Because obituaries are succinct and explicitly intended to summarize their subjects’ lives, they may be expected to include only the features that the author finds most salient but also to signal to others in the community the socially-recognized aspects of the deceased’s character. We begin by reviewing studies 1 and 2, in which obituaries were carefully read and labeled. We then report study 3, which further develops these results with a semi-automated, large-scale semantic analysis of several thousand obituaries. Geography, gender, (...) and elite status all turn out to be associated with the virtues and values associated with the deceased. (shrink)

Virtues are dispositions that make their bearers admirable. Dispositions can be studied scientifically by systematically varying whether their alleged bearers are in (or take themselves to be in) the dispositions' eliciting conditions. In recent decades, empirically-minded philosophers looked to social and personality psychology to study the extent to which ordinary humans embody dispositions traditionally considered admirable in the Aristotelian tradition. This led some to conclude that virtues are not attainable ideals, and that we should focus our ethical reflection and efforts (...) more on jerry-rigging our environments than on improving our characters. Most virtue ethicists resisted this reorientation. However, much of the scientific evidence on which the controversy was based has failed to replicate, raising the question of how much faith we should place in methodologically suspect studies. In this paper, I assess the state of the debate and recommend best practices for a renewed interdisciplinary investigation of virtues and vices in which philosophical expertise related to conceptualization and theorizing is essentially intertwined with scientific expertise related to operationalization, measurement, and statistics. (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.

Mechanistic explanations satisfy widely held norms of explanation: the ability to manipulate and answer counterfactual questions about the explanandum phenomenon. A currently debated issue is whether any nonmechanistic explanations can satisfy these explanatory norms. Weiskopf argues that the models of object recognition and categorization, JIM, SUSTAIN, and ALCOVE, are not mechanistic yet satisfy these norms of explanation. In this article I argue that these models are mechanism sketches. My argument applies recent research using model-based functional magnetic resonance imaging, a novel (...) neuroimaging method whose significance for current debates on psychological models and mechanistic explanation has yet to be explored. (shrink)

Although Nietzsche accepted a distant cousin of Brian Leiter’s “Doctrine of Types,” according to which, “Each person has a fixed psycho-physical constitution, which defines him as a particular type of person,” the details of his actual view are quite different from the flat-footed position Leiter attributes to him. Leiter argues that Nietzsche thought that type-facts partially explain the beliefs and actions, including moral beliefs and actions, of the person whom those type-facts characterize. With this much, I agree. However, the Doctrine (...) of Types as formulated by Leiter, is manifestly unsupported both by Nietzsche’s texts and as an empirical hypothesis. Although Leiter has teamed up with Joshua Knobe to shore up the empirical credentials of his version of the Doctrine of Types, and although Knobe is one of the best experimental philosophers currently working in moral psychology, their account of the Doctrine is wrong both textually and empirically. That is to say, Nietzsche did not hold the version of the Doctrine they attribute to him, and it’s a good thing he didn’t, because the version that he actually did hold is better empirically supported than the version that they attribute to him. For Nietzsche – and in reality – types are not immutable or fixed. Although not everyone is endowed with the same type, which type someone belongs to can (though needn’t) evolve over the course of her lifetime. In particular, whereas I agree with Leiter that the neo-Aristotelian account of character development is empirically inadequate, I do so not because I think no character development occurs but because I think that character development occurs in a different way. In addition, for Nietzsche – and in reality – types on their own are not normative. Character, which is normatively evaluable, only arises through the refinement, calibration, and development of temperament. It might seem like I’ve just set myself an ambitious-enough goal, but I want to do more in this paper. The main point I want to argue is that Nietzsche held a person-type-relative unity of virtue thesis, according to which what’s intrinsically good for a particular person is to develop and act from particular character traits that “fit” her type. (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)

We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information.” Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain, (...) issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science” is unique. (shrink)

