I assess Churchland's views on folk psychology and conceptual thinking, with particular emphasis on the connection between these topics.

I discuss a large number of emotions that are relevant to performance at epistemic tasks. My central concern is the possibility that it is not the emotions that are most relevant to success of these tasks but associated virtues. I present cases in which it does seem to be the emotions rather than the virtues that are doing the work. I end of the paper by mentioning the connections between desirable and undesirable epistemic emotions.

I argue that general constraints on how humans think about humans produce universal features of the concept of mind. Some of these constraints determine how we imagine other people's thinking and action through our own. I formulate this in opposition to what I call the "theory theory". I believe this was the first use of this terminology, and this work was an early version of what has come to be called the simulation theory.

The claim of this paper is that the everyday functions of knowledge make most sense if we see knowledge as contrastive. That is, we can best understand how the concept does what it does by thinking in terms of a relation “a knows that p rather than q.” There is always a contrast with an alternative. Contrastive interpretations of knowledge, and objections to them, have become fairly common in recent philosophy. The version defended here is fairly mild in that there (...) is no suggestion that we cannot think in terms of a simpler not explicitly contrastive relation “a knows that p.” Some, for instance Schaffer (2005) and Karjalainen and Morton (2003), have hinted that this stronger possibility may be right. But all that I am arguing now is that facts that are easily expressed in contrastive terms are vital to understanding why we need the concept of knowledge. In a piece that is in some ways a companion to this one ("Contrastivism" in Duncan Pritchard and Sven Bernecker, eds. The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Routledge 2010, 513-522), I give a general survey of theories of contrastive knowledge and the differences between them. (shrink)

I argue that the contrast between models and theories is important for public policy issues. I focus especially on the way a mathematical model explains just one aspect of the data.

We describe the three place relation of contrastive knowledge, which holds between a person, a target proposition, and a contrasting proposition. The person knows that p rather than that q. We argue for three claims about this relation. (a) Many common sense and philosophical ascriptions of knowledge can be understood in terms of it. (b) Its application is subject to fewer complications than non-contrastive knowledge is. (c) It applies over a wide range of human and nonhuman cases.

I discussed the ways in which folk psychology is influenced by the need for small-scale cooperation between people. I argue that considerations about cooperation and mutual benefit can be found in the everyday concepts of belief, desire, and motivation. I describe what I call "solution thinking", where a person anticipates another person's actions by first determining the solution to the cooperative problem that the person faces and then reasoning backwards to a prediction of individual action.

I explore the possibility that mentality can be characterized as a level in between the functional and the neurological, namely as a physical system exhibiting a specific kind of chaos. The argument is meant to make a case for this kind of characterization rather than giving one in specific detail.

I argue that on an understanding of imagination that relates it to an individual's environment rather than her mental contents imagination is essential to emotion, and brings together affective, cognitive, and representational aspects to emotion. My examples focus on morally important emotions, especially retrospective emotions such as shame, guilt, and remorse, which require that one imagine points of view on one's own actions. PUBLISHER'S BLURB: Recent years have seen an enormous amount of philosophical research into the emotions and the imagination, (...) but as yet little work has been done to connect the two. In his engaging and highly original new book, Adam Morton shows that all emotions require some form of imagination and goes on to fully explore the link between these two important concepts both within philosophy and in everyday life. We may take it for granted that complex emotions, such as hope and resentment, require a rich thinking and an engagement with the imagination, but Morton shows how more basic and responsive emotions such as fear and anger also require us to take account of possibilities and opportunities beyond the immediate situation. Interweaving a powerful tapestry of subtle argument with vivid detail, the book highlights that many emotions, more than we tend to suppose, require us to imagine a situation from a particular point of view and that this in itself can be the source of further emotional feeling. Morton goes on to demonstrate the important role that emotions play in our moral lives, throwing light on emotions such as self-respect, disapproval, and remorse, and the price we pay for having them. He explores the intricate nature of moral emotions and the challenges we face when integrating our thinking on morality and the emotions. This compelling and thought-provoking new book challenges many assumptions about the nature of emotion and imagination and will appeal to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the role that these concepts play in our lives. The book also has far reaching implications that will spark debate amongst scholars and students for some time to come. (shrink)

An account of the virtues of limitation management: intellectual virtues of adapting to the fact that we cannot solve many of the problems that we can describe. I argue that the best response to many problems depends not on the most rationally promising solution, but on the most likely route to success. I argue against techniques that assume that one will fulfil ones intentions, and distinguish between failures of rationality and failures of intelligence. I describe the trap of supposing that (...) one will be capable of following the plan that would best exploit ones limited resources. (shrink)

I consider Glimcher's claim to have given an account of mental functioning that is at once neurological and decision-theoretical. I am skeptical, but remark on some good ideas of Glimcher's.

Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; belief-like states, by contrast, (...) are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem-objectivity-is not insurmountable. /// [Adam Morton] It is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable. Emotional truth is a dubious though attractive notion, but emotional accuracy is much easier to make sense of. My approach to accuracy goes via an account of what makes a story accurate. Stories can be accurate but not true, and emotions can be accurate whether or not they are true. The capacity for emotional accuracy, for emotions that fit a person's situation, is an aspect of emotional intelligence, which is as important an aspect of rational human agency as the intelligent formation of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

I try to differentiate evil from ordinary wrong-doing without succumbing to a demonic account of evilthat makes the motivation for awful actions different in kind to that for less awful ones. I argue that much - not all - evil is perpetrated by people disturbingly like the rest of us. I discuss the possibility that evil is a dangerous and self-perpetuating concept, licencing us to label people in ways that encourage atrocity. I allow that there is a lot to this (...) suggestion while also insisting that the distinction between wrong and evil is robust. I raise the possibility that evil and ordinary wrong are in some ways orthogonal, so that one act may be more wrong but less evil than another (and conversely.) I might add that my account has nothing to do with theodicy. In fact I think the traditional 'problem of evil' is a distraction from more important issues. (shrink)

I argue that folk psychology does not serve the purpose of facilitating prediction of others' behaviour but if facilitating cooperative action. (See my subsequent book *The Importance of Being Understood*.

This paper begins with a discussion the role of less-than-admirable epistemic emotions in our respectable, indeed admirable inquiries: nosiness, obsessiveness, wishful thinking, denial, partisanship. The explanation for their desirable effect is Mandevillian: because of the division of epistemic labour individual epistemic vices can lead to shared knowledge. In fact it is sometimes essential to it.

review of Laden's *Reasoning: a social picture* praising the aim and expressing puzzlement at the details,.

I relate plural quantification, and predicate logic where predicates do not need a fixed number of argument places, to the part-whole relation. For more on these themes see later work by Boolos, Lewis, and Oliver & Smiley.

We give a general description of a class of contrastive constructions, intended to capture what is common to contrastive knowledge, belief, hope, fear, understanding and other cases where one expresses a propositional attitude in terms of “rather than”. The crucial element is the agent's incapacity to distinguish some possibilities from others. Contrastivity requires a course-graining of the set of possible worlds. As a result, contrastivity will usually cut across logical consequence, so that an agent can have an attitude to p (...) rather than q but not to r rather than q , where r is a logical consequence of p . We relate these ideas to some general issues about thought, such as the question of whether all possibilities that can be distinguished in emotion can be distinguished in belief. (shrink)

A critical exposition of plans to colonize other planets , especially Mars, and their costs. The final chapter links with issues about the value and future of human life. See the extended summary uploaded to this site.

I discuss the possibility that there is no intrinsic unity to the capacities which are bundled under the label "folk psychology". Cooperative skills, attributional skills, and predictive skills may be scattered as parts of other non--psychological capacities. I discuss how some forms of social life bring these different skills together. I end with some remarks on how abilities that are not unified in their essential mechanisms may still form a rough practical unity. (Remark: the paper is conjectural. It describes a (...) possibility to take seriously rather than a conclusion of which I am convinced.). (shrink)

[Ronald de Sousa] Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; belief-like (...) states, by contrast, are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem-objectivity-is not insurmountable. /// [Adam Morton ] It is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable. Emotional truth is a dubious though attractive notion, but emotional accuracy is much easier to make sense of. My approach to accuracy goes via an account of what makes a story accurate. Stories can be accurate but not true, and emotions can be accurate whether or not they are true. The capacity for emotional accuracy, for emotions that fit a person's situation, is an aspect of emotional intelligence, which is as important an aspect of rational human agency as the intelligent formation of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

This is a reply to de Sousa's 'Emotional Truth', in which he argues that emotions can be objective, as propositional truths are. I say that it is better to distinguish between truth and accuracy, and agree with de Sousa to the extent of arguing that emotions can be more or less accurate, that is, based on the facts as they are.

