In this paper, I argue that morality, like theism, is a framework for ordering observations. I demonstrate that morality is a court framework, using the three category-pairs common to a court system. I then ask which observations this framework is ordering. I consider three theories: 1) individual preferences, 2) social norms, 3) a society’s relation to its environment. I demonstrate that the latter is the best fit, and that it makes sense that prehistoric societies would attempt to apply a court (...) framework to their environments, given their theistic beliefs. I provide some examples for further illustration. -/- I then argue that having determined what morality is trying to describe, we can ask whether it is the best method for doing so, given our current knowledge of the world, and that the answer is no. As an example, I demonstrate how a functional framework provides a much better explanation for the failures of communism than a moral framework. After that, I argue that a functional framework, this time based on evolutionary theory, is able to solve persistent problems in moral philosophy. I then address three possible objections to my theory, most notably the ‘naturalistic fallacy’, arguing that this fallacy is widely misunderstood and does not apply to morality, but rather to agency, which is a separate issue. I end with a definition of amoralism and explain why I use the term for myself. (shrink)

In this brief paper, I present some basic arguments for why insights in moral psychology, especially the work of Jonathan Haidt and others in Moral Foundations Theory, points towards a resolution of long-standing meta-ethical questions.

In this paper, I argue that morality is a simplifying framework for describing human behaviour and its relation to nature, based on the analogy of a human court, and that the correct framework is functional, informed by evolutionary theory. Because of this, morality breaks down when extended beyond everyday situations, and this has led to severely negative consequences in some situations where it has been used as a guide for large-scale societal change. It also blocks progress in the social sciences (...) by effectively treating a set of descriptions as unchallengeable. I argue that as human models of the world improve, morality will be replaced by functional descriptions, just as theism has been. This will have significant implications for all major areas of society, including culture, government, and science. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that David Hume's is-ought problem stems from morality as a simplifying framework. Morality is the attempt to describe human behaviour and its relation to nature through a court framework, dating to prehistoric times. Such a court does not really exist, hence we are not referring to anything directly when we make moral statements, and therefore 'is' and 'ought' do not align. The solution is to replace morality with what it's really trying to describe: patterns in (...) individual behaviour. (shrink)

The central question in meta-ethics, and arguably all of ethics, is the question of what moral statements refer to. Several candidates have been proposed, including Platonic objects, natural objects, commands, and personal preferences. The answer, I suggest, is that it is none of these. Rather, morality is a framework. We see this by looking at common moral terms: ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘justice’, ‘guilt’, ‘responsibility’, ‘blame’, and ‘rights’. These terms all have something in common: they are legal terms. Since morality dates (...) to prehistoric times, it’s easy to see where this could have come from: prehistoric societies observed nature acting in a ‘court-like’ way – for example punishing them for overhunting – and inferred that this was a larger version of their own tribunal processes. Thus, we can define morality as an anthropomorphic framework based on the analogy of a human court, applied to human behaviour and its relation to nature. The framework persisted through human religious history, with various gods being the lawmaker and judge. This presents a problem: human society has worked hard to eliminate non-natural objects from our model of the world, replacing them with natural descriptions. Assuming we don’t really believe nature is a giant court, the question is how we replace morality with a natural description. (shrink)

Moral philosophers are, among other things, in the business of constructing moral theories. And moral theories are, among other things, supposed to explain moral phenomena. Consequently, one’s views about the nature of moral explanation will influence the kinds of moral theories one is willing to countenance. Many moral philosophers are (explicitly or implicitly) committed to a deductive model of explanation. As I see it, this commitment lies at the heart of the current debate between moral particularists and moral generalists. In (...) this paper I argue that we have good reasons to give up this commitment. In fact, I show that an examination of the literature on scientific explanation reveals that we are used to, and comfortable with, non-deductive explanations in almost all areas of inquiry. As a result, I argue that we have reason to believe that moral explanations need not be grounded in exceptionless moral principles. (shrink)

What makes some acts morally right and others morally wrong? Traditionally, philosophers have thought that in order to answer this question we must find and formulate exceptionless moral principles—principles that capture all and only morally right actions. Utilitarianism and Kantianism are paradigmatic examples of such attempts. In recent years, however, there has been a growing interest in a novel approach—Particularism—although its precise content is still a matter of controversy. In this paper I develop and motivate a new formulation of particularism (...) as a research program and I show that my formulation is not vulnerable to the most common objections to particularism. Moreover, I argue that the particularist research program shows enough promise to warrant further exploration. (shrink)

Philosophers who study conspiracy theories have increasingly addressed the questions of where conspiracy theories come from, what such theories do, and what to do about them. This essay serves as a commentary on the answers to these questions offered by contributors to this special issue.

