Do salient normative claims about politics require moral premises? Political moralists think they do, political realists think they do not. We defend the viability of realism in a two-pronged way. First, we show that a number of recent attacks on realism, as well as realist responses to those attacks, unduly conflate distinctively political normativity and non-moral political normativity. Second, we argue that Alex Worsnip and Jonathan Leader-Maynard’s recent attack on realist arguments for a distinctively political normativity depends on assuming moralism (...) as the default view, which places an excessive burden on the viability of realism, and so begs the question. Our discussion, though, does not address the relative merits of realism and moralism, so its upshot is relatively ecumenical: moralism need not be the view that all apt normative political judgments are moral judgments, and realism need not be the view that no apt normative political judgments are moral judgments. (shrink)

Instances of epistemic injustice elicit resistance, anger, despair, frustration or cognate emotional responses from their victims. This sort of response to the epistemic injustices that accompanied historical systems of oppression such as colonialism, for example, is normal. However, if their victims have internalised these oppressive situations, we could get the counterintuitive response of appreciation. In this paper, I argue for the phenomenon of appreciative silencing to make sense of instances like this. This is a form of epistemic silencing that happens (...) when the accepted hegemonic intuitions of the oppressed are formed/influenced by the ideologies of the oppressors over time. Here, we have a resilient, oppressive and hegemonic epistemic system. Put together, it creates a variant of epistemic injustice and silencing that is obscure since its victims are neither resistant nor aware of the injustice they face but are appreciative. (shrink)

There has recently been a focus on the question of statue removalism. This concerns what to do with public history statues that honour or otherwise celebrate ethically bad historical figures. The specific wrongs of these statues have been understood in terms of derogatory speech, inapt honours, or supporting bad ideologies. In this paper I understand these bad public history statues as history, and identify a distinctive class of public history-specific wrongs. Specifically, public history plays an important identity-shaping role, and bad (...) public history can commit specifically ontic injustice. Understanding bad public history in terms of ontic injustice helps understand not just to address bad public history statues, but also understand the value of public history more broadly. (shrink)

When an agent suffers in their capacity as a knower, they are a victim of epistemic injustice. Varieties of epistemic injustices have been theorised. A salient feature across these theories is that perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice belong to different social groups. In this paper, I argue for a form of epistemic injustice that could occur between members of the same social group. This is a form of epistemic injustice where the knower is first a victim of historical and (...) continuing oppression. Secondly, they internalise and appreciate the systems that harm them as a knower. This is possible because the victim subscribes to perniciously formed epistemic systems. This form of epistemic injustice is a valuable explanatory tool for non-standard and obscure instances of epistemic injustice where the victim a) accepts and appreciates the injustice they experience and b) is even the seeming perpetrator of the injustice against themselves. (shrink)

My concern here is to motivate some theses in the philosophy of mind concerning the interpersonal character of intentions. I will do so by investigating aspects of shared agency. The main point will be that when acting together with others one must be able to act directly on the intention of another or others in a way that is relevantly similar to the manner in which an agent acts on his or her own intentions. What exactly this means will become (...) clearer once we understand what it is to act directly on one’s own intentions. But I take it to be a fundamental assumption of the prevailing individualism of the theory of action— one at the core of its conception of the separateness of individuals— that one person cannot act directly on another’s intention. I agree that there is an important way in which we are or can be separate and autonomous thinkers and agents. But the way the individualist tries to capture this separateness is misguided. (shrink)

The interreligious dialogue has a very important place in all the meeting agendas from all over the world, regardless the topic addressed. Having a concrete dynamic, this kind of theological problematic follows the general spiritual movement of communities and their unresolved necessities. Although the interreligious dialogue has an old history, it developed today on the basis of actual issues of violence and disagreements between peoples. Therefore, because religion has an essential place in the life of human communities from all over (...) the world, the dialogue with people of other faiths and ideologies must be necessarily promoted. In this context, the Orthodox Church representatives participated at many meetings in the purpose to promote and sustain the interreligious dialogue, bringing in actuality their bi-millenaries theological experience, based on the Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. From the orthodox point of view, the liberty is the greatest gift which God has given to man and also a free world cannot exist without love between people. This love has its fundament and purpose in the Holy Trinity. (shrink)

