Involuntary memories raise worries for any notion of constitution of memorial experiences and of the relationship between subjectivity, the past, and intentionality. However, this does not mean they are wholly intractable for an intentional analysis of consciousness. To the contrary, if one avoids conflating the will with thetic or express intentional acts, the Sartrean notion of intentionality is well-placed to account for the most salient features of involuntary memories, without resorting to appeals to non-subjective memorial processes in which any sense (...) of implication or investment in the content of involuntary memory seems difficult to locate. To make this case, two steps are taken. The first is to map out a Sartrean phenomenology of memory, by taking into consideration how his notions of intentional consciousness, absence, and lack play out at the level of memory. The second is to examine how the Sartrean model of intentional consciousness appears to be well-adapted to the phenomenal traits most salient to involuntary memories. The upshot of such an examination is a provocative phenomenological position on the nature of the resistance of the past and on doing justice to the past, that is, in regard to how memorial intentionality ought be conceived when involuntary memories contribute to the rule rather than merely being an exception in the experience of the past. (shrink)

Epistemic pluralists in the philosophy of science often argue that different epistemic perspectives in science are equally warranted. Sandra Mitchell – with her Integrative Pluralism (IP) – has notably advocated for this kind of epistemic pluralism. A problem arises for Mitchell however because she also wants to be an epistemological pluralist. She claims that, not only are different epistemic perspectives in science equally warranted in different contexts, but different understandings of these epistemic perspectives in science are also equally (...) warranted in different contexts. The problem is that Mitchell argues that her understanding of epistemic perspectives in science (IP) is the correct one, and it is dilemmic to then claim that there is more than one such understanding. As solution, I suggest that we abandon epistemological pluralism and instead follow Feyerabend in being opportunistic pluralists. We can adopt pluralism as a short-term strategy in the pursuit of a long-term unitary goal. This unitary goal is what philosophers of understanding call objectual understanding, the kind of understanding that Integrative Pluralism tacitly aspires to anyway. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends an account of model-based science that I dub model pluralism. I argue that despite a growing awareness in the philosophy of science literature of the multiplicity, diversity, and richness of models and modeling practices, more radical conclusions follow from this recognition than have previously been inferred. Going against the tendency within the literature to generalize from single models, I explicate and defend the following two core theses: any successful analysis of models must target sets (...) of models, their multiplicity of functions within science, and their scientific context and history and for almost any aspect x of phenomenon y, scientists require multiple models to achieve scientific goal z. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different fundamental ways of being. Trenton Merricks has recently raised three objections to combining pluralism with a generic way of being enjoyed by absolutely everything there is: first, that the resulting view contradicts the pluralist’s core intuition; second, that it is especially vulnerable to the charge—due to Peter van Inwagen—that it posits a difference in being where there is simply a difference in kind; and, third, that it is in tension (...) with various historically influential motivations for pluralism. I reply to each of these objections in turn. My replies will help to bring out the true nature of the pluralist’s basic commitments. (shrink)

Anecdotal pluralism (AP) is the claim that, when two individuals disagree on the truth of a religious belief, the right move to make is to engage in a communal epistemic process of evidence sharing and evaluation, motivated by the willingness to learn from each other, understand the adversary's views and how these challenge their own, and re-evaluate their own epistemic position in regards to external criticisms. What I will do in my paper is to provide a presentation of AP (...) and give a few reasons in support. I will begin with showing how pluralism can be promoted by religious experiences inhering in any (historical) tradition. To this regard, my purpose is to analyse such experiences as conducive to the assumption of the two main principles defining any pluralist view. Subsequently, I will construe AP by seven claims, and I will focus my efforts on justifying its superiority both to exclusivism/inclusivism and other varieties of pluralism. My next and final move is to list a few reasons which support my view. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the prospects for pluralism about knowledge, that is, the view that there is a plurality of knowledge relations. After a brief overview of some views that entail a sort of pluralism about knowledge, I focus on a particular kind of knowledge pluralism I call standards pluralism. Put roughly, standards pluralism is the view that one never knows anything simpliciter. Rather, one knows by this-or-that epistemic standard. Because there is a plurality (...) of epistemic standards, there is a plurality of knowledge relations. In §1 I argue that one can construct an impressive case for standards pluralism. In §2 I clarify the relationship between standards pluralism, epistemic contextualism and epistemic relativism. In §3 I argue that standards pluralism faces a serious objection. The gist of the objection is that standards pluralism is incompatible with plausible claims about the normative role of knowledge. In §4 I finish by sketching the form that a standards pluralist response to this objection might take. (shrink)

