Earl Conee and Richard Feldman claim that mentalism identifies the core of internalist epistemology. This is what I call identifying ur-internalism. Their version of ur-internalism differs from the traditional one ? viz., accessibilism ? by not imposing requirements stipulating that subjects must have reflective access to facts which justify their beliefs for these beliefs to be justified. Instead, justification simply supervenes on the mental lives of subjects. I argue that mentalism fails to establish itself as ur-internalism by demonstrating that the (...) strong supervenience claim used by Conee and Feldman is consistent with cognitive externalism (often called ?the extended mind hypothesis?). Briefly, cognitive externalism claims that the mental states themselves (rather than their contents) constitutively depend on factors outside the bodily individual. Given this possibility, I claim Conee and Feldman's supervenience principle no longer suits the purposes to which they put it. (shrink)

Rob Wilson claims that mental properties are not attributable to wide subjects, despite the claims of authors like Clark and Chalmers. I examine Wilson's objection and endeavor to demonstrate that Clark and Chalmers' account does support the attribution of mental properties to wide subjects.

Ability is a key notion in much contemporary externalist epistemology. Various authors have argued that there is an ability condition on knowledge . Moreover, epistemic justification is also arguably tied to ability. Yet there is not total agreement amongst the interested parties about the conditions under which subjects possess abilities, nor the conditions under which a subject who possesses an ability exercises or manifests it. Here, I will address what conditions must obtain for a subject to possess an ability.

Cognitive abilities have been invoked to do much work in externalist epistemology. An ability condition (sometimes in conjunction with a separate, anti-luck condition) is seen to be key in satisfying direction-of-fit and modal stability intuitions which attach to the accrual of positive epistemic status to doxastic attitudes. While the notion of ability has been given some extensive treatment in the literature (especially John Greco, Alan Millar and Ernest Sosa), the implications for these abilities being particularly cognitive ones has been given (...) less attention. To rectify this oversight, I examine the debate over the nature of cognition from philosophy of cognitive science, paying particular attention to the debate between defenders of internalist theories (Fred Adams, Kenneth Aizawa and Rob Rupert) and externalist theories (so-called “extended mind” positions). Armed with substantive accounts of cognition, I argue that the epistemological externalist’s obligation to repudiate epistemological internalism forces her to adopt some sort of externalist account of cognition. (shrink)

The world contains objective causal relations and universals, both of which are intimately connected. If these claims are true, they must have far-reaching consequences, breathing new life into the theory of empirical knowledge and reinforcing epistemological realism. Without causes and universals, Professor Fales argues, realism is defeated, and idealism or scepticism wins. Fales begins with a detailed analysis of David Hume's argument that we have no direct experience of necessary connections between events, concluding that Hume was mistaken on this fundamental (...) point. Then, adopting the view of Armstrong and others that causation is grounded in a second-order relation between universals, he explores a range of topics for which the resulting analysis of causation has systematic implications. In particular, causal identity conditions for physical universals are proposed, which generate a new argument for Platonism. The nature of space and time is discussed, with arguments against backward causation and for the view that space and time can exist independently of matter or causal process. Many of Professor Fales's conclusions seem to run counter to received opinion among contemporary empiricists. Yet his method is classically empiricist in spirit, and a chief motive for these metaphysical explorations is epistemological. The final chapters investigate the perennial question of whether an empiricist, internalist and foundational epistemology can support scientific realism. (shrink)

We argue that human rights are best conceived as norms arising from a fiduciary relationship that exists between states and the citizens and noncitizens subject to their power. These norms draw on a Kantian conception of moral personhood, protecting agents from instrumentalization and domination. They do not, however, exist in the abstract as timeless natural rights. Instead, they are correlates of the state's fiduciary duty to provide equal security under the rule of law, a duty that flows from the state's (...) institutional assumption of irresistible sovereign powers. (shrink)

Traditionally, theories of mindreading have focused on the representation of beliefs and desires. However, decades of social psychology and social neuroscience have shown that, in addition to reasoning about beliefs and desires, human beings also use representations of character traits to predict and interpret behavior. While a few recent accounts have attempted to accommodate these findings, they have not succeeded in explaining the relation between trait attribution and belief-desire reasoning. On my account, character-trait attribution is part of a hierarchical system (...) for action prediction, and serves to inform hypotheses about agents’ beliefs and desires, which are in turn used to predict and interpret behavior. (shrink)

The Doctrine of the Given The Myth of the Given A Methodological Problem To a convinced foundationalist, the project of establishing the existence of the ...

