The mesostriatal dopamine system is prominently implicated in model-free reinforcement learning, with fMRI BOLD signals in ventral striatum notably covarying with model-free prediction errors. However, latent learning and devaluation studies show that behavior also shows hallmarks of model-based planning, and the interaction between model-based and model-free values, prediction errors, and preferences is underexplored. We designed a multistep decision task in which model-based and model-free influences on human choice behavior could be distinguished. By showing that choices reflected both influences we could (...) then test the purity of the ventral striatal BOLD signal as a model-free report. Contrary to expectations, the signal reflected both model-free and model-based predictions in proportions matching those that best explained choice behavior. These results challenge the notion of a separate model-free learner and suggest a more integrated computational architecture for high-level human decision-making. (shrink)

Recent defenders of metaethical constructivism (like Christine Korsgaard, Sharon Street, Aaron James, and Carla Bagnoli) argue that this view can be shown to represent a new, free-standing alternative to familiar approaches in metaethics. If they are correct, traditional discussions in metaethics have overlooked an important position, one that is supposed to adequately explain the nature of our ethical thinking and practice while avoiding the kinds of objections that traditional views struggle with. However, what form constructivism should take and whether constructivists (...) can make good on this ambitious claim remains extremely controversial. This article starts out with a brief account of the origins of contemporary discussions of constructivism. It then moves on to canvass the main motivations and arguments for constructivism along with the various ways in which the view has been interpreted. In the second half of the article, it introduces a serious challenge to the ambitious claim that constructivism represents a new, free-standing approach in metaethics and concludes by entertaining a very recent proposal that this challenge might overlook. (shrink)

In a recent series of lectures delivered at the Institute of Fine Arts and the Frick Collection, Michael Ann Holly highlighted a moment in the 1950s when, she argues, art history made a pivotal choice, opting to follow Erwin Panofsky’s iconographic system of interpretation, based in a neo-Kantian historical distance, rather than Hans-Georg Gadamer’s theory of immediacy of experience.1 The dichotomy between visual experience and contextualization that Holly implicitly posits in her lecture suggests a long-standing tension in the historiography of (...) art history. Holly’s argument that Gadamer is a forgotten founder figure for the discipline of art history is a compelling one, not only for art history but, as I... (shrink)

When world’s most famous taxidermist, Carl Akeley, died in 1926, many obituaries cited his consummate skill and innovative technique, often arguing that he had elevated taxidermy from a craft to an art. Such claims notwithstanding, taxidermy tends still to be considered as a craft. While scholars have studied the various ways in which taxidermy has been deployed within art practices – to critique gender, colonialism and concepts of mortality – late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century attempts to classify it as a (...) fine art failed. This critical and historical asymmetry frames the following article, which explores what it tells us about how art is conceived today. I argue that taxidermy ‘failed’ as a form of art not because its procedures were distasteful, nor because its practice lacked the skill and vision an art might require. Rather, taxidermy remains outside of art due to a confluence of historical shifts in art practice and theory in the late nineteenth century, particularly those associated with the rise of instant photography and the advent of the snapshot. In this context, the making and display of taxidermied specimens entailed tensions – between ideal and real, type and example, multiple and singular, index and object – that were and remain central to photography and art. But, unlike photography, around which art historians have developed a sophisticated discourse, taxidermy lacks a critical vocabulary. Importantly, I argue, the taxidermied animal’s status involves no author-function, thus throwing into question methods of production and display. And, in light of this, I delineate taxidermy’s ‘failure’ in order to elucidate some of the tacit exclusions enacted by art history, particularly with regard to works that simultaneously reveal and negate their own manufacture. (shrink)

