Conceptual engineers have recently turned to the notion of conceptual functions to do a variety of explanatory work. Functions are supposed to explain what speakers are debating about in metalinguistic negotiations, to capture when two concepts are about the same thing, and to help guide our normative inquiries into which concepts we should use. In this paper, I argue that this recent “functional turn” should be deflated. Contra most interpreters, we should not try to use a substantive notion of conceptual (...) functions to handle various problems for conceptual engineering. The primary accounts of function appealed to by conceptual engineers, namely etiological and system functions, are not suited to handle many of the problems functions are supposed to handle, and it’s dubious whether any other account of function would do better. Instead of trying to use substantive functions to solve theoretical problems, we should deflate those problems themselves by focusing only on what matters to us, as speakers or theorists, in a given inquiry. (shrink)

The idea that deep brain stimulation (DBS) induces changes to personality, identity, agency, authenticity, autonomy and self (PIAAAS) is so deeply entrenched within neuroethics discourses that it has become an unchallenged narrative. In this article, we critically assess evidence about putative effects of DBS on PIAAAS. We conducted a literature review of more than 1535 articles to investigate the prevalence of scientific evidence regarding these potential DBS-induced changes. While we observed an increase in the number of publications in theoretical neuroethics (...) that mention putative DBS-induced changes to patients’ postoperative PIAAAS, we found a critical lack of primary empirical studies corroborating these claims. Our findings strongly suggest that the theoretical neuroethics debate on putative effects of DBS relies on very limited empirical evidence and is, instead, reliant on unsubstantiated speculative assumptions probably in lieu of robust evidence. As such, this may reflect the likelihood of a speculative neuroethics bubble that may need to be deflated. Nevertheless, despite the low number of first-hand primary studies and large number of marginal and single case reports, potential postoperative DBS changes experienced by patients remain a critical ethical concern. We recommend further empirical research in order to enhance theoretical neuroethics work in the area. In particular, we call for the development of better instruments capable of capturing potential postoperative variations of PIAAAS. (shrink)

Acts that are considered undesirable standardly violate our expectations. In contrast, acts that count as morally desirable can either meet our expectations or exceed them. The zone in which an act can be morally desirable yet not exceed our expectations is what we call the zone of moral indifference, and it has so far been neglected. In this paper, we show that people can use positive terms in a deflated manner to refer to actions in the zone of moral indifference, (...) whereas negative terms cannot be so interpreted. (shrink)

In this paper we confront a challenge to truthmaker theory that is analogous to the objections raised by deflationists against substantive theories of truth. Several critics of truthmaker theory espouse a ‘deflationary’ attitude about truthmaking, though it has not been clearly presented as such. Our goal is to articulate and then object to the underlying rationale behind deflationary truthmaking. We begin by developing the analogy between deflationary truth and deflationary truthmaking, and then show how the latter can be found in (...) the work of Dodd, Hornsby, Schnieder, Williamson, and others. These philosophers believe that the ambitions of truthmaker theory are easily satisfied, without recourse to ambitious ontological investigation—hence the analogy with deflationary truth. We argue that the deflationists’ agenda fails: there is no coherent deflationary theory of truthmaking. Truthmaking, once deflated, fails to address the questions at the heart of truthmaking investigation. Truthmaking cannot be had on the cheap. (shrink)

