The current situation around COVID-19 portrays a threat to us in several ways: It imposes uncertainty, a lack of control and reminds us of our own mortality. People around the world have reacted to these threats in seemingly unrelated ways: From stockpiling yeast and toilet paper to favoring nationalist ideas or endorsing conspiratorial beliefs. According to the General Process Model of Threat and Defense the confrontation with a threat - a discrepant experience - makes humans react with both proximal (...) and distal threat responses. While the proximal response manifests in behavioral inhibition that leads to heightened anxious arousal and vigilance, distal responses seek to lower behavioral inhibition and the associated state of anxiety and vigilance through engaging in distal defenses. In the present research, we propose that the reactions to COVID-19 may represent distal defense strategies to the pandemic (in the form of environmental or group related worldview defenses) and therefore can be explained and forecasted by the model. Thus we hypothesized increased perceived COVID-19 threat perception to lead to a proximal threat response in the form of heightened behavioral inhibition. This, in return, should enhance the use of distal defenses (i.e.: several ingroup biases, system justification and conspiratorial beliefs) overlapping with the reactions observed as a response to COVID-19. This hypothesized mediated effect of increased perceived COVID-19 threat on distal defenses was tested in two pre-registered studies: In Study 1 (N = 358) results showed perceived COVID-19 threat to be related to behavioral inhibition and in turn to be associated with increased distal defenses (i.e., higher entitativity, control restoration motivation, passive party support). In Study 2 (N = 348) we manipulated COVID-19 threat salience and found results suggesting the distal defenses of system justification and conspiratorial beliefs to be mediated by the proximal threat response. The results of the present research hint towards a common mechanism through which the seemingly unrelated reactions to COVID-19 can be explained. The results might help to predict future behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and design measures to counteract detrimental effects of the pandemic. (shrink)

The U.S. military is developing augmented reality (AR) capabilities for use on the battlefield as a means of achieving greater situational awareness. The superimposition of digital data—designed to expand surveillance, enhance geospatial understanding, and facilitate target identification—onto a live view of the battlefield has important implications for virtuous conduct in war: Can the soldier exercise practical wisdom while integrated into a system of militarized legibility? Adopting a virtue ethics perspective, I argue that AR disrupts the soldier’s immersion in the scene (...) such that he is blinded to features beyond those identified in advance by the military’s system of cybernetic judgment. I turn to Michael Walzer’s classic account of the “naked soldier” dilemma to illustrate how AR capabilities radically shrink the bounds within which the soldier can cultivate the capacity for right conduct. By transforming the ambiguous ethical matter of killing an enemy combatant into the straightforward application of a rule, AR hollows out the soldier’s potential for virtuous action. The “smart battlefield” leaves no space for deliberative judgments that transcend the technical and legal determinations already written into the soldier’s view of the scene. (shrink)

(1984). The projection argument in Galileo and Copernicus: Rhetorical strategy in the defence of the new system. Annals of Science: Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 109-133.

The exact process that leads to the eruption of autoimmune reactions against β cells and the evolution of diabetes is not fully understood. Macrophages and T cells may launch an initial immune reaction against the pancreatic islets of Langerhans, provoking inflammation and destructive insulitis. The information on the molecular mechanisms of the emergence of β cell injury is controversial and points to possibly important roles for the perforin–granzyme, Fas–Fas-ligand (FasL) and tumor-necrosis-factor-mediated apoptotic pathways. FasL has several unique features that make (...) it a potentially ideal immunomodulatory tool. Most important, FasL is selectively toxic to cytotoxic T cells and less harmful to regulatory T cells. This review discusses the intrinsic sensitivity of β cells to FasL-mediated apoptosis, the conditions that underlie this β cell sensitivity, and the feasibility of using FasL to arrest autoimmunity and prevent islet allograft rejection. In both the autoimmune and transplant settings, it is imperative to progress from the administration of nonspecific immunosuppressive therapy to the concept of β-cell-specific immunomodulation. FasL evolves as a prime candidate for antigen-specific immunomodulation. BioEssays 28: 211–222, 2006. © 2006 Wiley periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

An immunizing strategy is an argument brought forward in support of a belief system, though independent from that belief system, which makes it more or less invulnerable to rational argumentation and/or empirical evidence. By contrast, an epistemic defense mechanism is defined as a structural feature of a belief system which has the same effect of deflecting arguments and evidence. We discuss the remarkable recurrence of certain patterns of immunizing strategies and defense mechanisms in pseudoscience and other belief (...) systems. Five different types will be distinguished and analyzed, with examples drawn from widely different domains. The difference between immunizing strategies and defense mechanisms is analyzed, and their epistemological status is discussed. Our classification sheds new light on the various ways in which belief systems may achieve invulnerability against empirical evidence and rational criticism, and we propose our analysis as part of an explanation of these belief systems’ enduring appeal and tenacity. (shrink)

