The essays in this collection step back to ask: Do the complex components of Dennett's work on intentionality, consciousness, evolution, and ethics themselves ...

This paper suggests that the flaw in the enthymeme approach to argument analysis is in the requirement, as I come to formulate it, that an argument be restated as a premises-and-conclusion sequence. The paper begins by investigating how logicians show that there are problems with the enthymeme approach. That investigation reveals a failure on the part of logicians to appreciate the importance of the rhetorical context of an argument. This failure, it is argued, is a consequence of what I refer (...) to as the Premise-Conclusion Requirement. (shrink)

This paper objects to treating begging the question as circular reasoning. It argues that what is at issue in the argument is not to be confused with the claim or position that the arguer is adopting, and that logicians from Aristotle on give the wrong definition and have difficulty making sense of the fallacy because they try to define it in terms of how an argument is defined by logical theory - as a sequence consisting of premises followed by a (...) conclusion. That the problematic about begging the question depends on treating an argument as a context-less sequence of statements seems to be anticipated by the pragma-dialectical approach. The paper offers a critique of this dialogical approach, as exemplified by Douglas Walton in his recent book on begging the question, on the grounds that it raises more problems than it solves. It concludes with the suggestion that what is really at issue in discussions of begging the question is the need for a theory of fallacy. (shrink)

Frank Ebersole's extraordinary investigations of certain key philosophical ideas behind problems in epistemology and metaphysics are the subject of this article-review. I have resisted providing what many readers will expect me to provide, namely, a critical examination of his philosophical methodology. I do question his unwilligness to say why his investigations only yield I negative results, and I do have something to say about classifying him as an ordinary language philosopher. However, my main focus is on trying to engage critically (...) with what he actually does in his work. To this end, I provide a narrative of the investigation he carries out into the possibility of comparing the objects of perception and dreams, and I cite other works of his in support of my understanding of that investigation. Although one of his lengthiest essays seems to be devoted to an anticipation of an objection to his approach, I explain why even there he is not concerned with the question of why he always seems to get negative results. After suggesting why some of his later essays seem to be so hard to read, I conclude by saying something about what I take to be his achievement. (shrink)

Critics of mainstream economics typically rest important weight on the differences between people and the 'agents' that populate economic theory and economic models. Hollis and Nell (1975) is both representative of and ancestral to many more recent variations on the theme. Lately, the upgraded status of behavioral economics (BE) within the discipline's mainstream has encouraged a number of writers to use revolutionary rhetoric in promotion of a 'paradigm shift' that includes the rejection of 'rational economic man' (Ormerod 1994, Heilbroner and (...) Milburg 1995, Fullbrook 2003). The current leading developers of BE are generally more circumspect, claiming that their approach complements standard theory rather than promising to supplant it (Camerer and Loewenstein 2004, Angner and Loewenstein this volume). However, they generally join the more florid critics in supposing that microeconomics is bound to improve its empirical relevance to the extent that it substitutes the study of people for that of abstract economic agents. Another body of thought that promotes this view stems from Sen's (1977) attack on standard economic agents as 'rational fools', amplified in Davis's (2003) argument that since economic agents lack some essential properties of human individuals, economic theory requires fundamental reform if it is to make progress in explaining human behavior. (shrink)

The importance and urgency of using ethical principles in the creation and content of climate change policy is well recognised. This article closely examines the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) engagement in ethical elements of international climate policy for abatement. The primary finding is the use of narrow framing around ‘nature based solutions’. The IUCNs’ own policy references to ethical principles such as fairness and justice are not adequately applied to the content of policy or to its critique. Recommendations are made (...) on how the IUCN (and NGOs generally) could enhance its ethical engagement to act consistently with the claim of moral leadership. (shrink)

Three recent book-length studies in the philosophy of economics (Mirowski 2002, Davis 2003, Ross 2005) have drawn attention to the fact that mainstream economic theory has consistently avoided commitment to any particular model of the person. This is the most significant respect in which economics has kept aloof from part of psychology. The widespread belief, on the other hand, that economists’ attentiveness to the psychology of choice and decision had to wait for the Allais challenge and then for Kahneman and (...) Tversky is a myth. It is true that for a brief period after World War II economists led by Samuelson tried to operationalize choice as analytically derivative from observed consumer demand. This was a minor episode in the history of theory. Ross (2005) argues that, if anything, mainstream microeconomics has been more sensitive to theoretical fashions in the psychology of choice than has been good for it. (shrink)

