In this paper, I show how semantic factors constrain the understanding of the computational phenomena to be explained so that they help build better mechanistic models. In particular, understanding what cognitive systems may refer to is important in building better models of cognitive processes. For that purpose, a recent study of some phenomena in rats that are capable of ‘entertaining’ future paths (Pfeiffer and Foster 2013) is analyzed. The case shows that the mechanistic account of physical computation may be complemented (...) with semantic considerations, and in many cases, it actually should. (shrink)

The objective of the research was to check whether False Consensus Effect (FCE), shown in much research,is also valid for ontological decisions. Test participants, faced with an ontological dilemma, made a choice three times,which of the 3 item set (Cracow City, Me myself, the Universe) refers to something most real. The research conducted first among psychology students (N=116), then replicated on mathematics students (N=126) and middle-aged people (N=106). Results: 1) All groups chose the Universe most seldom (4%-11% subjects), the (...) remaining two “objects” were chosen with similar frequency, 2) FCE occurred in all groups and in reference to each choice, 3) with people who made inconsequent choices (16% of test participants), FCE was notably higher (p <.001) in comparison to people making consequent choices,4)FCE with inconsequent people turned out to be higher (p <.01) even in comparison with “the smallest minority”, people who (consequently) chose the Universe. (shrink)

Many authors have argued that epistemic rationality sometimes comes into conflict with our relationships. Although Sarah Stroud and Simon Keller argue that friendships sometimes require bad epistemic agency, their proposals do not go far enough. I argue here for a more radical claim—romantic love sometimes requires we form beliefs that are false. Lovers stand in a special position with one another; they owe things to one another that they do not owe to others. Such demands hold for beliefs as (...) well. Two facets of love ground what I call the false belief requirement , or the demand to form false beliefs when it is for the good of the beloved: the demand to love for the right reasons and the demand to refrain from doxastic wronging. Since truth is indispensable to epistemic rationality, the requirement to believe falsely, consequently, undermines truth norms. I demonstrate that, when the false belief requirement obtains, there is an irreconcilable conflict between love and truth norms of epistemic rationality: we must forsake one, at least at the time, for the other. (shrink)

Prof. Miščević has long been an ardent defender of the use of thought experiments in philosophy, foremost metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Recently he has, in his typically sophisticated manner, extended his general account of philosophical thought-experimenting to the domain of normative politics. Not only can the history of political philosophy be better understood and appreciated, according to Miščević, when seen as a more or less continuous, yet covert, practice of thought-experimenting, the very progress of the discipline may crucially (...) depend on finding the right balance between the constraints of (biological, psychological, economic, political, and so on) reality and political-moral ideals when we set to design our basic political notions and institutions. I have much less confidence in this project than prof. Miščević does. As a subspecies of moral TE, political TE share all their problems plus exhibit some of their own. In the paper, I present and discuss two types of evidence that threaten to undermine political philosophers’ trust in thought-experiments and the ethical/political intuitions elicited by them: (i) the dismal past record of thought-experimentation in moral and political philosophy; and (ii) the variety, prevalence, and stubbornness, of bias in ordinary social/political judgment. (shrink)

Nativists about theory of mind have typically explained why children below the age of four fail the false belief task by appealing to the demands that these tasks place on children’s developing executive abilities. However, this appeal to executive functioning cannot explain a wide range of evidence showing that social and linguistic factors also affect when children pass this task. In this paper, I present a revised nativist proposal about theory of mind development that is able to accommodate these (...) findings, which I call the pragmatic development account. According to this proposal, we can gain a better understanding of the shift in children’s performance on standard false-belief tasks around four years of age by considering how children’s experiences with the pragmatics of belief discourse affect the way they interpret the task. (shrink)

