Materialist metaphysicians want to side with physics, but not to take sides within physics.Ifwetook literally the claim of a materialist that his position is simply belief in the claim that all is matter, as currently conceived, we would be faced with an insoluble mystery. For how would such a materialist know how to retrench when his favorite scientific hypotheses fail? How did the 18thcentury materialist know that gravity, or forces in general, were material? How did they know in the 19thcentury (...) that the electromagnetic field was material, and persisted in this conviction after the aether had been sent packing?The doctrine of physicalism casts a long shadow in contemporary philosophy, configuring all kinds of philosophical issues and projects. Unsurprisingly, its proponents argue that physicalism has all the obvious features necessary for a scientific hypothesis to be in what we will call ‘good standing,’ i.e. being worthy of serious scientific investigation. In fact, many claim much more, arguing that physicalism is a well-confirmed hypothesis and possibly amongst the best of our theories. But, as our second opening passage makes clear, a persistent worry has been that physicalism, or ‘materialism’ as van Fraassen terms it, is an edifice built on sand. For many philosophers question whether the ‘physical’ can be specified at all, or at least in a manner that will produce a physicalism that would be in good standing. (shrink)

Materialist metaphysicians want to side with physics, but not to take sides within physics.If we took literally the claim of a materialist that his position is simply belief in the claim that all is matter, as currently conceived, we would be faced with an insoluble mystery. For how would such a materialist know how to retrench when his favorite scientific hypotheses fail? How did the 18th century materialist know that gravity, or forces in general, were material? How did they know (...) in the 19th century that the electromagnetic field was material, and persisted in this conviction after the aether had been sent packing?The doctrine of physicalism casts a long shadow in contemporary philosophy, configuring all kinds of philosophical issues and projects. Unsurprisingly, its proponents argue that physicalism has all the obvious features necessary for a scientific hypothesis to be in what we will call ‘good standing,’ i.e. being worthy of serious scientific investigation. In fact, many claim much more, arguing that physicalism is a well-confirmed hypothesis and possibly amongst the best of our theories. But, as our second opening passage makes clear, a persistent worry has been that physicalism, or ‘materialism’ as van Fraassen terms it, is an edifice built on sand. For many philosophers question whether the ‘physical’ can be specified at all, or at least in a manner that will produce a physicalism that would be in good standing. (shrink)

My thesis is devoted to an attempt to offer, on behalf of mathematical Platonism, a reply to what may seem to be a powerful objection to it. The objection is this: If there is, as the Platonist supposes, mathematical knowledge of abstract objects, then there is a correlation between our beliefs and the mathematical facts. However, how is such a correlation to be explained given that mathematical objects are a-causal? The worry is that no explanation is possible and that this (...) is a considerable mark against mathematical Platonism. The source of the difficulty here is obvious: standard models for explaining such correlations proceed via the idea that facts cause beliefs, or that beliefs cause facts, or that there was a common cause. But these possibilities are not available to the Platonist given the a-causality of mathematical objects. ;I claim that such a correlation is explicable in a way which neither, contra expectation, renders abstract objects causal nor assigns to us capacities the exercise of which allows to us to explain the correlation on some implausible extension of a perceptual model. The thought is this: that explaining the correlation requires explaining conjunctions of facts and beliefs. But the conjunctions in question are, at least for the Platonism here considered, conjunctions of a brute fact and an explicable fact . However I argue, and this is the core of the thesis, that such conjunctions can always be explained by reiterating the brute fact and citing whatever explains the explicable fact. If this thesis about explanation is accepted, then such correlations are readily explicable. ;The rest of the thesis is devoted to examining various objections to this reply and to the thesis concerning explanation. I argue that they are not fatal. (shrink)

S.R.L. Clark is a prominent defender of environmental holism and an advocate of the better treatment of other species. Not coincidentally, he is also a defender of a Neoplatonic Theism which holds that the presuppositions of reason have theistic implications and the point of the world is to exemplify beauty, or all the forms of beauty. Here I examine certain aspects of his view. I do so because I’m drawn to his main holist conclusion: we should live according to those (...) rules that will allow as many creatures as possible, of as many kinds, their best chance of living a satisfactory life according to their kind. However, I express doubts about his general route to the principle. (shrink)

