What accounts for how we know that certain rules of reasoning, such as reasoning by Modus Ponens, are valid? If our knowledge of validity must be based on some reasoning, then we seem to be committed to the legitimacy of rule-circular arguments for validity. This paper raises a new difficulty for the rule-circular account of our knowledge of validity. The source of the problem is that, contrary to traditional wisdom, a universal generalization cannot be inferred just on the basis of (...) reasoning about an arbitrary object. I argue in favor of a more sophisticated constraint on reasoning by universal generalization, one which undermines a rule-circular account of our knowledge of validity. (shrink)

Whereas Bayesians have proposed norms such as probabilism, which requires immediate and permanent certainty in all logical truths, I propose a framework on which credences, including credences in logical truths, are rational because they are based on reasoning that follows plausible rules for the adoption of credences. I argue that my proposed framework has many virtues. In particular, it resolves the problem of logical omniscience.

A lot has been said about how the notion of reference relates to the notion of knowledge; not much has been said, however, on how the notion of referencerelates to our ability to become aware of what we do not know that allows us to be curious. In this essay I attempt to spell out a certain type of reference I call ‘inostensible’ that I claim to be a fundamental linguistic tool which allows us to become curious of what we (...) do not know. In the first part, I try to explicate the notion of inostensible reference, both for singular and for general terms, as well as full declarative sentences, and in the second part, I argue that our capacity to enjoy conceptual curiosity is essentially based upon our aptitude for inostensible reference. (shrink)

Despite the recent increase in interest in philosophy about ignorance, little attention has been paid to the question of what makes it possible for a being to become aware of their own ignorance. In this paper, I try to provide such an account by arguing that, for a being to become aware of their own ignorance, they must have the mental capacity to represent something as being unknown to them. For normal adult humans who have mastered a language, mental representation (...) of an unknown is enabled by forming linguistic expressions whose content is grasped, but whose referent is unknown. I provide a neo-Fregean, a neo-Russellian, and then a unified account of this. On that basis, I then argue further that the content of ignorance can always be captured by a question. I then distinguish between propositional ignorance and non-propositional ignorance and argue that propositional ignorance attributions can be of three types, that-ignorance, whether-ignorance, and fact-ignorance. I conclude by arguing that the acquisition of truths, even when it yields knowledge that is certain, does not always eliminate one’s ignorance and that there is a degree of ignorance in almost everything we claim to know. (shrink)

This paper begins by raising a puzzle about what function our use of the word ‘rational’ could serve. To solve the puzzle, I introduce a view I call Epistemic Communism: we use epistemic evaluations to promote coordination among our basic belief-forming rules, and the function of this is to make the acquisition of knowledge by testimony more efficient.

White, Christensen, and Feldman have recently endorsed uniqueness, the thesis that given the same total evidence, two rational subjects cannot hold different views. Kelly, Schoenfield, and Meacham argue that White and others have at best only supported the weaker, merely intrapersonal view that, given the total evidence, there are no two views which a single rational agent could take. Here, we give a new argument for uniqueness, an argument with deliberate focus on the interpersonal element of the thesis. Our argument (...) is that the best explanation of the value of promoting rationality is an explanation that entails uniqueness. (shrink)

A Boltzmann Brain, haphazardly formed through the unlikely but still possible random assembly of physical particles, is a conscious brain having experiences just like an ordinary person. The skeptical possibility of being a Boltzmann Brain is an especially gripping one: scientific evidence suggests our actual universe’s full history may ultimately contain countless short-lived Boltzmann Brains with experiences just like yours or mine. I propose a solution to the skeptical challenge posed by these countless actual Boltzmann Brains. My key idea is (...) roughly this: the skeptical argument that you’re one of the Boltzmann Brains requires you to make a statistical inference, but the Principle of Total Evidence blocks us from making the inference. I discuss how my solution contrasts with a recent suggestion, made by Sean Carroll and David Chalmers, for how to address the skeptical challenge posed by Boltzmann Brains. And I discuss how my solution handles certain relevant concerns about what to do when we have higher-order evidence indicating that our first-order evidence is misleading. (shrink)

