JUNE 2015 UPDATE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY: JOHN CORCORAN’S PUBLICATIONS ON ARISTOTLE 1972–2015 By John Corcoran -/- This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications relevant to his research on Aristotle’s logic. Sections I, II, III, and IV list 21 articles, 44 abstracts, 3 books, and 11 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article from Corcoran’s Philadelphia period that antedates his Aristotle studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article from his (...) Buffalo period first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated as listed or with endnotes connecting them with other work and pointing out passages that in-retrospect are seen to be misleading and in a few places erroneous. In addition, Section V, “Discussions”, is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 23 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 69 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is also annotated as listed or with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. Section VI, “Alternatives”, lists recent works on Aristotle’s logic oblivious of Corcoran’s research and, more generally, of the Lukasiewicz-initiated tradition. As is evident from Section VII, “Acknowledgements”, Corcoran’s publications benefited from consultation with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, Roberto Torretti, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in collaboration with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. -/- REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. Also, let me know of passages I should comment on. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications devoted at least in part to Aristotle’s logic. Sections I–IV list 20 articles, 43 abstracts, 3 books, and 10 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article that antedates Corcoran’s Aristotle’s studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated with endnotes connecting them with (...) other work. In addition, Section V “Discussions” is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 22 in the 1980s, 39 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 65 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is annotated with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. As is evident from the Acknowledgements sections, all of Corcoran’s publications benefited from correspondence with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in consultation with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications relevant on Aristotle’s logic. The Sections I, II, III, and IV list respectively 23 articles, 44 abstracts, 3 books, and 11 reviews. Section I starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article—from Corcoran’s Philadelphia period that antedates his discovery of Aristotle’s natural deduction system—and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article—from his Buffalo period first reporting his original results. It ends with works published in 2015. (...) Some items are annotated as listed or with endnotes connecting them with other work and pointing out passages that, in retrospect, are seen to be misleading and in a few places erroneous. In addition, Section V, “Discussions”, is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 10 items published in the 1970s, 24 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, 60 in the 2000s, and 70 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is also annotated as listed or with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. Section VI, “Alternatives”, lists recent works on Aristotle’s logic oblivious of Corcoran’s research and, more generally in some cases, even of the Łukasiewicz-initiated tradition. As is evident from Section VII, “Acknowledgements”, Corcoran’s publications benefited from consultation with other scholars, most notably George Boger, Charles Kahn, John Mulhern, Mary Mulhern, Anthony Preus, Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, Roberto Torretti, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in collaboration with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. (shrink)

The best accuracy arguments for probabilism apply only to credence functions with finite domains, that is, credence functions that assign credence to at most finitely many propositions. This is a significant limitation. It reveals that the support for the accuracy-first program in epistemology is a lot weaker than it seems at first glance, and it means that accuracy arguments cannot yet accomplish everything that their competitors, the pragmatic (Dutch book) arguments, can. In this paper, I investigate the extent to which (...) this limitation can be overcome. Building on the best arguments in finite domains, I present two accuracy arguments for probabilism that are perfectly general—they apply to credence functions with arbitrary domains. I then discuss how the arguments’ premises can be challenged. We will see that it is particularly difficult to characterize admissible accuracy measures in infinite domains. (shrink)

Scientists imagine for epistemic reasons, and these imaginings can be better or worse. But what does it mean for an imagining to be epistemically better or worse? There are at least three metaepistemological frameworks that present different answers to this question: epistemological consequentialism, deontic epistemology, and virtue epistemology. This paper presents empirical evidence that scientists adopt each of these different epistemic frameworks with respect to imagination, but argues that the way they do this is best explained if scientists are fundamentally (...) epistemic consequentialists about imagination. (shrink)

This paper argues that Kant’s concept of ‘respect’ for the moral law has roots in Adam Smith’s concept of ‘regard’ for the general rules of conduct, which was translated as Achtung in the first German translation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. After illustrating that Kant’s technical understanding of respect appeared relatively late in his intellectual development, I argue that Kant’s concept of respect and Smith’s concept of regard share a basic similarity: they are both a single complex phenomenon with (...) two core aspects, namely an attitude and a feeling. I then suggest that the concept of regard offered Kant a way to deal a problem concerning moral motivation that he was trying to solve at the time he likely first read Smith. I conclude by drawing some implications from the account I have offered for our understanding of Kant’s relation to Smith more generally. (shrink)

