Animal Consciousness and Blindsight

Sean J. Allen-Hermanson, Univerisity of Toronto

I offer an argument about how to solve what Tye calls "The problem of simple minds" or the problem of knowing where to draw the line between conscious sensory awareness and mere automatism in the animal world. Tye and Dretske have recently argued that the theory of consciousness ~ which appeals to first-order cognition implies that insects such as honey bees have phenomenal experiences. I argue that considerations about blind sight show that the first-order thought approach is in need of revision. Once this is done it seems more likely that bees are a kind of zombie. They are creatures which are naturally dissociated: like subjects with blindsight, their perceptions are not qualitatively subjective.

A Unique Propensity to Engage in Homosexual Acts

Jami Anderson, University of Michigan, Flint

After stating "I am gay," Navy Lieutenant Paul G. Thomasson was honorably discharged from the military. In Thomasson v. Perry (1996), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth District affirmed Thomasson’s discharge. Thomasson is now considered the leading case evaluating the constitutionality of the U.S. military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy. In this paper, I show that the court’s analysis of the Department of Defense policy rests on two unarticulated and undefended assumptions about sexuality. The first is that an act of sex is not essentially defined in terms of the sexual orientation of the persons engaging in that act. The second is that whether or not a person is an open homosexual determines the essential nature of the homosexual acts of others. I conclude that both assumptions are untenable and, therefore, the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy is indefensible.

Reasonable Self-Assessment and Personal Autonomy: Insights Derived from Studies of Persons with Frontal Brain Injury

Joel Anderson (Washington University, St. Louis)
Warren Lux (Washington University, St. Louis)

This paper represents the collaborative effort of a professional philosopher (Anderson) and a clinical cognitive neurologist (Lux). Drawing on clinical evidence and a review of the current ethics literature on personal autonomy, we argue that many current models of autonomy are deficient in overlooking that reasonable self-assessment is critical to the exercise of personal autonomy in its fullest sense. Although we focus here on cases in which the presence of serious cognitive deficits can be confirmed neurologically, the implications are much broader and raise important issues for psychiatric contexts in which patients present with aberrant assessments of their abilities or state of mental health.

We develop this idea by first presenting a standard view of autonomy in which self-direction is emphasized. We will then present a series of brain injury cases derived from the clinical experience of one of the authors. In each clinical example, exquisitely well-preserved self-direction will be noted, whereas the ability of the patient to act with full autonomy will have been clearly diminished by the patient's disease in each instance. We will go on to discuss the key common clinical feature of these cases, a defect in each patient's awareness of his or her own disease-related cognitive deficits. These defects in awareness are themselves cognitive deficits due to brain disease and can be understood within the context of our larger understanding of overall human brain function, particularly with regard to the role of the frontal lobes in self-monitoring and self-awareness. Against this background, we will present our view of the limitations of models of autonomy that rely too exclusively on self-direction, and we will develop our arguments for the critical importance to full autonomy of what we have called reasonable self-assessment.

Impartiality, Public Reason and Group Rights

John Arthur, Binghamton University

Public reason demands legal and political argument should be restricted so that those who construct constitutions and make and interpret laws must set aside information about race, gender and ethnicity. It has therefore come in for criticism for two reasons. First, it is said to be impractical because people cannot forget who they are or what they care about, especially their gender, race and ethnicity. The second criticism is that since law is supposed to be blind to race and gender public reason ignores the political significance of group difference and undermines claims for affirmative action and group based rights. In this paper I explain the nature of impartiality and its connection with public reason, assess the charges that it is impractical and argue that although public reason requires impartiality, such "epistemic abstinence" is compatible with adequate consideration to race and group rights.

Moral Attention and Compassion in Encountering You: Gurwitsch and Buber

P. Sven Arvidson, Seattle University

The application of Aron Gurwitsch’s phenomenology to Martin Buber’s relational existentialism yields provocative results. Under a novel lighting of moral attention and compassion, two claims can be made. First, Gurwitsch’s phenomenology of transformations in consciousness reveals the structure of moral attention in Buber’s Ichund Du.Second, persons can use the knowledge of this structure of moral attention to increase the possibility and probability of compassion in their lives.

How To Do Things With Pornography

Nancy Bauer, Tufts University

In the last decade, a number of feminist analytic philosophers, most notably Rae Langton and Jennifer Homsby, have proposed using J. L. Austin’s theory of speech acts to fight the proliferation of pornography. Their goal is to show that pornographic "speech" functions in conventional ways to harm women and thus cannot hide behind the protection of free-speech laws, which construe pornography as mere expression. In this paper I question whether pornography could have the kind of authority that Langton and Homsby concede it must have if it is to succeed in subordinating and silencing women. And I suggest that it is a mistake for philosophers to elide the legal and Austinian conceptions of "speech" and thereby sidestep the crucial project of investigating the particular powers of film and photography, the quintessential pornographic media.

BBP ——> Bp

Peter Baumann, Swarthmore College

Can I be wrong about my own beliefs? More precisely: Can I falsely believe that I believe that p? I argue that the answer is negative. This runs against what many philosophers and psychologists have traditionally thought and still think. I will use a rather new kind of argument,—one that is based on considerations about Moore’s paradox. It shows that believing that one believes that p implies that one believes that p —even though believing that p does not imply believing that one believes that p (BBp —> Bp but not: Bp —> BBp).

A Moorean Response to Skepticism

Timothy A. Black, California State University, Fresno

Keith DeRose provides a contextualist response to skeptical arguments such as the following: Argument from Ignorance 1. I don’t know that I’m not a brain-in-a-vat. 2. If l know that I have hands, then I know that I’m not a brain-in-a-vat. 3. Therefore, I don’t know that I have hands. According to contextualism, the standards for knowledge are unusually high in some contexts but comparatively low in others. The skeptic can truthfully say in contexts of the former sort that I don’t know, but we can nevertheless correctly say in contexts of the latter sort that I do. DeRose’s primary argument for contextualism rests on the claim that it best explains why we make certain epistemic judgments. Yet even though his contextualism salvages much of our ordinary knowledge, it commits us to certain disagreeable skeptical conclusions. For example, according to contextualfsm, I sometimes fail to know that I have hands. I argue that we should prefer a Moorean response to skepticism, according to which the standards for knowledge are always comparatively low. We should prefer the Moorean response for two reasons. First, it provides an explanation of our epistemic judgments that is just as good as the one provided by DeRose’s contextualism. The Moorean can explain both how I know that I have hands and how I know that I’m not a brain-in-a-vat. The Moorean can also explain why we sometimes judge that I don’t know that I have hands and why we sometimes judge that I don’t know that I’m not a brain-in-a-vat. Second, my Moorean response commits us to no disagreeable skeptical conclusions. Even though we sometimes judge otherwise, my Moorean response maintains that I can know across contexts both that I have hands and that I’m not a brain-in-a-vat.

Exploring Anger: Making Connections Between Anger and Autonomy

Angela Bolte, University of Nevada-Reno

Many people believe that when we are angry, we are out of control and lack the ability to exercise autonomous choice. Many philosophers have agreed that the emotional subject in general, and the angry subject in particular, are the antitheses of the rational autonomous agent. I challenge this view and argue that it is possible for an agent who is in the throes of anger nevertheless to achieve autonomy. I develop a unique conception of anger that illustrates its potential value in autonomy. I argue that anger has particular qualities that help to reduce the risk of heteronomy. Anger, for example, plays a role in the activity of caring or valuing by bringing awareness of what one values. Anger also helps us repel and reduce harm. Taken as a whole, these qualities illustrate the potential positive value anger has regarding autonomy.

