Abstract: This essay explores recent trends and major issues related to gay and lesbian philosophy in ethics (including issues concerning the morality of homosexuality, the natural function of sex, and outing and coming out); religion (covering past and present debates about the status of homosexuality and how biblical and qur'anic passages have been interpreted by both sides of the debate); the law (especially a discussion of the debates surrounding sodomy laws, same-sex marriage and its impact on transsexuals, and whether the (...) law should be used to enforce morality); scientific research into the origins of homosexuality (including discussion of arguments against such research); and metaphysics (especially the question of whether homosexuality is socially constructed during particular times and in particular cultures, or whether sexual orientation is an essential trait cutting across times and cultures). (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that adherents of Patrick Toner’s hylemorphic animalism who also assent to orthodox Christology and a thesis about the necessity of identity must reject a prima facie plausible theological possibility held by Ockham, entertained in one form by St. Thomas Aquinas, and recently held by Richard Cross, Thomas Flint,, and, and Timothy Pawl and concerning which individual concrete human natures an omnipotent God could assume.

Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.

Vagueness provides the first comprehensive examination of a topic of increasing importance in metaphysics and the philosophy of logic and language. Timothy Williamson traces the history of this philosophical problem from discussions of the heap paradox in classical Greece to modern formal approaches such as fuzzy logic. He illustrates the problems with views which have taken the position that standard logic and formal semantics do not apply to vague language, and defends the controversial realistic view that vagueness is a (...) kind of ignorance--that there really is a grain of sand whose removal turns a heap into a non-heap, but we cannot know which one it is. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss how Causal Decision Theory should be modified to handle a class of problematic cases involving deterministic laws. Causal Decision Theory, as it stands, is problematically biased against your endorsing deterministic propositions (for example it tells you to deny Newtonian physics, regardless of how confident you are of its truth). Our response is that this is not a problem for Causal Decision Theory per se, but arises because of the standard method for assessing the truth of (...) certain counterfactuals. The truth of deterministic laws is `modally fragile' on the standard semantics for counterfactuals: if determinism is true and you were to do otherwise, the laws would be different. We provide two ways of avoiding this problem: 1) supplement the standard semantics for counterfactuals with impossible worlds, or 2) introduce rigid designators into the description of problematic decision situations. We argue that both of these approaches are well-motivated and can be readily incorporated into Lewisian Causal Decision Theory. (shrink)

The paper clarifies and defends the orthodox view that counterfactual conditionals with impossible antecedents are vacuously true against recent criticisms. It argues that apparent counterexamples to orthodoxy result from uncritical reliance on a fallible heuristic used in the processing of conditionals. A comparison is developed between such counterpossibles and vacuously true universal generalizations.

Understandably absorbed in technical details, discussion of the semantic paradoxes risks losing sight of broad methodological principles. This chapter sketches a general approach to the comparison of rival logics, and applies it to argue that revision of classical propositional logic has much higher costs than its proponents typically recognize.

When I take off my glasses, the world looks blurred. When I put them back on, it looks sharpedged. I do not think that the world really was blurred; I know that what changed was my relation to the distant physical objects ahead, not those objects themselves. I am more inclined to believe that the world really is and was sharp-edged. Is that belief any more reasonable than the belief that the world really is and was blurred? I see more (...) accurately with my glasses on than off, so visual appearances when they are on have some cognitive priority over visual appearances when they are off. If I must choose which kind of visual appearance to take at face value, I will choose the sharp-edged look. But what should I think when I see a mist, which looks very blurred however well I am seeing? Indeed, why choose to take any of the looks at face value? Why not regard all the choices as illegitimate projections of ways of seeing the world onto the world itself? (shrink)

The second volume in the _Blackwell Brown Lectures in Philosophy_, this volume offers an original and provocative take on the nature and methodology of philosophy. Based on public lectures at Brown University, given by the pre-eminent philosopher, Timothy Williamson Rejects the ideology of the 'linguistic turn', the most distinctive trend of 20th century philosophy Explains the method of philosophy as a development from non-philosophical ways of thinking Suggests new ways of understanding what contemporary and past philosophers are doing.

