It seems like people have character traits that explain a good deal of their behavior. Call a theory character realism just in case it vindicates this folk assumption. Recently, Christian Miller has argued that the way to reconcile character realism with decades of psychological research is to adopt metaphysical reductivism about character traits. Some contemporary psychological theories of character and virtue seem to implicitly endorse such reductivism; others resist reduction of traits to finer-grained mental components or processes; and (...) still others remain silent on the metaphysics of traits. In this paper we argue that character realists do not have to, and in fact should not, be reductivists. We introduce a theoretical dilemma for reductivist character realism. Then we explain how nonreductivists can meet the standards for empirical adequacy laid out by Miller and others. Further, we argue, hylomorphic nonreductivism avoids the theoretical dilemma that threatens reductivism. It also fits nicely the major commitments of recent models of virtue in psychology. Thus, character realists should not be reductivists. (shrink)

In Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer argues via elimination for a global error theory, according to which all normative judgments ascribe properties that do not exist. Streumer also argues that it is not possible to believe his view, which is a claim he uses in defending his view against several objections. I argue that reductivists and nonreductivists have compelling responses to Streumer's elimination argument – responses constituting strong reason to reject Streumer’s diagnosis of any alleged incredulity about his error theory.

Bart Streumer believes that the following principle is true of all normative judgements: When two people make conflicting normative judgements, at most one of them is correct. Streumer argues that noncognitivists are unable to explain why is true, or our acceptance of it. I argue that his arguments are inconclusive. I also argue that our acceptance of is limited in the case of instrumental and epistemic normative judgements, and that the extent to which we do accept for such judgements can (...) be explained by an assumption of shared standards of correctness. Finally, I argue that reductivists can appeal to the same ideas to defend their view that instrumental and epistemic normative judgements describe non-normative relations. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Derek Parfit made the bold suggestion, at various times under the heading of the "Normativity Objection," that anyone in possession of normative concepts is in a position to know, on the basis of their competence with such concepts alone, that reductive realism in ethics is not even possible. Despite the prominent role that the Normativity Objection plays in Parfit's non-reductive account of the nature of normativity, when the objection hasn't been ignored, it's been criticized and even derided. (...) We argue that the exclusively negative attention that the objection has received has been a mistake. On our reading, Parfit's Normativity Objection poses a serious threat to reductivism, as it exposes the uneasy relationship between our a priori knowledge of a range of distinctly normative truths and the typical package of semantic commitments that reductivists have embraced since the Kripkean revolution. (shrink)

Emotion theory includes attempts to reduce or assimilate emotions to states such as bodily feelings, beliefs-desire combinations, and evaluative judgements. Resistance to such approaches is motivated by the claim that emotions possess a sui generis phenomenology. Uriah Kriegel defends a new form of emotion reductivism which avoids positing irreducible emotional phenomenology by specifying emotions’ phenomenal character in terms of a combination of other phenomenologies. This article argues Kriegel’s approach, and similar proposals, are unsuccessful, since typical emotional experiences are constituted (...) by sui generis feelings towards value. (shrink)

Analytic reductivism in metaethics has long been out of philosophical vogue. In Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normativity (2014), Stephen Finlay tries to resuscitate it by developing an analytic metaethical reductive naturalistic semantics for ‘good.’ He argues that an end-relational semantics is the simplest account that can explain all of the data concerning the term, and hence the most plausible theory of it. I argue that there are several assumptions that a reductive naturalist would need to make about (...) contextual parameter completion to derive reductive naturalism from an end-relational semantics—assumptions that nonnaturalists might forcefully resist. I also argue for the claim that an end-relational semantics could provide surprising resources for nonnaturalists to address semantic worries about their views—the upshot of which paints the way for a new and sophisticated nonnaturalism about the semantics of moral discourse. Nonnaturalists have long suspected that they need not worry about semantics and this paper lends support to that suspicion. (shrink)

