ABSTRACT This paper offers an account of intending to self-deceive which opposes that provided by standard intentionalist accounts of self-deception. According to my account, self-deception is attained instantaneously: to intend to self-deceive that P is thereby to self-deceive that P. Relating this to the concepts of evidence, belief and self-awareness, I develop an account of self-deception which holds that self-deceivers misrepresent themselves as believing what they profess to believe. I argue that my account yields solutions to the central problems of (...) self-deception – the static problem and the dynamic problem – while remaining faithful to the phenomena of self-deception. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that a literal understanding of someone’s self-deception that p yields the following contradiction. Qua self-deceiver, she does not believe that p, yet – qua self-deceived – she does believe that p. I argue that this assumption is ill-founded. Literalism about self-deception – the view that self-deceivers literally self-deceive – is not committed to this contradiction. On the contrary, properly understood, literalism excludes it.

I defend a Husserlian account of self-consciousness against representationalist accounts: higher-order representationalism and self-representationalism. Of these, self-representationalism is the harder to refute since, unlike higher-order representationalism, it does not incur a regress of self-conscious acts. However, it incurs a regress of intentional contents. I consider, and reject, five strategies for avoiding this regress of contents. I conclude that the regress is inherent to self-representationalism. I close by showing how this incoherence obtrudes in what must be the self-representationalist’s account of the (...) phenomenology of experience. (shrink)

According to doxastic accounts of self-deception, self-deception that P yields belief that P. For doxastic accounts, the self-deceiver really believes what he, in self-deception, professes to believe. I argue that doxastic accounts are contradicted by a phenomenon that often accompanies self-deception. This phenomenon – which I term ‘secondary deception’ – consists in the self-deceiver's defending his professed (deceit-induced) belief to an audience by lying to that audience. I proceed to sketch an alternative, non-doxastic account of how we should understand self-deception (...) in terms of the self-deceiver's misrepresentation of himself as believing that P. (shrink)

On the philosophy of some Hindu saints from Tamil Nadu.

Distributed programming paradigms such as MapReduce and Spark have alleviated sequential bottleneck while mining of massive transaction databases. Of significant importance is mining High Utility Itemset that incorporates the revenue of the items purchased in a transaction. Although a few algorithms to mine HUIs in the distributed environment exist, workload skew and data transfer overhead due to shuffling operations remain major issues. In the current study, Parallel Utility Computation algorithm has been proposed with novel grouping and load balancing strategies for (...) an efficient mining of HUIs in a distributed environment. To group the items, Transaction Weighted Utility values as a degree of transaction similarity is employed. Subsequently, these groups are assigned to the nodes across the cluster by taking into account the mining load due to the items in the group. Experimental evaluation on real and synthetic datasets demonstrate that PUC with TWU grouping in conjunction with load balancing converges mining faster. Due to reduced data transfer, and load balancing-based assignment strategy, PUC outperforms different grouping strategies and random assignment of groups across the cluster. Also, PUC is shown to be faster than PHUI-Growth algorithm with a promising speedup. (shrink)

1. Sexual Brains and Body Politics 2. Hormones and Hardwiring 3. Making Sense of Brain Organization Studies 4. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Brain Organization 5. Working Backward from “Distinct‘ Groups 6. Masculine and Feminine Sexuality 7. Sexual Orienteering 8. Sex-Typed Interests 9. Taking Context Seriously 10. Trading Essence for Potential.

This article proposes how theatre, as a site of expert adult imaginative play, provides a unique window into how E-cognition can advance our understanding of imagination as a lifelong practice. I characterize theatrical activity as highly developed actions and strategies for wielding bodies, objects, and environments as imaginative practice. Through an enactively based case study of the play _Provenance_ by Autopoetics ( 2018 ), I reveal how creation and performance processes literally and epistemically engineer novel niches for the spectator. This (...) case study investigates how _Provenance_’s recurring theatrical device of newspaper manipulation constitutes a cognitive device for an affordance-oriented and predictive spectator. As I track the priorities and processes of these longstanding play development and performance techniques informed by the theatrical tradition of Jacques Lecoq (1921–1999), I suggest how concepts such as affordances, affordance spaces, predictive engagement, and the free energy principle are apt conceptual tools for understanding how these practices engender imaginative encounters. I follow this analysis by suggesting, via the free energy principle’s conception of “models,” that there may be cognitive consequences to the possible changes experienced by the spectator that exceed theatrical experience. I conclude this discussion by pointing toward how my 4-E inflected insights on the imaginative practices of _Provenance_ may be applicable to imagination and pretense in other arenas not just behind but also beyond the footlights. (shrink)

