In this article I present several challenges to the view that Shelly Kagan calls ‘modal personism’. First, there is a plausible account of our identity that, if true, greatly diminishes the scope of Kagan's view. But the scope of the view is already quite limited because the category of modal persons is restricted to those non-persons that had but have lost the potential to become persons. If the category were to include non-persons that retain the potential to (...) become persons, Kagan's view would have implausible implications about abortion and about the moral status of certain animals. (shrink)

In ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’, Shelly Kagan sketches an account on which both actually being a person and possibly being a person are relevant to one's moral status, labelling this view ‘modal personism’ and supporting its conclusions with appeals to intuitions about a range of marginal cases. I tender a pessimistic response to Kagan's concern about motivating modal personism: that is, of being able to ‘go beyond the mere appeal to brute intuition, eventually offering an account (...) of why modal personhood should matter in the ways we may intuitively think that it does.’. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan argues in his ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’ for four provocative claims: 1. speciesism is not necessarily a mere prejudice; 2. most people are not speciesists; 3. ‘modal personism’ more closely reflects what most people believe, and 4. modal personism might be true. In this article, I object to Kagan's account of what constitutes a ‘mere prejudice’, and I object to the sort of argument he uses to show that most people are not speciesist. I (...) then attempt to motivate, and defend what I take to be the best version of modal personism; answer several problems for the view; and raise other problems that I think are harder to answer. (shrink)

Philosophers struggle to explain why human beings with deep cognitive impairments have a higher moral status than certain non-human animals. Modal personism promises to solve this problem. It claims that humans who lack the capacities of “personhood” and the potential to develop them nonetheless could have been persons. I argue that modal personism has poor prospects because it's hard to see how we could offer a plausible account of modal personhood. I search for an adequate (...) understanding of modal personhood by considering existing accounts and sketching new ones. But each account fails, either because it objectionably excludes some deeply cognitively impaired humans from the class of modal persons or because it makes modal personhood doubtfully relevant to moral status. And the modal personist cannot solve this problem by appealing to the misfortune suffered by modal persons. (shrink)

Predicates of personal taste (fun, tasty) and epistemic modals (might, must) share a similar analytical difficulty in determining whose taste or knowledge is being expressed. Accordingly, they have parallel behavior in attitude reports and in a certain kind of disagreement. On the other hand, they differ in how freely they can be linked to a contextually salient individual, with epistemic modals being much more restricted in this respect. I propose an account of both classes using Lasersohn’s (Linguistics and Philosophy 28: (...) 643–686, 2005) “judge” parameter, at the same time arguing for crucial changes to Lasersohn’s view in order to allow the extension to epistemic modals and address empirical problems faced by his account. (shrink)

Modal constitution theory is one of the most influential solutions to the paradoxes of coincidence, and the problem of personal identity. It rests on three fundamental premises: common-sense objects exist; sometimes objects coincide in space; the coincidence of objects in space requires explanation. In this article, the author offers a critique of the modal theory of constitution. First, the definition of the constitution is examined and a new argument is offered that modal theory either does not provide (...) asymmetry of the constitution or leads to an infinite series of constitutive objects, unsatisfactorily extending ontology. Also, the author demonstrates that possible additions to the constitutive definition, which can make the definition sufficient for asymmetric relation, lead to additional theoretical difficulties, leading to the logical impossibility of constitution relation. Second, the author demonstrates that the theory of constitution offers an unsatisfactory theory of identity because it faces three problems: the overpopulation problem, the epistemic problem, and the personal problem. All of these considerations lead the author to conclude that modal constitution theory is not metaphysically satisfactory. (shrink)

Imagination is a source of evidence for objective modality. It is through this epistemic connection that the idea of modality first gains traction in our intellectual life. A proper theory of modality should be able to explain our imagination’s modal epistemic behaviors. This chapter highlights a peculiar asymmetry regarding epistemic defeat for imagination-based modal justification. Whereas imagination-based evidence for possibility cannot be undermined by information about the causal origin of our imaginings, unimaginability-based evidence for impossibility can be undermined (...) by information about the causal origin of the unimaginability. It is argued that an acceptance of S4 over S5 as the true logic for objective modality best explains this epistemic asymmetry. (shrink)

Kagan argues that human beings who are neither persons nor even potential persons — if their impairment is independent of genetic constitution — are modal persons: individuals who might have been persons. Moreover, he proposes a view according to which both personhood and modal personhood are sufficient for counting more, morally, than nonhuman animals. In response to this proposal, I raise one relatively minor concern about Kagan's reasoning — that he judges too quickly that insentient beings can have (...) interests — before engaging the appeal to modal personhood. I challenge the thesis that modal personhood is relevant to one's moral status, first, by way of analogy to a kicker who misses a field goal though he might have made it; second, by casting doubt on implications for two impaired infants ; and, finally, by examining implications for dogs who would count as modal persons when genetic enhancements are capable of transforming them into persons. (shrink)

