Summary Colour and space are pervasive topics in both perception and art. This article investigates the role of colour and pattern in relation to space and time in the art works by two artists: Frank Stella, a well-known Post-War American abstract painter, and Pieter Vermeersch, an emerging Belgian abstract painter, representing a contemporary trend to break the barriers between artistic disciplines. While Stella adheres to the Modernist logic of non-illusionistic, non-spatial, non-referential art as object, perceived instantaneously, Vermeersch explores ways to (...) enhance the viewers’ spatial and temporal experiences through complex art installations with multiple objects and architectural elements interacting with each other and with the spaces in which they are embedded. We discuss these major themes in some representative art works, and in the way they are perceived and appreciated by contemporary viewers, investigated in four empirical studies: two laboratory experiments using well-controlled stimuli derived from at works, and two museum studies employing a variety of methods, including mobile eye-tracking and questionnaires. (shrink)

We have evolved to become who we are, at least in part, due to our general drive to create new things and ideas. When seeking to improve our creations, ideas, or situations, we systematically overlook opportunities to perform subtractive changes. For example, when tasked with giving feedback on an academic paper, reviewers will tend to suggest additional explanations and analyses rather than delete existing ones. Here, we show that this addition bias is systematically reflected in English language statistics along several (...) distinct dimensions. First, we show that words associated with an increase in quantity or number (e.g., add, addition, more, most) are more frequent than words associated with a decrease in quantity or number (e.g., subtract, subtraction, less, least). Second, we show that in binomial expressions, addition-related words are mentioned first, that is, add and subtract rather than subtract and add. Third, we show that the distributional semantics of verbs of change, such as to improve and to transform, overlap more with the distributional semantics of add/increase than subtract/decrease, which suggests that change verbs are implicitly biased toward addition. Fourth, addition-related words have more positive connotations than subtraction-related words. Fifth, we demonstrate that state-of-the-art large language models, such as the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-3), are also biased toward addition. We discuss the implications of our results for research on cognitive biases and decision-making. (shrink)

This paper considers challenges resulting from the use of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). We argue that these challenges should be considered through the lens of value alignment. Instead of discussing why specific goals and values, such as fairness and nondiscrimination, ought to be implemented, we consider the question of how AAJI can be aligned with goals and values more generally, in order to be reliably integrated into legal and judicial systems. This value alignment framing draws on AI safety and (...) alignment literature to introduce two otherwise neglected considerations for AAJI safety: specification and assurance. We outline diverse research directions and suggest the adoption of assurance and specification mechanisms as the use of AI in the judiciary progresses. While we focus on specification and assurance to illustrate the value of the AI safety and alignment literature, we encourage researchers in law and philosophy to consider what other lessons may be drawn. (shrink)

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) to judicial decision-making has already begun in many jurisdictions around the world. While AI seems to promise greater fairness, access to justice, and legal certainty, issues of discrimination and transparency have emerged and put liberal democratic principles under pressure, most notably in the context of bail decisions. Despite this, there has been no systematic analysis of the risks to liberal democratic values from implementing AI into judicial decision-making. This article sets out to fill this (...) void by identifying and engaging with challenges arising from artificial judicial decision-making, focusing on three pillars of liberal democracy, namely equal treatment of citizens, transparency, and judicial independence. Methodologically, the work takes a comparative perspective between human and artificial decision-making, using the former as a normative benchmark to evaluate the latter. -/- The chapter first argues that AI that would improve on equal treatment of citizens has already been developed, but not yet adopted. Second, while the lack of transparency in AI decision-making poses severe risks which ought to be addressed, AI can also increase the transparency of options and trade-offs that policy makers face when considering the consequences of artificial judicial decision-making. Such transparency of options offers tremendous benefits from a democratic perspective. Third, the overall shift of power from human intuition to advanced AI may threaten judicial independence, and with it the separation of powers. While improvements regarding discrimination and transparency are available or on the horizon, it remains unclear how judicial independence can be protected, especially with the potential development of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). Working out the political and legal infrastructure to reap the fruits of artificial judicial intelligence in a safe and stable manner should become a priority of future research in this area. (shrink)

