Chimpanzees follow the gaze of conspecifics and humans — follow it past distractors and behind barriers, ‘check back’ with humans when gaze following does not yield interesting sights, use gestures appropriately depending on the visual access of their recipient, and select different pieces of food depending on whether their competitor has visual access to them. Taken together, these findings make a strong case for the hypothesis that chimpanzees have some understanding of what other individuals can and cannot see. However, (...) chimpanzees do not seem nearly so skillful in the Gesture Choice and Object Choice experimental paradigms. Neither behavioral conditioning nor theory of mind explanations can account for these results satisfactorily. Instead this chapter proposes the idea that chimpanzees have the cognitive skills to recall, represent, categorize, and reason about the behavior and perception of others, but not their intentional or mental states, because they do not know that others have such states since they cannot make a link to their own. Human beings began their own evolutionary trajectory with these same skills, but then at some point in their evolution (probably quite recently) they began to understand that their own experience could serve as some kind of model for that of other persons. This allowed for even better prediction and control of the behavior of others and better communication and cooperation with them as well, and so it was an adaptation with immediate adaptive consequences that ensured its survival. (shrink)

The paper offers an integrative interpretation of the different lines of thought Wittgenstein was inspecting in On Certainty and what he might have been looking for through them. It suggests that we may have been focusing our attention too strongly in the wrong place and comes to a new conclusion about where the real import of these reflections lies. This leads to an answer to the initially posed question of Foundationalism that revises the way in which there can be (...) said to be a grounding intention in On Certainty. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with reasonings that purport to explain why certain organisms have certain traits by showing that their actual design is better than contrasting designs. Biologists call such reasonings 'functional explanations'. To avoid confusion with other uses of that phrase, I call them 'design explanations'. This paper discusses the structure of design explanations and how they contribute to scientific understanding. Design explanations are contrastive and often compare real organisms to hypothetical organisms that cannot possibly exist. They are not (...) causal but appeal to functional dependencies between an organism's different traits. These explanations point out that because an organism has certain traits, it cannot be alive if the trait to be explained were replaced by a specified alternative. They can be understood from a mechanistic point of view as revealing the constraints on what mechanisms can be alive. (shrink)

When people avow their present feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc., they enjoy what may be called “first-person privilege.” If I now said: “I have a headache,” or “I’m thinking about Venice,” I would be taken at my word: I would normally not be challenged. According to one prominent approach, this privilege is due to a special epistemic access we have to our own present states of mind. On an alternative, deflationary approach the privilege merely reflects a socio-linguistic convention governing (...) avowals. We reject both approaches. On our proposed account, a full explanation of the privilege must recognize avowals as expressive performances, which can be taken to reveal directly the subject’s present mental condition. We are able to improve on special access accounts and deflationary accounts, as well as familiar expressive accounts, by explaining both the asymmetries and the continuities between avowals and other pronouncements, and by locating a genuine though non-epistemic source for first-person privilege. (shrink)

When people avow their present feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc., they enjoy what may be called “first‐person privilege.” If I now said: “I have a headache,” or “I'm thinking about Venice,” I would be taken at my word: I would normally not be challenged. According to one prominent approach, this privilege is due to a special epistemic access we have to our own present states of mind. On an alternative, deflationary approach the privilege merely reflects a socio‐linguistic convention governing (...) avowals. We reject both approaches. On our proposed account, a full explanation of the privilege must recognize avowals as expressive performances, which can be taken to reveal directly the subject's present mental condition. We are able to improve on special access accounts and deflationary accounts, as well as familiar expressive accounts, by explaining both the asymmetries and the continuities between avowals and other pronouncements, and by locating a genuine though non‐epistemic source for first‐person privilege. (shrink)

The spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the North Africa and al-Andalus in the west, to the Chinese borders and the Indian Subcontinent in the east, helped Muslims to establish close contact with many different cultures. One of the consequences of this is that both the increase in scientific accumulation and the emergence of new needs in military, financial and similar aspects accelerated the studies on geography. Islamic geographers of the first period, not only did they describe the (...) cities to which they travelled but also they depicted the cities about which they could collect data. These first works, which can be considered as a kind of written maps, have some common features, although they are written in different geographies and revealed by different schools. One of these common points is the terminology that they used in depictions of cities. This terminology suggests that there was a common city typology among Muslim geography scholars that stands out in the depiction of cities. In this study, particularly we will try to answer a number of questions such as what the concepts of authors are and what they mean and the relationship between these concepts by examining the uses of authors in their works.SummaryThe depictions of settlements which were designated as madīna in the works of the medieval Muslim geographers have some common characteristics. One of them is the terminology used by the authors in depictions of cities. In this study, particularly I tried to answer a number of questions such as what the concepts of authors are and what they mean and the relationship between these concepts by examining the uses of authors in their works. Then, a common city typology which is prominent in the depiction of cities among the Muslim geography scholars has been put forward. The structural elements that are considered to constitute this typology also revealed the topographic elements of a city at that time.The cities conquered by muslims had a great impact on the emergence of the terminology used by Muslim geographers in depicting cities. I can say that especially Persian influence; the cities in Iran, Khurāsān which were captured from the Sāsānians and Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr districts was effective. However, geography writers did not restrict using this terminology for only these regions, they also had continued to use in depiction of other regions such as North Africa and al-Andalus. This means that a common language and terminology emerged and started to be used.Geography authors point to five main elements that I have examined in separate titles while describing Islamic cities that they called "madīna". These are kuhandiz, shahristān, rabad, the part so-called “the adjacent agricultural fields / agricultural fields surrounded by wall” by us and the last part rustāq connected to main city center. Depending on ways of development of cities, these elements sometimes developed from inside to out, in other words from center to environment, sometimes surrounded by independent walls and sometimes adjacent to each other. However, a city did not have to have all these elements at the same time. This situation was totally related to development level of city, and the cities which had all these elements were the military, administrative and economically developed centers of the period. From the methodical point of view, it should be noted that the examples given in the study were selected from among the other cities in order to ensure that to understand the subject in best way and ensure that the silhouette on the city typology is seen better. Because it is possible to find examples of each element in all city depictions of Islamic geography writers. Kuhandiz, shahristān/madīna, and rustāq are the elements that can be seen in the pre-Islamic period. It is possible to think of the Islamic period as a period in which these words were conceptualized, new madīnas and rabads were formed, surrounded by walls and rabads were gradually transformed into madīnas. In geography texts, it is seen that there is a concept confusion between kuhandiž and buildings named qalʿa, ḥiṣār and ḥiṣn. However, as some writers hade tried to emphasize, "kuhandiz" had been using for these structures which were previously known as fortress (especially ḥiṣn or qalʿa) due to their proportion to shahristāns / madīnas of city centers, and were notably seen in the regions of Khurāsān and Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr. Kuhandižs represent the centers of pre-Islamic cities and were continued to be used for the same purpose in the early Islamic period. But, these old areas were gradually abandoned due to the development of new parts of settlement under Muslim administration. Shahristāns were residential areas where the majority of people lived. With the Islamic period, the word “shahristān” had been terminologically changed to “madīna” and use of this concept by scientific circles was gradually disappeared in time. At this point, it is one of the issues to be considered in the examination of geography works that the use of “madīna” in Arabic both for the concept of the city in which we examine the structural elements in this article, and for “shahristān” which is one of the elements of the city.As it is understood from the geographical texts, madīna was continued to be established by Muslims in cities for centuries. These are also examples of change in cities as a result of development and housing activities after the conquests. However, we don’t have much information in the geography works about the cities which had more than one shahristān /madīna before the inhabit of Muslims. As far as we can reach, the only example in our resources with multiple madīnas/shahristān belonging to the pre-Islamic period is Bukhara.As in the developed cities of the period such as Bukhara, Samarqand, Marw and Balkh, it is seen a generaly circular fortification wall which usually surrounded main center of cities including kuhandizs, madīnas/ shahristān and mostly later rabads. So, it is more appropriate to consider the areas between these walls and other parts of city (kuhandiz, shahristān/madīna, rabad) as an independent element because of the fact that they were lands with determined borders and were defined by separate concepts. I have used “adjacent agricultural area” for this element for now. Thus, this area constitutes one of the structural elements of the cities.Rustāqs were parts of Persian-Sāsānian urbanization and land administration, and had continued to be partially implemented during the Islamic period. They were the source of livelihood of the cities from foundation stage and were an indispensable tool of the society based on agriculture in that ages. Depending on size, the cities could have dozens of them. As can be seen in the case of Balkh, the rustāḳs especially connected to the big city centers were not composed of one or several villages. Moreover, these rustāqs could contain big settlements called madīna which were their centers. (shrink)

Contemporary debates on decolonising knowledge production, inclusive of research on Africa, are crucial and challenge researchers to reflect on the legacies of colonial power relations that continue to permeate the production of knowledge about the continent, its peoples, and societies. Yet these are not new debates. Sixty years ago, Ghana’s first president and pan-Africanist leader, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, highlighted the importance of Africa-centred knowledge. Similarly, in the 1980s, Claude Ake advocated for endogenous knowledge production on Africa. But progress has been (...) slow at best, indicated by the enduring predominance of non-African writers on African issues within leading scholarly journals. Thus, we examine why decolonisation of knowledge production remains so necessary and what can be done within the context of scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. These questions are addressed at two levels, one more practical and one more reflective . At both levels, issues of power inequalities and injustice are critical. At the practical level, the asymmetrical power relations between scholars in the Global North and South are highlighted. At a deeper level, the critiques of contemporary African authors are outlined, all contesting the ongoing coloniality and epistemic injustices that affect knowledge production on Africa, and calling for a more fundamental reorientation of ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches in order to decolonise knowledge production. (shrink)

Cognitive abilities cannot be measured directly. What we can measure is individual variation in task performance. In this paper, we first make the case for why we should be interested in mapping individual differences in task performance on to particular cognitive abilities: we suggest that it is crucial for examining the causes and consequences of variation both within and between species. As a case study, we examine whether multiple measures of inhibitory control for non-human animals do indeed produce correlated (...) task performance; however, no clear pattern emerges that would support the notion of a common cognitive ability underpinning individual differences in performance. We advocate a psychometric approach involving a three-step programme to make theoretical and empirical progress: first, we need tasks that reveal signature limits in performance. Second, we need to assess the reliability of individual differences in task performance. Third, multi-trait multi-method test batteries will be instrumental in validating cognitive abilities. Together, these steps will help us to establish what varies between individuals that could impact their fitness and ultimately shape the course of the evolution of animal minds. Finally, we propose executive functions, including working memory, inhibitory control and attentional shifting, as a sensible starting point for this endeavour. (shrink)

When people avow their present feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc., they enjoy what may be called “first‐person privilege.” If I now said: “I have a headache,” or “I'm thinking about Venice,” I would be taken at my word: I would normally not be challenged. According to one prominent approach, this privilege is due to a special epistemic access we have to our own present states of mind. On an alternative, deflationary approach the privilege merely reflects a socio‐linguistic convention governing (...) avowals. We reject both approaches. On our proposed account, a full explanation of the privilege must recognize avowals as expressive performances, which can be taken to reveal directly the subject's present mental condition. We are able to improve on special access accounts and deflationary accounts, as well as familiar expressive accounts, by explaining both the asymmetries and the continuities between avowals and other pronouncements, and by locating a genuine though non‐epistemic source for first‐person privilege. (shrink)

