This open access book investigates the role played by identity of proofs in proof-theoretic semantics. It develops a conception of proof-theoretic semantics as primarily concerned with the relationship between proofs (understood as abstract entities) and derivations (the linguistic representations of proofs). It demonstrates that identity of proof is a key both to clarify some —still not wholly understood— notions at the core of proof-theoretic semantics, such as harmony; and to broaden the range of the phenomena which can be analyzed using (...) the tools of this semantic paradigm, so as to include for instance paradoxes. The volume covers topics such as the philosophical significance of different criteria of identity of proofs, and adequacy conditions for an intensional account of the notion of harmony. The author also examines the Prawitz-Tennant analysis of paradoxes by investigating on the one hand the prospects of turning it into a theory of meaning for paradoxical languages, and on the other hand two distinct kinds of phenomena, first observed by Crabbe and Ekman, showing that the Tennant-Prawitz criterion for paradoxicality overgenerates. This volume is of interest to scholars in formal and philosophical logic. (shrink)

Åsa Burman has recently introduced the important notion of telic power and differentiated it from deontic power in an attempt to build a bridge between ideal and non-ideal social ontology. We find Burman’s project promising but we argue that more is to be done to make it entirely successful. First, there is a palpable tension between Burman’s claim that telic power can be ontologically independent of deontic power and her examples, which suggests that these forms of power share the same (...) basis. Second, it is not completely clear how telic power helps non-ideal social ontologists explain oppression, since Burman thinks that both forms of power are transparent to social agents. We offer solutions to both problems. First, we question the thesis that telic power can exist without deontic power. Burman contends that this is possible because some social roles involving telic power can exist independently of institutions, which are––in her opinion––the source of deontic power. Against Burman, we suggest that all social roles involve deontic power, whether or not they are institutional. Second, we argue that while the exercise of deontic power requires a mutual recognition of the social roles of the interacting agents and, therefore, an acceptance of the associated norms, the exercise of telic power does not require acceptance of the relevant norms. This is why invoking telic power is useful in explaining how oppression and injustice can arise. Lastly, we suggest that the relation between teleological normativity and telic power has not been fully clarified by Burman and requires a deeper analysis. (shrink)

Affective experiences such as pains, pleasures, and emotions have affective phenomenology: they feel pleasant. This type of phenomenology has a loopy regulatory profile: it often motivates us to act a certain way, and these actions typically end up regulating our affective experiences back. For example, the pleasure you get by tasting your morning coffee motivates you to drink more of it, and this in turn results in you obtaining another pleasant gustatory experience. In this article, we argue that reflexive imperativism (...) is the only intentionalist account of affective phenomenology—probably, the only account at all—that is able to make sense of its loopy regulatory profile. (shrink)

According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, when you have an experience with content p, you often have prima facie justification for believing p that doesn’t rest on your independent justification for believing any proposition. Although dogmatism has an intuitive appeal and seems to have an antisceptical bite, it has been targeted by various objections. This paper principally aims to answer the objections by Roger White according to which dogmatism is inconsistent with the Bayesian account of how evidence affects our rational credences. (...) If this were true, the rational acceptability of dogmatism would be seriously questionable. I respond that these objections don’t get off the ground because they assume that our experiences and our introspective beliefs that we have experiences have the same evidential force, whereas the dogmatist is uncommitted to this assumption. I also consider the question whether dogmatism has an antisceptical bite. I suggest that the answer turns on whether or not the Bayesian can determine the priors of hypotheses and conjectures on the grounds of their extra-empirical virtues. If the Bayesian can do so, the thesis that dogmatism has an antisceptical bite is probably false. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss whether there are genuinely *diachronic* constraints of practical rationality, that is, pressures on combinations of practical attitudes over time, which are not reducible to mere synchronic rational pressures. Michael Bratman has recently argued that there is at least one such diachronic rational constraint that governs the stability of intentions over time. *Pace* Bratman, I argue that there are no genuinely diachronic constraints on intentions that meet the stringent desiderata set by him. But I show that (...) there are at least two synchronic rational constraints with distinctive and important, although only indirect, diachronic dimensions. Neither of them, however, supports the practical conservatism in the face of normative underdetermination that, according to Bratman, is part and parcel of the diachronic rationality of intention stability. (shrink)

