Millikan (1998a) relies on the ability an organism may have to reidentify external objects. It is difficult to develop an account of how this might occur because the organism could make a mistake in the tokening of a concept; it could misidentify the external object. To sustain her nondescriptivism, Millikan's account of reidentification must make the link between concept and object arbitrary. However, to make mistakes possible, there must be a norm for the production of concepts. These two requirements seem (...) to leave no room for a middle ground. (shrink)

The naturalistically inclined philosopher of mind faces two related challenges: (1) show how mental content could be part of the natural world, and (2) show how content can be one of the factors responsible for producing (causing) behaviour, that is, show that content is not epiphenomenal. One might pursue the first goal with the intent of showing that mental content is epiphenomenal, but it is more likely that the philosopher concerned with showing how content can be naturalized also expects content (...) to be causally efficacious. Indeed, why pursue the first challenge while holding that content is epiphenomenal? Thus these two challenges overlap: show how content can be naturalized without making content epiphenomenal. (shrink)

I argue that Carruthers' arguments that animals are unable to have conscious experience relies on a human-centered view of consciousness. Once we abandon those characteristics of consciousness that are typically human, such as the ability to reason about one's conscious experience, it becomes clear that animals may have conscious experience, although such experience may not be available as the subject of thought. Consideration of evidence from human conscious experience, child development, and evolution supports this suggestion.

The conclusions drawn from mirror self-recognition studies, in which nonhuman animals are tested for whether they detect a mark on their bodies which can be observed only in the mirror, are based on several presuppositions. These include that performance on the test is an indication of species wide rather than individual abilities, and that all the animals which pass the test are demonstrating the presence of the same psychological ability. However, further details about the results of the test indicate that (...) these presuppositions are false. Animals take the test as individuals, not as stand-ins for species, and members of different species rely on different cognitive mechanisms to pass the test. For nonhuman animals, passing the test seems to be a consequence of enculturation and practice. (shrink)

Owens (1993) argues that a tension exists between our commonsense view of mental states and the scientific view that psychological explanations not contradict supervenience. He suggests that one cannot accept the anti-individualistic conclusions of Twin-Earth thought experiments and continue to use folk psychological states to explain behavior. I argue that his conclusions are based on individuating content widely and causal powers narrowly, and that such individuation violates consistency assumptions about the terms of his discussion. Thus, I argue, the tension he (...) points to evaporates when we adopt either a consistently wide view or a consistently narrow view. (shrink)

The naturalistically inclined philosopher of mind faces two related challenges: show how mental content could be part of the natural world, and show how content can be one of the factors responsible for producing behaviour, that is, show that content is not epiphenomenal. One might pursue the first goal with the intent of showing that mental content is epiphenomenal, but it is more likely that the philosopher concerned with showing how content can be naturalized also expects content to be causally (...) efficacious. Indeed, why pursue the first challenge while holding that content is epiphenomenal? Thus these two challenges overlap: show how content can be naturalized without making content epiphenomenal. (shrink)

Laland et al. rightly observe that the pressures affecting the evolution of a trait include the previous effects the trait has had on the environment. Ignoring this would be like ignoring the effect of compound interest: a distortion, not a simplification. However, cultural evolution is not niche construction. In niche construction one mechanism has effects over multiple paths. Cultural evolution involves the effects of several mechanisms.

A premise in the recent eliminativist arguments of Paul and Patricia Churchland is the power of connectionist-type models to solve problems facing cognitive science. I argue that their demonstrations of this power do not challenge folk psychology. Implicit in the Churchlands' arguments is the premise that folk psychology will fail to reduce to neuroscience. In the remainder of the paper I argue that just as the failure of classical genetics to reduce to molecular genetics does not suggest the elimination of (...) classical genetics, so the possible future failure of folk psychology to reduce to neuroscience would not of itself argue for the elimination of folk psychology. (shrink)

A premise in the recent eliminativist arguments of Paul and Patricia Churchland is the power of connectionist-type models to solve problems facing cognitive science. I argue that their demonstrations of this power do not challenge folk psychology. Implicit in the Churchlands' arguments is the premise that folk psychology will fail to reduce to neuroscience. In the remainder of the paper I argue that just as the failure of classical genetics to reduce to molecular genetics does not suggest the elimination of (...) classical genetics, so the possible future failure of folk psychology to reduce to neuroscience would not of itself argue for the elimination of folk psychology. (shrink)

