This paper articulates and defends a novel hybrid account of well-being. We will call our view a Robust Hybrid. We call it robust because it grants a broad and not subservient role to both objective and subjective values. In this paper we assume, we think plausibly but without argument, that there is a significant objective component to well-being. Here we clarify what it takes for an account of well-being to have a subjective component. Roughly, we argue, it (...) must allow that favoring attitudes that are not warranted by the lights of objective values can ground benefits. Given this understanding, we show that there is an important and unrecognized expansion in the resources available to fully objectivist views: namely that such views can help themselves to the value of warranted love of objective goods. Such a move by the objectivist can help them respond to concerns that, on their view, a person’s well-being can be too alien to them. We next argue that, nonetheless, such objectivist views are still unconvincing due to their lack of a subjective component. This motivates a move from fully objective accounts to hybrid accounts. We show that many prominent hybrid theories in the literature are inadequate because they implausibly minimize the subjective component. This motivates a move to a robust hybrid view that has an expanded subjectivist component. We conclude with some remarks about the interrelation between the subjective and objective components in the hybrid account that we favor and a role for resonance in a theory of well-being other than serving as a hard constraint on any benefit. (shrink)

This chapter discusses two different issues about the relationship between legal positivism and robust normativity (understood as the most authoritative kind of normativity to which we appeal). First, the chapter argues that, in many contexts when discussing “legal positivism” and “legal antipositivism”, the discussion should be shifted from whether legal facts are ultimately partly grounded in moral facts to whether they are ultimately partly grounded in robustly normative facts. Second, the chapter explores an important difference within the kinds of (...) arguments that legal philosophers give for the (purported) truth of legal positivism. The difference concerns whether (purportedly) robustly normative facts are appealed to as premises in those arguments or not. (A closely connected issue is whether (purportedly) normative facts that bear one or more important connections to robustly normative facts are appealed to in premises to those arguments.) The chapter argues that thinking about this dividing line helps people better situate the positivist/antipositivist dispute, better understand the space of views in legal philosophy, better evaluate those views, and avoid having merely verbal disputes. (shrink)

The notion that a false positive (false conviction) is worse than a false negative (false acquittal) is a deep-seated commitment in the theory of criminal law. Its most illustrious formulation, the so-called Blackstone’s ratio, affirms that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”. Are people’s evaluations of criminal statutes consitent with this tenet of the Western legal tradition? To answer this question, we conducted three experiments (total _N_ = 2492) investigating how people reason about (...) a particular class of offenses—proxy crimes—known to vary in their specificity and sensitivity in predicting actual crime. By manipulating the extent to which proxy crimes convict the innocent and acquit those guilty of a target offense, we uncovered evidence that attitudes toward proxy criminalization depend primarily on its propensity toward false positives, with false negatives exerting a substantially weaker effect. This tendency arose across multiple experimental conditions—whether we matched the rates of false positives and false negatives or their frequencies, whether information was presented visually or numerically, and whether decisions were made under time pressure or after a forced delay—and was unrelated to participants’ probability literacy or their professed views on the purpose of criminal punishment. Despite the observed inattentiveness to false negatives, when asked to justify their decisions, participants retrospectively supported their judgments by highlighting the proxy crime’s efficacy (or inefficacy) in combating crime. These results reveal a striking inconsistency: people favor criminal policies that protect the rights of the innocent, but report comparable concern for their expediency in fighting crime. (shrink)

The article presents an agent-based model of scientific interaction aimed at examining how different degrees of connectedness of scientists impact their efficiency in knowledge acquisition. The model is built on the basis of Zollman’s ABM by changing some of its idealizing assumptions that concern the representation of the central notions underlying the model: epistemic success of the rivalling scientific theories, scientific interaction and the assessment in view of which scientists choose theories to work on. Our results suggest that (...) whether and to what extent the degree of connectedness of a scientific community impacts its efficiency is a highly context-dependent matter since different conditions deem strikingly different results. More generally, we argue that simplicity of ABMs may come at a price: the requirement to run extensive robustness analysis before we can specify the adequate target phenomenon of the model.1 1Introduction2Zollman's 2010 Model3Static versus Dynamic Epistemic Success 3.1Introducing the notion of dynamic epistemic success3.2Implementation and results for the basic setup4Critical Interaction 4.1Introducing critique4.2Implementation and results5Inertia of Inquiry 5.1Introducing rational inertia5.2Implementation and results6Threshold Below Which Theories Are Equally Promising 6.1An inquiry that is even more difficult6.2Implementation and results7Discussion8Conclusion. (shrink)

In the past generation, various philosophers have been concerned with the so-called “placement problem” for naturalism. The problem has taken on the shorthand alliteration of the 4Ms, since Mind/Mentality, Meaning, Morality, and Modality/Mathematics are four important phenomena that are difficult to place within orthodox construals of naturalism, typified by physicalism and a methodological preference for ways of knowing associated with the natural sciences. In this paper I highlight the importance of temporality to this ostensibly forced choice between naturalism and the (...) 4Ms, and then reframe the problem by advocating a temporal naturalism rather than the atemporal versions that remain the orthodoxy. In short, I argue in Section 1 that scientific naturalism is standardly atemporal in outlook and in philosophical presuppositions, in Section 2 that temporality is a fundamental condition for each of the 4Ms (drawing on insights from classical phenomenology), and hence the intransigence of the dilemma. Instead of accepting this construal, in Section 3 I outline a temporal naturalism that owes more to biology than to physics (and hence more to Peter Godfrey-Smith than Huw Price), where we also see temporally dependent “points of view” in incipient biological forms, and where the norms surrounding explanation are less nomological and reductive in orientation. (shrink)

Bradford Skow’s Objective Becoming (2015) is a strikingly original and philosophically rich contribution to contemporary philosophy of time. The book rewards very careful study, and is surely a ‘must-read’ for anyone with an interest in current debates concerning time and change. Perhaps the most immediately compelling aspect of the book is its leading question: if I [Skow] didn’t already accept the ‘block universe theory’ (BU),1 which theory of time would I defend? Skow’s surprising (and, from my perspective, welcome!) answer is (...) that he would defend some version of the Moving Spotlight Theory (MST). However, Skow’s reason for this answer is less familiar: it is that MST—unlike BU and its popular rival Presentism—‘contains robust passage’. Skow goes on to (quite convincingly, in my view) defend two versions of MST against a number of common objections: ‘MST-Supertense’ and ‘MST-Time’. In the first part of this paper (§1), I investigate the question of what it is for a theory to contain robust passage in Skow’s sense. In particular, I argue that given Skow’s arguments in favour of robust passage, he should probably not count MST-Time as a theory that contains robust passage. I also argue that there are better reasons to reject BU than those Skow describes. In the second part of the paper (§2), I focus on Skow’s MST-Supertense. I argue that there are reasons for MSTers to reject MST-Supertense in favour of a more ‘traditional’ version of MST (the view I call ‘Classic MST’). (shrink)