The radically enactive, embodied view of cognition (REC) holds that cognition is not always and everywhere grounded in the manipulation of contentful representations. Arguments for REC have assumed that its opponents defend a substantive notion of representation—a notion that entails the existence of content-carrying mental states. This paper considers the prospects of representationalism of a different stripe—one that prefers deflated notions representation. For example, deflationists hold that talk of mental representations might just be a kind of convenient labeling that does (...) not commit theorists to any substantive claims about the explanatory work done by psychosemantic properties. Taking the deflationary option thus undercuts the crucial motivation for positing mental representations in the first place. This chapter argues that, should the deflationist arguments prove warranted, they provide reason to hold that some forms of cognition are contentless, à la REC. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind tend to hold one of two broad views about mental representation: they are either robustly realist about mental representations, taking them to have determinate, objective content independent of attributors’ explanatory interests and goals, or they embrace some form of anti-realism, holding that mental representations are at best useful fictions. It is becoming increasingly clear that neither view is satisfactory. Realists disagree about the basis for objective content, and computational neuroscientists and psychologists, while making widespread use of representational (...) talk in articulating their theories, seem indifferent to the efforts of these philosophers to articulate a secure foundation for such talk, suggesting a disconnect between the preoccupations of philosophers of cognitive science and actual practice in these sciences. Fictionalists, for their part, must deny that representational mental states can be causes of cognition and behavior, and that appeal to mental representation can be genuinely explanatory, views that flatly contradict assumptions central to both science and everyday life. I develop and defend a distinctive ‘third way’ – a view I call a deflationary account of mental representation – that both resolves philosophical worries about content and best fits actual practice in science and everyday life. According to the deflationary account, appeal to mental representation does indeed purport to pick out causes of behavior, but the attribution of content to these causes is best understood as a pragmatically motivated gloss, justified in part by attributors’ explanatory interests and goals. Content plays an explanatory role in the deflationary account, but one quite different than that assumed by robust representational realists. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to a prominent objection, deflationist theories of truth can’t account for the explanatory connection between true belief and successful action [Putnam 1978]. Canonical responses to the objection show how to reformulate truth-involving explanations of particular successful actions, so as to omit any mention of truth [Horwich 1998]. According to recent critics, though, the canonical strategy misses the point. The deflated paraphrases lack the generality or explanatory robustness of the original explanatory appeals to truth [Kitcher 2002; Lynch 2009; Gamester (...) 2018]. This article diagnoses the canonical response’s failure and shows how deflationists can make sense of appeals to truth in explaining practical success, in all of their generality and robustness, without construing truth as a substantial property. (shrink)

I will argue that accounts of mineness and pre-reflective self-awareness can be helpful to panpsychists in solving the combination problems. A common strategy in answering the subject combination problem in panpsychism is to deflate the subject, eliminating or reducing subjects to experience. Many modern panpsychist theories are deflationist or endorse deflationist accounts of subjects, such as Parfit’s reductionism of personal identity and G. Strawson’s identity view. To see if there can be deflation we need to understand what the subject/self (...) is. One aspect of consciousness left unexplored and unappreciated by panpsychist theories is pre-reflective self-consciousness/self-awareness. Theories of the self, inspired by phenomenology, that are serious about subjectivity, could be of use in arguing against the deflationary reductionism of the experiencing subject. These theories show that there is more to the subject of experience than just its experiences (qualities). Even without arguing for any precise account of the nature of the self, it can be shown what phenomenology of subjective character of consciousness and pre-reflective self-awareness contributes to the combination problem debate. (shrink)

To conclude that there is enough or not enough evidence demonstrating that deep brain stimulation causes unintended postoperative personality changes is an epistemic problem that should be answered on the basis of established, replicable, and valid data. If prospective DBS recipients delay or refuse to be implanted because they are afraid of suffering from personality changes following DBS, and their fears are based on unsubstantiated claims made in the neuroethics literature, then researchers making these claims bear great responsibility for prospective (...) recipients' medical decisions and subsequent well-being. Our article “Deflating the ‘DBS causes personality’ bubble” reported an increase in theoretical neuroethics publications suggesting putative DBS-induced changes to personality, identity, agency, autonomy, authenticity and/or self and a critical lack of supporting primary empirical studies. This special issue of Neuroethics brings together responses to our initial publication, with our own counter-responses organized according to common themes. We provide a brief summary for each commentary and its main criticisms as well as a discussion of the way in which these responses can: 1) help clarify the meaning of PIAAAS, suggesting supplementary frameworks for understanding the impact of DBS on PIAAAS; 2) provide further empirical evidence of PIAAAS by presenting results from the researchers’ own work; and/or 3) offer a critique of our research approach and/or findings. Unintended postoperative putative changes to PIAAAS remain a critical ethical concern. It is beyond dispute that we need to develop reliable empirical and conceptual instruments able to measure complex cognitive, affective, and behavioural changes in order to investigate whether they are attributable to DBS alone. (shrink)