BackgroundThe terminal illness of late-stage Alzheimer’s and related dementias is progressively cruel, burdensome, and can last years if caregivers assist oral feeding and hydrating. Options to avoid prolonged dying are limited since advanced dementia patients cannot qualify for Medical Aid in Dying. Physicians and judges can insist on clear and convincing evidence that the patient wants to die—which many advance directives cannot provide. Proxies/agents’ substituted judgment may not be concordant with patients’ requests. While advance directives can be patients’ last resort (...) to attain a peaceful and timely dying consistent with their lifelong values, success depends on their being effective and acceptable. A single flaw can provide opponents justification to refuse the directive’s requests to cease assisted feeding.AimThis article considers 24 common advance directive flaws in four categories. Process flaws focus on how patients express their end-of-life wishes. Content flaws reflect drafters’ selection of conditions and interventions, and how they are described. Inherent flaws can make advance directives unacceptable to authorities concerned about premature dying. Strategies are needed to compel physicians to write needed orders and to prevent third parties from sabotaging these orders after they are implemented. The article includes excerpts from “dementia-specific” directives or supplements that exemplify each flaw—mostly from the US and Europe. No directive critiqued here included an effective strategy to resolve this long-debated bioethical conflict: the past directive requests “Cease assisted feeding” but the incapacitated patient apparently expresses the desire to “Continue assisted feeding.” Some opponents to the controversial request, cease assisted feeding, use this conflict as a conceptual wedge to practice hard paternalism. This article proposes a protocol to prevent this conflict from emerging. These strategies may prevent authorities from requiring patients to fulfill authorities’ additional clinical criteria as a prerequisite to honor the requests in patients directives.ConclusionThis critique of flaws may serve as a guide to drafting and to selecting effective and acceptable advance directives for dementia. It also poses several bioethical and clinical questions to those in authority: Does your paternalistic refusal to honor patients’ wishes respect their self-determination? Protect vulnerable patients from harm? Force patients to endure prolonged suffering? Violate the principles of bioethics? Violate the very foundation of patient-centered care? (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of language uses experimental methods developed in the cognitive sciences to investigate topics of interest to philosophers of language. This article describes the methodological background for the development of experimental approaches to topics in philosophy of language, distinguishes negative and positive projects in experimental philosophy of language, and evaluates experimental work on the reference of proper names and natural kind terms. The reliability of expert judgments vs. the judgments of ordinary speakers, the role that ambiguity plays in influencing (...) responses to experiments, and the reliability of metalinguistic judgments are also assessed. (shrink)

Radical contextualists have observed that the content of what is said by the utterance of a sentence is shaped in far-reaching ways by the context of utterance. And they have argued that the ways in which the content of what is said is shaped by context cannot be explained by semantic theory. A striking number of the examples that radical contextualists use to support their view involve sentences containing color adjectives ("red", "green", etc.). In this paper, I show how the (...) most sophisticated analysis of color adjectives within the explanatory framework of compositional truth conditional semantics—recently developed by Kennedy and McNally (Synthese 174(1): 79-98 2010)—needs to be modified to handle the full range of contextual variation displayed by color adjectives. (shrink)

John Rawls’s 1980 Dewey Lectures are widely acknowledged to represent the locus classicus for contemporary discussions of moral constructivism. Nevertheless, few published works have engaged with the significant interpretive challenges one finds in these lectures, and those that have fail to offer a satisfactory reading of the view that Rawls presents there or the place the lectures occupy in the development of Rawls's thinking. Indeed, there is a surprising lack of consensus about how best to interpret the constructivism of these (...) lectures. In this paper, I argue that the constructivism presented in the Dewey Lectures is best understood as involving the view that moral truth is correspondence with procedurally-determined, stance-dependent facts. Employing Rawls’s discussion of rational intuitionism as a foil, I defend this reading against textual discrepancies from within the lectures, as well as those one finds across Rawls’s other works. In addition to settling interpretive disputes, I draw out the ways in which this understanding of Kantian constructivism fits within the broader comparative project in ‘moral theory’ that Rawls inherits from Sidgwick. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvidence suggests that older adults experience greater emotional well-being compared to younger adults. Appraisal theories of emotion posit that differences in emotional experience are the...