It is a core feature of the conception of freedom as non-domination that freedom requires the absence of exposure to arbitrary power across a range of relevant possible worlds. While this modal robustness is critical to the analysis of paradigm cases of unfreedom such as slavery, critics such as Gerald Gaus have argued that it leads to absurd conclusions, with barely-felt constraints appearing as sources of unfreedom. I aim to clarify the demands of the modal robustness requirement, and offer a (...) reinterpretation of its place in the conceptual framework of freedom as non-domination. I illustrate this point through a discussion of low-probability threats of interference which are central to Gaus’s critique, which I term ‘distant threats’. I argue that those committed to robust conceptions of freedom should still be concerned by these kinds of threats, which will sometimes constitute genuine sources of unfreedom. But rather than leading to absurd conclusions, we should instead view them as diagnostic of deficiencies within existing regimes of non-domination. The challenge posed by distant threats of domination to the republican conception of freedom does not prove it implausible, but illustrates some of its most important insights about the social and economic conditions of free status, and the fragility of that freedom. (shrink)

This paper concerns the recent revival of entity realism. Having been started with the work of Ian Hacking, Nancy Cartwright and Ronald Giere, the project of entity realism has recently been developed by Matthias Egg, Markus Eronen, and Bence Nanay. The paper opens a dialogue among these recent views on entity realism and integrates them into a more advanced view. The result is an epistemological criterion for reality: the property-tokens of a certain type may be taken as real insofar (...) as only they can be materially inferred from the evidence obtained in a variety of independent ways of detection. (shrink)

BackgroundHuman infection studies (HIS) are valuable in vaccine development. Deliberate infection, however, creates challenging questions, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) where HIS are new and ethical challenges may be heightened. Consultation with stakeholders is needed to support contextually appropriate and acceptable study design. We examined stakeholder perceptions about the acceptability and ethics of HIS in Malawi, to inform decisions about planned pneumococcal challenge research and wider understanding of HIS ethics in LMICs.MethodsWe conducted 6 deliberative focus groups and 15 (...) follow-up interviews with research staff, medical students, and community representatives from rural and urban Blantyre. We also conducted 5 key informant interviews with clinicians, ethics committee members, and district health government officials.ResultsStakeholders perceived HIS research to have potential population health benefits, but they also had concerns, particularly related to the safety of volunteers and negative community reactions. Acceptability depended on a range of conditions related to procedures for voluntary and informed consent, inclusion criteria, medical care or support, compensation, regulation, and robust community engagement. These conditions largely mirror those in existing guidelines for HIS and biomedical research in LMICs. Stakeholder perceptions pointed to potential tensions, for example, balancing equity, safety, and relevance in inclusion criteria.ConclusionsOur findings suggest HIS research could be acceptable in Malawi, provided certain conditions are in place. Ongoing assessment of participant experiences and stakeholder perceptions will be required to strengthen HIS research during development and roll-out. (shrink)

Proponents of environmentalist views often urge the teaching of such views and the inculcation of ‘green’ values within the educational curriculum of schools as a key component of achieving their ends. It might seem that modern versions of political morality that refuse to take a stance on controversial questions—religious, ethical, philosophical—or eschew appeal to perfectionist doctrines, such as Rawlsian political liberalism, are beset by a particularly acute difficulty in this regard. To the extent that environmentalist views embody claims about ethical (...) matters such as how individuals should live their lives, they fall foul of this version of political morality. This article evaluates the resources available to political liberalism to respond to the challenge of bringing the teaching of green values and virtues within the national curriculum. It argues that environmental concerns differ in morally important ways from other ethical, philosophical, and religious views that are typically off-limits to political liberalism. Much that passes as green ideals are not simply a conception of the good life in the manner that religious views, for example, are. Rather, many environmental goods are crucial to the realisation of socioeconomic justice and therefore escape the requirement of state neutrality on endorsing the truth or importance of their role. A minimal political liberal education includes teaching about justice-based concerns as part of a compulsory national curriculum. (shrink)

While much has been written on love, the question of how romantic love differs from friendship love has only rarely been addressed. This chapter focuses on shedding some light on this question. I begin by considering goal-oriented approaches to love. These approaches, I argue, have the resources needed to account for the differences between friendship love and romantic love. But purely goal-oriented accounts fail on account of their utilitarian gloss of our loved ones. Even when they circumvent this criticism, they (...) make the mistake of conflating the motivational tendencies of love for its constitutive characteristics. I then turn my attention to David Velleman's account of love as a moral emotion but argue that his view lacks the resources to account for the differences between romantic love and friendship love. I then go on to sketch a socially situated account of love that does better in this respect. I conclude by reflecting on the normativity of love. (shrink)

I argue against a growing radical trend in current theoretical cognitive science that moves from the premises of embedded cognition, embodied cognition, dynamical systems theory and/or situated robotics to conclusions either to the effect that the mind is not in the brain or that cognition does not require representation, or both. I unearth the considerations at the foundation of this view: Haugeland's bandwidth-component argument to the effect that the brain is not a component in cognitive activity, and arguments inspired (...) by dynamical systems theory and situated robotics to the effect that cognitive activity does not involve representations. Both of these strands depend not only on a shift of emphasis from higher cognitive functions to things like sensorimotor processes, but also depend on a certain understanding of how sensorimotor processes are implemented - as closed-loop control systems. I describe a much more sophisticated model of sensorimotor processing that is not only more powerful and robust than simple closed-loop control, but for which there is great evidence that it is implemented in the nervous system. The is the emulation theory of representation, according to which the brain constructs inner dynamical models, or emulators, of the body and environment which are used in parallel with the body and environment to enhance motor control and perception and to provide faster feedback during motor processes, and can be run off-line to produce imagery and evaluate sensorimotor counterfactuals. I then show that the emulation framework is immune to the radical arguments, and makes apparent why the brain is a component in the cognitive activity, and exactly what the representations are in sensorimotor control. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on two claims, put forward by Feyerabend in his later writings , which constitute the metaphysical core of his view of scientific inquiry. The first, that we call the pliability thesis, is the claim that the world can be described by indefinitely many conceptual systems, none of them enjoying a privileged status. The second, that we call the resistance thesis, is the claim that the pliability of the world is limited, i.e., not all the (...) different conceptual systems that can be used to describe the world will be equally successful: the world offers resistance to some attempts to describe it. We show that, in spite of the later Feyerabend’s notorious antirealist leanings, the pliability thesis is fully compatible with a robustly realist view of science, and we suggest that, surprisingly, Feyerabend’s insights concerning the limited pliability of the world turn out to be those of a potential ally of sophisticated versions of scientific realism. (shrink)

