The early history of string theory is marked by a shift from strong interaction physics to quantum gravity. The first string models and associated theoretical framework were formulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the context of the S-matrix program for the strong interactions. In the mid-1970s, the models were reinterpreted as a potential theory unifying the four fundamental forces. This paper provides a historical analysis of how string theory was developed out of S-matrix physics, aiming to clarify (...) how modern string theory, as a theory detached from experimental data, grew out of an S-matrix program that was strongly dependent upon observable quantities. Surprisingly, the theoretical practice of physicists already turned away from experiment before string theory was recast as a potential unified quantum gravity theory. With the formulation of dual resonance models (the “hadronic string theory”), physicists were able to determine almost all of the models' parameters on the basis of theoretical reasoning. It was this commitment to “non-arbitrariness”, i.e., a lack of free parameters in the theory, that initially drove string theorists away from experimental input, and not the practical inaccessibility of experimental data in the context of quantum gravity physics. This is an important observation when assessing the role of experimental data in string theory. (shrink)

A self-fulfilling prophecy in neuroprognostication occurs when a patient in coma is predicted to have a poor outcome, and life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn on the basis of that prediction, thus directly bringing about a poor outcome for that patient. In contrast to the predominant emphasis in the bioethics literature, we look beyond the moral issues raised by the possibility that an erroneous prediction might lead to the death of a patient who otherwise would have lived. Instead, we focus on the (...) problematic epistemic consequences of neuroprognostic SFPs in settings where research and practice intersect. When this sort of SFP occurs, the problem is that physicians and researchers are never in a position to notice whether their original prognosis was correct or incorrect, since the patient dies anyway. Thus, SFPs keep us from discerning false positives from true positives, inhibiting proper assessment of novel prognostic tests. This epistemic problem of SFPs thus impedes learning, but ethical obligations of patient care make it difficult to avoid SFPs. We then show how the impediment to catching false positive indicators of poor outcome distorts research on novel techniques for neuroprognostication, allowing biases to persist in prognostic tests. We finally highlight a particular risk that a precautionary bias towards early withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment may be amplified. We conclude with guidelines about how researchers can mitigate the epistemic problems of SFPs, to achieve more responsible innovation of neuroprognostication for patients in coma. (shrink)

Where did the universe come from? Is life a result of chance, or design? If God is loving and all-powerful, why does evil still exist? Is religious belief just a byproduct of undirected evolutionary processes? Or did God make sure humans would evolve in such a way as to believe? Are philosophers closed-minded about religion? And why is so much of philosophy of religion about God-but not about gods? Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces students to some of the (...) major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God. It also includes discussions of some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the deep interconnections between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter considers what place there is for non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion. Whatever your religious beliefs-or lack of beliefs-we think you will find many of the arguments in this book fascinating to think about, and useful starting points for deeper philosophical discussions. (shrink)

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the restrictive measures implemented for its control, may considerably affect people’s lives particularly vulnerable persons such as children, elderly and people with underlying diseases. This study aimed to assess the well-being of Vietnamese people after COVID-19 lockdown measures were lifted and life gradually returned to normal in Vietnam. Methods: An online survey was organized from 21 st to 25 th April 2020 among Vietnamese residents aged 18 and over. Data were collected concerning the participants’ health (...) status, COVID-19 preventive behaviour, and consequences of the preventive measures. The WHO-5 Well-Being Index was used to score participants’ well-being. Results: A total of 1922 responses were analyzed (mean age was 31 years; range: 18-76). Factors associated with a high well-being score included older age, eating healthy food, practising physical exercise, working from home, and adherence to the COVID-19 preventive measures. Female participants, persons worried about their relatives’ health, and smokers were more likely to have a low well-being score. Conclusions: The Vietnamese people continued to follow COVID-19 preventive measures even after the lockdown was lifted. Most respondents scored high on the well-being scale. However, the emergence of a new COVID-19 outbreak with an epicenter in Da Nang city is expected to increase public anxiety and mental health problems. It is clear that together with preventive measures, developing strategies to guarantee the well-being of the Vietnamese people’s is equally important. (shrink)

