This book presents an original comprehensive approach to some of the most difficult problems concerning sense-perception and other mental states. After rejecting prevailing approaches, the author presents his own viewpoint which may be characterized as direct, critical realism. Basing his conclusions on conceptual analysis, psychological evidence and historical considerations, the author is able to offer new insights into traditionally unsolved problems concerning the nature of perceptual states, the ontological status of perceptual environment, the cognitive mechanism in perception and the explanation (...) of perceptual mistakes. The book also discusses the implications of this approach for other mental states such as memory and consciousness. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2-3, Page 267-283, April 2022.

The move to satisficing has been thought to help consequentialists avoid the problem of demandingness. But this is a mistake. In this article I formulate several versions of satisficing consequentialism. I show that every version is unacceptable, because every version permits agents to bring about a submaximal outcome in order to prevent a better outcome from obtaining. Some satisficers try to avoid this problem by incorporating a notion of personal sacrifice into the view. I show that these attempts are unsuccessful. (...) I conclude that, if satisficing consequentialism is to remain a position worth considering, satisficers must show (i) that the move to satisficing is necessary to solve some problem, whether it be the demandingness problem or some other problem, and (ii) that there is a version of the view that does not permit the gratuitous prevention of goodness. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 6, Page 680-686, July 2022.

This book explores the role of causal constraints in science, shifting our attention from causal relations between individual events--the focus of most philosophical treatments of causation--to a broad family of concepts and principles generating constraints on possible change. Yemima Ben-Menahem looks at determinism, locality, stability, symmetry principles, conservation laws, and the principle of least action-causal constraints that serve to distinguish events and processes that our best scientific theories mandate or allow from those they rule out. Ben-Menahem's approach reveals that causation (...) is just as relevant to explaining why certain events fail to occur as it is to explaining events that do occur. She investigates the conceptual differences between, and interrelations of, members of the causal family, thereby clarifying problems at the heart of the philosophy of science. Ben-Menahem argues that the distinction between determinism and stability is pertinent to the philosophy of history and the foundations of statistical mechanics, and that the interplay of determinism and locality is crucial for understanding quantum mechanics. Providing historical perspective, she traces the causal constraints of contemporary science to traditional intuitions about causation, and demonstrates how the teleological appearance of some constraints is explained away in current scientific theories such as quantum mechanics. (shrink)

David Benatar argues that creating someone always harms them. I argue that his master argument rests on a conceptual incoherence.

The partner choice approach to understanding the evolution of cooperation builds on approaches that focus on partner control by considering processes that occur prior to pair or group formation. Proponents of the partner choice approach rightly note that competition to be chosen as a partner can help solve the puzzle of cooperation. I aim to build on the partner choice approach by considering the role of signalling in partner choice. Partnership formation often requires reliable information. Signalling is thus important in (...) the context of partner choice. However, the issue of signal reliability has been understudied in the partner choice literature. The issue deserves attention because – despite what proponents of the partner choice approach sometimes claim – that approach does face a cheater problem, which we might call the problem of false advertising in biological markets. Both theoretical and empirical work is needed to address this problem. I will draw on signalling theory to provide a theoretical framework within which to organise the scattered discussions of the false advertising problem extant in the partner choice literature. I will end by discussing some empirical work on cooperation, partner choice, and punishment among humans. (shrink)

Abstract:This article sets out two central theses. Both theses primarily involve a fundamental criticism of current contractarian business ethics (CBE), but if these can be sustained, they also constitute two boundary conditions for any future contractarian theory of business ethics. The first, which I label the self-discipline thesis, claims that current CBE would gain considerably in focus if more attention were paid to the logic of the social contract argument. By this I mean the aims set by the theorist and (...) method of reasoning by which normative conclusions are drawn in the contract model. The second, to which I refer as the domain-specificity thesis, argues that current CBE needs to be better adapted to its field of application and the specific goals which it aims to establish. I will substantiate these two theses on the basis of a comparative analysis of CBE with two earlier families of social contract theories. (shrink)

This paper proposes an analysis of statements about universals according to which such statements assert nothing more than that the evidence we’d take to confirm them obtains, where this evidence is understood to consist solely of patterns in the behavior of particulars that cannot be explained by other regularities in the way things behave. On this analysis, to say that a universal exists is simply to say that there is such a pattern in the behavior of certain particulars, and for (...) any predicate F that is presumed to correspond to a universal, to say that a particular is F is simply to say that its behavior exhibits a pattern of this sort. I argue that there is no theoretical work that we want postulations and ascriptions of universals to do that they’d be unfit for if analyzed in this way, and consequently that there is no reason to treat such statements as asserting anything more than what the proposed analysis suggests. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 528-549, July 2022.

