‘Constitutive luck’ refers to luck that affects the sort of person one is. This article demonstrates that it is a philosophically troubling sort of luck, causing problems in, at least, ethics and political philosophy. Some, notably Susan Hurley, Nicholas Rescher, and Daniel Statman, have argued that such trouble can be avoided, by pointing out that the notion of constitutive luck is incoherent. The article examines this claim by means of a discussion of the idea of luck in general, settling (...) on an account of luck in terms of the notions of chance, value, and (lack of) control. This account is then used to show that the notion of constitutive luck is not incoherent. We are stuck with the problems made by constitutive luck. (shrink)

The "width" of the mind is an important topic in contemporary philosophical psychology. Support for active externalism derives from theoretical, engineering, and observational perspectives. Given the history of psychology, psychopathology is notable in its absence from the list of avenues of support for the idea that some cognitive processes extend beyond the physical bounds of the organism in question. The current project is to defend the possibility, plausibility, and desirability of externalist psychopathology. Doing so both adds to the case for (...) externalism and suggests ways of improving our study of cognitive dysfunction. I establish the possibility of externalist psychopathology through the development of models of wide cognitive processing, and, by implication, failure of such processing, from the work of S.L. Hurley and Robert Wilson. The plausibility of wide conceptualization and explanation of cognitive disorders is shown through an examination of apraxia, disorders of learned, skilled movements. The desirability of externalist psychopathology is suggested through a look at theoretical and therapeutic virtues, again drawing on Wilson's work. (shrink)

One stream in contemporary philosophical and psychological study of the emotions argues that they are perceptual capacities. The present project is to compare and contrast two possible models of emotional perception. The central difference between these models is the notion of modularity, and the corresponding overall view of the nature of the mind, that they use. One model uses classic, Fodorian modules, which S.L. Hurley characterizes as “vertical”. The other model uses “horizontal” modules. I suggest some empirical tests that (...) might adjudicate between these different kinds of emotional modularity, and hence between these two models of emotional perception. I conclude with some remarks about the extent of the relevance of this issue. (shrink)

Three related issues are addressed. First, Hurley treats emulation and imitation as a straightforward dichotomy with emulation emerging first. Recent conceptual analyses and chimpanzee experiments challenge this. Second, other recent chimpanzee experiments reveal high-fidelity social transmission, questioning whether copying fidelity is the brake on cumulative culture. Finally, other cognitive processes such as pretence need to be integrated.

Tens of thousands of students have learned to be more discerning at constructing and evaluating arguments with the help of Patrick J. Hurley. Hurley’s lucid, friendly, yet thorough presentation has made A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC the most widely used logic text in North America. In addition, the book’s accompanying technological resources, such as CengageNOW and Learning Logic, include interactive exercises as well as video and audio clips to reinforce what you read in the book and hear in (...) class. In short, you’ll have all the assistance you need to become a more logical thinker and communicator. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

The first edition was awarded the '2005 Textbook Award of the Association of University Professors of Management (Verband der Hochschullehrer fur ...

Recently research on imitation and its role in social cognition has been flourishing across various disciplines. After briefly reviewing these developments under the headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation, I advance the _shared circuits_.

This provocative study revives a classical idea about rationality by developing analogies between the structure of personality and the structure of society in the context of contemporary work in the philosophy of mind, ehtics, decision theory, and social choice theory.

How should politicians act? When should they try to lead public opinion and when should they follow it? Should politicians see themselves as experts, whose opinions have greater authority than other people's, or as participants in a common dialogue with ordinary citizens? When do virtues like toleration and willingness to compromise deteriorate into moral weakness? In this innovative work, Andrew Sabl answers these questions by exploring what a democratic polity needs from its leaders. He concludes that there are systematic, (...) principled reasons for the holders of divergent political offices or roles to act differently. Sabl argues that the morally committed civil rights activist, the elected representative pursuing legislative results, and the grassroots organizer determined to empower ordinary citizens all have crucial democratic functions. But they are different functions, calling for different practices and different qualities of political character. To make this case, he draws on political theory, moral philosophy, leadership studies, and biographical examples ranging from Everett Dirksen to Ella Baker, Frances Willard to Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr. to Joe McCarthy. Ruling Passions asks democratic theorists to pay more attention to the "governing pluralism" that characterizes a diverse, complex democracy. It challenges moral philosophy to adapt its prescriptions to the real requirements of democratic life, to pay more attention to the virtues of political compromise and the varieties of human character. And it calls on all democratic citizens to appreciate "democratic constancy": the limited yet serious standard of ethical character to which imperfect democratic citizens may rightly hold their leaders--and themselves. (shrink)

