The present chapter discusses three areas of ethical concern associated with the extended mind, namely mental privacy, mental manipulation, and agency. We also examine the ethics of the extended mind from the standpoint of three general normative frameworks, namely, consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.

On the standard interpretation, if a person holds cyclical preferences, the person is prone to acting irrationally. I provide a different interpretation, tying cyclical preferences not to irrationality, but to indecision. According to this alternative understanding – coined the indecision interpretation – top cycles in a person’s preferences can be associated with a difficulty in justifying one’s choice. If an agent’s justificatory impasse persists despite attempts to resolve the cycle, the agent can be deemed undecided. The indecision interpretation is compatible (...) with the standard interpretation of such cycles as instances of irrationality. Yet indecision corresponds to a first-person, non-instrumental perspective on the problem, whereas irrationality usually corresponds to a third-person, instrumental perspective. Due to these differences, interpreting cycles in terms of indecision offers a novel conceptual perspective, pertinent both for explanatory purposes and for the aim of normative theorizing. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent (AI) technologies are increasingly being used in many workplaces. It is recognised that there are ethical dimensions to the ways in which organisations implement AI alongside, or substituting for, their human workforces. How will these technologically driven disruptions impact the employee–employer exchange? We provide one way to explore this question by drawing on scholarship linking Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the psychological contract (PC). Using ISCT, we show that the macrosocial contract’s ethical AI norms of beneficence, non-maleficence, (...) autonomy, justice, and explicability can feed into national- and organisational-level microsocial contracts. We also outline the role of employees’ technology frames in this process. We then use an illustrative example to demonstrate how this multilevel normative background helps to inform the content of individuals’ PCs in the context of working with AI technologies. (shrink)

The phenomena of call-outs and call-ins are fiercely debated. Are they mere instances of virtue signaling? Or can they actually perform social justice work? This paper gains purchase on these questions by focusing on how language users negotiate norms in speech. The authors contend that norm-enacting speech not only makes a norm salient in a context but also creates conversational conditions that motivate adherence to that norm. Recognizing this allows us to define call-outs and call-ins: the act of calling-out brings (...) with it the presupposition that its target's behavior is norm-violating, whereas the act of calling-in simply presupposes its target's willingness to revise their belief. With these definitions at hand, we evaluate whether call-outs and call-ins are suitable tools for combating social injustice. (shrink)

The negative impacts of social media have given rise to philosophical questions around whether social media companies have the authority to regulate user-generated content on their platforms. The most popular justification for that authority is to appeal to private ownership rights. Social media companies own their platforms, and their ownership comes with various rights that ground their authority to moderate user-generated content on their platforms. However, we argue that ownership rights can be limited when their exercise results in significant harms (...) to others or the perpetration of injustices. We outline some of the substantive harms that social media platforms inflict through their practices of content moderation and some of the procedural injustices that arise through their arbitrary application of community guidelines. This provides a normative basis for calls to better regulate user-generated content on social media platforms. We conclude by considering some of the political and legal implications of our argument. (shrink)

Epistemologists have long believed that epistemic luck undermines propositional knowledge. Action theorists have long believed that agentive luck undermines intentional action. But is there a relationship between agentive luck and epistemic luck? While agentive luck and epistemic luck have been widely thought to be independent phenomena, we argue that agentive luck has an epistemic dimension. We present several thought experiments where epistemic luck seems to undermine both knowledge-how and intentional action and we report experimental results that corroborate these judgments. These (...) findings have implications for the role of knowledge in a theory of intentional action and for debates about the nature of knowledge-how and the significance of knowledge representation in folk psychology. (shrink)

A fundamental question asked in modal logic is whether a given theory is consistent. But consistent with what? A typical way to address this question identifies a choice of background knowledge axioms (say, S4, D, etc.) and then shows the assumptions codified by the theory in question to be consistent with those background axioms. But determining the specific choice and division of background axioms is, at least sometimes, little more than tradition. This paper introduces generic theories for propositional modal logic (...) to address consistency results in a more robust way. As building blocks for background knowledge, generic theories provide a standard for categorical determinations of consistency. We argue that the results and methods of this paper help to elucidate problems in epistemology and enjoy sufficient scope and power to have purchase on problems bearing on modalities in judgement, inference, and decision making. (shrink)

