Justification, or at least ‘justification’, bulks large in recent epistemology. The view that knowledge consists of true-justified-belief has been prominent in this century, and the justification of belief has attracted considerable attention in its own right. But it is usually not at all clear just what an epistemologist means by ‘justified’, just what concept the term is used to express. An enormous amount of energy has gone into the attempt to specify conditions under which beliefs of one or another sort (...) are justified; but relatively little has been done to explain what it is for a belief to be justified, what that is for which conditions are being sought. The most common procedure has been to proceed on the basis of a number of obvious cases of justified belief, without pausing to determine what property it is of which these cases are instances. Now even if there were some single determinate concept that all these theoriests have implicitly in mind, this procedure would be less than wholly satisfactory. For in the absence of an explicit account of the concept being applied, we lack the most fundamental basis for deciding between supposed intuitions and for evaluating proposed conditions of justification. And in any event, as philosophers we do not seek merely to speak the truth, but also to gain an explicit, reflective understanding of the matters with which we deal. We want to know not only when our beliefs are justified, but also what it is to enjoy that status. True, not every fundamental concept can be explicated, but we shall find that much can be done with this one. (shrink)

The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...) primary and secondary qualities from Galileo onward. It is arguably one of several conceptions involved in Whewell’s method of the “consilience of inductions” (Laudan 1971) and is to be found in several places in Peirce. (From M. Brewer and B. Collins, eds., (1981); Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences (a festschrift for Donald T. Campbell), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 123–162.). (shrink)

Panpsychism is the view that consciousness a sh the most puzzling and strangest phenomenon in the entire universe a sh is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the.

The larger project of which this volume forms part is an attempt to craft a coherent doctrine of divine eternity and God's relationship to time.

Willard van Orman Quine once said that he had a preference for a desert ontology. This was in an earlier day when concerns with logical structure and ontological simplicity reigned supreme. Ontological genocide was practiced upon whole classes of upper-level or ‘derivative’ entities in the name of elegance, and we were secure in the belief that one strayed irremediably into the realm of conceptual confusion and possible error the further one got from ontic fundamentalism. In those days, one paid more (...) attention to generic worries about possible errors than to actual errors derived from distancing oneself too far from the nitty-gritty details of actual theory, actual inferences from actual data, the actual conditions under which we posited and detected entities, calibrated and ‘burned in’ instruments, identified and rejected artifacts, debugged programs and procedures, explained the mechanisms behind regularities, judged correlations to be spurious, and in general, to the real complexities and richness of actual scientific practice. (shrink)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt:...earth. r' = radius of moon, or other body. P = moon's horizontal parallax = earth's angular semidiameter as seen from the moon. f = moon's angular semidiameter. Now = P (in circular measure), r'-r = r (in circular measure);.'. r: r':: P: P', or (radius of earth): (radios of (...) moon):: (moon's parallax): (moon's semidiameter). Examples. 1. Taking the moon's horizontal parallax as 57', and its angular diameter as 32', find its radius in miles, assuming the earth's radius to be 4000 miles. Here moon's semidiameter = 16';.-. 4000::: 57': 16';.-. r = 400 16 = 1123 miles. 2. The sun's horizontal parallax being 8"8, and his angular diameter 32V find his diameter in miles. ' Am. 872,727 miles. 3. The synodic period of Venus being 584 days, find the angle gained in each minute of time on the earth round the sun as centre. Am. l"-54 per minute. 4. Find the angular velocity with which Venus crosses the sun's disc, assuming the distances of Venus and the earth from the sun are as 7 to 10, as given by Bode's Law. Since (fig. 50) S V: VA:: 7: 3. But Srhas a relative angular velocity round the sun of l"-54 per minute (see Example 3); therefore, the relative angular velocity of A V round A is greater than this in the ratio of 7: 3, which gives an approximate result of 3"-6 per minute, the true rate being about 4" per minute. Annual ParaUax. 95. We have already seen that no displacement of the observer due to a change of position on the earth's surface could apparently affect the direction of a fixed star. However, as the earth in its annual motion describes an orbit of about 92 million miles radius round the sun, the different positions in space from which an observer views the fixed stars from time to time throughout the year must be separated... (shrink)

