In his book, On Reflection, Hilary Kornblith criticizes what he regards as a chronic tendency in philosophy towards inflating the significance of reflection in ways that manifest a combination of philosophical naiveté and scientific ignorance about how reflection actually works. In these comments, I respond to Kornblith's challenge by sketching an account of the philosophical significance of reflection in the theory of epistemic justification.

Philosophy is a reflective activity. So perhaps it is unsurprising that many philosophers have claimed that reflection plays an important role in shaping and even improving our philosophical thinking. This hypothesis seems plausible given that training in philosophy has correlated with better performance on tests of reflection and reflective reasoning has correlated with demonstrably better judgments in a variety of domains. This article reviews the hypothesized roles of reflection in philosophical thinking as well as the empirical evidence (...) for these roles. This reveals that although there are fairly reliable links between reflection and philosophical judgment among both laypeople and philosophers, the role of reflection in philosophical thinking may nonetheless depend in part on other factors, some of which have yet to be determined. So progress in research on reflection in philosophy may require further innovation in experimental methods and psychometric validation of philosophical measures. (shrink)

This article examines the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) and its role in philosophical inquiry. It begins with an overview of RE before discussing some of the subtleties involved in its interpretation, including challenges to the standard assumption that RE is a form of coherentism. It then evaluates some of the main objections to RE, in particular, the criticism that this method generates unreasonable beliefs. It concludes by considering how RE relates to recent debates about the role of intuitions in (...) philosophy. (shrink)

In 1968, Jürgen Habermas claimed that, in an advanced technological society, the emancipatory force of knowledge can only be regained by actively recovering the ‘forgotten experience of reflection’. In this article, we argue that, in the contemporary situation, critical reflection requires a deliberative ambiance, a process of mutual learning, a consciously organised process of deliberative and distributed reflection. And this especially applies, we argue, to critical reflection concerning a specific subset of technologies which are actually oriented (...) towards optimising human cognition. In order to create a deliberative ambiance, fostering critical upstream reflection on emerging technologies, we developed the concept of a mutual learning exercise. Building on a number of case studies, we analyse what an MLE involves, both practically and conceptually, focussing on key aspects such as ambiance and expertise, the role of ‘genres of the imagination’ and the profiles of various ‘subcultures of debate’. Ideally, an MLE becomes a contemporary version of the Socratic agora, providing a stage where multiple and sometimes unexpected voices and perspectives mutually challenge each other, in order to strength-en the societal robustness and responsiveness of emerg-ing technologies. (shrink)

This paper aims to flesh out the celebrated notion of reflective equilibrium within a probabilistic framework for epistemic rationality. On the account developed here, an agent's attitudes are in reflective equilibrium when there is a certain sort of harmony between the agent's credences, on the one hand, and what the agent accepts, on the other hand. Somewhat more precisely, reflective equilibrium is taken to consist in the agent accepting, or being prepared to accept, all and only claims that follow from (...) a maximally comprehensive theory that is more probable than any other such theory. Drawing on previous work, the paper shows that when an agent is in reflective equilibrium in this sense, the set of claims they accept or are prepared to accept is bound to be logically consistent and closed under logical implication. The paper also argues that this account can explain various features of philosophical argumentation in which the notion of reflective equilibrium features centrally, such as the emphasis on evaluating philosophical theories holistically rather than in a piecemeal fashion. (shrink)

Humans have distinctive powers of reflection: no other animal seems to have anything like our capacity for self-examination. Many philosophers hold that this capacity has a uniquely important guiding role in our cognition; others, notably Hilary Kornblith, draw attention to its weaknesses. Kornblith chiefly aims to dispel the sense that there is anything ‘magical’ about second-order mental states, situating them in the same causal net as ordinary first-order mental states. But elsewhere he goes further, suggesting that there is something (...) deeply misleading about reflection’s first-person view of cognition. This chapter takes a closer look at the conditions under which reflection is misleading. Even if humans are the only reflective animals, we are no longer the only creatures that can be questioned about their claims. Chatbots can also be asked to explain themselves, and by studying the conditions under which they produce clarification as opposed to confabulation, we can develop a non-skeptical account of the epistemic value of reflection. I argue that this capacity naturally supports the distribution of complex problem solving among multiple agents. (shrink)

