Arguments attempting to debunk moral beliefs, by showing they are unjustified, have tended to be global, targeting all moral beliefs or a large set of them. Popular debunking arguments point to various factors purportedly influencing moral beliefs, from evolutionary pressures, to automatic and emotionally-driven processes, to framing effects. We show that these sweeping arguments face a debunker’s dilemma: either the relevant factor is not a main basis for belief or it does not render the relevant beliefs unjustified. Empirical debunking arguments (...) in ethics can avoid this predicament, but only if they are refocused on highly selective classes of moral belief. Experimental data can combine with familiar consistency reasoning to reveal that like cases are not being treated alike. Selective debunking arguments are unlikely to yield sweeping sceptical conclusions, but they can lead to rational moral change. (shrink)

Non-naturalists about normativity hold that there are instantiable normative properties which are metaphysically discontinuous with natural properties. One of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile this discontinuity with the supervenience of the normative on the natural. Drawing on J. L. Mackie’s seminal but highly compressed discussion in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, this paper argues that the supervenience challenge as usually conceived is merely a symptom of a more fundamental challenge in the vicinity.

In this article I argue that there are two different types of understanding: the understanding we get from explanations, and the understanding we get from unification. This claim is defended by first showing that explanation and unification are not as closely related as has sometimes been thought. A critical appraisal of recent proposals for understanding without explanation leads us to discuss the example of a purely classificatory biology: it turns out that such a science can give us understanding of the (...) world through unification of the phenomena, even though it does not give us any explanations. The two types of understanding identified in this paper, while strictly separate, do have in common that both consist in seeing how the individual phenomena of the universe hang together. Explanations give us connections between the phenomena through the asymmetric, ‘vertical’ relation of determination; unifications give us connections through the symmetric, ‘horizontal’ relation of kinship. We then arrive at a general definition of understanding as knowledge of connections between the phenomena, and indicate that there might be more than two types of understanding. (shrink)

Examines to what extent Heidegger accepted the Nazi philosophy, assesses his anti-Semitism, and looks at the links between philosophy and politics.

The distinction between the body schema and the body image has become the stock in trade of much recent work in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy. Yet little is known about the interactions between these two types of body representations. We need to account not only for their dissociations in rare cases, but also for their convergence most of the time. Indeed in our everyday life the body we perceive does not conflict with the body we act with. Are the body (...) image and the body schema then somehow reshaping each other or are they relatively independent and do they only happen to be congruent? On the basis of the study of bodily hallucinations, we consider which model can best account for the body schema/body image interactions. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that moral judgment is a natural kind by developing an empirically grounded theory of the distinctive conceptual content of moral judgments. Psychological research on the moral/conventional distinction suggests that in moral judgments right and wrong, good and bad, praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, etc. are conceptualized as serious, general, authority-independent, and objective. After laying out the theory and the empirical evidence that supports it, I address recent empirical and conceptual objections. Finally, I suggest that the theory uniquely (...) accounts for the possibility of genuine moral agreement and disagreement. (shrink)

The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication.

Experimental research in moral psychology can be used to generate debunking arguments in ethics. Specifically, research can indicate that we draw a moral distinction on the basis of a morally irrelevant difference. We develop this naturalistic approach by examining a recent debate between Joshua Greene and Selim Berker. We argue that Greene's research, if accurate, undermines attempts to reconcile opposing judgments about trolley cases, but that his attempt to debunk deontology fails. We then draw some general lessons about the possibility (...) of empirical debunking arguments in ethics. (shrink)

