35 found
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  1. Against Brain-in-a-Vatism: On the Value of Virtual Reality.Jon Cogburn & Mark Silcox - 2014 - Philosophy and Technology 27 (4):561-579.
    The term “virtual reality” was first coined by Antonin Artaud to describe a value-adding characteristic of certain types of theatrical performances. The expression has more recently come to refer to a broad range of incipient digital technologies that many current philosophers regard as a serious threat to human autonomy and well-being. Their concerns, which are formulated most succinctly in “brain in a vat”-type thought experiments and in Robert Nozick's famous “experience machine” argument, reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that (...)
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  2.  14
    A Defense of Simulated Experience: New Noble Lies.Mark Silcox - 2018 - New York: Routledge.
    Philosophers from Plato and Augustine to Heidegger, Nozick, and Baudrillard have warned us of the dangers of living on too heavy a diet of illusion and make-believe. But contemporary cultural life provides broader, more attractive opportunities to do so than have existed at any other point in history. The gentle forms of self-deceit that such experiences require of us, and that so many have regarded as ethically unwholesome or psychologically self-destructive, can in fact serve as vital means to political reconciliation, (...)
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  3. The Transition into Virtual Reality.Mark Silcox - 2019 - Disputatio 11 (55):437-451.
    In “The Virtual and the Real,” David Chalmers argues that there is an epistemic and ontological parity between VR and ordinary reality. My argument here is that, whatever the plausibility of these claims, they provide no basis for supposing that there is a similar parity of value. Careful reflection upon certain aspects of the transition that individuals make from interacting with real-world, physical environments to interacting with VR provides a basis for thinking that, to the extent that there are good (...)
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  4. Virtue epistemology and moral luck.Mark Silcox - 2006 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 3 (2):179--192.
    Thomas Nagel has proposed that the existence of moral luck mandates a general attitude of skepticism in ethics. One popular way of arguing against Nagel’s claim is to insist that the phenomenon of moral luck itself is an illusion , in the sense that situations in which it seems to occur may be plausibly re-described so as to show that agents need not be held responsible for the unlucky outcomes of their actions. Here I argue that this strategy for explaining (...)
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  5.  41
    Experience Machines: The Philosophy of Virtual Worlds.Mark Silcox (ed.) - 2017 - London: Rowman & Littlefield.
    In his classic work Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick asked his readers to imagine being permanently plugged into a 'machine that would give you any experience you desired'. The authors in this volume re-evaluate the merits of Nozick’s argument, and use it to examine subsequent developments in culture and technology.
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  6.  21
    Distributive Justice and Gameplay.Mark Silcox - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (4):2103-2115.
    In Anarchy, State and Utopia Robert Nozick criticizes a broad range of theories of distributive justice using a thought experiment that involves the financial incentives for playing basketball. In this paper, I defend the so-called “patterning” conceptions of justice that are the targets of Nozick’s “Wilt Chamberlain” argument, via the development of an extended analogy between the distribution of politically relevant resources and the playing of games, as this latter activity is characterized by Bernard Suits in his influential book on (...)
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  7. Computing machinery and emergence: The aesthetics and metaphysics of video games.Jon Cogburn & Mark Silcox - 2004 - Minds and Machines 15 (1):73-89.
    We build on some of Daniel Dennett’s ideas about predictive indispensability to characterize properties of video games discernable by people as computationally emergent if, and only if: (1) they can be instantiated by a computing machine, and (2) there is no algorithm for detecting instantiations of them. We then use this conception of emergence to provide support to the aesthetic ideas of Stanley Fish and to illuminate some aspects of the Chomskyan program in cognitive science.
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  8.  13
    Screen Worlds, Virtual Worlds, Constructed Worlds.Mark Silcox - 2023 - Constructivist Foundations 18 (3):402-403.
    Open peer commentary on the article “The World of Screen Creatures” by Bin Liu. Abstract: Bin Liu’s defense of phenomenalism via an elaborate and inventive thought experiment is contrasted with more traditional ways of defending that doctrine. A similar distinction in strategies can be drawn between different ways of arguing that we live in a virtual world. The comparison leads to a more general, metaphilosophical conclusion about how to argue for constructivist positions in metaphysics.
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  9. Psychological Trauma and the Simulated Self.Mark Silcox - 2014 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (3):349-364.
    In the 1980s, there was a significant upsurge in diagnoses of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Ian Hacking suggests that the roots of this tendency lie in the excessive willingness of psychologists past and present to engage in the “psychologization of trauma.” I argue that Hacking makes some philosophically problematic assumptions about the putative threat to human autonomy that is posed by the increasing availability, attractiveness, and plausibility of various forms of simulated experience. I also suggest how a different set of axiological (...)
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  10.  23
    Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom.Jon Cogburn & Mark Silcox (eds.) - 2012 - Open Court Publishing.
    Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy presents twenty-one chapters by different writers, all D&D aficionados but with starkly different insights and points of view. The book is divided into three parts. The first, "Heroic Tier: The Ethical Dungeon-Crawler," explores what D&D has to teach us about ethics. Part II, "Paragon Tier: Planes of Existence," arouses a new sense of wonder about both the real world and the collaborative world game players create. The third part, "Epic Tier: Leveling Up," is at the (...)
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  11. Computability Theory and Ontological Emergence.Jon Cogburn & Mark Silcox - 2011 - American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1):63.
    It is often helpful in metaphysics to reflect upon the principles that govern how existence claims are made in logic and mathematics. Consider, for example, the different ways in which mathematicians construct inductive definitions. In order to provide an inductive definition of a class of mathematical entities, one must first define a base class and then stipulate further conditions for inclusion by reference to the properties of members of the base class. These conditions can be deflationary, so that the target (...)
     
