The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within distributed cognition and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities.

This volume celebrates the various facets of Alan Turing (1912–1954), the British mathematician and computing pioneer, widely considered as the father of computer science. It is aimed at the general reader, with additional notes and references for those who wish to explore the life and work of Turing more deeply. -/- The book is divided into eight parts, covering different aspects of Turing’s life and work. -/- Part I presents various biographical aspects of Turing, some from a personal point of (...) view. -/- Part II presents Turing’s universal machine (now known as a Turing machine), which provides a theoretical framework for reasoning about computation. His 1936 paper on this subject is widely seen as providing the starting point for the field of theoretical computer science. -/- Part III presents Turing’s working on codebreaking during World War II. While the War was a disastrous interlude for many, for Turing it provided a nationally important outlet for his creative genius. It is not an overstatement to say that without Turing, the War would probably have lasted longer, and may even have been lost by the Allies. The sensitive nature of Turning’s wartime work meant that much of this has been revealed only relatively recently. -/- Part IV presents Turing’s post-War work on computing, both at the National Physical Laboratory and at the University of Manchester. He made contributions to both hardware design, through the ACE computer at the NPL, and software, especially at Manchester. Part V covers Turing’s contribution to machine intelligence (now known as Artificial Intelligence or AI). Although Turing did not coin the term, he can be considered a founder of this field which is still active today, authoring a seminal paper in 1950. -/- Part VI covers morphogenesis, Turing’s last major scientific contribution, on the generation of seemingly random patterns in biology and on the mathematics behind such patterns. Interest in this area has increased rapidly in recent times in the field of bioinformatics, with Turing’s 1952 paper on this subject being frequently cited. -/- Part VII presents some of Turing’s mathematical influences and achievements. Turing was remarkably free of external influences, with few co-authors – Max Newman was an exception and acted as a mathematical mentor in both Cambridge and Manchester. -/- Part VIII considers Turing in a wider context, including his influence and legacy to science and in the public consciousness. -/- Reflecting Turing’s wide influence, the book includes contributions by authors from a wide variety of backgrounds. Contemporaries provide reminiscences, while there are perspectives by philosophers, mathematicians, computer scientists, historians of science, and museum curators. Some of the contributors gave presentations at Turing Centenary meetings in 2012 in Bletchley Park, King’s College Cambridge, and Oxford University, and several of the chapters in this volume are based on those presentations – some through transcription of the original talks, especially for Turing’s contemporaries, now aged in their 90s. Sadly, some contributors died before the publication of this book, hence its dedication to them. -/- For those interested in personal recollections, Chapters 2, 3, 11, 12, 16, 17, and 36 will be of interest. For philosophical aspects of Turing’s work, see Chapters 6, 7, 26–31, and 41. Mathematical perspectives can be found in Chapters 35 and 37–39. Historical perspectives can be found in Chapters 4, 8, 9, 10, 13–15, 18, 19, 21–25, 34, and 40. With respect to Turing’s body of work, the treatment in Parts II–VI is broadly chronological. We have attempted to be comprehensive with respect to all the important aspects of Turing’s achievements, and the book can be read cover to cover, or the chapters can be tackled individually if desired. There are cross-references between chapters where appropriate, and some chapters will inevitably overlap. -/- We hope that you enjoy this volume as part of your library and that you will dip into it whenever you wish to enter the multifaceted world of Alan Turing. (shrink)

The main claim of this paper is that Andy Clark's most influential argument for ‘the extended mind thesis’ (EM henceforth) fails. Clark's argument for EM assumes that a certain form of common-sense functionalism is true. I argue, contra Clark, that the assumed brand of common-sense functionalism does not imply EM. Clark's argument also relies on an unspoken, undefended and optional assumption about the nature of mental kinds—an assumption denied by the very common-sense functionalists on whom Clark's argument draws. I also (...) critique Mark Sprevak's reductio of Clark's argument. Sprevak contends that Clark's argument does not merely entail EM; it entails an extended mind thesis so strong as to be absurd. He goes on to claim that Clark's argument should properly be viewed as a reductio of the very common-sense functionalism on which it depends. Sprevak's argument shares the flaw that afflicts Clark's argument, or so I claim. (shrink)

The Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC) holds that that not all human cognition is realized inside the head. The related but distinct Hypothesis of Extended Mentality (HEM) holds that not all human mental items are realized inside the head. Clark & Chalmers distinguish between these hypotheses in their original treatment of cognitive extension, yet these two claims are often confused. I distinguish between functionalist theories on which functional roles are individuated according to computational criteria, and those on which functional roles (...) are individuated according to rational criteria. I then present an argument for a modest version of HEC from computational functionalism, based on Clark & Chalmers’ original argument. In doing so I articulate a successor to their parity principle, and review studies by Wayne Gray et al. that provide plausible evidence for actual cognitive extension. I then respond to a new criticism of HEC by Mark Sprevak using the modest account I have developed, arguing that Sprevak conflates HEC and HEM. (shrink)

This is a review of The Turing Guide (2017), written by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson, and others. The review includes a new sociological approach to the problem of computability in physics.

This article is interdisciplinary in its claims. Evolving around the ecological concept of affordance, it brings together pragmatics and ecological psychology. Starting from the theoretical writings of Peirce, Dewey and James, the biosemiotic claims of von Uexküll, Gibson’s ecological approach to perception and some empirical evidence from recent neurobiological research, it elaborates on the concepts of experiential and enactive cognition as applied to music. In order to provide an operational description of this approach, it introduces some conceptual tools from the (...) domain of cybernetics with a major focus on the concept of circularity, which links perception to action in a continuous process of sense-making and interaction with the environment. As such, it is closely related to some pragmatic, biosemiotic and ecosemiotic claims which can be subsumed under the general notion of functional significance. An attempt is made to apply this conceptual framework to the process of musical sense-making which involves the realisation of systemic cognition in the context of epistemic interactions that are grounded in our biology and possibilities for adaptive control. Central in this approach is the concept of coping with the environment, or, in musical terms, to perceive the sounding music in terms of what it affords for the consummation of musical behaviour. (shrink)

This paper is an extended prolepsis in favor of epistemic situationism, the thesis that epistemic virtues are not sufficiently widely distributed for a virtue-theoretic constraint on knowledge to apply without leading to skepticism. It deals with four objections to epistemic situation: 1) that virtuous dispositions are not required for knowledge, 2) that the Big Five or Big Six personality model proves that intellectual virtues are a reasonable ideal, 3) that the cognitive-affective personality system framework proves that intellectual virtues are a (...) reasonable ideal, and 4) that weakening the reliability requirement through epistemic dependence or abilism means that common inferential strategies really are virtues. The paper concludes with reflections on the replication crisis in psychological science. (shrink)

In his book Worlds and Individuals, Possible and Otherwise (2010), Takashi Yagisawa presents and argues for a novel and imaginative version of modal realism. It differs both from Lewis’s modal realism (Lewis 1986) and from actualists’ ersatz accounts (Adams 1974; Sider 2002). In this paper, I’ll present two arguments, each of which shows that Yagisawa’s metaphysics is incoherent. The first argument shows that the combination of Yagisawa’s metaphysics with impossibilia leads to triviality: every sentence whatsoever comes out true. This is (...) so even if Yagisawa accepts a paraconsistent notion of logical consequence, on which contradictions do not entail arbitrary conclusions. The second argument is independent of Yagisawa’s acceptance of impossibilia. It shows that Yagisawa’s metaphysics of possible worlds is incoherent. Using ordinary modal reasoning, I derive a contradiction from Yagisawa’s account of possible worlds. (shrink)

Provides an overview of Mark Sharlow's philosophical work with summaries of his positions. Includes references and links to his writings.