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

It is now generally understood that constraints play an important role in commonsense moral thinking and generally accepted that they cannot be accommodated by ordinary, traditional consequentialism. Some have seen this as the most conclusive evidence that consequentialism is hopelessly wrong,1 while others have seen it as the most conclusive evidence that moral common sense is hopelessly paradoxical.2 Fortunately, or so it is widely thought, in the last twenty-five years a new research program, that of Agent-Relative Teleology, has come to (...) the rescue on all sides. While consequentialism says that every agent ought always to do that action that will bring about the most good, according to Agent- Relative Teleology. (shrink)

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

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

We argue that at least some corvids morally ought to be granted a right to bodily liberty in the US legal system and relevantly similar systems. This right would grant immunity to frivolous captivity and extermination. Implementing this right will require new legislation or the expansion of existing legislation including the elimination of various "pest" clauses. This paper proceeds in three parts. First, we survey accounts of the moral grounds of legal rights. Second, to establish an overlapping consensus supporting corvid (...) bodily liberty rights, we survey the empirical literature on corvid cognition. Third, we illustrate what a corvid right to bodily liberty might look like, by looking to recent developments in animal law, as well as previous advocacy on behalf of primates and cetaceans. (shrink)

Impossible worlds are representations of impossible things and impossible happenings. They earn their keep in a semantic or metaphysical theory if they do the right theoretical work for us. As it happens, a worlds-based account provides the best philosophical story about semantic content, knowledge and belief states, cognitive significance and cognitive information, and informative deductive reasoning. A worlds-based story may also provide the best semantics for counterfactuals. But to function well, all these accounts need use of impossible and as well (...) as possible worlds. So what are impossible worlds? Graham Priest claims that any of the usual stories about possible worlds can be told about impossible worlds, too. But far from it. I'll argue that impossible worlds cannot be genuine worlds, of the kind proposed by Lewis, McDaniel or Yagisawa. Nor can they be ersatz worlds on the model proposed by Melia or Sider. Constructing impossible worlds, it turns out, requires novel metaphysical resources. (shrink)

This article considers two important problems for the idea that what we ought to do is determined by the balance of competing reasons. The problems are distinct, but the object of the article is to explore how they admit of a single solution. It is a consequence of this solution that objective reasons—facts that count in favor—are in an important sense less objective than they have consistently been assumed to be. This raises but does not answer the question as to (...) what evidence we ever had that reasons are as objective as has been assumed. (shrink)

Quietist Moral Realists accept that there are moral facts and properties, while aiming to avoid many of the explanatory burdens thought to fall on traditional moral realists. This chapter examines the forms that Quietist Moral Realism has taken and the challenges it has faced, in order to better assess its prospects. The best hope, this chapter argues, lies in a pragmatist approach that distinguishes the different functions of diverse areas of discourse. This paves the way for a form of Quietism (...) that does not simply remain quiet about the explanatory demands of metaethics, but rather is able to diagnose where they go wrong. By combining a neopragmatic analysis of the discourse with an easy approach to ontology, , we can develop a form of Quietist Moral Realism that is far stronger than critics of quietism have appreciated. (shrink)

Kerr coined the term ‘HARKing’ to refer to the practice of ‘hypothesizing after the results are known’. This questionable research practice has received increased attention in recent years because it is thought to have contributed to low replication rates in science. The present article discusses the concept of HARKing from a philosophical standpoint and then undertakes a critical review of Kerr’s twelve potential costs of HARKing. It is argued that these potential costs are either misconceived, misattributed to HARKing, lacking evidence, (...) or that they do not take into account pre- and post-publication peer review and public availability to research materials and data. It is concluded that it is premature to conclude that HARKing has led to low replication rates. (shrink)

This article is one of the final works of Mark Pettinelli and discusses feelings, emotions and cognitive psychology.

