The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short Form (TEIQue-SF). Analyses were performed using a sample of undergraduates (N = 585) recruited from four universities across China. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Chinese TEIQue-SF supported the one-factor structure of trait emotional intelligence. Measurement invariance analyses were conducted across the Chinese sample and a sample of Canadian undergraduate students (N = 638). Although the two samples demonstrated configural and partial metric invariance, (...) scalar invariance was not found. Cross-cultural implications and explanations of the present findings, as well as suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the Hong Kong approach to consent regarding the forgoing of life-sustaining treatment for incompetent elderly patients. It analyzes the contextualized approach in the Hong Kong process-based, consensus-building model, in contrast to other role-based models which emphasize the establishment of a system of formal laws and a clear locus of decisional authority.Without embracing relativism, the paper argues that the Hong Kong model offers an instructive example of how strategic ambiguities can both make good sense within particular cultural context (...) and serve important moral goals. (shrink)

This paper examines what it is for a condition to be a disease. It falls into two sections. In the first I examine the best existing account of disease (as proposed by Christopher Boorse) and argue that it must be rejected. In the second I outline a more acceptable account of disease. According to this account, by disease we mean a condition that it is a bad thing to have, that is such that we consider the afflicted person to have (...) been unlucky, and that can potentially be medically treated. All three criteria must be fulfilled for a condition to be a disease. The criterion that for a condition to be a disease it must be a bad thing is required to distinguish the biologically different from the diseased. The claim that the sufferer must be unlucky is needed to distinguish diseases from conditions that are unpleasant but normal, for example teething. Finally, the claim that for a condition to be a disease it must be potentially medically treatable is needed to distinguish diseases from other types of misfortune, for example economic problems and legal problems. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering involves revising our concepts. It can be pursued as a specific philosophical methodology, but is also common in ordinary, non-philosophical, contexts. How does our capacity for conceptual engineering fit into human cognitive life more broadly? I hold that conceptual engineering is best understood alongside practices of conceptual exploration, examples of which include conceptual supposition (i.e. suppositional reasoning about alternative concepts), and conceptual comparison (i.e. comparisons between possible concept choices). Whereas in conceptual engineering we aim to change the concepts (...) we use, in conceptual exploration, we reason about conceptual possibilities. I approach conceptual exploration via the linguistic tools we use to communicate about concepts, using metalinguistic negotiation, convention-shifting conditionals, and metalinguistic comparatives as my key examples. I present a linguistic framework incorporating conventions that can account for this communication in a unified way. Furthermore, I argue that conceptual exploration helps undermine skepticism about conceptual engineering itself. (shrink)

In Talking about, Unnsteinsson defends an intentionalist theory of reference by arguing that confused referential intentions degrade reference. Central to this project is a “belief model” of both identity confusion and unconfused thought. By appealing to a well‐known argument from Campbell, I argue that this belief model falls short, because it fails to explain the inferential behavior it promises to explain. Campbell's argument has been central in the contemporary literature on Frege's puzzle, but Unnsteinsson's account of confusion provides an opportunity (...) for more clarity about how the argument is best interpreted, and what it shows. (shrink)

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other a kind of process (...) that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought. (shrink)

The so-called ‘mental files theory’ in the philosophy of mind stems from an analogy comparing object-concepts to ‘files’, and the mind to a ‘filing system’. Though this analogy appears in philosophy of mind and language from the 1970s onward, it remains unclear to many how it should be interpreted. The central commitments of the mental files theory therefore also remain unclear. Based on influential uses of the file analogy within philosophy, I elaborate three central explanatory roles for mental files. Next, (...) I outline several common criticisms of the file picture, which have been a source of resistance to the view. Finally, I outline several interpretations of the theory, thus highlighting that the best interpretation of the file-theory's central analogy remains a live issue. (shrink)

This paper has a narrow and a broader target. The narrow target is a particular version of what I call the mental-files conception of singular thought, proposed by Robin Jeshion, and known as cognitivism. The broader target is the MFC in general. I give an argument against Jeshion's view, which gives us preliminary reason to reject the MFC more broadly. I argue Jeshion's theory of singular thought should be rejected because the central connection she makes between significance and singularity does (...) not hold. However, my argument grants Jeshion's claim that there is a connection between significance and file-thinking. The upshot is not only that we have reason to reject Jeshion's significance constraint on singular thought, but that we have reason to question the connection made by MFC proponents between file-thinking and singularity. (shrink)