This paper describes how fictionalism can be coupled with the quietism of Carnap, to create the position ‘Neo-Carnapian Fictionalism’. Carnap argues that it is not meaningful to question reality in an external sense to assess what really exists, rather it is only meaningful to talk in an internal sense within a framework about what exists according to the framework rules. I use the concept of fictions in place of frameworks to argue that we ought to treat much seemingly ontologically committing (...) language as consisting in nothing more than a useful heuristic and as being fictional. This reframes ontological debates as being based around the practical advantages of utilizing a way of speaking in a fictionalist manner. The aim of this paper is thus to resurrect Carnap’s metaontology in the form of a deflated global fictionalism, that is divorced from the antirealism usually associated with fictionalism, where the fictionalism is based on quietism instead of antirealism. (shrink)

Many people feel compelled to interpret, describe, and respond to Large Language Models (LLMs) as if they possess inner mental lives sim- ilar to our own. Responses to this phenomenon have varied. Inflation- ists hold that at least some folk psychological ascriptions to LLMs are warranted. Deflationists argue that all such attributions of mentality to LLMs are misplaced, often cautioning against the risk that anthropomor- phic projection may lead to misplaced trust or potentially even confusion about the moral status of (...) LLMs. We advance this debate by assessing two common deflationary arguments against LLM mentality. What we term the robustness strategy aims to undercut one justification for believing that LLMs are minded entities by showing that putatively cognitive and humanlike behaviours are not robust, failing to generalise appropriately. What we term the etiological strategy undercuts attributions of mental- ity by challenging naive causal explanations of LLM behaviours, offering alternative causal accounts that weaken the case for mental state attribu- tions. While both strategies offer powerful challenges to full-blown infla- tionism, we find that neither strategy provides a knock-down case against ascriptions of mentality to LLMs simpliciter. With this in mind, we ex- plore a modest form of inflationism that permits ascriptions of mentality to LLMs under certain conditions. Specifically, we argue that folk prac- tice provides a defeasible basis for attributing mental states and capacities to LLMs provided those mental states and capacities can be understood in metaphysically undemanding terms (e.g. knowledge, beliefs and de- sires), while greater caution is required when attributing metaphysically demanding mental phenomena such as phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

It seems that no philosopher these days wants a theory of truth which can be accused of being metaphysical. But even if we agree that grandiose metaphysics is to be spurned, even if we agree that our theory of truth should be a deflated one, the controversy does not die down. A variety of deflationist options present themselves. Some, with Richard Rorty, take the notion of truth to be so wedded to metaphysics that we are advised to drop it altogether. (...) Others, with Paul Horwich, take the disquotational or equivalence schema—'p' is T if and only if p—to completely capture the content of the predicate 'is true'. And others argue that there is a conception of truth to be had which is non-metaphysical but which goes beyond the triviality expressed by the disquotational schema. (shrink)

This review critically examines Frances Egan’s Deflating Mental Representation (MIT Press, 2025), a seminal work in the philosophy of mind that challenges traditional conceptions of mental representation and intentionality. Egan argues for a deflationary account wherein ascriptions of content to mental states are pragmatically grounded and serve primarily as explanatory tools, rather than reflecting substantive representational relations. The book navigates scientific, everyday, and philosophical contexts, showing how content attribution functions as a “gloss” that aids explanation without committing to metaphysical assumptions (...) about representation. While Egan’s approach offers solutions to long-standing debates, it also faces critical tensions regarding the individuation of mental states and the role of the external environment. This review highlights both the originality and the philosophical challenges of Egan’s position, underscoring the book’s contribution to ongoing debates in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

If we must take mathematical statements to be true, must we also believe in the existence of abstract eternal invisible mathematical objects accessible only by the power of pure thought? Jody Azzouni says no, and he claims that the way to escape such commitments is to accept (as an essential part of scientific doctrine) true statements which are about objects that don't exist in any sense at all. Azzouni illustrates what the metaphysical landscape looks like once we avoid a militant (...) Realism which forces our commitment to anything that our theories quantify. Escaping metaphysical straitjackets (such as the correspondence theory of truth), while retaining the insight that some truths are about objects that do exist, Azzouni says that we can sort scientifically-given objects into two categories: ones which exist, and to which we forge instrumental access in order to learn their properties, and ones which do not, that is, which are made up in exactly the same sense that fictional objects are. He offers as a case study a small portion of Newtonian physics, and one result of his classification of its ontological commitments, is that it does not commit us to absolute space and time. (shrink)

