In light of recent breakneck pace in machine learning, questions about whether near-future artificial systems might be conscious and possess moral status are increasingly pressing. This paper argues that as matters stand these debates lack any clear criteria for resolution via the science of consciousness. Instead, insofar as they are settled at all, it is likely to be via shifts in public attitudes brought about by the increasingly close relationships between humans and AI users. Section 1 of the paper I (...) briefly lays out the current state of the science of consciousness and its limitations insofar as these pertain to machine consciousness, and claims that there are no obvious consensus frameworks to inform public opinion on AI consciousness. Section 2 examines the rise of conversational chatbots or Social AI, and argues that in many cases, these elicit strong and sincere attributions of consciousness, mentality, and moral status from users, a trend likely to become more widespread. Section 3 presents an inconsistent triad for theories that attempt to link consciousness, behaviour, and moral status, noting that the trends in Social AI systems will likely make the inconsistency of these three premises more pressing. Finally, Section 4 presents some limited suggestions for how consciousness and AI research communities should respond to the gap between expert opinion and folk judgment. (shrink)

This paper presents an overview of the risks and benefits of Social AI, understood as conversational AI systems that cater to human social needs like romance, companionship, or entertainment. Section 1 of the paper provides a brief history of conversational AI systems and introduces conceptual distinctions to help distinguish varieties of Social AI and pathways to their deployment. Section 2 of the paper adds further context via a brief discussion of anthropomorphism and its relevance to assessment of human-chatbot relationships. Section (...) 3 of the paper provides a survey of potential and in some cases demonstrated harms associated with user interactions with Social AI systems. Finally, Section 4 discusses how the benefits and harms of Social AI can best be addressed, with a primary focus on how frameworks from AI ethics can inform their development. (shrink)

Despite there being little consensus on what intelligence is or how to measure it, the media and the public have become increasingly preoccupied with the concept owing to recent accomplishments in machine learning and research on artificial intelligence (AI). Governments and corporations are investing billions of dollars to fund researchers who are keen to produce an ever‐expanding range of artificial intelligent systems. More than 30 countries have announced such research initiatives over the past 3 years 1. For example, the EU (...) Commission pledged to increase the investment in AI research to €1.5 billion by 2020 (from €500 million in 2017), while China has committed $2.1 billion towards an AI technology park in Beijing alone 1. This global investment in AI is astonishing and prompts several questions: What are the true possibilities and limitations of AI? What do AI researchers and developers mean by “intelligence”? How does this compare to the everyday concept of intelligence and how the term is other branches of cognitive science? And can machine learning produce anything that is truly “intelligent”? (shrink)

Most scientific theories of consciousness are challenging to apply outside the human case insofar as non‐human systems (both biological and artificial) are unlikely to implement human architecture precisely, an issue I call the specificity problem. After providing some background on the theories of consciousness debate, I survey the prospects of four approaches to this problem. I then consider a fifth solution, namely the theory‐light approach proposed by Jonathan Birch. I defend a modified version of this that I term the modest (...) theoretical approach, arguing that it may provide insights into challenging cases that would otherwise be intractable. (shrink)

There is compelling evidence that pain experience is influenced by cognitive states. We explore one specific form of such influence, namely placebo analgesia, and examine its relevance for the cognitive penetration debate in philosophy of mind. We single out as important a form of influence on experience that we term radical cognitive penetration, and argue that some cases of placebo analgesia constitute compelling instances of this phenomenon. Still, we urge caution in extrapolating from this to broader conclusions about cognitive penetration (...) in perceptual experience. Instead, we suggest that the cognitive penetration of pain raises distinctive psychological, epistemological, and ethical issues. (shrink)

