Gareth Evans proposes that there are semantic natural kinds of words. In his development of this theory,he argues for two constraints on the identification of these kinds. I argue that neither of these constraints are justified. Furthermore,my argument against Evans' second constraint constitutes a direct argument for the existence of semantic natural kinds,something Evans himself never offers. I conclude by sketching some positive details of a more plausible theory of semantic natural kinds.

The world contains objective causal relations and universals, both of which are intimately connected. If these claims are true, they must have far-reaching consequences, breathing new life into the theory of empirical knowledge and reinforcing epistemological realism. Without causes and universals, Professor Fales argues, realism is defeated, and idealism or scepticism wins. Fales begins with a detailed analysis of David Hume's argument that we have no direct experience of necessary connections between events, concluding that Hume was mistaken on this fundamental (...) point. Then, adopting the view of Armstrong and others that causation is grounded in a second-order relation between universals, he explores a range of topics for which the resulting analysis of causation has systematic implications. In particular, causal identity conditions for physical universals are proposed, which generate a new argument for Platonism. The nature of space and time is discussed, with arguments against backward causation and for the view that space and time can exist independently of matter or causal process. Many of Professor Fales's conclusions seem to run counter to received opinion among contemporary empiricists. Yet his method is classically empiricist in spirit, and a chief motive for these metaphysical explorations is epistemological. The final chapters investigate the perennial question of whether an empiricist, internalist and foundational epistemology can support scientific realism. (shrink)

Character-trait attribution is an important component of everyday social cognition that has until recently received insufficient attention in traditional accounts of folk psychology. In this paper, I consider how the case of character-trait attribution fits into the debate between mindreading-based and broadly ‘pluralistic’ approaches to folk psychology. Contrary to the arguments of some pluralists, I argue that the evidence on trait understanding does not show that it is a distinct, non-mentalistic mode of folk-psychological reasoning, but rather suggests that traits are (...) ordinarily understood as mentalistic dispositions. I also examine several ways in which trait attribution might also serve regulative, ‘mindshaping’ functions by promoting predictable norm-governed behavior, and argue that mindreading plays several important roles in these cases as well. I conclude that an appreciation of the relationship between trait attribution and mindreading is crucial to understanding the role it plays in our folk psychology. (shrink)

This paper theorizes that the effect of human rights violations on US economic aid is conditioned by the salience of US national security concerns. National security concerns will be more salient in situations where recipients contribute to maintaining US security and in temporal eras when the USA is perceived as being under increased external threat. As the relational and temporal salience of national security increases, any negative effect of human rights violations on US economic aid should decrease. I test this (...) hypothesis by examining US economic aid allocations to states from 1977 to 2005. The results show that the salience of national security concerns present in the US-recipient relationship does condition the relationship between human rights violations and US economic aid. There are also significant differences between different temporal eras of US foreign aid allocation. Future work should address how conflicts between interests and values in US foreign policy are negotiated. (shrink)

We argue that human rights are best conceived as norms arising from a fiduciary relationship that exists between states and the citizens and noncitizens subject to their power. These norms draw on a Kantian conception of moral personhood, protecting agents from instrumentalization and domination. They do not, however, exist in the abstract as timeless natural rights. Instead, they are correlates of the state's fiduciary duty to provide equal security under the rule of law, a duty that flows from the state's (...) institutional assumption of irresistible sovereign powers. (shrink)

This essay presents a critical review of recent literature on evil in medieval philosophy, as understood by thinkers from Anselm of Canterbury onward. "Evil" is taken to include not only serious, deliberate wrongdoing, but also everyday sins done from ignorance or passion. Special attention is paid to Aquinas's De Malo, Giles of Rome and the aftermath of the 1277 Condemnation, scholarly disputes about Scotus's teachings, and commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics by Walter Burley, Gerald Odonis, and John Buridan.

