The Krueger & Funder (K&F) article would gain in constructive value if the authors spelled out what role the heuristics-and-biases approach could play in balancing the field of social cognition, lowering the burden of blame on it, cautioning overly enthusiastic readers from championing the “enough-with-the-biases” movement, and acknowledging that not all biases are caused by minorities.

In this paper, I argue that Hume’s account of moral judgment is best understood if it is read in light of Hume’s explanatory project. I first lay out the textual support to show that Hume’s account of justice in the Treatise includes both approval of a motive that gives rise to the virtue of justice, and approval of a system of conduct, irrespective of a motive. I then argue that we can allow for such plurality in Hume’s theory of moral (...) judgment if we view it in light of his explanatory project: finding unifying causes for disparate phenomena. Hume offers a unified theory of moral judgment because he can show that the different approvals are explained by the same causes. Finally, I argue that viewing Hume’s account of moral judgment in light of his explanatory project allows us to appreciate a further distinction between the moral judgment of the natural and the artificial virtues: while judgments of the former are fully explained by the causes of a certain motive, the latter are only fully explained by the causes of the motive in the context of a convention, which in turn is partially constituted by non-approved motives. (shrink)

This paper takes a simple, informal suggestion by Broome and another more explicit suggestion by Kamm for how to deal with asymmetric claims and shows how they can be interpreted to be consistent with two different social welfare functions: Sum-of-square-roots of individual utilities, and product of utilities. These functions are then used to analyze more complicated situations but I show that the first yields more intuitive results, and a better compromise of efficiency and justice, than the other. (Published Online July (...) 11 2006). (shrink)

Some people argue that the distribution of medical resources should be sensitive to agents’ responsibility for their ill-health. In contrast, others point to the social determinants of health to argue that the collective agents that control the conditions in which agents act should bear responsibility. To a large degree, this is a debate in which those who hold individuals responsible currently have the upper hand: warranted appeals to individual responsibility effectively block allocation of any significant degree of responsibility to collective (...) agents. We suggest that a different understanding of individual responsibility might lead to a fairer allocation of blame. Scaffolded agency is individual agency exercised in a context in which opportunities and affordances are structured by others. Appeals to scaffolded agency at once recognize the role of the individual and of the collective agents who have put the scaffolds in place. (shrink)

The paper motivates a novel research programme in the philosophy of action parallel to the ‘Knowledge First’ programme in epistemology. It is argued that much of the grounds for abandoning the quest for a reductive analysis of knowledge in favour of the Knowledge First alternative is mirrored in the case of intentional action, inviting the hypothesis that intentional action is also, like knowledge, metaphysically basic. The paper goes on to demonstrate the sort of explanatory contribution that intentional action can make (...) once it is no longer taken to be a target for reductive analysis, in explaining other, non-intentional kinds of action and voluntariness. (shrink)

McKenna’s critique (rather than criticisms) of idealized approaches to epistemology is an important contribution to the literature. In this brief discussion, I set out his main concerns about more idealized approaches, within and beyond social epistemology, before turning to some issues I think he neglects. I suggest that it’s important to pay attention to the prestige hierarchy in philosophy, and to how that hierarchy can serve ideological purposes. The greater prestige of more abstract approaches plays a role in determining what (...) issues and what voices we attend to. (shrink)

The external world sceptic tells some familiar narratives involving massive deception. Perhaps we are brains in vats. Perhaps we are the victim of a deceitful demon. You know the drill. The sceptic proceeds by observing first that victims of such deceptions know nothing about their external environment and that second, since we cannot rule out being a victim of such deceptions our- selves, our own external world beliefs fail to attain the status of knowledge. Discussions of global external world scepticism (...) tend to focus on the second step, where a number of well-known lines of resistance have been offered. But there has been little attention to the first, seemingly innocuous step. That will be the focus of this paper. Part one – sections 1, 2, and 3 – will explain why these standard narratives are not convincing examples of cases where there is no knowledge of the external world. In part two – section 4 – we shall undertake a useful case study. David Lewis’s ‘Elusive Knowledge’ is often thought of as presenting an epistemological vision that is somewhat friendly to external world scepticism: as Lewis himself presents things, there are contexts where external world knowledge ascriptions are uniformly false, and where true knowledge ascriptions are limited to either axiomatic truths or truths about our inner life. We examine his discussion in the light of the preceding reflections and show that the framework he presents is not so concessionary to global external world scepticism after all. (shrink)

