Building on recent formal work by Aleks Knoks, we explore how the idea that certain epistemic norms may be indeterminate could be implemented in a default logic.

Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive enhancement even as they (...) recognize its potential perils. The public is biopolitically moderate, endorses both meritocratic principles and the intrinsic value of hard work, and appears to be sensitive to the salient moral issues raised in the debate. Taken together, these data suggest that public attitudes toward enhancement are sufficiently sophisticated to merit inclusion in policy deliberations, especially if we seek to align public sentiment and policy. (shrink)

Brentano never published on Bertrand’s paradox but claimed to have a solution. Adrian Maître has recovered from the Franz Brentano Archive Brentano’s remarks on his solution. They do not give us a worked demonstration of his solution but only an incomplete and in places obscure justification of it. Here I attempt to identify his solution, to explain what seem to me the clearly discernible parts of his justification and to discuss the extent to which the justification succeeds in the light (...) of current work on Bertrand’s paradox. (shrink)

We need urgently to bring about a revolution in universities around the world, wherever possible, so that they take their fundamental task to be, not to acquire and apply knowledge, but rather to help humanity learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that we may make progress towards a good, genuinely civilized, wise world. The pursuit of knowledge would be a vital but subsidiary task. I have argued for the urgent need for (...) such an academic revolution for nearly 50 years, ever since the publication of two books: What’s Wrong With Science? Towards a People’s Rational Science of Delight and Compassion, 1976, and From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution for Science and the Humanities, 1984, both available free online. This article, written in preparation for a talk given to Pittsburgh University on the 15th September 2023, gives an outline of my baffled struggles with problems of philosophy, science, literature and life that led up to the discovery of the urgent need for an intellectual and institutional revolution in universities around the world, needed in order to galvanize the social revolution required to enable us to make progress to a world in which peace, justice, democracy, individual freedom, sustainable prosperity, the possibility of a good life, are available to all, insofar as that is attainable. (shrink)

Which artificial intelligence (AI) systems are agents? To answer this question, I propose a multidimensional account of agency. According to this account, a system's agency profile is jointly determined by its level of goal-directedness and autonomy as well as is abilities for directly impacting the surrounding world, long-term planning and acting for reasons. Rooted in extant theories of agency, this account enables fine-grained, nuanced comparative characterizations of artificial agency. I show that this account has multiple important virtues and is more (...) informative than alternatives. More speculatively, it may help to illuminate two important emerging questions in AI ethics: 1. Can agency contribute to the moral status of non-human beings, and how? 2. When and why might AI systems exhibit power-seeking behaviour and does this pose an existential risk to humanity? (shrink)

According to an orthodox view, the capacity for conscious experience (sentience) is relevant to the distribution of moral status and value. However, physicalism about consciousness might threaten the normative relevance of sentience. According to the indeterminacy argument, sentience is metaphysically indeterminate while indeterminacy of sentience is incompatible with its normative relevance. According to the introspective argument (by François Kammerer), the unreliability of our conscious introspection undercuts the justification for belief in the normative relevance of consciousness. I defend the normative relevance (...) of sentience against these objections. First, I demonstrate that physicalists only have to concede a limited amount of indeterminacy of sentience. This moderate indeterminacy is in harmony with the role of sentience in determining moral status. Second, I argue that physicalism gives us no reason to expect that introspection is unreliable with respect to the normative relevance of consciousness. (shrink)

Which animals have conscious experiences? Many different, diverse and unrelated behaviors and cognitive capacities have been proposed as tests of the presence of consciousness in an animal. It is unclear which of these tests, if any, are valid. To remedy this problem, I develop a list consisting of eight desiderata which can be used to assess putative tests of animal consciousness. These desiderata are based either on detailed analogies between consciousness-linked human behavior and non-human behavior, on theories of consciousness or (...) on methods from human consciousness science. If a test or set of tests satisfies more of these desiderata, passing it provides stronger evidence of consciousness. Moreover, one can design future tests of animal consciousness with the intention of satisfying these desiderata to ensure their evidential strength. (shrink)

How can we think about things in the outside world? There is still no widely accepted theory of how mental representations get their meaning. In light of pioneering research, Nicholas Shea develops a naturalistic account of the nature of mental representation with a firm focus on the subpersonal representations that pervade the cognitive sciences.

