Cet article part d’un constat retenu par un certain art « politique » : la nécessité de visibiliser les corps minorisés. On y interroge le mot d’ordre suivant, celui d’après lequel l’enjeu principal d’une esthétique de l’émancipation est la représentation. Plus largement, il s’agira de voir comment les discours de libération en art s’empèsent de contraintes rigoristes à l’opposé de l’agenda politique qu’ils annoncent. Méthodologiquement, il est fait recours à une symptomatologie nietzschéenne du langage : une étude des énoncés qui (...) cherche à faire remonter à la surface un système de morale grégaire dont ces énoncés sont solidaires. (shrink)

Contemporary phenomenal externalists are motivated to a large extent by the transparency of experience and by the related doctrine of representationalism. On their own, however, transparency and representationalism do not suffice to establish externalism. Hence we should hesitate to dismiss phenomenal internalism, a view shared by many generations of competent philosophers. Rather, we should keep both our options open, internalism and externalism. It is hard, however, to see how to keep open the internalist option, for although transparency and representationalism have (...) not yet definitively established externalism, they have indeed made it quite intuitive. Internalism, by comparison, comes across at first sight as antiquated and ridden with difficulties. This is why I propose the Stained Glass model of consciousness. I do so with the following two aims: first, to make internalism intuitive in the age of transparency, and second, to show how to resist the many recent anti-internalist arguments. In particular, I argue that phenomenal internalism need not be epistemically worrisome, that it is compatible at once with transparency, representationalism, and content externalism, and that although it requires an error theory, this error theory is a harmless one. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose to study the problem of universals in Thomas Aquinas with ‘’analytic glasses’’ (according to the famous phrase of Jonathan Barnes). Starting with the semantic criteria of Peirce used by Armstrong, we propose to present a new reading of the position of Thomas, especially of the De ente et essentia . We introduce the thesis of Thomas Aquinas in contemporary discussions highlighting the difficulty of classifying Thomas Aquinas as a realist or as a universalist. Our main (...) goal is thus to present a new reading of the position of Aquinas, while showing how and why his thesis might be a promising solution in the discussion of the problem of universals. (shrink)

Business ethics journals have appeared on a few ranked lists that are specific to this niche discipline. As with more traditional academic disciplines, these rankings are used for academic rewards such as faculty tenure and promotion, along with department and school ratings. Journal ranking has been subject to considerable criticism even as its administrative use persists. Among the criticisms are that journal quality is a poor proxy for article quality, citation rate is an imperfect reflection of article influence, and bias (...) may be introduced into rankings by visibility characteristics such as journal age, size, circulation, and experience of the rater with a journal. This research note studies the effect of journal age and size on the rankings of business ethics journals compiled by Beets, Lewis, and Brower, by Albrecht, Thompson, Hoopes, and Rodrigo, and by Serenko and Bontis. Significant correlation was found for journal age with the administratively derived Beets et al. ranking. No significant correlation was found for size in any ranking study. Results were not significant for the Albrecht et al. and the Serenko and Bontis rankings representing the perspectives from surveys of active researchers or citation analysis. Perhaps sometimes a journal’s reputation precedes it, as perception of journal quality may be biased by journal visibility, either because it has been published and available for a number of years, or because it is well known and likely to be cited. (shrink)

Human creativity generates novel ideas to solve real-world problems. This thereby grants us the power to transform the surrounding world and extend our human attributes beyond what is currently possible. Creative ideas are not just new and unexpected, but are also successful in providing solutions that are useful, efficient and valuable. Thus, creativity optimizes the use of available resources and increases wealth. The origin of human creativity, however, is poorly understood, and semantic measures that could predict the success of generated (...) ideas are currently unknown. Here, we analyze a dataset of design problem-solving conversations in real-world settings by using 49 semantic measures based on WordNet 3.1 and demonstrate that a divergence of semantic similarity, an increased information content, and a decreased polysemy predict the success of generated ideas. The first feedback from clients also enhances information content and leads to a divergence of successful ideas in creative problem solving. These results advance cognitive science by identifying real-world processes in human problem solving that are relevant to the success of produced solutions and provide tools for real-time monitoring of problem solving, student training and skill acquisition. A selected subset of information content (IC Sánchez–Batet) and semantic similarity (Lin/Sánchez–Batet) measures, which are both statistically powerful and computationally fast, could support the development of technologies for computer-assisted enhancements of human creativity or for the implementation of creativity in machines endowed with general artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The field of AI safety aims to prevent increasingly capable artificially intelligent systems from causing humans harm. Research on moral alignment is widely thought to offer a promising safety strategy: if we can equip AI systems with appropriate ethical rules, according to this line of thought, they'll be unlikely to disempower, destroy or otherwise seriously harm us. Deontological morality looks like a particularly attractive candidate for an alignment target, given its popularity, relative technical tractability and commitment to harm-avoidance principles. I (...) argue that the connection between moral alignment and safe behavior is more tenuous than many have hoped. In general, AI systems can possess either of these properties in the absence of the other, and we should favor safety when the two conflict. In particular, advanced AI systems governed by standard versions of deontology need not be especially safe. (shrink)

