According to one of Leibniz's theories of contingency a proposition is contingent if and only if it cannot be proved in a finite number of steps. It has been argued that this faces the Problem of Lucky Proof , namely that we could begin by analysing the concept ‘Peter’ by saying that ‘Peter is a denier of Christ and …’, thereby having proved the proposition ‘Peter denies Christ’ in a finite number of steps. It also faces a more general but (...) related problem that we dub the Problem of Guaranteed Proof . We argue that Leibniz has an answer to these problems since for him one has not proved that ‘Peter denies Christ’ unless one has also proved that ‘Peter’ is a consistent concept, an impossible task since it requires the full decomposition of the infinite concept ‘Peter’. We defend this view from objections found in the literature and maintain that for Leibniz all truths about created individual beings are contingent. (shrink)

Consider a certain red rose. The proposition that the rose is red is true because the rose is red. One might say as well that the proposition that the rose is red is made true by the rose’s being red. This, it has been thought, does not commit one to a truthmaker of the proposition that the rose is red. For there is no entity that makes the proposition true. What makes it true is how the rose is, and how (...) the rose is is not an entity over and above the rose. It is against this view that I shall argue in this paper. I shall argue that a significant class of true propositions, including inessential predications like the proposition that the rose is red, are made true by entities. "No truthmaking without truthmakers" is my slogan. Although I have my view about what kinds of entities are truthmakers, I shall not argue for or presuppose that view here. All I shall argue for here is that if a proposition is made true by something, it is made true by some thing, but my argument will leave it open what kind of thing that thing is: it could be a fact or state of affairs, a trope, or any other sort of entity. (shrink)

This bulletin contains a summary of the main topics of discussion in truthmaker theory, namely: the definition of truthmakers, problems with Truthmaker Necessitarianism and Truthmaker Maximalism, the ontological burden of truthmakers and the recalcitrant topic of truthmakers for negative truths.

1. The Bundle Theory I shall discuss is a theory about the nature of substances or concrete particulars, like apples, chairs, atoms, stars and people. The point of the Bundle Theory is to avoid undesirable entities like substrata that allegedly constitute particulars. The version of the Bundle Theory I shall discuss takes particulars to be entirely constituted by the universals they instantiate.' Thus particulars are said to be just bundles of universals. Together with the claim that it is necessary that (...) particulars have constituents, the fundamental claim of the Bundle Theory is: (BT) Necessarily, for every particular x and every entity y, y constitutes x if and only ify is a universal and x instantiates y. 2 The standard and supposedly devastating objection to the Bundle Theory is that it entails or is committed to a false version of the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (Armstrong 1978: 91, Loux 1998: 107), namely: (Pll) Necessarily, for all particulars x and y and every universal z, if z is instantiated by x if and only if z is instantiated byy, then x is numerically identical with y. The most famous counterexample to the Identity of Indiscernibles is that put forward by Max Black, consisting of a world where there are only two iron spheres two miles apart from each other, having the same diameter, temperature, colour, shape, size, etc (Black 1952: 156). Let us from now on think of the properties of the spheres in this world as universals. The possibility of this world, which I shall hereafter refer to as 'Black's world', makes (Pll) false.' And according to common philosophical opinion this means that the Bundle Theory is false.. (shrink)

Peter Milne has tried to refure Truthmaker Maximalism. the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker, by producing a simple and direct counterexample to it, the sentence M: This sentence has no truthmaker. I argue that, contrary to what Milne argues, on Truthmaker Maximalism M is equivalent to the Liar, which gives the truthmaker maximalist a way to defend his position from Milne's counterexample: to argue that M expresses no proposition.

In my book *Resemblance Nominalism* I argued that the truthmakers of ´a and b resemble each other´ are just a and b. In his "Resemblance Nominalism and counterparts" Alexander Bird objects to my claim that the truthmakers of ´a and b resemble each other´ are just a and b. In this paper I respond to Bird´s objections.

