Time is a fundamental domain of experience. In this paper we ask whether aspects of language and culture affect how people think about this domain. Specifically, we consider whether English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently. We review all of the available evidence both for and against this hypothesis, and report new data that further support and refine it. The results demonstrate that English and Mandarin speakers do think about time differently. As predicted by patterns in language, Mandarin speakers (...) are more likely than English speakers to think about time vertically (with earlier time-points above and later time-points below). (shrink)

In this paper we examine how English and Mandarin speakers think about time, and we test how the patterns of thinking in the two groups relate to patterns in linguistic and cultural experience. In Mandarin, vertical spatial metaphors are used more frequently to talk about time than they are in English; English relies primarily on horizontal terms. We present results from two tasks comparing English and Mandarin speakers’ temporal reasoning. The tasks measure how people spatialize time in three-dimensional space, including (...) the sagittal (front/back), transverse (left/right), and vertical (up/down) axes. Results of Experiment 1 show that people automatically create spatial representations in the course of temporal reasoning, and these implicit spatializations differ in accordance with patterns in language, even in a non-linguistic task. Both groups showed evidence of a left-to-right representation of time, in accordance with writing direction, but only Mandarin speakers showed a vertical top-to-bottom pattern for time (congruent with vertical spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin). Results of Experiment 2 confirm and extend these findings, showing that bilinguals’ representations of time depend on both long-term and proximal aspects of language experience. Participants who were more proficient in Mandarin were more likely to arrange time vertically (an effect of previous language experience). Further, bilinguals were more likely to arrange time vertically when they were tested in Mandarin than when they were tested in English (an effect of immediate linguistic context). (shrink)

Revisionism about moral responsibility is the view that we would do well to distinguish between what we think about moral responsibility and what we ought to think about it, that the former is in some important sense implausible and conflicts with the latter, and so we should revise our concept accordingly. In this paper, I assess two related problems for revisionism and claim that focus on the first of these problems has thus far allowed the second to go largely unnoticed. (...) Here I develop this new objection to revisionism and argue that, while revisionists can successfully respond to the reference-anchoring problem, the normativity-anchoring problem poses a serious objection to the view. In particular, the methodological commitments used to motivate revisionism make it uniquely difficult for revisionists to justify our continued participation in the practice of moral praising and blaming. I conclude by briefly addressing a potential objection based on a common charge against revisionism: that there is no real difference between the view and its conventional competitors and thus the normativity-anchoring problem is of little interest in the broader dialectic. I argue that both of these claims are false. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that new attempts to undermine the principle of alternative possibilities via appeal to time travel fail. My argument targets a version of a Frankfurt-style counterexample to the principle recently developed by Spencer. I argue that in avoiding one prominent objection to standard Frankfurt-style counterexamples Spencer’s time travel case runs afoul of another. Furthermore, the very feature of the case which makes it initially appealing also makes it impossible to revise the case such that it can (...) avoid this further objection. Thus Spencer’s time travel case and cases like it provide no dialectical advantages over other Frankfurt-style cases. I conclude that this strategy for refining such cases should be abandoned. (shrink)

The contemporary philosophical debate on free will and moral responsibility is rife with appeal to a variety of allegedly intuitive cases and principles. As a result, some have argued that many strands of this debate end in “dialectical stalemates,” boiling down to bedrock, seemingly intractable disagreements about intuition . Here I attempt to carve out a middle ground between conventional reliance on appeal to intuition and intuitional skepticism in regards to the philosophical discussion of moral responsibility in particular. The main (...) goal of this paper is to propose and defend a new methodological assumption that I argue responsibility theorists can and should accept, one that serves to preserve a general skepticism about the proper role of intuition in our responsibility theorizing while marking a particular class of our responsibility judgments as having a privileged epistemic status such that they can play a role in constraining our responsibility theorizing. (shrink)

