Philosophy Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2799
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Item Epistemic "Might": A Non-Epistemic Analysis(2019) Harr, Quinn; Williams, Alexander; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A speaker of (1) implies that she is uncertain whether (2), making this use of might “epistemic.” On the received view, the implication is semantic, but in this dissertation I argue that this implication is no more semantic than is the implication that a speaker of (2) believes John to be contagious. (1) John might be contagious. (2) John is contagious. This follows from a new observation: unlike claims with explicitly epistemic locutions, those made with “epistemic” uses of might can be explained only with reference to non-epistemic facts. I conclude that they express a relation, not to relevant information, but instead to relevant circumstances, and that uncertainty is implied only because of how informed speakers contribute to conversations. This conclusion dissolves old puzzles about disagreements and reported beliefs involving propositions expressed with might, puzzles that have been hard for the received view to accommodate. The cost of these advantages is to explain why the circumstantial modality expressed by might is not inherently oriented towards the future, as has been claimed for other circumstantial modalities. But this claim turns out to be false. The correct characterization of the temporal differences reveals that the modality expressed by might relates to propositions whereas other modalities relate to events. Neither sort is epistemic.Item Some Epistemological and Practical Challenges to Moral Realism: Evolutionary Debunking, Overgeneralization, and Afterward(2019) Licon, Jimmy Alfonso; Carruthers, Peter; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I examine epistemological and practical challenges to robust moral realism – the view that moral facts are independent of actual or idealized minds, and causally inert (hereafter moral realism). Following an introductory chapter, in the next two chapters, I examine an epistemic challenge to moral knowledge (given moral realism) emanating from the so-called 'evolutionary debunking arguments' (EDAs). In the second chapter, I argue that capacity approaches are more plausible than content approaches in that the (i) capacity approach is a more pernicious threat to moral realism; and, (ii) the content approach faces a greater explanatory burden. In the third chapter, I argue that the overgeneralization objection to EDAs – they viciously overgeneralize to domains like the epistemic – faces a dilemma: either EDAs don't overgeneralize as there is an independent reason to trust our beliefs in such non-moral domains; or, they benignly overgeneralize to non-moral domains, if we lack an independent reason, and evolution would plausibly be distorting, in that domain. Either way, EDAs don't viciously overgeneralize. In the last chapter, I evaluate moral fictionalism: the view that we have practical reasons to think and act morally (e.g. it enhances self-control), despite holding skeptical or deflationary metaethical views. I argue that there are good philosophical and empirical reasons to think that (a) discarding beliefs is far harder than fictionalists claim; and, (b) robust moral dispositions one would need to effectively think and act morally would inculcate belief, pace moral fictionalism. Finally, I argue that keeping moral beliefs mitigates moral risk: there is a live epistemic possibility that (a) we could be wrong in our skeptical or deflationary metaethical views, and (b) if our views about such matters are mistaken, but we act on them, we risk acting seriously wrongly. This is another practical reason to think and act morally. And we must be motivated to act morally to mitigate moral risk – so we should preserve our moral beliefs. So, we have practical reasons to keep our moral beliefs, instead of morally pretending.Item Mindreading for Cooperation: a moderately minimalist approach(2019) Schoenher, Julius; Carruthers, Peter; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation puts forth a series of arguments about the extent to which human cooperative interaction is fundamentally shaped by mindreading; i.e. the capability to reason about the psychological causes (e.g. intentions, beliefs, goals) of behavior. The introduction to this dissertation discusses the broad philosophical underpinnings that lay the foundations for more specific philosophical issues under discussion in subsequent chapters. In chapter two, I argue that a thorough interpretation of the relevant empirical evidence suggests that mindreading is fast, effortlessly deployed, and operative sub-personally. For this reason, mindreading is principally well-suited to enable most everyday cooperative interactions. In the appendix, I (in collaboration with Evan Westra ) elaborate on this picture, arguing that the cognitive mechanisms operative in social interactions are, in all relevant respects, similar to those operative in non-interactive situations. While chapter two and the appendix defend the idea that the cognitive faculties responsible for mindreading are fit to enable cooperative interactions, chapters three and four take this perspective for granted and discusses whether human cooperation is crucially dependent on a