Spontaneous freedom, the freedom of unplanned and unscripted activity enjoyed by “free spirits,” is central to everyday talk about “freedom.” Yet the freedom of spontaneity is absent from contemporary moral philosophers’ theories of freedom. This article begins to remedy the philosophical neglect of spontaneous freedom. I offer an account of the nature of spontaneous freedom and make a case for its value. I go on to show how an understanding of spontaneous freedom clarifies the free will debate by helping to (...) make sense of the libertarian claim that compatibilist varieties of freedom do not allow for genuine novelty and creativity. (shrink)

Hot-cold empathy gaps are a pervasive phenomena wherein one’s predictions about others tend to skew ‘in the direction’ of one’s own current visceral states. For instance, when one predicts how hungry someone else is, one’s prediction will tend to reflect one’s own current hunger state. These gaps also obtain intrapersonally, when one attempts to predict what one oneself would do at a different time. In this paper, we do three things: We draw on empirical evidence to argue that so-called hot-cold (...) empathy gaps arise when one projects one’s own current state into a simulation about another. Second, we argue that this process does not typically confer knowledge, even when the predictions it produces happen to be accurate. Third, we suggest that these results can be used to develop a challenge for L.A. Paul's view that authentic action sometimes requires subjective knowledge of one’s own values and how these values relate to relevant outcomes. We then sketch an alternative view of the epistemic grounds of authenticity, one on which authenticity requires a kind of understanding. The relevant form of understanding can be achieved by subjective knowledge but can also be achieved elsewise, such as through testimony from a close friend about what one values. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a paradigm-based explanation of respect. Paradigm-based explanations propose to illuminate subject matter that are basically disunified, by identifying a form of them (“the paradigm”) that is then shown to be explanatorily basic to the subject as a whole. This explanatory strategy is well-suited to the subject of respect, which is widely agreed to encompass two distinct kinds, appraisal respect and recognition respect. Accordingly, the paper sets out to determine which of these two kinds is paradigmatic (...) and which, derivative. It begins by advancing a novel account of appraisal respect (“perspectival respect”), which it also hypothesizes is respect in its paradigmatic form. On this hypothesis, perspectival respect is paradigmatic in virtue of its apparent “point” or function, which is that it constitutively aims at understanding another person’s perspective on things. The paper then tests the viability of this hypothesis by showing how one central form of recognition respect (“respect for persons”) can reasonably be understood to derive from respect in its paradigmatic form, by showing how it is illuminated by the aim of interpersonal understanding. (shrink)

What do we owe those with whom we inquire? Presumably, quite a bit. Anything beyond what is necessary to secure knowledge? Yes. In this paper, I argue for a class of ‘zetetic rights.’ These are rights distinctive to participants in group inquiry. Zetetic rights help protect important central interests of inquirers. These include a right to aid, a right against interference, and a right to exert influence over the course of inquiry. Building on arguments by Fricker (2015), I defend these (...) rights, and explore cases of their violation: zetetic wrongings. I argue that zetetic wrongings constitute a distinctive, ubiquitous, and significant form of injustice in our epistemic and zetetic lives. To improve our inquiries and avoid epistemic injustice, we need to contend with zetetic wronging. Making this case helps show that a complete picture of epistemic life must account for the deep influence of our cooperative ties to one another. (shrink)

Identity labels like “woman”, “Black,” “mother,” and “evangelical” are pervasive in both political and personal life, and in both formal and informal classification and communication. They are also widely thought to undermine agency by essentializing groups, flattening individual distinctiveness, and enforcing discrimination. While we take these worries to be well-founded, we argue that they result from a particular practice of using labels to rigidly label others. We identify an alternative practice of playful self-labelling, and argue that it can function as (...) a tool for combating oppression by expressing and enhancing individual and collective agency. (shrink)

Various philosophers have recently defended norms of inquiry which forbid inquiry into questions which lack true answers. I argue that these norms are overly restrictive, and that they fail to capture an important relationship between inquiry and our position as non-ideal epistemic agents. I defend a more flexible and forgiving norm: Epistemic Improvement. According to this norm, inquiry into a question is permissible only if it’s not rational for one to be sure that by inquiring one won’t improve epistemically upon (...) the question. This norm illuminates the significant role that inquiry plays in our lives, given our epistemic nonideality, and it also motivates a robust understanding of the value of inquiry, as encompassing epistemic improvements which go beyond figuring out the answers to questions. (shrink)

