Showing papers in "Philosophical Studies in 2011"

On the epistemic costs of implicit bias

Abstract: The Central Intelligence Agency’s Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Heuer 1999) provides concise and practical summaries of recent work in cognitive psychology using real-world examples intended to help CIA agents perform their daily activities more effectively. Its 12th chapter—‘‘Biases in Estimating Probabilities’’—describes a number of widely-discussed findings from the heuristics and biases tradition. The chapter points out that among the errors that a well-trained CIA agent should aim to avoid are mistakes arising from what is commonly referred to as the ‘‘base-rate fallacy.’’ Here is an example:

Construction area (no hard hat required)

Abstract: A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’ I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation

Disagreements about taste

Abstract: I argue for the possibility of substantive aesthetic disagreements in which both parties speak truly. The possibility of such disputes undermines an argument mobilized by relativists such as Lasersohn (Linguist Philos 28:643–686, 2005) and MacFarlane (Philos Stud 132:17–31, 2007) against contextualism about aesthetic terminology. In describing the facts of aesthetic disagreement, I distinguish between the intuition of dispute on the one hand and the felicity of denial on the other. Considered separately, neither of those phenomena requires that there be a single proposition asserted by one party to an aesthetic dispute and denied by the other. I suggest instead that many such disputes be analyzed as disputes over the selection or appropriateness of a contextually salient aesthetic standard.

Enculturating the Supersized Mind

Abstract: In the final pages of Supersizing the Mind, Clark describes Dawkins’ ‘‘mental flip.’’ Dawkins asked biologists to abandon their focus on individual organisms and instead to imagine ‘‘bodies falling transparent so as to reveal the near-seamless play of replicating DNA.’’ By taking such a view, one might see that an organism is just a gene’s way of replicating itself. Clark goes onto say that a similar mental flip is needed in the sciences of mind ‘‘...to cease to unreflectively privilege the inner, the biological, and the neural.’’ In this view, ‘‘[t]he human mind ... emerges as the productive interface of brain, body, and social and material world.’’ Clark is to be congratulated for making this case and bolstering it with empirical evidence. From low-level processes of motor control to high-level processes of reasoning Clark shows us how cognitive processes are enacted in systems that transcend the boundaries of the individual organism. Supersizing the Mind delivers us to a point from which yet another ‘‘mental flip’’ is both possible and necessary. In this commentary I will try to describe this next flip and some of the things that become apparent when it is made.

The Nature of Intuitive Justification

Abstract: In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational phenomenology as it occurs perception, and I make a case for thinking that it is present in a wide variety of logical, mathematical, and philosophical intuitions.

Finding the Mind

Abstract: Supersizing the Mind (henceforth, SSM) was a book with a double mission. The first mission was to display and discuss the rich and varied landscape of recent work in the area of (broadly speaking) embodied, environmentally embedded, cognitive science. To this end, I canvassed and organized a wide range of examples in which fine details of embodiment, of worldly action, and of worldly resources, could be seen to make diverse and unexpectedly deep contributions to human cognitive achievements. The second mission, building in many ways upon the first, was to pursue the more radical suggestion that is now known as the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition.1 This was the suggestion2 that in some such cases, there is a sufficiently dense degree of inter-animation between the neural and the grossbodily, or even between the organismic and the extra-organismic, for it to become ill-warranted and unproductive to reserve the label of 'cognitive processing' for the inner, neural or organismic contributions alone. Of course, the mere fact of dense inter-animation will not be enough: there may well be dense inter-animation between, say, the sailor and the sailboat, or between the digestive tract and the brain, without either the sailor-sailboat or the brain-digestive tract system counting as an extended cognitive system. But where we find dense inter-animation and that interanimation looks to be serving recognizably cognitive (for example, broadly speaking epistemic or knowledge-oriented) ends, then (assuming, see below, that we can also assign 'ownership' of the relevant states or processes to a distinct agent) then there is or so I argued no good reason to carve the mental cake according to

Farewell to the luck (and Mind) argument

Abstract: In this paper I seek to defend libertarianism about free will and moral responsibility against two well-known arguments: the luck argument and the Mind argument. Both of these arguments purport to show that indeterminism is incompatible with the degree of control necessary for free will and moral responsibility. I begin the discussion by elaborating these arguments, clarifying important features of my preferred version of libertarianism—features that will be central to an adequate response to the arguments—and showing why a strategy of reconciliation (often referred to as “deliberative libertarianism”) will not work. I then consider four formulations of the luck argument and find them all wanting. This discussion will place us in a favorable position to understand why the Mind argument also fails.