Two central accounts of human cognition emerge over the course of the Middle Ages: the theory of divine illumination and an Aristotelian theory centered on abstraction from sense data. Typically, these two accounts are seen as competing views of the origins of human knowledge; theories of divine illumination focus on God’s direct intervention in our epistemic lives, whereas Aristotelian theories generally claim that our knowledge derives primarily (or even entirely) from sense perception. In this paper, I address an early attempt (...) to reconcile these two accounts—namely, Robert Grosseteste’s commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics—and I argue that Grosseteste’s efforts to bring Aristotle’s account of human cognition into harmony with a theory of divine illumination proves both philosophically interesting and largely successful. Grosseteste’s claim that God does not directly illumine our intellects in this life opens his theory to the worry that Grosseteste leaves the divine out of his theory of divine illumination in the CPA. Steven Marrone, for example, holds that Grosseteste’s Aristotelian focus in this work causes him to abandon the theory of divine illumination he advocated in the earlier De veritate in favor of a modified theory of “human” illumination. I argue in contrast that Grosseteste does give God a role in human knowledge in the CPA—a role that allows human beings to remain largely responsible for the acquisition of knowledge while still requiring God’s illumination for actual cognition. In short, I conclude that, although human bodies interfere with God’s direct illumination of our intellects, God nevertheless plays a crucial ideogenic role in human cognition by illuminating the objects of our intellection and making them intelligible to us. (shrink)

The reintroduction of Aristotle's Analytics to the Latin West—in particular, the reintroduction of the Posterior Analytics—forever altered the course of medieval epistemological discussions. Although the Analytics fell decidedly from grace in later centuries, the sophisticated account of human cognition developed in the Posterior Analytics appealed so strongly to thirteenth-century European scholars that it became one of the two central theories of knowledge advocated in the later Middle Ages. Robert Grosseteste's 'Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libro', written in the 1220s, is (...) most likely the first complete Latin commentary on the Posterior Analytics. As the thirteenth century wore on, Aristotle’s account of human cognition was generally set in opposition to the Augustinian-influenced theory of divine illumination that was de rigueur in the early thirteenth century. Although common consensus holds that this pattern of opposition was set already in Grosseteste’s CPA, I argue that the story of the Posterior Analytics’s early reception is, in fact, quite different. In particular, I maintain that, rather than seeing himself as forced to choose between his earlier theory of divine illumination and the “new” Aristotelian epistemology, Grosseteste is perfectly content to blend and bring together the diverse elements of these systems and to present a consciously synthetic rather than adversarial picture of these differing accounts of human cognition. (shrink)

Three puzzles about self-deception make this mental phenomenon an intriguing explanatory target. The first relates to how to define it without paradox; the second is about how to make sense of self-deception in light of the interpretive view of the mental that has become widespread in philosophy; and the third concerns why it exists at all. In this paper I address the first and third puzzles. First, I define self-deception. Second, I criticize Robert Trivers' attempt to use adaptionist evolutionary (...) psychology to solve the third puzzle (existence). Third, I sketch a theory to replace that of Trivers. Self-deception is not an adaptation, but a spandrel in the sense that Gould and Lewontin give the term: a byproduct of other features of human (cognitive) architecture. Self-deception is so undeniable a fact of human life that if anyone tried to deny its existence, the proper response would be to accuse this person of it. (Allen Wood, 1988). (shrink)

I raise the question of what cognitive attitude self-deception brings about. That is: what is the product of self-deception? Robert Audi and Georges Rey have argued that self-deception does not bring about belief in the usual sense, but rather “avowal” or “avowed belief.” That means a tendency to affirm verbally (both privately and publicly) that lacks normal belief-like connections to non-verbal actions. I contest their view by discussing cases in which the product of self-deception is implicated in action in (...) a way that exemplifies the motivational role of belief. Furthermore, by applying independent criteria of what it is for a mental state to be a belief, I defend the more intuitive view that being self-deceived that p entails believing that p. Beliefs (i) are the default for action relative to other cognitive attitudes (such as imagining and hypothesis) and (ii) have cognitive governance over the other cognitive attitudes. I explicate these two relations and argue that they obtain for the product of self-deception. (shrink)

Here I review Robert Trivers' 2011 book _The Folly of Fools_, in which he advocates the evolutionary theory of deceit and self-deception that he pioneered in his famous preface to Richard Dawkins' _Selfish Gene_. Although the book contains a wealth of interesting discussion on topics ranging from warfare to immunology, I find it lacking on two major fronts. First, it fails to give a proper argument for its central thesis--namely, that self-deception evolved to facilitate deception of others. Second, the (...) book lacks conceptual clarity with respect to the focal term "self-deception.". (shrink)

Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the (...) frameworks and practices of cognitive scientists of religion. Employing philosophical tools as well as drawing on case studies, contributions not only illuminate psychological experiments, anthropological observations and neurophysical research relevant to understanding religious phenomena, they allow cognitive scientists to either heed or clarify their position in relation to Wittgenstein's objections. By developing and responding to his criticisms, Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion offers novel perspectives on his philosophy in relation to religion, human nature, and the mind. Contents: Introduction (Robert Vinten); Ch.1: 'Wittgenstein, Concepts, and Human Nature' (Roger Trigg); Ch.2: 'On Truth, Language, and Objectivity' (Florian Franken Figueiredo); Ch.3 'Pascal Boyer's Miscellany of Homunculi: A Wittgensteinian Critique of Religion Explained' (Robert Vinten); Ch.4 'The Brain Perceives/Infers' (Hans van Eyghen); Ch.5 'The Imaginary Inner Inside Cognitive Science of Religion' (Christopher Hoyt); Ch.6 'Cognitive Theories and Wittgenstein: Looking for Convergence not for Divergence' (Olympia Panagiotidou); Ch. 7 'Wittgenstein, Naturalism, and Interpreting Religious Phenomena' (Thomas Carroll); Ch.8 'Natural Thoughts and Unnatural Oughts: Lessing, Wittgenstein, and Contemporary CSR' (Guy Axtell); Ch.9 'Normative Cognition in Cognitive Science of Religion' (Mark Addis); Ch.10 'Brains as the Source of Being: Mind/Brain Focus and the Western Model of Mind in Dominant Cognitive Science Discourse' (Rita McNamara); Ch.11 'On Religious Practices as Multiscale Active Inference: Certainties Emerging From Recurrent Interactions Within and Across Individuals and Groups' (Inês Hipólito and Casper Hesp). (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen famously offers a version of the luck objection to libertarianism called the ‘Rollback Argument.’ It involves a thought experiment in which God repeatedly rolls time backward to provide an agent with many opportunities to act in the same circumstance. Because the agent has the kind of freedom that affords her alternative possibilities at the moment of choice, she performs different actions in some of these opportunities. The upshot is that whichever action she performs in the actual-sequence is (...) intuitively a matter of mere chance. I explore a new response to the Rollback Argument. If there are true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom, then the agent performs the same action each time she is placed in the same circumstance, because that is what she would freely do in that circumstance. This response appears to negate the chancy intuition. Ultimately, however, I argue that this new response is unsuccessful, because there is a variant of the Rollback Argument that presents the same basic challenge to the libertarian on the assumption that there are true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom. Thus, true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom do not provide the libertarian with a solution to the Rollback Argument. (shrink)

Dieser Band stellt die erste Fortsetzung der 2013 begonnenen Publikation zur „Wirtlichen Ökonomie“ dar. Er dient der sich fortsetzenden Frage nach der Wirtlichkeit. Zu dieser Frage gehört es, das Ökonomische aus einer notwendig gewordenen Zurückhaltung gegenüber dem methodischen Vorgriff der modernen Wirtschaftswissenschaften zu denken. Die Zurückhaltung verleiht, indem sie den Fragebereich der Wirtlichkeit eröffnet, den hier versammelten Beiträgen ihren wahren Zusammenhang.

This is my reply to Josh Weisberg, Robert Van Gulick, and William Seager, published in JCS vol 20, 2013. This symposium grew out of an author-meets-critics session at the Central APA conference in 2013 on my 2012 book THE CONSCIOUSNESS PARADOX (MIT Press). Topics covered include higher-order thought (HOT) theory, my own "wide intrinsicality view," the problem of misrepresentation, targetless HOTs, conceptualism, introspection, and the transitivity principle.

Peter van Inwagen's Direct Argument (DA) purports to establish the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility, without appealing to the notion of avoidability, a notion on whose analysis compatibilists and incompatibilists disagree. Van Inwagen intended DA to refute compatibilism, or at least to shift the burden of proof onto the compatibilist. In this paper, we offer a critical assessment of DA. We examine a variety of objections to DA due to John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Ishtiyaque Haji, Seth Shabo, Michael (...) McKenna, and David Widerker. We divide these objections into those based on dialectical considerations (section 1), and objections in the form of counterexamples to a central principle which the Direct Argument employs (sec 2). The conclusion we reach is that the proponent of DA can deal plausibly with these objections, thus establishing DA as a powerful argument in favor of incompatibilism. (shrink)

