DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Sociocultural norms against women can contribute to promoting intimate partner violence (IPV) and shape women's decision to disclose IPV. A cross‐cultural analysis of the existing literature is needed to present an overview of the influences of sociocultural norms on women's decisions regarding the disclosure of IPV across different cultural contexts. The purpose of the review was to synthesize published quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods (MMs) studies to identify known sociocultural norms across different cultures that may influence women's decision to disclose (...) IPV. The Whittemore and Knafl framework, Rayyan software, and PRISMA flow diagram were used. Databases included APA PsycInfo, CINAHL, PubMed, SocINDEX, and Women's Studies International. The quality of studies was assessed by the MMs appraisal tool. A total of 15 research articles written in English and published in peer‐reviewed journals were included. Main categories emerged: (1) stigma surrounding IPV disclosure, victimization, and divorce; (2) gender roles; (3) preserving family honor; and (4) Children's well‐being and future. A one‐size‐fits‐all approach is not adequate for women who are considering disclosing IPV. Findings underscore that regardless of residing in individualistic countries, those sociocultural norms related to traditional gender roles and gender inequality are still important barriers to the disclosure of IPV among women with collectivist roots. (shrink)

As well as aiming to revive interest in Meinong's thought, this book challenges many of the most widespread assumptions of philosophical logic.

We ask whether it is reasonable to delay or refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines that have been shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective against infectious diseases. We consider two kinds of vaccine hesitancy. The first is geared to scientifically informed open questions about vaccines. We argue that in cases where the data is not representative of relevant groups, such as pregnant women and ethnic minorities, hesitancy can be reasonable on epistemic grounds. However, we argue that hesitancy is (...) not reasonable if a vaccine has passed well-conducted clinical trials. The second kind of hesitancy is to do with beliefs about the institutions offering a successfully trialled vaccine and the justifiability of cooperating with those institutions. For example, in the UK, distrust of the UK Government or the National Health Service is identified as a factor in the vaccine hesitancy of minority ethnic populations. We ask whether this sort of hesitation is reasonable given normative requirements of fair co-operation, both with those institutions and the wider population. We suggest that the answer is not straightforward. Sometimes the hesitation is unreasonable but understandable. -/- . (shrink)

Propose l'idée directrice suivante : les trois monothéismes méditerranéens forment système comme les polythéismes indo-européens. Au prix d'une critique girardienne du modèle dumézilien, qui a l'effet de compliquer les deux approches ainsi privées de leur tentation englobante, l'analyse procède à une exégèse véritablement anthropologique.

Free logic, an alternative to traditional logic, has been seen as a useful avenue of approach to a number of philosophical issues of contemporary interest. In this collection, Karel Lambert, one of the pioneers in, and the most prominent exponent of, free logic, brings together a variety of published essays bearing on the application of free logic to philosophical topics ranging from set theory and logic to metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. The work of such distinguished philosophers as (...) Bas van Fraassen, Dana Scott, Tyler Burge, and Jaakko Hintikka is represented. Lambert provides an introductory essay placing free logic in the logical tradition beginning with Aristotle, developing it as the natural culmination of a trend begun in the Port Royal logic of the 1600s, and continuing through current predicate logic--the trend to rid logic of existence assumptions. His Introduction also provides a useful systematic overview of free logic, including both a standard syntax and some semantical options. (shrink)

