Karsten Stueber
College of the Holy Cross, Philosophy, Faculty Member
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Ricevuto: 9 marzo 2015; accettato il 13 aprile 2015 █ Abstract Moral sentimentalism has seen a tremendous rise in popularity in recent years within contemporary meta-ethical theory, since it promises to delineate the normative domain in a... more
Ricevuto: 9 marzo 2015; accettato il 13 aprile 2015 █ Abstract Moral sentimentalism has seen a tremendous rise in popularity in recent years within contemporary meta-ethical theory, since it promises to delineate the normative domain in a naturalistically unob-jectionable manner. After showing that both Michael Slote and Jesse Prinz's sentimentalist positions fall short of fulfilling this promise, this essay argues that contemporary sentimentalists are advised to take their clues from Adam Smith rather than David Hume. While Hume was absolutely right in emphasizing the importance of empathy in the moral context, his official description of the mechanisms of empathy as articulated in the Treatise falls fundamentally short for this purpose. Adam Smith's conception of empa-thy, a conception that in fact is closer to some of Hume' remarks in the Enquiry rather than the Treatise, as essentially involving perspective taking and his appeal to the impartial spectator perspective...
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To a large extent, contemporary philosophical debate takes place within a framework of ... Cartesian substances and they view higher order macroscopic facts and properties as being ... Nevertheless philosophers worry immensely about how... more
To a large extent, contemporary philosophical debate takes place within a framework of ... Cartesian substances and they view higher order macroscopic facts and properties as being ... Nevertheless philosophers worry immensely about how naturalism as a general ... Rather various special sciences like psychology, biology, geology, and economics maintain ... In a closely related issue, philosophers debate whether the laws of the special sciences ... In this context, it is particularly troublesome that we seem to be practically unable to specify the ... These considerations ...
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In this paper, I will discuss Searle's main argument for the first person perspective in regard to meaning and intentionality. He claims that Quine's and Davidson's arguments for the indeterminacy of meaning and... more
In this paper, I will discuss Searle's main argument for the first person perspective in regard to meaning and intentionality. He claims that Quine's and Davidson's arguments for the indeterminacy of meaning and inscrutability of reference should be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of the third person methodology. I will defend the third person perspective by reevaluating the claims for the inscrutability thesis. It will be shown that Searle's argument for the first person perspective is not conclusive and that the inscrutability of reference does ...
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Our ordinary concepts of meaning and content are notoriously undefined and vague. A philosophical examination of these notions should, therefore, not be expected to capture all the aspects we usually associate with them. Meaning should be... more
Our ordinary concepts of meaning and content are notoriously undefined and vague. A philosophical examination of these notions should, therefore, not be expected to capture all the aspects we usually associate with them. Meaning should be rather understood as a theoretical notion whose merit depends on the explanatory value of a specific theory. This of course should not be taken to imply that there are no general criteria to judge the success of a particular theory of meaning. Any proponent of a theory of meaning should have ...
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In this essay, I will suggest ways of improving on Davidson’s conception of the explanatory autonomy of folk psychological explanations. For that purpose, I will appeal to insights from the recent theory of mind debate emphasizing the... more
In this essay, I will suggest ways of improving on Davidson’s conception of the explanatory autonomy of folk psychological explanations. For that purpose, I will appeal to insights from the recent theory of mind debate emphasizing the centrality of various forms of empathy for our understanding of another person’s mindedness. While I will argue that we need to abandon Davidson’s position of anomalous monism, I will also show that my account is fully compatible with Davidson’s non-reductive and interpretationist account of meaning and mental content. Indeed, my account does more justice to the empathic capacities underlying our interpretive capacities, which Davidson himself has to acknowledge in thinking about the constitutive features of thought and meaning. More specifically, I will propose a new way of philosophically safeguarding the causal-explanatory autonomy of our ordinary action explanations by showing how our empathic capacities are involved in epistemically delineating th...
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Lipps's core concept of empathy and his claim that empathy should be understood as the primary epistemic means for our perception of other persons as minded creatures were highly influential and were the focus of a considerable... more
Lipps's core concept of empathy and his claim that empathy should be understood as the primary epistemic means for our perception of other persons as minded creatures were highly influential and were the focus of a considerable debate among philosophers at the beginning of the 20 th century (Prandtl 1910, Stein 1917, Scheler 1973). Even philosophers who did not agree with Lipps's specific explication, found the concept of empathy appealing because his argument for empathy was closely tied to a thorough critique of what was ...