According to reductivist axiological perfectionism about well-being (RAP), well-being is constituted by the development and exercise of central human capacities. In defending this view, proponents have relied heavily on the claim that RAP provides a unifying explanation of the entries on the ‘objective list’ of well-being constituents. I argue that this argument fails to provide independent support for the theory. RAP does not render a plausible objective list unless such a list is used at every stage of theory development to (...) shape the details of the view. Absent such motivated fine-tuning, RAP even fails to provide a satisfying account of two supposed paradigm cases of perfectionist value: achievement and knowledge. Thus, if RAP is to be defended, it must be defended directly by providing reasons for accepting the axiological principle at its heart. It cannot be defended, indirectly, by pointing to its attractive implications. (shrink)

This paper compares two alternative explanations of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge (i.e., the claim that whether an agent knows that p can depend on pragmatic factors). After reviewing the evidence for such pragmatic encroachment, we ask how it is best explained, assuming it obtains. Several authors have recently argued that the best explanation is provided by a particular account of belief, which we call pragmatic credal reductivism. On this view, what it is for an agent to believe a proposition (...) is for her credence in this proposition to be above a certain threshold, a threshold that varies depending on pragmatic factors. We show that while this account of belief can provide an elegant explanation of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, it is not alone in doing so, for an alternative account of belief, which we call the reasoning disposition account, can do so as well. And the latter account, we argue, is far more plausible than pragmatic credal reductivism, since it accords far better with a number of claims about belief that are very hard to deny. (shrink)

It doesn’t seem possible to be a realist about the traditional Christian God while claiming to be able to reduce God talk in naturalistically acceptable terms. Reduction, in this case, seems obviously eliminativist. Many philosophers seem to think that the same is true of the normative—that reductive “realists” about the normative are not really realists about the normative at all, or at least, only in some attenuated sense. This paper takes on the challenge of articulating what it is that makes (...) reductive theological realism look hopeless, with the aim of explaining why we should think that the normative is relevantly different. Although it follows from my diagnosis that reductivists have their work cut out for them, I find nothing which suggests that the prospects for a successful reductive realism about the normative are in any way diminished—particularly for reductive views about reasons. Even reductivists, I argue, can at least aspire to a realism that is robust. (shrink)

I assume that there exists a general phenomenon, the phenomenon of the explanatory gap, surrounding consciousness, normativity, intentionality, and more. Explanatory gaps are often thought to foreclose reductive possibilities wherever they appear. In response, reductivists who grant the existence of these gaps have offered countless local solutions. But typically such reductivist responses have had a serious shortcoming: because they appeal to essentially domain-specific features, they cannot be fully generalized, and in this sense these responses have been not just local but (...) parochial. Here I do better. Taking for granted that the explanatory gap is a genuine phenomenon, I offer a fully general diagnosis that unifies these previously fragmented reductivist responses. (shrink)

Discussions of divine simplicity generally overlook the distinction between identity claims that are reductivist and identity claims that are eliminativist. If, for instance, the identity claim that 'the chair = a configuration of particles' is merely reductive, then there exist chairs and there exist configurations of particles and it turns out that they are identical. The identity in this case does not reduce the ontological complexity of the world. But if the identity claim is eliminativist, then it is true again (...) that chairs are configurations of particles, but chairs do not in fact exist. The illusory object that we call a chair turns out to be nothing over and above a configuration of physical particles. The chair reduces to the configuration of particles without remainder. The defense of divine simplicity in this paper argues that it is in this eliminativist sense that God's intrinsic properties are identical to God. (shrink)