In “Harmful Choices, the Case of C, and Decision-Making Competence,” Pickering and colleagues advance an argument in favor of externalism, a view in which the competence of a decision maker is judged relative to factors external to their cognition. In advancing this argument, Pickering and colleagues focus on the external factor of harm: In their view, it is the harmfulness of a considered or chosen action that provides evidence against the competence of the decision maker. However, the proper identification of (...) harmful choices and outcomes remains a demanding task, largely because our understanding of what harm is remains deeply incomplete. Despite 50 years of tempestuous debate, the metaphysics of harm remains an unsettled question. The existence of such a debate does not, in and of itself, provide evidence against the externalist position; rather, it is the theories of harm themselves that pose meaningful challenges for the externalist. Our purpose, here, is to illuminate these challenges. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a new concept named the uniform single valued neutrosophic graph. An illustrative example and some properties are examined. Next, we develop an algorithmic approach for computing the complement of the single valued neutrosophic graph. A numerical example is demonstrated for computing the complement of single valued neutrosophic graphs and uniform single valued neutrosophic graph.

Can agents be duty-bound towards ends that are infeasible? Some scholars have endorsed a “feasibility constraint” on justice and answered that we cannot be duty-bound to bring about the infeasible. In this paper, I question whether the feasibility constraint on justice should still be endorsed and whether we are duty-bound to pursue some aims regardless of this constraint. I ask: Can an ethical agent be duty-bound to work towards bringing about a state of affairs that is desirable but infeasible? I (...) consider the climate crisis: climate justice may require us to work towards ends that may be infeasible, such as maintaining global climate warming below 1.5°C or mitigating climate change in a way that treats all people affected fairly. I argue that we may be duty-bound or obliged to work towards some desirable goals when faced with the infeasible and conclude that we should reject feasibility constraints on climate justice. (shrink)

This paper assesses the state of research ethics in low- and middle-income countries and the achievements of the Fogarty International Center's bioethics training program since 2000. The vision of FIC for the next decade of research ethics education is encapsulated in four proposed goals: (1) Ensure sufficient expertise in ethics review by having someone with long-term training on every high-workload REC; (2) Develop LMIC capacity to conduct original research on critical ethical issues by supporting doctoral and postdoctoral training and career (...) paths for research ethicists; (3) Make research training and review at LMIC institutions sustainable by identifying additional funding mechanisms and models; (4) Make institutional research systems more ethical and efficient through context-specific training integrated into all levels of scientific training. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the relationship between job burnout and employee performance in the feed industry during the ASF outbreak. Further, the researchers employed a descriptive-correlational research design in order to analyze the acquired data and produce pertinent findings. Thus, the researchers gathered data from one hundred two (102) feed industry employees. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Individual Work Performance Questionnaire (IWPQ) were employed to ascertain the extent of job burnout experienced by the respondents and evaluate employee performance, (...) respectively. Based on the statistical analysis, there is a significant relationship between job burnout and employee performance. Moreover, the study's findings were thoroughly analyzed and discussed. (shrink)

This paper rigorously examines the primitive foundations of economic reasoning through an original framework based on symbolic logic. Extending previous work, it formalizes economic conceptions (\(\mathbb{C}\)), symbols (\(s_i\)), and introduces a structured language (\(\mathcal{L_{\mathbb{C}}}\)) to define their formation and interpretation. Organized as a continuous chain of declarations and illustrations, the paper offers a concise, systematic approach to understanding the philosophy of economic reasoning through formal representations.

