Ultrasociality, as expressed in agricultural, monetary, and fossil fuel economies, has spurred exponential growth in population and in resource use that now threaten civilization. These threats take the form of prisoner's dilemmas. Avoiding collapse requires more cooperative economic organization that must be informed by knowledge of human behavior and cultural evolution. The evolution of a cooperative information economy is one possibility.

The last 15 years or so has seen the development of a fascinating new area of cognitive science: the cognitive science of religion (CSR). Scientists in this field aim to explain religious beliefs and various other religious human activities by appeal to basic cognitive structures that all humans possess. The CSR scientific theories raise an interesting philosophical question: do they somehow show that religious belief, more specifically belief in a god of some kind, is irrational? In this paper I investigate (...) this question and argue that CSR does not show that belief in god is irrational. (shrink)

Decades of psychological research have been aimed at modeling how people learn features and categories. The empirical validation of these theories is often based on artificial stimuli with simple representations. Recently, deep neural networks have reached or surpassed human accuracy on tasks such as identifying objects in natural images. These networks learn representations of real‐world stimuli that can potentially be leveraged to capture psychological representations. We find that state‐of‐the‐art object classification networks provide surprisingly accurate predictions of human similarity judgments for (...) natural images, but they fail to capture some of the structure represented by people. We show that a simple transformation that corrects these discrepancies can be obtained through convex optimization. We use the resulting representations to predict the difficulty of learning novel categories of natural images. Our results extend the scope of psychological experiments and computational modeling by enabling tractable use of large natural stimulus sets. (shrink)

One of Laurence BonJour’s main arguments for the existence of the a priori is an argument that a priori justification is indispensable for making inferences from experience to conclusions that go beyond experience. This argument has recently come under heavy fire from Albert Casullo, who has dubbed BonJour’s argument, “The Generality Argument.” In this paper I (i) defend the Generality Argument against Casullo’s criticisms, and (ii) develop a new, more plausible, version of the Generality Argument in response to some other (...) objections of my own. Two of these objections stem out of BonJour’s failing to fully consider the importance of the distinction between being justified in believing that an inference is good and being justified in making an inference. The final version of the argument that I develop sees the Generality Argument as one part of a cumulative case argument for the existence of a priori justification, rather than as a stand-alone knock-down argument. (shrink)

This Commentary offers a critique of an eco-relational approach in robot ethics, highlighting the importance of articulating an ecologically-sensitive ethical orientation that incorporates the entire more-than-human world, including technological entities like forms of artificial intelligence. While the eco-relational approach enhances our understanding of the complex way in which morally significant properties operate on a phenomenological level, it is not without its flaws. In particular, this perspective focuses on ethical concepts when it needs to be rooted in ethical systems, misrepresents the (...) extant literature on relational approaches to moral status, and is insufficiently ecological in a way that would bring machines into the moral universe by way of their location in and importance to the larger environment. At a time when the legal status of robots is being decided before moral questions are settled, it remains important to get the contours of relevant debates right so that the robot ethics discourse brings us closer to developing practical solutions for ethical dilemmas emerging in our increasingly technological age. (shrink)

Religious belief and behavior raises the following two questions: (Q1) Does God, or any other being or state that is integral to various religious traditions, exist? (Q2) Why do humans have religious beliefs and engage in religious behavior? How one answers (Q2) can affect how reasonable individuals can be in accepting a particular answer to (Q1). My aim in this chapter is to carefully distinguish the various ways in which an answer to Q2 might affect the rationality of believing in (...) God. A literature has sprouted around this exact issue, but it has heretofore focused almost exclusively on one way in which a genealogy for p can affect the rationality of believing p – namely, by the genealogy functioning within a debunking argument. However, there are other ways a genealogy can affect the rationality of a belief. I suggest that we should be interested in whether genealogies more broadly cast doubt on religious beliefs. My main goal is: (i) to argue that CSR does not cast doubt on theistic belief in a few of the primary ways that propositions can cast doubt on other propositions, including via a debunking argument; and (ii) to suggest that one plausible way in which CSR might cast doubt on theistic belief is by undermining various traditional theistic reasons, and to illustrate how this might work with one example of a traditional theistic reason – religious experience. (shrink)

