A central job for propositions is to be the objects of the attitudes. Propositions are the things we doubt, believe and suppose. Some philosophers have thought that propositions are sets of possible worlds. But many have become convinced that such an account individuates propositions too coarsely. This raises the question of how finely propositions should be individuated. An account of how finely propositions should be individuated on which they are individuated very finely is sketched. Objections to the effect that the (...) account individuates propositions too finely are raised and responses to the objections are provided. It is also shown that theories that try to individuate propositions less finely have serious problems. (shrink)

A central objection to McDowell’s conceptualism about empirical content concerns the fine-grained phenomenology of experience, which supposedly entails that the actual content of experience cannot be matched in its particularity by our concepts. While McDowell himself has answered this objection in recourse to the possibility of demonstrative concepts, his reply has engendered a plethora of further objections and is widely considered inadequate. I believe that McDowell’s critics underestimate the true force of his reply because they tend to read unrecognized empiricist (...) presuppositions into his account of experience. To show this, I introduce a new hylomorphic reading of McDowell’s account of experience and argue that the objections to his reply all rest on a specific empiricist assumption, which is untenable because it conflates the form of experience with its content. Consequently, conceptualism so understood can resist all of these objections, as I attempt to show by systematizing and answering them. (shrink)

In its original context, the “problem of the speckled hen” was a challenge to classical foundationalists who held that introspective beliefs about experience enjoy infallible foundational justification. Ernest Sosa has led a revival of interest in the problem, using it to object to neo-classical foundationalists and to motivate his own reliabilist theory of introspective justification. His discussion has spawned replies from those who claim that there are viable non-reliabilist solutions to the problem. I argue that these alternative proposals in the (...) literature are unsuccessful. I end, though, with an objection to Sosa’s theory. Along the way I also consider what the speckled hen and related examples have to teach about the fineness of grain of experience. (shrink)

In this paper I consider one of the influential challenges to the notion that perceptual experience might be completely conceptually structured, a challenge that rests on the idea that conceptual structure cannot do justice to the fineness of grain of perceptual experience. In so doing, I canvass John McDowell's attempt to meet this challenge by appeal to the notion of demonstrative concepts and review some criticisms recently leveled at McDowell's deployment of demonstrative concepts for this purpose by Sean (...) D. Kelly. Finally, I suggest that, though Kelly's criticisms might challenge McDowell's original presentation of demonstrative concepts, a modified notion of demonstrative concepts is available to the conceptualist that is proof against Kelly's criticisms. (shrink)

One of the current debates in philosophy of mind is whether the content of perceptual experiences is conceptual or nonconceptual. The proponents of nonconceptual content, or nonconceptualists, typically support their position by appealing to the so-called Fineness of Grain Argument, which, in rough terms, has as its conclusion that we do not possess concepts for everything we perceive. In his Mind and World, John McDowell tried to give a response to the argument, and show that we do possess (...) concepts for everything we perceive. His response is based on the idea that we have a capacity to recognize all that we perceive. However, a good number of people took this proposal as being empirically false. My aim in this paper is to show that McDowell’s proposal is not only not empirically false, but likely to be empirically true. We do have the capacity to recognize all that we perceive, but such recognition capacity is dependent on information stored in short-term memory, and not in longterm memory, as McDowell’s critics have mistakenly supposed. (shrink)

The so-called ‘re-identification condition’ (Kelly 2011) has played an important role in the most prominent argument for nonconceptualism, the argument from fineness of grain. A number of authors have recently argued that the condition should be modified or discarded altogether, with devastating implications for the nonconceptualist (see, e.g., Brewer 2005, Chuard 2006). The aim of this paper is to show that the situation is even more dire for nonconceptualists, for even if the re-identification condition remains in its original (...) form, the argument from fineness of grain still fails to make the case for nonconceptualism. The paper's central case rests on two claims: according to the first, if the re-identification condition holds, then some beliefs will represent some properties nonconceptually; and according to the second, if some beliefs represent some properties nonconceptually, the argument from fineness of grain fails to make the case for nonconceptualism in any relevant sense. It follows that if the re-identification condition holds, the argument from fineness of grain fails to make the case for nonconceptualism. (shrink)

