The principle of Conditional Excluded Middle has been a matter of longstanding controversy in both semantics and metaphysics. The principle suggests (among other things) that for any coin that isn't flipped, there is a fact of the matter about how it would have landed if it had been flipped: either it would have landed heads, or it would have landed tails. This view has gained support from linguistic evidence indicating that ‘would’ commutes with negation (e.g., ‘not: if A, would C’ (...) is equivalent to ‘if A, would not C’). There is, however, a long list of operators that similarly appear to commute with negation, even though the corresponding excluded middle principles are indefensible. We suggest that the data supporting Conditional Excluded Middle is best explained as a pragmatic effect. (shrink)

In an historic moment in Dutch politics, the entire cabinet left the House of Representatives during a debate due to extreme right politician Thierry Baudet's conspiracy-laden speech. After espousing a variety of conspiratorial claims, Baudet accused the Minister of Finance, Sigrid Kaag, of being a secret agent for a global Deep State since her studies at Oxford. The accusation prompted Kaag and the entire cabinet to exit the chamber. While some MPs defended Baudet's right to speak, others supported the chair's (...) decision to silence him for violating the rules. These events showcase the divisive potential of conspiracy accusations in politics, causing polarised reactions. Our analysis delves into the dynamics of conspiracy accusations, their impact on polarisation, and the role of intended audiences (as opposed to general audiences) in both advancing accusations and shaping responses thereto. We argue that Baudet's tactics aimed at capitalising on the polarisation his accusations generated. We argue further that dismissing conspiracy accusations too hastily can deepen public distrust in elected officials, emphasising the need for caution in handling such claims. Ultimately, we highlight the broader pattern of conspiracy accusations being employed to fuel political polarisation, raising questions about their role in democratic deliberation. (shrink)

Vagueness is given a philosophically neutral definition in terms of an epistemic notion of tolerance. Such a notion is intended to capture the thesis that vague terms draw no known boundary across their range of signification and contrasts sharply with the semantic notion of tolerance given by Wright (1975, 1976). This allows us to distinguish vagueness from superficially similar but distinct phenomena such as semantic incompleteness. Two proofs are given which show that vagueness qua epistemic tolerance and vagueness qua borderline (...) cases (when properly construed to exclude terms which are stipulated to give rise to borderline cases) are in fact conceptually equivalent dimensions of vagueness, contrary to what might initially be expected. It is also argued that the common confusion of tolerance and epistemic tolerance has skewed the vagueness debate in favour of indeterminist over epistemic conceptions of vagueness. Clearing up that confusion provides an indirect argument in favour of epistemicism. Finally, given the equation of vagueness with epistemic tolerance, it is shown that there must be radical higher-order vagueness, contrary to what many authors have argued. (shrink)

Dynamic semantics violates numerous classical laws, including Non-Contradiction. Proponents of dynamic semantics have offered no explanation for this behavior, and some critics consider this result to be strong evidence against the tenability of the dynamic program. I defend and explain failures of Non-Contradiction by comparing dynamic semantics and classical, truth conditional semantics in terms of their idealizing assumptions. I demonstrate that dynamic semantics rejects context fixity, an idealizing assumption that truth-conditional semantics typically adopts. I then argue that any semantics which (...) rejects context fixity should, by the classical semanticist’s own lights, violate Non-Contradiction under certain circumstances. I then demonstrate that dynamic semantics violates Non-Contradiction in all and only those circumstances. I subsequently appeal to this insight to vindicate some of dynamic semantics’ more controversial predictions. I close by suggesting that discussion of idealizing assumptions, common in the sciences, is similarly crucial to fruitful discussion in natural language semantics. (shrink)

