The article is a critical commentary on explication of the notion of law of nature based on the concept of counterfactual proposition. The view in question was originally proposed in the 40’s of past century by Roderick M. Chisholm and Nelson Goodman (further referred to as ‘CG criterion’) and has been popular among philosophers ever since.

In their widely cited article, Swain et al. report data that, purportedly, demonstrates instability of folk epistemic intuitions regarding the famous Truetemp case authored by Keith Lehrer. What they found is a typical example of priming, where presenting one stimulus before presenting another stimulus affects the way the latter is perceived or evaluated. In their experiment, laypersons were less likely to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp case when they first read a scenario describing a clear case of knowledge, and more (...) likely to ascribe knowledge when they first read a vignette describing a clear case of nonknowledge. We tried to replicate Swain et al. findings in three experiments: one devised in Polish, and the other two conducted in English. We found no priming effect for knowledge ratings regarding the Truetemp case – laypersons were similarly likely to attribute knowledge in all three investigated conditions. These three failed replication attempts are not decisive as to whether the priming effect in question occurs, nevertheless, the collected data puts Swain et al. conclusions about instability of epistemic intuitions in jeopardy. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that folk knowledge attribution practices regarding some epistemological thought experiments differ significantly from the consensus found in the philosophical literature. More specifically, laypersons are likely to ascribe knowledge in the so-called Authentic Evidence Gettier-style cases, while most philosophers deny knowledge in these cases. The intuitions shared by philosophers are often used as evidence in favor (or against) certain philosophical analyses of the notion of knowledge. However, the fact that these intuitions are not universal, (...) as non-philosophers do not sympathize with verdicts made by philosophers, is problematic and requires some explanation. Recently, a promising theoretical approach emerged that could be used to explain away unexpected folk knowledge attributions. According to the protagonist projection hypothesis, when subjects answer questions about some hypothetical scenario, their judgments might result from adopting the cognitive perspective of the protagonist in the given scenario. Previous experimental findings suggest protagonist projection might be responsible for problematic knowledge attributions in Gettier-style cases. This paper reports data collected in an experiment which focused on five different Authentic Evidence Gettier-style scenarios and investigated the impact of protagonist projection on folk knowledge ascriptions in such cases. The results bring some support to the protagonist projection hypothesis, but do not allow to explain away a substantial number of problematic folk knowledge attributions. (shrink)

The cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions reported by Weinberg, Nichols and Stich (2001; hereafter: WNS) laid the ground for the negative program of experimental philosophy. However, most of WNS’s findings were not corroborated in further studies. The exception here is the study concerning purported differences between Westerners and Indians in knowledge ascriptions concerning the Zebra Case, which was never properly replicated. Our study replicates the above-mentioned experiment on a considerably larger sample of Westerners (n = 211) and Indians (n = (...) 204). The analysis found a significant difference between the ethnic groups in question in the predicted direction: Indians were more likely to attribute knowledge in the Zebra Case than Westerners. In this paper, we offer an explanation of our result that takes into account the fact that replications of WNS’s other experiments did not find any cross-cultural differences. We argue that the Zebra Case is unique among the vignettes tested by WNS since it should not be regarded as a Gettier case but rather as a scenario exhibiting skeptical pressure concerning the reliability of sense-perception. We argue that skepticism towards perception as a means of gaining knowledge is a trope that is deeply rooted in Western epistemology but is very much absent from Classical Indian philosophical inquiry. This line of reasoning is based on a thorough examination of the skeptical scenarios discussed by philosophers of the Indian Nyaya tradition and their adversaries. (shrink)

