225 research outputs found
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From ape empathy to human morality?
The idea that empathy provides an important developmental precursor to moral decision making possesses significant conceptual appeal. However, the idea of a necessary, diachronic relation between empathy and morality has been rejected recently (by Prinz 2011, amongst others). This paper reassesses the strength of the claim that empathy is developmentally necessary for (at least some forms of) morality and argues that the position remains a live possibility
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Mirroring, mindreading and smart behaviour-reading
This paper examines the claim that mirror neuron activity is the mechanism by which we come to know about the action-related intentions of others (e.g. Gallese et al 1996, Rizzolatti et al 2009), i.e. that they are a mechanism for âmindreadingâ. I agree with recent authors (e.g. Hickok 2008, Jacob 2008) who reject this view but nevertheless I argue that mirror neurons may still have a role to play in the ways in which we understand one another (social cognition). If we adopt a certain kind of pluralism about social cognition then the mirror neuron system could play a role in social cognition even if it provides no access to the minds of others at all. I argue for this view and consider what the approach might entail for the ontology of the mirror neuron system
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Local vs. global pragmatics
In 'Local pragmatics in a Gricean framework', Mandy Simons argues that, contrary to the received view, it is possible to accommodate local pragmatic effects utilising just the mechanisms for pragmatic reasoning provided by Grice. Although I agree with this overarching claim, this paper argues that we need to be careful in our understanding of 'what is said', and the nature of communicated content in general, when deciding between local and global accounts of pragmatic effects
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Explanatory roles for minimal content
A standard objection to so-called âminimal semanticsâ (Borg 2004, 2012, Cappelen and Lepore 2005) is that minimal contents are explanatorily redundant as they play no role in an adequate account of linguistic communication (those making this objection include Levinson 2000, Carston 2002, Recanati 2004). This paper argues that this standard objection is mistaken. Furthermore, I argue that seeing why the objection is mistaken sheds light both on how we should draw the classic Gricean distinction between saying and implicating, and how we should think about the key philosophical notion of assertion. Specifically, it reveals that these ideas are best understood primarily in socio-linguistic terms (resting on the degree of liability a speaker is held to have for linguistically conveyed content)
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Exploding explicatures
âPragmaticistâ positions posit a three-way division within utterance content between: (i) the standing meaning of the sentence, (ii) a somewhat pragmatically enhanced meaning which captures what the speaker explicitly conveys (following Sperber and Wilson 1986, I label this the âexplicatureâ), and (iii) further indirectly conveyed propositions which the speaker merely implies. Here I re-examine the notion of an explicature, asking how it is defined and what work explicatures are supposed to do. I argue that explicatures get defined in three different ways and that these distinct definitions can and do pull apart. Thus the notion of an explicature turns out to be ill-defined
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Epistemic virtues vs. ethical values in the financial services sector
In his important recent book, *Ethics and the Global Financial Crisis: Why Incompetence is Worse than Greed* (2015), Boudewijn de Bruin argues that a key element of the global financial crisis of 2007-8 was a failure of epistemic (i.e. knowledge-based) virtue. To improve matters, then, de Bruin argues we need to focus on the acquisition and exercise of epistemic virtues, rather than to focus on a more ethical culture for banking per se. While this is an interesting suggestion and it is indeed very plausible that an increased focus on proper knowledge-related behaviour will be part of a solution, we are sceptical both about de Bruinâs overarching theoretical claims and about his practical suggestions for change. Instead we argue that change in this sector is best promoted by reconceiving of the relationship between financial institutions and the societies they serve, and that this is fundamentally not an epistemic but a moral issue
Salience: Descriptions and incompleteness
The contention of this thesis is that there are good reasons for preferring a Russellian analysis of descriptions to any other account, but that there exists a fundamental problem to be overcome for such an approach. This is the issue of incompleteness, for the quantificational treatment makes an appeal to uniqueness which is often not satisfied by the descriptive material mentioned, e.g. 'the dog' does not contain enough predicative material to secure a unique denotation. In this thesis I consider, and offer reasons for rejecting, the three most common (pragmatic level) solutions and suggest that we are instead forced to a semantic level alteration. I then go on to offer my own preferred version of such a move: a semantic level appeal to the pragmatic property of salience. I suggest that we have antecedent reasons for requiring such a notion of salience, as a property which is both able to operate prior to the securing of a referent and which may be mutually recognisable between interlocutors. Such a property would then be available to underpin and direct decisions on intended reference in a communicative environment. To show this I briefly examine the nature of communication itself and argue that there is good reason to posit the shared ground in referential communication as mutual recognition of salience. Finally, having established an independent requirement for such a notion, I show how it might be adopted, as elided content, into the truth conditions of incomplete descriptions, without violating the major tenets of the quantificational theory
The influence of the glycaemic index of breakfast and lunch on substrate utilisation during the postprandial periods and subsequent exercise
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In defence of individual rationality
Common-sense (or folk) psychology holds that (generally) we do what we do for the reasons we have. This common-sense approach is embodied in claims like âI went to the kitchen because I wanted a drinkâ and âShe took a coat because she thought it might rain and hoped to stay dryâ. However, the veracity of these common-sense psychological explanations has been challenged by experimental evidence (primarily from behavioural economics and social psychology) which appears to show that individuals are systematically irrationalâthat often we do not do what we do because of the reasons we have. Recently, some of the same experimental evidence has also been used to level a somewhat different challenge at the common-sense view, arguing that the overarching aim of reasoning is not to deliver better or more reason-governed decisions for individual reasoners, but to improve group decision making or to protect an individualâs sense of self. This paper explores the range of challenges that experimental work has been taken to raise for the common-sense approach and suggests some potential responses. Overall, I argue that the experimental evidence surveyed should not lead us to a rejection of individual rationality
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Language and context
Emma Borg discusses the relationship between linguistic meaning and context, and talks about her own view, called 'Semantic Minimalism', in this Philosophy Bites interview, conducted by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton
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