In his 1904 letter to G.F. Stout, Cook Wilson distinguishes objective and sub- jective conceptions of appearance, and provides a diagnosis for the modern acceptance of the subjective conception in terms of a confused misdescrip- tion of the objective appearances that perceptual experience affords. More- over, Cook Wilson links subjective appearances with idealism, the suggestion being that perceptual appearances must be objective if they are to afford us with something akin to proof of a world without the mind.

The best writing of Mark Pettinelli, about cognitive psychology, cognitive science, etc.

In ‘A Dialogue’, Hume offers an important reply to the moral skeptic. Skeptics traditionally point to instances of moral diversity in support of the claim that our core values are fixed by enculturation. Hume argues that the skeptic exaggerates the amount of variation in moral codes, however, and fails to adopt an indulgent stance toward attitudes different from ours. Hume proposes a charitable interpretation of moral disagreement, moreover, which traces it back to shared principles of human nature. Contemporary philosophers attempt (...) to locate examples of moral variability that cannot be accommodated in this way. But they are no more successful than their predecessors. Moral skeptics have not found a single case of moral diversity that is resistant to the Humean strategy. (shrink)

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We (...) Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)

This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that being is inescapably diverse in kind—is anchored in his argument for the existence of change. -/- Aristotle may be the only thinker to have given a noncircular definition of change. (...) When he gave this definition, arguing that change is real was a losing proposition. To show that it exists, he had to rework the way philosophers understood reality. His groundbreaking analysis of change has long been interpreted through a Platonist lens, however, in which being is conceived as unchanging. Offering a comprehensive reexamination of the relationship between change and being in Aristotle, Sentesy makes an important contribution to scholarship on Aristotle, ancient philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, and metaphysics. (shrink)

An archive of Mark Sharlow's two blogs, "The Unfinishable Scroll" and "Religion: the Next Version." Covers Sharlow's views on metaphysics, epistemology, mind, science, religion, and politics. Includes topics and ideas not found in his papers.

Do mountains exist? The answer to this question is surely: yes. In fact, ‘mountain’ is the example of a kind of geographic feature or thing most commonly cited by English speakers (Mark, et al., 1999; Smith and Mark 2001), and this result may hold across many languages and cultures. But whether they are considered as individuals (tokens) or as kinds (types), mountains do not exist in quite the same unequivocal sense as do such prototypical everyday objects as chairs (...) or people. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Research notes of Mark Pettinelli about cognitive science, cognitive psychology.

My concern is to overturn the Leibnizean model of God's creation of the world which proposes that God selected a possible world out of a whole host of other alternative ones. This is the familiar possible worlds model of creation. I argue that this understanding of creation does not take seriously the idea of ex nihilo and that, rather than considering determinate possible worlds, we should understand possibility as indeterminate. I then develop this argument and explores how it impacts on (...) the idea of providence, and the problem of evil. I then explore the notion of creativity. Only a God who can make something utterly novel is a God who is making something different from Himself and which consequently has no divine precedent. A God who uses possible worlds makes nothing new. -/- . (shrink)

This collection of articles is almost all of the psychological writings of Mark Pettinelli.

In recent work Mary Kate McGowan presents an account of oppressive speech inspired by David Lewis's analysis of conversational kinematics. Speech can effect identity-based oppression, she argues, by altering 'the conversational score', which is to say, roughly, that it can introduce presuppositions and expectations into a conversation, and thus determine what sort of subsequent conversational 'moves' are apt, correct, felicitous, etc., in a manner that oppresses members of a certain group (e.g. because the suppositions and expectations derogate or demean members (...) of that group). In keeping with the Lewisian picture, McGowan stresses the asymmetric pliability of conversational scores. She argues that it is easier to introduce (for example) sexist presuppositions and expectations into a conversation than it is to remove them. Responding to a sexist remark, she thus suggests, is like trying to "unring a bell". I begin by situating McGowan's work in the wider literature on speech and social hierarchy, and explaining how her account of oppressive speech improves upon the work of others in its explication of the relationship between individuals' verbal conduct and structurally oppressive social arrangements. I then propose an explanation and supportive elaboration of McGowan's claims about the asymmetric pliability of conversations involving identity-oppressive speech. Rather than regarding such asymmetry as a sui generis phenomenon, I show how we can understand it as a consequence of a more general asymmetry between making things salient and un-salient in speech, and I show how this asymmetry also operates in various cases that interested Lewis. (shrink)