There is growing interest in machine ethics in the question of whether and under what circumstances an artificial intelligence would deserve moral consideration. This paper explores a particular type of moral status that the author terms psychological moral patiency, focusing on the epistemological question of what sort of evidence might lead us to reasonably conclude that a given artificial system qualified as having this status. The paper surveys five possible criteria that might be applied: intuitive judgments, assessments of intelligence, the (...) presence of desires and autonomous behavior, evidence of sentience, and behavioral equivalence. The author suggests that despite its limitations, the latter approach offers the best way forward, and defends a variant of that, termed the cognitive equivalence strategy. In short, this holds that an artificial system should be considered a psychological moral patient to the extent that it possesses cognitive mechanisms shared with other beings such as nonhuman animals whom we also consider to be psychological moral patients. -/- . (shrink)

Most people will grant that we bear special moral obligations toward at least some nonhuman animals that we do not bear toward inanimate objects like stones, mountains, or works of art. These moral obligations are plausibly grounded in the fact that many if not all nonhuman animals share important psychological states and capacities with us, such as consciousness, suffering, and goal-directed behavior. But which of these states and capacities are really critical for a creature’s possessing moral status, and how can (...) we determine which animals do in fact have them? In this paper, I examine three main approaches to answering these questions. First are what I term consciousness-based approaches that tackles these questions by first asking which animals are conscious. Second are affective-state approaches that focus on identifying behavioural and physiological signatures of states like pain, fear, and stress. Finally, I consider what I call preference-based approaches whose focus is on the question of which organisms have robust motivational states. I examine the prospects and challenges—both theoretical and empirical—faced by these seemingly contrasting methodologies. I go on to suggest that there are reasons why, despite challenges, we should be robustly committed to the project of identifying psychological grounds of moral status. I conclude by suggesting we should also take seriously the idea of pluralism about moral status, according to which each of these approaches might be capable of providing independent grounds for moral consideration. (shrink)

The science of consciousness has made great strides in recent decades. However, the proliferation of competing theories makes it difficult to reach consensus about artificial consciousness. While for purely scientific purposes we might wish to adopt a ‘wait and see’ attitude, we may soon face practical and ethical questions about whether, for example, agents artificial systems are capable of suffering. Moreover, many of the methods used for assessing consciousness in humans and even non-human animals are not straightforwardly applicable to artificial (...) systems. With these challenges in mind, I propose that we look for ecumenical heuristics for artificial consciousness to enable us to make tentative assessments of the likelihood of consciousness arising in different artificial systems. I argue that such heuristics should have three main features: they should be (i) intuitively plausible, (ii) theoretically-neutral, and (iii) scientifically tractable. I claim that the concept of general intelligence — understood as a capacity for robust, flexible, and integrated cognition and behavior — satisfies these criteria and may thus provide the basis for such a heuristic, allowing us to make initial cautious estimations of which artificial systems are most likely to be conscious. -/- . (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

In debates in philosophy and cognitive science concerning short-term memory mechanisms and perceptual experience, most discussion has focused on the working memory and the various forms of sensory memory such as iconic memory. In this paper, I present a summary of some evidence for a proposed further form of memory termed conceptual short-term memory. I go on to outline some of the ways in which this additional distinctive sort of short-term memory might be of relevance to ongoing philosophical debates, specifically (...) in relation to questions about high-level perceptual phenomenology, the relationship between consciousness and reportability, and the boundary between cognition and perception. I conclude that conceptual short-term memory offers a promising new direction of research and philosophical investigation. (shrink)

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

The concept of creativity is a central one in folk psychological explanation and has long been prominent in philosophical debates about the nature of art, genius, and the imagination. The scientific investigation of creativity in humans is also well established, and there has been increasing interest in the question of whether the concept can be rigorously applied to non-human animals. In this paper, I argue that such applications face serious challenges of both a conceptual and methodological character, reflecting deep controversies (...) within both philosophy and psychology concerning how to define and apply the concept of creativity. After providing a brief review of some of the leading theories of creativity and discussing some of the strongest putative cases of creative intelligence in non-human animals, I examine some of the more worrisome difficulties faced by attempts to use these theories to answer the question of whether animals are truly creative. I conclude by examining how we might overcome them, and suggest that one approach worth taking seriously is to adopt what I term a Strong Rejectionist view of creativity, eschewing use of the term entirely in the scientific study of comparative cognition. (shrink)

