A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio-economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and which, other thought experiments are considered first. Our results show that compared to subjects who receive the Truetemp Case (...) first, subjects first presented with a clear case of knowledge are less willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case, and subjects first presented with a clear case of nonknowledge are more willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs. (shrink)

Critically significant parental effects in behavioral genetics may be partly understood as a consequence of maternal brain structure and function of caregiving systems recently studied in humans as well as rodents. Key parental brain areas regulate emotions, motivation/reward, and decision making, as well as more complex social-cognitive circuits. Additional key environmental factors must include socioeconomic status and paternal brain physiology. These have implications for developmental and evolutionary biology as well as public policy.

Theocratic communities ensconced within liberal democracies ought to be treated differently than they are at present. Liberals have neglected to consider carefully the challenges that theocracy presents, largely because none has undertaken to examine the essence of that way of governing. In this there is a serious problem, however, for existing legal structures impede severely the religious free exercise of theocrats, and no appropriate solution to this injustice has yet been given. ;Theocracy is a distinctive mode of governance involving rigid (...) rule and religious authorities, and promoting a particular value above all others. Understanding the nature of theocracy enables one to see its shortcomings; however, it also serves to show how that way of governing may reasonably be important to the devout. If one properly acknowledges the moral right of persons to revise and pursue their conceptions of the good life, one must allow that theocrats should be permitted to live in their uncommon communities without substantial interference from liberal government. The best way to resolve the problem of theocratic communities living inside liberal democracies could be to provide those groups with quasi-sovereign status, allowing them greater freedom to live as they see fit, within certain morally required parameters. (shrink)

Some time ago, F. P. Ramsey (1960) suggested that knowledge is true belief obtained by a reliable process. This suggestion has only recently begun to attract serious attention. In 'Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge', Alvin Goldman (1976) argues that a person has knowl- edge only if that person's belief has been formed as a result of a reliable cognitive mechanism. In Belief, Truth, and Knowledge, David Arm- strong (1973) argues that one has knowledge only if one's belief is a comPletely reliable (...) sign of the truth of the proposition believed. On both of these theories, the reliability of one's belief is a necessary condition of that belief's being an instance of knowledge. These reliability theories have another interesting feature in common, namely, that neither of them explicitly requires or includes the traditional justification requirement for knowledge. Reliability has taken over the role of justification. This naturally leads to the question whether reliability and justification are related in some philosophically interes- ting fashion. In this paper I shall investigate this question. The result will be a positive proposal to the effect that justified belief is reliable belief. This result, in turn, explains why reliability can take over the role of justification in an account of knowledge. Moreover, the identification of justification with reliability constitutes a step toward the naturalization of normative epistemological concepts. (shrink)

