In a series of recent papers, Jane Friedman has argued that attitudes like wondering, enquiring, and suspending judgement are question-directed and have the function of moving someone from a position of ignorance to one of knowledge. Call such attitudes interrogative attitudes. Friedman insists that all IAs are governed by the following Ignorance Norm: Necessarily, if one knows Q at t, then one ought not have an IA towards Q at t. However, I argue that key premisses in Friedman’s argument actually (...) point towards an opposing conclusion; namely, that IAs are not governed by the Ignorance Norm, and IAs have functions other than moving someone from a position of ignorance to one of knowledge. I conclude that the Ignorance Norm should be rejected. (shrink)

The second essay of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (GM) offers a naturalistic and developmental account of the emergence of conscience, a faculty uniquely responsive to remembering and honoring obligations. This article attempts to solve an interpretive puzzle that is invited by the second essay's explanation of nonmoral obligation, prior to the capacity to feel guilt. Ostensibly, Nietzsche argues that the conscience and our concept of obligation originated within contractual (“creditor-debtor”) relations, when creditors punished delinquent debtors (GM II:5). However, this interpretation, (...) which I call the contractualist reading, is incoherent and subject to an insoluble bootstrapping problem. I argue instead that Nietzsche provides two accounts of nonmoral obligation in the second essay, and that the conscience originated in the morality of custom to track rule prohibitions (“I will nots” [GM II:3]), which Nietzsche conceives of as involuntary or reciprocal obligations that, unlike contractual debts, do not require the making of promises. (shrink)

I argue that the concept of direction of fit is best seen as picking out a certain inferential property of a psychological attitude. The property in question is one that believing shares with assuming and fantasizing and fails to share with desire. Unfortunately, the standard analysis of DOF obscures this fact because it conflates two very different properties of an attitude: that in virtue of which it displays a certain DOF, and that in virtue of which it displays certain revision (...) conditions. I claim that the latter corresponds with the aim of an attitude, not its DOF. In order to remedy this failure of the standard analysis, I offer an alternative account of DOF, which I refer to as the two-content analysis. (shrink)

My dissertation addresses the question "do desires provide reasons?" I present two independent lines of argument in support of the conclusion that they do not. The first line of argument emerges from the way I circumscribe the concept of a desire. Complications aside, I conceive of a desire as a member of a family of attitudes that have imperative content, understood as content that displays doability-conditions rather than truth-conditions. Moreover, I hold that an attitude may provide reasons only if it (...) has truth-evaluable content. Insofar as desires lack truth-evaluable content, I hold that the content of a desire has the wrong kind of logical structure to provide reasons. My second line of argument claims that even if a desire did have truth-evaluable content, it would not follow that desires provide reasons. This is because a desire has no more rational significance than a guess or coin-flip. My argument relies on what I call the non-substitutability principle, the thesis that (all things being equal) one cannot substitute something that lacks rational significance, relative to some attitude, A, for something that has rational significance, relative to A, and leave the rational standing of A unchanged. For example, one cannot substitute the guess that P (i.e., something that lacks rational significance relative to the belief that P) for the perception that P (i.e., something that is rationally significant relative to the belief that P) without altering the rational standing of the belief. I argue that when the non-substitutability principle is applied to a desire that gives rise to an intention, it turns out that one can always substitute a guess or coin-flip (i.e., something that lacks rational significance relative to the intention) for the desire, without altering the rational standing of the intention. I take this to show that desires are not rationally significant relative to the intentions to which they give. (shrink)

According to the Strong Belief Thesis (SBT), intending to X entails the belief that one will X. John Brunero has attempted to impugn SBT by arguing that there are cases in which an agent intends to X but is unsure that she will X. Moreover, he claims that the standard reply to such putative counterexamples to SBT – namely, to claim that the unsure agent merely has an intention to try – comes at a high price. Specifically, it prevents SBT (...) from playing the kind of explanatory role the cognitivist requires. This article meets Brunero's challenge to SBT by offering an account of trying and intending to try that not only saves SBT from Brunero's criticism, but does so in a way that preserves the explanatory significance that cognitivists typically take SBT to have. (shrink)

