This book presents the definitive exposition of 'prospect theory', a compelling alternative to the classical utility theory of choice. Building on the 1982 volume, Judgement Under Uncertainty, this book brings together seminal papers on prospect theory from economists, decision theorists, and psychologists, including the work of the late Amos Tversky, whose contributions are collected here for the first time. While remaining within a rational choice framework, prospect theory delivers more accurate, empirically verified predictions in key test cases, as well (...) as helping to explain many complex, real-world puzzles. In this volume, it is brought to bear on phenomena as diverse as the principles of legal compensation, the equity premium puzzle in financial markets, and the number of hours that New York cab drivers choose to drive on rainy days. Theoretically elegant and empirically robust, this volume shows how prospect theory has matured into a new science of decision making. (shrink)

In contrast to mainstream theories focusing on adolescent developmental deficits, the positive youth development (PYD) approach highlights adolescent developmental plasticity and potentials. There are rich empirical research and review studies showing that PYD attributes promote adolescent well-being. However, the existing literature shows several limitations. First, while there are many Western studies, Chinese studies are sparse, particularly studies in mainland China. Second, most PYD studies are cross-sectional studies with data collected at one single time point. Third, researchers in different Chinese (...) contexts seldom employed validated Chinese scales assessing different domains of PYD attributes. Fourth, few studies have examined the relationships between PYD attributes (measures of eudaimonic well-being) and life satisfaction (measure of hedonic well-being) and hopelessness (measure of negative well-being) in a single study. Finally, the role of life satisfaction or hopelessness as a mediator of the relationship between PYD attributes and psychological well-being is unclear. To explore the importance of PYD attributes to Chinese adolescent psychological well-being, we conducted a longitudinal study with two waves of data collected from junior high school students in mainland China ( N = 2,648). At both times, validated measures of PYD attributes, life satisfaction, and hopelessness were employed. Results showed that PYD attributes concurrently and longitudinally predicted life satisfaction and hopelessness with small effect sizes. Cross-lagged panel analyses showed that while Wave 2 life satisfaction did not serve as a mediator of the relationship between Wave 1 PYD attributes and Wave 2 hopelessness, Wave 2 hopelessness served as a mediator of the link from Wave 1 PYD attributes to Wave 2 life satisfaction. In view of the paucity of research findings in this area, the present findings clarify the association between PYD attributes and hedonic well-being (indexed by life satisfaction) and negative psychological well-being (indexed by hopelessness) in Chinese adolescents. (shrink)

There are plenty of classic paradoxes about conditional obligations, like the duty to be gentle if one is to murder, and about “supererogatory” deeds beyond the call of duty. But little has been said about the intersection of these topics. We develop the first general account of conditional supererogation, with the power to solve familiar puzzles as well as several that we introduce. Our account, moreover, flows from two familiar ideas: that conditionals restrict quantification and that supererogation emerges from (...) a clash between justifying and requiring reasons. (shrink)

The general proposition of the positive youth development approach is that developmental assets such as psychosocial competence can promote healthy adolescent development and reduce problem behavior. Despite that many Western studies have shown that PYD attributes are negatively related to adolescent delinquency, not all empirical findings support the negative associations. Although different dimensions of PYD attributes may bear differential relationships with delinquency, this possibility has not been properly examined so far. In addition, related studies in mainland China do not exist. (...) Finally, the possible mediating role of life satisfaction in linking PYD attributes to delinquency has rarely been studied. To address the research gaps and understand how PYD attributes are associated with adolescent delinquency and the underlying mediating effect of life satisfaction, matched longitudinal data were collected from 2,648 mainland Chinese secondary school students at two waves which were separated by one year. On each occasion, participants completed a questionnaire containing validated measures of PYD attributes, life satisfaction, and delinquency. Congruent with the general theoretical prediction of the PYD approach, different PYD attributes were inversely related to concurrent and future adolescent delinquency in separate regression analyses. In addition, the negative predictions were mediated by life satisfaction. When all PYD attributes were included in a single path analysis model, three findings were observed. First, two PYD dimensions, including self-identity and general PYD attributes, showed robust negative predictions on delinquency via life satisfaction. Second, prosocial attributes displayed a weak and unstable negative predictive effect. Third, cognitive-behavioral competence showed an unexpected positive predictive effect on delinquency directly or via its negative effects on life satisfaction. The present findings add value to the existing literature by revealing the predictive role of PYD attributes on life satisfaction and delinquency among mainland Chinese adolescents. The findings also reinforce the importance of investigating individual dimensions of PYD attributes simultaneously in the research field. The present study suggests that it is promising to cultivate PYD attributes as a strategy to reduce delinquency among adolescents in mainland China. (shrink)

In this paper, we present and defend a natural yet novel analysis of normative reasons. According to what we call support-explanationism, for a fact to be a normative reason to φ is for it to explain why there's normative support for φ-ing. We critically consider the two main rival forms of explanationism—ought-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about ought, and good-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about goodness—as well as the popular Reasons-First view, which takes the notion of a (...) normative reason to be normatively fundamental. Support-explanationism, we argue, enjoys many of the virtues of these views while avoiding their drawbacks. We conclude by exploring several further important implications: among other things, we argue that the influential metaphor of ‘weighing’ reasons is inapt, and propose a better one; that, contrary to what Berker (2019) suggests, there's no reason for non-naturalists about normativity to accept the Reasons-First view; and that, contrary to what Wodak (2020b) suggests, explanationist views can successfully accommodate what he calls ‘redundant reasons’. (shrink)

