A suggestion famously made by Peter Winch and carried through to present discussions holds that what constitutes the social as a kind consists of something shared – rules or practices commonly learned, internalized, or otherwise acquired by all members belonging to a society. This essays argues against the explanatory efficacy of appeals to this shared something as constitutive of a social kind by examining a violation of social norms or rules, viz., mistakes. I argue that an asymmetric relation exists between (...) the notion of mistakes and that of the social. In particular, mistakes do not presuppose a concept of the social, but the concept of the social requires prior specification of a category of mistakes. But no such prior specification proves possible. The very notion of a mistake is so inchoate that it makes it impossible to provide the kind of regimentation required for a rule-governed domain. Thus, there may be recognized mistakes even in the absence of a unified system or common knowledge of norms.Later writers attempt to avoid Winch's over-strong assumption that something shared and internal constitutes the social but cannot. Extending recent work by Stephen Turner, I argue that ``the social'' is not a domain that is susceptible to lawlike treatment, but rather a heterogeneous, motley collection. For absent the assumption of a shared something, no social object exists to be explained. So, I conclude, we have at present no clear way of marking out the social as a coherent or unified domain of inquiry. (shrink)

Should a principle of charity be applied to the interpretation of the colour concepts exercised in visual experience? We think not. We shall argue, for one thing, that the grounds for applying a principle of charity are lacking in the case of colour concepts. More importantly, we shall argue that attempts at giving the experience of colour a charitable interpretation either fail to respect obvious features of that experience or fail to interpret it charitably, after all. Charity to visual experience (...) is therefore no motive for resisting the natural, Galilean response to a scientific understanding of light and vision. The best interpretation of colour experience ends up convicting it of widespread and systematic error. (shrink)

Three theories contend as explanations of perpetrator behavior in the Holocaust as well as other cases of genocide: structural, intentional, and situational. Structural explanations emphasize the sense in which no single individual or choice accounts for the course of events. In opposition, intentional/cutltural accounts insist upon the genocides as intended outcomes, for how can one explain situations in which people ‘step up’ and repeatedly kill defenseless others in large numbers over sustained periods of time as anything other than a choice? (...) Situational explanations offer a type of behavioral account; this is how people act in certain environments. Critical to the situational account as I discuss it is the ‘Asch paradigm’, i.e. experimentally attested conditions for eliciting conformityof behavior regardlesss of available evidence of prior beliefs. In what follows, I defend what I term above a version of situational explanations of perpetrator behavior. Moreover, I maintain that the factors that explain provide an understanding as well. While not committed to the complete irrelevance or exclusion of cultural or structural factors, nonetheless situational analyses can account both for what happened and why. A cardinal virtue of this version of situational explanations consists in showing how shallow the problem of understanding turns out to be for such cases. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay offers a reconfiguration of the possibility‐space of positions regarding the metaphysics and epistemology associated with historical knowledge. A tradition within analytic philosophy from Danto to Dummett attempts to answer questions about the reality of the past on the basis of two shared assumptions. The first takes individual statements as the relevant unit of semantic and philosophical analysis. The second presumes that variants of realism and antirealism about the past exhaust the metaphysical options . This essay argues that both (...) of these assumptions should be rejected. It develops as an alternative an irrealist account of history, a view based in part on work by Leon Goldstein and Ian Hacking. On an irrealist view, historical claims ought to be treated as subject to the same conditions and caveats that apply to any theory of empirical or scientific knowledge. Irrealism argues for pasts as made and not found. The argument emphasizes the priority of classification over perception in the order of understanding and so verification. Because nothing a priori anchors practices of classification, no sense can be attached to claims that some single structure must or does determine what events take place in human history. Irrealism denies to realism the very intelligibility of any imagined view from nowhere, that is, a determinately configured past subsisting sub specie aeternitatis. A plurality of pasts exists because constituting a past always depends to some degree on socially mediated negotiations of a fit between descriptions and experience. (shrink)

