Regress arguments have convinced many that reasoning cannot require beliefs about what follows from what. In this paper I argue that this is a mistake. Regress arguments rest on dubious (although deeply entrenched) assumptions about the nature of reasoning — most prominently, the assumption that believing p by reasoning is simply a matter of having a belief in p with the right causal ancestry. I propose an alternative account, according to which beliefs about what follows from what play a constitutive (...) role in reasoning. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on reasoning is dominated by the assumption that reasoning is essentially a matter of following rules. This paper challenges this view, by arguing that it misrepresents the nature of reasoning as a personal level activity. Reasoning must reflect the reasoner’s take on her evidence. The rule-following model seems ill-suited to accommodate this fact. Accordingly, this paper suggests replacing the rule-following model with a different, semantic approach to reasoning.

Scholars of international law have been increasingly troubled by states’ vast powers and practices of migrant exclusion. There is no doubt that much of this uneasiness is catalyzed by a keen sense of the demands of a basic liberalism at the international legal order's core. Indeed, the increased construction of border walls,1 the continuously widespread use of deportation as a migration control tool,2 and new digital bordering technologies3 have all come under scrutiny precisely because of the challenges they pose to (...) the notion of supposedly universal entitlements, both substantive and procedural, that often appear disabled or overridden when it comes to the treatment of different sorts of migrants. My goal in this contribution is not to add to such legal critiques, but rather to provide the contours of a broader normative argument to rebuke—or at least complicate—what is often called the state's “right to exclude” all or most would-be immigrants. This right is not just standardly assumed in legal and political practice—indeed, standardly viewed as the linchpin of sovereignty—but has also enjoyed sophisticated defense by liberal political theorists.4 The main goal of my argument is to suggest that anyone with basic liberal inclinations—including political theorists, lawyers, and practitioners of politics—should be able to agree that, under current circumstances, granting states a potent “right to exclude” entails deep tensions with basic moral standards of legitimate authority. This is because the deeply entrenched characteristics and historical background conditions of immigration control today tend structurally to push states to violate the appropriate moral conditions of their legitimate authority to enforce immigration restrictions.5 While moving above and beyond legal argumentation, my hope is that the argument may underscore and give further analytical expression to some of the animating concerns of contemporary legal contestations of states’ exclusive powers and practices. (shrink)

The issue whether psychopathic offenders are practically rational has attracted philosophical attention. The problem is relevant in theoretical discussions on moral psychology and in those concerning the appropriate social response to the crimes of these individuals. We argue that classical and current experiments concerning the instrumental learning in psychopaths cannot directly support the conclusion that they have impaired instrumental rationality, construed as the ability for transferring the motivation by means-ends reasoning. In fact, we defend the different claim that these experiments (...) appear to show that psychopaths in certain circumstances are not aware of the relevant means for their ends. Moreover, we suggest how further empirical research could help to settle the issue. (shrink)

In his long-awaited book On What Matters Parfit develops a normative theory that covers a whole range of normative concepts, from reasons and rationality to questions of moral progress and meaning of life. This paper focuses on Parfit*s view on reasons and rationality, and especially concentrates on three theses that are implicitly or explicitly endorsed by Parfit. The theses are: 1) the concept of a normative reason cannot be explicated in a non-circular way, 2) rationality of non-normative beliefs never influences (...) the rationality of desires and actions, and 3) there are no desire-based reasons. The main aim of the paper is to critically evaluate the plausibility of the latter three theses. (shrink)

In his essay ‘Transparency, Belief, Intention’, Alex Byrne (2011) argues that transparency—our ability to form beliefs about some of our intentional mental states by considering their subject matter, rather than on the basis of special psychological evidence—involves inferring ‘from world to mind’. In this reply I argue that this cannot be correct. I articulate an intuitive necessary condition for a pattern of belief to count as a rule of inference, and I show that the pattern involved in transparency does not (...) meet that condition. As a result, I conclude that transparency does not involve inference. (shrink)

Machine intelligence already helps medical staff with a number of tasks. Ethical decision-making, however, has not been handed over to computers. In this proof-of-concept study, we show how an algorithm based on Beauchamp and Childress’ prima-facie principles could be employed to advise on a range of moral dilemma situations that occur in medical institutions. We explain why we chose fuzzy cognitive maps to set up the advisory system and how we utilized machine learning to train it. We report on the (...) difficult task of operationalizing the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and patient autonomy, and describe how we selected suitable input parameters that we extracted from a training dataset of clinical cases. The first performance results are promising, but an algorithmic approach to ethics also comes with several weaknesses and limitations. Should one really entrust the sensitive domain of clinical ethics to machine intelligence? (shrink)

According to the so-called ‘Taking Condition’ (a label due to Boghossian 2014) on inference, for a response R in circumstances C to count as an instance of reasoning or inferring, it must be the case that the agent’s taking it that R is warranted or justified in C plays (the right sort of) explanatory role in her R-ing. The Taking Condition has come under much criticism in the theory of reasoning. While I believe that these criticisms can be answered, my (...) aim in this paper is to build a positive case for the Taking Condition. More specifically, I argue that views based on the Taking Condition do a much better job accounting for crucial features of reasoning—especially once we recognize the pervasiveness and significance of defeasibility in our reasoning. (shrink)

The book provides an overview of the contemporary discussion of the mind-body problem. This discussion takes its modern form during the 17th century in the works of René Descartes. The book covers the most important points of view in modern philosophy of mind. An important thesis of the book is that contemporary debates are still heavily influenced by Descartes’ arguments, especially those related to the nature of consciousness. (Google translate).