Different versions of the A-theory of time are traditionally defined in terms of whether everything is present, or whether there are also past and future things. In this paper I argue that the traditional way of defining A-theories should be abandoned. I focus on the traditional definition of presentism, according to which always, everything is present. First, I argue that there are good reasons to reject all the most plausible interpretations of the predicate ‘is present’ as it appears in (...) the traditional definition of presentism. It follows that there are also good reasons to reject the most plausible interpretations of the traditional definitions of the other A-theories. I then argue that there is a better way of defining the A-theories, in terms of the question of whether existence has a beginning and an end. Finally, I argue that what goes for the traditional definition of presentism goes for the traditional definition of its modal analogue actualism, according to which necessarily, everything is actual : there are good reasons to reject the traditional definition of actualism in favour of a definition in terms of contingent existence. (shrink)

A normative reason for a person to? is a consideration which favours?ing. A motivating reason is a reason for which or on the basis of which a person?s. This paper explores a connection between normative and motivating reasons. More specifically, it explores the idea that there are second-order normative reasons to? for or on the basis of certain first-order normative reasons. In this paper, I challenge the view that there are second-order reasons so understood. I then show that prominent (...) views in contemporary epistemology are committed to the existence of second-order reasons, specifically, views about the epistemic norms governing practical reasoning and about the role of higher-order evidence. If there are no second-order reasons, those views are mistaken. (shrink)

David Lewis's work is of fundamental importance in many areas of philosophical inquiry and there are few areas of Anglo-American philosophy where his impact has not been felt. Lewis's philosophy also has a rare unity: his views form a comprehensive philosophical system, answering a broad range of questions in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of action and many other areas. This breadth of Lewis's work, however, has meant that it is difficult to know where to start in (...) Lewis's work and a casual reader may often miss some of the illuminating connections between apparently quite disparate pieces of Lewis's work. This book aims to make this body of work more accessible to a general philosophical readership, while also providing a unified overview of the many contributions Lewis has made to contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. The book can be divided into four parts. The first part examines Lewis's metaphysical picture - one of the areas where he has had the greatest impact and also the framework for the rest of his theories. The second section discusses Lewis's important contributions in the philosophy of mind, language and meaning. The third part explores some of Lewis's work in decision theory, metaethics and applied ethics, areas where his work in not necessarily as widely appreciated, but in which he has done a range of work that is both accessible and important. The final section focuses on Lewis's distinctive philosophical method, perhaps one of his most significant legacies, which combines naturalism with "common-sense" theorizing. (shrink)

The rapid development of artificial womb technologies means that we must consider if and when it is permissible to kill the human subject of ectogestation—recently termed a ‘gestateling’ by Elizabeth Chloe Romanis—prior to ‘birth’. We describe the act of deliberately killing the gestateling as gestaticide, and argue that there are good reasons to maintain that gestaticide is morally equivalent to infanticide, which we consider to be morally impermissible. First, we argue that gestaticide is harder to justify than abortion, primarily (...) because the gestateling is completely independent of its biological parents. Second, we argue that gestaticide is morally equivalent to infanticide. To demonstrate this, we explain that gestatelings are born in a straightforward sense, which entails that killing them is infanticide. However, to strengthen our overall claim, we also show that if gestatelings are not considered to have been born, killing them is still equivalent to killing neonates with congenital anomalies and disabilities, which again is infanticide. We conclude by considering how our discussion of gestaticide has implications for the permissibility of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from gestatelings. (shrink)

This book contributes to two debates and it does so by bringing them together. The first is a debate in metaethics concerning normative reasons, the considerations that serve to justify a person’s actions and attitudes. The second is a debate in epistemology concerning the norms for belief, the standards that govern a person’s beliefs and by reference to which they are assessed. The book starts by developing and defending a new theory of reasons for action, that is, of practical (...) reasons. The theory belongs to a family that analyses reasons by appeal to the normative notion of rightness (fittingness, correctness); it is distinctive in making central appeal to modal notions, specifically, that of a nearby possible world. The result is a comprehensive framework that captures what is common to and distinctive of reasons of various kinds: justifying and demanding; for and against, possessed and unpossessed; objective and subjective. The framework is then generalized to reasons for belief, that is, to epistemic reasons, and combined with a substantive, first-order commitment, namely, that truth is the sole right-maker for belief. The upshot is an account of the various norms governing belief, including knowledge and rationality, and the relations among them. According to it, the standards to which belief is subject are various, but they are unified by an underlying principle. (shrink)

While epistemologists have long debated what it takes for beliefs to be justified, they've devoted much less collective attention to the question of what it takes for beliefs to be excused, and how excuses differ from justifications. This stands in contrast to the state of affairs in legal scholarship, where the contrast between justifications and excuses is a standard topic in introductory criminal law textbooks. My goal in this paper is to extract some lessons from legal theory for epistemologists seeking (...) to distinguish epistemic justifications from epistemic excuses. First, I'll provide a brief overview of appeals to the justification/excuse distinction in epistemology, focusing on the internalism/externalism debate. Then, I'll identify some choice points in legal theory for how to think about the function of the justification/excuse distinction, and will in turn correspond to analogous choice points in epistemology. Ultimately, I'll argue that depending on which way we go at some crucial junctures, we can motivate either a traditional, non‐factive, internalist conception of justification, or a purely factive one where truth is all that's required for a belief to be justified. But there's no clear path, via legal theory, to view that only beliefs that amount to knowledge are justified. (shrink)

