The paper compares dispositionalism about laws of nature with primitivism. It argues that while the distinction between these two positions can be drawn in a clear-cut manner in classical mechanics, it is less clear in quantum mechanics, due to quantum non-locality. Nonetheless, the paper points out advantages for dispositionalism in comparison to primitivism also in the area of quantum mechanics, and of contemporary physics in general.

The article sets out a primitive ontology of the natural world in terms of primitive stuff—that is, stuff that has as such no physical properties at all—but that is not a bare substratum either, being individuated by metrical relations. We focus on quantum physics and employ identity-based Bohmian mechanics to illustrate this view, but point out that it applies all over physics. Properties then enter into the picture exclusively through the role that they play for the dynamics of the primitive (...) stuff. We show that such properties can be local, as well as holistic, and discuss two metaphysical options to conceive them, namely, Humeanism and modal realism in the guise of dispositionalism. 1 Introduction2 Primitive Ontology: Primitive Stuff3 The Physics of Matter as Primitive Stuff4 The Humean Best System Analysis of the Dynamical Variables5 Modal Realism about the Dynamical Variables6 Conclusion. (shrink)

An ontology of Leibnizian relationalism, consisting in distance relations among sparse matter points and their change only, is well recognized as a serious option in the context of classical mechanics. In this paper, we investigate how this ontology fares when it comes to general relativistic physics. Using a Humean strategy, we regard the gravitational field as a means to represent the overall change in the distance relations among point particles in a way that achieves the best combination of being simple (...) and being informative. (shrink)

John Bell proposed an ontology for the GRW modification of quantum mechanics in terms of flashes occurring at space- time points. This article spells out the motivation for this ontology, inquires into the status of the wave function in it, critically examines the claim of its being Lorentz invariant, and considers whether it is a parsimonious but nevertheless physically adequate ontology.

The paper shows how the Bohmian approach to quantum physics can be applied to develop a clear and coherent ontology of non-perturbative quantum gravity. We suggest retaining discrete objects as the primitive ontology also when it comes to a quantum theory of space-time and therefore focus on loop quantum gravity. We conceive atoms of space, represented in terms of nodes linked by edges in a graph, as the primitive ontology of the theory and show how a non-local law in which (...) a universal and stationary wave-function figures can provide an order of configurations of such atoms of space such that the classical space-time of general relativity is approximated. Although there is as yet no fully worked out physical theory of quantum gravity, we regard the Bohmian approach as setting up a standard that proposals for a serious ontology in this field should meet and as opening up a route for fruitful physical and mathematical investigations. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these relations changing. We assess two strategies to combine this ontology with physics, using classical mechanics as example: the Humean strategy adopts the standard, non-relationalist physical theories as they stand and interprets their formal apparatus as the means of bookkeeping of the change of the distance relations (...) instead of committing us to additional elements of the ontology. The alternative theory strategy seeks to combine the relationalist ontology with a relationalist physical theory that reproduces the predictions of the standard theory in the domain where these are empirically tested. We show that, as things stand, this strategy cannot be accomplished without compromising a minimalist relationalist ontology. (shrink)

Externalist theories of justification create the possibility of cases in which everything appears to one relevantly similar with respect to two propositions, yet one proposition is justified while the other is not. Internalists find this difficult to accept, because it seems irrational in such a case to affirm one proposition and not the other. The underlying internalist intuition supports a specific internalist theory, Phenomenal Conservatism, on which epistemic justification is conferred by appearances.

