Academic internships are increasingly common in other disciplines, but have not been discussed or implemented widely in the discipline of philosophy. This article fills this gap by discussing the potential benefits of philosophy internships and addressing two important questions: whether there is something different about philosophy—possibly its abstractness, versatility, or what I refer to as “pluripotency”—that renders the benefits of internships out of reach for many philosophy students, and whether philosophy faculty should be responsible for developing and implementing philosophy internships. (...) In this article, I argue that there is nothing about the discipline itself that prevents philosophy majors from experiencing the benefits of academic internships and that, among the different possible internship coordinators, philosophy faculty bear primary responsibility for developing academic internships in philosophy and assisting philosophy students as they transition from college to professional career. (shrink)

Academic internships are increasingly common in other disciplines, but have not been discussed or implemented widely in the discipline of philosophy. This article fills this gap by discussing the potential benefits of philosophy internships and addressing two important questions: whether there is something different about philosophy—possibly its abstractness, versatility, or what I refer to as “pluripotency”—that renders the benefits of internships out of reach for many philosophy students, and whether philosophy faculty should be responsible for developing and implementing philosophy internships. (...) In this article, I argue that there is nothing about the discipline itself that prevents philosophy majors from experiencing the benefits of academic internships and that, among the different possible internship coordinators, philosophy faculty bear primary responsibility for developing academic internships in philosophy and assisting philosophy students as they transition from college to professional career. (shrink)

Ethics training is becoming increasingly common in pre-professional contexts to address ethical misconduct in business, medicine, science, and other disciplines. These courses are often taught by philosophers. The question is whether such ethics training, which involves philosophical reflection, is effective in cultivating ethical behavior. This paper takes a closer look at the goals of teaching ethics and how our current methods are ineffective in achieving the affective and active goals of teaching ethics. This paper then suggests how experiential learning and, (...) specifically, service learning may be one way forward in achieving these goals. While some pre-professional programs have implemented service learning, the ethics courses offered by philosophers also may be improved by giving students more opportunities to engage their communities through service learning. (shrink)

Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most federally funded public benefits programs with few exceptions such as emergency medical assistance and nutrition assistance for women and children. This paper defends the view that a liberal society should provide greater access to undocumented immigrants to public benefits programs and responds to an important economic objection that a state should be able to prioritize the needs of its own members who contribute to these programs. This paper specifically addresses empirical and moral versions of (...) this objection. It also distinguishes between two kinds of public benefits. Certain public benefits, such as social security, may reflect an agreed-upon distribution of public goods, to which people are entitled based on their membership or contribution. Other public benefits, such as nutrition assistance, are set aside primarily to help people based on their need. In the latter case, it is not membership or contribution, but need or which need is greater, that supplies justification for the distribution of these benefits even when resources are limited. (shrink)

A common assumption in the selection of nonhuman animal subjects for research and the approval of research is that, if the risks of a procedure are too great for humans, and if there is a so-called scientific necessity, then it is permissible to use nonhuman animal subjects. I reject the common assumption as neglecting the central ethical issue of the permissibility of using nonhuman animal subjects and as being inconsistent with the principle of justice used in human subjects research ethics. (...) This principle requires that certain classes of individuals not be subjected to a disproportionate share of the burdens or risks of research. I argue for an extension of this principle to nonhuman animal research and show that a prima facie violation of the principle occurs because nonhuman animals bear an overwhelmingly disproportionate share of the risks of research without sufficient justification or reciprocal benefit. (shrink)

How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality , Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of one hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, Theory (...) and Reality covers logical positivism the problems of induction and confirmation Karl Popper's theory of science Thomas Kuhn and "scientific revolutions" the views of Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and Paul Feyerabend and challenges to the field from sociology of science, feminism, and science studies. The book then looks in more detail at some specific problems and theories, including scientific realism, the theory-ladeness of observation, scientific explanation, and Bayesianism. Finally, Godfrey-Smith defends a form of philosophical naturalism as the best way to solve the main problems in the field. Throughout the text he points out connections between philosophical debates and wider discussions about science in recent decades, such as the infamous "science wars." Examples and asides engage the beginning student a glossary of terms explains key concepts and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. However, this is a textbook that doesn't feel like a textbook because it captures the historical drama of changes in how science has been conceived over the last one hundred years. Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates in language that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This paper, while neutral on questions about the minimality of truth, argues for the non-minimality of truth-aptness.

