In this paper, it is argued that those who claim that the dispositionalist theory of color has even a prima facie advantage over color physicalism in accommodating the similarity relations that seem to hold among the colors are mistaken. The appearance that dispositionalists can handle the relevant similarity claims stems from the unexamined assumption that the similarity of two dispositions is simply a matter of the similarity of the manifestations of those dispositions. A more careful treatment of the ways in (...) which two dispositions can be similar to, or different from, one another must consider both the bases and the manifestation conditions of those dispositions in addition to their manifestations. After examining cases of dispositions from outside the domain of colors, it is argued that attention to conditions of manifestation provides a particularly strong reason for rejecting the assumption that similarity of manifestations entails similarity of dispositions. Without this assumption, dispositionalists about color are shown to be in the same position as non-dispositionalists regarding similarity relations among the colors. This way of responding to color dispositionalism is compared with two other responses [offered by Byrne :641–665, 2003) and McLaughlin ], and shown to be a candidate to strengthen, rather than replace, either one. (shrink)

Gray argues that my three earlier counterexamples fail to refute representational theories of phenomenal character. I maintain that, despite Gray's arguments, each example does in fact work against the particular representational theory at which it is targeted. Further, I question whether my internalism regarding phenomenal character and Gray's externalism regarding modularity are in genuine conflict with one another.

In this provocative new work of social philosophy, Seligman evaluates modernity's wager, namely, the gambit to liberate the modern individual from external social and religious norms by supplanting them with the rational self as its own ...

When one encounters disagreement about the truth of a factual claim from a trusted advisor who has access to all of one's evidence, should that move one in the direction of the advisor's view? Conciliatory views on disagreement say "yes, at least a little." Such views are extremely natural, but they can give incoherent advice when the issue under dispute is disagreement itself. So conciliatory views stand refuted. But despite first appearances, this makes no trouble for *partly* conciliatory views: views (...) that recommend giving ground in the face of disagreement about many matters, but not about disagreement itself. (shrink)

The claim of this paper is that the everyday functions of knowledge make most sense if we see knowledge as contrastive. That is, we can best understand how the concept does what it does by thinking in terms of a relation “a knows that p rather than q.” There is always a contrast with an alternative. Contrastive interpretations of knowledge, and objections to them, have become fairly common in recent philosophy. The version defended here is fairly mild in that there (...) is no suggestion that we cannot think in terms of a simpler not explicitly contrastive relation “a knows that p.” Some, for instance Schaffer (2005) and Karjalainen and Morton (2003), have hinted that this stronger possibility may be right. But all that I am arguing now is that facts that are easily expressed in contrastive terms are vital to understanding why we need the concept of knowledge. In a piece that is in some ways a companion to this one ("Contrastivism" in Duncan Pritchard and Sven Bernecker, eds. The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Routledge 2010, 513-522), I give a general survey of theories of contrastive knowledge and the differences between them. (shrink)

Many favor representationalism about color experience. To a first approximation, this view holds that experiencing is like believing. In particular, like believing, experiencing is a matter of representing the world to be a certain way. Once you view color experience along these lines, you face a big question: do our color experiences represent the world as it really is? For instance, suppose you see a tomato. Representationalists claim that having an experience with this sensory character is necessarily connected with representing (...) a distinctive quality as pervading a round area out there in external space. Let us call it “sensible redness” to highlight the fact that the representation of this property is necessarily connected with the sensory character of the experience. Is this property, sensible redness, really co-instantiated with roundness out there in the space before you? (shrink)

In order to predict and explain behavior, one cannot specify the mental state of an agent merely by saying what information she possesses. Instead one must specify what information is available to an agent relative to various purposes. Specifying mental states in this way allows us to accommodate cases of imperfect recall, cognitive accomplishments involved in logical deduction, the mental states of confused or fragmented subjects, and the difference between propositional knowledge and know-how .

Some philosophical theories of the nature of color aim to respect a "common sense" conception of color: aligning with the common sense conception is supposed to speak in favor of a theory and conflicting with it is supposed to speak against a theory. In this paper, we argue that the idea of a "common sense" conception of color that philosophers of color have relied upon is overly simplistic. By drawing on experimental and historical evidence, we show how conceptions of color (...) vary along several dimensions and how even supposedly "core" components of the contemporary "common sense" conception of color are less stable than they have been thought to be. (shrink)

In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.

