In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 237-241 [Access article in PDF] Practical, Functional, and Natural Kinds Nick Haslam Keywords: Classification, essentialism, natural kinds, practical kinds. I am grateful to the two commentators for giving my paper their serious attention, and for writing such stimulating, clarifying, and challenging responses. In a brief response I can only begin to discuss a select few issues, although both commentaries could generate (...) a great deal of profitable exchange.Zachar's commentary elaborates his practical kinds model, discusses several of the graded series of kinds proposed in my taxonomy of psychiatric categories, and disputes some aspects of my treatment of natural kinds. Zachar and I have no quarrel on his first point. I recognize his practical kinds model as a general theory of psychiatric classification rather than simply as a description of one type of category, the "practical kind." It was perhaps bad form to pilfer a term from Zachar's model and give it a more circumscribed role in my own, although by doing so I intended both to acknowledge the importance of the concept and to situate it among some of its alternatives.All the same, I stand by the account of practical kinds developed in my paper, even if it reflects a narrower sense than Zachar's. In my sense, practical kinds are pragmatically drawn distinctions imposed on continuous dimensions, whereas to Zachar all psychiatric categories are at least to some degree practical. He therefore proposes a broad "continuum" of practical kinds. The difficulty that I have with this proposal is that such a continuum implies a fundamental unity among psychiatric categories: categories are all to be understood first and foremost in pragmatic terms and differences in kind between them in internal structure are to be neglected. In my view, although the pragmatic bases of psychiatric classification are vitally important, and perhaps inadequately formulated in my paper, the neglect of internal structure and of possible breaks in the continuum of kinds are real limitations of the practical kinds model. Although Zachar is partially justified in claiming that his view is pluralistic, allowing as it does for variability in degrees of practicality, by failing to acknowledge distinctly different kinds of categories in the psychiatric domain, his view is less pluralistic than I believe it should be.One example of what I take to be this neglect of structural differences is a conflation of two sorts of practicality in Zachar's work. On the one hand, certain categories such as hypertension or obesity are defined on pragmatic grounds, a binary distinction being drawn in the absence of an internal discontinuity, because individuals identified as category members are adjudged to [End Page 237] be at significantly elevated risk. On the other hand, some categories just happen to have high practical utility. Zachar argues that schizotaxia, for example, is practical because it affords a variety of scientific and clinical inferences.It seems to me that these sorts of practicality—or perhaps these sorts of relations to practicality—are importantly different. Hypertension is defined as a category because of its practical utility—because a certain blood pressure threshold marks an inflection in actuarial risk of other illnesses—and might therefore be said to have "front-end" or constitutive practicality. Schizotaxia, which taxometric research shows to be a discrete kind (Haslam, 2003), is not defined and identified primarily on the basis of its relation to an external criterion, but on the basis of its internal structure. Its features cohere in a way that indicates a category with a determinate prevalence. It has "back-end" or consequential practicality to the degree that this category enables useful predictions. These two proposed forms of practicality are equally important: both mean that categories will be pragmatically valuable. However, they are also different, being characteristic of different kinds of categories and perhaps even negatively related. Kinds with front-end practicality, that is, may tend to have a more restricted range of practical implications, defined as they are in relation to specific external criteria. Kinds with back-end practicality, in contrast, may enable a wider array of predictions to the extent that... (shrink)

A pluralistic view of psychiatric classification is defended, according to which psychiatric categories take a variety of structural forms. An ordered taxonomy of these forms—non-kinds, practical kinds, fuzzy kinds, discrete kinds, and natural kinds—is presented and exemplified. It is argued that psychiatric categories cannot all be understood as pragmatically grounded, and at least some reflect naturally occurring discontinuities without thereby representing natural kinds. Even if essentialist accounts of mental disorders are generally mistaken, they are not implied whenever a psychiatric category (...) that is not pragmatically grounded is posited. (shrink)

