When knowledge is being doubted one way to express this doubt is by a counterfactual. Typically this counterfactual quotes some elements of the actual case or a case considered as actual and dodges the connection between proposition believed and what makes that proposition true. For example, when Descartes states his dreaming skepticism case, he gives us instances where he has previously been lying in his bed fast asleep while dreaming that he is awake. What triggers the loss of knowledge in (...) Descartes’ case is that if he were asleep, he would still believe that he is sitting by the fire, holding a paper in his hand etc. The fact that he cannot distinguish between his dream-state and awake-state entails that he doesn’t know in the awake-state, considered as actual, either. So, a description of counterfactual possibilities that can be used to doubt knowledge in a possibility considered as actual has to make the truth of p indistinguishable from the falsity of p. Any possibility that falls under this description will be called transparent. Here is a definition: For any possibility W and any proposition believed p, W is transparent iff, in W the truth of p is indistinguishable from the falsity of p. (shrink)

Recently, psychologists have started to distinguish between three kinds of experience of meaning. Drawing on philosophical as well as empirical literature, I argue that the experience of one’s own life making sense involves a sense of narrative justification, so that not just any kind of intelligibility suffices; the experience of purpose includes enthusiastic future-directed motivation against the background of a global sort of hopefulness, or the resonance of what one does right now with one’s values; and finally, the experience of (...) significance consists primarily of feelings of pride and fulfilment, which construe our actions as making a positive difference to the world or as mattering to someone who matters to us. Mutually exclusive philosophical views of what makes our lives meaningful could all be simultaneously correct about the fittingness of these different kinds of experience. (shrink)

The moral importance of liability to harm has so far been ignored in the lively debate about what self-driving vehicles should be programmed to do when an accident is inevitable. But liability matters a great deal to just distribution of risk of harm. While morality sometimes requires simply minimizing relevant harms, this is not so when one party is liable to harm in virtue of voluntarily engaging in activity that foreseeably creates a risky situation, while having reasonable alternatives. On plausible (...) assumptions, merely choosing to use a self-driving vehicle typically gives rise to a degree of liability, so that such vehicles should be programmed to shift the risk from bystanders to users, other things being equal. Insofar vehicles cannot be programmed to take all the factors affecting liability into account, there is a pro tanto moral reason not to introduce them, or restrict their use. (shrink)

Suppose that our life choices result in unpredictable experiences, as L.A. Paul has recently argued. What does this mean for the possibility of rational prudential choice? Not as much as Paul thinks. First, what’s valuable about experience is its broadly hedonic quality, and empirical studies suggest we tend to significantly overestimate the impact of our choices in this respect. Second, contrary to what Paul suggests, the value of finding out what an outcome is like for us does not suffice to (...) rationalize life choices, because much more important values are at stake. Third, because these other prudential goods, such as achievement, personal relationships, and meaningfulness, are typically more important than the quality of our experience (which is in any case unlikely to be bad when we achieve non- experiential goods), life choices should be made on what I call a story- regarding rather than experience-regarding basis. (shrink)

Malcolm-Smith, Solms, Turnbull and Tredoux [Malcolm-Smith, S., Solms, M.,Turnbull, O., & Tredoux, C. . Threat in dreams: An adaptation? Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 1281–1291.] have made an attempt to test the Threat-Simulation Theory , a theory offering an evolutionary psychological explanation for the function of dreaming [Revonsuo, A. . The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 877–901]. Malcolm-Smith et al. argue that empirical evidence from their own study as well as (...) from some other studies in the literature does not support the main predictions of the TST: that threatening events are frequent and overrepresented in dreams, that exposure to real threats activates the threat-simulation system, and that dream threats contain realistic rehearsals of threat avoidance responses. Other studies, including our own, have come up with results and conclusions that are in conflict with those of Malcolm-Smith et al. In this commentary, we provide an analysis of the sources of these disagreements, and their implications to the TST. Much of the disagreement seems to stem from differing interpretations of the theory and, consequently, of differing methods to test it. (shrink)

