I work on human rationality and the metaphysics of doxastic states. My dissertation is a criticism of dual-process theory of reasoning, concluding in my own one-system account of reasoning. I am currently working on the nature and ethics of belief and faith as well. I bring empirical considerations from implicit beliefs to bear on the norms of belief formation. Supervisors: Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Kristin Andrews, and Jacob Beck
The two-system hypothesis states that there are two kinds of reasoning systems, the first of whic... more The two-system hypothesis states that there are two kinds of reasoning systems, the first of which is evolutionarily old, heuristically (or associatively) based, automatic, fast, and is a collection of independent systems. The second is evolutionarily new, perhaps peculiar to humans, is rule-based, controlled, slow, and is a single token system. Advocates of the two-system hypothesis generally support their claim by an inference to the best explanation: two systems are needed to explain experimental data from the reasoning, heuristics, and biases literature. The best evidence for this claim comes from simultaneous contradictory belief (henceforth SCB) (Sloman 1996, 2002). I argue that Sloman has not provided us with cases of SCB. In each of his examples there is no evidence that the beliefs are held simultaneously. I then offer the outline for an experimental setup that would offer compelling evidence for the existence of SCB and thereby support the two-system hypothesis.
Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith that p entails belief that p. This view has rece... more Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith that p entails belief that p. This view has recently come under fire within analytic philosophy of religion. One common objection is that faith is compatible with doubt in a way that belief is not. One version of this objection, recently employed by Beth Rath (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 81, 161–169, 2017), is to use a particular story, in this case Jesus Christ’s cry of dereliction, to argue that someone had propositional faith while ceasing to believe. Thus, doxasticism is false. Rath’s approach of analyzing a case from scripture has the advantage of allowing her to provide evidence for the claim that a subject had propositional faith but lost belief. However, I argue that Rath faces a dilemma: on the interpretation of the passage necessary for her argument, either Christ did lose his propositional faith that God was with him, or else he did not lose his belief that God was with him. Either way, she must reject...
Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticis... more Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticism is that faith seems compatible with doubt in a way that belief is not. Thus, it seems possible to have faith without belief, and several non-doxasticist accounts of faith are motivated inter alia by the need to account for this type of doubt. I provide three avenues of response: 1) favored cases of faith without belief beg the question by stipulating faith-that-p-without-beliefthat-p, or if the non-doxasticist provides evidence that there is faith without belief, this evidence points to either 2) no-faith-that-p-because-disbelief-that-p or 3) faith-that-p-with-belief-that-p.
Cognitive scientists claim to have discovered a large number of cognitive biases, which have a te... more Cognitive scientists claim to have discovered a large number of cognitive biases, which have a tendency to mislead reasoners. Might cognitive scientists themselves be subject to the very biases they purport to discover? And how should this alter the way they evaluate their research as evidence for the existence of these biases? In this paper, we posit a new paradox (the ‘Self-Reflexive Bias Paradox’), which bears a striking resemblance to some classical logical paradoxes. Suppose that research R appears to be good evidence for the existence of bias B, but if B exists, then R would have been subject to B. Thus, it seems sensible for the researcher to reject R as good evidence for the existence of B. However, rejecting R for this reason admits the existence of B. We examine four putative cognitive biases and criticisms of them, each of which seem to be subject to self-reflexivity. In two cases, we argue, paradox is avoidable. In the remaining two, we cannot find a way to avoid the paradox, which poses a practical obstacle to scientific inquiry and results in an intriguing theoretical quandary.
The doctrine of the resurrection says that God will resurrect the body that lived and died on ear... more The doctrine of the resurrection says that God will resurrect the body that lived and died on earth—that the post-mortem body will be numerically identical to the pre-mortem body. After exegetically supporting this claim, and defending it from a recent objection, we ask: supposing that the doctrine of the resurrection is true, what are the implications for the mind-body relation? Why would God resurrect the body that lived and died on earth? We compare three accounts of the mind-body relation that have been applied to the doctrine of the resurrection: substance dualism, constitutionalism, and animalism. We argue that animalism offers a superior explanation for the necessity of the resurrection: since human persons just are their bodies, life after death requires resurrection of one’s body. We conclude (by inference to the best explanation) that those endorsing the doctrine of the resurrection should be animalists.
