In many-valued logics with the unit interval as the set of truth values, from the standard negation and the product (or, more generally, from any strict Frank t-norm) all measurable logical functions can be derived, provided that also operations with countable arity are allowed. The question remained open whether there are other t-norms with this property or whether all strict t-norms possess this property. We give a full solution to this problem (in the case of strict t-norms), together with convenient (...) sufficient conditions. We list several families of strict t-norms having this property and provide also counterexamples (the Hamacher product is one of them). Finally, we discuss the consequences of these results for the characterization of tribes based on strict t-norms. (shrink)

This revised edition includes a new Preface outlining developments in Relevance Theory since 1986, discussing the more serious criticisms of the theory, and ...

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between knowledge management systems, particularly emphasizing knowledge acquisition and dissemination, and their impact on academic staff's teaching motivation. By employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), data from 676 academic staff at higher education institutions in Vietnam was analyzed, revealing a complex interplay of factors. Notably, positive associations were found between knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination, and teaching motivation. However, the interaction effect of knowledge acquisition and knowledge dissemination appeared to be negatively associated with teaching motivation. (...) This suggests the possible existence of a resource curse of knowledge in improving staff’s teaching motivation. It is recommended that the knowledge systems are refined to reduce complexity and that staff are trained with better knowledge processing methods for reducing resource curse risks. (shrink)

Short abstract (98 words). Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given humans’ exceptional dependence on communication and vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of (...) evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. (shrink)

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

Non-skeptical robust realists about normativity, mathematics, or any other domain of non- causal truths are committed to a correlation between their beliefs and non- causal, mind-independent facts. Hartry Field and others have argued that if realists cannot explain this striking correlation, that is a strong reason to reject their theory. Some consider this argument, known as the Benacerraf–Field argument, as the strongest challenge to robust realism about mathematics, normativity, and even logic. In this article I offer two closely related accounts (...) for the type of explanation needed in order to address Field's challenge. I then argue that both accounts imply that the striking correlation to which robust realists are committed is explainable, thereby discharging Field's challenge. Finally, I respond to some objections and end with a few unresolved worries. (shrink)

The contemporary debate on collective intentionality in analytic philosophy has lasted several decades, but questions concerning the nature of ‘we’ and the relation between the individual and the community are obviously far older. We can find a particularly rich discussion in early phenomenology. Indeed, while starting out with an interest in the individual mind, phenomenologists began their exploration of dyadic forms of interpersonal relations shortly before the start of World War I and were already deeply engaged in extensive analyses of (...) collective forms of intentionality a few years later. A distinctive feature of the phenomenological contribution was its exploration of the relation between the first- and second-person singular and the first-person plural perspectives. How are I, you, and we intertwined? The aim of this paper is to present some core insights from this early debate. (shrink)

Preface Part One Buddhism and Phenomenology Ch.1Buddhism and Phenomenology Ch.2 Husserl and Merleau-Ponty Part Two The Four Basic Buddhist Models in India Introduction Ch.3 Model One: The Five Skandhas Ch.4 Model Two: Pratitya-samutpada Ch.5 Model Three: Tridhatu Ch.6 Model Four: Sila-Samadhi-Prajna Ch.7 Asamjni-samapatti and Nirodha-samapatti Ch.8 Summary of the Four Models Part Three Karma, Meditation, and Epistemology Ch.9 Karma Ch.10 Madhyamikan Issues Ch.11 The Privilaging of Prajna-paramita Part Four Trimsika and Translations Ch.12 Texts and Translations Part Five The Ch’eng Wei-Shih (...) Lun and the Problem of Psychosophical Closure: Yogacara in China Ch.13 Ch.14 Seven Trajectories Ch.15 The Legend of the Transmission of the Ch’eng Wei-Shih Lun Ch.16 Alterity: Parinama Ch.17 Why Consciousness in Not Empty Ch.18 On Rupa Ch.19 Externality Ch.20 The Four Conditions Ch.21 Mirror Knowing: Soteric Alterations Ch.22 Language, Avijnapti-Rupa and Vijnapti-Rupa Ch.23 Is What is Ultimately Real Itself Ultimately Real? Conclusions Appendices Bibliography Index. (shrink)

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The article explores and compares the accounts of empathy found in Lipps, Scheler, Stein and Husserl and argues that the three latter phenomenological thinkers offer a model of empathy, which is not only distinctly different from Lipps’, but which also diverge from the currently dominant models.