:In this essay I identify two burdens for eliminativist accounts of moral responsibility. I first examine an underappreciated logical gap between two features of eliminativism, the gap between descriptive skepticism and full-blown prescriptive eliminativism. Using Ishtiyaque Haji’s luck-based skepticism as an instructive example, I argue that in order to move successfully from descriptive skepticism to prescriptive eliminativism one must first provide a comparative defense of the conflicting principles that motivate the former. In other words, one must fix the skeptical spotlight. (...) I then present and assess a second burden for eliminativists, they must meet what I call the motivational challenge. In order to meet this second burden, eliminativists must motivate their prescriptive account over preservationist competitors, and I assess two potential strategies for doing so. The first is to offer arguments that appeal to the gains and losses of abandoning our responsibility-related attitudes and practices, and the second is to offer direct arguments that we cannot retain these attitudes and practices. I conclude that the adequacy of either strategy remains at best an open question, but that making these burdens explicit might better position eliminativists to meet their competitors on more equal ground. (shrink)

One of the projects Shaun Nichols takes up in Bound is to provide a folk psychological diagnosis of the problem of free will. As part of this diagnosis, Nichols suggests that the dispute between eliminativists and preservationists depends to some extent on assumptions about the way ‘free will’ refers. In light of this, he argues that we might have good reason to accept a discretionary view of free will. Here, I will focus on teasing out some of the more fine-grained (...) features of the discretionary view Nichols proposes. In so doing I will challenge the idea that there is a tenable strategy for consistently preserving two main features of the view: that eliminativists and preservationists can both speak truly, and that the apparent disagreement between them can be diffused by appealing to the role that different practical interests play in the context of utterance. I will conclude with some suggestive remarks on how the spirit of the discretionary view Nichols offers might still be preserved despite the challenge I raise, and why there are good reasons to pursue this kind of view further. (shrink)

This book makes a case for the permissibility of reactive blame – the angry, harmful variety. Blame is a thorny philosophical problem, as it is notoriously difficult to specify the conditions under which an agent is deserving of blame, is deserving of blame in the basic sense, and furthermore why this is so. Kelly McCormick argues that sharpening the focus to reactive, angry blame can both show us how best to characterize the problem itself, and suggest a possible (...) solution to it, because even reactive blame is both valuable and deserved in the basic sense. Finally, McCormick shows how, despite the many facets of the dark side of blame, adopting an explicitly victim-centered approach highlights a powerful argument from empathy for retaining reactive blame and its attendant attitudes and practices. (shrink)

How does the term ‘free will’ refer? This question seems to lie at the center of debates about whether the attitudes and practices that depend on our successful attributions of basic-desert-entailing moral responsibility ought to be preserved or eliminated. In this paper I tackle questions about the way that different reference-fixing conventions might inform disagreement between preservationists and eliminativists about free will and moral responsibility, and argue that even recent elimination-friendly work on reference fails to offer much real support for (...) eliminativism. In fact, making explicit the role that different motivating concerns play in rendering certain reference-fixing conventions operative for eliminativists and preservationists suggests at least one powerful reference-based argument in favor of preservationism. (shrink)

Traditional work on moral responsibility has for quite some time focused on the compatibility question: is moral responsibility compatible with determinism ? But there is a second question that has also played a central role, though perhaps less explicitly. Call this second question the justificatory question:Can our reactive attitudes, judgments about moral responsibility, and the attendant practice of moral praising and blaming be rationally maintained and justified?It is not uncommon to take providing an answer to the compatibility question to be (...) a necessary step in providing an answer to the justificatory question. One obvious way to respond to the justificatory question is to first assess whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism and then assess the consequences for our attendant attitudes and practices. Compatibilists, for example, provide an affirmative answer to the compatibility question, argue that we can, at least sometimes, be morally res .. (shrink)

In Luck’s Mischief, Ishtiyaque Haji offers a dual skeptical argument about obligation and moral responsibility, one that avoids direct appeal to determinism and indeterminism and instead argues tha...