Imagine a philosophy conference in Presocratic Greece. The hot question is: what are things made of? Followers of Thales say that everything is made of water, followers of Anaximenes that everything is made of air, and followers of Heraclitus that everything is made of fire. Nobody is quite clear what these claims mean, and some question whether the founders of the respective schools ever made them. But amongst the groupies there is a buzz about all the recent exciting progress. The (...) mockers and doubters make plenty of noise too. They point out that no resolution of the dispute between the schools is in sight. They diagnose Thales, Anaximenes and Heraclitus as suffering from a tendency to overgeneralize. We can intelligibly ask what bread is made of, or what houses are made of, but to ask what things in general are made of is senseless, some suggest, because the question is posed without any conception of how to verify an answer; language has gone on holiday. Paleo-pragmatists invite everyone to relax, forget their futile pseudo-inquiries and do something useful instead. (shrink)

The philosophical relevance of experimental psychology is hard to dispute. Much more controversial is the so‐called negative program's critique of armchair philosophical methodology, in particular the reliance on ‘intuitions’ about thought experiments. This chapter responds to that critique. It argues that, since the negative program has been forced to extend the category of intuition to ordinary judgments about real‐life cases, the critique is in immediate danger of generating into global scepticism, because all human judgments turn out to depend on intuitions. (...) Recently, some proponents of the negative program have tried to demarcate the target of their critique more narrowly. However, their attempts are still far too indiscriminate, and over‐generate scepticism. Nevertheless, once experimental philosophy has refined its own methodology, it may contribute to the refinement of the methodology of mainstream philosophy, by filtering out the effects of cognitive bias, although it offers no prospect of doing without judgments on real or imaginary cases. (shrink)

Hayek and the Efficient Market Hypothesis are often seen as proposing a similar theory of prices. Hayek is seen as proposing to understand prices as information conveyer, incorporating inform...

This chapter aims to attempt no more than to make some informal and unsystematic remarks on the transformation of analytic philosophy. It deals with a few sketchy remarks on the historiography of recent analytic philosophy. Writing in 1981, David Lewis described “a reasonable goal for a philosopher” as bringing one’s opinions into stable equilibrium. A natural comparison is between Lewis’s Quinean or at least post‐Quinean methodology and the methodology of Peter Strawson, Quine’s leading opponent from the tradition of ordinary language (...) philosophy. Analytic epistemology provides a good case study of the philosophical application of Gricean pragmatics outside the philosophy of language. On Michael Dummett picture of the history of philosophy, Descartes had made epistemology first philosophy, the engine for the rest of philosophy, and then Frege had replaced epistemology by the philosophy of language as first philosophy. The chapter suggests that philosophy sometimes already uses an abductive methodology and ought to use it more in the future. (shrink)

In the article ”Against Physicalism-plus-God: How Creation Accounts for Divine Action in the World’, I defined a framework which allows us to make some progress in our understanding of how God acts in the world. In the present article, I apply this framework to the specific question of chance events. I show that chance does not provide an explanation for special divine action. Nevertheless, chance does not hamper God’s ability to act in the world, and creation provides a framework for (...) the understanding of chance, which is akin to what we see in modern science. (shrink)