In this article I provide and defend a solution to the problem of moral luck. The problem of moral luck is that there is a set of three theses about luck and moral blameworthiness each of which is at least prima facie plausible, but that, it seems, cannot all be true. The theses are that (1) one cannot be blamed for what happens beyond one’s control, (2) that which is due to luck is beyond one’s control, and (3) we rightly (...) blame each other for events that are due to luck. I suggest that the response which distinguishes between degree and scope of blameworthiness is promising. The main objection that one might level against this approach is that it seems to lead to the absurd conclusion that we, in the actual world, are as blameworthy as the person we could have been and who performs all sorts of heinous acts in a far away possible world. For, we in the actual world and our counterpart in a far away possible world are both such that we would perform certain heinous acts in particular circumstances. I argue that this objection can be met, namely by paying attention to the nature of luck. By using the insights into the nature of luck that have been gained by epistemologists, we can solve the problem of luck as it has been formulated by ethicists. For, epistemologists have argued that some event is due to luck only if it fails to occur in a substantial number of nearby possible worlds. I defend this account of luck and argue that the problem of moral luck can be solved if we pay attention to the nature of luck. I, therefore, call my solution to the problem of moral luck a modal solution. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that the capacity to think of one’s perceptions as cross-modally integrated is incompatible with a reductionist account of the self. In §2 I distinguish three versions of the argument from cross-modality. According to the ‘unification’ version of the argument, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity to identify an object touched as the same as an object simultaneously seen. According to the ‘recognition’ version, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity, having once (...) seen an object, to reidentify that same object by touch alone. According to the ‘objectivity’ version, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity to think of one’s perceptions in different modalities as perceptions of one and the same object. The third version seems to establish that one must conceive of oneself substantially, as the numerically identical owner of one’s experiences, a conclusion in agreement with recent work in developmental psychology claiming to show that an infant’s cross-modal capacities are essentially implicated in their development of a sense of self. There is further work to be done if this is to be tumed into an argument against reductionism: there is no swift route from the epistemology of self-consciousness to the metaphysics of the self. In the §3, I will claim that there is, nevertheless, an argument linking the two. What I propose is an argument derived, not from the token-reflexive rule for the first-person, but resting on its anaphoric behaviour spanning intensional operators. (shrink)

Next SectionThis short paper argues that predictive expressions (will, gonna) are modals. In section 1, I provide three empirical arguments for a treatment of predictive expressions as modals: (i) they behave like modals in that they can occur in overt and covert conditionals in a way that non-modal operators cannot; (ii) they have morphological variants which show displacement behaviors, i.e., nonveridicality; (iii) like modals, they obviate the personal experience requirement on predicates of personal taste. In section 2, I specifically (...) rebut arguments by Kissine (2008) that will is not a modal. In section 3 I conclude. (shrink)

In the present study, cross-modal (i.e., across sensory modalities such as smell and sound) iconicity (i.e., resemblance) and indexicality (i.e., contiguity) in lexical sensory and emotional signs in Finnish Sign Language will be considered from an articulatory perspective (i.e., the production of signs). Such cross-modal iconicity has not been extensively studied previously, so here, with the help of cognitive semiotics, I aim to carefully describe the cross-modal patterns observed across 118 signs, including 60 sensory signs and 58 (...) emotional signs. The analysis is framed within the theoretical model of Semiotic Hierarchy, which entails a non-reductionist view of meaning. In addition, a pheno-methodological triangulation will be applied: phenomenology (first-person method), literature of phenomenological and semiotic descriptions (second-person perspective) and experimental findings (third-person perspective). The results of this analysis show that (a) 71 of the 118 sensory and emotional signs are cross-modally indexical, (b) only 10 of the 71 signs can be regarded as cross-modally iconic, (c) cross-modal iconicity is highly diagrammatic, (d) iconicity and indexicality are highly integrated, and (e) articulatory feedback matters in the formation of semiotic patterns. This study contributes to our understanding of cross-modal iconicity in signed languages, as well as studies in semiotic systems more generally. (shrink)

In a recent article, Emanuel Rutten has presented a novel argument for the existence of God, defined as a personal being that is the first cause of reality. An interesting feature of the argument, which caused quite a stir, is that it does not fall within any of the traditional categories of arguments for God’s existence. Rutten calls his argument a modal-epistemic one, which reflects the fact that the first premise of his argument states that all possible truths are (...) knowable. The main purpose of this article is a simple one: to point out that Rutten’s modal-epistemic argument is flawed. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that the capacity to think of one’s perceptions as cross-modally integrated is incompatible with a reductionist account of the self. In §2 I distinguish three versions of the argument from cross-modality. According to the ‘unification’ version of the argument, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity to identify an object touched as the same as an object simultaneously seen. According to the ‘recognition’ version, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity, having once (...) seen an object, to reidentify that same object by touch alone. According to the ‘objectivity’ version, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity to think of one’s perceptions in different modalities as perceptions of one and the same object. The third version seems to establish that one must conceive of oneself substantially, as the numerically identical owner of one’s experiences, a conclusion in agreement with recent work in developmental psychology claiming to show that an infant’s cross-modal capacities are essentially implicated in their development of a sense of self. There is further work to be done if this is to be tumed into an argument against reductionism: there is no swift route from the epistemology of self-consciousness to the metaphysics of the self. In the §3, I will claim that there is, nevertheless, an argument linking the two. What I propose is an argument derived, not from the token-reflexive rule for the first-person, but resting on its anaphoric behaviour spanning intensional operators. (shrink)

