Frames, i.e., recursive attribute-value structures, are a general format for the decomposition of lexical concepts. Attributes assign unique values to objects and thus describe functional relations. Concepts can be classified into four groups: sortal, individual, relational and functional concepts. The classification is reflected by different grammatical roles of the corresponding nouns. The paper aims at a cognitively adequate decomposition, particularly, of sortal concepts by means of frames. Using typed feature structures, an explicit formalism for the characterization of cognitive frames is (...) developed. The frame model can be extended to account for typicality effects. Applying the paradigm of object-related neural synchronization, furthermore, a biologically motivated model for the cortical implementation of frames is developed. Cortically distributed synchronization patterns may be regarded as the fingerprints of concepts. (shrink)

This study explores the relation between pain sensitivity and the cognitive processing of words. 130 participants evaluated the pain-relatedness of a total of 600 two-syllabic nouns, and subsequently reported on their own pain sensitivity. The results demonstrate that pain-sensitive people (based on their self-report) associate words more strongly with pain than less sensitive people. In particular, concrete nouns like syringe, wound, knife, and cactus, are considered to be more pain-related for those who are more pain-sensitive. We discuss our results in (...) the light of three theoretical frameworks – cognitive bias, prototype theory, embodied account. We argue that the latter is best suited to explain the results of this study in the sense in which it implies the principle of body specificity, according to which different bodily characteristics lead to corresponding differences in the way in which people construct concepts and word meanings. (shrink)

Sind die Menschenrechte primär Ausdruck einer politischen Praxis und die Idee der Menschenrechte eine Art „Überbau“, den die Praxis epiphänomenal hervorbringt? Oder ist die Praxis der Menschenrechte das Ergebnis der Verwirklichung einer normativen Idee, die unabhängig von ihr existiert? Ist die Idee der Menschenrechte die Bedingung dafür, dass es die Praxis der Menschenrechte geben kann? Oder gibt es einen Vorrang der Praxis vor der Idee? In meinem Aufsatz argumentiere ich für zwei These: 1. These: Menschenrechte sind prinzipiell unabhängig von jeder (...) bestehenden rechtlichpolitischen Praxis und sind zugleich untrennbar an bestimmte rechtlich-politische Praktiken geknüpft. Darin besteht der konstitutive Widerspruch der Menschenrechte. 2. These: Aus diesem Widerspruch folgt nicht, dass wir aufhören sollten über Menschenrechte nachzudenken und eine Politik der Menschenrechte anzustreben. Der Widerspruch hat keine lähmende Wirkung, sondern ist theoretisch und praktisch produktiv. Um diese Thesen zu plausiblisieren, werde ich zunächst einige Grundzüge von Arendts Diskussion der Menschenrechte rekapitulieren (Abschnitt 2) und ihr Postulat eines den Menschenrechten vorgelagerten „Rechts, Rechte zu haben“ diskutieren (Abschnitt 3). Ausgehend von einer kritischen Diskussion der diskurstheoretischen Weiterentwicklung von Arendts These zu einem „Recht auf Rechtfertigung“ im diskurstheoretischen Konstruktivismus von Seyla Benhabib und Rainer Forst (Abschnitt 4) werde ich einen rechtfertigungstheoretischen Dekonstruktivismus vorstellen, der das Verhältnis von Praxis und Idee der Menschenrechte als produktiven Widerspruch fasst (Abschnitt 5). (shrink)

Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich am Beispiel des deutschen "Kopftuchstreits" mit der rechtlich-politischen Auseinandersetzung um subjektive Rechte innerhalb des liberalen Rechtsstaats. Wie Christoph Menke in seiner Deutung der für den politischen Liberalismus wesentlichen politischen Konflikte gezeigt hat, bezieht sich diese Auseinandersetzung vorrangig auf zwei Fragen: Wer sollte Anspruch darauf genießen, ein politisches Subjekt zu sein, das heißt, als Gleiche oder Gleicher berücksichtigt zu werden? Welche Ansprüche politischer Subjekte könneen als schützenswerte Verwirklichung subjektiver Rechte gelten? Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich vorwiegend mit (...) der Frage, wie die politischen Konflikte des letztgenannten Typs auf die rechtliche Auseinandersetzung um Grundrechte abfärben. Damit wende ich mich gegen ein Verständnis der Grundrechte, das diese als Garant der ethischen Neutralität eines liberalen Gemeinwesens ansieht. Ich möchte zeigen, dass der Sinn subjektiver Rechte in der liberalen Demokratie zwar unter anderem genau darin besteht, dass sie partikulare ethische Wertvorstellungen neutralisieren und die Bürgerinnen und Bürger innerhalb eines vernünftigen Rahmens vor Unterdrückung schützen. Wie eine Analyse der Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts (BVerfG) zum "Kopftuchstreit" zeigt, wird diese Funktion aber stets zugleich durch die partikulare Interpretation gleicher Rechte unterminiert. Dies bezeichne ich als die Dekonstruktion der Neutralität, die sich im Recht vollzieht. (shrink)