Monists, pluralists, and particularists disagree about the structure of the best explanation of the rightness (wrongness) of actions. In this paper I argue that the availability of good moral advice gives us reason to prefer particularist theories and pluralist theories to monist theories. First, I identify two distinct roles of moral theorizing—explaining the rightness (wrongness) of actions, and providing moral advice—and I explain how these two roles are related. Next, I explain what monists, pluralists, and particularists disagree about. Finally, I (...) argue that particularists and pluralists are better situated than monists to explain why it is a good idea to think before we act, and that this gives us reason to favor particularism and pluralism over monism. (shrink)

Many of us read Peter Singer ’ s work on our obligations to those in desperate need with our students. Famously, Singer argues that we have a moral obligation to give a significant portion of our assets to famine relief. If my own experience is not atypical, it is quite common for students, upon grasping the implications of Singer ’ s argument, to ask whether Singer gives to famine relief. In response it might be tempting to remind students of the (...) ad hominem fallacy of attacking the person advancing an argument rather than the argument itself. In this paper I argue that the “ ad hominem reply ” to students ’ request for information about Singer is misguided. First I show that biographical facts about the person advancing an argument can constitute indirect evidence for the soundness / unsoundness of the argument. Second, I argue that such facts are relevant because they may reveal that one can discard the argument without thereby incurring moral responsibility for failing to act on its conclusion even if the argument is sound. (shrink)

What are the consequences, for human moral practice, of an evolutionary understanding of that practice? By ‘moral practice’ we mean the way in which human beings think, talk and debate in moral terms. We suggest that the proper upshot of such considerations is moderate support for anti-realism in ethics.

Quassim Cassam has argued that psychological and epistemological analyses of conspiracy theories threaten to overlook the political nature of such theories. According to Cassam, conspiracy theories are a form of political propaganda. I develop a limited critique of Cassam's analysis.This paper advances two core theses. First, acceptance of conspiracy theories requires a rejection of epistemic authority that renders conspiracy theorists susceptible to co-option by certain political programs while insulating such programs from criticism. I argue that the contrarian nature of conspiracy (...) theories partially accounts for the prominence of such theories in populist movements.Second, the contrarian nature of conspiracy theories partially accounts for their attractiveness, especially among those to whom populism already appeals. I argue that for those who resent what appears from their perspective as the shaping of the epistemic landscape by alien perspectives, conspiracy theorizing may facilitate the reassertion of epistemic autonomy. (shrink)

Putting together Kant's theory of emotion is complicated by two facts: (1) Kant has no term which is an obvious equivalent of "emotion" as used in contemporary English; (2) theorists disagree about what emotions are. These obstacles notwithstanding, my dissertation aims to provide the foundation for a reconstruction of Kant's theory of emotion that is both historically accurate and responsive to contemporary philosophical concerns. In contrast to available approaches which rest on contested assumptions about emotions, I start from the generally (...) accepted and reasonable premise that what we call "emotions" refers in Kant to a set of mental states, some of which he associates with the feeling of pleasure and displeasure ("feelings"), others with the faculty of desire ("desires"). I then proceed to examine the nature of these two kinds of mental states and their proper treatment. I argue that Kantian feelings are representations of objects' relation to the subject, that have a felt quality, and dispose their subject to certain behaviors. While feelings can only motivate action by causing desires and have no temporal direction, desires - except for certain wishes - are future-directed, which allows them to motivate actions immediately (but they need not bring action about). Equipped with this account of feelings and desires, I proceed to examine the kind of treatment Kant prescribes for them, and argue that feelings (except affects) should be cultivated, that is, acquired and improved so that they could be used to pursue rational ends, while inclinations, i.e., habitual sensuous desires, should generally be disciplined, that is, constrained by rules. The resultant picture is compelling because it rests on minimal assumptions about emotions and successfully incorporates the phenomenological, evaluative, and dispositional functions traditionally associated with emotions. (shrink)