Conventionalists hold that the sorts of events that one survives—such as teletransportation, or a brain transplant—is at least partly determined by our attitudes. But if Conventionalism is true, whose attitudes directly determine whether one survives? Do the individual's attitudes do all the work as Private Conventionalists hold, or do the community's attitudes also factor in as Public Conventionalists hold? There has recently been a greater push towards Private Conventionalism, while explicit arguments for Public Conventionalism are difficult to come by. In (...) this paper, I attempt to rectify the situation by presenting my case for Public Conventionalism. (shrink)

The standard way to test alternative descriptive theories of moral judgment is by asking subjects to evaluate (amongst others) sacrificial dilemmas, where acting classifies as a utilitarian moral judgment and not acting classifies as a deontological moral judgment. Previous research uncovered many situational factors that alter subject’s moral judgments without affecting which type of action utilitarianism or deontology would recommend. This literature review provides a systematic analysis of the experimental literature on the influence of situational factors on moral judgments in (...) sacrificial dilemmas. It analyses 53 articles in detail and reports mean effect sizes, as well as operationalizations, for 36 situational factors that significantly influence moral judgment. Moreover, the review discusses how the impact of situational factors relates to a dual process theory of moral judgment. It supports the view that utilitarian judgments are driven by controlled cognitive processes and shows that the drivers of deontological judgments depend on valence. (shrink)

A central question in the philosophy of science is: What is a law of nature? Different answers to this question define an important schism: Humeans, in the wake of David Hume, hold that the laws of nature are nothing over and above what actually happens and reject irreducible facts about natural modality (Lewis, 1983, 1994; cf. Miller, 2015). According to Non-Humeans, by contrast, the laws are metaphysically fundamental (Maudlin, 2007) or grounded in primitive modal structures, such as dispositional essences of (...) powerful properties (Bird, 2007), necessitation relations (Armstrong, 1983), or primitive subjunctive facts (Lange, 2009). This volume focuses on recent developments in the discussion of Humeanism, specifically on pragmatic versions of the view that put the needs of limited agents like us front and center. (shrink)

This paper argues against the common justification for the necessity of the state through the particular difficulty of private property right. Instead, I argue that the necessity of the state is internal to the concept of right in general. In order to show this, I point out how Kants adoption of hylomorphic language for the concept of right, where there is a formal and material aspect of right, allows us to understand the Rechtslehre as progressing through a syllogistic deduction from (...) innate right (major), private right (minor) to public right (conclusion). Material right is made necessary through its subsumption under formal right in the civil condition. (shrink)

Around 540 million years ago there was a sudden, dramatic adaptive radiation known as the Cambrian Explosion. This event marked the origin of almost all of the phyla (major lineages characterized by fundamental body plans) of animals that would ever live on earth, as well the appearance of many notable features such as rigid skeletons and other hard parts, complex jointed appendages, eyes, and brains. This radical evolutionary event has been a major puzzle for evolutionary biologists since Darwin, and while (...) our understanding of it has recently improved with new fossil finds, richer molecular phylogenies, and better grasp of ecological, evolutionary, and developmental processes generally, unanswered questions remain. In this paper I argue that a basic cognitive toolkit for embodied, object-oriented, spatial cognition (what I call Basic Cognitive Embodiment) is a practical necessity for control of a large, mobile, complexly articulated body in space. This hypothesis allows us to relate the complexification of animal bodies to the complexification of perception, cognition and behavior in a way that can help to fill in gaps in our emerging picture of the Cambrian Explosion, as well as shed light on the deep evolutionary origins of the mind. (shrink)

