It is largely assumed that conceptual engineering is essentially about revising, introducing, or eliminating representational devices, in particular the intension and extension of words and concepts. However, tying conceptual engineering too closely to representations is risky. Not everyone endorses the notion of representation as theoretically helpful or even real. Not everyone thinks that concepts or meanings should be understood in terms of the notion of representation. Does this mean that conceptual engineering is not interesting or relevant for (...) these skeptics? In this paper, I motivate and propose a non-representationalist construal of conceptual engineering. I argue that conceptual engineers can be understood as primarily engineering linguistic entitlements and commitments rather than representational devices. Note that this account is non-representationalist, but explicitly not anti-representationalist. Representations may play a significant role when it comes to justifying and completing commitment engineering projects. (shrink)

Can scientific evidence prompt us to revise philosophical theories or folk theoretical accounts of phenomena of the mind? We will argue that it can—but only under the condition that they make a so-called ‘ontological commitment’ to something that is actually subject to empirical inquiry. In other words, scientific evidence pertaining to neuroanatomical structure or causal processes only has a refuting effect if philosophical theories and folk notions subscribe to either account. We will illustrate the importance of ‘ontological commitment’ with the (...) ‘neuroanatomical approach’ to amusement as proposed in a recent paper by Palencik :419–434, 2007). We will show that the scientific evidence presented in said neuroanatomical approach has no bearing on the conceptual issues, in that the philosophical theories and folk distinction that are criticized do not subscribe to any account of the underlying neuroanatomical structure or causal processes. Our suggestions in this paper are not limited to philosophical accounts of humor but apply to the relationship of philosophy, common sense and science in general. (shrink)

Conceptualization and measurement of organizational commitment involve different dimensions that include economic, affective, as well as moral aspects labelled in the literature as: ‘continuance’, ‘affective’ and ‘normative’ commitment. This multidimensional framework emerges from the convergence of different research lines. Using Aristotle’s philosophical framework, that explicitly considers the role of the will in human commitment, it is proposed a rational explanation of the existence of mentioned dimensions in organizational commitment. Such a theoretical proposal may offer a more accurate definition of ‘affective (...) commitment’ that distinguishes feelings from rational judgments. The use of a philosophical explanation coherent with psychological findings also allows the discovery of a wider moral concept of ‘normative commitment’. (shrink)

Many research institutions and funders have recently stated their commitment to actively support and promote ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ (EDI) in various aspects of health research including Patient and Public Involvement (PPI). However, translating this commitment into specific research projects presents significant challenges that existing approaches, practical guidelines and initiatives have not adequately addressed. In this paper, we explore how the lack of clear justifications for the EDI commitment in existing guidelines inadvertently complicates the work of those involved with PPI (...) and we stress the need for conceptual clarity for any EDI effort to yield meaningful results. Our focus centres on the first principle of the EDI discourse, ‘equality’, particularly in the form of ‘equality of opportunity’ as outlined in current guidance provided by the National Institute of Health Research in the United Kingdom. We examine challenges related to justifying and implementing a general, unspecified commitment to equality of opportunity and explain that this reflects a lack of consensus regarding the moral value of PPI in research – a profound problem that remains unaddressed. We then discuss how the presence of several opposing moral perspectives on PPI, makes determining the most appropriate way of addressing barriers to involvement complex and controversial, raising ethical implications for the work of health researchers, PPI specialists and coordinators. Finally we make suggestions on how future research can enrich the concept of ‘equality of opportunity’ in PPI and improve practice. While our primary focus is on the NIHR, a strong advocate of PPI in research, this analysis will point to normative and ethical considerations that may be relevant to other research institutions and funding organisations aiming to promote equality of opportunity in their public and patient involvement strategies. (shrink)

This chapter argues for the importance of considering conceptual and normative commitments when addressing questions of responsible practice in data-intensive agricultural research and development. We consider genetic gain-focused plant breeding strategies that envision a data-intensive mode of breeding in which genomic, environmental and socio-economic data are mobilised for rapid crop variety development. Focusing on socio-economic data linkage, we examine methods of product profiling and how they accommodate gendered dimensions of breeding in the field. Through a comparison with participatory (...) breeding methods, we argue that the conceptual commitments underpinning current methods of integrating socioeconomic data into calculations of genetic gain can preclude the achievement of key social development goals, and that better engagement with participatory approaches can help address this problem. We conclude by identifying three key avenues towards a data-intensive approach to plant breeding that utilises the diverse sources of relevant evidence available, including socio-economic data, and maximises the chance of developing sustainable and responsible strategies and research practices in this domain: (1) reliable, long-term management of data infrastructures; (2) ongoing critical analysis of the conceptual foundations of specific strategies; and (3) regular transdisciplinary consultations including expertise in the social studies of agricultural science as well as participatory breeding techniques. (shrink)

The concepts expressed by social role terms such as artist and scientist are unique in that they seem to allow two independent criteria for categorization, one of which is inherently normative. This study presents and tests an account of the content and structure of the normative dimension of these “dual character concepts.” Experiment 1 suggests that the normative dimension of a social role concept represents the commitment to fulfill the idealized basic function associated with the role. Background information can affect (...) which basic function is associated with each social role. However, Experiment 2 indicates that the normative dimension always represents the relevant commitment as an end in itself. We argue that social role concepts represent the commitments to basic functions because that information is crucial to predict the future social roles and role-dependent behavior of others. (shrink)

