Throughout Mary Shelley’s early life, she was exposed to numerous well-known and influential people regarding cultural, political, and socio-economic matters. As she began writing, these influences undoubtedly played a role in her narrative. Her novel, _Frankenstein_, written during the time of the first Industrial Revolution in Britain, was one such novel that exhibited her political and economic influences through science fiction. This article addresses many of those influences, including the introduction of the machine into manufacturing. It further addresses how Frankenstein’s (...) Monster may have been one of the first created forms of artificial intelligence (AI). We further expound upon many economic concepts that have persisted through time and are relevant today given the faciliatory aspects, as well as the uncertainty, of AI. We relate these through the literary piece _Frankenstein_ to explore how a two-century-year-old tale provides a blueprint for understanding the conflict among humans and machines and provides a roadmap for harmonization in the past, present, and future. (shrink)

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, (...) some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

Philosophy is a reflective activity. So perhaps it is unsurprising that many philosophers have claimed that reflection plays an important role in shaping and even improving our philosophical thinking. This hypothesis seems plausible given that training in philosophy has correlated with better performance on tests of reflection and reflective reasoning has correlated with demonstrably better judgments in a variety of domains. This article reviews the hypothesized roles of reflection in philosophical thinking as well as the empirical evidence for these roles. (...) This reveals that although there are fairly reliable links between reflection and philosophical judgment among both laypeople and philosophers, the role of reflection in philosophical thinking may nonetheless depend in part on other factors, some of which have yet to be determined. So progress in research on reflection in philosophy may require further innovation in experimental methods and psychometric validation of philosophical measures. (shrink)

The received view of implicit bias holds that it is associative and unreflective. Recently, the received view has been challenged. Some argue that implicit bias is not predicated on “any” associative process, but it is unreflective. These arguments rely, in part, on debiasing experiments. They proceed as follows. If implicit bias is associative and unreflective, then certain experimental manipulations cannot change implicitly biased behavior. However, these manipulations can change such behavior. So, implicit bias is not associative and unreflective. This paper (...) finds philosophical and empirical problems with that argument. When the problems are solved, the conclusion is not quite right: implicit bias is not necessarily unreflective, but it seems to be associative. Further, the paper shows that even if legitimate non-associative interventions on implicit bias exist, then both the received view and its recent contender would be false. In their stead would be interactionism or minimalism about implicit bias. (shrink)

The Socratic method has long been venerated for its ability to produce insightful and engaging academic discourse in the classroom. It has also been criticized, however, for encouraging an overly aggressive and, perhaps, combative teaching style, as well as for its potential stultifying and manipulative effect on students. Assessing its merits, though, is a difficult task, as there is little consensus as to what constitutes a successful application of the Socratic method. Addressing this issue requires a closer examination of Plato’s (...) dialogues, our main source for descriptions of Socrates’s pedagogical practices, in the hope that they might provide us with a clearer and richer understanding of the principles that guide Socrates as he questions his interlocutors. While we cannot undertake anything near an exhaustive examination in this chapter, our aim is instead to uncover some important features of the underlying pedagogical model employed in the dialogues most closely associated with the Socratic method. After examining these features in light of recent criticisms, we conclude that educators today still have good reason to look to this ancient method for inspiration. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of cognitive reflection tests assumes that correct responses are reflective and lured responses are unreflective. However, prior process-tracing of mathematical reflection tests has cast doubt on this interpretation. In two studies (N = 201), we deployed a validated think-aloud protocol in-person and online to test how this assumption is satisfied by the new, validated, less familiar, and less mathematical verbal Cognitive Reflection Test (vCRT). Importantly, thinking aloud did not disrupt test performance compared to a control group. Moreover, (...) verbalized thoughts in both studies revealed that most (but not all) correct responses involved reflection and that most (but not all) lured responses lacked reflection. These data suggest that the vCRT usually satisfies the standard interpretation of the reflection tests (albeit not without exceptions) and that the vCRT can be a good measure of the construct theorized by the two-factor explication of ‘reflection’ (as deliberate and conscious). (shrink)