Intertemporal bargaining theory based on the hyperbolic discounting of expected rewards accounts for how choosing in categories increases self-control, without postulating, as Rachlin does, the additional rewardingness of patterns per se. However, altruism does not seem to be based on self-control, but on the primary rewardingness of vicarious experience. We describe a mechanism that integrates vicarious experience with other goods of limited availability.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Folk Taxonomies Versus Official TaxonomiesNick Haslam (bio)Keywordsclassification, DSM-IV, folk taxonomyFlanagan and Blashfield’s paper continues a highly original program of research on clinicians’ understandings of psychopathology. This work is unique in bringing concepts and methods from cognitive anthropology to bear on psychiatric classification. At first blush, it might seem questionable to treat clinicians’ beliefs about psychiatric disorders as folk taxonomies, no different in kind from classifications of birds produced (...) by members of a forest-dwelling tribe. Unlike birds and other natural objects of folk taxonomies, mental disorders are not concrete entities and they cannot be distinguished on perceptual grounds. Unlike tribespeople, clinicians are not simply “folk” whose naïve classifications can be compared with those of scientific authorities. They are, in fact, heavily exposed to the reigning official taxonomy during their professional training, and their thinking can hardly remain unaffected by it. It is a testament to Flanagan and Blashfield’s work that despite these apparent disanalogies, their folk-taxonomic approach manages to illuminate how clinicians carve up the psychiatric domain.This paper reports some careful, creative, and labor-intensive studies to make a few fundamental claims about how clinicians classify. First, the authors argue that clinicians hold simplified taxonomies compared with the official DSM-IV taxonomy: They encompass fewer disorders and classify them in a shallower hierarchy. Second, they claim that clinicians substantially agree in how they classify disorders, and that a consensus classification can therefore be extracted from their individual taxonomies. Third, they argue that clinicians’ taxonomies show only a modest consistency with DSM-IV, and that the discrepancies may be systematic and important. Notably, for example, clinicians did not preserve the fundamental divide between the DSM’s Axes I and II. My comments address the second and third claims.Is There a “Consensus” among the Clinicians?One of the main achievements of Flanagan and Blashfield’s paper is to develop a “consensual taxonomy,” which is laid out in their Table 2a. This taxonomy clearly distils how their clinicians tended to judge the relations among diagnoses. However, it is an exaggeration to present it as a consensus. If, by Romney, Weller, and Batchelder’s (1986) third criterion, “cultural consensus” requires that the primary factor in a principal components analysis accounts for “most” of the variance in clinicians’ judgments, then Flanagan and Blashfield’s analysis [End Page 281] fails to show consensus. Their first factor accounts for only twenty-five percent of the variance, well short of the required majority. This finding implies that there is three times as much inconsistency or variability among clinicians’ taxonomic judgments than there is consistency and commonality. The observed factor-analytic findings are compatible with the average correlation between pairs of clinicians being only about 0.2, a very weak level of agreement.This is not to say that there is no consistency among the clinicians, or that there is no value in summarizing that consistency, but it does indicate that there is a great deal of diversity as well. Clinicians’ folk taxonomies seem to be highly idiosyncratic, more a Babel of distinctive classifications than a chorus of agreement. It is therefore risky to draw strong generalizations about how clinicians classify, and to imply that there is a single consensual taxonomy.Several things are very interesting about this diversity of classifications. First, Flanagan and Blashfield show that it cannot be explained by the clinicians’ differing levels of experience or by the different methodologies used to elicit their taxonomies. The variability among clinicians must therefore have some other basis, which awaits further investigation. Second, the level of agreement (“consensus”) obtained here is significantly lower than what has been found in more orthodox studies of folk taxonomy. By implication, the classification of psychiatric disorders is a slipperier enterprise than the classification of animals and plants. People who have extensive professional experience and training in the field of psychopathology—vocational training that includes the standardizing forces of accrediting bodies and a dominant psychiatric nosology—nevertheless tend not to agree substantially about how to map that territory. One guess about why this might be is that clinicians’ folk taxonomies are not merely descriptive maps of the interrelations among diagnostic entities, but are... (shrink)

The network approach to psychiatric phenomena has the potential to clarify and enhance psychiatric diagnosis and classification. However, its generally well-justified anti-essentialism views psychiatric disorders as invariably fuzzy and arbitrary, and overlooks the likelihood that the domain includes some latent categories. Network models misrepresent these categories, and fail to recognize that some comorbidity may represent valid co-occurrence of discrete conditions.

