This volume is about the many ways we perceive. Contributors explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. They consider how the senses extract perceptual content from receptoral information. They consider what kinds of objects we perceive and whether multiple senses ever perceive a single event. They consider how many senses we have, what makes one sense distinct from another, and whether and why distinguishing senses may be useful. (...) They consider the extent to which the senses act in concert, rather than as discrete modalities, and whether this influence is epistemically pernicious, neutral, or beneficial. They explore both the familiar five sense modalities and other candidate sense modalities, including a sense for flavour, inner senses (e.g., a sense for pain), and various senses that may result from using sensory substitution devices. Contributors often represent competing views, and the methods they deploy sometimes differ from one essay to the next—with some drawing upon the sciences and engineering and others relying upon conceptual analysis. All contributors agree, nonetheless, that traditional theorizing about the senses is hampered by a neglect of the senses other than vision, and by the misconception that vision is a passive receptacle for an image thrown by a lens. And many contributors believe that it is unduly restrictive to think of perception as a collation of contents provided by individual sense modalities; they think that to understand perception properly, we need to build into our accounts the idea that the senses work together. The ambition of the volume is to begin to develop better paradigms for understanding the senses, and thereby to move toward a better understanding of perception. (shrink)

This paper takes up the problem of correlationism from a phenomenological perspective. Speculative realists, such as Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman, seek to establish new forms of Continental realism largely because, in their view, phenomenology cannot adequately account for the real. To counter these claims, I will use what I call a “critical phenomenological approach”, which critically delimits the real from the intentional relation, and thus makes possible a phenomenological theory of the real. This approach to realism establishes not only (...) that the real is independent from the intentional relation but also that the intentional relation itself is contingent with regard to the real. Furthermore, it also shows that the human being is exposed to the real in an originary way that calls into question the adequacy of Meillassoux’s and Harman’s forms of realism. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will investigate the ramifications of moral knowledge for naturalism (roughly, the view that all that exists is the natural world). Specifically, we will draw attention to a certain problem we face if the world is purely naturalistic. We will then show how theism provides resources for solving this problem. We’ll argue that the fact that we have lots of moral knowledge fi ts better with theism than with naturalism. Specifically, we’ll present reasons to think that (1) (...) naturalists who think we have lots of moral knowledge will have trouble rationally maintaining both their naturalism and their belief that we have such knowledge and (2) theism better explains the fact that we have lots of moral knowledge than naturalism does. (shrink)

Background: The regulation of muscle force is a vital aspect of sensorimotor control, requiring intricate neural processes. While neural activity associated with upper extremity force control has been documented, extrapolation to lower extremity force control is limited. Knowledge of how the brain regulates force control for knee extension and flexion may provide insights as to how pathology or intervention impacts central control of movement.Objectives: To develop and implement a neuroimaging-compatible force control paradigm for knee extension and flexion.Methods: A magnetic resonance (...) imaging safe load cell was used in a customized apparatus to quantify force during neuroimaging. Visual biofeedback and a target sinusoidal wave that fluctuated between 0 and 5 N was provided via an MRI-safe virtual reality display. Fifteen right leg dominant female participants completed a knee extension and flexion force matching paradigm during neuroimaging. The force-matching error was calculated based on the difference between the visual target and actual performance. Brain activation patterns were calculated and associated with force-matching error and the difference between quadriceps and hamstring force-matching tasks were evaluated with a mixed-effects model.Results: Knee extension and flexion force-matching tasks increased BOLD signal among cerebellar, sensorimotor, and visual-processing regions. Increased knee extension force-matching error was associated with greater right frontal cortex and left parietal cortex activity and reduced left lingual gyrus activity. Increased knee flexion force-matching error was associated with reduced left frontal and right parietal region activity. Knee flexion force control increased bilateral premotor, secondary somatosensory, and right anterior temporal activity relative to knee extension. The force-matching error was not statistically different between tasks.Conclusion: Lower extremity force control results in unique activation strategies depending on if engaging knee extension or flexion, with knee flexion requiring increased neural activity for the same level of force and no difference in relative error. These fMRI compatible force control paradigms allow precise behavioral quantification of motor performance concurrent with brain activity for lower extremity sensorimotor function and may serve as a method for future research to investigate how pathologies affect lower extremity neuromuscular function. (shrink)

The belief bias in reasoning occurs when individuals are more willing to accept conclusions that are consistent with their beliefs than conclusions that are inconsistent. The present study...