Putting Meaning in Its Place: Philosophy of Language and Constitutional Interpretation

Troy Booher, University of Utah

Originalists believe that judges should simply determine what the language of the Constitution means and apply it accordingly. Ronald Dworkin believes that this language sometimes enjoins judges to use moral judgment. Dworkin argues for this by distinguishing between two kinds of intention: semantic and pragmatic. Semantic intentions determine what a speaker’s language means, and pragmatic intentions are what a speaker intend as a consequence of having uttered the language. By showing that descriptive language is more elusive than Dworkin admits, I argue that, absent evidence of the Constitution’s historical context, Dworkin’s distinction is completely unhelpful to us in determining the correct application of Constitutional law to cases. In the end, Dworkin’s position surprisingly collapses into the position of his most vociferous rival, Justice Scalia. I take Dworkin’s confusion to be an instance of the biggest philosophical mistake of the twentieth century: giving the philosophy of language primary importance.

Welfare, Voting and the Constitution of a Federal Assembly: A Monte Carlo Simulation

Luc Bovens, University of Colorado at Boulder

A federal assembly can be constituted so that each state in the federation has the same number of representatives or it can be constituted so that the number of representatives for each state is proportional to the population size of the state. Equal and proportional representation are two poles on a continuum of models of representation. Presumably the constitution of the assembly will have repercussions on the distribution of welfare in the federation. We do a Monte Carlo simulation to determine the resulting welfare distributions after a large number of motions have been considered by the assembly. Subsequently we construct measures (utilarian, Rawlsian, egalitarian…) that evaluate the resulting welfare distributions and determine which model of representation in the federal assembly maximizes the measure in question. This approach permits us to make recommendations about the constitution of a federal assembly, contingent on the political ideals that one embraces.

Against Agent-Basing

Michael Sean Brady, University of Stirling

Agent-based virtue ethics is a unitary normative theory according to which the moral status of actions is entirely dependent upon the moral status of an agent’s motives and character traits. One of the problems any such approach faces is to capture the common-sense distinction between an agent’s doing the right thing, and their doing it for the right (or wrong) reason. In this paper I argue that agent- based virtue ethics ultimately fails to capture this kind of fine-grained distinction, and that this suggests more serious problems with the approach as such. In order to make my argument I focus first on the response to the above problem given by one of the main contemporary proponents of agent-basing, Michael Slote, and second on a response available to agent-basers such as Linda Zagzebski, which invokes the behaviour of fully virtuous agents. I maintain that neither response is plausible.

Discontinuous Continuity: Schlegel’s fragmentary project

Roy Brand, New School For Social Research

This paper develops the view that Schlegel’s Philosophical Fragments answers to the problematic raised by Kant’s reflective judgment of taste, namely that it remains merely reflective. The early romantics found in Kant’s aesthetics the suggestion that a singular moment can reveal the totality of being-i.e. the harmony of reason and nature or the unity of the system-though not on the phenomenal level but only in aesthetic reflection. This paper argues that Schlegel conceived of the fragment as the phenomenal correlate to Kant’s reflective judgment. Fragmentation does not exclude completion and systematicity, rather, it gives rise to the work of forming connections, which strives for the completion of a system. The fragment not only represents the system by marking its absence it also shows a form of discontinuous continuity, at once textual and ethical, by introducing limits and gaps on the level of presentation.

A Critique of an Argument for A Priori Fallibilism

Teresa Britton, Eastern Illinois University

In an essay entitled "On the Obvious, " Robin Jeshion argues for fallibilism concerning a priori justification. Fallibilism is the view that it is possible to have full a priori justification for false beliefs. In her essay, she criticizes earlier defenses of fallibilism because they merely type-individuate belief forming processes in such a way that presumes the fallibilist position. Jeshion proposes a novel argument for the view. Jeshion argues that full a priori justification must be possible for those false beliefs that are entailed by the best available conceptual understanding; because the best available conceptual understanding is necessary for acquiring correct conceptual understanding. I show that Jeshion may have type-individuated epistemic processes in such a way that presumes fallibilism, as in the arguments that she herself criticizes. In addition, I show that a key premise in Jeshion’s argument for fallibilism is untenable.

Anti-Realism and Possibility

Berit Brogaard, Southern Illionis University, Edwardsville
Joe R. Salerno, Texas A&M University

Semantic formulations of anti-realism—i.e., those that attempt to explain truth in terms of possible knowledge—have never been fully satisfactory .A critical issue is how to interpret the operant notion of possibility in an adequate manner. We argue that anti-realism cannot be formulated with familiar notions of possibility. The anti-realist has her own notion, which we aim to clarify herein.

Representation and Material Falsity in Cartesian Sensations

Deborah Brown, The University of Queensland

In the Third Meditation Descartes distinguishes between two kinds of falsity: one which pertains to judgements, the other, "material falsity," to ideas "when they represent non-things as things." The distinction is crucial to Descartes’ambition to turn philosophy away from its reliance upon the senses as the source of knowledge about the physical world. As Arnauld observed however it is not obvious how, given Descartes’ standard picture of representation understood in terms of the objective existence of things, ideas can be materially false. Many commentators have since come to believe that Arnauld was basically right arguing either that after the Replies, Descartes ceased to conceive of sensory representation in terms of objective reality or that his account was fundamentally incoherent. This paper offers an interpretation which restores coherence to Descartes’ theory of sensory representation and brings to light the structure of what Descartes considered to be the most serious source of error.

A Case for Hedonism in the Philebus

James P. Butler, Berea College

Commentators (e.g. Irwin) frequently suppose that with the victory of intelligence over pleasure in the Philebus Plato proves that intelligence is a more intrinsically valuable—indeed a crucial—component of the happy life. Accordingly, if intelligence is an intrinsically valuable component, Plato cannot be holding even a modest hedonism that the happy life simply is the most pleasant life. I argue against such interpretations: Plato’s argument is not about which possession of the soul is more intrinsically valuable and serves as a more important component of the happy life. Rather, Plato contends that intelligence is better than enjoyment as a means to happiness. Interpreted in this way, nothing in the Philebus precludes the possibility that the happiness produced by intelligence is simply an overall predominance of pleasure over pain. I suggest that such an interpretation is consistent with the hedonistic view we find in Republic IX and the Laws.

Empeiria in Aristotle

Travis L. Butler, Iowa State University

In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle claims that empeiria (often translated "experience"), gives us the principles of every science. This paper provides an explanation and defense of this claim, by way of an account of the nature of empeiria. Aristotle is shown to share with Plato the idea that a person’s empeiria is made up of beliefs with certain features: they are "educated guesses," made in the light of a case-history, but in the absence of knowledge of causes. These guess-beliefs are important for theory-building, as they usefully combine practical success and epistemic failure. They facilitate further inquiry into their object, although they fail to grasp its nature.

The Generality Constraint, Nonsense, and Categorial Restricitons

Elisabeth M. Camp, University of California, Berkeley

I argue that syntactically well-formed strings do in general express thoughts, and that competent thinkers both can and ought to be able to grasp such thoughts. This is true, I claim, even for semantically absurd strings like ‘Caesar is a prime number’ and ‘Life is a walking shadow.’ A more specific way of putting this claim is that Gareth Evans’ Generality Constraint should be viewed as a fully general constraint on concept possession and propositional thought. I establish this by arguing, first, that such absurd -strings do possess substantive inferential roles; second, that hearers exploit these inferential roles in interpreting such strings metaphorically; and third, that there is no good reason to deny truth-conditions to strings with inferential roles.

Time and the Work of Art: Reconsiderations of Heidegger’s Reading of the Will to Power

Tracy L. Colony, Leuven, Belgium

In this essay, I challenge the predominant reception of Heidegger’ s first Nietzsche lecture as a reductive account of Nietzsche’s thought of the will to power. Focusing upon the temporal determination of the meaning of essence in this lecture, I argue that Heidegger’s understanding of the will to power as essence is not based upon a traditional sense of eidos, but rather, upon a unity of essence which has its origin in difference. The unity that Heidegger accords the will to power as art is the sense of unity brought forth in the moment of creation which grounds and defines a particular form of historical existence. I conclude by demonstrating that the sense of difference underlying this unity is a kairological rupture of all eidetic givens in the originary temporality of der Augenblick in Nietzsche’s thought of eternal recurrence.

