How to conceptualize loving relationships so as to accommodate that just love is geared toward preserving and fostering individual autonomy? To develop an answer, this paper draws on the recent debate on the rational role of experience to motivate a view dubbed Murdochian presentationalism. Murdochian presentationalism takes seriously two presentationalist ideas: 1) individuals harboring different world views who respond to identical situations differently can be equally rational; 2) our views and concepts develop under the constant pressure of experience. It combines (...) these ideas with Murdoch’s tenet that coming to know others (and thus being able to do well by them) requires unselfish love, construed as just attention that involves a continuous refinement of our evaluative concepts and makes us better attuned to what is real. Complemented with a broadly Kantian notion of autonomy, the resulting view fits the bill. The paper ends on a sketch of what is dubbed the ideal lovers’ pledge and a comment on what metaphor the view arrived at suggests for thinking about loving relationships. (shrink)

Experience, it is widely agreed, constrains our thinking and is also thoroughly theory-laden. But how can it constrain our thinking while depending on what it purports to constrain? To address this issue, I revisit and carefully analyze the account of observation provided by Norwood Russell Hanson, who introduced the term ‘theory-ladenness of observation’ in the first place. I show that Hanson’s account provides an original and coherent response to the initial question and argue that, if suitably developed, his account provides (...) a distinctive, powerful, and attractive alternative to relationalist and standard representationalist conceptions of experience. (shrink)

My contribution to the first round of a tetralog with Bill Brewer, Anil Gupta, and John McDowell. Each of us has written a response to the writings of the other three philosophers on the topic "Empirical Reason". My initial contribution focuses on what we know a priori about perception. In the second round, we will each respond to the each writer's first-round contributions.

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things,—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

In this paper, I give readers an idea of what some scholars are interested in, what I found interesting, and what may be of future interest in the philosophy of emotion. I begin with a brief overview of the general topics of interests in the philosophy of emotion. I then discuss what I believe to be some of the most interesting topics in the contemporary discourse, including questions about how philosophy can inform the science of emotion, responses to aspects of (...) the mind–body problem, and concerns about perception, cognition, and emotion, along with questions about the place of 4E approaches and meta-semantic pluralist(e) approaches in the embodied cognitive tradition. I also discuss the natural kind–social construction debate in the philosophy of emotion, the emerging field of cultural evolution, the import of a dual-inheritance theory in this emerging field, and I propose a possible way to integrate the frameworks of dual-inheritance theory and meta-semantic pluralism(e) to demonstrate at least one way in which the philosophy of emotion can contribute to the emerging field of cultural evolution. I conclude with a brief summary of this paper and note at least one significant implication of my proposal for the natural kind–social construction debate in the philosophy of emotion. (shrink)

There is a straightforward view of perception that has not received adequate consideration because it requires us to rethink basic assumptions about the objects of perception. In this paper, I develop a novel account of these objects—the sensible qualities—which makes room for the straightforward view. I defend two primary claims. First, I argue that qualities like color and shape are “ontologically flexible” kinds. That is, their real definitions allow for both physical objects and mental entities to be colored or shaped. (...) Second, a single instance of these qualities can be attributed to more than one entity. Just as we attribute the same instance of a material property to a statue and to the clay that constitutes it, single instances of sensible qualities should be attributed both to the physical objects perceived and to the perceptual states that have those instances as their objects. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to assess the viability of a perceptual epistemology based on what Anil Gupta calls the “hypothetical given”. On this account, experience alone yields no unconditional entitlement to perceptual beliefs. Experience functions instead to establish relations of rational support between what Gupta calls “views” and perceptual beliefs. I argue that the hypothetical given is a genuine alternative to the prevailing theories of perceptual justification but that the account faces a dilemma: on a natural assumption about (...) the epistemic significance of support relations, any perceptual epistemology based on the hypothetical given results in either rationalism or skepticism. I conclude by examining the prospects for avoiding the dilemma. One option is to combine the hypothetical given with a form of holism. Another is to combine the view with a form of hinge epistemology. But neither offers a simple fix. (shrink)

Inferencjalizm semantyczny Roberta B. Brandoma jest ważną i nową teorią znaczenia we współczesnej, analitycznej filozofii języka. Wyłożona została w bardzo obszerny sposób w monografii pt. Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment. Jest to teoria jednocześnie pragmatyczna, normatywna, holistyczna i dyskursywna. Stanowisko Brandoma jest z jednej strony gloryfikowane, natomiast z drugiej strony wzbudza kontrowersje. Powstaje zatem metafilozoficzne pytanie: Jak ocenić wkład tej teorii w filozofię języka? Inferencjalizm akcentuje wnioskowania materialne, askrypcje de re i użycie wyrażeń deiktycznych. Są to kategorie (...) „wertykalne”, akcentujące „związek” z rzeczywistością. Brandom jednak kładzie nacisk także na anaforyczną koncepcję referencji i prawdy. To czyni jego podejście wartościowym, anaforyczne bowiem rozumienie referencji i prawdy dostarcza dodatkowego objaśnienia użycia słów „odnosi się” i „ jest prawdziwe”. Ale kategorie te są „horyzontalne”. Brandom dostrzega problem nabywania empirycznego znaczenia przez wyrażenia inicjujące łańcuchy anaforyczne i proponuje — jako próbę rozwiązania problemu — zmodyfikowanie inferencjalizmu semantycznego przez poszerzenie go o epistemologią rewizyjną i fallibilistyczną. Dodatkowo wspomaga on swoją teorię przez pragmatykę normatywną, aplikującą kategorię asercji, uprawnienia, różnorodnych zobowiązań, czy „zdobywania punktów”. Wydaje się jednak, że wciąż brakuje pojęcia prawdziwości mocniejszego niż to zaproponowane w koncepcji anaforycznej — pojęcie prawdy, wyrażone przy użyciu relacji korespondencji między językiem a rzeczywistością. Idea korespondencji ma tę wadę, że trudno jest ją satysfakcjonująco zdefiniować. Ważną jednak zaletą takiej relacji jest to, że jest ona relacją „język–rzeczywistość”, a nie tylko anaforyczną relacją „język–język”. Postawiony zarzut nie dyskwalifikuje inferencjalizmu. Wyraża on jedynie ogólno-epistemologiczną trudność z definicją prawdy. Natomiast doniosłością inferencjalizmu jest to, że próbuje on łączyć różne elementy, a przez to — w bardziej adekwatny sposób — objaśnić czym jest znaczenie i wyjaśnić, jak wyrażenia je nabywają. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 232-235, January 2022.

Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? (...) Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification. (shrink)