Mark Jago presents an original philosophical account of meaningful thought: in particular, how it is meaningful to think about things that are impossible. We think about impossible things all the time. We can think about alchemists trying to turn base metal to gold, and about unfortunate mathematicians trying to square the circle. We may ponder whether God exists; and philosophers frequently debate whether properties, numbers, sets, moral and aesthetic qualities, and qualia exist. In many philosophical or mathematical debates, when (...) one side of the argument gets things wrong, it necessarily gets them wrong. As we consider both sides of one of these philosophical arguments, we will at some point think about something that’s impossible. Yet most philosophical accounts of meaning and content hold that we can’t meaningfully think or reason about the impossible. -/- In The Impossible, Jago argues that we often gain new information, new beliefs, and, sometimes, fresh knowledge through logic, mathematics, and philosophy. That is why logic, mathematics, and philosophy are useful. We therefore require accounts of knowledge and belief, of information and content, and of meaning which allow space for the impossible. Jago’s aim in this book is to provide such accounts. He gives a detailed analysis of the concept of hyperintensionality, whereby logically equivalent contents may be distinct, and develops a theory in terms of possible and impossible worlds. Along the way, he provides a theory of what those worlds are and how they feature in our analysis of normative epistemic concepts: knowledge, belief, information, and content. (shrink)

Human-centered explainable AI (HCXAI) advocates for the integration of social aspects into AI explanations. Central to the HCXAI discourse is the Social Transparency (ST) framework, which aims to make the socio-organizational context of AI systems accessible to their users. In this work, we suggest extending the ST framework to address the risks of social misattributions in Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly in sensitive areas like mental health. In fact LLMs, which are remarkably capable of simulating roles and personas, may lead (...) to mismatches between designers' intentions and users' perceptions of social attributes, risking to promote emotional manipulation and dangerous behaviors, cases of epistemic injustice, and unwarranted trust. To address these issues, we propose enhancing the ST framework with a fifth 'W-question' to clarify the specific social attributions assigned to LLMs by its designers and users. This addition aims to bridge the gap between LLM capabilities and user perceptions, promoting the ethically responsible development and use of LLM-based technology. (shrink)

This paper establishes model-theoretic properties of \, a variation of monadic first-order logic that features the generalised quantifier \. We will also prove analogous versions of these results in the simpler setting of monadic first-order logic with and without equality and \, respectively). For each logic \ we will show the following. We provide syntactically defined fragments of \ characterising four different semantic properties of \-sentences: being monotone and continuous in a given set of monadic predicates; having truth preserved under (...) taking submodels or being truth invariant under taking quotients. In each case, we produce an effectively defined map that translates an arbitrary sentence \ to a sentence \ belonging to the corresponding syntactic fragment, with the property that \ is equivalent to \ precisely when it has the associated semantic property. As a corollary of our developments, we obtain that the four semantic properties above are decidable for \-sentences. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

Nondescriptivist views in many areas of philosophy have long been associated with the commitment that in contrast to other domains of discourse, there are no propositions in their particular domain. For example, the ‘no truth conditions’ theory of conditionals1 is understood as the view that conditionals don’t express propositions, noncognitivist expressivism in metaethics is understood as advocating the view that there are not really moral propositions,2 and expressivism about epistemic modals is thought of as the view that there is no (...) such thing as the proposition that Jack might be at home, over and above the proposition that Jack is at home.3 Of course, it is nearly always acknowledged that advocates of a nondescriptivist theory need not deny that there are conditional, moral, or modal propositions ‘at the end of the day’ – for if they also endorse a deflationary reading of talk about propositions, as famously advocated by Simon Blackburn, then they can employ such deflationary talk just as much as the rest of us. They just don’t appeal to propositions to do any of the work in their theories. Rather, they ‘earn the right’ to talk about propositions.4 It is the aim of this paper to upset this way of thinking about the proper attitude of nondescriptivists toward propositions, and to advocate a more constructive and in some ways more radical alternative on behalf of the nondescriptivist. I will begin by introducing and developing a set of problems that are faced by any nondescriptivist theory which tries to do without propositions. All of these problems are easily solved by any view which postulates propositions across the board, but none of them are solved by merely deflationary talk about propositions – their most promising solutions require propositions to do real theoretical work, and therefore the problems themselves remind us of and illustrate some of the important reasons why it is worth positing propositions in the first place.. (shrink)

