State universities have grown to become monumental enterprises generating revenues of more than $124 billion a year in the sale and delivery of education and other services. They compete in a marketplace composed of private secular, nonsecular and for-profit higher education institutions. In addition, state universities in their own right engage in a number of traditionally for-profit "business" enterprises competing with the private sector. However, as the enterprise aspect of state universities grows; so too does the impact of a unique (...) competitive advantage enjoyed solely by state universities--that is, the ability of state universities to immune themselves from lawsuit in federal court under the guise of "sovereign immunity" for disputes arising under federal employment laws. Indeed, as a consequence of recent Supreme Court rulings, state agencies, including universities, are the only entities in the United States that are effectively exempt from the enforcement of federal employment laws in federal or state courts. This article reviews the condition of the "two faces" of the state university regarding federal employment law and the apparent new barriers to federal court access of employees to judicial review of employment disputes. (shrink)

This paper examines popular‘conventionalist’explanations of why philosophers need not back up their claims about how‘we’use our words with empirical studies of actual usage. It argues that such explanations are incompatible with a number of currently popular and plausible assumptions about language's ‘social’character. Alternate explanations of the philosopher's purported entitlement to make a priori claims about‘our’usage are then suggested. While these alternate explanations would, unlike the conventionalist ones, be compatible with the more social picture of language, they are each shown to (...) face serious problems of their own. (shrink)

This article identifies a novel challenge to standard understandings of responsibility practices, animated by experimental studies of biases and heuristics. It goes on to argue that this challenge illustrates a general methodological challenge for theorizing about responsibility. That is, it is difficult for a theory to give us both guidance in real world contexts and an account of the metaphysical and normative foundations of responsibility without treating wide swaths of ordinary practice as defective. The general upshot is that theories must (...) either hew more closely to actual practice than they appear to, or they must provide some normative foundation for responsibility that does not go through actual practice. (shrink)

This brief essay honor the recently deceased American author Cormac McCarthy by interpreting a short scene from one of his screenplays as a modern instance of genuinely tragic understanding. This interpretation is compared on the one hand with a related yet comedic version of tragic knowledge, and on the other hand with the play "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles. The essay argues that fostering the presentiment of such tragic understanding might be a an effective way of motivating people to act (...) to avert climate change. (shrink)

Dewey's voluminous writings, spanning decades and reflecting the contrasting national moods of different historical periods, abound with tensions, not to say contradictions. In highlighting and working with a conflict within Dewey's commitments, then, I do not mean to be catching him out or correcting a mistake. The tension on which I focus is one with which he struggled for most of his philosophical career and one that he never satisfactorily resolved, yet it is also one that goes to the heart (...) of what it is to be a pragmatist. It involves the role of final ends in a philosophy that places practical reasoning at the heart of all knowledge. I will argue that while Dewey had powerful philosophical prejudices that prevented him from adequately dealing with this problem himself, a solution is nonetheless forthcoming that maintains, and perhaps even deepens, the main themes of his pragmatism. Setting out this solution will lead me, in the end, to a novel formulation of the pragmatist theory of truth. (shrink)

Aristotle states inMetaphysicsZ13 (1038b9-11) that nothing said universally τῶν ϰαϑόλου λεγομένων is substance (οὐαία), rather the substance of each thing is particular to it (οὐαία ἐϰάστου ὴ ίδιος ἐϰάστῳ). The natural interpretation of this statement is that being said universally is a sufficient condition for not being substance. But this claim is very perplexing since it is the key premiss in the following apparently inconsistent set:(1)Form is substance.(2)Form is universal.(3)Nothing universal or said universally is substance, rather the substance of something (...) is particular ἴδιος to it. (shrink)

Although a good deal has been written about Kant's conception of free will in recent years, there has been no serious attempt to examine in detail the development of his views on the topic. This book endeavours to remedy the situation by tracing Kant's thoughts on free will from his earliest discussions of it in the 1750s through to his last accounts in the 1790s. This developmental approach is of interest for at least two reasons. First, it shows that the (...) path that led Kant to view freedom as a transcendental power that is both radically distinct from and compatible with the causality of nature was a winding one. Second, it indicates that, despite the variety of views of free will that Kant held at various times, the concept occupied a central place in his thought, because it was the point of union between his theoretical and practical philosophy. (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)