What is aesthetic appreciation? In this paper, I approach this question in an indirection fashion. First, I introduce the Kantian notion of moral worthy action and an influential analysis of it. Next, I generalise that analysis from the moral to the aesthetic domain, and from actions to affects. Aesthetic appreciation, I suggest, consists in an aesthetically worthy affective response. After unpacking the proposal, I show that it has non-trivial implications while cohering with a number of existing insights concerning the (...) nature of appreciation and the constraints to which it is subject. In closing, I note some limitations on the analogy between aesthetic appreciation and morally worthy action. (shrink)

The available resources for global health assistance are far outstripped by need. In the face of such scarcity, many people endorse a principle according to which highest priority should be given to the worst off. However, in order for this prioritarian principle to be useful for allocation decisions, policy-makers need to know what it means to be badly off. In this article, we outline a conception of disadvantage suitable for identifying the worst off for the purpose of making health resource (...) allocation decisions. According to our total advantage view: the worst off are those who have the greatest total lifetime disadvantage; advantage foregone due to premature death should be treated in the same way as other ways of being disadvantaged at a time; how badly off someone is depends on the actual outcomes that will befall her without intervention, not her prospects at a time; and all significant forms of disadvantage count for determining who is worst off, not just disadvantage relating to health. We conclude by noting two important implications of the total advantage view: first, that those who die young are among the globally worst off, and second, that the epidemiological shift in the global burden of disease from communicable to non-communicable diseases should not lead to a corresponding shift in global health spending priorities. (shrink)

This paper defends a novel view of ‘what it is like’-sentences, according to which they attribute certain sorts of relations—I call them ‘affective relations’—that hold between events and individuals. The paper argues in detail for the superiority of this proposal over other views that are prevalent in the literature. The paper further argues that the proposal makes better sense than the alternatives of the widespread use of Nagel’s definition of conscious states and that it also shows the mistakes in two (...) prominent suggestions about the definition when properly understood: first, that it is empty and uninformative, and second, that it leads directly to a substantial claim in the theory of consciousness, namely that an individual is in a conscious state only if the individual is aware of their being in that state. (shrink)

There was a time when Greco-Roman culture recognized faith as an indispensable social good. More recently, however, the value of faith has been called into question, particularly in connection with religious commitment. What, if anything, is valuable about faith—in the context of ordinary human relations or as a distinctive stance people might take in relation to God? I approach this question by examining the role that faith talk played both in ancient Jewish and Christian communities and in the larger Greco-Roman (...) culture in which Christian faith talk evolved. I locate the value of faith and faithfulness in the context of relationships involving trust and loyalty and argue that what is most distinctively valuable about faith is the function it plays in sustaining relationships through various kinds of challenges, including through evidentially unfavorable circumstances and significant periods of doubt. In light of this discussion, I set out a view of relational faith and, taking Mother Teresa as an exemplar, argue for two further conclusions. First, faith can play the valuable role that it plays in sustaining relationships even without belief of the salient propositions. Second, in at least some circumstances, in order for faith to play this valuable role in a way that does not require epistemic opinions that fail to fit one’s evidence, it is important that faith does not require such belief. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of generics in social cognition. First, we explore the nature and effects of the most common form of generics about social kinds. Second, we discuss the nature and effects of a less common but equally important form of generics about social kinds. Finally, we consider the implications of this discussion for how we ought to use language about the social world.

There is a longstanding debate in the literature about static versus dynamic approaches to meaning and conversation. A formal result due to van Benthem is often thought to be important for understanding what, conceptually speaking, is at issue in the debate. We introduce the concept of a conversation system, and we use it to clarify the import of van Benthem's result. We then distinguish two classes of conversation systems, corresponding to two concepts of staticness. The first class corresponds to (...) a generalization of the class of systems that van Benthem's result concerns. These are the strongly static conversation systems. The second class is broader, and allows for a certain commonly recognized form of context sensitivity. These are the weakly static conversation systems. In the vein of van Benthem's result, we supply representation theorems which independently characterize these two varieties of conversation system. We observe that some canonically dynamic semantic systems correspond to weakly static conversation systems. We close by discussing some hazards that arise in trying to bring our formal results to bear on natural language phenomena, and on the debate about whether the compositional semantics for natural language should take a dynamic shape. (shrink)

The central question in contemporary ethics is whether virtue can replace duty as the primary notion in ethical theory. The subject of intense contemporary debate in ethical theory, virtue ethics is currently enjoying an increase in interest. This is the first book to focus directly on the subject. It provides a clear, systematic introduction to the area and houses under one cover a collection of the central articles published on the debate over the past decade. The essays encompass a (...) wide range ofaspects: the difference between virtue ethics and traditional duty ethics; present arguments for and against virtue ethics; the practical implications of virtue ethics and the Aristotelian and Kantian attitudes to virtue ethics. (shrink)