In his most recent collection of papers, J. Baird Callicott has continued to advance a communitarian environmental ethic inspired by the mid–century “land ethic” writings of Aldo Leopold. One subject of concern is a dilemma. Either: the position is open to a charge of “eco–fascism” because it holds that only one maximal community fundamentally matters and interests of smaller communities and individuals can be swamped by a fundamental concern with the whole. Or: it is a “paper tiger” because it says (...) that many communities fundamentally matter, but offers no advice about how we are settle prima–facie conflicts of obligations tied to our various communities. Callicott now offers two new second–order priority principles designed to steer the communitarian position through the dilemma. I outline the relevant parts of his new position. However, I argue that one of the principles ends up offering no coherent advice over the priority of the very communities that inspire interest in the position of Leopold. Callicott proposes that the more intimate and venerable of our communities should have priority, but these elements can come apart in the relevant cases. (shrink)

S.R.L. Clark is a prominent defender of environmental holism and an advocate of the better treatment of other species. Not coincidentally, he is also a defender of a Neoplatonic Theism which holds that the presuppositions of reason have theistic implications and the point of the world is to exemplify beauty, or all the forms of beauty. Here I examine certain aspects of his view. I do so because I’m drawn to his main holist conclusion: we should live according to those (...) rules that will allow as many creatures as possible, of as many kinds, their best chance of living a satisfactory life according to their kind. However, I express doubts about his general route to the principle. (shrink)

Books reviewed: Wayne Ouderkirk and Jim Hill, (eds), Land, Value, Community: Callicott and Environmental Philosophy John Meyer, Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Thought Val Plumwood, Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason David Schmidtz and Elizabeth Willott, (eds), Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works.

Compiled by scholars at the court of Liu An, king of Huainan, in the second century B.C.E, _The Huainanzi_ is a tightly organized, sophisticated articulation of Western Han philosophy and statecraft. Outlining "all that a modern monarch needs to know," the text emphasizes rigorous self-cultivation and mental discipline, brilliantly synthesizing for readers past and present the full spectrum of early Chinese thought. _The Huainanzi_ locates the key to successful rule in a balance of broad knowledge, diligent application, and the penetrating (...) wisdom of a sage. It is a unique and creative synthesis of Daoist classics, such as the _Laozi_ and the _Zhuangzi_; works associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the _Changes_, the _Odes_, and the _Documents_; and a wide range of other foundational philosophical and literary texts from the _Mozi_ to the _Hanfeizi_. The product of twelve years of scholarship, this remarkable translation preserves _The Huainanzi_'s special rhetorical features, such as parallel prose and verse, and showcases a compositional technique that conveys the work's powerful philosophical appeal. This path-breaking volume will have a transformative impact on the field of early Chinese intellectual history and will be of great interest to scholars and students alike. (shrink)

We propose a revised definition of “argument scheme” that focuses on describing argumentative performances and normative assessments that occur within an argumentative context, the social context in which the scheme arises. Our premise-and-conclusion structure identifies the typical instantiation of an argument in the argumentative context, and our critical framework describes a set of normative assessments available to participants in the context, what we call _practically normative_ assessments. We distinguish this practical normativity from the _rationally or universally normative_ assessment that might (...) be imposed from outside the argumentative context. Thus, the practical norms represented in an argument scheme may still be subject to rational critique, and the scheme avoids the is/ought fallacy. We ground our theoretical discussion and observations in an empirical study of US district court opinions resolving legal questions about copyright fair use and the lawyers’ briefs that led to them, instantiating our definition of argument scheme in the “argument for classification by precedent.” Our definition addresses some criticisms the argument-scheme construct has received. For example, using our data, we show that a minimally well formed instance of this type of argument does not shift any conventional burden from the proponent of the argument to its skeptics. We also argue that these argument schemes need not be seen as dialogical. (shrink)

This paper defends a counterexample to Modus Tollens, and uses it to draw some conclusions about the logic and semantics of indicative conditionals and probability operators in natural language. Along the way we investigate some of the interactions of these expressions with 'knows', and we call into question the thesis that all knowledge ascriptions have truth-conditions.