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2017
Modal Arguments in the philosophy of mind purport to show that the body is not necessary for a hu... more Modal Arguments in the philosophy of mind purport to show that the body is not necessary for a human person’s existence. The key premise in these arguments are generally supported with thought experiments (e.g. I could exist either in some other bodily form or in a disembodied state). I argue that Christians endorsing the Doctrine of the Resurrection have good reason to deny this key premise. Traditional Christianity affirms that eschatological human existence is an embodied existence in the very bodies we inhabited while alive. The raises the Resurrection Question: why would God go through the trouble of resurrecting those bodies? I argue that adequately answering this question requires give up on Modal Arguments within the philosophy of mind.
There are two problems with Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) claim that an innate inherence he... more There are two problems with Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) claim that an innate inherence heuristic is part of our cognitive makeup. First, some of their examples of inherent features do not seem to accord with the authors' own definition of inherence. Second, rather than posit an inherence heuristic to explain why humans rely more heavily on inherent features, it may be more parsimonious to do so on the basis of aspects of the world itself and our relationship to it.
Iu this paper I defend C.B. Martin's identity theory in which intrinsic properties of concrnt... more Iu this paper I defend C.B. Martin's identity theory in which intrinsic properties of concrnte objects-ari simultaneously qualitative and dispositional. Using three argumentsfnom Syrlney Shoemaker, I demonstrate that therc are epistemic difihculties with ontologically separating dispositional and qualitative properties. I use Prior, ?argetter, an{ Jq9$on as a paradigm casi of such an attempt to separate these two kinds of prope*ies. The diffrculty with Prior et al.'s higber-order account ofdispositions is this: given an asymmetry relation, the qualitative pmperties can vary without necessarily altering the object's dispositions-. Given that our interactiou with arobject is with its dispositions, our lorowledge of objects becomes swerely limited. Therefore, we ought not posit qualitative and dispositional properties as
Simultaneous Contradictory Belief and the Two-System Hypothesis Joshua Mugg (joshuamugg@gmail.com... more Simultaneous Contradictory Belief and the Two-System Hypothesis Joshua Mugg (joshuamugg@gmail.com) Department of Philosophy, 4700 Keele St. Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada criticism of the two-system hypothesis has focused on the kind claim (Samuels 2009; Evans 2011), I argue that Sloman has not provided us with cases of SCB. I then offer an experimental setup that would strongly support the existence of SBC. Abstract The two-system hypothesis states that there are two kinds of reasoning systems, the first of which is evolutionarily old, heuristically (or associatively) based, automatic, fast, and is a collection of independent systems. The second is evolutionarily new, perhaps peculiar to humans, is rule-based, controlled, slow, and is a single token system. Advocates of the two-system hypothesis generally support their claim by an inference to the best explanation: two systems are needed to explain experimental data from the reasoning, heuristics, and biases literature. The best eviden...
Cognitive scientists claim to have discovered a large number of cognitive biases, which have a te... more Cognitive scientists claim to have discovered a large number of cognitive biases, which have a tendency to mislead reasoners. Might cognitive scientists themselves be subject to the very biases they purport to discover? And how should this alter the way they evaluate their research as evidence for the existence of these biases? In this paper, we posit a new paradox (the 'Self-Reflexive Bias Paradox'), which bears a striking resemblance to some classical logical paradoxes. Suppose that research R appears to be good evidence for the existence of bias B, but if B exists, then R would have been subject to B. Thus, it seems sensible for the researcher to reject R as good evidence for the existence of B. However, rejecting R for this reason admits the existence of B. We examine four putative cognitive biases and criticisms of them, each of which seem to be subject to self-reflexivity. In two cases, we argue, paradox is avoidable. In the remaining two, we cannot find a way to avoid the paradox, which poses a practical obstacle to scientific inquiry and results in an intriguing theoretical quandary.
Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticis... more Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticism is that faith seems compatible with doubt in a way that belief is not. Thus, it seems possible to have faith without belief, and several non-doxasticist accounts of faith are motivated inter alia by the need to account for this type of doubt. I provide three avenues of response: 1) favored cases of faith without belief beg the question by stipulating faith-that-p-without-beliefthat-p, or if the non-doxasticist provides evidence that there is faith without belief, this evidence points to either 2) no-faith-that-p-because-disbelief-that-p or 3) faith-that-p-with-belief-that-p.
