Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birthmark offers a sharp lens through which to examine power, purity, and personal identity. Scientist and spiritual idealist, Aylmer, is obsessed with “correcting” the only flaw he perceives in his wife Georgina, the imprint of a small red hand on her pale cheek. For Alymer, this one “imperfection” reaches deep into Georgina’s heart, a sign of sin, decay, and mortality. It is the natural that must be overcome with science. Drawing on Hawthorne’s tragic fiction, this paper questions (...) the influence of stigma, power dynamics, and mind-body dualism in constructing disability identity within the framework of medical and spiritual practices of care. Whether in the role of a spiritual leader, chaplain, or medical professional, people providing care must first address ableism and perceptions of normalcy in relation to their own identity and calling before offering professional advice to disabled people seeking guidance or support. It is only as professional fields adopt a posture marked by courageous humility that healing practices will promote the flourishing of all people, including those with disabilities. (shrink)

A book review of a "Psychology in Progress" collection of these early 1980s articles from a variety of cognitive science disciplines that were pushing back against behaviourism, exploring the nature and function of consciousness, &/or advancing (or rediscovering) content-driven or representational models. Book Chapters: Editor's introduction: "Human brain anatomy" Harry J. Jerison, "On the Evolution of mind" Keith Oatley, "Representations of the physical and social world" John O'Keefe, "Is consciousness the gateway to the hippocampal cognitive map? A speculative essay (...) on the neural basis of mind" David A. Oakley, "Cognition and imagery in animals" David A. Oakley, "Animal awareness, consciousness and self-image" Freda Newcome, "Neuropsychology of consciousness: a review of human clinical evidence" Joseph E. LeDoux, "Brain, mind and language" David A. Oakley and Lesley C. Eames, "The plurality of consciousness". (shrink)

Definite descriptions, I shall argue, have two possible functions. 1] They are used to refer to what a speaker wishes to talk about, but they are also used quite differently. Moreover, a definite description occurring in one and the same sentence may, on different occasions of its use, function in either way. The failure to deal with this duality of function obscures the genuine referring use of definite descriptions. The best known theories of definite descriptions, those of Russell and Strawson, (...) I shall suggest, are both guilty of this. Before discussing this distinction in use, I will mention some features of these theories to which it is especially relevant. (shrink)

This paper develops a form of transcendental naïve realism. According to naïve realism, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational. According to transcendental naïve realism, the naïve realist theory of perception is not just one theory of perception amongst others, to be established as an inference to the best explanation and assessed on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that weighs performance along a number of different dimensions: for instance, fidelity to appearances, simplicity, systematicity, fit with scientific theories, and so on. (...) Rather, naïve realism enjoys a special status in debates in the philosophy of perception because it represents part of the transcendental project of explaining how it is possible that perceptual experience has the distinctive characteristics it does. One of the potentially most interesting prospects of adopting a transcendental attitude towards naïve realism is that it promises to make the naïve realist theory of perception, in some sense, immune to falsification. This paper develops a modest form of transcendental naïve realism modelled loosely on the account of the reactive attitudes provided by Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, and suggests one way of understanding the claim that naïve realism is immune to falsification. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to use contemporary discussions of naïve realist theories of perception to offer an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception. The second is to use consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception to outline a distinctive version of a naïve realist theory of perception. In a Merleau-Pontian spirit, these two aims are inter-dependent.

Margaret Cavendish was a contemporary critic of the mechanistic theories of matter that came to dominate seventeenth-century thought and the proponent of a distinctive form of non-mechanistic materialism. Colour was a central issue both to the mechanistic theories of matter that Cavendish opposed and to the non-mechanistic alternative that she defended. This chapter considers the form of colour realism that Cavendish developed to complement her non-mechanistic materialism, and uses her criticisms of contemporary views of colour to try to better understand (...) the experimental approach to natural philosophy associated with writers like Hooke and Boyle. Allen argues that Cavendish’s discussion of colour in Observations upon Experimental Philosophy helps to show that there was a close connection between experimental philosophy and mechanistic theories of matter, and that, at least in the middle of the seventeenth century, experimental and speculative forms of mechanism were not mutually exclusive. (shrink)

This paper uses the knowledge account of assertion (KAA) in defense of epistemological contextualism. Part 1 explores the main problem afflicting contextualism, what I call the "Generality Objection." Part 2 presents and defends both KAA and a powerful new positive argument that it provides for contextualism. Part 3 uses KAA to answer the Generality Objection, and also casts other shadows over the prospects for anti-contextualism.

