Almost every facet of the experience of musical listening—from pitch, to rhythm, to the experience of emotion—is thought to be shaped by the meeting and thwarting of expectations. But it is unclear what kind of mental states these expectations are, what their format is, and whether they are conscious or unconscious. Here, we distinguish between different modes of musical listening, arguing that expectations play different roles in each, and we point to the need for increased collaboration between music psychologists and (...) philosophers in order to arrive at a more detailed characterisation of conscious musical experience and the role of expectations therein. (shrink)

This paper explores whether judgement itself can be judged—whether evaluative acts can become the object of further structurally valid judgement. Through the Judgemental Triad—Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance—we analyze the possibility of meta-attribution: the recursive act of judging a judgement. We argue that such meta-judgement is structurally possible only when the second-order judgement maintains its own triadic integrity, fulfilling its own requirements for Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance. However, the potential for infinite recursion inherent in meta-judgement poses both a structural limit and (...) an ethical demand for reflexive containment. We conclude that the judgement of judgement is not a paradox but a fundamental condition for philosophical accountability, critical thinking, and the dynamic evolution of meaning structures within the framework of Judgemental Philosophy. (shrink)

What is the scope of our conscious mental agency, and how do we acquire self-knowledge of it? Both questions are addressed through an investigation of what best explains our inability to form judgemental thoughts in direct response to practical reasons. Contrary to what Williams and others have argued, it cannot be their subjection to a truth norm, given that our failure to adhere to such a norm need not undermine their status as judgemental. Instead, it is argued that we cannot (...) form judgements at will because we subjectively experience them as responses to epistemic reasons, and because this is incompatible with our experiential awareness of direct mental actions, such as instances of imagining. However, this latter awareness does not extend to indirect agency, which relies on epistemic or causal processes as means. Judging may therefore still count as an indirect action - just like, say, breaking a window by throwing a stone. (shrink)

The paper aims to weaken a widespread argument against indexical contextualism regarding matters of personal taste. According to indexical contextualism, an utterance of “T is tasty” (where T is an object of taste) expresses the proposition that T is tasty for J (where J is a judge). This argument suggests that indexical contextualism cannot do justice to our disagreement intuitions regarding typical disputes about personal taste because it has to treat conversations in which one speaker utters “T is tasty” and (...) another responds with “T is not tasty” (referred to as ‘judge-non-specific conversations’ in this paper) as being on a par with conversations in which one speaker utters “T is tasty to me” and another responds with “T is not tasty to me” (referred to as ‘judge-specific conversations’). The argument has it that judge-specific conversations, unlike judge-non-specific conversations, do not contain disagreement between speakers. To defend indexical contextualism, some philosophers have proposed accounts (here referred to as ‘dual-proposition theories’) according to which utterances of “T is tasty” are used to communicate both the above kinds of semantically expressed proposition and some other kinds of proposition (like superiority propositions or metalinguistic propositions) that could be used to explain disagreements about taste. The paper defends two claims: First, it is argued that judge-specific conversations, or at least some of them, do contain disagreement between speakers, contrary to what the anti-indexical-contextualist argument supposes. Second, it is argued that dual-proposition indexical-contextualist theories fail to explain judge-specific conversations that are intuitively interpreted as containing disagreement. (shrink)

Content note: This paper discusses rape throughout.Abstract. In this paper, I consider arguments in favor of jury trials. While I find these generally persuasive, I argue that there can be cases where juries are not fit for purpose. In those cases, I argue that they should be replaced by judge-only trials. In doing so, I propose a framework for determining whether a type of case is unsuitable for jury trials. Partly in response to low conviction rates, there have been recent (...) suggestions that rape trials should be conducted without juries. I suggest that there is strong evidence that these offences qualify under the criteria I have described. As a result, I argue that judge-only trials should be adopted for trying rape cases. (shrink)

This paper applies Judgemental Philosophy to the interconnected domains of historical memory (collective and individual), truth claims, and ethical responsibility. We argue that both history and memory function not merely as repositories of facts or experiences, but as fields of structurally judgeable meaning, contingent upon the successful operation of the Judgemental Triad: Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance. Phenomena such as historical distortion, collective amnesia, denialism, repression, and the lingering effects of trauma are analyzed not primarily as failures of factual accuracy or (...) psychological defense mechanisms, but as structural breakdowns within this Triad. Specifically, these failures often involve the blockage of Constructivity (especially regarding trauma), the deliberate fragmentation or falsification of Coherence, and, most critically, the disabling of Resonance, which prevents the past from returning meaningfully—affectively and ethically—to present subjects. Ethical remembrance and historical responsibility, therefore, require not just recall or factual correction, but the active restoration and maintenance of the structural conditions (Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance) that allow the past, even difficult and traumatic pasts, to be judged and to 'return' meaningfully. This framework provides a structural basis for understanding historical accountability, the possibility of collective healing, and the reconstruction of truthful and ethical narratives about the past. (shrink)