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  12. Agonistic Moralism.Mark Silcox - 2018 - Contemporary Aesthetics 16 (1).
     
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  13. A Prolegomenon to Radical Interpretation.Mark Silcox - 2002 - Dissertation, The Ohio State University
    About halfway through the twentieth century, it became a fairly common practice amongst philosophers and psychologists to speculate about the procedures whereby human beings might come to understand one another's speech in what have come to be known as the circumstances of "radical interpretation." Writers belonging to this tradition shared a common curiosity about how understanding of a human language might be achieved by an investigator to whom that language was more or less totally unfamiliar. Philosophers such as W. V. (...)
     
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  14.  19
    Comments on “Authority, Particularity and the Districting Solution” by Chris King.Mark Silcox - 2019 - Southwest Philosophy Review 35 (2):41-43.
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  15.  10
    Comments on “Nonfunctional Semantics in Plant Signaling” by Mark Bauer.Mark Silcox - 2018 - Southwest Philosophy Review 34 (2):73-77.
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  16.  46
    The Problem With (Quasi-Realist) Expressivism.Mark Silcox - 2012 - Southwest Philosophy Review 28 (1):33-41.
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  17.  87
    Computability theory and literary competence.Mark Silcox & Jon Cogburn - 2006 - British Journal of Aesthetics 46 (4):369-386.
    criticism defend the idea that an individual reader's understanding of a text can be a factor in determining the meaning of what is written in that text, and hence must play a part in determining the very identity conditions of works of literary art. We examine some accounts that have been given of the type of readerly ‘competence’ that a reader must have in order for her responses to a text to play this sort of constitutive role. We argue that (...)
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  18.  47
    Homo Ludens Revisited.Mark Silcox - 2017 - Southwest Philosophy Review 33 (1):1-14.
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  19. Historicism, Science Fiction, and the Singularity.Mark Silcox - 2021 - In Barry Francis Dainton, Will Slocombe & Attila Tanyi (eds.), Minding the Future: Artificial Intelligence, Philosophical Visions and Science Fiction. Springer. pp. 197-218.
    Many writers who have discussed the Singularity have treated it not only as the inevitable outcome of advancements in cybernetic technology, but also as natural consequence of broader patterns in the development of human knowledge, or of human history itself. In this paper I examine these claims in light of Karl Popper’s famous philosophical critique of historicism. I argue that, because the Singularity is regarded as both a product of human ingenuity and a reflection of the permanent limitations of our (...)
     
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  20. Mind and anomalous monism.Mark Silcox - 2005 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Anomalous Monism is a type of property dualism in the philosophy of mind. Property dualism combines the thesis that mental phenomena are strictly irreducible to physical phenomena with the denial that mind and body are discrete substances. For the anomalous monist, the plausibility of property dualism derives from the fact that although mental states, events and processes have genuine causal powers, the causal relationships that they enter into with physical entities cannot be explained by appeal to fundamental laws of nature. (...)
     