A specific issue for argumentation theory is whether information and communication technologies play any role in governing argument — that is, as parties engage in practical activities across space and time via ICTs, does technology matter for the interplay of argumentative content and process in managing disagreement? The case made here is that technologies do matter because they are not merely conduits of communication but have a role in the pragmatics of communication and argumentation. In particular, ICTs should be recognized (...) as communication-information services that are delegated degrees of responsibility for managing disagreements arising from practical activities. These services are organized around practical theories for designing disagreement space. However, recognizing this relationship between argument and technology requires accounting for procedures, techniques, or rules and speech acts that are not argumentative propositions in any strict sense but that are consequential for what becomes argumentation in any setting. An account about designing disagreement space, grounded in Jackson and Jacobs’s theory of Disagreement Management, is put forward to address these issues while more generally contributing to understanding argument in context. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

One influential philosophical account of desire treats it as a species of propositional attitude, possessing broadly the same kinds of content as belief while differing in direction of fit. However, this arguably neglects more basic forms of desire. It seems an open possibility, for example, that animals that lack propositional attitudes might still have simple desires mediated by sensations like hunger and thirst. In this essay, I will argue the case for the existence of these basic desires, and suggest a (...) strategy for understanding them. I begin by briefly discussing some different approaches to the psychological ascription of desires, and examine some candidate forms of behaviour that might be constitutive of a creature's having a basic desire. I go on to argue that a form of behaviour known as motivational trade-off offers a particularly promising framework for attributions of basic desire. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer of (...) 2000, evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of philosophers’ other (...) commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime's quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. (...) In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain's obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) challenged earlier thinking about the basic structures of human being, our involvement in practical affairs, and our understanding of history, time, and being. Blitz clarifies Heidegger’s discussions, offers alternative analyses of phenomena central to Heidegger’s argument, and examines the connection between Heidegger’s position in Being and Time and his support of Nazism. As Blitz explains in his new afterword, “When I began to study Martin Heidegger nearly fifty years ago, my goal was to explore (...) the meaning of Being and Time for political philosophy. I wished to discover what it might offer for clarifying the grounds on which the basic concepts and alternatives of political philosophy rest. Would a close reading of it help us understand the questions of justice, freedom, the common good, natural rights, virtue, human happiness, and the philosophic life? These questions are as important today as they were then.” Although Blitz often questions and criticizes Heidegger’s views, he presents them with scrupulous care and clarity. Specialists and students in the areas of political theory, phenomenology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy will find Heidegger’s Being and Time & the Possibility of Political Philosophy an invaluable resource. (shrink)

We usually consider literary thinking to be peripheral and dispensable, an activity for specialists: poets, prophets, lunatics, and babysitters. Certainly we do not think it is the basis of the mind. We think of stories and parables from Aesop's Fables or The Thousand and One Nights, for example, as exotic tales set in strange lands, with spectacular images, talking animals, and fantastic plots--wonderful entertainments, often insightful, but well removed from logic and science, and entirely foreign to the world of everyday (...) thought. But Mark Turner argues that this common wisdom is wrong. The literary mind--the mind of stories and parables--is not peripheral but basic to thought. Story is the central principle of our experience and knowledge. Parable--the projection of story to give meaning to new encounters--is the indispensable tool of everyday reason. Literary thought makes everyday thought possible. This book makes the revolutionary claim that the basic issue for cognitive science is the nature of literary thinking. In The Literary Mind, Turner ranges from the tools of modern linguistics, to the recent work of neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman, to literary masterpieces by Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Proust, as he explains how story and projection--and their powerful combination in parable--are fundamental to everyday thought. In simple and traditional English, he reveals how we use parable to understand space and time, to grasp what it means to be located in space and time, and to conceive of ourselves, other selves, other lives, and other viewpoints. He explains the role of parable in reasoning, in categorizing, and in solving problems. He develops a powerful model of conceptual construction and, in a far-reaching final chapter, extends it to a new conception of the origin of language that contradicts proposals by such thinkers as Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. Turner argues that story, projection, and parable precede grammar, that language follows from these mental capacities as a consequence. Language, he concludes, is the child of the literary mind. Offering major revisions to our understanding of thought, conceptual activity, and the origin and nature of language, The Literary Mind presents a unified theory of central problems in cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. It gives new and unexpected answers to classic questions about knowledge, creativity, understanding, reason, and invention. (shrink)

