As its title suggests, this anthology is a collection of papers presented at a conference on feelings and emotions held in Amsterdam in 2001. One of the symposium’s main goals was to draw some of the most prominent researchers in emotion research together and provide a multi-disciplinary ‘snap shot’ of the state of the art at the turn of the century. In that respect it is truly a cognitive science success story. There are articles from a wide range of fields, (...) encompassing, e.g., philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Another.. (shrink)

In philosophical thought experiments, as in ordinary discourse, our understanding of verbal case descriptions is enriched by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences have us routinely infer what else is also true of the cases described. We consider how such routine inferences from polysemous words can generate zombie intuitions: intuitions that are ‘killed’ (defeated) by contextual information but kept cognitively alive by the psycholinguistic phenomenon of linguistic salience bias. Extending ‘evidentiary’ experimental philosophy, this paper examines whether the ‘zombie argument’ against materialism (...) is built on zombie intuitions. We examine the hypothesis that contextually defeated stereotypical inferences from the noun ‘zombie’ influence intuitions about ‘philosophical zombies’. We document framing effects (‘zombie’ vs ‘duplicate’) predicted by the hypothesis. Findings undermine intuitions about the conceivability of ‘philosophical zombies’ and address the philosophical ‘hard problem of consciousness’. Findings support a deflationary response: The impression that principled obstacles prevent scientific explanation of how physical processes give rise to conscious experience is generated by philosophical arguments that rely on epistemically deficient intuitions. (shrink)

Hartry Field distinguished two concepts of type‐free truth: scientific truth and disquotational truth. We argue that scientific type‐free truth cannot do justificatory work in the foundations of mathematics. We also present an argument, based on Crispin Wright's theory of cognitive projects and entitlement, that disquotational truth can do justificatory work in the foundations of mathematics. The price to pay for this is that the concept of disquotational truth requires non‐classical logical treatment.

In the future, when we compare the welfare of a being of one substrate (say, a human) with the welfare of another (say, an artificial intelligence system), we will be making an intersubstrate welfare comparison. In this paper, we argue that intersubstrate welfare comparisons are important, difficult, and potentially tractable. The world might soon contain a vast number of sentient or otherwise significant beings of different substrates, and moral agents will need to be able to compare their welfare levels. However, (...) this work will be difficult, because we lack the same kinds of commonalities across substrates that we have within them. Fortunately, we might be able to make at least some intersubstrate welfare comparisons responsibly in spite of these issues. We make the case for cautious optimism and call for more research. (shrink)

Examining those risk and benefit perceptions utilised in the formation of attitudes and opinions about emerging technologies such as nanotechnology can be useful for both industry and policy makers involved in their development, implementation and regulation. A broad range of different socio-psychological and affective factors may influence consumer responses to different applications of nanotechnology, including ethical concerns. A useful approach to identifying relevant consumer concerns and innovation priorities is to develop predictive constructs which can be used to differentiate applications of (...) nanotechnology in a way which is meaningful to consumers. This requires elicitation of attitudinal constructs from consumers, rather than measuring attitudes assumed to be important by the researcher. Psychological factors influencing societal responses to 15 applications of nanotechnology drawn from different application areas were identified using repertory grid method in conjunction with generalised Procrustes analysis. The results suggested that people differentiate nanotechnology applications based on the extent to which they perceive them to be beneficial, useful, necessary and important. The benefits may be offset by perceived risks focusing on fear and ethical concerns. Compared to an earlier expert study on societal acceptance of nanotechnology, consumers emphasised ethical issues compared to experts but had less concern regarding potential physical contact with the product and time to market introduction. Consumers envisaged fewer issues with several applications compared to experts, in particular food applications. (shrink)

I will demonstrate that conductive arguments are found in the inference to the best explana-tion as it is used in science. Conductive arguments, I argue, operate on two levels: the first is in the con-struction of hypotheses; the second is through the competition of hypotheses. By constructing arguments based on observations of facts, all possible factors are taken into account and a judgment is made based on our weighing of considerations: conductive argumentation.