Richard Holton has argued that the traditional account of intentions—which only posits the existence of all-out intentions—is inadequate because it fails to accommodate dual-plan cases; ones in which it is rationally permissible for an agent to adopt two competing plans to bring about the same end. Since the consistency norms governing all-out intentions prohibit the adoption of competing intentions, we can only preserve the idea that the agent in a dual-plan case is not being irrational if we attribute to them (...) a pair of partial intentions. I argue that, contrary to initial appearances, (i) Holton has yet to offer us an actual account of partial intentions, and (ii) that the traditional account of intentions already has the resources necessary to accommodate dual-plan cases. (shrink)

This paper examines the ontological and epistemological implications of artificial intelligence (AI) through posthumanist philosophy, integrating the works of Deleuze, Foucault, and Haraway with contemporary computational methodologies. It introduces concepts such as negative augmentation, praxes of revealing, and desedimentation, while extending ideas like affirmative cartographies, ethics of alterity, and planes of immanence to critique anthropocentric assumptions about identity, cognition, and agency. By redefining AI systems as dynamic assemblages emerging through networks of interaction and co-creation, the paper challenges traditional dichotomies such (...) as human versus machine and subject versus object. Bridging analytic and continental philosophical traditions, the analysis unites formal tools like attribution analysis and causal reasoning with the interpretive and processual methodologies of continental thought. This synthesis deepens the understanding of AI’s epistemic and ethical dimensions, expanding philosophical inquiry while critiquing anthropocentrism in AI design. The paper interrogates the spatial foundations of AI, contrasting Euclidean and non-Euclidean frameworks to examine how optimization processes and adversarial generative models shape computational epistemologies. Critiquing the reliance on Euclidean spatial assumptions, it positions alternative geometries as tools for modeling complex, recursive relationships. Furthermore, the paper addresses the political dimensions of AI, emphasizing its entanglements with ecological, technological, and sociopolitical systems that perpetuate inequality. Through a politics of affirmation and intersectional approaches, it advocates for inclusive frameworks that prioritize marginalized perspectives. The concept of computational qualia is also explored, highlighting how subjective-like dynamics emerge within AI systems and their implications for ethics, transparency, and machine perception. Finally, the paper calls for a posthumanist framework in AI ethics and safety, emphasizing interconnectivity, plurality, and the transformative capacities of machine intelligence. This approach advances epistemic pluralism and reimagines the boundaries of intelligence in the digital age, fostering novel ontological possibilities through the co-creation of dynamic systems. (shrink)

This paper examines the ontological and epistemological implications of artificial intelligence (AI) through posthumanist philosophy, integrating the works of Deleuze, Foucault, and Haraway with contemporary computational methodologies. It introduces concepts such as negative augmentation, praxes of revealing, and desedimentation, while extending ideas like affirmative cartographies, ethics of alterity, and planes of immanence to critique anthropocentric assumptions about identity, cognition, and agency. By redefining AI systems as dynamic assemblages emerging through networks of interaction and co-creation, the paper challenges traditional dichotomies such (...) as human versus machine and subject versus object. Bridging analytic and continental philosophical traditions, the analysis unites formal tools like attribution analysis and causal reasoning with the interpretive and processual methodologies of continental thought. This synthesis deepens the understanding of AI’s epistemic and ethical dimensions, expanding philosophical inquiry while critiquing anthropocentrism in AI design. The paper interrogates the spatial foundations of AI, contrasting Euclidean and non-Euclidean frameworks to examine how optimization processes and adversarial generative models shape computational epistemologies. Critiquing the reliance on Euclidean spatial assumptions, it positions alternative geometries as tools for modeling complex, recursive relationships. Furthermore, the paper addresses the political dimensions of AI, emphasizing its entanglements with ecological, technological, and sociopolitical systems that perpetuate inequality. Through a politics of affirmation and intersectional approaches, it advocates for inclusive frameworks that prioritize marginalized perspectives. The concept of computational qualia is also explored, highlighting how subjective-like dynamics emerge within AI systems and their implications for ethics, transparency, and machine perception. Finally, paper calls for a posthumanist framework in AI ethics and safety, emphasizing interconnectivity, plurality, and the transformative capacities of machine intelligence. This approach advances epistemic pluralism and reimagines the boundaries of intelligence in the digital age, fostering novel ontological possibilities through the co-creation of dynamic systems. (shrink)

