The paper by Monteiro, Musten and Compson (2014) is to be commended for providing a comprehensive discussion of the compatibility issues arising from the integration of mindfulness – a 2,500-year-old Buddhist practice – into research and applied psychological domains. Consistent with the observations of various others (e.g., Dunne, 2011; Kang & Whittingham, 2010), Monteiro and colleagues have not only highlighted that there are differences in how Buddhism and contemporary mindfulness interventional approaches interpret and contextualize mindfulness, but there are also differing (...) interpretations of mindfulness within Buddhism. These apparent differences within Buddhism are arguably more noticeable when making comparisons across Buddhist vehicles (i.e., Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), but to a lesser extent intra-vehicular differences can also be said to exist (i.e., differences between Buddhist traditions of the same vehicle). This commentary investigates the validity of some of these different Buddhist constructions of mindfulness, and then discusses how a better understanding of their scriptural and conceptual soundness (or lack thereof) may help to reconcile some of the actual and perceived incompatibility between Buddhist practice and contemporary secular mindfulness-based approaches. (shrink)

Models not only represent but may also influence their targets in important ways. While models’ abilities to influence outcomes has been studied in the context of economic models, often under the label ‘performativity’, we argue that this phenomenon also pertains to epidemiological models, such as those used for forecasting the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic. After identifying three ways in which a model by the Covid-19 Response Team at Imperial College London may have influenced scientific advice, policy, and individual responses, (...) we consider the implications of epidemiological models’ performative capacities. We argue, first, that performativity may impair models’ ability to successfully predict the course of an epidemic; but second, that it may provide an additional sense in which these models can be successful, namely by changing the course of an epidemic. (shrink)

Als Plato de hedendaagse academie zou aanschouwen, zou hij niet alleen stomverbaasd zijn over de massificatie en de byzantijnse bureaucratie, maar gezien het ethische doel van de universiteit zou hij ook reden hebben om bezorgd te zijn.

I argue that psychology and epistemology should posit distinct cognitive attitudes of religious credence and factual belief, which have different etiologies and different cognitive and behavioral effects. I support this claim by presenting a range of empirical evidence that religious cognitive attitudes tend to lack properties characteristic of factual belief, just as attitudes like hypothesis, fictional imagining, and assumption for the sake of argument generally lack such properties. Furthermore, religious credences have distinctive properties of their own. To summarize: factual beliefs (...) are practical setting independent, cognitively govern other attitudes, and are evidentially vulnerable. By way of contrast, religious credences have perceived normative orientation, are susceptible to free elaboration, and are vulnerable to special authority. This theory provides a framework for future research in the epistemology and psychology of religious credence. (shrink)

How to account for the power that art holds over us? Why do artworks touch us deeply, consoling, transforming or invigorating us in the process? In this paper, we argue that an answer to this question might emerge from a fecund framework in cognitive science known as predictive processing (a.k.a. active inference). We unpack how this approach connects sense-making and aesthetic experiences through the idea of an ‘epistemic arc’, consisting of three parts (curiosity, epistemic action and aha experiences), which we (...) cast as aspects of active inference. We then show how epistemic arcs are built and sustained by artworks to provide us with those satisfying experiences that we tend to call ‘aesthetic’. Next, we defuse two key objections to this approach; namely, that it places undue emphasis on the cognitive component of our aesthetic encounters—at the expense of affective aspects—and on closure and uncertainty minimization (order)—at the expense of openness and lingering uncertainty (change). We show that the approach offers crucial resources to account for the open-ended, free and playful behaviour inherent in aesthetic experiences. The upshot is a promising but deflationary approach, both philosophically informed and psychologically sound, that opens new empirical avenues for understanding our aesthetic encounters. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. (shrink)

In dit hoofdstuk presenteer ik de belangrijkste bevindingen en uitspraken uit mijn diepte-interviews met de respondenten. Ik geef hiermee antwoord op de deelvragen ‘Wat voor beeld wordt er gevormd in Nederlandse kranten over geweldpleging door de Staat in Nederlands-Indië?’, ‘Welk beeld in Nederlandse kranten is exemplarisch voor positieve of negatieve berichtgeving over geweldpleging door de Staat in Nederlands-Indië?’, ‘Wat zijn de belangrijkste reacties geweest van media, Staat of andere betrokkenen op de berichtgeving in kranten over Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden in Indië?’ en (...) ‘Hoe kijken representatoren voor media, Staat, betrokkenen en/of nabestaanden zelf aan tegen de beeldvorming over de misdragingen in Nederlands-Indië?’ De vijf geïnterviewde experts hebben zich uiteraard uitgelaten over beeldvorming in Nederlandse kranten over verschillende perioden. Ik heb de paragrafen daar voor het gemak tevens chronologisch naar ingedeeld. (shrink)

van Els, Paul. "#MeToo avant la lettre." Filosofie-Tijdschrift 28, no. 3 (May 2018): 35–39.