Sometimes you make a choice. Whether or not you made it was up to you. The choice was free. But how can this be? A scientific view of the world may leave no room for free choice. Free will literature continually explodes. Yet experts still focus on control or on a power to do otherwise. Sadly, they neglect another intuitive feature of free will: being an underived source or ultimate originator. When acting freely, one is a self-determined, self-directed, sole author (...) of change. Surprisingly, though the literature is replete with this pre-theoretic feature of free will, virtually no one makes rigorous use of it when constructing arguments. Equipped with fresh research, this book contends that agent-causation—currently an unpopular theory—deserves serious reconsideration. Only agent-causation accounts for ultimate origination, and popular objections fail under rigorous scrutiny. This book is tightly argued. It challenges and deepens recent advances in free will scholarship made by Peter van Inwagen, Robert Kane, Carl Ginet, Randy Clarke, Stewart Goetz, Tim O’Connor, and others. (shrink)

I here sketch a reply to Peter van Inwagen’s Rollback Argument, which suggests that libertarian accounts of free agency are beset by problems involving luck. Van Inwagen imagines an indeterministic agent whose universe is repeatedly ‘rolled back’ by God to the time of her choice. Since the agent’s choice is indeterministic, her choices are sometimes di erent in the imaginary rollback scenarios. I show that although this is true, this need not impair her control over what she does. I develop (...) an account of when and why the fact that an agent would choose di erently impairs control, which provides a novel response to the Rollback Argument. (shrink)

This paper -distinguishes between the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition and the Hypothesis of Embedded Cognition, characterizing them as competitors (both motivated by situated, interactive cognitive processing, with the latter being the more conservative of the two interpretations of the data) -clarifies the relation between content externalism and extended cognition -introduces the problem of cognitive bloat, as part of a critical discussion of Clark and Chalmers's "past-endorsement criterion" (if the criterion is embraced, we privilege the internal, endorsing process -- which looks (...) more like an embedded view -- and if the criterion is rejected, bloat follows) and as a problem for extended views more generally -develops a dilemma critical of Clark and Chalmers's "explanatory kinds" argument for extended mind and cognition (arguing that their reasoning faces serious problems regardless of whether one individuates the kinds in question in a fine-grained or a coarse-grained way) -argues that an appeal to functionalism doesn't resolve the issue -argues for the priority, in debates about extended cognition, of the identification of cognitive systems (e.g., because a functionalist approach can't be applied unless we already know what count as inputs and outputs, which requires having already identified the boundaries of the cognitive system). (shrink)

En este artículo introductorio al número especial “Desacuerdos Profundos: Precisiones y Exploraciones”, se presentan los artículos que comprenden este número brindando contexto a sus distintas temáticas, las cuales van desde la naturaleza de los desacuerdos profundos y su resolución, hasta sus conexiones con debates filosóficos y fenómenos sociales.

1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

In this paper, we consider recent attempts to metaphysically explain agentive modality in terms of conditionals. We suggest that the best recent accounts face counterexamples, and more worryingly, they take some agentive modality for granted. In particular, the ability to perform basic actions features as a primitive in these theories. While it is perfectly acceptable for a semantics of agentive modal claims to take some modality for granted in getting the extension of action claims correct, a metaphysical explanation of agentive (...) modality cannot, at least not in the way that conditional approaches to agentive modality do. We argue that this problem was present even in the classical conditional analysis. By a pessimistic induction, we suggest that, probably, no conditional approach to agentive modality will succeed. (shrink)

Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...) and critique, it remains underdeveloped and is often misrepresented by its critics (section 8). (shrink)

The concept of affordances is rapidly gaining traction in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. Affordances are opportunities for action provided by the environment. An important open question is whether affordances can be used to explain mental action such as attention, counting, and imagination. In this paper, we critically discuss McClelland’s (‘The Mental Affordance Hypothesis’, 2020, Mind, 129(514), pp. 401–427) mental affordance hypothesis. While we agree that the affordance concept can be fruitfully employed to explain mental action, we argue (...) that McClelland’s mental affordance hypothesis contain remnants of a Cartesian understanding of the mind. By discussing the theoretical framework of the affordance competition hypothesis, we sketch an alternative research program based on the principles of embodied cognition that evades the Cartesian worries. We show how paradigmatic mental acts, such as imagination, counting, and arithmetic, are dependent on sensorimotor interaction with an affording environment. Rather than make a clear distinction between bodily and mental action, the mental affordances highlight the embodied nature of our mental action. We think that in developing our alternative research program on mental affordances, we can maintain many of the excellent insights of McClelland’s account without reintroducing the very distinctions that affordances were supposed to overcome. (shrink)

The computational argument for individualism, which moves from computationalism to individualism about the mind, is problematic, not because computationalism is false, but because computational psychology is, at least sometimes, wide. The paper provides an early, or perhaps predecessor, version of the thesis of extended cognition.

