Philosophical orthodoxy has it that intentional action consists in one’s intention appropriately causing a motion of one’s body, placing the latter as (conceptually and/or metaphysically) prior to the former. Here I argue that this standard schema should be reversed: acting intentionally is at least conceptually prior to intending. The argument is modelled on a Williamsonian argument for the priority of knowledge developed by Jenifer Nagel. She argues that children acquire the concept KNOWS before they acquire BELIEVES, building on this alleged (...) developmental priority of knowledge to establish its conceptual priority. I start by taking a closer look at Nagel’s argument, canvassing extant objections to do both with the empirical adequacy of her claims and their philosophical implications. Doing so allows me in the second part of the paper to draw lessons that inform the construction of a revamped parallel argument for the priority of ACTS INTENTIONALLY. (shrink)

Recently, various philosophers have argued that we can obtain knowledge via the imagination. In particular, it has been suggested that we can come to know concrete, empirical matters of everyday significance by appropriately imagining relevant scenarios. Arguments for this thesis come in two main varieties: black box reliability arguments and constraints-based arguments. We suggest that both strategies are unsuccessful. Against black-box arguments, we point to evidence from empirical psychology, question a central case-study, and raise concerns about a (claimed) evolutionary rationale (...) for the imagination's reliability. Against the constraints-based account, we argue that to the extent that it works, this does not give rise to knowledge that is distinctively from the imagination. We conclude by suggesting that the imagination's role in raising possibilities, traditionally seen as part of the context of discovery, can in fact play a role in justification, including as a bulwark against certain sorts of skepticism. (shrink)

Mind wandering has been a target of a fast-expanding area of research in cognitive science and philosophy. One of the central puzzles that researchers have been grappling with is whether this mental process should be thought of as passive or active in nature. Intuitively, a wandering mind seems passive but mounting empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Irving (2021) defends a prominent account of mind wandering as unguided attention, which aims inter alia to resolve the puzzle. However, I present counterexamples that reveal (...) Irving’s account to be both too weak and too strong. I then develop the alternative proposal that (stated roughly) mind wandering consists in voluntarily passive attention. After unpacking and defending this idea, I show how it helps to eliminate the conflicting appearance of mind wandering as both passive and active. (shrink)

This paper explores some consequences of Lewis’s (Australas J Philos 74(4):549–567, 1996) understanding of how knowledge is compartmentalized. It argues, first, that he underestimates how badly it impacts his view. When knowledge is compartmentalized, it lacks at least one of two essential features of Lewis’s account: (a) Elusiveness—familiar skeptical possibilities, when relevant, are incompatible with everyday knowledge. (b) Knowledge is a modality—when a thinker knows that p, there is no relevant possibility where p is false. Lewis proposes compartmentalized knowledge to (...) keep treating knowledge as a modality while mitigating one of its unrealistic epistemological implications: In normal modal epistemic logic (and standard possible world semantics), a thinker always counts as knowing the strongest proposition that follows from the set of all the individual propositions that this thinker knows. Lewis’s compartmentalization proposal is that thinkers merely know the conjunctions of propositions that are known in each of, but not across, their compartments. The irony is that in avoiding overblown knowledge the view now allows for thinkers to attend to skeptical error possibilities and yet knowledge is present. The account avoids inflation of knowledge in one sense only to acquire another type of knowledge the view denies subjects can have. This problem motivates an inspection of knowledge accounts whose intra-compartment closure principles are weaker than those that are valid in normal modal-logic. The conclusion is that some formulations of closure can avoid the challenge Lewis’s view faces. Nevertheless, even these closure principles pose a barrier—perhaps an implausible barrier—for knowledge of ignorance. Even when the reasoning supporting the lack of knowledge is sound, a subject cannot always know she doesn’t know. Interestingly, this obstacle is one that knowledge of knowledge doesn’t seem to face. (shrink)

Moral realism is often taken to have common sense and initial appearances on its side. Indeed, by some lights, common sense and initial appearances underlie all the central positive arguments for moral realism. We offer a kind of debunking argument, taking aim at realism’s common sense standing. Our argument differs from familiar debunking moves both in its empirical assumptions and in how it targets the realist position. We argue that if natural selection explains the objective phenomenology of moral deliberation and (...) judgement, then this undermines arguments from that phenomenology. This results in a simpler, and in some ways more direct, challenge to realism. It is also less vulnerable to the main objections that have been leveled against such arguments. If accepted, our conclusion should make a real difference to the dialectic in this area. It means that neither realism nor its denial is the default, to-be-refuted, position. (shrink)

The idea that knowledge can be extended by inference from what is known seems highly plausible. Yet, as shown by familiar preface paradox and lottery-type cases, the possibility of aggregating uncertainty casts doubt on its tenability. We show that these considerations go much further than previously recognized and significantly restrict the kinds of closure ordinary theories of knowledge can endorse. Meeting the challenge of uncertainty aggregation requires either the restriction of knowledge-extending inferences to single premises, or eliminating epistemic uncertainty in (...) known premises. The first strategy, while effective, retains little of the original idea—conclusions even of modus ponens inferences from known premises are not always known. We then look at the second strategy, inspecting the most elaborate and promising attempt to secure the epistemic role of basic inferences, namely Timothy Williamson’s safety theory of knowledge. We argue that while it indeed has the merit of allowing basic inferences such as modus ponens to extend knowledge, Williamson’s theory faces formidable difficulties. These difficulties, moreover, arise from the very feature responsible for its virtue- the infallibilism of knowledge. (shrink)

