Who are the best subjects for judgment tasks intended to test grammatical hypotheses? Michael Devitt ( [2006a] , [2006b] ) argues, on the basis of a hypothesis concerning the psychology of such judgments, that linguists themselves are. We present empirical evidence suggesting that the relevant divide is not between linguists and non-linguists, but between subjects with and without minimally sufficient task-specific knowledge. In particular, we show that subjects with at least some minimal exposure to or knowledge of such tasks tend (...) to perform consistently with one another—greater knowledge of linguistics makes no further difference—while at the same time exhibiting markedly greater in-group consistency than those who have no previous exposure to or knowledge of such tasks and their goals. (shrink)

Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. Devitt ([2010]) replies that, in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability and grammaticality, we misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, and fail to see how our empirical results can be squared with his position. We reply in this note. Inter alia we argue that Devitt's (...) focus on grammaticality intuitions, rather than acceptability intuitions, distances his discussion from actual linguistic practice. We close by questioning a demand that drives his discussion—viz., that, for linguistic intuitions to supply evidence for linguistic theorizing, a better account of why they are evidence is required. (shrink)

Medical ethics would be better if people were taught to think more clearly about well-being or the concept of what is good for a person. Yet for a variety of reasons, bioethicists have generally paid little attention to this concept. Here, I argue, first, that focusing on general theories of welfare is not useful for practical medical ethics. I argue, second, for what I call the “theory-without-theories approach” to welfare in practical contexts. The first element of this approach is a (...) focus on examining important and relatively uncontroversial constituents of welfare as opposed to general theories. The second key element is a framework for thinking about choice in relation to welfare, a framework I refer to as “the mild objectivity framework.” I conclude with illustrations of the way in which the “theory without theories approach” can improve thinking in medicine. (shrink)

This article examines the meaningful intervention that Gert-Jan Van der Heiden’s recent book, The Voice of Misery: A Continental Philosophy of Testimony, makes in the developing field of the philosophy of testimony. I argue that this intervention is accomplished through a phenomenological investigation into the nature of the testimonial object and of the demand that it makes upon one who bears witness. In taking such an approach, I argue, Van der Heiden initiates an ontological turn in the field of testimonial (...) theory, shifting the conversation away from a debate about the conditions in which belief in testimony is justified – a debate that has in many ways defined the field for philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition. I suggest that Van der Heiden’s account is helpful in demonstrating that, in many cases, doing justice to a testimonial object requires an epistemic-ethical attitude other than belief. The article concludes by developing a few questions for Van der Heiden based on my interpretation of his project, including to what extent his phenomenology of testimony can account for how often our receptivity to testimony depends on the default trust that we have in others by virtue of our fundamental immersion in social life. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 7-18.

This book examines the central role that language plays in understanding and human flourishing. The book begins by exploring Heidegger's idea that language is an essential element of how we dwell in the world and is, for the most part, ready-to-hand for us. With Gadamer, I then begin to explore phenomena where language is not ready-to-hand but calls for interpretation. The latter half of the book explores distinct ways in which language can become unready-to-hand for individuals (e.g., in cases of (...) trauma, depression, and social subordination) and examines the way that such situations have been analyzed by twentieth-century Continental thinkers (e.g., Blanchot, Kristeva, Derrida). (shrink)

This chapter presents Gadamer’s conception of language and of its role in the process of understanding. The chapter begins by explaining what Gadamer means when he says that language is characterized by an essential “self-forgetfulness” [Selbstvergessenheit] and how this relates to his account of the fore-structure of the understanding. Next, it explains what it means to conceive of a linguistic presentation (e.g., a poem or a lecture) as a hermeneutic event and how this conceptualization is essential to Gadamer’s account of (...) understanding and of the dialectical unity between language and being. The chapter ends by considering how Gadamer’s analysis of conversation further clarifies what it means to be open to the event of language. (shrink)

