This volume reflects the development and theoretical foundation of a new paradigm for critical thinking based on inquiry. The field of critical thinking, as manifested in the Informal Logic movement, developed primarily as a response to the inadequacies of formalism to represent actual argumentative practice and to provide useful argumentative skills to students. Because of this, the primary focus of the field has been on informal arguments rather than formal reasoning. Yet the formalist history of the field is still evident (...) in its emphasis, with respect to both theory and pedagogy, on the structure and evaluation of individual, de-contextualized arguments. It is our view that such a view of critical thinking is excessively narrow and limited, failing to provide an understanding of argumentation as largely a matter of comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments with the goal of reaching a reasoned judgment on an issue. As a consequence, traditional critical thinking instruction is problematic in failing to provide the reasoning skills that students need in order to accomplish this goal. Instead, the goal of critical thinking instruction has been seen largely as a defensive one: of learning to not fall prey to invalid, inadequate, or fallacious arguments. (shrink)

In French post-structuralism, »decentering« signifies the criticism of any metaphysical »centre« which is supposed to reign the development and the logic of discourse, and hence of thinking. In particular, anthropology and the recourse to humanism were suspected to miss the plurality and the self-differing nature of discursive practices. This article presents Dewey’s philosophy as an alternative to this criticism. Dewey is comparably sceptical of any attempt to treat the human being as a metaphysical essence. Nevertheless, he develops an explicit humanism (...) which defends the central values of freedom, openness, and growth. This paradoxical humanism is rendered possible by developing a concept of nature, and the human being, which,decenters‘ the specific human capacities by consequently treating them as an integral part of nature. (shrink)

Essays on Aristotle's Sea-Battle, Lazy Argument, Argument Reaper, Diodorus' Master Argument -/- The book is devoted to the ancient logical theories, reconstruction of their semantic proprieties and possibilities of their interpretation by modern logical tools. The Ancient arguments are frequently misunderstood in modern interpretations since authors usually have tendency to ignore their historical proprieties and theoretical background what usually leads to a quite inappropriate picture of the argument’s original form and mission. Author’s primary intention was to draw attention to the (...) complexity of some historical arguments and to the theoretical context in which arguments were created, circulated, developed, and finally tuned. Four well-known ancient arguments – with a common central subject related to the future contingencies problem – are reconstructed from available historical sources: “The Sea Battle”, which is drawn from Aristotle’s treatise De Interpretatione; two arguments, usually ascribed to the Stoics, “The Lazy Argument” and “The Reaper”; “The Master Argument” of the Megarian philosopher Diodorus. Arguments are linguistically and semantically detaily analyzed, formally presented by reflecting some relevant corresponding hypotheses based on physical or logical theories of their ancient authors, and finally covered by appropriate logical tools familiar to a modern reader. Two appendices are added at the closing part of the book. One covering some assumptions relevant for understanding of rival streams in ancient theories of meaning related to the nature of names and naming; the other is devoted to the ancient understanding of logical proposition and attempts to find an adequate Latin translation of the Greek delicate philosophical term “ἀξίωμα”. (shrink)

Recent epistemology offers an account of what it is to know other persons. Such views hold promise for illuminating several issues in philosophy of religion, and for advancing a distinctive approach to religious epistemology. This paper develops an account of interpersonal knowledge, and clarifies its relation to propositional and qualitative knowledge. I then turn to our knowledge of God and God's knowledge of us, and compare my account of interpersonal knowledge with important work by Eleonore Stump on "Franciscan" knowledge. I (...) examine how interpersonal knowledge may figure in liturgical practice, in diffusing the problem of divine hiddenness, and in motivating a novel understanding of divine love. I also explore the possibility of epistemic injustice arising from dismissal or neglect of our religious testimony to one another, or of divine testimony to humanity, focusing specifically on the import of interpersonal knowledge. (shrink)

In a series of works Sosa (in: Knowledge in perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991; A virtue epistemology: apt belief and reflective knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; Reflective knowledge: apt belief and reflective knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009; ‘How Competence Matters in Epistemology’, Philos Perspect 24(1):465–475, 2010; Knowing full well, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011; Judgment and agency, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015; Epistemology, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2017) has defended the view that there are two kinds or (...) ‘grades’ of knowledge, animal and reflective. One of the most persistent critics of Sosa’s attempts to bifurcate knowledge is Kornblith (in: Greco (ed) Ernest sosa and his critics, Wiley, Hoboken, 2004; ‘Sosa in Perspective’, Philos Stud 144(1):127–136, 2009; On reflection, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012). Our aim in this paper is to outline and evaluate Kornblith’s criticisms. We will argue that, while they raise a range of difficult (exegetical and substantive) questions about Sosa’s ‘bi-level’ epistemology, Sosa has the resources to adequately respond to all of them. Thus, this paper is a (qualified) defence of Sosa’s bi-level epistemology. (shrink)