Thomas Reid’s Non-Naive Direct Realism

Rebecca E. Copenhaver, Lewis and Clark College

Direct realism is often understood as the claim that perception is unmediated. Thomas Reid considers himself a direct realist, yet he regards sensations as mediating perception. Taking Reid at his word, I formulate a new definition of direct realism that allows for such a claim while preserving the distinction between direct and indirect realism. In offering this definition I show that what is at issue between direct and indirect realists is not the immediacy of perception. Direct and indirect realists may reach general agreement that perception is mediated by sensations. However, they will disagree about how mediating entities represent external objects. Indirect realists hold that it is in virtue of the intrinsic characters of mediating entities and external objects that the former represent the latter, while direct realists hold that it is in virtue of an extrinsic relation that mediating entities represent external objects.

Rigidly Designating Kind Terms and Individual Essences

Benjamin Cordry, University of Kentucky

In this paper, I consider what it is for a kind term to be a rigid designator and analyze statements of the sort ‘Samba is a tiger’ that attribute membership in a natural kind to an individual thing picked out by a name. I argue that such statements are, if true, necessarily true. The argument is rather trivial -the real work is in showing that a given kind term actually is a rigidly designating kind term. However, I conclude that this can be done without resort to any metaphysical claims a nominalist would wish to deny.

Presentism and "Taking Tense Seriously"

Thomas M. Crisp, University of Notre Dame

Presentists—those who think, roughly, that only present things exist—are wont to "take tense seriously." But, goes a frequent worry, one can’t sensibly take tense seriously and be a presentist, since Presentism spelled-out in accord with the strictures of Serious Tensism yields a thesis which is either trivially true or manifestly false. A standard reply to this worry has it that, by making use of an unrestricted quantifier, the presentist can both take tense seriously and give a non-trivial formulation of her thesis. Sadly enough, this reply has not convinced everyone. In this paper, I’ll say something about why. I’ll argue that it should have convinced everyone.

Sex, Suicide, and Two Conceptions of Dignity

David R. Cummiskey, Bates College

The dignity of humanity provides the metaphysical basis for the Kantian imperative of respect for persons. Kant and Kantians, however, appeal to two very different conceptions of dignity and they thus rely on two quite distinct interpretations of the concept of respect for the dignity of persons. I will call one a substantive conception and the other a procedural conception. The procedural conception of dignity is manifest in contractualist interpretations of Kantian ethics. These theories focus on consent (or the possibility of dissent), as the crucial factor required by respect. The substantive conception of dignity is manifest in Kantian theories that use the concept of dignity to limit the legitimating power of consent.

I argue, first, that these are competing and possibly incompatible conceptions of dignity, second, that only the procedural conception is consistent with a Kantian rationalist conception of ethics, but, third, that Kant and Kantians illegitimately use a substantive interpretation when defending particular moral judgements. In particular, Kant's view of sexuality as essentially degrading depends on an illegitimate use of a substantive conception of human dignity. In addition, this distinction between two conceptions of dignity sheds light on disputes about the Kantian basis of a right to die with dignity. Here too, a Kantian prohibition on suicide is based on a mistaken appeal to a more substantive conception of human dignity. The correct Kantian conception of dignity is proceduralist and this conception prohibits neither sex nor suicide.

Berkeley on the Meaning of Idea

Stephen H. Daniel, Texas A&M University

Commentators have proposed different ways to interpret what Berkeley means by his central concept idea. Standard interpretations include (I) mental objects, (2) "objective" (vs. formal) realities, (3) the content of mental acts or intentional objects, (4) "adverbially" differentiated mental activities, and (5) mental events (vs. mental acts). Such approaches assume that understanding sensible objects "by way of idea" requires us to think of ideas as things other than minds. But even though contrasting ideas and minds seems justified by the Principles and Dialogues, its effect is to treat minds as if they are objects-something Berkeley repeatedly warns against. His Philosophical Commentaries avoids that error by describing mind not in terms of ideas but ideas in terms of mind. This reversal of perspective reveals how standard interpretations mistakenly treat Berkeleyan ideas as objects of discrete acts when, in fact, they are products of the active (willed) differentiation that characterizes mind.

Global Frankfurt-Style Cases: A Libertarian Reply

John J. Davenport, Fordham University

In recent years, libertarian critics of Frankfurt-style cases have argued that they do not show that all relevant alternative possibilities can be eliminated while an agent remains responsible for some action, omission, intention, decision (or their consequences). One such argument, which I call the tracing defense, holds that a Frankfurt-style case can convince us that responsibility and inevitability are compatible in the given situation only if the case implicitly leaves open the possibility that the agent’s responsibility traces to other metaphysically or temporally prior conditions, which may include prior alternatives. But recently, defenders of Frankfurt have developed new, "global" versions of Frankfurt-cases that might seem to refute this tracing defense of libertarian conditions on moral responsibility. . I reply that the global cases fail because they involve a fallacy of composition and they make it impossible to distinguish the agent acting on her own from the cosmos acting through her.

The Weighted Lottery and the Claims of the One Versus the Many

Daniel B. Dennis, Birkbeck College

It is argued that when deciding whether to save the one or the many (all of whom are strangers) one should use the Weighted Lottery, rather than always toss a coin or always save the many. The Weighted Lottery is shown to respect the claims of each person, to give each person an identical initial weighting, whilst at the same time accommodating the intuitive preference for saving the group, by giving the group a greater chance of survival. Section (ii) of the paper shows that the Weighted Lottery is needed whenever the issue of who is in the larger group and who is in the smaller, has not been determined by a fair lottery.

Kant on Arrogance and Self-Respect

Robin S. Dillon, Lehigh University

Kant’s reference in the Doctrine of Virtue to arrogance in the context of discussing servility as a vice opposed to the duty to respect as persons suggests that arrogance is the vice of excess, as servility is the vice of deficiency, in relation to which one kind of self-respect is the mean. But a careful examination of what Kant says there about arrogance and self-respect, as well as his discussion of arrogance as one of the vices that violate our duties to respect other persons as such, reveals a more complex relation between arrogance and self-respect: arrogance is opposed in several different ways to several different kind of self-respect. More importantly, what Kant has to say about arrogance and self-respect makes it clear that arrogance is the deadliest of vices and why self-respect is the very core of morality.

False Positives and Bad Samaritans

Joseph S. Ellin, Western Michigan University

Bad Samaritan laws (BSLs) are laws which, under criminal penalties, impose a duty to rescue strangers. One argument for BSLs is that they would increase the number of rescues; another is that they would punish people who violate the moral duty to help those in danger. I argue that BSLs are subject to false positives, that is, cases in which a non-rescuer would be guilty of violating a BSL but would not be culpable of violating any moral duty. I illustrate this with several examples of intentional non-rescuers who do not violate any moral duty to perfom a rescue. By punishing those who are not culpable of violating a moral duty, BSLs would be unjust. Like other arguments against BSLs this argument does not defeat arguments favoring BSLs, but does deflate such arguments by showing an undesirable feature of BSLs.

The Real Logical Problem Evil Poses for the Theist

Mylan Engel, Jr., Northern Illinois University

Most contemporary philosophers of religion think that the logical problem of evil is dead, that it was laid to rest once and for all by Plantinga’s ingenious transworld-depravity-based free will defense. I argue that there are two distinct logical problems of evil, "the traditional problem" and "the real problem." I show that Plantinga’s free will defense fails to demonstrate the logical compatibility of God and evil and that, as a result, the real problem remains in tact. Unless, and until the theist can solve this problem, theism is irrational.

Justice, Punishment, and the Ethics of Care

Scott D. Gelfand, Oklahoma State University

In "Justice, Punishment, and the Ethics of Care," I attempt to demonstrate, contra Carol Gilligan, Marilyn Friedman, Virginia Held and Nel Noddings, that the ethics of care can be utilized to determine our obligations in the public realm. I begin with a discussion and critique. If an ethics of care approach proposed by Michael Slote and then sketch out what I believe is a letter alternative to Slote’s approach. I then apply this latter approach to the topic of punishment. I conclude that the ethics of care is in a better position than many realize to operate as a comprehensive, freestanding theory relevant to both private and public morality. In addition, provide novel approach to punishment.

