Unbelievable Errors defends an error theory about all normative judgements: not just moral judgements, but also judgements about reasons for action, judgements about reasons for belief, and instrumental normative judgements. This theory states that normative judgements are beliefs that ascribe normative properties, but that normative properties do not exist. It therefore entails that all normative judgements are false. -/- Bart Streumer also argues, however, that we cannot believe this error theory. This may seem to be a problem for the (...) theory. But he argues that it makes this error theory more likely to be true, since it undermines objections to the theory and it makes it harder to reject the arguments for the theory. -/- He then sketches how certain other philosophical theories can be defended in a similar way. He concludes that to make philosophical progress, we need to make a sharp distinction between a theory's truth and our ability to believe it. (shrink)

We argued that formal objections to the error theory overgeneralize and therefore fail. Christine Tiefensee and Gregory Wheeler deny this. We argue that they are wrong, for two reasons. The first concerns how we should adjudicate conflicts between formal and substantive commitments. The second concerns an overlooked tension between formal objections and non-error-theoretic views. Our discussion shows that the commitments behind formal objections to the error theory, such as the dual schema, should be regarded as much more contentious than is (...) often assumed. (shrink)

The reform movement in science is seemingly constructing a new moral economy of science around process and bureaucracy, in which a new scientific etiquette is emerging that prescribes the performance of reformed science as civilised, efficient and objective. Bureaucratic innovations were borne out of the reform movement that seek to prescribe specific research processes, including but not limited to preregistration and registered reports. This moral economy emerges in the form of a bureaucracy and its epistemic uniformity actively suppresses scientific plurality. (...) This paper argues that Eliasian drivers such as distinction, shame and disgust, act to pressure scientists into adopting this new etiquette. Even though the etiquette's appearance is quite new, it can be traced back to existing moral economies of science and their pursuit of efficiency and objectivity. (shrink)

Reductive realists about normative properties are often charged with being relativists: it is often argued that their view implies that when two people make conflicting normative judgements, these judgements can both be true. I argue that reductive realists can answer this charge by copying the quasi-realist moves that many expressivists make. I then argue that the remaining difference between reductive realism and expressivism is unimportant.

What is property, and why does our species happen to have it? In The Property Species, the economist Bart Wilson explores how we acquire, perceive, and know the custom of property, and why this might be relevant to social scientists, philosophers, and legal scholars for understanding how property works in the twenty-first century.

1. In this contribution we will discuss phenomena of language in mania within a Lacanian framework. In psychiatric descriptions manic language phenomena are mainly captured under the term flight of...

Linguistic research has revealed several pathways of language change that may guide our understanding of the evolution of mental‐state attribution. In particular, it turns out that, in many languages, quotative verbs have been exapted for attributing a variety of mental states, including beliefs and intentions. In such languages, the literal translation of, “Betty said: ‘There will be war’”, may be used not only to quote Betty's words, but also to convey that she thought or intended there to be war. This (...) paper presents a model of the pragmatic shifts underlying this pathway, and proposes an evolutionary trajectory from quotation to the public practice of attributing beliefs and intentions, and thence to implicit belief/intention attribution. (shrink)

A colorful history of utilitarianism told through the lives and ideas of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and its other founders In The Happiness Philosophers, Bart Schultz tells the colorful story of the lives and legacies of the founders of utilitarianism—one of the most influential yet misunderstood and maligned philosophies of the past two centuries. Best known for arguing that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong," utilitarianism was developed (...) by the radical philosophers, critics, and social reformers William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart and Harriet Taylor Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. Together, they had a profound influence on nineteenth-century reforms, in areas ranging from law, politics, and economics to morals, education, and women's rights. Their work transformed life in ways we take for granted today. Bentham even advocated the decriminalization of same-sex acts, decades before the cause was taken up by other activists. As Bertrand Russell wrote about Bentham in the late 1920s, "There can be no doubt that nine-tenths of the people living in England in the latter part of last century were happier than they would have been if he had never lived." Yet in part because of its misleading name and the caricatures popularized by figures as varied as Dickens, Marx, and Foucault, utilitarianism is sometimes still dismissed as cold, calculating, inhuman, and simplistic. By revealing the fascinating human sides of the remarkable pioneers of utilitarianism, The Happiness Philosophers provides a richer understanding and appreciation of their philosophical and political perspectives—one that also helps explain why utilitarianism is experiencing a renaissance today and is again being used to tackle some of the world's most serious problems. (shrink)

