The work of Thomas White represents a systematic attempt to combine the best of the new science of the seventeenth century with the best of Aristotelian tradition. This attempt earned him the criticism of Hobbes and the praise of Leibniz, but today, most of his attempts to navigate between traditions remain to be explored in detail. This paper does so for his ontology of accidents. It argues that his criticism of accidents in the category of location as entities over (...) and above substances was likely aimed at Francisco Suárez, and shows how White’s worries about the analysis of location were linked with his broader cosmological views. White rejects real qualities, but holds that the quantity of a substance is somehow distinct from its bearer. This reveals a common ground with some of his scholastic interlocutors, but lays bare a deep disagreement with thinkers like Descartes on the nature of matter. (shrink)

In this paper I will offer a comprehensive defense of the safety account of knowledge against counterexamples that have been recently put forward. In Sect. 2, I will discuss different versions of safety, arguing that a specific variant of method-relativized safety is the most plausible. I will then use this specific version of safety to respond to counterexamples in the recent literature. In Sect. 3, I will address alleged examples of safe beliefs that still constitute Gettier cases. In Sect. 4, (...) I will discuss alleged examples of unsafe knowledge. In Sect. 5, I will address alleged cases of safe belief that do not constitute knowledge for non-Gettier reasons. My overall goal is to show that there are no successful counterexamples to robust anti-luck epistemology and to highlight some major presuppositions of my reply. (shrink)

Is it possible for an individual that has gone out of being to come back into being again? The English Aristotelian, Thomas White, argued that it is not. Thomas Hobbes disagreed, and used the case of the Ship of Theseus to argue that individuals that have gone out of being may come back into being again. This paper provides the first systematic account of their arguments. It is doubtful that Hobbes has a consistent case against White. Still his (...) criticism may have prompted White to clarify his views on identity over time in his later work. (shrink)

In Rahul Banerjee and Bikas K. Chakrabarti (eds.), Progress in Brain Research, 168: 215-246. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Electronic offprint available upon request.

The Gamer’s Dilemma refers to the philosophical challenge of justifying the intuitive difference people seem to see between the moral permissibility of enacting virtual murder and the moral impermissibility of enacting virtual child molestation in video games (Luck Ethics and Information Technology, 1:31, 2009). Recently, Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 has argued that the Gamer’s Dilemma is actually an instance of a more general “paradox”, which he calls the “paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly”, and he proposes a graveness resolution to (...) this paradox. In response, we argue for four key claims. First, we accept Luck’s expansion of the Gamer’s Dilemma to be applicable to a wider set of media, but give a novel recasting of this in terms of the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. Second, we develop a novel criticism of Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 graveness resolution to this broader paradox. Third, we argue that the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far helps to expose an implicit moralism in the Gamer’s Dilemma literature when compared to relevant nearby literatures about other forms of media. Fourth, we consider a range of non-moral, cultural and media conventions that plausibly help to dissolve the intuitive moral gap between non-sexual and sexual violence that is central to this paradox. (shrink)

This article accomplishes two goals. First, the paper clarifies Edmund Husserl’s investigation of the historical inception of the number system from his early works, Philosophy of Arithmetic and, “On the Logic of Signs (Semiotic)”. The article explores Husserl’s analysis of five historical developmental stages, which culminated in our ancestor’s ability to employ and enumerate with number signs. Second, the article reveals how Husserl’s conclusions about the history of the number system from his early works opens up a fusion point with (...) his investigations from his mature texts, The Crisis of the European Sciences and “The Origin of Geometry”. On the one hand, the essay shows that Husserl’s methodology was similar, as he sought in both his early and late writings to uncover the essence of the history of the formal sciences and was not executing mere intellectual history. On the other hand, the article discloses that Husserl’s insights from both time periods are strikingly analogous. Already in his early texts, Husserl saw that the sciences emerged from pre-theoretical experiences of the world and that the sciences are the result of a historical process, which involves the psychic activities of past individuals and the maintaining of discoveries over time by intersubjective communities. I conclude by showing how, in light of the analysis of this paper, we can rethink the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy. (shrink)