form of reciprocal attribution of mental states that is often labeled common knowledge. In chapter three of this dissertation I address, and reject, the oft defended idea that truly performing an action together with others requires that all parties commonly know their intended goals. I argue that this view is fundamentally mistaken. Successfully acting together with others often requires not knowing these goals. Chapter four explores reciprocal belief attribution in the context of coordination problems. Humans often coordinate their actions by replicating successful past choices; they reason based on precedent. Philosophers have often claimed that solving coordination problems by relying on precedent presupposes common knowledge that all parties rely on precedent in trying to coordinate their actions. Chapter four points out that this assumption is erroneous: Coordinating behavior on the basis of precedent is broadly incompatible with any higher-order knowledge (or beliefs) about the other agents’ choices.Item Disadvantage in Context: From Microaggressions to Healthcare Policy(2019) Perez Gomez, Javiera Maximiliana; Kerstein, Samuel J; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Many dimensions of applied ethics appeal to consequentialist moral theories to evaluate the moral permissibility of an action, practice, or policy. But such an approach risks obscuring other, non-consequentialist concerns. In line with this worry, this dissertation seeks to clarify and morally examine three phenomena that may compound the disadvantages that members of historically and currently disadvantaged groups face: microaggressions, the promotion of prenatal testing for selective abortion, and the allocation of scarce medical resources. Chapter 1, “Disadvantage in Context,” describes the notion of disadvantage that is relevant to this dissertation and explains the relation between Chapters 2-4. Chapter 2, “Microaggressions: What’s the Big Deal?” argues that the standard view of microaggressions, which holds that microaggressions are harmful because they express devaluing messages about members of disadvantaged groups, is too underdeveloped both for identifying microaggressions and for explaining why they are morally objectionable. I then offer an improved account of microaggressions according to which it is the content of what is expressed that determines when microaggressions are morally objectionable. Chapter 3, “When Is the Promotion of Prenatal Testing for Selective Abortion Wrong?” addresses the imprecisions of the expressivist objection to prenatal testing, which maintains that when medical professionals promote the use of prenatal testing for abortion on grounds of disability, they express a harmful, devaluing message to and about extant disabled people. I then offer an improved formulation of this objection according to which the promotion of prenatal testing for selective abortion is sometimes wrong. Chapter 4, “Indirect Benefits and Double Jeopardy in the Allocation of Scarce, Lifesaving Resources,” examines the question of whether or not benefits to third parties, e.g., saving their lives or improving socioeconomic conditions, should count when resources are scarce and not all can be saved. By recruiting the notion of ‘double jeopardy,’ which, as I argue, can be understood in two distinct ways, I aim to give a stronger foundation for the idea that counting indirect benefits such as social contribution would be wrong—at least given certain social conditions.Item The Nature of Governmental Authority(2019) Phillips, Cindy; Morris, Christopher W; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation puts forward a series of arguments and theoretical proposals concerning institutional authority—particularly, governmental authority. I attend to conceptual debates regarding the function of legal systems and the nature of authority. Moreover, I cover a normative debate regarding the permissible use of political power. The overall view that I build is that governmental institutions have a decision-making authority over the status of certain normative relations in society, and they were designed to have this decision-making authority to serve the need of making group decisions, despite persistent disagreements about policy outcomes, in order to solve practical problems. Chapter 1, “My Overall Perspective,” provides a guide to my overall view regarding the nature of governmental authority. This PhD dissertation takes the form of the three-paper model, and a reader may not see the conceptual links between these papers. In this chapter, I present the view on the nature of governmental authority that comes out of these papers. Chapter 2, “The Presumption of Liberty and the Coerciveness of the State,” presents a challenge to skeptics who think that nearly all uses of political power is impermissible. I argue that a state can engage in permissible uses of political power over a broad range of domains without possessing any entitlements. Chapter 3, “What Authority Is, What It Is Not,” argues against the orthodoxy that authority is a species of power over others. I then build and defend the view that authority is a status that authorizes a person or entity to change one’s normative status. Chapter 4, “Law’s Function as a Decision-Procedure” provides an analysis of how we can determine the law’s essential function. I use this