I distinguish two ways of developing anti-exceptionalist approaches to logical revision. The first emphasizes comparing the theoretical virtuousness of developed bodies of logical theories, such as classical and intuitionistic logic. I'll call this whole theory comparison. The second attempts local repairs to problematic bits of our logical theories, such as dropping excluded middle to deal with intuitions about vagueness. I'll call this the piecemeal approach. I then briefly discuss a problem I've developed elsewhere for comparisons of logical theories. Essentially, the (...) problem is that a pair of logics may each evaluate the alternative as superior to themselves, resulting in oscillation between logical options. The piecemeal approach offers a way out of this problem andthereby might seem a preferable to whole theory comparisons. I go on to show that reflective equilibrium, the best known piecemeal method, has deep problems of its own when applied to logic. (shrink)

Hilary Kornblith argues that reflection is not more valuable than unreflective processes, because reflection is not different in kind from unreflective processes. Reflection, then, has no special role in whether we know, are reasonable, are able to exercise free will, or are able to act as we should. I summarize Kornblith’s arguments and provide a reason to think that Kornblith’s arguments fail; if the arguments are successful, they give us reason to believe that reflection is more (...) valuable than his arguments indicate. (shrink)

In On Reflection, Hilary Kornblith criticizes Sosa’s distinction between animal and reflective knowledge. His two chief criticisms are that reflective knowledge is not superior to animal knowledge and that Sosa’s distinction does not identify two kinds of knowledge. I argue that Sosa can successfully avoid both of these charges.

Reflection is widely acknowledged to play a crucial role in enhancing the competence of medical professionals. Developed countries have given importance to implementing reflective practices for professional development. In developing countries, reflective practices are not given much importance as a tool for professional growth. This article aims to uncover the existing practices of reflection and the challenges faced by medical professionals working at a government hospital in Nepal. It also promotes the practice of reflection to improve daily (...) professional practice. This article aims to uncover the existing practices of reflection and the challenges faced by medical professionals working at a government hospital in Nepal. This qualitative study utilized Narrative Inquiry as the research method and conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with two medical professionals selected through purposive sampling followed by content analysis of the collected data. The study was based on the theories of social constructivism and transformative learning. After analyzing the data, three significant themes emerged: empathizing through reflection, change in practice through reflection, and barriers to reflective practices. The study identified several barriers to reflective practices, including a negative attitude, sociocultural contexts, and a lack of support from the medical community. It is crucial to encourage self-reflection for medical professionals to enhance their professional growth and promote lifelong learning. This study provides valuable insights into the significance of reflective practices in the professional development of medical personnel, particularly in developing countries. (shrink)

A common line of thought claims that we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, while less sophisticated creatures are not, because we are, and they are not, self-aware. Our self-awareness is thought to provide us with a kind of control over ourselves that they lack: we can reflect upon ourselves, upon our thoughts and actions, and so ensure that they are as we would have them to be. Thus, our capacity for reflection provides us with the control over (...) ourselves that grounds our responsibility. I argue that this thought is subtly, but badly, confused. It uses, as its model for the control that grounds our responsibility, the kind of control we exercise over ordinary objects and over our own voluntary actions: we represent to ourselves what to do or how to change things, and then we bring about that which we represent. But we cannot use this model to explain our responsibility for ourselves and our actions: if there is a question about why or how we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, it cannot be answered by appeal to a sophisticated, self-directed action. There must be some more fundamental account of how or why we are responsible. I replace the usual account with a novel but natural view: responsible mental activity can be modeled, not as an ordinary action, but as the settling of a question. This shift will require abandoning the tempting but troublesome thought that responsible activity involves discretion and awareness—which, I argue, we must abandon in any case. (shrink)

Action is not always guided by conscious deliberation; in many circumstances, we act intuitively rather than reflectively. Tamar Gendler (2014) contends that because intuitively guided action can lead us away from our reflective commitments, it limits the power of knowledge to guide action. While I agree that intuition can diverge from reflection, I argue that this divergence does not constitute a restriction on the power of knowledge. After explaining my view of the contrast between intuitive and reflective thinking, this (...) paper argues against the conclusions Gendler draws from empirical work on implicit bias. (shrink)

This paper explores an initially attractive principle connecting beliefs in general with beliefs about what beliefs are rational. The principle turns out to be violated by intuitively rational beliefs in some situations. The paper lays out some options for reacting to this fact.

