In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas makes the claim that the unprecedented public use of critical reason was an essential constituent of the early modern European (bourgeois) public sphere (1991, 27-28, 105-6, and more generally 1-117). Narrating the history of the particular concept of critical reason that animated the public sphere, Habermas locates its origin in the practical reason (phronesis) of Aristotle but argues that Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More had drastically transformed the concept when they substituted (...) for phronesis a practical reason based instead on techne (1973, 42, 50-51). Machiavelli's role was central in this transformation, for he "reduces the practical .. (shrink)

Shulamith Firestone argues that for women to embrace equal rights without recognizing them for children is unjust. Protection of children is merely repressive control: they are infantilized by our treatment of them. I maintain that many children no longer get much protection, but neither are they being provided with an environment conducive to learning prudence or morality. Recognizing equal rights for children is likely to worsen this situation, not make it better.

It seems plausible that (i) how much punishment a person deserves cannot be affected by the mere existence or nonexistence of another person. We might have also thought that (ii) how much punishment is deserved cannot increase merely in virtue of personal division. I argue that (i) and (ii) are inconsistent with the popular belief that, other things being equal, when people culpably do very wrong or bad acts, they ought to be punished for this—even if they have repented, are (...) now virtuous, and punishing them would benefit no one. Insofar as we cannot deny (i), we are either forced to abandon the popular belief in desert, or else allow that personal division could, as I put it, “multiply desert.” Some may not find the latter, considered by itself, troubling. But I argue that the thesis that division multiplies desert faces a potentially serious problem, which arises in the context of personal fusion. It is difficult to see how to maintain a particular family of desert views in light of the cases here presented. (shrink)

Recent research in social psychology suggests that many beliefs are formed as a result of implicit biases in favour of members of certain groups and against members of other groups. This article argues that beliefs of this sort present a counterexample to accessibilism in epistemology because the position cannot account for how the epistemic status of a belief that is the result of an implicit bias can differ from that of a counterpart belief that is the result of an unbiased (...) response to the available evidence. (shrink)

It is argued that standard accounts of the epistemology of religious commitmentfail to be properly sensitive to certain important features of the nature of religious conviction. Once one takes these features of religious conviction seriously, then it becomes clear that we are not to conceive of the epistemology of religious conviction along completely rational lines.But the moral to extract from this is not fideism, or even a more moderate proposal that casts the epistemic standing of basic religious beliefs along nonrational (...) lines. Rather, one needs to recognise that in an important sense religious convictions are not beliefs at all, but that this is compatible with the idea that many other religious commitments are beliefs. This picture of the nature of religious commitment is shown to fit snugly with the Wittgensteinian account of hinge commitments, such that all rational belief essentially presupposes certain basic arational hinge commitments, along lines originally suggested by John Henry Newman. We are thus able to marshal a parity-style argument in defence of religious commitment. Although religious belief presupposes basic arational religious convictions, it is not on this score epistemically amiss since all belief presupposes basic arational convictions, or hinge commitments. The resulting view of the epistemology of religious commitment is a position I call quasi-fideism. (shrink)

While philosophy has been defined as a critical endeavour since Plato, the critical potential of rhetoric has been mostly overlooked. In recent years, critique itself – as a means of enlightenment and emancipation – has come under attack. While there have been various attempts to renew and strengthen critical theory and practice, rhetoric has not yet played a part in these attempts. Addressing this lacuna, the article argues that rhetoric can function as a critical force within philosophy. The rhetorical perspective (...) confronts the claim to rational discourse and universal knowledge with the contingency of philosophical languages, means of representation, and social practices. Moreover, it allows us to think of critique as an activity of a subject that is at the same time constituted and transformed by it. This opens up the possibility of a rhetorical philosophizing that meets its critical standards by taking into account both the conditions of its own speaking and what it must exclude as its ‘other’ in order to function. (shrink)

It is often thought that as human agents we have a power to determine our actions for ourselves. And a natural conception of this power is as freedom – a power over alternatives so that we can determine for ourselves which of a variety of possible actions we perform. But what is the real content of this conception of freedom, and need self-determination take this particular form? I examine the possible forms self-determination might take, and the various ways freedom as (...) a power over alternatives might be constituted. I argue that though ordinary ethical thought, and especially moral blame, may be committed to our possession of some capacity for self-determination, the precise nature of this power is probably ethically underdetermined – though conceptions of the nature of the power that come from outside ethics may then have important implications for ethics. (shrink)

According to the standard argument from targetless higher-order representations, the possibility of such representations presents a dilemma for higher-order theorists. In this article I argue that there are two theoretically well-motivated replies to the standard argument. Consequently, the standard argument against higher-order theories fails. I then go on to argue that while certain versions of higher-order theory can adequately respond to the standard argument, they both, nevertheless, fail to explain the fineness-of-grain that phenomenally conscious experience appears to have.

