What makes a biological entity an individual? Jack Wilson shows that past philosophers have failed to explicate the conditions an entity must satisfy to be a living individual. He explores the reason for this failure and explains why we should limit ourselves to examples involving real organisms rather than thought experiments. This book explores and resolves paradoxes that arise when one applies past notions of individuality to biological examples beyond the conventional range and presents an analysis of identity and (...) persistence. The book's main purpose is to bring together two lines of research, theoretical biology and metaphysics, which have dealt with the same subject in isolation from one another. Wilson explains an alternative theory about biological individuality which solves problems which cannot be addressed by either field alone. He presents a more fine-grained vocabulary of individuation based on diverse kinds of living things, allowing him to clarify previously muddled disputes about individuality in biology. (shrink)

In _Phenomenology, Naturalism and Empirical Science_, Jack Reynolds takes the controversial position that phenomenology and naturalism are compatible, and develops a hybrid account of phenomenology and empirical science. Though phenomenology and naturalism are typically understood as philosophically opposed to one another, Reynolds argues that this resistance is based on an understanding of transcendental phenomenology that is ultimately untenable and in need of updating. Phenomenology, as Reynolds reorients it, is compatible with liberal naturalism, as well as with weak forms of (...) methodological naturalism. Chapters explore areas where scientific and phenomenological work overlap and sometimes conflict, contesting standard ways of understanding the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and empirical science. The book outlines the significance of the first-person perspective characteristic of phenomenology—both epistemically and ontologically—while according due respect to the relevant empirical sciences. This book makes a significant contribution to one of the central issues in phenomenology and argues for phenomenology’s ongoing importance for the future of philosophy. (shrink)

A wide variety of theoretical tasks is inescapably part of psychological research, practice, and public policy initiatives. A classification and illustrated summary of these theoretical tasks is provided, an important purpose of which is to remind providers and users of psychological research and interventions of important theoretical dimensions of these activities. A larger purpose, however, is the promotion of theoretical psychology as an orientation toward, and a set of understandings and tools with which psychologists might approach, an appropriately contextualized self-understanding (...) of their practices as researchers and practitioners. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Embraces the principle of homeostasis and the necessarily egocentric and essentially innate nature of the mechanisms for control of one's equilibrium. Employing H. Werner's concept of a unity that organisms create with their environments, interactive behaviors are described that demonstrate how all such behavior, even the interaction with oneself, is guided by that principle to create and preserve a unity. The interactive behaviors of humans that are described are seen to be animistic-like in that they appear to arbitrarily assign motives (...) to others who do not have those motives. The animistic behaviors are seen to be the means whereby humans become attached to others when they form relationships. These then develop in an individual into a complex fixed permanent unity. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Two lines of evidence indicate that there exists a reciprocal inhibitory relationship between opposed brain networks. First, most attention-demanding cognitive tasks activate a stereotypical set of brain areas, known as the task-positive network and simultaneously deactivate a different set of brain regions, commonly referred to as the task negative or defaultmode network. Second, functional connectivity analyses show that these same opposed networks are anti-correlated in the resting state. Wehypothesize that these reciprocally inhibitory effects reflect two incompatible cognitive modes, each of (...) which may be directed towards understanding the external world. Thus, engaging onemode activates one set of regions and suppresses activity in the other.Wetest this hypothesis by identifying two types of problem-solving task which, on the basis of prior work, have been consistently associated with the task positive and task negative regions: tasks requiring social cognition, i.e., reasoning about the mental states of other persons, and tasks requiring physical cognition, i.e., reasoning about the causal/mechanical properties of inanimate objects. Social and mechanical reasoning tasks were presented to neurologically normal participants during fMRI. Each task type was presented using both text and video clips. Regardless of presentation modality, we observed clear evidence of reciprocal suppression: social tasks deactivated regions associated with mechanical reasoning and mechanical tasks deactivated regions associated with social reasoning. These findings are not explained by self-referential processes, task engagement, mental simulation,mental time travel or external vs. internal attention, all factors previously hypothesized to explain default mode network activity. Analyses of resting state data revealed a close match between the regions our tasks identified as reciprocally inhibitory and regions of maximal anti-correlation in the resting state. These results indicate the reciprocal inhibition is not attributable to constraints inherent in the tasks, but is neural in origin. Hence, there is a physiological constraint on our ability to simultaneously engage two distinct cognitive modes. Furtherwork is needed tomore precisely characterize these opposing cognitive domains. (shrink)