Using his two-dimensional semantics, I demonstrate that David Chalmers’s 2010 ‘two-dimensional argument against materialism’ is sound only if a wide swath of reductive physicalist theses – crucially, those involving identity and other intrinsic reductive relations – are inconceivable. 2DA therefore begs the question against its opponents and undermines its argumentative relevance. Comparisons are drawn to similar arguments in Marton and Sturgeon; the present account differs in its formal and philosophical simplicity, as well as its specific application to reductivist doctrines beyond (...) the ineffective and merely supervenient. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation of Gestalt theory in The Structure of Behavior is central to his entire corpus. Yet commentators exhibit little agreement about what lesson is to be learned from his critique, and provide little exegesis of how his argument proceeds. I fill this exegetical gap. I show that the Gestaltist’s fundamental error is to reify forms as transcendent realities, rather than treating them as phenomena of perceptual consciousness. From this, reductivist errors follow. The essay serves not only as a helpful (...) guide through parts of The Structure of Behavior for newcomers, but also offers a corrective to recent trends in philosophy of mind. Such influential commentators as Hubert Dreyfus, Taylor Carmen, and Evan Thompson have, I argue, risked serious misunderstanding of Merleau-Ponty’s view, by mistakenly treating “circular causality” as central to Merleau-Ponty’s own acausal view of forms. -/- [The version archived at Philpapers is closer to the author's preferred format. Formatting requirements in the published version make the section/subsection hierarchy needlessly difficult to follow. There are some changes to content in the published version. Please cite only the published version.]. (shrink)

Where does entitlement to trust come from? When we trust someone to φ, do we need to have reason to trust them to φ or do we start out entitled to trust them to φ by default? Reductivists think that entitlement to trust always “reduces to” or is explained by the reasons that agents have to trust others. In contrast, anti-reductivists think that, in a broad range of circumstances, we just have entitlement to trust. even if we don’t have positive (...) reasons to do so. In this paper, we argue for a version of anti-reductivism. Roughly, we argue that we have default entitlement to trust someone to φ so long as there is an operative norm that requires S to φ. At least in such circumstances (and absent defeaters), we don’t need any positive reasons to trust S to φ. (shrink)

Modern philosophy is, for what appear to be good reasons, uniformly hostile to sui generis final causes. And motivated to develop philosophically and scientifically plausible interpretations, scholars have increasingly offered reductivist and eliminitivist accounts of Aristotle's teleological commitment. This trend in contemporary scholarship is misguided. We have strong grounds to believe Aristotle accepted unreduced sui generis teleology, and reductivist and eliminitivist accounts face insurmountable textual and philosophical difficulties. We offer Aristotelians cold comfort by replacing his apparent view with failed accounts. (...) And so we ought to admit Aristotle’s prima facie commitments and deal with — if not accept — the consequences. (shrink)

Evidentialism and Reliabilism are two of the main contemporary theories of epistemic justification. Some authors have thought that the theories are not incompatible with each other, and that a hybrid theory which incorporates elements of both should be taken into account. More recently, other authors have argued that the resulting theory is well- placed to deal with fine-grained doxastic attitudes (credences). In this paper I review the reasons for adopting this kind of hybrid theory, paying attention to the case of (...) credences and the notion of probability involved in their treatment. I argue that the notion of probability in question can only be an epistemic (or evidential) kind of probability. I conclude that the resulting theory will be incompatible with Reliabilism in one important respect: it cannot deliver on the reductivist promise of Reliabilism. I also argue that attention to the justification of basic beliefs reveals limitations in the Evidentialist framework as well. The theory that results from the right combination of Evidentialism and Reliabilism, therefore, is neither Evidentialist nor Reliabilist. (shrink)

Nietzsche's thought has been of renewed interest to philosophers in the Anglo-American philosophical community as well as to philosophers of a more phenomenological and hermeneutic background. The volume aims to appeal to both communities of scholars as it seeks to deepen the growing interest and appreciation of Nietzsche's contribution to our understanding of the mind. The 16 essays by leading Nietzsche scholars examine Nietzsche's understanding of consciousness and investigate its continuities with current developments in philosophy of mind, neuroscience, neuroethics, psychology, (...) linguistics, and metaphysics. Recent work in philosophy of mind emphasises non-reductive approaches to consciousness and self-consciousness. The mental is understood as always already embodied as well as situated or embedded in and emerging from a complex system. Nietzsche's thoroughly naturalistic philosophy has received renewed attention as it challenges any reductivist attempt to understand the mental exclusively as a physical phenomenon using the methods of the natural sciences. His understanding of nature and the physical, informed by but not reducible to the natural sciences of his time, is highly idiosyncratic. It posits the mental at several levels, from unconscious and proto-conscious drives, affects and emotions, to reflective, higher-order conscious states, intentionality and language. (shrink)