Moral encroachment holds that the epistemic justification of a belief can be affected by moral factors. If the belief might wrong a person or group more evidence is required to justify the belief. Moral encroachment thereby opposes evidentialism, and kindred views, which holds that epistemic justification is determined solely by factors pertaining to evidence and truth. In this essay I explain how beliefs such as ‘that woman is probably an administrative assistant’—based on the evidence that most women employees at the (...) firm are administrative assistants—motivate moral encroachment. I then describe weaknesses of moral encroachment. Finally I explain how we can countenance the moral properties of such beliefs without endorsing moral encroachment, and I argue that the moral status of such beliefs cannot be evaluated independently from the understanding in which they are embedded. (shrink)

There is a growing interest in the foundations as well as the application of imprecise probability in contemporary epistemology. This dissertation is concerned with the application. In particular, the research presented concerns ways in which imprecise probability, i.e. sets of probability measures, may helpfully address certain philosophical problems pertaining to rational belief. The issues I consider are disagreement among epistemic peers, complete ignorance, and inductive reasoning with imprecise priors. For each of these topics, it is assumed that belief can be (...) modeled with imprecise probability, and thus there is a non-classical solution to be given to each problem. I argue that this is the case for peer disagreement and complete ignorance. However, I discovered that the approach has its shortcomings, too, specifically in regard to inductive reasoning with imprecise priors. Nevertheless, the dissertation ultimately illustrates that imprecise probability as a model of rational belief has a lot of promise, but one should be aware of its limitations also. (shrink)

Because anticipated and retrospective regret play important roles in practical deliberation and motivation, better understanding them can illuminate the contours of human agency. However, the possibility of self-ignorance and the fact that we change over time can make regret—especially anticipatory regret—not only a poor predictor of where the agent will be in the future but also an unreliable indicator of where the agent stands. Granting these, this paper examines the way in which prospective and, particularly, retrospective regret can nevertheless yield (...) important insight into the sorts of creatures we are, both generally and individually. The experience of retrospective regret can show a person she values something in a way she did not know or that she is (or was) a different person than she had thought, insights which can factor into forward-looking, or prospective, deliberation. Such instances of revelatory regret reveal something to the agent about herself as agent. I examine two cases of agential self-ignorance. In the first, the experience of regret reveals what the agent values, not only to others but even to the agent himself. In the second, the agent anticipates experiencing regret for an action but does not experience the regret, suggesting that the agent did not value the rejected alternative in the way she thought. Anticipatory regret is forward-looking and can play an important role in practical deliberation. But insofar as anticipatory regret flows from one’s imperfect judgment and prospection about oneself, retrospective regret can be an important corrective in helping the agent understand her own standpoint. (shrink)

This article argues for the elimination of the concept of life worth living from philosophical vocabulary on three complementary grounds. First, the basic components of this concept suffer from multiple ambiguities, which hamper attempts to ground informative evaluative and classificatory judgments about the worth of life. Second, the criteria proposed to track the extension of the concept of life worth living rest on unsupported axiological assumptions and fail to identify precise and plausible referents for this concept. And third, the concept (...) of life worth living is not shown to serve any major evaluative or classificatory purpose besides those served by already available axiological concepts. By eliminating the concept of life worth living, philosophers will free themselves of the task of addressing ill-posed axiological questions and ground reflection about the worth of life on more rigorous conceptual foundations. (shrink)

According to non-doxastic theories of propositional faith, belief that p is not necessary for faith that p. Rather, propositional faith merely requires a ‘positive cognitive attitude’. This broad condition, however, can be satisfied by several pragmatic approaches to a domain, including fictionalism. This paper shows precisely how fictionalists can have faith given non-doxastic theory, and explains why this is problematic. It then explores one means of separating the two theories, in virtue of the fact that the truth of the propositions (...) in a discourse is of little consequence for fictionalists, whereas their truth matters deeply for the faithful. Although promising, this approach incurs several theoretical costs, hence providing a compelling reason to favour a purely doxastic account of faith. (shrink)