This article attempts to develop further the conception of dynamics in Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO): its model of how objects develop and change. Objects are affected by relations between them, and have the potential both to produce and undergo effects, as realised in interaction with other objects. To elaborate on the change of objects in OOO, an idea is adopted from transcendental ontology. A key Hegelian question in this article is how the realisation of existing potential can produce new potential (Schelling: (...) potentialisation, going from the actual to the possible). Stated differently: how can objects change to the point of breaking their identity and generating a new object? One needs to consider that objects are nested at different levels, and that the degree of how radical change may be depends on the perspective of any given level. To address this issue, the article employs the notion of a script: a structure of nodes, each with its own subscripts. The analysis is applied and developed further through a comparative analysis of change in evolution, economics, a theory of discovery, and linguistics. The dual intention of this is to see if OOO can help us understand those phenomena, and to see in turn if those phenomena can inform the further development of OOO. (shrink)

Gricean pragmatics. Saying vs. implicating ; Discourse and cooperation ; Conversational implicatures ; Generalised vs. particularised ; Cancellability ; Gricean reasoning and the pragmatics of what is said -- The standard recipe for Q-implicatures. The standard recipe ; Inference to the best explanation ; Weak implicatures and competence ; Relevance ; Conclusion -- Scalar implicatures. Horn scales and the generative view ; Implicatures and downward entailing environments ; Disjunction : exclusivity and ignorance ; Conclusion -- Psychological plausibility. Charges of psychological (...) inadequacy ; Logical complexity ; Abduction ; Incremental processing ; The intentional stance ; Alternatives ; Conclusion -- Nonce inference or defaults?. True defaults ; Strong defaultism ; Weak defaultism ; Contextualism ; Conclusion -- Intentions, alternatives, and free choice. Free choice ; Problems with the standard recipe ; Intentions first ; Free choice explained ; Comparing alternatives ; Two flavours of Q-implicature ; Conclusion -- Embedded implicatures : the problems. The problems ; Varieties of conventionalism ; Against conventionalism ; Conclusion -- Embedded implicatures : a Gricean approach. Disjunction ; Belief reports ; Factives and other presupposition inducers ; Indefinites ; Contrastive construals and lexical pragmatics ; Conclusion. (shrink)

In this volume, Geurts takes discourse representation theory (DRT), and turns it into a unified account of anaphora and presupposition, which he applies not only to the standard problem cases but also to the interpretation of modal expressions, attitude reports, and proper names. The resulting theory, for all its simplicity, is without doubt the most comprehensive of its kind to date. The central idea underlying Geurts' 'binding theory' of presupposition is that anaphora is just a special case of presupposition projection. (...) But this is only one of the ways in which the concept of presupposition is taken beyond its traditional limits. Geurts shows, furthermore, that presupposition projection is crucially involved in several phenomena that are not usually viewed in presuppositional terms, such as modal subordination, de re readings of attitude reports, and rigid designation. While making his case for DRT and the binding theory, Geurts also presents an incisive analysis of what is probably still the most influential account of presupposition, viz. the satisfaction theory, demonstrating that there are fundamental problems not only with this theory but with the very framework in which it is couched. (shrink)

This paper is one in a series of rational analyses of the Dutch Simonshaven case, each using a different theoretical perspective. The theoretical perspectives discussed in the literature typically use arguments, scenarios, and probabilities, in various combinations. The theoretical perspective on evidential reasoning used in this paper has been designed to connect arguments, scenarios, and probabilities in a single formal modeling approach, in an attempt to investigate bridges between qualitative and quantitative analytic styles. The theoretical perspective uses the recently proposed (...) logical formalism of case models, where cases represent possible combinations of evidence and events, ordered by an ordering relation. In the context of evidential reasoning, the ordering relation can be represented by a probability function. As an ordering relation is qualitative in nature, the theoretical perspective is in a formally precise sense simultaneously with and without probabilities. (shrink)

Even though more than half of all citizens in the world are currently able to exercise the right to elect their leaders, many of them choose not to vote. This article considers the role of compulsory voting in order to enhance the democratic values of political participation and equality. Raising turnout considerably, it is an effective instrument to motivate citizens to express their voice in public life, thereby ensuring that their concerns will be heeded. Opponents of compulsory voting, however, argue (...) that it is undesirable because it violates the value of personal liberty and drags uninterested citizens to the polls. This article tries to rebut these arguments and challenge their underlying concept of democracy. As compulsory voting sends the message that every vote matters, it is able to restore rather than harm democracy and its values. (shrink)