From an evolutionary point of view, the function of moral behaviour may be to secure a good reputation as a co‐operator. The best way to do so may be to obey genuine moral motivations. Still, one's moral reputation maybe something too important to be entrusted just to one's moral sense. A robust concern for one's reputation is likely to have evolved too. Here we explore some of the complex relationships between morality and reputation both from an evolutionary (...) and a cognitive point of view. (shrink)

From an evolutionary point of view, the function of moral behaviour may be to secure a good reputation as a co-operator. The best way to do so may be to obey genuine moral motivations. Still, one's moral reputation maybe something too important to be entrusted just to one's moral sense. A robust concern for one's reputation is likely to have evolved too. Here we explore some of the complex relationships between morality and reputation both from an evolutionary (...) and a cognitive point of view. (shrink)

Legality is a monograph scoring distinct contributions across the board of jurisprudential discourse. Among the most prominent arguments marshalled in this book is an impressively robust defence of reductionism about legal norms. The concept of a plan is invoked in the service of delivering a formidable task, that of disembarrassing the legal philosopher of the quest for what makes legal norms metaphysically distinct. The answer is simple, yet relies on an intricate chain of arguments: talk of legal norms is (...) just a linguistic convention for referring to a metaphysically more versatile kind of object, namely, plans. This essay aims to record and evaluate the metaphysical implications of this reductionist turn. More precisely, it shall locate two defensible, yet sharply divergent, variants of plan positivism which Shapiro’s dense analysis appears to conflate at the expense of his theory’s explanatory ambitions. The concern this essay intends to raise regards an... (shrink)

In a (2016) paper in this journal, I defuse allegations that theoretical ecological research is problematic because it relies on teleological metaphysical assumptions. Mark Sagoff offers a formal reply. In it, he concedes that I succeeded in establishing that ecologists abandoned robust teleological views long ago and that they use teleological characterizations as metaphors that aid in developing mechanistic explanations of ecological phenomena. Yet, he contends that I did not give enduring criticisms of theoretical ecology a fair shake in (...) my paper. He says this is because enduring criticisms center on concerns about the nature of ecological networks and forces, the instrumentality of ecological laws and theoretical models, and the relation between theoretical and empirical methods in ecology that that paper does not broach. Below I set apart the distinct criticisms Sagoff presents in his commentary and respond to each in turn. (shrink)

Loving another person requires that we set that person apart from others, but morality is often thought to require that we view everyone as equally important. I argue that two approaches to the nature of love, robust concern and special perception, both miss crucial aspects of loving relationships: sensitivity to the beloveds attitude as well as the lover’s. Shared history as a necessary condition of loving relationships addresses these problems, and points the way to more productive analysis (...) of conflicts between loving relationships and impartiality. (shrink)

Current views of the control of complex, purposeful movements acknowledge that organizational processes must reconcile multiple concerns. The central priority is of course accomplishing the actor's goal. But in specifying the manner in which this occurs, the action plan must accommodate such factors as the interaction of mechanical forces associated with the motion of a multilinked system (classical mechanics) and, in many cases, intrinsic bias toward preferred movement patterns, characterized by so‐called “coordination dynamics.” The most familiar example of the latter (...) is the symmetry constraint, where spatial trajectories and/or temporal landmarks (e.g., reversal points) of concurrentlymoving body segments (limbs, digits, etc.) exhibit mutual attraction. The natural coordination tendencies that emerge through these constraints can facilitate or hinder motor control, depending on the degree of congruency with the desired movement pattern. Motor control theorists have long recognized the role of classical mechanics in theories of movement organization, but an appreciation of the importance of intrinsic interlimb bias has been gained only recently.Although detailed descriptions of temporal coordination dynamics have been provided, systematic attempts to identify additional salient dimensions of interlimb constraint have been lacking. We develop and implement here a novel method for examining this problem by exploiting two robust principles of psychomotor behavior, the symmetry constraint and the Two‐Thirds Power Law. Empirical evidence is provided that the relative spatial patterns of concurrently moving limbs are naturally constrained in much the same manner as previously identified temporal constraints and, further, that apparent velocity interference is an indirect, secondary consequence of primary spatial assimilation. The theoretical implications of spatial interference are elaborated with respect to movement organization and motor learning. The need to carefully consider the appropriate dimensions with which to characterize coordination dynamics is also discussed. (shrink)

Robust technological enhancement of core cognitive capacities is now a realistic possibility. From the perspective of neutralism, the view that justifications for public policy should be neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good, only members of a subset of the ethical concerns serve as legitimate justifications for public policy regarding robust technological enhancement. This paper provides a framework for the legitimate use of ethical concerns in justifying public policy decisions regarding these enhancement technologies by evaluating the ethical (...) concerns that arise in the context of testing such technologies on nonhuman animals. Traditional issues in bioethics, as well as novel concerns such as the possibility of moral status enhancement, are evaluated from the perspective of neutralism. (shrink)

Current views of the control of complex, purposeful movements acknowledge that organizational processes must reconcile multiple concerns. The central priority is of course accomplishing the actor's goal. But in specifying the manner in which this occurs, the action plan must accommodate such factors as the interaction of mechanical forces associated with the motion of a multilinked system (classical mechanics) and, in many cases, intrinsic bias toward preferred movement patterns, characterized by so-called “coordination dynamics.” The most familiar example of the latter (...) is the symmetry constraint, where spatial trajectories and/or temporal landmarks (e.g., reversal points) of concurrentlymoving body segments (limbs, digits, etc.) exhibit mutual attraction. The natural coordination tendencies that emerge through these constraints can facilitate or hinder motor control, depending on the degree of congruency with the desired movement pattern. Motor control theorists have long recognized the role of classical mechanics in theories of movement organization, but an appreciation of the importance of intrinsic interlimb bias has been gained only recently.Although detailed descriptions of temporal coordination dynamics have been provided, systematic attempts to identify additional salient dimensions of interlimb constraint have been lacking. We develop and implement here a novel method for examining this problem by exploiting two robust principles of psychomotor behavior, the symmetry constraint and the Two-Thirds Power Law. Empirical evidence is provided that the relative spatial patterns of concurrently moving limbs are naturally constrained in much the same manner as previously identified temporal constraints and, further, that apparent velocity interference is an indirect, secondary consequence of primary spatial assimilation. The theoretical implications of spatial interference are elaborated with respect to movement organization and motor learning. The need to carefully consider the appropriate dimensions with which to characterize coordination dynamics is also discussed. (shrink)