Are demands for equality motivated by envy? Nietzsche, Freud, Hayek, and Nozick all thought so. Call this the Envy Objection. For egalitarians, the Envy Objection is meant to sting. Many egalitarians have tried to evade the Envy Objection.. But should egalitarians be worried about envy? In this paper, I argue that egalitarians should stop worrying and learn to love envy. I argue that the persistent unwillingness to embrace the Envy Objection is rooted in a common misunderstanding of the nature of (...) the charge, what it reveals, and what can be said in response to it. I develop what Bernard Williams might call a vindicatory genealogy of envy, thereby allowing us to see that envy, rather than undermining egalitarian intuitions, can in fact play a distinct justificatory role (when it is fitting), which undermines the Envy Objection. (shrink)

Strawson (1994) and Peacocke (1992) introduced thought experiments that show that it seems intuitive that there is, in some way, an experiential character to mental events of understanding. Some (e.g., Siewert 1998, 2011; Pitt 2004) try to explain these intuitions by saying that just as we have, say, headache experiences and visual experiences of blueness, so too we have experiences of understanding. Others (e.g., Prinz 2006, 2011; Tye 1996) propose that these intuitions can be explained without positing experiences of understanding. (...) Call this the debate between Realism and Anti-Realism about experiences of understanding. This paper aims to advance that debate in two ways. In the first half, I develop more precise characterizations of what Realists and Anti-Realists propose. In the second half, I distinguish the four most plausible versions of Anti-Realism and argue that Realism better explains the target intuition than any of them does. (shrink)

What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research. Humorous, surprising and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street. What (...) does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and about success in life? Why did ancient Egyptians worship the capacity to pay careful attention as the highest of gods? What dreadful paths do people tread when they become resentful, arrogant and vengeful? Dr. Peterson journeys broadly, discussing discipline, freedom, adventure and responsibility, distilling the world's wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. [This book] shatters the modern commonplaces of science, faith and human nature, while transforming and ennobling the mind and spirit of its readers. (shrink)

The #MeToo movement generated a feminist insistence that we “believe women.” But the men accused of assault, harassment, and other violations frequently defended themselves with the insistence that they had always “respected women” – sometimes, going so far as to get numerous women to sign letters swearing that these men had always respected them. This common MeToo defense reveals the core inconsistency – and the core entitlement – at the heart of misogyny and sexual injustice: some women deserve respect. But (...) the duty to respect those women relies on an invisible entitlement to disrespect – indeed, to assault, harass, dominate, or exploit – others. This chapter explores consent’s role within the superstructure of misogyny and sexual injustice, arguing what consent is a key apparatus of white supremacy. It argues that consent has been constructed through dynamics of colonial and racist sexual entitlement, mapping some (white) women as deserving of respect and the right to consent, while marking other women as expendable or disposable within the sexual economy. This means not only that consent is historically constructed as white, but also that whiteness, and in particular, white womanhood, is constructed through consent. Thus, white women’s right to consent – or to refuse – is premised upon the inability of other women to do so. In this way, the right to sexual consent does not disrupt the norm of male sexual entitlement. Consent has always been premised on non-consent, from coloniality and slavery to contemporary porn, which offers a vision of the world without proper consent, so that granting consent to actual women is an exceptional practice, an “act of respect.” By including race and class alongside gender in my analysis of consent, I argue that contemporary feminist visions of sexual justice must do more than defend or ameliorate consent, but develop intersectional interrogations of sexual justice that reckon with the complicities of consent. (shrink)

Chemical kinds are generally treated as having timelessly fixed identities. Biological kinds are generally treated as evolved and/or evolving entities. So what kind of kind is a biochemical kind? This article defends the thesis that biochemical molecules are clustered chemical kinds, some of which—namely, evolutionarily conserved units—are also biological kinds. On this thesis, a number of difficulties that have recently occupied philosophers concerned with proteins and kinds are shown to be either resolved or dissolved. 1 Introduction2 Conflicting Intuitions about Kinds (...) of Proteins3 Against Permissive Pluralism4 Against Nominalism, Toward a Duality of Kinds5 Biological Kinds, Chemical Kinds, and Their Relations6 Implications for Biological Individuals7 Implications for Monism and Scientific Practice. (shrink)

Chemical kinds (e.g. gold) are generally treated as having timelessly fixed identities. Biological kinds (e.g. goldfinches) are generally treated as evolved and/or evolving entities. So what kind of kind is a biochemical kind? This paper defends the thesis that biochemical molecules are clustered chemical kinds, some of which–namely, evolutionarily conserved units–are also biological kinds.On this thesis, a number of difficulties that have recently occupied philosophers concerned with proteins and kinds are shown to be resolved or dissolved.