Beliefs are concrete particulars containing ideas of properties and notions of things, which also are concrete. The claim made in a belief report is that the agent has a belief (i) whose content is a specific singular proposition, and (ii) which involves certain of the agent's notions and ideas in a certain way. No words in the report stand for the notions and ideas, so they are unarticulated constituents of the report's content (like the relevant place in "it's raining"). The (...) belief puzzles (Hesperus, Cicero, Pierre) involve reports about two different notions. So the analysis gets the puzzling truth values right. (shrink)

This short e-book is (in the author's words) "an attempt to open up new and better ways of thinking about God." The author draws together insights from philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, and ontology to construct a conception of God that avoids both supernaturalism and simplistic forms of pantheism.

Connectionism seems to avoid many of the problems of classical artificial intelligence, but has it avoided all of them? In this thesis I examine the problem that Intentionality, the directedness of thought to an object, raises for connectionism. As a preliminary approach, I consider the role of Intentionality in classical artificial intelligence from the programmer’s point of view. In this investigation, one problem I identify with classical artificial intelligence is that the Intentionality of the programmer seems to be projected onto (...) the system, rather than the programmer creating a system whereby Intentionality arises intrinsically within the system. -/- In considering the current practice of connectionism, the same problem with Intentionality reappears. The assignment of Intentional content to input or output nodes in a neural network likewise projects the Intentionality of the programmer onto the system, and that projection is often reinforced by the training process of the neural network. However, connectionism seems to have an advantage over classical artificial intelligence in this respect, in that there is a form of neural network in which the network itself organizes the output nodes. The challenge is to utilize these self-organizing networks without having the programmer project Intentionality onto the system in an act of interpretation. -/- I suggest that the way to overcome these problems in connectionism is to embody the neural network within a world, whether physical or virtual, and to allow the system to develop concepts purely empirically. In this manner, connectionism can make scientific observations concerning the nature of cognition without the risk of contamination from the programmer’s own Intentionality. (shrink)

This paper examines two recent contributions to the hate speech literature – by Steven Heyman and Jeremy Waldron – which seek a justification for the legal restriction of hate speech in an account of the way that hate speech infringes against people’s dignity. These analyses look beyond the first-order hurts and disadvantages suffered by the immediate targets of hate speech, and consider the prospect of hate speech sustaining complex social structures whose wide-scale operations lower the social status of members of (...) targeted groups. In Heyman’s and Waldron’s accounts we find plausible insights into the nature of identity-based social hierarchies, and the harms that redound to subordinated people under the operations of such hierarchies. I argue, however, that both analyses are unsuccessful as justifications for the restriction of hate speech, because they do not ultimately provide reason to think that hate speech is responsible for creating or sustaining identity-based social hierarchies. (shrink)

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study of perception, taking as its starting point a puzzle in Empedocles' theory of vision: if perception is a mode of material assimilation, how can we perceive colors at a distance? Kalderon argues that the theory of perception offered by Aristotle in answer to the puzzle is both attractive and defensible.

Jason Stanley's Know How aims to offer an attractive intellectualist analysis of knowledge how that is compositionally predicted by the best available treatments of sentences like 'Emile knows how to make his dad smile.' This paper explores one significant way in which Stanley's compositional treatment fails to generate his preferred account, and advocates a minimal solution.