There is a natural objection to the epistemic coherence of Bas van Fraassen’s use of a distinction between the observable and unobservable in his constructive empiricism, an objection that has been raised with particular clarity by Alan Musgrave. We outline Musgrave’s objection, and then consider how one might interpret and evaluate van Fraassen’s response. According to the constructive empiricist, observability for us is measured with respect to the epistemic limits of human beings qua measuring devices, limitations ‘which will be described (...) in detail in the final physics and biology’ (van Fraassen 1980: 17). In order for the constructive empiricist to determine what counts as observable, he will have to appeal to our best scientific theories of light, human physiology, and so forth. To put the same point in a slightly more abstract way, in order to draw a distinction between observable and unobservable entities, the constructive empiricist needs to use his best scientific theory of observability – call it T* – to tell him the identity of the observable entities. This raises an interesting difficulty. Constructive empiricism is the view that ‘science aims to give us theories that are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate’ (van Fraassen 1980:12). When he accepts a theory, the constructive empiricist only believes the statements of his scientific theories that are about observable entities. Thus, in order to know which statements of a scientific theory to believe, the constructive empiricist needs to know which statements of that theory are about observable entities. In particular then, the constructive empiricist only believes the statements of his theory of observability T* that are about observable entities. Therefore, in order to know which statements of T* he can believe, the constructive empiricist needs to know which statements of T* are about observable entities. However, it is T* that tells the constructive empiricist what counts as an observable entity: the constructive empiricist therefore needs to use T* to tell him which statements of T* he can believe. The fact that the distinction drawn by T* must also apply to itself is not an immediate cause for alarm.. (shrink)

Behavioral genetic (BG) research has yielded many important discoveries about the origins of human behavior, but offers little insight into how we might improve outcomes. We posit that this gap in our knowledge base stems in part from the epidemiologic nature of BG research questions. Namely, BG studies focus on understanding etiology as it currently exists, rather than etiology in environments that could exist but do not as of yet (e.g., etiology following an intervention). Put another way, they focus exclusively (...) on the etiology of “what is” rather than “what could be”. The current paper discusses various aspects of this field-wide methodological reality, and offers a way to overcome it by demonstrating how behavioral geneticists can incorporate an experimental approach into their work. We outline an ongoing study that embeds a randomized intervention within a twin design, connecting “what is” and “what could be” for the first time. We then lay out a more general framework for a new field—experimental BGs—which has the potential to advance both scientific inquiry and related philosophical discussions. (shrink)

Responses to the pernicious influences of mainstream pornography on its viewers fall into two main sorts: regulation and education. Pornography has long been a core topic in analytic feminist philosophy, but it has largely focused on issues around regulation, in particular with trying to undermine arguments against regulation on the grounds that pornography should count as protected speech. Here I instead look at some ways that philosophy can contribute to an education-based approach, in particular to what has been (...) class='Hi'>called an ‘education to address pornography's influence’. I first argue that philosophical considerations can help to motivate this kind of overall approach to countering pornography's influence, but the main contribution of the paper is to contend that such considerations can also contribute to shaping the kind of content and messaging that such an education should have. I discuss two related issues, focusing on pornographic films. The first concerns the status of pornographic films as fiction; it is misleading and unhelpful to tell teenagers and young adults that pornography is ‘just fiction’, as is sometimes proposed, but it is not clear what more effective and accurate message might be offered instead. The second concerns the ways that pornographic films often present the people (and in particular the women) who perform in them as ideals or archetypes when it comes to what kinds of sexual acts people typically choose and enjoy, which I argue is a neglected form of objectification. I briefly evaluate some suggestive examples of proposed messaging, targeted at teens and young adults. (shrink)

This qualitative research examines the influence of animosity on physicians during clinical encounters and its ethical implications. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Israeli-Jewish physicians: four treated Syrians and six treated Palestinian terrorists/Hezbollah militants or Palestinian civilians. An interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to uncover main themes in these interviews. Whereas the majority of physicians stated they are obligated to treat any patient, physicians who treated Syrians exhibited stronger emotional expression and implicit empathy, while less referring to the presence of (...) the Israeli-Arab conflict. In contrast, physicians who treated enemy combatants or Palestinian civilians showed the exact opposite. Linking these results to the “Implicit Bias” theory, the role of empathy and the beneficence principle in medical ethics, we argue that: the unconscious decreased emotional involvement among the latter group of physicians is a deficiency that needs to be recognized; and this deficiency undermines the principle of beneficence, thereby possibly influencing the fulfillment of the commitment to treat patients. Acknowledging and addressing the potential emotional and ethical deficiencies entailed in encounters with the so-called enemy-patients are of importance to the global medical community, since such encounters are increasingly an integral part of the current political realities faced by both the developed and developing worlds. (shrink)

More than a decade has passed since North American Indigenous scholars began a public dialogue on how we might “Indigenize the academy.” Discussions around how to “Indigenize” and whether it’s possible to “decolonize” the academy in Canada have proliferated as a result of the Truth and Reconciliation of Canada, which calls upon Canadians to learn the truth about colonial relations and reconcile the damage that is ongoing. Indigenous scholars are increasingly leading and writing about efforts in their institutions; efforts include (...) land- and Indigenous language-based pedagogies, transformative community-based research, Indigenous theorizing, and dual governance structures. Kim Anderson’s paper invites dialogue about how Indigenous feminist approaches can spark unique Indigenizing practices, with a focus on how we might activate Indigenous feminist spaces and places in the academy. In their responses, Elena Flores Ruíz uses Mexican feminist Indigenizing discourse to ask what can be done to promote plurifeminist indigenizing practices and North-South dialogues that acknowledge dynamic Indigenous pasts and diverse contexts for present interactions on Turtle Island. Georgina Tuari Stewart proceeds to describe Mana Wahine indigenous feminist theory from Aotearoa before proceeding to develop a “kitchen logic” of mana, which parallels Anderson’s understanding of tawow. Finally, Madina Tlostanova reflects on how several ways of advancing indigenous feminist academic activism described by Anderson intersect with examples from her own native Adyghe indigenous culture divided between the neocolonial situation and the post-Soviet trauma. (shrink)

One very important question about poverty is what rich people like us should do to fight it. In this article, I argue that we can, at little cost to ourselves, give tithes of our money and live within our so-called ‘ecological footprint’. At the end of the article, it is argued that we should, morally, do these things.

