The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) is widely regarded as the most promising physicalist defence against the so-called epistemic arguments—the anti-physicalist arguments that establish an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal facts on the basis of the occurrence of epistemic gaps in our descriptions of these facts. The PCS tries to undercut the force of the epistemic arguments by attributing the occurrence of the epistemic gaps to the special character of phenomenal concepts—the concepts by means of which we think about our (...) phenomenal experiences. In this essay, the author examines David Chalmers' master argument against the PCS and the objections raised against this argument by Peter Carruthers, Bénédicte Veillet and Katalin Balog in defending the PCS. While the author finds these objections to be successful defences of the PCS, the author shares Balog's belief that in this regard, the debate between the physicalists and anti-physicalists is a stalemate. (shrink)

Critical in the computationalist account of the mind is the phenomenon called computational or computer simulation of human thinking, which is used to establish the theses that human thinking is a computational process and that computing machines are thinking systems. Accordingly, if human thinking can be simulated computationally then human thinking is a computational process; and if human thinking is a computational process then its computational simulation is itself a thinking process. This paper shows that the said phenomenon—the computational simulation (...) of human thinking—is ill-conceived, and that, as a consequence, the theses that it intends to establish are problematic. It is argued that what is simulated computationally is not human thinking as such but merely its behavioral manifestations; and that a computational simulation of these behavioral manifestations does not necessarily establish that human thinking is computational, as it is logically possible for a non-computational system to exhibit behaviors that lend themselves to a computational simulation. (shrink)

This paper primarily disputes Dreyfus’s account of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it raises objections to the three central claims of such an account; namely: that Searle’s theory of intentional action can be used as a stand-in for Husserl’s; that Heidegger rejects the primordiality of the intentionality of consciousness; and that Heidegger distinguishes between conscious and unconscious types of intentional actions and he privileges the latter over the former. I show the first to be unwarranted owing to (...) a lack of fundamental parallelisms between Searle’s and Husserl’s theories of intentionality. I show the second to be mistaken for failing to take into account Heidegger’s strategic handling of the concept of consciousness and for contradicting Heidegger’s concept of care as the essential meaning of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Lastly, I show the third to be highly problematic for lacking in textual evidence and explanatory power. (shrink)

This essay shows the presence of transcendence in the on-going attempt to come up with a purely scientific account of the workings of the human mind. At the center of the developmental stages of this attempt is the computational theory of mind, which regards the human mind as some kind of computer. With Wittgenstein’s analysis of the limits of linguistic representation in the Tractatus as a framework, it is argued that the various difficulties encountered by this attempt are primarily due (...) to the transcendental nature of the human mind, which eludes scientific explanation. (shrink)

The damaging and harmful effects of the activities of some corporations on the consumers, employees, and natural environment, have given rise to the need to subject corporate policies, decisions, and actions to a moral evaluation. But due to the peculiar nature of the corporation, being a collective and a legal creation engaged in the activity of business, such evaluation has become a controversial matter, at least among philosophers. This controversy can be formulated as a question of whether corporations have certain (...) moral obligations which are over and above their legal and economic duties. Among the various ways of approaching this question, I focus on two general ones. The first concerns the ethical nature of corporate acts. Here I show why the business nature of corporate acts is no reason to exempt corporations from having moral obligations. The second concerns the moral status of corporations. Here I show why it remains meaningful to regard corporations as moral agents and thus as appropriate bearers of moral obligations. On the whole, I therefore argue for the view that corporations have moral obligations of their own. (shrink)

Business is one of the most pervasive elements of society, whose effects on our lives are extensive. As such, business decisions and behaviors need to be guided not only by economic and legal considerations but also by ethical ones. But because of some mistaken views, the place of ethics in business has remained vague and dubious; and this serves as a rationalization for regarding unethical practices in business as mere strategies for a successful business endeavor. This essay aims to establish (...) the grounds for the application of ethical principles to the business activity by clarifying the moral dimensions of such activity and by demonstrating the possibility of benevolent business. Its arguments center around three basic points, namely: that business acts possess the relevant features that give them moral status, that the arguments purporting to establish the irrelevance of ethics to the conduct of doing business are untenable, and that business selfishness need not be vicious and can combine with the selflessness of benevolence to produce a decision that is both ethical and profitable at the same time. (shrink)