According to the No-Luck-Thesis knowledge possession is incompatible with luck – one cannot know that p if the truth of one’s belief that p is a matter of luck. Recently, this widespread opinion was challenged by Peter Baumann, who argues that in certain situations agents do possess knowledge even though their beliefs are true by luck. This paper aims at providing empirical data for evaluating Baumann’s hypothesis. The experiment was designed to compare non-philosophers’ judgments concerning knowledge and luck in one (...) case that Baumann takes to be in favor of his claim and other cases where, according to him, absence of knowledge coincides with luck. The results show that the cases do not differ in a significant way between each other with respect to verdicts regarding knowledge and luck. In all cases subjects were more reluctant to judge that the ‘Gettierized’ belief is knowledge and more likely to judge that it is true by luck in comparison to a belief that is an uncontroversial instance of knowledge. However, the negative relationship between knowledge and luck ascriptions predicted by the No-Luck-Thesis was almost absent. The data raise some doubts about the No-Luck-Thesis, but the reasons for doubt are different than what Baumann expected. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the effect described in the literature as the Group Knobe Effect, which is an asymmetry in ascription of intentionality of negative and positive side-effects of an action performed by a group agent. We successfully replicate two studies originally conducted by Michael and Szigeti, who observed this effect and provide empirical evidence of the existence of two related effects—Group Epistemic and Doxastic Knobe Effects—which show analogous asymmetry with respect to knowledge and belief ascriptions. We explain how (...) the existence of the Group Knobe Effect and its epistemic and doxastic counterparts affects the philosophical debate on collective agency and intentionality and supports the intuitiveness of realism about collective agency among laypeople. We also critically assess the reasoning presented by Michael and Szigeti in favor of the realist-collectivist interpretation of their results. We argue that a thorough analysis of both their data and our new findings shows a rather wide range of differing intuitions among laypeople regarding the status of groups as agents. These results show that while some laypeople may have realist-collectivist intuitions, the contrary realist-distrubutivist intuitions are also widespread and the claim that the majority of laypeople hold collectivist intuitions regarding group agency is unjustified. (shrink)

In this paper, I report new empirical data on folk semantic intuitions concerning color adjectives in so-called context-shifting experiments. Contextualists present such experiments — that is, they describe different conversational contexts in which a given sentence is uttered — in order to argue that context can shape meaning and truth conditions to such a degree that competent speakers would give opposite truth evaluations of the same sentence in different contexts. The initial findings of Hansen and Chemla (2013) suggest that laypersons’ (...) semantic judgments are sensitive to context in the same way that is predicted by contextualists. In this paper, I focus on context-shifting experiments that involve color adjectives; also, I present experiments that are a partial replication and methodological extension of Hansen and Chemla’s study. One aim of my study was to corroborate these authors’ findings using a bigger sample (total N = 1128), but the main goal was to test the stability of results in different methodological variants of empirical adaptations of context-shifting experiments. This part of the study addresses the issues pointed out in my earlier paper (Ziółkowski 2017), where I argued that certain experimental settings (within-subjects) might bring data that is more favorable to contextualism than other settings (between-subjects). My study compares three different experimental settings: within-subjects (with randomized order of context presentation), between-subjects (where participants evaluating different contexts aredistinct groups), and “contrastive design” (where both contexts are presented side by side on the same screen). My results are highly consistent across the methodological variants I employed, but while they show some of the effects expected by contextualists, it is disputable whether they bring strong support to contextualism with respect to color adjectives. (shrink)

Recent experimental work has shown that the truth-value judgments of color predications, i.e. utterances of the form “the leaves on my tree are green” or “these walls are brown,” are influenced by slight changes in the context of utterance (Hansen and Chemla 2013, Ziółkowski, 2021). Most explanations of this phenomenon focus on the semantics of color adjectives. However, it is not clear if these explanations do justice to the nuances of the empirical data on context-sensitivity of color predications (Ziółkowski, 2021). (...) In contrast to the adjectival explanations, Agustin Vicente (2015) has recently proposed that the context-sensitivity of color predications can be explained by invoking the polysemy of the noun. In this paper, we present the results of three studies designed to empirically test this hypothesis: a traditional survey experiment (Study 1), an exploratory correlational study inspired by the semantic integration paradigm (Study 2a), and a follow-up experiment (Study 2b) that was designed to mitigate possible shortcomings of Study 2a. The results of our studies present preliminary evidence against Vicente’s theory. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to the debate concerning the kind of philosophical conclusions that can (or cannot) be derived from systematic empirical studies of intuitions about the reference of proper names. The focus of the paper is the famous study by Machery et al. (2004) in which intercultural differences in semantic intuitions between American and Chinese participants were observed. Machery et al. used the obtained results to question the usefulness of intuitions in philosophical discussions concerning the reference of proper (...) names. In this paper, I present the results of my own philosophical-experimental studies aimed at analyzing methods used in research dedicated to the problem of reference rather than semantic intuitions as such. These results indicate a significant instability of responses regarding the reference of proper names and their susceptibility to the impact of philosophically insignificant factors. Based on the collected data, I argue that methods used in experimental studies concerning the reference of proper names conducted to date do not guarantee the assessment of intuitions of the desired kind. (shrink)

