Nicomachean Ethics/NE, Book III, Chapters 1-5, provides Aristotle’s account of “Voluntary Movement.” It, thus, draws the Passion-Action distinction, only posited earlier in Categories, while also serving as the linchpin of NE’s discussion of Virtue, in explicitly connecting it to Right Reason. My explication of this text renders its terminology consistent with the Law of Excluded Middle and rebuts two criticisms of the Eudaimonistic Axiology on which it is based. These results are shown to be entailments of Aristotle’s doctrine that Voluntary (...) is (a) Relative. That categorization is then used to help treat a problematic case of Deliberation beyond his purview. (shrink)

The soul is an explanatory principle of Aristotle’s natural science, accounting both for the fact that living things are alive as well as for the diverse natural attributes that belong to them by virtue of being alive. I argue that the explanatory role of the soul in Aristotle’s natural science must be understood in light of his view, stated in a controversial passage from Parts of Animals (645b14–20), that the soul of a living thing is a “complex activity” of its (...) organic body. This paper explores the role of this “complex activity” model of soul in Aristotle’s study of soul in De Anima. I argue, first, that the model has its origins in De Anima II.4, where Aristotle argues that living things do all they do by nature for the sake of a single, teleologically primary end. I argue further that Aristotle uses this model to account for the psychological attributes naturally present in living things, including their capacities for vital activities like nutrition, reproduction, and perception, and that this is the task to which Aristotle devotes the obscure final chapters of De Anima III. (shrink)

Here I develop an account of our persistence that accommodates each of the following compelling intuitions: (i) that we are animals, (ii) that we existed prior to the onset of whatever psychological capacities are necessary for personhood, and we can continue to exist with the loss of those and other psychological capacities, (iii) that with suitable psychological continuity, the person goes with the brain/cerebrum in remnant person and brain/cerebrum transplant cases, and (iv) that it is possible for us to survive (...) gradual large-scale replacement of organic with inorganic parts. With the help of a couple of recent “hybrid” animalist accounts I develop an analysis of our persistence that entails (ii)–(iv) while being consistent with (i). (shrink)

This dissertation investigates that which can only be known with the following criteria of knowledge: (i) it is unchangeable; (ii) it cannot be mistaken; (iii) it is identical with its object. It begins by addressing the following questions: what can and cannot exist in solely this sense? Can anything exist in this sense? A further thesis it explores is that the split between the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge which has given rise to the unexplained and inexplicable (...) residues in the solutions to epistemological problems which have been propounded by Western philosophers. These residues have been a breeding ground for a skepticism which casts doubt on the validity of the philosophic enterprise. It is hoped that this thesis might play some role in indicating a pathway through which faith in the philosophic enterprise may be restored. The approach taken is multi-leveled, at once transcen¬dental, metaphysical, phenomenological and empirical. It is transcendental in that the question is always ‘how is knowledge possible?’ It is metaphysical in that the focal point is always that which is, and not that which seems to be. It is phenomenological in that it is confined to the data of consciousness and makes no attempt to go beyond consciousness. It is empirical in that the final court of appeal for any argument is always pure experience. It is demonstrated that, given the separation of the subject knower from the object of knowledge, knowledge is an impossibility. Separatist views of knowledge are taken up and analyzed, among which are: knowledge as caused by objects; knowledge as the knowledge of an object; knowledge as the correspondence between ideas and objects; knowledge as an act; knowledge as a possession. All these views leave untouched the basic questions: what is knowledge? How is the object of knowledge known? How can knowledge arise in the first place? The existence of the object is then shown to be purely dependent on the existence of the subject, and vice versa. An analysis of experience reveals that no difference between subject and object is ever detected and detectable. The breakdown of experience into subjects and objects is shown to be a purely theoretical interpretation of experience, unjustified and unjustifiable in actual experience. It is finally shown that it is impossible to legitimize ideas of difference, either from the world of objects or from the mind of the subject knower. That there can be an appearance of plurality is demonstrated to rest upon the reality of space and time, existences which prove to be purely ideal. A re-integration of subject and object into the experience from which they have been dirempted provides an explanation of the possibility of know¬ledge, knowledge which is at once certain and of the real. An application of the perspective of non-dualism is suggested to offer philosophic solutions to such epistemological impasses as the relation of language and meaning and the universal and the particular. The relevance of an epistemological inquiry for action is indicated in such a way as to bring knowledge and existence into harmony with each other. The broader aim of the dissertation is to legitimize the philosophic enterprise as a pathway to unchangeable, unmistakable, and unitary knowledge. (shrink)

This essay argues that Anselm’s Proslogium II is self-invalidating and that it must be so in order for Proslogium III to be a valid argument. It begins by differentiating between necessary existence, logical possibility, and contingency, establishing that necessary existence can never be treated as a matter of logical possibility. In turn, possibility must always be defined alongside the concept of contingency. It is then further shown that necessity can in no sense be possible, for the possible implies the contingent (...) at some future time. In the context of Anselm’s Proslogium II, this means that the proposition that that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-conceived could exist invalidates Anselm’s conclusion that it does exist in reality for it confines Deity to contingent actuality only. Furthermore, it is shown that the conclusion of Proslogium III—that a necessary being is that than which nothing greater can be conceived—rests on the invalidity of the contingent actuality established in Proslogium II, which is shown to be invalid retrospectively as a logical consequence of the validity of III and prospectively as the condition for the validity of III. It is not that III is merely the stronger of the two arguments; it is, if correct, the only valid argument. (shrink)

