Deference,respect and intensionality

This paper is about the standard Reflection Principle (van Fraassen in J Philos 81(5):235–256, 1984) and the Group Reflection Principle (Elga in Nous 41(3):478–502, 2007; Bovens and Rabinowicz in Episteme 8(3):281–300, 2011; Titelbaum in Quitting certainties: a Bayesian framework modeling degrees of belief, OUP, Oxford, 2012; Hedden in Mind 124(494):449–491, 2015). I argue that these principles are incomplete as they stand. The key point is that deference is an intensional relation, and so whether you are rationally required to defer to a person at a time can depend on how that person and that time are designated. In this paper I suggest a way of completing the Reflection Principle and Group Reflection Principle, and I argue that so completed these principles are plausible. In particular, they do not fall foul of the Sleeping Beauty case (Elga in Analysis 60(2):143–147, 2000), the Cable Guy Paradox (Hajek in Analysis 65(286):112–119, 2005), Arntzenius’ prisoner cases (Arntzenius in J Philos, 100(7):356–370, 2003), or the Puzzle of the Hats (Bovens and Rabinowicz in Episteme 8(3):281–300, 2011).     

God’s Melancholia

Donald Capps’s (Capps 1997, 2001, 2002a, b) male melancholia theory has been of interest to me during the past few years (Carlin 2003, 2006, 2007), and Capps (2004, 2007a, b) himself has been publishing more on the topic. In his psychobiographical book on Jesus, Capps (2000) notes that psychologists of religion have been reluctant to psychoanalyze Jesus, and here I note that even fewer have been willing to diagnose God, one recent exception being J. Harold Ellens (2007). In this article, I explore the melancholia issue further, this time applying the theory to God by means of theological concepts that deal with the Trinity and the passion of God. And while this article is playful (Pruyser 1974; cf. Dykstra 2001), the upshot is more serious: If men are incurably religious and melancholic, as Capps argues, and if men, by and large, are the creators of religion, wouldn’t one expect to find traces of this melancholy in religion, particularly in its sacred texts and doctrines? By identifying these tendencies in religion, especially in God, the pastoral psychologist, I believe, is helping contemporary Christian men—especially fathers and sons—recognize their own melancholy selves and, perhaps, helping them get along a little better.     

The personal and the subpersonal in the theory of mind debate

It is a widely accepted assumption within the philosophy of mind and psychology that our ability for complex social interaction is based on the mastery of a common folk psychology, that is to say that social cognition consists in reasoning about the mental states of others in order to predict and explain their behavior. This, in turn, requires the possession of mental-state concepts, such as the concepts belief and desire. In recent years, this standard conception of social cognition has been called into question by proponents of so-called ‘direct-perception’ approaches to social cognition (e.g., Gallagher 2001, 2005, 2007, 2012; Gallagher and Hutto 2008; Zahavi 2005, 2011) and by those who argue that the ‘received view’ implies a degree of computational complexity that is implausible (e.g., Bermúdez 2003; Apperly and Butterfill 2009). In response, it has been argued that these attacks on the classical view of social cognition have no bite at the subpersonal level of explanation, and that it is the latter which is at issue in the debate in question (e.g., Herschbach 2008; Spaulding 2010, 2015). In this paper, I critically examine this response by considering in more detail the distinction between personal and subpersonal level explanations. There are two main ways in which the distinction has been developed (Drayson 2014). I will argue that on either of these, the response proposed by defenders of the received view is unconvincing. This shows that the dispute between the standard conception and alternative approaches to mindreading is a dispute concerning personal-level explanations - what is at stake in the debate between proponents of the classical view of social cognition and their critics is how we, as persons, navigate our social world. I will conclude by proposing a pluralistic approach to social cognition, which is better able to do justice to the multi-faceted nature of our social interactions as well as being able to account for recent empirical findings regarding the social cognitive abilities of young infants.     