Ramsey, Stick and Garon (1991) argue that if the correct theory of mind is some parallel distributed processing theory, then folk psychology must be false. Their idea is that if the nodes and connections that encode one representation are causally active then all representations encoded by the same set of nodes and connections are also causally active. We present a clear, and concrete, counterexample to RSG's argument. In conclusion, we suggest that folk psychology and connectionism are best understood as complementary (...) theories. Each has different limitations, yet each will co-evolve with the other in an overlapping domain of 'normal' psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism by Brenda AbbottRobert J. Karris, OFMBrenda Abbott, Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism. Durham, UK: Franciscan Publishing, 2021. Pp. vii + 388. 16 photos. £15.00. ISBN: 9781915198013.Father Eric Doyle, OFM, a member of the Province of the Immaculate Conception, UK, was born in 1938 and died in (...) 1984. He was highly talented and educated, steeped in the Franciscan tradition, a superb and humorous communicator. He was just right for his time, he was ahead of his time, and he may be just what Franciscans need today in their time as they continue to renew themselves in the spirit of St. Francis and in Franciscan Christology and spirituality.Abbott sets down her goal: "My purpose and goal in publishing this book is that something of the man and his vision will be communicated here, and that a new generation of Franciscan friars and scholars, as well as believers and unbelievers more widely, may be inspired by this vision and become aware of Doyle's enduring and precious legacy" (ii). She accomplishes her goal through an introduction, fifteen chapters which mainly delve into Doyle's Franciscan Christology and spirituality, and a conclusion. Endnotes follow each chapter. The book, which is very well-researched and written, ends with two appendices and a bibliography. Abbot has marvelously achieved her goal.The introduction is followed by: chapter 1, "Early Life: 1938–1970"; chapter 2, "The Friar"; chapter 3, "The Teacher"; chapter 4, "The Shepherd and Evangeliser"; chapter 5, "The Scholar"; chapter 6, "The Mystic"; chapter 7, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 1)"; chapter 8, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 2)"; chapter 9, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 3)"; chapter 10, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 4)"; chapter 11, "The Ecologist: Our Sister Mother Earth"; chapter 12, "The Ecumenist: Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ"; chapter 13, "The Post–Vatican II Theologian"; chapter 14, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 1)"; and chapter 15, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 2)."In the space allotted me, I provide three snapshots of Eric Doyle. First is the assessment of Doyle from an outside source, Bishop Thomas McMahon, who in his eulogy said: "He put profound truths in a very [End Page 249] simple way and conveyed always a sense of the numinous. … [He was] vivid, articulate, deeply learned, intensely human, hugely alive, full of mischief, unsparing of self … a contemporary Francis. His Franciscan spirituality permeated his total thinking" (174). I underscore Bishop Mc-Mahon's emphasis on St. Francis and his spirituality. I see implied here Doyle's teaching about the Absolute Primacy of Christ—that Christ is head of all creation and conqueror of sin and death, and that the reason for Christ's incarnation is not sin but love—demonstrating Doyle's retrieval of the best from the Franciscan tradition.The second snapshot points to two areas where Doyle was ahead of his time. First, he was a TV personality. Abbott dedicates pages 117–23 to Doyle as a wonderful TV presence. From 1971 to 1984 he was on four hundred programs of The Big Question. One reviewer noted: "The length, breadth and width of his discourse … is colossal … This man is an original, a non-pareil; before they made him, they broke the mould" (121). Second, in his book on Francis's Canticle of Brother Sun, first published in 1980, Doyle anticipated many of Pope Francis' teachings in Laudato Si'. As Abbott says: "Foreshadowing much of Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si', Doyle demonstrates how belief in the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of creation can help us create a better world" (270).The third snapshot is an indication of how Doyle's legacy continues in print. Doyle's St Francis and the Song of Brotherhood has been reprinted a number of times, most recently in 1997 by Franciscan Institute Publications as St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood and Sisterhood. It has been translated into five languages: Italian, German, Portuguese, Korean, and Japanese. Under the imprint of Tau Publications is My Heart's Quest: Collected Writings of Eric Doyle, Friar Minor, Theologian, edited by Josef Raischl... (shrink)