The two-system hypothesis states that there are two kinds of reasoning systems, the first of whic... more The two-system hypothesis states that there are two kinds of reasoning systems, the first of which is evolutionarily old, heuristically (or associatively) based, automatic, fast, and is a collection of independent systems. The second is evolutionarily new, perhaps peculiar to humans, is rule-based, controlled, slow, and is a single token system. Advocates of the two-system hypothesis generally support their claim by an inference to the best explanation: two systems are needed to explain experimental data from the reasoning, heuristics, and biases literature. The best evidence for this claim comes from simultaneous contradictory belief (henceforth SCB) (Sloman 1996, 2002). I argue that Sloman has not provided us with cases of SCB. In each of his examples there is no evidence that the beliefs are held simultaneously. I then offer the outline for an experimental setup that would offer compelling evidence for the existence of SCB and thereby support the two-system hypothesis.
Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith that p entails belief that p. This view has rece... more Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith that p entails belief that p. This view has recently come under fire within analytic philosophy of religion. One common objection is that faith is compatible with doubt in a way that belief is not. One version of this objection, recently employed by Beth Rath (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 81, 161–169, 2017), is to use a particular story, in this case Jesus Christ’s cry of dereliction, to argue that someone had propositional faith while ceasing to believe. Thus, doxasticism is false. Rath’s approach of analyzing a case from scripture has the advantage of allowing her to provide evidence for the claim that a subject had propositional faith but lost belief. However, I argue that Rath faces a dilemma: on the interpretation of the passage necessary for her argument, either Christ did lose his propositional faith that God was with him, or else he did not lose his belief that God was with him. Either way, she must reject...
Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticis... more Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticism is that faith seems compatible with doubt in a way that belief is not. Thus, it seems possible to have faith without belief, and several non-doxasticist accounts of faith are motivated inter alia by the need to account for this type of doubt. I provide three avenues of response: 1) favored cases of faith without belief beg the question by stipulating faith-that-p-without-beliefthat-p, or if the non-doxasticist provides evidence that there is faith without belief, this evidence points to either 2) no-faith-that-p-because-disbelief-that-p or 3) faith-that-p-with-belief-that-p.
Cognitive scientists claim to have discovered a large number of cognitive biases, which have a te... more Cognitive scientists claim to have discovered a large number of cognitive biases, which have a tendency to mislead reasoners. Might cognitive scientists themselves be subject to the very biases they purport to discover? And how should this alter the way they evaluate their research as evidence for the existence of these biases? In this paper, we posit a new paradox (the ‘Self-Reflexive Bias Paradox’), which bears a striking resemblance to some classical logical paradoxes. Suppose that research R appears to be good evidence for the existence of bias B, but if B exists, then R would have been subject to B. Thus, it seems sensible for the researcher to reject R as good evidence for the existence of B. However, rejecting R for this reason admits the existence of B. We examine four putative cognitive biases and criticisms of them, each of which seem to be subject to self-reflexivity. In two cases, we argue, paradox is avoidable. In the remaining two, we cannot find a way to avoid the paradox, which poses a practical obstacle to scientific inquiry and results in an intriguing theoretical quandary.
The doctrine of the resurrection says that God will resurrect the body that lived and died on ear... more The doctrine of the resurrection says that God will resurrect the body that lived and died on earth—that the post-mortem body will be numerically identical to the pre-mortem body. After exegetically supporting this claim, and defending it from a recent objection, we ask: supposing that the doctrine of the resurrection is true, what are the implications for the mind-body relation? Why would God resurrect the body that lived and died on earth? We compare three accounts of the mind-body relation that have been applied to the doctrine of the resurrection: substance dualism, constitutionalism, and animalism. We argue that animalism offers a superior explanation for the necessity of the resurrection: since human persons just are their bodies, life after death requires resurrection of one’s body. We conclude (by inference to the best explanation) that those endorsing the doctrine of the resurrection should be animalists.
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2017
Modal Arguments in the philosophy of mind purport to show that the body is not necessary for a hu... more Modal Arguments in the philosophy of mind purport to show that the body is not necessary for a human person’s existence. The key premise in these arguments are generally supported with thought experiments (e.g. I could exist either in some other bodily form or in a disembodied state). I argue that Christians endorsing the Doctrine of the Resurrection have good reason to deny this key premise. Traditional Christianity affirms that eschatological human existence is an embodied existence in the very bodies we inhabited while alive. The raises the Resurrection Question: why would God go through the trouble of resurrecting those bodies? I argue that adequately answering this question requires give up on Modal Arguments within the philosophy of mind.
There are two problems with Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) claim that an innate inherence he... more There are two problems with Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) claim that an innate inherence heuristic is part of our cognitive makeup. First, some of their examples of inherent features do not seem to accord with the authors' own definition of inherence. Second, rather than posit an inherence heuristic to explain why humans rely more heavily on inherent features, it may be more parsimonious to do so on the basis of aspects of the world itself and our relationship to it.