Surprises are important in our everyday lives as well as in our scientific and philosophical theorizing—in psychology, information theory, cognitive-neuroscience, philosophy of science, and confirmation theory. Nevertheless, there is no satisfactory theory of what makes something surprising. It has long been acknowledged that not everything unexpected is surprising. The reader had no reason to expect that there will be exactly 190 words in this abstract and yet there is nothing surprising about this fact. We offer a novel theory that explains (...) when and why an unexpected fact is surprising. We distinguish between descriptive and normative notions of what is surprising; clarify the sense in which surprising facts are unexpected; and, finally, develop and defend the significance account of surprise, according to which a fact is surprising to an agent if and to the extent that it is both unexpected and significant to the agent. Since a surprising fact can be significant to an agent in various ways—personal, moral, epistemic, and aesthetic—surprise is not merely or primarily epistemic. Fitting surprise reflects more than a person’s view of what is; it reflects a person’s view of what is significant. (shrink)

If we want to assess whether or not a naturalized phenomenology is a desideratum or a category mistake, we need to be clear on precisely what notion of phenomenology and what notion of naturalization we have in mind. In the article I distinguish various notions, and after criticizing one type of naturalized phenomenology, I sketch two alternative takes on what a naturalized phenomenology might amount to and propose that our appraisal of the desirability of such naturalization should be more positive, (...) if we opt for one or both of the latter alternatives. (shrink)

The article examines some of the main theses about self-awareness developed in recent analytic philosophy of mind (especially the work of Bermúdez), and points to a number of striking overlaps between these accounts and the ones to be found in phenomenology. Given the real risk of unintended repetitions, it is argued that it would be counterproductive for philosophy of mind to ignore already existing resources, and that both analytical philosophy and phenomenology would profit from a more open exchange.

I present an account of mental representation based upon the ‘SINBAD’ theory of the cerebral cortex. If the SINBAD theory is correct, then networks of pyramidal cells in the cerebral cortex are appropriately described as representing, or more specifically, as modelling the world. I propose that SINBAD representation reveals the nature of the kind of mental representation found in human and animal minds, since the cortex is heavily implicated in these kinds of minds. Finally, I show how SINBAD neurosemantics can (...) provide accounts of misrepresentation, equivocal representation, twin cases, and Frege cases. (shrink)

Empirical evidence indicates that bereaved spouses are surprisingly muted in their responses to their loss, and that after a few months many of the bereaved return to their emotional baseline. Psychologists think this is good news: resilience is adaptive, and we should welcome evidence that there is less suffering in the world. I explore various reasons we might have for regretting our resilience, both because of what resilience tells us about our own significance vis-à-vis loved ones, and because resilience may (...) render us incapable of comprehending how things really stand, valuewise. I also compare our actual dispositions to extreme alternatives (“sub-resilience” and “super-resilience”), and consider whether we might endorse (plain) resilience as a kind of mean. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that when a theory is committed to an apparently unexplainable massive correlation, that fact counts significantly against the theory. Philosophical theories that imply that we have knowledge of non-causal mind-independent facts are especially prone to this objection. Prominent examples of such theories are mathematical Platonism, robust normative realism and modal realism. It is sometimes thought that theists can easily respond to this sort of challenge and that theism therefore has an epistemic advantage over atheism. In this paper, (...) I will argue that, contrary to widespread thought, some versions of theism only push the challenge one step further and thus are in no better position than atheism. (shrink)

Several authors believe that there are certain facts that are striking and cry out for explanation—for instance, a coin that is tossed many times and lands in the alternating sequence HTHTHTHTHTHT…. According to this view, we have prima facie reason to believe that such facts are not the result of chance. I call this view the striking principle. Based on this principle, some have argued for far-reaching conclusions, such as that our universe was created by intelligent design, that there are (...) many universes other than the one we inhabit, and that there are no mathematical or normative facts. Appealing as the view may initially seem, I argue that we lack sufficient reason to accept it. (shrink)

Reviews the history of teaching in the United States over three hundred years, and describes aspects of recruitment, organization, and logic particular to the profession.

