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465Contrastivity and indistinguishabilitySocial Epistemology 22 (3). 2008.We give a general description of a class of contrastive constructions, intended to capture what is common to contrastive knowledge, belief, hope, fear, understanding and other cases where one expresses a propositional attitude in terms of “rather than”. The crucial element is the agent's incapacity to distinguish some possibilities from others. Contrastivity requires a course-graining of the set of possible worlds. As a result, contrastivity will usually cut across logical consequence, so that a…Read more
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457If I were a Dry Well-Made MatchDialogue 12 (2): 322-324. 1973.I discuss Goodman's claim that when 'all As are Bs' is a law then the counterfactual 'if a were an A, it would be a B' is tue. I give counterexamples, and link the failure of the connection to the contrast between higher level and lower level laws
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455Folk PsychologyIn Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. 2009.I survey the previous 20 years work on the nature of folk psychology, with particular emphasis on the original debate between theory theorists and simulation theorists, and the positions that have emerged from this debate.
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450Because he thought he had insulted himJournal of Philosophy 72 (1): 5-15. 1975.I compare our idioms for quantifying into belief contexts to our idioms for quantifying into intention contexts. The latter is complicated by the fact that there is always a discrepancy between the action as intended and the action as performed. The article contains - this is written long after it appeared - an early version of a tracking or sensitivity analysis of the relation between a thought and its object.
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450Human bounds: rationality for our speciesSynthese 176 (1). 2010.Is there such a thing as bounded rationality? I first try to make sense of the question, and then to suggest which of the disambiguated versions might have answers. We need an account of bounded rationality that takes account of detailed contingent facts about the ways in which human beings fail to perform as we might ideally want to. But we should not think in terms of rules or norms which define good responses to an individual's limitations, but rather in terms of desiderata, situations that l…Read more
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443Incommensurability, incomparability, and practical reason, Ruth Chang (ed.), Harvard university press, 1998, 303 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 16 (1): 147-174. 2000.review of Ruth Chang's collection in which I argue that the apparent agreements between the authors disguise underlying important differences.
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441Review: John L. Pollock: Thinking About Acting: Logical Foundations for Rational Decision Making (review)Mind 117 (467): 716-719. 2008.a review of John Pollock's *Thinking about Acting* with a focus on his aim of describing psychological mechanisms which are humanly feasible.
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437Reasoning: A Social Picture. By Anthony Simon LadenPhilosophical Quarterly 63 (253): 843-846. 2013.review of Laden's *Reasoning: a social picture* praising the aim and expressing puzzlement at the details,.
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434Extensional and non-truth-functional contextsJournal of Philosophy 66 (6): 159-164. 1969.I discuss Frege's argument - later called the slingshot - that if a construction is extensional and preserves logical equivalence then it is truth-functional. I consider some simple apparent counterexamples and conclude that they are not sentence-embedding in the required way.
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432Kinds of ModelsIn Malcolm G. Anderson & Paul D. Bates (eds.), Model Validation: perspectives in hydrological science, Wiley. pp. 11-22. 2001.We separate metaphysical from epistemic questions in the evaluation of models, taking into account the distinctive functions of models as opposed to theories. The examples a\are very varied.
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427Atrocity, Banality, Self-DeceptionPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 12 (3): 257-259. 2005.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 257-259 [Access article in PDF] Atrocity, Banality, Self-Deception Adam Morton Keywords evil, self-deception, banality, atrocity, motivation When talking about evil we must make a fundamental choice about how we are to use the term. We may use it as half of the contrast "good versus evil," in which case it covers everything that is not good. That includes moral incompetence, lack of im…Read more
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426Accomplishing AccomplishmentActa Analytica 27 (1): 1-8. 2012.The concepts of knowledge and accomplishment are duals. There are many parallels between them. In this paper I discuss the "AA" thesis, which is dual to the well known KK thesis. The KK thesis claims that if someone knows something, then she knows that she knows it. This is generally thought to be false, and there are powerful reasons for rejecting it. The AA thesis claims that if someone accomplishes something, then she accomplishes that she accomplishes it. I argue that this, too, is false, an…Read more
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424Mathematical Modelling and Contrastive ExplanationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (Supplement): 251-270. 1990.Mathematical models provide explanations of limited power of specific aspects of phenomena. One way of articulating their limits here, without denying their essential powers, is in terms of contrastive explanation.
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418If you're so smart why are you ignorant? Epistemic causal paradoxesAnalysis 62 (2): 110-116. 2002.I describe epistemic versions of the contrast between causal and conventionally probabilistic decision theory, including an epistemic version of Newcomb's paradox.