There is a robust scientific consensus concerning climate change and evolution. But many people reject these expert views, in favour of beliefs that are strongly at variance with the evidence. It is tempting to try to explain these beliefs by reference to ignorance or irrationality, but those who reject the expert view seem often to be no worse informed or any less rational than the majority of those who accept it. It is also tempting to try to explain (...) these beliefs by reference to epistemic overconfidence. However, this kind of overconfidence is apparently ubiquitous, so by itself it cannot explain the difference between those who accept and those who reject expert views. Instead, I will suggest that the difference is in important part explained by differential patterns of epistemic deference, and these patterns, in turn, are explained by the cues that we use to filter testimony. We rely on cues of benevolence and competence to distinguish reliable from unreliable testifiers, but when debates become deeply politicized, asserting a claim may itself constitute signalling lack of reliability. (shrink)

The Hybrid View endorses utilitarianism about animals and rejects utilitarianism about humans. This view has received relatively little sustained attention in the philosophical literature. Yet, as we show, the Hybrid View underlies many widely held beliefs about zoos, pet ownership, scientific research on animal and human subjects, and agriculture. We develop the Hybrid View in rigorous detail and extract several of its main commitments. Then we examine the Hybrid View in relation to the view (...) that human use of animals constitutes a special relationship. We show that it is intuitively plausible that our use of animals alters our moral obligations to animals. That idea is widely believed to be incompatible with the sort of utilitarian approach in animal ethics that is prescribed by the Hybrid View. To overturn that conventional wisdom, we develop two different principles concerning the moral significance of human use of animals, which we call the Partiality Principle and the Strengthening Principle. We show that the Partiality Principle is consistent with several key commitments of the Hybrid View. And, strikingly, we show that the Strengthening Principle is fully consistent with all of the main commitments of the Hybrid View. Thus we establish the surprising result that utilitarians about animals can coherently offer a robust and intuitively appealing account of the moral significance of animal use. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with neo-Fregean accounts of reference to abstract objects. It develops an objection to the most familiar such accounts, due to Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, based upon what I call the 'proliferation problem': Hale and Wright's account makes reference to abstract objects seem too easy, as is shown by the fact that any equivalence relation seems as good as any other. The paper then develops a response to this objection, and offers an account of what it (...) is for abstracta to exist that is Fregean in spirit but more robust than familiar views. (shrink)

There are currently two robust traditions in philosophy dealing with doxastic attitudes: the tradition that is concerned primarily with all-or-nothing belief, and the tradition that is concerned primarily with degree of belief or credence. This paper concerns the relationship between belief and credence for a rational agent, and is directed at those who may have hoped that the notion of belief can either be reduced to credence or eliminated altogether when characterizing the norms governing ideally rational agents. It presents (...) a puzzle which lends support to two theses. First, that there is no formal reduction of a rational agent’s beliefs to her credences, because belief and credence are each responsive to different features of a body of evidence. Second, that if our traditional understanding of our practices of holding each other responsible is correct, then belief has a distinctive role to play, even for ideally rational agents, that cannot be played by credence. The question of which avenues remain for the credence-only theorist is considered. (shrink)

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with a relaxed form of normative realism. Relaxed realists accept the existence of mind-independent normative truths, properties, and facts, but argue that normative truths do not have truthmakers and that normative properties and facts are not metaphysically robust. The thesis develops relaxed realism by responding to various objections and challenges. The first paper argues that relaxed realists can answer questions about normative language without their theory collapsing into one of the familiar theories in the literature (...) or becoming implausible. More specifically, contrary to Michael Ridge (2019), it argues that relaxed realists can embrace an inferentialist account of normative terms without their theory collapsing into naturalism or quasi-realism. The second paper offers an account of normative belief specifically designed for relaxed realists. It argues that relaxed realists can explain normative belief through a functionalist theory of mind. This proposal not only provides relaxed realists with an explicit explanation of normative belief but also distinguishes it from related theories, notably quasi-realist theories. In doing so, it addresses a previously unresolved dilemma raised by Ridge (2019) and Böddeling (2020) concerning the relaxed realist’s view of normative belief. The third paper clarifies and defends relaxed realism. It justifies the claim that normative truths do not have truthmakers by arguing that these truths are true not because of the existence of truthmaking entities but simply because of the way things are normatively. The fourth paper examines the kind of relaxed realist theory that Scanlon (2014) defends within a “domain-centered view” of existence and truth. The article highlights how this view makes relaxed realism more viable by defending it against objections based on substantive domain-independent ideas, such as the idea that all (synthetic) truths must have truthmakers. Additionally, it presents a distinct argument, different from the one presented in the third paper, to justify the claim that normative truths do not have truthmakers. (shrink)

The computer has increasingly become the principal model for the mind, which means our most basic experience of ""reality"" is as mediated through a screen, or stored in a cloud. As a result, we are losing a sense of the concrete and imposing presence of the real, and the fundamental claim it makes on us, a claim that Iris Murdoch once described as the essence of love. In response to this postmodern predicament, the present book aims to draw on the (...) classical philosophical tradition in order to articulate a robust philosophical anthropology, and a new appreciation of the importance of the ""transcendental properties"" of being: beauty, goodness, and truth. The book begins with a reflection on the importance of metaphysics in our contemporary setting, and then presents the human person's relation to the world under the signs of the transcendentals: beauty is the gracious invitation into reality, goodness is the self-gift of freedom in response to this invitation, and truth is the consummation of our relation to the real in knowledge. The book culminates in an argument for why love is ultimately a matter of being, and why metaphysical reason in indispensable in faith. ""Philosopher D. C. Schindler defies the dragon of modernity, whose dominant thought patterns induce a life- and culture-threatening loss of reality and self. He offers life-giving proposals regarding love, being, and the transcendentals to restore us profoundly to the world and to ourselves as humans. Buy the book--you may divest yourself of others. Digest it, and revel in your already-involvement with a responsive reality--an involvement of intimate encounter and communion; a reality that is love, fraught with beauty, goodness, and truth."" --Esther Lightcap Meek, Geneva College ""Love and the Postmodern Predicament is a treasure trove of philosophical riches. Schindler does not merely indicate the need to return to metaphysics to wrestle successfully with what he carefully and accurately describes as our postmodern predicament, but in fact leads us out of that predicament. His profound and original reflections on love, grounded in the transcendental properties of being, are a radical refashioning of traditional metaphysical principles."" --Jonathan J. Sanford, University of Dallas ""In this rewarding little text, Schindler accomplishes something too rare among works of philosophy: he accommodates a wide audience and yet deftly draws the reader into deep metaphysical waters, into a consideration of some of the most profound and perennial philosophical concerns. Throughout, the timeliness of his reflections on love, beauty, God, and the good remains in clear view. This is a highly recommended work by an author of capacious intellect and generous spirit."" --Lee M. Cole, Hillsdale College D. C. Schindler is Associate Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology at The John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America. He is the author of The Perfection of Freedom: Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel between the Ancients and the Moderns (2013). (shrink)