With the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), global researchers were confronted with major challenges. The German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON) was launched in fall 2020 to effectively leverage resources and bundle research activities in the fight against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We analyzed the setup phase of NAPKON as an example for multicenter studies in Germany, highlighting challenges and optimization potential in connecting 59 university and nonuniversity study sites. We examined the ethics application (...) process of 121 ethics submissions considering durations, annotations, and outcomes. Study site activation and recruitment processes were investigated and related to the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. For all initial ethics applications, the median time to a positive ethics vote was less than two weeks and 30 of these study sites (65%) joined NAPKON within less than three weeks each. Electronic instead of postal ethics submission (9.5 days (Q1: 5.75, Q3: 17) vs. 14 days (Q1: 11, Q3: 26), p value = 0.01) and adoption of the primary ethics vote significantly accelerated the ethics application process. Each study center enrolled a median of 37 patients during the 14-month observation period, with large differences depending on the health sector. We found a positive correlation between recruitment performance and COVID-19 incidence as well as hospitalization incidence. Our analysis highlighted the challenges and opportunities of the federated system in Germany. Digital ethics application tools, adoption of a primary ethics vote and standardized formal requirements lead to harmonized and thus faster study initiation processes during a pandemic. (shrink)

On November 4, 2008, during his concession speech to President-Elect Barack Obama, Senator John McCain transformed Obama's victory into his theodicy by claiming that the election "proved" that the country had progressed from its days organizing social life around racial exclusion. McCain's speech exemplifies a paradox of "American" progress: black bodies ascending to social heights previously prevented through a particularly pernicious brand of white American antiblack racism, upon whose backs U.S. global financial and military dominance was built, become evidence for (...) justifying American exceptionalism. One tragic irony of American history is that since at least emancipation, "black... (shrink)

A reading of Kant as a theological rationalist may cohere with some Mu’tazilite views of morality, but is alien to mainstream Sunnism. Those who seek to engage Muslims would be well-advised to recall that they hold to a law-oriented ethics based in revelation, not on what reason might discover as compatible with God’s mind.

The approach of liberal political philosopher John Rawls on the issue of abortion relied on his construct of “public reason,” in which citizens in a pluralistic democracy restrict the use of deliberative arguments and reasons that are drawn from their “irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines,” including their religious worldviews. From this reasoning, Rawls concludes that a just society is one that includes the legal right to abortion. However, the author contends that the use of another of Rawls’s theories—“justice as fairness”—leads to an (...) alternative conclusion: that legally sanctioned abortion represents the unjust persecution of a specific population—the unborn. Further, this same theoretical approach supports the egalitarian application of Catholic social thought to protect the fetus as a uniquely vulnerable position in society. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 677–686. (shrink)

Sex reassignment surgery raises a number of ethical questions. This article examines a few of these questions through the lens of Karol Wojtyla’s philosophical anthropology. The author maintains that the operation is based on a dualistic view of the person and a distorted understanding of the human capacity for self-determination. In his work, Wojtyla emphasizes the inseparable connection between freedom and truth, and he argues that the person is a unity of body and spirit, so that the body cannot be (...) reduced to mere matter. Therefore, the author concludes that sex reassignment surgery must be seen as morally illicitin light of Wojtyla’s anthropology. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9.4 (Winter 2009): 711–723. (shrink)

The Winter Garden Photograph was my Ariadne, not because it would help me discover a secret thing, but because it would tell me what constituted that thread which drew me toward Photography. I had understood that henceforth I must interrogate the evidence of Photography, not from the viewpoint of pleasure, but in relation to what we romantically call love and death. Ultimately — or at the limit — in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away (...) or close your eyes. “The necessary condition for an image is sight,” Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: “We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.”... (shrink)

Why would Rene Descartes, the father of modern rationalist philosophy, choose "meditations" -- a term and genre associated with religious discourse and practice -- for the title of his magnum opus that lays the metaphysical foundations for his reform of all knowledge, including mathematics and sciences? Why did he believe that the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, which the Meditations on First Philosophy set out to demonstrate, can only be made self-evident through meditating? These are the (...) question that Christopher Wild's book answers. Descartes discovered the "foundations of a marvelous science" through a dramatic conversion in southern Germany in the winter of 1619. The spiritual and cognitive exercises, derived from ancient philosophy and the Christian meditative tradition, which Descartes deployed in the Meditations, enable readers to discover metaphysical truths with the same degree of self-evidence with which Descartes did during his own conversion. Descartes' meditative turn, Wild argues, brings to a culmination a life-long preoccupation with the practice or craft of thinking, known as Cartesian method. By joining meditation to method the Meditations becomes the founding document for a Cartesian "art of turning," a new practice of both thought and life. (shrink)