The role of certitude in our mental lives is, to put it mildly, controversial. Many current epistemologists (including epistemologists of religion) eschew certitude altogether. Given his emphasis on certitude, some have maintained that John Henry Newman was an infallibilist about knowledge. In this paper, we argue that a careful examination of his thought (especially as seen in the Grammar of Assent) reveals that he was an epistemic fallibilist. We first clarify what we mean by fallibilism and infallibilism. Second, we explain (...) why some have read Newman as an infallibilist. Third, we offer two arguments that Newman is at least a fallibilist in a weak sense. In particular, the paradox he seeks to resolve in the Grammar and his dispute with John Locke both indicate that he is at least a weak fallibilist. We close with a consideration of whether Newman is a fallibilist in a much stronger sense as well. (shrink)

The article traces the evolution and crystallization of Buber’s philosophy of dialogue. It focuses on his consideration of the epistemological and ontological issues attendant to the principium individuationis, the subject of his doctoral dissertation of 1904. Culminating with the publication of Ich und Du in 1923, this process was punctuated by life experiences that led him to affirm rather than to seek to transcend the principium individuationis as the ontological ground of being manifest in the matrix of everyday life, which (...) we are beckoned to sanctify through I-Thou relations. (shrink)

There is little more common in ethics than to think pain is intrinsically bad and pleasure is intrinsically good. A Humean-style error theory of the axiology of pain and pleasure is developed against these commonsense claims. We defend the thesis that the value of pain and pleasure is always contingent and only instrumental. We survey prominent theories of both intrinsic value and pain/pleasure, all of which assume that pain and pleasure are intrinsically valuable. We base our error theory on counterexamples (...) to this assumption, upon which these theories falter, and a theory of pain and pleasure which derives their value solely from their evolutionary function. (shrink)

Ongoing and anticipated COVID-19 human challenge studies in the UK may advance our understanding of COVID-19 and facilitate the licensure of safe, effective, and easily deployable next-generation COVID-19 vaccines and boosters. We argue that international volunteer recruitment for COVID-19 human challenge trials can help promote diversity in these trials and ensure a sufficient number of eligible volunteers, both of which will increase the benefits of challenge research. We explore the ethical ramifications of dealing with unfair background conditions of global vaccine (...) injustice to expand medical research, and conclude that international recruitment for COVID-19 human challenge trials can be conducted ethically provided that several robust protections are in place for volunteers. (shrink)

This thesis modifies the wording of William Clifford’s 1877 evidence principle (that ‘it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’) to propose an explicitly moral principle, restricted to descriptive beliefs (about what is or is not the case) and excluding prescriptive beliefs (about what ought or ought not to be the case). It considers potential counter-examples, particularly William James’s 1896 defence of religious belief; and concludes that the modified principle survives unscathed. It then searches (...) for suitable criteria for ‘sufficient’ and ‘insufficient’ evidence, first within a Bayesian framework enriched by pragmatic considerations, and finally by returning to Clifford’s conception of our shared responsibilities to our shared epistemic asset. Combined with elements of Edward Craig’s (1990, 1999) ‘state-of-nature’ theory of knowledge this gets us to a minimum threshold to avoid insufficient evidence and an aspirational criterion of sufficient evidence. (shrink)

Our doxastic states are our belief-like states, and these include outright doxastic states and degreed doxastic states. The former include believing that p, having the opinion that p, thinking that p, being sure that p, being certain that p, and doubting that p. The latter include degrees of confidence, credences, and perhaps some phenomenal states. But we also have conviction (being convinced simpliciter that p) and degrees of conviction (being more or less convinced that p). This volume shows: how and (...) why all of the outright doxastic states mentioned above can be reduced to conviction thresholds; what degrees of conviction fundamentally are (degreed reliance-dispositions); why degrees of conviction are not credences; when suspending a belief is compatible with continuing to believe; and the surprising extent to which Kant endorsed the theory of conviction that emerges in this volume. (shrink)

In this brief review it is not possible to do full justice to this lively and lucidly presented study. It is fair to say, I think, that the considerable merits of this work rest primarily with its intelligent and reliable selection of material, most of which is already available and familiar. This study does not aim to challenge any orthodoxies or present new material of some significant kind. Rasmussen does not need to do this since his real concern is to (...) tell a story about two great thinkers in an engaging manner – a task which he achieves with great success. This is a book that scholars will thoroughly enjoy and appreciate and which will also find many appreciative readers well beyond these boundaries. (shrink)

When organizations solve collective action problems or realize values, they do so by means of institutions. These are commonly regarded as self-stabilizing. Yet, they can also be subject to endogenous processes of decay, or so we argue. We explain this in terms of psychological and cultural processes, which can change even if the formal structures remain unchanged. One key implication is that the extent to which norms, values, and ideals motivate individuals to comply with institutions is limited.

