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The Knowledge Condition on Intentional Action in Its Proper Home Mind Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Laura Tomlinson Makin
In this paper, I argue against recent modifications of the Knowledge Condition on intentional action that weaken the condition. My contention is that the condition is best understood in the context of Anscombe’s Intention and, when so understood, can be maintained in its strongest form.
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Conceptual Engineering: For What Matters Mind Pub Date : 2024-01-08 Sebastian Köhler, Herman Veluwenkamp
Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of evaluating and improving our representational devices. But how should we conduct this enterprise? One increasingly popular answer to this question proposes that conceptual engineering should proceed in terms of the functions of our representational devices. In this paper, we argue that the best way of understanding this suggestion is in terms of normative
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The End is Near: Grim Reapers and Endless Futures Mind Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Joseph C Schmid
José Benardete developed a famous paradox involving a beginningless set of items each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. The Grim Reaper version of this paradox has recently been employed in favour of various finitist metaphysical theses, ranging from temporal finitism to causal finitism to the discrete nature of time. Here, I examine a new challenge
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Does Non-Measurability Favour Imprecision? Mind Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Cian Dorr
In a recent paper, Yoaav Isaacs, Alan Hájek, and John Hawthorne argue for the rational permissibility of ’credal imprecision’ by appealing to certain propositions associated with non-measurable spatial regions: for example, the proposition that the pointer of a spinner will come to rest within a certain non-measurable set of points on its circumference. This paper rebuts their argument by showing that
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Infelicitous Conditionals and KK Mind Pub Date : 2023-11-11 John Hawthorne, Yoaav Isaacs
Kevin Dorst (2019) uses the ‘manifest unassertability’ of conditionals of the form ‘If I don’t know p, then p’ as a new motivation for the KK thesis. In this paper we show that his argumentation is misguided. Plausible heuristics offer a compelling and nuanced explanation of the relevant infelicity data. Meanwhile, Dorst relies on tools that, quite independently of KK, turn out to be rather poor predictors
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Why Care About What There Is? Mind Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Daniel Z Korman
There’s the question of what there is, and then there’s the question of what ultimately exists. Many contend that, once we have this distinction clearly in mind, we can see that there is no sensible debate to be had about whether there are such things as properties or tables or numbers, and that the only ontological question worth debating is whether such things are (in one or another sense) ultimate
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New Work on Biosignatures Mind Pub Date : 2023-10-12 Christopher Cowie
The search for extraterrestrial life centres on the search for ‘biosignatures’. Yet there is little agreement within the scientific community with respect to what exactly it is for something to be a biosignature. Existing accounts are presented and criticised. An alternative is provided that resolves problems with existing accounts by distinguishing clearly between types and tokens.
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Boolean-Valued Sets as Arbitrary Objects Mind Pub Date : 2023-09-17 Leon Horsten
This article explores the connection between Boolean-valued class models of set theory and the theory of arbitrary objects in roughly Kit Fine’s sense of the word. In particular, it explores the hypothesis that the set-theoretic universe as a whole can be seen as an arbitrary entity. According to this view, the set-theoretic universe can be in many different states. These states are structurally like
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Hume’s Separability Principle, his Dictum, and their Implications Mind Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Graham Clay
Hsueh M. Qu has recently argued that Hume’s famed ‘Separability Principle’ from the Treatise entangles him in a contradiction. Qu offers a modified principle as a solution but also argues that the mature Hume would not have needed to avail himself of it, given that Hume’s arguments in the first Enquiry do not depend on this principle in any form. To the contrary, I show that arguments in the first
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The Sum of Well-Being Mind Pub Date : 2023-07-11 Jacob M Nebel
Is well-being the kind of thing that can be summed across individuals? This paper takes a measurement-theoretic approach to answering this question. To make sense of adding well-being, we would need to identify some natural ‘concatenation’ operation on the bearers of well-being that satisfies the axioms of extensive measurement and can therefore be represented by the arithmetic operation of addition
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Conditional Collapse Mind Pub Date : 2023-07-05 Sam Carter
