Lawyers and the legal system have been much criticized in recent years. Despite popular perceptions, the legal system contains numerous mechanisms and rules designed to ensure fair results. This paper shows how the legal system tries to implement, in commercial transactions, the ethical principles of truthfulness and fairness. The Anglo-American development of Equity Courts is reviewed briefly. Several examples of the Law's enforcement of ethical principles are presented, in four different legal areas: Contracts, Securities, Goods, and Real Estate. The intent (...) here is to present an overview of the problem, with area-specific illustrations, rather than a comprehenisve examination of the cases in just one area. (shrink)

The connection between whole and part is intimate: not only can we share the same space, but I’m incapable of leaving my parts behind; settle the nonmereological facts and you thereby settle what is a part of what; wholes don’t seem to be an additional ontological commitment over their parts. Composition as identity promises to explain this intimacy. But it threatens to make the connection too intimate, for surely the parts could have made a different whole and the whole have (...) had different parts. In this paper I attempt to offer an account of parthood that is intimate enough but not too intimate: the parts generate the whole, but they are not themselves the whole. (shrink)

A useful linkage can be made between recent literature on the philosophy and ethics of place and Australian work on education for place responsiveness. Place education, which holds a creative tension between deep experience and critical awareness, has a central role to play in any practical expression of an ethic of place. The way forward is suggested by Stefanovic's mediated iterative process for group work and the suspension of outcome orientation and judgement to allow the experience to speak for itself (...) prior to critical reflection for individual work. Malpas's philosophy of place and experience provides a framework for understanding the importance of narrative in structuring and being structured by place, and the significance of childhood place memories. Narrative emerges as a 'central organising principle' of place and identity, and can be viewed as both stories that connect us and stories that make us different. Place responsiveness work in Australia presents the opportunity for constructive intercultural dialogue and embedding new narratives of sustainability in place. (shrink)

Is there a distinctively epistemic kind of blame? It has become commonplace for epistemologists to talk about epistemic blame, and to rely on this notion for theoretical purposes. But not everyone is convinced. Some of the most compelling reasons for skepticism about epistemic blame focus on disanologies, or asymmetries, between the moral and epistemic domains. In this paper, I defend the idea that there is a distinctively epistemic kind of blame. I do so primarily by developing an account of the (...) nature of epistemic blame. My account draws on a prominent line of theorizing in moral philosophy that ties blame to our relationships with one another. I argue that with my account of epistemic blame on hand, the most compelling worries about epistemic blame can be deflated. There is a distinctively epistemic kind of blame. (shrink)

Does Aristotle offer a definition of the soul? In fact, he rejects the possibility of defining the soul univocally. Because “life” is a homonymous concept, so too is “soul”. Given the specific causal role that Aristotle envisages for form and essence, the soul requires multiple different definitions to capture how it functions as a cause in each form of life. Aristotle suggests demonstrations can be given which express these causal definitions; I reconstruct these demonstrations in the paper.

In this short paper, I critically examine Veli Mitova’s proposal that social-identity groups can have collective epistemic reasons. My primary focus is the role of privileged access in her account of how collective reasons become epistemic reasons for social-identity groups. I argue that there is a potentially worrying structural asymmetry in her account of two different types of cases. More specifically, the mechanisms at play in cases of “doxastic reasons” seem fundamentally different from those at play in cases of “epistemic-conduct (...) reasons”. The upshot is a need for further explanation of what unifies these dimensions of the account. (shrink)

One challenge in developing an account of the nature of epistemic blame is to explain what differentiates epistemic blame from mere negative epistemic evaluation. The challenge is to explain the difference, without invoking practices or behaviors that seem out of place in the epistemic domain. In this paper, I examine whether the most sophisticated recent account of the nature of epistemic blame—due to Jessica Brown—is up for the challenge. I argue that the account ultimately falls short, but does so in (...) an instructive way. Drawing on the lessons learned, I put forward an alternative approach to the nature of epistemic blame. My account understands epistemic blame in terms of modifications to the intentions and expectations that comprise our “epistemic relationships” with one another. This approach has a number of attractions shared by Brown’s account, but it can also explain the significance of epistemic blame. (shrink)

