•  85
    Illusory Signs as Frustrated Expectations: Undoing Descartes’ Overblown Response
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 79 (3): 1073-1096. 2023.
    Descartes held that it is impossible to make true statements about what we perceive, but I go over alleged cases of illusory experience to show why such a skeptical conclusion (and recourse to God) is overblown. The overreaction, I contend, stems from an insufficient awareness of the habitual expectations brought to any given experience. These expectations manifest themselves in motor terms, as perception constantly prompts and updates an embodied posture of readiness for what might come next. S…Read more
  •  389
    As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated and robots approach autonomous decision-making, debates about how to assign moral responsibility have gained importance, urgency, and sophistication. Answering Stenseke’s (2022a) call for scaffolds that can help us classify views and commitments, we think the current debate space can be represented hierarchically, as answers to key questions. We use the resulting taxonomy of five stances to differentiate—and defend—what is known as the “blank…Read more
  •  137
    分析的是哲学, 欧陆的是文学 ?
    Philosophy Now 109 21-23. 2015.
    马克·尚巴尼论证分析传统所谓的“专业”风格并不能确保论证专业,事实上,也不能保证论证者头 脑清晰。
  •  384
    One’s a Crowd? On Greenwood’s Delimitation of the Social
    Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (4): 519-530. 2013.
    In an effort to carve a distinct place for social facts without lapsing into a holistic ontology, John Greenwood has sought to define social phenomena solely in terms of the attitudes held by the actor in question. I argue that his proposal allows for the possibility of a “lone collectivity” that is unpalatable in its own right and incompatible with the claim that sociology is autonomous from psychology. As such, I conclude that the relevant beliefs need to be held by more than one person
  •  169
    Kantian Humility and Randian Hubris?
    Reason Papers 43 (1). 2023.
    Ayn Rand and Immanuel Kant had profound disagreements, not just about the possible scope of knowledge, but (more importantly) about the possible scope of philosophy, especially metaphysics. This paper explores those disagreements, steel-manning both sides. My conclusion is that 1) both thinkers have worthwhile points to make, yet 2) Rand is guilty of poor scholarship while 3) Kant is guilty of appeal to ignorance. Despite the fallacious nature of (3), I stress that ignorance is not by itself som…Read more
  •  317
    Reality and Semiosis
    In Jamin Pelkey (ed.), Bloomsbury Semiotics Volume 1: History and Semiosis, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022.
    This chapter investigates whether signs and their action, semiosis, are real. It critically surveys three arguments. The first argument consists in holding that semiosis must be real, because denying the reality of signs is self-defeating. This self-confirming status seems to imply that semiosis is the very means by which we partition the mind-independent and mind-dependent. One would then need to clarify this ontological neutrality or priority. The second argument consists in identifying an ins…Read more
  •  326
    My Life Gives the Moral Landscape its Relief
    In Sam Harris: Critical Responses, Carus Books. 2023.
    Sam Harris (2010) argues that, given our neurology, we can experience well-being, and that seeking to maximize this state lets us distinguish the good from the bad. He takes our ability to compare degrees of well-being as his starting point, but I think that the analysis can be pushed further, since there is a (non-religious) reason why well-being is desirable, namely the finite life of an individual organism. It is because death is a constant possibility that things can be assessed as “for” or …Read more
  •  435
    Why Philosophy of Language is Unreliable for Understanding Unreliable Filmic Narration
    Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 59 (2): 43-50. 2022.
    A typical device in film is to have a character narrating what is going on, but this narration is not always a reliable guide to the events. According to Maier, distortions may be caused by the narrator’s intent, naivety, use of drugs, and/or cognitive disorder/illness. What is common to these various causes, he argues, is the presence of a point of view, which appears in a movie as shots. While this perspective-based account of unreliability covers most cases, I unpack its methodological conseq…Read more
  •  709
    A Note on M. Barbieri’s “Scientific Biosemiotics”
    American Journal of Semiotics 25 (1-2): 155-161. 2009.
