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Front Matter Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-30
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 75, Issue 1, March 2024.
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Expected choiceworthiness and fanaticism Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Calvin Baker
Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness (MEC) is a theory of decision-making under moral uncertainty. It says that we ought to handle moral uncertainty in the way that Expected Value Theory (EVT) handles descriptive uncertainty. MEC inherits from EVT the problem of fanaticism. Roughly, a decision theory is fanatical when it requires our decision-making to be dominated by low-probability, high-payoff options
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Logicality in natural language Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Gil Sagi
Is there a relation of logical consequence in natural language? Logicality, in the philosophical literature, has been conceived of as a restrictive phenomenon that is at odds with the unbridled richness and complexity of natural language. This article claims that there is a relation of logical consequence in natural language, and moreover, that it is the subject matter of the bulk of current theories
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Normativity, prudence and welfare Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Michael Ridge
Most discussions of discourse about welfare and discourse about prudence are a “package deal” when it comes to their normativity—either both or neither are normative. In this paper I argue against this conventional “package deal” assumption. I argue that discourse about welfare is not normative in one useful sense of that term, but that prudential discourse is normative. My argument draws in part on
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Methodological worries for humean arguments from evil Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Timothy Perrine
Humean arguments from evil are some of the most powerful arguments against Theism. They take as their data what we know about good and evil. And they argue that some rival to Theism better explains, or otherwise predicts, that data than Theism. However, this paper argues that there are many problems with various methods for defending Humean arguments. I consider Philo’s original strategy; modern strategies
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In defense of genuine un-forgiving Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Anna-Bella Sicilia
Despite much philosophical attention on forgiveness itself, the phenomenon of un-forgiving is relatively neglected. Some views of forgiveness commit us to denying that we can ever permissibly un-forgive. Some go so far as to say the concept of un-forgiving is incomprehensible—it is the nature of forgiveness to be permanent. Yet many apparent cases of un-forgiving strike us as both real and justified
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Symmetries and ground Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Martin Glazier
If the tiles of a mosaic are arranged symmetrically, then the image those tiles constitute must be symmetric as well. This paper formulates and defends the general principle at work in this case: roughly, that a symmetry cannot ground an asymmetry. It is argued that the principle supports strong objections to four metaphysical views: qualitativism, relationalism, the tenseless or ‘B’ theory of time
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The presumption of realism Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Nils Franzén
Within contemporary metaethics, it is widely held that there is a “presumption of realism” in moral thought and discourse. Anti-realist views, like error theory and expressivism, may have certain theoretical considerations speaking in their favor, but our pretheoretical stance with respect to morality clearly favors objectivist metaethical views. This article argues against this widely held view. It
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The good life as the life in touch with the good Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Adam Lovett, Stefan Riedener
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The self-reinforcing nature of joint action Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-27 Facundo M. Alonso
Shared intention normally leads to joint action. It does this, it is commonly said, only because it is a characteristically stable phenomenon, a phenomenon that tends to persist from the time it is formed until the time it is fulfilled. However, the issue of what the stability of shared intention comes down to remains largely undertheorized. My aim in this paper is to remedy this shortcoming. I argue
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Existentialist risk and value misalignment Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-25 Ariela Tubert, Justin Tiehen
We argue that two long-term goals of AI research stand in tension with one another. The first involves creating AI that is safe, where this is understood as solving the problem of value alignment. The second involves creating artificial general intelligence, meaning AI that operates at or beyond human capacity across all or many intellectual domains. Our argument focuses on the human capacity to make
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Fictions that don’t tell the truth Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-25 Neri Marsili
Can fictions lie? According to a classic conception, works of fiction can never contain lies, since their content is not presented as true, nor is it meant to deceive us. But this classic view can be challenged. Sometimes fictions appear to make claims about the actual world, and these claims can be designed to convey falsehoods, historical misconceptions, and even pernicious stereotypes. Should we
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Evidentialism, justification, and knowledge‐first Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Alexander Bird
This paper examines the relationship between evidentialism, knowledge‐first epistemology, (E=K) in particular, and justification. Evidentialism gives an account of justified belief in terms of evidence but is silent on the nature of evidence. Knowledge‐first tells us what evidence is but stands in need of an agreed account of justification. So each might be able to supply what the other lacks. I argue
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Why there are no Frankfurt‐style omission cases Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Joseph Metz
Frankfurt‐style action cases have been immensely influential in the free will and moral responsibility literatures because they arguably show that an agent can be morally responsible for a behavior despite lacking the ability to do otherwise. However, even among the philosophers who accept Frankfurt‐style action cases, there remains significant disagreement about whether also to accept Frankfurt‐style
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Consensual discrimination Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Andreas Bengtson, Lauritz Aastrup Munch
What makes discrimination morally bad? In this paper, we discuss the putative badness of a case of consensual discrimination to show that prominent accounts of the badness of discrimination—appealing, inter alia, to harm, disrespect, and inequality—fail to provide a satisfactory answer to this question. In view of this, we present a more promising account.