Premarital Sex and Exploitation in a Liberal Society

David Gilboa, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh

Unimpressed by the exhortations of previous generations, our modern society accepts premarital sex. Advisably? In an attempt to answer this question, I shall, drawing on findings from evolutionary psychology and bargaining theory, make three related points. First, premarital sex is potentially exploitative. Second, to allow premarital sex is not merely to extend a certain freedom, but indirectly to compel women to practice premarital sex, hence effectively to foster their exploitation. Third, some of the measures taken to combat the sexual exploitation of single women can make matters worse, as the implementation of these measures tends to increase rather than decrease the level of the exploitation.

Defending Fundamentality: A Modern Argument for Simples

Carl Gillett, Illinois Wesleyan University

In this paper I show two doctrines supported by the higher sciences, and widely endorsed by philosophers, entail that simples exist. First, I outline an infinite regress argument based upon the nature of the realization relation which shows that there must be unrealized, and in this sense ‘simple’, properties. Second, I show that in combination with a plausible thesis about the nature of constituency this argument can be extended to establish that simple individuals also exist. My conclusion is that physicalists, dualists, and even those philosophers who profess to distrust metaphysics, are all committed to the existence of a fundamental causal level of simples.

Beyond the Medical Model? The Disability Rights Movement and the Exception for the Profoundly Impaired

Sara L. Goering, California State University-Long Beach

The formal justice model proposed by Anita Silvers in Disability, Discrimination and Difference emphasizes the social model of disability and the need for full equality of opportunity, and suggests that distributing special benefits to individuals with disabilities is self- defeating. Yet Silvers allows an exception for the "profoundly impaired." In this paper, I show how the theory falls short when it comes to dealing with "profoundly impaired" individuals, and explore the ways in which making the exception raises serious theoretical concerns for the grounding of the formal justice model.

Buddhist Perspectives on Rawls’s Overlapping Consensus

Christopher W. Gowans, Fordham University

Rawls proposes that persons with conflicting comprehensive doctrines could join an overlapping consensus on a political conception of liberalism. Could this consensus include Buddhists in the United States? Or is Buddhism fundamentally at odds with liberalism, as is sometimes maintained? In response to these questions, I argue for a complex "middle way," taking as my primary reference point the Buddha’s teaching (Dhamma) in the Sutta Pitaka of the Pali canon. On the one hand, followers of this teaching could be reasonable citizens, and they could have some reason to affirm values such as religious tolerance, democratic rule, and state responsibility to alleviate poverty. On the other hand, from a Buddhist perspective, questions may be raised about understanding these values in terms of rights as individual entitlements, and a different model of consensus than that of Rawls may be suggested.

What, then, is African Philosophy? A Critical Project in Double Gesture’

Peter Gratton, DePaul University

This paper will attempt to read between the particularist and universalist camps of African philosophy, which we will argue can only be thought in contradistinction to each other. We will argue that African philosophy "today is a more flexible and often highly eclectic and syncretic melange of the African and the Western, the old and the new, the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial." Rethought in these terms, African philosophical practice cannot be reduced to that which at worst is an a-historical (universalist) or relativist (particularist) enterprise, as a number of commentators, including Carole Pearce, are want to do. On the contrary, we will argue that by operating between these positions, as a syncretic but never stable melange, "African philosophy" is a performative signifier that by its very name brings together and calls into question an endless number of oppositions: universalist/particularist, African thought/ philosophy.

Hope, Memory, and the Immortality of the Soul in Plato

G. Scott Gravlee, Mount Union College

Hopefulness is central to Plato’s conception of philosophical practice. In this paper, I sketch a view of Socratic/Platonic philosophy that shows the connections between reason and hope and which characterizes the Socratic attitude towards philosophical practice—an attitude which routinely falls between philosophical despair and philosophical presumption—as an attitude of hopefulness. Thus, for Socrates and Plato, hope and hopefulness are central to the motivation and practice of philosophy and to the character of the true philosopher. After establishing this, I comment on the connections which Plato makes between hope and memory in order to apply the concept of hope to the development of new understandings regarding the central Socratic doctrine of recollection and the Platonic use of mythology in several of the most influential dialogues.

The Irreducility and Nonconceptuality of Emotion

York H. Gunther, California State University, Northridge

Anti-reductionists recognize that emotions have intentional content and are unique mental causes. However, this uniqueness is rarely, if ever, traced to the kind of intentional content emotions have. An anti-reductionist is more likely to single out a phenomenological, evaluative or perspectival feature which, as purportedly distinctive of emotional experience, precludes the reduction of emotions to, say, physiological or cognitive states. In this paper I offer an argument which shows that emotions are unique in virtue of the kind of intentionality they have. My contention is that their failure to exhibit genuine logical form suggests that they violate the Principle of Force Independence. From this, I outline three consequences: (I) that emotions cannot be reduced to cognitive and/or motivational states, (2) that they require an independent theory of meaning/ content based on propriety, and that they present a compelling paradigm of nonconceptuality.

Hegel on Logic and Determinacy

Jay A. Gupta, University of Toronto

In this paper, I attempt to clarify the relation between Hegel’s uses of the terms ‘logic’ and ‘determinacy’ in the Science of Logic. I develop the hypothesis, put forth by adherents of what has come to be known as the "non-metaphysical interpretation", that the Science of Logic is a theory of determinacy, and that the treatise that precedes it, the Phenomenology of Spirit, is designed to eliminate all our presuppositions concerning the nature of determinacy.

If It Itches, Scratch

Richard J. Hall, Michigan State University

Bodily sensations, e.g. pains, itches, twinges and tickles, seem to many to consist of, or at least to involve, non-intentional qualia. In an effort to avoid qualia, intentionalists take bodily sensations to be representations of bodily states. I argue that certain bodily sensations are best thought of not as descriptive representations of bodily states but as commands. An itch, for example, is the sensory command, "Scratch!" We can thus avoid qualia, avoid having to concoct some descriptive content where there doesn’t seem to be any, and at the same time explain the close connection between these bodily sensations and certain actions.

Paradise Lost and the Question of Legitimacy

Wendy C. Hamblet, California State University, Stanislaus

Tales of tragic beginnings, in one form or another, line the cradle of Western civilization. Experts tell us that our stories stay with us long after their "truths" have been consciously discarded. Even where a society feels secure in its freedom from their hold, living in a world post mortem dei, these mythologems may live on in the recesses of that society’s symbolic universe, configuring the horizons of its lifeworld, structuring its thinking and inclining its progeny toward certain patterns of comportment in the world. Well we might wonder, then, the extent to which the Western psyche may have become, over the millennia that these tragic tales have held conceptual sway, infected by anxieties related to the guilt, nostalgia and sense of abandonment spawned by tragic tales of "human" beginnings.

Can We Do Applied Ethics First? Why We Can And Should Do Applied Ethics Before Settling the Questions in Ethical Theory and Meta-Ethics

Elizabeth Harman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

An "applied ethics paper" argues for a general conclusion about a specific area of ethics without assuming any ethical theory or meta-ethical view. My first aim is to defend the-applied ethics paper from the objection that the methodology of the paper is misguided, because we can’t have good reason to accept any conclusion in applied ethics without having first settled the questions in ethical theory and/ or meta-ethics. I consider six elaborations of this objection, and argue that each fails. My second aim is to argue that not only is the applied ethics paper a perfectly reasonable way to do moral reasoning, it is a crucial and necessary part of all moral reasoning. Specifically, not only can applied ethics be done before the questions: in ethical theory are settled, but it must be done before these questions are settled.

