Marina Sbisà’s remarks on illocutionary pluralism suggest but do not constitute a full-blown theory. In this chapter I discuss two different attempts to build on those remarks. The first, illocutionary relativism, is my own attempt to develop the ideas presented in Sbisà’s remarks. The second, from Marcin Lewiński, differs in important ways. I then briefly compare these two varieties of illocutionary pluralism.

This book uses the framework of care ethics to articulate a novel theory of our epistemic obligations to one another. It presents an original way to understand our epistemic vulnerabilities, our obligations in education, and our care-duties toward others with whom we stand in epistemically vulnerable relationships. As embodied and socially interdependent knowers, we have obligations to one another that are generated by our ability to care-that is to meet each other's epistemic vulnerabilities. The author begins the book by arguing (...) that the same motivations that moved social epistemologists away from individualistic epistemology should motivate a move to a care-based theory. The following chapters outline our epistemic care-duties to vulnerable agents, and offer criteria of epistemic goodness for communities of inquiry. Finally, the author discusses the tension between epistemic care and epistemic paternalism. Epistemic Care will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social epistemology, ethics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of education. (shrink)

Disagreement is, for better or worse, pervasive in our society. Not only do we form beliefs that differ from those around us, but increasingly we have platforms and opportunities to voice those disagreements and make them public. In light of the public nature of many of our most important disagreements, a key question emerges: How does public disagreement affect what we know? This volume collects original essays from a number of prominent scholars--including Catherine Elgin, Sanford Goldberg, Jennifer Lackey, Michael Patrick (...) Lynch, and Duncan Pritchard, among others--to address this question in its diverse forms. The book is organized by thematic sections, in which individual chapters address the epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of dissent. The individual contributions address important issues such as the value of disagreement, the nature of conversational disagreement, when dissent is epistemically rational, when one is obligated to voice disagreement or to object, the relation of silence and resistance to dissent, and when political dissent is justified. Voicing Dissent offers a new approach to the study of disagreement that will appeal to social epistemologists and ethicists interested in this growing area of epistemology. (shrink)

Suppose I make an utterance, intending it to be a command. You don’t take it to be one. Must one of us be wrong? In other words, must each utterance have, at most, one illocutionary force? Current debates over the constitutive norm of assertion and over illocutionary silencing, tend to assume that the answer is yes—that each utterance must be either an assertion, or a command, or a question, but not more than one of these. While I think that this (...) assumption is intuitive, I will argue in this paper that it is not sustainable. I’ll argue that this assumption makes it hard to explain what determines illocutionary force in a consistent and non-ad hoc way. I will demonstrate this is not fatal for the notion of illocutionary force writ large by offering some alternatives. (shrink)

I argue that the debates over which norm constitutes assertion can be abandoned by challenging the three main motivations for a constitutive norm. The first motivation is the alleged analogy between language and games. The second motivation is the intuition that some assertions are worthy of criticism. The third is the discursive responsibilities incurred by asserting. I demonstrate that none of these offer good reasons to believe in a constitutive norm of assertion, as such a norm is understood in the (...) literature. Others who have made similar arguments conclude that assertion does not exist at all—that there is no such thing as assertion. I disagree: we do not have to relinquish the category of assertion just because it is not normatively constituted. There are alternative ways to understand and individuate assertion that do not rely on a constitutive norm. (shrink)

It is uncontroversial that we sometimes have moral obligations to voice our disagreements, when, for example, the stakes are high and a wrong course of action will be pursued. But might we sometimes also have epistemic obligations to voice disagreements? In this paper, I will argue that we sometimes do. In other words, sometimes, to be behaving as we ought, qua epistemic agents, we must not only disagree with an interlocutor who has voiced some disagreed-with content but must also testify (...) to this disagreement. This is surprising given that norms on testimony are generally taken to be permissive, and epistemic obligations are usually taken to be negative. In this paper I will discuss some occasions in which epistemic obligations to testify may arise, and I will attempt to investigate the nature of these obligations. I'll briefly discuss the relationship between epistemic and moral norms. I'll offer an account of what it takes to discharge epistemic obligations to testify. Finally, I'll look at some accounts of epistemic obligation that might explain these obligations. (shrink)

In this paper I explain and defend a version of illocutionary pluralism called illocutionary relativism. I use this position to explain Rae Langton’s now-famous example of a woman who is illocutionarily disabled in her attempt to refuse sex. Illocutionary relativism gives us the tools to explain both why the woman refused and why she is illocutionarily disabled. I base my explanation of illocutionary relativism in background literature in speech act theory from Austin and Sbisa. Finally, I close by pointing out (...) some implications for how we should understand consent. (shrink)

