This paper has two aims. One is to draw a distinction between two types of trust. The other is to argue for its applicability in academic discourse on educational policies. One of the two types of trust is ethical trust that rests on beliefs about others’ ethical virtues. The other is institutional trust that typically depends on law enforcement and economic incentives. Ideas about a social order based primarily on institutional trust have haunted political thought since the time of Thomas (...) Hobbes. Such ideas may seem realistic if we focus on business relations, where conformity to contractual terms suffices to meet the needs of all concerned. Intimate relationships rely more on ethical trust. In the first half of the paper the difference between these two types of trust is explained. In the final sections it is argued that successful schoolwork depends on ethical trust and that measures to make schools more reliable in the institutional sense, through supervision and accountability, need to be applied with caution. Such measures can undermine ethical trust because they, at least implicitly, question the moral integrity of teachers and school-heads. (shrink)

Based on the existence of polysemy (e.g., lunch can refer to both food and events), it is argued that central tenets of externalist semantics and Fodorian concept atomism, an externalist theory on which words lack semantic structure, are unsound. We evaluate the premise that these arguments rely on—that polysemous words have separate, finer‐grained senses. We survey the evidence across psychology and linguistics and argue that it shows that polysemy does not exist, at least not in this “sense”. The upshot (...) is that if polysemy does not exist, it cannot pose a problem for atomism or externalism. (shrink)

Social egg freezing has become an expanding clinical practice and there is a growing body of empirical literature on women's attitudes and the sociocultural implications of this phenomenon. Yet, its impact remains subject to ethical controversy. This article reports on a qualitative study, drawing on 18 interviews with women who had elected to initiate at least one egg freezing cycle in Belgium. Our findings, facilitated by a ‘symbiotic empirical ethics’ approach, shed light on the concerns and perceptions that accompany (...) women's decisions while supporting a more context-sensitive reading of the ethical debate. We identified three key themes: feeling overwhelmed with uncertainty and a threatening future, bodily discomfort and distress during the medical process, and the endless pursuit of peace of mind. One of the issues that emerges from these findings is the risk ritual function of social egg freezing, referring to routine actions of risk anticipation that mitigate uncertainty and express a sense of individual responsibility. While more research is needed, this conceptualisation provides a starting point to flesh out the wider context of this moral practice and its symbolic meaning for women. (shrink)

I argue that there are some situations in which it is praiseworthy to be motivated only by moral rightness de dicto, even if this results in wrongdoing. I consider a set of cases that are challenging for views that dispute this, prioritising concern for what is morally important in moral evaluation. In these cases, the agent is not concerned about what is morally important, does the wrong thing, but nevertheless seems praiseworthy rather than blameworthy. I argue that the views under (...) discussion cannot accommodate this, and should be amended to recognise that it is often praiseworthy to be motivated to do what is right. (shrink)

In this paper we argue, against a somewhat standard view, that pragmatic phenomena occur in mathematical language. We provide concrete examples supporting this thesis.

Generalized Quantifier Theory defines superlative quantifiers at most n and at least n as truth-conditionally equivalent to comparative quantifiers fewer than n+1 and more than n \1. It has been demonstrated, however, that this standard theory cannot account for various linguistic differences between these two types of quantifiers. In this paper I discuss how the distinction between assertibility and truth-conditions can be applied to explain this phenomenon. I draw a parallel between the assertibility of disjunctions and superlative quantifiers, and (...) argue that those assertibility conditions are essentially modal. I use epistemic logic to formalize the assertibility conditions and revisit some of the linguistic puzzles related to superlative quantification. (shrink)