Numerous authors have expressed concern that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) poses an existential risk to humanity. These authors argue that we might build AI which is vastly intellectually superior to humans (a ‘superintelligence’), and which optimizes for goals that strike us as morally bad, or even irrational. Thus, this argument assumes that a superintelligence might have morally bad goals. However, according to some views, a superintelligence necessarily has morally adequate goals. This might be the case either because abilities for moral (...) reasoning and intelligence mutually depend on each other, or because moral realism and moral internalism are true. I argue that the former argument misconstrues the view that intelligence and goals are independent, and that the latter argument misunderstands the implications of moral internalism. Moreover, the current state of AI research provides additional reasons to think that a superintelligence could have bad goals. (shrink)

In order to make progress towards a better world we need to learn how to do it. And for that we need institutions of learning rationally designed and devoted to helping us solve our global problems, make progress towards a better world. It is just this that we lack at present. Our universities pursue knowledge. They are neither designed nor devoted to helping humanity learn how to tackle global problems — problems of living — in more intelligent, humane and effective (...) ways. That, this book argues, is the key disaster of our times, the crisis behind all the others: our failure to have developed our institutions of learning so that they are rationally organized to help us solve our problems of living — above all, our global problems. Having universities devoted almost exclusively to the pursuit of knowledge is a recipe for disaster. Scientific knowledge and technological know-how have unquestionably brought great benefits to humanity. But they have also made possible — even caused — our current global crises, above all the impending crisis of global warming. In this lucid and provocative book, Nicholas Maxwell argues convincingly that we need urgently to bring about a revolution in universities round the world so that their basic aim becomes wisdom, and not just knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter outlines improvements and developments made to aim-oriented empiricism since "From Knowledge to Wisdom" was first published in 1984. It argues that aim-oriented empiricism enables us to solve three fundamental problems in the philosophy of science: the problems of induction and verisimilitude, and the problem of what it means to say of a physical theory that it is unified.

Sensorimotor enactivism is the view that the content and the sensory modality of perceptual experience are determined by implicit knowledge of lawful regularities between bodily movements and patterns of sensory stimulation. A proponent of the explanatory argument for sensorimotor enactivism holds that this view is able to provide an intelligible explanation for why certain material realizers give rise to certain perceptual experiences, while rival accounts cannot close this “explanatory gap”. However, I argue that the notion of the “material realizer” of (...) perceptual experience is ambiguous. On a narrow construal, the explanatory gap cannot be bridged, not even by enactivism. On a wide construal, enactivism gets a grip on the explanatory gap, but to the same extent do established theories of consciousness. Thus, on both horns of the dilemma, the explanatory power of enactivism is not superior to more traditional theories of conscious experience. (shrink)

"Understanding Scientific Progress constitutes a potentially enormous and revolutionary advancement in philosophy of science. It deserves to be read and studied by everyone with any interest in or connection with physics or the theory of science. Maxwell cites the work of Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, Ludwig Bolzmann, Pierre Duhem, Einstein, Henri Poincaré, C.S. Peirce, Whitehead, Russell, Carnap, A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman, Bas van Fraassen, and numerous others. He lauds Popper for advancing beyond (...) verificationism and Hume’s problem of induction, but faults both Kuhn and Popper for being unable to show that and how their work could lead nearer to the truth." —Dr. LLOYD EBY teaches philosophy at The George Washington University and The Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC "Maxwell's aim-oriented empiricism is in my opinion a very significant contribution to the philosophy of science. I hope that it will be widely discussed and debated." – ALAN SOKAL, Professor of Physics, New York University "Maxwell takes up the philosophical challenge of how natural science makes progress and provides a superb treatment of the problem in terms of the contrast between traditional conceptions and his own scientifically-informed theory—aim-oriented empiricism. This clear and rigorously-argued work deserves the attention of scientists and philosophers alike, especially those who believe that it is the accumulation of knowledge and technology that answers the question."—LEEMON McHENRY, California State University, Northridge "Maxwell has distilled the finest essence of the scientific enterprise. Science is about making the world a better place. Sometimes science loses its way. The future depends on scientists doing the right things for the right reasons. Maxwell's Aim-Oriented Empiricism is a map to put science back on the right track."—TIMOTHY McGETTIGAN, Professor of Sociology, Colorado State University - Pueblo "Maxwell has a great deal to offer with these important ideas, and deserves to be much more widely recognised than he is. Readers with a background in philosophy of science will appreciate the rigour and thoroughness of his argument, while more general readers will find his aim-oriented rationality a promising way forward in terms of a future sustainable and wise social order."—David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer, 2017/2 "This is a book about the very core problems of the philosophy of science. The idea of replacing Standard Empiricism with Aim-Oriented Empiricism is understood by Maxwell as the key to the solution of these central problems. Maxwell handles his main tool masterfully, producing a fascinating and important reading to his colleagues in the field. However, Nicholas Maxwell is much more than just a philosopher of science. In the closing part of the book he lets the reader know about his deep concern and possible solutions of the biggest problems humanity is facing."—Professor PEETER MŰŰREPP, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia “For many years, Maxwell has been arguing that fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, especially the problem of induction, cannot be solved granted standard empiricism (SE), a doctrine which, he thinks, most scientists and philosophers of science take for granted. A key tenet of SE is that no permanent thesis about the world can be accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence. For a number of reasons, Maxwell argues, we need to adopt a rather different conception of science which he calls aim-oriented empiricism (AOE). This holds that we need to construe physics as accepting, as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, a hierarchy of metaphysical theses about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, which become increasingly insubstantial as we go up the hierarchy. In his book “Understanding Scientific Progress: Aim-Oriented Empiricism”, Maxwell gives a concise and excellent illustration of this view and the arguments supporting it… Maxwell’s book is a potentially important contribution to our understanding of scientific progress and philosophy of science more generally. Maybe it is the time for scientists and philosophers to acknowledge that science has to make metaphysical assumptions concerning the knowability and comprehensibility of the universe. Fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, which cannot be solved granted SE, may be solved granted AOE.” Professor SHAN GAO, Shanxi University, China . (shrink)

