According to some recent arguments, if our moral beliefs are products of natural selection, then we do not have moral knowledge. In defense of this inference, its proponents argue that natural selection is a process that fails to track moral facts. In this paper, I argue that our having moral knowledge is consistent with, the hypothesis that our moral beliefs are products of natural selection, and the claim that natural selection fails to track moral facts. I also argue that natural (...) selection is a process that could track moral facts, albeit imperfectly. I do not argue that we do have moral knowledge. I argue instead that Darwinian considerations provide us with no reason to doubt that we do, and with some reasons to suppose that we might. (shrink)

I argue that the idea of ‘quasi-independence’ [Lewontin, R. C. . Adaptation. Scientific American, 239, 212–230] cannot be understood without attending to the distinction between fitness and advantageousness [Sober, E. . Philosophy of biology. Boulder: Westview Press]. Natural selection increases the frequency of fitter traits, not necessarily of advantageous ones. A positive correlation between an advantageous trait and a disadvantageous one may prevent the advantageous trait from evolving. The quasi-independence criterion is aimed at specifying the conditions under which advantageous traits (...) will evolve by natural selection in this type of situation. Contrary to what others have argued [Sterelny, K. . Evolutionary explanations of human behavior. Australian Journal of Philosophy, 70, 156–172, and Sterelny, K., & Griffiths, P. . Sex and death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press], these conditions must involve a precise quantitative measure of the extent to which advantageous traits are beneficial, and the degree to which they are correlated with other traits. Driscoll [Driscoll, C. . Can behaviors be adaptations? Philosophy of Science, 71, 16–35] recognizes the need for such a measure, but I argue that she does not provide the correct formulation. The account of quasi-independence that I offer clarifies this point. (shrink)

Discussion of J. Kevin O’Regan’s “Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the Feel of Consciousness” Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s13164-012-0090-7 Authors J. Kevin O’Regan, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS - Université Paris Descartes, Centre Biomédical des Saints Pères, 45 rue des Sts Pères, 75270 Paris cedex 06, France Ned Block, Departments of Philosophy, Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 5 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA Journal Review of (...) Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158. (shrink)

We are grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our article. Too many interesting and important points have been raised for us to tackle them all in this response, and so in the below we have sought to draw out the major themes. These include problems with both the term ‘ultimate causation’ and the proximate-ultimate causation dichotomy more generally, clarification of the meaning of reciprocal causation, discussion of issues related to the nature of development and phenotypic (...) plasticity and their roles in evolution, and consideration of the need for an extended evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

Bayesian reasoning has been applied formally to statistical inference, machine learning and analysing scientific method. Here I apply it informally to more common forms of inference, namely natural language arguments. I analyse a variety of traditional fallacies, deductive, inductive and causal, and find more merit in them than is generally acknowledged. Bayesian principles provide a framework for understanding ordinary arguments which is well worth developing.

Theoretical Computer Science, 383: 270-289, 2007.

What Is Scientific Knowledge? is a much-needed collection of introductory-level chapters on the epistemology of science. Renowned historians, philosophers, science educators, and cognitive scientists have authored 19 original contributions specifically for this volume. The chapters, accessible for students in both philosophy and the sciences, serve as helpful introductions to the primary debates surrounding scientific knowledge.First-year undergraduates can readily understand the variety of discussions in the volume, and yet advanced students and scholars will encounter chapters rich enough to engage their many (...) interests. The variety and coverage in this volume make it the perfect choice for the primary text in courses on scientific knowledge. It can also be used as a supplemental book in classes in epistemology, philosophy of science, and other related areas. (shrink)

: Bioethics has focused on the areas of individual ethical choices--patient care--or public policy and law. There are, however, important arenas for ethical choices that have been overlooked. Health care is populated with intermediate arenas such as hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, and health care systems. This essay argues that bioethics needs to develop a language and concepts for institutional ethics. A first step in this direction is to think about institutional conscience.