One central objection to philosophical defences of liberal neutrality is that many neutrally justified laws and policies are nonetheless discriminatory as they unilaterally impose costs or confer unearned privileges on the bearers of a particular conception of the good. Call this the false neutrality objection. While liberal neutralists seldom consider this objection to be a serious allegation, and often claim that it rests on a misunderstanding, I argue that it is a serious challenge for proponents of justificatory neutrality. Indeed, (...) a careful examination of recent French and Canadian laws which impede the members of cultural minorities from freely practising their religion reveals that the state can hide its discriminatory aims by cloaking the policies it enacts in neutral language. In order to avoid the problem of false neutrality, I contend, liberal neutralists should defend a combination of neutrality of justification and neutrality of aim and operationalize neutrality of aim through a practical test that has been a defining feature of American jurisprudence on religious freedom in the last thirty years: the general applicability requirement. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that critical theory needs to make its socio-ontological commitments explicit, whilst on the other hand I will posit that contemporary social ontology needs to amend its formalistic approach by embodying a critical theory perspective. In the first part of my paper I will discuss how the question was posed in Horkheimer’s essays of the 1930s, which leave open two options: (1) a constructive inclusion of social ontology within social philosophy, or else (2) a program (...) of social philosophy that excludes social ontology. Option (2) corresponds to Adorno’s position, which I argue is forced to recur to a hidden social ontology. Following option (1), I first develop a metacritical analysis of Searle, arguing that his social ontology presupposes a notion of 'recognition' which it cannot account for. Furthermore, by means of a critical reading of Honneth, I argue that critical theory could incorporate a socioontological approach, giving value to the constitutive socio-ontological role of recognition and to the socio-ontological role of objectification. I will finish with a proposal for a socio-ontological characterization of reification which involves that the basic occurrence of recognition is to be grasped at the level of background practices. (shrink)

The modern form of government resort their legitimacy to democracy and Republican concept. In any viable way, the political power no longer entertains the dynasty or any divinity from the religion. Then who are responsible to make us fateful if we are any kind of citizen in a polity. Often it is true that the government has to be an amalgam of power elites, and divided for a limited government. The modern democratic constitutionalism considered this aspect any most in primacy (...) to defend or promote their privileges or vision. This root context of civil interaction around 17th and 18th centuries has underlain the modern form of democratic state. Within the concern of these two points, the paper has explored the main feature of limited government in the liberal constitutionalism, which deals with the separation of powers principle, distribution of governmental powers and some of controversies involving the social legislation and role of public officers. I hope that it could be a lesson for the public officer of both camps, one as realistically and the other in the context of analogical insights. Hopefully, I may expect that the following research may be bred in socialist tension of states about how the public officers are structured to act and could liberate themselves to progress. (shrink)

Marx claims that economic crisis is endemic to capitalism and will worsen as capitalism develops. The article situates Marx’s crisis theory within the discipline of political economy, explains its relationship to mainstream economics, charts economic crises that have happened since the 1840s, and explains Marx’s crisis theorem of the fall in the rate of profit. In conclusion, the 2008 economic crisis, and the notion of crisis in general, are speculatively considered. Special attention is given to the affective desire to own (...) a home, particularly as this is desire is developed by capitalism, in relation to the sub-prime mortgage credit crisis. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation of the theory of time and the theory of truth in Deleuze’s philosophy. According to Deleuze, a mutation in our conception of time occurred with Kant. In antiquity, time had been subordinated to movement, it was the measure or the “number of movement” (Aristotle). In Kant, this relation is inverted: time is no longer subordinated to movement but assumes an independence and autonomy of its own for the first time. In Deleuze’s phrasing, time becomes the (...) pure and empty form of everything that moves and changes — not an eternal form (as in Plato), but precisely the form of what is not eternal. In turn, the theory of time is inextricably linked to the concept of truth, since to say that a proposition is true means that it is true “in all times and in all places.” Truth, in other words, is timeless, eternal, non-temporal. When the form of the true is confronted with the form of time, the concept of truth is necessarily put into crisis, and Deleuze’s argument is that time allows the power of the false to assume an autonomy of its own. The analysis will attempt to show how the liberation of time from movement (the pure and empty form of time) leads to a liberation of the false from the true (the power of the false). (shrink)

> Context • The alleged dichotomy between mind and matter is pervasive. Therefore, the attempt to explain mat- ter in terms of mind (idealism) is often considered a mirror image of that of explaining mind in terms of mat- ter (mainstream physicalism), in the sense of being structurally equivalent despite being reversely arranged. > Problem • I argue that this is an error arising from language artifacts, for dichotomies must reside in the same level of abstraction. > Method • I (...) show that, because matter outside mind is not an empirical observation but rather an explanatory model, the epistemic symmetry between the two is broken. Consequently, matter and mind cannot reside in the same level of abstraction. > Results • It then becomes clear that attempting to explain mind in terms of matter is epistemically more costly than attempting to explain matter in terms of mind. > Implications • The qualities of experience are suggested to be not only epistemically, but also ontologically primary. > Constructivist content • I high- light the primacy of perceptual constructs over explanatory abstraction on both epistemic and ontic levels. > Key words • Idealism, physicalism, pancomputationalism, anti-realism, hard problem of consciousness, epistemic symmetry, explanatory abstraction, levels of abstraction. (shrink)

