We explore two special challenges indigenous peoples pose to the idea of sovereigns as trustees for humanity. The first challenge is rooted in a colonial history during which a trusteeship model of sovereignty served as an enabler of paternalistic colonial policies. The challenge is to show that the trusteeship model is not irreparably colonial in nature. The second challenge, which emerges from the first, is to specify the scope and nature of indigenous peoples’ sovereignty within the trusteeship model. Whereas the (...) interaction between states and foreign nationals is the locus of cosmopolitan law, the relationship between states and indigenous peoples is distinctive. In the ordinary cosmopolitan case, foreign nationals do not purport to possess legal authority. Indigenous peoples often do make such a claim, pitting their claim to authority against the state’s. We discuss how international law has attempted to come to grips with indigenous sovereignty by requiring states to include indigenous peoples in decision-making processes that affect their historical lands and rights. A crucial fault line in the jurisprudence, however, separates a duty to consult indigenous peoples from a duty to acquire their free, prior and informed consent. The latter but not the former recognizes that indigenous peoples possess a veto over state projects on their lands, in effect recognizing in them a limited co-legislative power. We focus on recent jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and consider whether either the duty to consult or FPIC are enough to dispel the shadow of the trusteeship model’s colonial past. We suggest that they are a move in the right direction, and that implicitly they represent international law’s recognition that states are no longer the sole bearers of sovereignty at international law. In limited circumstances, international law recognizes indigenous peoples as sovereign actors. (shrink)

Luck permeates our lives, and this raises a number of pressing questions: What is luck? When we attribute luck to people, circumstances, or events, what are we attributing? Do we have any obligations to mitigate the harms done to people who are less fortunate? And to what extent is deserving praise or blame a ected by good or bad luck? Although acquiring a true belief by an uneducated guess involves a kind of luck that precludes knowledge, does all luck undermine (...) knowledge? And how accurate are our luck attributions anyway? The academic literature has seen growing, interdisciplinary interest in luck, and this volume brings together and explains the most important areas of this research. It consists of 39 newly commissioned chapters, written by an internationally acclaimed team of philosophers and psychologists, for a readership of students and researchers. Its coverage is divided into six sections: (i) The History of Luck, (ii) The Nature of Luck, (iii) Moral Luck, (iv) Epistemic Luck, (v) The Psychology of Luck, and (vi) Future Research. The chapters in these sections cover a wide range of topics, from the problem of moral luck, to anti-luck epistemology, to the relationship between luck attributions and cognitive biases, to meta-questions regarding the nature of luck itself, to a range of other theoretical and empirical questions currently being investigated by ethicists, epistemologists, and psychologists. By bringing this research together, the Handbook serves as both a touchstone for understanding the relevant issues and a first port of call for future philosophical and psychological research on luck. (shrink)

Two intellectual vices seem to always tempt us: arrogance and diffidence. Regarding the former, the world is permeated by dogmatism and table-thumping close-mindedness. From politics, to religion, to simple matters of taste, zealots and ideologues all too often define our disagreements, often making debate and dialogue completely intractable. But to the other extreme, given a world with so much pluralism and heated disagreement, intellectual apathy and a prevailing agnosticism can be simply all too alluring. So the need for intellectual humility, (...) open-mindedness, and a careful, humble commitment to the truth are apparent. In this book, Dr Church and Dr Samuelson explicate a robust and vibrant account of the philosophy and science of this most valuable virtue, and they highlight how it can be best applied and personally developed. (shrink)

We critique two popular philosophical definitions of intellectual humility: the “low concern for status” and the “limitations-owning.” accounts. Based upon our analysis, we offer an alternative working definition of intellectual humility: the virtue of accurately tracking what one could non-culpably take to be the positive epistemic status of one’s own beliefs. We regard this view of intellectual humility both as a virtuous mean between intellectual arrogance and diffidence and as having advantages over other recent conceptions of intellectual humility. After defending (...) this view, we sketch remaining questions and issues that may bear upon the psychological treatment of intellectual humility such as whether evidence will help determine how this construct relates to general social humility on the one hand, and intellectual traits such as open-mindedness, curiosity, and honesty on the other. (shrink)

This paper challenges the linguistic arguments Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson gave in support of their thesis that knowing how is a species of knowing that.

