Kant’s moral philosophy both enjoins the acquisition of self-knowledge as a duty, and precludes certain forms of its acquisition via what has become known as the Opacity Thesis. This article looks at several recent attempts to solve this difficulty and argues that they are inadequate. I argue instead that the Opacity Thesis rules out only the knowledge that one has acted from genuine moral principles, but does not apply in cases of moral failure. The duty of moral (...) self-knowledge applies therefore only to one’s awareness of one’s status as a moral being and to the knowledge of one’s moral failings, both in particular actions and one’s overall character failings, one’s vices. This kind of knowledge is morally salutary as an aid to discovering one’s individual moral weakness as well as the subjective ends for which one acts, and in this way for taking up the morally required end of treating human beings as human beings. In this way, moral self-knowledge can be understood as a necessary element of moral improvement, and I conclude by suggesting several ways to understand it thereby as genuinely primary among the duties to oneself. (shrink)

Nietzsche believes that we do not know our own actions, nor their real motives. This belief, however, is but a consequence of his assuming a quite general skepticism about introspection. The main aim of this paper is to offer a reading of this last view, which I shall call the Inner Opacity (IO) view. In the first part of the paper I show that a strong motivation behind IO lies in Nietzsche’s claim that self-knowledge exploits the same set (...) of cognitive capacities as well as the same folk-psychological framework involved in outward-directed mind-reading. In the second part I turn to Nietzsche’s view of agency and argue that he sees a fundamental discrepancy between the conscious attitudes we have introspective access to, on the one hand, and the subpersonal processes and states occurring at the unconscious level of the drives, on the other hand. (shrink)

Self-knowledge presents a challenge for naturalistic theories of mind. Peter Carruthers’s (2011) approach to this challenge is Rylean: He argues that we know our own propositional attitudes because we (unconsciously) interpret ourselves, just as we have to interpret others in order to know theirs’. An alternative approach, opposed by Carruthers, is to argue that we do have a special access to our own beliefs, but that this is a natural consequence of our reasoning capacity. This is the approach of (...) transparency theories of self-knowledge, neatly encapsulated in Byrne’s epistemic rule (BEL): If p, believe that you believe that p (Byrne 2005). In this paper, I examine an objection to Carruthers’s theory in order to see whether it opens up space for a transparency theory of self-knowledge: Is it not the case that in order to interpret someone I have to have some direct access to what I believe (cf. Friedman and Petrashek 2009)? (shrink)

According to Kant, the opacity of human motivation takes two distinct forms – a psychological form: man ‘can never, even by the most strenuous self-examination, get entirely behind [his] covert incentives’ – and a social form: ‘everyone in our race finds it advisable to be on his guard, and not to reveal himself completely’. In other words, first, men's ‘interior’ cannot be entirely revealed to themselves and, second, they tend not to reveal their ‘interior’ to others. A number (...) of Kant scholars have acknowledged the importance of the first form of opacity in Kant's thought and have attempted to draw out from it implications for moral deliberation and ethics in general. The aim of this paper is to examine the second, social form of opacity and draw out its anthropological implications, an issue that has been overlooked in the literature. To do so, I focus on Kant's contrast between men and beings that I would like to call ‘sincere aliens’. These sincere aliens are beings who have the opposite features of man's opacity, namely beings who cannot but reveal their ‘interior’ both to others and to themselves. (shrink)

This essay is an overview of Nietzsche’s philosophy of action. I discuss the central features of Nietzsche’s account and the ways in which it departs from standard accounts. Section 1 discusses Nietzsche’s view of the opacity of human action. I focus on the way in which the agent’s experience of the world is shaped by unnoticed and unconscious factors. Section 2 asks what role self-consciousness has in the production of action. Section 3 turns to the way in which (...) Nietzsche understands the action/behavior distinction. Finally, Section 4 analyzes Nietzsche’s account of freedom. What emerges is a view that is not just one more entry into the standard debates, but an attempt at rethinking the terms in which the debate is cast. (shrink)

Materialism, reductionism, behaviorism, functionalism, dynamic systems theory and computationalism are popular views, but they were shown by Wittgenstein to be incoherent. The study of behavior encompasses all of human life but behavior is largely automatic and unconscious and even the conscious part, mostly expressed in language (which Wittgenstein equates with the mind), is not perspicuous, so it is critical to have a framework which Searle calls the Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR) and I call the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order (...) Thought (DPHOT). After summarizing the framework worked out by Wittgenstein and Searle, as extended by modern reasoning research, I show the inadequacies in Carruther’s views, which pervade most discussions of behavior including contemporary behavioral sciences. I maintain that his book is an amalgam of two books, one a summary of cognitive psychology and the other a summary of the standard philosophical confusions on the mind with some new jargon added. I suggest that the latter should be regarded as incoherent or as a cartoon view of life and that taking Wittgenstein at his word, we can practice successful self therapy by regarding the mind/body issue as a language/body issue. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

