A line of research within embodied cognition seeks to show that an organism’s body is a determinant of its conceptual capacities. Comparison of this claim of body determinism to linguistic determinism bears interesting results. Just as Slobin’s (1996) idea of thinking for speaking challenges the main thesis of linguistic determinism, so too the possibility of thinking for acting raises difficulties for the proponent of body determinism. However, recent studies suggest that the body may, after all, have a determining role in (...) cognitive processes of sentence comprehension. (shrink)

Originally published in 1986. The theory of events presented is one that construes events to be concrete particulars; and it embodies an attempt to take seriously the idea that events are the changes that objects undergo when they change. The theory is about what an event really is, about when events are identical, about what properties events have essentially, and about what relations events bear to entities of other kinds. In addition, this book contains an account of what philosophers are (...) up to when they provide reasons for thinking that objects belonging to metaphysically interesting kinds exist. It also gives an account of the role of criteria of identity in such reasons, and an account of what criteria of identity must be like in order for them to be able to play such a role. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument has rarely been evaluated from an empirical perspective. This is puzzling because its conclusion seems to be making a testable claim about the world: supervenient properties are causally inefficacious. An empirical perspective, however, reveals Kim’s argument to rest on a mistaken conception about how to test whether a property is causally efficacious. Moreover, the empirical perspective makes visible a metaphysical bias that Kim brings to his argument that involves a principle of non‐inclusion.

In this paper, I want eventually to get around to proposing a criterion of identity for events which are changes in physical objects, where events are construed as comprising a distinct metaphysical category of thing. The proposal will be preceded by a discussion of what I take to be a mistaken suggestion for such a criterion; I will do that because I think that seeing what it takes to show why that suggestion fails helps to motivate a theory about what (...) it is to be an event; and that theory wi II supply the conceptual foundations for my proposal concerning the criterion of identity for events. Before that suggestion is discussed, however, I want to discuss briefly an aspect of the question, Why do we have to give a criterion of identity for events, or for objects of any sort whatsoever? I want to have a brief look at the connection between identity criteria and the idea of a kind of object. (shrink)

Christian List and Peter Menzies 2009 have looked to interventionist theories of causation for an answer to Jaegwon Kim's causal exclusion problem. Important to their response is the idea of realization-insensitivity. However, this idea becomes mired in issues concerning multiple realization, leaving it unable to fulfil its promise to block exclusion. After explaining why realization-insensitivity fails as a solution to Kim's problem, I look to interventionism to describe a different kind of solution.

Quite unexpectedly, cognitive psychologists find their field intimately connected to a whole new intellectual landscape that had previously seemed remote, unfamiliar, and all but irrelevant. Yet the proliferating connections tying together the cognitive and evolutionary communities promise to transform both fields, with each supplying necessary principles, methods, and a species of rigor that the other lacks. (Cosmides and Tooby, 1994, p. 85).

This chapter elaborates on an intuitive criterion much discussed by ancient Greek philosophers regarding the conditions under which an object can be said to change. Heraclitus and Parmenides both denied the possibility of change. Heraclitus believed that changes are constantly occurring. Consequently, he needed to sever the connection between the idea that a thing changes and the idea that a change occurs, a connection expressed by the claim that a change occurs just in case a thing changes. Heraclitus was a (...) temporal parts theorist; therefore, to accept his view means abandoning the idea that the things that come into and go out of existence are also things that can alter. Parmenides, on the other hand, believed that nothing can become what it is not; therefore, nothing can change. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, omissions are not events or actions, but rather fact-like entities, and that, insofar as only events and actions can be causes, omissions cannot be causes. Nevertheless, since omissions can, and often do, play a role in the explanations of events, their place in such explanations must be found; and an attempt to find such a place is made.