The prominent place 0f corpuscularizm mechanism in L0ckc`s Essay is nowadays universally acknowledged} Certainly, L0ckc’s discussions 0f the primary/secondary quality distinction and 0f real essences cannot be understood without reference to the corpuscularizm science 0f his day, which held that all macroscopic bodily phenomena should bc explained in terms 0f the motions and impacts 0f submicroscopic particles, 0r corpuscles, each of which can bc fully characterized in terms of 21 strictly limited range 0f (primary) properties: size, shape, motion (or mobility), (...) and, perhaps, solidity 0r impcnctrability.2 Indeed, L0ckc’s lists 0f primary quali-. (shrink)

The notion of subjective indistinguishability has long played a central role in explanations of the force of Cartesian sceptical hypotheses. I argue that sceptical hypotheses do not need to be subjectively indistinguishable to be compelling and I provide an alternative diagnosis of their force that explains why this is the case. My diagnosis focuses on the relation between one’s experiences and third-personal accounts of the circumstances in which these experiences occur. This relation is characterized by a distinctive gap that leaves (...) room for questions about the nature of one’s circumstances, providing sceptical hypotheses with a foothold. I argue that this gap lends sceptical hypotheses their force and renders the stipulation of subjective indistinguishability unnecessary. (shrink)

In this paper, we attempt to de-naturalize the prevailing economistic imaginary of work that Max Weber and later commentators described as ‘protestant work ethic,’ epitomized in the figure of homo economicus. We do so by contrasting it with the imaginary of skillful work that can be found in vignettes about artisans in the Zhuangzi. We argue that there are interesting contrasts between these views concerning 1) direct goal achievement vs. indirect goal achievement through the cultivation of skills; 2) the hierarchization (...) of mental versus physical dimensions of work; 3) the crafting of non-dominating relationships between the working subject, their object, and their instruments of work, which leads to questions about the sustainability of these relationships; and 4) the relationship between work and well-being, which the Daoist texts conceptualize in a much more holistic, but also more presentist way than Western economic rationality. We conclude by pointing out the relevance of these differences for several contemporary debates about work, by denaturalizing a dominant imaginary of work, by distinguishing different forms of work, by suggesting a different relation between work and nature, and by raising questions about the desirability of the automation of work. (shrink)

Dispositional Essentialism, as commonly conceived, consists in the claims that at least some of the fundamental properties essentially confer certain causal-nomological roles on their bearers, and that these properties give rise to the natural modalities. As such, the view is generally taken to be committed to a realist conception of properties as either universals or tropes, and to be thus incompatible with nominalism as understood in the strict sense. Pace this common assumption of the ontological import of Dispositional Essentialism, the (...) aim of this paper is to explore a nominalist version of the view, Austere Nominalist Dispositional Essentialism. The core features of the proposed account are that it eschews all kinds of properties, takes certain predicative truths as fundamental, and employs the so-called generic notion of essence. As I will argue, the account is significantly closer to the core idea behind Dispositional Essentialism than the only nominalist account in the vicinity of Dispositional Essentialism that has been offered so far—Ann Whittle’s Causal Nominalism—and is immune to crucial problems that affect this view. (shrink)

In his article ‘Making semantics for essence’ (Inquiry, 2019), Justin Zylstra proposed a truthmaker semantics for essence and used it to evaluate principles regarding the explanatory role of essence. The aim of this article is to show that Zylstra's semantics has implausible implications and thus cannot adequately capture essence.