The paper points out that the modern formulation of Bohm’s quantum theory known as Bohmian mechanics is committed only to particles’ positions and a law of motion. We explain how this view can avoid the open questions that the traditional view faces according to which Bohm’s theory is committed to a wave-function that is a physical entity over and above the particles, although it is defined on configuration space instead of three-dimensional space. We then enquire into the status of the (...) law of motion, elaborating on how the main philosophical options to ground a law of motion, namely Humeanism and dispositionalism, can be applied to Bohmian mechanics. In conclusion, we sketch out how these options apply to primitive ontology approaches to quantum mechanics in general. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new way of defining sport that I call a ‘core-periphery’ model. According to a core-periphery model, sport comes in degrees – what I refer to as ‘sport-likeness’ – and the aim of the philosopher of sport is to chart those dimensions along which an activity can be more or less a sport. By introducing the concept of sport-likeness, the core-periphery model complicates the picture of what is or is not a sport and encourages philosophers (...) interested in defining sport to engage with the social sciences in exploring the extension of the term sport in common usage. In this paper I present the results of a small survey about attitudes to sport, and use it to illustrate how a core-periphery definition of sport would proceed. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Phyllis Rooney’s 2003 chapter, “Feminist Epistemology and Naturalized Epistemology: An Uneasy Alliance,” taking guidance from her critique of naturalized epistemology in pursuing my own analysis of another uneasy alliance: that between feminist epistemology and social epistemology. Investigating some of the background assumptions at work in prominent conceptions of social epistemology, I consider recent analyses of "epistemic bubbles" to ask how closely such analyses are aligned with ongoing research in feminist epistemology. I argue that critical feminist (...) insights in political philosophy are called for here, especially those that focus on multiple politically salient relationships and also emphasize practices of personal transformation as inseparably bound up with broader movements for social transformation. Insofar as feminist epistemology continues to carry another world in its heart, I argue that it will continue to rest uneasily with any effort to align it with—let alone subsume it within—the still emerging field of social epistemology. (shrink)

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, we should conclude (...) that beauty is not generally necessary or sufficient for epistemic value, and increasing beauty will not generally tend to increase epistemic value. (shrink)

Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or evaluated by scientists. This article begins to remedy this by presenting the results of a qualitative study performed on two systems biology laboratories. I found that the more advanced a participant was in their scientific career, the more they valued imagination. Further, positive attitudes toward imagination were primarily due to the perceived role of imagination in problem-solving. (...) But not all problem-solving episodes involved clear appeals to imagination, only maximally specific problems did. This pattern is explained by the presence of an implicit norm governing imagination use in the two labs: only use imagination on maximally specific problems, and only when all other available methods have failed. This norm was confirmed by the participants, and I argue that it has epistemological reasons in its favour. I also found that its strength varies inversely with career stage, such that more advanced scientists do (and should) occasionally bring their imaginations to bear on more general problems. A story about scientific pedagogy explains the trend away from (and back to) imagination over the course of a scientific career. Finally, some positive recommendations are given for a more imagination-friendly scientific pedagogy. (shrink)

Right after Philo’s about-face in Part 12 of the Dialogues, he gives an argument that the dispute between the theist and the atheist is merely verbal. Since everything is at least a little like everything else, the atheist must concede that the source of order is at least remotely like a human intellect, even if this source is something like a rotting turnip. This passage provides a major argument for dismissing Hume’s apparent avowals of theism in the Dialogues and elsewhere, (...) since Philo’s assertions are so loose as to let in a rotting turnip. The right reading of the passage is more interesting. The paragraph was written in 1776, right before Hume’s death. It’s thus one of the few philosophical texts written late enough to reflect his encounter with the French philosophes in the 1760s. We have good biographical evidence that Hume was criticized for being too much of a theist in France. The turnip is rotting not in order to make fun of the argument from design, but in order to make fun of d’Holbach's and Diderot's account of the origin of life, accounts that generalized dramatically from John Needham’s observations of nematodes in rotting wheat. In the rotting turnip paragraph, Hume is attempting to establish that the dispute between the theist and the atheist isn’t empirically tractable, that atheists will never outflank the apophatic theologian on the question of whether human minds are unlike God, and that if atheists are consistent with their analogical methods, they ought to be more open to the argument from design. (shrink)