In this paper I describe three kinds of mansplaining, “well, actually” mansplaining, straw-mansplaining, and speech act–confusion mansplaining. While these three kinds have much in common, I focus on speech act–confusion mansplaining and offer a speech act theoretic account of what goes wrong when people mansplain in this way. In cases of speech act–confusion mansplaining, the target of the mansplaining is not able to do what she wants with her words. Her conversational contribution is taken to have a different force than (...) the force she intends. This contributes to women’s discursive disablement and to the restriction of women’s participation in epistemically relevant exchanges. (shrink)

I can, given the right conditions, transmit my knowledge to you by telling you some information. If I know the time, and if all goes well, I can bring it about that you know it too. If conditions are right, all I have to do is assert to you what time it is. Paradigmatically, speakers use assertions to transmit what they know to their hearers. Clearly, assertion and testimony are tightly connected. The nature of this connection, however, is not so (...) clear. According to many accounts, assertion has an epistemic constitutive norm. This norm appears to be able to account for some important features of testimony: first, testimonial knowledge transmission, second, the reliability of testimony, and third, the epistemic rights exchanged in cases of testimony. In this paper, however, I argue against this apparent ability. The constitutive norm of assertion, I argue, plays no role in accounts of testimonial knowledge transmission, or of the epistemic rights that testimony confers. This is especially clear whe.. (shrink)

In developing her ethics of care, Eva Kittay discusses the vulnerability and voluntarism models of obligation. Kittay uses the vulnerability model to demonstrate that we have some obligations to ca...

Empathy can be terribly important when we talk to people who are different from ourselves. And it can be terribly important that we talk to people who are different precisely about those things that make us different. If we’re to have productive conversations across differences, then, it seems we must develop empathy with people who are deeply different. But, as Laurie Paul and others point out, it can be impossible to imagine oneself as someone who is deeply different than oneself—something (...) that plausible definitions of empathy seem to require. How then, can these terribly important conversations take place? I argue that philosophical and psychological work on intellectual humility can show us a way to empathize and have these conversations even when we can’t imagine ourselves as the other. (shrink)

Intellectual humility is a concept in progress—philosophers and psychologists are in the process of defining and coming to understand what intellectual humility is and what place it has in our theories. Most accounts of intellectual humility build from work in virtue epistemology, the study of knowledge as the state that results when agents are epistemically virtuous (or, perhaps, the view that the proper object of study for epistemology is the intellectually virtuous agent). [...].

Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm, by McGowanMary Kate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 209.

In this paper, I argue that gossip is both an epistemic evil—it can restrict access to information—and an epistemic good—it can be a key resource for knowers. These two faces of gossip can be illustrated when we consider the effects of participating in and being excluded from gossiping groups. Social psychology has begun to study these effects and their results are useful here. Because of these two aspects, I argue, gossip holds a peculiar place in our epistemic economy. It is (...) vicious, and employed to restrict agents in their capacities as knowers, and it is also a valuable epistemic commodity, employed to enable agents in their epistemic capacities. To see these sides clearly, I employ some machinery from Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice. The tools from Fricker will help demonstrate that gossip can be both the means of unjustly restricting an epistemic agent, and the epistemically valuable ends from which she is restricted. Finally, I draw some conclusions for epistemology more generally. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

This chapter concentrates on the edges of the lived body, which act to mediate between the outermost and innermost edges. The prospects for construing bodily edges are explored. Bodily edges realise the paradigm of definitive but incomplete self-knowledge in a very particular way: namely, that such edges are parts of parts. The internal and external edges of bodily parts are not only glimpsed in the course of ongoing experience but also offer a grip for hands. Inside/outside is an especially significant (...) binary edge structure, and is altogether central to edges that inhere in bodies. Bodily edges act as the mediatrix between the edges of the perceived earth and those of the inner psyche, and also provide the conjunctures for many things in experienced life-worlds. (shrink)

