In the burgeoning literature on thought experiments, examples are drawn from almost all areas of philosophy, one exception, however, being aesthetics. There are good reasons why this is so: there are very few interesting theory-oriented thought experiments in aesthetics, which is unsurprising since there are few well-developed theories to test in this field. After evaluating some aesthetic thought experiments in light of some general epistemic questions regarding thought experiments, we argue that theory-centred thought experiments are not the only kinds of (...) thought experiments, and that the practical and productive thought experiments that are prevalent in aesthetics are also worthy of some attention. (shrink)

The “somewhat vague, intuitive” notion from computability theory of an effective procedure (method) or algorithm can be fairly precisely defined even if it is not sufficiently formal and precise to belong to mathematics proper (in a narrow sense)—and even if (as many have asserted) for that reason the Church–Turing thesis is unprovable. It is proved logically that the class of effective procedures is not decidable, i.e., that no effective procedure is possible for ascertaining whether a given procedure is effective. This (...) undecidability result is proved directly from the notion itself of an effective procedure, without reliance on any (partly) mathematical lemma, conjecture, or thesis invoking recursiveness or Turing-computability. In fact, there is no reliance on anything very mathematical. The proof does not even appeal to a precise definition of ‘effective procedure’. Instead, it relies solely and entirely on a basic grasp of the intuitive notion of an effective procedure. Though the result that effectiveness is undecidable is not surprising, it is also not without significance. It has the consequence, for example, that the solution to a decision problem, if it is to be complete, must be accompanied by a separate argument that the proposed ascertainment procedure invariably terminates with the correct verdict. (shrink)

Changing our minds isn't easy. Even when we recognize our views are disputed by intelligent and informed people, we rarely doubt our rightness. Why is this so? How can we become more open-minded, putting ourselves in a better position to tolerate conflict, advance collective inquiry, and learn from differing perspectives in a complex world? -/- Nathan Ballantyne defends the indispensable role of epistemology in tackling these issues. For early modern philosophers, the point of reflecting on inquiry was to understand (...) how our beliefs are often distorted by prejudice and self-interest, and to improve the foundations of human knowledge. Ballantyne seeks to recover and modernize this classical tradition by vigorously defending an interdisciplinary approach to epistemology, blending philosophical theorizing with insights from the social and cognitive sciences. -/- Many of us need tools to help us think more circumspectly about our controversial views. Ballantyne develops a method for distinguishing between our reasonable and unreasonable opinions, in light of evidence about bias, information overload, and rival experts. This method guides us to greater intellectual openness--in the spirit of skeptics from Socrates to Montaigne to Bertrand Russell--making us more inclined to admit that sometimes we don't have the right answers. With vibrant prose and fascinating examples from science and history, Ballantyne shows how epistemology can help us know our limits. (shrink)

Alonzo Church famously provided three principal competing criteria for “strict synonymy,” i.e., sameness of semantic content. These are his Alternatives (0), (1), and (2)—numbered in order of increasing course-grainedness of content. On Alternative (2), expressions are deemed strictly synonymous iff they are logically equivalent. This criterion seems hopeless as an account of the objects of propositional attitude. On Alternative (1), expressions are deemed synonymous iff they are λ-convertible. Alternative (1) also evidently conflicts with discourse about the attitudes. On Alternative (0), (...) expressions are deemed strictly synonymous iff they are “synonymously isomorphic” in Church’s sense. On Alternative (0), semantic content is so fine-grained that not even “Romeo loves Juliet” and “Juliet is loved by Romeo” qualify as strictly synonymous. A fourth alternative, here called “Alternative (3),” deems expressions strictly synonymous iff they are co-intensional, i.e., they have the same semantic extension with respect to the same possible worlds. This criterion’s notion of content is even more course grained than that of Alternative (2). Several objections to Alternative (3) are considered. (This article is contained within the author’s more definitive essay, “Singular Concepts”.). (shrink)

Epistemic trespassers judge matters outside their field of expertise. Trespassing is ubiquitous in this age of interdisciplinary research and recognizing this will require us to be more intellectually modest.