Motivated by examples, many philosophers believe that there is a significant distinction between states of affairs that are striking and therefore call for explanation and states of affairs that are not striking. This idea underlies several influential debates in metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, normative theory, philosophy of modality, and philosophy of science but is not fully elaborated or explored. This paper aims to address this lack of clear explanation first by clarifying the epistemological issue at hand. Then it introduces an (...) initially attractive account for strikingness that is inspired by the work of Paul Horwich and adopted by a number of philosophers. The paper identifies two logically distinct accounts that have both been attributed to Horwich and then argues that, when properly interpreted, they can withstand former criticisms. The final two sections present a new set of considerations against both Horwichian accounts that avoid the shortcomings of former critiques. It remains to be seen whether an adequate account of strikingness exists. (shrink)

The present war in Ukraine has seen millions of women flee as refugees, while martial law forbids adult men under 60 from leaving the country. According to various reports, many and perhaps most women Ukrainian refugees are breaking romantic ties with the men they leave behind, building new lives with men in their countries of refuge, and/or planning never to return. I avoid any comment about the morality of these events, and instead take up the general question of whether women (...) war refugees have any obligations of “connubial loyalty” to their menfolk in circumstances where those men are discharging a moral obligation to fight in the war that precipitated their womenfolk’s flight in the first place. I answer that they do. (shrink)

We argue that the growing prevalence of statistical machine learning in everyday decision making – from creditworthiness to police force allocation – effectively replaces many of our humdrum practical judgments and that this will eventually undermine our capacity for making such judgments. We lean on Aristotle’s famous account of how phronesis and moral virtues develop to make our case. If Aristotle is right that the habitual exercise of practical judgment allows us to incrementally hone virtues, and if AI saves us (...) time by taking over some of those practical judgments, or if its pattern recognition capacities are very good at learning that kind of behavior – we risk innovating ourselves out of moral competence with the introduction of AI. (shrink)

This book argues that political libertarianism can be grounded in widely shared, everyday moral beliefs--particularly in strictures against shifting our burdens onto others. It also seeks to connect these philosophical arguments with related work in economics, history, and politics for a wide-ranging discussion of political economy.

In this chapter, we focus on the debate over publicly maintained racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the United States and South Africa. After pointing to some representative examples of racist monuments, we discuss ways a monument can be thought racist and neutrally categorize removalist and preservationist arguments heard in the monument debate. We suggest that both extremist and moderate removalist goals are likely to be self-defeating and that when concerns of civic sustainability are put (...) on moral par with those of fairness and justice, something like a Mandela-era preservationist policy is best: one which removes the most offensive of the minor racist monuments, but which focuses on closing the monumentary gap between peoples and reframing existing racist monuments. (shrink)

This article challenges the consensus that silences about mental disorders are there to be broken. While silence in mental disorders can be painful, even deadly, the consensus rests on an oversimplified understanding of silence. Drawing upon accounts from depression and bipolar memoirs, this article names and analyses some salient experiences of silence in mood disorders. It does so with two goals in mind. The first is to show that mood disorders may involve several different kinds of lived experiences of silence. (...) This is important because even though silence is considered a promising objective symptom of depression, little has been written about lived experiences of silence in disorders that involve depression. The second is to argue against the fetishisation of breaking silence and the concomitant understandings of silence as an externally imposed and inherently negative phenomenon. This is important because some silences are not experienced as external and are even felt to be valuable, meaning that efforts to break them may be counterproductive. (shrink)

Through an investigation of Husserl's concept of horizontal intentionality, the article basically argues that the horizon is intrinsically intersubjective, and that it entails an implicit reference to the intentions of possible Others. Against this background it is argued that our perceptual experience of an embodied Other, our factual encounter with the Other, is not the most basic and fundamental type of intersubjectivity. On the contrary, it presupposes a type of intersubjectivity which belongs a priori to the structure of constituting subjectivity.

Prudential hedonism has been beset by many objections, the strength and number of which have led most modern philosophers to believe that it is implausible. One objection in particular, however, is nearly always cited when a philosopher wants to argue that prudential hedonism is implausible—the experience machine objection to hedonism. This paper examines this objection in detail. First, the deductive and abductive versions of the experience machine objection to hedonism are explained. Following this, the contemporary responses to each version of (...) the argument are assessed and the deductive version is argued to be relatively ineffective compared to the abductive version. Then, a taxonomy of the contemporary critical responses to the abductive version is created. Consideration of these responses shows that the abductive version of the objection is fairly powerful, but also that one type of response seems promising against it. This response argues that experience machine thought experiments seem to elicit judgments that are either too biased to be used as evidence for the objection or not obviously in favour of reality. It is argued that only this type of refutation seems likely to convince proponents of the abductive version that the objection is much weaker than they believe it to be. Finally, it is suggested that more evidence is required before anything definitive can be said on the matter. (shrink)