This is a reply to discussions by Robert Kane, Kelly McCormick, and Manuel Vargas of Shaun Nichols, Bound: Essays on Free Will and Responsibility.

Looking back on it, it seems almost incredible that so many equally educated, equally sincere compatriots and contemporaries, all drawing from the same limited stock of evidence, should have reached so many totally different conclusions---and always with complete certainty.

Suppose that one is at least a minimal realist about a given domain, in that one thinks that that domain contains truths that are not in any interesting sense of our own making. Given such an understanding, what can be said for and against the method of reflective equilibrium as a procedure for investigating the domain? One fact that lends this question some interest is that many philosophers do combine commitments to minimal realism and a reflective equilibrium methodology. Here, for (...) example, is David Lewis on philosophy: Our “intuitions” are simply opinions: our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular; some general; some are more firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions, and a reasonable goal for a philosopher is to bring them into equilibrium. Our common task it to find out what equilibria there are that can withstand examination, but it remains for each of us to come to rest at one or another of them… Once the menu of well-worked out theories is before us, philosophy is a matter of opinion. Is that to say that there is no truth to be had? Or that the truth is of our own making, and different ones of us can make it differently? Not at all! If you say flatly that there is no god, and I say that there are countless gods but none of them are our worldmates, then it may be that neither of us is making any mistake of method. We may each be bringing our opinions to equilibrium in the most careful possible way, taking account of all the arguments, distinctions, and counterexamples. But one of us, at least, is making a mistake of fact. Which one is wrong depends on what there is (1983: x-xi). In addition to philosophy in general, the method of reflective equilibrium has also been endorsed as the appropriate procedure for investigating various other subject.. (shrink)

Transitions: introduction -- Ethics and the aesthetic -- Ethics and the metaphysical -- Ethics and interpretation -- Ethical friendships. Conclusion.

From an early age, humans exhibit a tendency to identify, adopt, and enforce the norms of their local communities. Norms are the social rules that mark out what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden in different situations for various community members. These rules are informal in the sense that although they are sometimes represented in formal laws, such as the rule governing which side of the road to drive on, they need not be explicitly codified to effectively influence behavior. There (...) are rules that forbid theft or the breaking of promises, but also rules which govern how close it is appropriate to stand to someone while talking to them, or how loud one should talk during the conversation. Thus understood, norms regulate a wide range of activity. They exhibit cultural variability in their prescriptions and proscriptions, but the presence of norms in general appears to be culturally universal. Some norms exhibit characteristics that are often associated with morality, such as a rule that applies to everyone and prohibits causing unnecessary harm. Others norms apply only to certain people, such as those that delimit appropriate clothing for members of different genders, or those concerning the expectations and responsibilities ascribed to individuals who occupy positions of leadership. The norms that prevail in a community can be more or less fair, reasonable, or impartial, and can be subject to critique and change. This entry provides an overview of interdisciplinary research into the psychological capacity for norm-guided cognition, motivation, and behavior. The notions of a norm and normativity occur in an enormous range of research that spans the humanities and behavioral sciences. Researchers primarily concerned with the psychology distinctive of norm-governed behavior take what can be called “cognitive-evolutionary” approaches to their subject matter. These approaches, common in the cognitive sciences, draw on a variety of resources and evidence to investigate different psychological capacities. This entry describes how these have been used to construct accounts of those cognitive and motivational features of minds that underpin the capacity to acquire, conform to, and enforce norms. It also describes how theories of the selective pressures and adaptive challenges prominent in recent human evolution have helped to inform and constrain theorizing about this psychological capacity, as well as how its features can influence the transmission and cultural evolution of norms. By way of organization, the entry starts with basics and proceeds to add subsequent layers of intricacy and detail. Researchers taking cognitive-evolutionary approaches to norms come from a wide range of disciplines, and have formulated, explored, and debated positions on a large number of different issues. In order to present a comprehensible overview of these interconnected literatures, the entry starts by laying out main contours and central tenets, the key landmarks in the conceptual space common to different theories and claims. It goes on to provide a more detailed description of the kinds of theoretical resources that researchers have employed, and identifies important dimensions along which more specific accounts of the psychology of norms have varied. It then canvasses different sources of empirical evidence that have begun to illuminate other philosophically interesting features of the capacity for norms. Finally, it ends with a discussion of the relationship between norm cognition and morality, with a few illustrations drawn from recent debates in moral theory. (shrink)