    A densely-packed critique of some current trends in semiotics
  •  694
    Some Convergences and Divergences in the Realism of Charles Peirce and Ayn Rand
    Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8 (1): 19-39. 2006.
    Structured around Charles S. Peirce's three-fold categorical scheme, this article proposes a comparative study of Ayn Rand and Peirce's realist views in general metaphysics. Rand's stance is seen as diverging with Peirce's argument from asymptotic representation but converging with arguments from brute relation and neutral category. It is argued that, by dismissing traditional subject-object dualisms, Rand and Peirce both propose iconoclastic construals of what it means to be real, dismissals ma…Read more
  •  649
    This paper suggests that it is largely a want of notional distinctions which fosters the “explanatory gap” that has beset the study of consciousness since T. Nagel’s revival of the topic. Modifying Ned Block’s controversial claim that we should countenance a “phenomenal-consciousness” which exists in its own right, we argue that there is a way to recuperate the intuitions he appeals to without engaging in an onerous reification of the facet in question. By renewing with the full type/token/tone …Read more
  •  347
    Analytic Philosophy, Continental Literature?
    Philosophy Now 109 21-23. 2015.
    Marc Champagne argues that the supposedly ’professional’ style of the analytic tradition does not ensure professionalism, nor indeed, clear-mindedness.
  •  792
    What About Suicide Bombers? A Terse Response to a Terse Objection
    Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 11 (2). 2011.
    Stressing that the pronoun "I" picks out one and only one person in the world (i.e., me), I argue against Hunt (and other like-minded Rand commentators) that the supposed "hard case" of destructive people who do not care for their own lives poses no special difficulty for rational egoism. I conclude that the proper response to a terse objection like "What about suicide bombers?" is the equally terse assertion "But I don't want to get blown up."
  •  563
    Just Do It: Schopenhauer and Peirce on the Immediacy of Agency
    Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 18 (2): 209-232. 2014.
    In response to the claim that our sense of will is illusory, some philosophers have called for a better understanding of the phenomenology of agency. Although I am broadly sympathetic with the tenor of this response, I question whether the positive-theoretic blueprint it promotes truly heralds a tenable undertaking. Marshaling a Schopenhauerian insight, I examine the possibility that agency might not be amenable to phenomenological description. Framing this thesis in terms of Charles S. Peirce’s…Read more
  •  956
    Russell and the Newman Problem Revisited
    Analysis and Metaphysics 11. 2012.
    In his 1927 Analysis of Matter and elsewhere, Russell argued that we can successfully infer the structure of the external world from that of our explanatory schemes. While nothing guarantees that the intrinsic qualities of experiences are shared by their objects, he held that the relations tying together those relata perforce mirror relations that actually obtain (these being expressible in the formal idiom of the Principia Mathematica). This claim was subsequently criticized by the Cambridge ma…Read more
  •  254
    Beauvoir and Rand: Asphyxiating People, Having Sex, and Pursuing a Career
    with Mimi Reisel Gladstein
    The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 15 (1): 23-41. 2015.
    In an attempt to start rectifying a lamentable disparity in scholarship, we evince fruitful points of similarity and difference in the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir and Ayn Rand, paying particular attention to their views on long-term projects. Endorsing what might be called an “Ethic of Resolve,” Rand praises those who undertake sustained goal-directed actions such as careers. Beauvoir, however, endorses an “Ethic of Ambiguity” that makes her more skeptical about the prospects of carrying out lif…Read more
  •  557
    The Mandatory Ontology of Robot Responsibility
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 30 (3). 2021.
    Do we suddenly become justified in treating robots like humans by positing new notions like “artificial moral agency” and “artificial moral responsibility”? I answer no. Or, to be more precise, I argue that such notions may become philosophically acceptable only after crucial metaphysical issues have been addressed. My main claim, in sum, is that “artificial moral responsibility” betokens moral responsibility to the same degree that a “fake orgasm” betokens an orgasm.