The modal argument for the existence of a Cartesian human soul proposed by Richard Swinburne more than thirty years ago, if slightly adjusted and interpreted correctly, becomes a plausible argument for anyone who accepts modal arguments. The difficulty consists in a relatively weak justification of the second premise, of the real possibility of a disembodied existence, as a result of which the argument does not provide a real proof. The argument is best understood in the following terms: Special (...) divine action is excluded from the metaphysical possibilities and only the natural possibilities are considered; the “conceivable” possibility of the existence of a person without a body is interpreted as a metaphysical possibility, and inductive support for its reality is provided by apparent first-person-conceivability of a disembodied existence, detailed descriptions of out-of-body and near-death experiences, a priori trust in introspection in psychology and the cognitive sciences, and by the unity of consciousness and the possibility of its extension to peripersonal space; statements about having a soul or being a material substance are excluded from the domain of the premises; and finally, one accepts the Kripkean principle that having a body or a soul is an essential component of a person. If these conditions are met, the argument is valid, and the conclusion is made more plausible by Swinburne’s modal argument than it would be without it.Argumentum modale pro animae humanae “Cartesianae” existentia, quod R. Swinburne ante plures quam 30 annos proposuit, acceptabile reddi potest cuicumque argumenta modalia non generatim respuenti, si paululum emendetur recteque intelligatur. Omnis huius argumenti diffi cultas consistit in iustifi catione debiliore secundae eius praemissae, quo pacto argumentum ineffi cax redditur. Argumentum vero optime intelligetur his quattuor punctis animadversis: Primo, possibilitas metaphysica non nisi possibilitates naturales comprehendere intelligatur, omni speciali Dei ingerentia exclusa. Secundo, personae possibilitas “conceptibilis” sine corpore existendi intelligatur ut realis possibilitas metaphysica. Cui realitati argumenta favent inductiva tum ex possibilitate imaginandi existentiam sine corpore; tum ex minutatim enarratis testimoniis experiendi status “extra corpus” et “prope mortem”; tum ex fi de fundamentali veritatis introspectionis in psychologia scientiis que cognitivis; tum ex unitate conscientiae ac possibilitate eam in spatium extra corpus extendendi. Tertio, e praemissarum congerie assertiones excludantur quibus homo animam habere vel substantiam materialem esse assumeretur. Quarto, principium S. Kripkii accipiatur, scil. corporis vel animae habitum personae essentialem esse debere. His omnibus servatis argumentum Swinburnii validum evadit, conclusionem suam plus credibilem reddens quam secus esset. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Sorites paradoxes threaten identity across possible worlds, as Roderick Chisholm pointed out some time ago. This chapter develops one such paradox, arguing that it formally resembles the problems of personal identity, and can be resolved by means a modal paradox, which is discussed in the first section. Lest it be thought that the paradox depends on the special nature of possibility, similar paradoxes are sketched for identity over time in the second section. The section (...) underlines the point of a uniform approach by sketching temporal analogues of modal paradoxes about artifact identity. Both modal and temporal versions involve the identity of artifacts. Treatments of closely related problems by Graeme Forbes and Nathan Salmon do not generalize in the same way. The concern of this chapter is to see how much of the original conception can be saved; maximal M‐relations provide the appropriate technique. (shrink)

According to First-Person Realism, one's own first-person perspective on the world is metaphysically privileged in some way. After clarifying First-Person Realism by reference to parallel debates in the metaphysics of modality and time, I survey eight different arguments in favor of First-Person Realism.