The current humanitarian use of drones is focused on two applications: disaster mapping and medical supply delivery. In response to the growing interest in drone deployment in the aid sector, we sought to develop a resource to support value sensitivity in humanitarian drone activities. Following a bottom-up approach encompassing a comprehensive literature review, two empirical studies, a review of guidance documents, and consultations with experts, this work illuminates the nature and scope of ethical challenges encountered by humanitarian organizations embarking upon (...) innovation programmes. The Framework for the Ethics Assessment of Humanitarian Drones (FEAHD) identifies five values and five key questions related to ethical considerations along the decision chain of humanitarian drone activities. It fills a gap between high-level, principle-based guidance related to humanitarian innovation, and detailed operation-oriented checklists for projects involving the use of drones. In this way, the FEAHD contributes to support value sensitivity in the humanitarian use of drones. (shrink)

Previous research in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) suggests that a main aim of explainability approaches is to satisfy specific interests, goals, expectations, needs, and demands regarding artificial systems (we call these “stakeholders' desiderata”) in a variety of contexts. However, the literature on XAI is vast, spreads out across multiple largely disconnected disciplines, and it often remains unclear how explainability approaches are supposed to achieve the goal of satisfying stakeholders' desiderata. This paper discusses the main classes of stakeholders calling for explainability (...) of artificial systems and reviews their desiderata. We provide a model that explicitly spells out the main concepts and relations necessary to consider and investigate when evaluating, adjusting, choosing, and developing explainability approaches that aim to satisfy stakeholders' desiderata. This model can serve researchers from the variety of different disciplines involved in XAI as a common ground. It emphasizes where there is interdisciplinary potential in the evaluation and the development of explainability approaches. (shrink)

Intellectual humility is an interesting but underexplored disposition. The claim “I am (intellectually) humble” seems paradoxical in that someone who has the disposition in question would not typically volunteer it. There is an explanatory gap between the meaning of the sentence and the meaning the speaker expresses by uttering it. We therefore suggest analyzing intellectual humility semantically, using a psycholexical approach that focuses on both synonyms and antonyms of ‘intellectual humility’. We present a thesaurus-based method to map the semantic space (...) of intellectual humility as a heuristic to support philosophical and psychological analysis of this disposition. We find three semantic clusters that compose intellectual humility: the sensible self, the discreet self, and the inquisitive self; likewise, we find three clusters that compose its contraries: the overrated self, the underrated other, and the underrated self. (shrink)

Is justice (merely) an expression of particular values or is it to be understood as a (universal) cross-cultural standard of validity? Following the ideas of Jacques Derrida, this book provides a new answer to this question: Justice is to be explained as a process of deconstruction. To arrive at this conclusion, I proceed from a critical discussion of Martin Heidegger's approach to social philosophy in Being and Time which I connect with a detailed analysis of the implications of Derrida's writings (...) on practical philosophy aspiring to provide a variety of insights, both critical and constructive, into the cultural and normative foundations of democracy. Thematically, the book bridges the frontiers between the philosophy of law, cultural and social philosophy, ethics and political theory, focusing on fundamental questions of the constitution of normativity, responsibility and justification. In this way, my reading of Heidegger and Derrida aims to shed light on the nature of the political problems that concern our societies today. The file contains the table of contents and the first two (introductory) chapters, the introductions of the remaining chapters, as well as the concluding remarks (in German). (shrink)

Like all causal theories in philosophy, the causal theory of action is plagued by the problem of deviant causal chains. I have proposed a solution on the basis of the assumption that mental states and events are causally efficacious in virtue of their contents. This solution has been questioned by Torbjörn Tännsjö (2009). First, I will reply to the objection, and then I will discuss Tännsjö’s alternative.