A series of recent studies have explored the impact of people's judgments regarding physical law, morality, and probability. Surprisingly, such studies indicate that these three apparently unrelated types of judgments often have precisely the same impact. We argue that these findings provide evidence for a more general hypothesis about the kind of cognition people use to think about possibilities. Specifically, we suggest that this aspect of people's cognition is best understood using an idea developed within work in the formal semantics (...) tradition, namely the notion of modality. On the view we propose, people may have separate representations for physical, moral and probabilistic considerations, but they also integrate these various considerations into a unified representation of modality. (shrink)

Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations ofbeliefs,which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations ofknowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one does not even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, (...) we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibits a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind – one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it. (shrink)

This essay emerges from consideration of a question in the epistemology of ethics or morality. This is not the common claim-centered question as to how moral claims are confirmed and whether their mode of confirmation gives us grounds to be confident about the prospects for ethical discourse. Instead, I am concerned with the less frequently posed concept-centered question of where in human experience moral terms or concepts are grounded — that is, where in experience the moral becomes salient to us. (...) This question was central to moral epistemology in the form it took among thinkers such as Locke, Hume, and Kant, and it remains of the first importance today. (shrink)

The contribution that may come from the general science of signs, semiotics, to the planning and development of education and learning at all levels, from early schooling through to university education and learning should not be neglected. As Umberto Eco claims in the “Introduction” to the Italian edition of his book Semiotica and Philosophy of Language (1984: xii, my trans.), “[general semiotics] is philosophical in nature, because it does not study a particular system, but posits the general categories in light (...) of which different systems can be compared. And for general semiotics philosophical discourse is neither advisable nor urgent: it is simply constitutive.” To the title of their book Semiotic Theory of Learning, at the centre of our attention in the present text, Andrew Stables, Winfried Nöth, Alin Olteanu, Sébastien Pesce, and Eetu Pikkarainen, rightly add the subtitle New Perspectives in the Philosophy of Education. This multivoiced contribution to research in learning and education in a semiotic framework has a unifying reference in the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, but without disregarding an array of other distinguished exponents of the teaching and education sciences from different disciplines, semioticians and philosophers alike. This book, a polyphonic effort, with its appeal to “act otherwise,” and to do so investing in learning and education, no doubt makes a significant contribution in such a direction: education for transformation, for humanizing social change. Beyond evidencing what to us are particularly interesting aspects of the topics under discussion in Semiotic Theory of Learning, we also propose to continue and amplify this multivoiced dialogue. While highlighting still other aspects and contributions made by the same semioticians and philosophers presented by the authors of this book, involving such figures as Charles Peirce, Charles Morris, Thomas Sebeok, John Deely, etc., we have further introduced other voices made to resound throughout, whether directly or indirectly, like that of Victoria Welby, Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Levinas, Adam Schaff, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Marcel Danesi, Augusto Ponzio, and Genevieve Vaughan. (shrink)

This article examines Derek Parfit's claim in Reasons and Persons that personal identity consists in non-branching psychological continuity with the right kind of cause. It argues that such psychological accounts of our identity fail, but that their main rivals, biological or animalist accounts do not fare better. Instead it proposes an error-theory to the effect that common sense takes us to be identical to our bodies on the erroneous assumption that our minds belong non-derivatively to them, whereas they in fact (...) belong to them derivatively in virtue of belonging to some proper parts of them, namely certain features of their brains. However, these features do not meet another necessary condition of being the subject or owner of our minds: the condition of being “accessible” so that we can attribute our mental states to them in everyday life. There is also the problem of specifying these features more precisely. Nothing meets these two conditions, so we are not identical to anything. This conclusion fits well with Parfit's claim that personal identity is not what matters. But although this negative claim is true, it is suggested that Parfit's positive account of what matters is mistaken: it is rather psychological similarity than psychological continuity/connectedness that matters. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers of religion typically take God to be ‘the personal omniGod’ – a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, and who creates and sustains all else that exists. Analytic philosophers also tend to assume that the personal omniGod is the God of ‘classical’ theism. Arguably, this is a mistake. To be consistent, a classical theist or her supporter must deny that God is literally a person. They need not, however, deny the aptness of using personal language, or of (...) thinking of God as a person or personal at the level of religious psychology. (shrink)