This chapter defends the view that manipulated behaviour is explained by an injustice. Injustices that explain manipulated behaviour need not involve agential features such as intentionality. Therefore, technology can manipulate us, even if technological artefacts like robots, intelligent software agents, or other ‘mere tools’ lack agential features such as intentionality. The chapter thus sketches a comprehensive account of manipulated behaviour related to but distinct from existing accounts of manipulative behaviour. It then builds on that account to defend the possibility that (...) we are being manipulated by technology. (shrink)

In this paper I propose three steps to overcome the force-content dichotomy and dispel the Frege point. First, we should ascribe content to force indicators. Through basic assertoric and directive force indicators such as intonation, word order and mood, a subject presents its position of theoretical or practical knowledge of a state of affairs as a fact, as something that is the case, or as a goal, as something to do. Force indicators do not operate on truth- or satisfaction evaluable (...) entities as on the traditional view, but complete and unify them. Second, higher-level acts such as interrogative, logical and fictional acts create higher-level unities that may suspend commitment to the assertions and directions they operate on. But they do not cancel their force, but transfer the meaning of force indicators into the new unities they create. For example, in the context of asking a theoretical or practical question, the assertoric or directive force indicator now presents the kind of knowledge the subject is seeking. Third, the Frege point conflates different varieties of force. We neither need Frege’s assertion sign, nor Hare’s neustic, nor Hanks’s cancellation sign, but only ordinary force indicators and interrogative, logical and fictional markers. Propositions are not forceless contents to which a subject commits by forceful acts, but forceful acts put forward by higher-level acts which may suspend commitment to them. (shrink)

The first part of this article makes the case that human cognition is an intergenerational project enabled by the inheritance and bequeathal of cognitive technology (Sects. 2–4). The final two sections of the article (Sects. 5 and 6) explore the normative significance of this claim. My case for the intergenerational claim draws results from multiple disciplines: philosophy (Sect. 2), cultural evolutionary approaches in cognitive science (Sect. 3), and developmental psychology and neuroscience (Sect. 4). In Sect. 5, I propose that cognitive (...) technology should be given to future generations in accordance with principles of pluralism and transparency. In the final main section of the article, Sect. 6, I apply these principles to topics such as the preservation of information, environmental offloading of cognition, and thinking itself. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Baumann's comments on "Can Knowledge Really be Non-fative?" In this paper Baumann's suggestions for how those who deny the factivty of knowledge might deal with the argument from inconsistency and explosion are addressed.

Defends Kantian paternalism: Interference with an individual’s liberty for her own sake is justified absent her actual consent only to the extent that such interference stands a reasonable chance of preventing her from exercising her liberty irrationally in light of the rationally chosen ends that constitute her conception of the good. More specifically, interference with an individual’s liberty is permissible only if, by interfering, we stand a reasonable chance of preventing that agent from performing actions she chose due to distorted (...) reasoning and which would result in that agent’s rationally chosen ends not being as fully realized as they would have been had she so acted. -/- Applied to suicide intervention Kantian paternalism implies that such intervention is justified to the extent that it prevents a person from ending her life when, due to distorted reasoning, she engages in suicidal behavior that is at odds with her rationally chosen ends. (shrink)

The standard position on moral perfection and gratuitous evil makes the prevention of gratuitous evil a necessary condition on moral perfection. I argue that, on any analysis of gratuitous evil we choose, the standard position on moral perfection and gratuitous evil is false. It is metaphysically impossible to prevent every gratuitously evil state of affairs in every possible world. No matter what God does—no matter how many gratuitously evil states of affairs God prevents—it is necessarily true that God coexists with (...) gratuitous evil in some world or other. Since gratuitous evil cannot be eliminated from metaphysical space, the existence of gratuitous evil presents no objection to essentially omnipotent, essentially omniscient, essentially morally perfect, and necessarily existing beings. (shrink)

This paper interrogates a widely accepted view about the nature of hope. The view is that hoping that p involves a belief about the prospects of p. It is argued that taking hope to require belief is at odds with some forms of recalcitrant hope and certain ways in which hope patterns similarly to other emotions. The paper concludes by explaining why it matters whether hope requires belief.