Although in theory social justice is considered as a core dimension of agroecological transitions, alternative food initiatives related to agroecology have been criticised for their exclusionary practices based on important social and economic biases. In this article, we adopt the lens of political intersectionality to study two cases of Agroecology-oriented Food Redistribution Coalitions in Spain that emerged to address the rising levels of food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the coalitions represent a convergence of diverse social struggles, (...) placing intersectionally marginalized groups at the centre of their activism. However, we also uncover that coalition members participate in different ways depending on their socioeconomic profiles, which could perpetuate inequalities in organizational practices. One major point of tension is the need to balance the goal of providing access to healthy and sustainable food with the affordability of such produce. This leads to the adoption of hybrid food networks that include conventionally produced food. We also highlight that while the predominance of women in these coalitions reflects the unequal distribution of food-related care work in society, the collectivization of such work through AFRCs practices points to a transformation of gender relations. Territorialized alliances between actors from urban and rural settings and between urban centers and peripheries are established through the coalitions. However, such networks fall short on involving large numbers of agroecology-oriented initiatives and providing direct encounters between consumers and producers. Overall, the article underscores the importance of addressing intersecting inequalities within alternative food initiatives and argues that intersectional coalitions offer an intriguing example of how to promote such understanding and pave the way towards (more) just agroecological transitions. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe some of what I take to be the more interesting features of friendship, then explore the extent to which other virtues can be reconstructed as sharing those features. I use trustworthiness as my example throughout, but I think that other virtues such as generosity & gratitude, pride & respect, and the producer’s & consumer’s sense of humor can also be analyzed with this model. The aim of the paper is not to demonstrate that all moral (...) virtues are exactly like friendship in all important respects, but rather to articulate a fruitful model in which to explore the virtues. Section 2 explores the relational nature of friendship, drawing on Aristotle’s discussion of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Section 3 catalogues four motivations for taking seriously the friendship model of virtue. Section 4 applies the friendship model in depth to the virtue of trustworthiness. (shrink)

Gaining information can be modelled as a narrowing of epistemic space . Intuitively, becoming informed that such-and-such is the case rules out certain scenarios or would-be possibilities. Chalmers’s account of epistemic space treats it as a space of a priori possibility and so has trouble in dealing with the information which we intuitively feel can be gained from logical inference. I propose a more inclusive notion of epistemic space, based on Priest’s notion of open worlds yet which contains only those (...) epistemic scenarios which are not obviously impossible. Whether something is obvious is not always a determinate matter and so the resulting picture is of an epistemic space with fuzzy boundaries. (shrink)

I discuss three ways of responding to the logical omniscience problems faced by traditional ‘possible worlds’ epistemic logics. Two of these responses were put forward by Hintikka and the third by Cresswell; all three have been influential in the literature on epistemic logic. I show that both of Hintikka's responses fail and present some problems for Cresswell’s. Although Cresswell's approach can be amended to avoid certain unpalatable consequences, the resulting formal framework collapses to a sentential model of knowledge, which defenders (...) of the ‘possible worlds’ approach are frequently critical of. (shrink)

We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance of (...) scaffolded cognition. In section three, we consider the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding. On the one hand, scaffolds can reduce the internal processing demands on cognitive agents while increasing their access to information. On the other hand, the use of scaffolding leaves cognitive agents increasingly vulnerable to forming false beliefs or failing to form beliefs at all about particular topics. With respect to the recognition heuristic, agents rely on third parties (such as the media) to report not just what’s true but also what’s important or valuable. This makes cognitive agents relying on these third parties vulnerable to two erroneous influences: 1) because they don’t recognize something, it isn’t important or valuable, and 2) because they do recognize something, it is important or valuable. Call the latter the Kardashian Inference and the former the Darfur Inference. In section four, we use Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, with special emphasis on the Darfur Inference. In section five, we use data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. We conclude with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better. One primary way to accomplish this it to shift the burden of embodying the virtue of epistemic justice from the hearer or consumer of media to the media themselves. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, (...) Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three "extreme", idealtype, untenable positions: only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak, only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn. (shrink)