Indicative and subjunctive conditionals are in non-complimentary distribution: there are conversational contexts at which both are licensed (Stalnaker 1975; Karttunen and Peters 1979; von Fintel 1998). This means we can ask an important, but under-explored, question: in contexts which license both, what relations hold between the two? In this paper, I’ll argue for an initially surprising conclusion:
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A Unified Interpretation of the Semantics of Relevance Logic Mind Pub Date : 2023-05-06 Rea Golan
I introduce a novel and quite intuitive interpretation of the ternary relation that figures in the relational semantics of many relevance logics. Conceptually, my interpretation makes use only of incompatibility and parthood relations, defined over a set of states. In this way, the proposed interpretation—of the ternary relation and the conditional—extends Dunn’s and Restall’s works on negation and
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Taming Pereboom’s Wild Coincidences Mind Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Thomas Müller
Pereboom’s ‘wild coincidences’ argument against agent-causal libertarianism is based on the claim that in a world governed by statistical laws, the dovetailing of indeterministic physical happenings with the free actions of agent causes would be a coincidence too wild to be credible. In this paper it is shown that the conclusion is valid for deterministic laws, but that it fails for statistical laws
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Deflecting Ockham’s Razor: A Medieval Debate about Ontological Commitment Mind Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Susan Brower-Toland
William of Ockham (d. 1347) is well known for his commitment to parsimony and for his so-called ‘razor’ principle. But little is known about attempts among his own contemporaries to deflect his use of the razor. In this paper, I explore one such attempt. In particular, I consider a clever challenge that Ockham’s younger contemporary, Walter Chatton (d. 1343) deploys against the razor. The challenge
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Epistemological Cognition in Husserl Mind Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Tarjei Mandt Larsen
What degree of justification should be required of epistemological cognition, the kind of cognition by which epistemological problems are to be solved? I consider the question by examining Husserl’s view of the matter. Challenging the current consensus, I argue that he is committed to the infallibility of epistemological cognition. I first present what he takes to be the leading problem of epistemology
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Counterfactual Decision Theory Mind Pub Date : 2023-04-19 Brian Hedden
I defend counterfactual decision theory, which says that you should evaluate an action in terms of which outcomes would likely obtain were you to perform it. Counterfactual decision theory has traditionally been subsumed under causal decision theory as a particular formulation of the latter. This is a mistake. Counterfactual decision theory is importantly different from, and superior to, causal decision
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KK, Knowledge, Knowability Mind Pub Date : 2023-04-06 Weng Kin San
kk states that knowing entails knowing that one knows, and K¬K states that not knowing entails knowing that one does not know. In light of the arguments against kk and K¬K, one might consider modally qualified variants of those principles. According to weak kk, knowing entails the possibility of knowing that one knows. And according to weak K¬K, not knowing entails the possibility of knowing that one
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Being Somehow Without (Possibly) Being Something Mind Pub Date : 2023-03-21 Peter Fritz
Contingentists—who hold that it is contingent what there is—are divided on the claim that having a property or standing in a relation requires being something. This claim can be formulated as a natural schematic principle of higher-order modal logic. On this formulation, I argue that contingentists who are also higher-order contingentists—and so hold that it is contingent what propositions, properties
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Accuracy and Probabilism in Infinite Domains Mind Pub Date : 2023-03-21 Michael Nielsen
The best accuracy arguments for probabilism apply only to credence functions with finite domains, that is, credence functions that assign credence to at most finitely many propositions. This is a significant limitation. It reveals that the support for the accuracy-first programme in epistemology is a lot weaker than it seems at first glance, and it means that accuracy arguments cannot yet accomplish
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Trespassing Testimony in Scientific Collaboration Mind Pub Date : 2023-03-07 Mikkel Gerken
The term ‘epistemic trespassing’ has recently been coined to denote a person’s judgments regarding a domain where they are not epistemic experts. In this paper, I focus on expert trespassing testimony – that is, testimony by an expert in a domain of expertise other than his own. More specifically, I focus on intra-scientific trespassing testimony between scientific collaborators. By developing a number
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Logical Realism and the Riddle of Redundancy Mind Pub Date : 2023-01-30 Óscar Antonio Monroy Pérez
According to an influential view, when it comes to representing reality, some words are better suited for the job than others. This is elitism. There is reason to believe that the set of the best, or elite, words should not be redundant or arbitrary. However, we are often forced to choose between these two theoretical vices, especially in cases involving theories that seem to be mere notational variants