There is a widely accepted distinction between being directly responsible for a wrongdoing versus being somehow indirectly or vicariously responsible for the wrongdoing of another person or collective. Often this is couched in analyses of complicity, and complicity’s role in the relationship between individual and collective wrongdoing. Complicity is important because, inter alia, it allows us to make sense of individuals who may be blameless or blameworthy to a relatively low degree for their immediate conduct, but are nevertheless blameworthy to (...) a higher degree for their implication in some larger (or another person’s) wrongdoing. In this paper, I argue that there is a distinctively epistemic kind of complicity. First, I motivate the distinction between direct and vicarious responsibility with three interlocking arguments, respectively appealing to: i) the structure of rational agency; ii) linguistic considerations; iii) the role of “principal vs. accomplice” in legal doctrine. I show how these arguments naturally extend to the epistemic domain, motivating an epistemic form of vicarious responsibility. I then examine complicity as a mechanism of vicarious epistemic responsibility. To fill this out, I engage with an epistemic analogue of the debate about the role of intention versus causal contribution in complicity. I propose a Casual Account of Epistemic Complicity, arguing that it accommodates a wide range of cases, and enables fine-grained explanations of degrees of culpability for epistemic complicity. With an adequate account of epistemic complicity on hand, we can explain what is objectionable about an important class of epistemic agent who, on an individual level, may be epistemically blameless or blameworthy to a relatively low degree, but whose relation to other individuals or collectives nevertheless makes them epistemically blameworthy to a higher degree. I explore some broader implications of this result. (shrink)

The standard methodology of comparative psychology has long relied upon a distinction between cognition and ‘mere association’; cognitive explanations of nonhuman animals behaviors are only regarded as legitimate if associative explanations for these behaviors have been painstakingly ruled out. Over the last ten years, however, a crisis has broken out over the distinction, with researchers increasingly unsure how to apply it in practice. In particular, a recent generation of psychological models appear to satisfy existing criteria for both cognition and association. (...) Salvaging the standard methodology of comparative psychology will thus require significant conceptual redeployment. In this article, I trace the historical development of the distinction in comparative psychology, distinguishing two styles of approach. The first style tries to make out the distinction in terms of the properties of psychological models, for example by focusing on criteria like the presence of rules & propositions vs. links & nodes. The second style of approach attempts to operationalize the distinction by use of specific experimental tests for cognition performed on actual animals. I argue that neither style of criteria is self-sufficient, and both must cooperate in an iterative empirical investigation into the nature of animal minds if the distinction is to be reformed. (shrink)

The main objection to pragmatism about knowledge is that it entails that truth-irrelevant factors can make a difference to knowledge. Blake Roeber (2018) has recently argued that this objection fails. I agree with Roeber. But in this paper, I present another way of thinking about the dispute between purists and pragmatists about knowledge. I do so by formulating a new objection to pragmatism about knowledge. This is that pragmatism about knowledge entails that factors irrelevant to both truth and “cognitive agency” (...) can make a difference to knowledge. An interesting additional upshot of my argument is the connection revealed between the debate between pragmatists and purists about knowledge, and the debate between “alethists” and pragmatists about reasons for belief. (shrink)

A plausible condition on having the standing to blame someone is that the target of blame's wrongdoing must in some sense be your “business”—the wrong must in some sense harm or affect you, or others close to you. This is known as the business condition on standing to blame. Many cases of epistemic blame discussed in the literature do not obviously involve examples of someone harming or affecting another. As such, not enough has been said about how an individual's epistemic (...) failing can really count as another person's business. In this paper, I deploy a relationship-based account of epistemic blame to clarify the conditions under which the business condition can be met in the epistemic domain. The basic idea is that one person's epistemic failing can be another's business in virtue of the way it impairs their epistemic relationship. (shrink)

The paper critically examines recent work on justifications and excuses in epistemology. I start with a discussion of Gerken’s claim that the “excuse maneuver” is ad hoc. Recent work from Timothy Williamson and Clayton Littlejohn provides resources to advance the debate. Focusing in particular on a key insight in Williamson’s view, I then consider an additional worry for the so-called excuse maneuver. I call it the “excuses are not enough” objection. Dealing with this objection generates pressure in two directions: one (...) is to show that excuses are a positive enough normative standing to help certain externalists with important cases; the other is to do so in a way that does not lead back to Gerken’s objection. I show how a Williamson-inspired framework is flexible enough to deal with both sources of pressure. Perhaps surprisingly, I draw on recent virtue epistemology. (shrink)