Quantum mechanics is humanity's finest scientific achievement. It explains why the sun shines and how your eyes can see. It's the theory behind the LEDs in your phone and the nuclear hearts of space probes. Every physicist agrees quantum physics is spectacularly successful. But ask them what quantum physics means, and the result will be a brawl. At stake is the nature of the Universe itself. What does it mean for something to be real? What is the role of consciousness (...) in the Universe? And do quantum rules apply to very small objects like electrons and protons, but not us? In What is Real?, Adam Becker brings to vivid life the brave researchers whose quest for the truth led them to challenge Bohr: David Bohm, who picked up Einstein's mantle and sought to make quantum mechanics deterministic, all while being hounded by the forces of McCarthyism; Hugh Everett, who argued that everything, big and small, must be governed by the same rules; and John Bell, who went to great lengths to eradicate the power of the god-like observer from the core of quantum physics. And they paid dearly, their reputations, careers, and sometimes lives ruined completely. But history has been kinder to them than their contemporaries were. As Becker shows, the brave intellectual giants have inspired a growing army of physicists and philosophers intent both on making a philosophically more satisfying theory of the universe and a more useful one as well. A gripping story of some of humanity's greatest ideas and the high cost with which many have pursued them, What is Real? is intellectual history at its passionate best. (shrink)

Background Journal editors are responsible for what they publish and therefore have a duty to correct the record if published work is found to be unreliable. One method for such correction is retraction of an article. Anecdotal evidence suggested a lack of consistency in journal policies and practices regarding retraction. In order to develop guidelines, we reviewed retractions in Medline to discover how and why articles were retracted. Methods We retrieved all available Medline retractions from 2005 to 2008 and a (...) one-in-three random selection of those from 1988 to 2004. This yielded 312 retractions (from a total of 870). Details of the retraction including the reason for retraction were recorded by two investigators. Results Medline retractions have increased sharply since 1980 and currently represent 0.02% of included articles. Retractions were issued by authors (63%), editors (21%), journals (6%), publishers (2%) and institutions (1%). Reasons for retraction included honest error or non-replicable findings (40%), research misconduct (28%), redundant publication (17%) and unstated/unclear (5%). Some of the stated reasons might have been addressed by corrections. Conclusions Journals' retraction practices are not uniform. Some retractions fail to state the reason, and therefore fail to distinguish error from misconduct. We have used our findings to inform guidelines on retractions. (shrink)

How best to think about quantum systems under permutation invariance is a question that has received a great deal of attention in the literature. But very little attention has been paid to taking seriously the proposal that permutation invariance reflects a representational redundancy in the formalism. Under such a proposal, it is far from obvious how a constituent quantum system is represented. Consequently, it is also far from obvious how quantum systems compose to form assemblies, i.e. what is the formal (...) structure of their relations of parthood, overlap and fusion. In this paper, I explore one proposal for the case of fermions and their assemblies. According to this proposal, fermionic assemblies which are not entangled—in some heterodox, but natural sense of ‘entangled’—provide a prima facie counterexample to classical mereology. This result is puzzling; but, I argue, no more intolerable than any other available interpretative option. (shrink)

Background: Breaches of publication ethics such as plagiarism, data fabrication and redundant publication are recognised as forms of research misconduct that can undermine the scientific literature. We surveyed journal editors to determine their views about a range of publication ethics issues. Methods: Questionnaire sent to 524 editors-in-chief of Wiley-Blackwell science journals asking about the severity and frequency of 16 ethical issues at their journals, their confidence in handling such issues, and their awareness and use of guidelines. Results: Responses were obtained (...) from 231 editors (44%), of whom 48% edited healthcare journals. The general level of concern about the 16 issues was low, with mean severity scores of <1 (on a scale of 0–3) for all but one. The issue of greatest concern (mean score 1.19) was redundant publication. Most editors felt confident in handling the issues, with <15% feeling “not at all confident” for all but one of the issues (gift authorship, 22% not confident). Most editors believed such problems occurred less than once a year and >20% of the editors stated that 12 of the 16 items never occurred at their journal. However, 13%–47% did not know the frequency of the problems. Awareness and use of guidelines was generally low. Most editors were unaware of all except other journals’ instructions. Conclusions: Most editors of science journals seem not very concerned about publication ethics and believe that misconduct occurs only rarely in their journals. Many editors are unfamiliar with available guidelines but would welcome more guidance or training. (shrink)

