American Philosophical Quarterly Research Articles

American Philosophical Quarterly

American Philosophical Quarterly

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: exacerbated problems, renewed problems, unprecedented problems - Introduction to the Special Issue of the American Philosophical Quarterly dedicated to The Ethics of AI

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: exacerbated problems, renewed problems, unprecedented problems - Introduction to the Special Issue of the American Philosophical Quarterly dedicated to The Ethics of AI

American Philosophical Quarterly

American Philosophical Quarterly

Introduction, Summary, Questions for the Future

Introduction, Summary, Questions for the Future

American Philosophical Quarterly

American Philosophical Quarterly

Animalists on the run

ABSTRACT The animalist population has swelled since they introduced their thesis – we are animals – within the personal identity debate a few decades ago. Now they’re a dominant force in the debate. However, more recently, their thesis has fallen prey to attacks. For example, I [Duncan, Matt. 2021. “Animalism is Either False or Uninteresting (Perhaps Both).” American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (no. 2): 187–200.] argue that, depending on how it is understood, animalism is either false or uninteresting. If it is merely the thesis that we are identical to animals (‘Animalism Light’), then it is uninteresting, because it doesn’t address the philosophical question it was supposed to address. If, instead, it is a stronger thesis – i.e., that we are essentially or fundamentally animals (‘Robust Animalism’) – then it is false. Even more recently, Andrew M. Bailey, Allison Krile Thornton, and Peter van Elswyk [2021. “Why Animalism Matters.” Philosophical Studies 178 (9): 2929–2942.] attempt to defend animalism against each of my two claims. They argue that Animalism Light holds considerable interest and that Robust Animalism can be defended against my arguments. In this article, I contribute to this exchange by defending my claims about animalism against Bailey et al.’s criticisms.

Radical Existentialist Exercise

Radical Existentialist Exercise

Lewis and Taylor as Partners in Sin

David Lewis’s analysis of “can” in “The Paradoxes of Time Travel” (Lewis, American Philosophical Quarterly, 13, 145–52, 1976) has been widely accepted both as a definitive analysis of “can” and as a successful resolution of the Grandfather Paradox for time travel. I argue that the central feature of his analysis puts it on all fours with a fallacy frequently imputed to fatalists such as Richard Taylor. I go on to consider two moves that might be made to avoid the fallacy, arguing that one of them leads to the unavailability of an all-things-considered “can” and the other to a new primitive modality, not analyzable in Lewis’s way.

Factualism and the Scientific Image

ABSTRACTThe Sellarsian task of ontology is to reconcile two seemingly divergent images of ordinary objects such as persons, tomatoes and tables, namely, the manifest image of common sense and the scientific image provided by fundamental physics (Sellars, Science, Perception, and Reality, 1963). Can the genuine categories of the ontologies of Substantialism (Heil, The World as We Find It, 2012), Structural Realism (Ladyman and Ross,Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, 2007; French, The Structure of the World: Metaphysics and Representation, 2014), and Factualism (Cumpa, ‘A Materialist Criterion of Fundamentality’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 2014), such as ‘substance’, ‘structure’, and ‘fact’, help us to solve the problem of the reconciliation of the two images of ordinary objects? In this paper I defend the thesis that the ontology of Factualism does a better job of reconciling the manifest and the scientific images of ordinary objects than other ontologies.

Is Identity Really so Fundamental?

We critically examine the claim by Otavio Bueno (Bueno O. 2014. “Why identity is fundamental”. American Philosophical Quarterly 51, 325-332) that identity is a fundamental concept. Bueno advances four related theses in order to ground such a claim: 1) identity is presupposed in every conceptual system; 2) identity is required to characterize an individual; 3) identity cannot be defined; 4) the intelligibility of quantification requires identity. We address each of these points and argue that there are no compelling reasons to hold that identity is fundamental in these cases. So, in the end, identity may not be a fundamental concept after all.

