In this brief introduction, we would first like to explain how these two special issues of Philosophical Psychology ( 23.3 and 23.4 ) actually came about. In addition, we will provide an outline of their overall structure and shortly summarize the featured papers.

Recognitional concepts have the following characteristic property: thinkers are disposed to apply them to objects merely on the basis of undergoing certain perceptual experiences. I argue that a prominent strategy for defending the existence of constitutive connections among concepts, which appeals to thinkers’ semantic-cum-conceptual intuitions, cannot be used to defend the existence of recognitional concepts. I then outline and defend an alternative argument for the existence of recognitional concepts, which appeals to certain psychological laws.

Our interest in this paper is to drive a wedge of contention between two different programs that fall under the umbrella of “experimental philosophy”. In particular, we argue that experimental philosophy’s “negative program” presents almost as significant a challenge to its “positive program” as it does to more traditional analytic philosophy.

Knobe (2003a, 2003b, 2004b) and others have demonstrated the surprising fact that the valence of a side-effect action can affect intuitions about whether that action was performed intentionally. Here we report the results of an experiment that extends these findings by testing for an analogous effect regarding knowledge attributions. Our results suggest that subjects are less likely to find that an agent knows an action will bring about a side-effect when the effect is good than when it is bad. It (...) is further argued that these findings, while preliminary, have important implications for recent debates within epistemology about the relationship between knowledge and action. (shrink)

Recent theories of epistemic contextualism have challenged traditional invariantist positions in epistemology by claiming that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions fluctuate between conversational contexts. Contextualists often garner support for this view by appealing to folk intuitions regarding ordinary knowledge practices. Proposed is an experiment designed to test the descriptive conditions upon which these types of contextualist defenses rely. In the cases tested, the folk pattern of knowledge attribution runs contrary to what contextualism predicts. While preliminary, these data inspire prima (...) facie skepticism for the contextualist hypothesis regarding folk knowledge claims, as well as challenge certain predictions made by recent theories of subject-sensitive invariantism. It is further argued that such results raise methodological questions concerning the practice of relying on an assumption of intuitions, with respect to ordinary language practices, as evidence for philosophical conclusions regarding knowledge. (shrink)

According to intellectualism, what a person knows is solely a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Anti-intellectualism is the view that what a person knows is more than simply a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Jason Stanley (2005) argues that, in addition to “traditional factors,” our ordinary practice of knowledge ascription is sensitive to the practical facts of a subject's situation. In this paper, we investigate this question empirically. Our results indicate that Stanley's (...) assumptions about knowledge ascriptions do not reflect our ordinary practices in some paradigmatic cases. If our data generalize, then arguments for anti-intellectualism that rely on ordinary knowledge ascriptions fail: the case for anti-intellectualism cannot depend on our ordinary practices of knowledge ascription. (shrink)

In the free will literature, some compatibilists and some incompatibilists claim that their views best capture ordinary intuitions concerning free will and moral responsibility. One goal of researchers working in the field of experimental philosophy has been to probe ordinary intuitions in a controlled and systematic way to help resolve these kinds of intuitional stalemates. We contribute to this debate by presenting new data about folk intuitions concerning freedom and responsibility that correct for some of the shortcomings of previous studies. (...) These studies also illustrate some problems that pertain to all of the studies that have been run thus far. (shrink)

What ought to count as an explanation? Such normative questions—what “ought to be” the case?—typically mark the domain that those with a type of philosophical aspiration call their own. Debates in the philosophy of history have for too long been marred by bad advice from just such aspirants. The recurrent suggestion has been that historians have a particular need for a theory of explanation since they seem to have none of their own. But neither the study of the natural sciences (...) nor the study of narrative compels or even makes plausible the view that it will be possible to adduce the norms of explanation, either in history or elsewhere, in advance of identifying theories that explain. I readily concede to Stueber, Carr, and FORLAND the use of a certain vocabulary when speaking of others. But it is one thing to point to a pervasive habit of explaining behavior in certain terms. It is quite another to document that these explanations have any value as explanations.What apart from habit or philosophical dogma establishes any of their proposals as explanatory? Explanation by invoking the myth of the shared should be replaced by explanations that have empirical content. (shrink)