Contextualism has been hotly debated in recent epistemology and philosophy of language. The Case for Contextualism is a state-of-the-art exposition and defense of the contextualist position, presenting and advancing the most powerful arguments in favor of the view and responding to the most pressing objections facing it.

In epistemology, “contextualism” denotes a wide variety of more-or-less closely related positions according to which the issues of knowledge or justification are somehow relative to context. I will proceed by first explicating the position I call contextualism, and distinguishing that position from some closely related positions in epistemology, some of which sometimes also go by the name of “contextualism”. I’ll then present and answer what seems to many the most pressing of the objections to contextualism as I construe it, and (...) also indicate some of the main positive motivations for accepting the view. Among the epistemologists I’ve spoken with who have an opinion on the matter, I think it’s fair to say a majority reject contextualism. However, the resistance has to this point been largely underground, with little by way of sustained arguments against contextualism appearing in the journals,[i] though I have begun to see various papers in manuscript form which are critical of contextualism. Here, I’ll respond the criticism of contextualism that, in my travels, I have found to be the most pervasive in producing suspicion about the view. (shrink)

This edition's postscript includes further reflections on these themes and others, and relates them to recent writings of other philosophers and computer ...

Quassim Cassam has argued that psychological and epistemological analyses of conspiracy theories threaten to overlook the political nature of such theories. According to Cassam, conspiracy theories are a form of political propaganda. I develop a limited critique of Cassam's analysis.This paper advances two core theses. First, acceptance of conspiracy theories requires a rejection of epistemic authority that renders conspiracy theorists susceptible to co-option by certain political programs while insulating such programs from criticism. I argue that the contrarian nature of conspiracy (...) theories partially accounts for the prominence of such theories in populist movements.Second, the contrarian nature of conspiracy theories partially accounts for their attractiveness, especially among those to whom populism already appeals. I argue that for those who resent what appears from their perspective as the shaping of the epistemic landscape by alien perspectives, conspiracy theorizing may facilitate the reassertion of epistemic autonomy. (shrink)

A central issue in epistemology concerns the connection between truth and justification. The burden of our paper is to explain this connection. Reliabilism, defended by Goldman, assumes that the connection is one of reliability. We argue that this assumption is too strong. We argue that foundational theories, such as those articulated by Pollock and Chisholm fail to elucidate the connection. We consider the potentiality of coherence theories to explain the truth connection by means of higher level convictions about probabilities, which (...) we call doxastic ascent, and defend such a theory. Our defense appeals to the work of Reid and contemporary cognitive psychology in order to account for the psychological reality of higher level evaluations. (shrink)

Existing analyses of disinformation tend to embrace the view that disinformation is intended or otherwise functions to mislead its audience, that is, to produce false beliefs. I argue that this view is doubly mistaken. First, while paradigmatic disinformation campaigns aim to produce false beliefs in an audience, disinformation may in some cases be intended only to prevent its audience from forming true beliefs. Second, purveyors of disinformation need not intend to have any effect at all on their audience’s beliefs, aiming (...) instead to manipulate an audience’s behavior through alteration of sub-doxastic states. Ultimately, I argue that attention to such non-paradigmatic forms of disinformation is essential to understanding the threat disinformation poses and why this threat is so difficult to counter. (shrink)