Perceptualists maintain that emotions essentially involve perceptual experiences of value. This view pressures advocates to individuate emotion types (e.g. anger, fear) by their respective evaluative contents. This paper explores the Attitudinalist Challenge to perceptualism. According to the challenge, everyday ways of talking and thinking about emotions conflict with the thesis that emotions are individuated by, or even have, evaluative content; the attitudinalist proposes instead that emotions are evaluative at the level of attitude. Faced with this challenge, perceptualists should deepen their (...) analogy with sensory experience; they should distinguish types of emotions by their content much as we can plausibly distinguish types of sensory experience (e.g. visual, auditory) by theirs. A second lesson is that perceptualists should distinguish an emotion’s representational guise (uniform across emotions) from its formal object (which varies). (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the under-researched figure A.W. Rehberg in his exchange with Kant over the relationship between theory and practice in the philosophy of right. I argue that Rehberg raises, what I call, two problems of political matter which attempt to show that Kant's overly formal approach to political theory cannot justifiably determine political practice. The first problem is the problem of positive determinations of right, rather than merely negative prohibitions. Rehberg takes this to mean that Kant cannot determine (...) us to a specific form of constitution. I argue that Kant's innovation of intelligible property functions as a response to this critique in that it provides the possibility of synthetic propositions of right a priori. Second, Rehberg insists that an a priori system of right cannot relate to already formed historical communities. Here Kant's response comes close to agreeing with Rehberg as Kant takes prudential or historical reasoning to harmonize with the demands of a priori right in order to applied to the sensible world. Kant, in this instance, comes closer to Rehberg by denying centralized enlightened monarchy and the reliance on natural and historical development for the application of right. (shrink)

My thesis is that social constructionists should embrace minimalist race. By this I mean they should accept the minimalist concept of race and the existence of minimalist races. They are likely to reject this suggestion because they are antirealists about biological race. But their antirealism about biological race is based on their identification of the biological concept of race with the racialist concept of race. The minimalist concept of race is free of the invidious features that make the racialist concept (...) objectionable. It represents race as ancestry marked by patterns of visible physical differences. The reasons social constructionists have to reject the racialist concept of race do not extend to the minimalist concept of race. Social constructionists should accept that minimalist races exist, because it is overwhelmingly plausible that such races exist. Furthermore, they need minimalist races to account for the biological correlate of social race and to secure the biological materials the project of social construction requires. (shrink)

This article challenges the orthodox view that there is and can be no scientifically valid concept of race applicable to human beings by presenting a candidate scientific concept of biological race. The populationist concept of race specifies that a “race” is a subdivision of Homo sapiens—a group of populations that exhibits a distinctive pattern of genetically transmitted phenotypic characters and that belongs to an endogamous biological lineage initiated by a geographically separated and reproductively isolated founding population. The viability of the (...) PRC is shown by demonstrating its capacity to withstand a wide range of objections. A common theme is that the objections turn on misconceptions of the idea of a scientific concept of race. The final section argues that the PRC will not foster racism. (shrink)

Are we being manipulated online? If so, is being manipulated by online technologies and algorithmic systems notably different from human forms of manipulation? And what is under threat exactly when people are manipulated online? This volume provides philosophical and conceptual depth to debates in digital ethics about online manipulation. The contributions explore the ramifications of our increasingly consequential interactions with online technologies such as online recommender systems, social media, user-friendly design, micro-targeting, default-settings, gamification, and real-time profiling. The authors in this (...) volume address four broad and interconnected themes: • What is the conceptual nature of online manipulation? And how, methodologically, should the concept be defined? • Does online manipulation threaten autonomy, freedom, and meaning in life, and if so, how? • What are the epistemic, affective, and political harms and risks associated with online manipulation? • What are legal and regulatory perspectives on online manipulation? The Philosophy of Online Manipulation brings these various considerations together to offer philosophically robust answers to critical questions concerning our online interactions with one another and with autonomous systems. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy, digital ethics, philosophy of technology, and the ethics of manipulation. (shrink)

John Bell proposed an ontology for the GRW modification of quantum mechanics in terms of flashes occurring at space- time points. This article spells out the motivation for this ontology, inquires into the status of the wave function in it, critically examines the claim of its being Lorentz invariant, and considers whether it is a parsimonious but nevertheless physically adequate ontology.

