This paper calls for a re-appraisal of McGee's analysis of the semantics, logic and probabilities of indicative conditionals presented in his 1989 paper Conditional probabilities and compounds of conditionals. The probabilistic measures introduced by McGee are given a new axiomatisation built on the principle that the antecedent of a conditional is probabilistically independent of the conditional and a more transparent method of constructing such measures is provided. McGee's Dutch book argument is restructured to more clearly reveal that it introduces a (...) novel contribution to the epistemology of semantic indeterminacy, and shows that its more controversial implications are unavoidable if we want to maintain the Ramsey Test along with the standard laws of probability. Importantly, it is shown that the counterexamples that have been levelled at McGee's analysis|generating a rather wide consensus that it yields `unintuitive' or `wrong' probabilities for compounds |fail to strike at their intended target; for to honour the intuitions of the counterexamples one must either give up the Ramsey Test or the standard laws of probability. It will be argued that we need to give up neither if we take the counterexamples as further evidence that the indicative conditional sometimes allows for a non-epistemic `causal' interpretation alongside its usual epistemic interpretation. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility that causal decision theory can be formulated in terms of probabilities of conditionals. It is argued that a generalized Stalnaker semantics in combination with an underlying branching time structure not only provides the basis for a plausible account of the semantics of indicative conditionals, but also that the resulting conditionals have properties that make them well-suited as a basis for formulating causal decision theory. Decision theory (at least if we omit the frills) is not an (...) esoteric science, however unfamiliar it may seem to an outsider. Rather it is a systematic exposition of the consequences of certain well-chosen platitudes about belief, desire, preference and choice. It is the very core of our common-sense theory of persons, dissected out and elegantly systematized. (David Lewis, Synthese 23:331–344, 1974, p. 337). A small distortion in the analysis of the conditional may create spurious problems with the analysis of other concepts. So if the facts about usage favor one among a number of subtly different theories, it may be important to determine which one it is. (Robert Stalnaker, A Defense of Conditional Excluded Middle, pp. 87–104, 1980, p. 87). (shrink)

When Adam Smith published his celebrated writings on economics and moral philosophy he famously referred to the operation of an invisible hand. Adam Smith's Political Philosophy makes visible the invisible hand by examining its significance in Smith's political philosophy and relating it to similar concepts used by other philosophers, revealing a distinctive approach to social theory that stresses the significance of the unintended consequences of human action. This book introduces greater conceptual clarity to the discussion of the (...) invisible hand and the related concept of unintended order in the work of Smith and in political theory more generally. By examining the application of spontaneous order ideas in the work of Smith, Hume, Hayek and Popper, Adam Smith's Political Philosophy traces similarities in approach and from these builds a conceptual, composite model of an invisible hand argument. While setting out a clear model of the idea of spontaneous order the book also builds the case for using the idea of spontaneous order as an explanatory social theory, with chapters on its application in the fields of science, moral philosophy, law and government. (shrink)

Statements containing epistemic modals (e.g., “by spring 2023 most European countries may have the Covid-19 pandemic under control”) are common expressions of epistemic uncertainty. In this paper, previous published findings (Knobe & Yalcin, 2014; Khoo & Phillips, 2018) on the opposition between Contextualism and Relativism for epistemic modals are re-examined. It is found that these findings contain a substantial degree of individual variation. To investigate whether participants differ in their interpretation of epistemic modals, an experiment with multiple phases and sessions (...) is used to classify participants according to the three semantic theories of Relativism, Contextualism, and Objectivism. Through this study, some of the first empirical evidence for the kind of truth-value shifts postulated by semantic Relativism is presented. It is furthermore found that participants’ disagreement judgments match their truth evaluations and that participants are capable of distinguishing between truth and justification. In a second experimental session, it is investigated whether participants thus classified follow the norm of retraction which Relativism uses to account for argumentation with epistemic modals. Here the results are less favorable for Relativism. In a second experiment, these results are replicated and the normative beliefs of participants concerning the norm of retraction are investigated following work on measuring norms by Bicchieri (2017). Again, it is found that on average participants show no strong preferences concerning the norm of retraction for epistemic modals. Yet, it was found that participants who had committed to Objectivism and had training in logics applied the norm of retraction to might-statements. These results present a substantial challenge to the account of argumentation with epistemic modals presented in MacFarlane (2014), as discussed. Keywords: Epistemic Modals, Relativism, Norm Conflicts, Retraction, Semantics, Truth Conditions, Argumentation. (shrink)