In this paper, I consider the so-called Access Problem for Duncan Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism (2012). After reconstructing Pritchard’s own response to the Access Problem, I argue that in order to assess whether Pritchard’s response is a satisfying one, we first need an account of the notion of ‘Reflective Access’ that underpins Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism. I provide three interpretations of the notion of Reflective Access: a metaphysical interpretation, a folk interpretation, and an epistemic interpretation. I argue that none of these three (...) interpretations comes without problems. I conclude that, until we have a clear and unproblematic account of Reflective Access, the Access Problem remains a challenge for Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism. (shrink)

I address the worry that reflective equilibrium is too weak as an account of justification because it fails to let differing views converge. I take up informal aspects of convergence and operationalise them in a formal model of reflective equilibrium. This allows for exploration by the means of computer simulation. Findings show that the formal model does not yield unique outputs, but still boosts agreement. I conclude from this that reflective equilibrium is best seen as a pluralist account of justification (...) that cannot be accused of resulting in an “anything goes” relativism. (shrink)

How can we figure out what’s right or wrong, if moral truths are neither self-evident nor something we can perceive? Very roughly, the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) says that we should begin moral inquiry from what we already confidently think, seeking to find a a match between our initial convictions and general principles that are well-supported by background theories, mutually adjusting both until we reach a coherent outlook in which our beliefs are in harmony (the equilibrium part) and we (...) know why and how they support each other (the reflective part). It has been central to the self-understanding of normative ethics and other branches of philosophy in the last half a century. In this chapter, we examine the history of the idea of RE and introduce a schema for generating 256 variants. We explain why RE is subject to serious objections insofar as it purports to yield epistemic justification in virtue of achieving coherence. However, we also develop a new argument to the effect that RE is the best feasible method for us to achieve moral understanding and the ability to justify our judgments to others. It may thus be crucial for responsible moral inquiry, even if coherence among considered judgments and principles is neither sufficient nor necessary for justified moral belief. (shrink)

Here I will develop a naturalistic account of epistemic reflection and its significance for epistemology. I will first argue that thought, as opposed to mere information processing, requires a capacity for cognitive self-regulation. After discussing the basic capacities necessary for cognitive self-regulation of any kind, I will consider qualitatively different kinds of thought that can emerge when the basic capacities enable the creature to interiorize a form of social cooperation. First, I will discuss second-personal cooperation and the kind of (...) thought that emerges from its interiorization. Then, I will discuss third-personal cooperation and the kind of thought that emerges from its interiorization. We will see that epistemic reflection is the interiorized version of interpersonal argumentation, which is the epistemic component of third-personal cooperation. In developing this account, I will draw heavily on the work of Michael Tomasello and other cognitive scientists advocating the “social intentionality hypothesis”. However, I will show how work done in the defeasible reasoning tradition can provide us with a deeper explanation of some claims made by advocates of the social intentionality hypothesis. Additionally, we will see that work done on social intentionality can help us better understand the significance of knowledge and justification as understood by the defeasible reasoning tradition. We will see that the social intentionality hypothesis and the defeasible reasoning tradition are mutually illuminating. By drawing equally on both, I will provide a novel account of the foundations of knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophers often find themselves in disagreement with contemporary philosophers they know full well to be their epistemic superiors on the topics relevant to the disagreement. This looks epistemically irresponsible. I offer a detailed investigation of this problem of the reflective epistemic renegade. I argue that although in some cases the renegade is not epistemically blameworthy, and the renegade situation is significantly less common than most would think, in a troublesome number of cases in which the situation arises the renegade is (...) blameworthy in her disagreement with recognized epistemic superiors. I also offer some thoughts on what it would mean for philosophical practice for us to refrain from being renegades. Finally, I show how a new kind of radical skepticism emerges from modest theses regarding the renegade. (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium focuses on the relationship between principles and judgments. Principles are relatively general rules for comprehending the area of enquiry. Judgments are our intuitions or commitments, ‘at all levels of generality’ (Rawls 1975: 8), regarding the subject matter. The basic idea of reflective equilibrium is to bring principles and judgments into accord. This can be achieved by revising the principles and/or the judgments. -/- I first look at normative political judgments (Section 2) before considering the role (...) of principles, arguments, devices of representation and background theory in wide reflective equilibrium (Section 3). I then consider two of the main challenges to the method (Section 4), and show how to use it to deliberate about substantive political principles (Section 5). I conclude with an extended example of the method in action (Section 6). (shrink)