During multiple testing, researchers often adjust their alpha level to control the familywise error rate for a statistical inference about a joint union alternative hypothesis (e.g., “H1,1 or H1,2”). However, in some cases, they do not make this inference. Instead, they make separate inferences about each of the individual hypotheses that comprise the joint hypothesis (e.g., H1,1 and H1,2). For example, a researcher might use a Bonferroni correction to adjust their alpha level from the conventional level of 0.050 to 0.025 (...) when testing H1,1 and H1,2, find a significant result for H1,1 (p < 0.025) and not for H1,2 (p > .0.025), and so claim support for H1,1 and not for H1,2. However, these separate individual inferences do not require an alpha adjustment. Only a statistical inference about the union alternative hypothesis “H1,1 or H1,2” requires an alpha adjustment because it is based on “at least one” significant result among the two tests, and so it refers to the familywise error rate. Hence, an inconsistent correction occurs when a researcher corrects their alpha level during multiple testing but does not make an inference about a union alternative hypothesis. In the present article, I discuss this inconsistent correction problem, including its reduction in statistical power for tests of individual hypotheses and its potential causes vis-à-vis error rate confusions and the alpha adjustment ritual. I also provide three illustrations of inconsistent corrections from recent psychology studies. I conclude that inconsistent corrections represent a symptom of statisticism, and I call for a more nuanced inference-based approach to multiple testing corrections. (shrink)

Games associated with congestion situations à la Rosenthal have pure Nash equilibria. This result implicitly relies on the existence of a potential function. In this paper we provide a characterization of potential games in terms of coordination games and dummy games. Second, we extend Rosenthal's congestion model to an incomplete information setting, and show that the related Bayesian games are potential games and therefore have pure Bayesian equilibria.

Animal rights and moral theories -- Arguing for one's species -- Utilitarianism and animals : Peter Singer's case for animal liberation -- Tom Regan : animal rights as natural rights -- Virtue ethics and animals -- Contractarianism and animal rights -- Animal minds.

We show that the modal µ-calculus over GL collapses to the modal fragment by showing that the fixpoint formula is reached after two iterations and answer to a question posed by van Benthem in [4]. Further, we introduce the modal µ~-calculus by allowing fixpoint constructors for any formula where the fixpoint variable appears guarded but not necessarily positive and show that this calculus over GL collapses to the modal fragment, too. The latter result allows us a new proof of the (...) de Jongh, Sambin Theorem and provides a simple algorithm to construct the fixpoint formula. (shrink)

We study the strictness of the modal μ-calculus hierarchy over some restricted classes of transition systems. First, we prove that over transitive systems the hierarchy collapses to the alternationfree fragment. In order to do this the finite model theorem for transitive transition systems is proved. Further, we verify that if symmetry is added to transitivity the hierarchy collapses to the purely modal fragment. Finally, we show that the hierarchy is strict over reflexive frames. By proving the finite model theorem for (...) reflexive systems the same results holds for finite models. (shrink)

Bringing together the latest scientific advances and some of the most enduring subtle philosophical puzzles and problems, this book collects original historical and contemporary sources to explore the wide range of issues surrounding the nature of life. Selections ranging from Aristotle and Descartes to Sagan and Dawkins are organised around four broad themes covering classical discussions of life, the origins and extent of natural life, contemporary artificial life creations and the definition and meaning of 'life' in its most general form. (...) Each section is preceded by an extensive introduction connecting the various ideas discussed in individual chapters and providing helpful background material for understanding them. With its interdisciplinary perspective, this fascinating collection is essential reading for scientists and philosophers interested in astrobiology, synthetic biology and the philosophy of life. (shrink)

Epistemology -- Power I -- Power II -- Subjectivity -- Resistance -- Critique -- Ethics.