Recently Joshua Knobe and Erica Roedder found that folk attributions of valuing tend to vary according to the perceived moral goodness of the object of value. This is an interesting finding, but it remains unclear what, precisely, it means. Knobe and Roedder argue that it indicates that the concept MORAL GOODNESS is a feature of the concept VALUING. In this article, I present a study of folk attributions of desires and moral beliefs that undermines this conclusion. I then propose the (...) beginnings of an alternative interpretation of the data that appeals to intrinsic biases in our third-person mindreading mechanisms. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of science gathers empirical data on how key scientific concepts are understood by particular scientific communities. In this paper we briefly describe two recent studies in experimental philosophy of biology, one investigating the concept of the gene, the other the concept of innateness. The use of experimental methods reveals facts about these concepts that would not be accessible using the traditional method of intuitions about possible cases. It also contributes to the study of conceptual change in science, which (...) we understand as the result of a form of conceptual ecology, in which concepts become adapted to specific epistemic niches. (shrink)

Radical experimentalists argue that we should give up using intuitions as evidence in philosophy. In this paper, I first argue that the studies presented by the radical experimentalists in fact suggest that some intuitions are reliable. I next consider and reject a different way of handling the radical experimentalists' challenge, what I call the Argument from Robust Intuitions. I then propose a way of understanding why some intuitions can be unreliable and how intuitions can conflict, and I argue that on (...) this understanding, both moderate experimentalism and the standard philosophical practice of using intuitions as evidence can help resolve these conflicts. (shrink)

Recent findings in neuroscience, evolutionary biology and psychology seem to threaten the existence or the objectivity of morality. Moral theory and practice is founded, ultimately, upon moral intuition, but these empirical findings seem to show that our intuitions are responses to nonmoral features of the world, not to moral properties. They therefore might be taken to show that our moral intuitions are systematically unreliable. I examine three cognitive scientific challenges to morality, and suggest possible lines of reply to them. I (...) divide these replies into two groups: we might confront the threat, showing that it does not have the claimed implications for morality; or we might bite the bullet, accepting that the claims have moral implications, but incorporating these claims into morality. I suggest that unless we are able to bite the bullet, when confronted by cognitive scientific challenges, there is a real possibility that morality will be threatened. This fact gives us a weighty reason to adopt a metaethics that makes it relatively easy to bite cognitive scientific bullets. Moral constructivism, in one of its many forms, makes these bullets more palatable; therefore, the cognitive scientific challenges provide us with an additional reason to adopt a constructivist metaethics. (shrink)

If any thesis is all-but-universally accepted by contemporary epistemologists, it is justificationism-the thesis that being an instance of knowledge has to include being epistemically justified in some appropriate way. If there is to be any epistemological knowledge about knowledge, a paradigm candidate would seem to be our knowledge that justificationism is true. This is a conception of a way in whichknowledge has to be robust. Nevertheless, this paper provides reason to doubt the truth of that conception. Even epistemology’s supposed conceptual (...) core is not as epistemically unchallengeable as we might have assumed to be the case. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that differ from those evoked by an abstract description of an otherwise similar state of affairs. In his Treatise on Human Nature, Hume ([1739] 1978) writes forcefully of this.

It has been standard philosophical practice in analytic philosophy to employ intuitions generated in response to thought-experiments as evidence in the evaluation of philosophical claims. In part as a response to this practice, an exciting new movement—experimental philosophy—has recently emerged. This movement is unified behind both a common methodology and a common aim: the application of methods of experimental psychology to the study of the nature of intuitions. In this paper, we will introduce two different views concerning the relationship that (...) holds between experimental philosophy and the future of standard philosophical practice (what we call, the proper foundation view and the restrictionist view), discuss some of the more interesting and important results obtained by proponents of both views, and examine the pressure these results put on analytic philosophers to reform standard philosophical practice. We will also defend experimental philosophy from some recent objections, suggest future directions for work in experimental philosophy, and suggest what future lines of epistemological response might be available to those wishing to defend analytic epistemology from the challenges posed by experimental philosophy. (shrink)