Truth pluralists say that truth-bearers in different “discourses”, “domains”, “domains of discourse”, or “domains of inquiry” are apt to be true in different ways – for instance, that mathematical discourse or ethical discourse is apt to be true in a different way to ordinary descriptive or scientific discourse. Moreover, the notion of a “domain” is often explicitly employed in formulating pluralist theories of truth. Consequently, the notion of a “domain” is attracting increasing attention, both critical and constructive. I argue that (...) this is a red herring. First, I identify the theoretical role for which pluralists appeal to domains, which is to answer what I call the “Individuation Problem”: saying what determines the way in which a particular truth-bearer is apt to be true. Second, I argue that pluralists need not appeal to domains for this purpose. I thus conclude that, despite the usual way of glossing the view, there is no role for the notion of a “domain” to play in the pluralist’s theory of truth. I argue that this defuses the “Problem of Mixed Atomics” and allows the pluralist to sidestep potentially intractable disputes about the nature of domains. (shrink)

Value pluralists see themselves as philosophical grown-ups. They profess to face reality as it is and accept resultant pessimism, while criticising their monist rivals for holding on to the naïve idea that the right, the good and the beautiful are ultimately harmonisable with each other. The aim of this essay is to challenge this self-image of value pluralists. Notwithstanding its usefulness as a means of subverting monist dominance, I argue that the self-image has the downside of obscuring various theoretical positions (...) that do not fall into either the pluralist or monist camp. Yet such positions do exist, as shown by my discussion of Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt. Near contemporaries of the pioneering value pluralist Isaiah Berlin, the pair, just like him, sought to be realistic about the lived experiences of political disasters and moral disorientation in the twentieth century. Moreover, they shared with Berlin a keen interest in real-world moral dilemmas, which seemed to them to have made traditional morality obsolete. But the three thinkers’ perspectives on ‘reality’ hardly converged, and neither Camus nor Arendt became a value pluralist as a result of their reflections on moral dilemmas. This, however, by no means indicates the pair’s immaturity. Rather, it shows that there is more than one way of observing fidelity to our actual experience and that value pluralists’ commitment to realism and resultant pessimism is not as uniquely mature as they would have us believe. (shrink)

Pluralism about truth is the view that there are many properties, not just one, in virtue of which things are true. Pluralists hope to dodge the objections that face traditional monistic substantive views of truth, as well as those facing deflationary theories of truth. More specifically, pluralists hope to advance an explanatorily potent understanding of truth that can capture the subtleties of various realist and anti-realist domains of discourse, all while avoiding the scope problem. I offer a new objection (...) to pluralism that challenges its fundamental commitment to there being a set of alethic properties in virtue of which claims are true. In its place I offer an alternative view that merges standard truthmaker theory with a primitivist conception of truth. This combination of views satisfies the theoretical desires that pluralists claim for themselves, but without taking on pluralism's host of challenges and problems. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one logic. Logical normativism is the view that logic is normative. These positions have often been assumed to go hand-in-hand, but we show that one can be a logical pluralist without being a logical normativist. We begin by arguing directly against logical normativism. Then we reformulate one popular version of pluralism—due to Beall and Restall—to avoid a normativist commitment. We give three non-normativist pluralist views, the most promising of (...) which depends not on logic’s normativity but on epistemic goals. (shrink)

Pluralist mathematical realism, the view that there exists more than one mathematical universe, has become an influential position in the philosophy of mathematics. I argue that, if mathematical pluralism is true (and we have good reason to believe that it is), then mathematical realism cannot (easily) be justified by arguments from the indispensability of mathematics to science. This is because any justificatory chain of inferences from mathematical applications in science to the total body of mathematical theorems can cover at (...) most one mathematical universe. Indispensability arguments may thus lose their central role in the debate about mathematical ontology. (shrink)

‘Value pluralism’ as traditionally understood is the metaphysical thesis that there are many values that cannot be ‘reduced’ to a single supervalue. While it is widely assumed that value pluralism is true, the case for value pluralism depends on resolution of a neglected question in value theory: how are values properly individuated? Value pluralism has been thought to be important in two main ways. If values are plural, any theory that relies on value monism, for example, (...) hedonistic utilitarianism, is mistaken. The plurality of values is also thought to raise problems for rational choice. If two irreducibly distinct values conflict, it seems that there is no common ground that justifies choosing one over the other. The metaphysical plurality of values does not, however, have the implications for rational choice that many have supposed. A charitable interpretation of value pluralist writings suggests a ‘nonreductive’ form of value pluralism. Nonreductive value pluralism maintains that in the context of practical choice, there are differences between values—whether or not those values reduce to a single supervalue—that have important implications for rational choice. This article examines the main arguments for metaphysical value pluralism, argues that metaphysical value pluralism does not have certain implications that it is widely thought to have, and outlines three forms of nonreductive value pluralism. (shrink)