The Free Will Defence has been attacked as being unsound, implausible and, more recently, irrelevant. The first section of the paper returns to a discussion on the relevance of the Free Will Defence, arguing that the case for its irrelevance is inextricably impaled on the horns of a dilemma. In the second section it is shown that Free Will Theodicy, even in a form extended to include natural evil, need not be as implausible as it is sometimes portrayed for it (...) demands no more than that good, on the whole, outweighs evil, on the whole. Finally, some tempting objections to the strategy employed in this argument are considered and rejected, both on the grounds that they are untenable in themselves and on the paradoxical ground that, if valid, the objections would appear to rule out any creation. (shrink)

In response to an accusation of having said something inappropriate, the accused may exploit the difference between the explicit contents of their utterance and its implicatures. Widely discussed in the pragmatics literature are those cases in which arguers accept accountability only for the explicit contents of what they said while denying commitment to the implicature. In this paper, we sketch a fuller picture of commitment denial. We do so, first, by including in our discussion not just denial of implicatures, but (...) also the mirror strategy of denying commitment to literal meaning and, second, by classifying strategies for commitment denial in terms of classical rhetorical status theory. In addition to providing a systematic categorization of our data, this approach offers some clues to determine when such a defence strategy is a reasonable one and when it is not. (shrink)

This paper consists of four parts. In section 1, I shall offer a strategy to bypass a counter‐example which Gareth Evans (1975) offers against Quine’s Thesis of the Inscrutability of Reference. In section 2, I shall introduce a criterion recently pro‐duced by Crispin Wright (1997) in terms of ‘psychological simplicity’ which threatens the perverse route offered in section 1. In section 3, I shall argue that a LOT model of human cognition could motivate Wright’s criterion. In section 4, I (...) shall argue that if we instead model human cognition by a recurrent neural network, then Wright’s criterion is unmotivated. Thus I shall produce a Connectionist Defence of the Inscrutability Thesis. (shrink)

Modal functionalism is the view that talk about possible worlds should be construed as talk about fictional objects. The version of modal fictionalism originally presented by Gideon Rosen adopted a simple prefixing strategy for fictionalising possible worlds analyses of modal propositions. However, Stuart Brock and Rosen himself in a later article have independently advanced an objection that shows that the prefixing strategy cannot serve fictionalist purposes. In this paper we defend fictionalism about possible worlds by showing that there (...) are other strategies besides the prefixing strategy for fictionalising talk about possible worlds, and that these strategies are proof against the objection advanced by Brock and Rosen. (shrink)

SummaryIn the present article it is argued that Pieter de la Court's Political Maxims of the State of Holland presented a remarkably consistent grand strategy for Holland in relation to its Dutch allies and the European powers. I present an outline of this strategy, which was built around the accomplishment and defence of commercial goals; I sketch a historical context that takes into account the general historical shift from tribute-taking agrarian societies towards commercial wealth-generating polities, and also the (...) violent contemporary military and ideological background against which De la Court's strategy stands out; I argue that his strategy can be understood by his use of three basic game theoretic concepts ; and I stress the distinctive character of De la Court's work, by comparing the practical and strategic use of these concepts in the Maxims with the function of the same concepts in the philosophical contract theories of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza. (shrink)

In this contribution, I defend a robust model of political idealism, making the case for such an approach to both the theory and practice of politics. On this view, not only in framing a political philosophy but also in putting forward policy proposals and institutional designs, we need not think about feasibility as an overriding, make-or-break criterion for evaluating the soundness of that theory or proposal, neither of which loses its point simply because it is deemed to be unlikely to (...) be implemented. Feasibility, in other terms, cannot be taken as the only standard, or even as the main standard, on which basis to assess the practical worth of a political strategy. (shrink)

In this paper I question the view that realism must delineate the basic ontological furniture of the world rather than giving arguments in semantic or epistemic terms for the existence of a mind-independent world. I call this view of stating and defending realism the Ontological Defence of Realism and take Devitt’s account of realism as a paradigmatic case of ODR. I argue that ODR cannot block ‘verificationist antirealism’ because the specific nature of what exists is not enough to secure the (...) mind-independence of what exists and, additionally, every element purported to achieve this, it compromises seriously the idea that realism is primarily an ontological issue. I also stress that ODR is in tension with a plausible realist insight namely the priority of the world over our theorizing. Because of this tension ODR weakens realism in several domains with no good reason. Specifically, I argue that in these domains ODR faces a dilemma: either to reject realism or to take realism to be dependent on a reductive account violating the realist insight. My point is that we should keep realism and ontology distinct and that compliance with the realist insight initiates a better strategy for the defence of realism. I address three possible objections thereby further clarifying my point. I conclude by presenting my view about the relation between ontology and realism. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the possibility that a ‘contented religious exclusivist’, will be fully rational and not neglectful of any of her epistemic duties when faced with the world’s religious diversity. I present an epistemic strategy for reflecting on one's beliefs and then present two features of religious belief that make contented exclusivism a rational possibility. I then argue against the positions of John Hick, David Basinger, and Steven Wykstra on contented exclusivism, and criticize an overly optimistic conception (...) of rationality. Finally, I describe a contented exclusivist who might very well not be fully rational in the face of religious diversity. (shrink)