What is the function of morality? On this question, something approaching a consensus has recently emerged. Impressed by developments in evolutionary theory, many philosophers now tell us that the function of morality is to reduce social tensions, and to thereby enable a society to efficiently promote the well-being of its members. In this paper, I subject this consensus to rigorous scrutiny, arguing that the functional hypothesis in question is not well supported. In particular, I attack the supposed evidential relation between (...) an evolutionary genealogy of morals and the functional hypothesis itself. I show that there are a great many functionally relevant discontinuities between our own culture and the culture within which morality allegedly emerged, and I argue that this seriously weakens the inference from morality’s evolutionary history to its present-day function. (shrink)

Block’s well-known distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness has generated a large philosophical literature about putative conceptual connections between the two. The scientific literature about whether they come apart in any actual cases is rather smaller. Empirical evidence gathered to date has not settled the issue. Some put this down to a fundamental methodological obstacle to the empirical study of the relation between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. Block (2007) has drawn attention to the methodological puzzle and attempted to (...) answer it. While the evidence Block points to is relevant and important, this paper puts forward a more systematic framework for addressing the puzzle. To give it a label, the approach is to study phenomenal consciousness as a natural kind. The approach allows consciousness studies to move beyond the initial means of identifying instances of the kind, like verbal report, and to find its underlying nature. It is wellrecognised that facts about an underlying kind may allow identification of instances of the kind that do not match the initial means of identification (cp. non-liquid samples of water). This paper shows that the same method can be deployed to investigate phenomenal consciousness independently of access consciousness. (shrink)

In order to create a better world we need to bring about a revolution in universities so that they become devoted to helping humanity learn how to make progress towards as good a world as possible.

It is argued that criticisms of Willian Band and James Park concerning the quantum mechanics measurement problem do not succeed.

The familiar complaint that some ambitious proposal is infeasible naturally invites the following response: Once upon a time, the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of women seemed infeasible, yet these things were actually achieved. Presumably, then, many of those things that seem infeasible in our own time may well be achieved too and, thus, turn out to have been perfectly feasible after all. The Appeal to History, as we call it, is a bad argument. It is not true that (...) if some desirable state of affairs was actually achieved, then it was feasible that it was achieved. “Actual” does not imply “feasible,” as we put it. Here is our objection. “Feasible” implies “not counterfactually fluky.” But “actual” does not imply “not counterfactually fluky.” So, “actual” does not imply “feasible.” While something like the Flukiness Objection is sometimes hinted at in the context of the related literature on abilities, it has not been developed in any detail, and both premises are inadequately motivated. We offer a novel articulation of the Flukiness Objection that is both more precise and better motivated. Our conclusions have important implications, not only for the admissible use of history in normative argument, but also by potentially circumscribing the normative claims that are applicable to us. (shrink)