  •  410
    Jordan Peterson gave a series of lectures on the Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories. His first lecture lasted two hours. In that time, Peterson managed to cover only a single line from the Bible. This lopsided gloss-to-text ratio, I argue, entails that the rational explanations actually do all the work while the Bible is dispensable.
  •  425
    This paper describes how bodily positions and gestures were used to teach argument diagramming to a student who cannot see. After listening to short argumentative passages with a screen reader, the student had to state the conclusion while touching his belly button. When stating a premise, he had to touch one of his shoulders. Premises lending independent support to a conclusion were thus diagrammed by a V-shaped gesture, each shoulder proposition going straight to the conclusion. Premises lendi…Read more
  •  359
    A Pragmatic-Semiotic Defence of Bivalence
    History and Philosophy of Logic 43 (2): 143-157. 2022.
    Since Peirce defined the first operators for three-valued logic, it is usually assumed that he rejected the principle of bivalence. However, I argue that, because bivalence is a principle, the strategy used by Peirce to defend logical principles can be used to defend bivalence. Construing logic as the study of substitutions of equivalent representations, Peirce showed that some patterns of substitution get realized in the very act of questioning them. While I recognize that we can devise non-cla…Read more
  •  749
    Jordan Peterson has attracted a high level of attention. Controversies may bring people into contact with Peterson's work, but ideas are arguably what keep them there. Focusing on those ideas, this book explores Peterson’s answers to perennial questions. What is common to all humans, regardless of their background? Is complete knowledge ever possible? What would constitute a meaningful life? Why have humans evolved the capacity for intelligence? Should one treat others as individuals or as memb…Read more
  •  617
    Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs: A New Précis
    American Journal of Semiotics 35 (3/4): 443-462. 2019.
    I will be talking today about the limits of cognitive science. I won’t be talking about contingent shortcomings that could perhaps be remedied with, say, more time, resources, or ingenuity. Rather, I will be concerned with limitations that are “baked into” the very enterprise. The main blind spot, I will argue, is consciousness—but not for the reasons typically given. Current work in philosophy of mind can sometimes seem arcane, so my goal today will be to answer the question: why bother? I have…Read more
  •  461
    Day shift God, night shift God
    Think 19 (54): 81-88. 2020.
    It is usually thought that only one being can be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. Challenging this monotheist conviction, I propose a universe ruled by two deities: ‘day shift God’ oversees the events that occur while the sun is up, whereas ‘night shift God’ oversees the events that occur while the sun is down. I survey objections to this proposal and conclude that the real obstacle is not an argument, but an aesthetic preference.
  •  1025
    Some have suggested that images can be arguments. Images can certainly bolster the acceptability of individual premises. We worry, though, that the static nature of images prevents them from ever playing a genuinely argumentative role. To show this, we call attention to a dilemma. The conclusion of a visual argument will either be explicit or implicit. If a visual argument includes its conclusion, then that conclusion must be demarcated from the premise or otherwise the argument will beg the que…Read more
  •  491
    ____ is Necessary for Interpreting a Proposition
    Chinese Semiotic Studies 15 (1). 2019.
    In Natural propositions (2014), Stjernfelt contends that the interpretation of a proposition or dicisign requires the joint action of two kinds of signs. A proposition must contain a sign that conveys a general quality. This function can be served by a similarity-based icon or code-based symbol. In addition, a proposition must situate or apply this general quality, so that the predication can become liable of being true or false. This function is served by an index. Stjernfelt rightly considers …Read more
  •  623
    Diagrams and alien ways of thinking
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 75 (C): 12-22. 2019.
    The recent wave of data on exoplanets lends support to METI ventures (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), insofar as the more exoplanets we find, the more likely it is that “exominds” await our messages. Yet, despite these astronomical advances, there are presently no well-confirmed tests against which to check the design of interstellar messages. In the meantime, the best we can do is distance ourselves from terracentric assumptions. There is no reason, for example, to assume that all…Read more
  •  760
    It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – its etymolo…Read more