Social norms are commonly understood as rules that dictate which behaviors are appropriate, permissible, or obligatory in different situations for members of a given community. Many researchers have sought to explain the ubiquity of social norms in human life in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying their acquisition, conformity, and enforcement. Existing theories of the psychology of social norms appeal to a variety of constructs, from prediction-error minimization, to reinforcement learning, to shared intentionality, to domain-specific adaptations for norm acquisition. In (...) this paper, we propose a novel methodological and conceptual framework for the cognitive science of social norms that we call normative pluralism. We begin with an analysis of the explanatory aims of the cognitive science of social norms. From this analysis, we derive a recommendation for a reformed conception of its explanandum: a minimally psychological construct that we call normative regularities. Our central empirical proposal is that the psychological underpinnings of social norms are most likely realized by a heterogeneous set of cognitive, motivational, and ecological mechanisms that vary between norms and between individuals, rather than by a single type of process or distinctive norm system. This pluralistic approach, we suggest, offers a methodologically sound point of departure for a fruitful and rigorous science of social norms. (shrink)

Courtesy of its free energy formulation, the hierarchical predictive processing theory of the brain (PTB) is often claimed to be a grand unifying theory. To test this claim, we examine a central case: activity of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic (DA) systems. After reviewing the three most prominent hypotheses of DA activity—the anhedonia, incentive salience, and reward prediction error hypotheses—we conclude that the evidence currently vindicates explanatory pluralism. This vindication implies that the grand unifying claims of advocates of PTB are unwarranted. More (...) generally, we suggest that the form of scientific progress in the cognitive sciences is unlikely to be a single overarching grand unifying theory. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways to exist. It is a position with deep roots in the history of philosophy, and in which there has been a recent resurgence of interest. In contemporary presentations, it is stated in terms of fundamental languages: as the view that such languages contain more than one quantifier. For example, one ranging over abstract objects, and another over concrete ones. A natural worry, however, is that the languages proposed by the (...) pluralist are mere notational variants of those proposed by the monist, in which case the debate between the two positions would not seem to be substantive. Jason Turner has given an ingenious response to this worry, in terms of a principle that he calls ‘logical realism’. This paper offers a counter-response on behalf of the ‘notationalist’. I argue that, properly applied, the principle of logical realism is no threat to the claim that the languages in question are notational variants. Indeed, there seems to be every reason to think that they are. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes and critiques several forms of pluralism about the levels of selection, and introduces a novel way of thinking about the biological properties and processes typically conceptualized in terms of distinct levels. In particular, "levels" should be thought of as being entwined or fused. Since the pluralism discussed is held by divergent theorists, the argument has implications for many positions in the debate over the units of selection. And since the key points on which the paper (...) turns apply beyond this specific issue, the paper may prove of general interest in thinking about the metaphysics of science. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the prospects for pluralism about knowledge, that is, the view that there is a plurality of knowledge relations. After a brief overview of some views that entail a sort of pluralism about knowledge, I focus on a particular kind of knowledge pluralism I call standards pluralism. Put roughly, standards pluralism is the view that one never knows anything simpliciter. Rather, one knows by this-or-that epistemic standard. Because there is a plurality (...) of epistemic standards, there is a plurality of knowledge relations. In §1 I argue that one can construct an impressive case for standards pluralism. In §2 I clarify the relationship between standards pluralism, epistemic contextualism and epistemic relativism. In §3 I argue that standards pluralism faces a serious objection. The gist of the objection is that standards pluralism is incompatible with plausible claims about the normative role of knowledge. In §4 I finish by sketching the form that a standards pluralist response to this objection might take. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways of being. Historically, ways of being are aligned with the ontological categories. This paper is about to investigate why there is such a connection, and how it should be understood. Ontological pluralism suffers from an objection, according to which ontological pluralism collapses into ontological monism, i.e., there is only one way to be. Admitting to ontological categories can save ontological pluralism from this objection if ways of (...) being ground ontological categories. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I investigate how differences in approach to truth and logic (in particular, a deflationist vs. a substantivist approach to these fields) affect philosophers’ views concerning pluralism and normativity in these fields. My perspective on truth and logic is largely epistemic, focusing on the role of truth in knowledge (rather than on the use of the words “true” and “truth” in natural language), and my reference group includes Carnap (1934), Harman (1986), Horwich (1990), Wright (1992), Beall and (...) Restall (2006), Field (2009), Lynch (2009), and Sher (2016a).1 Whenever possible, I focus on positive rather than negative views on the issues involved, although in some cases this is not possible. (shrink)

