Peter Ludlow shows how word meanings are much more dynamic than we might have supposed, and explores how they are modulated even during everyday conversation. The resulting view is radical, and has far-reaching consequences for our political and legal discourse, and for enduring puzzles in the foundations of semantics, epistemology, and logic.

We often find ourselves communicating from radically different perspectives on the world. In this new book Ludlow explains how we successfully communicate across some radically diverse perspectival positions, including diverse temporal, spatial and personal positions, through our use of cognitive dynamics.

It appears that indexicals must have fine-grained senses for us to explain things involving human action and emotions, and we typically identify these different senses with different modes of expression. On the other hand, we also express the very same thought in very different ways. The first problem is the problem of cognitive significance. The second problem is what Branquinho (1999) has called the problem of cognitive dynamics. The question is how we can solve both of those problems at the (...) same time. Vojislav Božičković (2021) offers one solution in which the cognitive dynamics runs through the objects of the attitudes. I discuss this solution and offer an alternative in which the theory of cognitive dynamics has no use for the objects of the attitudes to unify expressions of attitudes. When we say or believe “the same thing” using different modes of expressions, it is by virtue of our deploying a dynamic theory of attitude expression. Like Lewis Carrol’s Red Queen, we must run to stay in place. (shrink)

One of the most provocative projects in recent analytic philosophy has been the development of the doctrine of externalism, or, as it is often called, anti-individualism. While there is no agreement as to whether externalism is true or not, a number of recent investigations have begun to explore the question of what follows if it is true. One of the most interesting of these investigations thus far has been the question of whether externalism has consequences for the doctrine that we (...) have authoritative, a priori self-knowledge of our mental states. The selected works presented in this volume, some previously published, some new, are representative of this debate and open up new questions and issues for philosophical investigation, including the connection between externalism, self-knowledge, epistemic warrant, and memory. (shrink)

This book explores the idea that all of logic can be reduced to two very simple rules that are sensitive to logical polarity. The authors show that this idea has profound consequences for our understanding of the nature of human inferential capacities, and for some of the key issues in contemporary linguistics.

ABSTRACT Tensism is the view that tense is not merely a property of language and the mind, but of the world itself. Perspectivalism extends this idea to all perspectival properties be they person or locational. One challenge that perspectivalism faces is the problem of expressing the contents of the beliefs and utterances of persons that are in other perspectival positions. One proposed solution to this problem is to allow for semantic theories that "realign" the expression of contents so that the (...) contents expressed by persons in other perspectival positions can be re-expressed from one's own perspectival position. In this paper I argue that a similar semantic realignment strategy could be deployed in helping perspectivalists generally come to grips with a puzzle raised by the Special Theory of Relativity. In short, the strategy is to realign the expression of contents in another inertial frame so that they are expressed from within your inertial frame. As we will see, the strategy is not puzzle free. (shrink)

According to a number of authors it is possible to give tenseless (B-series) truth conditions for tensed sentences by utilizing token indexicals in something like the following fashion. (1a) An utterance u of 'Past S' is true iff at some time earlier than u, S is true (1b) An utterance u of 'Pres S' is true iff at some time overlapping u, S is true This strategy has been challenged on the grounds that it will break down in cases like (...) (2). (2) There was no spoken language A number of strategies have been attempted to circumvent this difficult, including the introduction of possible utterances, etc. In this paper I argue that such moves are unnecessary — that the problem turns on scope interactions with hidden modals in the theorems of the T-theory. (shrink)

I defend a new account of constitutive essence on which an entity’s constitutively essential properties are its most fundamental, nontrivial necessary properties. I argue that this account accommodates the Finean counterexamples to classic modalism about essence, provides an independently plausible account of constitutive essence, and does not run into clear counterexamples. I conclude that this theory provides a promising way forward for attempts to produce an adequate nonprimitivist, modalist account of essence. As both triviality and fundamentality in the account are (...) understood in terms of grounding, the theory also potentially has important implications for the relation between essence and grounding. (shrink)