Conventional sacrificial moral dilemmas propose directly causing some harm to prevent greater harm. Theory suggests that accepting such actions (consistent with utilitarian philosophy) involves more reflective reasoning than rejecting such actions (consistent with deontological philosophy). However, past findings do not always replicate, confound different kinds of reflection, and employ conventional sacrificial dilemmas that treat utilitarian and deontological considerations as opposite. In two studies, we examined whether past findings would replicate when employing process dissociation to assess deontological and utilitarian inclinations independently. (...) Findings suggested two categorically different impacts of reflection: measures of arithmetic reflection, such as the Cognitive Reflection Test, predicted only utilitarian, not deontological, response tendencies. However, measures of logical reflection, such as performance on logical syllogisms, positively predicted both utilitarian and deontological tendencies. These studies replicate some findings, clarify others, and reveal opportunity for additional nuance in dual process theorist’s claims about the link between reflection and dilemma judgments. (shrink)

Many studies find reflective thinking predicts less belief in God or less religiosity — so-called analytic atheism. However, the most widely used tests of reflection confound reflection with ancillary abilities such as numeracy, some studies do not detect analytic atheism in every country, experimentally encouraging reflection makes some non-believers more open to believing in God, and one of the most common sources of online research participants seems to produce lower data quality. So analytic atheism may be less than universal or (...) partially explained by confounding factors. To test this, we developed better measures, controlled for more confounds, and employed more recruitment methods. All four studies detected signs of analytic atheism above and beyond confounds (N > 70,000 people from five of six continental regions). We also discovered analytic apostasy: the better a person performed on reflection tests, the greater their odds of losing their religion since childhood — even when controlling for confounds. Analytic apostasy even seemed to explain analytic atheism: apostates were more reflective than others and analytic atheism was undetected after excluding apostates. Religious conversion was rare and unrelated to reflection, suggesting reflection’s relationships to conversion and deconversion are asymmetric. Detected relationships were usually small, indicating reflective thinking is a reliable albeit marginal predictor of apostasy. (shrink)

Reflective reasoning has been central to philosophy and cognitive science more generally. However, scholars lack a unified empirical explication of ‘reflection’. This paper synthesizes a cross-disciplinary account from philosophers, scientists, and centuries of English speakers: ‘reflection’ often refers to—among other things—conscious and deliberate reconsideration of an initial intuition. This two-factor account of reflection empirically distinguishes reflection from often conflated phenomena such as rumination; it also tidily classifies self-conscious reflection as a subset of reflection. This account also accommodates mounting evidence that (...) reflection is neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality. The two-factor account has implications for philosophy (e.g., that both practical and theoretical reasoning can benefit from reflection) and science (e.g., that reflection can be a solution to rather than just a symptom of negative rumination). So the two-factor account should be preferred to accounts that do less to unify, make sense of, and guide philosophy and science. (shrink)

Published in 1797, the Doctrine of Right is Kant's most significant contribution to legal and political philosophy. As the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals, it deals with the legal rights which persons have or can acquire, and aims at providing the grounding for lasting international peace through the idea of the juridical state. This commentary analyzes Kant's system of individual rights, starting from the original innate right to external freedom, and ending with the right to own property and (...) to have contractual and family claims. Clear and to the point, it guides readers through the most difficult passages of the Doctrine, explaining Kant's terminology, method and ideas in the light of his intellectual environment. One of the very few commentaries on the Doctrine of Right available in English, this book will be essential for anyone with a strong interest in Kant's moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

Reflectivists consider reflective reasoning crucial for good judgment and action. Anti-reflectivists deny that reflection delivers what reflectivists seek. Alas, the evidence is mixed. So, does reflection confer normative value or not? This paper argues for a middle way: reflection can confer normative value, but its ability to do this is bound by such factors as what we might call epistemic identity: an identity that involves particular beliefs—for example, religious and political identities. We may reflectively defend our identities’ beliefs rather than (...) reflect open-mindedly to adopt whatever beliefs cohere with the best arguments and evidence. This bounded reflectivism is explicated with an algorithmic model of reflection synthesized from philosophy and science that yields testable predictions, psychometric implications, and realistic metaphilosophical suggestions—for example, overcoming motivated reflection may require embracing epistemic identity rather than veiling it (à la Rawls 1971). So bounded reflectivism should be preferred to views offering anything less. (shrink)