Twentieth-century developments in logic and mathematics have led many people to view Euclid’s proofs as inherently informal, especially due to the use of diagrams in proofs. In _Euclid and His Twentieth-Century Rivals_, Nathaniel Miller discusses the history of diagrams in Euclidean Geometry, develops a formal system for working with them, and concludes that they can indeed be used rigorously. Miller also introduces a diagrammatic computer proof system, based on this formal system. This volume will be of interest to mathematicians, (...) computer scientists, and anyone interested in the use of diagrams in geometry. (shrink)

The fact that someone is generous is a reason to admire them. The fact that someone will pay you to admire them is also a reason to admire them. But there is a difference in kind between these two reasons: the former seems to be the ‘right’ kind of reason to admire, whereas the latter seems to be the ‘wrong’ kind of reason to admire. The Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem is the problem of explaining the difference between the ‘right’ (...) and the ‘wrong’ kind of reasons wherever it appears. In this article I argue that two recent proposals for solving the Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem do not work. I then offer an alternative solution that provides a unified, systematic explanation of the difference between the two kinds of reasons. (shrink)

In several articles, Mumma has presented a formal diagrammatic system Eu meant to give an account of one way in which Euclid's use of diagrams in the Elements could be formalized. However, largely because of the way in which it tries to limit case analysis, this system ends up being inconsistent, as shown here. Eu also suffers from several other problems: it is unable to prove several wide classes of correct geometric claims and contains a construction rule that is probably (...) computationally intractable and that may not even be decidable. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists face a puzzle. In brief, the puzzle is that if the reason there is to believe in accord with the evidence depends, as the instrumentalist says it does, on agents’ idiosyncratic interests, then there is no reason to expect that this reason is universal. Here, I identify and explain two strategies instrumentalists have used to try and solve this puzzle. I then argue that we should find these strategies wanting. Faced with the failure of these strategies, I articulate (...) a heretofore neglected solution on behalf of instrumentalism. (shrink)

Using the Public Value Mapping framework, I address the values successes and failures of chemistry as compared to the emerging field of green chemistry, in which the promoters attempt to incorporate new and expanded values, such as health, safety, and environmental sustainability, to the processes of prioritizing and conducting chemistry research. I document how such values are becoming increasingly public. Moreover, analysis of the relations among the multiple values associated with green chemistry displays a greater internal coherence and logic than (...) for conventional chemistry. Although traditional chemistry research has successfully contributed to both economic and values gains, there have been public values failures due to imperfect values articulations, failure to take a longer-term view, and inertia within a system that places too much emphasis on science values. Green chemistry, if implemented effectively, has potential to remedy these failures. (shrink)

Do epistemic requirements vary along with facts about what promotes agents' well-being? Epistemic instrumentalists say 'yes', and thereby earn a lot of contempt. This contempt is a mistake on two counts. First, it is incorrectly based: the reasons typically given for it are misguided. Second, it fails to distinguish between first- and second-order epistemic instrumentalism; and, it happens, only the former is contemptible. In this book, Nathaniel P. Sharadin argues for rejecting epistemic instrumentalism as a first-order view not because (...) it suffers extensional failures, but because it suffers explanatory ones. By contrast, he argues that epistemic instrumentalism offers a natural, straightforward explanation of why being epistemically correct matters. What emerges is a second-order instrumentalist explanation for epistemic authority that is neutral between competing first-order epistemic theories. This neutrality is an advantage. But, drawing on work from cognitive science and psychology, Sharadin argues that instrumentalists can abandon that neutrality in order to adopt a view he calls epistemic ecologism. Epistemic Instrumentalism Explained will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The philosopher Roberto Unger and the physicist Lee Smolin have recently argued that the current explanatory framework of cosmology, which presumes a timeless background of unchanging physical laws, should be replaced by a thoroughly relational framework in which time is fundamental and all laws are subject to change. Within this alternative framework, however, Unger and Smolin find themselves confronted by a dilemma: either the laws of nature evolve according to some higher set of “meta-laws,” which reinstates a timeless background at (...) a higher level, or the laws of nature evolve randomly and the path of inquiry is blocked. In response to this dilemma, the authors propose a theory of causal events as singular, freely chosen, and self-determined optimalities constrained only by their intrinsic relations to all other events. (shrink)