In some lottery situations, the probability that your ticket's a loser can get very close to 1. Suppose, for instance, that yours is one of 20 million tickets, only one of which is a winner. Still, it seems that (1) You don't know yours is a loser and (2) You're in no position to flat-out assert that your ticket is a loser. "It's probably a loser," "It's all but certain that it's a loser," or even, "It's quite certain that it's (...) a loser" seem quite alright to say, but, it seems, you're in no position to declare simply, "It's a loser." (1) and (2) are closely related phenomena. In fact, I'll take it as a working hypothesis that the reason "It's a loser" is unassertable is that (a) You don't seem to know that your ticket's a loser, and (b) In flat-out asserting some proposition, you represent yourself as knowing it.1 This working hypothesis will enable me to address these two phenomena together, moving back and forth freely between them. I leave it to those who reject the hypothesis to sort out those considerations which properly apply to the issue of knowledge from those germane to that of assertability. Things are quite different when you report the results of last night's basketball game. Suppose your only source is your morning newspaper, which did not carry a story about the 1 game, but simply listed the score, "Knicks 83, at Bulls 95," under "Yesterday's Results." Now, it doesn't happen very frequently, but, as we all should suspect, newspapers do misreport scores from time to time. On several occasions, my paper has transposed a result, attributing to each team the score of its opponent. In fact, that your paper's got the present result wrong seems quite a bit more probable than that you've won the lottery of the above paragraph. Still, when asked, "Did the Bulls win yesterday?", "Probably" and "In all likelihood" seem quite unnecessary. "Yes, they did," seems just fine.. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is an intimate connection between being coloured and looking coloured. As Strawson memorably remarked, it is natural to assume that ‘colours are visibilia or they are nothing’. But what exactly is the nature of this relationship?A traditionally popular view of the relationship between being coloured and looking coloured starts from the common place that the character of our perceptual experience changes as the conditions in which an object is perceived vary. For instance, our experience changes when we view (...) an object under different illuminants, as when we move from artificial illumination indoors to natural daylight outside. It changes under one and the same illuminant, depending on whether the object is directly or indirectly illuminated. And it varies independently of this, as the background against which the object is perceived varies. Placing a lot of weight on the idea that objects look or appear different as the perceptual conditions vary, proponents of this approach suggest that we can understand what it is for something to be coloured in terms of what it is for something to look coloured in specific perceptual conditions. (shrink)

I present the features of the ordinary use of 'knows' that make a compelling case for the contextualist account of that verb, and I outline and defend the methodology that takes us from the data to a contextualist conclusion. Along the way, the superiority of contextualism over subject-sensitive invariantism is defended, and, in the final section, I answer some objections to contextualism.

I will here sharply oppose all the phases of the story Schaffer & Knobe tell. In Part 1 we will look at the supposed empirical case against standard contextualism, and in Part 2 we will investigate Schaffer & Knobe’s supposed empirical case for the superiority of contrastivism over standard contextualism.

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 75-77.

This paper considers whether we should believe philosophical claims on the basis of testimony in light of related debates about aesthetic and moral testimony. It is argued that we should not believe philosophical claims on testimony, and different explanations of why we should not are considered. It is suggested that the reason why we should not believe philosophical claims on testimony might be that philosophy is not truth-directed.

It is widely accepted that there is a visual field, but the analogous notion of an auditory field is rejected by many philosophers on the grounds that the metaphysics or phenomenology of audition lack the necessary spatial or phenomenological structure. In this paper, I argue that many of the common objections to the existence of an auditory field are misguided and that, contrary to a tradition of philosophical scepticism about the spatiality of auditory experience, it is as richly spatial as (...) visual experience—and in some ways even more so. By carefully considering the spatiality and boundedness of audition, along with how sounds or their sources are experienced as occurring within the surrounding acoustic environment, we can gain a better understanding of (i) our auditory experience of space and (ii) the conditions for the existence of spatial sensory fields in general in a way that does not privilege vision over the other senses. (shrink)

This volume brings together experts from a wide range of disciplines to define and describe taboo words and language and to investigate the reasons and beliefs behind them. It examines topics such as impoliteness, swearing, censorship, taboo in deaf communities, translation of tabooed words, and the use of taboo in banter and comedy.

Many of our beliefs are acquired online. Online epistemic environments are replete with fake news, fake science, fake photographs and videos, and fake people in the form of trolls and social bots. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the threat that such online fakes pose to the acquisition of knowledge. I argue that fakes can interfere with one or more of the truth, belief, and warrant conditions on knowledge. I devote most of my attention to the effects of (...) online fakes on satisfaction of the warrant condition, as these have received comparatively little attention. I consider three accounts of the conditions under which fakes compromise the warrant condition. I argue for the third of these accounts, according to which the propensity of fakes to exist in an environment threatens warrant acquisition in that environment. Finally, I consider some limitations on the epistemic threat of fakes and suggest some strategies by which this threat can be mitigated. (shrink)