By late 20th century, the rationality wars had launched debates about the nature and norms of intuitive and reflective thinking. Those debates drew from mid-20th century ideas such as bounded rationality, which challenged more idealized notions of rationality observed since the 19th century. Now that 21st century cognitive scientists are applying the resulting dual process theories to artificial intelligence, it is time to dust off some lessons from this history. So this paper synthesizes old ideas with recent results from experiments (...) on humans and machines. The result is Strategic Reflectivism, which takes the position that one key to intelligent systems (human or artificial) is pragmatic switching between intuitive and reflective inference to optimally fulfill competing goals. Strategic Reflectivism builds on American Pragmatism, transcends superficial indicators of reflective thinking such as model size or chains of thought, and becomes increasingly actionable as we learn more about the value of intuition and reflection. (shrink)

This paper presents a new interpretation of the objects of dianoia in Plato’s divided line, contending that they are mental images of the Forms hypothesized by the dianoetic reasoner. The paper is divided into two parts. A survey of the contemporary debate over the identity of the objects of dianoia yields three criteria a successful interpretation should meet. Then, it is argued that the mental images interpretation, in addition to proving consistent with key passages in the middle books of the (...) Republic, better meets those criteria than do any of the three main positions. (shrink)

Our understanding of implicit bias and how to measure it has yet to be settled. Various debates between cognitive scientists are unresolved. Moreover, the public’s understanding of implicit bias tests continues to lag behind cognitive scientists’. These discrepancies pose potential problems. After all, a great deal of implicit bias research has been publicly funded. Further, implicit bias tests continue to feature in discourse about public- and private-sector policies surrounding discrimination, inequality, and even the purpose of science. We aim to do (...) our part by reconstructing some of the recent arguments in ordinary language and then revealing some of the operative norms or values that are often hidden beneath the surface of these arguments. This may help the public learn more about the science of implicit bias. It may also help both laypeople and scientists reflect on the values, interests, and stakeholders involved in establishing, justifying, and communicating scientific research. (shrink)

In Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory: A View from the Wretched, Dustin J. Byrd and Seyed Javad Miri bring together a collection of essays by a variety of scholars who explore the lasting influence of Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist, revolutionary, and social theorist. Fanon's work not only gave voice to the "wretched" in the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), but also shaped the radical resistance to colonialism, empire, and racism throughout much of the world. His seminal works, such as (...) Black Skin, White Masks, and The Wretched of the Earth, were read by The Black Panther Party in the United States, anti-imperialists in Africa and Asia, and anti-monarchist revolutionaries in the Middle East. Today, many revolutionaries and scholars have returned to Fanon's work, as it continues to shed light on the nature of colonial domination, racism, and class oppression. Contributors include: Syed Farid Alatas, Rose Brewer, Dustin J. Byrd, Sean Chabot, Richard Curtis, Nigel C. Gibson, Ali Harfouch, Timothy Kerswell, Seyed Javad Miri, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pramod K. Nayar, Elena Flores Ruiz, Majid Sharifi, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib and Esmaeil Zeiny. (shrink)

In his book, The Frankfurt School and the Dialectics of Religion: Translating Critical Faith into Critical Theory, Dustin J. Byrd argues that at the core of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory is a secularized theology. Unlike their predecessors, especially Feuerbach, Marx, Lenin, Freud, and Nietzsche, who argued for an abstract negation of religion, the first generation of Critical Theorists followed Hegel's logic and attempted to rescue and preserve the revolutionary, emancipatory, and liberational aspects of religion in their secular non-conformist (...) philosophy. They saw in both Judaism and Christianity certain conceptual and semantic elements that could be enlisted into their struggle for a future reconciled society, one beyond the slaughterbench of history. In order to rescue religion, theological concepts had to go through the process of determinate negation, wherein such materials migrate from the depth of the religious mythos into publicly accessible reasoning, thus making the revolutionary impulse of prophetic religion accessible to the secular world. Byrd also argues that this determinate negation of religion remains relevant to today's post-secular societies, especially in regard to religious Muslims attempting to find their place in Western countries, which are often hostile to religion and religiosity. Examining the strengths and weaknesses of Habermas' famous "translation proviso," he argues that both religious and secular citizens of the West can learn from the Frankfurt School's dialectical approach to religion in order to find a space wherein both religious faith and secular reason can not only co-exist, but also join together in the process of creating a more reconciled future society. (shrink)