Disgust originated as an evolutionary adaptation for avoiding disease, but it has since infiltrated morality. Many philosophers are skeptical of moral disgust. Skeptics argue that disgust is unreliable and harmful, and that we should eliminate or minimize feelings of disgust in moral thought. However, these arguments are unsuccessful. They do not show that disgust is more problematic than other emotions implicated in morality. Moreover, empirical research suggests that disgust supports important norms and values. Disgust is frequently elicited by “reciprocity violations,” (...) i.e., acts of cheating, dishonesty, and exploitation. The emotion is a fitting response because it accurately reflects the ability of these moral wrongs to pollute and to circulate. Repurposing its original functions, moral disgust motivates social exclusion, tracks the spread of immorality, and acts as a signaling system to coordinate sanctioning. Instead of expunging ourselves of moral disgust, then, we should seek to understand its virtues and its vices. (shrink)

We show that plane hyperbolic geometry, expressed in terms of points and the ternary relation of collinearity alone, cannot be expressed by means of axioms of complexity at most ∀∃∀, but that there is an axiom system, all of whose axioms are ∀∃∀∃ sentences. This remains true for Klingenberg's generalized hyperbolic planes, with arbitrary ordered fields as coordinate fields.

We provide a quantifier-free axiom system for plane hyperbolic geometry in a language containing only absolute geometrically meaningful ternary operations (in the sense that they have the same interpretation in Euclidean geometry as well). Each axiom contains at most 4 variables. It is known that there is no axiom system for plane hyperbolic consisting of only prenex 3-variable axioms. Changing one of the axioms, one obtains an axiom system for plane Euclidean geometry, expressed in the same language, all of whose (...) axioms are also at most 4-variable universal sentences. We also provide an axiom system for plane hyperbolic geometry in Tarski's language L B which might be the simplest possible one in that language. (shrink)

Reverse analyses of three proofs of the Sylvester-Gallai theorem lead to three different and incompatible axiom systems. In particular, we show that proofs respecting the purity of the method, using only notions considered to be part of the statement of the theorem to be proved, are not always the simplest, as they may require axioms which proofs using extraneous predicates do not rely upon.

In this paper, I argue that unification is neither necessary nor sufficient for explanation. Focusing on the versions of the unificationist theory of explanation of Kitcher and of Schurz and Lambert, I establish three theses. First, Kitcher’s criterion of unification is vitiated by the fact that it entails that every proposition can be explained by itself, a flaw that it is unable to overcome. Second, because neither Kitcher’s theory nor that of Schurz and Lambert can solve the problems of asymmetry (...) and accidental generalizations, it follows that unification is not sufficient to ground explanation. Third, some good explanations are disunifying, which entails that unification is not necessary for explanation either. (shrink)

Western philosophers have generally neglected honor as a moral phenomenon worthy of serious study. Appiah’s recent work on honor in moral revolutions is an important exception, but even he is careful to separate honor from morality, regarding it as only “an ally” of morality. In this paper we take Appiah to be right about the psychological, social, and historical role honor has played in three notable moral revolutions, but wrong about the moral nature of honor. We defend two new theses: (...) First, honor is an emotional and moral form of recognition respect that can hinder or aid moral progress. Second, honor, so conceived, can play a rational role in progressive moral change, as it did among the working class in the British abolition of slave trade, when the pressure of moral consistency moved them to protest American slavery as an affront to their honor without change in their moral belief that slavery is wrong. (shrink)

Consider the Unshareability View, namely, the view that first person thought or self-thought—thought as typically expressed via the first person pronoun—is not shareable from subject to subject. In this article, I show that a significant number of Fregean and non-Fregean commentators of Frege have taken the Unshareability View to be the default Fregean position, rehearse Frege’s chief claims about self-thought and suggest that their combination entails the Unshareability View only on the assumption that there is a one-to-one correspondence between way (...) of thinking and thought-individuating cognitive value, outline an account of self-thought that rejects the assumption and keeps intact all of Frege’s chief claims, and respond to a number of worries to the effect that this proposal yields undesirable results from the point of view of the individuation of self-thought at the level of cognitive value. (shrink)

