What is it Like to be a Phenomenologist?

In a recent paper, 'On the Persistence of Phenomenology' (in T. Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience , Paderborn, 1995), Diana Raffman presents a new argument for qualia, an argument that provides new focus for the qualia debate. We think Raffman's work relocates the debate to a better neighbourhood, a neighbourhood in which what tempts us to think that there must be qualia or phenomenal information is highlighted. Raffman, we argue, locates the core thought shared by many of the friends of qualia, namely, that our conceptual resources are inadequate for capturing the richness of experience. Experience is ineffably determinate. Moreover, Raffman's argument in support of this thought seems especially embarrassing to scientific-minded materialists, since the argument relies largely on well established empirical facts. We show, however, that Raffman's argument fails. So, if we are correct that her argument highlights what is tempting about qualia, then we have also shown that it is not tempting.     

What is it Like to be a Group Agent?

The existence of group agents is relatively widely accepted. Examples are corporations, courts, NGOs, and even entire states. But should we also accept that there is such a thing as group consciousness? I give an overview of some of the key issues in this debate and sketch a tentative argument for the view that group agents lack phenomenal consciousness (pace Schwitzgebel 2015 ). In developing my argument, I draw on integrated information theory, a much‐discussed theory of consciousness. I conclude by pointing out an implication of my argument for the normative status of group agents.     

What is it Like to be Someone Else? Simulation and Empathy

This paper explores two models of empathy. One model places theory centre stage; the other emphasises our capacity to re-enact fragments of another's mental life. I argue that considerations of parsimony strongly support the latter, simulative approach. My results have consequences for the current debate between the theory-theory and simulation theory. That debate is standardly conceived as a debate about mental state attribution rather than about empathy. However, on the simulation model, empathy and mental state attribution involve a common mechanism. Thus the strength of the simulative approach to empathy lends considerable credence to the simulation account of mental state attribution. Considerations of empathy are thus surprisingly important in the philosophy of mind..     

What Is It Like to Be an Alien?

This brief article is concerned with an aspect of Jonathan Glover's book, Alien Landscapes?. After reflecting a little on the book as a whole, the question that is taken up is, ‘Why might a book that seeks to help those without mental disorders understand what they are like “from the inside” be of interest to laymen and practitioners in the criminal law?’. One answer lies in part in the way that ‘what it is like from the inside’ might interact with judgements of criminal responsibility. Taking its cue from examples used by Glover the article considers, and puts pressure on, the ‘dual view’ he proposes: that when dealing with those with mental disorders we should treat them as responsible agents in the sense of not withholding from them Strawson's ‘reactive attitudes’, while nevertheless accepting that their personalities and behaviours are the results of large doses of ‘bad luck’.     

What is to be done?

The overriding question in contemporary philosophy is as follows: We now have a reasonably well-established conception of the basic structure of the universe. But it is not at all easy to reconcile the basic facts we have come to know with a certain conception we have of ourselves, derived in part from our cultural inheritance but mostly from our own experience. Various aspects of this question are examined, concerning consciousness, intentionality, language, rationality, free will, society and institutions, politics, and ethics.     

What Does it Mean to call God Good?

Contemporary expositions of God's goodness commonly err either (1) by subjecting God to moral laws, which is to question His sovereignty, or (2) by failing to establish that God will always act in accordance with moral principles, which removes the theist's ability to appeal to God's goodness in response to problems of evil. Current attempts at intermediate positions which avoid these two problems fall short. In this paper, I aim to construct a better intermediate position and account of God's goodness. I do this by claiming that God's ability to create is best explained in terms of God's self-love. Since God, as the greatest possible being, must be able to create, He must love Himself. I argue that this in turn entails that God loves all things, since by loving Himself, God loves the pre-existent ideas of everything that will come to exist, and by extension the things themselves. This, I argue, allows us to have confidence that God will act in accordance with moral principles, but without subjecting Him to moral laws.     

What is it to be healthy?

According to Christopher Boorse's Bio-Statistical Theory (BST), 'health' is statistically normal function in a reference class, and 'health' and 'disease' are empirical, objective and value-free concepts. I demonstrate that the success of the BST depends on its choice of reference classes; different reference classes result in different accounts of health. I argue that nothing in nature empirically or objectively dictates the use of reference classes Boorse proposes. Reference classes in the BST, and the concept of health, are therefore not value-free. Nor is there a reason to favour the BST over accounts of health that use different reference classes.     

What Does a Prophet Know?

