In this Introduction we introduce the central themes of the Evaluative Perception volume. After identifying historical and recent contemporary work on this topic, we discuss some central questions under three headings: (1) Questions about the Existence and Nature of Evaluative Perception: Are there perceptual experiences of values? If so, what is their nature? Are experiences of values sui generis? Are values necessary for certain kinds of experience? (2) Questions about the Epistemology of Evaluative Perception: Can evaluative experiences ever justify evaluative (...) judgments? Are experiences of values necessary for certain kinds of justified evaluative judgments? (3) Questions about Value Theory and Evaluative Perception: Is the existence of evaluative experience supported or undermined by particular views in value theory? Are particular views in value theory supported or undermined by the existence of value experience? (shrink)

This paper demarcates a theoretically interesting class of "evaluational adjectives." This class includes predicates expressing various kinds of normative and epistemic evaluation, such as predicates of personal taste, aesthetic adjectives, moral adjectives, and epistemic adjectives, among others. Evaluational adjectives are distinguished, empirically, in exhibiting phenomena such as discourse-oriented use, felicitous embedding under the attitude verb `find', and sorites-susceptibility in the comparative form. A unified degree-based semantics is developed: What distinguishes evaluational adjectives, semantically, is that they denote context-dependent measure functions (...) ("evaluational perspectives")—context-dependent mappings to degrees of taste, beauty, probability, etc., depending on the adjective. This perspective-sensitivity characterizing the class of evaluational adjectives cannot be assimilated to vagueness, sensitivity to an experiencer argument, or multidimensionality; and it cannot be demarcated in terms of pretheoretic notions of subjectivity, common in the literature. I propose that certain diagnostics for "subjective" expressions be analyzed instead in terms of a precisely specified kind of discourse-oriented use of context-sensitive language. I close by applying the account to `find x PRED' ascriptions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvaluative aesthetic discourse communicates that the speaker has had first-hand experience of what is talked about. If you call a book bewitching, it will be assumed that you have read the book. If you say that a building is beautiful, it will be assumed that you have had some visual experience with it. According to an influential view, this is because knowledge is a norm for assertion, and aesthetic knowledge requires first-hand experience. This paper criticizes this view and argues for (...) an alternative view, according to which aesthetic discourse expresses affective states of mind, analogously to how assertions express beliefs. It is because these affective states require first-hand experience that aesthetic discourse communicates that such acquaintance is at hand. The paper furthermore argues that the lack of an experience requirement for aesthetic belief ascriptions constitutes a problem for the kind of expressivist who claims that evaluative belief states are covert non-cognitive states. (shrink)

It is widely held within contemporary metaethics that there is a lack of linguistic support for evaluative expressivism. On the contrary, it seems that the predictions that expressivists make about evaluative discourse are not borne out. An instance of this is the so-called problem of missing Moorean infelicity. Expressivists maintain that evaluative statements express non-cognitive states of mind in a similar manner to how ordinary descriptive language expresses beliefs. Conjoining an ordinary assertion that p with the denial of being in (...) the corresponding belief state famously gives rise to Moorean infelicity:?? It’s raining but I don’t believe that it’s raining. If expressivists are right, then conjoining evaluative statements with the denial of being in the relevant non-cognitive state of mind should give rise to similar infelicity. However, as several theorists have pointed out, this does not seem to be the case. Statements like the following are not infelicitous: Murder is wrong but I don’t disapprove of it. In this paper, I argue that evaluative statements express the kind of states that are attributed by ‘find’-constructions in English and that these states are non-cognitive in nature. This addresses the problem of missing Moorean infelicity and, more generally, goes to show that there are linguistic facts which support expressivism about evaluative discourse. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that our ordinary English words man and woman are “gender terms,” and gender is distinct from biological sex. That is, they believe womanhood and manhood are not defined even partly by biological sex. This sex/gender distinction is one of the most influential ideas of the twentieth century on the broader culture, both popular and academic. Less well known are the reasons to think it’s true. My interest in this paper is to show that, upon investigation, the arguments (...) for the sex/gender distinction have feet of clay. In fact, they all fail. We will survey the literature and tour arguments in favor of the sex/gender distinction, and then we’ll critically evaluate those arguments. We’ll consider the argument from resisting biological determinism, the argument from biologically intersex people and vagueness, the argument from the normativity of gender, and some arguments from thought experiments. We’ll see that these arguments are not up to the task of supporting the sex/gender distinction; they simply don’t work. So, philosophers should either develop stronger arguments for the sex/gender distinction, or cultivate a variety of feminism that’s consistent with the traditional, biologically-based definitions of woman and man. (shrink)

