This article develops a detailed, empirically driven analysis of the nature of the transition costs incurred in becoming disabled. Our analysis of the complex nature of these costs supports the claim that it can be wrong to cause disability, even if disability is just one way of being different. We also argue that close attention to the nature of transition costs gives us reason to doubt that well-being, including transitory impacts on well-being, is the only thing that should determine the (...) wrongness of causing or removing disability. Non-welfare considerations also defeat the claim that it is always wrong to cause disability. The upshot of these conclusions is that closer attention to the nature of transition costs supports disabled people who strenuously contest the assumption that their well-being is lower than nondisabled people. It also suggests that, in addition, disabled people should contest their opponents’ narrow account of how we should make ethical decisions regarding causing or failing to prevent disability. (shrink)

Intertemporal choice is the study of how people make choices about what and how much to do at various points in time, when choices at one time influence the possibilities available at other points in time. These choices are influenced by the relative value people assign to two or more payoffs at different points in time. Most choices require decision-makers to trade off costs and benefits at different points in time. These decisions may be about savings, work effort, education, nutrition, (...) exercise, health care and so forth. Since early in the twentieth century, economists have analyzed intertemporal decisions using the discounted utility model, which assumes that people evaluate the pleasures and pains resulting from a decision in much the same way that financial markets evaluate losses and gains, exponentially 'discounting' the value of outcomes according to how delayed they are in time. Discounted utility has been used to describe how people actually make intertemporal choices and it has been used as a tool for public policy. Policy decisions about how much to spend on research and development, health and education all depend on the discount rate used to analyze the decision. (shrink)

Any attempt to develop biosemiotics either towards a new biological ground theory or towards a metaphysics of living nature necessitates some kind of naturalization of its semiotic concepts. Instead of standard physicalistic naturalism, a certain kind of semiotic naturalism is pursued here. The naturalized concepts are defined as referring only to the objects of our external experience. When the semiotic concepts are applied to natural phenomena in biosemiotics, there is a risk of falling into anthropomorphic errors if the semiotic concepts (...) remain mentalistic. It is suggested that there really is an anthropomorphic error or “hidden prototype fallacy” arising from Peirce’s prototype for semiosis: the research process of an experimental scientist. The fallacy lies in the concept of the object of representation — it is questionable whether there are any objects of representation for bacteria and whether the DNA-signs have any objects. The conclusion is that Peircean semiotic concepts are naturalizable but only if they are based on some more primitive concept of representation. The causal origins of representations are not relevant, only their anticipative consequences (i.e. meaning). (shrink)

Mental accounting is a concept associated with the work of Richard Thaler. According to Thaler, people think of value in relative rather than absolute terms. They derive pleasure not just from an object’s value, but also the quality of the deal – its transaction utility (Thaler, 1985). In addition, humans often fail to fully consider opportunity costs (tradeoffs) and are susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy. Why are people willing to spend more when they pay with a credit card than (...) cash (Prelec & Simester, 2001)? Why would more individuals spend $10 on a theater ticket if they had just lost a $10 bill than if they had to replace a lost ticket worth $10 (Kahneman & Tversky, 1984)? Why are people more likely to spend a small inheritance and invest a large one (Thaler, 1985)? According to the theory of mental accounting, people treat money differently, depending on factors such as the money’s origin and intended use, rather than thinking of it in terms of the “bottom line” as in formal accounting (Thaler, 1999). An important term underlying the theory is fungibility, the fact that all money is interchangable and has no labels. In mental accounting, people treat assets as less fungible than they really are. Even seasoned investors are susceptible to this bias when they view recent gains as disposable “house money” (Thaler & Johnson, 1990) that can be used in high-risk investments. In doing so, they make decisions on each mental account separately, losing out the big picture of the portfolio. (See also partitioning and pain of paying for ideas related to mental accounting.) . (shrink)

Biosemiotics belongs to a class of approaches that provide mental models of life since it applies some semiotic concepts in the explanation of natural phenomena. Such approaches are typically open to anthropomorphic errors. Usually, the main source of such errors is the excessive vagueness of the semiotic concepts used. If the goal of biosemiotics is to be accepted as a science and not as a priori metaphysics, it needs both an appropriate source of the semiotic concepts and a reliable method (...) of adjusting them for biosemiotic use. Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy offers a plausible candidate for both these needs. Biosemioticians have adopted not only Peirce’s semiotic concepts but also a number of metaphysical ones. It is shown that the application of Peirce’s basic semiotic conceptions of sign and sign-process (semiosis) at the substantial level of biosemiotics requires the acceptance of certain metaphysical conceptions, i.e. Tychism and Synechism. Peirce’s method of pragmaticism is of great relevance to biosemiotics: 1. Independently of whether Peirce’s concepts are used or even applicable at the substantial level of biosemiotics, Peirce’s method remains valuable in making biosemiotics and especially in adjusting its basic concepts. 2. If Peircean semeiotic or metaphysics is applied at the substantial level of biosemiotics, pragmaticism is valuable in clarifying the meaning and reference of the applied Peircean concepts. As a consequence, some restrictions for the application of Peirce in biosemiotics are considered and the distinction of Peirce’s philosophy from the 19th century idealistic Naturphilosophie is emphasized. (shrink)

