In very general terms, an agent is a being with the capacity to act, and 'agency' denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity. The philosophy of action provides us with a standard conception and a standard theory of action. The former construes action in terms of intentionality, the latter explains the intentionality of action in terms of causation by the agent’s mental states and events. From this, we obtain a standard conception and a standard theory of agency. There are (...) alternative conceptions of agency, and it has been argued that the standard theory fails to capture agency. Further, it seems that genuine agency can be exhibited by beings that are not capable of intentional action, and it has been argued that agency can and should be explained without reference to causally efficacious mental states and events. Debates about the nature of agency have flourished over the past few decades in philosophy and in other areas of research. In philosophy, the nature of agency is an important issue in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychology, the debates on free will and moral responsibility, in ethics, meta-ethics, and in the debates on the nature of reasons and practical rationality. For the most part, this entry focuses on conceptual and metaphysical questions concerning the nature of agency. In the final sections, it provides an overview of empirically informed accounts of the sense of agency and of various empirical challenges to the commonsense assumption that our reasons and our conscious intentions make a real difference to how we act. (shrink)

Alfred Mele’s zygote argument is widely considered to be the strongest version of the manipulation argument against compatibilism (about free will and determinism). Opponents have focused largely on the first of its two premises and on the overall dialectic. My focus here will be on the underlying thought experiment—the Diana scenario—and on the second premise of the argument. I will argue that reflection on the Diana scenario shows that the second premise does not hold, and we will see that my (...) objection to the second premise helps to defend the claim that manipulation arguments face, in general, a dilemma. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that many arguments from expert opinion are strong arguments. Therefore, in many cases it is rational to rely on experts since in many cases the fact that an expert says that p makes it highly likely that p is true. I will defend this claim by providing 5 arguments that illuminate and elaborate on 5 crucial claims about expertise. In this way, I aim to undermine recent attempts to establish a rampant scepticism about arguments from (...) expert opinion. (shrink)

Since causal processes can be prevented and interfered with, law-governed causation is a challenge for necessitarian theories of laws of nature. To show that there is a problematic friction between necessity and interference, I focus on David Armstrong's theory; with one proviso, his lawmaker, nomological necessity, is supposed to be instantiated as the causation of the law's second relatum whenever its first relatum is instantiated. His proviso is supposed to handle interference cases, but fails to do so. In order to (...) be able to handle interferences, any theory which utilizes a kind of necessitation as lawmaker has to downgrade what it treats as necessity to something more akin to (Newtonian) forces. (shrink)

Benjamin Libet's empirical challenge to free will has received a great deal of attention and criticism. A standard line of response has emerged that many take to be decisive against Libet's challenge. In the first part of this paper, I will argue that this standard response fails to put the challenge to rest. It fails, in particular, to address a recent follow-up experiment that raises a similar worry about free will (Soon, Brass, Heinze, & Haynes, 2008). In the second part, (...) however, I will argue that we can altogether avoid Libet-style challenges if we adopt a traditional compatibilist account of free will. In the final section, I will briefly explain why there is good and independent reason to think about free will in this way. (shrink)

Given some reasonable assumptions concerning the nature of mental causation, non-reductive physicalism faces the following dilemma. If mental events cause physical events, they merely overdetermine their effects (given the causal closure of the physical). If mental events cause only other mental events, they do not make the kind of difference we want them to. This dilemma can be avoided if we drop the dichotomy between physical and mental events. Mental events make a real difference if they cause actions. But actions (...) are neither mental nor physical events. They are realized by physical events, but they are not type-identical with them. This gives us non-reductive physicalism without downward causation. The tenability of this view has been questioned. Jaegwon Kim, in particular, has argued that non-reductive physicalism is committed to downward causation. Appealing to the nature of actions, I will argue that this commitment can be avoided. (shrink)