This essay challenges the widely accepted principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. The author considers situations in which there are sufficient conditions for a certain choice or action to be performed by someone, So that it is impossible for the person to choose or to do otherwise, But in which these conditions do not in any way bring it about that the person chooses or acts as he (...) does. In such situations the person may well be morally responsible for what he chooses or does despite his inability to choose or to do otherwise. Finally the author considers certain suggestions for revising the principle he rejects or for replacing it with a principle of an altogether different kind. (shrink)

Existing analyses of disinformation tend to embrace the view that disinformation is intended or otherwise functions to mislead its audience, that is, to produce false beliefs. I argue that this view is doubly mistaken. First, while paradigmatic disinformation campaigns aim to produce false beliefs in an audience, disinformation may in some cases be intended only to prevent its audience from forming true beliefs. Second, purveyors of disinformation need not intend to have any effect at all on their audience’s beliefs, aiming (...) instead to manipulate an audience’s behavior through alteration of sub-doxastic states. Ultimately, I argue that attention to such non-paradigmatic forms of disinformation is essential to understanding the threat disinformation poses and why this threat is so difficult to counter. (shrink)

Some arguments include imperative clauses. For example: ‘Buy me a drink; you can’t buy me that drink unless you go to the bar; so, go to the bar!’ How should we build a logic that predicts which of these arguments are good? Because imperatives aren’t truth apt and so don’t stand in relations of truth preservation, this technical question gives rise to a foundational one: What would be the subject matter of this logic? I argue that declaratives are used to (...) produce beliefs, imperatives are used to produce intentions, and beliefs and intentions are subject to rational requirements. An argument will strike us as valid when anyone whose mental state satisfies the premises is rationally required to satisfy the conclusion. For example, the above argument reflects the principle that it is irrational not to intend what one takes to be the necessary means to one’s intended ends. I argue that all intuitively good patterns of imperative inference can be explained using off-the-shelf formulations of our rational requirements. I then develop a formal-semantic theory embodying this view that predicts a range of data, including free-choice effects and Ross’s paradox. The resulting theory shows one way that our aspirations to rational agency can be discerned in the patterns of our speech, and is a case study in how the philosophy of language and the philosophy of action can be mutually illuminating. (shrink)

One of the disadvantages of redistributive taxation is that it reduces people’s financial incentives to increase national wealth and benefit others by engaging in productive activities. It is natural to suppose that the severity of this disadvantage will be proportional to the socially prevailing level of human selfishness. Thus, several advocates of redistribution (inter alia G. A. Cohen; Ha-Joon Chang) have argued that this disadvantage of redistribution need not be as severe as critics often suggest, because human beings need not (...) be so selfish. My aim in this paper is to argue that even in a society entirely composed of unselfish and impartially beneficent individuals, redistributive taxation would still discourage activities which contribute to national wealth, because differing individuals have different views about what counts as benefitting themselves and others. I also relate my discussion to G. A. Cohen’s influential ‘camping trip’ argument for socialism (from Why Not Socialism?). (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship of mourning and the gift in the work of Jacques Derrida. I argue that mourning is not a Derridean gift, but mourning does open us to the gift. Reading the works of Aristotle, Cicero, and Kierkegaard on friendship and love to the dead in the wake of Derrida’s Politics of Friendship makes this relation among mourning and the gift apparent for he presents mourning as the opening to a democracy to-come whose logic is the gift. (...) Through these accounts, I maintain that in preparing us for the gift, mourning the dead other can help us to relate better with the living other in ethical, political, and ontological terms. (shrink)