In this essay, I will suggest ways of improving on Davidson’s conception of the explanatory autonomy of folk psychological explanations. For that purpose, I will appeal to insights from the recent theory of mind debate emphasizing the... more
In this essay, I will suggest ways of improving on Davidson’s conception of the explanatory autonomy of folk psychological explanations. For that purpose, I will appeal to insights from the recent theory of mind debate emphasizing the centrality of various forms of empathy for our understanding of another person’s mindedness. While I will argue that we need to abandon Davidson’s position of anomalous monism, I will also show that my account is fully compatible with Davidson’s non-reductive and interpretationist account of meaning and mental content. Indeed, my account does more justice to the empathic capacities underlying our interpretive capacities, which Davidson himself has to acknowledge in thinking about the constitutive features of thought and meaning. More specifically, I will propose a new way of philosophically safeguarding the causal-explanatory autonomy of our ordinary action explanations by showing how our empathic capacities are involved in epistemically delineating th...
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Abstract: This paper describes the historical background to contemporary discussions of empathy and rationality. It looks at the philosophy of mind and its implications for action explanation and the philosophy of history. In the... more
Abstract: This paper describes the historical background to contemporary discussions of empathy and rationality. It looks at the philosophy of mind and its implications for action explanation and the philosophy of history. In the nineteenth century, the concept of empathy became prominent within philosophical aesthetics, from where it was extended to describe the way we grasp other minds. This idea of empathy as a way of understanding others echoed through later accounts of historical understanding as involving re-enactment, ...
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In this paper I will discuss Kim's powerful explanatory exclusion argument against the causal efficacy of mental properties. Baker and Burge misconstrue Kim's challenge if they understand it as being based on a purely metaphysical... more
In this paper I will discuss Kim's powerful explanatory exclusion argument against the causal efficacy of mental properties. Baker and Burge misconstrue Kim's challenge if they understand it as being based on a purely metaphysical understanding of causation that has no grounding in an epistemo-logical analysis of our successful scientific practices. As I will show, the emphasis on explanatory practices can only be effective in answering Kim if it is understood as being part of the dual-explanandum strategy. Furthermore, a fundamental problem of the contemporary debate about mental causation consists in the fact that all sides take very different examples to be paradigmatic for the relation between psychological and neurobiological explanations. Even if we should expect some alignment in the explanatory scope of neurobiology and psychology/folk-psychology, there is no reason to expect that all mental explanations are exempted by physical explanations, since they do not in general explain the same phenomena.
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The anthology with papers by Michael Frazer, Simon Blackburn, Jesse Prinz, Peter Railton, Antti Kauppinen, Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, Michelle Mason, Remy Debes, Karsten Stueber, Diane Tietjen Meyers, David Wong, and Justin D'Arms and... more
The anthology with papers by Michael Frazer, Simon Blackburn, Jesse Prinz, Peter Railton, Antti Kauppinen, Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, Michelle Mason, Remy Debes, Karsten Stueber, Diane Tietjen Meyers, David Wong, and Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson has just been published by Cambridge University Press. It should be available on Amazon very soon. (Just received my copy of it)
Abstract Participants in the debate about the nature of folk psychology tend to share one fundamental assumption: that its primary purpose consists in the prediction and explanation of another person's behavior. The... more
Abstract Participants in the debate about the nature of folk psychology tend to share one fundamental assumption: that its primary purpose consists in the prediction and explanation of another person's behavior. The following essay will evaluate recent challenges to this assumption by philosophers such as Joshua Knobe who insist that folk psychology and its concepts are intimately linked to our ethical concerns. I will show how conceiving of folk psychology in an engaged manner enables one to account for the evidence cited in favor ...
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Michael Slote's book Moral Sentimentalism constitutes a powerful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking defense of a sentimentalist position in normative ethics and in metaethics. While Slote is inspired by Hume, in developing... more
Michael Slote's book Moral Sentimentalism constitutes a powerful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking defense of a sentimentalist position in normative ethics and in metaethics. While Slote is inspired by Hume, in developing his position, he takes his cues from contemporary research in developmental and social psychology, which emphasizes a close relation between our empathic capacities and our prosocial and altruistic motivation. In discussing Slote's book, I will therefore pay particular attention to exploring the various aspects of ...