The paper argues that grounding is neither irreflexive, nor asymmetric, nor transitive. In arguing for that conclusion the paper also arguesthat truthmaking is neither irreflexive, nor asymmetric, nor transitive.

How can sound and space be connected not only in a metaphorical sense? Over the last decades, philosophy of sound, aesthetics, and musicology have shown increasing interest in space inquiry. However, the way we interact with each other, communicate in space, and gather information about/in space is rooted in sound in a completely different way from those of musical metaphors. In this paper, I present an analysis of the role sound plays in the constitution of both space and relations of (...) intimacy within it. Starting from the wealthy tips that E. T. Hall gives to us in order to delineate a new understanding of proxemics that includes sound experience, I argue that sound, silence, and noise are essential to determine the intimate space and the way we interact with it. Moving from a classical proxemics perspective, the analysis will focus on the intimate relation between sound, space, and body, dialoguing with phenomenology, anthropology, semiotics, and philosophy of space. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen has given an answer to the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’. His answer is: Because there being nothing is as improbable as anything can be: it has probability 0. Here I shall examine his argument for this answer and I shall argue that it does not work because no good reasons have been given for two of the argument’s premises and that the conclusion of the argument does not constitute an answer to the question (...) van Inwagen wanted to answer. (shrink)

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra offers a fresh philosophical account of properties. How is it that two different things (such as two red roses) can share the same property (redness)? According to resemblance nominalism, things have their properties in virtue of resembling other things. This unfashionable view is championed with clarity and rigor.

In this paper I argue that Ancient Greek Sceptics implicitly presupposed a Parmenidean ontology.

The concern of this paper is a version of Resemblance Nominalism according to which resemblance classes, i.e. classes of resembling things, are determined by paradigms. I show that the theory is false, since paradigms do not generally determine resemblance classes. Although I concentrate upon the version of the theory which was delineated by H. H. Price, my results apply to any other theory constructing resemblance classes out of paradigms.

The paper clarifies the sense of remark 202 of Wittgenstein's *Philosophical Investigations* with respect to its relation to the private language argument. It argues, against what some have maintained, that remark 202 is not meant to reject the possibility of a private language as this is defined in remark 243.

In this chapter I shall reply to a pair of articles in which the main contention of my “Why truthmakers” – namely, that an important class of synthetic true propositions have entities as truth-makers – is rejected. In §§1–5 I reply to Jennifer Hornsby’s “Truth without Truthmaking Entities” (2005) and in §§6–7 I reply to Julian Dodd’s “Negative Truths and Truthmaker Principles” (2007).

Resemblance Nominalism is the view that denies universals and tropes and claims that what makes F-things F is their resemblances. A famous argument against Resemblance Nominalism is Russell's regress of resemblances, according to which the resemblance nominalist falls into a vicious infinite regress. Aristocratic Resemblance Nominalism, as opposed to Egalitarian Resemblance Nominalism, is the version of Resemblance Nominalism that claims that what makes F-things F is that they resemble the F-paradigms. In this paper I attempt to show that a recently (...) advocated strategy to stop Russell's regress by using paradigms does not succeed. (shrink)

Listening is not an incorporeal experience; we do not listen with our non-extended minds. We listen with all our body, and music can change completely our personal structure. It is through sound experience that we change and asset ourselves. Studies in the doctrine of affects often use sonorous metaphors and concepts such as Stimmung, resonance, consonance, that refer to sound experience. In this paper, I try first of all to show how listening is rooted in body experience. Then, I argue (...) for a new consideration of the notion of person that takes into account the fundamental sonorous basis – psycho-acoustic – of its constitution. Thanks to sounds we can reach a new conceptualization of emotional relations between persons which we attain through the person’s ordo amoris. Additionally, with the analysis of sounds we grasp some aspects of emotional experience related to the singular person (intra-personal). So, if sounds are profoundly related to corporeal experience, so strongly involving affects as to modify our personal structure and form a person’s constitution, and affects can really do that, their relationship need to be inquired where both sound experience and affection are rooted: corporeity. (shrink)