Much has been written recently about free will and moral responsibility. In this paper I will focus on the relationship between free will, on the one hand, and various notions that fall under the rubric of “morality,” broadly construed, on the other: deliberation and practical reasoning, moral responsibility, and ethical notions such as “ought,” “right,” “wrong,” “good,” and “bad.” I shall begin by laying out a natural understanding of freedom of the will. Next I develop some challenges to the common-sense (...) view that we have this sort of freedom. I will go on to explore the implications of this challenge for deliberation, moral responsibility, and the central ethical notions. (shrink)

Abraham’s “leadership by example” provides a template for business leaders to implement a tone at the top based on a balance of tzedek (righteousness) and mishpat (legal judgement). The former expresses the generosity of spirit required of leaders, while the latter expresses the sound judgement in conformity with both ethics and enacted law. We relate the two constructs to several contemporary theories of justice and jurisprudence. We also relate the development of Abrahamic Justice in the Jewish tradition from antiquity through (...) Maimonides in the middle ages. We draw insight from this tradition to answer a contemporary business ethics question: Do corporate managers violate their fiduciary duty to shareholders if they refuse to engage in legal tax avoidance? (shrink)

This paper pioneers the use of methods and findings from psycholinguistics in experimental philosophy’s ‘sources project’. On this basis, it clarifies the epistemological relevance of empirical findings about intuitions – a key methodological challenge to experimental philosophy. The sources project (aka ‘cognitive epistemology of intuitions’) seeks to develop psychological explanations of philosophically relevant intuitions, which help us assess their evidentiary value. One approach seeks explanations which trace relevant intuitions back to automatic cognitive processes that are generally reliable but predictably generate (...) cognitive illusions under specific vitiating circumstances. The paper develops and experimentally tests such an explanation for intuitions at the root of a historically influential paradox about perception (‘argument from illusion’). The explanation traces these intuitions to stereotype-driven amplification, an automatic process routinely involved in language comprehension (e.g., understanding philosophical case-descriptions). Distributional semantics analysis and a forced-choice plausibility ranking task are employed to establish the relevant verb-associated stereotypes. The paper argues that the inferences facilitated by these stereotypes are generally reliable, but shows that vitiating circumstances obtain in the formulation of the targeted paradox. On this basis, the paper explores two complementary strategies for assessing the evidentiary value of intuitive judgments. (shrink)

The Consequence Argument is one of the leading arguments for the incompatibility of causal determinism and free will in the sense of freedom to do otherwise. Thus, it challenges “classical compatibilism” of the sort defended by many philosophers, such as Hume, Schlick, Ayer, Lehrer, Perry, Lewis, Vihvelin, et, al. David Lewis has offered what has become the most influential response: local-miracle compatibilism. I present a critique of this kind of response to the Consequence Argument. My critique shows that, although Lewis-style (...) local-miracle compatibilism may effectively address some versions of the Consequence Argument, it does not succeed in refuting others. My critique consists, in large part, in arguing for a new reconstruction of the principle of the fixity of the past - a principle that played a crucial role in the history of the debate and that has, in one form or another, been employed by many important historical figures. I will also show why Lewis’s famous views about our powers in time-travel are false. (shrink)

Suppose that animals have rights. If so, may you go down to your local farm store, buy some chicks, raise them in your backyard, and eat their eggs? You wouldn't think so. But we argue, to the contrary, that you may. Just as there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate a slave, even if that means paying into a corrupt system, so there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate chickens by buying them. Moreover, we contend that (...) restrictions on freedom of movement can be appropriate for chickens, but not humans, because of the obvious differences between the interests of healthy, adult humans versus those of chickens who have been bred for human use. We also argue that egg consumption is permissible based on the plausible assumption that no one's rights are violated in their consumption, and so while there may sometimes be morally preferable uses for eggs, you do nothing unjust in eating them. If we're right, then the rights view doesn't imply that veganism is obligatory; rather, it implies that the constraints on how we source animal products, though highly demanding, are not so demanding that they can't be met. (shrink)