This article opens with the consequentialist–deontologist debate, with the former concerned about the relevance of punitive measures against their crime reducing potentials, while the latter highlights punishment as censure of wrongful acts and the proportion of the punishment to the degree of crime. The article briefly discusses the empirical research on the impact of penal sanctions and focuses on three main kinds of empirical research into possible general deterrent effects—namely, association studies, quasi-experimental studies, and contextual and perceptual studies. It addresses (...) the methodological issues involved in deterrence research and summarizes the results precisely. This article also discusses reductivism in the view of the possibility that penal sanctions could influence the offender's will. The results suggest that crime preventive aims can justify sentencing policies only to a limited degree, at least for the foreseeable future. (shrink)

Given the sheer vastness of the totality of contemporary human knowledge and our individual epistemic finitude it is commonplace for those of us who lack knowledge with respect to some proposition(s) to appeal to experts (those who do have knowledge with respect to that proposition(s)) as an epistemic resource. Of course, much ink has been spilled on this issue and so concern here will be very narrowly focused on testimony in the context of epistemological views that incorporate evidentialism and internalism, (...) and which are either reductivist or non-reductivist in nature. Also, as the main question about testimony addressed here is whether or not testimony can provide any basic justification at all, attention will be narrowly focused on the simple case where one is presented with testimony that something is the case from only one source and on one occasion. It turns out that there are some seriously odd epistemic features of such appeals to expertise that arise both for those who intend to accept internalism, evidentialism and reductivism about justification by testimony and for those who intend to accept internalism, evidentialism and non-reductivism about justification by testimony. (shrink)

Despite a recent explosion of interest in the ethics of armed conflict, the traditional just war criterion that war be waged by a “legitimate authority” has received less attention than other components of the theory. Moreover, of those theorists who have addressed the criterion, many are deeply skeptical about its moral significance. This article aims to add some clarity and precision to the authority criterion and to debates surrounding it, and to suggest that this skepticism may be too quick. First, (...) it provides an analysis of the authority criterion, and argues there are (at least) two distinct moral claims associated with the criterion, requiring separate evaluation. Second, it outlines an increasingly influential “reductivist” approach to just war theory, and explains how it grounds powerful objections to the authority criterion. Third, and in response, it sketches the most promising strategies for providing a (qualified) defense of authority, and the further questions and complications they raise. Importantly, these strategies aim to rehabilitate the authority criterion from within a broadly reductivist view. (shrink)

The main theory at the core of this monograph is that the person is an entity ontologically new, since she is able to perform an act of self-transcendence, which is meant as her critical distancing from her own “self”, understood as subject of social recognition (Anerkennung), in order to open to the encounter with the world (Weltoffenheit). This allows us to consider a person in a new way, different both from confessional interpretations that see her only as a center of (...) the spirit and from reductivistic views. Schelling examines the act of self-transcendence through the concept of ecstasy, whereas Scheler associates it with the phenomenological reduction. The act of self-transcendence, that Schelling sees as originated by the “hunger of being”, is at the roots of the formation process of a person (Bildung): the person takes her shape by exiting from her own self-referential dimension and encountering otherness. If considered from this viewpoint, Plato’s “epimeleia heautou” exceeds an intimistic perspective: the “care” is no more a solipsistic self-care, but rather becomes the care through which the person transcends her own self to open to the relationships with otherness. It turns, therefore, into a care for world-openness (care for Weltoffenheit). The transformation of the individual and of society so becomes the double-faced aspect of the same process. The development of this set of problems occurs through a dialogue with Schelling’s and Scheler’s positions, but it is also supported by a historical-philosophical investigation, that for instance provides evidence of the influences of Schelling’s Berlin period on Scheler’s last theories and on the philosophical anthropology of the 20th century. Schelling was the first to conceive the concept of “eccentricity” in an anthropological sense, since until then the term had been confined to Kepler’s astronomy. Consequently, the planets’ elliptic (eccentric) movement heightens to an emblematic metaphor of human nature and freedom. The monograph also examines a possible convergence between Plato’s epimeleia heautou and Scheler’s phenomenological reduction. The book ends with a chapter on the topic of Vorbild. The exemplary testimony, that is Vorbild, becomes witnessing evidence immune from any pedagogical-moralistic intent: in fact, if it should relapse into the rhetoric of the “wish to give a good example”, it would immediately conform to the opposite logic of the model. A model is universal in so far as it makes everyone more like the others, nullifying the diversity, whereas exemplariness is universal in so far as it makes everyone more unique and motivates each one to follow her own characteristic path of existential trans-formation. Exemplarity doesn’t convey any contents, but rather encourages a kind of solidaristic involvement. Yet there are also negative exemplarities (Gegenbild) that place obstacles in the formation and block the existence of the personal center. (shrink)