In this article I give a unified account of three phenomena: bullshit, pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy. My aims are partly conceptual, partly evaluative. Drawing on Harry Frankfurt's seminal analysis of bullshit, I give an account of the three phenomena and of how they are related, and I use this account to explain what is bad about all three. More specifically, I argue that what is defective about pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy is precisely that they are special cases of bullshit. Apart from raising (...) interesting philosophical issues, gaining a clearer understanding of these phenomena is also of practical importance, in that it bears on how best to tackle the threat that they pose. (shrink)

Do psychopaths make moral judgments but lack motivation? Or are psychopaths’ judgments are not genuinely moral? Both sides of this debate seem to assume either externalist or internalist criteria for the presence of moral judgment. However, if moral judgment is a natural kind, we can arrive at a theory-neutral criterion for moral judgment. A leading naturalistic criterion suggests that psychopaths have an impaired capacity for moral judgment; the capacity is neither fully present nor fully absent. Psychopaths are therefore not counterexamples (...) to internalism. Nonetheless, internalism is empirically problematic because it is unable to explain psychopaths’ moral deficits. (shrink)

A core tenet of metanormative non-naturalism is that genuine or robust normativity—i.e., the kind of normativity that is characteristic of moral requirements, and perhaps also of prudential, epistemic and even aesthetic requirements—is metaphysically special in a way that rules out naturalist analyses or reductions; on the non-naturalist view, the normative is sui generis and metaphysically discontinuous with the natural. Non-naturalists agree, however, that the normative is modally as well as explanatorily dependent on the natural. These two commitments—discontinuity and dependence—at least (...) initially pull in opposite directions, and one of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile them. In this paper I spell out the most pressing version of this discontinuity problem, as I propose to call it, and I go on to offer a novel solution. Drawing on the ideology of reasons-firstism, I formulate an account of normative explanation which reconciles the two commitments, and I argue that competing accounts either do not solve the problem or are implausible on independent grounds. (shrink)

Recent interpreters portray Aristotle as a Protagorean antirealist, who thinks that colors and other perceptibles do not actually exist apart from being perceived. Against this, I defend a more traditional interpretation: colors exist independently of perception, to which they are explanatorily prior, as causal powers that produce perceptions of themselves. They are not to be identified with mere dispositions to affect perceivers, or with grounds distinct from these qualities, picked out by their subjective effect on perceivers (so-called “secondary qualities”). Rather, (...) they are intrinsic qualities of objects, which are in reality just as they appear to be. At the same time, Aristotle rejects any “simple theory of color” according to which the essence and nature of colors is fully revealed in experience. Although the character of perceptibles as they are experienced is “better known to us,” their essence and nature only comes to be known through a correct theory. (shrink)

Using the axiom system provided by Carsten Augat in [1], it is shown that the only 6-variable statement among the axioms of the axiom system for plane hyperbolic geometry (in Tarski's language L B =), we had provided in [3], is superfluous. The resulting axiom system is the simplest possible one, in the sense that each axiom is a statement in prenex form about at most 5 points, and there is no axiom system consisting entirely of at most 4-variable statements.

Since the publication of Clark and Chalmers' Extended Mind paper, the central claims of that paper, viz. the thesis that cognitive processes and cognitive or mental states extend beyond the brain and body, have been vigorously debated within philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. Both defenders and detractors of these claims have since marshalled an impressive battery of arguments for and against “active externalism.” However, despite the amount of philosophical energy expended, this debate remains far from settled. We (...) argue that this debate can be understood as answering two metaphysical questions. Yet prominent voices within the debate have assumed that there is a tight relationship between these two questions such that one question can be answered via the other. We defend an alternative ‘wide’ view, whereby mentality is understood as constituted by wide social and cultural factors. Our wide view entails that the two metaphysical questions are separate and should be kept distinct. This suggests that active externalism as understood by prominent voices within that debate requires dissolution, rather than solution. However, if the debate were instead understood as only focusing on the second of the two questions, then there could be a possible future for this debate. (shrink)