According to the analysis of intentional action that Michael Bratman has dubbed the 'Simple View', intending to x is necessary for intentionally x-ing. Despite the plausibility of this view, there is gathering empirical evidence that when people are presented with cases involving moral considerations, they are much more likely to judge that the action (or side effect) in question was brought about intentionally than they are to judge that the agent intended to do it. This suggests that at least as (...) far as the ordinary concept of intentional action is concerned, an agent need not intend to x in order to x intentionally. (shrink)

During the past two decades, an interest among philosophers in fictitious and illusory beliefs has sprung up in fields ranging anywhere from mathematics and modality to morality.1 In this paper, we focus primarily on the view that Saul Smilansky has dubbed “free will illusionism”—i.e., the purportedly descriptive claim that most people have illusory beliefs concerning the existence of libertarian free will, coupled with the normative claim that because dispelling these illusory beliefs would produce negative personal and societal consequences, those of (...) us who happen to know the dangerous and gloomy truth about the non-existence of libertarian free will should simply keep quiet in the name of the common good. (shrink)

Frank Jackson has given us an elegant and important book. It is, by a long shot, the most sophisticated defense of the use of conceptual analysis in philosophy that has ever been offered. But we also we find it a rather perplexing book, for we can’t quite figure out what Jackson thinks a conceptual analysis is. And until we get clearer on that, we’re not at all sure that conceptual analysis, as Jackson envisions it, is possible. The main reason for (...) our perplexity is that Jackson seems to be making some empirical assumptions about people’s intuitions and the psychological mechanisms that give rise to them, though it is far from clear exactly what these empirical assumptions are. Moreover, on what is perhaps the most natural reading, he is making at least one assumption about which many cognitive scientists who study concepts have serious doubts. In the first of our two sections, we will elaborate this theme. Our goal, in that section, is not so much to criticize as to seek clarification. It is a great virtue of this journal’s multiple review format that critics can pose questions to authors, and the authors get to reply. So we hope that in his reply Jackson will help us understand his defense of conceptual analysis by explaining more clearly what his empirical assumptions are; and if he is indeed making an assumption that many cognitive scientists would challenge, we hope he will tell us why he thinks that challenge is misguided. In the second section, our stance will be more critical. There is one empirical assumption about which Jackson is admirably clear and explicit. However, we think there is now good reason to think that this assumption is false. (shrink)

Do facts about water have a priori, transparent, reductive explanations in terms of microphysics? Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker hold that they do not. David Chalmers and Frank Jackson hold that they do. In this paper I argue that Chalmers.

In this paper, we present the results of two surveys that investigate subjects’ judgments about what can be known or justifiably believed about lottery outcomes on the basis of statistical evidence, testimonial evidence, and “mixed” evidence, while considering possible anchoring and priming effects. We discuss these results in light of seven distinct hypotheses that capture various claims made by philosophers about lay people’s lottery judgments. We conclude by summarizing the main findings, pointing to future research, and comparing our findings to (...) recent studies by Turri and Friedman. (shrink)

This paper does two things. First, it argues for a metaphilosophical view of conceptual analysis questions; in particular, it argues that the facts that settle conceptual-analysis questions are facts about the linguistic intentions of ordinary folk. The second thing this paper does is argue that if this metaphilosophical view is correct, then experimental philosophy is a legitimate methodology to use in trying to answer conceptual-analysis questions.

Analytic philosophers have long used a priori methods to characterize folk concepts like knowledge, belief, and wrongness. Recently, researchers have begun to exploit social scientific methodologies to characterize such folk concepts. One line of work has explored folk intuitions on cases that are disputed within philosophy. A second approach, with potentially more radical implications, applies the methods of cross-cultural psychology to philosophical intuitions. Recent work suggests that people in different cultures have systematically different intuitions surrounding folk concepts like wrong, knows, (...) and refers. A third strand of research explores the emergence and character of folk concepts in children. These approaches to characterizing folk concepts provide important resources that will supplement, and perhaps sometimes displace, a priori approaches. (shrink)