The paper explores the defence by the early sociologist of science Ludwik Fleck against the charge of relativism. It is shown that there are crucial and hitherto unnoticed similarities between Fleck’s strategy and the attempt by his contemporary Karl Mannheim to distinguish between an incoherent relativism and a consistent relationism. Both authors seek to revise epistemology fundamentally by reinterpreting the concept of objectivity in two ways: as inner- and inter-style objectivity. The argument for the latter concept shows the genuine political (...) background and intent of Fleck’s sociology of science and its ambition to relieve the cultural struggles of his time. (shrink)

Recently Kenneth Kendler and Peter Zachar have raised doubts about the correspondence theory of truth and scientific realism in psychopathology. They argue that coherentist or pragmatist approaches to truth are better suited for understanding the reality of psychiatric disorders. In this article, I show that rejecting realism based on the correspondence theory is deeply problematic: It makes psychopathology categorically different from other sciences, and results in an implausible view of scientific discovery and progress. As an alternative, I suggest a robustness-based (...) approach that can accommodate the significance of coherence and pragmatic factors without rejecting scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

It is widely believed that at least two developments in the last third of the 20th century have given dispositionalism—the view that powers, capacities, potencies, etc. are irreducible real properties—new credibility: (i) the many counterexamples launched against reductive analyses of dispositional predicates in terms of counterfactual conditionals and (ii) a new anti-Humean faith in necessary connections in nature which, it is said, owes a lot to Kripke’s arguments surrounding metaphysical necessity. I aim to show in this paper that necessity is, (...) in fact, of little help for the dispositionalists. My argument makes use of one of the above mentioned counterexamples against Humean reduction: antidotes. Turning the tables, I ask how the dispositionalists themselves can deal with antidotes. The result will be to show that if the dispositionalists are to demystify antidote cases, they must make plausible a conceptualisation of dispositions that does not invoke any kind of necessity. I will cautiously suggest that the anti-Humean link dispositions bring to the world has to be thought of in terms of (Newtonian) forces. (shrink)

This study explores the relation between pain sensitivity and the cognitive processing of words. 130 participants evaluated the pain-relatedness of a total of 600 two-syllabic nouns, and subsequently reported on their own pain sensitivity. The results demonstrate that pain-sensitive people associate words more strongly with pain than less sensitive people. In particular, concrete nouns like ‘syringe’, ‘wound’, ‘knife’, and ‘cactus’ are considered to be more pain-related for those who are more pain-sensitive. These findings dovetail with recent studies suggesting that certain (...) bodily characteristics influence the way people form mental representations (Casasanto, 2009). We discuss three mechanisms which could potentially account for our findings: attention and memory bias, prototype analysis, and embodied cognition. We argue that, whereas none of these three accounts can be ruled out, the embodied cognition hypothesis provides a particularly promising view to accommodate our data. (shrink)

According to what I call the reductive standard-causal theory of agency, the exercise of an agent's power to act can be reduced to the causal efficacy of agent-involving mental states and events. According to a non-reductive agent-causal theory, an agent's power to act is irreducible and primitive. Agent-causal theories have been dismissed on the ground that they presuppose a very contentious notion of causation, namely substance-causation. In this paper I will assume, with the proponents of the agent-causal approach, that substance-causation (...) is possible, as I will argue against that theory on the ground that it fails as a theory of agency. I will argue that the non-reductive agent-causal theory fails to account for agency, because it fails to account for agential control: it cannot explain why the stipulated irreducible relation between the agent and an action constitutes the agent's exercise of control over the action. This objection, I will argue, applies to the agent-causal theory in particular, and to the non-reductive approach in general. (shrink)

In two recent papers in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Howard Sankey has argued that there is an intimate relationship between Pyrrhonian skepticism and recent approaches to epistemic relativism.Though the general argument and idea of Sankey’s papers is very much appreciated, it is argued that the epistemic relativist’s recourse to the skeptical strategy outlined by the Pyrrhonian is not a good one. This diagnosis gives rise to an objection against the epistemic relativist who argues on the basis of (...) the skeptical strategy that differs from Sankey’s naturalistic response. Furthermore, it can be shown that what is really at stake between epistemic relativism and epistemic absolutism is the question of which criteria there are for variation of epistemic norms and epistemic systems. (shrink)