Excerpt from Les Sceptiques Grecs Enfin le doute lui-meme n'est pas le scepticisme. C'est du doute seulement qu'on pourrait dire qu'il est a peu pres contem porain de la pensee humaine; car, pour un esprit qui reflechit, la decouverte de la premiere erreur suffit a inspirer une certaine defiance de soi; et combien de temps a-t-il fallu a des esprits un peu attentifs pour s'apercevoir qu'ils s'etaient plus d'une fois trompee? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of (...) rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Hyperbolic geometry can be axiomatized using the notions of order andcongruence (as in Euclidean geometry) or using the notion of incidencealone (as in projective geometry). Although the incidence-based axiomatizationmay be considered simpler because it uses the single binary point-linerelation of incidence as a primitive notion, we show that it issyntactically more complex. The incidence-based formulation requires some axioms of the quantifier-type forallexistsforall, while the axiom system based on congruence and order can beformulated using only forallexists-axioms.

Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently been unearthing the unconscious processes that give rise to moral intuitions and emotions. According to skeptics like Joshua Greene, what has been found casts doubt on many of our moral beliefs. However, a new approach in moral psychology develops a learning-theoretic framework that has been successfully applied in a number of other domains. This framework suggests that model-based learning shapes intuitions and emotions. Model-based learning explains how moral thought and feeling are attuned to local material (...) and social conditions. Philosophers can draw on these explanations, in some cases, in order to vindicate episodes of moral change. Explanations can support justifications by showing that they are not mere rationalizations. In addition, philosophical justifications are a fertile source for empirical hypotheses about the rational learning mechanisms that shape moral intuitions and emotions. (shrink)

Sensorimotor Theory is the claim that it is our practical know-how of the relations between our environments and us that gives our environmental interactions their experiential qualities. Yet why should such interactions involve or be accompanied by experience? This is the ‘absolute’ gap question. Some proponents of SMT answer this question by arguing that our interactions with an environment involve experience when we cognitively access those interactions. In this paper, I aim to persuade proponents of SMT to accept the following (...) three claims. First, that appeals to cognitive access fail to answer the absolute gap question. Second, that SMT can be read in a way that rejects the gap question. Third, that if proponents of SMT are prepared to read SMT in a way that rejects the absolute gap question, then they can also reject the claim that cognitive access is needed to explain experience. (shrink)

Problems and choices -- Who shall live? -- The physician : the captain of the team -- The hospital : the house of hope -- Drugs : the key to modern medicine -- Paying for medical care.

the three topics named in the title of this book: Christianity, antiquity, and Enlightenment, are not meant merely to describe the contents of the various chapters it contains. a narrative is implied in their selection and arrangement, and embedded ...

In this paper we provide a quantifier-free, constructive axiomatization of metric-Euclidean and of rectangular planes . The languages in which the axiom systems are expressed contain three individual constants and two ternary operations. We also provide an axiom system in algorithmic logic for finite Euclidean planes, and for several minimal metric-Euclidean planes. The axiom systems proposed will be used in a sequel to this paper to provide ‘the simplest possible’ axiom systems for several fragments of plane Euclidean geometry.

Naturalists who conceive of knowledge as a natural kind are led to treat ‘knowledge’ as a natural kind term. ‘Knowledge,’ then, must behave semantically in the ways that seem to support a direct reference theory for other natural kind terms. A direct reference theory for ‘knowledge,’ however, appears to leave open too many possibilities about the identity of knowledge. Intuitively, states of belief count as knowledge only if they meet epistemic criteria, not merely if they bear a causal/historical relation to (...) the term. I will develop this objection and show that it is grounded in modal considerations central to Kripke’s work on reference. I will also argue that a more plausible externalist semantics for natural kind terms disarms the objection. (shrink)

We prove that, in the framework of ordered geometry, the inner form of the Pasch axiom does not imply its outer form . We also show that OP can be properly split into IP and the weak Pasch axiom.