The essays in this volume are based on addresses presented during a colloquium on free logic, modal logic and related areas held at the University of California at Irvine, in May of 1968. With the single exception of Dagfinn F011esdal, whose revised address is included in a recent issue of Synthese honoring W. V. Quine, all of the speakers at the Irvine colloquium are contributors to this volume. Thanks are due to Professor A. I. Melden, Chairman of the Department of (...) Philosophy at Irvine, for his enthusiastic support of the colloquium, and to Drs. Gordon Brittan and Daniel Dennett for their help in the administration of the colloquium. Finally. I should also like to thank Professor Ralph W. Gerard, Dean of the Graduate Division of the University of California at Irvine, for the financial support which made the colloquium possible. KAREL LAMBERT Laguna Beach, California, 1969 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE V KAREL LAMBERT and BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN/ Meaning Relations, Possible Objects, and Possible Worlds 1 JAAKKO HINTIKKA / Existential Presuppositions and Uniqueness Presuppositions 20 RICHMOND H. THOMASON / Some Completeness Results for Modal Predicate Calculi 56 H. LEBLANC and R. K. MEYER / Truth-Value Semantics for the Theory of Types 77 J. M. VICKERS / Probability and Non Standard Logics 102 PETER W. WOODRUFF / Logic and Truth Value Gaps 121 DANA SCOTT / Advice on Modal Logic 143 INDEX OF NAMES 175 KAREL LAMBER T AND BAS C. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a series of papers read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society through the 1820s, the Cambridge mathematician George Peacock laid the foundation for a natural history of arithmetic that would tell a story of human progress from counting to modern arithmetic. The trajectory of that history, Peacock argued, established algebraic analysis as a form of universal reasoning that used empirically warranted operations of mind to think with symbols on paper. The science of counting would suggest arithmetic, arithmetic would suggest (...) arithmetical algebra, and, finally, arithmetical algebra would suggest symbolic algebra. This philosophy of suggestion provided the foundation for Peacock's “principle of equivalent forms,” which justified the practice of nineteenth-century English symbolic algebra. Peacock's philosophy of suggestion owed a considerable debt to the early Cambridge Philosophical Society culture of natural history. The aim of this essay is to show how that culture of natural history was constitutively significant to the practice of nineteenth-century English algebra. (shrink)

La Phenomenologie, derniere section du Nouvel Organon (1764) de Jean-Henri Lambert, proposee ici dans sa traduction integrale, constitue une piece originale apportee au debat entre rationalisme et empirisme au XVIIIe siecle. Ce texte aborde le probleme de la critique de l'apparence en general, en ne recherchant pas seulement les criteres de l'apparence sensible, mais egalement ceux de l'apparence intellectuelle et morale, avec une consideration particuliere pour le domaine du probable. La verite apparente est au coeur de la phenomenologie definie (...) aussi comme une optique ou perspective transcendante. La question centrale est celle du depassement de l'apparence, car elle nous induit en erreur en nous dissimulant l'etre reel. (shrink)

This paper considers whether theism is compatible with moral error theory. This issue is neglected, perhaps because it is widely assumed that these views are incompatible. I argue that this is mistaken. In so doing, I articulate the best argument for thinking that theism and moral error theory are incompatible. According to it, these views are incompatible because theism entails that God is morally good, and moral error theory entails that God is not. I reject this argument. Since it is (...) the best argument for thinking that theism and moral error theory are incompatible, I conclude that these views are compatible: one can coherently accept both views. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the nature of the Star Maker in Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker, as well as Stapledon’s exploration of the theological problem of evil, as compared with philosophical conceptions of God and their respective theodicies in the tradition of classical theism, as propounded by philosophers such as Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Maimonides, Aquinas, and Avicenna. It argues that Stapledon’s philosophical divergence from classical theism entails that the Star Maker of the novel is more demiurge than true divinity, and that this (...) divergence is integral to the basically amoral character of the Star Maker, as well as the purely aesthetic resolution of the problem of evil articulated in Star Maker. This analysis, in turn, will hopefully bear on future studies touching on the trope of quasi-divinities, evolved and contingent gods, present in the work of other SF authors. (shrink)

Deliberation and democratic legitimacy -- Moral pluralism and political consensus -- Associations and democracy (with Joel Rogers) -- Freedom of expression -- Procedure and substance in deliberative democracy -- Directly-deliberative polyarchy (with Charles Sabel) -- Democracy and liberty -- Money, politics, political equality -- Privacy, pluralism, and democracy -- Reflections on deliberative democracy -- Truth and public reason.

The authors contend that most contemporary logic textbooks fail the average student because they emphasize the evaluation of arguments over their clarification, assuming that the student already understands what motivations underlie logic.

