This research details a pilot study of Finnish college students and their views on the academic ethics. Finland is an unexamined population on this issue. In the current project, we surveyed students in the spring of 2014. We found unethical behavior is common on projects but less common on exams. We also found students are unwilling to report wrongdoing by other students. We examined differences between students’ attitudes on cheating based on several demographic factors, including gender, age and major. We (...) conclude by discussing the implications for further research in this area. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy is a collection of essays on important texts and figures in the history of Chinese thought. The essays cover both well-known texts such as the Analects and the Zhuangzi as well as many of the lesser-known thinkers in the classical and post-classical Chinese tradition. Most of the chapters focus on thinkers or texts in one of three important historical movements: Classical ("pre-Qin") Chinese philosophy, Chinese Buddhism, and the Confucian response to Buddhism ("neo-Confucianism" broadly construed).

Contrastivism about ‘ought’ holds that ‘ought’ claims are relativized, at least implicitly, to sets of mutually exclusive but not necessarily jointly exhaustive alternatives. This kind of theory can solve puzzles that face other linguistic theories of ‘ought’, via the rejection or severe restriction of principles that let us make inferences between ‘ought’ claims. By rejecting or restricting these principles, however, the contrastivist takes on a burden of recapturing acceptable inferences that these principles let us make. This paper investigates the extent (...) to which a contrastivist can do this. (shrink)

Because anticipated and retrospective regret play important roles in practical deliberation and motivation, better understanding them can illuminate the contours of human agency. However, the possibility of self-ignorance and the fact that we change over time can make regret—especially anticipatory regret—not only a poor predictor of where the agent will be in the future but also an unreliable indicator of where the agent stands. Granting these, this paper examines the way in which prospective and, particularly, retrospective regret can nevertheless yield (...) important insight into the sorts of creatures we are, both generally and individually. The experience of retrospective regret can show a person she values something in a way she did not know or that she is (or was) a different person than she had thought, insights which can factor into forward-looking, or prospective, deliberation. Such instances of revelatory regret reveal something to the agent about herself as agent. I examine two cases of agential self-ignorance. In the first, the experience of regret reveals what the agent values, not only to others but even to the agent himself. In the second, the agent anticipates experiencing regret for an action but does not experience the regret, suggesting that the agent did not value the rejected alternative in the way she thought. Anticipatory regret is forward-looking and can play an important role in practical deliberation. But insofar as anticipatory regret flows from one’s imperfect judgment and prospection about oneself, retrospective regret can be an important corrective in helping the agent understand her own standpoint. (shrink)

This paper argues for contrastivism about the deontic modals, 'ought', 'must', and 'may'. A simple contrastivist semantics that predicts the desired entailment relations among these modals is offered.

A crucial tenet of virtue-based or expertise-based theorizing about politics is that there are ways to identify and select morally and epistemically excellent people to hold office. This paper considers historical challenges to this task that come from within Greek and Confucian thought and political practice. Because of how difficult it is to assess character in ordinary settings, we argue that it is even more difficult to design institutions that select for virtue at the much wider political scale. Specifically, we (...) argue that the vast majority of proposals that purport to select for virtue are either (a) unlikely to be effective, (b) not implementable at the scale of most current nations, or (c) have already been incorporated into most democratic states. Thus defenders of meritocratic institutions should take more seriously the practical barriers that will almost certainly arise when trying to implement these proposals at scale. Historical proponents of meritocratic values were well aware of concerns about the feasibility of their political ideals, and we should be too. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on attributions of phenomenal consciousness, leaving to the side interesting questions about how people attribute other types of consciousness. While researchers are not in perfect agreement about how the concept of phenomenal consciousness should be understood, the standard line is that a creature is phenomenally conscious just in case it has phenomenally conscious mental states, and that a mental state is phenomenally conscious just in case it has phenomenal qualities. The chapter explores whether lay people employ the (...) concept of phenomenal consciousness. It begins by looking at the evidence for an affirmative answer to this question, focusing on Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz's article, Intuitions About Consciousness: Experimental Studies. The chapter explains the evidence for a negative answer to the target question, focusing on Justin Sytsma and Edouard machery's article, Two Conceptions of Subjective Experience. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that when thinking about justice, political philosophers should pay more attention to social norms, not just the usual subjects of basic principles, rights, laws, and policies. I identify two widely-endorsed ideas about political philosophy that interfere with recognizing the importance of social norms—ideas I dub ‘compulsoriness’ and ‘institutionalism’—and argue for their rejection. I do this largely by focusing on questions about who can and should be an agent of justice. I argue that careful reflection on (...) these questions supports a kind of pluralism that reveals the importance of social norms, three types of which I discuss. (shrink)

