In this paper, we present two puzzles involving desire reports concerning series of events. What does a person want to happen in the first event – is it the event with the highest expected return, or the event that is the initial part of the best series? We show that existing approaches fail to resolve the puzzles around this question and develop a novel account of our own. Our semantics is built around three ideas. First, we propose that desire ascriptions are evaluated relative to a contextually supplied set of propositions, or alternatives. The semantic value of an ascription ‘S wants p’ is determined by S's preference ordering over these alternatives. Second, we propose that desire reports carry a requirement to the effect that the prejacent of the ascription must be suitably related to the background set of alternatives. Finally, we suggest that desire reports carry a dominance condition concerning the subject's ranking of the alternatives. Overall, we argue that our theory provides us with an elegant resolution of our puzzles, and yields a promising approach to desire.
{"title":"Desire","authors":"Kyle Blumberg, J. Hawthorne","doi":"10.3998/phimp.2116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.2116","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we present two puzzles involving desire reports concerning series of events. What does a person want to happen in the first event – is it the event with the highest expected return, or the event that is the initial part of the best series? We show that existing approaches fail to resolve the puzzles around this question and develop a novel account of our own. Our semantics is built around three ideas. First, we propose that desire ascriptions are evaluated relative to a contextually supplied set of propositions, or alternatives. The semantic value of an ascription ‘S wants p’ is determined by S's preference ordering over these alternatives. Second, we propose that desire reports carry a requirement to the effect that the prejacent of the ascription must be suitably related to the background set of alternatives. Finally, we suggest that desire reports carry a dominance condition concerning the subject's ranking of the alternatives. Overall, we argue that our theory provides us with an elegant resolution of our puzzles, and yields a promising approach to desire.","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48386102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We are bombarded with epistemic norms. Respect your evidence. Don’t believe in contradictions. Don’t arbitrarily change beliefs. But how do such norms get their normative force? Why should we respect our evidence, for example? In this paper I offer a familiar type of answer, epistemic instrumentalism. Epistemic instrumentalism holds that epistemic norms get their normative force by being useful. You should respect your evidence because it will help you achieve some valuable ends. This answer, while familiar, is not very popular. There is a widely accepted objection to epistemic instrumentalism, the too few reasons objection. The objection looms so large that standard developments of instrumentalism have become bloated with philosophical machinery to respond to it. This does a disservice to epistemic instrumentalism. Rather than focusing completely on the objection, I focus on describing a simple model for how conforming to the epistemic norms is broadly useful. Once I describe the simple model, the too few reasons objection becomes much easier to answer. This strategy results in a well-motivated philosophical theory based on uncontroversial facts that has many advantages over rival theories.
{"title":"Embedded Epistemic Instrumentalism: An Account of Epistemic Normativity","authors":"J. Willoughby","doi":"10.3998/phimp.745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.745","url":null,"abstract":"We are bombarded with epistemic norms. Respect your evidence. Don’t believe in contradictions. Don’t arbitrarily change beliefs. But how do such norms get their normative force? Why should we respect our evidence, for example? In this paper I offer a familiar type of answer, epistemic instrumentalism. Epistemic instrumentalism holds that epistemic norms get their normative force by being useful. You should respect your evidence because it will help you achieve some valuable ends. This answer, while familiar, is not very popular. There is a widely accepted objection to epistemic instrumentalism, the too few reasons objection. The objection looms so large that standard developments of instrumentalism have become bloated with philosophical machinery to respond to it. This does a disservice to epistemic instrumentalism. Rather than focusing completely on the objection, I focus on describing a simple model for how conforming to the epistemic norms is broadly useful. Once I describe the simple model, the too few reasons objection becomes much easier to answer. This strategy results in a well-motivated philosophical theory based on uncontroversial facts that has many advantages over rival theories. ","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44922171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hume identifies the idea of time with the idea of succession and denies that we have or even can have an idea of time without change. He argues that our idea of time is not applicable to unchanging objects and that unchanging objects cannot be said to endure. At the center of Hume’s treatment of time is a fiction that is supposed to explain how we falsely believe that we can form an idea of time without change and how we consider unchanging objects to endure. The literature has struggled to make sense of Hume’s riddled arguments and obscure claims. Against the background of Hume’s intention to establish a new foundation for the sciences, we consider the most important and controversial texts from the perspective of Hume’s likely target: the idea of absolute time. From this perspective, we offer important insights into the questions that have dominated the literature.