The idea of levels of organization plays a central role in the philosophy of the life sciences. In this article, I first examine the explanatory goals that have motivated accounts of levels of organization. I then show that the most state-of-the-art and scientifically plausible account of levels of organization, the account of levels of mechanism proposed by Bechtel and Craver, is fundamentally problematic. Finally, I argue that the explanatory goals can be reached by adopting a deflationary approach, where levels of (...) organization give way to more well-defined and fundamental notions, such as scale and composition. (shrink)

Robustness is often presented as a guideline for distinguishing the true or real from mere appearances or artifacts. Most of recent discussions of robustness have focused on the kind of derivational robustness analysis introduced by Levins, while the related but distinct idea of robustness as multiple accessibility, defended by Wimsatt, has received less attention. In this paper, I argue that the latter kind of robustness, when properly understood, can provide justification for ontological commitments. The idea is that we are justified (...) in believing that things studied by science are real insofar as we have robust evidence for them. I develop and analyze this idea in detail, and based on concrete examples show that it plays an important role in science. Finally, I demonstrate how robustness can be used to clarify the debate on scientific realism and to formulate new arguments. (shrink)

The relationship between psychological states and the brain remains an unresolved issue in philosophy of psychology. One appealing solution that has been influential both in science and in philosophy is Dennett’s concept of the intentional stance, according to which beliefs and desires are real and objective phenomena, but not necessarily states of the brain. A fundamental shortcoming of this approach is that it does not seem to leave any causal role for beliefs and desires in influencing behavior. In this paper, (...) I show that intentional states ascribed from the intentional stance should be seen as real causes, develop this to an independently plausible ontological position, and present a response to the latest interventionist causal exclusion worries. (shrink)

Though ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism is apparently based on disagreement, this aspect of skepticism has been widely neglected in contemporary discussion on skepticism. The paper provides a rational reconstruction of the skeptical argument from disagreement that can be found in the books of Sextus Empiricus. It is argued that this argument forms a genuine skeptical paradox that has no fully satisfactory resolution. All attempts to resolve it make knowledge or justified belief either intuitively too easy or impossible.

One of the most fundamental questions in the philosophy of mathematics concerns the relation between truth and formal proof. The position according to which the two concepts are the same is called deflationism, and the opposing viewpoint substantialism. In an important result of mathematical logic, Kurt Gödel proved in his first incompleteness theorem that all consistent formal systems containing arithmetic include sentences that can neither be proved nor disproved within that system. However, such undecidable Gödel sentences can be established to (...) be true once we expand the formal system with Alfred Tarski s semantical theory of truth, as shown by Stewart Shapiro and Jeffrey Ketland in their semantical arguments for the substantiality of truth. According to them, in Gödel sentences we have an explicit case of true but unprovable sentences, and hence deflationism is refuted. -/- Against that, Neil Tennant has shown that instead of Tarskian truth we can expand the formal system with a soundness principle, according to which all provable sentences are assertable, and the assertability of Gödel sentences follows. This way, the relevant question is not whether we can establish the truth of Gödel sentences, but whether Tarskian truth is a more plausible expansion than a soundness principle. In this work I will argue that this problem is best approached once we think of mathematics as the full human phenomenon, and not just consisting of formal systems. When pre-formal mathematical thinking is included in our account, we see that Tarskian truth is in fact not an expansion at all. I claim that what proof is to formal mathematics, truth is to pre-formal thinking, and the Tarskian account of semantical truth mirrors this relation accurately. -/- However, the introduction of pre-formal mathematics is vulnerable to the deflationist counterargument that while existing in practice, pre-formal thinking could still be philosophically superfluous if it does not refer to anything objective. Against this, I argue that all truly deflationist philosophical theories lead to arbitrariness of mathematics. In all other philosophical accounts of mathematics there is room for a reference of the pre-formal mathematics, and the expansion of Tarkian truth can be made naturally. Hence, if we reject the arbitrariness of mathematics, I argue in this work, we must accept the substantiality of truth. Related subjects such as neo-Fregeanism will also be covered, and shown not to change the need for Tarskian truth. -/- The only remaining route for the deflationist is to change the underlying logic so that our formal languages can include their own truth predicates, which Tarski showed to be impossible for classical first-order languages. With such logics we would have no need to expand the formal systems, and the above argument would fail. From the alternative approaches, in this work I focus mostly on the Independence Friendly (IF) logic of Jaakko Hintikka and Gabriel Sandu. Hintikka has claimed that an IF language can include its own adequate truth predicate. I argue that while this is indeed the case, we cannot recognize the truth predicate as such within the same IF language, and the need for Tarskian truth remains. In addition to IF logic, also second-order logic and Saul Kripke s approach using Kleenean logic will be shown to fail in a similar fashion. (shrink)