It is widely believed that a conservative moral outlook is opposed to biomedical forms of human enhancement. In this paper, I argue that this widespread belief is incorrect. Using Cohen’s evaluative conservatism as my starting point, I argue that there are strong conservative reasons to prioritise the development of biomedical enhancements. In particular, I suggest that biomedical enhancement may be essential if we are to maintain our current evaluative equilibrium (i.e. the set of values that undergird and permeate our current (...) political, economic, and personal lives) against the threats to that equilibrium posed by external, non-biomedical forms of enhancement. I defend this view against modest conservatives who insist that biomedical enhancements pose a greater risk to our current evaluative equilibrium, and against those who see no principled distinction between the forms of human enhancement. (shrink)

Subjects who retain their beliefs in the face of higher-order evidence that those very beliefs are outputs of flawed cognitive processes are at least very often criticisable. Many think that this is because such higher-order evidence defeats various epistemic statuses such as justification and knowledge, but it is notoriously difficult to give an account of such defeat. This paper outlines an alternative explanation, stemming from some of my earlier work, for why subjects are criticisable for retaining beliefs in the face (...) of paradigm kinds of putatively defeating higher-order evidence: they manifest dispositions that are bad relative to a range of candidate epistemic successes such as true belief and knowledge. In particular, giving up belief in response to higher-order evidence only when that evidence is not misleading would require subjects to have dispositions that discriminate between cases in which their original cognitive processes is fine, and cases in which they merely seemed to be fine. But, I argue, such dispositions are not normally humanly feasible. I show that retaining belief in putative cases of defeat by higher-order evidence is problematic irrespective of whether veritism or some form of gnosticism is true. In the end I contrast my account of dispositional evaluations with similar-sounding ideas that have been put forth in the literature, such as consequentialist views that focus on instrumental means to success. (shrink)

A fiction may prescribe imagining that a pig can talk or tell the future. A fiction may prescribe imagining that torturing innocent persons is a good thing. We generally comply with imaginative prescriptions like the former, but not always with prescriptions like the latter: we imagine non-evaluative fictions without difficulty but sometimes resist imagining value-rich fictions. Thus arises the puzzle of imaginative resistance. Most analyses of the phenomenon focus on the content of the relevant imaginings. The present analysis focuses instead (...) on the character of certain kinds of imaginings, arguing that we resist in such cases given the rich evaluative character of the imaginings prescribed, and the agent-dependent constraints on imagining in such ways. (shrink)

Against those who identify genealogy with reductive genealogical debunking or deny it any evaluative and action-guiding significance, I argue for the following three claims: that although genealogies, true to their Enlightenment origins, tend to trace the higher to the lower, they need not reduce the higher to the lower, but can elucidate the relation between them and put us in a position to think more realistically about both relata; that if we think of genealogy’s normative significance in terms of a (...) triadic model that includes the genealogy’s addressee, we can see that in tracing the higher to the lower, a genealogy can facilitate an evaluation of the higher element, and where the lower element is some important practical need rather than some sinister motive, the genealogy can even be vindicatory; and finally, that vindicatory genealogies can offer positive guidance on how to engineer better concepts. (shrink)