Against quietist normative realism

Abstract: Recently, some philosophers have suggested that a form of robust realism about ethics, or normativity more generally, does not face a significant explanatory burden in metaphysics. I call this view metaphysically quietist normative realism. This paper argues that while this view can appear to constitute an attractive alternative to more traditional forms of normative realism, it cannot deliver on this promise. I examine Scanlon’s attempt to defend such a quietist realism, and argue that rather than silencing metaphysical questions about normative reasons, his defense at best succeeds only in shifting the focus of metaphysical enquiry. I then set aside the details of Scanlon’s view, and argue on general grounds that that the quietist realist cannot finesse a crucial metanormative task: to explain the contrast between the correct normative system and alternative putatively normative standards.

Darwin and moral realism: Survival of the iffiest

Abstract: This paper defends moral realism against Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” (this journal, 2006). I argue by separation of cases: From the assumption that a certain normative claim is true, I argue that the first horn of the dilemma is tenable for realists. Then, from the assumption that the same normative claim is false, I argue that the second horn is tenable. Either way, then, the Darwinian dilemma does not add anything to realists’ epistemic worries.

Analog and Digital, Continuous and Discrete

Abstract: Representation is central to contemporary theories regarding the mind/brain. But the nature of representation—both in the mind/brain and more generally—is a source of ongoing controversy. One way of categorizing representational types is to distinguish between the analog and the digital: the received view is that analog representations vary smoothly, while digital representations vary in a step-wise manner. In other words, ‘digital’ is synonymous with ‘discrete’, while ‘analog’ is synonymous with ‘continuous’. I argue that this characterization is inadequate to account for the ways in which representation is (and should be) used in cognitive science; in its place, I suggest an alternative taxonomy. I will defend and extend David Lewis’s account of analog and digital representation, distinguishing analog from continuous representation, as well as digital from discrete representation. I will argue that the distinctions available in this fourfold account better accord with representational features of interest in cognitive science than the received analog/digital dichotomy.

The feels good theory of pleasure

Abstract: Most philosophers since Sidgwick have thought that the various forms of pleasure differ so radically that one cannot find a common, distinctive feeling among them. This is known as the heterogeneity problem. To get around this problem, the motivational theory of pleasure suggests that what makes an experience one of pleasure is our reaction to it, not something internal to the experience. I argue that the motivational theory is wrong, and not only wrong, but backwards. The heterogeneity problem is the principal source of motivation for this, otherwise, highly counterintuitive theory. I intend to show that the heterogeneity problem is not a genuine problem and that a more straightforward theory of pleasure is forthcoming. I argue that the various experiences that we call “pleasures” all feel good.

Contextualism, contrastivism, and X-Phi surveys

Abstract: The tale that Jonathan Schaffer and Joshua Knobe tell in “Contrastivism Surveyed” (henceforth, “S&K”) is a tragic one for what we may call “standard contextualists” about knowledge attributions. First, they report (word of this has been “out on the street” for a while now) that a recent wave of work in Experimental Philosophy threatens to undermine the intuitive basis that contextualists have claimed for their view. Given the importance of that intuitive basis for the view, this would be very bad news indeed for contextualists. But the saddest stories usually aren’t just bad news from start to finish: True tragedies usually involve some real or apparent upturn in fortune, some glimmer of hope that can then be cruelly stomped out in the tragic ending of the story. So, in Act II, we’re told that these experimental results that seem hostile to contextualism turn out to be driven by what looks like some kind of performance error (though S&K don’t use that term to describe what’s going on) being made by the survey takers: If you ask the survey questions in the right way (as S&K have now done in a new survey), you both get the kind of results contextualists would be looking for, and also the makings of a case that it’s these friendlier results, and not the earlier, hostile ones, that should be heeded. But then we find in Act III that when you look carefully, what the experimental results really turn out to support is a particular form of contextualism, contrastivism, that “standard” contextualists reject (and by “standard” contextualists, I guess I just mean “noncontrastivist” contextualists). I will here sharply oppose all the phases of the story S&K tell. In Part 1 we will look at the supposed empirical case against standard contextualism, and in Part 2 we will investigate S&K’s supposed empirical case for the superiority of contrastivism over standard contextualism. (I won’t here go into my own reasons for preferring standard contextualism over contrastivism; for that, see DeRose 2009: 34-41.)