Modus Ponens Under the Restrictor View

There is a renewed debate about modus ponens. Strikingly, the recent counterexamples in Cantwell (Theoria, 74, 331–351 2008), Dreier (2009) and MacFarlane and Kolodny (The Journal of Philosophy, 107, 115–143 2010) are generated by restricted readings of the ‘if’-clause. Moreover, it can be argued on general grounds that the restrictor view of conditionals developed in Kratzer (1986) and Lewis (1975) leads to counterexamples to modus ponens (cp. Charlow Synthese, 190, 2291–2323 2013; Khoo Philosophical Studies, 166, 153–64 2013). This paper provides a careful analysis of modus ponens within the framework of the restrictor view. Despite appearances to the contrary, there is a robust sense in which modus ponens is valid, owing to the fact that conditionals do not only allow for restricted readings but have bare interpretations, too.     

Solving Smullyan Puzzles with Formal Systems

Solving numeric, logic and language puzzles and paradoxes is common within a wide community of high school and university students, fact witnessed by the increasing number of books published by mathematicians such as Martin Gardner (popular books as old as Gardner in Aha! insight. W. H. Freeman & Co., London, 1978, Wheels, life and other mathematical amusements. W H Freeman & Co., London, 1985), Douglas Hofstadter [in one of the best popular science books on paradoxes (Hofstadter in Godel, escher, bach: an eternal golden braid, Penguin, London, 2000)], inspired by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems), Patrick Hughes and George Brecht (see Hughes and Brecht in Vicious circles and infinity, an anthology of paradoxes. Penguin Books, London, 1993) and Raymond M. Smullyan (the most well known being Smullyan in Forever undecided, puzzle guide to godel. Oxford Paperbacks, Oxford 1988, To Mock a Mockingbird and other logic puzzles. Oxford Paperbacks, Oxford 2000, The lady or the tiger? And other logic puzzles. Dover Publications Inc., Mineola 2009), inter alia. Books by Smullyan (such as Smullyan 1988, 2000) are, however, much more involved, since they introduce learning trajectories and strategies across several subjects of mathematical logic, as difficult as combinatorial logic (see, e.g., Smullyan 2000), computability theory (see Smullyan 1988), and proof theory (see Smullyan 1988, 2009). These books provide solutions to their suggested exercises. Both statements and their solutions are written in the natural language, introducing some informal algorithms. As an exercise in Mathematics we wonder if an easy proof system could be devised to solve the amusing equations proposed by Smullyan in his books. Moreover, university students of logic could well train themselves in constructing deductive systems to solve puzzles instead of a non-uniform treatment one by one. In this paper, addressing students, we introduce one such formal systems, a tableaux approach able to provide the solutions to the puzzles involving either propositional logic, first order logic, or aspect logic. Let the reader amuse herself or himself!     

Glymour and Quine on Theoretical Equivalence

Glymour (1970, 1977, 1980) and Quine (1975) propose two different formal criteria for theoretical equivalence. In this paper we examine the relationships between these criteria.     

Mental Illness Publications in Major Pastoral Care Journals from 1950 to 2003

The issue of mental illness has been of considerable interest to both of us over the past several years. The first author has taught a course on the subject for a decade, and his recent publications on the subject include several articles on John Nash (Capps, 2003b, 2004a,b, 2005b), a book on mental illness for pastoral care professionals (2005a), and an article on whether William James was a patient at McLean Hospital (2007). The second author has had experience with the mentally ill through his pastoral work at Trenton Psychiatrist Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, a mental hospital with a rather checkered history (see Scull, 2005), and in Scotland and has also written an article on John Nash (Carlin, 2006). This shared interest, together with evidence that serious mental illness in America has been steadily increasing (Torrey &; Miller, 2001, pp. 295–299), caused us to wonder what sort of attention mental illness has received in our major journals of pastoral care from 1950 to the present. Specifically, has this attention kept pace with the increase in mental illness?     

