In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is for a degreed property to count as degrees of consciousness, (...) and (4) applies the analysis to various theories of consciousness. I argue that whether consciousness comes in degrees ultimately depends on which theory of consciousness turns out to be correct. But I also argue that most theories of consciousness entail that consciousness comes in degrees. (shrink)

Some philosophers think that life is worth living not merely because of the goods and the bads within it, but also because life itself is good. I explain how this idea can be formalized by associating each version of such of a view with a function from length of life to the value generated by life itself. Then I argue that every version of the view that life itself is good faces some version of the following dilemma: either (1) good (...) human lives are worse than very long lives wholly devoid of pleasure, desire-satisfaction, knowledge, or any other goods, or (2) very short lives containing nothing but suffering are worth living. Since neither result is plausible, we ought to reject the view that life itself is good. On the view I favor, any given life may be worth living because of the goods that it contains, but life itself is neutral. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of "objective phenomenology," or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Are a material object, such as a statue, and its constituting matter, the clay, parts of one another? One wouldn't have thought so, and yet a number of philosophers have argued that they are. I review the arguments for this surprising claim showing how they all fail. I then consider two arguments against the view concluding that there are both pre-theoretical and theoretical considerations for denying that the statue and the clay are mutual parts.

Many philosophers accept both of the following claims: (1) consciousness matters morally, and (2) species membership doesn’t matter morally. In other words, many reject speciesism but accept what we might call 'sentientism'. But do the reasons against speciesism yield analogous reasons against sentientism, just as the reasons against racism and sexism are thought to yield analogous reasons against speciesism? This paper argues that speciesism is disanalogous to sentientism (as well as racism and sexism). I make a case for the following (...) asymmetry: (a) some non-humans clearly have interests, but (b) no non-conscious entities clearly have interests. This asymmetry, I argue, renders sentientism resistant to the standard argument against speciesism. (shrink)

Is A & C sufficient for the truth of ‘if A were the case, C would be the case’? Jonathan Bennett thinks not, although the counterexample he gives is inconsistent with his own account of counterfactuals. In any case, I argue that anyone who accepts the case of Morgenbesser's coin, as Bennett does, should reject Bennett’s counterexample. Moreover, I show that the principle underlying his counterexample is unmotivated and indeed false. More generally, I argue that Morgenbesser’s coin commits us to (...) the sufficiency of A & C for the truth of the corresponding counterfactual. (shrink)

Andrew McGonigal presents some interesting data concerning truth in serial fictions.1 Such data has been taken by McGonigal, Cameron and Caplan to motivate some form of contextualism or relativism. I argue, however, that many of these approaches are problematic, and that all are under-motivated as the data can be explained in a standard invariantist semantic framework given some independently plausible principles.

The growing demand for uterus transplantation (UTx) invites continued philosophical evaluation of the function of UTx (and what constitutes its ‘success’), as well as the recipient eligibility for UTx. Currently, UTx caters to partnered, cisgender women of childbearing age looking to get pregnant and give birth to a biogenetically related child. The medical justification for this—the treatment of uterine infertility—explains the primacy of this practice. However, this dominant conceptualization of UTx does not necessarily capture the diverse needs for which both (...) cis‐ and transgender women might take interest in UTx that are not strictly procreative, such as bodily integrity and gender identity reasons. In this paper, I argue that non‐procreative motivations for uterus acquisition ought to be taken seriously as a matter of non‐discrimination and consistency. (shrink)

False consciousness requires a general explanation for why, and how, oppressed individuals believe propositions against, as opposed to aligned with, their own well-being in virtue of their oppressed status. This involves four explanatory desiderata: belief acquisition, content prevalence, limitation, and systematicity. A social constructionist approach satisfies these by understanding the concept of false consciousness as regulating social research rather than as determining the exact mechanisms for all instances: the concept attunes us to a complex of mechanisms conducing oppressed individuals to (...) mistake social understandings of themselves as natural self-understandings—the limits lie where these overlap (sometimes), or are entirely absent. (shrink)