The objective of this paper is to explain why certain authors - both popular and academic - are making a mistake when they attribute obligations to uncoordinated groups of persons, and to argue that it is particularly unhelpful to make this mistake given the prevalence of individuals faced with the difficult question of what morality requires of them in a situation in which there's a good they can bring about together with others, but not alone. I'll defend two alternatives to (...) attributing obligations to uncoordinated groups. The first solution has us build better people, who will coordinate their actions willingly and spontaneously when the occasion arises. The second solution has us build better groups, so that when the occasion arises, there is a framework in place for coordinating members into action. (shrink)

Expands an inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of experience with the assistance of far-flung species. Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the first animal body form well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path.

Many of the items that humans consume are produced in ways that involve serious harms to persons. Familiar examples include the harms involved in the extraction and trade of conflict minerals (e.g. coltan, diamonds), the acquisition and import of non- fair trade produce (e.g. coffee, chocolate, bananas, rice), and the manufacture of goods in sweatshops (e.g. clothing, sporting equipment). In addition, consumption of certain goods (significantly fossil fuels and the products of the agricultural industry) involves harm to the environment, to (...) future persons, and to current persons in low-lying and developing countries, by way of their impacts on climate change. When it comes to such large-scale harms, it's easy for the individual to feel helpless. Even if she sincerely wishes things were otherwise, she may wonder what she could possibly do to make them so. In this paper I briefly explore several promising avenues for generating duties in individuals to consume ethically, and develop one in particular: that an individual ought to signal her commitments to others, as a first step in collectivizing to act against unjust global labour practices. (shrink)

Climate change appears to be a classic aggregation problem, in which billions of individuals perform actions none of which seem to be morally wrong taken in isolation, and yet which combine to drive the global concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) ever higher toward environmental (and humanitarian) catastrophe. When an individual can choose between actions that will emit differing amounts of GHGs―such as to choose a vegan rather than carnivorous meal, to ride a bike to work rather than drive a car, (...) or to take a reusable bag to the supermarket rather than send another plastic bag to landfill―does she have any reason to choose the lower-emitting actions? In this chapter I'll reject the claim that individuals don't make a difference when it comes to climate change. I first discuss making a difference with every action, as a way of getting clearer about how individuals' actions impact causally on the harms resulting from climate change, making a distinction so far overlooked in the climate ethics discussion between 'macro' thresholds like ice-cap melt, and 'micro' thresholds like severe weather events. I set aside making a difference with every action as implausible, and then move on to discuss both low probability of major difference, and high probability of minor difference. I argue that both of these are plausible characterizations of individuals' causal contributions to climate change. I conclude by noting some policy implications of having (probabilistic) individual difference-making back in play. (shrink)

Introduction i. Adam Smith's Lectures at Glasgow University Adam Smith was elected to the Chair of Logic at Glasgow University on 9 January, and admitted to ...

Twentieth century philosophers introduced the distinction between “objective rightness” and “subjective rightness” to achieve two primary goals. The first goal is to reduce the paradoxical tension between our judgments of what is best for an agent to do in light of the actual circumstances in which she acts and what is wisest for her to do in light of her mistaken or uncertain beliefs about her circumstances. The second goal is to provide moral guidance to an agent who may be (...) uncertain about the circumstances in which she acts, and hence is unable to use her standard moral principle directly in deciding what to do. This paper distinguishes two important senses of “moral guidance”; proposes criteria of adequacy for accounts of subjective rightness; canvasses existing definitions for “subjective rightness”; finds them all deficient; and proposes a new and more successful account. It argues that each comprehensive moral theory must include multiple principles of subjective rightness to address the epistemic situations of the full range of moral decision-makers, and shows that accounts of subjective rightness formulated in terms of what it would reasonable for the agent to believe cannot provide that guidance. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself--as opposed to merely in our representations of the world--against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague properties and relations ; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague objects (...) ; we argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the world as a whole might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects. (shrink)