What should we believe if epistemic and practical reasons for belief point in different directions? I argue that there’s no single answer, but rather a Dualism of Theoretical and Practical Reason is true: what we epistemically ought to believe and what we practically ought to believe may come apart, and both are independently authoritative. I argue in particular against recently popular views that subordinate the epistemic to the practical: it’s not the case that epistemic reasons bear on what we ‘just (...) plain ought’ to believe just to the extent we have practical reason to believe epistemically correctly. Why? Because epistemic reasons give rise to authoritative demands independently of the practical pay-off of believing accordingly. This is shown in particular by the fact that it can be fitting to epistemically ‘blame’ us just because we fail to believe as we epistemically ought, even if we don’t have sufficient practical reason to believe so. I also argue that we don’t need to come up with what we ‘just plain ought’ to believe, because contrary epistemic and practical responsibility responses can be simultaneously fitting in conflict cases, and because epistemic and practical ought judgments give rise to different enkrasia requirements, among other things. (shrink)

Truth-relativism is the claim that the truth of statements is dependent on the context in which they are made. In this article, truth-relativism is considered as a way to explain disagreements. Viewpoint relativism, a recent version of truth-relativism, is introduced as a useful framework to analyse how truth-relativism approaches disagreements. Viewpoint relativism is based on contextual semantics and the logic of viewpoint, which is a two-dimensional modal logic. In viewpoint relativism, the central concept is a point of view in relation (...) to which truth claims are evaluated. Viewpoint relativism is compared to the truth-relativism of Peter Lasersohn and John MacFarlane. Finally, truth-relativism is defended against the critique of Paul Boghossian that it represents untenable ‘replacement relativism’. (shrink)

In considering the lodestars of American neoconservative thought-among them Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, James Q. Wilson, and Francis Fukuyama-Antti Lepistö makes a compelling case for the centrality of their conception of "the common man" in accounting for the enduring power and influence of their thought. Lepistö locates the roots of this conception in the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. Subsequently, the neoconservatives weaponized the ideas of Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and David Hume to denounce postwar liberal elites, educational authorities, and social (...) reformers-ultimately giving rise to a defining force in American politics: the "common sense" of "the common man.". (shrink)

If we assume that consciousness is a natural biological phenomenon in the brain, should we expect the current brain sensing and imaging methods to somehow ‘discover’ consciousness? The answer depends on the following points: What kind of level of biological organization do we assume consciousness to be? What would count as the discovery of this level? What are the levels of organization from which the currently available research instruments pick signals and acquire data? Single-cell recordings, PET, fMRI, EEG and MEG (...) pick different types of signals from different levels of organization in the brain. However, it seems they do not manage to pick signals that would allow the direct visualization and reconstruction of the higher levels of electrophysiological organization that are crucial for the empirical discovery and theoretical explanation of consciousness. The message of the present paper is twofold: On the one hand, we should be aware of the practical limitations of the currently available methods of cognitive neuroscience and not read too much into the images produced by them. On the other hand, the present limitations could be overcome by more sophisticated methods in the future. Therefore, contrary to what several philosophers have argued, the empirical discovery of consciousness in the brain is not impossible in principle. (shrink)

Everyone agrees that not all norms that govern belief and assertion are epistemic. But not enough attention has been paid to distinguishing epistemic norms from others. Norms in general differ from merely evaluative standards in virtue of the fact that it is fitting to hold subjects accountable for violating them, provided they lack an excuse. Different kinds of norm are most readily distinguished by their distinctive mode of accountability. My thesis is roughly that a norm is epistemic if and only (...) if its violation makes it fitting to reduce epistemic trust in the subject, even if there is no doubt about their sincerity, honesty, or other moral virtues. That is, violations of epistemic norms don’t merit resentment or other forms of blame, but rather deduction of credibility points in internal scorekeeping and related attitudinal and behavioral changes. As Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice shows, such distrust is undesirable from the point of view of an epistemic agent. Consequently, when one manifests epistemic distrust towards a subject in suitable circumstances, it amounts a way of holding her accountable. Since this form of accountability involves no opprobrium, there is good reason to think it is not linked to voluntary control in the same way as moral accountability. Finally, I make use of this account of what makes epistemic norms distinctive to point out some faulty diagnostics in debates about norms of assertion. My aim is not to defend any substantive view, however, but only to offer tools for identifying the right kind of evidence for epistemic norms. (shrink)

