In this volume, Joshua Eckhardt examines the religious texts and books that surrounded the poems, sermons, and inscriptions of the early modern poet and preacher John Donne. Focusing on the material realities legible in manuscripts and Sammelbände, bookshops and private libraries, Eckhardt uncovers the myriad ways in which Donne’s writings were received and presented, first by his contemporaries, and later by subsequent readers of his work. Eckhardt sheds light on the religious writings with which Donne’s work was linked during (...) its circulation, using a bibliographic approach that also informs our understanding of his work’s reception during the early modern period. He analyzes the religious implications of the placement of Donne’s poem “A Litany” in a library full of Roman Catholic and English prayer books, the relationship and physical proximity of Donne’s writings to figures such as Sir Thomas Egerton and Izaak Walton, and the movements in later centuries of Donne’s work from private owners to the major libraries that have made this study possible. Eckhardt’s detailed research reveals how Donne’s writings have circulated throughout history—and how religious readers, communities, and movements affected the distribution and reception of his body of work. Centered on a place in time when distinct methods of reproduction, preservation, and circulation were used to negotiate a complex and sometimes dangerous world of confessional division, Religion Around John Donne makes an original contribution to Donne studies, religious history, book history, and reception studies. (shrink)

John Tomasi's Free Market Fairness treats both traditions with depth, nuance, and unremitting fair-mindedness, and then points us toward a synthesis. Social democrats and libertarians equally need to read this book.

Language is a human universal reflecting our deeply social nature. Among its essential functions, language enables us to quickly and efficiently share information. We tell each other that many things are true—that is, we routinely make assertions. Information shared this way plays a critical role in the decisions and plans we make. In Knowledge and the Norm of Assertion, a distinguished philosopher and cognitive scientist investigates the rules or norms that structure our social practice of assertion. Combining evidence from philosophy, (...) psychology, and biology, John Turri shows that knowledge is the central norm of assertion and explains why knowledge plays this role. -/- Concise, comprehensive, non-technical, and thoroughly accessible, this volume quickly brings readers to the cutting edge of a major research program at the intersection of philosophy and science. It presupposes no philosophical or scientific training. It will be of interest to philosophers and scientists, is suitable for use in graduate and undergraduate courses, and will appeal to general readers interested in human nature, social cognition, and communication. (shrink)

We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency problems, show in what respects AI fares little worse or better and argue that (...) at least some regulatory proposals for explainable AI could end up setting the bar higher than is necessary or indeed helpful. The demands of practical reason require the justification of action to be pitched at the level of practical reason. Decision tools that support or supplant practical reasoning should not be expected to aim higher than this. We cast this desideratum in terms of Daniel Dennett’s theory of the “intentional stance” and argue that since the justification of action for human purposes takes the form of intentional stance explanation, the justification of algorithmic decisions should take the same form. In practice, this means that the sorts of explanations for algorithmic decisions that are analogous to intentional stance explanations should be preferred over ones that aim at the architectural innards of a decision tool. (shrink)

A standard view in contemporary philosophy is that belief is involuntary, either as a matter of conceptual necessity or as a contingent fact of human psychology. We present seven experiments on patterns in ordinary folk-psychological judgments about belief. The results provide strong evidence that voluntary belief is conceptually possible and, granted minimal charitable assumptions about folk-psychological competence, provide some evidence that voluntary belief is psychologically possible. We also consider two hypotheses in an attempt to understand why many philosophers have been (...) tempted to view belief as involuntary: that belief is a prototype concept and that belief is a dual character concept. Altogether, our findings contribute to longstanding philosophical debates about the relationship between the will and the intellect, while also advancing scientific understanding of important social judgments. (shrink)

I accomplish two things in this paper. First I expose some important limitations of the contemporary literature on the norms of assertion and in the process illuminate a host of new directions and forms that an account of assertional norms might take. Second I leverage those insights to suggest a new account of the relationship between knowledge and assertion, which arguably outperforms the standard knowledge account.