The Axis II Work Group of the Task Force on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) has expressed concern that antisocial personality disorder (APD) criteria are too long and cumbersome and that they focus on antisocial behaviors rather than personality traits central to traditional conceptions of psychopathy and to international criteria. R. D. Hare et al describe an alternative to the approach taken in the DSM-III—Revised (DSM-III—R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987), namely, the revised Psychopathy Checklist. The authors also (...) discuss the multisite APD field trials designed to evaluate and compare 4 criteria sets: the DSM-III—R criteria, a shortened list of these criteria, the criteria for dyssocial personality disorder from the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (World Health Organization, 1990), and a 10-item criteria set for psychopathic personality disorder derived from the revised Psychopathy Checklist. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Relationalism is a view popularized by Cohen according to which the colors are relational properties. Cohen’s view has the unintuitive consequence that the following propositions are false: (i) no object can be more than one determinate or determinable color all over at the same time; (ii) ordinary illusion cases occur whenever the color perceptually represented conflicts, according to (i) above, with the object’s real color; and (iii) the colors we perceive obey (i). I investigate Cohen’s attempt to address these intuitive (...) propositions with which his view struggles and find it to be incompatible with how he motivates his view. (shrink)

The purpose of this introduction is to give a rough overview of the discussion of the formalization of arguments, focusing on deductive arguments. The discussion is structured around four important junctions: i) the notion of support, which captures the relation between the conclusion and premises of an argument, ii) the choice of a formal language into which the argument is translated in order to make it amenable to evaluation via formal methods, iii) the question of quality criteria for such formalizations, (...) and finally iv) the choice of the underlying logic. This introductory discussion is supplemented by a brief description of the genesis of the special issue, acknowledgements, and summaries of each article. (shrink)

In this article, the Golden Rule, a central ethical value to both Judaism and Confucianism, is evaluated in its prescriptive and proscriptive sentential formulations. Contrary to the positively worded, prescriptive formulation – “Love others as oneself” – the prohibitive formulation, which forms the injunction, “Do not harm others, as one would not harm oneself,” is shown to be the more prevalent Judaic and Confucian presentation of the Golden Rule. After establishing this point, the remainder of the article is dedicated to (...) an inquiry into why this preference between the two Golden-Rule-formulations occurs. In doing so, this article discovers four main benefits to the proscriptive formulations: I) harm-doing, as opposed to generalizable moral goodness, is easier for individuals to subjectively comprehend II) the prevention of harm-doing is the most fundamental ethical priority III) the proscriptive formulation preserves self-directed discovery of what is good, thus preserving moral autonomy IV) individuals are psychologically pre-disposed toward responding to prohibitions rather than counsels of goodness. (shrink)

Loneliness is a near-universal experience. It is particularly common for individuals with (so-called) psychopathological conditions or disorders. In this paper, we explore the experiential character of loneliness, with a specific emphasis on how social goods are experienced as absent in ways that involve a diminished sense of agency and recognition. We explore the role and experience of loneliness in three case studies: depression, anorexia nervosa, and autism. We demonstrate that even though experiences of loneliness might be common to many psychopathologies, (...) these experiences nevertheless have distinctive profiles. Specifically, we suggest that: (i) loneliness is often a core characteristic of depressive experience; (ii) loneliness can drive, and even cement, disordered eating practices and anorectic identity in anorexia nervosa; iii) loneliness is neither a core characteristic of autism nor a driver but is rather commonly experienced as stemming from social worlds, environments, and norms that fail to accommodate autistic bodies and their distinctive forms of life. We aim to do justice to the pervasiveness of loneliness in many — if not all — psychopathologies, while also highlighting the need to attend to psychopathology-specific experiences of loneliness, agency, and (non-)recognition. (shrink)

Constitution theorists have argued that due to a difference in persistence conditions, persons are not identical with the animals or the bodies that constitute them. A popular line of objection to the view that persons are not identical with the animals/bodies that constitute them is that the view commits one to undesirable overpopulation, with too many minds and too many thinkers. Constitution theorists are well aware of these overpopulation concerns and have gone a long way toward answering them. However, there (...) is one mental excess worry that remains especially problematic. It is argued here that the worry about too many thoughts, or too many instantiations of mentality in general, remains a serious threat to the constitution view of persons. What exactly the threat is and how it arises is described in detail in Section III. It is then shown that attempts to allay the concern are unsuccessful. I argue, in particular, that appealing to the distinction between derivative and non-derivative instantiation fails to solve the problem. (shrink)

Space situational awareness (SSA) is vital for international safety and security, and for the future of space travel. The sharing of SSA data and information should improve the state of global SSA for planetary defense and spaceflight safety. I take steps toward a Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Ontology, and outline some central objectives, requirements and desiderata in the ontology development process for this domain. The purpose of this ontological system is to explore the potential for the ontology research topic to (...) (i) represent SSA general knowledge, data, and entities/objects, (ii) clearly express the meaning of SSA data, and (iii) foster SSA data-sharing. The overall goal and motivation is to (iv) improve our capacity for planetary defense, e.g., from near- or deep-space objects and phenomena, and (v) facilitate safer and peaceful space access, navigation and travel, by improving global SSA. This research is thereby intended only for peaceful space-domain applications and uses, with particular interests in orbital debris. There is little application of ontology to the space domain as compared with other disciplines and little if any ontological development of SSA and related domains. In this respect, this paper offers novel concepts. (shrink)

The orbital debris problem presents an opportunity for inter-agency and international cooperation toward the mutually beneficial goals of debris prevention, mitigation, remediation, and improved space situational awareness (SSA). Achieving these goals requires sharing orbital debris and other SSA data. Toward this, I present an ontological architecture for the orbital debris and broader SSA domain, taking steps in the creation of an orbital debris ontology (ODO). The purpose of this ontological system is to (I) represent general orbital debris and SSA domain (...) knowledge, (II) structure, and standardize where needed, orbital data and terminology, and (III) foster semantic interoperability and data-sharing. In doing so I hope to (IV) contribute to solving the orbital debris problem, improving peaceful global SSA, and ensuring safe space travel for future generations. (shrink)