My dissertation is concerned with the misconceptions many postmodernist theorists and critics harbor about the history of western philosophy and about various branches of it, misconceptions that I contend are the source of the simplistic account of both postwar culture and literature, and eighteenth-and nineteenth-century realist fiction, that they provide. ;In the first chapter, I consider the campaign that a host of postmodernists have mounted against something they typically refer to as the "logic of either/or," alleged to structure western thought. (...) This logic they claim they try to "subvert" by recourse to something else called the "logic of both/and," which, they assert, violates the law of noncontradiction. Instantiations of the "logic of both/and" that postmodernists cite as evidence of the "contradictory," subversive nature of postmodernism include, for example, that postmodernism is both a break from and a continuation of modernism, that postmodernist fiction is both about reality and about the processes of artistic creation, and that postmodern humor is both destructive and constructive. None of these states of affairs, however, is a contradiction, much less a violation of the law of noncontradiction. What postmodernists assume is that by the terms of classical logic, postmodernism, for example, must be either a break from or a continuation of modernism--that is, they attribute to classical logicians what is considered by them to be one of the most common fallacies of presumption: the either/or fallacy, or black-and-white thinking. It is the trivial notion that A and B can both be predicated of x that underwrites, in effect, the "radical" claims made by postmodernists on behalf of the "logic of both/and." ;In the second chapter, I address the reductive accounts of both realist and postmodernist fiction that postmodernists characteristically offer. Many assume, for example, that a realist metaphysics is implicit in realist fiction, and argue that, for this reason, realist fiction is outmoded. The ground of this assumption is, among other things, a misconception about what metaphysical realism is. A belief in a "world out there" is not, as a number of postmodernists seem to think, tantamount to a belief in the truth of metaphysical realism-- the thesis, simply put, that reality is mind-independent. There is no pat, one-to-one correspondence between literary realism and metaphysical realism , and no reason--stylistic or otherwise--why a realist novel cannot express an anti-realist metaphysics--not even any reason why an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century realist novel couldn't, since metaphysical anti-realism was as alive and well then as metaphysical realism is today. The latter point is important, for postmodernists often base their assertions about the metaphysical assumptions that inform eighteenth- and nineteenth-century realist fiction not on any textual evidence, but on a priori assumptions about the metaphysical beliefs it was possible for realist fiction to reflect. This "ideas-of-the-time" approach to literary history is problematic in its own right, but it becomes even more so if one's assumptions about what were or were not the ideas of the time, are, as in this case, false. (shrink)

Modern history has looked on the United States of America as a country with a very distinct and proud national heritage and identity, though this was not always so. When founded in 1776, America was a nation that had not yet developed the identity and customs that would soon come to define the country nationally and internationally. The articulation of this distinct identity fell to the artist class and, in particular, first and second generation American painters. Painters such as Thomas (...) Eakins, Thomas Cole, and the Hudson River School of artists pulled from their natural surroundings to create art that would foster pride in the values of peace, liberty, and freedom. Without these early painters, the United States would not have the strong identity that is so well known today. (shrink)

Modern history has looked on the United States of America as a country with a very distinct and proud national heritage and identity, though this was not always so. When founded in 1776, America was a nation that had not yet developed the identity and customs that would soon come to define the country nationally and internationally. The articulation of this distinct identity fell to the artist class and, in particular, first and second generation American painters. Painters such as Thomas (...) Eakins, Thomas Cole, and the Hudson River School of artists pulled from their natural surroundings to create art that would foster pride in the values of peace, liberty, and freedom. Without these early painters, the United States would not have the strong identity that is so well known today. (shrink)

I argue that the uniqueness of comedy lies in its potential for social critique. Reading through Aristotle, Hegel, and Umberto Eco, I show that because comedy is not negative, not a counter-argument, it can expose social structures for what they are.

The planning/control distinction is an important tool in the study of sensorimotor transformations. However, published data from our laboratories suggest that, contrary to what is predicted by the proposed model, (1) structures in the superior parietal lobe of both monkeys and humans can be involved in movement planning; and (2) fast pointing actions can be immune to visual illusions even if they are performed without visual feedback. The planning–control model as proposed by Glover is almost certainly too schematic.

Human judgements are affected by the words in which information is presented —or ‘framed’. According to the standard gloss, ‘framing effects’ reveal counter-normative reasoning, unduly affected by positive/negative language. One challenge to this view suggests that number expressions in alternative framing conditions are interpreted as denoting lower-bounded (minimum) quantities. However, it is unclear whether the resulting explanation is a rationalising one. I argue that a number expression should only be interpreted lower-boundedly if this is what it actually means. I survey (...) how number expressions might be assigned lower-bounded meanings, due to their conventional semantics or pragmatic enrichment in context. I argue that deciding between these possibilities requires foundational philosophical input. (shrink)

Differing views on reduction are briefly reviewed and a suggestion is made for a working definition of 'approximate reduction'. Ab initio studies in quantum chemistry are then considered, including the issues of convergence and error bounds. This includes an examination of the classic studies on CH2 and the recent work on the Si2C molecule. I conclude that chemistry has not even been approximately reduced.