A joke is amusing if and only if it’s fitting to be amused by it; an act is regrettable if and only if it’s fitting to regret it. Many philosophers accept these biconditionals and hold that analogous ones obtain between a wide range of additional evaluative properties and the fittingness of corresponding responses. Call these the _fit–value biconditionals_. The biconditionals give us a systematic way of recognizing the role of fit in our ethical practices; they also serve as the bedrock (...) of various metaethical projects, such as fitting-attitude analysis of value and the ‘fittingness first’ approach. Yet despite the importance of the biconditionals, there is very little discussion of their proper interpretation. This paper argues that any plausible interpretation of the fit_–_value biconditionals must disarm several kinds of apparent counterexample. For instance, that an achievement is pride-worthy doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to take pride in it because the achievement might not be mine or that of anyone close to me; that a joke is amusing doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to be amused by it for six straight months; and that a person is loveable doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to love him romantically because that person might be my sibling. We consider possible responses to such counterexamples and develop what we consider the most promising interpretation of the biconditionals. The upshot is that certain widespread assumptions about fit and its relation to value and reasons should be reconsidered. (shrink)

Close attention to Kant’s comments on animal minds has resulted in radically different readings of key passages in Kant. A major disputed text for understanding Kant on animals is his criticism of G. F. Meier’s view in the 1762 ‘False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures’. In this article, I argue that Kant’s criticism of Meier should be read as an intervention into an ongoing debate between Meier and H. S. Reimarus on animal minds. Specifically, while broadly aligning (...) himself with Reimarus, Kant distinguishes himself from both Meier and Reimarus on the role of judgement in human consciousness. (shrink)

The DSM‐5 highlights two essential psychological features of anorexia nervosa (AN): recalcitrant fear of gaining weight and body image disturbance. Prominent accounts grant false beliefs about body weight and shape a central role in the explanation of AN behavior. In this article, we propose a stronger emphasis on recalcitrant fear. We show that such fear can explain AN behavior without the intermediary of a false belief, and thus without the associated explanatory burdens and conceptual difficulties. We illustrate how (...) shifting the emphasis from false belief to recalcitrant fear can supplement a number of different non‐doxastic models of AN. (shrink)

This book launches a sustained defense of a radical interpretation of the doctrine of the open future. Patrick Todd argues that all claims about undetermined aspects of the future are simply false.

Corcoran, J. 2005. Counterexamples and proexamples. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 11(2005) 460. -/- John Corcoran, Counterexamples and Proexamples. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150 E-mail: [email protected] Every perfect number that is not even is a counterexample for the universal proposition that every perfect number is even. Conversely, every counterexample for the proposition “every perfect number is even” is a perfect number that is not even. Every perfect number that is odd is a proexample for the existential proposition that some (...) perfect number is odd. Conversely, every proexample for the proposition “some perfect number is odd” is a perfect number that is odd. As trivial these remarks may seem, they can not be taken for granted, even in mathematical and logical texts designed to introduce their respective subjects. One well-reviewed book on counterexamples in analysis says that in order to demonstrate that a universal proposition is false it is necessary and sufficient to construct a counterexample. It is easy to see that it is not necessary to construct a counterexample to demonstrate that the proposition “every true proposition is known to be true” is false–necessity fails. Moreover the mere construction of an object that happens to be a counterexample does not by itself demonstrate that it is a counterexample–sufficiency fails. In order to demonstrate that a universal proposition is false it is neither necessary nor sufficient to construct a counterexample. Likewise, of course, in order to demonstrate that an existential proposition is true it is neither necessary nor sufficient to construct a proexample. This article defines the above relational concepts of counterexample and of proexample, it discusses their surprising history and philosophy, it gives many examples of uses of these and related concepts in the literature and it discusses some of the many errors that have been made as a result of overlooking the challenging subtlety of the proper use of these two basic and indispensable concepts. (shrink)