In a paper published in this journal Martin Hinton aims to show that the struggle between Moti Mizrahi and me about whether arguments from expert opinion are weak arguments rests on misunderstandings (Hinton 2015). Let me emphasize that I generally appreciate Hinton’s intention to settle the dispute between Mizrahi and myself in this way. 1 Furthermore, I also agree with Hinton’s conclusion that if Mizrahi is interpreted in the way Hinton does, then Mizrahi’s “claim becomes far less controversial, but also (...) rather uninteresting” (Hinton 2015, 551)—to refer to the title of my former paper: just spilling out the water wouldn’t be worth a paper in Informal Logic. 2 Let me therefore focus in this reply on the points where Hinton directly attacks my treatment of Mizrahi and also what Hinton takes to be my account of expertise. I will discuss the following criticism of Hinton: (1) that, at points, my attack on Mizrahi is unfair due to my misunderstanding of his intentions, (2) that the notion of expertise I use is self-contradictory/inconsistent, (3) that the argument for my view is circular, (4) that one of my examples—the example from soccer—is mistaken. In rebutting this criticism, I aim to clarify the background of my former paper in this journal. (shrink)

I argue for the possibility of a proprioceptive art in addition to, for example, visual or auditory arts, where aspects of some martial arts will serve as examples of that art form. My argument is inspired by a thought of Ted Shawn’s, one of the pioneers of American modern dance: "Dance is the only art wherein we ourselves are the stuff in which it is made.” In a first step, I point out that in some practices of martial arts (in (...) the paper I will introduce “hyongs” & “katas”), we are, too, the stuff these performances are made of. Second, I show that we, as martial arts practitioners, are not in the first place visual or auditorial observers (as common in painting or music or ballet) but introspective, proprioceptive perceivers of our bodies and their movements. (As a corollary we get that we are, in such a case, necessarily our exclusive audience.) In an third crucial step, I show that the martial arts practices referred to, hyongs & katas, and especially the proprioceptive aspects thereof, can indeed count as art. Thus, proprioceptive art is possible because some practices of some martial arts are actual existing examples of that art form. (shrink)

The paper focuses on one central aspect of Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge: his exemption of the contents of mathematics and the natural sciences from sociological investigations. After emphasizing the importance of Mannheim’s contribution and his exemption-thesis to the history and development of the field and the problem of relativism, I survey several interpretations of the thesis – especially those put forward by proponents of the so-called ‘Strong Programme’. I argue that these interpretations do not get the philosophical background and (...) impetus of Mannheim’s contribution right. By distinguishing between naturalistic and anti-naturalistic strands in Mannheim’s work I propose a new reading on which Mannheim did not exempt the contents of the areas in question principally or because of a lack of nerve and will. It is argued that Mannheim’s exemption-thesis rather is a consequence of his own sketchy sociological investigations of ‘the paradigm of the natural sciences’. (shrink)

In a recent article we argued that organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research program. John Lemos criticized our argumentation on various counts. Here we reply to some of Lemos’s criticisms.

Secreted signaling molecules act as morphogens to control patterning and growth in many developing tissues. Since locally produced morphogens spread to form a concentration gradient in the surrounding tissue, spreading is generally thought to be the key step in the non‐autonomous actions. Here, we review recent advances in tool development to investigate morphogen function using the role of decapentaplegic (Dpp)/bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)‐type ligand in the Drosophila wing disc as an example. By applying protein binder tools to distinguish between the (...) roles of Dpp spreading and local Dpp signaling, we found that Dpp signaling in the source cells is important for wing patterning and growth but Dpp spreading from this source cells is not as strictly required as previously thought. Given recent studies showing unexpected requirements of long‐range action of different morphogens, manipulating endogenous morphogen gradients by synthetic protein binder tools could shed more light on how morphogens act in developing tissues. (shrink)

In a recent paper in 'Social Epistemology' Dimitri Ginev aims to show that Ludwik Fleck uses transcendental arguments in two contexts in his work that are closely intertwined: the context of comparative cognitive sociology and the context of socio-historical epistemology. I am skeptical about Ginev’s interpretation and my aim is to show that at least the part of Ginev’s argument in which he aims to show Fleck’s use of transcendental arguments in the context of socio-historical epistemology is not convincing. To (...) my mind, a much better interpretation of Fleck’s argument in this context is to see Fleck as using scientisticinstead of transcendental arguments. (shrink)