Many have the intuition that human persons are both extremely and equally valuable. This seeming extremity and equality of vale is puzzling: if overall value is the sum of one’s final value and instrumental value, how could it be that persons share the same extreme value? One way that we can solve the Value Puzzle is by following Andrew Bailey and Josh Rasmussen. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 103, 264–277 (2020) and accepting that persons have infinite final value. But there are (...) some significant downsides to their way of thinking about values, which relies on the extended real numbers. We offer a different approach: if we model values using the hyperreal numbers, we can capture many of our intuitions about the extremity and relative equality of human value without incurring the substantial theoretical costs of using the extended real numbers. We also examine other ways of modeling the infinite value of persons and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these other accounts compared to ours. (shrink)

The external world sceptic tells some familiar narratives involving massive deception. Perhaps we are brains in vats. Perhaps we are the victim of a deceitful demon. You know the drill. The sceptic proceeds by observing first that victims of such deceptions know nothing about their external environment and that second, since we cannot rule out being a victim of such deceptions our- selves, our own external world beliefs fail to attain the status of knowledge. Discussions of global external world scepticism (...) tend to focus on the second step, where a number of well-known lines of resistance have been offered. But there has been little attention to the first, seemingly innocuous step. That will be the focus of this paper. Part one – sections 1, 2, and 3 – will explain why these standard narratives are not convincing examples of cases where there is no knowledge of the external world. In part two – section 4 – we shall undertake a useful case study. David Lewis’s ‘Elusive Knowledge’ is often thought of as presenting an epistemological vision that is somewhat friendly to external world scepticism: as Lewis himself presents things, there are contexts where external world knowledge ascriptions are uniformly false, and where true knowledge ascriptions are limited to either axiomatic truths or truths about our inner life. We examine his discussion in the light of the preceding reflections and show that the framework he presents is not so concessionary to global external world scepticism after all. (shrink)

I argue for three conclusions. First, responsibility skeptics are committed to the position that the criminal justice system should adopt a universal nonresponsibility excuse. Second, a universal nonresponsibility excuse would diminish some of our most deeply held values, further dehumanize criminals, exacerbate mass incarceration, and cause an even greater number of innocent people (nonwrongdoers) to be punished. Third, while Saul Smilansky's ‘illusionist’ response to responsibility skeptics – that even if responsibility skepticism is correct, society should maintain a responsibility‐realist/retributivist criminal justice (...) system – is generally compelling, it would not work if a majority of society were to convert, theoretically and psychologically, to responsibility skepticism. In this (highly improbable) scenario, and only in this (highly improbable) scenario, the criminal justice system would need to be reformed in such a way that it aligned with the majority's responsibility‐skeptical beliefs and attitudes. (shrink)

At a House hearing on December 5, 2023, the presidents of three universities—Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania—refused to state that certain kinds of hate speech, specifically calls for genocide of Jews, are prohibited on their campuses. The backlash against two of them, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill, was swift and devastating; both of them were successfully pressured to resign. Still, while Professors Gay’s and Magill’s responses were widely criticized as tone-deaf, they were legally correct. At many (...) private, and all public, colleges and universities, even the worst hate speech is generally protected unless it is accompanied by aggressive, threatening, or violent conduct. -/- These “demotions” augur even worse consequences, including termination, for less powerful faculty who say the “wrong” thing, in particular statements in support of Trumpism, an increasingly mainstream ideology that stitches together white supremacy, misogyny, a preference for autocracy over democracy, and several phobias—homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia. The question I address in this paper is whether these consequences are constitutional at public schools. Whose right is stronger—a public-school teacher’s First Amendment right to express pro-Trumpist sentiments or a public school’s right to maintain a fair, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment? In this article, I argue that the public school has the upper hand here, that it is indeed constitutionally permitted to prohibit political hate speech that contributes to a hostile learning environment. Still, I narrowly limit this prohibition to dehumanizing speech—that is, speech explicitly suggesting that some human beings are “lesser”, intrinsically less valuable, than other human beings. -/- One objection to this position is that public schools may not prohibit any speech, no matter how dehumanizing, because such prohibition amounts to constitutionally impermissible viewpoint discrimination. I argue, however, that viewpoint discrimination is an integral part of education and therefore constitutionally permissible. Education necessarily involves promoting some values over others. These values fall into seven categories: constitutional principles, the humanist virtues, successful character traits and behaviors, knowledge and truth, art and beauty, health (both mental and physical), and social goods (such as justice, peace, and rule of law). (shrink)