The operations of deep networks are widely acknowledged to be inscrutable. The growing field of Explainable AI has emerged in direct response to this problem. However, owing to the nature of the opacity in question, XAI has been forced to prioritise interpretability at the expense of completeness, and even realism, so that its explanations are frequently interpretable without being underpinned by more comprehensive explanations faithful to the way a network computes its predictions. While this has been taken to be a (...) shortcoming of the field of XAI, I argue that it is broadly the right approach to the problem. (shrink)

Five experiments demonstrate the central role of knowledge attributions in social evaluations. In Experiments 1–3, we manipulated whether an agent believes, is certain of, or knows a true proposition and asked people to rate whether the agent should perform a variety of actions. We found that knowledge, more so than belief or certainty, leads people to judge that the agent should act. In Experiments 4–5, we investigated whether attributions of knowledge or certainty can explain an important finding on how people (...) act based on statistical evidence, known as “the Wells effect”. We found that knowledge attributions, but not certainty attributions, mediate this effect on decision making. 2018 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

“Gettier cases” have played a major role in Anglo-American analytic epistemology over the past fifty years. Philosophers have grouped a bewildering array of examples under the heading “Gettier case.” Philosophers claim that these cases are obvious counterexamples to the “traditional” analysis of knowledge as justified true belief, and they treat correctly classifying the cases as a criterion for judging proposed theories of knowledge. Cognitive scientists recently began testing whether philosophers are right about these cases. It turns out that philosophers were (...) partly right and partly wrong. Some “Gettier cases” are obvious examples of ignorance, but others are obvious examples of knowledge. It also turns out that much research in this area of philosophy is marred by experimenter bias, invented historical claims, dysfunctional categorization of examples, and mischaracterization by philosophers of their own intuitive judgments about particular cases. Despite these shortcomings, lessons learned from studying “Gettier cases” are leading to important insights about knowledge and knowledge attributions, which are central components of social cognition. (shrink)

This article sheds new light on the interesting but little-studied figure of Thomas Scott of Canterbury (1566–1635). In presenting Scott's ideas I will modify the interpretation laid out by Peter Clark whose groundbreaking study, ‘Thomas Scott and the Growth of Urban Opposition to the Early Stuart Regime’, is still the only secondary source that pays detailed attention to Scott and his thought, especially his religious opinions. The necessity to revisit Clark's interpretation of Scott's place within the political and doctrinal debates (...) of early Stuart England stems from the conviction that his political work and his ideological stances deserve more subtle attention. Most importantly, they were part of the emerging reaction against the policies of the first two Stuart Kings which can be labelled ‘country patriotism’. Finally, the elucidation of Scott's writings will provide a novel insight into an early configuration of English national identity. ☆ Earlier versions of this article were presented at the seminar ‘British History in the 17th Century’ held at the Institute of Historical Research (London) and at the ‘Modern History Seminar’ held at the History Department of the University of Birmingham. I wish to thank the audiences on both occasions for their questions and comments, especially Justin Champion, Richard Cust, John Miller. I would also like to thank Jonathan Scott, Johann P. Sommerville and Richard Whatmore for reading the text. This article is based on archival research pursued at the Kentish Archive Office, Maidstone (KAO), Canterbury Cathedral Library (CCL), Bodleain Library, Oxford (BLO) and British Library, London (BL). The manuscripts referred to in the text are listed as KAO U951/z/9, U951/z/10, U951/z16, U951/z17 (Knatchbull Papers); CCL Urry Mss 66 (‘Thomas Scott's Papers on the Elections to the Parliament of 1626’, 1a–141a); BLO Ballard Ms 61; BL Harley 7018, Additional MSS 62135, n. 31. The majority of the material consists of Scott's diary and of a series of mostly unfoliated papers in Scott's own hand. Some portions of the diary are in secretarial hand, whilst others are reproduced in Proceedings in Parliament 1628, ed. R.C. Johnson et al., 6 vols. (New Haven and London, 1977–1983), VI, Appendixes and Indexes, 126–37, 218–43 (hereafter PP 1628; where there are passages in both manuscript and printed form I refer to the latter). Amongst the miscellanous Scott manuscripts two are in Bodleian Library, Rawlinson Ms A 346, 224a–34b and 285a–97b. These are transcribed and published in Dorothea Scott, otherwise Gotherson and Hogben, of Egerton House, Kent, 1611–1680, A New and Enlarged Edition by G.D. Scull (Oxford, 1883) (hereafter Dorothea Scott). (shrink)