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)

Real-world agents do not know all consequences of what they know. But we are reluctant to say that a rational agent can fail to know some trivial consequence of what she knows. Since every consequence of what she knows can be reached via chains of trivial cot be dismissed easily, as some have attempted to do. Rather, a solution must give adequate weight to the normative requirements on rational agents’ epistemic states, without treating those agents as mathematically ideal reasoners. I’ll (...) argue that agents can fail to know trivial consequences of what they know, but never determinately. Such cases are epistemic oversights on behalf of the agent in question, and the facts about epistemic oversights are always indeterminate facts. As a result, we are never in a position to assert that such-and-such constitutes an epistemic oversight for agent i (for we may rationally assert only determinate truths). I then develop formal epistemic models according to which epistemic accessibility relations are vague. Given these models, we can show that epistemic oversights always concern indeterminate cases of knowledge. (shrink)

Dalawa sa mga hibla ng Pilosopiyang Filipino ay patungkol sa paggamit ng banyagang pilosopiya at pamimilosopiya sa wikang Filipino. Makatutulong ang dalawang ito tungo sa pagsasalin ng mga banyagang kaisipan sa talastasang bayan. Ang dalawang hiblang ito ang nais na ambagan ng kasalukuyang sanaysay, sa pamamagitan ng pagsasagawa ng rebyu sa isang halimbawa ng anime/manga na Hapon: ang Attack on Titan (AOT) ni Hajime Isayama. Gagamitin sa pagbasa ng AOT ang mga pilosopikal na pananaw ng ilang Aleman/Austrianong pilosoper/sikolohista na sina (...) Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Carl Schmitt, at Friedrich Nietzsche. Sa pagbasang ito sa pamamagitan ng apat na banyagang palaisip, tututukan ang tema ng kalayaan at digmaan. Liban dito, maglalatag din ng pagmumuni-muni ukol sa paksa ng pananangkapan sa kasaysayan bilang sandatang pulitikal, isang temang lantad na lantad rin sa AOT. Ang lahat ng ito ay isasagawa sa wikang Filipino, bilang pagtatangka na makapag-ambag sa pagpapasok ng anime/manga na Hapon at pilosopiyang Aleman/Austriano sa talastasang bayan. (shrink)

Some objects we value because they afford a felt connection with people, events, or places connected with their past. Visiting Canterbury cathedral, you encounter the place where, in 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered by four knights of Henry II. Knowing that you are standing in the very place where Becket’s blood was spilled gives the past event a sense of tangible reality. One feels ‘in touch with’ the past; history seems to ‘come alive’. In this paper, I propose an (...) explanation for the phenomenology of such experiences in terms of an imaginative activity that represents what an object is historically connected with as part of the object in the present. One imagines of the site of Becket’s murder Becket being murdered. According to my account, objects that embody their histories are representations in Kendall Walton’s sense: they have the function of serving as props in games of make-believe. (shrink)

Metaethical expressivists claim that we can explain what moral words like ‘wrong’ mean without having to know what they are about – but rather by saying what it is to think that something is wrong – namely, to disapprove of it. Given the close connection between expressivists’ theory of the meaning of moral words and our attitudes of approval and disapproval, expressivists have had a hard time shaking the intuitive charge that theirs is an objectionably subjectivist or mind-dependent view of (...) morality. Expressivism, critics have charged over and again, is committed to the view that what is wrong somehow depends on or at least correlates with the attitudes that we have toward it. Arguments to this effect are sometimes subtle, and sometimes rely on fancy machinery, but they all share a common flaw. They all fail to respect the fundamental idea of expressivism: that ‘stealing is wrong’ bears exactly the same relationship to disapproval of stealing as ‘grass is green’ bears to the belief that grass is green. In this paper I rehearse the motivations for the fundamental idea of expressivism and show how the arguments of Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit [1998], Russ Shafer-Landau [2003], Jussi Suikkanen [2009], and Christopher Peacocke [2004] all fail on this same rock. In part 1 I’ll rehearse the motivation for expressivism – a motivation which directly explains why it does not have subjectivist consequences. Then in each of parts 2-5 I’ll illustrate how each of Jackson and Pettit’s, Peacocke’s, Shafer-Landau’s, and Suikkanen’s arguments work, respectively, and why each of them fails to respect the fundamental parity at the heart of expressivism. Though others have tried before me to explain why expressivism is not committed to any kind of subjectivism or mind-dependence – prominently including Blackburn [1973], [1998], Horgan and Timmons [2006], and, in response to Pettit and Jackson, Dreier [2004] and Smith and Stoljar [2003], the explanation offered in this article is distinguished by its scope and generality.. (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.