This paper is an original attempt to understand the foundations of economic reasoning. It endeavors to rigorously define the relationship between subjective interpretations and objective valuations of such interpretations in the context of theoretical economics. This analysis is substantially expanded through a dynamic approach, where the truth of a valuation results in an updated interpretation or changes in the agent's subjective belief regarding the effectiveness of the selected action as well as the objective reality of the effectiveness of all other (...) possible actions (i.e. consequence realization). Complications arise when the economic agent is presented with a set of actions that render ambiguous preference, or when the effectiveness of an action cannot be perceived upon its selection, thereby necessitating a different theory of choice and consequence realization. (shrink)

In this article we developed scientific and applied foundations of commercialization of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects, on the example of exhausted mines. It is determined that the category of “anthropogenic object” can be considered in a narrow-applied sense, as specific anthropogenic objects to ensure the target needs, and in a broad theoretical sense, meaning everything that is created and changed by human influence, that is the objects of both artificial and natural origin. It was determined that problems of (...) commercialization of the natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects are most often considered by researchers for specific objects, without having complex methodological coverage from the point of view of combining environmental, technical, economic and managerial components. When studying the substantiation of the scientific base, the authors confirmed the feasibility of the commercialization of natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects on the example of a number of theoretical scientific studies in reclamation, reconstruction, recreation, remediation, restoration of biological productivity and economic value of land disturbed by economic activity. The considered examples of exhausted mines in the 21st century in the USA, Canada, Germany, Romania, and Poland indicate a wide range of opportunities for their commercialization. The study of the potential for commercialization of exhausted mines in the post-Soviet countries testified to the underused reserves for the commercialization of their nature-resource potential and their high potential for further development. The authors proposed the identification of anthropogenic objects on the basic livelihood spheres of society. There were identified the main system (natural, biological, technical, economic, social, managerial) and structural (subjects, trends, threats, risks, problems, challenges) factors of diagnosing the state of an anthropogenic object. A set of measures has been developed for commercialization of an anthropogenic object in functional and production activities, product policy, financial and investment spheres, pricing and sales policies, promotion, management and determination of property rights. Recommendations were provided on optimizing the management decision-making process based on a set of positivistic development principles, methods, and management functions. The study allows international organizations, state and local authorities, territorial communities, owners and potential investors to see new opportunities and make mutually beneficial decisions on the rational use of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects. (shrink)

Philosophers have rightly condemned lookism—that is, discrimination in favor of attractive people or against unattractive people—in education, the justice system, the workplace and elsewhere. Surprisingly, however, the almost universal preference for attractive romantic and sexual partners has rarely received serious ethical scrutiny. On its face, it’s unclear whether this is a form of discrimination we should reject or tolerate. I consider arguments for both views. On the one hand, a strong case can be made that preferring attractive partners is bad. (...) The idea is that choosing partners based on looks seems essentially similar to other objectionable forms of discrimination. (In particular, the preference for attractive partners is arguably both unfair and harmful to a significant degree.) One can try to resist this conclusion in several ways. I consider three possible replies. The first has to do with the possibility of controlling our partner preferences. The second pertains to attractiveness and “good genes”. The last attempts to link certain aspects of attractiveness to a prospective partner’s personality and values. I argue that the first two replies fail conclusively, while the third only amounts to a limited defense of a particular kind of attractiveness preference. So the idea that we should often avoid preferring attractive partners is compelling. (shrink)

Internodons are a formalization of Hennig's concept of species. We present an alternative construction of internodons imposing a tree structure on the genealogical network. We prove that the segments (trivial unary trees) from this tree structure are precisely the internodons. We obtain the following spin-offs. First, the generated tree turns out to be an organismal tree of life. Second, this organismal tree is homeomorphic to the phylogenetic Hennigian species tree of life, implying the discovery of a multi-level tree of life: (...) this phylogenetic tree can be obtained by zooming out from the organismal tree, or conversely, the organismal tree of life can be generated by expanding the phylogenetic nodes into unary trees. Finally, the definition of the organismal tree allows an efficient algorithmic transformation of a given genealogical network into its corresponding phylogenetic species tree of life. The latter will be presented in a separate paper. (shrink)