O artigo a seguir, “A moral antiga e a moral moderna” (“La morale ancienne et la morale moderne”), foi publicado originalmente na Revue Philosophique, ano XXVI, janeiro de 1901, p. 1-12. Nele, Brochard discute as principais diferenças entre a moral antiga e a moral moderna, destacando a ausência na moral antiga das idéias de dever e obrigação, tão caras à moral moderna a ponto de hoje não a concebermos sem elas. O esclarecimento das razões que levaram os modernos a entender (...) a moral como ciência do dever, é um dos motivos pelos quais esse texto merece ser lido. (shrink)

This paper assesses two different approaches to inner speech that can be found in the literature. One of them regards inner speech as a vehicle of conscious thought. The other holds that inner speech is better characterised as an activity derived from social uses of its outer counterpart. In this paper I focus on the explanatory power of each approach to account for the control of attention and behaviour in the context of executive tasks. I will argue that the vehicle (...) view cannot capture some central cases of inner speech in executive tasks because they cannot be described as cases of bringing thought into consciousness. Then I will offer a revised version of the activity view and I will apply it to some examples so as to show that it is better posited to account for them. I end by considering two objections to the activity view and a possible way to address them. (shrink)

From virtue ethics and interactionist perspectives, we hypothesized that personal justice norms (distributive and procedural justice norms) were shaped directly and multiplicatively by ethical dispositions (equity sensitivity and need for structure) and ethical climates (egoistic, benevolent, and principle climates). We collected multisource data from 123 companies in Hong Kong, with personal factors assessed by participants’ self-reports and contextual factors by aggregations of their peers. In general, LISREL analyses with latent product variables supported the direct and multiplicative relationships. Our findings could (...) lay the groundwork for justice research from a morality perspective in future. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss two different metaethical challenges based on population ethical impossibility results. According to the anti-realist challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the existence of objective moral facts. According to the skeptical challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the reliability of our moral intuitions. My aim is to systematically explore and evaluate these challenges. In addition to clarifying the issues, I argue that population ethical impossibility results do not in fact support any anti-realist (...) or skeptical conclusions. (shrink)

This paper explores the metaethical ramifications of a coarse-grained criterion of property identity, sometimes referred to as Hume's dictum. According to Hume's dictum, properties are identical if and only if they are necessarily co-extensive. Assuming the supervenience of the normative on the natural, this criterion threatens the non-naturalist view that there are instantiable normative properties which are distinct from natural properties. In response, non-naturalists typically point to various counterintuitive implications of Hume's dictum. The paper clarifies this strategy and defends it (...) against objections by Bart Streumer and Ralf Bader. In addition, it is argued that proponents of naturalist and supernaturalist views, along with proponents of a certain kind of nihilism, should also reject Hume's dictum. This shows that non-naturalists can also attack the criterion indirectly, by pointing to partners in guilt. Also, it shows that not just any opponent of non-naturalism can appeal to Hume's dictum. Only certain nihilists can. (shrink)

Intellectualist theories attempt to assimilate know how to propositional knowledge and, in so doing, fail to properly explain the close relation know how bears to action. I develop here an anti-intellectualist theory that is warranted, I argue, because it best accounts for the difference between know how and mere “armchair knowledge.” Know how is a mental state characterized by a certain world-to-mind direction of fit (though it is non-motivational) and attendant functional role. It is essential of know how, but not (...) propositional knowledge, that it makes possible performance errors and has the functional role of guiding action. The theory is attractive, in part, because it allows for propositional, non-propositional and perhaps even non-representational varieties of know how. (shrink)