The history of philosophy risks a self-opacity whereby we overestimate or underestimate our proximity to prior modes of thinking. This risk is relevant to assessing Hegel’s appropriation by McDowell and Priest. McDowell enlists Hegel for a quietist answer to the problem with assuming that concepts and reality belong to different orders, viz., how concepts are answerable to the world. If we accept Hegel’s absolute idealist view that the conceptual is boundless, this problem allegedly dissolves. Priest enlists Hegel for (...) a dialetheist answer to the problem with assuming that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive, viz., how certain sentences are both true and false. If we accept Hegel’s dialectical view that certain contradictions are necessary, this problem allegedly dissolves. For both McDowell and Priest, we find a true friend in Hegel. I argue that McDowell’s and Priest’s appropriations of Hegel overestimate Hegel’s affinity with quietism and dialetheism. McDowell reads Hegel as a quietist who silences metaphysical claims and the skeptical questions they raise against commonsense, but neglects Hegel’s adaptation of ancient skepticism against commonsense. Priest reads Hegel as a dialetheist who subordinates formal logic to dialectical logic by affirming the truth of certain contradictions, but neglects Hegel’s commitment to resolving contradictions for the sake of truth qua whole. I diagnose their misreadings in terms of what Hegel regards as the three moments of logic and argue that while McDowell jumps to its third moment, Priest stalls at its second moment. According to Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, logic has three “moments”: the abstractive moment of the understanding, which “stops short” at fixed categories; the negative moment of dialectic, which discovers the “genuine nature” of the categories, viz., that each “passes over, of itself, into its opposite”; and the positive moment of speculation, which grasps the “unity” of categories through the “dissolution” of their inner opposition. Hegel warns that if these moments are “kept separate from each other […] they are not considered in their truth”. I suggest that quietist and dialetheist readings of Hegel fail to consider truthfully the unified moments of his logic. In his quietist critique of metaphysics, McDowell enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of concept and reality. But McDowell helps himself directly to the third moment of logic, where the unity of the categories, and hence the boundlessness of the conceptual, would be fully articulated. Since he arrives at the third moment prematurely, ignoring its prior moments, he obscures its truth (§1). In his dialetheist critique of formal logic, Priest enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of truth and falsity. But Priest restricts himself gratuitously to the second moment of logic, where contradictions within the categories are not yet resolved. Since he stalls at the second moment, severed from its final moment, he obscures its truth (§2). I argue we can extricate Hegel from quietist and dialetheist misreadings only if we grasp the truth of the three moments of logic. (shrink)

Psychedelic ingestion and meditative practice are both ancient methods for altering consciousness that became widely known in Western society in the second half of the 20th century. Do the similarities begin and end there, or do these methods – as many have claimed over the years – share some deeper common elements? In this chapter I take a neurophilosophical approach to this question and argue that there are, indeed, deeper commonalities. Recent empirical studies show that psychedelics and meditation modulate overlapping (...) brain networks involved in the sense of self, salience, and attention; moreover, psychedelics can occasion lasting increases in “mindfulness-related capacities” for taking a non-reactive stance on one’s inner experience (e.g. Sampedro et al. 2017). The self-binding theory of psychedelic ego dissolution (Letheby and Gerrans 2017) offers a plausible explanation of these findings: by disrupting self-related beliefs implemented in high-level cortical networks, both psychedelics and meditation can “unbind” mental contents from one’s self-model, moving these contents along the continuum from phenomenal transparency to opacity (cf. Metzinger 2003). In other words, both psychedelics and meditation can expose and weaken our foundational beliefs about our own identity, allowing us to disidentify with these beliefs and see them as “just thoughts”. There are connections between these ideas and recent arguments suggesting that psychedelic use may have epistemic benefits consistent with philosophical naturalism (Letheby 2015, 2016, 2019). I conclude with a proposal: these connections may help in thinking about the putative epistemic benefits of meditation practice from a naturalistic perspective. (shrink)