Lyotard defines being postmodern as an ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’. Such incredulity includes, in particular, skepticism vis-à-vis Enlightenment ideals like autonomy. Motivated by such skepticism, several educational scholars put into question education for autonomy as it is practiced in the formal settings of national school systems. More specifically, they criticize that practices of autonomy education can have certain normalizing and ideological e￿ects that undermine the aim of creating autonomous subjects. This article examines these critiques of education for autonomy and argues that (...) they are best understood as calls for reforming educational practices, and not as outright rejections of education for autonomy. Thus, since the allegedly ‘postmodern’ critiques of autonomy education cannot be plausibly understood as radical ruptures with Enlightenment ideals, the article concludes that these critiques represent (merely) constructive self-critical reflections on what Habermas dubbed the ‘unfinished project of modernity’. (shrink)

So-called basic self-knowledge (ordinary knowledge of one's present states of mind) can be seen as both 'baseless' and privileged. The spontaneous self-beliefs we have when we avow our states of mind do not appear to be formed on any particular epistemic basis (whether intro-or extro-spective). Nonetheless, on some views, these self-beliefs constitute instances of (privileged) knowledge. We are here interested in views on which true mental self-beliefs have internalist epistemic warrant that false ones lack. Such views are committed to (...) a form of disjunctivism about basic self-knowledge. We begin by presenting an influential disjunctivist view about perceptual knowledge (Pritchard 2008, 2012, and elsewhere) and articulate a problem for it. We then consider two versions of disjunctivism about basic self-knowledge – one 'constitutivist', the other 'neo-expressivist' – and argue that both can avoid an analogue of this problem for self-knowledge. However, we give reasons for preferring the disjunctivism yielded by neo-expressivism. We conclude by considering briefly whether an acceptable disjunctivism about mental self-beliefs can point the way toward a sensible disjunctivism about perceptual beliefs. (shrink)

In Mind and World and related works, John McDowell attempts to offer us an understanding of the relation between our experience of the world and our wording of it. In arguing for this understanding, McDowell sees himself as engaged in a Wittgensteinian exorcism of a philosophical puzzlement; and his aim is to recover for us a truly satisfying way of conceiving of the relation between our words and our world. Taking my bearing from Stanley Cavell's reading of Wittgenstein, in which, (...) as I argue, the notion of 'the point of an utterance' plays a central role, I develop a criticism of McDowell on two levels. First, I try to show that McDowell fails to lead his words - 'experience', 'seeing', 'judging', 'claiming', and others - back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. His use of these words is still controlled by a particular picture of our relation to the world, rather than by our everyday criteria. Second, I argue that the picture controlling McDowell's account of our wording of our world is one in which the question concerning the point of putting something into words is being repressed. McDowell proposes that our experience 'contains claims', in the sense that it provides us with the very same content that a claim, or a judgment, might have. I argue that, given the philosophical work that McDowell intends such formulations to perform, the 'innocent' understanding that he aims to recover for us betokens a failure to attend to the conditions that allow our words to express, or otherwise carry, any determinate content.Not: 'How can I describe what I see?' but 'What does one call "description of what is seen"'? (Wittgenstein). Wittgenstein (1980a), remark 981. (shrink)

The article assesses different models of professional ethics and develops a model which sees professional imperatives as the institutionally-guided expression of foundational moral principles. This article uses the model to assess the moral pressures placed on interrogators in undercover operations in which a detective poses as a suspect in pre-arraignment holding. While highly effective, the level of empathetic rapport required risks incurring compassion fatigue and burn out on the part of detectives.

Davidson’s well-known language skepticism—the claim that there is no such a thing as a language—has recognizably Gricean underpinnings, some of which also underlie his continuity skepticism—the claim that there can be no philosophically illuminating account of the emergence of language and thought. My first aim in this paper is to highlight aspects of the complicated relationship between central Davidsonian and Gricean ideas concerning language. After a brief review of Davidson’s two skeptical claims and their Gricean underpinnings, I provide my own (...) take on how Davidson’s continuity skepticism can be resisted consistently with his rejection of the Gricean priority claim, yet without giving up some of Grice’s own insights regarding the origins of meaning. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the connection between meaning, the specific field of phenomenological philosophy, and mattering, the cornerstone of personal identity. Doing so requires that we take a stand on the scope and method of phenomenological philosophy itself. I will argue that while we can describe our lives in an “impersonal” way, such descriptions will necessarily omit what makes it the case that such lives can matter at all. This will require distinguishing between “personal” identity and “self” identity, an (...) idea well-established in the phenomenological literature – for instance, in Husserl’s distinction between the “transcendental ego” and the person -- but I will argue that self-identity is a normative achievement whose clarification requires a move into second-person phenomenology. The argument moves through three sections. First, I will discuss Aron Gurwitsch’s “non-egological” conception of consciousness and will explain the most important reason Husserl rejected this view in his transcendental phenomenology. Second, I will discuss some contemporary approaches to Husserl’s distinction between person and ego. Third, I will argue that these approaches testify to an ambiguity in Husserl’s account of being “true” to oneself that requires us to understand selfhood as having the structure Heidegger called care. The importance of this will be demonstrated phenomenologically in a critical examination of Paul Ricoeur’s ontology of selfhood, particularly his interpretation of the second-person phenomenology of conscience. (shrink)

