I discussed the ways in which folk psychology is influenced by the need for small-scale cooperation between people. I argue that considerations about cooperation and mutual benefit can be found in the everyday concepts of belief, desire, and motivation. I describe what I call "solution thinking", where a person anticipates another person's actions by first determining the solution to the cooperative problem that the person faces and then reasoning backwards to a prediction of individual action.

Enth.: Dugoald Stewart's account of Adam Smith / ed. by I.S. Ross.

I argue that the contrast between models and theories is important for public policy issues. I focus especially on the way a mathematical model explains just one aspect of the data.

This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida’s writings on Heidegger and the gift. In the first section of the essay, I situate the publication of the latter half of Derrida’s 1978–79 seminar against his writings on the gift generally, beginning in 1968 and ending in 2000. In the second section, I explain how the second volume of Donner le temps relates to the first. In the final three sections of the paper, I (...) focus on three prominent topics of the seminar, so as to show how they impact our previous understanding of major aspects of Derrida’s thought: first, the Heideggerian thinking of the es gibt, as it relates to the gift’s unconditionality. Second, the problematic of the Kunstwerk, as it informs Derrida’s thinking of récit. Third, the problem of Dichtung, as it is linked to the poématique. (shrink)

Sommers (2010) argues that experimental philosophers of free will have largely been asking the wrong question – the question whether philosophically naïve individuals think that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism. The present studies begin to alleviate this concern by testing the intuitive plausibility of Pereboom’s (2001) four case argument. The general pattern of responses from two experiments does not support Pereboom’s predictions. Moreover, those who were high in the personality trait emotional stability tended to judge that (...) manipulated agents were more free and morally responsible compared to individuals low in emotional stability. (shrink)

Precision testing of the quantum electrodynamics (QED) and the standard model provides some of the most secure knowledge in the history of physics. These tests can also be used to constrain and search for new physics going beyond the standard model. We examine the evidential structure of relationships between theoretical predictions from QED, precision measurements of these phenomena, and the indirect determination of the fine structure constant. We argue that "pure QED" is no longer sufficient to predict the electron's anomalous (...) magnetic moment, and that standard model effects are needed. The details relevant to low-energy QED are robust against future theory change. (shrink)

The past ten years have seen multiple attempts to estimate the relation between the global personality trait extraversion and compatibilist free will judgments. Here, we contribute to that line of research by conducting a meta-analysis of 17 published and eight unpublished studies (N = 2,811) estimating that relation. Overall, the mean effect size was modest but remarkably robust across materials, locations, and labs (z =.19, 95% CI.15-.24, p <.001). No significant publication bias was detected in the studies (t (23) = (...) 1.88, p =.07). While there was no significant heterogeneity in the studies (Q (24) = 34.42, p =.08, I2 = 26.05), a moderator analysis suggested that the effect is strongest in cases that contain highly affective actions (e.g., murder) (z =.22, 95% CI.17-.28, p <.001) and weakest in cases that contain actions with low affect (e.g., asking whether free will is compatible with determinism) (z =.09, 95% CI -.05-.23, p =.22). The meta-analysis provides additional evidence that extraversion is related to compatibilist free will judgments and helps to identify opportunities to discover boundary conditions and more proximal causal mechanisms for the relation. The results of the meta-analysis also have implications for informed decision making. (shrink)

In this paper I formulate Minimal Requirements for Candidate Predictions in quantum field theories, inspired by viewing the standard model as an effective field theory. I then survey standard effective field theory regularization procedures, to see if the vacuum expectation value of energy density ) is a quantity that meets these requirements. The verdict is negative, leading to the conclusion that \ is not a physically significant quantity in the standard model. Rigorous extensions of flat space quantum field theory eliminate (...) \ from their conceptual framework, indicating that it lacks physical significance in the framework of quantum field theory more broadly. This result has consequences for problems in cosmology and quantum gravity, as it suggests that the correct solution to the cosmological constant problem involves a revision of the vacuum concept within quantum field theory. (shrink)

Many areas of frontier physics are confronted with the crisis of a lack of accessible, direct evidence. As a result, direct model building has failed to lead to any new empirical discoveries. In this paper I argue that these areas of frontier physics have developed common methods for turning precision measurements of known quantities into potential evidence for anomalies hinting at new physics. This method of framework generalization has arisen as a sort of model-independent method for generalizing beyond known physics (...) and organizing experimental searches. I argue that this method is well-justified given the current epistemic landscape, and that theory construction in general is much broader than simply building new dynamical models. (shrink)

INSTITUTES OF Moral Philosophy. INTRODUCTION. » SECTION I. Of Knoivledge in general. * AL L knowledge is either of particular facts, or of general rules. ...