Nesse primeiro momento da análise do problema da liberdade em Espinosa, gostaria de mostrar que, embora Espinosa trate o conceito de contingência como relacionado à finitude do entendimento humano, o que sugere uma abordagem meramente negativa, ele, na verdade, desenvolve uma abordagem positiva, a saber : a contingência, assim como o tempo , é uma forma necessária do pensamento humano que tem um fundamento na realidade das coisa s às quais ele se aplica, embora não possa ser considerado uma propriedade (...) das coisas. Mostrar que a contingência , assim como o conceito de tempo, é uma forma necessária do pensamento humano significa mostrar não apenas que existem condições objetivas que autorizam a aplicação desse conceito, mas que a imperfeição na qual se funda o conceito de contingência é necessária e intransponível para o entendimento humano. -/- O primeiro passo será estabelecido a partir da prova de que a categorização temporal, da qual a contingência é uma das formas , tem por fundamento o estatuto ontológico peculiar das coisas sobre as quais ela incide, a saber, sobre o estatuto modal (não-substancial) das coisas singulares, unicamente no qual é possível distinguir entre a essência e a existência. O segundo passo consistirá em mostrar que a categorização temporal é uma forma necessária do conhecimento que o homem tem do mundo na medida em que ela é uma das atividades constitutiva s da unidade numérica da alma humana, ou seja, uma das atividades pelas quais a alma humana existe em ato na duração. (shrink)

I defend an interpretation of the first Critique’s category of totality based on Kant’s analysis of totality in the third Critique’s Analytic of the mathematical sublime. I show, firstly, that in the latter Kant delineates the category of totality — however general it may be — in relation to the essentially singular standpoint of the subject. Despite the fact that sublime and categorial totality have a significantly different scope and function, they do share such a singular baseline. Secondly, I argue (...) that Kant’s note (in the first Critique’s metaphysical deduction) that deriving the category of totality requires a special act of the understanding can be seen as a ‘mark’ of that singular baseline. This way, my aesthetical ‘detour’ has the potential of revealing how the subjective aspects of object-constitution might be accounted for in the very system of the categories (of quantity) itself. (shrink)

There is a tension for those who want to simultaneously hold that Abraham’s disposition to sacrifice Isaac is epistemically justified and yet hold that a contemporary father would not be justified in believing that God is commanding him to sacrifice his son. This paper attempts to resolve that tension. While some commentators have correctly pointed out that one must take Abraham’s long relationship with God into account when considering Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son, they do not entertain the possibility (...) that his hearing this commandment is evidence against the hypothesis that Abraham is speaking to God. I grant this possibility. But I argue that when God commands Abraham to do the unthinkable, Abraham’s previously acquired evidence could still be sufficient to justify his belief that he is speaking with God. And in making this argument, I attempt to show what differentiates Abraham from the contemporary father who thinks that God is commanding him to sacrifice his son. (shrink)

There is disagreement among physicians and medical ethicists on the precise goals of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (HPM). Some think that HPM's goals should differ from those of other branches of medicine and aim primarily at lessening pain, discomfort, and confusion; while others think that HPM's practices should, like all other branches of medicine, aim at promoting health. I take the latter position: using the ars moriendi to set a standard for what it means to die well, I argue that (...) if HPM's practices were to aim at mitigating suffering with little regard to promoting health, some patients would die worse deaths than if HPM's practices were to aim at health. According to the ars moriendi, flourishing at the end of one's life requires that one exercise her agency and pursue the goods most important to her. On this view, HPM's practices should promote patients’ health to enable them to pursue these goods. (shrink)

In 1995, the publication of Marleen Rozemond’s paper, Descartes’s Case for Dualism, triggered the revival of the discussion on his argument in favor of the real distinction between body and soul among the Anglo-Saxon scholars. In particular, the discussion then resumed on the necessity of introducing a hidden premise (the so-called attribute premise) in order to regain its probatory character. This debate has reflected on the Cartesian studies in Brazil, and my objective in this text is to bring to the (...) debate two texts still unexplored in relation to this interpretative problem. My hypothesis is that the attempts to justify the thesis that the substance has exactly one principal attribute have not yet succeeded because they underestimated the contribution brought about by the transformation of the notion of nature entailed by the introduction of the concept of principal attribute. Understanding the Cartesian proof of substantial dualism, and more particularly the "attribute premise", would involve, I suggest, the thesis according to which the concept of principal attribute, insofar as it expresses the essence of the substance, is not, and cannot be, according to Descartes, an abstract universal, but rather one of a particular nature. (shrink)

A presentation of Spinoza's theory of affections and concept of conatus aimed at a psychoanalyst audience.

Evolutionary debunking arguments appeal to selective etiologies of human morality in an attempt to undermine moral realism. But is morality actually the product of evolution by natural selection? Although debunking arguments have attracted considerable attention in recent years, little of it has been devoted to whether the underlying evolutionary assumptions are credible. In this paper, we take a closer look at the evolutionary hypotheses put forward by two leading debunkers, namely Sharon Street and Richard Joyce. We raise a battery of (...) considerations, both empirical and theoretical, that combine to cast doubt on the plausibility of both hypotheses. We also suggest that it is unlikely that there is in the vicinity a plausible alternative hypothesis suitable for the debunker’s cause. (shrink)