A lively topic of debate in decision theory over recent years concerns our understanding of the different risk attitudes exhibited by decision makers. There is ample evidence that risk-averse and risk-seeking behaviours are widespread, and a growing consensus that such behaviour is rationally permissible. In the context of clinical medicine, this matter is complicated by the fact that healthcare professionals must often make choices for the benefit of their patients, but the norms of rational choice are conventionally grounded in a (...) decision maker’s own desires, beliefs and actions. The presence of both doctor and patient raises the question of whose risk attitude matters for the choice at hand and what to do when these diverge. Must doctors make risky choices when treating risk-seeking patients? Ought they to be risk averse in general when choosing on behalf of others? In this paper, I will argue that healthcare professionals ought to adopt a deferential approach, whereby it is the risk attitude of the patient that matters in medical decision making. I will show how familiar arguments for widely held anti-paternalistic views about medicine can be straightforwardly extended to include not only patients’ evaluations of possible health states, but also their attitudes to risk. However, I will also show that this deferential view needs further refinement: patients’ higher-order attitudes towards their risk attitudes must be considered in order to avoid some counterexamples and to accommodate different views about what sort of attitudes risk attitudes actually are. (shrink)

In combating international terrorism, it is important to observe some basic principles, such as that international law must be complied with, care should be taken that one does not proceed in such a way that future terrorists are recruited, and one does not oneself become a terrorist. Unfortunately, the war on terrorism.

Russell’s rejection in 1898 of the doctrine of internal relations — the view that all relations are grounded in the intrinsic properties of the terms related — was a decisive part of his break with Hegelianism and opened the way for his turn to analytic philosophy. Before rejecting it, Russell had given the doctrine little thought, though it played an essential role in the most intractable of the problems facing his attempt to construct a Hegelian dialectic of the sciences. I (...) argue that it was Russell’s early reading of Leibniz, in preparation for his lectures on Leibniz given at Cambridge in 1899, that most probably alerted him to the role the doctrine was playing in his own philosophy. Leibniz defended a similar doctrine and extricated it from difficulties like those faced by Russell by means of devices that were not open to Russell. Russell would have come across these views of Leibniz in writings by Leibniz that he read in the summer of 1898, just before he rejected the doctrine of internal relations. (shrink)

That Kant sees the faculties of imagination and judgment as closely related is not controversial. Yet precisely how they relate to each other, especially across his Critical philosophy, is less clear. In this paper, I consider the relationship between what Kant calls the ‘power of imagination’ [Einbildungskraft] and the ‘power of judgment’ [Urteilskraft]. I argue for the following claim: insofar as the power of judgment is the faculty of thinking particulars under universals, the power of imagination is the faculty of (...) producing and providing particulars for judgment—either to reflect on or to subsume under universals. Such an account reveals that our capacity for imagination is intimately bound up with our capacity to judge. (shrink)

The conditional analysis of ability faces familiar counterexamples involving cases of volitional incapacity. An interesting response to the problem of volitional incapacity is to try to explain away the responses elicited by such counterexamples by distinguishing between what we are able to do and what we are able to bring ourselves to do. We argue that this error-theoretic response fails. Either it succeeds in solving the problem of volitional incapacity at the cost of making the conditional analysis vulnerable to obvious (...) counterexamples to its necessity. Or, it avoids the counterexamples to its necessity but fails to solve the problem of volitional incapacity. (shrink)

A bad philosophy of inquiry, built into the intellectual/institutional structure of universities round the world, betrays both reason and humanity.

A persistent worry concerning conventionalist accounts of law is that such accounts are ill equipped to account for law’s special normativity. I offer a particular kind of conventionalist account that is based on the practice-dependent account of conventional norms I have offered elsewhere and consider whether it is vulnerable to the Normativity Objection. I argue that it isn’t. It can account for all the ways in which law can justly claim to be normative. While there are ways of being normative (...) that it cannot account for, it is an error to suppose that law is normative in any of those ways. (shrink)

In this paper I present a novel supertask in a Newtonian universe that destroys and creates infinite masses and energies, showing thereby that we can have infinite indeterminism. Previous supertasks have managed only to destroy or create finite masses and energies, thereby giving cases of only finite indeterminism. In the Nothing from Infinity paradox we will see an infinitude of finite masses and an infinitude of energy disappear entirely, and do so despite the conservation of energy in all collisions. I (...) then show how this leads to the Infinity from Nothing paradox, in which we have the spontaneous eruption of infinite mass and energy out of nothing. I conclude by showing how our supertask models at least something of an old conundrum, the question of what happens when the immovable object meets the irresistible force. (shrink)