NOW OPEN-ACCESS! In Reason, Authority, and the Healing of Desire in the Writings of Augustine, Mark Boone explains Augustine’s theology of desire in a cross-section of his writings. He shows that Augustine's writings consistently teach a Platonically informed, yet distinctively Christian, theology of desire.

The inflation of Type I error rates is thought to be one of the causes of the replication crisis. Questionable research practices such as p-hacking are thought to inflate Type I error rates above their nominal level, leading to unexpectedly high levels of false positives in the literature and, consequently, unexpectedly low replication rates. In this article, I offer an alternative view. I argue that questionable and other research practices do not usually inflate relevant Type I error rates. I begin (...) by introducing the concept of Type I error rates and distinguishing between statistical errors and theoretical errors. I then illustrate my argument with respect to model misspecification, multiple testing, selective inference, forking paths, exploratory analyses, p-hacking, optional stopping, double dipping, and HARKing. In each case, I demonstrate that relevant Type I error rates are not usually inflated above their nominal level, and in the rare cases that they are, the inflation is easily identified and resolved. I conclude that the replication crisis may be explained, at least in part, by researchers’ misinterpretation of statistical errors and their underestimation of theoretical errors. (shrink)

Negative facts get a bad press. One reason for this is that it is not clear what negative facts are. We provide a theory of negative facts on which they are no stranger than positive atomic facts. We show that none of the usual arguments hold water against this account. Negative facts exist in the usual sense of existence and conform to an acceptable Eleatic principle. Furthermore, there are good reasons to want them around, including their roles in causation, chance-making (...) and truth-making, and in constituting holes and edges. (shrink)

Philosophers have come to distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reasons for belief, intention, and other attitudes. Several theories about the nature of this distinction have been offered, by far the most prevalent of which is the idea that it is, at bottom, the distinction between what are known as ‘object-given’ and ‘state-given’ reasons. This paper argues that the object-given/state-given theory vastly overgeneralizes on a small set of data points, and in particular that any adequate account of the distinction (...) between the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reason must allow state-given reasons to be of the right kind. The paper has three main goals, corresponding to its three main parts. In part 1 I set up the problem by introducing the right-kind/wrong-kind distinction, the object-given/state-given distinction, and the object-given/state-given theory, according to which the former distinction simply amounts to the latter. Part 2 presents the main argument of the paper: I argue against the object-given/state-given theory by showing that all of the earmarks of the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reason apply to reasons not to intend and not to believe, but that these cases can’t be captured by the object-given/state-given theory. Finally, in part 3 I use these arguments to motivate and explore a more general hypothesis about the rightkind/wrong-kind distinction, and explore some of the consequences of rejecting the object-given/stategiven theory. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

Several authors have recently endorsed the thesis that there is what has been called pragmatic encroachment on knowledge—in other words, that two people who are in the same situation with respect to truth-related factors may differ in whether they know something, due to a difference in their practical circumstances. This paper aims not to defend this thesis, but to explore how it could be true. What I aim to do, is to show how practical factors could play a role in (...) defeating knowledge by defeating epistemic rationality—the very kind of rationality that is entailed by knowledge, and in which Pascalian considerations do not play any role—even though epistemic rationality consists in having adequate evidence. (shrink)

Are the sculpture and the mass of gold which permanently makes it up one object or two? In this article, we argue that the monist, who answers ‘one object’, cannot accommodate the asymmetry of material constitution. To say ‘the mass of gold materially constitutes the sculpture, whereas the sculpture does not materially constitute the mass of gold’, the monist must treat ‘materially constitutes’ as an Abelardian predicate, whose denotation is sensitive to the linguistic context in which it appears. We motivate (...) this approach in terms of modal analyses of material constitution, but argue that ultimately it fails. The monist must instead accept a deflationary, symmetrical use of ‘materially constitutes’. We argue that this is a serious cost for her approach. (shrink)

