In recent years, the opioid crisis in the United States has sparked significant discussion on doctor–patient interactions concerning chronic pain treatments, but little to no attention has been given to investigating the vocal aspects of patient talk. This exploratory sociolinguistic study intends to fill this knowledge gap by employing prosodic discourse analysis to examine context-specific linguistic features used by the interlocutors of two distinct medical interactions. We found that patients employed both low pitch and creak as linguistic resources when (...) describing chronic pain, narrating symptoms and requesting opioids. The situational use of both features informs us about the linguistic ways in which patients frame fraught issues like chronic pain in light of the current opioid crisis. This study expands the breadth of phonetic analysis within the domain of discourse analysis, serving to illuminate discussions surrounding the illocutionary role of the lower vocal tract in expressing emotions. (shrink)

Teleosemantics explains mental representation in terms of biological function and selection history. One of the main objections to the account is the so-called ‘Swampman argument’ (Davidson 1987), which holds that there could be a creature with mental representation even though it lacks a selection history. A number of teleosemanticists reject the argument by emphasising that it depends on assuming a creature that is fi ctitious and hence irrelevant for teleosemantics because the theory is only concerned with representations in real-world organisms (...) (Millikan 1996, Neander 1996, 2006, Papineau 2001, 2006). I contend that this strategy doesn’t succeed. I off er an argument that captures the spirit of the original Swampman objection but relies only on organisms found in the actual world. Th e argument undermines the just mentioned response to the Swampman objection, and furthermore leads to a particular challenge to strong representationalist theories of consciousness that endorse teleosemantics such as, e.g., Dretske’s (1995) and Tye’s (1995, 2000) accounts. On these theories, the causal effi cacy of consciousness in actual creatures will be undermined. (shrink)

A sceptical response to the idea that wisdom may be turned into a new academic subject or science, and to the idea that to do so would be in any way be wise. .

The view that metaphysics is a waste of time appears to be gaining in popularity. It is held openly by many scientists and even many philosophers. I argue here that this is a consequence of the way metaphysics is usually done and the futility of a certain approach to it, and not a reason to suppose there is no useful knowledge to be acquired from its study. -/- .

There is a widespread view that Buddhist philosophy embodies logical contradictions such that there would be 'true' contradictions, This article explains that this is not the case and that Buddhist philosophy, more generally the Perennial philosophy, denies all contradictions for the sake of a doctrine of Unity.

Some time ago, in an article for the Journal of Consciousness Studies, David Chalmers challenged his peers to identify the ingredient missing from our current theories of consciousness, the absence of which prevents us from solving the 'hard' problem and forces us to make do with nonreductive theories. Here I respond to this challenge. I suggest that consciousness is a metaphysical problem and as such can be solved only within a global metaphysical theory. Such a theory would look very like (...) the information theory proposed by Chalmers, but with the addition of an extra phenomenon that would allow it to become fundamental. (shrink)

The difficulties of philosophy reflects the nature of reality. Here it is proposed that the inability of scholastic philosophers to solve philosophical problems is a clear indication that neither philosophy nor reality is as complicated as they believe, but that its conceptual simplification cannot be achieved when we reject nondualism and endorse extreme and partial world-theories.

As a fan of Sherlock Holmes from a young age it occurred to me recently to wonder what the great detective would have made of the 'hard' problem of consciousness. Here is one possible scenario.

A tongue-in-cheek marketing review of university philosophy prompted by a slow-down in sales and mounting criticism of the product. These problems are diagnosed as the consequence of an inward-looking culture that encourages a narrow and fixed focus on selling the traditional product while discouraging examination of its competitors.

Mysticism claims of its logical scheme that it is Euclidean, that from its first axiom or principle the remainder of its doctrine follows, but it makes this claim in so many languages and in such a variety of obscure and self-contradictory ways that it is difficult to discern how this could be possible, and it is rarely considered a plausible claim in metaphysics. I believe it is plausible, and in this essay I try to explain why. -/- .

Our aim in this paper is to suggest that most current theories of global justice fail to adequately recognise the importance of global public goods. Broadly speaking, this failing can be attributed at least in part to the complexity of the global context, the individualistic focus of most theories of justice, and the localised nature of the theoretical foundations of most theories of global justice. We argue ? using examples (particularly that of protecting antibiotic efficacy) ? that any truly effective (...) theory of global justice must recognise the importance of global public goods. Global public goods confer significant benefits to individuals yet can only be effectively promoted and preserved through collective action and the restriction of individual choice; something which most theories of justice are structurally unequipped to sufficiently promote. (shrink)