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The normative property dualism argument Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Jesse Hambly
In this paper, I develop an argument against a type of Non-Analytic Normative Naturalism. This argument, the Normative Property Dualism Argument, suggests that if Non-Analytic Normative Naturalists posit that normative properties are identical to natural properties and that such identities are a posteriori, they will be forced to posit that these properties that are both normative and natural have
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Linguistic imposters Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Denis Kazankov, Edison Yi
There is a widespread phenomenon that we call linguistic imposters. Linguistic imposters are systematic misuses of expressions that misusers mistake with their conventional usages because of misunderstanding their meaning. Our paper aims to provide an initial framework for theorising about linguistic imposters that will lay the foundation for future philosophical research about them. We focus on the
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The Unity of Science and the Mentaculus Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Martin Glazier
Among the most promising options for vindicating Oppenheim and Putnam’s unity of science hypothesis is the ‘Mentaculus’ of Albert and Loewer. I assess whether this promise can be borne out. My focus is on whether the Mentaculus can deliver what Oppenheim and Putnam call the ‘unity of laws’: the reduction of special science laws to the laws of fundamental physics. I conclude that although the Mentaculus
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Mental Causation for Standard Dualists Australasian Journal of Philosophy Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Bram Vaassen
The standard objection to dualist theories of mind is that they seemingly cannot account for the obvious fact that mental phenomena cause our behaviour. On the plausible assumption that all our beh...
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Options and Agency Australasian Journal of Philosophy Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Sophie Kikkert, Barbara Vetter
Published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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Marcus on self‐conscious knowledge of belief Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-18 James R. Shaw
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Marcus on forms of judgment and the theoretical orientation of the mind Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Lucy Campbell
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Some challenges raised by unconscious belief Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Adam Leite
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Precis of belief, inference, and the self‐conscious mind Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Eric Marcus
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Judgment's aimless heart Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-16 Matthew Vermaire
It's often thought that when we reason to new judgments in inference, we aim at believing the truth, and that this aim of ours can explain important psychological and normative features of belief. I reject this picture: the structure of aimed activity shows that inference is not guided by a truth‐aim. This finding clears the way for a positive understanding of how epistemic goods feature in our doxastic
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Metanormative regress: an escape plan Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Christian Tarsney
How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some “second-order” norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a
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What Justifies Electoral Voice? J. S. Mill on Voting Mind Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Jonathan Turner
Mill advocates plural voting on instrumentalist grounds: the more competent are to have more votes. At the same time, he regards it as a ‘personal injustice’ to withhold from anyone ‘the ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in which he has the same interest as other people’ (Mill 1861a, p. 469). But if electoral voice is justified by its contribution to good governance
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Indiscernibility and the grounds of identity Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Samuel Z. Elgin
I provide a theory of the metaphysical foundations of identity: an account of what grounds facts of the form \(a=b\). In particular, I defend the claim that indiscernibility grounds identity. This is typically rejected because it is viciously circular; plausible assumptions about the logic of ground entail that the fact that \(a=b\) partially grounds itself. The theory I defend is immune to this circularity
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Two approaches to metaphysical explanation Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Ezra Rubenstein
Explanatory metaphysics aspires to explain the less fundamental in terms of the more fundamental. But we should recognize two importantly different approaches to this task. According to the generation approach, more basic features of reality generate (or give rise to) less basic features. According to the reduction approach, less perspicuous ways of representing reality reduce to (or collapse into)
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People and places Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-10 John Horden, Dan López de Sa
Several authors have argued that socially significant places such as countries, cities and establishments are immaterial objects, despite their being spatially located. In contrast, we aim to defend a reductive materialist view of such entities, which identifies them with their physical territories or premises. Accordingly, these are all material objects; typically, aggregates of land and infrastructure
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Incommensurability and hardness Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-09 Chrisoula Andreou
There is growing support for the view that there can be cases of incommensurability, understood as cases in which two alternatives, X and Y, are such that X is not better than Y, Y is not better than X, and X and Y are not equally good. This paper assumes that alternatives can be incommensurable and explores the prominent idea that, insofar as choice situations that agents face qua rational agents
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What, If Anything, Is Biological Altruism? Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Topaz Halperin, Arnon Levy
The study of biological altruism is a cornerstone of modern evolutionary biology. Associated with foundational issues about natural selection, it is often supposed that explaining altruism is key to understanding social behaviour more generally. Typically, ‘biological’ altruism is defined in purely effects-based, behavioural terms—as an interaction in which one organism contributes fitness to another