The Razor says: do not multiply entities without necessity! The Laser says: do not multiply fundamental entities without necessity! Behind the Laser lies a deep insight. This is a distinction between the costs and the commitments of a theory. According to the Razor, every commitment is a cost. Not so according to the Laser. According to the Laser, derivative entities are an ontological free lunch: that is, they are a commitment without a cost. Jonathan Schaffer (2015) has argued that the (...) Laser should replace the Razor. In Sections 2-4 we shall discuss and argue against Schaffer’s arguments for replacing the Razor with the Laser. Schaffer considers several objections to his views, and in Sections 5-7 we shall argue that Schaffer does not deal successfully with two of them. In Section 8 we shall present a probabilistic argument for the Laser. However, the argument has a limitation and does not support the replacement of the Razor with the Laser. Indeed, it supports only the claim that, given certain assumptions, the multiplication of explanatorily relevant derivative entities does not matter; but, as we argue in the same section, there is an argument that multiplying explanatorily superfluous derivative entities does makes a theory less rationally acceptable. Our conclusion is that the Laser cannot replace the Razor and that derivative entities are not an ontological free lunch. (shrink)

Starting from Jaspers’ analysis of attitudes in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen and analyzing their causes, we find an essential description of the human being. The human condition of being in the world (Heidegger, Jaspers) can be troubled (Freud, Jung). However, this is characteristic for human life (Jaspers, Schellenbaum). Among all attitudes, the enthusiastic one is the more consistent with human being’s dynamic nature (Bergson, Jaspers, Schellenbaum). The human being feels himself deeply touched (Scheler, Jaspers) and becomes stunned. The aim of the (...) paper is to show that the enthusiastic view is well exposed by the act of singing. Traditionally analysed in connection with art (Cassirer, Solger, Wackenroder), the enthusiastic view gives us a “sound image” of the human being since his childhood (Gehlen, Leydi). In everyday life and by all its difficulties (Freud, Jung, Schellenbaum, Jaspers), the human being discloses his nature in acoustic manifestations (Keil, Kafka, Wackenroder) by expressing the enthusiastic mode. (shrink)

The resemblance nominalist says that the truthmaker of 〈Socrates is white〉 ultimately involves only concrete particulars that resemble each other. Furthermore he also says that Socrates and Plato are the truthmakers of 〈Socrates resembles Plato〉, and Socrates and Aristotle those of 〈Socrates resembles Aristotle〉. But this, combined with a principle about the truthmakers of conjunctions, leads to the apparently implausible conclusion that 〈Socrates resembles Plato and Socrates resembles Aristotle〉 and 〈Socrates resembles Plato and Plato resembles Aristotle〉 have the same truthmakers, (...) namely, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. I shall argue that the resemblance nominalist can say that those conjunctions have the same truthmakers but these truthmakers make them true in different ways. I shall also use this view to account for the truthmakers of propositions like 〈Socrates is white〉, and respond to previous objections by Cian Dorr and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

The subtraction argument, originally put forward by Thomas Baldwin (1996), is intended to establish Metaphysical Nihilism, the thesis that there could have been no concrete objects. Some modified versions of the argument have been proposed in order to avoid some difficulties faced by the original argument. In this paper I shall concentrate on two of those versions, the so-called subtraction argument* (presented and defended in Rodriguez-Pereyra 1997, 2000, 2002), and Efird and Stoneham’s recent version of the argument (Efird and (...) Stoneham 2005). I shall defend the subtraction argument* from Alexander Paseau’s (2006) objection that because a crucial premise of the subtraction argument* may have no plausibility independent from Metaphysical Nihilism, the subtraction argument* is not suasive. Although Paseau focuses on the subtraction argument*, I shall point out that Efird and Stoneham could reply to Paseau’s objection in the same way. Thus there are (at least) two suasive versions of the subtraction argument that establish Metaphysical Nihilism. But are those two arguments equally good? I shall argue that the subtraction argument* is preferable to Efird and Stoneham’s argument. (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

