The impact of our desires and preferences upon our ordinary, everyday beliefs is well-documented [Gilovich, T. . How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: The Free Press.]. The influence of such motivational factors on delusions, which are instances of pathological misbelief, has tended however to be neglected by certain prevailing models of delusion formation and maintenance. This paper explores a distinction between two general classes of theoretical explanation for delusions; the motivational (...) and the deficit. Motivational approaches view delusions as extreme instances of self-deception; as defensive attempts to relieve pain and distress. Deficit approaches, in contrast, view delusions as the consequence of defects in the normal functioning of belief mechanisms, underpinned by neuroanatomical or neurophysiological abnormalities. It is argued that although there are good reasons to be sceptical of motivational theories , recent experiments confirm that motives are important causal forces where delusions are concerned. It is therefore concluded that the most comprehensive account of delusions will involve a theoretical unification of both motivational and deficit approaches. (shrink)

Does the formation of delusions involve abnormal reasoning? According to the prominent ‘two-factor’ theory of delusions (e.g. Coltheart, 2007), the answer is yes. The second factor in this theory is supposed to affect a deluded individual's ability to evaluate candidates for belief. However, most published accounts of the two-factor theory have not said much about the nature of this second factor. In an effort to remedy this shortcoming, Coltheart, Menzies and Sutton (2010) recently put forward a Bayesian account (...) of inference in delusions. I outline some criticisms of this important account, and sketch an alternative account of delusional inference that, I argue, avoids these criticisms. Specifically, I argue that the second factor in delusion formation involves a systematic deviation from Bayesian updating, a deviation that may be characterized as a bias towards ‘explanatory adequacy’. I present a numerical model of this idea and show that my alternative account is broadly consistent with prominent prediction error models of delusion formation (e.g. Corlett, Murray et al., 2007). (shrink)

In this paper we ask whether the two-factor theory of delusions is compatible with two claims, that delusions are pathological and that delusions are adaptive. We concentrate on two recent and influential models of the two-factor theory: the one proposed by Max Coltheart, Peter Menzies and John Sutton (2010) and the one developed by Ryan McKay (2012). The models converge on the nature of Factor 1 but diverge about the nature of Factor 2. The differences between the two (...) models are reflected in different accounts of the pathological and adaptive nature of delusions. We will explore such differences, considering naturalist and normativist accounts of the pathological and focusing on judgements of adaptiveness that are informed by the shear-pin hypothesis (McKay and Dennett 2009). After reaching our conclusions about the two models, we draw more general implications for the status of delusions within two-factor theories. Are there good grounds to claim that delusions are pathological? Are delusions ever adaptive? Can delusions be at the same time pathological and adaptive? (shrink)

Highly mobile computing devices promise to improve quality of life, productivity, and performance. Increased situation awareness and reduced mental workload are two potential means by which this can be accomplished. However, it is difficult to measure these concepts in the ‘wild’. We employed an ultra-portable battery operated and wireless functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to non-invasively measure hemodynamic changes in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. Measurements were taken during navigation of a college campus with either a hand-held display, or an augmented (...) reality wearable display. Hemodynamic measures were also paired with secondary tasks of visual perception and auditory working memory to provide behavioral assessment of situation awareness and mental workload. Navigating with an augmented reality wearable display produced the least workload during both secondary tasks. The hemodynamics associated with errors were also different between the two devices. Errors with an augmented reality wearable display were associated with increased prefrontal activity and the opposite was observed for the hand-held display. This suggests that the cognitive mechanisms underlying errors between the two devices differ. These findings show fNIRS is a valuable tool for assessing new technology in ecologically valid settings and that head-mounted displays offer benefits with regards to mental workload while navigating, and potentially superior situation awareness with improved display design. (shrink)