The primary aim of this paper is to highlight, at least in short, how the resources of experimental philosophy could be fruitfully applied to the evidential problem of evil. To do this, we will consider two of the most influential and archetypal formulations of the problem: William L. Rowe’s article, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” (1979). and Paul Draper’s article, “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists” (1989). We will consider the relevance of experimental philosophy (...) to Rowe’s 1979 argument in §1 and to Draper’s 1989 argument in §2. But in addition to exploring how the resources of experimental philosophy might apply to the problem of evil, it is also worth exploring what broader empirical factors might contribute to people having the intuitions that have—from someone’s affective state to someone’s need for closure. In §3, we want to very briefly elucidate a few areas where the psychology of philosophy might be productively explored in future empirical research. (shrink)

This paper will be broken down into four sections. In §1, I try to assuage a worry that intellectual humility is not really an intellectual virtue. In §2, we will consider the two dominant accounts of intellectual humility in the philosophical literature—the low concern for status account the limitations-owing account—and I will argue that both accounts face serious worries. Then in §3, I will unpack my own view, the doxastic account of intellectual humility, as a viable alternative and potentially a (...) better starting place for thinking about this virtue. And I’ll conclude in §4 by trying to defend the doxastic account against some possible objections. (shrink)

While experimental philosophy has fruitfully applied the tools and resources of psychology and cognitive science to debates within epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, relatively little work has been done within philosophy of religion. And this isn’t due to a lack of need! Philosophers of religion frequently rely on empirical claims that can be either verified or disproven, but without exploring whether they are. And philosophers of religion frequently appeal to intuitions which may vary wildly according to education level, theological background, etc., (...) without concern for whether or not the psychological mechanisms that underwrite those intuitions are broadly shared or reliable. In this chapter, I explore some of the fruit and possibilities for the emerging field of experimental philosophy of religion. First, in Section 1, I will elucidate some of the historical grounding for experimental philosophy of religion. Then in Section 2, I briefly consider how the tools and resources of experimental philosophy might be fruitfully applied to a seminal topic within philosophy of religion, namely, the problem of evil. In Section 3, we’ll sketch some broader applications of experimental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will explore the luck at issue in Gettier-styled counterexamples and the subsequent problem it poses to any viable reductive analysis of knowledge. In the 1st section, we will consider the specific species of luck that is at issue in Gettier counterexamples, then, in the next section, I will briefly sketch a diagnosis of the Gettier Problem and try to explain why the relevant species of luck has proven to be extremely difficult to avoid. And finally, I (...) will consider a prominent objection to the proposed diagnosis of the Problem. (shrink)

We study a canonical modal logic introduced by Lemmon, and axiomatised by an infinite sequence of axioms generalising McKinsey’s formula. We prove that the class of all frames for this logic is not closed under elementary equivalence, and so is non-elementary. We also show that any axiomatisation of the logic involves infinitely many non-canonical formulas.

Capability theorists have suggested different, sometimes incompatible, ways in which their approach takes account of the value of freedom, each of which implies a different kind of normative relation between functionings and capabilities. This paper examines three possible accounts of the normative relation between functionings and capabilities, and the implications of each of these accounts in terms of degrees of paternalism. The way in which capability theorists apparently oscillate between these different accounts is shown to rest on an apparent tension (...) between anti-paternalism and anti-fetishism. The paper then advances a fourth account, which incorporates a concern with the content-independent or ‘non-specific’ value of freedom. Only the fourth account would remove all traces of paternalism from the capability approach. Whatever reasons advocates of the capability approach might have had for rejecting this fourth account, those reasons are not internal to the capability approach itself. (shrink)

The task that Hume explicitly sets himself in 3.2 of the Treatise is to identify the motive that renders just actions virtuous and constitutes justice as a virtue. But surprisingly, he never provides a clear account of what this motive is. This is the problem of the missing motive. The goal of this paper is to explain this problem and offer a novel solution. To set up my solution, I analyze a recent proposal from Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and illustrate what it (...) gets right and what it gets wrong. I develop a solution that retains the benefits of his proposal while addressing its defects. The result is a significant advancement in our understanding of Hume’s theory of justice. (shrink)

I advance arguments in favour of PKF as an articulation of a central sense of the predicate ‘true’, and show how it illuminates the relationship between that sense and the ‘external’ notion of truth found in such claims as ‘An utterance of the Liar Sentence does not say anything, and so is not true’.