This paper develops a theory of analog representation. We first argue that the mark of the analog is to be found in the nature of a representational system’s interpretation function, rather than in its vehicles or contents alone. We then develop the rulebound structure theory of analog representation, according to which analog systems are those that use interpretive rules to map syntactic structural features onto semantic structural features. The theory involves three degree-theoretic measures that capture three independent ways in which (...) a system can be more or less analog. We explain how our theory improves upon prior accounts of analog representation, provides plausible diagnoses for novel challenge cases, extends to hybrid systems that are partially analog and partially symbolic, and accounts for some of the advantages and disadvantages of representing analogically versus symbolically. (shrink)

Is consciousness intrinsically valuable? Some theorists favor the positive view, according to which consciousness itself accrues intrinsic value, independent of the particular kind of experience instantiated. In contrast, I favor the neutral view, according to which consciousness is neither intrinsically valuable nor disvaluable. The primary purpose of this paper is to clarify what is at stake when we ask whether consciousness is intrinsically valuable, to carve out the theoretical space, and to evaluate the question rigorously. Along the way, I also (...) show why the neutral view is attractive and why certain arguments for the positive view do not work. (shrink)

This paper focuses on an early Chinese conception of genealogical argumentation in the late Warring States text Han Feizi and a possible response it has to the problem of genealogical self-defeat as identified by Amia Srinivasan —i.e., the genealogist cannot seem to support their argument with premises their interlocutor or they themselves can accept, given their own argument. The paper offers a reading of Han Fei’s genealogical method that traces back to the meditative practice of an earlier Daoist text the (...) Zhuangzi and its communicative strategy, providing a conception of genealogy aimed at undoing fixations on political systems in order to bring about a more adaptive state—specifically, genealogy that does not require epistemological commitment to its premises. (shrink)

Literature on testimonial injustice and ways that perpetrators might combat it have flourished since Miranda Fricker’s ground-breaking work on testimonial injustice. Less attention has been given, however, to the role of bystanders. In this paper, I examine the accountability that bystanders may have for their omissions to redress testimonial injustice. I argue that bystander accountability applies in cases where it is opportune for bystanders to intervene, and if they are also sufficiently equipped and able to redress the testimonial injustice. Moreover, (...) I recommend that we move beyond virtue responsibilism for ameliorative thinking about testimonial injustice. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of emotion focuses on challenging dualistic conceptualizations. Three of the most obvious dualisms are the following: 1. emotion opposes reason; 2. emotion is subjective, while reason is objective; 3. emotion lies internal to the subject, while reason is external. With challenges to these dualisms, one of the more interesting questions that has surfaced is the idea of emotional appropriateness in a particular context. Here, consider a widely held belief in the United States associates racialized groups (...) with specific emotions—most notably African American women with anger. Clearly these emotional attributions are essentialistic--and hence racist. But this response is too easy. The acknowledgement that emotion lies both internally in the subject and externally in the world opens the possibility of attributing an emotional temperament to a population group. Yet if an identity group has an emotional temperament, can they be accountable for emotionally appropriate behavior? (shrink)

Conscious experiences are characterized by mental qualities, such as those involved in seeing red, feeling pain, or smelling cinnamon. The standard framework for modeling mental qualities represents them via points in geometrical spaces, where distances between points inversely correspond to degrees of phenomenal similarity. This paper argues that the standard framework is structurally inadequate and develops a new framework that is more powerful and flexible. The core problem for the standard framework is that it cannot capture precision structure: for example, (...) consider the phenomenal contrast between seeing an object as crimson in foveal vision versus merely as red in peripheral vision. The solution I favor is to model mental qualities using regions, rather than points. I explain how this seemingly simple formal innovation not only provides a natural way of modeling precision, but also yields a variety of further theoretical fruits: it enables us to formulate novel hypotheses about the space and structures of mental qualities, formally differentiate two dimensions of phenomenal similarity, generate a quantitative model of the phenomenal sorites, and define a measure of discriminatory grain. A noteworthy consequence is that the structure of the mental qualities of conscious experiences is fundamentally different from the structure of the perceptible qualities of external objects. (shrink)

Traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, gender, and deviance. Recent studies have added socio-technical aspects of the digital divide as a new focus.