Philosophers have debated whether it is possible to knowledgeably infer a conclusion from a false premise. For example, if a fan believes that the actress’s dress is blue, but the dress is actually green, can the fan knowledgeably infer “the dress is not red” from “the dress is blue”? One aspect of this debate concerns what the intuitively correct verdict is about specific cases such as this. Here I report a simple behavioral experiment that helps answer this question. The main (...) finding is that people attribute knowledge in cases where a true conclusion is inferred from a false premise. People did this despite judging that the premise was false and unknown. People also viewed the agent as inferring the conclusion from the premise. In closely matched conditions where the conclusion was false, people did not attribute knowledge of the conclusion. These results support the view that the ordinary knowledge concept includes in its extension cases of knowledge inferred from false premises. (shrink)

This chapter enhances and extends a powerful and promising research program, performance-based epistemology, which stands at the crossroads of many important currents that one can identify in contemporary epistemology, including the value problem, epistemic normativity, virtue epistemology, and the nature of knowledge. Performance-based epistemology offers at least three outstanding benefits: it explains the distinctive value that knowledge has, it places epistemic evaluation into a familiar and ubiquitous pattern of evaluation, and it solves the Gettier problem. But extant versions of performance-based (...) epistemology have been the object of serious criticism. This chapter shows how to meet the objections without sacrificing the aforementioned benefits. (shrink)

The field of cognitive modeling has progressed beyond modeling cognition in the context of simple laboratory tasks and begun to attack the problem of modeling it in more complex, realistic environments, such as those studied by researchers in the field of human factors. The problems that the cognitive modeling community is tackling focus on modeling certain problems of communication and control that arise when integrating with the external environment factors such as implicit and explicit knowledge, emotion, cognition, and the cognitive (...) system. These problems must be solved in order to produce integrated cognitive models of moderately complex tasks. Architectures of cognition in these tasks focus on the control of a central system, which includes control of the central processor itself, initiation of functional processes, such as visual search and memory retrieval, and harvesting the results of these functional processes. Because the control of the central system is conceptually different from the internal control required by individual functional processes, a complete architecture of cognition must incorporate two types of theories of control: Type 1 theories of the structure, functionality, and operation of the controller, and type 2 theories of the internal control of functional processes, including how and what they communicate to the controller. This book presents the current state of the art for both types of theories, as well as contrasts among current approaches to human-performance models. It will be an important resource for professional and student researchers in cognitive science, cognitive-engineering, and human-factors.Contributors: Kevin A. Gluck, Jerry T. Ball, Michael A. Krusmark, Richard W. Pew, Chris R. Sims, Vladislav D. Veksler, John R. Anderson, Ron Sun, Nicholas L. Cassimatis, Randy J. Brou, Andrew D. Egerton, Stephanie M. Doane, Christopher W. Myers, Hansjorg Neth, Jeremy M Wolfe, Marc Pomplun, Ronald A. Rensink, Hansjorg Neth, Chris R. Sims, Peter M. Todd, Lael J. Schooler, Wai-Tat Fu, Michael C. Mozer, Sachiko Kinoshita, Michael Shettel, Alex Kirlik, Vladislav D. Veksler, Michael J. Schoelles, Jerome R. Busemeyer, Eric Dimperio, Ryan K. Jessup, Jonathan Gratch, Stacy Marsella, Glenn Gunzelmann, Kevin A. Gluck, Scott Price, Hans P. A. Van Dongen, David F. Dinges, Frank E. Ritter, Andrew L. Reifers, Laura Cousino Klein, Michael J. Schoelles, Eva Hudlicka, Hansjorg Neth, Christopher W. Myers, Dana Ballard, Nathan Sprague, Laurence T. Maloney, Julia Trommershauser, Michael S. Landy, A. Hornof, Michael J. Schoelles, David Kieras, Dario D. Salvucci, Niels Taatgen, Erik M. Altmann, Richard A. Carlson, Andrew Howes, Richard L. Lewis, Alonso Vera, Richard P. Cooper, and Michael D. Byrne. (shrink)

A critical review of “Gettier” cases and theoretical attempts to solve “the” "Gettier" "problem".