The just war tradition assumes that civil war is a possible site of justice. It has an uneasy relationship with liberalism, because the latter resists the idea that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified in moral terms. The paper suggests that, even if this is true, these two schools of thought are closer to each other than often appears to be the case. In particular, the paper argues that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified using the liberal assumptions that nonviolent (...) opposition is the proper non-institutional technique to fight oppressive regimes, and that law enforcement is the appropriate response to unjustified rebellions. Given these assumptions, insurgent warfare is limited to circumstances in which, firstly, nonviolent resistance is no longer a reasonable course of action; and secondly, insurgents have the intention to create the political conditions that are needed to make it a coherent option again.Counter insurgent warfare, in turn, is restrained to those situations in which, first, there is a rebellion or revolution even though the use of nonviolent strategies for conflict and change remains a reasonable choice; and second, police agencies lack the resources that arerequired for managing and suppressing rebel activities. Of course, these requirements should be taken as presumptions, and there may be cases when they do not hold. (shrink)

Some rules seem more important than others. The moral rule to keep promises seems more important than the aesthetic rule not to wear brown with black or the pool rule not to scratch on the eight ball. A worrying number of metaethicists are increasingly tempted to explain this difference by appealing to something they call “authoritative normativity” – it’s because moral rules are “authoritatively normatively” that they are especially important. The authors of this chapter argue for three claims concerning “authoritative (...) normativity”: (1) that motivation for it originates in a parochial conception of “normative flavours”; (2) that arguments against alternative ways of explaining e.g., morality’s importance are overblown; and (3) that there are strong reasons against theorizing in terms of “authoritative normativity”. The overarching aim is not to show that “authoritative normativity” is incoherent or entirely unmotivated. Rather, it is to discuss some of “authoritative normativity’s” deeper commitments to correct the impression that is it largely benign or that it is entailed by familiar and popular “metanormative” positions. Authoritative normativity, it seems to us, is a solution in search of a problem. (shrink)

A new philosophical analysis is provided of the notorious Sleeping Beauty Problem. It is argued that the correct solution is one-third, but not in the way previous philosophers have typically meant this. A modified version of the Problem demonstrates that neither self-locating information nor amnesia is relevant to the core Problem, which is simply to evaluate the conditional chance of heads given an undated Monday-or-Tuesday awakening. Previous commentators have failed to appreciate the significance of the information that Beauty gains upon (...) waking, and which is relevant to the conditional chance of heads: de re acquaintance with the awakening itself and the non-locating knowledge that it is an experimental awakening. David Lewis and company are committed to several unjustifiable and unacceptable probability assessments. Previous commentators have in effect confused the information that Beauty undergoes this particular experimental awakening for the information that she undergoes some experimental awakening or other. Lewis in particular thereby illegitimately tips the scales both in favor of heads and in favor of Monday. The Sleeping Beauty Problem is equivalent to a ball-in-urn word problem in elementary probability theory. (shrink)

Two theses figure centrally in work on the epistemology of disagreement: Equal Weight (‘EW’) and Uniqueness (‘U’). According to EW, you should give precisely as much weight to the attitude of a disagreeing epistemic peer as you give to your own attitude. U has it that, for any given proposition and total body of evidence, some doxastic attitude is the one the evidence makes rational (justifies) toward that proposition. Although EW has received considerable discussion, the case for U has not (...) been critically evaluated. Endorsing U, we argue, commits one to the highly controversial thesis that whatever fixes your rational attitudes can do so only by fixing what evidence you have. This commitment imposes a relatively demanding requirement on justified belief in U, one that we argue is not satisfied by what is currently the strongest available case for U, due to Roger White [2005]. Our challenge to U makes more trouble for its proponents than do the worries about U expressed by Gideon Rosen [2001] and Thomas Kelly [2010]. Moreover, if Kelly [2010] is correct in thinking that EW “carries with it a commitment to” U—a claim which we accept for reasons similar to Kelly’s but is beyond this paper’s scope (but see Ballantyne and Coffman [forthcoming])—then our challenge to U bears importantly on EW: to the extent that our challenge to U succeeds, EW also suffers. (shrink)