This article is a preliminary presentation of conjunctive paraconsistency, the claim that there might be non-explosive true contradictions, but contradictory propositions cannot be considered separately true. In case of true ‘p and not p’, the conjuncts must be held untrue, Simplification fails. The conjunctive approach is dual to non-adjunctive conceptions of inconsistency, informed by the idea that there might be cases in which a proposition is true and its negation is true too, but the conjunction is untrue, Adjunction fails. While (...) non-adjunctivism is a well-known option, the other view is not so much studied nowadays, but it was not unknown in the tradition, and there are some positive suggestions, in recent literature, that the position is plausible and deserves to be developed. The article compares conjunctivism, non-adjunctivism and dialetheism, then focuses on some possible justifications, costs and benefits of the conjunctive view. (shrink)

A legacy of Enlightenment thought was to see the human as separate from nature. Human history was neatly distinguished from natural history. The age of Anthropocene has now put all that into question. This human exceptionalism is seen by some as responsible for the devastating impact humans have had on the planet. But if we give up on the nature / culture distinction and see human activity as just another type of natural process, we risk losing our ability to attribute (...) moral agency and responsibility to humanity for the environmental crisis, argues Giuseppina D’Oro. (shrink)

This paper introduces a conceptual framework, denoted as ‘Line Theory,’ which is predicated on the procedural anatomy inherent in ordinary plans. A plan, recognized as a set of instructions for execution, undergoes in-depth scrutiny to analyze its constituent elements. The concise examination delves into the formation of line and effect within real space stemming from procedures. Line theory serves the purpose of elucidating the absolute optimization of plans. It is formulated to inaugurate an exploration into the veracity of procedures and (...) their elemental changes, examining their correlation with space and motion at the most fundamental level. The scientific community has extensively delved into the examination of the behavior and structure of objects at the microscopic level. This paper endeavors to stimulate interest in the analogous analysis of procedures. The fundamental objective within this theoretical framework is to offer a distinct philosophical perspective on changes and effects. (shrink)

Vendler’s :161–173, 1979) puzzle about imagination is that the sentences ‘Imagine swimming in that water’ and ‘Imagine yourself swimming in that water’ seem at once semantically different and semantically the same. They seem semantically different, since the first requires you to imagine ’from the inside’, while the second allows you to imagine ’from the outside.’ They seem semantically the same, since despite superficial dissimilarity, there is good reason to think that they are syntactically and lexically identical. This paper sets out (...) the puzzle and offers a novel solution. Our proposal is that, just as there is knowledge-wh, there is also imagining-wh and that the inside/outside distinction Vendler points to is properly understood as a distinction within imagining-wh. In particular, to imagine swimming from the inside is to imagine what it feels like to swim, while to imagine swimming from the outside is to imagine what it looks like to swim. We show that this proposal is well grounded in both the semantics and syntax of ‘imagine.’ We also argue it makes better sense than its rivals of the data Vendler found so puzzling. (shrink)

This paper examines 18th-century Annamese Neo-Confucian discourse on conceptual issues related to zhongguo and the hua-yi dichotomy as expressed across a diversity of 18th-century writings. I engage with Huang Chun-chieh’s theory of “contextual turn” and localized subjectivity in 18th-century East Asian Confucianisms by arguing that 18th-century Annamese Neo-Confucianism operated along a dissimilar ideological trajectory which affirmed “geographic China, political China, and cultural China” as a transdynastic and singular zhongguo from which Annam received its politico-cultural legitimation and prestige. This discourse of (...) dependence on institutional recognition and geographical connection to the Chinese zhongguo distinguished 18th-century Annamese literati not only from contemporaneous modes of Confucian intellectuality in Japan and Joseon, but also from foundational conceptions of Vietic statehood characteristic of the early Le dynasty. My analysis of metaphysical theories invoked by 18th-century Annamese literati in their discussions of zhongguo and the rise of human civilization engages with both Huang Chun-chieh’s theory of a philological turn away from the metaphysical commitments in 18th-century East Asian Confucianisms and Alexander Woodside’s theory of pre-modern Vietnamese Confucianism being characterized by a non-metaphysical “classical primordialism.”. (shrink)