According to the cognitivist strategy, the desire to bring about P provides reasons for intending to bring about P in a way analogous to how perceiving that P provides reasons for believing that P. However, while perceiving P provides reasons for believing P by representing P as true, desiring to bring about P provides reasons for intending to bring about P by representing P as good. This paper offers an argument against this view. My argument proceeds via an appeal to (...) what I call the non-substitutability of perception, the thesis that, given that there is no independent evidence for P, one cannot substitute something that fails to provide reasons with respect to P for the perceptual experience that P, without altering the rational permissibility of believing that P. By contrast, I argue that it is always possible to substitute something that fails to provide reasons for a desire without altering the rational permissibility of an intention based on said desire. I take this to show that a desire does not provide reasons in a way analogous to perceptual experience. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to develop a system of corporate ethics based on an understanding and interpretation of the ethical demand of human beings who are in relation with each other according to Emmanuel Levinas' teachings and the responsibility the human being has to and for herself and others whom she encounters based on Paul Ricoeur's teachings on human action, text and hermeneutics. While the philosophies to which we will be referring may not overtly present a normative ethic, (...) we shall convey them in such a way that is reasonably germane to the development of our system of corporate ethics that would, indeed, demonstrate why (and, perhaps, how in some instances) the human being must act in response to the demand of the other whom she encounters. -/- We must not abandon the discussion as it relates to the economy but rather include it in a broader and more comprehensive dialogue about working to promote, support and protect the human dignity of all people using the advancements of technology to improve the human condition. The broader discussion must include but not be limited to developing a working definition of corporate ethics. To engage in discussions about the economy as an indicator for human success, we must speak openly and honestly about all stakeholders that participate and are affected by the economy. Without forsaking other stakeholders, we find the corporation - the entity whose actions have the farthest reaching and, in some cases, longer lasting impact on the human condition - to be an appropriate point of departure for this endeavor. (shrink)

In 2011, a 5,000-year-old “male” skeleton buried in a “female” way was discovered by an archaeological team just outside of modern-day Prague. This article queries the impulse to name such a discovery as evidence of transgender identity, and bodies, in an increasingly ancient past. To do so, it takes up the work of Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sylvia Wynter, and Hortense Spillers as a means to push back against the impetus to name such discoveries “transgender” in order to shore up (...) the legitimacy of contemporary trans identity. Each of these three thinkers offers a different vantage point for rethinking such naming practices that push the reader to consider how desires to name and place “transgender” in a distant past papers over the violence of plantation slavery, global imperialism, and the Enlightenment's shift toward scientific reason. This article argues not that such anthropological discoveries should not be considered transgender, but rather that the desire for them to be, or become, transgender does not legitimate contemporary transgender identity, and may instead treat certain iterations of transness as spatially and temporally universal. (shrink)

The fourteen essays in this volume, by leading scholars in the field, explore the relationship between teleology and politics in Kant’s corpus. Among the topics discussed are Kant’s normative political theory and legal philosophy; his cosmopolitanism and views on international relations; his theory of history; his theory of natural teleology; and the broader relationship between morality, history, nature, and politics. _Politics and Teleology in Kant_ will be of interest to a wide audience, including Kant scholars; scholars and students working in (...) moral and political philosophy, the philosophy of history, and political theory and political science; legal scholars; and international relations theorists. (shrink)

According to content-relativist theories of moral language, different speakers use the same moral sentences to say different things. Content-relativism faces a well-known problem of lost disagreement. Recently, numerous content-relativists (including the author) have proposed to solve this problem by appeal to various kinds of non-content-based, or broadly pragmatic, disagreement. This presents content-relativists with a new problem—of found agreement. Which (if any) of these newly identified kinds of conflict is correctly identified as the lost moral disagreement we were looking for? This (...) paper offers a critical comparison of different content-relativist proposals. It divides them into two broad categories, quasi-expressivist theories (QED) and metalinguistic theories (MLD). Objections to each are considered, and QED is tentatively found to be superior. (shrink)