Causation is one of philosophy's most venerable and thoroughly-analyzed concepts. However, the study of how ordinary people make causal judgments is a much more recent addition to the philosophical arsenal. One of the most prominent views of causal explanation, especially in the realm of harmful or potentially harmful behavior, is that unusual or counternormative events are accorded privileged status in ordinary causal explanations. This is a fundamental assumption in psychological theories of counterfactual reasoning, and has been transported to philosophy by (...) Hitchcock and Knobe (2009). A different view--the basis of the culpable control model of blame (CCM)--is that primary causal status is accorded to behaviors that arouse negative evaluative reactions, including behaviors that stem from nefarious motives, negligence or recklessness, a faulty character, or behaviors that lead to harmful or potentially harmful consequences. This paper describes four empirical studies that show consistent support for the CCM. (shrink)

Most philosophers find it puzzling how beliefs could wrong, and this leads them to conclude that they do not. So there is much philosophical work to be done in sorting out whether I am right to say that they do, as well as how this could be so. But in this paper I will take for granted that beliefs can wrong, and ask instead when beliefs wrong. My answer will be that beliefs wrong when they falsely diminish. This answer has (...) three parts: that beliefs wrong only when they are false, that beliefs wrong only when they diminish, and that false diminishment is sufficient for wronging. I will seek to elaborate on and defend all three of these claims, but it is the first to which I will give the most attention. (shrink)

What is it to have a reason? According to one common idea, the "Factoring Account", you have a reason to do A when there is a reason for you to do A which you have--which is somehow in your possession or grasp. In this paper, I argue that this common idea is false. But though my arguments are based on the practical case, the implications of this are likely to be greatest in epistemology: for the pitfalls we fall into when (...) trying to defend the Factoring Account reflect very well the major developments in empiricist epistemology during the 20th century. I conjecture that this is because epistemologists have been--wrongly--wedded to the Factoring Account about evidence, which I conjecture is a certain kind of reason to believe. (shrink)

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of philosophers’ other (...) commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

In his contribution, Mark Alfano lays out a new (to virtue theory) naturalistic way of determining what the virtues are, what it would take for them to be realized, and what it would take for them to be at least possible. This method is derived in large part from David Lewis’s development of Frank Ramsey’s method of implicit definition. The basic idea is to define a set of terms not individually but in tandem. This is accomplished by assembling all (...) and only the common sense platitudes that involve them (e.g., typically, people want to be virtuous), conjoining those platitudes, and replacing the terms in question by existentially quantified variables. If the resulting sentence is satisfied, then whatever satisfies are the virtues. If it isn’t satisfied, there are a couple of options. First, one could just admit defeat by saying that people can’t be virtuous. More plausibly, one could weaken the conjunction by dropping a small number of the platitudes from it (and potentially adding some others). Alfano suggests that the most attractive way to do this is by dropping the platitudes that deal with cross-situational consistency and replacing them with platitudes that involve social construction: basically, people are virtuous (when they are) at least in part because other people signal their expectations of virtuous conduct, which induces virtuous conduct, which in turn induces further signals of expected virtuous conduct, and so on. (shrink)

I develop and defend a truthmaker semantics for the relevant logic R. The approach begins with a simple philosophical idea and develops it in various directions, so as to build a technically adequate relevant semantics. The central philosophical idea is that truths are true in virtue of specific states. Developing the idea formally results in a semantics on which truthmakers are relevant to what they make true. A very natural notion of conditionality is added, giving us relevant implication. I then (...) investigate ways to add conjunction, disjunction, and negation; and I discuss how to justify contraposition and excluded middle within a truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

In “On Sense and Reference,” surrounding his discussion of how we describe what people say and think, identity is Frege’s first stop and his last. We will follow Frege’s plan here, but we will stop also in the land of make-believe.