Taxonomising the senses

Abstract: I argue that we should reject the sparse view that there are or could be only a small number of rather distinct senses. When one appreciates this then one can see that there is no need to choose between the standard criteria that have been proposed as ways of individuating the senses—representation, phenomenal character, proximal stimulus and sense organ—or any other criteria that one may deem important. Rather, one can use these criteria in conjunction to form a fine-grained taxonomy of the senses. We can think of these criteria as defining a multidimensional space within which we can locate each of the senses that we are familiar with and which also defines the space of possible senses there could be.

Holding others responsible

Abstract: Theorists have spent considerable time discussing the concept of responsibility. Their discussions, however, have generally focused on the question of who counts as responsible, and for what. But as Gary Watson has noted, “Responsibility is a triadic relationship: an individual (or group) is responsible to others for something” (Watson Agency and answerability: selected essays, 2004, p. 7). Thus, theorizing about responsibility ought to involve theorizing not just about the actor and her conduct, but also about those the actor is responsible to—and specifically about how these people hold the actor responsible for her conduct. In this paper, I give a topology of the terrain of holding others responsible. Over the course of the paper I disambiguate two very broad senses of holding responsible—regarding another as a responsible agent and holding another responsible for a particular piece of conduct. Next, I argue that the latter sense of holding responsible is a genus with two species—what I will call “holding responsible as deep moral appraisal” and “holding responsible as accountability.” Appreciating these distinctions, I argue, sheds considerable light on a number of questions concerning the scope and nature of our practices of holding others responsible. Finally, illuminating these distinct senses of holding responsible and highlighting their features reveals an awkwardness in the most carefully explicated and influential account of holding responsible, namely R. Jay Wallace’s account in Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.

The great beetle debate: a study in imagining with names

Abstract: Statements about fictional characters, such as “Gregor Samsa has been changed into a beetle,” pose the problem of how we can say something true (or false) using empty names. I propose an original solution to this problem that construes such utterances as reports of the “prescriptions to imagine” generated by works of fiction. In particular, I argue that we should construe these utterances as specifying, not what we are supposed to imagine—the propositional object of the imagining—but how we are supposed to imagine. Most other theories of thought and discourse about fictional characters either fail to capture the intentionality of our imaginings, or else obscure the differences between imaginings directed toward fictional characters and those directed toward real individuals. I argue that once we have an account of prescriptions to imagine about real individuals, we can adapt the same framework to specify the contents of prescriptions to imagine about fictional characters, and thereby to account for the truth (or falsity) of statements about fictional characters.

Quantifiers and epistemic contextualism

Abstract: I defend a neo-Lewisean form of contextualism about knowledge attributions. Understanding the context-sensitivity of knowledge attributions in terms of the context-sensitivity of universal quantifiers provides an appealing approach to knowledge. Among the virtues of this approach are solutions to the skeptical paradox and the Gettier problem. I respond to influential objections to Lewis’s account.

Coreference and meaning

Abstract: Sometimes two expressions in a discourse can be about the same thing in a way that makes that very fact evident to the participants. Consider, for example, ‘he’ and ‘John’ in ‘John went to the store and he bought some milk’. Let us call this ‘de jure’ coreference. Other times, coreference is ‘de facto’ as with ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Samuel Clemens’ in a sincere use of ‘Mark Twain is not Samuel Clemens’. Here, agents can understand the speech without knowing that the names refer to the same person. After surveying many available linguistic and pragmatic tools (intentions to corefer, presuppositions, meanings, indexing, discourse referents, binding etc.) I conclude that we must posit a new semantic primitive to account for de jure coreference.