The text is the Russian translation of W. Whewell’s work “Novum Organon Renovatum” (Preface and Book I Aphorisms concerning ideas), which is the third edition of the second volume of his major work “The philosophy of the Inductive Sciences founded upon their History”. In the text, W. Whewell proposes his theory of scientific method and classification of the necessary scientific ideas as a basis, from where every particular scientific discipline derives. By adopting the structure of the notorious Francis Bacon’s “Novum (...) Organon”, Whewell reverses the order of scientific genesis, opposing himself to inductivism – the most influential philosophical theory of his time. (shrink)

Oxford Scholarly Classics brings together a number of great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in a uniform series design, they will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

Abstract: Some propose that the question of how you know that James is angry can be adequately answered with the claim that you see that James is angry. Call this the Perceptual Hypothesis. Here, I examine that hypothesis. I argue that there are two different ways in which the Perceptual Hypothesis could be made true. You might see that James is angry by seeing his bodily features. Alternatively, you might see that James is angry by seeing his anger. If you (...) see that James is angry in the first way, your knowledge is inferential. If you see that James is angry in the second way, your knowledge is not inferential. These are different ways of knowing that James is angry. So the Perceptual Hypothesis alone does not adequately answer the question of how you know that fact. To ascertain how you know it, we need to decide whether or not you saw his anger. This is an epistemological argument. But it has consequences for a theory of perception. It implies that there is a determinate fact about which features of an object you see. This fact is made true independently of what you come to know by seeing. In the final section of the paper, I seek to undermine various ways in which the claim that you see James' anger may be thought implausible. (shrink)

This study is an unusual contribution to the philosophy of mind in that it argues for the sometimes unfashionable view of dualism: that mind and matter are distinct and separate entities as Descartes believed. The author takes as his point of departure the imaginative hypothesis of disembodiment, which establishes the possibility of the mind's being a quite non-material thing. There are clear casual correlations between what is physical and what is mental, and the most serious issue confronting dualism since Descartes (...) has been how such an interaction is possible. Dr Hart sets out to answer this question by showing that the issue is as much about the nature of causation as it is about the natures of mind and matter. (shrink)

The notion of levels has been widely used in discussions of cognitive science, especially in discussions of the relation of connectionism to symbolic modeling of cognition. I argue that many of the notions of levels employed are problematic for this purpose, and develop an alternative notion grounded in the framework of mechanistic explanation. By considering the source of the analogies underlying both symbolic modeling and connectionist modeling, I argue that neither is likely to provide an adequate analysis of processes at (...) the level at which cognitive theories attempt to function: One is drawn from too low a level, the other from too high a level. If there is a distinctly cognitive level, then we still need to determine what are the basic organizational principles at that level. (shrink)

This essay considers what it means to understand natural language and whether a computer running an artificial-intelligence program designed to understand natural language does in fact do so. It is argued that a certain kind of semantics is needed to understand natural language, that this kind of semantics is mere symbol manipulation (i.e., syntax), and that, hence, it is available to AI systems. Recent arguments by Searle and Dretske to the effect that computers cannot understand natural language are discussed, and (...) a prototype natural-language-understanding system is presented as an illustration. (shrink)

This paper concerns the rational reconstruction of physical theories initially advanced by F. P. Ramsey and later elaborated by Rudolf Carnap. The Carnap–Ramsey reconstruction of theoretical knowledge is a natural development of classical empiricist ideas, one that is informed by Russell's philosophical logic and his theories of propositional understanding and knowledge of matter ; as such, it is not merely a schematic representation of the notion of an empirical theory, but the backbone of a general account of our knowledge of (...) the physical world. Carnap–Ramsey is an illuminating approach to epistemological problems that remain with us, one whose difficulties are shared by accounts that have sought to replace it. 1 Introduction 2 Russell's theory of propositional understanding 3 Ramsey's primary and secondary systems 4 Carnap's reconstruction of the language of science and an observation of Newman 5 Extension of the foregoing to constructive empiricism 6 Putnam's model-theoretic argument and the semantic view of theories 7 The problem clarified and resolved. (shrink)