In 1960, Kevin Lynch wrote The Image of the City, which transformed the way design professionals and social scientists dealt with the urban form and design. The Evaluative Image of the City follows the work of Lynch and further explores the role of human evaluations of the cityscape. This book describes how to assess, plan, and design the appearance of cities to please inhabitants. It presents a series of studies on evaluative images and discusses methodologies, findings, and applications to design (...) and planning at various stages. Designers, planners, and businesspeople, as well as the general public, will find this book a valuable guide for improving the image of their surroundings. (shrink)

The descriptions 'good' and 'bad' are examples of thin concepts, as opposed to 'kind' or 'cruel' which are thick concepts. Simon Kirchin provides one of the first full-length studies of the crucial distinction between 'thin' and 'thick' concepts, which is fundamental to many debates in ethics, aesthetics and epistemology.

Recent years have seen rapid progress in the development of ontologies as semantic models intended to capture and represent aspects of the real world. There is, however, great variation in the quality of ontologies. If ontologies are to become progressively better in the future, more rigorously developed, and more appropriately compared, then a systematic discipline of ontology evaluation must be created to ensure quality of content and methodology. Systematic methods for ontology evaluation will take into account representation of (...) individual ontologies, performance (in terms of accuracy, domain coverage and the efficiency and quality of automated reasoning using the ontologies) on tasks for which the ontology is designed and used, degree of alignment with other ontologies and their compatibility with automated reasoning. A sound and systematic approach to ontology evaluation is required to transform ontology engineering into a true scientific and engineering discipline. This chapter discusses issues and problems in ontology evaluation, describes some current strategies, and suggests some approaches that might be useful in the future. (shrink)

A recent quarrel over faultless disagreements assumes that disputes over evaluative sentences should be understood as regular, factual disagreements. Instead, I propose that evaluative disagreements should be understood in Lewisian terms. Language use works like a rule-governed game. In it, the assertion of an evaluative sentence is an attempt to establish one value as default in the conversation; its rejection, in turn, is in most cases the refusal to accept this move.

The Jinn, which is regarded as the third kind of entity apart from the angel and the human being, has been the subject matter of several separate works written by both Muslims and non-Muslims in the past and present. In short, such works deal with the nature of jinns and their characteristics, and they cover matters such as the beliefs about jinns in several religions and cultures and their relationship with human beings. Apart from the fact that the primary source (...) of Islam, namely, the Quran, has a separate chapter called al-Jinn (The Jinn) /72, it provides information about jinns in many verses in several other chapters. Traditions also provide plenty of information about jinns. One example of such information is on the question whether the Holy Prophet have met with jinns. A study of the traditions on this matter reveals the fact that there are ṣaḥīḥ (authentic) traditions that appear to be in conflict with each other and/or with some of the verses in the Quran. In this paper, we have analyzed and evaluated the relevant traditions in order to reconcile these contradictions, thus we aimed to clarify the matter. The question on whether the Holy Prophet met with jinns is often discussed within the context of narrations coming from Ibn al-Masʿūd and Ibn ʿAbbās. While the traditions coming from Ibn al-Masʿūd indicate that the Prophet met with jinns, a tradition narrated by Ibn ʿAbbās says the opposite. In the present work, we have analyzed the outwardly conflicting traditions narrated by both companions along with traditions narrated by other companions on this matter in the light of the chronology of the revelation of the Quran. As a result, we have concluded that the Holy Prophet have met with jinns as narrated by Ibn al-Masʿūd and that the report narrated by Ibn ʿAbbās was about the first years of Islam. (shrink)