This paper explores the critical conditions of such semiotic realism that is commonly presumed in the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of biosemiotics. The central task is to make basic biosemiotic concepts as clear as possible by applying C.S. Peirce’s pragmaticist methodology to his own concepts, especially to those that have had a strong influence on the Copenhagian biosemiotics. It appears essential to study what kinds of observation the basic semiotic concepts are derived from. Peirce had two different derivations to the concept (...) of sign, both having a strong logical character. Therefore, it is discussed at length what Peirce’s conception of logic consists of and how logical concepts relate to the concepts of other sciences. It is shown that Peirce had two different perspectives toward sign, the ‘transcendental’ one and the objective one, and only the latter one is executable in biosemiotic applications. Although Peirce’ theory of signs seems to appear as twofold (if not even manifold), it is concluded that the ore conception has been stable. The apparent differences are presumably due to the different perspectives of consideration. Severe limitations for the application of Peirce’s semiotic concepts follow from this analysis that should be taken into account in biosemiotics relying on its Copenhagen interpretation. The first one concerns the ‘interpreter’ of a suggested biosemiotic sign — whether it is ‘we’ (as a ‘meta-agent’) or some genuine biosemiotic ‘object-agent’. Only if the latter one is determinable, some real biosemiotic sign-action may occur. The second one concerns the application of the concept of the object of sign — its use is limited so that a sign has an object if and only if it seeks a true conception about it. This conclusion has drastic further consequences. Most of the genuinely biosemiotic sign-processes do not tend toward truth about anything but toward various practical ends. Therefore, the logical concept of sign, e.g. the one of Peirce’s semeiotic, is an insufficient concept for biosemiotics. In order to establish a sufficient one, Peircean theoretical ethics and esthetics are introduced. It is concluded that they involve simpler and more general but still normative concept of sign — the concept of anticipative or constructive representation that does not represent any object at all. Instead, it is a completely future-oriented representation that guides action. Objective ethics provides the suitable concept of representation, but it appeals to objective esthetics that provides a theory of (local) natural self-normativity. The concepts of objective logic form the special species of objective ethics. The conclusion is that biosemiotics should be based on applied objective ethics and esthetics rather than on (Peircean semeiotic) logic and its metaphysical application. Finally, the physiosemiotic over-generalization of the concept of sign is shortly discussed. It is suggested that it would be more appropriate to rename such controversial generalizations than to adhere to semiotic terminology. Here, again, Peirce appears as a healthy role model with his ‘ethics of terminology’. (shrink)

Intersectionality has utilized various feminist theories that continue subculture of violence thinking about Black men and boys. While intersectional feminists often claim that intersectionality leads to a clearer social analysis of power and hierarchies throughout society and within groups, the categories and claims of intersectionality fail to distinguish themselves from previously racist theories that sought to explain race, class, and gender, based on subcultural values. This article is the first to interrogate the theories used to construct the gendered categories and (...) the assumptions behind Black male positionality under intersectional analyses. Contrary to its promises for more liberated Black identities, intersectionality merely replicates the pseudo-science of racist criminology and presents decades old theories as cutting-edge gender analyses. In short, while intersectionality has allowed Black women to create nuanced experiences and epistemological accounts of Black womanhood, the very same theory has confined Black male experience to the perpetration of violence and defined Black manhood as lesser—merely the exemplification of white masculinity’s pathological excess. (shrink)

Two experiments with undergraduates as subjects were carried out with the aim of replicating and extending previous results showing that the implication of the behavioral life-cycle hypothesis (H. M. Shefrin & R. H. Thaler, 1988) that people classify assets in different mental accounts (current income, current assets, and future income) may explain how consumption choices are influenced by temporary income changes. In both experiments subjects made fictitious choices between paying for a good in cash or according to a more expensive (...) installment plan after they had received an income which was either less, the same, or larger than usual. In Experiment 1 subjects were supposed to have savings so that the total assets were equal, whereas in Experiment 2 the total assets varied. The results of both experiments supported the role of mental accounts in demonstrating that subjects were unwilling to pay in cash after an income decrease even though they had access to saved money. Thus, in effect they chose to pay more for the good than they had to. Indicating a need for further refinement of the concept of mental account, choices to pay in cash after an income decrease tended to be more frequent when the consumption and savings motives were compatible than when they were incompatible. Furthermore, increasing the total assets made subjects more willing to pay in cash after an income decrease. (shrink)

Two experiments with undergraduates as subjects tested explanations of how a prior temporary income change influences choices between buying and deferred buying. In Experiment 1 predictions from the behavioral life-cycle theory (Shefrin & Thaler, 1988), the renewable resources model (Linville & Fischer, 1991) and the loss-sensitivity principle (Garling & Romanus, 1997) were contrasted. The results are inconsistent with the latter two explanations since the framing of buying as positive (buying a new model of a product) or negative (replacing a broken (...) product) did not interact with the income change. Congruent with the behavioral life-cycle theory, willingness to buy was greater when subjects received a temporary income increase than when they received a temporary income decrease although total assets were equal. Further support for the behavioral life-cycle theory is obtained in Experiment 2 where four income-change conditions and durable and nondurable goods are compared. (shrink)

Several studies have shown that preference is not necessarily synonymous with choice. In particular, the most preferred object from a set of objects presented in a non—choice context is not necessarily chosen when the same objects are options in a choice situation (Lichtenstein & Slovic, 1971, 1973; Tversky, Sattah, & Slovic, 1988) . Our research on the choice—preference discrepancy replicates these findings and thus bears some resemblance to the study by Tversky, Sattah, and Slovic (1988). Two competing explanations are tested.

