A central aspect of people's beliefs about the mind is that mental activities—for example, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving—are interrelated, with some activities being kinds or parts of others. In common-sense psychology, reasoning is a kind of thinking and reasoning is part of problem solving. People's conceptions of these mental kinds and parts can furnish clues to the ordinary meaning of these terms and to the differences between folk and scientific psychology. In this article, we use a new technique for (...) deriving partial orders to analyze subjects' decisions about whether one mental activity is a kind or part of another. The resulting taxonomies and partonomies differ from those of common object categories in exhibiting a converse relation in this domain: One mental activity is a part of another if the second is a kind of the first. The derived taxonomies and partonomies also allow us to predict results from further experiments that examine subjects' memory for these activities, their ratings of the activities' importance, and their judgments about whether there could be "possible minds" that possess some of the activities but not others. (shrink)

The present study examined the effects of semantic structure on simple inductive judgments about category members. For a particular category, subjects were told that one of the species had a given property and were asked to estimate the proportion of instances in the other species that possessed the property. The results indicated that category structure—in particular, the typicality of the species—influenced subjects' judgments. These results were interpreted by models based on the following assumption: When little is known about the underlying (...) distribution of a property, subjects assume that the distribution mirrors that of better-known properties. For this reason, if subjects learn that an unknown property is possessed by a typical species, they are more likely to generalize than if the same fact had been learned about an atypical species. (shrink)

Lance Rips describes a unified theory of natural deductive reasoning and fashions a working model of deduction, with strong experimental support, that is capable of playing a central role in mental life.

One of the most challenging and rewarding roles for in-house hospital attorneys is serving as a member of their hospital’s Bioethics Committee. As a member of the Committee, an attorney assists in developing institutional ethics policies and guidelines, and also participates in ethics consultations involving disputes about patient care. Institutions such as the Author’s employer, Texas Children’s Hospital, promote open and honest communications between members of a patient’s health care team and the patient’s parents and family; however, when communications break (...) down, the Committee’s goal is to provide an objective forum where disputes can be discussed and hopefully resolved in a professional, ethical manner. (shrink)

The conception of reflective reasoning, like that of higher order thinking, has been informed by a Cartesian view of the self. Reflection is conceived of as a solipsistic process, in which persons consider their own thoughts in isolation. Higher order thinking has equally been represented as a single thinker considering thoughts at a meta-level. This paper proposes a different conception of reflection and higher order thinking, in which reflective dialogue is seen as the fundamental context in which reflection is possible (...) and higher order thinking engendered. The very process of dialectic defines what it is to be reflective and to think critically. Learning to reflect alone is a consequence of internalising the discourse. (shrink)

"I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."Reduced to its most basic task, bioethics is about choices. What is the ethical or unethical decision at a particular biomedical moment? What is most just or unjust for a disabled or infirmed loved one? What feels like the morally right or wrong decision in a healthcare moment? "Should we or shouldn't we" at a medical impasse?Understandably, the question of choice has found an especially prominent and ethically contentious place (...) in disability discourses. Are disabled lives, disabled identities, and disabled bodies themselves best understood as "chosen"? As terminological variations on this theme, disability scholar Simi Linton has asked in the past... (shrink)

Recent research on the metaethical beliefs of ordinary people appears to show that they are metaethical pluralists that adopt different metaethical standards for different moral judgments. Yet the methods used to evaluate folk metaethical belief rely on the assumption that participants interpret what they are asked in metaethical terms. We argue that most participants do not interpret questions designed to elicit metaethical beliefs in metaethical terms, or at least not in the way researchers intend. As a result, existing methods are (...) not reliable measures of metaethical belief. We end by discussing the implications of our account for the philosophical and practical implications of research on the psychology of metaethics. (shrink)

I trust my lawyer more than I trust my doctor.—Shana Alexander, 1992 [The audience laughed.]1The Hippocratic Oath makes the physician invoke external supervision of her adherence to what she affirm...

In this paper, I question the orthodox position that true belief is a fundamental epistemic value. I begin by raising a particularly epistemic version of the so-called “value problem of knowledge” in order to set up the basic explanandum and to motivate some of the claims to follow. In the second section, I take aim at what I call “bottom-up approaches” to this value problem, views that attempt to explain the added epistemic value of knowledge in terms of its relation (...) to a more fundamental value of true belief. The final section is a presentation of a value-theoretic alternative, one that explains the value problem presented in the first section while also doing justice to intuitions that may cause us to worry about bottom-up approaches. In short,knowledgeand not mere true belief is a fundamental epistemic value as it is the constitutive goal of propositional inquiry. (shrink)

Rights and obligations—sometimes referred to as deontology or deontic powers—are key to most contemporary conceptions of social ontology. Both Cambridge Social Ontology and the dominant analytic conception associated, most prominently, with John Searle, place rights and obligations at the centre of their accounts. Such a common emphasis has led some to consider deontology to be a point of similarity between these different theories. This is a mistake. In this paper, I show that a distinctive conception of rights and obligations underpins (...) Cambridge Social Ontology and its social positioning theory. Moreover, I argue that a fuller understanding of the account of rights and obligations defended in Cambridge in fact reveals that it can be differentiated from other conceptions and, most importantly, Searle's, by its recognition that a practical dimension is always involved in social constitution. (shrink)

The emerging global climate crisis threatens human health in unprecedented ways, yet global health concerns have not been sufficiently considered within international climate change efforts. A more collaborative pathway could advance efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change while protecting public health and social justice.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 10, Page 34-36, October 2012.

