Radical and autopoietic enactivists disagree concerning how to understand the concept of sense-making in enactivist discourse and the extent of its distribution within the organic domain. I situate this debate within a broader conflict of commitments to naturalism on the part of radical enactivists, and to phenomenology on the part of autopoietic enactivists. I argue that autopoietic enactivists are in part responsible for the obscurity of the notion of sense-making by attributing it univocally to sentient and non-sentient beings and following (...) Hans Jonas in maintaining a phenomenological dimension to life-mind continuity among all living beings, sentient or non-sentient. I propose following Merleau-Ponty instead, who offers a properly phenomenological notion of sense-making for which sentience is a necessary condition. Against radicalist efforts to replace sense-making with a deflationary, naturalist conception of intentionality, I discuss the role of the phenomenological notion of sense-making for understanding animal behavior and experience. (shrink)

Which is better: a guarantee of a modest amount of moral value, or a tiny probability of arbitrarily large value? To prefer the latter seems fanatical. But, as I argue, avoiding such fanaticism brings severe problems. To do so, we must decline intuitively attractive trade-offs; rank structurally identical pairs of lotteries inconsistently, or else admit absurd sensitivity to tiny probability differences; have rankings depend on remote, unaffected events ; and often neglect to rank lotteries as we already know we would (...) if we learned more. Compared to these implications, fanaticism is highly plausible. (shrink)

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between speaking and spoken speech, and the relation between the two, in his Phenomenology of Perception. Against a common interpretation, I argue on exegetical and philosophical grounds that the distinction should not be understood as one between two kinds of speech, but rather between two internally related dimensions present in all speech. This suggests an interdependence between speaking and spoken aspects of speech, and some commentators have critiqued Merleau-Ponty for claiming a priority of speaking over (...) spoken speech. However, there is a sense in which Merleau-Ponty is right to emphasize the priority, namely, in terms of the ontological priority of the speaking subject with respect to language understood as a constituted cultural ideality. The latter only maintains its ontological status insofar as it is taken up by a language community. I favorably contrast Merleau-Ponty’s views on this question to those of the late Heidegger and de Saussure, and suggest potential applications of this clarified position for contemporary discussions in philosophy of language. (shrink)

Approaches to the naturalization of phenomenology usually understand naturalization as a matter of rendering continuous the methods, epistemologies, and ontologies of phenomenological and natural scientific inquiry. Presupposed in this statement of the problematic, however, is that there is an original discontinuity, a rupture between phenomenology and the natural sciences that must be remedied. I propose that this way of thinking about the issue is rooted in a simplistic understanding of the phenomenological reduction that entails certain assumptions about the subject matter (...) of phenomenology and its relationship to the natural sciences. By contrast, Merleau‐Ponty's first work, The Structure of Behavior, presents a radically different approach to the phenomenological reduction, one that traverses the natural sciences and integrates them into phenomenology from the outset. I outline the argument for this position in The Structure of Behavior and then discuss consequences for current methodological issues surrounding the naturalization of phenomenology, focusing on the relationship between empirical sciences of mind, phenomenological psychology, and transcendental phenomenology. This novel exegesis of Merleau‐Ponty's view on the reduction offers new insight into his oft‐quoted remark that the phenomenological reduction is impossible to complete. (shrink)

I have two objectives in this article. The first is methodological: I elaborate a minimal phenomenological method and attempt to show its importance in studies of infant behavior. The second objective is substantive: Applying the minimal phenomenological approach, combined with Meltzoff’s “like-me” developmental framework, I propose the hypothesis that infants learn the pointing gesture at least in part through imitation. I explain how developments in sensorimotor ability (posture, arm and hand control and coordination, and locomotion) in the first year of (...) life prepare the infant for acquiring the pointing gesture. The former may directly enable the latter by allowing the infant to experience its own body as being “like those” of others, thus allowing it to imitatively appropriate a broader range of adult behavior. My proposal emphasizes the embodiment of mind in the development of cognition, contrary to latent dualistic tendencies in some developmental literature. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a novel account of the phenomenality of language by focusing on characteristics of perceived speech. I explore the extent to which the spoken word can be said to have a horizonal structure similar to that of spatiotemporal objects: our perception of each is informed by habitual associations and expectations formed through past experiences of the object or word and other associated objects and experiences. Specifically, the horizonal structure of speech in use can fruitfully be compared (...) to that of a tool in use. The comparison suggests an account of our linguistic faculty as continuous with more foundational faculties of perception and action. I provide empirical corroboration of this account by drawing on recent neuroimaging studies of the multimodal, sensorimotor bases of speech comprehension. I then discuss how such an understanding of our linguistic ability helps advocates of embodied, non-representationalist accounts of cognition respond to a common objection. Critics grant that embodied approaches may be adequate to account for lower-level, online modes of cognition, such as perception and action, which directly engage their object. But they question whether such approaches can “scale up” to higher modes of cognition, such as imagination, memory, thought, and language, which can entertain absent, non-existent, or abstract objects. By providing a plausible account of the continuity of lower cognition and language-involving cognition, my approach responds to this objection, at least where language is concerned. (shrink)