For over a century now, American scholars (among others) have been debating the merits of “bad Samaritan” laws — laws punishing people for failing to attempt easy and safe rescues. Unfortunately, the opponents of bad Samaritan laws have mostly prevailed. In the United States, the “no-duty-to-rescue” rule dominates. Only four states have passed bad Samaritan laws, and these laws impose only the most minimal punishment — either sub-$500 fines or short-term imprisonment. -/- This Article argues that every state should criminalize (...) bad Samaritanism. There are three main reasons. First, criminalization is required by the supreme value that we place on protecting human life, a value that motivates laws against both homicide and manslaughter. Second, criminalization is recommended by the “proportionality principle” — i.e., the principle that a law’s level of punishment should be directly proportional to the moral severity of the offense. Third, criminalization would yield a number of significant benefits, including helping to minimize needless deaths and injuries and providing society with an institutional outlet for its outrage against bad Samaritans. -/- Still, many objections have been leveled against bad Samaritan laws. This Article will argue that while some of these objections — for example, the objections involving foundational criminal law principles such as the actus-reus requirement, the harm principle, and causation — are all easily refuted, five other objections are not. These five objections involve pragmatic considerations such as the difficulties with obtaining evidence against bad Samaritans and psychological considerations such as people’s understandable reasons for not wanting to “get involved.” This Article will then put these five objections into reflective equilibrium with the moral arguments for bad Samaritan laws and conclude that while bad Samaritanism should indeed be criminalized, the punishment that convicted bad Samaritans receive should be mild — certainly milder than the level of punishment recommended by the “proportionality principle.” The corollary of this conclusion is that the criminal law should sometimes abandon the proportionality principle. (shrink)

In this article, I weigh in on the debate between "Humeans" and "New Humeans" concerning David Hume's stance on the existence of causal connections in "the objects." According to New Humeans, Hume believes in causal connections; according to Humeans, he does not. -/- My argument against New Humeans is that it is too difficult to reconcile Hume's repeated claims that causal connections are inconceivable with any belief that they these inconceivable somethings still exist. Specifically, Hume either assumes or does not (...) assume that causal connections do or must exist. If he does not, then the New Hume is false. If he does, then it is only reasonable to expect him to do one of two things: (1) provide explicit and unambiguous statements to the effect that he still believes that causal connections do or must exist despite his belief that we cannot even conceive of them and/or (2) provide textual evidence that he subscribes to a reason for believing that causal connections do or must exist in the objects despite his belief that we cannot even conceive of them. I then argue that Hume never satisfies either (1) or (2). -/- My ultimate conclusion is not that the New Hume is false. On the contrary, in section IX, I will argue that the New Hume is still a viable possibility if we attribute a certain other position to Hume – what I will refer to as "Newtonian Empiricism." But I will also argue that this rather plausible interpretation of Hume is equally consistent with Hume's being an agnostic about causal connections and Hume's being a Humean about causal connections. Therefore while we have no good reason to subscribe to the New Hume (rather than Hume's being an agnostic or a Humean), we cannot conclusively rule out this interpretation. (shrink)

It is generally thought that ought implies can. If this maxim is correct, then my inability to do otherwise entails that I cannot be blamed for failing to do otherwise. In this article, however, I use Harry Frankfurt’s famous argument against the "Principle of Alternative Possibilities" (PAP) to show that the maxim is actually false, that I can be blamed for failing to do otherwise even in situations where I could not have done otherwise. In these situations, I do not (...) act otherwise not because I cannot act otherwise but because I choose not to act otherwise.None. (shrink)

A surprisingly large number of scholars believe that (a) we are blameworthy, and therefore punishable, only for what we have control over; (b) we have control only over our actions and intentions, not the consequences of our actions; and therefore (c) if two agents perform the very same action (e.g., attempting to kill) with the very same intentions, then they are equally blameworthy and deserving of equal punishment – even if only one of them succeeds in killing. This paper argues (...) against these “equivalence theorists” that harmful consequences do make a moral difference, that the harm produced by the killer’s attempt retroactively makes her action more blameworthy, and therefore deserving of more punishment, than the failed attempter’s attempt. The primary argument for this “non-equivalence theory” is an analogy with gambling. Just as a gambler makes a deal with the casino to allow metaphysical luck to retroactively determine the “profit status” of her bet, so too the attempted killer makes a deal with “the casino of morality” to allow metaphysical luck to retroactively determine the moral status of her attempt. She makes the “moral deal” that if her attempt succeeds, her attempt was more blameworthy than if her attempt does not succeed. And it is the greater blameworthiness of the killer’s attempt that justifies our intuition that the killer should be punished more harshly than the failed attempter. (shrink)

Statistical evidence—say, that 95% of your co-workers badmouth each other—can never render resenting your colleague appropriate, in the way that other evidence (say, the testimony of a reliable friend) can. The problem of statistical resentment is to explain why. We put the problem of statistical resentment in several wider contexts: The context of the problem of statistical evidence in legal theory; the epistemological context—with problems like the lottery paradox for knowledge, epistemic impurism and doxastic wrongdoing; and the context of a (...) wider set of examples of responses and attitudes that seem not to be appropriately groundable in statistical evidence. Regrettably, we do not come up with a fully general, fully adequate, fully unified account of all the phenomena discussed. But we give reasons to believe that no such account is forthcoming, and we sketch a somewhat messier account that may be the best that can be had here. (shrink)

Gregory Kavka's 'Toxin Puzzle' suggests that I cannot intend to perform a counter-preferential action A even if I have a strong self-interested reason to form this intention. The 'Rationalist Solution,' however, suggests that I can form this intention. For even though it is counter-preferential, A-ing is actually rational given that the intention behind it is rational. Two arguments are offered for this proposition that the rationality of the intention to A transfers to A-ing itself: the 'Self-Promise Argument' and David Gauthier's (...) 'Rational Self-Interest Argument.' But both arguments – and therefore the Rationalist Solution – fail. The Self-Promise Argument fails because my intention to A does not constitute a promise to myself that I am obligated to honor. And Gauthier's Rational Self-Interest Argument fails to rule out the possibility of rational irrationality. (shrink)

