Mind - recent issues

Epistemic Conditions for Collective Action

Chant, S. R., Ernst, Z. — 2008-08-18

Writers on collective action are in broad agreement that in order for a group of agents to form a collective intention, the members of that group must have beliefs about the beliefs of the other members. But in spite of the fact that this so-called ‘interactive knowledge’ is central to virtually every account of collective intention, writers on this subject have not offered a detailed account of the nature of interactive knowledge. In this paper, we argue that such an account is necessary for any adequate analysis of collective intention. Furthermore, we argue that an application of Robert Aumann's theory of interactive knowledge may be used to address several puzzling features of collective intention.

Spinoza and Consciousness

Nadler, S. — 2008-08-18

Most discussions of Spinoza and consciousness—and there are not many— conclude either that he does not have an account of consciousness, or that he does have one but that it is at best confused, at worst hopeless. I argue, in fact, that people have been looking in the wrong place for Spinoza's account of consciousness, namely, at his doctrine of ‘ideas of ideas’. Indeed, Spinoza offers the possibility of a fairly sophisticated, naturalistic account of consciousness, one that grounds it in the nature and capacities of the body. Consciousness for Spinoza, I suggest, is a certain complexity in thinking that is the correlate of the complexity of a body, and human consciousness, for Spinoza, is nothing but the correlate in Thought of the extraordinarily high complexity of the human body in Extension. In this respect, Spinoza anticipates the conception of mind that is presently emerging from studies in the so-called ‘embodied mind’ research program. Moreover, this research program, in turn, may hold out hope for a clearer understanding of some of Spinoza's more difficult claims.

Character and Consistency: Still More Errors

Sreenivasan, G. — 2008-08-18

This paper continues a debate among philosophers concerning the implications of situationist experiments in social psychology for the theory of virtue. In a previous paper (2002), I argued among other things that the sort of character trait problematized by Hartshorne and May's (1928) famous study of honesty is not the right sort to trouble the theory of virtue. Webber (2006) criticizes my argument, alleging that it founders on an ambiguity in ‘cross-situational consistency’ and that Milgram's (1974) obedience experiment is immune to the objections I levelled against Hartshorne and May. Here I respond to his criticisms. The most important error in Webber's argument is that it overlooks a distinction between ‘one time performance’ experiments and ‘iterated trial’ experiments. I explain why the former cannot begin to trouble the theory of virtue.

Evaluating the Pasadena, Altadena, and St Petersburg Gambles

Fine, T. L. — 2008-08-18

By recourse to the fundamentals of preference orderings and their numerical representations through linear utility, we address certain questions raised in Nover and Hájek 2004, Hájek and Nover 2006, and Colyvan 2006. In brief, the Pasadena and Altadena games are well-defined and can be assigned any finite utility values while remaining consistent with preferences between those games having well-defined finite expected value. This is also true for the St Petersburg game. Furthermore, the dominance claimed for the Altadena game over the Pasadena game, and that would have been claimed for the St Petersburg game over the Altadena, can be contradicted without fear of inconsistency with the axioms of utility theory. However, insistence upon dominance can be made to yield a contradiction of the Archimedean axiom of utility theory.

Strong and Weak Expectations

Easwaran, K. — 2008-08-18

Fine has shown that assigning any value to the Pasadena game is consistent with a certain standard set of axioms for decision theory. However, I suggest that it might be reasonable to believe that the value of an individual game is constrained by the long-run payout of repeated plays of the game. Although there is no value that repeated plays of the Pasadena game converges to in the standard strong sense, I show that there is a weaker sort of convergence it exhibits, and use this to define a notion of ‘weak expectation’ that can give values to the Pasadena game and many others, though not to all games that fail to have a strong expectation in the standard sense.

Complex Expectations

Hajek, A., Nover, H. — 2008-08-18

In our 2004, we introduced two games in the spirit of the St Petersburg game, the Pasadena and Altadena games. As these latter games lack an expectation, we argued that they pose a paradox for decision theory. Terrence Fine has shown that any finite valuations for the Pasadena, Altadena, and St Petersburg games are consistent with the standard decision-theoretic axioms. In particular, one can value the Pasadena game above the other two, a result that conflicts with both our intuitions and dominance reasoning. We argue that this result, far from resolving the Pasadena paradox, should serve as a reductio of the standard theory, and we consequently make a plea for new axioms for a revised theory. We also discuss a proposal by Kenny Easwaran that a gamble should be valued according to its ‘weak expectation’, a generalization of the usual notion of expectation.