Gender dysphoria is a clinically significant incongruence between expressed gender and assigned gender, with rapidly growing prevalence among children. The UK High Court recently conducted a judicial review regarding the service provision at a youth-focussed gender identity clinic in Tavistock. The high court adjudged it ‘highly unlikely’ that under-13s, and ‘doubtful’ that 14–15 years old, can be competent to consent to puberty blocker therapy for GD. They based their reasoning on the limited evidence regarding efficacy, the likelihood of progressing to (...) cross-sex hormone therapy and the ‘life-changing consequences’ of puberty blockers. In this article, I offer two concurrent arguments to dispute their reasoning. First, I argue that minors can be competent to consent to puberty blockers for GD, because the decision to undergo puberty blocker therapy is no more complex or far-reaching than other medical decisions that we accept a child should be able to make. Second, I argue that—irrespective of competence—such legal restriction for all children fundamentally contradicts the central ethical tenet of child healthcare: best interests. For these two reasons, the high court should not restrict access to puberty blockers for competent GD children. (shrink)

Paul Sheehy has argued that the modal realist cannot satisfactorily allow for the necessity of God’s existence. In this short paper I show that she can, and that Sheehy only sees a problem because he has failed to appreciate all the resources available to the modal realist. God may be an abstract existent outside spacetime or He may not be: but either way, there is no problem for the modal realist to admit that He exists at every concrete possible world.

Epistemological Disjunctivism is a view about paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge. Duncan Pritchard claims that it is particularly well suited to accounting for internalist and externalist intuitions. A number of authors have disputed this claim, arguing that there are problems for Pritchard’s way with internalist intuitions. I share the worry. However, I don’t think it has been expressed as effectively as it can be. My aim in this paper is to present a new way of formulating the worry, in terms (...) of an “explanatory challenge”. The explanatory challenge is a simple, yet powerful and illuminating challenge for Epistemological Disjunctivism. It is illuminating in the sense that it shows us why Epistemological Disjunctivism must take on certain internalistically problematic commitments. A secondary aim of this paper is to examine whether the recently much-discussed distinction between justifications and excuses in epistemology can support an adequate response. I will argue that it cannot. (shrink)

I respond to Tim Smartt’s (2023) skepticism about epistemic blame. Smartt’s skepticism is based on the claims that (i) mere negative epistemic evaluation can better explain everything proponents of epistemic blame say we need epistemic blame to explain; and (ii) no existing account of epistemic blame provides a plausible account of the putative force that any response deserving the label “blame” ought to have. He focuses primarily on the prominent “relationship-based” account of epistemic blame to defend these claims, arguing that (...) the account is explanatorily idle, and cannot distinguish between epistemically excused and epistemically blameworthy agents. I argue that Smartt mischaracterizes the account’s role for judgments of epistemic relationship impairment, leading to mistaken claims about the account’s predictions. I also argue that the very feature of the account that Smartt mischaracterizes is key to understanding what epistemic blame does for our epistemic responsibility practices that mere negative epistemic evaluation cannot. (shrink)

In this article I analyze the themes of temporality and alterity as they were developed over the first three of Descartes’s Meditations. I discuss the temporality of the evil deceiver, as well as the implicit theory of time and time-consciousness in the Second Meditation. I show that this theory of time is purely subjective, continuous, pre-numerical, and independent of local motion and the body, thus making it independent of Aristotle’s theory of time. I then explain God’s continuous creation of time (...) and the discontinuous theory of time Descartes develops in the Third Meditation. Moreover, I show that there is an ontological and temporal priority of the Other over the self, and that temporal self-consciousness is necessarily also consciousness of God, his continuous creation of time, time itself, and other finite substances. (shrink)

This article revolves around the debate surrounding the lack of a coherent definition for corporate social responsibility (CSR). I make use of Jacques Derrida’s theorizing on contested meaning to argue that CSR’s ambiguity is actually necessary in light of its functional role as a “supplement” to corporate profit-seeking. As a discourse that refuses to conclusively resolve the tension between profit-seeking and prosociality, CSR expresses an important critical perspective which demands that firms act responsibly, while retaining the overall corporate frame of (...) shareholder supremacy. CSR does this by ambivalently affirming both profit-seeking and prosociality, a necessary contradiction. Attempts to reduce CSR’s ambiguity can thus only succeed by undermining its viability as a normative discourse that captures how certain elements of society understand how firms should act. The analysis suggests that greater scholarly attention is needed with regard to the material discursive environments within which discourses such as CSR are deployed. A discursive approach to research could thus benefit future practitioners, who have to act according to fluid standards of responsibility that cannot be authoritatively defined, but which can be better understood than they are at present. (shrink)

