The General Data Protection Regulation imposes, at European level, a need to seek express or explicit consent for the processing of health data. In the framework of biomedical research, some favor the use of express ‘broad’ consent, whereas other maintain, or wish to maintain the use of presumed or implicit consent, often referred to as ‘non-opposition’ in conditions in which such consent is still authorized. In our view, broad consent and presumed consent are likely to prove to be easy solutions (...) in the short term but much less relevant in the long term, for both hospital and patients, if the bioethical objective remains the improvement of patient quality of life and/or survival, regardless of the disease considered. Dynamic consent could be the best way to achieve this objective because only this type of consent could improve hospital transparency and increase patient confidence by allaying certain fears. (shrink)

This book defines, through a survey of the European tradition of literature, art, poetry, and music, some of the philosophical and psychological implications and developments of that myth.

In 1902 Henri Lebesgue (1875-1941) published his thesis containing a new theory of integration which was based on Borel's theory of measure. Independently of this William Henry Young (1863-1942) together with his wife Grace Chisholm Young (1868-1944) developed a similar theory of measure and integration. Only after submitting their papers on this subject to the London Mathematical Society did they learn about Lebesgue's results. Consequently the Youngs decided to publish a revised version in which the concept of Lebesgue was (...) taken into consideration and discussed. This parallel discovery will be analysed both from a mathematical and a psychological point of view. The previously unpublished primary sources from the private correspondence of the Youngs will be used to illuminate the collaboration between the Youngs and their reaction to Lebesgue. (shrink)

BackgroundAt the start of 2021, oncologists lacked the necessary scientific knowledge to adapt their clinical practices optimally when faced with cancer patients refusing or reluctant to be vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the marked vulnerability of these patients to severe, and even fatal forms of this new viral infectious disease. Oncologists at Foch Hospital were confronted with this phenomenon, which was observed worldwide, in both the general population and the population of cancer patients.MethodsBetween April and November 2021, the Ethics and Oncology (...) Departments of Foch Hospital decided to investigate this subject, through an empirical and interdisciplinary study in bioethics. Our scientific objective was to try to identify and resolve the principal bio-ethical issues, with a view to improving clinical practices in oncology during future major pandemics of this kind, from a highly specific bio-ethical standpoint. We used a mainly qualitative methodological approach based on questionnaires and interviews.ResultsIn April 2021, 29 cancer patients refused or were reluctant to be vaccinated. Seventeen of these patients said that making vaccination mandatory would have helped them to accept vaccination. In October 2021, only 10 cancer patients continued to maintain their refusal. One of the main reasons for the decrease in refusals was probably the introduction of the “pass sanitaire” in July 2021, which rendered vaccination indispensable for many activities. However, even this was not sufficient to convince these 10 cancer patients.ConclusionWe identified a key bio-ethical issue, which we then tried to resolve: vaccination policy. We characterized a major tension between “the recommendation of anti-COVID-19 vaccination” and “free will”, and the duty to “protect each other”. Mandatory vaccination, at least in France, could resolve this tension, with positive effects on quality of life, or survival, in cancer patients initially refusing or reluctant to be vaccinated, but only if collective and individual scales are clearly distinguished. (shrink)

The Gesta Normannorum Ducum is one of the most important sources for the history of Normandy and England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and contains the earliest prose account of the Norman Conquest. It was written by a succession of authors, the first of whom was William of Jumièges, who wrote for William the Conqueror. Later writers, such as Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, interpolated and extended the chronicle as far as King Henry I. The later accretions (...) reveal much not only about changing attitudes towards the Norman invasion of England, but also about views of the early Viking foundation of Normandy. Elisabeth van Houts's two-volume edition is based on a study of all forty-seven extant manuscripts of the Gesta, including the earliest surviving copy of c. 1100, hitherto unknown. The full original text of William of Jumièges is supplied, as well as the integral text of the subsequent revisions and additions. Volume I contains Dr van Houts's introduction to the whole work, together with the text and translation of books i-iv. Books v-viii will appear in Volume II. The edition forms an important contribution to our understanding of Anglo-Norman politics. (shrink)