Two methodological claims in Hart's TheConceptofLaw have produced perplexity: that it is a book on 1 and that it may also be regarded as an essay in 2 Are these two ideas reconcilable? We know that mere analysis of our legal concepts cannot tell us much about their properties, that is, about the empirical aspect of law. We have learned this from philosophical criticisms of conceptual analysis; yet Hart informs us that analytic jurisprudence can be reconciled with descriptive sociology. The (...) answer to this puzzle lies in the notion of nonambitious conceptual analysis. The theorist analyzes concepts but accepts the limitations of conceptual analysis and therefore uses empirical knowledge and substantive arguments to explain, refine, or perhaps refute initial insights provided by intuitions. This is the conclusion that this paper arrives at as an argumentative strategy to defend Hart's legal theory from the criticisms of Stavropoulos and Dworkin. The latter argues that Hart's legal theory cannot explain theoretical disagreements in law because he relies on a shared criterial semantics. Stavropoulos aims to show that Hart's semantics is committed to ambitious conceptual analysis and relies on the usage of our words as a standard of correctness. Both attacks aim to show that the semantic sting stings Hart's legal theory. This essay refines both challenges and concludes that not even in the light of the most charitable interpretation of these criticisms is Hart's legal theory stung by the semantic sting. This study defends the view that Hart's methodological claims were modest and that he was aware of the limits of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method. He was, this study claims, far ahead of his time. (shrink)

A recent strategy for defending physicalism about the mind against the zombie argument relies on the so-called conditional analysis of phenomenal concepts. According to this analysis, what kinds of states our phenomenal concepts refer to depends crucially on whether the actual world is merely physical or not. John Hawthorne, David Braddon-Mitchell and Robert Stalnaker have claimed, independently, that this analysis explains the conceivability of zombies in a way consistent with physicalism, thus blocking the zombie argument. Torin Alter has recently (...) presented three arguments against the conditional analysis strategy. This paper defends the conditional analysis strategy against Alter’s objections. (shrink)

Patrick McGrath has argued that my defence of papal infallibility does not succeed. His basic strategy is to establish that, contrary to my arguments, infallible papal utterances are statements and not merely declarations. He wants this result in order to go on to show that the Pope, in possession of no priviliged epistemic access to the world, is not infallible. I agree that the Pope has no priviliged epistemic access; so that is not in dispute. What is in dispute (...) is the fundamental question of whether infallible papal utterances are statements or declarations. I want to show that McGrath's arguments against my position do not work. If I am successful, then the Pope's infallibility is secure. (shrink)

The ideal of value free science states that the justification of scientific findings should not be based on non-epistemic (e.g. moral or political) values. It has been criticized on the grounds that scientists have to employ moral judgements in managing inductive risks. The paper seeks to defuse this methodological critique. Allegedly value-laden decisions can be systematically avoided, it argues, by making uncertainties explicit and articulating findings carefully. Such careful uncertainty articulation, understood as a methodological strategy, is exemplified by the (...) current practice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (shrink)

The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) is widely regarded as the most promising physicalist defence against the so-called epistemic arguments—the anti-physicalist arguments that establish an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal facts on the basis of the occurrence of epistemic gaps in our descriptions of these facts. The PCS tries to undercut the force of the epistemic arguments by attributing the occurrence of the epistemic gaps to the special character of phenomenal concepts—the concepts by means of which we think about (...) our phenomenal experiences. In this essay, the author examines David Chalmers' master argument against the PCS and the objections raised against this argument by Peter Carruthers, Bénédicte Veillet and Katalin Balog in defending the PCS. While the author finds these objections to be successful defences of the PCS, the author shares Balog's belief that in this regard, the debate between the physicalists and anti-physicalists is a stalemate. (shrink)