The consequence argument ungrounded

Peter van Inwagen’s original formulation of the Consequence Argument employed an inference rule (rule beta) that was shown to be invalid given van Inwagen’s interpretation of the modal operators in the Consequence Argument (McKay and Johnson in Philos Top 24:113–122, 1996). In response, van Inwagen (Metaphysics. The big questions, Blackwell, Oxford, 2008a, Harv Rev Philos 22:16–30, 2015) recently suggested a revised interpretation of his modal operators. Following up on a debate between Blum (Dialectica 57:423–429, 2003) and Schnieder (Synthese 162:101–115, 2008), I analyze van Inwagen’s revised interpretation in terms of explanatory notions and I argue that van Inwagen faces a dilemma: he either has to admit that beta entails fatalism, or he has to admit that a new counterexample invalidates beta. Either way, it seems reasonable to reject beta and to conclude that the Consequence Argument fails. Further, I argue that Widerker’s (Analysis 47:37–41, 1987) well-known substitute for rule beta is faced with a similar dilemma and, therefore, is bound to fail as well. I conclude that, if the modal operators are interpreted in terms of explanatory notions, neither van Inwagen’s nor Widerker’s rule of inference turns out to be valid.     

Pinocchio against the Semantic Hierarchies

The Liar paradox is an obstacle to a theory of truth, but a Liar sentence need not contain a semantic predicate. The Pinocchio paradox, devised by Veronique Eldridge-Smith, was the first published paradox to show this. Pinocchio’s nose grows if, and only if, what Pinocchio is saying is untrue (the Pinocchio principle). What happens if Pinocchio says that his nose is growing? Eldridge-Smith and Eldridge-Smith (Analysis, 70(2): 212-5, 2010) posed the Pinocchio paradox against the Tarskian-Kripkean solutions to the Liar paradox that use language hierarchies. Eldridge-Smith (Analysis, 71(2): 306-8, 2011) also set the Pinocchio paradox against semantic dialetheic solutions to the Liar. Beall (2011) argued the Pinocchio story was just an impossible story. Eldridge-Smith (Analysis, 72(3): 749-752, 2012b) responded that unless the T-schema is a necessary truth of some sort (logical, metaphysical or analytic), the Pinocchio principle is possible. Luna (Mind & Matter 14(1): 77–86, 2016) argues that the Pinocchio contradiction proves the principle is false. D’Agostini & Ficara (2016) discuss a more plausible physical truth-tracking trait, the Blushing Liar, and argue that the Pinocchio contradiction is not a metaphysical dialetheia. I respond to Luna, and D’Agostini & Ficara, and prove that the Pinocchio paradox is a counterexample to hierarchical solutions to the Liar.     

Animal Morality: What It Means and Why It Matters

It has been argued that some animals are moral subjects, that is, beings who are capable of behaving on the basis of moral motivations (Rowlands 2011, 2012, 2017). In this paper, we do not challenge this claim. Instead, we presuppose its plausibility in order to explore what ethical consequences follow from it. Using the capabilities approach (Nussbaum 2004, 2007), we argue that beings who are moral subjects are entitled to enjoy positive opportunities for the flourishing of their moral capabilities, and that the thwarting of these capabilities entails a harm that cannot be fully explained in terms of hedonistic welfare. We explore the implications of this idea for the assessment of current practices involving animals.     

Power,Situation, and Character: A Confucian-Inspired Response to Indirect Situationist Critiques

Indirect situationist critiques of virtue ethics grant that virtue exists and is possible to acquire, but contend that given the low probability of success in acquiring it, a person genuinely interested in behaving as morally as possible would do better to rely on situationist strategies - or, in other words, strategies of environmental or ecological engineering or control (Doris, 2002, 1998; see also Levy 2012). In this paper, I develop a partial answer to this critique drawn from work in early Confucian ethics and in contemporary philosophy and psychology. From early Confucian ethics, I lean on the concept of li, or ritual. Ritual represents both a set of situational manipulations that are especially effective at directly producing moral behavior and at indirectly cultivating virtue over time, and also a virtue that consists of facility with and expertise in these situational manipulations (Mower 2013; Slingerland, 2011; Sarkissian, 2010; and Hutton, 2006). Appealing to the particular example of social power, I then argue that one is justified in attempting to acquire virtue if one (a) knows that one will frequently encounter circumstances in which purely situationist strategies lose effectiveness, (b) if these circumstances also carry moral urgency: the risk of great harm or opportunity for great benefit to others is high, and (c) if utilizing the potent combination of situationist strategies and virtue envisioned by the early Confucians as ritual is possible.     