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

This paper champions the view (REG) that the concept of a normative reason for an agent S to perform an action A is that of an explanation why it would be good (in some way, to some degree) for S to do A. REG has numerous virtues, but faces some significant challenges which prompt many philosophers to be skeptical that it can correctly account for all our reasons. I demonstrate how five different puzzles about normative reasons can be solved by (...) attention to the concept of goodness, and in particular observing the ways in which it—and consequently, talk about reasons—is sensitive to context (ends and information). Rather than asking simply whether or not certain facts are reasons for S to do A, we need to explore the contexts in which it is and is not correct to describe a certain fact as “a reason” for S to do A. These five puzzles concern: (1) reasons for attitudes of the “right kind”, (2) evidence as reasons, (3) normative facts as reasons, (4) subjective reasons, and (5) attitudes as reasons. (shrink)

Could interacting mindreaders be in a position to know things which they would be unable to know if they were manifestly passive observers? This paper argues that they could. Mindreading is sometimes reciprocal: the mindreader’s target reciprocates by taking the mindreader as a target for mindreading. The paper explains how such reciprocity can significantly narrow the range of possible interpretations of behaviour where mindreaders are, or appear to be, in a position to interact. A consequence is that revisions and extensions (...) are needed to standard theories of the evidential basis of mindreading. The view also has consequences for understanding how abilities to interact combined with comparatively simple forms of mindreading may explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of sophisticated forms of social cognition. (shrink)

In Part One of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant repeatedly refers to a “proof” that human nature has a necessary and universal “evil propensity,” but he provides only obscure hints at its location. Interpreters have failed to identify such an argument in Part One. After examining relevant passages, summarizing recent attempts to reconstruct the argument, and explaining why these do not meet Kant's stated needs, I argue that the elusive proof must have a transcendental form (called quasi‐transcendental (...) because Kant never uses “transcendental” in Religion). With deceptive simplicity, the section titles of Part One, viewed as components in an architechtonic system of religion, constitute steps in just such a proof. (shrink)

Sufferers of eating disorders often hold false beliefs about their own body size. Such beliefs appear to violate norms of rationality, being neither grounded by nor responsive to appropriate forms of evidence. I defend the rationality of these beliefs. I argue that they are in fact supported by appropriate evidence, emanating from proprioceptive misperception of bodily boundaries. This argument has far‐reaching implications for the explanation and treatment of eating disorders, as well as debates over the relationship between rationality and human (...) psychology. (shrink)

Anorexia nervosa patients exhibit distorted body-representations. Specifically, they represent their bodies as larger than reality. Given that this distortion likely exacerbates the condition, there is an obligation to further understand and, if possible, rectify it. In pursuit of this, experimental paradigms are needed which manipulate the spatial content of these representations. In this essay, I discuss how virtual reality technology that implements full-body variants of the rubber-hand illusion may prove useful in this regard, and I discuss some issues related to (...) the clinical application of this method. -/- . (shrink)

Leibniz argues that there must be a fundamental level of simple substances because composites borrow their reality from their constituents and not all reality can be borrowed. I contend that the underlying logic of this ‘borrowed reality argument’ has been misunderstood, particularly the rationale for the key premise that not all reality can be borrowed. Contrary to what has been suggested, the rationale turns neither on the alleged viciousness of an unending regress of reality borrowers nor on the Principle of (...) Sufficient Reason, but on the idea that composites are phenomena and thus can be real only insofar as they have a foundation in substances, from which they directly ‘borrow’ their reality. The claim that composites are phenomena rests in turn on Leibniz's conceptualism about relations. So understood, what initially looked like a disappointingly simple argument for simples turns out to be a rather rich and sophisticated one. (shrink)

This article is a rebuttal to Robert G. Cavin and Carlos A. Colombetti’s article, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis: Problems with Craig’s Inference to the Best Explanation,” which argues that the Standard Model of current particle physics entails that non-physical things (like a supernatural God or a supernaturally resurrected body) can have no causal contact with the physical universe. As such, they argue that William Lane Craig’s resurrection hypothesis is not only incompatible with the notion of Jesus physically appearing to the (...) disciples, but the resurrection hypothesis is significantly limited in both its explanatory scope and explanatory power. This article seeks to demonstrate why their use of the Standard Model does not logically entail a rejection of the physical resurrection of Jesus when considering the scope and limitations of science itself. (shrink)