The present study aimed to quantify the magnitude of sex differences in humans' ability to accurately recognise non-verbal emotional displays. Studies of relevance were those that required explicit labelling of discrete emotions presented in the visual and/or auditory modality. A final set of 551 effect sizes from 215 samples was included in a multilevel meta-analysis. The results showed a small overall advantage in favour of females on emotion recognition tasks (d = 0.19). However, the magnitude of that sex difference was (...) moderated by several factors, namely specific emotion, emotion type (negative, positive), sex of the actor, sensory modality (visual, audio, audio-visual) and age of the participants. Method of presentation (computer, slides, print, etc.), type of measurement (response time, accuracy) and year of publication did not significantly contribute to variance in effect sizes. These findings are discussed in the context of social and biological explanations of sex differences in emotion recognition. (shrink)

According to a well-known argument against dispositional essentialism, the nature of unmanifested token powers leaves dispositional essentialists with an objectionable commitment to the reality of non-existent entities. The idea is that, because unmanifested token powers are directed at their non-existent token manifestations, they require the reality of those manifestations. Arguably the most promising response to this argument works by claiming that, if properties are universals, dispositional directedness need only entail the reality of actually existing manifestation types. I argue that this (...) response fails, because no version of the response can adequately accommodate dispositions of the sort that follow from Coulomb’s law. This result both defeats an important argument that dispositional essentialists ought to be realists about universals and appears to leave dispositional essentialists with a problematic commitment to either non-relational connections or a Meinongian ontology. (shrink)

Developing novices’ proficiency in skilful activities is central to the reproduction of human societies. The interactional practices through which instruction is accomplished have provided a rich focus for ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies examining classroom settings, and, more recently, non-classroom environments of instruction in practical and manual skills. This paper examines the work of instruction in basketball training and in particular the correction of player performances, which are a ubiquitous and central feature of instruction in basketball training sessions. A central (...) part of this instructional action relies on the coach observing training activities to determine players’ competencies and to extract relevant correctables from the players’ embodied displays, which are in turn embedded within complex arrangements of rapidly moving bodies situated in material environments. In this paper we examine the visual-analytic work involved in both organizing and observing a basketball training activity, demonstrating the sequential layering of multiple membership categorization devices drawn upon in producing and recognizing actions in this setting. We argue that the coach deploys spatial orientations which function analogously to membership categorization devices, with players’ bodily positions relative to one another and the material structure of the surround generating category-like sets of rights, responsibilities, and sequential relevancies. As we demonstrate, these orientations provide crucial resources for the identification of players’ errors and thereby for the organization of instruction in interaction in this setting. (shrink)

What does the development of a truly robust contemporary theory of domination require? Ashley J. Bohrer argues that it is only by considering all of the dimensions of race, gender, sexuality, and class within the structures of capitalism and imperialism that we can understand power relations as we find them nowadays. Bohrer explains how many of the purported incompatibilities between Marxism and intersectionality arise more from miscommunication rather than a fundamental conceptual antagonism. As the first monograph entirely devoted to (...) this issue, »Marxism and Intersectionality« serves as a tool to activists and academics working against multiple systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression. (shrink)

David Chalmers argues that virtual objects exist in the form of data structures that have causal powers. I argue that there is a large class of virtual objects that are social objects and that do not depend upon data structures for their existence. I also argue that data structures are themselves fundamentally social objects. Thus, virtual objects are fundamentally social objects.

Moral distress, is, at its core, an organizational problem. It is experienced on a personal level, but its causes originate within the system itself. In this commentary, we argue that moral distress is not inherently good, that effective interventions must address the external sources of moral distress, and that while there is a place for resilience in the healthcare professions, it cannot be an effective antidote to moral distress.

On some popular accounts of promissory obligation, a promise creates an obligation to the person to whom the promise is made . On such accounts, the wrong involved in breaking a promise is a wrong committed against a promisee. I will call such accounts ‘directed obligation’ accounts of promissory obligation. While I concede that directed obligation accounts make good sense of many of our promissory obligations, I aim to show that directed obligation accounts, at least in their current forms, cannot (...) accommodate an obligation to keep deathbed promises. While the term 'deathbed promise' refers to any promise made to a person who is dying, I focus specifically on deathbed promises which will not, or even cannot, be fulfilled until after the promisee's death. In what follows, I examine two prominent types of directed obligation account: rights-based accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise gives the promisee certain rights, and harm accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise puts the promisee in a special position to be harmed. I argue that neither version can accommodate an obligation to keep deathbed promises. (shrink)