I address here the question what sense to make of the idea that there can be thought prior to language. I begin by juxtaposing two familiar and influential philosophical views, one associated with the work of Paul Grice, the other associated with the work of Donald Davidson. Grice and Davidson share a broad, rationalist perspective on language and thought, but they endorse conflicting theses on the relation between them. Whereas, for Grice, thought of an especially complex sort is a (...) precondition of linguistic meaning, for Davidson, there can be no genuine thought without language. I argue that both views present us with unpalatable alternatives concerning our understanding of the natural origins of objective thought and meaningful language. Drawing on what I take to be key insights from Grice and Davidson, I then lay out some broad desiderata for an intermediate position. I finally turn to a certain form of nonlinguistic communication of the sort of which both prelinguistic children and languageless animals are capable, viz., expressive communication. I propose that a proper appreciation of the character and function of expressive communication can help us trace the outlines of the desired intermediate position. (shrink)

Animals react and adjust to the behavior of their conspecifics. Much less is known about whether animals also react and adjust to the psychological states of others. Recent evidence suggests that chimpanzees follow the gaze of others around barriers, past distracters, and check back if they find nothing. Chimpanzees can gauge the motives of a human experimenter and distinguish his intentional from accidental actions. These results suggest that chimpanzees interpret the perceptions and actions of others from a psychological perspective -they (...) seem to know what others can and cannot see and what goals others pursue. It is hypothesized that the co-operation of the ability to operate on psychological states and the motivation to share emotions and experiences with others are key ingredients in the making of human minds. (shrink)

One approach to assess the explanatory power of natural selection is to ask what type of facts it can explain. The standard list of explananda includes facts like trait frequencies or the survival of particular organisms. Here, I argue that this list is incomplete: natural selection can also explain a specific kind of individual-level fact that involves traits. The ability of selection to explain this sort of fact vindicates the explanatory commitments of empirical studies on microevolution. Trait facts must (...) be distinguished from a closely related kind of fact, that is, the fact that a particular individual x has one trait rather than another. Whether or not selection can explain the latter type of fact is highly controversial. According to the so-called ‘Negative View’ it cannot be explained by selection. I defend the Negative View against Nanay’s objection. (shrink)

What I call “Rorty’s Dilemma” has us caught between the Scylla of Cartesian Dualism and the Charybdis of eliminativism about the mental. Proper recognition of what is distinctively mental requires accommodating incorrigibility about our mental states, something Rorty thinks materialists cannot do. So we must either countenance mental states over and above physical states in our ontology, or else give up altogether on the mental as a distinct category. In section 2, “Materialist Introspectionism—Independence and Epistemic Authority”, I review (...) reasons for being dissatisfied with materialist introspectionism as a way out of the dilemma. In section 3, “Constitutivism”, I outline two constitutivist alternatives to materialist introspectionism. In section 4, “A Neo-Expressivist View”, I offer my neo-expressivist view (defended in Bar-On, Speaking my mind: Expression and self-knowledge. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004 ), according to which the distinctive status of mental self-ascriptions is to be explained by appeal to the expressive character of acts of issuing them (in speech or in thought). This view, I argue, allows us to stay clear of eliminativism without committing to Cartesian substance dualism, thereby offering a viable way of slipping between the horns of Rorty’s dilemma. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 41-46 [Access article in PDF] On What There Really Is to Our Notion of Ownership of a Thought Annalisa Coliva JOHN CAMPBELL'S REPLY to my paper aims at reestablishing the point that there are two strands to our notion of ownership of a thought. There are two ways of cashing out this idea. 1 First, one could say that A is the (...) owner of a thought if and only if both the following two independent conditions apply 2 : (1) X is introspectively aware of a token thought and (2) X is the person who formed that token thought. Second, one may hold that there are twodifferent and independent notions of ownership of a thought, call it O1 and O2, corresponding to (1) and (2), respectively. For brevity, I will refer only to the first interpretation. But what I will be saying will apply, mutatis mutandis, to both.On this view, thought insertion would be a case in which someone thinks that (1) is satisfied, while (2) is not and, therefore, denies that the thought she is introspectively aware of is her own. 3 Campbell's explanation of thought insertion is quite clear: the subject has prima facie reasons to think that she is not the person who formed that token thought—maybe because she does not experience that thought as formed by herself—and, therefore, has prima facie reasons to deny that she is its owner, but she is mistaken in identifying the producer of the thought and what she says is false, yet reasonable. 4 Notice, however, an important consequence of Campbell's model. If (1) and (2) are independent conditions, then one could obtain without the other. Hence, it must be conceivable that one is introspectively aware of a thought that one has not produced. Indeed, cases of multiple personality, if taken literally, might be taken as examples of this kind of situation: person A and person B inhabit the same body, A can have access to B's thoughts, yet B remains their producer. So A could actually say something like "I'm thinking (i.e. I am immediately aware) that p, but this is not my thought (it is not the thought I produced), it's B's (the thought that B produced)" and what she would be saying would in fact be true.Yet, a simple-minded reaction one may have toward this line of explanation is this: If the subject is either saying something false, but reasonable, or, indeed, something altogether true, when she says "I'm thinking 'Kill God,' but this isn't my thought, it's Chris'," why should we consider her report as an expression of some kind of cognitive illusion, 5 which we take as a symptom of mental illness, as opposed to, at most, a possible mistake in identifying the producer of the thought? And, connectedly, why should we try to cure her, rather than just, at most, correct her? [End Page 41]Hence, the whole dispute between Campbell and me hinges on whether it is logically possible for one to be introspectively aware of a thought and yet not be its producer. Campbell claims that it is, whereas I deny that this is a genuine possibility. He holds that these are two independent conditions and that the one can obtain without the other, whereas I hold that they are not independent and that they stand or fall together. Campbell is fully aware of being making a surprising claim because, as he points out, "[The two strands in the ordinary notion of ownership of a thought] do not ordinarily even seem to come apart" (Campbell 2002, italics mine). Yet he offers in its support no more than an analogy between being the person who produced a certain signature and being the person who produced a given token thought. Let us look at it closer.Consider the following situation: a person NN looks at a piece of paper with NN written on it and wonders whether she is the... (shrink)