Those of us who are not pacifists face an obvious challenge. Common-sense morality contains a stringent constraint on intentional killing, yet war involves homicide on a grand scale. If wars are to be morally justified, it needs be shown how this conflict can be reconciled. A major fault line running throughout the contemporary just war literature divides two approaches to attempting this reconciliation. On a ‘reductivist’ view, defended most prominently by Jeff McMahan, the conflict is largely illusory, since such killing (...) can be justified by aggregating individuals’ ordinary permissions to use force in self- and other-defence. In opposition, a rival ‘nonreductivist’ approach holds that these considerations are insufficient for the task. One prominent version of non-reductivism grounds the permission to kill in combatants’ membership in certain kinds of group or association. The key claim is that participation in certain morally important relationships can provide an independent source of permission for killing in war. This paper argues that non-reductivism should be rejected. It does so by pushing a dilemma onto non-reductivists: if they are successful in showing that the relevant relationships can generate permissions to kill in war, they must also jettison the most intuitive restrictions on conduct in war—the constraint on intentionally killing morally innocent non-combatants most saliently. Since this conclusion is unacceptable, non-reductivism should be rejected. (shrink)

The principle of noncombatant immunity prohibits warring parties from intentionally targeting noncombatants. I explicate the moral version of this view and its criticisms by reductive individualists; they argue that certain civilians on the unjust side are morally liable to be lethally targeted to forestall substantial contributions to that war. I then argue that reductivists are mistaken in thinking that causally contributing to an unjust war is a necessary condition for moral liability. Certain noncontributing civilians—notably, war-profiteers—can be morally liable to be (...) lethally targeted. Thus, the principle of noncombatant immunity is mistaken as a moral (though not necessarily as a legal) doctrine, not just because some civilians contribute substantially, but because some unjustly enriched civilians culpably fail to discharge their restitutionary duties to those whose victimization made the unjust enrichment possible. Consequently, the moral criterion for lethal liability in war is even broader than reductive individualists have argued. (shrink)

In this paper we examine different answers to the question of what we are, focusing in particular on eliminative and reductivist proposals about persons or selves. We conclude that, as of today, dualism seems more reasonable than naturalism, if by naturalism we understand the thesis that psychological entities can be reduced or eliminated.

Publication of Taras Lyuty’s book on Nietzsche is a salient event in the philosophical life of Ukraine in 2016. Given the fact that the book covers a great number of different issues, the reviewer decides to focus on those of them which correspond to his own academic interests, related primarily to the history of psychoanalysis and biographical approach within the historiography of philosophy. As a review shows, Lyuty masterfully avoids such a trap as a biographical reductivism. He neither reduces (...) his hero’s teaching to his life, nor isolates the former from the latter. The reviewer pays a special attention to Lyuty’s delineation of intellectual links between the great philosopher and some of his predecessors (such as Ralf Waldo Emerson) and followers (some pioneers of depth psychology). In the end, the reviewer demonstrates that a very deep and systematic analysis of Nietzsche’s biography and philosophical heritage carried out by Lyuty leaves a room for further productive reflections and interpretations. (shrink)