Analysing the demands of global justice for the distribution of resources is a complex task and requires consideration of a broad range of issues. Of particular relevance is the effect that different distributions will have on global population growth and individual welfare. Since changes in the consumption and distribution of resources can have major effects on the welfare of the global population, and the rate at which it increases, it is important to establish meaningful principles to ensure a just distribution (...) of resources. In order to establish such principles we must consider the scope of any reproductive rights, and rights to other goods, such as food and health care, as well as examine the extent of duties correlating to those rights. In addition to the impact that distributions of global goods have on the welfare of current generations, it is also important to consider what duties we have, if any, to future generations. -/- The final version of this paper is available to download here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470015902.a0024140. (shrink)

Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates (...) to very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing ideological hostility in the field, occasionally even from those from their own side of the political spectrum. Finally, while about half of the subjects believed that discrimination against left- or right-leaning individuals in the field is not justified, a significant minority displayed an explicit willingness to discriminate against colleagues with the opposite ideology. Our findings are both surprising and important, because a commitment to tolerance and equality is widespread in philosophy, and there is reason to think that ideological similarity, hostility, and discrimination undermine reliable belief formation in many areas of the discipline. (shrink)

Why do we engage in folk psychology, that is, why do we think about and ascribe propositional attitudes such as beliefs, desires, intentions etc. to people? On the standard view, folk psychology is primarily for mindreading, for detecting mental states and explaining and/or predicting people’s behaviour in terms of them. In contrast, McGeer (1996, 2007, 2015), and Zawidzki (2008, 2013) maintain that folk psychology is not primarily for mindreading but for mindshaping, that is, for moulding people’s behavior and minds (e.g., (...) via the imposition of social norms) so that coordination becomes easier. Mindreading is derived from and only as effective as it is because of mindshaping, not vice versa. I critically assess McGeer’s, and Zawidzki’s proposal and contend that three common motivations for the mindshaping view do not provide sufficient support for their particular version of it. I argue furthermore that their proposal underestimates the role that epistemic processing plays for mindshaping. And I provide reasons for favouring an alternative according to which, in social cognition involving ascriptions of propositional attitudes, neither mindshaping nor mindreading is primary but both are complementary in that effective mindshaping depends as much on mindreading as effective mindreading depends on mindshaping. (shrink)

It has been argued that implicit biases are operative in philosophy and lead to significant epistemic costs in the field. Philosophers working on this issue have focussed mainly on implicit gender and race biases. They have overlooked ideological bias, which targets political orientations. Psychologists have found ideological bias in their field and have argued that it has negative epistemic effects on scientific research. I relate this debate to the field of philosophy and argue that if, as some studies suggest, (...) the same bias also exists in philosophy then it will lead to hitherto unrecognised epistemic hazards in the field. Furthermore, the bias is epistemically different from the more familiar biases in respects that are important for epistemology, ethics, and metaphilosophy. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that generics (i.e., unquantified generalizations) are pervasive in communication and that when they are about social groups, this may offend and polarize people because generics gloss over variations between individuals. Generics about social groups might be particularly common on Twitter (X). This remains unexplored, however. Using machine learning (ML) techniques, we therefore developed an automatic classifier for social generics, applied it to 1.1 million tweets about people, and analyzed the tweets. While it is often suggested that generics (...) are ubiquitous in everyday communication, we found that most tweets (78%) about people contained no generics. However, tweets with generics received more “likes” and retweets. Furthermore, while recent psychological research may lead to the prediction that tweets with generics about political groups are more common than tweets with generics about ethnic groups, we found the opposite. However, consistent with recent claims that political animosity is less constrained by social norms than animosity against gender and ethnic groups, negative tweets with generics about political groups were significantly more prevalent and retweeted than negative tweets about ethnic groups. Our study provides the first ML-based insights into the use and impact of social generics on Twitter. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have gathered impressive evidence for the surprising conclusion that philosophers' intuitions are out of step with those of the folk. As a result, many argue that philosophers' intuitions are unreliable. Focusing on the Knobe Effect, a leading finding of experimental philosophy, we defend traditional philosophy against this conclusion. Our key premise relies on experiments we conducted which indicate that judgments of the folk elicited under higher quality cognitive or epistemic conditions are more likely to resemble those of the (...) philosopher. We end by showing how our experimental findings can help us better understand the Knobe Effect. (shrink)

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Can judging that an agent blamelessly broke a rule lead us to claim, paradoxically, that no rule was broken at all? Surprisingly, it can. Across seven experiments, we document and explain the phenomenon of excuse validation. We found when an agent blamelessly breaks a rule, it significantly distorts people’s description of the agent’s conduct. Roughly half of people deny that a rule was broken. The results suggest that people engage in excuse validation in order to avoid indirectly blaming others (...) for blameless transgressions. Excuse validation has implications for recent debates in normative ethics, epistemology and the philosophy of language. These debates have featured thought experiments perfectly designed to trigger excuse validation, inhibiting progress in these areas. (shrink)

