In this article I explore various facets of Nozick’s famous thought experiment involving the experience machine. Nozick’s original target is hedonism—the view that the only intrinsic prudential value is pleasure. But the argument, if successful, undermines any experientialist theory, i.e. any theory that limits intrinsic prudential value to mental states. I first highlight problems arising from the way Nozick sets up the thought experiment. He asks us to imagine choosing whether or not to enter the machine and uses our choice (...) (or rather the choice he assumes most people will have) as evidence against experientialist theories. But for this strategy to succeed it must be possible to distinguish between self-interested and non-self-interested reasons for declining to enter the machine, and there is no obvious way to do this without begging the question against the hedonist. In successive sections I then (a) consider a common misconception of Nozick’s conclusion (that he thinks machine life is the worst life), (b) consider different intuitions about what is important to well-being but missing from machine life, and finally (c) explain what “the experience requirement” is, and describe its relationship to debates about experientialist theories. (shrink)

The literature of economic theory, like that of philosophy, abounds in prefaces and prolegomena. Methodology and analysis of concepts take an important place in a science which has not found the sure path of development. But there is no sure path for methodology either. The selfconscious methodology of social science has been largely a borrowing from that of physical science, where procedures have developed to a stage of considerable maturity. But the analogy falls down where guidance is most needed, at (...) the points where social science is most likely to develop new concepts and new types of structure. Philosophers have not been lacking, indeed, to belittle the entire enterprise, and to deny the possibility of anything that could strictly be called social science. (shrink)

Decision-Making Capacity First published Tue Jan 15, 2008; substantive revision Fri Aug 14, 2020 In many Western jurisdictions the law presumes that adult persons, and sometimes children that meet certain criteria, are capable of making their own medical decisions; for example, consenting to a particular medical treatment, or consenting to participate in a research trial. But what exactly does it mean to say that a subject has or lacks the requisite capacity to decide? This question has to do with what (...) is commonly called “decisional capacity”, a central concept in health care law and ethics, and increasingly an independent topic of philosophical inquiry. -/- Decisional capacity can be defined as the ability of subjects to make their own medical decisions. Somewhat similar questions of capacity arise in other contexts, such as capacity to stand trial in a court of law and the ability to make decisions that relate to personal care and finances. However, the history behind the more general legal notions of capacity to stand trial and capacity to manage one’s life is different and operates somewhat differently in law (Roth, Meisel, & Litz 1977; Zapf & Roesch 2005). For the purposes of this discussion the notion of decisional capacity will be limited to medical contexts only; most notably, those where decisions to consent or to refuse treatment or participation in clinical research are concerned. (shrink)

This chapter explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of (...) radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR. (shrink)

This is a collection of seventeen essays on learning, teaching, and the philosophy of education. A sequel to Hawkins's 'The Informed Vision' (1947), this new volume covers a wide range of topics, from generating the most basic student interest in the subject matter at hand to the specific challenges of teaching science and mathematics. In the title essay, Hawkins addresses widespread concerns over low literacy rates and the poor state of our educational system, questioning our limited understanding of (...) literacy as the ability to manipulate the printed word. Another essay explicates methods of inducing children toward certain types of learning, and then letting their spontaneous, natural urges toward self-education take over. In his concluding essay on human equality, Hawkins argues -- contrary to recent works such as Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray's 'The Bell Curve' -- that it is the relative poverty or wealth of our intellectual nurturing with respect to the cultural mainstream that accounts for differences in educational performance, no congenital inequalities. Moreover, he seeks to address exactly what sort of equivalence or equality -- preferably one that does not erase individual and cultural differences-we can and ought unqualifiedly to approve of and so seek to realise. Whatever the topic, Hawkins's essays draw upon a lifetime of teaching experience, illuminating the multiplicity of methods that should be used to educate our children. (shrink)

Frege believes that the content of declarative sentences divides into a thought and its ‘colouring’, perhaps combined with assertoric force. He further thinks it is important to separate the thought from its colouring. To do this, a criterion which determines sameness of sense between sentences must be deployed. But Frege provides three criteria for this task, each of which adjudicate on different grounds. In this article, rather than expand on criticisms levelled at two of the criteria offered, the author focuses (...) on the most promising candidate. As it stands, this criterion has problems, but not insuperable ones. He suggests an adjusted criterion that relies on the epistemic notion of triviality. He recommends this criterion as both harmonious with Frege’s broader thought and preferable to alternatives offered. The moral is that Frege individuates thoughts by deploying an epistemic concept, and this is the only suitable way for him to do so. (shrink)