Structural analogies connect Williamson’s epistemology and action theory: for example, action is the direction-of-fit mirror image of knowledge, and knowledge stands to belief as action stands to intention. These structural analogies, for Williamson, are meant to illuminate more generally how ‘mirrors’ reversing direction of fit should be understood as connecting the spectrum of our cognitive and practically oriented mental states. This paper has two central aims, one negative and the other positive. The negative aim is to highlight some intractable problems (...) with Williamson’s preferred analogical picture, which links the cognitive and the practical through the nexus of direction-of-fit mirroring. The positive aim of the paper is to propose a better alternative. In particular, we show that an achievement-theoretic proposal captures what is in common across the range of attitudes that exhibit the kind of structure that knowledge-belief, action-desire/intention do, while at the same time avoiding the problems shown to face Williamson’s proposed picture. Moreover, we draw attention to several key theoretical benefits of embracing our proposed achievement-theoretic picture, including some of the key benefits of the knowledge-first programme that Williamson’s own analogies were designed to secure. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the costs and benefits of confabulation, focusing on the type of confabulation people engage in when they offer explanations for their attitudes and choices. What makes confabulation costly? In the philosophical literature confabulation is thought to undermine claims to self-knowledge. I argue that when people confabulate they do not necessarily fail at mental-state self-attributions, but offer ill-grounded explanations which often lead to the adoption of other ill-grounded beliefs. What, if anything, makes confabulation beneficial? As people (...) are unaware of the information that would make their explanations accurate, they are not typically in a position to acknowledge their ignorance or provide better-grounded explanations for their attitudes and choices. In such cases, confabulating can have some advantages over offering no explanation because it makes a distinctive contribution to people’s sense of themselves as competent and largely coherent agents. This role of ill-grounded explanations could not be as easily played by better-grounded explanations should these be available. In the end, I speculate about the implications of this conclusion for attempting to eliminate or reduce confabulation. (shrink)

Delusions are defined as irrational beliefs that compromise good functioning. However, in the empirical literature, delusions have been found to have some psychological benefits. One proposal is that some delusions defuse negative emotions and protect one from low self-esteem by allowing motivational influences on belief formation. In this paper I focus on delusions that have been construed as playing a defensive function (motivated delusions) and argue that some of their psychological benefits can convert into epistemic ones. Notwithstanding their epistemic costs, (...) motivated delusions also have potential epistemic benefits for agents who have faced adversities, undergone physical or psychological trauma, or are subject to negative emotions and low self-esteem. To account for the epistemic status of motivated delusions, costly and beneficial at the same time, I introduce the notion of epistemic innocence. A delusion is epistemically innocent when adopting it delivers a significant epistemic benefit, and the benefit could not be attained if the delusion were not adopted. The analysis leads to a novel account of the status of delusions by inviting a reflection on the relationship between psychological and epistemic benefits. (shrink)

The thesis of Weak Unrestricted Composition says that every pair of objects has a fusion. This thesis has been argued by Contessa and Smith to be compatible with the world being junky and hence to evade an argument against the necessity of Strong Unrestricted Composition proposed by Bohn. However, neither Weak Unrestricted Composition alone nor the different variants of it that have been proposed in the literature can provide us with a satisfying answer to the special composition question, or so (...) we will argue. We will then go on to explore an alternative family of purely mereological rules in the vicinity of Weak Unrestricted Composition, Cardinal Composition: A plurality of pairwise non-overlapping objects composes an object iff the objects in the plurality are of cardinality smaller than $$\kappa $$ κ. As we will show, all the instances for infinite $$\kappa $$ κ s determine fusion and are compatible with junk, and every instance for a $$\kappa > \aleph _0$$ κ > ℵ 0 is furthermore compatible with gunk and dense chains of parthood. (shrink)

Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis’ famous and influential Discours sur les différentes figures des astres, which represented the first public defense of attractionism in the Cartesian stronghold of the Paris Academy, sometimes suggests a metaphysically agnostic defense of gravity as simply a regularity. However, Maupertuis’ considered account in the essay, I argue, is much more subtle. I analyze Maupertuis’ position, showing how it is generated by an extended consideration of the possibility of attraction as an inherent property and fuelled by (...) an understanding of Lockean skepticism about knowledge of real essences that is more nuanced perhaps even than Locke’s own. (shrink)

