The aim of this paper is to explore the peculiar case of infectious logics, a group of systems obtained generalizing the semantic behavior characteristic of the -fragment of the logics of nonsense, such as the ones due to Bochvar and Halldén, among others. Here, we extend these logics with classical negations, and we furthermore show that some of these extended systems can be properly regarded as logics of formal inconsistency and logics of formal undeterminedness.

In this paper, I aim to show that agency-based accounts of moral status are more plausible than many have previously thought. I do this by developing a novel account of moral status that takes agency, understood as the capacity for intentional action, to be the necessary and sufficient condition for the possession of moral status. This account also suggests that the capacities required for sentience entail the possession of agency, and the capacities required for agency, entail the possession of sentience. (...) Thus on this account sentient beings possess agency and agents possess sentience. If this is correct, it will show that an Agency Account of moral status can offer a plausible defence of the moral status of all sentient beings, something that previous Agency Accounts have not succeeded in doing. What is more, this account could establish that all sentient animals are not just moral status holders per se, but that they are owed pro tanto obligations regarding continued existence and liberty, similar in kind, though not always in strength, to those owed to humans. (shrink)

The prevalent views of animal liberty among animal advocates suggest that liberty is merely instrumentally valuable and invasive paternalism is justified. In contrast to this popular view, I argue that liberty is intrinsically good for animals. I suggest that animal well-being is best accommodated by an Objective List Theory and that liberty is an irreducible component of animal well-being. As such, I argue that it is good for animals to possess liberty even if possessing liberty does not contribute towards their (...) subjective well-being, and even in some cases where it has a negative effect upon their subjective well-being. To establish this view I argue that if animals are agents, as I assume they are, then like humans they must be able to determine the course of their own lives (to some extent). Further, having the opportunity to self-determine one’s life just is the very same thing as liberty, and having the opportunity to determine the course of one’s life is intrinsically good. Thus liberty has intrinsic value for humans and animals. So, in addition to the instrumental harms of having one’s liberty restricted, I claim that restricting animals’ liberty in principle harms them because it undermines their capacity for self-determination and fails to acknowledge their authority as agents to make their own choices. (shrink)

The idea that only complex brains can possess genuine representations is an important element in mainstream philosophical thinking. An alternative view, which I label ‘liberal representationalism’, holds that we should accept the existence of many more full-blown representations, from activity in retinal ganglion cells to the neural states produced by innate releasing mechanisms in cognitively unsophisticated organisms. A promising way of supporting liberal representationalism is to show it to be a consequence of our best naturalistic theories of representation. However, several (...) philosophers and scientists have recently argued against this strategy. In the paper I counter these objections in defense of liberal representationalism. (shrink)

Sparrow argues that military robots capable of making their own decisions would be independent enough to allow us denial for their actions, yet too unlike us to be the targets of meaningful blame or praise—thereby fostering what Matthias has dubbed “the responsibility gap.” We agree with Sparrow that someone must be held responsible for all actions taken in a military conflict. That said, we think Sparrow overlooks the possibility of what we term “blank check” responsibility: A person of sufficiently high (...) standing could accept responsibility for the actions of autonomous robotic devices—even if that person could not be causally linked to those actions besides this prior agreement. The basic intuition behind our proposal is that humans can impute relations even when no other form of contact can be established. The missed alternative we want to highlight, then, would consist in an exchange: Social prestige in the occupation of a given office would come at the price of signing away part of one's freedoms to a contingent and unpredictable future guided by another agency. (shrink)

Efforts to bridge emotion theory with neurobiology can be facilitated by dynamic systems (DS) modeling. DS principles stipulate higher-order wholes emerging from lower-order constituents through bidirectional causal processes cognition relations. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion, as well as DS mechanisms of integration by which they interact. These mechanisms (...) include nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion–appraisal states with reference to neural processes. (shrink)