This book provides a novel formulation and defence of moral error theory. It also provides a novel solution to the so-called now what question; viz., the question what we should do with our moral thought and talk after moral error theory. The novel formulation of moral error theory uses pragmatic presupposition rather than conceptual entailment to argue that moral judgments carry a non-negotiable commitment to categorical moral reasons. The new answer to the now what question is pragmatic presupposition substitutionism: (...) we should substitute our current moral judgments, which pragmatically presuppose the existence of categorical moral reasons with ‘schmoral’ judgments that pragmatically presuppose the existence of a specific class of prudential reasons. These are prudential reasons that, when we act on them, contribute to the satisfaction of what the author calls ‘the fundamental desire’; namely, the desire to live in a world with mutually beneficial cooperation. (shrink)

Reconstruction is a central notion in Dewey’s account of inquiry and in his metaphilosophical commitments. In his work, Dewey made a call for reconstruction of philosophy, in the reconstruction of central notions of the discipline, like knowledge, logic, truth, the good, reason, and experience. Inquiry itself is reconstructive, according to Dewey, involving the transformation of an indeterminate situation into one which is determinate and understood. Dewey’s philosophical views should therefore be of interest to those taking part in the recent (...) turn towards revisionary philosophical methodologies, like conceptual engineering, explication, and amelioration. In light of the recent developments in revisionary methodologies, I aim to explore Dewey’s conception of concepts in relation to the conceptual engineering literature, suggesting that it provides a useful conception of concepts for conceptual engineering, and to suggest a Deweyan model of philosophical inquiry where concepts are the objects of inquiry. In both cases, I hope to show a productive interaction between Dewey’s ideas and contemporary discussions of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Cognitive science has been beset for thirty years by foundational disputes about the nature and extension of cognition—e.g. whether cognition is necessarily representational, whether cognitive processes extend outside the brain or body, and whether plants or microbes have them. Whereas previous philosophical work aimed to settle these disputes, I aim to understand what conception of cognition scientists could share given that they disagree so fundamentally. To this end, I develop a number of variations on traditional conceptual explication, and defend (...) a novel explication of cognition called the sensitive management hypothesis. -/- Since expert judgments about the extension of “cognition” vary so much, I argue that there is value in explication that accurately models the variance in judgments rather than taking sides or treating that variance as noise. I say of explications that accomplish this that they are ecumenically extensionally adequate. Thus, rather than adjudicating whether, say, plants can have cognitive processes like humans, an ecumenically adequate explication should classify these cases differently: human cognitive processes as paradigmatically cognitive, and plant processes as controversially cognitive. -/- I achieve ecumenical adequacy by articulating conceptual explications with parameters, or terms that can be assigned a number of distinct interpretations based on the background commitments of participants in a discourse. For example, an explication might require that cognition cause “behavior,” and imply that plant processes are cognitive or not depending on whether anything plants do can be considered “behavior.” Parameterization provides a unified treatment of embattled concepts by isolating topics of disagreement in a small number of parameters. -/- I incorporate these innovations into an account on which cognition is the “sensitive management of organismal behavior.” The sensitive management hypothesis is ecumenically extensionally adequate, accurately classifying a broad variety of cases as paradigmatically or controversially cognitive phenomena. I also describe an extremely permissive version of the sensitive management hypothesis, arguing that it has the potential to explain several features of cognitive scientific discourse, including various facts about the way cognitive scientists ascribe representations to cognitive systems. (shrink)

We describe the legal practice of using civil court orders to mandate outpatient mental health treatment for adults with serious mental illness. After briefly placing the practice in historical context, we discuss the traditional clinical rationale and assumptions underlying outpatient commitment and its legal variants, as well as how the predominant and controversial preventive form of outpatient commitment emerged in the U.S. to address limitations of earlier versions of these laws, such as "conditional release." We then consider whether, and under (...) what conditions, outpatient commitment may be ethical, and we provide a conceptual framework for deciding such questions at the policy and individual-case levels. (shrink)

This article introduces an “ordonomic” approach to corporate citizenship. We believe that ordonomics offers a conceptual framework for analyzing both the social structure and the semantics of moral commitments. We claim that such an analysis can provide theoretical guidance for the changing role of business in society, especially in regard to the expectation and trend that businesses take a political role and act as corporate citizens. The systematicraison d'êtreof corporate citizenship is that business firms can and—judged by the (...) criterion of prudent self-interest—“should” take on an active role in rule-finding discourses and rule-setting processes with the intent of realizing a win-win outcome of the economic game. We identify—and illustrate—four ways that corporate citizens can employ moral commitments as a factor of production to enhance their processes of economic value creation. (shrink)