analysis to argue that the law’s essential function is a decision-making one. Each of these chapters is a standalone paper. None of these papers presupposes another one, and they can be read in any order.Item Art, Fiction, and Explanation(2019) Song, Moonyoung; Levinson, Jerrold; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of four stand-alone chapters that address topics at the intersection of art, fiction, and explanation. Chapter 1, “the nature of the interaction between moral and artistic value,” aims to elucidate what it means to say that a work’s moral virtue or defect is an artistic virtue or defect. I address this question by showing that the following two strategies commonly used to establish such a claim are not successful: (1) appealing to the counterfactual dependence of the work’s artistic value on its moral virtue or defect; and (2) arguing that the work is artistically valuable (or defective) and morally valuable (or defective) for the same reasons. Chapter 2, “aesthetic explanation,” argues for the psychological account of aesthetic explanation (i.e., the explanation of the aesthetic by the non-aesthetic), according to which the presence of certain non-aesthetic properties explains the presence of a certain aesthetic property just when the observer’s experiences of the non-aesthetic properties cause their experience of the aesthetic property. I demonstrate how this account illuminates the selectivity of aesthetic explanation—the phenomenon of aesthetic explanation citing only some of the non-aesthetic properties on which an aesthetic property supervenes—, drawing an analogy between the selectivity of aesthetic explanation and causal explanation. Chapter 3, “the fictionality puzzle, fictional truth, and explanation,” proposes that what is true in fiction is determined by inference to the best explanation. I show that this account of fictional truth provides a novel solution to the fictionality puzzle, which concerns why certain kinds of deviant claims, such as deviant moral claims (e.g., female infanticide is permissible), are difficult to make true in fiction, whereas other kinds of deviant claims, such as deviant scientific claims (e.g., time travel is possible), are regularly true in fiction. Chapter 4, “aptness of fiction-directed emotions,” argues that the criteria governing the epistemic appropriateness of emotions directed towards fictional entities are analogous to the criteria governing the epistemic appropriateness of emotions directed towards real entities. In both cases, an emotion is epistemically appropriate if and only if it is fitting, justified, and salience-tracking, and these notions are understood in analogous ways.Item Vulnerable Patients, Autonomy, Well-being, and Death(2018) Gipe, Kelsey; Kerstein, Samuel J; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)At the beginning of our lives and often at the end, we have important medical decisions made for us by proxy consenters including family, legal guardians, and/or medical professionals. This places us in particularly vulnerable and dependent positions that essentially ‘bookend’ our lives. As a bioethicist, I view as among my duties working to improve the experience of medicine for vulnerable populations as well as advocating for protections for such patients against the poor decision-making of others (and, in rare exceptional cases, even themselves). I’ve opted for a ‘covering concept’ model for my dissertation, which consists of three sizeable papers on related topics. The vulnerable populations I focus on in this project are children, the mentally ill, and the elderly. All three of these papers touch on issues surrounding the authenticity and limits of informed consent, tensions between respecting patient autonomy and promoting patient well-being, and how best to face death. In How to Face the Future: A Model for Delayed Disclosure of Incidental Findings from Pediatric Whole Genome Sequencing, I argue that in cases of widely-focused pediatric genetic testing, consent for release of a limited class of incidental findings should be delayed until the pediatric patient or research subject reaches the age of majority. I also propose a model for delayed disclosure in such cases. In Early Palliative Sedation Therapy and the Challenge of Psychological Suffering, I make the case that current end of life palliative care practices in the United States rationally commit us to the moral permissibility of palliative sedation to alleviate refractory psycho-existential suffering, even in cases where death of the patient is far from imminent. In Cardiac Pacemakers and Withdrawal of Care at the End of Life, I make the case that deactivation of cardiac pacemakers is morally distinct from typical instances of withdrawal of care at the end of life. I argue that in highly dependent patients, pacemaker deactivation is morally akin to voluntary active euthanasia, while in non-highly-dependent patients, pacemaker deactivation only serves to lessen the patient’s quality of life unnecessarily.Item Novels and Their Instances: A Metaphysical Exploration(2017) Aliev, Alexey; Levinson, Jerrold; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)What is the ontological status of novels? Are they inscriptions (i.e., concrete texts typically written or printed on something or displayed on the screen of some electronic device)? Sets of inscriptions? Mental