People often fail to comply with the demands of morality. Partial compliance theory takes this noncompliance or its possibility into account in the formulation of moral requirements for people to comply with, or in the evaluation of people’s actions against those requirements. This chapter critically engages with recent work on partial compliance theory. It examines the relationship between noncompliance and injustice, assesses different ways of doing partial compliance theory, sketches the relationship between partial compliance theory and other central methodological debates (...) in moral and political philosophy, and considers whether it is reasonable to issue moral requirements without examining what would happen if everyone did their part. (shrink)

We discuss potential biorisks from large language models (LLMs). AI assistants based on LLMs such as ChatGPT have been shown to significantly reduce barriers to entry for actors wishing to synthesize dangerous, potentially novel pathogens and chemical weapons. The harms from deploying such bioagents could be further magnified by AI-assisted misinformation. We endorse several policy responses to these dangers, including prerelease evaluations of biomedical AIs by subject-matter experts, enhanced surveillance and lab screening procedures, restrictions on AI training data, and access (...) controls on biomedical AI. We conclude with a suggestion about future research directions in bioethics. (shrink)

This essay examines Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Picture Theory' and the modes of reality presented by logical atomism. Simply this theory argues that the world can be understood by simple entities which can be broken down to substances that do not belong to anything else. This essay will illustrate that the Picture Theory cannot ultimately portray an accurate account of reality based on simples. To contrast this claim, I will use René Descartes as a means of countering my claim against Wittgenstein. Yet (...) this will only strengthen my argument regarding simples. Ultimately, this demonstrates that the Picture Theory is unable to accurately depict a complex reality. (shrink)

This paper examines the integration and unification of the philosophy and psychology of well-being. For the most part, these disciplines investigate well-being without reference to each other. In recent years, however, with the maturing of each discipline, there have been a growing number of calls to integrate the two. While such calls are welcome, what it means to integrate well-being philosophy and psychology can vary greatly depending on one’s theoretical and practical ends. The aim of this paper is to provide (...) a novel conceptual framework for thinking about integrating well-being philosophy and psychology that systematically categorizes different kinds of integration projects. We divide existing attempts in the literature into three broad categories according to the perspective from which the integration takes place: (1) top-down meta-theoretical unification; (2) psychological integration within philosophy; and (3) philosophical integration within psychology. These categories are then broken down into various further subcategories. Our aim in providing this framework is both to facilitate the assessment and comparison of existing integration attempts and to provide a roadmap for future integration attempts. For each category, we discuss one or two representative examples of the approaches. By doing so, we hope to generate interest in the wide variety of existing integration projects, as well as to generate discussion concerning the benefits and pitfalls of different approaches. (shrink)

Multidimensional adjectives are ubiquitous in natural language. An adjective F is multidimensional just in case whether F applies to an object or pair of objects depends on how those objects stand with respect to multiple underlying dimensions of F-ness. Developing a semantics for multidimensional adjectives requires us to address the problem of dimensional aggregation: how do the application conditions of an adjective F in its positive and comparative forms depend on its underlying dimensions? Here we develop a semantics for multidimensional (...) adjectives that incorporates aggregation functions. We then explore an analogy between dimensional aggregation and preference aggregation, bringing results from social choice theory to bear on the number and kind of aggregation functions that are admissible in a context. These results suggest that, for any given adjective, there will often be multiple aggregation functions admissible, meaning that multidimensional comparatives are often vague. (shrink)

Susan Schneider (2019) has proposed two new tests for consciousness in AI (artificial intelligence) systems, the AI Consciousness Test and the Chip Test. On their face, the two tests seem to have the virtue of proving satisfactory to a wide range of consciousness theorists holding divergent theoretical positions, rather than narrowly relying on the truth of any particular theory of consciousness. Unfortunately, both tests are undermined in having an ‘audience problem’: Those theorists with the kind of architectural worries that motivate (...) the need for such tests should, on similar grounds, doubt that the tests establish the existence of genuine consciousness in the AI in question. Nonetheless, the proposed tests constitute progress, as they could find use by some theorists holding fitting views about consciousness and perhaps in conjunction with other tests for AI consciousness. (shrink)