This book gathers together thirteen of Peter van Inwagen's essays on metaphysics, several of which have acquired the status of modern classics in their field. They range widely across such topics as Quine's philosophy of quantification, the ontology of fiction, the part-whole relation, the theory of 'temporal parts', and human knowledge of modal truths. In addition, van Inwagen considers the question as to whether the psychological continuity theory of personal identity is compatible with materialism, and defends the thesis that (...) possible states of affairs are abstract objects, in opposition to David Lewis's 'extreme modal realism'. A specially-written introduction completes the collection, which will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in metaphysics. (shrink)

Some philosophers think that a person can justifi ably believe that p is possible even though she has no theory according to which p is possible. They think, for example, that she can justifiably believe that there could be naturally purple elephants even though she lacks (inter alia) a theory about the factors germane to elephant pigmentation. There is a certain optimism about this view: it seems to assume that people are fairly good at ferreting out problems with proposed (...) class='Hi'>modal claims; so, if a person doesn’t detect one, then she’s within her rights to assume that there is no problem to be found. I am suspicious of this optimism, but I do not have space to challenge it here. Instead, I want to outline the more pessimistic alternative. Suppose that a person is not justified in believing that p is possible unless she has a theory according to which p is possible. How might such an account be developed? My aim is to map out this neglected option. (shrink)

What is required for you to know what a certain property is? And what is required for you to have the concept of that property? Hume held that a person who has never tasted a pineapple cannot know what the property tasting like a pineapple is. He also thought that this person cannot have the corresponding concept. A subsequent tradition in empiricism generalises these claims at least to all the so-called "secondary qualities." I will argue that this tradition is mistaken. (...) I will argue that there is no more of a philosophically significant connection between the property tasting like a pineapple and your taste experiences of pineapples than there is between the property having a mass and your tactile experiences when lifting objects. Likewise with respect to the corresponding concepts. (shrink)

Suppose that God exists: what difference would that make to the world? The answer depends on the nature of God and the nature of the world. In this book, William E. Mann argues in one new and sixteen previously published essays for a modern interpretation of a traditional conception of God as a simple, necessarily existing, personal being. Divine simplicity entails that God has no physical composition or temporal stages; that there is in God no distinction between essence and existence; (...) that there is no partitioning of God's mental life into beliefs, desires, and intentions. God is thus a spiritual, eternal being, dependent on nothing else, whose essence is to exist and whose mode of existence is identical with omniscience, omnipotence, and perfectly goodness. In metaphysical contrast, the world is a spatial matrix populated most conspicuously by finite physical objects whose careers proceed sequentially from past to present to future. Mann defends a view according to which the world was created out of nothing and is sustained in existence from moment to moment by God. The differences in metaphysical status between creator and creatures raise questions for which Mann suggests answers. How can God know contingent facts and necessary truths without depending on them? Why is it so easy to overlook God's presence? Why would self-sufficient God create anything? Wouldn't a perfect God create the best world possible? Can God be free? Can we be free if God's power is continuously necessary to sustain us in existence? If God does sustain us, is God an accomplice whenever we sin? Mann responds to the Euthyphro dilemma by arguing for a kind of divine command metaethical theory, whose normative content lays emphasis on love. Given the metaphysical differences between us, how can there be loving relationships between God and creatures? Mann responds by examining the notions of piety and hope. (shrink)

What is required for you to know what a certain property is? And what is required for you to have the concept of that property? Hume held that a person who has never tasted a pineapple cannot know what the property tasting like a pineapple is. He also thought that this person cannot have the corresponding concept. A subsequent tradition in empiricism generalises these claims at least to all the so-called "secondary qualities." I will argue that this tradition is mistaken. (...) I will argue that there is no more of a philosophically significant connection between the property tasting like a pineapple and your taste experiences of pineapples than there is between the property having a mass and your tactile experiences when lifting objects. Likewise with respect to the corresponding concepts. (shrink)

The class of true modal verbs in English is usually understood to include auxiliary verbs conveying possibility and necessity (including predictive future) that lack non-finite morphological forms; from a syntactic perspective, these verbs occur only in finite clauses (as opposed to infinitives or gerunds). Nevertheless the true modals do not inflect for third-person singular agreement, unlike normal present-tense verbs. When they are negated, true modals always precede the negative particle not, regardless of their understood scope relative to negation, and (...) never give rise to do-support. (shrink)

The classical problem of free will is one instance of the Integration Challenge. The Integration Challenge in its general form is that of reconciling our metaphysics of any given area with our epistemology for that same area. In the case of free will, the challenge is that of reconciling our seeming first-person knowledge of our exercise of free thought, deliberation, choice and action with a description of what is really going on in the world as characterized in terms of causation, (...) determination, explanation and causal possibility. (shrink)

Lynne Rudder Baker and many others think that paradigmatic instances of one object constituting another—a piece of marble constituting a statue, or an aggregate of particles constituting a living body—involve two distinct objects in the same place at the same time. Some who say this believe in the doctrine of temporal parts; but others, like Baker, reject this doctrine. Such philosophers, whom one might call “coincidentalists”, cannot say that these objects manage to share space in virtue of sharing a temporal (...) part confined to just that place and time. But what can or should coincidentalists say about the nature of constitution? Many have analyzed the relation as one of sharing, “at some level”, all and only the same parts. Most have agreed that such massive part-sharing is at least a central component of and necessary condition for constitution. The heart of Baker’s Persons and Bodies, and its most significant contribution to the development of coincidentalism, is a theory of constitution that makes no appeal to mereology. The leading idea in Baker’s account is, instead, a modal one: objects belonging to constituted kinds are the necessary result of putting objects belonging to appropriate constituting kinds in the right circumstances, circumstances which the constituting objects need not have been in. So putting a piece of man-shaped marble in the right circumstances necessarily results in the existence of a second object, a statue, constituted by the marble; but the piece of marble need not have fallen into these circumstances or any others in which it would constitute a statue. (shrink)