The target article challenges standard approaches to prejudice reduction, warning that they may inure people to inequality and deflect them from seeking collective solutions to it. I argue that the collective action approach has its own risks and limitations and that standard contact and common identity approaches may complement rather than work against it.

A debate has emerged in the bioethics literature about the use of biotechnology to modify human nature. A failure to define humanness has produced conceptual confusion in this debate. We draw upon recent social psychological work on folk concepts of humanness and dehumanization to analyse the understandings of humanness that underpin the rival positions. We argue that advocates and opponents of human nature modification employ distinct conceptions of humanness, and that their differing evaluations of modification make sense in light of (...) these conceptions. Advocates view modification as the enhancement of a non-essentialist sense of humanness that takes us further from animal nature. Opponents view it as the loss of an essentialist sense of humanness that takes us closer to a robotic state. Recognition that humanness has multiple senses implies that there is no mutually exclusive choice between seeing the outcome of modification as a quantitative gain in humanness or a fundamental, qualitative loss of it. (shrink)

The concept of culture is an integral part of contemporary psychology. However, a mindless use of the concepts and practices traditionally prevalent in academic psychology may lead us into theoretical quandaries borne out of the age old controversy about the nature of psychology as a natural or cultural science. This paper attempts to resolve the quandaries by clarifying a conceptual distinction and relation between interpretive and explanatory psychological theories under a neo-diffusionist metatheory of culture, the view of culture as interpersonally (...) and intrapersonally distributed non-genetically transmitted information. We then outline and advocate both interpretive and explanatory research programs in psychological studies of culture, arguing for 'experimental semiotics' as an interpretive research program in the methodological tradition of experimentation. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of (...) our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

We begin by showing that every theory of the value of uncertain prospects must have one of three unpalatable properties. _Reckless_ theories recommend giving up a sure thing, no matter how good, for an arbitrarily tiny chance of enormous gain; _timid_ theories permit passing up an arbitrarily large potential gain to prevent a tiny increase in risk; _non-transitive_ theories deny the principle that, if A is better than B and B is better than C, then A must be better than (...) C. Having set up this trilemma, we study its horns. Non-transitivity has been much discussed; we focus on drawing out the costs and benefits of recklessness and timidity when it comes to axiology, decision theory, and normative uncertainty. (shrink)

_Anthropic Bias_ explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"--that is, evidence that has been filtered by the precondition that there be some suitably positioned observer to "have" the evidence. This conundrum--sometimes alluded to as "the anthropic principle," "self-locating belief," or "indexical information"--turns out to be a surprisingly perplexing and intellectually stimulating challenge, one abounding with important implications for many areas in science and philosophy. There are the philosophical thought experiments and paradoxes: (...) the Doomsday Argument; Sleeping Beauty; the Presumptuous Philosopher; Adam & Eve; the Absent-Minded Driver; the Shooting Room. And there are the applications in contemporary science: cosmology ; evolutionary theory ; the problem of time's arrow ; quantum physics ; game-theory problems with imperfect recall ; even traffic analysis. _Anthropic Bias_ argues that the same principles are at work across all these domains. And it offers a synthesis: a mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects that attempts to meet scientific needs while steering clear of philosophical paradox. (shrink)

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, (...) some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

Philosophers often characterize discourse in general as aiming at some sort of convergence (in beliefs, plans, dispositions, feelings, etc.), and many views about aesthetic discourse in particular affirm this thought. I argue that a convergence norm does not govern aesthetic discourse. The conversational dynamics of aesthetic discourse suggest that typical aesthetic claims have directive force. I distinguish between dynamic and illocutionary force and develop related theories of each for aesthetic discourse. I argue that the illocutionary force of aesthetic utterances is (...) typically invitational because its dynamic force is influenced by a ‘communal’ norm. I draw on dynamic pragmatics to develop a formal account of this dynamic force that explains why invitation has pride of place in aesthetic conversation. It turns out that the end of aesthetic discourse is not convergence but a distinctive form of community, a kind of harmony of individuality, that is compatible with aesthetic disagreement. If this is right, then convergence theories of aesthetic and normative discourse, and of conversation in general, need to be revised. (shrink)

Tasler teaches readers how to thrive when faced with difficult choices, provides a clear understanding of why you make the choices you do, and suggests the tools to make those decision change your business and your life.

