| 1. |
- Gustafsson, Johan E.
(författare)
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Phenomenal Continuity and the Bridge Problem
- 2011
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Ingår i: Philosophia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0048-3893 .- 1574-9274. ; 39:2, s. 289-296
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Any theory that analyses personal identity in terms of phenomenal continuity needs to deal with the ordinary interruptions of our consciousness that it is commonly thought that a person can survive. This is the bridge problem. The present paper offers a novel solution to the bridge problem based on the proposal that dreamless sleep need not interrupt phenomenal continuity. On this solution one can both hold that phenomenal continuity is necessary for personal identity and that persons can survive dreamless sleep.
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| 2. |
- Janvid, Mikael, 1968-
(författare)
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Understanding Understanding: An Epistemological Investigation
- 2014
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Ingår i: Philosophia. - : Springer Science+Business Media B.V.. - 0048-3893 .- 1574-9274. ; 42:4, s. 971-985
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding has received growing interest from epistemologists in recent years, but no consensus regarding its epistemic properties has yet been reached. This paper extracts, but also rejects, candidates of epistemic properties for construing an epistemological model of understanding from the writings of epistemologists participating in the current discussion surrounding that state. On the basis of these results, a suggestion is put forward according to which understanding is a non-basic epistemic state of warrant rather than knowledge. It is argued that this move provides a satisfactory conciliatory answer to the central question whether understanding is a factive epistemic state. Some differ- ences between understanding and knowledge are recorded along the way: for instance, that in contrast to knowledge, understanding does not require belief and that, even though neither knowledge nor understanding iterates, so that a subject can both know without knowing that she knows, as well as understanding without understanding that she understands, the reasons for the failure is different.
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| 3. |
- Johansson, Jens
(författare)
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Roache's Argument against the Cohabitation View
- 2011
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Ingår i: Philosophia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0048-3893 .- 1574-9274. ; 39:2, s. 309-310
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rebecca Roache's recent critique of David Lewis's cohabitation view assumes that a person cannot be properly concerned about something that rules out that she ever exists. In this brief response, I argue against this assumption.
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| 4. |
- Nilsson, Peter
(författare)
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Butler's stone and ultimate psychological hedonism
- 2013
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Ingår i: Philosophia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0048-3893 .- 1574-9274. ; 41:2, s. 545-553
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper discusses psychological hedonism with special reference to the writings of Bishop Butler, and Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. Contrary to philosophical orthodoxy, Sober and Wilson have argued that Butler failed to refute psychological hedonism. In this paper it is argued: (1) that there is a difference between reductive and ultimate psychological hedonism; (2) that Butler failed to refute ultimate psychological hedonism, but that he succeeded in refuting reductive psychological hedonism; and, finally and more importantly, (3) that Butler's criticism of reductive hedonism can be used as a stepping-stone in another argument showing the implausibility of ultimate psychological hedonism as well.
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| 5. |
- Nilsson, Peter
(författare)
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On the suffering of compassion
- 2011
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Ingår i: Philosophia. - : Springer. - 0048-3893 .- 1574-9274. ; 39:1, s. 125-144
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Compassion is often described in terms of suffering. This paper investigates the nature of this suffering. It is argued that compassion involves suffering of a particular kind. To begin with a case is made for the negative claim that compassion does not involve an ordinary, or afflictive, suffering over something. Secondly, it is argued that the suffering of compassion is a suffering for someone else’s sake: If you feel compassion for another person, P, then you suffer over P:s suffering for P:s sake, and if that is all you do, then you are not affected with an afflictive suffering over something. The final section identifies and addresses a problem concerning self-pity, and a suggestion is made on how to specify the proposed account so as to cover both self-directed and other-directed compassion.