There remains no consensus among social scientists as to how to measure and understand forms of information deprivation such as misinformation. Machine learning and statistical analyses of information deprivation typically contain problematic operationalizations which are too often biased towards epistemic elites' conceptions that can undermine their empirical adequacy. A mature science of information deprivation should include considerable citizen involvement that is sensitive to the value-ladenness of information quality and that doing so may improve the predictive and explanatory power of extant (...) models. (shrink)

Accepting a promise is normatively significant in that it helps to secure promissory obligation. But what is it for B to accept A’s promise to φ? It is in part for B to intend A’s φ-ing. Thinking of acceptance in this way allows us to appeal to the distinctive role of intentions in practical reasoning and action to better understand the agency exercised by the promisee. The proposal also accounts for rational constraints on acceptance, and the so-called directedness of promissory (...) obligation. Finally, the proposal, conjoined with Cognitivism about intentions, addresses recent criticism of Scanlon’s expectation-based view of promissory obligation. (shrink)

This article presents a new approach to studying aesthetics by weaving together a thread of ideas based on investigating the problematics of the philosophy of art from a behavioral paradigm in order to exceed the margins of aesthetics. I claim that it makes no sense to ask if something is art, but rather we should be looking out into the manners in which art subsists, consists, and insists itself. Several notions of what I call behavioral aesthetics are proposed such as (...) observation, aesthetic experience and aesthetic conditioning, behavioral materialism, out-comes, behavioral memory and replication or acquisition, interaction and intra-action, emotional engineering, artificial instincts, aesthetic dissonance, and the problem of measurement. The proposed goal of behavioral aesthetics consists in studying the process of individuation as constitutive of art with the methods of Bernard Stiegler’s general organology and genealogy of the sensible. The article presents a behavioral stance as a borderline mode for approaching the genealogy of aesthetics. I mostly refer to Tania Bruguera’s Behavior Art School and Wright Judson’s Behavioral Art, and the paradigm of new materialism, notably agential realism of Karan Barad. (shrink)

We need modal imagination in order to extend our conception of reality - and, in particular, of human beings - beyond our immediate experience in the indexical present; and we need to do this in order to preserve the significance of human interaction. To make this leap of imagination successfully is to achieve not only insight but also an impartial perspective on our own and others' inner states. This perspective is a necessary condition of experiencing compassion for others. This is (...) the primary thesis I will try to defend in this discussion. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

Why should we decolonise knowledge? One popular rationale is that colonialism has set up a single perspective as epistemically authoritative over many equally legitimate ones, and this is a form of...

Multicellular organisms contain numerous symbiotic microorganisms, collectively called microbiomes. Recently, microbiomic research has shown that these microorganisms are responsible for the proper functioning of many of the systems (digestive, immune, nervous, etc.) of multicellular organisms. This has inclined some scholars to argue that it is about time to reconceptualise the organism and to develop a concept that would place the greatest emphasis on the vital role of microorganisms in the life of plants and animals. We believe that, unfortunately, there is (...) a problem with this suggestion, since there is no such thing as a universal concept of the organism which could constitute a basis for all biological sciences. Rather, the opposite is true: numerous alternative definitions exist. Therefore, comprehending how microbiomics is changing our understanding of organisms may be a very complex matter. In this paper we will demonstrate that this pluralism proves that claims about a change in our understanding of organisms can be treated as both true and untrue. Mainly, we assert that the existing concepts differ substantially, and that only some of them have to be reconsidered in order to incorporate the discoveries of microbiomics, while others are already flexible enough to do so. Taking into account the plurality of conceptualisations within different branches of modern biology, we will conduct our discussion using the developmental and the cooperation–conflict concepts of the organism. Then we will explain our results by referring to the recent philosophical debate on the nature of the concept of the organism within biology. (shrink)