In this paper, we contend that the “Smith case” in Gettier’s attempt to refute the justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge does not work. This is because the said case fails to satisfy the truth condition, and thus is not a case of JTB at all. We demonstrate this claim using the framework of Donnellan’s distinction between the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions. Accordingly, the truth value of Smith’s proposition “The man who will get the job has (...) ten coins in his pocket” partly depends on how Smith uses the definite description “the man who will get the job” when he utters the proposition. Since, upon uttering the proposition, Smith has in mind a particular individual, namely Jones, and not just whoever will fit the attribute specified in the definite description, Smith uses the definite description referentially. And so when it turns out that it is Smith who eventually gets the job, the definite description fails to refer to Jones as intended by Smith, thereby making Smith’s proposition false. To think that Smith’s proposition is still true, in this regard, is to use the definite description attributively—that it is about whoever will fit the definite description. Apparently, when Gettier claims that Smith’s proposition is still true, to demonstrate that it is a case of JTB, he, in effect, imposes his attributive understanding of Smith’s usage of the definite description on Smith’s own epistemic situation. (shrink)

One fundamental healthcare issue brought to the fore by the current COVID-19 pandemic concerns the scope and nature of the right to healthcare. Given our increasing need for the usually limited healthcare resources, to what extent can we demand provision of these resources as a matter of right? One philosophical way of handling this issue is to clarify the nature of this right. Using the challenges of COVID-19 in the Philippines as the context of analysis, we argue for the view (...) that regards the right to healthcare as fundamentally moral in kind, which should thereby guide its legal and contractual appropriations. In particular, we respond to objections against this view stemming from issues concerning the universality and satisfiability of the right’s correlative duty. We deal with such issues by invoking the relative degree of incumbency of moral rights and the capability-relativity of positive duties. We further contend that as these factors define the scope of the moral right to healthcare, they thus constrain what we can demand as a matter of right to meet our healthcare needs in this time of the pandemic. (shrink)

The supposition that Wittgenstein's Tractatus advances a certain metaphysics has given rise to a controversy over the ontological status of his Tractarian objects. It has been debated, for instance, whether these objects consist only of particulars or of both particulars and universals; whether they are physical, phenomenal, or phenomenological entities; and whether they correspond to Russell's objects of acquaintance or Kant's phenomena and substance. In this essay, I endorse Ishiguro's view that these objects, being formal concepts, are ontologically neutral and (...) thus are not identifiable with any ontological kind of entities. I elaborate on the coherence of this view with the propositional dependence of the meaning of Tractarian names. After showing why some arguments for ascribing a Russellian theory of meaning to these names do not work, I demonstrate why Ishiguro's account of Tractarian objects and names provides a better explanation of the unalterability of these objects. (shrink)

The essay deals with the issue of how a non-summativist account of collective epistemic traits can be properly justified. We trace the roots of this issue in virtue epistemology and collective epistemology and then critically examine certain views advanced to justify non-summativism. We focus on those considered by Fricker, including Gilbert’s concept of plural subjects, which she endorses. We find her analysis of these views problematic for either going beyond the parameters of the summativism-nonsummativism debate or contradicting common intuitions about (...) epistemic trait ascriptions. As an alternative, we advance the idea that collective epistemic traits are system properties; or that epistemic traits act as system properties when attributed to collectives taken in their own right. Working as a system, the individual members of a collective perform their designated roles or tasks in coordination and cooperation with each other to achieve theirjoint intentions. Being attributes exclusive to systems, collective epistemic traits cannot, therefore, be attributed in the same respect to the individuals comprising these systems, thereby blocking any summative account of these traits. This model also easily sidesteps the problems besetting Fricker’s preferred one. (shrink)