representations of some semantic content? Structures of meanings? Syntactic sequences? Or something else? Furthermore, what is the ontological status of instances of a novel (i.e., entities that manifest all the primary properties that must be experienced to fully appreciate this novel)? Are they readings (i.e., sequences of sounds generated as a result of reading aloud)? Inscriptions? Both readings and inscriptions? Or some other entities? My goal in this dissertation is to answer these questions. The dissertation is structured as follows. In Part 1, I provide some terminological clarifications that must be made before addressing the issues concerning the ontological status of novels and their instances. In particular, in Chapter 1 ("Defining 'a Novel'"), I define "a novel," and in Chapter 2 ("Defining 'an Instance of an Artwork'"), I define "an instance of an artwork." Part 2 is aimed at clarifying the ontological status of instances of novels. I begin, in Chapter 3 ("Against Inscriptions as Instances of Novels"), by arguing against the most widely endorsed ontology of instances of novels–the ontology according to which the paradigmatic, or most typical, entities that serve as such instances are inscriptions. Next, in Chapter 4 ("An Ontology of Instances of Novels"), I put forward and defend an alternative ontology–the one according to which instances of novels are readings and mereological sums of readings and graphic elements. Finally, in Chapter 5 ("The Novel as a Performing Art"), I examine a peculiar consequence of the foregoing ontology–that the novel is a performing art. The purpose of Part 3 is to clarify the ontological status of novels. I begin, in Chapter 6 ("What a Novel Is Not"), with a critical overview of the most promising existing ontologies of novels, arguing that none of these ontologies stands up completely to criticism. Then, in Chapter 7 ("An Ontology of Novels"), I expound and defend a new ontology of novels. According to this ontology, novels are a peculiar kind of concreta–namely, concrete types composed of certain sonic, semantic, syntactic, contextualist, and visual elements.Item Rationality and Moral Risk: A Moderate Defense of Hedging(2017) Tarsney, Christian; Moller, Dan; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How should an agent decide what to do when she is uncertain not just about morally relevant empirical matters, like the consequences of some course of action, but about the basic principles of morality itself? This question has only recently been taken up in a systematic way by philosophers. Advocates of moral hedging claim that an agent should weigh the reasons put forward by each moral theory in which she has positive credence, considering both the likelihood that that theory is true and the strength of the reasons it posits. The view that it is sometimes rational to hedge for one's moral uncertainties, however, has recently come under attack both from those who believe that an agent should always be guided by the dictates of the single moral theory she deems most probable and from those who believe that an agent's moral beliefs are simply irrelevant to what she ought to do. Among the many objections to hedging that have been pressed in the recent literature is the worry that there is no non-arbitrary way of making the intertheoretic comparisons of moral value necessary to aggregate the value assignments of rival moral theories into a single ranking of an agent's options. This dissertation has two principal objectives: First, I argue that, contra these recent objections, an agent's moral beliefs and uncertainties are relevant to what she rationally ought to do, and more particularly, that agents are at least sometimes rationally required to hedge for their moral uncertainties. My principal argument for these claims appeals to the enkratic conception of rationality, according to which the requirements of practical rationality derive from an agent's beliefs about the objective, desire-independent value or choiceworthiness of her options. Second, I outline a new general theory of rational choice under moral uncertainty. Central to this theory is the idea of content-based aggregation, that the principles according to which an agent should compare and aggregate rival moral theories are grounded in the content of those theories themselves, including not only their value assignments but also the metaethical and other non-surface-level propositions that underlie, justify, or explain those value assignments.Item RELATIVE AND OBJECTIVE, ON BALANCE: Detailing the Best Systems Analysis of Laws(2017) Bialek, Max; Lyon, Aidan; Romeijn, Jan-Willem; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Variations on Lewis’ Best Systems Analysis (BSA) of laws of nature have tended to emphasize the aspects of the view that allow it to accommodate the peculiarities of scientific practice. That move has allowed such views to do a lot of good work in solving old and new challenges for the BSA, but at the cost of strengthening the argument against the BSA that it is insufficiently objective. I argue that the “insufficiently objective” objection is overcome by a balance of relativity in the laws and limits to that relativity, each properly motivated by appeal to scientific practice. I then explore what relativity in the laws, and limits to it, may be required by scientific practice.