In disputes about conceptual analysis, each side typically appeals to pre-theoretical 'intuitions' about particular cases. Recently, many naturalistically oriented philosophers have suggested that these appeals should be understood as empirical hypotheses about what people would say when presented with descriptions of situations, and have consequently conducted surveys on non-specialists. I argue that this philosophical research programme, a key branch of what is known as 'experimental philosophy', rests on mistaken assumptions about the relation between people's concepts and their linguistic behaviour. The (...) conceptual claims that philosophers make imply predictions about the folk's responses only under certain demanding, counterfactual conditions. Because of the nature of these conditions, the claims cannot be tested with methods of positivist social science. We are, however, entitled to appeal to intuitions about folk concepts in virtue of possessing implicit normative knowledge acquired through reflective participation in everyday linguistic practices. (shrink)

The binding problem is frequently discussed in consciousness research. However, it is by no means clear what the problem is supposed to be and how exactly it relates to consciousness. In the present paper the nature of the binding problem is clarified by distinguishing between different formulations of the problem. Some of them make no mention of consciousness, whereas others are directly related to aspects of phenomenal experience. Certain formulations of the binding problem are closely connected to the classical philosophical (...) problem of the unity of consciousness and the currently fashionable search for the neural correlates of consciousness. Nonetheless, only a part of the current empirical research on binding is directly relevant to the study of consciousness. The main message of the present paper is that the science of consciousness needs to establish a clear theoretical view of the relation between binding and consciousness and to encourage further empirical work that builds on such a theoretical foundation. (shrink)

Binding can be described at three different levels: In neuroscience it refers to the integration of single-cell activities to form functional neural assemblies, especially in response to global stimulus properties; in cognitive science it refers to the integration of distributed modular input processing to form unified representations for memory and action, and in consciousness studies it refers to the unity of phenomenal consciousness . To describe and explain the unity of consciousness, detailed phenomenological descriptions of binding at the phenomenal level (...) and clarification of the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms are required. The disunity of consciousness during dreaming is a fruitful avenue to study phenomenal binding and its mechanisms. The notion of the 'bizarreness' of dreams is closely related to the concept of 'binding': bizarreness can be reconceptualized as referring to different types of unusual combinations of features in the binding of dream images coherently together. The present study concentrates on the representation of human characters and the bizarreness found in these representations. We developed a rating scale that distinguishes different types of bizarreness on the basis of the unusual combinations of elements that are manifested in dream images. The data consisted of 592 dream reports in the home-based dream diaries of 52 students. The results indicate that about half of the human characters appearing in our dreams contain bizarre elements, and that certain types of bizarreness are more frequent than others. Phenomenal features intrinsic to the representation of a person are less frequently bizarre than is the external relation between the person and the context . Thus, binding the local features of a representation coherently together appears to be less prone to errors than binding several different information streams together into a coherent phenomenal model of the world. (shrink)

Is it good for us if the different parts of our lives are connected to each other like the parts of a good story? Some philosophers have thought so, while others have firmly rejected it. In this paper, I focus on the state-of-the-art anti-narrativist arguments Amy Berg has recently presented in this journal. I argue that while she makes a good case that the best kind of lives for us do not revolve around a single project or theme, the best (...) kind of narrativist views actually encourage us to pursue a variety of different projects, as long as they are mutually supportive. I claim that when interpreted in the most plausible way, prudentially good-making narrative coherence arises precisely out of this kind of unity in diversity. Well-roundedness and narrative coherence are thus not inherently in tension, but are both good-making holistic features of our lives. (shrink)

(Pdf updated to final, slightly revised version of November 2010) -/- Almost everyone would prefer to lead a meaningful life. But what is meaning in life and what makes a life meaningful? I argue, first, for a new analysis of the concept of meaningfulness in terms of the appropriateness of feelings of fulfilment and admiration. Second, I argue that while the best current conceptions of meaningfulness, such as Susan Wolf’s view that in a meaningful life ‘subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness’, (...) do a fairly good job capturing meaningfulness at a time, we need an account that makes sense of the intimate connection between meaningfulness and having a direction in one’s life. According to the Teleological View I propose, what makes a single chapter of a life most meaningful is success in reaching central, objectively valuable goals as a result of exercising essential human capacities. Life as a whole is most meaningful when past efforts increase the success of future goal-setting, goal-seeking, and goal-reaching, so that the life forms a coherent whole without being dedicated to a single aim. Since coherence in this sense is a holistic property of a life, global prudential value is not a function of local prudential values. I suggest that just as pleasure is the final good of human beings as subjects of experience, meaningfulness is the final good of human beings as active agents. (shrink)