Kant limits cosmopolitan right to a universal right of hospitality, condemning European imperial practices towards indigenous peoples, while allowing a right to visit foreign countries for the purpose of offering to engage in commerce. I argue that attempts by contemporary theorists such as Jeremy Waldron to expand and update Kant’s juridical category of cosmopolitan right would blunt or erase Kant’s own anti-colonial doctrine. Waldron’s use of Kant’s category of cosmopolitan right to criticize contemporary identity politics relies on premises that upset (...) Kant’s balanced right to hospitality. An over-extensive right to visit can invoke “Kantian” principles that Kant himself could not have consistently held, without weakening his condemnation of European settlement. I construct an alternative spirit of cosmopolitan right more favorable to the contemporary claims of indigenous peoples. Kant’s analysis suggests there are circumstances when indigenous peoples may choose whether to engage in extensive cultural interaction, and reasonably refuse the risks of subjecting their claims to debate in democratic politics in a unitary public. Cosmopolitan right accorded respect to peoples; any “domestic” adaptation of cosmopolitan right should respect indigenous peoples as peoples, absent a serious public explanation by a democratic state for why it has now become appropriate to treat indigenous peoples merely as individual citizens. (shrink)

This paper discusses the nature and the status of inference to the best explanation. We outline the foundational role given IBE by its defenders and the arguments of critics who deny it any place at all ; argue that, on the two main conceptions of explanation, IBE cannot be a foundational inference rule ; sketch an account of IBE that makes it contextual and dependent on substantive empirical assumptions, much as simplicity seems to be ; show how that account avoids (...) the critics ' complaints and leaves IBE an important role ; and sketch how our account can clarify debates over IBE in arguments for scientific realism. (shrink)

This article adapts John Rawls’s writings, arguing that past injustice can change what we ought to publicly affirm as the standard of justice today. My approach differs from forward-looking approaches based on alleviating prospective disadvantage and backward-looking historical entitlement approaches. In different contexts, Rawls’s own concern for the ‘social bases of self-respect’ and equal citizenship may require public endorsement of different principles or specifications of the standard of justice. Rawls’s difference principle focuses on the least advantaged socioeconomic group. I argue (...) that a historicized difference principle considers the relative standing of racial, gender, and other historically stigmatized groups; provides their members assurance by weakening incentives to manipulate justice to another group’s advantage; and may result in policies resembling reparations, though justified by forward-looking considerations of self-respect and public assurance. I then examine how disrespectful justifications were historically used to forcibly include indigenous peoples as citizens. While Rawls thinks providing citizens one package of basic liberties signals respect, indigenous self-government could better support self-respect. I invoke Rawlsian international justice, which calls for mutual respect between peoples. Indigenous peoples’ status should reflect their past and persisting peoplehood, providing assurance by weakening incentives to unjustly transform international into domestic contexts. (shrink)