Science is often thought of as a methodical but dull activity. But the finest science, the breakthroughs most admired and respected by scientists themselves, is characterized by elegance." "What does elegance mean in the context of science? Economy is a considerable part of it; creativity too. Sometimes, a suggested solution is so simple and neat that it elicits an exclamation of wonder from the observer. The greatest science, whether primarily theoretical or experimental, reflects a creative imagination." "In this book, the (...) distinguished physiologist and writer Ian Glynn explores some of the finest examples of elegance in science: the delightful simplicity of the laws discovered by Kepler and Newton in the motion of the planets; Galileo's experiments with an inclined plane; the remarkable work of Thomas Young on light; dazzling insights into the counterintuitive workings of our perception demonstrated by Richard Gregory and Vilayanur Ramachandran; and the several breakthroughs that led to Crick and Watson's unravelling of the structure and function of DNA. The result is a fascinating tour through some of the most important episodes in the history of science."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

The aim of Dimitris Vardoulakis’s paper, ‘Toward a Critique of the Ineffectual: Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle and the Construction of an Action without Ends’, is to provide the foundation for a critique of aimless action by tracing its genesis to Heidegger’s putative misinterpretation of Aristotelian phronēsis (practical wisdom) in the 1920s. Inasmuch as ‘the ineffectual’—the name Vardoulakis gives to action devoid of ends—plays a crucial role in post-Heideggerian continental philosophy, he thereby seeks to diagnose and to provide an aetiology of (...) an illness afflicting contemporary thought. In my response, I will first argue that, while Vardoulakis is right to identify an emphasis on the ineffectual in Heidegger, he is mistaken about its origin. Heidegger does not strip phronēsis of instrumentality, nor does he mistranslate Nichomachean Ethics 1139a31–32. Second, I trace an alternative source for the ineffectual, which is not simply a negative alternative to technological machination but stems from a positive experience of what Meister Eckhart, and Heidegger in his wake, called life without why. Finally, I look at a couple of texts, including one discussed by Vardoulakis, in which even the later Heidegger is not entirely dismissive of calculative instrumentality but instead assigns the latter to a secondary, restricted site of competence. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of corporate identity from a moral perspective. In it we argue that the reification and personification involved in attributing an identity to an organization has moral repercussions. Through a discussion of 'intentionality' we suggest that it is philosophically problematic to treat an abstraction of the corporation as possessing identity or acting as a conscious moral agent. The article moves to consider practical and ethical issues in the areas of organizational commitment, of health and safety, and (...) corporate social responsibility, and finds that the notion of identity can be abused, although it will no doubt continue to be used as it does have some practical utility. In conclusion, we argue that despite being meaningless from a philosophical stance, the concept of corporate identity need not be discarded, however, it is far from benign and intense moral scrutiny is necessary wherever it is applied. (shrink)

Threshold- and signal-detection-based models have dominated theorizing about recognition memory. Building upon these theoretical frameworks, we have argued for a dual-process model in which conscious recollection and familiarity contribute to memory performance. In the current paper we assessed several memory models by examining the effects of levels of processing and the number of presentations on recognition memory receiver operating characteristics . In general, when the ROCs were plotted in probability space they exhibited an inverted U shape; however, when they were (...) plotted inzspace they exhibited a U shape. An examination of the ROCs showed that the dual-process model could account for the observed ROCs, but that models based solely on either threshold or signal-detection processes failed to provide a sufficient account of the data. Furthermore, an examination of subjects' introspective reports using the remember/know procedure showed that subjects were aware of recollection and familiarity and were able to consistently report on their occurrence. The remember/know data were used to accurately predict the shapes of the ROCs, and estimates of recollection and familiarity derived from the ROC data mirrored the subjective reports of these processes. (shrink)

In his book The Things We Mean, Stephen Schiffer advances a subtle defence of what he calls the ‘face-value’ analysis of attributions of belief and reports of speech. Under this analysis, ‘Harold believes that there is life on Venus’ expresses a relation between Harold and a certain abstract object, the proposition that there is life on Venus. The present essay first proposes an improvement to Schiffer’s ‘pleonastic’ theory of propositions. It then challenges the face-value analysis. There will be such things (...) as propositions only if they possess conditions of identity and distinctness. By analyzing Frege’s theory of propositions (Gedanken), I argue that such conditions may be found for the special case of beliefs and sayings advanced as premises and conclusions of deductive arguments. These conditions, however, are not applicable to most ordinary beliefs and sayings. Ordinary attributions and reports, then, do not place thinkers and speakers in relations to propositions. A bonus is exposure of the fallacy in the Putnam-Taschek objection to Frege’s theory of sense and reference. (shrink)