In “The Open Future” (2021) Patrick Todd argues that the future is open, and that as a consequence all future contingents are false (as opposed to the more common view that they are neither true nor false). Very roughly, this latter claim is motivated by the idea that (a) presentism is true, and so future (and indeed past) things do not exist and (b) if future things do not exist, then the only thing that could ground there being (...) future tensed facts, and hence make those future tensed claims true, is the present and the laws of nature. But (c) the present and the laws of nature cannot ground there being future tensed facts because they do not necessitate there being any such fact. Hence future tensed claims are all false. Todd then goes on to present a semantics for his version of the open future on which all future contingents are false. In what follows we take up two strands of Todd’s view. First, we begin, in Section 2, by outlining Todd’s argument that future contingents are all false. We suggest that the considerations that Todd adduces for this conclusion do not support this being so. Then in Section 3 we consider the semantics that Todd offers, and argue that it yields implausible consequences. (shrink)

Modeling involves the use of false idealizations, yet there is typically a belief or hope that modeling somehow manages to deliver true information about the world. The paper discusses one possible way of reconciling truth and falsehood in modeling. The key trick is to relocate truth claims by reinterpreting an apparently false idealizing assumption in order to make clear what possibly true assertion is intended when using it. These include interpretations in terms of negligibility, applicability, tractability, early-step, and (...) more. Elaborations are suggested about their precise formulations, mutual relationships, and truth-aptness. (shrink)

The debate on whether and why misinformation is bad primarily focuses on the spread of false beliefs as its main harm. From the assumption that misinformation primarily causes harm through the spread of false beliefs as a starting point, it has been contended that the problem of misinformation has been exaggerated. Its tendency to generate false beliefs appears to be limited. However, the near-exclusive focus on whether or not misinformation dupes people with false beliefs neglects other (...) epistemic harms associated with it. Specifically, I show that misinformation also causes trouble for the epistemic goods of truth attainment, intellectual autonomy and debate pluriformity. Moreover, for each of these goods, I argue that emphasizing error-avoidance exacerbates, rather than mitigates, the harms caused by misinformation. These oversights and dilemmas show that prioritizing error-avoidance in the fight against misinformation is not a neutral default policy or necessarily a net positive. A shift in focus away from the spread of false beliefs as the main harm of misinformation is needed to better understand and counter its negative effects. (shrink)

In recent years, a new generation of activists has reinvigorated debate over the public commemorative landscape. While this debate is in no way limited to statues, it frequently crystallizes around public representations of historical figures who expressed support for the oppression of certain groups or contributed to their past or present oppression. In this paper, I consider what should be done about such representations. A number of philosophers have articulated arguments for modifying or removing public monuments. Joanna Burch-Brown (2017) grounds (...) her argument for removal in what I call the “honorific” function of such representations—the ways in which they express and tend to cultivate admiration for their subjects. In the first two sections of the paper, I develop a novel argument for modifying these representations based on this insight. I argue that leaving such representations unmodified in the public space tends to undermine the dignity of members of oppressed groups as well as their assurance that society and government are committed to their rights and constitutional entitlements. In the paper’s third section, I develop a “balancing test” for determining whether the relevant moral and pragmatic considerations favor making a particular representation inaccessible to the public, or recontextualizing it for public consumption. Unlike some of the existing philosophical treatments of honorific representations that focus on particular monuments, this balancing test is designed for general application to any honorific representation that satisfies the presumptive case for modification. To conclude, I offer some reasons why weak forms of recontextualization that do not involve altering institutional context may often be an insufficient remedy for the problems I describe. (shrink)

Social philosophers often invoke the concept of false consciousness in their analyses, referring to a set of evidence-resistant, ignorant attitudes held by otherwise sound epistemic agents, systematically occurring in virtue of, and motivating them to perpetuate, structural oppression. But there is a worry that appealing to the notion in questions of responsibility for the harm suffered by members of oppressed groups is victim-blaming. Individuals under false consciousness allegedly systematically fail the relevant rationality and epistemic conditions due to structural (...) distortions of reasoning or knowledge practices, undermining their status as responsible moral agents. But attending to the constitutive mechanisms and heterogeneity of false consciousness allows us to see how having it does not eo ipso render someone an inappropriate target of blame. I focus here on the 1889 anti-suffragist manifesto “An Appeal Against Female Suffrage,” arguing that its signatories, despite false consciousness, satisfy both conditions for ordinary blameworthiness. I consider three prominent signatories, observing that the irrationality characterisation is unsustainable beyond group-level diagnoses, and that their capacity to respond appropriately to reasons was not compromised. Following recent work on epistemic injustice, I also argue that culpable mechanisms constituted their false consciousness, rendering them blameworthy for the Appeal. (shrink)