I discuss the connections between rationality and intentional action, emphasising that different kinds of action are rational an intentional in different ways.

I classify emotions in the family of regret, remorse, and so on, in such a way that it is easy to see how there can be further emotions in this family, for which we happened not to have names in English. I describe some of these emotions.

Card argues that we should not give injustice priority over evil. I agree. But I think Card sets us up for some difficult balancings, for example of small evils against middle sized injustices. I suggest some ways of staying off the tightrope.

review of Glymour's *Theory and Evidence* focusing on the arguments against holism.

I describe conventions not of correct reasoning but of giving and taking advice about reasoning. This article is asn anticipation of part of the first chapter of my forthcoming *Bounded Thinking*, OUP 2012.

Moral high-performers have characteristic faults. I describe difficulties in handling moral problems that arise not out of faulty intentions or defective values but because the agents underestimate the complexity of the situation.

We separate metaphysical from epistemic questions in the evaluation of models, taking into account the distinctive functions of models as opposed to theories. The examples a\are very varied.

I argue that considerations about computational complexity show that all finite agents need characteristics like those that have been called epistemic virtues. The necessity of these virtues follows in part from the nonexistence of shortcuts, or efficient ways of finding shortcuts, to cognitively expensive routines. It follows that agents must possess the capacities – metavirtues –of developing in advance the cognitive virtues they will need when time and memory are at a premium.

(for Adam Morton's half) I argue that if we take the values of persons to be ordered in a way that allows incomparability, then the problems Broome raises have easy solutions. In particular we can maintain that creating people is morally neutral while killing them has a negative value.

I discuss ways in which the linguistic form of mathimatics helps us think mathematically.

I describe a way of handling comparative adjectives "a is P-er than b", in terms of degrees "a has P to degree d". I defend this approach against attacks due to C J F Williams in an article in the same issue of *Analysis*, by tracing his objections to the assumption that degrees must be linearly ordered. Since this abstract is written years later, I can mention that some of the ideas were taken further in my Hypercomparatives. Synthese 111, 1997, (...) 97-114 . (shrink)

I discuss ways in which innate human psychology facilitates the quasi-game-theoretical reasoning required for group life.

I describe epistemic versions of the contrast between causal and conventionally probabilistic decision theory, including an epistemic version of Newcomb's paradox.

I admire Audi's intentions in discussing the rationality of beliefs, desires, and actions together, and doubt that this can be done internalistically, as he tries.

Scale matters in morality, so that different factors occupy us at high and low scales. Different people are needed to be good neighbours in everyday life and moral heroes in crises. There is no reason to believe that the same traits are required for both. So there is no such thing as the all-round good person.

It is in a way easier to imagine evil actions than we often suppose, but what it is thus relatively easy to do is not what we want to understand about evil. To argue for this conclusion I distin- guish between imagining why someone did something and imagining how they could have done it, and I try to grasp partial understanding, in part by distinguishing different imaginative pers- pectives we can have on an act. When we do this we see (...) an often unnoticed asymmetry: we do not put the same demands on our understanding of wrongdoing as on that of most everyday, morally acceptable, actions. (shrink)

A review of Ernest Sosa's *Knowing Full Well* focusing on the safety/reliability contrast and the relation between knowledge and action. There are also remarks on the issue of what value knowledge adds to true belief.

expanded version of NDPR review of Yablo's Abpoutness.

The problem concerns quantifiers that seem to hover between universal and existential readings. I argue that they are neither, but a different quantifier that has features of each. NOTE the published paper has a mistake. I have corrected this in the version on this site. A correction note will appear in Analysis.

I describe Maher's utility-based account of theory acceptance, generally approvingly but with a few questions and doubts.

This introduction to the translation of Henri Lefebvre's 1956 essay “The theory of ground rent and rural Sociology” moves through three stages. First, it suggests that Anglophone appropriations of Lefebvre have tended to focus too much on his urban writings, at the expense of understanding his early work on rural sociology, and failing to recognise how his urban focus emerged as a result of his interest in rural–urban transformation. Second, it provides a summary of his wider work on rural questions, (...) including his unfinished work on a major treatise of rural sociology; and outlines the key themes of the present essay in relation to these other projects. Third, it connects Lefebvre's issues to wider debates in political economy and geography about aspects of the rural, land and ground rent, not least including the work of Antonio Gramsci and José Carlos Mariátegui. (shrink)