This chapter explores a case study in contemporary fanaticism. We adopt Katsafanas’s conceptualization of fanaticism to make possible an in-depth discussion of and evaluation of a diffuse but important social movement — the anglophone manosphere. According to Katsafanas, fanatics are fruitfully understood as members of a group that adopts sacred values which they hold unconditionally to preserve their own psychic unity, and who feel that those values are threatened by those who do not accept them. The manosphere includes several social (...) movements, including incels, men’s rights activists, and men-going-their-own-way. We show that many members of these groups are well-characterized by Katsafanas’s theory of fanaticism, and that they have forged their fanatical group identity using tools that philosophers have tended to associate with more benign social movements and the task of “conceptual engineering.” Indeed, we think that manosphere groups have in many cases been more successful than more palatable liberationist movements, and that this case study in the dark side of conceptual engineering may be both sobering and informative. (shrink)

For deductive reasoning to be justified, it must be guaranteed to preserve truth from premises to conclusion; and for it to be useful to us, it must be capable of informing us of something. How can we capture this notion of information content, whilst respecting the fact that the content of the premises, if true, already secures the truth of the conclusion? This is the problem I address here. I begin by considering and rejecting several accounts of informational content. I (...) then develop an account on which informational contents are indeterminate in their membership. This allows there to be cases in which it is indeterminate whether a given deduction is informative. Nevertheless, on the picture I present, there are determinate cases of informative (and determinate cases of uninformative) inferences. I argue that the model I offer is the best way for an account of content to respect the meaning of the logical constants and the inference rules associated with them without collapsing into a classical picture of content, unable to account for informative deductive inferences. (shrink)

Despite the recent surge of interest in Nietzsche’s moral psychology and his conceptions of character and virtue in particular, little attention has been paid to his treatment of the relation between character traits and the terms that designate them. In this paper, I argue for an interpretation of this relation: Nietzsche thinks there is a looping effect between the psychological disposition named by a character trait-term and the practice of using that term.

At first glance, Schopenhauer’s account of human freedom looks strikingly similar to Schelling’s account of formal freedom in the Freiheitsschrift. Despite the clear similarities, I argue that there is a decisive difference between the two accounts—a difference that has to do with the ultimate grounding of freedom. For Schelling, the intelligible deed is a radical self-grounding of the eternal essence of the human being. For Schopenhauer, the eternal essence of the human being is groundless. Moreover, I argue that this difference (...) has decisive consequences for two sets of issues. On the one hand, Schelling’s concept of self-grounding allows him to preserve the universal application of the principle of ground. On the other hand, self-grounding is the only way that human beings can be responsible for who they are. Schelling thus anticipates a key insight of Galen Strawson: ultimate moral responsibility is only possible for a causa sui. (shrink)

Exploitation and Economic Justice in the Liberal Capitalist State offers the first new, liberal theory of economic justice to appear in more than 30 years. The theory presented is designed to offer an alternative to the most popular liberal egalitarian theories of today and aims to be acceptable to both right and left libertarians too.

Lange argues that some natural phenomena can be explained by appeal to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In these “distinctively mathematical” explanations, the core explanatory facts are either modally stronger than facts about ordinary causal law or understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue. Craver and Povich argue that Lange’s account of DME fails to exclude certain “reversals”. Lange has replied that his account can avoid these directionality charges. Specifically, Lange argues that in legitimate DMEs, (...) but not in their “reversals,” the empirical fact appealed to in the explanation is “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue” in the explanandum. I argue that Lange’s reply is unsatisfactory because it leaves the crucial notion of being “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement” obscure in ways that fail to block “reversals” except by an apparent ad hoc stipulation or by abandoning the reliance on understanding and instead accepting a strong realism about essence. (shrink)

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.