This paper looks at three ways of addressing probabilism’s implausible requirement of logical omniscience. The first and most common strategy says it’s okay to require an ideally rational person to be logically omniscient. I argue that this view is indefensible on any interpretation of ‘ideally rational’. The second strategy says probabilism should be formulated not in terms of logically possible worlds but in terms of doxastically possible worlds, ways you think the world might be. I argue that, on the interpretation (...) of this approach that lifts the requirement of certainty in all logical truths, the view becomes vacuous, issuing no requirements on rational believers at all. Finally, I develop and endorse a new solution to the problem. This view proposes dynamic norms for reasoning with credences. The solution is based on an old proposal of Ian Hacking’s that says you’re required to be sensitive to logical facts only when you know they are logical facts. (shrink)

In section 1, I develop epistemic communism, my view of the function of epistemically evaluative terms such as ‘rational’. The function is to support the coordination of our belief-forming rules, which in turn supports the reliable acquisition of beliefs through testimony. This view is motivated by the existence of valid inferences that we hesitate to call rational. I defend the view against the worry that it fails to account for a function of evaluations within first-personal deliberation. In the rest of (...) the paper, I then argue, on the basis of epistemic communism, for a view about rationality itself. I set up the argument in section 2 by saying what a theory of rational deduction is supposed to do. I claim that such a theory would provide a necessary, sufficient, and explanatorily unifying condition for being a rational rule for inferring deductive consequences. I argue in section 3 that, given epistemic communism and the conventionality that it entails, there is no such theory. Nothing explains why certain rules for deductive reasoning are rational. (shrink)

Rationalism, my target, says that in order to have perceptual knowledge, such as that your hand is making a fist, you must “antecedently” (or “independently”) know that skeptical scenarios don’t obtain, such as the skeptical scenario that you are in the Matrix. I motivate the specific form of Rationalism shared by, among others, White (Philos Stud 131:525–557, 2006) and Wright (Proc Aristot Soc Suppl Vol 78:167–212, 2004), which credits us with warrant to believe (or “accept”, in Wright’s terms) that our (...) senses are reliably veridical, where that warrant is one we enjoy by default, that is, without relying on any evidence or engaging in any positive argument. The problem with this form of Rationalism is that, even if you have default knowledge that your senses are reliable, this is not adequate to rule out every kind of skeptical scenario. The problem is created by one-off skeptical scenarios, scenarios that involve a highly reliable perceiver who, by a pure fluke, has a one-off, non-veridical experience. I claim you cannot infer that your present perceptual experience is veridical just on the basis of knowledge of your general reliability. More generally, if you infer that the present F is G, just on the basis of your knowledge that most Fs are Gs, this is what I call statistical inference, and, as I argue, statistical inference by itself does not generate knowledge. I defend this view of statistical inference against objections, including the objection that radical skepticism about our ordinary inductive knowledge will follow unless statistical inference generates knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate how the interactions of a robot with its environment can be used to create concepts that are typically represented by verbs in language. Towards this end, we utilize the notion of affordances to argue that verbs typically refer to the generation of a specific type of effect rather than a specific type of action. Then, we show how a robot can form these concepts through interactions with the environment and how humans can use these concepts (...) to ease their communication with the robots. We demonstrate that iCub, a humanoid robot, can use the concepts, which it has developed, to to understand what a human performs, perform multi-step planning for reaching a goal state as well as to specify a goal to the robot using symbolic descriptions. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a question about deductive reasoning: why am I in a position to immediately infer some deductive consequences of what I know, but not others? I show why the question cannot be answered in the most natural ways of answering it, in particular in Descartes’s way of answering it. I then go on to introduce a new approach to answering the question, an approach inspired by Hume’s view of inductive reasoning.