In this essay I lay out the textual materials surrounding the birth of physical anthropology as a racial science in the eighteenth century with a special focus on the development of Kant's own contributions to the new field. Kant’s contributions to natural history demonstrated his commitment to a physical, mental, and moral hierarchy among the races and I spend some time describing both the advantages he drew from this hierarchy for making sense of the social and political history of inequality (...) between peoples, and the obviously problematic relationship that such views would entail for Kant’s universalism as he began to formulate his ethical program in the 1780s. While there is continued scholarly debate regarding a purported moral “turn” made by Kant once he dropped his commitment to a racial hierarchy in the 1790s, what the narrative as a whole reveals is not only the manner by which questions of racial difference defined physical anthropology from its outset, but the easy and uncomplicated manner by which whole member groups of the population could be excluded from lofty pronouncements regarding the “rights of man”—a fact that was as true for Kant in Königsberg, as it was for Jefferson and Hamilton in Philadelphia. (shrink)

Language is often conceived of today as providing a person with a worldview and a set of communicative norms that one accepts unambiguously. However, in his 1992 lecture, “Monolingualism of the Other,” Jacques Derrida insists that his mother tongue is for him “not a natural element, not the transparency of the ether, but an absolute habitat.” In other words, while French is an intimate part of his existence, his relationship to it is nevertheless ambiguous. Derrida claims that his situation is (...) not exceptional though, since for no person is language simply a “natural element.” In this essay, I examine first the phenomenological basis for this controversial claim, drawing from Derrida’s lecture as well as earlier explorations by Martin Heidegger to elucidate the point. Later I turn to address the ethical-political dimensions of Derrida’s claim, explaining how it serves to protest against a problematic process of consolidating power. (shrink)

There are two attitudes regarding the historical situation of understanding commonly held today. On the one hand, we believe that we only achieve a real, worthwhile understanding of a topic when our thinking manages to break free from the dogmas of the past. We believe that this transcendence of the historical situation of thought is both possible and desirable. We applaud those whose thought appears to us to proceed unhinged by traditional dogmas, whether those dogmas be old habits of scientific (...) thought or traditional ideas about social life. We celebrate as epistemic heroes those who discover their own way of thinking. On the other hand, many are quick to accept as a general rule that one’s understanding is inevitably bound to one’s particular historical and cultural situation. Nobody understands things in a historical vacuum. Accordingly, we believe that there is no transcending the historicity of the understanding and thus no epistemic heroes to applaud. This chapter examines Gadamer's argument in “The Elevation of the Historicity of Understanding" (a central section in "Truth and Method") as a critique of both of these alternatives -- alternatives that can be traced back to the historical epochs of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. I argue that, for Gadamer, both of these historical models of understanding misconstrue the way that understanding is grounded in historical consciousness. (shrink)

This chapter presents a conception of understanding where understanding emerges out of the joint experience of conversation. On this conception, understanding requires more than the pre-reflective acquisition of shared social meanings – a conception of understanding historically highlighted by existential phenomenologists. Beyond this, it requires what occurs in genuine conversation, namely, that one put one’s pre-reflective social meanings at risk in the process of critical self-reflection. Drawing from the hermeneutic phenomenology of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I argue that conversation is that joint (...) experience that gives rise to such critical self-reflection and that it is conversation’s play-structure in particular that makes it a source of understanding in this sense. (shrink)

Kant was well versed in many of the debates taking place in the life sciences during his day. One of the more central areas of contention concerned the proper means for discriminating between material bodies composed of organised parts (like clocks or automatons) and living material bodies composed of organised parts (like plants and animals). For many theorists, it seemed clear that the physically organised structure of a body was distinct from any vital forces responsible for the life processes or (...) metabolism at work within it. This was the approach taken by the chemist Georg Stahl (1659-1734), for example, who resisted attempts to provide a mechanical account of metabolism, arguing instead that only something like a physis or anima could explain a living body’s capacity for the movement of otherwise inert material parts. This was a position which Kant appears to have appreciated when, in discussing the issue in 1766, he exclaimed “I am convinced that Stahl, who is disposed to explain animal processes in organic terms, was frequently closer to the truth than [the mechanists] Hofmann or Boerhaave, to name but a few” (2:331). And indeed, by 1790 Kant would reach conclusions similar to Stahl’s regarding the manner by which we must reflectively judge animal processes to be operating, given that for Stahl the biological body was best taken to be a complex, self-organising system of material parts and a purposive force or physis responsible for their ongoing interrelation. (shrink)

This paper will consider ethical issues arising from medical tort litigation. I will argue that deep changes are required to ensure fairness in litigation and in order to hold morally responsible those corporations that take unnecessary risks with consumers’ lives.