Lost in Translation: Religion in The Public Sphere

This paper proposes a Wittgenstein-inspired critique of the prism of translation that frames the recent literature about the debate between Rawls and Habermas on the role of religious reasons in the public sphere (Habermas 2008; Weithman 2006; Wolterstorff 1997). This debate originates with the introduction of Rawls’s proviso in his conception of the public use of reason (Rawls The University of Chicago Law Review, 64(3), 765-807, 1997), which consists in the “translation” of religious reasons into secular ones, which he thinks is necessary in order for religious reasons to be legitimate in the public sphere (Courtois Dialogue, 49, 91-112, 2010; Loobuyck and Rummens Ars disputandi: The Online Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 5, 237–249, 2011; Sikka The Review of Politics, 78, 91-116, 2016). Even though Wittgenstein is not himself concerned with religious pluralism as a political issue, there are numerous scholars who have discussed the political implications of his remarks (Gunnell Contemporary Political Theory, 12 80-101, 2013; Livingston Philosophy and Social Criticism, 33(6), 691–715, 2007; Moore Philosophy and Social Criticism, 36(9), 1113-1136 2010; Pohlhaus and Wright Political Theory, 30(6), 800–27, 2002). The thesis of this paper is that the interpretation proposed by Cora Diamond (2000) in regards to ethical and religious questions turns out to be a suitable way out of the “translation requirement”. According to this solution, if there is to be an understanding between secular and religious citizens on the basis of religious reasons, it should not rely on a “translation” but rather on mutual self-representation.     

Seeing through eyes,mirrors, shadows and pictures

I argue that we can see in a great many cases that run counter to common sense. We can literally see through mirrors, in just the same way that we (literally) see through our eyes. We can, likewise, literally see through photographs, shadows, and (some) paintings. Rather than starting with an analysis of seeing, I present a series of evolving thought experiments, arguing that in each case there is no relevant difference between it and the previous case regarding whether we see. In a sense, my arguments can be thought of as akin to the Extended Mind Hypothesis (Clark and Chalmers 1998). But instead of arguing that our minds can extend into the world, I argue that our sensory organs can extend into the world. Among the things that emerge from this discussion are (1) that—contrary to Currie (1995) and Carroll (1996)—seeing an object O doesn’t require being able to locate O with respect to yourself, (2) that—contrary to Sorensen (2008)—we can see objects by seeing their shadows, and (3) that—contrary to Walton (1984)—it doesn’t matter whether the causal relation between O and yourself is mediated by beliefs.     

Why the Canberra plan won’t help you do serious metaphysics

Jackson (From metaphysics to ethics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998) argues that conceptual analysis plays a modest, albeit crucial, role in ‘serious metaphysics’: roughly, the project of demystifying phenomena we take to be mysterious by locating them in the natural world. This defence of conceptual analysis is associated with ‘the Canberra Plan’, a philosophical methodology that has its roots in the works of both Lewis (J Philos 67(13):427–446, 1970, Australas J Philos 50:249–258, 1972) and Jackson (Monist 77:93–110, 1994, 1998). There is, however, a distinction to be drawn between conceptual analysis, as it is typically employed in the Canberra plan, and a version of it defended by Jackson himself. In this paper, I elucidate this distinction, and employ examples from the history of science to argue the use of the former, but not the latter, incurs certain problems of conceptual change. Moreover, I also argue neither can be used to undertake serious metaphysics—the former because of the aforementioned problems, and the latter due to the machinery it employs to solve them.     

