Department of Philosophy

Current Dissertations

In the dissertation, I consider a variety of ways in which we might go about trying to make sense of the role of truth in discourse about so-called “matters of taste.” In the end, I argue that we do best to understand evaluative taste claims (what I call claims about “matters of good taste”) as bearers of the same sort of absolute truth-values that we ordinarily attribute to prosaically factual claims. In other words, I argue that evaluative taste claims are best understood as claims about whether something has value in general, as opposed to claims that are somehow indexed to our idiosyncratic individual or communal evaluative standards. By contrast, I argue that most non-evaluative taste claims (what I call claims about “matters of personal taste”), which I analyze as ascriptions of response-dependent properties, are best understood as expressing claims that are so indexed.

My thesis argues that the behavioral and the mental can form an inseparable unity in action.  This theory emerges from the works of Gilbert Ryle and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and stands in stark contrast to the prevailing causal theory of action.  Ryle claimed that “adverbial” actions constitute cognition.  Merleau-Ponty claimed that “motor-intentional” actions constitute perception.  This theory lends credence to contemporary theories of “embodied” cognition and perception that are committed, as were Ryle and Merleau-Ponty, to a constitutive relation between bodily behavior and mentality.

It is natural to think that to explain a phenomenon is to provide information, true information, about why it happens.  Scientific explanations, however, often take the form of idealized models: theoretical constructs that contain deliberate distortions (e.g. frictionless planes, infinite populations). Why is it that explanations in science commonly misrepresent the way things happen? More generally, how and when does idealization contribute to scientific understanding? I offer a general account of the role of idealization in explanation and provide several case studies from biology.

I set out by arguing for a two-dimensional conception of scientific explanation. On this conception the explanatory value of a model depends, first, on the causal information it contains – the extent to which it captures relevant causal factors. Second, a good explanation represents causal facts in a way that allows scientists to reason about the system being explained. The two dimensions interact and may trade off with one another. I argue that this view gains support from a prior (and plausible) notion of scientific understanding. Moreover, it combines two attractive ideas that have hitherto led separate lives: The idea that explanatory value depends on the character of the representational resources used in explanation, central to Kitcher’s unifcationism; and the idea that good explanations track causal facts, currently dominant in the philosophy of science.

The two-dimensional conception nicely illuminates the role of idealization. I build on a recent account by Michael Strevens, on which an idealized model is explanatory when it does not misrepresent difference makers. I show that this is best understood as an account of the informational dimension of idealizing explanations.  From the representational standpoint, idealization allows us to isolate causal factors and reason concretely. Drawing on Kendall Walton’s work on “make-believe”, I call attention to the connection between idealization and fiction. An idealized model’s engagement of the imagination may contribute to its representational, hence explanatory, value.

The second part of the dissertation consists of three case studies. These illustrate how idealization, and some kinds of fictional representation, contribute to scientific understanding. Yet they also show that idealization can lead theorists to overestimate explanatory value. The first case study concerns the Hodgkin-Huxley model of the action potential, a cornerstone of modern neurobiology. This is a best-case scenario for idealizing explanation. The analysis of a fictional “model neuron” – as H&H call it – is tightly coupled to the causal properties of squid axons as ascertained in the lab.
The next case study focuses on game theoretic models of the evolution of justice. Early in this project, individual-level acquisition of norms was idealized as a form of success seeking. I argue that follow-up work has refined the initial model, but has not sought to adjust it to the realities of moral learning. Here the focus on a compelling fictional set-up leads to an overestimation of the insights gained vis-à-vis real-world phenomena.

The final case study targets the concept of information in cellular and developmental biology. I argue that informational concepts are used in a figurative mode, much like metaphors. However, they play an important role in allowing biologists to compactly represent processes of control and regulation.  Viewing biological information through the lens of idealization allows us to get a purchase on its explanatory value, but it also highlights its unusual theoretical role.

People who are equally hard-working can command radically different wages, and hence different life prospects, merely because they possess different innate talents. Inequalities of this sort strike many people as unjust. Yet, the challenge is to characterize the injustice precisely and to explain what form of social institutions would target and eliminate the injustice.  My thesis takes up this challenge by solving three related problems. First, I explain why individuals should not be taxed according to their ability to earn, after showing why explanations put forward by John Rawls, Liam Murphy, and Thomas Nagel fail. Second, I show that, contrary to Ronald Dworkin, it is not merely desirable but also possible for a distribution of resources to be sensitive to how hard an individual works, but insensitive to the distribution of talents. And, third, in response to G.A. Cohen, I argue that individuals who forego their preferred occupation for the sake of social welfare can accept greater rewards consistent with an egalitarian ethos. Together, the three parts develop a comprehensive account of the just treatment of unequal talents in the market.

Reasoning is a process by which individuals can acquire or abandon attitudes on the basis of other attitudes to which they are rationally related. Many philosophers take there to be prescriptions associated with reasoning, yet many also take reasoning to be an essentially passive cognitive process. I show that these commitments are incompatible and argue that individuals engage in reasoning as a kind of action, one that is the psychological analogue of rational discourse. Reasoning is a psychological activity in which an individual makes rationally related sub-vocalized utterances towards answering a question. The sub-vocalized utterances made in reasoning instantiate the attitudes involved in it. The proposed account allows us to reconceptualize the frame problem, weakness of will, and self-deception.