War is almost always conducted with various restrictions in the form of rules, rituals, and taboos. Many of the norms that regulate warfare can be found in the tradition of just war. This tradition seeks to provide a middle ground between an unrealistic (at least for politicians) pacifism that does not even allow war in self-defence and a too realistic realism that claims there is no place for ethics in war. The tradition of just war does not have the (...) force of law; it provides, above all, a vocabulary to discuss war in moral terms. At the same time, the tradition does have an impact: it forms the basis of humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. Just like with laws, it is recognised here that imperfect adherence to these principles does not necessarily diminish their validity. Most proponents of the tradition believe that the principles of just war, even though some date back centuries, are sufficiently general to be applicable to contemporary conflicts, such as the Russo-Ukrainian War. If we apply the norms of the just war tradition to the current situation in Ukraine, we see that Russia is waging an unjust war in an unjust manner. (shrink)

William Molyneux was born in Dublin, studied in Trinity College Dublin, and was a founding member of the Dublin Philosophical Society (DPS), Ireland’s counterpart to the Royal Society in London. He was a central figure in the Irish intellectual milieu during the Early Modern period and – along with George Berkeley and Edmund Burke – is one of the best-known thinkers to have come out of that context and out of Irish thought more generally. In 1688, when Molyneux wrote the (...) letter to Locke in which he posed the now famous question about a man born blind made to see, he was an active member of the DPS and was on familiar terms with several other key figures in Irish philosophy at the time. For the most part, Irish thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries answered “no” to Molyneux’s question of whether a blind man made to see could distinguish, by sight alone, between a cube and a sphere. (shrink)

Is knowledge necessary or sufficient or both necessary and sufficient for acceptable practical reasoning and rational action? Several authors (e.g., Williamson, Hawthorne, and Stanley) have recently argued that the answer to these questions is positive. In this paper I present several objections against this view (both in its basic form as well in more developed forms). I also offer a sketch of an alternative view: What matters for the acceptability of practical reasoning in at least many cases (and in all (...) the cases discussed by the defenders of a strong link between knowledge and practical reasoning) is not so much knowledge but expected utility. (shrink)

-- 05.04.2024 -- Intervention held at the Italian Philosophical Society’s national congress’ section entitled "Texts, Words and Images: Philosophical Traditions and Translations", at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy -- -/- The aim of this intervention is to briefly advance an interpretation of the post- COVID19 digitalisation processes as to be recognised within the philosophical framework of Vorstellung Metaphysik, “metaphysics of representation”. I would maintain that the formula, firstly indicated by Martin Heidegger, can provide us with a tool (...) to interpret contemporary culture as founded on an “iteration” of individual and collective consciousness into non-existent digital realities. Moreover, I will argue that these concepts are philosophically relatable to those of alienation and reification that come from Marxist traditions. Ultimately, the analysis will try to use the above mentioned tools to delve into an interpretation of remote working and education as potential carriers of alienation. (shrink)

In this paper, new evidence is presented for the assumption that the reason-relation reading of indicative conditionals ('if A, then C') reflects a conventional implicature. In four experiments, it is investigated whether relevance effects found for the probability assessment of indicative conditionals (Skovgaard-Olsen, Singmann, and Klauer, 2016a) can be classified as being produced by a) a conversational implicature, b) a (probabilistic) presupposition failure, or c) a conventional implicature. After considering several alternative hypotheses and the accumulating evidence from other studies (...) as well, we conclude that the evidence is most consistent with the Relevance Effect being the outcome of a conventional implicature. This finding indicates that the reason-relation reading is part of the semantic content of indicative conditionals, albeit not part of their primary truth-conditional content. (shrink)

By definition, “logic of postmodernism" would appear to be a contradiction in terms: philosophic post¬modernism emerged as a critique of attempts to found philosophy on some principle of reasoning and to found reasoning on some formal guidelines for how we ought to think. Nonetheless, there are two reasons why Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) ought to be labeled the logician of postmodernism — the philosopher who, more than any other, etched out the normative guidelines for postmodern thinking. The first (...) reason is that Peirce attempted to accomplish the impossible, or at least the contradictory. He launched his philosophic career with a logical critique of "Cartesianism" — his label for the modernist attempt to found philosophy on some formal principles of reasoning. He then attempted to replace the principles of Cartesian reasoning with a set of anti-modernist principles that proved themselves to be as modernist as their contraries. The second reason for giving Peirce his label is that his failures to accomplish the impossible engendered in him something he was unable to achieve willfully: a habit of self-critical yet self-affirming thinking that was neither modernist nor anti-modernist but, rather, a disciplined variety of postmodern thinking. In his later years, Peirce began to sketch out the principles of philosophic postmodernism by describing features of his own emergent habit of thinking. This sketching comes close enough to what I would label a logic of postmodernism — where the method of logic is as postmodern as the thinking it describes. (shrink)