When a prominent attribute looms larger in one response procedure than in another, a violation of procedure invariance occurs. A hypothesis based on compatibility between the structure of the input information and the required output was tested as an explanation of this phenomenon. It was also compared with other existing hypotheses in the field. The study had two aims: (1) to illustrate the prominence effect in a selection of preference tasks (choice, acceptance decisions, and preference ratings); (2) to demonstrate the (...) processing differences in a matching procedure versus the selected preference tasks. Hence, verbal protocols were collected in both a matching task and in subsequent preference tasks. Silent control conditions were also employed. The structure compatibility hypothesis was confirmed in that a prominence effect obtained in the preference tasks was accompanied by a lower degree of attention to the attribute levels in these tasks. Furthermore, as predicted from the structure compatibility hypothesis, it was found that fewer comparisons between attribute levels were performed in the preference tasks than in the matching task. It was therefore concluded that both these processing differences may explain the occurrence of the prominence effects. (shrink)

Two studies investigated how planning affects intention-behavior consistency. In Study 1 an experimental group and control group which each consisted of 14 undergraduates were requested in computerized interviews to indicate which activities they intended to perform on the following day. Subjects in the experimental group were also requested in a second phase of the interviews to specify when and where they intended to perform the activities. The results showed that activities for which time and place had been specified were more (...) likely to be performed. In Study 2 another 75 undergraduates volunteered to participate in an experiment in which they were requested to perform an activity (reporting mood effects of reading a prose excerpt) by themselves on one of three following days. One group of subjects only agreed to perform the activity, another group agreed to perform the activity as well as indicated when and where they would do it, and a third group in addition to this indicated which other activities they would perform on the same day. In support of the hypothesis that planning an activity increases the likelihood that it will be performed, the results showed that subjects who indicated other activities more frequently performed the target activity. More efficient time management resulting from planning may account for the findings, although further research is needed to show this conclusively. (shrink)

The study examines the relative merits of a noncompatibility and a restructuring explanation of the recurrent empirical finding that a prominent attribute looms larger in choices than in judgments. Pairs of equally attractive options were presented to 72 undergraduates who were assigned to six conditions in which they performed (1) only preference judgments or choices, (2) preference judgments or choices preceded by judgments of attractiveness of attribute levels, or (3) preference judgments or choices accompanied by think-aloud reports. The results replicated (...) the prominence efTect for choices, but a prominence effect was also found for preference judgments. In accordance with the restructuring explanation, the think-aloud protocols indicated that options were more often restructured in choices than in preference judgments. However, restructuring could not explain the prominence effect observed for preference judgments. A modified compatibility hypothesis is offered as an alternative explanation. (shrink)

This volume’s aim is to stimulate philosophical interest in the experience of noise. There are at least three important open questions about noise. First, how should the relationship between noise as a scientific phenomenon and as a type of experience be understood? Is the one to be understood in terms of the other, and what implications may be drawn from this? Second, are experiences of noise strictly limited to perceptual states or to one type of perceptual state – for instance, (...) to acoustic experiences? E.g. is there noise that is visual or tactile? Is there noise that is cognitive, affective, or evaluative? Third, how can philosophy make sense of noise in the first place? Should noise simply be relegated to the hither side of the explananda of philosophy, as the mere leftover of whatever philosophy sets out to account for; meaning, being, totality, etc.? Or may noise be understood as a positive phenomenon in its own right, which has its own distinctive features and content, difficult though they might be to pin down? This volume will contribute to the burgeoning philosophy of noise by highlighting how contemporary philosophical perspectives with a phenomenological or experiential bent – the latter under both broad and narrow construals – can make inroads to these questions about a fascinating yet little understood quarter of human experience. (shrink)

A violation of procedure invariance in preference measurement is that the predominant or prominent attribute looms larger in choice than in a matching task. In Experiment 1, this so-called prominence effect was demonstrated for choices between pairs of options, choices to accept single options, and preference ratings of single options. That is, in all these response modes the prominent attribute loomed larger than in matching. The results were replicated in Experiment 2, in which subjects chose between or rated their preference (...) for pairs of options which were matched to be equally attractive either in the same session or 1 week earlier. On the basis of these and previous results, it is argued that the prominence effect is a reliable phenomenon. However, none of several cognitive explanations which have been offered appears to be completely viable. (shrink)