This essay on Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt (2016) challenges her argument from two opposing sides. First, it critiques all jeremiads. It asks how a person uttering prophetic indictments, whether in the form of a classical jeremiad or the more moderate form that Kaveny argues for, can possibly know of what she speaks, given the otherness of God. Second, it calls for more jeremiads. It asks whether a person, whether religious or not, might indeed know enough to offer withering jeremiads, in those cases where she sees the target of her jeremiad making flagrantly incompatible commitments.     

What Does Good Science-Based Advice to Politics Look Like?

Journal for General Philosophy of Science - I address options for providing scientific policy advice and explore the relation between scientific knowledge and political, economic and moral values....     

What is it like to be Oscar?

Oscar is going to be the first artificial person — at any rate, he is going to be the first artificial person to be built in Tucson's Philosophy Department. Oscar's creator, John Pollock, maintains that once Oscar is complete he will experience qualia, will be self-conscious, will have desires, fears, intentions, and a full range of mental states (Pollock 1989, pp. ix–x). In this paper I focus on what seems to me to be the most problematical of these claims, viz., that Oscar will experience qualia. I argue that we have not been given sufficient reasons to believe this bold claim. I doubt that Oscar will enjoy qualitative conscious phenomena and I maintain that it will be like nothing to be Oscar.     

Know how to be Gettiered?

Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson’s influential article “Knowing How” argues that knowledge‐how is a species of knowledge‐that. One objection to their view is that knowledge‐how is significantly different than knowledge‐that because Gettier cases afflict the latter but not the former. Stanley and Williamson argue that this objection fails. Their response, however, is not adequate. Moreover, I sketch a plausible argument that knowledge‐how is not susceptible to Gettier cases. This suggests a significant distinction between knowledge‐that and knowledge‐how.     

What is it Like to be a Butterfly? A Philosophical Interpretation of Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream

This paper attempts to recast Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream within the larger normative context of the ‘Inner Chapters’ and early Daoism in terms of its moral significance, particularly in the way that it prescribes how a Daoist should live through the ‘significant symbol’ of the butterfly. This normative reading of the passage will be contrasted with two recent interpretations of the passage—one by Robert Allinson and the other by Harold Roth—that tend to focus more on the epistemological and mystical concerns of the text. As will be argued, the undue emphasis on the epistemological and mystical significance of the passage not only comes to grief when considered in light of philosophical and textual concerns but also obscures the moral dimensions of the passage that are more congruent with the ‘Inner Chapters’ as a whole.     

What is it Like to Have an Unconscious Mental State?

Philosophical Studies - HOST is the theory that to be conscious of a mental state is totarget it with a higher-order state (a `HOS'), either an innerperception or a higher-order thought. Some...     

What Difference Does It Make?

Abstract. The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion has its most direct influence on faculty members who teach in colleges, universities, and theological schools. These faculty members, in turn, have an impact upon churches through their leadership and teaching in local communities. Wabash workshops encourage faculty to continue to develop four qualities that make a difference in their teaching and scholarship, in the lives of students who become community and church leaders, and ultimately in the life of the church: these are the abilities to (1) help pastoral leaders integrate multiple kinds of knowledge, (2) value context and particularity, (3) strengthen their skills as public theologians and community leaders, and (4) cultivate the encouragement to live lives of wholeness. The gift of hospitality at Wabash workshops provides the environment and space for faculty to engage these qualities in their teaching, research, scholarship, and living.     

What Does God Know? Supernatural Agents’ Access to Socially Strategic and Non‐Strategic Information

Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents' socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents' knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we measured response-times to questions about the knowledge attributed to four different agents--God, Santa Claus, a fictional surveillance government, and omniscient but non-interfering aliens--that vary in their omniscience, moral concern, ability to punish, and how supernatural they are. As anticipated, participants respond more quickly to questions about agents' socially strategic knowledge than non-strategic knowledge, but only when agents are able to punish.     

Autism—What Does Gender Have to Do With It?

The relationship between gender and autism is an underexplored topic, and one in which the psychoanalytic literature on gender is relevant. The therapist examines her failing to have understood the importance of gender issues for an autistic male child and his family and the ramifications of this oversight to help in the development of “gender creativity” (Ehrensaft, 2016). The gender issues included an initial absence of gender (the meaning of which will be clarified), a subsequently emerging wish to be a girl, and then a powerful, in part reactive wish to be a male. This case highlights the early sensory issues in the development of gender, dyadic work with parents in the treatment sessions, countertransference reactions related to gender, and the relevance of thinking psychoanalytically about neurodevelopmental disorders.