According to the standard argument from targetless higher-order representations, the possibility of such representations presents a dilemma for higher-order theorists. In this article I argue that there are two theoretically well-motivated replies to the standard argument. Consequently, the standard argument against higher-order theories fails. I then go on to argue that while certain versions of higher-order theory can adequately respond to the standard argument, they both, nevertheless, fail to explain the fineness-of-grain that phenomenally conscious experience appears to have.

I begin by examining a recent debate between John McDowell and Christopher Peacocke over whether the content of perceptual experience is non-conceptual. Although I am sympathetic to Peacocke’s claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual, I suggest a number of ways in which his arguments fail to make that case. This failure stems from an over-emphasis on the "fine-grainedness" of perceptual content - a feature that is relatively unimportant to its non-conceptual structure. I go on to describe two other features of (...) perceptual experience that are more likely to be relevant to the claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual. These features are 1) the dependence of a perceived object on the perceptual context in which it is perceived and 2) the dependence of a perceived property on the object it is perceived to be a property of. (shrink)

We seem perfectly able to perceive fine-grained shades of colour even without possessing precise concepts for them. The same might be said of shapes. I argue that this is in fact not the case. A subject can perceive a colour or shape only if she possesses a concept of that type of colour or shape. I provide new justification for this thesis, and do not rely on demonstrative concepts such as THIS SHADE or THAT SHAPE, a move first suggested by (...) John McDowell, but rejected by Christopher Peacocke and Richard Heck among others.1. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the emerging position in metaphysics that artifact functions characterize real kinds of artifacts. We analyze how it can circumvent an objection by David Wiggins (Sameness and substance renewed, 2001, 87) and then argue that this position, in comparison to expert judgments, amounts to an interesting fine-grained metaphysics: taking artifact functions as (part of the) essences of artifacts leads to distinctions between principles of activity of artifacts that experts in technology have not yet made. We show, (...) moreover, that our argument holds not only in the artifactual realm but also in biology: taking biological functions as (part of the) essences of organs leads to distinctions between principles of activity of organs that biological experts have not yet made. We run our argument on the basis of analyses of artifact and biological functions as developed in philosophy of technology and of biology, thus importing results obtained outside of metaphysics into the debate on ontological realism. In return, our argument shows that a position in metaphysics provides experts reason for trying to detect differences between principles of activities of artifacts and organs that have not been detected so far. (shrink)

“Mechanical objectivity,” which Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison trace to the mid-nineteenth century, often coincided with efforts to inscribe nature “directly,” such as through automatic registering machines. But what did this inscription entail? Addressing this question requires that we reexamine indexicalization: the shift in semiotic ideology whereby medial technologies are imagined and acted on as if they preserved material traces of the real. Indexicalization is no simple reflex of mechanical objectivity and is more varied and consequential than commonly imagined. This (...) essay demonstrates this by returning to the sciences of face-to-face interaction, which crystallized in postwar America but drew inspiration from earlier research on talk therapy. Returning to efforts to record psychoanalysis sessions in the early 1930s “objectively,” it chronicles a shift in the technosemiotic mediation of knowledge. Whereas transcripts were originally “verbatim” records of literal content, researchers came to seek tacit, symptomological signs. And whereas mechanical recording was introduced to avoid an observer effect, it was later deemed necessary to preserve indexical traces for fine-grained analysis. This indexicalization had ontological as well as epistemological effects, and it was inspired not by mechanical objectivity but by the parallel capacities of the perceptive psychoanalyst and the receptive mechanical recorder, both virtuosic in registering the indexical richness of the communicative unconscious. (shrink)