Can we justify our most basic beliefs about morality, religion and the nature of the world? Can there be a rational and objective way of choosing between alternative societies, modes of life or world-views? Dr Trigg shows how philosophical analysis is relevant to these questions and criticizes the tendency to emphasize notions of commitment and convention at the expense of truth and reason. He draws parallels between issues that are often too isolated from each other and identifies a cluster of (...) related ideas, all of which stress the notion of self-contained conceptual systems that define their own standards of rationality. First published in 1973, this book will interest professional philosophers as a vigorous and distinctive exposition of several fundamental philosophical problems and more especially it can be used as an introduction for students to a wide range of philosophical problems. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis is undergoing a revival in philosophy, and much of the credit goes to Frank Jackson. Jackson argues that conceptual analysis is needed as an integral component of so-called serious metaphysics and that it also does explanatory work in accounting for such phenomena as categorization, meaning change, communication, and linguistic understanding. He even goes so far as to argue that opponents of conceptual analysis are implicitly committed to it in practice. We show that he is wrong (...) on all of these points and that his case for conceptual analysis doesn't succeed. At the same time, we argue that the sorts of intuitions that figure in conceptual analysis may still have a significant role to play in philosophy. So naturalists needn't disregard intuitions altogether. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In what sense is commitment essential to joint action, and do the participants in a joint action themselves perceive commitment as essential? Attempts to answer this question have so far been hampered by clashes of intuition. Perhaps this is because the intuitions in question have mostly been investigated using informal methods only. To explore this possibility, we adopted a more formal approach to testing intuitions about joint action, sampling naïve participants’ intuitions about experimentally controlled scenarios. This approach did reveal (...) patterns in participants’ responses which may hint at potential conceptual links between commitment and joint action. It did not however provide evidence to support the view that commitment is essential to joint action, at least not from the agents’ own perspective. We conclude that intuitions alone, even when drawn systematically from a large sample, may be a poor basis for theorizing about joint action. (shrink)

Moral distress has been the subject of extensive research and debate in the nursing ethics literature since the mid-1980s, but the concept has received comparatively little attention from those working outside of applied ethics. In this article, I defend a care ethical account of moral distress, according to which the phenomenon is the product of an agent’s inability to live up to one of her caring commitments. This account has a number of attractions. First, it places a greater emphasis (...) on the importance of the relationship between the caregiver and her cared-for than that found in previous accounts. Second, it does not make problematic assumptions about the correctness of a caregiver’s moral judgments, as has been claimed in relation to previous accounts of moral distress. Finally, my account allows for a clear conceptual distinction to be drawn between moral distress and other forms of negative moral emotion such as guilt and regret. Earlier accounts draw this distinction by appealing to the causal aetiology of moral distress, but as I show here, such appeals are ultimately unsuccessful unless they are made from an explicitly care ethical starting point. One of the implications of my account is that moral distress has the potential to occur in the context of any caregiving relationship. This claim is explored in the final section of the paper, in relation to student-teacher and parent-child caregiving. (shrink)

This paper explains three ways to develop a conceptual role view of meaning in metaethics. First, it suggests that there’s a way to combine inspiration from noncognitivism with a particular form of the conceptual role view to form a noncognitivist view with distinctive advantages over other noncognitivist views. Second, it suggests that there’s also a way to combine a strong commitment to cognitivism with a different form of the conceptual role view to form a version of cognitivism (...) with distinctive advantages over other cognitivist views. Finally, it suggests that there's another way to think of the conceptual role view in metaethics is as opening up the space for a third way, beyond cognitivism and noncognitivism. (shrink)

This article explores the conceptual commitments underlying Luxemburg’s repudiation of the discourse of disappointment which had overtaken the European socialist movement during the First World War. My analysis brushes against the grain of the traditional interpretation of Luxemburg’s admonitions ‘to be cheerful despite everything and anything’ as arising from her allegiance to a Marxist philosophy of history which decrees that socialism must inevitably prevail and so refuses to give way to disappointment or despair. The philosophy of history which (...) Luxemburg absorbed from Marx, notably through the Eighteenth Brumaire, prophesies the ultimate victory of socialism but ordains that the actual events and experiences through which this victory is prepared will consist in catastrophes rather than conquests. In Luxemburg, I suggest, we can see more clearly how the experience of failure could make the realization of socialism more rather than less certain, and in terms that refer more directly to the inner situation of the socialist activist than the abstract assurances on which Marx relied: failure occasions the opportunity for deeper learning but, more importantly, it is in the experience of failure that the commitment on which the realization of socialism depends is tested and, in Luxemburg’s hands at least, forged. (shrink)

Using Rational Choice Theory to account for moral agency has always had some uncomfortable aspect to it. Economists’ attempts to include the moral dimension of behaviour either as a preference for moral behaviour or as an external constraint on self-interested choice, have been criticized for relying on tautologies or lacking a realistic picture of motivation. Homo Oeconomicus, even when conceptually enriched by all kinds of motivations, is ultimately still characterized as caring only for what lies in his interest. Amartya Sen (...) has drawn the economists’ attention to a specific blind spot in rational choice theory (henceforth RCT), i.e. the idea of commitment. By starting from the premise that the human capacity to commit is a necessary precondition for moral behaviour, our aim in this paper is twofold: first, we argue that taking the idea of commitment seriously in economics requires an enriched concept of rationality. Second, we reject a Kantian interpretation of Sen’s concept of commitment and argue that Harry Frankfurt’s views about caring can be used to develop the concept of commitment in a direction that is compatible with Rational Choice Theory. (shrink)

