Why is there anything except physics?

In the course of defending his view of the relation between the special sciences and physics from Jaegwon Kim’s objections Jerry Fodor asks “So then, why is there anything except physics?” By which he seems to mean to ask if physics is fundamental and complete in its domain how can there be autonomous special science laws. Fodor wavers between epistemological and metaphysical understandings of the autonomy of the special sciences. In my paper I draw out the metaphysical construal of his view and argue that while in a sense it answers Fodor’s question it is immensely implausible.     

Is there a problem with enhancement?

This article examines arguments concerning enhancement of human persons recently presented by Michael Sandel (2004). In the first section, I briefly describe some of his arguments. In section two, I consider whether, as Sandel claims, the desire for mastery motivates enhancement and whether such a desire could be grounds for its impermissibility. Section three considers how Sandel draws the distinction between treatment and enhancement, and the relation to nature that he thinks each expresses. The fourth section examines Sandel's views about parent/child relations and also how enhancement would affect distributive justice and the duty to aid. In conclusion, I briefly offer an alternative suggestion as to why enhancement may be troubling and consider what we could safely enhance.     

Why is a truth-predicate like a pronoun?

I begin with an exposition of the two main variants of the Prosentential Theory of Truth (PT), those of Dorothy Grover et al. and Robert Brandom. Three main types of criticisms are then put forward: (1) material criticisms to the effect that (PT) does not adequately explain the linguistic data, (2) an objection to the effect that no variant of (PT) gives a properly unified account of the various occurrences of “true” in English, and, most importantly, (3) a charge that the comparison with proforms is explanatorily idle. The last objection is that, given a complete semantic account of pronouns, proadjectives, antecedents, etc., together with a complete (PT), the essential semantic character of “true” could be deduced, but then, the idleness of the comparison with pronouns would be apparent. It turns out that objections (2) and (3) are related in the following way: the prosentential terminology is held to conceal the lack of unity in (PT), by describing the different data in the same terms (“proform”, “antecedent”, etc.). But this, I argue, is only a way of truly describing, rather than explaining, the data, these being certain relations of equivalence and consequence between sentences. I consider a language for which (PT) would be not only true, but also explanatory, but note that this language is very different from English. I end by showing that Robert Brandom’s case that “is true” is not a predicate fails, and that his motivation for saying so is based on fallacious reasoning (namely, Boghossian’s argument against deflationism).     

Why the generality problem is everybody’s problem

The generality problem is widely considered to be a devastating objection to reliabilist theories of justification. My goal in this paper is to argue that a version of the generality problem applies to all plausible theories of justification. Assume that any plausible theory must allow for the possibility of reflective justification—S’s belief, B, is justified on the basis of S’s knowledge that she arrived at B as a result of a highly (but not perfectly) reliable way of reasoning, R. The generality problem applies to all cases of reflective justification: Given that B is the product of a process-token that is an instance of indefinitely many belief-forming process-types (or BFPTs), why is the reliability of R, rather than the reliability of one of the indefinitely many other BFPTs, relevant to B’s justificatory status? This form of the generality problem is restricted because it applies only to cases of reflective justification. But unless it is solved, the generality problem haunts all plausible theories of justification, not just reliabilist ones.     

Suppressing unwanted memories: where there is a will,there is a way?

Research suggests that suppressing unwanted thoughts, generally, is an ineffective thought control strategy, because suppression attempts oftentimes fail, and, furthermore, result in a paradoxical increase of unwanted thoughts, later on. The present study sought to investigate whether manipulated expectations about suppression efficacy determine actual effects of suppression attempts. To test this hypothesis, participants listened to an audiotaped story, and were subsequently appointed to one of four conditions: a no-instruction-control (n = 20), suppression (n = 20), suppression-works (n = 20; participants were told that suppression generally is a fruitful strategy), or suppression-does-not-work (n = 25; participants were told that suppression primarily has paradoxical effects) condition. Two hours later, participants' memories of the story were tested, and several metamemory questions were answered. Induced expectations actually determined the perceived efficacy of suppression attempts, as well as thought frequency, although perceived or actual accuracy of recollections was not affected by the instructions.     

Is there a supervenience problem for robust moral realism?

Philosophical Studies - The paper describes the problem for robust moral realism of explaining the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral, and examines five objections to the argument: (1) The...     