Every day, new warnings emerge about artificial intelligence rebelling against us. All the while, a more immediate dilemma flies under the radar. Have forces been unleashed that are thrusting humanity down an ill-advised path, one that's increasingly making us behave like simple machines? In this wide-reaching, interdisciplinary book, Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger examine what's happening to our lives as society embraces big data, predictive analytics, and smart environments. They explain how the goal of designing programmable worlds goes hand (...) in hand with engineering predictable and programmable people. Detailing new frameworks, provocative case studies, and mind-blowing thought experiments, Frischmann and Selinger reveal hidden connections between fitness trackers, electronic contracts, social media platforms, robotic companions, fake news, autonomous cars, and more. This powerful analysis should be read by anyone interested in understanding exactly how technology threatens the future of our society, and what we can do now to build something better. (shrink)

Ethics rounds in clinical ethics have already taken hold in multiple venues. There are “sit-down rounds,” which usually consist of a bioethicist setting a specific, prescheduled time aside for residents and/or others to bring a case or two for discussion with the bioethicist. Another kind of rounds that occurs on an ad hoc or infrequent basis is to have either a staff or outside bioethicist give hospital-wide and/or departmental “grand rounds.” Grand rounds is a traditional educational format in medicine and (...) adding bioethics to the topics covered in grand rounds is an important means of elevating ethical awareness within a department or throughout a healthcare organization. Newer is the rounding practice of adding a bioethicist to other established rounding processes, such as case management and utilization review rounds. All of these kinds of ethics rounds are important opportunities to elevate the level of moral discourse within a healthcare setting and are becoming part and parcel of any full-service hospital bioethics program. (shrink)

Current scientific research on consciousness aims to understand how consciousness arises from the workings of the brain and body, as well as the relations between conscious experience and cognitive processing. Clearly, to make progress in these areas, researchers cannot avoid a range of conceptual issues about the nature and structure of consciousness, such as the following: What is the relation between intentionality and consciousness? What is the relation between self-awareness and consciousness? What is the temporal structure of conscious experience? What (...) is it like to imagine or visualize something, and how is this type of experience different from perception? How is bodily experience related to self-consciousness? Such issues have been addressed in detail in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, inaugurated by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and developed by numerous other philosophers throughout the 20th century. This chapter provides an introduction to this tradition and its way of approaching issues about consciousness. We first discuss some features of phenomenological methodology and then present some of the most important, influential, and enduring phenomenological proposals about various aspects of consciousness. These aspects include intentionality, self-awareness and the first-person perspective, time-consciousness, embodiment, and intersubjectivity. We also highlight a few ways of linking phenomenology and cognitive. (shrink)

This chapter examines arguments for the view that any science of the supernatural must be a pseudoscience. It shows that many of these arguments are not good arguments. It also argues that, contrary to recent philosophical discussions, the appeal to the supernatural should not be ruled out as science for methodological reasons, but rather because the notion of supernatural intervention probably suffers from fatal flaws.

Habermas's paradigm of communicative action is usually taken to be pretty much dominated by consensus, "Yes-saying." What if this were a radically one-sided perception? We take up this unorthodox position by arguing that "no-saying" in this paradigm is typically overlooked and underemphasized. To demonstrate this, we consider how negativity is figured at the most basic onto-ethical level in communicative action, as well as expressed in civil disobedience, a phenomenon to which Habermas assigns the remarkable role of "touchstone" (Prufstein) of constitutional (...) democracy. Once the importance of no-saying is drawn out, the paradigm looks distinctly less hostile to dissensus and agonism in democratic life. (shrink)