It is typically assumed that while we know other people’s mental states by observing and interpreting their behavior, we know our own mental states by introspection, i.e., without interpreting ourselves. In his latest book, The opacity of mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge, Peter Carruthers (2011) argues against this assumption. He holds that findings from across the cognitive sciences strongly suggest that self-knowledge of conscious propositional attitudes such as intentions, judgments, and decisions involves a swift and unconscious (...) process of self-interpretation that utilizes the same sensory channels that we employ when working out other people’s mental states. I provide an overview of Carruthers’ book before discussing a pathological case that challenges his account of self-knowledge and mentioning empirical evidence that undermines his use of a particular kind of data in his case against introspection of conscious attitudes. (shrink)

This paper defends the persistence of the subjective or self-intimating dimension of experience in non-ordinary and pathological states of consciousness such as non-dual awareness, full absorption, drug-induced ego dissolution, and the minimal conscious state. In considering whether non-ordinary and pathological conscious states display any subjective features, we confront a dilemma. Either they do, in which case there needs to be some way of accounting for these features in phenomenal terms, or they do not, in which case there is nothing (...) it is like to be in them. But the dilemma only arises if we assume that opacity rather than phenomenality is a pervasive feature of these non-ordinary states. However, non-ordinary conscious states are deemed phenomenally opaque only by overly restrictive standards of conceivability that: (i) fail to account for the variety of nonordinary and pathological experience in non-arbitrary ways; (ii) sidestep the problem of the attribution and location of mental content (given intelligibility requirements for experience) or relegate them to illusory constructs; (iii) assume an unproblematic appeal to testimonial evidence. I discuss some cases from contemplative traditions and psychopathology and offer some plausible alternative explanations. (shrink)

In examining Judith Butler's treatment of Spinoza insofar as it reflects the tenacity of a commitment to the need to "honor the death drive," a need often justified by the ethical and political resources it provides, this essay asks about the basis of this need for feminist theory. From whence does it come? What ethical and political work does a primary vigilance toward our destructive and death-bent urges do? Thus, I begin with a review of Butler's treatment of Spinoza, and (...) proceed to make some suggestions about what motivates her creative appropriation of his principle of conatus. Finally, without demanding that Butler represent Spinoza's philosophy accurately, I propose that Spinoza's philosophy allows a very strong acknowledgment of destruction, including self-destruction, without conceding the necessity of an ethics or politics of anxiety. Like Butler, and perhaps even more radically, Spinoza insists upon our opacity to ourselves, our irreducible and original multiplicity and constitutive relationality, as well as the inability finally to demarcate the boundaries of the self. Yet his ethics culminates in what he calls a "remedy for the affects," in an endeavor to displace and minimize sad passions, like anxiety. In concluding, the question for feminist theory remains: Which are the best fictions, models of selfhood, and modes of speculation for the displacement of anxiety, aggression, and the passions that trigger violence agianst ourselves and others in a misogynist, homophobic, and racist culture? If I am not able to answer these questions in the course of this brief essay, I hope to underline the importance of asking them. (shrink)

Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems currently used for decision-making are opaque, i.e., the internal factors that determine their decisions are not fully known to people due to the systems’ computational complexity. In response to this problem, several researchers have argued that human decision-making is equally opaque and since simplifying, reason-giving explanations (rather than exhaustive causal accounts) of a decision are typically viewed as sufficient in the human case, the same should hold for algorithmic decision-making. Here, I contend that this argument (...) overlooks that human decision-making is sometimes significantly more transparent and trustworthy than algorithmic decision-making. This is because when people explain their decisions by giving reasons for them, this frequently prompts those giving the reasons to govern or regulate themselves so as to think and act in ways that confirm their reason reports. AI explanation systems lack this self-regulative feature. Overlooking it when comparing algorithmic and human decision-making can result in underestimations of the transparency of human decision-making and in the development of explainable AI that may mislead people by activating generally warranted beliefs about the regulative dimension of reason-giving. (shrink)

In this article I analyse two complaints of white vilification, which are increasingly occurring in Australia. I argue that, though the complainants (and white people generally) are not harmed by such racialized speech, the complainants in fact harm Australians of colour through these utterances. These complaints can both cause and constitute at least two forms of epistemic injustice (willful hermeneutical ignorance and comparative credibility excess). Further, I argue that the complaints are grounded in a dual misrecognition: the complainants misrecognize themselves (...) in their own privileged racial specificity, and they misrecognize others in their own marginal racial specificity. Such misrecognition preserves the cultural imperialism of Australia’s dominant social imaginary—a means of oppression that perpetuates epistemic insensitivity.Bringing this dual misrecognition to light best captures the indignity that is suffered by the victims of the aforementioned epistemic injustices. I argue that it is only when we truly recognize difference in its own terms, shifting the dominant social imaginary, that “mainstream Australians”can do their part in bringing about a just society. (shrink)