Deflationists about truth hold that the function of the truth predicate is to enable us to make certain assertions we could not otherwise make. Pragmatists claim that the utility of negation lies in its role in registering incompatibility. The pragmatist insight about negation has been successfully incorporated into bilateral theories of content, which take the meaning of negation to be inferentially explained in terms of the speech act of rejection. We implement the deflationist insight in a bilateral theory by taking (...) the meaning of the truth predicate to be explained by its inferential relation to assertion. We combine this account of the meaning of the truth predicate with a new diagnosis of the Liar Paradox: its derivation requires the truth rules to preserve evidence, but these rules only preserve commitment. The result is a novel inferential deflationist theory of truth, which solves the Liar Paradox in a principled manner. We end by showing that our theory and simple extensions thereof have the resources to axiomatize the internal logic of several supervaluational hierarchies, including Cantini’s. This solves open problems of Halbach (2011) and Horsten (2011). (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss the various ways in which intentions can be said to be conditional, with particular attention to the internal conditions on the intentions’ content. I will first consider what it takes to carry out a conditional intention. I will then discuss how the distinctive norms of intention apply to conditional intentions and whether conditional intentions are a weaker sort of commitments than the unconditional ones. This discussion will lead to the idea of what I call (...) the ‘deep structure’ of intentions. Roughly, this is the idea that the conditional nature of our intentions is only partially made explicit in the expressions we use to communicate our intentions and in the explicit form of our thinking about and reasoning with them. Most conditions that qualify our intentions are part of a deep functional structure that can be evinced by observing the actual psychological functioning of intentions and by considering the rational requirements that they engage. I will argue that the deep structure of intentions is characteristically conditional. Genuinely unconditional intentions are only limiting instances of conditional intentions and their contribution to agency can only be understood in light of this fact. I will conclude by showing that the characteristic conditional structure of intentions is intimately related to distinctive features of human agency, especially to its unity over time. (shrink)

It is often argued that future-directed decisions are effective at shaping our future conduct because they give rise, at the time of action, to a decisive reason to act as originally decided. In this paper, I argue that standard accounts of decision-based reasons are unsatisfactory. For they focus either on tie-breaking scenarios or cases of self-directed distal manipulation. I argue that future-directed decisions are better understood as tools for the non-manipulative, intrapersonal division of deliberative labor over time. A future-directed decision (...) to ϕ gives rise to a defeasible exclusionary reason to ϕ. This reason is grounded on the default authority that is normally granted to one’s prior self as an “expert” deliberator. I argue that this kind of exclusionary reason is the only one that can account for the effectiveness of future-directed decisions at shaping our diachronic agency without violating our autonomy over time. (shrink)

In the present paper we discuss a recent suggestion of Schroeder-Heister concerning the possibility of defining an intensional notion of harmony using isomorphism in second-order propositional logic. The latter is not an absolute notion, but its definition is relative to the choice of criteria for identity of proofs. In the paper, it is argued that in order to attain a satisfactory account of harmony, one has to consider a notion of identity stronger than the usual one (based on β- and (...) η-conversions) that the authors have investigated in recent work. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright’s analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that Wright’s analysis is partially incoherent with our analysis of (...) warrant transmission and prima facie defective. We conclude exploring three alternative lines of reply: developing a more satisfactory account of transmission failure, which we outline; dismissing the Bayesian counterexample by rejecting some of its assumptions; reinterpreting Wright’s analysis to make it immune to the counterexample. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the popular philosophical thesis---aka the ‘own action condition’---that an agent can only intend one’s own actions. I argue that the own action condition does not hold for any executive attitude, intentions included. The proper object of intentions is propositional rather than agential (‘I intend that so-and-so be the case’ rather than ‘I intend to do such-and-such’). I show that, although there are some essential de se components in intending, they do not restrict the content (...) of intentions to one’s own actions. I then discuss the special way in which one’s own actions can figure in the content of one’s intentions, which shows that the distinction between intending and acting is less stark than it appears at first. This is a conclusion that many defenders of the own action condition might find appealing but which, I argue, is better supported by rejecting the own action condition. (shrink)