Since 1980 effective field theories (EFT's) have been the focus of much research by quantum field theorists but their philosophical implications have gone mostly unnoticed. Some authors claim EFT's are approximations to some fundamental theory. Others claim EFT's are ends in themselves, not approximations to some fundamental theory, and that we can use them to bypass the problem of renormalization. In the present work I argue that the EFT programme can bypass the problem if ontological commitments only come from theoretical (...) predictions. Since the history of QFT suggests some form of entity realism, the EFT programme does not allow us to bypass the problem of renormalization. (shrink)

Logic as a subject has existed for a long time. Aristotle and the Stoics identified some of its principles, as did Indian logicians. And this ancient logic underwent an extraordinary mathematical development in the last hundred and fifty years. So logic certainly exists, at least as a branch of mathematics. The question is whether it is anything more than that.

This paper examines Robert Fogelin's suggestion that there may be deep disagreements, where no argument can address what is at issue. A number of possible bases for Fogelin's position are considered and rejected: people sometimes do not have enough in common for reasons to count as reasons; doubt is possible only against the background of framework propositions; key premises may be inarguable; argument must occur within a conceptual framework. The paper concludes by reflecting on why it is important to have (...) a point of view when thinking critically about an argument and whether that fact constitutes a limitation as to what can be achieved by critical thinking. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of certain arguments given by the Milindapanha and Jay Garfield for the conventional nature of reality or existence. These arguments are of interest in their own right. They also are significant if they are presumed to attack an obstacle we all face in achieving non-attachment, namely, our belief in the inherent or substantial existence of ourselves and the familiar objects of our world. The arguments turn on a distinction between these objects, and some other way (...) of conceiving of them, in terms of which their conventional existence becomes apparent. After the distinction and the arguments that depend on it are shown to be problematic, the paper concludes with some reflections on the doctrine of skillful means and its applicability to Buddhist philosophical argument. (shrink)

The Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), according to which we are responsible for what we did only if we could have done otherwise, is relied upon in the argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. Compatibilists, like Harry Frankfurt, attack PAP with stories that they devise as counter-examples; why are their stories, and the stories devised by defenders of PAP, so bad? Answers that suggest themselves are that these philosophers do not try to imagine how things actually unfolded; (...) what it would be like for a real person in the situation; and actual talk of someone being responsible or being able to do otherwise. That they do not imagine these things also can be explained by their unwarranted assumption that when they talk, for example, about someone not being able to do otherwise, they are talking not about talk of it (in a story), but of the thing itself, not-being-able-to-do-otherwise. (shrink)

An argumentative passage that might appear to be an instance of denying the antecedent will generally admit of an alternative interpretation, one on which the conditional contained by the passage is a preface to the argument rather than a premise of it. On this interpretation. which generally is a more charitable one, the conditional plays a certain dialectical role and, in some cases, a rhetorical role as welL Assuming only a very weak principle of exigetical charity, I consider what it (...) would take in a given case to justify accepting the less charitable interpretation. I then present evidence that those conditions are seldom met. Indeed, I was unable to find a single published argument that can justifiably be charged with denying the antecedent. (shrink)

It is generally recognized that descriptive and normative individualism are logically independent theses. This paper defends the stronger view that recognition of the falsehood of descriptive individualism is crucial to understanding the evolutionary and developmental basis of normative individualism. The argument given for this is not analytic; rather, it is based on empirical generalizations about the evolution of markets with specialized labor, about the nature of information processing in large markets, and about the socialization of human children.

Guala notes that low-cost punishment is the main mechanism that deters free-riding in small human communities. This mechanism is complemented by unusual human vulnerability to gossip. Defenders of an evolutionary discontinuity supporting human sociality might seize on this as an alternative to enjoyment of moralistic aggression as a special adaptation. However, the more basic adaptation of language likely suffices.

