{"title":"Grievance politics and identities of resentment","authors":"Paul Katsafanas","doi":"10.1007/s11098-025-02293-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-025-02293-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Does it make sense to say that certain evaluative outlooks and political ideologies are essentially negative or oppositional in structure? Intuitively, it seems so: there is a difference between outlooks and ideologies that are expressive of hatred, resentment, and contempt, on the one hand, and those expressive of more affirmative emotions. But drawing this distinction is more difficult than it seems. It requires that we find a way of maintaining the following claim, which I call <i>Negative Orientation:</i> although you claim to value X, you are more accurately described as disvaluing Y. I argue that we cannot make sense of Negative Orientation at the level of evaluative judgments, for nothing about the etiology, content, or justification of evaluative judgments will support the Negative Orientation claim. we can make sense of it by attending to the psychology of valuing. Using spiteful hatred as a paradigm case, I explain how certain outlooks and ideologies induce and sustain spiteful hatred in their adherents and thereby render the Negative Orientation claim true.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143371528","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":"Bias, Norms, and Function: comments on Thomas Kelly’s Bias: a Philosophical Study","authors":"Gabbrielle M. Johnson","doi":"10.1007/s11098-025-02288-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-025-02288-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This commentary on Thomas Kelly’s <i>Bias: A Philosophical Study</i> compares his Norm-Theoretic Account, which defines <i>bias</i> as involving systematic deviations from genuine norms, with the Functional Account of Bias, which instead conceptualizes <i>bias</i> as a functional response to the problem of underdetermination. While both accounts offer valuable insights, I explore their compatibility and differences, arguing that the Functional Account provides a more comprehensive understanding of bias by offering deeper explanatory insights, particularly regarding bias’s origins and purpose.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143371511","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":"Self-referring as self-directed action","authors":"Krisztina Orbán","doi":"10.1007/s11098-025-02283-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-025-02283-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I propose that examining pointing and, especially, self-pointing helps us to better understand Self-Referring (knowingly and intentionally self-referring). I explain basic features of pointing and self-pointing, such as referring, reference-fixing and the subject’s knowledge of the referent. I propose to treat Self-Referring as a self-directed action. Self-pointing makes it explicit how Self-Referring is a self-directed action produced for intentionally expressing something about the agent of the self-directed action. My project is an attempt to naturalize the capacity for Self-Reference. The capacity for self-directed action predates and enables the acquisition of Self-Referring. The structure of self-pointing reveals how the referent of ‘I’ is fixed in such way that we can begin to see how it supports the cognitive significance of Self-Referring expressions. In arguing for my proposal, I reflect on findings from developmental and comparative psychology and analyze Self-Reference in both spoken and sign-languages.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143371510","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 appreciation?","authors":"Auke Montessori","doi":"10.1007/s11098-025-02284-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-025-02284-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>It is commonplace amongst epistemologists to note the importance of grasping or appreciating one’s evidence. The idea seems to be that agents cannot successfully utilize evidence without it. Despite the popularity of this claim, the nature of appreciating or grasping evidence is unclear. This paper develops an account of what it takes to appreciate the epistemic relevance of one’s evidence, such that it can be used for some specific conclusion. I propose a basing account on which appreciating evidence involves being able to correctly base. That is, the agent is disposed to base various conclusions on her evidence that are objectively supported by that evidence. She can also derive correct conclusions if her evidence were slightly different. This account is cognitively undemanding, and explains why appreciation is crucial for the core functions of using evidence, like excluding hypotheses and probabilistic reasoning. I contrast this view with possible rival accounts and argue that the rival accounts add nothing over and above the basing account.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143371526","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":"Defining consciousness and denying its existence. Sailing between Charybdis and Scylla","authors":"François Kammerer","doi":"10.1007/s11098-025-02285-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-025-02285-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ulysses, the strong illusionist, sails towards the Strait of Definitions. On his left, Charybdis defines “phenomenal consciousness” in a loaded manner, which makes it a problematic entity from a physicalist and naturalistic point of view. This renders illusionism attractive, but at the cost of committing a potential strawman against its opponents – phenomenal realists. On the right, Scylla defines “phenomenal consciousness” innocently. This seems to render illusionism unattractive. Against this, I show that Ulysses can pass the Strait of Definitions. He should sail straight towards Scylla. Supposedly innocent definitions land a concept that makes illusionism attractive without committing a strawman. Indeed, this concept, which captures what the phenomenal realist means, is explicitly innocent but implicitly loaded. Beyond the Strait lies another danger: the Sirens of Redefinitions. They incite our hero to redefine his terms to salvage verbally (weak) phenomenal realism – judged preferable to overt strong illusionism. Ulysses should resist the Sirens’ songs and choose overt strong illusionism over its weak realist reformulation.