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Abstract This article will defend the centrality of empathy and simulation for our understanding of individual agency within the conceptual framework of folk psychology. It will situate this defense in the context of recent developments... more
Abstract This article will defend the centrality of empathy and simulation for our understanding of individual agency within the conceptual framework of folk psychology. It will situate this defense in the context of recent developments in the theory of mind debate. Moreover, the article will critically discuss narrativist conceptions of social cognition that conceive of themselves as alternatives to both simulation and theory theory.
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Abstract: Contemporary philosophers of history and interpretation theorists very often deny the thesis of intentional realism, because they reject intentionalism or the thesis that an agent's or author's... more
Abstract: Contemporary philosophers of history and interpretation theorists very often deny the thesis of intentional realism, because they reject intentionalism or the thesis that an agent's or author's intentions are relevant for the interpretive practice of the human sciences. I will defend intentional realism by showing why it is wrong to whole-heartedly reject intentionalism and by clarifying the logical relation between intentionalism and intentional realism. I will do so by discussing the two central arguments against intentionalism; the ...
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abstract This essay develops a new account of the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. Imaginative resistance is best conceived of as a limited phenomenon. It occurs when we try to engage imaginatively with different moral worlds that... more
abstract This essay develops a new account of the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. Imaginative resistance is best conceived of as a limited phenomenon. It occurs when we try to engage imaginatively with different moral worlds that are insufficiently articulated so that they do not allow us either to quarantine our imaginative engagement from our normal moral attitudes or to agree with the expressed moral judgment from the perspective of moral deliberation. Imaginative resistance thus reveals the central epistemic importance that ...
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Abstract This essay will defend a causal conception of action explanations in terms of an agent's reasons by delineating a metaphysical and epistemic framework that allows us to view folk psychology as providing us with... more
Abstract This essay will defend a causal conception of action explanations in terms of an agent's reasons by delineating a metaphysical and epistemic framework that allows us to view folk psychology as providing us with causal and autonomous explanatory strategies of accounting for individual agency. At the same time, I will calm philosophical concerns about the issue of causal deviance that have been at the center of the recent debates between causalist and noncausalist interpretations of action explanations. For that purpose, it is ...
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Abstract This essay challenges King's argument for the claim that social relations have to be conceived of as primary and main ontological category for an adequate analysis of the social realm. The author shows that... more
Abstract This essay challenges King's argument for the claim that social relations have to be conceived of as primary and main ontological category for an adequate analysis of the social realm. The author shows that King's arguments do not succeed in fully replacing the categories of agency and structure that are pervasive in contemporary social theory. At most, King succeeds in delineating a neglected area of social theory, something that should be taken into account in addition to structure and agency.
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Ordinary language and scientific discourse are filled with linguistic expressions for dispositional properties such as soluble, elastic, reliable, and humorous. We characterize objects in all domains physical objects as well as human... more
Ordinary language and scientific discourse are filled with linguistic expressions for dispositional properties such as soluble, elastic, reliable, and humorous. We characterize objects in all domains physical objects as well as human persons with the help of dispositional expressions. Hence, the concept of a disposition has historically and systematically played a central role in different areas of philosophy ranging from metaphysics to ethics. The contributions of this volume analyze the ancient foundations of ...
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In the last twenty-five years, researchers have started to recognize infants' capacity for joint attention as an important milestone not only for the acquisition of linguistic competence but also for the general ability to relate to... more
In the last twenty-five years, researchers have started to recognize infants' capacity for joint attention as an important milestone not only for the acquisition of linguistic competence but also for the general ability to relate to each other as minded creatures and as a central step in the development of our capacity for social cognition (Moore & Dunham, 1995; Eilan et al., 2005). Interestingly, in focusing on the phenomenon of joint attention, various authors have started to challenge the basic presuppositions of the so-called theory of mind debate ...