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

This article addresses questions concerning Enlightenment universalism and cultural diversity by focusing on the views of China held by Pierre Bayle and the Baron de Montesquieu. In contrast to the characterizations of Enlightenment thought as insufficiently attentive to cultural diversity and as providing pretexts for imposing European values on non-European cultures, recent scholarship has sought to uncouple Enlightenment thought from imperialism and colonialism. An examination of the perspectives, positive and negative, of Bayle and Montesquieu on China suggests that Enlightenment thinkers (...) attempted to reconcile ethical universalism and cultural diversity, but also shows the limitations of such attempts. Thus, while dismissals of Enlightenment thought as universalistic and even imperialistic fail to consider Bayle’s and Montesquieu’s subtle engagements with Chinese culture, their accounts of China arguably fall short of being robust cross-cultural or anti-colonial perspectives. (shrink)

My dissertation is concerned with natural kind terms; its most basic goal is to provide a semantic account of the role these play in scientific discourse. Since my broad semantic approach follows Sellars and Brandom in looking to the pragmatically articulated inferential role of sentences rather than their relation to the world, I manage to set aside metaphysical questions regarding the nature of kinds. I begin with an account of the central role played by natural kind terms in theoretical explanation. (...) I show how natural kind terms are essential to the explanatory function of scientific laws as inference licenses of a certain sort. I turn then to the curious fact that natural kind terms occur in multiple grammatical positions: as parts of attributive predicates and as apparently singular referents . This latter role is at times one that seems to involve a quantificational attribution to all members of the kind, but at other times is more robust . My account demonstrates the utility of just such ambiguity to the role played by kind terms in explanation. I go on to account for a number of other puzzling features of natural kind term usage and to explain the distinction between natural kind terms and other sortals on grounds of their distinctive pragmatic significances. I conclude by laying out how my view can be extended to give a semantics for other sorts of kind terms . This allows us to draw a substantial distinction between gerrymandered kind terms and those that our theories should genuinely commit us to, while acknowledging that the entire natural/social divide among the kind terms stands or falls with our ability to show that there is an important fundamental distinction between different sorts of theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 533 Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind. By AMELIE OKSEN· BERG RORTY. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. Pp. x & 378. This volume assembles essays written over a period of fifteen years (1973-1988), dealing with topics grouped into the following four areas: (1) persons and identity, (2) the nature of psychological activities, (3) problems in philosophy of mind such as fear, self-deception and akrasia, and (...) (4) issues of virtue and character in social context. Rorty's approach to these topics is governed by a " commitment to the primacy of the particular" (ix). Her style, consequently, is rich in detail, in the exhibition of differences between related issues (e.g., between personal identity and identity of human being), and in the dis· play of the importance of context for setting the philosophical problems concerning mind. Indeed, she writes: " If there were a great ontological table of contents, neither mind nor individ"Ual minds would be likely to appear on the list of independent substances " (5). Thus the collec· tion does not set out a substantial theory of mind; rather, it exhibits a set of commitments and preoccupations-in the author's words, " a point of view." The value of the collection lies in its wealth of discriminating exposition of intricately related issues, and in the display of a philosophical intellect whose consistency survives the strategic pre· disposition to analyze by distinguishing contexts. The first grouping of essays is "Persons and Personae." The title essay "Persons and Personae" (1987) argues that there is no over· arching synthesis that will reconcile the several concepts of a person. Rorty argues from the premise that any concept of person is rooted in and reflects the characteristic central activities of a society: "primary, privileged activities, the activities that are thought to express human excellence and tasks " (25). This unpacks into three parts: (1) that there is no such thing as the concept of a person; (2) that concepts of persons are always reflective of some particular society; and (3) that the element of a society that defines its concept of self will be its list of central human activities, be they religious, political, economic, or moral in nature. Rorty analyzes seven such concepts, and concludes by eschewing what she calls a "vulgar Wittgensteinian" approach; namely, simply advising philosophers to be cured of the yearning for one metaphysical concept of person. Instead, briefly, she acknowledges that yearning and recommends inquiry into its roots and recommends scrutiny of the various overlapping but uncoordinatable concepts of person in the various areas of life that give rise to them. In "The Transformation of Persons" (1973) she argues that the question " Is this the same person? " may have multiple admissible 534 BOOK REVIEWS answers. The question of personal identity through change has, she argues, typically given rise to either psychological, memory-based criteria, or to criteria based on reidentification of the same physical agent. Her claim is that either of these, pressed hard enough, presupposes the other. She dismisses the potentially dismal construal of this conclusion, holding that a recognition of the interdependence of psychological and physical criteria of identity is in fact beneficial, as both kinds of criteria tend to emphasize our notion of persons as (at least) the "irreducible units of responsible agency " (57). The argumentation supporting this contention of criterial interdependence is, however, thin. In "Persons, Policies, and Bodies" (1973) Rorty moves her concerns further toward the issues of responsibility. She examines the theory that a person is a locus of rational agency, that is, one who operates according to deliberately adopted policies that guide particular choices. She notes that if this theory holds, the concept of a person is conceptually distinct from the concept of an individual human being and from an individuated self as a subject of experience. But it does not hold, according to her, at least in any robust sense. She discloses difficulties in fleshing out the notions of choice and rational agency required by the theory, arguing that attempts to salvage it by resorting to rationality as a matter of degree or as a potential tend to vitiate the theory instead of saving it. Rather, her view is that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Biting the Bullet:The Ethics and Aesthetics of ViolenceJonathan AllenThe Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia, by William Pfaff. New York. Simon & Schuster, 2004, 368 pp.Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag. New York, Picador, 2003, 131 pp.In the nineteenth century a broadly influential branch of Romantic philosophy insisted that goodness and beauty were intimately related. The goals of ethical and aesthetic education were taken to be one (...) and the same—the cultivation of the kalokagathos or "noble-and-beautiful" individual.1 This robust view of the relation between ethical and aesthetic education is now rarely defended; it was dealt a mortal wound by the inconvenient fact that highly cultured or Gebildete individuals have been implicated in the twentieth century's worst political crimes.This does not mean, however, that connections between ethical and aesthetic projects are no longer made. One such attempt to relate ethics and aesthetic—a bleak, somber, and deeply chastened attempt—is presented in the late Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others. In this small but dense book, Sontag assesses the hope that the reproduction of images, especially photographic images, of violence and atrocity might help to abolish war, or at least to play a role in combating genocide or the commission of gross violations of the laws of war. While she evidently wishes to find "an antidote to the perennial seductiveness of war," Sontag is doubtful that photography is equal to this moral burden.2Sontag's work concentrates on the aesthetic and ethical challenges that confront any attempt to convey the horrors of war to uninvolved observers. Her focus is thus trained on an attempt to exorcise what she refers to as the "seductiveness of war"; she is not primarily concerned to identify the source of war's allure (though she does have some interesting observations to make on the issue).3 William Pfaff, by contrast, is both repelled and fascinated by the modern embrace of violence. The Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia offers an enthralling account of the intellectual and aesthetic forces that provoked the feverish modern love affair with violence and war. Pfaff is at least as doubtful as Sontag, however, that that love affair [End Page 100] is over and that we are in a position to forge a more pacific sensibility. Nevertheless, he insists that if we are to have the slightest hope of avoiding a full-scale repetition of the twentieth-century's "carnival of inhumanity," we need to understand the nature of its romance with violence.So how did that romance come about? The central theme of The Bullet's Song is the consequences of the loss of "chivalry." This, according to Pfaff, was a code that "held that what an individual or society could licitly do to another was limited by a morality linked to the essential values of Western civilization."4 Within this framework, it was expected that states would sometimes go to war with one another, but war was seen merely as an extreme means of settling disputes, not of eliminating entire societies or remaking the world. For individuals, war was presented as "a test of valor, rewarded by 'honor'"—in other words, it was seen as an occasion to test oneself in the light of a set of ideals of conduct that operated as constraints on permissible behavior in war.5 All of this came to a sticky end in the trenches of World War I, replaced by a morally nihilistic idea of total war. Pfaff claims that this moral vacuum proved intolerable to many individuals. They reacted in several different ways. Some attempted to construct "codes of individual transcendence" and "collective will," while others gave themselves over to "utopias based on historical fictions."6This is a very large story, and it is in fact too bulky for the confines of this book. First, it must be said that Pfaff fails to present his central claims clearly. He is unclear, for example, as to exactly what was lost with the destruction of the chivalric code, as well as what caused its destruction. At times, he seems to be suggesting that the rise of... (shrink)