Op-ed on value of majoring in one of the traditional liberal arts.

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

This paper provide the first extended discussion in the philosophical literature of the epistemic significance of the phenomenon of “being known” and the relationship it has to reparations that are distinctively epistemic. Drawing on a framework provided by the United Nations of the “right to know,” it is argued that victims of gross violations and injustices not only have the right to know what happened, but also the right to be known—to be a giver of knowledge to others about their (...) own experiences. It is shown that such victims can suffer epistemic wrongs by being rendered invisible, vilified or demonized, or systematically distorted, and that these ways of not being known demand epistemic reparations. While there are traditional reparations that are epistemic in nature, such as memorialization and education, it is argued that there is a prior and arguably more important epistemic reparation—knowing victims of gross violations and injustices in the sense of bearing witness. The paper concludes with a sketch of an epistemological picture to underwrite this notion of epistemic reparations, one that significantly expands the traditional picture by including epistemic duties that are imperfect in nature and concern actions in addition to beliefs. (shrink)

This paper defends reliabilism against the classic demon world victim thought experiment. In doing so, I underscore two of its key alleged intuitions. I then articulate a host of varied responses open to the reliabilist, arguing that these readily available responses provide the reliabilist with a way to either accommodate or reject these initial intuitions about the demon world victim thought experiment, and in a way consistent with reliabilism. Thus, I conclude that the demon world thought experiment does not undercut (...) reliability as the hallmark of epistemic justification. (shrink)

In the philosophical literature on mental states, the paradigmatic examples of mental states are beliefs, desires, intentions, and phenomenal states such as being in pain. The corresponding list in the psychological literature on mental state attribution includes one further member: the state of knowledge. This article examines the reasons why developmental, comparative and social psychologists have classified knowledge as a mental state, while most recent philosophers--with the notable exception of Timothy Williamson-- have not. The disagreement is traced back to a (...) difference in how each side understands the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and belief, concepts which are understood in both disciplines to be closely linked. Psychologists and philosophers other than Williamson have generally have disagreed about which of the pair is prior and which is derivative. The rival claims of priority are examined both in the light of philosophical arguments by Williamson and others, and in the light of empirical work on mental state attribution. (shrink)

Many epistemologists use intuitive responses to particular cases as evidence for their theories. Recently, experimental philosophers have challenged the evidential value of intuitions, suggesting that our responses to particular cases are unstable, inconsistent with the responses of the untrained, and swayed by factors such as ethnicity and gender. This paper presents evidence that neither gender nor ethnicity influence epistemic intuitions, and that the standard responses to Gettier cases and the like are widely shared. It argues that epistemic intuitions are produced (...) by the natural ‘mindreading’ capacity that underpins ordinary attributions of belief and knowledge in everyday social interaction. Although this capacity is fallible, its weaknesses are similar to the weaknesses of natural capacities such as sensory perception. Experimentalists who do not wish to be skeptical about ordinary empirical methods have no good reason to be skeptical about epistemic intuitions. (shrink)

Op-ed in local paper about being warned I could be ticketed for a bumper sticker while going through a suburban police check point.

This study examined school administrators’ counselling and conceptual skills for effective secondary school administration in Rivers State. Two (2) research questions and 2 hypotheses were answered and tested in the study, respectively. The population of the study was the 245 public secondary schools in Rivers State, with a teacher population of 8196, from which 414 (equivalent of 5% from the population) were selected as the sample, using the stratified random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was a validated 11-item (...) instrument titled ‘School Administrators’ Counselling and Conceptual Skills for Effective Secondary School Administration Scale’ (SACCSESSAS), with a reliability index of 0.87, designed by the researchers in the modified 4-point Likert scale model. Mean scores and standard deviations were used in answering the research questions while z.test statistics were performed and used in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study show that school administrators’ counselling skills enhance effective secondary school administration through presenting opportunities for active listening to building rapport and empathy and that administrators conceptual skills enhance school effectiveness through presenting opportunities for school members to think creatively to understanding issues and solving problems. The study also found non-significant differences between the mean ratings of teachers with teaching and non-teaching qualifications on the ways school administrators’ counselling and conceptual skills enhance effective secondary school administration, respectively. It was therefore concluded that school administrators’ counselling and conceptual skills are indispensable in running effective school administration and that as ways forward adequate counselling skills should be employed by school administrators while also making sure that conceptual skills should be in regular use to achieve school effectiveness. (shrink)