According to the iterative conception of set, sets can be arranged in a cumulative hierarchy divided into levels. But why should we think this to be the case? The standard answer in the philosophical literature is that sets are somehow constituted by their members. In the first part of the paper, I present a number of problems for this answer, paying special attention to the view that sets are metaphysically dependent upon their members. In the second part of the paper, (...) I outline a different approach, which circumvents these problems by dispensing with the priority or dependence relation altogether. Along the way, I show how this approach enables the mathematical structuralist to defuse an objection recently raised against her view. (shrink)

Crispin Wright has given an explanation of how a first time warrant can fall short of transmitting across a known entailment. Formal epistemologists have struggled to turn Wright’s informal explanation into cogent Bayesian reasoning. In this paper, I analyse two Bayesian models of Wright’s account respectively proposed by Samir Okasha and Jake Chandler. I argue that both formalizations are unsatisfactory for different reasons, and I lay down a third Bayesian model that appears to me to capture the valid kernel of (...) Wright’s explanation. After this, I consider a recent development in Wright’s account of transmission failure. Wright suggests that his condition sufficient for transmission failure of first time warrant also suffices for transmission failure of supplementary warrant. I propose an interpretation of Wright’s suggestion that shield it from objections. I then lay down a fourth Bayesian framework that provides a simplified model of the unified explanation of transmission failure envisaged by Wright. (shrink)

There are two standard conceptions of the functioning of and rationale for the diachronic will, i.e., for an agent's capacity to settle on her future conduct in advance. According to the pragmatic-instrumentalist view, the diachronic will benefits us by increasing the long-term satisfaction of our rational preferences. According to the cognitive view, it benefits us by satisfying our standing desire for self-knowledge and self-understanding. Contrary to these views, I argue for a constitutive view of the diachronic will: the rationale for (...) it is that it makes possible to engage in activities with a radically novel temporal structure, activities that are not merely continuous over time, but temporally integrated and unified. These activities are essential to our form of life and to our existence as temporally unified agents. The instrumental and cognitive benefits, if any, are merely secondary to the ontological ones. (shrink)

Arbitrariness is a distinctive feature of human language, and a growing body of comparative work is investigating its presence in animal communication. But what is arbitrariness, exactly? We propose to distinguish four notions of semiotic arbitrariness: a notion of opaque association between sign forms and semiotic functions, one of sign-function mapping optionality, one of acquisition-dependent sign-function coupling, and one of lack of motivatedness. We characterize these notions, illustrate the benefits of keeping them apart, and describe two reactions to our proposal: (...) abandoning arbitrariness-talk in favor of the newly introduced conceptual vocabulary, or feeding the distinctions back into the parent concept. (shrink)

A citizen of Early Renaissance Florence that stepped out into the streets and entered the spaces of his civic world joined a concert of creative formal behaviors in which he was at once an actor and a spectator. His problem here was to interpret the complex web of overlapping, conflicting and simultaneous meanings he would have read in the actions and images by which the community directed him and represented itself, and find his own place and set his standing. On (...) most occasions he would probably have elected for a state of suspension, a floating of multiple possibilities he was loath to precipitate in too stable a form: in ambiguity the citizen of Florence developed a richness of signification, and found a refuge. (shrink)

This book examines phenomenal conservatism, one of the most influential and promising internalist conceptions of non-inferential justification debated in current epistemology and philosophy of mind. It also explores the significance of the findings of this examination for the general debate on epistemic justification. According to phenomenal conservatism, non-inferential justification rests on seemings or appearances, conceived of as experiences provided with propositional content. Phenomenal conservatism states that if it appears to S that P, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has (...) some justification for believing that P. This view provides the basis for foundationalism and many ordinary epistemic practices. This book sheds new light on phenomenal conservatism by assessing objections to it and examining epistemological merits and advantages attributed to it. In a nutshell, phenomenal conservatism is actually compatible with Bayesian reasoning, and it is unaffected by bootstrapping problems and challenges that appeal to the cognitive penetrability of perception. Nevertheless, appearance-based justification proves unstable or elusive and its antisceptical bite is more limited than expected. These difficulties could be surmounted if phenomenal conservatism were integrated with a theory of inferential justification. The book appeals to scholars and postgraduates in the field of epistemology and philosophy of mind who are interested in the rational roles of appearances. (shrink)