This essay is a critical examination of how Edmund Husserl, in his appropriation of Franz Brentano’s concept of intentionality into his phenomenology, deals with the very issues that shaped Brentano’s theory of intentionality. These issues concern the proper criterion for distinguishing mental from physical phenomena and the right explanation for the independence of the intentionality of mental phenomena from the existence or non-existence of their objects. Husserl disagrees with Brentano’s views that intentionality is the distinguishing feature of all mental phenomena (...) and that the mental status of intentional objects is what explains the said independence. The crucial concept in Husserl’s theory of intentionality is the noema of consciousness, which functions in the same way as Gottlob Frege’s sense in his theory of semantics. This essay argues that Husserl’s alternative solutions to the problems of Brentano run in conflict either with the desired rigor of his phenomenology or with the actual workings of language. (shrink)

Expressions of the form 'S is aware of the fact that p' are commonplace. This book provides a systematic exploration of the relation between knowledge and factual awareness, arguing that knowledge is but one species of factual awareness and that we can understand the possession of objective reasons, the normativity of knowledge, and the nature of knowledge in terms of factual awareness. In this way, the state of factual awareness is, structurally and substantively, a more basic type of state than (...) knowledge. If correct, this undermines a number of ways in which knowledge has been regarded as ‘first’ in recent epistemology. (shrink)

Due to his significant role in the development of computer technology and the discipline of artificial intelligence, Alan Turing has supposedly subscribed to the theory of mind that has been greatly inspired by the power of the said technology which has eventually become the dominant framework for current researches in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, namely, computationalism or the computational theory of mind. In this essay, I challenge this supposition. In particular, I will try to show that there is no (...) evidence in Turing’s two seminal works that supports such a supposition. His 1936 paper is all about the notion of computation or computability as it applies to mathematical functions and not to the nature or workings of intelligence. On the other hand, while his 1950 work is about intelligence, it is, however, particularly concerned with the problem of whether intelligence can be attributed to computing machines and not of whether computationality can be attributed to human intelligence or to intelligence in general. (shrink)

This essay primarily disputes Dreyfus’s account of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it raises objections to the three central claims of such an account; namely: (1) that Searle’s theory of intentional action can be used as a stand-in for Husserl’s; (2) that Heidegger rejects the primordiality of the intentionality of consciousness; and (3) that Heidegger distinguishes between conscious and unconscious types of intentional actions and he privileges the latter over the former. I show the first to be (...) unwarranted owing to a lack of fundamental parallelisms between Searle’s and Husserl’s theories of intentionality. I show the second to be mistaken for failing to take into account Heidegger’s strategic handling of the concept of consciousness and for contradicting Heidegger’s concept of care as the essential meaning of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Lastly, I show the third to be highly problematic for lacking in textual evidence and explanatory power. (shrink)

John Searle and Roger Penrose are two staunch critics of computationalism who nonetheIess believe that with the right framework the mind can be naturalized. while they may be successful in showing the shortcomings of computationalism, I argue that their alternative noncomputational frameworks equally fail to carry out the project to naturalize the mind. The main reason is their failure to resolve some fundamental incompatibilities between mind and science. Searle tries to resolve the incompatibility between the subjectivity of consciousness and the (...) objectivity of silence by means of conceptual clarification. He, howeve4 fails to deal with the concepts crucial to this incompatibility, namely, the publicness of scientific knowledge and the privacy of psychological knowledge. Penrose tries to resolve the incompatibility between the non-computationality of psychological process and the computationality of scientific process by expanding the scope of science through some radical changes in quantum physics. His strategy, howeve4 has the danger of trivializing the distinction between science and non-science thereby putting into question the very value of the project to naturalize the mind. In addition, the feasibility of this strategy remains dubious in light of the mysteries that still surround quantum physics. (shrink)