Findings from the cognitive sciences suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for some memory errors are adaptive, bringing benefits to the organism. In this paper we argue that the same cognitive mechanisms also bring a suite of significant epistemic benefits, increasing the chance of an agent obtaining epistemic goods like true belief and knowledge. This result provides a significant challenge to the folk conception of memory beliefs that are false, according to which they are a sign of cognitive frailty, (...) indicating that a person is less reliable than others or their former self. Evidence of memory errors can undermine a person’s view of themselves as a competent epistemic agent, but we show that false memory beliefs can be the result of the ordinary operation of cognitive mechanisms found across the species, which bring substantial epistemic benefits. This challenge to the folk conception is not adequately captured by existing epistemological theories. However, it can be captured by the notion of epistemic innocence, which has previously been deployed to highlight how beliefs which have epistemic costs can also bring significant epistemic benefits. We therefore argue that the notion of epistemic innocence should be expanded so that it applies not just to beliefs but also to cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

This chapter will discuss Spinoza’s critique of free will, though our brief study of this topic in the first part of the chapter will aim primarily at preparing us to address the main topic of the chapter, which is Spinoza’s explanation of the reasons which force us to believe in free will. At times, Spinoza seems to come very close to asserting the paradoxical claim that we are not free to avoid belief in free will. In the second part of (...) the chapter I will closely examine Spinoza’s etiological explanation of how we come to form the belief in free will. In the third part, I will raise and respond to a crucial objection to Spinoza’s explanation of the formation of our belief in free will. I will then turn to examine Fichte’s intriguing claim that Spinoza’s position on the issue of free will suffers from an internal contradiction, as evinced in Fichte’s suggestive remark: “Spinoza could not have been convinced of his own philosophy. He could only have thought of it; he could not have believed it [Er konnte seine Philosphie nur denken, nicht sie glauben].”. (shrink)

This article is a study of the interpretive resources developed by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show. Interpretive resources – also called ‘hermeneutical resources’ – are concepts, narratives, conceptual frameworks, etc. that enable subjects to make sense of themselves and their world. Much recent scholarship has explored how a community's interpretive resources influence social interactions or character traits in the community. In Limbaugh's transcripts, we found a pattern of what we call ‘concept doubling’, wherein terms are characterised in a way (...) suggesting that liberals and conservatives express different concepts by their utterances of the same word form. We propose that this promotes an interpretive resource that encourages in those who use it what we call ‘false double consciousness’. We contrast the effects of false double consciousness with those of double consciousness, and we consider the interpretive resources available within false double consciousness. (shrink)

In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates’ second account of ‘false’ pleasure (41d-42c) outlines a form of illusion: pleasures that appear greater than they are. I argue that these pleasures are perceptual misrepresentations. I then show that they are the grounds for a methodological critique of hedonism. Socrates identifies hedonism as a judgment about the value of pleasure based on a perceptual misrepresentation of size, witnessed paradigmatically in the ‘greatest pleasures’.

Leibniz’s claim that this is the best of all possible worlds has been subject to numerous criticisms, both from his contemporaries and ours. In this paper I investigate a cluster of such criticisms based on the existence, abundance or character of worldly evil. As several Leibniz-inspired versions of optimism have been advanced in recent years, the aim of my investigation is to assess not just how Leibniz’s brand of optimism fares against these criticisms, but also whether optimism as a philosophy (...) has the resources to meet these challenges. I show that none of the criticisms considered has sufficient force to pose a threat to Leibniz’s version of optimism or to one modelled on it. (shrink)

The dominant Greek and Roman ideology held that the best human life required engaging in politics, on the grounds that the human good is shared, not private, and that the activities central to this shared good are those of traditional politics. This chapter surveys three ways in which philosophers challenged this ideology, defended a withdrawal from or transformation of traditional politics, and thus rethought what politics could be. Plato and Aristotle accept the ideology's two central commitments but insist that a (...) few exceptional human beings could transcend the good of human activities. Epicurus argues that the human good is private, not shared. Socrates and some of his followers, including especially the Stoics, argue that the activities central to the shared human good are not those of traditional politics. (shrink)