Kant is often considered a key figure in a modern transition from social and political systems based on honour to those based on dignity, where “honour” is understood as a hierarchical measure of social value, and “dignity” is understood as the inherent and equal worth of every individual. The essay provides a richer account of Kant’s contribution to the “politics of equal dignity” by examining his understanding of dignity and honour, and the interaction between these concepts. The essay argues that (...) Kant appeals to multiple varieties of dignity and honour, that he does not reject honour in favour of dignity, and that he sees some versions of honour as conducive to respect for dignity. Furthermore, the complexity of Kant’s views on dignity and honour has implications for the theory and practice of human rights in the current day. (shrink)

A new reading of Plato's account of conventionalism about names in the Cratylus. It argues that Hermogenes' position, according to which a name is whatever anybody 'sets down' as one, does not have the counterintuitive consequences usually claimed. At the same time, Plato's treatment of conventionalism needs to be related to his treatment of formally similar positions in ethics and politics. Plato is committed to standards of objective natural correctness in all such areas, despite the problematic consequences which, as he (...) himself shows, arise in the case of language. (shrink)

Pyrrhonian sceptics claim, notoriously, to assent to the appearances without making claims about how things are. To see whether this is coherent we need to consider the philosophical history of ‘appearance’(phainesthai)-talk, and the closely related concept of an impression (phantasia). This history suggests that the sceptics resemble Plato in lacking the ‘non-epistemic’ or ‘non-doxastic’ conception of appearance developed by Aristotle and the Stoics. What is distinctive about the Pyrrhonian sceptic is simply that the degree of doxastic commitment involved in his (...) assent to an impression is asymptotally low. (shrink)

This article employs Foucauldian and feminist analytics to advance a critical approach to wearable digital health- and activity-tracking devices. Following Foucault’s insight that the growth of individual capabilities coincides with the intensification of power relations, I argue that digital self-tracking devices (DSTDs) expand individuals’ capacity for self-knowledge and self-care at the same time that they facilitate unprecedented levels of biometric surveillance, extend the regulatory mechanisms of both public health and fashion/beauty authorities, and enable increasingly rigorous body projects devoted to the (...) attainment of normative femininity. These technologies of surveillance, normalization, and discipline thus function to augment, and facilitate the cooperation of, neoliberal-era biopower and post-feminist patriarchal power. My analysis of digital self-tracking devices’ instrumentality to biopower and patriarchy contributes to the emergent field of critical digital health studies and builds new connections between political, social, and feminist theories of embodiment; biopower studies; fat studies; and trans-disciplinary body studies. (shrink)

This paper is about the relevance of attitude-ascriptions to debates about singular thought. It examines a methodology (common to early acquaintance theorists [Kaplan 1968] and recent critics of acquaintance [Hawthorne and Manley 2012], which assumes that the behaviour of ascriptions can be used to draw conclusions about singular thought. Although many theorists (e.g. [Recanati 2012]) reject this methodology, the literature lacks a detailed examination of its implications and the challenges faced by proponents and critics. I isolate an assumption of the (...) methodology, which I call the tracking assumption: that an attitude-ascription which states that s Φ's that P is true iff s has an attitude, of Φ-ing, which is an entertaining of the content P (with entertain used in a stipulated sense). I argue that the tracking assumption must be rejected, not because it has deflationary consequences, but because it leads to unstable commitments. I also show that there are independent reasons to reject it, because ordinary attitude ascriptions underdetermine even the truth-conditions of the mental-states they ascribe. However, I argue, this does not involve rejecting the claim that attitude-ascriptions express relations between agents and contents. Instead, they state different relations depending on contextual factors other than the nature of the mental-states ascribed. (shrink)

A generally ignored feature of Plato’s celebrated image of the cave in Republic VII is that the ascent from the cave is, in its initial stages, said to be brought about by force. What kind of ‘force’ is this, and why is it necessary? This paper considers three possible interpretations, and argues that each may have a role to play.