I argue that an evaluational conception of love collides with the way we value love. That way allows that love has causes, but not reasons, and it recognizes and celebrates a love that refuses to justify itself. Love has unjustified selectivity, due to its arbitrary causes. That imposes a non-tradability norm. A love for reasons, rational love or evaluational love would be propositional, and it therefore allows that the people we love are tradable commodities. A moralized conception of love is (...) no less committed to treating those we love as tradable commodities; it is just that they are tradable moral commodities. An evaluative criterion of adequacy, I suggest, encourages the opposite view ? a non-rational and non-evaluational concept of love. Such a love can set up partial obligations, which may even demand that one sacrifice one's life. Only a love that has causes but not reasons can have the kind of value that we think love has, and thus it would only be rational to pursue and foster such a love. (shrink)

Cognitive enhancement may be defined as the amplification or extension of core capacities of the mind through improvement or augmentation of internal or external information processing systems. Cognition refers to the processes an organism uses to organize information. These include acquiring information (perception), selecting (attention), representing (understanding) and retaining (memory) information, and using it to guide behavior (reasoning and coordination of motor outputs). Interventions to improve cognitive function may be directed at any of these core faculties.

Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beliefs, values or institutions can reveal some inherent dynamic (...) or pattern which may be problematically obscured from our view. In this paper, I try to make good on these claims by offering a sketchy genealogy of emancipatory values, or values which call for the liberation of persons from systems of dominance and oppression. The real history of these values, I argue, is both epistemologically vindicatory and functionally enlightening. (shrink)

"Ethical thought has no chance of being everything it seems." Bernard Williams offered this cryptic remark in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, and in this chapter I argue that understanding it is the key to understanding Williams' skepticism about moral theory and about systematization in ethics. The difficulty for moral philosophy, Williams believed, is that ethics looks one way to embodied, active agents, but looks entirely different when considered from the standpoint of theory. This, in turn, means that following (...) a moral theory is a sure route to practical alienation. I argue that once we see it for what it is, we can see that Williams own skepticism undermines his later attempts to vindicate Truthfulness. Moreover, given the pervasiveness of reflective practical alienation in ordinary life, it leaves us with a difficult question: what would a non-alienated ethical existence even look like for us? (shrink)

The study of active matter systems demonstrates how interactions might co-constitute agential dynamics. Active matter systems are comprised of self-propelled independent entities which, en masse, take part in complex and interesting collective group behaviors at a far-from-equilibrium state (Menon, 2010 ; Takatori & Brady, 2015 ). These systems are modelled using very simple rules (Vicsek at al. 1995), which reveal the interactive nature of the collective behaviors seen from humble to highly complex entities. Here I show how the study of (...) active matter systems supports two related proposals regarding interaction and agency. First, I argue that the study of interactive dynamics in these systems evidences the utility of treating interaction as an ontological category (Longino, 2021 ) and challenges methodological individualism as the received explanatory primitive in the study of agency. Second, the methods used to research active matter systems demonstrate how a minimal approach to agency can scale up in studying interactive agential dynamics in more complex systems. The examples of coordination dynamics (Kelso, 2001 ) and participatory sense-making (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007 ) are provided to show how understanding agency requires us to look beyond the individuals to the interactive agential dynamics that can guide, scaffold, or constrain their activity. (shrink)