Originally published in German, Christoph Wulf’s _Anthropology_ sets its sights on a topic as ambitious as its title suggests: anthropology itself. Arguing for an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to anthropology that incorporates science, philosophy, history, and many other disciplines, Wulf examines—with breathtaking scope—all the ways that anthropology has been understood and practiced around the globe and through the years. Seeking a central way to understand anthropology in the midst of many different approaches to the discipline, Wulf concentrates on the (...) human body. An emblem of society, culture, and time, the body is also the result of many mimetic processes—the active acquisition of cultural knowledge. By examining the role of the body in the performance of rituals, gestures, language, and other forms of imagination, he offers a bold new look at how culture is produced, handed down, and transformed. Drawing such examinations into a comprehensive and sophisticated assessment of the discipline as a whole, _Anthropology_ looks squarely at the mystery of humankind and the ways we have attempted to understand it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Periwigged Heralds":Epistemology and Intertextuality in Early American CometographyChristopher JohnsonIn the winter of 1680-81 an enormous comet appeared in the nighttime skies of Europe and the Americas.1 This "blazing star" occasioned numerous treatises, poems, pamphlets, broadsides, ballads, engravings, and woodcuts. Evaluating this cometary copia, the historian of science, Pingré, in 1783 observes:The world was inundated with writings on these phenomena, on their nature, on their significations; for there were still (...) astrologers and cometomantics [Cométomantiens]... I believe that the languages were not even as confused at the Tower of Babel, as were the sentiments concerning this famous comet.2Pingré's belated impatience with the discursive flood of "astrologers and cometomantics" echoes of course the more general Cartesian objection to the confusion of words and things, a confusion that L'Académie des sciences and Royal Society dedicated themselves to eliminating. But the arduous nature of this effort in seventeenth-century Europe is exemplified by the numerous, often-conflicting interpretations of the 1618, 1665, and 1680 comets—to say nothing of the unprecedented "new stars" or novas of 1572 and 1604, which were often treated as cometary phenomena. In this essay, though, I will trace the contours of this epistemological confusion in the Americas—specifically in [End Page 399] Mexico, Peru, and New England—where European astronomical, astrological, theological, and literary discourses concerning comets were repeated and imitated but also where they were mediated by cultural concerns unique to the New World. More particularly, by focusing on some of the intertextual aspects of the interpretation of the 1680 comet in the Americas, I suggest that the hermeneutic of signs which dominated in one way or another almost every Early American cometography is indicative of broader epistemological and rhetorical tensions that characterize the period.Popular belief in late seventeenth-century Europe generally held that a comet's appearance heralded God's wrath. In Germany the terrible "Wunder-Komet" of 1680 precipitated the publication of nearly a hundred treatises, most of which echoed the motto on a medal struck by the State Library of Zurich: "The star threatens evil things. Have faith! God will set things right."3 The devout comet-watcher could thus look forward to imminent salvation, while sinners were urged to seize a final chance to repent. Still, even many of the learned who treated comets mathematically also embraced some form of theological hermeneutic. Both Kepler and, later in his life, Newton wished to retain comets as actors in God's eschatological drama.4 Though others, like Galileo and Gassendi, saw the comet as a natural event without semiotic significance, the more astrologically inclined continued to see it not just as a sign but as the effective cause itself of ill, or less often, good fortune.5 Stanislaw Lubieniecki's1667 Theatrum cometicum thus places one comet at Jerusalem's destruction and another at Christ's birth.6 In other words, the Theatrum, like most contemporary cometographies, is fueled by the logic of analogy, for a comet was generally read as a wondrous (but usually disastrous) sign linking the microcosm and macrocosm, or alternately, as a sign legible only by translating the Book of Nature with the lexicon provided by the Book of God, the Bible.7 When it came to comets, the epistemic shift that Foucault traces in The Order of Things, from a sixteenth-century symbolic or qualitative world-view to a seventeenth-century rationalist or quantitative one, was often slowly and/or incompletely achieved. Forced to speak of a comet's "beard" or "tail," even the less mantic cometographers found themselves interrogating the analogical nature of their discourse as much as the celestial objects that excited their curiosity. [End Page 400]Especially in France and to a lesser extent England the epistemological and rhetorical assumptions associated with the idea that comets heralded misfortune were being subject to increasing scrutiny if not sometimes also outright scorn. Most famously, Pierre Bayle in his Pensées diverses; Ecrites à un Docteur de Sorbonne, à l'occasion de la comète qui parut au mois de Decembre 1680, uses the comet as a kind of floating signifier which allows him to interrogate with proto-Enlightenment rigor all manner... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2601\PINCREPL.261 : 2006-06-05 11:54