This is a non-technical version of "The Decision Problem for Effective Procedures." The “somewhat vague, intuitive” notion from computability theory of an effective procedure (method) or algorithm can be fairly precisely defined, even if it does not have a purely mathematical definition—and even if (as many have asserted) for that reason, the Church–Turing thesis (that the effectively calculable functions on natural numbers are exactly the general recursive functions), cannot be proved. However, it is logically provable from the notion of an (...) effective procedure--without reliance on any (partially) mathematical thesis or conjecture concerning effective procedures, such as the Church–Turing thesis--that the class of effective procedures is undecidable, i.e., that no effective procedure is possible for ascertaining whether a given procedure is effective. The proof does not appeal to a precise definition of ‘effective procedure’. Instead, it relies solely and entirely on a basic grasp of the intuitive notion of such a procedure. Though this undecidability result itself is not surprising, it is also not without significance. It has the consequence, for example, that the solution to a decision problem, if it is to be complete, must be accompanied by a separate argument that the proposed ascertainment procedure is, in fact, a decision procedure, i.e., effective—for example, that it invariably terminates with the correct verdict. (shrink)

We prove some results on the polynomial hierarchies of infinite abelian groups. In particular, we show the polynomial hierarchy over an infinite group of exponent a prime number p collapse if and only if it is the case in the classical theory.

Many philosophers claim that it is always intrinsically good when people get what they deserve and that there is always at least some reason to give people what they deserve. I highlight problems with this view and defend an alternative. I have two aims. First, I want to expose a gap in certain desert-based justifications of punishment. Second, I want to show that those of us who have intuitions at odds with these justifications have an alternative account of desert at (...) our disposal – one that may lend our intuitions more credibility. (shrink)

I demonstrate that a "speech act" theory of meaning for imperatives is—contra a dominant position in philosophy and linguistics—theoretically desirable. A speech act-theoretic account of the meaning of an imperative !φ is characterized, broadly, by the following claims. -/- LINGUISTIC MEANING AS USE !φ’s meaning is a matter of the speech act an utterance of it conventionally functions to express—what a speaker conventionally uses it to do (its conventional discourse function, CDF). -/- IMPERATIVE USE AS PRACTICAL !φ's CDF is to (...) express a practical (non-representational) state of mind—one concerning an agent's preferences and plans, rather than her beliefs. -/- Opposed to speech act accounts is a preponderance of views which deny that a sentence's linguistic meaning is a matter of what speech act it is used to perform, or its CDF. On such accounts, meaning is, instead, a matter of "static" properties of the sentence—e.g., how it depicts the world as being (or, more neutrally, the properties of a model-theoretic object with which the semantic value of the sentence co-varies). On one version of a static account, an imperative 'shut the window!' might, for instance, depict the world as being such that the window must be shut. -/- Static accounts are traditionally motivated against speech act-theoretic accounts by appeal to supposedly irremediable explanatory deficiencies in the latter. Whatever a static account loses in saying (prima facie counterintuitively) that an imperative conventionally represents, or expresses a picture of the world, is said to be offset by its ability to explain a variety of phenomena for which speech act-theoretic accounts are said to lack good explanations (even, in many cases, the bare ability to offer something that might meet basic criteria on what a good explanation should be like). -/- I aim to turn the tables on static accounts. I do this by showing that speech act accounts are capable of giving explanations of phenomena which fans of static accounts have alleged them unable to give. Indeed, for a variety of absolutely fundamental phenomena having to do with the conventional meaning of imperatives (and other types of practical language), speech act accounts provide natural and theoretically satisfying explanations, where a representational account provides none. (shrink)

Two theses are central to recent work on the epistemology of disagreement: Conciliationism:?In a revealed peer disagreement over P, each thinker should give at least some weight to her peer's attitude. Uniqueness:?For any given proposition and total body of evidence, the evidence fully justifies exactly one level of confidence in the proposition. 1This paper is the product of full and equal collaboration between its authors. Does Conciliationism commit one to Uniqueness? Thomas Kelly 2010 has argued that it does. After some (...) scene-setting (?1), in ?2 we explain and criticize Kelly's argument, thereby defeating his larger argument that Conciliationism deserves no dialectical special treatment. But we argue further that Conciliationists are committed to a disjunction, one of whose disjuncts is Uniqueness, that amounts to an ?extremely strong and unobvious position? (??3?4). If we are correct, theorists should not treat Conciliationism as a default position in debates about the epistemic significance of disagreement. (shrink)

