In previous work, I have sought to show that the basic argument for epistemic relativism derives from the problem of the criterion that stems from ancient Pyrrhonian scepticism. Because epistemic relativism depends upon a sceptical strategy, it is possible to respond to relativism on the basis of an anti-sceptical strategy. I argue that the particularist response to scepticism proposed by Roderick Chisholm may be combined with a naturalistic and reliabilist conception of epistemic warrant as the basis for a satisfactory response (...) to epistemic relativism. In this paper, I outline this particularist response to relativism, and provide further commentary on the relationship between naturalism and particularism. In addition, I set the approach in contrast with reflective equilibrium approaches in epistemology. I also briefly explore the connection between the particularist response to relativism and G. E. Moore’s defense of an external world. (shrink)

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is a classic text in the history and philosophy of science. It is one of the best known works in the field outside this area of academic specialization. One need only mention the term ‘paradigm’ to register the extent to which Kuhn’s ideas have entered the vernacular. Traditionally, philosophers of science have tended to focus on questions about the nature of scientific method. Kuhn brought a historical orientation to bear on such questions. (...) Structure opens with the words, ‘History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed’ (p.1). Kuhn proposed a model of scientific change that emphasizes historical development. As Kuhn foresaw, reflection on its history has transformed our image of science. Science is now seen as a developing process, practised by humans in a variety of shifting historical and social circumstances. (shrink)

Why should we refrain from doing things that, taken collectively, are environmentally destructive, if our individual acts seem almost certain to make no difference? According to the expected consequences approach, we should refrain from doing these things because our individual acts have small risks of causing great harm, which outweigh the expected benefits of performing them. Several authors have argued convincingly that this provides a plausible account of our moral reasons to do things like vote for policies that will reduce (...) our countries’ greenhouse gas emissions, adopt plant-based diets, and otherwise reduce our individual emissions. But this approach has recently been challenged by authors like Bernward Gesang and Julia Nefsky. Gesang contends that it may be genuinely impossible for our individual emissions to make a morally relevant difference. Nefsky argues more generally that the expected consequences approach cannot adequately explain our reasons not to do things if there is no precise fact of the matter about whether their outcomes are harmful. -/- In the following chapter, author Howard Nye defends the expected consequences approach against these objections. Nye contends that Gesang has shown at most that our emissions could have metaphysically indeterministic effects that lack precise objective chances. He argues, moreover, that the expected consequences approach can draw upon existing extensions to cases of indeterminism and imprecise probabilities to deliver the result that we have the same moral reasons to reduce our emissions in Gesang’s scenario as in deterministic scenarios. Nye also shows how the expected consequences approach can draw upon these extensions to handle Nefsky’s concern about the absence of precise facts concerning whether the outcomes of certain acts are harmful. The author concludes that the expected consequences approach provides a fully adequate account of our moral reasons to take both political and personal action to reduce our ecological footprints. (shrink)

Former NAACP chapter head Rachel Dolezal's attempted transition from the white to the black race occasioned heated controversy. Her story gained notoriety at the same time that Caitlyn Jenner graced the cover of Vanity Fair, signaling a growing acceptance of transgender identity. Yet criticisms of Dolezal for misrepresenting her birth race indicate a widespread social perception that it is neither possible nor acceptable to change one's race in the way it might be to change one's sex. Considerations that support transgenderism (...) seem to apply equally to transracialism. Although Dolezal herself may or may not represent a genuine case of a transracial person, her story and the public reaction to it serve helpful illustrative purposes. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

In this short essay, we sketch a theory of faith that features resilience in the face of challenges to relying on those in whom you have faith. We argue that it handles a variety of both religious and secular faith-data, e.g., the value of faith in relationships of mutual faith and faithfulness, how the Christian and Hebrew scriptures portray pístis and ʾĕmûnāh, and the character of faith as it is often expressed in popular secular venues.