The Lottery Paradox has been thought to provide a reductio argument against probabilistic accounts of inductive inference. As a result, much work in artificial intelligence has concentrated on qualitative methods of inference, including default logics, which are intended to model some varieties of inductive inference. It has recently been shown that the paradox can be generated within qualitative default logics. However, John Pollock's qualitative system of defeasible inference, does avoid the Lottery Paradox by incorporating a rule designed specifically for that (...) purpose. I shall argue that Pollock's system instead succumbs to a worse disease: it fails to allow for induction at all. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a series of papers read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society through the 1820s, the Cambridge mathematician George Peacock laid the foundation for a natural history of arithmetic that would tell a story of human progress from counting to modern arithmetic. The trajectory of that history, Peacock argued, established algebraic analysis as a form of universal reasoning that used empirically warranted operations of mind to think with symbols on paper. The science of counting would suggest arithmetic, arithmetic would suggest (...) arithmetical algebra, and, finally, arithmetical algebra would suggest symbolic algebra. This philosophy of suggestion provided the foundation for Peacock's “principle of equivalent forms,” which justified the practice of nineteenth-century English symbolic algebra. Peacock's philosophy of suggestion owed a considerable debt to the early Cambridge Philosophical Society culture of natural history. The aim of this essay is to show how that culture of natural history was constitutively significant to the practice of nineteenth-century English algebra. (shrink)

Explanation and evidence are related in one way that is uncontroversial: evidence can confirm or disconfirm explanations. One explanation of Sally’s cold is that she has a virus; another is that she has a bacterial infection. The available evidence confirms the virus explanation because the evidence supports that colds are caused by viruses, not bacteria. A more interesting question concerns whether explanatory facts themselves provide evidence. That is to say, do we get evidence for p simply by realizing that p, (...) if true, would explain some data? Explanationists answer this question affirmatively, maintaining that explanatoriness is evidence of truth. (shrink)

I have applied a fairly general, learning theoretic perspective to some questions raised by Reichenbach's positions on induction and discovery. This is appropriate in an examination of the significance of Reichenbach's work, since the learning-theoretic perspective is to some degree part of Reichenbach's reliabilist legacy. I have argued that Reichenbach's positivism and his infatuation with probabilities are both irrelevant to his views on induction, which are principally grounded in the notion of limiting reliability. I have suggested that limiting reliability is (...) still a formidable basis for the formulation of methodological norms, particularly when reliability cannot possibly be had in the short run, so that refined judgments about evidential support must depend upon measure-theoretic choices having nothing to do in the short run with the truth of the hypothesis under investigation. To illustrate the generality of Reichenbach's program, I showed how it can be applied to methods that aim to solve arbitrary assessment and discovery problems in various senses. In this generalized Reichenbachian setting, we can characterize the intrinsic complexity of reliable inductive inference in terms of topological complexity. Finally, I let Reichenbach's theory of induction have the last say about hypothetico-deductive method. (shrink)

Elaine Scarry argues in The Body in Pain that war is a vast and reciprocal swearing on the body, with corporeality key not only to its brutal prosecution but also to the eventual ending of the political ‘crisis of substantiation’ that war entails. However, her work has not been extensively explored with reference to significant transformations in the embodied experiences of contemporary warfare. This article thus analyses a particular articulation of late modern warfare that I term predatory war, whose current (...) signature motif is the drone strike, through the lens of Scarry’s work. Here, the associated modes of embodiment are radically non-reciprocal, the woundscapes of conflict are profoundly asymmetric, and the affective mediation of bodily injury does not substantiate any ending to the conflict. As such, I argue that the ontology and phenomenology of predatory war increasingly resembles what Scarry identifies as the underlying structure of torture. (shrink)

Was David Hume radically sceptical about our attempts to understand the world or was he merely approaching philosophical problems from a scientific perspective? Most philosophers today believe that Hume's outlook was more scientific than radically sceptical and that his scepticism was more limited than previously supposed. If these philosophers are correct, then Hume's approach to philosophy mirrors the approach of many contemporary philosophers. This similarity between Hume and many aspects of contemporary philosophy suggests that we should try to understand Hume (...) not as an historical relic but as a partner in a continuing philosophical dialogue. When we look closely at Hume's thoughts about human understanding, we find that Hume's scepticism emerges very insistently in the context of Hume's scientific approach. This book tries to come to terms with Hume's scepticism in a way that sheds light on contemporary philosophy and its relationship to science. (shrink)