A distinctive feature of Juan Comesaña's epistemological account is the possibility of an agent possessing a false proposition as evidence. Comesaña argues that there are a number of theoretical virtues of his account once we accept this possibility, however, one might expect that there are particular vices of his account as well. Littlejohn and Dutant (2021) claim that a reflective agent who accepts Comesaña's view is rationally compelled to update their credences differently than unreflective agents, or else they will be (...) guilty of a problematic kind of doublethink: evidence in general can be false, but my evidence is never false. I argue that parallel reasoning applies to any epistemological view that says that it is possible for a rational agent to be wrong about what their evidence is. When a rational agent reflectively accepts that they could be wrong about their evidence they are rationally compelled to update their credences differently than unreflective agents, or else they will be guilty of a problematic kind of doublethink: even though rational agents in general are wrong about their evidence, I'm never wrong about my evidence. Reflecting on a particular challenge to Comesaña's view ultimately reveals a general challenge to fallibilism. (shrink)

This chapter aims to deepen Donald Schön’s insight about jazz playing as an example of what he calls “reflection-in-action” (RiA) by situating this notion within the enactive view of humans as linguistic bodies. Our main claim is that the knowl-edge or skills displayed by expert jazz musicians must be understood as aural and communicative in nature. After presenting the notions of RiA and linguistic bodies, we develop our view through a critical discussion of four statements from Schön’s passage on (...) jazz musicianship, before wrapping up and clarifying the position we are advocating. This way, we suggest a revised version of Schön’s concept, which we call “reflection in communicative jazz action.". (shrink)

How far, if at all, do our intrapersonal and our interpersonal epistemic obligations run in parallel? This paper treats the question as addressing the stability of doxastic commitment in the two dimensions. In the background lies an analogy between doxastic and practical commitment. We’ll pursue the question of doxastic stability by coining a doxastic analogue of Gregory Kavka’s much-discussed toxin case. In this new case, you foresee that you will rationally abandon a doxastic commitment by undergoing a shift in the (...) context in which you doxastically deliberate. The case reveals an important stability condition on doxastic commitment that plays no role in cases modeled on Ulysses and the Sirens, the scenario that has shaped previous attempts to draw an analogy between doxastic and practical commitment. The stability condition thereby revealed is not diachronic -- it does not involve a shift in belief -- but we can construct specifically diachronic cases that reveal an important intrapersonal epistemic obligation. This obligation arises when you expect the shift in belief by ‘projecting’ yourself into a future doxastic context -- thus vindicating a restricted, but only this restricted, application of Bas van Fraassen’s Reflection Principle. Despite some important differences, we can use these diachronic cases as a model for interpersonal cases that reveal an important role for doxastic context in the epistemology of disagreement. But the roles played by projection and context in disagreement ensure that there is no general obligation to be responsive to the opinion of an epistemic peer who disagrees with you. (shrink)

A stubborn problem for reflectance physicalism about color is to account for individual differences in normal trichromat color perception. The identification of determinate colors with physical properties of visible surfaces in a universal, perceiver-independent way is challenged by the observation that the same surfaces in identical viewing conditions often look different in color to different human subjects with normal color vision. Recently, leading representatives of reflectance physicalism have offered some arguments to defend their view against the individual differences challenge. In (...) this paper I challenge their defense. I argue thateven though individual differences are present in shape perception as well as in color perception, the mechanisms of shape perception and those of color perception differ in ways which make them completely different regarding their evidential status for certain identity claims. Thus comparing color perception to shape perception offers no support for identifying hues with reflectances. On the other hand, drawing a parallel between the temperature-mean kinetic energy of molecules (MKE) identification and the proposed hue-reflectance identities is no support for reflectance physicalism either, since there is an important disanalogybetween the two cases. While individual differences obtain in color perception, the effects of temperature (e.g., melting, thermal expansion) do not exhibit analogous variation, which makes the temperature-MKE identification unproblematic compared to the hue-reflectance identification. One motivation for this ongoing debate is that the success or failure of reflectance physicalism has far-reaching consequences regarding externalist theories of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Reflection Theory holds that our sensations reflect physical properties, whereas Empiricism believes that sense (data), presentations, and phenomena are the ultimate existence. Lenin adhered to Reflection Theory and criticized Helmholtz’s sensory symbolism for affirming the similarity between a sensation and a physical property. By using information and color vision theories, analyzing the ostensive definition with inverted qualia, and extending the relativity principle, this paper affirms the external world’s existence independent of personal sensations. Still, it denies the similarity between (...) a sense and a physical property. Then, it improves symbolism to analog symbolism and Reflection Theory to Information Reflection Theory. (shrink)