The philosophical implication that guides the issue addressed here is the following: how does the principle of the common constitute a frontal apophasis to the principle of property in contemporary democracies? I do not pretend to offer an exhaustive answer to this problem. However, I use the argumentative strategy of dividing this paper into three sections: (i) theoretically investigate the dialectical tension between the principle of the common and the principle of property; (ii) analytically observe the premise that the behavioral (...) practices of exacerbated individualism contribute as an act of aversion to the principle of the common and (iii) dwell on the articulation of the notion of the principle of the common as a factor that is present on the threshold between the philosophical vulgar and philosophical universal. Finally, I form some considerations that problematize the naturalized notion of the principle of property in current democracies, in view of the constituent power that the principle of the common holds in the perspective of achieving the well-being of human agents in contemporary community life. (shrink)

With its use of the powerful technology of computer, the computational theory of mind or computationalism, which regards minds as computational systems, has been widely hailed as the most promising theory that will carry out the project of explaining the workings of the mind in purely scientific terms. While it continues to serve as the primary framework for scientifically inclined theorizing and investigations about the nature of minds, especially in the area of cognitive science, it, however, continues to face strong (...) objections from its critics. And with the growing complexity and sophistication of the arguments used to promote and reject the theory, the debate has become intractable. It has become quite difficult to assess which side of the dispute is gaining the upper hand. Such difficulty may be due to a variety of reasons. In this essay, I critically examine two of such reasons. The first concerns the ambiguity of the theory’s intended scope of application: whether it is limited to the mind’s cognitive features only or it also includes the mind’s phenomenal features. The second concerns the vagueness of how the so-called computer modelling of human cognitive processes is able to duplicate such processes. Accordingly, if insufficiently addressed, they remain as two roadblocks to the entire project of computationalism. (shrink)

This essay deals with the following issues: (1) whether corporations can have moral responsibilities; (2) whether, granting that corporations can have moral responsibilities, nature can be an object of these responsibilities; and (3) what moral theory can appropriately justify why corporations ought to contribute to the cause of environmental protection. It is here argued that while it can be shown that corporations can have moral responsibilities, such responsibilities are limited towards humans and other corporations. The main reason is that the (...) morally relevant functional capacities which corporations can be shown as possessing are limited to those functional capacities that give moral status to humans. As such, natural nonhumans are beyond the scope of these responsibilities. But this does not mean that it becomes justifiable for corporations to disregard environmental concerns. For part of the moral responsibilities of corporations towards humans is to respect the right of humans to a livable natural environment. In addition, because of their enduring existence and long-term goals, corporations can act as a bridge between humans of the present generation and those of future generations. This bridge makes it meaningful to speak of the moral responsibilities of humans of the present generation towards those of future generations. (shrink)

This essay shows why children advertising or business ads directed at children cannot be justified on moral grounds. It is argued that while the persuasive intent of business ads in general does not always lead to the manipulation of consumers, children’s yet undeveloped or general lack of the capacity to make autonomous, rational, or free and informed buying decisions renders business ads directed at them necessarily manipulative. Accordingly, it is when ads are manipulative that they are unethical. And the absence (...) of an internal mechanism in children to guard themselves against the possible manipulations of the ads directed at them renders the persuasive techniques of these ads as ways of taking advantage of their vulnerability. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of mind is generally characterized by its project to naturalize the mind. Utilizing the findings of the different sciences involved in cognitive science, especially those of artificial intelligence and neuroscience, it continues to explore ways to explain the workings of the mind in purely scientific terms. But despite the rigor and sophistication of its methods, certain questions critical to its success have remained unanswered, such as how consciousness emerges from the brain’s physical processes and how the phenomenal properties (...) of our conscious experiences arise from the physical properties of our bodily experiences. This has led some scholars to seek alternative perspectives. One such perspective that is widely explored today is Buddhist thought. The centrality of the mind in Buddhist thought and its perceived compatibility with the findings of modern science make it an attractive alternative framework to carry out the naturalization project. In this paper, I aim to examine the plausibility of this strategy. In particular, I shall evaluate whether Buddhist thought provides the needed insights to overcome the challenges facing the said project. (shrink)