In this chapter, I revisit the issue of the explanatory gap that is supposed to open when considering identity statements between physical and mental phenomena. I show that the question asked in the original formulation of the explanatory gap was this: ʻwhy this phenomenal character, rather than any other, is attached to this physiological process?ʼ I argue that this question can be answered, because there is a natural fit between the phenomenal character of experiences and their functional roles. For example, (...) pains feel inherently unpleasant, and that explains why they cause avoidance behaviour, and the felt location and intensity of pain indicates the location and extent of damage to the body. I discuss some other possible gaps in our understanding the relationship between the mental and the physical, and conclude that the fit between functional role and phenomenal character goes a long way, though probably not the whole way, to closing the explanatory gap. (shrink)

It is widely held in philosophy that knowing is not a state of mind. On this view, rather than knowledge itself constituting a mental state, when we know, we occupy a belief state that exhibits some additional non-mental characteristics. Fascinatingly, however, new empirical findings from cognitive neuroscience and experimental philosophy now offer direct, converging evidence that the brain can—and often does—treat knowledge as if it is a mental state in its own right. While some might be tempted to keep the (...) metaphysics of epistemic states separate from the neurocognitive mechanics of our judgements about them, here I will argue that these empirical findings give us sufficient reason to conclude that knowledge is at least sometimes a mental state. The basis of this argument is the epistemological principle of neurocognitive parity—roughly, if the contents of a given judgement reflect the structure of knowledge, so do the neurocognitive mechanics that produced them. This principle, which I defend here, straightforwardly supports the inference from the empirical observation that the brain sometimes treats knowledge like a mental state to the epistemological conclusion that knowledge is at least sometimes a mental state. All told, the composite, belief-centric metaphysics of knowledge widely assumed in epistemology is almost certainly mistaken. (shrink)

Contemporary privacy debates regarding new technologies often define privacy in terms of control over personal information such that the privacy “problem” is a lack of control and the privacy “solution” is increased control. This article questions the control-paradigm by pointing to its parallels with earlier debates in the philosophy of technology regarding technology that was out-of-control. What first-generation philosophers of technology understood was that at the root of the questioning of technology lay a need to question the modern self itself. (...) Legal debates regarding privacy renew the importance of this question, for the control-paradigm perpetuates a view of the self as an individual with an inner core transparent to itself on solitary introspection and revealed to others through self-conscious acts of disclosure. Increasingly, this model fails to account for the challenges raised by new technologies and calls for rethinking. (shrink)

Some philosophers search for the mark of the cognitive: a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions identifying all instances of cognition. They claim that the mark of the cognitive is needed to steer the development of cognitive science on the right path. Here, I argue that, at least at present, it cannot be provided. First (§2), I identify some of the factors motivating the search for a mark of the cognitive, each yielding a desideratum the mark is (...) supposed to satisfy (§2.1). I then (§2.2) highlight a number of tensions in the literature on the mark of the cognitive, suggesting they’re best resolved by distinguishing two distinct programs. The first program (§3) is that of identifying a mark of the cognitive capturing our everyday notion of cognition. I argue that such a program is bound to fail for a number of reasons: it is not clear whether such an everyday notion exists; and even if it existed, it would not be able to spell out individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for cognition; and even if it were able to spell them out, these conditions won’t satisfy the desiderata a mark of the cognitive should satisfy. The second program is that of identifying a mark of the cognitive spelling out a genuine scientific kind. But the current state of fragmentation of cognitive science, and the fact that it is splintered in a myriad of different research traditions, prevent us from identifying such a kind. And we have no reason to think that these various research traditions will converge, allowing us to identify a single mark. Or so, at least, I will argue in (§4). I then conclude the paper (§5) deflecting an intuitive objection, and exploring some of the consequences of the thesis I have defended. (shrink)

Two of the premises of Pylyshyn's target article – surface reconstruction as the goal of early vision and inaccessibility of intermediate stages in the process presumably leading to such reconstruction – are questioned and found wanting.

Two of the premises of the target paper -- surface reconstruction as the goal of early vision, and inaccessibility of intermediate stages in the process presumably leading to such reconstruction -- are questioned and found wanting.

The target article provides a useful investigative model for studying social behaviors, but it falls short of establishing a more comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding complex social inter- actions. Social behaviors such as play involve a dynamic and complex interplay between two or more organisms. Even when feed-forward mechanisms are taken into account and the model is anchored to evolutionary theory, the utility of this model is still limited by the conspicuous absence of neurobiological theory and data.