Gelman and Loken (2013, 2014) proposed that when researchers base their statistical analyses on the idiosyncratic characteristics of a specific sample (e.g., a nonlinear transformation of a variable because it is skewed), they open up alternative analysis paths in potential replications of their study that are based on different samples (i.e., no transformation of the variable because it is not skewed). These alternative analysis paths count as additional (multiple) tests and, consequently, they increase the probability of making a Type I (...) error during hypothesis testing. The present article considers this forking paths problem and evaluates four potential solutions that might be used in psychology and other fields: (a) adjusting the prespecified alpha level, (b) preregistration, (c) sensitivity analyses, and (d) abandoning the Neyman-Pearson approach. It is concluded that although preregistration and sensitivity analyses are effective solutions to p-hacking, they are ineffective against result-neutral forking paths, such as those caused by transforming data. Conversely, although adjusting the alpha level cannot address p-hacking, it can be effective for result-neutral forking paths. Finally, abandoning the Neyman-Pearson approach represents a further solution to the forking paths problem. (shrink)

Prophet (pbuh) has given notice that the Salah [prayer] is the first deed in which the Muslim servant will be brought to account on the Day of Judgement. The Prophet (pbuh) also informed that if the believer’s obligatory (fardh) prayers are lacking this will be made up from voluntary (nawafil) prayers and that the servant comes close to Allah by fulfilling obligatories and continues to draw near to him with voluntary deeds. One of nawafil is the prayer which is performed (...) before and after the obligatory Friday prayer. When we examine the Prophetic narrations about those prayers -which is also called the first and the second sunnah- and their authenticity, we witness that the Prophet (pbuh) performed prayers in differing raka’ah numbers after the obligatory Friday prayer and urged to it, but there is no authentic and clear traditon indicating that He (pbuh) perfomed any prayer before it. However, by taking into account some general statements of Prophet (pbuh), some weak narrations and some practices of companions it has been said that the Friday prayer has a sunnah before it and moreover it is a Sunnah Muakkadah (stressed sunnah) which is performed in two or four raka’ahs. This article aims to present the narrations about whether the Prophet (pbuh) and companions used to perform any prayers before and after the obligatory Juma’ prayer and their number of raka’s, to determine their authenticity and to evaluate them by reporting the comments about them. (shrink)

In some severely uncertain situations, exemplified by climate change and novel pandemics, policymakers lack a reasoned basis for assigning probabilities to the possible outcomes of the policies they must choose between. I outline and defend an uncertainty averse, egalitarian approach to policy evaluation in these contexts. The upshot is a theory of distributive justice which offers especially strong reasons to guard against individual and collective misfortune.

A core challenge for contemporary bioethics is how to address the tension between respecting an individual’s autonomy and promoting their wellbeing when these ideals seem to come into conflict (Not...

The human dimensions involved in the operational objectives of Restorative Justice demand the highest quality of program design and staff training. In this paper, I argue that this desideratum has yet to be fully realized in existing Restorative Justice programs, in particular, with regard to the facilitation of reconciliation. I begin by presenting the chief problems associated with the concentration on reparation in Restorative Justice programs, to the neglect of reconciliation. I then argue that this phenomenon is, in part, a (...) consequence of (i) the almost universal use of service-delivery criteria in the evaluation of Restorative Justice programs, and (ii) the absence of research on the interactional processes involved within the victim-offender encounter itself, using suitably designed methodological tools. (shrink)

The genre to which an artwork belongs affects how it is to be interpreted and evaluated. An account of genre and of the criteria for genre membership should explain these interpretative and evaluative effects. Contrary to conceptions of genres as categories distinguished by the features of the works that belong to them, I argue that these effects are to be explained by conceiving of genres as categories distinguished by certain of the purposes that the works belonging to them are intended (...) to serve. (shrink)

Academic institutions migrated to modular teaching-learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To ensure the quality of the pedagogical innovations employed, the study determined the students’ evaluation of the faculty prepared instructional modules for the courses they enrolled in during the first and second semesters of Academic Year 2020-2021. Employing a descriptive-correlational research design, the study was participated by 644 students from three colleges who were then available during the data gathering. Data gathered through online surveys were then analyzed using descriptive (...) statistics and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient utilizing jamovi software. Results revealed that the faculty-prepared instructional modules were acceptable and satisfactory to the students. Besides, the students' evaluation of the instructional modules was positively related to their level of satisfaction. Still, the students recommended that a review of the modules be done before sending the modules; a more extended time allotment is considered, and sufficient concrete examples are given in the modules. With this, the faculty concerned are encouraged to review the phases involved in the design, development, and distribution of the instructional modules to make them highly acceptable and very satisfactory to the students while maintaining the quality of both the content and aesthetics of the learning materials. Considering the study’s limitations, further endeavors may be carried out to validate this pedagogical innovation. (shrink)

