The Presence of Others

Hybrid accounts of folk psychology maintain that we sometimes theorize and sometimes simulate in order to understand others. An important question is why this is the case. In this paper, I present a view according to which simulation, but not theory, plays a central role in empathy. In contrast to others taking a similar approach to simulation, I do not focus on empathy’s cognitive aspect, but stress its affective-motivational one. Simulating others’ emotions usually engages our motivations altruistically. By vicariously feeling what others are feeling, we directly come to be motivated by their projects and concerns. Simulation contrasts with more theoretical approaches to psychological attribution that help us understand and explan others, but that do not move us altruistically. This helps us see why we would posit two different folk psychological approaches instead of merely one.     

The Idea of Different Folk Psychologies

The idea of different folk psychologies is the idea that among the world's cultures there are those whose folk, or commonsense, psychologies differ in theoretically significant ways from each other and from western folk psychology. This challenges the claim that folk psychology is a 'cultural universal'. The paper looks first of all at what are called 'opulent' accounts of folk psychology, which employ a wide-ranging and more complex set of psychological concepts, and 'core' accounts, which employ a much more restricted set of such concepts. With respect to both kinds of account it is argued that field studies of the folk-psychological concepts of a number of ethnic groups indicate significant differences between the concepts used by those groups and those of western folk psychology; and hence do not support the view that folk psychology is a cultural universal.     

Problems with Norms of Assertion

In this paper I draw attention to a number of problems that afflict norm accounts of assertion, i.e. accounts that explain what assertion is, and typically how speakers understand what assertion is, by appeal to a norm of assertion. I argue that the disagreements in the literature over norm selection undermines such an account of understanding. I also argue that the treatment of intuitions as evidence in the literature undermines much of the connection to empirical evidence. I further argue that appeals made to conversational patterns do not require the existence of any norms at all.     

Sellars on thoughts and beliefs

In this paper, I examine Wilfrid Sellars’ famous Myth of Jones. I argue the myth provides an ontologically austere account of thoughts and beliefs that makes sense of the full range of our folk psychological abilities. Sellars’ account draws on both Gilbert Ryle and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ryle provides Sellars with the resources to make thoughts metaphysically respectable and Wittgenstein the resources to make beliefs rationally criticisable. By combining these insights into a single account, Sellars is able to see reasons as causes and, hence, to respect the full range of our folk psychological generalisations. This is achieved by modelling folk psychological practice on theoretical reasoning. But despite frequent misinterpretation, Sellars does not claim that thoughts and beliefs are theoretical concepts. Thus, folk psychological explanation is not theoretical, and hence, it is not replaceable by scientific theory. Hence, scientific concepts will not eliminate folk psychological concepts. Thus, Sellars avoids eliminativism.     

Counterfactual Discourse in Context

The classic Lewis‐Stalnaker semantics for counterfactuals captures that Sobel sequences are consistent sequences, for example:

• a. If Sophie had gone to the parade, she would have seen Pedro dance.
• b. But if Sophie had gone to the parade and been stuck behind someone tall, she would not have seen Pedro dance.

But reverse a sequence like this one and it no longer sounds so good, which is surprising on the classic semantics. This observation motivated Kai von Fintel (2001) and Thony Gillies (2007) to propose dynamic semantic accounts of counterfactual conditionals. Subsequently, Sarah Moss (2012) defended the classic semantics against the charge that it need be abandoned in the face of these order effects, arguing that the infelicity of the reverse sequences is pragmatic. I argue that both accounts are ultimately untenable, but each account has strengths. Seeing what works and what doesn't in each account points the way to the right positive view. With this in mind, I defend a contextualist account of counterfactuals that takes conversational relevance to play a central role.     

Response-dependence without reduction?

I will discuss those epistemic accounts of truth that say, roughly and at least, that the truth is what all ideally rational people, with maximum evidence, would in the long run come to believe. They have been defended on the grounds that they can solve sceptical problems that traditional accounts cannot surmount, and that they explain the value of truth in ways that traditional (and particularly, minimal) accounts cannot; they have been attacked on the grounds that they collapse into idealism.