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411Mathematics as languageIn Adam Morton & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), Benacerraf and His Critics, Blackwell. pp. 213--227. 1996.I discuss ways in which the linguistic form of mathimatics helps us think mathematically
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407Contrastive KnowledgeIn Martijn Blaauw (ed.), Contrastivism in philosophy, Routledge/taylor & Francis Group. pp. 101-115. 2013.The claim of this paper is that the everyday functions of knowledge make most sense if we see knowledge as contrastive. That is, we can best understand how the concept does what it does by thinking in terms of a relation “a knows that p rather than q.” There is always a contrast with an alternative. Contrastive interpretations of knowledge, and objections to them, have become fairly common in recent philosophy. The version defended here is fairly mild in that there is no suggestion that we canno…Read more
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407Review of Maher *Betting on Theories* (review)Philosophical Books 35 (3): 213-215. 1994.I describe Maher's utility-based account of theory acceptance, generally approvingly but with a few questions and doubts.
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404Epistemic virtues, metavirtues, and computational complexityNoûs 38 (3). 2004.I argue that considerations about computational complexity show that all finite agents need characteristics like those that have been called epistemic virtues. The necessity of these virtues follows in part from the nonexistence of shortcuts, or efficient ways of finding shortcuts, to cognitively expensive routines. It follows that agents must possess the capacities – metavirtues –of developing in advance the cognitive virtues they will need when time and memory are at a premium.
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403Talk About BeliefsPhilosophical Books 35 (1): 47-49. 1994.review of Mark Crimmins' *Talk about Beliefs*
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393The concepts of knowledge and of accomplishment have many similarities. In fact they are duals, in a sense that I explain. Similar issues arise about both of them, deriving from the functions they serve in everyday evaluation of inquiry and action.
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393Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting TogetherPhilosophical Quarterly 65 (260): 582-585. 2015.I praise Bratman's minimal account of shared agency, while expressing some doubts about the explanatory force of his central concepts and some puzzlement about what he means by norms.
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393Review of Yablo *Aboutness* (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2014-09-14). 2014.expanded version of NDPR review of Yablo's Abpoutness
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392Cousins of RegretIn Gottlieb Anna (ed.), the moral psychology of regret, . forthcoming.I classify emotions in the family of regret, remorse, and so on, in such a way that it is easy to see how there can be further emotions in this family, for which we happened not to have names in English. I describe some of these emotions.
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392Formal Semantics of Natural Language (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (4): 805-808. 1982.a review of Keenan, ed. *Formal Semantics of Natural Language*
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385Against the Ramsey testAnalysis 64 (4): 294-299. 2004.I argue against the Ramsey test connecting indicative conditionals with conditional probability, by means of examples in which conditional probability is high but the conditional is intuitively implausible. At the end of the paper, I connect these issues to patterns of belief revision.
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373But are they right? The prospects for empirical conceptologyJournal of Cognition and Culture 6 (1-2): 193-197. 2006.This is exciting stuff. Philosophers have long explored the structure of human concepts from the inside, by manipulating their skills as users of those concepts. And since Quine most reasonable philosophers have accepted that the structure is a contingent matter – we or not too different creatures could have thought differently – which in principle can be..
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373Should We Colonize Other Planets?Polity. 2018.A critical exposition of plans to colonize other planets , especially Mars, and their costs. The final chapter links with issues about the value and future of human life. See the extended summary uploaded to this site.
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371The Presidential Address: Where Demonstratives Meet Vagueness: Possible LanguagesProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1). 1999.I present three invented languages, in order to support a claim that vagueness and demonstrativity are related. One of them handles vagueness like English handles demonstratives, the second handles demonstratives like English handles vagueness, and the third combines the resources of the first two. The argument depends on the claim that all three can be learned and used by anyone who can speak English.
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367Imaginary EmotionsThe Monist 96 (4): 505-516. 2013.I give grounds for taking seriously the possibility that some of the emotions we ascribe do not exist. I build on the premise that the experience of imagining an emotion resembles that of having one. First a person imagines having an emotion. This is much like an emotion, so the person takes herself to be having the emotion that she imagines, and acts or expects a disposition to act accordingly. The view sketched here contrasts possibly impossible emotions such as disembodied passion, blind rag…Read more
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364Decisions, Uncertainty, and the BrainMind 114 (455): 737-739. 2005.I consider Glimcher's claim to have given an account of mental functioning that is at once neurological and decision-theoretical. I am skeptical, but remark on some good ideas of Glimcher's.