Suppose we know our own attitudes, e.g. judgments and decisions, only by unconsciously interpreting ourselves. Would this undermine the assumption that there are conscious attitudes? Carruthers has argued that if the mentioned view of selfknowledge is combined with either of the two most common approaches to consciousness, i.e. the higher-order state account or the global workspace theory , then the conjunction of these theories implies that there are no conscious attitudes. I shall show that Carruthers' argument against the existence of (...) conscious attitudes doesn't succeed, and mention studies on autism and logical reasoning under cognitive load that suggest that there are conscious attitudes. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of epistemological skepticism - the view that we do not and cannot know anything about the world around us - focus very much on a certain kind of skeptical argument involving a skeptical scenario (a situation familiar from Descartes’ First Meditation). According to the argument, knowing some ordinary proposition about the world (one we usually take ourselves to know) requires knowing we are not in some such skeptical scenario SK; however, since we cannot know that we are not (...) in SK we also cannot know any ordinary proposition. One of the most prominent skeptical scenarios is the brain-in-the-vat-scenario: An evil scientist has operated on an unsuspecting subject, removed the subject’s brain and put it in a vat where it is kept functioning and is connected to some computer which feeds the brain the illusion that everything is “normal”. This paper looks at one aspect of this scenario after another – envatment, disembodiment, weird cognitive processes, lack of the right kind of epistemic standing, and systematic deception. The conclusion is that none of these aspects (in isolation or in combination) is of any relevance for a would-be skeptical argument; the brain-in-the-vat-scenario is irrelevant to and useless for skeptical purposes. Given that related scenarios (e.g., involving evil demons) share the defects of the brain-in-the-vat-scenario, the skeptic should not put any hopes on Cartesian topoi. (shrink)

An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact (...) on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated (with the notion that brains do not passively build models, but instead support the guidance of action). A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principles to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed (e.g., educational applications, treatment possibilities for developmental and psychopathological disorders, the development of neural prostheses). All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system. (shrink)

Assertions are the centre of gravity in social epistemology. They are the vehicles we use to exchange information within scientific groups and society as a whole. It is therefore essential to determine under which conditions we are permitted to make an assertion. In this paper we argue and provide empirical evidence for the view that the norm of assertion is justified belief: truth or even knowledge are not required. Our results challenge the knowledge account advocated by, e.g. Williamson (1996), in (...) general, and more specifically, put into question several studies conducted by Turri (2013, 2016) that support a knowledge norm of assertion. Instead, the justified belief account championed by, e.g. Douven (2006), seems to prevail. (shrink)

You may not know me well enough to evaluate me in terms of my moral character, but I take it you believe I can be evaluated: it sounds strange to say that I am indeterminate, neither good nor bad nor intermediate. Yet I argue that the claim that most people are indeterminate is the conclusion of a sound argument—the indeterminacy paradox—with two premises: (1) most people are fragmented (they would behave deplorably in many and admirably in many other situations); (2) (...) fragmentation entails indeterminacy. I support (1) by examining psychological experiments in which most participants behave deplorably (e.g., by maltreating “prisoners” in a simulated prison) or admirably (e.g., by intervening in a simulated theft). I support (2) by arguing that, according to certain plausible conceptions, character evaluations presuppose behavioral consistency (lack of fragmentation). Possible reactions to the paradox include: (a) denying that the experiments are relevant to character; (b) upholding conceptions according to which character evaluations do not presuppose consistency; (c) granting that most people are indeterminate and explaining why it appears otherwise. I defend (c) against (a) and (b). (shrink)

In her last known piece of work Lady Mary Shepherd’s Metaphysics (1832), Mary Shepherd writes that “mind, may inhere in definite portions of matter […] or of infinite space” (LMSM 699). Shepherd thus suggests that a mind – a “capacity for sensation in general” (e.g., EPEU 16) – may have a spatial location. This is prima facie surprising given that she is committed to the view that the mind is unextended. In this paper, we argue that Shepherd can consistently honor (...) both of these commitments. We argue, first, that even though finite minds, due to their unextendedness cannot, to use Shepherd’s term, ‘occupy’ space as material bodies do, such minds can nonetheless be said to have a spatial location in virtue of what we call their presence, or what Shepherd calls ‘inherence’, in a material body. Second, we argue that, in a similar way, the divine mind is present throughout the whole of space and is thus omnipresent. We then argue that, in contrast to finite minds, the divine mind does not require a body to be present in space. Rather, we contend, God’s omnipresence might be best understood in a ‘holenmerist’ sense, where the divine mind is wholly present in every part of creation. (shrink)