A recent, seemingly appealing version of the powerful qualities view defines properties’ qualitativity via an essentialist claim and their powerfulness via a grounding claim. Roughly, this approach holds that properties are qualities because they have qualitative essences, while they are powerful because their instances or essences ground causal-modal facts. I argue that this theory should be replaced with one that defines the powerfulness of qualities in terms of both a grounding claim and a ‘meta-grounding’ claim. Specifically, I formulate and defend (...) a view on which qualities are powerful just if instances of those qualitiesat least partiallyground dispositionsin virtue of the essences of those qualities. (shrink)

When patients are not able to speak for themselves, surrogate decision makers are asked to guide treatment decisions and formulate a plan of care in accordance with what the patients would have wanted. This necessitates an exploration into the patients’ views about life and how it should be lived, how the patients constructed their identity or life story, and their attitudes towards sickness and suffering. When an individual appoints a surrogate, such as a healthcare power of attorney, a common presumption (...) is that this designation evinces merit. This obscures the possibility of multiple other considerations that influence individual choice. This article presents a clinical case in which the claim to know someone best created a controversy that brought treatment decisions to a standstill. Further, it illuminates how the question, “Given the current medical condition, what would this person want?” risks presuming that a singular, unambiguous preference exists and that one person can provide the answer. Clinical ethicists can play a vital role in situations when there is a dispute among a designated surrogate and family members over a patient’s preference. By embracing the complexity of the desire to synthesize seemingly irreconcilable perspectives about identity, uncovering the reasons that underlie disagreement, and guiding inquiry in such a way that allows stakeholders to move beyond the conflict, clinical ethicists can facilitate decision making that honors the patient and may mitigate moral distress. (shrink)

Many philosophers have suggested that claims of need play a special normative role in ethical thought and talk. But what do such claims mean? What does this special role amount to? Progress on these questions can be made by attending to a puzzle concerning some linguistic differences between two types of 'need' sentence: one where 'need' occurs as a verb, and where it occurs as a noun. I argue that the resources developed to solve the puzzle advance our understanding of (...) the metaphysics of need, the meaning of 'need' sentences, and the function of claims of need in ethical discourse. (shrink)

Taylor has recently argued that adopting either the standard Kimian or Davidsonian approaches to the metaphysics of events quite directly solves the regress of pure powers. I argue, though, that on closer inspection Taylor’s proposal does not succeed, given either the Kimian or the Davidsonian account of events.

Experiences of urges, impulses, or inclinations are among the most basic elements in the practical life of conscious agents. This article develops a theory of urges and their epistemology. The article motivates a tripartite framework that distinguishes urges, conscious experiences of urges, and exercises of capacities that agents have to control their urges. The article elaborates the elements of the tripartite framework, in particular, the phenomenological contribution of motor imagery. It argues that experiences of urges and exercises of control over (...) urges play coordinate roles in enabling an agent’s awareness of their impulses. (shrink)

Racial inequities in medicine are the consequence of intersecting, multidimensional factors. As detailed in the articles by Braddock, Mithani, Cooper, and Boyd, and Yearby, the...

Peter Ludlow presents the first book on the philosophy of generative linguistics, including both Chomsky's government and binding theory and his minimalist ...

While the inference problem is widely thought to be one of the most serious problems facing non-Humean accounts of laws, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that a primitivist response straightforwardly dissolves the problem. On this basis, he claims that the inference problem is really a pseudo-problem. Here I clarify the prospects of a primitivist response to the inference problem and their implications for the philosophical significance of the problem. I argue both that it is a substantial question whether this sort of (...) response ought to be accepted and that the inference problem, contra Schaffer, remains a significant problem with important implications for the non-Humean position. I also argue that this discussion indicates grounds to be wary about applying the Schaffer-style strategy of straightforwardly dissolving problems by stipulation to other philosophical problems. (shrink)

It is well known that humans are able to represent the mental states of others. This ability is commonly thought to be unique to humans. However, recent studies on the food caching, gift giving, and cooperative behaviours of Corvids and Parrots provide evidence for this ability in birds. Upon examining the empirical evidence, I argue that the best explanation for these behaviours is that birds are able to represent conspecifics as having particular mental states. I further argue that birds are (...) able to do this by simulating the minds of conspecifics. (shrink)