When a belief is self-fulfilling, having it guarantees its truth. When a belief is self-defeating, having it guarantees its falsity. These are the cases of “self-impacting” beliefs to be examined below. Scenarios of self-defeating beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack sufficient reason to have any belief whatsoever. Scenarios of self-fulfilling beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack reason to have any one belief over another. (...) Both scenarios have been used independently to challenge Evidentialism, on which what we may rationally believe is all and only what fits our current evidence. Here we tie the two scenarios together and explore what a knowledge-sensitive evidentialist approach to one implies for the other. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a novel interpretation of Shepherd’s notion of selfhood. In distinction to Deborah Boyle’s interpretation, I contend that Shepherd differentiates between the mind and the self. The latter, for Shepherd, is an effect arising from causal interactions between mind and body – specifically those interactions that give rise to our present stream of consciousness, our memories, and that can unite these two. Thus, the body plays a constitutive role in the formation of the (...) class='Hi'>self. The upshot of this interpretation is that it can dissolve the problem of individuating mind that Boyle identifies. Briefly, the problem consists in Shepherd seemingly individuating minds in terms of their associated bodies and bodies in terms of the minds they are united with. My interpretation, however, allows to see that Shepherd neither wants nor needs to individuate the mind in isolation of the body and to read the passages, in which the problem seems to arise, as being about what makes living beings individual – with mind and body both playing a crucial role in this context. (shrink)

As education institution, school has the biggest role to achieve education qualities. Teacher as the actor of education activities is the important constituent in a school. Highly working motivated teachers should be able to motivate the students in order to get good academic results. Teachers working motivation has affected by teacher’s self efficacy and the organizational climate at school. This research will investigate the influence of teacher’s self efficacy and organizational climate at school to teachers in five schools (...) which hold by “X” Foundation in Jakarta and Tangerang. The samples are 113 teachers, who are accidentally taken from the population. This results shows that teacher’s self efficacy and organizational climate at school together influenced the teachers working motivation. (shrink)

Advancements in machine learning have fuelled the popularity of using AI decision algorithms in procedures such as bail hearings, medical diagnoses and recruitment. Academic articles, policy texts, and popularizing books alike warn that such algorithms tend to be opaque: they do not provide explanations for their outcomes. Building on a causal account of transparency and opacity as well as recent work on the value of causal explanation, I formulate a moral concern for opaque algorithms that is yet to receive (...) a systematic treatment in the literature: when such algorithms are used in life-changing decisions, they can obstruct us from effectively shaping our lives according to our goals and preferences, thus undermining our autonomy. I argue that this concern deserves closer attention as it furnishes the call for transparency in algorithmic decision-making with both new tools and new challenges. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the extent to which economies in the developed and developing world rely on gig workers to perform essential tasks such as health care, personal transport, food and package delivery, and ad hoc tasking services. As a result, workers who provide such services are no longer perceived as mere low-skilled laborers, but as essential workers who fulfill a crucial role in society. The newly elevated moral and economic status of these workers increases consumer demand for corporate (...) social responsibility regarding this stakeholder group – specifically for practices that increase worker freedom and rewards. We provide algorithmic tools for online labor platforms to meet this demand, thereby bolstering their social purpose and ethical branding while better protecting themselves from future reputational crises. To do so, we advance a managerial strategy rooted in moral self-awareness theory in order to leverage customers’ virtuous self-perception and increase gig-worker freedom. (shrink)

Our cultural situation is to seek a moral form of self-constitution, rather than an ontological or epistemological foundation. Such a moral ground lies in the paradox of willing surrender of the will to do wrong or dysfunctional acts in order to enter temporally-extended processes of moral change. But the paradox of willing surrender of the will requires analysis. The propositional form of it cannot be sustained and must instead give way to willingness as an ongoing choice. The self-reflexivity (...) of the will with which we accomplish this turns out to be a core activity of human activity that seeks openness to moral growth through humility. The paper suggests that self-constitution in this manner this is what freedom is for us and is therefore the source of our hope. (shrink)

This essay explores the interrelationship between tragedy and comedy, with specific focus given to the potential that comedy can provide in transforming the most tragic of situations. In building this claim, the very dynamics and distinctions that divide the tragic from the comic are considered in view of the self-negation that the comic posits. That is, while tragedy requires a certain acceptance of the finite, from which destiny and circumstance come to certify the hero’s tragic predicament, in comedy, what (...) succeeds is that which functions through an act of self-negation. This, it is argued, offers a subversive redefining of tragedy, one that proves constitutive of a comic fatalism that does not mourn one’s tragic predicament or fated end, but, instead, fully identifies with our comic predicament. Going beyond the pitfalls of political nicety and moral condemnation, which seek easy gratification or cynical distance, the conclusion examines the conceptual artist, Vanessa Place, and her performance of rape jokes. (shrink)