The euthanasia literature typically discusses the difference between “active” and “passive” means of ending a patient’s life. Physician-assisted suicide differs from both active and passive forms of euthanasia insofar as the physician does not administer the means of suicide to the patient. Instead, she merely prescribes and dispenses them to the patient and lets the patient “do the rest” – if and when the patient chooses. One supposed advantage of this process is that it maximizes the patient’s autonomy with respect (...) to both her decision to die and the dying process itself. Still, despite this supposed advantage, Oregon is the only state to have legalized physician-assisted suicide. After summarizing the most important Supreme Court opinions on euthanasia (namely, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep’t of Health; Vacco v. Quill; Washington v. Glucksberg; and Gonzales v. Oregon), this paper argues that while there are no strong ethical reasons against legalizing physician-assisted suicide, there are some very strong policy reasons for keeping it criminal in the other forty-nine states. (shrink)

It is well known that the nature of consciousness is elusive, and that attempts to understand it generate problems in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, psychology, and neuroscience. Less appreciated are the important – even if still elusive – connections between consciousness and issues in ethics. In this chapter we consider three such connections. First, we consider the relevance of consciousness for questions surrounding an entity’s moral status. Second, we consider the relevance of consciousness for questions surrounding moral responsibility for action. (...) Third, we consider the relevance of consciousness for the acquisition of moral knowledge. (shrink)

The Hodgkin–Huxley (HH) model of the action potential is a theoretical pillar of modern neurobiology. In a number of recent publications, Carl Craver ([2006], [2007], [2008]) has argued that the model is explanatorily deficient because it does not reveal enough about underlying molecular mechanisms. I offer an alternative picture of the HH model, according to which it deliberately abstracts from molecular specifics. By doing so, the model explains whole-cell behaviour as the product of a mass of underlying low-level events. The (...) issue goes beyond cellular neurobiology, for the strategy of abstraction exhibited in the HH case is found in a range of biological contexts. I discuss why it has been largely neglected by advocates of the mechanist approach to explanation. 1 Introduction2 A Primer on the HH Model2.1 The basic qualitative picture2.2 The quantitative model3 Interlude: What Did Hodgkin and Huxley Think?4 Craver’s View4.1 Mechanistic explanation4.2 Sketches4.3 Craver's view: The HH model as a mechanism sketch5 An Alternative View of the HH Model5.1 Another look at the equations5.2 The discrete-gating picture5.3 The road paved by Hodgkin and Huxley5.4 Summary and comparison to Craver6 Conclusion: The HH Model and Mechanistic Explanation6.1 Sketches and abstractions6.2 Why has aggregative abstraction been overlooked? (shrink)

There has been a resurgence of interest lately within philosophy of mind and action in the category of mental action. Against this background, the present paper aims to question the very possibility, or at least the theoretical significance, of teasing apart mental and bodily acts. After raising some doubts over the viability of various possible ways of drawing the mental act/bodily act distinction, the paper draws some lessons from debates over embodied cognition, which arguably further undermine the credibility of the (...) distinction. The insignificance of the distinction is demonstrated in part by showing how the focus on ‘inner’ acts hampers fruitful discussion of Galen Strawson’s skepticism of mental agency. Finally, the possibility is discussed that a distinction between covert and overt action should supplant the one between mental and bodily action. (shrink)

We present a puzzle about knowledge, probability and conditionals. We show that in certain cases some basic and plausible principles governing our reasoning come into conflict. In particular, we show that there is a simple argument that a person may be in a position to know a conditional the consequent of which has a low probability conditional on its antecedent, contra Adams’ Thesis. We suggest that the puzzle motivates a very strong restriction on the inference of a conditional from a (...) disjunction. (shrink)

Available reports provide an account of academic staff’s poor job performance in higher education institutions and universities in particular. Consequently, a growing body of research has been attracted to this area, including those seeking ways to understand the problem and others aimed at proffering solutions. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the influence of occupational stress on the job performance of academic staff in universities. Three null hypotheses directed the study in line with the quantitative ex-post facto research (...) design. A sample of 150 respondents was obtained using the systematic random sampling technique from a population of 400 lecturers in the Faculty of Education from two public universities in Nigeria. A 31-item questionnaire was used for data collection. The null hypotheses were tested at the .05 alpha level using simple linear regression analysis. It was revealed that remuneration is a significant positive predictor of academic staff job performance. The prediction of workload was negatively non-significant on the job performance of academics. The provision of institutional amenities has a positive but non-significant prediction on academic staff job performance in the two public universities. It was concluded that occupational stress significantly influences the job performance of lecturers in universities. The study recommended that the government constantly pay lecturers’ salaries as and when due. Institutional managers should reward lecturers with outstanding performance to boost their morale for effective service delivery. (shrink)