Self, person, and identity are among the concepts most central to the way humans think about themselves and others. It is often natural in biology to use such concepts; it seems sensible to say, for example, that the job of the immune system is to attack the non-self, but sometimes it attacks the self. But does it make sense to borrow these concepts? Don’t they only pertain to persons, beings with sophisticated minds, and perhaps even souls? I argue that if (...) we focus on the every-day concepts of self and identity, and set aside loftier concepts found in religion, philosophy, and psychology that are applicable, at most, to humans, we can see that self and identity can be sensibly applied widely in biology. (shrink)

ArgumentIn this paper I present an interpretation of du Bois-Reymond’s thesis on the impossibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness and of its present importance. I reconsider du Bois-Reymond’s speech “On the limits of natural science” in the context of nineteenth-century German philosophy and neurophysiology, pointing out connections and analogies with contemporary arguments on the “hard problem of consciousness.” Du Bois-Reymond’s position turns out to be grounded on an epistemological argument and characterized by a metaphysical skepticism, motivated by the unfruitful (...) speculative tendency of contemporary German philosophy and natural science. In the final sections, I show how contemporary research can benefit from a reconsideration of this position and its context of emergence, which is a good vantage point to trace open problems in consciousness studies back to their historical development. (shrink)

The central unifying element in the philosophy of Peter Browne is his theory of analogy. Although Browne's theory was originally developed to deal with some problems about religious language, Browne regards analogy as a general purpose cognitive mechanism whereby we substitute an idea we have to stand for an object of which we, strictly speaking, have no idea. According to Browne, all of our ideas are ideas of sense, and ideas of sense are ideas of material things. Hence we can (...) conceive of spiritual things – including even our own spirit – only by analogy. One interesting application Browne makes of his theory is an account of how concepts such as knowledge can be correctly applied to beings that have no intrinsic properties in common, such as non-human animals, humans, angels, and God. I argue that this is best understood as what, in the contemporary literature, is known as a ‘multiple realizability’ problem and that Browne's solution to this problem has important similarities to functionalist theories in recent philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The long history of theorizing about perception divides into two quite distinct and irreconcilable camps, one that takes sensory experience to show us external reality just as it is, and one that takes such experience to reveal our own mind. I argue that we should reject both sides of this debate, and admit that the phenomenal character of experience, as such, reveals little about the nature of the external world and even less about the mind.

Philosophers today have largely given up on the project of categorizing being. Aristotle’s ten categories now strike us as quaint, and no attempt to improve on that effort meets with much interest. Still, no one supposes that reality is smoothly distributed over space. The world at large comes in chunks, and there remains a widespread intuition, even among philosophers, that some of these chunks have a special sort of unity and persistence. These, we tend to suppose, are most truly agents (...) and subjects, and are what exist in the most proper sense of the term. We believe, in other words, in substances. (shrink)

The theme of this paper is a philosophical theory of communication; more specifically, a theory about the understanding of language. It is an old theory, whose classical exponent was John Locke, and in the form that Locke expounded it the theory is now generally rejected by philosophers. But it is far from being a mere museum piece. The view about language that Locke put forward was a plausible one, and it has continued to be put forward in various forms. My (...) main concern here is with a very recent version of the theory, contained in a book published early in 1975; however, it will be helpful to begin with a brief account of Locke's version. This is not only classical, but is also simple and clear, and as such it may serve as a useful stepping-stone towards an understanding of the more modern version. (shrink)

Abstract In his critique of modern libertarian thinking, Jeffrey Friedman (1997) argues that libertarian moral theory makes social science irrelevant. However, if its moral claims are hypothetical rather than categorical imperatives, then economics, history, sociology, and other disciplines play a central role in libertarian thought. Limitations on human knowledge necessitate abstractly formulated rules, among which are claims of rights. Further, Friedman's remarks on freedom rest on an erroneous understanding of the role of definitions in philosophy, and his characterization of the (...) ?right to do wrong? as a ?logical contradiction? reveals a misunderstanding of logic. (shrink)

Ratio Juris, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 386-414, December 2021.