Batterman and Rice ([2014]) argue that minimal models possess explanatory power that cannot be captured by what they call ‘common features’ approaches to explanation. Minimal models are explanatory, according to Batterman and Rice, not in virtue of accurately representing relevant features, but in virtue of answering three questions that provide a ‘story about why large classes of features are irrelevant to the explanandum phenomenon’ ([2014], p. 356). In this article, I argue, first, that a method (the renormalization group) they propose (...) to answer the three questions cannot answer them, at least not by itself. Second, I argue that answers to the three questions are unnecessary to account for the explanatoriness of their minimal models. Finally, I argue that a common features account, what I call the ‘generalized ontic conception of explanation’, can capture the explanatoriness of minimal models. (shrink)

It is argued here that large-scale organization and networked computing enable new divisions of communicative work aimed at shaping the content, direction, and outcomes of societal conversations. The challenge for argumentation theory and practice lies in attending to these new divisions of communicative work in constituting contemporary argumentative realities. Goffman’s conceptualization of participation frameworks and production formats are applied to articulate the communicative work of organizations afforded by networked computing that invents and innovates argument in all of its senses—as product, (...) process, and procedure. Communicative work, however, may be scaffolding argumentative contexts and practices that are quite different than what has constituted past argumentative realities. The computerization of argument happens as organizations invent and innovate argument practice relative to the demands and opportunities of interorganizational communication. The cases and examples examined here suggest that argument practice is evolving around the logic of conversation and the principle of personalization. The analysis challenges argumentation theory to seriously engage with the construction of communicative contexts and the realization of ideas about disagreement management in organizational practice and information infrastructures. Directions for integrating insights from a design perspective on argument with insights from organizational and information systems theory are proposed for coming to terms with an era of large-scale organization and computerization, in particular the evolution of argument practice, the inscription of argument in the built environment, and the absorption of socio-cultural argument practices by organizations and computation. (shrink)

Explores the full extent of Hegel's interest in tragedy and comedy throughout his works and extends from more literary and dramatic issues to questions about the role these genres play in the history of society and religion.

Europa kende na de Tweede Wereldoorlog een periode van grote vooruitgang met toenemende gelijkheid, stijgende productiviteit, expansie van het onderwijs en fundamentele wetenschappelijke en technologische doorbraken. Maar in de jaren zeventig begon het tij te keren. In de eerste periode was het beleid gericht op de gemeenschap; in de tweede was het (neo)liberaal. Het nieuwe neoliberale regime droeg bij tot instabiliteit in Afrika en het Midden-Oosten, tot massale illegale migratie ook. In tal van westerse landen groeide de interne verdeeldheid. Sinds (...) 2008 is dit regime in diepe crisis. De vertrouwde vormen van gemeenschapsdenken - christendemocratie en sociaaldemocratie - zijn inmiddels zodanig geliberaliseerd dat zij niet in staat blijken terug te keren naar een beleid gestoeld op gemeenschapsdenken. Die taak valt vandaag het nationalisme te beurt. Dit boek verduidelijkt de aard en oorsprong van het verschil tussen gemeenschapsdenken en liberalisme. Het beschrijft hoe een reset mogelijk is. Hoe democratie kan worden hersteld, hoe kan worden teruggekeerd naar een vreedzamer wereld met meer welvaart, welzijn en vooruitgang."--Back cover. (shrink)

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We (...) Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)