I can't imagine going on when there are no more expectations.

Dame Edith Evans

Review: Torin Alter and Sven Walter (eds): Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism

Aranyosi, I. — 2008-08-18

Review: Karl Ameriks: Kant and the Historical Turn: Philosophy as Critical Interpretation

Wenzel, C. H. — 2008-08-18

Review: David Benatar: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence

Nagasawa, Y. — 2008-08-18

Review: David Christensen: Putting Logic in Its Place: Formal Constraints on Rational Belief

Titelbaum, M. G. — 2008-08-18

Review: John W. Cook: The Undiscovered Wittgenstein: The Twentieth Century's Most Misunderstood Philosopher

Hutchinson, P., Read, R. — 2008-08-18

Review: Julian Dodd: Works of Music: An Essay in Ontology

Predelli, S. — 2008-08-18

Review: Daniel A. Dombrowski: Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response

Oppy, G. — 2008-08-18

Review: Steven French and Decio Krause: Identity in Physics: A Historical, Philosophical, and Formal Analysis

Pniower, J. C. — 2008-08-18

Review: Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens (eds): Philosophy and Conceptual Art

Pillow, K. E. — 2008-08-18

Review: Andy Hamilton: Aesthetics and Music

Scruton, R. — 2008-08-18

Review: Fraser MacBride (ed.): Identity and Modality

Linnebo, O. — 2008-08-18

Review: Michael Otsuka: Libertarianism without Inequality

Freeman, S. — 2008-08-18

Review: John L. Pollock: Thinking About Acting: Logical Foundations for Rational Decision Making

Morton, A. — 2008-08-18

Review: Agustin Rayo and Gabriel Uzquiano (eds): Absolute Generality

Dieveney, P. — 2008-08-18

Review: Andrews Reath: Agency and Autonomy in Kant's Moral Theory

Timmons, M. — 2008-08-18

Review: Mark Rowlands: Body Language

Roth, M. — 2008-08-18

Review: Paul Sheehy: The Reality of Social Groups

Ruben, D.-H. — 2008-08-18

Review: David Woodruff and Amie L. Thomasson (eds): Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind

Kennedy, M. — 2008-08-18

Review: Robert J. Stainton: Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language

Bach, K. — 2008-08-18

Review: Gabriele Taylor: Deadly Vices

Mason, M. — 2008-08-18

Review: R. Jay Wallace: Normativity and the Will

Scott-Kakures, D., Hurley, P. — 2008-08-18

Books Received

2008-08-18

Announcements

2008-08-18

Goodness and Reasons: Accentuating the Negative

Crisp, R. — 2008-04-10

This paper concerns the relation between goodness, or value, and practical reasons, and in particular the so-called ‘buck-passing’ account (BPA) of that relation recently offered by T. M. Scanlon, according to which goodness is not reason-providing but merely the higher-order property of possessing lower-order properties that provide reasons to respond in certain ways. The paper begins by briefly describing BPA and the motivation for it, noting that Scanlon now accepts that the lower-order properties in question may be evaluative. He also insists that the BPA is not biconditional (wisely, since otherwise goodness becomes a ‘Cambridge property’), which leaves him with the task of explaining why goodness arises only in a sub-set of cases in which lower-order properties ground reasons. Having rejected two attempts to do this, based on elucidation of the responses and of the reasons, I suggest that Scanlon may claim that goodness arises in, and only in, cases where the lower-order properties are evaluative and that goodness itself provides us with a way of distinguishing the evaluative from the non-evaluative. In other words, he should retain the negative component of BPA, according to which being good is not itself reason-providing, while surrendering the positive, according to which the property of goodness is merely the higher-order property of having lower-order properties that provide reasons to respond.