For aggregative theories of moral value, it is a challenge to rank worlds that each contain infinitely many valuable events. And, although there are several existing proposals for doing so, few provide a cardinal measure of each world's value. This raises the even greater challenge of ranking lotteries over such worlds—without a cardinal value for each world, we cannot apply expected value theory. How then can we compare such lotteries? To date, we have just one method for doing so (proposed (...) separately by Arntzenius, Bostrom, and Meacham), which is to compare the prospects for value at each individual location, and to then represent and compare lotteries by their expected values at each of those locations. But, as I show here, this approach violates several key principles of decision theory and generates some implausible verdicts. I propose an alternative—one which delivers plausible rankings of lotteries, which is implied by a plausible collection of axioms, and which can be applied alongside almost any ranking of infinite worlds. (shrink)

Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 202-238, Spring 2022.

Aggregative moral theories face a series of devastating problems when we apply them in a physically realistic setting. According to current physics, our universe is likely _infinitely large_, and will contain infinitely many morally valuable events. But standard aggregative theories are ill-equipped to compare outcomes containing infinite total value so, applied in a realistic setting, they cannot compare any outcomes a real-world agent must ever choose between. This problem has been discussed extensively, and non-standard aggregative theories proposed to overcome it. (...) This paper addresses a further problem of similar severity. Physics tells us that, in our universe, how remotely in time an event occurs is _relative_. But our most promising aggregative theories, designed to compare outcomes containing infinitely many valuable events, are sensitive to how remote in time those events are. As I show, the evaluations of those theories are then relative too. But this is absurd; evaluations of outcomes must be absolute. So we must reject such theories. Is this objection fatal for all aggregative theories, at least in a relativistic universe like ours? I demonstrate here that, by further modifying these theories to fit with the physics, we can overcome it. (shrink)

This paper tracks the development of Merleau-Ponty's inquiries into language through the themes of institution, symbolism, and nature in his Collège de France lectures of 1953-1960. It seeks to show the continuity of Merleau-Ponty's inquiries over this period. The Problem of Speech course (1953-1954) constitutes his last extended treatment of speech, language, and expression, and it leaves many questions unanswered. Nonetheless, a careful study of the course reveals that the inquiries that follow into institution and symbolism, and later into nature, (...) do not mark a sharp rupture with his earlier thought. Rather, the later investigations are required by those into language and expression to clarify the underlying functions that support them. Ultimately, the themes of language and nature will be deeply interwoven in Merleau-Ponty's late thought, with institution and symbolism serving as important mediating concepts. (shrink)

Can it be rational to be risk-averse? It seems plausible that the answer is yes—that normative decision theory should accommodate risk aversion. But there is a seemingly compelling class of arguments against our most promising methods of doing so. These long-run arguments point out that, in practice, each decision an agent makes is just one in a very long sequence of such decisions. Given this form of dynamic choice situation, and the (Strong) Law of Large Numbers, they conclude that those (...) theories which accommodate risk aversion end up delivering the same verdicts as risk-neutral theories in nearly all practical cases. If so, why not just accept a simpler, risk-neutral theory? The resulting practical verdicts seem to be much the same. In this paper, I show that these arguments do not in fact condemn those risk-aversion-accommodating theories. Risk aversion can indeed survive the long run. (shrink)