Jonas Olson writes that "a plausible moral error theory must be an error theory about all irreducible normativity". I agree. But unlike Olson, I think we cannot believe this error theory. I first argue that Olson should say that reasons for belief are irreducibly normative. I then argue that if reasons for belief are irreducibly normative, we cannot believe an error theory about all irreducible normativity. I then explain why I think Olson's objections to this argument fail. I end by (...) showing that Olson cannot defend his view as a partly revisionary alternative to an error theory about all irreducible normativity. (shrink)

In this paper, a reaction is presented to Siegel’s claim that the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation ignores or neglects epistemological viewpoints that he finds vital to any normative theory of argumentation. The focus is on the most important problems in Siegel’s argument: 1) the ambiguity of the term ‘argument’ and the alleged negligence of this ambiguity in pragma-dialectics; 2) the critical rational perspective of the pragma-dialectical account; and 3) the alleged negligence of the “abstract propositional sense” of argument in pragma-dialectics.

The legal basis for processing personal data and some other types of Big Data is often the informed consent of the data subject involved. Many data controllers, such as social network sites, offer terms and conditions, privacy policies or similar documents to which a user can consent when registering as a user. There are many issues with such informed consent: people get too many consent requests to read everything, policy documents are often very long and difficult to understand and users (...) feel they do not have a real choice anyway. Furthermore, in the context of Big Data refusing consent may not prevent predicting missing data. Finally, consent is usually asked for when registering, but rarely is consent renewed. As a result, consenting once often implies consent forever. At the same time, given the rapid changes in Big Data and data analysis, consent may easily get outdated. This paper suggests expiry dates for consent, not to settle questions, but to put them on the table as a start for further discussion on this topic. Although such expiry dates may not solve all the issues of informed consent, they may be a useful tool in some situations. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that it cannot be the case that a person ought to perform an action if this person cannot perform this action. However, most of these philosophers do not give arguments for the truth of this claim. In this paper, I argue that it is plausible to interpret this claim in such a way that it is entailed by the claim that there cannot be a reason for a person to perform an action if it is impossible that (...) this person will perform this action. I then give three arguments for the truth of the latter claim, which are also arguments for the truth of the former claim as I interpret it. (shrink)

Quasi‐realists are expressivists who say much of what realists say. To avoid making their view indistinguishable from realism, however, they usually stop short of saying everything realists say. Many realists therefore think that something important is missing from quasi‐realism. I argue that quasi‐realists can undermine this thought by defending a version of quasi‐realism that I call super‐quasi‐realism. This version seems indistinguishable from realism, but I argue that this is a mistaken impression that arises because we cannot believe super‐quasi‐realism.

Although both Heidegger and Derrida criticize Hegel as the archetype and historical culmination of the metaphysics of presence, Hegel’s dialectics also serves as a model for their critical destruct...

Developmentally, adolescence sits in transition between childhood and adulthood. Involving adolescents in their medical decision-making prompts important and complex ethical questions. Originating in the UK, the concept of Gillick competence is a dominant framework for navigating adolescent medical decision-making from legal, ethical and clinical perspectives and is commonly treated as comprehensive. In this paper, we argue that its utility is far more limited, and hence over-reliance on Gillick risks undermining rather than promoting ethically appropriate adolescent involvement. We demonstrate that Gillick (...) only provides guidance in the limited range of cases where legal decisional authority needs to be clarified. The range of cases where use of Gillick actually promotes adolescent involvement is narrower still, because several features must be present for Gillick to be enacted. Each of these features can, and do, act as barriers to adolescent involvement. Within these limited situations, we argue that Gillick is not specific or strong enough and is reliant on ethically contestable principles. Moreover, in most situations in adolescent healthcare, Gillick is silent on the ethical questions around involving adolescents. This is because it focuses on decisional authority—having the final say in decision-making—which is one small subset of the many ways adolescents could be involved in decision-making. The implication of our analysis is that use of Gillick competence tends to limit or undermine adolescent involvement opportunities. We propose that those working with adolescents should be judicious in seeking Gillick’s guidance, instead drawing on and developing alternative frameworks that provide a comprehensive model for adolescent involvement. (shrink)

The dominant moral philosophy of nineteenth-century Britain was utilitarianism, beginning with Bentham and ending with Sidgwick. Though once overshadowed by his immediate predecessors in that tradition, Sidgwick is now regarded as a figure of great importance in the history of moral philosophy. Indeed his masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, has been described by John Rawls as the 'most philosophically profound' of the classical utilitarian works. In this volume a distinguished group of philosophers reassesses the full range of Sidgwick's work, not (...) simply his ethical theory, but also his contributions as a historian of philosophy, a political theorist, and a reformer. (shrink)

Many philosophers argue that the error theory should be rejected because it is incompatible with standard deontic logic and semantics. We argue that such formal objections to the theory fail. Our discussion has two upshots. First, it increases the dialectical weight that must be borne by objections to the error theory that target its content rather than its form. Second, it shows that standard deontic logic and semantics should be revised.