An impressive body of recent literature posits that traditional notions of civil disobedience prevent us from properly considering potentially legitimate types of ‘uncivil’ political lawbreaking. When might uncivil (covert, legally evasive, morally offensive and potentially violent) lawbreaking prove normatively acceptable? If justifiable, what conditions should its practitioners be reasonably expected to meet? Despite some important insights, defenders of uncivil disobedience rely on a narrow and sometimes misleading view of civil disobedience, as previously practiced and theorized. Notwithstanding legitimate skepticism about Rawlsian (...) notions of civil disobedience, they reproduce its troublesome binary or ‘all-or-nothing’ view of political lawbreaking. Uncivil disobedience’s proponents tend to group a vast array of distinctive types of lawbreaking under one amorphous categorical rubric, impeding the suitably complex, nuanced analysis we need. A superior approach would pay careful attention to uncivil disobedience’s ambivalent historical record, a record suggesting that UD is more likely to reproduce authoritarian populism’s disturbing political logic than counteract it. (shrink)

Methodological reductionists practice ‘wannabe reductionism’. They claim that one should pursue reductionism, but never propose how. I integrate two strains in prior work to do so. Three kinds of activities are pursued as “reductionist”. “Successional reduction” and inter-level mechanistic explanation are legitimate and powerful strategies. Eliminativism is generally ill-conceived. Specific problem-solving heuristics for constructing inter-level mechanistic explanations show why and when they can provide powerful and fruitful tools and insights, but sometimes lead to erroneous results. I show how traditional metaphysical (...) approaches fail to engage how science is done. The methods used do so, and support a pragmatic and non-eliminativist realism. (shrink)

The goal of this chapter is to describe recollective memory and give an account of some of the characteristics of this form of human memory. I take recollective memory to be the type of memory that occurs when an individual recalls a specific episode from their past experience. I start with this very loose definition because a large part of this chapter consists of an attempt to work out a more detailed and analytic description of this form of memory.

The media hoop-la about Edward Snowden has obscured a less flashy yet more vital – and philosophically relevant – part of the story, namely the moral and political seriousness with which he acted to make the hitherto covert scope and scale of NSA surveillance public knowledge. Here I argue that we should interpret Snowden’s actions as meeting most of the demanding tests outlined in sophisticated political thinking about civil disobedience. Like Thoreau, Gandhi, King and countless other (forgotten) grass-roots activists, Snowden (...) has in fact articulated a powerful defense of why he was morally obligated to engage in politically motivated law-breaking. He has also undertaken impressive efforts to explain how his actions are distinguishable from ordinary criminality, and why they need not culminate in reckless lawlessness. In fact, his example can perhaps help us advance liberal and democratic ideas about civil disobedience. First, it highlights sound reasons why, pace the orthodox view, the acceptance of punishment by those engaging in civil disobedience should not be seen as a precondition of its legitimacy. Second, Snowden reminds us that ours is an era in which intensified globalization processes directly shape every feature of political existence. Defenders of civil disobedience need to update their reflections accordingly. (shrink)