This article focuses on recent discussions about holobionts and evolutionary individuality to evaluate the merits of integrative pluralism. I argue that integrative pluralism is the wrong approach to take when it comes to holobiont research because integrative pluralism is not liberal enough to accommodate both single-species and multispecies individuals. I conclude by suggesting two points. First, a pluralistic view helps us better understand holobiont research. Second, the case of holobionts helps us develop a better account of scientific pluralism.

There are two sorts of singular terms for which we have difficulty applying Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction: complex definite descriptions, and proper names. With respect to the uses of such terms in certain contexts we seem to have conflicting intuitions as to whether they should be classified as referential or attributive. The problem concerning how to apply Donnellan’s distinction to the uses of certain complex definite descriptions has never been debated in the literature. On the other hand there have been attempts (...) to extend Donnellan’s distinction to the uses of proper names, the most popular one being due to Kripke. However the argument Kripke gives to this end in his ‘Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference’ seems to be inconsistent with the position he takes in Naming and Necessity. I suggest that the reason we seem to have conflicting intuitions with respect to the uses of such terms, is because there is not one but two separate distinctions inherent in Donnellan’s examples; a pragmatic distinction based on the speaker’s intentions in using a term , and an epistemic one based on the notion of having an object in mind. In the light of this, I argue that the issue of whether there are attributive uses of proper names, in the latter sense, relates to the epistemic problem of whether a speaker can have de re attitudes toward an object that he does not have in mind. On this epistemic issue Kripke and Donnellan are on opposite sides as revealed by their debate over the issue of whether there are contingent a priori propositions. (shrink)

This article gives a Bayesian argument showing that, even if your total empirical evidence confirms that you have zillions of duplicate Boltzmann Brains, that evidence does not confirm that you are a Boltzmann Brain. The article also attempts to explain what goes wrong with several of the sources of the temptation for thinking that such evidence does have skeptical implications.

What does it mean for a general term to be rigid? It is argued by some that if we take general terms to designate their extensions, then almost no empirical general term will turn out to be rigid; and if we take them to designate some abstract entity, such as a kind, then it turns out that almost all general terms will be rigid. Various authors who pursue this line of reasoning have attempted to capture Kripke’s intent by defining a (...) rigid general term as one that applies to the objects in its extension essentially. I argue that this account is significantly mistaken for various reasons: it conflates a metaphysical notion (essentialism) with a semantic one (rigidity); it fails to countenance the fact that any term can be introduced into a language by stipulating that it be a rigid designator; it limits the extension of rigid terms so much that terms such as ‘meter’, ‘rectangle’, ‘truth’, etc. do not turn out to be rigid, when they obviously are; and it wrongly concentrates on the predicative use of a general term in applying a certain test offered by Kripke to determine whether a term is rigid. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that given Donnellan’s formulation of the attributive uses of definite descriptions, as well as Kripke’s [6] and Salmon’s [10] generalized accounts, most uses of definite descriptions that are taken to be attributive turn out not to be so. In building up to my main thesis, I first consider certain problematic cases of uses of definite descriptions that do not neatly fit into any category. I then argue that, in general, a complete definite description we use (...) is complex, in which there is an embedded singular term that is used referentially. From this I conclude that an attributive use of a definite description is an extremely rare linguistic phenomenon, much less frequent than what Donnellan, Kripke, and Salmon have presupposed; so much so that the standard examples given by Donnellan of the attributive use of definite descriptions do not qualify as attributive. (shrink)