Existing interpretations of Kant’s appeal to the spontaneity of the mind focus almost exclusively on the discussion of pure apperception in the Transcendental Deduction. The risk of such a strategy lies in the considerable degree of abstraction at which the argument of the Deduction is carried out: existing interpretations fail to reconnect adequately with any ground-level perspective on our cognitive lives. This paper works in the opposite direction. Drawing on Kant’s suggestion that the most basic picture we can have of (...) our cognitive capacity already makes reference to its state of excellence, or health (“sound understanding”), I set out by assembling Kant’s normative ground-level view of our cognitive lives, and then search for the fundamental condition of its possibility. This leads me to Kant’s conception of reflection as a normative requirement of judgment. Through examination of Kant’s remarks on reflection, I connect Kant’s preoccupation with the enlightenment ideal of originality (thinking for oneself) with his central appeal to the spontaneity of the mind. (shrink)

This chapter describes Spinoza's obscure “ideas of ideas” doctrine and his claim that “as soon as one knows something, one knows that one knows it, and simultaneously knows that one knows that one knows, and so on, to infinity”. Spinoza holds that the human mind is a representation of the body: the “objectum of the idea constituting the human mind” is the human body. Suppose ideas are essentially self‐reflexive, and that this reflexive awareness, the “idea of the idea,” makes the (...) objectively‐real representational content present to mind. The chapter also suggests that Spinoza holds that adequate ideas come, by nature, with reflective knowledge. Reasoning through the Ethics is one way to come to the adequate ideas that silence doubts about the veridicality of one's adequate ideas of bodies. The “human mind has an adequate cognition of God's eternal and infinite essence”. (shrink)

There can be no doubt that Kant thought we should be reflective: we ought to care to make up our own minds about how things are and what is worth doing. Philosophical objections to the Kantian reflective ideal have centred on concerns about the excessive control that the reflective person is supposed to exert over her own mental life, and Kantians who feel the force of these objections have recently drawn attention to Kant’s conception of moral virtue as it is (...) developed in his later work, chiefly the Metaphysics of Morals. Melissa Merritt’s book is a distinctive contribution to this recent turn to virtue in Kant scholarship. Merritt argues that we need a clearer, and textually more comprehensive, account of what reflection is, in order not only to understand Kant’s account of virtue, but also to appreciate how it effectively rebuts long-standing objections to the Kantian reflective ideal. (shrink)

This paper proposes a Rawlsian conception of moral justification as a social activity. Through a close reading, Rawls’ view of ethical justification is shown to be significantly more dialogical and deliberative than is commonly appreciated. The result is a view that emphasizes the social nature of ethical justification and identifies information sharing between persons as the crux of justification in metaethics, in contrast to normative ethics. I call it Rawlsian reflective equilibrium to distinguish it from other varieties.

My aim in this paper is to provide an account of practical judgement, for Kant, that situates it within his theory of judgement as a whole—particularly, with regards to the distinction between the determining and reflecting use of judgement. I argue that practical judgement is a kind of determining judgement, but also one in which reflecting judgement plays a significant role. More specifically, I claim that practical judgement arises from the cooperation of the reflecting power of judgement with the faculty (...) of reason—the former assisting the latter in the application of its principle. I conclude by considering a possible role for feeling in practical judgement. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss two recurring themes in Sosa’s work, reexamined in Judgment and Agency (SOSA, 2015) from a new angle, i.e. the place and importance of reflection in the cognitive economy of the epistemic agent, and epistemic value. Regarding the latter, Sosa suggests that knowing full well, which necessarily involves reflection, has value because it contributes to human flourishing. Although Sosa’s “new virtue epistemology” appears very promising in explaining different intuitions regarding epistemology and demonstrating that it (...) is possible to join reliabilist and responsibilist accounts of virtue epistemology, we believe that solving the value problem requires further clarification in order to truly explain the value of knowledge. (shrink)