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey presents a puzzle to which she argues there is no current solution. Lackey's claim is that testimonial knowledge can have something conspicuously wrong with it and still be knowledge. Testimonial knowledge can be ‘deficient’. Given that knowledge is a normative category, that it describes what it is for a belief to go right, there is a puzzle that comes with accounting for how a testimonial belief could be knowledge and yet go wrong in the ways Lackey has in (...) mind. In this paper, I argue that the deficiency is one of teamwork, and that Lackey's puzzle offers one a window into the respect in which testimony is a kind of team achievement. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a new approach to philosophy that incorporates the experimental methodologies of psychology, behavioral economics, and sociology. Experimental philosophers generally maintain that, in addition to traditional philosophical practices, these ways of gathering evidence can be instrumental in shedding light on philosophically important issues. Rather than relying on their own intuitions about specific cases, experimental philosophers perform systematic experiments to determine what intuitions people have about those cases. These intuitions are then used as evidence. In this context, four main (...) approaches to experimental philosophy are introduced, a sample of experimental philosophy’s results is offered, and some of the philosophical importance of those results is explained. (shrink)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is, in part, an information handling system that can remove humans from the information handling process. The particular problem explored is how we are to understand privacy when considering informational systems that handle personal information in ways that impact people’s lives when there is no human operator in direct contact with that personal information. I argue that these new technologies need to take concepts like privacy into account, but also, that we ought also to take (...) these technologies into account to reconsider and perhaps reconceptualise privacy. This paper argues that while an inhuman system like the IoT does not necessarily violate the interpersonal privacy of people, if the IoT is used as part of a state surveillance program, a political notion of privacy may be violated. (shrink)

In two experiments, we demonstrate that intentional action intuitions vary as a function of whether one brings about or observes an event. In experiment 1a (N?=?38), participants were less likely to judge that they intended (M?=?2.53, 7 point scale) or intentionally (M?=?2.67) brought about a harmful event compared to intention (M?=?4.16) and intentionality (M?=?4.11) judgments made about somebody else. Experiments 1b and 1c confirmed and extended this pattern of actor-observer differences. Experiment 2 suggested that these actor-observer differences are not likely (...) to occur when participants are asked to ?imagine? being an actor. We argue that these results challenge the substantial philosophical and empirical reliance on hypothetical thought examples about intentional action. Our data offer new and necessary methodological avenues for understanding folk intentional action intuitions. (shrink)

I provide an account of precision testing in particle physics that makes a virtue of theory-ladenness in experiments. Combining recent work on the philosophy of experimentation with a broader view of the scientific process allows one to understand that the most precise and secure knowledge produced in a mature science cannot be achieved in a theory-independent fashion. I discuss precision tests of the muon’s magnetic moment and effective field theory as a means to repurpose precision tests for exploratory purposes.

Rather than being in inherent conflict with religion or operating on planes that do not intersect, the cognitive science of religion (CSR) can be used to renovate a religious understanding of the world. CSR allows one to reshape the perspectives of Aquinas and Calvin on the natural knowledge of God. The Christian tradition affirms that all human beings have available to them some knowledge of God. This claim has empirical import and thus invites scientific investigation and clarification. A CSR-inspired lens (...) allows one’s theological reflections to move from paradigms that focus on the cognitive reach of a domain-general power of human thought to a paradigm focused on different ways of relating to another person. The case study of the natural knowledge of God presented here models a productive way of relating CSR and religious perspectives from within a faith tradition. (shrink)

It is commonly claimed that fully virtuous individuals cannot be ignorant and that everyday intuitions support this fact. Others maintain that there are virtues of ignorance and most people recognize them. Both views cannot be correct. We report evidence from three experiments suggesting that ignorance does not rule out folk attributions of virtue. Additionally, results show that many of these judgments can be predicted by one’s emotional stability—a heritable personality trait. We argue that these results are philosophically important for the (...) study of virtue and we discuss some of the ways individual differences may inform and facilitate current debates in ethics. We close with a cautionary argument detailing the risks of discounting some intuitions simply because they are associated with seemingly less desirable personality traits. (shrink)

In this paper I look at moral debates about animal disenhancement. In particular, I propose that given the particular social institutions in which such disenhancement will operate, we ought to reject animal disenhancement. I do this by introducing the issue of animal disenhancement and presenting arguments in support of it, and showing that while these arguments are strong, they are unconvincing when we look at the full picture. Viewing animal disenhancement in a context such as high intensity food production, we (...) see that the arguments in support of it fall short of other ethical considerations, leading me to conclude that the moral and pragmatic reasons weigh against animal disenhancement. (shrink)