Desires

McDaniel, K., Bradley, B. — 2008-04-10

It is not at all obvious how best to draw the distinction between conditional and unconditional desires. In this paper we examine extant attempts to analyse conditional desire. From the failures of those attempts, we draw a moral that leads us to the correct account of conditional desires. We then extend the account of conditional desires to an account of all desires. It emerges that desires do not have the structure that they have been thought to have. We attempt to explain the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic desire in light of our account of desire. We show how to use our account to solve Wollheim's paradox of democracy and to save modus ponens. Finally, we extend the account of desire to related phenomena, such as conditional promises, intentions, and commands.

Rule-Following, Explanation-Transcendence, and Private Language

Panjvani, C. — 2008-04-10

I examine what I take to be an important consideration for the later Wittgenstein: the understanding of a rule does not exceed or transcend an understanding of explanations or instructions in the rule. I contend that this consideration plays a central role in the later Wittgenstein's views on rule-following. I first show that it serves as a key premiss in a sceptical argument concerning our ability to follow rules. I then argue that this consideration is vital to Wittgenstein's case against what I describe as a realist view of rules. This realist view requires that our understanding of a rule extend beyond what can be understood from any set of instructions or explanation. For Wittgenstein, because this is to transcend publicly available means of conveying understanding, this realist's understanding is a private understanding. He calls this private source of understanding an ‘intuition’ and the main line of argument against intuition in our understanding of a rule draws, appropriately, on what is called his ‘private language argument’. In this paper, I defend a non-verificationist reading of this argument and its use against the realist so-construed.

Vague Representation

Rayo, A. — 2008-04-10

The goal of this paper is to develop a theory of content for vague language. My proposal is based on the following three theses: (1) language-mastery is not rulebased— it involves a certain kind of decision-making; (2) a theory of content is to be thought of instrumentally—it is a tool for making sense of our linguistic practice; and (3) linguistic contents are only locally defined—they are only defined relative to suitably constrained sets of possibilities.

Truth, Assertion, and the Horizontal: Frege on 'The Essence of Logic'

Taschek, W. W. — 2008-04-10

In the opening to his late essay, ‘Der Gedanke’, Frege asserts without qualification that the word ‘true’ ‘points the way for logic’. But in a short piece from his Nachlass entitled ‘My Basic Logical Insights’, Frege writes that the word ‘true’ makes ‘an unsuccessful attempt to point to the essence of logic’, asserting instead that ‘what really pertains to logic lies not in the word "true" but in the assertoric force with which the sentence is uttered’. Properly understanding what Frege takes to be at issue here is crucial for understanding his conception of logic and, in particular, what he takes to be its normative status vis-à-vis judgement, assertion, and inference. In this paper, I focus my attention on clarifying the latter claim and Frege's motivations for making it, exposing what I take to be a fundamental tension in Frege's conception of logic. Finally, I discuss whether Frege's deployment of the horizontal in his mature Begriffsschrift helps to resolve this tension.

Does Frege Use a Truth-Predicate in his 'Justification' of the Laws of Logic? A Comment on Weiner

Greimann, D. — 2008-04-10

Joan Weiner has recently claimed that Frege neither uses, nor has any need to use, a truth-predicate in his justification of the logical laws. She argues that because of the assimilation of sentences to proper names in his system, Frege does not need to make use of the Quinean device of semantic ascent in order to formulate the logical laws, and that the predicate ‘is the True’, which is used in Frege's justification, is not to be considered as a truth-predicate, because it does not apply to true sentences or true thoughts. The present paper aims to show that Frege needs to use, and does use, a truth-predicate in this context. It is argued, first, that Frege needs to use a truthpredicate in order to show that the truth of the logical laws is evident from the senses of the sentences by means of which they are formulated, and second, that the predicate that he actually uses, ‘is the True’, must be considered as a truth-predicate in the relevant sense, because it can be used and is actually used by Frege to explain the truth-conditions of thoughts. To defend this interpretation, it is discussed whether the explanatory use of ‘is the True’ in Frege's system is compatible with his deflationary analysis of ‘true’. The paper's conclusion is that there is indeed a conflict here; but, from Frege's point of view, this conflict is due merely to the logical imperfection of natural language and does not affect the proper system but only its propaedeutic.

How Tarskian is Frege?

