Recent developments in AI, particularly in affective computing, have brought renewed attention to the question of first‑person authority—the authority subjects ordinarily take themselves to have with respect to their own avowals about their mental states. Emotion Recognition Systems, in particular, are often presented as being able to infer what you are feeling, in some cases better than you do. At the same time, recent work on self-knowledge emphasises that much of our self-knowledge is inferential, technologically mediated, and fallible. Together, these developments give rise to a tension: if AI systems can accurately infer our mental states, might they become accurate enough to override our avowals and thereby undermine our authority? I argue that the question rests on a mistaken but common assumption that first-person authority is grounded in a form of epistemic reliability or superiority that subjects enjoy over their mental states, an assumption often inherited from accounts of self-knowledge. Instead, I develop a capacities-based, non-epistemic, account of first-person authority. On this view, first-person authority is grounded in a subject’s distinctive set of capacities to relate to their mental states—through avowal, endorsement, and related capacities—in ways that are not available to others. Although first-person avowals are often accurate as a matter of contingent fact, that is not what makes them authoritative. The upshot is that AI does not pose a threat to first-person authority simpliciter; rather, it helps reveal the types of self-avowals that are vulnerable to challenge.
Discussions of certainty in epistemology often focus on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of “hinges,” the background certainties that make justification and epistemic evaluation possible. While the nature and epistemic status of hinges remain contested, this paper argues that they are best understood not as propositions or merely individual commitments, but as socially grounded, non-propositional certainties. Although hinge statements often take the form of empirical propositions, they function beyond justification and empirical testing while structuring the possibility of empirical knowledge. Engaging with interpretations such as Moyal-Sharrock’s account of verbalized non-propositional certainties and Pritchard’s notion of hinge commitments, I argue that hinges are instantiated pragmatically through action, embodied practice, and social participation. Drawing on theories of collective intentionality, I propose that hinges constitute a shared normative background that enables coordinated epistemic practices and underlies the possibility of inquiry. This account clarifies how background certainties are acquired, maintained, and shared across individuals, while also helping explain disagreement and misunderstanding when such certainties diverge. More broadly, it highlights the fundamentally social character of human cognition and knowledge, opening new avenues for dialogue between epistemology, cognitive science, and related disciplines.
Victoria LawsonIn personPracticing Val Plumwood’s Philosophy in the Indoor Spider EncounterWhen you experience physical bodily sensations of fear and disgust, beyond an immediate jump scare, of a spider inside your home, you experience a reaction informed by the separation, both conceptually and physically, of nature and culture in Western society. This separation, according to Val Plumwood, is not just a separation of distinct concepts, of a natural world and a human one, but a chasmic split between radically disparate and homogenised concepts. This informs her account of Western culture as a hegemonic centre – a dominant group forming an exclusive centre of moral and social reasoning – hyper-separating itself from nonhuman animals and the environment. This worldview requires individual maintenance, where experiences that resist conceptual separation elicit not just a physiological, but a conceptual reaction against the mixing of the boundary between nature and culture. I argue that spiders inside the cultural space of the home are an example of this boundary mixing, one in which you can choose to confront your own conceptual belief. This is important, as Plumwood argues the nature/culture dualism has given a conceptual basis for environmental destruction, a destruction which risks the ongoing existence of humans everywhere.
Georg Lukács’ The Destruction of Reason and Max Horkheimer’s The End of Reason both center on the theme of reason, as their titles indicated. However, there is a profound divergence in their intellectual foundations and teleological outlooks. This study examines these divergences through two core lenses: the philosophers’ contrasting attitudes toward Stalinism and their differing conceptions of reason’s prospects. As a consequence, their views on praxis, individuality, and the role of collective vs. individual struggle diverge: Lukacs prioritizes material transformation and collective action, while Horkheimer emphasizes critical reflection and the preservation of individual autonomy. Despite both being considered as foundational figures of Western Marxism, their disagreements reflect deeper tensions within Marxist thought regarding emancipation, rationality, and the relationship between theory and political practice. This paper argues that these differences stem not from contradictory commitments to Marxism, but from distinct responses to 20th-century political realities (e.g., fascism, Stalinist governance) and divergent interpretations of Marxism’s core tenets, particularly regarding the nature of reason and the path to human emancipation.