Strategies for combating climate change which advocate for human population limitation have recently been understandably criticised on the grounds that they embody a form of 'climate colonialism': a moral wrong that involves disproportionally shifting the burdens of climate change onto developing, historically exploited nations (which have low per capita emissions but high fertility rates) in order to offset burdens in affluent nations (which have high per capita emissions but low fertility rates). This article argues that once the relevance of population (...) growth to climate change has been correctly understood as working in tandem with consumption levels, this objection fails as a general criticism. Moreover, even if population could be ignored as a variable, the climate colonialism charge would re-emerge in a different form, since, at present population sizes, it would be environmentally catastrophic for developing nations to reach production ambitions which see their per capita emissions massively increase. Even if emission reductions in affluent nations are (rightly) prioritised, there are good reasons to prevent enormous growth of emissions in developing nations. Those environmental risks become much greater given those nations' projected population increases in the coming century. The article then explores how the necessary radical environmental policies pertaining to fertility rates might be enacted in non-coercive ways, reducing the sting of the ‘climate colonialism’ charge. The article ends by considering some reasons to be moderately sceptical about such policies. (shrink)

Todd and Rabern (2021) mount an argument that – contra both Thomason’s (1970) supervaluationism and MacFarlane’s (2014) relativism – an “open future” view is incompatible with the principle they call “Retro-closure”, according to which today’s rain implies that yesterday it was true that it would rain a day later. In a recent piece, MacFarlane replies. This paper has two aims. First, I argue that MacFarlane’s response to Todd and Rabern is unsuccessful on its own terms. Second, I attempt to clarify (...) Todd and Rabern’s overall argument, and explain how MacFarlane’s replies should be construed within the overall dialectic. The intended result: if you want an "open future", then one's best option is a modified Peirceanism (Todd 2021); if one wants Retro-closure, one's best option is one on which there is a determinate "Thin Red Line" (a view sometimes called "Ockhamism"). However, one cannot have what supervaluationism and relativism both promise, viz., a view that preserves both. (shrink)

Traditional wisdom dictates that statistical model outputs are estimates, not measurements. Despite this, statistical models are employed as measurement instruments in the social sciences. In this article, I scrutinize the use of a specific model—the logit model—for psychological measurement. Given the adoption of a criterion for measurement that I call comparability, I show that the logit model fails to yield measurements due to properties that follow from its fixed residual variance.

This paper develops a novel, neo-republican account of just state surveillance in the information age. The goal of state surveillance should be to avoid and prevent domination, both public and private. In light of that conception of justice, the paper makes three substantive points. First, it argues that modern state surveillance based upon information technology and predicated upon a close partnership with the tech sector gives the state significant power and represents a serious potential source of domination. Second, it argues (...) that, nonetheless, state surveillance can serve legitimate republican ends and so unilateral and private technological attempts to block it may be wrongful. Third, it argues that, despite the serious normative failings of current institutions, state surveillance can be justly regulated and made accountable through a legal liability regime that incentivizes tech company intermediaries to ally with civil society groups in order to safeguard the privacy rights of potential subjects of state surveillance. (shrink)

Geometric underdetermination (i.e., the underdetermination of the geometric properties of space and time) is a live possibility in light of some of our best theories of physics. In response to this, geometric conventionalism offers a selective anti-realism, refusing to assign truth values to variant geometric propositions. Although often regarded as being dead in the water by modern philosophers, in this article we propose to revitalise the programme of geometric conventionalism both on its own terms, and as an attractive response to (...) the above-mentioned live cases of geometric underdetermination. Specifically, we (1) articulate geometrical conventionalism as we conceive it, (2) anticipate various objections to the view, and defend it against those objections, and (3) demonstrate how geometric conventionalism plays out in the context of a wide variety of spacetime theories, both classical and relativistic. (shrink)

We present and defend a Thomistic cosmological argument that runs independently of the principle of sufficient reason, sidestepping perhaps two of the most recurrent objections to cosmological reasoning: (a) the possibility of brute facts (i.e., that not everything needs an adequate explanation of its existence) and (b) the accusation of the composition fallacy. Drawing upon the work of Barry Miller, we show that any contingent entity like Thumper the rabbit, upon metaphysical analysis, is either a contradictory structure and therefore an (...) impossible existent or else points towards an extrinsic cause for the unity of its really distinct metaphysical parts (namely, its essence and its existence). This conclusion enables the inference that only an uncaused cause with no really distinct metaphysical parts can ultimately produce anything with really distinct metaphysical parts. We then suggest it is not implausible that this entity is God. (shrink)