Der Logische Empirismus hat in der intellektuellen Welt Frankreichs fast keine Spuren hinterlassen, obwohl die Gruppe sich bei zwei Kongressen 1935 und 1937 der intellektuellen Ôffentlichkeit in Paris prasentierte. Otto Neurath, prominentes Mitglied des «Wiener Kreises », bereitete die Auftritte der Logischen Empiristen in Paris vor. In seiner umfangreichen Korrespondenz manifestieren sich zahlreiche Spannungen sowohl innerhalb der Gruppe ais auch mit ihren Kooperationspartnem in Paris. Der Physiker Philipp Frank war mit der wissenschaftlichen Landschaft in Frankreich viel besser vertraut ais Neurath. (...) Er hat Neurath schon damais darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass die Rolle Louis Rougiers ais « Botschafter » des Empirismus für die Rezeption in Frankreich problematisch sein konnte. Er driingte Neurath, die Verbindung mit anderen Wissenschaftlem und Philosophen, vor allem mit Henri Berr und dem Centre de synthèse zu verstlirken. (shrink)

Renaissance magic was an attempt to supply Platonism with a philosophy of nature that could compete with Aristotelian physics. It was expected to heal the increasing breach between science and faith. However, the basic presupposition of every magic worldview, the notion of a living universe, favors immanentism and arguably hastened the rise of secularism. Secularism, it should be noted, was not an identifiable set of theories but a process towards modernity with its correspondent philosophical theology. Three different stages in that (...) development can be shown in the philosophical systems of three famous Renaissance magicians: Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, and Tommaso Campanella. (shrink)

The Gesta Normannorum Ducum is one of the most important sources for the history of Normandy and England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and contains the earliest prose account of the Norman Conquest. It was written by a succession of authors, the first of whom was William of Jumieges, who wrote for William the Conqueror. Later historians, such as Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, interpolated and extended the chronicle as far as King Henry I. The later accretions (...) reveal much not only about changing attitudes towards the Norman invasion of England, but also about views of the early Viking foundations of Normandy.Elisabeth van Houts's two-volume edition is based on a study of all forty-seven extant manuscripts of the Gesta, including the earliest surviving copy of c. 1100, unknown until very recently. The full original text of William of Jumieges is supplied, as well as the integral text of the subsequent revisions and additions. Volume I contains Dr van Houts's introduction to the whole work, together with the text and translation of books i-iv. Volume II contains books v-viii. The edition forms an important contribution to our understanding of Anglo-Norman politics. (shrink)

Dans la psychose, les données cliniques montrent que dès l'apparition des premiers troubles aigus, une difficulté caractéristique se manifeste au niveau de l'attribution de la responsabilité causale des actions. Les patients se sentent poussés à agir par les autres tout en ayant aussi le sentiment de contrôler l'action d'autrui. Cette difficulté va souvent de pair chez les schizophrènes avec une modification du sentiment d'identité personnelle. Parmi les symptômes de l'autisme, on trouve des difficultés de contrôle de l'action, une réduction des (...) centres d'intérêts, des stéréotypies comportementales et une difficulté à comprendre les événements d'ordre mental. Des résultats expérimentaux récents permettent d'orienter la réflexion théorique sur l'origine fonctionnelle commune de ces perturbations. Ils indiquent l'importance du suivi de l'action dans l'acquisition par l'enfant d'une " théorie de l'esprit ", c'est-à-dire des connaissances nécessaires à l'interprétation de ses propres états mentaux et de ceux d'autrui. Dans le cas de l'adulte, un mauvais suivi de l'action pourrait porter atteinte à la capacité de reconnaître ses propres intentions d'agir, et modifier ainsi le sens de sa propre identité. Subjectivité et conscience d'agir rassemble des travaux de clinique psychiatrique (Henri Grivois), de psychologie du développement (James Russell), de neuroscience cognitive (Marc Jeannerod, Pierre Fourneret) et de philosophie de l'esprit (John Campbell, Pascal Engel, Elisabeth Pacherie, Joëlle Proust). Le point commun est d'élucider le rôle qui revient aux fonctions exécutives dans la compréhension de soi-même et d'autrui. L'ouvrage s'adresse aux étudiants, aux enseignants et aux chercheurs en psychologie, en neuroscience et en philosophie, mais aussi aux psychiatres et aux cliniciens, ainsi qu'à tous ceux qui s'intéressent aux progrès de la psychopathologie cognitive. (shrink)

