Questioning the causal inheritance principle

Mental causation, though a forceful intuition embedded in our commonsense psychology, is difficult to square with the rest of commitments of physicalism about the mind. Advocates of mental causation have found solace in the causal inheritance principle, according to which the mental properties of mental states share the causal powers of their physical counterparts. In this paper, I present a variety of counterarguments to causal inheritance and conclude that the requirements for causal inheritance are stricter than what standing versions of said principle imply. In line with this, physicalism may be destined to epiphenomenalism unless multiple realizability turns out false

Intentionality without biological naturalism

La habitación china es una versión del test de Turing que permite a Searle defender su naturalismo biológico, según el cual la computación no es ni suficiente ni constitutiva de la mente. en este ensayo, investigo las dos versiones de su postura anticomputacionalista, sostengo que la computación forma parte de la comprensión del lenguaje natural y sugiero una vía para la reducción fisicalista de la intencionalidad en los actos de habla proposicionales.The Chinese Room argument is a variant of Turing’s test which enables Searle to defend his biological naturalism, according to which computation is neither sufficient nor constitutive of the mind. In this paper, I examine both strands of his anticomputationalist stance, argue that computation is constitutive of natural language understanding and suggest a path toward the physicalist reduction of intentionality for propositional speech acts

Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism

This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-119791RA-I00; RTI2018-098882-B-I00), the Polish National Science Centre (2020/36/C/HS5/00111; 2017/25/N/HS5/00944), the Swiss National Science Foundation (PZ00P1_179912), and the European Research Council (805498).Data, Materials, and Software Availability. Anonymized study data, analysis scripts, and stimuli (including translations) have been deposited in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/yw8ek/)A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges.European Research Council 805498Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung PZ00P1_179912Narodowe Centrum Nauki 2017/25/N/HS5/00944, 2020/36/C/HS5/00111Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2020-119791RA-I00, RTI2018-098882-B-I0

Fuller and the Folk: The Inner Morality of Law Revisited

The experimental turn in philosophy has reached several sub-fields including ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. This paper is among the first to apply experimental techniques to questions in the philosophy of law. Specifically, we examine Lon Fuller's procedural natural law theory. Fuller famously claimed that legal systems necessarily observe eight principles he called "the inner morality of law." We evaluate Fuller's claim by surveying both ordinary people and legal experts about their intuitions about legal systems. We conclude that, at best, we should be skeptical of Fuller's inner morality of law in light of the experimental data

Intencionalidad sin naturalismo biológico

La habitación china es una versión del test de Turing que permite a Searle defender su naturalismo biológico, según el cual la computación no es ni suficiente ni constitutiva de la mente. en este ensayo, investigo las dos versiones de su postura anticomputacionalista, sostengo que la computación forma parte de la comprensión del lenguaje natural y sugiero una vía para la reducción fisicalista de la intencionalidad en los actos de habla proposicionales

The typicality effect in basic needs

According to the so-called Classical Theory, concepts are mentally represented by individually necessary and jointly sufficient application conditions. One of the principal empirical objections against this view stems from evidence that people judge some instances of a concept to be more typical than others. In this paper we present and discuss four empirical studies that investigate the extent to which this ‘typicality effect’ holds for the concept of basic needs. Through multiple operationalizations of typicality, our studies yielded evidence for a strong effect of this kind: (1) Participants tended to recall the same core examples of the concept in a free-listing task. (2) They judged some basic needs to be more typical than others. (3) The items that were judged to be more typical were listed more frequently in the free-listing task. (4) These items were listed earlier on in the free-listing task. (5) Typical basic needs, as well as non needs, were classified faster than atypical basic needs in a reaction time study. These findings suggest that the concept of basic needs may have a non-classical (e.g., exemplar or prototype) structure. If so, the quest for a simple and robust intensional analysis of the concept may be futile.Austrian Science Fund (FWF)Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT)Japan Society for the Promotion of Science PE21001Karl-Franzens-Universitat Graz (Start-Up Grant), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion PID2020-119791RA-I00Austrian Science Fund (FWF) P3316