Modern science’s ability to produce, store, and analyze big datasets is changing the way that scientific research is practiced. Philosophers have only begun to comprehend the changed nature of scientific reasoning in this age of “big data.” We analyze data-focused practices in biology and climate modeling, identifying distinct species of data-centric science: phenomena-laden in biology and phenomena-agnostic in climate modeling, each better suited for its own domain of application, though each entail trade-offs. We argue that data-centric practices in science are (...) not monolithic because the opportunities and challenges presented by big data vary across scientific domains. (shrink)

Epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's paradox. I set out the puzzling phenomena, explain why a standard relational semantics for these operators cannot handle them, and recommend an alternative semantics. A pragmatics appropriate to the semantics is developed and interactions between the semantics, the pragmatics, and the definition of consequence are investigated. The semantics is then extended to probability operators. Some problems and prospects for probabilistic representations of content and context are explored.

Public participation is well known for its practitioner insights and wealth of case reports. This knowledge is essential and has been well employed. Likewise, the theoretical literature on public participation is growing rapidly. The need for better conceptual and theoretical understandings of public participation has become clear. Public participation theories have not received great attention, and few have been proposed or tested. Yet theory offers much to practitioners of various interventions. The authors summarize work toward developing a public participation theory (...) and propose a way to conceptualize its skeletal components. The authors recognize that any theory must acknowledge that different people have different beliefs about what public participation should accomplish. Further, contextual variables affect a process’s character and outcomes. The authors begin with a discussion of theory’s importance to scholars, practitioners, and participants and provide an overview of existing approaches. The authors present findings from two empirical case studies used to further develop their theory of fair and competent public participation. They conclude with some observations about challenges and ways forward. (shrink)

When I tell you that it’s raining, I describe a way the world is—viz., rainy. I say something whose truth turns on how things are with the weather in the world. Likewise when I tell you that the weatherman thinks that it’s raining. Here the truth of what I say turns on how things are with the weatherman’s state of mind in the world. Likewise when I tell you that I think that it’s raining. Here the truth of what I (...) say turns on how things are with my state of mind in the world. (shrink)

This article considers the implications for film analysis of the presence or absence of a manual crank. More specifically, it looks at the 16 mm Time and Motion Study Projector as used in behavioral research in the 1960s and 1970s. The controversial concept of ‘interactional synchrony’, or the dance-like coordination of people in conversation, emerged from the use of this hand-turned projector. William S. Condon developed the concept along with the technique of microanalysis. Starting with the projector manufactured by Bell (...) & Howell, he made numerous improvements to facilitate observation—‘sweeping’ over segments of very short duration to discover the rhythmic synchrony of all filmed participants. It led him to a theory of ‘process’ in communication, and in the reception of speech in particular. People always ‘danced’ to the tune of their own voice, and their listeners ‘danced’ to the tune of the speaker—at intervals of one-sixth or one-eighth of a second. This also led Condon to an epistemology of discovery derived partly from philosophy but mostly from his machinery. The universe, he said, is a ‘continuum of order’ whose structures are preserved through translations of order: of thought into speech, speech into vibrations, vibrations into neurons, and back into behavior. The only exceptions are people with disabilities, like the autistics Condon studied from the 1970s onward. But the very distinction of normal and pathological was epiphenomenal to his scanning technique; it was rooted in material and formal qualities of film and of the projector whose crank he turned often. (shrink)

I develop a conception of expressivism according to which it is chiefly a pragmatic thesis about some fragment of discourse, one imposing certain constraints on semantics. The first half of the paper uses credal expressivism about the language of probability as a stalking-horse for this purpose. The second half turns to the question of how one might frame an analogous form of expressivism about the language of deontic modality. Here I offer a preliminary comparison of two expressivist lines. The first, (...) expectation expressivism, looks again to Bayesian modelling for inspiration: it glosses deontically modal language as characteristically serving to express decision-theoretic expectation (expected utility). The second, plan expressivism, develops the idea (due to Gibbard 2003) that this language serves to express 'plan-laden' states of belief. In the process of comparing the views, I show how to incorporate Gibbard's modelling ideas into a compositional semantics for attitudes and modals, filling a lacuna in the account. I close with the question whether and how plan expressivism might be developed with expectation-like structure. (shrink)