In this article , I first engage in some conceptual clarification of what the words "imagine," "imagining," and "imagination" can mean. Each has a constructive sense, an attitudinal sense, and an imagistic sense. Keeping the senses straight in the course of cognitive theorizing is important for both psychology and philosophy. I then discuss the roles that perceptual memories, beliefs, and genre truth attitudes play in constructive imagination, or the capacity to generate novel representations that go well beyond what's prompted by (...) one's immediate environment. (shrink)

As artefacts, the worlds of digital games are designed and developed to fulfil certain expressive, functional, and experiential objectives. During play, players infer these purposes and aspirations from various aspects of their engagement with the gameworld. Influenced by their sociocultural backgrounds, sensitivities, gameplay preferences, and familiarity with game conventions, players construct a subjective interpretation of the intentions with which they believe the digital game in question was created. By analogy with the narratological notion of the implied author, we call the (...) figure to which players ascribe these intentions ‘the implied designer’. In this article, we introduce the notion of the implied designer and present an initial account of how appreciators ascribe meaning to interactive, fictional gameworlds and act within them based on what they perceive to be the designer’s intentions. (shrink)

Imaginative representations are crucial to the generation of action--both pretense and plain action. But well-known theories of imagination on offer in the literature [1] fail to describe how perceptually-formatted imaginings (mental images) and motor imaginings function in the generation of action and [2] fail to recognize the important fact that spatially rich imagining can be integrated into one's perceptual manifold. In this paper, I present a theory of imagining that shows how spatially rich imagining functions in the generation of action. (...) I also describe the imaginative structures behind two under-explored forms of action: semi-pretense and pretense layering. In addition, I suggest that my theory of imagining meshes better than the competitors with current work in cognitive and affective neuroscience. (shrink)

In an earlier issue, I argue (2014) that psychology and epistemology should distinguish religious credence from factual belief. These are distinct cognitive attitudes. Levy (2017) rejects this distinction, arguing that both religious and factual “beliefs” are subject to “shifting” on the basis of fluency and “intuitiveness.” Levy’s theory, however, (1) is out of keeping with much research in cognitive science of religion and (2) misrepresents the notion of factual belief employed in my theory. So his claims don’t undermine my distinction. (...) I conclude by suggesting some approaches to empirically testing our views. (shrink)

Iconic photographs are visual arguments depicting an, often dramatic, particular situation showing victims of disasters. Spectators watching the photo of the particular situation, empathise with it, and project the feelings evoked onto the events that form the context for the scene in the picture. This mobilises them into political action. In the process, however, the depicted personal misery is perused to exemplify the larger events. The tragedy of iconic photographs is analysed not as the misery experienced by the depicted persons, (...) but as the breach of their right to shame which is required for the photo to acquire iconicity. Examples are addressed, as well as the contrast classes of the self-portrait and Byzantine icons. (shrink)

In this Part II, I investigate different approaches to the question of what makes imagining different from belief. I find that the sentiment-based approach of David Hume falls short, as does the teleological approach, once advocated by David Velleman. I then consider whether the inferential properties of beliefs and imaginings may differ. Beliefs, I claim, exhibit an anti-symmetric inferential governance over imaginings: they are the background that makes inference from one imagining to the other possible; the reverse is not true, (...) and this allows us to distinguish the two attitudes. I then go on to consider the action theory of imagining and the role that imaginings play in generating emotion. (shrink)

It is argued that, contrary to prevailing opinion, Bas van Fraassen nowhere uses the argument from underdetermination in his argument for constructive empiricism. It is explained that van Fraassen’s use of the notion of empirical equivalence in The Scientific Image has been widely misunderstood. A reconstruction of the main arguments for constructive empiricism is offered, showing how the passages that have been taken to be part of an appeal to the argument from underdetermination should actually be interpreted.

