Background: Prejudices against minorities can be understood as habitually negative evaluations that are kept in spite of evidence to the contrary. Therefore, individuals with strong prejudices might be dominated by habitual or “automatic” reactions at the expense of more controlled reactions. Computational theories suggest individual differences in the balance between habitual/model-free and deliberative/model-based decision-making.Methods: 127 subjects performed the two Step task and completed the blatant and subtle prejudice scale.Results: By using analyses of choices and reaction times in combination with computational (...) modeling, subjects with stronger blatant prejudices showed a shift away from model-based control. There was no association between these decision-making processes and subtle prejudices.Conclusion: These results support the idea that blatant prejudices toward minorities are related to a relative dominance of habitual decision-making. This finding has important implications for developing interventions that target to change prejudices across societies. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of science gathers empirical data on how key scientific concepts are understood by particular scientific communities. In this paper we briefly describe two recent studies in experimental philosophy of biology, one investigating the concept of the gene, the other the concept of innateness. The use of experimental methods reveals facts about these concepts that would not be accessible using the traditional method of intuitions about possible cases. It also contributes to the study of conceptual change in science, which (...) we understand as the result of a form of conceptual ecology, in which concepts become adapted to specific epistemic niches. (shrink)

Thomas Reid is now recognized as one of the towering figures of the Enlightenment. Best known for his published writings on epistemology and moral theory, he was also an accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher, as an earlier volume of his manuscripts edited by Paul Wood for the Edinburgh Reid Edition, Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation, has shown. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid collects all of the known letters to and from Reid in a fully annotated form. Letters already (...) published by Sir William Hamilton and others have been reedited, and roughly half of the letters included appear in print for the first time. Writing in 1802, Reid's disciple and biographer Dugald Stewart doubted that Reid's correspondence &"would be generally interesting.&" This collection proves otherwise, for the letters illuminate virtually every aspect of Reid's life and career and, in some instances, provide us with invaluable evidence about activities otherwise undocumented in his manuscripts or published works. Through his correspondence we can trace Reid's relations with contemporaries such as David Hume and his colleagues at both King's College, Aberdeen, and the University of Glasgow, as well as his engagement with the most controversial philosophical, scientific, and political issues of his day. If anything, the letters assembled here serve as the starting point for understanding Reid and his place in the Enlightenment. (shrink)

This book explores the role of divine severity in the character and wisdom of God, and the flux and difficulties of human life in relation to divine salvation. Much has been written on problems of evil, but the matter of divine severity has received relatively little attention. Paul K. Moser discusses the function of philosophy, evidence and miracles in approaching God. He argues that if God's aim is to extend without coercion His lasting life to humans, then commitment to (...) that goal could manifest itself in making human life severe, for the sake of encouraging humans to enter into that cooperative good life. In this scenario, divine agapē is conferred as free gift, but the human reception of it includes stress and struggle in the face of conflicting powers and priorities. Moser's work will be of great interest to students of the philosophy of religion, and theology. (shrink)

This essay re-examines Adam Smith’s encounter with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Against the grain of present scholarship it contends that when Smith read and reviewed Rousseau’s Second Discourse, he neither registered it as a particularly important challenge, nor was especially influenced by, or subsequently preoccupied with responding to, Rousseau. The case for this is made by examining the British context of Smith’s own intervention in his 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments, where a proper appreciation of the roles of David Hume and Bernard (...) Mandeville in the formation of Smith’s thought pushes Rousseau firmly into the background. Realising this, however, forces us to re-consider our evaluations of Rousseau’s and Smith’s very different political visions. Given that questions of individual recognition, economic inequality, and political stability remain at the heart of today’s social challenges, the implications of this are not just historical but of direct contemporary import. (shrink)

According to Alasdair MacIntyre's influential account of practices, ‘teaching itself is not a practice, but a set of skills and habits put to the service of a variety of practices’ (MacIntyre and Dunne, 2002, p. 5). Various philosophers of education have responded to and critiqued MacIntyre's position, most notably in a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (Vol. 37.2, 2003). However, both in that Special Issue and since, this debate remains inconclusive. Much of this earlier discussion seems (...) to accept that teaching is a unique case in being a putative practice that does not fit readily into MacIntyre's account. In fact many supposed practices, including some nominated by MacIntyre himself, do not fit his account. A constructive critique of this account leads to a refurbished, broadly MacIntyrean account of practice. This will clarify the issue of whether teaching and a range of other activities are, indeed, practices. (shrink)

Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with (...) traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in _On the Origin of Species_. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world—an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is. (shrink)