What makes a high-quality biomarker experiment? The success of personalized medicine hinges on the answer to this question. In this paper, I argue that judgment about the quality of biomarker experiments is mediated by the problem of theoretical underdetermination. That is, the network of biological and pathophysiological theories motivating a biomarker experiment is sufficiently complicated that it often frustrates valid interpretation of the experimental results. Drawing on a case-study in biomarker diagnostic development from neurooncology, I argue that this problem of (...) underdetermination can be overcome with greater coordination across the biomarker research trajectory. I then sketch an account for how coordination across a research trajectory can be evaluated. I ultimate conclude that what makes a high-quality biomarker experiment must be judged by the epistemic contribution it makes to this coordinated research effort. (shrink)

Expert-informed public policy often depends on a degree of public trust in the relevant expert authorities. But if lay citizens are not themselves authorities on the relevant area of expertise, how can they make good judgements about the trustworthiness of those who claim such authority? I argue that the answer to this question depends on the kind of trust under consideration. Specifically, I maintain that a distinction between epistemic trust and recommendation trust has consequences for novices judging the trustworthiness of (...) experts. I argue for this by identifying the unique difficulties that emerge when a novice is asked not just to believe expert testimony, but to follow expert recommendations. I outline criteria for novice judgements of expert trustworthiness that have been proposed by Elizabeth Anderson and show that novel problems emerge for her criteria when we shift focus from epistemic trust to recommendation trust. More is needed when we are asked not just to believe the experts but to act as they recommend, because novices looking for trustworthy expert recommendations need to establish whether the recommended course of action supports what is important to them and accords with their values. (shrink)

Thaddeus Metz defends the retributive theory of punishment against challenges mounted by some of the contributors to this collection. People, he thinks, ought to be censured in a way that is proportional to what they have done and for which they are responsible. Understanding does not conflict with judging. On the contrary, according to him, the more we understand, the better we are able to censure appropriately. Metz’s argument is Kantian insofar as he argues that ‘respect for persons [victims, responsible (...) wrongdoers and the community at large] requires condemning people proportionately to their responsible wrongdoing and hence that understanding a person merely indicates what would be proportionate, not that proportionality is unjustified’. His reason for thinking that Kantian respect requires retribution is that, as in non-retributive cases such as economic justice, compensatory justice, and justice in healthcare rationing, it requires imposing burdens on persons consequent to an awareness of their responsible choices. To use his slogan, ‘judging is apt because of understanding’. (shrink)

[This draft is dated November 2007. I wrote it while I was a fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies at UW-Milwaukee, in 2005-06, and published it only on the Center's website as a working paper. Many of the core ideas in this paper wound up in "Receptivity and the Will," Nous 2009, "Assertion, Sincerity, and Knowledge," Nous 2013, and "Assurance and Warrant," Philosophers' Imprint 2014 -- though formulated rather differently. What follows is the original abstract.] This working paper (...) extends a project that I’ve been developing for several years on the role of trust, including self-trust, in rationality and personal autonomy. I’m interested equally in epistemic questions (what to believe) and in practical questions (how to act), though the present paper addresses only the former. In an earlier paper on the epistemic side of my project, “Telling as Inviting to Trust” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, May 2005), I offered an explanation of how you can get an entitlement to believe something simply by trusting someone when she tells you it’s so, the entitlement deriving not merely from the assurance but from the trustworthy character of the one who gives it. The present paper adapts my explanation of believing-on-another’s-word to belief as such, via the observation that you can’t form a belief without trusting someone’s judgment – if only your own. I view intrapersonal reasoning about what to believe as an internalization of the interpersonal cases I analyzed in that earlier paper. In each instance, belief-formation has a second-personal dynamic: an invitation to trust on one side, trusting acceptance of that invitation on the other. If I’m right, the dynamic at the heart of all belief manifests not autonomy but a trusting heteronomy, whereby you render yourself appropriately receptive to judgment – your own or another’s. (The idea that judging is inviting self-trust first occurred to me in 2002, but I didn’t get a chance to develop it properly till 2005-06, my fellowship year at the Center for 21st Century Studies. I appreciate the support.). (shrink)

This paper is a response to an earlier paper by Mark Nelson in which he argues for the claim that the best judges of the merits of arguments for the existence of God are theists whose belief in God is properly basic. I criticise Nelson's argument, and pursue some questions about the significance of the conclusion for which he argues.

One’s life can be meaningful, but not worth living, or worth living, but not meaningful, which demonstrates that an evaluation of whether life is worth living differs from an evaluation of whether one’s life is meaningful. But how do these evaluations differ? As I will argue, an evaluation of whether life is worth living is a more comprehensive evaluation than the evaluation of whether one’s individual life is meaningful. In judging whether one finds life worth living, one takes into account, (...) not only whether one’s life is meaningful, but undesirable aspects of life such as chronic pain and suffering. For example, a person who is suffering greatly, but who has lived a meaningful life, might still conclude that his or her life is not worth living. Although the famed question about the meaning of life has received most of the attention, I argue that the better and more fruitful question is “Is life worth living?” One should want, not just for one’s life to be meaningful, but for it to be worth living. (shrink)