In this article I discuss and evaluate the selectivity problem as a problem put forward by Bermudez (1997, 2000) against anti-intentionalist accounts of self-deception. I argue that the selectivity problem can be raised even against intentionalist accounts, which reveals the too demanding constraint that the problem puts on the adequacy of a psychological explanation of action. Finally I try to accommodate the intuitions that support the cogency of the selectivity problem using the resources from the framework provided by an anti-intentionalist (...) account of self-deception. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of whether the influential distinction between levels of explanation introduced by David Marr can be used as a general framework for contemplating levels of explanation in cognitive sciences. Marr introduced three levels at which we can explain cognitive processes: the computational, algorithmic, and implementational levels. Some argue that Marr’s levels of explanation can only be applied to modular cognitive systems. However, since many psychological processes are non-modular, it seems that Marr’s levels of explanation cannot explain (...) such psychological processes. To show that the latter claim is not convincing, the paper draws upon an influential paradigm from cognitive sciences that is based on the principle of free energy. Based on this paradigm, the paper argues that even non-modular psychological processes can be computationally analyzed and algorithmically implemented. The conclusion of the paper is that, at least under the assumption that the func- tion of the mind is to minimize free energy, Marr’s levels of explanation can be successfully used as a general framework for understanding psychological processes at different levels of description. (shrink)

The Lazy Argument, as it is preserved in historical testimonies, is not logically conclusive. In this form, it appears to have been proposed in favor of part-time fatalism (including past time fatalism). The argument assumes that free will assumption is unacceptable from the standpoint of the logical fatalist but plausible for some of the nonuniversal or part-time fatalists. There are indications that the layout of argument is not genuine, but taken over from a Megarian source and later transformed. The genuine (...) form of the argument seems to be given in different form and far closer to Megarian logical fatalism and its purpose is not to defend laziness. If the historical argument has to lead to a logically satisfactory solution, some additional assumptions and additional tuning is needed. (shrink)

Both G.F.W. Hegel and Carl Schmitt took seriously the problem of political sovereignty entailed by liberal political theories. In Dictatorship (1919) and Political Theology (1922), Schmitt rejects liberal political theories that argue for the immediate unity of democracy and legality i.e., popular sovereignty, because he thinks they cannot secure political sovereignty. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel denounces popular sovereignty for similar reasons. Yet given Schmitt’s negative assessment of Hegel their positions are seldom related to one another. I argue in (...) this paper that Schmitt’s analysis of liberal political theories is similar to Hegel’s analysis of Rousseau’s liberal ideas. I contend, however, that Schmitt’s solution, which collapses the distinction between the executive and the legislative power in favor of the former, fails to secure political sovereignty. Contrary to Schmitt, Hegel conceives of the liberal predicament as a basic determination of any political state that rests on the division of the legislative and executive power. Hegel argues that the constitutional monarchy is a genuine instantiation of political sovereignty that can maintain not only the division of these powers, but also their unity. In this regard, I argue that Hegel’s conception of the division of powers provides a more convincing theory of the problem afflicting modern states than Schmitt’s and at least deserves to be taken more seriously by critics of Schmitt’s solution such as Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Jurgen Habermas, Andreas Kalyvas and Chantal Mouffe. (shrink)

Recently there has been a trend of moving towards biological and neurocognitive based classifications of mental disorders that is motivated by a dissatisfaction with the syndrome-based classifications of mental disorders. The Research Domain Criteria (indicated with the acronym RDoC) represents a bold and systematic attempt to foster this advancement. However, RDoC faces theoretical and conceptual issues that need to be addressed. Some of these difficulties emerge when we reflect on the plausible reading of the slogan “mental disorders are brain disorders”, (...) that according to proponents of RDoC constitutes one of its main presuppositions. Some authors think that endorsing this idea commits RDoC to a form of biological reductionism. We offer empirical and theoretical considerations for concluding that the slogan above should not be read as a reductionist thesis. We argue, instead, that the slogan has a pragmatic function whose aim is to direct research in psychopathology. We show how this function might be captured in the framework of a Carnapian explication as a methodological tool for conceptual engineering. Thus, we argue that a charitable interpretation of the aims of the proponents of RDoC should be understood as an attempt at providing an explication of the concept of mental disorder in terms of brain disorder whose main goal is to provide a more precise and fruitful notion that is expected to have a beneficial impact on classification, research, and treatment of psychiatric conditions. (shrink)