The topic of the human face is addressed from a biocultural perspective, focusing on the empirical investigation of how the face is represented, perceived, and evaluated in artistic portraits and self-portraits from the XVth to the XVIIth century. To do so, the crucial role played by the human face in social cognition is introduced, starting from development, showing that neonatal facial imitation and face-to-face dyadic interactions provide the grounding elements for the construction of intersubjective bonds. The neuroscience of face (...) perception is concisely presented and discussed, together with the psychophysics of face perception and gaze exploration, introducing the notions of the left visual field advantage and the left gaze bias. The results of experiments on the perception and the emotional and aesthetic rating of artistic portraits and self-portraits are reported, showing that despite participants’ inability to tell self-portraits and portraits apart, greater emotional, communicative-social, and aesthetic ratings were attributed to self-portraits. It is concluded that neuroscience and experimental aesthetics can contribute to better understand the human face, hence to better understand ourselves. (shrink)

Some philosophers hold that stifling free expression stifles intellectual life. Others reply that freedom of expression can harm members of marginalized groups by alienating them from social life or worse. Yet we should still favour freedom of expression, especially where marginalized groups are concerned. It's better to know who has repugnant beliefs as it allows marginalized groups to identify threats: free expression qua self-defence.

Real human agents, even when they are rational by everyday standards, sometimes assign different credences to objectively equivalent statements, such as ‘Orwell is a writer’ and ‘E.A. Blair is a writer’, or credences less than 1 to necessarily true statements, such as not-yet-proven theorems of arithmetic. Anna Mahtani calls this the phenomenon of ‘opacity’. Opaque credences seem probabilistically incoherent, which goes against a key modelling assumption of probability theory. I sketch a modelling strategy for capturing opaque credence assignments without (...) abandoning probabilistic coherence. I draw on ideas from judgement-aggregation theory, where we face similar challenges of defining the ‘objects of judgement’. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This paper looks at the debates between internalism and externalism in mind and epistemology. In each realm, internalists face what we call 'The Connection Problem', while externalists face what we call 'The Problem of Opacity'. We offer an integrated account of thought content and epistemic warrant that overcomes the problems. We then apply the framework to debates between internalists and externalists in metaethics.

Entrepreneurship education with a focus on sustainable development primarily teaches students to develop a profit‐driven mentality. As sustainable development is a value‐oriented and normative concept, the role of individual ethical norms and val‐ ues in entrepreneurial processes has been receiving increased attention. Therefore, this study addresses the role of moral competence in the process of idea generation for sustainable development. A mixed method design was developed in which would‐ be entrepreneurs were subjected to a questionnaire (n = 398) and to (...) real‐life deci‐ sion‐making processes in a case assignment (n = 96). The results provide stepping stones for implementing (moral) competencies in entrepreneurship education as a possible avenue to move away from a sole focus on a profit‐driven mentality. (shrink)

Carruthers argues that knowledge of our own propositional attitudes is achieved by the same mechanism used to attain knowledge of other people's minds. This seems incompatible with "privileged access"---the idea that we have more reliable beliefs about our own mental states, regardless of the mechanism. At one point Carruthers seems to suggest he may be able to maintain privileged access, because we have additional sensory information in our own case. We raise a number of worries for this suggestion, concluding that (...) Carruthers's new theory cannot clearly preserve the superior reliability of our beliefs about our own attitudes. (shrink)

This is a reply to commentators in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport's special issue symposium on GAMES: AGENCY AS ART. I respond to criticisms concerning the value of achievement play and striving play, the transparency and opacity of play, the artistic status of games, and many more.

We explore the view that Frege's puzzle is a source of straightforward counterexamples to Leibniz's law. Taking this seriously requires us to revise the classical logic of quantifiers and identity; we work out the options, in the context of higher-order logic. The logics we arrive at provide the resources for a straightforward semantics of attitude reports that is consistent with the Millian thesis that the meaning of a name is just the thing it stands for. We provide models to show (...) that some of these logics are non-degenerate. (shrink)