We introduce a two-valued and a three-valued truth-valuational substitutional semantics for the Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc). We then prove that the 2-valid arguments are identical to the 3-valid ones with strict-to-tolerant validity. Next, we introduce a Lemmon-style Natural Deduction system and prove the completeness of Quarc on both two- and three-valued versions, adapting Lindenbaum’s Lemma to truth-valuational semantics. We proceed to investigate the relations of three-valued Quarc and the Predicate Calculus (PC). Adding a logical predicate T to Quarc, true of (...) all singular arguments, allows us to represent PC quantification in Quarc and translate PC into Quarc, preserving validity. Introducing a weak existential quantifier into PC allows us to translate Quarc into PC, also preserving validity. However, unlike the translated systems, neither extended system can have a sound and complete proof system with Cut, supporting the claim that these are basically different calculi. (shrink)

The Everyday Life Reader brings together a wide range of thinkers from Freud to Baudrillard with primary sources on everyday life such as the Mass Observation survey and key texts by Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre, to provide a comprehensive resource on theories of everyday life. Ben Highmore's introduction surveys the development of thought about everyday life, setting theories in their social and historical context, and each themed section opens with an essay introducing the debates. Sections include: * Situating (...) the Everyday * Everyday Life and National Culture * Ethnography Near and Far * Reclamation Work * Everyday Things. (shrink)

Educators continue to struggle with how masculinities are performed and regulated in spaces of learning. In a time of rapid social change, there is a renewed impetus for gender justice reform in schooling, though these approaches themselves remain a shifting picture. Adding a new layer of complexity, we are now witness to educational policy recommendations around surveillance which are designed to counteract boys’ and young men’s vulnerabilities to be radicalised into the misogynies of the ‘manosphere’. These recommendations exist despite limited (...) research and significant gaps in our understanding regarding both the manosphere as well as the emotional lives of young men. The article intentionally shifts the conversation from reactive surveillance in schools to educative gender justice approaches. We focus, in particular, on the significance of ‘pedagogic discomfort’ in terms of fostering gender transformative dialogue which is critical of ideas associated with the manosphere. We consider how a constructive dialogue might be fostered with a particular focus on pedagogies that recognise the emotional intensities of gender justice work. (shrink)

There is currently a theoretical tension between young children’s failure in False Belief Tasks (FBTs) and their success in a variety of other tasks that also seem to require the ability to ascribe false beliefs to agents. We try to explain this tension by the hypothesis that in the FBT, children think they are asked what the agent should do in the circumstances and not what the agent will do. We explain why this hypothesis is plausible. We examined the hypothesis (...) in two experiments, each involving a new task. In the first task, the hypothesised misunderstanding of the question leads to failure without the need to ascribe a false belief, and we show that failure in this new task is correlated with failure in the FBT. In the second task, passing which requires ascribing a false belief to an agent, and for which we have partial yet encouraging results, the children are asked a question which is unlikely to be misunderstood. Children pass this task much more often than they do a standard FBT. The mentioned tension is thus resolved. We conclude that the so-called False Belief Task probably does not check the ability to ascribe false beliefs but rather linguistic development. (shrink)

This article contends that close attention to music/language analogies allows us to perceive how language attempts to gain an understanding of its own cognitive nature. The article does so by closely reading Paul de Man's ‘The Rhetoric of Blindness’, an essay in which de Man suggests that a detailed look at the analogies between musical and linguistic structures made by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Essay On the Origin of Languages helps reveal how literary criticism becomes ‘blind’ to its own metaphysical (...) presuppositions. Scrutinizing the terms on which de Man engages Rousseau, the article argues that surface inconsistencies in de Man's use of musical concepts reveal a deeper pattern of ‘deafness’ which turns his notion of ‘empty’ subjectivity against itself. It concludes with some suggestions for how we might further develop the study of music/language analogies, a subject that has the potential to invigorate our understanding of the non-conceptual aspects of linguistic meaning. (shrink)

"Here, for the first time, we have the work of a key pioneer presented in all its depth and range. The pragmatic and prophetic voice of Joseph Ben-David speaks with a power and a clarity that will win the attention of a new generation of scholars."--Arnold Thackray, University of Pennsylvania "A superb collection of brilliant papers by a pioneering mind of international fame, who did much to shape the sociology of science. In organizing this major work, its knowing editor, Gad (...) Freudenthal, has identified a remarkable sociological edifice that exhibits the theoretical coherence of Joseph Ben-David's many-sided and evolving contributions to the field."--Robert K. Merton, Columbia University. (shrink)