Wittgenstein was centrally concerned with the puzzling nature of the mind, mathematics, morality and modality. He also developed innovative views about the status and methodology of philosophy and was explicitly opposed to crudely "scientistic" worldviews. His later thought has thus often been understood as elaborating a nuanced form of naturalism appealing to such notions as "form of life", "primitive reactions", "natural history", "general facts of nature" and "common behaviour of mankind". And yet, Wittgenstein is strangely absent from much of the (...) contemporary literature on naturalism and naturalising projects. This is the first collection of essays to focus explicitly on the relationship between Wittgenstein and naturalism. The volume is divided into four sections, each of which addresses a different aspect of naturalism and its relation to Wittgenstein's thought. The first section considers how naturalism could or should be understood. The second section deals with some of the main problematic domains—consciousness, meaning, mathematics—that philosophers have typically sought to naturalise. The third section explores ways in which the conceptual nature of human life might be continuous in important respects with animals. The final section is concerned with the naturalistic status and methodology of philosophy itself. This book thus casts a fresh light on many classical philosophical issues and brings Wittgensteinian ideas to bear on a number of current debates-for example experimental philosophy, neo-pragmatism and animal cognition/ethics-in which naturalism is playing a central role. (shrink)

We further develop the mathematical theory of causal interventions, extending earlier results of Korb, Twardy, Handfield, & Oppy, (2005) and Spirtes, Glymour, Scheines (2000). Some of the skepticism surrounding causal discovery has concerned the fact that using only observational data can radically underdetermine the best explanatory causal model, with the true causal model appearing inferior to a simpler, faithful model (cf. Cartwright, (2001). Our results show that experimental data, together with some plausible assumptions, can reduce the space of viable explanatory (...) causal models to one. (shrink)

A finite data set is consistent with infinitely many alternative theories. Scientific realists recommend that we prefer the simplest one. Anti-realists ask how a fixed simplicity bias could track the truth when the truth might be complex. It is no solution to impose a prior probability distribution biased toward simplicity, for such a distribution merely embodies the bias at issue without explaining its efficacy. In this note, I argue, on the basis of computational learning theory, that a fixed simplicity bias (...) is necessary if inquiry is to converge to the right answer efficiently, whatever the right answer might be. Efficiency is understood in the sense of minimizing the least fixed bound on retractions or errors prior to convergence. (shrink)

This paper concerns the widely discussed exchange between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell that took place a few years back. The author first provides a brief sketch of how McDowell’s practice of philosophy for the last twenty or so years is best described as “quietist” in the spirit of the later Wittgenstein. Next, he shows that this exchange with Dreyfus is best understood as carried on largely in this spirit as well, even though McDowell somewhat inexplicably fails to acknowledge this (...) point in the course of the dispute. Finally and most importantly, the author shows how, somewhat ironically, the dispute takes a turn that suggests a remaining tension in McDowell’s own thought about the nature of philosophy. This tension comes out in his unwillingness to relinquish, or at least set aside temporarily, important parts of the traditional philosophical vocabulary that seem to be getting in the way in his dispute with Dreyfus. At the broadest level, the paper concerns difficulties with attempts to overcome the metaphysical tradition, and the role of the tradition’s vocabulary in such attempts, even in a discussion between two skilled philosophers who both have great sympathy for such a project. (shrink)

The selection from Capreolus's work represented in this translation shows him defending Aquinas's conclusions on faith, hope, charity, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the virtues against such adversaries.

Stephen Gardiner and Augustin Fragnière offer a thorough critique of the Oxford Principles meant to govern geoenegineering in their paper ‘The tollgate principles for the governance...