I There are a great many ways in which a thing can be good. What counts as a way of being good? I leave it to intuition. Let us allow that being a good dancer is being good in a way, and that so also is being a good carpenter. We might group these and similar ways of being good under the name activity goodness, since a good dancer is good at dancing and a good carpenter is good at (...) carpentry. Everything good at doing something D is good in a way, and for each activity D, being good at D-ing falls into the class of ways of being good which I call activity goodness. Again, let us allow that being a good hammer is being good in a way, and that so also is being a good butter knife. We might group these ways of being good under the name equipment goodness, since a good hammer is good for use in hammering nails and a good butter knife is good for use in buttering bread. Everything good for use in achieving a purpose P is good in a way, and for each purpose P, being good for use in achieving P falls into the class of ways of being good which I call equipment goodness. Again, let us allow that tasting good is being good in a way, and so also are looking good, sounding good, and so on. The class here is aesthetic goodness. Is all goodness goodness-in-a-way? Intuitively, the answer is yes: it seems right to think that everything is good only insofar as it is good in one or more ways. (shrink)

Though warfare has been a popular subject of inquiry in Aristotelian virtue ethics since antiquity, pacifism has almost never been afforded sympathetic study. This paper helps to fill that lacuna by asking whether and how secular virtue ethics can provide a theory of pacifism, whether and how it might defeat some common/foreseeable objections, and what additional work needs to be done in order for virtue ethicists to provide a philosophically robust account of pacifism. I begin by translating a pacifist (...) argument from suffering into an argument from the virtue of compassion. Compassionate agents, sensitive as they are to others’ plights, will be highly averse to lethal warfare. In the second section, I argue that cases for pacifism like this one, which are rooted in individual virtues, cannot constitute a complete argument for pacifism because of the commonly held view that the virtues are reciprocal/unified, and that such an argument will therefore require supplementation in order to be action-guiding. The third section elaborates on what I call the impracticality objection. Any convincing account of pacifism will have to respond to this objection, and I argue that virtue ethical pacifism is especially vulnerable to it. In the fourth section, I highlight two avenues available to the virtue ethicist who defends pacifism from the impracticality objection. Neither of these avenues is viable without further research, however, so while I insist that virtue ethical pacifism is not defeated by the impracticality objection, I maintain also that this form of pacifism requires further scholarly work. (shrink)

Research on the evolution of language is often framed in terms of sharp discontinuities in syntax and semantics between animal communication systems and human language as we know them. According to the so-called “pragmatics-first” approach to the evolution of language, when trying to understand the origins of human language in animal communication, we should be focusing on potential pragmatic continuities. However, some proponents of this approach (e.g. Seyfarth and Cheney Animal Behavior 124: 339–346, 2017) find important pragmatic continuities, whereas (...) others (e.g. Origgi and Sperber 2000) find sharp discontinuities. I begin (in Section 1) by arguing that this divergence is due to the fact that the proponents implicitly rely, respectively, on two different views of pragmatics, corresponding to different conceptions of what is involved in context-dependence – one “Carnapian”, the other “Gricean”. I argue that neither conception is fit to serve the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the evolution of language. In Section 2, I examine a recent formal “semantic-pragmatic” analysis of monkey calls, due to Philippe Schlenker et al. (in, e.g., Linguistics and Philosophy 37 (6): 439–501, 2014, Trends in Cognitive Science 20 (12): 894–904, 2016a, Theoretical Linguistics 42 (1–2): 1–90, 2016b), which appears to improve on the Carnapian and Gricean conceptions. However, I argue that the appearances are misleading and that the S-P analysis is no better suited than Carnapian analyses for the purposes of those seeking to establish human-nonhuman pragmatic continuities. Understanding why this is so will point the way toward my preferred, genuinely intermediate conception of pragmatics (as defended in Bar-On Biology & Philosophy 36 (6): 1–25, 2021), which – I argue in Section 3 – is better fit for these purposes. Drawing on recent discussions of chimpanzee communication, I briefly indicate which aspects of extant primate call communication – both gestural and vocal – could potentially count as pragmatic according to this conception. (shrink)

Increasingly, humanitarian organizations across the globe have been implementing innovative technologies in their practice as they respond to the needs of communities affected by conflicts, disasters, and public health emergencies. However, technological innovation may intersect with moral values, norms, and commitments, and may challenge humanitarian imperatives. Through the examination of an empirical case study on drone mapping, this paper aims to explore three questions: (1) What are the dynamics between aid delivery and technological innovation in the humanitarian enterprise? (2) (...) How are structural problems addressed in an environment in which technology is being portrayed as a force for change? (3) What moral responsibilities towards vulnerable populations should humanitarian stakeholders bear when introducing innovative technologies in humanitarian action. Discussion revolves around the ideology of “technological utopia”, and the normative role of technology in the aid sector - to make substantive impacts, or to produce “success stories”. In conclusion, a call for rigorous ethical analysis to help foster value sensitive humanitarian innovation (VSHI) is made. (shrink)

This paper examines Aquinas's theory of dualist mental causation, that is, his theory of how human beings can efficiently cause changes in their bodies in virtue of two non-physical mental states of theirs, specifically an act of the intellect and an act of the will. It is first shown that Aquinas's hylomorphism does not lie at the heart of this theory. Rather, a relation that he calls “contact of power” (tactus virtutis) does. The remainder of the paper then investigates the (...) nature of this relation. Since Aquinas discusses key marks of it by contrasting it with physical contact, the paper focuses on this contrast. It is argued that, for Aquinas, the human soul stands in a relation of contact of power to the body or, more precisely, a certain part of the body when it causes a change in it and is holenmerically co-located with it. (shrink)