A classic debate concerns whether reasonableness should be understood statistically (e.g., reasonableness is what is common) or prescriptively (e.g., reasonableness is what is good). This Article elaborates and defends a third possibility. Reasonableness is a partly statistical and partly prescriptive “hybrid,” reflecting both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Experiments reveal that people apply reasonableness as a hybrid concept, and the Article argues that a hybrid account offers the best general theory of reasonableness. -/- First, the Article investigates how ordinary people judge (...) what is reasonable. Reasonableness sits at the core of countless legal standards, yet little work has investigated how ordinary people (i.e., potential jurors) actually make reasonableness judgments. Experiments reveal that judgments of reasonableness are systematically intermediate between judgments of the relevant average and ideal across numerous legal domains. For example, participants’ mean judgment of the legally reasonable number of weeks’ delay before a criminal trial (ten weeks) falls between the judged average (seventeen weeks) and ideal (seven weeks). So too for the reasonable num- ber of days to accept a contract offer, the reasonable rate of attorneys’ fees, the reasonable loan interest rate, and the reasonable annual number of loud events on a football field in a residential neighborhood. Judgment of reasonableness is better predicted by both statistical and prescriptive factors than by either factor alone. -/- This Article uses this experimental discovery to develop a normative view of reasonableness. It elaborates an account of reasonableness as a hybrid standard, arguing that this view offers the best general theory of reasonableness, one that applies correctly across multiple legal domains. Moreover, this hybrid feature is the historical essence of legal reasonableness: the original use of the “reasonable person” and the “man on the Clapham omnibus” aimed to reflect both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Empirically, reasonableness is a hybrid judgment. And normatively, reasonableness should be applied as a hybrid standard. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the ethics of war through the framework of Judgemental Philosophy. We argue that war is not simply a site of moral extremity but often a zone of structural judgemental collapse. Through the Judgemental Triad—Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance—we identify conditions under which ethical reasoning becomes unjudgeable. In particular, we show that war frequently eliminates the possibility of resonance, distorts coherence, and disables individual or collective constructibility. As a result, moral claims about war often function as rationalizations rather than (...) genuine judgements. The paper concludes by proposing criteria for recognizing when war enters a structurally non-ethical domain, and what minimal ethical functions may still be preserved. (shrink)

Nathan Hanna has recently addressed a claim central to my 2013 article ‘Must Punishment Be Intended to Cause Suffering’ and to the second chapter of my 2016 book An Expressive Theory of Punishment: namely, that punishment need not involve an intention to cause suffering. -/- Hanna defends what he calls the ‘Aim To Harm Requirement’ (AHR), which he formulates as follows. AHR: ‘an agent punishes a subject only if the agent intends to harm the subject’ (Hanna 2017 p969). I’ll try (...) to show in this note that Hanna’s latest attempts to defend AHR fail. I’ll start by setting out my own view, drawing attention to one significant, but perhaps understandable, misstatement of Hanna’s. I’ll then discuss two alleged counter-examples that Hanna presents to my view, and show that they both fail in their own terms. I’ll also argue that, given assumptions that Hanna is willing to make a scenario closely related to one that Hanna presents counts against AHR. I’ll then discuss how significant it would be if these counter-examples were successful. My view is that it wouldn’t matter much, and that anyone attracted to abolitionism should agree. I’ll conclude with a brief discussion of Hart, which may be of interest to enthusiasts and Hart scholars. (shrink)

Cover versions form a loose but identifiable category of tracks and performances. We distinguish four kinds of covers and argue that they mark important differences in the modes of evaluation that are possible or appropriate for each: mimic covers, which aim merely to echo the canonical track; rendition covers, which change the sound of the canonical track; transformative covers, which diverge so much as to instantiate a distinct, albeit derivative song; and referential covers, which not only instantiate a distinct song, (...) but for which the new song is in part about the original song. In order to allow for the very possibility of transformative and referential covers, we argue that a cover is characterized by relation to a canonical track rather than merely by being a new instance of a song that had been recorded previously. (shrink)

This paper explores the complex temporal structure inherent in judgement within the framework of Judgemental Philosophy. Using the Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance), we analyze the seemingly paradoxical temporality of judgement: it necessarily involves a retrospective synthesis of past events or information for its formation (Constructivity and Coherence), resulting in an unavoidable structural delay. Simultaneously, we argue that the completion of judgement, particularly through the axis of Resonance, is fundamentally oriented towards the future, requiring a temporal opening for meaning to (...) 'return' or be received. Thus, judgement is revealed not as an instantaneous act, but as a temporally extended process rooted in the synthesis of the past yet intrinsically directed towards future Resonance. This understanding of judgement's dual temporal nature—structural delay in formation and forward orientation in completion—provides crucial insights into ethical responsibility, the nature of meaning over time, and phenomena like trauma, forgiveness, and hope. (shrink)

This paper offers a structural diagnosis of the global climate inaction paradox: why, despite overwhelming scientific consensus and public awareness, meaningful action on climate change remains elusive. Drawing from Judgemental Philosophy, we argue that climate judgement is structurally undermined due to the failure of the Judgemental Triad: constructibility, coherence, and especially resonance. We demonstrate how temporal, spatial, and affective disconnects render climate scenarios experientially unownable. This disjunction leads to a collapse of judgement—not of information or will. As a remedy, we (...) propose a new framework for climate ethics based on restoring resonance with the planetary future, redefining climate responsibility not as a burden of facts, but as a structure of return. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Max Deutscher’s recent accounts of thinking, willing and judging, derived from his reading of Hannah Arendt’s 'The Life of the Mind', as set out in his book 'Judgment After Arendt'. Against Deutscher I argue that thinking does not presuppose thoughtfulness, that being willing is compatible with willing reluctantly, and that actor and spectator judgments are distinct types of judgments.