Determinism is usually understood as a commonly clear and obvious thesis. In the most of the actual literature a character of determinism is rarely enough explicitly underlined and we believe that it is the reason why common uses of the term often leads to inconsistencies and present a source of misunderstandings of different sorts. Here we will try to show that that there are many forms of determinism; that the concept of determinism has a composite character; and that conceptions of (...) determinism can be mutually discriminated and organized according to particular elements they are consisting of by applying the procedure of classification. (shrink)

Subverting a once widely held Quinean paradigm, there is a growing consensus among philosophers of logic that higher-order quantifiers (which bind variables in the syntactic position of predicates and sentences) are a perfectly legitimate and useful instrument in the logico-philosophical toolbox, while neither being reducible to nor fully explicable in terms of first-order quantifiers (which bind variables in singular term position). This article discusses the impact of this quantificational paradigm shift on metaphysics, focussing on theories of properties, propositions, and identity, (...) as well as on the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

The paper deals with the possible readings of The Reaper Argument premisses. Some conjectures related to the Stoics’ alleged proof of the argument are discussed.

Despite many authors in psychiatry endorsing a naturalist view of the mind, many still consider that mental dysfunctions cannot be reduced to brain dysfunctions. This paper investigates the main reasons for this view. Some arguments rely on the analogy that the mind is like software while the brain is like hardware. The analogy suggests that just as software can malfunction independently of hardware malfunctions, similarly the mind can malfunction independently of any brain malfunction. This view has been critically examined in (...) recent literature. However, other less discussed reasons suggest that mental dysfunctions cannot be reduced to brain dysfunctions because mental dysfunctions are appropri- ately ascribed at the level of intentional mental states, while brain dysfunctions are solely related to abnormalities in anatomy and physiological processes. This paper questions why such a view would be upheld. The discussion is framed within the interface problem in the philosophy of cognitive science, which concerns the relationship between personal and subpersonal levels of explanation. The paper examines the view that an autonomist perspective on the personal/ subpersonal distinction could justify the separation of mental dysfunctions, described in intentional terms, from brain dysfunctions, described in anatomical or physiological terms. Ultimately, the paper argues that the autonomist view cannot be upheld in psychiatry and, consequently, does not provide a principled justification for rejecting the reduction of mental dysfunctions to brain dysfunctions. (shrink)

The internet has become an ubiquitous epistemic source. However, it comes with several drawbacks. For instance, the world wide web seems to foster filter bubbles and echo chambers and includes search results that promote bias and spread misinformation. Richard Heersmink suggests online intellectual virtues to combat these epistemically detrimental effects . These are general epistemic virtues applied to the online environment based on our background knowledge of this online environment. I argue that these online intellectual virtues also demand a particular (...) view of cognitive integration. Online intellectual virtues are incompatible with a popular conception of extended minds proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers . I suggest that if we want to hold on to both a conception of online intellectual virtues and some conception of the extended mind, we have to accept a more gradual theory of cognitive integration along the lines of second-wave theories of the extended mind. (shrink)

Higher-order realists about properties express their view that there are properties with the help of higher-order rather than first-order quantifiers. They claim two types of advantages for this way of formulating property realism. First, certain gridlocked debates about the nature of properties, such as the immanentism versus transcendentalism dispute, are taken to be dissolved. Second, a further such debate, the tropes versus universals dispute, is taken to be resolved. In this paper I first argue that higher-order realism does not in (...) fact resolve the tropes versus universals dispute. In a constructive spirit, I then develop higher-order realism in a way that leads to a dissolution, rather than a resolution, of this dispute too. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been overwhelming public health-care systems around the world. With demand exceeding the availability of medical resources in several regions, hospitals have been forced to invoke triage. To ensure that this difficult task proceeds in a fair and organised manner, governments scrambled experts to draft triage guidelines under enormous time pressure. Although there are similarities between the documents, they vary considerably in how much weight their respective authors place on the different criteria that they propose. Since most (...) of the recommendations do not come with ethical justifications, analysing them requires that one traces back these criteria to their underlying theories of distributive justice. In the literature, COVID-19 triage has been portrayed as a value conflict solely between utilitarian and egalitarian elements. While these two accounts are indeed the main antipodes, I shall show that in fact all four classic theories of distributive justice are involved: utilitarianism, egalitarianism, libertarianism, and communitarianism. Detecting these in the documents and classifying the suggested criteria accordingly enables one to understand the balancing between the different approaches to distributive justice—which is crucial for both managing the current pandemic and in preparation for the next global health crisis. (shrink)