Bu makale kapsamında, XII. yüzyılda yaşamış önemli Yahudi din âlimlerinden Musa bin Meymûn (öl. 601/1204) ile XVII. yüzyılda yaşamış olan ve düşünceleri neticesinde ateist olduğu suçlamasıyla yirmi dört yaşındayken aforoz edilip bağlı bulunduğu Yahudi cemaatinden kovulan Spinoza’nın (öl. 1088/1677) vahiy ve nübüvvet anlayışları ele alınmıştır. Spinoza, Teolojik-Politik İnceleme adlı eserinde, teolojinin felsefeden ayrılması gerekliliğini göstermek amacındadır. Spinoza’nın bu arzusu onu, İbn Meymûn’la ve onun temsil ettiği gelenekle karşı karşıya getirmiştir. Neticede Spinoza’nın vahiy ve nübüvvet konusunda İbn Meymûn’dan etkilendiği ve onunla (...) bir hesaplaşmaya girdiği görülmektedir. Onun İbn Meymûn’dan hangi bakımdan etkilendiği ya da onunla nasıl bir hesaplaşmaya girdiği makalenin asıl konusunu teşkil etmektedir. Çalışmamız giriş, ana bölüm ve sonuç olarak üç bölümden oluşmaktadır. Giriş bölümünde öncelikle vahiy kavramının ne ifade ettiğine ve hem İslam düşünürlerinin hem de İbn Meymûn’un beslendiği ana kaynak olması nedeniyle Platon ile Aristoteles’in kehanet ve rüya hakkındaki görüşlerine kısaca değinilmiştir. Ayrıca Spinoza’nın İbn Meymûn’dan etkilenmesi veya onunla hesaplaşmasının, İbn Meymûn’un da mensubu olduğu İslam filozoflarının temsil ettiği gelenekle alakalı olmasından dolayı giriş bölümünde, bazı İslam filozoflarının görüşlerine de ana hatlarıyla değinme gereği duyulmuştur. Bunu yaparken Müslüman filozofların ilklerinden ve en önemlilerinden kabul edilen Kindî (öl. 252/866?), Fârâbî (öl. 339/950) ve İbn Sinâ’nın (öl. 428/1037) düşüncelerine özlü şekilde değinilmesi yeterli görülmüştür. Bu arada tarihsel açıdan İbn Meymûn’la Spinoza arasında bir yerde duran diğer bir Yahudi filozof Levi ben Gershom’un (öl. 745/1344) fikirleri de kısaca ele alınmıştır. Bu filozofların düşüncelerinden yola çıkılarak vahyin mütehayyile kuvvetiyle, ayrıca rüya ve kehanetle ilgisi gösterilmeye çalışılmıştır. Çalışmanın asıl bölümünde ise öncelikle İbn Meymûn’un vahiy ve nübüvvet anlayışı incelenmiş, akabinde bu, Spinoza’nın vahiy ve nübüvvet anlayışıyla mukayese edilmiştir. İbn Meymûn’un nübüvvet anlayışı incelenirken yer yer İslam filozoflarından etkilendiği kısımlara değinilmiştir. Bu mukayesede bilhassa İbn Meymûn’un Delâletu’l-Hâirîn adlı eseriyle Spinoza’nın Teolojik-Politik İnceleme adlı eseri ana kaynaklar olarak değerlendirilmiştir. Bu çalışma neticesinde hem iki düşünürün teolojik yaklaşımının daha iyi anlaşılması hem de Aydınlanmanın müjdecilerinden biri sayılan Spinoza’nın eleştirel dahi olsa İbn Meymûn’a kadar uzanan düşünce kodları gösterilmek istenmiştir. İbn Meymûn’a kadar uzanan bu kodların aynı zamanda İslam düşünce dünyasına uzandığı da vurgulanmak istenmiştir. Bu makalede, konunun kapsamı iki düşünürün peygamber, vahiy ve vahyin oluşmasında rol alan enfüsi ve afaki etmeler ile vahyin dili yönündeki düşünceleriyle sınırlandırılmıştır. İki düşünürün teolojiye ait mucize gibi diğer görüşlerindeki farklılıklar ya da benzerlikler makalenin kapsamı dışında tutulmuştur. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPopular culture has many examples of evil characters having vertically pupilled eyes. Humans have a long evolutionary history of rivalry with snakes and their visual systems were evolved to rapidly detect snakes and snake-related cues. Considering such evolutionary background, we hypothesised that humans would perceive vertical pupils, which are characteristics of ambush predators including some of the snakes, as threatening. In seven studies conducted on samples from American and Turkish samples, we found that vertical pupils are perceived as more threatening (...) on both explicit and implicit level and they are associated with physical, rather than social, threat. Findings provided partial support regarding our hypothesis about the relevance of snake detection processes: Snake phobia, and not spider phobia, was found to be related to perceiving vertical pupils as threatening, however an experimental manipulation of saliency of snakes re... (shrink)