On a view implicitly endorsed by many, a concept is epistemically better than another if and because it does a better job at ‘carving at the joints', or if the property corresponding to it is ‘more natural' than the one corresponding to another. This chapter offers an argument against this seemingly plausible thought, starting from three key observations about the way we use and evaluate concepts from en epistemic perspective: that we look for concepts that play a role in explanations (...) of things that cry out for explanation; that we evaluate not only ‘empirical' concepts, but also mathematical and perhaps moral concepts from an epistemic perspective; and that there is much more complexity to the concept/property relation than the natural thought seems to presuppose. These observations, it is argued, rule out giving a theory of conceptual evaluation that is a corollary of a metaphysical ranking of the relevant properties. -/- conceptual ethics, explanation, naturalness, epistemic value, concept/property, semantic internalism. (shrink)

Land art requires careful evaluation when assessing its aesthetic and ethical value. Critics of land art charge that it is unethical in that it uses nature without such use being justified by some future good. Other critics charge that land art harms nature aesthetically. In this essay, the author canvasses these charges and argues that some land art is ethically and aesthetically defensible, and that some has great and rare potential in both realms.

In current philosophical discussions on evidence in the medical sciences, epidemiology has been used to exemplify a specific version of evidential pluralism. According to this view, known as the Russo–Williamson Thesis, evidence of both difference-making and mechanisms is produced to make causal claims in the health sciences. In this paper, I present an analysis of data and evidence in epidemiological practice, with a special focus on research on the exposome, and I cast doubt on the extent to which evidential pluralism (...) holds in this case. I start by focusing on the claim that molecular data allows for the production of mechanistic evidence. On the basis of a close look at the ways in which molecular data is used in exposome research, I caution against interpretations in terms of mechanistic evidence. Secondly, I expand my critical remarks on the thesis by addressing the conditions under which data is categorised as evidence in exposome research. I argue that these show that the classification of a dataset as a type of evidence is dependent on the ways in which the data is used. This is in contrast with the approach of evidential pluralism, where evidence is classified in different types on the basis of its intrinsic properties. Finally, I come back to what I consider the core of the thesis and suggest that the epidemiological research analysed in the paper indicates different interpretations of evidential pluralism and its applicability in the health sciences. (shrink)

We use psychological concepts (e.g., intention and desire) when we ascribe psychological states to others for purposes of describing, explaining, and predicting their actions. Does the evidence reported by Knobe show, as he thinks, that moral evaluation shapes our mastery of psychological concepts? We argue that the evidence so far shows instead that moral evaluation shapes the way we report, not the way we think about, others' psychological states.

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] is the point of epistemic evaluation? Why do we appraise others as knowers, understanders and so forth? Epistemology has traditionally focused on analysing the conditions under which one has knowledge, leaving aside for the most part questions about the roles played by epistemic evaluation in our lives more broadly. This fact is borne out by the (...) so-called Gettier literature. For decades, epistemologists have attempted to ferret out the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, but few have asked why knowledge would have the features suggested by conceptual analysis. Suppose, for example, that knowledge really is non-lucky justified true belief. Why would this be? What use do we have for a concept that is demarcated by those conditions? Is there something abhorrent about coming... (shrink)