This paper concerns a specific epistemic feature of believing for a reason (e.g., believing that it will rain on the basis of the grey clouds outside). It has commonly been assumed that our access to such facts about ourselves is akin in all relevant respects to our access to why other people hold their beliefs. Further, discussion of self-intimation - that we are necessarily in a position to know when we are in certain conditions - has centred largely around mental (...) states. In contrast to both assumptions, this paper argues that believing for a reason is (at least) very nearly self-intimating: necessarily, if a subject believes that q for the reason that p, then, provided relevant conceptual and rational capacities, she is in a position to form a justified true belief that she believes that q for the reason that p. We should think this on the basis of the role that believing for a reason plays from the subjects’ perspective, and in particular, the way in which it intellegises one’s belief. (shrink)

Obligations to reduce one’s green house gas emissions appear to be difficult to justify prior to large-scale collective action because an individual’s emissions have virtually no impact on the environmental problem. However, I show that individuals’ emissions choices raise the question of whether or not they can be justified as fair use of what remains of a safe global emissions budget. This is true both before and after major mitigation efforts are in place. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to establish an (...) obligation to reduce personal emissions because it appears unlikely that governments will in fact maintain safe emissions budgets. The result, I claim, is that under current conditions we lack outcome, fairness, promotional, virtue or duty based grounds for seeing personal emissions reductions as morally obligatory. (shrink)

According to the “knowability thesis,” every truth is knowable. Fitch’s paradox refutes the knowability thesis by showing that if we are not omniscient, then not only are some truths not known, but there are some truths that are not knowable. In this paper, I propose a weakening of the knowability thesis (which I call the “conjunctive knowability thesis”) to the e:ect that for every truth p there is a collection of truths such that (i) each of them is knowable and (...) (ii) their conjunction is equivalent to p. I show that the conjunctive knowability thesis avoids triviality arguments against it, and that it fares very di:erently depending on another thesis connecting knowledge and possibility. If there are two propositions, inconsistent with one another, but both knowable, then the conjunctive knowability thesis is trivially true. On the other hand, if knowability entails truth, the conjunctive knowability thesis is coherent, but only if the logic of possibility is weak. (shrink)

Ready or not, the game is changing. Life has shifted more dramatically in the past hundred years than it did the thousand years before. It's altered more in the past five years alone than it did in the previous fifty years. What does this mean for the next three years? The next ten years?The problem is, we're not playing a game. The stakes in the church are higher than they've ever been. As leaders, we risk the future of this generation (...) if we ignore the rapid change of pace.Zombies, Football and the Gospel walks you through ten game-changing concepts that will help you navigate the shifting sands of culture and connect with the world around you, both personally and professionally.(And just in case you're wondering, zombies and football provide key sign posts along the way.)The game has changed. It's time for us to change the way we play because we can't afford to lose. (shrink)

In this article, I examine two of the standard objections to forms of value hedonism. The first is the common claim, most famously made by Bradley and Moore, that Mill's qualitative hedonism is inconsistent. The second is the apparent problem for quantitative hedonism in dealing with malicious pleasures. I argue that qualitative hedonism is consistent, even if it is implausible on other grounds. I then go on to show how our intuitions about malicious pleasure might be misleading.

In this paper we argue that physical theories, including quantum mechanics, refer to some kind of ‘objects’, even if only implicitly. We raise questions about the logico-mathematical apparatuses commonly employed in such theories, bringing to light some metaphysical presuppositions underlying such apparatuses. We point out to some incongruities in the discourse holding that quantum objects would be entities of some ‘new kind’ while still adhering to the logico-mathematical framework we use to deal with classical objects. The use of such apparatus (...) would hinder us from being in complete agreement with the ontological novelties the theories of quanta seem to advance. Thus, we join those who try to investigate a ‘logic of quantum mechanics’, but from a different point of view: looking for a formal foundation for a supposed new ontology. As a consequence of this move, we can revisit Einstein’s ideas on physical reality and propose that, by considering a new kind of object traditionally termed ‘non-individuals’, it is possible to sustain that they still obey some of Einstein’s conditions for ‘physical realities’, so that it will be possible to talk of a ‘principle of separability’ in a sense which is not in complete disagreement with quantum mechanics. So, Einstein’s departure from quantum mechanics might be softened at least concerning a form of his realism, which sees separated physical objects as distinct ‘physical realities’. (shrink)