Appeals to “being on the right side of history” or accusations of being on the wrong side of history are increasingly common on social media, in the media proper, and in the rhetoric of politics. One might well wonder, though, what the value is of invoking history in this manner. Is declaring who is on what side of history merely dramatic shorthand for one's being right and one's opponents wrong? Or is there something more to it than that? In this (...) paper, I argue that an appeal to being on the right side of history is best construed as an invocation of higher-order evidence. I do not deny that there are purely rhetorical, non-evidential uses of the right and wrong side of history, but the phrase can be construed in a more substantive manner. I use work on virtual epistemic elections to model these appeals to history. Zeroing in on the kind of higher-order evidence invoked helps us clarify the criterion for better or worse, more or less convincing appeals to it. (shrink)

Five experiments suggested that everyday free will and moral responsibility judgments about some hypothetical thought examples differed from free will and moral responsibility judgments about the actual world. Experiment 1 (N = 106) showed that free will intuitions about the actual world measured by the FAD-Plus poorly predicted free will intuitions about a hypothetical person performing a determined action (r = .13). Experiments 2–5 replicated this result and found the relations between actual free will judgments and free will judgments about (...) hypothetical determined or fated actions (rs = .22–.35) were much smaller than the differences between them (ηp2 = .2–.55). These results put some pressure on theoretical accounts of everyday intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)

The computable Lipschitz reducibility was introduced by Downey, Hirschfeldt and LaForte under the name of strong weak truth-table reducibility [6]). This reducibility measures both the relative randomness and the relative computational power of real numbers. This paper proves that the computable Lipschitz degrees of computably enumerable sets are not dense. An immediate corollary is that the Solovay degrees of strongly c.e. reals are not dense. There are similarities to Barmpalias and Lewis’ proof that the identity bounded Turing degrees of c.e. (...) sets are not dense [2]), however the problem for the computable Lipschitz degrees is more complex. (shrink)

Recent research on the semantics and pragmatics of slurs has offered insight into several important facts concerning their meaning and use. However, prior work has unfortunately been restricted primarily to considerations of slurs that typically target females, homosexuals, and African Americans. This is problematic because such a narrowly focused attention to slurs in prior work has left theorizing of how slurs generally function relatively uninformed by facts of actual language use. As a result, theoretical accounts of slurs that have so (...) far been proposed have largely failed to accurately reflect actual usage, account for the empirical findings about slurs and general pejoratives from the social sciences, and offer any informative predictions to help guide future research. At this time more empirically oriented homework on the variety of ways that different slurs have been used in different cases would be helpful for theorists to consider so that they can proceed to develop more nuanced and empirically informed theories about slurs, their usage, and their effects. Accordingly, since no account of slurs for Italian Americans has so far been offered, this article provides a systematic and empirically informed analysis of slurs for Italian Americans that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Further, this article demonstrates that the family resemblance account of slurs maintained here has major advantages over previous accounts insofar as it is flexible yet robust enough to accommodate both the derogatory and appropriative use of slurs, can explain many of the psychological effects that slurs actually have on both their users and targets, and is more in accord with the real rather than ideal nature of our organic human psychology. (shrink)

Some rights are so important for human autonomy and well-being that many scholars insist they should not be waived, traded, or abandoned. Privacy is a recent addition to this list. At the other end of the spectrum is the belief that privacy is a mere unimportant interest or preference. This paper defends a middle path between viewing privacy as an inalienable, non-waivable, non-transferrable right and the view of privacy as a mere subjective interest. First, an account of privacy is offered (...) that clarifies the concept and demonstrates how privacy is directly related to human health and well-being. Second, along with considering and rejecting several accounts for why privacy might be considered an inalienable right, an argument is offered for why it is morally permissible to waive, transfer, abandon, or alienate privacy. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles, and the larger socio-technical systems that they are a part of are likely to have a deep and lasting impact on our societies. Trust is a key value that will play a role in the development of autonomous driving systems. This paper suggests that trust of autonomous driving systems will impact the ways that these systems are taken up, the norms and laws that guide them and the design of the systems themselves. Further to this, in order to (...) have autonomous driving systems that are worthy of our trust, we need a superstructure of oversight and a process that designs trust into these systems from the outset. Rather than banning or avoiding all autonomous vehicles should a tragedy occur, despite these systems having some level of risk, we want resilient systems that can survive tragedies, and indeed, improve from them. I will argue that trust plays a role in developing these resilient systems. (shrink)

This article explores the way in which social explanations underpin the names of particular disciplines. Taking the example of pharmacogenomics, it shows how this term has been constructed since it appeared in 1997, the differences and similarities between it and its precursor, pharmacogenetics, and the way in which commercial interests underpin this new term. Drawing on the idea of visions and the sociology of expectation, the article shows how different actors compete to have their preferred definitions of the term accepted (...) by the world at large. (shrink)