Two key questions of normative decision theory are: 1) whether the probabilities relevant to decision theory are evidential or causal; and 2) whether agents should be risk-neutral, and so maximise the expected value of the outcome, or instead risk-averse (or otherwise sensitive to risk). These questions are typically thought to be independent---that our answer to one bears little on our answer to the other. But there is a surprising argument that they are not. In this paper, I show that evidential (...) decision theory implies risk neutrality, at least in moral decision-making and at least on plausible empirical assumptions. Take any risk-aversion-accommodating decision theory, apply it using the probabilities prescribed by evidential decision theory, and every verdict of moral betterness you reach will match those of expected value theory. (shrink)

Explaining the behaviour of ecosystems is one of the key challenges for the biological sciences. Since 2000, new-mechanicism has been the main model to account for the nature of scientific explanation in biology. The universality of the new-mechanist view in biology has been however put into question due to the existence of explanations that account for some biological phenomena in terms of their mathematical properties (mathematical explanations). Supporters of mathematical explanation have argued that the explanation of the behaviour of ecosystems (...) is usually provided in terms of their mathematical properties, and not in mechanistic terms. They have intensively studied the explanation of the properties of ecosystems that behave following the rules of a non-random network. However, no attention has been devoted to the study of the nature of the explanation in those that form a random network. In this paper, we cover that gap by analysing the explanation of the stability behaviour of the microbiome recently elaborated by Coyte and colleagues, to determine whether it fits with the model of explanation suggested by the new-mechanist or by the defenders of mathematical explanation. Our analysis of this case study supports three theses: (1) that the explanation is not given solely in terms of mechanisms, as the new-mechanists understand the concept; (2) that the mathematical properties that describe the system play an essential explanatory role, but they do not exhaust the explanation; (3) that a non-previously identified appeal to the type of interactions that the entities in the network can exhibit, as well as their abundance, is also necessary for Coyte and colleagues’ account to be fully explanatory. From the combination of these three theses we argue for the necessity of an integrative pluralist view of the nature of behaviour explanation when this is given by appealing to the existence of a random network. (shrink)

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the compatibility of (...) the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

critical analyses of the arguments and attitudes favoring the various popular datings of the inception of a human being's life.

This paper argues for a treatment of belief as essentially sensitive to certain features of context. The first part gives an argument that we must take belief to be context-sensitive in the same way that assertion is, if we are to preserve appealing principles tying belief to sincere assertion. In particular, whether an agent counts as believing that p in a context depends on the space of alternative possibilities the agent is considering in that context. One and the same doxastic (...) state may amount to belief that p in one context but not another. The second part of the paper gives a formal treatment of doxastic states, according to which belief is context-sensitive along just these lines. The model is applied to characterize (but not to refute) skeptical arguments. (shrink)

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which (...) allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's doxastic state. (shrink)

Is God a person, like you and me eventually, but only much better and without our human deficiencies? When you read some of the philosophers of religion, including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, or Open Theists, God appears as such a person, in a sense closer to Superman than to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. It is also a theory that a Christian pastoral theology today tends to impose, insisting that God is close to us and attentive to all of (...) us. But this modern account of God could be a deep and even tragic mistake. One God in three persons, the formula of the Trinity, does not mean that God is a person. On this matters we need an effort in the epistemology of theology to examine more precisely what we can pretend to know about God, and especially how we could pretend to know that God is person. (shrink)

Effective Altruism is a social movement which encourages people to do as much good as they can when helping others, given limited money, time, effort, and other resources. This paper first identifies a minimal philosophical view that underpins this movement, and then argues that there is an analogous minimal philosophical view which might underpin Effective Justice, a possible social movement that would encourage promoting justice most effectively, given limited resources. The latter minimal view reflects an insight about justice, and our (...) non-diminishing moral reason to promote more of it, that surprisingly has gone largely unnoticed and undiscussed. The Effective Altruism movement has led many to reconsider how best to help others, but relatively little attention has been paid to the differences in degrees of cost-effectiveness of activities designed to decrease injustice. This paper therefore not only furthers philosophical understanding of justice, but has potentially major practical implications. (shrink)