A comprehensive survey of the key topics, debates and problems surrounding autonomy. Comprising over 40 chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook is essential reading for those in political philosophy, ethics, applied ethics and philosophy of law.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

E. E. Constance Jones was one of the first women to study philosophy at the University of Cambridge. This paper focuses on her claim from her first major work, Elements of Logic as a Science of Propositions, that each thing has a unique existence. Jones’s claim follows from claims about tropes and haecceities; but, I suggest, it’s not claims about tropes and haecceities that lead her to accept it. Rather, I suggest, it’s claims about what she calls the denomination of (...) names and the quantitiveness of things that lead her to accept it. Her claim that each thing has a unique existence thus fits within her more general views in Elements of Logic. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. If critical theory is to challenge capitalism’s corrosive commodification of labor and nature, then it should renew a sense of labor as a real bodily power with an internal telos, along the lines of an Aristotelian normativity of praxis. Recent thought however either rejects normativity altogether, or pits normative praxis against labor uncritically reduced to its commodification. Habermas’s work provides an exemplary case of the latter. While he rightly found the ‘production paradigm’ of (...) normativity problematic, his acceptance of the reified form of labor as total led to a severe divorce of praxis from the emerging contents of the body and nature. Although Aristotle also separated praxis from poiesis, his thought nevertheless harbors views of their dialectical integration without falling into the problematic production paradigm. Here the normativity of praxis emerges from poiesis understood non-reductively as the form of the self-organizing body already transforming nature and itself toward higher interactions. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article porte sur l’analyse des interrelations entre les pratiques non officielles du sulh, de la réconciliation, et le travail des cours de justice à partir d’enquêtes menées en Algérie et, subsidiairement, au Soudan. J’illustrerai en particulier l’idée que le sulh – action faisant bien souvent référence au ‘ûrf (conventions usuelles ou droit coutumier) ou encore à la loi coranique et aux jurisprudences musulmanes (malékite en particulier) – s’inscrit en continuité et en complément avec le travail judiciaire. Je propose (...) ici de réfléchir à la pluralité des acteurs, mais également aux dimensions spatiales et temporelles qui orientent l’ensemble du processus articulant pratiques non officielles de réconciliation et celles (officielles) des cours de justice. Nous avons en effet une pluralité de lieux – lieu du crime, lieux de la réconciliation, cours de justice – qui imprègnent et l’interprétation que l’on se fait de l’offense et le procès socio-légal (réconciliation/cours de justice) dans son ensemble. Je discuterai ainsi des conséquences pratiques et théoriques de cette articulation entre réconciliation (sulh) et processus judiciaire. (shrink)

Functionalists define a given mental state as a state that is apt to be the cause of specific effects and the effect of specific causes. Two tokens of the same belief, however, often cause and are caused by very different events: what makes them beliefs of the same type? Several answers, including the one relying on the identity of actual plus counterfactual causal relations, are considered and rejected. Functionalists did not notice that they have to specify how a state which (...) is to be identified as mental is to be individuated, but, given their theory, this cannot be done. (shrink)

In a series of publications I have claimed that by contrast to standard formal languages, quantifiers in natural language combine with a general term to form a quantified argument, in which the general term's role is to determine the domain or plurality over which the quantifier ranges. In a recent paper Zoltán Gendler Szabó tried to provide a counterexample to this analysis and derived from it various conclusions concerning quantification in natural language, claiming it is often ‘bare’. I show that (...) Szabó's example fails, and that even if it were successful his conclusions would not be supported by it. (shrink)

As graduates embark on the next phase of their lives, what better way to get them accustomed to the rat race they are about to enter than by introducing them to the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre? Cleverly told through the story of a pair of rats trapped in the labyrinth of existence, this allegory humorously conveys the key ideas of Sartre's existential philosophy in graphic-novel form - accessible for students and readers of all ages."--Back cover.

In this essay, Ben-Porath begins from the assumption that just war theory should be extended to include a jus post bellum component. Postwar conduct should be significantly informed by a care ethics perspective, particularly its political aspects as developed by Joan Tronto and others. Care ethics should be extended to the international postwar arena with one significant amendment, namely, weakening the aim of ending dependence.