This chapter presents what is called ’deflated truth pluralism.’ The aim is not to argue for a particular version of deflated truth pluralism, but rather only to illustrate the sort of view involved. This sort of truth pluralism is deflated in at least two senses: it essentially revolves around a deflationary conception of truth; and it acknowledges only deflationarily respectable truth-predicates in the plurality. After presenting the view and motivation for it, the chapter closes by briefly responding to a few (...) objections and/or questions about deflated truth pluralism. (shrink)

If we take mathematical statements to be true, then must we also believe in the existence of invisible mathematical objects, accessible only by the power of thought? Jody Azzouni says we do not have to, and claims that the way to escape such a commitment is to accept - as an essential part of scientific doctrine - true statements which are 'about' objects which don't exist in any real sense.

Underestimation of reliability is discussed from the viewpoint of deflation in estimates of reliability caused by artificial systematic technical or mechanical error in the estimates of correlation. Most traditional estimators of reliability embed product–moment correlation coefficient in the form of item–score correlation or principal component or factor loading. PMC is known to be severely affected by several sources of deflation such as the difficulty level of the item and discrepancy of the scales of the variables of interest and, (...) hence, the estimates by Rit and λi are always deflated in the settings related to estimating reliability. As a short-cut to deflation-corrected estimators of reliability, this article suggests a procedure where Rit and λi in the estimators of reliability are replaced by alternative estimators of correlation that are less deflated. These estimators are called deflation-corrected estimators of reliability. Several families of DCERs are proposed and their behavior is studied by using polychoric correlation coefficient, Goodman–Kruskal gamma, and Somers delta as examples of MEC-corrected coefficients of correlation. (shrink)

Precis of Deflating Mental Representation for a book symposium.

This paper seeks to deflate G. A. Cohen ’s recent meta-ethical argument that fundamental principles must be “fact-insensitive.” That argument does not advance Cohen ’s dispute with Rawls and other social contract theorists. There is attenuated sense of “factinsensitivity” which they can happily grant, which Cohen never rules out on specifically metaethical grounds. While his barrage of substantive arguments may retain independent force, the argument from fact-insensitivity is largely inconsequential.

This chapter contains sections titled: 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5.

Deflationists about truth seek to undermine debates about the nature of truth by arguing that the truth predicate is merely a device that allows us to express a certain kind of generality. I argue that a parallel approach is available in the case of logical consequence. Just as deflationism about truth offers an alternative to accounts of truth's nature in terms of correspondence or justification, deflationism about consequence promises an alternative to model-theoretic or proof-theoretic accounts of consequence's nature. I then (...) argue, against considerations put forward by Field and Beall, that Curry's paradox no more rules out deflationism about consequence than the liar paradox rules out deflationism about truth. (shrink)

Horwich’s paper is an intriguing and subtle attempt to extend deflationism from the theory of truth to the theory of meaning. Horwich endorses a use-theory of meaning which claims that one replacement instance of the schema “‘x’ means x”, e.g. “‘t1’ means t1”, is paraphrasable as U(‘t1’), while another replacement instance is..