Do we apply higher epistemic standards to subjects with high stakes? This paper argues that we expect different outward behavior from high-stakes subjects—for example, we expect them to collect more evidence than their low-stakes counterparts—but not because of any change in epistemic standards. Rather, we naturally expect subjects in any condition to think in a roughly adaptive manner, balancing the expected costs of additional evidence collection against the expected value of gains in accuracy. The paper reviews a body of empirical (...) work on the automatic regulation of cognitive effort in response to stakes, and argues that we naturally see high- and low-stakes subjects as experiencing different levels of ‘epistemic anxiety’, and anticipate different levels of cognitive effort from them for this reason. If unresolved epistemic anxiety always bars an ascription of knowledge, then we can explain our responses to cases involving shifting stakes without positing any variation in the standards of intuitive knowledge ascription. (shrink)

This essay explores the speech act of dogwhistling (sometimes referred to as ‘using coded language’). Dogwhistles may be overt or covert, and within each of these categories may be intentional or unintentional. Dogwhistles are a powerful form of political speech, allowing people to be manipulated in ways they would resist if the manipulation was carried outmore openly—often drawing on racist attitudes that are consciously rejected. If philosophers focus only on content expressed or otherwise consciously conveyed they may miss what is (...) most powerful and pernicious in the speech of political culture. This essay is a call to start paying attention to these more covert speech acts, and a first attempt at beginning to theorize them. It argues that dogwhistles present a complex and interesting case for the philosopher of language, and explores their implications for democratic politics. (shrink)

Why do our intuitive knowledge ascriptions shift when a subject's practical interests are mentioned? Many efforts to answer this question have focused on empirical linguistic evidence for context sensitivity in knowledge claims, but the empirical psychology of belief formation and attribution also merits attention. The present paper examines a major psychological factor (called ?need-for-closure?) relevant to ascriptions involving practical interests. Need-for-closure plays an important role in determining whether one has a settled belief; it also influences the accuracy of one's cognition. (...) Given these effects, it is a mistake to assume that high- and low-stakes subjects provided with the same initial evidence are perceived to enjoy belief formation that is the same as far as truth-conducive factors are concerned. This mistaken assumption has underpinned contextualist and interest-relative invariantist treatments of cases in which contrasting knowledge ascriptions are elicited by descriptions of subjects with the same initial information and different stakes. The paper argues that intellectualist invariantism can easily accommodate such cases. (shrink)

Why do we find agents less blameworthy when they face mitigating circumstances, and what does this show about philosophical theories of moral responsibility? We present novel evidence that the tendency to mitigate the blameworthiness of agents is driven both by the perception that they are less normatively competent—in particular, less able to know that what they are doing is wrong—and by the perception that their behavior is less attributable to their deep selves. Consequently, we argue that philosophers cannot rely on (...) the case strategy to support the Normative Competence theory of moral responsibility over the Deep Self theory. However, we also outline ways in which further empirical and philosophical work would shift the debate, by showing that there is a significant departure between ordinary concepts and corresponding philosophical concepts, or by focusing on a different type of coherence with ordinary judgments. (shrink)

Moral abolitionists claim that morality ought to be abolished. According to one of their most prominent arguments, this is because making moral judgments renders people significantly less tolerant toward anyone who holds divergent views. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that morality’s tolerance-decreasing effect only occurs if people are realists about moral issues, i.e., they interpret these issues as objectively grounded. We found support for this hypothesis (Studies 1 and 2). Yet, it also turned out that the intolerance associated (...) with realism is mediated by moral conviction and perceived consensus. People tend to feel more strongly about those moral issues they ground objectively and, in doing so, are more prone to display the vice of moral smugness toward those who disagree with them. The remedy for this that has been recommended is humility which we found (Study 3) is indeed related to reduced intolerance, in part by predicting a reduction in realism, but also in part through a direct connection to intolerance. These results put pressure on abolitionists’ “argument from intolerance.”. (shrink)