We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own death or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we, spiritually or practically? In Preparing to Die, Andrew Holecek presents a wide array of resources to help the reader address this unfinished business. Part One shows how to prepare one's mind and how to help others, before, during, and after death. The author explains how spiritual preparation for death can (...) completely transform our relationship to the end of life, dissolving our fear and helping us to feel open and receptive to letting go in the dying process. Daily meditation practices, the stages of dying and how to work with them, and after-death experiences are all detailed in ways that will be particularly helpful for those with an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and in Tibetan approaches to conscious dying. Part Two addresses the practical issues that surround death. Experts in grief, hospice, the funeral business, and the medical and legal issues of death contribute chapters to prepare the reader for every practical concern, including advance directives, green funerals, the signs of death, warnings about the funeral industry, the stages of grief, and practical care for the dying. Part Three contains heart-advice from twenty of the best-known Tibetan Buddhist masters now teaching in the West. These brief interviews provide words of solace and wisdom to guide the dying and their caregivers during this challenging time. Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death. (shrink)

A satisfactory theory of linguistic communication must explain how it is that, through the interpersonal exchange of auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli, the communicative preconditions for the acquisition of testimonial knowledge regularly come to be satisfied. Without an account of knowledge-yielding communication this success condition for linguistic theorizing is left opaque, and we are left with an incomplete understanding of testimony, and communication more generally, as a source of knowledge. This paper argues that knowledge-yielding communication should be modelled on knowledge (...) itself. It is argued that knowledge-yielding communication occurs iff interlocutors coordinate on truth values in a non-lucky and non-deviant way. This account is able to do significant explanatory work: it sheds light on the nature of referential communication, and it allows us to capture, in an informative way, the sense in which interlocutors must entertain similar propositions in order to communicate successfully. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the enkratic principle in its classic formulation may not be a requirement of rationality. The investigation of whether it is leads to some important methodological insights into the study of rationality. I also consider the possibility that we should consider rational requirements as a subset of a broader category of agential requirements.

This paper argues that the dominance of linear models has led many sociologists to construe the social world in terms of a "general linear reality." This reality assumes (1) that the social world consists of fixed entities with variable attributes, (2) that cause cannot flow from "small" to "large" attributes/events, (3) that causal attributes have only one causal pattern at once, (4) that the sequence of events does not influence their outcome, (5) that the "careers" of entities are largely independent, (...) and (6) that causal attributes are generally independent of each other. The paper discusses examples of these assumptions in empirical work, consider standard and new methods addressing them, and briefly explores alternative models for reality that employ demographic, sequential, and network perspectives. (shrink)

A Physicalist Manifesto is a full treatment of the comprehensive physicalist view that, in some important sense, everything is physical. Andrew Melnyk argues that the view is best formulated by appeal to a carefully worked-out notion of realization, rather than supervenience; that, so formulated, physicalism must be importantly reductionist; that it need not repudiate causal and explanatory claims framed in non-physical language; and that it has the a posteriori epistemic status of a broad-scope scientific hypothesis. Two concluding chapters argue (...) in detail that contemporary science provides no significant empirical evidence against physicalism and some considerable evidence for it. Written in a brisk, candid and exceptionally clear style, this 2003 book should appeal to professionals and students in philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of science. (shrink)

I distinguish two different senses in which philosophers speak of moral verdicts, senses that in turn invite two different senses of moral overridingness. Although one of these senses, that upon which moral verdicts are taken to reflect decisive reasons from a distinctively moral standpoint, currently dominates the moral overridingness debate, my focus is the other sense, upon which moral verdicts are taken to reflect decisive reasons that are distinctively moral. I demonstrate that the recent tendency to emphasize the now dominant (...) sense to the exclusion of the alternative, couple with the failure to disambiguate the two senses, has fundamentally skewed central debates in moral theory. (shrink)

Christian concern about how we treat animals has increased strikingly in recent years. More and more Christians are deciding that our attitudes towards animals must change. Here is a book which presents, for the first time, a comprehensive and well-argued theological case for the rights of animals, and offers a challenging critique of our existing insensitivity toward animal life. Everyone who cares about the rights of animals, particularly clergy and ministers who are constantly being asked for answers on the issue, (...) will welcome this new and important book. (shrink)

Kant holds that in order to have knowledge of an object, a subject must be able to “prove” that the object is really possible—i.e., prove that there is neither logical inconsistency nor “real repugnance” between its properties. This is (usually) easy to do with respect to empirical objects, but (usually) impossible to do with respect to particular things-in-themselves. In the first section of the paper I argue that an important predecessor of Kant’s account of our ignorance of real possibility can (...) be found in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In the middle sections I discuss the way in which our inability to prove the real possibility of things-in-themselves motivates Kant’s famous prohibition on certain kinds of knowledge-claims about them. In the final section I examine Hegel’s attempts to dissolve this problem of real repugnance and thereby remove an inherited obstacle to speculative knowledge of the supersensible. -/- . (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according to (...) which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