The cognitive mind-brain is haunted by the ghost of consciousness. Cognitive science must face this ghost, since consciousness is perhaps the most important mental phenomenon: it forms a seemingly united, multimodal phenomenological world around the subject who experiences this world from a certain point of view. Many current approaches to consciousness fail to illuminate the nature of this “experienced world”. Some philosophers want to eliminate consciousness from science for good, others build theories in which the concept of consciousness is distorted (...) beyond recognition. I argue that elimination and Daniel Dennett's “multiple drafts” model do not offer genuine explanations for consciousness. However, certain empirically-based approaches to consciousness succeed in exorcising its ghostly reputation and, at the same time, in preserving the experienced world of consciousness as an important explanandum. (shrink)

This note explores how ideal subjectivism in metanormative theory can help solve two important problems for Fitting Attitude analyses of value. The wrong-kind-of-reason problem is that there may be sufficient reason for attitude Y even if the object is not Y-able. The many-kinds-of-fittingness problem is that the same attitude can be fitting in many ways. Ideal subjectivism addresses both by maintaining that an attitude is W-ly fitting if and only if endorsed by any W-ly ideal subject. A subject is W-ly (...) ideal when the most robust way of avoiding W-type practical problems is deferring to her endorsement. (shrink)

When we admire a person, we don’t just have a wow-response towards them, as we might towards a painting or a sunset. Rather, we construe them as realizing an ideal of the person in their lives to a conspicuous degree. To merit admiration, it is not enough simply to do something valuable or to possess desirable character traits. Rather, one’s achievements must manifest commitments and character traits that define a worthwhile ideal. Agential admiration, I argue, is a person-focused attitude like (...) shame, contempt, and hubristic pride, not an act-focused one like gratitude or guilt, not to mention mere evaluation as excellent. Given its holistic focus, its motivational effects permeate our interactions with its target, who is construed as an exemplar. Consequently, even if someone is admirable in some way, admiring them may be all-things-considered inappropriate, if they fall short of other ideals that we ought to care about. (shrink)

According to strong immanent realism, proposed for instance by David M. Armstrong, universals are concrete, located in their instances. E.J. Lowe and Douglas Ehring have presented arguments to the effect that strong immanent realism is incoherent. Cody Gilmore has defended strong immanent realism against the charge of incoherence. Gilmore’s argument has thus far remained unanswered. We argue that Gilmore’s response to the charge of incoherence is an ad hoc move without support independent of strong immanent realism itself. We conclude that (...) strong immanent realism remains under the threat of incoherence posed by Lowe and Ehring. (shrink)

commentary on Dainton, B. (2000). Stream of Consciousness: Unity and Continuity in Conscious Experience. London: Routledge. ABSTRACT: Stream of Consciousness is a detailed and insightful analysis of the nature of phenomenal consciousness, especially its unity at a time and continuity over stretches of time. I find Dainton's approach to phenomenal consciousness in many ways sound but I also point out one major source of disgreement between us. Dainton believes that to explain phenomenal unity and continuity, no reference to anything outside (...) experience is required. Thus, he postulates a fundamental experiential relation called co-consciousness which is supposed to do all the explanatory work. On the contrary, I hold that to truly explain features of consciousness such as phenomenal unity and continuity, reference to mechanisms outside the phenomenal realm are necessary. (shrink)

Bruno Latour (2004) claims that modernist critique, the kind that removes the false veils of ideology, ‘has run out of steam’. Despite its theoretical variety, it often consists in pointing out how...

An overview and critical analysis of the study of consciousness, integrating findingsfrom philosophy, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience into a unified theoreticalframework.