Die Wissenschaftsphilosophie des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts ist reichhaltiger und differenzierter in ihren Standpunkten als lange vermutet. Die Autoren zeigen das anhand der nur teilweise erforschten Interaktion zwischen den Wissenschaftsphilosophen des deutschen und französischen Sprachraums. Das Buch liefert neue Erkenntnisse zur Rolle der Philosophiekongresse in Prag 1934 und Paris 1937 sowie zur Bedeutung einzelner Akteure wie Marcel Boll, der die Rezeption des Logischen Empirismus in Frankreich beförderte. Die Spuren, die Ernst Mach, aber auch der weniger bekannte deutsche Physiologe und Hirnforscher Ewald (...) Hering in der französischen Wissenschaftsphilosophie hinterliessen, verfolgen die Autoren bis hin zu den Ideen Jean Piagets. Im Mittelpunkt des Buchs stehen Philosophen aus Frankreich, Deutschland und Österreich und ihre Leistung, die Wissenschaften nicht nur erkenntnistheoretisch und logisch durchleuchtet, sondern auch erkannt zu haben, dass ihre theoretische Struktur nur dann vollständig erfasst werden kann, wenn ihre praktische Dimension mit einbezogen wird. Dafür steht Henri Poincaré, der die tragende Rolle der Konventionen für die Theoriebildung in der Mathematik herausstellte. Sichtbar wird der Bezug zur Praxis auch in Moritz Schlicks Überlegungen zu einer auf Empirie basierenden Ethik oder in der Arbeit Otto Neuraths, der eine aus den modernen Wissenschaften gewonnene Konzeption menschlichen Erkennens für das Projekt der gesellschaftlichen Aufklärung fruchtbar machen wollte. (shrink)

Princess Elisabeth and Anne Conway were contemporaries whose lives present many striking parallels. From their early interest in Descartes’ philosophy to their encounter with Van Helmont and the Quakers in their maturity, both were brought into contact with the same sets of ideas and forms of spirituality at similar points in their lives. Despite their common interest in philosophy, and their many mutual acquaintances, it is difficult to ascertain what either knew about the other, and whether either knew anything (...) about the other’s philosophy. This paper reviews the evidence for connections between them and their knowledge of one another. After outlining the parallels in their personal circumstances and the sources for their knowledge of each other, I discuss key intermediaries: Henry More, the Hartlib Circle, Francis Mercury van Helmont and the Quaker leaders Robert Barclay and George Keith. Although they were certainly aware of one another, the answer to the question of whether there was any philosophical inter-change between them remains especially elusive. (shrink)

Dan ZAHAVI, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity. A Response to the Linguistic-Pragmatic Critique ; Françoise DASTUR, Chair et langage. Essais sur Merleau-Ponty ; Jean GREISCH, Michel Henry et l’épreuve de la vie ; Elisabeth STRÖKER, The Husserlian Foundations of Science ; John McCUMBER, Metaphysics and Oppression, Heidegger’s Challenge to Western Philosophy ; Marc RICHIR, Phénoménologie en esquisses. Nouvelles fondations ; Raphaël GÉLY, La genèse du sentir. Essai sur Merleau-Ponty ; John SALLIS, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (...) ; Bin KIMURA, L’entre. Une approche phénoménologique de la schizophrénie ; Dermot MORAN, Tim MOONEY, The Phenomenology Reader ; Ion COPOERU, Structuri ale constituirii ; Fabio CIARAMELLI, La distruzione del’desiderio. Il narcisismo nell’epoca di consumo di massa ; Pierre KELLER, Husserl and Heidegger on Human Experience. (shrink)

Mitigation—preventative actions to reduce the human forcing of climate change with the goal of keeping climate change within a range to which humans can adapt—must be prompt, rigorous, and focused on eliminating emissions of carbon dioxide, beginning with rapid cessation of the use of coal. Carbon dioxide is by far the most threatening greenhouse gas because it remains in the atmosphere for millennia longer than any other major greenhouse gas, and the heat retained on the planet by atmospheric carbon dioxide (...) will continue to emerge from its transitional storage in the deep oceans for millennia after the atmospheric carbon finally dissipates. Sustainable development can be increased and ocean acidification can be stopped only if the dominant fossil fuel regime is promptly replaced by an affordable and accessible alternative energy regime. Poorer countries cannot be reasonably expected to cooperate with vigorous mitigation unless they are assisted with necessary adaptation. (shrink)