Amongst those who answered Molyneux’s question in the negative or at least not in the positive, George Berkeley is of particular interest because he argued for a very radical position. Most of his contribution to the discussion can be found in his Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. I will give an exposition of his view (2) and then move on to a critical discussion of this kind of view, - what one could call the “Berkeleian view” (3). (...) I think that the problems of what has become a standard negative answer to the question (mainly brought forward by empiricists) become very clear in Berkeley’s case and one can also learn a lot from this. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the early hominid ‘‘lithic niche’’ by examining the social implications of stone artifact making. I reject the idea that making tools for use is an adequate explanation of the elaborate artifact forms of the Lower Palaeolithic, or a sufficient cause for long-term trends in hominid technology. I then advance an alternative mechanism founded on the claim that competency in making stone artifacts requires extended learning, and that excellence in artifact making is attained only by highly skilled individuals (...) who have been taught and practiced for extensive periods. Consequently both competency and expertise in knapping comes at a high learning cost for both the individual learner and the social group to which they belong. Those high intrinsic costs of learning created contexts in which groups selected cost-reducing forms of social learning and teaching, and in which specialization could develop. Artifacts and their manufacturing processes probably acquired functions as social signals—as honest signals of valuable capacities. The magnification of these signals, through competition between knappers and through inspiring later craftspeople, may account for a substantial amount of the accumulated elaboration visible in the archaeological record. Consequently lithic artifacts operated as material symbols from an early time in hominid evolution. (shrink)

The development of nuclear energy technologies in the second half of the 20th century came with great hopes of rebuilding nations recovering from the devasta-tion of the Second World War or recently released from colonial rule. In coun-tries like France, India, the USA, Canada, Russia, and the United Kingdom, nuclear energy became the symbol of development towards a modern and technologically advanced future. However, after more than six decades of experi-ence with nuclear energy production, and in the aftermath of the (...) Fukushima nuclear disaster, it is safe to say that nuclear energy production is not without its problems.Some of these problems have their origins in the very materiality of the technolo-gies involved. For example, not only does the use of highly radioactive materials give rise to risks for the current generation (e.g., in the potential for disaster when reactors melt down) but high-level radioactive waste from nuclear energy production presents a serious intergenerational problem for which an acceptable final solution or its implementation remains elusive. Moreover, nuclear energy technologies have specific social and political consequences. For example, they have been said to be authoritarian technologies (Winner, 1980), requiring cen-tralized authority, secrecy, and technocratic decision-making. While some of these problems could have been foreseen before nuclear energy technologies were introduced, others only arose after these technologies were already integrated into the social and infrastructural fabric of our lives. Addition-ally, new technologies (e.g., Generation III, III+ and IV reactors) are still being developed, bringing with them new and uncertain hazards and risks. Ignorance and uncertainty about the possible deleterious effects of introducing a new technology are inevitable, especially if the technology is complex, large time-scales are involved, or risks depend on social or political factors unforeseen in the design stage. However, this should not deter us from developing and intro-ducing new technologies. Rather, it should motivate us to organize these ‘exper-iments’ with new technologies in society in such a way that we can learn about their possible hazards and risks as effectively and responsibly as possible (van de Poel, 2011, 2015). In this way, it is possible to minimize risks and avoid unwant-ed moral, social or political developments. However, organizing such experi-ments responsibly also means that one could come to the conclusion that continuing an experiment is no longer responsible or desirable. Should we be prepared for such a scenario, and if so, how could we do that? One possible strategy to tackle this issue is that the technology and its introduction should be reversible. The aim of this thesis is to further explore this strategy by answering the following main research question (RQ) and accompanying subquestions (SQ):RQ: What are the implications of reversibility for the responsible develop-ment and implementation of nuclear energy technologies?SQ1: Under what conditions can nuclear energy technologies be considered reversible?SQ2: Why should nuclear energy technologies be reversible?SQ3: If so, how could the reversibility of nuclear energy technologies be achieved?After the introductory chapter 1, the chapters that form the main body of this dissertation each provide a distinct contribution to answering the three subques-tions and, by extension, the main research question. Guided by three historical case studies of nuclear energy technology development (i.e., India, France and the USA), chapter 2 answers the first subquestion by formulating the two condi-tions under which it can be considered reversible, i.e., 1) the ability to stop the further development and deployment of a that technology in society, and 2) the ability to undo the undesirable outcomes (material, institutional or symbolic) of the development and deployment of the technology. Chapter 3 subsequently tackles the second subquestion by establishing the general desirability of technological reversibility by virtue of its relation to responsibility in Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical phenomenology. It argues that technology development is a legitimate response to responsibility but inevitably falls short of the responsibility that inspires it, incessantly calling for technological and political change in the process. Having thus argued that nuclear energy technologies should ideally be reversible, chap-ters 4 and 5 work towards specific strategies to achieve technological reversibil-ity. Chapter 4 first investigates the processes that make it difficult to stop the further development and implementation of a nuclear energy technology in society, thus provid-ing input on how to fulfill the first condition for the reversibility of nuclear energy technologies. To do so, it presents a phenomenological perspective on technology and its adoption based on the work of Alfred Schutz. It also explores different ways in which technology adoption drives the processes of path depend-ence towards technological lock-in. Chapter 5 examines the history of geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste in the USA. It identifies a number of concrete policy pitfalls that could lead to lock-in and that should consequently be avoided. It also presents a number of general design strategies that could facilitate the undoing of undesirable consequences of a technology, thus providing input on how to fulfill the second condition for the reversibility of nuclear energy technol-ogies.Chapter 6 summarizes the central findings of the thesis and explains how these help to answer the research questions. On top of this, it reflects on a number of complications connected to reversibility considerations. Based on this, it is concluded that the question of irreversibility and reversibility is context- and technology-specific and a matter of degree. The chapter concludes with a reflec-tion on generalizations and limitations of the results. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the implications of this dissertation’s results for responsibly experimenting with nuclear energy technologies in society. (shrink)