{"title":"Hume on Temporal Experience and the Fiction of Time Without Change","authors":"Miren Boehm, Maité Cruz","doi":"10.3998/phimp.1626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.1626","url":null,"abstract":"Hume identifies the idea of time with the idea of succession and denies that we have or even can have an idea of time without change. He argues that our idea of time is not applicable to unchanging objects and that unchanging objects cannot be said to endure. At the center of Hume’s treatment of time is a fiction that is supposed to explain how we falsely believe that we can form an idea of time without change and how we consider unchanging objects to endure. The literature has struggled to make sense of Hume’s riddled arguments and obscure claims. Against the background of Hume’s intention to establish a new foundation for the sciences, we consider the most important and controversial texts from the perspective of Hume’s likely target: the idea of absolute time. From this perspective, we offer important insights into the questions that have dominated the literature.","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43813469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the Origin, Darwin forwards two incompatible lines of attack on special creationism. First, he argues that imperfect or functionless traits are evidence against design. Second, he argues that since special creationism can be made compatible with any observation, it is unscientific and explanatorily vacuous. In later works, Darwin shifts to an argument that he finds much more persuasive and which would undermine theistic evolutionism as well. He argues that variation is random with respect to selection and that this demonstrates that there is no design in the biological world. I examine why Darwin found the argument from independence of variation and selection more compelling than the argument from imperfection. I argue that Darwin utilized general principles of causal inference, akin to those used in modern causal modeling, to rule out any unified cause behind the evolutionary process.
{"title":"Darwin's Causal Argument Against Creationism","authors":"Hayley Clatterbuck","doi":"10.3998/phimp.930","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.930","url":null,"abstract":"In the Origin, Darwin forwards two incompatible lines of attack on special creationism. First, he argues that imperfect or functionless traits are evidence against design. Second, he argues that since special creationism can be made compatible with any observation, it is unscientific and explanatorily vacuous. In later works, Darwin shifts to an argument that he finds much more persuasive and which would undermine theistic evolutionism as well. He argues that variation is random with respect to selection and that this demonstrates that there is no design in the biological world. I examine why Darwin found the argument from independence of variation and selection more compelling than the argument from imperfection. I argue that Darwin utilized general principles of causal inference, akin to those used in modern causal modeling, to rule out any unified cause behind the evolutionary process. ","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47017883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Plausibly, one important part of a good life is doing work that makes a contribution, or a positive difference to the world. In this paper, however, I explore contribution pessimism, the view that people will not always have adequate opportunities for making contributions. I distinguish between three interestingly different and at least initially plausible reasons why this view might be true: in slogan form, things might become too easy, they might become too good, or we might be too late. Now, one response to these problems might be to deliberately attempt to undo them. However, I claim that this solution is intuitively misguided, and argue that explaining this supports a holistic approach to the value of contributions. Finally, I argue that if contribution pessimism is correct, it could provide an explanation of some widely held intuitions about issues in population ethics, with implications about the practical issue of how much priority we should give to addressing risks of human extinction.