This discussion treats a set of familiar social derelictions as consequences of the perversion of a universalistic moral theory in the service of an ill-considered or insufficiently examined personal agenda.The set includes racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and class elitism, among other similar pathologies, under the general heading of discrimination. The perversion of moral theory from which these derelictions arise, I argue, involves restricting its scope of application to some preferred subgroup of the moral community of human beings. -/- The following (...) analysis of higher-order discrimination suggests that we often select the individuals who constitute such subgroups for reasons that we ourselves would reject on moral grounds were we to examine them carefully, but that we choose instead to put our rational resources in the service of avoiding any such examination at all costs. The implication is that arguments that truncate the scope of moral theory in fact justify bestowing the gift of moral treatment on a select few who deserve it no more than the many from whom we withhold it. Therefore, it would be precipitous to conclude that universalistic moral theory can be legitimately restricted in its practical scope of application in any way at all. (shrink)

Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified (...) agency. The Kantian conception solves certain intractable problems in decision theory by integrating it into classical predicate logic, and provides answers to longstanding controversies in metaethics concerning moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification that the Humean conception engenders. In addition, it sheds light on certain kinds of moral behavior – for example, the whistleblower – that the Humean conception is at a loss to explain. (shrink)

Shared activity is often simply willed into existence by individuals. This poses a problem. Philosophical reflection suggests that shared activity involves a distinctive, interlocking structure of intentions. But it is not obvious how one can form the intention necessary for shared activity without settling what fellow participants will do and thereby compromising their agency and autonomy. One response to this problem suggests that an individual can have the requisite intention if she makes the appropriate predictions about fellow participants. I argue (...) that implementing this predictive strategy risks derailing practical reasoning and preventing one from forming the intention. My alternative proposal for reconciling shared activity with autonomy appeals to the idea of acting directly on another's intention. In particular, I appeal to the entitlement one sometimes has to another's practical judgment, and the corresponding authority the other sometimes has to settle what one is to do. (shrink)

In a recent reply to our article, “What is Interpretability?,” Prasetya argues against our position that artificial neural networks are explainable. It is claimed that our indefeasibility thesis—that adding complexity to an explanation of a phenomenon does not make the phenomenon any less explainable—is false. More precisely, Prasetya argues that unificationist explanations are defeasible to increasing complexity, and thus, we may not be able to provide such explanations of highly complex AI models. The reply highlights an important lacuna in our (...) original paper, the omission of the unificationist account of explanation, and affords us the opportunity to respond. Here, we argue that artificial neural networks are explainable in a way that should satisfy unificationists and that interpretability methods present ways in which ML theories can achieve unification. (shrink)

Most moral theories share certain features in common with other theories. They consist of a set of propositions that are universal, general, and hence impartial. The propositions that constitute a typical moral theory are (1) universal, in that they apply to all subjects designated as within their scope. They are (2) general, in that they include no proper names or definite descriptions. They are therefore (3) impartial, in that they accord no special privilege to any particular agent's situation which cannot (...) be justified under (2) and (3). These three features do not distinguish moral theories from other theories, nor indeed from most general categorical propositions we assert. Yet, in recent years, these features of moral theories have been the target of a certain concerted and sustained criticism, namely, that to be committed to such a moral theory, or to aspire to act in accordance with its requirements, results in what has come to be known as moral alienation. Moral alienation, according to this criticism, consists in (i) viewing one's ground projects from an impersonal, "moral point of view" engendered by one's acceptance of the theory; (ii) being prepared to sacrifice these projects to the requirements of moral principle; and (iii) making such a sacrifice specifically and self-consciously in order to conform to these requirements. Moral alienation is said to manifest itself in one (or both) of two ways, depending on the nature of the project thus susceptible to sacrifice. One may be alienated from oneself, if the project consists of tastes, convictions, or aspirations that are centrally definitive of one's self. In this case one's commitment to the project can be at best conditional on its congruence with one's moral theory. It is claimed that this must make for a rather tepid and unenthusiastic commitment indeed. Alternatively, one may be alienated from others, if the project is an interpersonal relationship such as a friendship, marriage, or collegial relationship. In this case one's responses to the other are motivated by one's awareness of what one's moral theory requires. It is claimed that this obstructs a genuine and unmediated emotional response to the other as such. My aim here will be to argue that this very compelling criticism - call it the moral-alienation criticism - is nevertheless misdirected. The real culprit is not any particular moral theory, but rather a certain familiar personality type that may or may not adopt it. (shrink)