Sainsbury argued that exact extensions for predicates entails the unacceptable infinite tower of higher order vagueness so that exact extensions must be rejected. I offer a second argument: The exact extensions arise when semantic values are assumed to be (exact) properties. But no assignment of unique properties to predicates could arise from any real-world finite basis. How, then, is talk of properties as semantic values to be understood? We distinguish the precise compositional rules of semantics from the operation of messy, (...) imprecise rules at the word/world interface for applicability of minimal predicates. When such application is sufficiently clear it is idealized as property instantiation and semantic composition proceeds in familiar ways. These imprecise rules for application of minimal predicates provide the proper locus for study of vagueness. The conclusions thus far apply to show that higher order vagueness is not forced and that classical logic can generally be retained. I discuss implications for the sorites paradox. Abandoning properties entails abandoning simple correspondence truth understood as Pa is true just in case a has the property signified by P. As an alternative I outline a pragmatist approach to truth, the spirit of which is conveyed by the slogan, “To be true enough is to work well enough.”. (shrink)

We examine possible causal structures of experiments with entangled quantum objects. Previously, these structures have been obscured by assuming a misleading probabilistic analysis of quantum non locality as 'Outcome Dependence or Parameter Dependence' and by directly associating these correlations with influences. Here we try to overcome these shortcomings: we proceed from a recent stronger Bell argument, which provides an appropriate probabilistic description, and apply the rigorous methods of causal graph theory. Against the standard view that there is only an influence (...) between the measurement outcomes, we show that there must be an influence from one setting to its distant outcome: EPR correlations can only come about if one of the outcomes is a common effect of both settings. Our discussion makes explicit under which assumptions similar conclusions from information theoretic considerations can be interpreted causally. (shrink)

Antidepressant medication and evidence-based psychotherapy have largely equivalent efficacy in the management of the common, less severe grades of depression. As a result, several national guidelines recommend that either can be used in the treatment of this disorder. Psychotherapy, however, differs in that it assists insight into how the depressed person appraises and manages the stressors that frequently trigger depressive episodes. I argue that the self-knowledge achieved through psychotherapy has moral value in that it promotes the autonomy of stressor-related decisions. (...) I further argue that such an effect comprises a compelling moral reason for doctors to see evidence-based psychotherapy not as merely optional, but as a necessary treatment for their patients with depression. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is a case study in public health ethics. It considers whether there is a basis in ethics for political action by health professionals and their associations in response to inhumane treatment. The issue arises from Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and the charge that this treatment has been both immoral and inhumane. This judgement raises several questions of broader significance in bioethics and of significance to the emerging field of public health ethics. These questions relate to the (...) role of health professionals in response to inhumane treatment of people in their charge; to the discipline of public health in light of a growing recognition of its ethical basis; and the role of public health and bioethical associations in response to ethical issues arising in a political context. It is argued that, in serious cases of humanitarian and human rights abuses affecting health and well‐being, there is a case for political action by health professionals, academic and professional institutions, and associations of public health and ethics. (shrink)

Gilbertson, Savulescu, Oakley and Wilkinson propose extending the availability of terminal sedation (TS) to patients with intractable pain and/or suffering who are expected to live more than 2 weeks (hence the designation of extended TS (ETS)) and to patients whose values are known but who do not have decision-making capacity.1 Their plan is worthy of serious consideration: it is, after all, based on the fundamental and well-recognised medical ethical values of patient autonomy and beneficence. But, even when restricted to jurisdictions (...) that allow assisted dying, the ETS proposal raises three important issues. When the authors speak of ‘assisted dying’ and of ‘Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAS)’, they refer specifically to the laws in Australia and similar ones in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain and Canada that permit clinicians either to provide patients with lethal medications for self-administration (formerly called physician-assisted suicide) or to administer lethal medications themselves (voluntary euthanasia). First, the authors distinguish—as do many patients and the public—between sedation to unconsciousness and death. Indeed, as the authors point out, the difference seems obvious: unconsciousness can be reversed, death cannot. Yet in the case of TS, this may be …. (shrink)

Epistemic Analysis, as I conceive of it, is concerned with the analysis of knowledge. The precincts of my concern have, however, been determined by the ...

There are basic questions concerning truth that have been perennial throughout the history of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks onwards: Is 'true' a ...