In his early writings on business cycle theory and the Great Depression Hayek argued that business cycle downturns including the steep downturn of 1929–1931 were caused by unsustainable elongations of capital structure of the economy resulting from bank-financed investment in excess of voluntary saving. Because monetary expansion was the cause of the crisis, Hayek argued that monetary expansion was an inappropriate remedy to cure the deflation and high unemployment caused by the crisis. He therefore recommended allowing the Depression to (...) take its course until the distortions that led to the downturn could be corrected by market forces. However, this view of the Depression was at odds with Hayek’s own neutral money criterion which implied that prices should fall during expansions and rise during contractions so that nominal spending would remain more or less constant over the cycle. Although Hayek strongly favoured allowing prices to fall in the expansion, he did not follow the logic of his own theory in favouring generally increasing prices during the contraction. This chapter explores the reasons for Hayek’s reluctance to follow the logic of his own theory in his early policy recommendations. The key factors responsible for his early policy recommendations seem to be his attachment to the gold standard and the seeming necessity for countries to accept deflation to maintain convertibility and his hope or expectation that deflation would overwhelm the price rigidities that he believed were obstructing the price mechanism from speeding a recovery. By 1935, Hayek’s attachment to the gold standard was starting to weaken, and in later years he openly acknowledged that he had been mistaken not to favor policy measures, including monetary expansion, designed to stabilize total spending. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deflating Psychiatric ClassificationClaudio E. M. Banzato (bio)Keywordsnosography, comorbidity, utility, pragmatismSystems of classification bring order into the world. They are a key part of the informational working infrastructure of the world we inhabit (Bowker and Star 1999). Thus, much of the human interaction hinges on these ordering—pattern identifying and creating—systems. Formal or informal, standardized or ad hoc, visible or invisible, enforced or optional, there are a myriad of classifications we (...) necessarily live by.Typically, classifications convey representations of states of affairs to make interventions on them feasible and, to some extent, predictable. In other words, classificatory systems and schemes try to confer intelligibility to the world. By succeeding in such task, they may provide rational grounds to human operation on reality (toward the most diverse ends). This account fully applies to medical classifications, which struggle to sort out all kinds of diseases, ailments, complaints, and sufferings that can possibly be targeted by medical interventions. This means classifications are instrumental to the ends pursued by medicine, quintessential modificatory activity. In sum, classifications are cognitive tools devised to build up knowledge by making relevant distinctions, which may prove helpful to guide human action.By working well, classifications eventually tend to become invisible. They end up looking just natural, as if they were carved by nature itself. But indeed purpose is the touchstone here. Even if a given class of objects fully qualifies as a 'natural kind' and necessary and sufficient criteria for class membership can be definitely established, it does not entail that it constitutes the best way to classify these objects irrespective of the context. Peter Zachar (2002) offers a compelling example from natural sciences, the utmost practical importance of distinguishing between hydrogen and its isotopes (hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium). In this case, the classificatory thrust stretches beyond the shared atomic number. In his words, "A crucial factor in recognizing them as distinct is that they are used in distinct activities and practices. We get a better neutron bounce with heavy water or D2O. Deciding what aspects of internal structure are important therefore cannot be isolated from external factors." (p. 220)In contemporary psychiatry, diagnostic classification has been center stage for several reasons. But before addressing them, however, a brief historical detour is necessary. Back in the nineteenth century, putting forward a new classification of mental diseases was taken somewhat as a token of psychiatric proficiency according to the witty remark by the French physician and publicist Philippe Buchez: "Upon believing that they have [End Page 23] completed their studies, rhetoricians will compose a tragedy and alienists a classification" (Berrios 1999, 152). By the middle of the twentieth century, many psychiatric classifications (based on diverse principles and underlying theoretical orientations) were still used across the world. The British psychiatrist Erwin Stengel (1959), in his influential report on classification of mental disorders, pointed out that the issue of difficulty of communication was then the order of the day for psychiatry, because it was widely perceived as one of the most serious obstacles to the progress in the field.The broad, worldwide survey carried out by Stengel made it clear that classifications of all shapes were used in different contexts, but they were seldom appealing outside the boundaries of the respective centers that generated them. Such diversity of classifications reflected not only different functions or purposes they were meant to serve, but also the role played by the history of a given problem within a particular medical tradition and cultural background. Thus, Stengel's aims for an acceptable statistical international classification were relatively modest: it should simply ground epidemiological work.Stengel's stance on classification was frankly pragmatic and utilitarian. He understood well the difficulties posed by the 'disease entity' assumption in psychiatry and asked the straight question: "Firstly, what do we classify in this field? Are we classifying diseases or people?", to which he offered a compromised answer: "It may be said that the material the psychiatrist has to classify consists neither of diseases nor of people but of a variety of disorders or reactions, a material which does not readily lend itself to classification" (Stengel 1959, 612). For him, the pursued agreement on the... (shrink)

Fred Dretske asserts that the conscious or phenomenal experiences associated with our perceptual states—e.g. the qualitative or subjective features involved in visual or auditory states—are identical to properties that things have according to our representations of them. This is Dretske's version of the currently popular representational theory of consciousness. After explicating the core of Dretske's representational thesis, I offer two criticisms. I suggest that Dretske's view fails to apply to a broad range of mental phenomena that have rather distinctive subjective (...) or qualitative features. I also suggest that Dretske's view, in identifying conscious experiences with features of our perceptual states, casts its aim too low. It deflates further than it should and, in consequence, fails to capture what are arguably some of the most important phenomena associated with our conscious lives. (shrink)