The rise of experimental philosophy has placed metaphilosophical questions, particularly those concerning concepts, at the center of philosophical attention. X-phi offers empirically rigorous methods for identifying conceptual content, but what exactly it contributes towards evaluating conceptual content remains unclear. We show how x-phi complements Rudolf Carnap’s underappreciated methodology for concept determination, explication. This clarifies and extends x-phi’s positive philosophical import, and also exhibits explication’s broad appeal. But there is a potential problem: Carnap’s account of explication was limited to empirical and (...) logical concepts, but many concepts of interest to philosophers are essentially normative. With formal epistemology as a case study, we show how x-phi assisted explication can apply to normative domains. (shrink)

Imagination plays a rich epistemic role in our cognitive lives. For example, if I want to learn whether my luggage will fit into the overhead compartment on a plane, I might imagine trying to fit it into the overhead compartment and form a justified belief on the basis of this imagining. But what explains the fact that imagination has the power to justify beliefs, and what is the structure of imaginative justification? In this paper, I answer these questions by arguing (...) that imaginings manifest an epistemic status: they are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified. This epistemic status grounds their ability to justify beliefs, and they accrue this status in virtue of being based on evidence. Thus, imaginings are best understood as justified justifiers. I argue for this view by way of showing how it offers a satisfying explanation of certain key features of imaginative justification that would otherwise be puzzling. I also argue that imaginings exhibit a number of markers of the basing relation, which further motivates the view that imaginings can be based on evidence. The arguments in this paper have theoretically fruitful implications not only for the epistemology of imagination, but for accounts of reasoning and epistemic normativity more generally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a series of papers read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society through the 1820s, the Cambridge mathematician George Peacock laid the foundation for a natural history of arithmetic that would tell a story of human progress from counting to modern arithmetic. The trajectory of that history, Peacock argued, established algebraic analysis as a form of universal reasoning that used empirically warranted operations of mind to think with symbols on paper. The science of counting would suggest arithmetic, arithmetic would suggest (...) arithmetical algebra, and, finally, arithmetical algebra would suggest symbolic algebra. This philosophy of suggestion provided the foundation for Peacock's “principle of equivalent forms,” which justified the practice of nineteenth-century English symbolic algebra. Peacock's philosophy of suggestion owed a considerable debt to the early Cambridge Philosophical Society culture of natural history. The aim of this essay is to show how that culture of natural history was constitutively significant to the practice of nineteenth-century English algebra. (shrink)

I draw on neurobiological evidence to defend the rationalist thesis that moral judgments are essentially dependent on reasoning, not emotions (conceived as distinct from inference). The neuroscience reveals that moral cognition arises from domain-general capacities in the brain for inferring, in particular, the consequences of an agent’s action, the agent’s intent, and the rules or norms relevant to the context. Although these capacities entangle inference and affect, blurring the reason/emotion dichotomy doesn’t preferentially support sentimentalism. The argument requires careful consideration of (...) the empirical evidence (from neuroimaging to psychopathology) and philosophical analysis of the commitments of rationalism versus sentimentalism in ethics. (shrink)

The Shape of Agency offers interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. The first part offers accounts of a collection of related phenomena that have long troubled philosophers of action: control over behaviour, non-deviant causation, and intentional action. These accounts build on earlier work in the causalist tradition, and undermine the claims made by many that causalism cannot offer a satisfying account of non-deviant causation, and therefore fails as an account of intentional (...) action. The second part turns to modes of agentive excellence—ways that agents display quality of form—providing a novel account of skill, including an account of the ways that agents display more or less skill. Shepherd discusses the role of knowledge in skill, and concludes that while knowledge is often important, it is inessential. This leads to a discussion of the way that knowledge of action and knowledge of how to act informs action execution. Knowledgeable action includes a unique epistemic underpinning: in knowledgeable action, the agent has authoritative knowledge of what she is doing and how she is doing it when and because she is poised to control her action by way of practical reasoning. (shrink)

It used to be a commonplace that the discipline of philosophy was deeply concerned with questions about the human condition. Philosophers thought about human beings and how their minds worked. They took an interest in reason and passion, culture and innate ideas, the origins of people’s moral and religious beliefs. On this traditional conception, it wasn’t particularly important to keep philosophy clearly distinct from psychology, history, or political science. Philosophers were concerned, in a very general way, with questions about how..