Symptoms of a Misunderstanding in Contemporary Academic Philosophy

AbstractThis paper challenges a conception of philosophy that is seldom clearly expressed, yet appears to be prevalent in contemporary academic philosophy. On the website of the American Philosophical Quarterly, some sentences appear that articulate well the essentials of that assumption. This article discusses those sentences and assumes that they may be symptomatic of a widespread blindness to a fundamental aspect of the nature of philosophical study. The first part of the article consists of an analysis and criticism of the sentences in question. The second part investigates some possible defences of the sentences and the conception of philosophy they express.

“What Can I Do to Get Out of It?”: How Self-Help Readers Make Use of the Language Game of Resilience

Resilience is, as a concept and as a discourse, a cultural resource that has experienced a growing importance over the last two decades, especially in the field of psychology. In September 2013, the most important database for scientific productions in psychology (www.psycinfo.org) contained more than 14,000 references concerning resilience. In French-speaking countries, for example, each new book by Boris Cyrulnik, the famous neuropsychiatrist who imported the notion of resilience into the psychological field, sells like hotcakes, with total sales of several million copies (see Marquis).

Kane’s Libertarian Theory and Luck: A Reply to Griffith

In a recent article, Meghan Griffith (American Philosophical Quarterly 47:43–56, 2010) argues that agent-causal libertarian theories are immune to the problem of luck but that event-causal theories succumb to this problem. In making her case against the event-causal theories, she focuses on Robert Kane’s event-causal theory. I provide a brief account of the central elements of Kane’s theory and I explain Griffith’s critique of it. I argue that Griffith’s criticisms fail. In doing so, I note some important respects in which Kane’s view is unclear and I suggest a plausible way of reading Kane that makes his theory immune to Griffith’s objections.

Is Desert in the Details?1

1 Thanks are due to Adam Arico, Matt Bedke, Mike Bruno, Jerry Gaus, Kate Johnson, Josh Knobe, David Schmidtz, Daniel Silvermint, Jen Zamzow, and an anonymous referee for this journal. 2 Samuel Scheffler says that “none of the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism assigns a significant role to desert at the level of fundamental principle.” Samuel Scheffler, “Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and Liberalism in Philosophy and Politics.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 21, no. 4 (1992): 299-323, 301. See, for example John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Revised ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999, 89; “The Basic Structure as Subject.” American Philosophical Quarterly 14, (1977): 159-65, 162; Ronald Dworkin, “Why Bakke Has No Case.” New York Review of Books, November 10, 1977; Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979; Brian Barry, Political Argument. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965; Robert Goodin, “Negating Positive Desert Claims.” Political Theory 13, no. 4 (1985): 575-598. 3 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, 104. 4 Eric Rakowski, Equal Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, 112. 5 Serena Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert, and the Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 28. 6 Peter Vallentyne, “Brute Luck Equality and Desert.” In Desert and Justice, edited by Serena Olsaretti, 169– 185. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 175.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Musical Works: Ontology and Meta‐Ontology

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Musical Works: Ontology and Meta‐Ontology

Endurance Per Se in B-time

Three arguments for the conclusion that objects cannot endure in B-time even if they remain intrinsically unchanged are examined: Carter and Hestevold’s enduring-objects-as-universals argument (American Philosophical Quarterly 31(4):269–283, 1994) and Barker and Dowe’s paradox 1 and paradox 2 (Analysis 63(2):106–114, 2003, Analysis 65(1):69–74, 2005). All three are shown to fail.