This article develops a conceptual framework that explains how organizations can influence employees’ attitudes and behaviour through their corporate social responsibility activities. There are plenty of studies to suggest the financial benefits of CSR. However, studies are scarce to link CSR with non-financial measures of organizational effectiveness, such as, affective commitment, job engagement and organizational citizenship behaviour. Moreover, studies are rare to delineate the process through which CSR can bring positive attitudes. Thus, this article focuses on organizational prosocial identity (...) as a mediating variable. The role of communicating CSR activities is almost negligible and to address this gap, this article considers CSR communication as a moderating variable. Drawing from literature, this article argues that the success of an organization lies in enhancing positive attitudes among employees and probably, one of the ways to promote this is through CSR. Based on this assertion, the framework identifies CSR activities towards four stakeholders and its impacts on employees. Several research implications are proposed based on the propositions highlighted in this article. (shrink)

Conceptual Engineering, the practice of stipulating a change in the meaning of a word in order to improve it in some fashion, for some end, has proved a popular topic among philosophers of language in recent times. Deutsch (Philos Stud 177:3935–3957, 2020) has argued that it has received an undue degree of interest since its implementation falls onto one of the horns of a dilemma: either the change to be effected is in the global semantic meaning of the given (...) word/concept, in which case it is infeasible, or it is merely in the local speaker-meaning, in which case it is largely trivial. I suggest, however, that there is a deeper, more troubling, objection to Conceptual Engineering. My criticism does not strictly take the form of a dilemma, since some cases may fall upon both horns at once and others may be able to squeeze through the gap, but it does involve highlighting two potential weaknesses of the project: one of those, as with Deutsch, is the danger of triviality, although it is not concerned only with the division between semantic and speaker meaning. It seems clear that there are cases where a particular authority or legislature has the capacity to alter a word’s legal meaning; others where certain groups may discuss the best way to use a technical term, each putting forward their preferred suggestions; and individual speakers are at liberty to choose to use a word with a particular intention. None of this is new, nor controversial, and, thus, is largely trivial. In all cases, but particularly where meanings are manipulated without due authority, inexplicitly, or in order to further a particular theoretical conception, however, there is a strong chance that the engineer will be led to commit one of the fallacies of language to which philosophy is particularly vulnerable (Hinton Evaluating the language of argument, Springer, Cham, 2021). These include fallacies of vagueness, equivocation, and persuasive definition. In this paper, I use examples to illustrate the likely fallaciousness of conceptual redefinitions and highlight in particular the ‘Philosophical Fallacy’, outlined by Nelson (A theory of philosophical fallacies.Translated by Leal F, Carus D. Springer, Cham 2016). I conclude that, as a method for philosophers, Conceptual Engineering is, in broad terms, either trivial or fallacious. (shrink)

Although first published in 1969, the methodological views advanced in Quentin Skinner's “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas” remain relevant today. In his article Skinner suggests that it would be inappropriate to even attempt to write the history of any idea or concept. In support of this view, Skinner advances two arguments, one derived from the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein and the other from that of J. L. Austin. In this paper I focus on the first of (...) these arguments. I claim that the conclusion which Skinner draws from this particular argument does not necessarily follow and that an alternative assessment of the methodological significance of Wittgenstein's philosophy for historians of ideas is possible. On this alternative view, far from ruling out conceptual history, an appeal to the view of meaning set out in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations leads to a quite different conclusion, namely that the writing of such a history is arguably a necessary precondition for the elucidation of the meaning of a number of the core concepts in the canon of the history of political thought. Skinner's views have changed somewhat since 1969. Indeed, from the mid 1970s onwards he came to relax the strict opposition to the idea of conceptual history to which he was then committed. The paper concludes by noting that this evolution in Skinner's thinking has made him much more sympathetic than anybody reading “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas” would have imagined to the research project of the Begriffgeschichte School of conceptual history. (shrink)

Given the African experience today---an experience defined by the search for a synthesis between the various influences on contemporary African culture, in particular Christianity and Islam, and, on the one hand, science, technology and modernization, while on the other, the quest for freedom and development in a condition of enervating poverty---what should be the commitment of the African philosopher? This is the question I address in this essay. I argue that not much can be gained in this situation by a (...) commitment to African culture or commitment to a discipline---philosophy. What is required, I suggest, is a commitment to human interests on the continent. This commitment can be expressed in various ways; for example, through the analysis, critique and reconstruction of traditional conceptual schemes, the examination of the ideological foundations of the African predicament and the consideration of issues---substantive and methodological---in other disciplines, particularly the social sciences. (shrink)

