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  1.  52
    Can We Test the Experience Machine?Basil Smith - 2011 - Ethical Perspectives 18 (1):29-51.
    Robert Nozick famously asks us whether we would plug in to an experience machine, or whether we would insist upon ‘living in contact with reality’. Felipe De Brigard, after conducting a series of empirical ‘inverted’ experience machine studies, suggests that this is a false dilemma. Rather, he says, ’…the fact is that people tend to prefer the state of affairs they are in currently,’ or the status quo. In this paper, I argue that these studies are a test case for (...)
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  2. Internalism and Externalism in the Philosophy of Mind and Language.Basil Smith - 2013 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    How are the contents of our beliefs, our intentions, and other attitudes individuated? Just what makes our contents what they are? Content externalism, as Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and others have argued, is the position that our contents depend in a constitutive manner on items in the external world, that they can be individuated by our causal interaction with the items they are about. Content internalism, by contrast, is the position that our contents depend primarily on the properties of our (...)
     
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  3. John Locke, Personal Identity and Memento.Basil Smith - 2006 - In Mark T. Conard & Robert Porfirio (eds.), The philosophy of film noir. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
    In this paper, I compare John Locke’s “memory theory” of personal identity and Memento. I argue that the plot of Memento is ambiguous, in that the main character seems to have two histories. As such, Memento is but a series of puzzle cases that intend to illustrate that, although our memories may not be chronologically related to one another, and may even be fused with the memories of other persons, those memories still constitute personal identity. Just as Derek Parfit argues, (...)
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  4.  38
    Davidson, Irrationality, and Ethics.Basil Smith - 2001 - Philosophy Today 45 (3):242-253.
    In this paper I outline Donald Davidson’s account of two forms of irrationality, akrasia and self-deception, and relate this account to ethical action and belief. His view of irrationality is generally a Freudian one, to the effect that agents must compartmentalize both offending particular mental contents, and governing second order principles. Davidson also hints that his account of akrasia and self-deception might show certain normative and meta-ethical theories to be irrational, insofar as they too engender irrationality. I explore these hints, (...)
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  5. Affect, Rationality, and the Experience Machine.Basil Smith - 2012 - Ethical Perspectives 19 (2):268-276.
    Can we test philosophical thought experiments, such as whether people would enter an experience machine or would leave one once they are inside? Dan Weijers argues that since 'rational' subjects (e.g. students taking surveys in college classes) are believable, we can do so. By contrast, I argue that because such subjects will probably have the wrong affect (i.e. emotional states) when they are tested, such tests are almost worthless. Moreover, understood as a general policy, such pretend testing would ruin the (...)
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  6.  52
    Cartesian scepticism about the external world, semantic or content externalism, and the mind.Basil Smith - unknown
    This thesis has three parts. In the first part, the author defends the coherence of Cartesian scepticism about the external world. In particular, the author contends that such scepticism survives attacks from Descartes himself, as well as from W.V.O. Quine, Robert Nozick, Alvin Goldman, and David Armstrong. It follows that Cartesian scepticism remains intact. In the second part of this thesis, the author contends that the semantic or content externalisms of Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge do not refute Cartesian scepticism (...)
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  7.  90
    Plantinga and Wittgenstein on Properly Basic Beliefs.Basil Smith - 2000 - Philo 3 (1):32-40.
    Alvin Plantinga argues that secular evidential ism must be false because the criteria of properly basic beliefs are too restrictive or incoherent. I argue that Plantinga’s arguments are unsound, and this is easily seen against what Wittgenstein implies about evidentialism.
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  8.  34
    (1 other version)Matching Well-Being to Merit: The Example of Punishment.Jeremy Watkins, Basil Smith, Renate Pilapil & Hanno Sauer - 2011 - Ethical Perspectives 18 (1):5-27.
    In this paper, I explore our common-sense thinking about the relation between moral value, moral merit, and well-being. Starting from Ross’s observation that welfarist axiologies ignore our intuitions about desert, I focus on axiologies that take moral merit and well-being to be independent determinants of value. I distinguish three ways in which these axiologies can be formulated, and I then consider their application to the issue of punishment. The objection that they recommend penalties in circumstances in which intuitively we would (...)
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  9.  22
    Christopher Martin is a researcher in the faculty of medicine and a lecturer in the faculty of education at memorial university of newfoundland, canada. A former school principal, his central area of research is moral philosophy and the ethical and political foundations of education. Email: Chris. Martin@ med. Mun. ca. [REVIEW]Hanno Sauer, Basil Smith & Jeremy Watkins - 2011 - Ethical Perspectives 18 (1):163.
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  10.  97
    A Dialogue on Consciousness, by Torin Alter and Robert Howell. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 2012 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 19 (9-10):247-252.
  11.  50
    A Middle Way to God. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 2002 - International Philosophical Quarterly 42 (1):138-139.
  12. CORTE, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: His Life and Spirit. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 1960 - Hibbert Journal 59:95.
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  13. Epistemic Luck, by Duncan Pritchard. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 2006 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 14 (2):291-295.
  14.  47
    Defending Theistic Proofs. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 1999 - Philo 2 (2):58-63.
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  15.  98
    (1 other version)Epistemology, by Ian Evans and Nicholas Smith. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 2013 - Teaching Philosophy 36 (2):204-209.
  16. HAYEK, The Constitution of Liberty. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 1960 - Hibbert Journal 59:205.
     
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  17. Mark Timmons, morality without foundations: A defense of ethical contextualism. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 2001 - Journal of Value Inquiry 35 (2):269-273.
    In Morality Without Foundations, Mark Timmons argues that moral judgments (e.g. “cruelty is wrong”) have what he calls “evaluative assertoric content,” and so, are true or false. However, I argue that, even if correct, this argument renders moral truth or falsity mysterious.
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  18.  40
    Necessity, Volition, and Love. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 2001 - Dialogue 40 (2):411-411.
    This is an insightful and clear group of essays which continues the work of an earlier collection called The Importance of What We Care About. In the earlier book, Frankfurt attempted to develop a theory of ideals independent of moral concerns. As he put it, “there is nothing distinctly moral about ideals such as being steadfastly loyal to a family tradition, or selflessly pursuing mathematical truth”. In Necessity, Volition, and Love, Frankfurt extends this theme. He says philosophers should pay attention (...)
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  19.  56
    The Sense of the Past. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 2007 - Review of Metaphysics 60 (3):696-698.
  20. Wittgenstein's Thought in Transition, by Dale Jacquette. [REVIEW]Basil Smith - 1999 - Metaphilosophy 40 (4):373-378.
     
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