The first argument that Hume offers against believing in miracle stories in Part 2 of his essay on miracles relies on social context in a way that makes it difficult to follow. Hume says that there’s never been a miracle story that’s well enough attested with respect to certain criteria of testimonial strength. A little later in the essay, he cites recent miracle stories coming from that Saint Médard cemetery as meeting the criteria to an exceptionally high degree, but even (...) so, he claims that we can dismiss the stories out of hand. The hidden background assumption is that his Protestant readers wouldn’t have been tempted to believe in miracle stories coming from an oppressed Catholic sect. Other examples in Part 2 of the essay work in the same way. Hume praises to the skies the quality of the evidence for an earlier Jansenist miracle, for a miracle involving the restoration of a leg through holy water at a Catholic cathedral, and a miracle at a temple of Serapis knowing that his readers won’t be inclined to believe in any of them. The point is that these miracles are better attested than the miracle stories in the Bible, and if we shouldn’t believe in the better attested stories, then we shouldn’t believe in the worse. This can seem like an appeal to prejudice, but really Hume is doing something subtler. He knows that it’s easier to criticize the irrational beliefs of others, but sees that once we turn the same standards that we use on others on our own beliefs, epistemic progress is possible. (shrink)

Michael Sandel's opposition to the project of human enhancement is based on an argument that centres on the notion of giftedness. Sandel claims that by trying to ?make better people? we fall prey to, and encourage, an attitude of mastery and thus lose, or diminish, our appreciation of the giftedness of life. Sandel's position and the underlying argument have been much criticised. In this paper I will try to make sense of Sandel's reasoning and give an account of giftedness (...) that defends its relevance for the ethical assessment of the human enhancement project. In order to do so, I will also look at virtue-related notions, such as gratitude and humility, and distinguish the gifted from the merely given. The failure to acknowledge this distinction gives rise to one of the most common objections to Sandel's argument. Other objections will be shown to rest on similar misunderstandings. (shrink)

This chapter offers an account of Crusius’ conception of freedom. In the first part of the chapter I sketch Crusius’ understanding of ‘Thelematology’ or ‘science of the will’ and his conception of the will itself. In the second part of the paper I provide an account of Crusius’ conception of freedom of the will and I focus on two topics: his understanding of freedom as self-determination and his conception of free choice. Contrary to how some of the secondary literature portrays (...) his view, I argue that freedom of the will, for Crusius, is not best described as the freedom to choose otherwise or liberty of indifference. On the contrary, Crusius argues that free choice is rarely indifferent to its choices and is most often strongly inclined towards certain ends that free choice must overcome and choose against. (shrink)

In this article we defend a moral conception of cosmopolitanism and its relevance for moral education. Our moral conception of cosmopolitanism presumes that persons possess an inherent dignity in the Kantian sense and therefore they should be recognised as ends‐in‐themselves. We argue that cosmopolitan ideals can inspire moral educators to awaken and cultivate in their pupils an orientation and inclination to struggle against injustice. Moral cosmopolitanism, in other words, should more explicitly inform the work that moral educators do. Real‐world constraints (...) on moral action and the need to prioritise one’s sometimes conflicting responsibilities will often qualify cosmopolitan justice as supererogatory. This fact does not absolve persons from aspiring to see themselves as having the moral obligation to help others in need, while recognising that their factual obligations are more modest in being bound by what they are actually able to do. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to shed new light on the role of feeling in Kant’s psychology of moral motivation by focusing on the concept of an incentive (Triebfeder), a term he borrowed from one of his most important rationalist predecessors, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. I argue that, similar to Baumgarten, Kant understands an incentive to refer to the ground of desire and that feelings function as a specific kind of ground within Kant’s psychology of moral action, namely as the ‘impelling (...) cause’ of desire. I claim that this interpretation has several advantages over the alternatives currently on offer in the literature. (shrink)

Time may be infinite in both directions. If it is, then, if persons could live at most once in all of time, the probability that you would be alive now would be zero. But if persons can live more than once, the probability that you would be alive now would be nonzero. Since you are alive now, with certainty, either the past is finite, or persons can live more than once.