In the wake of the spectacular success of Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice, philosophers have paid a great deal of attention to testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when recipients of testimony discount it in virtue of its source: usually, their social identity. The remedy for epistemic injustice is almost always listening better and giving greater weight to the testimony we hear, on most philosophers' implicit or explicit view. But Fricker identifies another kind of epistemic injustice: hermeneutical injustice. This kind of injustice (...) occurs when someone can't articulate their own experience or understand their situation for lack of the hermeneutical tools. There is a possible tension between these kinds of injustice, we suggest: sincere testimony may be misleading (may fail to identify significant harms the testfier is subject, or may fail to register its magnitude, or to categorize it as the kind of harm it is) in virtue of a lack of hermeneutical resources. This tension raises the possibility that there are situations in which experts - those who possess hermeneutical tools - may be able to correct the testimony of those who experience harms in virtue of their identity. In this paper, we identify possible cases in which epistemic injustice might be reduced through such correction: in which an increase in testimonial injustice might serve to decrease it in the longer run, for example. We also suggest how the obvious dangers of a too great readiness to see testimony as in need of expert correction might be mitigated, and how the expert might suggest corrections without ceasing to listen. (shrink)

Response to commentary. We are grateful to Crockett and Craigie for their interesting remarks on our paper. We accept Crockett’s claim that there is a need for caution in drawing inferences about patient groups from work on healthy volunteers in the laboratory. However, we believe that the evidence we cited established a strong presumption that many of the patients who are routinely taking a medication, including many people properly prescribed the medication for a medical condition, have morally significant aspects of (...) their cognition and behavior modified in a way that is unintended and may sometimes be unwelcome. Crockett notes that in some cases the effects of long-term drug use may differ, sometimes markedly, from the effects of short-term use. However, if acute use of a drug affects a neural system involved in mediating moral cognition or behavior, this nevertheless provides some evidence that chronic use of the drug may affect that same system and thus have morally significant effects. It is also plausible, in some cases, that an acute moral effect would give rise to a chronic moral effect via cognitive mechanisms. ... (shrink)

We present a minimal pragmatic restriction on the interpretation of the weights in the “Equal Weight View” regarding peer disagreement and show that the view cannot respect it. Based on this result we argue against the view. The restriction is the following one: if an agent, $$\hbox {i}$$ i, assigns an equal or higher weight to another agent, $$\hbox {j}$$ j,, he must be willing—in exchange for a positive and certain payment—to accept an offer to let a completely rational and (...) sympathetic $$\hbox {j}$$ j choose for him whether to accept a bet with positive expected utility. If $$\hbox {i}$$ i assigns a lower weight to $$\hbox {j}$$ j than to himself, he must not be willing to pay any positive price for letting $$\hbox {j}$$ j choose for him. Respecting the constraint entails, we show, that the impact of disagreement on one’s degree of belief is not independent of what the disagreement is discovered to be. (shrink)

There are few indulgences academics can crave more than to have their work considered and addressed by leading researchers in their field. We have been fortunate to have two outstanding philosophers from whose work we have learned a great deal give ours their thoughtful attention. Grappling with Stephen Yablo’s, and Juan Comesaña’s comments and criticisms has helped us gain a better understanding of our ideas as well as their shortcomings. We are extremely grateful to them for the attentiveness and seriousness (...) with which they have considered our arguments and to philosophical studies for giving us this opportunity. Given the substantive difference between the two response papers, there is not much beyond sincere gratitude that we can covey to them jointly. We will therefore address them in turn. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn a recent paper, Michael Pardo argues that the epistemic property that is legally relevant is the one called Safety, rather than Sensitivity. In the process, he argues against our Sensitivity-related account of statistical evidence. Here we revisit these issues, partly in order to respond to Pardo, and partly in order to make general claims about legal epistemology. We clarify our account, we show how it adequately deals with counterexamples and other worries, we raise suspicions about Safety's value here, and (...) we revisit our general skepticism about the role that epistemological considerations should play in determining legal policy. (shrink)

The Sleeping Beauty problem—first presented by A. Elga in a philosophical context—has captured much attention. The problem, we contend, is more aptly regarded as a paradox: apparently, there are cases where one ought to change one’s credence in an event’s taking place even though one gains no new information or evidence, or alternatively, one ought to have a credence other than 1/2 in the outcome of a future coin toss even though one knows that the coin is fair. In this (...) paper we argue for two claims. First, that Sleeping Beauty does gain potentially new relevant information upon waking up on Monday. Second, his credence shift is warranted provided it accords with a calculation that is a result of conditionalization on the relevant information: “this day is an experiment waking day” (a day within the experiment on which one is woken up). Since Sleeping Beauty knows what days d could refer to, he can calculate the probability that the referred to waking day is a Monday or a Tuesday providing an adequate resolution of the paradox. (shrink)

The overwhelmingly predominant view in philosophy sees intending as a mental state, specifically a plan-like state. This paper rejects the predominant view in favor of a starkly opposed novel alternative. After criticizing both the predominant Bratman-esque view of intention, and an alternative view inspired by Michael Thompson, the paper proceeds to set out and defend the idea that acting with an intention to V should be understood disjunctively, as either one’s V-ing intentionally or one’s performing some kind of failed intentional (...) V-ing, where the two disjuncts share no common state of intention. Instructive structural parallels to perceptual disjunctivism are pointed out, and the view is shown, unlike its rivals, to successfully extend to capture both prospective and present intention, thereby unifying the three different guises of intention. (shrink)