In dit artikel wordt de dominante metafysische oriëntatie in de hedendaagse meta-ethiek kritisch onder de loep genomen. Het hedendaagse debat, dat zich voornamelijk richt op de vraag hoe moraliteit metafysisch gezien 'in de werkelijkheid past', wordt gekenmerkt door een reeks complexe en soms esoterische discussies die, zo wordt betoogd, weinig bijdragen aan ons filosofische begrip van ethiek. Deze focus op metafysische grondslagen heeft geleid tot een tunnelvisie, waarin het debat gevangen zit tussen steeds ingewikkeldere vormen van non-cognitivisme, herconceptualisaties van 'objectiviteit' (...) en metafysische acrobatiek. Als alternatief wordt voorgesteld de aandacht in de meta-ethiek te verleggen naar het domein van praktisch redeneren. Door ons te concentreren op de patronen van geldige praktische argumentatie en het soort overwegingen dat mensen daadwerkelijk overtuigt, kunnen we wellicht een beter inzicht krijgen in de aard van ethische normativiteit en de rol ervan in ons leven. Het artikel pleit voor een meer pragmatische en minder metafysisch beladen benadering van de meta-ethiek, die zich richt op de daadwerkelijke praktijken van moreel redeneren en argumenteren. (shrink)

Three puzzles about self-deception make this mental phenomenon an intriguing explanatory target. The first relates to how to define it without paradox; the second is about how to make sense of self-deception in light of the interpretive view of the mental that has become widespread in philosophy; and the third concerns why it exists at all. In this paper I address the first and third puzzles. First, I define self-deception. Second, I criticize Robert Trivers' attempt to use adaptionist evolutionary psychology (...) to solve the third puzzle (existence). Third, I sketch a theory to replace that of Trivers. Self-deception is not an adaptation, but a spandrel in the sense that Gould and Lewontin give the term: a byproduct of other features of human (cognitive) architecture. Self-deception is so undeniable a fact of human life that if anyone tried to deny its existence, the proper response would be to accuse this person of it. (Allen Wood, 1988). (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm xác định các nhân tố tác động đến động lực làm việc của toàn thể các bộ công nhân viên tại Công ty TNHH Kim Cương Sao Sáng. Phương pháp nghiên cứu định lượng được sử dụng và thực hiện phân tích thống kê mô tả, phân tích độ tin cậy, phân tích nhân tố khám phá (EFA) và phân tích hồi quy đa biến. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, có 6 nhân tố ảnh hưởng và (...) tác động tích cực đến động lực làm việc của cán bộ nhân viên tại Công ty TNHH Kim Cương Sao Sáng, bao gồm: Tiền lương và phúc lợi; Cơ hội đào tạo và phát triển; Mối quan hệ cấp trên; Mối quan hệ đồng nghiệp; Sự công nhận và Đặc điểm công việc. (shrink)

This paper claims that the standard characterization of the motivational role of belief should be supplemented. Beliefs do not only, jointly with desires, cause and rationalize actions that will satisfy the desires, if the beliefs are true; beliefs are also the practical ground of other cognitive attitudes, like imagining, which means beliefs determine whether and when one acts with those other attitudes as the cognitive inputs into choices and practical reasoning. In addition to arguing for this thesis, I take issue (...) with Velleman's argument that belief and imagining cannot be distinguished on the basis of motivational role. (shrink)

I here defend historical entitlement theories of property rights against a popular charge. This is the objection that such theories fail because no convincing account of original appropriation exists. I argue that this argument assumes a certain reading of historical entitlement theory and I spell out an alternative reading against which it misfires. On this reading, the role of acts of original appropriation is not to justify but to individuate people’s holdings. I argue that we can identify which acts count (...) as original appropriation against the background of a general justification for a practice of property rights. On this view, what I will call ‘natural’ acts of original appropriation are acts by which a person begins to satisfy the general conditions for justified ownership. Finally, I offer an interpretation of John Locke's theory of appropriation along these lines and argue that it provides an attractive reading of his view. (shrink)