Happiness, Identity, and Well-Being

Danie M. Haybron, University of Arizona

This paper concerns happiness, understood in the contemporary psychological, non-evaluative sense of being happy. It is argued that happiness connects with our identities in important ways, and as such has normative force: namely, as an aspect of nature-fulfillment. This, if correct, indicates that popular subjectivist theories of well-being, most notably the various desire theories, are false: what we normally consider a paradigm of subjective value-happiness is, in an important sense, an objective good. It also points us in the direction of an account of human flourishing that is in some ways Aristotelian. However, the relevant norms depend, not on human nature as such, but on the particular constitution of each individual.

What is Presentism, and Does it Preclude Persistence?

H. Scott Hestevold, University of Alabama

Presentism has been characterized as the doctrine that "the present time is ontologically privileged," "that only the present is real," though some take Presentism to be significant and true, others dismiss it as trivially true or trivially false. After arguing that certain formulations of Presentism are trivial, we offer a formulation that implies nontrivially both that Static i.e. space-like] Time is incorrect and that Transient [i.e. dynamic time] Time is correct. We then cite arguments that suggest that Presentism altogether precludes persistence —both persistence by perdurance and persistence by endurance. By developing a Presentist account of endurance and change, we conclude that Presentism does not imply radical eliminativism regarding persistence. Though we do argue that Presentism should be rejected neither on grounds that it is trivial nor on grounds that it precludes persistence, we take no stand on whether Presentism is correct.

An Ancient "Conception" of Truth:
Aristotle’s Metaphysics 7

Blake Hestir, Texas Christian University

Tarski claims that although the classical conception of truth one finds in places like Aristotle’s Metaphysics is not precise and clear, he has no doubt that his own semantic conception of truth conforms to the intuitive content of that of Aristotle. What is significant about this claim is: (a) many scholars consider Aristotle to be the co-father (with Plato) of the correspondence theory of truth, and (b) Tarski quite intentionally distances his own semantic "conception" of truth from "theories" of truth, especially those which account for truth in terms of correspondence. I argue that Tarski is right about Aristotle’s conception of truth as we find it expressed in Metaphysics 7. Aristotle’s remarks on truth neither suggest nor entail any sort of correspondence theory of truth per se; rather, Aristotle has a very minimalistic conception of truth and to think otherwise is to anachronistically attribute to him a notoriously problematic theory.

Alien Desires, Whims and Values

Donald C. Hubin, Ohio State University

Neo-Humean instrumentalists hold that an agent’s reasons for acting are grounded in the agent’s desire. This view encounters problems with "alien desires"—desires with which the agent does not identify. The standard version of neo-Humeanism holds that these desires, like any others generate reasons for acting. A variant of neo-Humeanism that grounds an agent’s reasons on her values, rather than all of her desires, avoids this implication, but at the cost of denying that we have reasons to act on innocent whims. A version of neo-Humeanism that holds that an agent has reason to satisfy all of her desires that are not in conflict with her values appears to allow us to grant the reason-giving force of innocent whims while denying the reason-giving force of alien desires.

The Liar Paradox: A Failure of Representation

J. Noel Hubler, Lebanon Valley College

Contrast 1)"this sentence is false" (the Liar’s Paradox) with 2)"the judgement I am now making is false." 1) is paradoxical, 2) is merely contradictory. If one tries to assign truth values to 1), one lands in paradox. There has been much dispute about how to understand why 1) cannot be assigned a truth value, but no such problems arise for 2). 2) is clearly self -contradictory and cannot be formulated as a judgement. It contradicts the nature of judgement to maintain that one’s judgement is false, for judgements by their nature claim truth. Sentences do not. Language is by its nature representational and is only true to the extent that it accurately represents true judgements. 1) is ill-formed because although it appears to be declarative and therefore purports to represent a judgement, it in actuality cannot represent any possible judgement. Therefore, the Liar’s Paradox cannot generate any paradox.

Williams, Internalization and the Grip of Ethical Practice

Mark P. Jenkins, Franklin and Marshall College

This paper gives an affirmative, although partial, answer to the question of whether it is possible to cull a positive account of ethical practice from the writings of Bernard Williams. While most such accounts rely on some theorized version of "the moral point of view," Williams’s account does not, making it both significant and controversial. Instead, Williams relies on internalization and acculturation, dispositions and emotions, to explain how we come to reason and behave ethically. Taking up the task of explaining the grip morality exerts on us—why we generally find ethical considerations impossible to ignore—the paper focuses on Williams’s conception of an "internalized other." Part self, part society, the internalized other links an agent’s personal projects and commitments to constraints imposed thereon by social expectations, and, in doing so, provides a phenomenologically rich and philosophically satisfying account of the grip of ethical practice.

Moral Disagreement and Non-Cognitivism about Moral Judgements

Leonard A. Kahn, University of California, Irvine

It is often claimed that non-cognitive meta-ethical theories do a better job of explaining moral disagreement than their cognitive rivals. But how good is the explanation offered by non-cognitive theories? I argue that on the most natural reading, non-cognitive theories are not finely grained enough to distinguish moral disagreements from non-moral disagreements. I consider attempts to remedy this defect in non-cognitive theories by interpreting moral judgments as expressions of norms with respect to emotions such as guilt and anger. However, I argue that these remedies render non-cognitive theories problematic in two ways: First, their explanations of moral disagreement in exotic cases (i.e., cases in which the disputants do not have a common background) are ineffectual; second, their explanations of moral disagreement in mundane cases (i.e., cases in which the disputants do have a common background) force us to interpret certain reasonable agents as if they suffered from psychological incoherence.

The Open Question Argument, Frege’s Puzzle, and Leibniz’s Law

Mark E. Kalderon, University College London

A version of the open question argument formulated in terms of Leibniz’s law is compared with a version of Frege’s puzzle also formulated in terms of Leibniz’s law. The parallel is instructive, not only for the light it sheds on this version of the open question argument, but also for the light it sheds on Frege’s puzzle. Indeed, it is argued that these arguments are unsound and that the unsoundness of these arguments turns on a de re / de dicto confusion.

The Psychic Power of Piety in the Republic

Errol Katayama, Ohio Northern University

The fact that piety is absent from the list of the cardinal virtues in Book 4 of the Republic is well attested. Those who attempt to explain its absence, for the most part, make the following assumptions: (1) that piety is somehow related to justice; and (2) that piety should be defined in reference to the gods or deities. By exploring the plausibility of piety being a part of justice (hence, accepting the first assumption), this paper challenges the second one by identifying the other divine entities, Platonic Forms, in reference to which piety should be defined. Accordingly, pious activity for Plato is to have "intercourse" with the Forms; that is, to engage in philosophy. To distinguish between pious and just person, this paper then tackles the notorious problem in the Republic concerning justice, that is, whether it is possible for any citizen of the ideal state other than the philosopher to be just. I suggest that in defining the virtue of justice as the power that consists in each of the parts doing its appropriate task, Plato leaves room for at least three kinds of such powers: (1) habit inculcated by education; (2) thought, which is some kind of knowledge (perhaps of the Forms) but definitely without the Form of the Good; and (3) the knowledge of the Forms, especially, that of the Good. If a person attains his psychic health by the first two kinds of power, then he is just, but if a person(that is, the philosopher) attains it by the third power, he is not only just but also pious.Finally, by focusing on the theme of the Republic, the paper concludes by speculating the possible reasons why Plato may have omitted the virtue of piety.

Hume and the Problem of Time

Eleanor F. Katz

Hume cannot say that the "idea" of time is derived from either a complex, and originating experience, or " ...a particular impression mix’d up with others, and plainly distinguishable from them…" Given his own empiricism, he is committed to dealing with the "content"-and not the form-of spatio-temporal awareness, but he does not want to say that space and time, in their unifying role, are given experience itself. Hume’s account of time reveals much of the structure of his treatment of space, so both will first be considered, with the reduction of time to follow. The origins of space and time in experience are, at best, difficult to trace. That Hume is aware of this is clear from the length and position of his chapters on space and time in the Treatise. Space and time are described (however unsatisfactorily) as general or complex ideas, for which there are no corroborating experiences. Transcendental notions such as forms of experience are not available to him. As is acknowledged by Hume, our common belief is that the mind exhibits a reliably organized sense of spatio-temporal awareness. His difficulty is in how to account for the mind’s sense of intuitive temporal unity, which is crucial in configuring mental phenomena.