Pragmatism and the correspondence theory of truth are longtime foes. Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that pragmatists must embrace truth as correspondence. I show that there is a distinctive pragmatic utility to taking truth to be correspondence, and I argue that it would be inconsistent for pragmatists to accept the utility of the belief that truth is correspondence while resisting the premise that this belief is correct. -/- In order to show how pragmatists can embrace truth as (...) correspondence, I develop a kind of alethic pluralism, which treats pragmatist truth as theoretically fundamental to truth as correspondence. This theoretical fundamentality of pragmatist truth allows the pragmatist to conditionally accept truth as correspondence for certain discourses without falling prey to the typical pragmatist objections to correspondence. This pluralist account of truth thus allows pragmatists to concede that, for certain domains of discourse, truth is correspondence, without thereby betraying their pragmatist principles. (shrink)

The goal of the present paper is to construct a formal explication of the pluralistic ignorance explanation of the bystander effect. The social dynamics leading to inaction is presented, decomposed, and modeled using dynamic epistemic logic augmented with ‘transition rules’ able to characterize agent behavior. Three agent types are defined: First Responders who intervene given belief of accident; City Dwellers, capturing ‘apathetic urban residents’ and Hesitators, who observe others when in doubt, basing subsequent decision on social proof. It is shown (...) how groups of the latter may end in a state of pluralistic ignorance leading to inaction. Sequential models for each agent type are specified, and their results compared to empirical studies. It is concluded that only the Hesitator model produces reasonable results. (shrink)

This brief commentary has three goals. The first is to argue that ‘‘framework debate’’ in cognitive science is unresolvable. The idea that one theory or framework can singly account for the vast complexity and variety of cognitive processes seems unlikely if not impossible. The second goal is a consequence of this: We should consider how the various theories on offer work together in diverse contexts of investigation. A final goal is to supply a brief review for readers who are compelled (...) by these points to explore existing literature on the topic. Despite this literature, pluralism has garnered very little attention from broader cognitive science. We end by briefly considering what it might mean for theoretical cognitive science. (shrink)

Animal welfare has a long history of disregard. While in recent decades the study of animal welfare has become a scientific discipline of its own, the difficulty of measuring animal welfare can still be vastly underestimated. There are three primary theories, or perspectives, on animal welfare - biological functioning, natural living and affective state. These come with their own diverse methods of measurement, each providing a limited perspective on an aspect of welfare. This paper describes a perspectival pluralist account of (...) animal welfare, in which all three theoretical perspectives and their multiple measures are necessary to understand this complex phenomenon and provide a full picture of animal welfare. This in turn will offer us a better understanding of perspectivism and pluralism itself. (shrink)

This book presents the author’s many and varied contributions to the revival and re-evaluation of American pragmatism. The assembled critical perspective on contemporary pragmatism in philosophy emphasizes the American tradition of cultural pluralism and the requirements of American democracy. Based partly on a survey of the literature on interest-group pluralism and critical perspectives on the politics of globalization, the monograph argues for reasoned caution concerning the practical effects of the revival. Undercurrents of “vulgar pragmatism” including both moral and (...) epistemic relativism threaten the intellectual and moral integrity of American thought – and have contributed to the present sense of political crisis. -/- The text chiefly contributes to the evaluation of the contemporary influence of the philosophy of John Dewey (1859–1952) and his late development of the classical pragmatist tradition. In comparison to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), William James (1842–1910), and earlier currents of American thought, Dewey’s philosophy, dominated by its overall emphasis on unification, is weaker in its support for the pluralism of cultural and religious contributions which have lent moral self-restraint to American policy and politics, both foreign and domestic. With all due homage to Dewey’s conception of philosophy, centered on human problems and the need for our ameliorative efforts, the argument is that in the contemporary revival, Dewey’s thought has been too often captured by “post-modernist” bandwagons of self-promotion and institutional control. -/- This work defends democratic individualism against more collectivist and corporatist tendencies in contemporary neo-pragmatism, and it draws upon up-to-date political analysis in defense of America’s long republican tradition. Pragmatism will not and cannot be removed from, or ignored, in American intellectual and moral history; and its influence on disciplines from law to politics, sociology and literary criticism has been immense. However, pragmatism has often been weak in commitment to cultural pluralism and in its accounts of truth. (shrink)

