One crucial premise in the argument from illusion is the Phenomenal Principle. It states that if there sensibly appears to be something that possesses a sensible quality, then there is something of which the subject is aware that has that sensible quality. The principle thus enables the inference from a mere appearance to an existence (usually a mental one). In the argument from appearance, a similar move is taken by some philosophers—they infer a content from a mere appearance. There are (...) two kinds of defences for the Phenomenal Principle in the literature, namely, the epistemological one (e.g. H.H. Price) and the semantic one (e.g. Frank Jackson). I argue that neither consolidates the Phenomenal Principle. I particularly demonstrate that the appearance verb in premise 1 of the argument from illusion is not used in the phenomenal sense as it is used in the Phenomenal Principle, which renders the argument essentially invalid. To avoid invalidity, the proponents either give up the phenomenal use, which makes the argument unable to serve its original purpose, i.e. inferring an unusual existence, or they insist on the phenomenal use in all premises of the argument, which will trivialise the argument. I also demonstrate that a similar objection applies to the argument from appearance. (shrink)

Panpsychism may be roughly defined as a view that at least some of the properties constituting the fundamental level of reality are mental or proto-mental. Despite its long history, it has been revived in recent discussions as a solution to the problems raised by the mind, especially to the so-called hard problem of consciousness. Contemporary panpsychism differs significantly from incarnations known from the history of philosophy mainly due to the fact that the former is often combined with so-called Russellian monism. (...) According to Russellian monism, the intrinsic properties of physical things remain unknown. This encourages panpsychists to argue that those properties are in fact mental. In my paper, I examine the three most common arguments for panpsychism: the Continuity Argument, the Hegelian Argument, and the Agnostic Argument. I take a closer look at each of them to assess their advantages and weaknesses. As I point out, the way in which one argues implies the version of panpsychism one adopts. This turns out to be especially important with regard to the Hegelian Argument and the Agnostic Argument. Both can be combined with Russellian monism, resulting in Russellian panpsychism. However, I claim that the philosophical consequences of these arguments are different, so it is legitimate to distinguish two kinds of Russellian panpsychism. In conclusion, I hold that there are reasons to prefer panpsychism based on the Agnostic Argument, which is more promising, as it responds to some general problems of panpsychism. (shrink)

I argue that knowledge can be seen as a quality standard that governs our sharing and storing of information. This standard satisfies certain functional needs, namely it allows us to share and store trustworthy information more easily. I argue that this makes knowledge a social kind, similar in important ways to other social kinds like money. This provides us with a way of talking about knowledge without limiting ourselves to the concept of knowledge. I also outline three ways in which (...) this view of knowledge can shed light on familiar epistemological problems: it can explain why knowledge is the norm of assertion, it can help us carve out the harm associated with testimonial injustice, and it can provide us with a clear analysis of the dangers associated with spreading misinformation. (shrink)

Virtues can be considered to play a causal role in the production of behaviour and so too can our self-narratives. We identify a point of connection between the two cases and draw a parallel between them. But, those folk psychological notions, virtues and self-narratives, fail to reduce smoothly to the underlying human physiology. As a first step towards handling that failure to connect with the scientific framework that is the familiar grounding for our understanding of causation, we consider the causal (...) theory of action, a leading theory of action, which shows how reasons, understood as an appropriate pair of beliefs and desires, can be treated as causes of action. Davidson’s picture is based on cause as a relation between events, which can have both a description in scientific terms and in folk psychological terms. The character of both virtues and self-narratives is not that of events, even extended ones, so we need to refer to examples of scientific explanation that incorporate structural properties of objects. While we retain the spirit of the causal theory, we wish to guard against any unwarranted optimism that an explicitly scientific explanation for human action lies in our future, drawing on Chomsky’s view that a causal explanation of human actions is likely to remain beyond human science forming capacities. We take a mild-realist view of virtues and self-narratives, in the style of Dennett. We argue that, in spite of that limited form of realism, underlined by Chomsky’s mysterian position in this domain, we still need to frame our explanations of behaviour based on virtues and self-narratives in causal terms. (shrink)