This paper investigates a fundamental aporia within the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas: how can ethical responsibility endure when infinite responsibility exceeds the finite subject’s capacity to fulfill it? Levinas grounds subjectivity in an asymmetrical responsibility for the Other that precedes freedom, reciprocity, and self-possession. Yet such radical responsibility threatens the subject with ethical exhaustion, shame, and retreat into ontological self-enclosure. Against interpretations that soften Levinasian asymmetry through reciprocity or mutual recognition, this paper argues that asymmetry remains irreducible. At the same time, however, asymmetrical responsibility generates what I call “hopeful asymmetry”: a fragile ethical hope directed toward the Other. Through an analysis of shame, substitution, and diachrony in Levinas’s major works, I argue that this hope functions as the transcendental condition that prevents ethical responsibility from collapsing into nihilistic absurdity. Hope does not resolve impossibility; rather, it suspends impossibility so that ethical responsiveness may continue despite constitutive inadequacy. Ultimately, the paper proposes a new interpretation of Levinasian ethics in which ethical shame becomes bearable only through the irreducible hope awakened by asymmetrical responsibility itself.
Jaeseok Choi is a Jesuit priest and a first-year M.A. student in the Department of Philosophy at Boston College. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering and his M.S. in Urban Planning from Seoul National University in South Korea. He also holds an M.A. in Philosophy and an M.Div... Read More →
Using Trevor Hedberg’s consequentialist argument for population control, I consider some historical and modern arguments against such control, and suggest responses that address those concerns. In particular, I will argue that economic concerns and anti-colonialist anxieties are misguided. Despite this and even with the best adaptive policies, the world’s environment and climate cannot survive the number of human beings currently on the planet, much less more. While acknowledging legitimate restrictions on coercion and acknowledging the problems of effectiveness, I will suggest that there is value in recognizing a problem even where we have limited solutions. Contrary to Hedberg, I will also argue that modern industrialized societies have special obligations to restrict their procreation rates.
Started out interesting in Bioethics and the Ethics of War. Now I'm interested in Environmental Ethics. (I'm interested in AI only if to the degree that I can't tolerate spruikers)
An increasing number of prominent ethicists (McMahahn, Nussbaum) and effective altruists are advocating for 'wild animal suffering interventionism’ (WASI): that humanity has a strong duty to intervene into natural ecosystems to ameliorate wild animal suffering not caused by humans. Fulfilling this project requires intergenerational governance of all animal populations on earth and the development of powerful bio and surveillance technologies. These same technologies are also being developed for the purposes of ecological conservation. I argue that WASI and ecological conservation are fundamentally at odds as WASI must aim to eventually destroy ecosystems and wild animal populations. The nascent field of 'interspecies population ethics', posits that all moral subjects must be included in counterfactual populations, irrespective of species membership. I explore the population ethics accounts of McMahan, Parfit and O'Brien. This shows that WASI does not aim for a garden of Eden full of vast happy animal populations structured like natural ecological systems, as is claimed by WASI authors and their critics, but a world of (post)humans. This marks the encroachment of WASI into ecological conservation discourse as inherently anti-ecological. Emerging conflicts between WASI and conservationists are identified in New Zealand and Australia.
This paper outlines and assesses current arguments for and against the ethical hedonist claim that pleasure is the only good, and that pain is the only bad. It outlines and appraises some recent moves in ‘heterogeneity’ arguments against hedonism, and some moves in recent arguments for hedonism that appeal to an experience requirement or a resonance requirement. It also analyses contest between attitudinal and phenomenal accounts of pleasure and pain, and some differences among such accounts that matter in experience/resonance arguments for hedonism, and in heterogeneity arguments against hedonism.
In virtue ethics and virtue epistemology, someone’s exercise of “intellectual” virtues such as open-mindedness, curiosity, and intellectual humility is understood as key to responsible and knowledge-conducive belief formation. “Moral” virtues such as generosity, courage, and kindness are largely treated as distinct and separate from their intellectual counterparts.