According to Allen Wood’s “procedural principle” we should believe only that which can be justified by evidence, and nothing more. He argues that holding beliefs which are not justified by evidence diminishes our self-respect and corrupts us, both individually and collectively. Wood’s normative and descriptive views as regards belief are of a piece with the received view which holds that beliefs aim at the truth. This view I refer to as the Truth-Tracking View (TTV). I first present a modest version (...) of TTV, one which is sensitive to standard criticisms and one which is fully consistent with the procedural principle. I then raise some doubts about TTV by considering both anecdotal cases and empirical studies. These studies suggest that certain types of belief are designed to aim away from truth, in limited, carefully calibrated ways. Moreover, it seems to be the case that selectively aiming away from the truth is important for human well-being and performance. Beliefs that are designed to aim away I dub “Tertullian” beliefs (t-beliefs). I then limn the distinguishing characteristics of t-belief and proceed to evaluate the procedural principle in light of the evidence which suggests that t-belief plays an important role in our cognitive economy. Next I argue that t-beliefs might be essential to the maintenance of self-respect and that they do not corrupt in the way that Wood claims. Finally, I argue that the fate of Wood’s procedural principle will be determined by the results of further empirical research— sociological, psychological, and neuroscientific. (shrink)

There is currently a theoretical tension between young children’s failure in False Belief Tasks (FBTs) and their success in a variety of other tasks that also seem to require the ability to ascribe false beliefs to agents. We try to explain this tension by the hypothesis that in the FBT, children think they are asked what the agent should do in the circumstances and not what the agent will do. We explain why this hypothesis is plausible. We examined (...) the hypothesis in two experiments, each involving a new task. In the first task, the hypothesised misunderstanding of the question leads to failure without the need to ascribe a false belief, and we show that failure in this new task is correlated with failure in the FBT. In the second task, passing which requires ascribing a false belief to an agent, and for which we have partial yet encouraging results, the children are asked a question which is unlikely to be misunderstood. Children pass this task much more often than they do a standard FBT. The mentioned tension is thus resolved. We conclude that the so-called False Belief Task probably does not check the ability to ascribe false beliefs but rather linguistic development. (shrink)

partial review of Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False is used to articulate some systems-theoretic ideas about the challenge of understanding subjective experience. The article accepts Nagel’s view that reductionist materialism fails as an approach to this challenge, but argues that seeking an explanation of mind based on emergence is more plausible than seeking one based on pan-psychism, which Nagel favors. However, the article proposes something similar to Nagel’s (...) neutral monism by positing a hierarchy of information processes that spans the domains of matter, life, and mind. As depicted in this hierarchy, subjective experience is emergent, but also continuous with informational phenomena at lower levels. (shrink)

Most commentators think that Plato's account of the varieties of false pleasure is disjointed and that various types of false pleasure he identifies are false in different ways. It really doesn't look that way to me: I think that the discussion is unified, and that Plato starts with less difficult cases to build up to a point about more important but less clear cases. In this paper, I do my best to show how this might work. I (...) don't think I will ever work on this again: the experience of writing this paper and dealing with frustrating refereeing practices has led me to pretty much switch to aesthetics. I'm much happier. But here are the fruits of my labor. I know there are a few details I got wrong (in particular a place or two where I should have scrutinized Frede's translation more closely), but I still think that I'm on the right track. I hope it's useful to someone. (shrink)

The starting point regarding consent has to be that it is both extremely important, and that it is often suspicious. In this article, the author tries to make sense of both of these claims, from a largely liberal perspective, tying consent, predictably, to the value of autonomy and distinguishing between autonomy as sovereignty and autonomy as nonalienation. The author then discusses adaptive preferences, claiming that they suffer from a rationality flaw but that it's not clear that this flaw matters morally (...) or politically. What matters is whether they suffer from an autonomy flaw. To answer this question, the author develops an account of autonomy failure, according to which a preference is nonautonomous if an injustice played an appropriate role in its causal history. The author then discusses the moral implications—and in an initial way, the political ones as well—of proclaiming a preference, or consent based on it, nonautonomous in this way. (shrink)