This article makes visible some of the premises that underlie Rosi Braidotti’s use of (political) myth. Focusing on some well-known characteristics of postmodernity, as well as the development of a new philosophy of subjectivity, I account for the divergence between Simone de Beauvoir, who thought of myth as a severe hindrance to the subject-becoming of women, and postmodern feminists, such as Donna Haraway and Braidotti, who represent a more affirmative stance. Through pinning down both similarities and differences between Haraway and (...) Braidotti, I demonstrate that postmodern feminists might still promote mythmaking for dissimilar reasons. I argue that Braidotti, in contrast to Haraway, approaches myth from a horizon partly shaped by an anti-rationalist or ‘demonic’ philosophical tradition, whose chief representative is Friedrich Nietzsche. By studying the argument delivered by the latter in defence of myth, I extract a conceptual distinction between the ‘Apolline’ and the ‘Dionysiac’ aspects of mythmaking, by which it becomes possible to further qualify Braidotti’s philosophy of political myth. (shrink)

The evidential value of moral intuitions has been challenged by psychological work showing that the intuitions of ordinary people are affected by distorting factors. One reply to this challenge, the expertise defence, claims that training in philosophical thinking confers enhanced reliability on the intuitions of professional philosophers. This defence is often expressed through analogy: since we do not allow doubts about folk judgments in domains like mathematics or physics to undermine the plausibility of judgments by experts in these domains, we (...) also should not do so in philosophy. In this paper I clarify the logic of the analogy strategy, and defend it against recent challenges by Jesper Ryberg. The discussion exposes an interesting divide: while Ryberg’s challenges may weaken analogies between morality and domains like mathematics, they do not affect analogies to other domains, such as physics. I conclude that the expertise defence can be supported by analogical means, though care is required in selecting an appropriate analog. I discuss implications of this conclusion for the expertise defence debate and for study of the moral domain itself. (shrink)

It is incorrect to construe Hume as a Pyrrhonian sceptic. Or so I have argued elsewhere. To the contrary, Hume in fact offers a detailed defence of the thesis that the norms of scientific inference, that is, the “rules by which to judge of causes and effects”, arereasonablerules to follow in forming our beliefs. Conforming to these rules in its formation of causal beliefs is astrategythe understanding employs in order to satisfy the end of curiosity (T271). Science is reasonable because, (...) so far as we can, within our fallible limits, discover, it is the strategy of belief formation that is the best means of achieving our end of truth, insofar as the latter is, within our fallible limits, attainable. (shrink)

A powerful reply to a range of familiar anti-physicalist arguments has recently been developed. According to this reply, our possession of phenomenal concepts can explain the facts that the anti-physicalist claims can only be explained by a non-reductive account of phenomenal consciousness. Chalmers (2006) argues that the phenomenal concept strategy is doomed to fail. This article presents the phenomenal concept strategy, Chalmers' argument against it, and a defence of the strategy against his.

In this paper, I argue against the phenomenal concept strategy and in favor of what Chalmers has called type-A materialism. On her release, Mary makes no cognitive discovery at all; not even a thin non-possibility-eliminating discovery, as Tye has recently claimed. When she is imprisoned, Mary already knows everything that is to be known about the phenomenal character of her experiences. What Mary acquires is a new non-cognitive and nonconceptual representation.

Many people have misgivings about the strategy of nuclear deterrence. Some of those misgivings centre on issues of effectiveness: safety depends entirely upon the dissuasion of an adversary. Other misgivings centre on moral concerns: the essence of deterrence is the threat, and the conditional intention, to kill millions of noncombatants. US President Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative promised an alternative to deterrence, a strategic posture of interception of an adversary's weapons rather than preclusion of the decision to attack. It is (...) conceived as a means of ‘defending’ the United States that does not threaten anyone. In this essay I examine various SDI proposals. I argue that only one of these could justify the transition to a strategic posture of ‘defence’, and might be a genuine alternative to deterrence—the one that is least feasible technologically. Only that one could plausibly be claimed to be morally superior to deterrence—and for strategic reasons, even its claim is dubious at best. Technologically more feasible proposals are not ‘defences’, but variants of deterrence. Since that is so, the most common and dramatic claim of their moral superiority to deterrence is incoherent. (shrink)

In domains like stock brokerage, clinical psychiatry, and long‐term political forecasting, experts generally fail to outperform novices. Empirical researchers agree on why this is: experts must receive direct or environmental learning feedback during training to develop reliable expertise, and these domains are deficient in this type of feedback. A growing number of philosophers resource this consensus view to argue that, given the absence of direct or environmental philosophical feedback, we should not give the philosophical intuitions or theories of expert philosophers (...) greater credence than those of novice philosophers. This article has three objectives. The first is to explore several overlooked issues concerning the strategy of generalizing from empirical studies of non‐philosophical expertise to the epistemic status of philosophical expertise. The second is to explain why empirical research into a causal relationship between direct learning feedback and enhanced expert performance does not provide good grounds for abandoning a default optimism about the epistemic superiority of expert philosophical theories. The third is to sketch a positive characterization of learning feedback that addresses developmental concerns made salient by the empirical literature on expert performance for specifically theory‐driven or “armchair” domains like philosophy. (shrink)