An eminent philosopher explains why we owe it to future generations to take immediate action on global warming Climate change is the supreme challenge of our time. Yet despite growing international recognition of the unfolding catastrophe, global carbon emissions continue to rise, hitting an all-time high in 2019. Unless humanity rapidly transitions to renewable energy, it may be too late to stop irreversible ecological damage. In The Pivotal Generation, renowned political philosopher Henry Shue makes an impassioned case for taking (...) immediate, radical action to combat global warming. Shue grounds his argument in a rigorous philosophical analysis of climate change’s moral implications. Unlike previous generations, which didn’t fully understand the danger of burning carbon, we have the knowledge to comprehend and control rising carbon dioxide levels. And unlike future generations, we still have time to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. This generation has the power, and thus the responsibility, to save the planet. Shirking that responsibility only leaves the next generation with an even heavier burden—one they may find impossible to bear. Written in direct, accessible language, The Pivotal Generation approaches the latest scientific research with a singular moral clarity. It’s an urgently needed call to action for anyone concerned about the planet’s future. (shrink)

In his new book the eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison provides an innovative and comprehensive interpretation of Kant's concept of freedom. The author analyzes the concept and discusses the role it plays in Kant's moral philosophy and psychology. He also considers in full detail the critical literature on the subject from Kant's own time to the present day. In the first part Professor Allison argues that at the centre of the Critique of Pure Reason there is the foundation for (...) a coherent general theory of rational agency. The second part employs this account of rational agency as a key to understanding Kant's concept of moral agency and associated moral psychology. The third part focuses on Kant's attempt to ground both moral law and freedom in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This is a major contribution to the interpretation of Kant which will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

Henry E. Allison presents an analytical and historical commentary on Kant`s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason. He argues that, rather than providing a new solution to an old problem, it addresses a new problem, and he traces the line of thought that led Kant to the recognition of the significance of this problem in his 'pre-critical' period. In addition to the developmental nature of the account of Kant`s views presented (...) here, two distinctive features of Allison's reading of the deduction are a defense of Kant`s oft criticized claim that the conformity of appearances to the categories must be unconditionally rather than merely conditionally necessary and an insistence that the argument cannot be separated from Kant`s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Most of us create and use a panoply of non-sentential representations throughout our ordinary lives: we regularly use maps to navigate, charts to keep track of complex patterns of data, and diagrams to visualize logical and causal relations among states of affairs. But philosophers typically pay little attention to such representations, focusing almost exclusively on language instead. In particular, when theorizing about the mind, many philosophers assume that there is a very tight mapping between language and thought. Some analyze utterances (...) as the outer vocalizations of inner thoughts (e.g. Grice 1957, Devitt 2005), while others treat thought as a form of inner speech (e.g. Sellars 1956/1997, Carruthers 2002). But even philosophers who take no stand on the relative priority of language and thought still tend to individuate mental states in terms of the sentences we use to ascribe them. Indeed, Dummett (1993) claims that it is constitutive of analytic philosophy that it approaches the mind by way of language. In many ways, this linguistic model is salutary. Our thoughts are often intimately intertwined with their linguistic expression, and public language does provide a comparatively tractable proxy for, and a window into, the messier realm of thought. However, an exclusive focus on thought as it is expressed in language threatens to leave other sorts of thought unexplained, or even to blind us to their possibility. In particular, many cognitive ethologists and psychologists find it useful to talk about humans, chimpanzees, birds, rats, and even bees as employing cognitive maps. We need to make sense of this way of talking about minds as well as more familiar sentential descriptions. In what follows, I investigate the theoretical and practical possibility of non-sentential thought. Ultimately, I am most interested in the contours of distinctively human thought: what forms does human thought take, and how do those different forms interact? How does human thought compare with that of other animals? In this essay, however, I focus on a narrower and more basic theoretical question: could thought occur in maps? Many philosophers are convinced that in some important sense, thought per se must be language-like.. (shrink)