Realists about possible worlds typically identify possible worlds with abstract objects, such as propositions or properties. However, they face a significant objection due to Lewis (1986), to the effect that there is no way to explain how possible worlds-as-abstract objects represent possibilities. In this paper, I describe a response to this objection on behalf of realists. The response is to identify possible worlds with propositions, but to deny that propositions are abstract objects, or indeed objects at all. Instead, I argue (...) that realists should follow Prior (1971) and others in treating higher-order quantification (e.g. quantification into predicate or sentence position) as a genuine form of quantification in its own right, and so in particular, not to be analysed in terms of first-order quantification over abstract objects. I argue that from this ‘higher-orderist’ perspective, there is a relatively straightforward answer to the question of how possible worlds-as-propositions succeed in representing possibilities. (shrink)

In this commentary, I will consider the implications of the argument made by Christopher Stratman (2020) in ‘Ectogestation and the Problem of Abortion’. Clearly, the possibility of ectogestation will have some effect on the ethical debate on abortion. However, I have become increasingly sceptical that the possibility of ectogestation will transform the problem of abortion. Here, I outline some of my reasons to justify this scepticism. First, that virtually everything we already know about unintended pregnancies, abortion and adoption does (...) not prima facie support the assumption that a large shift to ectogestation would occur. Moreover, if ectogestation does not lead to significant restrictions to abortion then there is unlikely to be any radical transformation of the practice of abortion. Second, abortion is already associated with stigma and so the presence of ectogestation would need to create additional stigma to modify behaviour. Finally, I argue that ectogestation shifts the debate away from the fetus to the human subject of the artificial womb—the gestateling. Therefore, creating a new category of killing—gestaticide—and this would only reorient the debate rather than end it. (shrink)

This paper argues for several related theses. First, the epistemological position that knowledge requires safe belief can be motivated by views in the philosophy of science, according to which good explanations show that their explananda are robust. This motivation goes via the idea—recently defended on both conceptual and empirical grounds—that knowledge attributions play a crucial role in explaining successful action. Second, motivating the safety requirement in this way creates a choice point—depending on how we understand robustness, we'll end up (...) with different conceptions of safety in epistemology. Lastly, and most controversially, there's an attractive choice at this point that will not vindicate some of the most influential applications of the safety-theoretic framework in epistemology, e.g., Williamson's arguments against the KK principle, and luminosity. (shrink)

Moral functioning is a defining feature of human personhood and human social life. Moral Psychology provides an integrative and evaluative overview of the theoretical and empirical traditions that have attempted to make sense of moral cognition, prosocial behavior, and the development of virtuous character.This is the first book to integrate a comprehensive review of the psychological literatures with allied traditions in ethics. Moral rationality and decisionmaking; the development of the sense of fairness and justice, and of prosocial dispositions; as (...) well as the notion of moral self and moral identity and their relation to issues of character and virtue are fully discussed in the rich contexts provided by psychological and philosophical paradigms. Lapsley emphasizes parenting and educational strategies for influencing moral behavior, reasoning, and character development, and charts a line of research for the “post-Kohlbergian era” in moral psychology.This book will be an invaluable text for advanced courses in moral psychology, as taught in departments of psychology, education, and philosophy. It will also prove to be a standard reference work for researchers and ethicists alike. (shrink)

What makes it the case that a given experience is pleasurable? According to the felt-quality theory, each pleasurable experience is pleasurable because of the way that it feels—its “qualitative character” or “felt-quality”. According to the attitudinal theory, each pleasurable experience is pleasurable because the experiencer takes certain attitudes towards it. These two theories of pleasure are typically framed as rivals, but it could be that they are both partly right. It could be that pleasure is partly a matter of felt-quality, (...) and partly a matter of attitudes. It could be that a hybrid theory is true. In this paper, I aim to advance the cause of hybrid theories of pleasure. I do this in two ways. I begin by examining the challenges which motivate the search for a hybrid theory. I call these the HONEST challenges: Heterogeneity, Oppositeness, Normativity, Euthyphro, Separateness, and Togetherness. The first three challenges—HON—are challenges for the felt-quality theory. The second three challenges—EST—are challenges for the attitudinal theory. Having established the HONEST challenges, I then describe and motivate a particular cluster of hybrid theories which I will call dispositional hybrid theories. According to these theories, pleasurable experiences are all and only those experiences which dispose us to desire them in virtue of feeling the way that they do. The dispositional theories deliver on the promise of hybrid theories: because they appeal to both felt-qualities and attitudes, they have the resources to avoid most, if not all, of the HONEST challenges. (shrink)

Medicines and medical devices containing animal-derived ingredients are frequently used on patients without their informed consent, despite a significant proportion of patients wanting to know if an animal-derived product is going to be used in their care. Here, I outline three arguments for why this practice is wrong. First, I argue that using animal-derived medical products on patients without their informed consent undermines respect for their autonomy. Second, it risks causing nontrivial psychological harm. Third, it is morally inconsistent to (...) respect patients’ dietary preferences and then use animal-derived medicines or medical devices on them without their informed consent. I then address several anticipated objections and conclude that the continued failure to address this issue is an ethical blind spot that warrants applying the principles of respect for autonomy and informed consent consistently. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