Where there is a way, is there a will? The effect of future choices on self-control

Choices often involve self-control conflicts such that options that are immediately appealing are less desirable in the long run. In the current research, the authors examine how viewing such a choice as one of a series of similar future choices rather than as an isolated decision decreases the preference for items requiring self-control. The authors show that (a) in a choice between a vice and a virtue, the share choosing vice increases when the decision is presented as one of a series of similar future choices versus when the same choice is viewed in isolation, and (b) the overall share choosing a vice increases when decisions are seen in connection with similar future choices. The findings contrast with the general wisdom that broader choice frames lead to the exercise of greater self-control. The authors propose that the context of similar future choices allows people to optimistically believe that they will choose a virtue in the future choice and hence provides them with a guilt-reducing justification to not exercise self-control in the present.     

Much ado about nothing? Why going non-semantic is not merely semantics

This paper argues that deciding on whether the cognitive sciences need a Representational Theory of Mind matters. Far from being merely semantic or inconsequential, the answer we give to the RTM-question makes a difference to how we conceive of minds. How we answer determines which theoretical framework the sciences of mind ought to embrace. The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 1 outlines Rowlands’s (2017) argument that the RTM-question is a bad question and that attempts to answer it, one way or another, have neither practical nor theoretical import. Rowlands concludes this because, on his analysis, there is no non-arbitrary fact of the matter about which properties something must possess in order to qualify as a mental representation. By way of reply, we admit that Rowlands’s analysis succeeds in revealing why attempts to answer the RTM-question simpliciter are pointless. Nevertheless, we show that if specific formulations of the RTM-question are stipulated, then it is possible, conduct substantive RTM debates that do not collapse into merely verbal disagreements. Combined, Sections 2 and 3 demonstrate how, by employing specifying stipulations, we can get around Rowlands’s arbitrariness challenge. Section 2 reveals why RTM, as canonically construed in terms of mental states exhibiting intensional (with-an-s) properties, has been deemed a valuable explanatory hypothesis in the cognitive sciences. Targeting the canonical notion of mental representations, Section 3 articulates a rival nonrepresentational hypothesis that, we propose, can do all the relevant explanatory work at much lower theoretical cost. Taken together, Sections 2 and 3 show what can be at stake in the RTM debate when it is framed by appeal to the canonical notion of mental representation and why engaging in it matters. Section 4 extends the argument for thinking that RTM debates matter. It provides reasons for thinking that, far from making no practical or theoretical difference to the sciences of the mind, deciding to abandon RTM would constitute a revolutionary conceptual shift in those sciences.     

Why Talk about Chinese Metaphysics?

Chinese philosophy in the twentieth century has often been related to some sort of cultural or other particularism or some sort of philosophical universalism. By and large, these still seem to be the terms along which academic debates are carried out. The tension is particularly manifest in notions such as “Chinese philosophy,” “Daoist cosmology,” “Neo-Confucian idealism,” or “Chinese metaphysics.” For some, “Chinese metaphysics” may be a blatant contradictio in adiecto, while others may find it a most ordinary topic to be discussed at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this article, I set out to examine two major discourses in which talk about “metaphysics” is frequent and popular and to which talk of “Chinese metaphysics” may wish to contribute: the history of philosophy and analytic philosophy. My contention is that it is usually far from obvious what reasons are behind putting “Chinese metaphysics” on the academic agenda and to what precise purpose this is done. What my discussion seeks to highlight is the as yet often largely unarticulated dimension of the politics of comparative philosophy—of which talk about “Chinese metaphysics” may but need not be an example.     

What was Leibniz's problem about relations?

The main purpose of the article is to get clear what Leibniz's concerns about relations were. His:

Father is true of David. Son is true of Solomon. But Being a father of is not true of any individual.

Leibniz, like modern nominalist Nelson Goodman, could not allow the ordered pair . To establish this I must argue against Hidé Ishiguro's claim that Leibniz should have straightforwardly constructed a logic of relations, and Jaakko Hintikka's claim that Leibniz could have allowed the use of relational predicates in such forms as (Ex) Rax and (Ey) Ryb. I must also argue that what they say about the windowlessness doctrine (especially the as if formulation) is beside the point.I wish to thank Susan Haack for her help in turning a draft into the present paper.     

Why is Cheating Wrong?

Since cheating is obviously wrong, arguments against it (it provides an unfair advantage, it hinders learning) need only be mentioned in passing. But the argument of unfair advantage absurdly takes education to be essentially a race of all against all; moreover, it ignores that many cases of unfair (dis)advantages are widely accepted. On the other hand, the fact that cheating can hamper learning does not mean that punishing cheating will necessarily favour learning, so that this argument does not obviously justify sanctioning cheaters.     

But is there harmony? questions about “empirical” personal construct research

Abstract

Empirical Constructivism in Europe: The Personal Construct Approach Verlag, Germany: Psychosozial, 1996, pp. 287 Edited by Joern Scheer and Ana Catina.