Prior’s puzzle is standardly taken to be the puzzle of why, given the assumption that that-clauses denote propositions, substitution of “the proposition that P” for “that P” within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs is invalid. I show that Prior’s puzzle is much more general than is ordinarily supposed. There are two variants on the substitutional form of the puzzle—a quantificational variant and a pronominal variant—and all three forms of the puzzle arise in a wide range of grammatical positions, (...) rather than merely in the complements of propositional attitude verbs. The generalized puzzle shows that a range of proposed solutions to the original puzzle fail, or are radically incomplete, and also reveals the connections between Prior’s puzzle and debates over the nature of semantic types and higher-order quantification. I go on to develop a novel, higher-order solution to the generalized form of the puzzle, and I argue that this higher-approach is superior to its first-order alternatives. (shrink)

Ramsification is a well-known method of defining theoretical terms that figures centrally in a wide range of debates in metaphysics. Prior's puzzle is the puzzle of why, given the assumption that that-clauses denote propositions, substitution of "the proposition that P" for "that P" within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs sometimes fails to preserve truth, and other times fails to preserve grammaticality. On the surface, Ramsification and Prior's puzzle appear to have little to do with each other. But Prior's (...) puzzle is much more general than is ordinarily appreciated, and Ramsification requires a solution to the generalized form of Prior's puzzle. Without such a solution, a wide range of theories will either fail to imply their Ramsey sentences, or have Ramsey sentences that are ill-formed. As a consequence, definitions of theoretical terms given using the Ramsey sentence will be either incorrect or nonsensical. I present a partial solution to the puzzle that requires making use of a neo-Davidsonian language for scientific theorizing, but the would-be Ramsifier still faces serious challenges. (shrink)

In this paper I contend that the 'superfluity' of triangles is only apparent; all those specified are indeed required for the smallest sub-units, so long as the symmetry of the final body to be constructed is taken into account at earlier stages.

The verb 'imagine' admits of perspectival modification: we can imagine things from above, from a distant point of view, or from the point of view of a Russian. But in such cases, there need be no person, either real or imagined, who is above or distant from what is imagined, or who has the point of view of a Russian. We call this the puzzle of perspectival displacement. This paper sets out the puzzle, shows how it does not just concern (...) language, but also states of imagining themselves, and then presents a solution. The solution draws on the idea that many reports of imagining conceal a distinctive kind of question, and such concealed questions have an extra argument place for (what we will call) an experiencer from whose perspective things are imagined. This solution has a range of advantages over other proposals in the literature, and helps to advance two debates concerning perspectival engagement with fiction. (shrink)

Does religious belief differ in any interesting way from other kinds of belief? For now, take ‘belief’ to mean how one takes the world to be, on the basis of which they act. Call beliefs like this ‘ordinary beliefs’. There are also more complicated, or abstract, beliefs. Call such beliefs ‘non-ordinary beliefs’. Are religious beliefs different in any significant or interesting way from what we call ‘standard belief’? Our analysis shows that they are not. Although the content of religious belief (...) is different, and sometimes so is the function, religious beliefs are still mental, dispositional attitudes that aim to provide a correct representation of the world. Therefore, religious beliefs are best understood as a sub-category of standard beliefs, alongside ordinary and non-ordinary beliefs. This account of religious belief provides further insight into the meaning of belief and supports a revision of a strict demarcation between standard and non-standard beliefs. (shrink)

The many-property problem has traditionally been taken to show that the adverbial theory of perception is untenable. This paper first shows that several widely accepted views concerning the nature of perception---including both representational and non-representational views---likewise face the many-property problem. It then presents a solution to the many-property problem for these views, but goes on to show how this solution can be adapted to provide a novel, fully compositional solution to the many-property problem for adverbialism. Thus, with respect to the (...) many-property problem, adverbialism and several widely accepted views in the philosophy of perception are on a par, and the problem is solved. (shrink)

Defense of an account of intrinsic properties in terms of (what is now called) grounding rather than naturalness.