John Buridan was the most famous philosophy teacher of his time, and probably the most influential. In this important new book, Jack Zupko offers the first systematic exposition of Buridan's thought to appear in any language. Zupko uses Buridan's own conception of the order and practice of philosophy to depict the most salient features of his thought, beginning with his views on the nature of language and logic and then illustrating their application to a series of topics in metaphysics, (...) natural philosophy, and ethics. Part 1 of John Buridan considers the picture of language and logic developed in Buridan's Summulae de dialectica. Buridan systematically overhauled the logic he first learned and later taught at the University of Paris, redeeming the older tradition of Aristotelian logic in terms, propositions, and arguments. This made possible newer and more powerful forms of philosophical discourse. The second part of this volume provides a reading of Buridan's philosophy, showing how this discourse shaped his treatment of speculative questions such as the relation between soul and body, the nature of knowledge, the proper subject of psychology, the function of the. (shrink)

This is an opinionated overview of the Frege-Geach problem, in both its historical and contemporary guises. Covers Higher-order Attitude approaches, Tree-tying, Gibbard-style solutions, and Schroeder's recent A-type expressivist solution.

Presupposing no familiarity with the technical concepts of either philosophy or computing, this clear introduction reviews the progress made in AI since the inception of the field in 1956. Copeland goes on to analyze what those working in AI must achieve before they can claim to have built a thinking machine and appraises their prospects of succeeding. There are clear introductions to connectionism and to the language of thought hypothesis which weave together material from philosophy, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. John (...) Searle's attacks on AI and cognitive science are countered and close attention is given to foundational issues, including the nature of computation, Turing Machines, the Church-Turing Thesis and the difference between classical symbol processing and parallel distributed processing. The book also explores the possibility of machines having free will and consciousness and concludes with a discussion of in what sense the human brain may be a computer. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception is the idea that what we see is influenced by such states as beliefs, expectations, and so on. A perceptual belief that results from cognitive penetration may be less justified than a nonpenetrated one. Inferentialism is a kind of internalist view that tries to account for this by claiming that some experiences are epistemically evaluable, on the basis of why the perceiver has that experience, and the familiar canons of good inference provide the appropriate standards by (...) which experiences are evaluated. I examine recent defenses of inferentialism by Susanna Siegel, Peter Markie, and Matthew McGrath and argue that the prospects for inferentialism are dim. (shrink)

Why do promises give rise to reasons? I consider a quadruple of possibilities which I think will not work, then sketch the explanation of the normativity of promising I find more plausible—that it is constitutive of the practice of promising that promise-breaking implies liability for blame and that we take liability for blame to be a bad thing. This effects a reduction of the normativity of promising to conventionalism about liability together with instrumental normativity and desire-based reasons. This is important (...) for a number of reasons, but the most important reason is that this style of account can be extended to account for nearly all normativity—one notable exception being instrumental normativity itself. Success in the case of promises suggests a general reduction of normativity to conventions and instrumental normativity. But success in the cases of promises is already quite interesting and does not depend essentially the general claim about normativity. (shrink)

An introductory overview of the main issues in the epistemology of perception.