Every area of knowledge is based on a variety of products of conceptual engineering. This article is programmatic in essence: it aims at introducing a model of how conceptual engineering works and, particularly, how conceptual innovation is achieved in the context of theoretical inquiry. First, it describes the context in which the explicit study of the relevance, scope, mechanisms, and aims of conceptual engineering was born. Secondly, it introduces a distinction between evaluative and instrumental conceptual (...) engineering based on the difference between committed and instrumental conceptual use. According to this, it argues that both evaluative and instrumental conceptual engineering might be formally seen as the result of one function, which, provided a conceptual problem, maps to possible conceptual solutions generating success or failure values. Lastly, it introduces a third kind of conceptual engineering, namely, constructive conceptual engineering. Its core is a function that maps solutions to a representational space of non-considered alternatives, thus generating new conceptual content. In general, the proposed model offers a productive and novel field of inquiry on the conditions and factors that grounds theoretical innovation through conceptual engineering. (shrink)

This thesis is a systematic investigation of whether there might be conceptual room for the idea that the world itself might be vague, independently of how we describe it. This idea – the existence of so-called ontic vagueness – has generally been extremely unpopular in the literature; my thesis thus seeks to evaluate whether this ‘negative press’ is justified. I start by giving a working definition and semantics for ontic vagueness, and then attempt to show that there are no (...) conclusive arguments that rule out vagueness of this kind. I subsequently establish what type of arguments I think would be most effective in establishing ontic vagueness and provide some arguments of this form. I then highlight a potential worry for this type of argument, but argue that it can be circumvented. Finally, I consider the main ways that the opponent of ontic vagueness would be likely resist the arguments I have offered, and argue that these strategies of response are methodologically problematic. I conclude by claiming that ontic vagueness is a perfectly plausible ontological commitment. (shrink)

Theories that combine physicalism with phenomenal concepts abandon the phenomenal irrealism characteristic of 1950s physicalism, thereby leaving physicalists trying to reconcile themselves to concepts appropriate only to dualism. Physicalists should instead abandon phenomenal concepts and try to develop our concepts of conscious states. Employing an account of concepts as structured mental representations, and motivating a model of conceptual development with semantic externalist considerations, I suggest that phenomenal concepts misrepresent their referents, such that if our conception of consciousness incorporates them, (...) it needs development. I then argue that the ?phenomenal concept strategy? (PCS) of a purely cognitive account of the distinction between phenomenal and physical concepts combines physicalism with phenomenal concepts only by misrepresenting physical properties. This is because phenomenal concepts carry ontological commitment, and I present an argument to show the tension between this commitment and granting ontological authority to physical concepts only. In the final section, I show why phenomenal concepts are more ontologically committed than PCS theorists can allow, revive U.T. Place's notion of a ?phenomenological fallacy? to explain their enduring appeal, and then suggest some advantages of functional analyses of concepts of conscious states over the phenomenal alternative. (shrink)

In section 308 of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein talks of the first step in philosophizing being ‘the one that altogether escapes notice ... that’s just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter’. In this essay, Michael Beaney explores some of the connections between conceptual creativity and the kind of first steps of which Wittgenstein spoke. Beaney argues that a good example of such a first step is Frege’s use of function–argument analysis and the associated conception (...) of concepts as functions, which led to almost all his characteristic doctrines. And Beaney shows that, while it is tempting to see the conceptual creativity involved in this case—that is, in Frege’s reconceiving concepts as functions—as originating in some ‘Eureka!’ moment and as catching on when others can exclaim ‘Now I can go on!’, all this needs careful description to avoid mythologization. (shrink)

On Chang's voluntarist account of commitments, when we commit to φ, we employ the 'normative powers' of our will to give ourselves a reason to φ that we would otherwise not have had. I argue that Chang's account, by itself, does not have sufficient conceptual resources to reconcile the normative significance of commitments with their alleged fundamentally volitional character. I suggest an alternative, second-personal account of commitment, which avoids this problem. On this account, the volitional act involved (...) in committing is one of holding ourselves accountable, thus putting us under to a pro tanto obligation to ourselves. The second-personal account implies that there is an interesting link between commitment and morality. (shrink)

Shepard’s (1987) universal law of generalisation (ULG) illustrates that an invariant gradient of generalisation across species and across stimuli conditions can be obtained by mapping the probability of a generalisation response onto the representations of similarity between individual stimuli. Tenenbaum and Griffiths (2001) Bayesian account of generalisation expands ULG towards generalisation from multiple examples. Though the Bayesian model starts from Shepard’s account it refrains from any commitment to the notion of psychological similarity to explain categorisation. This chapter presents the (...) class='Hi'>conceptual spaces theory (Gärdenfors 2000, 2014) as a mediator between Shepard’s and Tenenbaum & Griffiths’ conflicting views on the role of psychological similarity for a successful model of categorisation. It suggests that the conceptual spaces theory can help to improve the Bayesian model while finding an explanatory role for psychological similarity. (shrink)