When it comes to understanding the nature of social cognition, we have— according to the standard view—a choice between the simulation theory, the theory-theory or some hybrid between the two. The aim of this paper is to argue that there are, in fact, other options available, and that one such option has been articulated by various think- ers belonging to the phenomenological tradition. More specifically, the paper will con- trast Lipps’ account of empathy—an account that has recently undergone something of (...) a revival in the hands of contemporary simulationists—with various accounts of empa- thy found in the phenomenological tradition. I discuss the way Lipps was criticized by Scheler, Stein and Husserl, and outline some of the core features of their, at times diver- gent, alternatives. I then proceed by considering how their basic take on empathy and social cognition was taken up and modified by Schutz—a thinker whose contribution to the analysis of interpersonal understanding has been unjustly neglected in recent years. (shrink)

As scientists start to adopt machine learning (ML) as one research tool, the security of ML and the knowledge generated become a concern. In this paper, I explain how supervised ML can be improved with better data ontology, or the way we make categories and turn information into data. More specifically, we should design data ontology in such a way that is consistent with the knowledge that we have about the target phenomenon so that such ontology can help us make (...) the inductive leap. I do so by thinking through a thought experiment, Goodman’s New Riddle of Induction (Fact, fiction, and forecast, Harvard University Press, 1955). Goodman’s riddle helps flesh out three problems of induction: (1) the problem of equal goodies, that there are often too many equally good inductive results given the same data; (2) the problem of diverging performance, that these equally good results can give opposite predictions in the future; and (3) the problem of mediocrity, that when averaged across all equally possible datasets and tasks, no inductive algorithm outperforms any other. I show that all these three problems are manifested as real obstacles in ML practice, namely, the Rashomon effect (Breiman in Stat Sci 16(3):199–231, 2001), the problem of underspecification (D’Amour et al. in J Mach Learn Res, 2020, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2011.03395 ), and the No Free Lunch theorem (Wolpert in Neural Comput 8(7):1341–90, 1996, https://doi.org/10.1162/neco.1996.8.7.1341 ). Lastly, I argue that proper data ontology can help mitigate these problems and I demonstrate how using concrete examples from climate science. This research highlights the links between philosophers’ discussions of induction and implications in ML practice. (shrink)

Until recently, cognitive research in infantile autism primarily focussed on the ability of autistic subjects to understand and predict the actions of others. Currently, researchers are also considering the capacity of autists to understand their own minds. In this article we discuss selected recent contributions to the theory of mind debate and the study of infantile autism, and provide an analysis of intersubjectivity and self-awareness that is informed both by empirical research and by work in the phenomenological tradition. This analysis (...) uncovers certain problems in the theory-theory account of autism, and at the same time illustrates the potential value of phenomenology for cognitive science. (shrink)

While much ink has been spilt over the political importance of speech, much less has been dedicated to the political importance of silence. This article seeks to fill that gap. We propose the need for a robust, democratic right to silence in public life and argue that there are politically salient epistemic reasons for recognising that right. We begin by defining what silence is and what a robust right to silence entails. We then argue that the right to silence offers (...) two politically salient epistemic benefits. The first is that, if the right to silence is maintained, we can avoid the epistemic harm that may be caused when an individual is compelled to lie in public. The second is that the right to silence can protect marginalised individuals against the epistemic injustices that may arise when others are likely to misconstrue their speech. (shrink)

In his recent book The Stream of Consciousness, Dainton provides what must surely count as one of the most comprehensive discussions of time-consciousness in analytical philosophy. In the course of doing so, he also challenges Husserl's classical account in a number of ways. In the following contribution, I will compare Dainton's and Husserl's respective accounts. Such a comparison will not only make it evident why an analysis of time-consciousness is so important, but will also provide a neat opportunity to appraise (...) the contemporary relevance of Husserl's analysis. How does it measure up against one of the more recent analytical accounts? (shrink)