Personalized genomics companies (PG; also called ‘direct-to-consumer genetics’) are businesses marketing genetic testing to consumers over the Internet. While much has been written about these new businesses, little attention has been given to their roles in science communication. This paper provides an analysis of the gene concept presented to customers and the relation between the information given and the science behind PG. Two quite different gene concepts are present in company rhetoric, but only one features in the science. To explain (...) this, we must appreciate the delicate tension between PG, academic science, public expectation, and market forces. (shrink)

The ‘black box problem’ is a long-standing talking point in debates about artificial intelligence. This is a significant point of tension between ethicists, programmers, clinicians and anyone else working on developing AI for healthcare applications. However, the precise definition of these systems are often left undefined, vague, unclear or are assumed to be standardised within AI circles. This leads to situations where individuals working on AI talk over each other and has been invoked in numerous debates between opaque and explainable (...) systems. This paper proposes a coherent and clear definition for the black box problem to assist in future discussions about AI in healthcare. This is accomplished by synthesising various definitions in the literature and examining several criteria that can be extrapolated from these definitions. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

This Element examines Kant's innovative account of labour in his political philosophy and develops an intersectional analysis of Kant. By demonstrating that Kant's analysis of slavery, citizenship, and sex developed in inter-linked ways over several decades, culminating in his development of a 'trichotomy' of Right, the author shows that Kant's normative account of independence is configured through his theory of labour, and is continuous with his anthropological accounts of race and gender, providing a systemic justification for the dependency of women (...) and non-whites embedded in his philosophy of right. By examining Kant's arguments about slavery as intertwined with his account of domestic labour, the author argues that his ultimate rejection of slavery may owe more to his changing conceptualization of labour than to his theory of race, and that his final arguments against slavery rehearse strategies for embedding intersectional patterns of domestic dependence in his account of the rightful state. (shrink)

We often feel survivor guilt when the very circumstances that harm others leave us unscathed. Although survivor guilt is both commonplace and intelligible, it raises a puzzle for the standard philosophical account of guilt, according to which people feel guilt only when they take themselves to be morally blameworthy. The standard account implies that survivor guilt is uniformly unfitting, as people are not blameworthy simply for having fared better than others. In this paper, we offer a rival account of guilt, (...) the relational account of guilt, which makes sense of survivor guilt and other forms of guilt without self-blame while preserving the intelligibility of guilt about culpable wrongdoing. According to this account, guilt involves the feeling of being unable to justify ourselves to others, and we lack self-justification when we (however blamelessly) stand on the positive side of an undesirable asymmetry with them. When someone survives something that those around her do not, the disparity in outcome constitutes an asymmetry that is often undesirable, because it arises from luck or violates a requirement of solidarity. Thus, survivor guilt is often fitting. (shrink)

Rules are meant to apply equally to all within their jurisdiction. However, some rules are frequently broken without consequence for most. These rules are only occasionally enforced, often at the discretion of a third-party observer. We propose that these rules—whose violations are frequent, and enforcement is rare—constitute a unique subclass of explicitly codified rules, which we call ‘phantom rules’ (e.g., proscribing jaywalking). Their apparent punishability is ambiguous and particularly susceptible to third-party motives. Across six experiments, (N = 1440) we validated (...) the existence of phantom rules and found evidence for their motivated enforcement. First, people played a modified Dictator Game with a novel frequently broken and rarely enforced rule (i.e., a phantom rule). People enforced this rule more often when the “dictator” was selfish (vs. fair) even though the rule only proscribed fractional offers (not selfishness). Then we turned to third person judgments of the U.S. legal system. We found these violations are recognizable to participants as both illegal and commonplace (Experiment 2), differentiable from violations of prototypical laws (Experiments 3) and enforced in a motivated way (Experiments 4a and 4b). Phantom rule violations (but not prototypical legal violations) are seen as more justifiably punished when the rule violator has also violated a social norm (vs. rule violation alone)—unless the motivation to punish has been satiated (Experiment 5). Phantom rules are frequently broken, codified rules. Consequently, their apparent punishability is ambiguous, and their enforcement is particularly susceptible to third party motives. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Pereboom’s empirical objection to agent causation fails to undermine the most plausible version of agent-causal libertarianism. This is significant because Pereboom concedes that such libertarianism is conceptually coherent and only falls to empirical considerations. To substantiate these claims I outline Pereboom’s taxonomy of agent-causal views, develop the strongest version of his empirical objections, and then show that this objection fails to undermine what I consider the most plausible view of agent-causal libertarianism, namely, reconciliatory integrationist (...) agent-causalism. I then strengthen my criticism of Pereboom by responding to three objections to my view. I show that these objections, though initially challenging, fail to undermine my argument. I therefore conclude that, to this extent, agent-causal views remain a viable option in the contemporary free will debate. (shrink)