Empirical evidence suggests that a majority of people believe that time robustly passes, and that many also report that it seems to them, in experience, as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists deny that time robustly passes, and many contemporary non-dynamists—deflationists—even deny that it seems to us as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists, then, face the dual challenge of explaining why people have such beliefs and make such reports about their experiences. Several philosophers have suggested the stable-self explanation, according to which (...) what partly explains one or both of the explananda is that people believe themselves to have a stable persisting self which is imagined either as moving through time, or as being stationary, with time moving around it. This paper empirically investigates this explanation. We found, however, no evidential support for the stable-self explanation, leaving the non-dynamist but also, we will argue, the dynamist, with an extant explanatory challenge. (shrink)

This is the first book-length treatment of the relationship between citizenship and the environment. Andrew Dobson argues that ecological citizenship cannot be fully articulated in terms of the two great traditions of citizenship - liberal and civic republican - with which we have been bequeathed. He develops an original theory of citizenship, which he calls 'post-cosmopolitan', and argues that ecological citizenship is an example and an inflection of it. Ecological citizenship focuses on duties as well as rights, and these (...) duties are owed non-reciprocally, by those individuals and communities who occupy unsustainable amounts of ecological space, to those who occupy too little. (shrink)

This introduction to mathematical logic starts with propositional calculus and first-order logic. Topics covered include syntax, semantics, soundness, completeness, independence, normal forms, vertical paths through negation normal formulas, compactness, Smullyan's Unifying Principle, natural deduction, cut-elimination, semantic tableaux, Skolemization, Herbrand's Theorem, unification, duality, interpolation, and definability. The last three chapters of the book provide an introduction to type theory (higher-order logic). It is shown how various mathematical concepts can be formalized in this very expressive formal language. This expressive notation facilitates proofs (...) of the classical incompleteness and undecidability theorems which are very elegant and easy to understand. The discussion of semantics makes clear the important distinction between standard and nonstandard models which is so important in understanding puzzling phenomena such as the incompleteness theorems and Skolem's Paradox about countable models of set theory. Some of the numerous exercises require giving formal proofs. A computer program called ETPS which is available from the web facilitates doing and checking such exercises. Audience: This volume will be of interest to mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers in universities, as well as to computer scientists in industry who wish to use higher-order logic for hardware and software specification and verification. (shrink)

This book expounds the transcendental realist theory of science and critical naturalist social philosophy that have been developed by Bhaskar and are used by many contemporary social scientists. It defends Bhaskar's view that the possibility and necessity of experiment show that reality is structured and stratified, his use of this idea to develop a non-reductive explanatory account of human sciences, and his notion that to explain social structures can sometimes be to criticize them. After a discussion of the uses of (...) critical realism in controversial areas of social science, Bhaskar's optimism about the prospects of human sciences is criticized. (shrink)

This is a discussion of the state of discussion on pragmatic reasons for belief.

This essay considers Kant’s theory of modality in light of a debate in contemporary modal metaphysics and modal logic concerning the Barcan formulas. The comparison provides a new and fruitful perspective on Kant’s complex and sometimes confusing claims about possibility and necessity. Two central Kantian principles provide the starting point for the comparison: that the possible must be grounded in the actual and that existence is not a real predicate. Both are shown to be intimately connected to the Barcan formulas, (...) and Kant’s views on what he distinguishes as three different kinds of modality are then considered in light of this connection. (shrink)

it has recently been discovered that propranolol — a beta-blocker traditionally used to treat cardiac arrhythmias and hypertension — might disrupt the formation of the emotionally disturbing memories that typically occur in the wake of traumatic events and consequently prevent the onset of trauma-induced psychological injuries such as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. One context in which the use of propranolol is generating interest in both the popufor and scientific press is sexual violence. Nevertheless, feminists have so far not weighed in on (...) propranolol. I suggest that the time is ripe for a careful feminist analysis of the moral and political implications of propranolol use in the context of sexual violence. In this paper, I map the feminist issues potentially raised by providing propranolol to victims of sexual assault, focusing in particufor on the compatibility of propranolol use and avaüability with an understanding of the social and systematic dimensions of rape s harms. I do not deliver a final verdict on propranolol; in fact, I show that we do not yet have enough information about propranolol's effects to do so. Rather, 1 provide a feminist framework for evaluating the possibilities and penis opened up by therapeutic memory manipuktion in the context of sexual violence against women. (shrink)