Editors' introduction to 3rd thematic issue on philosophy of medicine.

This article argues that manipulation is negligent influence. Manipulation is negligent in the sense that manipulators do not chose their method of influence because for its potential to reveal reasons to their victims. Thus, manipulation is a lack of care, or negligence, exclusively understood exclusively in terms of how one influences. That makes the proposed account superior to the most influential alternative, which analyses manipulation disjunctively as violation of several distinct types of norms. The implication is a paradigm shift in (...) understanding manipulation in terms of what manipulators intend to do toward a focus on what they fail to do or intend. (shrink)

Like William James before him, Huw Price has influentially argued that truth has a normative role to play in our thought and talk. I agree. But Price also thinks that we should regard truth-conceived of as property of our beliefs-as something like a metaphysical myth. Here I disagree. In this paper, I argue that reflection on truth's values pushes us in a slightly different direction, one that opens the door to certain metaphysical possibilities that even a Pricean pragmatist can love.

In this paper, I try to show that democratic consensus – one of the more prominent ideals in recent political thought – is an essential byproduct of epistemically warranted beliefs about political action and organization, at least in those cases where the issues under dispute are epistemic in nature. An essential byproduct (to borrow Jon Elster’s term) is a goal that can only be intentionally achieved by aiming at some other objective. In my usage, a political issue is epistemic when (...) there is some right (or at least best) answer concerning how it ought to be resolved that is independent of people’s beliefs or desires about how it ought to be resolved. An important secondary claim, then, is that it is difficult to explain the presumptive value of political deliberation unless we understand a very large share of political issues as epistemic in nature. This view implies a considerably more contentious model of political deliberation but is not incompatible with familiar forms of conciliatory behavior in our public disputes. (shrink)

I develop a psychological account for how it is that we use imagination to metaphysically modalize, i.e., to reach conclusions about metaphysical modality. Specifically, I argue that Nichols and Stich’s (2003) cognitive theory of imagination can be extended to metaphysical modalizing. I then use the extension to explicate philosophical disagreements about whether a scenario is metaphysically possible. Thereafter, I address Nichols’ (2006) objection that psychologizing imagination makes it clear that imagination is unreliable when used to metaphysically modalize. The end result (...) is a naturalistic account for how imagination enables us to metaphysically modalize. (shrink)

A wide body of psychological research corroborates the claim that whether one’s life is (or will be) meaningful appears relevant to whether it is rational to continue living. This article advances conceptions of life’s meaningfulness and of suicidal choice with an eye to ascertaining how the former might provide justificatory reasons relevant to the latter. Drawing upon the recent theory of meaningfulness defended by Cheshire Calhoun, the decision to engage in suicide can be understood as a choice related to life’s (...) meaningfulness insofar as an individual can see no point in investing her agency in her anticipated future. These meaning-based reasons relevant to suicidal choice either cannot be reduced to the reasons of well-being that philosophers have typically used to analyse suicide decisions or at least forms a distinct class of reasons within those that contribute to well-being. (shrink)