Judges are typically tasked to consider sentencing benefits but not costs. Previous research finds that both laypeople and prosecutors discount the costs of incarceration when forming sentencing attitudes, raising important questions about whether professional judges show the same bias during sentencing. To test this, we used a vignette-based experiment in which Minnesota state judges reviewed a case summary about an aggravated robbery and imposed a hypothetical sentence. Using random assignment, half the participants received additional information about plausible (...) negative consequences of incarceration. As predicted, our results revealed a mitigating effect of cost exposure on prison sentence term lengths. Critically, these findings support the conclusion that policies that increase transparency in sentencing costs could reduce sentence lengths, which has important economic and social ramifications. (shrink)

What do we do with Judges? This two-edged word? This ambidextrous book? These ambivalent heroes? The Judges were drawing their last fleeting breaths shipwrecked and scattered upon the shores of historical-critical-grammatical-linear-modernist-masculine interpretation. "The narrative is primitive," they said. "The editors have made a mess," they exclaimed. "The conclusion is really an appendix," another said. Then the bible-acrobats jumped in pretending there was no literary carnage while at the same time drawing our eyes away from the literary carnage. "No, (...) no, there is an order to this disorderly book!" "Gideon is a man of faith," they explained. "Gideon is a sham," others retorted. "Long live the king," they cried. "Oh no, the king will bring down the nation," others said. Enter the latest literary critics and the fresh feminist readers to save the day. And save they have. Barry noted the irony. Cheryl called attention to the elaborate, spiraling labyrinth. Phyllis remembered the forgotten. Mieke heralded the incoherence. Deborah the Bee slings Barak with irony. Cowardly Jephthah sacrifices his virgin daughter immediately after he is filled with the spirit. Blind Samson remains stuck in some adolescent, Pinnochio-like stage milling around the same old vices. The Levite, the man of word and sacrifice, lies to the people and dismembers his wife. To beat it all the myopic narrator joins in lock step with the other blind characters stumbling around in the narrative. What manner of text is this? These Judges, these stories, are even more troubling now that we take them seriously. Now what do we do with Judges? The recent scholarship is most promising, but I think we must press forward, or is that backward, or perhaps to another plan. Perhaps Judges hearkens forward to the postmodern. What would Judges look like if we viewed the story through a postmodern lens? Would we see the text in another dimension? Would we let the characters live and breathe as confusing, confounding, intricate characters? Judges speaks to me. These judges, they teach me. How can I ever forget my reading of Judges? For once I found a text reflecting the madness of faith in my maddening world. For once I saw a text like Pablo. I heard the echo of Umberto. I noted the faint murmurings of Jacques. I danced a most joyous jig with Julia. I saw, up ahead, or was that behind me, or over to the side, Martin's flickering candle. Mieke, meet Jael. Barak, meet Barry. Jacques, meet Gideon. Samson, meet Martin. Umberto, meet the narrator or two or three. Pablo, meet the Levite's wife---sorry, she has no name. (shrink)

This paper explores the paradoxical human tendency to seek meaning in what cannot be judged—entities, events, or concepts that lie beyond the structural limits of the Judgemental Triad. We propose that this drive arises not from ignorance or error, but from an existential structure within the resonance axis itself: a compulsive demand for return even where return is impossible. Drawing from religious belief, death, infinity, and metaphysical abstraction, we argue that the urge to judge the unjudgeable reflects a deep structural (...) commitment to preserve coherence in the face of meaning collapse. This compulsion is not an error, but a boundary behavior of the human meaning system. (shrink)

The use of neuroscientific evidence in criminal trials has been steadily increasing. Despite progress made in recent decades in understanding the mechanisms of psychological and behavioral functioning, neuroscience is still in an early stage of development and its potential for influencing legal decision-making is highly contentious. Scholars disagree about whether or how neuroscientific evidence might impact prescriptions of criminal culpability, particularly in instances in which evidence of an accused’s history of mental illness or brain abnormality is offered to support a (...) plea of not criminally responsible. In the context of these debates, philosophers and legal scholars have identified numerous problems with admitting neuroscientific evidence in legal contexts. To date, however, less has been said about the challenges of evaluating the evidence upon which integrative mechanistic explanations that bring together evidence from different areas of neuroscience are based. As we explain, current criteria for evaluating such evidence to determine its admissibility in legal contexts are inadequate. Appealing to literature in the philosophy of scientific experimentation and theoretical work in the social, cognitive and behavioral sciences, we lay the groundwork for reforming these criteria and identify some of the implications of modifying them. (shrink)

How should scientists judge the quality of research articles? In this article I present general criteria for judging the scientific value of a research report submitted for publication. These criteria can improve the quality of research articles and produce fair referee reports that are scientifically justifiable. My view is based on four fundamental rules that guide all good science. These rules ought to determine whether scientific research reports merit publication in scientific journals. The rules for good science also structure this (...) article. They are as follows. [1] Scientists must use specialised problem-solving; [2] scientists must refer to previous work; [3] scientists must justify their findings; and [4] scientists must convince their scientific community. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the basis for Kant's praise of Wolff's general logic as "the best we have." I argue that Wolff's logic was highly esteemed by Kant on account of its novel analysis of the three operations of the mind (tres operationes mentis), in the course of which Wolff formulates an argument for the priority of the understanding's activity of judging.