I argue that in many cases, there are good reasons to engage with people who hold fringe beliefs such as debunked conspiracy theories. I (1) discuss reasons for engaging with fringe beliefs; (2) discuss the conditions that need to be met for engagement to be worthwhile; (3) consider the question of how to engage with such beliefs, and defend what Jeremy Fantl has called “closed-minded engagement” and (4) address worries that such closed-minded engagement involves problematic deception or manipulation. Thinking about (...) how we engage with irrational emotions offers a way of responding to these concerns. Reflection on engagement with fringe beliefs has wider implications for two distinct philosophical discussions. First, it can help illuminate the nature of beliefs, lending support to the view that not all states which are deeply resistant to evidence thereby fail to be beliefs. Second, an implication of the view I put forth is that it need not constitute a lack of respect to adopt what Peter Strawson called “the objective stance” in relationships. (shrink)

Experiences of embodied remembering are familiar and diverse. We settle bodily into familiar chairs or find our way easily round familiar rooms. We inhabit our own kitchens or cars or workspaces effectively and comfortably, and feel disrupted when our habitual and accustomed objects or technologies change or break or are not available. Hearing a particular song can viscerally bring back either one conversation long ago, or just the urge to dance. Some people explicitly use their bodies to record, store, or (...) cue memories. Others can move skilfully, without stopping to think, in complex and changing environments thanks to the cumulative expertise accrued in their history of fighting fires, or dancing, or playing hockey. The forms of memory involved in these cases may be distinct, operating at different timescales and levels, and by way of different mechanisms and media, but they often cooperate in the many contexts of our practices of remembering. (shrink)

Many people have a strong intuition that there is something morally objectionable about playing violent video games, particularly with increases in the number of people who are playing them and the games' alleged contribution to some highly publicized crimes. In this paper,I use the framework of utilitarian, deontological, and virtue ethical theories to analyze the possibility that there might be some philosophical foundation for these intuitions. I raise the broader question of whether or not participating in authentic simulations of immoral (...) acts in generalis wrong. I argue that neither the utilitarian, nor the Kantian has substantial objections to violent game playing, although they offer some important insights into playing games in general and what it is morally to be a ``good sport.'' The Aristotelian, however, has a plausible and intuitive way to protest participation in authentic simulations of violent acts in terms of character: engaging in simulated immoral actserodes one's character and makes it more difficult for one to live a fulfilled eudaimonic life. (shrink)

David Hunter’s On Believing is an ambitious, extremely carefully argued, discussion of what it means to believe. He urges readers to re-think the way to categorize beliefs (or more precisely believ...

In this paper we compare two theories about the cognitive architecture underlying morality. One theory, proposed by Sripada and Stich (forthcoming), posits an interlocking set of innate mechanisms that internalize moral norms from the surrounding community and generate intrinsic motivation to comply with these norms and to punish violators. The other theory, which we call the M/C model was suggested by the widely discussed and influential work of Elliott Turiel, Larry Nucci and others on the “moral/conventional task”. This theory posits (...) two distinct mental domains, the moral and the conventional, each of which gives rise to a characteristic suite of judgments about rules in that domain and about transgressions of those rules. We give an overview of both theories and of the data each was designed to explain. We go on to consider a growing body of evidence that suggests the M/C model is mistaken. That same evidence, however, is consistent with the Sripada and Stich theory. Thus, we conclude that the M/C model does not pose a serious challenge for the Sripada and Stich theory. (shrink)