Permissivism about rationality is the view that there is sometimes more than one rational response to a given body of evidence. In this paper I discuss the relationship between permissivism, deference to rationality, and peer disagreement. I begin by arguing that—contrary to popular opinion—permissivism supports at least a moderate version of conciliationism. I then formulate a worry for permissivism. I show that, given a plausible principle of rational deference, permissive rationality seems to become unstable and to collapse into unique rationality. (...) I conclude with a formulation of a way out of this problem on behalf of the permissivist. (shrink)

This article examines one of the relevant concepts in the current debate on home birth—autonomy in place of birth—and its uses in general language, ethics, and childbirth health care literature. International discussion on childbirth services. A concept analysis guided by the model of Walker and Avant. The authors suggest that autonomy in the context of choosing place of birth is defined by three main attributes: information, capacity and freedom; given the antecedent of not harming others, and the consequences of accountability (...) for the outcome. Model, borderline and contrary cases of autonomy in place of birth are presented. A woman choosing place of birth is autonomous if she receives all relevant information on available choices, risks and benefits, is capable of understanding and processing the information and choosing place of birth in the absence of coercion, provided she intends no harm to others and is accountable for the outcome. The attributes of the definition can serve as a useful tool for pregnant women, midwives, and other health professionals in contemplating their moral status and discussing place of birth. (shrink)

This collection brings together a selection of my recently published or forthcoming articles. What unites them is their common concern with one of the central ambitions of philosophy, namely to get clearer about our first-personal perspective onto the world and our minds. Three aspects of that perspective are of particular importance: consciousness, intentionality, and rationality. The collected essays address metaphysical and epistemological questions both concerning the nature of each of these aspects and concerning the various connections among them. More generally, (...) given that intentionality and ratio- nality are both normative phenomena, the main theme of the articles is the relationship between consciousness and normativity and the centrality of this relationship to our first-personal perspective. -/- This focus culminates in the defense of two specific views, experiential rationalism and experiential intentionalism. The first is, very roughly, the view that how our mental episodes are given in consciousness reflects their rational role in our mental lives: it is part of what our mental episodes subjectively are like that we phenomenally experience them as providing and/or responding to certain kinds of reasons. The central claim of the second view, on the other hand, is that the intentionality of our mental episodes is essentially linked to consciousness and involves a token-reflexive element: they intentionally present not only the world, but also themselves as being a certain way. -/- Some of the essays also deal with the contrast between our first- and our third-personal perspectives and the — to some extent related — division of labour between philosophy and the empirical sciences. Both perspectives have their limitations and sometimes conflict with each other, raising the question of what the consequences are for accounts of our first-personal knowledge and its internal or external objects. (shrink)

This paper addresses Bas van Fraassen’s claim that empiricism is a ‘stance’. I begin by distinguishing two different kinds of stance: an explicit epistemic policy and an implicit way of ‘finding oneself in a world’. At least some of van Fraassen’s claims, I suggest, refer to the latter. In explicating his ordinarily implicit ‘empirical stance’, he assumes the stance of the phenomenologist, describing the structure of his commitment to empiricism without committing to it in the process. This latter stance does (...) not incorporate the attitude that van Fraassen takes to be characteristic of empiricism. Thus its possibility serves to illustrate that empiricism as an all-encompassing philosophical orientation is untenable. I conclude by discussing the part played by feelings in philosophical stances and propose that they contribute to philosophical conviction, commitment and critique. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that trust is a moral attitude, by putting forward the Obligation-Ascription Thesis: If E trusts F to do X, this implies that E ascribes an obligation to F to do X. I explicate the idea of obligation-ascription in terms of requirement and the appropriateness of blame. Then, drawing a distinction between attitude and ground, I argue that this account of the attitude of trust is compatible with the possibility of amoral trust, that is, trust held (...) among amoral persons on the basis of amoral grounds. It is also compatible with trust adopted on purely predictive grounds. Then, defending the thesis against a challenge of motivational inefficacy, I argue that obligation-ascription can motivate people to act even in the absence of definite, mutually-known agreements. I end by explaining, briefly, the advantages of this sort of moral account of trust over a view based on reactive attitudes such as resentment. (shrink)