In this article, derria byrd contends that more robust interrogation of the organizational contribution to inequity in higher education would be aided by understanding higher education organizations as social actors. Organizational social actor theory demonstrates that colleges and universities are more than inert contexts in which marginalized students' experiences and outcomes play out. They are entities that possess unique dispositional orientations, motives, and inclinations toward action. This conceptual article argues that engagement with institutional habitus, grounded in Pierre Bourdieu's theory (...) of practice, situates colleges and universities as social actors whose structural positions generate interests, beliefs, and behaviors that tend to constrain opportunity for students. The concept shifts the empirical gaze from students to colleges and universities in examinations of education inequity and facilitates analysis of how colleges' social position and the organizational identity, opportunities, and limitations it engenders support and/or inhibit organizational practice, including transformation toward equity. byrd crafts this argument in five parts: (1) exploration of organizational social actorhood theory, (2) overview of Bourdieu's theoretical framework and key conceptual tools, (3) expansions on Bourdieu's foundational formula to demonstrate how institutional habitus supplements the theorist's framework, (4) purposeful engagement with critiques of how institutional habitus has been employed in educational research, and (5) guiding principles for empirical engagement with institutional habitus. Throughout, byrd employs a collective case study of three college campuses to ground the theoretical review in empirical realities and uncover the invisible influence of social power on organizational practice. Given Bourdieu's attention to higher education and broad concern for systemic inequities reproduced at this level, this article focuses on higher education but has implications for educational research more broadly. (shrink)

Reflective reasoning often correlates with certain philosophical decisions, but it is often unclear whether reflection causes those decisions. So a pre-registered experiment assessed how reflective thinking relates to decisions about 10 thought experiments from epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of mind. Participants from the United States were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk, CloudResearch, Prolific, and a university. One participant source yielded up to 18 times as many low-quality respondents as the other three. Among remaining respondents, some prior correlations between reflective and (...) philosophical thinking replicated. For example, reflection predicted denying that accidentally justified true beliefs count as knowledge. However, reflection test order did not impact philosophical decisions. Instead, a philosophical reflection effect emerged: making philosophical decisions before the reflection test improved reflection test performance. These and other data suggest causal paths between reflection and philosophy can go both directions, but detecting such results can depend on factors such as data quality. (shrink)

: The traditional "doctrinal" approach to interpreting Plato's dialogues has been criticized in recent literature on grounds that it can neither account for the structural complexities of the dialogues nor resolve conflicts within or between dialogues. Accordingly, a non-doctrinal, dramatic approach has been offered in its place. In response to this literature, I argue that, though the doctrinal approach is flawed, the non-doctrinal, dramatic approach does not provide a viable alternative. Instead, I offer a revised doctrinal approach based upon Socrates' (...) discussion of "summoners" in Republic 522e–525a and supported by the Meno. (shrink)

Frankfurt-type examples seem to show that agents can be morally responsible for their actions and omissions even if they could not have done otherwise. Fischer and Ravizza's influential account of moral responsibility is largely based on such examples. I examine a problem with their account of responsibility in cases where we fail to act. The solution to this problem has a surprising and far reaching implication concerning the construction of successful Frankfurt-type examples. I argue that the role of the counterfactual (...) intervener in such examples can only be filled by a rational agent. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have revealed systematic errors in human reasoning. There is disagreement about what these errors indicate about human rationality, but one upshot seems clear: human reasoning does not seem to fit traditional views of human rationality. This concern about rationality has made its way through various fields and has recently caught the attention of philosophers. The concern is that if philosophers are prone to systematic errors in reasoning, then the integrity of philosophy would be threatened. In this paper, I (...) present some of the more famous work in cognitive science that has marshaled this concern. Then I present reasons to think that those with training in philosophy will be less prone to certain systematic errors in reasoning. The suggestion is that if philosophers could be shown to be less prone to such errors, then the worries about the integrity of philosophy could be constrained. Then I present evidence that, according to performance on the CRT (Frederick 2005), those who have benefited from training and selection in philosophy are indeed less prone to one kind of systematic error: irrationally arbitrating between intuitive and reflective responses. Nonetheless, philosophers are not entirely immune to this systematic error, and their proclivity for this error is statistically related to their responses to a variety of philosophical questions. So, while the evidence herein puts constraints on the worries about the integrity of philosophy, it by no means eliminates these worries. The conclusion, then, is that the present evidence offers prima facie reasons to ascribe a mitigated privilege to philosophers' ability to rationally arbitrate between intuitive and reflective responses. (shrink)