According to David Lewis, we all believe there are countless ways in which things might have been different from the way they are in fact. Surely, for example, the world could have existed even if, say, Quine had been a politician, or if there had been one less page in Word and Object, or indeed if there had been no such person as Quine at all. All these things, we are inclined to think, might have been the case. And thus (...) we find ourselves saying, “There are many ways things could have been.” However, as Lewis notes, this sentence involves an existential quantification over objects of a peculiar sort: “ways things could have been”—”possible worlds,” if you like. At face value, then, our modal discourse commits us to belief in possible worlds—as peculiar as that may seem. Those who feel squeamish at this prospect can perhaps console themselves with the fact that failure to believe in real, live alternate possibilities ends in Spinozism: the view that (in Samuel Clarke’s words) “nothing which is not, could possibly have been; and nothing which is, could possibly not have been; and that no mode or circumstance of the existence of anything could possibly have been in any respect otherwise than it now actually is.” For most of us, I dare say, this is a difficult pill to swallow. (shrink)

Modal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s possibly being F with its having a counterpart that is F at another possible world; temporal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s having been F or going to be F, with its having a counterpart that is F at another time. Benovsky, J. 2015. “Alethic Modalities, Temporal Modalities, and Representation.” Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 29: 18–34 in this journal endorses modal counterpart theory but holds that temporal counterpart theory is untenable because it does (...) not license the ascription of the intuitively correct temporal properties to ordinary objects, and hence that we should understand ordinary objects, including persons, as transtemporal ‘worms’. I argue that the worm theory is problematic when it comes to accounting for what matters in survival and that temporal counterpart theory provides a plausible account of personal persistence. (shrink)

We present our personal view on W.J. Blok's contribution to modal logic.

The Person Vanishes argues that despite John Dewey's failure to articulate «an adequate theory of personality», his writings provide at least a theory-sketch of human personality consistent with the assumptions that framed his philosophical outlook. Recognizing the new developments in society, science, and the arts, Dewey argues for the necessity of a Copernican revolution in our understanding of the human self; from the monadic and minimalist self of the Cartesian-Newtonian modernist tradition to a relational and processual model of selfhood consonant (...) with the press of post-modernist historical experience. As a field and activity conception, Dewey's self emerges as a nexus of relational energizing, genuinely moored in a cultural surrounding in which ongoing creative reconstruction becomes the mark and criterion of the self's health and growth. What vanishes in Dewey's reconstruction is not the self as such, but only the entitative, substantive self of early modernism. Dewey's understanding of the self is grounded in the conviction that philosophy must begin its inquiry from the ordinary experience of plain men and women. The Person Vanishes examines Dewey's participatory notion of deliberation, what he calls «dramatic rehearsal», by using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case study. The analysis attempts to cash out the personal and collective habits, as well as the different modalities of ends, facts, and values that diagram the existential dimensions of this problematic situation. Contrary to traditional dualistic and spectatorial accounts of deliberation, Dewey's «dramatic rehearsal» shows the complexity of decision-making when the genuine limitations of daily life are taken seriously. The attempt to march to Dewey's participatory philosophy reveals the escapist nature of all dualistic philosophical traditions and the reason for their continuous failure to resolve concrete social and personal conflicts. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss a seemingly straightforward argument against physicalism which, despite being implicit in much of the philosophical debate about consciousness, has not received the attention it deserves (compared to other, better-known “epistemic”, “modal”, and “conceivability” arguments). This is the argument from the non-supervenience of the first-personal (and indexical) facts on the third-personal (and non-indexical) ones. This non-supervenience, together with the assumption that the physical facts (as conventionally understood) are third-personal, entails that some facts (...) – namely, first-personal, phenomenal ones – do not supervene on the physical facts. Unlike other arguments against physicalism, the first-personal argument, if successful, refutes not only physicalism but also other third-personal metaphysical pictures, including standard versions of dualism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I motivate ‘Origin Conventionalism’—the view that which facts about one’s origins are essential to one’s existence depends partly on our person-directed attitudes. One important upshot is that the view offers a novel and attractive solution to the Nonidentity Problem. That problem typically assumes that the sperm-egg pair from which a person originates is essential to that person’s existence; in which case, for many future persons that come into existence under adverse conditions, had those conditions not been realized, the individuals (...) wouldn’t have existed. This is problematic because it delivers the counter-intuitive conclusion that it’s not wrong to bring about such adverse conditions since they don’t harm anyone. Origin Conventionalism, in contrast, holds that whether a person’s sperm-egg origin is essential to their existence depends on their person-directed attitudes. I argue that this provides a unique and attractive way of preserving the intuition that the actions in the ‘nonidentity cases’ are morally wrong because of the potential harm done to the individuals in question. (shrink)