In his Quadratura, Paul of Venice considers a sophism involving time and tense which appears to show that there is a valid inference which is also invalid. His argument runs as follows: consider this inference concerning some proposition A: A will signify only that everything true will be false, so A will be false. Call this inference B. Then B is valid because the opposite of its conclusion is incompatible with its premise. In accordance with the standard doctrine (...) of ampliation, Paul takes A to be equivalent to 'Everything that is or will be true will be false'. But he proceeds to argue that it is possible that B's premise ('A will signify only that everything true will be false') could be true and its conclusion false, so B is not only valid but also invalid. Thus A and B are the basis of an insoluble. In his Logica Parva, a self-confessedly elementary text aimed at students and not necessarily representing his own view, and in the Quadratura, Paul follows the solution found in the Logica Oxoniensis, which posits an implicit assertion of its own truth in insolubles like B. However, in the treatise on insolubles in his Logica Magna, Paul develops and endorses Swyneshed's solution, which stood out against this ''multiple-meanings'' approach in offering a solution that took insolubles at face value, meaning no more than is explicit in what they say. On this account, insolubles imply their own falsity, and that is why, in so falsifying themselves, they are false. We consider how both types of solution apply to B and how they complement each other. On both, B is valid. But on one (following Swyneshed), B has true premises and false conclusion, and contradictories can be false together; on the other (following the Logica Oxoniensis), the counterexample is rejected. (shrink)

The theory of epistemic vigilance posits that -- to quote the eponymous paper that introduced the theory -- “humans have a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance, targeted at the risk of being misinformed by others." Despite the widespread acceptance of the theory of epistemic vigilance, however, I argue that the theory is a poor fit with the evidence: while there is good reason to accept that people ARE vigilant, there is also good reason to believe that their vigilance (...) is NOT epistemic. Rather, the evidence actually supports an alternative theory, one that I dub the theory of "Machiavellian vigilance": humans have a suite of cognitive mechanisms for Machiavellian vigilance, targeted at tracking others' relative social status and maintaining or enhancing one's own status. The evidence against epistemic vigilance stems from three sources: (a) data demonstrating that people are terrible at detecting honesty or competence, (b) data demonstrating that our vigilance is phylogenetically prior to the development of homo sapiens, and therefore was not designed to be sensitive to linguistic communication, and (c) data demonstrating that people's sources of information are distributed, and not detectable through individual vigilance. The evidence in favor of Machiavellian vigilance is the mirror image of the evidence against epistemic vigilance: (a) data demonstrating that people are very accurate at detecting status, (b) data demonstrating that social species, including bonobos and chimps, track the social status of their conspecifics, and (c) data demonstrating that people can quickly track status even in new social groups. (shrink)

Review of Patrick Todd's The Open Future (2021, OUP).

In his rich and suggestive paper, Alvaro Vallejo argues for the novel thesis that Plato posits a form of pleasure in the Republic and the Philebus. Vallejo argues that the notion of a Platonic form of pleasure best explains other things that Plato says about pleasure. First, Plato draws a distinction between true pleasure and the appearance of pleasure. Second, Plato uses the same language to describe the relationship between forms and their inferior instantiations as he uses to describe the (...) relationship between true and false pleasures. In these comments, I argue that we do not need to posit a form of pleasure to explain these features of the text. Moreover, I argue that on Vallejo’s account of the form of pleasure, the form could not do the job required of it, namely, it could not explain the problem with false pleasures. (shrink)

An epistemic agent A is a false epistemic authority for others iff they falsely believe A to be in a position to help them accomplish their epistemic ends. A major divide exists between what I call "epistemic quacks", who falsely believe themselves to be relevantly competent, and "epistemic charlatans", i.e., false authorities who believe or even know that they are incompetent. Both types of false authority do not cover what Lackey (2021) calls "predatory experts": experts who systematically (...) misuse their social-epistemic status as a cover for predatory behavior. Qua experts, predatory experts are competent and thus could (and maybe sometimes do) help their clients. But should we count them as genuine epistemic authorities? No, I argue, they are false epistemic authorities because, in addition to their practical and moral misconduct, such experts systematically deceive their clients, thereby thwarting the clients’ epistemic ends. (shrink)