Engaging in environmental stewardship is critical for sustainability. Understanding individual differences and engagement is an important gap in present scholarship and addressing it is necessary to understand individual factors that relate to the types of activities engaged in, motivations and barriers to environmental stewardship. We surveyed 637 Canadian and American adults via Amazon Mechanical Turk, querying a range of demographic, psychological and environmental perceptions factors as well as motivations and barriers to stewardship activities. Respondents were ultimately grouped into Non-Stewards, Home-Oriented (...) Stewards and Community-Oriented Stewards. Few differences were found among these groups. However, Home-Oriented Stewards and Community-Oriented Stewards exhibited very different initial and ongoing motivations to engage in environmental stewardship. Accordingly, we identify stewardship motivations as a potential leverage point and as one of several promising avenues for future research related to enhancing engagement in environmental stewardship for the sustainability of the planet. (shrink)

Writing in EIA 22, no. 1, Mathias Risse presented a novel way to think about the problem of immigration in the context of global justice, adopting the standpoint of the common ownership of the earth. The following Exchange is in response to that essay.

Kopec and Titelbaum collect five alleged counterexamples to Uniqueness, the thesis that it is impossible for agents who have the same total evidence to be ideally rational in having different doxastic attitudes toward the same proposition. I argue that four of the alleged counterexamples fail, and that Uniqueness should be slightly modified to accommodate the fifth example.

Physicians vary in their moral judgments about health care costs. Social intuitionism posits that moral judgments arise from gut instincts, called “moral foundations.” The objective of this study was to determine if “harm” and “fairness” intuitions can explain physicians’ judgments about cost-containment in U.S. health care and using cost-effectiveness data in practice, as well as the relative importance of those intuitions compared to “purity”, “authority” and “ingroup” in cost-related judgments.

This essay describes Newman’s adaptations of plays by Plautus (c. 254–184 BC) and Terence (195/185–159 BC) for performance at the Birmingham Oratory School. Because Newman believed in the value of Latin plays for students, he expended a great deal of energy on their adaptation and production while carefully editing the plays to omit any questionable content.

Despite the title, Arthur Ripstein’s Kant and the Law of War is best read as a comprehensive account of rightful international order.1 While the book is certainly a groundbreaking intervention into...

In this paper we argue that there is a kind of moral disagreement that survives the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. While a veil of ignorance eliminates sources of disagreement stemming from self-interest, it does not do anything to eliminate deeper sources of disagreement. These disagreements not only persist, but transform their structure once behind the veil of ignorance. We consider formal frameworks for exploring these differences in structure between interested and disinterested disagreement, and argue that consensus models offer us a (...) solution concept for disagreements behind the veil of ignorance. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of mathematics are deadlocked between two alternative ontologies for numbers: Platonism and nominalism. According to contemporary mathematical Platonism, numbers are real abstract objects, i.e. particulars which are nonetheless “wholly nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatial, nontemporal, and noncausal.” While this view does justice to intuitions about numbers and mathematical semantics, it leaves unclear how we could ever learn anything by mathematical inquiry. Mathematical nominalism, by contrast, holds that numbers do not exist extra-mentally, which raises difficulties about how mathematical statements could be (...) true or false. Both theories, moreover, leave inexplicable how mathematics could have such a close relationship with natural science, since neither abstract nor mental objects can influence concrete physical objects. The Thomist understanding of quantity as an accident inhering in concrete substances breaks this deadlock by granting numbers a foundation in extra-mental reality which explains why numeric expressions are relevant in natural science and how we come to know the truth or falsity of mathematical statements. Further, this kind of moderate realism captures the semantic advantages of the Platonists and the ontological parsimony of the nominalists (since for Thomists quantity is not a separate, free-standing ontological addition). Despite these advantages, the Thomistic understanding of number has been out of favor since the work of Cantor, who argued that actual infinities (regarded by Aristotelians as impossible) are required for modern developments in mathematics. This paper frees philosophers of mathematics to embrace the advantages of Thomistic realism by showing that Cantor’s understanding of actual and potential infinity is not the same as Aquinas’s, and that potential infinities (in Aquinas and Aristotle’s sense) can do all the work Cantor claims for actual infinities in modern mathematics. (shrink)

I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is: understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well—regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary (...) condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lies within the domain of wisdom. I show that the argued for condition yields the desirable result that being wise is not a common achievement, but that it is not something that can only plausibly be achieved in the modern era. (shrink)

A descriptive norm is a behavioral rule that individuals follow when their empirical expectations of others following the same rule are met. We aim to provide an account of the emergence of descriptive norms by first looking at a simple case, that of the standing ovation. We examine the structure of a standing ovation, and show it can be generalized to describe the emergence of a wide range of descriptive norms.