The aims of this paper are twofold: firstly, to give the reader a comprehensive- but not exhaustive- understanding of Schopenhauer’s theory of will, and, secondly, to elucidate certain problems inherent in this theory. Schopenhauer’s epistemology, dual aspect ontology, aesthetics, ethics, and pessimism are explored. Additionally, a cursory exposition of Kant’s metaphysics is presented, along with Schopenhauer’s critique of this. Possible solutions to problems in his theory are expounded and subsequently critiqued. Most salient of these problems is his identification of the (...) will with the Kantian thing-in-itself. I argue that Schopenhauer’s theory of will contradicts the Kantian confines on metaphysical knowledge. Consequently, and in light of his own epistemology, there are serious, if not intractable, problems with his contentions that the will is the thing-in-itself, and is knowable. (shrink)

According to the principle of Conjunction Closure, if one has justification for believing each of a set of propositions, one has justification for believing their conjunction. The lottery and preface paradoxes can both be seen as posing challenges for Closure, but leave open familiar strategies for preserving the principle. While this is all relatively well-trodden ground, a new Closure-challenging paradox has recently emerged, in two somewhat different forms, due to Backes :3773–3787, 2019a) and Praolini :715–726, 2019). This paradox synthesises elements (...) of the lottery and the preface and is designed to close off the familiar Closure-preserving strategies. By appealing to a normic theory of justification, I will defend Closure in the face of this new paradox. Along the way I will draw more general conclusions about justification, normalcy and defeat, which bear upon what Backes :2877–2895, 2019b) has dubbed the ‘easy defeat’ problem for the normic theory. (shrink)

History has left a territory composed of two municipalitics, whose shape is unique, belonging partly to the Netherlands and partly to Belgium. Earlier both parts belonged to the former Duchy of Brabant, a tenitory that is now split up into the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant (including Baarle-Nassau) and thc Belgian provinces of Antwerp (which includes Baarle-Hertog), Vlaams Brabant, Brussels, and Brabant-Wallon. People are quite comfortable with this situation, even though it raises many complicated and difficult problems that even the most (...) brilliant jurists are puzzled. Baarle-Hertog is called on older Belgian maps Barle-Duc (Hertog = Duke, fr: duc) and must not be confused with the prefectoral town of Bar-le-Duc, Meuse, France. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal Duncan Pritchard responds to an objection to the modal account of risk pressed by Ebert, Smith and Durbach ( 2020 ). In this paper, I expand upon the objection and argue that it still stands. I go on to consider a more general question raised by this exchange – whether risk is ‘objective’, or whether it is something that varies from one perspective to another.

Gilles Deleuze was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, and Smith is widely recognized to be one of his most penetrating interpreters, as well as an important philosophical voice in his own right. Combining his most important pieces over the last fifteen years along with two new essays, this book is Smith 's definitive treatise on Deleuze. The essays are divided into four sections, which cover Deleuze's use of the history of philosophy, an overview of (...) his philosophical system, an analysis of several Deleuzian concepts, as well as an assessment of his position within contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Is it right to convict a person of a crime on the basis of purely statistical evidence? Many who have considered this question agree that it is not, posing a direct challenge to legal probabilism – the claim that the criminal standard of proof should be understood in terms of a high probability threshold. Some defenders of legal probabilism have, however, held their ground: Schoeman (1987) argues that there are no clear epistemic or moral problems with convictions based on purely (...) statistical evidence, and speculates that our aversion to such convictions may be nothing more than an irrational bias. More recently, Hedden and Colyvan (2019, section VI) describe our reluctance to convict on the basis of purely statistical evidence as an ‘intuition’, but suggest that there may be no ‘in principle’ problem with such convictions (see also Papineau, forthcoming, section 6). In this paper, I argue that there is, in some cases, an in principle problem with a conviction based upon statistical evidence alone – namely, it commits us to a precedent which, if consistently followed through, could lead to the deliberate conviction of an innocent person. I conclude with some reflections on the idea that the criminal justice system should strive to maximise the accuracy of its verdicts – and the related idea that we should each strive to maximise the accuracy of our beliefs. (shrink)