Evaluative and normative terms and concepts are often said to be "essentially contestable". This notion has been used in political and legal theory and applied ethics to analyse disputes concerning the proper usage of terms like democracy, freedom, genocide, rape, coercion, and the rule of law. Many philosophers have also thought that essential contestability tells us something important about the evaluative in particular. Gallie (who coined the term), for instance, argues that the central structural features of essentially contestable concepts secure (...) their evaluativeness. I'll argue that these (widely held) central features are exemplified by many evaluative and non-evaluative terms alike, owing to more general factors (such as multidimensionality) which have nothing in particular to do with being evaluative. The role of these factors in semantic interpretation is subject to a certain kind of "metasemantic" disputes which have the features of the disputes characteristically admitted by essentially contestable concepts (whether evaluative or not) and which can be similarly substantive and worthwhile. In closing I'll discuss how my argument shows that our understanding of evaluative disagreement needs refinement. The overall upshot is that essential contestability shows nothing deep or distinctive about the evaluative in particular. (shrink)

In “Value Ascriptions: Rethinking Cognitivism,” Sigrún Svavarsdóttir offers a novel account of the semantic function of evaluative predication, according to which such predicates function as “linguistically encoded classificatory devices.” This short paper raises three questions about Svavarsdóttir’s account: how it relates to familiar sorts of projects in and about semantics, how to understand the nature of “linguistic encoding,” and how to understand the significance of the account’s central use of sets.

I propose that the successes and contributions of reinforcement learning urge us to see the mind in a new light, namely, to recognise that the mind is fundamentally evaluative in nature.

Ectogenesis, or “artificial womb technology,” has been heralded by some, such as prominent feminist Shulamith Firestone, as a way to liberate women. In this chapter, we challenge this view by offering an alternative analysis of the technology as relying upon and perpetuating a problematic model of pregnancy which, rather than liberating women, serves to devalue them. We look to metaphysics as the abstract study of reality to elucidate how the entities in a pregnancy are related to one another. We consider (...) two models of the metaphysics of pregnancy: (1) the Parthood Model, whereby the fetus is a part of what/who gestates it; and (2) and the Fetal Container Model, whereby the gestator is a container for the fetus. We suggest that under the assumption of the Fetal Container Model, we are more likely to think that any container will suffice for gestation, even an artificial one. In contrast, under the assumption of the Parthood Model, we are less likely to treat the gestator as interchangeable or replaceable, given the parthood relationship between gestator and fetus. This chapter argues that ectogenesis is conceptually linked to the Fetal Container Model and advocates a more cautious approach in promoting ectogenesis as a tool for women’s liberation. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have investigated various ways in which non‐epistemic evaluations can affect knowledge attributions. For example, several teams of researchers (Beebe and Buckwalter 2010; Beebe and Jensen 2012; Schaffer and Knobe 2012; Beebe and Shea 2013; Buckwalter 2014b; Turri 2014) report that the goodness or badness of an agent’s action can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. These findings raise important questions about how patterns of folk knowledge attributions should influence philosophical theorizing about knowledge.

This paper presents the design and development of intelligent tutoring system for teaching Oracle. The Oracle Intelligent Tutoring System (OITS) examined the power of a new methodology to supporting students in Oracle programming. The system presents the topic of Introduction to Oracle with automatically generated problems for the students to solve. The system is dynamically adapted at run time to the student’s individual progress. An initial evaluation study was done to investigate the effect of using the intelligent tutoring system (...) on the performance of students. (shrink)

Thick Evaluation, by KirchinSimon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 198.

I discuss Gheaus's (2013) argument against the claim that the requirements of justice are not constrained by feasibility concerns. I show that the general strategy exemplified by this argument is not only dialectically puzzling, but also imposes a heavy cost on theories of justice -- puzzling because it simply sidesteps a presupposition of any plausible formulation of the so-called "feasibility requirement"; costly because it it deprives justice of its normative implications for action. I also show that Gheaus's attempt to recover (...) this normative force presupposes an epistemic dimension to the feasibility requirement that most proponents of that requirement would reject. (shrink)