In the near future we may be able to manipulate human embryos through genetic intervention. Jürgen Habermas has argued against the development of technologies which could make such intervention possible. His argument has received widespread criticism among bioethicists. These critics argue that Habermas's argument relies on implausible assumptions about human nature. Moreover, they challenge Habermas's claim that genetic intervention adds something new to intergenerational relationships pointing out that parents have already strong control over their children through education. In this paper (...) a new approach to Habermas's theory is suggested which makes clear that he has a strong point against genetic intervention. A more charitable reading of Habermas with respect to his assumptions concerning human nature is presented. Moreover, Habermas's assumption concerning the power of genetic controlling is evaluated. By means of a close comparison of genetic and educational control it is shown that Habermas's argument relies on much weaker assumptions than generally understood. (shrink)

Drawing on Frederick Douglass’s arguments about racial pride, I develop and defend an account of feeling racial pride that centers on resisting racialized oppression. Such pride is racially ecumenical in that it does not imply partiality towards one’s own racial group. I argue that it can both accurately represent its intentional object and be intrinsically and extrinsically valuable to experience. It follows, I argue, that there is, under certain conditions, a morally unproblematic, and plausibly valuable, kind of racial pride available (...) to white people, though one that could hardly differ more from what is generally meant by “white pride.”. (shrink)

In comparing classical and non-classical solutions to the semantic paradoxes arguments relying on strength have been influential. In this paper I argue that non-classical solutions should preserve the proof-theoretic strength of classical solutions. Leitgeb’s logic of HYPE is then presented as an interesting possibility to strengthen FDE with a suitable conditional. It is shown that HYPE allows for a non-classical Kripkean theory of truth, called KFL, that is strong enough for the relevant purposes and has additional attractive properties.

This article develops an objection to Kant’s proof of freedom from the Critique of Practical Reason. In his proof — the fact of reason argument — Kant deduces the reality of freedom, understood as the ability to act independently of all inclinations, from our consciousness of the unconditional validity of morality. He calls this consciousness the "fact of reason". After a systematic reconstruction of the argument, I develop an objection that relies on three points: (i) the cultural embeddedness of human (...) beings ("fact of culture"), (ii) an "external" perspective on human deliberative processes, and (iii) an alternative interpretation of the unconditional validity of morality that appears in practical deliberation. Contrary to Kant’s claims, I argue that the reality of freedom cannot be deductively derived from the fact of reason. I then discuss two objections to my argument. The first objection claims that my considerations regarding the "external" perspective misunderstand Kant's methodology. The second objection states that, based on my considerations, the fact of reason ultimately turns out to be an illusion. I discuss both objections and refute them. My ultimate conclusion is that Kant's fact of reason argument is not convincing. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Democracy Democracy and Social Justice Democracy, Social Justice and Peace Democracy and War.

This paper focuses on the categoricity of arithmetic and determinacy of arithmetical truth. Several ‘internal’ categoricity results have been discussed in the recent literature. Against the background of the philosophical position called internalism, we propose and investigate truth-theoretic versions of internal categoricity based on a primitive truth predicate. We argue for the compatibility of a primitive truth predicate with internalism and provide a novel argument for (and proof of) a truth-theoretic version of internal categoricity and internal determinacy with some positive (...) properties. (shrink)

Dieses Buch über Kant's Leben und die Grundlagen seiner Lehre in drei Vorträgen ist ein unveränderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe der zweiten Auflage von 1906. Der Vero Verlag ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernährung, Medizin und weiteren Genres. Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur. Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitäten erhältlich. Der Vero Verlag verlegt diese Bücher neu und trägt (...) damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch für die Zukunft bei. (shrink)

Empirical insights into language processing have a philosophical relevance that extends well beyond philosophical questions about language. This chapter will discuss this wider relevance: We will consider how experimental philosophers can examine language processing in order to address questions in several different areas of philosophy. To do so, we will present the emerging research program of experimental argument analysis (EAA) that examines how automatic language processing shapes verbal reasoning – including philosophical arguments. The evidential strand of experimental philosophy uses mainly (...) questionnaire-based methods to assess the evidentiary value of intuitive judgments that are adduced as evidence for philosophical theories and as premises for philosophical arguments. Extending this prominent strand of experimental philosophy, EAA underpins such assessments, extends the scope of the assessments, and expands the range of the empirical methods employed: EAA examines how automatic inferences that are continually made in language comprehension and production shape verbal reasoning, and draws on findings about comprehension biases that affect the contextualisation of such default inferences, in order to explain and expose fallacies. It deploys findings to assess premises and inferences from premises to conclusions, in philosophical arguments. To do so, it adapts methods from psycholinguistics and recruits methods from computational linguistics. (shrink)