Since 1790, the term Naturwissenschaften occurs in the lecture lists of the University of Jena published in the Allgemeine Literatur‐Zeitung of Jena. Naturwissenschaften is used as a title for lectures previously listed under the headings of Philosophie or Naturgeschichte. The introduction of the concept of Naturwissenschaften is interesting for several reasons: Firstly, at that time it is not the usual label in this context, and one therefore has to ask whether it already implies the connotations that are associated with the (...) modern concept of Naturwissenschaften, i. e. science in the modern sense. Secondly, the lecture lists of the University of Jena give insight into the various changes in the established ordering scheme for academic lectures that lead to the introduction of the term Naturwissenschaften, thus contributing to a better understanding of both the history of this concept and of the development of the university faculties as we know them. A close look at the concept of Naturwissenschaften as it was used around 1800 may, thirdly, help to understand the use made of this concept in philosophy, especially in the philosophy of nature of this period. (shrink)

Phenomenal character is the what-it's-likeness of subjective experience. I develop an ontology of phenomenal feel as process. My being in some phenomenal state R is the process of my instantiating R’s neurological correlate. The ontology explains why we have asymmetric epistemic access to phenomenal characters: the ontological ground for the subjective or first-personal stance is different from the ontological ground for the objective or third-personal stance. I end by situating my account in debates about physicalism.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 2, Page 154-172, June 2022.

The paper examines the status of conscious presentation with regard to mental content and intentional states. I argue that conscious presentation of mental content should be viewed on the model of a secondary quality, as a subjectiveeffect of the microstructure of an underlying brain state. The brain state is in turn viewed as the instantiation of an abstract computational state, with the result that introspectively accessible content is interpreted as a presentation of the associated computational state realized by the brain. (...) However, if the relation between consciousness and representational content is construed in this manner, then conscious presentation does not provide an adequate foundation for the claim that human mental states areintrinsically intentional. On this model, I argue that functionalism is able to account for (non-intrinsic) intentionality, but not for consciousness, which has implications for the computational paradigm, as well as for Searle's Chinese room thought experiment. (shrink)

In the United States, amid the fractious politics of attempting to achieve something close to universal access to basic health care, two impressions are likely to feed skepticism about the status of a right to universal access: the moral principles that underlie any right to universal access may seem incredibly "ideal," not well rooted in the society's actual fabric, and the necessary practical and political attempts to limit the scope of universally accessible care to make its achievement realistic may seem (...) marked less by moral rhyme and reason than by the pull of conflicting interests. I try to directly dispel the first of these impressions and to obliquely question the second. The immense political barriers to .. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the prevalence of age comparison studies in developmental psychology. It argues that many such studies, which aim to determine when children acquire adult-like abilities, lack clear theoretical justification. The critique is framed within broader discussions of research priorities in psychology, drawing parallels to past trends in neuroscience where initial fascination with brain localization gave way to more theoretically driven research. Questioning the value of studies motivated primarily by publication rather than theoretical advancement, the paper advocates for (...) a shift towards research that addresses fundamental questions about developmental mechanisms. Implications for research design and the future direction of developmental psychology are discussed. (shrink)

Quite remarkably, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling uses the notion of “drive” in analysing important cognitive achievements: An important instance of this attitude can be found in his characterizing Kant as a philosopher who operates in the basis of instincts. His key argument in adopting “drives” as key to the cognitive faculties of humans derives from the conviction that cognitive endeavours need to be open and directed towards grasping reality not in individual items, but as a totality. He arrives, in employing (...) these terms, at an understanding of science, and of cognition in general, as an open, future-directed, and dynamic process. This chapter presents an overview of Schelling’s usage of “drive”-related terms, discusses his rather detailed description of the mechanics of drives within the structure of human faculties, and draws some conclusions as to Schelling’s understanding of “science” and the dynamics of science. (shrink)

David Papineau (2003; 2005) has discussed the relationship between social learning and the family of postulated evolutionary processes that includes ‘organic selection’, ‘coincident selection’, ‘autonomisation’, ‘the Baldwin effect’ and ‘genetic assimilation’. In all these processes a trait which initially develops in the members of a population as a result of some interaction with the environment comes to develop without that interaction in their descendants. It is uncontroversial that the development of an identical phenotypic trait might depend on an interaction with (...) the environment in one population and not in another. For example, some species of passerine songbirds require exposure to species-typical songs in order to reproduce those songs whilst others do not. Hence we can envisage a species beginning with one type of developmental pathway and evolving the other type. If, however, the successive evolution of these two developmental pathways were a mere coincidence, selection first favoring the ability to acquire the trait and later, quite independently, favoring the ability to develop it autonomously, then this would not be a distinctive kind of evolutionary process, but merely two standard instances of natural selection. George Gaylord Simpson pointed this out in the paper that gave us the term ‘Baldwin effect’ (Simpson, 1953). The real interest of the Baldwin effect and its relatives lies in the mechanisms which might link the evolution of the two developmental pathways, so that acquiring the trait through interaction with the environment makes it more likely that later generations will evolve the ability to acquire the same trait without that interaction. (shrink)

A leaf falls to the ground, wafting lazily on the afternoon breeze. Clouds move across the sky, and birds sing. Are these events governed by universal laws of nature, laws that apply everywhere without exception, subsuming events such as the falling of the leaf, the movement of the clouds and the singing of the birds? Are such laws part of a small set of fundamental laws, or descended from such a set, which govern everything there is in the world?

