Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 2, Page 107-129, April 2022.

" -- F. Bradford Wallack The twentieth century has seen the greatest innovations in philosophical cosmology since Newton and Descartes, and Alfred North Whitehead was the first and greatest of the philosophers to work out these innovations ...

Language and culture endow humans with access to conceptual information that far exceeds any which could be accessed by a non-human animal. Yet, it is possible that, even without language or specific experiences, non-human animals represent and infer some aspects of similarity relations between objects in the same way as humans. Here, we show that monkeys’ discrimination sensitivity when identifying images of animals is predicted by established measures of semantic similarity derived from human conceptual judgments. We used metrics from computer (...) vision and computational neuroscience to show that monkeys’ and humans’ performance cannot be explained by low-level visual similarity alone. The results demonstrate that at least some of the underlying structure of object representations in humans is shared with non-human primates, at an abstract level that extends beyond low-level visual similarity. Because the monkeys had no experience with the objects we tested, the results suggest that monkeys and humans share a primitive representation of object similarity that is independent of formal knowledge and cultural experience, and likely derived from common evolutionary constraints on object representation. (shrink)

This paper presents a non-reductionist framework of eight nested modes of evolution that have successively emerged to organize the reproduction of all organisms, from the blue-green algae to our societies. The processes of biological, "Darwinian," evolution are those of drift during reproduction, and of selection. The key unit of evolutionary time is the generation, and its locus is the organisms' life-cycle setup. Different life-cycle setups support different mechanisms of reproduction, and therefore different modes of evolution. By tracing the different (...) life-cycle setups attested throughout Life's History, we are able to characterize the successive modes of evolution with which they are associated. The present attempt has led to a characterization of the following eight nested modes of evolution: Basic; Reptilian; Archaic Mammalian; Progressive Mammalian; Socio-cultural; Extrasomatically Enhanced Socio-cultural; Tinkering; and finally Para-biological. These successively emerging modes govern a progressively reduced number of life-forms. The first four modes are "Darwinian" in the strict sense. The fifth, or socio-cultural mode, which governs whale and elephant societies in addition to hominoids, is already not "Darwinian" in the traditional sense. The last three modes have emerged with the genus homo, through the progressive extension of its life-cycle setups. The present framework is to be used heuristically, as a prism with which to separate the evolutionary spectrum of the constituent elements of human behavior. An example of such a behavioral evolutionary spectrum is presented in the conclusion, and is used to compare the present framework with those recently proposed by Maynard Smith and Szathmáry and by Foley. (shrink)

Colour constancy refers to the ability to extract information about surface colours independently of illumination conditions. A ripe strawberry, for example, appears the same red when viewed under a blue sky or a reddish sunset. Since Land's pioneering work, discussion has centred on the issue whether colour constancy is achieved primarily in the retina or visual cortex. Recently, the debate has shifted to a consideration of the constraints imposed by various psychophysical tasks and instructions. Humans can judge illuminant colour, (...) reflected-light colour, surface colour, and the relationship between surface colours within a scene. Such observations suggest that colour constancy may not be a unitary phenomenon, and that its different aspects may be mediated at different levels in the visual system. Several questions therefore arise: are the tasks of surface estimation and illuminant estimation complementary, insofar as good performance in one implies poor performance in the other? How does retinal adaptation alter performance? Is colour vision tuned to the statistical composition of natural surfaces and illuminants? What role does colour-opponent processing in retina and cortex play in colour constancy? These and related questions are explored here in order to better understand what we mean when we ask: "Why do strawberries look red?". (shrink)

These books were dictated by Wittgenstein to pupils between 1933 and 1935, and present an earlier version of the ideas of the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein's main concern is with problems of meaning, but this leads him to consider many connected problems, particularly in the philosophy of mind. Part of the interest of these books is historical, since manuscript copies of them helped to spread Wittgenstein's influence in the '30's and '40's; but they are also important philosophically, for they cast new (...) light on the problems of the Investigations.--B. N. F. (shrink)