The field of the philosophy of biology is flourishing in its aim to evaluate and rethink the view inherited from the previous century ---the Modern Synthesis. Different research areas and theories have come to the fore in the last decades in order to account for different biological phenomena that, in the first instance, fall beyond the explanatory scope of the Modern Synthesis. This thesis is anchored and motivated by this revolt in the philosophy of biology. -/- The central target (...) in this context is the possibility of naturalizing teleology, a classical nightmare for the history of biology itself. This requires, principally, understanding the causes of teleological explanations without assuming an unfashioned backward causation of sorts. As the riddles of teleological explanations are about their temporal dimension, I analyze different temporal scales of biological processes: evolutionary, developmental, and physiological. -/- The first one is the one defended in the context of the Modern Synthesis. As expected, one of the aims of this thesis is to evaluate the adequacy of an evolutionary account of teleological explanation. The scrutiny is negative. Evolutionary explanations in the context of the Modern Synthesis lack the necessary causal roots to naturalize teleology. Concerning the physiological scale, a long tradition pushed up by Kant and the organicist movement in the 20th century allows us to better understand how teleological explanations can be naturalized in physiological process. The key notions in this temporal scale are self-organization and the recursive, looped character of physiological process. While the physiological scale may be suitably accounted by contemporaries views, such as Autonomous Systems Theory, different central teleological phenomena remain unexplained from a purely physiological perspective. In particular, different issues concerning the (adaptive) construction of organism ---such as plasticity, robustness, variation, novelty, inheritance--- deserve an ontogenetic analysis. -/- The principal aim of this thesis is to provide a theory of teleological development that falls beyond the Modern Synthesis' framework and is prompted by different insights from the history of biology. I call it Agential Teleosemantics. It rests on two central pillars. First, that developmental processes, beyond any gene-centered stance, can be understood in informational terms; i.e. developmental processes are about the interaction of developmental resources conveying biological information. The second ingredient is agentivity, namely the idea that development is regulated by an agentive system according to the adaptiveness of the phenotypic outcomes produced. The role of agency in Agential Teleosemantic is equivalent to the role of genes in the Modern Synthesis: it is responsible for explaining the order and the adaptive complexity in the living realm. -/- The second target of this thesis regards the possibility of naturalizing intentional explanations in cognitive science. The central project involved in such an aim is known as teleosemantics. Classical teleosemantics however is etiological: it explains the teleofunctions of representational systems in terms of evolutionary processes. The different disputes in the contemporary philosophy of biology provide two insights to analyze teleosemantics in cognitive science. First, the challenges against the Modern Synthesis must be extended to the evolutionary approach of etiological teleosemantics. Second, as Agential Teleosemantics suggests an alternative source for teleofunctions ---ontogeny, I offer an attempt to integrate Agential Teleosemantics into cognitive science in order to provide an alternative teleosemantic project to understand intentional explanations in cognitive science. (shrink)

Objective: To determine the views of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and professionals in relation to confidentiality, consent and access to data within a proposed MS register in the UK. Design: Qualitative study using focus groups (10) and interviews (13). Setting: England and Northern Ireland. Participants: 68 people with MS, neurologists, MS nurses, health services management professionals, researchers, representatives from pharmaceutical companies and social care professionals. Results: People with MS expressed open and altruistic views towards the use of their personal (...) information to facilitate service provision and research, placing trust in responsible guardianship and legitimate use of their information. Participant’s proposed that people with MS should be able to select their individual level of involvement in a register using levels of consent. It was agreed that access to the register should be governed by a guardianship committee composed of a range of stakeholders. People with MS did not wish their details to be used by marketing agencies and did not consider this a legitimate use of their data. Whilst participants were positive of the role a register could play in promoting research, participants felt that access to data by pharmaceutical industries should be administered by the guardianship committee. People with MS are concerned should their employers be able to access their personal information. Professionals were more cautious than people with MS in their approach to the use of patient personal data within a register. Conclusions: Whilst all stakeholders were positive of the benefits of an MS register, development of such a resource must incorporate robust data security and guardianship measures in order to ensure that, whilst opportunities are maximised, risks to the privacy of individuals and legal challenges to professionals are avoided. (shrink)