We review publications in automated scientific discovery using deep learning, with the aim of shedding light on problems with strong connections to philosophy of science, of physics in particular. We show that core issues of philosophy of science, related, notably, to the nature of scientific theories; the nature of unification; and of causation loom large in scientific deep learning. Therefore, advances in deep learning could, and ideally should, have impact on philosophy of science, and vice versa. We suggest lines of (...) further research, and highlight the role ‘theory-based’ AI could have in future developments of the field. (shrink)

Bringing together the latest scientific advances and some of the most enduring subtle philosophical puzzles and problems, this book collects original historical and contemporary sources to explore the wide range of issues surrounding the nature of life. Selections ranging from Aristotle and Descartes to Sagan and Dawkins are organised around four broad themes covering classical discussions of life, the origins and extent of natural life, contemporary artificial life creations and the definition and meaning of 'life' in its most general form. (...) Each section is preceded by an extensive introduction connecting the various ideas discussed in individual chapters and providing helpful background material for understanding them. With its interdisciplinary perspective, this fascinating collection is essential reading for scientists and philosophers interested in astrobiology, synthetic biology and the philosophy of life. (shrink)

Philosophers have tended to construe friendship as an intimate relationship involving mutual love, and have focused their discussions on this ‘true’ form of friendship. However, everyone recognizes that we use the word ‘friend’ and its cognates to refer, non-ironically, to those with whom we share various relationships that are not terribly intimate or which do not involve mutual love. I argue that there exists no general reason to restrict our philosophical focus to ‘true’ friendships, and allege that we can gain (...) important insights if we broaden our perspective to include lesser friends. I contend that friendships, in the broad sense (encompassing both ‘true’ and lesser forms), are necessarily relationships that are the product of significant collaborative norm manipulation. And I argue that understanding friendship in this way helps explain important features, including the difference between friendships and familiar relations, the non-fungibility of friends, and why friendships are often in flux. (shrink)

Offers managers new tools to deal with the tough problems businesses face today. Reveals how analyzing the ethical dimensions of problems actually offers competitive advantages. Offers illustrative case examples from internally recognized companies showing that high ethics and high profits go hand in hand--and identifies the factors responsible for these companies' success.

An account of distinctively mathematical explanation (DME) should satisfy three desiderata: it should account for the modal import of some DMEs; it should distinguish uses of mathematics in explanation that are distinctively mathematical from those that are not (Baron [2016]); and it should also account for the directionality of DMEs (Craver and Povich [2017]). Baron’s (forthcoming) deductive-mathematical account, because it is modelled on the deductive-nomological account, is unlikely to satisfy these desiderata. I provide a counterfactual account of DME, the Narrow (...) Ontic Counterfactual Account (NOCA), that can satisfy all three desiderata. NOCA appeals to ontic considerations to account for explanatory asymmetry and ground the relevant counterfactuals. NOCA provides a unification of the causal and the non-causal, the ontic and the modal, by identifying a common core that all explanations share and in virtue of which they are explanatory. (shrink)

For years now, unionization has been under vigorous attack. Membership has been steadily declining, and with it union bargaining power. As a result, unions may soon lose their ability to protect workers from economic and personal abuse, as well as their significance as a political force. In the Name of Liberty responds to this worrying state of affairs by presenting a new argument for unionization, one that derives an argument for universal unionization in both the private and public sector from (...) concepts of liberty that we already accept. In short, In the Name of Liberty reclaims the argument for liberty from the political right, and shows how liberty not only requires the unionization of every workplace as a matter of background justice, but also supports a wide variety of other progressive policies. (shrink)

In Republic 8–9, Socrates describes four main kinds of vicious people, all of whose souls are “ruled” by an element other than reason, and in some of whom reason is said to be “enslaved.” What role does reason play in such souls? In this paper, I argue, based on Republic 8–9 and related passages, and in contrast to some common alternative views, that for Plato the “enslavement” of reason consists in this: instead of determining for itself what is good, reason (...) is forced to desire and pursue as good a goal determined by the soul’s ruler. (shrink)