For almost half a century, the person most responsible for fomenting brouhahas regarding degrees of plasticity in the writing of histories has been Hayden White. Yet, despite the voluminous responses provoked by White’s work, almost no effort has been made to treat White’s writings in a systematic yet sympathetic way as a philosophy of history. Herman Paul’s book begins to remedy that lack and does so in a carefully considered and extremely scholarly fashion. In his relatively brief six chapters (...) (plus an introduction), Paul packs a wealth of information. He convincingly demonstrates that a guiding theme of White’s work from earliest times has been that historians have no choice but to impose a structure on historical data and thus bear responsibility for structures so imposed. As such, a key philosophical question concerns on what bases White contends that a freedom of choice exists regarding forms given to recorded histories. This essay focuses on how Paul argues for a unified vision that answers this question, as well as how he offers an original and comprehensive conception of White’s writings. (shrink)

The dispute between realists about color and anti-realists is actually a dispute about the nature of color properties. The disputants do not disagree over what material objects are like. Rather, they disagree over whether any of the uncontroversial facts about material objects--their powers to cause visual experiences, their dispositions to reflect incident light, their atomic makeup, and so on--amount to their having colors. The disagreement is thus about which properties colors are and, in particular, whether colors are any of the (...) properties in a particular set that is acknowledged on both sides to exhaust the properties of material objects. In a previous paper we discussed at length one attempt to identify colors with particular properties of material objects--namely, with their dispositions to cause visual experiences. Here we shall discuss a different and perhaps more influential version of realism, which says that the colors of material objects are microphysical properties of their surfaces. We shall call this theory physicalism about color (physicalism, for short). In order to evaluate this theory, however, we shall first have to clarify some methodological issues. Our hope is that we can bring some further clarity to the question of color realism, whether or not we succeed in our critique of the physicalists' answer. (shrink)

This collection of newly commissioned essays, edited by NYU philosophers Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke, resumes the current surge of interest in the proper explication of the notion of a priori. The authors discuss the relations of the a priori to the notions of definition, meaning, justification, and ontology, explore how the concept figured historically in the philosophies of Leibniz, Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein, and address its role in the contemporary philosophies of logic, mathematics, mind, and science. The editors’ (...) Introduction familiarizes the reader with the issues that are to be explored in detail in later parts of the anthology. (shrink)

History has been disparaged since the late 19th century for not conforming to norms of scientific explanation. Nonetheless, as a matter of fact a work of history upends the regnant philosophical conception of science in the second part of the 20th century. Yet despite its impact, Kuhn’s Structure has failed to motivate philosophers to ponder why works of history should be capable of exerting rational influence on an understanding of philosophy of science. But all this constitutes a great irony and (...) a mystery. The mystery consists of the persistence of a complete lack of interest in efforts to theorize historical explanation. Fundamental questions regarding why an historical account could have any rational influence remain not merely unanswered, but unasked. The irony arises from the fact that analytic philosophy of history went into an eclipse where it remains until this day just around the time that the influence of Kuhn’s great work began to make itself felt. This paper highlights puzzles long ignored regarding the challenges a work of history managed to pose to the epistemic authority of science, and what this might imply generally for the place of philosophy of history vis-à-vis the problems of philosophy. (shrink)

Alex Rosenberg’s latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistemic value. Rosenberg argues not for the replacement of narrative history by something more science-like, but rather the end of histories understood as an account of human doings under a certain description. This review critiques three of his main arguments: 1) narrative history must root its explanations in folk psychology, 2) there are no beliefs nor desires guiding human action, and 3) historical narratives are morally and ethically (...) pernicious. Rosenberg’s book reprises themes about action explanation he first rehearsed 40 years ago, albeit with neuroscience rather than sociobiology now “preempting” explanations that trade on folk psychological notions. Although Rosenberg’s argument strategy has not altered, the review develops a number of reasons as to why his approach now lacks any plausibility as a strategy for explaining histories, much less a successful one. (shrink)

The Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) is chosen to illustrate the long-standing wave-particle duality problem. Why is which-way (welcher weg) information incompatible with wave interference? How do we explain Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment? Most crucially, how can the photon divide at the first beam splitter and yet terminate on either arm with its undiminished energy? The position advanced is that the photon has two identities, one supporting particle features and the other wave features. There is photon kinetic energy that never splits (on (...) half-silvered mirrors) or diffracts (in pinholes or slits). Then there are photon probability waves that do diffract and can reinforce or cancel. Photon kinetic energy is oscillatory; its cycles require/occupy time. E = mc2 suggests that kinetic energy is physically real as occurrence in time just as rest mass is physically real as existence in space; both are quantized and both occupy/require a dimension for their occurrence or existence. Photon kinetic energy (KE) thus resides in time, but is still present/available for interactions (events) in space; rest mass (e.g., your desk) resides in space but is still present/available for interactions (events) in time. While photon probability waves progress in space and diffract there, photon KE resides in time and never diffracts in space; at reception it always arrives whole and imitates particle impact without being a particle. Photon probability waves are real; they diffract in space. Acknowledging that the photon has two identities (residing energy and progressing probability), explains photon dual nature. And wave-particle duality is central to quantum mechanics. Understanding it leads to new insights into entanglement, nonlocality and the measurement problem. A 30-minute video on nonlocality and photon dualism can be found by a google: search “youtube klevgard nonlocality”). (shrink)

Darcy's law is a phenomenological relationship for fluid flow rate that finds one of its principle applications in hydrology. Theoretical hydrologists rely upon a multiplicity of conceptual models to carry out approximate derivations of Darcy's law. These derivations provide structural explanations of the law; they require the application of fundamental principles, such as conservation of momentum, to idealized models of the porous media within which the flow occurs. In practice, recognition of the idealized conditions incorporated into models facilitates the empirical (...) clarification of the domain within which the law remains accurate. Structural explanations also contribute to the physical interpretation of phenomenological parameters. (shrink)

In this article, I outline a strategy for challenging J.L. Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument, and specifically the premise within the argument that asserts the existence of what Schellenberg calls nonresistant nonbelief. Drawing on some of the philosophical resources of skeptical theism, I show how this premise is based on a particular “noseeum assumption”—what I call Schellenberg’s Noseeum Assumption—that underwrites a particular “noseeum argument.” This assumption is that, regarding putative nonresistant nonbelievers, more likely than not we’d detect these nonbelievers’ resistance toward God (...) if there were any. I give reasons for thinking that it is not more reasonable to affirm than to refrain from affirming Schellenberg’s Noseeum Assumption, and so reason to think that the hiddenness argument is not a good argument for atheism. I also defend the strategy I outline against several objections. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

The word "green" refers to the color green, which could more precisely refer to the wavelength of green photons, green paint, green light, or green qualia. But in this 12-page paper, as in this abstract, it is written in black. Thus its referential meaning(s) is different than its non-referential or presentational meaning, which is the actual quale of blackness arising in the actual reader's mind. Philosophy has discussed--but never employed--non-referential terms before. That is like discussing swimming but never employing a (...) swimming ability. It can be done, but it misses the whole point. This paper discusses non-referential terms, poetry, painting, music, swimming, counterfactuals, and how this distinction is deeper than the 1st-person / 3rd-person divide. (shrink)

Commentary on Walsh, E. 2020. Cognitive transformation, dementia, and the moral weight of advance directives. The American Journal of Bioethics. 20(8): 54–64.

Dinner tonight may be 6 hours later than lunch today. Also, lunch and dinner go from being in our future to being in our present (consecutively) and then our past (consecutively). How do quantum mechanics and relativity account for this?

It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it (...) would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices. (shrink)

The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.

What's wrong with Copenhagen, GRW, Superdeterminism, QBism, Many-worlds, Bohmianism, and Retrocausality, and how theses differ from Presentist Fragmentalism.

The first purpose of this series of articles is to introduce case studies on how current AI models can be used in the development of a possible theory of quantum gravity, their limitations, and the role the researcher has in steering the development in the right direction, even highlighting the errors, weaknesses and strengths of the whole process. The second is to introduce the new Presentist Fragmentalist ontology as a framework and use it for developing theories of quantum gravity and (...) speculate on achieving a TOE. We emphasize it is necessary for the researcher to check everything in these articles for themselves. While there are many good ideas in this series of papers, the AI is known to make even arithmetic and algebraic mistakes. To select just five apparently good ideas, there is a causal interaction tensor Cαβγδ(F1, F2) that encodes the causal relationship and the strength of the (possibly non-local) interaction between two fragments of reality (formed by each quantum system). There is a quantitative prediction for a testable table-top experiment. There is an explanation of how spacetime emerges from the fragments and their interactions. There is an explicit account of the double-slit experiment. And there is an explanation how this theory accommodates dark matter and dark energy simultaneously. We explore ideas, equations they lead to, concrete calculations, and give corrections along the way. While these are generally morally right within this framework they must be checked by the researcher. Given this caveat, we believe we have made significant progress with the PF interpretation in developing a theory of quantum gravity and pointing out a possible path to a TOE. (shrink)

Dinner today is 6 hours after lunch today. Also, these are in our future, then in our present (consecutively), and then in our past (consecutively). How do both quantum mechanics and relativity account for these?

