{"title":"A simpler model of judgment: on Sosa’s Epistemic Explanations","authors":"Antonia Peacocke","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02232-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02232-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In <i>Epistemic Explanations</i>, Sosa continues to defend a model of judgment he has long endorsed. On this complex model of judgment, judgment aims not only at correctness but also at aptness of a kind of alethic affirmation. He offers three arguments for the claim that we need this model of judgment instead of a simpler model, on which judgment aims only at correctness. The first argument cites the need to exclude knowledge-spoiling luck from apt judgment. The second argument uses the complex model to distinguish judgment from mere guessing. The third argument involves the assessment of suspension of judgment as a performance. This paper shows why none of these arguments succeeds, and so recommends adopting the simpler model of judgment.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"260 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142753627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Silence as complicity and action as silence","authors":"J. L. A. Donohue","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02246-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02246-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Silence sometimes constitutes moral complicity. We see this when protestors take to the streets against racial injustice. Think of signs with the words: “Silence is complicity.” We see this in instances of sexual harassment, when we learn that many knew and said nothing. We see this in cases of wrongdoing within a company or organization, when it becomes clear that many were aware of the negligent or criminal activity and stayed silent. In cases like this we consider agents morally complicit in virtue of their silence. Flagrant injustices cry out for action, and sometimes remaining silent amounts to complicity in those injustices. What philosophy owes us is an account of how it could be that silence constitutes complicity. In this paper I argue that one possibility is an account grounded in problematic deliberative contribution. The core idea of “deliberative complicity,” as I call it, is that agents have moral duties concerning the moral deliberation of other agents, and failures in these duties can amount to moral complicity. For example, an agent aware that a colleague is sexually harassing his students has a deliberative obligation to report the misconduct, and their silence in failing to report constitutes a failure to fulfill their deliberative obligation, a failure that grounds their moral complicity in the harassment. If my argument is successful, it provides a distinctive reason to prefer a deliberative account of moral complicity: it can capture cases of silent complicity that other views of moral complicity cannot. And further, by turning our attention toward our interpersonal deliberative obligations, a deliberative account of complicity can incorporate helpful resources from recent work in social epistemology and speech act theory as we set out to determine when and why silence amounts to complicity. And when it does, we cannot stay silent. We must speak.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142697093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Responses to Speaks, Stojnić and Szabó","authors":"Jeffrey C. King","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02219-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02219-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Consider the class of contextually sensitive expressions whose context invariant meanings arguably do not suffice to secure semantic values in context. Demonstratives and demonstrative pronouns are the examples of such expressions that have received the most attention from philosophers. However, arguably this class of contextually sensitive expressions includes among other expressions modals, conditionals, tense, gradable adjectives, possessives, ‘only’, quantifiers, and expressions that take implicit arguments (e.g. ‘ready’ in sentences like ‘Molly is ready.’). Most theorists, including me, think that since the context invariant meanings of such expressions do not by themselves secure semantic values in context for these expressions, they must be supplemented in some way in context in order to secure semantic values in context. For this reason, I call these expressions <i>supplementives</i>. I just said that supplementives need some sort of supplementation to secure semantic values in context. Of course, the question of what <i>form</i> the supplementation in context takes is controversial. For example, ever since Kaplan claimed that the semantic value of a demonstrative or demonstrative pronoun in context is the <i>demonstratum</i> of its associated <i>demonstration</i>, there has been a lively controversy over whether that or some other account is the correct one. Call an account of how a given supplementive secures a semantic value in context a <i>metasemantics</i> for the supplementive. In King [2018] I argue that all supplementives have felicitous uses in which they haven’t been assigned unique semantic values in context. This conclusion is somewhat surprising, since many uses of supplementives in which they have not been assigned unique semantic values in context are quite infelicitous. I call felicitous uses of supplementives in which they haven’t been assigned unique semantic values in context instances of <i>felicitous underspecification</i>. The central idea is that in cases of felicitous underspecification, supplementives get assigned a <i>range of candidates for being their semantic values in contexts</i> rather than being assigned unique semantic values in contexts. Consider an example. Glenn and I are out surfing at Lost Winds beach. There are some surfers to our south stretching a quarter mile or so down the beach. I notice that some surfers in an ill-defined group to our immediate south are getting incredible rides. I say to Glenn looking south toward them ‘Those guys are good.’ It seems easy to imagine that nothing in the context of utterance determines a unique group of surfers as the semantic value in context of ‘Those guys’. For example, it is easy to imagine that I didn’t intend any <i>specific, unique</i> group to be the semantic value in context. Instead, there is a range of overlapping groups that are legitimate candidates for being the semantic value in context of ‘Those guys’. Nonetheless, my utterance is felicitous:","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142678464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In defense of virtual veridicalism","authors":"Yen-Tung Lee","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02256-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02256-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper defends <i>virtual veridicalism</i>, according to which many perceptual experiences in virtual reality are veridical. My argument centers on perceptual variation, the phenomenon in which perceptual experience appears all the same while being reliably generated by different properties under different circumstances. It consists of three stages. The first stage argues that perceptual variation can occur in color perception without involving misperception. The second stage extends the argument to perceptual variation of space, arguing that it is possible for individuals to perceive distinct physical spaces as having the same experiential space without suffering from systematic misperception. The final stage proceeds to argue that perceptual variation without misperception in color and spatial perception can occur across virtual and ordinary environments. In that sense, given that ordinary experiences are presumably veridical, experiences in virtual reality are also veridical.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142673893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What are we to do? Making sense of ‘joint ought’ talk","authors":"Rowan Mellor, Margaret Shea","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02222-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02222-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We argue for three main claims. First, the sentence ‘A and B ought to φ and ψ’ can express what we a call a joint-ought claim: the claim that the plurality A and B ought to φ and ψ respectively. Second, the truth-value of this joint-ought claim can differ from the truth-value of the pair of claims ‘A ought to φ’ and ‘B ought to ψ.’ This is because what A and B jointly ought to do can diverge from what they individually ought to do: it may be true that A and B jointly ought to φ and ψ respectively, yet false that A ought to φ and false that B ought to ψ; and vice-versa. Third, either of two prominent semantic analyses of ‘ought’—Mark Schroeder’s relational semantics, and Angelika Kratzer’s modal semantics—can model joint-ought claims and this difference in truth-value.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142670267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Withhold by default: a difference between epistemic and practical rationality","authors":"Chris Tucker","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02233-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02233-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In practical rationality, if two reasons for alternative actions are tied, then either action is *permissible*. In epistemic rationality, we get the Epistemic Ties Datum: if the reasons for belief and disbelief are tied, then withholding judgment is *required*. I argue that this difference is explained by a difference in default biases. Practical rationality is biased toward permissibility. An action is permissible unless the specific features of the situation (e.g., the costs and benefits that apply) make it prohibited. In contrast, epistemic rationality is biased toward withholding judgment. Withholding judgment is required unless the specific features of the situation (e.g., the evidence) makes belief or disbelief permissible. This difference explains the Epistemic Ties Datum. When the reasons for belief and disbelief are equally weighty, they cancel each other out. But then the only remaining reason is the default reason, or default bias, to withhold judgment. Since it is the only remaining reason, it requires us to withhold judgment.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"128 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142670273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disagreement, AI alignment, and bargaining","authors":"Harry R. Lloyd","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02224-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02224-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p>New AI technologies have the potential to cause unintended harms in diverse domains including warfare, judicial sentencing, medicine and governance. One strategy for realising the benefits of AI whilst avoiding its potential dangers is to ensure that new AIs are properly ‘aligned’ with some form of ‘alignment target.’ One danger of this strategy is that–dependent on the alignment target chosen–our AIs might optimise for objectives that reflect the values only of a certain subset of society, and that do not take into account alternative views about what constitutes desirable and safe behaviour for AI agents. In response to this problem, several AI ethicists have suggested alignment targets that are designed to be sensitive to widespread normative disagreement amongst the relevant stakeholders. Authors inspired by voting theory have suggested that AIs should be aligned with the verdicts of actual or simulated ‘<i>moral parliaments</i>’ whose members represent the normative views of the relevant stakeholders. Other authors inspired by decision theory and the philosophical literature on moral uncertainty have suggested that AIs should maximise socially expected choiceworthiness. In this paper, I argue that both of these proposals face several important problems. In particular, they fail to select attractive ‘compromise options’ in cases where such options are available. I go on to propose and defend an alternative, bargaining-theoretic alignment target, which avoids the problems associated with the voting- and decision-theoretic approaches.