What makes public history more than just another hill to fight over in culture war politics? In this paper I propose a novel way of understanding the political significance of how public history creates and shapes identities: a contractarian one. I argue that public history can be sensibly understood as representing groups as a society’s contracting parties. One particular value of the contractarian approach is that it helps to elucidate the phenomenon of “signing on,” where a marginalized or oppressed group (...) is offered membership in a society without the social order being meaningfully changed. (shrink)

From the above lines one can see that St. Cyril of Alexandria is presented, along with a great theologian, as it is clear from the writings against the heretics of his time, like a true apologist for Christianity with paganism dispute that resurfaced after Emperor Julian, the Apostate. On the other hand, the writing of the Orthodox Patriarch proves to be of great importance in understanding the difficulties experienced by the Christian faith in a territory where paganism flourished from time (...) to time. Moreover, the work of St. Cyril can be put together with Christian apologists ‗works from previous centuries, being of a real interest for our times into a field so necessary but forgot in the theological schools and pastoral work: Apologetics. (shrink)

An understanding of the factors behind the evolution of multicellularity is one of today’s frontiers in evolutionary biology. This is because multicellular organisms are made of one subset of cells with the capacity to transmit genes to the next generation and another subset responsible for maintaining the functionality of the organism, but incapable of transmitting genes to the next generation. The question arises: why do somatic cells sacrifice their lives for the sake of germline cells? How is germ/soma separation maintained? (...) One conventional answer refers to inclusive fitness theory, according to which somatic cells sacrifice themselves altruistically, because in so doing they enhance the transmission of their genes by virtue of their genetic relatedness to germline cells. In the present article we will argue that this explanation ignores the key role of policing mechanisms in maintaining the germ/soma divide. Based on the pervasiveness of the latter, we argue that the role of altruistic mechanisms in the evolution of multicellularity is limited and that our understanding of this evolution must be enriched through the consideration of coercion mechanisms. (shrink)

The Syncretism, specific of old and new religious currents, is a phenomenon closely linked to millenarian movements and the emergence of so-called prophets that say that transmit divine messages being dependent at the same time, important social changes, economic political and, not least, religious. In the history of religions, syncretism is determined by several factors, among which are the changes in social, political, economic, and new philosophical and religious synthesis, the term acquiring a cosmopolitan sense. Syncretism occurs when two or (...) more social groups with different religions, contact, assimilating their members and various other religious characteristics specific groups and, for the most part, are foreign to their own beliefs. Religious syncretism has grown particularly intense during the first four centuries of the Christian era, but its traces can envision more or less pronounced in all religious history of humanity, with respect to the merger of two or more deities or acceptance of new forms and often contradictory in different parts of religious worship of pagan deities specifically different. (shrink)

While Plantinga has famously argued that acceptance of neo-Darwinian theory commits one to the rejection of naturalism, Plantinga’s argument is vulnerable to an objection developed by Evan Fales. Not only does Fales’ objection undermine Plantinga’s original argument, it establishes a general challenge which any attempt to revitalize Plantinga’s argument must overcome. After briefly laying out the contours of this challenge, we attempt to meet it by arguing that because a purely naturalistic account of our etiology cannot explain the correlation between (...) our preference for simplicity and simplicity’s ability to serve as a veridical method of theory selection, the scientific realist is committed to the rejection of naturalism. (shrink)