The Friedman–Stanley jump, extensively studied by descriptive set theorists, is a fundamental tool for gauging the complexity of Borel isomorphism relations. This paper focuses on a natural computable analog of this jump operator for equivalence relations on $\omega $, written ${\dotplus }$, recently introduced by Clemens, Coskey, and Krakoff. We offer a thorough analysis of the computable Friedman–Stanley jump and its connections with the hierarchy of countable equivalence relations under the computable reducibility $\leq _c$. In particular, we show that this (...) jump gives benchmark equivalence relations going up the hyperarithmetic hierarchy and we unveil the complicated highness hierarchy that arises from ${\dotplus }$. (shrink)

A citizen of Early Renaissance Florence that stepped out into the streets and entered the spaces of his civic world joined a concert of creative formal behaviors in which he was at once an actor and a spectator. His problem here was to interpret the complex web of overlapping, conflicting and simultaneous meanings he would have read in the actions and images by which the community directed him and represented itself, and find his own place and set his standing. On (...) most occasions he would probably have elected for a state of suspension, a floating of multiple possibilities he was loath to precipitate in too stable a form: in ambiguity the citizen of Florence developed a richness of signification, and found a refuge. (shrink)

In this paper, three theories of progress and the aim of science are discussed: the theory of progress as increasing explanatory power, advocated by Popper in The logic of scientific discovery ; the theory of progress as approximation to the truth, introduced by Popper in Conjectures and refutations ; the theory of progress as a steady increase of competing alternatives, which Feyerabend put forward in the essay “Reply to criticism. Comments on Smart, Sellars and Putnam” and defended as late as (...) the last edition of Against method. It is argued that, contrary to what Feyerabend scholars have predominantly assumed, Feyerabend's changing attitude towards falsificationism—which he often advocated at the beginning of his career, and vociferously attacked in the 1970s and 1980s—must be explained by taking into account not only Feyerabend's very peculiar view of the aim of science, but also Popper's changing account of progress. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Monstrous Conclusion, according to which, for any population, there is a better population consisting of just one individual (the Monster). The Monstrous Conclusion is deeply counterintuitive. I defend a version of Prioritarianism as a particularly promising population axiology that does not imply the Monstrous Conclusion. According to this version of Prioritarianism, which I call Asymptotic Prioritarianism, there is diminishing marginal moral importance of individual welfare that can get close to, but never quite reach, some upper limit. (...) I argue that Asymptotic Prioritarianism faces a theoretical cost, that I call the Absolute Priority Principle. However, the Absolute Priority Principle is an extreme version of what I call the Trade-off Condition, an already noteworthy problem facing other (more widely endorsed) versions of Prioritarianism. I conclude that it is better for a theory to imply the Absolute Priority Principle and avoid the Monstrous Conclusion than to imply the Monstrous Conclusion and the Trade-off Condition. The potential for Asymptotic Prioritarianism is substantial. (shrink)

We show that the modal µ-calculus over GL collapses to the modal fragment by showing that the fixpoint formula is reached after two iterations and answer to a question posed by van Benthem in [4]. Further, we introduce the modal µ~-calculus by allowing fixpoint constructors for any formula where the fixpoint variable appears guarded but not necessarily positive and show that this calculus over GL collapses to the modal fragment, too. The latter result allows us a new proof of the (...) de Jongh, Sambin Theorem and provides a simple algorithm to construct the fixpoint formula. (shrink)