“Radical The paper provides a survey of arguments for claims that rational agents should have transitive preferences and argues that they are not valid. The presentation is based on a chapter for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Rational and Social Choice.

Alongside his groundbreaking work in logic, Bernard Bolzano (1781?1848) made important contributions to ontology, notably with his theory of collections. Recent work has done much to elucidate Bolzano's conceptions, but his notion of a sum has proved stubbornly resistant to complete understanding. This paper offers a new interpretation of Bolzano's concept of a sum. I argue that, although Bolzano's presentation is defective, his conception is unexceptionable, and has important applications, notably in his work on the foundations of arithmetic.

One metaphysical problem about laws is how to find appropriate truthmakers for fully general functional laws. What makes it true, for instance, that an uninstantiated mass would interact with others as prescribed by laws concerning mass? This is the missing value problem. D. M. Armstrong attempted to solve it by appeal to determinable universals. I will offer a trope‐theoretic solution that, while in some ways more metaphysically adventurous than Armstrong's view, avoids commitment to universals and determinables (as different from their (...) determinates). The solution makes use of a special conception of tropes as capable of intrinsic change. It also makes use of a distinction between two ways of having a causal power (a distinction we should make in any case). Existing powers‐based approaches to the problem struggle to avoid the idea that powers mysteriously point beyond themselves. But if tropes are capable of intrinsic change in the way I propose, they can account for the full generality of laws with minimal pointing beyond, and can do so while retaining natures that are credibly intrinsic. (shrink)

Educational research is widely believed to be essentially empirical, consisting mainly of collecting and analysing data, with randomised control trials as the 'gold standard'. This book argues that good educational research is often philosophical in nature. Offering a critical overview of the current state of educational research, the authors argue that there are two factors in particular that distort it. One is that throughout the world it is expected to serve the interests of the state in securing educational improvements, as (...) measured by standardised examination results, and to demonstrate 'scientific' credentials sufficient to guarantee absence of ideological bias and carry conviction. The other is that learning to do educational research is generally seen as a matter of being trained in empirical 'research methods'. The authors demonstrate, by contrast, that good educational research needs the rigorous thinking characteristic of philosophy, and that philosophical treatments themselves sometimes constitute such research. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that a rationale for a circumscribed form of desire-based justification can be developed out of a contemporary Kantian account as a natural extension of that account. It maintains that certain of Christine Korsgaard's recent arguments establish only that desires must have certain features antithetical to instrumentalism in order to justify. Other arguments purport to establish the standard (stronger) result: that because desires do not have these features, they cannot justify. Her arguments for this strong result, it contends, (...) cannot be reconciled with central commitments in her epistemology and philosophy of mind. The consistent implementation of these commitments opens up a surprising space within what is still readily recognizable as a Kantian ethics--the space for desire-based justification. (shrink)

In our target article, we discussed the standards of evidence that could be used to identify adaptations, and argued that building an empirical case that certain features of a trait are best explained by exaptation, spandrel, or constraint requires the consideration, testing, and rejection of adaptationist hypotheses. We are grateful to the 31 commentators for their thoughtful insights. They raised important issues, including the meaning of “exaptation”; whether Gould and Lewontin's critique of adaptationism was primarily epistemological or ontological; the necessity, (...) sufficiency, or utility of design evidence, phylogenetic analyses, homology, and molecular genetics in distinguishing exaptations from adaptations; whether adaptationists accept adaptationist hypotheses too quickly; and the real utility of adaptationism to human behavioral science. We organize our response along the major points of the target article, in some situations defending our original claims and in others modifying them. While debate on these issues will undoubtedly continue, we are cautiously optimistic that the main points of the target article (as modified by our response) will help move the debate in a positive direction. (shrink)

Young traces the evolution of the term information from its general linguistic use into the mainstream of modern science, proposing an entirely new definition of information as a mass-energy phenomenon. He demonstrates that: information is in all cases a form phenomenon; both form and information are mass-energy rather than abstract phenomena; mind can be viewed as a mass-energy rather form-manipulating process; form constitutes a mechanism immanent in the physical universe via which mass-energy systems can communicate informationally and control their own (...) energetic activities. (shrink)