Sartre’s analysis of intersubjectivity in the third part of Being and Nothingness is guided by two main motives1. First of all, Sartre is simply expanding his ontological investigation of the essential structure of and relation between the for-itself (pour-soi) and the in-itself (en-soi). For as he points out, I need the Other in order fully to understand the structure of my own being, since the for-itself refers to the for-others (EN 267/303, 260/298); moreover, as he later adds, a treatment of (...) the relation to the in-itself must necessarily include an analysis of the Other precisely because this relation is played out in the presence of the Other (EN 410/472). Secondly, Sartre wants to supply a concrete solution to the problem of solipsism (EN 289/329, 296/337). This problem was already preoccupying him in The Transcendence of the Ego, but at that time, Sartre argued that solipsism could be avoided by means of a non-egological theory of consciousness, since such a theory—which sees the transcendental field of consciousness as non-personal and the I as a product of reflection (TE 36/52-53, 63/80- 81)—would no longer confer a privileged status to the I vis-à-vis the Other (TE 85/104). In Being and Nothingness, however, Sartre concedes that this renunciation of the transcendental I has in fact been of no help in overcoming solipsism (EN 280/318). The problem remains and has to be solved. As he is quick to add, however, a proper solution will not involve any proof of the existence of Others; rather, it will be a question of revealing the foundation of our “pre-ontological” certainty with regard to the existence of the Other (EN.. (shrink)

This chapter examines whether an individual’s being worse off than others should be a relevant consideration in the allocation of limited medical resources. It reviews arguments pressed by proponents of different theories of justice about whether being worse off than others makes special demands on health care resource prioritization. Even if there is good reason to restrict the concern for the worse off to those with worse health in the prioritization and allocation of health care resources, additional issues remain. One (...) is how to determine who has worse health, and whether the worse off are those with the worse overall health or those with the most serious medical condition now in need of treatment. Another issue is whether only individuals’ present health, or instead their lifetime health, including past and expected future health, is relevant. (shrink)

Faced with the choice between supporting industrial plant agriculture and hunting, Tom Regan’s rights view can be plausibly developed in a way that permits a form of hunting we call “dignitarian.” To motivate this claim, we begin by showing how the empirical literature on animal deaths in plant agriculture suggests that a non-trivial amount of hunting would not add to animal harm. We discuss how Tom Regan’s miniride principle appears to morally permit hunting in that case, and we address recent (...) objections by Jason Hanna to environmentally-based culling that may be seen to speak against this conclusion. We then turn to dignity, which is especially salient in scenarios where harm is necessary or justifiable. We situate “dignitarian” hunting within a larger framework of adversarial ethics, and argue that dignitarian hunting gives animals a more dignified death than the alternatives endemic to large-scale plant agriculture, and so is permissible based on the kinds of principles that Regan endorses. Indeed, dignitarian hunting may actually fit better with Regan’s widely endorsed animal rights framework than the practice of many vegans, and should only be rejected if we’re just as willing to condemn supporting conventional plant agriculture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ideal of Shared Decision Making Between Physicians and PatientsDan W. Brock (bio)IntroductionShared treatment decision making, with its division of labor between physician and patient, is a common ideal in medical ethics for the physician-patient relationship.1 Most simply put, the physician's role is to use his or her training, knowledge, and experience to provide the patient with facts about the diagnosis and about the prognoses without treatment and with (...) alternative treatments. The patient's role in this division of labor is to provide the values—his or her own conception of the good—with which to evaluate these alternatives, and to select the one that is best for himself or herself. As a rough guide to practice, this is a reasonable conception; most of the time it is likely to produce sound treatment decisions. However, as an ideal it is too simplistic, and is subject to several challenges that I will explore in this paper.Some challenges relate to the physician's role. This facts/values division of labor seems to assume that the physician can and should provide the facts about treatment alternatives in a value-neutral form. But some have questioned whether the sciences on which medicine is based are, or can be, value free. Moreover, the concepts of health and disease, and of the normal and pathological, are held by many to be value laden. And even if it is possible for physicians to provide only value-neutral facts to the patient, should the physicians' role be restricted in this way?Other challenges that I will present in the paper are to the patient's role [End Page 28] as provider of the values for the evaluation of the different treatment alternatives. One defense of this role is based on the claim that physicians are not in a position to know reliably what is in a patient's best interests (Buchanan, forthcoming). I believe at least as influential—even if often not explicitly stated—is an extreme subjectivism about values that assumes that the patient's own ultimate values, which define his or her own conception of the good, are incorrigible. By incorrigible, I mean they cannot be mistaken. In the standard case in which treatment is pursued for the patient's benefit, this extreme subjectivism is thought to support the patient's values guiding treatment decision making and treatment. I will explore this incorrigibility claim and will argue that on each of the main philosophical conceptions of the good for persons it is indefensible and should not be the basis for shared treatment decision making.Underlying this view of the physician-patient division of labor are assumptions and beliefs about the nature and relation of facts and values, and science and ethics, that are largely the legacy of a logical positivism that has long since been rejected by most philosophers. It is time that these unstable foundations for our normative ideal of the physician-patient relation were finally removed and replaced with more defensible underpinnings.Two Models of the Physician-Patient RelationshipPositivists insisted on a relatively sharp distinction between descriptive or empirical claims and science, on the one hand, and evaluative claims and ethics, on the other.2 Descriptive statements and the claims of science were to be true or false according to whether they in fact correctly described and explained the world. By remaining properly descriptive or empirical, science could, at least in principle, be entirely value neutral or value free.In its more extreme versions, positivism held that ethical judgments lacked cognitive content, but were instead expressions of emotions or attitudes, and as such could be neither true nor false, correct or mistaken. Because no evaluative statements were held to be logically entailed by any descriptive or empirical statements, moral reasoning was thought to be properly understood not as reasoning but as attempts at nonrational persuasion.3 Many drew from this an extreme subjectivism in ethics along the lines of what I have called above the incorrigibility thesis—there is no meaningful sense in which an individual's ultimate values defining his or her own conception of the good life could be mistaken, false, or unfounded.These... (shrink)