The monumental Encyclopedia of Religion (16 volumes), whose editor-in-chief was Mircea Eliade and which appeared in 1987, did not enjoy a welcome as expected, criticisms soon coming from researchers in several scientific fields. These criticisms related to the method used and the deep imprint that Eliade had on the work. The opinions echoed earlier criticisms of Eliade and his research method with reference to the field of History of Religions. If in the middle of the last century Eliade was considered (...) one of the greatest historians of religions, with the passage of time his authority in the field decreased. The same can be seen in the influence that the Eliadian work had, including the Encyclopedia of Religion. (shrink)

This chapter offers an indirect defence of the Evansian conception of egocentric space, by showing how it resolves a puzzle concerning the unity of egocentric spatial perception. The chapter outlines several common assumptions about egocentric perspectival structure and argues that a subject’s experience, both within and across her sensory modalities, may involve multiple structures of this kind. This raises the question of how perspectival unity is achieved, such that these perspectival structures form a complex whole, rather than merely disunified set (...) of individually, distinctively structured experiences. The shortcomings of variety of accounts are considered: switch accounts ; sensory accounts; transformation accounts; and ultimate accounts. These shortcomings are addressed by a further kind of account provided by the Evansian conception – an agentive account – according to which egocentrically structured experiences present the world in relation to parts of a single thing, the body as a dynamic unity. (shrink)

One of the insights of dynamic semantics in its various guises (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Groenendijk & Stokhof 1991, Kamp & Reyle 1993 among many others) is that interpretation is sensitive to left-to-right order. Is order sensitivity, particularly the default left-to-right order of evaluation, a property of particular meanings of certain lexical items (e.g., dynamically interpreted conjunction) or is it a more general feature of meaning composition? If it is a more general feature of meaning composition, is it a processing (...) ‘preference’ or should it be captured as a ‘harder’ constraint on the type of meanings and operations over meanings involved in natural language interpretation? This squib draws attention to the symmetrical A-too B-too construction (found in a variety of languages, e.g., Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Russian) in this context. It argues that any semantic analysis of its main ‘symmetrical-meaning’ characteristic should also allow for subtler interactions between this construction and items that are clearly sensitive to evaluation-order effects, e.g., anaphoric adjectives like next and other. We suggest that the notion of postsupposition embedded in a broader dynamic framework is better able to account for both the symmetric nature of this construction, its non-symmetric variant A-too, and its interaction with items that are evaluation-order sensitive. We briefly compare this proposal with a couple of possible alternative accounts. (shrink)

One important thesis Ásta defends in Categories We Live By is that social properties and categories are somehow dependent on our thoughts, attitudes, or practices—that they are inventions of the mind, projected onto the world. Another important aspect of her view is that the social properties are related to certain base properties; an individual is placed in a category when the relevant base properties are thought to hold of them. I see the relationship between the social and the base as (...) connected to the problem of explaining how the social properties are sufficiently stable so as to be taken seriously, both in theoretical endeavors as well as in practical matters of how we relate to each other. In this light, I identify stability constraints for an adequate account of social categories. I argue that certain distinctive aspects of Ásta's conferralist view of social categories, such as the radical contextualism in her account of gender, undermine the stability of categories and are at odds with taking social categories seriously. I end with the suggestion that a distinctive “sheltered” form of normativity might help us do justice to Ásta's insights while avoiding some of the destabilizing elements of conferralism. (shrink)

As a site of colonial conquest, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced colonialism’s historic and continuing harms. One of the aspects of this harm is epistemic. In the analytic philosophical tradition, this harm can partly be theorised in line with the literature on epistemic injustice, although it does not fit squarely. I show this by arguing for what can be understood as a colonial state’s specific manifestation of epistemic injustice. This manifestation takes into account the historical context of colonisation and the continuing (...) coloniality of sub-Saharan African countries. From this, I argue for an approach to remediating this epistemic injustice that relies on the fair-minded pursuit of knowledge. This approach, I briefly argue, gains valuable insights from African epistemological traditions and can be beneficial to other epistemic injustice instances that result specifically from historical cases of oppression. (shrink)