This paper attempts to answer two questions: What is epistemic agency? And what are the motivations for having this concept? In response to the first question, it is argued that epistemic agency is the agency one has over one’s belief-forming practices, or doxastic dispositions, which can directly affect the way one forms a belief and indirectly affect the beliefs one forms. In response to the second question, it is suggested that the above conception of epistemic agency is either implicitly endorsed (...) by those theorists sympathetic to epistemic normativity or, at minimum, this conception can make sense of the legitimacy of the normative notions applicable to how and what one should believe. It is further contended that belief formation in some respects is a skill that can be intentionally developed and refined. Accepting this contention and the existence of certain epistemic norms provide inconclusive yet good reasons to endorse this concept. Recent challenges to this concept by Hillary Kornblith and Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij are also considered. (shrink)

Nick Bostrom has famously defended the credibility of the simulation hypothesis – the hypothesis that we live in a computer simulation. Barry Dainton has recently employed the simulation hypothesis to defend the ‘simulation solution’ to the problem of natural evil. The simulation solution claims that apparently natural evils are in fact the result of wrong actions on the part of the people who create our simulation. In this way, it treats apparently natural evils as actually being moral evils, allowing them (...) to be explained via the free will theodicy. Other theodicies which assimilate apparently natural evils to moral ones include Fall theodicies, which attribute apparently natural evils to the biblical Fall, and diabolical theodicies, which attribute them to the activity of demons. Unfortunately, Dainton fails to give compelling reasons for preferring the simulation solution to Fall or diabolical theodicies. He gives one argument against diabolical theodicies, but it has no force against their best version, and he does not discuss Fall theodicies at all. In this article, I attempt to rectify this. I discuss several problems faced by Fall and diabolical theodicies which the simulation solution avoids. These provide some reason to prefer the simulation solution to these alternatives. (shrink)

We discuss Boltzmann’s probabilistic explanation of the second law of thermodynamics providing a comprehensive presentation of what is called today the typicality account. Countering its misconception as an alternative explanation, we examine the relation between Boltzmann’s H-theorem and the general typicality argument demonstrating the conceptual continuity between the two. We then discuss the philosophical dimensions of the concept of typicality and its relevance for scientific reasoning in general, in particular for understanding the reduction of macroscopic laws to microscopic laws. Finally, (...) we reply to various common criticisms of the typicality account. (shrink)

Using the example of classical electrodynamics, I argue that the concept of fields as mediators of particle interactions is fundamentally flawed and reflects a misguided attempt to retrieve Newtonian concepts in relativistic theories. This leads to various physical and metaphysical problems that are discussed in detail. In particular, I emphasize that physics has not found a satisfying solution to the self-interaction problem in the context of the classical field theory. To demonstrate the superiority of a pure particle ontology, I defend (...) the direct interaction theory of Wheeler and Feynman against recent criticism and argue that it provides the most cogent formulation of classical electrodynamics. (shrink)

Perception is typically distinguished from cognition. For example, seeing is importantly different from believing. And while what one sees clearly influences what one thinks, it is debatable whether what one believes and otherwise thinks can influence, in some direct and non-trivial way, what one sees. The latter possible relation is the cognitive penetration of perception. Cognitive penetration, if it occurs, has implications for philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. This paper offers an analysis of the phenomenon, (...) its theoretical consequences, and a variety of experimental results and possible interpretations of them. The paper concludes by proposing some constraints for analyses and definitions of cognitive penetrability. (shrink)