Many people in animal studies favor the use of gendered pronouns for nonhuman animals, even in cases where the animal’s sex is unknown. By contrast, many people in gender studies favor the use of the default singular they for humans. Our aim is to show that the most obvious ways of fitting these pronoun norm proposals together—a hybrid option (“he”/“she” for animals, “they” for humans) and a uniform one (i.e., default to the singular they when gender identity is unknown, regardless (...) of species)—have serious costs. Animal advocates will worry that the hybrid approach marks animals as fundamentally different from human beings, while advocates for gender justice will worry that preserving gendered pronouns for animals will also preserve gender essentialism. However, switching to a universal default singular they—that is, where we use “they” for all individuals, both human and nonhuman—may set back animals’ interest in being seen as sentient individuals. Our aim is not to defend a solution to this problem, but simply to argue that this is a problem that deserves consideration when assessing candidate pronoun norms. (shrink)

There Is a Disciplinary divide between philosophers and historians in how they read Addams’s first book, Democracy and Social Ethics. Philosophers identify Addams primarily as a pragmatist. They often compare and contrast her thinking with that of James and Dewey, and find her a fruitful resource for contemporary discussions about gender, social justice, and peace. Much of this scholarship gives central place to Addams’s Democracy and Social Ethics. Except for nods to her 1892 essay “The Subjective Necessity of Settlements,” philosophers (...) rarely discuss whether her religious sensibilities influenced her theorizing.1 While historians debate Addams’s religious identity, many locate her within the social gospel .. (shrink)

CASUS is an authoring system, which should enable physicians to produce problem-based computer learning programs with minimal technical effort and give them sound instructional support. The theoretical background of CASUS are constructivist approaches to learning and instruction, which deal mainly with the question, how to design problem-based learning environments. The paper presents the constructivist concept of CASUS and results of a forma-tive evaluation. Four authors were observed and interviewed while developing a learning case with CASUS. The evaluation pursued mainly the (...) question of which difficulties arise while producing a case with CASUS and which measures are necessary in order to improve the authoring system. Results show that with regard to technical aspects physicians can produce learning cases even without any special prior knowledge. There were far more problems with instructional aspects of the production of cases. Most of these difficulties were very specific to the content of the cases. Therefore, it seems that an appropriate way to design learning cases with high quality, is a cooperation between some authors with different expertise. (shrink)

Nichtsprachliche Darstellungsformen in der Kunst finden als Medien der Vergegenwärtigung und Vermittlung philosophischer Fragestellungen gesteigerte Aufmerksamkeit. Dieser Band widmet sich aus erkenntnistheoretischer Perspektive der Frage nach den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen künstlerischer Darstellungen philosophischen Denkens.0Experten der Disziplinen Kunsttheorie und Philosophie wie Elke Bippus, Horst Bredekamp, Dieter Mersch, Klaus Sachs-Hombach u. a. setzen dabei einen Fokus auf Bilder, Filme, Ausstellungspraktiken und Architektur. Die einzelnen Texte sind auch durch Graphic Recordings des Zeichners Sebastian Lörscher festgehalten, wodurch die Forschungsbeiträge selbst im Dialog mit einer (...) künstlerischen Darstellungsform stehen. (shrink)

Als politischer Leitbegriff hat das Gemeinwohl in den Diskussionen um die Zukunft des Wohlfahrtsstaates, bürgergesellschaftliches Engagement und "Sozialkapital" an Bedeutung gewonnen. In einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft muss allerdings stets aufs Neue ausgehandelt werden, was das allgemeine Wohl überhaupt ausmacht, und folgerichtig bedienen sich verschiedene soziale Akteure der Gemeinwohlrhetorik. Solche Rhetoriken und die sie gestützte politische Praxis sind Indikatoren des Wandels politischer Orientierungen und Institutionen. Zudem ist nicht auszuschließen, daß zuviel oder unglaubwürdige Gemeinwohlrhetorik zu einem Verbrauch soziomoralischer Ressourcen führt. Das Gemeinwohl ist (...) ein normatives Ideal, das auch Vorstellungen darüber prägt, wieviel Gemeinsinn aufgebracht werden soll. (shrink)