A prominent objection to the knowledge norm of belief is that it is too demanding or too strong. The objection is commonly framed in terms of the idea that there is a tight connection between norm violation and the appropriateness of criticism or blame. In this paper I do two things. First, I argue that this way of motivating the objection leads to an impasse in the epistemic norms debate. It leads to an impasse when knowledge normers invoke excuses to (...) explain away a prima facie connection between blamelessness and justified belief. Second, I argue that a way out of the impasse becomes available when we take a closer look at some distinctions in the theory of responsibility. There are at least three different notions of responsibility relevant here. I argue that a weaker notion of responsibility – attributability – should be used to motivate the objection that the knowledge norm of belief is too strong. Insofar as the proposal motivates the objection without appeal to blamelessness, it opens up space to move beyond the impasse. (shrink)

I consider David Efird and Tom Stoneham's recent version of the subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism, the view that there could have been no concrete objects at all. I argue that the two premises of their argument are only jointly acceptable if the quantifiers in one range over a different set of objects from those which the quantifiers in the other range over, in which case the argument is invalid. So either the argument is invalid or we should not accept (...) both its premises. (shrink)

We regularly make graded normative judgements in the epistemic domain. Recent work in the literature examines degrees of justification, degrees of rationality, and degrees of assertability. This paper addresses a different dimension of the gradeability of epistemic normativity, one that has been given little attention. How should we understand degrees of epistemic criticizability? In virtue of what sorts of factors can one epistemic failing be worse than another? The paper develops a dual-factor view of degrees of epistemic criticizability. According to (...) the view, degrees of epistemic criticizability are (i) an inverse function of degrees of doxastic justification and (ii) a function of degrees of agent culpability. The paper develops an account of each factor, and explains how they should be weighted. The paper also addresses the importance of modelling degrees of epistemic criticizability in a broader context. I focus on the role that such a model can play in the ethics of epistemic criticism. (shrink)

For A. J. Ayer, the occurrence of delusions confutes the notion that we perceive the world directly. He argues instead that perceptions are caused by immaterial “sense data” which somehow represent the properties of material things to us in our experiences. J. L. Austin systematically rejects Ayer’s claims, arguing that the occurrence of delusions does not preclude the possibility of direct perception, and that, indeed, our normal perception is direct. I challenge both philosophers’ ideas by examining how they deal with (...) the phenomenon of colour. (shrink)

In The Norm of Belief, John Gibbons claims that there is a “natural reaction” to the general idea that one can be normatively required to Ø when that requirement is in some sense outside of one’s first person perspective or inaccessible to one. The reaction amounts to the claim that this is not possible. Whether this is a natural or intuitive idea or not, it is difficult to articulate exactly why we might think it is correct. To do so, we (...) need a view about the relationship between agents’ capacities to accord with normative requirements and the conditions under which those normative requirements obtain. I offer an account of the epistemic dimension of this relationship. The goal is to provide enough of a story about the natural reaction to make accounting for it look like an important desideratum for any theory of the nature of normative requirements—whether these are moral or epistemic. To focus the discussion, I use Timothy Williamson’s knowledge-first view of evidence as an example of a view in epistemology that generates the natural reaction. One upshot of the discussion, then, is a detailed account of what is troubling about Williamson’s influential but controversial view of evidence. (shrink)

Whether there is a general moral obligation to obey the law, often referred to as ‘political obligation’, is an enduring question in contemporary legal and political philosophy. Theories are continually being formulated, criticized, and reformulated as theorists attempt to settle this issue. However, there yet remains no general consensus as to whether any theory successfully answers this question in either the affirmative or the negative. I propose the legal doctrine of quasi-contract as a candidate for making sense of this persistent (...) issue. While the duty to reciprocate and the principle of reasonable expectations each falls short when independently advanced as a theory of political obligation, quasi-contract, which combines reciprocity, reasonable expectations, and additional moral considerations, is able to establish a satisfactory account of political obligation. (shrink)

There is a distinction between merely having the right belief, and further basing that belief on the right reasons. Any adequate epistemology needs to be able to accommodate the basing relation that marks this distinction. However, trouble arises for Bayesianism. I argue that when we combine Bayesianism with the standard approaches to the basing relation, we get the result that no agent forms their credences in the right way; indeed, no agent even gets close. This is a serious problem, for (...) it prevents us from making epistemic distinctions between agents that are doing a reasonably good job at forming their credences and those that are forming them in clearly bad ways. I argue that if this result holds, then we have a problem for Bayesianism. However, I show how the Bayesian can avoid this problem by rejecting the standard approaches to the basing relation. By drawing on recent work on the basing relation, we can develop an account of the relation that allows us to avoid the result that no agent comes close to forming their credences in the right way. The Bayesian can successfully accommodate the basing relation. (shrink)

Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...) day, Hume’s Dictum has played a major role in philosophy, especially in contemporary metaphysics. In ruling out necessary connections, Hume’s Dictum implies that causal relations and the laws of nature are contingent. It makes other demands on our metaphysics of science as well; for example, it places restrictions on our metaphysics of counterfactuals, dispositions, and explanation. The principle has applications in other areas too. Hume’s Dictum places constraints on our theories of abstract objects and moral properties. For example, Hume’s Dictum rules out the view that moral properties are distinct from, but necessarily connected to, non-moral properties. While Hume’s Dictum is a prominent principle in metaphysics, few Humeans have defended the principle at length. It is assumed more often than it is argued for. As a result, Hume’s Dictum no longer enjoys the reputation it once did. It’s common to hear complaints about the lack of arguments in support of Hume’s Dictum. Moreover, philosophers are increasingly willing to defend views that are at odds with Hume’s Dictum. A striking example of this is the recent explosion of interest in views that take causal relations and the laws of nature to be necessary. Humeans can no longer afford to be complacent. An extended defense of Hume’s Dictum is called for, and that’s what this dissertation aims to offer. This dissertation has three parts. In the first part, I lay out some preliminaries and offer a precise formulation of Hume’s Dictum. In the second part, I develop three arguments in favor of Hume’s Dictum. In the final part, I defend Hume’s Dictum against objections. (shrink)

In this book encounter with Kostas Axelos' Introduction to Future Ways of Thought: On Marx and Heidegger, I introduce Axelos as an imaginative reader of Marx and Heidegger. His approach draws on their parallels to imagine what is possible. I argue that Axelos makes three unique contributions to the Heideggerian-Marxist project. First, Axelos’ understanding of the planetary epoch relies on a reading of Marx that is heavily influenced by Heidegger’s concept of “world”. Second, he builds on the idea of an (...) “open world” meant to combat the technological over-determination characteristic of the planetary era. Third, Axelos preserves the significance of Heidegger and Marx to outline the possibilities of a thinking that, as of yet, remain a future undertaking. I conclude with some ideas about how Axelos' thinking may be further developed. (shrink)

Blameless norm violation in young children is an underexplored phenomenon in epistemology. An understanding of it is important for accounting for the full range of normative standings at issue in debates about epistemic norms, and the internalism-externalism debate generally. More specifically, it is important for proponents of factive epistemic norms. I examine this phenomenon and put forward a positive proposal. I claim that we should think of the normative dimension of certain actions and attitudes of young children in terms of (...) a kind of “prospective agency”. I argue that the most sophisticated account of exculpatory defenses in epistemology – due to Clayton Littlejohn – does not provide an adequate model for exculpatory defenses of prospective agents. The aim is not primarily to challenge Littlejohn. Rather, I engage with his framework as a way of setting up my positive proposal. I call it the “heuristic model”. (shrink)

Anthony Brueckner has argued that claims about underdetermination of evidence are suppressed in closure-based scepticism (“The Structure of the Skeptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54:4, 1994). He also argues that these claims about underdetermination themselves lead to a paradoxical sceptical argument—the underdetermination argument—which is more fundamental than the closure argument. If Brueckner is right, the status quo focus of some predominant anti-sceptical strategies may be misguided. In this paper I focus specifically on the relationship between these two arguments. I (...) provide support for Brueckner’s claim that the underdetermination argument is the more fundamental sceptical argument. I do so by responding to a challenge to this claim put forward by Stewart Cohen (“Two Kinds of Skeptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58:1, 1998). Cohen invokes an alternative epistemic principle which he thinks can be used to challenge Brueckner. Cohen’s principle raises interesting questions about the relationship between evidential considerations and explanatory considerations in the context of scepticism about our knowledge of the external world. I explore these questions in my defence of Brueckner. (shrink)

Evaluating counterfactuals in worlds with deterministic laws poses a puzzle. In a wide array of cases, it does not seem plausible that if a non-actual event were to occur that either the past would be different or that the laws would be different. But it’s also difficult to see how we can avoid this result. Some philosophers have argued that we can avoid this dilemma by allowing that a proposition can be a law even though it has violations. On this (...) view, for the relevant cases, the past and the laws would still hold, but the laws would have a violation. In this paper, I raise a problem for the claim that the laws and the past are preserved for all of the relevant counterfactual antecedents. I further argue that this problem undermines motivating the possibility of violations on the grounds that they allow us to hold that the past and the laws are typically counterfactually preserved, even if they are not always preserved. (shrink)