This paper lays out the moral theory of philosopher and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Based on a moral epistemology wherein moral concepts are grounded in a well-cultivated moral sense, Montessori develops a threefold account of moral life. She starts with an account of character as an ideal of individual self-perfection through concentrated attention on effortful work. She shows how respect for others grows from and supplements individual character, and she further develops a notion of social solidarity that goes beyond cooperation (...) toward shared agency. Partly because she attends to children's ethical lives, Montessori highlights how character, respect, and solidarity all appear first as prereflective, embodied orientations of agency. Full moral virtue takes up prereflective orientations reflectively and extends them through moral concepts. Overall, Montessori's ethic improves on features similar to some in Nietzschean, Kantian, Hegelian, or Aristotelian ethical theories while situating these within a developmental and perfectionist ethics. (shrink)

Affective experience in nonhuman animals is of great interest for both theoretical and practical reasons. This paper highlights research by the psychologists Anthony Dickinson and Bernard Balleine which provides particularly good evidence of conscious affective experience in rats. This evidence is compelling because it implicates a sophisticated system for goal-directed action selection, and demonstrates a contrast between apparently conscious and unconscious evaluative representations with similar content. Meanwhile, the evidence provided by some well-known studies on pain in nonhuman animals is much (...) less convincing. This comparison may offer lessons for the future study of animal consciousness. (shrink)

Up to now theories of semantic information have implicitly relied on logical monism, or the view that there is one true logic. The latter position has been explicitly challenged by logical pluralists. Adopting an unbiased attitude in the philosophy of information, we take a suggestion from Beall and Restall at heart and exploit logical pluralism to recognise another kind of pluralism. The latter is called informational pluralism, a thesis whose implications for a theory of semantic information we explore.

Cette contribution se centre sur le rapport que l'on est en mesure d'établir entre la façon dont est construit un corpus de discours et les objectifs de l'analyse, ce qui explique son titre. On part des définitions larges qui sont données sur cette notion en sciences sociales et en linguistique pour montrer les problèmes qu'elle pose au regard des opérations de recueil des données, de la question de l'exhaustivité, des catégories sur lesquelles il porte, de la nature de l'outil de (...) traitement des données. Puis en on précise la différence qu'il faut opérer entre langue et discours, texte et discours, texte et contexte, distinctions sur lesquelles il faut être au clair lorsqu'on traite de corpus. Suite à ces distinctions, on montre de quelle façon la construction d'un corpus dépend d'un positionnement théorique lié à un objectif d'analyse, ce que l'on appelle une problématique. On envisage trois types de corpus selon qu'ils se réfèrent à une problématique dite cognitive, communicative ou représentationnelle. Puis on montre comment un corpus de textes s'élabore dans un jeu de déconstruction et de reconstruction selon des critères d'ouverture ou de clôture (intertexte et hypertexte), de contraste (interne et externe) et de pertinence quantitative et/ou qualitative. On termine par le renvoi à un exemple d'analyse pratiqué par le Centre d'Analyse du Discours à propos du discours d'information télévisé, afin de montrer comment on peut tirer parti de certaines de ces options, et comment elles peuvent se combiner. (shrink)

Let R(X, B) denote the class of probability functions that are defined on algebra X and that represent rationally permissible degrees of certainty for a person whose total relevant background evidence is B. This paper is concerned with characterizing R(X, B) for the case in whichX is an algebra of propositions involving two properties and B is empty. It proposes necessary conditions for a probability function to be in R(X, B), some of which involve the notion of statistical dependence. The (...) class of probability functions that satisfy these conditions, here denoted PI, includes a class that Carnap once proposed for the same situation. Probability functions in PI violate Carnap's axiom of analogy but, it is argued, that axiom should be rejected. A derivation of Carnap's model by Hesse has limitations that are not present in the derivation of PI given here. Various alternative probability models are considered and rejected. (shrink)