We consider the current debate between bioconservatives and their opponents—whom we dub bioliberals—about the moral acceptability of human enhancement and the policy implications of moral debates about enhancement. We argue that this debate has reached an impasse, largely because bioconservatives hold that we should honour intuitions about the special value of being human, even if we cannot identify reasons to ground those intuitions. We argue that although intuitions are often a reliable guide to belief and action, there are circumstances in (...) which they are not reliable. Intuitions—including intuitions about enhancement—are subject to various cognitive biases rendering them unreliable in some circumstances. We argue that many bioconservative intuitions about enhancement are examples of such unreliable intuitions. Given this, it is unrealistic of bioconservatives to expect others to rely on their unexamined intuitions. Furthermore, refusing to engage in debates about the reasons and values that underpin their intuitions about enhancement will have the effect of making bioconservative voices less relevant in policy debates about enhancement than they would otherwise be. (shrink)

I defend the widely-held view that morally worthy action need not be motivated by a desire to promote rightness as such. Some have recently come to reject this view, arguing that desires for rightness as such are necessary for avoiding a certain kind of luck thought incompatible with morally worthy action. I show that those who defend desires for rightness as such on the basis of this argument misunderstand the relationship between moral worth and the kind of luck that their (...) argument employs. Consequently, the argument provides no reason to doubt the popular view that a desire for rightness as such is no part of virtue. I conclude by suggesting that a family of worries about merely accidentally right action presuppose one side of the recent debate about objectivism and perspectivism about moral rightness. (shrink)

Is it conceptually possible for an event, L, to be the cause of an earlier event, E? Some writers have employed the so-called bilking argument to attempt to show that the idea of such backwards causation is incoherent . According to this argument, if we are presented with what someone claims to be a case of backwards causation, it would be possible in principle to wait for E to occur, and then intervene to prevent the occurrence of L, thus demonstrating (...) that E could not have been caused by L after all. Moreover, if our attempts to bilk L-type events having observed E-type events always fail, we have grounds to argue that any causal relationship between the two is not one of backwards causation, but of ordinary, forwards, earlier-to-later causation.Does the bilking argument succeed in showing backwards causation to be incoherent? Before answering this question, let us deal with a far simpler reason for deeming backwards causation incoherent, whose elucidation now will be useful later. To those attracted to the view that temporal order is determined by causal order, 1 backwards causation may seem incoherent because on this view a cause is by definition earlier than its effect. I do not take issue with this view, and wish my conception of backwards causation to be compatible with it. 2 By ‘backwards causation’, I mean causation that runs in the opposite direction to some other causal processes, such that the temporal order entailed by such backwards causation is the reverse of that entailed by those other causal processes. In most philosophical discussions of backwards causation, we are at least implicitly given reasons to believe that these other causal processes dictate the …. (shrink)

1 Some philosophers defend the thesis that women are adult human females. Call this the adult human female thesis (AHF). There are two versions of this thesis—one modal and one definitional. Accord...

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of place (...) to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

When people are making certain medical decisions – especially potentially transformative ones – the specter of regret may color their choices. In this paper, I ask: can predicting that we will regret a decision in the future serve any justificatory role in our present decision-making? And if so, what role? While there are many pitfalls to such reasoning, I ultimately conclude that considering future retrospective emotions like regret in our decisionmaking can be both rational and authentic. Rather than indicating that (...) one is about to make a mistake or that there is some underlying value that one already cares about but is overlooking, the prediction that one will regret a decision in the future makes one confront how her present values and priorities may change as a result of her choice in ways she cannot presently anticipate. (shrink)

While it is tempting to suppose that an act has moral worth just when and because it is motivated by sufficient moral reasons, philosophers have, largely, come to doubt this analysis. Doubt is rooted in two claims. The first is that some facts can motivate a given act in multiple ways, not all of which are consistent with moral worth. The second is the orthodox view that normative reasons are facts. I defend the tempting analysis by proposing and defending a (...) heterodox account of both normative and motivating reasons that is inspired by Donald Davidson’s primary reasons. We should adopt the heterodox view, I argue, because it addresses an overlooked but fatal defect in the orthodox conception of reasons, of which challenges to the tempting analysis are a special case. (shrink)