This essay assesses the account of truth presented in Wiggins's 2002 paper ‘An indefinibilist cum normative view of truth and the marks of truth'. I agree with Wiggins that we should seek, not to define truth, but to elucidate it by unfolding its connections with other basic notions. However, I give reasons for preferring an elucidation based on Ramsey's account of truth to Wiggins's Tarski-inspired approach. I also cast doubt on Wiggins's thesis that convergence is a mark of truth, arguing (...) instead that a claim which is up for assessment as true or false must be one to which different speakers/hearers can attach, and know that they are attaching, the same sense. I use this principle to rule out an account of indicative conditionals, and bring some considerations to bear on the question of whether those conditionals have truth values. An appendix revisits a debate about the determinateness of distinctness. (shrink)

Philip Jourdain put this question to Frege in a letter of 28 January 1909. Frege had, indeed, next to nothing to say about ordinals, and in this respect Bob Hale has followed the master. As I hope this chapter will show, though, the topic is worth addressing. The natural abstraction principle for ordinals combines with full, impredicative second-order logic to engender a contradiction, the so-called Burali-Forti Paradox. I shall contend that the best solution involves a retreat to a predicative logic. (...) Such a retreat has implications for other neo-Fregean theories, including the cardinal arithmetic on which Hale has focused. The discussion will touch on a topic which has been at the centre of Hale’s more recent work—namely, the interpretation of plural and higher-order quantifiers. (shrink)

Genes are thought to have evolved from long-lived and multiply-interactive molecules in the early stages of the origins of life. However, at that stage there were no replicators, and the distinction between interactors and replicators did not yet apply. Nevertheless, the process of evolution that proceeded from initial autocatalytic hypercycles to full organisms was a Darwinian process of selection of favourable variants. We distinguish therefore between Neo-Darwinian evolution and the related Weismannian and Central Dogma divisions, on the one hand, and (...) the more generic category of Darwinian evolution on the other. We argue that Hull’s and Dawkins’ replicator/interactor distinction of entities is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for Darwinian evolution to take place. We conceive the origin of genes as a separation between different types of molecules in a thermodynamic state space, and employ a notion of reproducers. (shrink)

In this exploratory paper, I consider how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might contribute to the failure of testimonial exchanges. In §1, I will briefly highlight four broad ways a testimonial exchange might fail. In §2, I will very briefly review the nature of epistemic injustice. In §3, I will explore how both epistemic injustice and intellectual humility can lead to failures in testimonial exchange, and I’ll conclude by suggesting how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might be related.

In this short paper, I highlight two potential hurdles for teams of researchers conducting interdisciplinary research: “the translation problem” and the “academic isolation” problem. Along the way, I’ll note some ways those hurdles were overcome within the context of the “Science of Intellectual Humility” project.

I compare three sorts of case in which philosophers have argued that we cannot assert the Law of Excluded Middle for statements of identity. Adherents of Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis deny that Excluded Middle holds for statements saying that an infinitesimal is identical with zero. Derek Parfit contended that, in certain sci-fi scenarios, the Law does not hold for some statements of personal identity. He also claimed that it fails for the statement ‘England in 1065 was the same nation as England (...) in 1067’. I argue that none of these cases poses a serious threat to Excluded Middle. My analysis of the last example casts doubt on the principle of the Determinacy of Distinctness. While David Wiggins's ‘conceptualist realism’ provides a metaphysics which can dispense with that principle, it leaves no house-room for infinitesimals. (shrink)

Does intellectual humility preclude the possibility of religious dogmatism and firm religious commitments? Does intellectual humility require religious beliefs to be held with diffidence? What is intellectual humility anyway? There are two things I aim to do in this short article. First, I want to briefly sketch an account of intellectual humility. Second, drawing from such an account, I want to explore whether intellectual humility could be compatible with virtuous religious dogmatism.