Volume 18, Issue 5, October 2019, Page 529-534.

A current and very influential theory in psychology holds that infants have innate, perceptually informed systems that endow them with surprisingly high-level concepts—for example, concepts of cardinality and causality. Proponents of core cognition hold that these initial concepts then provide the building blocks for later adult ideas within these domains. This paper reviews the evidence for core cognition and argues that these systems aren’t sufficient to explain how children learn their way to adult thoughts about language, number, or cause.

Many experiments with infants suggest that they possess quantitative abilities, and many experimentalists believe that these abilities set the stage for later mathematics: natural numbers and arithmetic. However, the connection between these early and later skills is far from obvious. We evaluate two possible routes to mathematics and argue that neither is sufficient: (1) We first sketch what we think is the most likely model for infant abilities in this domain, and we examine proposals for extrapolating the natural number concept (...) from these beginnings. Proposals for arriving at natural number by (empirical) induction presuppose the mathematical concepts they seek to explain. Moreover, standard experimental tests for children's understanding of number terms do not necessarily tap these concepts. (2) True concepts of number do appear, however, when children are able to understand generalizations over all numbers; for example, the principle of additive commutativity (a+b=b+a). Theories of how children learn such principles usually rely on a process of mapping from physical object groupings. But both experimental results and theoretical considerations imply that direct mapping is insufficient for acquiring these principles. We suggest instead that children may arrive at natural numbers and arithmetic in a more top-down way, by constructing mathematical schemas. (shrink)

This dissertation is concerned with normativity both as an explanatory device in the philosophy of language, logic and epistemology and as a philosophical issue in its own right. Following later Wittgenstein and Sellars, it is argued that language is normative, in the first instance because of the fact that speech acts take place within a structure of social norms and institutions. This fact is then utilized to show that important features of semantic content can be explained in terms of such (...) norms. ;This Sellarsian conception of linguistic usage as the performance of acts within a linguistic game of giving and asking for reasons, leads us to focus on inferential proprieties as central to semantic content. It is, then, natural to look at logical vocabulary, paradigmatically 'entails', as expressing the very normative relations definitive of this content. An idea of Brandom's is developed in providing a formal theory of the inferential content of logical vocabulary. Such normative-inferentialist semantic analyses are developed for a wide range of logical systems. ;A certain conception of justification also falls naturally out of this general theory of language. If asserting is an act performed within a linguistic game, then justification can be thought of as a matter of winning such a game, a successfully defending one's assertion in the face of licensed challenges to it. This account is developed, drawing consequences for the theory of rationality and knowledge. ;The second major issue of the dissertation is the theory of the normative itself and much of the constructive work in the philosophy of language, philosophy of logic and epistemology forms a case study for a particular theory of the normative. On the basis of Wittgensteinian considerations, it is argued that normativity must be understood as resting ultimately on social practice. ;We solve problems of earlier accounts of norms by introducing a novel normative relation between assertions of normative propriety and social practices. Normative assertions do not describe existing social standards, but do nonetheless derive their semantic content from those standards. This argument carried through in detail for cases of logical and epistemic vocabulary in the dissertation. (shrink)

What is the function of concepts pertaining to meaning in socio-linguistic practice? In this study, the authors argue that we can approach a satisfactory answer by displacing the standard picture of meaning talk as a sort of description with a picture that takes seriously the similarity between meaning talk and various types of normative injunction. In their discussion of this approach, they investigate the more general question of the nature of the normative, as well as a range of important topics (...) specific to the philosophy of language. (shrink)

What is the logic of entailment? The latter half of the twentieth century has seen, for even the simplest languages, a proliferation of distinct formal entailment systems, each having those willing to defend its status as the answer. Among those defenders, and among the most adamant and mutually critical, are the champions of strict implication and relevance logic. To an outsider, this debate must seem singularly odd. Here we have a group of philosophers who cannot agree on the validity of (...) a simple, easily comprehensible inference scheme. They seem to think that they are not talking past one another---that there is some reality each seeks to describe---for they continue to write articles declaring that the opposing view is wrong. Yet they cannot seem to convince the other side that their view is even remotely plausible, thus leading some to an instrumentalist dismissal of the whole debate.I argue that the defenders of the two systems are right to suggest that something deeper is at issue between them than mere usefulness in particular applied contexts. Once we see what this is, however, we will see that they are, after all, talking past one another. When we succeed in clarifying the crucial underlying issue, we can then succeed in clarifying the crucial distinction between two dimensions of the underlying concept. Both the classicalist and the relevantist, then, will be seen to have accurately captured one dimension of the root concept. (shrink)

This paper argues that advertisements have been wrongly conceived as appealing to the irrational. Advertisements contain a structure of argumentation, but often far more complex than would initially appear. Advertisements give reasons for consumers to choose products, voters to elect a candidate, or citizens to alter their behavior. The way they do so is to best explained in terms of their argumentative structure.