The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement

Thomas P. Kelly, Harvard Society of Fellows

It is a striking fact that almost everyone holds at least some beliefs that are explicitly rejected by others who have been exposed to all of the same evidence and arguments. When a belief that one holds is explicitly rejected by individuals over whom one possesses no discernible epistemic advantage, does this give one a reason for skepticism about that belief? In deciding what to believe about some controversial question, how (if at all) should one take into account the considered judgements of one’s epistemic peers? In pursuing these questions, I contrast two fundamentally different views about the epistemic role of the considered judgements of others. According to the first view, that role is essentially limited to calling one’s attention to arguments that one might have overlooked or evidence of which one might have been unaware. According to the second view, that role is not limited to calling to one’s attention relevant considerations that might otherwise have escaped noticed; rather, one should, in addition, give some independent weight to the fact that an epistemic peer takes the available evidence to warrant a certain attitude. I argue for the superiority of the first view.

William Rowe’s A Priori Argument From Evil

Klaas Johannes Kraay, University of Toronto

The hypothesis of no prime worlds (NPW) states that for any world x that an omnipotent being can actualize, there is a better world, y, that the omnipotent being could have actualized instead of x. This view is generally adopted by those who wish to defend God from the charge of not having done his best in actualizing this world. While this defense is compelling, it has not made the problem of evil vanish. William Rowe advances an intriguing and powerful a priori argument for the non-existence of God on NPW. In this paper, I examine three recent responses to Rowe’ s argument due to Bruce Langtry, William Morris, and Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder, respectively. I conclude that none is successful, but I show that Rowe’s argument nevertheless requires more defense than he provides.

Testimonial Knowledge and the Infant/Child Abjection

Jennifer Lackey, Pomona College

There are two main views of the justification of testimonial beliefs: while non-reductionists maintain that hearers can be justified in accepting the reports of others, albeit defeasibly, merely on the basis of their testimony, reductionists require that hearers also have positive reasons on behalf of the testimony in question. One of the central problems afflicting reductionism is the apparent fact that infants and small children are not cognitively capable of having the inductively based positive reasons required by reductionism. Since non-reductionism does not impose a requirement of this sort, it does not face this problem and is therefore taken to have a significant advantage over reductionism. In this paper, however, I argue that if this objection undermines reductionism, then a variant of it similarly undermines non-reductionism. Thus, considerations about the cognitive capacities of infants and small children do not effectively discriminate between these two competing theories of testimonial justification.

Anti-realism and Normativity

Alexa Lee, University of California, Davis

In Wittgenstein on Following a Rule, John McDowell puts forth a "transcendental argument", intended to demonstrate the impossibility of a successful anti-realist account of semantic content. In a key premise of this argument, McDowell contends that the picture of the linguistic community issued in by an anti-realist construal of meaning simply "obliterates" norms altogether. I argue that McDowell is guilty of a grave methodological error in the framing of this premise, and thus diffuse the transcendental argument. Further, drawing heavily on Dummett’s positive considerations of semantic anti-realism, I outline just where this approach finds proper application for the notion of normativity. It will be shown herein, contra McDowell, that anti-realism has ample resources to accommodate a robust conception of normativity, and hence content.

Necessary Truth and the Mind of God

Brian Leftow, Fordham University

Plato’s Euthyphro asks whether the good is good because God loves it, or on the other hand God loves it because it is good. The Euthyphro question has an analogue. Consider the claims that red is a color or that 2+2=4. Are these true because God affirms them, or does God affirm them because they are true? I offer a simple argument that if there is a God, the truth and necessity of necessary non-world-indexed indicative truths appropriately involving non-divine contingent concreta rests on God. I argue that these necessary truths depend on God’s will. But this does not rule it out that they depend in like fashion on His intellect or nature. For nothing in my argument rules it out that God’s will is as it is due to some fact about His intellect or nature.

Does Race Travel?

Ronald J. Mallon, The University of Hong Kong

Race theorists widely agree that race is some sort of social construction. One way of interpreting this claim leads people to claim that race was created, that it can be transformed or destroyed, or as Michael Root recently has put it, that ‘race does not travel’. Such claims involve a certain way of construing the referent of ‘race’ and racial terms but I argue that important claims made by many racial theorists require an alternative construal. I suggest this points to the need for a pluralistic ontology of race.

Agent Causation As The Solution To All Compatiblist’s Problems

Ned Markosian, Western Washington University

In a recent paper, I argued that agent causation theorists should be compatibilists. In this paper, I argue that compatibilists should be agent causations theorists. I consider three of the main problems facing compatibilism: (i) the powerful intuition that I can’t be responsible for actions that were somehow determined before I was born, (ii) Peter van Inwagen’s modal argument (the one involving the inference rule (b), and (iii) the objection to compatibilism that is based on claiming that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition for freedom. And in the case of each of these problems, I argue that the compatibilist has a much more plausible response to that problem if she endorses the theory of agent causation that she does otherwise.

Is Fichte a Social Contract Theorist?

Wayne M. Martin, UC San Diego

The two fundamental questions of political philosophy are (a) What is the basis of political obligation? and (b) What constitutes a just political order? A social contractarian answers these questions by appeal to a contract among citizens in accordance with which each can benefit from the fruits of social cooperation. The paper considers whether J.G. Fichte’s liberal political philosophy, as laid out in the Naturrecht , is aptly understood as a social contract position. After surveying the conflicting evidence on this point, the author argues that while Fichte offers a contractarian answer to the second of the two basic questions of political philosophy, his answer to the first question (and his most original contribution to political philosophy) does not rely on an appeal to a social contract, but rather on the thesis that recognition of the autonomous agency of others is a condition on the possibility of objective, self-conscious experience.

Inferentialism and Object-representation

Mark McCullagh, University of Guelph

Robert Brandom has argued that in terms of their inferential roles alone, we can tell which occurrences of singular terms have basic object-representational purport. This is an essential plank in his inferentialist reconstruction of the philosophy of language. To do this Brandom needs to distinguish the singular terms and he needs to distinguish the extensional occurrences of singular terms. The latter task, I argue, cannot be done: there is no way solely in terms of their inferential roles to distinguish extensional and non-extensional occurrences of singular terms For there is too much variety, along the dimension of what we might call ‘quotativity’, among such occurrences. Inferentialism, therefore, seems unable to reconstruct the basic representational concepts.

Is the Rule of Law Consistent with Judges Exercising Discretion in Sentencing?

Joan L. McGregor, Arizona State University

Captain Vere in the novella Billy Budd cautions the members of the drumhead court, who are convened to decide the fate of Billy Budd, not to be swayed by the "feminine in man" and be tempted to consider the particularities of Billy Budd’s circumstances and his character in meting out the sentence. What I want to consider is whether the Rule of Law is consistent with judges exercising their discretion to apportion particularized justice. what is called equity’? In this paper, I use the story of Billy Budd to explore the relationship with the Rule of Law and judicial discretion. Judicial discretion has come under wide-spread renunciation and I explore some of the reasons for that, particularly in reference to sentencing. Ultimately. I argue that judges ought to determine sentences on the basis of equity which refines and tempers the retributive response.

Function, Malfunction, and Intentional Explanation

Jillian Scott McIntosh, The University of Western Ontario

Many current attempts to naturalize intentional content invoke biological function, with its attendant normativity, in order, in part, to accommodate misrepresentation. There is a near-consensus as to how to understand this normativity, namely by understanding function etiologically. I dispute this consensus without denying that there is a normative element to biological function. With what I take to be a better understanding of biological function, I return to the central issue in the philosophy of mind. I conclude that invoking biological function in individuating content eviscerates intentional explanation: this way of getting what we want precludes us getting what it is that we really want, if what we really want is causal intentional explanation.