At any given time, a subject has a multiplicity of conscious experiences. A subject might simultaneously have visual experiences of a red book and a green tree, auditory experiences of birds singing, bodily sensations of a faint hunger and a sharp pain in the shoulder, the emotional experience of a certain melancholy, while having a stream of conscious thoughts about the nature of reality. These experiences are distinct from each other: a subject could experience the red book without the singing (...) birds, and could experience the singing birds without the red book. But at the same time, the experiences seem to be tied together in a deep way. They seem to be unified, by being aspects of a single encompassing state of consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.3 (2003) 227-231 [Access article in PDF] World Traveling as a Clinical Methodology for Psychiatric Care Suzanne M. Jaeger Keywords embodiment, dialogical consciousness, interpersonal communication, epistemic responsibility, self-knowledge, understanding IN HER ARTICLE "Moral Tourists and World Travelers," Nancy Potter suggests a way in which psychiatrists and psychologists could gain a better understanding of their mentally ill patients' experiences. Rather than assuming that hallucinations and (...) incoherent speech and behavior are merely senseless disconnections from reality, Potter argues that mental health care clinicians ought to spend time engaging patients on their own terms. Even when mental illness is a result of brain disease, much can be learned about the patient's experiences of their disease by temporarily setting aside the scientific frameworks of diagnosis and medical treatment. Potter uses Maria Lugones' concept of world traveling and recommends playfully accepting, and even entering into the patient's world (Lugones 1990). She calls world traveling a methodology and explains it in some detail. Moreover, at the close of her essay, Potter suggests that clinicians have a moral obligation to understand the mentally ill patient's world from the patient's perspective. This obligation is based on an appeal to our sense of what it is to be a responsible knower who attends to issues of trust and truth. Relying on arguments made by Lorraine Code (1987), Potter asserts that to try to understand the other's perspective is the responsible thing to do.My discussion focuses on the notion of play to which Potter appeals, as well as on what she sees as the moral obligation of clinicians to communicate with their mentally ill patients in extra-professional ways. This moral obligation arises because (a) the theoretical and professional frameworks of medical science are seen as inadequate, and (b) playfulness opens up mutually respectful, authentic interaction between persons. I generally agree with Potter's claims, and I want to situate them in the wider framework of an epistemological debate about the status of our knowledge of others. A broader context will help to elucidate the strengths of Potter's analysis as well as some points for critical discussion. I begin with the relationship of trust between clinicians and patients.Few people would disagree with the claim that patients need to be able to trust that their physicians are not harming them, but helping them to get better. If patients feel misunderstood, they will not trust their caretakers. This is probably even truer for psychiatric patients, whose conditions and loss of autonomy make establishing trust even more challenging. Psychiatric patients [End Page 227] often have their own ways of compensating for the symptoms of their mental illness. If either their will to survive or their compensatory strategies go unrecognized or misinterpreted, patients may respond by rejecting the well-intentioned efforts of caretakers to restore them to a degree of ease, measured as it must be by the standards of the professionals under whose care the patient remains. 1 Despite the fact that these standards are established through scientific testing procedures for the treatment of diseases, they may be experienced by patients as indifferent to the particular and unique features of their condition. Nestled within the issue of trust is thus a question of truth.Although current scientific knowledge of the human brain, and of human behavior, has made available a range of sophisticated therapies and psychotropic drugs, there are still many mental illnesses that leave families and clinicians wondering whether the treatment plans are providing any help. Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia are two examples. There is a difference between, on the one hand, containing the patient's behavior by admitting the patient to a psychiatric ward and managing symptoms with psychotropic medications, and, on the other hand, understanding what is happening for the patient, from his or her perspective. Although psychiatric patients may not have a realistic sense of either their abilities or the extent and nature of their disease, there may be much about their experiences that ought to be known and understood by the professionals caring for them... (shrink)

La figure de l’entrepreneur est aujourd’hui utilisée dans une grande variété de discours publics. Ce travail cherche à remonter à l’une des sources théoriques de la constitution de cette figure : la théorie de l’entrepreneur de Schumpeter (1911a et 1911b). Ce retour montre que Schumpeter, dans son contexte intellectuel et théorique, est amené à importer une anthropologie philosophique en économie, celle de Nietzsche, auteur largement lu dans l’Autriche du début du xxe siècle. En transposant, à l’intérieur de sa théorie économique, (...) certaines caractéristiques majeures du grand homme créatif nietzschéen dans la figure de l’entrepreneur, Schumpeter développe une explication originale de la nature dynamique du marché et de l’évolution économique. Néanmoins il importe aussi de Nietzsche une série d’ambiguïtés, notamment en ce qui concerne l’origine de l’exceptionnalité individuelle de l’entrepreneur, et plus particulièrement de sa puissance créatrice. Une seconde ambiguïté est très largement héritée, qui concerne l’extension du modèle de l’individu entrepreneur : constitue-t-il une théorie de l’action valable pour tous les individus ou uniquement pour un type d’individus particuliers? Comment concilier exceptionnalité de l’entrepreneur et norme d’un entreprenariat pour tous? La dernière partie de ce travail s’attache ainsi à explorer ces ambiguïtés, qui apparaissent chez Schumpeter et ses successeurs, notamment Israël Kirzner.Codes JEL : B13, B25, B31, B40. (shrink)