According to one of the greatest Greek philosophers in history, Aristotle, all men by nature desire to know. Human beings are in the pursuit for knowledge and truth. Across the history of philosophy, many thinkers provided various views in understanding the human cognition. In man’s search for knowledge, it is inevitable to resort to language in the sense that it is the principal method of human communication. In this paper, the researcher will try to investigate the relation of language in (...) human’s acquisition of knowledge in the perspective of John Locke. John Locke was widely regarded as one of the most notable and influential thinkers during the Enlightenment period. Locke was famous for his work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” which was one of the first great defenses of modern empiricism. He stressed that the human mind is basically a “tabula rasa” or a blank tablet and only through experience that knowledge can be written down. In Book II, it was stressed that language plays an important role in human cognition. Locke believes that language is a tool for communication; that humans want to communicate their ideas, the contents of their minds. It is by the use of words that people convey their necessarily private thoughts to each other. Accordingly, words signify or indicate ideas; words are sensible marks of ideas. However, Locke asserted that there is a misuse or abuse of language. He believes that improper use of language is one of the greatest obstacles in human cognition. The main question of this paper is: Based on Locke’s philosophical perspective, what is the relationship of language in man’s acquisition of knowledge? This paper only limits to the book of Locke entitled, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, which is also supplemented by various secondary sources. The first part of this paper is all about Locke’s philosophical understanding on human understanding. The second part is about the relationship between knowledge and language as discussed particularly on the Book III of his book. The third part is all about the abuses of language and their remedies. (shrink)

This article derives from a paper presented at the Philosophy of Religion and Mysticism Conference hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, May 22-24, 2014. That paper introduced theories and methods drawn from the ”cognitive science of religion’ and suggested future avenues of research connecting CSR and scholarship on mysticism. Towards these same ends, the present article proceeds in three parts. Part I outlines the origins, aims, and basic tenets of CSR research. Part II discusses one specific causal (...) perspective that informs a wide range of CSR research, Sperber’s ”epidemiological’ approach to cultural expression, and connects this perspective to the example of creator deities. Part III discusses some possible future directions for CSR research concerning mysticism and mystical experience. Finally, a coda addresses two common misunderstandings concerning the ”reductionist’ nature of CSR research. (shrink)

Chancy counterfactuals are a headache. Dylan Dodd (2009) presents an interesting argument against a certain general strategy for accounting for them, instances of which are found in the appendices to Lewis (1979) and in Williams (2008). I will argue (i) that Dodd’s understates the counterintuitiveness of the conclusions he can reach; (ii) that the counterintuitiveness can be thought of as an instance of more general oddities arising when we treat vagueness and indeterminacy in a classical setting; and (iii) the underlying (...) source of discontent which animates Dodd’s complains is to be found in a certain general constraint one might impose on conditionals—what I’ll call the counterfactual Ramsey bound. Unfortunately, the counterfactual Ramsey bound is just as problematic as its famous indicative cousin. The moral is that there’s no comfortable resting place in this area; for violations of the counterfactual Ramsey bound are going to lead to prima facie surprising results. (shrink)

As we enter the 2020s, global poverty is still a grave and persistent problem. Alleviating and eradicating poverty within and across the world’s societies requires a thorough understanding of its nature and extent. Although economists still standardly measure absolute and relative poverty in monetary terms, a consensus is emerging that poverty is a socially relational problem involving deprivations in multiple dimensions, including health, standard of living, education and political participation. The anthology Dimensions of Poverty advances the interdisciplinary debate on multidimensional (...) poverty, and features contributions from leading international experts and early career researchers (including from the Global South). This introductory chapter gives an overview of formative debates, central concepts and key findings. While monetary poverty measures are still dominant in public and academic debate, their explanatory power has been drawn into question. We discuss relevant criticisms before outlining the normative concepts that can inform both multidimensional poverty and monetary measures, including basic capabilities, basic needs and social primary goods. Next, we introduce several influential multidimensional poverty indices, including the Human Development Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index. The anthology shows in detail how such measures can be improved, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It shows that there are different methods of poverty research that require further investigation, including participatory studies, (value) surveys, public consensus building, the constitutional approach, and financial diaries. Finally, we show that there is an ongoing problem of epistemic asymmetries in global poverty research, and discuss responsibility for addressing poverty, including the responsibilities of academics. The remainder of the chapter is dedicated to a more detailed preview of the volume’s 20 contributions, which are assembled along the following five themes: (I) poverty as a social relation; (II) epistemic injustices in poverty research; (III) the social context of poverty; (IV) measuring multidimensional poverty; and (V) country cases. (shrink)

This article examines the domestic use of drones by law enforcement to gather information. Although the use of drones for surveillance will undoubtedly provide law enforcement agencies with new means of gathering intelligence, these unmanned aircrafts bring with them a host of legal and epistemic complications. Part I considers the Fourth Amendment and the different legal standards of proof that might apply to law enforcement drone use. Part II explores philosopher Wittgenstein’s notion of actional certainty as a means to interpret (...) citizens' expectations of privacy with regard to their patterns of movement over time. Part III discusses how the theory of actional certainty can apply to the epistemic challenge of determining what is a “reasonable” expectation of privacy under the law. This Part also investigates the Mosaic Theory as a possible reading of the Fourth Amendment. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I. Life and Works II. Theoretical Natural Philosophy: Boyle's Corpuscularianism III. Experimental Natural Philosophy and Methodology IV. Theology, Metaphysics, and Natural Philosophy V. Boyle's Influence.