Researchers have evaluated how broad categories of emotion influence judgments of learning relative to neutral items. Specifically, JOLs are typically higher for emotional relative to neutral items. The novel goal of the present research was to evaluate JOLs for fine-grained categories of emotion. Participants studied faces with afraid, angry, sad, or neutral expressions and with afraid, angry, or sad expressions. Participants identified the expressed emotion, made a JOL for each, and completed a recognition test. JOLs were higher for the emotional (...) relative to neutral expressions. However, JOLs were insensitive to the categories of negative emotion. Using a survey design in Experiment 3, participants demonstrated idiosyncratic beliefs about emotion. Some people believed the fine-grained emotions were equally memorable, whereas others believed a specific emotion was most memorable. Thus, beliefs about emotion are nuanced, which has important implications for JOL theory. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the emerging position in metaphysics that artifact functions characterize real kinds of artifacts. We analyze how it can circumvent an objection by David Wiggins (Sameness and substance renewed, 2001, 87) and then argue that this position, in comparison to expert judgments, amounts to an interesting fine-grained metaphysics: taking artifact functions as (part of the) essences of artifacts leads to distinctions between principles of activity of artifacts that experts in technology have not yet made. We show, (...) moreover, that our argument holds not only in the artifactual realm but also in biology: taking biological functions as (part of the) essences of organs leads to distinctions between principles of activity of organs that biological experts have not yet made. We run our argument on the basis of analyses of artifact and biological functions as developed in philosophy of technology and of biology, thus importing results obtained outside of metaphysics into the debate on ontological realism. In return, our argument shows that a position in metaphysics provides experts reason for trying to detect differences between principles of activities of artifacts and organs that have not been detected so far. (shrink)

Coarse-grain models are essential to understand the biological function of DNA molecules because the length and time scales of the sequence-dependent physical properties of DNA are often beyond the reach of experimental and all-atom computational methods. Simulating coarse-grain models of DNA, e.g. using Langevin dynamics, requires the parametrization of both potential and kinetic energy functions. Many studies have shown that the flexibility (i.e., potential energy) of a DNA molecule depends on its sequence. In contrast, little is known about (...) the sequence-dependence of DNA mass parameters required to model its kinetic energy. In this paper, an algebraic expression is derived for the kinetic energy as a function of linear and angular velocities of each DNA base parameterized by its mass, center of mass, and rotational inertia tensor. The parameters of this function are then approximated from a set of fine-grain molecular dynamics simulations representing all combinations of the four DNA base pairs AT, TA, GC, and CG, in different sequence contexts. Compatibility conditions associated with the assumption of each base being modeled as a rigid body were verified to be good approximations. The kinetic parameters were found to be significantly different between the four G, C, A, and T bases, and to not be dependent on the sequence context. This suggests that the effective kinetic parameters of a DNA base may depend only on the base itself, not on its neighbors. (shrink)

Explanations of biological phenomena such as cell division, protein synthesis or circadian rhythms commonly take the form of models of the responsible mechanisms. Recently philosophers of science have attempted to analyze this practice, presenting mechanisms as organized collections of parts performing operations that together produce the phenomenon. But in some cases what researchers seek to explain is not a general phenomenon, but a specific feature of a more fine-grained phenomenon. In some of these cases, it is not the model of (...) the mechanism that performs the explanatory work. I consider a case in which the investigator offered an abstract representation of a fine-grained phenomenon to show why in had the feature in question. I consider a second case in which a researcher abstracted from the mechanism to identify a design principle that explains why the functioning mechanism exhibits a specific feature. (shrink)

This paper reviews the contribution of Hannah Arendt's 1963 monograph, On Revolution, to the theme of this collection: “contestatory cosmopolitanism.” I am critical of normative interpretations of the text that treat it as a wholesale rejection of the French revolutionary tradition and as a tribute either to American constitutionalism, in more liberal readings, or to the council system of direct democracy, in more radical readings. I read it against this doctrinal grain as a dialectical analysis of the modern revolutionary (...) tradition as a whole. I argue that it is more productive for our own purposes and more faithful to Arendt's own approach to read the book as an exploration of the developmental forms of the modern revolutionary tradition, beginning with the “perplexities” present in the modern concept of revolution and then moving on to the more applied and practical “perplexities” involved in the realization of the concept: first in the French Revolution, then in the American Revolution and finally in.. (shrink)