This paper defends Priorianism, a theory in the philosophy of time which combines three theses: first, that there is a metaphysical distinction between the present time and non-present times; second, that there are temporary propositions, that is, propositions that change in truth-value simpliciter over time; and third, that there is change over time only if there are temporary propositions. Priorianism is accepted by many Presentists, Growing Block Theorists, and Moving Spotlight Theorists. However, it is difficult to defend the view (...) without appealing to premises that those who reject the view find controversial. My aim in this paper is to defend Priorianism in a way that largely avoids appealing to such premises. I do three things: first (Section 1), I describe the component theses of Priorianism and the relations between them. Next (Section 2), I show how Priorians can respond to the argument that the B-theory implies that there are temporary propositions, and therefore satisfies the Priorian condition for there being change over time. Finally (Section 3), I defend the Priorian thesis that there is change over time only if there are temporary propositions against an alternative principle of change defended by Ross Cameron (The Moving Spotlight, 2015). (shrink)

Much of contemporary philosophy of mind is marked by a dissatisfaction with the two main positions in the field, standard materialism and standard dualism, and hence with the search for alternatives. My concern in this paper is with two such alternatives. The first, which I will call non-standard materialism, is a position I have defended in a number of places, and which may take various forms. The second, panpsychism, has been defended and explored by a number of recent writers. (...) My main goals are: (a) to explain the differences between these positions; and (b) to suggest that non-standard materialism is more plausible than panpsychism. (shrink)

A modus tollens against zero-dimensional material objects is presented from the premises (i) that if there are zero-dimensional material objects then there are bare particulars, and (ii) that there are no bare particulars. The argument for the first premise proceeds by elimination. First, bare particular theory and bundle theory are motivated as the most appealing theories of property exemplification. It is then argued that the bundle theorist’s Ockhamism ought to lead her to reject spatiotemporally located zero-dimensional property instances. (...) Finally, it is argued that since she must accept such instances if she accepts zero-dimensional material object bundles, she ought to avoid the latter. This leaves bare particular theory as the default view of zero-dimensional material objects. The argument for the second premise invokes the thesis that the exemplification of at least one sparse property is a prerequisite for the existence of any particular. It is argued from Humean considerations that bare particulars fail this prerequisite. (shrink)

Law and the legal system through which law is effected are very powerful, yet the power of the law has always been limited by the laws of nature, upon which the law has now direct grip. Human law now faces an unprecedented challenge, the emergence of a second limit on its grip, a new “species” of intelligent agents (AI machines) that can perform cognitive tasks that until recently only humans could. What happens, as a matter of law, when another species (...) interacts with us, can be integrated into human minds and bodies, makes “real-world” decisions—not through human proxies, but directly—and does all this “intelligently”, with what one could call autonomous agency or even a “mind” of its own? The article starts from the clear premise that control cannot be exercised directly on AI machines through human law. That control can only be effected through laws that apply to humans. This has several regulatory implications. The article’s first discusses what, in any attempt to regulate AI machines, the law can achieve. Having identified what the law can do, the article then canvases what the law should aim to achieve overall. The article encapsulate its analysis in a list of both doctrinal and normative principles that should underpin any regulation aimed at AI machines. Finally, the article compares three transnational options to implement the proposed regulatory approach. (shrink)

Some experiences—like the experience of eating cheesecake—are good experiences to have. But when we try to explain why they are good, we encounter a clash of intuitions. First, we have an objectivist intuition: plausibly, the experiences are good because they feel the way that they do. Second, we have a subjectivist intuition: if a person were indifferent to that kind of experience, then it might fail to be good for that person. Third, we have a possibility intuition: for any (...) kind of experience, possibly there is a subject who is indifferent to that kind of experience. The pleasure problem is the problem we face in reconciling these three claims. I explain the problem and argue for a solution. I argue that we ought to reject the most common solutions: rejecting the objectivist or subjectivist intuitions. Instead, we ought to follow Timothy Sprigge in rejecting the possibility claim. We should embrace the view that experiences bear necessary connections to our attitudes. (shrink)

This paper takes a closer look at ordinary thought and talk about motivating reasons, in an effort to better understand how it works. This is an important first step in understanding whether—and if so, how—such thought and talk should inform or constrain our substantive theorizing. One of the upshots is that ordinary judgments about motivating reasons are at best a partial and defeasible guide to what really matters, and that so-called factualists, propositionalists, and statists are all partly right, as (...) well as partly wrong, when it comes to the question of what motivating reasons “are”. (shrink)

[Commentary on Kwong-loi Shun, “Anger, Compassion, and the Distinction between First and Third Person” Australasian Philosophical Review 6.1 (Issue theme: Moral psychology— Insights from Chinese Philosophy), forthcoming.] -/- In maintaining that gratitude fails to reflect a perspectival distinction based on whether the grateful agent is the direct beneficiary of the benefactor’s good will, Kwong-loi Shun suggests that gratitude might be felt to benefactors for benefits bestowed to strangers. With an eye toward understanding the form that gratitude might take on (...) this kind of view, I consider two mutually exclusive ways of unpacking this proposal in the context of Shun’s other commitments. On the first (expansive) approach, responses of grateful reciprocation are extended to persons who presently receive only our approval or approbation. The expansive route, however, entails treating gratitude and its negative counterpart asymmetrically, for reasons that are nonobvious. On the second (restrictive) approach, gratitude in effect collapses into approval, and our interpersonal practices are rid not only of angry payback (of the sort associated with resentment), but also of the 'positive payback' presently associated with gratitude. The restrictive route, however, excises from our practices features of gratitude that have considerable interpersonal value. (shrink)