This is a work in the philosophy of language and metasemantics. Its purpose is to help answer the question about how words acquire their meanings. The work is divided into two parts. The purpose of Part One is to defend the claim that, despite numerous attempts, the so-called Kripkenstein’s sceptical challenge, and especially the problem of finitude, has not been offered a successful straight solution. The purpose of Part Two is to critically examine Robert Brandom’s philosophy, which can be (...) treated as an answer to the sceptical challenge in my interpretation. My main claim is that although Brandom’s so-called normativist approach does provide a principled solution to the sceptical challenge, the proposal faces a host of other problems in the light of which I reject it. -/- What is Kripkenstein’s sceptical challenge? The name 'Kripkenstein' is an abbreviation used in the literature for Saul Kripke’s reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later works, published in 1982. In the long essay, Kripke presents (that Wittgenstein presented) a sceptical challenge that demands an explanation of how any word can have a determinate meaning. The challenge is usually thought to consist of three interrelated problems: (1) the problem of finitude, (2) the problem of error, and (3) the problem of normativity. Following Martin Kusch, I view the problem of finitude as the most important one. According to the problem, briefly, since any actual subject is a finite being, i.e. capable of exhibiting only finite expressions of linguistic signs, it will always be possible to ask whether, in a given context, she is following a rule S1 or rule S2 that corresponds to the meaning of the sign. For example, supposing that the sign in question is '+', it can be asked whether the subject in a given context has followed the addition rule or an alternative quaddition rule, according to which any addition problem exceeding certain arbitrary cardinality results in five. According to the hypothesis, the actual use of '+' by any speaker is compatible with both rules. Since any speaker has only finite dispositions to the mathematical conduct, there will always be some limit after which there is no fact of the matter, according to the sceptic, which rule the subject will have turned out to have followed. Hence, it is indeterminate whether any actual subject has ever calculated according to the addition rule or the quaddition rule. -/- From my view, despite the work of Kripke and Kusch, the problem of finitude has not been taken as seriously as it ought to have been. This in turn has significant consequences for the metasemantic theory concerning the origin and nature of meaning. In particular, I claim that the way how the meaning of words is determined must be understood as temporal in nature. Moreover, I claim that Kripke’s causal-historical account of reference can work as a non-straight solution to the challenge that explains how at least the meanings of some words can be temporally determined. -/- One central aim of Brandom’s philosophy is to give a straight answer to the problem of finitude by providing an answer to the problem of normativity. However, I claim that Brandom’s version of the 'normativity of meaning' hypothesis cannot work as he intends. The key issues are difficult to summarise, but to put it succinctly, the crucial problem concerns Brandom’s ambition to give an answer to a version of Agrippa’s trilemma, or how a chain of justifications can end in anything else than (i) premises that have already been used, (ii) a primitive premise, or an (iii) infinitude of premises. My claim is that Brandom’s resolution to the trilemma is not sound. (shrink)

Este texto presenta la traducción al español (precedida de un estudio introductorio) de la Parte III, sección VI de la obra “Una investigación cuidadosa y estricta de las nociones modernas prevalecientes de la libertad de la voluntad” de Jonathan Edwards. Esta sección se titula: “La libertad de indiferencia no sólo es innecesaria para la virtud, sino que es completamente inconsistente con ella; y todas las inclinaciones y los hábitos, ya sean virtuosos o viciosos, son inconsistentes con las nociones arminianas de (...) la libertad y de la agencia moral”. En ella JEdwards hace una dura crítica a lo que él denomina la “libertad de indiferencia”. El estudio introductorio pone este escrito en un contexto más contemporáneo, identificando como este tipo de libertad a propuestas como el libertarismo de Robert Kane. (shrink)

It is widely held that truth and reference play an indispensable explanatory role in theories of meaning. By contrast, so-called deflationists argue that the functions of these concepts are merely expressive and never explanatory. Robert Brandom has proposed both a variety of deflationism — the anaphoric theory —, and a theory of meaning — inferentialism — which doesn’t rely on truth or reference. He argues that the anaphoric theory counts against his (chiefly referentialist) rivals in the debate on meaning (...) and thereby paves the way for inferentialism. In this paper, I give a friendly reconstruction of anaphoric deflationism (section II) and point to a distinguishing feature of the theory with respect to other deflationist proposals. While Brandom simply assumes, but doesn’t earn this feature, I propose a natural argument to justify it (section III). Then, however, I point out a subtle but clear sense in which truth and reference can play a role in explaining meaning, even if the anaphoric theory holds. Thus, anaphoric deflationism will turn out to be neutral in the debate on meaning (section IV). (shrink)

“Probably Peirce’s best-known works are the first two articles in a series of six that originally were collectively entitled Illustrations of the Logic of Science and published in Popular Science Monthly from November 1877 through August 1878. The first is entitled ‘The Fixation of Belief’ and the second is entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’ In the first of these papers Peirce defended, in a manner consistent with not accepting naive realism, the superiority of the scientific method over other (...) methods of overcoming doubt and ‘fixing belief.’” — Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision) -/- “Pragmatist epistemologies often explore how we can carry out inquiries in a self-controlled and fruitful way. (Where much analytic epistemology centres around the concept of knowledge, considered as an idealised end-point of human thought, pragmatist epistemology centres around the concept of inquiry, considered as the process of knowledge-seeking and how we can improve it.) So pragmatists often provide rich accounts of the capacities or virtues that we must possess in order to inquire well, and the rules or guiding principles that we should adopt. A canonical account is Peirce’s classic early paper ‘The Fixation of Belief‘. Here Peirce states that inquiry is a struggle to replace doubt with “settled belief“, and that the only method of inquiry that can make sense of the fact that at least some of us are disturbed by inconsistent beliefs, and will subsequently reflect upon which methods of fixing belief are correct is the Method of Science, which draws on the Pragmatic Maxim described above. This contrasts with three other methods of fixing belief: i) refusing to consider evidence contrary to one’s favored beliefs (the Method of Tenacity), ii) accepting an institution’s dictates (the Method of Authority), iii) developing the most rationally coherent or elegant-seeming belief-set (the A Priori Method).“ — Catherine Legg, “Pragmatism,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision). (shrink)