The potential for the occurrence of multiple-role relationships is increased when professors also consult with athletic teams on their campuses. Such multiple-role relationships have potential ethical implications that are unclear and largely unexplored, and consultants may find multiple-role relationships both difficult to deal with and unavoidable. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the nature of teacher–practitioner multiple-role relationships. Participants (N = 35) were recruited from Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology (AAASP) certified consultants (CCs) who (...) were also affiliated with a university (N = 68). All participants completed a 28-item survey exploring the incidence and relevant issues pertaining to multiple-role relationships. Chi-square analyses revealed that licensed mental health practitioners (i.e., psychologists and counselors) were more likely than nonlicensed AAASP CCs to believe that multiple-role relationships were never appropriate in sport psychology, χ2(1, N = 30) = 12.80, p <.001, and to have never taken part in a multiple-role relationship, χ2(1, N = 33) = 12.44, p <.001. Independent samples t tests revealed that mental health practitioners also reported that they would have higher levels of concern for both the practitioner, t(30) = –2.77, p =.009, and the client, t(30) = –2.50, p =.018, in such a relationship. (shrink)

I argue that in order to apply the most common type of criteria for logicality, invariance criteria, to natural language, we need to consider both invariance of content—modeled by functions from contexts into extensions—and invariance of character—modeled, à la Kaplan, by functions from contexts of use into contents. Logical expressionsshould be invariant in both senses. If we do not require this, then old objections due to Timothy McCarthy and William Hanson, suitably modified, demonstrate that content invariant expressions can display intuitive (...) marks of non-logicality. If we do require this, we neatly avoid these objections while also managing to demonstrate desirable connections of logicality to necessity. The resulting view is more adequate as a demarcation of the logical expressions of natural language. (shrink)

In his 2011 book Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin makes a case for the view that genuine values cannot conflict and, moreover, that they are necessarily mutually supportive. I argue that by prioritizing coherence over the conceptual authenticity of values, Dworkin’s ‘interpretivist’ view risks neglecting what we care about in these values. I first determine Dworkin’s position on the monism/pluralism debate and identify the scope of his argument, arguing that despite his self-declared monism, he is in fact a pluralist, but (...) unusual in denying conflict between plural values. I then set out the structure of his interpretive theory of value relations and present a case of value conflict which I think interpretivism cannot deal with. Following this I argue that there are structural reasons why cases like this are liable to occur and suggest that interpretivism will frequently fail to properly reflect people’s moral commitments because reinterpretation of values has the side effect of excluding important moral commitments from our conceptions of values. While, as Dworkin argues, there are no brute moral facts concerning values, moral psychology constrains the range of acceptable conceptions of values. Given the shortcomings of interpretivism I conclude that we should acknowledge that values may conflict. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Philosophy of religion has recently made a turn to lived religion, an approach which seeks to understand lived religion as it is experienced concretely by individual practitioners. However, this turn to lived religion has seen limited engagement with the notion of belonging. Belonging here refers to the felt sense of being part of a group – of insidership – along with the development of positive social ties and mutual affective concern. It is my contention in this paper that reflection (...) on this experience of belonging can improve our understanding of lived religion. In particular, I argue that human beings have an affective need to belong – a fundamental and affective need for belonging and positive social relationship which is felt in the body and rooted in human biology and evolutionary history. This paper makes the case for the affective need to belong, before examining its implications for understanding religion. It finds that the affectivity of belonging is capable of raising the affective salience of certain in-group beliefs, as well as creating affective hurdles to dissent, and in so doing can help to explain processes of religion conversion, sustained religious adherence, and religious disaffiliation. (shrink)