The problem of trust in social relationships was central to the emergence of the modern form of civil society and much discussed by social and political philosophers of the early modern period. Over the past few years, in response to the profound changes associated with postmodernity, trust has returned to the attention of political scientists, sociologists, economists, and public policy analysts. In this sequel to his widely admired book, The Idea of Civil Society, Adam Seligman analyzes trust as a (...) fundamental issue of our present social relationships. Setting his discussion in historical and intellectual context, Seligman asks whether trust--which many contemporary critics, from Robert Putnam through Francis Fukuyama, identify as essential in creating a cohesive society--can continue to serve this vital role. Seligman traverses a wide range of examples, from the minutiae of everyday manners to central problems of political and economic life, showing throughout how civility and trust are being displaced in contemporary life by new "external' system constraints inimical to the development of trust. Disturbingly, Seligman shows that trust is losing its unifying power precisely because the individual, long assumed to be the ultimate repository of rights and values, is being reduced to a sum of group identities and an abstract matrix of rules. The irony for Seligman is that, in becoming postmodern, we seem to be moving backward to a premodern condition in which group sanctions rather than trust are the basis of group life. (shrink)

Discusses recent work on representationalism, including: the case for a representationalist theory of consciousness, which explains consciousness in terms of content; rivals such as neurobiological type-type identity theory (Papineau, McLaughlin) and naive realism (Allen, Campbell, Brewer); John Campbell and David Papineau's recent objections to representationalism; the problem of the "laws of appearance"; externalist vs internalist versions of representationalism; the relation between representationalism and the mind-body problem.

This collection of papers centres around a novel approach to the problem of phenomenal consciousness called cosmopsychism. A simple version of cosmopsychism says that the cosmos as a whole is conscious. In this collection, I focus on a comparison between arguably the most promising versions of cosmopsychism and panpsychism, called constitutive cosmopsychism and constitutive panpsychism, respectively. -/- The first paper, ‘A Blueprint for Cosmopsychism’ offers a blueprint for a cosmopsychist approach, comparing it to the panpsychist approach. It highlights how following (...) the blueprint allows one to sidestep the most serious of panpsychism’s problems, the combination problem, while also avoiding the problem of infinite decomposition. However, it notes that the approach must address a serious problem of its own in the derivation problem. -/- The second paper, ‘Beyond Panpsychism and Cosmopsychism? Focuses’ on two related views that reject subjects of experience at the fundamental level, thus avoiding the subject aspects of the combination and derivation problems. Albahari’s perennialism is touted as the natural successor to cosmopsychism; avoiding its subject derivation problem while maintaining a cosmic consciousness. Meanwhile, Coleman’s panqualityism is touted as a natural successor to panpsychism; avoiding its combination problem while maintaining that phenomenality is present at the level of microphysical ultimates. However, I show both views seem to face problems equal in measure to those they seek to avoid. -/- The third paper, ‘The Subject Problem for Panpsychism and Cosmopsychism’ targets the hardest problems for constitutive panpsychism and constitutive cosmopsychism; the subject combination problem and the subject derivation problem, respectively. I show that the two problems are almost identical, both hinging on the entailment of what I call synchronous perspectives scenarios. I formulate broad arguments from metaphysical impossibility and epistemic implausibility against both views, based on such scenarios. However, I provide a possible model of how to understand synchronous perspective scenarios unproblematically. I also provide several alternative responses. -/- The fourth, and final, paper in the collection provides an account of, and motivation for, a version of cosmopsychism I call CRP cosmopsychism. This version of cosmopsychism is created on the priority cosmopsychism blueprint and has three further key commitments: simple panpsychism, priority monism and Russellian monism. The paper motivates each of these commitments both in isolation and in partnership, before responding to each of the derivation problems; the subject derivation problem, the quality derivation problem and the structure derivation problem. Furthermore, I argue that cosmopsychism should be preferred over panpsychism owing to considerations concerning internal relations. (shrink)

Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science. With a surge of studies in affective neuroscience in recent decades, scientists are poised to answer this question. In this target article, we present a meta-analytic summary of the neuroimaging literature on human emotion. We compare the locationist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories consistently and specifically correspond to distinct brain regions) with the psychological constructionist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories (...) are constructed of more general brain networks not specific to those categories) to better understand the brain basis of emotion. We review both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses of brain–emotion correspondence and report meta-analytic findings bearing on these hypotheses. Overall, we found little evidence that discrete emotion categories can be consistently and specifically localized to distinct brain regions. Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind: A set of interacting brain regions commonly involved in basic psychological operations of both an emotional and non-emotional nature are active during emotion experience and perception across a range of discrete emotion categories. (shrink)

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

Toward an ontology of the social-historical -- Proto-institutions and epistemological encounters -- Anthropological aspects of subjectivity: the radical imagination -- Hermeneutical horizons of meaning -- The rediscovery of physis -- Objective knowledge in review -- Rethinking the world of the living being -- Reimaging cosmology -- Conclusion: the circle of creation.

