After resolving the dreaming doubt at the end of the Sixth Meditation, Descartes concedes to Hobbes that one could apply the criterion for waking experience in a dream and thus be deceived, but he no longer considers this possibility to have skeptical force. I argue that this is a legitimate response by Descartes since 1) the dreaming doubt in the Sixth Meditation is no longer a global skeptical hypothesis as it is in the First, and 2) the level of certainty (...) that sensory experience must meet in the Sixth Meditation is lower than it must meet in the First. (shrink)

Consider the following causal exclusion principle: For all distinct properties F and F* such that F* supervenes on F, F and F* do not both cause a property G. Peter Menzies and Christian List have proven that it follows from a natural conception of causation as difference-making that this exclusion principle is not generally true. Rather, it turns out that whether the principle is true is a contingent matter. In addition, they have shown that in a wide range of empirically (...) ordinary cases, it follows that F* causes G and F does not. These cases plausibly include instances where F* is a mental property and F and G are physical properties. If this is the right conception of causation, it therefore turns out that the physical world is not causally closed. In this paper I show that there is an alternative conception of causation as difference-making that does not have the same consequences. Whether the physical world is causally closed therefore turns out to depend, inter alia, on which conception of difference-making is correct. I give a number of arguments for the alternative conception of difference-making. (shrink)

I argue against the claim, advanced by David Albert and Barry Loewer, that all non-fundamental laws can be derived from those required to underwrite the second law of thermodynamics.

Is the common cause principle merely one of a set of useful heuristics for discovering causal relations, or is it rather a piece of heavy duty metaphysics, capable of grounding the direction of causation itself? Since the principle was introduced in Reichenbach’s groundbreaking work The Direction of Time (1956), there have been a series of attempts to pursue the latter program—to take the probabilistic relationships constitutive of the principle of the common cause and use them to ground the direction of (...) causation. These attempts have not all explicitly appealed to the principle as originally formulated; it has also appeared in the guise of independence conditions, counterfactual overdetermination, and, in the causal modelling literature, as the causal markov condition. In this paper, I identify a set of difficulties for grounding the asymmetry of causation on the principle and its descendents. The first difficulty, concerning what I call the vertical placement of causation, consists of a tension between considerations that drive towards the macroscopic scale, and considerations that drive towards the microscopic scale—the worry is that these considerations cannot both be comfortably accommodated. The second difficulty consists of a novel potential counterexample to the principle based on the familiar Einstein Podolsky Rosen (EPR) correlations in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 112-134, June 2022.

The problem of the man who met death in Damascus appeared in the infancy of the theory of rational choice known as causal decision theory. A straightforward, unadorned version of causal decision theory is presented here and applied, along with Brian Skyrms’ deliberation dynamics, to Death in Damascus and similar problems. Decision instability is a fascinating topic, but not a source of difficulty for causal decision theory. Andy Egan’s purported counterexample to causal decision theory, Murder Lesion, is considered; a simple (...) response shows how Murder Lesion and similar examples fail to be counterexamples, and clarifies the use of the unadorned theory in problems of decision instability. I compare unadorned causal decision theory to previous treatments by Frank Arntzenius and by Jim Joyce, and recommend a well-founded heuristic that all three accounts can endorse. Whatever course deliberation takes, causal decision theory is consistently a good guide to rational action. (shrink)

Debates about the ethical and social implications of research that aims to extend human longevity by intervening in the ageing process have paid little attention to the attitudes of members of the general public. In the absence of empirical evidence, conflicting assumptions have been made about likely public attitudes towards life-extension. In light of recent calls for greater public involvement in such discussions, this target article presents findings from focus groups and individual interviews which investigated whether members of the general (...) public identify ethical issues surrounding life-extension, and if so, what these ethical issues are? In this study, while some participants were concerned primarily with the likely personal consequences of life-extension, for others the question of whether or not to pursue interventions to extend longevity, and how they should be implemented, clearly raised important ethical issues, many of which have been prominent in debates among bioethicists. (shrink)

First Published in 2016. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.