Since the development of assisted reproductive technologies, infertile individuals have crossed borders to obtain treatments unavailable or unaffordable in their own country. Recent media coverage has focused on the outsourcing of surrogacy to developing countries, where the cost for surrogacy is significantly less than the equivalent cost in a more developed country. This paper discusses the ethical arguments against international surrogacy. The major opposition viewpoints can be broadly divided into arguments about welfare, commodification and exploitation. It is argued that the (...) only valid objection to international surrogacy is that surrogate mothers may be exploited by being given too little compensation. However, the possibility of exploitation is a weak argument for prohibition, as employment alternatives for potential surrogate mothers may be more exploitative or more harmful than surrogacy. It is concluded that international surrogacy must be regulated, and the proposed regulatory mechanism is termed Fair Trade Surrogacy. The guidelines of Fair Trade Surrogacy focus on minimizing potential harms to all parties and ensuring fair compensation for surrogate mothers. (shrink)

Psychology without genuinely thoughtful philosophy winds up as self-help gimmicks; philosophy without the insights & feeling of psychology remains an arcane academic game out of touch with life. By re-joining spirit & soul, this book is a major work of both philosophy & psychology. Casey asks puzzling questions & gives lasting answers. In a clear & vivid manner, one of America's best professional thinkers takes up one of the great themes of imagination, fantasy, hallucination, remembering & perceiving. Film & (...) architecture provide surprising material for his brilliant & useful account of basic philosophical problems which are also major mysteries of the soul. (shrink)

Through extensive training, experts acquire specialized knowledge and abilities. In this paper, I argue that experts also acquire specialized visual experiences. Specifically, I articulate and defend the account that experts enjoy visual experiences that represent gestalt properties through perceptual learning. I survey an array of empirical studies on face perception and perceptual expertise that support this account. I also look at studies on perceptual adaptation that some might argue present a problem for my account. I show how the data are (...) subject to an interpretation that is friendly to it. Last, I address two theoretical objections to the claim that visual experiences represent gestalt properties. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 30-31.

World peace was a common theoretical consideration among philosophers during Europe’s Enlightenment period. The first robust essay on peace was written by Charles Irénée Castel de Saint- Pierre, which sparked an intellectual debate among prominent philosophers like Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Jeremy Bentham, who offered their own treatises on the concept of peace. Perhaps the most influential of all such writings comes from Immanuel Kant, who argues that world peace is no “high- flown or exaggerated notion” but rather a natural (...) result of the rational progression of the human species. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the mastermind behind the formation of the League of Nations in 1920 that provided the scaffolding to today’s United Nations, read Kant’s philosophy while he was a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Some have argued that it is no coincidence that the per-son responsible for embarking upon the first serious political pursuit of world peace on a global scale was familiar with Kant. Indeed, William Galston claims that “Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points [for world peace] were a faithful transcription of both the letter and spirit of Kant’s Perpetual Peace.”3 Historical connections aside, the question remains as to whether Kant’s philosophy is a viable conception of peace in a contemporary context. Using the conceptual distinction of positive and negative peace provided by Johan Galtung, I argue that Kant’s philosophy does provide the scaffolding for a viable conception of peace. In particular, I provide particular examples as to what social rights must be included in a Kantian model of peace. (shrink)

Barz (2018) contends that there is no specification of the phenomenon of first-person authority that avoids falsity or triviality. This paper offers one. When a subject self-ascribes a current conscious mental state in speech, there is a presumption that what she says is true. To defeat this presumption, one must be able to explain how she has been led astray.

Innovative research on decision making under ‘deep uncertainty’ is underway in applied fields such as engineering and operational research, largely outside the view of normative theorists grounded in decision theory. Applied methods and tools for decision support under deep uncertainty go beyond standard decision theory in the attention that they give to the structuring of decisions. Decision structuring is an important part of a broader philosophy of managing uncertainty in decision making, and normative decision theorists can both learn from, and (...) contribute to, the growing deep uncertainty decision support literature. (shrink)

For computer simulation models to usefully inform climate risk management, uncertainties in model projections must be explored and characterized. Because doing so requires running the model many ti...

You might think a simple “No” would suffice as an answer. But there are features of Kant’s ethics that appear to be strikingly similar to virtue oriented views, so striking that some Kantians themselves have argued that Kant’s ethics in fact shares these features with virtue ethics. In what follows, I will argue against this view, though along the way I will acknowledge the features of Kant’s view that make it appear more like a kind of virtue ethics than it (...) really is. My plan is to first set out the distinctive features of what is nowadays called “virtue ethics”, those features that make it a genuine alternative to other normative theories. I then consider the features Kant’s view might share in common with virtue ethics and the case for saying that it is, therefore, fundamentally the same sort of theory. I follow these two sections with an argument against this position. I want to warn you at the outset, however, that my argument itself will be quite unsurprising, since it is an argument that has been central to the way in which most philosophers have understood Kant’s ethics. Any novelty I can claim here is in my account of what makes virtue ethics a genuine alternative to other normative theories, and my defense of this argument against those, in particular Barbara Herman, who have apparently found the argument unpersuasive. (shrink)