Endurantist and perdurantist accounts of persistence

Abstract: In this paper, I focus on three issues intertwined in current debates between endurantists and perdurantists—(i) the dimension of persisting objects, (ii) whether persisting objects have timeless, or only time-relative, parts, and (iii) whether persisting objects have proper temporal parts. I argue that one standard endurantist position on the first issue is compatible with standard perdurantist positions on parthood and temporal parts. I further argue that different accounts of persistence depend on the claims about objects’ dimensions and not on the auxiliary claims about parthood and temporal parts.

The symmetry of rational requirements

Abstract: Some irrational states can be avoided in more than one way. For example, if you believe that you ought to A you can avoid akrasia by intending to A or by dropping the belief that you ought to A. This supports the claim that some rational requirements are wide-scope. For instance, the requirement against akrasia is a requirement to intend to A or not believe that you ought to A. But some writers object that this Wide-Scope view ignores asymmetries between the different ways of avoiding irrationality. In this paper I defend the Wide-Scope view against recent objections of this sort from Mark Schroeder and Niko Kolodny. I argue that once we are clear about what the Wide-Scope view is committed to—and, importantly, what it is not—we can see that Schroeder and Kolodny’s objections fail.

A new approach to manipulation arguments

Abstract: There are several argumentative strategies for advancing the thesis that moral responsibility is incompatible with causal determinism. One prominent such strategy is to argue that agents who meet compatibilist conditions for moral responsibility can nevertheless be subject to responsibility-undermining manipulation. In this paper, I argue that incompatibilists advancing manipulation arguments against compatibilism have been shouldering an unnecessarily heavy dialectical burden. Traditional manipulation arguments present cases in which manipulated agents meet all compatibilist conditions for moral responsibility, but are (allegedly) not responsible for their behavior. I argue, however, that incompatibilists can make do with the more modest (and harder to resist) claim that the manipulation in question is mitigating with respect to moral responsibility. The focus solely on whether a manipulated agent is or is not morally responsible has, I believe, masked the full force of manipulation-style arguments against compatibilism. Here, I aim to unveil their real power.

In search of clarity about parity

Abstract: Andy Clark’s Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Clark 2008) is, among other things, a characteristically bold and timely defence of the extended mind hypothesis (Clark and Chalmers 1998). According to this hypothesis, which Clark here calls EXTENDED, the physical mechanisms of mind (the material vehicles that realize cognition) sometimes extend beyond the traditional boundaries of skull and skin, such that ‘‘actions and loops through nonbiological structure [sometimes count] as genuine aspects of extended cognitive processes’’ (p. 85). In the brief treatment that follows I cannot hope to engage with everything that is worthy of discussion in Clark’s rich and exciting text, so I shall content myself with exploring and assessing a central thread in his argument for EXTENDED. That thread revolves around what is called the parity principle. Here is how that principle is formulated in Supersizing the Mind (p. 77, drawing on Clark and Chalmers 1998, p. 8):

On the Meaning of the Question "How Fast Does Time Pass?"

Abstract: In this paper I distinguish interpretations of the question ``How fast does time pass?’’ that are important for the debate over the reality of objective becoming from interpretations that are not. Then I discuss how one theory that incorporates objective becoming—the moving spotlight theory of time—answers this question. It turns out that there are several ways to formulate the moving spotlight theory of time. One formulation says that time passes but it makes no sense to ask how fast; another formulation says that time passes at one second per supersecond; and a third says that time passes at one second per second. I defend the intelligibility of this final version of the theory.

Van Inwagen’s modal skepticism

Abstract: In this paper, the author defends Peter van Inwagen’s modal skepticism. Van Inwagen accepts that we have much basic, everyday modal knowledge, but denies that we have the capacity to justify philosophically interesting modal claims that are far removed from this basic knowledge. The author also defends the argument by means of which van Inwagen supports his modal skepticism, offering a rebuttal to an objection along the lines of that proposed by Geirrson. Van Inwagen argues that Stephen Yablo’s recent and influential account of the relationship between conceivability and possibility supports his skeptical claims. The author’s defence involves a creative interpretation and development of Yablo’s account, which results in a recursive account of modal epistemology, what the author calls the “safe explanation” theory of modal epistemology.