iscussion REJOINDER TO SOAMES C P Philosophy / Purdue U. West Lafayette,  ,  @. y goal in reviewing Soames’ book was to help readers of this journal evalMuate his contribution to the history of analytic philosophy, with a special focus on his discussion of Russell. Soames charges both that I misrepresent the contents of his book and that I (...) make mistakes in the interpretation of various aspects of Russell’s philosophy. If I had committed any errors of the former sort, I would certainly apologize and thank Soames for bringing such mistakes to my attention. After explaining why I do not believe I have misrepresented the contents of his book, I will turn to the one substantive issue that he raises in his reply, namely the need for unperceived sense-data in Russell’s external world program. While disagreement here is more understandable, nothing Soames says in his book or in his reply has led me to revise my original remarks. My review began with a one-page summary of Soames’ -page book. I said that “Moore, and nearly every other figure that Soames discusses, is [said to be] guilty of confusing necessity, analyticity and apriority” and in the next paragraph mentioned “Moore’s views on ethics” and “Russell’s conception of analysis ” (“Reply”, p. ). Soames replies: “Not so. Although I do show that such conflation had negative consequences for the views of several philosophers, Moore and Russell are not among them” (p. ). I could have added more page references to my discussion. On Moore, after a long list of twelve “fundamental methodological notions” which include analysis, analyticity and necessity, Soames claims that “unclarity about these fundamental methodological notions eviscerated his most important meta-ethical conclusions” (: ). For  Scott Soames, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century,  vols. (Princeton: Princeton U. P., ). Christopher Pincock, “History of Philosophical Analysis”, Russell, n.s.  (winter – ): –. Scott Soames, “Reply to Pincock”, Russell, n.s.  (winter –): –. References preceded by “:” or “:” refer to the volumes of Soames’ book. Other unlabelled references in the text will be either to my review or to Soames’ reply. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (summer ): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  - _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2601\PINCREPL.261 : 2006-06-05 11:54  Discussion Russell, Soames notes that Russell’s “view that ordinary proper names mean the same as descriptions associated with them by speakers … was ultimately shown to be deeply problematic by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity” (: ). A reference is then made to Soames’ discussion of Kripke in Volume  where Soames explains how Kripke’s “modal argument” undermined Russell’s approach (: ). Soames also complains that I object to his “characterization of Russellian propositions as complexes of properties and objects whose structure mirrors the logical forms of sentences that express them” (p. ). What I said was that it was “extremely misleading” to say that (quoting Soames again) “propositions constitute the information encoded by sentences … [and of] the information encoded by a sentence (in a logically perfect language) as a complex entity the structure of which mirrors the structure of sentences” (p.  and : –). So, Soames did not say that propositions are “complexes of properties and objects” and if he had said this I would not have objected. Soames goes on to use a settheoretic construction to explain exactly what propositions are. But there is a big difference between a set-theoretic construction and a complex of the sort Russell had in mind, and a reader of Soames would have no awareness of the gap. That is, she is likely to be misled. Finally, Soames says that “Pincock foolishly speculates” (p. ) in ascribing confusion to him about the relevance of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems to Principia Mathematica. Now, when a philosopher gives an argument described as the “final nail in the coffin” (: ), and this argument depends on a tacit assumption, I submit that it is far from foolish to think that the philosopher believes that this assumption is correct. This is, after all, just the methodology that Soames employs when he reconstructs the commitments of the philosophers that he talks about. And, in this case... (shrink)