The paper investigates to what extent the method of cases can be interpreted as either a descriptive or a normative enterprise. I demonstrate that although most instances of the method of cases in most philosophical theories could be interpreted as being intended to either discover or revise the meaning of their target concepts, within a theory of reference this method cannot be used to shift the meaning of the concept of reference. The reason for this is that intuitions of extension (...) in a theory of reference constitute a set of data that needs to be explained, while in most other philosophical theories they could either be abandoned in favor of intuitions of intension or serve as a criterion for the adequacy of the proposed definition of the target concept. This feature of a theory of reference is caused by the fact that an implicit understanding of what reference is in a theory of reference is usually assumed and is out of discussion. In effect, the claim in paradigmatic instances of the method of cases within a theory of reference does not concern whether an expression does or does not refer in particular cases, but rather what the reference of a certain expression is, and therefore it cannot be justified by intuitions of intension. (shrink)

Wilcox proposed an argument against imprecise probabilities and for the principle of indifference based on a thought experiment where he argues that it is very intuitive to feel that one’s confidence in drawing a ball of a given colour out of an unknown urn should decrease while the number of potential colours in the urn increases. In my response to him, I argue that one’s intuitions may be unreliable because it is very hard to truly feel completely ignorant in such (...) a situation. I further argue that Wilcox must also account for the conflicting intuition that it is absurd to have to feel completely convinced that a specific claim about reality is true _in the absence of any evidence_ in order to avoid being irrational. It is dubious that this intuition is considerably less universal and strongly-held than Wilcox’s own intuition. Finally, I point out that even if Wilcox’s intuition were to be universally shared among members of our biological species, it is far from being clear that someone refusing to let that intuition dictate his or her beliefs would be irrational. For all these reasons, I believe that Wilcox was not successful in proving that philosophers and scientists representing uncertainty through imprecise probabilities are violating the principles of rationality. (shrink)

The epistemology of intuitions has become popular recently with philosophers’ increasing use of experimental methods to study intuitions. Philosophers have focused on the reliability of intuitions, as empirical studies seem to suggest that conflicting intuitions are common. One set of studies, concerning what Sinnott-Armstrong calls the abstract/concrete paradox, suggests that conflicting intuitions are common and, hence, that mistaken intuitions are common. As Goldman notes, if mistaken intuitions are sufficiently prevalent, then we might have reason to think intuitions are unreliable. I (...) argue that mistaken intuitions are not common, since studies concerning the abstract/concrete paradox have unknowingly studied several distinct phenomena instead of the abstract/concrete paradox and, hence, that they present merely apparently conflicting intuitions. I then discuss the import of empirical studies for debates about reliability, noting that those studies can inform us about the unreliability of intuitions but we are still unclear about the conditions for reliability. (shrink)

Consider three widely shared claims that have not been discussed vis-à-vis one another. In his Proslogion, Saint Anselm argued that the claim “God exists” is true. If an intuition that a claim c is a useful a-priori justificatory resource, this can only be because such an intuition is a justification that c is true. And if an intuition that c is a justification that c is true, c can stand, not only for mathematical or logical claims, but also for controversial (...) philosophical ones, e.g., “God exists”. This essay addresses to while dialoguing with the literature on Anselm and intuition and articulating an alternative reading of the Proslogion. The alternative reading is that regardless of whether the Proslogion backs up or aims to back up the claim that “God exists” is true, it implicitly articulates the Meaning Argument whose conclusion is that all persons of faith are able to understand that the claim “God exists” is meaningful. This argument, it is argued, is evidence that an intuition that c may be a useful a-priori justificatory resource even if such intuition does not track truth, but merely meaning in being a justification for taking c to be meaningful. It is also supported that an intuition that “God exists” is not a justification that this claim is true. This is an indication that there may be reasons for thinking that the same applies to other controversial philosophical claims. (shrink)

Upon discovering that certain beliefs we hold are contingent on arbitrary features of our background, we often feel uneasy. I defend the proposal that if such cases ofcontingency anxietyinvolve defeaters, this is because of the epistemic significance of disagreement. I note two hurdles to our accepting thisDisagreement Hypothesis. Firstly, some cases of contingency anxiety apparently involve no disagreement. Secondly, the proposal may seem to make our awareness of the influence of arbitrary background factors irrelevant in determining whether to revise our (...) beliefs. I show that each of these problems can be successfully accommodated by theDisagreement Hypothesis. (shrink)