Heidegger hielt die unter dem Titel Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs angekundigte Vorlesung im Sommer-Semester 1925 in der Marburger Universitat. Er gelangte jedoch nicht mehr zur Ausfuhrung der zentralen Thematik. Der Themenkreis der Vorlesung ist mit der Nennung des Untertitels abgesteckt: Prolegomena zu einer Phanomenologie von Geschichte und Natur. Heideggers thematische Uberlegungen beginnen mit einer Kennzeichnung der Situation von Philosophie und Wissenschaft in der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und stellen das seiner Deutung nach entscheidende Ereignis dieser Zeit heraus: den Durchbruch der (...) Phanomenologie als philosophische Forschung. Er untersucht ihre wesentlichen Entdeckungen, verteidigt sie gegen Missverstandnisse, um dann seinerseits Kritik vorzubringen, wo die Phanomenologie ihrer Forderung zu den Sachen selbst nicht gerecht wird. (shrink)

The ArgumentHistorians of science naturally tend to express interest in other forms of intellectual activity only when these intersect with science. This tendncy has produced a number of enlightening studies of what happens when science and (for instance) law or theology come into contact, but little by way of how science enters into the calculations and social status of such forms of knowledge after the conjuction has passed. Recent work in the sociology of professions, in contrast, has focused attention precisely (...) on those moments when the expert knowledge produced by different group doesnotoverlap. This has been the contribution of Andrew Abbortt's theory of “jurisdictional boundaries” between competing professions. The case of Victorian actuaries who worked hard to maintain unique intellectual claims in the competitive life insurance industry while maintainiing strong social connections and overlaps in knowledge with organized science, challenges the way both historians of science and sociologists of professions view contending knowledge claims. By observing what motivated actuaries to forge an alliance with men of science in the 1820s, then tracing their gradual recognition of a need to distance themselves from certain of the “scientific” values that had earlier informed their collective identity, it is possible to make sense of connections as well as disconnections between science and other forms of knowledge. A history of quantification from the actuaries' perspective, in other words, allows us to view science bothasandincontext. (shrink)

This article argues against privileging the expectations of settlers over those of dispossessed peoples. I assume in this article that historical rights to occupancy do not persist through all changes in circumstances, but a theory of justice should reduce perverse incentives to unjustly settle on land in hopes of legitimating occupancy. Margaret Moore, in her 2015 book, A Political Theory of Territory, tries to balance these intuitions through an argument based on legitimate expectations. I argue that Moore’s attempt to reduce (...) perverse incentives (through expectation-altering institutional design) fails. Moore unduly privileges settler expectations, especially over those of indigenous peoples. I criticize United States court decisions resurrecting the expectations of past settlers in the allotment era (which share structural features with Moore’s arguments). Lastly, distinguishing between ‘final’ supersession of historical injustice through changing circumstances, and ‘dormant’ supersession, shows how indigenous claims to land and jurisdiction may revive. (shrink)

Disorders of volition are often accompanied by, and may even be caused by, disruptions in the phenomenology of agency. Yet the phenomenology of agency is at present little explored. In this paper we attempt to describe the experience of normal agency, in order to uncover its representational content.

Rousseau’s account of the “legislator” or “lawgiver” is commonly regarded as one of the most far-fetched, ominous, and baffling parts of his teaching in the Social Contract. In brief, Rousseau’s lawgiver seems to be a proto-totalitarian figure whose self-appointed mission is to found a political community by “denaturing” people at a single stroke and who may be a mere figment of Rousseau’s overheated imagination. Accordingly, this part of the Social Contract threatens to make a mockery of Rousseau’s claim to be (...) “taking men as they are and laws they can be,” as well as his claim that the combination of “ freedom and equality” is “the greatest good” in the civil state. Following and extending Rousseau’s own method of teaching by examples, however, this essay argues that Benjamin Franklin’s influence over the American republic—especially through his posthumous Autobiography—offers a prosaic example of the apparently fantastical phenomenon sketched by Rousseau. In fact, I argue that Franklin’s case corresponds more fully to Rousseau’s description than do any of Rousseau’s own examples (such as Moses, Lycurgus, and Numa) and that Franklin showed in practice what Rousseau suggested in theory: that a lawgiver can succeed without relying on coercion and without undercutting the equality that underlies a just society. Franklin’s denaturing influence, I suggest, has been crucial for the durability of republicanism in the United States, given the country’s size and diversity. (shrink)