‘...if you learn to think like Peter Cave – with freshness, humour, objectivity and penetration – you will have been amply rewarded.’ :::: Prof. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, University of Notre Dame __________________ Chapter Titles:>>> ___ 1 Lao Tzu: The Way to Tao >>> 2 Sappho: Lover >>> 3 Zeno of Elea: Tortoise Backer, Parmenidean Helper >>> 4 Gadfly: aka ‘Socrates’ >>> 5 Plato: Charioteer, Magnificent Footnote Inspirer – ‘Nobody Does It Better’ >>> 6 Aristotle: Earth-Bound, Walking >>> 7 Epicurus: Gardener, (...) Curing the Soul, Ably Assisted by Lucretius >>> 8 Avicenna: Flying Man, Unifier >>> 9 Descartes: With Princess, With Queen >>> 10 Spinoza: God-Intoxicated Atheist >>> 11 Leibniz: Monad Man >>> 12 Bishop Berkeley, ‘That Paradoxical Irishman’: Immaterialist, Tar-Water Advocate >>> 13 David Hume: The Great Infidel or Le Bon David >>> 14 Kant: Duty Calls, Categorically >>> 15 Schopenhauer: Pessimism With Flute >>> 16 John Stuart Mill: Utility Man, With Harriet, Soul-Mate >>> 17 Søren Kierkegaard: Who? >>> 18 Karl Marx: Hegelian, Freedom-Fighter >>> 19 Lewis Carroll: Curiouser and Curiouser >>> 20 Nietzsche: God-Slaying Jester, Trans-Valuer >>>> 21 Bertrand Russell: Radical, Aristocrat >>> 22 G. E. Moore: Common-Sense Defender, Bloomsbury’s Sage >>> 23 Heidegger: Hyphenater >>> 24 Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialist, Novelist, French >>> 25 Simone Weil: Refuser and Would-Be Rescuer >>> 26 Simone de Beauvoir: Situated, Protester, Feminist >>> 27 Ludwig Wittgenstein: Therapist >>> 28 Hannah Arendt: Controversialist, Journalist? >>> 29 Iris Murdoch: Attender >>> 30 Samuel Beckett: Not I >>>. (shrink)

Under what conditions is a belief inferentially justified? A partial answer is found in Justification from Justification : a belief is inferentially justified only if all of the beliefs from which it is essentially inferred are justified. After reviewing some important features of JFJ, I offer a counterexample to it. Then I outline a positive suggestion for how to think about inferentially justified beliefs while still retaining a basing condition. I end by concluding that epistemologists need a model of (...) inferentially justified belief that is more permissive and more complex than JFJ. (shrink)

Justice and Libertarianism The term ‘justice’ is commonly used in several different ways. Sometimes it designates the moral permissibility of political structures (such as legal systems). Sometimes it designates moral fairness (as opposed to efficiency or other considerations that are relevant to moral permissibility). Sometimes it designates legitimacy in the sense of it being morally impermissible for others to interfere forcibly with the act or omission (e.g., my failing to go to dinner with my mother may be wrong but nonetheless (...) legitimate). Finally, sometimes it designates what we owe each other in the sense of respecting everyone’s rights. Of course, these notions are closely related. What we owe each other may, but need not, be partly based on issues of fairness. Legitimacy and permissibility of political structures are largely, but perhaps not entirely, determined by what rights of non-interference individuals have. Nonetheless, these are distinct notions and we shall focus only on what we owe each other. Justice as what we owe each other is not concerned with impersonal duties (duties owed to no one, i.e., that do not correspond to anyone’s rights). If there are impersonal duties, then something can be just but nonetheless morally impermissible. For brevity, we shall often write of actions being permissible or agents having a moral liberty, but this should always be understood in the interpersonal sense of violating no one’s rights. Libertarianism is sometimes advocated as a derivative set of rules (e.g., derived from rule utilitarian or contractarian doctrines). Here, however, we reserve the term for the natural rights doctrine that agents initially fully own themselves. Agents are full self-owners just in case they own themselves in precisely the same way that they can fully own inanimate objects. Stated slightly differently, full self-owners own themselves in the same way that a full chattel-slaveowner owns a slave. Throughout, we are concerned with moral ownership and not legal ownership.. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the instability of an increasingly popular position about how metaphysicians ought to regard parsimony. This instability is rooted in an unrecognized tension between two claims. First, we as metaphysicians ought to minimize the number of ontological kinds we posit. Second, it is not the case that we ought to minimize the number of ideological expressions we employ, especially when those expressions are of the same ideological kind (e.g. the compositional predicates "is a part of" (...) and "overlaps"). I argue that the two claims are in tension with one other. At the very least, minimizing the number of ontological kinds posited entails minimizing the number of expressions employed---more specifically, the "ontologically committing" predicates. But, plausibly, the tension runs deeper than that. I suggest that minimizing the number of ontological kinds just is a specific way of minimizing the number of ideological expressions employed in stating a theory. The two activities target the same aspect of reality, the world's metaphysical structure. I end by evaluating three different responses to this puzzle. Ultimately, I suggest that metaphysicians should treat the minimization of the number of ideological expressions as more important than it currently is treated. (shrink)