The paper presents and discusses phenomenological facts about perceptual spaces and percepts, but ends with a few thoughts about possible causal explanations of such spaces. The overarching double-sided hypothesis claims that - from a phenomenological point of view - each individual animal has at each consciously perceived moment of time a sense-modality-neutral perceptual space, and that these perceptual spaces are so-called container spaces. This means, to be concrete, that blind persons, deaf persons, and all perceptually non-handicapped persons have the same (...) kind of phenomenological perceptual space, a sense-modality-neutral container space. The causal reflections bring in James J. Gibson’s work on such matters. (shrink)

In this article I discuss identity and indiscernibility for person‐stages and persons. Identity through time is not an identity relation (it is a unity relation). Identity is carefully distinguished from persistence. Identity is timeless and necessary. Person‐stages are carefully distinguished from persons. Theories of personal persistence are not theories of identity for persons. I deal not with the persistence of persons through time but with the timeless and necessary identity and indiscernibility of persons. I argue that it is possible that (...) there are non‐identical but indiscernible temporally whole persons. I discuss the biographies of persons and develop the type or token distinction for persons. Twins in symmetrical or eternally recurrent universes are examples of indiscernible persons. I discuss temporal and modal branching, and I end with survival for person‐tokens and eternity for person‐types. (shrink)

The first amounts, roughly, to "It is necessarily the case that any President of the U.S. is a citizen of the U.S." But the second says, "the person who in fact is the President of the U.S, has the property of necessarily being a citizen of the U.S," Thus, while (2) is clearly true, it would be reasonable to consider (3) false.

It seems undeniable that we have many items of modal knowledge. Tradition has it that conceivability is the evidence for possibility that gets us to this modal knowledge. But "conceive" cannot mean think, understand, entertain, suppose, or find believable, because none of these are suited to serve as evidence for possibility, and if it is none of these, it is mysterious what conceivability is, and why it is evidence for possibility. I argue that sensory imagination is the most (...) promising candidate for a source of modal evidence. A theory of imaginative content is developed in Chapter One, one which allows what seems undeniable: that we do imagine the impossible. This raises a challenge to explain why, in the face of our ability to imagine the impossible, we should accept imagination as modal evidence. The predominant response, developed by Saul Kripke, limits the scope of imagination to preserve the link between imagination and what is possible. In Chapter Two I argue that the Kripkean theory is best thought of as an error theory: when we take ourselves to imagine, e.g., water without H2O, or Mark Twain and Sam Clemens in a fistfight, we are mistaken. I articulate and defend an alternative modal epistemology, one that exploits the crucial difference between assigned and basic content of imagining. The evidential value of some imaginings is undermined by independent considerations about the connection between assigned content and ignorance. Instances in which we imagine the impossible are all cases where these independent considerations give us reason to doubt the imagining's value as modal evidence. The conclusions about assigned content are applied in Chapter Three to the first-person imaginings thought to be crucial in philosophy of mind: the imaginability of zombies, and the imaginability of being a disembodied soul. It is argued that such imaginings offer no evidence favoring dualism over materialism. Finally, alternatives to imagination as the source for modal evidence are discussed in Chapter Four. I explore both direct intuition and a priori-based accounts, and conclude that neither offers a genuine alternative to the imagination. (shrink)

Thought experiments that concoct bizarre possible world modalities are standard fare in debates on personal identity. Appealing to intuitions raised by such evocations is often taken to settle differences between conflicting theoretical views that, albeit, have practical implications for ethical controversies of personal identity in health care. Employing thought experiments that way is inadequate, I argue, since personhood is intrinsically linked to constraining facts about the actual world. I defend a moderate modal skepticism according to which intuiting across conceptually (...) incongruent worlds constitutes ‘invalid intuitioninferences’—i.e., carrying over intuitions gathered from facts about possible worlds that are at odds with facts about the actual world, for the purpose of making claims about real-life persons and their identity, leads to conceptual incongruences. Such a methodological fallout precludes accurate, informative judgments about personal identity in the actual world, calling into question the adequacy of thought experimental considerations for potential real world applications in medical ethics. (shrink)

We offer an analysis of future morphemes as epistemic operators. The main empirical motivation comes from the fact that future morphemes have systematic purely epistemic readings—not only in Greek and Italian, but also in Dutch, German, and English will. The existence of epistemic readings suggests that the future expressions quantify over epistemic, not metaphysical alternatives. We provide a unified analysis for epistemic and predictive readings as epistemic necessity, and the shift between the two is determined compositionally by the lower tense. (...) Our account thus acknowledges a systematic interaction between modality and tense—but the future itself is a pure modal, not a mixed temporal/modal operator. We show that the modal base of the future is nonveridical, i.e. it includes p and ¬p worlds, parallel to epistemic modals such as must, and present arguments that future morphemes are a category that stands in between epistemic modals and predicates of personal taste. We identify, finally, a subclass of epistemic futures which are ratificational, and argue that will is a member of this class. (shrink)