This paper gives a radical answer to why there is something rather than nothing based on the Calculus of Qualia and its non-referential terms. The answer turns out to be: because what exists exists necessarily because of its nature. To sum up and oversimplify the extensive argument in two sentences, skipping many steps: 1. By the question “why is there something rather than nothing” we actually mean to be asking “why is there something rather than the weakest assumption?” 2. The (...) non-referential term █ (which does not even refer to itself) in the Calculus of Qualia possibly exists, and, as it has no counterfactuals, that implies its necessary actuality. The upshot is that the existence of the non-referential term █ is a weaker assumption (i.e. assumes less) than the assumption that there could have been nothing. The extensive argument in the paper gives the first compelling secular answer to the ultimate question. (shrink)

This paper introduces non-referential terms into language as used in the Calculus of Qualia (CQ). It is possible to write “blackness” to refer to the experience of the subjective, internal quale of blackness. It is possible to write █ as another word for “blackness,” another referential term. But that is not its meaning in CQ. In CQ the word “blackness” is used as usual, as a symbol that refers to something other than itself. But █ is the immediate subjective experience (...) (quale) that arises in the reader’s mind. “Blackness” refers to the color or quale. But █ in no way refers, _not even to itself_, it is strictly non-referential. It’s presentation instantiates it. This is no some trivial definitional trick but is a paradigm shift. Examples, traps, and concequences for theories of truth and meaning are briefly explored. (shrink)

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking (...) prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your future selves. (shrink)

This note (it is not a full-fledged academic paper) introduces a novel approach to classic thought experiments in consciousness studies through the incorporation of non-referential terms—symbols that present experiences directly rather than referring to them. By analyzing the Hard Problem, Knowledge Argument, Philosophical Zombies, and Spectrum Inversion thought experiments using both referential terms (like "blackness") and non-referential terms (like █), the paper reveals that many apparent philosophical puzzles arise from conflating referential descriptions with direct presentational experiences. The analysis shows that (...) attempting to formulate these thought experiments using non-referential terms often requires instantiating the very experiences in question, creating self-referential paradoxes that solve or dissolve the original problems. (shrink)

Big Bang and the actual state of the universe; not information; entropic time is wrong; not discrete computation; 1-d topologies; QBism reconsidered; not Boltzmann brains; A-theories; the Big Bang and A-theories; not Boltzmann brains again.

If the sun were to suddenly go out we wouldn't know it for 8 minutes. But if Alice is sitting in the middle of the sun and measures one of a pair of entangled particles and we measure the other one, what direction she measures her particle in has instantaneous effects on the one we measure. This is resolved in the Presentist Fragmentalist interpretation of QM.

Dinner today is 6 hours later than lunch. Also they are in our future and then (consecutively) in our present and then (consecutively) in our past. How do both quantum mechanics and relativity account for this?

We can ask, (1) given the state of the universe at the big bang, what is the probability that the universe would have ended up in its current actual state? What is the probability distribution for the possible states the universe could have evolved into? We can ask, (2) given the current actual state of the universe, what is the probability the big bang would have been in the state it was? What is the probability distribution over different possible states (...) at the big bang? Both the Fine-Tuning argument and the Anthropic argument are confused versions of (2). This settles the issues once and for all. (shrink)

The self can be understood in objective metaphysical terms as a bundle of properties, as a substance, or as some other kind of entity on our metaphysical list of what there is. Such an approach explores the metaphysical nature of the self when regarded from a suitably impersonal, ontological perspective. It explores the nature and structure of the self in objective reality, that is, the nature and structure of the self from without. This is the objective self. I am taking (...) a different approach. In addition to objective reality, which is usually understood and explored from an impersonal, quasi-observational and metaphysically realist perspective, we can also explore the nature and structure of subjective reality. The nature and structure of subjective reality is defined by the nature and structure of first-personal, conscious experience. Subjective reality is as real as objective reality, and a metaphysical realist such as myself can endorse the existence of both kinds of ontology. The mental states that, as experienced from the first-personal or subjective perspective, capture the nature and structure of subjective reality, are included in objective reality. The questions to explore in a subjective ontology of the self concern the nature and structure of the self from the first-personal or subjective perspective, that is, the nature and structure of the self from within. This is the subjective self. (shrink)