The Eugenic Mind Project is a wide-ranging, philosophical book that explores and critiques both past and present eugenic thinking, drawing on the author’s intimate knowledge of eugenics in North America and his previous work on the cognitive, biological, and social sciences, the fragile sciences. Informed by the perspectives of Canadian eugenics survivors in the province of Alberta, The Eugenic Mind Project recounts the history of eugenics and the thinking that drove it, and critically engages contemporary manifestations of eugenic thought, newgenics. (...) An accessible, original work of scholarship adopting what the author calls a standpoint eugenics, this book focuses on the roots of eugenic thinking past and present. It will provoke and enrich discussions about human nature and human diversity, the social uses of biotechnology, and social policy governing future generations. You can download the preface and acknowledgements here. (shrink)

Although the Evans argument against vague identity has been much discussed, proposah for blocking it have not so far satisfied general conditions which any solution ought to meet. Moreover, the relation between ontically vague identity and ontic vagueness more generally has not yet been satisfactorily addressed. I advocate a way of resisting the Evans argument which satisfies the conditions. To show how this approach can vindicate particular cases of ontically vague identity, I develop a framework for describing ontic vagueness in (...) general in terms of multiple actualities. This provides aprìncipled approach to ontically vague identity which is unaffected by the Evans argument. (shrink)

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the "two visual systems" hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in conscious visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver's bodily actions. In this paper, I review and assess three main sources (...) of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis. I argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency. (shrink)

In his influential article ‘Essence and Modality’, Fine proposes a definition of necessity in terms of the primitive essentialist notion ‘true in virtue of the nature of’. Fine’s proposal is suggestive, but it admits of different interpretations, leaving it unsettled what the precise formulation of an Essentialist definition of necessity should be. In this paper, four different versions of the definition are discussed: a singular, a plural reading, and an existential variant of Fine’s original suggestion and an alternative version proposed (...) by Correia which is not based on Fine’s primitive essentialist notion. The first main point of the paper is that the singular reading is untenable. The second that given plausible background assumptions, the remaining three definitions are extensionally equivalent. The third is that, this equivalence notwithstanding, Essentialists should adopt Correia’s version of the definition, since both the existential variant, which has de facto been adopted as the standard version of the definition in the literature, and the plural reading suffer from problems connected to Fine’s primitive essentialist notion. (shrink)

In replying to certain objections to the existence of God, Robert Adams, Bruce Langtry, and Peter van Inwagen assume that God can appropriately choose a suboptimal world, a world less good than some other world God could have chosen. A number of philosophers, such as Michael Slote and Klaas Kraay, claim that these theistic replies are therefore committed to the claim that satisficing can be appropriate. Kraay argues that this commitment is a significant liability. I argue, however, that the (...) relevant defenses of theism are committed to the appropriateness of, not satisficing, but motivated submaximization. When one submaximizes with motivation, one aims at the optimum but accepts the good enough because of a countervailing consideration. When one satisfices, one aims at the good enough and chooses the good enough because it realizes her aim at the good enough. While commitment to the appropriateness of satisficing may be a significant liability, commitment to the appropriateness of motivated submaximization is not. (shrink)

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory ‘‘goes beyond the individual’’ but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. (...) This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency. (shrink)

An intrinsic property, according to one important account, is a property that is had by all of one's duplicates. Instead, one might choose to characterize intrinsic properties as those that can be had in the absence of all distinct individuals. After reviewing the problems with these earlier accounts, the author presents a less problematic analysis. The goal is to clarify the rough idea that an intrinsic property is a special sort of non-relational property; having the property does not consist in (...) any relation one bears to distinct individuals. (shrink)

John Hawthorne in a recent paper takes issue with Lewisian accounts of counterfactuals, when relevant laws of nature are chancy. I respond to his arguments on behalf of the Lewisian, and conclude that while some can be rebutted, the case against the original Lewisian account is strong.I develop a neo-Lewisian account of what makes for closeness of worlds. I argue that my revised version avoids Hawthorne’s challenges. I argue that this is closer to the spirit of Lewis’s first (non-chancy) proposal (...) than is Lewis’s own suggested modification. (shrink)