The dominant approach to assessing decision-making capacity in medicine focuses on determining the extent to which individuals possess certain core cognitive abilities. Critics have argued that this model delivers the wrong verdict in certain cases where patient values that are the product of mental disorder or disordered affective states undermine decision-making without undermining cognition. I argue for a re-conceptualization of what it is to possess the capacity to make medical treatment decisions. It is, I argue, the ability to track one’s (...) own personal interests at least as well as most people can. Using this idea, I demonstrate that it is possible to craft a solution for the problem cases—one that neither alters existing criteria in dangerous ways (e.g. does not open the door to various kinds of abuse) nor violates the spirit of widely accepted ethical constraints on decision-making assessment. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends a new principle for when a structural equation model is apt for analyzing actual causation. Any such analysis in terms of these models has two components: a recipe for reading claims of actual causation off an apt model, and an articulation of what makes a model apt. The primary focus in the literature has been on the first component. But the problem of structural isomorphs has made the second especially pressing (Hall 2007; Hitchcock 2007a). Those (...) with realist sympathies have reason to resist the standard response to this problem, which introduces a normative parameter into the metaphysics (Hall 2007; Halpern and Hitchcock 2010, 2015; Halpern 2016a; Menzies 2017; Gallow 2021). However, the only alternative solution in the literature leaves central questions unanswered (Blanchard and Schaffer 2017). I propose an independently motivated aptness requirement, Evident Mediation, that provides the missing details and resolves the structural isomorph problem without need for a normative parameter. (shrink)

Once symbolized by a burning armchair, experimental philosophy has in recent years shifted away from its original hostility to traditional methods. Starting with a brief historical review of the experimentalist challenge to traditional philosophical practice, this chapter looks at research undercutting that challenge, and at ways in which experimental work has evolved to complement and strengthen traditional approaches to philosophical questions.

Poverty has traditionally been conceived of as a state of deprivation. To be poor is to lack something essential to human flourishing. How that something is understood—in terms of welfare, resources, or capabilities—and how it is measured—in absolute terms or relative to a social standard—has been the subject of much debate within the development literature. In this paper, I put forward an account of poverty rooted in the philosophy of action. I argue that poverty essentially involves being in a context (...) in which a reasonable agent’s future-directed agency is systemically undermined. Centering this dimension of poverty allows us to attend to aspects of poverty that are easily overlooked on existing accounts. (shrink)

We naturally evaluate the beliefs of others, sometimes by deliberate calculation, and sometimes in a more immediate fashion. Epistemic intuitions are immediate assessments arising when someone’s condition appears to fall on one side or the other of some significant divide in epistemology. After giving a rough sketch of several major features of epistemic intuitions, this article reviews the history of the current philosophical debate about them and describes the major positions in that debate. Linguists and psychologists also study epistemic assessments; (...) the last section of the paper discusses some of their research and its potential relevance to epistemology. (shrink)

What it would mean for phenomenology to move in an ontological direction that would render its relevance to contemporary political movement less ambiguous while at the same time retaining those aspects of its method that are epistemologically and politically advantageous? The present study crafts the beginnings of a response to this question by examining four configurations of consciousness that seem to be respectively tied to certain oppressive contexts and certain kinds of oppressed bodies: 1. false consciousness, 2. bad faith, 3. (...) double consciousness, and 4. se faire objet (making oneself an object). Such a comparison both promises to widen our understanding of the ontology of consciousness in general and generate a suggestive vision of what it would take to follow through, ontologically speaking, on the idea that consciousness is fundamentally and irrevocably of a bodily nature. (shrink)

Humans have distinctive powers of reflection: no other animal seems to have anything like our capacity for self-examination. Many philosophers hold that this capacity has a uniquely important guiding role in our cognition; others, notably Hilary Kornblith, draw attention to its weaknesses. Kornblith chiefly aims to dispel the sense that there is anything ‘magical’ about second-order mental states, situating them in the same causal net as ordinary first-order mental states. But elsewhere he goes further, suggesting that there is something deeply (...) misleading about reflection’s first-person view of cognition. This chapter takes a closer look at the conditions under which reflection is misleading. Even if humans are the only reflective animals, we are no longer the only creatures that can be questioned about their claims. Chatbots can also be asked to explain themselves, and by studying the conditions under which they produce clarification as opposed to confabulation, we can develop a non-skeptical account of the epistemic value of reflection. I argue that this capacity naturally supports the distribution of complex problem solving among multiple agents. (shrink)