This paper is a response to replies by Dan López de Sa and Mark Jago to my ‘Truthmaking, Entailment, and the Conjuction Thesis’. In that paper, my main aim was to argue against the Entailment Principle by arguing against the Conjunction Thesis, which is entailed by the Entailment Principle. In the course of so doing, although not essential for my project in that paper, I defended the Disjunction Thesis. López de Sa has objected both to my defence of the Disjunction (...) Thesis and my case against the Conjunction Thesis. I shall show that his objections are unfounded and based on serious misunderstandings of my position, what the relevant debate is, and some fundamental notions of Truthmaker Theory. Jago argues that accepting the Disjunction Thesis and rejecting the Conjunction Thesis is hard to maintain. But I show that Jago has not shown that accepting the Disjunction Thesis while rejecting the Conjunction Thesis is impossible or even hard to maintain. Jago believes that, to accept the Disjunction Thesis while rejecting the Conjunction Thesis, one needs to reject his axiom (T3), which says that all the truthmakers for <P&P> are truthmakers for <P>. I argue that there are reasons to reject such a principle, and the version of it that says that what makes <P&P> true makes <P> true. (shrink)

Causation was an important topic of philosophical reflection during the Seventeenth Century. This reflection centred around certain particular problems about causation, one of which was the problem of causation between mind and body. The doctrine of the pre-established harmony is Leibniz's response to the problem of causation between mind and body. In this chapter I shall (a) explain the problem of mind-body causation; (b) explain Leibniz's pre-established harmony; and (c) assess his case for it.

Is it possible to conceptualize the sound image? How can we talk about the intertwined between visual image and sound? When precisely is there a sound image? In this article, I specify what is not a sound image, and I analyze three forms of what should be considered a sound image. Understood as a form of experience, the sound image is linked to a subject, but at the same time is independent from him: it is a world manifestation.

Leibniz was a philosopher of principles: the principles of Contradiction, of Sufficient Reason, of Identity of Indiscernibles, of Plenitude, of the Best, and of Continuity are among the most famous Leibnizian principles. In this article I shall focus on the first three principles; I shall discuss various formulations of the principles (sect. 1), what it means for these theses to have the status of principles or axioms in Leibniz’s philosophy (sect. 2), the fundamental character of the Principles of Contradiction and (...) Sufficient Reason (sect. 3), some attempts to demonstrate the Principles of Contradiction and Sufficient Reason (sect. 4), and one attempt to demonstrate the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (sect. 5). The main results of the chapter are summarized in a short conclusion (sect. 6). (shrink)

The object of this paper is to provide a solution to Nelson Goodman’s Imperfect Community difficulty as it arises for Resemblance Nominalism, the view that properties are classes of resembling particulars. The Imperfect Community difficulty consists in that every two members of a class resembling each other is not sufficient for it to be a class such that there is some property common to all their members, even if ‘x resembles y’ is understood as ‘x and y share some property’. (...) In the paper I explain and criticise several solutions to the difficulty. Then I develop my own solution, which is not subject to the objections I make to the other solutions, and which accords completely with the basic tenets of Resemblance Nominalism. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell argued that any attempt to get rid of universals in favor of resemblances fails. He argued that no resemblance theory could avoid postulating a universal of resemblance without falling prey to a vicious infinite regress. He added that admitting such a universal of resemblance made it pointless to avoid other universals. In this paper I defend resemblance nominalism from both of Russell's points by arguing that (a) resemblance nominalism can avoid the postulation of a universal of resemblance without (...) falling into a vicious infinite regress, and (b) even if resemblance nominalism had to admit a universal of resemblance, this would not make it pointless to avoid postulating other universals. (shrink)

The notion of “empire” in Hardt and Negri’s political theory indicates a new postmodern sovereignty, able to lead the capital accumulation in the global market era. With the concept of “empire”, Hardt and Negri want to overtake the imperialism doctrines, considered by the two authors unable to understand correctly the global world. The aim of this essay is to clarify the conceptual contraposition between “empire” and “imperialism” offering a brief description of the international debate raised by the publication of “Empire” (...) by Hardt and Negri, in order to present the different positions and describe strengths, contradictions and aporias. (shrink)