Since Davidson's proposal to use a Tarskian theory of truth in order to develop a theory of meaning has been criticised extensively, it is decisive to ask whether Davidson needs such a theory as an assumption and premise in other parts of his work. Especially, many authors have claimed that Davidson's argument in his paper 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' depends on his approach in the theory of meaning. It is argued that this interpretation is wrong and (...) Davidson's attack on conceptual relativism does not depend in any way on his defense of truth-conditional semantics. Rather Davidson's thoroughgoing holism and the principle of charity are the basic rationale for his denial of conceptual relativism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a moderate form of epistemic relativism that is inspired by the work of Thomas Kuhn fails. First of all, it is shown that there is evidence to the effect that Kuhn already in his 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' proposes moderate relativism. Second, it is argued that moderate relativism is confronted with a severe dilemma that follows from Kuhn’s own argument for his relativistic conclusion. By focusing on the work of moderate relativists like Bernd (...) Schofer and Gerald Doppelt this dilemma as well as the ultimate failure of Kuhn’s moderate relativism are exhibited. (shrink)

Je considère la relation entre le « Tournant » (die Kehre) de Heidegger et le réalisme. Je commence par décrire comment la critique heideggerienne du problème du monde extérieur anticipe le nouveau réalisme. J’élabore une reconstruction de l’auto-critique heideggerienne d’Être et temps en montrant comment cette œuvre manifeste un anti-réalisme de plus haut niveau. Ensuite, je montre comment le Tournant heideggerien est motivé par l’inadéquation de ce premier anti-réalisme. Dans sa philosophie de l’événement, Heidegger va vers une ontologie réaliste en (...) développant des concepts tels que celui de destin (Geschick), qu’il comprend comme indépendant de toute attitude humaine. Heidegger en dernier lieu retombe cependant dans un anti-réalisme, parce que l’être reste dépendant de l’implication des êtres humains. Je conclue donc cet essai en exposant brièvement ma propre conception du nouveau réalisme, selon laquelle les objets sont remplis de signification d’une manière qui est indépendante de nos attitudes vis-à-vis d’eux. (shrink)

Wiggins and Wilbanks (2019) provide an overview of what they consider to be different models of citizen science in health and biomedical research and highlight related ethical issues. They offer, h...

This article examines strands of an intellectual history in Media and Cultural Studies and Science and Technology Studies in both of which researchers were prompted to take up ethnography. Three historical phases of this process are identified. The move between phases was the result of particular displacements and contestations of perspective in the research procedures within each discipline. Thus concerns about appropriate contextualization led to the eventual embrace of anthropological ethnographic methods. The article traces the subsequent emergence of a ‘crisis (...) of context’ in the deployment of ethnography within these disciplines. The analysis of these historical changes is informed by a particular depiction of Euro-American knowledge conventions. The article suggests that the limits currently perceived for ethnography are a specific instance of the more general limits now recognized for these knowledge conventions. (shrink)

This paper discusses Sosa’s via media between existential relativism and absolutism. We discuss three implications of Sosa’s account which require some further clarification. First, we distinguish three alternative readings of Sosa’s account – the indexicalist, the homonymist and the (proper) relativist reading – and argue that they differ with respect to two crucial points: (a) they lead to different analyses of the lack of disagreement in existential discourse, and (b) they differ with respect to the question of whether conceptual schemes (...) pick out different senses of “exist” or whether they pick out different entities to exist. Second, we ask Sosa to answer on four problematic implications of his final position: (a) Sosa appears to change the topic from ontology to semantics without solving the ontological issue. (b) It is puzzling why Sosa finally accepts the initially implausible explosion of reality. (c) Sosa is forced to accept that disputants really disagree in existential disputes (although faultlessly). (d) We offer an even simpler alternative option to reconcile the realist and the relativist intuitions by clarifying what is meant by “conceptual relativism”, without arguing for existential relativity at all. Third, we argue that Sosa’s argumentative reliance on an appropriate development of conceptual schemes drives him not only to a position of pure conceptual absolutism, but even to a more traditional form of ontological absolutism according to which nature itself manages to cut the cookies. In contrast to his apparent intention, this discharges Sosa’s via media from any relativist intuition. (shrink)