However, recognition of our ubiquitous dependence on others for not only information but also norms for finding and interpreting such undermines individualist approaches and implies a more complex relationship between so-called intellectual and moral virtue. This paper argues that given our beliefs are often formed by knowledge from others and are mediated through social practices of knowing, our regard and treatment of others is necessarily implicated in belief-formation and the pursuit of knowledge.
Drawing primarily on work on social epistemic dependence and Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice (2003), I propose that social epistemic dependence suggests efficacious epistemic practices rely to some extent on ethical regard for and treatment of others. This claim motivates a reconsideration of the traditional distinction between moral and intellectual virtues and provokes a need for a virtue ethic of belief which unifies moral and intellectual concerns and practices.
Proponents of the “inquisitive theory of mind” argue that intentions are among the attitudes which are question sensitive. Understood this way, to form an intention is to settle on an answer to a ‘practical questions,’ a question about what to do. But what is an answer to a practical question, and what is it to “settle” on one answer over others? In this paper I argue that, contra the extant question-sensitive theory of intention (Beddor & Goldstein 2023), settling on an answer to a practical question involves being in a mental state with imperative content. Hence, the question-sensitivity of intention recommends against the standard view on which intentions are attitudes toward propositional contents. On the view I defend, Imperativism, to intend to φ is to occupy a mental state with content akin to the imperative “φ!” in natural language. Imperativism is closely related to the most widely discussed non-propositionalist theory, the “do-ables view,” on which the content of an intention is an infinitival clause (e.g., “to φ”). While both the do-ables view and Imperativism capture the intuitive sense in which the objects of our intentions are acts, I show that only Imperativism can be plausibly squared with question-sensitivity.
This paper argues that Spinoza’s concept of active joy provides a philosophical grounding for contemporary theory of serious leisure. For Spinoza, active joy is a sustained increase in our power of acting, achieved through activities rooted in understanding, autonomy, and rational self‑cultivation. This paper cites empirical evidence from the current leisure studies scholarship and explains how such joy emerges when we engage in practices that systematically expand our capacities and align with our conatus. The term “serious leisure”, defined as the committed, skill‑based, identity‑forming pursuit of a chosen activity, mirrors this structure. Both frameworks emphasise disciplined engagement and the transformation of ordinary pursuits into personal flourishing. By interpreting serious leisure through Spinoza’s lens, this paper shows how amateurism, volunteerism and hobbies generate active joy by enhancing competence, agency, and social embeddedness. The paper also illustrates that Spinoza’s philosophy clarifies why serious leisure contributes to resilience and wellbeing. Consequently, the sustained engagement in serious leisure embodies a Spinozist pathway toward freedom, where joy emerges from the rational understanding of our potential within a structured yet intrinsically rewarding domain of activity.
Panpsychism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality, gained significant attention in the recent decades as a potentially better alternative to physicalism or substance dualism. However, panpsychism runs into a serious problem—the combination problem—according to which the multiplicity of microphenomenally conscious particles somehow combine into a macrophenomenal consciousness that we have. Very recently, Kadic (2024) proposed a version of panpsychism which he calls monadic panpsychism. This version comes in two main varieties: dynamic version and global version. The former states that microphenomenally conscious particles stand in causal relations such that they make one particle macrophenomenally conscious. The latter states that the same causal process makes all particles conscious. In both cases, macrophenomenal consciousness is explained by avoiding all of the problems that hunt its alternatives. In this paper, I explore monadic panpsychism by raising objections and solving them in its favor. To solve all objections I appeal to the theory of evolution. The first objection is the incredulous stare problem according to which both versions of monadic panpsychism have a low prior probability. I argue that evolution could in principle either produce an organism which contains a single macrophenomenal particle, or an organism which contains a large totality of macrophenomenal particles. Given that to be the case, we should increase our credences about both versions of monadic panpsychism. Also, monadic panpsychism and evolution are similar in a sense that they contain elements of apparent arbitrariness in their theories. The second problem is the selection problem against the dynamic version in particular: why is this particle dominant but not some other one? I respond that evolution could select for a mechanism which randomly chooses particles to be dominant, even though, I admit that there are residual questions that cannot be answered even by evolution. Lastly, I compare two versions of monadic panpsychism in general and I conclude that we should: (i) increase our credences in both versions of monadic panpsychism, and that (ii) we might favor the global version over the dynamic version so far.