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Neo-Logicism and Gödelian Incompleteness Mind Pub Date : 2023-01-30 Fabian Pregel
There is a long-standing gap in the literature as to whether Gödelian incompleteness constitutes a challenge for Neo-Logicism, and if so how serious it is. In this paper, I articulate and address the challenge in detail. The Neo-Logicist project is to demonstrate the analyticity of arithmetic by deriving all its truths from logical principles and suitable definitions. The specific concern raised by
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Valid Arguments as True Conditionals Mind Pub Date : 2023-01-19 Andrea Iacona
This paper explores an idea of Stoic descent that is largely neglected nowadays, the idea that an argument is valid when the conditional formed by the conjunction of its premises as antecedent and its conclusion as consequent is true. As will be argued, once some basic features of our naïve understanding of validity are properly spelled out, and a suitable account of conditionals is adopted, the equivalence
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On Deniability Mind Pub Date : 2023-01-12 Alexander Dinges, Julia Zakkou
Communication can be risky. Like other kinds of actions, it comes with potential costs. For instance, an utterance can be embarrassing, offensive, or downright illegal. In the face of such risks, speakers tend to act strategically and seek ‘plausible deniability’. In this paper, we propose an account of the notion of deniability at issue. On our account, deniability is an epistemic phenomenon. A speaker
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Attention and (painful) Interest: Revisiting the Interest Theory of Attention Mind Pub Date : 2023-01-02 Mark Textor
The nineteenth century saw the development of reductive views of attention. The German philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf (1848-1936) proposed an original reductive view according to which attention is nothing but interest and interest itself is a positive feeling. Stumpf’s view was developed by Francis Bradley (1846-1924), George Frederick Stout (1860-1944), and Josiah Royce (1855-1916), but
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Backlighting and Occlusion Mind Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Søren Overgaard
In the philosophy of perception, objects are typically frontlit. But according to Roy Sorensen, backlit objects have surprising lessons to teach us about perception. In backlit conditions, ‘the principles of occlusion are reversed’, Sorensen (2008, p. 25) maintains. In particular, he claims we see the back surfaces of backlit objects. But as I argue in this paper, Sorensen’s arguments in support of
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Unifying Epistemic and Practical Rationality Mind Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Mattias Skipper
Many theories of rational action are predicated on the idea that what it is rational to do in a given situation depends, in part, on what it is rational to believe in that situation. In short: they treat epistemic rationality as explanatorily prior to practical rationality. If they are right in doing so, it follows, on pain of explanatory circularity, that epistemic rationality cannot itself be a form
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Crossmodal Basing Mind Pub Date : 2022-08-23 Zoe Jenkin
What kinds of mental states can be based on epistemic reasons? The standard answer is only beliefs. I argue that perceptual states can also be based on reasons, as the result of crossmodal interactions. A perceptual state from one modality can provide a reason on which an experience in another modality is based. My argument identifies key markers of the basing relation and locates them in the crossmodal
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A Genealogy of Reasonableness Mind Pub Date : 2022-08-22 Krista Lawlor
We all know that being reasonable is important in daily life. Beyond daily life, major political and ethical theorists give central place to reasonableness in their accounts of just and moral behaviour. In the law, at least in the Anglo-American setting, reasonableness is the standard for a wide range of behaviour, from administrative decisions to torts. But what is it to be reasonable? In answer,
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The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant’s Dialectic, by Ian Proops Mind Pub Date : 2022-04-28 Markus Kohl
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Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility: Essays in Ancient Philosophy, by Susanne Bobzien Mind Pub Date : 2022-04-21 Brad Inwood
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The Many and the One: A Philosophical Study of Plural Logic, by Salvatore Florio and Øystein Linnebo Mind Pub Date : 2022-04-15 Oliver Tatton-Brown
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Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato’s Timaeus, by Aileen R. Das Mind Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Tommaso Alpina
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Epistemic Values: Collected Papers in Epistemology, by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski Mind Pub Date : 2022-03-08 Heather Battaly
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Gender without Gender Identity: The Case of Cognitive Disability Mind Pub Date : 2022-03-03 Elizabeth Barnes
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Context and Coherence: The Logic and Grammar of Prominence, by Una Stojnić Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-28 Khoo J.