In the immediate post-war period, a set of thinkers, most notably Jacques Maritain, developed influential natural law theories of constitutional democracy. The central tenet of the natural law approach to the post-war settlement was that, without the type of foundational understanding of the constitutional system it was proposing, the new democratic political institutions would relapse into totalitarianism. In response to this natural law challenge, Hans Kelsen sought to explicate and defend a self-consciously secular and relativistic understanding of the basis of (...) constitutional democracy. This article will examine the debate between the Kelsenian and the natural law view of constitutional democracy. The debate raises questions of foundational importance, and a number of issues are of particular concern in the present global context. These issues concern the role of moral pluralism and its relevance to the structure of constitutional democracy, and the relationship between universal values and the common good of particular communities. (shrink)

This article evaluates an emerging element in popular debate and inquiry: DYOR. (Haven’t heard of the acronym? Then Do Your Own Research.) The slogan is flexible and versatile. It is used frequently on social media platforms about topics from medical science to financial investing to conspiracy theories. Using conceptual and empirical resources drawn from philosophy and psychology, we examine key questions about the slogan’s operation in human cognition and epistemic culture.

This book introduces readers to the many arguments and controversies concerning abortion. While it argues for ethical and legal positions on the issues, it focuses on how to think about the issues, not just what to think about them. It is an ideal resource to improve your understanding of what people think, why they think that and whether their (and your) arguments are good or bad, and why. It's ideal for classroom use, discussion groups, organizational learning, and personal reading. -/- (...) From the Preface -/- To many people, abortion is an issue for which discussions and debates are frustrating and fruitless: it seems like no progress will ever be made towards any understanding, much less resolution or even compromise. -/- Judgments like these, however, are premature because some basic techniques from critical thinking, such as carefully defining words and testing definitions, stating the full structure of arguments so each step of the reasoning can be examined, and comparing the strengths and weaknesses of different explanations can help us make progress towards these goals. -/- When emotions run high, we sometimes need to step back and use a passion for calm, cool, critical thinking. This helps us better understand the positions and arguments of people who see things differently from us, as well as our own positions and arguments. And we can use critical thinking skills help to try to figure out which positions are best, in terms of being supported by good arguments: after all, we might have much to learn from other people, sometimes that our own views should change, for the better. -/- Here we use basic critical thinking skills to argue that abortion is typically not morally wrong. We begin with less morally-controversial claims: adults, children and babies are wrong to kill and wrong to kill, fundamentally, because they, we, are conscious, aware and have feelings. We argue that since early fetuses entirely lack these characteristics, they are not inherently wrong to kill and so most abortions are not morally wrong, since most abortions are done early in pregnancy, before consciousness and feeling develop in the fetus. -/- Furthermore, since the right to life is not the right to someone else’s body, fetuses might not have the right to the pregnant woman’s body—which she has the right to—and so she has the right to not allow the fetus use of her body. This further justifies abortion, at least, until technology allows for the removal of fetuses to other wombs. Since morally permissible actions should be legal, abortions should be legal: it is an injustice to criminalizing actions that are not wrong. -/- In the course of arguing for these claims, we: 1. discuss how to best define abortion; 2. dismiss many common “question-begging” arguments that merely assume their conclusions, instead of giving genuine reasons for them; 3. refute some often-heard “everyday arguments” about abortion, on all sides; explain why the most influential philosophical arguments against abortion are unsuccessful; 4. provide some positive arguments that at least early abortions are not wrong; 5. briefly discuss the ethics and legality of later abortions, and more. -/- This essay is not a “how to win an argument” piece or a tract or any kind of apologetics. It is not designed to help anyone “win” debates: everybody “wins” on this issue when we calmly and respectfully engage arguments with care, charity, honesty and humility. This book is merely a reasoned, systematic introduction to the issues that we hope models these skills and virtues. Its discussion should not be taken as absolute “proof” of anything: much more needs to be understood and carefully discussed—always. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Most of what we believe comes to us from the word of others, but we do not always believe what we are told. We often reject thinkers' reports by attributing biases to them. We may call this debunking. In this essay, I consider how debunking might work and then examine whether, and how often, it can help to preserve rational belief in the face of disagreement.