Some theories in the philosophy of time combine a commitment to the existence of non-present regions of spacetime with the view that there is a perspective-independent present time. We call such theories 4D A-theories. There is a well-known objection to 4D A-theories, as follows: 4D A-theories entail that the vast majority of subjects across time believe falsely that they are present. But if the vast majority of subjects across time believe falsely that they are present, we do not know that (...) we are present. We call this the Epistemic Objection to 4D A-theories. In this paper we do two things: first, we describe and assess a number of different versions of the Epistemic Objection. We argue that there is only one version of the objection—the version due to Russell that we call the Safety Argument—that does not rely on implausible epistemic principles which entail radical scepticism. Second, we raise objections to the main strategies adopted by 4D A-theorists in response to the Safety Argument. We conclude that the Epistemic Objection—in the form of the Safety Argument—remains a threat to 4D A-theories. (shrink)

Using Riemann’s Rearrangement Theorem, Øystein Linnebo (2020) argues that, if it were possible to apply an infinite positive weight and an infinite negative weight to a working scale, the resulting net weight could end up being any real number, depending on the procedure by which these weights are applied. Appealing to the First Postulate of Archimedes’ treatise on balance, I argue instead that the scale would always read 0 kg. Along the way, we stop to consider an infinitely jittery (...) flea, an infinitely protracted border conflict, and an infinitely electric glass rod. (shrink)

Impossible fictions are valuable evidence both for a theory of fiction and for theories of meaning, mind and epistemology. This article focuses on what we can learn about fiction from reflecting on impossible fictions. First, different kinds of impossible fiction are considered, and the question of how much fiction is impossible is addressed. What impossible fiction contributes to our understanding of "truth in fiction" and the logic of fiction will be examined. Finally, our understanding of unreliable narrators and unreliable (...) narration in fiction needs to accommodate stories that, on the face of it, cannot possibly be true. (shrink)

According to Cicero, “all emotions spring from the roots of error: they should not be pruned or clipped here and there, but yanked out” (Cicero 2002: 60). The Stoic enthusiasm for the extirpation of emotion is radical in two respects, both of which can be expressed with the claim that emotional responses are never appropriate. First, the Stoics held that emotions are incompatible with virtue , since the virtuous man will retain his equanimity whatever his fate. Grief is always (...) vicious, both bad and bad for you, even when directed at events commonly considered tragic, such as the loss of one’s child. (shrink)

This article explores the law and ethics of lobbying. The legal discussion examines disclosure regulations, employment restrictions,bribery laws, and anti-fraud provisions as each applies to the lobbying context. The analysis demonstrates that given the social value placed on the First Amendment, federal law generally affords lobbyists wide latitude in determining who, what, when, where, and how to lobby.The article then turns to ethics. Lobbying involves deliberate attempts to effect changes in the law. An argument is advanced that because law (...) implicates the use of force and because law ideally reflects the values of a democratic society, seeking to slant the law to serve a client’s narrow interests cannot provide an adequate ethical end for a lobbyist. On the contrary, a lobbyist has an affirmative moral duty to seek reasonably balanced and just laws. The article examines, refines, and defends this proposition in a number of settings. (shrink)

Since Darwin, the idea of psychological continuity between humans and other animals has dominated theory and research in investigating the minds of other species. Indeed, the field of comparative psychology was founded on two assumptions. First, it was assumed that introspection could provide humans with reliable knowledge about the causal connection between specific mental states and specific behaviors. Second, it was assumed that in those cases in which other species exhibited behaviors similar to our own, similar psychological causes were (...) at work. In this paper, we show how this argument by analogy is flawed with respect to the case of second‐order mental states. As a test case, we focus on the question of how other species conceive of visual attention, and in particular whether chimpanzees interpret seeing as a mentalistic event involving internal states of perception, attention, and belief. We conclude that chimpanzees do not reason about seeing in this manner, and indeed, there is considerable reason to suppose that they do not harbor representations of mental states in general. We propose a reinterpretation model in which the majority of the rich social behaviors that humans and other primates share in common emerged long before the human lineage evolved the psychological means of interpreting those behaviors in mentalistic terms. Although humans, chimpanzees, and most other species may be said to possess mental states, humans alone may have evolved a cognitive specialization for reasoning about such states. (shrink)

The lambda calculus is a universal programming language. It can represent the computable functions, and such offers a formal counterpart to the point of view of functions as rules. Terms represent functions and this allows for the application of a term/function to any other term/function, including itself. The calculus can be seen as a formal theory with certain pre-established axioms and inference rules, which can be interpreted by models. Dana Scott proposed the first non-trivial model of the extensional lambda (...) calculus, known as $ D_{\infty }$, to represent the $\lambda $-terms as the typical functions of set theory, where it is not allowed to apply a function to itself. Here we propose a construction of an $\infty $-groupoid from any lambda model endowed with a topology. We apply this construction for the particular case $D_{\infty }$, and we see that the Scott topology does not provide enough information about the relationship between higher homotopies. This motivates a new line of research focused on the exploration of $\lambda $-models with the structure of a non-trivial $\infty $-groupoid to generalize the proofs of term conversion to higher-proofs in $\lambda $-calculus. (shrink)