The debate on the notion of function has been historically dominated by dispositional and etiological accounts, but recently a third contender has gained prominence: the organizational account. This original theory of function is intended to offer an alternative account based on the notion of self-maintaining system. However, there is a set of cases where organizational accounts seem to generate counterintuitive results. These cases involve cross-generational traits, that is, traits that do not contribute in any relevant way to the self-maintenance of (...) the organism carrying them, but instead have very important effects on organisms that belong to the next generation. We argue that any plausible solution to the problem of cross-generational traits shows that the organizational account just is a version of the etiological theory and, furthermore, that it does not provide any substantive advantage over standard etiological theories of function. (shrink)

Policy-makers must sometimes choose between an alternative which has somewhat lower expected value for each person, but which will substantially improve the outcomes of the worst off, or an alternative which has somewhat higher expected value for each person, but which will leave those who end up worst off substantially less well off. The popular ex ante Pareto principle requires the choice of the alternative with higher expected utility for each. We argue that ex ante Pareto ought to be rejected (...) because it conflicts with the requirement that, when possible, one ought to decide as one would with full information. We apply our argument in an analysis of US policy on screening for breast cancer. -/- . (shrink)

Naturalistic theories of representation seek to specify the conditions that must be met for an entity to represent another entity. Although these approaches have been relatively successful in certain areas, such as communication theory or genetics, many doubt that they can be employed to naturalize complex cognitive representations. In this essay I identify some of the difficulties for developing a teleosemantic theory of cognitive representations and provide a strategy for accommodating them: to look into models of signaling in evolutionary game (...) theory. I show how these models can be used to formulate teleosemantics and expand it in new directions. (shrink)

According to the Theory of the Second Best, in non-ideal circumstances, approximating ideals might be suboptimal (with respect to a specific interpretation of what “approximating an ideal” means). In this paper, I argue that the formal model underlying the Theory can apply to problems in epistemology. Two applications are discussed: First, in some circumstances, second-best problems arise in Bayesian settings. Second, the division of epistemic labour can be subject to second-best problems. These results matter. They allow us to evaluate the (...) claim, made by many philosophers, that second-best problems have import in epistemology (and the specific conditions under which the Theory finds applications). They also allow us to see that talk of “approximating an ideal” is ambiguous, and to clarify the conditions in which approximating an epistemic ideal might be beneficial. (shrink)

Nationalism seems a persistent ideology in academia as much as in politics; despite the fact that it has been shown that nationalism is deeply unjust for minorities. A case for national identity is often invoked to supplement liberalism regarding the inner difficulties that liberal theories have to explain their membership, assure stability and produce endorsement. So, it seems that national identity may also be required for justice. While this controversy continues, I argue that a different approach is available. We can (...) define a conception of legitimacy independently from a conception of justice, and then ask what legitimacy requires from our national allegiances. If everything goes well, much of the controversy from justice disappears as we find that the case for cultural nationalism may be illegitimate for liberal democracies. (shrink)

Street’s (Philos Stud 127(1):109–166, 2006) Darwinian Dilemma purports to show that evolutionary considerations are in tension with realist theories of value, which include moral realism. According to this argument, moral realism can only be defended by assuming an implausible tracking relation between moral attitudes and moral facts. In this essay, I argue that this tracking relation is not as implausible as most people have assumed by showing that the three main objections against it are flawed. Since this is a key (...) premise in the reasoning, I conclude that the Darwinian Dilemma against moral realism can be resisted. (shrink)

Informational theories of semantic content have been recently gaining prominence in the debate on the notion of mental representation. In this paper we examine new-wave informational theories which have a special focus on cognitive science. In particular, we argue that these theories face four important difficulties: they do not fully solve the problem of error, fall prey to the wrong distality attribution problem, have serious difficulties accounting for ambiguous and redundant representations and fail to deliver a metasemantic theory of representation. (...) Furthermore, we argue that these difficulties derive from their exclusive reliance on the notion of information, so we suggest that pure informational accounts should be complemented with functional approaches. (shrink)

This article builds on C. S. Peirce’s suggestive blueprint for an inclusive outlook that grants reality to his three categories. Moving away from the usual focus on (contentious) cosmological forces, I use a modal principle to partition various ontological layers: regular sign-action (like coded language) subsumes actual sign-action (like here-and-now events) which in turn subsumes possible sign-action (like qualities related to whatever would be similar to them). Once we realize that the triadic sign’s components are each answerable to this asymmetric (...) subsumption, we obtain the means to track at which level of complexity semiosis finds itself, in a given case. Since the bulk of such a “trinitarian” metaphysics would be devoted to countenancing uninterpreted phenomena, I argue that current misgivings about sign-based ontologies are largely misplaced. (shrink)