The damaging effects of the activities of corporations on the natural environment have given rise to the need to evaluate corporate policies, decisions, and actions affecting the natural environment on moral grounds. There are two important questions that need to be addressed in this regard. The first is whether corporations have a moral obligation to protect the natural environment, which is over and above their economic duty to maximize profits for their stockholders and their legal duty to obey environmental laws. (...) And the second is, given that they do have this moral obligation, what sort of environmental ethical theory (homocentrism, biocentrism, utilitarianism) ought to guide the exercise of such an obligation? This paper argues that corporations do have such moral obligations, for they are moral agents in virtue of their nonmetaphorical possession of rational capacities. This, however, implies that the corporations’ exercise of this obligation can only be properly guided by a rationalist type of ethics. (shrink)

One legacy of post-Enlightenment dualism in the universe of academic discourse is the presence of two approached to notions of duality championed by two differing camps. One camp might arbitrarily be called debunkers; the other might be labeled rationalists. The strategies of the camps are conditioned by traditional notions of inside and outside. Debunkers consider themselves outsiders, beyond a deceptive show filled with tricky mirrors. Rationalists, by contrast, spend a great deal of time among mirrors, listening to explanations from the (...) overseers, attempting to absorb sideshow language, hoping to provide acceptable analytical accounts. If debunkers are intent on discovering generative and, presumably, hidden ideological inscriptions of a given discourse—its situation on what Amiri Baraka calls the “real side” of economic exchange and world exploitative power—rationalists are concerned to study discursive products, to decode or explain them according to forms and formulas that claim to avoid general views or judgments of ideology. Differentiating the camps also is what might be called a thermal gradient: the heat of the debunker’s passion is palpable. It is unnecessary to command him, in the manner of the invisible man’s tormentor, to “Get hot, boy! Get hot!” Rationalists, by contrast, do not radiate. They appear to have nothing personal at stake and remain coolly instructive and intelligently unflappable in their analyses.This tale of an Enlightenment legacy, as I have told it, contrasts a debunking body and rationalist soul. As I have suggested in my opening sentence, however, what is at issue is not so much two actual and substantially distinctive camps as two metonyms for dual approaches to a common subject—namely, notions of duality. My claim is that the Enlightenment reflexivity of academic discourse, devoted to, say, “the Other” and conceived in dualistic terms of self-and-other, expresses itself as an opposition. Thos whom I have called debunkers gladly accept the Other’s sovereignty as a bodily and aboriginal donnée; rationalists work to discover the dynamics of “othering” engaged in by a self-indulgent Western soul. The difficulty of producing usefully analytical or political results for either camp is occasioned by their joint situation within a post-Enlightenment field. Houston A. Baker, Jr. is the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a poet whose recent volume Blues Journeys Home appeared in 1985. He is also the author of a number of studies of Afro-American literature and culture, including the forthcoming Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. (shrink)

When a belief is self-fulfilling, having it guarantees its truth. When a belief is self-defeating, having it guarantees its falsity. These are the cases of “self-impacting” beliefs to be examined below. Scenarios of self-defeating beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack sufficient reason to have any belief whatsoever. Scenarios of self-fulfilling beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack reason to have any one belief over another. Both scenarios have been used (...) independently to challenge Evidentialism, on which what we may rationally believe is all and only what fits our current evidence. Here we tie the two scenarios together and explore what a knowledge-sensitive evidentialist approach to one implies for the other. (shrink)

The study of metaphor is now firmly established as a central topic within cognitive science and the humanities. We marvel at the creative dexterity of gifted speakers and writers for their special talents in both thinking about certain ideas in new ways, and communicating these thoughts in vivid, poetic forms. Yet metaphors may not only be special communicative devices, but a fundamental part of everyday cognition in the form of 'conceptual metaphors'. An enormous body of empirical evidence from cognitive linguistics (...) and related disciplines has emerged detailing how conceptual metaphors underlie significant aspects of language, thought, cultural and expressive action. Despite its influence and popularity, there have been major criticisms of conceptual metaphor. This book offers an evaluation of the arguments and empirical evidence for and against conceptual metaphors, much of which scholars on both sides of the wars fail to properly acknowledge. (shrink)