Our culture is conflicted about morally judging and condemning. We can't avoid it altogether, yet many layfolk today are loathe to do it for reasons neither they nor philosophers well understand. Their resistance is often confused (by themselves and by theorists) with some species of antiobjectivism. But unlike a nonobjectivist, most people think that (a) for us to judge and condemn is generally (objectively) morally wrong , yet (b) for God to do so is (objectively) proper, and (c) so too (...) for certain persons in certain relations (e.g., self-condemnation, parental child rearing.) Certainly, religious (e.g., Christian) critics of judging and condemning without doubting the objective truth of their tradition's core moral teachings. Most puzzling is that (a) merely judging and condemning in one's heart may be improper, and (b) someone else with no more evidence or expertise might properly judge and condemn the same action. The answer is in condemning's complex structure of presuppostions. Condemning and judging are acts, and attitudes initiated by the act. Condemnation is motivated by two judgments presumed to justify it, a criticism of a target, and a judgment that the criticism justifies some negative response toward the target. Unlike nonpunitive penalties, punishments are motivated and explained by condemnation. Condemnation is an act of a hostile will, wishing some evil for its target, not (just) as a means to some good. Its root is in damning, an act akin to cursing. It declares a degraded status. The hostility makes it harder to justify condemnation than criticism, and punishment than nonpunitive penalties. Condemning claims objectivity and authority. It involves reflexive evaluation, regarding itself justified, approving its hostile feelings toward the target. Condemners presume themselves entitled to sit in judgment, pass judgment, and cast the condemned down. Those presumptions inhere in sitting in judgment, assuming jurisdiction. Unlike mathematical or scientific judgments, passing moral judgment seems to be a political act subject to extraepistemic constraints. "Who are you to judge?" may properly challenge your right to pass judgment. (shrink)

The appeal to mechanisms in scientific explanation is commonplace in contemporary philosophy of science. In short, mechanists argue that an explanation of a phenomenon consists of citing the mechanism that brings the phenomenon about. In this paper, we present an argument that challenges the universality of mechanistic explanation: in explanations of the contemporary features of the eukaryotic cell, biologists appeal to its symbiogenetic origin and therefore the notion of symbiogenesis plays the main explanatory role. We defend the notion that symbiogenesis (...) is non-mechanistic in nature and that any attempt to explain some of the contemporary features of the eukaryotic cell mechanistically turns out to be at least insufficient and sometimes fails to address the question that is asked. Finally, we suggest that symbiogenesis is better understood as a pragmatic scientific law and present an alternative non-mechanistic model of scientific explanation. In the model we present, the use of scientific laws is supposed to be a minimal requirement of all scientific explanations, since the purpose of a scientific explanation is to make phenomena expectable. Therefore, this model would help to understand biologists’ appeal to the notion of symbiosis and thus is shown to be better, for the case under examination, than the mechanistic alternative. (shrink)

In her book Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, Ann Hartle argues that Montaigne’s thought is dialectical in the Hegelian sense. Unlike Hegel’s progressive dialectic, however, Montaigne’s thought is, according to Hartle, circular in that the reconciliation of opposed terms comes not in the form of a newly emergent term, but in a return to the first term, where the meaning of the first is transformed as a result of its dialectical interaction with the second. This analysis motivates Hartle’s claim that (...) Montaigne is not a skeptic at all, let alone a Pyrrhonian skeptic. In this paper, I argue that Hartle’s circular-dialectical interpretation of Montaigne is not only compatible with Pyrrhonism, but is in fact an ideal model for understanding Sextus Empiricus’s skeptical therapy. (shrink)

Critique of prevailing textbook conception of sufficient conditions and necessary conditions as a truth functional relation of material implication (p->q)/(~q->~p). Explanation of common sense conception of condition as correlative of consequence, involving dependence. Utility of this conception exhibited in resolving puzzles regarding ontology, truth, and fatalism.

In this paper Animalism is analysed. It will be argued that Animalism is correct in claiming (i) that being of a certain sort of animal S is a fundamental individuative substance sortal concept (animal of the species Homo Sapiens), (ii) that this implies that Animalism is correct in claiming that persons such as us are, by necessity, human beings, (iii) that remaining the same animal is a necessary condition for our identity over time. Contrary to Animalism it will be argued (...) that this does not imply that person should be understood as a phased sortal concept. It will be argued that Animalism rests upon a prior conception of person, and that this implies that person must be understood as a basic substance sortal concept through which we have to individuate ourselves and others. It is further argued that this, together with the insights of Animalism, implies that persons, by necessity, are beings of a biological nature. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion of the Cracow Circle (1934-1944) are the principal precursors of what is now called the analytic philosophy of religion. The widespread claim that the analytic philosophy of religion was from the beginning an Anglo-American affair is an ill-informed one. It is demonstrable that the enterprise, although not the label "analytic philosophy of religion," appeared in Poland in the 1930’s. Józef Bochenski’s postwar work is a development of the Cracow Circle’s prewar work in the analytic philosophy of religion, (...) or at least of important elements of that earlier work. Bochenski’s approach in his ’Logic of Religion’ is quite original and might still be profitably studied and discussed by philosophers of religion of the analytic persuasion. (shrink)