John Rawls’ method of reflective equilibrium is the most influential methodology in contemporary ethics.This paper argues that this influence is undeserved, for two reasons. First, reflective equilibrium fails to accomplish two tasks that give us reason to care about methodology. On the one hand, it fails to explain how (or whether) moral knowledge is possible.This is because the method is explicitly oriented towards the distinct (and less interesting) task of characterizing our moral sensibilities. On the other hand, the method fails (...) to provide an informative way of adjudicating central methodological debates in ethics. Second, where Rawls’ method –and the background methodology he uses to motivate it –do have substance, that substance is implausible. The role of dispositions in the method entails that it endorses obviously irrational inferences. Further, the method makes substantively implausible distinctions between the dispositions that are allowed to play a methodological role. Rawls' background methodology appeals to the idea of a psychology in ‘wide reflective equilibrium’. However, both formal and empirical path-dependence considerations strongly suggest that there is nothing even minimally determinate that is someone’s psychology in ‘wide reflective equilibrium’. I close by exploring salient attempts to salvage the spirit of reflective equilibrium by abandoning elements of Rawls’ approach. I argue that none of these attempts succeed. I conclude that appeal to the method of reflective equilibrium is not a helpful means of addressing pressing methodological questions in ethics. In a slogan, reflective equilibrium is methodologically irrelevant. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on one controversial element of the method of reflective equilibrium, namely Rawls’s idea that the commitments that enter the justificatory procedure should be pre-selected or filtered: According to him, only considered judgements should be taken into account in moral philosophy. There are two camps of critics of this filtering process: 1) Critics of reflective equilibrium: They reject the Rawlsian filtering process as too weak and seek a more reliable one, which would actually constitute a distinct (...) epistemic method. 2) Proponents of reflective equilibrium: They reject the Rawlsian filtering process as too exclusionary. We defend RE against its critics, arguing that the method can secure reasonable commitments without depending on a strong external filtering process. However, we side with the critical proponents of reflective equilibrium and argue that without the Rawlsian weak filtering process, RE is more plausible both as a general method as well as in the context of moral philosophy. (shrink)

According to Phenomenal Conservatism (PC), if a subject S has an appearance that P, in the absence of defeaters, S has justification for believing P by virtue of her appearance's inherent justifying power. McCain and Moretti (2021) have argued that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness: if S becomes reflectively aware of an appearance, the appearance loses its inherent justifying power. This limits the explanatory power of PC and reduces its antisceptical bite. This paper provides a novel (...) argument to the same conclusion and contends that it does not apply to Phenomenal Explanationism, the appearance-based account of justification alternative to PC defended by McCain and Moretti (2021). (shrink)

I argue against the claim that it is trivial to state that Sidgwick used the method of wide reflective equilibrium. This claim is based on what could be called the Triviality Charge, which is pressed against the method of wide reflective equilibrium by Peter Singer. According to this charge, there is no alternative to using the method if it is interpreted as involving all relevant philosophical background arguments. The main argument against the Triviality Charge is that although the method of (...) wide reflective equilibrium is compatible with coherentism (understood as a form of weak foundationalism) as well as moderate foundationalism, it is not compatible with strong foundationalism. Hence, the claim that a philosopher uses the method of wide reflective equilibrium is informative. In particular, this is true with regard to Sidgwick. (shrink)

A quick look at the concept of reflective equilibrium in philosophy.

I present considerations surrounding pre-reflective self-consciousness, arising in work I am conducting on a new physicalist, process-based account of [phenomenal] consciousness. The account is called the meta-causal account because it identifies consciousness with a certain type of arrangement of meta-causation. Meta-causation is causation where a cause or effect is itself an instance of causation. The proposed type of arrangement involves a sort of time-spanning, internal reflexivity of the overall meta-causation. I argue that, as a result of the account, any conscious (...) process has PRSC. Hence, PRSC does not need to be taken as a stipulation or argued for on purely phenomenological grounds or as a necessary support for reflective consciousness. I also show how it is natural to the account that PRSC is not an additional, peripheral, sort of consciousness, but is intrinsic to all consciousness, thereby fitting claims about self-intimation and co-constitution by various authors, and also being amenable to an adverbial account. As part of this, consciousness of an external object is just the form that current self-consciousness takes, the meta-causal constitution of it being inextricably modulated by the causal relationship with the object. The article also discusses how MCA helps explore issues of for-me-ness, transparency of perceptual consciousness, and possible immediacy and non-relationality of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists often assume that mirror reflections are optical illusions. According to many authors, what we see in a mirror appears to be behind it. I discuss two strategies to resist this piece of dogma. As I will show, the conviction that mirror reflections are illusions is rooted in a confused conception of the relations between location, direction, and visibility. This conception is unacceptable to those who take seriously the way in which mirrors contribute to our experience of the (...) world. My argument may be read as an advertisement of the neglected field of philosophical catoptrics, the philosophical study of the optical properties of mirrors. It enables us to recast familiar issues in the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