In the Protagoras, Socrates argues that what appears to be akrasia is, in fact, the result of a hedonic illusion: proximate pleasures appear greater than distant ones. On the face of it, his account is puzzling: why should proximate pleasures appear greater than distant ones? Certain interpreters argue that Socrates must be assuming the existence of non-rational desires that cause proximate pleasures to appear inflated. In this paper, I argue that positing non-rational desires fails to explain the hedonic error. However, (...) careful consideration of Socrates’ treatment of appearances reveals that he is not without resources to explain the illusion. I argue that in the Protagoras, appearances are imagistic mental representations that appear true but tend to be false. I suggest that proximate pleasures produce inflated hedonic predictions because we represent them more vividly than distant ones, yielding greater anticipatory pleasure which causes us to overestimate their magnitude. (shrink)

-/- This essay discusses the relation between ideal theory and two forms of political moralism identified by Bernard Williams, structural and enactment views. It argues that ideal theory, at least in the sense Rawls used that term, only makes sense for structural forms of moralism. These theories see their task as describing the constraints that properly apply to political agents and institutions. As a result, they are primarily concerned with norms that govern action. In contrast, many critiques of ideal theory (...) are structured and motivated by their commitment to an enactment model of political theorizing. This instead sees political agents and institutions as instruments for producing or promoting better states of affairs. Enactment models treat the evaluations that rank different states of affairs as justificatorily basic, rather than norms governing action on which structural models focus. This reveals an important feature of debates about ideal theory. Whether ideal theory is capable of appropriately guiding action will depend on what the criteria for appropriately guiding action are, about which different theorists have importantly different views. For example, some popular strategies for defending ideal theory fail, while it may be much less clear that some alternatives to ideal theory can provide action guidance than their advocates claim. (shrink)

I argue that some of the most prominent interpretations of Reid's response to skepticism marginalize a crucial aspect of his thought: namely, that our common sense beliefs meet whatever normative standards of rationality the skeptic might fairly demand of them. This should be seen as supplementary to reliabilist or proper functionalist interpretations of Reid, which often ignore this half of the story. I also show how Reid defends the rationality of believing first principles by appealing to their naturalness and irresistibility. (...) The resulting interpretation supplies Reid with a more satisfying and formidable response to the skeptic than interpretations currently offer. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that there are two kinds of normative concepts : evaluative concepts, such as good, and deontic concepts, such as ought. The question that is raised by this distinction is how it is possible to claim that evaluative concepts are normative. Given that deontic concepts appear to be at the heart of normativity, the bigger the gap between evaluative and deontic concepts, the less it appears plausible to say that evaluative concepts are normative. After having presented the (...) main differences between evaluative and deontic concepts, and shown that there is more than a superficial difference between the two kinds, the paper turns to the question of the normativity of evaluative concepts. It will become clear that, even if these concepts have different functions, there are a great many ties between evaluative concepts, on the one hand, and the concepts of ought and of reason, on the other. (shrink)

Increasingly, the high throughput technologies used by biomedical researchers are bringing about a situation in which large bodies of data are being described using controlled structured vocabularies—also known as ontologies—in order to support the integration and analysis of this data. Annotation of data by means of ontologies is already contributing in significant ways to the cumulation of scientific knowledge and, prospectively, to the applicability of cross-domain algorithmic reasoning in support of scientific advance. This very success, however, has led to a (...) proliferation of ontologies of varying scope and quality. We define one strategy for achieving quality assurance of ontologies—a plan of action already adopted by a large community of collaborating ontologists—which consists in subjecting ontologies to a process of peer review analogous to that which is applied to scientific journal articles. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that it is only because we happen to want or care about things that we think some things of value. We start off caring about things, and then project these desires onto the external world. In this chapter, I make a preliminary case for the opposite view, that it is our evaluative thinking that is prior or comes first. On this view, it is only because we think some things of value that we care about or want (...) anything at all. This view is highly explanatory. In particular, it explains (i) the special role that pleasure and pain play in our motivational systems, (ii) why phenomenal consciousness evolved, and (iii) how the two main competing theories of normative reasons for action—i.e., objectivism and subjectivism—can be reconciled. After explaining why this is so, I respond to the most serious objections to this view, including that it cannot account for temptation and willpower, or for the existence and appropriateness of the reactive attitudes. (shrink)