I show that the recent account of levels in neuroscience proposed by Craver and Bechtel is unsatisfactory since it fails to provide a plausible criterion for being at the same level and is incompatible with Craver and Bechtel’s account of downward causation. Furthermore, I argue that no distinct notion of levels is needed for analyzing explanations and causal issues in neuroscience: it is better to rely on more well-defined notions such as composition and scale. One outcome of this is that (...) apparent cases of downward causation can be analyzed away. (shrink)

In Pantsar (2014), an outline for an empirically feasible epistemological theory of arithmetic is presented. According to that theory, arithmetical knowledge is based on biological primitives but in the resulting empirical context develops an essentially a priori character. Such contextual a priori theory of arithmetical knowledge can explain two of the three characteristics that are usually associated with mathematical knowledge: that it appears to be a priori and objective. In this paper it is argued that it can also explain the (...) ... (shrink)

Traditional epistemology is haunted by the spectre of scepticism. Yet the more pressing concern in the contemporary intellectual scene must surely be relativism rather than scepticism. This has been the case in the history and philosophy of science since the work of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, to say nothing of the emergence of the sociology of scientific knowledge. In Epistemic Relativism: A Constructive Critique, Markus Seidel comes firmly to grips with this modern spectre. Though Seidel devotes attention to (...) other forms of relativism, the primary focus of the book is epistemic relativism, which he understands to be relativism about epistemic justification. Relativist or relativist-tending authors such as Kuhn, Nelson Goodman, Martin Kusch, Richard Rorty and Peter Winch receive some discussion . But Seidel takes as his main relativist target the work of the founding figures of the Edinburgh “strong programme”, Barry Barnes and David Bloor. While .. (shrink)

We propose a multi-step evaluation schema designed to help procurement agencies and others to examine the ethical dimensions of autonomous systems to be applied in the security sector, including autonomous weapons systems.

Moral philosophers and psychologists often assume that people judge morally lucky and morally unlucky agents differently, an assumption that stands at the heart of the Puzzle of Moral Luck. We examine whether the asymmetry is found for reflective intuitions regarding wrongness, blame, permissibility, and punishment judg- ments, whether people’s concrete, case-based judgments align with their explicit, abstract principles regarding moral luck, and what psychological mechanisms might drive the effect. Our experiments produce three findings: First, in within-subjects experiments favorable to reflective (...) deliberation, the vast majority of people judge a lucky and an unlucky agent as equally blameworthy, and their actions as equally wrong and permissible. The philosophical Puzzle of Moral Luck, and the challenge to the very possibility of systematic ethics it is frequently taken to engender, thus simply do not arise. Second, punishment judgments are significantly more outcome- dependent than wrongness, blame, and permissibility judgments. While this constitutes evidence in favor of current Dual Process Theories of moral judgment, the latter need to be qualified: punishment and blame judgments do not seem to be driven by the same process, as is commonly argued in the literature. Third, in between-subjects experiments, outcome has an effect on all four types of moral judgments. This effect is mediated by negligence ascriptions and can ultimately be explained as due to differing probability ascriptions across cases. (shrink)

Intellectual humility can be broadly construed as being conscious of the limits of one’s existing knowledge and capable to acquire more knowledge, which makes it a key virtue of the information age. However, the claim “I am (intellectually) humble” seems paradoxical in that someone who has the disposition in question would not typically volunteer it. There is an explanatory gap between the meaning of the sentence and the meaning the speaker ex- presses by uttering it. We therefore suggest analyzing intellectual (...) humility semantically, using a psycholexical approach that focuses on both synonyms and antonyms of ‘intellectual humili- ty’. We present a thesaurus-based methodology to map the semantic space of intellectual hu- mility and the vices it opposes as a heuristic to support philosophical and psychological anal- ysis of this disposition. We performed the mapping both in English and German in order to test for possible cultural differences in the understanding of intellectual humility. In both lan- guages, we find basically the same three semantic dimensions of intellectual humility (sensi- bility, discreetness, and knowledge dimensions) as well as three dimensions of its related vic- es (self-overrating, other-underrating and dogmatism dimensions). The resulting semantic clusters were validated in an empirical study with English (n=276) and German (n=406) par- ticipants. We find medium to high correlations (0.54-0.72) between thesaurus similarity and perceived similarity, and we can validate the labels of the three dimensions identified in the study. But we also find indications of the limitations of the thesaurus methodology in terms of cluster plausibility. We conclude by discussing the importance of these findings for construct- ing psychometric scales for intellectual humility. (shrink)