The error statistical philosopher as normative naturalist

We argue for a naturalistic account for appraising scientific methods that carries non-trivial normative force. We develop our approach by comparison with Laudan’s (American Philosophical Quarterly 24:19–31, 1987, Philosophy of Science 57:20–33, 1990) “normative naturalism” based on correlating means (various scientific methods) with ends (e.g., reliability). We argue that such a meta-methodology based on means–ends correlations is unreliable and cannot achieve its normative goals. We suggest another approach for meta-methodology based on a conglomeration of tools and strategies (from statistical modeling, experimental design, and related fields) that affords forward looking procedures for learning from error and for controlling error. The resulting “error statistical” appraisal is empirical—methods are appraised by examining their capacities to control error. At the same time, this account is normative, in that the strategies that pass muster are claims about how actually to proceed in given contexts to reach reliable inferences from limited data.

Propositional knowledge and know-how

This paper is roughly in two parts. The first deals with whether know-how is constituted by propositional knowledge, as discussed primarily by Gilbert Ryle (1949) The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (2001). Knowing how. Journal of Philosophy, 98, pp. 411–444 as well as Stephen Hetherington (2006). How to know that knowledge-that is knowledge-how. In S. Hetherington (Ed.) Epistemology futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The conclusion of this first part is that know-how sometimes does and sometimes does not consist in propositional knowledge. The second part defends an analysis of know-how inspired by Katherine Hawley’ (2003). Success and knowledge-how. American Philosophical Quarterly, 40, pp. 19–31, insightful proposal that know-how requires counterfactual success. I conclude by showing how this analysis helps to explain why know-how sometimes does and sometimes does not consist of propositional knowledge.

Consciousness, context, and know-how

In this paper I criticize the most significant recent examples of the practical knowledge analysis of knowledge-how in the philosophical literature: David Carr [1979, Mind, 88, 394–409; 1981a, American Philosophical Quarterly, 18, 53–61; 1981b, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 15(1), 87–96] and Stanley & Williamson [2001, Journal of Philosophy, 98(8), 411–444]. I stress the importance of know-how in our contemporary understanding of the mind, and offer the beginnings of a treatment of know-how capable of providing insight in to the use of know-how in contemporary cognitive science. Specifically, I claim that Carr’s necessary conditions for know-how fail to capture the distinction he himself draws between ability and knowing-how. Moreover, Carr ties knowing-how to conscious intent, and to an explicit knowledge of procedural rules. I argue that both moves are mistakes, which together render Carr’s theory an inadequate account both of common ascriptions of knowledge-how and of widely accepted ascriptions of knowledge-how within explanations in cognitive science. Finally, I note that Carr’s conditions fail to capture intuitions (heshares) regarding the ascription of know-how to persons lacking ability. I then consider the position advocated by Stanley & Williamson (2001), which seems avoid Carr’s commitments to conscious intent and explicit knowledge while still maintaining that “knowledge-how is simply a species of knowledge-that" (Stanley & Williamson, 2001, p. 411). I argue that Stanley and Williamson’s attempt to frame a reductionist view that avoids consciously occurrent beliefs during exercises of knowledge-how and explicit knowledge of procedural rules is both empirically implausible and explanatorily vacuous. In criticizing these theories I challenge the presuppositions of the most pervasive response to Ryle in the philosophic literature, what might be described as “the received view." I also establish several facts about knowing-how. First, neither conscious intent nor explicit representation (much less conscious representation) of procedural rules are necessary for knowing-how given the theory of cognition current in cognitive science. I argue that the discussed analyses fail to capture the necessary conditions for knowledge-how because know-how requires the instantiation of an ability and of the capacities necessary for exploiting an ability—not conscious awareness of purpose or explicit knowledge of rules. Second, one must understand knowledge-how as task-specific, i.e., as presupposing certain underlying conditions. Conceiving of know-how as task-specific allows one to understand ascriptions of know-how in the absence of ability as counterfactual ascriptions based upon underlying competence.

Single-case probabilities and the case of Monty Hall: Levy’s view

In Baumann (American Philosophical Quarterly 42: 71–79, 2005) I argued that reflections on a variation of the Monty Hall problem throws a very general skeptical light on the idea of single-case probabilities. Levy (Synthese, forthcoming, 2007) puts forward some interesting objections which I answer here.