The majority of contemporary philosophers of mind are physicalists. The majority of physicalists, however, are non-reductive physicalists. As nonreductive physicalists, these philosophers hold that a system's mental properties are different from a system's physical properties, that is, they hold that the sum total of mental facts about some system is a different set of facts than the sum total of physical facts about the same system. As physicalists, however, these nonreductivists hold that mental facts are nonetheless determined by physical facts, (...) that is, they subscribe to the supervenience thesis, i.e., the thesis that no mental differences can obtain without physical differences obtaining. In this paper I take up the issue of how best to understand the notion of supervenience, especially in the light of recent advances in the neurosciences. (shrink)

Previous studies on crisis know­ledge organization mostly focused on the categorization of crisis know­ledge without regarding its dynamic trend and temporal-spatial features. In order to emphasize the dynamic factors of crisis collaboration, a fine-grained crisis know­ledge model is proposed by integrating temporal-spatial analysis based on ontology, which is one of the commonly used methods for know­ledge organization. The reconstruction of ontology-based crisis know­ledge will be implemented through three steps: analyzing temporal-spatial features of crisis know­ledge, reconstructing crisis know­ledge ontology, and verifying (...) the temporal-spatial ontology. In the process of ontology reconstruction, the main classes and properties of the domain will be identified by investigating the crisis information resources. Meanwhile the fine-grained crisis ontology will be achieved at the level of characteristic representation of crisis know­ledge including temporal relationship, spatial relationship, and semantic relationship. Finally, we conducted case addition and system implementation to verify our crisis know­ledge model. This ontology-based know­ledge organization method theoretically optimizes the static organizational structure of crisis know­ledge, improving the flexibility of know­ledge organization and efficiency of emergency response. In practice, the proposed fine-grained ontology is supposed to be more in line with the real situation of emergency collaboration and management. Moreover, it will also provide the know­ledge base for decision-making during rescue process. (shrink)

Intensionality (or opacity) is a core property of mental representations and sometimes understanding opacity is claimed to be a part of children's theory of mind (evidenced with the false belief task). Children, however, pass the false belief task and the intensionality tasks at different ages (typically 4 vs. 5;1-6;11 years). According to two dominant interpretations, the two tests either require different conceptual resources or vary only in their executive or linguistic load. In two experiments, involving 120 children aged 3-6 (Experiment (...) 1) and 75 children aged 4-6 (Experiment 2), we tested two variants of the executive load hypothesis: The differential linguistic complexity of the two tests, and the dual-name problem of the intensionality task. The former was addressed by standardizing and minimizing the linguistic demands of both tasks (contrasted with the typical narrative intensionality task), and the latter by introducing the dual-name problem into the false belief task as well, so that it was present in both tasks. We found that (1) two structurally different intensionality tasks shared more variance with each other than with the structurally similar false belief task, and that (2) introducing a dual label problem into the false belief task did not reduce the developmental gap. Our results speak against interpreting the difference between the time children pass the two tests entirely in terms of performative issues, and support the conceptual enrichment hypothesis. We discuss the theoretical relevance of these results, suggesting that they are best explained by fine-grained increments within the concept of belief, rather than a radical conceptual change. We conclude that understanding opacity of minds – which emerges between age 5 and 6 – is an important step towards a more advanced form of ToM. (shrink)

This paper discusses two distinct strategies that have been adopted to provide fine-grained propositions; that is, propositions individuated more finely than sets of possible worlds. One strategy takes propositions to have internal structure, while the other looks beyond possible worlds, and takes propositions to be sets of circumstances, where possible worlds do not exhaust the circumstances. The usual arguments for these positions turn on fineness-of-grain issues: just how finely should propositions be individuated? Here, I compare the two strategies (...) with an eye to the fineness-of-grain question, arguing that when a wide enough range of data is considered, we can see that a circumstance-based approach, properly spelled out, outperforms a structure-based approach in answering the question. (Part of this argument involves spelling out what I take to be a reasonable circumstance-based approach.) An argument to the contrary, due to Soames, is also considered. (shrink)