This essay is an examination of stupid knowing, an attempt to catalog a particular species of knowing, and to understand when, how, and why the label "stupid" gets applied to marginalized groups of knowers. Heldke examines the ways the defining processes work and the conditions that make them possible, by considering one group of people who get defined as stupid: rural people. In part, the author intends her identification and categorization of stupid knowing to support the work of theorists of (...) resistance who have identified ways that those marginalized as stupid knowers use the cloak of their purported stupidity in the aid of their resistance. Heldke also hopes to add to the existing critique of the hierarchies of knowing an understanding of one particular way one form of knowledge is devalued: stupidification. Why are some forms of knowledge actually regarded as leaving one incapable of other forms of rational thought? (shrink)

This paper argues that a priori justification is, in principle, compatible with naturalism—if the a priori is understood in a way that is free of the inessential properties that, historically, have been associated with the concept. I argue that empirical indefeasibility is essential to the primary notion of the a priori ; however, the indefeasibility requirement should be interpreted in such a way that we can be fallibilist about apriori-justified claims. This fallibilist notion of the a priori accords with the (...) naturalist’s commitment to scientific methodology in that it allows for apriori-justified claims to be sensitive to further conceptual developments and the expansion of evidence. The fallibilist apriorist allows that an a priori claim is revisable in only a purely epistemic sense. This modal claim is weaker than what is required for a revisability thesis to establish empiricism, so fallibilist apriorism represents a distinct position. (shrink)

Plato's Republic divided subsequent study of justice in two, as a virtue of people and of institutions. Here, the start of a reunification is attempted. Justice is first understood personally as the mean between arrogance and servility, where just people properly respect themselves and others. Because justice requires that like cases be treated alike and self-respect is a special instance of respect generally, justice requires a single standard for self and others. In understanding justice in terms of respect, structural analogies (...) become apparent between "recognition" and "appraisal" respect, on one hand, and Rawls' two principles of justice on the other. The paper closes with a discussion of how mercy is related to justice and an explanation of why just people always look for reasons to mitigate blame and punishment but never to aggravate them. (shrink)

I explore Locke’s complex attitude toward the natural philosophy of his day by focusing on Locke’s own treatment of Newton’s theory of gravity and the presence of Lockean themes in defenses of Newtonian attraction/gravity by Maupertuis and other early Newtonians. In doing so, I highlight the inadequacy of an unqualified labeling of Locke as “mechanist” or “Newtonian.”.

One of the deepest tensions in Locke’s Essay, a work full of profound and productive conflicts, is one between Locke’s metaphysical tendencies—his inclination to presuppose or even to argue for substantive metaphysical positions—and his devout epistemic modesty, which seems to urge agnosticism about major metaphysical issues. Both tendencies are deeply rooted in the Essay. Locke is a theorist of substance, essence, quality. Yet, his favorite conclusions are epistemically pessimistic, even skeptical; when it comes to questions about how the world is (...) constituted, our understandings cannot penetrate very far. Locke seems torn between metaphysics and modesty, between dogmatism and skepticism. This chapter will consider two specific examples of this sort of tension. The first involves the ontology of body, and the second, the ontology of mind. The conflict concerning bodily natures looks like this: As is well-known, Locke typically describes bodies in the terms of the corpuscularian science of his day, as exemplified especially by the natural philosopher Robert Boyle. Locke’s characterizations of the real essences of bodies are mechanist. He envisions them as corpuscularian textures-- spatial arrangements of particles possessing size. (shrink)

Here I reply to the main points raised by the commentators on the arguments put forward in my Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP, 2009). My response is aimed at defending a modest doxastic account of clinical delusions, and is articulated in three sections. First, I consider the view that delusions are inbetween perceptual and doxastic states, defended by Jacob Hohwy and Vivek Rajan, and the view that delusions are failed attempts at believing or not-quitebeliefs, proposed by Eric Schwitzgebel and (...) Maura Tumulty. Then, I address the relationship between the doxastic account of delusions and the role, nature, and prospects of folk psychology, which is discussed by Dominic Murphy, Keith Frankish, and Maura Tumulty in their contributions. In the final remarks, I turn to the continuity thesis and suggest that, although there are important differences between clinical delusions and non-pathological beliefs, these differences cannot be characterised satisfactorily in epistemic terms. (shrink)

Letheby’s book is an engaging and crystal-clear exploration of the philosophical issues raised by the use of psychedelic drugs. In this paper, we focus on the epistemological issues Letheby examines in chapter 8 and argue that his analysis requires an agency-first approach to epistemic evaluation. On an agency-first approach, epistemic evaluation is about identifying the skills agents needs to acquire in order to pursue and fulfil their epistemic goals.