The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill demonstrates that Mill both saw his views as part of a systematic defense of empiricist epistemology and utilitarian ethics, and was to a large extent successful in offering a coherent and connected defense of this system. At the time Alan Ryan's highly acclaimed study was first published, it was unusual in insisting on the systematic character of Mill's philosophy. Since 1970, however, many writers have contributed to a more systematic understanding of Mill's program (...) for philosophy, ethics and social science, and Alan Ryan's new preface to the second edition assesses the way Mill appears in this new climate of opinion. (shrink)

Recent setbacks to international institutions and projects of global governance have been viewed as marking a resurgence of nation-state sovereignty. In fact, however, many of the major controversies and developments in contemporary international law and geopolitics concern the administration, autonomy, and internal hierarchy not of states, but of supra-state regions. The spatial logic of a world divided into such regions is best articulated in Carl Schmitt’s theory of the Großraum, which in various respects describes and explains key features of modern (...) world order. Taking regional systems as self-constituting political units characterized by internal forms of dominance and legitimation aids in identifying the operation of hegemony in contemporary international law and institutions. It also makes possible a reinterpretation of global constitutionalist discourse as a democratizing project that finds its most important expressions in counter-hegemonic movements within the various “great spaces” constituting today’s world. (shrink)

In this article we outline the ways in which questions of language have both revealed problems with conceptions of knowledge and suggested constructive ways of addressing those problems. Having examined the limitations of instrumental notions of language, we outline some alternatives, especially those developed from the middle of the 19th and throughout the 20th century. We locate forceful and influential philosophical interventions in the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger and foundational revisions in the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and his (...) structuralist inheritors. We also chart the parallel path of literary theory from Mallarmé through Blanchot and poststructuralism to deconstruction. We conclude, after making some observations about the politicization of language in the works of feminist and postcolonial theorists, with some remarks about how the question of language helps to problematize global knowledge. (shrink)

The import of underground facilities in military strategy in the US grew exponentially after the Gulf War. The success of precision-guided conventional missiles meant that any above-ground building or complex could be accurately targeted and destroyed, thus driving states with less sophisticated weapons to go underground to secure space for covert weapons development and the protection of command and control centres for military and governmental functions. Underground facilities have thus become the main challenge to objects of detection and targeting practices (...) for US military research and development. This article provides a meditation on the underground in relation to military planning and technology, the limits of aerial visual control of terrain, the plans by the US military to counter underground defensive moves, the efficacy of tele-technologies to detect and destroy such installations at a distance, and an oblique genealogy of aerial and subterrestrial strategies in relation to technologies to overcome the limitations of each. In so doing, the article argues a deeply connected relationship between the imaginary and the material in attempts to realize a mastery of space and populations essential to military operations, thus posing questions about sensory perception, the status of the subject with regard to agency and control, and the prosthetic outfitting of the subject that both supports and blunts agency and control. (shrink)

The design office of Charles and Ray Eames was a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multimedia affair linking Hollywood, the State Department, universities, the corporate sector and international fairs during the height of the Cold War. Bringing together design, furniture, cutting-edge technology and experimental, avant-garde informed-multiscreen projections, the Eames Office operated as a humanities/IT/media/arts lab. For the 1964 World’s Fair, the Eameses created ‘The Information Machine’ for IBM. The techniques of display and experimental juxtaposition of images, sound and new media capacities later migrated (...) to the many ‘happenings’ following in the wake of Allan Kaprow’s medial and performative experiments. The Eames Office crafted for the 1964 World’s Fair a vision of global change and possibility grounded in avant-garde visual techniques and aesthetics that continue to constitute a specific globe crafted by the US Cold War military-industrial-university-entertainment complex that remains the grounds for our current collective nomos. (shrink)