Henry Wellman and colleagues have provided evidence of a robust developmental progression in theory-of-mind (or as we will say, “mindreading”) abilities, using verbal tasks. Understanding diverse desires is said to be easier than understanding diverse beliefs, which is easier than understanding that lack of perceptual access issues in ignorance, which is easier than understanding false belief, which is easier than understanding that people can hide their true emotions. These findings present a challenge to nativists about mindreading, and are said to (...) support a social-constructivist account of mindreading development instead. This article takes up the challenge on behalf of nativism. Our goal is to show that the mindreading-scale findings fail to support constructivism because well-motivated alternative hypotheses have not yet been controlled for and ruled out. These have to do with the pragmatic demands of verbal tasks. (shrink)

For several decades, international law has recognized certain norms such as the prohibitions against genocide, slavery, and military aggression as "jus cogens"- peremptory law which supersedes conflicting international treaties and customs. Despite widespread acceptance of the jus cogens concept, legal theorists continue to debate whether peremptory norms derive their legal authority from state consent, natural law, or the demands of international public order. Anxiety over peremptory norms' legal basis has frustrated efforts to clarify the scope and content of jus cogens, (...) as well as placing peremptory norms on a collision course with inherited notions of state sovereignty. Drawing on Immanuel Kant 's conception of fiduciary relations, this Article develops a new theory of jus cogens based on the idea that states are fiduciaries of their people. According to the fiduciary theory, peremptory norms do not stand in opposition to state sovereignty; rather, they are constitutive of state sovereign authority because all states owe their subjects a fiduciary obligation to comply with such norms. The fiduciary model of the state resolves the longstanding tension in international legal theory between peremptory norms and state sovereignty and points to discrete formal and substantive criteria for identifying peremptory norms. (shrink)

This article presents a rule-utilitarian theory which lies much closer to the social contract tradition than most other forms of consequentialism do: calculated-rates rule preference utilitarianism. Being preference-utilitarian allows the theory to be grounded in instrumental rationality and the equality of agents, as opposed to teleological assumptions about impartial goodness. The calculated-rates approach, judging rules’ consequences by what would happen if they were accepted by whatever number of people is realistic rather than by what would happen if they were accepted (...) universally or by exactly 90% of the population, allows it to select rules based not just on their ability to give good advice to their followers but also on their ability to attract followers in the first place. The result is a theory that, although fully utilitarian and not at all pluralistic or intuitionist, nevertheless offers a principled justification for giving some weight to seemingly non-utilitarian considerations: Lockean natural rights, Kantian respect for autonomy, and Scanlonian distributive justice. (shrink)

In contemporary discussions of natural evil, one classically important theodicy—variously called warfare theodicy, fallen angel theodicy, or the Satan hypothesis—is rarely mentioned, let alone defended. This is the view that so-called natural evil, the evil suffered by sentient beings that is not caused by human agency, is caused by angelic agency, specifically that of Satan and other fallen angels. Although the Satan hypothesis has received scant attention in contemporary philosophy of religion, Richard Swinburne, Michael Martin, Robert Adams, and David O’Connor (...) have each brought separate objections against it, but their objections fail. The real problem with the Satan hypothesis lies elsewhere. This paper begins by stating the Satan hypothesis and briefly sketching its scriptural and theological warrants in the Christian tradition. Second, it canvasses the objections that have been brought against the hypothesis and shows how each objection fails. Third, it isolates the real problem for the Satan hypothesis, namely the lack of any satisfactory account of how malevolent angelic agency could conceivably be the cause of natural evil. Finally, the paper offers three speculative proposals for such an account, highlighting problems with each. The upshot is that although the Satan hypothesis is a prominent theodicy in the history of Christian thought and in popular Christianity, it confronts philosophical challenges not yet met by its proponents. (shrink)

This paper offers a smattering of applications of pragmatics to epistemology. In most cases they concern recent epistemological claims that depend for their plausibility on mistaking something pragmatic for something semantic. After giving my formulation of the semantic/pragmatic distinction and explaining how seemingly semantic intuitions can be responsive to pragmatic factors, I take up the following topics: 1. Classic Examples of Confusing Meaning and Use 2. Pragmatic Implications of Hedging or Intensifying an Assertion 3. Belief Attributions 4. Knowledge-wh 5. The (...) Knowledge Rule on Assertion 6. Testimony 7. Asserting and Thinking of Possibilities 8. Concessive Knowledge Attributions 9. “Pragmatic Encroachment” 10. Epistemic Contextualism.. (shrink)

The Doctrine of the Given The Myth of the Given A Methodological Problem To a convinced foundationalist, the project of establishing the existence of the ...