The epistemic virtues and vices are typically defined in terms of effects or motivations related to the epistemic states of their possessors. However, philosophers have recently begun to consider _other-regarding_ epistemic virtues, traits oriented toward the epistemic flourishing of others. In a similar vein, this paper discusses _outward-facing_ epistemic vices, properties oriented toward the epistemic languishing of others. I argue for the existence of both reliabilist and responsibilist outward-facing vices, and illustrate how such vices negatively bear on the epistemic prospects (...) of others. I pay special attention to how outward-facing epistemic vices may manifest in online activities that promote the epistemic languishing of others by negatively influencing the online epistemic environment. (shrink)

Some of the barriers to the realisation of equality reflect the value of respecting prerogatives people have to favour themselves. Even G.A. Cohen, whose egalitarianism is especially pervasive and demanding, says that.

Shelly Kagan has recently defended the view that it is morally worse for a human being to suffer some harm than it is for a lower animal (such as a dog or a cow) to suffer a harm that is equally severe (ceteris paribus). In this paper, I argue that this view receives rather less support from our intuitions than one might at first suppose. According to Kagan, moreover, an individual’s moral status depends partly upon her ‘modal capacities.’ In this (...) paper, I argue that the most natural strategy for justifying Kagan’s theory faces some important challenges. More generally, I argue that philosophers who wish to defend the view that human beings have a higher moral status than that of the lower animals face a dilemma. Either their theory of moral status will imply (unacceptably) that some severely cognitively impaired human beings have a significantly lower moral status than that of typical human beings, or these philosophers will be forced to ground moral status in a set of properties so far removed from a subject’s actual capacities that it will become difficult to see why these kinds of properties should have such moral importance. (shrink)

Some theorists argue that rather than advocating a principle of educational equality as a component of a theory of justice in education, egalitarians should adopt a principle of educational adequacy. This paper looks at two recent attempts to show that adequacy, not equality, constitutes justice in education. It responds to the criticisms of equality by claiming that they are either unsuccessful or merely show that other values are also important, not that equality is not important. It also argues that a (...) principle of educational adequacy cannot be all there is to justice in education. (shrink)

Commentary in reply to an article by Jeff McMahan and Julian Savulescu.

The decline in autobiographical memory function in people with Alzheimer’s dementia has been argued to cause a loss of self-identity. Prior research suggests that people perceive changes in moral traits and loss of memories with a “social-moral core” as most impactful to the maintenance of identity. However, such research has so far asked people to rate from a third-person perspective, considering the extent to which hypothetical others maintain their identity in the face of various impairments. In the current study, we (...) examined the impact of perspective, comparing first- and third-person perspectives, as well as memory type. This online study asked 201 participants to consider hypothetical scenarios in which either themselves or another person experienced different types of memory failures associated with a diagnosis of AD. For each scenario, participants rated the degree to which the depicted individual remained the same person, and how impactful the impairment was. Social semantic memory failures – involving failures to recognise a loved one – were rated as most detrimental to self-continuity, and procedural memory failures the least. Averaged across all memory types, people considered their own and their partner’s self-continuity to be more resilient to memory failures than that of a parent or stranger. However, this pattern was reversed for some memory types: forgetting semantic or episodic information about close relationships was rated as more detrimental from a first-person than third-person perspective. Our findings suggest that perspective and type of memory impairment interact to impact judgements about the extent to which people maintain their identity when they experience dementia, and highlight the importance of social relationships to maintaining a sense of self. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that mere temporal proximity always and without exception strengthens certain moral duties, including the duty to save – call this view Robust Temporalism. Although almost all other moral philosophers dismiss Robust Temporalism out of hand, I argue that it is prima facie intuitively plausible, and that it is analogous to a view about special obligations that many philosophers already accept. I also defend Robust Temporalism against several common objections, and I highlight its relevance to a (...) number of practical policy debates, including longtermism. My conclusion is that Robust Temporalism is a moral live option, that deserves to be taken much more seriously in the future. (shrink)

Two blocks from the new Rolls-Royce showroom with its mindboggling prices, two street peddlers say they don’t pay attention to the luxurious rides now mixing amid hordes of motorbikes. Why should they?