What are appropriate criteria for assessing a theory of morality? In Ideal Code, Real World, Brad Hooker begins by answering this question, and then argues for a rule-consequentialist theory. According to rule-consequentialism, acts should be assessed morally in terms of impartially justified rules, and rules are impartially justified if and only if the expected overall value of their general internalization is at least as great as for any alternative rules. In the course of developing his rule-consequentialism, Hooker discusses impartiality, (...) well-being, fairness, equality, the question of how the 'general internalization' of rules is to be interpreted by rule-consequentialism, and the main objections to rule-consequentialism. He also discusses the social contract theory of morality, act-consequentialism, and the question of which moral prohibitions and which duties to help others rule-consequentialism endorses. The last part of the book considers the implications of rule-consequentialism for some current controversies in practical ethics. (shrink)

Possible-worlds talk obscures, rather than clarifies, the debate about haecceitism. In this paper I distinguish haecceitism and anti-haecceitism from other doctrines that sometimes go under those names. Then I defend the claim that there are no non-tendentious definitions of ‘haecceitism’ and ‘anti-haecceitism’ using possible-worlds talk. That is, any definition of ‘haecceitism’ using possible-worlds talk depends, for its correctness, on a substantive theory of the nature of possible worlds. This explains why using possible-worlds talk when discussing haecceitism causes confusion: if the (...) parties to the discussion presuppose different theories of the nature of possible worlds, then they will mean different things by ‘haecceitism’. (shrink)

To what extent is the external world the way that it appears to us in perceptual experience? This perennial question in philosophy is no doubt ambiguous in many ways. For example, it might be taken as equivalent to the question of whether or not the external world is the way that it appears to be? This is a question about the epistemology of perception: Are our perceptual experiences by and large veridical representations of the external world? Alternatively, the question might (...) be taken as asking whether or not the external world is like its ways of appearing to us, where the expression “ways of appearing” is intended to pick out aspects of our perceptual experiences themselves. This is a metaphysical version of the question of the relationship between appearance and reality: What is the relationship between the phenomenal features that characterize perceptual experience, on the one hand, and the mind-independent features of the external objects of perception, on the other? There are some philosophers who might resist distinguishing between these two questions. For them, “ways of appearing” in the phenomenal sense just are the ways that things appear to be (let’s call the latter the “intentional sense” of “ways of appearing”).1 That is, the phenomenal character of an experience is nothing over and above its representational content. Phenomenal properties are represented properties—the properties that an experience attributes to the external objects of perception. The question of whether or not phenomenal properties can be identified with the represented properties of an experience mirrors traditional questions in the philosophy of perception. If they can be identified with each other, then in veridical perception we might be said to “directly grasp” features of the external world through perception. The properties that are present to the mind are the very same properties that belong to the external objects of perception. Such a view affords.... (shrink)

If two subjects have phenomenally identical experiences, there is an important sense in which the way the world appears to them is precisely the same. But how are we to understand this notion of 'ways of appearing'? Most philosophers who have acknowledged the existence of phenomenal content have held that the way something appears is simply a matter of the properties something appears to have. On this view, the way something appears is simply the way something appears to be . (...) This identification supports a Russellian theory of phenomenal content, according to which phenomenal content is exhausted by facts about what specific properties are represented by an experience. The present paper motivates and develops an alternative Fregean theory of phenomenal colour content. According to Fregean theories, the phenomenal content that is shared by any two phenomenally identical experiences is a matter of how the world is represented, and need not involve sameness in what is represented. It is argued that ways of appearing are modes of presentations of external properties and objects, and a detailed theory is presented about the nature of the modes of presentation involved in colour experience. (shrink)

The debate over Locke’s theory of slavery has focused on his involvement with the Royal African Company and other institutions of African slavery, as well as his rhetorical use of slavery in opposing absolutism. This overlooks Locke’s deep involvement with the Carolina colony, and in particular that colony’s Indian slave trade, which was largely justified in just-war terms. Evidence of Locke’s participation in the 1682 revisions to the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which removed the infamous “absolute power and authority” clause, (...) and his knowledge of colonial affairs, when examined alongside textual evidence of the timing of the composition of Locke’s theory of slavery, indicates a significant connection between the colony and Locke’s work. In light of this evidence, this article suggests an interpretation of Locke’s theory that stresses its character as a response to the conditions he encountered in Carolina. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish interpretations of the question ``How fast does time pass?’’ that are important for the debate over the reality of objective becoming from interpretations that are not. Then I discuss how one theory that incorporates objective becoming—the moving spotlight theory of time—answers this question. It turns out that there are several ways to formulate the moving spotlight theory of time. One formulation says that time passes but it makes no sense to ask how fast; another formulation (...) says that time passes at one second per supersecond; and a third says that time passes at one second per second. I defend the intelligibility of this final version of the theory. (shrink)

Phenomenal character is determined by representational content, which both hallucinatory and veridical experiences can share. But in the case of veridical experience, unlike hallucination, the external objects of experience literally have the properties one is aware of in experience. The representationalist can accept the common factor assumption without having to introduce sensory intermediaries between the mind and the world, thus securing a form of direct realism.