Consciousness seems to be an enigmatic phenomenon: it is difficult to imagine how our perceptions of the world and our inner thoughts, sensations and feelings could be related to the immensely complicated biological organ we call the brain. This volume presents the thoughts of some of the leading philosophers and cognitive scientists who have recently participated in the discussion of the status of consciousness in science. The focus of inquiry is the question: "Is it possible to incorporate consciousness into science?" (...) Philosophers have suggested different alternatives -- some think that consciousness should be altogether eliminated from science because it is not a real phenomenon, others that consciousness is a real, higher-level physical or neurobiological phenomenon, and still others that consciousness is fundamentally mysterious and beyond the reach of science. At the same time, however, several models or theories of the role of conscious processing in the brain have been developed in the more empirical cognitive sciences. It has been suggested that non-conscious processes must be sharply separated from conscious ones, and that the necessity of this distinction is manifested in the curious behavior of certain brain-damaged patients. This book demonstrates the dialogue between philosophical and empirical points of view. The writers present alternative solutions to the brain-consciousness problem and they discuss how the unification of biological and psychological sciences could thus become feasible. Covering a large ground, this book shows how the philosophical and empirical problems are closely interconnected. From this interdisciplinary exploration emerges the conviction that consciousness can and should be a natural part of our scientific world view. (shrink)

What is the relationship between meaning in life and happiness? In psychological research, subjective meaning and happiness are often contrasted with each other. I argue that while the objective meaningfulness of a life is distinct from happiness, subjective or felt meaning is a key constituent of happiness, which is best understood as a multidimensional affective condition. Measures of felt meaning should consequently be included in empirical studies of the causes and correlates of happiness.

Many find it reasonable to take our past actions into account when making choices for the future. In this paper, I address two important issues regarding taking past investments into account in prudential deliberation. The first is the charge that doing so commits the fallacy of honoring sunk costs. I argue that while it is indeed irrational to care about sunk costs, past investments are not sunk costs when we can change their teleological significance, roughly their contribution to our excellence (...) as temporally extended, reasons-responsive, and goal-directed agents. I suggest some general principles for evaluating such significance. Second, it’s a live issue whether we should care about the fate of our past projects, even if we can now affect it. I reject Dale Dorsey’s recent answer, and argue that the puzzle he addresses turns out to be merely apparent, if we take seriously the fact that we are temporally extended. (shrink)

From the beginning of his career Martin Luther thought intensively about questions concerning the human being’s capacities for loving God and the neighbor. The relation between human nature and love was a vital issue throughout his whole theological work even though he explicitly connected it with the concept of ‘imago Dei’ only quite late. Luther discusses human nature mostly in its fallen state, where the image is almost totally lost, but presents also his view of human nature in its pure (...) state. He avoids identifying the Divine love and the image of God. Nevertheless, love clearly belongs to the image. The article aims at investigating the reason for this view and the question of ontological difference between Christ as the essential image of God and the ‘ordinary’ human being as having the image of God. Luther’s understanding of the role of love in the relation between the human being and God will be compared with that of his Catholic contemporary, Cardinal Cajetan. The article intends,furthermore, to describe how Luther understands the restoration of the image of God through the outward means of the Gospel and Sacraments and the inner but given affects of faith and love. (shrink)

Explanatory problems in the philosophy of neuroscience are not well captured by the division between the radical and the trivial neuron doctrines. The actual problem is, instead, whether mechanistic biological explanations across different levels of description can be extended to account for psychological phenomena. According to cognitive neuroscience, some neural levels of description at least are essential for the explanation of psychological phenomena, whereas, in traditional cognitive science, psychological explanations are completely independent of the neural levels of description. The challenge (...) for cognitive neuroscience is to discover the levels of description appropriate for the neural explanation of psychological phenomena. (shrink)

The history of the parishioners’ right to participate in and influence the choice of local clergy in Sweden and Finland can be taken back as far as the late Medieval Times. The procedures for electing clergymen are described in historiography as a specifically Nordic feature and as creating the basis of local self-government. In this article the features of local self-government are studied in a context where the scope for action was being modified. The focus is on the parishioners’ possibilities (...) and willingness to influence the appointment of pastors in the Lutheran parishes of the Russo-Swedish borderlands in the 18th century. At the same time, this article will offer the first comprehensive presentation of the procedures for electing pastors in the Consistory District of Fredrikshamn. The Treaty of Åbo, concluded between Sweden and Russia in 1743, ensured that the existing Swedish law, including the canon law of 1686, together with the old Swedish privileges and statutes, as well as the freedom to practise the Lutheran religion, remained in force in the area annexed into Russia. By analysing the actual process of appointing pastors, it is possible to discuss both the development of the local political culture and the interaction between the central power and the local society in the late Early Modern era. (shrink)