According to a number of recent philosophers, knowledge has an intimate relationship with rationality. Some philosophers hold, in particular, that rational agents do things for good motivating reasons, and that p can be one’s motivating reason for -ing (acting/believing/fearing/etc.) only if one knows that p. This paper argues against this view and in favor of the view that p cannot be one’s motivating reason for -ing—in the relevant sense—unless there is an appropriate explanatory connection between the fact that p and (...) one’s -ing. I argue that this view offers a better account of the cases alleged to support the knowledge view. (shrink)

The Socratic Turn addresses the question of whether we can acquire genuine knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong. Reputedly, Socrates was the first philosopher to make the attempt. But Socrates was a materialistic natural scientist in his youth, and it was only much later in life--after he had rejected materialistic natural science--that he finally turned, around the age of forty, to the examination of ordinary moral and political opinions, or to moral-political philosophy so understood. Through a consideration of (...) Plato's account of Socrates' intellectual development, and with a view to relevant works of the pre-Socratics, Xenophon, Aristotle, Hesiod, Homer, and Aristophanes, Dustin Sebell reproduces the course of thought that carried Socrates from materialistic natural science to moral-political philosophy. By doing so, he seeks to recover an all but forgotten approach to the question of justice, one still worthy of being called scientific.--Book jacket. (shrink)

When we engage in practical deliberation, we sometimes engage in careful probabilistic reasoning. At other times, we simply make flat out assumptions about how the world is or will be. A question thus arises: when, if ever, is it rationally permissible to engage in the latter, less sophisticated kind of practical deliberation? Recently, a number of authors have argued that the answer concerns whether one knows that p. Others have argued that the answer concerns whether one is justified in believing (...) that one knows that p. Against both of these, this paper argues that the answer concerns whether p is ‘practically certain’—that is, whether the actual epistemic probability that p differs from epistemic certainty that p only in ways that are irrelevant to the decision one currently faces. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between terror, power and the rule of law. First, tracing Burke’s use of the term terror back to ancient Greek usage, I argue that being terrified is incommensurable with the experience of acting together with others. In this way, terror and power are distinct. However, most acts of terror aim to terrify some people while inoculating others from terror. Witnesses to the terror of others may feel empowered by the destruction of the power of others. (...) Second, the rule of law and terror seem incommensurable because causing terror often involves violating the law. However, modern political thought is founded on the idea that the law itself ought to be terrifying. That the terror of non-state actors appears random and the terror of the law has hardly been noticed in recent commentary on terrorism indicate that the rule of law produces an interesting audience effect. In order to sustain power and legitimacy while practising terror, governments use the rule of law to divide audiences up into terrified criminals and innocent witnesses. The practice of terror as an ‘open secret’ also produces similar audience effects. Finally, despite these connections between power, terror and the rule of law, I argue that terror is always technically out of power, even when practised by states. Terror is the true weapon of the weak because it always admits a failure to foster human connections with certain people and groups. Nonviolence is a weapon of the weak in the sense that it instantiates new, unencumbered power. (shrink)

It has generally been recognized that while Bruno Latour’s and Martin Heidegger’s respective philosophies of technology converge on key points there is also a significant difference of attitudes towards the themes discussed. To better appreciate the similarities and differences, I suggest that we seek to understand both Latour and Heidegger as philosophers of the event, who seek to rescue the novel emergence of beings from the sedimentation of reductive, explanatory frameworks. I take up this line of thought and compare Latour’s (...) and Heidegger’s theories of things and the types of experiences they presume. Latour’s metaphysics of the actant ensures that no actant’s activity is ever reduced to being the passive effect of another. Yet while the actant can be ‘applied’ to any entity, from a Heideggerian standpoint this strength is precisely its weakness. Latour’s metaphysics provides a horizon of thought that blocks an original experience of things that Heidegger’s thought points towards. By stepping back from the horizonal experience Latour’s metaphysical blueprint for entities imposes, one can enter into an original opening that stems neither from humans nor nonhumans, but an ineradicable mystery at the origin of being. This mystery is nothing more than the inability to give ultimate reasons for the presence of beings. While Latour’s actant as _Ding_ is simply an actant with innumerable relations, Heidegger’s _das Ding_ is the concrete experience of the dissolution of metaphysical reasons, first and last causes. Precisely because Heidegger’s _das Ding_ emerges from a prior mystery that suspends any overarching causal or purposive schema, things can more freely presence from themselves. (shrink)