Shlomo Avineri first suggested some forty years ago that Hegel’s remarks in favor of Jewish emancipation in the Philosophy of Right were initially made in Heidelberg to support the majority of students within the Allgemeine Burschenschaft there who—against the general consensus within the Burschenschaftenmovement as a whole—insisted on the admission of Jewish students to their fraternity. While Avineri’s account needs to be modified in some respects, the publication of the Wannenmann transcript of Hegel’s lectures in Heidelberg has since confirmed that (...) these remarks were indeed made in Heidelberg and clearly did constitute a deliberate political act. (shrink)

We show that Lewis’s modal realism, and his serviceability-based argument for it, cohere with his epistemological contextualism. Modal realism explains why serviceability-based reasoning in metaphysics might be reliable, while Lewis’s contextualism explains why Lewis can properly ignore the possibility that serviceability isn’t reliable, at least when doing metaphysics. This is because Lewis’s contextualism includes a commitment to a kind of pragmatic encroachment, so that whether a subject knows can depend on how much is at stake with respect to whether the (...) belief is true or false. Accordingly, we suggest that Lewis can count as knowing that serviceability is a reliable guide to truth in metaphysics, since the stakes are generally low there, and so can be justified in believing that modal realism is true based on its serviceability. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against Fried’s thesis that a wrong must be intended by the violator in order for a person’s negative rights to be violated. With Fried’s requirement these rights become in a sense derivative from wrongs. This makes the relation between one’s negative rights and one’s moral integrity, upon which Fried wants to base rights, indirect and inappropriately weak. If rights are based on one’s status as a freely choosing, rational, moral personality, then whether one’s rights are (...) violated should be determined by inspecting one’s own loss of integrity or function, not by examining the assailant’s intentions. (shrink)

There are basically four options to which state the limiting instant in a change from one state to its opposite belongs – only the first, only the second, both or none. This situation is usually referred to as the limit decision problem since all of these options seem troublesome: The first two alleged solutions are asymmetric and thus need something to ground this asymmetry in ; while the last two options leave the realm of classical logic. I argue that including (...) the debate about dispositions enables new options for solutions to the temporal limit decision problem. Metaphysical considerations function as a symmetry-breaker and thus remove the need for a non-classical solution. Dispositions bring about the changes in the world, so they constitute the metaphysical background for the instant of change. In particular, I argue that according to the triadic process account of dispositions, the limiting instant belongs to the second interval and only the second interval. (shrink)

En el pensamiento de Paul Ricœur, la libertad se acompaña siempre de la imaginación. En este sentido, la imaginación es definida como la tarea de mediar entre las tensiones que el hombre vive como consecuencia de su inherente desproporción entre finito e infinito. Esta tarea se apoya sobre una característica del mundo que posibilita la operación de la imaginación. Ella implica una conexión pre-refl exiva entre la interioridad humana y el mundo de la vida. Se trata del fenómeno sonoro de (...) la repercusión (retentissement) que constituye una influencia directa que Ricœur recibe de Gaston Bachelard y de Eugène Minkoswski. El enfoque del presente trabajo es develar la herencia de este fenómeno, poco estudiado en la filosofía ricœuriana, a la luz de la evolución de la función imaginativa. (shrink)

Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries is an excellent new translation of the Zhuangzi. Brook Ziporyn has produced an abridged and annotated edition of the classic for Hackett's growing series of translations on early Chinese intellectual history. The closest competitors to this new edition are the translations by Watson (1968), Graham (1981), and Mair (1994). Ziporyn's work succeeds in part because he manages to do both less and more than the others. With judicious abridgement (sixteen full chapters, (...) including all seven "Inner" chapters, plus selections from six more—about two-thirds of the entire work) and valuable added commentary, this book is a great choice for the .. (shrink)