Educators are increasingly concerned with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in student writing. Much of the concern focuses on the issue of students using ChatGPT to complete their work. I introduce the CUPID model for instructors to use when thinking about how to pedagogically handle ChatGPT. The CUPID model lays out five general approaches: Catch, Utilize, Prevent, Ignore, and Disincentivize. I suggest that instructors should especially consider using certain assignments that fall under the approach “Disincentivize”. Philosophy instructors in particular (...) should assign more low-stakes writing, such as journals and reflection pieces. The adoption of low-stakes writing assignments aims to discourage students from relying on AI while promoting clarity of thought and deeper engagement with philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Perin argues that theSceptic is engaged in the search for truth and that since this is so, the Sceptic aims to satisfy certain basic rational requirements.

Kriegel has recently developed an adverbial account of intentionality, in part to solve the problem of how we can think of non-existents. The view has real virtues: it endorses a non-relational conception of intentionality and is ontologically conservative. Alas, the view ultimately cannot replace the act-object model of intentionality that it seeks to, because it depends on the act-object model for its intelligibility at key points. It thus fails as a revisionistic theory. I argue that the virtues of adverbialism can (...) be had from within the act-object framework, provided we understand intentional objects correctly. I use Crane as a guide here, and build on his work on intentional objects. In the end, we can provide a suitable solution to the problem of thinking of non-existents within the act-object framework without adopting implausible ontological or metaphysical views. So, adverbialism is neither a possible stand-alone revisionary option nor a needed modif... (shrink)

Dystopian and postapocalyptic narratives are often vectors for utopian hope in decidedly anti-utopian historical moments. The twenty-first century has, arguably, been such a moment. The association of utopianism with some of the most devastating political projects of the twentieth century, the plurality of existential threats looming over the globalized world, and the hegemony of global capitalism converge to form a cultural milieu inundated with grim visions of the future. These visions, however, have a stubborn tendency to gesture toward their negation: (...) the emancipated society. Optimism and pessimism are intermingled in contemporary narratives that frame the end of civilization as the precondition for a utopian... (shrink)

Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) employ an evolving framework of calibrated language for assessing and communicating degrees of certainty in findings. A persistent challenge for this framework has been ambiguity in the relationship between multiple degree-of-certainty metrics. We aim to clarify the relationship between the likelihood and confidence metrics used in the Fifth Assessment Report (2013), with benefits for mathematical consistency among multiple findings and for usability in downstream modeling and decision analysis. We discuss how our (...) proposal meshes with current and proposed practice in IPCC uncertainty assessment. (shrink)

In the heart of southeast Texas, an industrial powerhouse often referred to as the 'Golden Triangle', the oil refineries and petrochemical plants stand as stalwart testaments to the region's economic evolution. Interestingly, before the discovery of oil at Spindletop, the lumber and cattle industries powered this region's economy. A profound shift occurred when the Lucas Gusher, a fountain of oil spurting thousands of feet into the air, struck the lands of Spindletop Hill on January 10, 1901. This remarkable discovery of (...) the Spindletop oilfield on a slat dome formation south of Beaumont, Texas, marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry and fundamentally transformed the region's geopolitical, economic, and cultural landscapes. People from all over the country relocated to Gladys City and Beaumont in search of work and new opportunities, creating a boomtown as the town's population swelled from 10,000 to 50,000. The newfound urbanization brought by the oil industry transformed the town and the surrounding areas, creating a ripple effect across the region that would be felt for generations to come. The surge in oil-driven economic activity transmuted the region into a vibrant nexus of commerce, with the oil industry emerging as a critical architect of growth and advancement. This newfound affluence incited by the petroleum sector ushered in an era of economic diversification, laying the groundwork for industrialization’s further evolution. The Spindletop Oil Fields not only underscored the United States’ ascent as the foremost petroleum-producing nation but also signaled the nation’s initiation into the Petroleum Age. It was Spindletop that solidified its position as America’s first significant oil field, becoming an enduring symbol of its industrial might. By 1985, over 153,000,000 barrels of oil had been produced and extracted from the Spindletop oil fields, underscoring the magnitude of this extraordinary resource. (shrink)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has initiated bundled payments for hip and knee total joint replacement in an effort to decrease healthcare costs and increase quality of care. The ethical implications of this program have not been studied. This article considers the ethics of patient selection to improve outcomes; specifically, screening patients by body mass index to determine eligibility for total joint replacement. I argue that this type of screening is not ethically defensible, and that the bundled payment (...) program as structured is likely to lead to unfair restrictions on who receives total joint replacements. (shrink)

