A central preoccupation of philosophy in the twentieth century was to determine constitutive conditions under which accurate (objective) empirical representation of the macrophysical environment is possible. A view that dominated attitudes on this project maintained that an individual cannot empirically represent a physical subject matter as having specific physical characteristics unless the individual can represent some constitutive conditions under which such representation is possible. The version of this view that dominated the century's second half maintained that objective empirical representation of (...) the physical environment requires the individual to be able to supplement this representation with representation of general constitutive features of objectivity. This essay criticizes instances of this version in P. F. Strawson and Quine. It maintains that all versions of the position postulate conditions on objective empirical representation that are more intellectual than are warranted. Such views leave it doubtful that animals and human infants perceptually represent elements in the physical environment. By appeal to common sense and to empirical perceptual psychology, this essay argues that unaided perception yields objective representation of the macrophysical environment. It does so in prelinguistic animals, even in animals that almost surely lack propositional attitudes. The essay concludes with explications of nondeflationary conceptions of representation and perception. It distinguishes nonperceptual sensing from perceptual representation and explicates perceptual representation as a type of objective sensory representation. Objectivity is marked by perceptual constancies. Representation is marked by a nontrivial role for veridicality conditions in explanations of the relevant states. (shrink)

Lon Fuller, one of the great American jurists of this century, is often remembered only for his stand on the morality of law in the Fuller-Hart debate. Rediscovering Fuller considers the full range of Fuller's writings, from his early engagement with legal fictions and his critique of legal positivism to his later work on implicit law and the art of institutional design. Contributors from the fields of both civil law and common law argue that Fuller's insights are highly relevant to (...) contemporary concerns. The book contains essays by K. Winston, D. Dyzenhaus, P. Cliteur, F. Schauer ("Beyond the Fuller-Hart Debate"), P. Westerman, W. van der Burg, D. Luban ("Moralities of Law"), G. Postema, P. Teachout ("Implicit Law"), R. Macdonald, W. Witteveen, J. Allison, M. Hertogh, K. Soltan ("The Art of Institutional Design"), J. Allan, F. Mootz, J. Vining ("Law's Dialogue"), and a preface by Ph. Selznick. "At some point in the future, when we become more open to the moral relevance of social inquiry, more empirical in our study of philosophical issues, more capable of uniting moral and social theory, Lon Fuller's work will stand as a landmark. This volume will help show the way." —Ph. Selznick. (shrink)

Keith Donnellan of UCLA is one of the founding fathers of contemporary philosophy of language, along with David Kaplan and Saul Kripke. Donnellan was and is an extremely creative thinker whose insights reached into metaphysics, action theory, the history of philosophy, and of course the philosophy of mind and language. This volume collects the best critical essays on Donnellan's forty-year body of work. The pieces by such noted philosophers as Tyler Burge, David Kaplan, and John Perry, discuss Donnellan's various insights (...) particularly offering new readings of his views on language and mind. (shrink)

We maximally extend the quantum‐mechanical results of Muller and Saunders ( 2008 ) establishing the ‘weak discernibility’ of an arbitrary number of similar fermions in finite‐dimensional Hilbert spaces. This confutes the currently dominant view that ( A ) the quantum‐mechanical description of similar particles conflicts with Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII); and that ( B ) the only way to save PII is by adopting some heavy metaphysical notion such as Scotusian haecceitas or Adamsian primitive thisness. We (...) take sides with Muller and Saunders ( 2008 ) against this currently dominant view, which has been expounded and defended by many. *Received July 2008; revised May 2009. †To contact the authors, please write to: F. A. Muller, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burg. Oudlaan 50, H5–16, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected] , and Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, IGG–3.08, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected] . M. P. Seevinck, Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, IGG–3.08, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Externalist theories of thought content are sometimes arrived at by reflection upon Twin Earth thought experiments of the sort made famous by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge. The conclusion many philosophers draw from these thought experiments is that certain types of thought contents are individuated, in part, by environmental or socioenvironmental factors. This doctrine of "Twin Earth content-externalism" implies that it is possible for thinkers that are alike in all intrinsic physical respects to differ in the contents of their thoughts (...) by virtue of differences in their environments. (shrink)