{"title":"Too Easy, Too Good, Too Late?","authors":"A. Dietz","doi":"10.3998/phimp.1336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.1336","url":null,"abstract":"Plausibly, one important part of a good life is doing work that makes a contribution, or a positive difference to the world. In this paper, however, I explore contribution pessimism, the view that people will not always have adequate opportunities for making contributions. I distinguish between three interestingly different and at least initially plausible reasons why this view might be true: in slogan form, things might become too easy, they might become too good, or we might be too late. Now, one response to these problems might be to deliberately attempt to undo them. However, I claim that this solution is intuitively misguided, and argue that explaining this supports a holistic approach to the value of contributions. Finally, I argue that if contribution pessimism is correct, it could provide an explanation of some widely held intuitions about issues in population ethics, with implications about the practical issue of how much priority we should give to addressing risks of human extinction.","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48430721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Propositions are (generally taken to be) the semantic values of declarative sentences in context. There is a long history of thinking that an important reason for taking propositions to be structured stems from the fact that the semantic values of such sentences are (typically) compositionally determined. In this paper, I argue that compositionality does not entail, nor provide good evidence for, the claim that propositions are structured. I go on to argue that there is no additional feature of declarative sentences—for example, that they are true or false—that, in conjunction with compositionality, entails or provides good evidence for the claim that the semantic values of those sentences are complex.
{"title":"Does Compositionality Entail Complexity?","authors":"John A. Keller","doi":"10.3998/phimp.2977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.2977","url":null,"abstract":"Propositions are (generally taken to be) the semantic values of declarative sentences in context. There is a long history of thinking that an important reason for taking propositions to be structured stems from the fact that the semantic values of such sentences are (typically) compositionally determined. In this paper, I argue that compositionality does not entail, nor provide good evidence for, the claim that propositions are structured. I go on to argue that there is no additional feature of declarative sentences—for example, that they are true or false—that, in conjunction with compositionality, entails or provides good evidence for the claim that the semantic values of those sentences are complex.","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46753138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The systematic study of male misogyny began with Christine de Pizan at the start of the fifteenth century. Although her work has generally been neglected within the history of philosophy, her ideas illuminate many questions of pressing current philosophical concern, including the nature of epistemic injustice, the prospects for an individualistic methodology in social theory, and the epistemology of disagreement.
{"title":"Old Bad Attitudes","authors":"R. Pasnau","doi":"10.3998/phimp.2606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.2606","url":null,"abstract":"The systematic study of male misogyny began with Christine de Pizan at the start of the fifteenth century. Although her work has generally been neglected within the history of philosophy, her ideas illuminate many questions of pressing current philosophical concern, including the nature of epistemic injustice, the prospects for an individualistic methodology in social theory, and the epistemology of disagreement.","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41352855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
According to many contemporary metaphysicians, we ought to theorize in terms of grounding because of its promise to explicate the idea of reality having a layered structure. However, a tension emerges when one combines the layered structure view with the view that higher-level facts are not reducible to lower level facts. This tension emerges from two problems. The first problem arises from the fact that grounding explanations entail true universal generalizations. In order to satisfy this constraint, we will face serious pressure to make sure the entities involved in the grounded facts are appropriately connected to the entities involved in the grounding facts, otherwise the generalizations associated with those grounding claims will come out false. However, ensuring the appropriate connections seemingly leaves no way for the non-reductivist to fully squeeze out reference to higher-level entities as we descend the levels of ground. This threatens the result that some higher-level facts must be taken as fundamental, which the non-reductivist cannot accept. I’ll argue that we can resolve the tension by taking the connections at issue to be essentially true. We can call this view essentialist non-reductivism. One significant upshot of the argument is that we can see not only that essentialist non-reductivism successfully resolves the tension, but that in principle no better solution could be offered.