Many theistic religions place a high value on faith in God and some traditions regard it as a virtue. However, philosophers commonly assign either very little value to faith in God or significant negative value, or even view it as a vice. Progress in assessing whether and when faith in God can be valuable or disvaluable, virtuous or vicious, rational or irrational, or otherwise apt or inapt requires understanding what faith in God is. This Special Issue on the normative appraisal (...) of faith in God for Religious Studies includes nine articles, from a diverse range of perspectives, which explore issues related to the core questions ‘What is faith in God?’ and ‘What normative questions about faith in God need to be addressed?’ In this Introduction, we briefly introduce each article. (shrink)

Expressions of emotion pose a serious challenge to the view that we perceive other people’s emotions directly. If we must perceive expressions in order to perceive emotions, then it is only ever the expressions that we are directly aware of, not emotions themselves. This paper develops a new response to this challenge by drawing an analogy between expressions of emotion and perceptual media. It is through illumination and sound, the paradigmatic examples of perceptual media, that we can see and hear (...) objects around us. Instead of screening these objects from view, however, they enable our perception while being transparent to us. With reference to perceptual constancy and transparency, I show how expressions show up in our experience of emotions in a surprisingly similar way. Given this, we can understand expressions as the media _through_ which we perceive emotions and overcome the above challenge to an otherwise attractive view. (shrink)

What is faith? Lara Buchak has done as much as anyone recently to answer our question in a sensible and instructive fashion. As it turns out, her writings reveal two theories of faith, an early one and a later one (or, if you like, two versions of the same theory). In what follows, we aim to do three things. First, we will state and assess Buchak’s early theory, highlighting both its good-making and bad-making features. Second, we will do the same (...) for her later theory, noting improvements on the early one. Third, we will mark various choice points in theorizing about faith, and we will argue for specific choices at those points, culminating in what we regard as a better, alternative theory of faith. Our critical aims, therefore, are ultimately constructive. By theorizing about faith with Lara Buchak, we aim to contribute to our common understanding of what faith is. (shrink)

In some circles, faith is said to be one of three theological virtues, along with hope and agape. But not everyone thinks faith is a virtue, theological or otherwise. Indeed, depending on how we understand it, faith may well conflict with the virtues. In this chapter we will focus on the virtue of humility. Does faith conflict with humility, or are they in concord? In what follows, we will do five things. First, we will sketch a theory of the virtue (...) of humility. Second, we will summarize a common view of faith, arguably held by Thomas Aquinas among others, and we will argue that Thomistic faith is not an intellectual virtue and that it conflicts with humility in the domain of inquiry. Third, we will plump for an older view of faith, one that predates Aquinas by at least 1500 years, Markan faith. Fourth, we will argue that Markan faith is an intellectual virtue and it is in concord with humility in the domain of inquiry. Fifth, we will argue that Markan faith, unlike Thomistic faith, is a personal virtue and that it is in concord with humility in the domain of personal relationships, both human-human and human-divine. (shrink)

This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that (...) a saying/showing distinction arises there too. In particular, in the final sub-section of the essay, it is suggested that we can see in Wittgenstein’s later work an inducement to say what we are shown. (shrink)

Negation often reinforces problematic habits of othering, but rethinking negation can make good on feminist hopes for logic as a transformative space for inclusion. As Plumwood argues in her 1993 paper, not all uses of negation in the context of social identity are inherently problematic, but the widespread implicit use of classical negation has limited our options with respect to representing difference, ultimately reinforcing dualisms that essentialize social differences in problematic ways. In response to these limitations, I take inspiration from (...) Dembroff’s recent work on the metaphysics of genderqueer identity to build models of social identity using the Heyting-Brouwer logic developed by Rauszer in her 1974 paper. Ultimately, I argue that these models demonstrate both how classical negation reinforces problematic habits of othering and how alternative forms of negation can transform our treatment of social identity altogether. (shrink)