I present two arguments for the view that it is nomologically possible that some non-biological creatures are conscious, including conventional, silicon-based AI systems. They assume the iterative natural kind (INK) strategy, according to which one should investigate consciousness by treating it as a natural kind which iteratively explains observable patterns and correlations between potentially consciousness-relevant features. Both arguments are based on the insight that we can already anticipate that future developments would give us reasons to attribute consciousness to some non-biological (...) creatures. According to the first argument, the fact that we can predict that ordinary people would be compelled to attribute consciousness to some possible non-biological creatures supports the view that these creatures are conscious. According to the second argument, an idealized scientific investigation – based on the INK strategy – would deliver the result that some possible non-biological creatures are conscious, and the outcome of such an ideal application corresponds to what is actually the case. My argument for the former premise is based on the claim that theoretical virtues and pre-theoretical principles support attributing consciousness to psychological duplicates, i.e., non-biological creatures which share the coarse-grained functional organization of humans. Finally, I argue that my second argument can be generalized beyond the INK strategy. (shrink)

Recently, I argued that human subjects in artificial wombs (AWs) “share the same moral status as newborns” and so, deserve the same treatment and protections as newborns. This thesis rests on two claims: (A) “Subjects of partial ectogenesis—those that develop in utero for at time before being transferred to AWs—are newborns,” and (B) “Subjects of complete ectogenesis—those who develop in AWs entirely—share the same moral status as newborns.” In response, Elizabeth Chloe Romanis argued that the subject in an AW is (...) “a unique human entity…rather than a fetus or a newborn.” She provides four lines of response to my essay. First, she argues that I have “misconstrued” what birth is. Once we correct that error, it becomes clear that subjects of partial ectogenesis have not been born. Second, she argues that my claims imply that non-implanted embryos (existing in vivo) “would also be ‘born.’” But that is absurd. Third, she claims I fail to “meaningfully respond” to distinctions she draws between subjects of ectogenesis and neonates. Finally, she criticizes my essay for focusing on subjects of AWs rather than focusing on pregnant persons (who should be at the “centre” of debates over AWs). I respond to each of these charges. In doing so, I reaffirm that (contra Romanis) some subjects of ectogenesis are newborns and all subjects of ectogenesis—even those that have not been born—share the same moral status as newborns. (shrink)

Many of us feel internally conflicted in the face of certain normative claims that make infeasible demands: say, normative claims that demand that agents do what, given deeply entrenched objectionable character traits, they cannot bring themselves to do. On the one hand, such claims may seem false on account of demanding the infeasible, and insisting otherwise may seem to amount to objectionable unworldliness – to chasing “pies in the sky.” On the other hand, such claims may seem true in spite (...) of making infeasible demands, and insisting otherwise may seem to amount to treating the agents in question with undue lenience – to mistakenly letting them “off the hook.” What is going on? One possibility is that we are making a mistake. I explore the alternative hypothesis that our ambivalent reactions, far from involving any mistake, are entirely consistent and appropriate. Rather than some single privileged ought such that the idea that “ought” implies “feasible” is either true or false, there are simply different oughts that are supposed to be capable of operating in the service of, and playing distinct roles associated with, what I shall call different core normative practices. In particular, there is a) some salient core practice-serving ought for which it’s true that “ought” implies “feasible” and b) some other salient core practice-serving ought for which it’s false that “ought” implies “feasible.” I sketch a framework for understanding different core practice-serving oughts in general and then use this framework to consider which particular core practice-serving oughts might be capable of vindicating our ambivalence. I begin by considering and rejecting a prevalent and prima facie promising account according to which the relevant oughts are the prescriptive ought and the evaluative ought. I then propose a different account that holds that the oughts we need are instead the deliberative ought and the hypological ought. (shrink)

Roughly, empirical AI alignment research (AIA) is an area of AI research which investigates empirically how to design AI systems in line with human goals. This paper examines the role of non-epistemic values in AIA. It argues that: (1) Sciences differ in the degree to which values influence them. (2) AIA is strongly value-laden. (3) This influence of values is managed inappropriately and thus threatens AIA’s epistemic integrity and ethical beneficence. (4) AIA should strive to achieve value transparency, critical scrutiny (...) from inside and outside the discipline – involving the public –, and to empower actors without strong commercial interests. (shrink)

The crisis of our times is that we have science without wisdom. Modern science and technology lead to modern industry and agriculture which in turn lead to all the great benefits of the modern world and to the global crises we face, from population growth to climate change. The fault lies, not with science, but with science dissociated from a more fundamental concern with problems of living. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the fundamental (...) task becomes to help humanity learn how to tackle problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that we may gradually discover how to make progress towards a better, wiser world. (shrink)

In order to make progress with solving our grave global problems we need to bring about a revolution in academia so that problems of living are given intellectual priority, and the basic intellectual aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, and not just acquire knowledge.