Since the publication of Hartry Field’s influential paper “Tarski’s Theory of Truth” there has been an ongoing discussion about the philosophical import of Tarski’s definition. Most of the arguments have aimed to play down that import, starting with that of Field himself. He interpreted Tarski as trying to provide a physicalistic reduction of semantic concepts like truth, and concluded that Tarski had partially failed. Robert Stalnaker and Scott Soames claimed then that Field should have obtained a stronger conclusion, namely (...) that Tarski’s failure in his allegedly intended physicalistic reduction was total. From another front, Hilary Putnam argued for an even more sweeping thesis: “[a]s a philosophical account of truth, Tarski’s theory fails as badly as it is possible for an account to fail.” Scott Soames followed suit also on this count, endorsing Putnam’s argument in section iii of the aforementioned paper; and John Etchemendy used a very similar argument to contend that “a Tarskian definition of truth [...] cannot possibly illuminate the semantic properties of the object language.” The paper argues that these contentions are based on several misunderstandings about the nature of a definition like Tarski’s. Regarding the Putnam-Soames-Etchemendy argument, we must apply a distinction Frege found natural to draw—and is natural to draw anyway—between what he called “constructive” definitions, definitions properly so called, which are mere stipulations, and what he described as “analytic” definitions, definitions which aim to make explicit the meaning of a term already in use. Regarding the Field-Soames-Stalnaker criticism, the paper contends that the true aims of a Tarskian truth definition are perfectly well fulfilled without Field’s amendments. (shrink)

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect the full (...) set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) -/- Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement -/- Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) -/- Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) -/- Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) -/- Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) -/- Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild -/- Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) -/- Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) -/- Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) -/- Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) -/- Part III - Online Public Consultation -/- Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) -/- Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) -/- Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) -/- Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) -/- Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) -/- Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations -/- Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) -/- Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) -/- Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) -/- Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) -/- Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) -/- Part V - Online Facilitation -/- Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) -/- Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) -/- Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) -/- Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) -/- Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) -/- Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) -/- Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools -/- Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) -/- Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) -/- Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) -/- Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) -/- Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) -/- Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) -/- Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). -/- For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu. (shrink)

Quantification, Negation, and Focus: Challenges at the Conceptual-Intentional Semantic Interface Tista Bagchi National Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies (NISTADS) and the University of Delhi Since the proposal of Logical Form (LF) was put forward by Robert May in his 1977 MIT doctoral dissertation and was subsequently adopted into the overall architecture of language as conceived under Government-Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981), there has been a steady research effort to determine the nature of LF in language in light of (...) structurally diverse languages around the world, which has ultimately contributed to the reinterpretation of LF as a Conceptual-Intentional (C-I) interface level between the computational syntactic component of the faculty of language and one or more interpretive faculties of the human mind. While this has opened up further possibilities of research in phenomena such as quantifier scope and scope interactions between negation, quantification, and focus, it has also given rise to a few real challenges to linguistic theory as well. Some of these are: (i) the split between lexical meaning – a matter supposedly belonging to the phase-wise selection of lexical arrays – and issues of semantic interpretation that arise purely from binding and scope phenomena (Mukherji 2010); (ii) partially relatedly, the level at which theta role assignment can be argued to take place, an issue that is taken up by me in Bagchi (2007); and (iii) how supposedly “pure” scopal phenomena relating to quantifiers, negation, and emphasizing expressions such as only and even (comparable to, e.g., Urdu/Hindi hii and bhii, Bangla –i and –o) also have dimensions of both focus and discourse reference. While recognizing all of these challenges, this talk aims to highlight particularly challenge (iii), both in terms of scholarship in the past and for the rich prospects for research on languages of south Asia with the semantics of quantification, negation, and focus in view. The scholarship of the past that I seek to relate this issue to is where, parallel to (and largely independently of) the research on LF that had been happening, Barwise and Cooper were developing their influential view of noun phrases as generalized quantifiers, culminating in their key 1981 article “Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language” while, independently, McCawley, in his 1981 book Everything that Linguists have Always Wanted to Know about Logic, established through argumentation that all noun phrases semantically behave like generalized quantified expressions (further elaborated by him in the second – 1994 – revised edition of his book). I seek to demonstrate, based on limited data analysis from selected languages of south Asia, that our current understanding of quantification, negation, and focus under the Minimalist view owes something significant to the two major, but now largely marginalized, works of scholarship, and that for the way forward it is essential to adopt a more formal-semantic approach as adopted by them and also by later works such as Denis Bouchard’s (1995) The Semantics of Syntax, Mats Rooth’s work on focus (e.g., Rooth 1996, “Focus” in Shalom Lappin’s Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory), Heim and Kratzer’s Semantics in Generative Grammar (1998), and Yoad Winter’s (2002) Linguistic Inquiry article on semantic number, to cite just a few instances. (shrink)

Most theories of suspense implicitly or explicitly have as a background assumption what I call suspense realism, i.e., that suspense is itself a genuine, distinct emotion. I claim that for a theory of suspense to entail suspense realism is for that theory to entail a contradiction, and so, we ought instead assume a background of suspense eliminativism, i.e., that there is no such genuine, distinct emotion that is the emotion of suspense. More precisely, I argue that i) any suspense realist (...) (...) theory must resolve the paradox of suspense, ii) if suspense is itself a genuine, distinct emotion, then in order to resolve the paradox of suspense it must be a radically sui generis genuine, distinct emotion, iii) according to any minimally adequate theory of the emotions, there can be no radically sui generis emotion, and so iv) there can be no genuine, distinct emotion that is the emotion of suspense. Quite simply, if a theory of suspense must entail suspense realism, then we ought to be eliminativists about suspense. This I call the Paradox of Suspense Realism, which I take to constitute a productive viability condition for any theory of suspense, i.e., any viable theory of suspense must be mutatis mutandis compatible with suspense eliminativism. (shrink)

Part of John Andrew Rice’s legacy, besides being a founder of Black Mountain College, is his vision of what a small liberal arts college curriculum should be. This vision helps shed light on some possible avenues by which to answer the following important questions: What implications do John Dewey’s progressive educational ideas have for experimenting with curricular design at small colleges? Does the college teacher’s struggle for improvement or growth depend on her having a belief that there is an ideal (...) liberal arts college curriculum? Probably the best known of such ready-made curricula is the Great Books Program, which employs a list of classic primary-source texts as the entry point into highly engaged dialogue, scholarship and learning guided by a teacher or tutor. In order to answer these questions, the paper turns to the historical debate between John Dewey and Robert Maynard Hutchins over the relative merits of progressive educational ideals and the Great Books approach. Most who have commented on this debate emphasize the differences between Dewey and Hutchins’ views.[ii] While Dewey emphasized learning through practical problem solving, in a dynamic mix of subject matter and method, Hutchins stressed exposure to and discussion of at least one-hundred primary texts in the Western canon, from Plato and Aristotle to Emerson and J.S. Mill. Hutchins resisted what he saw as the progressive educator’s push to transform the proper end of educating the whole person into training her for a particular vocation. In response, Dewey criticized Hutchins’ insistence that there existed a “hierarchy of truths” and that higher learning should remain aloof to the concerns of everyday life. Few commentators, however, mention the significant areas of agreement between the pedagogical approaches of Dewey and Hutchins, as well as other Great Books scholars. Since Rice praised the ideas of at least one Great Books proponent (Stringfellow Barr of St. John’s College), a more positive reconstruction of the Dewey-Hutchins exchange helps us to see how Dewey’s ideas informed Rice’s vision for the experimental college at Black Mountain—or so I argue.[iii]. (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)