Philosophers have probably been organizing conferences since at least the time of Plato’s academy (Barnes, 1998). More recently, philosophers have brought some of their conferences online (e.g., Brown, 2009; Buckner, Byrd, Rushing, & Schwenkler, 2017; Calzavarini & Viola, 2018; Nadelhoffer, 2006). However, the adoption of online conferences is limited. One might wonder if scholars prefer traditional conferences for their ability to provide goods that online conferences cannot. While this may be true, online conferences outshine traditional conferences in various ways, (...) and at a significantly lower cost. By considering the costs and benefits of both conference models, we may find reasons to prefer online to traditional conferences in some circumstances. This paper shares the methods, quantitative results, and qualitative results of the Minds Online conferences of 2015, 2016, and 2017. The evidence suggests that the online conference model can help scholars better understand their profession, share the workload of conference organizing, increase representation for underrepresented groups, increase accessibility to attendees, decrease monetary costs for everyone involved, sustain conference activity during states of emergency, and reduce their carbon footprint. So, the advantages of traditional conferences might be outweighed by their higher costs after all. (shrink)

Traditionally, incompatibilism has rested on two theses. First, the familiar Principle of Alternative Possibilities says that we cannot be morally responsible for what we do unless we could have done otherwise. Accepting this principle, incompatibilists have then argued that there is no room for such alternative possibilities in a deterministic world. Recently, however, a number of philosophers have argued that incompatibilism about moral responsibility can be defended independently of these traditional theses (Ginet 2005: 604-8; McKenna 2001; Stump 1999: 322-4, 2000 (...) and 2002; van Inwagen 1983: 182-8; and Zagzebski 2000). Incompatibilists of this stripe are generally motivated by the concern that, if determinism.. (shrink)

In response to crises, people sometimes prioritize fewer specific identifiable victims over many unspecified statistical victims. How other factors can explain this bias remains unclear. So two experiments investigated how complying with public health recommendations during the COVID19 pandemic depended on victim portrayal, reflection, and philosophical beliefs (Total N = 998). Only one experiment found that messaging about individual victims increased compliance compared to messaging about statistical victims—i.e., "flatten the curve" graphs—an effect that was undetected after controlling for other factors. (...) However, messaging about flu (vs. COVID19) indirectly reduced compliance by reducing perceived threat of the pandemic. Nevertheless, moral beliefs predicted compliance better than messaging and reflection in both experiments. The second experiment’s additional measures revealed that religiosity, political preferences, and beliefs about science also predicted compliance. This suggests that flouting public health recommendations may be less about ineffective messaging or reasoning than philosophical differences. (shrink)