Animalism is the view that human persons are human animals – biological organisms that belong to the species Homo sapiens. This paper concerns a family of modal objections to animalism based on the essentiality of personhood (persons and animals differ in their persistence conditions; psychological considerations are relevant for the persistence of persons, but not animals; persons, but not animals, are essentially psychological beings). Such arguments are typically used to support constitutionalism, animalism’s main neo-Lockean rival. The problem with such (...) arguments is that they wrongly assume that animalism is incompatible with our essentially being psychological beings. In this paper, I discuss a formulation of animalism, what I call psychologically-serious animalism, according to which human persons are essentially human animals and essentially persons. I show how the availability of this neglected formulation of animalism undermines objections based on the essentiality of personhood. (shrink)

In the debate between relativism and contextualism about various expressions, the Operator Argument, initially proposed by Kaplan , has been taken to support relativism. However, one widespread reaction against the argument has taken the form of arguing against one assumption made by Kaplan: namely, that certain natural language expressions are best treated as sentential operators. Focusing on the only extant version of the Operator Argument proposed in connection to predicates of personal taste such as “tasty” and experiencer phrases such as (...) “for Anna” ), in this paper I investigate whetherthe reasons offered by Cappelen and Hawthorne against various assumptions of the argument failing in the case of modal, temporal, locationaland precisional expressions transfer to the case of experiencer phrases to undercut support for relativism about predicates of personal taste. My aim is to show that they don’t. Thus, I first show that their considerations against experiencer phrases such as “for Anna” being sentential operators are not decisive. Second, I show that even if granting that such experiencer phrases are not sentential operators, a suitably modified version of the Operator Argument can be defended from the objections they raise. (shrink)

Social interaction, especially for older people living alone is a challenge currently facing human-robot interaction (HRI). There has been little research on user preference towards HRI interfaces. In this paper, we took both objective observations and participants’ opinions into account in studying older users with a robot partner. The developed dual-modal robot interface offered older users options of speech or touch screen to perform tasks. Fifteen people aged from 70 to 89 years old, participated. We analyzed the spontaneous actions (...) of the participants, including their attentional activities and conversational activities, the temporal characteristics of these social behaviours, as well as questionnaires. It has been revealed that social engagement with the robot demonstrated by older people was no different from what might be expected towards a human partner. This study is an early attempt to reveal the social connections between human beings and a personal robot in real life. (shrink)

In this article, I suggest that reflection on a broadly Aristotelian-cum-Hegelian conception about the determination of the conditions of identity and individuation of objects and properties shows that it entails (what Brandom calls) the Kant–Sellars thesis about modality and identity, one consequence of which is that persons are not identical to human beings. This view is in conflict with the Aristotelian liberal naturalist view to the effect that to be a person is identical to being an individual of a specific (...) animal kind—namely, homo sapiens—characterized by a specific and unique ‘form of life’ (and natural history) which differentiates it from all other animal kinds. I conclude that this novel and unorthodox liberal naturalist view about personhood constitutes an interesting and viable liberal naturalist alternative to more ‘orthodox’ liberal naturalist neo-Aristotelian views like Thompson’s, as it can better accommodate certain counterfactual ‘person-human being decoupling’ scenarios in our modern conception of ourselves-in-the-world. (shrink)