There is growing concern that decision-making informed by machine learning (ML) algorithms may unfairly discriminate based on personal demographic attributes, such as race and gender. Scholars have responded by introducing numerous mathematical definitions of fairness to test the algorithm, many of which are in conflict with one another. However, these reductionist representations of fairness often bear little resemblance to real-life fairness considerations, which in practice are highly contextual. Moreover, fairness metrics tend to be implemented in narrow and targeted toolkits that (...) are difficult to integrate into an algorithm’s broader ethical assessment. In this paper, we derive lessons from ethical philosophy and welfare economics as they relate to the contextual factors relevant for fairness. In particular we highlight the debate around acceptability of particular inequalities and the inextricable links between fairness, welfare and autonomy. We propose Key Ethics Indicators (KEIs) as a way towards providing a more holistic understanding of whether or not an algorithm is aligned to the decision-maker’s ethical values. (shrink)

Moti Mizrahi (2013) presents some novel counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism (HS) for indicative conditionals. I show that they are not compelling as they neglect the complicated ways in which conditionals and modals interact. I then briefly outline why HS should nevertheless be rejected.

“A Phenomenology of Seeing and Affect in a Polarized Climate,” focuses on the polarized political climate that reflects racial and class differences in the wake of the Trump election. She explores how to see differently about those with whom one disagrees—that is in this specific scenario for Lee, the Trump supporters, including Asian American members of her own family. Understanding Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s exploration of the interstice between the visible and the invisible, if human beings are to see otherwise, we need (...) to disrupt the ready association between the visible and the invisible. Here, she explores the function of affect for the possibility of this break. The phenomenological understanding of emotion does not necessarily empower emotion with any sort of superlative force, especially over reason. But a subject’s emotion chiasmatically reflects the world and vice versa. The caustic and strong emotions felt by people about this presidency reflects the entrenched political climate in our society and chiasmatically the entrenched political climate embroils people in strong emotions that make it difficult to see those with whom we disagree as people we can trust and consider reasonable. To break out of this standoff, to see differently about Trump supporters, one needs to feel differently about them as well. (shrink)

Epistemic injustices are wrongs that agents can suffer in their capacity as knowers. In this article, I offer a conceptualisation of a phenomenon I call anticipatory epistemic injustice, which I claim is a distinct and particularly pernicious type of epistemic injustice worthy of independent analysis. I take anticipatory epistemic injustice to consist in the wrongs that agents can suffer as a result of anticipated challenges in their process of taking up testimony-sharing opportunities. I distinguish my account from paradigmatic cases of (...) epistemic injustice, such as Miranda Fricker’s concepts of testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice; additionally, I differentiate my view from Kristie Dotson’s account of testimonial smothering. I argue, ultimately, that anticipatory epistemic injustice is a useful addition to our current taxonomy of epistemic injustices, as it has promising explanatory potential for a range of non-standard cases of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

The standard versions of predicativism are committed to the following two theses: proper names are count nouns in all their occurrences, and names do not refer to objects but express name-bearing properties. The main motivation for predicativism is to provide a uniform explanation of referential names and predicative names. According to predicativism, predicative names are fundamental and referential names are explained by appealing to a null determiner functioning like “the” or “that.” This paper has two goals. The first is to (...) reject the predicativists’ explanation of the two types of names. I present three syntactic counterexamples to the predicativists’ account of referential names: incorporation, modification, and measure phrase uses. The second goal is to present a novel strategy to explain the two types of names. I propose that referential names are fundamental but that there are null morphemes available for transforming a name into a count noun (and possibly into other syntactic categories). (shrink)

A Lockean metaphysics of belief that understands outright belief as a determinable with degrees of confidence as determinates is supposed to effect a unification of traditional coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned (...) knowledge” – knowledge in the absence of rational confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured, even without token identity, given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification. (shrink)