This paper concerns anti-Humean intuitions about connections in nature. It argues for the existence of a de re link that is not necessity.Some anti-Humeans tacitly assume that metaphysical necessity can be used for all sorts of anti-Humean desires. Metaphysical necessity is thought to stick together whatever would be loose and separate in a Hume world, as if it were a kind of universal superglue.I argue that this is not feasible. Metaphysical necessity might connect synchronically co-existent properties—kinds and their essential features, (...) for example—but it is difficult to see how it could also serve as the binding force for successions of events. That is, metaphysical necessity seems not to be fit for diachronic, causal affairs in which causal laws, causation, or dispositions are involved. A different anti-Humean connection in nature has to do that job.My arguments focus mainly on a debate which has been the battleground for Humean vs. anti-Humean intuitions for many decades—namely, the analysis of dispositional predicates—yet I believe (but do not argue here) that the arguments generalise to causation and causal laws straightforwardly. (shrink)

In “How Art Teaches: A Lesson from Goodman”, Markus Lammenranta inquires if and how artworks can convey propositional knowledge about the world. Lammenranta argues that the cognitive role of art can be explained by revising Nelson Goodman’s theory of symbols. According to Lammenranta, the problem of Goodman’s theory is that, despite providing an account of art’s symbolic function, it denies art the possibility of mediating propositional knowledge. Lammenranta claims that Goodman’s theory can be augmented by enlarging it with an (...) account of direct reference developed by Bertrand Russell and contemporary philosophy of language. On this basis, an expanded version of Goodman’s theory can explain how artworks can express propositions even without being linguistic, representational, or non-fictive. Lammenranta explicates his theory by explaining how abstract paintings and literary fictions can mediate propositional claims about the actual, everyday world. (shrink)

This paper proposes and defends an account of what it is to act for reasons. In the first part, I will discuss the desire-belief and the deliberative model of acting for reasons. I will argue that we can avoid the weaknesses and retain the strengths of both views, if we pursue an alternative according to which acting for reasons involves taking something as a reason. In the main part, I will develop an account of what it is to take something (...) as a reason for action. On the basis of this, I will then offer a new account of what it is to act for reasons. (shrink)

This paper combines two ideas: (1) That the Lewisian best system analysis of lawhood (BSA) can cope with laws that have exceptions (cf. Braddon-Mitchell in Noûs 35(2):260–277, 2001; Schrenk in The metaphysics of ceteris paribus laws. Ontos, Frankfurt, 2007). (2) That a BSA can be executed not only on the mosaic of perfectly natural properties but also on any set of special science properties (cf., inter alia, Schrenk 2007, Selected papers contributed to the sections of GAP.6, 6th international congress of (...) the society for analytical philosophy. Mentis, Paderborn/Münster, 2008; Cohen and Callender in Philos Stud 145:1–34, 2009, Erkenntnis 73:427–447, 2010). Bringing together (1) and (2) results in an analysis of special science ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

In this paper, I study how mathematicians are presented in western popular culture. I identify five stereotypes that I test on the best-known modern movies and television shows containing a significant amount of mathematics or important mathematician characters: (1) Mathematics is highly valued as an intellectual pursuit. (2) Little attention is given to the mathematical content. (3) Mathematical practice is portrayed in an unrealistic way. (4) Mathematicians are asocial and unable to enjoy normal life. (5) Higher mathematics is ...

Increasingly complex and autonomous systems require machine ethics to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks to society arising from the new technology. It is challenging to decide which type of ethical theory to employ and how to implement it effectively. This survey provides a threefold contribution. First, it introduces a trimorphic taxonomy to analyze machine ethics implementations with respect to their object (ethical theories), as well as their nontechnical and technical aspects. Second, an exhaustive selection and description of relevant (...) works is presented. Third, applying the new taxonomy to the selected works, dominant research patterns, and lessons for the field are identified, and future directions for research are suggested. (shrink)