Interactionism has emerged as a promising approach to moral character in the wake of the situationist challenge and the character-situation debate. This paper will consider whether interactionism is troubled by a familiar problem from the philosophy of mind: the coupling-constitution or causal-constitution fallacy. In relation to character, this issue pertains to whether the external factors featured in interactionist models are partly constitutive of the agent’s character, or whether they merely play a causal role. In contrast to some other interactionist theorists, (...) I argue that interactionism doesn’t need to make distinctions regarding causation and constitution, and would be better off without attempting to do so. Making such claims would only add metaphysical baggage to interactionism that won’t aid in its goal of providing an empirically adequate moral psychology of character. Interactionists are thus better off evading the C-C fallacy challenge, rather than attempting to meet it head-on. (shrink)

In this short paper, I critically examine Veli Mitova’s proposal that social-identity groups can have collective epistemic reasons. My primary focus is the role of privileged access in her account of how collective reasons become epistemic reasons for social-identity groups. I argue that there is a potentially worrying structural asymmetry in her account of two different types of cases. More specifically, the mechanisms at play in cases of “doxastic reasons” seem fundamentally different from those at play in cases of “epistemic-conduct (...) reasons.” The upshot is a need for further explanation of what unifies these dimensions of the account. (shrink)

Humanity will face water scarcity as this century progresses. Water use grew twice as fast as the global human population last century, and an increasing number of regions around the world are facing, or will face, freshwater scarcity. Four billion people face water scarcity at least one month out of the year. Scarcity makes water valuable for privatizers and commodifiers as an investment vehicle; it emboldens the currency of commodification. I will argue for water justice as socioenvironmental justice. The injustices (...) that can and do attach to water are not reducible to merely distributional wrongs or injustices, they are moral and political harms as markers of a failing democracy; water injustice, then, is a structural harm. I build on the literature of power dynamics from Iris Marion Young and David Schlosberg and argue that water injustice is structural and involves mis- and malrecognition and participation; moreover, I introduce the argument that water justice is participatory, a method of development that walks in lockstep with reflexive and discursive democracy. (shrink)

This paper aims to settle the question of what Ludwig Wittgenstein meant by "what solipsism means": This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what solipsism means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language mean the limits of my world. 1 Throughout this paper, I will paraphrase "what solipsism means" simply as (...) 'solipsism.'2 The aim of the present paper can then be restated as an attempt to specify the conception of solipsism Wittgenstein was addressing in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. A secondary aim is to... (shrink)

Hope and the Longing for Utopia is Daniel Boscaljon’s second edited collection, following his earlier Resisting the Place of Belonging: Uncanny Homecomings in Religion, Narrative and the Arts and his solo-authored Vigilant Faith, both of which I am now very excited to read! A welcome contribution to the postsecular discourse on utopian studies in the twenty-first century, the twelve interdisciplinary essays contained in this volume achieve what its editor sets out in the introduction: “contribute toward a revitalized sense of the (...) potentiality of utopic thinking, one that grounds its hopes in an embrace of human fragility, failure and imperfection instead of... (shrink)

As Jonathan Dancy points out, if we are tempted to think morality is a rational enterprise, we would expect moral judgments to be constrained by requirements of consistency. If our judgments and choices use general moral principles as guides or standards -- like the laws that feature in the explicit calculations of Immanuel Kant’s moral agent – we can be somewhat confident we respond to moral salience with consistency and, perhaps, rationally. For Kant, explicit reason ensures consistency because the explicit (...) application of maxims is autonomous from volatile external factors. Contemporary empirical studies in moral psychology show that when we respond morally we seemingly do so from emotion or intuition, not reason. For Kant, emotions and intuitions fluctuate with respect to volatile external factors. They are not the sort of things upon which we ought to base judgment and decision. If we hold the Kantian model true, we must assume that we fail to participate rationally in the moral enterprise. I argue against the Kantian model of moral cognition and turn to Aristotle to develop an account of moral cognition that allows us to retain our standing as rational moral agents. First, I argue for a particularist conception of moral reasons: I deny that the consistency required of a picture of morality as a rational enterprise requires our thought utilizes general moral rules. Next, I develop a particularist account of moral knowledge – a demand from their generalist opponents – by providing an account of moral perception. I subsequently argue that the deliverances of moral perception can constitute knowledge by providing a McDowellian account of perceptual justification. Lastly, I return to examine how the empirical work motivating the idea that we don’t participate in morality rationally. I show how none of these studies threatens the Aristotelian model as a viable alternative to the Kantian model. (shrink)