The epistemic argument against epiphenomenalism aims to prove that even if epiphenomenalism is true, its adherents are not able to justify their inferential beliefs. This would mean that they cannot know that they are right which is a self-stultifying consequence. I elaborate on this problem and then present an updated version of epiphenomenalism based on property dualism. I argue that this position is capable of refuting the conclusion of the epistemic argument even in spite of accepting its essential assumptions. This (...) was made possible by an upgraded property exemplification account of events. I also argue against a view which, if true, gives substantial support to the epistemic argument: that a belief justified by other beliefs is knowledge only if it is caused by those beliefs in virtue of their contents. (shrink)

Adam Carter (2022) recently proposed that a successful analysis of knowledge needs to include an autonomy condition. Autonomy, for Carter, requires a lack of a compulsion history. A compulsion history bypasses one’s cognitive competences and results in a belief that is difficult to shed. I argue that Carter’s autonomy condition does not cover partially autonomous beliefs properly. Some belief-forming processes are partially bypassing one’s competences, but not bypassing them completely. I provide a case for partially autonomous belief based on processing (...) fluency effects and argue that partially autonomous beliefs only amount to knowledge in some cases. I finally suggest how to adjust the autonomy condition to capture partially autonomous belief properly. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse and develop how scepticism becomes an intelligible question starting from requirements that epistemologists themselves aim to endorse. We argue for and defend the idea that the root of scepticism is the underdetermination principle by articulating its specificitya respectable epistemic principle and by defending it against objections in current literature. This engagement offers a novel understanding of underdetermination-based scepticism. While most anti-sceptical approaches challenge scepticism by understanding it as postulating uneliminated scenarios of mass (...) deception, or as endorsing unnatural epistemic requirements, we argue here that both contentions are mistaken. Underdetermination-based scepticism targets our beliefs by issuing a genuine question about the rational support they enjoy. If we cannot establish that the sources of our beliefs provide them the required epistemic merit and authority, they lack non-arbitrary grounds. This has a sizable impact on what constitutes a satisfactory anti-sceptical strategy. Strategies that merely focus on the scenario-based aspect of scepticism, or on the truth-functional evaluation of our beliefs, are shown to miss the mark of the sceptical threat. The proposed analysis ultimately provides a shift in perspective concerning the character and reach of philosophical doubt. (shrink)

This paper develops a version of the acquaintance theory of introspective justification. In the process, it rejects the view that acquaintance is sui generic in favor of a view that identifies acquaintance with availability for selection by attention mechanisms. Moreover, unlike many recent accounts of knowledge by acquaintance, it explains the epistemic significance of acquaintance in terms of the epistemic basing relation without any need to appeal to the structure or existence of phenomenal concepts. Lastly, while in ideal cases acquaintance (...) will provide a kind of infallible justification, the paper shows how to extend these ideas to allow that acquaintance can provide fallible introspective justification. (shrink)

Some alethic pluralists maintain that there are two kinds of truths operant in our alethic discourse: a realist kind and an anti-realist kind. In this paper, we argue that such a binary conception cannot accommodate certain social truths, specifically truths about race. Most alethic pluralists surprisingly overlook the status of racial truths. Douglas Edwards is, however, an exception. In his version of alethic pluralism—Determination Pluralism—racial truths are superassertible (anti-realist) true rather than correspondence (realist) true. We argue that racial truths exhibit (...) features of both superassertibility (anti-realism) and correspondence (realism). This suggests a fuzzy boundary between realist and anti-realist kinds of truth. There may be a continuum rather than a dichotomy of truths. We conclude by sketching one way for alethic pluralists to accommodate such a notion. (shrink)

The skeptical solution is based on two assumptions — the rejection of semantic facts and the denial of semantic nihilism. On the basis of the non-factualist interpretation of this solution, these two assumptions are reconciled by stating that meaning ascriptions possess non-descriptive function. Nonetheless, Alexander Miller argues that this position is self-refuting since, as despite its non-descriptivism, by rejecting any kind of semantic facts, it inevitably leads to semantic nihilism. In this text, I demonstrate that Miller’s argument is not sound. (...) I argue that a coherent non-factualist way of formulating the conditions of correct use of meaning ascriptions may be performed by rejecting the closure principle of assertibility of meaning ascriptions. On this basis, I demonstrate that argument formulated against non-factualist interpretation by Miller may be refuted. What is more, I argue that rejection of the closure principle should be regarded as the central aspect of Kripke’s skeptical solution. (shrink)