Science and fiction seem to lie at opposite ends of the cognitive-epistemic spectrum. The former is typically seen as the study of hard, real-world facts in a rigorous manner. The latter is treated as an instrument of play and recreation, dealing in figments of the imagination. Initial appearances notwithstanding, several central features of scientific modeling in fact suggest a close connection with the imagination and recent philosophers have developed detailed accounts of models that treat them, in one way or another, (...) as akin to fictions. This chapter will critically discuss the fictions approach as an epistemology of scientific modeling. (shrink)

Why is it that the study of Ethics is so unpopular? It is because there are so many systems of Ethics, and they are all in such hopeless contradiction. Why are there so many systems? Because each writer starts with his theory and then attempts to get the facts to agree with it. What is the remedy? The remedy, says Professor Levy-Bruhl, is to start with the practice. And what then? Then, he says, you find that the practice is everything, (...) that you need no theory, and that every ethical writer is in harmony with every other. 'Every ethical doctrine,' says Professor Levy-Bruhl, 'jealously defends the originality of its ethical principle against the objections of others, but it formulates the guiding rules of conduct, the concrete precepts of justice and charity, in the same terms as its rivals, whether its adherent is a disciple of Kant, a critical philosopher, a pessimist, a positivist, an evolutionist, a spiritualist, or a theologian.' The way out of the chaos of theoretical Ethics, then, is to deny its existence. There is no such science. The only science of Ethics is the practical. Its object of study is the conscience of man. Its rules and obligations are what the conscience reveals to experience. It takes Professor Levy-Bruhl half his book to get rid of theoretical ethics. Then, however, he is free, and he moves more rapidly in the discussion of Natural Ethics and Ethical Feeling. He ends with a chapter of Practical Results. -The Expository Times, Vol. 17. (shrink)

To a large extent, the evidential base of claims in the philosophy of science has switched from thought experiments to case studies. We argue that abandoning thought experiments was a wrong turn, since they can effectively complement case studies. We make our argument via an analogy with the relationship between experiments and observations within science. Just as experiments and ‘natural’ observations can together evidence claims in science, each mitigating the downsides of the other, so too can thought experiments and case (...) studies be mutually supporting. After presenting the main argument, we look at potential concerns about thought experiments, suggesting that a judiciously applied mixed-methods approach can overcome them. (shrink)

Thought experiments play a role in science and in some central parts of contemporary philosophy. They used to play a larger role in philosophy of science, but have been largely abandoned as part of the field’s “practice turn”. This chapter discusses possible roles for thought experimentation within a practice-oriented philosophy of science. Some of these roles are uncontroversial, such as exemplification and aiding discovery. A more controversial role is the reliance on thought experiments to justify philosophical claims. It is proposed (...) that if we adopt an underlying empiricist view of concepts, then thought experiments can be seen as affording us contact with scientific practice, despite their seemingly a priori character. The advantages and drawbacks of thought experiments are discussed via comparison with case studies, on the one, and simulations on the other hand. The chapter closes with some remarks on how to combine thought experiments with other methods. (shrink)