Paul Benacerraf’s argument that mathematical realism is apparently incompatible with mathematical knowledge has been widely thought to also show that a priori knowledge in general is problematic. Although many philosophers have rejected Benacerraf’s argument because it assumes a causal theory of knowledge, some maintain that Benacerraf nevertheless put his finger on a genuine problem, even though he didn’t state the problem in its most challenging form. After diagnosing what went wrong with Benacerraf’s argument, I argue that a new, more challenging, (...) version of Benacerraf’s problem can be constructed. The new version—what I call the Defeater Version—of Benacerraf’s problem makes use of a no-defeater condition on knowledge and justification. I conclude by arguing that the best way to avoid the problem is to construct a theory of how a priori judgments reliably track the facts. I also suggest four different kinds of theories worth pursuing. (shrink)

In his book, Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment, John Pittard presents and critiques what he calls the “master argument for disagreement-motivated religious skepticism.” This argument purports to show, using only higher-order reasoning and facts about religious disagreement, that nobody’s religious outlook is justified (at least, nobody aware of the argument). The master argument presupposes that any attempt to vindicate one’s religious outlook must employ dispute-independent reasons. Pittard objects to this assumption and argues, instead, for rationalist weak conciliationism: the view that (...) partisan justification can be had when (and only when) one has rational insight into the claim in question. In this paper, I raise a challenge for rationalist weak conciliationism; in short, it is difficult to explain why only rational insight provides partisan justification while maintaining that a wide range of beliefs, including religious beliefs, can be justified in a partisan way. (shrink)

One of the contentious philosophical issues surrounding the cognitive science of religion (CSR) is whether well-confirmed CSR theories would debunk religious beliefs. These debates have been contentious in part because of criticisms of epistemic principles used in debunking arguments. In this paper I use Ernest Sosa’s respected theory of knowledge as fully apt belief—which avoids objections that have been leveled against sensitivity and safety principles often used in debunking arguments—to construct a plausible debunking argument for religious belief on the assumption (...) that religious belief is formed simply through processes theorized by CSR. But, in fact, most believers also rely on arguments of various sorts, and their beliefs are not debunked. (shrink)

As some artists discovered early in the century, there is a particular pleasure and stimulation to be derived from works of art created by cultures untouched by our own traditions of form. In part this is probably a delight in exoticism, in being away from home, and in part it possibly is our sentiment for cultures we look on as traditional, in a Jungian sense, or primitive in their unquestioning allegiance to simple cultural necessity. But more significantly, without indulging in (...) philosophical or anthropological speculation, we are forced, in looking at such objects as these elegantly designed boxes and bowls, to revise our visual thinking, our assumptions about unity and grace.Joshua C. Taylor, director of the National Collection of Fine Arts of the Smithsonian Institution, has written Learning to Look, William Page: The American Titian, and catalogues of exhibits of futurism and the works of Umberto Boccioni. Part 1 of this paper has been published in somewhat different form in Boxes and Bowls. (shrink)

According to the most recent articulation of her view, Marilyn Adams’s reply to the problem of horrendous evils states that God offers compensation to those who experience horrendous evils. This compensation includes the good of the incarnation of God and the good of identification with God in virtue of suffering horrendous evils. Andrew Gleeson has raised a series of objections to Adams’s recent articulation. I argue that all of Gleeson’s arguments fail or fail to pose a distinct challenge. I then (...) present a different challenge: that her view provides insufficient compensation for horrendous evils. I conclude by suggesting a development of her view. (shrink)

How does Jesus’s death atone for human sin? Traditional answers to this question face a challenge: explain how Jesus’s death plays an important and distinctive role in atoning for human sin without employing problematic philosophical or moral assumptions. I present a new answer that meets the challenge. In the context of the Jewish sacrificial background, the blood of a pure victim can communicate the washing away of sins. Jesus’s death atones because through it his blood, and then his resurrection, can (...) communicate the washing away of sins and thus that God has accepted his work of atonement. (shrink)