Many of the items that humans consume are produced in ways that involve serious harms to persons. Familiar examples include the harms involved in the extraction and trade of conflict minerals (e.g. coltan, diamonds), the acquisition and import of non- fair trade produce (e.g. coffee, chocolate, bananas, rice), and the manufacture of goods in sweatshops (e.g. clothing, sporting equipment). In addition, consumption of certain goods (significantly fossil fuels and the products of the agricultural industry) involves harm to the environment, to (...) future persons, and to current persons in low-lying and developing countries, by way of their impacts on climate change. When it comes to such large-scale harms, it's easy for the individual to feel helpless. Even if she sincerely wishes things were otherwise, she may wonder what she could possibly do to make them so. In this paper I briefly explore several promising avenues for generating duties in individuals to consume ethically, and develop one in particular: that an individual ought to signal her commitments to others, as a first step in collectivizing to act against unjust global labour practices. (shrink)

Epistemic permissivism is the view that it is possible for two people to rationally hold incompatible attitudes toward some proposition on the basis of one body of evidence. In this paper, I defend a particular version of permissivism – unacknowledged permissivism (UP) – which says that permissivism is true, but that no one can ever rationally believe that she is in a permissive case. I show that counter to what virtually all authors who have discussed UP claim, UP is an (...) attractive view: it is compatible with the intuitive motivations for permissivism and avoids a significant challenge to permissivism: the arbitrariness objection. (shrink)

This paper, while neutral on questions about the minimality of truth, argues for the non-minimality of truth-aptness.

In this paper I defend an eudaimonistic reading of Spinoza’s ethical philosophy. Eudaimonism refers to the mainstream ethical tradition of the ancient Greeks, which considers happiness a naturalistic, stable, and exclusively intrinsic good. Within this tradition, we can also draw a distinction between weak eudaimonists and strong eudaimonists. Weak eudaimonists do not ground their ethical conceptions of happiness in complete theories of metaphysics, epistemology, or psychology. Strong eudaimonists, conversely, build their conceptions of happiness around an overall philosophical system that extends (...) far beyond ethics, while nevertheless being directed at the promotion of a happy life. I will show that Spinozistic happiness is not only naturalistic, stable, and exclusively intrinsically good, but that Spinoza is also a strong eudaimonist because his ethical account of happiness is incomprehensible without appeal to metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological doctrines. As well, I will explain how the apparent subjective and relativistic features of Spinoza’s ethics do not undermine the eudaimonistic reading, because both Spinoza and the ancient eudaimonists grant that the beliefs/feelings of the subject play a necessary (but insufficient) role in happiness as the highest good. (shrink)

Long-standing neglect of the chemical senses in the philosophy of perception is due, mostly, to their being regarded as ‘lower’ senses. Smell, taste, and chemically irritated touch are thought to produce mere bodily sensations. However, empirically informed theories of perception can show how these senses lead to perception of objective properties, and why they cannot be treated as special cases of perception modelled on vision. The senses of taste, touch, and smell also combine to create unified perceptions of flavour. The (...) nature of these multimodal experiences and the character of our awareness of them puts pressure on the traditional idea that each episode of perception goes one or other of the five senses. Thus, the chemical senses, far from being peripheral to the concerns of the philosophy of perception, may hold important clues to the multisensory nature of perception in general. (shrink)

A de minimis risk is defined as a risk that is so small that it may be legitimately ignored when making a decision. While ignoring small risks is common in our day-to-day decision making, attempts to introduce the notion of a de minimis risk into the framework of decision theory have run up against a series of well-known difficulties. In this paper, I will develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of overcoming two major obstacles to the modelling (...) of de minimis risk. The key move is to introduce, into decision theory, a non-probabilistic conception of risk known as normic risk. (shrink)

A collection of material on Husserl's Logical Investigations, and specifically on Husserl's formal theory of parts, wholes and dependence and its influence in ontology, logic and psychology. Includes translations of classic works by Adolf Reinach and Eugenie Ginsberg, as well as original contributions by Wolfgang Künne, Kevin Mulligan, Gilbert Null, Barry Smith, Peter M. Simons, Roger A. Simons and Dallas Willard. Documents work on Husserl's ontology arising out of early meetings of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy.