This essay responds to four critical essays by Rosemary Kellison, Ebrahim Moosa, Joseph Winters, and Martin Kavka on the author’s recent book, Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary (Cambridge, 2018). Parts I and II work in tandem to further develop my accounts of strategic empathy and agonistic political friendship. I defend against criticisms that my argument for moral imagination obligates oppressed people to empathize with their oppressors. I argue, further, that healthy conflict can be motivated by (...) a kind of “secular” love. This enables my position to immanently criticize and mediate the claims that one must either love (agapically) one’s opponent in order to engage them in “healthy conflict,” on one hand, or that one must vanquish, exclude, or “cancel” one’s opponent, on the other. In Part III, I demonstrate how my account mediates the challenge of an alleged standing opposition between moral imagination and socio-theoretical critique. I defend a methodologically pragmatist account of immanent prophetic criticism, resistance, and conflict transformation. Finally, I respond to one critic’s vindication of a strong enemy/adversary opposition that takes up the case of white supremacist violence in the U.S. I argue that the time horizon for healthy conflict must be simultaneously immediate and also long-term, provided that such engagements remain socio-critically self-reflexive and seek to cultivate transformational responses. (shrink)

These three volumes, entitled Essays On Values, bring together fortyone recent articles by researchers at the Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA). They are a small sample of everything that, in the last four years, the Institute’s researchers have published, in English, in indexed journals and collections of essays with peer review. As a whole, they reflect very well the research work that is done at IFILNOVA. Section I. of Volume 1 gathers six articles that deal directly with the question “what (...) are values?”, the question that guides all the work of the institute’s different laboratories and research groups. The first article, by Susana Cadilha and Vítor Guerreiro, results from work developed in the Laboratory of Ethics and Political Philosophy (EPLab); the second, by João Constâncio, from the Lisbon Nietzsche Group; the third, by Alexandra Dias Fortes, from the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group; the third and fifth, by Nuno Fonseca, and Maria Filomena Molder, from the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Group of the Laboratory of Culture and Value (CultureLab); the last, by Erich H. Rast, from the Philosophy of Language and Argumentation Theory Group and the Lisbon Mind, Cognition & Knowledge Group of the Laboratory of Argumentation, Cognition, and Language (ArgLab). Section II. brings together three articles by members of the Lisbon Nietzsche Group. Since 2010, the Lisbon Nietzsche Group has completed several funded projects, and has established itself as a leading international research group on Nietzsche’s thought. The three articles demonstrate the crucial importance of the question of values in Nietzsche’s work, always thought from the perspective of the possibility of a “transvaluation of all values”. Maria João Mayer Branco’s article focuses on the value of introspection, and how Nietzsche anticipates Wittgenstein’s “expressivist” view of the “the Peculiar Grammar of the Word ‘I’” and the impossibility of private languages. Marta Faustino’s article considers the theme of affirmation and the value of life through the interpretation of Nietzsche’s reflection on truthfulness, intellectual honesty and courage in the light of Michel Foucault’s work on parrhesia. Pietro Gori’s article studies how Nietzsche creates a new anthropological ideal based on his enquiry into the values of the “good European”. The area of Wittgenstein studies has had a strong influence on the institute since the time when it was a philosophy of language institute. The Wittgensteinian distinction between facts and values was decisive in defining the question of values as the central issue of IFILNOVA’s research project, replacing the focus on philosophy of language. More recently, the focus of research at the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group has been on epistemic values, in particular in their connection with the question of religious belief. In Section III., Nuno Venturinha’s article examines, in the light of an epistemological standpoint, the way Wittgenstein thinks about the possibility of translation. Robert Vinten’s article argues that Wittgenstein’s thought contains elements for a critique of the concept of justice and of the liberal political visions of both Richard Rorty and Chantal Mouffe, despite the fact that both have drawn inspiration from Wittgenstein. Benedetta Zavatta’s article questions the value of mythology by thinking of it as a disease of language – not only in Wittgenstein, but also in a whole philosophical tradition that preceded him. The existence of a research group in ancient philosophy is a recent but very promising development in the life of IFILNOVA. Section IV. includes two articles by members of the group. Paulo Alexandre Lima’s article considers the critique of misology and the value of discourse in Plato’s Phaedo. Hélder Telo’s article examines the pedagogical and protreptic value of imperfection in Plato’s work. (shrink)