Ces etudes debordent le probleme du temps chez les Stoiciens et se proposent d'etablir que cette question, en apparence modeste, permet d'eclairer, et en meme temps commande l'ensemble du systeme. Au premier abord en effet, la theorie du temps se presente comme une simple section d'un chapitre de la Physique, celui qui traite des Incorporels. Mais deja la simple interpretation des textes transmis fait voir que cette theorie tient etroitement a d'autres theories, comme celle des incorporels en general, des categories, (...) de la substance. Abordant ensuite les theses majeures de la logique et de l'ethique, on s'apercoit qu'a leur tour elles sont solidaires de la conception du temps qui, dans bien des cas, fait evanouir leur apparence de paradoxe. A cela meme, il n'y a rien d'etrange, si l'on se souvient que le stoicisme, plus que tout autre philosophie antique, constitue un systeme coherent. Mais plus particulierement, le probleme du temps a du former comme le noeud de la reflexion stoicienne qui vise, contre les lourdes autorites de Platon et d'Aristote, a retablir dans sa realite et dans sa dignite, le concret, le sensible, disqualifie comme sujet a la generation et a la corruption, c'est-a-dire, en un mot, comme l'etre dans le temps. (shrink)

Actions are uncontroversially public. However, the prevailing model of explanation in the debate about the de se seems to conflict with this fact by proposing agent-specific explanations that yield agent-specific types of action—i.e. types of action that no two agents can instantiate. Remarkably, this point affects both proponents and critics of the de se. In this paper, I present this kind of problem, characterise the proper level of analysis for action explanation compatible with the publicity of action—i.e. the agent-bound level—and (...) suggest that acknowledgement of this level highlights two important amendments of contemporary views. First, sceptics must accept that, when explanation is attitude-involving, the attitudes mentioned in the explanation of action must refer to the agent. Secondly, and perhaps more surprisingly, proponents of the de se should seek for accounts of de se attitudes that are not confined to a specific agent and are, therefore, sharable across agents. (shrink)

Hyperbolic geometry can be axiomatized using the notions of order andcongruence (as in Euclidean geometry) or using the notion of incidencealone (as in projective geometry). Although the incidence-based axiomatizationmay be considered simpler because it uses the single binary point-linerelation of incidence as a primitive notion, we show that it issyntactically more complex. The incidence-based formulation requires some axioms of the quantifier-type \forall\exists\forall, while the axiom system based on congruence and order can beformulated using only \forall\exists-axioms.

As with the development of several logical notions, it is shown that the concept of resource-consciousness, i. e. the concern over the number of times that a given sentence is used in the proof of another sentence, has its origin in the foundations of geometry, pre-dating its appearence in logical circles as BCK-logic or affine logic.

In this paper we provide quantifier-free, constructive axiomatizations for several fragments of plane Euclidean geometry over Euclidean fields, such that each axiom contains at most 4 variables. The languages in which they are expressed contain only at most ternary operations. In some precisely defined sense these axiomatizations are the simplest possible.

Ever since John Perry's developments in the late 70s, it is customary among philosophers to take de se contents as essentially tied to the explanation of action. The target explanation appeals to a subject-specific notion of de se content capable of capturing behavioural differences in central cases. But a subject-specific de se content leads us, I argue, to a subject-specific notion of intentional action that prevents basic forms of generalisation. Although this might be seen as a welcome revision of our (...) pre-theoretical conceptions, I propose, instead, a strategy to circumvent this rather unexpected result: to reject subject-specific de se contents in favour of subject-specific ways of thinking that do not enter into the content of one's attitudes. (shrink)

To date, much of the current research has focused on examining the direct relationships between the components of the fraud triangle theory and fraud intention. However, limited empirical studies have explored the mediating effects of rationalization and opportunity. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to examine the mediating role of rationalization and opportunity on the direct relationship between pressure and fraud intention, as well as the relationship between pressure and opportunity. A sample of 166 managers participated in the (...) study, and partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed model and hypotheses. Results showed that pressure was positively related to both rationalization and fraud intention. Moreover, the relationship between pressure and fraud intention was found to be partially mediated by both rationalization and opportunity. Similarly, rationalization was also found to partially mediate the relationship between pressure and opportunity. These findings suggest that pressure can increase fraud intention directly, as well as indirectly through rationalization and opportunity. This study contributes to the current literature by shedding light on the interplay among the three key components of the fraud triangle theory and their effects on fraud intention. The study provides valuable insights for relevant stakeholders, both theoretically and practically. (shrink)