In this paper I rehearse two central failings of traditional possible world semantics. I then present a much more robust framework for intensional logic and semantics based liberally on the work of George Bealer in his book Quality and Concept. Certain expressive limitations of Bealer's approach, however, lead me to extend the framework in a particularly natural and useful way. This extension, in turn, brings to light associated limitations of Bealer's account of predication. In response, I develop a more general (...) and intuitively more adequate account of the logical form of predication. (shrink)

ABSTRACT McCabe [2021: 137–40] identifies a crucial ambiguity in the terms ‘learns’ and ‘knows’. Such terms can be read as either ‘perfective’ or ‘imperfective’. This is an aspect difference. The former indicates a settled state, the latter a directed process. McCabe uses this insight to show how Socrates can rebut the sophists’ view of meaning, render compelling Socrates’ self-refutation arguments, and explain the Socratic connections between learning, knowledge, and how one should live. In the final section of the Euthydemus, Euthydemus (...) offers the ‘Omniscience Sophism’, and the related, rather cheeky, ‘Father Sophisms’. McCabe [ibid.: 140–2] suggests that the Omniscience Sophism might be addressed by identifying an aspect ambiguity, but does not follow up her point in detail. In this response, I argue that McCabe’s instinct is good and that a relative term, such as ‘knowledgeable’, can be understood as having two senses. That distinction is between what I call ‘fine-grained’ and ‘coarse-grained’ senses of ‘knowledgeable’. I suggest that this distinction that tracks McCabe’s aspect distinction between senses of ‘learns’ and best explains the fallacy committed in the Omniscience Sophism. (shrink)

Reasoning about concurrent programs involves representing the information that concurrent processes manipulate disjoint portions of memory. In sophisticated applications, the division of memory between processes is not static. Through operations, processes can exchange the implied ownership of memory cells. In addition, processes can also share ownership of cells in a controlled fashion as long as they perform operations that do not interfere, e.g., they can concurrently read shared cells. Thus the traditional paradigm of distributed computing based on locations is replaced (...) by a paradigm of concurrent computing which is more tightly based on program structure. Concurrent Separation Logic with Permissions, developed by O’Hearn, Bornat et al., is able to represent sophisticated transfer of ownership and permissions between processes. We demonstrate how these ideas can be used to reason about fine-grained concurrent programs which do not employ explicit synchronization operations to control interference but cooperatively manipulate memory cells so that interference is avoided. Reasoning about such programs is challenging and appropriate logical tools are necessary to carry out the reasoning in a reliable fashion. We argue that Concurrent Separation Logic with Permissions provides such tools. We illustrate the logical techniques by presenting the proof of a concurrent garbage collector originally studied by Dijkstra et al., and extended by Lamport to handle multiple user processes. (shrink)

This paper aims to distinguish two main types of coarse graining, and reveal the relationship between the notions of coarse graining and emergence. In physics, some forms of coarse graining seem to be indispensable to show a physical property, and the other merely changes our descriptions of the system. To clarify the notion of coarse graining, this article investigates the cases of the renormalization group method and irreversibility, both of which have been important topics in philosophy of science, and the (...) case of the rigid body in classical mechanics, which is an elementary case including coarse graining. The case studies reveal the distinction between substantial and mere coarse-graining. This distinction clarifies the relationships between the notions of coarse graining and emergence and further provides some implications for the issues about emergence. (shrink)