The ArgumentEugenics, in whatever form it may be articulated, is based on the idea that phenotypic characteristics of particular individuals can be predicted in advance. This paper argues that biology's capacity to predict many of the characteristics exhibited by an individual, especially behavioral or cognitive attributes, will always be very limited. This stems from intrinsic limitations to the methodology for relating genotypes to phenotypes, and from the nature of developmental processes which intervene between genotypes and phenotypes. While genetic studies may (...) generate valid population predictions for conditions which impact human health, neither genetics nor developmental biology are likely to generate useful individual predictions about variation in non-disease-related human behavioral and cognitive phenotypes in the foreseeable future. (shrink)

Volume 22, Issue 3, October 2019, Page 351-352.

In this paper we will be concerned with the interpretability logic of PA and in particular with the fact that this logic, which is denoted by ILM, does not have the interpolation property. An example for this fact seems to emerge from the fact that ILM cannot express Σ₁-ness. This suggests a way to extend the expressive power of interpretability logic, namely, by an additional operator for Σ₁-ness, which might give us a logic with the interpolation property. We will formulate (...) this extension, give an axiomatization which is modally complete and arithmetically complete (although for proofs of these theorems we refer to an earlier paper), and investigate interpolation. We show that this logic still does not have the interpolation property. (shrink)

This volume consists of fourteen essays in honor of Daniel Devereux on the themes of love, friendship, and wisdom in Plato, Aristotle, and the Epicureans. Philia (friendship) and eros (love) are topics of major philosophical interest in ancient Greek philosophy. They are also topics of growing interest and importance in contemporary philosophy, much of which is inspired by ancient discussions. Philosophy is itself, of course, a special sort of love, viz. the love of wisdom. Loving in the right way is (...) very closely connected to doing philosophy, cultivating wisdom, and living well. The first nine essays run the gamut of Plato's philosophical career. They include discussions of Plato's Alcibiades, Euthydemus, Gorgias, Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Symposium; and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Protrepticus and Magna Moralia. It ends with a discussion of Epicurean friendship. (shrink)

Andrew Feenberg has taken issue with the “neo-liberal agenda” that is currently guiding how far too many universities both conceptualize and use “educational technology.” In this article, I expand the scope of his critical discussion to include analysis of contemporary higher education initiatives that capitalize on big data.

Thompson provides an accessible review of the current scientific and philosophical discussions of colour vision and is vital reading for all cognitive scientists and philosophers whose interests touch upon this central area.Colour fascinates all of us, and scientists and philosophers have sought to understand the true nature of colour vision for many years. In recent times, investigations into colour vision have been one of the success stories of cognitive science, for each discipline within the field - neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, computer (...) science and artificial intelligence, and philosophy - has contributed significantly to our understanding of colour. Evan Thompson's book is a major contribution to this interdisciplinary project.Colour Vision provides an accessible review of the current scientific and philosophical discussions of colour vision. Thompson steers a course between the subjective and objective positions on colour, arguing for a relational account. This account develops a novel 'ecological' approach to colour vision in cognitive science and the philosophy of perception. It is vital reading for all cognitive scientists and philosophers whose interests touch upon this central area. (shrink)

Evan Thompson’s paper has four parts. First, he says more about what he means when he asks, “what is living?” Second, he presents his way of answering this question, which is that living is sense-making in precarious conditions. Third, he responds to Welton’s considerations about what he calls the “affective entrainment” of the living being by the environment. Finally, he addresses Protevi’s remarks about panpsychism.

Some philosophers deny that science can investigate the supernatural - specifically, the nature and actions of God. If a divine being is atemporal, then, indeed, this seems plausible - but only, I shall argue, because such a being could not causally interact with anything. Here I discuss in detail two major attempts, those of Stump and Kretzmann, and of Leftow, to make sense of theophysical causation on the supposition that God is eternal. These views are carefully worked out, and their (...) failures are instructive for any attempt to reconcileeternality with causal efficacy. I conclude by arguing that if knowledge of God is possible, in virtue of His effects upon the world, then it is science that must play the preeminent role in producing that knowledge. (shrink)

Phillips and colleagues convincingly argue that knowledge attribution is a faster, more automatic form of mindreading than belief attribution. However, they do not explain what it is about knowledge attribution that lends it this cognitive advantage. I suggest an explanation of the knowledge-attribution advantage that would also help to distinguish it from belief-based and minimalist alternatives.