The hard problem of consciousness has held center stage in the philosophy of mind for the past two decades. It claims that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences—what it’s like to be in them—cannot be explained by appeal to the operation of physiological subsystems. The hard problem arises, however, only given the assumption that hylomorphism is false. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. A human is not a random collection of physical materials, but an individual (...) composed of physical materials with a structure that accounts for what it is and what it can do—the powers it has. What is true of humans is true of their activities as well. The latter are not random physiological changes, but structured ones: we engage in them by coordinating the ways our parts manifest their powers. Structured activities include perceptual experiences. Consequently, everything about a perceptual experience, including its phenomenal character, can be explained by describing the perceiver’s perceptual subsystems, the powers of those subsystems, and the coordination that unifies their activities into the activity of the perceiver as a whole. Conscious experiences thus fit unproblematically into the natural world—just as unproblematically as the phenomenon of life. Even exponents of the hard problem of consciousness agree that there is no hard problem of life. Consequently, if hylomorphism is true, there can be no hard problem of consciousness. To insist that there is such a problem, then, is implicitly to reject hylomorphism. The concept of consciousness that motivates the hard problem is as much a theoretical construct, therefore, as the concept of life that motivates an obstinate vitalist. (shrink)

It is well known that the probabilistic relation of confirmation is not transitive in that even if E confirms H1 and H1 confirms H2, E may not confirm H2. In this paper we distinguish four senses of confirmation and examine additional conditions under which confirmation in different senses becomes transitive. We conduct this examination both in the general case where H1 confirms H2 and in the special case where H1 also logically entails H2. Based on these analyses, we argue that (...) the Screening-Off Condition is the most important condition for transitivity in confirmation because of its generality and ease of application. We illustrate our point with the example of Moore’s “proof” of the existence of a material world, where H1 logically entails H2, the Screening-Off Condition holds, and confirmation in all four senses turns out to be transitive. (shrink)

This article provides an introduction to the special issue on post-neoliberalism. It does so by considering challenges to the neoliberal order that have come, post-financial crisis, from the political right. It looks closely at the relation of neoliberalism to conservatism, on one hand, and libertarianism, on the other, in order to address the threat posed to the neoliberal order by paleoconservatism, neoreactionary politics, ordonationalism, libertarian paternalism, and different forms of sovereignty and elite power. The final section of this introduction reflects (...) on the challenge to the neoliberal orthodoxy posed by the current COVID-19 crisis. For while events of 2020–21 have facilitated new forms of privatization of many public services and goods, they also signal, potentially, a break from the neoliberal orthodoxies of the previous four decades, and, in particular, from their overriding concern for the market. (shrink)

Beliefs are freely attributed to God nowadays in Anglo–American philosophical theology. This practice undoubtedly reflects the twentieth–century popularity of the view that knowledge consists of true justified belief . The connection is frequently made explicit. If knowledge is true justified belief then whatever God knows He believes. It would seem that much recent talk of divine beliefs stems from Nelson Pike's widely discussed article, ‘Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action’. In this essay Pike develops a version of the classic argument for (...) the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will in terms of divine forebelief. He introduces this shift by premising that ‘ A knows X ’ entails ‘A believes X ’. As a result of all this, philosophers have increasingly been using the concept of belief in defining ‘omniscience’. (shrink)

Strawson’s case in favor of panpsychism is at heart an updated version of a venerable form of argument I’ll call the ‘intrinsic nature’ argument. It is an extremely interesting argument which deploys all sorts of high caliber metaphysical weaponry (despite the ‘down home’ appeals to common sense which Strawson frequently makes). The argument is also subtle and intricate. So let’s spend some time trying to articulate its general form.

There are many branches of philosophy called “the philosophy of X,” where X = disciplines ranging from history to physics. The philosophy of artificial intelligence has a long history, and there are many courses and texts with that title. Surprisingly, the philosophy of computer science is not nearly as well-developed. This article proposes topics that might constitute the philosophy of computer science and describes a course covering those topics, along with suggested readings and assignments.

Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle; it accounts for what things are and what they can do. My goal is to articulate a metaphysic of hylomorphic structure different from those currently on offer. It is based on a substance-attribute ontology that takes properties to be powers and tropes. Hylomorphic structures emerge, on this account, as powers to configure the materials that compose individuals.

This work is an examination of teleological attributions i.e. ascriptions of proper functions and natural ends) to the features and behavior of living things with a view to understanding their application to human life.