According to the Classical Pessimistic Induction (CPI), otherwise positive features like predictive and explanatory success actually cast doubt on theories that display them. After all, they negatively correlate with truth. From this historical track record, it is inferred that current best theories are probably not (even approximately) true. The CPI is often wielded against realists about science, but others like Hume (1757), Pareto (1935), and Hájek (2007) extend it to philosophical theories more generally. In this paper, I unveil a priori (...) refutations that defang the CPI in all its guises. To date, treatments of this topic typically assume the following: if the historical proportion of false theories increases, then it has increasingly negative bearing against realism. I show that this assumption is false. I identify three types of problems for the CPI, each attaching to some interpretation or other. The first problem is that the CPI violates a universal adequacy condition on the confirmation relation that restricts the relationship between entailment and disconfirmation. The second problem is that the induction’s target hypotheses preclude the track record from instantiating a list of epistemically significant properties that empirical information is supposed to afford. The third problem is that it is constitutively impossible for the CPI to have random samples; this implies that even the use of randomization procedures cannot help. In sum: my refutation is novel, accessible by pure reflection, and quite general. (shrink)

This study argues that the notion of transparency requires reconsideration as an essence of ethical agency. It provides a brief explication of the concept of transparency, rooted in the principle of human dignity of Immanuel Kant, and suggests that it has been inadequately appreciated by media ethics scholars and instructors more focused on relatively simplistic applications of his categorical imperative. This study suggests that the concept's Kantian roots raise a radical challenge to conventional understandings of human interaction and, by extension, (...) what it means to exercise freedom. (shrink)

Central to the contemporary dispute over 'naturalizing epistemology' is the question of the continuity of epistemology with science, i.e., how far purely descriptive, psychological matters can or should inform the traditional evaluative epistemological enterprise. Thus all parties tend to agree that the distinction between psychology and epistemology corresponds to a firm fact/value distinction. This is something Reid denies with respect to the first principles of common sense: while insisting on the continuity of epistemology with the rest of science, he does (...) not wish to derive an 'ought' from an 'is', nor to reduce the epistemological to the psychological. His view is that the first principles are constitutive principles, hence that they are simultaneously descriptive and prescriptive, and thus that with regard to them there is in this sense simply no fact/value gap to be bridged. (shrink)

The central role of corporate leaders in setting the ethical tone for their organization is widely accepted. Four well known former CEOs are profiled to illustrate how their managerial ethical leadership not only influenced their firms but also the practice of business. Insights are drawn from their writings and speeches as well as other sources which examine demonstrated leadership abilities. Their behavior not only provides examples of leadership but also is exemplary from an ethical point of view. The article concludes (...) with five common themes that describe these individuals and the essence of managerial ethical leadership. (shrink)

I defend the position argued previously by Germain Grisez and me that total brain death is a valid criterion of death on the grounds that a human being is essentially a rational animal, and a brain-dead body lacks the radical capacity for rational actions. I reply to Josef Seifert’s objection that our positions rest on a reductionist view of the human person, and to other objections concerning the inter-relation between the human soul, its powers, and functions of the brain. I (...) argue that a brain-dead body lacks the material dispositions needed for having the form or soul of a human being. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship activity continues to surge tremendously in market and economic systems around the world. Yet, social entrepreneurship theory and understanding lag far behind its practice. For instance, the nature of the entrepreneurial discovery phenomenon, a critical area of inquiry in general entrepreneurship theory, receives no attention in the specific context of social entrepreneurship. To address the gap, we conceptualize social entrepreneurial discovery based on an extension of corporate social responsibility into social entrepreneurship contexts. We develop a model that emphasizes (...) mobilization and timing as underpinnings of social entrepreneurial discovery and offer distinct conceptual aspects and theoretic propositions instrumental to future social entrepreneurship research. (shrink)

Language agents are AI systems that combine large language models with other elements to facilitate interaction with an environment. They include LLM-based chatbots but can have a wide range of additional features to support learning, reasoning and decision-making. Goldstein and Kirk-Giannini. Citationm.s. [AI wellbeing] argue that some language agents have beliefs and desires, but it is not obvious that they are agents at all, since they select outputs by querying language models. This paper investigates agency and desires in language agents.