Recent debates in psychopathy studies have articulated concerns about false-positives in assessment and research sampling. These are pressing concerns for research progress, since scientific quality depends on sample quality, that is, if we wish to study psychopathy we must be certain that the individuals we study are, in fact, psychopaths. Thus, if conventional assessment tools yield substantial false-positives, this would explain why central research is laden with discrepancies and nonreplicable findings. This paper draws on moral psychology in order (...) to develop tentative theory-driven exclusion criteria applicable in research sampling. Implementing standardized procedures to discriminate between research participants has the potential to yield more homogenous and discrete samples, a vital prerequisite for research progress in etiology, epidemiology, and treatment strategies. (shrink)

Recently, a number of cases have been proposed which seem to show that – contrary to widely held opinion – a subject can inferentially come to know some proposition p from an inference which relies on a false belief q which is essential. The standard response to these cases is to insist that there is really an additional true belief in the vicinity, making the false belief inessential. I present a new kind of case suggesting that a subject (...) can inferentially come to know a proposition from an essential false belief where no truth in the vicinity seems to be present. (shrink)

Rationalist accounts of the development of folk-psychology maintain that the acquisition of this capacity is aided by special-purpose mechanisms rich in innate structure. Rationalists have typically maintained that false-belief understanding (FBU) emerges very early on, before the age of two. To explain why young children nonetheless fail the false-belief task, rationalists have suggested that they may have troubles expressing their FBU. Here I do two things. First, I argue that extant proposals about what might prevent children from expressing (...) their FBU cannot explain some of the relevant data. Second, I put forward a new rationalist proposal, the processing-time account, according to which young children fail because they cannot carry out all the required processing in the time available. I argue that the processing-time account overcomes the challenges extant rationalist accounts face while being compatible with the evidence in their support, thereby providing a compelling explanation of the development of FBU. (shrink)

Patrick Todd's The Open Future defends the view that all future contingent statements, like ‘It will rain tomorrow’, are false.1 Not only is ‘It will rain tomor.

Many epistemologists call themselves ‘fallibilists’. But many philosophers of language hold that the meaning of epistemic usages of ‘possible’ ensures a close knowledge- possibility link : a subject’s utterance of ‘it’s possible that not-p’ is true only if the subject does not know that p. This seems to suggest that whatever the core insight behind fallibilism is, it can’t be that a subject could have knowledge which is, for them, possibly false. I argue that, on the contrary, subjects can (...) have such possibly false knowledge. My ultimate aim, then, is to vindicate a very robust form of fallibilism. Uniquely, however, the account I offer does this while also allowing that concessive knowledge attributions – sentences of the form “I know that p, but it’s possible that not-p” – are not only infelicitous but actually false whenever uttered. The account predicts this result without conceding KPL. I argue that my account has the resources to explain some related cases for which the KPL account yields the wrong predictions. Taken as a whole, the linguistic data not only do not support the proposal that subjects cannot have possibly false knowledge, but indeed positively favor the proposal that they can. (shrink)

This chapter explores a species of false modesty, false intellectual humility, which is defined as affected or pretended intellectual humility concealing intellectual arrogance. False intellectual humility is situated in a virtue epistemological framework, where it is contrasted with intellectual humility, understood as excellence in self-attribution of intellectual weakness. False intellectual humility characteristically takes the form of insincere expressions of ignorance or uncertainty – as when dogmatically committed conspiracy theorists insist that they just want to know what’s (...) going on – and, in such cases, false intellectual humility is a kind of false skepticism or false fallibilism. In connection with this, the chapter further explores the relationship between the concepts of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism. A distinction can be drawn between the virtues of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism, but the traditional association of skepticism and fallibilism with intellectual humility is vindicated by the fact that the virtues of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism overlap. (shrink)

It is difficult to be a philosopher in this postmodern era. This is so because philosophers, who heretofore have been the archetype of persons eager to engage in reasoned discourse, regardless of their differences, suddenly seem unable to talk to each other, primarily due to claim by postmoderns that non-postmoderns are naïve in their blindness to the fact that truth the claims cannot be true in any objective sense, and that claims to objectivity have been used maliciously throughout the ages (...) to wield oppression. After exploring some of the seductive arguments of the post-modern position, and suggesting a re-working of the non-post-modern position, this paper will conclude that philosophical educators carry a heavy responsibility for limiting the real-life damage that has been produced by this philosophical truth-storm by siding firmly with its less contentious opposite by becoming guardians of the possibility that claims can be false. (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)