Deliberate contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is a reader’s ability to figure out a (not the) meaning for an unknown word from its “context”, without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. The appropriate context for such CVA is the “belief-revised integration” of the reader’s prior knowledge with the reader’s “internalization” of the text. We discuss unwarranted assumptions behind some classic objections to CVA, and present and defend a computational theory of CVA that we have adapted to a new (...) classroom curriculum designed to help students use CVA to improve their reading comprehension. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are two irreducibly distinct negative concepts of liberty: freedom as non-prevention, and freedom as non-coercion. Contemporary proponents of the negative view, such as Matthew Kramer and Ian Carter, have sought to develop the Hobbesian idea that freedom is essentially a matter of physical non-prevention. Accordingly, they have sought to reduce the freedom-diminishing effect of coercion to that of prevention by arguing that coercive threats function to diminish freedom by preventing people from performing certain combinations of (...) actions. Against this, this paper argues that coercion diminishes people’s freedom in ways that cannot be fully captured in terms of prevention. Focusing on two types of case, those involving coercive threats and those involving coercive preference manipulation, it argues that non-coercion and physical non-prevention are importantly different goods. It concludes that a complete negative account of liberty must draw not only on the (Hobbesian) ‘non-prevention’ strand of the negative tradition but also on its (Hayekian) ‘non-coercion’ strand. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe held that acting intentionally entails knowing (in a distinctively practical way) what one is doing. The consensus for many years was that this knowledge thesis faces decisive counterexamples, the most famous being Donald Davidson’s carbon copier case, and so should be rejected or at least significantly weakened. Recently, however, a new defense of the knowledge thesis has emerged: provided one understands the knowledge in question as a form of progressive judgement, cases like Davidson’s pose no threat. In this (...) paper, I argue that this neo-Anscombean maneuver fails because it is founded on an untenable conception of the difference between intentional and merely lucky success. More specifically, the neo-Anscombean view conflates merely lucky success with subjectively surprising success. Unlike the former, subjectively surprising success may well be intentional, for it may well be the result of an exercise of knowledge-how. After sketching an alternative view that better captures the intuitive contrast between lucky and intentional success, I argue that the conflation of surprising and merely lucky success owes to a tacit commitment to the thesis that knowing how entails knowing that one knows how. This thesis is not only false, but distortive of the explanatory role of knowledge-how. This result, in turn, tells us something important about what practical knowledge cannot be. (shrink)

In this paper I engage interdisciplinary conversation on inaction as the dominant response to climate change, and develop an analysis of the specific phenomenon of complacency through a critical-feminist lens. I suggest that Chris Cuomo's discussion of the “insufficiency” problem and Susan Sherwin's call for a “public ethics” jointly point toward particularly promising harm-reduction strategies. I draw upon and extend their work by arguing that extant philosophical accounts of complacency are inadequate to the task of sorting out what it means (...) to be complacent on climate change. I offer a sketch for an alternative account, which I take to be a start in the direction of mapping out a diverse array of “motivational vices” that need to be named, grappled with, and remedied. (shrink)

Rivka Weinberg advances an error theory of ultimate meaning with three parts: (1) a conceptual analysis, (2) the claim that the extension of the concept is empty, and (3) a proposed fitting response, namely being very, very sad. Weinberg’s conceptual analysis of ultimate meaning involves two features that jointly make it metaphysically impossible, namely (i) the separateness of activities and valued ends, and (ii) the bounded nature of human lives. Both are open to serious challenges. We offer an internalist alternative (...) to (i) and a relational alternative to (ii). We then draw out implications for (2) and conclude with reasons to be cheerful about the prospects of a meaningful life. (shrink)

This article makes the case that our digital devices create illusions of agency. There are times when users feel as if they are in control when in fact they are merely responding to stimuli on the screen in predictable ways. After the introduction, the second section of the article offers examples of illusions of agency that do not involve human–computer interaction in order to show that such illusions are possible and not terribly uncommon. The third and fourth sections of the (...) article cover relevant work from empirical psychology, including the cues that are known to generate the sense of agency. The fifth section of the article shows that our devices are designed to deliver precisely those cues. In the sixth section, the argument is completed with evidence that users frequently use their smartphones without the sort of intentional supervision involved in genuine agency. This sixth section includes the introduction of Digital Environmental Dependency Syndrome (DEDS) as a possible way of characterizing extended use of the smartphone without genuine agency. In the final section of the article, there is a discussion of questions raised by the main claim, including suggestions for reducing occurrences of illusions of agency through software design. (shrink)