Nathan Carlin revisits the role of religion in bioethics, an increasingly secular enterprise, and argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich's method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has developed and progressively refined an argument against moral intuitionism—the view on which some moral beliefs enjoy non-inferential justification. He has stated his argument in a few different forms, but the basic idea is straightforward. To start with, Sinnott-Armstrong highlights facts relevant to the truth of moral beliefs: such beliefs are sometimes biased, influenced by various irrelevant factors, and often subject to disagreement. Given these facts, Sinnott-Armstrong infers that many moral beliefs are false. What then shall we think (...) of our own moral beliefs? Either we have reason to think some of our moral beliefs are reliably formed or we have no such reason. If the latter, our moral beliefs are unjustified. If we have reason to think some moral beliefs are reliably formed, then those beliefs are not non-inferentially justified, because then we’ll have reason to accept something—namely, that they are reliably formed—that entails or supports those beliefs. But then, either way, our moral beliefs are not non-inferentially justified, and so moral intuitionism is false. This paper takes issue with Sinnott-Armstrong’s interesting and widely discussed argument, which we here call the Empirical Defeat Argument (EDA). According to us, the EDA does not defeat moral intuitionism. In section 1, we will set out the argument, briefly reviewing the rationale Sinnott-Armstrong offers for the premises. Then, in section 2, we identify a critical but dubious epistemological assumption concerning the nature of defeat that undergirds the argument. Finally, in section 3, we will defend our challenge to the EDA by answering two objections. (shrink)

Intellectual humility is commonly thought to be a mindset, disposition, or personality trait that guides our reactions to evidence as we seek to pursue the truth and avoid error. Over the last decade, psychologists, philosophers, and other researchers have begun to explore intellectual humility, using analytical and empirical tools to understand its nature, implications, and value. This review describes central questions explored by researchers and highlights opportunities for multidisciplinary investigation.

Recent work on the nature of luck widely endorses the thesis that an event is good or bad luck for an individual only if it is significant for that individual. In this paper, I explore this thesis, showing that it raises questions about interests, well-being, and the philosophical uses of luck. In Sect. 1, I examine several accounts of significance, due to Pritchard (2005), Coffman (2007), and Rescher (1995). Then in Sect. 2 I consider what some theorists want to ‘do’ (...) with luck, taking important examples from epistemology (explaining Gettier-style examples) and political philosophy (offering a rationale for the just distribution of resources in society), while suggesting implications for significance. Drawing together lessons from Sects. 1 and 2, I develop a new account of significance in Sect. 3 before concluding with reflections on the debate in Sect. 4. (shrink)

Shadow Philosophy: Plato’s Cave and Cinema is an accessible and exciting new contribution to film-philosophy, which shows that to take film seriously is also to engage with the fundamental questions of philosophy. Nathan Andersen brings Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange into philosophical conversation with Plato’s Republic , comparing their contributions to themes such as the nature of experience and meaning, the character of justice, the contrast between appearance and reality, the importance of art, and the impact of images. (...) At the heart of the book is a novel account of the analogy between Plato’s allegory of the cave and cinema, developed in conjunction with a provocative interpretation of the most powerful image from A Clockwork Orange , in which the lead character is strapped to a chair and forced to watch violent films. Key features of the book include: a comprehensive bibliography of suggested readings on Plato, on film, on philosophy, and on the philosophy of film a list of suggested films that can be explored following the approach in this book, including brief descriptions of each film, and suggestions regarding its philosophical implications a summary of Plato’s Republic , book by book, highlighting both dramatic context and subject matter. Offering a close reading of the controversial classic film A Clockwork Orange , and an introductory account of the central themes of the philosophical classic The Republic , this book will be of interest to both scholars and students of philosophy and film, as well as to readers of Plato and fans of Stanley Kubrick. (shrink)

David Lewis and Peter van Inwagen have claimed that there are no “knockdown” arguments in philosophy. Their claim appears to be at odds with common philosophical practice: philosophers often write as though their conclusions are established or proven and that the considerations offered for these conclusions are decisive. In this paper, I examine some questions raised by Lewis’s and van Inwagen’s contention. What are knockdown arguments? Are there any in philosophy? If not, why not? These questions concern the nature of (...) the philosophical enterprise and our answers have implications for the limits on the attitudes of informed, rational thinkers. (shrink)