Despite being a common phenomenon with significant consequences on our everyday life, strikes (and direct actions in general) are still relatively undertheorized in the philosophical literature. Our paper has a specific focus that is best encapsulated in a question: What is the relationship between liberalism and the right to strike? Liberalism’s cornerstone is the idea that rights and liberties of individuals are of supreme political importance. Rights and liberties, however, are not created equal. The basic liberties are those that are (...) so politically important that legal restrictions upon them are unjustified unless to protect other basic liberties within an overall scheme of liberties, such as under a bill of rights. So, our question becomes: Is the right to strike a basic liberty? Two ongoing disputes are relevant here. The ‘older’ debate concerns the status of economic liberties and their relation to the right to strike. We will focus on a ‘newer’ discussion because it poses a challenge to liberalism itself. Namely, some ‘radical’ critics of liberalism (Gourevitch, Raekstad and Rossi) have argued that there are rights that involve coercing others, exercised during strikes or engagement in other direct action, that do not qualify as liberal basic liberties and that can sometimes take normative precedence over the liberal basic liberties. This criticism, if correct, defeats liberalism. Notice, though: since the weighing of different particular basic liberties against each other in an overall scheme of liberty is integral to high liberalism, the genuine threat that the radical critique poses stems not from the second conjunct (which its proponents have defended) but from its first (which they have merely assumed). For, if (contrary to what the radical work assumes) the right to engage in coercive strike action is a liberal basic liberty then it can, at least in principle, win out over other basic liberties, within an overall scheme of liberties, in situations of prima facie moral conflict. Raekstad and Rossi extend the radical critique, beyond the case of coercive strikes, to other forms of direct action (outside of industrial disputes) that have avowedly moral or political goals. These could include workplace occupations, street blockades, hacktivism, counter-economics, tax resistance and more. In the paper we argue that the ‘radicals’ are not entitled to the assumption that the right to strike is not a liberal basic liberty. Moreover, we suggest, high liberalism has the resources to accommodate not only a general right to engage in non-coercive strike action, but also the right to engage in some forms of coercive direct action, whether as part of an industrial dispute or not. More precisely, we show that liberalism has the resources to accommodate not only (i) a general right to engage in non-coercive strike action, but also (ii) the right to engage in some forms of coercive direct action, whether (iii) as part of an industrial dispute or (iv) not. (shrink)

Moral assertions express attitudes, but it is unclear how. This paper examines proposals by David Copp, Stephen Barker, and myself that moral attitudes are expressed as implicature (Grice), and Copp's and Barker's claim that this supports expressivism about moral speech acts. I reject this claim on the ground that implicatures of attitude are more plausibly conversational than conventional. I argue that Copp's and my own relational theory of moral assertions is superior to the indexical theory offered by Barker and (...) Jamie Dreier, and that since the relational theory supports conversational implicatures of attitude, expressive conventions would be redundant. Furthermore, moral expressions of attitude behave like conversational and not conventional implicatures, and there are reasons for doubting that conventions of the suggested kind could exist. (shrink)

MMA fighting in a competition is not necessarily wrong and is often, as far as we can tell, permissible. Our argument has two premises. First, if an act does not infringe on anyone’s moral right or violate another side-constraint, then it is morally permissible. Second, MMA-violence does not infringe on anyone’s moral right or violate another side-constraint. The first premise rested on two assumptions. First, if a person does a wrong act, then he wrongs someone. Second, if one person wrongs (...) a second, then the first infringes on the second’s right. We then looked at Nicholas Dixon’s powerful Kantian argument that MMA fighting is wrong. (shrink)

Levy (2021 Levy, N. (2021). Bad beliefs: Why they happen to good people. Oxford University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]) argues that bad beliefs predominately stem from automatic (albeit rational) updating in response to testimonial evidence. To counteract such beliefs, then, we should focus on ridding our epistemic environments of misleading testimony. This paper responds as follows. First, I argue that the suite of automatic processes related to bad beliefs extends well beyond the deference-based processes that Levy identifies. Second, I push back (...) against Levy’s claim that bad beliefs stem from wholly rational processes, suggesting that, in many cases, such processes are better characterized as arational. Finally, I note that Levy is too quick to dismiss the role that individuals can play in cleaning up their own epistemic environments, and I suggest one route through which this is possible. (shrink)

Governments are increasingly making use of field experiments to evaluate policy interventions in the spheres of education, public health and welfare. However, the research ethics literature is largely focused on the clinical context, leaving investigators, institutional review boards and government agencies with few resources to draw on to address the ethical questions they face regarding such experiments. In this article, we aim to help address this problem, investigating the conditions under which informed consent is required for ethical policy research conducted (...) or authorized by government. We argue that investigators need not secure participants' informed consent when conducting government policy experiments if: the government institution conducting or authorizing the experiment possesses a right to rule over the spheres of policy targeted by the research; and data collection does not involve the violation of participants' autonomy rights. (shrink)