Ever since the early days of quantum mechanics it has been suggested that consciousness could be linked to the collapse of the wave function. However, no detailed account of such an interplay is usually provided. In this paper we present an objective collapse model where the collapse operator depends on integrated information, which has been argued to measure consciousness. By doing so, we construct an empirically adequate scheme in which superpositions of conscious states are dynamically suppressed. Unlike other proposals in (...) which “consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function,” our model is fully consistent with a materialistic view of the world and does not require the postulation of entities suspicious of laying outside of the quantum realm. (shrink)

From the very beginning, phenomenology met with sound inquiry. Not only the relationship between Husserl and Stumpf, whose investigations influenced numerous philosophers and twenty-century trends, but a whole musicological thread (Mersmann, Eimert, Güldenstein, Bekker) referred to phenomenology during the twenties and following decades (Besseler, Leibowitz, Schaeffer, Rognoni). From another side, explicit aesthetic reflections are traceable in the Göttingen Circle but also in W. Conrad, Schütz, Plessner, and Anders-Stern. Even Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, up to Smith, Ihde, Dufrenne, Clifton, Ferrara, and Piana, which (...) more or less systematically dealt with sound. The aim of this work is to show the fundamental cores of a phenomenology of sound; then, the continuing need for research. Through themes like the constitution of the sound-object, the phenomenological distinction between sounds and noises, and the spatial features of sound, the phenomenological scenario of sound inquiry will be pointed out and analyzed. (shrink)

In addition to protecting agents’ autonomy, consent plays a crucial social role: it enables agents to secure partners in valuable interactions that would be prohibitively morally risk otherwise. To do this, consent must be observable: agents must be able to track the facts about whether they have received a consent-based permission. I argue that this morally justifies a consent-practice on which communicating that one consents is sufficient for consent, but also generates robust constraints on what sorts of behaviors can be (...) taken as consent- communicating. (shrink)

This note argues that research in analytical philosophy broadly conceived should be published exclusively in English. Reasons are given for this and the thesis is defended against thirteen objections.

This essay aims at clarifying the concept of «multitude» through a comparison between Negri’s work and some of the critiques addressed to his thought. In the first part of the paper, I will consider the relationship between multitude and the individual, in order to confute those who think that the category of «multitude» is a liberal one. Then, I will analyze the connection between the multitude and class-working class, so as to highlight that in Negri’s theory there is not an (...) opposition between those categories. Finally, the last paragraph will examine the forms of the «multitudinarian class struggle» and the hiatus existing between will and potentiality of the multitude related to the issue, still not resolved, of its organization. That is, the long-standing issue of the relationship between theory and «practice» of the multitude. (shrink)

The problem of moral disagreement has been presented as an objection to contextualist semantics for ‘ought’, since it is not clear that contextualism can accommodate or give a convincing gloss of such disagreement. I argue that independently of our semantics, disagreements over ‘ought’ in non-cooperative contexts are best understood as indirect metalinguistic disputes, which is easily accommodated by contextualism. If this is correct, then rather than posing a problem for contextualism, the data from moral disagreements provides some reason to adopt (...) a semantics that allows contextual variance in the meanings of ‘ought’. (shrink)

Husserl and the phenomenology of religion have a delicate relationship that combines direct references to religious themes with broader analyses subsumable under the more general phenomenology of consciousness. This paper shows the themes and problems of a Husserlian phenomenological analysis of religious consciousness through an encounter with its elements. Word, Prayer, relationship with the Sacred and Faith are some of the indelible traces of a phenomenology of religious consciousness. The belief, however, is that phenomenology can be spoken of if and (...) only if the themes are addressed through the analysis of consciousness as the method teaches. Thus, an analysis of religious lived-experiences and transcendence (subjective and absolute) is joined by such phenomenologically diriment questions as a possible dichotomy between transcendence of immanence or immanence of transcendence. (shrink)