Nguyen argues that only his radically pragmatic account and Sterken’s indexical account can capture what we call the positive data. We present some new data, which we call the negative data, and argue that no theory of generics on the market is compatible with both the positive data and the negative data. We develop a novel version of the indexical account and show that it captures both the positive data and the negative data. In particular, we argue that there is (...) a semantic constraint that, in any context, the semantic value of GEN is upward monotone and non-symmetric. On the other hand, the pragmatic account has difficulty accommodating the negative data. This is because no pragmatic principles have been developed that can explain the negative data. In the paper, we focus on only the pragmatic account and the indexical account, but our discussion has broad implications for the debate on generics: any empirically adequate accounts of generics must be flexible enough to accommodate the positive data and yet constrained enough to accommodate the negative data. (shrink)

I sketch here an intuitive picture of repeatable artworks as created types, which are individuated in part by historical paths (re)production. Although attractive, this view has been rejected by a number of authors on the basis of general claims about abstract objects. On consideration, however, these general claims are overgeneralizations, which whilst true of some abstracta, are not true of all abstract objects, and in particular, are not true of created types. The intuitive picture of repeatable artworks as created types (...) is, then, left in place. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the function argument of Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics 2.1. The argument seeks to define happiness through the method of division; shows that the highest good is better than all four of the goods of the soul, not only two, as commentators have thought; and unlike the Nicomachean argument, makes the highest good definitionally independent of the human function.

A review of 'The aesthetics and ethics of copying'. Hick, Darren Hudson and Reinhold Schmücker, eds.

To address the rising concern that algorithmic decision-making may reinforce discriminatory biases, researchers have proposed many notions of fairness and corresponding mathematical formalizations. Each of these notions is often presented as a one-size-fits-all, absolute condition; however, in reality, the practical and ethical trade-offs are unavoidable and more complex. We introduce a new approach that considers fairness—not as a binary, absolute mathematical condition—but rather, as a relational notion in comparison to alternative decisionmaking processes. Using US mortgage lending as an example use (...) case, we discuss the ethical foundations of each definition of fairness and demonstrate that our proposed methodology more closely captures the ethical trade-offs of the decision-maker, as well as forcing a more explicit representation of which values and objectives are prioritised. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, the federal system is an effective mode of organizing different sources of power while avoiding sovereign politics. This article aims to contribute two specific claims to the burgeoning scholarship on Arendt's international federalism. First, Arendt's international thoughts call for balancing two demands: the domestic need for human greatness and flourishing and the international demand for regulation and cooperation. Second, her reflections on council-based federalism offer a nuanced position that views the dual elements of equality in politics (intra-state (...) and interstate equality) as neither contradictory nor reconciliatory but rather as ideal types along a continuum. This study shows that, through the unique form of federalism emphasizing the need to balance two demands of free politics with a clear acknowledgement of its precariousness, Arendt's thinking adds much-needed sensitivity to international discourse. (shrink)

Are counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents automatically true? That is, is Conjunction Conditionalization: if (X & Y), then (X > Y) valid? Stalnaker and Lewis think so, but many others disagree. We note here that the extant arguments for Conjunction Conditionalization are unpersuasive, before presenting a family of more compelling arguments. These arguments rely on some standard theorems of the logic of counterfactuals as well as a plausible and popular semantic claim about certain semifactuals. Denying Conjunction Conditionalization, then, requires (...) rejecting other aspects of the standard logic of counterfactuals, or else our intuitive picture of semifactuals. (shrink)

이 책자는 형식 논리의 일종인 양상논리에 입문하고 싶으신 분들을 위한 짧은 교재입니다. “양상논리 맛보기” 라는 말마따나, 이 책자는 양상논리에 관심은 있지만 아직 본격적으로 공부를 시작하진 않은 분들께서 ‘맛보기’를 하기에 적합한 안내 책자입니다. 아무쪼록 이 책자가 양상논리를 공부해나가시는데 유용한 첫 발판이 될 수 있기를 바랍니다. / This booklet is a Korean adaptation and translation of Part VIII of forall x: Calgary (Fall 2021 edition), which is intended to be introductory material for modal logic. The original text is based on Robert Trueman's (...) A Modal Logic Primer, which is revised and expanded by Richard Zach and Aaron Thomas-Bolduc in forall x: Calgary. (forall x: Calgary is based on forall x: Cambridge by Tim Button, which is in turn based on forall x by P. D. Magnus, and also includes material from forall x: Lorain County Remix by Cathal Woods and J. Robert Loftis.) This booklet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. (shrink)

I reply to Ahmed’s rejection (2011) of my argument (Walters 2009) that all counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents are themselves true.