This paper argues that it is permissible for computer scientists and engineers—working with advanced militaries that are making good faith efforts to follow the laws of war—to engage in the research and development of lethal autonomous weapons systems. Research and development into a new weapons system is permissible if and only if the new weapons system can plausibly generate a superior risk profile for all morally relevant classes and it is not intrinsically wrong. The paper then suggests that these conditions (...) are satisfied by at least some potential LAWS development programs. More specifically, since LAWS will lead to greater force protection, warfighters are free to become more risk-acceptant in protecting civilian lives and property. Further, various malicious motivations that lead to war crimes will not apply to LAWS or will apply to no greater extent than with human warfighters. Finally, intrinsic objections—such as the claims that LAWS violate human dignity or that it creates ‘responsibility gaps’—are rejected on the basis that they rely upon implausibly idealized and atomized understandings of human decision-making in combat. (shrink)

Employing insights from Italian sexual difference theory on law and rights, this article examines how both the text of the Italian Abortion Law of 1978 and its operation reveal the contradictions within liberal rights discourse on reproductive freedom. The Act itself contains traces of both Roman Catholic and liberal pluralist worldviews and has, since its introduction, been the site of conflict over competing notions of citizenship and legal identity. This article explores the impact of the Act's paradoxical nature on its (...) operation against the background of the complex debates within the different strands of feminist theory in Italy over the question of reproductive freedom. (shrink)

An influential body of recent work on moral psychology has stressed the interconnections among ethics, narrative, and empathy. Yet as Patrick Colm Hogan argues, this work is so vague in its use of the term 'narrative' as to be almost substanceless, and this vagueness is in large part due to the neglect of literary study. Extending his previous work on universal story structures, Hogan argues that we can transform ill-defined intuitions about narrative and ethics into explicit and systematic accounts (...) of the deep connections between moral attitudes and narratives. These connections are, in turn, inseparable from empathy, a concept that Hogan proceeds to clarify and defend against a number of widely read critiques. In the course of the book, Hogan develops and illustrates his arguments through analyses of global narratives, constructing illuminating ethical interpretations of literary works ranging from Shakespeare to Chinese drama and the Bhagavad Gita. (shrink)

As J. Baird Callicott has argued, Adam Smith's moral theory is a philosophical ancestor of recent work in environmental ethics. However, Smith's "all important emotion of sympathy" (Callicott, 2001, p. 209) seems incapable of extension to entities that lack emotions with which one can sympathize. Drawing on the distinctive account of sympathy developed in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, as well as his account of anthropomorphizing nature in "History of Astronomy and Physics," I show that sympathy with non-sentient nature is (...) possible within a Smithian ethics. This provides the possibility of extending sympathy, and thereby benevolence and justice, to nature. (shrink)

Should all digital communication be accessible to government inspection? Is robust cryptography in the hands of the public a threat to our national security? With Dorothy Denning and Patrick Sullivan.

Bayesian confirmation theory offers an explicatum for a pretheoretic concept of confirmation. The “problem of irrelevant conjunction” for this theory is that, according to some people's intuitions, the pretheoretic concept differs from the explicatum with regard to conjunctions involving irrelevant propositions. Previous Bayesian solutions to this problem consist in showing that irrelevant conjuncts reduce the degree of confirmation; they have the drawbacks that (i) they don't hold for all ways of measuring degree of confirmation and (ii) they don't remove the (...) conflict with intuition but merely “soften the impact” (as Fitelson has written). A better solution, which avoids both these drawbacks, is to show that the intuition is wrong. (shrink)

The well-known classification of legal procedure into “four feet” presents certain conceptual problems for the Indian legal tradition that various Smṛtikāras and commentators have attempted to resolve in different and sometimes contradictory ways. These difficulties arise because the four feet originally referred in Indian legal theory to four distinct, hierarchical legal domains rather than procedural means for reaching a verdict. The earliest attested discussion of the four feet, found in Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra, indicates that early legal theorists understood the greater legal (...) order as being comprised of four hierarchical domains and that these domains were ordered by the state as expressed in the original formulation of the four feet. Among the four legal domains, that of vyavahāra was developed by the state itself as a realm of public, transactional law meant to address disputes that could not be resolved in other legal forums. From this we can conclude that the origin of Indian jurisprudence lies with state efforts to formalize and enforce the laws of public transactions. The reinterpretation of the four feet by later jurists was motivated perhaps by resistance to one of the fundamental relationships expressed in the four feet, namely that royal authority possessed the greatest legal authority, independent of Brāhmaṇical law. (shrink)

This is a developmental study of Wittgenstein. It is concerned exclusively with his philosophy of language and is remarkably clear and simple in contrasting the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations.