La famille a longtemps t considre comme une unit sociale compose de trois relations simples : mari-femme, parent-enfant et matre-serviteur. Mais la fin du dix-huitime sicle, la dimension affective de la famille devient prpondrante, ce qui en exclut progressivement les serviteurs. Cette tude se penche sur le moment crucial de l'histoire des ides ou le paradigme familial est en train de changer, en s'intressant aux discours sur la famille d'une srie de penseurs issus de la tradition du droit naturel moderne (...) et des Lumires cossaises. Dans un effort constant de replacer chaque relation analyse dans le cadre de la famille, et la famille dans l'argument politique et philosophique plus gnral dfendu par ces auteurs, cette tude montre que la famille, loin d'tre une question subsidiaire, joue un role important dans la comprhension des rapports sociaux cette poque. (shrink)

This paper seeks to advance the joyful environmental ethic of Robin Wall Kimmerer. According to Kimmerer's environmental ethic of gratitude and reciprocity, each person has a responsibility to share their unique gifts with the world in return for the gifts they have received from nature. Drawing on Karen Barad, this paper contends that nonhumans are active, open-ended, and relational singularities that also provide ontological gifts by coconstituting the very being of humans and the world. Since sharing one's gifts to make (...) good gifts for a nonhuman requires knowing oneself and the nonhuman, this paper argues that open-ended curiosity is an onto-epistemic, environmental virtue because it enables humans to understand nonhumans as open-ended and relational singularities. Epistemically, a person must be open to transforming their beliefs and questions in relation to nonhumans. Ontologically, a person must be open to transforming their bodies, practices, and world in relation to nonhumans. To develop this account of open-ended curiosity, this paper engages the work of Vinciane Despret. (shrink)

Tourism literature has shown there is a disagreement amongst academics conducting tourism research as to whether tourism is an academic community, academic study, and/or academic discipline. These three terms are used loosely and change in meaning depending upon the author, source, context, and discipline of the author(s). The following paper identifies tourism’s current position in academia using these three ideas of academic acceptance as tools to guide the discussion. Also guiding the discussion are ideas from tourism scholars and Kuhn’s ideas (...) of what constitutes a discipline. The discussion leads to a debate about “truths” in tourism research. Recommendations regarding the advancement of tourism in academia via theory construction in the academic field of tourism are presented. (shrink)

Leading researchers in the philosophy of mind present and explore cutting edge research in the exciting new field of experimental philosophy.

Both advocates and critics of experimental philosophy often describe it in narrow terms as being the empirical study of people’s intuitions about philosophical cases. This conception corresponds with a narrow origin story for the field—it grew out of a dissatisfaction with the uncritical use of philosophers’ own intuitions as evidence for philosophical claims. In contrast, a growing number of experimental philosophers have explicitly embraced a broad conception of the sub-discipline, which treats it as simply the use of empirical methods to (...) inform philosophical problems. And this conception has a corresponding broad origin story—the field grew out of a recognition that philosophers often make empirical claims and that empirical claims call for empirical support. In this paper, I argue that the broad conception should be accepted, offering support for the broad origin story. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive collection of essays that explores cutting-edge work in experimental philosophy, a radical new movement that applies quantitative and empirical methods to traditional topics of philosophical inquiry. Situates the discipline within Western philosophy and then surveys the work of experimental philosophers by sub-discipline Contains insights for a diverse range of fields, including linguistics, cognitive science, anthropology, economics, and psychology, as well as almost every area of professional philosophy today Edited by two rising scholars who take a broad (...) and inclusive approach to the field Offers a complete introduction for non-specialists and students to the central approaches, findings, challenges, and controversies in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