Throughout his discussion, Clark speaks constantly of phenomenal and qualitative properties. But properties, like any other posited entities, ought to earn their explanatory keep, and this I don't think Clark's phenomenal or qualitative properties actually do. I argue that all the work he enlists for them could be done better by purely intentional contents of our sentient states; that is, they could better be regarded as mere intentional properties, not real ones. Clark eschews such intentionalism, but I see no reason (...) for him to resist a properly deflated version of it that I sketch. Moreover, such intentionalism seems to me to stand a better chance than Clark's reliance on properties in explaining the peculiar ways in which experience appears to us that so concern the qualiaphile. (shrink)

A criticism of Arthur Collins' attempt to deflate beliefs states by treating them as merely correctness-making properties of persons.

ABSTRACT:‘Race’ has long searched for a stable, suitable idea, with no consensus on a master meaning in sight. What I call deflationary pluralism about the existence of race recognizes that various meanings may be true as far as they go but avoids murky disputes over whether there are races in some sense. Once we have rejected the notion that racial essences yield innate cognitive differences, there is little point to arguing over the race idea. In its place, I propose the (...) idea of socioancestry, which jettisons racial thinking yet recognizes the social dynamics of color. For example, Black Americans, many of whom have traceable non-African ancestry, constitute an Africa-identified, socioancestrally black subgroup. ‘Race’ talk is not needed to sustain legitimate color-conscious approaches to social identity and social justice. Long-standing fixation on the race idea has obscured the simple truth that visible continental ancestry is the root of the social reality of color consciousness. (shrink)

In Truth and Objectivity, Crispin Wright argues that because truth is a distinctively normative property, it cannot be as metaphysically insubstantive as deflationists claim. We offer a reconstruction of Wright’s Inflationary Argument that highlights the steps required to establish its inflationary conclusion. We argue that if a certain metaphysical and epistemological view of a given subject matter is accepted, a local counterexample to the Inflationary Argument can be constructed. As a case study we focus on the domain of basic taste. (...) We develop two variants of a subjectivist and relativist metaphysics and epistemology that seem palatable in that domain and we show that the Inflationary Argument doesn’t go through in the domain of basic taste thus construed. We conclude by briefly discussing the significance of this result for the debate on alethic pluralism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn my response to Ganeri's [2018] paper, I take Buddhagosha's deflationary account of episodic memory one step further through the analysis of the Madhyamaka philosopher Candrakīrti who, like Buddhagosha, explicitly defends episodic memory as a recollection of the objects experienced in the past, rather than subjective experience. However, unlike Buddhagosha, Candrakīrti deflates episodic memory by showing the incoherence of the Sautrāntika-Yogācāra's thesis that episodic memory requires the admission of reflexive awareness. Also unlike Buddhagosha, Candrakīrti shows the incoherence of the Mimāṁsāka-Naiyāyika's (...) self-implication requirement thesis, therefore directly countering Tulving's challenge to the Buddhist philosophers, by arguing that episodic memory is capable of mental time travel without any reference to the operation of enduring self. I will thus suggest that Candrakīrti may have even greater success in deflating the self-implication requirement of episodic memory. (shrink)

Perhaps the greatest determinant of individual and societal welfare is who raises children and with what degree of discretion. Philosophers have endeavored in myriad ways to provide normative justification for ascribing a right to be a legal parent and to possess particular legal powers as a parent. This Article shows why they fail and offers an alternative theoretical framework for delimiting parental rights. The prevailing tendency in philosophical writing on the topic is to begin with observations and intuitions specific to (...) parent-child relationships. Against that tendency, this Article demonstrates the need to begin with principles at a high level of generality, covering a broad range of human relationships. This yields a much more limited moral right in connection with parenthood than do accounts that fail to generalize. (shrink)