In a series of joint papers, Teppo Felin and Nicolai J. Foss recently launched a microfoundations project in the field of strategic management. Felin and Foss observe that extant explanations in strategic management are predominantly collectivist or macro. Routines and organizational capabilities, which are supposed to be properties of firms, loom large in the field of strategic management. Routines figure as explanantia in explanations of firm behavior and firm performance, for example. Felin and Foss plead for a replacement of such (...) macro-explanations by micro-explanations. Such a replacement is needed, Felin and Foss argue, because macro-explanations are necessarily incomplete: they miss out on crucial links in the causal chain that connect macro phenomena with each other. I argue that this argument is flawed. It is based on a doubtful if not outright incorrect understanding and use of Coleman’s diagram. In a sense to be explained below, only if Coleman’s diagram is squared it can accurately account for the relations between individual action and interaction, routines and firm behavior and firm performance. Once Coleman’s diagram is squared, one can see why and how macro-explanations need not miss out on any link in the causal chains that connect macro phenomena. Micro-analyses are still needed, not to highlight and specify causal links that macro-explanations miss out on, but to check whether the many properties that are ascribed to routines in macro-explanations of firm behavior are warranted. (shrink)

Both bereavement and the loss of a religious faith can be deeply disorienting experiences which radically transform one’s experience of the world, sense of self, and relationships with others. Recently, grief has received increased philosophical interest – especially from a phenomenological perspective – as philosophers seek to understand what it is to experience grief and what understanding grief can teach us about human experience more broadly. Grief is most commonly associated with bereavement loss; however, there is growing awareness of the (...) possibility of grief for non-death losses. This paper argues that certain experiences of deconversion can be occasions for grief. The experience of losing one’s religious faith has had scant coverage in contemporary philosophical literature yet its effect on individuals can be comparable to that of bereavement. This paper analyses deconversion experiences according to four themes common to bereavement: world destruction, temporal disruption, personal loss, and the loss of possibilities. Using a range of deconversion narratives drawn from ethnographic literature, this paper argues that some experiences of deconversion closely resemble experiences of grief, and so some responses to deconversion can rightly be called grief. One key difference between deconversion and other forms of grief regards the future-orientation of the experiences. While grief is often directed towards the loss of future possibilities, many accounts of deconversion are more concerned with losses from the past and present a positive attitude towards the future. This positive outlook can be explained by interpreting the deconversion experience through the lens of grief. (shrink)

Response to Horgan, Goldman, and Graham. Part of a book symposium on my _Perception and Basic Beliefs_.

This edited volume focuses on the use of ?necessary condition counterfactuals? in explaining two key events in twentieth century history, the origins of the ...

Jacob Ross and Mark Schroeder argue that invariantist accounts of disagreement are incompatible with the phenomenon of reversibility. In this essay I develop a non-standard theory of propositional attitudes, which I call attitudinal relativism. Using the resources of attitudinal relativism, I articulate an invariantist account of disagreement that is compatible with reversibility.

In Scotland, for hundreds of years, juries have chosen between three criminal verdicts: “guilty,” “not guilty,” and “not proven.” The “not proven” verdict’s legal meaning remains mysterious. In this article, I aim to describe and solve the problem. Applying modern ideas about standards of proof to the intellectual history of “not proven” yields eight plausible meanings for the verdict. With the extent of the problem in mind, I offer a solution. In the three-verdict system, jurors should deliver a “guilty” verdict (...) when they believe that the accused has committed the crime and a “not guilty” verdict when they believe that the accused has not committed the crime. The “not proven” verdict is for all other states of mind. Clarifying this question matters for determining whether the verdict’s existence is just. It also offers some evidence for how the criminal standard of proof works in other legal systems. (shrink)