Taking reduction in the traditional deductive sense, the programmatic claim that most of genetics can be reduced by molecular genetics is defended as feasible and significant. Arguments by Ruse and Hull that either the relationship is replacement or at best a weaker form of reduction are shown to rest on a mixture of historical and logical confusions about the nature of the theories involved.

Hegel's objection -- Is Kant's idealism subjective? -- An ambiguity in 'subjectivism' -- The epistemological problem -- The transcendental deduction of the categories and subjectivism -- Are Kant's categories subjective? -- Hegel's suspicion : Kantian critique and subjectivism -- What is kantian philosophical criticism? -- Hegel's suspicion : initial formulation -- A shallow suspicion? -- Deepening the suspicion : criticism, autonomy, and subjectivism -- Directions of response -- Critique and suspicion : unmasking the critical philosophy -- Hegel's transformation of critique (...) -- The rejection of Kantian critique : philosophy, skepticism, and the recovery of the ancient idea -- Hegel's epistemology in the shadow of Schelling -- Schulze's skepticism contra the critical philosophy -- Ancient versus modern skepticism : Hegel's difference -- Against the modern conception of rational cognition -- Against modern self-certainty -- The history of skepticism: decline into dogmatism -- Philosophy counter culture and time -- The return to Kantian critique : recognizing the rights of ordinary consciousness -- Two conceptions of philosophical critique -- The return to critique and the relation of philosophy to its history -- The rights of ordinary consciousness and the need for critique -- Critique as the realization of the science of metaphysics -- Hegel's self-transformational criticism -- Presuppositionless philosophy -- The problem of the criterion -- Self-transformational criticism -- The problem of the we' -- Our transformation -- Hegel's alternative model : critical transformation as self-realization. (shrink)

This paper characterizes the increase in ‘scientific understanding’ that resulted from the Ingold Revolution in organic chemistry. By describing both the sorts of explanations facilitated by Ingold’s Revolution and the sense in which organic chemistry was ‘unified’ by adopting these approaches to explanation, one can appreciate how this revolution led to a dramatic qualitative improvement in organic chemists’ understanding of the phenomena that they study. The explanatory unification responsible for this transformation in organic chemistry is contrasted with contemporary philosophical accounts (...) of unification and its relationship to both scientific understanding and explanation. (shrink)

Talk about time travel is puzzling even if it isn't obviously contradictory. Philosophers however are divided about whether time travel involves empirical paradox or some deeper metaphysical incoherence. It is suggested that time travel requires a Parmenidean four-dimensionalist metaphysical conception of the world in time. The possibility of time travel is addressed (mainly) from within a Parmenidean metaphysical framework, which is accepted by David Lewis in his defence of the coherence of time travel. It is argued that time travel raises (...) formidable difficulties which are not satisfactorily resolved by Lewis's ingenious defence of time travel. Objections to time travel considered include: (1) travel to other times is impossible because there is nowhere (or “nowhen”) to go to; (2) the problem that upon setting out on a journey to the past a time machine will collide with itself; (3) time travel generates a mysterious temporal dualism between experiential time and physical time; (4) travel to the past permits reverse causation, raising the possibility of causal loops and attendant problems arising, for example, from the prospect of empirical contradiction and the possibility of someone being one of their ancestors. (shrink)

The distinction between harm that is intended as a means or end, and harm that is merely a foreseen side-effect of one’s action, is widely cited as a significant factor in a variety of ethical contexts. Many use it, for example, to distinguish terrorist acts from certain acts of war that may have similar results as side-effects. Yet Bennett and others have argued that its application is so arbitrary that if it can be used to cast certain harmful actions in (...) a more favorable light, then it can equally be manipulated to do the same for any kind of harmful action. In response, some have tried to block such extensions of the intend/foresee distinction by rejecting its application in cases where the relation between the plainly intended means and the harm is “too close”. This move, however, has been attacked as vague and obscure, and Bennett has argued that all the plausible candidates for explicating the idea of excessive closeness ultimately fail. In this paper, I develop and defend an account of excessive closeness with the aim of rescuing the intend/foresee distinction from such charges of arbitrariness. The account is based on the distinction between merely causal and constitutive relations among states of affairs, and I show both how it escapes Bennett’s objections to other accounts and how it applies to a variety of cases. Finally, I also examine Quinn’s alternative move of shifting the focus of the intend/foresee distinction in an attempt to sidestep the issue of closeness, and argue that it is not ultimately successful. In fact, Quinn’s view has shortcomings that can be resolved only by returning to an appeal to some notion of closeness, underscoring the need for the sort of account I offer. (shrink)