A response to a declaration in 'Le Monde', 'Luttons efficacement contre les théories du complot' by Gérald Bronner, Véronique Campion-Vincent, Sylvain Delouvée, Sebastian Dieguez, Karen Douglas, Nicolas Gauvrit, Anthony Lantian, and Pascal Wagner-Egger, published on June the 6th, 2016.

Several authors have recently argued against intellectualism, the view that one’s epistemic position with respect to p depends exclusively on one’s truth-relevant factors with respect to p. In this paper, I first examine two prominent arguments for the anti-intellectualist position and find both of them wanting. More precisely, I argue that these arguments, by themselves, are underdetermined between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. I then manifest the intuitive plausibility of intellectualism by examining the ordinary conversational pattern of challenging a claim.

The syntactic structure of the deontic “ought” has been much debated in philosophy and linguistics. Schroeder argues that the deontic “ought” is syntactically ambiguous in the sense that it can be associated with either a control or raising construction. He distinguishes between deliberative and evaluative “ought”s and argues that the deliberative “ought” is control while the evaluative “ought” is raising. However, if there is a control sense of “ought,” it implies that there is a sense of “ought” in which the (...) word carries an external argument. Chrisman (2012) proposes two linguistic tests to verify this prediction. I add a new test, which I call the intensionality test, to the list. (shrink)

We examined whether the enforcement of phantom rules—frequently broken and rarely enforced codified rules—varies by the race of the rule breaker. First, we analyzed whether race affects when 311 calls, a nonemergency service, end in arrest in New York City. Across 10 years, we found that calls from census blocks of neighborhoods consisting of mostly White individuals were 65% less likely to escalate to arrest than those where White people were the numerical minority. Next, we experimentally manipulated transgressor race and (...) found that participants (N = 393) who were high in social dominance orientation were more likely to route 311 calls to 911 when the transgressor was Black (vs. White). We also explored the subjective experience of phantom rule enforcement; People of color report they are more likely to be punished for violating phantom rules compared to White people. Overall, we find evidence of racism in the enforcement of phantom rules. (shrink)

Some cases show that counterfactual conditionals (‘counterfactuals’ for short) are inherently ambiguous, equivocating between forward-tracking and backtracking counterfactu- als. Elsewhere, I have proposed a causal modeling semantics, which takes this phenomenon to be generated by two kinds of causal manipulations. (Lee 2015; Lee 2016) In an important paper (Hiddleston 2005), Eric Hiddleston offers a different causal modeling semantics, which he claims to be able to explain away the inherent ambiguity of counterfactuals. In this paper, I discuss these two semantic treatments (...) and argue that my (bifurcated) semantics is theoretically more promising than Hiddleston’s (unified) semantics. (shrink)

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I examine (...) the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination. (shrink)

Faced with the choice between saving one person and saving two others, what should we do? It seems intuitively plausible that we ought to save the two, and many forms of consequentialists offer a straightforward rationale for the intuition by appealing to interpersonal aggregation. But still many other philosophers attempt to provide a justification for the duty to save the greater number without combining utilities or claims of separate individuals. I argue against one such attempt proposed by Iwao Hirose. Despite (...) being consequentialist, his argument is aggregation-free since it relies on a non-aggregative value judgement method, instead of interpersonal aggregation, to establish that (other things being equal) a state of affairs is better when more people survive therein. I do not take issue with its consequentialist element; rather, I claim that there is no good reason to adopt the method in question, and thus no good reason to be moved by his argument overall. What we are in search of is not merely a logically possible method that can produce the conclusion that we already want, but one that we have good reason to adopt. Hirose's argument elegantly demonstrates how it could possibly be true that it is right to save the greater number; but it fails to show that we have reason to believe so - even when we do not combine the interests of different individuals. (shrink)

I discuss whether "sentience" (i.e., phenomenal consciousness) comes in degrees.