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Regions, extensions, distances, diameters Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-09 Claudio Calosi
Extended simple regions have been the focus of recent developments in philosophical logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of physics. However, only a handful of works provides a rigorous characterization of an extended simple region. In particular, a recent paper in this journal defends a definition based on an extrinsic notion of least distance. Call it the Least Distance proposal. This paper provides
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The irrational failure to act Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-09 Matthew Heeney
I defend against a salient objection the thesis that practical rationality requires us to perform intentional actions. The objection is that if rationality requires the performance of intentional actions, then agents are irrational for failing to succeed in what they intend to do. I reply to this objection by hewing closely to the principle that the rational ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. We are rationally
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Introspection Is Signal Detection Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Jorge Morales
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Ahead of Print.
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Understanding in mathematics: The case of mathematical proofs Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-06 Yacin Hamami, Rebecca Lea Morris
Although understanding is the object of a growing literature in epistemology and the philosophy of science, only few studies have concerned understanding in mathematics. This essay offers an account of a fundamental form of mathematical understanding: proof understanding. The account builds on a simple idea, namely that understanding a proof amounts to rationally reconstructing its underlying plan
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Proximal intentions intentionalism Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Victor Tamburini
According to a family of metasemantics for demonstratives called intentionalism, the intentions of speakers determine the reference of demonstratives. And according to a sub-family I call proximal intentions (PI) intentionalism, the intention that determines reference is one that occupies a certain place—the proximal one—in a structure of intentions. PI intentionalism is thought to make correct predictions
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Knowledge, true belief, and the gradability of ignorance Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Robert Weston Siscoe
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Who’s afraid of common knowledge? Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Giorgio Sbardolini
Some arguments against the assumption that ordinary people may share common knowledge are sound. The apparent cost of such arguments is the rejection of scientific theories that appeal to common knowledge. My proposal is to accept the arguments without rejecting the theories. On my proposal, common knowledge is shared by ideally rational people, who are not just mathematically simple versions of ordinary
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Memory Systems and the Mnemic Character of Procedural Memory Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Jonathan Najenson
According to a standard view in psychology and neuroscience, there are multiple memory systems in the brain. Philosophers and scientists of memory rely on the idea that there are multiple memory systems in the brain to infer that procedural memory is not a cognitive form of memory. As a result, memory is considered to be a disunified capacity. In this article, I evaluate two criteria used by Michaelian
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Probability discounting and money pumps Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Petra Kosonen
In response to cases that involve tiny probabilities of huge payoffs, some argue that we ought to discount small probabilities down to zero. However, this paper shows that doing so violates Independence and Continuity, and as a result of these violations, those who discount small probabilities can be exploited by money pumps. Various possible ways of avoiding exploitation will be discussed. This paper
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In Defence of the Agent and Patient Distinction: The Case from Molecular Biology and Chemistry Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Davis Kuykendall
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Ahead of Print.
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Rights reclamation Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-03
Abstract According to a rights forfeiture theory of punishment, liability to punishment hinges upon the notion that criminals forfeit their rights against hard treatment. In this paper, I assume the success of rights forfeiture theory in establishing the permissibility of punishment but aim to develop the view by considering how forfeited rights might be reclaimed. Built into the very notion of proportionate
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Superconditioning Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Simon M. Huttegger
When can a shift from a prior to a posterior be represented by conditionalization? A well-known result, known as “superconditioning” and going back to work by Diaconis and Zabell, gives a sharp answer. This paper extends the result and connects it to the reflection principle and common priors. I show that a shift from a prior to a set of posteriors can be represented within a conditioning model if
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‘You're changing the subject’: An unfair objection to conceptual engineering? Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Delia Belleri
Conceptual engineering projects are sometimes criticized for ‘changing the subject’. In this paper, I first discuss three strategies that have been proposed to address the change of subject objection. I notice that these strategies fail in similar ways: they all deploy a ‘loose’ notion of subject matter, while the objector can always reply deploying a ‘strict’ notion. Based on this, I then argue that
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On Block's delineation of the border between seeing and thinking Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Christopher S Hill
This note is concerned with Ned Block's claim that cognition differs from perception in being paradigmatically conceptual, propositional, and non-iconic. As against Block, it maintains that large stretches of cognition constitutively involve, or depend on, iconic representations.