I confront Feyerabend's position and critical rationalism in order to have a foundation or starting point for my (historical) investigation. The main difference of his position towards falsificationism is the belief that different theories cannot be discussed rationally. Feyerabend is convinced that Galilei's observations with the telescope in the historical context of the Copernican revolution supports his criticism. In particular, he argues that the Copernican theory was supported by deficient hypotheses, and falsifications were disposed by ad hoc hypotheses and propaganda. (...) Furthermore, he claims that his philosophy of science reconstructs Galilei's defence of the Copernican theory. He introduces a central principle of his position (the principle of tenacity) in order to justify a research strategy of not eliminating falsified theories. He tries to show that the tenacious defence of a theory corresponds to Galilei's defence of the Copernican theory. Remarkably, Feyerabend's approach to explain the development of science earns an important support from his interpretation of Galilei's observations. On this basis I give a falsificationist interpretation of Galilei's observations with the telescope, and oppose this interpretation to Feyerabend's. From a falsificationist perspective, auxiliary hypotheses compete during the Copernican revolution which can (with some effort) be critically discussed. Then I analyse the historical case in order to test Feyerabend's interpretation of the Copernican revolution. Inter alias I investigate thoroughly whether Galilei, as Feyerabend claims, immunised falsifications of the Copernican theory by the introduction of ad hoc hypotheses. The investigation considers Galilei's explanation of Venus' phases, his establishment of the irradiation hypothesis, the explanation of the telescope's functionality, and the role of the reproducibility of the observations with the telescope. Finally I provide a rational reconstruction of Galilei's falsification of the Ptolemaic theory. The formalisation shows that Galilei was not a cautious critical rationalist, but a very confident scientist using the method of falsification. (shrink)

Trust constitutes a fundamental strategy to deal with risks and uncertainty in complex societies. In line with the vast literature stressing the importance of trust in doctor–patient relationships, trust is therefore regularly suggested as a way of dealing with the risks of medical artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, this approach has come under charge from different angles. At least two lines of thought can be distinguished: (1) that trusting AI is conceptually confused, that is, that we cannot trust AI; and (...) (2) that it is also dangerous, that is, that we should not trust AI—particularly if the stakes are as high as they routinely are in medicine. In this paper, we aim to defend a notion of trust in the context of medical AI against both charges. To do so, we highlight the technically mediated intentions manifest in AI systems, rendering trust a conceptually plausible stance for dealing with them. Based on literature from human–robot interactions, psychology and sociology, we then propose a novel model to analyse notions of trust, distinguishing between three aspects: reliability, competence, and intentions. We discuss each aspect and make suggestions regarding how medical AI may become worthy of our trust. (shrink)

Restrictionism is a response to the Liar and other paradoxes concerning truth. Restrictionists—as I will call proponents of the strategy—respond to these paradoxes by giving up instances of the schema -/- <p> is true iff p. -/- My aim is to show that the current unpopularity of restrictionism is undeserved. I will argue that, whilst cautious versions of the strategy may face serious problems, a radical and previously overlooked version of restrictionism provides a strong and defensible response to (...) the paradoxes. (shrink)

This paper investigates the prospects of a distinctively Plotinian argument for God’s existence. Specifically, this paper assesses Plotinus’ argument for the One/Good (Enneads; V.1,V.4), a principle rooted in Plato’s Republic (509b6-9), as a philosophical motivation for an argument for God’s existence. While the appropriative task of using Plotinus’ argument for natural theological purposes is not original to this work, this project remains in its philosophical infancy. It is to this end that the Plotinian background from which the argument proceeds is (...) articulated, and thereafter contextualised in Edward Feser’s Plotinian argument. This work defends Feser against two objections he does not consider, concluding that the appropriative strategy is successful and is a significant contribution to natural theology. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 6, Page 9-10, June 2012.