One type of argument to sceptical paradox proceeds by making a case that a certain kind of metaphysically “heavyweight or “cornerstone” proposition is beyond all possible evidence and hence may not be known or justifiably believed. Crispin Wright has argued that we can concede that our acceptance of these propositions is evidentially risky and still remain rationally entitled to those of our ordinary knowledge claims that are seemingly threatened by that concession. A problem for Wright’s proposal is the so-called Leaching (...) worry: if we are merely rationally entitled to accept the cornerstones without evidence, how can we achieve evidence-based knowledge of the multitude of quotidian propositions that we think we know, which require the cornerstones to be true? This paper presents a rigorous, novel explication of this worry within a Bayesian framework, and offers the Entitlement theorist two distinct responses. (shrink)

The non-well-founded set theories described by Aczel (1988) have received attention from category theorists and computer scientists, but have been largely ignored by philosophers. At the root of this neglect might lie the impression that these theories do not embody a conception of set, but are rather of mere technical interest. This paper attempts to dispel this impression. I present a conception of set which may be taken as lying behind a non-well-founded set theory. I argue that the axiom AFA (...) is justified on the conception, which provides, contra Rieger (Mind 109:241–253, 2000), a rationale for restricting attention to the system based on this axiom. By making use of formal and informal considerations, I then make a case that most of the other axioms of this system are also justified on the conception. I conclude by commenting on the significance of the conception for the debate about the justification of the Axiom of Foundation. (shrink)

We present a natural deduction system for dual-intuitionistic logic. Its distinctive feature is that it is a single-premise multiple-conclusions system. Its relationships with the natural deduction systems for intuitionistic and classical logic are discussed.

In this paper, I present an interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on the experience of wonder at the existence of the world. According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein's feeling of wonder stems from perceiving the existence of the world as an absolute miracle, that is, as a fact that is in principle beyond explanation. Based on this analysis, I will suggest that Wittgenstein's experience is akin to what has been described by other authors such as Coleridge, Pessoa, Heidegger, Scheler, Sartre, and Hadot, (...) among many others. Through a comparison between Wittgenstein and Coleridge on the experience of existence, I shall highlight some core features of this experience, chief among them the use of the notion of nothingness in clarifying what is understood in the experience, the role of intuition, and the presence of a specific pathos. As a whole, this paper aims to provide a contribution to the project of a phenomenology of the experience of existence and intends to create a bridge for a dialogue between Wittgenstein and the phenomenological tradition on the enigma of existence. (shrink)

Lexical innovations (e.g., zero-derivations coined on the fly by a speaker) seem to bear semantic content. Yet, such expressions cannot bear semantic content as a function of the conventions of meaning in force in the language, since they are not part of its lexicon. This is in tension with the commonplace view that the semantic content of lexical expressions is constituted by linguistic conventions. The conventionalist has two immediate ways out of the tension. The first is to preserve the conventionalist (...) assumption and deny that lexical innovations bear semantic content. The second is to dynamicize the conventionalist assumption, that is, argue that presentations of unattested expressions trigger an augmentation of the standing semantic resources of the language and instantiate content as a result of this underlying update. Building on a comparison with the production of novel onomatopoeic words, iconic pseudowords and pro-speech gestures, the paper argues that the issue is best addressed by suspending the conventionalist assumption, and describes the metasemantic implications of the claim. (shrink)

I focus on a key argument for global external world scepticism resting on the underdetermination thesis: the argument according to which we cannot know any proposition about our physical environment because sense evidence for it equally justifies some sceptical alternative (e.g. the Cartesian demon conjecture). I contend that the underdetermination argument can go through only if the controversial thesis that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility is true. I also suggest a reason to doubt that (...) conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility, and thus to doubt the underdetermination argument. (shrink)

Starting from the case of insurance claims, I investigate the dynamics of acceptance, rejection and denial. I show that disagreement can be more varied than one might think. I illustrate this by looking at the Warren/Sanders controversy in the 2020 democratic primaries and at religious agnosticism.