Cet article étudie les effets de l’absence de prix monétaires sur la coordination des actions individuelles sur le marché politique. Il s’articule autour de deux parties. Il rappelle, dans la première, que le prix monétaire est une condition nécessaire du calcul économique et qu’il est un pré-requis institutionnel de la coordination des anticipations opérée par l’entrepreneur sur le marché. La deuxième partie se cale sur ce résultat. Elle expose, tout d’abord, les conséquences sur la formation des préférences politiques de l’impossibilité (...) pour les électeurs de pratiquer un calcul monétaire et expl ique, ensui te, comment malgré l’absence de prix monétaire, l’entrepreneur politique ajuste l’offre à la demande politique. Nous montrons que la coordination politique se fait autour de l’activité de l’entrepreneur politique, mais que le processus de reconnaissance des préférences politiques passe par la prise de parole et la normalisation idéologique du discours politique et non par le système des prix et la normalisation monétaire des préférences économiques. La coordination politique possède, pour cette raison, une moindre efficacité cognitive que la coordination économique.This paper studies the implications of the lack of monetary prices for the modes of individuals calculus’ coordination on the “political market”. On the economic market, the evaluation of decision costs is based on monetary prices. The entrepreneurs’ decisions are led by the profit expectations they build on the information embodied in market prices. Given that there is no price on the “political market”, how are individuals informed? What are their incentives to act? And how are their actions coordinated? It is argued that 1) the electoral system provides information on the individuals’ preferences between “being candidate” and “being represented”, 2) the individuals are induced to be candidate since the existing political supply does not meet their expectations, and 3) the coordination is achieved through ideology that acts as a signaling mechanism. (shrink)

This article studies the impact of a credit expansion monetary policy on output and unemployment rate. In the introduction the history of the Phillips curve and its interpretation are presented to understand why New Consensus Macroeconomics argues that monetary policy is neutral in long-run i. e. has no effect on economic activity and natural unemployment rate. This New Consensus Macroeconomics supports the independence of the Central Bank, inflation-targeting and the strategy of constrained discretion model and influences strongly the monetary policy (...) of central bank today. The second section critics these three principles of the new consensus. It opposes free-banking to central banking system, and takes the defense of deflation to critic the inflation-targeting. Then the third section deals with long-run neutrality of monetary policy. In an Austrian Business Cycle perspective, there is neutrality of monetary only if the production structure must always return exactly to its level of before the boom. It is improbable, because the monetary policy via tax inflation and artificial variation of real interest rate has a long-run effects on the conditions of financing of entrepreneurial project and in fine all the market process dynamic. (shrink)

Cet article étudie les effets de l’absence de prix monétaires sur la coordination des actions individuelles sur le marché politique. Il s’articule autour de deux parties. Il rappelle, dans la première, que le prix monétaire est une condition nécessaire du calcul économique et qu’il est un pré-requis institutionnel de la coordination des anticipations opérée par l’entrepreneur sur le marché. La deuxième partie se cale sur ce résultat. Elle expose, tout d’abord, les conséquences sur la formation des préférences politiques de l’impossibilité (...) pour les électeurs de pratiquer un calcul monétaire et expl ique, ensui te, comment malgré l’absence de prix monétaire, l’entrepreneur politique ajuste l’offre à la demande politique. Nous montrons que la coordination politique se fait autour de l’activité de l’entrepreneur politique, mais que le processus de reconnaissance des préférences politiques passe par la prise de parole et la normalisation idéologique du discours politique et non par le système des prix et la normalisation monétaire des préférences économiques. La coordination politique possède, pour cette raison, une moindre efficacité cognitive que la coordination économique.This paper studies the implications of the lack of monetary prices for the modes of individuals calculus’ coordination on the “political market”. On the economic market, the evaluation of decision costs is based on monetary prices. The entrepreneurs’ decisions are led by the profit expectations they build on the information embodied in market prices. Given that there is no price on the “political market”, how are individuals informed? What are their incentives to act? And how are their actions coordinated? It is argued that 1) the electoral system provides information on the individuals’ preferences between “being candidate” and “being represented”, 2) the individuals are induced to be candidate since the existing political supply does not meet their expectations, and 3) the coordination is achieved through ideology that acts as a signaling mechanism. (shrink)

From his earliest work on personal identity to his last on the value of truthfulness, the ideas and arguments of Bernard Williams - in the metaphysics of personhood, in the history of philosophy, but especially in ethics and moral psychology - have proved sometimes controversial, often influential, and always worth studying. This book provides a comprehensive account of Williams's many significant contributions to contemporary philosophy. Topics include personal identity, various critiques of moral theory, practical reasoning and moral motivation, truth and (...) objectivity, and the relevance of ancient Greece to modern life. It not only positions Williams among these important philosophical topics, but also with regard to the views of other philosophers, including prominent forerunners such as Hume and Nietzsche and contemporary thinkers such as, Nagel, McDowell, MacIntyre and Taylor. The fragmentary nature of Williams's work is addressed and recurring themes and connections within his work are brought to light. (shrink)