Recent work in social epistemology has begun to make use of the behavioral-scientific concept of the nudge, but without sustained attention to how it should be translated from behavioral to epistemic contexts. We offer an account of doxastic nudges that satisfies extensional and theoretical desiderata, defend it against other accounts in the literature, and use it to clarify ongoing discussions of how nudges relate to reason-giving, knowledge, and autonomy.

Korea maintained a dual system of legal education since it imported the American style of legal education under the influence of Japan. The public had conceived it a kind of nerd or dude that had to be engrafted with the national needs as any solution in the face of globalization challenge. This led to a monopoly of legal education in Korea that disturbed the interest holders, those whom are lawyers, law professors, law schools and department of laws and the interested (...) public, into discontention and aggrievance. While law schools in Korea now emphasize a unitary approach for the whole group of lawyers through bar association and law schools, the professors of law department, the other form of grass-root legal education in this soil, perceived that it should include a wide of public interest amenable to its respective concerns. Under this backdrop, the paper explored the French model of judge selection and discussed the inadequacy of current American style to select the judge from the pool of career attorneys. The author also suggests a change of paradigm niggardly upon public inculcation and consensus that best suits the distinct Korean tradition and policy environment of national judicial system. (shrink)

This paper is part of a conversation in the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective (SERRC) about my paper “Epistemic Domination and ‘Gender Identity Fraud’ Prosecutions.” It replies to Talia Mae Bettcher’s “A Letter to Resa-Philip Lunau: Epistemic Domination, ‘Gender Identity Fraud,’ and Reality Enforcement.” In this response, I address the questions Bettcher raises about my arguments, including my decision not to propose that the sex/gender presentation of trans people be treated as evidence. I also develop a more nuanced engagement (...) with Miranda Fricker’s and Katharine Jenkins’s work in “Epistemic Injustice, Ignorance, and Trans Experiences” to reinforce my claim that hermeneutical injustice did not play a role in “gender identity fraud” prosecutions. In doing so, I question Fricker’s strong linkage between experience, understanding, and the possession of concepts, and I extend my account of epistemic domination as a more accurate framework for understanding these cases. (shrink)

The principle of nemo iudex in causa sua is central to John Locke’s social contract theory: the state is justified largely due to the human need for an impartial system of criminal justice. In contemporary Anglo-American legal practice, the value of impartiality in criminal justice is accepted uncritically. At the same time, advocates of restorative justice frequently make reference to a crime victim’s right to have his or her voice heard in the criminal justice process without regard for impartiality as (...) potentially being morally valuable. In this article, I challenge the central place of impartiality in criminal justice on the grounds that it leads to a setup ill-suited to moral psychology. Though restorative justice advocates are not principled in their implicit rejection of impartiality and the nemo iudex principle, their preferred method of criminal justice conduces to crime victims’ being good judges in their own case. (shrink)

This article critically examines Mexico’s 2024–2025 judicial reform, which introduced the popular election of all federal judges, marking an unprecedented institutional change. Drawing on legal philosophy and democratic theory, the paper argues that the reform undermines constitutional guarantees, weakens the protection of fundamental rights, and distorts democratic representation. Rather than enhancing accountability, the reform politicizes the judiciary, erodes judicial independence, and diminishes citizens’ right to impartial adjudication, as reflected in low electoral participation and international criticism. Situating the reform within (...) a broader process of democratic backsliding, the article contends that judicial elections function less as a democratizing mechanism than as a tool of power concentration, posing serious risks to constitutionalism and the human rights discourse in Mexico. (shrink)

This paper challenges the growing discourse suggesting artificial intelligence (AI) may one day serve as a moral decision-maker or possess moral authority. Using the framework of Judgemental Philosophy, we argue that AI, regardless of its sophistication in simulating reasoning or consistency, is structurally ineligible for genuine moral judgement because it cannot satisfy the necessary preconditions defined by the Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance). While AI systems can exhibit high degrees of Constructivity (generating complex outputs from data) and Coherence (maintaining (...) internal logical or statistical consistency), they fundamentally lack Resonance—the affective and intersubjective return of meaning to a subject that grounds ethical judgement in lived experience and shared value structures. We contend that moral judgement and the authority derived from it require a self-affecting subjectivity capable of receiving the 'return' of its own attributions, a structure that current and foreseeable AI systems inherently lack. Delegating moral judgement to non-resonant systems poses significant risks to human ethical autonomy and the very structure of meaning. (shrink)

Matthew Soteriou provides an analysis of authoritatively knowing one’s own mental acts which depends on a surprising assumption: One cannot truly judge that one is judging. After briefly criticizing his account of one’s awareness that one is judging, I critically scrutinize two of his arguments against the possibility of truly judging that one is judging. Firstly, assuming such a possibility leads to a regress. Secondly, the second-order judgement inevitably replaces the first-order judgement such as to make the former wrong.