When we understand that something is a pot, is it because of one property that all pots share? This seems unlikely, but without this common essence, it is difficult to see how we could teach someone to use the word "pot" or to see something as _a_ pot. The Buddhist apoha theory tries to resolve this dilemma, first, by rejecting properties such as "potness" and, then, by claiming that the element uniting all pots is their very difference from all non-pots. (...) In other words, when we seek out a pot, we select an object that is not a non-pot, and we repeat this practice with all other items and expressions. Writing from the vantage points of history, philosophy, and cognitive science, the contributors to this volume clarify the nominalist apoha theory and explore the relationship between apoha and the scientific study of human cognition. They engage throughout in a lively debate over the theory's legitimacy. Classical Indian philosophers challenged the apoha theory's legitimacy, believing instead in the existence of enduring essences. Seeking to settle this controversy, essays explore whether apoha offers new and workable solutions to problems in the scientific study of human cognition. They show that the work of generations of Indian philosophers can add much toward the resolution of persistent conundrums in analytic philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

Lange argues that some natural phenomena can be explained by appeal to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In these “distinctively mathematical” explanations, the core explanatory facts are either modally stronger than facts about ordinary causal law or understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue. Craver and Povich argue that Lange’s account of DME fails to exclude certain “reversals”. Lange has replied that his account can avoid these directionality charges. Specifically, Lange argues that in legitimate DMEs, (...) but not in their “reversals,” the empirical fact appealed to in the explanation is “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue” in the explanandum. I argue that Lange’s reply is unsatisfactory because it leaves the crucial notion of being “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement” obscure in ways that fail to block “reversals” except by an apparent ad hoc stipulation or by abandoning the reliance on understanding and instead accepting a strong realism about essence. (shrink)

Doxastic voluntarism is the thesis that our beliefs are subject to voluntary control. While there’s some controversy as to what “voluntary control” amounts to (see 1.2), it’s often understood as direct control: the ability to bring about a state of affairs “just like that,” without having to do anything else. Most of us have direct control over, for instance, bringing to mind an image of a pine tree. Can one, in like fashion, voluntarily bring it about that one believes a (...) specific proposition? Doxastic voluntarists hold that, at least in some circumstances—such as when the evidence is ambiguous—we can. Doxastic involuntarists, in contrast, maintain that we cannot. Some involuntarists hold that the concept of belief itself precludes the possibility of believing voluntarily. Others hold that the impossibility of voluntary belief is a contingent psychological fact. Historically, the issue of doxastic voluntarism has been connected to how many think about religious commitment: a prominent view of faith is that it is a voluntary decision to believe. Furthermore, the issue of voluntarism has also been viewed as having bearing on fundamental questions in epistemology. For example, are epistemic norms duties to believe in certain ways? Are there practical or moral reasons to believe? If the answer to either question is “yes,” it seems some measure of voluntary doxastic control is required. -/- In section 1, we expand on the definition of doxastic voluntarism, and survey various kinds of control (e.g. direct, indirect, long-range) and the doxastic attitudes we might control (e.g. outright belief, withholding, credences). In section 2, we discuss a number of historical views on doxastic voluntarism. In section 3, we survey motivations for rejecting doxastic voluntarism. There are two general strategies: arguments that appeal to psychological considerations, and conceptual arguments regarding the nature of belief. In section 4, we survey five approaches to defending voluntarism: those that appeal to epistemic permissivism, doxastic compatibilism, skepticism, one-off considerations, and non-standard views of belief. In section 5, we cover empirical work on doxastic voluntarism. The last two sections discuss two implications of voluntarism. In section 6, we discuss voluntarism’s implications for the ethics of belief, and in section 7, we discuss issues at the intersection of voluntarism and religious faith. (shrink)