Intuitively, many people seem to hold that engaging in acts of virtual murder in videogames is morally permissible, whereas engaging in acts of virtual child molestation is morally impermissible. The Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck in Ethics Inf Technol 11:31–36, 2009) challenges these intuitions by arguing that it is unclear whether there is a morally relevant difference between these two types of virtual actions. There are two main responses in the literature to this dilemma. First, attempts to resolve the dilemma by defending (...) an account of the relevant moral differences between virtual murder and virtual child molestation. Second, attempts to dissolve the dilemma by undermining the intuitions that ground it. In this paper, we argue that a narrow version of the Gamer’s Dilemma seems to survive attempts to resolve or dissolve it away entirely, since neither approach seems to be able to solve the dilemma for all cases. We thus provide a contextually sensitive version of the dilemma that more accurately tracks onto the intuitions of gamers. However, we also argue that the intuitions that ground the narrow version of the Dilemma may not have a moral foundation, and we put forward alternative non-moral normative foundations that seem to better account for the remaining intuitive difference between the two types of virtual actions. We also respond to proposed solutions to the Gamer’s Dilemma in novel ways and set out areas for future empirical work in this area. (shrink)

Avia Pasternak’s account of permissible political rioting includes a constraint that insists only oppressed citizens, and not privileged citizens, are permitted to riot when rioting is justified. This discussion note argues that Pasternak’s account, with which I largely agree, should be expanded to admit the permissibility of privileged citizens rioting alongside and in solidarity with oppressed citizens. The permissibility of privileged citizens participating in riots when rioting is justified is grounded in the notions that it is sometimes necessary, in accordance (...) with Pasternak’s necessity condition, and that it will oftentimes substantially improve the chances of successfully achieving the just aims the rioting seeks to achieve, in accordance with Pasternak’s success condition. Allowing for this improves Pasternak’s already strong account of permissible political rioting on its own terms. (shrink)

The notion of Hegel's Dialectic has been largely critiqued and thoroughly regarded as largely a headache in the realm of metaphysics. In this work, I made the attempt to navigate and substantiate the complexity of an adapted reiteration of those fundamental Dialectical notions in conjunction with a more focused description of Idealism that attempts to substantiate itself within the bounds of our current understanding of physics and QM. This papers goal is to serve more than anything as an entry point (...) for a discussion of metaphysical prospects in the vein of Hegelian Phenomenology and ways in which we can restructure such notions into a theory compatible with current understandings of material reality such that we may be able to make meaningful progress to unraveling more of the mysteries on the composition and unfolding of our reality. (shrink)

The thesis of this essay is that equal opportunity (EO) "strictly dominates" (in the game-theoretic sense) reparations. That is, (1) all the ways reparations would make our world more just would also be achieved under EO; (2) EO would make our world more just in ways reparations cannot; and (3) reparations would create injustices which EO would avoid. Further, (4) EO has important practical advantages over reparations. These include economic efficiency, feasibility, and long-term impact. Supporters of reparations should abandon that (...) ideal to support equal opportunity instead. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 5-41, Winter 2024.

With Jan Degenaar and Kevin O’Regan’s (D&O) critique of (what they call) ‘autopoietic enactivism’ as point of departure, this article seeks to revisit, refine, and develop phenomenology’s significance for the enactive view. Arguing that D&O’s ‘sensorimotor theory’ fails to do justice to perceptual meaning, the article unfolds by (1) connecting this meaning to the notion of enaction as a meaningful co-definition of perceiver and perceived, (2) recounting phenomenological reasons for conceiving of the perceiving subject as a living body, and (3) (...) showing how the phenomenological perspective does a better job at fulfilling D&O’s requirement for grounding notions of mentality in ‘outer’ criteria than they do. The picture that thus emerges is one of perceptual meaning as an integration of lived, living, and behavioral aspects – a structure of behavior that cannot be captured by appeal to sensorimotor capacities alone but that is adequately illuminated by the enactive notion of adaptive autonomy. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to compile a selection of the various formalisms found in conversation theory to introduce readers to Pask's discursive algebra. In this way, the text demonstrates how concept sharing and concept formation by means of the interaction of two participants may be formalized. The approach taken in this study is to examine the formal notation system used by Pask and demonstrate how such formalisms may be used to represent concept sharing and concept formation through conversation. (...) The compilation of the discursive algebra using the framework provided by conversation theory could potentially be used as an auxiliary framework to study conversational interactions in multi-agent systems theory. (shrink)