Debates about Generative AI often focus on empirical claims concerning cognitive enhancement or decline. This paper argues that the deeper issue is aesthetic. AI reshapes the form, tempo, and structural movement of reflective thought. Drawing on multi-modal critical thinking framework (Gilbert, 1994) and a conception of improvisational thinking as the aesthetic mode of dialectical engagement (Yazici, 2025), I defend a middle-way position. Generative AI threatens thinking only when engaged passively, encouraging aesthetic flattening through premature closure and conceptual smoothness. When approached through an improvisational stance, however, AI-generated outputs become material for reinterpretation, resistance, and creative transformation. The impact of AI on human thought is therefore not technologically determined but dependent on the aesthetic posture of the thinker. The philosophical task in an AI age is to cultivate forms of engagement that preserve the open-ended, self-revising thus improvisational ways of thinking.
The rise of critical thinking in Greece’s early philosophy can be traced back to the earliest written literature of ancient Greece, with the works of the epic poets Hesiod and Homer. Critical thinking was not just limited to the logical philosophies of Plato and Aristotle of the classical age, nor with interpretation to the sixth century BCE natural philosophers’ empirical observations and theories.Through a comparative analysis of the themes and structures surrounding concepts of creation in the myths of Greece’s epic poems, with the theories of the early Presocratic natural philosophers, this paper proposes to pinpoint when ancient Greece’s formal critical reasoning began. It argues the Presocratic philosophers were the transition point from mythological thinking of Greece’s archaic age to the scientific reasoning of Greece’s classical age. However, the earlier epic poetry also employed this critical reasoning, which makes it Greece’s earliest instance of recorded critical reasoning. Both mediums of epic poetry and natural philosophy used critical reasoning to explain natural phenomena and justify human existence. Thus the early Greek thinkers employed critical reasoning in what were early quasi-scientific explanations for what they observed around them that were based on empirical observation and practice combined with logic and reasoning.
Tolerance is firmly established in political, religious, and legal contexts, yet in the sphere of belief its boundaries remain undefined. In matters of opinion, no legal obligation requires individuals to justify or defend their claims. For that reason, the task of setting limits falls to critical thinking. It safeguards the conditions under which knowledge can be distinguished from mere opinion and responsible judgment from arbitrary assertion. An epistemic community endures only where practices of verification, argumentation, and reason-giving are preserved. Institutions do not think or tolerate on their own, but they shape the environment in which justification is either encouraged or replaced by unchecked expression. Tolerance should be understood as a starting assumption rather than a final value. It reflects a willingness to acknowledge the existence of the other. Critical thinking, however, asks a further question: is a given position genuinely different, grounded in a distinct but coherent conceptual framework, or is it simply false within a shared one? What is truly other may resist direct comparison and require broader criteria of evaluation. What is false demands critical rejection. Failing to distinguish between these cases erodes standards of judgment. The spread of fake information makes this risk visible. The problem is not openness to difference, but the elevation of error to the status of a legitimate alternative.
Prosocial behaviour-promoting virtual reality (PBP-VR) experiences often claim to foster empathy and understanding by allowing users to virtually embody members of marginalised groups. In this talk, I argue that PBP-VR can also produce distinctive epistemic errors that generate morally problematic forms of social understanding. I identify and analyse two such errors: synecdoche epistemic arrogance, in which users mistake a narrow or artificial virtual experience for genuine insight into the experiences of marginalised people more broadly, and epistemic overestimation, in which users significantly overestimate the depth or reliability of the understanding they have acquired through virtual embodiment. I argue that these errors are morally significant because they can encourage misplaced epistemic confidence, diminish appropriate deference to lived testimony, and reinforce distorted beliefs about oppression and social identity. Moreover, PBP-VR may sometimes unintentionally lead users to misinterpret emotionally salient virtual experiences as morally enlightening, even where those experiences are highly artificial, and or, affectively misleading (think, for example, a man embodied as a woman who concludes that being sexually harassed is 'fun' and therefore 'not that bad'). The talk concludes by considering how these risks complicate common claims about VR as an “empathy machine” and by outlining several ethical implications for the design and implementation of PBP-VR systems.