Our world is beset with appalling problems. To solve these urgent, intractable global problems it is not new scientific knowledge and technology that we need so much as new actions: new policies, new international relations, new institutions and social arrangements, new ways of living. The mere provision of scientific know-ledge and technological know-how cannot help much: indeed, all too often it actually makes matters worse. The dreadful truth is that science has played a crucial role, often unwittingly, in the creation (...) of our problems. To solve our problems we certainly need to learn, but what we need to learn is not so much new knowledge as new actions—new, more cooperative, wiser ways of living. Above all, we need to learn how to resolve our conflicts in more just, humane and rationally cooperative ways. This in turn requires that we create new institutions and traditions of learning, rationally devoted to helping us to learn how to become more cooperative and wise. We need a new kind of academic enterprise, all over the world, which takes as its basic task to promote not just knowledge, but rather wisdom—wisdom being defined as the capacity to solve problems of living so as to achieve what is of value, for oneself and others (wisdom thus including but going beyond knowledge). (shrink)

In order to solve the problem of the monstrous acts that an all-powerful, all-knowing God would daily be performing, we need to sever the God of Power from the God of Value. The former is the underlying dynamic unity in the physical universe, eternal, omnipresent, all-powerful, but an It, and thus not capable of knowing what It does. It can be forgiven the terrible things It does. The latter is what is of most value associated with our human world - (...) or the world of sentient life more generally. Having performed this surgical operation on God, the problem then becomes: How can we put the two halves of God together again? How can our human world, imbued with experiential qualities, consciousness, free will meaning and value, exist and best flourish, embedded as it is in the physical universe? This is our fundamental problem - philosophical, intellectual and practical. It is our fundamental religious problem. (shrink)

In this paper I set out to solve the problem of how the world as we experience it, full of colours and other sensory qualities, and our inner experiences, can be reconciled with physics. I discuss and reject the views of J. J. C. Smart and Rom Harré. I argue that physics is concerned only to describe a selected aspect of all that there is – the causal aspect which determines how events evolve. Colours and other sensory qualities, lacking causal (...) efficacy, are ignored by physics and cannot be predicted by physical theory. Even though physics is silent about sensory qualities, they nevertheless exist objectively in the world – in one sense of “objective” at least. (shrink)

The crisis of our times is that we have science without wisdom. Modern science and technology lead to modern industry and agriculture which in turn lead to all the great benefits of the modern world and to the global crises we face, from population growth to climate change. The fault lies, not with science, but with science dissociated from a more fundamental concern with problems of living. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the fundamental (...) task becomes to help humanity learn how to tackle problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that we may gradually discover how to make progress towards a better, wiser world. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a new way for pacifists to deal with the problem of supreme emergency. In it I argue that a supreme emergency in which some disaster can only be prevented by modern war is a morally tragic situation. This means that a leader faced with a supreme emergency acts unjustifiably in both allowing something terrible to occur, as well as in waging war to prevent it. I also argue that we may have cause to excuse from (...) wrongdoing the agents who must choose an unjustified action in a supreme emergency. (shrink)

One of Bolzano’s objections to Kant’s way of drawing the analytic-synthetic distinction is that it only applies to judgments within a narrow range of syntactic forms, namely, universal affirmative judgments. According to Bolzano, Kant cannot account for judgments of other syntactic forms that, intuitively, are analytic. A recent paper by Ian Proops also attributes to Kant the view that analytic judgments beyond a limited range of syntactic forms are impossible. I argue that, correctly understood, Kant’s conception of analyticity allows for (...) analytic judgments of a wider range of syntactic forms. (shrink)

Many prominent ethicists, including Shelly Kagan, John Rawls, and Thomas Scanlon, accept a kind of epistemic modesty thesis concerning our capacity to carry out the project of ethical theorizing. But it is a thesis that has received surprisingly little explicit and focused attention, despite its widespread acceptance. After explaining why the thesis is true, I argue that it has several implications in metaethics, including, especially, implications that should lead us to rethink our understanding of Reductive Realism. In particular, the thesis (...) of epistemic modesty in ethics implies a kind of epistemic modesty about the metaphysical nature of ethics, if Reductive Realism about the metaphysical nature of ethics is true, and it implies that normative concepts are indispensable to practical deliberation in a way that answers an influential objection to Reductive Realism from Jonathan Dancy, David Enoch, William FitzPatrick, and Derek Parfit. (shrink)

There are two broad approaches to theorizing about ontological categories. Quineans use first-order quantifiers to generalize over entities of each category, whereas type theorists use quantification on variables of different semantic types to generalize over different categories. Does anything of import turn on the difference between these approaches? If so, are there good reasons to go type-theoretic? I argue for positive answers to both questions concerning the category of propositions. I also discuss two prominent arguments for a Quinean conception of (...) propositions, concerning their role in natural language semantics and apparent quantification over propositions within natural language. It will emerge that even if these arguments are sound, there need be no deep question about Quinean propositions’ true nature, contrary to much recent work on the metaphysics of propositions. (shrink)

This paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world of our own minds. I start by arguing that the internalist/externalist debate in epistemology has been widely misconstrued---we need to reconfigure the debate in order to see how it can arise about our access to the internal world. I then argue for the coherence of scenarios of radical deception about our own minds, and I use them to defend a properly formulated internalist view (...) about our access to our minds. The overarching lesson is that general epistemology and the specialized epistemology of introspection need to talk---each has much to learn from each other. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that recourse to war is justifiable only as a last resort. If a situation can be resolved by less harmful means, then war is unjust. It is also commonly accepted that violent actions in war should be necessary and proportionate. Violent actions in war are unjust if the end towards which those actions are means can be achieved by less harmful means. In this article, I argue that satisfaction of the last resort criterion depends in part (...) upon the likelihood of success of non-violent alternatives to war, and that the actual and potential effectiveness of non-violent resistance means that the last resort criterion of the jus ad bellum and the proportionality criterion of the jus in bello are harder to satisfy than is often presumed. (shrink)

Most scientists would hold that science has not established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – i.e. such that there is some as-yet undiscovered true physical theory of everything that is unified. This is an empirically untestable, or metaphysical thesis. It thus lies beyond the scope of science. Only when physics has formulated a testable unified theory of everything which has been amply corroborated empirically will science be in a position to declare that it has established that the cosmos is (...) physically comprehensible. But this argument presupposes a widely accepted but untenable conception of science which I shall call standard empiricism. According to standard empiricism, in science theories are accepted solely on the basis of evidence. Choice of theory may be influenced for a time by considerations of simplicity, unity, or explanatory capacity, but not in such a way that the universe itself is permanently assumed to be simple, unified or physically comprehensible. In science, no thesis about the universe can be accepted permanently as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. Granted this view, it is clear that science cannot have established that the universe is physically comprehensible. Standard empiricism is, however, as I have indicated, untenable. Any fundamental physical theory, in order to be accepted as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, must satisfy two criteria. It must be sufficiently empirically successful, and sufficiently unified. Given any accepted theory of physics, endlessly many empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted – disunified because they assert that different dynamical laws govern the diverse phenomena to which the theory applies. These disunified rivals are not considered for a moment in physics, despite their greater empirical success. This persistent rejection of empirically more successful but disunified rival theories means, I argue, that a big, highly problematic, implicit assumption is made by science about the cosmos, to the effect, at least, that the cosmos is such that all seriously disunified theories are false. Once this point is recognized, it becomes clear, I argue, that we need a new conception of science which makes explicit, and so criticizable and improvable the big, influential, and problematic assumption that is at present implicit in physics in the persistent preference for unified theories. This conception of science, which I call aim-oriented empiricism, represents the assumption of physics in the form of a hierarchy of assumptions. As one goes up the hierarchy, the assumptions become less and less substantial, and more and more nearly such that their truth is required for science, or the pursuit of knowledge, to be possible at all. At each level, that assumption is accepted which best accords with the next one up, and has, associated with it the most empirically progressive research programme in physics, or holds out the greatest hope of leading to such an empirically progressive research programme. In this way a framework of relatively insubstantial, unproblematic, fixed assumptions and associated methods is created, high up in the hierarchy, within which much more substantial and problematic assumptions and associated methods, low down in the hierarchy, can be changed, and indeed improved, as scientific knowledge improves. One assumption in this hierarchy of assumptions, I argue, is that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – that is, such that some yet-to-be-discovered unified theory of everything is true. Hence the conclusion: improve our ideas about the nature of science and it becomes apparent that science has already established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – in so far as science can ever establish anything theoretical. (shrink)

Given constructivism’s enduring popularity and appeal, it is perhaps something of a surprise that there remains considerable uncertainty among many philosophers about what constructivism is even supposed to be. My aim in this article is to make some progress on the question of how constructivism should be understood. I begin by saying something about what kind of theory constructivism is supposed to be. Next, I consider and reject both the standard proceduralist characterization of constructivism and also Sharon Street’s ingenious standpoint (...) characterization. I then suggest an alternative characterization according to which what is central is the role played by certain standards of correct reasoning. I conclude by saying something about the implications of this account for evaluating the success of constructivism. I suggest that certain challenges that have been raised against constructivist theories are based on dubious understandings of constructivism, whereas other challenges only properly come into focus once a proper understanding is achieved. (shrink)

Scientific method interests the linguist not only as it interests every scientific worker, but also in a special way, because the scientist, as part of his method, utters certain very peculiar speech-forms. The linguist naturally divides scientific activity into two phases: the scientist performs “handling” actions and utters speech. The speech-forms which the scientist utters are peculiar both in their form and in their effect upon hearers.