Lynne Rudder Baker and many others think that paradigmatic instances of one object constituting another—a piece of marble constituting a statue, or an aggregate of particles constituting a living body—involve two distinct objects in the same place at the same time. Some who say this believe in the doctrine of temporal parts; but others, like Baker, reject this doctrine. Such philosophers, whom one might call “coincidentalists”, cannot say that these objects manage to share space in virtue of sharing a temporal (...) part confined to just that place and time. But what can or should coincidentalists say about the nature of constitution? Many have analyzed the relation as one of sharing, “at some level”, all and only the same parts. Most have agreed that such massive part-sharing is at least a central component of and necessary condition for constitution. The heart of Baker’s Persons and Bodies, and its most significant contribution to the development of coincidentalism, is a theory of constitution that makes no appeal to mereology. The leading idea in Baker’s account is, instead, a modal one: objects belonging to constituted kinds are the necessary result of putting objects belonging to appropriate constituting kinds in the right circumstances, circumstances which the constituting objects need not have been in. So putting a piece of man-shaped marble in the right circumstances necessarily results in the existence of a second object, a statue, constituted by the marble; but the piece of marble need not have fallen into these circumstances or any others in which it would constitute a statue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beyond Personal Identity: Dōgen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-SelfCarl OlsonBeyond Personal Identity: Dōgen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self. By Gereon Kopf. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2001. 298 + xx pp.This work of comparative philosophy focuses on the problem of the self by comparing Western existential and phenomenological thought with Zen thinkers such as Dōgen and Nishida. In addition to such thinkers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Edmund (...) Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, the author also includes a discussion of such Western philosophers as Descartes, Kant, Leibniz, Lock, and Hume. The author demonstrates a knowledgeable command of his subjects and the central focus of the book.After discussing the problem of personal identity in the first part of the book, the author uses the second part of the book to place phenomenologists into dialogue with Zen Buddhist thinkers. The second part of the book includes the following topics: selfhood, otherness, continuity of experience, and temporality. In the final part of the book, the author considers the Zen conception of personal identity by discussing a Zen phenomenology of experience and personhood as presencing. Within the context of this final part of the book, Kopf wants to develop terminology that derives from both phenomenology and Zen Buddhism in order to consider the Zen notion of no-self as a process of presencing. This approach gives the author an opportunity to explore the philosophical implications of Zen Buddhist terminology and rhetoric and to suggest a way to theorize and discuss the self beyond personal [End Page 200] identity. Overall, each of the three parts of the book provides a different perspective: a discourse on personal identity, a comparative philosophical perspective, and a Zen viewpoint.This work of comparative philosophy embodies an internal tension between the position of the author and the impermanent nature of the non-self in Zen Buddhism. Kopf acknowledges his basic position in the following way: "It is my thesis that the framing of the question of personal identity already implies the notion of an enduring self" (p. xviii). In contrast, Dōgen rejects the notion of an enduring self or personal identity. The author's stated thesis and that of Zen Buddhism suggests that continuity is a crucial issue for this book.In chapter 4, Kopf elucidates his understanding of the continuity of experience: "The notion of continuity reflects the assumption that the 'I' of human experience is not without a history: It finds itself in the context of past experiences, which the experiental 'I' encounters in memories, as well as in a given situation" (p. 124). In short, a person finds oneself thrown into a situation. After discussing Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, the non-self doctrine in early Buddhism, how the Mahāyāna thinker Vasubandhu attributes continuity of experience to the habit energy produced by karmic activity, and how Nāgārjuna collapses the distinction between sam.sāra and nirvan.a, the author considers the positions of Dōgen and Nishida. The former defines the continuity of experience by two diachronically diverse dharma positions instead of three moments of time. This position suggests that Dōgen views continuity as the process from the present to the present and not as a process that operates from the past into the future. According to Nishida, the I-Thou forms a nonrelative contradictory self-identity, and it exists in the world of expression. This implies that the self is simultaneously continuous and discontinuous.In his chapter on temporality, Kopf distinguishes between abstract time, phenomenal time, lived time, and actual time, which is a fourth dimension suggested by Dōgen and Nishida. Abstract time is rejected because time is inseparable from existence. Grasping time as a dynamic event, the author discusses phenomenal time, in which the self realizes its own temporality and historicity. In contrast to the threefold structure of abstract time, phenomenal time possesses a twofold structure of past and future, whereas lived time embodies an internal unity in which the present unifies the past and future. A fourth dimension of time—actual time—is suggested by the work of Dōgen and Nishida. Actual time expresses a "modality of... (shrink)

Recently, it has become a custom to treat questions as a game between two subjects. Unfortunately, one rarely goesbeyond the scheme of Questioner-Scientist and Answerer-Nature, althoughthe Interlocutor so conceived displays some undesirable features. This paperargues for the idea that logic of questions can be build as a logic of the gamebetween “knowledge resources” persons or theories, rather than errant Scientist and omniscient Nature. To this end the concept of epistemically-possibleworlds is discussed, which is conceived as analogous to that of possible (...) worldsin modal logic. And, furthermore, the concepts of relation of epistemic alternativeness and of epistemically-alternative worlds are introduced. On thisbasis a version of semantics for propositional, three-valued logic of questionsis offered and semantic proofs of some theses are given. (shrink)

According to indexical contextualism, the perspectival element of taste predicates and epistemic modals is part of the content expressed. According to nonindexicalism, the perspectival element must be conceived as a parameter in the circumstance of evaluation, which engenders “thin” or perspective-neutral semantic contents. Echoing Evans, thin contents have frequently been criticized. It is doubtful whether such coarse-grained quasi-propositions can do any meaningful work as objects of propositional attitudes. In this paper, I assess recent responses by Recanati, Kölbel, Lasersohn and MacFarlane (...) to the “incompleteness worry”. None of them manages to convince. Particular attention is devoted to an argument by John MacFarlane, which states that if perspectives must be part of the content, so must worlds, which would make intuitively contingent propositions necessary. I demonstrate that this attempt to defend thin content views such as nonindexical contextualism and relativism conflates two distinct notions of necessity, and that radical indexicalist accounts of semantics, such as Schaffer’s necessitarianism, are in fact quite plausible. (shrink)