It is now common to distinguish Metaphysical from Epistemological Disjunctivism. It is equally common to suggest that it is at least not obvious that the latter requires a commitment to the former: at the very least, a suitable bridge principle will need to be identified which takes one from the latter to the former. This paper identifies a plausible-looking bridge principle that takes one from the version of Epistemological Disjunctivism defended by John McDowell and Duncan Pritchard, which I label Reflective (...) Epistemological Disjunctivism, or (RED), to Metaphysical Disjunctivism. Moreover, it identifies a modification the proponent of (RED) could, and should, make to the Internalist component of their theory, and argues that the commitment to Metaphysical Disjunctivism remains, even if such a modification is made. The upshot is that the commitment to Metaphysical Disjunctivism on the part of (RED) is shown to be particularly robust. (shrink)

This paper shows that any view of future contingent claims that treats such claims as having indeterminate truth values or as simply being false implies probabilistic irrationality. This is because such views of the future imply violations of reflection, special reflection and conditionalization.

This article reviews research on counterfactual, social, and temporal comparisons and proposes a Reflection and Evaluation Model (REM) as an organizing framework. At the heart of the model is the assertion that 2 psychologically distinct modes of mental simulation operate during comparative thinking: reflection, an experiential (“as if”) mode of thinking characterized by vividly simulating that information about the comparison standard is true of, or part of, the self; and evaluation, an evaluative mode of thinking characterized by the (...) use of information about the standard as a reference point against which to evaluate one’s present standing. Reflection occurs when information about the standard is included in one’s self-construal, and evaluation occurs when such information is excluded. The result of reflection is that standard–consistent cognitions about the self become highly accessible, thereby yielding affective assimilation; whereas the result of evaluation is that comparison information is used as a standard against which one’s present standing is evaluated, thereby yielding affective contrast. The resulting affect leads to either an increase or decrease in behavioral persistence as a function of the type of task with which one is engaged, and a combination of comparison-derived causal inferences and regulatory focus strategies direct one toward adopting specific future action plans. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that there is a causal condition on perception, and that this condition is a conceptual truth about perception. A highly influential argument for this claim is based on intuitive responses to Gricean-style thought experiments. Do the folk share the intuitions of philosophers? Roberts et al. (2016) presented participants with two kinds of cases: Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a mirror and a pillar) and Non-Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a clock and brain stimulation). (...) They found that a substantial minority agreed that seeing occurs in the Non-Blocker cases, and that in the Blocker cases significantly less agreed that seeing occurs. They thus hypothesized that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition than with a causal condition. This paper continues this line of enquiry with two new experiments. The paper investigates the generality and robustness of Roberts et al.’s findings by expanding the sense modalities tested from only vision to audition and olfaction as well. The paper also uses Gricean-style thought experiments as a case study for investigating the “reflection defense” against the negative project in experimental philosophy. Our results replicate and extend Roberts et al.’s study and support their hypothesis that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition. They also provide an empirical reason to doubt the reflection defense. (shrink)

The late Middle Ages witnessed a recapitulation of medieval reflection on beauty. Jean Gerson is an important representative of these philosophical and theological contributions, although he has been largely neglected up to this time. A first dimension of his ideas on beauty is the incorporation of beauty (pulchrum) into the number of transcendentals, i.e., the concepts “convertible” with the notion of being (ens), that is, unity, truth, and goodness (unum, verum and bonum). This article revisits Monica Calma’s study on (...) Gerson’s theory of beauty and suggests new hypothetical sources that may have inspired this aspect of his thought. The second aspect emphasised here is Gerson’s classification of beauty, which entails some similarities to the one of Ulrich of Strasbourg, but also differs from it. Moreover, its incorporation of a division entirely devoted to artistic beauty is highly remarkable. (shrink)

In light of the observations and research design presented in the previous reports, the current technical report is focused on the relationship between the quality and specificity of the content of the gambling sites and the site’s SEO and marketing policy. This relationship is dependent upon the category of the gambling site and the difference in content quality, and the degree to which the mathematical dimension of gambling is reflected in this content is explained by this dependence.

In this paper, I present a problem for regarding the reflective equilibrium and original position methods as consistent. I do not prove that there is an inconsistency, but there is a puzzle of how the two methods can be made consistent. The concern about inconsistency is because the former method allows for a kind of historical bias, as noted by T.H. Irwin, whereas the latter method seeks to guard against historical bias.