I show that all these claims are mistaken. The system of statements accepted by an adherent of an epistemic account who also accepts the equivalence scheme is the same as that accepted by an adherent of a traditional account who also accepts a remarkably strong thesis of epistemic optimism. The singling out of one rather than another claim within this system as defining ‘true’ cannot make as much difference as to imply idealism or refute scepticism.

However, it can make all the difference when it is a matter of explaining the value of truth. For a crucial point in such explanation depends on what can be soundly substituted for what in intensional contexts; above all those governed by such verbs as ‘know’, ‘hope’, ‘believe’, ‘value’. That is, it depends on what expressions are intensionally equivalent. And one point of singling out one formulation as definitional can be to settle just this.

But though some epistemic theorists have deemed ability to explain the value of truth a merit of their account (and lack of this ability a fatal defect of traditional accounts, of minimal accounts in particular), it turns out that minimal accounts of ‘true’ fit a sound account of our valuing of truth in a way that epistemic accounts do not.

In the course of this argument I rebut related positions: e.g. Dummett's, that minimal definitions fail because they cannot account for the point of having a notion of truth, and that an account of the practice of assertion is what would fill this lacuna. I argue to the contrary that if the point of the notion could not be explained on the basis of a traditional definition, it could not be explained at all.     

A Unified Empirical Account of Responsibility Judgments*

Skeptical worries about moral responsibility seem to be widely appreciated and deeply felt. To address these worries—if nothing else to show that they are mistaken—theories of moral responsibility need to relate to whatever concept of responsibility underlies the worries. Unfortunately, the nature of that concept has proved hard to pin down. Not only do philosophers have conflicting intuitions; numerous recent empirical studies have suggested that both prosaic responsibility judgments and incompatibilist intuitions among the folk are influenced by a number of surprising factors, sometimes prompting apparently contradictory judgments. In this paper, we show how an independently motivated hypothesis about responsibility judgments provides a unified explanation of the more important results from these studies. According to this ‘Explanation Hypothesis’, to take an agent to be morally responsible for an event is to take a relevant motivational structure of the agent to be part of a significant explanation of the event. We argue that because of how explanatory interests and perspectives affect what we take as significant explanations, this analysis accounts for the puzzling variety of empirical results. If this is correct, the Explanation Hypothesis also provides a new way of understanding debates about moral responsibility.     

Reasons explanations (of actions) as structural explanations

Non-causal accounts of action explanation have long been criticized for lacking a positive thesis, relying primarily on negative arguments to undercut the standard Causal Theory of Action (Wilson and Shpall , in: Zalta (ed) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016). Additionally, it is commonly thought that non-causal accounts fail to provide an answer to Donald Davidson’s (1963) challenge for theories of reasons explanations of actions. According to Davidson’s challenge, a plausible non-causal account of reasons explanations must provide a way of connecting an agent’s reasons, not only to what she ought to do, but to what she actually does. That is, such explanations must be truth-apt, not mere rationalizations. My aim in this paper is to show how a non-causal account of action can provide explanations that are truth-apt and genuinely explanatory. To make this argument, I take as a given an account of the practical syllogism (the syllogistic form of practical reasoning) discussed by Michael Thompson (Life and action: elementary structures of practice and practical thought, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2008) and Eric Wiland (Reasons, Continuum, New York, 2012), according to which the practical syllogism is truly practical rather than propositional in nature. Next, I present my primary positive thesis: reasons for actions have explanatory power in virtue of being parts of a structure—the practical syllogism—that contains the action being explained. I then argue that structural action explanations can meet Davidson’s challenge and that they genuinely explain actions. Finally, I conclude by addressing some objections to my argument.

     

Meta-Externalism vs Meta-Internalism in The Study of Reference

We distinguish and discuss two different accounts of the subject matter of theories of reference, meta-externalism and meta-internalism. We argue that a form of the meta-internalist view, “moderate meta-internalism”, is the most plausible account of the subject matter of theories of reference. In the second part of the paper we explain how this account also helps to answer the questions of what kind of concept reference is, and what role intuitions have in the study of the reference relation.