In Warrant and Proper Function, Alvin Plantinga claims that metaphysical naturalism, when joined to a naturalized epistemology, is self-undermining. Plantinga argues that naturalists are committed to a neoDarwinian account of our origins, and that the reliability of our cognitive faculties is improbable or unknown relative to that theory. If the theory is true, then we are in no position to know that, whereas theism, if true, underwrites cognitive reliability. I seek to turn the tables on Plantinga, showing that neoDarwinism provides (...) strong reasons for expecting general cognitive reliability, whereas the likelihood of that relative to theism is unknowable. (shrink)

The so-called “analytical” appendix to the first part of Spinoza’s Ethics has at times puzzled scholars. It notably breaks with the geometrical method adopted in most of the text, and includes an impassioned argument against teleology, popular morality, and, ultimately, the faculty of imagination. In this essay I seek to resolve this interpretive difficulty by side-by-side comparison with philosophical resources from one of Spinoza’s main influences. In particular, I argue that analysis of the appendix to the first part of his (...) Ethics is benefitted by comparison with certain Maimonidean arguments regarding the “imagination”—themselves part of a long tradition of debate on the powers of the imaginative faculty in ancient and medieval philosophy—contained in The Guide of the Perplexed. I introduce and trace this connection across both texts. This helps us to better appreciate both the appendix and its place within the Ethics and Spinoza’s sustained, complicated relationship with Medieval Judaism’s greatest thinker. (shrink)

Some philosophers deny that science can investigate the supernatural - specifically, the nature and actions of God. If a divine being is atemporal, then, indeed, this seems plausible - but only, I shall argue, because such a being could not causally interact with anything. Here I discuss in detail two major attempts, those of Stump and Kretzmann, and of Leftow, to make sense of theophysical causation on the supposition that God is eternal. These views are carefully worked out, and their (...) failures are instructive for any attempt to reconcileeternality with causal efficacy. I conclude by arguing that if knowledge of God is possible, in virtue of His effects upon the world, then it is science that must play the preeminent role in producing that knowledge. (shrink)

Sensory substitution presents the philosopher of cognitive science with a particularly interesting case. Using prosthetics to map visual stimuli onto other modalities, such as touch or audition, otherwise blind individuals may develop perceptual capacities and behaviours commonly associated with sight. Experienced users can distinguish ‘visually’ presented objects and will even jerk back from a looming surface. Whether perception with sensory substitution devices should be classed as a type of vision, some other modality, or a new sense remains a matter of (...) debate, however. In the following, I review arguments commonly used to rebut the visual interpretation and, drawing on recent experimental studies and phenomenological self-reports, construct a novel case for treating sensory substitution as a visual process. (shrink)

In this essay I will argue for an interpretation of the remarks of Physics 1.1 that both resolves some of the confusion surrounding the precise nature of methodology described there and shows how those remarks at 184a15-25 serve as important programmatic remarks besides, as they help in the structuring of books 1 and 2 of the Physics. I will argue that “what is clearer and more knowable to us” is what Aristotle goes on to describe in 1.2—namely, that nature exists (...) and that natural things change—his basic starting-point for natural science. This, I shall hope to show, is the kind of “immediate” sense datum which Aristotle thinks must be further analyzed in terms of principles and then causes over the course of Physics books 1 and 2 to lead to knowledge about the natural world.[1] Such an analysis arrives at, as I shall show, a definition of nature not initially available from the starting-point just mentioned, and which is clearer by nature.[2] It is not my aim here to resolve longstanding debates surrounding Aristotle’s original intent in the ordering and composition of the first two books of the Physics, nor how the Physics is meant to fit into the Aristotelian corpus taken as a coherent whole, but rather to show that the first two books of the Physics, as they stand, fit with the picture of methodology for natural science presented to us in 1.1. [1] An interesting consequence of this, and one which I shall not pursue in this paper at any length, is that the progression from what is clearer to us and what is clearer by nature is by necessity a form of revision: i.e., the Physics should not be seen as a work validating the “starting-point” of 1.2 contra the monists, but a work which gradually builds to the language of matter and form as what is clearer by nature. [2] Viz., what we find at the beginning of 2.1: “this suggests that nature is a sort of source and cause of change and remaining unchanged in that to which it belongs primarily of itself, that is, not by virtue of concurrence”. (shrink)

