Anti-individualism is the thesis that features of the social and physical environments contribute to determining the contents of our beliefs. The notion of content implicit in the thought experiments supporting anti-individualism is tied to explications of how our terms and the concepts they express are correctly applied. Since anti-individualists should regard these explications as a subject of ongoing dispute, they should claim that sameness and difference of content is not always detectable upon reflection. Many philosophers accordingly worry that anti-individualists cannot (...) accommodate the use of belief attributions to characterize individual points of view. The key to these objections is the thesis that belief attributions have the same truth-value if they attribute beliefs with the same content. When the semantic and metaphysical motivations for this assumption are discredited, anti-individualism's alleged problems with characterizing individual points of view may be solved without introducing an additional notion of "cognitive" content which tracks differential dubitability judgments. The resulting account of belief requires a new account of understanding and responsibility to evaluation which emphasizes participation in ongoing attempts to formulate explications rather than knowledge thereof. (shrink)

Descartes is typically interpreted as asserting two related theses: 1) that the will is absolutely free in the sense that no bodily state can compel it or restrain its activity; and 2) that error is always avoidable, no matter what the condition of the body. On the basis of Descartes’s discussions of insanity and dreaming, I argue that both of these interpretive claims are false. In other words, Descartes acknowledged that a diseased or otherwise out of sorts body can compel (...) the will to affirm obscure and confused perceptions. After marshalling textual evidence for this conclusion, I go on to show how Descartes’s acknowledgment of physically induced impaired judgment can be squared with his unqualified assertions of free will, his commitment to the non-deceptiveness of God, and his epistemology. (shrink)

Descartes is typically interpreted as asserting two related theses: 1) that the will is absolutely free in the sense that no bodily state can compel it or restrain its activity; and 2) that error is always avoidable, no matter what the condition of the body. On the basis of Descartes’s discussions of insanity and dreaming, I argue that both of these interpretive claims are false. In other words, Descartes acknowledged that a diseased or otherwise out of sorts body can compel (...) the will to affirm obscure and confused perceptions. After marshalling textual evidence for this conclusion, I go on to show how Descartes’s acknowledgment of physically induced impaired judgment can be squared with his unqualified assertions of free will, his commitment to the non-deceptiveness of God, and his epistemology. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy studies show that ordinary people have conflicting moral intuitions: when asked about events in a deterministic universe, respondents exhibit compatibilist intuitions about vignettes describing concrete actions, but they have incompatibilist intuitions in response to more abstract queries. Nichols and Knobe maintain that concrete compatibilist intuitions should be explained as emotion-induced performance errors in the psychological process of moral judgment. Their theory is criticized in two main ways. First, they fail to establish that the role of emotion in generating (...) compatibilist intuitions justifies the charge of performance error. Second, doubts are raised about the reliability of the psychological processes that generate incompatibilist intuitions. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of declining support for the humanities in American culture, this presidential address urges the philosophical community to examine itself. Scientific naturalists in particular are invited to apply their theories about the tribal nature of human social groups to their own community. The ultimate goal is to encourage contemporary naturalistic philosophers to reclaim the humanistic appeal of historical naturalists such as William James and David Hume. While the goal of the essay is serious, its tone as a dinnertime (...) address is irreverent, including among other indiscretions an analogy between prominent philosophical naturalists and leaders of the Tea Party. (shrink)

Cognitivism in the philosophy of emotion is the view that judgments are essential to any adequate understanding of the emotions. Non-cognitivists attempt to explain emotions independently of judgment. Against non-cognitivism, I deploy Peter Strawson's distinction between the "participant" and "objective" attitudes to show that the stark distinction non-cognitivists draw between emotions and triggering judgments cannot be maintained. I also counter efforts by non-cognitivists to dismiss cognitivism as mere "folk psychology" or methodologically suspect "conceptual analysis.".