Ehrenmord ist eine nicht selten vorkommende Tat in der Turkei. Mit fortgesetzter Wanderung in die großen Städte der Türkei und ins Ausland, wird dieses Phänomen auch in andere Regionen getragen. Daher setzt sich auch die Öffentlichkeit in zunehmenden Maße mit dieser Thematik auseinander. In diesem Artikel wird versucht, den Ehrenmord unter philosophischen Gesichtspunkten zu erklären.Hierzu werden Gedanken Engels, Butlers, Foucaults, Levi Strauss’ und auch weitere bedeutende Forschungsarbeiten zum Thema Selbstmord hinzugezogen.

This paper aims to accessibly present, and then critique, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber's recent proposals for the evolutionary function of human reasoning. I take a critical look at the main source of experimental evidence that they claim as support for their view, namely the confirmation or “myside” bias in reasoning. I object that Mercier and Sperber did not adequately argue for a claim that their case rests on, namely that it is evolutionarily advantageous for you to get other people (...) to believe whatever you antecedently believe. And I give my own argument that this claim is false. I also critically look at their suggestion that reasoning has a justificatory function, functioning as a kind of reputation management tool. I argue this suggestion does not amount to a plausible evolutionary function. (shrink)

I object to Markos Valaris’s thesis that reasoning requires a belief that your conclusion follows from your premisses. My counter-examples highlight the important but neglected role of suppositional reasoning in the basis of so much of what we know.

The main question of this paper is: how do we manage to know what our own degrees of belief are? Section 1 briefly reviews and criticizes the traditional functionalist view, a view notably associated with David Lewis and sometimes called the theory-theory. I use this criticism to motivate the approach I want to promote. Section 2, the bulk of the paper, examines and begins to develop the view that we have a special kind of introspective access to our degrees of (...) belief. I give an initial assessment of the view by examining its compatibility with leading theories of introspection. And I identify a challenge for the view, and explain why I'm optimistic that the view can overcome it. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to and elaborate on some of the ideas put forth on my book The Philosophy of Curiosity (2012) as well as its follow-up “Curiosity and Ignorance” (2016) by Nenad Miščević, Erhan Demircioğlu, Mirela Fuš, Safi ye Yiğit, Danilo Šuster, Irem Günhan Altıparmak, and Aran Arslan.

I develop a new version of the ordinary language response to skepticism. My version is based on premises about the practical functions served by our epistemic words. I end by exploring how my argument against skepticism is interestingly non-circular and philosophically valuable.

Jacques Lacan was a notoriously difficult and idiosyncratic thinker. But is there any value in his hermetically difficult style? By highlighting certain crucial elements of his practice, I show how Lacan enlists the notion of difficulty to press home that he did not want his readers to understand directly. Instead, as Foucault and Althusser explain so well, Lacan wished for his readers and auditors to discover themselves as subjects of desire through reading him. Indeed, in miming the language of the (...) unconscious, Lacan believed he could throw into sharp relief the notion of the unconscious itself and, paradoxically, better express himself. This temporary detour through misunderstanding indicates the programmatic value of difficulty itself. By commenting on the comedic aspect of Lacan's difficult literary dandyism, I also seek to playfully remind the reader that Lacan was a master of comedy and irony and that it is only by adopting a comparative literary approach to his work that we can appreciate how his theory of misunderstanding is at the heart of his conceptualization of madness and psychosis, allowing us to see how, for Lacan, the subject is ontologically sick. (shrink)

I argue that Millianism has the very odd consequence that there are simple direct questions that Millians can grasp, but they cannot answer them in the positive or the negative, or in some other way, nor could they say that they do not know the answer.