The slogans of social movements are often put forward as simple truths, so that advocacy has consisted in changing social conditions such that these new truth claims are accepted as true: that women’s rights are human rights, that Black lives matter. Social movements critical of the political ascendance of Donald Trump, however, have been concerned not merely with this or that truth claim, but with the status—epistemological, social, and political—of truth itself. Those examining this post-truth moment have often turned to (...) Friedrich Nietzsche, who for many is synonymous with the kind of postmodern conception of truth at the center of post-truth politics. However, while it is true that Nietzsche offers valuable... (shrink)

Existential theorists have been working to syncretize philosophy, science, and spirituality since shortly after Galileo unknowingly initiated the schism between them. Contemporary philosophers, scientists, and theologians are still engaged in this effort, but have little to show for nearly four centuries of effort. The thesis of this article is that—despite their cooperative intentions—these theorists continue to talk past each other, due to an unacknowledged disagreement on the meaning of their overlapping terms of art. To effectively unify the divergent existential insights (...) of philosophy, science, theism, and spirituality, it will be necessary to return to first principles. To establish an integration baseline, this article defines a diverse collection of philosophical, scientific, theistic, and spiritual expressions, in a unifying vocabulary. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of gentrification have tended to focus on residential displacement. However, the prevalence of residential displacement is fiercely contested, with many urban geographers regarding it as quite uncommon. This lends some urgency to the underexplored question of how one should evaluate other forms of gentrification. In this paper, I argue that one of the most important harms suffered by victims of displacement gentrification is loss of access to the goods conferred by membership in a thriving local community. Leveraging the (...) social scientific literature, I go on to argue that non-displacement gentrification also often damages local communities. One can hence extend existing philosophical critiques of displacement gentrification to argue that non-displacement gentrification likewise poses a threat to relational equality, and often violates certain basic occupancy rights. Focusing on the value that inheres in thriving local communities also suggests some new possibilities for critiquing gentrification. For instance, existing occupancy rights critiques focus on incumbent land users’ interests in stability. However, one can also argue in a Lockean mode that incumbent land users’ occupancy rights are at least partially grounded in their community having laboured together to create objects of value. An extension of Michael Walzer’s theory of justice to incorporate community goods as a separate ‘sphere’ might also have widespread appeal. Taken together, these arguments constitute a sustained and theoretically ecumenical case for the pro tanto moral objectionability of gentrification. (shrink)

It’s ten minutes before eight on a mild morning in Hanoi, and the philosopher-king of Vietnam’s potent coffee industry is down to the last 2 inches of his first cigar of the day.

Introduction -- Historical essays -- The humanist brain : Alberti, Vitruvius, and Leonardo -- The enlightened brain : Perrault, Laugier, and Le Roy -- The sensational brain : Burke, Price, and Knight -- The transcendental brain : Kant and Schopenhauer -- The animate brain : Schinkel, Bötticher, and Semper -- The empathetic brain : Vischer, Wölfflin, and Göller -- The gestalt brain : the dynamics of the sensory field -- The neurological brain : Hayek, Hebb, and Neutra -- The phenomenal (...) brain : Merleau-Ponty, Rasmussen, and Pallasmaa -- Neuroscience and architecture -- Anatomy : architecture of the brain -- Ambiguity : architecture of vision -- Metaphor : architecture of embodiment -- Hapticity : architecture of the senses -- Epilogue: The architect's brain. (shrink)

Panqualityism, recently defended by Sam Coleman, is a variety of Russellian monism on which the categorical properties of fundamental physical entities are qualities, or, in Coleman’s exposition, unconscious qualia. Coleman defends a quotationalist, higher-order thought version of panqualityism. The aim of this paper is, first, to demonstrate that a first-order representationalist panqualityism is also available, and to argue positively in its favor. For it shall become apparent that quotationalist and first-order representationalist panqualityism are, in spite of their close similarities, radically (...) different theories: quotationalist panqualityism locates qualities in the subject of an experience, while first-order panqualityism locates qualities in the world. I argue that this makes quotationalist panqualityism implausible and first-order, representationalist panqualityism a highly natural, elegant, and intuitive theory. (shrink)