In addition to providing a rebuttal of the “paper-doubts” of the would-be skeptic, pragmatists have also been quite responsive to the social dimensions of doubt. This is true concerning the causes of doubt. This is true also regarding its consequences: doubt has consequences on epistemic trust; on the way we discuss truths, either about the sciences or about the “construction of good”. Readers of Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty and of some of his most important political writings can easily see (...) how practical uncertainty can degenerate into practical and political skepticism, preventing the emergence of the public. This social aspect of the question has received less attention, perhaps, than the general pragmatist stance towards skepticism, and the present symposium offers a rst round of insights into this aspect of the question: the papers retrieved below all cast light on important aspects of the debate on justi cation, on scienti c dogmatism, on irony and skepticism, on doubt and legal theory, on skepticism and political anarchism. (shrink)

This note is a sequel to Huber. It is shown that obeying a normative principle relating counterfactual conditionals and conditional beliefs, viz. the royal rule, is a necessary and sufficient means to attaining a cognitive end that relates true beliefs in purely factual, non-modal propositions and true beliefs in purely modal propositions. Along the way I will sketch my idealism about alethic or metaphysical modality.

Recently, a number of epistemologists (notably Feldman [2007], [2009] and White [2005], [2013]) have argued for the rational uniqueness thesis, the principle that any set of evidence permits only one rationally acceptable attitude toward a given proposition. In contrast, this paper argues for extreme rational permissivism, the view that two agents with the same evidence may sometimes arrive at contradictory beliefs rationally. This paper identifies different versions of uniqueness and permissivism that vary in strength and range, argues that evidential peers (...) with different interests need not rationally endorse all the same hypotheses, argues that evidential peers who weigh the theoretic virtues differently can sometimes rationally endorse contradictory conclusions, and finally defends the permissivist appeal to standards against objections in the works of Feldman and White. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to establish a substantial positive philosophical connection between Bas van Fraassen and Hegel, by focusing on their respective notions of ‘stance’ and ‘form of consciousness’. In Section I, I run through five ways of understanding van Fraassen’s idea of a stance. I argue that a ‘stance’ is best understood as an intellectual disposition. This, in turn, means that the criteria for assessing a stance are ones which ask whether or not a stance adequately makes (...) sense of things. In Section II, the discussion turns to Hegel’s notion of a ‘form of consciousness’. I argue that Hegel’s notion of a ‘form of consciousness’ is best understood as comprising a worldview. The principal advantage of articulating stances in a Hegelian way is that such an interpretation improves on the previous five ways of understanding stances. This is because a form of consciousness explicitly details both the theoretical and affective attitudes that van Fraassen is after. Therefore, why Hegel is potentially a better source of understanding stances than the other accounts is that forms of consciousness most clearly illustrate the pragmatist elements of a stance. (shrink)

I present and defend (1) an account of ethical judgments as judgments about our reasons to feel specific motivationally laden attitudes, (2) an account of what an agent should do in terms of what would achieve ends that she has reason to be motivated to pursue, and (3) an account of an agent’s reasons for motivation (and thus action) in terms of the prescriptions of the most fundamental principles that guide her deliberations. Using these accounts, I explain the connection between (...) ethics and reasons for action, how ethical judgments are both descriptive and intrinsically motivating, and how ethical facts arise from facts about agents’ deliberations. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

Evidentialists and Pragmatists about reasons for belief have long been in dialectical stalemate. However, recent times have seen a new wave of Evidentialists who claim to provide arguments for their view which should be persuasive even to someone initially inclined toward Pragmatism. This paper reveals a central flaw in this New Evidentialist project: their arguments rely on overly demanding necessary conditions for a consideration to count as a genuine reason. In particular, their conditions rule out the possibility of pragmatic reasons (...) for action. Since the existence of genuine pragmatic reasons for action is common ground between the Evidentialist and the Pragmatist, this problem for the New Evidentialist arguments is fatal. The upshot is that the deadlock between these two positions is restored: neither side can claim to be in possession of an argument that could convince the other. As it happens, I myself favor Pragmatism about reasons for belief, and although I don't claim to be able to convince a committed Evidentialist, I do make a prima facie case for Pragmatism by describing particular scenarios in which it seems to be true. I then go on to develop my own preferred version of the view: Robust Pragmatism, according to which a consideration never constitutes a reason for believing a proposition purely in virtue of being evidence for it. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the relationship between historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, and indeed scientists themselves. I argue that they co-habit a shared intellectual territory ; and they should be able to do so peacefully, and with mutual respect, even if they disagree radically about how to describe the methods and results of science. I then go on to explore some of the challenges to mutually respectful cohabitation between history, philosophy and sociology of science. I conclude by identifying (...) a familiar kind of project in the philosophy of science which seeks to explore the worldview of a particular scientific discipline, and argue that it too has a right to explore the shared territory even though some historians and sociologists may find it methodologically suspect. (shrink)