In dit artikel betwist ik het gangbare idee dat de rede ontoereikend is voor morele motivatie, met name in relatie tot universele ethische kwesties. Door een uitgebreide verkenning van de Dual-Process Theory (DPT) stel ik dat onze morele intuïties zowel trainbaar zijn als een inherente neiging hebben naar universalistische overwegingen. Ik betoog dat sociale rechtvaardiging en de drang naar rationele argumentatie een cruciale rol spelen in het vormen en veranderen van onze morele standpunten. Concluderend pleit ik voor een herwaardering van (...) klassiek moreel redeneren en stel ik dat een universele ethiek psychologisch realistischer is dan eerder werd aangenomen. (shrink)

This paper aims to reconstruct the politico-philosophical content of the Ancient Wenzi, according to three interrelated questions: How does the text communicate its views to the reader? What are its main ideas? When and where were these ideas first put to writing? Accordingly, after a discussion of preliminaria in section 1, section 2 focuses on the rhetorical devices in the text, section 3 on its key terms, and section 4 on its possible historical context. The goal of this paper is (...) not only to describe the content of the Ancient Wenzi, but also to contextualize it. That is, to explore the debate to which the Ancient Wenzi may have responded. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has now well and truly established itself as one of the main normative theories. It is now quite common, and indeed, expected, for virtue ethics to be included, alongside deontology and consequentialism, in any Moral Philosophy syllabus worth its salt. Students are typically introduced to virtue ethics only after studying the other two normative theories, and this often sets the scene for various sorts of misunderstandings, with students expecting virtue ethics to be based on the same set of (...) rules and assumptions as its rivals. Or at least, that is my experience. In this paper I want to focus on one such misunderstanding, which arises when trying to apply virtue ethics to our judgments of other people’s actions and behaviour. Although there are countless ways in which a theory can be misunderstood, it is worth guarding against this one in particular, given that it can lead someone who takes virtue ethics seriously to act in ways that are not virtuous, or even vicious. I begin by making a few remarks about the role of normative theory, and then go on to give four examples of how applying virtue ethics can lead to poor behaviour. In the final section I identify the mistake in question and conclude by noting how it can be avoided. (shrink)

We introduce an independence notion for choice functions, which we call ‘epistemic independence’ following the work by De Cooman et al. [17] for lower previsions, and study it in a multivariate setting. This work is a continuation of earlier work of one of the authors [29], and our results build on the characterization of choice functions in terms of sets of binary preferences recently established by De Bock and De Cooman [11]. We obtain the many-to-one independent natural extension in this (...) framework. Given the generality of choice functions, our expression for the independent natural extension is the most general one we are aware of, and we show how it implies the independent natural extension for sets of desirable gambles, and therefore also for less expressive imprecise-probabilistic models. Once this is in place, we compare this concept of epistemic independence to another independence concept for choice functions proposed by Seidenfeld [28], which De Bock and De Cooman [2] have called S-independence. We show that neither is more general than the other. (shrink)

Evidentials indicate a source of evidence for a content, and sometimes do more. Depending on the language, they also express the speaker's belief in that content or its possibility. This paper is about how to explain the expression of belief. It argues that semantic explanations are better than illocutionary explanations in two ways. First, a general argument is provided that a semantic explanation is preferable. Second, a case study is given to the evidentials of Cuzco Quechua to argue that a (...) semantic explanation is preferable to the illocutionary explanation that has been proposed in great detail by Faller (2002, 2012, 2014). The upshot is that illocutionary explanations of how belief is expressed are dispensable for at least some languages with grammaticalized evidentials. (shrink)

Self-knowledge is a persistent—and paradoxical—theme in medieval mysticism, which portrays our ultimate goal as union with the divine. Union with God is often taken to involve a cognitive and/or volitional merging that requires the loss of a sense of self as distinct from the divine. Yet affective mysticism—which emphasizes the passion of the incarnate Christ and portrays physical and emotional mystical experiences as inherently valuable—was in fact the dominant tradition in the later Middle Ages. An examination of both the affective (...) and apophatic traditions demonstrates that, in addition to constituting a necessary stage on the path toward union with the divine, self-knowledge in medieval mysticism was seen not just as something to be transcended, but (particularly in the works of female mystics) as a means of overcoming alienation from embodied existence. (shrink)