It is often argued, most recently by Samuel Scheffler, that we should reconcile with our mortality as constitutive of our existence: as essential to its temporal structure, to the nature of deliberation, and to our basic motivations and values. Against this reconciliatory strategy, I argue that there is a kind of immortal existence that is coherently conceivable and potentially desirable. First, I argue against the claim that our existence has a temporal structure with a trajectory that necessarily culminates in an (...) ending. This claim is based on two false assumptions: that a life as a whole calls for narrative structure, and that narratives necessarily require closure as temporal endings. Second, I reject the proposal that temporal finitude is constitutive of the basic elements of diachronic agency, including the nature of deliberation and of our values. I argue that only finitude as scarcity of opportunities is constitutive of these elements. Additionally, scarcity might be present in an endless existence. Therefore, it is not incoherent to conceive of a recognizable and potentially desirable immortality that grounds the core features of diachronic agency. Thus, against the reconciliatory strategy, I conclude that we might never fully reconcile with mortality. Although we might embrace our inescapable mortality as essential to a fuller range of features of our existence, we can still justifiably regret our missing on an immortal existence. (shrink)

In “Some Remarks on Extending and Interpreting Theories with a Partial Truth Predicate”, Reinhardt [21] famously proposed an instrumentalist interpretation of the truth theory Kripke–Feferman ( $\mathrm {KF}$ ) in analogy to Hilbert’s program. Reinhardt suggested to view $\mathrm {KF}$ as a tool for generating “the significant part of $\mathrm {KF}$ ”, that is, as a tool for deriving sentences of the form $\mathrm{Tr}\ulcorner {\varphi }\urcorner $. The constitutive question of Reinhardt’s program was whether it was possible “to justify the (...) use of nonsignificant sentences entirely within the framework of significant sentences”. This question was answered negatively by Halbach & Horsten [10] but we argue that under a more careful interpretation the question may receive a positive answer. To this end, we propose to shift attention from $\mathrm {KF}$ -provably true sentences to $\mathrm {KF}$ -provably true inferences, that is, we shall identify the significant part of $\mathrm {KF}$ with the set of pairs $\langle {\Gamma, \Delta }\rangle $, such that $\mathrm {KF}$ proves that if all members of $\Gamma $ are true, at least one member of $\Delta $ is true. In way of addressing Reinhardt’s question we show that the provably true inferences of suitable $\mathrm {KF}$ -like theories coincide with the provable sequents of matching versions of the theory Partial Kripke–Feferman ( $\mathrm {PKF}$ ). (shrink)

This paper considers two novel Bayesian responses to a well-known skeptical paradox. The paradox consists of three intuitions: first, given appropriate sense experience, we have justification for accepting the relevant proposition about the external world; second, we have justification for expanding the body of accepted propositions through known entailment; third, we do not have justification for accepting that we are not disembodied souls in an immaterial world deceived by an evil demon. The first response we consider rejects the third intuition (...) and proposes an explanation of why we have a faulty intuition. The second response, which we favor, accommodates all three intuitions; it reconciles the first and the third intuition by the dual component model of justification, and defends the second intuition by distinguishing two principles of epistemic closure. (shrink)

This paper questions different conceptions of Medical Humanities in order to provide a clearer understanding of what they are and why they matter. Building upon former attempts, we defend a conception of Medical Humanities as a humanistic problem-based approach to medicine aiming at influencing its nature and practice. In particular, we discuss three main conceptual issues regarding the overall nature of this discipline: (i) a problem-driven approach to Medical Humanities; (ii) the need for an integration of Medical Humanities into medicine; (...) (iii) the methodological requirements that could render Medical Humanities an effective framework for medical decision-making. (shrink)