The revised edition of Paul Seabright’s The Company of Strangers is critically reviewed. Seabright aims to help non-economists participating in the cross-disciplinary study of the evolution of human sociality appreciate the potential value that can be added by economists. Though the book includes nicely constructed and vivid essays on a range of economic topics, in its main ambition it largely falls short. The most serious problem is endorsement of the so-called strong reciprocity hypothesis that has been promoted by several (...) prominent economists, but does not pass muster with biologists. (shrink)

Faced with the exponential development of Big Data and both its legal and economic repercussions, we are still slightly in the dark concerning the use of digital information. In the perpetual balance between confidentiality and transparency, this data will lead us to call into question how we understand certain paradigms, such as the Hippocratic Oath in medicine. As a consequence, a reflection on the study of the risks associated with the ethical issues surrounding the design and manipulation of this "massive (...) data" seems to be essential. This book provides a direction and ethical value to these significant volumes of data. It proposes an ethical analysis model and recommendations to better keep this data in check. This empirical and ethico-technical approach brings together the first aspects of a moral framework directed toward thought, conscience and the responsibility of citizens concerned by the use of data of a personal nature. Defines Big Data applications in health Presents the ethical value of the medical datasphere via the description of a model of an ethical analysis of Big Data Provides the recommendations and steps necessary for successful management and governance of personal health data Helps readers determine what conditions are essential for the development of the study of Big Data. (shrink)

Here are some things that I know right now: that I’m feeling a bit hungry, that there’s a red cardinal on my bird feeder, that I’m sitting down, that I have a lot of grading to do today, that my daughter is mad at me, that I’ll be going for a run soon, that I’d like to go out to the movies tonight. As orthodoxy would have it, some among these represent things to which I have privileged epistemic access, namely: (...) my present states of mind . I normally know these states directly, immediately, non-inferentially – I know them the way no one else can know them, and in a way I know nothing else. It’s the job of philosophers to tell us what the scope and source of this self-knowledge and to explain what renders it privileged. (shrink)

What's the relation between being a P and being called 'P', for example, between being a cat and being called 'cat'? Surely something might be a cat without being called 'cat'; indeed, cats as such might not be called 'cats'. If the word 'cat' disappeared from the language, the event would not entail the disappearence of cats. What about the converse implication? Does being called 'cat' entail being a cat? It would seem so. (...) For suppose 'cat' refers to certain objects, and let Moon be one such object. Consider the statement that Moon is a cat. The statement is true just in case Moon is one of the objects that 'cat' refers to, which she is. Hence, the statement is true, therefore Moon is a cat. Being among the objects that 'cat' refers to entails being a cat. However, it is one thing to say that 'cat' refers to certain objects, and (possibly) a different thing to say that certain objects are called 'cats'. Spiders are often called 'insects', yet 'insect' does not refer to spiders: it is not correct to call spiders 'insects'. "Being called" is often intended as a descriptive notion: whether something is, or is not called 'P' is just a fact that can be stated in terms of people's behavior or patterns of behavior. Reference, on the other hand, may not be descriptive in this sense. Philosophers have often been trying to characterize the quasi-technical notion of reference by suitably restricting or qualifying the everyday, descriptive notion of "being called". Success in such an enterprise would amount to showing that being called* 'P' -a suitably modified version of being called 'P'- entails being P. Whether the enterprise is bound to fail is not the topic of this article. Here, I would like to show that one such attempt did fail, whereas another, more recent attempt that would seem to be bound to fail for analogous reasons does not fail; or not for such reasons, anyway. A few decades ago, some philosophers believed that being called 'P' was (with some qualifications) a sufficient condition for being a P.. (shrink)

We investigate the question of whether one can characterize complexity classes in terms of efficient reducibility to the set of Kolmogorov-random strings . This question arises because and , and no larger complexity classes are known to be reducible to in this way. We show that this question cannot be posed without explicitly dealing with issues raised by the choice of universal machine in the definition of Kolmogorov complexity. What follows is a list of some of our main results.• (...) Although Kummer showed that, for every universal machine U there is a time bound t such that the halting problem is disjunctive truth-table reducible to in time t, there is no such time bound t that suffices for every universal machine U. We also show that, for some machines U, the disjunctive reduction can be computed in as little as doubly-exponential time.• Although for every universal machine U, there are very complex sets that are -reducible to , it is nonetheless true that . • Any decidable set that is polynomial-time monotone-truth-table reducible to is in .• Any decidable set that is polynomial-time truth-table reducible to via a reduction that asks at most f queries on inputs of size n lies in. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of self-knowledge share a presupposition to the effect that the only way to vindicate so-called first-person authority as understood by our folk-psychology is to identify specific “good-making” epistemic features that render our self-ascriptions of mental states especially knowledgeable. In earlier work, I rejected this presupposition. I proposed that we separate two questions: How is first-person authority to be explained? What renders avowals instances of a privileged kind of knowledge?In response to question, I offered a neo-expressivist account (...) that, I argued, is compatible with a variety of non-deflationary, substantive answers to question. Here I re-evaluate the relative merits of the neo-expressivist account in light of some recent attempts to capture first-person authority by appealing to the so-called transparency of mental self-attributions. I then canvass two recent appeals to transparency that give priority to question. Bearing in mind.. (shrink)

After offering a characterization of what unites versions of ‘expressivism’, we highlight a number of dimensions along which expressivist views should be distinguished. We then separate four theses often associated with expressivism – a positive expressivist thesis, a positive constitutivist thesis, a negative ontological thesis, and a negative semantic thesis – and describe how traditional expressivists have attempted to incorporate them. We argue that expressivism in its traditional form may be fatally flawed, but that expressivists nonetheless have the resources (...) for preserving what is essential to their view. These resources comprise a re-configuring of expressivism, the result of which is the view we call ‘neo-expressivism’. After illustrating how the neo-expressivist model works in the case of avowals and ethical claims, we explain how it avoids the problems of traditional expressivism. (shrink)