Dutch Book arguments have been presented for static belief systems and for belief change by conditionalization. An argument is given here that a rule for belief change which under certain conditions violates probability kinematics will leave the agent open to a Dutch Book.

I argue that van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science is superior to the realists’ explanation. Whereas realists argue that our current theories are successful because they accurately reflect the structure of the world, the selectionist claims that our current theories are successful because unsuccessful theories have been eliminated. I argue that, unlike the explanation proposed by the realist, the selectionist explanation can also account for the failures of once successful theories and the fact that sometimes two competing (...) theories are both equally successful. (shrink)

The idea that beliefs may be stake-sensitive is explored. This is the idea that the strength with which a single, persistent belief is held may vary and depend upon what the believer takes to be at stake. The stakes in question are tied to the truth of the belief—not, as in Pascal’s wager and other cases, to the belief’s presence. Categorical beliefs and degrees of belief are considered; both kinds of account typically exclude the idea and treat belief as stake-invariant (...) , though an exception is briefly described. The role of the assumption of stake-invariance in familiar accounts of degrees of belief is also discussed, and morals are drawn concerning finite and countable Dutch book arguments. (shrink)

If counterfactual dependence is sufficient for causation and if omissions can be causes, then all events have many more causes than common sense tends to recognize. This problem is standardly addressed by appeal to pragmatics. However, Carolina Sartorio [2010] has recently raised what I shall argue is a more interesting problem concerning omissions for counterfactual theories of causation—more interesting because it demands a more subtle pragmatic solution. I discuss the relationship between the idea that causes are proportional to their effects, (...) the idea that causation is contrastive, and the question of the dimensions along which causal explanations should be evaluated with respect to one another. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Aristotle’s treatment of the homoeomerous, or like-parted, bodies. I argue that they are liable to be far more complexly structured than is commonly supposed. While Aristotelian homoeomers have no intrinsic macrostructural properties, they are, in an important class of cases, essentially marked by the presence and absence of microstructural ones. As I show, these microstructural properties allow Aristotle to neatly demarcate the non-elemental homoeomers from the elements. That demarcation, in turn, helps to clarify Aristotle’s (...) conceptions of both homoeomery and what it is to be a bodily element. On Aristotle’s account, I argue, a homoeomerous body, as such, is divisible into at least one part that is the same specific kind as the whole. Elemental bodies are the limiting case. For Aristotle, an elemental body is only divisible into parts that are of the same specific kind as the whole. (shrink)

Two criticisms of Dutch strategy arguments are discussed: One says that the arguments fail because agents who know the arguments can use that knowledge to avoid Dutch strategy vulnerability, even though they violate the norm in question. The second consists of cases alleged to be counterexamples to the norms that Dutch strategy arguments defend. The principle of Reflection and its Dutch strategy argument are discussed, but most attention is given to the rule of Conditionalization and to Jeffrey's rule for fallible (...) learning. I argue that the first criticism should be rejected, and that the second presents no counterexamples to the rationality of commitment to the rules. (shrink)

Discussion of moral explanation has reached an impasse, with proponents of contemporary ethical naturalism upholding the explanatory integrity of moral facts and properties, and opponents--including both antirealists and non-naturalistic realists--insisting that such robustly explanatory pretensions as moral theory has be explained away. I propose that the key to solving the problem lies in the question whether instances of moral properties are causally efficacious. It is argued that, given the truth of contemporary ethical naturalism, moral properties are causally efficacious if the (...) properties of the special sciences are. (shrink)

One guide to an argument's significance is the number and variety of refutations it attracts. By this measure, the Dutch book argument has considerable importance.2 Of course this measure alone is not a sure guide to locating arguments deserving of our attention—if a decisive refutation has really been given, we are better off pursuing other topics. But the presence of many and varied counterarguments at least suggests that either the refutations are controversial, or that their target admits of more than (...) one interpretation, or both. The main point of this paper is to focus on a way of understanding the Dutch Book argument (DBA) that avoids many of the well-known criticisms, and to consider how it fares against an important criticism that still remains: the objection that the DBA presupposes value-independence of bets. (shrink)

The construction of digital simulacra in healthcare and medical research purportedly strives to virtually recreate some aspect of reality, whether that be a piece of human tissue, an entire organ,...