This paper analyses Spalding’s Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen (1748) through a translation proposal that tries to point out the human disposal to act ethically. In accord with modern German use, I argue for a translation of Bestimmung as disposition. In the first part of the article, I deal with the relevant issues for a philosophy of human experience that are present in Spalding’s text. In the second one, I bring the translation proposal into the philosophical domain showing how (...) the Bestimmung as disposition suits the human nature, in particular for what concerns the ethics, namely the way humans are arranged to act with others, and things in a non-egoistic mode. The analysis rests on two philosophical concepts: Sorge (Heidegger) and Liebe (Jaspers), that give a description of the essential relational component of human beings in which to take care, to love, and to discover our surrounding world are the key points. (shrink)

Some, but not all, of the mistakes a person makes when acting in apparently necessary self-defense are reasonable: we take them not to violate the rights of the apparent aggressor. I argue that this is explained by duties grounded in agents' entitlements to a fair distribution of the risk of suffering unjust harm. I suggest that the content of these duties is filled in by a social signaling norm, and offer some moral constraints on the form such a norm can (...) take. (shrink)

In the Discourse on Metaphysics Leibniz put forward his famous complete-concept definition of substance. Sometimes this definition is glossed as stating that a substance is an entity with a concept so complete that it contains all its predicates, and it is thought that it follows directly from Leibniz’s theory of truth. Now, an adequate definition of substance should not apply to accidents. But, as I shall point out, if Leibniz’s theory of truth is correct then an accident is an entity (...) with a concept so complete that it contains all its predicates. The aim of this paper is to clarify Leibniz’s notion of substance in the Discourse with a view to explaining how that definition successfully distinguishes between substances and accidents. (shrink)

In the last few years, the idea of human being has been enlarged from the individual closeness to morphogenetic openness. Concurrently with discovers and researches into invisible worlds that live with human beings – microbes, fungi, bacteria, etc. – a debate has opened up that agrees with recent positions in the field of ontology. The human being is capable of poietic openness and is defined by relations. Anyway, an absence of a rigorous conceptualisation of the individualising process remains latent to (...) the discourse. A classic principle of individualisation is probably incomplete. This paper brings into dialogue individualisation with singularisation through the manifestation process of expression in accordance with recent theoretical enactments of hybridisation processes. (shrink)

L'articolo analizza i fondamenti delle indagini percettive nell'impostazione fenomenologica. In particolare l'ambito uditivo si struttura in modalità, ricezioni ed analisi che, attraverso la critica di vari autori (Husserl, Heidegger, Dufrenne, Ihde, Schaeffer), si mostrano articolate in due direzioni (soggetto-oggetto e oggetto-soggetto). L' analisi delle componenti costitutive porta a riconoscere come ricorrente tra autori differenti quell'impostazione del problema la quale asserisce che, se da un lato non può prescindere dall'attività percettiva, come attività propria del soggetto, dall'altro questa stessa cerca una legittimità (...) emergente dalle cose stesse. La costituzione, una volta riconosciuto il darsi dell'oggetto sonoro, risiede, tuttavia, nelle attività percettive che delineano così il differenziarsi degli ascolti. (shrink)

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly able to leverage crime statistics to make risk predictions for particular individuals, employing a form of inference that some condemn as violating the right to be “treated as an individual.” I suggest that the right encodes agents’ entitlement to a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the rule of law. Rather than precluding statistical prediction, it requires that citizens be able to anticipate which variables will be used as predictors and act intentionally to avoid (...) them. Furthermore, it condemns reliance on various indexes of distributive injustice, or unchosen properties, as evidence of law-breaking. (shrink)

Man avoids solitude through _divertissement_ because he is afraid of what staying alone entails: thinking about himself (Pascal). Furthermore, man seeks isolation in order to gain ambition and reputation (Montaigne). However, solitude is really different from isolation and it is a fundamental emotional condition. Heidegger’s analysis of the forms of boredom adapts to and relates to the specific dynamic of solitude, showing that it is a part of human being’s structure despite his experience appearing controversial. Even if man lives in (...) modern apartments and one-room apartments, he is in a condition of co-isolation (Sloterdijk) that differs from solitude. There is a space solitude (Foucault) that involves – or can involve – human isolation, but we only experience essential solitude in sleep (Merleau-Ponty, Blanchot, Perec) where man detached himself from himself and he is really alone, from himself and the others. The forms of solitude lead the analysis towards impersonal activity. (shrink)