Several recent criticisms of the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) identify multiple ambiguities in the way it has been formulated by its chief proponents. Here we provide evidence that this hypothesis has also been interpreted in various different ways by the scientific community. Our diagnosis of this problem is that SMH lacks an adequate computational-level account of practical decision making. Such an account is necessary for drawing meaningful links between neurological- and psychological-level data. The paper concludes by providing a simple, five-step (...) model of practical decision making. Recasting SMH in terms of this model generates more precise and empirically tractable computational-level hypotheses about the various ways that somatic markers might influence practical decisions. (shrink)

Roy Sorensen introduced the concept of an epistemic blindspot in the 1980s. A proposition is an epistemic blindspot for some individual at some time if and only if that proposition is consistent but unknowable by that individual at that time. In the first half of this paper, I extend Sorensen work on blindspots by arguing that there exist blindspots that essentially involve hopes. In the second half, I show how such blindspots can contribute to and impair different pursuits of self-understanding. (...) My arguments throughout this paper draw on Luc Bovens’s account of hope. (shrink)

Are workers dominated? A recent suite of neo-republican and relational egalitarian philosophers think they are. Suppose they are right; that is, suppose that some workers are governed by an unjust and arbitrary power existing in labour relations, which persists even in the presence of the actual ability to exit. My question is this: does that give us reason to impose restrictions on firms? According to the so-called Efficiency Objection there are relevant trade-offs that need to be considered between the efficiency (...) of firms and the freedom of workers, and upon considering these trade-offs, we should reject workplace democracy. In this paper, I present a dilemma for the Efficiency Objection. I argue that either the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds or non-moral grounds; if the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds, then it fails because efficiency cannot be valued for its own sake (it is only instrumentally good); if the Efficiency Objection is justified on non-moral grounds, then it fails because of the respect that we owe to persons as persons; therefore, the Efficiency Objection fails. (shrink)

To systematically answer the generalized Kretschmann objection, I propose a mean to make operational a criterion widely recognized as allowing one to decide whether the gauge symmetry of a theory is artificial or substantial. My proposition is based on the dressing field method of gauge symmetry reduction, a new simple tool from mathematical physics. This general scheme allows one in particular to straightforwardly argue that the notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking is superfluous to the empirical success of the electroweak theory. (...) Important questions regarding the context of justification of the theory then arise. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 4 Seiten: 559-572.

The COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on mental health interact with preexisting health risks and disparities to impact varying populations differently. This study explored the relationship between demographic variables, distress and mental health, and vulnerability factors for COVID-19. An online cross-sectional study was conducted from 18 June to 17 July 2020, reflecting the impact of early phase COVID-19 pandemic and related shelter-in-place measures in the United States. Participants were adults residing in the United States, with substantial subsamples of American Indian, Asian American, (...) African-American, and Hispanic and/or Latinx participants, as well as people with disabilities and sexual minorities. Outcomes measured were depression, hopelessness, somatic complaints, anxiety-related disorders, locus of control, and a novel measure of pandemic-related distress. Data were analyzed using analyses of covariance, chi-square test, and correlation coefficients. Generally, younger individuals, and those with less financial power—across all identities—suffered more distress. When controlling for age, lower financial power was associated with higher scores on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale-Revised, Beck Hopelessness Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-15, Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders for Adults Panic Disorder, SCARED-A generalized anxiety disorder, SCARED-A obsessive–compulsive disorder, and the COVID-19 Pandemic Distress restriction/disconnection scale. In addition, disparities were found, in general, for marginalized identities by gender, sexual orientation, and disability status. Importantly, each ethnicity subsample showed a unique pattern of relationships between COVID-19 risk variables and mental health symptoms. The results support the hypothesis that any pandemic may amplify preexisting social and financial disparities. Overall, interventions at the clinical, governmental, or health equity level should take into consideration the needs of vulnerable groups. (shrink)