I observe that the “concept-generator” theory of Percus and Sauerland (2003), Anand (2006), and Charlow and Sharvit (2014) does not predict an intuitive true interpretation of the sentence “Plato did not believe that Hesperus was Phosphorus”. In response, I present a simple theory of attitude reports which employs a fine-grained semantics for names, according to which names which intuitively name the same thing may have distinct compositional semantic values. This simple theory solves the problem with the concept-generator theory, but, as (...) I go on to show, it has problems of its own. I present three examples which the concept-generator theory can accommodate, but the simple fine-grained theory cannot. These examples motivate the full theory of the paper, which combines the basic ideas behind the concept-generator theory with a fine-grained semantics for names. The examples themselves are of interest independently of my theory: two of them constrain the original concept-generator theory more tightly than previously discussed examples had. (shrink)

Commonplace syntactic constructions in natural language seem to generate ontological commitments to a dazzling array of metaphysical categories - aggregations, sets, ordered n-tuples, possible worlds, intensional entities, ideal objects, species, intensive and extensive quantities, stuffs, situations, states, courses of events, nonexistent objects, intentional and discourse objects, general objects, plural objects, variable objects, arbitrary objects, vague kinds and concepts, fuzzy sets, and so forth. But just because a syntactic construction in some natural language appears to invoke a new category of entity, (...) are we theoreticians epistemically justified in holding that there are such entities? This would hardly seem sufficient. To be epistemically justified, the ontology to which we theoreticians are committed must pass strict standards: the entities must be of the sort required by our best comprehensive theory of the world. The thesis of this paper is that fine-grained type-free intensional entities are like this. If the thesis is right, these entities have a special objective status perhaps not possessed by some of the other ontological categories associated with special syntactic constructions in natural language. In fact, it is plausible to hold that fine-grained type-free intensional entities provide the proper minimal framework for constructing logical and linguistic theories. In this paper my strategy will be to survey the competing conceptions of fine-grained type-free intensionality and to present arguments in support of one of them. Following this narrowing down process, I will go on to the indicated epistemological considerations. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of the semantics of copular be as displayed in its behaviour in be+AP configurations. I begin by arguing against the Partee/Dowty distinction between a semantically null be of predication and a thematically relevant agentive be, and I propose that there is one semantically relevant verb whose grammatical role is to turn an AP predicate into a verbal one. The denotation of be must thus be a function from denotations of Adjective Phrases to denotation of Verb (...) Phrases. I argue that these denotations are crucially different in kind: verbs (and thus VPs) denote eventualities, which are count entities and which are temporally locatable, while adjectives (and thus APs) denote mass entities, which are states and which are not temporally locatable. Be thus denotes a locating function which maps from the mass to the count domain, and is the analogue of the ‘packaging’ function in the nominal domain. After a comparison between the mass/count distinction in the verbal and nominal domains, I show how this theory accounts for properties of be in small clause and progressive constructions which have hitherto been explained by positing a so-called agentive be. (shrink)

This paper proposes a minimal logic of fine-grained information dynamics via belief bases. The framework is shown to be able to accommodate explicit belief, implicit belief, awareness of and awareness that, where awareness of agents is not treated as a tacit premise. A sound and complete axiomatization of static logic is established, upon which a series of dynamic operations are defined. It is argued that these dynamics adapt different scenarios. Our logic is minimal because to each agent we only attach (...) two databases, from which a variety of epistemic attitudes are generated. (shrink)

We introduce a game model for an Algol-like programming language with primitives for parallel composition and synchronization on semaphores. The semantics is based on a simplified version of Hyland–Ong-style games and it emphasizes the intuitive connection between the concurrent nature of games and that of computation. The model is fully abstract for may-equivalence.