Deductivism has been variously presented as an evaluative thesis and as an interpretive one. I argue that deductivism fails as a universal evaluative thesis, and as such that its value as an interpretive thesis must be supported on other grounds. As a reconstructive strategy, deductivism is justified only on the grounds that an arguer is, or ought to be, aiming at the deductive standard of evidence. As such, the reconstruction of an argument as deductive must be supported by contextual (...) and situational factors including facts about the arguer. Further, the plausibility of deductivism as a normative thesis is not tied to its plausibility as a descriptive or interpretive thesis. (shrink)

According to philosophical orthodoxy, there are informative criteria of identity over time. Anti-criterialism rejects this orthodoxy and claims that there are no such criteria. This paper examines anti-criterialism in the light of recent attacks on the thesis by Matt Duncan, Sydney Shoemaker and Dean Zimmerman. It is argued that those attacks are not successful. Along the way, a novel strategy to defend anti-criterialism against the critics’ most challenging objection is developed. Under-appreciated difficulties for criterialism are also raised which, I (...) claim, there is no obvious way to solve. It is concluded that anti-criterialism may be a much stronger rival to criterialism than is often supposed. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the phenomenal concept strategy (henceforth PCS) and in favor of what Chalmers has called type-A materialism ([2006], [2010] p. 111). On her release, Mary makes no cognitive discovery at all, not even a thin, non-possibility-eliminating discovery, as Tye has recently claimed [2012]. When she is imprisoned, Mary already knows everything that is to be known about the phenomenal character of her experiences. What Mary acquires is a new non-cognitive and nonconceptual representation.

_Physicalism and the Spell of Consciousness_ explores the nature of consciousness, arguing that ontologically speaking, consciousness and matter are one and the same since both are physical entities. By synthesizing work in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics from the last twenty years and forging a dialogue with contemporary research in empirical sciences of the mind, Andreas Elpidorou develops an account of the concepts that we deploy when we introspectively examine our conscious experiences, and defends the view that the uniqueness (...) of consciousness is an unavoidable consequence of being conscious of consciousness. This book provides an up-to-date, systematic defense of the phenomenal concept strategy, and offers a theory-based formulation of physicalism. Elpidorou links metaphysics and empirical philosophy of mind by showing how embodied cognition allows us to explain the appearance of contingency that is present in mind-brain identity statements. His argument is situated at the intersections of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of cognitive science, and advances the debate regarding the ontological status of consciousness. (shrink)

Science and the humanities share the same kit of working tools, called the world's literature. While the author of this article deals mainly with the scientific and mathematical literature, the reader probably gravitates towards some other branches, but such distinctions were hardly made in the Middle Ages. The American philosopher, Wallace Stevens, in his book The Necessary Angel remarks that at the time of Aristotle, the Greek language had no word to signify literature. The reason is surely that literature had (...) long since been too universal an element in Greece to require a name. We have no name for the smell of air. This all-pervading power of literature is apparent already two generations before Aristotle, when Socrates made his defence against leading the youth of Athens towards atheism. Plato's Apology tells us how Socrates taunted his accuser: “Have you such a low opinion of the judges, that you fancy them so illiterate as not to know these doctrines are found in the books of Anaxagoras which are full of them? And so, my word, the youth are said to be taught them by Socrates, when they can be bought in the book-market for one drachma at most…” (a coin today worth 1.4 pence!). (shrink)

The sports world has historically rejected the practice of tanking. I argue that this attitude is unwarranted. To do so, I introduce a concept called strategic suboptimal play (SSP), which is the practice of incurring the risk of a short-term competitive disadvantage to increase the chances of gaining a longer-term competitive advantage. Tanking is just an instance of SSP employed in higher-order games, i.e. games that are at least partially played by other games, like tournaments or seasons. Since SSP is (...) integral to every sport, there are currently no easy grounds for rejecting it outright. As such, the same is true of tanking. I will explore some possible reasons why tanking is wrongly thought objectionable, as well as some objections to and implications of my argument for competitive sports more broadly. (shrink)

This book presents 12 essays that focus on the analysis of the problems prompted by cyber operations. It clarifies and discusses the ethical and regulatory problems raised by the deployment of cyber capabilities by a state’s army to inflict disruption or damage to an adversary’s targets in or through cyberspace. Written by world-leading philosophers, ethicists, policy-makers, and law and military experts, the essays cover such topics as the conceptual novelty of COs and the ethical problems that this engenders; the applicability (...) of existing conceptual and regulatory frameworks to COs deployed in case of conflicts; the definition of deterrence strategies involving COs; and the analysis of models to foster cooperation in managing cyber crises. Each essay is an invited contribution or a revised version of a paper originally presented at the workshop on Ethics and Policies for Cyber Warfare, organized by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The volume endorses a multi-disciplinary approach, as such it offers a comprehensive overview of the ethical, legal, and policy problems posed by COs and of the different approaches and methods that can be used to solve them. It will appeal to a wide readership, including ethicists, philosophers, military experts, strategy planners, and law- and policy-makers. (shrink)

Nicholas Jardine offers here an edition and the first translation into English of Johannes Kepler's A Defence of Tycho against Ursus. He accompanies this with essays on the provenance of the treatise - the circumstances which provoked Kepler to write it, an analysis of its strategy, style and historical sources and of the contents of Ursus' Treatise on Astronomical Hypotheses to which Kepler was replying. Dr Jardine also provides three extended interpretive essays on the intrinsic interest and historical significance (...) of the work. (shrink)