I investigate the structure of pro-tempore disjunctive intentions: intentions directed at two or more eventually incompatible goals that are nonetheless kept open for the time being, while the agent is waiting to acquire more information to determine which option is better. These intentions are the basic tool for balancing, in our planning agency, rigidity and flexibility, stability and responsiveness to changing circumstances. They are a pervasive feature of intentional diachronic agency and contribute to secure dynamic consistency in our plans. I (...) show how they differ from simple disjunctive intentions, where the agent is indifferent between the options. I argue that pro-tempore disjunctive intentions meet the distinctive pressures of intentions and that, contrary to the initial impressions, they are both stable and successful at settling practical matters. In closing, I argue that pro-tempore disjunctive intentions are all-out intentions that are more explanatorily powerful than Holton's "partial" intentions. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Michael Huemer’s phenomenal conservatism—the internalist view according to which our beliefs are prima facie justified if based on how things seems or appears to us to be—doesn’t fall afoul of Michael Bergmann’s dilemma for epistemological internalism. We start by showing that the thought experiment that Bergmann adduces to conclude that is vulnerable to his dilemma misses its target. After that, we distinguish between two ways in which a mental state can contribute to the justification (...) of a belief: the direct way and the indirect way. We identify a straightforward reason for claiming that the justification contributed indirectly is subject to Bergmann’s dilemma. Then we show that the same reason doesn’t extend to the claim that the justification contributed directly is subject to Bergmann’s dilemma. As is the view that seemings or appearances contribute justification directly, we infer that Bergmann’s contention that his dilemma applies to is unmotivated. In the final part, we suggest that our line of response to Bergmann can be used to shield other types of internalist justification from Bergmann’s objection. We also propose that seeming-grounded justification can be combined with justification of one of these types to form the basis of a promising version of internalist foundationalism. (shrink)

In this chapter I shall address the question as to whether there exists a universal and atemporal justification for the claims made by a community that adopts a particular style of reasoning. I shall present a case study in which a claim made in the laboratory style of reasoning has no universal and atemporal justification. As I shall explain, Hacking justifies his belief that unobservable entities exist on the ground that they can be regularly manipulated by experimenters in order to (...) find out and produce various phenomena (experimental realism); he also maintains that no belief that our theories are true is required in order to be realist about unobservable entities. I shall argue that his justification is relative to the laboratory style of reasoning. Ultimately, from this case study I shall draw the important conclusion that the styles of reasoning project implies epistemic relativism. In the first part of this chapter, I shall analyse Hacking’s experimental realism in the light of the styles of reasoning project. I shall start by making these points: Hacking’s theory anti-realism denies the possibility of ranking styles of reasoning in terms of their capacity to explain phenomena; furthermore, Hacking is not successful in showing that his entity realism is justified for a community that does not adopt the laboratory style of reasoning. It will follow that the styles of reasoning project is in conflict with the claim that we know about unobservable entities. (shrink)

Crispin Wright maintains that the architecture of perceptual justification is such that we can acquire justification for our perceptual beliefs only if we have antecedent justification for ruling out any sceptical alternative. Wright contends that this principle doesn’t elicit scepticism, for we are non-evidentially entitled to accept the negation of any sceptical alternative. Sebastiano Moruzzi has challenged Wright’s contention by arguing that since our non-evidential entitlements don’t remove the epistemic risk of our perceptual beliefs, they don’t actually enable us to (...) acquire justification for these beliefs. In this paper I show that Wright’s responses to Moruzzi are ineffective and that Moruzzi’s argument is validated by probabilistic reasoning. I also suggest that Wright cannot answer Moruzzi’s challenge without weakening the support available for his conception of the architecture of perceptual justification. (shrink)

A pressing and difficult practical problem concerns the general issue of the right social response to offenders classified as having antisocial personality disorder. This paper approaches this general problem by focusing, from a philosophical perspective, on the still relevant but more approachable question whether psychopathic offenders are morally responsible. In particular, I investigate whether psychopaths possess moral understanding. A plausible way to approach the last question requires a satisfactory philosophical interpretation of the empirical evidence that appears to show that psychopaths (...) fail to draw the distinction between conventional and moral norms. Specifically, I will consider a recent philosophical debate polarized between supporters of rationalist and sentimentalist accounts of moral understanding. These opponents have discussed whether the case of psychopathy offers empirical support for their account and undermine the rival view. I will argue that the available empirical data leave the outcome of this discussion indeterminate. However, this implies that both these principal theories of moral understanding, if independently motivated, would imply that psychopaths have certain deficits that might affect their moral understanding and, consequently, their moral responsibility. (shrink)

Maddy gave a semi-formal account of restrictiveness by defining a formal notion based on a class of interpretations and explaining how to handle false positives and false negatives. Recently, Hamkins pointed out some structural issues with Maddy's definition. We look at Maddy's formal definitions from the point of view of an abstract interpretation relation. We consider various candidates for this interpretation relation, including one that is close to Maddy's original notion, but fixes the issues raised by Hamkins. Our work brings (...) to light additional structural issues that we also discuss. (shrink)

This paper develops a new theory of the morality of promissory obligations. T. M. Scanlon notoriously argued that promising consists in assuring the promisee that we will do something. I disagree. I argue that it is true that promising consists in assuring the promisee, but what the promisor gives to the promisee is not an assurance that they will do something, but that the normative situation is in a certain way.