In this paper we explore Searle’s defense of conceptual relativism. It emerges that Searle formulates the thesis in many different ways and that contrary to his contention not all are trivial and platitudinous. Specifically he does not distinguish clearly between an ontological and a linguistic version of conceptual relativism as well as between weak difference and stronger incommensurability of conceptual schemes. This has consequences for Searle’s defense of external realism.

Soviet attitude towards Bohr reflects changes in the ideological approach to science. During the last period before Stalin's death ?danov proclaimed the campaign against Western influence in Soviet philosophy and science. Nevertheless the physicist M. A. Markov tried to introduce complementarity as a materialistic interpretation of quantum?mechanics in 1948. He was officially condemned. This was followed by a period (1948?54) during which heavy attacks were made against the Copenhagen school. In 1958, after a personal exchange of thoughts with Bohr, academician (...) Fock declared complementarity and probability to be irreversible steps towards a new insight into physical reality, at the same time correcting some of Bohr's epistemological conceptions. (shrink)

This essay attempts to demonstrate that it is doubtful if Galileo's famous thought experiment concerning falling bodies in his 'Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences' (Galileo 1954: 61-64) actually does succeed in proving that Aristotle was wrong in claiming that "bodies of different weight […] move […] with different speeds which stand to one another in the same ratio as their weights," (Galileo 1954: 61). (Part I); and further that it is likewise doubtful that that argument does or even can establish (...) Galileo's own famous 'Law of Falling Bodies,' viz., that regardless of their weight all bodies fall with the same speed. (Part II). (shrink)

Assertions are speech acts by means of which we express beliefs. As such they are at the heart of our linguistic and social practices. Recent research has focused extensively on the question whether the speech act of assertion is governed by norms, and if so, under what conditions it is acceptable to make an assertion. Standard theories propose, for instance, that one should only assert that p if one knows that p (the knowledge account), or that one should only assert (...) that p if p is true (the truth account). In a series of four experiments, this question is addressed empirically. Contrary to previous findings, knowledge turns out to be a poor predictor of assertability, and the norm of assertion is not factive either. The studies here presented provide empirical evidence in favour of the view that a speaker is warranted to assert that p only if her belief that p is justified. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegr ndeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien ver ffentlicht. Gr ndungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), G nther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von J rgen Mittelstra mitherausgegeben.

Moral philosophers and psychologists often assume that people judge morally lucky and morally unlucky agents differently, an assumption that stands at the heart of the Puzzle of Moral Luck. We examine whether the asymmetry is found for reflective intuitions regarding wrongness, blame, permissibility, and punishment judg- ments, whether people’s concrete, case-based judgments align with their explicit, abstract principles regarding moral luck, and what psychological mechanisms might drive the effect. Our experiments produce three findings: First, in within-subjects experiments favorable to reflective (...) deliberation, the vast majority of people judge a lucky and an unlucky agent as equally blameworthy, and their actions as equally wrong and permissible. The philosophical Puzzle of Moral Luck, and the challenge to the very possibility of systematic ethics it is frequently taken to engender, thus simply do not arise. Second, punishment judgments are significantly more outcome- dependent than wrongness, blame, and permissibility judgments. While this constitutes evidence in favor of current Dual Process Theories of moral judgment, the latter need to be qualified: punishment and blame judgments do not seem to be driven by the same process, as is commonly argued in the literature. Third, in between-subjects experiments, outcome has an effect on all four types of moral judgments. This effect is mediated by negligence ascriptions and can ultimately be explained as due to differing probability ascriptions across cases. (shrink)