There is a strong appetite in ‘the wild’ (i.e., beyond the academy) for public philosophy. There are myriad forums available, from magazines and online publications to podcasts and YouTube videos, for those who wish to engage in philosophy in a non-academic context. For academic philosophers, this has raised methodological and metaphilosophical questions like: ‘what is the best way to engage in public philosophy?’ and ‘what are our aims when we engage in public philosophy?’ But what do ‘the public’ want? If (...) public philosophy is philosophy written for a public audience, what is it, exactly, that it can or might do for them? Several answers have been proposed by philosophers, but less attention has been paid to how the public themselves might answer that question. The aim of this essay is to try and put together at least the beginning of an answer. In June 2022 we put out a survey in the hope of eliciting views from ‘the public’ on issues relating to the nature and aims of both philosophy (more generally) and public philosophy. In doing so, our aim was to take a ‘democratic’ approach to answering the question: What is public philosophy? (shrink)

This paper considers two conceptual expansions of Du Boisian double consciousness—white double consciousness (Alcoff 2015) and kaleidoscopic consciousness (Medina 2013)—both of which aim to articulate the moral-epistemic potential of cultivating double consciousness from racially dominant or other socially privileged positions. We analyze these concepts and challenge them on the grounds that they lack continuity with their Du Boisian predecessor and face problems of practical feasibility. As we show, these expansions obscure structural barriers that make white double consciousness and kaleidoscopic consciousness (...) unlikely antidotes to the kind of racial domination that double consciousness was introduced to illuminate. We conclude that while more intersectional and pluralistic accounts of double consciousness may be desirable, the project of expansion has moral limits. Identifying these limitations, we outline ways in which double consciousness—as a tool for conceptualizing the genealogy of structural anti-Blackness—remains valuable in the absence of ever-expanding revision. (shrink)

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of knowledge—analytic and intuitive, explicit and tacit. Analytic knowledge is arrived at by logical deductive thinking, and is a sequential thought process in which each step can be explained and defended. Intuitive knowledge, in contrast, is frequently alogical or nonrational, and often involves nonconscious mental processes. Though intuitive ways of knowing are essential to both scientific research and scientific medicine, the culture of medicine celebrates only the analytic, evidentiary kind of knowledge, while eschewing intuition (...) as being “nonscientific.” The popularity and prevalence of what is known as evidence-based medicine reflects this bias in favor of the analytic and the explicit. Though the evidence-based approach has contributed greatly to standardizing medical care, favoring treatments for which there is evidence of effectiveness, it has limitations. An overreliance on evidence-based medicine is problematic, because this approach leaves out important factors in the actual practice of clinical medicine such as diagnosis, nonverbal cures provided by patients, and the way the doctor–patient relationship bears on patient management and compliance, and because it is not appropriate for dealing with medical conditions that do not lend themselves to study by controlled clinical trials. (shrink)

The dominant approach to assessing decision-making capacity in medicine focuses on determining the extent to which individuals possess certain core cognitive abilities. Critics have argued that this model delivers the wrong verdict in certain cases where patient values that are the product of mental disorder or disordered affective states undermine decision-making without undermining cognition. I argue for a re-conceptualization of what it is to possess the capacity to make medical treatment decisions. It is, I argue, the ability to track one’s (...) own personal interests at least as well as most people can. Using this idea, I demonstrate that it is possible to craft a solution for the problem cases—one that neither alters existing criteria in dangerous ways (e.g. does not open the door to various kinds of abuse) nor violates widely accepted ethical constraints on decision-making assessment. (shrink)

There is an enduring and widespread perception amongst policy makers and practitioners that certain groups of children, in particular those who find learning difficult, have a detrimental effect on the achievement of other children. Challenging this basic assumption, this award-winning book argues that high levels of inclusion can be entirely compatible with high levels of achievement and that combining the two is not only possible but essential if all children are to have the opportunity to participate fully in education. This (...) fully revised second edition is packed with vivid case studies that explore the benefits and tensions for children and schools, and sets out to answer the following questions: What is the nature of the relationship between the inclusion of some children and the achievement of all? Are there strategies which can raise the achievement of all children, whilst safeguarding the inclusion of others who are more vulnerable? What changes can a school make to ensure high levels of inclusion as well as high levels of achievement for all its children? Achievement and Inclusion in Schools offers a fully up-to-date analysis of current issues in light of recent changes to education policy in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It provides practical guidance for practitioners and policy-makers, and will be of interest to anyone passionate about inclusive education. (shrink)