Agency,Chance, and the Scientific Status of Psychology

Psychologists generally reject the reductionist, physicalist, “nothing but” stance of the natural sciences. At the same time they consider their discipline a science and wonder why it does not enjoy the status (and funding) of the natural sciences. Ferguson American Psychologist, 70, 527-542 (2015), Lilienfeld American Psychologist, 67, 111-129 (2012), and Schwartz et al. American Psychologist, 71, 52-70 (2016) are among those who adopt a soft naturalism of nonreductive physicalism which declares, or implies, that when it comes to humans, there is more than what the natural sciences can unravel. They envision psychology as scientific in the epistemological sense of generating reproducible results, but reject the reductive ontology of science which currently points to the undeterminable chance of quantum theory as the closest physics has come to the beginnings and what might loosely be called the foundation of the universe (e.g., Bridgman Harper's, 158, 443-451 1929; Eddington 1948). The case made here is that any science, including a psychological one, must be based on a naturalist ontology. This implies restricting the term science to disciplines which not only meet epistemological criteria like reproducibility, but which also adopt—on the ontological level—the parsimonious assumption that at present it makes sense to think that “there is nothing but time and chance” (e.g., Cox and Forshaw 2011; Crease and Goldhaber 2014; Rorty 1989). From this perspective, psychology emerges as two distinct disciplines, one a natural science, the other a human science in the broad sense of science as scientia.     

A visual familiarity account of evidence for orthographic processing in pigeons <Emphasis Type="Italic">(Columbia livia)</Emphasis>: a reply to Scarf,Corballis, Güntürkün,and Colombo (2017)

Scarf et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci 113(40):11272–11276, 2016) demonstrated that pigeons, as with baboons (Grainger et al. in Science 336(6078):245–248, 2012; Ziegler in Psychol Sci.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612474322, 2013), can be trained to display several behavioural hallmarks of human orthographic processing. But, Vokey and Jamieson (Psychol Sci 25(4):991–996, 2014) demonstrated that a standard, autoassociative neural network model of memory applied to pixel maps of the words and nonwords reproduces all of those results. In a subsequent report, Scarf et al. (Anim Cognit 20(5):999–1002, 2017) demonstrated that pigeons can reproduce one more marker of human orthographic processing: the ability to discriminate visually presented four-letter words from their mirror-reversed counterparts (e.g. “LEFT” vs. “ Open image in new window ”). The current report shows that the model of Vokey and Jamieson (2014) reproduces the results of Scarf et al. (2017) and reinforces the original argument: the recent results thought to support a conclusion of orthographic processing in pigeons and baboons are consistent with but do not force that conclusion.     

Equivalences Among Polarity Algorithms

The concept of polarity is pervasive in natural language. It relates syntax, semantics and pragmatics narrowly (Giannakidou, in: Maienborn, von Heusinger, Portner (eds.), Semantics: an international handbook of natural language meaning, De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, 2011; Israel in The grammar of polarity: pragmatics, sensitivity, and the logic of scales, Cambridge studies in linguistics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014), it refers to items of many syntactic categories such as nouns, verbs and adverbs. Neutral polarity items appear in affirmative and negative sentences, negative polarity items cannot appear in affirmative sentences, and positive polarity items cannot appear in negative sentences. A way of reasoning in Natural Language is through Natural Logic (van Benthem in Essays in logical semantics, vol. 29 of Studies in linguistics and philosophy, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1986; Language in action: categories, lambdas, and dynamic logic, vol. 130 of Studies in logic, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1991). This logic is based on the concept of polarity in order to make the meaning of a sentence weaker o stronger without changing its truth value. There exist many proposals to compute polarity in the Natural Logic context, the most widely known are the ones by: van Benthem (1986, 1991), Sánchez-Valencia (Studies on natural logic and categorial grammar, Ph.D. thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1991), Dowty (Proceedings of the 4th conference on semantics and theoretical linguistics, Cornel University, CLC Publications, Rochester, 1994), and van Eijck (in: ten Cate, Zeevat (eds.), 6th international Tbilisi symposium on logic, language, and computation, Batumi, Georgia, Springer, 2007). If Natural Logic is going to be used, as an inferential mechanism between text fragments, in Natural Language Processing applications such as text summarization, question answering, and information extraction, it is a priority to know what the existing relationship among the aforementioned algorithms is; for example, to implement the most general. We show in this paper the equivalence among the analyzed algorithms, filling a gap in Natural Logic research, particularly in computing polarity, and the soundness of their algorithms.     