Contemporary versions of natural rights libertarianism trace their locus classicus to Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But although there have been many criticisms of the version of political libertarianism put forward by Nozick, many of these fail objections to meet basic methodological desiderata. Thus, Nozick’s libertarianism deserves to be re-examined. In this paper I develop a new argument which meets these desiderata. Specifically, I argue that the libertarian conception of self-ownership, the view’s foundation, implies what I call the Asymmetrical (...) Value Claim: a dubious claim about the importance of choice relative to other valuable capacities. I argue that this misunderstands what is really valuable in life, and show how it causes libertarianism to generate counterintuitive public policy recommendations. (shrink)

I argue for the merits of studying historical moral revolutions to inform moral and political philosophy. Such a research program is not merely of empirical, historical interest but has normative implications. To explain why, I situate the proposal in the tradition of naturalized epistemology. As Alison M. Jaggar and other scholars have argued, a naturalistic approach is characteristic of much feminist philosophy. Accordingly, I argue that the study of moral revolutions would be especially fruitful for feminist moral and political philosophers.

Epistemologists are engaged, among other things, in the business of formulating epistemic norms. That is, they formulate principles that tell us what we should believe and to what degree of confidence, or how to evaluate such epistemic states. In The End of Epistemology As We Know It, Brian Talbot argues that thus far, most of the theories resulting from these efforts are flawed. In this critical notice I examine three of his arguments.

In her editorial introduction to the special issue 10 years of Viewing from Within: the Legacy of Francisco Varela as well as in her co-authored contribution 'The validity of first-person descriptions as authenticity and coherence' , Claire Petitmengin expresses some reservations about the way I have been characterizing reflection in some of my earlier writings. In replying to the criticism, I will use the occasion to amplify some of my previous remarks, pinpoint what I take to be some ambiguities in (...) Petitmengin and Bitbol's own positive proposal, make some additional points that relate directly to the important questions that they raise in their joint paper, and finish off with a few remarks regarding one of the central claims made by Vermersch in his contribution to the special issue. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years there have been a number of attempts to analyse the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. This article discusses three leading attempts to analyse this distinction that don’t appeal to the notion of nat-uralness: the duplication analysis endorsed by G. E. Moore and David Lewis, Peter Vallentyne’s analysis in terms of contractions of possible worlds, and the analysis of Gene Witmer, William Butchard and Kelly Trogdon in terms of grounding.

This article is a study of the Later Mohists' 'Lesser Selection (Xiaoqu)', which, more than any other early Chinese text, seems to engage in the study of logic. I focus on a procedure that the Mohists called mou . Arguments by mou are grounded in linguistic parallelism, implying perhaps that the Mohists were on the way to a formal analysis of argumentation. However, their main aim was to head off arguments by mou that targeted their own doctrines, and if their (...) argument succeeds then it entails that linguistic parallelism can never ground a cogent argument. In a way, this committed them to the view that formal logic cannot work, but the fact that they did not pursue this line of investigation was by no means inevitable. One consequence of this study is that the Later Mohists conducted their logical work by studying the behaviour of terms and verb phrases, and did not identify the sentence as a significant linguistic unit. This tends to confirm Chad Hansen's generalisation that early Chinese philosophers did not posit sentences or other sentence-like entities such as propositions, beliefs, or laws. Focusing on subsentential expressions did not stop the Mohists from addressing genuinely logical issues, but it may help explain the fact that they never developed a conception of logical structure. This study includes the complete Chinese text of the 'Lesser Selection' and a translation in English. (shrink)