These three volumes, entitled Essays On Values, bring together fortyone recent articles by researchers at the Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA). They are a small sample of everything that, in the last four years, the Institute’s researchers have published, in English, in indexed journals and collections of essays with peer review. As a whole, they reflect very well the research work that is done at IFILNOVA. Section I. of Volume 1 gathers six articles that deal directly with the question “what (...) are values?”, the question that guides all the work of the institute’s different laboratories and research groups. The first article, by Susana Cadilha and Vítor Guerreiro, results from work developed in the Laboratory of Ethics and Political Philosophy (EPLab); the second, by João Constâncio, from the Lisbon Nietzsche Group; the third, by Alexandra Dias Fortes, from the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group; the third and fifth, by Nuno Fonseca, and Maria Filomena Molder, from the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Group of the Laboratory of Culture and Value (CultureLab); the last, by Erich H. Rast, from the Philosophy of Language and Argumentation Theory Group and the Lisbon Mind, Cognition & Knowledge Group of the Laboratory of Argumentation, Cognition, and Language (ArgLab). Section II. brings together three articles by members of the Lisbon Nietzsche Group. Since 2010, the Lisbon Nietzsche Group has completed several funded projects, and has established itself as a leading international research group on Nietzsche’s thought. The three articles demonstrate the crucial importance of the question of values in Nietzsche’s work, always thought from the perspective of the possibility of a “transvaluation of all values”. Maria João Mayer Branco’s article focuses on the value of introspection, and how Nietzsche anticipates Wittgenstein’s “expressivist” view of the “the Peculiar Grammar of the Word ‘I’” and the impossibility of private languages. Marta Faustino’s article considers the theme of affirmation and the value of life through the interpretation of Nietzsche’s reflection on truthfulness, intellectual honesty and courage in the light of Michel Foucault’s work on parrhesia. Pietro Gori’s article studies how Nietzsche creates a new anthropological ideal based on his enquiry into the values of the “good European”. The area of Wittgenstein studies has had a strong influence on the institute since the time when it was a philosophy of language institute. The Wittgensteinian distinction between facts and values was decisive in defining the question of values as the central issue of IFILNOVA’s research project, replacing the focus on philosophy of language. More recently, the focus of research at the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group has been on epistemic values, in particular in their connection with the question of religious belief. In Section III., Nuno Venturinha’s article examines, in the light of an epistemological standpoint, the way Wittgenstein thinks about the possibility of translation. Robert Vinten’s article argues that Wittgenstein’s thought contains elements for a critique of the concept of justice and of the liberal political visions of both Richard Rorty and Chantal Mouffe, despite the fact that both have drawn inspiration from Wittgenstein. Benedetta Zavatta’s article questions the value of mythology by thinking of it as a disease of language – not only in Wittgenstein, but also in a whole philosophical tradition that preceded him. The existence of a research group in ancient philosophy is a recent but very promising development in the life of IFILNOVA. Section IV. includes two articles by members of the group. Paulo Alexandre Lima’s article considers the critique of misology and the value of discourse in Plato’s Phaedo. Hélder Telo’s article examines the pedagogical and protreptic value of imperfection in Plato’s work. (shrink)

A fundamental problem in understanding the nature of time is explaining its directionality. This 1990 PhD thesis re-examines the concepts of time flow, the physical directionality of time, and the semantics of tensed language. Several novel results are argued for that contradict the orthodox anti-realist views still dominant in the subject. Specifically, the concept of "metaphysical time flow" is supported as a valid scientific concept, and argued to be intrinsic to the directionality of objective probabilities in quantum mechanics; the common (...) claims that quantum probability theory is time reversible is shown to be based on an analytic error, stemming from a false choice for the criterion for reversibility of probabilistic theories (recognized by Satosi Watanabe in the 1950s but ignored in all philosophical discussions); and a consistent semantics for tensed language (adapted from the tree model of Storrs McCall) is constructed, showing that the common rejection of "time flow" as having no meaningful semantics is false. These debates are still ongoing in almost exactly the same state they were pre-1990, and there is appears to be no visible progress in the subject. Critical points made against errors in the orthodox account (which has been sustained for 70 years by the anti-realist philosophy of time, typified by the "Pittsburg School" of Grunbaum-Earman-Norton-Roberts), are still not recognized in the philosophy of time or physics. Some key technical proofs in this thesis have been published in physics proper. See p.ii-iii for full original abstract. (This pdf is uploaded from the Massey University archive.). (shrink)

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)

We demonstrate how real progress can be made in the debate surrounding the enhanced indispensability argument. Drawing on a counterfactual theory of explanation, well-motivated independently of the debate, we provide a novel analysis of ‘explanatory generality’ and how mathematics is involved in its procurement. On our analysis, mathematics’ sole explanatory contribution to the procurement of explanatory generality is to make counterfactual information about physical dependencies easier to grasp and reason with for creatures like us. This gives precise content to key (...) intuitions traded in the debate, regarding mathematics’ procurement of explanatory generality, and adjudicates unambiguously in favour of the nominalist, at least as far as explanatory generality is concerned. (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)

This chapter defends the account of metaphysical indeterminacy of Barnes and Williams against Eklund's objections.

The question of the cognitive role of fictionality is this: what is the correct cognitive attitude to take to p, when it is fictional that p? We began by considering one answer to this question, implicit in the work of Kendall Walton, that the correct response to a fictional proposition is to imagine that proposition. However, this approach is silent in cases of fictional incompleteness, where neither p nor its negation are fictional. We argue that that Waltonians should embrace a (...) pluralistic account of the cognitive role of fictional incompleteness: in some cases of fictional incompleteness, we are permitted to resolve the incompleteness during our engagement with the target fiction, and in other cases, we are obliged not to resolve the incompleteness. But though pluralism is accommodated by Walton’s wider account of fictionality, it puts tension on his motivating idea that fictionality stands to the imagination as truth stands to belief. And so we develop a rival conception of the cognitive role of fictionality that is built around a different analogy: on this evidentialist approach, (known) fictionality stands to the imagination as evidence stands to credence. (shrink)

A vexing problem in contemporary epistemology—one with origins in Plato’s Meno—concerns the value of knowledge, and in particular, whether and how the value of knowledge exceeds the value of mere true opinion. The recent literature is deeply divided on the matter of how best to address the problem. One point, however, remains unquestioned: that if a solution is to be found, it will be at the personal level, the level at which states of subjects or agents, as such, appear. We (...) take exception to this orthodoxy, or at least to its unquestioned status. We argue that subpersonal states play a significant—arguably, primary—role in much epistemically relevant cognition and thus constitute a domain in which we might reasonably expect to locate the “missing source” of epistemic value, beyond the value attached to mere true belief. (shrink)