Now available in English for the first time, The Visibility of the Image explores the development of an influential aesthetic tradition through the work of six figures. Analysing their contribution to the progress of formal aesthetics, from its origins in Germany in the 1880s to semiotic interpretations in America a century later, the six chapters cover: Robert Zimmermann (1824-1898), the first to separate aesthetics and metaphysics and approach aesthetics along the lines of formal logic, providing a purely syntactic way of (...) using signs, regardless of objective content; Alois Riegl (1858-1905), who went on to further develop aesthetics on the model of formal logic, creating a theory of style in response to Zimmermann's call for an aesthetics oriented toward formal logic; Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), who represents a step toward an understanding of consciousness by using pictures as cognitive tools; Konrad Fiedler (1841-1895), the Saxon philosopher who considered the possibility that some kinds of images are made and viewed not for what they show, but for their visibility's sake alone; Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), responsible for taking up the connections between the problems of reducing the range of potential meanings and contexts of a given image down to just the picture surface; Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who set out to establish whether a picture with no objective reference, such as an abstract painting, still counts as a sign, and if so, in what sense. Bringing these thinkers together and interlinking their ideas, Lambert Wiesing presents an engaging history of formal aesthetics, while reconstructing the philosophical foundations for the appearance of new image forms in the 20th century, including the video-clip, abstract collage, digital simulation and virtual reality. Using this original approach, The Visibility of the Image introduces the rise of modern image theory and provides a valuable account of our engagement with pictures in the 21st century. (shrink)

Philosophische Mythen und Modelle. Unzufriedenheit auf höchstem Niveau ; Der Mythenvorwurf in der Philosophie ; Modellierende Philosophie : eine contradictio in adjecto ; Der Mythos des Gegebenen ; Vom Mythos desGegebenen zum Mythos des Mittelbaren ; Interpretationismus und Wahrnehmungsphilosophie ; Transzendentaler Interpretationismus ; Die Verbindung des Mythos des Gegebenen mit dem Mythos des Mittelbaren : Repräsentationalismus ; Das Paradigma des Zugangs -- Phänomenologie : die Philosophie ohne Modell. Phänomenale Gewißheit ; Vom cartesischen Cartesianismus zum phänomenologischen Cartesianimus ; Intentionalität : das (...) fundamentum inconcussum relationalis ; Zu den Sachen und zurück zur Sprache ; Phänomenologische Protreptik ; Eidetische Variation -- Das Mich der Wahrnehmung. Von den Bedingungen der Möglichkeit zu den Folgen der Wirklichkeit ; Vom Primat des Wahrnehmenden zum Primat der Wahrnehmung ; Vom Ich zum Mich der Wahrnehmung ; Die Zumutung dauernder Anwesenheit ; Die Beschreibung der Anwesenheitszumutung : der Gehalt der Wahrnehmung ; Die Qualität der Wahrenmung und der Auffassungssinn ; Sich sicher sein, daß etwas der Fall ist : Wissen und Gewißheit ; Die unmögliche Epoché ; Vom Eindruck zum Ausdruck zur Teilhabe ; Transzendentale Ästhetik und die Unterstellung von Anschauungsformen ; Die Leiblichkeit des Wahrnehmenden : eine folge der Wahrnehmung ; Die Kontinuität des Wahrgenommenen ; Das Wahrgenommene und die Ursache der Wahrnehmung ; Die Zumutung der Öffentlichkeit ; Die Identität des Mich -- Die Partizipationspause. Pause versus Unterbrechung ; Die drei Paradigmen der Bildwahrnehmungstheorie ; Das besondre Objekt der Bildwahrnehmung ; Die besonderen Folgen der Bildwahrnehmung ; Zum Zuschauen gezwungen ; Die optische Entindividualisierung des Mich ; Zur Teilnahme entschieden. (shrink)