Analyse van de crisis in de normen, waarden en gebruiken in het oude Griekenland, zoals beschreven door Plato.

There is a well-known argument against irreducibly normative properties that appeals to the following claim about supervenience: for all possible worlds W and W*, if the instantiation of descriptive properties in W and W* is exactly the same, then the instantiation of normative properties in W and W* is also exactly the same. This claim used to be uncontroversial, but recently several philosophers have challenged it. Do these challenges undermine this argument? I argue that they do not, since the negation (...) of this claim about supervenience has consequences that are much more implausible than the negations of key premises in these challenges. (shrink)

The classical utilitarian legacy of Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, James Mill, and Henry Sidgwick has often been charged with both theoretical and practical complicity in the growth of British imperialism and the emerging racialist discourse of the nineteenth century. But there has been little scholarly work devoted to bringing together the conflicting interpretive perspectives on this legacy and its complex evolution with respect to orientalism and imperialism. This volume, with contributions by leading scholars in the field, represents the first (...) attempt to survey the full range of current scholarly controversy on how the classical utilitarians conceived of 'race' and the part it played in their ethical and political programs, particularly with respect to such issues as slavery and the governance of India. The book both advances our understanding of the history of utilitarianism and imperialism and promotes the scholarly debate, clarifying the major points at issue between those sympathetic to the utilitarian legacy and those critical of it. (shrink)

In Magnolia, a 1999 movie written and directed by then 29-year-old Paul Thomas Anderson, we follow a range of characters who all try to come to terms with the things happening to them in both the present and past. This chapter interprets the movie as making a philosophical point about meaning: how and why do people find meaning in and attribute meaning to things, even if they seem to happen for no apparent reason at all? We will analyze how both (...) the movie’s characters and all of us watching the movie, living our own lives, try to make sense of the often absurd coincidences in life. More importantly, we will ask why we feel the need to “make sense” of the things that happen to and around us and what happens when our attempts fail. How should we respond to things that simply don’t make sense, even after we have tried hard? The chapter explains how (key scenes of) the movie can be interpreted as visualizing the philosophical notion of “the absurd” and inviting us to respond to absurdities in ways already articulated by the French existentialist Albert Camus. (shrink)

The Sublime in Schopenhauer's Philosophy transforms our understanding of Schopenhauer's aesthetics and anthropology. Bart Vandenabeele breaks new ground by providing what is probably the first monograph to be devoted exclusively to Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime. The book focuses on Schopenhauer's conception of the sublime and how it relates to the individual and its attitude towards life. The author explores in unusual depth Schopenhauer's relation to Kant, whose follower and critic he was, and shows how Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory moves (...) beyond Kant's in numerous meaningful ways. Drawing on recent insights in psychology and the philosophy of mind, Vandenabeele seeks ultimately to rework Schopenhauer's theory into a viable form so as to establish the sublime as a distinctive aesthetic category with a broader existential and metaphysical significance. (shrink)

Abstract: The Gricean theory of conversational implicature has always been plagued by data suggesting that what would seem to be conversational inferences may occur within the scope of operators like believe , for example; which for bona fide implicatures should be an impossibility. Concentrating my attention on scalar implicatures, I argue that, for the most part, such observations can be accounted for within a Gricean framework, and without resorting to local pragmatic inferences of any kin d. However, there remains a (...) small class of marked cases that cannot be treated as conversational implicatures, and they do require a local mode of pragmatic interpretation. (shrink)

People talk not only to others but also to themselves. The self talk we engage in may be overt or covert, and is associated with a variety of higher mental functions, including reasoning, problem solving, planning and plan execution, attention, and motivation. When talking to herself, a speaker takes devices from her mother tongue, originally designed for interpersonal communication, and employs them to communicate with herself. But what could it even mean to communicate with oneself? To answer that question, we (...) need a theory of communication that explains how the same linguistic devices may be used to communicate with others and oneself. On the received view, which defines communication as information exchange, self talk appears to be an anomaly, for it is hard to see the point of exchanging information with oneself. However, if communication is analysed as a way of negotiating commitments between speaker and hearer, then communication may be useful even when speaker and hearer coincide. Thus a commitment-based approach allows us to make sense of self talk as well as social talk. (shrink)