This vigorously written and clearly argued Bradford Book is a must for anyone interested in intentionality, functionalism, and the status and prospects of scientific and folk psychology. It is a measure of how much has changed in the philosophy of psychology that the familiar arguments--masterfully marshalled and extended here-against the reducibility of everyday psychological statements to statements about brain states within an experimental cognitive science are here, for Stich, arguments against folk psychology. The experimental behaviorists are understood as having (...) issued the revolutionary, and reasonably justified, claim that our everyday folk psychological talk is simply false: false in much the way of demonology in that the things folk psychology talks about simply are not there. What helped us to be less troubled by this claim was analytic or logical behaviorism: folk psychological talk was perfectly viable because it really was just short-hand dispositional talk about behavior. Using beliefs as a central stalking horse, Stich argues, as recent eliminative materialists like the Churchlands, that it may well be that the terms of folk psychology have no referents. In brief, there simply may be no such things as beliefs, any more than there are devils, though of course there are all sorts of interesting phenomena that have led us to talk as if there were such. Beliefs are not in the head, nor anywhere else either. (shrink)

Anyone who has ever tried to teach the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to undergraduate students will welcome this volume as a classroom aid. Using the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations as their basic sources, the authors have collected textual references under eighteen general topics. A partial list of the topics includes: "The Picture-Theory," "Naming," "Private Languages," "Meaning and Use," and "Philosophical Method." In each case there are cross references to the basic texts and, where applicable, references to the Notebooks, the (...) Blue and Brown Books, Zettel and Philosophische Bemerkungen. The great service that this text performs is that it illustrates the unity of Wittgenstein’s thought—a fact that is not immediately apparent in one’s first contact with either the Tractatus or the Investigations. An important feature of the workbook is that, in addition to the references to Wittgenstein’s own work, each topic includes references to classical and contemporary treatments of the issue so that Wittgenstein’s work will not be regarded as a "curiosity in the history of philosophy." On the facing page of each topic the authors have supplied a series of questions for discussion, some of which call for straightforward textual interpretation while others require sophisticated philosophical reasoning. Thus, depending on the competence of the students, the questions can be dealt with on a variety of levels. The program of topics is designed to emphasize the continuity of Wittgenstein’s thought, and to combat the widely held view that the Investigations is a repudiation of most of the doctrines of the Tractatus. Perhaps this is why several important topics, e.g., "Grammar," "Family Resemblances," and "Seeing As," are not treated at all. But there are other sources in which the textual references for these topics can be found, and the neglect of these topics does not take away from the usefulness of the text as a class aid.—J. J. F. (shrink)

Bradford F. Hinze şi Irfan A. Omar (eds.), Heirs of Abraham. The Future of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Relations Maryknoll, New York, 2005.

Following Chalmers, I take the most promising response to the meta-problem to be a realizationist one on which (roughly) consciousness plays a role in realizing the processes that explain why we think that there is a hard problem of consciousness. I favour an interactionist dualist version of realizationism on which experiences are non-physical states that non-redundantly cause problem judgments. This view is subject to the challenges of specifying laws that would enable experiences to cause problem judgments and of explaining why (...) it's not a lucky coincidence that experiences' causal and rational powers converge on problem judgments. I propose a strategy for solving the meta-problem and meeting these challenges. According to it, a fundamental teleological law operates on normative features of experiences in ways that bias experiences towards causing effects that they rationalize, including problem judgments. I conclude by applying the strategy to other luck-avoidance challenges. (shrink)

Some physical theories predict that almost all brains in the universe are Boltzmann brains, i.e. short-lived disembodied brains that are accidentally assembled as a result of thermodynamic or quantum fluctuations. Physicists and philosophers of physics widely regard this proliferation as unacceptable, and so take its prediction as a basis for rejecting these theories. But the putatively unacceptable consequences of this prediction follow only given certain philosophical assumptions. This paper develops a strategy for shielding physical theorizing from the threat of Boltzmann (...) brains. The strategy appeals to a form of phenomenal externalism about the physical basis of consciousness. Given that form of phenomenal externalism, the proliferation of Boltzmann brains turns out to be benign. While the strategy faces a psychophysical fine-tuning problem, it both alleviates cosmological fine-tuning concerns that attend physics-based solutions to Boltzmann brain problems and pays explanatory dividends in connection with time’s arrow. (shrink)