Here I consider the two most venerated arguments about the existence of God: the Ontological Argument and the Argument from Evil. The Ontological Argument purports to show that God’s nature guarantees that God exists. The Argument from Evil purports to show that God’s nature, combined with some plausible facts about the way the world is, guarantees (or is very compelling grounds for thinking) that God does not exist. Obviously, both arguments cannot be sound. But I argue here that they are (...) both unsound for the very same reason. (shrink)

This Element introduces the philosophical literature on models, with an emphasis on normative considerations relevant to models for decision-making. Chapter 1 gives an overview of core questions in the philosophy of modeling. Chapter 2 examines the concept of model adequacy for purpose, using three examples of models from the atmospheric sciences to describe how this sort of adequacy is determined in practice. Chapter 3 explores the significance of using models that are not adequate for purpose, including the purpose of informing (...) public decisions. Chapter 4 provides a basic framework for values in modelling, using a case study to highlight the ethical challenges in building models for decision making. It concludes by establishing the need for strategies to manage value judgments in modelling, including the potential for public participation in the process. (shrink)

There are many alleged problems with trusting another person’s moral testimony, perhaps the most prominent of which is that it fails to deliver moral understanding. Without moral understanding, one cannot do the right thing for the right reason, and so acting on trusted moral testimony lacks moral worth. This chapter, however, argues that moral advice differs from moral testimony, differs from it in a way that enables a defender of moral advice to parry this worry about moral worth. The basic (...) idea is that an advisor and an advisee can together constitute a joint agent, and that this joint agent’s action can indeed have moral worth. So while the advisee himself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone he lacks the right reason), and while the advisor herself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone she does not do the right thing), they together do the right for the right reason. (shrink)

We review and present a new meta‐analysis of research suggesting that ethicists in the United States appear to behave no morally better overall than do non‐ethicist professors. Measures include: returning library books, peer evaluation of overall moral behavior, voting participation, courteous and discourteous behavior at conferences, replying to student emails, paying conference registration fees and disciplinary society dues, staying in touch with one's mother, charitable giving, organ and blood donation, vegetarianism, and honesty in responding to survey questions. One multi‐measure study (...) found ethicists tending to embrace more stringent moral views, especially about meat eating and charitable donation. The same multi‐measure study found ethicists and other professors to show similarly small‐to‐medium correlations between their expressed normative attitudes and their self‐reported or directly measured behavior. (shrink)

There has recently been a revival of interest in ‘naturalizing’ ethics. A naturalization seeks to vindicate ethical realism — the idea that ethical judgments can be true reflections of a moral reality — without violating the naturalist constraint that science sets the limits of ontology. The recent revival has been prompted by examples of successful scientific reduction (e.g. temperature, water), and by the emergence of new, nonreductive naturalist strategies (e.g. for biological and mental properties). In this paper, I argue against (...) such naturalist approaches to ethics. My argument builds on the traditional one offered by G.E. Moore, namely that a naturalization would fail to respect an existing difference between the meanings of moral and naturalistic terms. I defend this line of argument against the common claim that it cannot block ‘synthetic’ property identities, ones grounded not in meaning equivalences but in empirical discoveries (as in the cases of temperature and water). I then go on to show that the Moorean argument can make trouble even for recent revisionist and nonreductive naturalist approaches. (shrink)

Introduction -- Sanctioning models : theories and their scope -- Methodology for a virtual world -- A tale of two methods -- When theories shake hands -- Models of climate : values and uncertainties -- Reliability without truth -- Conclusion.