The logical empiricists held that an analogical hypothesis does not gain any acceptability from the analogy on which it is founded. On this view, the acceptability of a hypothesis cannot be discounted by criticizing the foundational analogy. Yet scientists commonly appear to level exactly this sort of criticism. If scientists are able to discount the acceptability of analogical hypotheses in this way, then the logical empiricist view is mistaken. I analyze four forms of analogy counterargument, disanalogy, misanalogy, counteranalogy, and false (...) analogy, with examples from the debate over the asteroid impact hypothesis. These counterarguments do address the acceptability of analogical hypotheses, indicating that analogies can confer acceptability, confirmation notwithstanding. 1 Introduction 2 The asteroid impact hypothesis 3 Analogy counterarguments 3.1 Disanalogy 3.2 Misanalogy 3.3 Counteranalogy 3.4 False analogy 4 Acceptability 5 Conclusions. (shrink)

Causal essentialists hold that a property essentially bears its causal and nomic relations. Further, as many causal essentialists have noted, the main motivations for causal essentialism also motivate holding that properties are individuated in terms of their causal and nomic relations. This amounts to a kind of identity of indiscernibles thesis; properties that are indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations are identical. This can be compared with the more well-known identity of indiscernibles thesis, according to which particulars (...) that are qualitatively indiscernible are identical. Robert Adams has developed a well-known objection to this thesis by considering a series of possibilities involving nearly qualitatively indiscernible particulars that naturally leads to a possibility involving qualitatively indiscernible particulars. I argue that we can construct parallel cases involving a series of possibilities involving properties that are nearly indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations that naturally lead to possibilities involving properties that are indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations. The same features that make Adams’ argument forceful also carry over to my cases, giving us a powerful objection to the causal essentialist identity of indiscernibles thesis. (shrink)

Critics of animal modeling have advanced a variety of arguments against the validity of the practice. The point of one such form of argument is to establish that animal modeling is pointless and therefore immoral. In this article, critical arguments of this form are divided into three types, the pseudoscience argument, the disanalogy argument, and the predictive validity argument. I contend that none of these criticisms currently succeed, nor are they likely to. However, the connection between validity and morality is (...) important, suggesting that critical efforts would be instructive if they addressed it in a more nuanced way. (shrink)

I argue that using a traditional biological account of parenthood causes problems for determining who counts as a parent for the purposes of filial obligations in alternative family structures. I then argue that a better way to understand parenthood is as a role. People who fill the role of parents are parents, regardless of their biological ties to a child. Next, I argue that children can have more than two parents and so can have filial obligations to more than two (...) people. I then demonstrate that understanding parenthood as a role allows us to correctly account for who should be a parent in cases of adoption, surrogacy, and extended families. In the final section I discuss three related worries about allowing a child to have more than two parents. (shrink)

I address an intuition commonly endorsed by metaphysicians, that there must be a fundamental layer of reality, i.e., that chains of ontological dependence must terminate: there cannot be turtles all the way down. I discuss applications of this intuition with reference to Bradley’s regress, composition, realism about the mental and the cosmological argument. I discuss some arguments for the intui- tion, but argue that they are unconvincing. I conclude by making some suggestions for how the intuition should be argued for, (...) and discussing the ramifications of giving the justification I think best. (shrink)

What are the ontological commitments of a sentence? In this paper I offer an answer from the perspective of the truthmaker theorist that contrasts with the familiar Quinean criterion. I detail some of the benefits of thinking of things this way: they include making the composition debate tractable without appealing to a neo-Carnapian metaontology, making sense of neo-Fregeanism, and dispensing with some otherwise recalcitrant necessary connections.

Here I describe a game that I use in my logic classes once we begin derivations. The game can help improve class dynamics, help struggling students recognizes they are not alone, open lines of communication between students, and help students of all levels prepare for exams. The game can provide struggling students with more practice with the fundamental rules of a logical system while also challenging students who excel at derivations. If students are struggling with particular rules or strategies in (...) the system, the game can be tailored to address them. I explain how the game has evolved since I started using it, highlighting the pedagogical benefits of the changes I have made, and I provide examples of the handouts I distribute and a “checklist” to use before, during, and after the game. (shrink)