Weiner, J. — 2008-04-10

In ‘Semantic Descent’ I argued that Frege does not have a metatheory in the following sense: the justifications he offers for his basic laws and rules of inference neither employ nor require a truth-predicate or metalinguistic variables. In ‘Does Frege Use a Truth-predicate in his "Justification" of the Laws of Logic?’, Dirk Greimann disputes this. As Greimann interprets Frege, (i) Frege's remarks commit him to giving a metatheoretic justification of the basic laws and rules of his logic, and (ii) Frege actually gives such a justification in the early sections of Grundgesetze—although the truth-predicate that Frege employs is a non-standard one: it is neither a predicate that holds of all and only true sentences nor a predicate that holds of all and only true thoughts. I argue that Greimann's interpretation is not, in the end, true to the text, and that his non-standard view of what is required of a Tarskian truth-predicate is ultimately not viable.

Review: Helen Beebee: Hume on Causation

Kail, P. J. E. — 2008-04-10

Review: Frederick Beiser: Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination

Pugh, D. — 2008-04-10

Review: Jose Luis Bermudez: Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes from the Philosophy of Gareth Evans

de Gaynesford, M. — 2008-04-10

Review: Akeel Bilgrami: Self-Knowledge and Resentment

Lawlor, K. — 2008-04-10

Review: Roger Crisp: Reasons and the Good

Richardson, H. S. — 2008-04-10

Review: Daniel W. Graham: Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy

Barnes, J. — 2008-04-10

Review: James Harris: Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy

Yaffe, G. — 2008-04-10

Review: Michael Huemer: Ethical Intuitionism

Lemos, N. — 2008-04-10

Review: John V. Kulvicki: On Images: Their Structure and Content

Bantinaki, K. — 2008-04-10

Review: Dominic McIver Lopes: Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures

Giovannelli, A. — 2008-04-10

Review: Robert J. Matthews: The Measure of Mind: Propositional Attitudes and Their Attribution

Longworth, G. — 2008-04-10

Review: Denis McManus: The Enchantment of Words: Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Marie, M. — 2008-04-10

Review: Hans Radder: The World Observed/The World Conceived

Fales, E. — 2008-04-10

Review: W. Teed Rockwell: Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory

Bickle, J. — 2008-04-10

Review: Thomas Sattig: The Language and Reality of Time

Rea, M. — 2008-04-10

Review: George Sher: In Praise of Blame

Watson, G. — 2008-04-10

Review: A. D. Smith: The Problem of Perception

Robinson, H. — 2008-04-10

Review: Karsten R. Stueber: Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences

Maibom, H. L. — 2008-04-10

Review: Folke Tersman: Moral Disagreement

Majors, B. — 2008-04-10

Review: Judith Thomson and Alex Byrne (eds): Content and Modality: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Stalnaker

Yagisawa, T. — 2008-04-10

Books Received

2008-04-10

Announcements

2008-04-10

Coherence as a Heuristic

Angere, S. — 2008-01-29

The impossibility results of Bovens and Hartmann (2003) and Olsson (2005) call into question the strength of the connection between coherence and truth. As part of the inquiry into this alleged link, I define a notion of degree of truth-conduciveness, relevant for measuring the usefulness of coherence measures as rules-of-thumb for assigning probabilities in situations of partial knowledge. I use the concept to compare the viability of some of the measures of coherence that have been suggested so far under different circumstances. It turns out that all of these, including the prior, are just about equally good in cases of very little knowledge. Nevertheless, there are differences in when they are applicable, and they also depart more from each other when more knowledge is added.

Partial Belief, Partial Intention

Holton, R. — 2008-01-29

Is a belief that one will succeed necessary for an intention? It is argued that the question has traditionally been badly posed, framed as it is in terms of all-out belief. We need instead to ask about the relation between intention and partial belief. An account of partial belief that is more psychologically realistic than the standard credence account is developed. A notion of partial intention is then developed, standing to all-out intention much as partial belief stands to all-out belief. Various coherence constraints on the notion are explored. It is concluded that the primary relations between intention and belief should be understood as normative and not essential.