Human cognitive acts are directed towards entities of a wide range of different types. What follows is a new proposal for bringing order into this typological clutter. A categorial scheme for the objects of human cognition should be (1) critical and realistic. Cognitive subjects are liable to error, even to systematic error of the sort that is manifested by believers in the Pantheon of Olympian gods. Thus not all putative object-directed acts should be recognized as having objects of their own. (...) Broadly, the objects towards which human cognition is directed should be parts of reality in a sense that is at least consistent with the truths of natural science. But such a scheme should also be (2) comprehensive: it should do justice to each sort of object on its own terms, and not attempt to eliminate objects of one sort in favour of objects of other, more favoured sorts. Linguistic and other forms of idealism, as well as Meinongian theories, which assign to each and every referring expression or intentional act an object tailored to fit, yield categorial schemes which fail to satisfy (1). Physicalistic and other forms of reductionism yield categorial schemes which fail to satisfy (2). What follows is a categorial scheme that is both critically realistic and comprehensive. Thus it enjoys some of the benefits of linguistic idealism and physicalism, without (or so it is hoped) the corresponding disadvantages of each. (shrink)

The politics of climate change is marked by the fact that countries are dragging their heels in doing what they ought to do; namely, creating a binding global treaty, and fulfilling the duties assigned to each of them under it. Many different agents are culpable in this failure. But we can imagine a stylised version of the climate change case, in which no agents are culpable: if the bad effects of climate change were triggered only by crossing a particular threshold, (...) and it was reasonably, but mistakenly, believed by each country that insufficiently many other countries were willing to cooperate in order for that threshold to remain uncrossed, no country would be required to make a unilateral contribution. Yet even without culpability, we can diagnose a moral ill: the world has gone other than it should have. If not for the mistaken beliefs, there would have been a global climate treaty, and all the avoidance of future suffering that would come with it. In this article I argue that this moral ill has implications for the non-culpable agents, in that it generates duties to disgorge actual holdings over and above the counterpart holdings in the relevant counterfactual: those holdings the agents would have had, were the world to have gone as it should. (shrink)

Searle’s tool for understanding culture, law and society is the opposition between brute reality and institutional reality, or in other words between: observer-independent features of the world, such as force, mass and gravitational attraction, and observer-relative features of the world, such as money, property, marriage and government. The question posed here is: under which of these two headings do moral concepts fall? This is an important question because there are moral facts – for example pertaining to guilt and responsibility – (...) which hover uncomfortably close to the boundary between the observer-relative and the observer-independent. By means of a thought experiment involving an imagined Chinese society in which guilt is determined by the random throwing of sticks, I seek to show that moral concepts threaten the foundations of Searle’s philosophy of social reality. (shrink)

Part 1 of this exchange consists in a critique by Smith of Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality focusing on Searle’s use of the formula ‘X counts as Y in context C’. Smith argues that this formula works well for social objects such as dollar bills and presidents where the corresponding X terms (pieces of paper, human beings) are easy to identify. In cases such as debts and prices and money in a bank's computers, however, the formula fails, (...) because these are cases of what he calls ‘free-standing Y terms’, since there is here no X which can count as the corresponding Y. In his response in Part 2, Searle argues that Smith’s critique rests on three misunderstandings: 1. in wrongly presupposing that Searle is trying to analyze the nature of what he calls “social objects”, rather than of social facts; 2. in thinking that the counts as formula is intended as a definition, rather than as a mere mnemonic; and 3. in neglecting the naturalism of Searle’s account. (shrink)

Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our experiments show geographic categories to be similar to their non-geographic counterparts in (...) the ways in which they generate instances of different relative frequencies at different levels. Other tests, however, provide preliminary evidence for the existence of important differences in subjects’ categorizations of geographic and non-geographic objects, and suggest further experimental work especially with regard to the role in cognitive categorization of different types of object-boundaries at different scales. (shrink)

Since ancient times, legal systems have held owners responsible for harm caused by their property. Across 4 experiments, we show that children aged 3–7 also hold owners responsible for such harm. Older children judge that owners should repair harm caused by property, and younger children may do this as well. Younger and older children judge that owners should apologize for harm, even when children do not believe the owners allowed the harm to occur. Children are also as likely to hold (...) owners responsible for harm caused by property as for harm caused by the owners themselves. The present findings contribute to psychological accounts of ownership by showing that ownership not only confers rights to control property, but also responsibility for harm caused by property. The findings also contribute to our understanding of the attribution of responsibility, and challenge accounts claiming that directly causing harm, or allowing it to happen, is a prerequisite for responsibility. The findings provide support for an account claiming that property is an extension of its owner, and likewise reveal that responsibility for harm caused by property is an early developing aspect of the psychology of ownership. 2018 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Since it is only five years since the publication of our paper, "Geographical categories: An ontological investigation" (Smith and Mark 2001), it seems somewhat strange to be making retrospective comments on the piece. Nevertheless, the field is moving quickly, and much has happened since the article appeared. A large number of papers have already cited the work, which suggests that there is a seam here that people find worthy of being mined. In this short essay, we first review the (...) paper and attempt to assess its significance from the perspective of our current work. We then put the paper in the context of our individual and joint works, which led up to it, and summarize our research trajectories since the paper appeared, pointing out what some of this reveals about spatial ontology in general. We conclude with some remarks on the future of ontological research in geographical information science. (shrink)