The proper task of philosophy is to keep alive awareness of what our most fundamental, important, urgent problems are, what our best attempts are at solving them and, if possible, what needs to be done to improve these attempts. Unfortunately, academic philosophy fails disastrously even to conceive of the task in these terms. It makes no attempt to ensure that universities tackle global problems - global intellectually, and global in the sense of concerning the future of the earth and humanity. (...) Universities do not give sustained attention to global problems (due to specialization and giving priority to the pursuit of knowledge) and as a result violate three of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable. Judged from the standpoint of helping humanity tackle global problems, universities as at present constituted betray reason and, as a result, betray humanity. Bereft of institutions of learning rationally designed to help us make progress towards as good and wise a world as possible, not surprisingly we fail to learn how to do it. This is the key crisis of our times. And it is, at root, a failure of philosophy. It is the failure of philosophy to keep alive rational exploration of global problems in universities, and in the public domain - a failure that can be traced back to the origins of modern philosophy in the 17th century. We urgently need a revolution in philosophy so that academic philosophers take up their proper task of promoting rational exploration of our fundamental, global problems. (shrink)

Opponents of abortion are often described as ‘inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities. They are alleged to do too little to combat spontaneous abortion, they should be adopting cryopreserved embryos with greater frequency and so on. These types of arguments—which we call ‘inconsistency arguments’—conform to a common pattern. Each specifies what consistent opponents of abortion would do (or believe), asserts that they fail to act (or believe) accordingly and concludes that they are inconsistent. Here, we show (...) that inconsistency arguments fail en masse. In short, inconsistency arguments typically face four problems. First, they usually fail to account for diversity among opponents of abortion. Second, they rely on inferences about consistency based on isolated beliefs shared by some opponents of abortion (and these inferences often do not survive once we consider other beliefs opponents of abortion tend to hold). Third, inconsistency arguments usually ignore the diverse ways in which opponents of abortion might act on their beliefs. Fourth, inconsistency arguments criticise groups of people without threatening their beliefs (eg, that abortion is immoral). Setting these problems aside, even supposing inconsistency arguments are successful, they hardly matter. In fact, in the two best-case scenarios—where inconsistency arguments succeed—they either encourage millions of people to make the world a (much) worse place (from the critic’s perspective) or promote epistemically and morally irresponsible practices. We conclude that a more valuable discussion would be had by focusing on the arguments made by opponents of abortion rather than opponents themselves. (shrink)

There is a need to bring about a revolution in the philosophy of science, interpreted to be both the academic discipline, and the official view of the aims and methods of science upheld by the scientific community. At present both are dominated by the view that in science theories are chosen on the basis of empirical considerations alone, nothing being permanently accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. Biasing choice of theory in the direction of simplicity, unity (...) or explanatory power does not permanently commit science to the thesis that nature is simple or unified. This current ‘paradigm’ is, I argue, untenable. We need a new paradigm, which acknowledges that science makes a hierarchy of metaphysical assumptions concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, theories being chosen partly on the basis of compatibility with these assumptions. Eleven arguments are given for favouring this new ‘paradigm’ over the current one. (shrink)

Kant’s distinction between the determining and reflecting power of judgment in the third Critique is not well understood in the literature. A mainstream view unifies these by making determination the telos of all acts of judgment (Longuenesse 1998). On this view, all reflection is primarily in the business of producing empirical concepts for cognition, and thus has what I call a determinative ideal. I argue that this view fails to take seriously the independence and autonomy of the ‘power of judgment’ (...) [Urteilskraft] as a higher cognitive faculty in its own right with its own a priori principle. Instead of seeing merely reflecting judgments as failed or incomplete acts of judgment, I argue that these are in fact paradigmatic of the activity of the power of judgment. More precisely, the reflecting power of judgment just is the power of judgment. Accordingly, reflecting judgment takes precedence over determining judgment; while the former operates according to a law that it gives itself, the latter requires another higher cognitive faculty to provide its principle. On my view, reflecting judgment should be understood as the capacity for purposive subsumption—most clearly seen in the activity of mere reflection. (shrink)

Much of my working life has been devoted to trying to get across the point that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom rather than just acquire knowledge.