The correspondence theory of truth is a precise and innovative account of how the truth of a proposition depends upon that proposition's connection to a piece of reality. Joshua Rasmussen refines and defends the correspondence theory of truth, proposing new accounts of facts, propositions, and the correspondence between them. With these theories in hand, he then offers original solutions to the toughest objections facing correspondence theorists. Addressing the Problem of Funny Facts, Liar Paradoxes, and traditional epistemological questions concerning how (...) our minds can access reality, he challenges recent objections, and defends what has traditionally been the most popular theory of truth. Written with clarity, precision, and sensitivity to a range of philosophical backgrounds, his book will appeal to advanced students and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of the relationship between truth and reality. (shrink)

Li Zehou’s work can be understood as an account of a Chinese modernity, a vision for Chinese society that seeks to integrate three distinct philosophical approaches. These are Chinese history and culture, which Li understands as largely Confucian; Marxism, which has exerted such influence on a modernizing China; and Western learning more generally, as expressed by figures such as Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. Li also frequently expresses the hope that a Chinese modernity will be one in which the importance (...) of the individual is recognized, and rights and freedoms upheld (e.g., 2006, p. 182). But this stance raises an important question: how are individuality and freedom understood in Li’s philosophical system? In this paper, I want to examine what resources Li offers to help us conceptualize their place in a modernity with Chinese characteristics. Confucian culture is often regarded as authoritarian and hierarchical, less interested than more liberal traditions in an ideal such as freedom. So how does freedom relate to the Confucian root of Chinese culture, as construed by Li? In this paper I explore how Li Zehou’s study of Confucian aesthetics can deliver a novel conception of freedom, one grounded in Confucian thinking about personal cultivation, and aimed at the free creation of delight (樂). (shrink)

Experimental philosophy uses experimental research methods from psychology and cognitive science in order to investigate both philosophical and metaphilosophical questions. It explores philosophical questions about the nature of the psychological world - the very structure or meaning of our concepts of things, and about the nature of the non-psychological world - the things themselves. It also explores metaphilosophical questions about the nature of philosophical inquiry and its proper methodology. This book provides a detailed and provocative introduction to this innovative field, (...) focusing on the relationship between experimental philosophy and the aims and methods of more traditional analytic philosophy. Special attention is paid to carefully examining experimental philosophy's quite different philosophical programs, their individual strengths and weaknesses, and the different kinds of contributions that they can make to our philosophical understanding. Clear and accessible throughout, it situates experimental philosophy within both a contemporary and historical context, explains its aims and methods, examines and critically evaluates its most significant claims and arguments, and engages with its critics. (shrink)

In Michel de Certeau’s Invention of the Everyday, improvisational community dance function as a catalyst for the subversive art of the oppressed, via its ancient Greek virtue/power of mētis, being “foxlike.” And in de Certeau’s The Possession of Loudun, this foxlike dance moves to the stage, as an improv chorus that disrupts the events at Loudon when reimagined as a tetralogy of plays at City Dionysia. More precisely, Loudun’s tetralogy could be interpreted as a series of three tragedies and one (...) comedy, the latter of which involves the chorine nuns’ channeling of anomie into a proto-feminist transfiguration. More precisely, the tactical prowess of the nuns’ chorus leader, namely the prioress Jeanne des Anges, elevates her to the status of an angelic prophet, which in de Certeau’s theatrical dancing critique makes her the Loudun tetralogy’s Dionysian, foxlike mage. In conclusion, this analysis suggests de Certeau’s relevance for revolutionary social justice today. (shrink)

It has been standard philosophical practice in analytic philosophy to employ intuitions generated in response to thought-experiments as evidence in the evaluation of philosophical claims. In part as a response to this practice, an exciting new movement—experimental philosophy—has recently emerged. This movement is unified behind both a common methodology and a common aim: the application of methods of experimental psychology to the study of the nature of intuitions. In this paper, we will introduce two different views concerning the relationship that (...) holds between experimental philosophy and the future of standard philosophical practice (what we call, the proper foundation view and the restrictionist view), discuss some of the more interesting and important results obtained by proponents of both views, and examine the pressure these results put on analytic philosophers to reform standard philosophical practice. We will also defend experimental philosophy from some recent objections, suggest future directions for work in experimental philosophy, and suggest what future lines of epistemological response might be available to those wishing to defend analytic epistemology from the challenges posed by experimental philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer evidence that folk views of free will and moral responsibility accord a central place to consciousness. In sections 2 and 3, I contrast action production via conscious states and processes with action in concordance with an agent's long-standing and endorsed motivations, values, and character traits. Results indicate that conscious action production is considered much more important for free will than is concordance with motivations, values, and character traits. In section 4, I contrast the absence of (...) consciousness with the presence of consciousness in behaviorally identical agents. Most participants attribute free will to conscious agents, but not to nonconscious agents. Focusing in particular on two leading views of free will and moral responsibility, namely, Deep Self and Reasons-Responsive Views, I argue that these results present philosophers of mind and action with the following explanatory burden: develop a substantive theory of the connection between consciousness on the on.. (shrink)