This paper argues that the concept and role of ‘institutional racism’ in contemporary discussions of race should be reconsidered. It starts by distinguishing between ‘intrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their constitutive features, and ‘extrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their negative effects. It accepts intrinsic institutional racism, but argues that a ‘disparate impact’ conception of extrinsic conception faces a number of objections, the most serious being that it (...) has no plausible account of what it is that makes extrinsically racist institutions racist. It also argues that claims about the explanatory indispensability of institutional racism are overstated (individual racism is at least as important), critiques structural approaches to racial inequality, and suggests that there is reason to doubt whether institutional reform can provide us with all that morality may require in the racial domain. (shrink)

In this paper I present an empirical solution to the puzzle of Macbeth's dagger. The puzzle of Macbeth's dagger is the question of whether, in having his fatal vision of a dagger, Macbeth sees a dagger. I answer this question by addressing a more general one: the question of whether perceptual verbs are intensional transitive verbs (ITVs). I present seven experiments, each of which tests a collection of perceptual verbs for one of the three features characteristic of ITVs. One of (...) these features is Nonexistence: the failure of sentences involving transitive verbs to entail the existence of their direct objects. The experiments reveal that with respect to all three of these features, "see" behaves much more like a paradigmatically extensional verb than an intensional one. But surprisingly, unlike "see", "perceive" behaves much more like a paradigmatically intensional verb. This shows that the category of perceptual verbs is not uniform with respect to the features of intensionality; while Macbeth does not see a dagger, he may still perceive one. (shrink)

Gauss’s quadratic reciprocity theorem is among the most important results in the history of number theory. It’s also among the most mysterious: since its discovery in the late 18th century, mathematicians have regarded reciprocity as a deeply surprising fact in need of explanation. Intriguingly, though, there’s little agreement on how the theorem is best explained. Two quite different kinds of proof are most often praised as explanatory: an elementary argument that gives the theorem an intuitive geometric interpretation, due to Gauss (...) and Eisenstein, and a sophisticated proof using algebraic number theory, due to Hilbert. Philosophers have yet to look carefully at such explanatory disagreements in mathematics. I do so here. According to the view I defend, there are two important explanatory virtues—depth and transparency—which different proofs (and other potential explanations) possess to different degrees. Although not mutually exclusive in principle, the packages of features associated with the two stand in some tension with one another, so that very deep explanations are rarely transparent, and vice versa. After developing the theory of depth and transparency and applying it to the case of quadratic reciprocity, I draw some morals about the nature of mathematical explanation. (shrink)

In this paper I show that we have strong empirical and theoretical reasons to treat the verbs we use in our semantic theorizing—particularly ‘refers to ’, ‘applies to ’, and ‘is true of ’—as intensional transitive verbs. Stating our semantic theories with intensional vocabulary allows us to partially reconcile two competing approaches to the nature and subject-matter of semantics: the Chomskian approach, on which semantics is non-relational, internalistic, and concerns the psychology of language users, and the Lewisian approach, on which (...) semantics is fully relational, specifies truth-conditions, and has metaphysical implications. ITVs have two readings: an intensional, de dicto reading, and a relational, de re reading. A semantic theory stated with the de dicto readings of our semantic verbs captures the core insights of the Chomskian approach to semantics, in part because it allows us to assign extremely fine-grained semantic values to expressions, even when those expressions are empty. On the other hand, the de re reading yields a theory that is fully relational, and issues in truth-conditions. The resulting theories are related—and compatible—in that they are expressed by two different readings of the very same semantic vocabulary, and plausibly, the distinction between these two readings is one of scope. (shrink)

There is good reason to think that, in every case of perceptual consciousness, there is something of which we are conscious; but there is also good reason to think that, in some cases of perceptual consciousness—for instance, hallucinations—there is nothing of which we are conscious. This paper resolves this inconsistency—which we call the presentation problem—by (a) arguing that ‘conscious of’ and related expressions function as intensional transitive verbs and (b) defending a particular semantic approach to such verbs, on which they (...) have readings that lack direct objects or themes. The paper further argues that this approach serves not only as a linguistic proposal about the semantics of ‘conscious of’, but also as a proposal about the metaphysics of conscious states. (shrink)

An interview with the American Philosophical Association regarding my work as an academic.