Abstract Both parties in the active philosophical debate concerning the conceptual character of perception trace their roots back to Kant's account of sensible intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason. This striking fact can be attributed to Kant's tendency both to assert and to deny the involvement of our conceptual capacities in sensible intuition. He appears to waver between these two positions in different passages, and can thus seem thoroughly confused on this issue. But this is not, in fact, the (...) case, for, as I will argue, the appearance of contradiction in his account stems from the failure of some commentators to pay sufficient attention to Kant's developmental approach to philosophy. Although he begins by asserting the independence of intuition, Kant proceeds from this nonconceptualist starting point to reveal a deeper connection between intuitions and concepts. On this reading, Kant's seemingly conflicting claims are actually the result of a careful and deliberate strategy for gradually convincing his readers of the conceptual nature of perception. (shrink)

A persistent problem in the dominant agricultural development model is the imposition of technologies without regard to local processes and cultures. Even with the recent shift towards sustainability and agroecology, initiatives continue to overlook local knowledge. In this article we provide analysis of agroecological soil management in the Maya-Achi territory of Guatemala. The Achí, subject to five decades of interventions and development, present an interesting case study for assessing the complementarities and tensions between traditional, generally preventative practices and external initiatives (...) which tend to be curative. Our findings reveal a complex farming system that continues to rely on ancestral knowledge and practices, many of which display a high potential for sustainability and are deeply embedded in local culture. While some new practices have been incorporated into the traditional system, abandonment rates are high, and some extension methods have been paternalistic. The Achí are thirsty for new ideas to help them confront their current, unprecedented challenges. However, future collaborations should be built on existing local knowledge, which has contributed to the development of preventative and restorative practices still in use. Introduced technologies must coincide with local needs and socioecological context in a manner that encourages beneficial synergies, as well as horizontal learning/teaching processes. (shrink)

This is the second edition of an award-winning 1981 book (Princeton University Press and Basil Blackwell, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation) considered to be a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language.

I argue that reflection on philosophers who could have been working among us but aren’t can lead us to give up our philosophical beliefs.

The concept of a reason is now central to many areas of contemporary philosophy. Key theses in ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of action, and the philosophy of the emotions, among others, have come to be framed in terms of reasons. And yet, despite their centrality, theorists seem to take inconsistent things for granted about how reasons work, what kinds of things can be reasons, what reasons favor, and more. Somehow reasons have come to be both indispensable and impenetrable. -/- (...) The Fundamentals of Reasons offers a comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of reasons. Focusing on the twin roles of reasons in explanation and deliberation, the book not only emphasizes what has made reasons central across philosophy but it also explores why philosophers have such incompatible pictures about what reasons are and how they work. Working from the inside out, Howard and Schroeder identify contentious assumptions about not only the internal structure of reasons but also their relationship to other important concepts, and then show how these contentious assumptions shape the many downstream applications of reasons in ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, and beyond. -/- This mildly opinionated exploration of key questions about the significance and nature of reasons helps the reader to navigate this important part of the philosophical landscape and to get clearer about why reasons seem important and what their import, ultimately, is. (shrink)

David-Ménard examines the problem of the genesis of Kant's moral philosophy. The separation between Kantian practical reason and the inclinations of sense which it regulates is shown by the author to originate in Kant's attempt to regulate his own tendency to hypochondria. Her argument links the themes from two of Kant's pre-critical works which attest to this tendency—“An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime—to the final form of (...) the critical philosophy. (shrink)

David-Ménard examines the problem of the genesis of Kant's moral philosophy. The separation between Kantian practical reason and the inclinations of sense which it regulates is shown by the author to originate in Kant's attempt to regulate his own tendency to hypochondria. Her argument links the themes from two of Kant's pre-critical works which attest to this tendency—“An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime—to the final form of (...) the critical philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany philosophers have suggested that disagreement is good grounds for scepticism. One response says that disagreement-motivated scepticism can be mitigated to some extent by the thesis that philosophical disputes are often verbal, not genuine. I consider the implications of this anti-sceptical strategy, arguing that it trades one kind of scepticism for others. I conclude with suggestions for further investigation of the epistemic significance of the nature of philosophical disagreement.

Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates to (...) very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing ideological hostility in the field, occasionally even from those from their own side of the political spectrum. Finally, while about half of the subjects believed that discrimination against left- or right-leaning individuals in the field is not justified, a significant minority displayed an explicit willingness to discriminate against colleagues with the opposite ideology. Our findings are both surprising and important, because a commitment to tolerance and equality is widespread in philosophy, and there is reason to think that ideological similarity, hostility, and discrimination undermine reliable belief formation in many areas of the discipline. (shrink)

Discussions of political obligation and political authority have long focused on the idea that the commands of genuine authorities constitute content-independent reasons. Despite its centrality in these debates, the notion of content-independence is unclear and controversial, with some claiming that it is incoherent, useless, or increasingly irrelevant. I clarify content-independence by focusing on how reasons can depend on features of their source or container. I then solve the long-standing puzzle of whether the fact that laws can constitute content-independent reasons is (...) consistent with the fact that some laws must fail to bind due to their egregiously unjust content. Finally I defend my understanding of content-independence against challenges and show why it retains a place of special importance for questions about the law and political obligation. Content-independence highlights that it is some feature of the law or law-making process in general that is supposed to generate moral obligations for citizens, not the merits of particular laws. (shrink)

This paper considers Freud's 1920 text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in light of Jacques Derrida's critical commentary on it in The Post Card. Against the deconstructive reading that highlights the performative aspects of Freud's speculative remarks, David-Ménard reads Freud's theory of the death drive as an epistemological and experimental hypothesis necessary for giving an account of the complexity and diversity of the clinical phenomenon of repetition in psychoanalysis. Though the death drive never appears locatable as such in the various (...) examples given by Freud, it is nonetheless accessible in the constellation of differences produced by traumatic dreams, children's games, etc. (shrink)

There is general consensus that explainable artificial intelligence is valuable, but there is significant divergence when we try to articulate why, exactly, it is desirable. This question must be distinguished from two other kinds of questions asked in the XAI literature that are sometimes asked and addressed simultaneously. The first and most obvious is the ‘how’ question—some version of: ‘how do we develop technical strategies to achieve XAI?’ Another question is specifying what kind of explanation is worth having in the (...) first place. As difficult and important as the challenges are in answering these questions, they are distinct from a third question: why do we want XAI at all? There is vast literature on this question as well, but I wish to explore a different kind of answer. The most obvious way to answer this question is by describing a desirable outcome that would likely be achieved with the right kind of explanation, which would make the explanation valuable instrumentally. That is, XAI is desirable to attain some other value, such as fairness, trust, accountability, or governance. This family of arguments is obviously important, but I argue that explanations are also intrinsically valuable, because unexplainable systems can be dehumanizing. I argue that there are at least three independently valid versions of this kind of argument: an argument from participation, from knowledge, and from actualization. Each of these arguments that XAI is intrinsically valuable is independently compelling, in addition to the more obvious instrumental benefits of XAI. (shrink)

David-Ménard examines the problem of the genesis of Kant's moral philosophy. The separation between Kantian practical reason and the inclinations of sense which it regulates is shown by the author to originate in Kant's attempt to regulate his own tendency to hypochondria. Her argument links the themes from two of Kant's pre-critical works which attest to this tendency—“An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime—to the final form of (...) the critical philosophy. (shrink)

This paper defends an interpretation of Gottlob Frege’s views on the structure of thought. I argue that Frege did not think that a thought has a unique decomposition into its component senses, but rather the same thought can be decomposed into senses in multiple, distinct ways. These multiple decompositions will often have distinct logical forms. I also argue against Michael Dummett and others that Frege was committed to the sense of a predicate being a function from the sense of a (...) name (or names) to a complete thought. I defend my Frege interpretation against a puzzle often discussed in the Frege literature; namely, that the Multiple Decompositions Thesis is incompatible with Frege’s stated view that a thought is built up out of its component senses as parts. I provide textual evidence and argument that Frege thought of the part/whole relation in such a way that a whole can be analyzed into (or built up out of) parts in multiple, distinct ways, thus dissolving the puzzle. I conclude with discussion of every sort of example of multiple decompositions that can be found in Frege's work. (shrink)