This paper introduces a novel strategy for responding to skeptical arguments based on the epistemic possibility of error or lack of certainty. I show that a nonclassical logic motivated by recent work on epistemic modals can be used to render such skeptical arguments invalid. That is, one can grant that knowledge is incompatible with the possibility of error and grant that error is possible, all while avoiding the skeptic’s conclusion that we lack knowledge.

This paper considers the possibility that ‘epistemic hypocrisy’ could be relevant to our blaming practices. It argues that agents who culpably violate an epistemic norm can lack the standing to blame other agents who culpably violate similar norms. After disentangling our criticism of epistemic hypocrites from various other fitting responses, and the different ways some norms can bear on the legitimacy of our blame, I argue that a commitment account of standing to blame allows us to understand our objections to (...) epistemic hypocrisy. Agents lack the epistemic standing to blame when they are not sufficiently committed to the epistemic norms they are blaming others for violating. This not only gives us a convincing account of epistemic standing to blame, it leaves us with a unified account of moral and epistemic standing. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

The book analyzes the sources of widespread dissatisfaction with democracies around the world and identifies directions for feasible reforms"--Provided by publisher.

Representationism is the view that the phenomenal character of an experience supervenes on its representational content. Synaesthesia is a condition in which the phenomenal character of the experience produced in a subject by stimulation of one sensory modality contains elements characteristic of a second, unstimulated sensory modality. After reviewing some of the recent psychological literature on synaesthesia and one of the leading versions of representationism, I argue that cases of synaesthesia, as instances of what I call the extra qualia problem, (...) are counterexamples to externalist versions of representationism. (shrink)

Organizations have neither a right to the vote nor a weighty right to life. We need not enfranchise Goldman Sachs. We should feel few scruples in dissolving Standard Oil. But they are not without rights altogether. We can owe it to them to keep our promises. We can owe them debts of gratitude. Thus, we can owe some things to organizations. But we cannot owe them everything we can owe to people. They seem to have a peculiar, fragmented moral status. (...) What explains this? Individualistic views explain this in terms of individualistic notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke any distinctive features of organizations. They just invoke the features of individual members of organizations. Collectivistic views, instead, explain this in terms of collective notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke the features of individual members of organizations. They just invoke the features of those organizations. We argue that neither approach works. Instead, one needs to synthesize the two approaches. Some individual interests, we think, are distinctively collective. We, as individuals, have a distinctive interest in playing a part in successful collective action. From this, so we argue, flows the apparently peculiar, fragmented moral status of organizations. (shrink)

In this essay, we draw on John Haugeland’s work in order to argue that Burge is wrong to think that exercises of perceptual constancy mechanisms suffice for perceptual representation. Although Haugeland did not live to read or respond to Burge’s Origins of Objectivity, we think that his work contains resources that can be developed into a critique of the very foundation of Burge’s approach. Specifically, we identify two related problems for Burge. First, if (what Burge calls) mere sensory responses are (...) not representational, then neither are exercises of constancy mechanisms, since the differences between them do not suffice to imply that one is representational and the other is not. Second, taken by themselves, exercises of constancy mechanisms are only derivatively representational, so merely understanding how they work is not sufficient for understanding what is required for something, in itself, to be representational (and thereby provide a full solution to the problem of perceptual representation). (shrink)

This book offers a novel account of grace, framed in terms of Bruno Latour's "principle of irreduction.

In January 1975, Michel Foucault contemplated the nature and formation of what in subsequent years he would come to know as governmentality. For Foucault, plague marks the rise of the invention of positive technologies of power, where these relations center around inclusion, multiplication, and security, rather than exclusion, negation, and rejection. In a point that might at first seem ancillary to his central argument, Foucault comments on stylized works about plague, such as those, according to the lecture series’ editors, exemplified (...) by Albert Camus. In footnote fifteen of the January 15, 1975 lecture, in reference to what Foucault deemed the “literary dream of” plagues, the editors list Camus’ 1947 novel La Peste, among other works, as representative of what Foucault described as “a kind of orgiastic dream in which plague is the moment when individuals come apart and when the law is forgotten.”. This article places Camus’ novel and other works in conversation with Foucault on governmentality, subjectivation, and truth to demonstrate the ways in which individualism itself can be viewed biopolitically. In so doing, it offers an urgent intervention that speaks powerfully to and is exemplified by the current global pandemic. Plague serves both as this literary dream and as a discursive mechanism engaged simultaneously with regimes of truth and the individuals constructing them. By pairing Foucault’s historical understanding of the invention of positive technologies of power with Camus’ treatment of “the absurd” in and out of the plague context, one uncovers the interrelation of governmentality, subjectivation, and truth. (shrink)