This paper examines the standard view of realization operative incontemporary philosophy of mind, and proposes an alternative, generalperspective on realization. The standard view can be expressed, insummary form, as the conjunction of two theses, the sufficiency thesis andthe constitutivity thesis. Physicalists of both reductionist and anti-reductionist persuasions share a conception of realization wherebyrealizations are determinative of the properties they realize and physically constitutive of the individuals with those properties. Centralto the alternative view that I explore here is the idea that (...) the requisite,metaphysically robust notion of realization is ineliminably context-sensitive. I shall argue that the sufficiency and constitutivity theses aretypically not jointly satisfied by any one candidate realizer, and that goingcontext-sensitive in one's metaphysics is preferable to the standard view.The context-sensitive views developed here are implicit in a range ofcommon views in both the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of biology,even if they have not been explicitly articulated, and even though theyundermine other views that are commonly endorsed. (shrink)

Discussions of whistleblowing and employee loyalty usually assume either that the concept of loyalty is irrelevant to the issue or, more commonly, that whistleblowing involves a moral choice in which the loyalty that an employee owes an employer comes to be pitted against the employee''s responsibility to serve public interest. I argue that both these views are mistaken and propose a third view which sees whistleblowing as entirely compatible with employee loyalty.

I will begin this comparative analysis with Quine, focusing on the front matter and first chapter of Word and Object (alongside From a Logical Point of View and two other short pieces), attempting to illuminate there a (1) basis of excessive, yet familiar, chaos, (2) method of improvised, dramatic distortion, and (3) consequent neo-Pragmatist metaphysics. Having elaborated this Quinian basis, method and metaphysics, I will then show that they can be productively translated into James Mercer’s poetic lyrics for The Shins, (...) with an emphasis on the first song, entitled “Caring is Creepy,” from their debut studio album, Oh, Inverted World! Finally, I will explain why Quine and Mercer are particularly suited to this translation (in contrast to other philosophically-rich pop lyricists such as Bob Dylan, and other pragmatist philosophers like Robert Brandom), in the course of which important implications will emerge for our globalized world today. (shrink)

The lexical priority of fair equality of opportunity in John Rawls’s justice as fairness, which has been sharply criticized by Larry Alexander and Richard Arneson among others, is left almost entirely undefended in Rawls’s works. I argue here that this priority rule can be successfully defended against its critics despite Rawls’s own doubts about it. Using the few textual clues he provides, I speculatively reconstruct his defense of this rule, showing that it can be grounded on our interest in self-realization (...) through work. This reconstructed defense makes liberal use of concepts already present in A Theory of Justice , including the Aristotelian Principle (which motivates the achievement of increasing virtuosity) and the Humboldtian concept of social union (which provides the context for the development of such virtuosity). I also show that this commitment to self-realization, far from violating the priority of right in Rawls’s theory, stems directly from his underlying commitment to autonomy, which is the very foundation of the moral law in his doctrine of right. The reconstituted defense of this priority rule not only strengthens the case for justice as fairness but also has important and controversial implications for public policy. (shrink)

This paper attempts to do two things. First, it recounts the problem of intentionality, as it has typically been conceptualized, and argues that it needs to be reconceptualized in light of the radical form of externalism most commonly referred to as the extended mind thesis. Second, it provides an explicit, novel argument for that thesis, what I call the argument from meaning making, and offers some defense of that argument. This second task occupies the core of the paper, and in (...) completing it I distinguish _active _ _cognition_ from _cyborg fantasy arguments_ for externalism, and develop the analogy between the extended mind thesis in the cognitive sciences and developmental systems theory in developmental biology. The rethinking of the problem of intentionality on offer leads not so much to a solution as to a dissolution of that problem, as traditionally conceived. (shrink)

My paper addresses a topic--the implications of Rawls's justice as fairness for affirmative action--that has received remarkably little attention from Rawls's major interpreters. The only extended treatments of it that are in print are over a quarter-century old, and they bear scarcely any relationship to Rawls's own nonideal theorizing. Following Christine Korsgaard's lead, I work through the implications of Rawls's nonideal theory and show what it entails for affirmative action: viz. that under nonideal conditions, aggressive forms of formal equality of (...) opportunity (e.g., sensitivity training, outreach efforts, external monitoring and enforcement) and compensating support (e.g., special fellowship programs, childcare facilities, mentoring, co-op opportunities, etc.) can be justified, but that "hard" and even "soft" quotas are difficult to defend under any conditions. I conclude the paper by exploring the implications of these surprising results for contemporary liberalism more broadly and for constitutional law and public policy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the metarepresentational systems we posses are wide or extended, rather than individualistic. There are two basic ideas. The first is that metarepresentation inherits its width from the mental representation of its objects. The second is that mental processing often operates on internal and external symbols, and this suggests that cognitive systems extend beyond the heads that house them.