Confronted with the problem of induction, Hans Reichenbach accepts that we cannot justify that induction is reliable. He tries to solve the problem by proving a weaker proposition: that induction is an optimal method of prediction, because it is guaranteed not to be worse and may be better than any alternative. Regarding the most serious objection to his approach, Reichenbach himself hints at an answer without spelling it out. In this paper, I will argue that there are two workable strategies (...) to rehabilitate Reichenbach’s account. The first leads to the widely discussed method of meta-induction, as proposed by Gerhard Schurz. The second strategy has not been suggested thus far. I will develop the second strategy and argue for it being, in some respects, superior to the first and closer to Reichenbach’s own position. (shrink)

Progressive stacking is a strategy for prioritizing in-class contributions that allows marginalized students to speak before non-marginalized students. I argue that this strategy is both pedagogically and ethically defensible. Pedagogically, it provides benefits to all students (e.g., expanded in-class discourse) while providing special benefits (e.g., increased self-efficacy) to marginalized students, helping to address historic educational inequalities. Ethically, I argue that neither marginalized nor non-marginalized students are wronged by such a policy. First, I present a strategy for self-disclosure (...) that reduces the risk of inadvertent, unwanted disclosure while respecting marginalized student autonomy in a manner analogous to accommodations provided under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Second, I argue that non-marginalized students are not wronged because such students are not silenced during discussion and because non-marginalized students benefit from the prioritization of marginalized voices. (shrink)

Nicholas Jardine offers here an edition and the first translation into English of Johannes Kepler's A Defence of Tycho against Ursus. He accompanies this with essays on the provenance of the treatise - the circumstances which provoked Kepler to write it, an analysis of its strategy, style and historical sources and of the contents of Ursus' Treatise on Astronomical Hypotheses to which Kepler was replying. Dr Jardine also provides three extended interpretive essays on the intrinsic interest and historical significance (...) of the work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hume's Defence of Causal InferenceDon GarrettFred Wilson. Hume's Defence of Causal Inference. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 439. Cloth, $80.00.According to its introduction, this book "deals solely with the problem of induction [and] solely with the issue of whether Hume is a sceptic with regard to causation and scientific reason" (p. 6). Wilson concludes that although Hume rejects "objective" necessary connections, he is not (...) a sceptic—or at least, no more than a fallibilist "academic" sceptic—about induction. In contrast to several relatively recent commentators, he accepts the traditional view that Hume did pose a general sceptical problem about induction. One of Wilson's many formulations of that problem (111) is this: "How can [inductive] inference habits be justified, shown to be reasonable?" According to Wilson, Hume raised this problem and offered a solution to it. In fact, he holds, Hume provided at least the outlines of the correct solution.The book consists of just three chapters, but each chapter is over one hundred pages long. Not surprisingly, then, it is not really devoted solely to the question of whether Hume was or was not a sceptic about induction. In fact, the book takes up a wide variety of other related topics, incorporating considerable amounts of material [End Page 126] from no fewer than thirteen of Wilson's previously-published articles. It helpfully formalizes arguments wherever possible.The first chapter is a series of set-pieces intended to prepare the way for more tightly focused discussion of Hume's treatment of inductive scepticism. Topics include Hume's two definitions of 'cause,' necessary connections, dispositions, mental activity, the epistemology of scientific instruments, and Hume's treatment of "scepticism with regard to the senses." One recurring theme is that Hume is no proto-Kantian about mental activity or the universality of causation; another is the importance to Hume of his "Rules by which to judge of causes and effects."The second chapter is the centerpiece of the book, for it is here that Wilson tries to show how Hume justifies inductive scientific reasoning. The justification, as Wilson reconstructs it, has two steps. The first step is to argue that we ought to make inductive inferences on the grounds that (as a matter of psychological necessity) we must make such inferences. But this is only half the battle, since there are various ways to make inductive inferences and various strategies and influences that might or might not be allowed to affect the outcome. Hume's chosen way of making inductive inferences, Wilson argues, is the scientific method of "eliminative induction," as embodied in the "Rules by which to judge of causes and effects." Hume's strategy for justifying this method, according to Wilson, is to show that it is "reasonable" by showing that it is the method best suited for a particular practical purpose—namely, the purpose of satisfying our passion of "curiosity." This passion aims not only at the pleasure of exercising our faculties, but also at the achievement of truth, or at least (what seems rather different) of a system of beliefs that will prove "satisfactory to the mind." Accordingly, Wilson takes Hume to argue that using the method of eliminative induction embodied in the "Rules" constitutes "the best we can do" by way of discovering the truth of generalizations and that experience shows other methods to be less satisfactory in attaining the truth. Of course, a method's being the best we can do does not in itself entail that it is good enough to warrant adoption; and to treat the past successes or failures of a particular method as indicative of its future success or failure is to rely on induction itself. Presumably, then, Wilson's Hume is meant to regard the inductive arguments showing the "reasonableness" of the "Rules" as themselves among the inductions that any human being ultimately must accept, regardless of specific methods, strategies, or influences.The book's third and final chapter takes up the challenge posed by the section of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature entitled "Of scepticism with regard to reason," in which Hume argues that "all the rules of logic... (shrink)