'... diese 'Einführung in die Metaphysik' [ist] echte Einführung in Heidegger... keines der Werke Heideggers [ist] so lebendig zu lesen und so unmittelbar aufzufassen...' Universitas 4 (1954) 'Unter dem Titel dieser Vorlesung aus dem Jahre 1935 verbirgt sich in Wirklichkeit eine große Auseinandersetzung mit den Grundlagen unserer planetarischen Situation.' Süddeutsche Zeitung vom 7./8.11.1953.

Evolutionary systems biology (ESB) aims to integrate methods from systems biology and evolutionary biology to go beyond the current limitations in both fields. This article clarifies some conceptual difficulties of this integration project, and shows how they can be overcome. The main challenge we consider involves the integration of evolutionary biology with developmental dynamics, illustrated with two examples. First, we examine historical tensions between efforts to define general evolutionary principles and articulation of detailed mechanistic explanations of specific traits. Next, these (...) tensions are further clarified by considering a recent case from another field focused on developmental dynamics: stem cell biology. In the stem cell case, incompatible explanatory aims block integration. Experimental approaches aim at mechanistic explanation while dynamical system models offer explanation in terms of general principles. We then discuss an ESB case in which integration succeeds: search for general attractors using a dynamical systems framework synergizes with the experimental search for detailed mechanisms. Contrasts between the positive and negative cases suggest general lessons for achieving an integrated understanding of developmental and evolutionary dynamics. The key integrative move is to acknowledge two complementary aims, both relevant to explanation: identifying the space of possible dynamic states and trajectories, and mechanistic understanding of causal interactions underlying a specific phenomenon of interest. These two aims can support one another in a joint project characterizing dynamic aspects of evolving lineages. This more inclusive project can lead to insights that cannot be reached by either approach in isolation. (shrink)

Philosophical and scientific investigations of the proprietary aspects of self—mineness or mental ownership—often presuppose that searching for unique constituents is a productive strategy. But there seem not to be any unique constituents. Here, it is argued that the “self-specificity” paradigm, which emphasizes subjective perspective, fails. Previously, it was argued that mode of access also fails to explain mineness. Fortunately, these failures, when leavened by other findings (those that exhibit varieties and vagaries of mineness), intimate an approach better suited to searching (...) for an explanation. Having an alternative in hand, one that shows promise of achieving explanatory adequacy, provides an additional reason to suspend the search for unique constituents. In short, a negative and a positive thesis are developed: we should cease looking for unique constituents and should seek to explain mineness in accord with the model developed here. This model rejects attempts to explain the phenomenon in terms of either a narrative or a minimal sense of self; it seeks to explain at a “molecular” level, one that appeals to multiple, interacting dimensions. The molecular-level model allows for the possibility that subjective perspective is distinct from a stark perspective (one that does not imply mineness). It proposes that the confounding of tacit expectations plays an important role in explaining mental ownership and its complement, disownership. But the confounding of tacit expectations is not sufficient. Because we are able to be aware of the existence of mental states that do not belong to self, we require a mechanism for determining degree of self-relatedness. One such mechanism is proposed here, and it is shown how this mechanism can be integrated into a general model of mental ownership. In the spirit of suggesting how this model might be able to help resolve outstanding problems, the question as to whether inserted thoughts belong to the patient who reports them is also considered. (shrink)