What does it mean to live dangerously? This is not just a philosophical question or an ethical call to reflect upon our own individual recklessness. It is a deeply political issue, fundamental to the new doctrine of 'resilience' that is becoming a key term of art for governing planetary life in the 21st Century. No longer should we think in terms of evading the possibility of traumatic experiences. Catastrophic events, we are told, are not just inevitable but learning experiences from (...) which we have to grow and prosper, collectively and individually. Vulnerability to threat, injury and loss has to be accepted as a reality of human existence. In this original and compelling text, Brad Evans and Julian Reid explore the political and philosophical stakes of the resilience turn in security and governmental thinking. Resilience, they argue, is a neo-liberal deceit that works by disempowering endangered populations of autonomous agency. Its consequences represent a profound assault on the human subject whose meaning and sole purpose is reduced to survivability. Not only does this reveal the nihilistic qualities of a liberal project that is coming to terms with its political demise. All life now enters into lasting crises that are catastrophic unto the end. (shrink)

In his "intimate, funny, conversational style" (Library Journal), Brad Warner stage dives into the Sam Harris, Karen Armstrong, Christopher Hitchens mosh pit of the God or no God debate - and body surfs up with a typically provocative perspective. Warner was initially interested in Zen because he wanted to find God, but Zen Buddhism is usually thought of as godless. Warner travels around the world looking for insight and what he finds, in chapters like "Sam Harris Believes in God," (...) "God Doesn't Have to Be Real to Exist," and "What God Wants," and through visits to places including Israel, Mexico, and Northern Ireland, is the belief that Buddhism "is a way to approach and understand God without dealing with religion." The fact that the book's title is Warner's mis-remembrance of a Zen monk's quote is emblematic of his profoundly engaging and idiosyncratic take on the ineffable power of the "ground of all being.". (shrink)

What are the appropriate criteria for assessing a theory of morality? In this enlightening work, Brad Hooker begins by answering this question. He then argues for a rule-consequentialist theory which, in part, asserts that acts should be assessed morally in terms of impartially justified rules. In the end, he considers the implications of rule-consequentialism for several current controversies in practical ethics, making this clearly written, engaging book the best overall statement of this approach to ethics.

The aim of this paper is to show that the truth of content externalism can be grounded in purely epistemological considerations in which no appeal is made to Twin‐Earth style cases. Content externalism is required to provide an adequate account of perceptual warrant.

According to color realism, object colors are mind-independent properties that cover surfaces or permeate volumes of objects. In recent years, some color scientists and a growing number of philosophers have opposed this view on the grounds that realism about color cannot accommodate the apparent unitary/binary structure of the hues. For example, Larry Hardin asserts, the unitary-binary structure of the colors as we experience them corresponds to no known physical structure lying outside nervous systems that is causally involved in the perception (...) of color. This makes it very difficult to subscribe to a color realism that is supposed to be about red, green, blue, black, and white—that is, the colors with which we are perceptually acquainted.1 Similarly, Evan Thompson says. (shrink)

An essential introduction to post-war critical thought on the problem of violence.

This essay addresses the violence of the digital world through its relationship to the visuality of noise and how it shapes the image of thought. Noting how deep and contemplative silence is integral to any creative and critical process, it fleshes out the ways the hyper-technologization of life is throwing us into an immersive abyss. This represents another indicator in the digital colonization of the human condition, through which the poetic is being completely appropriated by a technological vision for species (...) being. Calling for a revival in attentive silence, it draws upon literary thinkers and artists, to move beyond the mimetic understanding for art and reveal the violent depths of digitalization and its total noise seduction which ultimately devour its own content. Over-stimulation thus becomes an audible clamor for lives lost within a digital trace; lives which no longer find they are able to cast any meaningful shadow. (shrink)

The following dissertation shows how German Literature negotiates the relationship between language and the visual arts, particularly in Romantic narratives. In contrast with authors of the Enlightenment, the Romantics tend to deny specificity to visual experience and in so doing dedifferentiate visual experience from the textual. ;The initial, methodological, chapter explicates perceptual models informed by the interplay of the philosophical approaches of Kant and Wittgenstein with the psychoanalytic discourse of Freud. In Chapter Two, I turn to Lessing's Laokoon Uder uber (...) die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie , in which he divides the arts into pictoral and linguistic signs. While the boundary between the two appears quite clear in Laokoon, his play Emilia Galotti reveals Lessing's anxiety that the difference cannot be so easily maintained. ;The subsequent chapter explores the representation of the visual arts in Tieck's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen . After a discussion of Wackenroder's Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders , 1 turn to Tieck's novel about a young student of Albrecht Durer. The novel responds to the ostensible binary between language and the visual arts by transmuting the distinction into one between readable landscape paintings and phantasmatic images that guide the protagonist. ;As another example of this Romantic viewpoint, I analyze Brentano's Godwi oder das steinerne Bild der Mutter . Here I use the distinction between symbol and allegory to point out the ways in which the text turns the difference between the arts into one between rhetorical figures. A similar manifestation of the problem occurs in Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild , discussed in Chapter Five. The novella follows the same lines as Lessing's Laokoon, thematizing the materiality of its eponymous marble statue. My final chapter concerns Kleist's model of visual perception, which is closely bound to his theology in his tales "Die heilige Cacilie" and "Der Findling" . ;Writing Images interprets the role of visuality in German Romantic literature in order to understand an unresolved problematic of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century thought for those who would too quickly either differentiate between or conflate the visual and the written. (shrink)

A longtime practitioner of Zen Buddhism discusses how the Zen concept of nonduality - the essential unity of all things - forms the basis of Buddhist ethics. The author describes key Buddhist doctrines such as the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, showing their relevance to modern problems.