This essay further substantiates the author’s earlier thesis that St. Bonaventure’s De reductione was the second half (or resumptio) of his inaugural lecture atParis. After reviewing the central aspect of that thesis, the essay further shows how an unedited inaugural sermon, Fons sapientiae Verbum Dei in excelsis (found in Vatican Burghesiani 157) received the De reductione in its earliest form, particularly in its use of specific authorities and its division of the lights of knowledge. The discovery of this sermon further (...) confirms in its reception of the De reductione that the work was originally an inaugural lecture. The essay then further explores the purpose and uniqueness of the De reductione as an inaugural lecture by comparing it to Fons sapientiae. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionIn 1974 at a gathering celebrating the seventh centenary of Bonaventure's death, Ignatius Brady reviewed the Quaracchi edition of Bonaventure's works. He noted various problems with the edition and considered the authenticity of a number of works discovered since the edition's completion in 1902. He argued against the attribution of all the texts then newly ascribed to Bonaventure, but pointed forward to texts that might still be looked for, (...) "either by identifying them in pieces already published or by searching for them in manuscripts."Brady singled out two texts in particular: a text he referred to as a principium biblicum, and defined as the opening discourse of a baccalaurius biblicus; and a principium magisteriale or aulicum, which Brady defined as a "recommendatio s. scripturae or recommendatio sacrae doctrinae given in brief form by the doctorandus in the aula/hall of the bishop and repeated at length soon after his promotion." He went on to lament that we possess lectures pertaining to these forms from great medieval theologians like John of La Rochelle and Thomas Aquinas, but none for Bonaventure. According to Brady, two primary reasons explained this gap in Bonaventure's corpus: 1) the Quaracchi editors really had no clear conception of the genre of principium and hence never looked for Bonaventure's; 2) some scholars reasoned that Bonaventure's well-known sermon "Christ the one teacher of all" functioned as his principium and hence looked no further. As Brady noted, however, "Christ the one teacher of all" could never function as Bonaventure's principium without doing extreme violence to the literary parameters set for that academic exercise. Bonaventure's principium thus remained at large and has continued to elude scholars since Brady's reflections thirty-four years ago. Until now.Though Brady's terminology requires modification in the light of more recent studies, the thesis I will argue for in this article is that the text we know as the De reductione is in fact the second half of Bonaventure's two part inaugural lecture as a master at Paris. The first half of the lecture I have identified and provisionally edited: an overlooked sermon beginning with the verse, Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia .In order to demonstrate my thesis that the De reductione is part of Bonaventure's inaugural lecture as a master or his principium, I will first review the specific terminology required to understand this literary genre. Second, I will focus on the form and subject matter of the De reductione itself in order to establish that it may be understood as sermon and that its subject matter fits within the genre of principia. Third, I will highlight known principia that share concerns and style similar to the De reductione thus further demonstrating that the text is Bonaventure's principium. Fourth, I will discuss two manuscripts that present the De reductione as a principium. In connection, I will also indicate how these two manuscripts present the relationship between Bonaventure's overlooked sermon Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia and the De reductione. Fifth, I will show how Omnium artifex forms an essential prologue to the De reductione.I. Clarifying the literary genre of the principiumThe term principium can cause confusion since the term takes on different meanings in accordance with the variety of meanings and associations the term possessed in the middle ages. Clarity regarding this term is crucial if the present thesis is to be proved and so I must review the basic ways the term could be used.In a broad sense, the term principium refers simply to "the inaugural lecture of a course," which in turn belongs to the much broader category of sermon. In this sense of inaugural lecture or sermon, Bonaventure's prologues to each of the four books of Peter Lombard's Sentences, the prologues to his biblical commentaries, and even to some degree the prologue to.. (shrink)

Ben Jonson, writing before 1641 in Discoveries, observed that nature intends us no courtesies. The rivers carry our boats, the winds favour our sails, and the sunlight warms our bodies, by necessary motions that contain no kindliness. This represented, or expressed, though perhaps unwittingly and certainly without scientific precision, the mechanical version of physical nature that steadily prevailed during the seventeenth century.