I Introduction The question of this paper is, what would it be to act with freedom of the will? What kind of control is inchoately in view when we speak, pretheoretically, of being ‘self- determining’ beings, of ‘freely making choices in view of consciously considered reasons’ (pro and con) - of its being ‘up to us’ how we shall act? My question here is not whether we have (or have any reason to think we have) such freedom, or (...) what is the most robust account of our freedom compatible with late twentieth-century science. Many contemporary philosophers are all too ready to settle for a deflationary account of freedom and declare victory, with some brief remarks reminding us that we were created a little lower than the angels. I am not so sanguine about the ability of such accounts to leave reasonably intact our judgments about human autonomy, dignity, and responsibility. But, as I’ve said, that’s not my concern here. Instead, I want to revisit the question of what exactly ‘self-determination’, on our ordinary conception, comes to. (shrink)

For a long time before the ‘climategate’ emails scandal of late 2009 which cast doubt on the propriety of science underpinning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, attention to climate change science and policy has focused solely upon the truth or falsity of the proposition that human behaviour is responsible for serious global risks from anthropogenic climate change. This article places such propositional concerns in the perspective of a different understanding of the relationships between scientific knowledge and public policy issues (...) from the conventional ‘translation’ model, in which prior scientific research and understanding is communicated and translated into corresponding policies — or not, if it remains disputed and overly uncertain. Explaining some of the key contingencies and bases for uncertainty in IPCC climate projections and human influences, I show how social and technical analysis of climate science is not about denial of the scientific propositional claims at issue, but about understanding the conditional and essentially ambiguous epistemic character of any such knowledge, however technically sophisticated and robust it may be. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is entirely plausible that existing scientific representations of climate change and its human causes may understate the risks induced by prevailing social-economic processes rather than exaggerate them. As the article shows, the public meanings given to climate science, and to ‘the climate problem’, and thus also the public culture which that knowledge is supposed to inform, are themselves already in key respects presumed and imposed by the science and its framing. This gives rise to perverse effects on public readiness to take informed democratic responsibility for ‘the global climate problem’, and associated cross-cutting issues which existing scientific framings of public policy erase from view. (shrink)

A long-standing concern (or at least a belief) about ESP, held by both skeptics and believers in the paranormal, is that if telepathy really occurs, then it might pose a threat to mental privacy. And it’s easy enough to see what motivates that view. Presumably we like to think that we enjoy privileged access to our own mental states. But if others could come to know telepathically what we’re thinking or feeling, then (among other disquieting prospects) that would (...) mean that our sins of the heart and most embarrassing or repulsive fleeting thoughts would potentially be available for public inspection. But how well-founded is that belief or concern? To get a grip on the issues, we should begin by considering the valuable distinction (perhaps first mentioned by C.D. Broad--Broad, 1953, 1962) between telepathic (or clairvoyant) cognition and telepathic (or clairvoyant) interaction. As you would expect, every instance of the former would be an instance of the latter, but the converse doesn’t hold—that is, ESP interaction may occur without ESP cognition. To see why this matters, we must take a closer look. If telepathic cognition occurs at all, it would presumably be a form of non-sensorial knowledge about another individual’s state of mind. More specifically, it would be a state of affairs in which so-called “percipient” A comes to know something about a telepathic interaction A has with another individual B. And what kind of things might A telepathically come to know? Well, presumably, in its most robust (and most intrusively intimidating) form, A would learn what’s going on in B’s mind—that is, that B is having certain thoughts, perceptions, or emotions. But it would still be an instance of telepathic cognition—admittedly, less intimidating or threatening to one’s mental privacy—if A learned merely that B was the telepathic cause of A’s current thought or experience—that is, that B was directly influencing or interfering with A’s stream of consciousness, whether or not A’s resulting thoughts or experiences were those of B or known by A to be those of B. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of the phenomenon that has come to be known as ‘moral luck’ have either dismissed it as illusory or touted it as the evidence for doubting the probative value of our commitment to certain widely avowed views concerning interpersonal assessments of responsibility. In this discussion, we present a third, distinctive interpretation of the moral luck phenomenon. Drawing upon empirically robust results from psychological studies of judgment bias, we argue that the phenomenon of moral luck is demonstrably not (...) illusory. What we suggest, however, is that the phenomenon ought not to be taken to countenance doubts about the standards generally taken to be regulative of assessments of interpersonal responsibility. Rather, its significance lies in foregrounding certain generally unacknowledged obstacles we face in the process of conclusively applying general valid moral standards in making specific judgments of responsibility and desert.1. (shrink)

Andrew Sayer undertakes a fundamental critique of social science's difficulties in acknowledging that people's relation to the world is one of concern. As sentient beings, capable of flourishing and suffering, and particularly vulnerable to how others treat us, our view of the world is substantially evaluative. Yet modernist ways of thinking encourage the common but extraordinary belief that values are beyond reason, and merely subjective or matters of convention, with little or nothing to do with the kind of (...) beings people are, the quality of their social relations, their material circumstances or well-being. The author shows how social theory and philosophy need to change to reflect the complexity of everyday ethical concerns and the importance people attach to dignity. He argues for a robustly critical social science that explains and evaluates social life from the standpoint of human flourishing. (shrink)

The central virtue at issue in recent philosophical discussions of the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics has been the virtue of compassion. Opponents of virtue ethics such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that experimental results from social psychology concerning helping behavior are best explained not by appealing to so-called ‘global’ character traits like compassion, but rather by appealing to external situational forces or, at best, to highly individualized ‘local’ character traits. In response, a number of philosophers have argued (...) that virtue ethics can accommodate the empirical results in question. My own view is that neither side of this debate is looking in the right direction. For there is an impressive array of evidence from the social psychology literature which suggests that many people do possess one or more robust global character traits pertaining to helping others in need. But at the same time, such traits are noticeably different from a traditional virtue like compassion. (shrink)

This paper describes Heidegger as a robust scientific realist, explains why his view has received such conflicting treatment, and concludes that the special significance of his position lies in his insistence upon linking the discussion of science to the question of its relation with technology. It shows that Heidegger, rather than accepting the usual forced option between realism and antirealism, advocates a realism in which he embeds the antirealist thesis that the idea of reality independent of human understanding (...) is unintelligible. This reading is defended against Rorty's antirealist interpretation, as well as Dreyfus' depiction of him as a deflationary realist, and his assessment of background realism is contrasted with Fine's. Further, the robustness of Heidegger's realism is laid out across several texts from 1912 to 1976, in order to show that he is neither an instrumental realist nor an internal realist. Finally, the point is made that the development of his view concerning realism gives rise to a critique of objectivity that is now being similarly advocated by numerous thinkers from a variety of disciplines, and that this critique is inevitably ethical and political. (shrink)