In accounts of indexicals, we encounter two problems: the problem of cognitive significance and the problem of cognitive dynamics. The problem of cognitive significance leads us to posit finer-grained sense content to account for the explanation of our actions and emotions. Meanwhile the problem of cognitive dynamics calls us to show how two episodes of thought can have the same fine-grained sense content even though they are expressed in different ways in different times and places. Bojislav Bozickovic offers a solution (...) to the problem of cognitive dynamics by using objects to tie together different ways in which a sense content might be expressed, and arguing that the sense expressions might become untied if we come to wonder if we are talking about the same object. I argue that this strategy raises a number of questions, and may lead to destabilization of our thought contents based on past and future concerns about object identity. (shrink)

Diagnostic testing can be used for many purposes, including testing to facilitate the clinical care of individual patients, testing as an inclusion criterion for clinical trial participation, and both passive and active surveillance testing of the general population in order to facilitate public health outcomes, such as the containment or mitigation of an infectious disease. As such, diagnostic testing presents us with ethical questions that are, in part, already addressed in the literature on clinical care as well as clinical research (...) (such as the rights of patients to refuse testing or treatment in the clinical setting or the rights of participants in randomized controlled trials to withdraw from the trial at any time). However, diagnostic testing, for the purpose of disease surveillance also raises ethical issues that we do not encounter in these settings, and thus have not been much discussed. In this paper we will be concerned with the similarities and differences between the ethical considerations in these three domains: clinical care, clinical research, and public health, as they relate to diagnostic testing specifically. Via an examination of the COVID-19 case we will show how an appeal to the concept of diagnostic justice helps us to make sense of the (at times competing) ethical considerations in these three domains. (shrink)

Evidence‐based medicine (EBM) proponents have argued that mechanistic evidence concerning medical treatments should be considered secondary to evidence derived from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). One common criticism of RCTs is that they often do not yield results that are generalizable to clinical practice, and that for clinical practice application, mechanistic evidence is needed. However, proponents of EBM have argued that mechanistic reasoning is often unreliable and thus not very useful. Here we suggest an important role of mechanistic explanation that has (...) been left out of this discussion entirely, namely, its importance in a patient’s decision of whether or not to take certain drugs. We argue that in certain cases, knowing how a treatment works is just as important for the patient as knowing whether it does. In this paper, we explore how and why giving patients mechanistic information can be an important factor in obtaining informed consent for medical treatment, focusing on the example case of hormonal contraceptives. (shrink)

To examine the ethical duty to patients and families in the setting of the resuscitation bay, we address a case with a focus on providing optimal care and communication to family members. We present a case of nonsurvivable traumatic injury in a minor, focusing on how allowing family more time at the bedside impacts the quality of death and what duty exists to maintain an emotionally optimal environment for family grieving and acceptance. Our analysis proposes tenets for patient and family-centric (...) care that, in alignment with trauma-informed care principles, optimize the long-term well-being of the family, namely valuing family desires and sensitivity to location. (shrink)

Ashley J. Bohrer argues that it is only by considering race, gender, sexuality, and ability within the structures of capitalism and imperialism that we can understand power relations. Bohrer explains how the purported incompatibilities between Marxism and intersectionality arise more from miscommunication than a fundamental conceptual antagonism.

In this book Ludlow uses the metaphysics of time as a case study and focuses on the dispute between A-theorists and B-theorists about the nature of time.

Part of T. M. Scanlon’s project in What We Owe to Each Other (1998) is to explain the importance and priority of moral reasons. But Scanlon also argues that this priority of moral reasons is compatible with the pursuit of other things we value, such as friendship. To this end, Scanlon claims that contractualist moral reasons internally accommodate our interests in such values. In this paper, I argue that Scanlon is unsuccessful in showing the compatibility of morality and the pursuit (...) of our other values. The contractualist may not be able to be a good friend. (shrink)

Craft-education was an important pedagogical model in the ancient world, but its importance was obscured by the common contrast between rhetoric and philosophy. Christian writers such as Gregory of Nyssa used craft-education as a model for Christian formation, because of its powerful emphasis on commitment, time, effort and the willingness of both pupil and teacher to submit to change. In the latter part of my article I will offer a preliminary assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of craft-education as a (...) model for the process of Christian formation. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Learning How to Innovate as a Socio-epistemological Process of Co-creation: Towards a Constructivist Teaching Strategy for Innovation” by Markus F. Peschl, Gloria Bottaro, Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler & Katharina Rötzer. Upshot: This commentary emphasizes the three levels of a teaching methodology designed to scaffold conceptual autonomy and innovation on the part of graduate students with diverse areas of expertise.