We develop the concept of a volitional disability as an aid in understanding those patients who behave in ways that are harmful to themselves in spite of their desire to do otherwise. Using this concept enables us to describe their behavior as intentional but ‘unvoluntary’. We demonstrate the clinical reality of such behavior by giving clinical examples of the behavior of those with phobic, compulsive, and addictive disorders. We then attempt to show how some kinds of self-harming behavior of noncompliant (...) patients are similar to phobic and compulsive behavior. We propose use of the concept of volitional disability to make it easier for physicians to work with these noncompliant patients and thus to improve their ability to provide better care for them. (shrink)

In §66 ofPhilosophical Investigations Wittgenstein looks for something common to various games and finds only an interconnecting network of resemblances. These are family resemblances. Sympathetic as well as unsympathetic readers have interpreted him as claiming that games form a family in virtue of these resemblances. This assumes Wittgenstein inverted the relation between being a member of a family and bearing family resemblances to others of that family. (The Churchills bear family resemblances to one another because they belong to the same (...) family, they don't belong to the same family because they resemble one another.) A close reading ofInvestigations gives no evidence that Wittgenstein made this mistake. Rather, family resemblances may play a role like the one criteria play for psychological terms. They give excellent but fallible evidence for membership in the extensions of some terms. (shrink)

In §50 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein wrote the sentence, “There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris.” Although some interpreters have claimed that Wittgenstein’s statement is mistaken, while others have proposed various explanations showing that this must be correct, none have questioned the fact that he intended to assert that it is impossible to describe the standard (...) meter as being a meter long. Given that Wittgenstein introduces this sentence as analogous to the claim that “existence cannot be attributed to an element,” and that the preceding passages discuss a language-game the simples of which can be described by their own names, there is good reason to think that Wittgenstein did not intend to assert this infamous sentence. (shrink)

In §50 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein wrote the sentence, “There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris.” Although some interpreters have claimed that Wittgenstein's statement is mistaken, while others have proposed various explanations showing that this must be correct, none have questioned the fact that he intended to assert that it is impossible to describe the standard (...) meter as being a meter long. Given that Wittgenstein introduces this sentence as analogous to the claim that “existence cannot be attributed to an element,” and that the preceding passages discuss a language‐game the simples of which can be described by their own names, there is good reason to think that Wittgenstein did not intend to assert this infamous sentence. (shrink)

In her later writings Jean Hampton develops an expressive theory of punishment she takes to be retributivist. Unlike Feinberg, Hampton claims wrongdoings as well as punishments are expressive. Wrongdoings assert that the victim is less valuable than victimizer. On her view we are obligated to punish because we are obligated to respond to this false assertion. Punishment expresses the moral truth that victim and wrongdoer are equally valuable. We argue that Hampton's argument would work only if she held that exerting (...) power over another provides evidence (albeit defeasible) of one's greater value. This is clearly a premise that neither she nor her readers are likely to accept. (shrink)

I Foundations i Every account of Nietzsche is an interpretation. Perhaps students of him are inclined to forget the extent to which this is also true of ...

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 252-273, July 2022.

In Coming to Our Senses, Michael Devitt insists that if we are going to argue about what meanings are, we should know why we care. He reasonably observes that unless we agree about this, we are likely to be arguing past one another. The meanings Devitt discusses are token meanings of individual thoughts and utterances. He holds that these meanings are properties, and that we have two purposes for attributing them to thoughts and utterances: to predict and explain a subject’s (...) behavior, and to learn about the world. If a property attributed to a thought by means of a t-clause serves either of these purposes then that property plays a semantic role. A meaning is any property that plays a semantic role. (shrink)

While there are a number of genuine philosophical topics that medical and premedical students can get out of a course on medical ethics, being an ethically sensitive health care worker requires more than knowing a variety of philosophically-interesting medical ethics questions and concepts. In addition, two goals of teaching medical ethics should be to ensure that health care workers have a healthy respect for the rights of their patients and to instill in students the importance of gathering as much information (...) as possible before making decisions that affect the lives of their patients. This paper discusses two methods by which this second goal is achieved, namely by using an in-class exercise and a procedure for delivering exams. (shrink)

Psychopaths continue to be demonised by the media and estimates suggest that a disturbing percentage of the population has psychopathic tendencies. This timely and controversial new book summarises what we already know about psychopathy and antisocial behavior and puts forward a new case for its cause - with far-reaching implications. Presents the scientific facts of psychopathy and antisocial behavior. Addresses key questions, such as: What is psychopathy? Are there psychopaths amongst us? What is wrong with psychopaths? Is psychopathy due to (...) nature or nurture? And can we treat psychopaths? Reveals the authors' ground-breaking research into whether an underlying abnormality in brain development leaves psychopaths with an inability to feel emotion or fear. The resulting theory could lead to early diagnosis and revolutionize the way society, the media and the state both views and contends with the psychopaths in our midst. (shrink)