Explaining the maintenance of communicative behavior in the face of incentives to deceive, conceal information, or exaggerate is an important problem in behavioral biology. When the interests of agents diverge, some form of signal cost is often seen as essential to maintaining honesty. Here, novel computational methods are used to investigate the role of common interest between the sender and receiver of messages in maintaining cost-free informative signaling in a signaling game. Two measures of common interest are defined. These quantify (...) the divergence between sender and receiver in their preference orderings over acts the receiver might perform in each state of the world. Sampling from a large space of signaling games finds that informative signaling is possible at equilibrium with zero common interest in both senses. Games of this kind are rare, however, and the proportion of games that include at least one equilibrium in which informative signals are used increases monotonically with common interest. Common interest as a predictor of informative signaling also interacts with the extent to which agents’ preferences vary with the state of the world. Our findings provide a quantitative description of the relation between common interest and informative signaling, employing exact measures of common interest, information use, and contingency of payoff under environmental variation that may be applied to a wide range of models and empirical systems. © 2013 Godfrey-Smith, Martínez. (shrink)

In her ‘On the apparent paradox of ideal theory’, Laura Valentini combines three supposedly plausible premises to derive the paradoxical result that ideal theory is both unable to, and indispensable for, guiding action. Her strategy is to undermine one of the three premises by arguing that there are good and bad kinds of ideal theory, and only the bad kinds are vulnerable to the strongest version of their opponents’ attack. By undermining one of the three premises she releases ideal theorists (...) from the paradox, which is as follows. (1) Any sound theory of justice is action-guiding. (2) Any sound theory of justice is ideal. (3) Any ideal theory fails to be action-guiding. Here I shall respond to Valentini in two ways. First, I shall show that both (1) and (2) are false. The falsity of either is sufficient to release ideal theorists from the paradox. Second, I shall show that Valentini’s response to (3) can be extended, because her bad kinds of ideal theory do not necessarily fail to guide action. The cumulative effect of my arguments further strengthens Valentini’s support of ideal theory. I will deal with premises (1) and (2) in Sections I and II, and (3) in Section III. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what organisms are and therefore what kinds of biological entities qualify as organisms. For some time now, the concept of organismality has been eclipsed by the notion of individuality. Biological individuals are those systems that are units of selection. I develop a conception of organismality that does not rely on evolutionary considerations, but instead draws on development and ecology. On this account, organismality and individuality can come apart. Organisms, in my view, are as Godfrey- (...) class='Hi'>Smith puts it “essentially persisters.” I argue that persistence is underpinned by differentiation, integration, development, and the constitutive embeddedness of organisms in their worlds. I examine two marginal cases, the Portuguese Man O’ War and the honey bee colony, and show that both count as organisms in light of my analysis. Next, I examine the case of holobionts, hosts plus their microsymbionts, and argue that they can be counted as organisms even though they may not be biological individuals. Finally, I consider the question of whether other, less tightly integrated biological systems might also be treated as organisms. (shrink)

The politics of climate change is marked by the fact that countries are dragging their heels in doing what they ought to do; namely, creating a binding global treaty, and fulfilling the duties assigned to each of them under it. Many different agents are culpable in this failure. But we can imagine a stylised version of the climate change case, in which no agents are culpable: if the bad effects of climate change were triggered only by crossing a particular threshold, (...) and it was reasonably, but mistakenly, believed by each country that insufficiently many other countries were willing to cooperate in order for that threshold to remain uncrossed, no country would be required to make a unilateral contribution. Yet even without culpability, we can diagnose a moral ill: the world has gone other than it should have. If not for the mistaken beliefs, there would have been a global climate treaty, and all the avoidance of future suffering that would come with it. In this article I argue that this moral ill has implications for the non-culpable agents, in that it generates duties to disgorge actual holdings over and above the counterpart holdings in the relevant counterfactual: those holdings the agents would have had, were the world to have gone as it should. (shrink)

Do consumers’ ordinary actions of purchasing certain goods make them complicit in global labour injustice? To establish that they do, two things much be shown. First, it must be established that they are not more than complicit, for example that they are not the principal perpetrators. Second, it must be established that they meet the conditions for complicity on a plausible account. I argue that Kutz’s account faces an objection that makes Lepora and Goodin’s better suited, and defend the idea (...) that consumers are complicit in at least two of the ways distinguished by the latter. In the final section of the paper, I consider whether consumers’ responsibility for complicity in global labour injustice is likely to be as strong as responsibility from another source, namely benefiting from that injustice. (shrink)