In this article, I criticize Véronique Zanetti on the topic of moral compromise. As I understand Zanetti, a compromise could only be called a “moral compromise” if (i) it does not originate under coercive conditions, (ii) it involves conflict whose subject matter is moral, and (iii) “the parties support the solution found for what they take to be moral reasons rather than strategic interests.” I offer three criticisms of Zanetti. First, Zanetti ignores how some parties may not have reason to (...) seek social peace at all. Zanetti’s claim that there is consensus on the aim of social peace can involve idealising away from disagreement in a manner that Zanetti accuses Rawls of. Second, even if there is consensus on the aim of seeking social peace, this leaves open the possibility of disagreement about which society different people should belong to. This idealises away from real world conflict concerning borders. Indeed, Zanetti does not mention that her ‘central example’ of moral disagreement, the German Abortion compromise, was enacted in the wake of German reunification. Third, there are at least two things that can be called the ‘German Abortion compromise.’ The compromise that Zanetti speaks of was imposed by the German Federal Constitutional Court. The court declared unconstitutional a law passed in 1992 that had been negotiated in parliament. Zanetti does not dwell on this lack of democratic credentials. Even the substance of the court-imposed solution is itself a dubious example of a moral compromise between parties based on what is acceptable to their reason. -/- (penultimate version - If you would like the .pdf of the final version for personal scholarly use, please contact me through the email address on my profile or my CV.). (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker, developing an idea of Wittgenstein’s, argues that we are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. Although we might be liable to error when “I” (or its cognates) is used as an object, we are immune to error when “I” is used as a subject (as when one says, “I have a toothache”). Shoemaker claims that the relationship between “I” as-subject and the mental states of which it is introspectively aware is tautological: when, say, we (...) judge that “I feel pain,” we are tautologically aware that feels pain is instantiated and that it is instantiated in oneself. Moreover, he contends that this relationship holds not just for bodily sensations, but also for the sense of agency and for visual perception. But we deny that this relationship is tautological; instead, we treat Shoemaker’s principle (IEM) as a hypothesis. We then proceed to show that certain pathological states and experimentally-induced illusions can be adduced to show that IEM describes not a necessary relationship but a contingent relationship, one that sometimes fails to obtain. That we are not immune to error in the way Shoemaker describes has grave consequences for many aspects of his ideas concerning the first-person perspective. In the course of arguing that these empirical phenomena count against IEM, we also show that not only can the content of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the subject: that is, not only can the what of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the who. (shrink)

As topics in the philosophy of emotion, pleasure and displeasure get less than their fair share of attention. On the one hand, there is the fact that pleasure and displeasure are given no role at all in many theories of the emotions, and secondary roles in many others.1 On the other, there is the centrality of pleasure and displeasure to being emotional. A woman who tears up because of a blustery wind, while an ill-advised burrito weighs heavily upon her digestive (...) tract, feels an impressive number of the sensations felt by someone who is gut-wrenchingly sad. Yet, unless she feels bad, the way she feels is only a pale echo of the feeling of sadness. If she feels good in spite of the burrito and the wind, then she does not feel at all the way she would if she were sad. Likewise, a man falling asleep can hardly fail to feel his muscles relax, his heart rate fall, and so on, but unless he feels good his state is only a shadow of feeling content. This paper will begin with a sketch of the nature of pleasure and displeasure, and the relation between them and the feelings that are characteristic of emotions. It will then argue that the capacity to feel pleased and displeased is, quite literally, a sense modality: one allowing us to perceive net change in the satisfaction of our intrinsic desires. As with any sense modality, the capacity to feel pleased and displeased displays substantial modularity. The paper concludes by considering the ways in which the modularity of pleasure and displeasure contributes to effects that might reasonably be called “the modularity of the emotions.”. (shrink)