Non‐governmental aid programs are an important source of health care for many people in the developing world. Despite the central role non‐governmental organizations play in the delivery of these vital services, for the most part they either lack formal systems of accountability to their recipients altogether, or have only very weak requirements in this regard. This is because most NGOs are both self‐mandating and self‐regulating. What is needed in terms of accountability is some means by which all the relevant stakeholders (...) can have their interests represented and considered. An ideally accountable decision‐making process for NGOs should identify acceptable justifications and rule out unacceptable ones. Thus, the point of this paper is to evaluate three prominent types of justification given for decisions taken at the Dutch headquarters of Médecins sans Frontières. They are: population health justifications, mandate‐based justifications and advocacy‐based justifications. The central question at issue is whether these justifications are sufficiently robust to answer the concerns and objections that various stakeholders may have. I am particularly concerned with the legitimacy these justifications have in the eyes of project beneficiaries. I argue that special responsibilities to certain communities can arise out of long‐term engagement with them, but that this type of priority needs to be constrained such that it does not exclude other potential beneficiaries to an undesirable extent. Finally, I suggest several new institutional mechanisms that would enhance the overall equity of decisions and so would ultimately contribute to the legitimacy of the organization as a whole. (shrink)

: Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's account of natality, Guenther argues that Martin Heidegger overlooks the distinct ontological and ethical significance of birth as a limit that orients one toward an other who resists appropriation, even while handing down a heritage of possibilities that one can—and must—make one's own. Guenther calls this structure of natality Being-from-others, modifying Heidegger's language of inheritance to suggest an ethical understanding of existence as the gift of the other.

What is it to base a belief on reasons? Existing attempts to give an account of the basing relation encounter a dilemma: either one appeals to some kind of neutral process that does not adequately reflect the way basing is a content‐sensitive first‐personal activity, or one appeals to linking or bridge principles that over‐intellectualize and threaten regress. We explain why this dilemma arises, and diagnose the commitments that are key obstacles to providing a satisfactory account. We explain why they should (...) be rejected anyway, and then offer a new, knowledge‐first virtue epistemological theory of the basing relation that shows how we can substantially theorize about mental processes without these commitments. The resulting view plausibly captures the way in which basing is an inherently mental and content‐sensitive process. (shrink)

Shame is notoriously ambivalent. On one hand, it operates as a mechanism of normalization and social exclusion, installing or reinforcing patterns of silence and invisibility; on the other hand, the capacity for shame may be indispensible for ethical life insofar as it attests to the subject’s constitutive relationality and its openness to the provocation of others. Sartre, Levinas and Beauvoir each offer phenomenological analyses of shame in which its basic structure emerges as a feeling of being exposed to others and (...) bound to one’s own identity. For Sartre, shame is an ontological provocation, constitutive of subjectivity as a being-for-Others. For Levinas, ontological shame takes the form of an inability to escape one’s own relation to being; this predicament is altered by the ethical provocation of an Other who puts my freedom in question and commands me to justify myself. For Beauvoir, shame is an effect of oppression, both for the woman whose embodied existence is marked as shameful, and for the beneficiary of colonial domination who feels ashamed of her privilege. For each thinker, shame articulates the temporality of social life in both its promise and its danger. (shrink)

Some claim that moral factors affect the epistemic status of our beliefs. Call this _the moral encroachment thesis_. It’s been argued that the moral encroachment thesis can explain at least part of the wrongness of racial profiling. The thesis predicts that the high moral stakes in cases of racial profiling make it more difficult for these racist beliefs to be justified or to constitute knowledge. This paper considers a class of racial generalizations that seem to do just the opposite of (...) this. The high moral stakes of the beliefs we infer from these generalizations make it _easier_ rather than _harder_ for these beliefs to be justified or to constitute knowledge. I argue that the existence of this class of cases—cases of “positive profiling”—give us reason to expand our account of moral encroachment in a way that brings it closer to the ideal of pragmatic encroachment that motivates it in the first place. (shrink)