A major point of debate about morally good motives concerns an ambiguity in the truism that good and strong-willed people desire to do what is right. This debate is shaped by the assumption that “what’s right” combines in only two ways with “desire,” leading to distinct de dicto and de re readings of the truism. However, a third reading of such expressions is possible, first identified by Janet Fodor, which has gone wholly unappreciated by philosophers in this debate. I identify (...) Fodor’s nonspecific reading of “desire to do what’s right” and briefly discuss its merits. (shrink)

Inflicting harm is generally preferable to inflicting death. If you must choose between the two, you should generally choose to harm. But prenatal harm seems different. If a mother must choose between harming her fetus or aborting it, she may choose either, at least in many cases. So it seems that prenatal harm is particularly objectionable, sometimes on a par with death. This paper offers an explanation of why prenatal harm seems particularly objectionable by drawing an analogy to the all-or-nothing (...) problem. It then argues that this analogy offers independent support for the ‘voluntarist’ view that at least some parental role obligations are grounded in the choice to be a parent. (shrink)

The paper presents a realist account of the epistemic objectivity of science. Epistemic objectivity is distinguished from ontological objectivity and the objectivity of truth. As background, T.S. Kuhn’s idea that scientific theory-choice is based on shared scientific values with a role for both objective and subjective factors is discussed. Kuhn’s values are epistemologically ungrounded, hence provide a minimal sense of objectivity. A robust account of epistemic objectivity on which methodological norms are reliable means of arriving at the truth is presented. (...) The problem remains that deliberative judgement is required to determine the relevance and relative significance of a range of methodological norms. A role is sketched for cognitive virtues which may be exercised in the course of the deliberative judgement. (shrink)

Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. Thus, we conclude that social entities are not justifiably excluded (...) from metaphysical inquiry. Finally, we ask how focusing on social entities could change the character of metaphysical inquiry. We suggest that starting from examples of social entities might lead metaphysicians to rethink the assumption that describing reality in terms of intrinsic, independent, and individualistic features is preferable to describing it in terms of relational, dependent, and non-individualistic features. (shrink)

Previous work in Game Studies has centered on several loci of investigation in seeking to understand virtual gameworlds. First, researchers have scrutinized the concept of the virtual world itself and how it relates to the idea of “the magic circle”. Second, the field has outlined various forms of experienced “presence”. Third, scholarship has noted that the boundaries between the world of everyday life and virtual worlds are porous, and that this fosters a multiplicity of identities as players identify both with (...) themselves-offline and themselves-in-game. Despite widespread agreement that these topics are targets for research, so far those working on these topics do not have mutually agreed-upon framework. Here we draw upon the work of Alfred Schutz to take up this call. We provide a phenomenological framework which can be used to describe the phenomena of interest to Game Studies, as well as open new avenues of inquiry, in a way acceptable and useful to all. This helps to distinguish the core of the field from the supplemental theoretical and critical commitments which characterize diverse approaches within the field. (shrink)

I argue that Davidson's conception of motivating reasons as belief-desire pairs suggests a model of normative reasons for action that is superior to the orthodox conception according to which normative reasons are propositions, facts, or the truth-makers of such facts.