How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder (...) and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis is undergoing a revival in philosophy, and much of the credit goes to Frank Jackson. Jackson argues that conceptual analysis is needed as an integral component of so-called serious metaphysics and that it also does explanatory work in accounting for such phenomena as categorization, meaning change, communication, and linguistic understanding. He even goes so far as to argue that opponents of conceptual analysis are implicitly committed to it in practice. We show that he is wrong on all of (...) these points and that his case for conceptual analysis doesn't succeed. At the same time, we argue that the sorts of intuitions that figure in conceptual analysis may still have a significant role to play in philosophy. So naturalists needn't disregard intuitions altogether. (shrink)

Body dissatisfaction has long been considered an integral component of and driving force behind anorexia nervosa. In this paper, I characterise body dissatisfaction in terms of problematic beliefs about body size and the value of thinness. I suggest two methods for understanding these beliefs. Regarding body size beliefs, I suggest focusing on certain forms of misleading phenomenal evidence that sufferers of anorexia nervosa are exposed to. Regarding beliefs about the value of thinness, I suggest focusing on the benefits of such (...) beliefs. (shrink)

[Stephen Yablo] The usual charge against Carnap's internal/external distinction is one of 'guilt by association with analytic/synthetic'. But it can be freed of this association, to become the distinction between statements made within make-believe games and those made outside them-or, rather, a special case of it with some claim to be called the metaphorical/literal distinction. Not even Quine considers figurative speech committal, so this turns the tables somewhat. To determine our ontological commitments, we have to ferret out all traces (...) of nonliterality in our assertions; if there is no sensible project of doing that, there is no sensible project of Quinean ontology. /// [Andre Gallois] I discuss Steve Yablo's defence of Carnap's distinction between internal and external questions. In the first section I set out what I take that distinction, as Carnap draws it, to be, and spell out a central motivation Carnap has for invoking it. In the second section I endorse, and augment, Yablo's response to Quine's arguments against Carnap. In the third section I say why Carnap's application of the distinction between internal and external questions runs into trouble. In the fourth section I spell out what I take to be Yablo's version of Carnap. In the last I say why that version is especially vulnerable to the objection raised in the second. (shrink)

Among contemporary epistemologists and scholars of ancient philosophy, one often hears that transmitting propositional knowledge by testimony is usually easy and straightforward, but transmitting understanding and know-how by testimony is usually difficult or simply impossible. Further provocative conclusions are then sometimes drawn from these claims: for instance, that know-how and understanding are not types of propositional knowledge. In contrast, I argue that transmitting propositional knowledge is sometimes easy and sometimes hard, just as transmitting know how and understanding is sometimes easy (...) and sometimes hard. No general lessons can be drawn about the relationships among propositional knowledge, know how, and understanding by considering the case of testimony alone. (shrink)

Evoke is a Python library for evolutionary simulations of signalling games. It offers a simple and intuitive API that can be used to analyze arbitrary game-theoretic models, and to easily reproduce and customize well-known results and figures from the literature.

This paper focuses on the fact that AI is predominantly portrayed as white—in colour, ethnicity, or both. We first illustrate the prevalent Whiteness of real and imagined intelligent machines in four categories: humanoid robots, chatbots and virtual assistants, stock images of AI, and portrayals of AI in film and television. We then offer three interpretations of the Whiteness of AI, drawing on critical race theory, particularly the idea of the White racial frame. First, we examine the extent to which this (...) Whiteness might simply reflect the predominantly White milieus from which these artefacts arise. Second, we argue that to imagine machines that are intelligent, professional, or powerful is to imagine White machines because the White racial frame ascribes these attributes predominantly to White people. Third, we argue that AI racialised as White allows for a full erasure of people of colour from the White utopian imaginary. Finally, we examine potential consequences of the racialisation of AI, arguing it could exacerbate bias and misdirect concern. (shrink)

What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how (...) to live well fails to do justice to the ancient tradition of ‘theoretical wisdom’. I address both of these concerns in filling out the account. (shrink)