The rejection of a “characterless” moral self is central to some of Bernard Williams’ most important contributions to philosophy. By the time of Truth and Truthfulness, he works instead with a model of the self constituted and stabilized out of more primitive materials through deliberation and in concert with others that takes inspiration from Diderot. Although this view of the self raises some difficult questions, it serves as a useful starting point for thinking about the process of developing an authentic (...) moral point of view in the context of contemporary living. In what follows, I begin to fill out and extend this picture of the self and its related notion of authenticity by exploring some of the “technologies of the self” at play in Rachel Cusk’s recent work (primarily, the Outline trilogy, Coventry, Second Place, and “The Stuntman”) that ask us to rethink the possibility and importance of stability; seek a way of constituting oneself and one’s values outside the confining structures of traditional narrative (focusing instead on a framework that might be provided by the visual arts); and give a different role to the sort of internalized other Williams sees as being at work in the mechanisms of shame. (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on inquiry yields important results about when it is appropriate to inquire and to what extent norms on inquiry are compatible with other epistemic norms. However, philosophers have been remarkably silent on the matter of what questions we ought to take up in the first place. In this paper, I take up this question, and argue that moral considerations constitute fit-related, right-kind reasons to adopt interrogative attitudes towards, and so inquire about, particular questions. This is a conclusion (...) of more general interest, because – as I explain – we might think that moral considerations are at best wrong-kind reasons for attitudes. If my contentions are right, then there is at least one kind of attitude – namely interrogative attitudes – of which this is not true. (shrink)

Love naturally gives rise to cravings for epistemic security. At the same time, since human beings are responsive to our interpretations of them, our desire that they be knowable risks becoming oppressively self-fulfilling. I argue that ‘erotic curiosity’—understood not as a desire for stable knowledge but rather as a desire to engage in an indefinitely prolonged inquisitive activity—is central to a certain kind of love.

This paper examines an overlooked aspect of interpersonal love: Like morality, love demands a certain kind of impartial or disinterested vision from us. We cannot love another person well, I argue, without being capable of such impartiality. Unfortunately, our self-interested nature makes meeting love's demand for impartiality extremely difficult if not impossible. This paper unpacks and offers a solution to this difficulty. Drawing on Iris Murdoch's work on love, I suggest that we can come to appreciate our beloveds as we (...) should through unselfing, a state of self-forgetful, disinterested appreciation of an object outside the self. When we unself, we are so deeply moved by an external object's value—e.g. a stunning sunset—that all our subjective cares and concerns disappear from view. In concluding, I suggest that the capacity for impartiality we must develop to love someone well is relevant to understanding what our moral relations demand of us. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have recently argued that our concepts of ‘person’ or ‘self’ are plural. Some have argued that we should also adopt a corresponding pluralism about the metaphysics of the self. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I sketch and motivate an approach to personal identity that supports the inference from facts about how we think about the self to facts about the nature of the self. On the proposed view, the self-concept partly determines the nature of (...) the self. This approach provides new justification for the recent empirical turn in the philosophy of personal identity. Second, I argue that closer examination reveals that the empirical evidence does not in fact support pluralism about the self. Instead, the evidence points toward a model of the self-concept as a complex web of attitudes that is disposed toward integration and unity. I ultimately suggest that this unifying disposition of the self-concept helps ground the existence of a singular self. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have recently argued that our concepts of ‘person’ or ‘self’ are plural. Some have argued that we should also adopt a corresponding pluralism about the metaphysics of the self. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I sketch and motivate an approach to personal identity that supports the inference from facts about how we think about the self to facts about the nature of the self. On the proposed view, the self-concept partly determines the nature of (...) the self. This approach provides new justification for the recent empirical turn in the philosophy of personal identity. Second, I argue that closer examination reveals that the empirical evidence does not in fact support pluralism about the self. Instead, the evidence points toward a model of the self-concept as a complex web of attitudes that is disposed toward integration and unity. I ultimately suggest that this unifying disposition of the self-concept helps ground the existence of a singular self. (shrink)

Two approaches to authenticity have gained currency in the recent analytic philosophical literature. The first takes authenticity to be a property of how people act (authentic agency). The second takes it to be a property of who people are (authentic self). This paper motivates both views, then argues that there is a dependency between the two: the exercise of authentic agency depends on the possession of an authentic self, while the possession of an authentic self relies on the prior exercise (...) of authentic agency. On a particular, individualist conception of the self, this leads to a paradox. This paradox is resolved if one instead adopts a social conception of the self, according to which the self is partially ontologically constituted by other agents (a ‘we’, rather than an ‘I’). (shrink)

Changing concepts, understood as social constructs and facets of linguistic expressions, and likewise the mechanisms of change and the dynamicity of their contents, cannot be adequately analysed without a holistic perspective of a language system on the one hand, and a multi-layered perspective of conversational interaction on the other. I take on board a case study of the concept humanism, in particular in its relation to speciesism, to argue for such a broad perspective when discussing concept revision, including its deliberate (...) and automatic aspects. Section 1 sets out the scene and the objectives, emphasising the importance of metapragmatic concerns. In Sect. 2, I briefly introduce some relevant terms and debates surrounding concepts, lexemes, and their dynamicity. Section 3 moves to the question of the foundations of meaning and points out the importance of addressing it in the context of these debates. Section 4 contains the case study of the concept humanism and the insights it offers for carving out the boundaries of inquiry into the life of a concept, focusing on the importance of broadly understood propositional content and the non-propositional overlay as they are dynamically constructed in discourse—and, as such, on the importance of metapragmatic concerns. Section 5 concludes and reiterates my plea against carving out fields of inquiry based on narrowly understood pursuits. (shrink)