This paper is an exploration of the Thomistic vice of despair, one of two vices opposed to the theological virtue of hope. Aquinas's conception of despair as a vice, and a theological vice in particular, distances him from contemporary use of the term "despair" to describe an emotional state. His account nonetheless yields a compelling psychological portrait of moral degeneration, which I explain via despair's link to its "root," the capital vice of sloth. Cases in which sloth and its offspring (...) vices progress into full-fledged despair raise intersecting issues about whether and how despair might be remediable. I conclude by considering puzzles regarding despair's disordered effects on the intellect and will and weighing three possible means of remedying it. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Derek Parfit made the bold suggestion, at various times under the heading of the "Normativity Objection," that anyone in possession of normative concepts is in a position to know, on the basis of their competence with such concepts alone, that reductive realism in ethics is not even possible. Despite the prominent role that the Normativity Objection plays in Parfit's non-reductive account of the nature of normativity, when the objection hasn't been ignored, it's been criticized and even derided. (...) We argue that the exclusively negative attention that the objection has received has been a mistake. On our reading, Parfit's Normativity Objection poses a serious threat to reductivism, as it exposes the uneasy relationship between our a priori knowledge of a range of distinctly normative truths and the typical package of semantic commitments that reductivists have embraced since the Kripkean revolution. (shrink)

According to many accounts of faith—where faith is thought of as something psychological, e.g., an attitude, state, or trait—one cannot have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. According to other accounts of faith, one can have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. Call the first sort of account doxasticism since it insists that faith requires belief; call the second nondoxasticism since it allows faith without belief. The New Testament may seem to favor doxasticism over nondoxasticism. For it may (...) seem that, according to the NT authors, one can have faith in God, as providential, or faith that Jesus is the Messiah, or be a person of Christian faith, and the like only if one believes the relevant propositions. In this essay, I propose to assess this tension, as it pertains to the Gospel of Mark. The upshot of my assessment is that, while it may well appear that, according to Mark, one can have faith only if one believes the relevant propositions, appearances are deceiving. Mark said no such thing. Rather, what Mark said—by way of story—about faith fits nondoxasticism at least as well as doxasticism, arguably better. More importantly, the account of faith that emerges from Mark is that faith consists in resilience in the face of challenges to living in light of the overall positive stance to the object of faith, where that stance consists in certain conative, cognitive, and behavioral-dispositional elements. (shrink)

This is a brief exploration of the notion of an objective fact. The form of objectivity at issue is distinct from epistemic objectivity or objectivity about truth. It is an ontological form of objectivity. Objective facts may obtain whether or not we know, believe or are aware of them. They depend upon objects, for example, on the properties that objects have or the relationships into which objects enter. Setting scepticism to one side, there is a perfectly mundane sense in which (...) we may come to have knowledge or fail to have knowledge of such facts. We must perceive objective facts from a perspective, but this does not enter into the facts. Nor does the fact that we must describe facts using language mean that facts are language-dependent. (shrink)

Does faith that p entail belief that p? If faith that p is identical with belief that p, it does. But it isn’t. Even so, faith that p might be necessarily partly constituted by belief that p, or at least entail it. Of course, even if faith that p entails belief that p, it does not follow that faith that p is necessarily partly constituted by belief that p. Still, showing that faith that p entails belief that p would be (...) a significant step in that direction. Can we take that step? In this essay, I assess, and reject, seven reasons to think we can. Along the way, I discuss having faith in a person, being a person of faith, believing something by faith, and believing a person. (shrink)

This is a comment on Moti Mizrahi's paper ' You Can't Handle the Truth: Knowledge = Epistemic Certainty'. Mizrahi claims that the factivity of knowledge entails that knowledge requires epistemic certainty. But the argument that Mizrahi presents does not proceed from factivity to certainty. Instead, it proceeds from a premise about the relationship between grounds and knowledge to the conclusion about certainty.

On doxastic theories of propositional faith,necessarily,S has faith that p only if S believes that p. On nondoxastic theories of propositional faith, it’s false that,necessarily,S has faith that p only if S believes that p. In this article, I defend three arguments for nondoxastic theories of faith and I respond to published criticisms of them.