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

In visual science the term filling-inis used in different ways, which often leads to confusion. This target article presents a taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena to organize and clarify theoretical and empirical discussion. Examples of boundary completion (illusory contours) and featural completion (color, brightness, motion, texture, and depth) are examined, and single-cell studies relevant to filling-in are reviewed and assessed. Filling-in issues must be understood in relation to theoretical issues about neuralignoring an absencejumping to a conclusionanalytic isomorphismCartesian materialism, a particular (...) neural stage that forms the immediate substrate of perceptual experience enactiveanimatesubpersonal” considerations about internal processing, but rather by considerations about the task of vision at the level of the animal or person interacting with the world. (shrink)

In this book, Christopher Evan Franklin develops and defends a novel version of event-causal libertarianism. This view is a combination of libertarianism--the view that humans sometimes act freely and that those actions are the causal upshots of nondeterministic processes--and agency reductionism--the view that the causal role of the agent in exercises of free will is exhausted by the causal role of mental states and events (e.g., desires and beliefs) involving the agent. Franklin boldly counteracts a dominant theory that has (...) similar aims, put forth by well-known philosopher Robert Kane. -/- Many philosophers contend that event-causal libertarians have no advantage over compatibilists when it comes to securing a distinctively valuable kind of freedom and responsibility. To Franklin, this position is mistaken. Assuming agency reductionism is true, event-causal libertarians need only adopt the most plausible compatibilist theory and add indeterminism at the proper juncture in the genesis of human action. The result is minimal event-causal libertarianism: a model of free will with the metaphysical simplicity of compatibilism and the intuitive power of libertarianism. And yet a worry remains: toward the end of the book, Franklin reconsiders his assumption of agency reductionism, arguing that this picture faces a hitherto unsolved problem. This problem, however, has nothing to do with indeterminism or determinism, or even libertarianism or compatibilism, but with how to understand the nature of the self and its role in the genesis of action. Crucially, if this problem proves unsolvable, then not only is event-causal libertarianism untenable, so also is event-causal compatibilism. (shrink)

It is well known that the difference in performance between valid and invalid trials in the covert orienting paradigm increases as the proportion of valid trials increases. This proportion valid effect is widely assumed to reflect “strategic” control over the distribution of attention. In the present experiments we determine if this effect results from an explicit strategy or implicit learning by probing participant’s awareness of the proportion of valid trials. Results support the idea that the proportion valid effect in the (...) covert orienting paradigm reflects implicit learning not an explicit strategy. (shrink)

Theodicies can be distinguished as “hard-nosed” or “good-hearted.” Typical features of each are given. I reject the former; they set the bar too low for God. Considerable discussion is devoted to Eleonore Stump's recent Wandering in Darkness, which sets the standard for good-hearted theodicies. I then develop the notion of a “perfect creature”, a possible being indistinguishable from God except lacking aseity, and argue that God should have created only perfect creatures. Since He did not, He is not. Theodicies, therefore, (...) are in trouble if there is a best possible world and it is a perfect creature world. (shrink)

Essentialism--understood as the doctrine that there are natural kinds--can be sustained with respect to the most fundamental physical entities of the world, as I elsewhere argue. In this paper I take up the question of the existence of natural kinds among complex structures built out of these elementary ones. I consider a number of objections to essentialism, in particular Locke's puzzle about the existence of borderline cases. A number of recent attempts to justify biological taxonomy are critically examined. I conclude (...) that theory partially justifies such taxonomies but supports only a weaker form of essentialism. (shrink)