One of the main tenets of current teleosemantic theories is that simple representations are Pushmi-Pullyu states, i.e. they carry descriptive and imperative content at the same time. In the paper I present an argument that shows that if we add this claim to the core tenets of teleosemantics, then (1) it entails that, necessarily, all representations are Pushmi-Pullyu states and (2) it undermines one of the main motivations for the Pushmi-Pullyu account.

The received view holds that there is a significant divide between full-blown representational states and so called ‘detectors’, which are mechanisms set off by specific stimuli that trigger a particular effect. The main goal of this paper is to defend the idea that many detectors are genuine representations, a view that I call ‘Strong Liberal Representationalism’. More precisely, I argue that ascribing semantic properties to them contributes to an explanation of behavior, guides research in useful ways and can accommodate misrepresentation.

The indeterminacy problem is one of the most prominent objections against naturalistic theories of content. In this essay I present this difficulty and argue that extant accounts are unable to solve it. Then, I develop a particular version of teleosemantics, which I call ’explanation-based teleosemantics’, and show how this outstanding problem can be addressed within the framework of a powerful naturalistic theory.

What is structural rationality? Specifically, what is the distinctive feature of structural requirements of rationality? Some philosophers have argued, roughly, that the distinctive feature of structural requirements is coherence. But what does coherence mean, exactly? Or, at least, what do structuralists about rationality have in mind when they claim that structural rationality is coherence? This issue matters for making progress in various active debates concerning rationality. In this paper, I analyze three strategies for figuring out what coherence means in the (...) debates on structural rationality. I argue that these strategies face problems. (shrink)

Historians occasionally use timelines, but many seem to regard such signs merely as ways of visually summarizing results that are presumably better expressed in prose. Challenging this language-centered view, I suggest that timelines might assist the generation of novel historical insights. To show this, I begin by looking at studies confirming the cognitive benefits of diagrams like timelines. I then try to survey the remarkable diversity of timelines by analyzing actual examples. Finally, having conveyed this (mostly untapped) potential, I argue (...) that neglecting timelines might mean neglecting significant aspects of reality that are revealed only by those signs. My overall message is that once we accept that relations are as important for the mind as what they relate, we have to pay closer attention to any semiotic device that enables or facilitates the discernment of new relations. (shrink)

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period (...) – its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

Mendelovici (forthcoming) has recently argued that (1) tracking theories of mental representation (including teleosemantics) are incompatible with the possibility of reliable misrepresentation and that (2) this is an important difficulty for them. Furthermore, she argues that this problem commits teleosemantics to an unjustified a priori rejection of color eliminativism. In this paper I argue that (1) teleosemantics can accommodate most cases of reliable misrepresentation, (2) those cases the theory fails to account for are not objectionable and (3) teleosemantics is not (...) committed to any problematic view on the color realism-antirealism debate. (shrink)

Prompted by the thesis that an organism’s umwelt possesses not just a descriptive dimension, but a normative one as well, some have sought to annex semiotics with ethics. Yet the pronouncements made in this vein have consisted mainly in rehearsing accepted moral intuitions, and have failed to concretely further our knowledge of why or how a creature comes to order objects in its environment in accordance with axiological charges of value or disvalue. For want of a more explicit account, theorists (...) writing on the topic have relied almost exclusively on semiotic insights about perception originally designed as part of a sophisticated refutation of idealism. The end result, which has been a form of direct givenness, has thus been far from convincing. In an effort to bring substance to the right-headed suggestion that values are rooted in the biological and conform to species-specific requirements, we present a novel conception that strives to make explicit the elemental structure underlying umwelt normativity. Building and expanding on the seminal work of Ayn Rand in metaethics, we describe values as an intertwined lattice which takes a creature’s own embodied life as its ultimate standard; and endeavour to show how, from this, all subsequent valuations can in principle be determined. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss a recent theory on functions called Organizational Account. This theory seeks to provide a new definition of function that overcomes the distinction between etiological and dispositional accounts and that could be used in biology as well as in technology. I present a definition of function that I think captures the intuitions of Organizational Accounts and consider several objections.