Intensive care units are challenging and technologically advanced environments. Dealing with situations that have an ethical dimension is an intrinsic part of working in such a milieu. When a moral dilemma emerges, it can cause anxiety and unease for all staff involved with it. Theoretical and abstract papers reveal that having to confront situations of ethical difficulty is a contributory factor to levels of poor morale and burnout among critical care staff. Despite this, there is a surprising dearth of published (...) nursing research in the UK that investigates how staff deal with ethical issues in intensive care units. The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss the development of a research framework designed to explore how staff deal with moral dilemmas in a British inten sive care unit. (shrink)

(1993). Alexander of aphrodisias and others on a controversial demonstration in aristotle’s modal syllogistic. History and Philosophy of Logic: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 201-214.

Carrie Chapman Catt's engagement of race remains controversial. This article argues that there are two elements to Catt's career-long use of evolutionary arguments to map questions of sex and race. For Catt, evolutionary change instantiated (macroevolutionary) progress, but this progress depended on sex and race as linked categories of (microevolutionary) differentiation. In her arguments, the sexes always participate together in the same trajectory of evolutionary progress. Race, however, is a contingent category: different races can, but also may not, participate together (...) in the progress narrative. Women of color thus had a doubly contingent position in her rhetoric. (shrink)

By definition, feminism is concerned with the historical, social and political meanings of sexual difference in the human body, and the spectrum of experiences those meanings produce. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, gendered forms of violence persist, abortion remains a political issue, reproductive and cosmetic technologies and their concomitant ethical questions are proliferating, and the presence of women's bodies in public spaces and for public consumption produces a range of anxieties about women's well-being and the common good. Feminist (...) scholars from across the disciplines grapple with these issues in Feminism and the Body. In so doing they continue a history of intellectual endeavor that, for centuries, has striven to identify the interplay between corporeal differences and relationships of power. This collection will take the reader on a journey into myriad domains in which a variety of discursive effects come to life in the embodied subject: from the theatres of medical surgery and law to the discussion fora of sex therapy and marriage guidance experts; from Peruvian villages of the late twentieth century to African American plays of the 1920s and 1930s; from explicitly feminist novels and films to the mainstream press and right into feminist scholarship that theorises the female body. In so doing, this collection restates and reinvigorates feminism's long-standing, necessary and emphatic engagement with the female body. (shrink)

This essay explores Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia epidemica, with its lengthy book on 'errors' in animal lore. In the limited critical literature on Browne's natural history, this author is generally seen as stumbling towards a zoological idiom and clearing away the emblematic 'clutter' of earlier writers on natural history—Gesner, Aldrovandi, Topsell or Franzius. This essay proposes that Browne is working with a more complex set of co-ordinates in his thought, beyond his experimental inclinations and his Aristotelian assumptions. It will explore the (...) extent to which his studies of animals emerge from, and duplicate, the presumptions of his biblical hermeneutics, and it will suggest that Browne regularly exports terms from scriptural exegesis—the categories of the literal, the figurative, and the emblematic—into his investigations of the natural world. (shrink)

Kevin Gray,Kafumu Kalyalya | : In this paper we challenge the role of consent in the global order by discussing current modes of international law making in the global order. We contend that the features of state consent in international law depart substantially from those assumed by theorists of the liberal order, who subscribe, in most cases, to the realist conception of state action. We argue, against those theorists, that state consents to coercive measures, and the state’s role in (...) carrying them out, has ceased to be central to an account of global law. We conclude that international law—often thought of as law beyond the state—now has expanded its scope to reach individuals and corporations, and that this change has important ramifications for theories of global justice. | : Dans cet article, nous interrogeons le rôle de l’accord dans l’ordre global en discutant les modes courants de constitution des lois internationales au sein de cet ordre. Nous prétendons que les fonctions de l’accord étatique en loi internationale s’écartent substantiellement de celles assumées par les théoriciens de l’ordre libéral, qui souscrivent, dans la plupart des cas, à la conception réaliste de l’action étatique. Contre ces théoriciens, nos posons que l’État consent à des mesures coercitives, et que le rôle de l’État d’effectuer celles-ci a cessé d’être central dans l’explication de la loi globale. Nous concluons que la loi internationale – souvent pensée comme une loi hors de l’État – a maintenant étendu son spectre jusqu’aux individus et corporations, et que ce changement a d’importantes ramifications que les théories globales de la justice devraient considérer. (shrink)

Toward an integrative theory of morality -- The origins of morality -- Perceptual partitioning in human history -- The cognitive and interactional structure of morality -- Subjective morality as an area of social scientific inquiry -- Reiterations.