The luck argument raises a serious challenge for libertarianism about free will. In broad outline, if an action is undetermined, then it appears to be a matter of luck whether or not one performs it. And if it is a matter of luck whether or not one performs an action, then it seems that the action is not performed with free will. This argument is most effective against event-causal accounts of libertarianism. Recently, Franklin (Philosophical Studies 156:199–230, 2011) has defended event-causal (...) libertarianism against four formulations of the luck argument. I will argue that three of Franklin’s responses are unsuccessful and that there are important versions of the luck challenge that his defense has left unaddressed. (shrink)

Alfred Mele’s zygote argument is widely considered to be the strongest version of the manipulation argument against compatibilism (about free will and determinism). Opponents have focused largely on the first of its two premises and on the overall dialectic. My focus here will be on the underlying thought experiment—the Diana scenario—and on the second premise of the argument. I will argue that reflection on the Diana scenario shows that the second premise does not hold, and we will see that my (...) objection to the second premise helps to defend the claim that manipulation arguments face, in general, a dilemma. (shrink)

Although scientific realism is the default position in the life sciences, philosophical accounts of realism are geared towards physics and run into trouble when applied to fields such as biology or neuroscience. In this paper, I formulate a new robustness-based version of entity realism, and show that it provides a plausible account of realism for the life sciences that is also continuous with scientific practice. It is based on the idea that if there are several independent ways of measuring, detecting (...) or deriving something, then we are justified in believing that it is real. I also consider several possible objections to robustness-based entity realism, discuss its relationship to ontic structural realism, and show how it has the potential to provide a novel response to the pessimistic induction argument. (shrink)

Empirical evidence challenges many of the assumptions that underlie traditional philosophical and commonsense conceptions of human agency. It has been suggested that this evidence threatens also to undermine free will and moral responsibility. In this paper, I will focus on the purported threat to moral responsibility. The evidence challenges assumptions concerning the ability to exercise conscious control and to act for reasons. This raises an apparent challenge to moral responsibility as these abilities appear to be necessary for morally responsible agency. (...) I will argue that this challenge collapses once the underlying conditions on moral responsibility are specified in sufficient detail. I will argue, in other words, that the empirical evidence does not support a challenge to the assumption that we are, in general, morally responsible agents. In the final section, I will suggest that empirical research on human agency is nevertheless relevant to various questions about moral responsibility. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward the triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not (...) stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels–but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favoured utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas–and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarisation surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how the dominant methods in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) may deliver insights that do not generalise to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Benjamin Libet’s work paved the way for the neuroscientific study of free will. Other scientists have praised this research as groundbreaking. In philosophy, the reception has been more negative, often even dismissive. First, I will propose a diagnosis of this striking discrepancy. I will suggest that the experiments seem irrelevant, from the perspective of philosophy, due to the way in which they operationalize free will. In particular, I will argue that this operational definition does not capture free will properly and (...) that it is based on a false dichotomy between internal and external causes. However, I will also suggest that this problem could be overcome, as there are no obvious obstacles to an operationalization of free will that is in accord with the philosophical conception of free will. (shrink)

Assertions are speech acts by means of which we express beliefs. As such they are at the heart of our linguistic and social practices. Recent research has focused extensively on the question whether the speech act of assertion is governed by norms, and if so, under what conditions it is acceptable to make an assertion. Standard theories propose, for instance, that one should only assert that p if one knows that p (the knowledge account), or that one should only assert (...) that p if p is true (the truth account). In a series of four experiments, this question is addressed empirically. Contrary to previous findings, knowledge turns out to be a poor predictor of assertability, and the norm of assertion is not factive either. The studies here presented provide empirical evidence in favour of the view that a speaker is warranted to assert that p only if her belief that p is justified. (shrink)

This paper explores whether it is possible to reformulate or re-interpret Lewis’s theory of fundamental laws of nature—his “best system analysis”—in such a way that it becomes a useful theory for special science laws. One major step in this enterprise is to make plausible how law candidates within best system competitions can tolerate exceptions—this is crucial because we expect special science laws to be so called “ceteris paribus laws ”. I attempt to show how this is possible and also how (...) we can thereby make the first step towards a solution for the infamous difficulties surrounding the troublesome ceteris paribus clause. The paper outlines the general ideas of the theory but also points out some of its difficulties and background assumptions. (shrink)

Abstract In the new millennium there have been important empirical developments in the philosophy of mathematics. One of these is the so-called “Empirical Philosophy of Mathematics”(EPM) of Buldt, Löwe, Müller and Müller-Hill, which aims to complement the methodology of the philosophy of mathematics with empirical work. Among other things, this includes surveys of mathematicians, which EPM believes to give philosophically important results. In this paper I take a critical look at the sociological part of EPM as a case study of (...) ... (shrink)