The fact that Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin seem to disagree about the ordinary use of words such as ‘voluntary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntarily’, and ‘involuntarily’ has been taken to cast doubt on the methods of ordinary language philosophy. As Benson Mates puts the worry, ‘if agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?’ (Mates, Inquiry 1:161–171, 1958, p. 165). In this chapter, (...) we evaluate Mates’s criticism alongside Ryle’s and Austin’s specific claims about the ordinary use of these words, assessing these claims against actual examples of ordinary use drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC). Our evaluation consists in applying a combination of methods: first aggregating judgments about a large set of samples drawn from the corpus, and then using a clustering algorithm to uncover connections between different types of use. In applying these methods, we show where and to what extent Ryle’s and Austin’s accounts of the use of the target terms are accurate as well as where they miss important aspects of ordinary use, and we demonstrate the usefulness of this new combination of methods. At the heart of our approach is a commitment to the idea that systematically looking at actual uses of expressions is an essential component of any approach to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter explores a potential analogy between mereological principles and laws of nature. Against a backdrop of what Marmodoro has termed ‘power structuralism’ (and a rejection of a Humean worldview), the connection between parthood and modality may be richer than has hitherto been considered. Mereological principles delineate possibilities for parts and wholes, and putting powers at the centre of a discussion about parthood can furnish a novel conception of mereological laws, much as dispositionalism has done so for natural laws; namely, (...) these principles express connections between fundamental dispositional properties. By extending dispositionalism to comprehend mereology in this way, we can help fulfil its promise to provide a foundational, naturalistic metaphysics, as foundational mereological debates then begin to mirror those relating to dispositionalist views of laws of nature: we may treat natural and mereological laws in tandem, as holding either necessarily or contingently, with associated strategies for dealing with supposed counterexamples to one’s preferred set of mereological principles. We can thus bring new life to the debate over whether questions of composition admit of contingent or only necessary answers. (shrink)

What is 'positive freedom'? Whereas negative freedom may be characterised as an absence of coercion or physical prevention, and republican freedom as an absence of interpersonal domination, positive freedom resists such pithy treatment. The term is widely taken to refer to a variety of seemingly distinct goods, including but not limited to actually exercisable options or capabilities, collective self-determination, psychological self-government, and self-realisation or flourishing. In this paper I aim to bring the positive conception into better focus by tracing the (...) positive tradition through some of its twists and turns, and considering in what ways it might qualify as a single tradition. Drawing on the lessons of this survey, I then suggest a way of thinking about the nature of positive freedom that’s both principled and historically informed. (shrink)

A perceptual realism that is naive in a good way must be naively realistic about world and mind. But contemporary self-described naive realists often have trouble acknowledging that both the good cases of successful perception and the bad cases of illusion and hallucination involve internal experiential states with intentional contents that present the world as being a certain way. They prefer to think about experience solely in relational terms because they worry that otherwise we won’t be able to escape from (...) radical skepticism. I argue that experiential relations to objects require that their subjects be in internal experiential states. But this does not mean that these states are our epistemological starting point which can be known independently of any knowledge of the external world. We do escape the epistemological predicament of radical skepticism because the good cases are primary over the bad ones. But this is not because the good cases alone provide reasons for belief, but because we do not need a reason to think we are in a good case, but do need a reason to think we are not, and such a reason must come from a good case. So bad cases can only be thought of as deviations from good cases. And we can only understand experiences as states with contents distinct from their objects and present in good and bad cases once we understand misrepresentation, that is, bad cases, and therefore only as we ascribe knowledge of the external world to ourselves. (shrink)

This chapter examines two premises of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) - that emotions are caused by beliefs and that those beliefs are represented in the mind as words or images. Being a philosophical examination, the chapter also seeks to demonstrate that these two premises essentially are philosophical premises. The chapter begins with a brief methodological suggestion of how to properly evaluate the theory of CBT. From there it works it way from examining the therapeutic practice of capturing the mental representations that (...) supposedly elicit emotional reactions to examining the assumption that emotions are caused by beliefs. The chapter ends by briefly pointing to some consequences of what has been said to the practice of CBT. (shrink)