René Jagnow [2012] argues that David Rosenthal's theory of consciousness cannot account for certain experiences that involve colours so fine-grained that we do not and cannot have concepts of them. Jagnow claims that an appeal to comparative concepts such as being slightly darker than cannot help Rosenthal, since, in order to apply such concepts, we would already need to be conscious of two distinct fine-grained colours. The present paper contests this claim. It appeals to the Cornsweet illusion and some other (...) visual phenomena, in order to argue that our visual systems can and do represent brutely comparative matters. (shrink)

Dariusz Łukasiewicz has investigated in depth the “Argument from Chance” which argues that the data revealing chance in the world are incompatible with Divine Providence. Łukasiewicz agrees that these data undermine the traditional model of Providence—a fine-grained model in which every single detail is controlled by God—but maintains that they are not incompatible with a coarse-grained model—in which God leaves to chance many aspects of history (including some horrendous evils). Furthermore, Łukasiewicz provides independent reasons to prefer this coarse-grained model. Even (...) though I agree that a maximally fine-grained model is undermined by the scientific data, I argue that this is no sufficient reason to adopt a model as coarse-grained as Łukasiewicz’s. I propose a model of intermediate level of fine-grainedness which could avoid the drawbacks of both extremes, and seems to me to provide a more traditional approach to the problem of evil. (shrink)

Inverted spectrum and absent-qualia arguments have at least shown that giving the functional role of a qualitative state is challenging, as it is arguable that the same functional organization among one's inputs, outputs, and mental states can be preserved despite having one's qualia radically altered or eliminated. Sydney Shoemaker has proposed a promising strategy for the functionalist: defining a given qualitative state as being disposed to cause a belief that one is in such a state. Such beliefs would be different (...) or not obtain should the qualitative state be altered or absent—showing that the qualitative state is in fact functionally relevant. I will argue that this approach, and a similar one by David Chalmers, face a difficulty in accounting for qualia at a fine grain, particularly those that do not readily fit our linguistic concepts and/or occur in peripheral awareness. I then show how the problem can be solved by incorporating certain conditional statements into functional definitions of qualia, and by relying on two theoretical resources I will discuss: qualitative beliefs with nonlinguistic content and QSMs (qualia-structuring mental phenomena). (shrink)

Frankfurt cases are supposed to provide us with counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities. Among the most well known responses to these cases is what John Fischer has dubbed the flicker of freedom strategy. Here we revisit a version of this strategy, which we refer to as the fine-grained response. Although a number of philosophers, including some who are otherwise unsympathetic to Frankfurt’s argument, have dismissed the fine grained response, we believe there is a good deal to be said (...) on its behalf. We argue, in particular, that reflection on certain cases involving omissions undermines the main objections to the response and also provides the groundwork for an argument in support of it. (shrink)

When Booth moved his finger, thereby firing a gun, thereby killing Lincoln, did he perform three discrete actions, or were there relations of identity or inclusion among them? Most treatments of this problem have tended to assume there is but one sort of entity properly to be called an action, and hence that one answer to this question must be established to the exclusion of all others. And the favored answer has been that Booth's actions are not discrete, or indeed (...) even overlapping, but identical. It is possible, however, to adopt a more conciliatory spirit, in which a place is sought for talk of discrete or fine-grained actions in cases like this, as well as for entities of the coarser sort most have favored. (shrink)

We study imagination as reality-oriented mental simulation (ROMS): the activity of simulating nonactual scenarios in one’s mind, to investigate what would happen if they were realized. Three connected questions concerning ROMS are: What is the logic, if there is one, of such an activity? How can we gain new knowledge via it? What is voluntary in it and what is not? We address them by building a list of core features of imagination as ROMS, drawing on research in cognitive psychology (...) and the philosophy of mind. We then provide a logic of imagination as ROMS which models such features, combining techniques from epistemic logic, action logic, and subject matter semantics. Our logic comprises a modal propositional language with non-monotonic imagination operators, a formal semantics, and an axiomatization. (shrink)

That Cn. Pompeius Magnus (cos. 70, II 55, III 52) was charged with the Roman cura annonae in September 57 is a fact quite well known to Roman historians and all interested in the history of the late Republic. Although Pompeius’ grain commission in many respects represented a novel development, relatively few have bothered to study the fine detail of what happened to be the third and final extraordinary proconsulship of his remarkable career, signifying that several important questions remain (...) largely unanswered1. After a brief discussion of the political context of the late summer of 57, this study therefore endeavours to cast a new light on his powers under the constitutive statute, the issue of the terminus of his tenure as superintendent of the grain supply, and its wider historical ramifications. (shrink)