In this chapter we explain what the no-difference challenge is, focusing in particular on act consequentialism. We talk about how different theories of causation affect the no-difference challenge; how the challenge shows up in real-world cases including voting, global labour injustice, global poverty, and climate change; and we work through a number of the solutions to the challenge that have been offered, arguing that many fail to actually meet it. We defend and extend one solution that does, and present a (...) further solution of our own. (shrink)

Notes: Papers from the McGill Bicentennial Hume Conference, McGill University, 1976 Subjects: Hume, David, 1711–1776--Congresses.

This chapter contains section titles: Introduction Senders and Receivers Content States of the Mind and Brain.

The Pinocchio paradox, devised by Veronique Eldridge-Smith in February 2001, is a counter-example to solutions to the Liar that restrict the use or definition of semantic predicates. Pinocchio’s nose grows if and only if what he is stating is false, and Pinocchio says ‘My nose is growing’. In this statement, ‘is growing’ has its normal meaning and is not a semantic predicate. If Pinocchio’s nose is growing it is because he is saying something false; otherwise, it is not growing. (...) ‘Because’ stands here for a non-semantic relation; it might be supposed to be causal or of some other nature, but it is not semantic. The paradox is discussed in relation to Tarski’s and Kripke’s theories of truth. Although the paradox is not necessarily a counter-example to a theory of a truth predicate, it is a problem for a theory of truth of the kind preserved by validity. (shrink)

The scandals of the 1980s, extending into the 1990s, came as a profound shock to Australians and New Zealanders. Both countries have prided themselves – somewhat smugly and naively – on being open, fair and honest societies. So it was very disillusioning to see both corruption and gross dereliction of duty exposed in virtually every sphere of public life. Perhaps the most positive outcome, however, amidst an almost daily diet of amazing revelations, has been the ability of the system – (...) and especially the judiciary and the media – to expose and deal with corruption even at the highest level.Following an extensive survey and literature review, it is clear that there is now widespread awareness of the need for reform in many areas of public administration, corporate governance and professional behaviour. However, a continuing cause for concern is the lack of leadership in identifying and addressing complex ethical dilemmas, particularly in the areas of conflict of interest and disclosure. (shrink)

I critically discuss Strawson's transcendental argument against other minds scepticism, and look at the prospects for a naturalised version of it.

The Liar paradox is an obstacle to a theory of truth, but a Liar sentence need not contain a semantic predicate. The Pinocchio paradox, devised by Veronique Eldridge-Smith, was the first published paradox to show this. Pinocchio’s nose grows if, and only if, what Pinocchio is saying is untrue. What happens if Pinocchio says that his nose is growing? Eldridge-Smith and Eldridge-Smith : 212-5, 2010) posed the Pinocchio paradox against the Tarskian-Kripkean solutions to the Liar paradox that (...) use language hierarchies. Eldridge-Smith : 306-8, 2011) also set the Pinocchio paradox against semantic dialetheic solutions to the Liar. Beall argued the Pinocchio story was just an impossible story. Eldridge-Smith : 749-752, 2012b) responded that unless the T-schema is a necessary truth of some sort, the Pinocchio principle is possible. Luna : 77–86, 2016) argues that the Pinocchio contradiction proves the principle is false. D’Agostini & Ficara discuss a more plausible physical truth-tracking trait, the Blushing Liar, and argue that the Pinocchio contradiction is not a metaphysical dialetheia. I respond to Luna, and D’Agostini & Ficara, and prove that the Pinocchio paradox is a counterexample to hierarchical solutions to the Liar. (shrink)

Semantic dialetheists astutely dodge Explosion, the logical contagion of everything being true if a single contradiction is true. A dialetheia is contained in their semantics, and sustained by a paraconsistent logic. Graham Priest has shown that this is a solution to the Liar paradox. I use the Pinocchio paradox, devised by Veronique Eldridge-Smith, as a counter-example. The Pinocchio paradox turns on the truth of Pinocchio, whose nose grows if and only if what he is saying is not true, saying (...) ‘My nose is growing’. It is not just a matter of interpretation whether Pinocchio’s nose is and is not growing. (shrink)