The evidence is overwhelming that members of particularly wealthy and industry-owning segments of Western societies have much larger carbon footprints than most other humans, and thereby contribute far more than their “fair share” to the enormous problem of climate change. Nonetheless, in this paper we shall counsel against a strategy focused primarily on blaming and shaming and propose, instead, a change in the ethical conversation about climate change. We recommend a shift in the ethical framework from a focus on the (...) role of individual agents and a conversation about guilt; in its place, we propose a relational approach to public health ethics that is centered around the idea of relational solidarity. We begin by briefly reviewing the most common—and woefully inadequate—approach in the West to reducing emissions and responding to the health-related impacts of climate change. We then go on to propose a relational approach to public health ethics as an alternative ethical framework that better fits the moral problems associated with climate change and holds promise for a more meaningful response. (shrink)

In this paper, I undertake a conceptual analysis of ordinary usages of the concepts of “litter” and “pollution.” If “litter” or “pollution” applies to space debris in its various contexts, then in dealing with space debris as an ethical concern, we may more neatly apply arguments for the wrongness of litter and pollution to these new contexts. After engaging in a conceptual analysis of “litter” and “pollution,” I consider whether these concepts apply to space debris, examining three contexts: (1) surface (...) debris on Moon and Mars, (2) intentionally crashing objects into gas giants, ice giants, and stars, and (3) the pressing issue of orbital space debris. I conclude by finding that neither “litter” nor “pollution” cleanly applies to any of these three contexts. (shrink)

There are many things that can be done to educate young people about controversial topics - including historical monuments - in schools. At the same time, however, we argue that there is little warrant for optimism concerning the educational potential of classroom instruction given the interpretative frame of the state-approved history curriculum; the onerous institutional constraints under which school teachers must labour; the unusual constellation of talents history teachers must possess; the frequent absence of marginalized voices in these conversations; and (...) finally, the not unlikely indifference - if not outright hostility - expressed by far too many members of the dominant group. For these reasons, we think it best to expand the scope of educational possibilities one is willing to consider. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that agents are self-ruled only when ruled by their (authentic) selves. Though this view is rarely argued for explicitly, one tempting line of thought suggests that self-rule is just obviously equivalent to rule by the self . However, the plausibility of this thought evaporates upon close examination of the logic of ‘self-rule’ and similar reflexives. Moreover, attempts to rescue the account by recasting it in negative terms are unpromising. In light of these problems, this paper instead proposes (...) that agents are self-ruled only when not ruled by others. One reason for favouring this negative social view is its ability to yield plausible conclusions concerning various manipulation cases that are notoriously problematic for nonsocial accounts of self-rule. A second reason is that the account conforms with ordinary usage. It is concluded that self-rule may be best thought of as an essentially social concept. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to show that naturalists cannot reasonably endorse moral realism. My argument will come in two parts. The first part aims to show that any plausible and naturalistically acceptable argument in favor of belief in objective moral properties will appeal in part to simplicity considerations (broadly construed)—and this regardless of whether moral properties are reducible to non-moral properties. The second part argues for the conclusion that appeals to simplicity justify belief in moral properties only if (...) either those properties are not objective or something like theism is true. Thus, if my argument is sound, naturalists can reasonably accept moral realism only if they are prepared to accept something like theism. But, as will become clear, naturalists can reasonably accept theism or something like it only if belief in some such doctrine is justified by the methods of science. For present purposes, I’ll assume (what I think virtually every naturalist will grant) that belief in theism and relevantly similar doctrines is not justified by the methods of science. Thus, I will conclude that naturalists cannot reasonably accept moral realism. (shrink)

How was the hypothetical character of theories of experience thought about throughout the history of science? The essays cover periods from the middle ages to the 19th and 20th centuries. It is fascinating to see how natural scientists and philosophers were increasingly forced to realize that a natural science without hypotheses is not possible.