How should we respond to historical figures who played an important role in their country's history but have also perpetrated acts of great evil? Much of the existing philosophical literature on this topic has focused on explaining why it may be wrong to celebrate such figures. However, a common response that is made in popular discussions around these issues is that we should not judge historical figures by today's standards. Our goal in this article is to examine the most plausible (...) way to understand this objection. We will examine three different interpretations of this argument. First, we will examine a view we call Temporal Moral Relativism, according to which moral standards are relative to particular points in time. Next, we outline Blame Relativism, the view that people from the past may be excused from blame for acts of conventionalised wrongdoing. Finally, we outline Ideals Relativism, according to which our moral ideals are partially relative to the time in which we live. We argue that Ideals Relativism provides the most plausible interpretation of this argument. (shrink)

Contrary to popular philosophical belief, judgment can indeed be an intentional action. That's because an intentional judgment, even one with content p, need not be intentional as a judgment that p. It can instead be intentional just as a judgment wh- for some specific wh- question—e.g. a judgment of which x is F or a judgment whether p. This paper explains how this is possible by laying out a means by which you can perform such an intentional action. This model (...) of intentional judgment does not stand in tension with the fact that judgment is causally regulated for truth, and that it is correct only if it is true. On the contrary, the structure of intentional action explains how an intentional judgment has these features. An extended example is developed, and sufficient conditions on intentional judgment are laid out. (shrink)

We often get reason to doubt the reliability of some of our own reasoning. The rational response to such evidence would seem to depend on how reliable one should estimate that reasoning to be. Independence principles constrain that reliability-assessment, to prevent question-begging reliance on the very reasoning being assessed. But this has consequences some find disturbing: can it be rational for an agent to bracket some of her reasons—which she may, after all, be assessing impeccably? So several arguments have been (...) offered against the very idea of an Independence principle. This paper argues that looking closely at these arguments actually strengthens the case for Independence, and yields some guidance in meeting a formidable challenge for Independence-defenders: formulating the principle in an adequate way. (shrink)

I will argue that just and accurate assessment must involve taking into account how racial injustice affects students’ performance in their work. To this end, I will motivate what I call the RACIAL-INJUSTICE-ASSESSMENT THESIS. According to this thesis, instructors must account for how racial injustice affects a student’s work for an instructor’s judgment of her work to count as just. To motivate the RACIAL-INJUSTICE ASSESSMENT THESIS, I will defend the ACCURACY THESIS and the JUSTICE THESIS. According to the ACCURACY THESIS, (...) the accuracy of an instructor’s judgment of a student’s work will covary with the degree to which she considers how racial injustice affects the performance enshrined in the student’s the work. According to the JUSTICE THESIS, the justness of instructors’ judgments of student work covary with the degree to which instructors consider racial injustice’s effect on student work. (shrink)

This paper argues that an AI judge is conceptually undesirable and not just something that lies beyond the state of the art in computer science. In a nutshell, even if an AI system could accurately predict how a good human judge would decide a particular case, its prediction would be the product of correlations between such factors as patterns of syntax in bodies of legal texts. This approach of AI systems is insufficient for basing their output on the sort of (...) rationales that are expected of valid judicial decisions in any desirable legal system. Thus, by their very nature, AI systems are incapable of providing valid legal decisions in any such system. (shrink)

A coherent practice of mens rea (‘guilty mind’) ascription in criminal law presupposes a concept of mens rea which is insensitive to the moral valence of an action’s outcome. For instance, an assessment of whether an agent harmed another person intentionally should be unaffected by the severity of harm done. Ascriptions of intentionality made by laypeople, however, are subject to a strong outcome bias. As demonstrated by the Knobe effect, a knowingly incurred negative side effect is standardly judged intentional, whereas (...) a positive side effect is not. We report the first empirical investigation into intentionality ascriptions made by professional judges, which finds (i) that professionals are sensitive to the moral valence of outcome type, and (ii) that the worse the outcome, the higher the propensity to ascribe intentionality. The data shows the intentionality ascriptions of professional judges to be inconsistent with the concept of mens rea supposedly at the foundation of criminal law. (shrink)