Instability occurs when the very fact of choosing one particular possible option rather than another affects the expected values of those possible options. In decision theory: An act is stable iff given that it is actually performed, its expected utility is maximal. When there is no stable choice available, the resulting instability can seem to pose a dilemma of practical rationality. A structurally very similar kind of instability, which occurs in cases of anti-expertise, can likewise seem to create dilemmas of (...) epistemic rationality. One possible line of response to such cases of instability, suggested by both Jeffrey (1983) and Sorensen (1987), is to insist that a rational agent can simply refuse to accept that such instability applies to herself in the first place. According to this line of thought it can be rational for a subject to discount even very strong empirical evidence that the anti-expertise condition obtains. I present a new variety of anti-expertise condition where no particular empirical stage-setting is required, since the subject can deduce a priori that an anti-expertise condition obtains. This kind of anti-expertise case is therefore not amenable to the line of response that Jeffrey and Sorensen recommend. (shrink)

David Ekdahl (2023), in a constructive and thoughtful commentary, outlines both points of agreement with and suggestions for further research arising from our paper ‘Crossing the Fictional Line: Moral Graveness, the Gamer’s Dilemma, and the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far’ (Montefiore & Formosa, 2023).

In answering normative questions, researchers sometimes appeal to the concept of basic needs. Their guiding idea is that our first priority should be to ensure that everybody is able to meet these needs—to have enough in terms of food, water, shelter, and so on. This article provides an opinionated overview of basic needs in normative contexts. Any basic needs theory must answer three questions: (1) What are basic needs? (2) To what extent do basic needs generate reasons for action and (...) how are these reasons to be understood? (3) How are basic needs and their satisfaction to be measured? I address these questions in turn. Then I also briefly discuss the theoretical potential of appealing to basic needs in normative contexts. It turns out that future research in this area could benefit from a higher degree of interdisciplinarity and methodological reflection, and that, generally speaking, basic needs theories are more promising than they have often been claimed to be. (shrink)

In a series of pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger), and (d) the difference (...) between people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility in response to first-person scenarios and third-person scenarios. We predicted that once we focused participants’ attention on the two different abilities to do otherwise available to agents in indeterministic and deterministic scenarios, their intuitions would support natural incompatibilism—the view that laypersons judge that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. This prediction was borne out by our findings. (shrink)

We discuss abstraction principles in the context of modal and temporal logic. It is argued that abstractionism conflicts with both serious presentism and serious actualism.

The much-discussed ‘Argument from Small Improvement’ has been advanced both as a reason to reject (tripartite) Completeness, one of the standard axioms of decision theory, and to accept the possibility of rationally incomparable choices. But this form of argument cannot be an effective basis for either of these conclusions, unless one already has some prior, independent reason to prefer Transitivity to Completeness as a constraint on rational preferences (or rational values). In particular, I show how a reverse argument from small (...) improvement can be constructed, starting from the assumption of tripartite Completeness, to the conclusion that Transitivity fails. I conclude that this form of argument as it has been standardly presented in the literature is a kind of ‘red herring’. We can only make progress here by evaluating the reasons independent of either such argument to prefer one or other of Transitivity or Completeness. (shrink)

The first aim of this paper is to prove a topological completeness theorem for a weak version of Stalnaker’s logic KB of knowledge and belief. The weak version of KB is characterized by the assumption that the axioms and rules of KB have to be satisfied with the exception of the axiom (NI) of negative introspection. The proof of a topological completeness theorem for weak KB is based on the fact that nuclei (as defined in the framework of point-free topology) (...) give rise to a profusion of topological belief operators that are compatible with the familiar topological knowledge operator. Thereby a canonical topological model for weak KB can be constructed. For this canonical model a truth lemma for the K and B holds such that a completeness theorem for KB can be proved in the familiar way. The second aim of this paper is to show that the topological interpretation of knowledge K comes along with a complete Heyting algebra of belief operators B that all fit the knowledge operator K in the sense that the pairs (K, B) satisfy all axioms of weak KB. This amounts to a pluralistic relation between knowledge and belief: Knowledge does not fully determine belief, rather it designs a conceptual space for belief operators where different (competing) belief operators coexist. (shrink)

We can cause windows to break and we can break windows; we can cause villages to flood and we can flood villages; and we can cause chocolate to melt and we can melt chocolate. Each time these can come apart: if, for example, A merely instructs B to break the window, then A causes the window to break without breaking it herself. Each instance of A breaking/flooding/melting/burning/killing/etc. something, is an instance of what I call making. I argue that making is (...) an independent, theoretically important notion—akin but irreducible to causing—and metaphysicians should pay attention to it. (shrink)