Recent work in quantum information science has produced a revolution in our understanding of quantum entanglement. Scientists now view entanglement as a physical resource with many important applications. These range from quantum computers, which would be able to compute exponentially faster than classical computers, to quantum cryptographic techniques, which could provide unbreakable codes for the transfer of secret information over public channels. These important advances in the study of quantum entanglement and information touch on deep foundational issues in both physics (...) and philosophy. This interdisciplinary volume brings together fourteen of the world's leading physicists and philosophers of physics to address the most important developments and debates in this exciting area of research. It offers a broad spectrum of approaches to resolving deep foundational challenges - philosophical, mathematical, and physical - raised by quantum information, quantum processing, and entanglement. This book is ideal for historians, philosophers of science and physicists"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In this dissertation we discuss infinite regress arguments from both a historical and a logical perspective. Throughout we deal with arguments drawn from various areas of philosophy. ;We first consider the regress generating portion of the argument. We find two main ways in which infinite regresses can be developed. The first generates a regress by defining a relation that holds between objects of some kind. An example of such a regress is the causal regress used in some versions of the (...) Cosmological Argument. The second sort of regress is generated by defining a certain procedure that can be repeated indefinitely many times. This will often be a procedure of analysis or of explanation. ;We then argue that for purposes of discussing regressive viciousness it is helpful to divide regresses into two main types. One type raises primarily epistemological issues. In this class we find the regress of justification often used in foundational arguments in epistemology. We also discuss certain arguments that treat theories of predication as attempts to explain predication. Our other class contains those regresses that raise primarily metaphysical problems. This class includes the causal regress as well as those arguments concerned with predication as an ontological problem. ;We agree with some philosophers that one problem that arises in the case of vicious regression is circularity. We show how this problem can be generalized to include other apparently non-circular regresses. The other main problem in epistemological regresses arises as a result of certain conditions that are placed on the relation involved. We look in detail at the epistemological justification regress to illustrate this last point. ;With respect to metaphysical regresses we again find several types of viciousness arguments. One problem is whether the infinite collection required for the regress is even possible. Another problem is whether an infinite number of events can occur in a finite time. These we deal with only briefly. The main difficulty with these regresses, considered as regresses and not just as infinite sets, again turns out to be certain conditions built into the relation involved. We focus on some arguments about causal regression to illustrate this point. ;Finally, we find no absolutely general conditions for regressive viciousness. There is, however, a certain limited range of ways in which a regress may be vicious. We make these ways explicit. (shrink)

There is now considerable evidence that human sentence processing is expectation based: As people read a sentence, they use their statistical experience with their language to generate predictions about upcoming syntactic structure. This study examines how sentence processing is affected by readers' uncertainty about those expectations. In a self-paced reading study, we use lexical subcategorization distributions to factorially manipulate both the strength of expectations and the uncertainty about them. We compare two types of uncertainty: uncertainty about the verb's complement, reflecting (...) the next prediction step; and uncertainty about the full sentence, reflecting an unbounded number of prediction steps. We find that uncertainty about the full structure, but not about the next step, was a significant predictor of processing difficulty: Greater reduction in uncertainty was correlated with increased reading times. We additionally replicated previously observed effects of expectation violation, orthogonal to the effect of uncertainty. This suggests that both surprisal and uncertainty affect human RTs. We discuss the consequences for theories of sentence comprehension. (shrink)

A history of the many different forms that the linguistic turn took would be a history of much of twentieth‐century philosophy. A. J. Ayer was the first holder of the Wykeham Chair to take the linguistic turn. Michael Dummett makes clear that he takes this concern with language to be what distinguishes “analytical philosophy” from other schools, the first‐personal inaccessibility of the language of thought makes such a version of the linguistic turn methodologically very different from the traditional ones. Even (...) within what is usually considered analytic philosophy of mind, much work violates the two tenets of conceptual philosophy. One might try to see in contemporary metaphysics a Quinean breakdown of divisions between philosophy and the natural sciences. Historians of philosophy on the grand scale may be too Whiggish or Hegelian to regard the linguistic or conceptual turn as merely a false turning from which philosophy is withdrawing that it recognizes its mistake. (shrink)