This introduction to the special section ‘The Half-Life of the Avant-Garde: 50 Years On from 50 Years On’ explains why the section is conceived to look back at the century since the First World War. It is designed to offer ways of rethinking the concept and the role of the anniversary, where the First World War constitutes the memorialized event. The organization of the section follows the movement between often hidden or submerged forms of continuity. It attempts to think some (...) of the aesthetic and technological legacies and inheritances of the First World War in its durational 100th anniversary through a specific temporal strategy most succinctly captured in the phrase ‘50 years on from 50 years on’. The entry point is the middle of the 20th century, allowing contributors to work backward and forward by examining links between the three separate temporal frames. The consistency but also the strangeness of critical practices, as world history passes with its violent climaxes and depressions, has unique contours in each frame, with Dada providing an exemplary through-line. (shrink)

It has become an article of faith among historians of logic that the square of opposition diagram is due not to Aristotle, but to Apuleius. I examine three Aristotelian texts and argue that Prior Analytics I.46 contains a square of opposition, making Aristotle the discoverer of the diagram.

Young and colleagues . Betwixt life and death: case studies of the Cotard delusion. In P. W. Halligan & J. C. Marshall , Method in madness: Case studies in cognitive neuropsychiatry. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.) have suggested that cases of the Cotard delusion result when a particular perceptual anomaly occurs in the context of an internalising attributional style. This hypothesis has not previously been tested directly. We report here an investigation of attributional style in a 24-year-old woman with Cotard (...) delusion . LU’s attributional style was assessed using the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire . A new measure of causal locus: the internal, personal and situational attributions questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 20, 261–264.). LU showed a significantly greater proportion of internalising attributions than the control group, both overall and for negative events specifically. The results obtained thus support an association of Cotard delusion with an internalising attributional style, and are therefore consistent with the account of Young and colleagues. The potential brain basis of Cotard delusion is discussed. (shrink)

Persian possesses a number of stative complex predicates with _dâshtan_ ‘to have’ that express certain kinds of mental state. I propose that these _possessive experiencer complex predicates_ be given a formal semantic treatment involving possession of a portion of an abstract quality by an individual, as in the analysis of property concept lexemes due to Francez and Koontz-Garboden (Language 91(3):533–563, 2015 ; Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34:93–106, 2016 ; Semantics and morphosyntactic variation: Qualities and the grammar of property concepts, (...) Oxford University Press, 2017 ). Augmented with an analysis of prepositional phrases introducing the target of the mental state and an approach to gradability in terms of measure functions (Wellwood in Measuring predicates, PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 2014 ), the analysis explains various properties of possessive experiencer complex predicates, including the behavior of target phrases, the ability of the non-verbal element to be modified by a range of adjectives, the direct participation of the non-verbal element in comparative constructions, and the ability of degree expressions to modify both the non-verbal element and the VP containing the complex predicate. Theoretically, the analysis ties transitive mental state expressions to the grammar and semantics of property concept sentences, which are expressed via possessive morphosyntax cross-linguistically, and connects with syntactic proposals that independently argue for a universal underlyingly possessive morphosyntax for mental state predicates (Noonan in Case and syntactic geometry, PhD dissertation, McGill University, 1992 ; Hale and Keyser in Prolegomenon to a theory of argument structure, MIT Press, 2002 ). The work here also motivates modifications to Francez and Koontz-Garboden’s original proposal, and opens new questions in the original empirical domain of the analysis of possessive predicating strategies for the expression of property concept sentences. (shrink)

Scholars have extensively debated the family’s place within liberalism, generally, and specific attention and critique has been given to the family in Rawls’ work. What has received less focus are the requirements of parents in a Rawlsian polity and, further, what those requirements might imply for the one case where states explicitly regulate the process of becoming parents: adoption. This paper seeks to discover what might be required of parents, adoptive or otherwise, in a Rawlsian social contract state. Second, it (...) considers adoptive parent selection in light of these requirements as well as Rawls’ arguments regarding merit and fair equality of opportunity. Finally, it considers what such a merit-based selection of adoptive parents implies for the disputed rights of same-sex couples to adopt children. Further, because the question of merit in this case will hinge upon what it means to be a “fit parent,” it also draws upon relevant empirical social science studies regarding gay and lesbian parents. The paper, then, evaluates both the theoretical and empirical validity of generalized claims that same-sex couples are less fit to be parents than are heterosexual couples. (shrink)

Franz Brentano's claim to fame is the reintroduction of intentionality to the modern philosophy of mind. Hickerson's book offers new interpretations of a central philosophical concept employed in the Brentano School, arguing against the now-standard misreading of Brentano as Immanentist. The History of Intentionality is a continuing history and will be valuable to present-day specialists and students in phenomenology and the philosophy of mind.