According to Anscombe, acting intentionally entails knowledge in action. This thesis has been near-universally rejected due to a well-known counterexample by Davidson: a man intending to make ten legible carbon copies might not believe with confidence, and hence not know, that he will succeed. If he does, however, his action surely counts as intentional. Damaging as it seems, an even more powerful objection can be levelled against Anscombe: while acting, there is as yet no fact of the matter as to (...) whether the agent will succeed. Since his belief that he will is not yet true while his action is in progress, he cannot possibly know that he is indeed bringing about the intended goal. Knowledge in action is not only unnecessary for intentional action, it seems, but-at least as regards success-bound types of action-impossible to attain in the first place. (shrink)

The relationship between psychological states and the brain remains an unresolved issue in philosophy of psychology. One appealing solution that has been influential both in science and in philosophy is Dennett’s concept of the intentional stance, according to which beliefs and desires are real and objective phenomena, but not necessarily states of the brain. A fundamental shortcoming of this approach is that it does not seem to leave any causal role for beliefs and desires in influencing behavior. In this paper, (...) I show that intentional states ascribed from the intentional stance should be seen as real causes, develop this to an independently plausible ontological position, and present a response to the latest interventionist causal exclusion worries. (shrink)

It is still a widespread assumption that metaphysics and ontology deal with roughly the same questions. They are supposed to be concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and to give an account of the meaning of 'existence' or 'being' in line with the broadest possible metaphysical assumptions. Against this, Markus Gabriel proposes a radical form of ontological pluralism that divorces ontology from metaphysics, understood as the most fundamental theory of absolutely everything. He argues that the concept of existence (...) is incompatible with the existence of the world and therefore proposes his innovative no-world-view. In the context of recent debates surrounding new realism and speculative realism, Gabriel also develops the outlines of a realist epistemological pluralism. His idea here is that there are different forms of knowledge that correspond to the plurality of fields of sense that must be acknowledged in order to avoid the trap of metaphysics. (shrink)

Previous research in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) suggests that a main aim of explainability approaches is to satisfy specific interests, goals, expectations, needs, and demands regarding artificial systems (we call these “stakeholders' desiderata”) in a variety of contexts. However, the literature on XAI is vast, spreads out across multiple largely disconnected disciplines, and it often remains unclear how explainability approaches are supposed to achieve the goal of satisfying stakeholders' desiderata. This paper discusses the main classes of stakeholders calling for explainability (...) of artificial systems and reviews their desiderata. We provide a model that explicitly spells out the main concepts and relations necessary to consider and investigate when evaluating, adjusting, choosing, and developing explainability approaches that aim to satisfy stakeholders' desiderata. This model can serve researchers from the variety of different disciplines involved in XAI as a common ground. It emphasizes where there is interdisciplinary potential in the evaluation and the development of explainability approaches. (shrink)

The paper develops an account of minimal traces devoid of representational content and exploits an analogy to a predictive processing framework of perception. As perception can be regarded as a prediction of the present on the basis of sparse sensory inputs without any representational content, episodic memory can be conceived of as a “prediction of the past” on the basis of a minimal trace, i.e., an informationally sparse, merely causal link to a previous experience. The resulting notion of episodic memory (...) will be validated as a natural kind distinct from imagination. This trace minimalist view contrasts with two theory camps dominating the philosophical debate on memory. On one side, we face versions of the Causal Theory that hold on to the idea that episodic remembering requires a memory trace that causally links the event of remembering to the event of experience and carries over representational content from the content of experience to the content of remembering. The Causal Theory, however, fails to account for the epistemic generativity of episodic memory and is psychologically and information-theoretically implausible. On the other side, a new camp of simulationists is currently forming up. Motivated by empirical and conceptual deficits of the Causal Theory, they reject not only the necessity of preserving representational content, but also the necessity of a causal link between experience and memory. They argue that remembering is nothing but a peculiar form of imagination, peculiar only in that it has been reliably produced and is directed towards an episode of one’s personal past. Albeit sharing their criticism of the Causal Theory and, in particular, rejecting its demand for an intermediary carrier of representational content, the paper argues that a causal connection to experience is still necessary to fulfill even the minimal requirements of past-directedness and reliability. (shrink)