According to contextualism, vast majority of natural-language expressions are context-sensitive. When testing whether this claim is reflected in Folk intuitions, some interesting methodological questions were raised such as: which experimental design is more appropriate for testing contextualism – the within- or the between-subject design? The main thesis of this paper is that the between-subject design should be preferred. The first experiment aims at assessing the difference between the results obtained for within-subjects measurements (where all participants assess all contexts) and between-subject (...) measurements (where respondents evaluating different contexts are distinct groups). It is shown that the within-subject design provides data that seems to support contextualism. However, I present an alternative, invariantist interpretation of these results, therefore showing that the within-subject design does not allow to empirically distinguish between contextualism and invariantism. The second experiment further elaborates the issue of how perceiving the contrast between contexts can affect subjects’ judgments – I show that certain kinds of contexts may elicit opposite intuitions when contrasted with different contexts. (shrink)

In this paper, we report the results of three high-powered replication studies in experimental philosophy, which bear on an alleged instability of folk philosophical intuitions: the purported susceptibility of epistemic intuitions about the Truetemp case (Lehrer, Theory of knowledge. Westview Press, Boulder, 1990) to order effects. Evidence for this susceptibility was first reported by Swain et al. (Philos Phenomenol Res 76(1):138–155, 2008); further evidence was then found in two studies by Wright (Cognition 115(3):491–503, 2010) and Weinberg et al. (Monist 95(2):200–222, (...) 2012). These empirical results have been quite influential in the recent metaphilosophical debate about the method of cases. However, none of Swain et al.’s ( 2008 ) predictions concerning order effects with Truetemp cases could be consistently and robustly replicated in our three experiments, and it is thus at best unclear whether Truetemp intuitions are in fact unstable. So, if proponents of the negative program in experimental philosophy still want to use order effects to challenge the reliability of philosophical case judgments, they would be well advised to look elsewhere instead. In any case, given the more robust empirical evidence that we present in this paper, the metaphilosophical flurry created by Swain et al. ( 2008 ) and Wright’s ( 2010 ) influential studies looks like mere alarmism in hindsight. (shrink)

Tekst stanowi głos w dyskusji dotyczącej filozoficznych wniosków, jakie można wysnuć z systematycznych badań empirycznych nad intuicjami w kwestii odniesienia nazw własnych. Artykuł nawiązuje do słynnych badań Machery’ego i współpracowników, w których zaobserwowali oni różnice międzykulturowe w intuicjach semantycznych Amerykanów i Chińczyków. Autorzy badań używają tego rezultatu, by podać w wątpliwość użyteczność intuicji w sporach filozoficznych dotyczących zagadnienia odniesienia nazw własnych. W artykule przedstawiam wyniki własnych badań filozoficzno-eksperymentalnych, które mają na celu nie tyle badanie intuicji semantycznych, ile analizę metod wykorzystywanych (...) do tego w dotychczasowych studiach poświęconych tej tematyce. Rezultaty moich badań wskazują na znaczącą niestabilność werdyktów dotyczących kwestii odniesienia nazw własnych i podatność tych werdyktów na czynniki nieistotne z filozoficznego punktu widzenia. Bazując na zebranych danych, twierdzę, że metody stosowane w dotychczasowych badaniach filozoficzno-eksperymentalnych poświęconych tematyce odniesienia nazw własnych nie gwarantują pomiaru intuicji o pożądanym charakterze. (shrink)