In this chapter, I consider two hypotheses that have informed recent work in experimental philosophy of mind. The first is a positive hypothesis put forward by Fiala, Arico, and Nichols : Categorization of an entity as an agent through fast, automatic, and domain-specific processing produces a disposition to ascribe a wide range of mental states to that entity. The second is a negative hypothesis put forward by Sytsma and Machery: The existence of phenomenally conscious mental states is not obvious from (...) first-person experience with states like seeing red and feeling pain. I argue that these hypotheses are not necessary at odds. Despite this, empirical results reported by Sytsma and Machery raise concerns for FAN's hypothesis, while results reported by FAN in response raise concerns for our hypothesis. I address these concerns in this essay, presenting the results of four new studies that support our negative hypothesis against FAN's challenge. (shrink)

Of hermeneutics and style: how to read Westphal -- Recontextualization: a Westphalian aufhebung? -- Westphal and Hegel: judging religion through politics -- Hegelians in heaven, but on earth ...: an "unfounding," Kierkegaardian faith -- Religiousness: the expression of faith -- Faith seeking understanding: Westphal's postmodernism -- Intermediary conclusions: the believing soul's self-transcendence -- Radical eschatology: Westphal, Caputo, and onto-theology -- Comparative eschatology: Westphal's theology, Kearney's philosophy, and Ricoeurian detours -- Westphal as a theologian and why it matters.

This chapter examines the convention concerning the theories of generation and form in the field of natural philosophy in Great Britain during the seventeenth century. It explains that natural philosophers treated the questions of biological generation interchangeably with those coming from chemistry, mineralogy, and meteorology, and considers Antoine Goudin's argument that there are both efficient and final causes at work in the earth's production of rocks that resemble animals or parts of animals. The chapter also suggests that the ‘chymists’ were (...) consistently presented as a challenging third party, alongside Aristotelianism and traditional atomism, in the effort to account for the composition of natural bodies. (shrink)

Every year, millions of students in the United States and around the world graduate from high school and college. Commencement speakers—often distilling the hopes of parents and four years of messaging from educators—tell graduates that they must do something grand, ambitious, or far-reaching. Change the world. Disrupt the status quo. Every problem in the world is your problem, awaiting your solutions. -/- This book is an antidote to that advice. It provides a clear-eyed assessment of three types of people who (...) tend to believe and promote a commencement speaker’s view of the world: the moralizer, who imposes unnecessary social costs by inappropriately enforcing morality; the busybody, who thinks the stranger and close friend merit equal shares of our benevolent attention; and the pure hearted, who equates acting with good intentions with just outcomes. The book also provides a bold defense of living an ordinary life by putting down roots, creating a good home, and living in solitude. A quiet, peaceful life can be generous and noble. It’s OK to mind your own business. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that the mental is nothing over and above the physical? In other words, what exactly is the thesis of physicalism about the mental? The question has not received the philosophical attention it deserves. If that sounds woefully uninformed, it's probably because you are mistaking my restricted thesis of physicalism about the mental for the unrestricted thesis of physicalism simpliciter. Physicalism simpliciter is the doctrine that everything is physical; equivalently, that there is nothing over and (...) above the physical. Physicalism simpliciter has been the subject of intense philosophical scrutiny. There are ongoing debates over how 'the physical' should be defined for the purpose of .. (shrink)