The Varieties of Moral Improvement,or why Metaethical Constructivism must Explain Moral Progress

Among the available metaethical views, it would seem that moral realism—in particular moral naturalism—must explain the possibility of moral progress. We see this in the oft-used argument from disagreement against various moral realist views. My suggestion in this paper is that, surprisingly, metaethical constructivism has at least as pressing a need to explain moral progress. I take moral progress to be, minimally, the opportunity to access and to act in light of moral facts of the matter, whether they are mind-independent or -dependent. For the metaethical constructivist, however, I add that moral progress ought also mean that agents come to be or could come to be motivated to act in light of the right kind of moral judgments. Together I take this to mean that, for all forms of constructivism, moral progress must be explained as a form of moral improvement, or agents aspiring to be better sorts of moral agents. In what moral improvement consists differs for various forms of constructivism. Here I distinguish between three different versions of metaethical constructivism: Humean constructivists as represented by Street (2008, 2010, 2012), Kantian constitutivist constructivists as represented by Korsgaard, and constructivists about practical reason as represented by Carla Bagnoli (2002, 2013). I conclude by showing that only constructivism as a view about practical reason can fully account for moral progress qua the opportunity for moral improvement.     

Do gray wolves (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis lupus</Emphasis>) support pack mates during aggressive inter-pack interactions?

For group-living mammals, social coordination increases success in everything from hunting and foraging (Crofoot and Wrangham in Mind the Gap, Springer, Berlin, 2010; Bailey et al. in Behav Ecol Sociobiol 67:1–17, 2013) to agonism (Mosser and Packer in Anim Behav 78:359–370, 2009; Wilson et al. in Anim Behav 83:277–291, 2012; Cassidy et al. in Behav Ecol 26:1352–1360, 2015). Cooperation is found in many species and, due to its low costs, likely is a determining factor in the evolution of living in social groups (Smith in Anim Behav 92:291–304, 2014). Beyond cooperation, many mammals perform costly behaviors for the benefit of group mates (e.g., parental care, food sharing, grooming). Altruism is considered the most extreme case of cooperation where the altruist increases the fitness of the recipient while decreasing its own fitness (Bell in Selection: the mechanism of evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008). Gray wolf life history requires intra-pack familiarity, communication, and cooperation in order to succeed in hunting (MacNulty et al. in Behav Ecol doi: 10.1093/beheco/arr159 2011) and protecting group resources (Stahler et al. in J Anim Ecol 82: 222–234, 2013; Cassidy et al. in Behav Ecol 26:1352–1360, 2015). Here, we report 121 territorial aggressive inter-pack interactions in Yellowstone National Park between 1 April 1995 and 1 April 2011 (>5300 days of observation) and examine each interaction where one wolf interferes when its pack mate is being attacked by a rival group. This behavior was recorded six times (17.6 % of interactions involving an attack) and often occurred between dyads of closely related individuals. We discuss this behavior as it relates to the evolution of cooperation, sociality, and altruism.     

The Hidden Set-Theoretical Paradox of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Tractatus</Emphasis>

We are familiar with various set-theoretical paradoxes such as Cantor's paradox, Burali-Forti's paradox, Russell's paradox, Russell-Myhill paradox and Kaplan's paradox. In fact, there is another new possible set-theoretical paradox hiding itself in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Wittgenstein 1989). From the Tractatus’s Picture theory of language (hereafter LP) we can strictly infer the two contradictory propositions simultaneously: (a) the world and the language are equinumerous; (b) the world and the language are not equinumerous. I call this antinomy the world-language paradox. Based on a rigorous analysis of the Tractatus, with the help of the technical resources of Cantor’s naive set theory (Cantor in Mathematische Annalen, 46, 481–512, 1895, Mathematische Annalen, 49, 207–246, 1897) and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice (hereafter ZFC) (Jech 2006: 3–15; Kunen 1992: xv–xvi; Bagaria 2008: 619–622), I outline the world-language paradox and assess the unique possible solution plan, i.e., the mathematical plan utilizing ‘infinity’. I conclude that Wittgenstein cannot solve the hidden set-theoretical paradox of the Tractatus successfully unless he gives up his finitism.