Marks individually or in combination constitute images that represent objects. How do those images represent those objects? Marks vary in style, both between and within images. Images also vary in style. How do those styles relate to each other and to the objects that those images represent? Referencing a diverse range of images, we answer the first question with a response-dependence theory of image representation derived from Mark Johnston, differentiating Lockean primary qualities of marks from secondary qualities of images. We (...) answer the second question with a perceptual theory of style derived from Paul Grice, differentiating physical style from image style, and representing conventionally from representing conversationally. (shrink)

Memoirs of a twenty-year relationship between the author and Ayn Rand, who was his friend, mentor, lover, and enemy. No index. No bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1485-1546) is well-known for his philosophical contributions to natural rights and international law. However, his extensive work on the conflict between civil authority and the authority of the Catholic Church has been largely neglected by political theorists and intellectual historians. While scholars have recently recognized the significant role played by natural law in the history of political secularism, they have focused almost exclusively on the “modern” natural law theories of Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Thomasius, as opposed to (...) the “scholastic” natural law of early modern Thomists like Vitoria. This essay undertakes an analysis of Vitoria’s use of natural law theory in his approach to civil-ecclesiastical conflict. Contrary to critiques from the “modern” natural lawyers, it argues that Vitoria’s idea of natural law spearheads a forceful defence of the autonomy of civil power from ecclesiastical power. Based on his sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural spheres of human life, Vitoria argues for a “dualist” position in which civil and ecclesiastical powers are independent and equally binding on human consciences. The essay acknowledges that Vitoria’s dualism ultimately gives way to his endorsement of papal supremacy over all Christian princes. However, this papalist conclusion does not follow from Vitoria’s natural law theory but rather from an opposing political principle: the notion of the universal Christian commonwealth. (shrink)

A revised version of Nathaniel Chipman's Sketches of the Principles of Government (1793), this early treatise on the underlying principles of American government addresses civil laws and obligations, the social state, rights of property, sovereignty and political power. An important early contribution to American constitutional law, it is also interesting for its Federalist perspective on the evolutions of political institutions from Washington to Jackson.Nathaniel Chipman [1752-1843] was a leading Vermont Federalist who was instrumental in that state's admission to (...) the Union. He became Vermont's chief Justice and went on to represent Vermont in the U.S. Senate. He was also one of America's first significant legal writers.One of his books, the Reports and Dissertations (1793) is included in Warren's list of "the four general works on the Common Law... [of] permanent value in American Legal Literature.": Warren, A History of the American Bar 335-336. See Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 5752, Sabin, A Dictionary of Books Relating to America 12824, Dictionary of American Biography II:73-74. (shrink)

This paper traces the development of enactive concepts of value and normativity from their roots in the canonical work of Varela et al. through more recent works of Ezequiel Di Paolo and others. It aims to show the central importance of these concepts for enactive theory while exposing a potentially troublesome ambiguity in their definition. Most definitions of enactive normativity are purely proscriptive, but it seems that enactive theories of cognitive agency and experience demand something more. On the other hand, (...) it is not clear that anything other than proscriptive normativity can be made compatible with the enactive tenet of autonomy and the rejection of representations. (shrink)

Neuroeconomics illustrates our deepening descent into the details of individual cognition. This descent is guided by the implicit assumption that “individual human” is the important “agent” of neoclassical economics. I argue here that this assumption is neither obviously correct, nor of primary importance to human economies. In particular I suggest that the main genius of the human species lies with its ability to distribute cognition across individuals, and to incrementally accumulate physical and social cognitive artifacts that largely obviate the innate (...) biological limitations of individuals. If this is largely why our economies grow, then we should be much more interested in distributed cognition in human groups, and correspondingly less interested in individual cognition. We should also be much more interested in the cultural accumulation of cognitive artefacts: computational devices and media, social structures and economic institutions. (shrink)

Mark Schroeder has recently offered a solution to the problem of distinguishing between the so-called " right " and " wrong " kinds of reasons for attitudes like belief and admiration. Schroeder tries out two different strategies for making his solution work: the alethic strategy and the background-facts strategy. In this paper I argue that neither of Schroeder's two strategies will do the trick. We are still left with the problem of distinguishing the right from the wrong kinds of reasons.