The renowned paradox of voting arises when one tries to explain the decision to go out and vote in an exclusively instrumental framework. Instead of postulating that voters always derive utility from the act of voting, I want to search for the reasons that underlie the absence or presence of a preference for voting. In my noninstrumental account of expressive rationality, citizens want to express who they are and what they care about. Whether or not one votes therefore depends on (...) the force of one’s commitments to principles, norms, ideologies or particular persons. This has been confirmed by empirical research showing that citizens vote because they feel they have to, not because they like doing so. Complementing instrumental rationality, this concept of expressive rationality gives a fuller, deeper and more adequate view of the way citizens make political decisions, thereby solving the paradox of voting. (shrink)

There is a complicated relation between social and political inertia – the failure of institutions to respond adequately to social, technological and environmental change – and social acceleration – the tendency of social change to go faster and faster. Social stasis and acceleration are not simply opposed but also causally related. This article contrasts two theories of political and social inertia. Francis Fukuyama argues that political inertia is a result of a cognitive and institutional rigidity which is ultimately grounded in (...) human nature, and that therefore inertia is a feature inherent in political systems. Hartmut Rosa, by contrast, sees inertia as a specifically modern phenomenon, which is the result of the inability of political institutions to cope with the accelerating rate of change in other social systems. It will be argued that a broad approach combining historical, institutional and normative perspectives is needed to explain political inertia. (shrink)

In Text, History, and Philosophy. Abhidharma Across Buddhist Scholastic Traditions, the development of the Abhidharma genre in South and East Asia from the life time of the historical Buddha to the tenth century CE is discussed.

C. Sturtewagen. ' Welcome Address' -- M. Lehnert. ' Practical Wisdom as a Measure of Recognition' -- A.P. Rots. ' Reclaiming Public Space: Shinto and Politics in Japan Today' -- P. Schwieger. ' Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern Tibet' -- E. Francis. ' Une autre conception de la royauté: de deux dynasties hindoues du sud de l'Inde' -- C.K. Neumann. ' Ḳadīmden: A Notion of Truth Turning into Legal Claims in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire' -- B. Martel-Thoumian. ' Itinéraires (...) chiites: pouvoir politique et religion dans le Dār al-islām médiéval' -- B. Dessein. 'Conclusions'. (shrink)

Gricean pragmatics has often been criticised for being implausible from a psychological point of view. This line of criticism is never backed up by empirical evidence, but more importantly, it ignores the fact that Grice never meant to advance a processing theory, in the first place. Taking our lead from Marr, we distinguish between two levels of explanation: at the W-level, we are concerned with what agents do and why; at the H-level, we ask how agents do whatever it is (...) they do. Whereas pragmatics is pitched at the W-level, processing theories are at the H-level. This is not to say that pragmatics has no implications for psychology at all, but it is to say that its implications are less direct than is often supposed. (shrink)

This book provides a theory of the juridification of business ethics. Ethical codes pop up everywhere in the business world and increasingly resemble the code of law. A focus on compliance rather than reflection becomes the norm. Legal perspectives replace ethical perspectives, turning ethicists into lawyers without a law degree. This juridification of business ethics conceals a diminishing trust in ethics, as legal reasoning substitutes philosophical thinking. By appealing to the critical study of law, Bart Jansen advocates for a (...) renewed focus on the ethical side of business. This book shows the importance of a good balance between law and ethics in business and is of great interest to both academics and professionals. (shrink)

Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini argues that we can believe the error theory. In this reply, I explain why I still think we cannot.

While digitization claims to provide efficiency, accessibility, expansion, speediness, and profit accumulation, it is actually colonizing every human activity. It has even become a purpose in itself. In this essay we focus on the digitization of legal practices and contents. We describe what digitization encompasses, how digitalization processes work, and to what extent they are able to replace juristic processes and produce legal outcomes. We are inspired by Walter Benjamin’s essay on the influence of mechanical reproduction of the works of (...) Art. Parallel to Benjamin’s work on Art, we will analyze Law and the consequences of innovations such as mechanical mass (re)production and computerized digitization. (shrink)

The term ‘inertia’ is often used to describe a kind of irrational resistance to change in individuals or institutions. Institutions, ideas and power structures appear to become entrenched over time, and may become ineffective or obsolete, even if they once played a legitimate or useful role. In this paper I argue that there is a common set of problems underlying the occurrence of resistance to change in individuals, social structures and the development of knowledge. Resistance to change is not always (...) irrational or problematic; it is also necessary to allow stable personal identities and social structures to survive in a constantly changing world. I offer a historical and theoretical framework for the question of inertia. Finally, I argue that philosophy has often seen its task to be the critique of ossified, inert or obsolete ideas and social structures, but that it has neglected the positive dimension of resistance to change. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE. (shrink)