This paper advances our understanding of the norms of assertion in two ways. First, I evaluate recent studies claiming to discredit an important earlier finding which supports the hypothesis that assertion has a factive norm. In particular, I evaluate whether it was due to stimuli mentioning that a speaker’s evidence was fallible. Second, I evaluate the hypothesis that assertion has a truth-insensitive standard of justification. In particular, I evaluate the claim that switching an assertion from true to false, while holding (...) all else objectively constant, is irrelevant to attributions of justification. Two pre-registered experiments provide decisive evidence against each claim. In the first experiment, switching from mentioning to not mentioning fallibility made no difference to assertability attributions, thereby disproving the criticism concerning fallibility. By contrast, switching an assertion from true to false decreased the rate of assertability attribution from over 90% to less than 20%, thereby replicating and vindicating the original finding supporting a factive norm. In the second experiment, switching an assertion from true to false decreased the rate of justification attribution from over 80 to 10%, thereby undermining the hypothesis that assertion’s standard of justification is truth-insensitive. The second experiment also demonstrates that perspective-taking influences attributions of justification, and it provides initial evidence that the standard of justification for assertion is stricter than the standard for belief. (shrink)

Appeals to ordinary thought and talk are frequent in philosophy, perhaps nowhere more than in contemporary epistemology. When an epistemological theory implies serious error in “commonsense” or “folk” epistemology, it is counted as a cost of the view. Similarly, when an epistemological theory respects or vindicates deep patterns in commonsense epistemology, it is viewed as a benefit of the view. Philosophers typically rely on introspection and anecdotal social observation to support their characterizations of commonsense epistemology. But recent experimental research shows (...) that philosophers employing these methods often seriously mischaracterize commonsense. Based on these findings, I propose a fundamental change to standard practice in the field. Whether the fundamental goal of epistemology is descriptive or prescriptive, experimentation is an integral part of the project. (shrink)

This paper tests a theory about the relationship between two important topics in moral philosophy and psychology. One topic is the function of normative language, specifically claims that one “ought” to do something. Do these claims function to describe moral responsibilities, encourage specific behavior, or both? The other topic is the relationship between saying that one “ought” to do something and one’s ability to do it. In what respect, if any, does what one “ought” to do exceed what one “can” (...) do? The theory tested here has two parts: (1) “ought” claims function to both describe responsibilities and encourage people to fulfill them (the dual-function hypothesis); (2) the two functions relate differently to ability, because the encouragement function is limited by the person’s ability, but the descriptive function is not (the interaction hypothesis). If this theory is correct, then in one respect “ought implies can” is false because people have responsibilities that exceed their abilities. But in another respect “ought implies can” is legitimate because it is not worthwhile to encourage people to do things that exceed their ability. Results from two behavioral experiments support the theory that “ought” exceeds but implies “can.” Results from a third experiment provide further evidence regarding an “ought” claim’s primary function and how contextual features can affect the interpretation of its functions. (shrink)

This chapter reviews some faults of the theoretical literature and findings from the experimental literature on “Gettier” cases. Some “Gettier” cases are so poorly constructed that they are unsuitable for serious study. Some longstanding assumptions about how people tend to judge “Gettier” cases are false. Some “Gettier” cases are judged similarly to paradigmatic ignorance, whereas others are judged similarly to paradigmatic knowledge, rendering it a theoretically useless category. Experimental procedures can affect how people judge “Gettier” cases. Some important central tendencies (...) in judging “Gettier” cases appear to be robust against demographic variation in biological sex, age, language, and culture, although there could be some interesting differences related to culture and personality traits. Some remaining questions regarding Gettier’s cases, “Gettier” cases, and “the Gettier problem” concern the psychology and sociology of contemporary anglophone theoretical epistemology. Some remaining questions regarding the empirical study of knowledge judgments concern mechanisms underlying observed behavioral patterns. (shrink)

I introduce an account of when a rule normatively sustains a practice. My basic proposal is that a rule normatively sustains a practice when the value achieved by following the rule explains why agents continue following that rule, thus establishing and sustaining a pattern of activity. I apply this model to practices of belief management and identifies a substantive normative connection between knowledge and belief. More specifically, I proposes one special way that knowledge might set the normative standard for belief: (...) knowing is essentially the unique way of normatively sustaining cognition and, thereby, inquiry. In this respect, my proposal can be seen as one way of elaborating a “knowledge-first” normative theory. (shrink)

A principal conclusion supported by convergent evidence from cognitive science, life science, and philosophy is that knowledge is a central norm of assertion—that is, according to the rules of the practice, assertions should express knowledge. That view has recently been challenged with new experiments. This paper identifies a critical confound in the experiments. In the process, a new study is reported that provides additional support for the view that knowledge is a central norm of assertion.