This paper examines Charles Taylor’s claim that personal identity is a matter of strong evaluations. Strong evaluations are in this paper analyzed as stable preferences, which are strongly identified with and which are based on qualitative distinctions concerning the non-instrumental value of options. In discussing the role of strong evaluations in personal identity, the focus is on "self-identity", not on the criteria of personhood or on the logical relation of identity. Two senses of self-identity can be distinguished: identity as practical (...) orientation and identity as self-definition in a more encompassing sense. The former consists of one’s strong evaluations only, the latter is a more comprehensive notion, in which strong evaluations have a double role. Strong evaluations are first of all directly a constituent of self-definitions, and secondly, self-definition with respect to other features proceeds in the light of the strong evaluations. (shrink)

In his writings on school choice and educational justice, Harry Brighouse presents normative evaluations of various choice systems. This paper responds to Brighouse's claim that it is inadequate to criticise these evaluations with reference to empirical data concerning the effects of school choice.

The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women 1979 (CEDAW) is beset with a substantial number of reservations, which is evidence of an antagonistic attitude towards the universalism of human rights. These reservations have largely been made on religious and cultural diversities that are incompatible with the core provisions of the Convention. The effect of this is that they make the overall purpose of the Convention to be defeated. This article examines the impact of the reservations (...) and the possible justifications bordering on the debate surrounding universalism, cultural relativism, tradition and religion. The article welcomes the extension of the Convention’s tentacles into controversial aspects of states’ public and private sphere to viciously tackle existing discriminatory practices against women. The article suggests that human rights should not be subjected to the superiority of one region, culture or religion over another because it has the effect of discrediting the intention of the rights. The article concludes by advocating for intense dialogue and continuous negotiations with states, to have many of such reservations withdrawn and for the intended reality of the Convention to be achieved. (shrink)

Decisions in medical contexts have immediate and obvious consequences in terms of health and sometimes death or survival. Medical decisions also have less obvious and less immediate consequences, including effects on the long-term physical and mental well-being of patients, their families and of care-givers, as well as on the distribution of scarce medical resources. Some of these consequences are hard to measure and estimate. Even harder, perhaps, is the determination of the relative value of different consequences. How should consequences be (...) evaluated? How do uncertainties and biases affect our evaluations of consequences? What influence should our evaluations of consequences have on our actions? These questions are all philosophical in nature. (shrink)

A layered approach to the evaluation of action alternatives with continuous time for decision making under the moral doctrine of Negative Utilitarianism is presented and briefly discussed from a philosophical perspective.

Ethicists are typically willing to grant that thick terms (e.g. ‘courageous’ and ‘murder’) are somehow associated with evaluations. But they tend to disagree about what exactly this relationship is. Does a thick term’s evaluation come by way of its semantic content? Or is the evaluation pragmatically associated with the thick term (e.g. via conversational implicature)? In this paper, I argue that thick terms are semantically associated with evaluations. In particular, I argue that many thick concepts (if not all) (...) conceptually entail evaluative contents. The Semantic View has a number of outspoken critics, but I shall limit discussion to the most recent--Pekka Väyrynen--who believes that objectionable thick concepts present a problem for the Semantic View. After advancing my positive argument in favor of the Semantic View (section II), I argue that Väyrynen’s attack is unsuccessful (section III). One reason ethicists cite for not focusing on thick concepts is that such concepts are supposedly not semantically evaluative whereas traditional thin concepts (e.g. good and wrong) are. But if my view is correct, then this reason must be rejected. (shrink)

This paper examines the nature of religion. A definition of religion is proposed, and a major rival interpretation -- that of John Hick -- is examined and rejected. It is then explained how religions can be evaluated.

Review of Evaluative Perception. By Bergqvist Anna, Cowan Robert.