Charles Griswold has written a comprehensive philosophical study of Smith's moral and political thought. Griswold sets Smith's work in the context of the Enlightenment and relates it to current discussions in moral and political philosophy. Smith's appropriation as well as criticism of ancient philosophy, and his carefully balanced defence of a liberal and humane moral and political outlook, are also explored. This 1999 book is a major philosophical and historical reassessment of a key figure in the Enlightenment that will be (...) of particular interest to philosophers and political and legal theorists, as well as historians of ideas, rhetoric, and political economy. (shrink)

Remaining important tasks in finding and developing new drugs and vaccines for HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer and other diseases require continued industry research and development. Industry’s research and development pipeline has produced drugs that have saved AIDS victims previously facing certain death, but still no cure nor vaccine is yet available. Experience with the process of research and development indicates that it requires more than a decade of development to produce a new drug with costs in the hundreds of millions of (...) dollars. Intellectual property protection is critically important in assuring that drug development continues. Partnerships between industry and the public sector have increased access to new therapies in developing countries and promise to enhance access to both patented and generic medicines in the future. (shrink)

[This is a paper that was originally written in 2017 and doesn't represent Silva's current thinking about degrees of confidence, conviction, and rationality.] Can there be knowledge and rational belief in the absence of a rational degree of confidence? Yes, and cases of "mistuned knowledge" demonstrate this. In this paper we leverage this normative possibility in support of advancing our understanding of the metaphysical relation between belief and credence. It is generally assumed that a Lockean metaphysics of belief that reduces (...) outright belief to degrees of confidence would immediately effect a unification of coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. Scott Sturgeon has suggested that the unification is effected by understanding the relation between outright belief and confidence as an instance of the determinable-determinate relation. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned knowledge”—knowledge and rational belief in the absence of rational confidence. We contend that there are genuine cases of mistuned knowledge and that, therefore, epistemological unification must forego token identity of belief and high confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence even without token-identity. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification. (shrink)

This papers deals with examples offered by Adams, Austin and others which seem to show that `if' does not conform to all of the laws of the conditional. These a reconciled by treating them as conjunctions with embedded modalities.

Interpreting Figurative Meaning critically evaluates the recent empirical work from psycholinguistics and neuroscience examining the successes and difficulties associated with interpreting figurative language. There is now a huge, often contradictory literature on how people understand figures of speech. Gibbs and Colston argue that there may not be a single theory or model that adequately explains both the processes and products of figurative meaning experience. Experimental research may ultimately be unable to simply adjudicate between current models in psychology, linguistics and philosophy (...) of how figurative meaning is interpreted. Alternatively, the authors advance a broad theoretical framework, motivated by ideas from 'dynamical systems theory', that describes the multiple, interacting influences which shape people's experiences of figurative meaning in discourse. This book details past research and theory, offers a critical assessment of this work and sets the stage for a new vision of figurative experience in human life. (shrink)

Although the sunk‐cost effect is a well‐documented psychological phenomenon in monetary investments, existing literature investigating behavioral investments (e.g., time, effort) has not replicated this effect except when such investments relate to monetary values. The current explanation for this discrepancy proposes that purely behavioral sunk‐cost effects are unlikely to be observed because they are difficult to book, track, and balance in a mental account. Conversely, we argue that, through an effort‐justification mechanism, people account for the amount of behavioral resources invested when (...) selecting an alternative, in which case they may fall prey to purely behavioral sunk‐cost effects. The results of two experiments support this prediction. Because many decisions involve behavioral investments, behavioral sunk‐cost effects should be pervasive psychological phenomena. (shrink)