Most contemporary accounts of moral responsibility take desert to play a central role in the nature of moral responsibility. It is also assumed that desert is a backward-looking concept that is not directly derivable from any forward-looking or consequentialist considerations, such as whether blaming an agent would deter the agent from performing similar bad actions in the future. When determining which account of moral responsibility is correct, proponents of desert-based accounts often take intuitions about cases to provide evidence either in (...) favor of or against a proposed theory. In this paper, I discuss two experiments that test whether folk intuitions accord with what desert-based accounts would predict. Results suggest that moral responsibility intuitions are sensitive to forward-looking considerations, thus posing a problem for desert-based accounts of moral responsibility. If appealing to intuitions about cases is a valid method of discovering the nature of moral responsibility and desert, it seems either desert is not entirely backward-looking or moral responsibility is not exclusively desert-based. These experimental results also suggest that consequentialist accounts of moral responsibility, which have largely been abandoned due to their counterintuitive nature, are perhaps not so counterintuitive after all. (shrink)

In the last decade, philosophers have offered a number of proposals concerning the logical form of hypothetical cases, or thought experiments, as these are used for purposes of testing philosophical claims. In this paper, I discuss what the desiderata for a formal proposal are. Employing a comparison with general philosophy of science, I suggest that one important desideratum is to highlight recurrent patterns of disagreement surrounding cases. I advocate a proposal in propositional modal logic which, I argue, better meets this (...) desideratum than competing proposals. I also sketch how this proposal may be extended into more fine grained analyses, employing counterfactual conditionals yet avoiding certain problems due to so-called "deviant realizations". (shrink)

This paper presents an epistemological framework capable of addressing the opposition between indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge, an opposition widespread in anthropology especially in relation to the problem of sustainable development. In the first part of the paper, we provide a contextualist framework that satisfies two constraints: a priori neutrality with respect to forms, or types, of knowledge, and explicitness of the conditions with respect to the possibility of knowledge transfer. In the second part, we apply the framework to the (...) specific case of Northern Algonquian knowledge. By means of the framework, we investigate and make explicit the underlying epistemic standard at play by identifying the conditions under which particular beliefs are qualified as knowledge in the Northern Algonquian context. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy, at least in its ‘negative’ variety, has standardly been portrayed as presenting a dramatic challenge to traditional philosophical methodology. As such, it has prompted a large variety of counter-arguments and defenses of intuition. In this paper, I argue that many of these objections to experimental philosophy rest on various oversimplifications that both experimental philosophers and their opponents have made regarding intuitions and philosophical methodology. Once these oversimplifications are abandoned, I argue that the experimentalist critique of current philosophical methods (...) becomes somewhat less dramatic, but also much less open to objection. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have discovered a large number of asymmetries in our intuitions about philosophically significant notions. Often those intuitions turned out to be sensitive to normative factors. Whereas optimists have insisted on a unified explanation of these findings, pessimists have argued that it is impossible to formulate a single factor explanation. I defend the intermediate position according to which unification is possible to some extent, but should be pursued within limits. The key issue that I address is how it is (...) possible to set such limits in a way that is true to the phenomena. (shrink)

This article explores the respective roles that medical and technological cognitive enhancements, on the one hand, and the moral and epistemic virtues traditionally understood, on the other, can play in enabling us to lead the good life. It will be shown that neither the virtues nor cognitive enhancements (of the kind we have access to today or in the foreseeable future) on their own are likely to enable most people to lead the good life. While the moral and epistemic virtues (...) quite plausibly are both necessary and sufficient for the good life in theory, virtue ethics is often criticised for being elitist and unachievable in practice for the vast majority. Some cognitive enhancements, on the other hand, might be necessary for the good life but are far from sufficient for such an existence. Here it will be proposed that a combination of virtue and some cognitive enhancements is preferable. (shrink)

What ought to count as an explanation? Such normative questions—what “ought to be” the case?—typically mark the domain that those with a type of philosophical aspiration call their own. Debates in the philosophy of history have for too long been marred by bad advice from just such aspirants. The recurrent suggestion has been that historians have a particular need for a theory of explanation since they seem to have none of their own. But neither the study of the natural sciences (...) nor the study of narrative compels or even makes plausible the view that it will be possible to adduce the norms of explanation, either in history or elsewhere, in advance of identifying theories that explain. I readily concede to Stueber, Carr, and FORLAND the use of a certain vocabulary when speaking of others. But it is one thing to point to a pervasive habit of explaining behavior in certain terms. It is quite another to document that these explanations have any value as explanations.What apart from habit or philosophical dogma establishes any of their proposals as explanatory? Explanation by invoking the myth of the shared should be replaced by explanations that have empirical content. (shrink)