In the 1970s, R.D. MacElroy coined the term ‘extremophile’ to describe microorganisms that thrive under extreme conditions (MacElroy 1974). This hybrid word transliterates to ‘love of extremes’ and has been studied as a straightforward concept for the past 40 years. In this paper, we discuss several ways the term has been understood in the scientific literature, each of which has different consequences for the distribution and importance of extremophiles. They are, briefly, Human-Centric, at the Edge of life’s habitation of Morphospace, (...) by appeal to Statistical Rarity, described by Objective Limits, and at the Limits of Impossibility for metabolic processes. Importantly, these concepts have co-existed, unacknowledged and conflated, for decades. Confusion and equivocation threaten to follow from the wildly varied inclusion or exclusion of organisms as extremophiles depending on the concept used. Under some conceptions, entire kinds of extremophiles become meaningless. Since our understanding of how life works is shaped by what we take to be its extremes, clarifying extremophily is key for many large-scale projects in biology, ecology, biotechnology and astrobiology. In what follows, we proceed as if a noncontroversial account of life is possible and that it is possible to find complex chemistry in the Universe that is similar enough to Life on Earth such that both may be considered instances of ‘life’ (but see Mariscal & Doolittle 2018). We raise, but do not address, the questions of whether the distribution of Life on Earth is representative of what we may find elsewhere in the Universe, whether the same kinds of extremophiles would exist given a replay of the tape of life. Additionally, each of these concepts assumes life based on some sort of biochemistry in this universe, effectively setting aside claims made by some artificial life proponents that their digital organisms are genuine examples of life (Langton 1989, Ray 1995). On the distinction between extremophilic and extremotolerant, we note that all accounts accept the latter as a broader category than the former, since ‘phily’ means love and tolerance is a prerequisite for love under any conception. Indeed, there will be many extremely impoverished environments where tolerance is the only option and thriving is precluded, e.g. Bacillus marismortui was extracted and grown from 250-million-year-old salt crystals in the Permian Salado Formation in an inactive yet persistent state (Vreeland et al., 2000). We also note that extremophily, as a functional category, is potentially applicable at many levels of the biological hierarchy. Extremophily at one level does not necessarily extend to higher and lower levels. For instance, a microorganism in isolation might be quite intolerant to certain environmental conditions yet flourish when subjected to the same conditions as a community or natural biofilm. Alternatively, a protein molecule might be quite stable or active under certain conditions even if the optimal environment for the organism containing it is far more mesophilic. There is an industry of artificially selecting organisms and proteins to adapt to extreme environments (see van den Burg & Eijsink 2002), providing some justification to consider ‘functioning at extremes’ as a worthwhile category of investigation. Finally, we also note certain physico-chemical ranges are rarely considered with respect to extremophily – timespan, size, nutrient availability (Hoehler & Jørgensen 2013), etc. – as well as some biological parameters – abundance, isolation, competition, etc. Perhaps scientific interest must also come into play as to the reason these criteria are not considered relevant. We return to this issue later. In the next section, we give five definitions of extremophily, show their benefits, drawbacks, and unintended yet unavoidable consequences. These arguments are summarized in Table 1 and represented visually in Figures 1 and 2. Given research on polyextremophiles, it seems Figure 2 is a more plausible representation of the state of current knowledge than Figure 1 (Harrison et al. 2013). Life is patchily distributed across various dimensions, which may reflect its contingent history, poor sampling, or (perhaps) fundamental limits. Figure 3 shows the conceptual flowchart for all of these views. In the following section, we take a step back to ask whether we should choose between these definitions and how such a judgment could be made. We argue for a limited pluralism, in which some, but not all, of the concepts are acceptable relative to certain practical and theoretical aims. (shrink)

Tyler Burge, Christopher Peacocke; Our Entitlement to Self-Knowledge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 117–158, h.

Tyler Burge presents an original study of the most primitive ways in which individuals represent the physical world. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, he gives an account of constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, and thus aims to locate origins of representational mind.

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia , Woodin’s Ω-Logic.

Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands — in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente — have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This program enables (...) students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student’s as well as the teacher’s creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program. (shrink)

The paper develops a conception of epistemic warrant as applied to perceptual belief, called "entitlement", that does not require the warranted individual to be capable of understanding the warrant. The conception is situated within an account of animal perception and unsophisticated perceptual belief. It characterizes entitlement as fulfillment of an epistemic norm that is apriori associated with a certain representational function that can be known apriori to be a function of perception. The paper connects anti-individualism, a thesis about the nature (...) of mental states, and perceptual entitlement. It presents an argument that explains the objectivity and validity of perceptual entitlement partly in terms of the nature of perceptual states–hence the nature of perceptual beliefs, which are constitutively associated with perceptual states. The paper discusses ways that an individual can be entitled to perceptual belief through its connection to perception, and ways that entitlement to perceptual belief can be undermined. (shrink)

In Perception: First Form of Mind, Tyler Burge develops an understanding of the most primitive type of representational mind: perception. Focusing on its form, function, and underlying capacities, as indicated in the sciences of perception, Burge provides an account of the representational content and formal representational structure of perceptual states, and develops a formal semantics for them. The account is elaborated by an explanation of how the representational form is embedded in an iconic format. These structures are then situated in (...) current theoretical accounts of the processing of perceptual representations, with an emphasis on the formation of perceptual categorizations. An exploration of the relationship between perception and other primitive capacities-conation, attention, memory, anticipation, affect, learning, and imagining-clarifies the distinction between perceiving, with its associated capacities, and thinking, with its associated capacities. Drawing on a broad range of historical and contemporary research, rather than relying on introspection or ordinary talk about perception, Perception: First Form of Mind is a scientifically rigorous and agenda-setting work in the philosophy of perception and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Tyler Burge, Christopher Peacocke; Our Entitlement to Self-Knowledge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 91–116, ht.

This paper starts from the presupposition that moral codes often do not suffice to make agents understand their moral responsibility. We will illustrate this statement with a concrete example of engineers who design a truck’s trailer and who do not think traffic safety is part of their responsibility. This opinion clashes with a common supposition that designers in fact should do all that is in their power to ensure safety in traffic. In our opinion this shows the need for a (...) moral philosophy that helps engineers to interpret their responsibility and think more critically about it. For this purpose we will explore the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, which is particularly interesting because he locates the beginning of moral thinking in the daily practice of a profession. This is consistent with the history of moral codes, for codes are also the product of moral reflection by professionals. We will use MacIntyre’s philosophy to (1) explain what is wrong with the designers’ understanding of their responsibility and (2) show a possible way to bring their reflection to a more self-critical level. We will also inspect MacIntyre’s proposal critically. (shrink)

This essay is a long one. It is not meant to be read in a single sitting. Its structure is as follows. In section I, I explicate perceptual anti-individualism. Section II centers on the two aspects of the representational content of perceptual states. Sections III and IV concern the nature of the empirical psychology of vision, and its bearing on the individuation of perceptual states. Section V shows how what is known from empirical psychology undermines disjunctivism and hence certain further (...) views that entail it, including naive realism. In Section VI, I raise a further point against disjunctivism. Section VII indicates how general reflection on perceptual perspective and epistemic ability supports the constraints from empirical psychology. It also explains how reflection on veridicality conditions, psychological explanation, and cognitive ability conspire to force recognition of the two kinds of representation mentioned in the preceding paragraph. In the Appendix, I criticize attempts to support disjunctivism. (shrink)

Foundations of Mind collects the essays which established Tyler Burge as a leading philosopher of mind.

The paper develops a conception of epistemic warrant as applied to perceptual belief, called “entitlement”, that does not require the warranted individual to be capable of understanding the warrant. The conception is situated within an account of animal perception and unsophisticated perceptual belief. It characterizes entitlement as fulfillment of an epistemic norm that is apriori associated with a certain representational function that can be known apriori to be a function of perception. The paper connects anti‐individualism, a thesis about the nature (...) of mental states, and perceptual entitlement. It presents an argument that explains the objectivity and validity of perceptual entitlement partly in terms of the nature of perceptual states–hence the nature of perceptual beliefs, which are constitutively associated with perceptual states. The paper discusses ways that an individual can be entitled to perceptual belief through its connection to perception, and ways that entitlement to perceptual belief can be undermined. (shrink)

Tyler Burge presents a collection of his seminal essays on Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), who has a strong claim to be seen as the founder of modern analytic philosophy, and whose work remains at the centre of philosophical debate today. Truth, Thought, Reason gathers some of Burge's most influential work from the last twenty-five years, and also features important new material, including a substantial introduction and postscripts to four of the ten papers. It will be an essential resource for any historian (...) of modern philosophy, and for anyone working on philosophy of language, epistemology, or philosophical logic. (shrink)