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) holds that evolutionary fitness is an objectively probabilistic causal disposition (i.e., a propensity) toward reproductive success. I characterize this as the conceptual foundation of the PIF. Reproductive propensities are meant to explain trends in actual reproductive outcomes. In this paper, I analyze the minimal theoretical and ontological commitments that must accompany the explanatory power afforded by the PIF’s foundation. I discuss three senses in which these commitments are less burdensome than has (...) typically been recognized: the PIF’s foundation is (i) compatible with a principled pluralism regarding the mathematical relationship between measures of individual and trait reproductive success; (ii) independent of the propensity interpretation of probability; and (iii) independent of microphysical indeterminism. The most substantive ontological commitment of the PIF’s foundation is to objective modal structures wherein macrophysical probabilities and causation can be found, but I hedge against metaphysically inflationary readings of this modality. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the implications of recent empirical research on concept representation for the philosophical enterprise of conceptual analysis. I argue that conceptual analysis, as it is commonly practiced, is committed to certain assumptions about the nature of our intuitive categorization judgments. I then try to show how these assumptions clash with contemporary accounts of concept representation in cognitive psychology. After entertaining an objection to my argument, I close by considering ways in which conceptual analysis (...) might be altered to accord better with the empirical work. (shrink)

This paper discusses the integrated approach to the semantics and pragmatics of language developed in my Making It Explicit . The core claim is that there are six consequential relations among commitments and entitlements that are sufficient for a practice exhibiting them to qualify as discursive, that is, as a practice of giving and asking for reasons, hence as one conferring genuinely conceptual content on the expressions, performances, and statuses that have scorekeeping significances in those practices. I divide (...) the six consequential relations into two groups, the fundamental-semantic and the social-pragmatic, and I characterise the complex interactions between them. The bold and potentially falsifiable overall claim is that any practice that exhibits this full six-fold structure will be interpretable in a broadly Davidsonian sense: roughly, mappable onto ours in a way that makes conversation with us possible. (shrink)

It is important that from a wider scientific perspective the basics of the conceptual comprehension of impeachment entrenched in the 1992 Lithuanian Constitution be related not only to (a) the nine explicit provisions whereby impeachment relations are regulated directly (Item 5 of Article 63, Article 74, Paragraph 2 of Article 86, Item 5 of Article 88, the first sentence of Paragraph 1 of Article 89, Item 4 of Paragraph 3 of Article 105, Paragraph 3 of Article 107, Item 5 (...) of Article 108, Article 116), but also to (b) the general constitutional principles (especially, the principle of protection of the rights and freedoms of a person), as well as to (c) the precedents of preparation, arrangement, suspension or continuation of impeachment proceedings (in cases of A. Butkevičius, R. Paksas or L. Karalius) and to (d) comparative international aspects, which are perceived not only in the US Constitution, but also in the European Convention on Human Rights which is no longer compatible (and clashing as regards the issue of consequences of impeachment) with the former. According to the European Court of Human Rights (judgment of 6 January 2011 in the case Paksas v. Lithuania), the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits irreversible (termless) limitation (grounded on impeachment) of the passive electoral right to be a Member of Parliament. It is also important to perceive (three) abstract procedural grounds of application of this institute to a certain official—a gross violation of the Constitution, breach of the oath and in case it transpires that a crime has been committed (Article 74 of the Constitution), and the factual (“concrete actions”—see Item 4 of Paragraph 3 of Article 105) grounds qualified according to the former, while due to the factual grounds the “impeachment case” is instituted. The notion “impeachment case” used in Item 4 of Paragraph 3 of Article 105 of the Constitution deserves special scientific attention. This notion indirectly means that: (a) prior to the application to the Constitutional Court by the Seimas, an impeachment case is (must be) instituted, which in itself means that impeachment and initiation and consideration thereof are distinguished by peculiarity in substantive procedure; (b) the Constitutional Court neither institutes this case nor “takes it over” (considers it), but in “its own” case of constitutional justice verifies those factual and procedural grounds, which are necessary in “the other” (impeachment) case instituted in the Seimas. The essence of the institute of impeachment cannot be properly perceived in the constitutional notions of “impeachment”, “case”, “proceedings“, if these notions are assessed only in the explicit provisions of Article 74 of the Constitution, i.e. they are not related to the logic of substantive and procedural arrangement and “intertwining” of the three provisions of the Constitution (Article 74, Item 4 of Paragraph 3 of Article 105 and Paragraph 3 of Article 107) as well as to the purpose of these provisions. On the grounds of the said three provisions of the Constitution, it is possible to assume that the essence of the institute of impeachment lies in a specific official accusation (of violations of special law) against the officials who have acquired (or who hold) certain constitutional powers and of bringing such officials to constitutional liability under the procedure for specific parliamentary impeachment proceedings and constitutional justice proceedings, i.e. deprivation (discontinuation) of constitutional powers under multi-level procedure for conditionally dual proceedings, in which the parliamentary proceedings and the constitutional justice proceedings are inter-connected and supplementeach other. (shrink)

J. M. Kennedy and J. Vervaeke argue that my view of the bodily and imaginative basis of meaning commits me to a mistaken reductionism and to the erroneous view that metaphors actually impose structure on the target domain. I explain the sense in which image schemas are central to the bodily grounding of meaning, although in a way that is not reductionistic. I then show how conceptual metaphors can involve pre-existing image-schematic structure and yet can also be partially constitutive (...) of the conceptual structure of the target domain. In this way human conceptual systems can be both rooted in patterns of our bodily interactions and at the same time can be subject to various kinds of imaginative development and extension. (shrink)