The present study aimed to understand how status-oriented individual differences such as narcissistic antagonism, narcissistic extraversion, and moral grandstanding motivations may have longitudinally predicted both behavioral and social media responses during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Via YouGov, a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults was recruited in August of 2019 (N = 2,519; Mage = 47.5, SD = 17.8; 51.4% women) and resampled in May of 2020, (N = 1,533). Results indicated that baseline levels of narcissistic antagonism (...) were associated with lower levels of social distancing and lower compliance with public health recommended behaviors. Similarly, dominance oriented moral grandstanding motivations predicted greater conflict with others over COVID-19, greater engagement in status-oriented social media behaviors about COVID-19, and lower levels of social distancing. (shrink)

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) is a syndrome of impaired health and performance that occurs as a result of low energy availability (LEA). Whilst many health effects associated with RED-S have been widely studied from a physiological perspective, further research exploring the psychological antecedents and consequences of the syndrome is required. Therefore, the aim of this study was to qualitatively explore athlete experiences of RED-S. Twelve endurance athletes (female n= 10, male n= 2; M age = 28.33 years) reporting (...) past or current experiences of RED-S, associated with periods of LEA, took part in semi-structured interviews designed to explore: contexts and mechanisms underpinning the onset of RED-S; the subjective experience of RED-S; and contexts and mechanisms influencing “recovery” from RED-S. Regardless of how RED-S was initiated, all athletes experienced a multitude of physiological impairments, accompanied by significant psychological distress. This paper contributes novel understanding of the complex interplay between physiological and psychological components of RED-S from the perspective of information-rich cases. The findings suggest that system-wide educational prevention and awareness interventions are vital for athletes and support personnel, such as coaches, parents, dieticians, psychologists, and sports medicine staff. (shrink)

Tarlac State University (TSU) is a multi-ethnic and multicultural institution with a student population that is predominated by the Kapampangan, Ilocano, and Tagalog ethnolinguistic groups. This paper is a comparative study of the ethnic stereotypes and self-stereotypes of these three ethnolinguistic groups. Using a modified Katz and Braly trait checklist, this paper was able to: 1) profile the ethnic stereotypes and self-stereotypes of these three ethnolinguistic groups, 2) determine their uniformity indices, 3) determine their positivity/negativity indices, 4) compare (...) and contrast their profiled ethnic stereotypes and self-stereotypes, 5) compare and contrast the uniformity indices of their ethnic stereotypes and self-stereotypes, and 6) compare and contrast the positivity/negativity indices of their ethnic stereotypes and self-stereotypes. This paper was also able to establish that the Kapampangan ethnic stereotype and self-stereotype shared the most number of traits in common, while the Tagalog ethnic stereotype and self-stereotype shared the least number of traits in common. This paper was also able to establish that the uniformity indices of the Kapampangan ethnic stereotype and self-stereotype are closest to each other; while those of the Tagalog ethnic stereotype and self-stereotype are farthest from each other. Finally, this paper was able to establish that the positivity/ negativity indices of the Kapampangan and Tagalog ethnic stereotype and self-stereotype are both closest to each other; while those of the Ilocano ethnic stereotype and self-stereotype are farthest to each other. This paper is significant not only in knowing whether there is a difference between how the three ethnolinguistic groups construct each other’s stereotypes and their respective self-stereotypes, but more so in laying down the preliminary information that would lead towards understanding the dynamics among these same ethnolinguistic groups, and towards building a more cohesive student body in TSU, or citizens of Tarlac City, or inhabitants of Tarlac Province. This paper is also important in providing a model study that can be replicated in other multicultural institutions and locations in the country. (shrink)

Self-control is integral to successful human agency. Without it we cannot extend our agency across time and secure central social, moral, and personal goods. But self-control is not a unitary capacity. In the first part of this paper we provide a taxonomy of self-control and trace its connections to agency and the self. In part two, we turn our attention to the external conditions that support successful agency and the exercise of self-control. We argue that (...) what we call moral security is a critical foundation for agency. Parts three and four explore what happens to agency when moral security is lacking, as in the case of those subject to racism, and those living in poverty. The disadvantages suffered by those who are poor, in a racial minority or other oppressed group, or suffering mental illness or addiction, are often attributed to a lack of individual self-control or personal responsibility. In particular, members of these groups are often seen as irresponsibly focused on short-term pleasures over long-term good, a view underwritten by particular psychological theories of self-control. We explore how narratives about racism and poverty undermine moral security, and limit and distort the possibility of synchronic and diachronic self-control. Where moral security is undermined, the connection between self-control and diachronic goods often fails to obtain and agency contracts accordingly. We close with some preliminary reflections on the implications for responsibility. (shrink)