I review recent empirical findings on knowledge attributions in lottery cases and report a new experiment that advances our understanding of the topic. The main novel finding is that people deny knowledge in lottery cases because of an underlying qualitative difference in how they process probabilistic information. “Outside” information is generic and pertains to a base rate within a population. “Inside” information is specific and pertains to a particular item’s propensity. When an agent receives information that 99% of all lottery (...) tickets lose (outside information), people judge that she does not know that her ticket will lose. By contrast, when an agent receives information that her specific ticket is 99% likely to lose (inside information), people judge that she knows that her ticket will lose. Despite this difference in knowledge judgments, people rate the likelihood of her ticket losing the exact same in both cases (i.e. 99%). The results shed light on other factors affecting knowledge judgments in lottery cases, including formulaic expression and participants’ own estimation of whether it is true that the ticket will lose. The results also undermine previous hypotheses offered for knowledge denial in lottery cases, including the hypotheses that people deny knowledge because they either deny justification or acknowledge a chance for error. (shrink)

Evidence from life science, cognitive science, and philosophy supports the hypothesis that knowledge is a central norm of the human practice of assertion. However, to date, the experimental evidence supporting this hypothesis is limited to American anglophones. If the hypothesis is correct, then such findings will not be limited to one language or culture. Instead, we should find a strong connection between knowledge and assertability across human languages and cultures. To begin testing this prediction, we conducted three experiments on Koreans (...) in Korean. In each case, the findings replicated prior results observed in Americans and were corroborated by key findings from new replication studies on Americans using materials back-translated from Korean. These findings support the theory that there is a core, cross-culturally robust human practice of assertion and that, according to the rules of this practice, assertions should express knowledge. (shrink)

Features Covers the philosophical and historical development of the concept of "species" Documents that variation was recognized by pre-Darwinian scholars Includes a section on the debates since the time of the New Synthesis Better suited to non-philosophers Summary Over time the complex idea of "species" has evolved, yet its meaning is far from resolved. This comprehensive work is a fresh look at an idea central to the field of biology by tracing its history from antiquity to today. Species is a (...) benchmark exploration and clarification of a concept fundamental to the past, present, and future of the natural sciences. In this edition, a section is added on the debate over species since the time of the New Synthesis, and brings the book up to date. A section on recent philosophical debates over species has also been added. This edition is better suited non-specialists in philosophy, so that it will be of greater use for scientists wishing to understand how the notion came to be that living organisms form species. (shrink)

This paper addresses a fundamental question in folk metaphysics: how do we ordinarily view human agency? According to the transcendence account, we view human agency as standing outside of the causal order and imbued with exceptional powers. According to a naturalistic account, we view human agency as subject to the same physical laws as other objects and completely open to scientific investigation. According to exceptionalist naturalism, the truth lies somewhere in between: we view human agency as fitting broadly within the (...) causal order while still being exceptional in important respects. In this paper, I report seven experiments designed to decide between these three competing theories. Across a variety of contexts and types of action, participants agreed that human agents can resist outcomes described as inevitable, guaranteed, and causally determined. Participants viewed non-human animal agents similarly, whereas they viewed computers, robots, and simple inanimate objects differently. At the same time, participants judged that human actions are caused by many things, including psychological, neurological, and social events. Overall, in folk metaphysics, human and non-human animals are viewed as exceptional parts of the natural world. (shrink)

If someone unintentionally breaks the rules, do they break the rules? In the abstract, the answer is obviously “yes.” But, surprisingly, when considering specific examples of unintentional, blameless rule-breaking, approximately half of people judge that no rule was broken. This effect, known as excuse validation, has previously been observed in American adults. Outstanding questions concern what causes excuse validation, and whether it is peculiar to American moral psychology or cross-culturally robust. The present paper studies the phenomenon cross-culturally, focusing on Korean (...) and American adults, and proposes a new explanation of why people engage in excuse validation, in terms of competing forces in human norm-psychology. The principal findings are that Americans and Koreans engaged in excuse validation at similar levels, and older adults were more likely to engage in excuse validation. (shrink)

Proper assertion requires belief. In support of this thesis, I provide an explanatory argument from linguistic patterns surrounding assertion and show how to handle cases of "selfless" assertion.