The history of the methodology of African philosophy can be divided into two periods: the nascent stage that’s characterized by a rigor-demand, and the contemporary stage that’s characterized by a relevance-demand. In this, paper, I argue for one way to strike the appropriate balance between relevance and rigor in African philosophy. Specifically, I argue that the unconscious rejection of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method by contemporary African philosophers played a major role in how African philosophy came to be characterized (...) by a relevance-demand. Consequently, I submit that even though being only or excessively relevance-oriented is not bad, African philosophy would become rich enough to compete with other regional philosophies—Western, Chinese, and so on—if it re-installs conceptual analysis as part of its methodology. (shrink)

According to Christian belief, Jesus Christ is a divine person who became “incarnate,” i.e., who became human. A key event in the second act of the drama of creation and redemption, the incarnation could not have failed to interest Aquinas, and he discusses it in a number of places. A proper understanding of what he thought about it is thus part of any complete understanding of his work. It is, furthermore, a window into his ideas on a variety of other (...) topics: God, human nature, language, substance, and so on. Finally, it forces us to come to grips with what is at stake in acknowledging that Aquinas was not only a philosopher but a theologian as well. (shrink)

How surprising is the insight, that being equals I in the 15th lecture of the Doctrine of Science 1804/II? It might have been indeed an unexpected turn for his contemporaries in Berlin listening to Fichte for the first time, but should it be surprising for us, having at least since 2012 (the year the last volume of [Gesamtausgabe] appeared) access to all his published and unpublished works? I want to propose a way of reading Fichte, which bypasses two popular and (...) contradictory interpretations of his philosophy in the post-Jena period: (a) the Absolute is the new first principle (hence the I is just a shadow of the much higher being) and (b) his system basically remains unchanged (hence the being is nothing more than the I). At first, I analyze the functions of later Fichte’s improved version of the Kantian and Reinholdian abstract subject-object-symbolism and assign specific content to it. This will shed light on the structure and the first principle of the Doctrine of Science 1804/II. In the second section I give reasons why Fichte calls both God and I “absolute” and “pure being” and explain their relation to each other referring to a thought experiment sometimes used by Kant—an analogy between the divine and human (pure) reason. The analogical thinking of this kind remains within the borders of transcendental philosophy as long as it is used only for certain didactic purposes. (shrink)

In recent decades, perspectivism has developed into an epistemological research program claiming its independence. This autonomy stems from Perspectivism’s potential ability to resolve the contradictions between realist and constructivist programs. Perspectivism is based on the idea that the object depends on perspective, which constitutes any subjective attempt to cognize it. Perspectivists reconstruct and explain the factors involved in the formation of perspective, identifying the conditionality of epistemic acts, using concepts such as “position”, “point of view”, “view”, “angle”, “horizon”, “focus”, “picture”, (...) “context”, “aspect”, etc. Although these concepts are part of the perspectivist’s toolkit, their meanings and interrelation have so far been taken for granted and have not yet been critically and comprehensively analyzed. The purpose of this article is to take steps toward clarifying the conceptual basis for defending perspectivism as an epistemological program. Once consistently uncovered and correlated in a conceptual model, Perspectivist concepts can be used as a tool for a detailed analysis of theories, positions, and beliefs. The article begins with a preliminary description of the concept of perspectivism and its brief history as an epistemological program. In particular, the first modern attempts to outline perspectivist epistemology are described in the works of F. Kaulbach (1990), W. Stegmaier (2008), and M. Massimi (2017, 2020). The problem of identifying the special a priori status of perspectivist notions as a strategy for justifying the autonomy of Perspectivism is then posed. A method for demonstrating such a status, based on Kant’s transcendentalism and P. Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics, is then suggested. (shrink)

This volume represents a rich multi-disciplinary contribution to an expanding literature on citizenship, identity, and education in a variety of majority and minority Muslim communities. Each of these essays offer important insights into the various ways one may identify with, and participate in, different societies to which Muslims belong, from the United Kingdom to Pakistan to Indonesia. Authors include Robert Hefner, Andrew March, Tariq Modood, Lucas Swaine, Matthew Nelson, Rosnani Hashim, Charlene Tan and Yedullah Kazmi.