Are philosophical arguments as effective as narratives in influencing charitable giving and attitudes toward it? In four experiments, we exposed online research participants to either philosophical arguments in favor of charitable giving, a narrative about a child whose life was improved by charitable donations, both the narrative and the argument, or a control text (a passage from a middle school physics text or a description of charitable organizations). Participants then expressed their attitudes toward charitable giving and were either asked how (...) much they would hypothetically donate if given $10 (Experiment 1) or told they had a 10% chance of winning $10 and given the opportunity to donate from their potential winnings (Experiments 2–4). Across the four experiments, participants in all of the narrative conditions and in some of the argument conditions tended to express more positive attitudes toward charitable giving and donated about $1 more on average than did participants in the control conditions. These effects appear to have been mediated by the “narrative transportation” scale, which suggests that appeals to donate can be effective if they engage participants’ emotions, imagery, and interest. (shrink)

Polus admires orators for the tyrannical power they have. However, Socrates argues that orators and tyrants lack power worth having: the ability to satisfy one's wishes or wants (boulēseis). He distinguishes wanting from thinking best, and grants that orators and tyrants do what they think best while denying that they do what they want. His account is often thought to involve two conflicting requirements: wants must be attributable to the wanter from their own perspective (to count as their desires), but (...) wants must also be directed at objects that are genuinely good (in order for failure to satisfy them to matter). We offer an account of wanting as reflective, coherent desire, which allows Socrates to satisfy both desiderata. We then explain why he thinks that orators and tyrants want to act justly, though they do greater injustices than anyone else and so frustrate their own wants more than anyone else. (shrink)

This article examines Harold Ramis’s 2005 noir comedy _The Ice Harvest_ as the critically dystopian counter-panel to his beloved 1993 film _Groundhog Day_, a film frequently discussed within the paradigm of utopia. While starkly different in genre, tone, and reception, the two films comprise a dialectical dyad that registers the historical transition from the utopian cultural effervescence of the early 1990s to the tragic foreclosure of imaginative horizons and the dystopian transformation of economic, political, and social landscapes in the new (...) millennium. In _The Ice Harvest_, the author argues, this is achieved through a strategic reactivation of film noir as a variant of the critical dystopia. (shrink)

There is much to admire in this book. It is written in a pleasingly straightforward style, and offers insight on a wide range of important issues.

In what sense, and to what extent, do rules of inference determine the meaning of logical constants? Motivated by the principle of charity, a natural constraint on the interpretation of logical constants is to make the rules of inference come out sound. But, as Carnap observed, although this constraint does rule out some non-standard interpretations, it does not rule them all out. This is known as Carnap’s problem. I suggest that a charitable interpretation of the logical constants should, as far (...) as possible, make the rules of inference both sound and complete, and I show how this idea can be brought to bear on a successful solution to Carnap’s problem in the case of classical propositional logic, as well as classical first-order logic. In fact, the solution generalizes to any logic whose rules of inference are sound and complete with respect to a bivalent semantics that is classical with respect to negation. (shrink)

The Standard View of personal identity says that someone who exists now can exist at another time only if there is continuity of her mental contents or capacities. But no person is psychologically continuous with a fetus, for a fetus, at least early in its career. has no mental features at all. So the Standard View entails that no person was ever a fetus---contrary to the popular assumption that an unthinking fetus is a potential person. It is also mysterious what (...) does ordinarily happen to a human fetus, if it does not come to be a person. Although an extremely complex variant of the Standard View may allow one to persist without psychological continuity before one becomes a person but not afterwards, a far simpler solution is to accept a radically non-psychological account of our identity. (shrink)

During his career, Ronald Dworkin wrote extensively on an impressive range of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy, but, like many of his contemporaries, international law remained a topic of relative neglect. His most sustained work on international law is a posthumously published article, “A New Philosophy for International Law” (2013), which displays some familiar aspects of his views in general jurisprudence, in addition to some novel (though perhaps surprising) arguments as well. This paper argues that the moralized account (...) of international law we might have expected is conspicuously missing from this posthumous article; with Dworkin advancing an argument based on a form of political realism instead. (shrink)

In the philosophy of climate science, debate surrounding the issue of variety of evidence has mostly taken the form of attempting to connect these issues in climate science and climate modeling with philosophical accounts of what has come to be known as “robustness analysis.” I argue that an “explanatory” conception of robustness is the best candidate for understanding variety of evidence in climate science. I apply the analysis to both examples of model agreement, as well at to the convergence of (...) evidence from both model and non-model sources. (shrink)

According to Eric Olson, the Thinking Animal Argument (TAA) is the best reason to accept animalism, the view that we are identical to animals. A novel criticism has been advanced against TAA, suggesting that it implicitly employs a dubious epistemological principle. I will argue that other epistemological principles can do the trick of saving the TAA, principles that appeal to recent issues regarding disagreement with peers and experts. I conclude with some remarks about the consequence of accepting these modified (...) principles, drawing out some general morals in defending animalism. (shrink)