Moral Conflict in Clinical Research

Maria W. Merritt, National Institute of Health

In this paper I analyze a moral conflict that inevitably arises for physicians who are also investigators in clinical research studies. The conflict is between clinical duty to each particular subject in a study, and scientific duty to other parties, including all the other subjects in a study. The physician’s clinical duty is the duty to offer no medical intervention uncompensated by proportionate direct (diagnostic, therapeutic, or palliative) benefit for the person who is to bear its burdens. The investigator’s scientific duty is to conduct the study so as to produce scientifically valid results in a timely manner. The two duties inevitably conflict because, as a rule, the only way that methodologically rigorous clinical research can be done is by asking subjects to take on medical burdens not reasonably expected to benefit them directly. How can a physician-investigator work out a sensitive, responsible decision-making strategy for hard cases of the conflict, in which neither duty is obviously overridden by the other? I propose a decision-making strategy that works by appealing to a third consideration: a subject’s interest in achieving the goals he or she has for his or her own participation in research. I call this consideration Subject’s Goals for short. Subject’s Goals has two notable features that make it especially apt to operate as a potentially conflict-resolving third consideration. First, it can include, but reaches beyond, the moral considerations underlying both clinical duty and scientific duty. Second, concern for Subject’s Goals belongs independently to excellent practice in both the role of physician and the role of investigator.

Living in the Material World

Christine R. Metzo, University of Kentucky

In La Nature, Merleau-Ponty provides not only an index of the problem of "materiality" in contemporary science and philosophical thought, but also an understanding of materiality which begins to integrate his studies of consciousness, behavior, language, and social life. I argue that his discussion of animal physiology and behavior in the second lecture course reworks a definition of materiality rather than simply critiquing mechanistic and atomistic models of matter. Matter is not univocal. The implication of his observations on the organism is an understanding of matter that is not simply a mystical vitalism, nor a physical mechanism. Rather, living being is material in the sense that it is characterized by a dynamic unity, a temporal unfolding, and a symbolic structure. Furthermore, these aspects of materiality give us a grounded way to understand Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the invisibility of the visible in his posthumously published unfinished manuscript.

Social Psychology and Descriptive Virtue Ethics

Christian B. Miller, University of Notre Dame

There is a problem with virtue ethics. It generates certain expectations about the behavior of human beings which are subject to empirical testing. But when the relevant experimental work is done, the results fall remarkably short of meeting those expectations. So despite its recent success, virtue ethics should no longer be considered as a viable option for contemporary moral philosophers. Such is the general line of reasoning being advanced against virtue ethics in several recent papers by Gilbert Harman, John Doris, and John Campbell. More formally, the shared argumentative strategy seems to be the following: (i) Virtue ethics is committed to certain descriptive theses which are subject to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation. (ii)Recent work in social psychology strongly disconfirms these theses. (iii)Therefore, virtue ethics must either reject these theses or itself be rejected. If this argument can be rendered sound, then virtue ethicists certainly do have a great deal to worry about. Thus it is surprising that most of the prominent defenders of the view have so far largely failed to address this line of attack. I hope to remedy this unfortunate omission.

Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense

Barbara G. Montero, Georgia State University

Proprioception is the sense by which we acquire information, via receptors in the joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles and skin, about the positions and movements of our own bodies. The aesthetic senses are the senses by which we experience beauty, grace, and other aesthetic properties. My claim is that proprioception is an aesthetic sense. As I will argue, to the degree that one can perceive the beauty of a painting visually, one can perceive the beauty of one’s own bodily movements and positions proprioceptively. In addition to this, I posit that recent discoveries about the function of mirror neurons—neurons that are activated both when one performs a task and when one sees that task performed—may pave the way towards a third-person proprioceptive aesthetics.

Revising one’s notion of revision: Foley and Quine on the norms of inquiry

Jennifer Nagel, University of Toronto

Putnam has argued that Quine’s epistemology reserves a special status for the central norms of science, a status incompatible with the program’s attempt to eliminate first philosophy. One of the most ingenious ways of trying to give a direct answer to Putnam’s sort of challenge comes from Richard Foley, who thinks that Quine could readily extend his theory to make these norms (simplicity, empiricism, conservatism) themselves empirically supportable. I think Foley’s effort deserves close attention, not because it actually succeeds—I try to explain here why it does not—but because it exposes some of the difficulties involved in trying to settle what it is for a question to be empirically decidable.

Parts of Levels

John O’Neal

This paper argues against the mereological conception of levels, the notion that the sciences track ontologically significant divisions of the world ordered by the part/whole relation. I argue that this conception of levels has intolerable consequences both for reductionist and anti-reductionists. I suggest empirical parts are better thought of as intransitive and intralevel, along the lines of David Sanford’s notion of a parts-list part.

Gadamer and Thoughtfulness

Bradley D. Park, University of Hawaii

The primary concern of this paper is to confront Gadamer’s polemic against method using his own rhetoric of "thoughtfulness" as well as analyzing the consequences of his adoption of a Heideggerean conception of thinking and truth as disclosure. Although Gadamer emphatically rejects the role of method in hermeneutics, it reemerges in the guise of "methodologically conscious understanding"—a conception that is central to what Gadamer means by "thoughtfulness." I will also argue that Gadamer cannot fully divorce method from his account of hermeneutic consciousness as long as he is concerned with truth. Consequently, a certain ambiguity surfaces regarding the proper object of hermeneutic understanding. On one hand, Gadamer argues that the task of hermeneutics is to understand the text, while, on the other, Gadamer inherits the phenomenological focus on the "things themselves" (das ding an sich) or, perhaps more precisely, a Heideggerean obligation to the "matter" of thinking (die Sache).

The Unity of Reason

Betsy C. Postow, University of Tennessee

Reasons for belief and reasons for action are both called reasons, but they may seem like drastically different sorts of thing. One salient difference is that reasons for belief are based on evidence, which is independent of our desires, while reasons for action seem typically to depend on our desires. A related difference is that reasons for belief seem to have unconditional normative authority in a way that reasons for action do not. Using the work of Joseph Raz as a springboard, I inquire whether these apparent differences can be dispelled. I conclude that they can.

Making Exceptions of Ourselves: Jean Hampton’s Account of Immorality

Terry L. Price, University of Richmond

Why do people behave immorally? On the standard view, moral failure is essentially volitional, not cognitive. We behave immorally because we are moved to do something other than what morality requires, not because we lack access to morality requirements. The volitional and cognitive accounts draw on competing senses of what it means to think that we are special and, in so doing, identify moral failure with our inclinations to make exceptions of ourselves. The two accounts differ in their characterizations of what causes us to make these kinds of exceptions. This paper develops a critique of the volitional account of immorality as it is articulated in the work of Jean Hampton. Ultimately, Hampton’s account cannot make sense of important cases of moral failure. To handle these cases, an account of immorality must underscore cognitive errors in the way that agents understand the scope of morality.

Hate Crimes, Oppression and Legal Theory

David Reidy, J.D., Ph.D., The University of Tennessee

I offer a novel argument for hate crimes laws. I call it the argument from oppression. I first argue against the three standard arguments for hate crimes laws (the greater harm argument, the more culpable mental state argument, and the fundamental values argument). I then critically examine a more recent argument from equal protection and distributive justice premises. Finally, I offer my argument and discuss some of its merits and difficulties. It depends on 1) the moral intuition that part of what makes paradigmatic hate crimes ( e.g., White on Black or straight on gay assaults) morally distinct is the fact that they are crimes against persons already disproportionately vulnerable to a wide and serious range of socially-produced harms arising from historic and systemic, group-based oppression, and 2) the claim that a society or its privileged members have special obligations to those saddled with such vulnerabilities.