In the twenty-five years since philosophers began to bemoan ‘the dreariness of aesthetics’, students in Wittgenstein's wake have done a great deal to eliminate the grounds of the complaint. Unfruitful essentialist theories have been largely displaced by the vigorous, if somewhat uncontrolled, growth of an enterprise which attempts to characterize and explicate aesthetic phenomena outside the desert of definition. The resulting view portrays typically aesthetic concepts as being indivisibly characterizing and evaluative, relativistic in application, necessarily linked to human attitudes, irreducible (...) to non-aesthetic concepts, and yet as having social conditions which make them capable of intersubjective comparison and test. These characteristics are usefully summarized in saying that aesthetic concepts are concepts of appraisal. The theory of aesthetic appraisal discussed here is clearly incompatible with views which postulate dichotomies between objectivity and subjectivity, fact and value, and it is quite analogous to ‘descriptivist’ theories in ethics which reject these absolute distinctions. Moral examples are thus often useful for explicating the notion of aesthetic appraisal and the theory embodying that notion likewise has an important bearing on contemporary controversies in ethics. (shrink)

This discussion explores skepticism about moral principles, the diminishing authority of principles in much recent moral philosophy, transformations of rationalism that result, and the possibility of morality within the bounds of custom alone.

The manipulation argument poses a significant challenge for any adequate compatibilist theory of agency. The argument maintains that there is no relevant difference between actions or pro‐attitudes that are induced by nefarious neurosurgeons, God, or (and this is the important point) natural causes. Therefore, if manipulation is thought to undermine moral responsibility, then so also ought causal determinism. In this paper, I will attempt to bolster the plausibility of John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's semicompatibilist theory of moral responsibility by (...) demonstrating how their account provides a distinctive line of response to three important types of manipulation. (shrink)

Foundationalist epistemologies, whether internalist or externalist, ground noetic structures in beliefs that are said to be foundational, or properly basic. It is essential to such epistemologies that they provide clear criteria for proper basicality. This proves, 1 argue, to be a thorny task, at least insofar as the goal is to provide a psychologically realistic reconstruction of our actual doxastic practices. I examine some of the difficulties, and suggest some implications, in particular for the externalist epistemology of Alvin Plantinga.

This critical study of the third book of Plantinga's trilogy on proper-function epistemology begins by denying that classical foundationalism proposes a deontic conception of justification. Nor is it subject to Gettier counterexamples, as, I show, Plantinga's fallibilism is and must be. Plantinga's central thesis is that there's no way of attacking the rationality of central Christian beliefs without attacking their truth. That, I argue, is not so on several grounds, e.g., because one can demand independent evidence for the existence of (...) the _sensus divinitatis and Holy Spirit, because of doctrinal disagreements, and because of the morally checkered character of "saved" Christians. (shrink)

The “doctrine of the given” that Fales defends holds that there are certain experiences such that we can have justified beliefs about their “contents” that are not based on any other beliefs, and that the rest of our justified empirical beliefs rest on those “basic beliefs.” The features of experience basic beliefs are about are said to be “given.” Fales holds that some basic beliefs are infallible, having a kind of clarity that guarantees their truth to the believer. In addition, (...) some basic beliefs are fallible, typically due to failure to devote full attention to one’s experience. (shrink)

A summation of research on the structure and function of the brain presents new ideas on how the human mind evolved in adaptation to a world that no longer exists.