Evidential Pluralism maintains that in order to establish a causal claim one normally needs to establish the existence of an appropriate conditional correlation and the existence of an appropriate mechanism complex, so when assessing a causal claim one ought to consider both association studies and mechanistic studies. Hitherto, Evidential Pluralism has been applied to medicine, leading to the EBM+ programme, which recommends that evidence-based medicine should systematically evaluate mechanistic studies alongside clinical studies. This paper argues that Evidential (...) class='Hi'>Pluralism can also be fruitfully applied to the social sciences. In particular, Evidential Pluralism provides (i) a new approach to evidence-based policy; (ii) an account of the evidential relationships in more theoretical research; and (iii) new philosophical motivation for mixed methods research. The application of Evidential Pluralism to the social sciences is also defended against two objections. (shrink)

Political liberals assume an accessibility requirement, which means that, for ensuring civic respect and non-manipulation, public officials should offer accessible reasons during political advocacy. Recently, critics have offered two arguments to show that the accessibility requirement is unnecessary. The first is the pluralism argument: Given the pluralism in evaluative standards, when officials offer non-accessible reasons, they are not disrespectful because they may merely try to reveal their strongest reason. The second is the honesty argument: As long as officials (...) honestly confess their beliefs after offering non-accessible reasons, disrespect and non-manipulation do not occur. This paper defends the accessibility requirement and asserts that these two arguments overlook a unique feature of the political domain. While all citizens collectively own political power as a corporate body, an official does not privately own her political power. Instead, she is a trustee who has a duty to act on behalf of the corporate body, that is, she has to make decisions on grounds that are accessible to others. This duty explains why, despite pluralism, the accessibility requirement is necessary. Moreover, given that political decisions are profoundly influential to each person, requiring people to be honest is ineffective in discouraging disrespectful and manipulative acts. (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed a growing awareness of conceptual and methodological hurdles within psychology and neuroscience that must be addressed for taxonomic and explanatory progress in understanding psychological functions to be possible. In this paper, I evaluate several recent knowledge-building initiatives aimed at overcoming these obstacles. I argue that while each initiative offers important insights about how to facilitate taxonomic and explanatory progress in psychology and neuroscience, only a “coordinated pluralism” that incorporates positive aspects of each initiative will (...) have the potential for success. (shrink)

What are words and how should we individuate them? There are two main answers on the philosophical market. For some, words are bundles of structural-functional features defining a unique performance profile. For others, words are non-eternal continuants individuated by their causal-historical ancestry. These conceptions offer competing views of the nature of words, and it seems natural to assume that at most one of them can capture the essence of wordhood. This paper makes a case for pluralism about wordhood: the (...) view that there is a plurality of acceptable conceptions of the nature of words, none of which is uniquely entitled to inform us as to what wordhood consists in. (shrink)

Grounding pluralism is the view that there are multiple kinds of grounding. In this essay, I motivate and defend an explanation-theoretic view of grounding pluralism. Specifically, I argue that there are two kinds of grounding: why-grounding—which tells us why things are the case—and how-grounding—which tells us how things are the case.

One of the most fascinating debates in the field of political theory has been the one about the relationship between value pluralism and liberalism. Based on their different conceptions and definitions, various theorists have often theorized a tension in the relationship between pluralism and liberalism. On the one hand, liberal authors who believe in the universality of liberal values that have to do with the safeguard of freedom (conceived at least to some extent as “negative freedom”), in the (...) expressions and the free choices that individuals within a society or group can make, tolerance, in their individuality, in the equality of opportunities for everyone, etc., and on the other hand, the pluralists, who emphasize that different values, beliefs and human goods (the diversity) in society are essentially incompatible with one another, and as such, also incommensurable. Against the positions of some various authors who theorize an inherent conflict between these two ideas, in this paper, we argue that in practice, but also theoretically justified, there is a connection and a mutual support relationship existing between pluralism and liberalism. Therefore, the main principles that pluralism protects, such as pluralism of value, incommensurability between multiple conceptions of the goods, etc., can find themselves best in the context of a liberal society. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relation between Crispin Wright’s alethic pluralism and my global expressivism. I argue that on many topics Wright’s own view counts as expressivism in my sense, but that truth itself is a striking exception. Unlike me, Wright never seems to countenance an expressivist account of truth, though the materials needed are available to him in his approaches to other topics.