In our dealings with young children, we often get them to do or think things by arranging their environments in certain ways; by dissembling, simplifying, or ambiguating the facts in answer to their queries; by carefully selecting the states of affairs, behavior of others, and utterances to which they shall be privy. We rightly justify these practices by pointing out a child's malleability, and the necessity of paying close attention to formative influences during its years of growth. This filtering of (...) influences is necessary, we point out, if children are ever to reach a degree of maturity and inner stability that will enable them to understand and cope adequately with the complexities, contradictions, and difficulties of the world from which we now seek to shield them. Thus a child's eventual state of competence, maturity, and autonomy adequately justifies our current practices of manipulation and selection of his environment: such practices are rightly held to be ultimately in the child's best interests as an adult. There is no future state of things with reference to which the Utilitarian night justify his policy of secrecy and manipulation, and in light of which this policy night eventually be dispensed with and commonly validated, in retrospect, as a means to the worthwhile goal of moral maturity. That is, there is no point at which the attitude of the Utilitarian to the rest of the community can develop past the analogous attitude of the parent towards the child; no point at which the Utilitarian might eventually bear to others a relationship of mutual acknowledgement and respect as mature, autonomous, moral adults. The consistent Utilitarian, then, largely regards himself as if he were the only adult in a community of children. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that folk knowledge attribution practices regarding some epistemological thought experiments differ significantly from the consensus found in the philosophical literature. More specifically, laypersons are likely to ascribe knowledge in the so-called Authentic Evidence Gettier-style cases, while most philosophers deny knowledge in these cases. The intuitions shared by philosophers are often used as evidence in favor (or against) certain philosophical analyses of the notion of knowledge. However, the fact that these intuitions are not universal, (...) as non-philosophers do not sympathize with verdicts made by philosophers, is problematic and requires some explanation. Recently, a promising theoretical approach emerged that could be used to explain away unexpected folk knowledge attributions. According to the protagonist projection hypothesis, when subjects answer questions about some hypothetical scenario, their judgments might result from adopting the cognitive perspective of the protagonist in the given scenario. Previous experimental findings suggest protagonist projection might be responsible for problematic knowledge attributions in Gettier-style cases. This paper reports data collected in an experiment which focused on five different Authentic Evidence Gettier-style scenarios and investigated the impact of protagonist projection on folk knowledge ascriptions in such cases. The results bring some support to the protagonist projection hypothesis, but do not allow to explain away a substantial number of problematic folk knowledge attributions. (shrink)

The recent publications reported in 2022 reveal the possibility of obtaining mouse embryos without the need for egg or sperm. These ‘artificial embryos’ can recapitulate some stages of development ex utero – from neurulation to organogenesis – without implantation. Synthetic mouse embryos might serve as a valuable model to gain further insights into early developmental stages. Indeed, it is expected for these models to be replicated by employing human cells. This promising research raises ethical issues and expands the horizon of (...) ethics in regard to the development of the human embryo. From this point of view, we state some of the new open venues for bioethical research. (shrink)

According to the No-Luck-Thesis knowledge possession is incompatible with luck – one cannot know that p if the truth of one’s belief that p is a matter of luck. Recently, this widespread opinion was challenged by Peter Baumann, who argues that in certain situations agents do possess knowledge even though their beliefs are true by luck. This paper aims at providing empirical data for evaluating Baumann’s hypothesis. The experiment was designed to compare non-philosophers’ judgments concerning knowledge and luck in one (...) case that Baumann takes to be in favor of his claim and other cases where, according to him, absence of knowledge coincides with luck. The results show that the cases do not differ in a significant way between each other with respect to verdicts regarding knowledge and luck. In all cases subjects were more reluctant to judge that the ‘Gettierized’ belief is knowledge and more likely to judge that it is true by luck in comparison to a belief that is an uncontroversial instance of knowledge. However, the negative relationship between knowledge and luck ascriptions predicted by the No-Luck-Thesis was almost absent. The data raise some doubts about the No-Luck-Thesis, but the reasons for doubt are different than what Baumann expected. (shrink)

I want to argue that self-deception is a species of a more general phenomenon, which I shall call pseudorationality, which in turn is necessitated by what I shall describe as our highest-order disposition to literal self-preservation. By "literal self-preservation," I mean preservation of the rational intelligibility of the self, in the face of recalcitrant facts that invariably threaten it.