Purpose This paper explores and identifies customer-value-related sacrifices that consumers attach to interactive health/life insurance. This paper aims to increase understanding of why individual consumers are not willing to embrace behaviour-tracking-based insurance applications. Design/methodology/approach The authors analysed data from a qualitative survey of Finnish insurance consumers who were not keen on adopting interactive insurance products. Findings Developed through thematic analysis, the framework presented in this paper illustrates consumers’ value sacrifices on four dimensions: economic, functional, emotional and symbolic value. Research limitations/implications (...) The framework and insights emerging in the study hold several implications related to increased understanding of consumers’ perceptions of insurance and to developing interactive insurance services. In addition, this work provides a promising foundation and avenues for further considerations related to digital ethics in insurance. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first piece applying a value sacrifice perspective in studying consumers’ unwillingness to adopt interactive insurance products. (shrink)

How can we figure out what’s right or wrong, if moral truths are neither self-evident nor something we can perceive? Very roughly, the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) says that we should begin moral inquiry from what we already confidently think, seeking to find a a match between our initial convictions and general principles that are well-supported by background theories, mutually adjusting both until we reach a coherent outlook in which our beliefs are in harmony (the equilibrium part) and we (...) know why and how they support each other (the reflective part). It has been central to the self-understanding of normative ethics and other branches of philosophy in the last half a century. In this chapter, we examine the history of the idea of RE and introduce a schema for generating 256 variants. We explain why RE is subject to serious objections insofar as it purports to yield epistemic justification in virtue of achieving coherence. However, we also develop a new argument to the effect that RE is the best feasible method for us to achieve moral understanding and the ability to justify our judgments to others. It may thus be crucial for responsible moral inquiry, even if coherence among considered judgments and principles is neither sufficient nor necessary for justified moral belief. (shrink)

Educational Theory, Volume 71, Issue 6, Page 717-741, December 2021. -/- Gert Biesta has criticized Anglo-American and German models of emancipatory education. According to Biesta, emancipation is understood in these models as liberation that results from a process in which a teacher transmits objective knowledge to his or her students and cultivates student capabilities. He claims that this so-called modern logic of emancipation does not lead to freedom because it installs inequality, dependency, and mistrust in the pedagogical relationship. In this (...) article, Antti Moilanen and Rauno Huttunen analyze whether German models of emancipatory education share the modern logic of emancipation and if they can escape Biesta's criticisms. For this purpose, they interpret Biesta's critique of the modern logic of emancipation and explicate central ideas related to the German models of critical education. They also compare the modern logic of emancipation to the German one, and they then assess German models of emancipatory pedagogy from the viewpoint of Biesta's criticisms. Moilanen and Huttunen conclude that the German models of emancipatory education present at least a partial alternative to the modern logic of emancipation. Despite this, the German models are based on the idea of education as cultivation. Because Biesta criticizes the theory of education as cultivation, it is possible to conclude that he would not accept the German models of emancipatory education. However, the German models of critical pedagogy provide answers to the following question: how can students achieve independence in the pedagogical relationship? When students take part in designing educational processes, they are summoned to assess the validity of the taught knowledge, and they practice independent decision-making at school; the pedagogical relationship, based on authority, can foster student self-determination. (shrink)

Antti Kauppinen Les philosophes se sont efforcés de montrer que nous devons être vertueux pour être heureux. Mais tant que nous nous en tenons à la compréhension moderne du bonheur comme quelque chose de vécu par un sujet – et je soutiens contre les eudaimonistes contemporains que nous devrions effectivement le faire – il peut au mieux exister un lien de causalité contingent entre la vertu et le bonheur. Néanmoins, nous avons de bonnes raisons de penser qu’être vertueux est (...) non accidentellement propice au bonheur. Pourquoi? Premièrement, le bonheur est, sommairement, la condition expérientielle de jouir d’états phénoménaux affectifs principalement positifs concernant des choses qui sont subjectivement importantes pour nous. Je soutiens que ce sentimentalisme à propos du bonheur a plusieurs avantages par rapport à la conception de Daniel Haybron comme état émotionnel. Deuxièmement, dans la mesure où nous sommes vertueux, nous pouvons identifier correctement ce qui vaut la peine d’être fait dans notre situation particulière et nous la poursuivrons habilement. En même temps, nous ne sommes pas dérangés par des choses qui ne valent pas la peine d’être prises en charge ou de s’inquiéter. Par conséquent, les personnes vertueuses sont susceptibles de profiter d’émotions positives centrales liées au succès et à l’approbation des autres, et d’éviter les émotions négatives communes liées à la comparaison sociale ou à l’avarice. Bien que leur bonheur soit encore en partie une question de chance, il l’est dans une moindre mesure que pour le reste d’entre nous. (shrink)