What is the Grounding Problem

Abstract: A philosophical standard in the debates concerning material constitution is the case of a statue and a lump of clay, Lumpl and Goliath respectively. According to the story, Lumpl and Goliath are coincident throughout their respective careers. Monists hold that they are identical; pluralists that they are distinct. This paper is concerned with a particular objection to pluralism, the Grounding Problem. The objection is roughly that the pluralist faces a legitimate explanatory demand to explain various differences she alleges between Lumpl and Goliath, but that the pluralist’s theory lacks the resources to give any such explanation. In this paper, I explore the question of whether there really is any problem of this sort. I argue (i) that explanatory demands that are clearly legitimate are easy for the pluralist to meet; (ii) that even in cases of explanatory demands whose legitimacy is questionable the pluralist has some overlooked resources; and (iii) there is some reason for optimism about the pluralist’s prospects for meeting every legitimate explanatory demand. In short, no clearly adequate statement of a Grounding Problem is extant, and there is some reason to believe that the pluralist can overcome any Grounding Problem that we haven’t thought of yet.

Neo-Frankfurtians and buffer cases: the new challenge to the principle of alternative possibilities

Abstract: The debate over whether Frankfurt-style cases are counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) has taken an interesting turn in recent years. Frankfurt originally envisaged his attack as an attempting to show that PAP is false—that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility. To many this attack has failed. But Frankfurtians have not conceded defeat. Neo-Frankfurtians, as I will call them, argue that the upshot of Frankfurt-style cases is not that PAP is false, but that it is explanatorily irrelevant. Derk Pereboom and David Hunt’s buffer cases are tailor made to establish this conclusion. In this paper I come to the aid of PAP, showing that buffer cases provide no reason for doubting either its truth or relevance with respect to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility.

Modal Meinongianism and fiction: the best of three worlds

Abstract: We outline a neo-Meinongian framework labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM) to account for the ontology and semantics of fictional discourse. Several competing accounts of fictional objects are originated by the fact that our talking of them mirrors incoherent intuitions: mainstream theories of fiction privilege some such intuitions, but are forced to account for others via complicated paraphrases of the relevant sentences. An ideal theory should resort to as few paraphrases as possible. In Sect. 1, we make this explicit via two methodological principles, called the Minimal Revision and the Acceptability Constraint. In Sect. 2, we introduce the standard distinction between internal and external fictional discourse. In Sects. 3–5, we discuss the approaches of (traditional) Meinongianism, Fictionalism, and Realism—and their main troubles. In Sect. 6 we propose our MMM approach. This is based upon (1) a modal semantics including impossible worlds (Subsect. 6.1); (2) a qualified Comprehension Principle for objects (Subsect. 6.2); (3) a notion of existence-entailment for properties (Subsect. 6.3). In Sect. 7 we present a formal semantics for MMM based upon a representation operator. And in Sect. 8 we have a look at how MMM solves the problems of the three aforementioned theories.

Conceptual mastery and the knowledge argument

Abstract: According to Frank Jackson’s famous knowledge argument, Mary, a brilliant neuroscientist raised in a black and white room and bestowed with complete physical knowledge, cannot know certain truths about phenomenal experience. This claim about knowledge, in turn, implies that physicalism is false. I argue that the knowledge argument founders on a dilemma. Either (i) Mary cannot know the relevant experiential truths because of trivial obstacles that have no bearing on the truth of physicalism or (ii) once the obstacles have been removed, Mary can know the relevant truths. If we give Mary the epistemological capabilities necessary to draw metaphysical conclusions about physicalism, she will, while trapped in the black and white room, be able to know every truth about phenomenal experience.

Knowledge and assumptions

Abstract: When epistemologists talk about knowledge, the discussions traditionally include only a small class of other epistemic notions: belief, justification, probability, truth. In this paper, we propose that epistemologists should include an additional epistemic notion into the mix, namely the notion of assuming or taking for granted. Our starting point is pre-theoretical. We don't aim to show that current theories of knowledge are forced to take assumptions into account. Nor will we present a particular theory of knowledge. Our goal is to illustrate, in broad strokes, the epistemological picture you end up with when you start in a different place, one which we think is ordinary and straightforward. We begin by spelling out the ordinary and straightforward picture. After clarifying the notion of assumption that we appeal to, we go on to show how this picture can handle certain problems facing theories of knowledge that do not appeal to assumptions.