Understanding the actions of others is fundamental for human social life. It builds on a grasp of the subjective intentionality behind behavior: one action comprises different things simultaneously (e.g., moving their arm, turning on the light) but which of these constitute intentional actions, in contrast to merely foreseen side-effects (e.g., increasing the electricity bill), depends on the description under which the agent represents the acts. She may be acting intentionally only under the description “turning on the light,” but did not (...) turn on the light in order to increase the electricity bill. In preregistered studies (N = 620), we asked how adults and children engage in such complex subjective action interpretation and evaluation in moral dilemmas. To capture the deep structure of subjects' representations of the intentional structures of actions, we derived “act trees” from their response patterns to questions about the acts. Results suggest that people systematically distinguish between intended main and merely foreseen side-effects in their moral and intentionality judgments, even when main and side-effects were closely related and the latter were harmful. Additional experimental conditions suggest that, when given ambiguous information, the majority of subjects assume that agents act with beneficial main intentions. This “good intention prior” was so strong that participants attributed good intentions even when the harmful action was no longer necessary to resolve the dilemma (Study 2). These methods provide promising new ways to investigate in more subtle and fine-grained ways how reasoners parse, interpret, and evaluate complex actions. (shrink)

Naturalistic stimuli, including movie, music, and speech, have been increasingly applied in the research of neuroimaging. Relative to a resting-state or single-task state, naturalistic stimuli can evoke more intense brain activities and have been proved to possess higher test–retest reliability, suggesting greater potential to study adaptive human brain function. In the current research, naturalistic functional magnetic resonance imaging (N-fMRI) has been a powerful tool to record brain states under naturalistic stimuli, and many efforts have been devoted to study the high-level (...) semantic features from spatial or temporal representations via N-fMRI. However, integrating both spatial and temporal characteristics of brain activities for better interpreting the patterns under naturalistic stimuli is still underexplored. In this work, a novel hybrid learning framework that comprehensively investigates both the spatial (via Predictive Model) and the temporal [via convolutional neural network (CNN) model] characteristics of the brain is proposed. Specifically, to focus on certain relevant regions from the whole brain, regions of significance (ROS), which contain common spatial activation characteristics across individuals, are selected via the Predictive Model. Further, voxels of significance (VOS), whose signals contain significant temporal characteristics under naturalistic stimuli, are interpreted via one-dimensional CNN (1D-CNN) model. In this article, our proposed framework is applied onto the N-fMRI data during naturalistic classical/pop/speech audios stimuli. The promising performance is achieved via the Predictive Model to differentiate the different audio categories. Especially for distinguishing the classic and speech audios, the accuracy of classification is up to 92%. Moreover, spatial ROS and VOS are effectively obtained. Besides, temporal characteristics of the high-level semantic features are investigated on the frequency domain via convolution kernels of 1D-CNN model, and we effectively bridge the “semantic gap” between high-level semantic features of N-fMRI and low-level acoustic features of naturalistic audios in the frequency domain. Our results provide novel insights on characterizing spatiotemporal patterns of brain activities via N-fMRI and effectively explore the high-level semantic features under naturalistic stimuli, which will further benefit the understanding of the brain working mechanism and the advance of naturalistic stimuli clinical application. (shrink)

Do philosophers use intuitions? Should philosophers use intuitions? Can philosophical methods (where intuitions are concerned) be improved upon? In order to answer these questions we need to have some idea of how we should go about answering them. I defend a way of going about methodology of intuitions: a metamethodology. I claim the following: (i) we should approach methodological questions about intuitions with a thin conception of intuitions in mind; (ii) we should carve intuitions finely; and, (iii) we should carve (...) to a grain to which we are sensitive in our everyday philosophising. The reason is that, unless we do so, we don’t get what we want from philosophical methodology. I argue that what we want is information that will aid us in formulating practical advice concerning how to do philosophy responsibly/well/better. (shrink)