The reductionistic vision of evolutionary theory, "the gene's eye view of evolution" is the dominant view among evolutionary biologists today. On this view, the gene is the only unit with sufficient stability to act as a unit of selection, with individuals and groups being more ephemeral units of function, but not of selection. This view is argued to be incorrect, on several grounds. The empirical and theoretical bases for the existence of higher-level units of selection are explored, and alternative analyses (...) discussed critically. The success of a multi-level selection theory demands the recognition and development of a multi-level genetics. The way to accomplish this is suggested. The genotype/phenotype distinction also requires further analysis to see how it applies at higher levels of organization. This analysis provides a way of defining genotype and phenotype for cultural evolution, and a treatment of the innate-acquired distinction which are both generalizeable to analyze problems of the nature and focus of scientific change. (shrink)

In this study we seek to determine whether catastrophic events lead to corporate charitable giving unrelated to levels of firm profitability. We examine the issue relative to the corporate philanthropic response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. Based on a sample of 489 Fortune 500 companies, we find that differences in the extent of corporate contributions following 9/11 are positively and significantly associated with differences in firms' profitability. Further, while the degree of connection to the catastrophic event led to (...) higher levels of giving in comparison to the contributions of less connected firms, differences in the extent of philanthropy are still␣related to short-term profitability for the more connected firms. The study thus provides evidence suggesting that even in the wake of catastrophic events, corporate philanthropic giving is constrained by economic concerns. (shrink)

This essay continues my investigation of `syntactic semantics': the theory that, pace Searle's Chinese-Room Argument, syntax does suffice for semantics (in particular, for the semantics needed for a computational cognitive theory of natural-language understanding). Here, I argue that syntactic semantics (which is internal and first-person) is what has been called a conceptual-role semantics: The meaning of any expression is the role that it plays in the complete system of expressions. Such a `narrow', conceptual-role semantics is the appropriate sort of semantics (...) to account (from an `internal', or first-person perspective) for how a cognitive agent understands language. Some have argued for the primacy of external, or `wide', semantics, while others have argued for a two-factor analysis. But, although two factors can be specified–-one internal and first-person, the other only specifiable in an external, third-person way–-only the internal, first-person one is needed for understanding how someone understands. A truth-conditional semantics can still be provided, but only from a third-person perspective. (shrink)

Skeptical theism contends that, due to our cognitive limitations, we cannot expect to be able to determine whether there are reasons which justify God’s permission of apparently unjustified evils. Because this is so, the existence of these evils does not constituted evidence against God’s existence. A common criticism is that the skeptical theist is implicitly committed to other, less palatable forms of skepticism, especially moral skepticism. I examine a recent defense against this charge mounted by Michael Bergmann. I point out (...) that the Bergmannian skeptical theist is unable to determine concerning any event or feature of the world whether that feature or event is good or evil all-things-considered. Because of this the skeptical theist must abandon any attempt to act in such a way that the world becomes better rather than worse as a result. These, I claim, are seriously skeptical conclusions, and should cause us to be skeptical about skeptical theism itself. (shrink)

By reconciling the linguistic device and the linguistic person, his book argues for a Vygotskyan cognitive science.

This essay examines the role of non-existent objects in "epistemological ontology" — the study of the entities that make thinking possible. An earlier revision of Meinong's Theory of Objects is reviewed, Meinong's notions of Quasisein and Außersein are discussed, and a theory of Meinongian objects as "combinatorially possible" entities is presented.