True beliefs and truth-preserving inferences are, in some sense, good beliefs and good inferences. When an inference is valid though, it is not merely truth-preserving, but truth-preserving in all cases. This motivates my question: I consider a Modus Ponens inference, and I ask what its validity in particular contributes to the explanation of why the inference is, in any sense, a good inference. I consider the question under three different definitions of ‘case’, and hence of ‘validity’: the orthodox definition given (...) in terms of interpretations or models, a metaphysical definition given in terms of possible worlds, and a substitutional definition defended by Quine. I argue that the orthodox notion is poorly suited to explain what's good about a Modus Ponens inference. I argue that there is something good that is explained by a certain kind of truth across possible worlds, but the explanation is not provided by metaphysical validity in particular; nothing of value is explained by truth across all possible worlds. Finally, I argue that the substitutional notion of validity allows us to correctly explain what is good about a valid inference. (shrink)

Background: For an effective treatment of patients, quality-assured safe implementation of drug therapy is indispensable. Fasting during Ramadan, an essential religious practice for Muslims, affects Muslim diabetics’ drug use in a number of different ways. Objectives: Ethical problems arising from fasting during the month of Ramadan for practicing Muslim patients are being discussed on the basis of extant research literature. Relevant conflicts of interest originating in this situation are being analysed from an ethical perspective. Material and methods: A number of (...) databases have been searched systematically in view of the stated objectives to identify relevant studies. Starting point for this review are the following questions: What information is available regarding the fasting behaviour of Muslim diabetics during Ramadan? What kind of ethical problems can be identified in the context of this religious practice? Results: The present review established a number of problems concerning medication adherence and drug use of practising Muslim diabetics during Ramadan, notably insufficient compliance, reduced frequency of consultations with their doctor, and inadequate, not sufficiently goal-oriented doctor-patient conversations about fasting. Conclusions: Deficiencies in medical as well as religious knowledge about fasting in Ramadan and a lack of sensitivity have been found among Muslim patients as well as among doctors. Compliance management and drug use in this area can be improved by effective, goal-oriented action plans and projects through which linguistic and cultural barriers can be addressed. (shrink)

I critically examine an evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism. The key premise of the argument is that there is no adequate explanation of our moral reliability. I search for the strongest version of the argument; this involves exploring how ‘adequate explanation’ could be understood such that the key premise comes out true. Finally, I give a reductio: in the sense in which there is no adequate explanation of our moral reliability, there is equally no adequate explanation of our inductive (...) reliability. Thus, the argument that would debunk our moral views would also, absurdly, debunk all inductive reasoning. (shrink)

After briefly expositing some fundamental issues in current debates about apriority, I go on to critically examine meaning-based explanations of how we acquire apriori justification.

ZusammenfassungIn wertpluralen Gesellschaften begegnen uns in der medizinischen Versorgung zahlreiche Konflikte, bei denen die kulturellen und religiösen Wertvorstellungen und Einstellungen des Patienten eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Besonders komplex wird es, wenn die betroffene Person nicht mehr in der Lage ist, selbst über die medizinischen Maßnahmen zu entscheiden. Ob eine Patientenverfügung in solchen Konfliktsituationen einen entscheidenden Beitrag zu einer ethisch angemessenen Lösung leisten kann, bleibt eine berechtigte Frage. Im Folgenden werden die ethischen Aspekte im Umgang mit muslimischen Patienten und die Nutzung (...) einer kultursensiblen und kultursensitiven Patientenverfügung bei diesen Patienten differenziert behandelt.Die Vielfalt an Haltungen zu Entscheidungen am Lebensende innerhalb der islamischen Welt, der Einfluss der Familie und traditioneller sittlicher Einstellungen, heterogene Formen der Religiosität und das Gesundheitssystem des jeweiligen Landes erweisen sich als wichtige normative Anhaltspunkte für die Anwendung einer Patientenverfügung bei muslimischen Patienten. Trotz zahlreicher Schwierigkeiten kann eine kultursensible und kultursensitive Patientenverfügung einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Berücksichtigung und Umsetzung der Entscheidungen eines entscheidungsunfähig gewordenen muslimischen Patienten leisten. (shrink)