This chapter explores the notion of popular participation advocated by philosopher-statesmen of the past such as Marcus Tullius Cicero, Leonardo Bruni and Francesco Guicciardini, and its political outcomes in relation to the common good. It highlights the significant similarities between traditional republicanism and the ideas of Philip Pettit. Drawing on the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, it argues that the people are much more likely than the few to make decisions that promote the common good within republics. It also suggests that (...) political democracy, owing to normative and empirical grounds, is more desirable than philosophical republicanism that empowers neutral or ‘depoliticised’ experts and representatives to act on behalf of the people. The chapter explains how popular marginalisation and elite empowerment resulted in the collapse of the regimes served by republican philosopher-statesmen. (shrink)

Disproof of heaven? -- Brain and gods -- The rational stance -- Reason and belief in God -- Against naturalism -- Atheism, inference, and IQ -- Atheism, autism, and intellectual humility -- Googling God -- Inference, intuition, and rationality.

This book focuses on the question, what is the relationship between Christianity and politics? The author argues that the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas offers an answer; discusses Aquinas's themes in the history of Christian political thought.

The phenomena of call-outs and call-ins are fiercely debated. Are they mere instances of virtue signaling? Or can they actually perform social justice work? This paper gains purchase on these questions by focusing on how language users negotiate norms in speech. The authors contend that norm-enacting speech not only makes a norm salient in a context but also creates conversational conditions that motivate adherence to that norm. Recognizing this allows us to define call-outs and call-ins: the act of calling-out brings (...) with it the presupposition that its target's behavior is norm-violating, whereas the act of calling-in simply presupposes its target's willingness to revise their belief. With these definitions at hand, we evaluate whether call-outs and call-ins are suitable tools for combating social injustice. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to develop and defend a novel answer to a question that has recently generated a considerable amount of controversy. The question concerns the normative significance of peer disagreement. Suppose that you and I have been exposed to the same evidence and arguments that bear on some proposition: there is no relevant consideration which is available to you but not to me, or vice versa. For the sake of concreteness, we might picture.

Disagreement about the nature of ‘addiction’, such as whether it is a brain disease, arises in part because the label is applied to a wide range of phenomena. This creates conceptual and definitional confusions and misunderstandings, often leading to researchers talking past one another. Ontologies have been successfully implemented in other fields to help solve these problems by creating unifying frameworks that can accommodate divergence while clarifying the basis for it. We argue that ontologies can help transform the way we (...) think and communicate about addiction as well, providing a basis for a shared understanding of the domain and a shared means for communicating and achieving that understanding. -/- We introduce the use of ontologies in science and medicine and show how they can unify differing perspectives on addiction. We also show how ontologies provide a practical tool for organizing our collective knowledge in this field, even, and especially, when that knowledge is garnered through distinct disciplinary approaches adopting disparate methodologies or perspectives (e.g., neurobiological, psychological, sociological, etc.). In the end, we believe that ontologies can help to avoid letting questions like “Is addiction a brain disease?” divide the field, hamper communication, or otherwise disrupt the ability to make meaningful progress. (shrink)

Argument that full grounds modally entail what they ground.

Introduction: Foucault and political philosophy -- Marx: antinormative critique -- Lenin: the invention of party governmentality -- Althusser: the failure to denormativise Marxism -- Deleuze: denormativisation as norm -- Rorty: relativising normativity -- Honneth: the poverty of critical theory -- Geuss: the paradox of realism -- Foucault: the lure of neoliberalism -- Conclusion: What now?