What should we do when we won't do as we ought? Suppose it ought to be that the procrastinating professor accept the task of reviewing a book, and actually review the book. It seems clear that given he won't review it, he ought not to accept the task. That is a genuine moral obligation in light of less than perfect circumstances. I want to entertain the possibility that a set of such obligations form something like a 'practical morality'; that which (...) we ought to do given that we're unlikely or unwilling to do much of what ideal morality demands. If it is possible to give a coherent account of these kinds of obligations, then it is possible to entertain the idea that these obligations are in fact what morality demands. The conceptual truths about justice (good, right, fairness) that come from ideals are one thing; the actions that morality demands of people given their actual circumstances are quite another. In this paper I will ask about the kinds of facts that can be used to establish a more circumscribed set of obligations than we get from the orthodox view about moral obligation. (shrink)

The truthmaker theory rests on the thesis that the link between a true judgment and that in the world to which it corresponds is not a one-to-one but rather a one-to-many relation. An analogous thesis in relation to the link between a singular term and that in the world to which it refers is already widely accepted. This is the thesis to the effect that singular reference is marked by vagueness of a sort that is best understood in supervaluationist terms. (...) In what follows we show that the supervaluationist approach to singular reference, when wedded to the truthmaker idea, yields a framework of surprising power, which offers a uniform set of solutions to a range of problems regarding identity, reference and knowledge, problems which have hitherto been dealt with on an ad hoc basis. (shrink)

In this paper I draw attention to a peculiar epistemic feature exhibited by certain deductively valid inferences. Certain deductively valid inferences are unable to enhance the reliability of one's belief that the conclusion is true—in a sense that will be fully explained. As I shall show, this feature is demonstrably present in certain philosophically significant inferences—such as GE Moore's notorious 'proof' of the existence of the external world. I suggest that this peculiar epistemic feature might be correlated with the much (...) discussed phenomenon that Crispin Wright and Martin Davies have called 'transmission failure'—the apparent failure, on the part of some deductively valid inferences to transmit one's justification for believing the premises. (shrink)

Difference and Repetition might be said to have brought about a Deleuzian Revolution in philosophy comparable to Kant’s Copernican Revolution. Kant had denounced the three great terminal points of traditional metaphysics – self, world and God – as transcendent illusions, and Deleuze pushes Kant’s revolution to its limit by positing a transcendental field that excludes the coherence of the self, world and God in favour of an immanent and differential plane of impersonal individuations and pre-individual singularities. In the process, he (...) introduces numerous conceptual innovations into philosophy: the becoming of concepts; a transformation of the form of the question; an insistence that philosophy must start in the middle; an attempt to think in terms of multiplicities; the development of a new logic and a new metaphysics based on a concept of difference; a new conception of space as intensive rather than extensive; a conception of time as a pure and empty form; and an understanding of philosophy as a system in heterogenesis – that is, a system that entails a perpetual genesis of the heterogeneous, an incessant production of the new. -/- Keywords: concepts, becoming, multiplicity, singularity, the middle [au milieu], difference, intensity, time, system, the new. (shrink)

Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical identity theory requires modification when theorising about presentations of self on social media. This chapter contributes to these efforts, refining a conception of digital identities by differentiating them from ‘corporatised identities’. Armed with this new distinction, I ultimately argue that social media platforms’ production of corporatised identities undermines their users’ autonomy and digital well-being. This follows from the disentanglement of several commonly conflated concepts. Firstly, I distinguish two kinds of presentation of self that I collectively refer to (...) as ‘expressions of digital identity’. These digital performances (boyd 2007) and digital artefacts (Hogan 2010) are distinct, but often confused. Secondly, I contend this confusion results in the subsequent conflation of corporatised identities – poor approximations of actual digital identities, inferred and extrapolated by algorithms from individuals’ expressions of digital identity – with digital identities proper. Finally, and to demonstrate the normative implications of these clarifications, I utilise MacKenzie’s (2014, 2019) interpretation of relational autonomy to propose that designing social media sites around the production of corporatised identities, at the expense of encouraging genuine performances of digital identities, has undermined multiple dimensions of this vital liberal value. In particular, the pluralistic range of authentic preferences that should structure flourishing human lives are being flattened and replaced by commercial, consumerist preferences. For these reasons, amongst others, I contend that digital identities should once again come to drive individuals’ actions on social media sites. Only upon doing so can individuals’ autonomy, and control over their digital identities, be rendered compatible with social media. (shrink)

Common sense is on the one hand a certain set of processes of natural cognition – of speaking, reasoning, seeing, and so on. On the other hand common sense is a system of beliefs (of folk physics, folk psychology and so on). Over against both of these is the world of common sense, the world of objects to which the processes of natural cognition and the corresponding belief-contents standardly relate. What are the structures of this world? How does the scientific (...) treatment of this world relate to traditional and contemporary metaphysics and formal ontology? Can we embrace a thesis of common-sense realism to the effect that the world of common sense exists uniquely? Or must we adopt instead a position of cultural relativism which would assign distinct worlds of common sense to each group and epoch? The present paper draws on recent work in computer science (especially in the fields of naive and qualitative physics), in perceptual and developmental psychology, and in cognitive anthropology, in order to consider in a new light these and related questions and to draw conclusions for the methodology and philosophical foundations of the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

This review focuses on the Ogdoas scholastica by Jacob Lorhard, published in 1606. The importance of this document turns on the fact that it contains what is almost certainly the first published occurrence of the term “ontology.” The body of the work consists in a series of diagrams called “diagraphs.” Relevant features of this compendium of diagraphs are: 1. that it does not in fact contain the word “ontology,” and 2. that Lorhard himself was not responsible for its content.

In this paper I will compare two competing accounts of assertion: the knowledge account and the justified belief account. When it comes to the evidence that is typically used to assess accounts of assertion – including the evidence from lottery propositions, the evidence from Moore’s paradoxical propositions and the evidence from conversational patterns – I will argue that the justified belief account has at least as much explanatory power as its rival. I will argue, finally, that a close look at (...) the ways in which assertions can be challenged and retracted reveals a certain advantage for the justified belief account. The paper will touch upon a number of further topics along the way, including the logical interaction between knowledge and justified belief, the nature of defeat, and the hypothesis that knowledge and justified belief are normatively coincident goals. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the claim that justification is closed under conjunction, and confront its most alarming consequence — that one can have justification for believing propositions that are unlikely to be true, given one's evidence.

This book is a survey of the most important developments in Austrian philosophy in its classical period from the 1870s to the Anschluss in 1938. Thus it is intended as a contribution to the history of philosophy. But I hope that it will be seen also as a contribution to philosophy in its own right as an attempt to philosophize in the spirit of those, above all Roderick Chisholm, Rudolf Haller, Kevin Mulligan and Peter Simons, who have done so much (...) to demonstrate the continued fertility of the ideas and methods of the Austrian philosophers in our own day. For some time now, historians of philosophy have been gradually coming to terms with the idea that post-Kantian philosophy in the German-speaking world ought properly to be divided into two distinct traditions which we might refer to as the German and Austrian traditions, respectively. The main line of the first consists in a list of personages beginning with Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Schelling and ending with Heidegger, Adorno and Bloch. The main line of the second may be picked out similarly by means of a list beginning with Bolzano, Mach and Meinong, and ending with Wittgenstein, Neurath and Popper. As should be clear, it is the Austrian tradition that has contributed most to the contemporary mainstream of philosophical thinking in the Anglo-Saxon world. For while there are of course German thinkers who have made crucial contributions to the development of exact or analytic philosophy, such thinkers were outsiders when seen from the perspective of native German philosophical culture, and in fact a number of them found their philosophical home precisely in Vienna. When, in contrast, we examine the influence of the Austrian line, we encounter a whole series of familiar and unfamiliar links to the characteristic concerns of more recent philosophy of the analytic sort. As Michael Dummett points out in his Origins of Analytic Philosophy, the newly fashionable habit of referring to analytic philosophy as "Anglo-American" is in this light a "grave historical distortion". If, he says, we take into account the historical context in which analytic philosophy developed, then such philosophy "could at least as well be called "Anglo-Austrian" (1988, p. 7). Much valuable scholarly work has been done on the thinking of Husserl and Wittgenstein, Mach and the Vienna Circle. The central axis of Austrian philosophy, however, which as I hope to show in what follows is constituted by the work of Brentano and his school, is still rather poorly understood. Work on Meinong or Twardowski by contemporary philosophers still standardly rests upon simplified and often confused renderings of a few favoured theses taken out of context. Little attention is paid to original sources, and little effort is devoted to establishing what the problems were by which the Austrian philosophers in general were exercised -- in spite of the fact that many of these same problems have once more become important as a result of the contemporary burgeoning of interest on the part of philosophers in problems in the field of cognitive science. (shrink)