Although the definition of ‘signal’ has been controversial for some time within the life sciences, current approaches seem to be converging toward a common analysis. This powerful framework can satisfactorily accommodate many cases of signaling and captures some of its main features. This paper argues, however, that there is a central feature of signals that so far has been largely overlooked: its special causal role. More precisely, I argue that a distinctive feature of signals is that they are minimal causes. (...) I explain this notion, suggest some strategies for identifying its instances and defend its relevance by means of conceptual and empirical considerations. (shrink)

Deception has recently received a significant amount of attention. One of main reasons is that it lies at the intersection of various areas of research, such as the evolution of cooperation, animal communication, ethics or epistemology. This essay focuses on the biological approach to deception and argues that standard definitions put forward by most biologists and philosophers are inadequate. We provide a functional account of deception which solves the problems of extant accounts in virtue of two characteristics: deceptive states have (...) the function of causing a misinformative states and they do not necessarily provide direct benefits to the deceivers and losses to the targets. (shrink)

Building on the notational principles of C. S. Peirce’s graphical logic, Pietarinen has tried to develop a propositional logic unfolding in the medium of sound. Apart from its intrinsic interest, this project serves as a concrete test of logic’s range. However, I argue that Pietarinen’s inaugural proposal, while promising, has an important shortcoming, since it cannot portray double-negation without thereby portraying a contradiction.

What is the place of coherence, or structural rationality, in good first-personal deliberation? According to Kolodny (2005), considerations of coherence are irrelevant to good first-personal deliberation. When we deliberate, we should merely care about the reasons or evidence we have for our attitudes. So, considerations of coherence should not show up in deliberation. In response to this argument, Worsnip (2021) argues that considerations of coherence matter for how we structure deliberation. For him, we should treat incoherent combinations of attitudes as (...) off-limits in deliberation. Some important questions are left unanswered by both camps. What do we mean by considerations of coherence “showing up” in first-personal deliberation? How do we interpret the divide between reasons-responsiveness and coherence? How should we interpret cases in which considerations of coherence interact with other norms or requirements? In this paper, I show how Haack’s (1993) crossword puzzle analogy sheds light on these questions. Also, the crossword puzzle analogy allows us to evaluate Kolodny’s objection and identify promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a conflict between two theses held by John McDowell, namely i) the claim that we are under a standing obligation to revise our beliefs if reflection demands it; and ii) the view that veridical experience is a mode of direct access to the world. Since puts no bounds on what would constitute reasonable doubt, it invites skeptical concerns which overthrow. Conversely, since says that there are some experiences which we are entitled to trust, it (...) undermines the prescriptive scope of. Drawing on C. S. Peirce's distinction between genuine and contrived doubt, I maintain that critical revisions of beliefs should be triggered only by unwanted disruptions of habits, thereby restoring unity between McDowell's two theses. (shrink)

Robert Brandom holds that what we mean is best understood in terms of what inferences we are prepared to defend, and that such a defence is best understood in terms of rule-governed social interactions. This manages to explain quite a lot. However, for those who think that there is more to making correct/incorrect inferences than obeying/breaking accepted rules, Brandom’s account fails to adequately capture what it means to reason properly. Thus, in an effort to sketch an alternative that does not (...) rely primarily on peer pressure, I draw on the work of C. S. Peirce. Peirce argued that, when we reason, we manipulate abstract diagrams in order to observe what results. Since some manipulations are barred by the self-same nature of the diagrams, I try to show that this qualitative incompatibility, which I dub “contrapiction,” is a good reason to regard some reasoning as bad. (shrink)

In response to the claim that our sense of will is illusory, some philosophers have called for a better understanding of the phenomenology of agency. Although I am broadly sympathetic with the tenor of this response, I question whether the positive-theoretic blueprint it promotes truly heralds a tenable undertaking. Marshaling a Schopenhauerian insight, I examine the possibility that agency might not be amenable to phenomenological description. Framing this thesis in terms of Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic framework, I suggest a way (...) to integrate the idea of streaming experiences with that of bodily strivings, which, owing to their primitive structure, can never be represented. (shrink)

This translation of Enrique Dussel's “‘Ser-Hispano’: Un Mundo en el ‘Border’ de Muchos Mundos” offers an interpretation of hispanos (Latin Americans and U.S. latinos) as historically, culturally, and geographically located “in-between” many worlds that combine to constitute an identity on the intercultural “border.” To illustrate how hispanos have navigated and continue to navigate their complex history in order to create a polyphonic identity, the essay sketches five historical-cultural “worlds” that come together to form the hispanic “world.”.