The Morality of Spin explores the ethics of political rhetoric crafted to persuade and possibly manipulate potential voters. Based on extensive insider interviews with leaders of Focus on the Family, one of the most powerful Christian right organizations in America, Nathaniel Klemp asks whether the tactic of tailoring a message to a particular audience is politically legitimate or amounts to democratic malpractice. Klemp’s nuanced assessment, highlighting both democratic vices and virtues of the political rhetoric, provides a welcome contribution to (...) recent scholarship on deliberative democracy, rhetoric, and the growing empirical literature on the American Christian right. (shrink)

In 'The duty to miscegenate', I harness John Stuart Mill's 19th century theory of social freedom to explain and to dismantle contemporary racialised and gendered injustice. In the first chapter—Social stigmatisation: 'a social tyranny'—I argue that persons racialised-and-gendered-as-black-women were, in the past, unjustly stigmatised by legal penalties against 'miscegenation' and are still, today, unjustly stigmatised by white male avoidance of cross-racial marriage and companionship. In the second chapter—Encounters that count: 'a foundation for solid friendship'—I argue that we can dismantle this (...) stigmatisation, by engaging in regular and frequent cross-racial commensality with persons racialised-and-gendered-as-black-women. In the third chapter—White right: 'a right to avoid'—I argue that, although we have a right to avoid commensal encounters with others, we do not have a right to avoid persons we racialise as black. On the contrary, we have a duty to encounter them, on terms of equality and intimacy. (shrink)

L.A. Paul has argued that an ordinary, natural way of making a decision -- by reflecting on the phenomenal character of the experiences one will have as a result of that decision -- cannot yield rational decision in certain cases. Paul's argument turns on the (in principle) epistemically inaccessible phenomenal character of certain experiences. In this paper I argue that, even granting Paul a range of assumptions, her argument doesn't work to establish its conclusion. This is because, as I argue, (...) the phenomenal character of an experience supervenes on epistemically accessible facts about its non-phenomenal character plus what the deciding agent is like. Because there are principles that link the non-phenomenal character of experiences (together with what a particular agent is like) to the phenomenal character of experiences, agents can reasonably form expectations about the valence of the phenomenal character of the experiences that they are deciding whether to undergo. These reasonable expectations are, I argue, enough to make the ordinary, natural way of making a decision yield rational decision. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have claimed that non-evidential considerations cannot play a role in doxastic deliberation as motivating reasons to believe a proposition. This claim, interesting in its own right, naturally lends itself to use in a range of arguments for a wide array of substantive philosophical theses. I argue, by way of a counterexample, that the claim to which all these arguments appeal is false. I then consider, and reply to, seven objections to my counterexample. Finally, as a way (...) of softening the blow, I show how the counterexample itself suggests a plausible diagnosis of why this claim has seemed so plausible to so many. (shrink)

In ontological debates, realists typically argue for their view via one of two approaches. The _Quinean approach_ employs naturalistic arguments that say our scientific practices give us reason to affirm the existence of a kind of entity. The _Fregean approach_ employs linguistic arguments that say we should affirm the existence of a kind of entity because our discourse contains reference to those entities. These two approaches are often seen as distinct, with _indispensability arguments_ typically associated with the former, but not (...) the latter, approach. This paper argues for a connection between the two approaches on the grounds that the typical arguments of the Fregean approach can be reformulated as indispensability arguments. This connection is significant in at least two ways. First, it implies that indispensability arguments provide a common framework within which to compare the Quinean and Fregean approaches, which allows for a more precise delineation of the two approaches. Second, it implies the possibility of analogical relations that allow proponents and opponents of each approach to draw upon the ideas that have been developed regarding the other. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have claimed that non-evidential considerations cannot play a role in doxastic deliberation as motivating reasons to believe a proposition. This claim, interesting in its own right, naturally lends itself to use in a range of arguments for a wide array of substantive philosophical theses. I argue, by way of a counterexample, that the claim to which all these arguments appeal is false. I then consider, and reply to, seven objections to my counterexample. Finally, as a way (...) of softening the blow, I show how the counterexample itself suggests a plausible diagnosis of why this claim has seemed so plausible to so many. (shrink)