In contemporary political discussions, it is depressingly common to see people criticized for expressing impure beliefs. Moreover, those who sometimes defect from their tribe are criticized for failing to be firmly enough on the side of the angels. We consider explanations for this behavior, including its relationship to moral grandstanding. We will also argue, on both moral and epistemic grounds, in favor of a norm against “blocking the exits.” We should not use social pressure to discourage people from publicly changing (...) their minds. (shrink)

_Environmental Philosophy in Desperate Times_ examines environmental philosophy in the context of climate denial, inaction, and thoughtlessness. It introduces readers to the varied theories and movements of environmental philosophy. But more than that, it seeks to unsettle our received understanding of the world and our role in it, especially through consideration of Indigenous, feminist, and radical voices.

This chapter considers the challenges to, and the resources for, cultivating a personal capacity for tolerance, given a Spinozist account of belief-formation. After articulating two main components of personal tolerance, I examine the features of Spinoza’s theory of cognition that make the cultivation of tolerance so difficult. This is followed by an analysis of Spinoza’s account of overcoming intolerant tendencies. Ultimately, I argue that the capacity of individuals to be tolerant depends crucially on the establishment of conditions of trust, conditions (...) that are conspicuously lacking in many modern democracies. (shrink)

In Aspiration, Agnes Callard examines the phenomenon of aspiration, the process by which one acquires values and becomes a certain kind of person. Aspiring to become a certain type of person involves more than wanting to act in certain ways. We want to come to see the world in a certain way and to develop the dispositions, attributes, and skills that allow us to seamlessly and effectively respond to situations. The skilled athlete or musician, for example, has developed the muscle (...) memory and the perceptual equivalent to naturally see what a situation requires and to respond well, whether playing a Rachmaninoff concerto or returning a tennis volley. -/- I use Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception to flesh out the process of becoming, through which aspired-to values, skills, and characteristics become part of one’s embodied being-in-the-world. Although some rightly focus on Merleau-Ponty’s efforts to avoid over-intellectualizing skillful action, without appreciating his distinction between habitual actions and human (or personal) acts, we overlook an important aspect of robust human agency—the way “a human act becomes dormant and is continued absent-mindedly as a reflex” (90). Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit and its relation to personal acts offers a rich and phenomenologically sensitive picture of aspiration. (shrink)

I develop a reduction of grounding to essence. My approach is to think about the relation between grounding and essence on the model of a certain conceptof existential dependence. I extend this concept of existential dependence in a coupleof ways and argue that these extensions provide a reduction of grounding to essenceif we use sorted variables that range over facts and take it that for a fact to obtain is forit to exist. I then use the account to resolve various (...) issues surrounding the concept of grounding and its connection with essence; apply the account to paradigm cases andto the impure logic of grounding; and respond to objections. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the concept of collective essence: that some truths are essential to many items taken together. For example, that it is essential to conjunction and negation that they are truth-functionally complete. The concept of collective essence is one of the main innovations of recent work on the theory of essence. In a sense, this innovation is natural, since we make all sorts of plural predications. It stands to reason that there should be a distinction between essential and (...) accidental plural predications if there is a distinction among singular predications. In this paper I defend the view that the concept of collective essence is governed by the principle of Monotonicity: that something is essential to some items only if it is essential to any items to which they belong. (shrink)