The exploration of chemical periodicity over the past 250 years led to the development of the Periodic System of Elements and demonstrates the value of vague ideas that ignored early scientific anomalies and instead allowed for extended periods of normal science where new methodologies and concepts are developed. The basic chemical element provides this exploration with direction and explanation and has shown to be a central and historically adaptable concept for a theory of matter far from the reductionist frontier. This (...) is explored in the histories of Prout’s hypothesis, Döbereiner Triads, element inversions necessary when ordering chemical elements by atomic weights, and van den Broeck’s ad-hoc proposal to switch to nuclear charges instead. The development of more accurate methods to determine atomic weights, Rayleigh and Ramsey’s gas separation and analytical techniques, Moseley’s X-ray spectroscopy to identify chemical elements, and more recent accelerator-based cold fusion methods to create new elements at the end of the Periodic Table point to the importance of methodological development complementing conceptual advances. I propose to frame the crossover from physics to chemistry not as a loss of accuracy and precision but as an increased application of vague concepts such as similarity which permit classification. This approach provides epistemic flexibility to adapt to scientific anomalies and the continued growth of chemical compound space and rejects the Procrustean philosophy of reductionist physics. Furthermore, it establishes chemistry with its explanatory and operational autonomy epitomized by the periodic system of elements as a gateway to other experimental sciences. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes two tasks. First, I examine in detail Edmund Husserl’s earliest philosophy of surrogates, as it is found in his 1890 “On the Logic of Signs ”. I analyze his psychological and logical investigations of surrogates, where the former is concerned with explaining how these signs function and the latter with how they do so reliably. His differentiation of surrogates on the basis of their genetic origins and degrees of necessity is discussed. Second, the historical importance of this (...) text is disclosed by showing how Semiotic serves as both the inspiration for, and the foil to, Husserl’s 1901 First Logical Investigation. Husserl not only adopts the idea that linguistic signs can function via association, but also maintains that such signs can motivate me to execute one of two experiences. The key difference between the texts is that Husserl abandons his theory of surrogates in 1901, instead holding that I can experience absent objects by means of empty intentions. The reasons why Husserl found it necessary to transform this tenet of his philosophy are discussed at length. (shrink)

Proponents of IBE claim that the ability of a hypothesis to explain a range of phenomena in a unifying way contributes to the hypothesis’s credibility in light of these phenomena. I propose a Bayesian justification of this claim that reveals a hitherto unnoticed role for explanatory unification in evaluating the plausibility of a hypothesis: considerations of explanatory unification enter into the determination of a hypothesis’s prior by affecting its ‘explanatory coherence’, that is, the extent to which the hypothesis offers mutually (...) cohesive explanations of various phenomena. (shrink)

This paper offers a more comprehensive and accurate picture of Edmund Husserl’s semiotics. I not only clarify, as many have already done, Husserl’s theory of signs from the 1901 Logical Investigations, but also examine how he transforms that element of his philosophy in the 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation. Specifically, the paper examines the evolution of two central tenets of Husserl’s semiotics. I first look at how he modifies his classification of signs. I disclose why he revised his (...) 1901 distinction between indicators and expressions, instead claiming in 1913/14 that the divisions should be drawn between indicators, signals, and categorial signs. Second, I elucidate why Husserl overturned his conclusion from the Investigations, that signs execute their signitive operations in three steps, because he recognizes that categorial signs and their meant object are experienced all at once. By exploring the transformation of these two tenets of Husserl’s semiotics, we will see that he conceived of the First Investigation only as a starting or jumping off point for future analyses of signitive experience, rather than as his final account. This analysis will further reveal novel insights about Husserl’s understanding of intersubjectivity, passivity, and temporality. (shrink)

A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N (...) = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests. (shrink)

In this introductory paper, I discuss the second-personal approach to ethics and the theory of recognition as two accounts of the fundamental sociality of the human form of life. The first section delineates the deep affinities between the two approaches. They both put a reciprocal social constellation front and center from which they derive the fundamental norms of moral and social life and a social conception of freedom. The second section discusses three points of contrast between the two approaches: The (...) accounts differ in that the second-personal approach opts for a narrower conception of recognition focusing on mutual moral accountability, whereas recognition theory suggests a broader conception including relations of love, respect, and esteem. Secondly, the accounts differ as to how they conceive of the interrelation of the I-thou and the I-We relationship. Finally, they differ with regard to the way they think of struggles for recognition. Whereas the second-personal approach suggests that we can understand struggles on the basis of a transcendental infrastructure of second-personal address, the theory of recognition considers norms of recognition as themselves constituted by dialectical social struggles. The paper closes with a reflection on the ways in which both approaches can help us understand the social vulnerability of the human form of life. (shrink)