We discuss how the law and scholars have approached three questions. First, what acts count as acts of entrapment? Secondly, is entrapment a permissible method of law-enforcement and, if so, in what circumstances? Thirdly, what must criminal courts do, in response to the finding that an offence was brought about by an act of entrapment, in order to deliver justice? While noting the contrary tendency, we suggest that the first question should be addressed in a manner that is (...) neutral about the answers to the other two. On the second question, we summarize various arguments about the permissibility of entrapment, while remaining largely neutral about their merits. With regard to the third question, we summarize the approaches to entrapment in various jurisdictions, and we note some patterns, across the jurisdictions here surveyed, concerning shifts from one sort of entrapment remedy to another. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a putative puzzle between non-reductive physicalism according to which psychological properties are distinct from, yet metaphysically necessitated by, physical properties, and Hume's dictum according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. However, the puzzle dissolves once care is taken to distinguish between distinct kinds of distinction: numerical distinctness, mereological distinctness, and what the chapter calls ‘weak modal distinctness’ and ‘strong modal distinctness’. For each of these notions, it turns out that either it makes (...) no sense according to non-reductive physicalism or else it is unclear whether Hume's dictum is true. The chapter then deploys these distinctions to argue first that unlike the dualist, the non-reductive physicalist can reject the exclusion principle in the causal exclusion argument, and second that emergentism can be distinguished from non-reductive physicalism. (shrink)

Why should one person obey another? Why (to ask the question from the first-person perspective) ought I to submit to another and follow her judgment rather than my own? In modern political thought, which denies that some are born rulers and others are born to be ruled, the most prominent answer has been: “Because I have consented to her authority.” By making authority conditional on the subjects’ consent, political philosophers have sought to reconcile authority’s hierarchical structure with the equal (...) moral standing of governor and governed. Yet such consent accounts of authority have long been deemed problematic on a number of grounds, not the least of which is that few citizens have given their consent to the state under whose laws they live. So unless we are willing to deny the state’s authority over those who have not consented, or revert to the pre-modern assumption of a natural political hierarchy, we must find another way of reconciling authority with our standing as free and equal moral agents. In recent political and legal philosophy, the most influential solution to this problem has been Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority, according to which legitimate authority, while it does not require the consent of the governed, must exist for their sake, or serve them. The normal way to justify someone’s authority, on the service conception, is to show that, by treating her directives as binding, the subjects are likely better to conform to reasons that apply to them anyway. The service conception has, however, recently been criticized (by, among others, Thomas Christiano, Scott Hershovitz, and Jeremy Waldron) for being insufficiently attuned to the significance that procedural, and in particular democratic, features of political and legal institutions have for the justification of their authority. If these ‘democratic critics’ are right, then two commitments that many in the liberal-democratic tradition may find independently attractive turn out to be in tension: the liberal idea that authority is normally legitimate only insofar as it serves its subjects, and the democratic idea that legitimate authority can (and regularly does) rest on fair procedures. In this article I argue that the critics’ arguments rest on a misunderstanding of the service conception; yet their worries point the way to an under-appreciated and interesting view of democracy as an authoritative arbitration procedure. After introducing the service conception’s view of justified authority, I briefly distinguish a broad and a narrow interpretation of it, and suggest that we should embrace the latter to make sense of the idea that political authority serves its subjects (Section I). Next I turn to the objection raised by the democratic critics: the service conception, they say, cannot make room for the intrinsic fairness of democratic procedures because it is preoccupied with the quality of outcomes (Section II). But, I argue, the objection rests on an illicit identification of two different kinds of outcomes: the outcome of the decision-making procedure on the one hand, the outcome or result of treating that first outcome as authoritative on the other. Distinguishing between these is crucial for an adequate understanding of democracy’s authority. While the service conception is indeed organized around the latter, this does not commit it to an exclusive concern with the former; yet it is a singular commitment to the former that is problematic from a democratic point of view (Section III). To bring home this point, I sketch a model of authority as arbitration that is frequently overlooked in recent discussions of authority even though it is centrally concerned with procedural (and ultimately democratic) values and fits squarely into the service conception of authority (Section IV). (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test (...) versus a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)

Like most theories in first order metaphysics, theories of persistence generally aim at metaphysically necessary truth. Consequently, those that accept proper temporal parts of material entities are maximally competitive only when they accord with the full range of metaphysically possible temporal mereological structures. Consider, for example, a structure in which every element is a proper temporal part of some others. The present essay argues that temporal junk plausibly is possible and that perdurantism, the thesis that material entities persist by (...) having distinct proper temporal parts at distinct times, does not accord with it. The essay then outlines a novel four-dimensionalist theory of persistence that accommodates junk. On this theory, material entities persist not in virtue of possessing proper temporal parts, but rather in virtue of being grounded by certain pluralities of fundamental property instances over their careers, and by sub-pluralities thereof over corresponding sub-intervals of their careers. Accordingly, this way of persisting is dubbed ‘plurdurance’. (shrink)