I am awaiting examination on my doctoral thesis which looks at prosocial behaviour promoting virtual reality. I ask: what can we plausibly know about others' experiences through virtual embodiment, and is acquiring this knowledge ethically desirable in the first place? ... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST N3.01
How does wishful thinking (the ‘desirability bias’) work? Existing theories (e.g., cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, psychological immune theory) struggle to adequately explain this phenomenon, so I apply theory construction methodology and standard critical thinking tools to improve on them. I find that wishful thinkers accurately perceive that attaining self-serving beliefs will confer genuine benefits to them, but underperceive their potential costs, leading to a distorted perception of the true personal benefit-cost ratio (BCR). Wishful thinkers must also maintain their beliefs over time, which they achieve with the strategic avoidance of doubt-inducing stimuli (even though this strategy has fundamental constraints). I posit that wishful thinking necessarily produces an aversive attitude towards self-doubt, and that such doubt aversion is a crucial causal factor: the overperception of the BCR of wishful thinking is locked in by it, as it obstructs future learning about costs. All of this produces serious risks for the wishful thinker, but they may reduce their exposure to these by developing conditional metacognitive knowledge about self-doubt. Unfortunately, doubt aversion can again obstruct this process. My main contention is that without the metacognitive neglect (i.e., the failure to develop metacognitive knowledge) of self-doubt and doubt aversion, wishful thinking could not be sustained.
With global reports of substantial mental health issues, there is an imperative to take seriously the criticisms of the traditional Western paradigm that entails the predominant epistemological and ontological assumptions about mental health. In this paper we argue that the historical development of concepts and theories related to self have created deeply embedded cultural legacies that are based on the ontological and epistemological assumptions of our individual and societal expectations about, and experiences of, wellbeing. Further, we will argue that ontological and epistemological assumptions in the Western paradigm concerning a fundamental ontological separation of selves from the world and of an intra-psychic divide mean that the way that the self is understood in relation to the experience of wellbeing is conceptually flawed. These embedded assumptions are demonstrated to be problematic by framing them in the double-bind scenario, whereby contradictory inputs create an irresolvable situation causing anxiety and confusion. Understanding the web of ontological and epistemological tangles and their consequent conceptual and lived ‘binds’ provides a framework within which to consider a paradigm shift in understanding the self in relation to critical thinking and the experience of wellbeing.
In this presentation, I critically evaluate the popular use of slippery slope arguments (SSAs) by opponents of Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD). I begin by evaluating different forms of SSA. I then identify recurrent methodological deficiencies appearing in SSAs opposing VAD, such as speculative causal chains of events, conflation of logical possibility with empirical probability, selective engagement with jurisdictional evidence, and the application of an asymmetric burden of proof that treats hypothetical future harms as certain or very likely, while down-playing, and sometimes even ignoring, the proven immediate suffering of VAD patients. Drawing on case studies from the philosophical literature, and legislative debates from jurisdictions where VAD has been permitted, I demonstrate that slippage toward the negative consequences predicted by opponents of VAD either have not occurred or have occurred in ways reflective of deliberative democratic debate, and clinical review. Further, I argue that the rhetorical force of SSAs, used in debates about VAD, often effectively conceals deeply held theological commitments (such as the sanctity of life) that advocates are reluctant to defend directly. I conclude by advocating for ways to distinguish legitimate SSAs from fallacious ones.
Group deliberation is a discursive process whereby participants seek to reach understanding by exchanging considerations, aiming to build consensus for the purpose of action-coordination. My PhD thesis develops formal (mathematical) models to study the mechanics of group deliberation. In this talk, I first address the question of whether formal models are appropriate to study group deliberation in the first place. On Jürgen Habermas' influential theory of communicative action, formal models are inappropriate to study processes of communicative action (such as deliberation), because they model agents as engaging in purposive strategic action, rather than as acting so as to reach understanding. I develop a concept, deliberative strategic action, and argue that it provides a conceptual warrant to study deliberation using formal models. An agent engaged in deliberative strategic action relies on purposive rationality to carry out a plan of action for the end of reaching understanding. Second, I present a framework, objects of deliberation. Here, deliberating agents seek consensus on one or more parts of a hypothetical imperative: ends, means, or facts. I argue that this framework helps us make sense of the diversity of formal models of deliberation.