This book constitutes one of the most important contributions to recent Kant scholarship. In it, one of the pre-eminent interpreters of Kant, Henry Allison, offers a comprehensive, systematic, and philosophically astute account of all aspects of Kant's views on aesthetics. The first part of the book analyses Kant's conception of reflective judgment and its connections with both empirical knowledge and judgments of taste. The second and third parts treat two questions that Allison insists must be kept distinct: the normativity (...) of pure judgments of taste, and the moral and systematic significance of taste. The fourth part considers two important topics often neglected in the study of Kant's aesthetics: his conceptions of fine art, and the sublime. (shrink)

I take up three puzzles about our emotional and evaluative responses to fiction. First, how can we even have emotional responses to characters and events that we know not to exist, if emotions are as intimately connected to belief and action as they seem to be? One solution to this puzzle claims that we merely imagine having such emotional responses. But this raises the puzzle of why we would ever refuse to follow an author’s instructions to imagine such responses, since (...) we happily imagine many other implausible things. A natural response to this second puzzle is that our responses to fiction are real, and so can’t just be conjured up in response to an author’s demands. However, this simple response is inadequate, because we often respond differently to people and events in fiction than we would if we encountered them in real life. Solving these three puzzles in a consistent way requires the notion of a “perspective” on a fictional world. I sketch an account of this intuitive but frustratingly amorphous notion: perspectives are tools for organizing our thinking, which can in turn alter our emotional and evaluative responses. Cultivating a perspective can be illuminating, entertaining, or corrupting — or all three at once. (shrink)

Henry Allison is one of the foremost interpreters of the philosophy of Kant. This new volume collects all his recent essays on Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. All the essays postdate Allison's two major books on Kant, and together they constitute an attempt to respond to critics and to clarify, develop and apply some of the central theses of those books. Two are published here for the first time. Special features of the collection are: a detailed defence of the (...) author's interpretation of transcendental idealism; a consideration of the Transcendental Deduction and some other recent interpretations thereof; further elaborations of the tensions between various aspects of Kant's conception of freedom and of the complex role of this conception within Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

On a familiar and prima facie plausible view of metaphor, speakers who speak metaphorically say one thing in order to mean another. A variety of theorists have recently challenged this view; they offer criteria for distinguishing what is said from what is merely meant, and argue that these support classifying metaphor within 'what is said'. I consider four such criteria, and argue that when properly understood, they support the traditional classification instead. I conclude by sketching how we might extract a (...) workable notion of 'what is said' from ordinary intuitions about saying. (shrink)

Traditional theories of sarcasm treat it as a case of a speaker's meaning the opposite of what she says. Recently, 'expressivists' have argued that sarcasm is not a type of speaker meaning at all, but merely the expression of a dissociative attitude toward an evoked thought or perspective. I argue that we should analyze sarcasm in terms of meaning inversion, as the traditional theory does; but that we need to construe 'meaning' more broadly, to include illocutionary force and evaluative attitudes (...) as well as propositional content. I distinguish four subclasses of sarcasm, individuated in terms of the target of inversion. Three of these classes raise serious challenges for a standard implicature analysis. (shrink)

I propose a distinct type of robustness, which I suggest can support a confirmatory role in scientific reasoning, contrary to the usual philosophical claims. In model robustness, repeated production of the empirically successful model prediction or retrodiction against a background of independentlysupported and varying model constructions, within a group of models containing a shared causal factor, may suggest how confident we can be in the causal factor and predictions/retrodictions, especially once supported by a variety of evidence framework. I present climate (...) models of greenhouse gas global warming of the 20th Century as an example, and emphasize climate scientists’ discussions of robust models and causal aspects. The account is intended as applicable to a broad array of sciences that use complex modeling techniques. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick,, philosopher, classicist, lecturer and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and supporter of women's university education, is well known for his Method of Ethics, a significant and influential book on moral theory. First published in 1883, this work considers the role the state plays in economic life, and whether economics should be considered an Art or a Science. Sidgwick applies his utilitarian views to economics, defending John Stuart Mill's 1848 treatise of the same name. The book calls for (...) a return to traditional political economy by eliminating 'needless polemics'. Sidgwick also outlines the need to bridge the gap between his analytical or deductive method and the inductive method employed by Mill's critics, the new generation of economic philosophers including John Elliot Cairnes and William Stanley Jevons. The second edition, reissued here, was published in 1887. (shrink)