Which of the two dominant arguments for duties to alleviate global poverty, supposing their premises were generally accepted, would be more likely to produce their desired outcome? I take Pogge's argument for obligations grounded in principles of justice, a "contribution" argument, and Campbell's argument for obligations grounded in principles of humanity, an "assistance" argument, to be prototypical. Were people to accept the premises of Campbell's argument, how likely would they be to support governmental reform in policies for international aid, or (...) to make individual contributions to international aid organizations? And I ask the same question, mutatis mutandis, for Pogge's argument. (shrink)

A critique of dubious contrasts between "science" and "religion" drawn on the basis of cognitive-evolutionary accounts of human psychology, e.g.,. the claim that religious concepts are “likely” and “natural” for the human mind whereas scientific thinking is “rare” and “unnatural.” Initially made by biologist Lewis Wolpert in *The Unnatural Nature of Science* (1993) and anthropologist Pascal Boyer in *Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought* (2001), they are developed at length by philosopher R. N. McCauley in a*Why Religion is (...) Natural and Science is Not* (2011). These contrasts involve tendentiously narrow or broad definitions of the terms “science” and “religion” and the obliteration of the complex historical and intellectual relations between the ideas and practices currently identified by those terms. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing claims in Sven Rosenkranz’s Justification as Ignorance is that Timothy Williamson’s celebrated anti-luminosity argument can be resisted when it comes to the condition ~K~KP—the condition that one is in no position to know that one is in no position to know P. In this paper, I critically assess this claim.

Deleuze argued that a fundamental mutation in the concept of time occurred in Kant. In antiquity, the concept of time was subordinated to the concept of movement: time was a ‘measure’ of movement. In Kant, this relation is inverted: time is no longer subordinated to movement but assumes an autonomy of its own: time becomes "the pure and empty form" of everything that moves and changes. What is essential in the theory of time is not the distinction between objective ‘clock (...) time’ (or physical time) and the subjective experience of ‘time consciousness,’ since both of them measure movements, whether the movement of extensive objects or intensive states. What is fundamental is rather the relation between time and movement, since time can only assume its own concept when it ceases to be subordinate to movement, whether that movement is objective or subjective. This article examines how Kant inverted the relation between time and movement, and how Deleuze’s own theory of time builds on Kant’s revolution and extends it further. (shrink)

Can there be a theory-free experience? And what would be the object of such an experience. Drawing on ideas set out by Husserl in the “Crisis” and in the second book of his “Ideas”, the paper presents answers to these questions in such a way as to provide a systematic survey of the content and ontology of common sense. In the second part of the paper Husserl’s ideas on the relationship between the common-sense world (what he called the ‘life-world’) and (...) the world of physical theory are subjected to a critical evaluation. The relation of Husserl’s ideas to current work in folk psychology and naive physics and to the direct realism of J. J. Gibson are also treated. (shrink)

In 1890 Christian von Ehrenfels published his classic paper "Über 'Gestaltqualitäten'", the first systematic investigation of the philosophy and psychology of Gestalt. Ehrenfels thereby issued an important challenge to the psychological atomism that was still predominant in his day. His paper not only exerted a powerful influence on the philosophy of the Meinong school, it also marked the beginning of the Gestalt tradition in psychology, later associated with the work of Wertheimer, Köhler and Koffka in Berlin. Includes papers by C. (...) Von Ehrenfels, Kurt Grelling and Paul Oppenheim and contributions by K. Mulligan, P.M. Simons and Barry Smith. (shrink)