Christopher Timpson proposes a deflationary view about information, according to which the term ‘information’ is an abstract noun and, as a consequence, information is not part of the material contents of the world. The main purpose of the present article consists in supplying a critical analysis of this proposal, which will lead us to conclude that information is an item even more abstract than what Timpson claims. From this view, we embrace a pluralist stance that recognizes the legitimacy of different (...) interpretations of the concept of information. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse scalar-tensor theories—specific instances of which include mainstream inflation and dark energy models—in light of the spacetime-matter dichotomy. We argue that it is difficult to categorise the scalar fields as either a pure aspect of the spacetime structure or a pure form of matter, by focusing on the Jordan vs Einstein frames of these theories. We present and evaluate various interpretational options available, concluding that the spacetime—matter dichotomy becomes untenable in this context. At the same time, (...) the ontological and conceptual category of spacetime can be decoupled from that of gravity, with the latter remaining viable in the context of scalar-tensor theories. (shrink)

Attitudinal embeddings, such as ‘I hope that murder is wrong’ or ‘she is glad that eating meat is not wrong’ are a less substantial problem for expressivists than is standardly thought. If expressivists are entitled to talk of normative beliefs, they can explain what it is to for an attitude to be semantically related to a normative content in terms of being functionally related to a belief with a normative content.

This is a shorter version of the paper. The longer version can be found under "Dante, the Deflation of Reason, and Education in Virtue." In the book he developed from his lectures on medieval and renaissance literature, The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis notes the dramatic deflation of conceptualizations of “reason” since the dawn of the modern era. In Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la Rose (1230), we see: “Reason the beautiful, a gracious lady, a humbled goddess…plead[ing] with the (...) lover as a celestial mistress, a rival to his earthly love.” Likewise, in his De Consolatione Philosophiae, Boethius’s Lady Philosophy seems semi-divine, her head effortlessly “pierc[ing] within the very heavens.” This is Reason as “intelligentia obumbrata…the shadow of angelic nature in man.” Nor were these lofty notions confined to the Middle Ages. Aristotle saw man’s “rational soul” as “the most divine element in us.” Plato likewise saw the “golden cord” of reason as “holy.” By 1755 however, Samuel Johnson could define “reason” in his influential Dictionary of the English Language as merely “the power by which man deduces one proposition from another, or proceeds from premises to consequences.” That is, reason had become a mere faculty of “calculation.” Such a faculty could obviously have no desires or ends of its own. Hence, in 1740, David Hume could note confidently that “reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will.” This deflation plays an explanatory role in many of the seismic shifts that have come to define modern thought. This paper paints a portrait of an earlier, and in my opinion much richer, view of “reason” and man’s “intellect.” My goal is to lay out a less familiar vision of rationality, and to show where it intersects with fault lines in modern thought. To make this contrast all the more stark, we shall not use one of the great pre-modern philosophers of mind for our comparison. Rather, we shall look to the greatest poet of the Middle Ages—and perhaps any age—to Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy. (shrink)

I argue that the metaphysical import of the Aharonov-Bohm effect has been overstated: correctly understood, it does not require either rejection of gauge invariance or any novel form of nonlocality. The conclusion that it does require one or the other follows from a failure to keep track, in the analysis, of the complex scalar field to which the magnetic vector potential is coupled. Once this is recognised, the way is clear to a local account of the ontology of electrodynamics ; (...) I sketch a possible such account. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that experience is given in the first person in a special way, different from the way it is presented in the third person. To say that an experience is given to the subject in a special way might be taken to mean that there is a special way a subject can come to know her own experience. The claim under scrutiny is that one cannot accept the idea that there is a special way a subject can (...) come to know her own experience and yet reject the presence of phenomenal mineness. I label this contention the mineness link. I argue against it and propose an alternative. An argument against the mineness link is not as such an argument against phenomenal mineness. The present project might be understood as arguing for the epistemological inefficiency of mineness, rather than for its psychological unreality. (shrink)

Yet, he also says that it is philosophically indeterminate which criterion for what exists is correct. Nominalism is the view that certain objects ( i.e ., abstract objects) do not exist, and not the view that it is philosophically indeterminate whether or not they do. I resolve the dilemma that Azzouni's claims pose: Azzouni is a non-factualist about what exists, but he is a factualist about which criterion for what exists our community of speakers has adopted. It is in the (...) latter sense only that Azzouni can call himself a nominalist. My thanks to Jody Azzouni and to an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

I assess Edwards' two principal arguments against Deflationary conceptions of Truth and argue that neither is fully successful, then revisit the ‘Inflationary’ argument of chapter 1 of Truth and Objectivity. A case is outlined for a more variegated account of the opposition between realist and anti-realist views of different regions of thought than Edwards' account permits.