Combating and overcoming corruption in business and in political affairs is one of the most important issues facing business and professional ethics in the 21st century. That corruption exists is a fact. That corruption is widespread and spreading is a commonperception. Many believe that corruption is culturally induced. Some believe corruption to be so much a part of the fabric of some societies as to be unquestioned and unassailable. Or, is it simply a myth that corruption is a matter of (...) culture? (shrink)

Fleming, Daniel J; Ryan, Thomas Three recent phrases of Pope Francis warrant attention and guide this article. First, there is his call for 'witnesses of God's love' in his tribute to modern martyrs. The second is 'the pedagogy of grace' and the work of the Spirit explained in 'Amoris Laetitia'. Third, from the same document, we find his discussion of accompaniment in the process of moral discernment within the church. With these as guideposts and drawing on recent studies in (...) moral philosophy and psychology, this article unfolds in five steps: setting the scene; witness in relation to moral understanding and intersubjectivity; intersubjectivity and conscience; a pedagogy of grace: Holy Spirit and nonbelievers; and a pedagogy of grace in relation to moral development. (shrink)

For Ordinary Language philosophy, at issue is the use of the expressions of language, not expressions in and of themselves. So, at issue is not, for example, ordinary versus (say) technical words; nor is it a distinction based on the language used in various areas of discourse, for example academic, technical, scientific, or lay, slang or street discourses – ordinary uses of language occur in all discourses. It is sometimes the case that an expression has distinct uses within distinct discourses, (...) for example, the expression ‘empty space’. This may have both a lay and a scientific use, and both uses may count as ordinary; as long as it is quite clear which discourse is in play, and thus which of the distinct uses of the expression is in play. Though connected, the difference in use of the expression in different discourses signals a difference in the sense with which it is used, on the Ordinary Language view. One use, say the use in physics, in which it refers to a vacuum, is distinct from its lay use, in which it refers rather more flexibly to, say, a room with no objects in it, or an expanse of land with no buildings or trees. However, on this view, one sense of the expression, though more precise than the other, would not do as a replacement of the other term; for the lay use of the term is perfectly adequate for the uses it is put to, and the meaning of the term in physics would not allow speakers to express what they mean in these other contexts. (shrink)

Abstract Semi-autonomous robotic weapons are already carving out a role for themselves in modern warfare. Recently, Ronald Arkin has argued that autonomous lethal robotic systems could be more ethical than humans on the battlefield, and that this marks a significant reason in favour of their development and use. Here I offer a critical response to the position advanced by Arkin. Although I am sympathetic to the spirit of the motivation behind Arkin's project and agree that if we decide to develop (...) and use these machines they ought to be programmed to behave ethically, there are several major problems with his view as it stands. At present, it is not clear whether such machines would be capable of behaving more ethically than humans. More importantly, to the extent that humans would remain in the context of war, human moral transgressions will continue, especially in the face of complicated ethical challenges accompanying automated warfare. Moreover, even if machines could be more ethical than humans in certain ways and in certain situations, this says nothing about whether warfare that contains these machines would itself be overall more ethical than warfare that does not include them as participants, or whether the inclusion of lethal robots is the best way to guard against human moral transgressions in war. (shrink)

We can make a good prima facie case for the inconsistency of Reid's theory of perception with his rejection of the Ideal Theory. Most scholars believe Reid adopts a theory on which the immediate object of perception is a physical body. Reid is thought to do this in order to avoid problems generated by the veil of perception in the Ideal Theory, a conjunction of commitments Reid closely associates with Hume and Locke. Reid explains that the Ideal Theory "leans with (...) its whole weight upon a hypothesis...[t]hat nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it". Reid attributes to the Ideal Theory thesis. (shrink)