Résumé/Abstract Soulevant le problème de l'anomalie du mental, le problème de l'externalisme sémantique, et le problème de l'incompatibilité des explications causales et du principe de l'harmonie des objets physiques,... more
Résumé/Abstract Soulevant le problème de l'anomalie du mental, le problème de l'externalisme sémantique, et le problème de l'incompatibilité des explications causales et du principe de l'harmonie des objets physiques, l'A. présente les ouvrages de D. Davidson et W. Child (1), de F. Dretske et RG Millikan (2), de LR Baker et T. Burge (3), consacrés: 1) à la survenance et à la pertinence causale des qualités mentales, 2) à l'intentionnalité et à la téléofonctionnalité, 3) au physicalisme et à l'autonomie des explications psychologiques
Abstract This essay will argue systematically and from a historical perspective that there is something to be said for the traditional claim that the human and natural sciences are distinct epistemic practices. Yet, in light of recent... more
Abstract This essay will argue systematically and from a historical perspective that there is something to be said for the traditional claim that the human and natural sciences are distinct epistemic practices. Yet, in light of recent developments in contemporary philosophy of science, one has to be rather careful in utilizing the distinction between understanding and explanation for this purpose. One can only recognize the epistemic distinctiveness of the human sciences by recognizing the epistemic centrality of reenactive empathy for our ...
Research Interests: Philosophy and Inquiry
Abstract This article will discuss the difficulties of providing a plausible account of rule following in the social realm. It will show that the cognitive model of rule following is not suited for this task. Nevertheless, revealing the... more
Abstract This article will discuss the difficulties of providing a plausible account of rule following in the social realm. It will show that the cognitive model of rule following is not suited for this task. Nevertheless, revealing the inadequacy of the cognitive model does not justify the wholesale dismissal of understanding human practices as rule-following practices, as social theorists like Bourdieu or Dreyfus have argued. Instead it will be shown that rule-following behavior is best understood as being based on a set of complex dispositions.
Judging from the contemporary debate in the philosophy of history, philosophers seem to think of history as an important but also as a very peculiar discipline. They cannot make up their minds on how exactly to describe the epistemic... more
Judging from the contemporary debate in the philosophy of history, philosophers seem to think of history as an important but also as a very peculiar discipline. They cannot make up their minds on how exactly to describe the epistemic status of historical knowledge or how exactly to situate history among human activities ranging from the arts to the natural sciences.
This article develops a constitutive account of self-knowledgethat is able to avoid certain shortcomings of the standard response to the perceived prima facieincompatibility between privileged self-knowledge and externalism. It argues... more
This article develops a constitutive account of self-knowledgethat is able to avoid certain shortcomings of the standard response to the perceived prima facieincompatibility between privileged self-knowledge and externalism. It argues that ifone conceives of linguistic action as voluntary behavior in a minimal sense, one cannot conceive ofbelief content to be externalistically constituted without simultaneously assuming that the agent hasknowledge of his beliefs.
2. Abstract It has become something of a consensus among philosophers of history that historians, in contrast to natural scientists, explain in a narrative fashion. Unfortunately, philosophers of history have not said much about how it is... more
2. Abstract It has become something of a consensus among philosophers of history that historians, in contrast to natural scientists, explain in a narrative fashion. Unfortunately, philosophers of history have not said much about how it is that narratives have explanatory power. They do, however, maintain that a narrative's explanatory power is sui generis and independent of our empathetic or reenactive capacities and of our knowledge of law-like generalizations.
ABSTRACT In this article I will challenge a received orthodoxy in the philosophy of social science by showing that Collingwood was right in insisting that reenactment is epistemically central for historical explanations of individual... more
ABSTRACT In this article I will challenge a received orthodoxy in the philosophy of social science by showing that Collingwood was right in insisting that reenactment is epistemically central for historical explanations of individual agency.
In this paper, I will discuss Searle's main argument for the first person perspective in regard to meaning and intentionality. He claims that Quine's and Davidson's arguments for the indeterminacy of meaning and inscrutability of... more
In this paper, I will discuss Searle's main argument for the first person perspective in regard to meaning and intentionality. He claims that Quine's and Davidson's arguments for the indeterminacy of meaning and inscrutability of reference should be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of the third person methodology. I will defend the third person perspective by reevaluating the claims for the inscrutability thesis.