Prominent defenders of the extended cognition thesis have looked to evolutionary theory for support. Roughly, the idea is that natural selection leads one to expect that cognitive strategies should exploit the environment, and exploitation of the right sort results in a cognitive system that extends beyond the head of the organism. I argue that proper appreciation of evolutionary theory should create no such expectation. This leaves open whether cognitive systems might in fact bear a relationship to the environment that leads (...) to their extension. *Received July 2009; revised January 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, 5185 Helen C. White Hall, 600 North Park Street, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The interpretation-construction distinction, which marks the difference between linguistic meaning and legal effect, is much discussed these days. I shall argue that the distinction is both real and fundamental – that it marks a deep difference in two different stages in the way that legal and political actors process legal texts. My account of the distinction will not be precisely the same as some others, but I shall argue that it is the correct account and captures the essential insights of (...) its rivals. This Essay aims to mark the distinction clearly! The basic idea can be explained by distinguishing two different moments or stages that occur when an authoritative legal text is applied or explicated. The first of these moments is interpretation – which I shall stipulate is the process that recognizes or discovers the linguistic meaning or semantic content of the legal text. The second moment is construction – which I shall stipulate is the process that gives a text legal effect. I shall then claim that the difference between interpretation and construction is real and fundamental. Although the terminology could vary, legal theorists cannot do without the distinction. One more preliminary point: the topic of this Essay is narrow and conceptual. This Essay, has three goals: to explicate the nature of the interpretation-construction distinction, to argue that this distinction marks a real difference, and to suggest that the distinction is helpful in that it enables legal theorists to clarify the nature of important debates, for example debates about constitutional interpretation. The Essay does not offer any particular theory of interpretation or construction – that it is, it remains agnostic about questions as to how linguistic meaning can be discerned or how legal content ought to be determined. Nor does this theory offer an account of the history and origins of the distinction. Those topics are important, but raising them in this Essay might shift attention away from prior questions about the nature and value of the distinction itself. Here is the roadmap. In Part II, this Essay shall discuss two preliminary sets of ideas: vagueness and ambiguity, and semantic content and legal content. In Part III, this Essay shall use these preliminary ideas to answer the questions, "What is interpretation?" and "What is construction?" In Part IV, this Essay shall consider some objections to the interpretation-construction distinction. In Part V, this Essay shall develop the argument that the distinction is fundamental and indispensable. (shrink)

Lost at times in the heat of debate about stem cell research, or any controversial advanced technology, is the need for precision in debate and discussion. The details matter a great deal, ranging from the need to use words that have precise definitions, to accurately quote colleagues and adversaries, and to cite scientific and medical results in a way that reflects the quality, rigor, and reliability of the work at issue. Regrettably, considerable inaccuracy has found its way into the debates (...) about stem cells, on all sides, with consequent fogging of the issues.A key detail that is often overlooked in the debates about the uses of human embryonic stem cells in research comes from the nature of in vitro fertilization treatment for infertility. Specifically, there are many frozen human embryos that are in excess of reproductive needs of the couple who generated them, and that must be either frozen indefinitely, donated to another couple, or destroyed. (shrink)

Those who think of some aspects of the world as "physically necessary" usually think of this kind of necessity as being confined to the general law of nature, initial conditions being "contingent." Tachyon theory and general relativity provide independent but related reasons for thinking that some initial states are, however, "impossible." And statistical mechanics seems to lead us to conclude that some initial conditions are, if not impossible, "highly improbable." We are then, led from these aspects of physics to wonder (...) if initial conditions are always "freely specifiable" and in the domain of physical contingency. (shrink)

Unifying traditional cognitive science is the idea that thinking is a process of symbol manipulation, where symbols lead both a syntactic and a semantic life. The syntax of a symbol comprises those properties in virtue of which the symbol undergoes rule-dictated transformations. The semantics of a symbol constitute the symbolsÕ meaning or representational content. Thought consists in the syntactically determined manipulation of symbols, but in a way that respects their semantics. Thus, for instance, a calculating computer sensitive only to the (...) shape of symbols might produce the symbol Ô5Õ in response to the inputs Ô2Õ, Ô+Õ, and Ô3Õ. As far as the computer is concerned, these symbols have no meaning, but because of its program it will produce outputs that, to the user, Òmake senseÓ given the meanings the user attributes to the symbols. (shrink)

Despite over one-hundred years of effort, the origin of temporal asymmetry in the physical world still eludes us. While much has been learned about the role played by fundamental instabilities in microdynamics, by the imperfect isolation of systems and by cosmological facts in the origin of the behavior described by kinetic theory and thermodynamics, important puzzles still remain which continue to make the origins of asymmetric thermal behavior out of dynamically time symmetric underlying laws mysterious to us.