In two experiments, we demonstrate that intentional action intuitions vary as a function of whether one brings about or observes an event. In experiment 1a (N?=?38), participants were less likely to judge that they intended (M?=?2.53, 7 point scale) or intentionally (M?=?2.67) brought about a harmful event compared to intention (M?=?4.16) and intentionality (M?=?4.11) judgments made about somebody else. Experiments 1b and 1c confirmed and extended this pattern of actor-observer differences. Experiment 2 suggested that these actor-observer differences are not likely (...) to occur when participants are asked to ?imagine? being an actor. We argue that these results challenge the substantial philosophical and empirical reliance on hypothetical thought examples about intentional action. Our data offer new and necessary methodological avenues for understanding folk intentional action intuitions. (shrink)

This thoughtful new abridgment is enriched by the brilliant commentary which accompanies it. In it, Laurence Dickey argues that the _Wealth of Nations_ contains--and conceals--a great deal of how Smith actually thought a commercial society works. Guided by his conviction that the so-called Adam Smith Problem--the relationship between ethics and economics in Smith's thinking--is a core element in the argument of the work itself, Dickey's commentary focuses on the devices Smith uses to ground his economics in broadly ethical and (...) social categories. An unparalleled guide to an often difficult and perplexing work. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to address what appears to be a novel theoretical and practical problem concerning physician-assisted suicide (PAS). This problem arises out of a newly created set of circumstances in which persons are hospitalized in jurisdictions where PAS, though now legally available to patients, remains morally contentious. When moral disagreements over PAS come to divide physicians, patients, and family members, it is quite likely they will today find their way to the hospital’s consulting ethicist, a member of (...) an emerging group of professionals charged with the responsibility (so we are told) of resolving moral conflict in the clinic. What can or should an ethics consultant do to fulfill this mandate in such circumstances? I argue that the now predominant conception of clinical ethics consultation is importantly deficient in that it provides no final guidance to ethicists on how they should respond in such cases. The ethicist may only recommend—or assist others to reach—solutions to moral disagreements falling within the limits of established norms. Since the normative landscape of PAS appears to be changing, whether it falls within these limits is unsettled. I conclude that the accepted goals of ethics consultation require a revised and expanded conception of the ethicist's role in cases involving PAS. I close by outlining what that revised understanding would look like and the further questions it raises. (shrink)

“Moorean Dogmatist” responses to external world skepticism endorse courses of reasoning that many people find objectionable. This paper seeks to locate this dissatisfaction in considerations about epistemic responsibility. I sketch a theory of immediate warrant and show how it can be combined with plausible “inferential internalist” demands arising from considerations of epistemic responsibility. The resulting view endorses immediate perceptual warrant but forbids the sort of reasoning that “Moorean Dogmatism” would allow. A surprising result is that Dogmatism’s commitment to immediate epistemic (...) warrant isn’t enough to avoid certain standard arguments for skepticism about the external world. (shrink)

This chapter provides empirical evidence about everyday attitudes concerning euthanasia. These attitudes have important implications for some ethical arguments about euthanasia. Two experiments suggested that some different descriptions of euthanasia have modest effects on people’s moral permissibility judgments regarding euthanasia. Experiment 1 (N = 422) used two different types of materials (scenarios and scales) and found that describing euthanasia differently (‘euthanasia’, ‘aid in dying’, and ‘physician assisted suicide’) had modest effects (≈3 % of the total variance) on permissibility judgments. These (...) effects were largely replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 409). However, in Experiment 2, judgments about euthanasia’s moral permissibility were best predicted by the voluntariness of the treatment. Voluntariness was a stronger predictor than some demographic factors and some domain general elements of moral judgments. These results help inform some debates about the moral permissibility of euthanasia (e.g., the slippery slope argument) suggesting that some of the key premises of those arguments are unwarranted. (shrink)