Hybrid contingentism combines first-order contingentism, the view that it is contingent what individuals there are, with higher-order necessitism, the view that it is non-contingent what properties and propositions there are (where these are conceived as entities in the range of appropriate higher-order quantifiers). This combination of views avoids the most delicate problems afflicting alternative contingentist positions while preserving the central contingentist claim that ordinary, concrete entities exist contingently. Despite these attractive features, hybrid contingentism is usually faced with rejection. The main (...) reason for this is an objection that crucially involves haecceitistic properties, properties such as being identical to Plato or being identical to Aristotle. The objection alleges that by accepting the necessary existence of such haecceities, hybrid contingentists incur an explanatory commitment that they are unable to discharge, namely that of explaining how it is that certain haecceities ‘lock onto’ their target individuals even when those individuals are absent. To defend hybrid contingentism against this charge, I first clarify the haecceities objection in several respects and consider, in particular, what notion of explanation the objection is operating with. After arguing that it can be fruitfully understood as a challenge to provide metaphysical grounds for certain haecceity facts, I develop a contingentist response to the objection that draws on recent work on the connection between ground and essence. (shrink)

According to dogmatism, one may know a proposition by inferring it from a set of evidence even if one has no independent grounds for rejecting a skeptical hypothesis compatible with one’s evidence but incompatible with one’s conclusion. Despite its intuitive attractions, many philosophers have argued that dogmatism goes wrong because they have thought that it licenses Moorean reasoning — i.e., reasoning in which one uses the conclusion of an inference as a premise in an argument against a skeptical hypothesis that (...) would undermine that very inference. In this paper I defend dogmatism against this line of thought. To begin with, I argue that the common assumption that uncontroversial Bayesian principles suffice to show that Moorean reasoning is not cogent is false: for all that Bayesianism says on the matter, Moorean reasoning might be perfectly fine. Nevertheless, Moorean reasoning does seem intuitively defective. As I argue, however, this does not provide grounds for an argument against dogmatism, because — contrary to what many philosophers have thought — dogmatism need not license Moorean reasoning. On the contrary, as I argue, dogmatism predicts that Moorean reasoning suffers from a clearly identifiable defect. (shrink)

This paper investigates how later medieval intellectuals dealt with perspectiva – the medieval discipline of optics, which had seen considerable popularity in Latin Europe since the 13th century and was epitomized in several “books of knowledge” of differing scopes, levels of difficulty and intended audience. This paper is focused narrowly on one of these intellectuals – Reimbotus de Castro (fl. 1350s–1380s), who was not only personal physician to the Roman Emperor Charles IV but was also a diligent copyist and abbreviator (...) of many quadrivial and medical texts, and the owner of several codices now kept in the Bibliotheca Palatina. One of these codices, Pal. lat. 1380, includes two optical treatises copied by Reimbot himself. A closer reading of these texts, hitherto unnoticed by historians of medieval science, provides fresh insight into the reception of optical knowledge in the intellectual milieu of Paris in the 1360s, when Reimbot resided here. The first text is Reimbot’s reportatio of lectures on the famous optical textbook Perspectiva communis by John Peckham; the second is Reimbot’s redaction of the unknown optical compendium Perspectiva cum sit una. Finally, this paper addresses the issue of why optics was interesting at all for people at the intersection of the scholarly and courtly communities like Reimbot (and late medieval scholars generally). It is suggested that medieval optics, being useful for astronomical observations, could be considered a sort of auxiliary discipline for astrology and astrological medicine. (shrink)

Groups can be epistemically vicious just like individuals. And just like individuals, groups sometimes want to do something about their vices. They want to change. However, intentionally combating one’s own vices seems impossible without detecting those vices first. Self-knowledge seems to provide a first step towards changing one’s own epistemic vices. I argue that groups can acquire self-knowledge about their epistemic vices and I propose an account of such collective self-knowledge. I suggest that collective self-knowledge of vices is partially based (...) on evidence that a group can generate by performing internal promptings. Whereas these promptings are done mentally in individual self-knowledge, these promptings are done by interactions of group members in the collective case. The group can then acquire inferential self-knowledge of their vices based on the evidence generated by the interactions within the group. Groups thereby bring themselves into a position from which they can combat and change those vices intentionally. (shrink)

In the paper I argue that medieval philosophers proposed several notions of the senses’ activity in perception. I illustrate the point using the example of two Franciscan thinkers – Peter Olivi (ca. 1248–1298) and Peter Auriol (ca. 1280–1322). Olivi’s notion of active perception assumes that every perceptual act demands a prior focusing of the mind’s attention. Furthermore, Olivi is partially inspired by the extramissionist theories of vision and reinterprets the notion of a visual ray postulated by them as a useful (...) model for explaining attention and attentional shifts. In Auriol’s view, perception is active because it participates in producing a perceptual content. e senses not only receive information from the environment, they also actively process it and, in Auriol’s words, put the external object into apparent being. e peculiar feature of Auriol’s account is his obvious tendency to conceive perceptual content as both dependent on our perceptual activity and external to the senses. Finally, I consider the two theories in the context of mirror perception – while Olivi focused on the ability of mirrors to switch attention’s direction, Auriol investigated the metaphysical nature of mirror images. (shrink)