Context and Coherence: The Logic and Grammar of Prominence, by StojnićUna. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. vii + 219.
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The Practical Origins of Ideas, by Matthieu Queloz Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Hannon M.
The Practical Origins of Ideas, by QuelozMatthieu. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xii + 281.
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Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic, by Karen Ng Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Tolley C.
Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic, by KarenNg. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 319.
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Non-Measurability, Imprecise Credences, and Imprecise Chances Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Isaacs Y, Hájek A, Hawthorne J.
Mind, fzab031, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzab031
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Towards a Mechanistically Neutral Account of Acting Jointly: The Notion of a Collective Goal Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-24 Stephen A Butterfill,Corrado Sinigaglia
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Morality and Mathematics, by Justin Clarke-Doane Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-24 Leng M.
Morality and Mathematics, by Clarke-DoaneJustin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. x + 208.
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Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On to Ethics, by Cora Diamond Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-14 Kremer M.
Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On to Ethics, by DiamondCora. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. 331.
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Pathways to Alternative Epistemologies in Africa, edited by Adeshina Afolayan, Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, and Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-11 Táíwò O.
Pathways to Alternative Epistemologies in Africa, edited by AfolayanAdeshinaYacob-HalisoOlajumokeOloruntobaSamuel Ojo. Springer2021. Pp. xi + 240.
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Fiction: A Philosophical Analysis Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-11 Woodward R.
Fiction: A Philosophical Analysis, by AbellCatharine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 198.
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The Dialogical Roots of Deduction: Historical, Cognitive, and Philosophical Perspectives on Reasoning, by Catarina Dutilh Novaes Mind Pub Date : 2022-02-04 Restall G.
The Dialogical Roots of Deduction: Historical, Cognitive, and Philosophical Perspectives on Reasoning, by NovaesCatarina Dutilh. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xiii + 271.
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Taking Frege at His Word, by Joan Weiner Mind Pub Date : 2022-01-11 Kim J.
Taking Frege at His Word, by WeinerJoan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 317.
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The Undivided Self: Aristotle and the ‘Mind-Body Problem’, by David Charles Mind Pub Date : 2022-01-11 Corcilius K.
The Undivided Self: Aristotle and the ‘Mind-Body Problem’, by CharlesDavid. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xiii + 303.
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Norms and Necessity, by Amie Thomasson Mind Pub Date : 2022-01-07 Chrisman M, Scharp K.
Norms and Necessity, by ThomassonAmie. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 294.
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Necessity Lost: Modality and Logic in Early Analytic Philosophy, by Sanford Shieh Mind Pub Date : 2022-01-07 Macbride F.
Necessity Lost: Modality and Logic in Early Analytic Philosophy, by ShiehSanford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xxiv + 441.
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Path Semantics for Indicative Conditionals Mind Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Santorio P.
AbstractThe literature on indicative conditionals contains two appealing views. The first is the selectional view: on this view, conditionals operate by selecting a single possibility, which is used to evaluate the consequent. The second is the informational view: on this view, conditionals don’t express propositions, but rather impose constraints on information states of speakers. Both views are supported
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The Scientific Imagination: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, edited by Arnon Levy and Peter Godfrey-Smith Mind Pub Date : 2021-12-04 Letitia Meynell
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Real Likenesses. Representation in Paintings, Photographs and Novels, by Michael Morris Mind Pub Date : 2021-12-04 Solveig Aasen
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Philosophy and the Human Paradox: Essays on Reason, Truth and Identity, by Alan Montefiore Mind Pub Date : 2021-11-29 Simon Glendinning
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The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs, by Lisa Bortolotti Mind Pub Date : 2021-11-03 Daniel Williams
The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs, by BortolottiLisa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 162.