Electronic informed consent represents an opportunity to redesign the way that participants understand and elect to enroll in clinical research studies. However, electronic consent faces certain barriers common to all informed consent processes and other barriers specific to the technical environment. At Sage Bionetworks, we designed an electronic consent process as a software product and released it as an open source tool. We believe that using contemporary design processes to intentionally create cognitive friction, where potential study participants are confronted with (...) interfaces that require them to slow down and contemplate study concepts, offers a significant opportunity for ethical design as research increasingly uses smartphones and digital methodologies. (shrink)

This paper connects recent findings from experimental epistemology to several major themes in classical Indian epistemology. First, current evidence supports a specific account of the ordinary knowledge concept in contemporary anglophone American culture. According to this account, known as abilism, knowledge is a true representation produced by cognitive ability. I present evidence that abilism closely approximates Nyāya epistemology’s theory of knowledge, especially that found in the Nyāya-sūtra. Second, Americans are more willing to attribute knowledge of positive facts than of negative (...) facts, especially when such facts are inferred and even when the positive and negative “facts” are logically equivalent. Similar suspicions about knowledge of negative facts seemingly occur in classical Indian epistemology, suggesting that the asymmetry might not be an American quirk but instead reflect a cross-culturally robust tendency in knowledge attributions. Each of these themes—abilism and the positive/negative asymmetry—presents an exciting opportunity for further research in experimental cross-cultural epistemology. (shrink)

Compatibilist libertarianism claims that alternate possibilities for action at the agential level are consistent with determinism at the physical level. Unlike traditional compatibilism about alternate possibilities, involving conditional or dispositional accounts of the ability to act, compatibilist libertarianism offers us unqualified modalities at the agential level, consistent with physical determinism, a potentially big advance. However, I argue that the account runs up against two problems. Firstly, the way in which the agential modalities are generated talks past the worries of the (...) incompatibilist in the traditional free will problem. As such, it fails to dispel the worries that determinism generates for the incompatibilist. Secondly, in spite of the ingenious use of the supervenience thesis and multiple realizability, the position still allows us to generate the old worry that determinism at the physical level would mean no alternate possibilities at the level of agency. In particular, I develop a new example, the ‘atomic slit case’ that demonstrates how physical level information is salient to what is possible at the agential level, motivating incompatibilism. (shrink)

Virtue epistemologists define knowledge as true belief produced by intellectual virtue. In this paper, I review how this definition fails in three important ways. First, it fails as an account of the ordinary knowledge concept, because neither belief nor reliability is essential to knowledge ordinarily understood. Second, it fails as an account of the knowledge relation itself, insofar as that relation is operationalized in the scientific study of cognition. Third, it serves no prescriptive purpose identified up till now. An alternative (...) theory, abilism, provides a superior account of knowledge as it is ordinarily and scientifically understood. According to abilism, knowledge is an accurate representation produced by cognitive ability. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic takes logical theories to be continuous with scientific theories. Scientific theories are subject to criteria of theoretical equivalence. This article compares two types of theoretical equivalence – one syntactic and one semantic – in the context of logical anti-exceptionalism, and argues that the syntactic approach leads to undesirable consequences. The anti-exceptionalist should therefore take a semantic approach when evaluating whether logical theories, understood as scientific theories, are equivalent. This article argues for a particular semantic approach, in terms (...) of categorical equivalence, to determine whether logical theories are equivalent. (shrink)