Can manipulated agents be morally responsible for what they do? According to hard-line structuralism, yes. On this view, manipulated agents are responsible in virtue of satisfying the relevant structural conditions taken to be sufficient for responsibility. Historicists disagree, claiming that responsibility also has a historical dimension. Here, I offer a two-step defense of hard-line structuralism. The first is deflationary: I argue that the kind of manipulation that best serves the historicists entails certain structural properties that already meet the normative demands (...) historicists invoke to justify historical conditions. The second is debunking: I argue that our reluctance to attribute responsibility to manipulated agents stems from an anchoring bias toward their pre-manipulation psychology, a bias that lacks normative justification. (shrink)

A new explanatory challenge of time perception presented by Gerardo Viera (2020) lies in reconciling three different ways time appears perceptually unified with the empirical data of how the mechanisms underlying time perception are fragmented and dissociable. Viera (2020) argues that existing models of time perception that locate this unity at the level of the mechanisms fail to meet this explanatory challenge. I propose that this challenge can be met if we adopt Pedersen’s (2024) hybrid theory of temporal binding. This (...) theory accounts for the temporal organisation of perception without taking it to be a function of synchronous processing or some centralised temporal integration mechanism. Instead, this organisation depends on the attentional modulation of hybrid retrodictive and predictive sensory processing. Effectively, the accounts suggest that temporal organisation of perception is achieved through selective attentional modulation that biases perception towards representing some subset sensory features that make up coherent and behaviourally useful perceptions. I explain how we can use this theory to account for the different kinds of perceived unity of time while also accounting for the disunified organisation of the underlying mechanisms. This view entails that we should deflate the phenomenological richness of this perceived unity relative to the limits and selectivity of attention. (shrink)

My approach to the compositionality of meaning is deflationary in two respects. In the first place it shows that there is no need for a Tarski‐style truth‐theoretic account of it, and thereby avoids the difficult methodological and technical problems that would have to be solved on such an account. And in the second place it shows that compositionality imposes no constraint whatsoever on theories of lexical meaning. On the first of these points I am opposing Davidson and the tradition in (...) semantics that he instigated. On the second point I am opposing Fodor and Lepore who have denounced various accounts of lexical meaning (including the one I favour – the use theory) for not squaring with compositionality. My plan for this paper is to outline the deflationary approach, to sketch its advantages, and to defend it against objections that have been made by Davidson, Fodor and Lepore. (shrink)

In the book he developed from his lectures on medieval and renaissance literature, The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis notes the dramatic deflation of conceptualizations of “reason” since the dawn of the modern era. In Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la Rose (1230), we see: “Reason the beautiful, a gracious lady, a humbled goddess…plead[ing] with the lover as a celestial mistress, a rival to his earthly love.” Likewise, in his De Consolatione Philosophiae, Boethius’s Lady Philosophy seems semi-divine, her head effortlessly (...) “pierc[ing] within the very heavens.” This is Reason as “intelligentia obumbrata…the shadow of angelic nature in man.” Nor were these lofty notions confined to the Middle Ages. Aristotle saw man’s “rational soul” as “the most divine element in us.” Plato likewise saw the “golden cord” of reason as “holy.” By 1755 however, Samuel Johnson could define “reason” in his influential Dictionary of the English Language as merely “the power by which man deduces one proposition from another, or proceeds from premises to consequences.” That is, reason had become a mere faculty of “calculation.” Such a faculty could obviously have no desires or ends of its own. Hence, in 1740, David Hume could note confidently that “reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will.” This deflation plays an explanatory role in many of the seismic shifts that have come to define modern thought. This paper paints a portrait of an earlier, and in my opinion much richer, view of “reason” and man’s “intellect.” My goal is to lay out a less familiar vision of rationality, and to show where it intersects with fault lines in modern thought. To make this contrast all the more stark, we shall not use one of the great pre-modern philosophers of mind for our comparison. Rather, we shall look to the greatest poet of the Middle Ages—and perhaps any age—to Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy. (shrink)