We present a novel semantic and conversational framework for a class of gradable-like constructions. These include metalinguistic comparatives, like "Ann is more a linguist than a philosopher", as well as metalinguistic equatives, degree modifications, and conditionals. To the extent previous literature discusses such metalinguistic gradability, the focus has been on comparatives. We extend our account of metalinguistic comparatives (Rudolph & Kocurek 2020) to cover a broader range of metalinguistic gradable constructions. On our semantic expressivist view, these all serve in various (...) ways to express speakers' relative commitments to different linguistic interpretations. (shrink)

Extensive and diverse conceptual work towards developing a definition of ‘mental disorder’ was motivated by the declassification of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1973. This highly politicised event was understood as a call for psychiatry to provide assurances against further misclassification on the basis of discrimination or socio-political deviance. Today, if a definition of mental disorder fails to exclude homosexuality, then it fails to provide this safeguard against potential abuses and therefore fails to do an important part (...) of the work it was intended to do. We argue that fact-based definitions of mental disorder, relying on scientific theory, fail to offer a robust definition of mental disorder that excludes homosexuality. Definitions of mental disorder based on values do not fare better: these definitions are silent on questions about the diagnostic status of individuals in oppressive societies and over-inclusive of mental or behavioural states that happen to be negatively valued in the individual's social context. We consider the latest definition proposed for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 in light of these observations. We argue that definition fails to improve on these earlier deficiencies. Its inclusion in the manual may offer false reassurance against repetition of past misclassifications. We conclude with a provocation that if candidate definitions of mental disorder are unable to exclude homosexuality, it might perhaps be preferable not to attempt a definition at all. (shrink)

This special issue is the result of concerns about the marginalized status of gender within the sociology of religion. The collection of exciting new research in this special issue advocates for the importance of a gender lens on questions of religion in order to highlight issues, practices, peoples, and theories that would otherwise not be central to the discipline. We encourage sociologists who study religion to engage more in interdisciplinary and intersectional scholarship, acknowledge developments in the global South, and develop (...) more compelling theoretical frameworks that analyze religion from a gendered perspective. Our aim is to bring religion to the attention of gender and feminist scholars and to encourage religion scholars to consider gender not just as a variable but as a social structure. We hope that both groups of scholars will consider gender and religion as mutually constitutive social categories. (shrink)

Socrates’ refutations of Thrasymachus in Republic I are unsatisfactory on a number of levels which need to be carefully distinguished. At the same time several of his arguments are more powerful than they initially appear. Of particular interest are those which turn on the idea of a craft, which represents a shared norm of practical rationality here contested by Socrates and Thrasymachus.

This discussion emphasises the diversity, philosophical seriousness and methodological distinctiveness of sophistic thought. Particular attention is given to their views on language, ethics, and the social construction of various norms, as well as to their varied, often undogmatic dialectical methods. The assumption that the sophists must have shared common doctrines (not merely overlapping interests and professional practices) is called into question.

Bioethics has entered a new era: as many commentators have noted, the familiar mantra of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice has proven to be an overly simplistic framework for understanding problems that arise in modern medicine, particularly at the intersection of public policy and individual preferences. A tradition of liberal pluralism grounds respect for individual preferences and affirmation of competing conceptions of the good. But we struggle to maintain (or at times explicitly reject) this tradition in the face of individual (...) preferences that we find distasteful, suspect, or even repugnant, especially where the broader social good or respect for equality is at stake. Directed donation presents us with such a dilemma: can we uphold the right of self-determination through respect of individual preferences regarding disposition of transplantable organs while at the same time maintaining an allocation system that reflects values of equity and justice claimed to underlie the socially negotiated practice of transplantation? Or are some preferences simply to be deemed unethical and not respected, even if that leads to a reduction in the number of transplantable organs available and to an apparent disregard for the autonomous decisions of the recently deceased? (shrink)

A generally ignored feature of Aristotle’s famous function argument is its reliance on the claim that practitioners of the crafts (technai) have functions: but this claim does important work. Aristotle is pointing to the fact that we judge everyday rational agency and agents by norms which are independent of their contingent desires: a good doctor is not just one who happens to achieve his personal goals through his work. But, Aristotle argues, such norms can only be binding on individuals if (...) human rational agency as such is governed by objective teleological norms.
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Can we feel emotions about abstract objects, assuming that abstract objects exist? I argue that at least some emotions can have abstract objects as their intentional objects and discuss why this conclusion is not just trivially true. Through critical engagement with the work of Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I devote special attention to awe, an emotion that is particularly well suited to show that some emotions can be about either concrete or abstract objects. In responding to a possible objection, (...) according to which we can only feel emotions about things that we take to matter to our flourishing, and thus cannot feel emotions about causally inefficacious abstract objects, I explore how abstract objects can be relevant to human flourishing and discuss someemotions other than awe that can be about abstract objects. I finish by explaining somereasons why my conclusion matters, including the fact that it presents a challenge to perceptual theories of emotion and causal theories of intentionality. (shrink)