Good physical experiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thought experiments? Especially problems of personal identity have engendered hypothetical scenarios that are very distant from the actual world. These imagined situations have been conspicuously ineffective at resolving conflicting intuitions and deciding between the different accounts of personal identity. Using prominent examples from the literature, I argue that this is due to many of these thought experiments (...) not adhering to the methodological standards that guide experimental design in nearly all other disciplines. I also show how empirically unwarranted background assumptions about human physiology render some of the hypothetical scenarios that are employed in the debate about personal identity highly misleading. (shrink)

V rámci filosofie věd panuje široká shoda na tom, že druhá polovina 20. století složila „labutí píseň" pozitivismu. Milton Friedman a Paul Samuelson, dva klíčoví autoři k metodologii ekonomie v daném časovém období, přitom tento vývoj ve filosofii vědy prý nikdy nereflektovali. Pozitivistická východiska - v prvé řadě v podobě redukcioni- stického přístupu - jsou tudíž stále přítomna ve vlivných teoretických konceptech rozvinutých ekonomy hlavního proudu. Značný počet autorů však v současnosti sdílí náhled, že tyto koncepty v nezanedbatelné míře přispěly (...) k vývoji, jenž ústil ve finanční krizi, vrcholící v letech 2008 a 2009. Předkládaný článek se proto táže, zda to byla právě krize - v níž mnozí spatřují empirické zamítnutí řady pozitivistických konceptů - která napsala „labutí píseň" pozitivismu v ekonomii hlavního proudu. (shrink)

This paper investigates the connection between two recent trends in philosophy: higher-orderism and conceptual engineering. Higher-orderists use higher-order quantifiers (in particular quantifiers binding variables that occupy the syntactic positions of predicates) to express certain key metaphysical doctrines, such as the claim that there are properties. I argue that, on a natural construal, the higher-orderist approach involves an engineering project concerning, among others, the concept of existence. I distinguish between a modest construal of this project, on which it aims at engineering (...) higher-order analogues of the familiar notion of first-order existence, and an ambitious construal, on which it additionally aims at engineering a broadened notion of existence that subsumes first-order and higher-order existence. After identifying a substantial problem for the ambitious project, I investigate a possible response which is based on adopting a cumulative type theory as the background higher-order logic. While effective against the problem at hand, this strategy turns out to undermine a major reason to embrace higher-orderism in the first place, namely the idea that higher-orderism dissolves a range of otherwise intractable debates in metaphysics. Higher-orderists are therefore best advised to pursue their engineering project on the modest variant and against the background of standard type theory. (shrink)

Fictionalists maintain that possible worlds, numbers or composite objects exist only according to theories which are useful but false. Hale, Divers and Woodward have provided arguments which threaten to show that fictionalists must be prepared to regard the theories in question as contingently, rather than necessarily, false. If warranted, this conclusion would significantly limit the appeal of the fictionalist strategy rendering it unavailable to anyone antecedently convinced that mathematics and metaphysics concern non-contingent matters. I try to show that their arguments (...) can be resisted by developing and defending a strategy suggested by Rosen, Nolan and Dorr, according to which the fiction-operator is to be analysed in terms of a counterfactual that admits of non-trival truth-values even when the antecedent is impossible. (shrink)

Jedno od najznačajnijih pitanja u filozofiji morala jest predstavljaju li moralni zahtjevi ujedno i razloge za djelovanje prema kojima se trebaju ravnati sve racionalne osobe. Prema jednoj koncepciji, moralni apsolutizam tvrdi da sve racionalne osobe imaju dovoljan razlog da poštuju moralne zahtjeve. Prema tom shvaćanju, moralni relativizam je tvrdnja da neće svi racionalni djelatnici imati dovoljan razlog da poštuju iste moralne zahtjeve. manje je istraženo pitanje što se događa ako pokušamo povezati filozofski naturalizam s pitanjem daju li moralni zahtjevi razloge (...) za djelovanje svim racionalnim djelatnicima. u ovom radu bavimo se potonjim pitanjem. neki autori smatraju da prihvaćanje filozofskog naturalizma nije važno za ovo pi- tanje. Drugi autori smatraju da filozofski naturalizam implicira relativizam u pogledu praktičnih razloga koji nije spojiv s moralnim apsolutizmom. u radu argumentiramo za to da su oba gledišta donekle ispravna. tvrdimo da ako se naturalizam shvati kao ontološka tvrdnja onda se možemo složiti s time da naturalizam ne igra ulogu u razrješenju debate između relativista i apsolutista. međutim, ako se naturalizam shvati kao metodološko gledište, onda smatramo da naturalizam podržava relativizam u pogledu praktičnih razloga, tj. ideju da moralni zahtjevi ne pružaju razloge za djelovanje svim racionalnim djelatnicima. (shrink)