The life-cycle theory of saving behavior (Modigliani, 1988) suggests that humans strive towards an equal intertemporal distribution of wealth. However, behavioral life-cycle theory (Shefrin & Thaler, 1988) proposes that people use self-control heuristics to postpone wealth until later in life. According to this theory, people use a system of cognitive budgeting known as mental accounting. In the present study it was found that mental accounts were used differently depending on if the income change was positive or negative. This was shown (...) both in a representative nationwide sample of households and in a student sample. Respondents were more willing to cut down on their propensity to consume when faced with an income decrease than to raise it when the income increased. Furthermore, contrary to the predictions of behavioral life-cycle theory, it was found that the respondents adjusted their propensity to consume the most when the income increases or decreases took place immediately. Hence, it is suggested that theories of intertemporal choice (e.g., Loewenstein, 1988; Loewenstein & Prelec, 1992) provide a better account of the data than does the behavioral lifecycle theory. (shrink)

Research on preference reversals has demonstrated a disproportionate influence of outcome probability on choices between monetary gambles. The aim was to investigate the hypothesis that this is a prominence effect originally demonstrated for riskless choice. Another aim was to test the structure compatibility hypothesis as an explanation of the effect. The hypothesis implies that probability should be the prominent attribute when compared with value attributes both in a choice and a preference rating procedure. In Experiment 1, two groups of undergraduates (...) were presented with medical treatments described by two value attributes (effectiveness and pain-relief). All participants performed both a matching task and made preference ratings. In the latter task, outcome probabilities were added to the descriptions of the medical treatments for one of the groups. In line with the hypothesis, this reduced the prominence effect on the preference ratings observed for effectiveness. In Experiment 2, a matching task was used to demonstrate that probability was considered more important by a group of participating undergraduates than the value attributes. Furthermore, in both choices and preference ratings the expected prominence effect was found for probability. (shrink)

Crisis prevention plans are usually evaluated based on their effects in terms of preventing or limiting organizational crisis. In this survey-based study, the focus was instead on how such plans influence employees’ reactions in terms of risk perception and well-being. Five different organizations were addressed in the study. Hypothesis 1 tested the assumption that leadership crisis preparation would lead to lower perceived risk among the employees. Hypothesis 2 tested the conjecture that it would also lead to a higher degree of (...) well-being. Both hypotheses were supported. The results and their implications are discussed. (shrink)

The alleged for-me-ness or mineness of conscious experience has been the topic of considerable debate in recent phenomenology and philosophy of mind. By considering a series of objections to the notion of for-me-ness, or to a properly robust construal of it, this paper attempts to clarify to what the notion is committed and to what it is not committed. This exercise results in the emergence of a relatively determinate and textured portrayal of for-me-ness as the authors conceive (...) of it. (shrink)

Motto: “History is denied not because it is ‘false’ but because, although impossible to be assimilated as present, it remains active in the present.” Martin Heidegger -/- “It is to be expected that people remember their past and imagine their future. But in fact, when they write discourses about history they imagine it through the prism of their own experiences and when they try to ponder over the future they refer to presupposed analogies with the past, until, in a double (...) process of repetition they imagine their past and remember their future.” Lewis Nanier. (shrink)

An important distinction lies between consciousness attributed to creatures, or subjects, (creature consciousness) and consciousness attributed to mental states (state consciousness). Most contemporary theories of consciousness aim at explaining what makes a mental state conscious, paying scant attention to the problem of creature consciousness. This attitude relies on a deeper, and generally overlooked, assumption that once an explanation of state consciousness is provided, one has also explained all the relevant features of creature consciousness. I call this the priority of state (...) consciousness thesis (PSC). In this paper, I want to explore how the renewed centrality bestowed to phenomenology in contemporary discussions on consciousness challenges PSC and, consequently, the standard way of framing the problem of consciousness. More precisely, I examine PSC in light of a view about the structure of phenomenal character that is paradigmatic of the approach above. This is subjectivism about phenomenal character (SUBJ), according to which a mental state is conscious when it acquires the property of for-me-ness. I argue that PSC and SUBJ are incompatible because the latter implies that creature consciousness is explanatorily prior to state consciousness. Consequently, if SUBJ is true, then PSC is false, and what constitutes the problem of consciousness is primarily a problem of explaining (a kind of) creature consciousness. I conclude by defending my claim from a pair of possible objections and drawing some implications for the discussion of for-me-ness and the debate on the explanation of consciousness. (shrink)

It is rare to find a book in political philosophy whose arguments successfully utilize both ideal and non-ideal theory. Rarer still does one find a book in political philosophy that takes seriously the proposition that the oppressed are not merely passive victims to injustice, but rather rational and moral agents, capable of making meaningful and informed choices concerning those things they have reason to value. Dark Ghettos does both.

To Shape a New World, ShelbyTommie and TerryBrandon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. x + 449.

Ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness aim to account for conscious states when these are understood in terms of what-it-is-like-ness. This paper considers two arguments concerning this aim, and concludes that ambitious theories fail. The misrepresentation argument against HO theories aims to show that the possibility of radical misrepresentation—there being a HO state about a state the subject is not in—leads to a contradiction. In contrast, the awareness argument aims to bolster HO theories by showing that subjects are aware of (...) all their conscious states. Both arguments hinge on how we understand two related notions which are ubiquitous in discussions of consciousness: those of what-it-is-like-ness and there being something it is like for a subject to be in a mental state. This paper examines how HO theorists must understand the two crucial notions if they are to reject the misrepresentation argument but assert the awareness argument. It shows that HO theorists can and do adopt an understanding—the HO reading—which seems to give them what they want. But adopting the HO reading changes the two arguments. On this reading, the awareness argument tells us nothing about those states there is something it is like to be in, and so offers no support to ambitious HO theories. And to respond to the misrepresentation understood according to the HO reading is to simply ignore the argument presented, and so to give no response at all. As things stand, we should deny that HO theories can account for what-it-is-like-ness. (shrink)

According to the No Alternate Possibilities argument, if time passes then the rate at which it passes could be different but time cannot pass at different rates, and hence time cannot pass. Typically, defenders of the NAP argument have focussed on defending premise, and have taken the truth of for granted: they accept the orthodox view of rate necessitarianism. In this paper we argue that the defender of the NAP argument needs to turn her attention to. We describe a series (...) of worlds that appear to contain differential passage: worlds where time passes at different rates in different subregions. If the NAP argument is to succeed, rate necessitarians must show that each of these worlds is either metaphysically impossible, or does not contain differential passage. (shrink)

Frankfurt-style cases purport to show that an agent can be morally responsible for an action despite not having any alternatives. Some critics have responded by highlighting various alternatives that remain in the cases presented, while Frankfurtians have objected that such alternatives are typically not capable of grounding responsibility. In this essay I address the recent suggestion by Seth Shabo that only alternatives associated with the ‘up to us’ locution ground moral responsibility. I distinguish a number of kinds of ability, suggest (...) which kinds of abilities ground the truth of the ‘up to us’ locution, and outline how these distinctions apply to the indeterministic buffer cases. (shrink)

Curry’s chapter “In the Fiat of Dreams” makes two strong claims about the definition of “black male” and the value of idealistic ethics for black men. Depending on what he means by the analyticity of “black male”, he either understates his desired conclusion for the severity of the black male’s condition, overstates his conclusion in rejecting idealistic ethics, or ends up in contradiction within the “world” or “society” he is talking about. Given the most charitable reading of his argument, I (...) show that he requires further explication, or merely a different argument, in order to make the claims that he intends to offer. (shrink)

Animals, the beautiful creatures of God in the Stoic and especially in Porphyry’s sense, need to be treated as rational. We know that the Stoics ask for justice for all rational beings, but there is no significant proclamation from their side that openly talks in favour of animal justice. They claim the rationality of animals but do not confer any rights to human beings. The later Neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry magnificently deciphers this idea in his writing On Abstinence from Animal Food. (...) Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus thinks that both animals and humans are made up of the same tissues, and like a human, animals also have the same way of perception, reasoning and appetites. My next effort would be to decipher how Porphyry illustrates Theophrastus’ perspective not in the way (the technical theory of justice) the Stoics argued. Porphyry’s stance seems more humanistic that looks for the pertinent reasons for treating animal rights from the contention of justice that Aristotle, in his early writings, defied since animals can deal with reasons. The paper highlights how much we could justificatorily demand empathetic concern for animals from the outlook of the mentioned Greek thinkers and the modern animal rights thinkers as quasi-right of animals, even if my position undertakes the empathetic ground for animals in an undeserving humanitarian way. (shrink)

Who constitutes the public on whose behalf such an official speaks and in whose name the apology is offered? In this paper I argue that in most cases, the “public” that the official offering an apology represents and on whose behalf the apology is offered is not the general public but the public sector: those who direct, control and populate the apparatus of the state. I argue that in most cases there is not a plausible model according to which public (...) sector actors can be treated as vehicles for actions, decisions, projects and values of the general public: a public sector actor is not an avatar of the general public. This makes for a gap between public officials and the general public that must be explicitly bridged with respect to actions, decisions and attitudes named in a public apology in order for members of the general public to perceive themselves as part of either the wrongs for which apology is offered or the apology itself. Recognizing this gap does not imply that members of the general public are not or cannot be responsible for wrongs perpetrated by public sector actors. However, it does imply that the source of the responsibility will not usually be found in public officials having acted at the behest of or for the sake of the general public. (shrink)

I defend an empirically-oriented approach to the analysis and remediation of social injustice. My springboard for this argument is a debate—principally represented here between Tommie Shelby and Elizabeth Anderson, but with much deeper historical roots and many flowering branches—about whether racial-justice advocacy should prioritize integration (bringing different groups together) or community development (building wealth and political power within the black community). Although I incline toward something closer to Shelby’s “egalitarian pluralist” approach over Anderson’s single-minded emphasis on integration, many of Shelby’s (...) criticisms of integrationism are misguided, and his handling of the empirical literature is profoundly unbalanced. In fact, while both Shelby and Anderson defend the importance of social science to their projects, I’ll argue that each takes a decidedly unempirical approach, which ultimately obscures the full extent of our ignorance about what we can and ought to do going forward. A more authentically empirical tack would be more epistemically humble, more holistic, and less organized around what I’ll call prematurely formulated “Grand Unified Theories of Social Change.” I defend a more “diversified experimentalist” approach, which rigorously tests an array of smaller-scale interventions before trying to replicate and scale up the most promising results. (shrink)