It has been suggested that we ought to idealize the apparatus used to measure quantum systems as consisting of an infinite number of particles. Various authors have claimed that if we do so we do not need to take seriously the limitations on measurement incorporated into the Wigner-Araki-Yanase quantum theory of measurement. Bub and claims we can solve the measurement problem if we make this assumption. I argue against both claims on the basis of differences between the role of such (...) idealizations in classical and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The social sciences stand at a strange crossroads. There is a greater need for disciplined inquiry into the issues of policy facing the United States. Yet the incentives in the political system, and in the professional guilds of those performing social research, discourage a close involvement of many prominent social scientists with policy. The political system, fearing an elite imposing its values on society, welcomes the natural scientist who seems to conform to the model of the politically neutral expert who (...) solves problems and addresses “facts”. This model also fits the higher ranks of the civil service, made up of specialists rather than generalist administrators, and the outside advisers serving officials concerned with high policy. Likewise, to protect themselves from changes of partisanship, leading academic social scientists forsake policy concerns for topics within the analytic traditions of Weberian Wertfreiheit. Just as Weber sought to avoid censorship by value neutral scholarship, the modern social scientist disdains the normative concerns of policy in favour of more tractable, morally neutral issues defined as the core of the discipline.The country needs to draw some of the best analytical talent in the social science community into the policy process and advisory roles. Disciplined inquiry cannot be left only to technicians whose professional interests are far removed from political, economic, social and other human sciences. To promote better policy and better social science, we should encourage serious, professionally grounded inquiry into social values, the directions of policy, and the role and proper limits of state power. In the clamour of American politics, there is little danger that policy will be monopolised by an elite group, but considerable danger that debate on policy will be impoverished by the absence of those most knowledgeable about social and economic reality. (shrink)

Murphy (2006) criticizes psychiatric nosology from the perspective of the philosophy of science, arguing that the model of pathology as encapsulated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders reflects a folk conception of the mental, and of malfunctioning, that is inadequately integrated with cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. The present paper supports this view through a case study of research on pathological gambling. It argues that recent modeling based on fMRI studies and behavioral genetics suggests a stipulative, non-seamless reduction (...) of pathological gambling to a specific disorder of the mesolimbic dopamine system. This argument is agnostic as between prior philosophical commitments to realism or empiricism. (shrink)

This paper is motivated by the concern that increasingly fewer philosophers of mind seem prepared to call themselves ‘functionalists’ these days. I suggest that this has less to do with explicit arguments presented against functionalism than with a gradual decay in the clarity of the term’s reference. This decay has two sources: functionalism has involved several different, logically independent research commitments, and it has become tightly associated, to an unnecessary degree, with classical computationalism, a program which is now under severe (...) pressure from connectionist and other bottom-up methodologies in Al. After diagnosing the causes of this drift, I seek to arrest it by sketching a version of functionalism---Minimal Strong Functionalism---that is strong enough to have ontological and methodological bite, but that is sufficiently minimal in its empirical commitments so as to not be hostage to the outcome of the current dispute in Al between connectionists and classicists. (shrink)

This handbook examines what education would look like if it prepared gifted students to transform the world—to make it a better place for all, not just for those who receive extra resources from schools in return for being labeled as “gifted.” The editors explore how transformationally gifted people can seek to make the world a better and more just place: they try to make a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring contribution to changing things in the world that are not working. (...) They do not view “giftedness” merely as a transaction whereby, in exchange for being labeled as “gifted,” they accrue benefits to themselves: such as a more prestigious education, more income, or residence in a more exclusive community. The overarching aim of this book is to present conceptions of what identification and instruction of the gifted would look like if the focus of gifted education was transformational rather than transactional. What if gifted education did not focus so much on acceleration vs. enrichment, or pull-out versus in-class integration, but rather on how to be gifted in giving back—in using one’s gifts to create a better world? (shrink)

Lea & Webley's (L&W's) non-exclusive distinction between tool-like and drug-like motivators is insufficiently discriminating to say much about money that is useful, as the distinction's equivocal application to sex, food, and drugs shows. Further, it appears as though the motivations of problem gamblers are non-metaphorically like those of drug addicts. (Published Online April 5 2006).

The revised edition of Paul Seabright’s The Company of Strangers is critically reviewed. Seabright aims to help non-economists participating in the cross-disciplinary study of the evolution of human sociality appreciate the potential value that can be added by economists. Though the book includes nicely constructed and vivid essays on a range of economic topics, in its main ambition it largely falls short. The most serious problem is endorsement of the so-called strong reciprocity hypothesis that has been promoted by several prominent (...) economists, but does not pass muster with biologists. (shrink)

This paper shows how one major area of health education work (smoking cessation) involves powerful, but currently largely implicit, philosophies of action. The analysis draws on empirical data derived from a previous study of would-be non-smokers' private explanations for their success or failure. Will-power, or the lack of it, emerged as a central theme in this study—a theme equally prevalent in almost all ‘How to Stop Smoking’ books and related health education pamphlets. The nature of will-power has long been discussed (...) by philosophers. However, will-power remains largely undefined and unresearched in health education. The would-be non-smokers also claimed to feel that they were making inauthentic or non-genuine choices (a theme which has also been the subject of philosophical analysis). If health educators were to develop a deeper understanding of will-power and authenticity (and were to appreciate that these ideas are complex rather than simple) this might have a considerable effect on the design of practical health education initiatives. (shrink)