This paper defends a principle I call Equal Treatment, according to which the rationality of a belief is determined in precisely the same way as the rationality of any other state. For example, if wearing a raincoat is rational just in case doing so maximizes expected value, then believing some proposition P is rational just in case doing so maximizes expected value. This contrasts with the popular view that the rationality of belief is determined by evidential support. It also contrasts (...) with the common idea that in the case of belief, there are two different incommensurable senses of rationality, one of which is distinctively epistemic. I present considerations that favor Equal Treatment over these two alternatives, reply to objections, and criticize some arguments for Evidentialism. I also show how Equal Treatment opens the door to a distinctive kind of response to skepticism. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have claimed that non-evidential considerations cannot play a role in doxastic deliberation as motivating reasons to believe a proposition. This claim, interesting in its own right, naturally lends itself to use in a range of arguments for a wide array of substantive philosophical theses. I argue, by way of a counterexample, that the claim to which all these arguments appeal is false. I then consider, and reply to, seven objections to my counterexample. Finally, as a way (...) of softening the blow, I show how the counterexample itself suggests a plausible diagnosis of why this claim has seemed so plausible to so many. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that "degree of belief" or "credence" is a more fundamental state grounding belief. Many other philosophers have been skeptical about the notion of "degree of belief", and take belief to be the only meaningful notion in the vicinity. This paper shows that one can take belief to be fundamental, and ground a notion of "degree of belief" in the patterns of belief, assuming that an agent has a collection of beliefs that isn't dominated by some other (...) collection in terms of the overall balance of truth and falsity that it could contain. (shrink)

What does it mean to be an aesthetic beholder? Is it different than simply being a perceiver? Most theories of aesthetic perception focus on 1) features of the perceived object and its presentation or 2) on psychological evaluative or emotional responses and intentions of perceiver and artist. In this chapter I propose that we need to look at the process of engaged perception itself, and further that this temporal process of be- coming a beholder must be understood in its embodied, (...) contextual and dynamic speci- ficity. Through both phenomenological and neuroscientific explorations I analyze what is characteristic about a more “aesthetic stance” and argue that there is a certain asym- metry between beholder and beheld, which has to do with a disengagement of goal- directed action, and which allows for other kinds of perceptual involvement than in a more “practical stance”. It is a multi-disciplinary project integrating a sensorimotor no- tion of aesthetic affordances, 18th century philosophy, and large-scale brain network findings. What ensues is a new dynamic framework for future empirical and theoretical research on aesthetic perception. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine whether doxastic voluntarism should be taken seriously within normative doxastic ethics. First, I show that currently the psychological evidence does not positively support doxastic voluntarism, even if I accept recent conclusions by Matthias Steup that the relevant evidence does not decisively undermine voluntarism either. Thus, it would seem that normative doxastic ethics could not justifiedly appeal directly to voluntarist assumptions. Second, I attempt to bring out how doxastic voluntarists may nevertheless hope to stir methodological worries (...) within normative doxastic ethics, should they demonstrate that our typical practices of deontically evaluating doxastic states crucially rely on voluntarist assumptions. I also argue that some of the key arguments thought positively to support voluntarism as a psychological thesis may be put to better effect in the context of this kind of descriptive vindication. However, a closer examination reveals that nothing obviously suggests that voluntarism provides a better regimentation of our ascription practices as compared to rival theses concerning human powers of doxastic control. (shrink)

Do the same epistemic standards govern scientific and religious belief? Or should science and religion operate in completely independent epistemic spheres? Commentators have recently been divided on William James’s answer to this question. One side depicts “The Will to Believe” as offering a separate-spheres defense of religious belief in the manner of Galileo. The other contends that “The Will to Believe” seeks to loosen the usual epistemic standards so that religious and scientific beliefs can both be justified by a unitary (...) set of evidentiary rules. I argue that James did build a unitary epistemology but not by loosening cognitive standards. In his psychological research, he had adopted the Comtian view that hypotheses and regulative assumptions play a crucial role in the context of discovery even though they must be provisionally adopted before they can be supported by evidence. “The Will to Believe” relies on this methodological point to achieve a therapeutic goal—to convince despairing Victorians that religious faith can be reconciled with a scientific epistemology. James argues that the prospective theist is in the same epistemic situation with respect to the “religious hypothesis” as the scientist working in the context of discovery. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the Jamesian-type beliefs, which are justified by virtue of their practical significance, and these theists tried to justify theistic beliefs on the exact same ground. I argue, contra the Jamesian tradition, that theistic beliefs are different from the Jamesian-type beliefs and thus cannot be justified on the same ground. I (...) also argue that the practical argument, as it stands, faces a problem of self-defeat. I then construct a new practical argument that avoids both problems. According to this new argument, theistic beliefs are rational to accept because such beliefs best supply us with motivation strong enough to carry out demanding moral tasks. (shrink)