According to the subset view of realization, a property realizes another if the causal powers of the latter are a subset of those of the former. Against this view, some authors (in particular, Kevin Morris and Paul Audi) have argued that it has an untenable consequence that realizing properties are less fundamental than the properties they realize, because the subset view characterizes realized properties as parts (subsets) of their realizers whereas it is generally true that a part is prior to (...) its whole. This paper defends the subset view from this “part-whole” objection, by arguing that if we compare individual powers of realizer and realizee with particular attention to their manifestation conditions, it turns out that each power of a realizee is grounded in some power of its realizer. This grounding relation between powers, I shall argue, allows subset theorists to explain why a realizer is more fundamental than its realizee, even while having the latter as a part. (shrink)

In this paper, we present some experimental findings whose best explanation, first of all, provides a positive answer to a philosophical question in ontology as to whether, in the overall domain of beings, there are fictional characters (_ficta_) over and above concrete individuals. Moreover, since such findings arise out of different comparisons between fictional characters and concrete individuals on the one hand and fictional characters again and non-items that do not belong at all to such an overall domain on the (...) other hand, they also suggest that _ficta_ are allowed as inhabiting a particular subrealm of that domain distinct from the one inhabited by concrete individuals, as previous findings in cognitive psychology had suggested. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that standard psychological continuity theory does not account for an important feature of what is important in survival – having the property of personhood. I offer a theory that can account for this, and I explain how it avoids the implausible consequences of standard psychological continuity theory, as well as having certain other advantages over that theory.

In a discussion of Sherlock Holmes’ “science of deduction” and the related “method of exclusion,” I show that Holmes’ claim that his inferences are deductive makes sense, if we consider his theoretical presuppositions. So, it is more accurate to say that he tries to reduce abduction to deduction than that he confuses them. His theoretical framework, albeit inadequate as a theory of empirical reasoning, can be seen as a basic model of classical (symbolic) AI. The main problems of this approach (...) are surveyed, and abduction is brought into play as both a better characterization of Holmes’ inferences and a better guide for building AI systems. This is a good background for raising the question of creativity because, according to Peirce, it relates to abduction in a substantial way. Is Sherlock Holmes creative? Can machines be creative? An affirmative answer to the second question might be given by a “logic of discovery” but the problem remains that inventing such a logic already presupposes creativity. (shrink)

Metaphysicians who are aware of modern physics usually follow Putnam (1967) in arguing that Special Theory of Relativity is incompatible with the view that what exists is only what exists now or presently. Partisans of presentism (the motto ‘only present things exist’) had very difficult times since, and no presentist theory of time seems to have been able to satisfactorily counter the objection raised from Special Relativity. One of the strategies offered to the presentist consists in relativizing existence to inertial (...) frames. This unfashionable strategy has been accused of counterfeiting, since the meaning of the concept of existence would be incompatible with its relativization. Therefore, existence could only be relativistically invariant. In this paper, I shall examine whether such an accusation hits its target, and I will do this by examining whether the different criteria of existence that have been suggested by the Philosophical Tradition from Plato onwards imply that existence cannot be relativized. (shrink)

The Dead Past Growing Block theory of time—DPGB-theory—is the metaphysical view that the past and the present tenselessly exist, whereas the future does not, and that only the present hosts mentality, whereas the past lacks it and is, in this sense, dead. One main reason in favour of this view is that it is immune to the now-now objection or epistemic objection (which aims at undermining the certainty, within an A-theoretical universe, of being currently experiencing the objective present time). In (...) this paper, I examine the additional arguments offered by P. Forrest and G. A. Forbes to back the DPGB-theory and show that they do not work. I also examine a proposal to rescue the DPGB-theory suggested by an anonymous reviewer for this journal and argue that it does not work either. Moreover, in line with D. Braddon-Mitchell and against Forbes, I argue that the DPGB-theory is indeed committed to the existence of zombies in the past. Being ad hoc and burdened by a very odd and counterintuitive ontological commitment, the DPGB-theory turns out to be rather unpalatable. (shrink)