A widespread assumption in current philosophy of mind is that a conscious state’s phenomenal properties vary with its representational contents. In this paper, I present (rather dogmatically) an alternative picture that recognizes two kinds of phenomenal properties that do not vary concomitantly with content. First, it admits phenomenal properties that vary rather with attitude: what it is like for me to see rain is phenomenally different from what it is like for me to remember (indistinguishable) rain, which is different again (...) from what it is like for me to visualize (indistinguishable) rain – where these differences cannot be traced back to variations in content. Secondly, there is a kind of phenomenal property that varies neither with content nor with attitude but is altogether invariant across all conscious states: a substantive phenomenal commonality among what it is like for me to see, remember, and visualize rain, cats, or dogs. This substantive commonality, I will suggest, is the for-me-ness component of what it is like for me to have any of these experiences. I will close by discussing the interrelations among these three concentric layers of phenomenality: content-based, attitude-based, and for-me-ness. (shrink)

in early 2019, the josiah royce society arranged two Author Meets Critics sessions on Tommy J. Curry’s Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of white Racial Empire. The first was held in New York City, at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting. The second was at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, in Columbus, Ohio. The sessions were vibrant and well-attended. With the exception of a few tendentious questions (...) at the close of the second meeting, however, our sessions lacked the element of controversy that is customary in discussions of racism in the history of philosophy. The panelists and the audience alike rather... (shrink)

Tommy J. Curry’s Another white Man’s Burden presents a rigorous intellectual history of Josiah Royce’s essays on race. Curry explains the several arguments that Royce made on this topic between 1900 and 1908, and he situates these within Royce’s social philosophy and some contemporaneous literatures on racism. The result is a comprehensive theory of cultural assimilation informed by an idealist metaphysics. Royce, namely, disdained segregation and rejected biological accounts of racial difference. But Royce scholars have wrongly taken these observations, (...) Curry argues, as evidence that their hero held progressive views on race. Royce rather began from the premise of Anglo-American cultural superiority, and... (shrink)

Nesse artigo, eu procuro mostrar que a leitura tradicional que atribui um procedimento dialético à abordagem aristotélica da acrasia, em Ética Nicomaquéia VII 1-3 provoca um sério problema interpretativo ao tentar compatibilizar a posição socrática acerca da acrasia e os phanomena. Primeiramente, tento mostrar, baseando-me numa análise de Tópicos I 1-2, que o procedimento metodológico, em EN VII 1 1145b2-7, não se caracteriza como dialético. Em segundo lugar, proponho uma leitura em que Aristóteles, passo a passo refuta a tese socrática (...) que nega a existência da acrasia, uma vez que esse tese não é contada entre os phainomena que se quer preservar. (shrink)

Nesse primeiro momento da análise do problema da liberdade em Espinosa, gostaria de mostrar que, embora Espinosa trate o conceito de contingência como relacionado à finitude do entendimento humano, o que sugere uma abordagem meramente negativa, ele, na verdade, desenvolve uma abordagem positiva, a saber : a contingência, assim como o tempo , é uma forma necessária do pensamento humano que tem um fundamento na realidade das coisa s às quais ele se aplica, embora não possa ser considerado uma propriedade (...) das coisas. Mostrar que a contingência , assim como o conceito de tempo, é uma forma necessária do pensamento humano significa mostrar não apenas que existem condições objetivas que autorizam a aplicação desse conceito, mas que a imperfeição na qual se funda o conceito de contingência é necessária e intransponível para o entendimento humano. -/- O primeiro passo será estabelecido a partir da prova de que a categorização temporal, da qual a contingência é uma das formas , tem por fundamento o estatuto ontológico peculiar das coisas sobre as quais ela incide, a saber, sobre o estatuto modal (não-substancial) das coisas singulares, unicamente no qual é possível distinguir entre a essência e a existência. O segundo passo consistirá em mostrar que a categorização temporal é uma forma necessária do conhecimento que o homem tem do mundo na medida em que ela é uma das atividades constitutiva s da unidade numérica da alma humana, ou seja, uma das atividades pelas quais a alma humana existe em ato na duração. (shrink)

According to what we will call subjectivity theories of consciousness, there is a constitutive connection between phenomenal consciousness and subjectivity: there is something it is like for a subject to have mental state M only if M is characterized by a certain mine-ness or for-me-ness. Such theories appear to face certain psychopathological counterexamples: patients appear to report conscious experiences that lack this subjective element. A subsidiary goal of this chapter is to articulate with greater precision both subjectivity theories (...) and the psychopathological challenge they face. The chapter’s central goal is to present two new approaches to defending subjectivity theories in the face of this challenge. What distinguishes these two approaches is that they go to great lengths to interpret patients’ reports at face value – greater length, at any rate, than more widespread approaches in the extant literature. (shrink)