What is known? And how do we come to know it? These are the primary points of focus for metaphysics and epistemology, respectively. Here, in one of the classic works of early-modern empiricist philosophy, John Locke (1632-1704) attempts to answer these basic human questions by moving away from the rationalist notion of innate ideas to establish the concept of the tabula rasa in which the mind is initially impressed with ideas through perception of the external world of substance. The formation (...) of basic ideas through the perception of primary and secondary qualities, and the more sophisticated development of concepts, is discussed as Locke departs from a purely mental view of knowledge to ground what we know in the firmer soil of empirical observation and in the mind's ability to interrelate ideas from perception. The careful reasoning of Locke's Essay has made it an enduring part of the history of of Western philosophy. (shrink)

This is a study in the meaning of natural language probability operators, sentential operators such as probably and likely. We ask what sort of formal structure is required to model the logic and semantics of these operators. Along the way we investigate their deep connections to indicative conditionals and epistemic modals, probe their scalar structure, observe their sensitivity to contex- tually salient contrasts, and explore some of their scopal idiosyncrasies.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

Institutional differentiation has been one of the central concerns of sociology since the days of Auguste Comte. However, the overarching tendency among institutionalists such as Durkheim or Spencer has been to treat the process of differentiation from a macro, "outside in" perspective. Missing from this analysis is how institutional differentiation occurs from the "inside out, "or through the efforts and struggles of individual and corporate actors. Despite the recent efforts of the "new institutionalism" to fill in this gap, a closer (...) look at the literature will uncover the fact that (1) it has tended to conflate macro-level institutions and meso-level organizations and (2) this has led to a taken for granted approach to institutional dynamics. This article seeks to develop a general theory of institutional autonomy; autonomy is a function of the degree to which specialized corporate units are structurally and symbolically independent of other corporate units. It is argued herein that the process by which these "institutional entrepreneurs" become independent can explain how institutions become differentiated from the "inside out." Moreover, this article offers five dimensions that can be operationalized, measuring the degree to which institutions are autonomous. (shrink)

We investigate a basic probabilistic dynamic semantics for a fragment containing conditionals, probability operators, modals, and attitude verbs, with the aim of shedding light on the prospects for adding probabilistic structure to models of the conversational common ground.

Desiring Whiteness provides a compelling new interpretation of how we understand race. Race is often seen to be a social construction. Nevertheless, we continue to deploy race thinking in our everyday life as a way of telling people apart visually. How do subjects become raced? Is it common sense to read bodies as racially marked? Employing Lacan's theories of the subject and sexual difference, Seshadri-Crooks explores how the discourse of race parallels that of sexual difference in making racial identity a (...) fundamental component of our thinking. Through close readings of literary and film texts, Seshardi-Crooks also investigates whether race is a system of difference equally determined by Whiteness. She argues that it is in relation to Whiteness that systems of racial classification are organized, endowing it with a power to shape human difference. (shrink)

The standard behavioral index for human consciousness is the ability to report events with accuracy. While this method is routinely used for scientific and medical applications in humans, it is not easy to generalize to other species. Brain evidence may lend itself more easily to comparative testing. Human consciousness involves widespread, relatively fast low-amplitude interactions in the thalamocortical core of the brain, driven by current tasks and conditions. These features have also been found in other mammals, which suggests that consciousness (...) is a major biological adaptation in mammals. We suggest more than a dozen additional properties of human consciousness that may be used to test comparative predictions. Such homologies are necessarily more remote in non-mammals, which do not share the thalamocortical complex. However, as we learn more we may be able to make “deeper” predictions that apply to some birds, reptiles, large-brained invertebrates, and perhaps other species. (shrink)

Focusing on cases which involve binding into epistemic modals with definite descriptions and quantifiers, I raise some new problems for standard approaches to all of these expressions. The difficulties are resolved in a semantic framework that is dynamic in character. I close with a new class of problems about de re readings within the scope of modals.