We introduce two notions–the shadows and the shallows of explanation–in opening up explanation to broader, interdisciplinary investigation. The shadows of explanation refer to past philosophical efforts to provide either a conceptual analysis of explanation or in some other way to pinpoint the essence of explanation. The shallows of explanation refer to the phenomenon of having surprisingly limited everyday, individual cognitive abilities when it comes to explanation. Explanations are ubiquitous, but they typically are not accompanied by the depth that we might, (...) prima facie, expect. We explain the existence of the shadows and shallows of explanation in terms of there being a theoretical abyss between explanation and richer, theoretical structures that are often attributed to people. We offer an account of the shallows, in particular, both in terms of shorn-down, internal, mental machinery, and in terms of an enriched, public symbolic environment, relative to the currently dominant ways of thinking about cognition and the world. (shrink)

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky illustrates that encounters with evil do not solely impact agents’ beliefs about God (or God’s existence). Evil impacts people on an emotional level as well. Authors like Hasker and van Inwagen sometimes identify the emotional impact of evil with the “existential” problem of evil. For better or worse, the existential version of the problem is often set aside in contemporary philosophical discussions. In this essay, I rely on Robert Roberts’ account of emotions as “concern-based (...) construals” to show that theistic philosophers can effectively address the existential problem (and so, the problem should not be set aside). In fact, addressing the emotional impact of evil is crucial, I argue, given that resolving just the impact of evil on agents’ beliefs about God constitutes an incomplete response to the problem of evil. (shrink)

Gideon Rosen has recently sketched an argument which aims to establish that the notion of metaphysical modality is systematically ambiguous. His argument contains a crucial sub-argument which has been used to argue for Metaphysical Contingentism, the view that some claims of fundamental metaphysics are metaphysically contingent rather than necessary. In this paper, Rosen’s argument is explicated in detail and it is argued that the most straight-forward reconstruction fails to support its intended conclusion. Two possible ways to save the argument are (...) rebutted and it is furthermore argued that the crucial sub-argument only supports a rather particular variant of Metaphysical Contingentism. (shrink)

When modern economists use the notions of sympathy or empathy, they often claim that their ideas have their roots in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, while sometimes complaining that Smith fails to distinguish clearly enough between the two concepts. Recently, Philippe Fontaine has described various forms of sympathy and empathy, and has explored their respective roles in Smith's work. My objective in this paper is to argue that Smith's analysis of how people's sentiments impinge on one another involves a (...) concept of fellow-feeling that is distinct from both sympathy and empathy. Unlike sympathy and empathy, fellow-feeling does not fit into the ontological framework of rational choice theory – which may explain why it tends to be overlooked by modern readers of Smith. (shrink)

Desire-based theories of well-being claim that a person's well-being consists of the satisfaction of her desires. Many of these theories say that well-being consists of the satisfaction of desires that she would have if her desires were "corrected" in various ways. Some versions of this theory claim that the corrections involve having "full information" or being an "ideal observer." I argue that well-being does not depend on what one would desire if she were an “ideal observer.” Rather, it depends on (...) what she would desire if she had as much information as she could have and still maintain her identity as the particular person she is. The paper attempts to spell out this suggestion by constructing a notion of integrity. Roughly, integrity is preserved if one’s most central projects, commitments, and character traits are left in tact. I argue that desire-based theories of well-being should define well-being in terms of the satisfaction of those desires that one would have if one’s epistemic situation were idealized as much as would be consistent with maintaining her integrity. (shrink)