I argue that we can reconcile two seemingly incompatible traditions for thinking about concepts. On the one hand, many cognitive scientists assume that the systematic redeployment of representational abilities suffices for having concepts. On the other hand, a long philosophical tradition maintains that language is necessary for genuinely conceptual thought. I argue that on a theoretically useful and empirically plausible concept of 'concept', it is necessary and sufficient for conceptual thought that a thinker be able to entertain many of the (...) potential thoughts produced by recombining her representational abilities apart from a direct confrontation with the states of affairs being represented. Such representational abilities support a cognitive engagement with the world that is flexible, abstract, and active. (shrink)

Metaphors are powerful communicative tools because they produce ”framing effects’. These effects are especially palpable when the metaphor is an insult that denigrates the hearer or someone he cares about. In such cases, just comprehending the metaphor produces a kind of ”complicity’ that cannot easily be undone by denying the speaker’s claim. Several theorists have taken this to show that metaphors are engaged in a different line of work from ordinary communication. Against this, I argue that metaphorical insults are rhetorically (...) powerful because they combine perspectives, presupposition, and pragmatics in the service of speech acts with assertoric force. (shrink)

This article discusses various dangers that accompany the supposedly benign methods in behavioral evoltutionary biology and evolutionary psychology that fall under the framework of "methodological adaptationism." A "Logic of Research Questions" is proposed that aids in clarifying the reasoning problems that arise due to the framework under critique. The live, and widely practiced, " evolutionary factors" framework is offered as the key comparison and alternative. The article goes beyond the traditional critique of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin, to (...) present problems such as the disappearance of evidence, the mishandling of the null hypothesis, and failures in scientific reasoning, exemplified by a case from human behavioral ecology. In conclusion the paper shows that "methodological adaptationism" does not deserve its benign reputation. (shrink)

Recent philosophical attention to climate models has highlighted their weaknesses and uncertainties. Here I address the ways that models gain support through observational data. I review examples of model fit, variety of evidence, and independent support for aspects of the models, contrasting my analysis with that of other philosophers. I also investigate model robustness, which often emerges when comparing climate models simulating the same time period or set of conditions. Starting from Michael Weisberg’s analysis of robustness, I conclude that his (...) approach involves a version of reasoning from variety of evidence, enabling this robustness to be a confirmatory virtue.. (shrink)

Natural selection causes adaptation, the fit between an organism and its environment. For example, the white and grey coloration of snowy owls living and breeding around the Arctic Circle provides camouflage from both predators and prey. In this Element, we explore a variety of such outcomes of the evolutionary process, including both adaptations and alternatives to adaptations, such as nonadaptive traits inherited from ancestors. We also explore how the concept of adaptation is used in evolutionary psychology and in animal behavior, (...) and the adequacy of methods used to confirm evolutionary accounts of human traits and behaviors. (shrink)

Henry E. Allison presents a comprehensive commentary on Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Allison pays special attention to the structure of the work and its historical and intellectual context. He argues that, despite its relative brevity, the Groundwork is the single most important work in modern moral philosophy.