In this brief essay, I explain the peculiar actions of the shopkeeper described in Philosophical Investigations 1 (the shopkeeper has been given an order and has gone on to fill it). I also shed light on why and how Wittgenstein wants us to notice the peculiarity of the actions. Wittgenstein wants us to watch the shopkeeper so as to displace the general notion of the meaning of a word in our philosophical reflections. Watching the shopkeeper's actions is watching him understand (...) the order he has been given. We see the shopkeeper doing logic, segmenting the order, there in the shop, in 3D. Nothing need happen in any Cartesian non-space or Realm of Forms or Third Realm. (shrink)

"At its core, Yoga invites practitioners to live fully in the midst of hardship while staying open to the possibility of being transformed by life experiences of all kinds. A seasoned Yoga teacher and writer, the author confronts the ways in which modern Yoga has strayed from its original purposes, challenging current perspectives of practice, balance and peace. Drawing on the foundations of Yoga philosophy, this book provides guideposts for living a resilient life through deepening the understanding and experience of (...) Yoga. To redefine the popular understanding of Yoga, chapters provide practical and applicable tools to reclaim practice as a way to be fully alive and aware, thereby unpacking the resistance, judgment and impatience that stand in the way of living a resilient life."-Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This study clarifies the confusion concerning the purpose of Husserl's last major phenomenological treatise, Experience and Judgment, and presents his theory of categorical judgment.

Cet essai met en cause la comparaison historique courante qui relie le traitement husserlien de la conscience du temps à la tradition philosophique occidentale par le biais du livre IX des Confessions d’Augustin. Je soutiens notamment que cette comparaison n’est valable qu’à l’égard des leçons sur le temps de 1905 (qui expliquent l’appréhension du temps par le recours à l’étirement de la conscience opéré par la mémoire) et non pour la théorie husserlienne ultérieure, que l’on peut dater autour de 1908 (...) (qui critique ouvertement les premières leçons à cause la position défectueuse et contre-intuitive qu’y était défendue selon laquelle la mémoire étend la perception). Après avoir pointé les défauts de la théorie du temps partagée par Augustin et par le Husserl de 1905, j’approfondis la distinction, élaborée plus tard par Husserl à partir de 1911, entre mémoire et rétention, et j’examine l’hypothèse selon laquelle la théorie aristotélicienne du temps telle qu’elle est présentée dans le IVème livre de la Physique pourrait représenter une meilleur terme de comparaison historique pour la théorie husserlienne de la maturité, notamment dans la mesure où elle s’appuie sur l’idée que c’est « l’esprit qui dit les “maintenant” comme deux ». (shrink)

The protests on June 16, 1976 of black schoolchildren in Soweto against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in their schools precipitated one of the most profound challenges to the South African apartheid state. These events were experienced in a context of violent social and political conflict. They were almost immediately drawn into a discourse that discredited and silenced them, manipulating meaning for ideological and political reasons with little regard for how language and its absence-silences-further violated those (...) who had experienced the events. Violence, in its physical and discursive shape, forged individual memories that remain torn with pain, anger, distrust, and open questions; collective memories that left few spaces for ambiguity; and official or public histories tarnished by their political agendas or the very structures-and sources-that produced them. Based on oral histories and historical documents, this article discusses the collusion of violence and silence and its consequences. It argues that-while the collusion between violence and silence might appear to disrupt or, worse, destroy the ability of individuals to think historically-the individual historical actor can and does have the will to contest and engage with collective memory and official history. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Catherine Malabou builds on neuroscience to offer a theory of the plasticity of the brain, arguing that trauma holds transformative potential. This article argues, however, that her theory prioritizes resilience in the face of episodic moments of violence and trauma, which undertheorizes the trauma of chronic conditions experienced by racialized, particularly Black, subjects. Instead, this article turns to Christina Sharpe’s theory of wake work and, more specifically, Black annotation and Black redaction, to demonstrate how, in the wake of transatlantic (...) slavery, there is space for the collective disruption of symbolic structures to generate openings for imagining and circulating alternative possibilities to the hegemonic institutions of the past and present. Contrasting Malabou’s focus on the transformation of the brain during episodic violence and trauma, this article contends that Sharpe may demonstrate the possibility of plasticity in form and the symbolic in quotidian experiences and practices. (shrink)

In this article Father McCormick, professor of philosophy in Marquette University, succinctly unravels two ever-recurring difficulties of the student of metaphysics. In another he will solve the problems of a mutable, non-eternal universe. The Editor.

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III References.