This paper seeks to understand the treatment effect of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs on opioid prescription rates. Using county-level panel data on all opioid prescriptions in the U.S. between 2006 and 2015, we investigate whether state interventions like PDMPs have heterogeneous treatment effects at the sub-state level, based on regional and temporal variations in policy design, extent of urbanization, race, and income. Our models comprehensively control for a set of county and time fixed effects, countyspecific and time-varying demographic controls, potentially (...) endogenous time-series trends in prescription rates, and other state-level opioid interventions such as Naloxone Access and Good Samaritan laws, Medicaid expansion, and the provision of Methadone Assistance Treatment. We find that PDMPs are only effective in reducing prescription rates if they obligate doctors to check for patients' history prior to filling out a prescription, but the frequency at which a state requires its PDMP to be updated is irrelevant to its effectiveness. Moreover, the significant treatment effects of PDMPs are almost exclusively driven by urban and predominantly white counties, with the relatively more affluent regions showing greater responsiveness than their less affluent counterparts. (shrink)

In this commentary on “Memory and Common Ground Processes in Language Use,” I draw attention to relevant work on mindreading. The concerns of research on common ground and mindreading have significant overlap, but these literatures have worked in relative isolation of each other. I attempt an assimilation, pointing out shared and distinctive concerns and mutually informative results.

While the evidential problem of evil has been enormously influential within the contemporary philosophical literature—William Rowe’s 1979 formulation in “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” being the most seminal—no academic research has explored what cognitive mechanisms might underwrite the appearance of pointlessness in target examples of suffering. In this exploratory paper, we show that the perception of pointlessness in the target examples of suffering that underwrite Rowe’s seminal formulation of the problem of evil is contingent on the (...) absence of broader context. In other words, we show that when such suffering is presented alongside broader contextual information, the appearance of pointlessness, on average, significantly diminishes. In §1 we briefly elucidate Rowe’s formulation of the problem of evil and the thought experiment that motivates a key premise. In §2 and §3 respectively, we briefly explain our hypothesis regarding Rowe’s case and our methods for testing these hypotheses. In §4, we elucidate our results, and in §5 we explore some of the philosophical implications of our findings and gesture towards some areas for future research. Finally, in §6, we briefly connect our research to some of the established philosophical literature on suffering and narrative before concluding. (shrink)

In this re-written classic text, the author provides a critical review of the various different ways in which ethical debates about warfare are already framed, and asks probing questions about how we think about war, and the changes it is undergoing.

There are two issues I want to very briefly raise in response to Robin McKenna’s paper, “Epistemic Contextualism, Epistemic Relativism, and Disagreement.” First, I want to question whether or not the disagreement problem faced by indexical contextualism is truly a problem. Secondly, I want to consider whether or not McKenna’s solution is really in keeping with indexical contextualism.

Bruno Whittle (2019) has recently extended Kripke’s semantical theory of truth to languages containing generalized quantifiers. There are reasons for axiomatizing semantical theories, and for regarding Halbach and Horsten’s PKF as a good axiomatization of Kripke’s. PKF is a theory in Partial Logic. The present paper complements Whittle’s by showing how Partial Logic, and then PKF, may be extended to cover binary quantifiers meaning ‘every’, ‘some’, and ‘most’.

This volume in the Deleuze Connections series debates and extends Deleuze's political thought through engagement with contemporary political events and concepts. Against recent critique of Deleuze as a non-political thinker, this book explores the specific innovations and interventions that Deleuze's profoundly political concepts bring to political thought and practice. The contributors use Deleuze's dynamic theoretical apparatus to engage with contemporary political problems, themes and possibilities, including micropolitics, cynicism, war, democracy, ethnicity, friendship, revolution, power, fascism, militancy, and fabulation.

Osiurak and Reynaud claim that research into the origin of cumulative technological culture has been too focused on social cognition and has consequently neglected the importance of uniquely human reasoning capacities. This commentary raises two interrelated theoretical concerns about O&R's notion of technical-reasoning capacities, and suggests how these concerns might be met.

Attempts to build bridges between Kierkegaard and current educational debates or dilemmas are in danger of appearing facile to friends of Kierkegaard, and opportunistic or irrelevant to each opposing side in educational controversies. In hope of reducing such extravagant risks, this essay explores some aspects of Kierkegaard on communication and on ways of being, i.e. his spheres or stages of existence. Communication through ways of being seems relatively straightforward. Communication across ways of being can seem either absurdly complicated or (if (...) aiming at unravelling such complications) wonderfully illuminating. This Kierkegaard could become a creatively awkward, Socratic partner in educational attempts to critique and deepen current accounts of language and communication, narrative and accountability, reason and justification, personal and social development, emotional intelligence and (of course) moral and religious education (with or without ‘spiritual’ development) as well as political or citizenship education. Wittgenstein found in Kierkegaard one lifelong Socratic conversation partner. If other educators can do this in their own ways, Kierkegaard can still breathe more lively passion into the cold embers of educational discourses. (shrink)