Interdisciplinary understanding requires integration of insights from different perspectives, yet it appears questionable whether disciplinary experts are well prepared for this. Indeed, psychological and cognitive scientific studies suggest that expertise can be disadvantageous because experts are often more biased than non-experts, for example, or fixed on certain approaches, and less flexible in novel situations or situations outside their domain of expertise. An explanation is that experts’ conscious and unconscious cognition and behavior depend upon their learning and acquisition of a set (...) of mental representations or knowledge structures. Compared to beginners in a field, experts have assembled a much larger set of representations that are also more complex, facilitating fast and adequate perception in responding to relevant situations. This article argues how metacognition should be employed in order to mitigate such disadvantages of expertise: By metacognitively monitoring and regulating their own cognitive processes and representations, experts can prepare themselves for interdisciplinary understanding. Interdisciplinary collaboration is further facilitated by team metacognition about the team, tasks, process, goals, and representations developed in the team. Drawing attention to the need for metacognition, the article explains how philosophical reflection on the assumptions involved in different disciplinary perspectives must also be considered in a process complementary to metacognition and not completely overlapping with it. (Disciplinary assumptions are here understood as determining and constraining how the complex mental representations of experts are chunked and structured.) The article concludes with a brief reflection on how the process of Reflective Equilibrium should be added to the processes of metacognition and philosophical reflection in order for experts involved in interdisciplinary collaboration to reach a justifiable and coherent form of interdisciplinary integration. An Appendix of “Prompts or Questions for Metacognition” that can elicit metacognitive knowledge, monitoring, or regulation in individuals or teams is included at the end of the article. (shrink)

Reflectance physicalists define reflectance as the intrinsic disposition of a surface to reflect finite-duration light pulses at a given efficiency per wavelength. I criticize the received view of dispositional reflectance (David R. Hilbert’s) for failing to account for what I call “harmonic dispersion,” the inverse relationship of a light pulse's duration to its bandwidth. I argue that harmonic dispersion renders reflectance defined in terms of light pulses an extrinsic disposition. Reflectance defined as the per-wavelength efficiency to reflect the superimposed, infinite-duration, (...) Fourier harmonics of pulses can be an intrinsic disposition of surfaces. This conclusion raises questions about mathematical realism, about which I nevertheless remain neutral. (shrink)

In contrast to the previously widespread view that Kant's work was largely in dialogue with the physical sciences, recent scholarship has highlighted Kant's interest in and contributions to the life sciences. Scholars are now investigating the extent to which Kant appealed to and incorporated insights from the life sciences and considering the ways he may have contributed to a new conception of living beings. The scholarship remains, however, divided in its interest: historians of science are concerned with the content of (...) Kant's claims, and the ways in which they may or may not have contributed to the emerging science of life, while historians of philosophy focus on the systematic justifications for Kant's claims, e.g., the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of Kant's statement that living beings are mechanically inexplicable. My aim in this paper is to bring together these two strands of scholarship into dialogue by showing how Kant's methodological concerns (specifically, his notion of reflective judgment) contributed to the ontological concern with life as a distinctive object of study. I argue that although Kant's explicit statement was that biology could not be a science, his implicit and more fundamental claim was that the study of living beings necessitates a distinctive mode of thought, a mode that is essentially analogical. I consider the implications of this view, and argue that it is by developing a new methodology for grasping organized beings that Kant makes his most important contribution to the new science of life. (shrink)

For Kant, ‘reflection’ is a technical term with a range of senses. I focus here on the senses of reflection that come to light in Kant's account of logic, and then bring the results to bear on the distinction between ‘logical’ and ‘transcendental’ reflection that surfaces in the Amphiboly chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason. Although recent commentary has followed similar cues, I suggest that it labours under a blind spot, as it neglects Kant's distinction between (...) ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ general logic. The foundational text of existing interpretations is a passage in Logik Jäsche that appears to attribute to Kant the view that reflection is a mental operation involved in the generation of concepts from non-conceptual materials. I argue against the received view by attending to Kant's division between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ general logic, identifying senses of reflection proper to each, and showing that none accords well with the received view. Finally, to take account of Kant's notio.. (shrink)

A long tradition in theology holds that the divine is in some sense incomprehensible, ineffable, or indescribable. This is mirrored in the set-theoretic literature by those who hold that the universe of sets is incomprehensible, ineffable, or indescribable. In this latter field, set theorists often study reflection principles; axioms that posit indescribability properties of the universe. This paper seeks to examine a theological reflection principle, which can be used to deliver a very rich ontology. I argue that in (...) analogy with set-theoretic reflection principles, we should understand theological reflection via schematic commitment. (shrink)