There is a fairly general consensus that names are Millian (or Russellian) genuine terms, that is, are singular terms whose sole semantic function is to introduce a referent into the propositions expressed by sentences containing the term. This answers the question as to what sort of proposition is expressed by use of sentences containing names. But there is a second serious semantic problem about proper names, that of how the referents of proper names are determined. This is the question that (...) I will discuss in this paper. Various views consistent with Millianism have been proposed as to how the semantic referents of proper names are determined. These views can be classified into (1) description theories and (2) causal theories, but they can also be classified into (3) social practice theories, on which a name’s referent is determined by a social practice involving the referent, and (4) individualistic theories, on which the referent of the use of a name is determined by the speaker’s state of mind. Here I argue against social practice theories of the sorts proposed by Kripke and Evans and in favor of an individualistic approach to name reference. I argue that social practice is irrelevant to determining name reference and that, as a consequence, names have no meanings in natural languages. In the second part of the paper I motivate and propose a new form of individualistic theory which incorporates features of both description theories and Evans’s social practice theory. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, scholars have reassessed the role of amour-propre in Rousseau’s thought. While it was once believed that he had an entirely negative valuation of the emotion, it is now widely held that he finds it useful and employs it to strengthen moral attachments, conjugal love, civic virtue and moral heroism. At the same time, scholars are divided as to whether this positive amour-propre is an antidote to the negative or dangerous form. Some scholars are confident that (...) ‘inflamed’ amour-propre can be overcome while others adopt a more fatalistic view. While mindful of Rousseau’s pessimism in his most famous works, this essay seeks to identify a middle position. By contending Rousseau’s discussion of amour-propre is largely concerned with the problems surrounding identity construction in commercial, urban societies, it will be argued that amour-propre can be lessened to manageable levels in more rural societies, that is, agrarian provincial life. (shrink)

Assertions are often accepted without being understood, a phenomenon I call stupefying. I argue that stupefying can be a means for conversational manipulation that works through at-issue content, in contrast with the not-at-issue and back-door speech act routes identified by others. This shows that we should reject a widely assumed connection between attention and at-issue content. In exploring why stupefying happens, it also emerges that stupefying has important cooperative uses, in addition to its manipulative ones, and so should not be (...) avoided altogether. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the eternity solution to the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge. After motivating the problem, I sketch the basic contours of the eternity solution. I then consider several objections which contend that the eternity solution falsely implies that we have various powers (e.g., to change God’s beliefs, or to affect the past) which, according to the objector, we do not in fact have.

Theodicy and Toleration Seem at first glance to be an unlikely pair of topics to treat in a single paper. Toleration usually means putting up with beliefs or actions with which one disagrees, and it is practiced because the beliefs or actions in question are not disagreeable enough to justify interference. It is usually taken to be a topic for moral and political philosophy. Theodicy, on the other hand, is the attempt to solve the problem of evil; that is, to (...) explain the origin of suffering and sin in a way that does not make God a moral cause of those evils.1 While theodicy concerns the notions of good and evil, and could therefore be considered a moral topic, historical and contemporary discussions of it have .. (shrink)

Philosophers debate whether all, some or none of the represcntational content of our sensory experience is conccptual, but the technical term "concept" has different uses. It is commonly linked more or less closely with the notions of judgdment and reasoning, but that leaves open the possibility that these terms share a systematic ambiguity or indeterminacy. Donald Davidson, however, holds an unequivocal and consistent, if paradoxical view that there are strictly speaking no psychological states with representational or intentional content except the (...) propositional attitudes of language users, since thc source or fundamental bearer of intentionality is the employed sentence. Accordingly he claims that what has content in ordinary sense experience is not sensation, but propositional belief caused, but not justified, by sensation. John McDowell, sharing some ofDavidson's premises,holds a less paradoxical, but (l will argue) equivocal and incoherent view that post-infantile human sensory expcrience must have content in so far as it is what grounds perceptual belief but that this content is itself conceptual or propositional, dependent on language and culture. Reasons are givcn in the present article for rejecting both views, and their common premises. It is argued that perceptual or sensory states have intentional content which is no more conceptual or propositional than the world is. Recognition that perceptual content and conceptual content are, in a certain unsurprising way incommensurable allows for a more realistic understanding of the relationship between Language and the world as we experience it. (shrink)