The middle years of the nineteenth century saw two crucial develop ments in the history of modern logic: George Boole's algebraic treat ment of logic and Augustus De Morgan's formulation of the logic of relations. The former episode has been studied extensively; the latter, hardly at all. This is a pity, for the most central feature of modern logic may well be its ability to handle relational inferences. De Morgan was the first person to work out an extensive logic (...) of relations, and the purpose of this book is to study this attempt in detail. Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871) was a British mathematician and logician who was Professor of Mathematics at the University of London (now, University College) from 1828 to 1866. A prolific but not highly original mathematician, De Morgan devoted much of his energies to the rather different field of logic. In his Formal Logic (1847) and a series of papers "On the Syllogism" (1846-1862), he attempted with great ingenuity to reformulate and extend the tradi tional syllogism and to systematize modes of reasoning that lie outside its boundaries. Chief among these is the logic of relations. De Mor gan's interest in relations culminated in his important memoir, "On the Syllogism: IV and on the Logic of Relations," read in 1860. (shrink)

According to the broadly Aristotelian distinction between universals and particulars, all and only the former are capable of whole multiple location. The present essay defends this distinction against four putative counterexamples. The first two, extended simple material objects and enduring time-traveling self-meeters, putatively are wholly multiply locatable, but not universals. The second two, unique properties of point-sized entities and Platonic (i.e., not spatiotemporally located) universals, putatively are universals, but not wholly multiply locatable. The defensive strategy is to resist certain (...) presuppositions underlying the examples. (shrink)

In discussions about the ethics of enhancement, it is often claimed that the concept of ‘human nature’ has no helpful role to play. There are two ideas behind this thought. The first is that nature, human nature included, is a mixed bag. Some parts of our nature are good for us and some are bad for us. The ‘mixed bag’ idea leads naturally to the second idea, namely that the fact that something is part of our nature is, by (...) itself, normatively inert. The Inert View claims that nothing normative follows from the mere fact that some trait is a part of our nature. If the Inert View is correct, then appeals to the value or importance of human nature in debates about enhancement are indeed misplaced. We argue that the Inert View is wrong, and that a certain concept of human nature – which we refer to as human form – does have an important role to play in debates about enhancement. (shrink)

The traditional view is that 'now’ is a pure indexical, denoting the utterance time. Yet, despite its initial appeal, the view has faced criticism. A range of data reveal 'now’ allows for discourse-bound (i.e., anaphoric) uses, and can occur felicitously with the past tense. The reaction to this has typically been to treat ‘now’ as akin to a true demonstrative, selecting the prominent time supplied by the non-linguistic context or prior discourse. We argue this is doubly mistaken. The first (...) mistake concerns the semantic value of ‘now’, which is not a time, but a state — the consequent state of a prominent event. The second is that ‘now’ is a pure indexical after all, insofar as its interpretation is determined without recourse to extra-linguistic supplementation. Specifically, we argue that any occurrence of 'now’ selects the consequent state of the most prominent event, where event-prominence is linguistically maintained through prominence-affecting updates contributed by coherence relations. Our analysis accounts straightforwardly for a wide range of discourse initial and discourse bound uses of ‘now’, while giving it a simple indexical meaning. (shrink)

This essay introduces the transcription and translation of Paul Feyerabend's "Der Begriff der Verständlichkeit in der modernen Physik" [The concept of intelligibility in modern physics] (1948), which is an early essay written by Paul Feyerabend in 1948 on the topic of intelligibility (Verständlichkeit) and visualizability (Anschaulichkeit) of physical theories. The existence of such essay was likely. It is listed in his bibliography as his first publication. Yet the content of the essay was unknown, as no original or copy is (...) extant in Feyerabend's Nachlass and no known published version was available to the community—until now. The essay has both historical and philosophical interest: it is, as far as our current knowledge goes, Feyerabend's earliest extant publication. It documents Feyerabend's philosophical interest as a physicist-to-be, in what he himself called his “positivist” phase; and it gives a rare if fragmentary insight into the early discussions of the ‘Third Vienna Circle’ and, more generally, the philosophical culture of discussion in Vienna. (shrink)

This article argues that reality and virtuality are still very much phenomenologically distinguishable, although this might not be the case forever. I argue for two main types of virtuality – one inherently involved in the dynamic horizons of perceptual experiences, while the other is all of our experiences of digital images – in order to show that a particular possible instantiation of the latter type, namely “pure” mixed reality (MR), might come to blur and collapse various experiential categories in the (...) future, not least real and irreal, like never before. To show this, there are three main sections. First, I outline my understanding of the two basic types of virtuality, as understood from a classical phenomenological analysis. Second, I give an account of the most important family of “virtual technologies” relevant to the question at hand, namely virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR, AR and MR respectively) technologies. After homing in on MR, I explain what “pure” MR is and how, through tactile holograms, this might change even basic experiential distinctions going forward, and not necessarily for the better. (shrink)

This chapter reviews four elements of David Lewis's account of materialism and experience. These elements include: materialism for which Lewis gave a distinctive and well‐known characterization; an account of what experience is; an account of the source of the tension between experience and materialism; and a strategy for resolving the tension. Lewis did not just give a distinctive and well‐known characterization of materialism, he gave two: one in terms of fundamental properties, and one in terms of supervenience. The chapter considers (...) two recent objections to that account. The first argues that knowledge‐how is a certain kind of knowledge‐that and in consequence Lewis's well‐known “ability hypothesis” fails. The second argues that if Lewis's contextualist approach to epistemology is correct, his rejection of the identification thesis is impossible. The author suggests that Lewis has the resources to answer both objections, but he ends by stating the real problems for Lewis's lie. (shrink)