“Do Anthropocene narratives confuse an important distinction between the natural and the historical past?” asks Giuseppina D’Oro. D’Oro defends the view that the concept of the historical past is sui generis and distinct from that of the geological past against a new, Anthropocene-inspired challenge to the possibility of a humanistically oriented historiography. She argues that the historical past is not a short segment of geological time, the time of the human species on Earth, but the past investigated from the perspective (...) of a distinctive kind of interest, that of uncovering the norms which governed historical agents in different periods of time. The past for the Egyptologist, or for the Roman historian, is not the same past studied by the palaeontologist or the geologist, not because it is infinitesimal short in comparison to geological time, but because the questions asked by historians concerned with the Egyptian or Roman civilization are not the same kind of questions asked by empirically minded scientists. She argues that the accusation that the distinction between the historical and the natural/geological past, rests on unacceptable form of human exceptionalism is based on the conflation of the concept of the historical past with that of the human past and that keeping alive the nature/culture distinction has important implications for praxis. If the distinction between nature and culture is collapsed, and the corollary that historical agents are not distinct in kind from natural agents (such as yeast and microbes) is accepted, then “the anticipation of the future would become a mere spectator’s sport analogous to the activity of predicting the weather”: collapsing the nature culture distinction, D’Oro argues, undermines the possibility of political action against the very threat (climate change) that motivates Anthropocene narratives in the first instance. (shrink)

According to the resemblance account of 'what it's like' and similar constructions, a sentence such as 'there is something it’s like to have a toothache' means 'there is something having a toothache resembles'. This account has proved controversial in the literature; some writers endorse it, many reject it. We show that this conflict is illusory. Drawing on the semantics of intensional transitive verbs, we show that there are two versions of the resemblance account, depending on whether 'resembles' is construed notionally (...) or relationally. While well-known criticisms of the resemblance account undermine its relational version, they do not touch its notional version. On the contrary, the notional version is equivalent to various accounts usually interpreted as rivals to resemblance. We end by noting that this resolution of the controversy (a) explains why 'like', which is a comparative, appears in a construction that concerns the properties of events, and (b) removes any pressure to suppose that 'like' is ambiguous between a comparative and a non-comparative sense. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop and defend a new adverbial theory of perception. I first present a semantics for direct-object perceptual reports that treats their object positions as supplying adverbial modifiers, and I show how this semantics definitively solves the many-property problem for adverbialism. My solution is distinctive in that it articulates adverbialism from within a well-established formal semantic framework and ties adverbialism to a plausible semantics for perceptual reports in English. I then go on to present adverbialism as a (...) theory of the metaphysics of perception. The metaphysics I develop treats adverbial perception as a directed activity: it is an activity with success conditions. When perception is successful, the agent bears a relation to a concrete particular, but perception need not be successful; this allows perception to be fundamentally non-relational. The result is a novel formulation of adverbialism that eliminates the need for representational contents, but also treats successful and unsuccessful perceptual events as having a fundamental common factor. (shrink)

The paper looks at the semantics and ontology of dispositions in the light of recent work on the subject. Objections to the simple conditionals apparently entailed by disposition statements are met by replacing them with so-called 'reduction sentences' and some implications of this are explored. The usual distinction between categorical and dispositional properties is criticised and the relation between dispositions and their bases examined. Applying this discussion to two typical cases leads to the conclusion that fragility is not a real (...) property and that, while both temperature and its bases are, this does not generate any problem of overdetermination. (shrink)

According to a widespread view in metaphysics and philosophy of science, all explanations involve relations of ontic dependence between the items appearing in the explanandum and the items appearing in the explanans. I argue that a family of mathematical cases, which I call “viewing-as explanations”, are incompatible with the Dependence Thesis. These cases, I claim, feature genuine explanations that aren’t supported by ontic dependence relations. Hence the thesis isn’t true in general. The first part of the paper defends this claim (...) and discusses its significance. The second part of the paper considers whether viewing-as explanations occur in the empirical sciences, focusing on the case of so-called fictional models. It’s sometimes suggested that fictional models can be explanatory even though they fail to represent actual worldly dependence relations. Whether or not such models explain, I suggest, depends on whether we think scientific explanations necessarily give information relevant to intervention and control. Finally, I argue that counterfactual approaches to explanation also have trouble accommodating viewing-as cases. (shrink)