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Why Experimental Balance Is Still a Reason to Randomize Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Marco Martinez, David Teira
Experimental balance is usually understood as the control for the value of the conditions, other than the one under study, which are liable to affect the result of a test. We discuss three different approaches to balance. ‘Millean balance’ requires identifying and equalizing ex ante the value of these conditions in order to conduct solid causal inferences. ‘Fisherian balance’ measures ex post the influence
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Robustness and Modularity Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Trey Boone
Functional robustness refers to a system’s ability to maintain a function in the face of perturbations to the causal structures that support performance of that function. Modularity, a crucial element of standard methods of causal inference and difference-making accounts of causation, refers to the independent manipulability of causal relationships within a system. Functional robustness appears to
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Mind the gap: noncausal explanations of dual properties Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Sorin Bangu
I identify and characterize a type of noncausal explanation in physics. I first introduce a distinction, between the physical properties of a system, and the representational properties of the mathematical expressions of the system’s physical properties. Then I introduce a novel kind of property, which I shall call a dual property. This is a special kind of representational property, one for which
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Why, Delilah? When music and lyrics move us in different directions Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Laura Sizer, Eva M. Dadlez
Songs that combine happy music and sad, violent, or morally disturbing lyrics raise questions about the relationship between music and lyrics in song, including the question of how such songs affect the listener, and of the ethical implications of listening – and perhaps singing along with – such songs. To explore those perplexing cases in which the affective impact of music and lyrics seem entirely
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Parity and Pareto Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Brian Hedden
Pareto principles are at the core of ethics and decision theory. The Strong Pareto principle says that if one thing is better than another for someone and at least as good for everyone else, then the one is overall better than the other. But a host of famous figures express it differently, with ‘not worse’ in place of ‘at least as good.’ In the presence of parity (or incommensurability), this results
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Kant’s Fantasy Mind Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Francey Russell
Throughout his lectures and published writings on anthropology, Kant describes a form of unintentional, unstructured, obscure, and pleasurable imaginative mental activity, which he calls fantasy (Phantasie), where we ‘take pleasure in letting our mind wander about in obscurity’ (LA 25:480). In the context of his pragmatic anthropology, Kant is concerned not only to describe this form of mental activity
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Resolving to believe: Kierkegaard's direct doxastic voluntarism Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Z Quanbeck
According to a traditional interpretation of Kierkegaard, he endorses a strong form of direct doxastic voluntarism on which we can, by brute force of will, make a “leap of faith” to believe propositions that we ourselves take to be improbable and absurd. Yet most leading Kierkegaard scholars now wholly reject this reading, instead interpreting Kierkegaard as holding that the will can affect what we
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Nativism and empiricism in artificial intelligence Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Robert Long
Historically, the dispute between empiricists and nativists in philosophy and cognitive science has concerned human and animal minds (Margolis and Laurence in Philos Stud: An Int J Philos Anal Tradit 165(2): 693-718, 2013, Ritchie in Synthese 199(Suppl 1): 159–176, 2021, Colombo in Synthese 195: 4817–4838, 2018). But recent progress has highlighted how empiricist and nativist concerns arise in the
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Distributive Epistemic Justice in Science Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-27 Gürol Irzik, Faik Kurtulmus
This article develops an account of distributive epistemic justice in the production of scientific knowledge. We identify four requirements: (a) science should produce the knowledge citizens need in order to reason about the common good, their individual good, and the pursuit thereof; (b) science should produce the knowledge those serving the public need to pursue justice effectively; (c) science should
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On Absolute Units Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-27 Neil Dewar
How may we characterize the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This article shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterizing the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of
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Replies to Alex Byrne, Mike Martin, and Nico Orlandi Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Berit “Brit” Brogaard