In this short informal note we consider four Gedankenexperiments that show A-theories of time are compelling and can be leveraged to give a Presentist Fragmentalist realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. Each of these four involve roles for manifest time, relativistic time, and quantum mechanical time. The point is to give simple everyday situations where a new point of view leads to the consistency of all three. This is the MO of the early Einstein. Einstein's Train is one of the Gedankenexperiments (...) considered. (shrink)

Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in (...) public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly— even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed.. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of Zeynep Tufekci’s capacities approach to social movements, which explains the strength of social movements in terms of their capacities. Tufekci emphasises that the capacities of contemporary social movements largely depend upon their uses of new digital technologies, and of social media in particular. We show that Tufekci’s approach has important implications for the structure of social movements, whether and what obligations they can have, and for how these obligations distribute to their members. In exploring (...) these implications, we develop a tripartite taxonomy of social movements. Each type of social movement in the taxonomy corresponds to a different type of group: social campaigns, social struggles, and social agitations. We show that all three types of social movement can bear obligations in virtue of their capacities. Finally, we argue that a surprising upshot of the obligations of social movements is that members of oppressed groups can have obligations to resist their own oppression in virtue of being members of social movements. (shrink)

In the replies to my critics that follow I offer a more detailed account of the specific papers that they discuss or examine. The papers that they are especially concerned with are: “The Material World and Natural Religion in Hume’s Treatise” (Ryan) [Essay 3], “Hume’s Skepticism and the Problem of Atheism” (Fosl) [Essay 12], and “Hume’s Philosophy of Irreligion and the Myth of British Empiricism (Gautier) [Essay 16].

Conservatism about perceptual justification tells us that we cannot have perceptual justification to believe p unless we also have justification to believe that perceptual experiences are reliable. There are many ways to maintain this thesis, ways that have not been sufficiently appreciated. Most of these ways lead to at least one of two problems. The first is an over-intellectualization problem, whereas the second problem concerns the satisfaction of the epistemic basing requirement on justified belief. I argue that there is at (...) least one Conservative view that survives both difficulties, a view which has the further ability to undercut a crucial consideration that has supported Dogmatist views about perceptual justification. The final section explores a tension between Conservatism and the prospects of having a completely general account of propositional justification. Ironically, the problem is that Conservatives seem committed to making the acquisition of propositional justification too easy. My partial defense of Conservatism concludes by suggesting possible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

In this article, I claim that Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road is a recent version of the film genre that Stanley Cavell calls the “melodrama of the unknown woman”. Accordingly, my discussion focuses on two key elements of that identification: the film's overriding dramatic and thematic emphasis on conversation; and the central characters’ relation to the wider social and political concerns of America.

The traditional problem of free will has reached an impasse; we are unlikely to see progress without rethinking the terms in which the problem had been cast. Our approach offers an alternative to the standard terms of the debate, by developing an authorially parameterized approach articulated within a two-dimensional semantics for temporal predicates.

Proponents of public reason views hold that the exercise of political power ought to be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. This article elucidates the common structure shared by all public reason views, first by identifying a set of questions that all such views must answer and, second, by showing that the answers to these questions stand in a particular relationship to each other. In particular, we show that what we call the ‘rationale question’ is fundamental. This fact, and the common (...) structure more generally, are often overlooked or distorted within the literature. As a result, we argue, several prominent argumentative moves made by both critics and defenders of public reason are unsuccessful. Our overall conclusion is that discussions of public reason views would be more fruitful if they made consistent use of the common structure we identify. (shrink)

Robert Brandom makes several mistakes in his discussion of Sellars's "Two-Ply" account of observation. Brandom does not recognize the difference in "level" between observation reports concerning physical objects and 'looks'-statements. He also denies that 'looks'-statements are reports or even make claims. They then demonstrate a more correct reading of Sellars on 'looks'-statements.