Structuralism and quidditism are competing views of the metaphysics of property individuation: structuralists claim that properties are individuated by their nomological roles; quidditists claim that they are individuated by something else. This paper (1) refutes what many see as the best reason to accept structuralism over quidditism and (2) offers a methodological argument in favor of a quidditism. The standard charge against quidditism is that it commits us to something ontologically otiose: intrinsic aspects of properties, so-called ‘quiddities’. Here I grant (...) that quiddities are ontologically otiose, but deny that quidditism requires them. According to a view I call ‘austere quidditism’, properties are individuated by bare numerical identity. I argue that, as far as ontological parsimony is concerned, austere quidditism and structuralism are on a par. But is austere quidditism a coherent alternative to structuralism? To see that it is, we must get clear on what exactly we mean by ‘property individuation’. What we discover is that structuralism is a counterpart theory for properties, and that austere quidditism is simply the rejection of counterpart theory. I conclude with a methodological argument to the effect that counterpart theory for properties ought to be rejected. This paper begins by situating the debate between structuralists and quidditists within the context of a debate over the epistemic limits of fundamental science. At the center of this debate is David Lewis’s posthumously published ‘Ramseyan Humility’ (2008). In the appendix I explain the precise role of austere quidditism in Lewis’s argument. (shrink)

The ‘impairment argument’ against abortion developed by Perry Hendricks aims to derive the wrongness of abortion from the wrongness of causing foetal alcohol syndrome. Hendricks endorses an ‘impairment principle’, which states that, if it is wrong to inflict an impairment of a certain degree on an organism, then, ceteris paribus, it is also wrong to inflict a more severe impairment on that organism. Causing FAS is wrong in virtue of the impairment it inflicts. But abortion inflicts an even more severe (...) impairment, and so, ceteris paribus, is also wrong. Notably, Hendricks thinks that this argument does not require the claim that the foetus is a person. Here, I respond to Hendricks by arguing that the ceteris paribus clause of the impairment principle is not met in ordinary cases of pregnancy. Carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term is much more burdensome than is refraining from excessive drinking for nine months. This provides a pro tanto justification for obtaining an abortion that does not apply to causing FAS. If the foetus is not a person, it seems fairly clear to me that this justification is strong enough to render abortion permissible. Hendricks is therefore incorrect in claiming that the impairment argument can go without claims concerning foetal personhood. If the foetus is a person, then whether burdensomeness justifies abortion depends on certain questions relating to Thomson’s famous violinist argument. I will not attempt to answer those. But anyone who is otherwise sympathetic to Thomson’s argument should not be moved by the impairment argument. (shrink)

This paper considers an orectic penetration hypothesis which says that desires and desire-like states may influence perceptual experience in a non-externally mediated way. This hypothesis is clarified with a definition, which serves further to distinguish the interesting target phenomenon from trivial and non-genuine instances of desire-influenced perception. Orectic penetration is an interesting possible case of the cognitive penetrability of perceptual experience. The orectic penetration hypothesis is thus incompatible with the more common thesis that perception is cognitively impenetrable. It is of (...) importance to issues in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, epistemology, and general philosophy of science. The plausibility of orectic perception can be motivated by some classic experimental studies, and some new experimental research inspired by those same studies. The general suggestion is that orectic penetration thus defined, and evidenced by the relevant studies, cannot be deflected by the standard strategies of the cognitive impenetrability theorist. (shrink)

Computer programs are generating artworks of astonishing novelty and aesthetic value. By the standard definition of creativity, these programs would count as being creative. But if you still hesitate to call a program creative, that's for good reason, we argue. It's because real creativity requires AGENTS who are responsible for what they make, and it's not at all clear that these programs are agents. -/- (The title was imposed by the editor. It was supposed to be called, "ARE COMPUTERS CREATIVE?").