I propose and defend a novel view called “de se consequentialism,” which is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it demonstrates—contra Doug Portmore, Mark Schroeder, Campbell Brown, and Michael Smith, among others—that agent-neutral consequentialism is consistent with agent-centered constraints. Second, it clarifies the nature of agent-centered constraints, thereby meriting attention from even dedicated nonconsequentialists. Scrutiny reveals that moral theories in general, whether consequentialist or not, incorporate constraints by assessing states in a first-personal guise. Consequently, de se consequentialism enacts constraints through the (...) very same feature that nonconsequentialist theories do. (shrink)

Many countries are experiencing increasing levels of demand for access to assisted reproductive technologies. Policies regarding who can access ART and with what support from a collective purse are highly contested, raising questions about what state responses are justified. Whilst much of this debate has focused on the status of infertility as a disease, we argue that this is something of a distraction, since disease framing does not provide the far-reaching, robust justification for state support that proponents of ART seem (...) to suppose. Instead, we propose that debates about appropriate state responses should consider the various implications for health and broader well-being that may be associated with difficulties starting a family. We argue that the harms and disruption to valued life projects of subfertility-related suffering may provide a stronger basis for justifying state support in this context. Further, we suggest that, whilst ART may alleviate some of the harm resulting from subfertility, population-level considerations can indicate a broader range of interventions aimed at tackling different sources of subfertility-related harm, consistent with broader public health aims. (shrink)

Controversial and provocative, To Be Real is a blueprint for the creation of a new political force.

I argue that uniquely human forms of ‘Theory of Mind’ are a product of cultural evolution. Specifically, propositional attitude psychology is a linguistically constructed folk model of the human mind, invented by our ancestors for a range of tasks and refined over successive generations of users. The construction of these folk models gave humans new tools for thinking and reasoning about mental states—and so imbued us with abilities not shared by non-linguistic species. I also argue that uniquely human forms of (...) ToM are not required for language development, such that an account of the cultural origins of ToM does not jeopardise the explanation of language development. Finally, I sketch a historical model of the cultural evolution of mental state talk. (shrink)

In a shift of position that has gone largely unnoticed by the great majority of commentators, Thomas Kuhn's version of the incommensurability thesis underwent a major transformation over the last decade and a half of his life. In his later work, Kuhn argued that incommensurability is a relation of translation failure between local subsets of interdefined theoretical terms, which encapsulate the taxonomic structure of a theory. Incommensurability arises because it is impossible to transfer the natural categories employed within one taxonomic (...) structure into the categorial system of another such structure. Apparently on the basis of such taxonomic incommensurability, Kuhn asserted a number of antirealist theses about truth, reference and reality. In this paper, it will be argued, however, that, far from leading to antirealist consequences about the relationship between theory and reality, the taxonomic incommensurability thesis may be incorporated unproblematically within a reasonably robust scientific realist framework. (shrink)

The paper presents some thoughts about how an account of rationality might be recovered from what might have first appeared as anti-rationalistic ideas in the work of Kuhn and Feyerabend. The paper draws inspiration from some suggestions of Bernstein and Rorty, as well well as Brown's theory of rationality.

It is argued that to believe is to believe true. That is, when one believes a proposition one thereby believes the proposition to be true. This is a point about what it is to believe rather than about the aim of belief or the standard of correctness for belief. The point that to believe is to believe true appears to be an analytic truth about the concept of belief. It also appears to be essential to the state of belief that (...) to believe is to believe true. This is not just a contingent fact about our ordinary psychology, since even a non-ordinary believer must believe a proposition that they believe to be true. Nor is the idea that one may accept a theory as empirically adequate rather than as true a counter-example, since such acceptance combines belief in the truth of the observational claims of a theory with suspension of belief with respect to the non-observational claims of a theory. Nor is the fact that to believe is to believe true to be explained in terms of an inference governed by the T-scheme from the belief that P to the belief that P is true, since there is no inference from the former to the latter. To believe that P just is to believe that P is true. (shrink)

An interview about realism conducted in English and translated into Persian by Reza Alizadeh Mamaghani.