Debates over health care have focused for so long on economics that the proper goals for medicine seem to be taken for granted; yet problems in health care stem as much from a lack of agreement about the goals and priorities of medicine as from the way systems function. This book asks basic questions about the purposes and ends of medicine and shows that the answers have practical implications for future health care delivery, medical research, and the education of medical (...) students. The Hastings Center coordinated teams of physicians, nurses, public health experts, philosophers, theologians, politicians, health care administrators, social workers, and lawyers in fourteen countries to explore these issues. In this volume, they articulate four basic goals of medicine — prevention of disease, relief of suffering, care of the ill, and avoidance of premature death — and examine them in light of the cultural, political, and economic pressures under which medicine functions. In reporting these findings, the contributors touch on a wide range of diverse issues such as genetic technology, Chinese medicine, care of the elderly, and prevention and public health. The Goals of Medicine clearly demonstrates the importance of clarifying the purposes of medicine before attempting to change the economic and organizational systems. It warns that without such examination, any reform efforts may be fruitless. (shrink)

Particularists in ethics emphasize that the normative is holistic, and invite us to infer with them that it therefore defies generalization. This has been supposed to present an obstacle to traditional moral theorizing, to have striking implications for moral epistemology and moral deliberation, and to rule out reductive theories of the normative, making it a bold and important thesis across the areas of normative theory, moral epistemology, moral psychology, and normative metaphysics. Though particularists emphasize the importance of the holism of (...) the normative, however, it is not something that they have been able to explain. In this paper I’ll show how to use a small number of simple and, I’ll argue, independently compelling assumptions in order to both predict and explain the holistic features of the normative with respect to the non-normative. The basic idea of the paper is simple. It is that normative claims are holistic because they are general, rather than because they defy generalization. (shrink)

The sense of smell occupies a peculiar intermediate position within Aristotle's theory of sense perception: odours, like colours and sounds, are perceived at a distance through an external medium of air or water; yet in their nature they are intimately related to flavours, the proper objects of taste, which for Aristotle is a form of touch. In this paper, I examine Aristotle's claims about odour and smell, especially in De Anima II.9 and De Sensu 5, to see what light they (...) shed on his theory of sense perception more generally. In the first half, I argue that neither of the two most influential recent ways of understanding Aristotle's theory of perception can adequately account for what he says about the sense of smell. In the second half, I offer my own positive account, considering and resolving various puzzles raised by Aristotle's claims about the nature of odour and its relation to flavour. Finally, I conclude that Aristotle's discussions of odour and smell suggest a plausible and interesting way of understanding the relationship, on his view, between ordinary, material changes in the sense organs and the activation of the capacity to perceive, considered merely as such. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there is a picture of how law works that most legal theorists are implicitly committed to and take to be common ground. This Standard Picture (SP, for short) is generally unacknowledged and unargued for. SP leads to a characteristic set of concerns and problems and yields a distinctive way of thinking about how law is supposed to operate. I suggest that the issue of whether SP is correct is a fundamental one for the philosophy (...) of law, more basic, for example, than the issue that divides legal positivists and anti-positivists, at least as the latter issue is ordinarily understood. The goals of the paper are fourfold: 1) to identify and articulate in some detail the Standard Picture; 2) to show that SP is widely held and has important consequences for other debates in the philosophy of law; 3) to show that SP leads to a serious theoretical problem; 4) to sketch an alternative picture that promises to avoid this problem. I emphasize the modesty of these goals in one respect. I make no claim to refute SP or to fully develop and defend an alternative picture. (shrink)

This article is a précis of Mark C. Murphy’s _Divine Holiness and Divine Action_ (Oxford University Press, 2021), which offers an account of God’s holiness and of the difference this view of God’s holiness should make to our understanding of divine action.