Political epistemology is a newly flourishing area of philosophy, but there is no comprehensive overview to this burgeoning field. This chapter maps out the terrain of political epistemology, highlights some of the key questions and topics of this field, draws connections across seemingly disparate areas of work, and briefly situates this field within its historical and contemporary contexts.

_ Source: _Volume 95, Issue 3, pp 368 - 413 Frege famously maintained that concepts are not objects. A key argument of Frege’s for this view is, in outline, as follows: if we are to account for the unity of thought, concepts must be deemed _unsaturated_; since objects are, by contrast, saturated entities, concepts cannot be objects. The author investigates what can be made of this argument and, in particular, of the unsaturated/saturated distinction it invokes. Systematically exploring a range of (...) reconstructions suggested by Frege’s writings, and drawing on contemporary work, the author illustrates that no plausible reconstruction is forthcoming. In essence, it is altogether unclear how to simultaneously substantiate, on the one hand, the claim that unsaturated entities must be recognized in order to account for unity and, on the other, the claim that unsaturatedness is incompatible with objecthood. (shrink)

When we see the way that the parts of the Appendix concerning belief hang together, we can understand how and why Hume moved from saying that belief is a vivid idea to saying that belief is a sui generis feeling. In the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume retracts his claim that perceptions with the same object only vary with respect to vivacity. In material in the appendix that he tells his reader to insert in Book 1, he explains his reasons: (...) the vivacity connected to belief is different in kind from that from the vivacity connected to poetry. Poetry can be more vivid, in its way, than belief. Since Hume’s main arguments for the thesis that beliefs are vivid ideas in the main body of the Treatise depend on the assumption that ideas with the same object only vary in vivacity, he owes us new arguments from his claim. He provides various arguments for a slightly revised thesis that belief is a particular sort of vivid idea at the beginning of the Appendix. (shrink)

It has often been noted that evil – by which I mean evil in human motivation and action – is difficult to understand. We find it hard to make sense of what ‘drives’ a person to commit evil. This is not because we cannot recognise or identify with some aspect of the psychology of evil; we all experience feelings of envy, spite, cruelty, and hatred. But somehow this shared experience can seem insufficient, and we are left at a loss as (...) to how such natural, universal human motivations could have resulted in this. The aims of this paper are modest, to do no more than point in a particular direction our attempts to understand the psychology of evil. §2 is a synoptic overview of what I shall call the ‘traditional’ picture of the psychology of evil. In §3, I argue that this picture is explanatorily inadequate. §§4-6 develop the traditional picture by suggesting some resources drawn from psychoanalytic theory that can meet the explanatory challenge. My argument here is schematic, seeking only to motivate a research project. It would take a much longer exploration of these resources, providing far more psychological detail, to work out what can rightfully be called an account of the psychology of evil. §7 situates the psychology of evil in relation to ‘normal’ psychology by noting the positive functions of mental processes involved in the psychology of evil. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe is well-known for her insistence that there are absolutely prohibited actions, though she is somewhat obscure about why this is so. Nonetheless, I contend in this paper that Anscombe is more concerned with the epistemology of absolute prohibitions, and that her thought on connatural moral knowledge – which resembles moral intuition – is key to understanding her thought on moral prohibitions. I shall identify key features of Anscombe’s moral epistemology before turning to investigate its sources, examining the roots (...) of connaturality in Aquinas and comparing it with rationalist ethical intuitionism, which Anscombe differs from in rejecting “good” as a simple, non-natural property. I then develop a two-stage argument about absolute prohibition: The first will be loosely Thomistic, while the second will suggest how Anscombe’s absolute prohibitions can be seen as a continuation of Wittgenstein’s anti-scepticism in On Certainty. I develop an account of absolute prohibitions as a form of Wittgensteinian hinge proposition – they are not the conclusions of deductive arguments, but the foundations for intelligibility in action. (shrink)