The scientific realism-antirealism debate concerns theories in general. However, as soon as the discussion draws arguments from the historical development of science, some issues emerge concerning how we should regard current theories in particular, as opposed to past and future ones. Positions here range between two extremes: on the one hand a radical version of the pessimistic meta-induction (PMI) would have it that since all past theories older than 100 - 150 years have been proven radically false and rejected , (...) all present and future theories will be rejected within 100-150 year, and there can be no truth in science (at most, empirical adequacy). On the opposite extreme blunt optimists like Doppelt (2007, 2011, 2014) or Park (2017a ... On treating differently....) hold that, given the astonishing qualitative and quantitative technical and methodological progress of research in the last century or so (Fahrbach 2011), current best theories are almost completely and exactly true, so that further progress, besides adding new knowledge, can at best correct minor details of present day theories: they will not be refuted, because they have a “unique status” in the history of their discipline, distinguishing them from other theories, since they “stand alone at the pinnacle of the entire field of inquiry” (Doppelt 2014, p. 285). But evidence is against both extremes: radical pessimism cannot explain why even the ancient and now rejected theories were predictively successful: some of their predictions were as precise as utterly unforeseen and unforeseeable, so that they couldn’t be gotten right except by a miracle. But an explanation of those successes is available, and it is that those theories had some true components which by themselves were sufficient to derive their predictions, and have actually been located by recent research. Therefore past theories were not completely false; hence, even the PMI cannot show that current theories are completely false. Again, radical pessimism cannot explain the rapidly increasing rate of success of science; which again, is plainly explained by the fact that the true components of older theories are typically preserved in current ones. On the other hand, it is a priory implausible that just now we have reached the “end of history” in scientific research, a sort of promised land of pure truths, or Peirce’s ideal limit of research, and that our science is infallible. We see the mistakes of past science, while we obviously cannot see those of present science, and this ingenerates the illusion that there are none. But we have seen the same illusion arising in the past, age after age, only to be deluded: in the 18th Century people thought Newton had definitely opened up for us God’s blueprint of the Universe. In 1874 Philipp von Jolly advised a young Max Planck against studying physics, because “In this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes”. In addition, we positively know that there are mistakes in current theories because even two of the most successful ones, quantum mechanics and relativity, are at variance with one another and are beset by unsolved riddles. No doubt contemporary science has made astonishing empirical and methodological progresses with respect to past science. But also in modern science vs. medieval science, etc. Nonetheless, even in the past empirical knowledge and scientific methodology had improved steadily: for instance, they had improved a lot from 1000 AD to 1700 AD, yet many wrong theories were still held at that date, and even thereafter. So, is hard to think that any improvement of our background empirical knowledge and methods can at some point make scientists practically infallible; and even more that this point has already been reached. Brad Wray (2016) pointed out that, just like at any time there are unconceived alternatives to the current theories, there are also unconceived methods (and instruments), by which those theories could be overthrown, like the discovery of the astronomical telescope in the helped overthrowing geocentrism, the discovery of the microscope jeopardized the theories of spontaneous generation, etc. Such new methods and instruments are produced all the time by the very progress of science, so the very advancements of contemporary science allows us to suppose that many will be discovered even in the next future, which will undermine today’s theories, opening the way to new revolutions. The arguments against both extremes are all sound, and beware, they are not mutually incompatible! Together, therefore, they drive to a moderate intermediate position: current theories are partly true, in fact more (perhaps much more) largely true than past ones, yet they probably still include important false components which might be replaced by future revolutionary changes, more or less like Newton’s absolute space and time and gravitational theory were replaced by Einstein’s spacetime and by its curvature, or the dichotomy of matter and energy, still surviving in late 19th Century electromagnetism and statistical mechanics was replaced by the continuum of quantum mechanics and special relativity. Contrary to Kuhn’s view, revolutions and progress go hand in hand. Of course current science stands on much firmer grounds than pre-20th Century science, yet there are continuities which justify some inductive inferences from past to present and future: we are still humans, basically using the same cognitive tool, reason and the five senses, and subject to the same cognitive limits; scientific method is basically the same; above all, Nature is still very complex, in fact unfathomably complex: it works in different ways at different scales or different locations in space or time. For instance, it is (roughly) deterministic at large scales, but indeterministic at small scales; the physical laws today are probably different from those a few instants after the Big Bang; entropy increases over time in the universe as a whole, but it may decrease in local areas or over short time spans; etc. (Alai 2017, 3282). Every great advancement in science has shown us unsuspected deeper and more basic layers of the structure of Nature, and we don’t know how many of those still lie ahead. Any of those discoveries brought out some basic mistake in our understanding of some of nature’s mechanisms, so spurred some kind of revolution. Induction is a correct inference pattern in general, and it may correctly be applied to past science, on condition of taking a correct image of past science as a premise. If this is done, the conclusion is a more balanced judgment of current and future theories, neither completely pessimistic nor implausibly optimistic. What we observe in past science is that (1) every single theory has been found to be mistaken and replaced; yet (2) mistaken but predictively successful theories had some true components (those essential to deriving their successful predictions); (3) those components were typically preserved in replacing theories, which therefore were more largely true. Since there is no reason to think that this trend is still on, we should conclude that current theories are more largely true than earlier ones, but still partly false. Even if not all the content of current theories exceeding old ones is probably true and will be preserved in the future, still we can appreciate one by one the new pieces of information and the corrections brought up by current theories, and we see they are really many. However, we cannot tell what in our theories is the percent of truth vs. falsity. A fortiori, therefore, we cannot tell how much more largely true than past theories they are, i.e. measure the difference in the respective percents of truth. Even less, of course, can we tell what percent of the whole truth on its particular subject a theory has gotten, since we don’t know what the whole truth is. It might be suggested that if the assumptions which were essential in deriving novel successful predictions are most probably true, as selectivists believe, then we should be able to discriminate what is true and what is false in our theories. However, this is not the case for two reasons. First, even assumptions which have not been so essentially employed might be true: only, we don’t have the acid test of it. Second, essential hypotheses typically appear in the derivation of novel predictions as undistinguished parts of stronger hypotheses which play the official role in the derivation; the latter are not essential, because the prediction might equally well have been derived by their essential part, even if this typically goes unnoticed. Furthermore, it can be argued that the essential content of an hypotheses often can be distinguished from its non-essential content only negatively, retrospectively and in hindsight (Alai 2021). That is, suppose H is an assumption which we now believe to be true because we believe was used essentially in deriving a successful prediction. If in the future we discover that is false, that will be sign that it had not actually been essential, and our discovery will also show which part H’ of H is wrong, hence, not essential. This however will not yet guarantee that all of the remaining part H” was essential and is true. Therefore, looking at current theories, we are entitled to believe that there is some truth in them, and more precisely that there is some truth in some hypotheses which appear to have been essential to certain novel predictions; however, we cannot be certain of what exactly is true in them. If we would, that would make our heuristics much easier than they are, for in face of any experimental failure of a theory we would know precisely and in advance which parts of it should not be modified and substituted. A further difficulty is that here my talk of “parts” of theories and hypotheses is vague and rather metaphorical, and there may be different ways (none easy, anyway) to rephrase it literally. So, this adds uncertainty to our outlook. For instance, suppose we formalize theories as collections of sentences, as in the classical “statement view”: then, it might be the case that 95% of the empirical atomic sentences of T are correct, that 50% of its middle-level theoretical atomic sentences are correct, but that 90% of the few very basic atomic theoretical sentences are wrong. If so, it might be matter of taste whether to call T largely true or largely false, but it would be certainly correct to call a “revolution” the substitution of T by a theory T’ which preserved most of the empirical and middle-level theoretical sentences of T while substituting 90% of its very basic theoretical sentences. Now, nothing allows us to exclude that a number of our best theories today is in a position like T. From this and the previous arguments it follows that it cannot be excluded, and in fact it is rather probable that our science, successful and largely true as it is, will undergo a number of revolutions in the future. (shrink)

