Showing papers in "The Philosophical Quarterly in 2018"
29 citations
TL;DR: The question of whether, and why, one may divert a runaway trolley away from where it will kill five people to where it would kill one has been investigated in the literature as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Much philosophical attention has been paid to the question of whether, and why, one may divert a runaway trolley away from where it will kill five people to where it will kill one. But little atten ...
25 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a new version of informational teleosemantics is proposed, drawing partly on empirical psychology, and partly on philosophical considerations, and they argue that this version has all the virtues of Neander's original theory, but also the further crucial advantage of being able to account for the distality of perceptual content.
Abstract: Perceptual representations have distal content: they represent external objects and their properties, not light waves or retinal images. This basic fact presents a fundamental problem for ‘input-oriented’ theories of perceptual content. As I show in the first part of this paper, this even holds for what is arguably the most sophisticated input-oriented theory to date, namely Karen Neander's informational teleosemantics. In the second part of the paper, I develop a new version of informational teleosemantics, drawing partly on empirical psychology, and partly on philosophical considerations. I shall argue that this version has all the virtues of Neander's original theory, but also the further crucial advantage of being able to account for the distality of perceptual content.
23 citations
16 citations
15 citations
TL;DR: The cognitive fine-tuning problem for cognitive phenomenalism as discussed by the authors is a challenge for cognitive phenomenology, which is the view that occurrent thoughts are identical with, or constituted of, cognitive phenomenalology.
Abstract: Cognitive phenomenalism is the view that occurrent thoughts are identical with, or constituted of, cognitive phenomenology. This paper raises a challenge for (standard forms of) this view: the cognitive fine-tuning problem. In broad brushstrokes the difficulty is that, for the cognitive phenomenalist, there is a distinction between three kinds of fact: cognitive phenomenal facts, sensory phenomenal facts, and functional facts. This distinction gives rise to the challenge of explaining why, in actuality, these three phenomena tend to be matched together in ways that respect norms of rationality. Various solutions to this problem are explored – divine intervention, value-involving laws of nature, or basic capacities to respond to reasons – all of which are wildly at odds with naturalism. If cognitive phenomenalists want their view to be consistent with naturalism, as many do, they must come up with a naturalistic solution to the cognitive fine-tuning problem.
13 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others, just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle.
Abstract: I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally.
13 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that a civil disobedient is responsible (i.e. answerable) to his fellows for the charges of wrongdoing, yet he is not liable to punishment merely for breaching the law, and defend an account of political obligation framed in terms of respect for (rather than mere obedience to) the law.
Abstract: Many believe that a citizen who engages in civil disobedience is not exempt from the sanctions that apply to standard law-breaking conduct. Since he is responsible for a deliberate breach of the law, he is also liable to punishment. Focusing on a conception of responsibility as answerability, I argue that a civil disobedient is responsible (i.e. answerable) to his fellows for the charges of wrongdoing, yet he is not liable to punishment merely for breaching the law. To support this claim, I defend an account of political obligation framed in terms of respect for (rather than mere obedience to) the law, and argue that the mere illegality of civil disobedience does not suffice to establish wrongdoing. I then discuss and reject three objections to my argument.
12 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an account of the value of procreative-parenting that can resist two particularly pressing philosophical challenges: the first challenge is to show that it is morally permissible for prospective parents to procreate given that adoption takes us much closer to both environmental and social justice.
Abstract: Many philosophers believe that the relationship between a parent and a child is valuable, but few believe that this has anything to do with procreation. However, if it is indeed true that procreation adds no value to the activity of parenting, then it is hard to see how procreative-parenting can overcome two particularly pressing philosophical challenges. The first challenge is to show that it is morally permissible for prospective parents to procreate given that adoption takes us much closer to both environmental and social justice. The second challenge is to show that it is morally permissible for biological parents to parent their biological child when other prospective parents are willing and able to do a much better job at furthering the child's interests. In this essay, I provide an account of the value of procreative-parenting that can resist these two challenges.
9 citations
9 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Calosi argues that CII entails Mereological Nihilism, defined as the thesis that everything is a mereological atom, that is, an entity without proper parts (or an entity that has only itself as a part).
Abstract: Claudio Calosi (2016a) has presented an ingenious argument to the effect that CII entails Mereological Nihilism (or ‘Nihilism’ for short), defined as the thesis that everything is a mereological atom, that is, an entity without proper parts (or, alternatively, an entity that has only itself as a part): (A) A(x) =df ∀y(y < x → y = x) (CN) ∀xA(x) Following Sider (2014), Calosi takes CII to entail the Collapse Principle (or ‘Collapse’ for short), according to which, if an entity x fuses a plurality of entities X, then something is a part of x if, and only if, it is one of the X:
TL;DR: This paper argues that these two traditional conceptions of numerical degree of similarity are logically independent, but philosophically inconsonant.
Abstract: There are at least two traditional conceptions of numerical degree of similarity. According to the first, the degree of dissimilarity between two particulars is their distance apart in a metric space. According to the second, the degree of similarity between two particulars is a function of the number of (sparse) properties they have in common and not in common. This paper argues that these two conceptions are logically independent, but philosophically inconsonant.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that rational permissibility is an indeterminate notion, with EDT and CDT each corresponding to one sharpening of this notion, and that both theories play a partial role in the true account of rational choice.
Abstract: A prominent philosophical debate concerns whether we should accept causal decision theory (CDT) or evidential decision theory (EDT) as our best theory of rational choice. However, instead of accepting one of these theories at the expense of the other, an alternative would be to accept that both theories play a partial role in the true account of rational choice. In this paper, I defend a pluralist account of this sort. In particular, I argue that rational permissibility is an indeterminate notion, with EDT and CDT each corresponding to one sharpening of this notion.