Contra Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan, neither classical just war theory nor the contemporary rules of war require or support any notion of combatant moral equality. Nations rightly accept prohibitions against punishing enemy combatants without recognizing any legal or moral right of aggressors to kill. The notion of combatant moral equality has real import only in our interpersonal -- and intrapersonal -- attitudes, since the notion effectively preempts any ground for conscientious objection. Walzer is criticized for over-emphasizing our collective responses (...) to war conduct and slighting our personal, extra-political responses. (shrink)

Thompson Clarke’s seminal paper “The Legacy of Skepticism” (1972) is notoriously difficult in both substance and presentation. Despite the paper’s importance to skepticism studies in the nearly half-century since its publication, no attempt has been made in the secondary literature to provide an account, based on a close reading of the text, of just what Clarke’s argument is. Furthermore, much of the existing literature betrays (or so it seems to me) fundamental misunderstandings of Clarke’s thought. In this essay, I attempt (...) to explain—concisely but comprehensively—Clarke’s overall argument in “The Legacy of Skepticism.”. (shrink)

critical analysis of moral status of human beings. Argues that humans have special moral status simply by being members of our species.

Analyses of quotation have assumed that quotations are referring expressions while disagreeing over details. That assumption is unnecessary and unacceptable in its implications. It entails a quasi-Parmenidean impossibility of meaningfully denying the meaningfulness or referential function of anything uttered, for it implies that: 'Kqxf' is not a meaningful expression 'The' is not a referring expression are, if meaningful, false. It also implies that ill formed constructions like: 'The' is 'the' are well formed tautologies. Such sentences make apparent the need for (...) what is commonly explicit, a genuine referring expression, a noun phrase, usually a description, to which the quotation is appositional. A quotation is not itself a word, though it may contain such. The markers signal that the enquoted material is like a sentence-embedded color patch, material displayed to facilitate reference to something identifiable by/with it specified by the noun phrase it subserves. (shrink)

Many think that Pascal’s Wager is a hopeless failure. A primary reason for this is because a number of challenging objections have been raised to the wager, including the “many gods” objection and the “mixed strategy” objection. We argue that both objections are formal, but not substantive, problems for the wager, and that they both fail for the same reason. We then respond to additional objections to the wager. We show how a version of Pascalian reasoning succeeds, giving us a (...) reason to pay special attention to the infinite consequences of our actions. (shrink)

The Greek constructions of Zoroaster relate to the historical Zoroaster and to the Zoroaster of the Zoroastrian faith in one respect only. The Greeks knew that Zoroaster was the “prophet,” in the sense of the human founder, of the national Persian religion of their times. That, of course, is a cardinal fact, but it is one fact only. For the rest, the Greek Zoroasters — for there were many — were fantasies of their own imaginations. Since the Greeks were a (...) curious and inventive people, these multiple Zoroasters are interesting creations in their own right. Of more importance, they are elements in the “West’s” construction — or misconstruction — of a major “oriental” religion. -/- . (shrink)

Tomando en cuenta las críticas más importantes a la teoría de los individuos transmundanos, así como algunos argumentos en relación con el esencialismo de origen, este artículo trata el problema de la identidad de aquellos individuos a través de mundos posibles. Proponemos la noción de mundo admisible como un tipo especial de modelo en Lógica Intensional, que, dentro de otro modelo, permite el mapeo de la historia e identidad de los individuos en diferentes mundos posibles. Esta propuesta sugiere una solución (...) plausible para determinar propiedades esenciales empíricamente relevantes ostentadas por los individuos transmundanos, un método eficaz para evaluar su identidad y, finalmente, una nueva perspectiva desde la cual reexaminar el clásico debate entre realismo y antirrealismo en la Filosofía del Lenguaje. (shrink)