It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in a permanent vegetative state, debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness, controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia, and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, (...) though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and those with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper defends pro-realism, the view that it is better if moral realism is true rather than any of its rivals. After offering an account of philosophical angst, I make three general arguments. The first targets nihilism: in securing the possibility of moral justification and vindication in objecting to certain harms, moral realism secures something that is non-morally valuable and even essential to the meaning and intelligibility of our lives. The second argument targets antirealism: moral realism secures a desirable independence (...) for moral justification that is qualitatively different from the anti-realistic construal of independence that is only explicable in terms of degrees of distance from our subjective responses and attitudes. Finally, I argue that while the pan-expressivist semantic program of quasi-realism has significant effects on what can be appropriately said in meta-ethical discourse, it provides no comfort to the pro-realist who is already angsty about anti-realism. (shrink)

This essay argues for a more methodologically diverse search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and study of habitable exoplanets that might contribute to the emergent field of critical habitability studies across the sciences and humanities. Whether or not contact is made with extraterrestrials, this effort is implicated in changing concepts of otherness at home and the ongoing work to decolonize Earth and make it more inhabitable. I examine historical efforts to think aliens philosophically in the work of Kant, to conclude with (...) a reflection on the trope of contact between humans, nonhuman animals, and aliens in Ted Chiang’s short story “The Great Silence.”. (shrink)

In The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard tried to argue against what she called the ‘privacy’ of reasons, appealing to Wittgenstein's argument against the possibility of a private language. In recent work she continues to endorse Wittgenstein's perspective on the normativity of meaning, although she now emphasizes that her own argument was only meant to be analogous to the private language argument. The purpose of the present paper is to show that the Wittgensteinian perspective is not only not useful in (...) support of Korsgaard's general project, but that it is positively inimical to it, in two ways. First, Wittgenstein opposes views on which principled or rule-following behavior requires that one be guided by anything like a mental representation of a rule or principle. But for Korsgaard, human action essentially requires this. Second, Wittgenstein systematically attempts to de-emphasize the importance of the first-personal perspective, and to emphasize the social functions even of concepts that might seem deployed primarily from that perspective: for example, concepts of sensations and intentions. This is the reverse of Korsgaard's emphasis. The paper also argues, however, that the private language argument does have some implications for a theory of rationality and reasons. (shrink)

This chapter argues that epistemic uses of the imagination are a sui generis form of reasoning. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, there are imaginings which instantiate the epistemic structure of reasoning. Second, reasoning with imagination is not reducible to reasoning with doxastic states. Thus, the epistemic role of the imagination is that it is a distinctive way of reasoning out what follows from our prior evidence. This view has a number of important implications for the epistemology of the (...) imagination. For one thing, it clarifies the epistemic role of widely invoked “constraints” on the imagination. For another, it highlights important and underappreciated disanalogies between how perceptual experiences and imaginings justify beliefs. Ultimately, the view that we can reason with imagination offers an illuminating and theoretically fruitful framework through which to understand the epistemic structure of the imagination. (shrink)

pt. 1. Text -- pt. 2. Notes, bibliography and indices.

Our interest in this paper is to drive a wedge of contention between two different programs that fall under the umbrella of “experimental philosophy”. In particular, we argue that experimental philosophy’s “negative program” presents almost as significant a challenge to its “positive program” as it does to more traditional analytic philosophy.