Epistemic invariantism is the view that the truth conditions of knowledge ascriptions don’t vary across contexts. Epistemic purism is the view that purely practical factors can’t directly affect the strength of your epistemic position. The combination of purism and invariantism, pure invariantism, is the received view in contemporary epistemology. It has lately been criticized by contextualists, who deny invariantism, and impurists, who deny purism. A central charge against pure invariantism is that it poorly accommodates linguistic intuitions about certain cases. In (...) this paper I develop a new response to this charge. I propose that pure invariantists can explain the relevant linguistic intuitions on the grounds that they track the propriety of indirect speech acts, in particular indirect requests and denials. [Note: this paper was written in 2010-11.]. (shrink)

This is a study of the rise of Hegelian thought throughout the intellectual world in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century. The book has three interrelated purposes. First, it constitutes the first synthetic description and comprehensive reconstruction of the historical genesis and humanist transformation of Hegelian ideology. Secondly, the study addresses the problem of recurrent patterns of hope and disillusionment in the successive phases of dialectical thought. Finally, the book is concerned with ideological responses to the experience (...) of communal and religious disintegration. (shrink)

Many experienced runners consider the use of wearable devices an important element of the training process. A key techno-utopic promise of wearables lies in the use of proprietary algorithms to identify training load errors in real-time and alert users to risks of running-related injuries. Such real-time ‘knowing’ is claimed to obviate the need for athletes’ subjective judgements by telling runners how they have deviated from a desired or optimal training load or intensity. This realist-contoured perspective is, however, at odds with (...) sociological research indicating that users of wearables engage in active ‘data sense-making’ that is highly contextualised. To investigate how athletes use (or not) algorithmic analysis to understand, make sense of, and improve their performance in real-time, we undertook qualitative interviews with distance runners to explore lived experiences of running with wearables. The runners described how they actively interpreted data from wearables, drawing on their own experience, ‘somatic knowledge’, and embodied ways of knowing. This allowed them to assess the relevance and usefulness of data in relation to their own goals, intentions, and feelings. Our findings challenge the techno-utopic promises of real-time and predictive analytics. (shrink)

John Tomarchio - Aquinas's Concept of Infinity - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 163-187 Aquinas's Concept of Infinity John Tomarchio MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN of late about Aquinas's concept of divine infinity, but the attention given to his other metaphysical uses of the term 'infinite' has been peripheral -- sometimes to ill effect in the interpretation of his concept of divine infinity. The intent of this article is to offer (...) an explication of Aquinas's analogical concept of infinity. What Aquinas means when he calls beings or their principles infinite is sufficiently complex that it needs to be analyzed in its own right before his arguments for things' actually being infinite can be evaluated. There is no one place in his writings where Aquinas gives a full treatment of the various metaphysical senses of infinity, and so his view has to be reconstructed from the analysis of sundry texts in juxtaposition. As my intent is to reconstruct his overall theory, I will take up the relevant texts in a logical rather than historical order. I will first address the kind of relative infinity Aquinas predicates of certain principles of things, namely, the matter, form, and existence of finite beings, and then the kind of actual infinity he predicates of certain things, namely angelic substances and God. In the course of doing so, I will identify four global distinctions that run through all these.. (shrink)

I defend the unpopular view that inference can create justification. I call this view inferential creationism. Inferential creationism has been favored by infinitists, who think that it supports infinitism. But it doesn’t. Finitists can and should accept creationism.

I review recent work from armchair and cross-cultural epistemology on whether humans possess a knowledge concept as part of a universal “folk epistemology.” The work from armchair epistemology fails because it mischaracterizes ordinary knowledge judgments. The work from cross-cultural epistemology provides some defeasible evidence for a universal folk epistemology. I argue that recent findings from comparative psychology establish that humans possess a species-typical knowledge concept. More specifically, recent work shows that knowledge attributions are a central part of primate social cognition, (...) used to predict others’ behavior and guide decision-making. The core primate knowledge concept is that of truth detection (across different sensory modalities) and retention (through memory) and may also include rudimentary forms of indirect truth discovery through inference. In virtue of their evolutionary heritage, humans inherited the primate social-cognitive system and thus share this core knowledge concept. (shrink)

This is a reply to Rebecca Taylor's 2017 JOPE article ‘Indoctrination and Social Context: A System-based Approach to Identifying the Threat of Indoctrination and the Responsibilities of Educators’. It agrees with her in going beyond the indoctrinatory role of the individual teacher to include that of whole educational systems, but differs in emphasizing indoctrinatory intention rather than outcome; and in allowing the possibility of indoctrination without individual teachers being indoctrinators at all.