Nagel’s constitutive moral luck is one important type of moral luck, but discussions of it have tended to focus on temperament. Luck in how aware a person is of morally relevant aspects of her situation—awareness luck—though similar in some ways, also raises different issues. Luck in temperament impacts how difficult a person finds it to behave well, while awareness luck impacts whether she even recognizes that the situation is making a moral demand on her. For this reason, awareness luck raises (...) some unique challenges for those who would deny the existence of moral luck. (shrink)

The standard models for what doctors must tell their patients are based on the idea of informed consent: physicians must provide the information that patients need to make treatment decisions. In fact, though, they usually provide considerably more information than this model requires. And rightly so: patients should receive enough information that they will not be surprised by whatever happens—unless the physician is also surprised.

Empathy is a lay term that is becoming increasingly viewed as a unitary function within the field of cognitive neuroscience. In this paper, a selective review of the empathy literature is provided. It is argued from this literature that empathy is not a unitary system but rather a loose collection of partially dissociable neurocognitive systems. In particular, three main divisions can be made: cognitive empathy , motor empathy, and emotional empathy. The two main psychiatric disorders associated with empathic dysfunction are (...) considered: autism and psychopathy. It is argued that individuals with autism show difficulties with cognitive and motor empathy but less clear difficulties with respect to emotional empathy. In contrast, individuals with psychopathy show clear difficulties with a specific form of emotional empathy but no indications of impairment with cognitive and motor empathy. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

_The Sceptics_ is the first comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of Greek scepticism, from the beginnings of epistemology with Xenophanes, to the final full development of Pyrrhonism as presented in the work of Sextus Empiricus. Tracing the evolution of scepticism from 500 B.C to A.D 200, this clear and rigorous analysis presents the arguments of the Greek sceptics in their historical context and provides an in-depth study of the various strands of the sceptical tradition.

We provide a justification for political liberalism’s Reciprocity Principle, which states that political decisions must be justified exclusively on the basis of considerations that all reasonable citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. The standard argument for the Reciprocity Principle grounds it in a requirement of respect for persons. We argue for a different, but compatible, justification: the Reciprocity Principle is justified because it makes possible a desirable kind of political community. The general endorsement of the Reciprocity Principle, we will (...) argue, helps realize joint political rule and relationships of civic friendship. The main obstacle to the realization of these values is the presence of reasonable disagreement about religious, moral, and philosophical issues characteristic of liberal societies. We show the Reciprocity Principle helps to overcome this obstacle. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 47, Issue 1, Page 72-103, Winter 2019.

Political liberals ask citizens not to appeal to certain considerations, including religious and philosophical convictions, in political deliberation. We argue that political liberals must include a demanding requirement of intellectual modesty in their ideal of citizenship in order to motivate this deliberative restraint. The requirement calls on each citizen to believe that the best reasoners disagree about the considerations that she is barred from appealing to. Along the way, we clarify how requirements of intellectual modesty relate to moral reasons for (...) deliberative restraint. And we argue against attempts to weaken our requirement of intellectual modesty by emphasizing those moral reasons. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that human pattern recognition can be simulated by automata. In particular, I show that gestalt recognition and recognition of family resemblances are within the capabilities of sufficiently complex Turing machines. The argument rests on elementary facts of automata and computability theory which are used to explicate our preanalytic, informal concepts concerning gestalt patterns and recognition. The central idea is that of a machine which "knows" its own structure. Although the paper thus aims to support mechanism, (...) especially as a framework hypothesis for perception, it contains suggestions for philosophy of science and philosophy of language as well. Some of these suggestions are sketched in the final section. (shrink)

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This study investigated the performance of boys with psychopathic tendencies and comparison boys, aged 9 to 17 years, on two tasks believed to be sensitive to amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex func- tioning. Fifty-one boys were divided into two groups according to the Psychopathy Screening Device (PSD, P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, in press) and presented with two tasks. The tasks were the gambling task (A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994) and the Intradimensional/ (...) Extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task (R. Dias, T. W. Robbins, & A. C. Roberts, 1996). The boys with psychopathic tendencies showed impaired performance on the gambling task. However, there were no group differences on the ID/ED task either for response reversal or extradimensional set shifting. The implications of these results for models of psychopathy are discussed. (shrink)