Should the nation provide expensive care and scarce organs to convicted felons? We distinguish between two fields of justice: Medical Justice and Societal Justice. Although there is general acceptance within the medical profession that physicians may distribute limited treatments based solely on potential medical benefits without regard to nonmedical factors, that does not mean that society cannot impose limits based on societal factors. If a society considers the convicted felon to be a full member, then that person would be entitled (...) to at least a decent minimum level of care — which might include access to scarce life-saving organs. However, if criminals forfeit their entitlement to the same level of medical care afforded to all members of society, they still would be entitled to a kind of rudimentary decent minimum granted to all persons on simple humanitarian grounds. Almost certainly this entitlement would not include access to organ transplants. (shrink)

This essay investigates the indeterminacy thesis - roughly the claim that the content of authoritative legal materials (such as the texts of constitutions, statutes, cases, rules, and regulations) does not determine the outcome of particular legal disputes. The indeterminacy thesis can be formulated as either "strong" or weak." The strong version of the indeterminacy thesis is demonstrably false, but several weak versions of the thesis are true but lack the radical implications of strong indeterminacy.The strong indeterminacy thesis is the claim (...) that all cases are "hard" cases - or that in any case any conceivable result can be derived from existing legal doctrine. Strong indeterminacy does not hold if there are easy cases - cases in which some outcomes cannot be legally correct. For example, if it were the case that the first paragraph of this abstract did not slander Gore Vidal, then there would be at least one easy case, and strong indeterminacy would be false.Weak versions of the indeterminacy thesis include the claim that important cases are indeterminate, that the law does not necessarily determine outcomes, or that every case could become indeterminate if political conditions supported indeterminacy. These weaker claims may be true, but they lack the critical bite associated with strong indeterminacy.The essay also distinguishes between "determinacy," "indeterminacy," and "underdeterminacy." The law is "determinate" with respect ot a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials contains only one member. The law is "indeterminate" with respect to a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials is identical with the set of all imaginable results. The law is "underdeterminate" with respect to a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials is a nonidentical subset of the set of all imaginable results.This article was first published in 1987, and some of the author's views have been revised in interim. (shrink)

Several variant "Newtonian" theories of inertia and gravitation are described, and their scientific usefulness discussed. An examination of these theories is used to throw light on traditional epistemological and metaphysical questions about space and time. Finally these results are examined in the light of the changes induced by the transition from "Newtonian" to general relativistic spacetime.

Justice is a natural virtue. Well-functioning humans are just, as are well-ordered human societies. Roughly, this means that in a well-ordered society, just humans internalize the laws and social norms (the nomoi)--they internalize lawfulness as a disposition that guides the way they relate to other humans. In societies that are mostly well-ordered, with isolated zones of substantial dysfunction, the nomoi are limited to those norms that are not clearly inconsistent with the function of law--to create the conditions for human flourishing. (...) In a radically dysfunctional society, humans are thrown back on their own resources--doing the best they can in circumstances that may require great practical wisdom to avoid evil and achieve good. Justice is naturally good for humans--it is part and partial of human flourishing. All of these are natural ethical facts. "Natural Justice" develops these claims in four stages. Part I contextualizes the claim that justice is a natural virtue in relationship to David Hume's famous argument about deriving ought from is, G. E. Moore's open-question argument, and the so-called fact-value distinction. The upshot of the discussion in part I is the claim that there are no clearly decisive objections to existence of natural ethical facts. Part II traces the movement from neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics to virtue jurisprudence by articulating a theory of the judicial virtues. Among these are the virtues of practical wisdom and of justice. Practical wisdom or phronesis is best understood on the model of moral vision, which in the context of law is legal vision or situation sense. The virtue of justice is best understood as lawfulness. Just humans are law-abiding or nomimos--in that they internalize the widely shared and deeply held social norms of their social groups. This part concludes with the claim that a legally correct decision is the decision that characteristically would be rendered by a fully virtuous judge under the circumstances of the case. Part III argues that natural justice can be understood on the model of natural goodness as articulated in the work of Philippa Foot and Michael Thompson. The intuitive idea is that justice as lawfulness is naturally good for reason--using social creatures in human circumstances. This part also articulates and responds to a variety of objections. Part IV concludes by articulating the sense in which an aretaic theory of law that incorporates a natural virtue of justice as lawfulness can be viewed as an expression of the natural law tradition. The natural law idea that an unjust enactment is not a true law corresponds to two senses in which positive laws can fail to be nomoi (in the technical sense specified by virtue jurisprudence). First, a given enactment may contravene deeply held and widely shared social norms. Second, such enactments may be fundamentally inconsistent with the purpose of law--the promotion of human flourishing. (shrink)