Theories of rational decision making often abstract away from computational and other resource limitations faced by real agents. An alternative approach known as resource rationality puts such matters front and center, grounding choice and decision in the rational use of finite resources. Anticipated by earlier work in economics and in computer science, this approach has recently seen rapid development and application in the cognitive sciences. Here, the theory of rationality plays a dual role, both as a framework for normative assessment (...) and as a source of scientific hypotheses about how mental processes in fact work. The latter project, often called rational analysis, depends for its success on a fine-grained characterization of the computational problem facing a decision maker, which may in turn depend on realistic assumptions about what the relevant agent is like. As a consequence, resource rationality involves a delicate, but often fruitful interplay between the normative and the descriptive. (shrink)

A growing number of decision theorists have, in recent years, defended the view that rationality is permissive under risk: Different rational agents may be more or less risk-averse or risk-inclined. This can result in them making different choices under risk even if they value outcomes in exactly the same way. One pressing question that arises once we grant such permissiveness is what attitude to risk we should implement when choosing on behalf of other people. Are we permitted to implement any (...) of the rationally permissible risk attitudes, is there some specific risk attitude that is required when choosing for others, or are we required to defer to the risk attitudes of the people on whose behalf we are choosing? This article elaborates on this question, explains its wider practical and theoretical significance, provides an overview of existing answers, and explores how to go about providing a more systematic account of how to choose on behalf of others in risky contexts. (shrink)

This is an edited transcription of Thomas S. Kuhn’s “Does Knowledge ‘Grow’?”.

This paper argues that instrumental rationality is more permissive than expected utility theory. The most compelling instrumentalist argument in favour of separability, its core requirement, is that agents with non-separable preferences end up badly off by their own lights in some dynamic choice problems. I argue that once we focus on the question of whether agents’ attitudes to uncertain prospects help define their ends in their own right, or instead only assign instrumental value in virtue of the outcomes they may (...) lead to, we see that the argument must fail. Either attitudes to prospects assign non-instrumental value in their own right, in which case we cannot establish the irrationality of the dynamic choice behaviour of agents with non-separable preferences. Or they don’t, in which case agents with non-separable preferences can avoid the problematic choice behaviour without adopting separable preferences. (shrink)

Our current understanding of ‘fake news’ is not in good shape. On the one hand, this category seems to be urgently needed for an adequate understanding of the epistemology in the age of the internet. On the other hand, the term has an unstable ordinary meaning and the prevalent accounts which all relate fake news to epistemically bad attitudes of the producer lack theoretical unity, sufficient extensional adequacy, and epistemic fruitfulness. I will therefore suggest an alternative account of fake news (...) that is meant as an explication rather than a traditional conceptual analysis of the term and that understands fake news solely from the consumer’s perspective. I will argue that this new account has the required theoretical unity, that it is epistemically highly fruitful, and that it is still very close to the ordinary usage. I conclude with addressing some of the main objections to this view. (shrink)

According to general wisdom, Carnap's quasianalysis is an ingenious but definitively flawed approach to epistemology and philosophy of science. I argue that this assessment is mistaken. Rather, Carnapian quasianalysis can be reconstructed as a special case of a general theory of structural representation. This enables us to exploit some interesting analogies of quasianalysis with the representational theory of measurement. It is shown how Goodman's well-known objections against the quasianalytical approach may be defused in the new framework. As an application, I (...) sketch how the thesis of empirical underdetermination of theories may be elucidated in the framework of quasianalysis. (shrink)