Plato, Allan Bloom wrote, is "the most erotic of philosophers," and his Symposium is one of the greatest works on the nature of love ever written. This new edition brings together the English translation of the renowned Plato scholar and translator, Seth Benardete, with two illuminating commentaries on it: Benardete's "On Plato's _Symposium_" and Allan Bloom's provocative essay, "The Ladder of Love." In the _Symposium,_ Plato recounts a drinking party following an evening meal, where the guests include the poet (...) Aristophanes, the drunken Alcibiades, and, of course, the wise Socrates. The revelers give their views on the timeless topics of love and desire, all the while addressing many of the major themes of Platonic philosophy: the relationship of philosophy and poetry, the good, and the beautiful. (shrink)

This volume is a tribute to the thought of Seth Benardete by contributors who had the rare good fortune of studying with him or those who discovered the treasure of his writings. Benardete was fully immersed in the world of the ancients, starting with Homer, but their works opened up for him a way to the fundamental questions-about justice and love, nature and law, human and divine. Finding "the problem of the human good grounded in the city, and the (...) problem of being in god," he was led to the conclusion that "Political philosophy is the eccentric core of philosophy." While Benardete wrote this statement reflecting on the theological-political issue in the work of his teacher, Leo Strauss, the paradoxical notion of an "eccentric core," in giving this volume its title, is meant to capture a characteristic of his own way of thinking. The essays in this collection-on the Bible and Homer, the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, and the Roman writers-indicate the range of Benardete's studies and teaching. The centrality of Plato is evident at the same time in those pieces as well as in the reviews of Benardete's books included here, along with three of his own previously unpublished essays. Book jacket. (shrink)

This paper critiques a number of standard ways of understanding the role of the metalanguage in a semantic theory for natural language, including the idea that disquotation plays a nontrivial role in any explanatory natural language semantics. It then proposes that the best way to understand the role of a semantic metalanguage involves recognizing that semantics is a model-based science. The metalanguage of semantics is language for articulating features of the theorist's model. Models are understood as mediating instruments---idealized structures used (...) to represent select aspects of the world, aspects the theorist is seeking some theoretical understanding of. The aspect of reality we are seeking some understanding of in semantics is a dimension of human linguistic competence---informally, knowledge of meaning. (shrink)

In this paper, we suggest that affect meets the traditional definition of “cognition” such that the affect–cognition distinction is phenomenological, rather than ontological. We review how the affect–cognition distinction is not respected in the human brain, and discuss the neural mechanisms by which affect influences sensory processing. As a result of this sensory modulation, affect performs several basic “cognitive” functions. Affect appears to be necessary for normal conscious experience, language fluency, and memory. Finally, we suggest that understanding the differences between (...) affect and cognition will require systematic study of how the phenomenological distinction characterising the two comes about, and why such a distinction is functional. (shrink)

Can conscious awareness be ascertained from physiological responses alone? We evaluate a novel learning-based procedure permitting detection of conscious awareness without reliance on language comprehension or behavioural responses. The method exploits a situation whereby only consciously detected violations of an expectation alter skin conductance responses . Thirty participants listened to sequences of piano notes that, without their being told, predicted a pleasant fanfare or an aversive noise according to an abstract rule. Stimuli were presented without distraction , or while distracted (...) by a visual task to remove awareness of the rule . A test phase included occasional violations of the rule. Only participants attending the sounds reported awareness of violations and only they showed significantly greater SCR for noise occurring in violation, vs. accordance, with the rule. Our results establish theoretically significant dissociations between conscious and unconscious processing and furnish new opportunities for clinical assessment of residual consciousness in patient populations. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen contends that free will is a mystery. Here I present an argument in the spirit of van Inwagen's. According to the Assimilation Argument, libertarians cannot plausibly distinguish causally undetermined actions, the ones they take to be exercises of free will, from overtly randomized outcomes of the sort nobody would count as exercises of free will. I contend that the Assimilation Argument improves on related arguments in locating the crucial issues between van Inwagen and libertarians who hope to (...) demystify free will, while avoiding objections these arguments have faced. (shrink)

The Luck Objection is an influential family of challenges to libertarianism. In recent years, discussions of the Luck Objection have reached an impasse of sorts. On one hand, existing responses to the objection have failed to satisfy libertarianism’s many critics. On the other hand, a growing number of libertarians seem unimpressed by existing formulations of the objection. To break the impasse, I present a two-stage version of the objection. The first stage has the limited objective of showing that supposed exercises (...) of free will resemble certain nonactions in being truly random outcomes. The second stage seeks to show that we aren’t morally responsible for supposed exercises of free will if they are truly random outcomes. The leading idea is that such actions, qua truly random outcomes of our prior mental states, don’t meet a plausible guidance requirement for morally responsible agency. (shrink)