This chapter discusses a problematic relation between user-friendly design and manipulation. Some specific features of the design of a website can make it a more or less potent tool for manipulation. In particular, features that can be summed up as creating a user-friendly experience are also manipulation-friendly. The ease of using a website also makes it easier to be manipulated via the website. The chapter provides an argument that this can be explained as a less intellectually virtuous engagement with websites (...) that are more user-friendly. It is simply more difficult to mobilize suitable intellectual virtues when the website is quick and easy to use. For instance, when Google Search presents search results quickly and easily users become less intellectually cautious and independent than they ought to be. The chapter discusses a mechanism that links user-friendly design to an overly trusting attitude towards a website that leads to this intellectually careless behaviour. This link is support with empirical evidence based on processing fluency effects. (shrink)

The notion of harm is frequently used in the discussion of the nature of mental disorder. Harm also plays important roles in the prominent diagnostic manuals such as DSM and ICD. Recently, however, Cristina Amoretti and Elisabetta Lalumera have questioned the idea that harm should be a necessary constituent of mental disorders. They argue that the notion of harm is underspecified and potentially leads to false negatives in diagnosing mental disorders. Given that harm plays significant roles in medical diagnosis and (...) treatment indicates that we should be reluctant to remove it as a criterion for deciding whether some condition is a mental disorder. Instead, we argue that harm should be understood in the prudential sense and harm in this sense provides a way of responding to worries raised by Amoretti and Lalumera, while staying true to the conception of harm that is relevant for psychiatric practice. (shrink)

In “Normative Reasons from a Naturalistic Point of View”, Marko Jurjako explores the foundational concept of normative reasons through the lens of methodological naturalism. Departing from traditional analytic or purely conceptual approaches, this philosophical inquiry navigates the terrain of reasons, rationality, and normativity—concepts with a long philosophical pedigree—within a framework rooted in our understanding of the natural and social world. By aligning the exploration with scientifically based theorizing, the book seeks a synoptic view that bridges the gap between relatively (...) isolated philosophical discussions of the nature of normative reasons and their grounding in human intrapersonal and interpersonal interactions that can be understood and explained by an array of scientifically inspired models. (shrink)

Rad pripremno ocrtava etično načelo saturiranosti u svrhe boljeg razumijevanja zdravog radnog okruženja. Načelo se oprimjeruje razmatranjem zajedničke biti ljudskih problema vezanih za uzrok, razvoj, učinke i posljedice COVID–19 virusne pandemije koja je potvrdila dugo znane, sustavne probleme opterećenja u ljudskom društvu, naročito u području poslovanja. Posebno treba istaknuti područje kadrovski i financijski potkapacitiranih nacionalnih sustava, poput znanstvenog sustava u Republici Hrvatskoj, u kojem vlada i problem višestrukog radnog identiteta. Izabrana optika motrenja služi približavanju moralne i organizacijske važnosti i korisnosti (...) kriterija saturiranosti za, s jedne strane, optimalnu organizaciju rada, ali i, s druge strane, očuvanje dostojanstva čovjeka u radnom okruženju. (shrink)

Higher‐order metaphysicians take facts to be higher‐order beings, i.e., entities in the range of irreducibly higher‐order quantifiers. In this paper, I investigate the impact of this conception of facts on the debate about the reality of tense. I identify two major repercussions. The first concerns the logical space of tense realism: on a higher‐order conception of facts, a prominent version of tense realism, dynamic absolutism, turns out to conflict with the laws of (higher‐order tense) logic. The second concerns our understanding (...) of the positions occupying this logical space: on a higher‐order conception of facts, an attractive interpretation of the central tense realist notion of ‘facts constituting reality’ becomes unavailable. I discuss these results in the context of the more general project of higher‐order metaphysics and the (meta)metaphysics of time, drawing out their implications for the nature of the disputes both between realists and anti‐realists about tense and between different tense realist factions. (shrink)

Gibt es überzeugende Überforderungseinwände gegen anspruchsvolle moralische Auffassungen? In diesem Buch werden Überforderungseinwände präzise charakterisiert, systematisch eingeordnet und argumentativ verteidigt. Unter Berücksichtigung der wichtigsten philosophischen Beiträge zum Thema wird gezeigt, weshalb gewisse Moraltheorien und -prinzipien dafür kritisiert werden können, dass sie zu viel von einzelnen Personen verlangen.