This book focuses on material culture as a subject of philosophical inquiry and promotes the philosophical study of material culture by articulating some of the central and difficult issues raised by this topic and providing innovative solutions to them, most notably an account of improvised action and a non-intentionalist account of function in material culture. Preston argues that material culture essentially involves activities of production and use; she therefore adopts an action-theoretic foundation for a philosophy of material culture. Part 1 (...) illustrates this foundation through a critique, revision, and extension of existing philosophical theories of action. Part 2 investigates a salient feature of material culture itself—its functionality. A basic account of function in material culture is constructed by revising and extending existing theories of biological function to fit the cultural case. Here the adjustments are for the most part necessitated by special features of function in material culture. These two parts of the project are held together by a trio of overarching themes: the relationship between individual and society, the problem of centralized control, and creativity. (shrink)

Function theorists routinely speculate that a viable function theory will be equally applicable to biological traits and artifacts. However, artifact function has received only the most cursory scrutiny in its own right. Closer scrutiny reveals that only a pluralist theory comprising two distinct notions of function--proper function and system function--will serve as an adequate general theory. The first section describes these two notions of function. The second section shows why both notions are necessary, by showing that attempts to do away (...) with one of them fail. This demonstration draws on examples from the artifactual realm to motivate major points of the argument. The third section is an outline of artifact function. It confirms the conclusions of the second section, and also begins the task of describing some of the special features of artifact function needing accommodation within the general theory. (shrink)

According to accounts of the Passion, Christ cries out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The cry, I argue, manifests that Christ lacks a belief that God is with him. Given the standard view of faith—belief that p is required for faith that p—it would follow that Christ lost his faith that God is with him just before he died. In this paper, I challenge the standard view by looking at the cognitive requirement of (...) faith. Although faith that p requires some positive cognitive orientation toward p, that orientation need not be belief. I show that reliance is an alternative stance that fulfills the cognitive requirement of faith. Reliance aims at providing sensible guidance for action that is in accord with one’s values/ends. Thinking of the cognitive component of Christ’s faith in terms of reliance makes sense of the doubt manifested in his cry. (shrink)

Drawing on decades of experience, a psychotherapist and Zen practitioner makes the Abhidharma--the original psychological system of Buddhism--accessible to a general audience for the first time. The Abhidharma, one of the three major text collections of the original Buddhist canon, explores the critical juncture of Buddhist thought and the therapeutic aspects of the religion and meditation. It frames the psychological system of Buddhism, explaining the workings of reality and the nature of the human mind. Composed of detailed matrixes and lists (...) that outline the interaction of consciousness and reality, The Abhidharma explores the essence of perception and experience, and the reasons and methods behind mindfulness and meditation. Because of its complexity, the Abhidharma has traditionally been reserved only for academic or monastic study; now, for the first time, clinical psychologist Beth Jacobs makes this dynamic, important text and its teachings available to general readers, using practical explanation, personal stories, and vivid examples to gently untangle the technical aspects of the Abhidharma. Jacobs’ work illuminates this classic of Buddhist thought, highlighting the ways it can broaden and deepen our experience of the human psyche and offering profound insights into spiritual practice. (shrink)

What is the best way to account for the badness of pain and what sort of theory of welfare is best suited to accommodate this view? I argue that unpleasant sensory experiences are prudentially bad in the absence of contrary attitudes, but good when the object of positive attitudes. Pain is bad unless it is liked, enjoyed, valued etc. Interestingly, this view is incompatible with either pure objectivist or pure subjectivist understandings of welfare. However, there is a kind of welfare (...) theory that can incorporate this view of the badness of pain and which is very, very close to being a form of subjectivism. Moreover, this hybrid account of welfare is entirely compatible with the deep motivations of subjectivism. I therefore argue that those who lean towards welfare subjectivism should adopt this account of pain, and that we should revise our understanding of subjectivism to count such theories as subjective. (shrink)