English translation of a paper intially publisdhed in French in Dialogue under the title 'Une solution pour le paradoxe de Goodman'. In the classical version of Goodman's paradox, the universe where the problem takes place is ambiguous. The conditions of induction being accurately described, I define then a framework of n-universes, allowing the distinction, among the criteria of a given n-universe, between constants and variables. Within this framework, I distinguish between two versions of the problem, respectively taking place: (i) in (...) an n-universe the variables of which are colour and time; (ii) in an n-universe the variables of which are colour, time and space. Finally, I show that each of these versions admits a specific resolution. (shrink)

I describe in this paper the basic elements of the n-universes, a methodological tool originally introduced in Franceschi (2001) in the context of the study of Goodman's paradox. As the n-universes can be used in wide-ranging applications, such as thought experiments, I describe them from an essentially pragmatic standpoint, i.e. by describing accurately the step-by-step process which leads to a given modelisation.

This introduction provides a brief overview of the issues and arguments that arise in Hume's _Dialogues concerning Natural Religion_ (1779). It also provides a few brief comments relating to the historical context in which this text should be interpreted , as well as an account of the place of the _Dialogues_ in relation to Hume's other philosophical works.

In their article ’Is Pregnancy a Disease? A Normative Approach’, Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen contend that, on several of the most prominent accounts of disease, pregnancy should be considered a disease. More specifically, of the five accounts they discuss, each renders pregnancy a disease or suffers serious conceptual problems otherwise. They take issue specifically with the dysfunction account of disease and argue that it suffers several theoretical difficulties. In this response, we focus on defending the dysfunction account against their (...) main objections and show why a version of the dysfunction account is viable on account of the indispensability of normativity in biology and medicine. After disarming their main objections to the dysfunction account, we briefly respond to their treatment of the normality of pregnancy and then draw a distinction between adverse symptoms and underlying causes to show why even though pregnancy may have ’disease-like’ features, it is not a disease. (shrink)

Various sexist and racist beliefs ascribe certain negative qualities to people of a given sex or race. Epistemic allies are people who think that in normal circumstances rationality requires the rejection of such sexist and racist beliefs upon learning of many counter-instances, i.e. members of these groups who lack the target negative quality. Accordingly, epistemic allies think that those who give up their sexist or racist beliefs in such circumstances are rationally responding to their evidence, while those who do not (...) are irrational in failing to respond to their evidence by giving up their belief. This is a common view among philosophers and non-philosophers. But epistemic allies face three problems. First, sexist and racist beliefs often involve generic propositions. These sorts of propositions are notoriously resilient in the face of counter-instances since the truth of generic propositions is typically compatible with the existence of many counter-instances. Second, background beliefs can enable one to explain away counter-instances to one’s beliefs. So even when counter-instances might otherwise constitute strong evidence against the truth of the generic, the ability to explain the counter-instances away with relevant background beliefs can make it rational to retain one’s belief in the generic despite the existence of many counter-instances. The final problem is that the kinds of judgements epistemic allies want to make about the irrationality of sexist and racist beliefs upon encountering many counter-instances is at odds with the judgements that we are inclined to make in seemingly parallel cases about the rationality of non-sexist and non-racist generic beliefs. Thus epistemic allies may end up having to give up on plausible normative supervenience principles. All together, these problems pose a significant prima facie challenge to epistemic allies. In what follows I explain how a Bayesian approach to the relation between evidence and belief can neatly untie these knots. The basic story is one of defeat: Bayesianism explains when one is required to become increasingly confident in chance propositions, and confidence in chance propositions can make belief in corresponding generics irrational. (shrink)

An important aspect of moral expertise is moral sensitivity, which is the ability to be sensitive to the presence of morally salient features in a context. This requires being able to see and acquire the morally relevant information, as well as organise and interpret it, so that you can undertake the related work of moral judgement, focus (or motivation) and action. As a distinct but interrelated component of ethical expertise, moral sensitivity can and must be trained and educated. However, despite (...) its importance to moral education, there has been comparatively little discussion about the role of ethical sensitivity and the ways that it can be trained within the context of Kant’s, and Kantian, ethics. This paper seeks to address this gap. While Kant does not explicitly focus in detail on moral sensitivity, by breaking sensitivity down into seven distinct aspects through drawing on the Four Component Model, we are able to identify a wealth of resources in Kant’s work from which we can con- struct an account of moral sensitivity education that draws on his underlying moral theory. (shrink)