O ceticismo é por vezes descartado como uma doutrina absurda e merecedora do seu lugar distante na antiguidade. Nada poderia ser menos correto. O ceticismo continua extremamente relevante para o pensamento filosófico e científico de hoje, servindo como um lembrete de que a sabedoria não é barata nem segura. Nesse texto, o meu objetivo principal é reproduzir o raciocínio das discussões clássicas sobre o ceticismo, mas de uma maneira coloquial e contemporânea. Após seguir as linhas de pensamento de Sexto Empírico, (...) René Descartes, e David Hume, eu vou extrair e identificar claramente as teses centrais que marcam as suas ideias. A minha intenção, porém, não é a de sugerir que as suas teses são auto-evidentes, ou incontestáveis, ou até hoje ainda incontestadas. Muito pelo contrário. A minha intenção é produzir um aperitivo ao debate e um convite a discussão. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Charles W. Mills and considering the case of reparations to Black Americans, this article defends the “structural turn” in the philosophical reparations scholarship. In the Black American context, the structural turn highlights the structural and institutional operations of a White supremacist political system and a long chronology of state-sponsored injustice, as opposed to enslavement as a standalone historical episode. Here, the question whether distributive justice is more appropriate than reparative justice is particularly pressing, since structural (...) racial inequalities form part of the basis for reparations. Derrick Darby’s pragmatic argument for non-race-specific redistributive policies and Tommie Shelby’s principled defense of distributive justice are both considered, as well as the challenge to the structural turn that comes from Carlton Waterhouse’s argument for reparations for enslavement rather than “legacy of slavery” reparations. (shrink)

Philosophers have highlighted a dilemma for the criminal law. Unjust, racist policies in the United States have produced conditions in which the dispossessed are more likely to commit crime. This complicity undermines the standing of the state to blame their offenses. Nevertheless, the state has reason to punish those crimes in order to deter future offenses. Tommie Shelby proposes a way out of this dilemma. He separates the state’s right to condemn from its right to punish. I raise doubts about (...) Shelby’s proposed resolution. So long as punishment is widely and reasonably understood to condemn crime, Shelby’s proposal does not resolve the dilemma. Moreover, there is reason to think the blaming aspect of punishment plays a role in the justification of its hard treatment. I conclude by considering some other ways out of the dilemma, focusing especially on how the United States might take responsibility for its complicity. (shrink)

Nesse artigo, apresento a crítica de Hume de seu Tratado da natureza humana contra a garantia de inferência de causalidade a partir de argumentos de cunho psicológico e de um argumento lógico. Em seguida, são esclarecidos os detalhes da crítica que Popper dirige contra Hume em seu artigo Ciência: Conjecturas e refutações, no qual foca em uma solução do Problema de Hume – considerado como uma faceta do Problema da Demarcação. Explicarei que Popper defende que a ciência avança sempre da (...) teoria em direção à observação – e não o contrário – e que uma atitude crítica em relação às inferências de causalidade pode nos livrar de um dogmatismo irracional. Ainda assim, sustento que Popper está mais para um reformador do pensamento de Hume do que para um demolidor. (shrink)

Nesse artigo, investigo três casos de erros de memória obtidos em laboratório como forma de avaliar as principais teorias da memória : teoria causal e simulacionismo. De maneira geral, a teoria causal afirma que alguém lembra de algo somente se sua lembrança está numa relação causal adequada com uma experiência anterior daquilo que é lembrado. No simulacionismo, essa relação não é necessária. Os casos de erros de memória investigados são DRM, “perdido no shopping” e erro de conjunção de conteúdo. Esses (...) casos são difíceis para a teoria causal, especialmente em sua versão direta, mas não para o simulacionismo. Minha hipótese é a de que essa dificuldade se deve especificamente ao critério causal adotado. ENGLISH: I investigate three lab cases of memory error and test their consequences to the main theories of (declarative) memory: causal theory and simulationism. Roughly, the causal theory states that a subject remembers something only if her remembering is in a causal relation with a past experience of that thing. In simulationism, this relation is not necessary. The cases of memory error are DRM, “lost in the mall”, and memory -conjunction error. These are problem cases for the causal theory, but not for simulationism. My hypothesis is that this difficulty is because of the causal requirement. (shrink)