I raise the question of what cognitive attitude self-deception brings about. That is: what is the product of self-deception? Robert Audi and Georges Rey have argued that self-deception does not bring about belief in the usual sense, but rather “avowal” or “avowed belief.” That means a tendency to affirm verbally (both privately and publicly) that lacks normal belief-like connections to non-verbal actions. I contest their view by discussing cases in which the product of self-deception is implicated in action in a (...) way that exemplifies the motivational role of belief. Furthermore, by applying independent criteria of what it is for a mental state to be a belief, I defend the more intuitive view that being self-deceived that p entails believing that p. Beliefs (i) are the default for action relative to other cognitive attitudes (such as imagining and hypothesis) and (ii) have cognitive governance over the other cognitive attitudes. I explicate these two relations and argue that they obtain for the product of self-deception. (shrink)

Jill de Villiers has argued that children's mastery of sentential complements plays a crucial role in enabling them to succeed at false-belief tasks. Josef Perner has disputed that and has argued that mastery of false-belief tasks requires an understanding of the multiplicity of perspectives. This paper attempts to resolve the debate by explicating attributions of desires and beliefs as extensions of the linguistic practices of making commands and assertions, respectively. In terms of these linguistic practices one can explain why desire-talk (...) will precede belief-talk and why even older children will have difficulty attributing incompatible desires. (shrink)

[OPEN ACCESS TARGET ARTICLE WITH COMMENTARIES AND RESPONSE] We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as *God exists*) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as *God appeared to _me_ last night*). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their surrounding culture; however, people (...) use agency-intuitions and other low-level experiences to form personal religious beliefs. We call our model the Interactive Religious Experience Model (IREM). IREM inverts received versions of Hyperactive Agency-Detection Device Theory (HADD Theory): instead of saying that agency-intuitions are major causes of religious belief in general, IREM says that general belief in supernatural agents causes people to seek situations that trigger agency-intuitions and other experiences, since these enable one to form personal beliefs about those agents. In addition to developing this model, we (1) present empirical and conceptual difficulties with received versions of HADD Theory, (2) explain how IREM incorporates philosophical work on indexical belief, (3) relate IREM to existing anthropological and psychological research, and (4) propose future empirical research programs based on IREM. (shrink)

Despite their success in describing and predicting cognitive behavior, the plausibility of so-called ‘rational explanations’ is often contested on the grounds of computational intractability. Several cognitive scientists have argued that such intractability is an orthogonal pseudoproblem, however, since rational explanations account for the ‘why’ of cognition but are agnostic about the ‘how’. Their central premise is that humans do not actually perform the rational calculations posited by their models, but only act as if they do. Whether or not the problem (...) of intractability is solved by recourse to ‘as if’ explanations critically depends, inter alia, on the semantics of the ‘as if’ connective. We examine the five most sensible explications in the literature, and conclude that none of them circumvents the problem. As a result, rational ‘as if’ explanations must obey the minimal computational constraint of tractability. (shrink)

In the Inner Chapters, arguments for a variety of different philosophical positions are present, including skepticism, relativism, particularism, and objectivism. Given that these are not all mutually consistent, we are left with the problem of reconciling the tensions among them. The various positions are described and passages from the Inner Chapters are presented illustrating each. A detailed commentary is offered on the opening of the Inner Chapters, arguing that it is best understood in an objectivist fashion. An interpretation is presented (...) of Zhuangzi's view of sagehood that reconciles the various arguments in the text. (shrink)

A conviction had by many Christians over many centuries is that natural language is inadequate for describing God. This is the doctrine of divine ineffability. Apophaticism understands divine ineffability as it being justified or proper to negate statements that describe God. This paper develops and defends a version of apophaticism in which the negation involved is metalinguistic. The interest of this metalinguistic apophaticism is two-fold. First, it provides a philosophical model of historical apophaticisms that shows their rational coherence. Second, metalinguistic (...) apophaticism enables a minimal understanding of ineffability that is independently plausible given its minor commitments. (shrink)

Book Review K. Brad Wray: Resisting Scientific Realism. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2018, xii + 224 pp, £ 75.00 (Hardcover), ISBN: 9781108231633. By Ragnar van der Merwe. In The Journal for the General Philosophy of Science.