Aristotle's modal syllogistic has been described as "incoherent," "a failure," "a realm of darkness." Even the gentler critics claim that it is inconsistent. I offer an interpretation according to which validity in the modal syllogistic is always obtained by substituting modal terms in the nonmodal syllogistic, and restricting the principles of modal conversion. In this paper I discuss the apodeictic syllogistic, showing that the restrictions I propose are powerful enough to do all the work Aristotle requires and, in fact, are (...) supported by a close analysis of Aristotle's text. The upshot of this is that there is for Aristotle no separate modal syllogistic. (shrink)

This is a brief note that looks at the problem presented by the traditional rendering of the modal syllogism Disamis XLL. In two recent articles, I argue that we should not attribute Disamis XLL to Aristotle. The purpose of this note is to provide textual support for my claim.

It is now well-established that physical activity has positive effects on both physical and mental health. However, the influence of organized physical activity on school adaptive behavior of adolescents with disabilities and/or behavioral disorders remains unclear. School behavior adaptation involves the ability to learn, conform to school norms and manage school activities without major behavior conflicts. A cross-sectional study was conducted to test the differences between organized physical activity and non-organized physical activity in an after school program. Eighty Romanian adolescents (...) were recruited and allocated to three groups: with disabilities [Ds;N= 17,Mage= 14.55 years, 12 males and 5 females], with conduct disorders [CDs,N= 21,Mage= 14.52 years 16 males and 5 females], and participants who had not shown signs of conduct disorders or disabilities [as a control group;N= 42,Mage= 14.2 years 20 males and 22 females]. Personality traits, school behavior, and sensorimotor coordination were assessed by using the Eysenck personality questionnaire—junior scale, school in-adaptability questionnaire scale, and Vienna Test System Sport respectively. Multivariate analysis of variance MANOVA and discriminant analysis were used to examine differences between the psychological and sensorimotor coordination outcomes across three groups and three types of physical activity context: organized physical activity, non-organized physical activity, and no physical activity. The findings indicate that not participating in an organized physical activity program results in a reduced level of physical mobility and consequently is associated with maladaptive social and psychological outcomes. Thus, we argued that attending in an organized physical activity program is more beneficial for participants with disabilities and/or behavior disorders, due to an increase in the probability of school integration and development of their motor skills. Clearly more research is needed in order to investigate these effects in neurophysiological levels. (shrink)

Many observers claim that business has become a powerful force in medicine and that the future of health care cannot escape that reality, even though some scholars lament it. The U.S. recently experienced the most devastating recession since the Great Depression. As health care costs rise, we face additional pressure to rein in health care spending. We also have important new legislation that could well mark a significant shift in how health care is provided and who has access to care, (...) namely the Affordable Care Act. These changes underscore the need to bring new thinking to the conversation about health care and to move beyond conceptual and practical obstacles that inhibit our progress.In this paper we do not to claim to have solutions. Rather, our aim is to try to identify some obstacles to fostering a better conversation about the future of health care and to envisioning a better health care system. (shrink)

The dialogue about the future of health care in the US has been impeded by flawed conceptions about medicine and business. The present paper re-examines some of the underlying assumptions about both medicine and business, and uses more nuanced readings of both terms to frame debates about the ACA and the emerging health care environment.