Davidson’s 1974 argument denying the possibility of incommensurable conceptual schemes is widely interpreted as entailing a denial of metaphysical pluralism. Speakers may group objects differently or have different beliefs about the world, but there is just one world. I argue there is tension arising from three aspects of Davidson’s philosophy: the 1974 argument against conceptual schemes; Davidson’s more recent emphasis on primitive triangulation as a necessary condition for thought and language; and Davidson’s semantic approach to metaphysics, what he (...) calls ‘the method of truth in metaphysics’. After elucidating the tension, I argue the tension can be resolved while preserving at least two major tenets of Davidson’s philosophy: conceptual schemes do not carve an uninterpreted reality into different worlds and truth is objective and non-epistemic. I argue Davidson is implicitly committed to a plurality of worlds. (shrink)

The study investigated postgraduate students’ knowledge of plagiarism, forms of plagiarism they commit, the reasons they commit plagiarism and actions taken against postgraduate students who plagiarise at Mzuzu University in Malawi. The study adopted a mixed methods approach. The quantitative data were collected by distributing questionnaires to postgraduate students and academic staff whereas qualitative data were collected by conducting follow-up interviews with some academics, an assistant registrar and assistant librarian. The study found that despite students reporting that they had a (...) conceptual understanding of plagiarism, the majority of them reported that they had intentionally and unintentionally committed plagiarism, mainly due to pressure for good grades (86.7%), laziness and poor time management (84.9%), and lack of good academic writing skills (84.9%). The study also established that prevalent forms of plagiarism admitted (by students) and reported (by academic staff) to have been committed included lack of proper acknowledgement after paraphrasing (69.8%), summarising (64.1%) and using quotation marks (56.6%). The study further found that the common sanctions applied by academics include giving a warning and asking the student to re-write the plagiarised work. The study recommends that Mzuzu University should carry out awareness campaigns about the negative effects of plagiarism, targeting postgraduate students; and should introduce advanced academic writing skills training for postgraduate students. (shrink)

This article examines the evolution of the concept of existence in modern visual representation and reasoning, highlighting important milestones. In the late eighteenth century, during the so-called golden age of visual reasoning, nominalism reigned supreme and there was limited scope for existential import or individuals in logic diagrams. By the late nineteenth century, a form of realism had taken hold, whose existential commitments continue to dominate many areas in logic and visual reasoning to this day. Physical, metaphysical, epistemological, and (...) linguistic positions underlie both nominalist and realist views. Since the paradigmatic works on visual reasoning in the 1990s, formal diagram systems have been developed that revive either the nominalist or realist perspectives. Unlike in the nineteenth century, these are not motivated by philosophical views. Nevertheless, they may still have an impact on many areas of philosophy and science outside logic. (shrink)

In this article I assess Rossian Intuitionism, which is the view that the Rossian Principles of Duty are self-evident. I begin by motivating and clarifying a version of the view—Rossian Conceptual Intuitionism—that hasn’t been adequately considered by Rossians. After defending it against a series of significant objections, I show that enthusiasm for Rossian Conceptual Intuitionism should be muted. Specifically, I argue that we lack sufficient reason for thinking that the Rossian Principles are self-evident, and that insisting that they (...) are self-evident may commit Rossians to radically expanding the scope of self-evidence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Our ascriptions of content to past utterances assign to them a level of conceptual continuity and determinacy that extends beyond what could be grounded in the usage up to their time of utterance. If one accepts such ascriptions, one can argue either that future use must be added to the grounding base, or that such cases show that meaning is not, ultimately, grounded in use. The following will defend the first option as the more promising of the two, (...) though this ultimately requires understanding the relation between use and meaning as ‘normative’ in two important ways. The first way is that the function from use to meaning must be of a sort that allows us to maintain a robust distinction between actual and correct use. The second sort of normativity is unique to theories that extend the grounding base into the future. In particular, if meaning is partially a function of future use, we can see our commitment to the ‘determinacy’ of meaning as a practical commitment that structures our linguistic practices rather than a theoretical commitment that merely describes them. (shrink)

Most accounts of the derogatory meaning of slurs are semantic. Recently, Nunberg proposed a purely pragmatic account offering a compelling picture of the relation between derogatory content and social context. Nunberg posits that the semantic content of slurs is identical to that of neutral counterparts, and that derogation is a result of the association of slur use with linguistic conventions of bigoted speakers. The mechanism responsible for it is a special kind of conversational implicature. However, this paper argues that Nunberg’s (...) proposal suffers from technical and conceptual problems regarding the application of the concepts of implicature and convention. It is proposed that the implicature mechanism should be replaced by expressive commitment attribution. The account advocated here preserves crucial insights of Nunberg’s analysis, 25–48, 2013a, Analytic Philosophy 54, 350–363, 2013b; Bolinger Nous, 51, 439–462, 2017), giving them a firmer conceptual basis. It supports a distinction between derogation and offensiveness of slurs that improves on the one proposed by Hom and May, 293–313 2013), and sheds light on puzzling borderline cases: the use of slurs by ignorant speakers and controversies surrounding the status of some words as potentially slurs. (shrink)