There is an intuitive difference in how we think about pluralism and attitudinal diversity in epistemological contexts versus political contexts. In an epistemological context, it seems problematically arbitrary to hold a particular belief on some issue, while also thinking it perfectly reasonable to hold a totally different belief on the same issue given the same evidence. By contrast, though, it doesn’t seem problematically arbitrary to have a particular set of political commitments, while at the same time thinking it perfectly reasonable (...) for someone in a similar position have a totally different set of political commitments. This chapter examines three explanatory theses that might be used to make sense of this difference: (1) that practical commitments are desire dependent in a way that beliefs are not; (2) that there are reasons to be resolute in practical commitments, but not in beliefs; and (3) that compromise in the face of practical political disagreement doesn’t mitigate controversy, whereas compromise in the face of disagreement about mere beliefs does mitigate controversy. (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)

Majority cycling and related social choice paradoxes are often thought to threaten the meaningfulness of democracy. But deliberation can prevent majority cycles – not by inducing unanimity, which is unrealistic, but by bringing preferences closer to single-peakedness. We present the first empirical test of this hypothesis, using data from Deliberative Polls. Comparing preferences before and after deliberation, we find increases in proximity to single-peakedness. The increases are greater for lower versus higher salience issues and for individuals who seem to have (...) deliberated more versus less effectively. They are not merely a byproduct of increased substantive agreement. Our results both refine and support the idea that deliberation, by increasing proximity to single-peakedness, provides an escape from the problem of majority cycling. (shrink)

Many accounts of structural rationality give a special role to logic. This paper reviews the problem case of clear-eyed logical uncertainty. An account of rational norms on belief that does not give a special role to logic is developed: doxastic probabilism.

The ten original studies included in this Research Topic investigate selected assumptions and predictions of parochial altruism theory in detail. We, the editors, are convinced that their highly instructive findings will help researchers interested in parochial altruism, but also in intergroup psychology more generally, to gain a much more fine-grained understanding of the interplay of altruistic and spiteful motives in human decision making in the context of intergroup relations. The broad range of disciplines represented by the authors contributing to this (...) Research Topic and the variety of methods used in their studies are representative for the current interdisciplinary interest in parochial altruism. The most important insight that, in our view, can be derived from the works collected here is that human decision making in intergroup contexts is more complex than suggested by current theory. Thus, we hope that future theorizing on parochial altruism will be stimulated by the evidence gathered in this Research Topic. In this editorial, we briefly highlight central findings reported here, which, to us, appear most informative for prospective enhancements of parochial altruism theory. (shrink)

We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this m...

Philosophical exploration of individualism and externalism in the cognitive sciences most recently has been focused on general evaluations of these two views (Adams & Aizawa 2008, Rupert 2008, Wilson 2004, Clark 2008). Here we return to broaden an earlier phase of the debate between individualists and externalists about cognition, one that considered in detail particular theories, such as those in developmental psychology (Patterson 1991) and the computational theory of vision (Burge 1986, Segal 1989). Music cognition is an area in the (...) cognitive sciences that has received little attention from philosophers, though it has relatively recently been thrown into the externalist spotlight (Cochrane 2008, Kruger 2014, Kersten forthcoming). Given that individualism can be thought of as a kind of paradigm for research on cognition, we provide a brief overview of the field of music cognition and individualistic tendencies within the field (sections 2 and 3) before turning to consider externalist alternatives to individualistic paradigms (section 4-5) and then arguing for a qualified form of externalism about music cognition (section 6). (shrink)

In this Introduction we introduce the central themes of the Evaluative Perception volume. After identifying historical and recent contemporary work on this topic, we discuss some central questions under three headings: (1) Questions about the Existence and Nature of Evaluative Perception: Are there perceptual experiences of values? If so, what is their nature? Are experiences of values sui generis? Are values necessary for certain kinds of experience? (2) Questions about the Epistemology of Evaluative Perception: Can evaluative experiences ever justify evaluative (...) judgments? Are experiences of values necessary for certain kinds of justified evaluative judgments? (3) Questions about Value Theory and Evaluative Perception: Is the existence of evaluative experience supported or undermined by particular views in value theory? Are particular views in value theory supported or undermined by the existence of value experience? (shrink)

A common objection to Sosa’s epistemology is that it countenances, in an objectionable way, unsafe knowledge. This objection, under closer inspection, turns out to be in far worse shape than Sosa’s critics have realised. Sosa and his defenders have offered two central response types to the idea that allowing unsafe knowledge is problematic: one response type adverts to the animal/reflective knowledge distinction that is characteristic of bi-level virtue epistemology. The other less-discussed response type appeals to the threat of dream scepticism, (...) and in particular, to the idea that many of our everyday perceptual beliefs are unsafe through the nearness of the dream possibility. The latter dreaming response to the safety objection to Sosa’s virtue epistemology has largely flown under the radar in contemporary discussions of safety and knowledge. We think that, suitably articulated in view of research in the philosophy and science of dreaming, it has much more going for it than has been appreciated. This paper further develops, beyond what Sosa does himself, the dreaming argument in response to those who think safety (as traditionally understood) is a condition on knowledge and who object to Sosa’s account on the grounds that it fails this condition. The payoffs of further developing this argument will be not only a better understanding of the importance of insights about dreaming against safety as a condition on knowledge, but also some reason to think a weaker safety condition, one that is relativised to SSS (i.e., skill/shape/situation) conditions for competence exercise, gets better results all things considered as an anti-luck codicil on knowledge. (shrink)

The wrong kind of reason (WKR) problem is a problem for attempts to analyze normative properties using only facts about the balance of normative reasons, a style of analysis on which the ‘Reasons First’ programme depends. I argue that this problem cannot be solved if the orthodox view of reasons is true --- that is, if each normative reason is numerically identical with some fact, proposition, or state-of-affairs. That’s because solving the WKR problem requires completely distinguishing between the right- and (...) wrong-kind reasons for an attitude. I argue that some facts give both right- and wrong-kind reasons for an attitude. Consequently, no such distinction between the two types of reasons is complete if reasons are facts or the like. I conclude by suggesting that reasons and facts are related by constitution, not identity. (shrink)