abstracta

Causal exclusion without physical completeness and no overdetermination

2021-10-06T11:52:02+00:00

Hitchcock (2012) demonstrated that the validity of causal exclusion arguments as well as the plausibility of several of their premises hinges on the specific theory of causation endorsed. In this paper I show that the validity of causal exclusion arguments—if represented within the theory of causal Bayes nets the way Gebharter (2015) suggests—actually requires much weaker premises than the ones which are typically assumed. In particular, neither completeness of the physical domain nor the no overdetermination assumption are required.

Self-Forming Actions, Non-Self-Forming Actions, and Indeterminism: A Problem for Kane’s Libertarianism

2021-10-06T11:52:01+00:00

Central to Robert Kane’s libertarian free will is the distinction between two kinds of action: (1) undetermined self-forming actions by means of which we shape our characters, and (2) actions that are determined by our freely formed characters. Daniel Dennett challenges the coherence of this distinction, but I argue that his arguments rely on highly controversial assumptions. In an effort to improve on Dennett’s criticism, I argue that some considerations about non-self-forming actions, when coupled with Kane’s naturalistic framework, imply that all choices are undetermined, which undercuts the distinction between his two categories of action. I then show that this conclusion threatens to undermine the very idea of self-formation Kane seeks to develop.

Cultural artefacts and neglect of the materials from which they are made

2021-10-06T11:51:55+00:00

This paper discusses an explanation, offered by Tim Ingold, for why social and cultural anthropologists have so far paid little attention to the materials from which artefacts are composed. The explanation is that these anthropologists accept a certain argument. According to the argument, what an anthropologist should focus on when examining an artefact are those qualities that make it part of a culture, and this is not the materials from which the artefact is composed. I show that Ingold has not made a compelling case against this argument, but also that it is not sound.

Nonconceptualism or De Re Sense? A New Reading of Kantian Intuition

2021-10-06T11:51:54+00:00

The aim of this paper is to offer a critically review the recent nonconceptualist reading of the Kantian notion of sensible intuition. I raise two main objections. First, nonconceptualist readers fail to distinguish connected but different anti-intellectualist claims in the contemporary philosophy of mind and language. Second, I will argue that nonconceptual readings fail because Kantian intuitions do not possess a representational content of their own that can be veridical or falsidical in a similar way to how the content of propositional attitudes are true of false. In this paper, I will support my own reading that sensible intuition is better seen as what Evans and McDowell (1991) have called a de re sense, whose main characteristic is object-dependence. In this sense, Kantian sensible intuitions can be seen as a sensible mode of donation of objects. In my reading, the Kantian opposition between intuitions and concepts is best seen as the opposition between the objectual de re perception of something and the propositional de dicto apperception that something is the case rather than the opposition between nonconceptual and conceptual contents. However, if Kantian sensible intuition is not a mental state with a nonconceptual content, it is certainly in the general anti-intellectualist neighborhood.