Do Formalist Judges Abide By Their Abstract Principles? A Two‑Country Study in Adjudication

Piotr Bystranowski was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the H2020 European Research Council research and innovation program, grant agreement 805498 (preparing study 1). Piotr Bystranowski, Bartosz Janik, and Maciej Prochnicki were supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland, National Programme for the Development of Humanities, from the research Grant No. 0068/NPRH4/H2b/83/2016, obtained and carried out at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (preparing study 2). We would like to express our gratitude to the National School of Judiciary and Public Prosecution in Poland for helping us with collecting data, as well as to Tomasz Zuradzki for comments on earlier drafts of the paper. This article has also benefited from the discussion at the Ethics Research Seminar organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.Recent literature in experimental philosophy has postulated the existence of the abstract/concrete paradox (ACP): the tendency to activate inconsistent intuitions (and generate inconsistent judgment) depending on whether a problem to be analyzed is framed in abstract terms or is described as a concrete case. One recent study supports the thesis that this effect influences judicial decision-making, including decision-making by professional judges, in areas such as interpretation of constitutional principles and application of clear-cut rules. Here, following the existing literature in legal theory, we argue that the susceptibility to such an effect might depend on whether decision-makers operate in a legal system characterized by the formalist or particularist approach to legal interpretation, with formalist systems being less susceptible to the effect. To test this hypothesis, we compare the results of experimental studies on ACP run on samples from two countries differing in legal culture: Poland and Brazil. The lack of significant differences between those results (also for professional legal decision-makers) suggests that ACP is a robust effect in the legal context.European Research Council (ERC) European Commission 805498Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Poland 0068/NPRH4/H2b/83/201

Autonomía, libertad y bienestar: sobre la justificación del paternalismo legal

Al margen de cuestiones sustantivas del paternalismo legal, desde la refutación inicial de Mill hasta hoy, se ha producido un rico debate sobre su fundamentación normativa. En la sección I, recojo algunas de las posturas prominentes en este debate. En la sección II, desarrollo ambas vertientes del antipaternalismo de Mill, a través de tanto la lectura liberal de Dworkin como la libertariana de Arneson, concluyendo que el antipaternalismo fuerte recae sobre un argumento endeble. En la sección III, defiendo la postura paternalista débil, lo cual remite la discusión sobre justificación a la pregunta por los ideales normativos universalizables

Trolleys, Triage and Covid-19: The Role of Psychological Realism in Sacrificial Dilemmas

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels--but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favored utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas—and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarization surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how hypothetical scenarios in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) should strive for more experiential and psychological realism, otherwise their results might not generalize to real-world moral dilemmas

The Typicality Effect in Basic Needs

According to the so-called Classical Theory, concepts are mentally represented by individually necessary and jointly sufficient application conditions. One of the principal empirical objections against this view stems from evidence that people judge some instances of a concept to be more typical than others. In this paper we present and discuss four empirical studies that investigate the extent to which this ‘typicality effect’ holds for the concept of basic needs. Through multiple operationalizations of typicality, our studies yielded evidence for a strong effect of this kind: (1) Participants tended to recall the same core examples of the concept in a free-listing task. (2) They judged some basic needs to be more typical than others. (3) The items that were judged to be more typical were listed more frequently in the free-listing task. (4) These items were listed earlier on in the free-listing task. (5) Typical basic needs, as well as non needs, were classified faster than atypical basic needs in a reaction time study. These findings suggest that the concept of basic needs may have a non-classical (e.g., exemplar or prototype) structure. If so, the quest for a simple and robust intensional analysis of the concept may be futile.Austrian Science Fund (FWF)Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT)Japan Society for the Promotion of Science PE21001Karl-Franzens-Universitat Graz (Start-Up Grant), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion PID2020-119791RA-I00Austrian Science Fund (FWF) P3316