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)

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

This book is a collection of some of my writings that do not fit the mold of standard philosophical articles. These writings range over several topics, including religion, free will, human dignity, the nature of persons, and a few others. The longest item in the collection is an archive of my blog, The Unfinishable Scroll, as it existed when the book was put together. That blog covers many philosophical topics, including some I haven't discussed elsewhere. Also in the collection are (...) essays (formerly web-based) on topics ranging from progress, to skepticism, to metaphysics - and back again. The book even contains an archive of another, less well-known, blog of mine. (shrink)

Recent increases in the rates of parental refusal of routine childhood vaccination have eroded many countries’ “herd immunity” to communicable diseases. Some parents who refuse routine childhood vaccines do so because they deny the mainstream medical consensus that vaccines are safe and effective. I argue that one reason these vaccine denialists disagree with vaccine proponents about the reasons in favor of vaccination is because they also disagree about the sorts of practices that are conducive to good reasoning about healthcare choices. (...) Vaccine denialists allocate epistemic authority more democratically than do mainstream medical professionals. They also sometimes make truth ascriptions for nonepistemic reasons, fail to recognize legitimate differences in expertiseand competence, and seek uncritical affirmation of their existing beliefs. By focusing on the different epistemic values and practices of vaccine denialists and mainstream medical professionals, I locate my discussion of vaccine denialism within broader debates about rationality. Furthermore, I argue that gender inequality and gendered conceptions of reason are important parts of the explanation of vaccine denialism. Accordingly, I draw upon feminist work—primarily feminist social epistemology—to help explain and evaluate this form of vaccine refusal. (shrink)

Nondescriptivist views in many areas of philosophy have long been associated with the commitment that in contrast to other domains of discourse, there are no propositions in their particular domain. For example, the ‘no truth conditions’ theory of conditionals1 is understood as the view that conditionals don’t express propositions, noncognitivist expressivism in metaethics is understood as advocating the view that there are not really moral propositions,2 and expressivism about epistemic modals is thought of as the view that there is no (...) such thing as the proposition that Jack might be at home, over and above the proposition that Jack is at home.3 Of course, it is nearly always acknowledged that advocates of a nondescriptivist theory need not deny that there are conditional, moral, or modal propositions ‘at the end of the day’ – for if they also endorse a deflationary reading of talk about propositions, as famously advocated by Simon Blackburn, then they can employ such deflationary talk just as much as the rest of us. They just don’t appeal to propositions to do any of the work in their theories. Rather, they ‘earn the right’ to talk about propositions.4 It is the aim of this paper to upset this way of thinking about the proper attitude of nondescriptivists toward propositions, and to advocate a more constructive and in some ways more radical alternative on behalf of the nondescriptivist. I will begin by introducing and developing a set of problems that are faced by any nondescriptivist theory which tries to do without propositions. All of these problems are easily solved by any view which postulates propositions across the board, but none of them are solved by merely deflationary talk about propositions – their most promising solutions require propositions to do real theoretical work, and therefore the problems themselves remind us of and illustrate some of the important reasons why it is worth positing propositions in the first place.. (shrink)