Recently a number of variously motivated epistemologists have argued that knowledge is closely tied to practical matters. On the one hand, radical pragmatic encroachment is the view that facts about whether an agent has knowledge depend on practical factors and this is coupled to the view that there is an important connection between knowledge and action. On the other hand, one can argue for the less radical thesis only that there is an important connection between knowledge and practical reasoning. So, (...) defenders of both of these views endorse the view that knowledge is the norm of practical reasoning. This thesis has recently come under heavy fire and a number of weaker proposals have been defended. In this paper counter-examples to the knowledge norm of reasoning will be presented and it will be argued that this viewand a number of related but weaker viewscannot be sustained in the face of these counter-examples. The paper concludes with a novel proposal concerning the norm of practical reasoning that is immune to the counter-examples introduced here. (shrink)

Van Fraassen’s (1989) infamous best of a bad lot objection is widely taken to be the most serious problem that afflicts theories of inference to the best explanation (IBE), for it alleges to show that we should not accept the conclusion of any case of such reasoning as it actually proceeds. Moreover, this is supposed to be the case irrespective of the details of the particular criteria used to select best explanations. The best of a bad lot objection is predicated (...) on, and really only requires, the idea that in any real case of IBE where one hypothesis is favored as best over those with which it competes, it is always the case that it is more likely that the true explanation is to be found in the set of unformulated and unconsidered logical alternatives to the set of actually considered hypotheses. On this basis, Van Fraassen believes that accepting the conclusion of IBEs so understood is irrational and this is simply because such inferences are supposedly not probative. In this paper the best of a bad lot objection will be addressed and it will be shown that Van Fraassen’s notorious criticism of IBE depends on a problematic conflation of two notions of rationality and thus that his criticism of IBE involves a damning equivocation. In essence, he conflates ideal standards of rationality with epistemic standards of rationality and, in so doing, makes it appear to be the case that we should not accept the conclusions of IBEs. But, when we disambiguate the concepts of rationality at work in the argument Van Fraassen’s conclusion simply does not follow. (shrink)

In “Naming and Necessity” Saul Kripke describes some cases which, he claims, provide counterexamples both to cluster theories and, more generally, to description theories of proper names. My view of these cases is that while they do not provide counterexamples to cluster theories, they can be used to provide evidence against single-description theories. In this paper I shall defend both of the claims involved in my view.

In this article, I vindicate the longstanding intuition that the Stoics are transitional figures in the history of ethics. I argue that the Stoics are committed to thinking that the ideal of human happiness as a life of virtue is impossible for some people, whom I dub ‘hopeless fools.’ In conjunction with the Stoic view that everyone is subject to the same rational requirements to perform ‘appropriate actions’ or ‘duties’ (kathēkonta/officia), and the plausible eudaimonist assumption that happiness is a source (...) of normative reasons only if it is in principle attainable, the existence of hopeless fools demonstrates that the Stoics were pluralists about the ultimate justificatory basis of rational action. Hopeless fools are required to behave just like their non-hopeless counterparts, not because doing so is conducive to their happiness, but because doing so conforms with the dictates of Right Reason. (shrink)

I propose a framework, derived from moral theory, for assessing the moral status of intelligent machines. Using this framework, I claim that some current and foreseeable intelligent machines have approximately as much moral status as plants, trees, and other environmental entities. This claim raises the question: what obligations could a moral agent (e.g., a normal adult human) have toward an intelligent machine? I propose that the threshold for any moral obligation should be the "functional morality" of Wallach and Allen [20], (...) while the upper limit of our obligations should not exceed the upper limit of our obligations toward plants, trees, and other environmental entities. (shrink)

An actual cause of some token effect is itself a token event that helped to bring about that effect. The notion of an actual cause is different from that of a potential cause – for example a pre-empted backup – which had the capacity to bring about the effect, but which wasn't in fact operative on the occasion in question. Sometimes actual causes are also distinguished from mere background conditions: as when we judge that the struck match was a cause (...) of the fire, while the presence of oxygen was merely part of the relevant background against which the struck match operated. Actual causation is also to be distinguished from type causation: actual causation holds between token events in a particular, concrete scenario; type causation, by contrast, holds between event kinds in scenario kinds. (shrink)