Different chemical species are often cited as paradigm examples of structurally delimited natural kinds. While classificatory monism may thus seem plausible for simple molecules, it looks less attractive for complex biological macromolecules. I focus on the case of proteins that are most plausibly individuated by their functions. Is there a single, objective count of proteins? I argue that the vagaries of function individuation infect protein classification. We should be pluralists about macromolecular classification.

I develop ontological pluralism about non-being, the view that there are multiple ways, kinds, or modes of non-being. I suggest that the view is both more plausible and defensible than it first seems, and that it has many useful applications across a wide variety of metaphysical and explanatory problems. After drawing out the relationship between pluralism about being and pluralism about non-being, I discuss quantificational strategies for the pluralist about non-being. I examine historical precedent for the view. (...) Finally, I suggest that pluralism about non-being has explanatory power across a variety of domains, and that the view can account for differences between nonexistent past and future times, between omissions and absences, and between different kinds of fictional objects. (shrink)

Discursive pluralism, recently fostered by anti-representationalist views, by stating that not all assertions conform to a descriptive model of language, poses an interesting challenge to representationalism. Although in recent years alethic pluralism has become more and more popular as an interesting way out for this issue, the discussion also hosts other interesting minority approaches in the anti-representationalist camp. In particular, the late stage of contemporary expressivism offers a few relevant insights, going from Price's denunciation of “placement problems” to (...) Brandom's inferentialism. This paper attempts to show how these expressivist ideas combine well together, composing a unitary and metaphysically sober metaphilosophical framework. (shrink)

Perceptual systems respond to proximal stimuli by forming mental representations of distal stimuli. A central goal for the philosophy of perception is to characterize the representations delivered by perceptual systems. It may be that all perceptual representations are in some way proprietarily perceptual and differ from the representational format of thought (Dretske 1981; Carey 2009; Burge 2010; Block ms.). Or it may instead be that perception and cognition always trade in the same code (Prinz 2002; Pylyshyn 2003). This paper rejects (...) both approaches in favor of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perception delivers a multiplicity of representational formats, some proprietary and some shared with cognition. The argument for perceptual pluralism marshals a wide array of empirical evidence in favor of iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations in perception as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) perceptual object representations. (shrink)

Pluralism is relevant to conceptual engineering in many ways. First of all, we face the issue of pluralism when trying to characterise the very object(s) of conceptual engineering. Is it just concepts? Could concepts be pluralistically conceived for the purposes of conceptual engineering? Or rather, is it concepts and other representational devices as well? Second, one may wonder whether concepts have only one function in our mental life (representation) or, rather, a plurality of functions (including non-representational ones). Third, (...) it is a contended question whether conceptual engineering projects should pursue only one set of values and goals (epistemic ones) or, rather, a variety of values and goals, including non-epistemic ones. Finally, the engineering of a concept may result in a form of “local” conceptual pluralism, which gives rise to its own ontological and semantic challenges. Having explored the various ways in which pluralism becomes important for conceptual engineers, this contribution presents and summarizes the articles published in this special issue. (shrink)

Explanatory pluralism holds that the sorts of comprehensive theoretical and ontological economies, which microreductionists and New Wave reductionists envision and which antireductionists fear, offer misleading views of both scientific practice and scientific progress. Both advocates and foes of employing reductionist strategies at the interface of psychology and neuroscience have overplayed the alleged economies that interlevel connections (including identities) justify while overlooking their fundamental role in promoting scientific research. A brief review of research on visual processing provides support for the (...) explanatory pluralist=s general model of cross-scientific relations and discloses the valuable heuristic role hypothetical identities play in cross-scientific research. That model also supplies grounds for hesitation about the correlation objection to the psycho-physical identity theory and complaints about an explanatory gap in physicalist accounts of consciousness. These takes on psycho-neural connections miss both the sorts of considerations that motivate hypothetical identities in science and their fundamental contribution to progressive research. Thus, their focus on the contributions of research at multiple levels of analysis does not bar explanatory pluralists from considering heuristic identity theory (HIT). Arguably, it encourages it. (shrink)

According to strong pluralist theories of truth, ‘true’ designates different properties depending on which sentences it’s applied to. An influential objection to strong pluralism claims it can’t make sense of logically complex sentences whose components have different truth-properties. For example, if ‘true’ designates correspondents for ‘Tabby is a cat’, and it designates coherence for ‘Tabby is beautiful’, what does it designate for ‘Tabby is a beautiful cat’ (Tappolet 1997)? Will Gamester (2019) has proposed a novel pluralist theory meant to (...) avoid the problem. The theory construes ‘true’ as designating a different property for each possible logical structure, and he has challenged monists to identify shortcomings of the theory in virtue of its pluralism. This paper answers Gamester’s challenge and identifies three such shortcomings. (1) The theory can’t make sense of the idea that all true conjunctions share the property of having true conjuncts, in virtue of which they are true. (2) The theory imposes unmotivated syntactic constraints on the language in which the theory of truth is formulated. (3) Avoiding the second shortcoming requires arbitrary choices among equally good candidates for “the” logical form of sentences and hence the designation of ‘true’ as applied to them. (shrink)