Starting from the plurality of explanatory strategies in the actual practice of socialscientists, I introduce a framework for explanatory pluralism – a normative endorsement of the plurality of forms and levels of explanation used by social scientists. Equipped with thisframework, central issues in the individualism/holism debate are revisited, namely emergence,reduction and the idea of microfoundations. Discussing these issues, we notice that in recentcontributions the focus has been shifting towards relationism, pluralism and interaction, awayfrom dichotomous individualism/holism thinking and a winner-takes-all approach. (...) Then, thechallenge of the debate is no longer to develop the ultimate individualistic approach ordefending the holist approach, but rather how to be combine individualism and holism; howcan they co-exist, interact, be integrated or develop some division of labour, while making thebest out of the strengths and limitations of the respective explanatory strategies of holists andindividualists? Thus, the debate shifts to how exactly pluralism should be understood as thenext leading question, going beyond the current individualism/holism debate. The paper endswith a discussion and evaluation of different understandings of explanatory pluralismdefended in the literature. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu được thực hiện với mục tiêu xác định các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến đến lòng trung thành của khách hàng sử dụng dịch vụ ngân hàng số tại các ngân hàng thương mại trên địa bàn tỉnh Đồng Nai. Phương pháp nghiên cứu hỗn hợp được sử dụng nhằm thu thập, phân tích dữ liệu từ 368 khách hàng cá nhân sử dụng dịch vụ ngân hàng số tại tỉnh Đồng Nai. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, (...) có 8 yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến Lòng trung thành của khách hàng sử dụng dịch vụ ngân hàng số tại tỉnh Đồng Nai bao gồm: Sự hiệu quả; Sự đáp ứng; Sự đảm bảo; Thiết kế; Sự đồng cảm; Ưu đãi; Thói quen; Chi phí chuyển đổi. -/- [This research was conducted to identify factors that affect the loyalty of customers using digital banking services at commercial banks in Dong Nai Province. A mixed research method was used to collect and analyze data from 368 individual customers using digital banking services in Dong Nai Province. Research results show that there are eight factors affecting customer loyalty using digital banking services in Dong Nai Province including Effectiveness; Responsiveness; Assurance; Design; Empathy; Promotion; Habit; and Conversion costs.]. (shrink)

This paper presents the main aspects of the proto-Wenzi’s philosophy, with a focus on its intricate relationship with the Laozi. They show that the proto-Wenzi advocates a philosophy of quietude, not only in terms of its content, but also through the rhetoric it uses to create a harmonious synthesis of diverse, and at times even incompatible, ideas.

Imagination contributes to human agency in ways that haven't been well understood. I argue here that pathways from imagistic imagining to emotional engagement support three important agential capacities: 1. bodily preparedness for potential events in one's nearby environment; 2. evaluation of potential future action; and 3. empathy-based moral appraisal. Importantly, however, the kind of pathway in question (I-C-E-C: imagining-categorization-emotion-conceptualization) also enables engagement with fiction. So human enchantment with fiction is a consequence of imaginative pathways that make us the kind of (...) agents we are. Finally, I use this approach to address imaginative resistance and the paradox of fiction. [The version archived here is a penultimate draft. Please email me at [email protected] to receive a pdf of the final in accordance with fair use.]. (shrink)

This article analyzes Mencius 7B.23, a concise passage that offers complex ethical dilemmas. It provides a close reading of the passage, along with relevant passages elsewhere in the text and, occasionally, in other texts. The narrow goal of the article is to present a coherent reading of the passage within the context of the Mencius as a whole. This reading suggests that while the passage touches upon a wide range of topics, including personal credibility and political responsibility, the overarching concern (...) is on being a morally superior person, on the difficult dilemmas such people may face, and on how they would respond to them. More broadly, the article shows that while the philosophical practice of "weighing circumstances" (quan 權) allows moral agents in exceptional cases to break certain moral or ritual rules, Mencius seems unwilling to apply this discretion when morality as a whole, or the integrity of the person who embodies it (shi 士), are involved. (shrink)

STIT logic is a prominent framework for the analysis of multi-agent choice-making. In the available deontic extensions of STIT, the principle of Ought-implies-Can (OiC) fulfills a central role. However, in the philosophical literature a variety of alternative OiC interpretations have been proposed and discussed. This paper provides a modular framework for deontic STIT that accounts for a multitude of OiC readings. In particular, we discuss, compare, and formalize ten such readings. We provide sound and complete sequent-style calculi for all of (...) the various STIT logics accommodating these OiC principles. We formally analyze the resulting logics and discuss how the different OiC principles are logically related. In particular, we propose an endorsement principle describing which OiC readings logically commit one to other OiC readings. (shrink)