Gilead et al. present a rich account of abstraction. Though the account describes several elements which influence mental representation, it is worth also delineating how feelings, such as fluency and emotion, influence mental simulation. Additionally, though past experience can sometimes make simulations more accurate and worthwhile, many systematic prediction errors persist despite substantial experience.

One way in which we might approach the challenge posed by the Sorites Paradox is considering that Sorites-susceptible predicates have several candidate extensions, or several ways in which these expressions can be made precise. For example, a candidate extension for the predicate ‘is a baby’ is the set of humans of less than two years, but also the set of those less than two years and one second, and of those less than two years and two seconds. In this chapter (...) we present and discuss two theories for vague predicates based on this idea: supervaluationism and subvaluationism. The chapter is structured in three parts. The first presents the super- and subvaluationist theories: their similarities and differences in the semantics, the resulting logics with their most characteristic features. The second reviews the super- and subvaluationist solutions to the Sorites Paradox and provides discussion on several controversies surrounding these theories. The third part introduces proof procedures for s’valuationist logics. (shrink)

There are three ways to control our future conduct: by causing it, by manipulating our future selves, or by taking future-directed decisions. I show that the standard accounts of future-directed decisions fail to do justice to their distinctive contribution in intentional diachronic agency. The standard accounts can be divided in two categories: First, those that conflate the operation of decisions with that of devices for either physical constraint or manipulative self-management. Second, accounts that, although they acknowledge the non-manipulative nature of (...) decisions, offer too restrictive a view of source of their effectiveness over time. I argue that a comprehensive view of decisions must acknowledge that there is a variety of ways in which they can be effective, which range from the exercise of rational authority to the reliance on sub-agential psychological propensities. What keeps all of these mechanisms together as possible explanations of the role of decisions in supporting diachronic intentional agency is that these mechanisms operate under a common regulative ideal of diachronic agency: the agent’s reliance on the continuous sense of the stability of the choiceworthiness of the action, regardless of her prior decision to perform it. In light of this regulative ideal, the contribution of effective decisions to diachronic agency is thus in principle dispensable although usually necessary for limited beings like us. (shrink)

Mindreading is the ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. According to the Theory-Theory (TT), mindreading is based on one's possession of a Theory of Mind. On the other hand, the Simulation Theory (ST) maintains that one arrives at the attribution of a mental state by simulating it in one's own mind. In this paper, I propose a ST-TT hybrid model of the ability to attribute disgust on the basis of visual stimuli such as facial expressions, body postures, etc. (...) More precisely, while I defend Goldman's (2006) thesis that the ability to attribute disgust based on observing disgusted facial expressions stems from a mirror-based simulation process, I argue that ST is unable to account for the ability to attribute disgust based on non-facial visual stimuli; I propose, rather, that this latter ability is theory-based. My model is grounded in evidence from individuals suffering from Huntington's Disease. (shrink)

Crispin Wright’s entitlement theory holds that we have non-evidential justification for accepting propositions of a general type––which Wright calls “cornerstones”––that enables us to acquire justification for believing other propositions––those that we take to be true on the grounds of ordinary evidence. Entitlement theory is meant by Wright to deliver a forceful response to the sceptic who argues that we cannot justify ordinary beliefs. I initially focus on strategic entitlement, which is one of the types of entitlement that Wright has described (...) in more detail. I suggest that it is dubious that we are strategically entitled to accept cornerstones. After this, I focus on entitlement in general. I contend that, in important cases, non-evidential justification for accepting cornerstones cannot secure evidential justification for believing ordinary propositions. My argument rests on a probabilistic regimentation of the so-called “leaching problem”. (shrink)