In this paper, I explore a new approach to we-mode agency drawing on the concept of layered agency. I argue that agents can shut out their personal attitudes in favour of a perspective jointly established with other people. I can act as a member of the philosophy department aiming for what the department agreed on, even if that might conflict with my personal beliefs. I can shut out these personal beliefs for a moment and reason from the group’s standpoint. While (...) this observation itself is not novel, I provide an original account for this phenomenon building on C. Thi Nguyen’s proposal of layered agency. I then use this new account of the we-mode as a basic building block for conceptualising social groups and group attitudes. I end by showing how the proposal deals with common cases from the literature. (shrink)

This paper suggests that virtue epistemology can help decide how to respond to conflicts between different epistemic goals for social media. It is a contribution to critical epistemology of social media insofar as it supplements system-level consideration with insights from individualist epistemology. In particular, whereas the proposal of critical social epistemology of social media by Joshua Habgood-Coote suggests that conflicts between epistemic goals of social media have to be solved by ethical consideration, I suggest that virtue epistemology can also solve (...) at least some of these conflicts fully within the epistemic realm. (shrink)

States cannot legitimately enforce their borders against migrants if dominant conceptions of sovereignty inform enforcement because these conceptions undermine sufficient respect for migrants’ basic human rights. Instead, such conceptions lead states to assert total control over outsiders’ potential cross-border movements to support their in-group’s self-rule. Thus, although legitimacy requires states to prioritize universal respect for basic human rights, sovereign states today generally fail to do so when it comes to border enforcement. I contend that this enforcement could only be rendered (...) legitimate if it was predicated on more desirable conceptions of sovereignty that supported the universal prioritization of basic human rights. Specifically, desirable conceptions would not establish and require absolute state sovereignty over borders as a necessary precondition for true popular self-governance. (shrink)

There is lively debate on the question if states have legitimate authority to enforce the exclusion of (would-be) immigrants. Against common belief, I argue that even non- cosmopolitan liberals have strong reason to be sceptical of much contemporary border authority. To do so, I first establish that for liberals, broadly defined, a state can only hold legitimate authority over persons whose moral equality it is not engaged in undermining. I then reconstruct empirical cases from the sphere of international relations in (...) which what I call ‘colonial norms’ continue to play significant structuring roles. I argue that it is sometimes only by unveiling these colonial norms and the roles they play that we can understand how some states today culpably contribute to undermining the moral equality of persons over whom they will come to claim immigration-related authority. I thus contend that paying attention to colonial norms distinctly enables us to reveal a set of instances in which all liberals should agree that states forfeit legitimate authority over would-be immigrants. (shrink)

Transparency accounts have become one of the main contenders for an adequate theory of self-knowledge. However, for the most part, work on transparent self-knowledge has solely focused on individual agents. In this paper, it is argued that transparency accounts have distinct advantages when we apply them beyond individual agents to social groups. It is shown that transparency accounts of self-knowledge are well-suited to apply to group agents by providing three arguments: the first argument shows that transparency accounts of group self-knowledge (...) can capture the relevant phenomenology well; the second argument suggests that transparency accounts of group self-knowledge are particularly economical. They do not need to posit any new capacities, or new properties of group mental states and therefore avoid commitment to dubious ontological features for social groups, such as distinct introspective faculties in groups. Finally, the third argument shows that transparency accounts are positioned well to explain the privilege and peculiarity of group self-knowledge. No single one of these arguments is decisive in favour of transparent group self-knowledge, but together they show that transparency accounts provide a promising route to understanding group self-knowledge. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers propose that the mind extends further than skin and skull. If they are right, then we should expect this to have some effect on our way of knowing our own mental states. If the content of my notebook can be part of my belief system, then looking at the notebook seems to be a way to get to know my own beliefs. However, it is at least not obvious whether self-ascribing a belief by looking at my notebook (...) is a case of introspection the same way that knowing my non-extended beliefs is. Traditionally this sort of introspection is thought to be privileged and special in ways that the extended introspection case seems not to be. There is nothing privileged about looking at my notebook. Anyone could do it. The aim of the paper is to find out how to understand extended introspection and whether there is something privileged and special about knowing one’s own extended beliefs. Moreover, the notebook case has close analogs using twenty-first century technology. It seems possible to know our beliefs that are extended to smartphones, wearable technology or a cloud-based data store. First, I present the case of extended introspection. I then discuss whether it should be understood as ordinary introspection or as mind-reading. Both seem to be bad fits, which finally prompts an original account for extended introspection based on epistemic rules. (shrink)

When does a group justifiedly believe that p? One answer to this question has been developed first by Schmitt and then by Hakli: when the group members jointly accept a reason for the belief. Call this the joint acceptance account of group justification. Their answer has great explanatory power, providing us with a way to account for cases in which the group's justification can diverge from the justification individual members have. Unfortunately, Jennifer Lackey developed a powerful argument against joint acceptance (...) accounts. She argues that these accounts lead to epistemically arbitrary reasons and therefore justification at will. Group justification loses the necessary connection to the world to be truth-conducive. In this paper I develop a new form of a joint acceptance account that can deal with Lackey's examples: the anchored joint acceptance account of group justification. I argue that properly understanding the role of epistemic expectations can help us form the best version of a joint acceptance account. While justification is only generated by joint acceptance of evidence, the evidential expectations towards a group are anchored in the group members. This anchoring guarantees that groups cannot manipulate their ultima facie justification illegitimately. (shrink)

In the current philosophical literature, determinism is rarely defined explicitly. This paper attempts to show that there are in fact many forms of determinism, most of which are familiar, and that these can be differentiated according to their particular components. Recognizing the composite character of determinism is thus central to demarcating its various forms.