In November 1953 after giving his lecture “The Question Concerning Technology” at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Martin Heidegger wrote in a letter to his wife: “Yet the decisive thing is…the fact that a horizon is opening up amongst the young people, one which announces itself from within technology while going beyond it.” The genesis of Heidegger’s now famous essay occurred 4 years earlier, however, during a series of four lectures delivered on the evening of December 1st, 1949 to (...) a semi-private group of wealthy ship brokers, businessmen, and industry leaders at the Club zu Bremen. The December 1949 lecture would mark Heidegger’s first public speaking engagement since being made an Emeritus Professor at Freiburg University and the institution of a teaching ban as a result of his affiliation with the Nazi party, which, although lifted in 1949, would prevent him from teaching again until the winter semester of 1950–1951. It was at this prestigious Bremen club, in front of an audien .. (shrink)

In this study, we investigate the conceptual structure of the metaphor “SIMILARITY IS PROXIMITY.” The results of four experiments suggest a tight mental link between similarity and proximity. Two experiments revealed that people judge entities to be more similar to each other when they are placed closely in space, while two other experiments showed that entities are judged to be closer to each other when they are thought to be more similar. We discuss this bidirectional metaphor transfer effect in light (...) of approaches to metaphor understanding, including the long-standing view that metaphorical mappings are assumed to be asymmetrical. We also consider the implications of this bi-directional mapping for high level cognition. (shrink)

Les falsifications idéologiques qui voient dans la puissance le seul déchaînement de la nature, des pulsions et des forces de domination, mobilisent la volonté et les instincts les plus agressifs pour les mettre au service de leur idéal de maîtrise. Vouloir la domination, telle est bien l'interprétation de la puissance que se font les impuissants. Cette interprétation a pour elle la force de l'évidence car c'est toujours la maîtrise, comme fonctionnement institué de la puissance, que nous percevons d'un œil grossier. (...) Les lectures réactives de Nietzsche se trouvent ainsi piégées lorsqu'elles mettent en avant certaines " valeurs nietzschéennes ". Elles ne font que révéler l'idéal de maîtrise qui anime leurs interprétations de la volonté de puissance. Elles oublient de se voir fonctionner en Nietzsche. Inutile pour cette raison de chercher la Grande Politique de Nietzsche dans un programme ou une institution. L'institution des valeurs se fait toujours au détriment de la puissance active d'évaluation individuelle. Alors que les lectures réactives de Nietzsche réduisent l'expression de cette puissance d'évaluation à un non-lieu, les lectures actives de Nietzsche en font une force de libération. De cette force, recouverte ou occultée par les plus grands interprètes de Nietzsche, dépend l'actualité critique d'une pensée pour tous, une pensée dont personne ne peut se prévaloir d'en être le seul maître. (shrink)

In an age where issues like climate change and the unintended consequences of technological innovation are high on the ethical and political agenda, questions about the nature and extent of our responsibilities to future generations have never been more important, yet simultaneously so difficult to answer. This book takes a unique approach to the problem by drawing on diverse traditions of thinking about care (including developmental psychology, phenomenology and feminist ethics) to explore the nature and meaning of our relationship with (...) the future. Demonstrating that many influential perspectives on intergenerational ethics, including positions advanced by John Rawls, Brian Barry, and Ulrich Beck are undermined by problems relating to uncertainty, it shows that an approach based on care ethics can confront the uncertain future successfully and give a viable account of the nature and scope of future-oriented responsibilities. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Suppose we believe that God created the world. Then surely we want it to be the case that he intended, in some sense at least, to create THIS world. Moreover, most theists want to hold that God didn't just guess or hope that the world would take one course or another; rather, he KNEW precisely what was going to take place in the world he planned to create. In particular, of each person P, God knew that P was to exist. (...) Call this the "standard" conception. Most theists find the standard conception appealing. Unfortunately, the view seems to conflict with the equally appealing idea — call it "temporal actualism" — that there are no "future" individuals beyond those that already exist in the present moment. For, on this view, for any historical person P, prior to creation, there was no such person as P and hence nothing about P for God to know. Hence, in particular, God couldn't have known that P was to exist. This is of course not a new problem. But past solutions to it are highly problematic. In this paper, after canvassing previous approaches, I will propose a solution that seems to preserve both temporal actualism and a suitably robust form of the standard conception while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. (shrink)

Ernst Fraenkel, geboren 1898, prägte die deutsche Politikwissenschaft der jungen Bundesrepublik. Er gab ihr eine interdisziplinäre Ausrichtung und gilt als Vater der Pluralismustheorie in Deutschland. Das Buch schildert sein bewegtes Leben, das mit der deutschen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts eng verknüpft ist.

Micheline Sauvage of the French National Scientific Research Centre traces for us the story of this great Athenian and great philosopher, as seen both by his contemporaries and by the European philosophers who followed after him.