Certain philosophers maintain that there is a ‘constitutive threshold for belief’: to believe that p just is to have a degree of confidence that p above a certain threshold. On the basis of this view, these philosophers defend what is known as ‘the Lockean Thesis ’, according to which it is rational to believe that p just in case it is rational to have a degree of confidence that p above the constitutive threshold for belief. While not directly speaking to (...) the controversy over the Lockean Thesis, this paper defends the general idea behind it—namely, the thesis that there is some threshold such that it is rational to believe that p if and only if it is rational to have a degree of confidence great than that threshold. This paper identifies the threshold in question—not with the alleged constitutive threshold for belief—but with what I call ‘the practical threshold for rational belief’. Roughly, the thesis defended here is that it is rational to believe that p if and only if it is rational to have a degree of confidence that p that rationalizes engaging in certain types of practical reasoning. (shrink)

What is the basis of our obligations to our animal companions? This is an important question for practical reasons, as the relationship that many individuals have with their animal companion is amongst the most intimate of relationships they share with a non-human animal. It is also important for theoretical reasons. One of those reasons is that our commitments to animal companions may appear to present a kind of puzzle. If we think that we have moral commitments to animal companions that (...) we do not have to other animals, such as livestock or free-roaming animals, what could explain this? I argue that the explanation for this difference in moral commitments is the result of the special relationship we have with our animal companions. More specifically, the basis of our moral commitments to animal companions are like those incurred by parents. Further, it is argued that causing the existence of or voluntarily taking on commitments of care for especially vulnerable and dependent sentient organisms implies robust responsibilities aimed at nurturing and promoting individual flourishing. This conclusion has implications regarding several related moral issues, such as whether animal companions require a moral education, what end-of-life commitments animal companion caregivers have, and whether it is justified to feed our animal companions other animals or let them engage in predation. Further, these issues are of practical interest to animal companion caregivers, law makers, and veterinarians, as well as being of theoretical interest to legal scholars and ethicists. (shrink)

We identify a class of paradoxes that is neither set-theoretical nor semantical, but that seems to depend on intensionality. In particular, these paradoxes arise out of plausible properties of propositional attitudes and their objects. We try to explain why logicians have neglected these paradoxes, and to show that, like the Russell Paradox and the direct discourse Liar Paradox, these intensional paradoxes are recalcitrant and challenge logical analysis. Indeed, when we take these paradoxes seriously, we may need to rethink the commonly (...) accepted methods for dealing with the logical paradoxes. (shrink)

It is well known that Socrates was executed by the city of Athens for not believing in the gods and for corrupting the youth. Despite this, it is not widely known what he really thought, or taught the youth to think, about philosophy, the gods, and political affairs. Of the few authors we rely on for firsthand knowledge of Socrates—Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle—only Xenophon, the least read of the four, lays out the whole Socratic education in systematic order. In (...) Xenophon's Socratic Education, through a careful reading of Book IV of Xenophon's Memorabilia, Dustin Sebell shows how Socrates ascended, with his students in tow, from opinions about morality or politics and religion to knowledge of such things. Besides revealing what it was that Socrates really thought—about everything from self-knowledge to happiness, natural theology to natural law, and rhetoric to dialectic—Sebell demonstrates how Socrates taught promising youths, like Xenophon or Plato, only indirectly: by jokingly teaching unpromising youths in their presence. Sebell ultimately shows how Socrates, the founder of moral and political philosophy, sought and found an answer to the all-important question: should we take our bearings in life from human reason, or revealed religion? (shrink)

The paper provides a critical discussion of the Super-Humean view of spacetime and the “minimalist ontology” in terms of Leibnizian relations and primitive matter points, recently developed by Esfeld et al. It investigates, in particular, the empirical adequacy of the proposed metaphysics, arguing that Super-Humeanism cannot provide a plausible account of space and time without committing to bona fide geometric structure in the fundamental relations. Against this backdrop, I propose a moderate version of Super-Humeanism and discuss its possible application to (...) Euclidean space and General Relativity. (shrink)