Using an example of a computer simulation of the convective structure of a red giant star, this paper argues that simulation is a rich inferential process, and not simply a “number crunching” technique. The scientific practice of simulation, moreover, poses some interesting and challenging epistemological and methodological issues for the philosophy of science. I will also argue that these challenges would be best addressed by a philosophy of science that places less emphasis on the representational capacity of theories and more (...) emphasis on the role of theory in guiding the construction of models. (shrink)

It is often said that the same particles can simultaneously make up two or more material objects that differ in kind and in their mental, biological and other qualitative properties. Others wonder how objects made of the same parts in the same arrangement and surroundings could differ in these ways. I clarify this worry and show that attempts to dismiss or solve it miss its point. At most one can argue that it is a problem we can live with.

There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Stephen Stich, have taken a stronger view, advocating doing away with semantics (...) entirely. This paper argues that a correct account of computation requires us to attribute content to computational processes in order to explain which functions are being computed. This entails that computational psychology must countenance mental representations. Since anti-semantic positions are incompatible with computational psychology thus construed, they ought to be rejected. Lastly, I argue that in an important sense, computers are not formal symbol manipulators. (shrink)

An enduring question in the philosophy of science is the question of whether a scientific theory deserves more credit for its successful predictions than it does for accommodating data that was already known when the theory was developed. In The Paradox of Predictivism, Eric Barnes argues that the successful prediction of evidence testifies to the general credibility of the predictor in a way that evidence does not when the evidence is used in the process of endorsing the theory. He (...) illustrates his argument with an important episode from nineteenth-century chemistry, Mendeleev's Periodic Law and its successful predictions of the existence of various elements. The consequences of this account of predictivism for the realist/anti-realist debate are considerable, and strengthen the status of the 'no miracle' argument for scientific realism. Barnes's important and original contribution to the debate will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy of science. (shrink)

In computer simulations of physical systems, the construction of models is guided, but not determined, by theory. At the same time simulations models are often constructed precisely because data are sparse. They are meant to replace experiments and observations as sources of data about the world; hence they cannot be evaluated simply by being compared to the world. So what can be the source of credibility for simulation models? I argue that the credibility of a simulation model comes not only (...) from the credentials supplied to it by the governing theory, but also from the antecedently established credentials of the model building techniques employed by the simulationists. In other words, there are certain sorts of model building techniques which are taken, in and of themselves, to be reliable. Some of these model building techniques, moreover, incorporate what are sometimes called “falsifications.” These are contrary-to-fact principles that are included in a simulation model and whose inclusion is taken to increase the reliability of the results. The example of a falsification that I consider, called artificial viscosity, is in widespread use in computational fluid dynamics. Artificial viscosity, I argue, is a principle that is successfully and reliably used across a wide domain of fluid dynamical applications, but it does not offer even an approximately “realistic” or true account of fluids. Artificial viscosity, therefore, is a counter-example to the principle that success implies truth – a principle at the foundation of scientific realism. It is an example of reliability without truth. (shrink)

This paper argues that under some conditions, when one person acts on the direction of another person, the two of them thereby act together, and that this explains why both the director and the directee can be responsible for what is done. In other words, a director and a directee can be a joint agent, one whose members are responsible for what they together do. This is most clearly so when the directive is a command. But it is also sometimes (...) so when the directive is a bit of advice. (shrink)

To study conscious experience we must, to some extent, trust introspective reports; yet introspective reports often do not merit our trust. A century ago, E.B. Titchener advocated extensive introspective training as a means of resolving this difficulty. He describes many of his training techniques in his four-volume laboratory manual of 1901- 1905. This paper explores Titchener's laboratory manual with an eye to general questions about the prospects of introspective training for contemporary consciousness studies, with a focus on the following examples: (...) introspective knowledge of the combination tones that arise when a musical interval is played; the 'flight of colours' in the afterimage of a field of bright, broad- spectrum light; and the possibility of non-obvious visual illusions. Introspective training appears to have some merit, but also to involve significant hazards. (shrink)