Full privatisation of schools would involve states abstaining from providing, funding or regulating schools. I argue that full privatisation would, in most circumstances, worsen social injustice in schooling. I respond to James Tooley's critique of my own arguments for funding and regulation and markets. I argue that even his principle of educational adequacy requires a certain level of state involvement and demonstrate that his arguments against a principle of educational equality fail. I show, furthermore, that he relies on an over-optimistic (...) attitude regarding the operation of markets, which involves a failure to appreciate the diversity of quality in states, and that he misreads the evidence concerning private schooling in some developing countries. (shrink)

This book argues that misinformation poses a multi-faceted threat to knowledge, while arguing that some forms of content moderation risk exacerbating these threats. It proposes alternative forms of content moderation that aim to address this complexity while enhancing human epistemic agency. The proliferation of fake news, false conspiracy theories, and other forms of misinformation on the internet and especially social media is widely recognized as a threat to individual knowledge and, consequently, to collective deliberation and democracy itself. This book argues (...) that misinformation presents a three-pronged threat to knowledge. While researchers often focus on the role of misinformation in causing false beliefs, this deceptive potential of misinformation exists alongside the potential to suppress trust and to distort the perception of evidence. Recognizing the multi-faceted nature of this threat is essential to the development of effective measures to mitigate the harms associated with misinformation. The book weaves together work in analytic epistemology with emerging empirical work in other disciplines to offer novel insights into the threats posed by misinformation. Additionally, it breaks new ground by systematically assessing different forms of content moderation from the perspective of epistemology. Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology will appeal to philosophers working in applied and social epistemology, as well as scholars and advanced students in disciplines such as communication studies, political science, and social psychology who are researching misinformation. (shrink)

This thesis is about making decisions when we are uncertain about what will happen, how valuable it will be, and even how to make decisions. Even the most sure-footed amongst us are sometimes uncertain about all three, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the latter two. The three essays that constitute my thesis hope to do a small part in rectifying this problem. The first essay is about the value of finding out how to make decisions. Society spends (...) considerable resources funding people (like me) to research decision-making, so it is natural to wonder whether society is getting a good deal. This question is so shockingly underresearched that bedrock facts are readily discoverable, such as when this kind of information is valuable. My second essay concerns whether we can compare value when we are uncertain about value. Many people are in fact uncertain about value, and how we deal with this uncertainty hinges on these comparisons. I argue that value comparisons are only sometimes possible; I call this weak comparability. This essay is largely a synthesis of the literature, but I also present an argument which begins with a peculiar view of the self: it is as if each of us is a crowd of different people separated by time (but connected by continuity of experience). I’m not the first to endorse this peculiar view of the self, but I am the first to show how it supports the benign view that value is sometimes comparable. We may be uncertain of any decision rules, even those that would tell us how to act when we face uncertainty in decision rules. We may be uncertain of how to decide how to decide how to... And so on. If so, we might have to accept infinitely many decision rules just to make any mundane decision, such as whether to pick up a five-cent piece from the gutter. My third essay addresses this problem of regress. I think all of our decisions are forced: we must decide now or continue to deliberate. Surprisingly, this allows us to avoid the original problem. I call this solution “when forced, do your best”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. The paper explores the philosophical intelligibility of contemporary defences of collective political forgiveness against a background of sceptical doubt, both general and particular. Three genera sceptical arguments are examined: one challenges the idea that political collectives exist; another challenges the idea that moral agency can be projected upon political collectives; a final argument challenges the attribution of emotions, especially anger, to collectives. Each of these sceptical arguments is rebutted. At a more particular level, the contrasts between individual forgiveness and (...) collective forgiveness gives rise to various problems and the ‘desiderata’ for their resolution - authority, specificity and temporal proximity - are briefly explored. (shrink)

I argue that semantics is the study of the proprietary database of a centrally inaccessible and informationally encapsulated input–output system. This system’s role is to encode and decode partial and defeasible evidence of what speakers are saying. Since information about nonlinguistic context is therefore outside the purview of semantic processing, a sentence’s semantic value is not its content but a partial and defeasible constraint on what it can be used to say. I show how to translate this thesis into a (...) detailed compositional-semantic theory based on the influential framework of Heim and Kratzer. This approach situates semantics within an independently motivated account of human cognitive architecture and reveals the semantics–pragmatics interface to be grounded in the underlying interface between modular and central systems. (shrink)