The 2-c debate between the Greek Apologists and the pagan Graeco-Roman tradition is multifaceted and complex. Common ground can be found in the mutual commitment to reason as a reflection of the Logos: Reason, or the rationality embedded in things. Logos, in this picture, is participated in through a performance of reasoning whose reliability is presupposed in the discourses of both debating parties—contextualized here as the presupposition that the deliverances and activity of reason are reliable for uncovering reality. Presuppositions are (...) starting points and driving principles of inquiry, here designated as first principles. One presuppositional conflict between 2-c Greek Apologists, taking the apologetic works of Justin, Theophilus, Athenagoras, and the author of the Epistle to Diognetus as a sample, and the pagan tradition, taking Celsus as its 2-c culmination, is over how to justify the commitment to reason’s reliability in the above sense. My claim in this paper is twofold: first, that the pagan position is unable in principle to demonstrate the reliability of its own reasoning and that all such inquiry is circular: it is always a further question for the pagan why reasoning reveals reality. I propose that what would count as an answer to this challenge is a metaphysical ‘fit’ between human embodiment and reality. And second, that the Apologists avoid this unhappy conclusion by committing themselves to the embodiment of Reason in Jesus—that the embodied act of human reasoning reveals reality because Reason itself is embodied in the same way. The upshot is that unless the pagan abandons his position, he is trapped in a circular epistemology and cannot encounter the Christian witness on its own terms. (shrink)

Traditionally, the investigation of truth has been anchored in a priori reasoning. Cognitive science deviates from this tradition by adding empirical data on how people understand and use concepts. Building on psychophysics and machine learning methods, we introduce conceptual scaling, an approach to map people's understanding of abstract concepts. This approach, allows computing participant-specific conceptual maps from obtained ordinal comparison data, thereby quantifying perceived similarities among abstract concepts. Using this approach, we investigated individual's alignment with philosophical theories on truth and (...) the predictive capacity of conceptual maps. The obtained results indicated that, while people's understanding of truth is multifaceted and encapsulates notions of coherence and authenticity, alignment is best for the correspondence theory of truth. Furthermore, conceptual maps allowed predicting individual outcomes with an accuracy of roughly 70%. This research demonstrates that conceptual scaling offers accurate descriptions of individual's understanding of abstract concepts, behavioral predictions, and quantification of alignment with theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

The correct identification of the abuse of political power during the COVID-19 crisis remains a challenge because officially declaring the pandemic allowed political representatives to exercise additional power disguisable as the maintenance of functioning social order under the principle of preserving humankind. One way to observe the abuse of power in its excess is the degree of compliance exhibited by the people who laid juridical restrictions for the purpose of combating COVID-19. The behaviour of political representatives was evidence of political (...) exceptionalism, for political representatives, as decisive authorities, were the first to disregard measures introduced without suffering negative consequences. Such abuse catalysed the collapse of trust in state communities, but has for its true result the consolidation of the class system in which the ethical value of trust is played out. In this paper, I discuss how the behaviour of state representatives demonstrates the existence of political exceptionalism based on the class system and what this means for the persistence of national trust. (shrink)

There are two common reactions to Frege’s claim that some senses and thoughts are private. Privatists accept both private senses and thoughts, while intersubjectivists don’t accept either. Both sides agree on a pair of tacit assumptions: first, that private senses automatically give rise to private thoughts; and second, that private senses and thoughts are the most problematic entities to which Frege’s remarks on privacy give rise. The aim of this paper is to show that both assumptions are mistaken. This will (...) motivate a so far neglected, reconciliatory position between privatism and intersubjectivism according to which all thoughts are public while some senses are private. (shrink)

This paper closes a gap in joint acceptance accounts of the mental life of groups by presenting a theory of group self-knowledge in the joint acceptance framework. I start out by presenting desiderata for a theory of group self-knowledge. Any such theory has to explain the linguistic practice of group avowals, and how self-knowledge can play a role in practical and moral considerations. I develop an account of group self-knowledge in the joint acceptance framework that can explain these desiderata. I (...) argue that a group has self-knowledge of its own attitude A if and only if (i) the operative members jointly accept that the group has attitude A; and (ii) that joint acceptance is non-deviantly caused by the operative group members’ belief that the members jointly accepted attitude A; and (iii) the group has attitude A. Together (i) to (iii) give us conditions for a group having a justified, non-lucky, true belief about its own attitude. (shrink)