In this Introduction, we offer, in the first section, a brief sketch of events before turning to track the profound innovations in militancy and theory that Le Group d'information sur les prisons (The Prisons Information Group, the GIP) and its work represent. In the second section, we explore the GIP’s prisoner-centered and largely prisoner-led structure, predicated on the recognition that prisoners have the political knowledge and political agency most relevant to prison resistance movements. In the third section, we trace the (...) GIP’s concomitant reconceptualization of the prison and the intellectual, both of which it embeds in a shared social field of which the former is symptomatic and to which the latter is beholden. In the fourth section, we develop the GIP’s anti-carceral, even abolitionist, legacies implicit within these innovations of militancy and theory, as well as across its archive more generally. Finally, in the fifth section, we close by sketching the GIP archive’s critical reception to date and then carve out new frontiers of interpretive debate in light of contemporary incarceration practices and developments in anti-carceral theory. (shrink)

This volume presents new research on the epistemology of seemings. It features original essays by leading epistemologists on the nature and epistemic import of seemings and intuitions. Seemings and intuitions are often appealed to in philosophical theorizing. In fact, epistemological theories such as phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism give pride of place to seemings. Such views insist that seemings are of central importance to theories of epistemic justification. However, there are many questions about seemings that have yet to be answered satisfactorily. (...) What kinds of seemings are there? How do seemings justify? Are seemings connected to truth? Do they play a significant role in inquiry? The chapters in this volume offer a range of useful arguments and fresh ideas about seemings, the nature of justification and evidential support, intuitions, inquiry, and the nature of inference. Seemings: New Arguments, New Angles will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in epistemology and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Internalist theories of epistemic justification supposedly have trouble explaining what justifies beliefs that are both stored in memory and currently out of mind. This is the problem of stored beliefs. This chapter provides a preliminary defence of stored/dispositional appearances and suggests that they provide a straightforward solution to the problem of stored beliefs.

"Imaginative cases, or what might be called puzzles, paradoxes, and other thought experiments, play a central role in epistemology. A significant component of understanding epistemological debates and theories is appreciating various cases and what they are thought to show. This volume collects 50 of the most important puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments in contemporary epistemology and describes their significance. The volume gives each case a memorable name, describes the details of the case, explains the issue to which the case is (...) relevant, briefly overviews the key responses to the case that have been put forward, and provides a list of suggested readings on the topic. Each entry is accessible, succinct, and self-contained. Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is a fantastic teaching tool as well as a handy resource for anyone interested in epistemological issues. Key Features: Though concise overall, offers broad coverage of the key areas of epistemology. Describes each imaginative case directly and in a memorable way, making the cases accessible and easy to remember. Provides a list of Suggested Readings for each case, divided into General Overviews, Seminal Presentations, and Other Important Discussions"--. (shrink)

Sociological theories of morality have grown in prevalence over the last decade and a half. These theories often focus on developing single concepts such as identity, reputation or emotion, or they provide sweeping historical accounts. Such theories often also take the construct of empathy for granted, as an inevitable consequence of morality. Here, I present a mechanistic theory of empathy which operates at multiple levels of analysis. The approach offered can help frame particular topics in the sociology of morality, though (...) it is also robust enough to analyse historical change. Specifically, the theory presented here is composed of sets of situational, structural and societal mechanisms. Each set is discussed, as well as their relation to one another, before turning to an explication of how the present theory relates to a selective sampling of prominent theories in the contemporary sociology of morality. (shrink)