Abstract:This study tests the usefulness of a person-situation interactionist framework in examining the willingness of a salesperson to lie to get an order. Using a survey of 389 salespersons, our results demonstrate that organizational relationships influence willingness to lie. Specifically, salespersons are less willing to lie to their own company than to their customer, than to a channel partner, and finally, than to a competitor firm. Furthermore, respondents from firms with a clear and positive ethical climate are less willing to (...) lie. Finally, our study finds that interactions between personality factors, such as high Machiavellianism and high self-monitoring, and situational factors have an impact on willingness to lie. Our results suggest that firms can take steps to influence employee ethical behavior. (shrink)

There is perhaps no more widely shared conviction in contemporary metaethics, even among those who hold otherwise divergent views, than that practical normativity must be capable of being naturalized (i.e., captured fully within a metaphysically naturalist worldview). My aim is to illuminate the central reasons for skepticism about this. While certain naturalizing projects are plausible for very limited purposes, it is unlikely that any can provide everything we might reasonably want from an account of goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness, (...) and unqualified reasons for acting—at least if we are unwilling to accept certain deflationary or bullet-biting moves. Some naturalizing views can be shown to fail outright to capture the relevant normative facts or properties, while others have more promise but can also be seen to have certain limitations and costs, failing to capture elements that some of us take to be important to an adequate theory of practical normativity. There are, of course, far more naturalizing moves than can be considered here, so the aim is not to establish the truth of nonnaturalism through a process of elimination. But I hope to say enough to bring out the central worries about naturalizing projects and to pose some challenges that apply more widely, with the aim of showing that ethical nonnaturalism remains an attractive and well-motivated option at least for those of us who reject both nihilism and various forms of ethical deflation. (shrink)

The alliance in the United States today between cowboy capitalism and evangelical Christianity cannot be understood sufficiently through the categories of efficient causality or ideological analysis. The constituencies fold similar spiritual dispositions into somewhat different ideologies and creeds. Each party then amplifies these dispositions in the other through the media politics of resonance. The ethos infusing the resonance machine is expressed without being articulated. The inability to grasp this political economy separate from the spiritualities infusing it may carry implications for (...) the form a successful countermovement could assume. (shrink)

Recent attempts to show that functional processing entails the presence of phenomenal consciousness have failed to deliver the kind of answers to the “problems of consciousness” that anti-materialists insist the functionalist must provide. I will illustrate this by focusing on the claims that there is a special “Hard Problem” of consciousness and an “explanatory gap” between functional and phenomenal facts. I then argue that if we supplement the functionalist stories with a relationalist conception of phenomenal properties, we can begin to (...) see the shape of a naturalistic theory of phenomenal consciousness that will provide intuitively compelling responses to these problems. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that evolution makes a sham of morality, even if morality is an adaptation. I disagree. I argue that our best current adaptationist theory of meaning offers objective truth conditionsfor signaling systems of all sorts. The objectivity is, however, relative to species – specifically to the adaptive history of the signaling system in question. While evolution may not provide the kind of species independent objective standards that (e.g.) Kantians desire, this should be enough for the practical work (...) of justifying our confidence in the objectivity of moral standards. If you believe morality is an adaptation, you should be a moral realist. (shrink)

Turner argues that computer programs must have purposes, that implementation is not a kind of semantics, and that computers might need to understand what they do. I respectfully disagree: Computer programs need not have purposes, implementation is a kind of semantic interpretation, and neither human computers nor computing machines need to understand what they do.