The principle of noncombatant immunity prohibits warring parties from intentionally targeting noncombatants. I explicate the moral version of this view and its criticisms by reductive individualists; they argue that certain civilians on the unjust side are morally liable to be lethally targeted to forestall substantial contributions to that war. I then argue that reductivists are mistaken in thinking that causally contributing to an unjust war is a necessary condition for moral liability. Certain noncontributing civilians—notably, war-profiteers—can be morally liable to be (...) lethally targeted. Thus, the principle of noncombatant immunity is mistaken as a moral (though not necessarily as a legal) doctrine, not just because some civilians contribute substantially, but because some unjustly enriched civilians culpably fail to discharge their restitutionary duties to those whose victimization made the unjust enrichment possible. Consequently, the moral criterion for lethal liability in war is even broader than reductive individualists have argued. (shrink)

Most philosophers writing on the ethics of war endorse “reductivist individualism,” a view that holds both that killing in war is subject to the very same principles of ordinary morality ; and that morality concerns individuals and their rights, and does not treat collectives as having any special status. I argue that this commitment to individualism poses problems for this view in the case of national defense. More specifically, I argue that the main strategies for defending individualist approaches to national (...) defense either fail by their own lights or yield deeply counterintuitive implications. I then offer the foundations for a collectivist approach. I argue that such an approach must do justice to the collective goods that properly constituted states make possible and protect through certain acts of defensive war; and that any such picture of national defense must make room for some form of national partiality. (shrink)

Much of the literature on the relationship between belief and credence has focused on the reduction question: that is, whether either belief or credence reduces to the other. This debate, while important, only scratches the surface of the belief-credence connection. Even on the anti-reductive dualist view, belief and credence could still be very tightly connected. Here, I explore questions about the belief-credence connection that go beyond reduction. This paper is dedicated to what I call the independence question: just how independent (...) are belief and credence? I look at this question from two angles: a descriptive one (as a psychological matter, how much can belief and credence come apart?) and a normative one (for a rational person, how closely connected are belief and credence?) Ultimately, I suggest that the two attitudes are more independent than one might think. (shrink)

Abstract The Greek composer and architect Iannis Xenakis has shown in Formalized Music (1963) how it is possible to compose or describe music and sound by means of probabilistic laws from mathematics, information theory and statistical mechanics. In his theory, scientific concepts and properties such as entropy take on a musical meaning in that they become also properties structurally instantiable by music. Philosophically speaking, this raises many important questions about the relation between science and the arts. One of these questions (...) concerns in particular the possibility for aesthetic symbols (like musical compositions) to convey scientific understanding, and understanding in general. In the present work, I claim that this question can be answered positively. In general, understanding does not necessarily depend on truth, explanation and propositionality (non-factualism, non-reductivism). Understanding can be conveyed also in non-propositional domains, in particular by means of exemplification. Since aesthetic and musical symbols are non-propositional, they can advance understanding possibly by exemplification, and in particular scientific understanding as long as they exemplify scientific concepts and properties. I moreover substantiate my claim by taking a case study: the concept of entropy in music. On the basis of Xenakis’ stochastic theory of music, I show how by exemplifying this concept, music can advance understanding of it. (shrink)

This book is an extended reflection on a basic but far-reaching claim: "There are no 'bare' particulars". Because "individuals are necessarily individuals of a kind," Lowe argues, "realism with regard to particulars or individuals... implies realism with regard to sorts or kinds". A "sortal" concept is "a concept of a distinct sort or kind of individuals". Lowe's purpose in this book is to examine the meaning and implications of sortal concepts, and to challenge relativist conceptions of identity and reductivist strategies (...) in metaphysics. (shrink)

Christian moral philosophy is a distinctive kind of moral philosophy owing to the special role it assigns to God in Christ. Much contemporary 'Christian ethics' focuses on semantic, modal, conceptual and epistemological issues. This may be helpful but it omits the distinctive focus of Christian moral philosophy: the human condition in a morally ordered universe and the redemptive work of jesus Christ as a response to that predicament. Christian moral philosophers should seek to remedy that neglect.