We aggregate different dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities following the stakeholder framework proposed in Clarkson (Acad Manag Rev 20(1), 92–117, 1995) and present consistent evidence that CSR strengths targeting different stakeholders have their unique impact on firm risk and financial performance. Institutional CSR activities that target secondary stakeholders are negatively associated with firm risk, measured by total risk and systematic risk. Technical CSR that target primary stakeholders are positively associated with firm financial performance, measured by Tobin’s Q, ROA, (...) and cash flow returns. Our results, based on a sample of S&P 500 component firms over the period of 1995–2009, are consistent with the risk management view of “altruistic” CSR activities and with the stakeholder salience theory. We also show that the impact of CSR activities on risk varies with the ethical climate, as proved in our subsample analyses on pre- and post-Sarbanes–Oxley periods. Our empirical analyses mitigate possible omitted variables and endogeneity concerns that are often overlooked in previous research. Our findings are robust to alternative CSR measures, to alternative risk and performance measures, and to alternative estimation methods. (shrink)

Dorit Bar-On develops and defends a novel view of avowals and self-knowledge. Drawing on resources from the philosophy of language, the theory of action, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, she offers original and systematic answers to many long-standing questions concerning our ability to know our own minds. We are all very good at telling what states of mind we are in at a given moment. When it comes to our own present states of mind, what we say goes; (...) an avowal such as "I'm feeling so anxious" or "I'm thinking about my next trip to Paris," it is typically supposed, tells it like it is. But why is that? Why should what I say about my present mental states carry so much more weight than what others say about them? Why should avowals be more immune to criticism and correction than other claims we make? And if avowals are not based on any evidence or observation, how could they possibly express our knowledge of our own present mental states? Bar-On proposes a Neo-Expressivist view according to which an avowal is an act through which a person directly expresses, rather than merely reports, the very mental condition that the avowal ascribes. She argues that this expressivist idea, coupled with an adequate characterization of expression and a proper separation of the semantics of avowals from their pragmatics and epistemology, explains the special status we assign to avowals. As against many expressivists and their critics, she maintains that such an expressivist explanation is consistent with a non-deflationary view of self-knowledge and a robust realism about mental states. The view that emerges preserves many insights of the most prominent contributors to the subject, while offering a new perspective on our special relationship to our own minds. (shrink)

Many theories of social justice maintain that concern for the social bases of self-respect grounds demanding requirements of political and economic equality, as self-respect is supposed to be dependent on continuous just recognition by others. This paper argues that such views miss an important feature of self-respect, which accounts for much of its value: self-respect is a capacity for self-orientation that is robust under adversity. This does not mean that there are no social bases of self-respect that such (...) theories ought to incorporate. It means that they are different: they consist of the motivational and epistemic resources needed to develop and maintain such robustness. (shrink)

Despite increasing prominence, ‘ought’-contextualism is regarded with suspicion by most metaethicists. As I’ll argue, however, contextualism is a very weak claim, that every metaethicist can sign up to. The real controversy concerns how contextualism is developed. I then draw an oft-overlooked distinction between “parochial” contextualism—on which the contextually-relevant standards are those that the speaker, or others in her environment, subscribe to—and “aspirational” contextualism—on which the contextually-relevant standards are the objective standards for the relevant domain. However, I argue that neither (...) class='Hi'>view is acceptable. I suggest an original compromise: “ecumenical contextualism”, on which some uses of ‘ought’ are parochial, others aspirational. Ecumenical contextualism is compatible with realism or antirealism, but either combination yields interesting results. And though it’s a cognitivist view, it is strengthened by incorporating an expressivist insight: for robustly normative usages of ‘ought’, the contextually-relevant standards must be endorsed by the speaker. (shrink)

In recent decades it has become increasingly clear that a substantial amount of cognitive work goes on independent of consciousness. The research has been carried out largely under two rubrics, implicit learning and implicit memory. The former has been concerned primarily with the acquisition of knowledge independent of awareness and the latter with the manner in which memories not readily available to conscious recall or recognition play a role in behavior; collectively these operations comprise the essential functions of the cognitive (...) unconscious. This paper reviews the recent history of work on these issues, identifies some of the problems confronting researchers, and introduces a theoretical framework based on principles of evolutionary biology within which to view them. The argument is that the cognitive unconscious, despite its apparent sophistication, is of considerable evolutionary antiquity and antedates conscious cognitive systems by a considerable amount of time. Various entailments of this evolutionary perspective are explored including such issues as phylogeny and ontogeny of implicit processes, the robustness of the implicit functions as displayed by the capacity to resist disruptions from psychological and neurological disorders, the relationship between implicit cognition and intelligence, and individual differences in implicit cognitive abilities. (shrink)

Proponents of the dispositional theory of properties typically claim that their view is not one that offers a realist, governing conception of laws. My first aim is to show that, contrary to this claim, if one commits to dispositionalism then one does not automatically give up on a robust, realist theory of laws. This is because dispositionalism can readily be developed within a Platonic framework of universals. Second, I argue that there are good reasons for realist dispositionalists to (...) favour a Platonic view. This is because the alternative Aristotelian version of dispositionalism, on which universals are immanent entities, is unstable for various reasons. My final aim is to address a common criticism facing Platonic theories of laws, which is the problem of how external entities can play an explanatory role where the world’s law-like patterns of behaviour are concerned. I argue that the Platonists’ response to the one over many problem can help to shed light on this matter, and a possible solution is sketched, one which makes use of the notions of essence, constitution and ontological dependence. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge is the most solid and robust kind of knowledge that humans have because of its inherent self-correcting character. Nevertheless, anti-evolutionists, climate denialists, and anti-vaxxers, among others, question some of the best-established scientific findings, making claims unsupported by empirical evidence. A common aspect of these claims is reference to the uncertainties of science concerning evolution, climate change, vaccination, and so on. This is inaccurate: whereas the broad picture is clear, there will always exist uncertainties about the details of (...) the respective phenomena. This book shows that uncertainty is an inherent feature of science that does not devalue it. In contrast, uncertainty advances science because it motivates further research. This is the first book on this topic that draws on philosophy of science to explain what uncertainty in science is and how it makes science advance. It contrasts evolution, climate change, and vaccination, where the uncertainties are exaggerated, and genetic testing and forensic science, where the uncertainties are usually overlooked. The goal is to discuss the scientific, psychological, and philosophical aspects of uncertainty in order to explain what it really is, what kinds of problems it actually poses, and why in the end it makes science advance. Contrary to public representations of scientific findings and conclusions that produce an intuitive but distorted view of science as certain, people need to understand and learn to live with uncertainty in science. This book is intended for anyone who wants to get a clear view of the nature of science. (shrink)