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| 6. |
- Olinder, Ragnar Francén
(författare)
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Svavarsdottir's Burden
- 2012
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Ingår i: Philosophia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0048-3893 .- 1574-9274. ; 40:3, s. 577-589
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is sometimes observed that the debate between internalists and externalists about moral motivation seems to have reached a deadlock. There are those who do, and those who don't, recognize the intuitive possibility of amoralists: i.e. people having moral opinions without being motivated to act accordingly. This makes Sigrun Svavarsdttir's methodological objection to internalism especially interesting, since it promises to break the deadlock through building a case against internalism (construed as a conceptual thesis), not on such intuitions, but on a methodological principle for empirical investigations. According to the objection, internalists incur the burden of argument, since they have to exclude certain explanations of the (verbal and non-verbal) behavior of apparent amoralists, while externalists don't. In this paper I argue that the objection fails: the principle for empirical investigations is plausible, but Svavarsdttir's application of it to internalism is not. Once we clearly distinguish between the conceptual and the empirical aspects of the internalist and externalist explanations of apparent amoralists, we see that these views incur an equal burden of explanation. I end the paper with a positive suggestion to the effect that there is a third alternative, a view that involves accepting neither internalism nor externalism, which does not incur an explanatory burden of the relevant sort.
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| 7. |
- Petersson, Björn
(författare)
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Co-responsibility and Causal Involvement
- 2013
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Ingår i: Philosophia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0048-3893 .- 1574-9274. ; 41:3, s. 847-866
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In discussions of moral responsibility for collectively produced effects, it is not uncommon to assume that we have to abandon the view that causal involvement is a necessary condition for individual co-responsibility. In general, considerations of cases where there is "a mismatch between the wrong a group commits and the apparent causal contributions for which we can hold individuals responsible" motivate this move. According to Brian Lawson, "solving this problem requires an approach that deemphasizes the importance of causal contributions". Christopher Kutz's theory of complicitious accountability in Complicity from 2000 is probably the most wellknown approach of that kind. Standard examples are supposed to illustrate mismatches of three different kinds: an agent may be morally co-responsible for an event to a high degree even if her causal contribution to that event is a) very small, b) imperceptible, or c) non-existent (in overdetermination cases). From such examples, Kutz and others conclude that principles of complicitious accountability cannot include a condition of causal involvement. In the present paper, I defend the causal involvement condition for co-responsibility. These are my lines of argument: First, overdetermination cases can be accommodated within a theory of coresponsibility without giving up the causality condition. Kutz and others oversimplify the relation between counterfactual dependence and causation, and they overlook the possibility that causal relations other than marginal contribution could be morally relevant. Second, harmful effects are sometimes overdetermined by non-collective sets of acts. Over-farming, or the greenhouse effect, might be cases of that kind. In such cases, there need not be any formal organization, any unifying intentions, or any other noncausal criterion of membership available. If we give up the causal condition for coresponsibility it will be impossible to delimit the morally relevant set of acts related to those harms. Since we sometimes find it fair to blame people for such harms, we must question the argument from overdetermination. Third, although problems about imperceptible effects or aggregation of very small effects are morally important, e.g. when we consider degrees of blameworthiness or epistemic limitations in reasoning about how to assign responsibility for specific harms, they are irrelevant to the issue of whether causal involvement is necessary for complicity. Fourth, the costs of rejecting the causality condition for complicity are high. Causation is an explicit and essential element in most doctrines of legal liability and it is central in common sense views of moral responsibility. Giving up this condition could have radical and unwanted consequences for legal security and predictability. However, it is not only for pragmatic reasons and because it is a default position that we should require stronger arguments (than conflicting intuitions about "mismatches") before giving up the causality condition. An essential element in holding someone to account for an event is the assumption that her actions and intentions are part of the explanation of why that event occurred. If we give up that element, it is difficult to see which important function responsibility assignments could have.
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| 8. |
- Sjögren, Jörgen, et al.
(författare)
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Concept Formation and Concept Grounding
- 2014
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Ingår i: Philosophia. - : Springer Science+Business Media B.V.. - 0048-3893 .- 1574-9274. ; 42:3, s. 827-839
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently Carrie S. Jenkins formulated an epistemology of mathematics, or rather arithmetic, respecting apriorism, empiricism, and realism. Central is an idea of concept grounding. The adequacy of this idea has been questioned e.g. concerning the grounding of the mathematically central concept of set (or class), and of composite concepts. In this paper we present a view of concept formation in mathematics, based on ideas from Carnap, leading to modifications of Jenkins’s epistemology that may solve some problematic issues with her ideas. But we also present some further problems with her view, concerning the role of proof for mathematical knowledge.
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