Aristotle attaches particular significance to the homonymy of many central concepts in philosophy and science: that is, to the diversity of ways of being common to a single general concept. His preoccupation with homonymy influences his approach to almost every subject that he considers, and it clearly structures the philosophical methodology that he employs both when criticizing others and when advancing his own positive theories. Where there is homonymy there is multiplicity: Aristotle aims to find the order within this multiplicity, (...) and believes that doing so is crucial to scientific inquiry and philosophical progress.Christopher Shields investigates and evaluates Aristotle's approach to questions about homonymy, characterizing the metaphysical and semantic commitments necessary to establish the homonymy of a given concept. Then, in a series of case-studies, Shields examines in detail some of Aristotle's principal applications of homonymy--to the body, sameness and oneness, life, goodness, and being. Shields's aim is not only to give a fuller understanding of Aristotle's methodology and to illuminate his specific doctrines in a variety of areas, but to show that this methodology remains fruitful today. (shrink)

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 78, Issue 1, Page 126-129, Winter 2020.

Expressives like damn and bastard have, when uttered, an immediate and powerful impact on the context. They are performative, often destructively so. They are revealing of the perspective from which the utterance is made, and they can have a dramatic impact on how current and future utterances are perceived. This, despite the fact that speakers are invariably hard-pressed to articulate what they mean. I develop a general theory of these volatile, indispensable meanings. The theory is built around a class of (...) expressive indices. These determine the expressive setting of the context of interpretation. Expressives morphemes act on that context, actively changing its expressive setting. The theory is multidimensional in the sense that descriptives and expressives are fundamentally different but receive a unified logical treatment. (shrink)

A study of Philo and Paul and the first-century sophistic movement.

The essays in this volume illuminate a central topic in ethical theory: moral dilemmas. Some contemporary philosophers dispute the traditional view that a true moral dilemma -- a situation in which a person has two irreconcilable moral duties -- cannot exist. This collection provides the historical background to the ongoing debate with selections from Kant, Mill, Bradley, and Ross. The best recent work on the question is represented in essays by Donagan, Foot, Hare, Marcus, Nagel, van Fraassen, Williams, and others.

The norms surrounding pejorative language, such as racial slurs and swear words, are deeply prohibitive. Pejoratives are typically a means for speakers to express their derogatory attitudes. As these attitudes vary along many dimensions and magnitudes, they initially appear to be resistant to a truth-conditional, semantic analysis. The goal of the paper is to clarify the essential linguistic phenomena surrounding pejoratives, survey the logical space of explanatory theories, evaluate each with respect to the phenomena and provide a preliminary assessment of (...) the initial resistance to a truth-conditional analysis. (shrink)

Moral error theories are often rejected by appeal to ‘companions in guilt’ arguments. The most popular form of companions in guilt argument takes epistemic reasons for belief as a ‘companion’ and proceeds by analogy. I show that this strategy fails. I claim that the companions in guilt theorist must understand epistemic reasons as evidential support relations if her argument is to be dialectically effective. I then present a dilemma. Either epistemic reasons are evidential support relations or they are not. If (...) they are not, then the companions in guilt argument fails. If they are, then a reduction of epistemic reasons to evidential support relations becomes available and, consequently, epistemic reasons cease to be a viable ‘companion’ for moral reasons. I recommend this structure of argument over existing strategies within the literature and defend my claims against recent objections from companions in guilt theorists. (shrink)

No existing normative decision theory adequately handles risk. Expected Utility Theory is overly restrictive in prohibiting a range of reasonable preferences. And theories designed to accommodate such preferences (for example, Buchak's (2013) Risk‐Weighted Expected Utility Theory) violate the Betweenness axiom, which requires that you are indifferent to randomizing over two options between which you are already indifferent. Betweenness has been overlooked by philosophers, and we argue that it is a compelling normative constraint. Furthermore, neither Expected nor Risk‐Weighted Expected Utility Theory (...) allow for stakes‐sensitive risk‐attitudes—they require that risk matters in the same way whether you are gambling for loose change or millions of dollars. We provide a novel normative interpretation of Weighted‐Linear Utility Theory that solves all of these problems. (shrink)

Fallacies and Argument Appraisal presents an introduction to the nature, identification, and causes of fallacious reasoning, along with key questions for evaluation. Drawing from the latest work on fallacies as well as some of the standard ideas that have remained relevant since Aristotle, Christopher Tindale investigates central cases of major fallacies in order to understand what has gone wrong and how this has occurred. Dispensing with the approach that simply assigns labels and brief descriptions of fallacies, Tindale provides fuller treatments (...) that recognize the dialectical and rhetorical contexts in which fallacies arise. This volume analyzes major fallacies through accessible, everyday examples. Critical questions are developed for each fallacy to help the student identify them and provide considered evaluations. (shrink)

Discusses Derrida's writings on Plato, Kant, Hegel, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Freud.