In this essay I introduce the question of artifactual functions in the context of the recent debate on the notion of function. I discuss some of the desiderata a satisfactory account should fulfill and compare them to the desiderata for a theory of biological functions. Finally, within this general framework, I briefly present the three papers included in this volume.

On 4 December 2006, during discussions on the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill, Andrew Dismore, Member of Parliament and then Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, said, ‘Organisations can kill people … but it is the actions and omissions of people in organisations that cumulatively cause death’. However, the corporate entity is a vehicle for the communal actions of those who guide the business activities. Attempting to seek out persons or people that are solely responsible for deaths (...) and violations of human rights caused by companies is fruitless. The entity is a vehicle for those actions, it possesses its own, often deep, pockets of finance and resources, and it has a public image. It is more useful to punish the corporate entity, in instances where the corporate behaviour has led to death and human rights abuses, as it is in seeking out individual defendants. Soft law options have not brought about a sufficient reduction in instances of deaths caused by corporate behaviour across jurisdictional borders. This article will argue that the time has now come to establish an international hard law on corporate killing, and for states to ensure that there is a viable path towards a redress for victims and their families along with adopting a duty to assist the victim or their family to pursue redress to ensure a fair balance of power against transnational companies. (shrink)

We shall focus on moral theories that are solely concerned with promoting the benefits (e.g., wellbeing) of individuals and explore the possibility of such theories ascribing some priority to benefits to those who are worse off—without this priority being absolute. Utilitarianism (which evaluates alternatives on the basis of total or average benefits) ascribes no priority to the worse off, and leximin (which evaluates alternatives by giving lexical priority to the worst off, and then the second worst off, and so on) (...) ascribes absolute priority to the worse off (i.e., favors even a very small benefit to a worse off person over very large benefits to large numbers of better off people). Neither extreme view, we assume, is plausible. (shrink)

Clinical Legal Education programmes now take place in most law schools in England and Wales. However, legal education continues to be predominantly focused on the analysis and application of rules, doctrines, and theories to hypothetical scenarios or essay questions. This form of pedagogy either minimises or ignores the role of the client in terms of supplying lawyers with knowledge pertinent to their case. In other words, it overlooks the fact that the lawyer’s acquisition of knowledge is not confined to technical (...) rationality. This article seeks to achieve three broad aims. First, to contribute to the debate concerning the epistemology of reflective practice. Second, to develop a theoretical reflective cycle, informed by Kant’s transcendental idealism, which seeks to maximise knowledge acquisition in legal education, namely knowledge supplied by the client. Third, to address implicit bias using the proposed reflective cycle. An optimal pedagogy for using this cycle is Clinical Legal Education, namely live client clinics. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce introduced the term “icon” for sign-vehicles that signify their objects in virtue of some shared quality. This qualitative kinship, however, threatens to collapse the relata of the sign into one and the same thing. Accordingly, the late medieval philosopher of signs John Poinsot held that, “no matter how perfect, a concept [...] always retains a distinction, therefore, between the thing signified and itself signifying.” Poinsot is touted by his present-day advocates as a realist, but I believe that, (...) judged by realist standards, his requirement of minimal dissimilarity backfires. Poinsot thinks that, in analyzing the sign, we should stop before a full merger between sign-vehicle and object is reached. Peirce, by contrast, saw good reason to push the analysis all the way down to one isolated quality. Because such a qualitative merger can lend support to realism, I favour Peirce’s stance. (shrink)