Does thought precede language, or the other way around? How does having a language affect our thoughts? Who has a language, and who can think? These questions have traditionally been addressed by philosophers, especially by rationalists concerned to identify the essential difference between humans and other animals. More recently, theorists in cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology have been asking these questions in more empirically grounded ways. At its best, this confluence of philosophy and science promises to blend the (...) respective strengths of each discipline, bringing abstract theory to bear on reality in a principled and focused way. At its worst, it risks degenerating into a war of words, with each side employing key expressions in its own idiosyncratic way – or worse, contaminating empirical research with a priori dogmas inherited from outmoded philosophical worldviews. In Baboon Metaphysics (2007), Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth offer an analysis of baboon cognition that promises to exemplify the very best interaction of philosophical theory and empirical research. They argue that baboons have a language of thought: a language-like representational medium, which supports the sophisticated cognitive abilities required to negotiate their complex social environment. This claim is intended to be surprising in its own right, and also to shed light on the evolution of spoken language. Because our own ancestors likely lived in a similarly complex social environment, Cheney and Seyfarth propose that the earliest humans also developed language first as a cognitive medium, and that spoken language evolved as a means to express those thoughts. There are two potential difficulties here. First, ‘Language of Thought’ (LOT) is a term of art, with much associated theoretical baggage and often comparatively little careful exposition. Thus, evaluating the claim requires getting clearer about just what LOT implies in this context.. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have discovered that they have a lot to learn from, or at least to ponder about, fiction. Many metaphysicians are attracted to fiction as a model for our talk about purported objects and properties, such as numbers, morality, and possible worlds, without embracing a robust Platonist ontology. In addition, a growing group of philosophers of mind are interested in the implications of our engagement with fiction for our understanding of the mind and emotions: If I don’t believe that (...) Anna Karenina exists, can I really pity her, or hope or desire that she extricate herself from her tragic situation? And why is there no “morality fiction,” analogous to science fiction? I suspect that philosophers have been especially comfortable thinking about fiction because it seems, at least prima facie, to employ the imagination in a way that conforms to a standard model of the mind. Specifically, contemporary philosophers tend to think of imagination as a form of mental pretense. Mental pretense can take two main forms: a cognitive attitude of supposing a set of propositions to be true (make-believe) or else an experiential state of imaging a scenario as if it were before one (imaging). Much of our pretense intertwines the cognitive and experiential modalities, of course. But both share a crucial common feature: all of one’s imaginative effort is invested in pretending that certain contents obtain. In this sense, we can understand imagination as the “offline” simulation of actual beliefs and perceptions (and perhaps other attitudes as well), where we analyze these in the normal way, as states individuated by their attitude and representational content. While I share the burgeoning interest in fiction, I want to suggest that we also have a lot to learn from poetry, and in particular from poetic metaphor. I will argue.. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally inclined toward one of two opposite extremes when it comes to metaphor. On the one hand, partisans of metaphor have tended to believe that metaphors do something different in kind from literal utterances; it is a ‘heresy’, they think, either to deny that what metaphors do is genuinely cognitive, or to assume that it can be translated into literal terms. On the other hand, analytic philosophers have typically denied just this: they tend to assume that if metaphors (...) express any genuine content at all, then that content can in principle be paraphrased into literal terms. They often conclude on this basis that metaphor is theoretically dispensable, and so that it poses no special challenges and affords no distinctive insights for the philosophy of language and mind. (shrink)

I discuss two types of evidential problems with the most widely touted experiments in evolutionary psychology, those performed by Leda Cosmides and interpreted by Cosmides and John Tooby. First, and despite Cosmides and Tooby's claims to the contrary, these experiments don't fulfil the standards of evidence of evolutionary biology. Second Cosmides and Tooby claim to have performed a crucial experiment, and to have eliminated rival approaches. Though they claim that their results are consistent with their theory but contradictory to the (...) leading non-evolutionary alternative, Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas theory, I argue that this claim is unsupported. In addition, some of Cosmides and Tooby's interpretations arise from misguided and simplistic understandings of evolutionary biology. While I endorse the incorporation of evolutionary approaches into psychology, I reject the claims of Cosmides and Tooby that a modular approach is the only one supported by evolutionary biology. Lewontin's critical examinations of the applications of adaptationist thinking provide a background of evidentiary standards against which to view the currently fashionable claims of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

The emphasis on the limitations of objectivity, in specific guises and networks, has been a continuing theme of contemporary analytic philosophy for the past few decades. The popular sport of baiting feminist philosophers — into pointing to what's left out of objective knowledge, or into describing what methods, exactly, they would offer to replace the powerful objective methods grounding scientific knowledge — embodies a blatant double standard which has the effect of constantly putting feminist epistemologists on the defensive, on the (...) fringes, on the run.This strategy can only work if objectivity is transparent, simple, stable, and clear in its meaning. It most certainly is not. In fact, taking objectivity as a sort of beautiful primitive, self-evident in its value, and all-powerful in its revelatory power, requires careless philosophy, and the best workers in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science have made reworked definitions of objectivity absolutely central to their own projects. In fact, classic feminist concerns with exploring the impact of sex and gender on knowledge, understanding, and other relations between human beings and the rest of the world fall squarely within the sort of human and social settings thatare already considered central in most current analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. I argue that the burden of proof is clearly on those who wish toreject the centrality and relevance of sex and gender to our most fundamental philosophical work on knowledge and reality. (shrink)