A new translation and edition of Aristotle's Protrepticus (with critical comments on the fragments) -/- Welcome -/- The Protrepticus was an early work of Aristotle, written while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, but it soon became one of the most famous works in the whole history of philosophy. Unfortunately it was not directly copied in the middle ages and so did not survive in its own manuscript tradition. But substantial fragments of it have been preserved in several (...) works by Iamblichus of Chalcis, a third century A.D. neo-Pythagorean philosopher and educator. On the basis of a close study of Iamblichus' extensive use and excerption of Aristotle's Protrepticus, it is possible to reconstruct the backbone of the lost work, and then to flesh it out with the other surviving reports about the work from antiquity (for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and other ancient commentators on Aristotle). It is also possible to identify several papyrus fragments of the work, and many references and literary allusions in later authors, especially Cicero, whose own lost dialogue Hortensius was a defense of philosophy modeleld on Aristotle's. (shrink)

Linda Zagzebski makes a compelling and many-faceted case for the primacy of virtue in both epistemology and ethics, and for the thesis that "epistemic evaluation just is a form of moral evaluation". Along the way, she explores a variety of theoretical problems in both ethics and epistemology, advancing promising new analyses and solutions. For a work of contemporary epistemology, Virtues of the Mind is uncommonly readable, relevant, and historically informed—and Zagzebski manages all this without sacrificing depth or rigor. Specialists and (...) nonspecialists alike will find it a rewarding study. (shrink)

Pessimists about moral testimony hold that there is something suboptimal about forming moral beliefs by deferring to another. This paper motivates an analogous claim about self-knowledge of the reason-responsive attitudes. When it comes to your own mind, it seems important to know things “from the inside”, in the first-personal way, rather than putting your trust in another. After motivating Pessimism, the paper offers an explanation of its truth. First-person knowledge is distinctive because it involves knowing a state of mind and (...) finding it intelligible from one’s point of view. It concludes by considering the value of this form of self-understanding. (shrink)

As our scientific and technical abilities expand at breathtaking speeds, concern that modern genetics and bioengineering are leading us to a posthuman future is growing. Is Human Nature Obsolete? poses the overarching question of what it is to be human against the background of these current advances in biotechnology. Its perspective is philosophical and interdisciplinary rather than technical; the focus is on questions of fundamental ontological importance rather than the specifics of medical or scientific practice.The authors -- all distinguished scholars (...) in their fields -- take on questions about technology's goals and values that are often ignored or sidelined in the face of rapid scientific advances and the highly specialized nature of technical knowledge. The essays included represent a rich variety of thought, ranging from finely nuanced philosophical and theological arguments to historical studies and cultural commentaries. Several explore the historical background of today's biotechnology: Timothy Casey traces such developments as the emergence of cybernetic humanity from Cartesian dualism, and Diane Paul presents the history of "positive" versus coerced eugenics. Jean Bethke Elshtain discusses cloning as a "messianic project" to perfect the body and exclude natural diversity -- giving as an example the elimination of Down Syndrome as an acceptable human type -- while Harold Baillie calls for an examination of the metaphysical roots of personhood. Robert Proctor finds no evidence in paleontology for any "essence of humanity," and Tom Shannon argues against materialist reductionism. Addressing social concerns, Lisa Sowle Cahill finds the possibility of a political solution to the problems raised by genetic engineering in Catholic teachings on social justice, and Langdon Winner looks critically at the "scientific enthusiasts of a posthuman future." Taken as a whole, the book provides a humanistic overview of a subject too often considered only in its technological aspect. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ‘Modus Darwin’ is the name given by Elliott Sober to a form of argument that he attributes to Darwin in the Origin of Species, and to subsequent evolutionary biologists who have reasoned in the same way. In short, the argument form goes: similarity, ergo common ancestry. In this article, I review and critique Sober’s analysis of Darwin’s reasoning. I argue that modus Darwin has serious limitations that make the argument form unsuitable for supporting Darwin’s conclusions, and that Darwin did (...) not reason in this way. (shrink)