Christian B. Miller has noted a “realism challenge” for virtue ethicists to provide an account of how the character gap between virtuous agents and non-virtuous agents can be bridged. This is precisely one of Han Feizi’s key criticisms against Confucian virtue ethics, as Eric L. Hutton argues, which also cuts across the Aristotelian one: appealing to virtuous agents as ethical models provides the wrong kind of guidance for the development of virtues. Hutton, however, without going into detail, notes that the (...) notion of rituals in the Confucian tradition may be able to sidestep Han Feizi’s criticism. In this essay, I wish to explore not only how the notion of rituals, alongside its corollaries in Xunzi’s Confucian program for ethical cultivation, indeed addresses Han Feizi’s criticism, but also observe that Aristotle’s tragic poetry plays functionally equivalent roles in his own understanding of ethical upbringing. I will begin by considering Han Feizi’s critique of ethical cultivation in virtue ethics as such and how it poses a specific problem for the acquisition of the ‘constitutive reasoning’ shared by Aristotle and Xunzi. I will then briefly note that this problem trades on the synthetic structure of human nature found in both Aristotle and Xunzi (the rational/irrational parts of the soul and the heartmind/five faculties), which grounds the way they understand ethical action and agency. Finally, I will suggest how both Aristotle and Xunzi understand the role of the arts in their extensive programme of ethical cultivation, allowing them to respond to Han Feizi’s attack as too narrow a construal of their respective ethical projects. It is hoped that, through this, we may gain a better sense of how more recent virtue ethicists may similarly draw on aesthetic resources for ethical development. (shrink)

Recent studies of peacebuilding highlight the importance of attending to people’s local experiences of conflict and cooperation. This trend, however, raises the fundamental questions of how the local is and should be constituted and what the relationship is between institutions and individual actors of peace at the local level of politics. I turn to Hannah Arendt’s thoughts to address these issues. Arendt’s thinking provides a distinctive form of realism that calls for stable institutions but never depletes the spirit of resistance. (...) Peacebuilding guided by this insight seeks to enable parties in conflict to voice their competing opinions by acting agonistically in public and to help them align their disruptive yet creative voices with a desire to establish and sustain common institutions. Thus, Arendt’s thinking not only offers a way to increase sensitivity to local differences but also to provide direction to the politics of resistance. In the end, it offers a balanced insight into peacebuilding and local agency beyond the contemporary liberal and critical approaches to peace. (shrink)

The debate over Hypothetical Syllogism is locked in stalemate. Although putative natural language counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism abound, many philosophers defend Hypothetical Syllogism, arguing that the alleged counterexamples involve an illicit shift in context. The proper lesson to draw from the putative counterexamples, they argue, is that natural language conditionals are context-sensitive conditionals which obey Hypothetical Syllogism. In order to make progress on the issue, I consider and improve upon Morreau’s proof of the invalidity of Hypothetical Syllogism. The improved proof (...) relies upon the semantic claim that conditionals with antecedents irrelevant to the obtaining of an already true consequent are themselves true. Moreover, this semantic insight allows us to provide compelling counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism that are resistant to the usual contextualist response. (shrink)

Researchers have recognized that interpersonal trust consists of different dimensions. These dimensions suggest that trust can be rational, cognitive, or affective. Affect, which includes moods and emotions, is likely to have a direct impact on the affective dimension. On the other hand, there are also studies showing that affect indirectly influence cognitive judgments. Nonetheless, in this chapter we argue that the impact of affect on judgment will not be the same on all individuals. In effect, the impact varies, depending on (...) the individual's attention to affect, motivation to use or guard against affect, or regulation of affect. All this may suggest that an individual's abilities or tendencies to manage affect will have implication on his or her trust relationships with others. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently proposed several alleged cases of “knowledge from falsehood,” i.e., cases of inferential knowledge epistemised by an inference with a false crucial premise. This paper examines such cases and argues against interpreting them as cases of knowledge from falsehood. Specifically, I argue that the inferences in play in such cases are in no position to epistemise their conclusions.