This paper examines Netflix's use of personalized thumbnails, framing the discussion within cybernetic and psychological contexts to explore the nature of intentionality in automated systems. While algorithms are designed to optimize user engagement, the ascription of "intentionality" to such systems requires careful delineation between human and machine agency. By analyzing the processes underlying automated personalization, this paper situates algorithmic behavior within a cybernetic framework, showing that while algorithmic ‘intentionality’ arises from emergent processes, it remains functionally distinct from moral agency. The (...) discussion contributes to the broader debate on the ethical implications of algorithmic design and communication strategies. (shrink)

This paper redefines human nature not by traditional criteria such as reason, language, or sociality, but by the ability for structured judgment. Utilizing the framework of the Judgemental Triad—Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance—it argues that humans are beings for whom judgment 'returns'. Unlike other species, humans constitute symbolic meaning, seek Coherence in identity and action, and require Resonance—the return of meaning—as a condition for dignity, ethics, and identity. This structural perspective grounds human uniqueness not in metaphysical substance but in ethical architecture. (...) The paper concludes with implications for moral education, technological extension, and the definition of future Personhood. (shrink)

Part of a book symposium for Peter Langland-Hassan's Explaining Imagination (2020).

Judges is about loss: a loss of the individual which leads to a loss of the tribe, and, if circumstances remain unchecked, a loss of the nation.

The aim of this chapter is to show how Francophone PS, or what is called French (historical) epistemology, embodies this interconnectedness. Moreover, a novel approach to what constitutes French epistemology will be developed here, going beyond a purely historical survey or a reevaluation of a range of concepts found in this tradition.7 The aim is instead to highlight two methodological principles at work in French epistemology that are often in tension with one another, but are not recognized as such in (...) the literature. (shrink)

In Ockham's Razors: A User's Guide, Elliott Sober argues that parsimony considerations are epistemically relevant on the grounds that certain methods of model selection, such as the Akaike Information Criterion, exhibit good asymptotic behaviour and take the number of adjustable parameters in a model into account. I raise some worries about this form of argument.

This paper traces the philosophical concept of life prior to Kant and uses this to contextualize his account of aesthetic judgment as a form of life. It argues on this basis that, according to Kant, the form that taste claims for itself, as explicated in its four moments, results in a demand being placed on the transcendental philosopher to admit the idea of an ultimate subjective basis of all cognitive activities in human beings, that is, a shared principle and form (...) of cognititive life htat is uniquely human. (shrink)

This paper explores whether the deliberate act of refusing to judge—motivated by caution, ethical principle, or strategic ambiguity—can itself be evaluated within the structural framework of Judgemental Philosophy. Utilizing the Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance), we analyze if such acts constitute a genuine negation of judgement or merely shift the locus of attribution to a higher-order level. We argue that the refusal to judge is never truly outside the judgemental structure; it functions as a form of meta-attribution ("judgement should not (...) occur here" or "judgement is impossible here"), which must itself satisfy the criteria of Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance to be considered structurally valid and meaningful. Consequently, even the explicit withholding of judgement becomes, paradoxically, a judgeable act, raising important questions about neutrality, responsibility, and the limits of ethical silence. (shrink)

In a recent article, Kiel Brennan-Marquez and Stephen E. Henderson argue that replacing human judges with AI would violate the role-reversibility ideal of democratic governance. Unlike human judges, they argue, AI judges are not reciprocally vulnerable to the process and effects of their own decisions. I argue that role-reversibility, though a formal ideal of democratic governance, is in the service of substantive ends that may be independently achieved under AI judges. Thus, although role-reversibility is necessary for (...) democratic governance when human judges are on the job, it may not be so when AI judges replace them. One broader implication for normative evaluation of disruptive technologies follows: formal and substantive ideals that often align must be independently examined in the evaluation of disruptive technologies. This is because these formal and substantive ideals may no longer align under the factual circumstances that come to govern when such technologies are deployed. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.