I raise three puzzles concerning self-deception: (i) a conceptual paradox, (ii) a dilemma about how to understand human cognitive evolution, and (iii) a tension between the fact of self-deception and Davidson’s interpretive view. I advance solutions to the first two and lay a groundwork for addressing the third. The capacity for self-deception, I argue, is a spandrel, in Gould’s and Lewontin’s sense, of other mental traits, i.e., a structural byproduct. The irony is that the mental traits of which self-deception is (...) a spandrel/byproduct are themselves rational. (shrink)

At this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, two policy aims are imperative: avoiding the need for a general lockdown of the population, with all its economic, social and health costs, and preventing the healthcare system from being overwhelmed by the unchecked spread of infection. Achieving these two aims requires the consideration of unpalatable measures. Julian Savulescu and James Cameron argue that mandatory isolation of the elderly is justified under these circumstances, as they are at increased risk of becoming severely ill (...) from COVID-19, and are thus likely to put disproportionate strain on limited healthcare resources. However, their arguments for this strategy are contingent on the lack of viable alternatives. We suggest that there is a possible alternative: a mandatory, centralised contact-tracing app. We argue that this strategy is ethically preferable to the selective isolation of the elderly, because it does not target members of a certain group, relying instead on the movements of each individual, and because it avoids the extended isolation of certain members of the society. Although this type of contact-tracing app has its drawbacks, we contend that this measure warrants serious consideration. (shrink)

A hard choice is a situation in which an agent is unable to make a justifiable choice from a given menu of alternatives. Our objective is to present a systematic treatment of the axiomatic structure of such situations. To do so, we draw on and contribute to the study of choice functions that can be indecisive, i.e., that may fail to select a non-empty set for some menus. In this more general framework, we present new characterizations of two well-known choice (...) rules, the maximally dominant choice rule and the top-cycle choice rule. Together with existing results, this yields an understanding of the circumstances in which hard choices arise. (shrink)

We study the representation of sets of desirable gambles by sets of probability mass functions. Sets of desirable gambles are a very general uncertainty model, that may be non-Archimedean, and therefore not representable by a set of probability mass functions. Recently, Cozman (2018) has shown that imposing the additional requirement of even convexity on sets of desirable gambles guarantees that they are representable by a set of probability mass functions. Already more that 20 years earlier, Seidenfeld et al. (1995) gave (...) an axiomatisation of binary preferences—on horse lotteries, rather than on gambles—that also leads to a unique representation in terms of sets of probability mass functions. To reach this goal, they use two devices, which we will call ‘SSK–Archimedeanity’ and ‘SSK–extension’. In this paper, we will make the arguments of Seidenfeld et al. (1995) explicit in the language of gambles, and show how their ideas imply even convexity and allow for conservative reasoning with evenly convex sets of desirable gambles, by deriving an equivalence between the SSK–Archimedean natural extension, the SSK–extension, and the evenly convex natural extension. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the problem of characterizing the content of experience as either conceptual or non-conceptual in -/- Kant’s transcendenta -/- l philosophy, a topic widely debated in contemporary philosophy. I start out with -/- Kant’s pre -/- -critical discussions of space and time in which he develops a specific notion of non-conceptual content. Secondly, I show that this notion of non-conceptual intuitional content does not seem to match well with the Transcendental Deduction. This incongruity results in three (...) interrelated problems that are -/- inherent to Kant’s -/- Transcendental Deduction in the -/- Critique -/- 1 -/- : the ‘Independency Disagreement’, the ‘Conceptualism Contradiction’ and the ‘Intuition Inconsistency’. -/- These three problems derive from apparently contradictory claims concerning the possibility of non-conceptual content. Contemporary Kantian conceptualists and non-conceptualists tend to take a stance at either side of the dilemma rather than trying to dissolve these tensions. In response to this, I propose a new solution to these difficulties based on a distinction between two kinds of conceptualism. This will reveal why Kant is a non-conceptualist in one significant sense, but also why he is still better regarded a conceptualist. -/- . (shrink)

This paper is a rejoinder to Alan Irwin's constructive response "Agreeing to Differ?" to our (2017) paper. We zoom in on the three main issues Irwin raises, namely (a) How to understand consensus? (b) Why are so many public participation activities consensus-driven? (c) Should we not value the art of closure, of finding ways to make agreements, particularly in view of the dire state of world politics today? We use this opportunity to highlight and further develop some of our ideas.