forthcoming in reisner and steglich-peterson, eds., Reasons for Belief If I believe, for no good reason, that P and I infer (correctly) from this that Q, I don’t think we want to say that I ‘have’ P as evidence for Q. Only things that I believe (or could believe) rationally, or perhaps, with justification, count as part of the evidence that I have. It seems to me that this is a good reason to include an epistemic acceptability constraint on evidence (...) possessed…1 It is a truism that adopting an unjustified belief does not put you in a better evidential position with respect to believing its consequences. This truism has led many philosophers to assume that there must, at a minimum, be a justification condition (and perhaps even a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence. This is the best (or only) possible explanation of the truism, these philosophers have believed. This paper explores an alternative explanation for the truism. According to the alternative explanation that I will offer, unjustified beliefs do not put you in a better evidential position with respect to believing their consequences because any evidence you have in virtue of having an unjustified belief is guaranteed to be defeated. Since the lack of justification for a belief guarantees its defeat, I will suggest, we don't need to postulate a special justification condition (much less a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence. Why is this important? It is important because the assumption that there must be a justification condition (or perhaps a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence places a high bar on what it takes to have evidence - such a high bar that it is difficult to see how this bar could be met in the case of basic, perceptually justified beliefs. As a result, the high bar set by this condition plays a fundamental role, I will claim, in central features of a core dialectic from the epistemology of basic perceptual belief which plays a central role in the debates between internalism and externalism, foundationalism and coherentism, and rationalism and empiricism.. (shrink)

This book outlines and evaluates the principal strands of critical legal studies, and achieves much more as well.

In this book Timmons defends a metaethical view that exploits certain contextualist themes in philosophy of language and epistemology. He advances what he calls assertoric non-descriptivism, a view that employs semantic contextualism in giving an account of moral discourse. This view, which like traditional non-descriptivist views stresses the practical, action-guiding function of moral thought and discourse, also allows that moral sentences, as typically used, make genuine assertions. Timmons then defends a contextualist moral epistemology thus completing his overall program of contextualism (...) in ethics. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic treatment of Locke's theory of probable assent. It shows how the theory applies to Locke's philosophy of science, moral epistemology, and religious epistemology. There is a powerful case to be made that the most important dimension of Locke's philosophy is his theory of rational probable assent, rather than his theory of knowledge. According to Locke, we largely live our lives in the "twilight of probability" rather than in "the sunshine of certain knowledge". Locke's theory of (...) probable assent is towering insofar as it contains a wealth of novel, independently interesting, and prescient elements that precede the modern field of formal epistemology. In this book, the author argues for the central role of probable assent in Locke's philosophy. Locke's theory of probable assent is based on an epistemic modesty that claims, roughly, that our cognitive abilities are quite limited and that we ought to carry ourselves in believing with due caution. This modesty motivates the author's discussion of other aspects of Locke's epistemology, notably his principle of proportionality, his doxastic involuntarism, his epistemological pragmatism, and his theory of testimony. The book concludes by connecting the theory of probable assent with Locke's views on the limits of science, moral epistemology, and the rationality of faith. Locke's Twilight of Probability will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on Locke and the history of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

The human spark -- Catch a fire -- The idea of you -- The idea of I -- Forbidden ideas -- Artful ideas -- Vast ideas -- Tight ideas -- Recurring ideas -- Future ideas.

Debates over how to conceptualize the nursing role were prominent in the nursing literature during the latter part of the twentieth century. There were, broadly, two schools of thought. Writers likeHenderson andOrem used the idea of a self‐care deficit to understand the nurse as doing for the patient what he or she could not do alone. Later writers found this paternalistic and emphasized the importance of the patient's free will. This essay uses the ideas of positive and negative freedom to (...) explore the differing conceptions of autonomy which are implicit in this debate. The notion of positive freedom has often been criticized as paternalistic, and the criticisms of self‐care in the nursing literature echo criticisms from political philosophy. Recent work on relational autonomy and on the relationship between autonomy and identity are used to address these objections. This essay argues for a more nuanced conception of the obligation to support autonomy that includes both positive (freedomto) and negative (freedomfrom) dimensions. This conception of autonomy provides a moral foundation for conceptualizing nursing in something like Henderson's terms: as involving the duty to expand the patient's capacities. The essay concludes by generalizing the lesson. Respect for autonomy on the part of any health care provider requires both respect for the patient's choices and a commitment to expand the patient's ability to actualize their choices. (shrink)