Baruch, or Benedictus, Spinoza (1632–77) is the author of works, especially the Ethics and the Theological-Political Treatise, that are a major source of the ideas of the European Enlightenment. The Ethics is a dense series of arguments on progressively narrower subjects – metaphysics, mind, the human affects, human bondage to passion, and human blessedness – presented in a geometrical order modeled on that of Euclid. In it, Spinoza begins by defending a metaphysics on which God is the only substance and (...) is bound by the laws of his own nature. Spinoza then builds a naturalistic ethics that is constrained by, and to some extent is a product of, his strong metaphysics. Human beings are individuals that causally interact with other individuals and are extremely vulnerable to external influence. They are not substances. Moreover, human beings are bound by the same laws that bind all other individuals in nature, so Spinoza presents accounts of goodness, virtue, and perfection that are consistent with these perfectly general laws. Spinoza’s principal influences include René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes (see hobbes, thomas), Moses Maimonides (see maimonides, moses), the Roman Stoics (see stoicism), and Aristotle (see aristotle). Although his innovative philosophical views undoubtedly contributed to the strong writ of cherem, or ostracism, that Spinoza received from the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1656, his work nevertheless also shows the influence of the study of Scripture and of Jewish law. (shrink)

I review the debate between ‘realist’ and ‘constructivist’ understandings of the psychoanalytic unconscious. To oversimplify, realists hold that unconscious mental states exist in the analysand’s mind fully formed and with determinate intentional content, independent of consciousness, and these are discovered in analysis. Constructivists (including relationalists and intersubjectivists) hold that the unconscious meaning of clinical material does not exist ‘pre-organised’ in the analysand’s mind, but is constructed, not discovered, through the analytic relationship. I argue that the debate is multiply confused. For (...) example, different meanings of ‘psychoanalysis’ and ‘constructivism’ are at play, and a number of central arguments rest on misunderstandings of complex philosophical positions concerning the status of science and the nature of human knowledge. Once these confusions are removed, an understanding of the psychoanalytic unconscious that retains the strengths of both realism and constructivism presents itself. (shrink)

Philosophical Papers, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 149-165, March 2012.

According to the received account of guilt in the philosophical literature, one cannot feel guilt unless one takes oneself to have done something morally wrong. But ordinary people feel guilt in many cases in which they do not take themselves to have done anything morally wrong. In this paper, I focus on one kind of guilt without perceived wrongdoing, guilt about being merely causally responsible for a bad state-of-affairs. I go on to present a novel account of guilt that explains (...) guilt about mere causal responsibility, according to which guilt represents part of the self as bound up with what is bad. (shrink)

Husserl famously argues that it is essential to perception to present the perceived object in perspectives. Hence, there is no – and there cannot be – perception without perspectival givenness. Yet, it seems that there are counterexamples to this essentialist claim, for we seem to be able to imagine beings that do not perceive in perspectives. Recently, there have been some accounts in the literature that critically discuss those counterexamples and assess to what extent they succeed in challenging Husserl’s essentialist (...) claim. In this paper I discuss three different answers to these counterexamples, all of them are found wanting. I offer a novel solution, taking into account some crucial findings of the contemporary debate about imagination and modality. I argue that this new solution is capable of fully vindicating Husserl’s essentialist claim. Finally, I reconstruct Husserl’s own way to treat such counterexamples, in order to showcase the notion of modality Husserlian phenomenology relies on. I argue for the hitherto widely underappreciated point that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology cannot appeal to strictly absolute modality but that the kind of modality in Husserlian phenomenology is conditional on the facticity that we have the transcendental structure we do in fact have. (shrink)