The best grounds for accepting contextualism concerning knowledge attributions are to be found in how knowledge-attributing (and knowledge-denying) sentences are used in ordinary, nonphilosophical talk: What ordinary speakers will count as “knowledge” in some non-philosophical contexts they will deny is such in others. Contextualists typically appeal to pairs of cases that forcefully display the variability in the epistemic standards that govern ordinary usage: A “low standards” case (henceforth, “LOW”) in which a speaker seems quite appropriately and truthfully to ascribe knowledge (...) to a subject will be paired with a “high standards” case (“HIGH”) in which another speaker in a quite different and more demanding context seems with equal propriety and truth to say that the same subject (or a similarly positioned subject) does not know. The contextualist argument based on such cases is driven by the premises that the positive attribution of knowledge in LOW is true, and that the denial of knowledge in HIGH is true. And where the contextualist has constructed HIGH and LOW wisely, those premises are in turn powerfully supported by the two mutually reinforcing strands of evidence that both of the claims intuitively seem true, and that both claims are perfectly appropriate. The resulting argument for contextualism is very powerful indeed, but I am on the offensive making that case in another paper: “The Ordinary Language Basis for Contextualism and the New Invariantism.”. (shrink)

Atomism denies that complexes exist. Common-sense metaphysics may posit masses, composite individuals and sets, but atomism says there are only simples. In a singularist logic, it is difficult to make a plausible case for atomism. But we should accept plural logic, and then atomism can paraphrase away apparent reference to complexes. The paraphrases require unfamiliar plural universals, but these are of independent interest; for example, we can identify numbers and sets with plural universals. The atomist paraphrases would fail if plurals (...) presuppose complexes: but an Appendix shows that reference to complexes is not required in the semantics of plurals. (shrink)

Thomas Blackson does not question that my argument in section 2 of “Assertion, Knowledge and Context” establishes the conclusion that the standards that comprise a truth-condition for “I know that P” vary with context, but does claim that this does not suffice to validly demonstrate the truth of contextualism, because this variance in standards can be handled by what we will here call Subject-Sensitive Invariantism (SSI), and so does not demand a contextualist treatment. According to SSI, the varying standards that (...) comprise a truth-condition of “I know that P” are sensitive to factors that attach to the speaker as the putative subject of knowledge, rather than as the speaker of the knowledge attribution. That is, according to SSI, these factors of the subject’s context determine a single set of standards that govern when the subject himself, or any other speaker, including those not engaged in conversation with the subject, can truthfully say that the subject “knows.” Thus, we do not get the result that contextualists insist on: that one speaker can truthfully say the subject “knows,” while another speaker, in a different and more demanding context, can say that the subject does “not know”, even though the two speakers are speaking of the same subject knowing (or not knowing) the same proposition at the same time. Given the possibility of SSI, Blackson concludes that I “either assumed without argument that [SSI] is false or failed to distinguish the different ways the standard for knowledge might be determined.” I indeed have long assumed that SSI can’t be right, and so have taken a different form of invariantism to be the real threat to contextualism. But since SSI, and views like it, now seem to be getting considerable attention, it is worth articulating why I find it unpromising. (shrink)

In recent years the 'zombie argument' has come to occupy a central role in the case against physicalist views of consciousness, in large part because of the powerful advocacy it has received from David Chalmers.1 In this paper I seek to neutralize it by showing that a parallel argument can be run for physicalism, an argument turning on the conceivability of what I shall call anti-zombies. I shall argue that the result is a stand-off, and that the zombie argument offers (...) no independent reason to reject physicalism. (shrink)

fits our evidence.[1] I will propose some potential counter-examples to test this evidentialist thesis. My main intention in presenting the “counter-examples” is to better understand Feldman’s evidentialism, and evidentialism in general. How are we to understand what our evidence is, how it works, and how are we to understand the phrase “epistemically ought to believe” such that evidentialism might make sense as a plausible thesis in light of the examples? Of course, we may decide that there’s no such way to (...) understand evidentialism -- that it just isn’t a plausible thesis. I must admit that my suspicions lean in that direction. But the potential counter-examples are put forward, not in a refutational spirit (though I have nothing against good refutations in philosophy), but as an invitation to evidentialists and potential evidentialists to refine and/or explain their thesis in light of the at least apparent problems that the examples highlight. (shrink)