Are the circumstances in which moral testimony serves as evidence that our judgement-forming processes are unreliable the same circumstances in which mundane testimony serves as evidence that our mundane judgement-forming processes are unreliable? In answering this question, we distinguish two possible roles for testimony: (i) providing a legitimate basis for a judgement, (ii) providing (‘higher-order’) evidence that a judgement-forming process is unreliable. We explore the possibilities for a view according to which moral testimony does not, in contrast to mundane testimony (...) play role (i), but can play role (ii). We argue that standard motivations for rejecting this hybrid position are unpersuasive but suggest that a more compelling reason might be found in considering the social nature of morality. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new self-defense theory of punishment, the rights-protection theory. By appealing to the interest theory of right, I show that what we call “the right of self-defense” is actually composed of the right to protect our basic rights. The right of self-defense is not a single, self-standing right but a group of derivative rights justified by their contribution to the protection of the core, basic rights. Thus, these rights of self-defense are both justified and constrained (...) by the basic rights they are supposed to protect. I then explain how this theory responds to a common objection. Opponents argue that, to exercise the right of self-defense, some threat must be present. However, in the context of punishment, the threat has already taken effect or is already gone. Thus, the right of self-defense becomes irrelevant when we punish an offender. I show that this objection is based on an implausibly narrow conception of self-defense. A reasonable conception would allow us to exercise our right of self-defense when there is a present definite threat, a future definite threat, or a potential threat. Thus, we may still exercise our right of self-defense in the context of punishment. (shrink)

Michael Dummett argues, against Saul Kripke, that there could have been unicorns. He then claims that this possibility shows that the logic of metaphysical modality is not S5, and, in particular, that the B axiom is false. Dummett’s argument against B, however, is invalid. I show that although there are number of ways to repair Dummett’s argument against B, each requires a controversial metaphysical or semantic commitment, and that, regardless of this, the case against B is undermotivated. Dummett’s case is (...) still of interest, however, as if his assumptions are correct, S5 has to go, with the natural culprit being S4. (shrink)

Totalitarianism is perhaps unanimously regarded as one of the greatest political evils of the last century and has been the grounds for much of Anglo-American political theory since. Confucianism, meanwhile, has been gaining credibility in the past decades among sympathizers of democratic theory in spite of criticisms of it being anti-democratic or authoritarian. I consider how certain key concepts in the classical Confucian texts of the Mencius and the Xunzi might or might not be appropriated for ‘legitimising’ totalitarian regimes. Under (...) an Arendtian approach to understanding totalitarianism, it is precisely an unproblematised relation to a normative History and Nature that underlies the potential compatibility or incompatibility. I argue against a longstanding prejudice that if any form of Confucianism would be totalitarian, it would have to be Xunzian. Against this, I hope to show that if any form of Confucianism would be totalitarian, it might well be a naturalistic Mencian Confucianism instead of a constructivist Xunzian one. (shrink)

Holly Smith (2014) contends that subjective deontological theories – those that hold that our moral duties are sensitive to our beliefs about our situation – cannot correctly determine whether one ought to gather more information before acting. Against this contention, I argue that deontological theories can use a decision-theoretic approach to evaluating the moral importance of information. I then argue that this approach compares favourably with an alternative approach proposed by Philip Swenson (2016).

Psychologists and philosophers have not yet resolved what they take implicit attitudes to be; and, some, concerned about limitations in the psychometric evidence, have even challenged the predictive and theoretical value of positing implicit attitudes in explanations for social behavior. In the midst of this debate, prominent stakeholders in science have called for scientific communities to recognize and countenance implicit bias in STEM fields. In this paper, I stake out a stakeholder conception of implicit bias that responds to these challenges (...) in ways that are responsive to the psychometric evidence, while also being resilient to the sorts of disagreements and scientific progress that would not undermine the soundness of this call. Along the way, my account advocates for attributing collective (group-level) implicit attitudes rather than individual-level implicit attitudes. This position raises new puzzles for future research on the relationship (metaphysical, epistemic, and ethical) between collective implicit attitudes and individual-level attitudes. (shrink)