Linnebo and Pettigrew have recently developed a version of non-eliminative mathematical structuralism based on Fregean abstraction principles. They recognize that this version of structuralism is vulnerable to the well-known problem of non-rigid structures. This paper offers a solution to the problem for this version of structuralism. The solution involves expanding the languages used to describe mathematical structures. We then argue that this solution is philosophically acceptable to those who endorse mathematical structuralism based on Fregean abstraction principles.

The leading hypothesis concerning the “reuse” or “recycling” of neural circuits builds on the assumption that evolution might prefer the redeployment of established circuits over the development of new ones. What conception of cognitive architecture can survive the evidence for this hypothesis? In particular, what sorts of “modules” are compatible with this evidence? I argue that the only likely candidates will, in effect, be the columns which Vernon Mountcastle originally hypothesized some 60 years ago, and which form part of the (...) well-known columnar hypothesis in neuroscience—systems that cannot handle gross cognitive functions as distinct from strictly exiguous subfunctions. This is in stark contrast to the modules postulated by much of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology. And yet the fate of this revised notion is unclear. The main issue confronting it is the effect of the neural network context on local function. At some point the effects of context are so strong that the degree of specialization required for modularity is not able to be met. Still, despite indications from neuroimaging that peripheral and central systems deploy shared circuitry, some skills clearly do seem to display modularization and autonomy. This article: provides an in-depth analytical and historical review of the fortunes of modular thinking in cognitive science; offers a systematic calibration of brain regions in terms of degrees of functional specificity and robustness; and suggests another way of accounting for the partially encapsulated character of expertise and other highly practiced skills without having to resort to domain-specific modules. (shrink)

There have been growing calls within Australia and beyond to defer medical interventions for children born with variations in their sex characteristics. These calls are increasingly grounded in the claim that such interventions when performed on infants and young children are a violation of their human rights. This paper examines the basis for this claim. It also examines the differences between the principles-based approach to medical ethics which has tended to dominant decisions regarding the treatment of children born with variations (...) in their sex characteristics, relative to the adoption of a rights-based approach. It identifies the points of complementarity between these two discourses but suggests that a rights-based approach offers some unique and differing insights into several issues concerning children born with variations in their sex characteristics. (shrink)

The past two decades have witnessed a revival of interest in multiple realization and multiply realized kinds. Bechtel and Mundale’s (1999) illuminating discussion of the subject must no doubt be credited with having generated much of this renewed interest. Among other virtues, their paper expresses what seems to be an important insight about multiple realization: that unless we keep a consistent grain across realized and realizing kinds, claims alleging the multiple realization of psychological kinds are vulnerable to refutation. In this (...) paper I argue that, intuitions notwithstanding, the terms of their recommendation make it impossible to follow, while also misleadingly insinuating that its application virtually guarantees mind-brain identity. Instead of a matching of grains, what multiple realization really requires is a principled method for adjudicating upon differences between tokens. Shapiro’s (2000) work on multiple realization can be understood as an attempt to adumbrate just such a method. While his “causal relevance” criterion can easily be mistaken for Bechtel and Mundale’s grain requirement, my analysis reveals exactly where and why these two tests diverge. (shrink)

The topic of population is treated only lightly in the major modern biographies of John Maynard Keynes, yet Keynes himself had strong - if varying - views on the subject. For many years he maintained a neo-Malthusian view of population, based on a postulated link between population growth and deteriorating terms of trade. This led him to take up a militant stance towards 'overpopulated' countries, notably India, China, and Egypt. Keynes on Population publishes two of John Maynard Keynes's (...) manuscripts not published in the Collected Writings: his Cambridge lectures on population and 1914 Oxford lecture on 'Population'. It provides a detailed commentary on the text of 'Population' and discusses the extent of Keynes's engagement with the Social Darwinist doctrine of the 'rapid multiplication of the unfit' and with eugenics. It then traces the subsequent vicissitudes of his views on population and his interventions in the contemporary politics of population. These include his part in the 1920s campaign for birth control, the reversal of his neo-Malthusianism, and his eventual support for family allowances. (shrink)