How can we make progress on the question of whether debate can do harm, and if it can, whether that’s a sufficient reason to suppress particular debates, or to adopt a ‘no debate!’ approach to particular topics ourselves? Obviously we’ll need to get clear on the key ingredients of the claim, which are what we’re counting as debate, and what we’re willing to countenance as harm. But we’ll also need to think about what exactly the harms are thought to be, (...) of debating any one of these controversial topics, and what, if anything, might be more important than avoiding those harms. I want to think about both the general question, which is whether the idea that debate can do harm makes sense and is sometimes true; and the more specific question, which is whether specific contemporary topics in which one side takes a ‘no debate!’ position or for which there is public support for not debating the topic, do in fact risk harm sufficient to justifying #nodebate tactics. (shrink)

What if you're not who you think you are? What if you don't really know the people closest to you? And what if your most deeply-held beliefs turn out to be. wrong? In Stop Being Reasonable, philosopher Eleanor Gordon-Smith tells gripping true stories that show the limits of human reason. Susie realises her husband harbours a terrible secret, Dylan leaves the cult he's been raised in since birth, Alex discovers he can no longer return to his former identity after (...) impersonating someone else on reality TV. All of them radically alter their beliefs about the things that matter most. What makes them change course? What does this say about our own beliefs? And, in an increasingly divided world, what does it teach us about how we might change the minds of others? Stop Being Reasonable is a mind-changing exploration of the murky place where philosophy and real life meet. (shrink)

Lockdowns in Australia have been strict and lengthy. Policy-makers appear to have given the preservation of quantity of lives strong priority over the preservation of quality of lives. But thought-experiments in population ethics suggest that this is not always the right priority. In this paper, I'll discuss both negative impacts on quantity of lives caused by the lockdowns themselves, including an increase in domestic violence, and negative impacts on quality of lives caused by lockdowns, in order to raise the question (...) of whether we each had reason to choose quantity over quality in our own lives in a way that would justify the lockdowns we had. (shrink)

The Pinocchio paradox poses one dialetheia too many for semantic dialetheists (Eldridge-Smith 2011). However, Beall (2011) thinks that the Pinocchio scenario is merely an impossible story, like that of the village barber who shaves just those villagers who do not shave themselves. Meanwhile, Beall maintains that Liar paradoxes generate dialetheia. The Barber scenario is self-contradictory, yet the Pinocchio scenario requires a principle of truth for a contradiction. In this and other respects the Pinocchio paradox is a version of the (...) Liar, unlike the Barber. One wonders why some Liars would be impossible if others generate dialetheias. (shrink)

For all the recent talk of people failing or succeeding as allies to oppressed groups, a well worked out philosophical theory of what it is for someone to be an ally is conspicuously absent. This makes it difficult to evaluate the claims of people failing or succeeding as allies, and consequently diminishes the concept’s usefulness to disadvantaged groups by making it difficult to identify who will genuinely help to further their interests. We aim to rectify this absence by answering the (...) following question: what is an ally? On the view that we develop, allyship is a regrettably hierarchical relationship that holds between a privileged individual and an oppressed group, and is formed through a series of actions taken by the privileged individual in a bid to contribute towards bringing that hierarchy to an end. (shrink)

This paper examines how and why information moved or failed to move within transatlantic botanical networks in the late eighteenth century. It addresses the problem of how practitioners created relationships of trust, and the difficulties they faced in transferring reputations between national contexts. Eighteenth-century botany was characteristically cross-cultural, cosmopolitan and socially diverse, yet in the 1770s and 1780s the American Revolutionary Wars placed these attributes under strain. The paper analyses the British and French networks that surrounded the Philadelphian plant hunter (...) William Young, to show how botanists and plant collectors created and maintained connections with each other, especially when separated by geographical and cultural distance. It highlights in particular the role played by commercial plant traders, and demonstrates how practitioners used objects to transmit social as well as scholarly information. The transnational circulation of information and knowledge in the Enlightenment was determined by culturally specific judgements about trust, confidence, communication and risk. Despite the prominent role played by material culture within these networks, scholars continued to place high value on face-to-face contact as a means of judging the trustworthiness and cooperation of their agents. (shrink)