This book explores both the embodied nature of social life and the social nature of human bodily life. It provides an accessible review of the contemporary social science debates on the body, and develops a coherent new perspective. Nick Crossley critically reviews the literature on mind and body, and also on the body and society. He draws on theoretical insights from the work of Gilbert Ryle, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Herbert Mead and Pierre Bourdieu, and shows how the work of (...) these writers overlaps in interesting and important ways which, when combined, provide the basis for a persuasive and robust account of human embodiment. The Social Body provides a timely review of the theoretical approaches to the sociology of the body. It offers new insights, and a coherent new perspective on the body. It will be valuable reading for students and academics in sociology, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Evolutionary development is sometimes thought of as exhibiting an inexorable trend towards higher, more complex, and normatively worthwhile forms of life. This paper explores some dystopian scenarios where freewheeling evolutionary developments, while continuing to produce complex and intelligent forms of organization, lead to the gradual elimination of all forms of being that we care about. We then consider how such catastrophic outcomes could be avoided and argue that under certain conditions the only possible remedy would be a globally coordinated policy (...) to control human evolution by modifying the fitness function of future intelligent life forms. (shrink)

I consider a number of reasons one might think we should only accept epistemic dilemmas in our normative epistemology as a last resort and argue that none of them is compelling.

Philosophy is a reflective activity. So perhaps it is unsurprising that many philosophers have claimed that reflection plays an important role in shaping and even improving our philosophical thinking. This hypothesis seems plausible given that training in philosophy has correlated with better performance on tests of reflection and reflective reasoning has correlated with demonstrably better judgments in a variety of domains. This article reviews the hypothesized roles of reflection in philosophical thinking as well as the empirical evidence for these roles. (...) This reveals that although there are fairly reliable links between reflection and philosophical judgment among both laypeople and philosophers, the role of reflection in philosophical thinking may nonetheless depend in part on other factors, some of which have yet to be determined. So progress in research on reflection in philosophy may require further innovation in experimental methods and psychometric validation of philosophical measures. (shrink)

Why does time pass and space does not? Are there just three dimensions? What is a quantum particle? Nick Huggett shows that philosophy -- armed with a power to analyze fundamental concepts and their relationship to the human experience -- has much to say about these profound questions about the universe. In Everywhere and Everywhen, Huggett charts a journey that peers into some of the oldest questions about the world, through some of the newest, such as: What shape is (...) space? Does it have an edge? What is the difference between past and future? What is time in relativity? Is time travel possible? Are there other universes? Huggett shows that answers to these profound questions are not just reserved for physics, and that philosophy can not only address but help advance our view of our deepest questions about the universe, space, and time, and their implications for humanity. His lively, accessible introduction to these topics is suitable for a general reader with no previous exposure to these profound and exciting questions. (shrink)

Articulate and perceptive, Intersubjectivity is a text that explains the notions of intersubjectivity as a central concern of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and politics. Going beyond this broad-ranging introduction and explication, author Nick Crossley provides a critical discussion of intersubjectivity as an interdisciplinary concept to shed light on our understanding of selfhood, communication, citizenship, power, and community. The volume traces the contributions of key thinkers engaged within the intersubjectivist tradition, including Husserl, Buber, Kojeve, Merlau-Ponty, Mead, Wittgenstein, Schutz, and Habermas. A (...) clear, concise introduction to a range of difficult concepts and thinkers, Intersubjectivity demystifies this very interdisciplinary subject for advanced and graduate-level students of philosophy, sociology, social psychology, and social and political theory. (shrink)

What is the purpose of art? What drives us to make it? Why do we value it? Nick Zangwill argues that the function of art is to have certain aesthetic properties in virtue of its non-aesthetic properties, and this function arises because of the artist's insight into the nature of these dependence relations and her intention to bring them about.

To what extent should we use technological advances to try to make better human beings? Leading philosophers debate the possibility of enhancing human cognition, mood, personality, and physical performance, and controlling aging. Would this take us beyond the bounds of human nature? These are questions that need to be answered now.

A dizzying trip through the mind(s) of the provocative and influential thinker Nick Land. During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as “rabid nihilism,” “mad black deleuzianism,” and “cybergothic,” developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of “continental philosophy” —a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British “speculative realist” philosophers who studied with him, and (...) through the many cultural producers—writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers—who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision. Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s—long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print)—in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids. Fanged Noumena gives a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and has introduced his unique voice to a new generation of readers. (shrink)

I argue that evidentialism should be rejected because it cannot be reconciled with empirical work on bias in cognitive and social psychology.