Iu this paper I defend C.B. Martin's identity theory in which intrinsic properties of concrnt... more Iu this paper I defend C.B. Martin's identity theory in which intrinsic properties of concrnte objects-ari simultaneously qualitative and dispositional. Using three argumentsfnom Syrlney Shoemaker, I demonstrate that therc are epistemic difihculties with ontologically separating dispositional and qualitative properties. I use Prior, ?argetter, an{ Jq9$on as a paradigm casi of such an attempt to separate these two kinds of prope*ies. The diffrculty with Prior et al.'s higber-order account ofdispositions is this: given an asymmetry relation, the qualitative pmperties can vary without necessarily altering the object's dispositions-. Given that our interactiou with arobject is with its dispositions, our lorowledge of objects becomes swerely limited. Therefore, we ought not posit qualitative and dispositional properties as
Simultaneous Contradictory Belief and the Two-System Hypothesis Joshua Mugg (joshuamugg@gmail.com... more Simultaneous Contradictory Belief and the Two-System Hypothesis Joshua Mugg (joshuamugg@gmail.com) Department of Philosophy, 4700 Keele St. Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada criticism of the two-system hypothesis has focused on the kind claim (Samuels 2009; Evans 2011), I argue that Sloman has not provided us with cases of SCB. I then offer an experimental setup that would strongly support the existence of SBC. Abstract The two-system hypothesis states that there are two kinds of reasoning systems, the first of which is evolutionarily old, heuristically (or associatively) based, automatic, fast, and is a collection of independent systems. The second is evolutionarily new, perhaps peculiar to humans, is rule-based, controlled, slow, and is a single token system. Advocates of the two-system hypothesis generally support their claim by an inference to the best explanation: two systems are needed to explain experimental data from the reasoning, heuristics, and biases literature. The best eviden...
Cognitive scientists claim to have discovered a large number of cognitive biases, which have a te... more Cognitive scientists claim to have discovered a large number of cognitive biases, which have a tendency to mislead reasoners. Might cognitive scientists themselves be subject to the very biases they purport to discover? And how should this alter the way they evaluate their research as evidence for the existence of these biases? In this paper, we posit a new paradox (the 'Self-Reflexive Bias Paradox'), which bears a striking resemblance to some classical logical paradoxes. Suppose that research R appears to be good evidence for the existence of bias B, but if B exists, then R would have been subject to B. Thus, it seems sensible for the researcher to reject R as good evidence for the existence of B. However, rejecting R for this reason admits the existence of B. We examine four putative cognitive biases and criticisms of them, each of which seem to be subject to self-reflexivity. In two cases, we argue, paradox is avoidable. In the remaining two, we cannot find a way to avoid the paradox, which poses a practical obstacle to scientific inquiry and results in an intriguing theoretical quandary.
Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticis... more Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticism is that faith seems compatible with doubt in a way that belief is not. Thus, it seems possible to have faith without belief, and several non-doxasticist accounts of faith are motivated inter alia by the need to account for this type of doubt. I provide three avenues of response: 1) favored cases of faith without belief beg the question by stipulating faith-that-p-without-beliefthat-p, or if the non-doxasticist provides evidence that there is faith without belief, this evidence points to either 2) no-faith-that-p-because-disbelief-that-p or 3) faith-that-p-with-belief-that-p.
How can we asking meaningful philosophy questions? Here is activity to do with your kids at home ... more How can we asking meaningful philosophy questions? Here is activity to do with your kids at home to get started on that question. This exercise was originally developed by Joe Oyler.
What is art? When does something become art? Is a frame part of art? Let's think about it togethe... more What is art? When does something become art? Is a frame part of art? Let's think about it together using The Dot!
Handout from Innovation Exchange at Park University. See here for a video of the presentation: ht... more Handout from Innovation Exchange at Park University. See here for a video of the presentation: http://www.innovatepark.org/innovation-exchanges
Draft for Virtual Meeting of Society for Philosophy and Psychology 2021
Spinozan theories of human reasoning (STHR) maintain that it is impossible to consider p without ... more Spinozan theories of human reasoning (STHR) maintain that it is impossible to consider p without accepting p, and that acceptance and rejection are accomplished by distinct cognitive systems. I argue against direct experimental work for STHR, against an inference to the best explanation for STHR, and offer positive reasons against STHR.
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