Many think that properties are powers. However, whilst some claim that properties are pure powers, others claim that properties are powerful qualities. In this paper, I argue that the canonical formulation of the powerful qualities view is no different from the pure powers view. Contrary to appearances, the two positions accept the same view of properties. Thus, the debate between them rests on an illusion. I draw out some consequences of this surprising result for issues over property individuation. Along the (...) way, I argue that all existing objections to the powerful qualities view fail. (shrink)

Henry Richardson argues that we can determine our ends rationally. He constructs a rich and original theory of how we can reason about our final goals. Richardson defuses the counter-arguments for the limits of rational deliberation, and develops interesting ideas about how his model might be extended to interpersonal deliberation of ends, taking him to the borders of political theory. Along the way Richardson offers illuminating discussions of, inter alia, Aristotle, Aquinas, Sidgwick, and Dewey, as well as the work (...) of several contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant’s _Paralogisms, _and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic. _Praise for the earlier edition: _ “Probably the most comprehensive and substantial study of the Critique of Pure Reason written by (...) any American philosopher.... This is a splendid book.”—Lewis White Beck “This masterful study... will most certainly join the canon of required reading for future interpreters of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Superbly organized and lucidly written.”—Garrett Green, _Journal of Religion_. (shrink)

Henry Richardson argues that we can determine our ends rationally. He constructs a rich and original theory of how we can reason about our final goals. Richardson defuses the counter-arguments for the limits of rational deliberation, and develops interesting ideas about how his model might be extended to interpersonal deliberation of ends, taking him to the borders of political theory. Along the way Richardson offers illuminating discussions of, inter alia, Aristotle, Aquinas, Sidgwick, and Dewey, as well as the work (...) of several contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

Recently, a new movement has arisen in the philosophy of perception: one that views perception as a natural kind. Strangely, this movement has neglected the extensive work in philosophy of science on natural kinds. The present paper remedies this. I start by isolating a widespread and influential assumption, which is that we can give necessary and sufficient conditions for perception. I show that this assumption is radically at odds with current philosophy of science work on natural kinds. I then develop (...) an alternative, new view of perception. This new view takes as its starting point the dominant position on kinds in the life sciences: the homeostatic property cluster account. I show that, if you accept this view, then all of the putative cases of unconscious perception are more plausibly seen as cases where it is indeterminate whether the mental episode in question is an instance of perception. (shrink)

William James was one of the most frequently cited authors in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, but the attention paid to James’s Principles of Psycho- logy in that work is typically explained in terms of James having ‘committed in a clear, exemplary manner, fundamental errors in the philosophy of mind.’ (Goodman 2002, p. viii.) The most notable of these ‘errors’ was James’s purported commitment to a conception of language as ‘private’. Commentators standardly treat James as committed to a conception of language as (...) private, and the most notorious instance of this commitment can purportedly be found in his discussion of the feelings associated with logical terms like ‘and’, ‘if ’ and ‘but’ in the Principles’s chapter, ‘The Stream of Thought’. However, the received view stands in need of serious re-evaluation. In particular, there is little reason to think that James’s notorious discussion of the ‘if-feeling’ should be understood as an attempt to give an account of the meaning of ‘if ’ (indeed, there is little reason to even think that Wittgenstein interpreted him this way). The picture of our ideas developed in ‘The Stream of Thought’ sits badly with any theory that identifies meanings with ideas in this way, and while James’s chapter on ‘Conception’ (as well as some portions of Some Problems of Philosophy) has also been portrayed as committing James to the in principle privacy of language, it will be argued here that James’s account of our ‘conceptions’ is radically different from that of the private linguist. (shrink)

Pluralist and eliminativist positions have proliferated within both science and philosophy of science in recent decades. This paper asks the question why this shift of thinking has occurred, and where it is leading us. We provide an explanation which, if correct, entails that we should expect pluralism and eliminativism to transform other debates currently unaffected, and for good reasons. We then consider the question under what circumstances eliminativism will be appropriate, arguing that it depends not only on the term in (...) question, but also on the context of discussion and details of the debate at hand. The resultant selective eliminativism is an appealing compromise for various ‘pluralists’ and ‘eliminativists’ who are currently locking horns. (shrink)