In the Nicomachean Ethics, one of Aristotle’s most frequent characterizations of the virtuous agent is that she acts for the sake of the fine (to kalon). In IX.8, this pursuit of the fine receives a more specific description; virtuous agents maximally assign the fine to themselves. In this paper, I answer the question of how we are to understand the fine as individually and maximally acquirable. I analyze Nicomachean Ethics IX.7, where Aristotle highlights virtuous activity (energeia) as central to the (...) fine, and argue that when virtuous agents pursue the fine, what they are pursuing is virtuous activity. I then address various problems, like how virtuous people can maximize virtuous activity yet sacrifice their lives, which would seem to amount to sacrificing future opportunities to virtuous activity and therefore not maximizing it. I also eliminate alternative interpretations that do not take virtuous activity as necessary to the fine, for example the common good interpretation, whereby virtuous agents pursuing the fine amounts to their pursuing the common good. (shrink)

The incidence and moral implications of cheating depend on how it is defined and measured. Research that defines and operationalizes cheating as an inventory of acts, that is, “cheating in any form,” has often fueled concern that cheating is reaching “epidemic proportions.” Such inventory measures appear, however, to conflate moral and administrative conceptions of the problem. Inasmuch as the immorality of behavior is a function of moral judgment, academic misconduct is immoral only when it is intentional, and the greatest moral (...) weight should be ascribed to violations that students judge to be the most “serious.”. (shrink)

Gwen Bradford presents the first systematic account of what achievements are, and why they are worth the effort. She argues that more things count as achievements than we might have thought, and offers a new perfectionist theory of value in which difficulty, perhaps surprisingly, plays a central part in characterizing achievements.

This paper defends the view that discovering that our universe is fine-tuned should make us more confident that other universes exist. My defense exploits a distinction between ideal and non-ideal evidential support. I use that distinction in concert with a simple model to disarm the most influential objection—the this-universe objection—to the view that fine-tuning supports the existence of other universes. However, the simple model fails to capture some important features of our epistemic situation with respect to fine-tuning. To capture these (...) features, I introduce a more sophisticated model. I then use the more sophisticated model to show that, even once those complicating factors are taken into account, fine-tuning should boost our confidence in the existence of other universes. (shrink)

What does the passage of time consist in? There are some suggestive metaphors. âEvents approach us, pass us, and recede from us, like sticks and leaves floating on the river of time.â âWe are moving from the past into the future, like ships sailing into an unknown ocean.â There is surely something right and deep about these metaphors. But how close are they to the literal truth? In this book Bradford Skow argues that they are far from the literal (...) truth. Skowâs argument takes the form of a defense of the block universe theory of time, a theory that, in many ways, treats time as a dimension of reality that closely resembles the three dimensions of space. Opposed to the block universe theory of time are theories that take the metaphors more seriously: presentism, the moving spotlight theory, the growing block theory, and the branching time theory. These are theories of ârobustâ passage of time, or âobjective becoming.â Skow argues that the best of these theories, the block universe theoryâs most worthy opponent, is the moving spotlight theory, the theory that says that âpresentnessâ moves along the series of times from the past into the future. Skow defends the moving spotlight theory against the objection that it is inconsistent, and the objection that it cannot answer the question of how fast time passes. He also defends it against the objection that it is incompatible with Einsteinâs theory of relativity. Skow proposes several ways in which the moving spotlight theory may be made compatible with the theory of relativity. Still, this book is ultimately a defense of the block universe theory, not of the moving spotlight theory. Skow holds that the best arguments against the block universe theory, and for the moving spotlight theory, start from the idea that, somehow, the passage of time is given to us in experience. Skow discusses several different arguments that start from this idea, and argues that they all fail. (shrink)