In this paper, I sketch out and assess two readings of Bentham's theory of meaning, one reductive (Section 2), the other quasi‐pragmatist (Section 3)—both implicating Bentham's ontological and epistemological views. I focus on the way these readings would understand Bentham's analyses of claims in moral and political discourse that rely on putatively normative notions such as obligations and rights, good and bad, and what ought to be the case. I conclude the paper by suggesting tentatively that the independent merits of (...) both readings could signal an irreconcilable tension at the heart of Bentham's thought (Section 4). (shrink)

The research guided by the correspondence metaphor is lauded for its emphasis on functional analysis, but the term “correspondence” itself needs clarification. Of the two terms in the relationship, only one is well defined. It is suggested that behavior at acquisition needs to be analyzed and that molecular principles from the learning laboratory might be useful in doing so.

En este ensayo analizaremos el argumento que usa Berkeley para probar la existencia de Dios en el Tratado sobre los principios del conocimiento humano I, §29. Veremos cuál es la estructura del argumento, la justificación que ofrece Berkeley de sus premisas y expondremos los que creemos son los principales problemas del argumento. A partir de nuestro análisis, llegaremos a la conclusión de que el argumento es dialécticamente inútil, en tanto que sus premisas no están justificadas.

Philosophers of the modern period are often presented as having made an elementary error: that of confounding the attitude one adopts toward a proposition with its content. By examining the works of Locke and the Port-Royalians, I show that this accusation is ill-founded and that Locke, in particular, has the resources to construct a theory of propositional attitudes.

This article canvases the main areas of controversy: the nature of Lockean signification and his position on propositions and particles.

Philosophers disagree about whether there could be “zombies”: beings physically identical to normal human people but lacking consciousness. Establishing their possibility would refute physicalism. But it is seldom noted that the popular “constitution view” of human people implies that our bodies actually are zombies. This would contradict several widely held views in the philosophy of mind.

It is morally impossible, Locke argued, for individuals to consensually establish absolute rule over themselves. That would be to transfer to rulers a power that is not ours, but God’s alone: owner...

It is morally impossible, Locke argued, for individuals to consensually establish absolute rule over themselves. That would be to transfer to rulers a power that is not ours, but God’s alone: ownership of our lives. This article analyses the conceptual presuppositions of Locke’s argument for the moral impossibility of self-enslavement through a comparison with other classical social contract theorists, including Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf. Despite notoriously defending the permissibility of voluntary enslavement of individuals and even entire peoples, Grotius similarly endorsed (...) divine ownership of human life. He could do so coherently, we show, because he denied that despotic power gives rulers rights in the lives of their subjects. Masters do not own slaves in the way we own material things. Reworking received Roman law categories, Grotius maintained that ‘perfect slavery’ consists in masters having a personal right to the slave’s perpetual service; a condition equivalent to what Locke called ‘drudgery’ and deemed permissible. Our analysis of this unpalatable set of ideas reveals that Locke’s argument is premised upon idiosyncratic conceptions of slavery and absolutism, disavowed by prominent defenders of absolutism in the classical social contract tradition. It is hence less powerful than commonly believed. (shrink)

Derek Parfit claims that we are not human beings. Rather, each of us is the part of a human being that thinks in the strictest sense. This is said to solve a number of difficult metaphysical problems. I argue that the view has metaphysical problems of its own, and is inconsistent with any psychological-continuity account of personal identity over time, including Parfit's own.

Literacy, specifically the use of writing for rational purposes, adds a new dimension to the traditional problem of the relation between language, thought and rationality. Central to rational thought are the logical relations expressed by such terms as “is”, “or”, “and” and “not”. Whereas some see these concepts as fundamental and innate, it is here argued that such terms exhibit a diverse range of uses in speech and thought but through literacy and education they become explicit objects of thought and (...) formalized or ‘normed’ into logical operators as part of a literate rationality. This more formal orientation to language is seen as metarepresentational and may be shown to have both an historical and a developmental trajectory. (shrink)

Literacy, specifically the use of writing for rational purposes, adds a new dimension to the traditional problem of the relation between language, thought and rationality. Central to rational thought are the logical relations expressed by such terms as “is”, “or”, “and” and “not”. Whereas some see these concepts as fundamental and innate, it is here argued that such terms exhibit a diverse range of uses in speech and thought but through literacy and education they become explicit objects of thought and (...) formalized or ‘normed’ into logical operators as part of a literate rationality. This more formal orientation to language is seen as metarepresentational and may be shown to have both an historical and a developmental trajectory. (shrink)

It is widely held that every person is a person essentially, where being a person is having special mental properties such as intelligence and self-consciousness. It follows that nothing can acquire or lose these properties. The paper argues that this rules out all familiar psychological-continuity views of personal identity over time. It also faces grave difficulties in accounting for the mental powers of human beings who are not intelligent and self-conscious, such as foetuses and those with dementia.