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard describes selfhood as an achievement, specifically claiming that the self’s task ‘is to become itself’ (SUD, 29/SKS 11, 143). But how can one can become who or what one already is, and what sort of achievement is it? This chapter draws on the work of Christine Korsgaard, another philosopher who sees selfhood as an achievement, using her notion of practical identity to explore Kierkegaard’s accounts of the structure of the self and of selfhood as (...) achievement. Kierkegaard’s treatment of selfhood—as aspirational and, if undertaken well, appropriately grounded in one’s facticity (i.e. the concrete facts of one’s situation)—suggests how consciously endorsed identities can guide (or fail to guide) our agency. Having a practical identity involves striving to inhabit adopted roles by aligning our actions with relevant normative demands, but also sometimes embracing and consciously adopting identities already tacitly guiding our engagement with the world. This framework also suggests several ways we can be alienated from desires, actions, or, more generally, our selves. Putting Kierkegaard in conversation with contemporary agency theory, this chapter has two guiding lines of inquiry. First, what does it mean to achieve selfhood and how can the notion of practical identity illuminate or be illuminated by this question? Second, how can this analysis clarify the experience of not being oneself, whether resulting from self-deception, self-ignorance, or the potentially frustrating gap between who one is and who one wants to be? (shrink)

This chapter argues that Spinoza's commitment to an essentialist reading of striving helps to explain his profound, and somewhat underappreciated, break with Thomas Hobbes not only in terms of his views of right and obligation, but also in terms of his conceptions of happiness and the good. It examines the similarities between Thomas Hobbes's and Spinoza's views on motivation. This is followed by an analysis of the distinct ways in which they understand striving, and in turn agency and artifice, showing (...) how these differences are reflected in their conceptions of civil life. Spinoza adopts a fundamentally different conception of action and agency, one that is rooted, unsurprisingly, in his conception of essence. The chapter considers how the differences yield fundamentally different views of goodness, happiness, liberty, and the function of the state. Spinoza's account of happiness and the agreement of essences profoundly shapes his view of the function of the state. (shrink)

What is it for something to be essential to an item? For some time, it was standard to think that the concept of necessity alone can provide an answer: for something to be essential to an item is for it to be strictly implied by the existence of that item. We now tend to think that this view fails because its analysans is insufficient for its analysandum. In response, some argue that we can supplement the analysis in terms of necessity (...) with a further condition. In this paper I argue that this view is untenable in its current form. I then provide a glimmer of hope to those who think that essence is at least partially analyzable in terms of necessity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I develop a truthmaker semantics for essence and use the semantics to investigate the explanatory role of essence.

The biological functions debate is a perennial topic in the philosophy of science. In the first full-length account of the nature and importance of biological functions for many years, Justin Garson presents an innovative new theory, the 'generalized selected effects theory of function', which seamlessly integrates evolutionary and developmental perspectives on biological functions. He develops the implications of the theory for contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of medicine and psychiatry, the philosophy of biology, and biology (...) itself, addressing issues ranging from the nature of mental representation to our understanding of the function of the human genome. Clear, jargon-free, and engagingly written, with accessible examples and explanatory diagrams to illustrate the discussion, his book will be highly valuable for readers across philosophical and scientific disciplines. (shrink)

This book is a critical survey of and guidebook to the literature on biological functions. It ties in with current debates and developments, and at the same time, it looks back on the state of discourse in naturalized teleology prior to the 1970s. It also presents three significant new proposals. First, it describes the generalized selected effects theory, which is one version of the selected effects theory, maintaining that the function of a trait consists in the activity that led to (...) its differential persistence or reproduction in a population, and not merely its differential reproduction. Secondly, it advances “within-discipline pluralism” (as opposed to between-discipline pluralism) a new form of function pluralism, which emphasizes the coexistence of function concepts within diverse biological sub-disciplines. Lastly, it provides a critical assessment of recent alternatives to the selected effects theory of function, namely, the weak etiological theory and the systems-theoretic theory. The book argues that, to the extent that functions purport to offer causal explanations for the existence of a trait, there are no viable alternatives to the selected effects view. -/- The debate about biological functions is still as relevant and important to biology and philosophy as it ever was. Recent controversies surrounding the ENCODE Project Consortium in genetics, the nature of psychiatric classification, and the value of ecological restoration, all point to the continuing relevance to biology of philosophical discussion about the nature of functions. In philosophy, ongoing debates about the nature of biological information, intentionality, health and disease, mechanism, and even biological trait classification, are closely related to debates about biological functions. (shrink)