This article approaches the notion of engagement from the perspective of critical ontology. With language as the starting point of its hermeneutic task, it commences with an etymological analyses of diverse Indo-European words gravitating around the semantic field of the notion of engagement. From these introductory insights obtained by an exercise in comparative linguistics, devotion and commitment are mapped as two opposite, yet inseparable, modes of being of engagement. Both of these modes seem to condition engagement in an ontologically disparate (...) manner. While examining their fundamental structures, some of the canonical concepts of history of philosophy such as being, existence, subjectivity, or world - and also some of its constitutive binary oppositions such as body/mind, individual/collective, transcendence/immanence, light/darkness and sacred/secular - will be reconsidered through the prism of different ontological dispositions that devotion and commitment impose respectively on engagement. The overall aim of this investigation is to bring forth the main existential characteristics of being-engaged, by interpreting the roles of who, where, and what of engagement, and in order to provide a fundamental conceptual apparatus for a critical ontology of engagement. (shrink)

Conceptualism conceives of perceptual experience as a source of reasons. This claim can be read in two ways: in a strong reading, perceptual experience is taken to provide necessary and sufficient conditions to justify doxastic states. In a weak reading, it is assumed to provide only the materials to form reasons, which are conceived as “hybrid entities” made from perceptual contents plus doxastic force. The paper shows that whereas the strong version is in error, the weak version is committed to (...) a dualistic understanding of perception-judgment transitions. This result leads to three further conclusions: conceptualism cannot rule out the existence of nonconceptual content, it is a version of the Myth of the Given, and pace conceptualists, only beliefs can justify other beliefs. (shrink)

Cappelen proposes a radically externalist framework for conceptual engineering. This approach embraces the following two theses. Firstly, the mechanisms that underlie conceptual engineering are inscrutable: they are too complex, unstable and non-systematic for us to grasp. Secondly, the process of conceptual engineering is largely beyond our control. One might think that these two theses are peculiar to the Austerity Framework, or to metasemantic externalism more generally. However, Cappelen argues that there is no reason to think that internalism (...) avoids either commitment. Cappelen argues that to do so she must provide arguments for 3 claims: there are inner states that are scrutable and within our control; concepts supervene on these inner states; and the determination relation from supervenience base to content is itself scrutable and within our control. In this paper, I argue that internalist conceptual role theories of content can meet Cappelen’s challenge. (shrink)

In Mind and World, John McDowell appeals to Kant’s dictum that thoughts without content are empty and intuitions without concepts are blind as encapsulating the idea of conceptualism about the content of perceptual experience. I argue that the appeal is inadequate, and this for a variety of reasons, one of them being that if Kant endorsed conceptualism along the lines of McDowell, he would be committed to returning to positions which he explicitly criticized, i.e. those of rationalist metaphysics; alternatively, he (...) would lapse into an idealism very much akin to Hegel’s. This is because McDowell’s conceptualism ultimately neglects the role of sensibility in mediating the relation between “mind” and “world”, which is crucial to recognizing the limits on cognition which Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism imposes upon subjects. (shrink)

What would something unlike us--a chimpanzee, say, or a computer--have to be able to do to qualify as a possible knower, like us? To answer this question at the very heart of our sense of ourselves, philosophers have long focused on intentionality and have looked to language as a key to this condition. Making It Explicit is an investigation into the nature of language--the social practices that distinguish us as rational, logical creatures--that revises the very terms of this inquiry. Where (...) accounts of the relation between language and mind have traditionally rested on the concept of representation, this book sets out an alternate approach based on inference, and on a conception of certain kinds of implicit assessment that become explicit in language. Making It Explicit is the first attempt to work out in detail a theory that renders linguistic meaning in terms of use--in short, to explain how semantic content can be conferred on expressions and attitudes that are suitably caught up in social practices. -/- At the center of this enterprise is a notion of discursive commitment. Being able to talk--and so in the fullest sense being able to think--is a matter of mastering the practices that govern such commitments, being able to keep track of one’s own commitments and those of others. Assessing the pragmatic significance of speech acts is a matter of explaining the explicit in terms of the implicit. As he traces the inferential structure of the social practices within which things can be made conceptually explicit, the author defines the distinctively expressive role of logical vocabulary. This expressive account of language, mind, and logic is, finally, an account of who we are. (shrink)

Gilbert (2000) examined the issue of collective intentionality in science. Her paper consisted of a conceptual analysis of the negative role of collective belief, consensus, and joint commitment in science, with a brief discussion of a case study investigated by Thagard (1998a, 1998b). I argue that Gilbert's concepts have to be refined to be empirically more relevant. Specifically, I distinguish between different kinds of joint commitments. I base my analysis on a close examination of Thagard's example, the discovery (...) of Helicobacter pylori, and two other historical cases involving the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics and the Austrian school of economics. I also argue that it is difficult to fulfill the condition of common knowledge, even in Gilbert's weak sense. I conclude by raising serious doubts about the very possibility of a certain type of joint commitment, which I refer to as an implicit joint commitment. (shrink)