Before the semester begins, a teacher tells his students: “There will be exactly one exam this semester. It will not take place on a day that is an immediate-successor of a day that you are currently in a position to know is not the exam-day”. Both the students and the teacher know – it is common knowledge – that no exam can be given on the first day of the semester. Since the teacher is truthful and reliable, it seems that (...) the students can know that what he says is true. However, in that case, assuming the students can know that they know whatever it is they know (KK) and assuming their knowledge is closed under entailment (closure), the students can reason from what they know to the conclusion that no exam will take place during the semester. This conclusion contradicts what they supposedly know: that there will be an exam. This puzzle, we argue, gives rise to a new consideration for the rejection of KK. We discuss unique features of the argument, especially in comparison to Timothy Williamson's rejection of KK in light of other versions of the surprise exam paradox. (shrink)

I argue for two propositions. First, contrary to the common wisdom, we may justly punish individuals who are not morally responsible for their crimes. Psychopaths – individuals who lack the capacity to feel sympathy – help to prove this point. Scholars are increasingly arguing that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their behavior because they suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for them to understand, and therefore be motivated by, moral reasons. These same scholars then infer from (...) this conclusion that they must also lack criminal responsibility and therefore that our continuing to punish psychopaths for their crimes is unjust. My response is that this inference is entirely fallacious. -/- Criminal responsibility turns out to be quite distinct from moral responsibility. The two kinds of responsibility require very different conditions to be satisfied. In particular, criminal responsibility, unlike moral responsibility, does not require an agent be able to grasp and follow moral reasons; it requires only that the individual be able to grasp and follow criminal laws. Once this point is recognized, it becomes much easier to accept my thesis: while the subset of psychopaths who commit crimes are not morally responsible for their criminal behavior because they cannot understand moral reasons, they are still criminally responsible because they can understand what the consequences will be if they get caught. For this reason, even though I concede that psychopaths are not morally responsible for the crimes that they commit, our practice of punishing them for these crimes is still just. -/- Second, I argue that psychopathy is a mental illness and should be recognized as such. One reason that it should be recognized as a mental illness is simply because it is; it satisfies the main criteria for inclusion in the DSM-IV, the “bible” of mental disorders. The other reason is more practical than conceptual. It starts with two facts: the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the preventive detention of any individual who is not a criminal suspect is not constitutional unless the individual is not only dangerous but also mentally ill; and psychopathy is not currently considered to be a mental illness. So, as things now stand, we cannot preventively commit dangerous psychopaths – that is, psychopaths who have clearly indicated that they will be committing serious crimes. Instead, we must wait for them to commit the crimes before we can lock them up. Unfortunately, this incarceration always comes too late for the victims. It would therefore be better if we could lock them up before they actually inflict any harm. Once again, then, I propose that the legal and psychological communities classify psychopathy as a mental illness. (shrink)

Intention Cognitivism – the doctrine that intending to V entails, or even consists in, believing that one will V – is an important position with potentially wide-ranging implications, such as a revisionary understanding of practical reason, and a vindicating explanation of 'Practical Knowledge'. In this paper, I critically examine the standard arguments adduced in support of IC, including arguments from the parity of expression of intention and belief; from the ability to plan around one's intention; and from the explanation provided (...) by the thesis for our knowledge of our intentional acts. I conclude that none of these arguments are compelling, and therefore that no good reason has been given to accept IC. (shrink)

In this Article, I will argue that a person may be deserving of criminal punishment even in certain situations where she is not necessarily morally responsible for her criminal act. What these situations share in common are two things: the psychological factors that motivate the individual’s behavior are environmentally determined and her crime is serious, making her less eligible for sympathy and therefore less likely to be acquitted. -/- To get to this conclusion, I will proceed in four steps. In (...) Part II, I will offer the first two of these steps. First, I will argue that our foundational assumption that moral responsibility is necessary for just blame and punishment is not self-evident and is actually rather difficult to explain and justify. Second, I will offer an explanation and justification that appeals to our moral psychology. Specifically, I will argue that we subscribe to this assumption ultimately because we sympathize with agents who lack responsibility for their actions. -/- Third, in Part IV, I aim to show that even if moral responsibility is not conceptually — only “emotionally” — necessary for just blame and punishment, the traditionally recognized criminal excuses are not at risk because, contrary to popular wisdom, they do not really rely on this assumption to begin with. Instead, they stand less for the metaphysical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing the non-responsible and more for the normative/ethical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing those whom we cannot reasonably expect to have acted better. I will further argue that the latter proposition does not necessarily reduce to the former. -/- Fourth, once I have defended my account of the excuses, I will question in Parts V and VI the increasingly popular notion that we should add certain conditions or circumstances to the list of recognized excuses. I will focus on one in particular — the psychological theory of “situationism” — and will argue that, despite its initial plausibility, it should be kept off the list. While situationism arguably does negate moral responsibility, it does not negate criminal responsibility. -/- Of course, this is a controversial point. Criminal responsibility is almost universally thought to require moral responsibility. But in a previous article, "Dangerous Psychopaths: Criminally Responsible But Not Morally Responsible, Subject to Criminal Punishment And to Preventive Detention," 48 San Diego L. Rev. 1299, I used personality psychology to drive a wedge between the two. In this article, I will use the opposite end of the psychological spectrum — social psychology — to drive the same important wedge. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has famously argued that the principle should be rejected. We analyze Williamson's argument and show that its key premise is ambiguous, and that when it is properly stated this premise no longer supports the argument against. After canvassing possible objections to our argument, we reflect upon some conclusions that suggest significant epistemological ramifications pertaining to the acquisition of knowledge from prior knowledge by deduction.