Hurley’s is a difficult book to work through—partly because of its length and the complexity of its arguments, but also because each of the ten essays of which it is composed has a rather different starting point and focus, and because few of her arguments achieve real closure. Essay 2 discusses competing interpretations of Kant, essay 4 articulates nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness, essay 5 offers fresh interpretations of commissurotomy patients’ behavior, essay 6 develops an objection to Wittgenstein on rule (...) following, essay 8 attacks an alleged assumption of externalism, and chapter 10 explores the possibility of combining a “motor theory” and a “control theory” of perception. This is a very rich brew, and at least half the challenge this book presents consists in discerning its central argument and conclusion with enough precision to bring criticism to bear. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1995, given by Susan Hurley (1954-2007), an American philosopher.

In their paper, “Conversational Artificial Intelligence in Psychotherapy: A New Therapeutic Tool or Agent?” Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) claim that therapeutic insights and therapeutic changes are...

Modern technology is more than a neutral tool: it is the framework of our civilization and shapes our way of life. Social critics claim that we must choose between this way of life and human values. Critical Theory of Technology challenges that pessimistic cliche. This pathbreaking book argues that the roots of the degradation of labor, education, and the environment lie not in technology per se but in the cultural values embodied in its design. Rejecting such popular solutions as economic (...) simplicity or spiritual renewal, Feenberg presents a compelling argument for broader democratic participation in technological choices. This book will be of special interest to scholars and students of philosophy, sociology, contemporary Marxism, and Critical Theory. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche is one of the most important philosophers of the 17th Century after Descartes. A pioneer of Rationalism, he was one of the first to champion and to further Cartesian ideas. Andrew Pyle places Malebranche's work in the context of Descartes and other philosophers, and also in its relation to ideas about faith and reason. He examines the entirety of Malebranche's writings, including the famous The Search After Truth , which was admired and criticized by both Leibniz and (...) Locke. Pyle presents an integrated account of Malebranche's central theses, occasionalism and 'vision in God', before exploring and assessing Malebranche's contribution to debates on physics and biology, and his views on the soul, self-knowledge, grace, and the freedom of the will. This penetrating and wide-ranging study will be of interest to not only philosophers, but also to historians of science and philosophy, theologians, and students of the Enlightenment or 17th Century thought. (shrink)

Why is neural activity in a particular area expressed as experience of red rather than green, or as visual experience rather than auditory? Indeed, why does it have any conscious expression at all? These familiar questions indicate the explanatory gap between neural activity and ‘what it’s like’-- qualities of conscious experience. The comparative explanatory gaps, intermodal and intramodal, can be separated from the absolute explanatory gap and associated zombie issues--why does neural activity have any conscious expression at all?. Here I (...) focus on comparative gaps: why is neural activity in a given area expressed as this type of experience rather than that type of experience? (shrink)

In their paper, “Closed-Loop Neuromodulation and Self-Perception in Clinical Treatment of Refractory Epilepsy,” Haeusermann et al. (2023) note that although responsive neurostimulation (RNS) data v...

How is it that a speaker _S_ can at once make it obvious to an audience _A_ that she intends to communicate some proposition _p_, and yet at the same time retain plausible deniability with respect to this intention? The answer is that _S_ can bring it about that _A_ has a high justified credence that ‘_S_ intended _p_’ without putting _A_ in a position to know that ‘_S_ intended _p_’. In order to achieve this _S_ has to exploit a (...) sense in which communication can be lottery-like. After defending this view of deniability I argue that it compares favorably to a rival account recently developed by Dinges and Zakkou (Mind, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzac056, 2023 ). (shrink)

Vagueness is the study of concepts that admit borderline cases. The epistemology of vagueness concerns attitudes we should have towards propositions we know to be borderline. On this basis Andrew Bacon develops a new theory of vagueness in which vagueness is fundamentally a property of propositions, explicated in terms of its role in thought.

ABSTRACT Pettigrove’s paper argues strongly and effectively against a proportionality principle grounded on a univocal scale of value, and argues in favour of a kind of virtue ethics that is focused exclusively on the characteristic and non-univocal attitudes of the subject. In my critique, however, I point out that not all proponents of value ethics adhere to the proportionality principle and that the radical shift from object to subject has risks that were highlighted in a book by C. S. Lewis, (...) The Abolition of Man. I also point out that Pettigrove in fact treats ‘I love you’ and ‘I forgive you’ substantively in terms of a first-person act in which any relationship-enabling response by the second person is accidental. On this account, there seems to be an underlying ethical challenge, namely that the Pettigrovian valuers are in reality isolated, cut off from relationships based on genuine union with second persons. (shrink)