In Consciousness Studies it is common to distinguish between subjective character and qualitative character. It is also non unusual to maintain that both can be analyzed independently. This is called the “division of conceptual labor”. This idea, however, does not match with our intuitive insight that subjective character is multiple. Here I identify the idea of the division of conceptual labor as a version of the myth of the self, and I push forward two arguments against it. After that, I (...) will propose an alternative characterization of subjectivity on conscious experience. My main conclusion is that, in order to define the subjective character, we do need the qualitative character. The self needs the other. (shrink)

Many epistemologists have argued that there is some degree of independence between individual and collective reliability (e.g., Kitcher 1990; Mayo-Wilson, Zollman, and Danks 2011; Dunn 2018). The question, then, is: To what extent are the two independent of each other? And in which contexts do they come apart? In this paper, I present a new case confirming the independence between individual and collective reliability optimization. I argue that, in voting groups, optimizing individual reliability can conflict with optimizing collective reliability. This (...) can happen even if various conditions are held constant, such as: the evidence jurors have access to, the voting system, the number of jurors, some independence conditions between voters, and so forth. This observation matters in many active debates on, e.g., epistemic dilemmas, the wisdom of crowds, independence theses, epistemic democracy, and the division of epistemic labour. (shrink)

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind-independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, (...) it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others. (shrink)

There has recently been an explosion of formal models of signalling, which have been developed to learn about different aspects of meaning. This paper discusses whether that success can also be used to provide an original naturalistic theory of meaning in terms of information or some related notion. In particular, it argues that, although these models can teach us a lot about different aspects of content, at the moment they fail to support the idea that meaning just is some kind (...) of information. As an alternative, I suggest a more modest approach to the relationship between informational notions used in models and semantic properties in the natural world. (shrink)

Ethological theories usually attribute semantic content to animal signals. To account for this fact, many biologists and philosophers appeal to some version of teleosemantics. However, this picture has recently came under attack: while mainstream teleosemantics assumes that representational systems must cooperate, some biologists and philosophers argue that in certain cases signaling can evolve within systems lacking common interest. In this paper I defend the standard view from this objection.

L’objectif de cet article est double. D’une part, il vise à identifier une interprétation éthique de la neutralité axiologique, et non de réduire ce critère à des considérations épistémologiques comme la distinction entre faits et valeurs. On peut, en effet, interpréter le critère de neutralité axiologique comme un mécanisme visant à défendre l’autonomie des différents membres de la communauté universitaire. D’autre part, cet article entend utiliser cette interprétation éthique pour répondre aux critiques contemporaines de la neutralité axiologique. Amartya Sen et (...) Hilary Putnam ont proposé des critiques pertinentes de la neutralité axiologique, en réfléchissant sur les conditions d’objectivité du discours éthique et politique. Au terme de cette analyse, nous proposerons une conception publique de la science, qui répond à l’impératif éthique de neutralité en sciences sociales, ainsi qu’au programme de recherche amorcé par Sen et Putnam. L’examen critique et public de la science est ce qui permet de respecter tant l’exigence de neutralité chez Weber que la demande d’une science renouvelée chez Sen et Putnam. (shrink)

When considering the social valuation of a life-year, there is a conflict between two basic intuitions: on the one hand, the intuition of universality, according to which the value of an additional life-year should be universal, and, as such, should be invariant to the context considered; on the other hand, the intuition of complementarity, according to which the value of a life-year should depend on what this extra-life-year allows for, and, hence, on the quality of that life-year, because the quantity (...) of life and the quality of life are complement to each other. This paper proposes three distinct accounts of the intuition of universality, and shows that those accounts either conflict with a basic monotonicity property, or lead to indifference with respect to how life-years are distributed within the population. Those results support the abandon of the intuition of universality. But abandoning the intuition of universality does not prevent a social evaluator from giving priority, when allocating life-years, to individuals with the lowest quality of life. (shrink)

Marc Champagne argues that the supposedly ’professional’ style of the analytic tradition does not ensure professionalism, nor indeed, clear-mindedness.