We review the various factors that limit adaptation by natural selection. Recent discussion of constraints on selection and, conversely, of the factors that enhance “evolvability”, have concentrated on the kinds of variation that can be produced. Here, we emphasise that adaptation depends on how the various evolutionary processes shape variation in populations. We survey the limits that population genetics places on adaptive evolution, and discuss the relationship between disparate literatures. BioEssays 22:1075–1084, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This article responds to recent debates in critical algorithm studies about the significance of the term “algorithm.” Where some have suggested that critical scholars should align their use of the term with its common definition in professional computer science, I argue that we should instead approach algorithms as “multiples”—unstable objects that are enacted through the varied practices that people use to engage with them, including the practices of “outsider” researchers. This approach builds on the work of Laura Devendorf, Elizabeth Goodman, (...) and Annemarie Mol. Different ways of enacting algorithms foreground certain issues while occluding others: computer scientists enact algorithms as conceptual objects indifferent to implementation details, while calls for accountability enact algorithms as closed boxes to be opened. I propose that critical researchers might seek to enact algorithms ethnographically, seeing them as heterogeneous and diffuse sociotechnical systems, rather than rigidly constrained and procedural formulas. To do so, I suggest thinking of algorithms not “in” culture, as the event occasioning this essay was titled, but “as” culture: part of broad patterns of meaning and practice that can be engaged with empirically. I offer a set of practical tactics for the ethnographic enactment of algorithmic systems, which do not depend on pinning down a singular “algorithm” or achieving “access,” but which rather work from the partial and mobile position of an outsider. (shrink)

Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories of aesthetic value are typically individualistic, in the sense that the paradigms they are designed to capture, and the questions to which they are offered as answers, center the individual’s engagement with aesthetic value. Here I offer some considerations that suggest that such individualism is a mistake and sketch a communitarian way of posing and answering questions about the nature of aesthetic value.

'The Probabilistic Mind' is a follow-up to the influential and highly cited 'Rational Models of Cognition'. It brings together developments in understanding how, and how far, high-level cognitive processes can be understood in rational terms, and particularly using probabilistic Bayesian methods.

Non-representational approaches to cognition have struggled to provide accounts of long-term planning that forgo the use of representations. An explanation comes easier for cognitivist accounts, which hold that we concoct and use contentful mental representations as guides to coordinate a series of actions towards an end state. One non-representational approach, ecological-enactivism, has recently seen several proposals that account for “high-level” or “representation-hungry” capacities, including long-term planning and action coordination. In this paper, we demonstrate the explanatory gap in these accounts that (...) stems from avoiding the incorporation of long-term intentions, as they play an important role both in action coordination and perception on the ecological account. Using recent enactive accounts of language, we argue for a non-representational conception of intentions, their formation, and their role in coordinating pre-reflective action. We provide an account for the coordination of our present actions towards a distant goal, a skill we call distal engagement. Rather than positing intentions as an actual cognitive entity in need of explanation, we argue that we take them up in this way as a practice due to linguistically scaffolded attitudes towards language use. (shrink)

Previously proposed strategies for tackling hermeneutical injustices take for granted the interests people have in certain things about them being intelligible to them and/or to others, and seek to enable them to satisfy these interests. Strategies of this sort I call interests-as-given strategies. I propose that some hermeneutical injustices can instead be tackled by doing away with certain of these interests, and so with the possibility of their unfair non-satisfaction. Strategies of this sort I call interests-in-question strategies. As a case (...) study in when such an interests-in-question strategy ought to be pursued, I look at how to tackle hermeneutical injustices arising in the context of gender-affirming healthcare as provided to adults by the National Health Service in the UK. I argue that considerations of trust, privacy, and respect all support pursuing such a strategy. One way to do so, I suggest, would be by replacing the existing gatekeeping model with an informed consent model for the provision of gender-affirming healthcare. Considerations of hermeneutical justice can hence be added to the already-impressive case for undertaking this shift. (shrink)