We advocate for the inclusion of Indigenous studies within first-year writing and academic English courses, particularly those taught to multilingual, international students. We argue that asking international students to learn about local and international Indigenous issues productively intersects with coursework in academic English. Our pedagogical approach emphasizes metalanguage and allows Indigenous studies and explicit language instruction to work in tandem, thereby recognizing the agency of Indigenous scholars and guiding non-Indigenous students in relation to it.

This chapter explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of (...) radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR. (shrink)

This paper provides a general introduction to the use of causal models in the metaphysics of causation, specifically structural equation models and directed acyclic graphs. It reviews the formal framework, lays out a method of interpretation capable of representing different underlying metaphysical relations, and describes the use of these models in analyzing causation.

Harman’s lottery paradox, generalized by Vogel to a number of other cases, involves a curious pattern of intuitive knowledge ascriptions: certain propositions seem easier to know than various higher-probability propositions that are recognized to follow from them. For example, it seems easier to judge that someone knows his car is now on Avenue A, where he parked it an hour ago, than to judge that he knows that it is not the case that his car has been stolen and driven (...) away in the last hour. Contextualists have taken this pattern of intuitions as evidence that ‘knows’ does not always denote the same relationship; subject-sensitive invariantists have taken this pattern of intuitions as evidence that non-traditional factors such as practical interests figure in knowledge; still others have argued that the Harman Vogel pattern gives us a reason to abandon the principle that knowledge is closed under known entailment. This paper argues that there is a psychological explanation of the strange pattern of intuitions, grounded in the manner in which we shift between an automatic or heuristic mode of judgment and a controlled or systematic mode. Understanding the psychology behind the pattern of intuitions enables us to see that the pattern gives us no reason to abandon traditional intellectualist invariantism. The psychological account of the paradox also yields new resources for clarifying and defending the single premise closure principle for knowledge ascriptions. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what constitutes an apt interpreted model for the purpose of analyzing causation. I first collect universally adopted aptness principles into a basic account, flagging open questions and choice points along the way. I then explore various additional aptness principles that have been proposed in the literature but have not been widely adopted, the motivations behind their proposals, and the concerns with each that stand in the way of universal adoption. I conclude that the remaining (...) work of articulating aptness for a SEM analysis of causation is tied up with issues to do with modality, ontology, and mereology. Continuing this work is therefore likely to shed light on the relationship between these areas and causation more generally. (shrink)

This paper comments on an article by V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein (JCS,1999) in which they purport to be identifying the neurological principles of beauty. I draw attention to the way the problem of beauty is construed in the philosophical literature by Mary Mothersill (1984) and Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment). I argue that Ramachandran and Hirsteins' principles do not address the problem of beauty because they do not differentiate between the experience of beauty and other closely related phenomena. I (...) then show how one might address the problem of beauty within the framework that they have adopted. (shrink)

Factive mental states, such as knowing or being aware, can only link an agent to the truth; by contrast, nonfactive states, such as believing or thinking, can link an agent to either truths or falsehoods. Researchers of mental state attribution often draw a sharp line between the capacity to attribute accurate states of mind and the capacity to attribute inaccurate or “reality-incongruent” states of mind, such as false belief. This article argues that the contrast that really matters for mental state (...) attribution does not divide accurate from inaccurate states, but factive from nonfactive ones. (shrink)

In forming groups—corporations, teams, academic departments, juries—humans gain new ways of acting in the world. Jennifer Lackey argues that groups need to be held responsible for their actions, and therefore need to be subject to epistemic evaluation. To criticize receptive or reckless behavior on the part of a corporation, for example, we need some account of what it is for a group to believe something, and for a group belief to be justified. In Lackey’s account, group epistemic states are (...) a function of the states of individual operative members. After raising some difficulties for her formulation of this function, this article raises questions about Lackey’s operative-member account can apply to new types of group agent, with a particular focus on the epistemic status of algorithmic systems that harvest human data. (shrink)