:Recent neuroimaging research on disorders of consciousness provides direct evidence of covert consciousness otherwise not detected clinically in a subset of severely brain-injured patients. These findings have motivated strategic development of binary communication paradigms, from which researchers interpret voluntary modulations in brain activity to glean information about patients’ residual cognitive functions and emotions. The discovery of such responsiveness raises ethical and legal issues concerning the exercise of autonomy and capacity for decisionmaking on matters such as healthcare, involvement in research, and (...) end of life. These advances have generated demands for access to the technology against a complex background of continued scientific advancement, questions about just allocation of healthcare resources, and unresolved legal issues. Interviews with professionals whose work is relevant to patients with disorders of consciousness reveal priorities concerning further basic research, legal and policy issues, and clinical considerations. (shrink)

This edited collection presents the latest cutting-edge research in the philosophy and cognitive science of temporal illusions. Illusion and error have long been important points of entry for both philosophical and psychological approaches to understanding the mind. Temporal illusions, specifically, concern a fundamental feature of lived experience, temporality, and its relation to a fundamental feature of the world, time, thus providing invaluable insight into investigations of the mind and its relationship with the world. The existence of temporal illusions crucially challenges (...) the naïve assumption that we can simply infer the temporal nature of the world from experience. This anthology gathers eighteen original papers from current leading researchers in this subject, covering four broad and interdisciplinary topics: illusions of temporal passage, illusions and duration, illusions of temporal order and simultaneity, and the relationship between temporal illusions and the cognitive representation of time. (shrink)

Bioethics has received important criticisms for its perceived privileging of biomedical authority with longstanding calls for greater recognition of the social, political, economic, historical, and...

Ciencia y lógica de mundos posibles indaga en un aspecto negativo de la visión positivista de la historia del pensamiento. Según esta interpretación, determinante dentro del pensamiento contemporáneo, existe una oposición irredimible entre la metodología del conocimiento científico y la metafísica. El estudio de los supuestos ontológicos de la epistemología aristotélica y de la nueva metodología galileana evidencia, sin embargo, que históricamente la ciencia moderna no nace en oposición a la metafísica, sino que surge a partir de una concepción metafísica (...) determinada. Resulta imposible comprender a fondo el fenómeno de la revolución galileana sin tener en cuenta los aportes lógicos de pensadores medievales que tuvieron una actitud crítica frente a las implicaciones ontológicas de la epistemología aristotélica. Con el advenimiento del idealismo trascendental - a diferencia de Descartes, Leibniz o Newton - la filosofía se separa de la ciencia experimental. Esto se debe a que con Kant la filosofía se aleja de la postura filosófica de los origenes de la ciencia moderna, y retorna a una concepción de la naturaleza en cierto modo similar a la aristotélica. Así mismo, la interpretación propuesta en el manifiesto del Círculo de Viena con respecto a algunas de las revoluciones científicas de los siglos XIX y XX, supone que la ciencia moderna se ha desarrollado en la dirección señalada por la concepción metafísica del mundo que se encuentra en el origen de la revolución galileana. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has reflected a growing interest in issues about the value of knowledge and the values informing epistemic appraisal. Is knowledge more valuable that merely true belief or even justified true belief? Is truth the central value informing epistemic appraisal or do other values enter the picture? Epistemic Value is a collection of previously unpublished articles on such issues by leading philosophers in the field. It will stimulate discussion of the nature of knowledge and of directions that might be (...) taken by the theory of knowledge. The contributors are Jason Baehr, Michael Brady, Berit Brogaard, Michael DePaul, Pascal Engel, Catherine Elgin, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Stephen Grimm, Ward Jones, Martin Kusch, Jonathan Kvanvig, Michael Lynch, Erik Olsson, Wayne Riggs and Matthew Weiner. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has reflected a growing interest in issues about the value of knowledge and the values informing epistemic appraisal. Is knowledge more valuable that merely true belief or even justified true belief? Is truth the central value informing epistemic appraisal or do other values enter the picture? Epistemic Value is a collection of previously unpublished articles on such issues by leading philosophers in the field. It will stimulate discussion of the nature of knowledge and of directions that might be (...) taken by the theory of knowledge. The contributors are Jason Baehr, Michael Brady, Berit Brogaard, Michael DePaul, Pascal Engel, Catherine Elgin, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Stephen Grimm, Ward Jones, Martin Kusch, Jonathan Kvanvig, Michael Lynch, Erik Olsson, Wayne Riggs and Matthew Weiner. (shrink)

Changes in the understanding of the relationship between business and society have led to increased interest in and discussion of the notion of corporate social responsibility.This paper offers an empirical analysis of the perceptions of top executives in the West Midlands, U.K., and in Delhi, District Ghaziabad, India, of the notion of corporate social responsibility. Organisational changes and involvement in social action programmes, and problems of implementing and monitoring Social Responsibility in two cultures, India and Britain, were explored.