Parent-infant emotional expressions vary according to parent and infant gender. Such parent-infant interactions critically affect infant development. Neuroimaging research is exploring emotion-related brain function that varies according to gender, and regulates parenting thoughts and behaviors in the early postpartum. Through specific brain functions, parenting serves to program the infant brain for the next generation of sex-specific emotional expression.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Being Sure of One's Self: Hume on Personal Identity1 Corliss Gayda Swain A number of papers recently published on Hume's theory of personal identityhavebeen devoted to the question: Whyin the Appendix to the Treatise did Hume express complete or acute dissatisfaction with his account of personal identity in book 1 of that work?2 In this paper I shall argue that no adequate answer can be given to this (...) question because its presupposition—namely, that Hume discovered some reason to be dissatisfied with his account—is false. My thesis is that Hume did not write the section ofthe Appendix dealing with personal identity in order to raise new questions about the adequacy ofhisbook 1 account of the mind; he wrote it in order to defend that account by showing that alternative explanations of personal identity are incoherent.3 Very briefly, this defense is as follows. In the Appendix Hume considers two hypotheses concerning the nature of the human mind: the first is the hypothesis accepted by many of the modern philosophers, namely, that the mind is a thinking substance which is both unitary and simple; the secondis Hume's own account ofpersonal identity, according to which "the true idea of the human mind, is to consider it as a system ofdifferent perceptions or different existences, which are link'd togetherby the relation ofcause and effect."4 Drawing on arguments he had developed in Treatise 1.4.5 and 6, Hume shows in the Appendix that the first hypothesis, while pretending to account for the identityand simplicityofthe selfin terms ofamental substance and to offer a new foundation for knowledge, actually leads us into the same labyrinth of obscurities and contradictions in which the ancient philosophy was involved when it tried to account for the identity and simplicity of material objects in terms of material substances. The modern philosophy tried to solve the same kind of problem as did the ancients, using the same kind of resources as the ancients used, and for this reason it is involved in the same contradictions and obscurities when it tries to explain the nature of the mind as the ancients were when they tried to explain the nature of matter. Hume's response to this situationisnotmerelytorejectbothmetaphysical systemsbutalso to reject their formulation of the problems ofidentity through change and unity in diversity and thè attendant criterion ofadequacy for the solution. Hume is sceptical that the problem which both the ancient Volume XVII Number 2 107 CORLISS GAYDA SWAIN andthemodernmetaphysicians setthemselves canbe solved,5but this does not mean that he is sceptical about personal identity or his own account ofit. In book 1 Hume had argued that a proper understanding ofthe real problem of personal identity leads to a real solution. In the Appendix he is concerned to show that this solution is not a solution to the (insoluble) problem that so preoccupied the metaphysicians. It is Hume's insistence that the metaphysicians' problem is insoluble that seems to have led commentators to think that Hume was dissatisfied with his own solution to the problem ofpersonal identity. On this view, the labyrinth ofcontradictions in which Hume finds himselfin the Appendix is not a labyrinth he gets into upon accepting his own account of personal identity, but rather a labyrinth he finds himself in without that account. What the Appendix adds to Hume's positive account of personal identity is a clear statement of the destructive argument againstmetaphysical systems that try to have it both ways. Thus, the Appendix should be read not as a renunciation but as a defense. I. Hume's "Renunciation" Commentators who hold that Hume found a new problem that was connected with his book 1 account of personal identity seem to have some strong textual support for their view.6 In the introductory paragraph of the section in the Appendix dealing with personal identity, Hume says, "But upon a more strict review of the section concerningpersonal identity, I find myselfinvoWd in such a labyrinth, that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent" (T 633).7 He confesses that his account ofpersonal identity is "very defective" (T 635) and claims that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hamann and the Philosophy of David Hume CHARLES W. SWAIN There have been many and various interpretations of Hume's philosophy; no one, so far as I know, has ever viewed him as a romantic. On the other hand, Johann Georg Hamann, "the wizard of the North," has gained his modicum of notoriety mainly through his influence on German romanticism, plus the fact that Kierkegaard mentions him approvingly, and (...) even quotes him in the Philosophical Fragments. Hume has been regarded as a sceptic, an empiricist, a naturalist and a positivist; Hamann is usually regarded as an irrationalist and proto-existentialist. 1 These two thinkers were certainly very different; yet Hamann had a profound appreciation for the philsophy of Hume. I want to suggest in this paper that a study of the use to which Hamann put Hume's philosophy may raise some difficulties for the prevailing view of Hamann's thought, and may also open up a somewhat different perspective on Hume's thought. Hamann found himself in rebellion against the spirit of his age. He saw in Hume an ally in his struggle against the over-confident rationalism of the Enlightenment. As an apologist, Hamann set himself the task of "smoking out the stylish spirit of the century by means of doubt." e He set about this task in a series of strange apologetic works, written in a deliberately mystifying, sometimes shocking style. His anti-rationalism made him a hero to the later romantics, and a mystery to his friends and readersmamong them his fellow citizen, Immanuel Kant. Beginning as a university student, Hamann had become a disciple of the Enlightenment, seeking his place in the brave new world of the early eighteenth century. He tried a career as a tutor, along with many a young man seeking an independent and comfortable life. Eventually he accepted a vaguely defined position with the mercantile firm of Berens in Riga, operated by the family of his college friend Johann Cristoph Berens. Hamann undertook a "secret mission" for the Berens firm which brought him to London in 1758 where, lonely and disheartened, he underwent a personal crisis which changed the direction of his life and resulted in his career as a man of letters and an apologist for Christianity against the Enlightenment. Having been a devotee for over a decade, Hamann felt that he knew the spirit of the Enlightenment. His opposition, however, baffling it may have appeared to his contemporaries, was not intended as obscurantism. He had his 1Hamann has been much more in vogue on the continent than in the English-speaking world. According to Martin Sells, Theologische Aspekte zur gegenw~irtigen Hamann-deutung (GSttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1957),p. 105,der Magus has been claimed as a spiritual ancestor by virtually every European intellectual movement of the last 150 yearst Philologische Einf~illeund Zwei]el, Iqadler iii, 41. [343] 344 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY "reasons," and a study of his use of Hume's philosophy will help to clarify this aspect of his thought. Hamann's acquaintance with the philosophy of Hume dates from his university days, where he was probably introduced to the world of English letters by his fondly remembered teacher, Heinrich Rappolt. Rappolt was a Wolffian, but not at all interested in the attempt to reconcile Wolffianism with pietistic Christianity --in contrast to his more renowned colleague, Martin Knutzen, Kant's teacher. Rappolt had traveled and studied in England, and apparently delighted in opening these new intellectual vistas to his students, s Hamann thus became familiar with Hume's political and economic writings, as well as his philosophical works. Already in 1756, during his Holmeister period, he had worked through an edition of Hume's works which contained various economic and political essays as well as the First Enquiry. 4 Hume's works were among the books which he bought (but perhaps never read) during his stay in London. In 1759, when he published his first apologetic work, Socratische Denku~rdigkeiten, he was (in his own words) "full of Hume." 5 He cites Hume throughout his literary career, and acknowledges his intellectual debt to Hume both publicly and privately. One of his last undertakings was a translation... (shrink)

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. (shrink)

In 'on the analysis of causation' ("synthese", Volume 21, 1970), We argued that any analysis of causation entailing that "a" caused "b" only if "a" is the set of conditions necessary and sufficient for "b" yields a formal contradiction. In 'causal necessity and logical necessity' ("philosophical studies", Volume 28, 1975), David sanford objects to that argument, Concentrating his attack on the notions of causal necessity and total sets of antecedent conditions. We reply in this paper that, Although sanford's objections help (...) clarify the issues, They are not telling. (shrink)

In addition to the infant cry being a signal for attention, it may also be a critical component of the early formation of attachments with caregivers. We consider the complex development of that attachment, which involves reciprocal interactive signaling and a host of evolutionarily conserved caregiver factors.

SOCREAL 2010: 2nd International Workshop on Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality. Sapporo, Japan, 2010-03-27/28. Session 3: Responsibility and Collective Agency.

This is a book of political theory about personal autonomy: its nature, its importance, and its problems. Swaine offers solutions for the defects of personal autonomy, arguing for ethical autonomy, a kind of self-rule that is modified by moral character.