As ever more advanced digital systems are created, it becomes increasingly likely that some of these systems will be digital minds, i.e. digital subjects of experience. With digital minds comes the risk of digital suffering. The problem of digital suffering is that of mitigating this risk. We argue that the problem of digital suffering is a high stakes moral problem and that formidable epistemic obstacles stand in the way of solving it. We then propose a strategy for solving it: Access (...) Monitor Prevent (AMP). AMP uses a ‘dancing qualia’ argument to link the functional states of certain digital systems to their experiences—this yields epistemic access to digital minds. With that access, we can prevent digital suffering by only creating advanced digital systems that we have such access to, monitoring their functional profiles, and preventing them from entering states with functional markers of suffering. After introducing and motivating AMP, we confront limitations it faces and identify some options for overcoming them. We argue that AMP fits especially well with—and so provides a moral reason to prioritize—one approach to creating such systems: whole brain emulation. We also contend that taking other paths to digital minds would be morally risky. (shrink)

This book first argues that what philosophers are really after, or at least should be after, when they seek a theory of explanation, is a theory of answers to why-questions. The book's main thesis, then, is a theory of reasons why. Every reason why some event happened is either a cause, or a ground, of that event. Challenging this thesis are many examples philosophers have thought they have found of "non-causal explanations." Reasons Why uses two ideas to show that these (...) examples are not counterexamples to the theory it defends. First is the idea that not every part of a good response to a why-question is part of an answer to that why-question. Second is the idea that not every reason why something is a reason why an event happened is itself a reason why that event happened. (shrink)

Experiences tend to be followed by states for which they provide normative reasons. Such harmonious correlations cry out for explanation. Theories that answer or diminish these cries thereby achieve an advantage over theories that do neither. I argue that the main lines of response to these cries that are available to biological theorists—theorists who hold (roughly) that conscious subjects are generally biological entities—are problematic. And I argue that panpsychism—which holds (roughly) that conscious subjects are ubiquitous in nature—provides an attractive response (...) to these explanatory cries. Taken together, these considerations underwrite a kind of ‘psychophysical fine-tuning’ argument in support of panpsychism, one that is reminiscent of cosmological fine-tuning arguments in favor of multiverse hypotheses. (shrink)

Fraser highlights an unattractive feature of Mohist ethics: the Mohists, while criticizing their Confucian contemporaries, restrict one’s pursuits to the most basic sorts of goods. Fraser suggests that the Mohists assume the perpetuity of scarce resources, which leads to a commitment to austerity, which in turn leads them to deny a plausible third way between austerity and excess. In their defence, I argue that the Mohists do not assume perpetuity of scarce resources but rather the hedonic treadmill. And instead of (...) begging the question by assuming austerity and then denying a moderate alternative to excess, the Mohists take the hedonic treadmill to preclude a principled stopgap between austerity and excess, leaving austerity as the only acceptable option. Finally, these dynamics illuminate a feature that should make us wary of parallels to Millian utilitarianism: the maximization principle of the latter is absent from Mohism, and this goes hand-in-hand with austerity. (shrink)

Pain, failure and false beliefs all make a life worse, or so it is plausible to think. These things and possibly others seem to be intrinsically bad—no matter what further good comes of them they make a life worse pro tanto. In spite of the obvious badness, this is difficult to explain. While there are many accounts of well-being, few are up to the challenge of a univocal explanation of ill-being. Perfectionism has particular difficulty. Otherwise, it is a theory that (...) has quite a lot in its favour. This paper proposes a new valuation scheme for perfectionism, the tripartite scheme, which affords perfectionism the resources to give a comprehensive account of robust bads and has further additional advantages for the view. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Aristotle's basic principle, that all friends love only because of the lovable, is egoistic. First, I argue that 'the lovable' (τὸ φιλητὸν) refers to that which appears to contribute to one's own happiness. Second, I argue that the lovable is the final cause of love. This means that in loving only because of the lovable, all friends love only for the sake of what appears to contribute to their own happiness. Further, Aristotelian love for (...) others not only requires that these others appear to contribute to one's own happiness but also prioritizes one's own happiness; Aristotelian love is therefore in some sense egoistic. (shrink)