It has been argued that there is a problem oftemporary intrinsics, the problem of explaininghow it is possible for things to possesssuccessively contrary properties, if a certaintheory about time, ``eternalism'', is true. Inthis paper, I consider whether there really issuch a problem and survey some standardsolutions to it. I argue for one of them, onewhich has been offered by Mark Johnston andPeter van Inwagen, and which I call the``exemplification-solution''''. I consider avariant on that solution offered by E.J. Lowe(and Sally Haslanger), (...) and I argue that thisvariant should be rejected. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Temporal Parts (sometimes abbreviated herein as 'DTP') asserts that, for each portion (including infinitely small portions) of the smallest period of time during which a material object exists, there is an object-a temporal part of the material object in question-which exists at that and at no other time. In "Things Change," Mark Heller offers an argument for DTP, and responds to a objection, the "No-Change" objection, to that doctrine.2 My goal in this paper is to undermine both (...) Heller's argument in favor of DTP and his response to that criticism. (shrink)

It is obvious that identical events must occur at the same time. This follows simply from the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals and from the fact that events have temporal features among which are those which attribute to events times of occurrence. Thus, )).But from the fact that is true, and is, indeed, true necessarily, it does not follow that events necessarily occur at the times at which they in fact occur. This latter claim about events is expressed as (...) follows: ). (shrink)

This is the text of a talk given at the Robert and Sarah Boote Conference in Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism in Physics, 22-23 April, 2006, Center for Philosophy of Science University of Pittsburgh.

Salmon, following Reichenbach and others, maintained that distant simultaneity was conventional in a special relativistic world in a way in which this was not so in prerelativistic spacetime. This paper surveys and criticizes a number of proposals to unpack this claim. It goes on to argue that if the claim has validity, it rests upon differing facts about epistemic accessibility of temporal relations in the different spacetimes, and not directly upon any facts about differing causal structures in these worlds.

Arguments from thought experiment ask the reader to imagine some hypothetical, sometimes exotic, often fantastic, scenario for the sake of illustrating or countering some claim. Variously characterized as mental experimentation, imaginary cases, and even crazy cases, thought experiments figure into both scientific and philosophical arguments. They are often criticized for their fictive nature and for their lack of grounding. Nevertheless, they are common especially in arguments in ethics and philosophy of mind. Moreover, many thought experiments have spawned variations that attempt (...) to both affirm and refute their original arguments. These emended thought experiments exhibit a variety of styles, details, and embellishments. A rhetorical analysis of these variations suggests a reciprocal influence between the arguers' selection of details and their philosophical commitments. I offer examples of this relationship from the variations on John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment and Judith Thomson's unconscious violinist thought experiment. (shrink)

Max Weber is noted for his diagnosis of the rationalization of life under capitalism. But in his social thought he also developed a powerful theory of the process of 'sociation' and associational life. This paper investigates the latter aspect of his thought in the context of his and Marianne Weber's American journey. Their observations about the religious sects, the African-American community, educational insti tutions, and the position of women reveal an understanding of democ ratization as a process of voluntaristic sociation, (...) whose original model is the sect. In these institutional settings and through their interactions with figures like William James, W. E. B. Du Bois, and M. Carey Thomas, the Webers develop a view of American social life that empha sizes the contribution of associative activity to the moral and political education of individuals, and to the creation of a distinctively modern form of democratic culture. (shrink)