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"76 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142670269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The prescriptive and the hypological: A radical detachment","authors":"Maria Lasonen-Aarnio","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02225-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02225-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>My aim in this paper is to introduce and motivate a general normative framework, which I call <i>feasibilism</i>, and to sketch a view of the relationship between the prescriptive and the hypological in the epistemic domain by drawing on the theoretical resources provided by this framework. I then generalise the lesson to the moral domain. I begin by motivating feasibilism. A wide range of norms appear to leave uncharted an important part of the normative landscape. Across different domains we need norms more directed at the subject, and less dependent on how the world beyond our control plays out. In the beginning of this paper I briefly outline two broad ways of seeking such subject-directed norms: <i>perspectivism</i> and <i>feasibilism</i>. According to feasibilism, the ultimate reason why more objectivist norms are inadequate on their own is not that they fail to take into account the limits of an agent’s perspective, but that they are not sensitive to limits on what ways of choosing, acting, and believing are feasible in a given situation. I think of these ways of choosing, acting, and believing in terms of an agent’s dispositions. This paper focuses on a gnosticist implementation of feasibilism. Such a view supplements a knowledge norm with a norm urging one to only be in doxastic states that are manifestations of the most knowledge-conducive feasible dispositions – that is, a norm urging one to be in doxastic states that are <i>reasonable</i>. But how should we think about the normative statuses of knowledge versus reasonableness? By drawing on two general hypotheses about the relationship between succeeding (e.g. knowing) and manifesting dispositions conducive to success (e.g. reasonable belief), I argue for a view on which the <i>prescriptive</i> and the <i>hypological</i> come radically apart. The result is that an epistemic analogue of a thesis that many have assumed to hold in the moral realm should be rejected. This thesis is <i>Only Blameworthy for Wrongs:</i> we can only ever be blameworthy for acts that are morally wrong. I argue that on the picture presented, we can be epistemically blameworthy for doxastic states that do not violate any prescriptive epistemic norms. I then generalise the considerations to the moral realm, arguing against <i>Only Blameworthy for Wrongs</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142642551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Incommensurability and democratic deliberation in bioethics","authors":"Nir Eyal","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02241-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02241-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Often, a health resource distribution (or, more generally, a health policy) ranks higher than another on one value, say, on promoting total population health; and lower on another, say, on promoting that of the worst off. Then, some opine, there need not be a rational determination as to which of the multiple distributions that partially fulfill both one ought to choose. Sometimes, reason determines only partially, intransitively, or contentiously which of the many “compromises” between these two values is best or most choiceworthy. Norman Daniels, Ruth Chang, Martijn Boot, and Anders Herlitz affirm this opinion, which I shall call “value incommensurability,” “rational underdeterminacy,” or “reasonable disagreement.” To decide between the multiple reasonable compromises on health resource distribution, these philosophers recommend a deliberative democratic process, on two main grounds. First, in such situations, deliberation can produce the determinacy needed for decisionmaking. Second, by treating respectfully and justly even those patients or communities for whom the distributive compromise selected is bad, deliberation shields the legitimacy of that policy. Increasingly, practically-oriented bioethics recommends democratic deliberation even more expansively than these philosophers do—for nearly every decision on health resource distribution and not only when values are incommensurate—on these two grounds and on others. And one could propose a more modest variant on this expansive move as the justification of democratic deliberation. I argue that none of these moves warrants democratic deliberation on health policy.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142601927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Is Rational Sentimentalism?","authors":"Selim Berker","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02235-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02235-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This commentary on Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson’s <i>Rational Sentimentalism</i> explores two key issues: what exactly is the position D’Arms and Jacobson call ‘rational sentimentalism’, and why exactly do they restrict their theorizing to the normative categories they dub ‘the sentimentalist values’? Along the way, a challenge is developed for D’Arms and Jacobson’s claim that there is no “response-independent” account of the fittingness conditions for emotions such as fear, pride, and amusement.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142601943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}