A militância política de Jorge Amado no Partido Comunista é um capítulo à parte na história do comunismo no Brasil, que completou 100 anos no dia 25 de março. Ela também é algo marcante em sua obra, a ponto da crítica literária brasileira, de tradição uspiana, considerá-la uma forma de panfleto partidário da nossa esquerda. Nesta exposição, pretende-se realizar uma breve discussão acerca de suas lutas políticas, das quais se destacam as questões religiosa e racial, que levaram Jorge Amado a (...) criar um projeto de lei, no período que exerceu o mandato de deputado constituinte pelo PCB, em 1946, assegurando a liberdade religiosa no Brasil. Aqui, também se destaca a sua amizade com o povo de candomblé que lhe honrou com títulos, como o de Obá de Xangô e Ogã de Iansã; além da forma como a crítica o rotulava de regionalista e escritor panfletário. Contudo, esta é uma forma de homenagear tanto o mais famoso dos doze Obás de Xangô da Bahia, quanto o Partidão, nesse seu centenário. Em termos metodológicos, trata-se de uma leitura ensaística foucaultiana sobre esses fatos e acontecimentos que marcaram duplamente a vida de Jorge Amado e do Comunismo no Brasil, já que lançamos mão de uma parte da maquinaria teórica do militante comunista do PCF (Partido Comunista Francês), Michel Foucault, como vontade de verdade, comentário, discurso, autoria, obra, descontinuidade (na continuidade) e dispersão. (shrink)

Este estudo tem como objetivo principal discutir qual o lugar da memória nas pesquisas históricas empreendidas pelo filósofo francês Michel Foucault, o qual foi responsável pelo desenvolvimento de duas frentes metodológicas de trabalho: a arqueologia do saber e a genealogia do poder, conhecidas hoje como arqueogenealogia foucaultiana. Ao longo de mais de 30 anos dedicados a estas pesquisas, Michel Foucault ganhou projeção nacional e internacional pela sua inquietante forma de aliar a militância política com o trabalho acadêmico, demonstrando, com isso, (...) qual era o papel do intelectual frente aos desafios e demandas no mundo do pós-guerra. Recebeu a maior honraria no mundo da intelectualidade francesa ao ser eleito professor do célebre Collège de France, assumindo, por mais de uma década, a cátedra história dos sistemas de pensamentos. Em uma de suas últimas entrevistas, declarou que todos os seus gestos tinham como principal objetivo: criar a história como os seres humanos se tornam sujeitos em nossa cultura. Esta declaração deixa evidente qual o lugar que a história ocupa em sua obra, mas qual seria o lugar da memória nesses seus empreendimentos? Por que a história aparece em seu trabalho como lugar privilegiado enquanto a memória tem um lugar de coadjuvante? São estas as reflexões iniciais que buscamos realizar neste nosso trabalho. (shrink)

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, (...) class='Hi'>Tommy’s confinement constituted a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

Há pelo menos três modos pelos quais o debate sobre a conduta doxástica se relaciona com a ética. O primeiro e menos contencioso assinala que o ato de crer, analogamente às ações morais, responde a um tipo de normatividade, não necessariamente moral. Por exemplo, as normas para o ato de crer podem ser puramente epistêmicas. Nesse caso, essas normas diriam respeito a como o agente deve visar ou buscar a verdade. O segundo modo como o debate da ética da crença (...) se relaciona com a ética diz respeito à fundamentação das normas para crer. A ideia é que a adoção dessas normas se fundamenta com base em razões morais e sociais. Por fim, o modo mais substancial consiste em sustentar que o ato de crer, ao menos em alguns casos, é em parte um fenômeno essencialmente moral e que, portanto, razões morais incidem diretamente sobre a legitimidade da crença. Por razões morais, alguém poderia ser recriminado por sustentar uma crença ainda que tivesse evidência favorável para ela. Neste verbete, tangenciando o clássico debate entre Clifford e William James e reações mais contemporâneas ao debate, apresentaremos e discutiremos cada um desses aspectos da ética da crença. (shrink)

I argue that racism is essentially a civic character trait: to be a racist is to have a character that rationally reflects racial supremacist sociopolitical values. As with moral vice accounts of racism, character is my account’s primary evaluative focus: character is directly evaluated as racist, and all other racist things are racist insofar as, and because, they cause, are caused by, express or are otherwise suitably related to racist character. Yet as with political accounts of racism, sociopolitical considerations provide (...) my account’s primary evaluative standard: satisfying the sociopolitical standard of racial supremacy is what makes racist character racist. (shrink)

This work investigates intuitions' nature, demonstrating how philosophers can best use them in epistemology. First, the author considers several paradigmatic thought experiments in epistemology that depict the appeal to intuition. He then argues that the nature of thought experiment-generated intuitions is not best explained by an a priori Platonism. Second, the book instead develops and argues for a thin conception of epistemic intuitions. The account maintains that intuition is neither a priori nor a posteriori but multi-dimensional. It is an intentional (...) but non-propositional mental state that is also non-conceptual and non-phenomenal in nature. Moreover, this state is individuated by its progenitor, namely, the relevant thought experiment. Third, the author provides an argument for the evidential status of intuitions based on the correct account of the nature of epistemic intuition. The suggestion is the fitting-ness approach: intuition alone has no epistemic status. Rather, intuition has evidentiary value as long as it fits well with other pieces into a whole, namely, the pertinent thought experiment. Finally, the book addresses the key challenges raised by supporters of anti-centrality, according to which philosophers do not regard intuition as central evidence in philosophy. To that end, the author responds to them, showing that they fail to affect the account of intuition developed in this book. This text appeals to students and researchers working in epistemology. (shrink)