Plato’s depiction of the first city in the Republic (Book II), the so-called ‘city of pigs’, is often read as expressing nostalgia for an earlier, simpler era in which moral norms were secure. This goes naturally with readings of other Platonic texts (including Republic I and the Gorgias) as expressing a sense of moral decline or crisis in Plato’s own time. This image of Plato as a spokesman for ‘moral nostalgia’ is here traced in various nineteenth- and twentieth-century interpretations, and (...) rejected. Plato’s pessimism about human nature in fact precludes any easy assumption that things, or people, were better in the old days. (shrink)

Among Aristotle’s criticisms of the Form of the Good is his claim that the knowledge of such a Good could be of no practical relevance to everyday rational agency, e.g. on the part of craftspeople. This critique turns out to hinge ultimately on the deeply different assumptions made by Plato and Aristotle about the relation of ‘good’ and ‘good for’. Plato insists on the conceptual priority of the former; and Plato wins the argument.

Autonomy and the Situated Self offers a critique of contemporary mainstream bioethics and proposes an alternative framework for the exploration of bioethical issues. It also contrasts two conceptions of autonomy, one based on a liberal model but detached from its political foundation and one that is responsive to the concerns of virtue ethics and connected to the concept of human flourishing.

A major goal of this work is to specify some steps of the process by which participants maintain coherency in their conversations.The underlying element of the analysis is a construct called a “context space.” Roughly, a group of utterances that refers to a single issue or episode forms the basis for a context space. Superficially, a conversation is a sequence of utterances; at a deeper level it is a structured entity whose utterances can be parsed into hierarchically related context spaces.As (...) a conversation proceeds, each conversant builds a discourse model that includes the conversation's context space structure, a notion of the present discourse topic, and a list of items being focused upon. Conversational coherency depends upon a lack of conflict between the respective models of the participants. Conflicts are prevented by speakers following high level syntactic and semantic relational rules that enable listeners to identify their discourse models. These rules, given in the study, are highly integrated with the view of conversation presented here—a hierarchy of related context spaces. (shrink)

By examining first-person descriptions of thought insertion I show that thought insertion is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon. People experiencing this phenomenon have huge difficulty explaining what it is like due to the bizarre nature of the experience. Through careful analysis of first-person descriptions I identify some of the characteristics of thought insertion. I then briefly examine some of the philosophical literature regarding agency, ownership and thought insertion and conclude that the standard account of the basic characteristics of thought insertion (...) is inadequate when we consider the phenomenon as it is experienced. First person descriptions suggest that thought insertion is characterised by a lack of personal ownership and not simply by a loss of agency or authorship. This is an important factor that should inform research and therapeutic intervention. We cannot hope to arrive at appropriate therapeutic intervention or identify underlying neuronal mechanisms for the experience if we cannot say what the experience actually is. I further suggest that more analysis of first-person description is required for an improved account of the phenomenology of thought insertion. (shrink)

Some assertions give rise to the acquaintance inference: the inference that the speaker is acquainted with some individual. Discussion of the acquaintance inference has previously focused on assertions about aesthetic matters and personal tastes (e.g. 'The cake is tasty'), but it also arises with reports about how things seem (e.g. 'Tom seems like he's cooking'). 'Seem'-reports give rise to puzzling acquaintance behavior, with no analogue in the previously-discussed domains. In particular, these reports call for a distinction between the specific acquaintance (...) inference (that the speaker is acquainted with a specific individual) and the general acquaintance inference (that the speaker is acquainted with something or other of relevance). We frame a novel empirical generalization -- the specific with stage-level generalization -- that systematizes the observed behavior, in terms of the semantics of the embedded 'like'-clause. We present supporting experimental work, and explain why the generalization makes sense given the evidential role of 'seem'-reports. Finally, we discuss the relevance of this result for extant proposals about the semantics of 'seem'-reports. More modestly, it fills a gap in previous theories by identifying which reports get which of two possible interpretations; more radically, it suggests a revision of the kind of explanation that should be given for the acquaintance behavior in question. (shrink)