There are many mean and nasty things to say about mean and nasty talk, but I don't plan on saying any of them. There's a specific problem about slurring words that I want to address. This is a semantic problem. It's not very important compared to the real-world problems presented by bigotry, racism, discrimination, and worse. It's important only to linguistics and the philosophy of language.

This talk, delivered at De l''autopoièse à la neurophénoménologie: un hommage à Francisco Varela; from autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: a tribute to Francisco Varela, June 18–20, at the Sorbonne in Paris, explicates several links between Varela''s neurophenomenology and his biological concept of autopoiesis.

Even though it’s based on a bad argument, there’s something to Strawson’s dictum. He might have likened ‘referring expression’ to phrases like ‘eating utensil’ and ‘dining room’: just as utensils don’t eat and dining rooms don’t dine, so, he might have argued, expressions don’t refer. Actually, that wasn’t his argument, though it does make you wonder. Rather, Strawson exploited the fact that almost any referring expression, whether an indexical, demonstrative, proper name, or definite description, can be used to refer to (...) different things in different contexts. This fact, he argued, is enough to show that what refers are speakers, not expressions. Here he didn’t take seriously the perfectly coherent view that an expression’s reference can vary with context. So, he concluded, what varies from context to context is not what a given expression refers to but what a speaker uses it to refer to. Strawson went on to suggest that there are several dimensions of difference between various sorts of referring expressions: degree of dependence on context, degree of “descriptive meaning,” and being governed by a general convention vs. an expressionspecific one. But despite these differences, he insisted that regardless of kind, referring expressions don’t themselves refer — speakers use them to refer. (shrink)

MARGA REIMER has forcefully challenged David Kaplan's recent claim ([3], pp. 582-4) that demonstrative gestures, in connnection with uses of demonstrative expressions, are without semantic significance and function merely as 'aids to communication', and that speaker intentions are what determine the demonstratum. Against this Reimer argues that demonstrations can and do play an essential semantic role and that the role of intentions is marginal at best. That is, together with the linguistic meaning of the demonstrative phrase being used, an act (...) of demonstration determines what is said. I will argue that Kaplan's view is borne out if we consider the referential intentions specific to communication. Reimer may be correct about such intentions as she considers, but she overlooks specifically referential ones. When these are taken into account, we find that aalthough demonstrations contribute in a way to what is said, this does not make them semantically significant. (shrink)

Is implementing the beneficent nudge program morally permissible in worlds like ours? I argue that there is reason for serious doubt. I acknowledge that beneficent nudging is highly various, that nudges are in some circumstances morally permissible and even called for, and that nudges may exhibit respect for genuine autonomy. Nonetheless, given the risk of epistemic injustice that nudges typically pose, neither the moral permissibility of beneficent nudging in the abstract, nor its case-by-case vindication, appears sufficient to justify implementing a (...) nudge program in worlds like ours. Drawing on Miranda Fricker’s account of epistemic injustice, I argue that the cogent defense of any nudge program, relative to worlds like ours, stands in need of serious attention to its potential for fostering or sustaining epistemic injustice. A more specific point hinges on recognizing a form of epistemic injustice not enough attended to in the literature to date, which I call reflective incapacitational injustice. This includes relative disadvantages in the attaining of the capacity to engage in critical reason, such as the capacity to go in for potentially critical reasoned deliberation and discursive exchange concerning ends. Since Cass Sunstein’s First Law of behaviorally informed regulation would be taken, in worlds like ours, to justify indeterminately many nudges leading to such epistemic injustice we have general grounds for doubting the moral permissibility of this nudge program. We should hence oppose the implementation of any such program until it is shown not to violate the demands of epistemic justice. (shrink)

In reply to Hominh and Nguyen, I argue that “creolizing” methods in the study and practice of Buddhism should not be opposed to historicist and contextualist modes of investigation and understanding. Rather, historicism and contextualism can and should inform creolizing approaches.

It is with great sadness that I record the death of Francisco Varela, who passed away at his home in Paris, on May 28, 2001. With his passing, the science of consciousness has lost one of its most brilliant, original, creative, and compas- sionate thinkers.