The recent controversy about misinformation has moved a question into the focus of the public eye that has occupied philosophers for decades: Under what conditions is it appropriate to assert a certain claim? When asserting a claim that x, must one know that x? Must x be true? Might it be normatively acceptable to assert whatever one believes? In the largest cross-cultural study to date (total n = 1,091) on the topic, findings from the United States, Germany, and Japan suggest (...) that, in order to claim that x, x need not be known, and it can be false. However, the data show, we do expect considerable epistemic responsibility on the speaker’s behalf: In order to appropriately assert a claim, the speaker must have good reasons to believe it. (shrink)

Benjamin Libet's empirical challenge to free will has received a great deal of attention and criticism. A standard line of response has emerged that many take to be decisive against Libet's challenge. In the first part of this paper, I will argue that this standard response fails to put the challenge to rest. It fails, in particular, to address a recent follow-up experiment that raises a similar worry about free will (Soon, Brass, Heinze, & Haynes, 2008). In the second part, (...) however, I will argue that we can altogether avoid Libet-style challenges if we adopt a traditional compatibilist account of free will. In the final section, I will briefly explain why there is good and independent reason to think about free will in this way. (shrink)

According to contextualism, the extension of claims of personal taste is dependent on the context of utterance. According to truth relativism, their extension depends on the context of assessment. On this view, when the tastes of a speaker change, so does the truth value of a previously uttered taste claim, and if it is false, the speaker is required to retract it. Both views make strong empirical assumptions, which are here put to the test for the first time in three (...) experiments with over 740 participants. It turns out that the linguistic behaviour of ordinary English speakers is consistent with contextualist predictions and inconsistent with the predictions of the most widely discussed form of truth relativism advocated by John MacFarlane. (shrink)

A coherent practice of mens rea (‘guilty mind’) ascription in criminal law presupposes a concept of mens rea which is insensitive to the moral valence of an action’s outcome. For instance, an assessment of whether an agent harmed another person intentionally should be unaffected by the severity of harm done. Ascriptions of intentionality made by laypeople, however, are subject to a strong outcome bias. As demonstrated by the Knobe effect, a knowingly incurred negative side effect is standardly judged intentional, whereas (...) a positive side effect is not. We report the first empirical investigation into intentionality ascriptions made by professional judges, which finds (i) that professionals are sensitive to the moral valence of outcome type, and (ii) that the worse the outcome, the higher the propensity to ascribe intentionality. The data shows the intentionality ascriptions of professional judges to be inconsistent with the concept of mens rea supposedly at the foundation of criminal law. (shrink)

Since causal processes can be prevented and interfered with, law-governed causation is a challenge for necessitarian theories of laws of nature. To show that there is a problematic friction between necessity and interference, I focus on David Armstrong's theory; with one proviso, his lawmaker, nomological necessity, is supposed to be instantiated as the causation of the law's second relatum whenever its first relatum is instantiated. His proviso is supposed to handle interference cases, but fails to do so. In order to (...) be able to handle interferences, any theory which utilizes a kind of necessitation as lawmaker has to downgrade what it treats as necessity to something more akin to (Newtonian) forces. (shrink)

The causal theory of action has been the standard view in the philosophy of action and mind. In this chapter, I will present responses to two challenges to the theory. The first says, basically, that there is no positive argument in favour of the causal theory, as the only reason that supports it consists in the apparent lack of tenable alternatives. The second challenge says that the theory fails to capture the phenomenon of agency, as it reduces activity to mere (...) happenings (events and event-causal processes). This is often referred to as the problem of "disappearing agency". My main aim is to show that there is no problem of disappearing agency, and we will see that my response to the first challenge will be conducive to this end. I will present a positive argument for the causal theory on the basis of considerations concerning the metaphysics of agency, and I will suggest that we "own" the agency that springs from our mental states and events "by default". (shrink)