In cases of sudden, life-threatening illness where the chance of survival appears negligible to the admitting physician, this opinion is not always revealed during the initial meeting with the patient's relatives. Reasons as to why this withholding of the truth may be acceptable are explored through review of available evidence and personal reflection. Factors identified include: the importance of hope in families' coping mechanisms, and the instinct to preserve it; the fallibility of physicians' perception of poor prognosis in the early (...) phase of illness; the need to avoid large swings in relatives' expectations that occur when patients appear to rally during initial resuscitation; and the adverse effect that an atmosphere of hopelessness can have on the provision of medical care. A strategy for the staged disclosure of information and the confirmation of hopelessness is then described, the aim being to find a compromise between providing a true opinion about a patient's prognosis, and regard for the opposing factors described. (shrink)

Since Peirce defined the first operators for three-valued logic, it is usually assumed that he rejected the principle of bivalence. However, I argue that, because bivalence is a principle, the strategy used by Peirce to defend logical principles can be used to defend bivalence. Construing logic as the study of substitutions of equivalent representations, Peirce showed that some patterns of substitution get realized in the very act of questioning them. While I recognize that we can devise non-classical notations, I (...) argue that, when we make claims about those notations, we inevitably get saddled with bivalent commitments. I present several simple inferences to show this. The argument that results from those examples is ‘pragmatic’, because the inevitability of the principle is revealed in use (not mention); and it is ‘semiotic’, because this revelation happens in the use of signs. (shrink)

This paper consists of four parts. In section 1, I shall offer a strategy to bypass a counter‐example which Gareth Evans (1975) offers against Quine’s Thesis of the Inscrutability of Reference. In section 2, I shall introduce a criterion recently pro‐duced by Crispin Wright (1997) in terms of ‘psychological simplicity’ which threatens the perverse route offered in section 1. In section 3, I shall argue that a LOT model of human cognition could motivate Wright’s criterion. In section 4, I (...) shall argue that if we instead model human cognition by a recurrent neural network, then Wright’s criterion is unmotivated. Thus I shall produce a Connectionist Defence of the Inscrutability Thesis. (shrink)

David Lewis famously dismisses genuine impossible worlds on the basis that a contradiction bound within the scope of his modifier ‘at w’ amounts to a contradiction tout court—an unacceptable consequence. Motivated by the rising demand for impossible worlds in philosophical theorising, this paper examines whether anything coherent can be said about an extension of Lewis’ theory of genuine, concrete possible worlds into genuine, concrete impossible worlds. Lewis’ reasoning reveals two ways to carve out conceptual space for the genuinely impossible. The (...) first is to abandon Lewis’ classical translation schema for negation, on the basis that it begs the question against incomplete and inconsistent worlds. I argue that, whilst this option incurs some loss in the semantics, it preserves the core spirit of Lewis’ metaphysics. The alternative is to bite the bullet, abandon classical logic and embrace true contradictions. The key challenge with this strategy is that the resulting theory seems committed to a particularly strong kind of dialethism—one that even dialethists would be reluctant to accept. I motivate such a dialethic account of genuine impossibilia using Lewis’ own methodology and defend it against triviality objections. I close with a few comments on why impossible worlds should not be reduced to set theoretic constructs out of possible worlds. (shrink)

Doxastic voluntarism maintains that we have voluntary control over our beliefs. It is generally denied by contemporary philosophers. I argue that doxastic voluntarism is true: normally, and insofar as we are rational, we are able to suspend belief and, provided we have a natural inclination to believe, we are able to rescind that suspension, and thus to choose to believe. I show that the arguments that have been offered against doxastic voluntarism fail; and that, if the denial of doxastic voluntarism (...) is part of a strategy to defeat scepticism, it is inept, because knowledge presupposes doubt. (shrink)

My main conclusion is that the prospects for a successful Free Will Defence employing Alvin Plantinga’s basic strategy are poor. The paper explains how the Defence is supposed to work, and pays special attention both to the definition of Transworld Depravity and also to whether is is possible that God actualizes a world containing moral good.