Libertarianism is a theory of justice that places significant moral weight on exclusive property rights. On this basis, many libertarian philosophers, from Robert Nozick to Michael Huemer, criticize any form of income redistribution. Ironically, some libertarians, following Philippe Van Parijs, Matt Zwolinski, and Charles Murray, have supported the introduction of an unconditional basic income. This essay seeks to prove that this support is not just a political compromise. By contrast, libertarian justice advocates have a strong moral basis for supporting (...) income redistribution in the form of unconditional cash payments. This essay explores one such reason, the Lockean proviso. The Lockean proviso is a moral requirement for the appropriation of unowned resources to leave “enough and as good” for others. There are many interpretations of the Lockean proviso, but the most ambitious are the egalitarian proviso and the sufficiency proviso. Each of them, but for different reasons, requires the introduction of a basic income. The egalitarian proviso establishes the equal rights of all people to natural resources, and therefore requires that all benefits from the ownership of natural resources be shared egalitarianly — in the form of unconditional equal payments. The sufficiency proviso establishes some threshold of sufficiency, and then imposes a restriction on exclusive property rights so that they can’t prevent redistribution in order to raise all people to the threshold of sufficiency. However, while both provisos require a basic income, they diverge on three important dimensions in assessing this basic income: applicability, taxable base, and amount of cash payments. (shrink)

The recent literature on mental causation has not been kind to nonreductive, materialist functionalism (‘functionalism’, hereafter, except where that term is otherwise qualified). The exclusion problem2 has done much of the damage, but the epiphenomenalist threat has taken other forms. Functionalism also faces what I will call the ‘problem of metaphysically necessary effects’ (Block, 1990, pp. 157-60, Antony and Levine, 1997, pp. 91-92, Pereboom, 2002, p. 515, Millikan, 1999, p. 47, Jackson, 1998, pp. 660-61). Functionalist mental properties are individuated partly (...) by their relation to the very effects those properties’ instantiations are thought to cause. Consequently, functionalist causal generalizations would seem to have the following problematical structure: The state of being, among other things, a cause of e (under such-andsuch conditions) causes e (under those conditions).3 The connection asserted lacks the contingency one would expect of a causal generalization. Mental states of the kind in question are, by metaphysical necessity, causes of e; any state that does not cause e is thereby a different kind of state. Yet, a mental state’s being the sort of state it is must play some causal role if functionalism is to account for mental causation.4 In what follows, I first articulate more fully the problem of metaphysically necessary effects. I then criticize three functionalist attempts to solve the problem directly. Given the failure of functionalist efforts to meet the problem head-on, I consider less direct strategies: these involve formulating functionalism or its causal claims in such a way that they appear not to generate the problem of metaphysically necessary effects. I argue against these indirect solutions, in each case concluding either that the problem still arises or that avoiding it requires the adoption of an unorthodox form of functionalism (itself a surprising result). In the final.. (shrink)

Contemporary republicans have adopted a less-than-charitable attitude toward private beneficence, especially when it is directed to the poor, worrying that rich patrons may be in a position to exercise arbitrary power over their impoverished clients. These concerns have led them to support impartial public provision by way of state welfare programs, including an unconditional basic income (UBI). In contrast to this administrative model of public welfare, I will propose a competitive model in which the state regulates and subsidizes a decentralized (...) and nonstatist provision of support for the poor. This model will fix the historically objectionable features of private provision by having the state prevent collusion among private charities, deliver information to recipients about alternative sources of assistance, and give substantial grants to charities as well as tax incentives and vouchers to donors. I will contend that such an approach would do a better job of minimizing domination of the poor than traditional welfare states and may prove more politically feasible than a UBI, at least in the near term in certain national contexts. (shrink)

An account of depiction should explain its key features. I identify six: that depiction is from a point of view; that it represents its objects as having a visual appearance; that it depictive content is always reasonably detailed; that misrepresentation is possible, but only within limits; and that the ability to interpret depictions co-varies, given general competence with pictures, with knowledge of what the depicted objects look like. All this suggests that picturing works by capturing appearances, but how more precisely (...) does it operate? I show how to use the notion of experienced resemblance in outline shape to analyse depiction in such a way as to answer this question, and to explain the six key features above. (shrink)

I develop a new theory of properties by considering two central arguments in the debate whether properties are dispositional or categorical. The first claims that objects must possess categorical properties in order to be distinct from empty space. The second argument, however, points out several untoward consequences of positing categorical properties. I explore these arguments and argue that despite appearances, their conclusions need not be in conflict with one another. In particular, we can view the second argument as supporting only (...) the claim that there is not a plurality of categorical properties, and not the stronger claim that there are no categorical properties whatsoever. I then develop a new account of properties which capitalizes on this insight. (shrink)