In artificial intelligence, recent research has demonstrated the remarkable potential of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs), which seem to exceed state-of-the-art performance in new domains weekly, especially on the sorts of very difficult perceptual discrimination tasks that skeptics thought would remain beyond the reach of artificial intelligence. However, it has proven difficult to explain why DCNNs perform so well. In philosophy of mind, empiricists have long suggested that complex cognition is based on information derived from sensory experience, often appealing to (...) a faculty of abstraction. Rationalists have frequently complained, however, that empiricists never adequately explained how this faculty of abstraction actually works. In this paper, I tie these two questions together, to the mutual benefit of both disciplines. I argue that the architectural features that distinguish DCNNs from earlier neural networks allow them to implement a form of hierarchical processing that I call “transformational abstraction”. Transformational abstraction iteratively converts sensory-based representations of category exemplars into new formats that are increasingly tolerant to “nuisance variation” in input. Reflecting upon the way that DCNNs leverage a combination of linear and non-linear processing to efficiently accomplish this feat allows us to understand how the brain is capable of bi-directional travel between exemplars and abstractions, addressing longstanding problems in empiricist philosophy of mind. I end by considering the prospects for future research on DCNNs, arguing that rather than simply implementing 80s connectionism with more brute-force computation, transformational abstraction counts as a qualitatively distinct form of processing ripe with philosophical and psychological significance, because it is significantly better suited to depict the generic mechanism responsible for this important kind of psychological processing in the brain. (shrink)

In this paper I further elucidate and defend a metaontological position that allows you to have a minimal ontology without embracing an error-theory of ordinary talk. On this view 'there are Fs' can be strictly and literally true without bringing an ontological commitment to Fs. Instead of a sentence S committing you to the things that must be amongst the values of the variables if it is true, I argue that S commits you to the things that must exist as (...) truthmakers for S if it is true. I rebut some recent objections that have been levelled against this metaontological view. (shrink)

The so-called March of Progress depicts human evolution as a linear progression from mohkey to man. Shelley (1996) analyzed this image as a visual argument proceeding through "rhetorical" and "demonstrative" modes of visual logic. In this paper, I confirm and extend this view of visual logic by examining variations of the original March image. These variations show that each mode of visual logic can be altered or isolated in support of new conclusions. Furthermore, the March can be included in a (...) visual "frame" to produce new arguments, much as a verbal argument can be made a component of a new and larger argument. (shrink)

I argue against the commonly held intuition that robots and virtual agents will never have emotions by contending robots can have emotions in a sense that is functionally similar to humans, even if the robots' emotions are not exactly equivalent to those of humans. To establish a foundation for assessing the robots' emotional capacities, I first define what emotions are by characterizing the components of emotion consistent across emotion theories. Second, I dissect the affective-cognitive architecture of MIT's Kismet and Leonardo, (...) two robots explicitly designed to express emotions and to interact with humans, in order to explore whether they have emotions. I argue that, although Kismet and Leonardo lack the subjective feelings component of emotion, they are capable of having emotions. (shrink)

There is widespread disagreement as to what the facts are concerning just when a collection of objects composes some further object; but there is widespread agreement that, whatever those facts are, they are necessary. I am unhappy to simply assume this, and in this paper I ask whether there is reason to think that the facts concerning composition hold necessarily. I consider various reasons to think so, but find fault with each of them. I examine the theory of composition as (...) identity, but argue that the version of this doctrine that entails universalism is implausible. I consider the claim that the a priority of such facts leads to their necessity, but give a defence of substantial contingent a priori truths. I ask whether the contingency of such facts would lead to unwelcome possibilities, but argue that the worrying looking possibilities can be blocked if it is desired. Next, I argue against the thought that the Lewis-Sider argument against restricted composition might give us reason to accept the necessity of universalism. Lastly, I respond to two objections from the 2006 BSPC. I conclude in favour of the contingency of the facts concerning when some things compose some thing. (shrink)

Let the label binary category terms refer to natural language expressions like ‘woman’, ‘man’, ‘female’, and ‘male’. Focusing on ‘woman’ and ‘female’, I develop a novel, empirically supported theory of the meanings of English binary category terms. Given plausible assumptions about the metaphysics of sex and gender, this gender-first theory predicts that the sentence ‘Trans women are women’ expresses a truth in all contexts and the sentence ‘Women are adult human females’ expresses a truth in most ordinary contexts — thus (...) that these two sentences can and usually do express logically consistent contents. The key feature of the proposed theory is that it treats both ‘woman’ and ‘female’ as sensitive to an individual’s gender when that individual belongs to a gendered category and to an individual’s sex otherwise. The existence and plausibility of a gender-first theory of this kind opens up conceptual room for trans-inclusive positions in the philosophy of sex and gender which endorse the claim that women are adult human females, thereby both accounting for trans women’s experiences of their bodies as female and helping to disarm the sentence ‘Women are adult human females’ as a trans-exclusionary slogan. (shrink)