The score was tied in the bottom of the ninth, I was on third base, and there was only one out when Bubba hit a towering fly ball to deep left-center. Although I’m no speed-demon, the ball was hammered so far that I easily could have scored the winning run if I had tagged up. But I didn’t. I got caught up in the excitement and stupidly played it half way, standing between third and home until I saw the center (...) fielder make his spectacular catch, after which I had to return sheepishly to third. The next batter grounded out, and we lost the game in extra innings. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists take perceptual experience, whatever else it involves, to be representational. In ‘The Silence of the Senses’, Charles Travis argues that this view involves a kind of category mistake, and consequently, that perceptual experience is not a representational or intentional phenomenon. The details of Travis’s argument, however, have been widely misinterpreted by his representationalist opponents, many of whom dismiss it out of hand. This chapter offers an interpretation of Travis’s argument from looks that it is argued presents (...) a genuine and important challenge to orthodox representational views of experience. Whilst this challenge may not be insurmountable, it places a substantial burden upon the representationalist to explain not only how experiences come to have the contents that they do, but how those contents come to feature in our conscious mental lives. (shrink)

My focus will be on Richard Feldman’s claim that what we epistemically ought to believe is what fits our evidence. I will propose some potential counter-examples to test this evidentialist thesis. My main intention in presenting the “counter-examples” is to better understand Feldman’s evidentialism, and evidentialism in general. How are we to understand what our evidence is, how it works, and how are we to understand the phrase “epistemically ought to believe” such that evidentialism might make sense as a plausible (...) thesis in light of the examples? Of course, we may decide that there’s no such way to understand evidentialism—that it just isn’t a plausible thesis. I must admit that my suspicions lean in that direction. But the potential counter-examples are put forward, not in a refutational spirit, but as an invitation to evidentialists and potential evidentialists to refine and/or explain their thesis in light of the at least apparent problems that the examples highlight. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding, modeling, and creating intelligence of various forms. It is a critical branch of cognitive science, and its influence is increasingly being felt in other areas, including the humanities. AI applications are transforming the way we interact with each other and with our environment, and work in artificially modeling intelligence is offering new insights into the human mind and revealing new forms mentality can take. This volume of original essays presents the (...) state of the art in AI, surveying the foundations of the discipline, major theories of mental architecture, the principal areas of research, and extensions of AI such as artificial life. With a focus on theory rather than technical and applied issues, the volume will be valuable not only to people working in AI, but also to those in other disciplines wanting an authoritative and up-to-date introduction to the field. (shrink)

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind provides a lively and accessible introduction to all the main themes and arguments currently being debated in this area. The book examines and criticizes four major theories of mind: Dualism, Mind/Brain Identity, Behaviourism and Functionalism. It argues that while consciousness and our mental lives depend upon physical processes in the brain, they are not reducible to those processes. The differences between mental and physical states, mind/body causality, the problem of other minds, and personal (...) identity are also explored in full. The second edition of this well respected text has been revised to include a new chapter which explores Aristotle’s philosophy of psychology and mind. It also includes new material on the Turing test and has been expanded and updated throughout. The book is designed to help students think for themselves about all the issues identified above, and contains exercises throughout the text to stimulate and challenge the reader. Objectives are clearly set out at the start of every chapter to enable students to check their understanding as they proceed, and each chapter ends with questions to consider. There are discussions of the most cited contemporary writers in the field, so that the reader can gain a rounded perspective of the debates. (shrink)

kind of joke to ask what is the case if the antecedent is false—“And where are the biscuits if I don’t want any?”, “And what’s on PBS if I’m not interested?”, “And who shot Kennedy if that’s not what I’m asking?”. With normal indicative conditionals like.

Resistance to contextualism comes in the form of many very different types of objections. My topic here is a certain group or family of related objections to contextualism that I call “Now you know it, now you don’t” objections. I responded to some such objections in my “Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions” a few years back. In what follows here, I will expand on that earlier response in various ways, and, in doing so, I will discuss some aspects of David Lewis’s (...) recent paper, “Elusive Knowledge.”. (shrink)