"The Quantum Revelation is mind-blowing." --Sting To say that quantum physics is the greatest scientific discovery of all time is not an exaggeration. In their discovery of the quantum realm, the physics community stumbled upon a genuine multifaceted revelation which can be likened to a profound spiritual treasure--a heretofore undreamed of creative power--hidden within our own mind. Quantum physics unequivocally points out that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness are inseparably linked, which is to say that (...) ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other. Einstein declared that what it reveals is so immensely important that "it should be everyone's concern." Yet few of us in the general public truly understand how the game-changing discoveries of the past century not only relate to our day-to-day lives, but also give us insights into the nature of reality and our place within it. Written for readers with no physics background, Paul Levy's latest book, The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality is for those who have heard that quantum physics is a fascinating subject but don't quite understand how or why. Levy contemplates the deeper philosophical underpinnings of quantum physics, exploring the fundamental questions it provokes: What does it mean that quantum theory has discovered that there is no such thing as "objective reality?" How are we participating--via our consciousness--in creating our experience of a reality that quantum theory itself describes as "dreamlike?" What are the implications for us in our day-to-day lives that--as quantum theory reveals--what we call reality is more like a dream that we had previously imagined? The Quantum Revelation is unique in how it synthesizes science and spirituality so as to reveal and explore the dreamlike nature of reality. It is a book not just for people interested in quantum theory, but for anyone who is interested in waking up and dreaming lucidly, be it in our night dreams or our waking life. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the Ethics includes versions of the views about sensation and its role in the production of knowledge that are present in the TIE and the KV. ‘Idea of an affection’ replaces the earlier terms for sensation. A sensation is a modification of the mind closely associated with a modification of body and explained in terms of the mind-body relation. In the KV, Spinoza continues to treat sensation as the immediate perception of corporeal modification and continues to (...) take the inference from sensation to the union of mind and body as a valid one. The KV is the earliest source of Spinoza's view that the idea-object model accounts for the mind-body relation. The only occurrence of sensatio in the CM might seem to tell against an account of sensation as something different from imagination. Accounts of reason and imagination in the Ethics considerably advance Spinoza's theory of knowledge. (shrink)

From email to smart phones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. David M. Levy, who has lived his life between the "fast world" of high tech and the "slow world" of contemplation, offers a welcome guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced while online. In a series of exercises carefully designed (...) to help readers observe and reflect on their own use, Levy has readers observe themselves while emailing and while multitasking, and also to experiment with unplugging for a specified period. (shrink)

I explicate the conditions required for criminal responsibility, provide an overview of criminal defenses, distinguish criminal responsibility from both tort liability and moral responsibility, and explicate the current state of the insanity defense.

Removing a black hole conic singularity by means of Kruskal representation is equivalent to imposing extensibility on the Kasner–Fronsdal local isometric embedding of the corresponding black hole geometry. Allowing for globally non-trivial embeddings, living in Kaluza–Klein-like M 5 × S 1 (rather than in standard Minkowski M 6 ) and parametrized by some wave number k, extensibility can be achieved for apparently “forbidden” frequencies ω in the range ω 1 (k) ≤ ω ≤ ω 2 (k). As k → 0, (...) ω 1, 2 (0) → ωH (e.g., ωH = 1/4M in the Schwarzschild case) such that the Hawking–Gibbons limit is fully recovered. The various Kruskal sheets are then viewed as slices of the Kaluza–Klein background. Euclidean k discreteness, dictated by imaginary time periodicity, is correlated with flux quantization of the underlying embedding gauge field. (shrink)

The American and some other constitutions entrench property rights by requiring super majoritarian voting as a condition for amending or revoking their own provisions. Following Buchanan and Tullock [The Calculus of Consent, Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor), 1962], this paper analyzes individuals' interests behind a veil of ignorance, and shows that under some standard assumptions, a (simple) majoritarian rule should be adopted. This result changes if one assumes that preferences are consistent with the behavioral (...) phenomenon known as the endowment effect. It then follows that (at least some) property rights are best defended by super majoritarian protection. The paper then shows that its theoretical results are consistent with a number of doctrines underlying American Constitutional Law. (shrink)

We investigate the procedure of "random sampling" where the alternatives are random variables. When comparing any two alternatives, the decision maker samples each of the alternatives once and ranks them according to the comparison between the two realizations. Our main result is that when applied to three alternatives, the procedure yields a cycle with a probability bounded above by 8 27 . Bounds are also obtained for other related procedures.