The nature of attention has been the topic of a lively research programme in psychology for over a century. But there is widespread agreement that none of the theories on offer manage to fully capture the nature of attention. Recently, philosophers have become interested in the debate again after a prolonged period of neglect. This paper contributes to the project of explaining the nature of attention. It starts off by critically examining Christopher Mole’s prominent “adverbial” account of attention, which traces (...) the failure of extant psychological theories to their assumption that attending is a kind of process. It then defends an alternative, process-based view of the metaphysics of attention, on which attention is understood as an activity and not, as psychologists seem to implicitly assume, an accomplishment. The entrenched distinction between accomplishments and activities is shown to shed new light on the metaphysics of attention. It also provides a novel diagnosis of the empirical state of play. (shrink)

Rationality requires that our mental attitudes exhibit specific patterns of coherence. Do we have reason to comply? 'Prichardian Quietists' regard this question as fundamentally confused: the only reasons to comply with rational requirements are the ones given by the requirements themselves. In this paper, I argue that PQ fails. I proceed by granting that Prichard's own position, from which PQ draws inspiration, is defensible, while identifying three serious problems with the parallel position about rationality. First, as I argue, PQ is (...) not plausibly combined with either the narrow-scope or the wide-scope formulations of rational requirements. Second, PQ implies that the reasons to comply with rational requirements are reasons of the wrong kind. And finally, PQ lacks a crucial component of its explanation, viz. a plausible theory of what constitutes being rationally required to V. (shrink)

Thought experiments play a role in science and in some central parts of contemporary philosophy. They used to play a larger role in philosophy of science, but have been largely abandoned as part of the field’s “practice turn”. This chapter discusses possible roles for thought experimentation within a practice-oriented philosophy of science. Some of these roles are uncontroversial, such as exemplification and aiding discovery. A more controversial role is the reliance on thought experiments to justify philosophical claims. It is proposed (...) that if we adopt an underlying empiricist view of concepts, then thought experiments can be seen as affording us contact with scientific practice, despite their seemingly a priori character. The advantages and drawbacks of thought experiments are discussed via comparison with case studies, on the one, and simulations on the other hand. The chapter closes with some remarks on how to combine thought experiments with other methods. (shrink)

Peter Baumann uses the Monty Hall game to demonstrate that probabilities cannot be meaningfully applied to individual games. Baumann draws from this first conclusion a second: in a single game, it is not necessarily rational to switch from the door that I have initially chosen to the door that Monty Hall did not open. After challenging Baumann's particular arguments for these conclusions, I argue that there is a deeper problem with his position: it rests on the false assumption that what (...) justifies the switching strategy is its leading me to win a greater percentage of the time. In fact, what justifies the switching strategy is not any statistical result over the long run but rather the "causal structure" intrinsic to each individual game itself. Finally, I argue that an argument by Hilary Putnam will not help to save Baumann's second conclusion above. (shrink)

This Article falls into three general parts. The first part starts with an important question: is the insanity defense constitutionally required? The United States Supreme Court will finally try to answer this question next term in the case of Kahler v. Kansas. -/- I say “finally” because the Court refused to answer this question in 2012 when it denied certiorari to an appeal brought by John Joseph Delling, a severely mentally ill defendant who was sentenced to life in prison three (...) years earlier for two murders. Delling never had the opportunity to plead the insanity defense because his home state, Idaho, had abolished it in 1982. -/- By depriving Delling of the right to plead insanity, Idaho violated Delling’s Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and his Eighth Amendment right against “cruel and unusual” punishment. Naturally, the same is true for many other mentally ill and disabled defendants who have been prosecuted in Idaho and in the other three states that have abolished the insanity defense: Kansas, Montana, and Utah. -/- The second general part of this Article notes an insight that I stumbled upon in the course of researching the first part: the insanity defense and the mistake of law defense both require ignorance of the law, what I refer to as “normative ignorance.” Indeed, normative ignorance is what makes both of these defenses exculpatory in the first place. -/- Given this critical connection, there is a way for Idaho, Kansas, Montana, and Utah to resume compliance with the Constitution. Instead of reinstating the insanity defense per se, which might be politically unpopular, they should just broaden their mistake of law defense to include normative ignorance caused by cognitive incapacity that is itself caused by mental illness or disability. -/- Still, this Article is not merely directed at these four western states. It is directed at the other forty-six states as well. Because they already have an insanity defense, they need not incorporate it into their mistake of law defense. But in the third general part, I will argue that they should still expand their mistake of law defense to cover defendants who either lack a reasonable opportunity to learn the law or reasonably but mistakenly infer from widely accepted norms or ethics that their conduct is lawful. (shrink)

We explore consequences of the view that to know a proposition your rational credence in the proposition must exceed a certain threshold. In other words, to know something you must have evidence that makes rational a high credence in it. We relate such a threshold view to Dorr et al.’s :277–287, 2014) argument against the principle they call fair coins: “If you know a coin won’t land tails, then you know it won’t be flipped.” They argue for rejecting fair coins (...) because it leads to a pervasive skepticism about knowledge of the future. We argue that the threshold view of evidence and knowledge gives independent grounds to reject fair coins. (shrink)

I describe a new problem for metaethical constructivism. The problem arises when agents make conflicting judgments, so that the constructivist is implausibly committed to denying they have any reason for any of the available options. The problem is illustrated primarily with reference to Sharon Street’s version of constructivism. Several possible solutions to the problem are explained and rejected.