1. EXPLICATING THE CONCEPT OF REFLECTION (under review) To understand how ‘reflection’ is used, I consider ordinary, philosophical, and scientific discourse. I find that ‘reflection’ seems to refer to reasoning that is deliberate and conscious, but not necessarily self-conscious. Then I offer an empirical explication of reflection’s conscious and deliberate features. These explications not only help explain how reflection can be detected; they also distinguish reflection from nearby concepts such as ruminative and reformative reasoning. After this, I find that reflection (...) is not obviously limited to only practical or only theoretical reasoning. The chapter ends with reasons to prefer ‘unreflective’ and ‘reflective’ to dual process theorists’ labels about systems or types. 2. BOUNDED REFLECTIVISM & EPISTEMIC IDENTITY (in Metaphilosophy) Reflection features centrally in philosophy (e.g., Korsgaard, 1996; Rawls, 1971; Sosa, 1991) and psychology (e.g., Pennycook, 2018). Bounded reflectivism is an empirically adequate model of reflection that explains reflection’s capacity to either help or hinder reasoning—e.g., reflective equilibrium vs. reflective polarization (e.g., Kahan et al., 2017). One innovation of the model is epistemic identity: an identity that involves particular beliefs—e.g., religious and political identities. When we feel that our epistemic identity is threatened, we can reflectively defend its beliefs rather than update our beliefs according to the best arguments and evidence. The solution, I argue, is not to suppress epistemic identity but embrace it by appealing to shared, superordinate epistemic identities. 3. ALL MEASURES ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL (under review) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? “10 cents” comes to most people’s minds immediately. However, upon reflection, we can realize that “5 cents” is the correct answer. There are many reflection tests. Each has its limitations. Some reflection tests are mathematical—like the bat-and-ball problem (e.g., Frederick, 2005) and others are logical (e.g., Janis & Frick, 1943). So there are concerns that reflection tests track logical and mathematical competence rather than reflection per se. Also, some psychologists assume a priori that correct answers are reflective and lured answers are unreflective. New evidence raises additional concerns about the plausibility of these assumptions. I argue that think aloud protocols (Ericsson & Simon, 1998) and process dissociation (Jacoby, 1991) can assuage some of these concerns. 4. GREAT MINDS DO NOT THINK ALIKE (in Review of Philosophy and Psychology) Two large studies (N = 1299), one pre-registered, found that many correlations between reflection and philosophical beliefs among non-philosophers replicated among philosophers. For example, less reflective philosophers preferred theism to atheism and utilitarian rather than deontological responses to the trolley problem (Hannikainen & Cova, in prep.; Pennycook et al., 2016; Reynolds, Byrd, & Conway, forthcoming). However, philosophical judgments were sometimes better predicted by factors like education, gender, and personality than by reflection test performance. So although some relationships between reflection and philosophy were robust, there is more to the link between reflection and philosophy. Normative implications are also discussed—e.g., how we can infer the quality of philosophical views from their correlations with reflective or unreflective reasoning. 5. WHAT WE CAN (AND CAN’T) INFER ABOUT IMPLICIT BIAS (in Synthese) Contrary to some philosophers and psychologists, I argue that implicit bias is probably associative. However, I also argue that debiasing is not thereby entirely unconscious and involuntary. Indeed, strong evidence suggests that reflection can change implicitly biased behavior—e.g., conscious and deliberate counterconditioning. This has implications for the science and morality of implicit bias—e.g., evidence suggests that we can reform biases; so. intuitively, we can be responsible for biases. (shrink)

"The Critical Theory of Religion: From the Frankfurt School to Emancipatory Islamic Thought" is a collection of essay of Dr. Dustin J. Byrd, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Olivet College. The book concerns the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society and how it relates to religion, especially Islam, in the contemporary world.

Many competing ideas exist around teaching ‘standard’ high school social studies subjects such as history, government, geography, and economics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of social studies teaching and learning as a moral activity. I first propose that current high school curriculum standards in the United States often fail in focusing on the kinds of sustained discourse and ideas necessary for students to develop an awareness and commitment to justice in a pluralistic society. I then (...) make the argument that understanding social studies as an inherently moral activity creates a space for transformative and meaningful learning to occur. Lastly, I contend that public schools are inextricably linked to understanding and creating elements of a just society and as such, hold equal potential to both support and severely hinder its development. (shrink)

Though Socrates appears to present examples of mathematicians hypothesizing entities in Republic 510c3-6, most interpreters assume that he really means that they hypothesize propositions. After establishing the plausibility of the entities interpretation, I show that it is fruitful in respect to locating the objects of dianoia, addressing the question of whether Plato held a theory of mathematical intermediates, and explaining the inferiority of mathematical reasoning to dialectic.

In chapter 9 of De Interpretatione, Aristotle offers a defense of free will against the threat of fatalism. According to the traditional interpretation, Aristotle concedes the validity of the fatalist's arguments and then proceeds to reject the Principle of Bivalence in order to avoid the fatalist's conclusion. Assuming that the traditional interpretation is right on this point, it remains to be seen why Aristotle felt compelled to reject such an intuitive semantic principle rather than challenge the fatalist's inference from truth (...) to necessity. The answer, I contend, lies in Aristotle's theory of truth and truthmakers. (shrink)

1. Introduction It is generally assumed that, during his early pre-critical phase, Kant accepted a Leibnizian account of freedom according to which we are free to do otherwise than we do even though our actions are determined. This assumption is false. Far from endorsing such an account, Kant explicitly argues in the New Elucidation of the First Principle of Metaphysical Cognition that there is no relevant sense in which we can do otherwise than we do. Nevertheless, he is equally convinced (...) that we are free and responsible for our actions. And so he concludes that we can be responsible for what we do even if we could not have done otherwise. Little attention, however, has been paid to this argument. This is unfortunate, since a better understanding of this stage in Kant's theory of freedom would surely help us in understanding the later critical developments. This paper seeks to remedy this deficiency. (shrink)