Curiosity is evident in humans of all sorts from early infancy, and it has also been said to appear in a wide range of other animals, including monkeys, birds, rats, and octopuses. The classical definition of curiosity as an intrinsic desire for knowledge may seem inapplicable to animal curiosity: one might wonder how and indeed whether a rat could have such a fancy desire. Even if rats must learn many things to survive, one might expect their learning must be driven (...) by simpler incentives, such as hunger. One might also wonder what proximal signals could guide animals towards knowledge itself, or how something as abstract as knowledge could ever be a motivational target for an unreflective animal. Taking a cue from recent work in reinforcement learning, I argue that surprise functions as a reward signal for the curious animal, and then show how this amounts to a desire for knowledge gain, where knowledge is conceived of as a cognitive adaptation to reality. This adaptation results in a mental state whose existence depends essentially on the truth of its contents, a factive mental state. Curious creatures benefit from an interaction between the prediction-error correction processes of basic learning and the active surprise-seeking force of their curiosity. This internally adversarial interaction accelerates knowledge gain in ways that are very helpful for agents with the restrictions of biological creatures, in environments with the complexity of our natural world. (shrink)

Do epistemic intuitions tell us anything about knowledge? Stich has argued that we respond to cases according to our contingent cultural programming, and not in a manner that tends to reveal anything significant about knowledge itself. I’ve argued that a cross-culturally universal capacity for mindreading produces the intuitive sense that the subject of a case has or lacks knowledge. This paper responds to Stich’s charge that mindreading is cross-culturally varied in a way that will strip epistemic intuitions of their evidential (...) value. I argue that existing work on cross-cultural variation in mindreading favors my position over Stich’s. (shrink)

The central claim is that the semantic knowledge exercised by people when they speak is practical knowledge. The relevant idea of practical knowledge is explicated, applied to the case of speaking, and connected with an idea of agents’ knowledge. Some defence of the claim is provided.

You and I have been colleagues for ten years, during which we have tirelessly discussed the reasons both for and against the existence of God. There is no argument or piece of evidence bearing directly on this question that one of us is aware of that the other is not—we are, then, evidential equals relative to the topic of God’s existence. There is also no cognitive virtue or capacity, or cognitive vice or incapacity, that one of us possesses that the (...) other does not—we are, then, also cognitive equals relative to the question at issue. Given this evidential and cognitive equality, combined with the fact that we have fully disclosed to one another all of our reasons and arguments relative to this topic, we are epistemic peers with respect to the question whether God exists. Yet despite the symmetry of our epistemic positions, we deeply disagree about the answer to this question. What response does rationality require in such a case, where epistemic peers disagree over a question despite there being no apparent asymmetries between them? (shrink)

Wherever philosophers disagree, one of the things at issue is likely to be what they disagree about, itself. In addition to asking whether moral realism is true, and which forms of moral realism are more likely to be true than others, we can also ask what it would mean for some form of moral realism to be true. The usual aspiration of such inquiry is to find definitions that all can agree on, so that we can use terms in a (...) uniform way. But we doubt that this aspiration is always possible, or even desirable. It will be our goal in this chapter to sketch out some of our reasons for such skepticism, and to lay out a picture of what philosophical inquiry can look like in metaethics and beyond, even when it is impossible to reach uniform agreement on the terms of the debate. (shrink)

What is common knowledge? According to the dominant iterative model, a group of people commonly knows that p if and only if they each individually know that p, and they furthermore each know that they each know that p, and so on to infinity. According to the integrative model proposed in this paper, a group commonly knows that p when its members are united in a state of mind of the type whose contents must be true. Epistemic integration within a (...) group is enabled by symmetrical signalling processes such as eye contact. In conversational dyads, symmetrical processing operates on pairs of signals produced by the two sides in a familiar format: speakers generate content for joint attention in main channel communication, and addressees evaluate that content in backchannel communication. Processes of reinforcement learning shape our pairwise signalling, driving the accumulation of common knowledge, both in response to extrinsic reward for coordinated action, and in response to the intrinsic reward of curiosity. Where the iterative model caps the epistemic performance of the group at the level of its weakest member, the integrative model of common knowledge shows how groups working together can outperform their strongest member working alone. (shrink)