Scientists may sometimes generalize from their samples to broader populations when they have not yet sufficiently supported this generalization. Do such hasty generalizations also occur in experimental philosophy? To check, we analyzed 171 experimental philosophy studies published between 2017 and 2023. We found that most studies tested only Western populations but generalized beyond them without justification. There was also no evidence that studies with broader conclusions had larger, more diverse samples, but they nonetheless had higher citation impact. Our analyses (...) reveal important methodological limitations of many experimental philosophy studies and suggest that philosophical training may not protect against hasty generalizations. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to outline Dorothy Emmet’s (1904-2000) account of perception in The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (published in 1945). Emmet’s account of perception is part of a wider attempt to rehabilitate metaphysics in the face of logical positivism and verificationism (of the kind espoused most famously by A. J. Ayer). It is thus part of an attempt to stem the tide of anti-metaphysical thought that had become widespread in British philosophy by the middle of the twentieth (...) century. In pursuit of that aim, Emmet draws on the work of figures like A. N. Whitehead and Henri Bergson, rather than more mainstream analytic thinkers like Bertrand Russell or G. E. Moore, for inspiration. Indeed, Emmet’s ideas stand in contrast to the prevailing tides of British philosophy during her lifetime. This makes Emmet a figure of considerable historical interest; she does not fit neatly into the traditional narrative of the continental-analytic divide, proposed a way forward for metaphysics in one of its greatest times of crisis, and pre-empted certain movements in more contemporary philosophy of perception. By espousing her unique account of perception and drawing out its connections to her wider philosophy, I hope to put Emmet ‘on the map’, so to speak, of twentieth century British thought. (shrink)

The relation-theory of mental acts proposes that a mental act is a kind of relative entity founded upon the mind and directed at the object of perception or thought. While most medieval philosophers recognized that there is something importantly relational about thought, they nevertheless rejected the view that mental acts are wholly relations. Rather, the dominant view was that a mental act is either in whole or part an Aristotelian quality added to the mind upon which such a relation to (...) the object can be founded. In this paper, I examine Durand of St.-Pourçain's defense of the relation-theory of mental acts against two objections raised against it: the first from John Duns Scotus, among others, and the second from an anonymous Thomist and Adam Wodeham. -/- . (shrink)

The word “justice” is used in several different ways. First, justice is sometimes understood as moral permissibility applied to distributions of benefits and burdens (e.g., income distributions) or social structures (e.g., legal systems). In this sense, justice is distinguished by the kind of entity to which it is applied, rather than a specific kind of moral concern.

Extending on an earlier paper [Found. Phys. Ltt., 16(4) 343–355, (2003)], it is argued that instants of time and the instantaneous (including instantaneous relative position) do not actually exist. This conclusion, one which is also argued to represent the correct solution to Zeno’s motion paradoxes, has several implications for modern physics and for our philosophical view of time, including that time and space cannot be quantized; that contrary to common interpretation, motion and change are compatible with the “block” universe (...) and relativity; and that time, space, and space-time too, cannot exist. Instead, motion and change become the major players. (shrink)

I articulate and defend a principle governing enforcement rights in response to a non‐culpable non‐just rights‐intrusion (e.g., wrongful bodily attack by someone who falsely, but with full epistemic justification, believes that he is acting permissibly). The account requires that the use of force reduce the harm from such intrusions and is sensitive to the extent to which the intruder is agent‐responsible for imposing intrusion‐harm.