Sharon Street (2006) has argued that, given certain plausible evolutionary considerations, normative realism leads to normative skepticism. Street calls this ‘the Darwinian dilemma’. This paper considers the two most popular responses to the Darwinian dilemma and argues that both are problematic. According to the naturalist response, the evolutionary account of our normative dispositions reveals that there was selection for normative dispositions that were reliable with respect to normative truth. According to the minimalist response, the evolutionary account reveals that there was (...) selection of normative dispositions that were reliable with respect to normative truth. This paper argues that the minimalist response is in principle unacceptable, and that the naturalist response faces a very serious difficulty. (shrink)

No consensus has been reached about the reconstruction of Euripides' fragmentary tragedyBellerophon, but two suggestions have not received the serious attention they deserve. The first is that Stheneboea is a character in the play, and the second that Euripides does not depict Bellerophon as an atheist or an impious hero. In this paper, I shall reconsider both of these suggestions. In fact, the addition of Stheneboea to thedramatis personaeallows us to correct the second problem, as I shall propose that Stheneboea, (...) not Bellerophon, speaks the infamous atheistic fragment. (shrink)

Dustin McWherter defends the possibility of critical ontology by pitting Roy Bhaskar's attempt to rehabilitate ontology in the philosophy of science against Kant's attempt to replace traditional ontology with an account of cognitive experience.

One sceptical rejoinder to those who claim that sensory perception is cognitively penetrable is to appeal to the involvement of attention. So, while a phenomenon might initially look like one where, say, a perceiver’s beliefs are influencing her visual experience, another interpretation is that because the perceiver believes and desires as she does, she consequently shifts her spatial attention so as to change what she senses visually. But, the sceptic will urge, this is an entirely familiar phenomenon, and it hardly (...) involves some special or theoretically important cognitive effect on sensory perception. Even supposing that the sceptic is correct about cases that are accurately described in this way, the rejoinder oversimplifies the possible roles that attention may play in mediating cognition and perception. This paper aims to identify these different roles, and by emphasis on empirical research on feature-based and object-based attention. What emerges is a plausible and well- evidenced mental schema that describes attention -mediated cognitive penetration. At the very least, the burden of proof is shifted to the sceptic, as he then must show that there are no mental phenomena involving attention in the more nuanced ways described here. One additional benefit of this analysis is that it illuminates various features of attention and its relation to both cognition and phenomenal consciousness. Therefore the analysis should be of interest to a broad range of theorists of the mind, and not just those invested in the cognitive penetration debate. (shrink)

Both Marilyn Adams and Eleonore Stump have endorsed requirements on theodicy which, if true, imply that we can never suffer all-things-considered harms. William Hasker has offered a series of arguments intended to show that this implication is unacceptable. This chapter evaluates Hasker’s arguments and finds them lacking. However, it also argues that Hasker’s arguments can be modified or expanded in ways that make them very powerful. The chapter closes by considering why God might not meet the requirements endorsed by Stump (...) and Adams and shows how they can modify their requirements to avoid the untenable implications about harm while still respecting the concerns that motivated their requirements in the first place. (shrink)

This chapter argues that we are irremediably ignorant about the identities of the fundamental properties that figure in the actual realization of the true final theory. Of the three published responses to Lewis’s work, each argues that even if Lewis’s metaphysical assumption, the thesis known as “quidditism,” is accepted, we need not accept his epistemic conclusion, the thesis of Humility. The aim of this chapter is to defend Lewis against these critics. Ann Whittle attempts to refute Humility by an appeal (...) to a more lenient account of identification. Following is a defense of Lewis carried by showing that his taxing account of identification is a perfectly good account of at least one perfectly legitimate sense of identification. (shrink)