We would like to thank Jaakko Reinikainen for their thoughtful engagement with our paper. In the end, we do not think that they have demonstrated substantive tensions in our view, but explaining wh...

I outline Spinoza’s development of the concept of conatus in the Ethics, and attempt to define its role in his metaphysics. In light of this, I critique the theory based on the identification by modern physics of certain radioactive substances, e.g., curium. These substances, I argue, are by definition unstable individuals whose essences include finite durations (half-lives). As such, they are in direct contradiction to Spinoza’s metaphysics. I then advance and critique several defenses Spinoza might make for his theory of (...) conatus. (shrink)

To a first approximation, cognitive science agrees with everyday notions about reasoning: According to both views, reasoning is a special sort of relation between beliefs – a relation that holds when accepting (or rejecting) one or more beliefs causes others to be accepted (rejected). If you learn, for example, that everyone dislikes iguana pudding, that should increase the likelihood of your believing that Calvin, in particular, dislikes iguana pudding. Reasoning could produce an entirely new belief about Calvin's attitude toward the (...) pudding, or it could modify an old one. In either case, accepting the second idea on the basis of the first exemplifies reasoning of the simplest sort. More complex reasoning results from chains of such changes. (Café Maudit serves everything Calvin dislikes. So, since everybody dislikes iguana pudding, Calvin does; since Calvin does, Café Maudit serves it.). (shrink)

Contrasting institutionalism and sexual liberation is the essence of Black Mirror episode, Striking Vipers, which challenges the socially constructed boundaries imposed on sexual experiences in its consideration of how two conflicting lifestyles, traditional commitment and sexual openness, can cohabitate together. Through use of virtual eroticism, the episode takes the privileged standing of heteronormative monogamy and exposes its inadequacy as an institution without concluding that it must be jettisoned entirely. By contrasting real‐world intimacy with virtuality, it considers the meaningfulness of sexual (...) fantasies, thereby questioning the very definition of true intimacy. Striking Vipers ultimately explores the possibility that what is real may not always be what is most meaningful. Physical relationships can be just as artificial as fantasy, and imagination can be just as meaningful as reality. It concludes with the suggestion that neither heteronormative monogamy nor virtual escapism are fully satisfying. Instead, both romantic expressions may provide the necessary balance between monotonous devotion and unrestrained sexuality. (shrink)

As the saying goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And in the recent burst of clinical attention being paid to the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patients, good intentions abound. But while this long‐overdue interest in LGBT health care aims to highlight important gaps and bring into relief serious issues in health care delivery for LGBT persons, such work can inadvertently reinforce both the marginalization of sexual minorities and the cultural norms related to sexuality, (...) gender identity, and the conventional family. To ensure that positive outcomes for LGBT patients are inextricably paired with those noble intentions, we advocate for a new, queer bioethics—a methodology of scholastic, bioethical, and critical scrutiny that not only addresses the needs of LGBT persons in health care settings but also considers the perspectives, histories, and feelings of such parties. (shrink)

This article considers how people judge the identity of objects (e.g., how people decide that a description of an object at one time, t₀, belongs to the same object as a description of it at another time, t₁). The authors propose a causal continuer model for these judgments, based on an earlier theory by Nozick (1981). According to this model, the 2 descriptions belong to the same object if (a) the object at t₁ is among those that are causally close (...) enough to be genuine continuers of the original and (b) it is the closest of these close-enough contenders. A quantitative version of the model makes accurate predictions about judgments of which a pair of objects is identical to an original (Experiments 1 and 2). The model makes correct qualitative predictions about identity across radical disassembly (Experiment 1) as well as more ordinary transformations (Experiments 2 and 3). (shrink)

Lines of Thought addresses how we are able to think about abstract possibilities: How can we think about math, despite the immateriality of numbers, sets, and other mathematical entities? How are we able to think about what might have happened if history had taken a different turn? Questions like these turn up in nearly every part of cognitive science, and they are central to our human position of having only limited knowledge concerning what is or might be true.

This paper addresses the question of the existence of corporate philanthropy. It proposes a framework for analysing corporate philanthropy along the dimensions of business/society interest and primary/secondary stakeholder focus. The framework is then applied in order to understand business involvement with the arts in the U.K. A unique dataset of 60 texts which describe different firms' involvement with the Arts is analysed using formal content analysis to uncover the motivations for business involvement. Cluster analysis is then used in order to (...) identify motivational groupings. Two broad types of involvement are identified – advertisers and legitimators. Only in one case of the 60 is there the potential to observe pure altruism. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it provides a clear framework to understand the motivations for corporate giving and applies this using empirical data. Secondly, this research finds little evidence, if at all, of corporate philanthropy in the context of firms giving to the Arts in the U.K. (shrink)