Depression is a common and devastating instance of ill-being which deserves an account. Moreover, the ill-being of depression is impacted by digital technology: some uses of digital technology increase such ill-being while other uses of digital technology increase well-being. So a good account of ill-being would explicate the antecedents of depressive symptoms and their relief, digitally and otherwise. This paper borrows a causal network account of well-being and applies it to ill-being, particularly depression. Causal networks are found to provide a (...) principled, coherent, intuitively plausible, and empirically adequate account of cases of depression in every-day and digital contexts. Causal network accounts of ill-being also offer philosophical, scientific, and practical utility. Insofar as other accounts of ill-being cannot offer these advantages, we should prefer causal network accounts of ill-being. (shrink)

In connection with his discussion of the three Ulpian formulae, Kant introduces three “leges,” namely the “lex iusti,” the “lex iuridica,” and the “lex iustitiae,” which he then defines in § 41 of the Doctrine of Right. The three “leges” correspond to the attributes “right,” “juridical,” and “established as right.” These three attributes in turn relate to the possibility, the reality, and the (material) necessity of our rights and juridical duties. The three “leges” and attributes have certain consequences for the (...) division of public justice, public justice being constitutive of the juridical state, into “iustitia tutatrix,” “iustitia commutativa,” and “iustitia distributiva.” This article provides a comprehensive account of all these concepts from § 41 of the Doctrine of Right. It also explains what until now has seemed to be a rather cryptic comment Kant makes at the end of his discussion of the Ulpian formulae regarding internal and external legal duties, and those legal duties that contain the derivation of the external legal duties from the principle of the internal legal duties through subsumption. Indeed the article provides the key to understanding the entire Doctrine of Right from a totally new perspective. (shrink)

Some argue that rationality requires a type of consistency between an agent's beliefs and her intentions, so that it is irrational for an agent to intend to act or to intend to act conditionally if she also believes that she could not do so in the relevant circumstances. Both practical and theoretical reasons have been offered in support of this consistency requirement. Likewise, there might appear to be similar practical and theoretical reasons supporting an additional requirement about conditions. According to (...) this additional requirement, it is also irrational for an agent to intend to act conditionally when she believes that the condition cannot be met. Reflecting on potential counterexamples to both requirements, I argue that the consistency requirement about conditions appears significantly less plausible than the requirement about actions. While it may typically be irrational for an agent to plan for conditions she thinks are impossible, there are occasions when it is rational to do so. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the problem of accounting for apparent inconsistencies between Plato’s early and middle works. Developmentalism seeks to account for these variances by differentiating a Socratic philosophy in the early dialogues from a Platonic philosophy in the middle. In opposition to this position, I propose an alternative explanation: differences between these two groups are due to Plato’s depiction and use of middle period epistemology. I argue that, in the early dialogues, Plato depicts Socrates’ use of the (...) “summoners” described in Book 7 of the Republic, and that Plato uses Socrates’ failed attempts to summon interlocutors for the purpose of summoning readers. In conclusion, I suggest that the hypothesis that Plato uses summoners provides a framework for addressing the wider problem of inconsistencies within the Platonic corpus. (shrink)

Some have argued that our sense of free will is an illusion. And some base this free will skepticism on claims about when we become consciously aware of our intentions. Evidence suggests that unreflective intentions form before we are conscious of them. And that is supposed to challenge our sense of free will. This inference from unreflective intention to free will skepticism may seem intuitive at first. However, upon reflection, this argument seems to entail a magical view of free will. (...) So, insofar as free will does not require magic, unreflective intentions do not necessarily undermine our sense of free will. (shrink)

Over one million annual deaths have been attributed to bacterial antimicrobial resistance. Although antibiotics have saved countless other lives, overuse and misuse of antibiotics increases this global threat. Developing new antibiotics and retraining clinicians can be undermined by patients who pressure clinicians to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics. So we validated two low-cost, scalable interventions for improving antibiotic decisions in an online randomized control trial and a pre-registered replication (N = 985). Both first-person vignette experiments found that an infographic and text message (...) caused intermediate to large improvements in antibiotic decisions compared to active controls — even when controlling for a dozen confounds. Notably, these educational interventions also reduced trust in a clinician who offered antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection. These data show how low-cost adjustments to existing communication systems can teach people to reduce the existential risks of antibiotic resistance and how inappropriate antibiotic prescribing can erode trust in health systems. (shrink)