Financial and prosocial biases in favor of attractive adults have been documented in the labor market, in social transactions in everyday life, and in studies involving experimental economic games. According to the taste-based discrimination model developed by economists, attractiveness-related financial and prosocial biases are the result of preferences or prejudices similar to those displayed toward members of a particular sex, racial, ethnic, or religious group. Other explanations proposed by economists and social psychologists maintain that attractiveness is a marker of personality, (...) intelligence, trustworthiness, professional competence, or productivity. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that attractive adults are favored because they are preferred sexual partners. Evidence that stereotypes about attractive people are causally related to financial or prosocial biases toward them is weak or nonexistent. Consistent with evolutionary explanations, biases in favor of attractive women appear to be more consistent or stronger than those in favor of attractive men, and biases are more consistently reported in interactions between opposite-sex than same-sex individuals. Evolutionary explanations also account for increased prosocial behavior in situations in which attractive individuals are simply bystanders. Finally, evolutionary explanations are consistent with the psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes that occur when individuals are exposed to potential mates, which facilitate the expression of courtship behavior and increase the probability of occurrence of mating. Therefore, multiple lines of evidence suggest that mating motives play a more important role in driving financial and prosocial biases toward attractive adults than previously recognized. (shrink)

This paper proposes a formal top-level model of explaining the outputs of machine-learning-based decision-making applications and evaluates it experimentally with three data sets. The model draws on AI & law research on argumentation with cases, which models how lawyers draw analogies to past cases and discuss their relevant similarities and differences in terms of relevant factors and dimensions in the problem domain. A case-based approach is natural since the input data of machine-learning applications can be seen as cases. While the (...) approach is motivated by legal decision making, it also applies to other kinds of decision making, such as commercial decisions about loan applications or employee hiring, as long as the outcome is binary and the input conforms to this paper’s factor- or dimension format. The model is top-level in that it can be extended with more refined accounts of similarities and differences between cases. It is shown to overcome several limitations of similar argumentation-based explanation models, which only have binary features and do not represent the tendency of features towards particular outcomes. The results of the experimental evaluation studies indicate that the model may be feasible in practice, but that further development and experimentation is needed to confirm its usefulness as an explanation model. Main challenges here are selecting from a large number of possible explanations, reducing the number of features in the explanations and adding more meaningful information to them. It also remains to be investigated how suitable our approach is for explaining non-linear models. (shrink)

There is an overriding orthodoxy amongst philosophers that attention is a ‘unified phenomenon’, subject to explanation by one monistic theory. In this article, I examine whether this philosophical orthodoxy is reflected in the practice of psychology. I argue that the view of attention that best represents psychological work is a variety of conceptual pluralism. When it comes to the psychology of attention, monism should be rejected and pluralism should be embraced. _1_ The Monistic Consensus _2_ The Varieties of Pluralism _3_ (...) Three Concepts _3.1_ Blindsight _3.2_ Executive attention _3.3_ Alerting _4_ Pluralism _4.1_ Methodological conceptual pluralism _4.2_ Three monist interpretations _5_ Philosophical Monism? _6_ Conclusion. (shrink)

In this paper several recent factor- and dimension-based models of precedential constraint are formally investigated and an alternative dimension-based model is proposed. Simple factor- and dimension-based syntactic criteria are identified for checking whether a decision in a new case is forced, in terms of the relevant differences between a precedent and a new case, and the difference between absence of factors and negated factors in factor-based models is investigated. Then Horty’s and Rigoni’s recent dimension-based models of precedential constraint are critically (...) examined. An alternative to their reason models is proposed which is less expressive but arguably easier to apply in practice. (shrink)

Defenders of the phenomenal concept strategy have to explain how both physical and phenomenal concepts provide a substantive grasp on the nature of their referents, whilst referring to the very same experience. This is the ‘new challenge’ to physicalism. In this paper, I argue that if the physicalist adopts the powerful qualities ontology of properties then a new and powerful version of the phenomenal concept strategy can be developed, which answers the new challenge.