A common view in the philosophy of perception holds that states of seeing objects face to face have particular contents. When you see, say, a dog face to face, your visual state represents the particular dog that is in front of you. In this paper, I argue for a related claim about states of seeing objects in conventional photographs. When you see a dog in a photograph, for example, your visual state represents the particular dog that was in front of (...) the camera when the photograph was taken, that is, the photograph's depictum. The argument in this paper proceeds in two steps. In the first step, I discuss states of seeing objects face to face. I argue that such a state represents the particular object whose surface is responsible for the optical information that the visual system uses to construct the state's attributive representational content. In the second step, I apply the result of this discussion to states of seeing objects in photographs. I argue that a state of seeing an object in a photograph has a particular content that represents the object that was in front of the camera when the photograph was taken. (shrink)

This paper examines whether American parents legally violate their children’s privacy rights when they share embarrassing images of their children on social media without their children’s consent. My inquiry is motivated by recent reports that French authorities have warned French parents that they could face fines and imprisonment for such conduct, if their children sue them once their children turn 18. Where French privacy law is grounded in respect for dignity, thereby explaining the French concerns for parental “over-sharing,” I show (...) that there are three major legal roadblocks for such a case to succeed in US law. First, US privacy tort law largely only protects a person’s image where the person has a commercial interest in his or her image. Secondly, privacy tort laws are subject to constitutional constraints respecting the freedom of speech and press. Third, American courts are reluctant to erode parental authority, except in cases where extraordinary threats to children’s welfare exist. I argue that while existing privacy law in the US is inadequate to offer children legal remedy if their parents share their embarrassing images of them without their consent, the dignity-based concerns of the French should not be neglected. I consider a recent proposal to protect children’s privacy by extending to them the “right to be forgotten” online, but I identify problems in this proposal, and argue it is not a panacea to the over-sharing problem. I conclude by emphasizing our shared social responsibilities to protect children by teaching them about the importance of respecting one another’s privacy and dignity in the online context, and by setting examples as responsible users of internet technologies. (shrink)

Sometimes speakers within a linguistic community use a term that they do not conceptualize as a slur, but which other members of that community do. Sometimes these speakers are ignorant or naïve, but not always. This article explores a puzzle raised when some speakers stubbornly maintain that a contested term t is not derogatory. Because the semantic content of a term depends on the language, to say that their use of t is semantically derogatory despite their claims and intentions, we (...) must individuate languages in a way that counts them as speaking our language L, assigns t a determinately derogatory content in L, and still accommodates the other features of slurs’ linguistic profile. Given the difficulty of doing this, there is some reason to give a non-semantic analysis of the derogatory aspect of slurs. The author suggests that rather than dismissing the stubborn as semantically incompetent, we would do better to appeal to expected uptake as moral reasons for the stubborn to adjust their linguistic practices. (shrink)

In some cases, there appears to be an asymmetry in the evidential value of statistical and more individualized evidence. For example, while I may accept that Alex is guilty based on eyewitness testimony that is 80% likely to be accurate, it does not seem permissible to do so based on the fact that 80% of a group that Alex is a member of are guilty. In this paper I suggest that rather than reflecting a deep defect in statistical evidence, this (...) asymmetry might arise from a general constraint on rational inquiry. Plausibly the degree of evidential support needed to justify taking a proposition to be true depends on the stakes of error. While relying on statistical evidence plausibly raises the stakes by introducing new kinds of risk to members of the reference class, paradigmatically `individualized' evidence---evidence tracing back to A's voluntary behavior---can lower the stakes. The net result explains the apparent evidential asymmetry without positing a deep difference in the brute justificatory power of different types of evidence. (shrink)