On Linking Dispositions and Conditionals

Manley, D., Wasserman, R. — 2008-01-29

Analyses of dispositional ascriptions in terms of conditional statements famously confront the problems of finks and masks. We argue that conditional analyses of dispositions, even those tailored to avoid.nks and masks, face five further problems. These are the problems of: (i) Achilles' heels, (ii) accidental closeness, (iii) comparatives, (iv) explaining context sensitivity, and (v) absent stimulus conditions. We conclude by offering a proposal that avoids all seven of these problems.

Kant's Formula of Humanity

Nelson, W. — 2008-01-29

This paper is concerned with the normative content of Kant's formula of humanity (FH). More specifically, does FH, as some seem to think, imply the specific and rigid prescriptions in 'standard' deontological theories? To this latter question, I argue, the answer is 'no'. I propose reading FH largely through the formula of autonomy and the formula of the kingdom of ends, where I understand FA to describe the nature of the capacity of humanity-a capacity for self-governance. The latter, I suggest, is akin to the capacity for planning and intentional action described in Michael Bratman's work. A significant part of what FH requires, I then propose, is that we exercise these capacities for planning in such a way that we accommodate and coordinate with the (permissible) plans and intentions of others. Kant himself, as do many commentators, emphasizes the idea that our human capacities give us a distinctive kind of value. On my interpretation, by contrast, what is fundamentally important is not the value of the capacities but rather what they make possible: distinctive ways of mistreating (using) persons, but also a distinctive kind of morally desirable relationship.

Russell's Last (and Best) Multiple-Relation Theory of Judgement

Pincock, C. — 2008-01-29

Russell's version of the multiple-relation theory from the Theory of Knowledge manuscript is presented and defended against some objections. A new problem, related to defining truth via correspondence, is reconstructed from Russell's remarks and what we know of Wittgenstein's objection to Russell's theory. In the end, understanding this objection in terms of correspondence helps to link Russell's multiplerelation theory to his later views on propositions.

Review: Horwich on Meaning

Gibbard, A., Gibbard, A. — 2008-01-29

Review: Cristina Bicchieri: The Grammar of Society

Skyrms, B. — 2008-01-29

Review: David Bostock: Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle's Physics

Lennox, J. — 2008-01-29

Review: R. A. Duff and Stuart P. Green (eds): Defining Crimes: Essays on the Special Part of the Criminal Law

Archard, D. — 2008-01-29

Review: Gregg Ten Elshof: Introspection Vindicated

Macdonald, C. — 2008-01-29

Review: Jonathan Glover: Choosing Children: The Ethical Dilemmas of Genetic Intervention

Oakley, J. — 2008-01-29

Review: Patrick Greenough and Michael P. Lynch (eds): Truth and Realism

Mantykoski, J. — 2008-01-29

Review: Anil Gupta: Empiricism and Experience

Gaskin, R. — 2008-01-29

Review: Raymond Martin and John Barresi: The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity

Blatti, S. — 2008-01-29

Review: Alfred R. Mele: Free Will and Luck

Fischer, J. M. — 2008-01-29

Review: Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan: Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology

Love, A. C. — 2008-01-29

Review: Nicholas Rescher: Cognitive Harmony: The Role of Systematic Harmony in the Constitution of Knowledge; Epistemic Logic: A Survey of the Logic of Knowledge; and Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology

Battaly, H. — 2008-01-29

Review: Antti Revonsuo: Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon

Molyneux, B. — 2008-01-29

Review: David M. Rosenthal: Consciousness and Mind

Lurz, R. W. — 2008-01-29

Review: Daniel Russell: Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life

Reshotko, N. — 2008-01-29

Review: Richard Sorabji: Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death

Martin, R. — 2008-01-29

Review: Daniel Stoljar: Ignorance and Imagination: The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness

Levine, J. — 2008-01-29

Review: Paul Thagard (in collaboration with Fred Kroon, Josef Nerb, Baljinder Sahdra, Cameron Shelley, and Brandon Wagner): Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition

Delancy, C. — 2008-01-29

Review: Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (eds): Persons: Human and Divine

Olson, E. — 2008-01-29

Review: Julian Young: Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion

Reginster, B. — 2008-01-29

Review: Dan Zahavi: Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective

Dainton, B. — 2008-01-29

Books Received

2008-01-29

Announcements

2008-01-29