A central question for philosophical psychology is which mental faculties form natural kinds. There is hot debate over the kind status of faculties as diverse as consciousness, seeing, concepts, emotions, constancy and the senses. In this paper, I take emotions and concepts as my main focus, and argue that questions over the kind status of these faculties are complicated by the undeservedly overlooked fact that natural kinds are indeterminate in certain ways. I will show that indeterminacy issues have led to (...) an impasse in the debates over emotions and concepts. I first consider and reject one way of resolving this impasse. I then suggest a different method, which places more emphasis on a close analysis of predictive and explanatory practices in psychology. I argue that when we apply this method, a new position emerges: that it is indeterminate whether concepts or emotions are natural kinds. They are neither determinately natural kinds, nor determinately not natural kinds. Along the way, we will see that natural kinds have been put to two completely different theoretical uses, which are often been blurred together, and that they are ill-suited to fulfil one of them. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles are one of the most spectacular recent developments of Artificial Intelligence. Among the problems that still need to be solved before they can fully autonomously participate in traffic is the one of making their behaviour conform to the traffic laws. This paper discusses this problem by way of a case study of Dutch traffic law. First it is discussed to what extent Dutch traffic law exhibits features that are traditionally said to pose challenges for AI & Law models, (...) such as exceptions, rule conflicts, open texture and vagueness, rule change, and the need for commonsense knowledge. Then three approaches to the design of law-conforming AV are evaluated in light of the challenges posed by Dutch traffic law, which includes an assessment of the usefulness of AI & Law models of nonmonotonic reasoning, argumentation and case-based reasoning. (shrink)

Direct-to-Consumer genomics has been a controversial topic for over a decade. Much work has been done on the legal issues it raises. This article asks a different question: What will DTC genomics and its legal issues look like in ten to twenty years? After discussing the five current uses of DTC genomics, it describes three current legal issues: medical uses, privacy of genomic information, and privacy in collection and analysis of human DNA. It then suggests that changes in human genomics (...) and how it is used will make the first of those DTC genomics legal issues less important in the future, but that the third will be increasingly significant. (shrink)

Within contemporary science, it is common practice to compare data points to the average, i.e., to the statistical mean. Because this practice is so familiar, it might at first appear not to be the sort of thing that requires explanation. But recent research in cognitive science and in the history of science gives us reason to adopt the opposite perspective. Cognitive science research on the ways people ordinarily make sense of the world suggests that, instead of using a purely statistical (...) notion of the average, people tend to use a value-laden notion of the normal. Similarly, historical research on the scientific practices used in other time periods indicates that, prior to the nineteenth century, scientists tended to make use of a notion of the normal that was overtly value-laden. These findings give us reason to rethink certain familiar facts about scientific practice. In particular, they suggest that the fact that scientists so often make use of the statistical average should be seen as a highly surprising fact, the sort of thing that calls out for explanation. (shrink)

I offer a new response to the regress argument against pure powers ontologies. This involves rejecting an overlooked premiss, which is that a power’s manifestation is exhaustively accounted for by the powers involved in it. Rejection of this premiss not only answers the regress argument, but also brings with it wider metaphysical consequences, including a shift away from one-category ontologies.

_Epistemology and Inference _ was first published in 1983. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Henry Kyburg has developed an original and important perspective on probabilistic and statistical inference. Unlike much contemporary writing by philosophers on these topics, Kyburg's work is informed by issues that have arisen in statistical theory and practice as well as issues familiar to professional philosophers. In (...) two major books and many articles, Kyberg has elaborated his technical proposals and explained their ramifications for epistemology, decision-making, and scientific inquiry. In this collection of published and unpublished essays, Kyburg presents his novel ideas and their applications in a manner that makes them accessible to philosophers and provides specialists in probability and induction with a concise exposition of his system. (shrink)

One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory and classics. A proponent of the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which he analysed in his classic work The Methods of Ethics, he later turned to the practical side of politics in this work, published in 1891. His aim was to have a 'rational discussion of political questions in modern states', and he offers a (...) thorough examination of Victorian politics, beginning with a discussion of political theory before moving on to more concrete matters such as property and law. The later chapters discuss the function of government through themes such as procedural matters, international affairs, war, political parties, and public participation, giving a comprehensive account of both ideas about and the functioning of late-nineteenth-century government. (shrink)

The powerful qualities view of properties is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. Recently, I have argued that the standard version of the view is no different from a rival view: the pure powers position. I have also argued that the canonical version of the powerful qualities view faces the same problem as the pure powers view: the dreaded regress objection. Joaquim Giannotti disagrees. First, Giannotti thinks that the standard version of the powerful qualities view can be differentiated from the (...) pure powers view. Second, Giannotti argues that the powerful qualities view is not susceptible to the regress objection. Third, he argues that there is another reasonable version of the powerful qualities view available, which makes use of the notion of ‘aspects’. In this note, I respond to Giannotti. I argue that all three of Giannotti’s arguments are unsuccessful. (shrink)