Frank Jackson has given us an elegant and important book. It is, by a long shot, the most sophisticated defense of the use of conceptual analysis in philosophy that has ever been offered. But we also we find it a rather perplexing book, for we can’t quite figure out what Jackson thinks a conceptual analysis is. And until we get clearer on that, we’re not at all sure that conceptual analysis, as Jackson envisions it, is possible. The main reason for (...) our perplexity is that Jackson seems to be making some empirical assumptions about people’s intuitions and the psychological mechanisms that give rise to them, though it is far from clear exactly what these empirical assumptions are. Moreover, on what is perhaps the most natural reading, he is making at least one assumption about which many cognitive scientists who study concepts have serious doubts. In the first of our two sections, we will elaborate this theme. Our goal, in that section, is not so much to criticize as to seek clarification. It is a great virtue of this journal’s multiple review format that critics can pose questions to authors, and the authors get to reply. So we hope that in his reply Jackson will help us understand his defense of conceptual analysis by explaining more clearly what his empirical assumptions are; and if he is indeed making an assumption that many cognitive scientists would challenge, we hope he will tell us why he thinks that challenge is misguided. In the second section, our stance will be more critical. There is one empirical assumption about which Jackson is admirably clear and explicit. However, we think there is now good reason to think that this assumption is false. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the view that positing analytic, constitutive connections among concepts best explains certain semantic-cum-conceptual intuitions. Jerry Fodor and Eric Margolis and Stephen Laurence offer alternative explanations according to which such intuitions can be explained without positing analyticities. I argue that these alternative explanations fail. As a partial diagnosis of their failure, I suggest that critics have failed to recognize the extent to which a psychologized notion of analyticity must depart from the traditional notion of ‘truth in (...) virtue of meaning alone’. (shrink)

We describe and report on results of employing a new method for analyzing lay conceptions of intentional and unintentional action. Instead of asking people for their conceptual intuitions with regard to construed scenarios, we asked our participants to come up with their own scenarios and to explain why these are examples of intentional or unintentional actions. By way of content analysis, we extracted contexts and components that people associated with these action types. Our participants associated unintentional actions predominantly with bad (...) outcomes for all persons involved and linked intentional actions more strongly to positive outcomes, especially concerning the agent. People’s conceptions of intentional action seem to involve more aspects than commonly assumed in philosophical models of intentional action that solely stress the importance of intentions, desires, and beliefs. The additional aspects include decisions and thoughts about the action. In addition, we found that the criteria that participants generated for unintentional actions are not a mere inversion of those used in explanations for intentional actions. Associations between involuntariness and unintentional action seem to be stronger than associations between aspects of voluntariness and intentional action. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue on empirically informed moral theory sketches the more important contributions to the field in the past several years. Attention is paid to experimental philosophy, the work of philosophers like Harman and Doris, and that of psychologists like Haidt and Hauser.

Many philosophers would, in theory, agree that the methods and tools of philosophy ought to be supplemented by those of other academic disciplines. In practice, however, the sociological data suggest that most philosophers fail to engage or collaborate with other academics, and this article argues that this is problematic for philosophy as a discipline. In relation to the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, the article highlights how experimental philosophers can benefit the field, but only insofar as they draw from the distinctive (...) methods of philosophy and overcome the charge of “amateur psychology” by more consistently collaborating with the scientists they seek to emulate. It concludes that philosophers ought to collaborate with other academics in order to gain an experience‐based understanding of the methods of other disciplines in addition to an understanding of the content of these disciplines. (shrink)

Against Kant, Eckart Förster claims that Goethe’s methodology of intuitive understanding is a real possibility for us. Firstly, this essay shows that this methodology has to be strictly distinguished from the questionable use of intuitions in contemporary analytic philosophy; secondly, strong parallels between Goethe’s intuitive understanding and Bergson’s intuition are put forward. Both use intuitions as a tool to find essence concepts for natural kinds. Moreover, the parallels help naturalists to detach Förster’s important insight from the idealistic context.