Could John Locke defend his view that the knowledge we acquire in intuition and demonstration is infallible, and should he try to defend it? Peter Schouls thinks the project is unviable, and I think Schouls is right. But I also think Locke should not even bother trying. I shall elaborate on the argument that he could not defend the view, indicate why I think he should abandon infallibility, given his other views, and then investigate what he might usefully say about (...) knowledge and certainty if he were persuaded to abandon it. (shrink)

Sounds are audible, and sound sources are audible. What is the audible relation between audible sounds and audible sources? Common talk and philosophy suggest three candidates. The first is that sounds audibly are properties instantiated by their sources. I argue that sounds are audible individuals and thus are not audibly instantiated by audible sources. The second is that sounds audibly are effects of their sources. I argue that auditory experience presents no compelling evidence that sounds audibly are causally related to (...) audible sources. The third is that sounds audibly are related mereologically to their sources. I present and offer a defence of this third candidate. (shrink)

Hume claims that education is ‘disclaimed by philosophy, as a fallacious ground of assent to any opinion’ (T 1.3.10.1) and that it is ‘never... recogniz'd by philosophers’ (T 1.3.9.19). He is usually taken to be referring here to indoctrination. I argue, however, that his main concern is with association and those philosophers who emphasize the epistemic dangers of the imagination. These include Locke, Hutcheson and Descartes, but not Hume himself. Hume praises education, highlighting its role in the formation of general (...) rules, and in fostering social conditions that encourage the growth of knowledge and moral virtue. (shrink)

In this essay I provide a reading of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner that focuses upon the question of the kind of creatures the Replicants are depicted as being, and the meaning that depiction should have for us. I draw upon Stanley Cavell's account of the problem of other minds to argue that the empathy test is in fact a mode of resisting the acknowledgment of others. And I draw upon Martin Heidegger's account of authenticity and mortality to argue that this (...) acknowledgment is crucial if one would become human. The film does not so much suggest that Replicants are, as such, human, but rather that humanity is won through the encounter with the inauthentic. (shrink)

How are we to understand philosophical claims about sense perception being direct versus indirect? There are multiple relevant notions of perceptual directness, so I argue. Perception of external objects may be direct on some notions, while indirect on others. My interest is with the sense in which ideas count as perceptual mediators in the philosophy of Descartes and Locke. This paper has two broader aims. The first is to clarify four main notions of perceptual directness. The second is to support (...) my contention that in the texts characterizing ideas as immediate objects of perception, Descartes and Locke are invoking the notion of directness I call 'objectual'. This notion is modeled on the way a picture mediates perception of the pictured object. The upshot of my account is that – with respect to the objectual notion of directness – Descartes and Locke each hold an indirect theory of perception. (shrink)

Koriat & Goldsmith propose that the correspondence metaphor captures the essence of everyday memory research. We suggest that correspondence is often not at issue because objective assessments of everyday events are frequently lacking. In these cases, other questions arise, such as how individuals evaluate the validity of memories and the significance they attach to those evaluations.

Investigations of metacognition – and also the application of the storehouse and correspondence metaphors – seem as appropriate for laboratory research as for naturalistic research. In terms of measurement, the only quantitative difference between the “input-bound percent correct” and “output-bound percent correct” is the inclusion versus exclusion (respectively) of omission errors in the denominator of the percentages.

An old Arab proverb runs as follows: He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; shun him. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child; teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep; wake him. But he who knows, and knows that he knows, is a sage; follow him.

Koriat & Goldsmith are right in their claim that the “ecological” and “traditional” approaches to memory rely on different metaphors. But the underlying ecological metaphor is notcorrespondence(which in any case is not a metaphorical notion): it isaction. Remembering is a kind of doing; like most other forms of action it is purposive, personal, and particular.

Nineteenth-century Harvard faculty and students looked to philosophical ideas about the proper and effective study of nature as the model of rationality to which their religion must conform. As these ideas changed, notions of rationality changed and so did Harvard religion.

Ünal and Papafragou examine what one might call learning “really hard” meanings, that is, evidentials, which linguistically mark the source of information associated with use of a given verb. They explore the relationship between children’s mastery of the relevant nonlinguistic conceptual underpinnings and the linguistic marking of evidentials, and find that the two kinds of mastery show different developmental trajectories, with the relationship far from one‐to‐one. This case study points to the complex and nuanced relationships between language learning and nonlinguistic (...) understanding in the same domain. (shrink)