Libertarianism appears to be incoherent, because free will appears to be incompatible with indeterminism. In support of this claim, van Inwagen offered an argument that is now known as the “rollback argument”. In a recent reply, Lara Buchak has argued that the underlying thought experiment fails to support the first of two key premises. On her view, this points to an unexplored alternative in the free will debate, which she calls “chance-incompatibilism”. I will argue that the rollback thought experiment does (...) support the second key premise of the argument, and, more importantly, that libertarianism is committed to the first premise for independent reasons concerning the relationship between the normative and causal strength of the agent’s reasons. The upshot will be that chance-incompatibilism is not a promising new alternative in the free will debate, and we will see that the debate around those issues can benefit from more attention to the role of the agent’s reasons for action. (shrink)

According to Anscombe, acting intentionally entails knowledge in ac- tion. This thesis has been near-universally rejected due to a well-known counter- example by Davidson: a man intending to make ten legible carbon copies might not believe with confidence, and hence not know, that he will succeed. If he does, however, his action surely counts as intentional. Damaging as it seems, an even more powerful objection can be levelled against Anscombe: while act- ing, there is as yet no fact of the (...) matter as to whether the agent will succeed. Since his belief that he will is not yet true while his action is in progress, he can- not possibly know that he is indeed bringing about the intended goal. Knowl- edge in action is not only unnecessary for intentional action, it seems, but–at least as regards success-bound types of action–impossible to attain in the first place. -/- In this paper I argue that traditional strategies to counter these objections are unsatisfactory and propose a new account of knowledge in action which has two core features: (i) It invokes an externalist conception of justification which not only meets Davidson’s challenge, but also casts doubts on the tacit internalist premise on which his example relies. (ii) Drawing on recent work about by John MacFarlane, the proposed account conceives of claims to in action as assessment-sensitive so as to overcome the factivity objection. From a retrospective point of evaluation, previous claims about future events and actions can not only be deemed as having been true, but also as having been known. (shrink)

Given some reasonable assumptions concerning the nature of mental causation, non-reductive physicalism faces the following dilemma. If mental events cause physical events, they merely overdetermine their effects (given the causal closure of the physical). If mental events cause only other mental events, they do not make the kind of difference we want them to. This dilemma can be avoided if we drop the dichotomy between physical and mental events. Mental events make a real difference if they cause actions. But actions (...) are neither mental nor physical events. They are realized by physical events, but they are not type-identical with them. This gives us non-reductive physicalism without downward causation. The tenability of this view has been questioned. Jaegwon Kim, in particular, has argued that non-reductive physicalism is committed to downward causation. Appealing to the nature of actions, I will argue that this commitment can be avoided. (shrink)

According to radical versions of embodied cognition, human cognition and agency should be explained without the ascription of representational mental states. According to a standard reply, accounts of embodied cognition can explain only instances of cognition and agency that are not “representation-hungry”. Two main types of such representation-hungry phenomena have been discussed: cognition about “the absent” and about “the abstract”. Proponents of representationalism have maintained that a satisfactory account of such phenomena requires the ascription of mental representations. Opponents have denied (...) this. I will argue that there is another important representation-hungry phenomenon that has been overlooked in this debate: temporally extended planning agency. In particular, I will argue that it is very difficult to see how planning agency can be explained without the ascription of mental representations, even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that cognition about the absent and abstract can. We will see that this is a serious challenge for the radical as well as the more modest anti-representationalist versions of embodied cognition, and we will see that modest anti-representationalism is an unstable position. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss a phenomenon we call perspectival plurality, which has gone largely unnoticed in the current debate between relativism and contextualism about predicates of personal taste. According to perspectival plurality, the truth value of a sentence containing more than one PPT may depend on more than one perspective. Prima facie, the phenomenon engenders a problem for relativism and can be shaped into an argument in favor of contextualism. We explore the consequences of perspectival plurality in depth and (...) assess several possible responses on behalf of advocates of relativism. (shrink)

This paper presents a series of studies (total N=579) which demonstrate that folk judgments concerning the reasonableness of decisions and actions depend strongly on whether they engender positive or negative consequences. A particular decision is deemed more reasonable in retrospect when it produces beneficial consequences than when it produces harmful consequences, even if the situation in which the decision was taken and the epistemic circumstances of the agent are held fixed across conditions. This finding is worrisome for the law, where (...) the reasonable person standard plays a prominent role. The legal concept of reasonableness is outcome-insensitive: whether the defendant acted in a reasonable fashion or not depends exclusively on her context of action, no matter how things play out. Folk judgments of reasonableness are thus inconsistent with the legal concept of reasonableness. Problematically, in common law jurisdictions, the decision whether a defendant’s behavior was reasonable or not is frequently (though not necessarily) delegated to a lay jury. (shrink)