It is very difficult to get a clear picture of how the Stoic is supposed to deliberate. This paper considers a number of possible pictures, which cover such a wide range of options that some look Kantian and others utilitarian. Each has some textual support but is also unworkable in certain ways: there seem to be genuine and unresolved conflicts at the heart of Stoic ethics. And these are apparently due not to developmental changes within the school, but to the (...) Stoics’ having adopted implicitly incompatible solutions in response to different philosophical challenges. (shrink)

Are the long, wildly inventive etymologies in Plato’s Cratylus just some kind of joke, or does Plato himself accept them? This standard question misses the most important feature of the etymologies: they are a competitive performance, an agôn by Socrates in which he shows that he can play the game of etymologists like Cratylus better than they can themselves. Such show-off performances are a recurrent feature of Platonic dialogue: they include Socrates’ speeches on eros in the Phaedrus, his rhetorical discourse (...) in the Menexenus, and his literary interpretation in the Protagoras. The paper compares these cases to work out the ground rules, purposes and implications of the Platonic agôn, and the Cratylus etymologies in particular. (shrink)

Recent turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa has prompted renewed concerns about women’s rights in Muslim societies. It has also raised questions about women’s agency and activism in religious contexts. This article draws on ethnographic research with women activists in Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, to address such concerns. My fieldwork shows that some Muslim women activists in democratizing Indonesia manifest pious critical agency. Pious critical agency is the capacity to engage critically and publicly (...) with religious texts. While some scholars have argued that pious and feminist subjectivity are inherently at odds, the emergence of pious critical agency in Indonesia demonstrates that piety and feminism can intersect in surprising and unexpected ways. Moreover, it shows that women’s agency can draw on both secular and religious resources and that religion can be used to promote critical discourses on gender. (shrink)

This paper explores in detail Gorgias' defense of rhetoric in Plato 's Gorgias, noting its connections to earlier and later texts such as Aristophanes' Clouds, Gorgias' Helen, Isocrates' Nicocles and Antidosis, and Aristotle's Rhetoric. The defense as Plato presents it is transparently inadequate; it reveals a deep inconsistency in Gorgias' conception of rhetoric and functions as a satirical precursor to his refutation by Socrates. Yet Gorgias' defense is appropriated, in a streamlined form, by later defenders of rhetoric such as Isocrates (...) and Aristotle. They present it as an effective reductio against a critique of rhetoric that depends on the "harm criterion." This is puzzling, since Plato 's own critique of rhetoric does not depend on the harm criterion. On the other hand, Plato does seem to embrace the harm criterion as a more general principle—as if pre-emptively embracing the reductio —in his arguments about the good in the Meno and Euthydemus. Nonetheless, Isocrates and Aristotle seem to be deliberately misreading Plato on rhetoric: where he intends to criticize its intrinsic nature, they respond as if he were merely complaining about its contingent effects. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT reflect, and can potentially perpetuate, social biases in language use. Conceptual engineering aims to revise our concepts to eliminate such bias. We show how machine learning and conceptual engineering can be fruitfully brought together to offer new insights to both conceptual engineers and LLM designers. Specifically, we suggest that LLMs can be used to detect and expose bias in the prototypes associated with concepts, and that LLM de-biasing can serve conceptual engineering projects (...) that aim to revise such conceptual prototypes. At present, these de-biasing techniques primarily involve approaches requiring bespoke interventions based on choices of the algorithm’s designers. Thus, conceptual engineering through de-biasing will include making choices about what kind of normative training an LLM should receive, especially with respect to different notions of bias. This offers a new perspective on what conceptual engineering involves and how it can be implemented. And our conceptual engineering approach also offers insight, to those engaged in LLM de-biasing, into the normative distinctions that are needed for that work. (shrink)

According to traditional versions of the mental file theory, we should posit _mental files_—that is, mental representations with containment structure—to explain both rational relations between the attitudes, and the persistence of the attitudes across time. However, Goodman and Gray ( 2022 ) offer a revisionary interpretation of the file framework, according to which its explanatory commitments are better presented by positing _mental filing_, as a process, but not _mental files_, as mental representations with file structure. Goodman and Gray focus on (...) a certain class of synchronic explanations, but files have also been thought to play an essential diachronic role in the maintenance and update of object-directed thought. This paper has two aims. First, we clarify the aims and commitments of Goodman and Gray ( 2022 ). Second, we extend their mental filing view to show how it can account for continued belief, change of mind and persistence of the attitudes in general. (shrink)