Christian moral philosophy is a distinctive kind of moral philosophy owing to the special role it assigns to God in Christ. Much contemporary 'Christian ethics' focuses on semantic, modal, conceptual and epistemological issues. This may be helpful but it omits the distinctive focus of Christian moral philosophy: the human condition in a morally ordered universe and the redemptive work of jesus Christ as a response to that predicament. Christian moral philosophers should seek to remedy that neglect.

In this essay several challenges are raised to the project of classifying Śāntideva’s ethical reasoning given in his Bodhicaryāvatāra, or Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva, as a species of ethical theory such as consequentialism or virtue ethics. One set of difficulties highlighted here arises because Śāntideva wrote this text to act as a manual of psychological transformation, and it is therefore often difficult to determine when his statements indicate his own ethical views. Further, even assuming we can identify (...) a set of statements that accurately portray the moral position of Śāntideva, it is argued that these statements underdetermine which foundational normative theory should be ascribed to him. (shrink)

This essay undertakes a phenomenological inquiry into the ‘experiential structure of hip-hop’ – a structure that hip-hop artist Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) gestures towards in his text Decoded. In this book, Jay-Z argues that hip-hop has a particular power to act as the vehicle for the communication of a specific type of experience, i.e. contradictory experiences, or those which do not seem possible under the principle of non-contradiction. For instance, Tupac Shakur says of his mom that “…even as a crack fiend, (...) mama / You always was a Black Queen, mama.” The way in which hip-hop is a powerful vehicle for this communication lies, according to Jay-Z, in its very structure, which he describes using two sets of terms: rhythm/flow and music/rhyme. Using Jay-Z’s general outline, this essay attempts to complete a phenomenological analysis of hip-hop, in the effort to (1) isolate the experiential structure of hip-hop and (2) isolate, within this structure, the way in which hip-hop is able to communicate contradictory experiences. In the final analysis, the author isolates the experiential structure of hip-hop and shows how its multiple layers work to draw listeners in and induce them to experience-with the artist. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the provocative image of the bodhisattva, the saint of the Indian Mahayana Buddhist tradition, descending into the hell realms to work for the benefit of its denizens. Inspired in part by recent attempts to naturalize Buddhist ethics, I argue that taking this ‘mythological’ image seriously, as expressing philosophical insights, helps us better understand the shape of Mahayana value theory. In particular, it expresses a controversial philosophical thesis: the claim that no amount of physical pain can disrupt the (...) flourishing of a fully virtuous person. I reconstruct two related elements of early Buddhist psychology that help us understand this Mahayana position: the distinction between hedonic sensation and virtuous or nonvirtous mental states ; and the claim that humans are massively deluded as to what constitutes well-being. Doing so also lets me emphasize the continuity between early Buddhist and Mahayana traditions in their views on well-being and flourishing. (shrink)

What makes it the case that an utterance constitutes an illocutionary act of a given kind? This is the central question of speech-act theory. Answers to it—i.e., theories of speech acts—have proliferated. Our main goal in this chapter is to clarify the logical space into which these different theories fit. -/- We begin, in Section 1, by dividing theories of speech acts into five families, each distinguished from the others by its account of the key ingredients in illocutionary acts. Are (...) speech acts fundamentally a matter of convention or intention? Or should we instead think of them in terms of the psychological states they express, in terms of the effects that it is their function to produce, or in terms of the norms that govern them? In Section 2, we take up the highly influential idea that speech acts can be understood in terms of their effects on a conversation’s context or “score”. Part of why this idea has been so useful is that it allows speech-act theorists from the five families to engage at a level of abstraction that elides their foundational disagreements. In Section 3, we investigate some of the motivations for the traditional distinction between propositional content and illocutionary force, and some of the ways in which this distinction has been undermined by recent work. In Section 4, we survey some of the ways in which speech-act theory has been applied to issues outside semantics and pragmatics, narrowly construed. (shrink)