Discussion of moral explanation has reached animpasse, with proponents of contemporaryethical naturalism upholding the explanatoryintegrity of moral facts and properties, andopponents – including both anti-realists andnon-naturalistic realists – insisting thatsuch robustly explanatory pretensions as moraltheory has be explained away. I propose thatthe key to solving the problem lies in thequestion whether instances of moral propertiesare causally efficacious. It is argued that,given the truth of contemporary ethicalnaturalism, moral properties are causallyefficacious if the properties of the specialsciences are. Certain objections are rebuttedinvolving (...) the nature of causation, on the onehand, and putative special features of themoral realm, on the other. (shrink)

I discuss a strategy for grounding ethical naturalism propounded by Frank Jackson and more recently by Allan Gibbard: that the undisputed supervenience of the moral upon the natural (or descriptive) entails that moral properties are natural (or descriptive) properties. I show that this strategy falls foul of certain indubitable constraints governing natural kinds; and I then rebut some objections. The upshot is that no viable strategy for supporting ethical naturalism is to be found along these lines. This result has additional (...) consequences, both for Jackson's attempt to accommodate ethical discourse into the natural world, and for Gibbard's purported 'meta-ethical synthesis'. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is to further a discussion of codes of ethics as institutionalized organizational structures that extend some form of legitimacy to organizations. The particular form of legitimacy is of critical importance to our analysis. After reviewing various theories of legitimacy, we analyze the literature on how legitimacy is derived from codes of ethics to discover which specific form of legitimacy is gained from their presence in organizations. We content analyze a sample of codes to consider the (...) question of whether a strategic, self-interested rationale lies behind the adoption of a code of ethics. We propose that the process of employing codes of ethics in this strategic manner has become, through isomorphism, an institutionalized practice that itself confers a cognitive form of legitimacy to the organization and further distances the codes from their moral foundation. (shrink)

Sequel to Armendt 1986, ‘A Foundation for Causal Decision Theory.’ The representation theorem for causal decision theory is slightly revised, with the addition of a new restriction on lotteries and a new axiom (A7). The discussion gives some emphasis to the way in which appropriate K-partitions are characterized by relations found among the agent’s conditional preferences. The intended interpretation of conditional preference is one that embodies a sensitivity to the agent’s causal beliefs.

To what extent do our beliefs, and how strongly we hold them, depend upon how they matter to us, on what we take to be at stake on them? The idea that beliefs are sometimes stake-sensitive (Armendt 2008, 2013) is further explored here, with a focus on whether beliefs may be stake-sensitive and rational. In contexts of extended deliberation about what to do, beliefs and assessments of options interact. In some deliberations, a belief about what you will do may rationally (...) influence your estimate of the value of doing it; deliberation dynamics provides a framework for modeling such interactions. A distinction is drawn between sensitivity to the magnitude of the stakes, and sensitivity to the shape of the stakes. Contexts of extended deliberation are settings in which some beliefs that p rationally depend on the shape of the stakes on p. The dependence is either rational stake-sensitivity or an outcome of rational learning; empirical evidence concerning contexts of deliberation may lead us to model rational beliefs in one way or the other. (shrink)

This article tracks the transformation of beagle dogs from a common breed in mid-twentieth century American laboratories to the de jure standard in global toxicological research by the turn of the twenty-first. The breed was dispersed widely due to the expanding use of dogs in pharmacology in the 1950s and a worldwide crisis around pharmaceutical safety following the thalidomide scandal of the 1960s. Nevertheless, debates continued for decades over the beagle’s value as a model of carcinogenicity, even as the dogs (...) became legislated stand-ins for human beings in multiple countries. Situating beagles as a biocommodity, the article calls for more sustained attention to the “political economy” of laboratory organism breeding, use, and production. The story of American commercial breeder Marshall Farms offers insight into the role of for-profit companies in contemporary laboratory animal provision, as the article makes a case for the value of a global perspective on transnational corporations as key sites of scientific practice and collaboration. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 66-67, December 2011.