This article examines Jacques Derrida’s work of self-reflection on his own teaching practice by using as a guiding thread the problematics of reproduction in the seminars of the 1970s. The first part of the article examines the sequence of seminars taught by Derrida at École normale supérieure from 1971 to 1977 to show how the concept of reproduction is deconstructed by Derrida across several seminars. Derrida systematically demonstrates, across several themes and fields (sociology and economy, biology and sexuality, art, technique, (...) ontology, and so on), that the critical recourse to the concept of reproduction (for instance, in its Marxist form) risks being complicit in the reproductive system it criticizes. The deconstructive motif of débordement is introduced to problematize this onto-logic of re-production. The second part of the article analyzes more specifically the unpublished seminar “GREPH, le concept de l’idéologie chez les idéologues français” (1974–75), in which Derrida examines the seminar function, his role as a teacher, and his own situation within the French educational system. In particular, Derrida offers a deconstructive critique of the reproductive effects of teaching, and of the institution of philosophy inasmuch as it functions as a reproductive machine. This work of deconstruction is done in the seminar notably through readings of Marx, Engels, and Althusser, with special attention to the concepts of ideology, reproduction, and sexual difference. (shrink)

A good account of the agnostic attitude of Suspending Judgement should explain how it can be rendered more or less rational/justified according to the state of one's evidence – and one's relation to that evidence. I argue that the attitude of suspending judgement whether p constitutively involves having a belief; roughly, a belief that one cannot yet tell whether or not p. I show that a theory of suspending that treats it as a sui generis attitude, wholly distinct from belief, (...) struggles to account for how suspension of judgement can be rendered more or less rational (or irrational) by one's evidence. I also criticise the related idea that suspension essentially requires an 'Inquiring Attitude'. I show how a belief-based theory, in contrast, neatly accounts for the rational and epistemic features of suspending and so neatly accounts for why an agnostic has a genuine neutral opinion concerning the question whether p, as opposed to simply having no opinion. (shrink)

Intuitions play an important role in the debate on the causal status of high‐level properties. For instance, Kim has claimed that his “exclusion argument” relies on “a perfectly intuitive … understanding of the causal relation.” We report the results of three experiments examining whether laypeople really have the relevant intuitions. We find little support for Kim's view and the principles on which it relies. Instead, we find that laypeople are willing to count both a multiply realized property and its realizers (...) as causes, and regard the systematic overdetermination implied by this view as unproblematic. (shrink)

This essay critically assesses Roman Ingarden’s 1915 review of the second edition of Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations. I elucidate and critique Ingarden’s analysis of the differences between the 1901 first edition and the 1913 second edition. I specifically examine three tenets of Ingarden’s interpretation. First, I demonstrate that Ingarden correctly denounces Husserl’s claim that he only engages in an eidetic study of consciousness in 1913, as Husserl was already performing eidetic analyses in 1901. Second, I show that Ingarden is misguided, (...) when he asserts that Husserl had fully transformed his philosophy into a transcendental idealism in the second edition. While Husserl does appear to adopt a transcendental phenomenology by asserting–in his programmatic claims–that the intentional content and object are now included in his domain of research, he does not alter his actual descriptions of the intentional relationship in any pertinent manner. Third, I show Ingarden correctly predicts many of the insights Husserl would arrive at about logic in his late philosophy. This analysis augments current readings of the evolution of Ingarden’s philosophy, by more closely examining the development of his largely neglected early thought. I execute this critical assessment by drawing both from Husserl’s later writings and from recent literature on the Investigations. By doing so, I hope to additionally demonstrate how research on the Investigations has matured in the one hundred years since the release of that text, while also presenting my own views concerning these difficult interpretative issues. (shrink)

Typically, nudging is a technique for steering the choices of people without giving reasons or using enforcement. In benevolent cases, it is used when people are insufficiently responsive to reason. The nudger triggers automatic cognitive mechanisms – sometimes even biases – in smart ways in order to push irrational people in the right direction. Interestingly, this technique can also be applied to doxastic attitudes. Someone who is doxastically unresponsive to evidence can be nudged into forming true beliefs or doxastic attitudes (...) that are propositionally justified. When doxastic nudging uses non-rational mechanisms, the worry is that nudging cannot result in justified beliefs or knowledge, as the resulting doxastic attitudes lack the right kind of basis. In this paper, I will argue that given the right background views about knowledge, justified beliefs and the relevant processes, epistemic nudging is possible even in these cases. That is, all kinds of nudging can – in appropriate circumstances – produce justified beliefs or knowledge in the nudgee. (shrink)

[ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY 2023 ESSAY PRIZE WINNER] I argue that the term ‘naturalism’ is so empty of meaning that it is not suitable for serious theorizing in philosophy. In particular, I argue that the question of whether or not some theory or thesis should count as naturalistic is an empty verbal dispute with no further theoretical significance. I also discuss naturalism construed as a methodological thesis and argue that any plausible version will collapse into triviality. Lastly, I briefly discuss (...) the idea that naturalism is not a thesis at all but rather a ‘stance’ and suggest that this too succumbs to the charge of emptiness. I conclude that we should stop talking about naturalism altogether. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine a number of relevant logics’ variable sharing properties from the perspective of theories of topic or subject-matter. We take cues from Franz Berto’s recent work on topic to show an alignment between families of variable sharing properties and responses to the topic transparency of relevant implication and negation. We then introduce and defend novel variable sharing properties stronger than strong depth relevance—which we call cn-relevance and lossless cn-relevance—showing that the properties are satisfied by the weak (...) relevant logics and , respectively. We argue that such properties address a sort of semantic lossiness of strong depth relevance. (shrink)

This article argues that Lara Buchak’s risk-weighted expected utility (REU) theory fails to offer a true alternative to expected utility theory. Under commonly held assumptions about dynamic choice and the framing of decision problems, rational agents are guided by their attitudes to temporally extended courses of action. If so, REU theory makes approximately the same recommendations as expected utility theory. Being more permissive about dynamic choice or framing, however, undermines the theory’s claim to capturing a steady choice disposition in the (...) face of risk. I argue that this poses a challenge to alternatives to expected utility theory more generally. (shrink)

In recent years an increasing number of psychologists have begun to explore the prevalence, causes and effects of ordinary people’s intuitions about moral realism. Many of these studies have lacked in construct validity, i.e., they have failed to measure moral realism. My aim in this paper accordingly is to motivate and guide methodological improvements. In analysis of prominent existing measures, I develop general recommendations for overcoming ten prima facie serious worries about research on folk moral realism. G1 and G2 require (...) studies’ answer choices to be as metaethically comprehensive as methodologically feasible. G3 and G4 prevent fallacious inferences from intuitions about related debates. G5 and G6 limit first-order moral and epistemic influences. G7 address studies’ instructions. And G8 and G9 suggest tests of important psychological presuppositions. (shrink)

This paper challenges the widely held view that ‘good for’, ‘well-being’, and related terms express a distinctive evaluative concept of central importance for ethics and separate from ‘simply good’ as used by G. E. Moore and others. More specifically, it argues that there's no philosophically useful good-for or well-being concept that's neither merely descriptive in the sense of naturalistic nor reducible to ‘simply good’. The paper distinguishes two interpretations of the common claim that the value ‘good for’ expresses is distinctively (...) ‘subject-relative’. One concerns the ground of this value, or the properties that make something good for you; it says these must involve some relation to you. The other concerns the resulting value itself, or what supervenes on this ground; it says that too involves a relation. Neither interpretation, the paper argues, yields a significantly distinct evaluative concept. The ethically fundamental evaluative concept is just ‘simply good’. (shrink)

Nach gängiger Auffassung nahm das Thema „Werte” in Carnaps Philosophie nur einen geringen Stellenwert ein. In dieser Arbeit soll gezeigt werden, daß diese Einschätzung der Korrektur bedarf: So wird der im „Aufbau“ vorgetragene Entwurf eines Konstitutionssystems mit Werten als der höchsten Schicht des Konstitutionssystems abgeschlossen. Auch die Quasianalyse als allgemeine Konstitutionsmethode steht in enger Beziehung zur Unterscheidung zwischen „Sein“ und „Gelten“, die für den werttheoretisch orientierten Neukantianismus der südwest-deutschen Schule charakteristisch war. Allgemein erlaubt die Wertthematik einen Blick auf Unterströmungen des (...) carnapschen Denkens, die in den offiziellen logisch-empiristischen Darstellungen seines Denkens meist vernachlässigt werden. Die Wertthematik, so die These dieser Arbeit, eröffnet überdies eine neue Perspektive auf die spezifisch Jenaer Konstellation von Neukantianismus und Lebensphilosophie, die Carnaps Philosophie wesentlich geprägt hat. (shrink)

I present two arguments that aim to establish logical limits on what we can know. More specifically, I argue for two results concerning what we can know about questions that we cannot answer. I also discuss a line of thought, found in the writings of Pierce and of Rescher, in support of the idea that we cannot identify specific scientific questions that will never be answered.