When speakers utter conflicting moral sentences, it seems clear that they disagree. It has often been suggested that the fact that the speakers disagree gives us evidence for a claim about the semantics of the sentences they are uttering. Specifically, it has been suggested that the existence of the disagreement gives us reason to infer that there must be an incompatibility between the contents of these sentences. This inference then plays a key role in a now-standard argument against certain theories (...) in moral semantics. In this paper, we introduce new evidence that bears on this debate. We show that there are moral conflict cases in which people are inclined to say both that the two speakers disagree and that it is not the case at least one of them must be saying something incorrect. We then explore how we might understand such disagreements. As a proof of concept, we sketch an account of the concept of disagreement and an independently motivated theory of moral semantics which, together, explain the possibility of such cases. (shrink)

Millikan and Her Critics offers a unique critical discussion of Ruth Millikan's highly regarded, influential, and systematic contributions to philosophy of mind and language, philosophy of biology, epistemology, and metaphysics. These newly written contributions present discussion from some of the most important philosophers in the field today and include replies from Millikan herself.

Recent scholarship in philosophy of science and technology has shown that scientific and technological decision making are laden with values, including values of a social, political, and/or ethical character. This paper examines the role of value judgments in the design of machine-learning systems generally and in recidivism-prediction algorithms specifically. Drawing on work on inductive and epistemic risk, the paper argues that ML systems are value laden in ways similar to human decision making, because the development and design of ML systems (...) requires human decisions that involve tradeoffs that reflect values. In many cases, these decisions have significant—and, in some cases, disparate—downstream impacts on human lives. After examining an influential court decision regarding the use of proprietary recidivism-prediction algorithms in criminal sentencing, Wisconsin v. Loomis, the paper provides three recommendations for the use of ML in penal systems. (shrink)

We are all guilty of it. We call people terrible names in conversation or online. We vilify those with whom we disagree, and make bolder claims than we could defend. We want to be seen as taking the moral high ground not just to make a point, or move a debate forward, but to look a certain way--incensed, or compassionate, or committed to a cause. We exaggerate. In other words, we grandstand. Nowhere is this more evident than in public discourse (...) today, and especially as it plays out across the internet. To philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke, who have written extensively about moral grandstanding, such one-upmanship is not just annoying, but dangerous. As politics gets more and more polarized, people on both sides of the spectrum move further and further apart when they let grandstanding get in the way of engaging one another. The pollution of our most urgent conversations with self-interest damages the very causes they are meant to forward. Drawing from work in psychology, economics, and political science, and along with contemporary examples spanning the political spectrum, the authors dive deeply into why and how we grandstand. Using the analytic tools of psychology and moral philosophy, they explain what drives us to behave in this way, and what we stand to lose by taking it too far. Most importantly, they show how, by avoiding grandstanding, we can re-build a public square worth participating in. (shrink)

Moral grandstanding is a pervasive feature of public discourse. Many of us can likely recognize that we have engaged in grandstanding at one time or another. While there is nothing new about the phenomenon of grandstanding, we think that it has not received the philosophical attention it deserves. In this essay, we provide an account of moral grandstanding as the use of public discourse for moral self-promotion. We then show that our account, with support from some standard theses of social (...) psychology, explains the characteristic ways that grandstanding is manifested in public moral discourse. We conclude by arguing that there are good reasons to think that moral grandstanding is typically morally bad and should be avoided. (shrink)