This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the relationship between Berkeley and his predecessor, the neo-Aristotelian thinker John Sergeant. In the literature to date, the relationship between these two thinkers has received attention for two reasons. First, because some commentators have attempted to establish a causal connection between them – specifically, by focusing on the fact that both thinkers develop a theory of ‘notions’. Second, because both Berkeley and Sergeant develop ‘anti-representationalist’ arguments against Locke’s epistemology. The first issue has received (...) much greater attention, particularly from commentators seeking an explanation for Berkeley’s use of the term ‘notion’. Only one scholar, G. A. Johnston (in 1923), has considered Berkeley and Sergeant’s anti-representationalism in any depth. In this paper, I argue that the weight given to the causal connection between Berkeley and Sergeant’s ‘notions’ is misplaced since the evidence in favour of this connection is weaker than is usually acknowledged. Instead, I build on Johnston’s analysis of the conceptual connection between Berkeley and Sergeant’s anti-representationalism. I first corroborate Johnston’s claim that there are striking similarities between their criticisms of Locke before going beyond that analysis by identifying two important similarities between their anti-representationalist arguments. (shrink)

For synergistic interactions between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, AI outputs often need to be explainable to people. Explainable AI (XAI) systems are commonly tested in human user studies. However, whether XAI researchers consider potential cultural differences in human explanatory needs remains unexplored. We highlight psychological research that found significant differences in human explanations between many people from Western, commonly individualist countries and people from non-Western, often collectivist countries. We argue that XAI research currently overlooks these variations and (...) that many popular XAI designs implicitly and problematically assume that Western explanatory needs are shared cross-culturally. Additionally, we systematically reviewed over 200 XAI user studies and found that most studies did not consider relevant cultural variations, sampled only Western populations, but drew conclusions about human-XAI interactions more generally. We also analyzed over 30 literature reviews of XAI studies. Most reviews did not mention cultural differences in explanatory needs or flag overly broad cross-cultural extrapolations of XAI user study results. Combined, our analyses provide evidence of a cultural bias toward Western populations in XAI research, highlighting an important knowledge gap regarding how culturally diverse users may respond to widely used XAI systems that future work can and should address. (shrink)

An individual is agent-responsible for an outcome just in case it flows from her autonomous agency in the right kind of way. The topic of agent-responsibility is important because most people believe that agents should be held morally accountable (e.g., liable to punishment or having an obligation to compensate victims) for outcomes for which they are agent-responsible and because many other people (e.g., brute luck egalitarians) hold that agents should not be held accountable for outcomes for which they are not (...) responsible. In this paper, I examine how false beliefs affect agent-responsibility. Unlike most of the papers in this collection, my paper is on the notion of agent-responsibility that many believe is relevant to justice and morality generally. I do not here address the question of how, if at all, justice and morality are sensitive to agent-responsibility. (shrink)

The English language now dominates scientific communications. Yet, many scientists have English as their second language. Their English proficiency may therefore often be more limited than that of a ‘native speaker’, and their scientific contributions (e.g. manuscripts) in English may frequently contain linguistic features that disrupt the fluency of a reader’s, or listener’s information processing even when the contributions are understandable. Scientific gatekeepers (e.g. journal reviewers) sometimes cite these features to justify negative decisions on manuscripts. Such justifications may rest on (...) the prima facie plausible assumption that linguistic characteristics that hinder fast and easy understandability of scientific contributions are epistemically undesirable in science. I shall raise some doubts about this assumption by drawing on empirical research on processing fluency and its biasing effects. I also argue that directing scientists with English as a foreign language toward approaching ‘native-level’ English can have the negative consequence of reducing their potential to make scientific belief formation more reliable. These points suggest that one seemingly compelling justification for linguistically discriminating against scientific contributions in ‘non-native’ English is questionable and that the common insistence by scientific gatekeepers on ‘native-like’ English may be epistemically harmful to science. (shrink)

In 1992, Peter Ochs and a few Christian and Muslim colleagues began to gather small groups, in and outside the classroom, to practice close and attentive reading of the sacred Scriptures of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions. The hope was that members of different religions could hear one another through the patient, respectful reading of each other's Scripture. Hearing each other, participants might enter into interreligious relationships that might point a way to the peaceful engagement of religions--especially those (...) who, after September 11, 2001, too often found themselves at each other's throats. It was a hope for religion without violence. In Religion without Violence, Ochs reflects on the practical and philosophic lessons he has learned from hosting hundreds of Scriptural Reasoning engagements. He introduces the "scriptural pragmatism" of Scriptural Reasoning." He painstakingly recounts instances of successful scriptural reasoning and warns where and how it might fail. He provides guidance on how to introduce and facilitate Scriptural Reasoning in the classroom. He shows how reading out of the "hearth" of a faith can contribute to peace building across religions. And, drawing on the resources of rabbinic tradition, Augustine, and Charles Peirce, he moves beyond practice to reflect on the implications of Scriptural Reasoning for discerning what kinds of "reasoning" best address and help repair societal crises like religion-related violent conflict. (shrink)