I defend a radical interpretation of biological populations—what I call population pluralism—which holds that there are many ways that a particular grouping of individuals can be related such that the grouping satisfies the conditions necessary for those individuals to evolve together. More constraining accounts of biological populations face empirical counter-examples and conceptual difficulties. One of the most intuitive and frequently employed conditions, causal connectivity—itself beset with numerous difficulties—is best construed by considering the relevant causal relations as ‘thick’ causal concepts. (...) I argue that the fine-grained causal relations that could constitute membership in a biological population are huge in number and many are manifested by degree, and thus we can construe population membership as being defined by massively multidimensional constructs, the differences between which are largely arbitrary. I end by showing that positions in two recent debates in theoretical biology depend on a view of biological populations at odds with the pluralism defended here. (shrink)

Sight is a capacity, and seeing is its exercise. Reflection on the sense in which sight is for the sake of seeing reveals distinct relations of dependence between sight and seeing, the capacity and its exercise. Moreover, these relations of dependence in turn reveal the nature of our perceptual capacities and their exercise. Specifically, if sight is for the sake of seeing, then sight will depend, in a certain sense, upon seeing, in a manner inconsistent with experiential monism. Thus reflection (...) on the power of perception forms the basis of an argument for experiential pluralism. (shrink)

This paper outlines a new pluralistic theory of normative reasons for belief, welfarist pluralism, which aims to explain how there can be basic alethic/epistemic reasons for belief and basic pragmatic/non-alethic reasons for belief that can combine to determine what one ought to believe. The paper shows how this non-derivative first-order pluralism arises from a purely welfarist account of the foundations of theoretical normativity, thereby combining foundational pragmatism with non-derivative pluralism about normative reasons for belief. In addition, this (...) paper outlines how welfarist pluralism provides a new and potentialy attractive account of the value of truth (or its indicators), namely that the value of truth (or its indicators) is its direct contribution to individuals' personal good or wellbeing. (shrink)

It is a commonly expressed sentiment that the science and philosophy of well-being would do well to learn from each other. Typically such calls identify mistakes and bad practices on both sides that would be remedied if scientists picked the right bit of philosophy and philosophers picked the right bit of science. We argue that the differences between philosophers and scientists thinking about well-being are more difficult to reconcile than such calls suggest, and that pluralism is central to this (...) task. Pluralism is a stance that explicitly drives towards accommodating and nurturing the richness and diversity of well-being, both as a concept and as an object of inquiry. We show that well-being science manifests a contingent pluralism at the level of methodology, whereas philosophy of well-being has largely rejected pluralism at the conceptual level. Recently, things have begun to change. Within philosophy, conceptual monism is under attack. But so is methodological pluralism within science. We welcome the first development, and bemoan the second. We argue that a joined-up philosophy and science of well-being should recognise the virtues of both conceptual and methodological pluralism. Philosophers should embrace the methodological justification of pluralism that can be found in the well-being sciences, and scientists should embrace the conceptual reasons to be pluralist that can be found in philosophical debate. (shrink)

According to strong pluralism, objects distinct by virtue of their modal properties can coincide. The most common objection towards such view invokes the so-called Grounding Problem according to which the strong pluralist needs to explain what the grounds are for supposed modal differences between the coincidents. As recognized in the literature, the failure to provide an answer to the Grounding Problem critically undermines the plausibility of strong pluralism. Moreover, there are strong reasons to believe that strong pluralists cannot (...) provide an explanation of the Grounding Problem. In this paper, we argue that strong pluralism can be motivated independently of the successful answer to the Grounding Problem. In order to achieve that aim, we provide a haecceitistic interpretation of strong pluralism according to which strong pluralism should be read as a position committed to the existence of primitive individuals, i.e., the individuals that have their criteria of individuation independently of their qualitative profiles. That said, we do not aim at defending haecceitism. Instead, our aim is rather modest: we want to provide a new way for the strong pluralist to supplement his view to make it more watertight. (shrink)