Malebranche and Chinese Philosophy: A Reconsideration

Gregory Reihman, Standford University

Nicholas Malebranche’s Dialogue between a Christian Philosopher and a Chinese Philosopher on the Existence and Nature of God (1707) has long been characterized as being at best a thinly veiled attack on Spinozism and at worst an example of Eurocentric misunderstanding of foreign philosophy. For example, Haun Saussy, Paul Verniere, and Dominick Iorio have all concluded that dialogue was merely a way for Malebranche to distance himself from the philosophy of Spinoza. And David Mungello has identified the work as a late example of "insular Eurocentrism," by which he means that it is superficial and devoid of genuine interest in the culture it discusses. In this paper, I argue against these viewpoints and demonstrate that Malebranche’s work, despite its limitations, should be seen as a genuine encounter with Chinese thought and as a crucial turning point in the European understanding of Chinese philosophy.

Non-Cognitivism and Agent-Centered Value

Michael R. Ridge, University of Edinburgh

Non-cognitivists argue that value judgments are pro-attitudes and that evaluative discourse serves to express those attitudes. An important challenge for the non-cognitivist is to explain the difference between agent-centered value judgments and agent-neutral value judgments. The challenge for the non-cognitivist is to explain what sorts of pro-attitudes are constitutive of agent-centered value judgments. Perhaps the most obvious account for the non-cognitivist is to hold that the attitudes constituting agent-centered value judgments are irreducibly ego-centric or de se. Indeed, one of the few philosophers who has given this issue some attention is James Dreier and he favors what I shall call the de se account. I argue that the de se account should be rejected because it fails to accommodate evaluative disagreement on either of two plausible non-cognitivist conceptions of evaluative disagreement.

Democracy and Equal Consideration

Steven Rieber, Georgia State University

Democracy is often taken to mean that the power to govern is held by the citizens or the permanent residents. Neither of these, however, is quite right; properly understood, democracy is government by those who have the moral right to be citizens, or the moral right to live and work permanently within the territory that is governed. This paper argues that the attempt to justify democracy on the basis of equal consideration of interests fails because it implies that many people who do not have the right to be citizens nevertheless ought to have a vote.

Tarski and Klima: Conceptual Closure in Anselm’s Proof

Anthony P. Roark, Boise State University

Gyula Klima has recently offered a sophisticated interpretation of Anselm’s ontological argument that exploits a medieval conception of intentional reference. I offer two distinct lines of objection to the argument so interpreted. The first points out a certain ambiguity in Klima’s formulation of the argument, one that requires a substantive revision of the argument’s conclusion. The second draws on the notion of semantic closure introduced by Tarski. Klima offers the atheist an "out" by drawing a distinction between constitutive and parasitic reference. I argue that using Klima’s preferred description ("the thought object than which no thought object can be thought greater than") to refer constitutively to God results in conceptual closure, a condition analogous to semantic closure that renders that instant conceptual system inconsistent and subject to paradox.

Can WE Afford to Be Broad-Minded?

Philip A. Robbins, Washington University

To be broad-minded is to deny the relevance of psychological modes of presentation to the individuation of mental contents. To endorse the Standard Picture of psychological explanation is to assume that agents are subsumed under laws which advert to intentional states individuated by content. I argue that this assumption about the nature of psychological laws is inconsistent with the claim that modes of presentation are irrelevant to content individuation. Hence, if the Standard Picture is correct, intentional psychology cannot be broad.

A New Route to the Necessity of Origin

Guy Rohrbaugh, University of Utah

The necessity of origin is a familiar thesis, but what exactly is argument for it supposed to be? In this paper I explore a new approach to understanding the conceptual grounds of the thesis and distinguish that approach from some others. I argue that we should understand the origin thesis as grounded in facts about what it takes to interfere with production of an object. Where these production processes enjoy a certain form of independence from one another, they support what I call independence principles, from which there is a valid argument for the origin thesis.

Are Ethical Judgments Intrinsically Motivational? Lessons From "Acquired Sociopathy"

Adina Roskies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Philosophical questions in a number of areas, including metaethics, Metaethical questions are typically held to be a priori, and therefore impervious to empirical evidence. Here I present a counterexample to this claim. I describe a group of brain-damaged patients who have an impairment in their moral sensibility: although they have normal moral beliefs and make moral judgments, they are not inclined to act in accordance with those beliefs and judgments. I argue that their deficits have bearing on the issue of internalism in ethics, the claim that morals are intrinsically motivating. Versions of internalism that focus upon the relation between moral belief and motivation, and those that posit a necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation are empirically false. However, two versions of judgment-internalism inspired by rationalism are compatible with, and interestingly illuminated by, the neuropsychological data. Of the views canvassed, only these formulations are candidates for expressing the claim of internalism in ways that could be true.

Challenges to the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition.

Robert D. Rupert, Texas Tech University

Over the past decade, an intriguing view of human cognition has garnered significant support. According to this view, which I will call the ‘hypothesis of extended cognition’ (‘HEC’), human cognitive processing literally extends into the environment surrounding the organism, and human cognitive states literally comprise elements in that environment. In this paper, I object to HEC on two counts: It implies radically counterintuitive attributions of belief and knowledge. And more importantly, when HEC is taken as its advocates seem to intend it, as an explanatory hypothesis in cognitive science, it fails to stand up to empirical observation. To support this last claim, I briefly discuss the role of working memory in human conversation, as well as research results in paired-associates learning tasks. I conclude that far from offering cognitive science greater explanatory power, HEC confuses the issues, in a way that threatens to sidetrack the empirical investigation of human cognition.

A New Asymmetry between Actions and Omissions

Ana Carolina Sartorio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In this paper I discuss the question whether there is an asymmetry between moral responsibility for actions and moral responsibility for omissions. "Frankfurt-style" omission cases have been offered as proof that there is no such asymmetry. I argue that these cases are not counterexamples to the old asymmetry thesis, the thesis defended by some philosophers in the past, according to which responsibility for actions does not entail the ability to do otherwise but responsibility for omissions does. However, there are other challenges to the old thesis, which are not based on Frankfurt-style examples. I argue that, even if these raised trouble for the old thesis, a new asymmetry claim would remain unscathed. I explain what the new asymmetry thesis is, and how it differs from the old one. Finally, I offer an account of why there is such an asymmetry.

McDowell’s Hegelianism Revisited

Kory P. Schaff, UC-San Diego

In the present paper I examine the Hegelian influence behind McDowell’s critique and extension of Kant’s critical philosophy. Specifically, I look at the way in which McDowel1 sees himself as "domesticating the rhetoric" of Hegel’s absolute idealism by relieving Kant from an unsatisfactory set of options following from his central insight in the "dual-dependence thesis" (DDT) that cognition draws on both sensibility (intuitions) and understanding (concepts). I shall accommodate the views of two recent commentators on the subject of McDowell’s Hegelianism, but make the additional claim that they overlook an important dimension of Hegel’s Kant critique by paying insufficient attention to two interrelated features of McDowell’s partially naturalized reconstruction of the relation between mind and world. The main focus here will bear on the implications of adopting the Hegelian supplements of "second nature" and Bildung that take more seriously the normativity of concepts and by extension the "category of the social."

Direct Reference, Psychological Explanation, and Frege Cases

Susan Schneider, Rutgers University

In this essay I defend a theory of psychological explanation that is based on the joint commitment to Russellianism and computationalism. I try to solve the problem of what I will call, following Jerry Fodor, "Frege cases." Frege cases involve agents who lack knowledge of certain identities, where such knowledge is relevant to the success of their behavior, leading to cases in which the agents fail to behave as the broad intentional laws predict. It is generally agreed that Frege cases are a major problem, if not the major problem, that this theory faces. In this essay, I hope to show that, contra the pessimism voiced in the literature, this theory can surmount the Frege cases.

A Problem for Perry (and Lycan)

Timothy W. Schoettle, Santa Monica, CA

John Perry distinguishes between the subject matter content of belief and the reflexive content of belief. He uses this distinction to explain how someone who has complete factual knowledge of a given domain can still make discoveries about that domain. Unfortunately, Perry’s distinction runs into trouble when we try to account for the learning process of a person who explores a previously unknown place. It is not always possible to separate the factual knowledge one gains in exploring a new place (the subject matter content) from one’s reflexive awareness of where one is (the reflexive content). One can pick out