Fiona Woollard argues that when one is personally involved in an emergency, one has a moral requirement to make substantial sacrifices to aid others that one would not otherwise have. She holds that there are three ways in which one could be personally involved in an emergency: by being physically proximate to the victims of the emergency; by being the only person who can help the victims; or by having a personal encounter with the victims. Each of these factors is (...) claimed to be defeasibly sufficient to ground personal involvement, and thus a requirement of substantial sacrifice to aid. Woollard defends this view on the basis of a number of cases. We show that Woollard’s cases contain various confounding factors. In view of the more precisely drawn cases offered here, it is clear that neither proximity nor uniqueness nor personal encounter is intuitively defeasibly sufficient in the way Woollard claims. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the simulation of intelligence, an activity that has been considered the notional task of Artificial Intelligence, does not comprise its duplication. Briefly touching on the distinction between conceivability and possibility, and commenting on Ryan’s approach to fiction in terms of the interplay between possible worlds and her principle of minimal departure, we specify verisimilitude in Artificial Intelligence as the accurate resemblance of intelligence by its simulation and, from this characterization, claim the metaphysical impossibility of duplicating intelligence, (...) as neither verisimilarly nor convincingly simulating intelligence involves its duplication. To this end, we argue by a representative case of simulation that, albeit conceivable, Turing’s test for machine intelligence wrongly equates the occurrence of indistinguishable intelligence performance to intelligence duplication, which is grounded in a prima facie conceivable but metaphysically impossible view that separates intelligence from its origin. Finally, we establish the following criterion for evaluating simulation in Artificial Intelligence: simulations succeed in AI if and only if they are able to epistemically persuade human beings that intelligence has been duplicated, that is, if and only if verisimilar simulations can convincingly minimally depart from actual intelligence. (shrink)

View more Abstract If logical truth is necessitated by sheer syntax, mathematics is categorially unlike logic even if all mathematics derives from definitions and logical principles. This contrast gets obscured by the plausibility of the Synonym Substitution Principle implicit in conceptions of analyticity: synonym substitution cannot alter sentence sense. The Principle obviously fails with intercepting: nonuniform term substitution in logical sentences. ‘Televisions are televisions’ and ‘TVs are televisions’ neither sound alike nor are used interchangeably. Interception synonymy gets assumed because logical (...) sentences and their synomic interceptions have identical factual content, which seems to exhaust semantic content. However, intercepting alters syntax by eliminating term recurrence, the sole strictly syntactic means of ensuring necessary term coextension, and thereby syntactically securing necessary truth. Interceptional necessity is lexical, a notational artifact. The denial of interception nonsynonymy and the disregard of term recurrence in logic link with many misconceptions about propositions, logical form, conventions, and metalanguages. Mathematics is distinct from logic: its truth is not syntactic; it is transmitted by synonym substitution; term recurrence has no essential role. The ‘=’ of mathematics is an objectual relation between numbers; the ‘=’ of logic marks a syntactic relation of coreferring terms. -/- . (shrink)

Critical analysis of development of concept of jus ante bellum.

As part of a review symposium on DARWIN'S ARGUMENT BY ANALOGY: FROM ARTIFICIAL TO NATURAL SELECTION (2021), the journal METASCIENCE invited Roger White, Jon Hodge and me to submit a response to the thoughtful commentaries on our book by Andrea Sullivan-Clarke, David Depew and Andrew Inkpen.

Animal protectionists condemn speciesism for motivating the practices protectionists condemn. This misconceives both speciesism and the morality condoning those practices. Actually, animal protectionists can be and generally are speciesists. The specifically speciesist aspects of people’s beliefs are in principle compatible with all but the most radical protectionist proposals. Humanity’s speciesism is an inclusivist ideal encompassing all human beings, not an exclusionary ethos opposing moral concern for nonhumans. Anti-speciesist rhetoric is akin to anti-racist rhetoric that condemned racists for regarding people as (...) moral inferiors because of their skincolor. Actually, racists never thought that skin color is itself a reason for discounting someone’s interests, just as humans have never thought that only a human can be a proper object of moral concern. Some speciesists have great concern for animal suffering; some don’t. Animal protectionists have yet to show that a lack of concern is due to some false assumptions. (shrink)

According to theological fictionalism, God has the same status as a fictional character in a novel or a movie. Such a claim has been defended by Robin Le Poidevin on the basis of Kendall Walton’s theory of make believe. But it is not only a philosophical esoteric account of religious beliefs, it is now an exoteric view, sometimes accepted by "believers" themselves, and so could even be considered a postmodern heresy. But theological fictionalism does not work: faith is real assent (...) and not make believe; belief is different from acceptance; belief and faith are dispositional, but make believe seems to presuppose an account of beliefs as occurrent states; we cannot anymore imagine at will than we can believe at will. (shrink)

Professional Military Ethics Education (PMEE) must transmit and promote military professionalism, so it must continuously.