This Chapter sketches a pluralist account of spiritual exemplarity. Starting from recent work by Linda Zagzebski, three main kinds of spiritual exemplarity are described, distinguished by their underlying aspiration. I name these the aspirations to allegiance, enlightened insight, and emulation, illustrated with examples from the Western and South and East Asian spiritual dispensations. The Chapter concludes by warning against tendencies either to occlude this plurality or to illicitly privilege one of these aspirations by nominating it alone as the 'authentic' form (...) of spiritual life. (shrink)

The ability to perceive the shapes of things as enduring through changes in how they stimulate our sense organs is vital to our sense of stability in the world. But what sort of capacity is shape constancy, and how is it reflected in perceptual experience? This paper defends a pluralist account of shape constancy: There are multiple kinds of shape constancy centered on geometrical properties at various levels of abstraction, and properties at these various levels feature in the content of (...) perceptual experience, governing patterns of apparent shape similarity. I propose that the varieties of shape constancy are subserved by the syntactic complexity of perceptual shape representations. By assigning discrete constituents to various abstract shape parameters, these representations attune us to the preservation of certain abstract shape properties through changes in more determinate shape properties. Finally, I draw broader lessons concerning the nature and function of perceptual constancy. (shrink)

Some theorists of normative explanation argue that we can make sense of debates between first-order moral theories such as consequentialism and its rivals only if we understand their explanations of why the right acts are right and the wrong acts are wrong as generative (e.g. grounding) explanations. Others argue that the standard form of normative explanation is, instead, some kind of unification. Neither sort of explanatory monism can account for all the explanations of particular moral facts that moral theorists seek (...) to state and defend. This paper argues that we can do better if we accept normative explanatory pluralism, the view that at least some particular explananda in normative inquiry have more than one type of correct complete explanation. Such pluralism is supported by what goes on in actual moral inquiry, parallels an independently plausible form of pluralism about scientific explanation, and can offer principled responses to central objections. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one correct logic. Most logical pluralists think that logic is normative in the sense that you make a mistake if you accept the premisses of a valid argument but reject its conclusion. Some authors have argued that this combination is self-undermining: Suppose that L1 and L2 are correct logics that coincide except for the argument from Γ to φ, which is valid in L1 but invalid in L2. If you (...) accept all sentences in Γ, then, by normativity, you make a mistake if you reject φ. In order to avoid mistakes, you should accept φ or suspend judgment about φ. Both options are problematic for pluralism. Can pluralists avoid this worry by rejecting the normativity of logic? I argue that they cannot. All else being equal, the argument goes through even if logic is not normative. (shrink)

Optogenetic techniques are described as “revolutionary” for the unprecedented causal control they allow neuroscientists to exert over neural activity in awake behaving animals. In this paper, I demonstrate by means of a case study that optogenetic techniques will only illuminate causal links between the brain and behavior to the extent that their error characteristics are known and, further, that determining these error characteristics requires comparison of optogenetic techniques with techniques having well known error characteristics and consideration of the broader neural (...) and behavioral context in which the targets of optogenetic interventions are situated. (shrink)

An intuitively appealing argument for pluralism in economics can be made on the grounds that schools of economic thought complement one another. Let us call this the complementarity-based argument for pluralism (CAP). The concepts of complementarity, pluralism, and school of thought are scrutinized in this paper to evaluate this argument. I argue that the complementarity of schools is relative to scientific goals, which implies that discussing complementarity of schools of economic thought requires discussing the goals of economic (...) research. I also distinguish weak from strong complementarity and show that some alleged complementarity relations between schools are weak and thus provide little support for CAP. However, if strong complementarity relations, relative to a valuable goal, can be demonstrated to exist between specific schools, this is a strong reason for pluralism about those schools. Finally, I provide suggestions on how to distinguish strong from weak complementarity. (shrink)

Pluralistic ignorance is a socio-psychological phenomenon that involves a systematic discrepancy between people’s private beliefs and public behavior in certain social contexts. Recently, pluralistic ignorance has gained increased attention in formal and social epistemology. But to get clear on what precisely a formal and social epistemological account of pluralistic ignorance should look like, we need answers to at least the following two questions: What exactly is the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance? And can the phenomenon arise among perfectly rational agents? In (...) this paper, we propose answers to both these questions. First, we characterize different versions of pluralistic ignorance and define the version that we claim most adequately captures the examples cited as paradigmatic cases of pluralistic ignorance in the literature. In doing so, we will stress certain key epistemic and social interactive aspects of the phenomenon. Second, given our characterization of pluralistic ignorance, we argue that the phenomenon can indeed arise in groups of perfectly rational agents. This, in turn, ensures that the tools of formal epistemology can be fully utilized to reason about pluralistic ignorance. (shrink)