Here are some things that I know right now: that I’m feeling a bit hungry, that there’s a red cardinal on my bird feeder, that I’m sitting down, that I have a lot of grading to do today, that my daughter is mad at me, that I’ll be going for a run soon, that I’d like to go out to the movies tonight. As orthodoxy would have it, some among these represent things to which I have privileged epistemic access, namely: (...) my present states of mind. I normally know these states directly, immediately, non-inferentially – I know them the way no one else can know them, and in a way I know nothing else. It’s the job of philosophers to tell us scope and source of this selfknowledge and to explain what renders it privileged. (shrink)

In this paper I outline the most relevant traits of the term ‘trust’ understood as one of the synonyms for ‘certainty’ that Ludwig Wittgenstein used in his posthumous work On Certainty. To this end, I analyze the paragraphs of On Certainty in which reference is made to pupils who are expected to trust what is taught by their teacher: in addition, I note that such a process is largely based on the attitude of rejection and bewilderment that teachers promote (...) towards people who call into doubt those certainties that pupils are expected to assimilate. Subsequently, after emphasizing the importance that Wittgenstein attached to the ineffability of certainties, I explain how such certainty or trust can be staged. Lastly, I clarify why an appropriate contemplation of this staging can be of great help for pupils to achieve at least four goals of educational interest: thus, children can not only strengthen their capacity for wonder, but also experience what things are ineffable, glimpse the limits of rationality, and become more tolerant of people who are partakers of a different world-picture. (shrink)

In postmodern societies the symbolic vacuum, a result of the loss of a unified religious tradition, calls for substitutes in the form of fragmentary and isolated memories. By drawing from the reservoir of those memories in an arbitrary and subjective way, privatised religion creates a kind of symbolic bricolage. Can such a bricolage become more than a mere ‘counterfeit’ of collective meaning that religion once used to provide? Can religious tradition, based on a broken continuity of memory, still bring about (...) a matrix of the ways of expressing one’s faith? If so, how? This twofold study seeks to explore those and similar questions by means of showing, firstly, in what sense religion can be conceived of as memory which produces collective meanings and, secondly, what may happen when individualised and absolutised memories alienate themselves from a continuity of tradition, thus beginning to function as a sort of private religion. Being the second part of the study in question, this article aims at exploring the postmodern crisis of religious memory, which includes the pluralisation of the channels of the sacred and the differentiation of a total religious memory into a plurality of specialised circles of memory. Firstly, it examines the three main aspects of the current crisis of continuity at large, namely the affirmation of the autonomous individual, the advance of rationalisation, and the process of institutional differentiation. Secondly, the plurality of the channels of the sacred is discussed in light of religion’s apparently unique way of drawing legitimisation from its reference to tradition. This is followed by two illustrations of the reconstruction of religious memory. In the final section of the article, a theological reflection on possible directions that may be taken in the face of the postmodern crisis of religious memory is offered. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the theoretical foundations underlying the testing of quantum electrodynamics. We show that for the photon propagator (together with the contiguous vertices) it is not necessary to introduce ad hoc modifications in sufficiently accurate scattering experiments. Energy, momentum transfer, and accuracy determine the tested length in a model-independent way. The situation is quite different with the electron propagator. If gauge invariance is taken for granted, the electron propagator cannot be tested with processes where diagrams with open (...) electron lines are important in the lowest order of perturbation theory. These processes can only give limits for anomalous moment and multiphoton parts of the vertices. On the other hand, processes with closed electron loops (vacuum polarization), such as photon-photon and Delbrück scattering, as well as photon splitting or corresponding low-energy, high-precision experiments can give limits also for the electron propagator. But in these cases only less accurate limits can be obtained, which depend on the modification model. Hence testing of the electron propagator, i.e., roughly speaking, the Dirac equation, is much more difficult than testing of the photon propagator, i.e, Maxwell's equations. (shrink)

In this article I explore the contemporary relationship of theology to philosophy through the call for a `renewed philosophy of being' by Pope John Paul II. I argue that in fact three understandings of being appear in this call: the first, phenomenological, appears as the bringing to description of the situation of contemporary nihilism, exemplified by Nietzsche both in his published works and his Nachlaß; the second, metaphysical, can be understood as the moralistic voice taken up by contemporary theologians in (...) addressing philosophy. This voice, I argue, is the voicing of the subjectivity of the (Cartesian) subject, and can be understood as the unfolding of the being-historical of the subject, explained in Martin Heidegger's use of the term `history of being' or Seinsgeschichte . This voice arises out of the `modernity' of the eighteenth century up to the present: it is a voice of extreme nihilism, but expressing itself as an imperative — not what `is', but what `should be'. This voice is also to be found in John Paul II. The third understanding is a possibility only arising out of the extreme nihilism encountered in the first two understandings of being. This understanding makes possible the genuine asking of the `question of being', the Seinsfrage, also laid out by Heidegger. As such, the question of being, when genuinely asked, alters the human comportment to God. Inasmuch as being presses in on man through a lack, an emptiness, that reasserts the fundamental orientation toward the future that unfolds from out of the being of beings, so the region of concealment and the withdrawal of the nihilating of the nothing, which is the region proper to divinity, can be understood and seen all over again. (shrink)

Previous research on scalar implicature has primarily relied on meta-linguistic judgment tasks and found varying rates of such inferences depending on the nature of the task and contextual manipulations. This paper introduces a novel interactive paradigm involving both a production and a comprehension side and a precise conversational goal. The main research question is what is reliably communicated by some in this communicative setting, both when the quantifier occurs in unembedded and embedded positions. Our new paradigm involves an action-based (...) task from which participants’ interpretation of utterances can be inferred. It incorporates a game-theoretic design, thereby including a precise model to predict participants’ behaviour in the experimental context. Our study shows that embedded and unembedded implicatures are reliably communicated by some. We propose two cognitive principles that describe what can be left unsaid. In our experimental context, a production strategy based on these principles is more efficient than a strategy based on literal descriptions. (shrink)