Shell tube surface condenser (STSC) is a heat exchanger system that exchange a high pressure steam into low pressure water and it is widely used in applications like textile industries and nuclear power plants. The modelling of the system has been established based on lumped parameters. In this paper, a fuzzy expert system is developed in order to improve the performance of the condenser. A pressure feedback system has been developed to analyze the effect of the condenser output temperature, circulating (...) water flow and heat developed. An experiment has been made for the closed loop system using fuzzy tuned PI, fuzzy logic and PID controllers and a promising results have been obtained successfully. (shrink)

. Computational chemistry grew in a new era of “desktop modeling,” which coincided with a growing demand for modeling software, especially from the pharmaceutical industry. Parameterization of models in computational chemistry is an arduous enterprise, and we argue that this activity leads, in this specific context, to tensions among scientists regarding the epistemic opacity transparency of parameterized methods and the software implementing them. We relate one flame war from the Computational Chemistry mailing List in order to assess in detail (...) the relationships between modeling methods, parameterization, software and the various forms of their enclosure or disclosure. Our claim is that parameterization issues are an important and often neglected source of epistemic opacity and that this opacity is entangled in methods and software alike. Models and software must be addressed together to understand the epistemological tensions at stake. (shrink)

This paper aims, first, to argue against using opaque AI technologies in decision making processes, and second to suggest that we need to possess a qualitative form of understanding about them. It first argues that opaque artificially intelligent technologies are suitable for users who remain indifferent to the understanding of decisions made by means of these technologies. According to virtue ethics, this implies that these technologies are not well-suited for those who care about realizing their moral capacity. The paper then (...) draws on discussions on scientific understanding to suggest that an AI technology becomes understandable to its users when they are provided with a qualitative account of the consequences of using it. As a result, explainable AI methods can render an AI technology understandable to its users by presenting the qualitative implications of employing the technology for their lives. (shrink)

We argue that relating to myself as me provides, as such, a reason to care about myself: grasping that an event involves me, instead of another, makes it matter in a special way. Further, this self-concern is not simply a matter of seeing in myself some instrumental value for other ends. We use as our foil a recent skeptical challenge to this view offered in Setiya 2015. We think the case against self-concern is powered by unwarrantedly narrow construals (...) of three key notions. One is the notion of a first-personal way of relating to oneself. A narrow account of the first person in terms of special epistemic relations to oneself makes it easy to overlook a source of non-instrumental reasons of self-concern, located in the special relation a subject has to herself as agent. Two is the notion of what it is to be a reason. And, three, is the notion of self-concern itself. We show that the skeptical case rests in part on a slide towards neighbouring but distinct notions of egoism and selfishness. We also argue that Setiya’s notion of self-love, offered to capture the pre-theoretical intuition of self-concern, cannot do it justice. (shrink)

We consider how an epistemic network might self-assemble from the ritualization of the individual decisions of simple heterogeneous agents. In such evolved social networks, inquirers may be significantly more successful than they could be investigating nature on their own. The evolved network may also dramatically lower the epistemic risk faced by even the most talented inquirers. We consider networks that self-assemble in the context of both perfect and imperfect communication and compare the behaviour of inquirers in each. This (...) provides a step in bringing together two new and developing research programs, the theory of self-assembling games and the theory of network epistemology. (shrink)

The paper analyses in some depth the distinction by Paul Humphreys between "epistemic opacity" —which I refer to as "weak epistemic opacity" here— and "essential epistemic opacity", and defends the idea that epistemic opacity in general can be made sense as coming in degrees. The idea of degrees of epistemic opacity is then exploited to show, in the context of computer simulations, the tight relation between the concept of epistemic opacity and actual scientific (modelling (...) and simulation) practices. As a consequence, interesting questions arise in connection with the role of agents dealing with epistemically opaque processes such as computer simulations. (shrink)

Many jurisdictions prohibit or severely restrict the use of evidence about a defendant’s character to prove legal culpability. Situationists, who argue that conduct is largely determined by situational features rather than by character, can easily defend this prohibition. According to situationism, character evidence is misleading or paltry. -/- Proscriptions on character evidence seem harder to justify, however, on virtue ethical accounts. It appears that excluding character evidence either denies the centrality of character for explaining conduct—the situationist position—or omits probative evidence. (...) Situationism is, after all, presented as antithetical to virtue ethics. -/- This essay provides a virtue ethical defense of character evidence exclusion rules. We show that existing virtue ethical rebuttals to situationism themselves support prohibitions on character evidence; even if behavior arises from stable character traits, character evidence should be prohibited. In building our case, we provide a taxonomy of kinds of character judgment and reconcile the ubiquity and reasonableness of character judgments in ordinary life with the epistemic legitimacy of character evidence prohibitions in law. (shrink)