Examining the historical development of scientific concepts is important for understanding the structured routines within which these concepts are currently used as goal-directed tools in experiments. To illustrate this claim, I will outline how the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations each draw on an older interdependent set of associations that, although nominally-discarded, continues to structure their current independent uses for pursuing discrete experimental goals. In doing so, I will highlight how three strands of literature offer mutually instructive insights for (...) understanding how the uses of our current scientific concepts contribute to experimental practices. The first strand of literature includes recent scholarship examining how the uses of scientific concepts can enable scientific practices (e.g., Boon 2012; Brigandt 2012; Feest 2010; Steinle 2012). In this context, scientific concepts have been described as tools that function in ways that contribute to empirical knowledge; contributions that extend beyond their traditionally recognized roles in mental and linguistic representation. The second strand of literature can be glimpsed within the technoscientific studies focus on non-human agency; a focus that supports an account of the disciplined routines within which concepts are used as acting in analogous ways to the routinized participation of machines in experiments (Pickering 1995). The third strand of the literature draws attention to how the functions of concepts are grounded by the set of historically-contingent experimental practices (e.g., Canguilhem 2008; Tiles 1984). Although maintaining valuable differences, the focus of these three strands of literature are mutually instructive. Together, they offer a view of the uses of concepts as taken-for-granted tools that function within networks of subterranean associations; associations that are grounded by historically contingent experimental practices that structure how they act (in concert with human and material participants) within the temporally dynamic processes of scientific practice. Through examples drawn from a comparison of the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations, I aim to demonstrate the value that the converging insights of these three strands of literature offer for studying the role of scientific concepts in experimental practices. (shrink)

Autobiography of Barry Smith; emphasizes the role of Dummett and Husserl, Austrian philosophy and economics, and the Munich-Göttingen-Kraków school of realist phenomenology.

: In the epistemology of the late Wittgenstein, a central place is given to the notion of the hinge: an arational commitment that provides a foundation of some sort for the rest of our beliefs. Quasi-fideism is an approach to the epistemology of religion that argues that religious belief is on an epistemic par with other sorts of belief inasmuch as religious and non-religious beliefs all rely on hinges. I consider in this paper what it takes to find the appropriate (...) hinge for a quasi-fideist approach to the epistemology of religion. (shrink)

In this essay, I evaluate four central metaethical readings of Spinoza’s moral philosophy in the literature: unqualified anti-realism, qualified anti-realism, qualified realism, and unqualified realism. More specifically, I discuss the metaethical readings of Charles Jarrett (unqualified anti-realism), Matthew Kisner (qualified anti-realism), Jon Miller (qualified realism), and Andrew Youpa (unqualified realism), each of which captures core aspects of this debate. My conclusions are that (1) Spinoza is neither an unqualified anti-realist nor an unqualified realist and (2) Spinoza’s ethical framework represents a (...) qualified synthesis of realist (naturalistic) and anti-realist (affective) features. (shrink)

We begin at the beginning, with an outline of Aristotle’s views on ontology and with a discussion of the influence of these views on Linnaeus. We move from there to consider the data standardization initiatives launched in the 19th century, and then turn to investigate how the idea of computational ontologies developed in the AI and knowledge representation communities in the closing decades of the 20th century. We show how aspects of this idea, particularly those relating to the use of (...) the term 'concept' in ontology development, influenced SNOMED CT and other medical terminologies. Against this background we then show how the Foundational Model of Anatomy, the Gene Ontology, Basic Formal Ontology and other OBO Foundry ontologies came into existence and discuss their role in the development of contemporary biomedical informatics. (shrink)

One way in which bioethicists can benefit the medical community is by clarifying the concept of disorder. Since insurance companies refer to the DSM for whether a patient should receive assistance, one must consider the consequences of one’s concept of disorder for who should be provided with care. I offer a refinement of Jerome Wakefield’s hybrid concept of disorder, the harmful dysfunction analysis. I criticize both the factual component and the value component of Wakefield’s account and suggest how they might (...) be improved. I propose that the factual component should be statistical variation analyzed in multilevel and chronological compilations of physiological data. I propose that the value component should prioritize the individual’s authority regarding the experience of suffering from a physiological condition. My account preserves the insight of using a factual and a value component while avoiding the problems that Wakefield’s original account faces. (shrink)