The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other (...) justifications of the Principle of Universalizability on offer, including Richard Hare's, are inadequate. (shrink)

Quietist Moral Realists accept that there are moral facts and properties, while aiming to avoid many of the explanatory burdens thought to fall on traditional moral realists. This chapter examines the forms that Quietist Moral Realism has taken and the challenges it has faced, in order to better assess its prospects. The best hope, this chapter argues, lies in a pragmatist approach that distinguishes the different functions of diverse areas of discourse. This paves the way for a form of Quietism (...) that does not simply remain quiet about the explanatory demands of metaethics, but rather is able to diagnose where they go wrong. By combining a neopragmatic analysis of the discourse with an easy approach to ontology, , we can develop a form of Quietist Moral Realism that is far stronger than critics of quietism have appreciated. (shrink)

We show that the modal µ-calculus over GL collapses to the modal fragment by showing that the fixpoint formula is reached after two iterations and answer to a question posed by van Benthem in [4]. Further, we introduce the modal µ~-calculus by allowing fixpoint constructors for any formula where the fixpoint variable appears guarded but not necessarily positive and show that this calculus over GL collapses to the modal fragment, too. The latter result allows us a new proof of the (...) de Jongh, Sambin Theorem and provides a simple algorithm to construct the fixpoint formula. (shrink)

Moral status arguments are typically formulated as descriptive statements that tell us something about the world. But philosophy of language teaches us that language can also be used performatively: we do things with words and use words to try to get others to do things. Does and should this theory extend to what we say about moral status, and what does it mean? Drawing on Austin, Searle, and Butler and further developing relational views of moral status, this article explores what (...) it means to conceptualize moral status in a performative way and in a way that reaches deep down to its basis, proposes a distinction between strong and weak versions of this view, and discusses the implications for thinking about the moral status of humans and nonhumans. Next to contributing to theory about performativity in the moral domain in general, this effort helps to reveal, understand, and evaluate the performative dimension of utterances made in public discussions about the moral status of animals and artificial agents such as robots and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The need for ethical naturalism -- Moral problem-solving as an empirical inquiry -- Where are our values bred? : sources of moral norms -- Intuitive processes of moral cognition -- Moral deliberation as cognition, imagination, and feeling -- The nature of "reasonable" moral deliberation -- There is no moral faculty -- Moral fundamentalism is immoral -- The making of a moral self.

For decades, intelligence and achievement tests have registered significant differences between people of different races, ethnicities, classes, and genders. We argue that most of these differences are explained not as reflections of differences in the distribution of intellectual virtues but as evidence for the metacognitive mediation of the intellectual virtues. For example, in the United States, blacks typically score worse than whites on tests of mathematics. This might lead one to think that fewer blacks possess the relevant intellectual virtues, or (...) that they possess them less fully. However, research on stereotype threat shows that when blacks are not reminded of their race, they do much better on these tests than when they are. Simply raising to salience the race of the student triggers the activation of the stereotype, which in turn leads to poorer performance. However, learning about stereotype threat to a large extent immunizes people against it. This suggests that the psycho-social dimension of intelligence that recognizes the possibility of effects like stereotype threat is a crucial mediating variable in the development and expression of the intellectual virtues. The Socratic, “Know thyself” needs to be expanded to, “Know thyself and thy society.” Self-knowledge and knowledge of relevant stereotypes are a necessary condition for optimal development and expression of the other intellectual virtues. (shrink)

Plato's Republic has proven to be of astounding influence and importance. Justly celebrated as Plato's central text, it brings together all of his prior works, unifying them into a comprehensive vision that is at once theological, philosophical, political and moral. The essays in this volume provide a picture of the most interesting aspects of the Republic, and address questions that continue to puzzle and provoke, such as: Does Plato succeed in his argument that the life of justice is the most (...) attractive one? Is his tripartite analysis of the soul coherent and plausible? Why does Plato seem to have to force his philosopher-guardians to rule when they know this is something that they ought to do? What is the point of the strange and complicated closing Myth of Er? This volume will be essential to those looking for thoughtful and detailed excursions into the problems posed by Plato's text and ideas. (shrink)

This paper provides articulates a non-epiphenomenal, libertarian kind of free will—a kind of free will that’s incompatible with both determinism and epiphenomenalism—and responds to scientific arguments against the existence of this sort of freedom. In other words, the paper argues that we don’t have any good empirical scientific reason to believe that human beings don’t possess a non-epiphenomenal, libertarian sort of free will.