Animals have moral status, and we have corresponding obligations to take their interests into account. I argue that Stakeholder Theory provides a moderate, yet principled way for businesses to do so. Animals ought to be treated as stakeholders given that they affect and are affected by the achievement of the objectives of the businesses in which they are involved. Stakeholder Theory therefore requires taking those interests into account. It does not, however, require that they be given the same weight as (...) human interests. By taking the stakeholder approach, businesses can avoid merely reacting to (rapidly increasing) public outcry over the treatment of animals. Even those who hold extreme positions—that businesses have no obligations to animals, or that animal products and services are inherently immoral—can take the treatment of animals as stakeholders to provide an ethical realpolitik of sorts that is both better for animals and better for business. (shrink)

Learning information about the etiology of one's beliefs can reduce the justification a thinker has for those beliefs. Learning information about the etiology of one's desires, emotions, or concepts can similarly have a debunking effect. In this chapter, I develop a unified account of etiological debunking that applies across these different kinds of cases. According to this account, etiological debunking arguments work by providing reason to think that there is no satisfying explanation of how it is that some part of (...) our mental life is fitting. The role that etiological information plays is to help to rule out (or render less plausible) potential explanations, given our background views about the world. This account suggests several potential morals for epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and metaethics. (shrink)

La Phenomenologie, derniere section du Nouvel Organon (1764) de Jean-Henri Lambert, proposee ici dans sa traduction integrale, constitue une piece originale apportee au debat entre rationalisme et empirisme au XVIIIe siecle. Ce texte aborde le probleme de la critique de l'apparence en general, en ne recherchant pas seulement les criteres de l'apparence sensible, mais egalement ceux de l'apparence intellectuelle et morale, avec une consideration particuliere pour le domaine du probable. La verite apparente est au coeur de la phenomenologie definie (...) aussi comme une optique ou perspective transcendante. La question centrale est celle du depassement de l'apparence, car elle nous induit en erreur en nous dissimulant l'etre reel. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science suggests that conscious thought plays a much less central role in the production of human behavior than most think. Partially on the basis of this work, Peter Carruthers has advanced the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. This claim is of independent interest for action theory, and its potential truth poses a problem for theories of free will and autonomy, which often take our capacity to consciously decide to be of central importance. In (...) this article, I examine the nature of conscious deciding and I argue that Carruthers fails to establish the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. (shrink)

Today, liberals face a predicament: how to defend liberal principles, when adherence to them seems to constitute a fatal disadvantage against unprincipled opponents. The challenge is not new. In the early years of the twentieth century, liberalism was attacked, by critics on both the right and, especially, the left for being hypocritical, naïve, irresponsible, and impotent. It couldn't, for example (anti-liberalists thought), address the acute inequality of imperial rule, racial segregation, and socio-economic poverty. These issues of social justice it was (...) claimed by critics required a politics marked by an uncompromising commitment to ultimate ends, and an unrelenting use of power. Faced with such sentiments and the practical successes of anti-liberal ideologies (i.e. Fascism, Nazism, and Communism) liberals felt pressure to silence their scruples and doubts, and embrace the confidence, ruthlessness, and intransigence exhibited by their opponents. But doing so seemed tantamount to abandoning liberal hopes for, and commitments to, human freedom and all they valued in the first place. In Liberalism for Dark Times, Cherniss tells the story of the liberal response to this challenge in the twentieth century. Through a close study of five leading intellectuals engaged in these debates-Max Weber, Raymond Aron, Albert Camus, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Isaiah Berlin-Cherniss reconstructs a distinctive, neglected strand of liberal thought. This strand defines and defends liberalism as a political ethos: a complex of dispositions, temperament, and sensibility and style-which include skepticism; openness to experience; and careful, discriminating judgment-that shape how individuals make choices, meet challenges, understand and pursue possibilities, and conduct themselves toward others in the course of political struggle. In reconstructing the history of, what he calls, a tempered liberalism, and formulating it as a distinctive political perspective, Cherniss offers an alternative to the prevalent ways of thinking about both, liberalism's history and the intellectual resources available to it today. (shrink)