A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time is a concise and accessible survey of the history of philosophical and scientific developments in understanding time and our experience of time. It discusses prominent ideas about the nature of time, plus many subsidiary puzzles about time, from the classical period through the present.

Aesthetics is thought of as not only a theory of art or beauty, but also includes sensibility, experience, judgment, and relationships. This paper is a study of Bernard Stiegler’s notion of Aesthetic War (stasis) and symbolic misery. Symbolic violence is ensued through a loss of individuation and participation in the creation of symbols. As a struggle between market values against spirit values human life and consciousness within neoliberal hyperindustrial society has become calculable, which prevents people from creating affective and meaningful (...) attachments to symbols in relation to our retentional apparatuses, technology and memory. Such tension can be thought of as a dissonance between overlapping domains of social life, private and public. New Media is a reflection of aesthetic dissonance, an experience such as being bored and entertained at the same time, between antagonistic experiences, values, and behavior. Moreover, new media is at once a medium of customizing aesthetic experience individually as well as the threat and practice of prioritizing calculability and modeling of consumer behavior in favor of capitalistic effectiveness, which results in the simultaneous categorization of an individual as a data point, putting those who do not fit an algorithm’s premises at a disadvantage. (shrink)

This dictionary, the first dedicated to the work of Gilles Deleuze, offers an in-depth and lucid introduction to one of the most influential figures in continental philosophy. It defines and contextualizes more than 150 terms relating to Deleuze's philosophy, including "becoming," "body without organs," "deterritorialization," "difference," "repetition," and "rhizome." The entries also explore Deleuze's intellectual influences and the ways in which his ideas have shaped philosophy, feminism, cinema studies, postcolonial theory, geography, and cultural studies. More than just defining and describing (...) specific terms, the dictionary elaborates on Deleuze's ideas to reveal the varied applications of his philosophy. The contributors, who include some of the most prominent Deleuze scholars, bring their expert knowledge and critical opinion to bear on the entries. Their work provides a range of theoretical, historical, and aesthetic contexts for anyone interested in Deleuzian thought. Contributors include: Ronald Bogue, University of Georgia; Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht University; Claire Colebrook, University of Edinburgh; Tom Conley, Harvard University; Eugene Holland, Ohio State University; Tamsin Lorraine, Swarthmore College; Paul Patton, University of New South Wales; Kenneth Surin, Duke University; Alberto Toscano, Goldsmiths College. (shrink)

John Scottus Eriugena (d. ca. 877) is regarded as the most important philosopher and theologian in the Latin West from the death of Boethius until the thirteenth century. He incorporated his understanding of Latin sources, Ambrose, Augustine, Boethius and Greek sources, including the Cappadocian Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus Confessor, into a metaphysics structured on Aristotle's Categories, from which he developed Christian Neoplatonist theology that continues to stimulate 21st-century theologians. This collection of essays provides an overview of the latest scholarship on (...) various aspects of Eriugena's thought and writings, including his Irish background, his use of Greek theologians, his Scripture hermeneutics, his understanding of Aristotelian logic, Christology, and the impact he had on contemporary and later theological traditions. Contributors: David Albertson, Joel Barstad, John Contreni, Christophe Erismann, John Gavin, Adrian Guiu, Michael Harrington, Catherine Kavanagh, A. Kijewska, Stephen Lahey, Elena Lloyd-Sidle, Bernard McGinn, Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi, Dermot Moran, Giulio D'Onofrio, Willemien Otten, and Alfred Siewers. (shrink)