Despite its small stature, "if" occupies a central place both in everyday language and the philosophical lexicon. In allowing us to talk about hypothetical situations, "if" raises a host of thorny philosophical puzzles about language and logic. Addressing them requires tools from linguistics, logic, probability theory, and metaphysics. Justin Khoo uses these tools to navigate a maze of interconnected issues about conditionals, some of which include: the nature of linguistic communication, the relationship between logical and natural languages, and the (...) relationship between different kinds of modality. According to Khoo's theory, conditionals form a unified class of expressions which share a common semantic core that encodes inferential dispositions. Thus, rather than represent the world, conditionals are devices used to communicate how we are disposed to infer. Khoo shows that this theory can be extended to predict the probabilities of conditionals, as well as how different kinds of conditionals differ both semantically and pragmatically. Khoo's book will make for a significant contribution to the literature on conditionals and should be of interest to philosophers, linguists, and computer scientists. (shrink)

Recent work on essence describes essence as assimilated to definition. It also posits a plurality of kinds of essence.Howdoes assimilation relate to pluralism? According to one view, a kind of essence is adequate only if it is definitional: something is essential to an item, in the relevant sense, only if it is part of what it is to be that item. In this paper, I argue that assimilation and pluralism are in tension with respect to consequentialist essence. This is problematic (...) given that, as a methodological prescription, some philosophers advise us to work with consequentialist essence. In this paper, I develop a theory of constitutive essence and use it to resolve the problem by defining an adequate notion of consequentialist essence that preserves the methodological prescription. (shrink)

Since the time of Hippocrates, madness has typically been viewed through the lens of disease, dysfunction, and defect. In 'Madness', philosopher of science Justin Garson presents a radically different paradigm for conceiving of madness and the forms that it takes. In this paradigm, which he calls madness-as-strategy, madness is neither a disease nor a defect, but a designed feature, like the heart or lungs.

Rahel Jaeggi’s theory of alienation has received less attention than her work on forms of life and capitalism. This theory avoids the problems of traditional theories of alienation: objectivism, paternalism, and essentialism. It also sidesteps post-structuralist criticisms of the theory of alienation. However, Jaeggi’s theory is flawed in two ways: it is not historically specific, and so cannot explain why alienation is a problem for modernity rather than other historical periods, and it is difficult to connect to social critique. I (...) argue that Karl Marx’s later theory of alienation, as interpreted by Moishe Postone and others, is able to avoid the problems that Jaeggi’s theory avoids, and is also able to avoid the flaws in her theory. This suggests that critical theory should focus on a theory of capitalism rather than normative social theory. (shrink)

Margaret MacDonald (1907–56) was a central figure in the history of early analytic philosophy in Britain due to both her editorial work as well as her own writings. While her later work on aesthetics and political philosophy has recently received attention, her early writings in the 1930s present a coherent and, for its time, strikingly original blend of common-sense and scientific philosophy. In these papers, MacDonald tackles the central problems of philosophy of her day: verification, the problem of induction, and (...) the relationship between philosophical and scientific method. MacDonald’s philosophy of science starts from the principle that we should carefully analyse the elements of scientific practice (particularly its temporal features) and the ways that scientists describe that practice. That is, she applies the techniques of ordinary language philosophy to actual scientific language. MacDonald shows how ‘scientific common-sense’ is inconsistent with both of the dominant schools of philosophy of her day. Bringing MacDonald back into the story of analytic philosophy corrects the impression that in early analytic philosophy, there are fundamental dichotomies between the style of Moore and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and the Vienna Circle on the other. (shrink)

Mainstream teleosemantics is the view that mental representation should be understood in terms of biological functions, which, in turn, should be understood in terms of selection processes. One of the traditional criticisms of teleosemantics is the problem of novel contents: how can teleosemantics explain our ability to represent properties that are evolutionarily novel? In response, some have argued that by generalizing the notion of a selection process to include phenomena such as operant conditioning, and the neural selection that underlies it, (...) we can resolve this problem. Here, we do four things: we develop this suggestion in a rigorous way through a simple example, we draw on recent neurobiological research to support its empirical plausibility, we defend the move from a host of objections in the literature, and we sketch how the picture can be extended to help us think about more complex “conceptual” representations and not just perceptual ones. (shrink)