Theoretical simplicity is difficult to characterize, and evidently can depend upon a number of distinct factors. One such desirable characteristic is that the laws of a theory have relatively few "counterinstances" whose accommodation requires the invocation of a ceteris paribus condition and ancillary explanation. It is argued that, when one theory is reduced to another, such that the laws of the second govern the behavior of the parts of the entities in the domain of the first, there is a characteristic (...) gain in simplicity of the sort mentioned: while I see no way of quantitatively measuring the "amount" of defeasibility of the laws of a theory, microreduction can be shown to decrease that "amount.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Chaos and LiteratureCarl Matheson and Evan KirchhoffIChaos theory was the intellectual darling of pop-science writers of the late 1980s. 1 In their eyes, it would provide a new paradigm by which to describe the world, one that liberated scientists from clockwork determinism—or, alternatively, from incomprehensible randomness. In an introductory textbook of the period, Robert Devaney called chaos theory “the third great scientific revolution of the 20th century, along (...) with relativity and quantum mechanics.” Similar attitudes propagated into philosophy; for example, Stephen Kellert argued that an acceptance of chaos theory would involve a reconfiguration of scientific methodology. 2It was in the domain of literary theory, however, that chaos found its most enthusiastic reception in the humanities, and the enthusiasm lives on. Many literary theorists display no hesitation in touting the supposedly revolutionary implications of chaos science. Katherine Hayles, the chief among them, argues that because the concept of order has undergone a “radical reevaluation” in recent decades, “textuality is conceived in new ways within critical theory and literature, and new kinds of phenomena are coming to the fore within an emerging field known as the science of chaos” (CO, p. 1). She infers that the new “paradigm of orderly disorder” (CB, p. xiii) represented by chaos theory signifies a conceptual revolution in modern culture as a whole. 3 She attempts to establish a parallel between chaos theory and various poststructuralist philosophical positions, including those of Derrida and Foucault, claiming that this new paradigm “may well prove to be as important to the second half of the century as the field concept was to [End Page 28] the first half” (CB, p. xiii), and that chaos may soon be “on a par with evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics in its impact on the culture” (CO, p. 4). Other theorists make claims for the interpretive power of chaos; according to William Demastes, “chaos theory can help in comprehending several paths that the theatre has followed since the inception of postmodernism” (p. 242). 4 By a conservative estimate, over fifty papers have been published which link chaos theory to literature or literary theory. Clearly, the idea that chaos theory has application outside of science is not restricted to one or two over-eager humanists.In this essay, we wish to address some of the claims which concern the relationship between chaos science and the study of literature. Three such claims are:a. There are significant similarities between the science of chaos, contemporary literary theory, and/or philosophy.b. We can trace a common etiology for chaos theory and poststructuralist criticism. The two are so intimately related that they are really different formulations of a common claim, as filtered through two different fields.c. The science of chaos can help us interpret and understand specific literary works, and perhaps contemporary literature in general.However, before assessing the relationship between chaos and literature, we will briefly introduce chaos theory itself and demonstrate that even a minimal understanding is sufficient to undercut the supposed revolutionary significance of chaos theory. 5IIChaotic systems are deterministic: an exact description of a system at any given time, together with the laws of nature that apply to it, will entail the entire future behavior of the system. In this sense, chaotic systems form a subclass of classical systems (and are to be distinguished from quantum systems, which are indeterministic). However, chaotic systems differ from the systems studied throughout most of the history of science in two major ways. First, the differential equations used to model them are nonlinear, while the history of mathematical physics is largely devoted to a treatment of linear differential equations. Technical issues aside, the ramifications of nonlinearity are: (i) equations which are impossible to solve using the general strategies designed for [End Page 29] linear equations; and consequently (ii) the need for solutions by methods of numerical approximation, generally performed on a computer. Second, chaotic systems exhibit a feature known as “sensitive dependence”—or, more colorfully, as “the butterfly effect,” a figure of speech intended to evoke the worry that our long-term forecasts of the weather can be hopelessly disrupted by the atmospheric fluctuations due to a single butterfly... (shrink)

In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, author Mark Evan Bonds examines how writers have struggled to isolate the essence of music in ways that account for its profound effects on the human spirit. By carefully tracing the evolution of absolute music from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to twentieth-century America, Bonds provides the first comprehensive history of this pivotal concept, and provokes new thoughts on the essence of music and how this essence explains music's effect. A (...) long awaited book from one of the most respected senior scholars in the field. (shrink)

Poverty tours - actual visits as well as literary and cinematic versions - are characterized as morally controversial trips and condemned in the press as voyeuristic endeavors. In this collaborative essay, we draw from personal experience, legal expertise, and phenomenological philosophy and introduce a conceptual taxonomy that clarifies the circumstances in which observing others has been construed as an immoral use of the gaze. We appeal to this taxonomy to determine which observational circumstances are relevant to the poverty tourism debate. (...) While we do not defend all or even most poverty tourism practices, we do conclude that categorical condemnation of poverty tourism is unjustified. (shrink)