This brief article intended for undergraduates argues for Experiential Foundationalism, the view that there are basic beliefs and they can be justified by experience.

In this paper, we defend three claims about what it will take for an AI system to be a basic moral patient to whom we can owe duties of non-maleficence not to harm her and duties of beneficence to benefit her: (1) Moral patients are mental patients; (2) Mental patients are true intentional systems; and (3) True intentional systems are systematically flexible. We suggest that we should be particularly alert to the possibility of such systematically flexible true intentional systems developing (...) in the areas of exploratory robots and artificial personal assistants. Finally, we argue that in light of our failure to respect the well-being of existing biological moral patients and worries about our limited resources, there are compelling moral reasons to treat artificial moral patiency as something to be avoided at least for now. (shrink)

Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Wadsworth 2015, 6th edition, eds Michael Rea and Louis Pojman. What is propositional faith? At a first approximation, we might answer that it is the psychological attitude picked out by standard uses of the English locution “S has faith that p,” where p takes declarative sentences as instances, as in “He has faith that they’ll win”. Although correct, this answer is not nearly as informative as we might like. Many people say that there (...) is a more informative answer. They say that, at the very least, propositional faith requires propositional belief. More precisely, they say that faith that p requires belief that p or that it must be partly constituted by belief that p. This view is common enough; call it the Common View. I have two main aims in this paper: (i) to exhibit the falsity of the Common View and the paucity of reasons for it, and (ii) to sketch a more accurate and comprehensive account of what propositional faith is. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently come to focus on explaining the phenomenon of ​bad beliefs,​ beliefs that are apparently true and well-evidenced but nevertheless objectionable. Despite this recent focus, a consensus is already forming around a particular explanation of these beliefs’ badness called ​moral encroachment​, according to which, roughly, the moral stakes engendered by bad beliefs make them particularly difficult to justify. This paper advances an alternative account not just of bad beliefs but of bad attitudes more generally according to which bad (...) beliefs’ badness originates not in a failure of sufficient evidence but in a failure to respond adequately to reasons. I motivate this alternative account through an analogy to recent discussions of moral worth centered on the well-known grocer case from Kant’s ​Groundwork​, and by showing that this analogy permits the proposed account to generalize to bad attitudes beyond belief. The paper concludes by contrasting the implications of moral encroachment and of the proposed account for bad attitudes’ blameworthiness. (shrink)

This book presents a critical analysis of the semantic incommensurability thesis of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. In putting forward the thesis of incommensurability, Kuhn and Feyerabend drew attention to complex issues concerning the phenomenon of conceptual change in science. They raised serious problems about the semantic and logical relations between the content of theories which deploy unlike systems of concepts. Yet few of the more extreme claims associated with incommensurability stand scrutiny. The argument of this book is as follows. (...) The terms of theories with different concepts diverge semantically and the vocabularies of such theories may not be fully intertranslatable. Given the possibility of referential overlap between the terms of conceptually divergent theories, it does not follow that the content of such theories is incomparable. Nor, given the distinction between understanding a language and translation from one language into another, does it follow that the proponents of mutually untranslatable theories are unable to communicate. Neither is it the case that the shift between conceptually divergent theories involves a discontinuous transition between theories which have no common reference or that refer to distinct worlds of their own making. The semantic differences resulting from conceptual variance may be embraced within a thoroughly realist framework on which they are construed as diverse linguistic relations to a fixed and independent reality. -/- The book, which was originally published in 1994, has now been re-issued in the Routledge Revivals series. -/- . (shrink)

The chapter introduces and characterizes the notion of fittingness. It charts the history of the relation and its relevance to contemporary debates in normative and metanormative philosophy and proceeds to survey issues to do with fittingness covered in the volume’s chapters, including the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relations between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of issues to (...) do with fittingness that aren’t covered extensively by the volume’s chapters in order to indicate avenues for further research. (shrink)