Neo-Fregean logicists claim that Hume’s Principle (HP) may be taken as an implicit definition of cardinal number, true simply by fiat. A long-standing problem for neo-Fregean logicism is that HP is not deductively conservative over pure axiomatic second-order logic. This seems to preclude HP from being true by fiat. In this paper, we study Richard Kimberly Heck’s Two-Sorted Frege Arithmetic (2FA), a variation on HP which has been thought to be deductively conservative over second-order logic. We show that it isn’t. (...) In fact, 2FA is not conservative over n-th order logic, for all $n \geq 2$. It follows that in the usual one-sorted setting, HP is not deductively Field-conservative over second- or higher-order logic. (shrink)

It has long been known that in the context of axiomatic second-order logic (SOL), Hume's Principle (HP) is mutually interpretable with "the universe is Dedekind infinite" (DI). I offer a more fine-grained analysis of the logical strength of HP, measured by deductive implications rather than interpretability. The main result is that HP is not deductively conservative over SOL + DI. That is, SOL + HP proves additional theorems in the language of pure second-order logic that are not provable from SOL (...) + DI alone. Arguably, then, HP is not just a pure axiom of infinity, but rather it carries additional logical content. On the other hand, I show that HP is $\Pi^1_1$ conservative over SOL + DI, and that HP is conservative over SOL + DI + "the universe is well ordered" (WO). Next, I show that SOL + HP does not prove any of the simplest and most natural versions of the axiom of choice, including WO and weaker principles. Lastly, I discuss other axioms of infinity. I show that HP does not prove the Splitting or Pairing principles (axioms of infinity stronger than DI). (shrink)

This paper investigates whether different philosophers’ claims about “normativity” are about the same subject or (as recently argued by Derek Parfit) theorists who appear to disagree are really using the term with different meanings, in order to cast disambiguating light on the debates over at least the nature, existence, extension, and analyzability of normativity. While I suggest the term may be multiply ambiguous, I also find reasons for optimism about a common subject-matter for metanormative theory. This is supported partly by (...) sketching a special kind of hybrid view of normative judgment, perspectivism, that occupies a position between cognitivism and noncognitivism, naturalism and nonnaturalism, objectivism and subjectivism, making it more plausible that radically different metanormative theories could be about the same thing. I explore three main fissures: between (i) the “normativity” of language/thought versus that of facts and properties, (ii) abstract versus substantive senses, and (iii) formal versus robust senses. (shrink)

I argue that no one knows whether there is free will.

Many authors have proposed constraining the behaviour of intelligent systems with ‘machine ethics’ to ensure positive social outcomes from the development of such systems. This paper critically analyses the prospects for machine ethics, identifying several inherent limitations. While machine ethics may increase the probability of ethical behaviour in some situations, it cannot guarantee it due to the nature of ethics, the computational limitations of computational agents and the complexity of the world. In addition, machine ethics, even if it were to (...) be ‘solved’ at a technical level, would be insufficient to ensure positive social outcomes from intelligent systems. (shrink)

Stephen Davies taught philosophy at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. His research specialty is the philosophy of art. He is a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics. His books include Definitions of Art (Cornell UP, 1991), Musical Meaning and Expression (Cornell UP, 1994), Musical Works and Performances (Clarendon, 2001), Themes in the Philosophy of Music (OUP, 2003), Philosophical Perspectives on Art (OUP, 2007), Musical Understandings and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Music (OUP, 2011), The (...) Artful Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution (OUP, 2012), The Philosophy of Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016 second ed.), and Adornment: What Self-decorations Tells Us about Who We Are, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). (shrink)

Some philosophers object to moral error theory by arguing that there a parity between moral and epistemic normativity. They maintain that moral and epistemic error theory stand or fall together, that epistemic error theory falls, and that moral error theory thus falls too. This paper offers a response to this objection on behalf of moral error theorists. I defend the view that moral and epistemic error theory do not stand or fall together by arguing that moral error theory can be (...) sustained alongside epistemic expressivism. This unusual combination of theories can be underpinned by differences in the foundational norms that guide moral and epistemic inquiry. I conclude that the problem of epistemic normativity fails to show that it is compulsory for us to reject moral error theory. (shrink)

Could Kant have possibly been the author of this quote? Believe it or not, he did write that! What did he mean?