Indispensability arguments are among the strongest arguments in support of mathematical realism. Given the controversial nature of their conclusions, it is not surprising that critics have supplied a number of rejoinders to these arguments. In this paper, I focus on one such rejoinder, Melia’s ‘Weasel Response’. The weasel is someone who accepts that scientific theories imply that there are mathematical objects, but then proceeds to ‘take back’ this commitment. While weaseling seems improper, accounts supplied in the literature have failed to (...) explain why. Drawing on examples of weaseling in more mundane contexts, I develop an account of the presumption against weaseling as grounded in a misalignment between two types of commitments. This is good news to the weasel’s opponents. It reinforces that they were right to question the legitimacy of weaseling. This account is also beneficial to the weasel. Uncovering the source of the presumption against weaseling also serves to draw out the challenge that the weasel must meet to override this presumption—what is required to be an ‘honest weasel’. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The publication of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 established a tradition of Catholic social teaching concerned with the moral obligations that should exist between capital and labour. In Ireland the encyclical instigated enthusiasm among some clergy for their congregation's welfare. An urgency given to social and economic questions coincided with the co-operative movement's introduction to the Irish countryside. Rural co-operative societies were established as part of a wider programme of economic democracy that placed ownership of production (...) in the hands of farmers. The growth of the co-operative movement benefitted from the participation of members of the clergy at both a national and local level. Co-operative organisers and socially minded priests shared an interest in addressing the iniquities of capitalist modernisation. Co-operators championed a communal form of business organisation that emphasised the moral importance of economic activity as much as its productive importance. The involvement of Catholic priests in the co-operative movement naturalised priest-led social action in the sphere of rural development. This article analyses intersections between the economic objectives of co-operation and Catholic social teaching to understand how attempts to promote a more democratic economy had a profound influence over the country's economic development. (shrink)

In chapters 9 and 10 of their book Roman but Not Catholic, Kenneth Collins and Jerry Walls criticize the Roman Catholic positions on the Eucharist as a sacrifice and on the ministerial priesthood. I reply to their historical and theological objections, and defend the belief that the Eucharistic sacrifice, the Mass, is a re-presentation, or making present, of Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice on Calvary, and a key component in God’s incarnational strategy for redeeming us.

There are five attitudes to truth: that of the philosopher, the truth-teller, the liar, the sophist, and the tyrant. After discussing the two most famous Greek Sophists, Gorgias and Protagoras, this essay argues that Trump’s attitude to truth while campaigning was that of a sophist: someone who is indifferent to the truth, using words only to acquire money, fame, and power. When he became president, however, his attitude changed to that of the tyrant described by Plato: someone who uses power (...) to assert control over the “truth.” In other words, by the repeated statement of manifest falsehoods, he drew a circle around himself, forcing others to choose between submission to his will and recognition of an independent reality. (shrink)

This is a critical study of Fabrizio Amerini’s recent book, ‘Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life.’ It briefly summarizes the book’s main line of argument, and then raises some objections, principally to Amerini’s contention that St Thomas’s metaphysical views should lead the Thomistically-inclined philosopher to accept delayed hominization even given modern embryological knowledge. The topics discussed include abortion and euthanasia, although the first of these is dealt with at greater length. Issues related to personhood and personal identity (...) are also addressed in the context of the beginning and end of human life. (shrink)

This is a survey of the concept of continuity. Efforts to explicate continuity have produced a plurality of philosophical conceptions of continuity that have provably distinct expressions within contemporary mathematics. I claim that there is a divide between the conceptions that treat the whole continuum as prior to its parts, and those conceptions that treat the parts of the continuum as prior to the whole. Along this divide, a tension emerges between those conceptions that favor philosophical idealizations of continuity and (...) those that are more readily available for mathematico-scientific use. (shrink)