This article examines the question of whether the atheist and the believer can understand each other, to the point of being friends intellectually. The answer is no. The atheist and the believer can be best enemies, but their epistemic disagreement is definitely radical. For it is not a disagreement on religious belief itself, but about what allows the believer to believe. The article examines some aspects of John Greco’s concept of ”friendly theism’, the discussion of conciliationism and anti-conciliatonism, and the (...) epistemic role of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

The identity "relation" is misconceived since the syntax of "=" is misconceived as a relative term. Actually, "=" is syncategorematic; it forms (true) sentences with a nonpredicative syntax from pairs of (coreferring) flanking names, much as "&" forms (true) conjunctive sentences from pairs of (true) flanking sentences. In the conaming structure, nothing is predicated of the subject, other than, implicitly, its being so conamed. An identity sentence has both an objectual reading as a necessity about what is named, and also (...) a metalinguistic reading as a contingency about the names. Either way the claim about the subject referent has no extralinguistic content. The necessity of alteridentity (non-self-identity) statements is "lexical", due to contingencies of the names' reference, much like the necessity of analytic statements, due to contingencies of the predicates' sense, and unlike the necessity of logical truths (e.g., self-identities) whose truth is secured by syntax alone. Both alter-identity and analytic sentences are readable as objectual necessities and metalinguistic contingencies. Epistemically, alter-identity statements are not essentially unlike analyticities. "Greece is Hellas"/"g=h" and "Greeks are Hellenes"/"(x)(Gx<=>Hx)" are equally (un)informative; so too for "Azure is cobalt"/"a=c" and "Everything azure is cobalt"/"(x)(Ax<=>Cx)". The real epistemic contrast is between proper names (terms without predicative sense) and terms with a predicative sense (names and predicates of properties). Proper names refer to concrete objects, property names refer to abstract objects. That contrast is metaphysical and thus epistemic. (shrink)

Critical analysis of wide variety of conceptions and justifications of retribution and punishment. Emphasis is on pivotal role of condemnation.

People espousing human moral equality encompassing every conspecific have been unumbrageous being labeled ‘speciesists’ and likened to Nazis and Klansmen, despite the insult’s being indefensible, and, if meant seriously, enraging. Perhaps their equanimity is unruffled because anti-speciesist acquaintances are remarkably chummier with them than with real racists. -/- Anti-speciesists confuse two questions: (1) Is the bare fact of an individual’s being a human in itself a reason for us humans to deal with it as we'd like to be dealt with? (...) (2) Have we enough reason, apart from human well-being, to impose on each other protections of other animals? Speciesism, perspicuously specified, says ‘yes’ to (1) and nothing about (2). World-wide, human fantasy is filled with nonhuman persons, alien morally accountable agents, thought worthy of being treated as we would wish to be treated, or better. The idea of human equality is consistent with both rapaciously using animals and radical animal protectionism. We meat-eaters discount animal interests, not because they’re nonhuman, but because we know no compelling reason to count them more. -/- Anti-speciesist literature is surveyed and seen to specify ‘speciesism’ capriciously. Terminology aside, anti-speciesist criticisms are specious. Anti-speciesists hope to shift the justificatory burden by denying species membership any moral relevance, but that denial cannot motivate their protectionism. Their ad hominem dismissal of speciesism as a self-serving prejudice is unsustainable. Their avowed inability to imagine any justification of speciesism is hardly probative. Their alleged refutations are baldly question-begging assertions of theses of hallowed ethical theories speciesism denies. They derive anti-speciesism from “anti-biologism” (a radical denial of any biological relation’s having any intrinsic moral relevance), which is fallaciously extrapolated from anti-racist and anti-sexist ideas. Appeals to taxonomical controversies glibly and disingenuously assume the relevance of those controversies, which anti-biologism denies. (shrink)