Contrary to appearances, semantic innocence can be claimed for a Fregean account of the semantics of expressions in indirect discourse. Given externalism about meaning, an expression that refers to its ordinary sense in an opaque context refers, ultimately, to its "references"; for, on this view, the reference of an expression directly determines its meaning. Externalism seems to have similar consequences for the truth-conditions of analytic sentences. If reference determines meaning, how can we distinguish a class of sentences as true in (...) virtue of meaning alone? The paper closes by hinting at an account of analyticity from an externalist perspective. (shrink)

One of the main obstacles to the realization of intentions for future actions and to the successful pursuit of long-term goals is lack of self-control. But, what does it mean to engage in self-controlled behaviour? On a motivational construal of self-control, self-control involves resisting our competing temptations, impulses, and urges in order to do what we deem to be best. The conflict we face is between our better judgments or intentions and “hot” motivational forces that drive (...) or compel us to act in opposing ways. In contrast, on an executive construal of self-control, the emphasis is not on overcoming temptation, but on overriding or inhibiting “cold” automatically triggered routines and habits that are at odds with what we intend to do. Our general aim in this chapter is to contribute to the development of an overarching theory of self-control by exploring ways in which these two apparently competing frameworks can be reconciled. We propose that self-control is best understood as a hybrid set of skills. We draw on recent work on expert motor skill to highlight important ways in which experts differ from novices in the capacities they deploy and the ways in which they deploy them. We consider analogies (and disanalogies) between the domain of sports expertise and the domain of self-control. We end by considering how such a hybrid approach can help us reconcile a motivational and an executive approach to self-control. (shrink)

Self-evidencing describes the purported predictive processing of all self-organising systems, whether conscious or not. Self-evidencing in itself is therefore not sufficient for consciousness. Different systems may however be capable of self-evidencing in different, specific and distinct ways. Some of these ways of self-evidencing can be matched up with, and explain, several properties of consciousness. This carves out a distinction in nature between those systems that are conscious, as described by these properties, and those that are (...) not. This approach throws new light on phenomenology, and suggests that some self-evidencing may be characteristic of consciousness. (shrink)

Each of us is not just a set of actions, experiences, and plans but also a set of traits, capacities, and attitudes; we are as much our character as our life. And while story form can help unify a messy life, when it comes to a messy character, we may need something like the form of a poem. Could we model our self-conception, then, on a work like Sonnet 35? In finding deep-going unity—and even bittersweet beauty—beneath surface-level ambivalence, Sonnet (...) 35 arguably offers a perfect formal model, pointing the way to a transfiguration, through art, of intractable internal conflict. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind commonly draw a distinction between the personal level – the distinctive realm of conscious experience and reasoned deliberation – and the subpersonal level, the domain of mindless mechanism and brute cause and effect. Moreover, they tend to view cognitive science through the lens of this distinction. Facts about the personal level are given a priori, by introspection, or by common sense; the job of cognitive science is merely to investigate the mechanistic basis of these facts. I argue (...) that this view misrepresents the structure of cognitive-scientific enquiry. Taken at face value, cognitive science makes no commitment to the existence of a distinctive level at which persons or selves appear. Thus, in the age of cognitive science, we should not expect to find the self in an ontologically distinct realm. Instead, we should expect to locate it in cognitive-scientific models themselves. In closing, I indicate likely results of this approach. (shrink)

Self-authorship has been established as the basis of an influential liberal principle of legislation and public policy. Being the author of one’s own life is a significant component of one’s own well-being, and therefore is better understood from the viewpoint of the person whose life it is. However, most philosophical accounts, including Raz’s conception of self-authorship, rely on general and abstract principles rather than specific, individual psychological properties of the person whose life it is. We elaborate on the (...) principles of self-authorship on the basis of self-determination theory, an empirically based psychological theory that has been at the forefront of the study of autonomy and self-authorship for more than 45 years. Our account transcends distinctions between positive and negative freedom and attempts to pinpoint the exact properties of self-authorship within the psychological processes of intrinsic motivation and internalization. If a primary objective of public policy is to support self-authorship, then it should be devised on the basis of how intrinsic motivation and internalization can be properly supported. Self-determination theory identifies three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The satisfaction of these needs is associated with the support and growth of intrinsic tendencies and the advancement of well-being. Through this analysis, we can properly evaluate the significance of rationality, basic goods, and the availability of options to self-authorship. Implications for law and policy are discussed with an emphasis on legal paternalism and what many theorists call “liberal perfectionism,” that is, the non-coercive support and promotion of the good life. (shrink)