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  21.  69
    On the Conceivability of an Omniscient Interpreter.Mark Silcox - 2007 - Dialogue 46 (4):627-636.
    I examine the “omniscient interpreter” (OI) argument against scepticism that Donald Davidson published in 1977 only to retract it twenty-two years later. I argue that the argument's persuasiveness has been underestimated. I defend it against the charges that Davidson assumes the actual existence of an OI and that Davidson's other philosophical commitments are incompatible with the very conceivability of an OI. The argument's surface implausibility derives from Davidson's suggestion that an OI would attribute beliefs using the same methods as a (...)
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  22.  74
    On the Value of Make-Believe.Mark Silcox - 2012 - Journal of Aesthetic Education 46 (4):20-31.
    Around the middle of the twentieth century, psychologists rediscovered the value of make-believe. Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a sudden and considerable outpouring of books that explored the pedagogical and therapeutic significance of imaginative play. Numerous experimental studies published since then have emphasized the importance of games of make-believe in the cognitive development and successful socialization of the very young.1 And increased attention to the use of mental imagery and fantasy in various forms of psychotherapy over the (...)
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  23. Psychohohistory's Noble Lie.Mark Silcox - 2023 - In Joshua Heter & Josef Thomas Simpson (eds.), Asimov's Foundation and Philosophy: Psychohistory and its Discontents. Carus Books. pp. 189-198.
     
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  24.  31
    Response to “Moral Heroism and the Requirement Claim” by Kyle Fruh.Mark Silcox - 2014 - Southwest Philosophy Review 30 (2):13-16.
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  25.  36
    Reply to Rosebury.Mark Silcox - 2009 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2):245-248.
    In his paper 'Moral Responsibility and Moral Luck,' Brian Rosebury argues that believers in moral luck ignore the fact that an agent's moral responsibilities often encompass certain epistemic obligations not usually recognized by commonsense morality. I have suggested in my article 'Virtue Epistemology and Moral Luck' that the plausibility of Rosebury's position depends upon a philosophically dubious account of the relation between first- and third-person perspectives on ethically significant events. Rosebury has defended himself against this charge in the present issue (...)
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  26.  23
    Stone Soup: Distributional Goods and Principles of Justice.Mark Silcox - 2020 - Social Theory and Practice 46 (4):869-889.
    Certain sorts of disputes about principles of distributive justice that have occupied a great deal of attention in recent political philosophy turn out to be fundamentally unresolvable, when they are conducted in ignorance of whether an important subclass of basic social goods exists within any particular society. I employ the folktale ‘Stone Soup’ to illustrate how such distributional goods might come into existence. Using the debate about John Rawls’s Difference Principle as an example, I argue that a proper appreciation for (...)
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  27.  21
    "Thick" Aesthetic Emotions and the Autonomy of Art.Mark Silcox - 2016 - Philosophy and Literature 40 (2):415-430.
    For the properly “cultivated,” proclaimed Oscar Wilde in 1890, “beautiful things mean only Beauty.”1 The idea that artworks possess a discrete and autonomous type of value, by virtue of their capacity to provoke a distinctively aesthetic type of response, is most often associated with artists and critics belonging to the modernist tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Certainly, many influential writers of the period who expressed more instrumentalist attitudes toward the value of their own work, such as (...)
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  28.  36
    (1 other version)The Cry of Nature.Mark Silcox - 2011 - Southwest Philosophy Review 27 (1):215-223.
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  29.  66
    The virtuous parent.Mark Silcox - 2010 - Journal of Value Inquiry 44 (4):499-508.
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  30.  22
    Undergraduate Relativism and Cicero’s De Amicitia.Mark Silcox - 2007 - Teaching Ethics 8 (1):29-38.
  31.  85
    The Subject of Experience. [REVIEW]Mark Silcox - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273):870-873.
    The Subject of Experience. By Galen Strawson.
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  32.  30
    Grossman, Morris. Art and Morality: Essays in the Spirit of George Santayana. Fordham University Press, 2014, xvi + 315 pp., 3 b&w illus., $85.00 cloth, $26.00 paper. [REVIEW]Mark Silcox - 2016 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74 (1):110-112.
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  33.  24
    If only it were all a game: Colin Milburn: Respawn: gamers, hackers, and technogenic life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018, 301pp, $26.95 PB. [REVIEW]Mark Silcox - 2019 - Metascience 29 (1):117-119.
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  34.  30
    Review of "Rule-Following and Realism". [REVIEW]Mark Silcox - 2004 - Essays in Philosophy 5 (1):40.
  35.  13
    Review of Rule-Following and Realism, by Gary Ebbs. [REVIEW]Mark Silcox - 2004 - Essays in Philosophy 5 (1):248-252.
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