‘Without exaggeration and oversimplification little progress is made in most fields of humanistic investigation.’ With this disarming quotation from A. D. Nock, Albert Henrichs begins his book-length interpretation of P. Colon, inv. 3328. In the same spirit of humanistic progress, I would like to reconsider some aspects of the text and to offer a different assessment of its place in the history of religion and literature.The fragments are from three pages of a hitherto unknown Greek novel, Lollianos'Phoinikika. Frags A and (...) B luckily include book-ends, from whose subscriptions we know the author and title of the work. Frag. C is just scraps which yield no continuous sense. Frag. A brokenly and confusedly mentions youths, women dancing, being thrown off the roof, sobriety, kissing, and then, in a slightly more intelligible scene, the male narrator's loss of virginity with a woman named Persis, her gift to him of a gold necklace which he refuses, the assistance of one Glauketes in taking the necklace elsewhere, and finally what seems to be a confrontation between Persis' mother and the two lovers. This last is similar to Achilles Tatius ii 23–5. Achilles Tatius also offers the closest parallel to frag. B, a ghastly description of human sacrifice and cannibalism. This scene is the focus of most of Henrichs' interpretation and I will limit myself to it in the present article.The central question raised by this new novel fragment is how to assess the relative importance of religious and literary parallels. Is thePhoinikikato be regarded as a document in religious or in literary history, or perhaps somewhere on the borderland of both? There has been a lively discussion in the last half century of the thesis that the ancient novels were written and read as religious documents, deriving their basic structure and many details from the myths and cults of particular religions. Henrichs devotes most of his book to arguing that the sacrifice scene in Lollianos is inspired by an actual rite, probably of a Dionysian character, and that thePhoinikikaserves to illuminate a little-known corner of religious history. His views are based on an extensive collection of liturgical, mythical and ethnological parallels concerning oath rituals, the sacrifice of children, cannibalism, and face-painting. Of all the parallels cited, the two which are closest in every way to Lollianos are Achilles Tatius iii 15 and Cassius Dio lxxi 4. On the strength of these Henrichs asserts that Lollianos' description of a ritual murder represents, more or less directly, the cultic practice of the Egyptian Boukoloi. Without postulating a religious message for thePhoinikikaas a whole, Henrichs does claim that this scene yields valuable information about the structure of ancient mystery rituals and that these new fragments support the methodological correctness of Kerenyi's and Merkelbach's approach to the ancient novels. (shrink)

Does Henry Thoreau have a positive politics? Depending on how one conceives of politics, answers will vary. Hannah Arendt famously portrayed Thoreau's commitment to the sanctity of individual conscience as distinctly unpolitical. More recent commentators grant that Thoreau has a politics, but they characterize it as profoundly negative in character. This essay argues that Thoreau indeed sponsors a positive politics-a politics of performing conscience. The performance of conscience before an audience transforms the invocation of consciencefrom a personally political act into (...) a publicly political one. The aim of the performance is to provoke one's neighbors into a process of individual self-reform that will make them capable of properly vigilant democratic citizenship and conscientious political agitation. I establish this claim through a sustained reading of a relatively neglected text that deserves wider attention in political theory: Thoreau's 1859 lecture defending insurrectionary activities by radical abolitionist John Brown. (shrink)

Resolves the fundamental debate between cognitivists and social constructionists concerning the metaphysics of human psychology, and offers new insights into therapy, education, and creativity.

This paper is both a response to the four reviewers in a special symposium on my book Adam Smith’s Pluralism and a substantive discussion of philosophy of education. In it, I introduce what I call “the educative critique,” a mode of analysis similar to Marxist, feminist, or postcolonial critiques, but focusing on the educative role of a text. I argue that choosing education as a theme is itself a solution to interpretive difficulties, not an add-on that only concerns pedagogues and (...) policy-makers. (shrink)

This article attempts to find grounds for agreement and tolerance among environmentalists, as well as all persons of good will who are reasonable and scientifically informed. It beguis by taking stock of where we are today in ethics in general, and then hi environmental ethics in particular. What are the major theories, their central ideas, and problems? Is there a way forward? Explained and defended throughout is the thesis that moral pluralism is the best way forward.

I discuss Greg Restall’s attempt to generate an account of logical consequence from the incoherence of certain packages of assertions and denials. I take up his justification of the cut rule and argue that, in order to avoid counterexamples to cut, he needs, at least, to introduce a notion of logical form. I then suggest a few problems that will arise for his account if a notion of logical form is assumed. I close by sketching what I take to be (...) the most natural minimal way of distinguishing content and form and suggest further problems arising for this route. (shrink)