There are at least two basic normative notions: rationality and reasons. The dominant normative account of reasons nowadays, which I call primitive pluralism about reasons, holds that some reasons are normatively basic and there is no underlying normative explanation of them in terms of other normative notions. Kantian constructivism about reasons, understood as a normative rather than a metaethical view, holds that rationality is the primitive normative notion that picks out which non-normative facts are reasons for what and explains why (...) those normative relations hold. By supposing that there is a plurality of primitive reasons, I argue that primitive pluralism about reasons lacks sufficient normative unity and structure. But Kantian constructivism about reasons faces a dilemma of its own: Either a conception of rationality is thick enough to capture the reasons of commonsense, in which case it cannot play the explanatory role assigned to it, or a conception of rationality is genuinely explanatory, in which case it is too thin to generate the reasons we recognize in commonsense. The aim of this paper is to suggest that if Kantian constructivism about reasons were built on a substantive, rather than merely formal, conception of rationality then it would stand a better chance at unifying the particular reasons we would endorse on due reflection. The groundwork I lay in this paper, I explain, is an essential first step in the larger project of developing a version of Kantian constructivism about reasons that might eventually explain all reasons in terms of rationality. (shrink)

a collection of articles by philosophers of mathematics on themes associated with the work of Paul Benacceraf.

In this paper, we use the biology of pain and Augustinian insights into the relationship between physical and spiritual death to give a defense of the Fall. If we think of pain as, biologically, a limiting system but one that interacts with advanced rationality in such a way as to create a new experience of one’s biological limits, then one can use Augustine’s treatment of our experience of physical death as both a consequence and a symbolic check on our moral (...) and spiritual condition to give an account of the Fall that is consistent with evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Science and technology have been integral issues of development cooperation for more than sixty years. Contrary to early efforts’ transfer of established technologies from the West to developing countries, contemporary technology aspirations increasingly articulate and practice the Global South as a live laboratory for technological experimentation. This approach is especially furthered by a group of private foundations and philanthrocapitalists whose endeavors in developing countries are, like their companies, shaped by logics of the individual, the market, and of societal progress through (...) technological innovation and experimentation. This article draws upon critical intellectual thought about the political and social ramifications of technology to reflect on the renascent role of technology in development cooperation. It traces the discourses and practices of philanthrocapitalist organizations, in particular the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to understand how their experimentalist technology aspirations influence human life and relations in the Global South. This article argues that this newfound focus on technology in development cooperation may challenge the essence of democracy, reduce participation, and have undesirable consequences for populations in the Global South. (shrink)

Since their discovery, mirror neurons have played a critical role in the interdisciplinary debate over how we come to understand other people, a topic often labelled 'mind-reading'. The philosopher Alvin Goldman argues that mirror neurons provide critical evidence that we come to understand others by simulating them. In this paper, I demonstrate that mirror neurons should be thought of as facilitating the perception of persons but should not be thought of as simulators. Our basic understanding of others does not come (...) from thinking our way into their shoes but rather through seeing into their minds through their pattern behaviour. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the proper subjects of intangible property claims include medical records, genetic profiles, and gene enhancement techniques. Coupled with a right to privacy these intangible property rights allow individuals a zone of control that will, in most cases, justifiably exclude governmental or societal invasions into private domains. I argue that the threshold for overriding privacy rights and intangible property rights is higher, in relation to genetic enhancement techniques and sensitive personal information, than is commonly suggested. (...) Once the bar is raised, so‐to‐speak, the burden of overriding it is formidable. Thus many policy decisions that have been recently proposed or enacted – citywide audio and video surveillance, law enforcement DNA sweeps, genetic profiling, national bans on genetic testing and enhancement of humans, to name a few – will have to be backed by very strong arguments. (shrink)

Drones deployed to monitor endangered species often crash. These crashes teach us that using drones for conservation is a contingent practice ensnaring humans, technologies, and animals. This article advances a crash theory in which pilots, conservation drones, and endangered megafauna are relata, or related actants, that intra-act, cocreating each other and a mutually constituted phenomena. These phenomena are entangled, with either reciprocal dependencies or erosive entrapments. The crashing of conservation drones and endangered species requires an ethics of care, repair, or (...) reworlding. Diffractions, disruptions that expose difference, result from crashes and reveal the precarious manner by which technologies, laws, and discourses bring nature and culture together. To support crash theory, this article presents three ethnographic cases. A drone crash in the United Kingdom near white rhinoceroses while building machine learning training data exhibits the involvement of the electromagnetic spectrum; the threat of crashes in the Pacific Northwest near Puget Sound orcas discloses the impacts of drone laws; and drone crashes in Sri Lanka among Asian elephants presents the problems of technoliberal ideals around programming natural worlds. Throughout the article, a methodology is developed, parallelism, which attends to the material similarities in lateral phenomena. (shrink)