William James’s paper “The Will to Believe” defends some distinctive and controversial views about the normative standards that should be adopted when we are reflecting upon what we should believe. He holds that, in certain special kinds of cases, it is rational to believe propositions even if we have little or no evidence to support our beliefs. And, in such cases, he holds that our beliefs can be determined by what he calls “passional considerations” which include “fear and hope, prejudice (...) and passion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpressure of our caste and set” (1897: 9). On most occasions “we find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why.” When James allows passional considerations a major role in determining the rationality of belief and argues that it is rational to form beliefs in advance of the evidence, he can easily be understood as holding that belief can be responsible when it is not warranted by epistemological norms. Belief can be rational and responsible when the reasons which support it are entirely prudential or practical. The question I am concerned with here is: how far can James’s argument in “The Will to Believe” be understood as an application of some views which are genuinely epistemological? One question we can ask about these views is: how far are they an application of a distinctively pragmatist approach to epistemological concerns about when belief is justified? One possibility is that James is making some original contributions to epistemology which may have echoes in contemporary epistemology. I shall argue that this interpretation of James’s argument is more plausible than it at first appears. (shrink)

In his popular lecture “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” (1899), William James considers the lack of awareness that we often have toward the insights of other people. “There is no point of view absolutely public and universal,” he says, and “even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations.” While every observer “gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands,” the stubborn fact, according to James, is that “neither the whole of truth nor...

There are convincing counter-examples to the widely accepted thesis that we cannot believe at will. For it seems possible that the truth of a proposition depend on whether or not one believes it. I call such scenarios cases of Truth Depends on Belief and I argue that they meet the main criteria for believing at will that we find in the literature. I reply to five objections that one might level against the thesis that TDB cases show that believing at (...) will is possible, namely that mind-reading is impossible, in TDB cases, one's belief is caused by one's desire, in TDB scenarios, one chooses not a belief but something else, TDB cases are reducible to Feldman cases, and that if truth depends on belief, we are on the road to a regress. Of course, TDB scenarios hardly, if ever, occur in real life. For three reasons, they are nonetheless important. First, they show that the thesis that it is conceptually impossible to believe at will is simply false. Second, they provide us with an imp.. (shrink)

William James was one of the most controversial philosophers of the early part of the 20 century, and his apparent skepticism about logic and any robust conception of truth was often simply attributed to his endorsing mysticism and irrationality out of an overwhelming desire to make room for religion in his world-view. However, it will be argued here that James’s pessimism about logic and even truth (or at least ‘absolute’ truth), while most prominent in his later views, stem from the (...) naturalistic conception of concepts developed much earlier in The Principles of Psychology (1890), and it is his commitment to naturalism about our conceptual powers, rather than to any sort of mysticism or irrationalism, that motivates his skepticism about the scope and power of logic, and ultimately about the objectivity of truth itself. (shrink)

Older people enter the final phases of their lives with well‐established habits and rituals, some of which might be or become substance abuse. This inquiry focused on the relationship between habits, rituals, and the compulsive addictive behaviours evident in older persons' substance abuse. Habits and rituals, examined as adaptive and limiting functions in older persons, revealed changes in autonomy, social inclusion, and emotional responses to such changes as older persons experience declining energy reserves and physical debilities. Older persons' ebbing sense (...) of control and passionate responses to change illustrate the perennial struggle between the will and emotions when habits and rituals transform to compulsive addictive behaviours. Two concepts, germane to this struggle both in older persons' addictive behaviours and nurses' response, emerged from this inquiry: temperance, a balance between the will's freely chosen actions and passionate desire, and discipline, the means to achieve such balance. The focused attention demanded in discipline can be realized in spiritual exercises and daily care of the soul. Disciplined actions engage the older persons' imaginative capacities to manage and abandon the self in goals consistent with end‐of‐life issues: meaningful fulfillment of human potential and the need for daily joy and pleasure in living the final years. (shrink)