We discuss the no-go theorem of Frauchiger and Renner based on an "extended Wigner's friend" thought experiment which is supposed to show that any single-world interpretation of quantum mechanics leads to inconsistent predictions if it is applicable on all scales. We show that no such inconsistency occurs if one considers a complete description of the physical situation. We then discuss implications of the thought experiment that have not been clearly addressed in the original paper, including a tension between relativity and (...) nonlocal effects predicted by quantum mechanics. Our discussion applies in particular to Bohmian mechanics. (shrink)

Perry Hendricks’ original ‘impairment argument’ against abortion relied on ‘the impairment principle’ (TIP): ‘if it is immoral to impair an organism O to the nth degree, then,ceteris paribus, it is immoral to impair O to the n+1 degree.’ Since death is a bigger impairment than fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), Hendricks reasons that, by TIP, if causing FAS is immoral, then,ceteris paribus, abortion is immoral. Several authors have argued that this conclusion is uninteresting, since theceteris paribusclause is not satisfied in actual (...) cases of abortion: women have reasons for wanting abortions which do not apply to drinking during pregnancy, so all else is not equal, and the conclusion is irrelevant to the morality of actual abortions. In a recent article in this journal, Hendricks and Bruce Blackshaw try to evade this criticism by replacing TIP with the ‘modified impairment principle’ (MIP): ‘if it is immoral to impair an organism O to the nth degree for reason R, then, provided R continues to hold (or is present), it is immoral to impair O to the n+1 degree.’ MIP allows us to derive theultima faciewrongness of abortion (not just itsceteris paribuswrongness) because MIP lacks aceteris paribusclause. But I argue that this lack also renders MIP false: MIP faces counterexamples and implausibly produces genuine moral dilemmas. Since the moral principle on which it relies is false, the modified impairment argument fails. I close by considering what a principle would need to do for the impairment argument to succeed. (shrink)

There are good, even if inconclusive, reasons to think that cognitive penetration of perception occurs: that cognitive states like belief causally affect, in a relatively direct way, the contents of perceptual experience. The supposed importance of – indeed as it is suggested here, what is definitive of – this possible phenomenon is that it would result in important epistemic and scientific consequences. One interesting and intuitive consequence entirely unremarked in the extant literature concerns the perception of art. Intuition has it (...) that knowledge about art changes how one aesthetically evaluates artworks. A profound explanation of this intuitive fact is that perceptual experiences vary with artistic expertise. Cognitive penetration provides an explanatory mechanism for this latter effect. What one knows or otherwise thinks about art may affect, in one of two ways sketched below, how one perceives art. Differences in aesthetic evaluation may follow, either because high-level aesthetic properties can be perceptually represented or because they causally depend on low-level perceptible properties. All of this lends credence to the hypothesis that the expert better judges art because she better perceives art. And she better perceives art because she better knows art. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel conversational implicature account of the pragmatic sensitivity of knowledge attributions. Developing an account I first suggested elsewhere and independently proposed by Lutz, this paper explores the idea that the relevant implicatures are generated by a constitutive relationship between believing a proposition and a disposition to treat that proposition as true in practical deliberation. I argue that while this view has a certain advantage over standard implicature accounts of pragmatic sensitivity, it comes with a significant concession (...) to proponents of pragmatic encroachment. On the account offered here, knowledge attributions have locally-pragmatically-sensitive implicatures because they have non-locally-pragmatically-sensitive entailments. The view thus represents a unique and powerful hybrid of these two approaches to the pragmatic sensitivity of knowledge attributions. (shrink)

A number of philosophers argue that because of its history of systematic disagreement, philosophy has made little to no epistemic progress – especially in comparison to the hard sciences. One argument for this conclusion contends that the best explanation for systematic disagreement in philosophy is that at least some, potentially all, philosophers are unreliable. Since we do not know who is reliable, we have reason to conclude that we ourselves are probably unreliable. Evidence of one’s potential unreliability in a domain (...) purportedly defeats any first-order support one has for any judgments in that domain. This paper defends philosophy. First, accepting that science is rightfully treated as the benchmark of epistemic progress, I contend that a proper conception of epistemic progress highlights that philosophy and science are relevantly similar in terms of such progress. Secondly, even granting that systematic disagreement is a mark of unreliability and that it does characterize philosophy, this paper further argues that evidence of unreliability is insufficient for meta-level, domain-wide, defeat of philosophical judgments more generally. (shrink)

