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Hybrid accounts of folk psychology maintain that we sometimes theorize and sometimes simulate in order to understand others. An important question is why this is the case. In this paper, I present a view according to which simulation, but not theory, plays a central role in empathy. In contrast to others taking a similar approach to simulation, I do not focus on empathy’s cognitive aspect, but stress its affective-motivational one. Simulating others’ emotions usually engages our motivations altruistically. By vicariously feeling what others are feeling, we directly come to be motivated by their projects and concerns. Simulation contrasts with more theoretical approaches to psychological attribution that help us understand and explan others, but that do not move us altruistically. This helps us see why we would posit two different folk psychological approaches instead of merely one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physicalists are committed to the determination without remainder of the psychological by the physical, but are they committed to this determination being a priori? This paper distinguishes this question understood de dicto from this question understood de re, argues that understood de re the answer is yes in a way that leaves open the answer to the question understood de dicto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I shall argue that if the Parfitian psychological criterion or theory of personal identity is true, then a good case can be made out to show that the psychological theorist should accept the view I call “psychological sequentialism”. This is the view that a causal connection is not necessary for what matters in survival, as long as certain other conditions are met. I argue this by way of Parfit’s own principle that what matters in survival cannot depend upon a trivial fact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will discuss Kim’s powerful explanatory exclusion argument against the causal efficacy of mental properties. Baker and Burge misconstrue Kim’s challenge if they understand it as being based on a purely metaphysical understanding of causation that has no grounding in an epistemological analysis of our successful scientific practices. As I will show, the emphasis on explanatory practices can only be effective in answering Kim if it is understood as being part of the dual-explanandum strategy. Furthermore, a fundamental problem of the contemporary debate about mental causation consists in the fact that all sides take very different examples to be paradigmatic for the relation between psychological and neurobiological explanations. Even if we should expect some alignment in the explanatory scope of neurobiology and psychology/folk-psychology, there is no reason to expect that all mental explanations are exempted by physical explanations, since they do not in general explain the same phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of Williamson's main contentions in his book is that knowing is a mental state. Knowing, however, is not a luminous condition, as many mental states seem to be, since one can know without being in a position to know that one knows. Williamson recognizes this fact but contends that it should not discourage one from accepting that knowing is a mental state, for, according to Williamson, even a mental state as seemingly luminous as feeling cold can be shown to be non-luminous. In this paper, we argue that a key premise in Williamson's anti-luminosity argument about feeling cold is problematic in virtue of the dubious epistemological ideas that underlie the premise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the question of whether the expected consequences of holding a belief can affect the rationality of doing so. Special attention is given to various ways in which one might attempt to exert some measure of control over what one believes and the normative status of the beliefs that result from the successful execution of such projects. I argue that the lessons which emerge from thinking about the case of belief have important implications for the way we should think about the rationality of a number of other propositional attitudes, such as regret, desire, and fear. Finally, I suggest that a lack of clarity with respect to the relevant issues has given rise to a number of rather serious philosophical mistakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Descartes conceives of theoretical reason in terms derived from practical reason, particularly in the role he gives to the passions. That the passions serve – under ``normal'' circumstances – to preserve the union of mind and body is a well-known feature of Descartes's defense of our native make-up. But they are equally important in our more purely theoretical endeavors. Some passions, most notably ``wonder,'' provide a crucial source of motivation in the search after truth, and also serve to reinforce memory. Our cognitive successes and failures can also be tracked by passions and trains of passions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first section of this paper, I articulate Jaegwon Kim's argument against emergent downward causation. In the second section, I canvas four responses to Kim's argument and argue that each fails. In the third section, I show that emergent downward causation does not, contra Kim, entail overdetermination. I argue that supervenience of emergent upon base properties is not sufficient for nomological causal relations between emergent and base properties. What sustains Kim's argument is rather the claim that emergent properties realized by base properties can have no causal powers distinct from those base properties. I argue that this is false. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attractive admirer of George Bernard Shaw once wrote to him with a not-so modest proposal: ``You have the greatest brain in the world, and I have the most beautiful body; so we ought to produce the most perfect child.'' Shaw replied: ``What if the child inherits my body and your brains?'' What if, indeed? Shaw's retort is interesting not because it reveals a grasp of elementary genetics, but rather because it suggests his grasp of an interesting and important principle of axiology. Since the brainy but ugly Shaw and his beautiful but apparently dim admirer both fall short of the ideal, she suggests that the best thing would be to genetically recombine his intelligence with her beauty. But what then would be the value of another genetic possibility: that of recombining his ugliness with her stupidity? Underlining the prompted inference is a fundamental principle of the theory of value which, perhaps surprisingly, has so far gone largely unnoticed in the ethical literature. I will call it the principle of recombinant values. It is the purpose of this paper to formulate the principle in a way which makes its content obvious and accessible; to motivate the principle philosophically; to both disentangle it from, and exhibit its relations to, principles of evaluative reasoning; to show how this purely qualitative principle meshes with the infamous thesis of additivity of value; and finally, to use it to ground a rather simple but quite general theory of the intrinsic value of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If mental anomalism is to be interpreted as a thesis unique to psychology, the anomalousness must be grounded in some feature unique to the mental, presumably its rational nature. While the ground for such arguments from normativity has been notoriously slippery terrain, there are two recently influential strategies which make the argument precise. The first is to deny the possibility of psychophysical bridge laws because of the different constitutive essences of mental and physical laws, and the second is to argue that mental anomalism follows from the uncodifiability of rationality. In this paper I argue that both strategies fail – the latter because it conflates prima facie and all things considered rationality and the former because it rests on a false premise, the principle of the rational character of belief. I distinguish four different formulations of this principle and argue that those formulations which are plausible cannot support the argument for mental anomalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are judgements and wishes really brain events (or brain states) which will be affirmed by a completed scientific account of how human behavior is caused? Materialists, other than eliminativists, say Yes. But brain events do not cause muscle contractions, hence bodily movements, directly. They do so, if at all, by triggering intermediate causes, viz. firings in motor nerves. So it is crucial, this paper argues, whether they are characterized as biological events – performances of naturally-selected-for operations – or instead as complex microphysical events. ``A causes B, B causes C, so A causes C'' is defensible for biological brain events, but fails for microphysical ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents pain as mental object. It explicitly defends the thesis that pain is a mental object, and it is a major goal of this paper to dispute this view, and argue that pain is more accurately described adverbially as the way that one perceive or sense something, rather than something we perceive or sense. Furthermore the author believe that the mental object view of pain is the source of other problems and disputes in this area. Perhaps to clearly establish the difference between the connate and the alien accusative it would help to consider some other similar cases.