According to the quasi-perceptualist account of philosophical intuitions, they are intellectual appearances that are psychologically and epistemically analogous to perceptual appearances. Moral intuitions share the key characteristics of other intuitions, but can also have a distinctive phenomenology and motivational role. This paper develops the Humean claim that the shared and distinctive features of substantive moral intuitions are best explained by their being constituted by moral emotions. This is supported by an independently plausible non-Humean, quasi-perceptualist theory of emotion, according to which (...) the phenomenal feel of emotions is crucial for their intentional content. (shrink)

In this paper I develop the thesis that dreams are essential to an understanding of waking consciousness. In the first part I argue in opposition to the philosophers Malcolm and Dennett that empirical evidence now shows dreams to be real conscious experiences. In the second part, three questions concerning consciousness research are addressed. (1) How do we isolate the system to be explained (consciousness) from other systems? (2) How do we describe the system thus isolated? (3) How do we reveal (...) the mechanisms on which this system is based? I suggest that empirical dream research combined with other empirical approaches can help us to sketch answers to all of these questions. I argue that the subjective form of dreams reveals the subjective, macro-level form of consciousness in general and that both dreams and the everyday phenomenal world may be thought of as constructed “virtual realities”. A major task for empirical consciousness research is to find out the mechanisms which bind this experienced world into a coherent whole. (shrink)

Recent empirical studies of philosophers by Eric Schwitzgebel and others have seriously called into question whether professional ethicists have any useful expertise with thought experiments, given that their intuitions appear to be no more reliable than those of lay subjects. Drawing on such results, sceptics like Edouard Machery argue that normative ethics as it is currently practiced is deeply problematic. In this paper, I present two main arguments in defense of the standard methodology of normative ethics. First, there is strong (...) reason to believe that expertise with thought experiments requires considering scenarios in their proper theoretical context and in parallel with other pertinent situations, so that we should not expect philosophers to be better than lay folk at responding to decontextualized cases. Second, skeptical views underestimate the epistemic benefits of the actual practices of post-processing initial verdicts both at individual and social levels. Contrary to a mythical conception of ‘the method of cases’, philosophers are frequently sensitive to the quality of intuitive evidence, reject and revise their verdicts on the basis of independently supported principles or interpersonal criticism, and defer to recognized specialists. (shrink)

This paper examines systematically which features of a life story (or history) make it good for the subject herself - not aesthetically or morally good, but prudentially good. The tentative narrative calculus presented claims that the prudential narrative value of an event is a function of the extent to which it contributes to her concurrent and non-concurrent goals, the value of those goals, and the degree to which success in reaching the goals is deserved in virtue of exercising agency. The (...) narrative value of a life is a simple sum of the values of individual events that comprise it. I claim that this view best explains and support common intuitions about the significance of the shape of a life. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to give a semantical analysis of why-questions. Why-questions will be construed as requests for knowledge. Special attention will be paid to considering what the conditions for conclusive answerhood are in the case of why-questions. Since explanations can often be thought of as answers to why-questions, we also discuss some topics in the theory of explanation.

We tested the new threat simulation theory of the biological function of dreaming by analysing 592 dreams from 52 subjects with a rating scale developed for quantifying threatening events in dreams. The main predictions were that dreams contain more frequent and more severe threats than waking life does; that dream threats are realistic; and that they primarily threaten the Dream Self who tends to behave in a relevant defensive manner in response to them. These predictions were confirmed and the theory (...) empirically supported. We suggest that the threat simulation theory of dreaming may have wider implications for theories about the function of consciousness. (shrink)