Intentions matter. They have some kind of normative impact on our agency. Something goes wrong when an agent intends some end and fails to carry out the means she believes to be necessary for it, and something goes right when, intending the end, she adopts the means she thinks are required. This has even been claimed to be one of the only uncontroversial truths in ethical theory. But not only is there widespread disagreement about why this is so, there is (...) widespread disagreement about in what sense it is so. In this paper I explore an underdeveloped answer to the question of in what sense it is so, and argue that resolving an apparent difficulty with this view leads to an attractive picture about why it is so. (shrink)

Scholars have devoted considerable attention to the discovery by Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson of a distinction between the fittingness of an emotion and the propriety of the same. Meanwhile, Christian theology has long been attentive to the relevance of Christian theology to the emotions. Although it seems that never so far have the twain discussions met, they should meet. A fitting emotion accurately construes a situation. Christian theology tells us something about the importance—or the lack thereof—of emotional fit for (...) the emotions involved in love. It is a desideratum for the emotions that they are fitting. But other desiderata for the emotional life sometimes overrule the desideratum of fit. Moreover, emotions sometimes have an effect on their own fittingness. As Kierkegaard shows, love construes its object as better than he presently is, but it also makes the object better. We should cultivate a disposition to loving emotions that are occasionally unfitting yet help to bring about better fit. I explain these things and consider how someone might go about cultivating loving emotions which are sometimes unfitting yet also restorative of fit. (shrink)

An account of distinctively mathematical explanation (DME) should satisfy three desiderata: it should account for the modal import of some DMEs; it should distinguish uses of mathematics in explanation that are distinctively mathematical from those that are not (Baron [2016]); and it should also account for the directionality of DMEs (Craver and Povich [2017]). Baron’s (forthcoming) deductive-mathematical account, because it is modelled on the deductive-nomological account, is unlikely to satisfy these desiderata. I provide a counterfactual account of DME, the Narrow (...) Ontic Counterfactual Account (NOCA), that can satisfy all three desiderata. NOCA appeals to ontic considerations to account for explanatory asymmetry and ground the relevant counterfactuals. NOCA provides a unification of the causal and the non-causal, the ontic and the modal, by identifying a common core that all explanations share and in virtue of which they are explanatory. (shrink)

Many scholars agree that the Internet plays a pivotal role in self-radicalization, which can lead to behaviours ranging from lone-wolf terrorism to participation in white nationalist rallies to mundane bigotry and voting for extremist candidates. However, the mechanisms by which the Internet facilitates self-radicalization are disputed; some fault the individuals who end up self-radicalized, while others lay the blame on the technology itself. In this paper, we explore the role played by technological design decisions in online self-radicalization in its myriad (...) guises, encompassing extreme as well as more mundane forms. We begin by characterizing the phenomenon of technological seduction. Next, we distinguish between top-down seduction and bottom-up seduction. We then situate both forms of technological seduction within the theoretical model of dynamical systems theory. We conclude by articulating strategies for combatting online self-radicalization. (shrink)

This paper will examine the nature of mechanisms and the distinction between the relevant and irrelevant parts involved in a mechanism’s operation. I first consider Craver’s account of this distinction in his book on the nature of mechanisms, and explain some problems. I then offer a novel account of the distinction that appeals to some resources from Mackie’s theory of causation. I end by explaining how this account enables us to better understand what mechanisms are and their various features.

This is a book about the metaphysics of perception and discusses touch, audition, and vision. Though primarily concerned with the nature of perception, it draws heavily from the history of philosophy of perception, and connects the concerns of analytical and continental philosophers.

Each truth has a truthmaker: an entity in virtue of whose existence that truth is true. So say truthmaker maximalists. Arguments for maximalism are hard to find, whereas those against are legion. Most accept that maximalism comes at a significant cost, which many judge to be too high. The scales would seem to be balanced against maximalism. Yet, as I show here, maximalism can be derived from an acceptable premise which many will pre-theoretically accept.