Kit Fine’s logic of essence and his reduction of modality crucially rely on a principle called the ‘monotonicity of essence’. This principle says that for all pluralities, xx and yy, if some xx belong to some yy, then if it is essential to xx that p, it is also essential to yy that p. I argue that on the constitutive notion of essence, this principle is false. In particular, I show that this principle is false because it says that some (...) propositions are essential to yy even though those propositions are only about some of its members. I then consider modifications to the principle appealing to consequential essence and argue that such a modification is inconsistent with a central. (shrink)

Of the three views of theoretical knowledge which form the focus of this article, the first has its source in the work of Russell, the second in Ramsey, and the third in Carnap. Although very different, all three views subscribe to a principle I formulate as ‘the structuralist thesis’; they are also naturally expressed using the concept of a Ramsey sentence. I distinguish the framework of assumptions which give rise to the structuralist thesis from an unproblematic emphasis on the importance (...) of ‘structural’ differences for the analysis and interpretation of theories belonging to the exact sciences, and I review a number of logical properties of Ramsey sentences using very simple arithmetical theories and their models. I then develop a reconstruction of the views of Russell, Ramsey, and Carnap that clarifies the interrelationships among them by appealing to aspects of the arithmetical examples that inform my discussion of Ramsey sentences. I conclude with an account of the philosophical basis of the structuralist thesis and the fundamental difficulty to which it leads. (shrink)

Charles Siewert's _The Significance of Consciousness_ contends that most philosophers and psychologists who have written about "consciousness" have neglected a crucial type or aspect that Siewert calls "phenomenal consciousness" and tries carefully to define. The present article argues that some philosophers, at least, have not neglected phenomenal consciousness and have offered tenable theories of it.

I oppose the popular view that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience consists in the subject's representing the (putative) perceived object as being so-and-so. The account of perceptual experience I favor instead is a version of the "Theory of Appearing" that takes it to be a matter of the perceived object's appearing to one as so-and-so, where this does not mean that the subject takes or believes it to be so-and-so. This plays no part in my criticisms of Representationalism. I (...) mention it only to be up front as to where I stand. My criticism of the Representationalist position is in sections. (1) There is no sufficient reason for positing a representative function for perceptual experience. It doesn't seem on the face of it to be that, and nothing serves in place of such seeming. (2) Even if it did have such a function, it doesn't have the conceptual resources to represent a state of affairs. (3) Even if it did, it is not suited to represent, e.g., a physical property of color. (4) Finally, even if I am wrong about the first three points, it is still impossible for the phenomenal character of the perceptual experience to consist in it's representing what it does. My central argument for this central claim of the paper is that it is metaphysically, de re possible that one have a certain perceptual experience without it's presenting any state of affairs. And since all identities hold necessarily, this identity claim fails. (shrink)

First published in 1990, Mind and Cognition: An Anthology is now firmly established as a popular teaching apparatus for upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in the philosophy of mind. Brings together the most important classic and contemporary articles in philosophy of mind and cognition Completely revised and updated throughout, in response to feedback from teachers in the field Now includes 20 new readings Each updated part opens with a brief, synoptic introduction to the individual field and a comprehensive further (...) reading list Each section also includes three to four of the most influential papers that have been written in the philosophy of mind over the last 40 years. (shrink)

John Leslie has published an argument that our own birth rank among all who have lived can be used to make inferences about all who will ever live, and hence about the expected survival time for the human race. It is found to be shorter than usually supposed. The assumptions underpinning the argument are criticized, especially the unwarranted one that the argument's sampling is equiprobable from among all who ever live. A mathematical derivation shows that Leslie's argument is correct only (...) if there exists a correlation of our birth rank to the event of doomsday. Such correlation is highly improbable. (shrink)

This article seeks to reframe the ethical discussion of genetic enhancement, which is the use of genetic engineering to supply a characteristic that a parent might want in a child that does not involve the treatment or prevention of disease. I consider whether it is likely that enhancement can be successfully prohibited. If genetic enhancement is feasible, it is likely that there will be demand for it because parents compete to produce able children and nations compete to accumulate human capital (...) in skilled workers. If some parents or nations begin using genetic enhancement, this will change these competitions in ways that increase the incentives for others to use it. Therefore, a ban on genetic enhancement would be unstable, because once the ban was breached by defectors the motivation of others to uphold it would weaken, making the ban liable to collapse. The argument provides a new perspective on slippery slopes to dangerous technology. Keywords: genetic enhancement, slippery slope argumentation CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)