C. S. Peirce is often credited as a forerunner of the verificationist theory of meaning. In his early pragmatist papers, Peirce did say that if we want to make our ideas clear(er), then we should look downstream to their actual and future effects. For many who work in philosophy of mind, this is enough to endorse functionalism and dismiss the whole topic of qualia. It complexifies matters, however, to consider that the term qualia was introduced by the founder of pragmatism (...) himself. Peirce was adamant that only triadic relations can support language and cognition. Even so, he insisted on purely logical grounds that, when we analyze triadic signs all the way, we are left with a qualitative residue he called Firstness. Such an isolated relatum could never be studied experimentally. Yet, given that this primitive state can be confirmed by means of a formal or prescissive distinction, I believe the Peircean account can do justice to many of the intuitions that generate the so-called hard problem of consciousness. My goal, then, is to show that Peirce's semiotic commitment to qualia is compatible with his foundational statements about pragmatism. (shrink)

It seems that epistemically rational agents should avoid incoherent combinations of beliefs and should respond correctly to their epistemic reasons. However, some situations seem to indicate that such requirements cannot be simultaneously satisfied. In such contexts, assuming that there is no unsolvable dilemma of epistemic rationality, either (i) it could be rational that one’s higher-order attitudes do not align with one’s first-order attitudes or (ii) requirements such as responding correctly to epistemic reasons that agents have are not genuine rationality requirements. (...) This result doesn’t square well with plausible theoretical assumptions concerning epistemic rationality. So, how do we solve this puzzle? In this paper, I will suggest that an agent can always reason from infallible higher-order reasons. This provides a partial solution to the above puzzle. (shrink)

Some have suggested that images can be arguments. Images can certainly bolster the acceptability of individual premises. We worry, though, that the static nature of images prevents them from ever playing a genuinely argumentative role. To show this, we call attention to a dilemma. The conclusion of a visual argument will either be explicit or implicit. If a visual argument includes its conclusion, then that conclusion must be demarcated from the premise or otherwise the argument will beg the question. If (...) a visual argument does not include its conclusion, then the premises on display must license that specific conclusion and not its opposite, in accordance with some demonstrable rationale. We show how major examples from the literature fail to escape this dilemma. Drawing inspiration from the graphical logic of C. S. Peirce, we suggest instead that images can be manipulated in a way that overcomes the dilemma. Diagrammatic reasoning can take one stepwise from an initial visual layout to a conclusion—thereby providing a principled rationale that bars opposite conclusions—and the visual inscription of this correct conclusion can come afterward in time—thereby distinguishing the conclusion from the premises. Even though this practical application of Peirce’s logical ideas to informal contexts requires that one make adjustments, we believe it points to a dynamic conception of visual argumentation that will prove more fertile in the long run. (shrink)

Deliberation is often seen as the site of human freedom, but the binding power of rationality seems to imply that deliberation is, in its own way, a deterministic process. If one knows the starting preferences and circumstances of an agent, then, assuming that the agent is rational and that those preferences and circumstances don’t change, one should be in a position to predict what the agent will decide. However, given that an agent could conceivably confront equally attractive alternatives, it is (...) an open question whether rational choice theory can ever eliminate indeterminacy. The clearest support for such a limitation comes from the “Buridan’s ass” scenario, where an agent is confronted with two (or more) equally attractive/unattractive options. Does rationality by itself have the resources needed to prevent such paralysis of action? Those who cannot accept the idea of decisional impotence devise various ways to avoid it: postulating a neutral valence, tipping the utilities, positing sub-personal influences, and bunching the options. I argue that each of these responses is either unwarranted or flawed. All parties to the debate agree that, factually, paralysis of action is not a pervasive phenomenon. This is either because (i) the utilities one assigns to two or more options can never be balanced or because (ii) thanks to some non-rational faculty (say, the will), we would not be stuck even if those utilities were perfectly counterpoised. By looking critically at four untenable responses, I aim to show that (i) is often just a dogma and (ii) is by no means a silly position. (shrink)

Epistemically immodest agents take their own epistemic standards to be among the most truth-conducive ones available to them. Many philosophers have argued that immodesty is epistemically required of agents, notably because being modest entails a problematic kind of incoherence or self-distrust. In this paper, I argue that modesty is epistemically permitted in some social contexts. I focus on social contexts where agents with limited cognitive capacities cooperate with each other (like juries).