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"79 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143191865","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":"Comments on Kelly: Against Positing a Non-Pejorative Sense of ‘Bias’","authors":"Selim Berker","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02281-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02281-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In <i>Bias: A Philosophical Study</i>, Thomas Kelly posits a distinction between two senses of the word ‘bias’, one pejorative, the other non-pejorative, and he puts this distinction to work in two crucial portions of the book: first, when he defends his central account of the nature of bias against would-be counterexamples; and, second, when he develops a new way of replying to external-world skepticism which hinges on conceding to the skeptic that we are biased against skeptical hypotheses. It is argued here that in neither of these places does Kelly’s distinction succeed in doing the work he needs is to do, and more generally that we should be suspicious of the very idea that ‘bias’ has a non-pejorative sense.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143071457","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":"Deception and manipulation in generative AI","authors":"Christian Tarsney","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02259-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02259-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Large language models now possess human-level linguistic abilities in many contexts. This raises the concern that they can be used to deceive and manipulate on unprecedented scales, for instance spreading political misinformation on social media. In future, agentic AI systems might also deceive and manipulate humans for their own purposes. In this paper, first, I argue that AI-generated content should be subject to stricter standards against deception and manipulation than we ordinarily apply to humans. Second, I offer new characterizations of AI deception and manipulation meant to support such standards, according to which a statement is deceptive (resp. manipulative) if it leads human addressees away from the beliefs (resp. choices) they would endorse under “semi-ideal” conditions. Third, I propose two measures to guard against AI deception and manipulation, inspired by this characterization: “extreme transparency” requirements for AI-generated content and “defensive systems” that, among other things, annotate AI-generated statements with contextualizing information. Finally, I consider to what extent these measures can protect against deceptive behavior in future, agentic AI systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142988713","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":"From seeing to knowing: the case of propositional perception","authors":"Miloud Belkoniene","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02274-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02274-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines the question as to whether propositional seeing is best thought of as a way of knowing a proposition to be true. After showing how Pritchard’s distinction between objective and subjective goodness motivates a negative answer to this question, I examine a challenge raised by Ghijsen for Pritchard’s construal of that distinction. I then turn to the connection between propositional seeing and belief. I argue that doxasticism about propositional seeing – the claim that propositional seeing involves belief – ultimately lacks independent motivation and I offer a model of propositional seeing that explains how propositional perception can provide one with a rational basis for forming a perceptual belief. Finally, I discuss in what way the proposed model of propositional seeing may remain compatible with the claim that propositional seeing is a way of knowing a proposition to be true.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142935641","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":"Proportionality in the Aggregate","authors":"Elad Uzan","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02275-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02275-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Much of revisionist just war theory is individualistic in nature: morality in war is just an extension of morality in interpersonal circumstances, so that killing in war is subject to the same moral principles that govern personal self-defense and defense of others. Recent work in the ethics of self-defense suggests that this individualism leads to a puzzle, which I call the puzzle of aggregation, when many threateners contribute to a single threatened harm. In this paper, I investigate the moral problems posed by the puzzle of aggregation and develop a novel account recently proposed by Jeff McMahan, which he calls “proportionality in the aggregate”. I argue that accepting proportionality in the aggregate as a moral constraint on the use of force has significant implications for the ethics of war and self-defense.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142935639","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":"Moral deference and morally worthy attitudes","authors":"Max Lewis","doi":"10.1007/s11098-024-02258-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02258-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper defends a novel version of moderate pessimism about moral deference, i.e., the view that we have <i>pro tanto</i> reason to try to avoid moral deference. The problem with moral deference is that it puts one in a bad position to form what I call morally worthy attitudes, i.e., non-cognitive attitudes that have moral worth in the same sense that certain actions have moral worth. Forming morally worthy attitudes requires a special sensitivity to the sufficiency of the moral reasons one has to form these attitudes. However, when one defers about a moral claim, one takes it fully on trust, which entails that one is strongly disposed to not intentionally try to take precautions against believing that moral claim epistemically defectively (e.g., falsely or without sufficient justification). Thus, moral deference makes one strongly disposed to not try to acquire the sensitivity required for forming morally worthy attitudes. However, morally worthy attitudes are more valuable than merely fitting attitudes and plausibly have both final and non-final value. Thus, moral deference interferes with gaining something with final and non-final value.</p>","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142935640","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}