Giambattista Vico is a philosopher with a deeply tragic sense of life. His theory of the course of nations does not entail a notion of progress. Nations are born, mature, decline, and perish, and the nations that rise in their wake must begin again from barbarism. Nevertheless, Vico has a doctrine of humor and laughter, which he details in a digression within short apologia, the “Vici Vindiciae.” No significant scholarly attention has ever been paid to this digression. In this article, (...) I critically consider Vico’s theory, with the greater intention of situating it in the context of his philosophy as a whole. I demonstrate that Vico’s association of “acute remarks” with the pursuit of truth, and his criticism of “argute remarks,” mockery, and laughter are an extension of his doctrine of the heroic mind. I also discuss the significance of Roman comedy for Vico as philologist. (shrink)

Expertise is a cognitive achievement that clearly involves experience and learning, and often requires explicit, time-consuming training specific to the relevant domain. It is also intuitive that this kind of achievement is, in a rich sense, genuinely perceptual. Many experts—be they radiologists, bird watchers, or fingerprint examiners—are better perceivers in the domain(s) of their expertise. The goal of this paper is to motivate three related claims, by substantial appeal to recent empirical research on perceptual expertise: Perceptual expertise is genuinely perceptual (...) and genuinely cognitive, and this phenomenon reveals how we can become epistemically better perceivers. These claims are defended against sceptical opponents that deny significant top-down or cognitive effects on perception, and opponents who maintain that any such effects on perception are epistemically pernicious. (shrink)

This paper develops a new argument from consciousness to theism: the argument from psychophysical harmony. Roughly, psychophysical harmony consists in the fact that phenomenal states are correlated with physical states and with one another in strikingly fortunate ways. For example, phenomenal states are correlated with behavior and functioning that is justified or rationalized by those very phenomenal states, and phenomenal states are correlated with verbal reports and judgments that are made true by those very phenomenal states. We argue that psychophysical (...) harmony is strong evidence for theism (or, at least, strong evidence against atheism in its standard naturalistic form). (shrink)

Andrew Bacon, John Hawthorne, and Gabriel Uzquiano have recently argued that free logics—logics that reject or restrict Universal Instantiation—are ultimately not promising approaches to resolving a family of intensional paradoxes due to Arthur Prior. These logics encompass ramified and contextualist approaches to paradoxes, and broadly speaking, there are two kinds of criticism they face. First, they fail to address every version of the Priorean paradoxes. Second, the theoretical considerations behind the logics make absolutely general statements about all propositions, properties of (...) propositions, etc., but because this sort of intensional quantification is always restricted in the logics, they cannot even express those considerations. I present a novel sort of free logic, which rejects the standard Universal Instantiation but validates a restricted form of the rule, and which addresses both kinds of criticism by allowing some propositions to be unrestricted in their quantification. (shrink)

The article addresses the debate about the empirical status of particles versus wave functions in Bohmian quantum mechanics. It thereby clarifies questions and misconceptions about the role of the...

Both common sense and dominant traditions in art criticism and philosophical aesthetics have it that aesthetic features or properties are perceived. However, there is a cast of reasons to be sceptical of the thesis. This paper defends the thesis—that aesthetic properties are sometimes represented in perceptual experience—against one of those sceptical opponents. That opponent maintains that perception represents only low-level properties, and since all theorists agree that aesthetic properties are not low-level properties, perception does not represent aesthetic properties. I offer (...) a novel argument—what I call the argument from seeing-as—against that sceptic which moves from consideration of ambiguous figures to consideration of visual art. It concludes that aesthetic properties are sometimes perceived and delivers a general lesson for philosophy of perception. Contrary to extant theories of rich perceptual content, aesthetic properties are far better candidates for high-level perceptual contents than standardly theorized rich contents like natural kinds. (shrink)