{"title":"Essentialist Non-Reductivism","authors":"Taylor-Grey Miller","doi":"10.3998/phimp.1205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.1205","url":null,"abstract":"According to many contemporary metaphysicians, we ought to theorize in terms of grounding because of its promise to explicate the idea of reality having a layered structure. However, a tension emerges when one combines the layered structure view with the view that higher-level facts are not reducible to lower level facts. This tension emerges from two problems. The first problem arises from the fact that grounding explanations entail true universal generalizations. In order to satisfy this constraint, we will face serious pressure to make sure the entities involved in the grounded facts are appropriately connected to the entities involved in the grounding facts, otherwise the generalizations associated with those grounding claims will come out false. However, ensuring the appropriate connections seemingly leaves no way for the non-reductivist to fully squeeze out reference to higher-level entities as we descend the levels of ground. This threatens the result that some higher-level facts must be taken as fundamental, which the non-reductivist cannot accept. I’ll argue that we can resolve the tension by taking the connections at issue to be essentially true. We can call this view essentialist non-reductivism. One significant upshot of the argument is that we can see not only that essentialist non-reductivism successfully resolves the tension, but that in principle no better solution could be offered.","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44936448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Some moral value istransparent just in case an agent with average mental capacities can feasiblycome to know whether some entity does, or does not, possess that value. In thispaper, I consider whether legitimacy—that is, the property of exercises ofpolitical power to be (at least) permissible—is transparent. Implicit in muchtheorising about legitimacy is the idea that it is. I will offer twocounter-arguments. First, injustice can defeat legitimacy, and injustice can beintransparent. Second, legitimacy can play a critical function in our practicalthought, which sometimes requires intransparency.
{"title":"The Intransparency of Political Legitimacy","authors":"Matthias Brinkmann","doi":"10.3998/phimp.1533","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.1533","url":null,"abstract":"Some moral value istransparent just in case an agent with average mental capacities can feasiblycome to know whether some entity does, or does not, possess that value. In thispaper, I consider whether legitimacy—that is, the property of exercises ofpolitical power to be (at least) permissible—is transparent. Implicit in muchtheorising about legitimacy is the idea that it is. I will offer twocounter-arguments. First, injustice can defeat legitimacy, and injustice can beintransparent. Second, legitimacy can play a critical function in our practicalthought, which sometimes requires intransparency.","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41668507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing on the 1870s-1880s work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, William James famously characterised the specious present as ‘the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’. Literature on the pre-history of late nineteenth century specious present theories clusters around the work of John Locke and Thomas Reid, and I argue it is incomplete. The pre-history is missing an inter-connected group of English philosophers writing on the present between 1749 and 1785: David Hartley, Joseph Priestley, Abraham Tucker, and William Watson. With William Herschel, Watson even conducted experiments to determine the limits of human temporal perception. These thinkers do not appear in the specious present literature, or broader historical surveys of temporal consciousness. Yet this paper shows they each held specious present theories, exploring those theories and placing them within each figure’s system. It argues all their work deserves further study; contextualises the nineteenth century theories of James and others; pushes back the start date of the history of experimental psychology on time perception by decades; and explores a possible line of influence from Hartley to Hodgson.
{"title":"The Specious Present in English Philosophy 1749-1785: Theories and Experiments in Hartley, Priestley, Tucker, and Watson","authors":"E. Thomas","doi":"10.3998/phimp.1281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.1281","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on the 1870s-1880s work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, William James famously characterised the specious present as ‘the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’. Literature on the pre-history of late nineteenth century specious present theories clusters around the work of John Locke and Thomas Reid, and I argue it is incomplete. The pre-history is missing an inter-connected group of English philosophers writing on the present between 1749 and 1785: David Hartley, Joseph Priestley, Abraham Tucker, and William Watson. With William Herschel, Watson even conducted experiments to determine the limits of human temporal perception. These thinkers do not appear in the specious present literature, or broader historical surveys of temporal consciousness. Yet this paper shows they each held specious present theories, exploring those theories and placing them within each figure’s system. It argues all their work deserves further study; contextualises the nineteenth century theories of James and others; pushes back the start date of the history of experimental psychology on time perception by decades; and explores a possible line of influence from Hartley to Hodgson.","PeriodicalId":20021,"journal":{"name":"Philosophers' Imprint","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44393142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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