Introduction -/- 1 Précis -/- 2 Methodology: Introducing digital humanities to the history of philosophy 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Core constructs 2.3 Operationalizing the constructs 2.4 Querying the Nietzsche Source 2.5 Cleaning the data 2.6 Visualizations and preliminary analysis 2.6.1 Visualization of the whole corpus 2.6.2 Book visualizations 2.7 Summary -/- Nietzsche’s Socio-Moral Framework -/- 3 From instincts and drives to types 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The state of the art on drives, instincts, and types 3.2.1 Drives 3.2.2 Instincts 3.2.3 Types 3.3 (...) The semantic neighborhood of drive, instinct, and type 3.4 A theory of (the relations among) instincts, drives, and types 3.4.1 Drives are act-directed rather than outcome-directed dispositions 3.4.2 The reflexive turn in Nietzsche’s drive psychology 3.4.3 Triggers of drive-displacement 3.4.4 Instincts are innate drives 3.4.5 Types are constellations of instincts and other drives 3.4.6 To what extent are types, instincts, and drives fixed? 3.5 Summary -/- 4 From types to virtues 4.1 Introduction 4.2 The state of the art on virtues and values 4.2.1 Virtues 4.2.2 Values 4.3 The semantic neighborhood of virtue and value 4.4 On (the relations among) instincts, drives, types, values, virtues, and values 4.4.1 Virtues are well-calibrated drives 4.4.2 Nietzsche’s type-relative unity of virtue thesis 4.4.3 The type of the criminal 4.4.4 Nietzschean exemplarism and his ad hominem attacks 4.5 Summary -/- 5 Socializing Nietzschean virtues 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Higher-order types 5.2.1 Social character construction 5.2.2 Reflexive character construction 5.3 Eponymous trait terms and Nietzschean summoning 5.3.1 Eponymous trait terms 5.3.2 Nietzschean summoning 5.4 Summary -/- Nietzschean virtues -/- 6 Curiosity 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Curiosity in virtue epistemology 6.3 Curiosity and its affiliated emotions 6.4 Curiosity, perspectivism, and inquiry 6.5 Curiosity as a virtue 6.5.1 A preliminary characterization 6.5.2 Curiosity in the middle through late works 6.6 Summary -/- 7 Courage 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Intellectual courage in contemporary virtue epistemology 7.3 Courage as a virtue 7.3.1 A preliminary characterization 7.3.2 Courage in the middle through late works 7.4 Summary -/- 8 Pathos of distance 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Contempt and disgust in contemporary moral psychology 8.3 The semantic neighborhood of contempt, disgust, and the pathos of distance 8.4 Nietzsche on contempt 8.4.1 Spernere mundum 8.4.2 Spernere neminem 8.4.3 Spernere se ipsum 8.4.4 Spernere se sperni 8.4.5 Nietzsche aims to induce what he considers fitting contempt in receptive readers 8.5 Nietzsche on disgust 8.5.1 The use of disgust: detaching from an ideal 8.5.2 The danger of disgust 8.6 The pathos of distance 8.7 Prospects for a Nietzschean democratic ethos 8.8 Summary -/- 9 Sense of humor 9.1 Introduction 9.2 The semantic neighborhood of laughter, humor, and comedy 9.3 The Nietzschean sense of humor and its functions 9.3.1 From episodic laughter to the sense of humor 9.3.2 Affirmation and inquiry 9.3.3 Negation and inquiry 9.3.4 Affiliation with like-minded inquirers 9.4 Summary -/- 10 Solitude 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Solitude in virtue theory and Nietzsche scholarship 10.3 The semantic neighborhood of solitude 10.4 An account of Nietzschean solitude 10.5 Summary -/- Conclusion -/- 11 Conscience & integrity 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Conscience and integrity in contemporary moral psychology and Nietzsche scholarship 11.2.1 Conscience and integrity in contemporary moral psychology 11.2.2 Conscience and integrity in Nietzsche commentary 11.3 The semantic neighborhood of conscience and integrity 11.4 Distinguishing conscience, good conscience, bad conscience, and intellectual conscience 11.4.1 Conscience 11.4.2 Good conscience 11.4.3 Bad conscience 11.4.4 Intellectual conscience and integrity 11.5 Summary -/- 12 Prospectus 12.1 Future directions in moral psychology 12.2 Future directions in Nietzsche scholarship 12.3 Future directions in digital humanities and the history of philosophy . (shrink)

We can readily identify goal-directed systems and distinguish them from non-goal-directed systems. A woodpecker hunting for grubs is the first, a pendulum returning to rest is the second. But what is it to be a goal-directed system? Perhaps the dominant answer to this question, inspired by systems theories such as cybernetics, is that goal-directed systems are distinguished by their tendency to seek, aim at, or maintain some more-or-less easily identifiable goal. Cybernetics and the like would hold that physical systems subject (...) only to physical laws can exhibit such behavior. If sound, this systems approach to teleology would unify a diverse range of goal-directed phenomena and neatly side-step many traditional bogey-men of teleology, such as anthropomorphism and future causation. Goal-directed phenomena would be a normal feature of the natural causal world that could be described in purely descriptive and quantitative terms, and receive ordinary causal explanations. Thus, the systems approach promises to provide a naturalistic-cum-descriptive account of teleology suitable for use in naturalistic accounts of other phenomena, including the intentionality of mental states and even self-consciousness. (shrink)

For years now, unionization has been under vigorous attack. Membership has been steadily declining, and with it union bargaining power. As a result, unions may soon lose their ability to protect workers from economic and personal abuse, as well as their significance as a political force. In the Name of Liberty responds to this worrying state of affairs by presenting a new argument for unionization, one that derives an argument for universal unionization in both the private and public sector from (...) concepts of liberty that we already accept. In short, In the Name of Liberty reclaims the argument for liberty from the political right, and shows how liberty not only requires the unionization of every workplace as a matter of background justice, but also supports a wide variety of other progressive policies. (shrink)

What do humility, intellectual humility, and open-mindedness mean in the context of inter-group conflict? We spend most of our time with ingroup members, such as family, friends, and colleagues. Yet our biggest disagreements —— about practical, moral, and epistemic matters —— are likely to be with those who do not belong to our ingroup. An attitude of humility towards the former might be difficult to integrate with a corresponding attitude of humility towards the latter, leading to smug tribalism that masquerades (...) as genuine virtue. These potentially conflicting priorities have recently come to the fore because “tribal epistemology” has so thoroughly infected political and social discourse. Most research on these dispositions focuses on individual traits and dyadic peer-disagreement, with little attention to group membership or inter-group conflict. In this chapter, we dilate the social scale to address this pressing philosophical and social problem. (shrink)

Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects (ELSA) originated in the 4thEuropean Research Framework Programme (1994) andresponsible research and innovation (RRI) from the EC researchagenda in 2010. ELSA has received renewed attention inEuropean funding schemes and research. This raises the questionof how these two approaches to social responsibility relate toone another and if there is the possibility to align. There is aneed to evaluate the relationship/overlap between ELSA and RRIbecause there is a possibility that new ELSA research will reinventthe wheel if it (...) does not engage with the body of literaturealready present in RRI research. This provides unneeded extrabureaucracy, reformulations of research agendas, extrainvestment, and an overabundance of frameworks to implement,and ELSA research does not take advantage of the body ofresearch developed in RRI. This paper evaluates how ELSA andRRI diverge, are complementary, and can be aligned. (shrink)

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 (...) with an introduction to Type I error rates that distinguishes them from 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)

The Razor says: do not multiply entities without necessity! The Laser says: do not multiply fundamental entities without necessity! Behind the Laser lies a deep insight. This is a distinction between the costs and the commitments of a theory. According to the Razor, every commitment is a cost. Not so according to the Laser. According to the Laser, derivative entities are an ontological free lunch: that is, they are a commitment without a cost. Jonathan Schaffer (2015) has argued that the (...) Laser should replace the Razor. In Sections 2-4 we shall discuss and argue against Schaffer’s arguments for replacing the Razor with the Laser. Schaffer considers several objections to his views, and in Sections 5-7 we shall argue that Schaffer does not deal successfully with two of them. In Section 8 we shall present a probabilistic argument for the Laser. However, the argument has a limitation and does not support the replacement of the Razor with the Laser. Indeed, it supports only the claim that, given certain assumptions, the multiplication of explanatorily relevant derivative entities does not matter; but, as we argue in the same section, there is an argument that multiplying explanatorily superfluous derivative entities does makes a theory less rationally acceptable. Our conclusion is that the Laser cannot replace the Razor and that derivative entities are not an ontological free lunch. (shrink)