The reasons for which I act are normally my reasons; I represent goal states and the means to attaining them, and these guide me in action. Can your reason ever be the reason why I act? If I haven’t yet taken up your reason and made it mine by representing it for myself, then it may seem mysterious how this could be possible. Nevertheless, the paper argues that sometimes one is entitled to another’s reason and that what one does is (...) to be explained in terms of it. The case for this draws on aspects of the interplay between reasons and intentions in individual agency that have not received the attention they deserve. The paper closes by exploring the limits of interpersonal entitlement to reasons by formulating a hypothesis about which reasons one might be entitled to, and by considering how defeaters can undermine entitlement. (shrink)

Commentary on: Olaf Blanke, Thomas Metzinger, Full-body illusions and minimal phenomenal selfhood, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 13, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 7-13, ISSN 1364-6613, DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.10.003.

Various data from communication that does not occur face-to-face are taken to be problematic for Kaplan’s account of indexical expressions, as is the case with the so-called answering machine paradox. One fix, developed by Sidelle (1991) and Briciu (2018), is the remote utterance view: recording artifacts are means by which speakers perform utterances at a distance, just as by means of other artifacts agents performs other types of actions at a distance. This view has faced an important objection, namely that (...) remote utterances lead to Moorean paradoxes. In this paper, I defend the remote utterance view against this objection and further develop the view. I argue that worries about Moorean paradoxes can easily be dispelled if we take into consideration the artifactual nature of recording devices, their materiality, and the communicative affordances they bring about. In the first section, we’ll present the answering machine paradox and give a brief overview of the remote utterance view. The second section presents the objection against the view, while the third gives a detailed rejoinder to the objection. Answering this objection is important also because it allows us to explore some underdeveloped aspects of the remote utterance view. First, I will discuss how the theorist calibrates her model with the data she seeks to explain and predict. Secondly, I will argue that speech acts performed via recording devices have different felicity conditions than their oral counterparts. I conclude with a short discussion of some semantic and pragmatic consequences of the view. (shrink)

‘Performative’ transcendental arguments exploit the status of a subcategory of self-falsifying propositions in showing that some form of skepticism is unsustainable. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between performatively inconsistent propositions and transcendental arguments, and then to compare performative transcendental arguments to modest transcendental arguments that seek only to establish the indispensability of some belief or conceptual framework. Reconceptualizing transcendental arguments as performative helps focus the intended dilemma for the skeptic: performative transcendental arguments directly confront the (...) skeptic with the choice of abandoning either skepticism or some other deep theoretical commitment. Many philosophers, from Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas to Jaakko Hintikka, C.I. Lewis, and Bernard Lonergan, have claimed that some skeptical propositions regarding knowledge, reason, and/or morality can be shown to be self-defeating; that is to say, they have claimed that the very upholding of some skeptical position is in some way incompatible with the position being upheld, or with the implied, broader dialectical position of the skeptic in question. Statements or propositions alleged to have this characteristic also sometimes are called ‘self-falsifying,’ ‘self-refuting,’ ‘self-stultifying,’ ‘self-destructive,’ or ‘pointless.’ However, proponents of the strategy of showing skepticism to be self-defeating have not in general adequately distinguished between two types of self-defeating proposition: self-falsifying and self-stultifying. In the first part of this paper I distinguish between self-falsifying and self-stultifying propositions, and introduce the notion of performative self-falsification. In the second part I discuss classical transcendental arguments, ‘modest’ transcendental arguments, and objections to each. In the third part I introduce two types of transcendental argument—each labeled “performative”—corresponding to two types of performatively self-falsifying proposition, and I compare them to modest transcendental arguments. (shrink)

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth’s unduly neglected monograph New and Old Methods of Ethics (1877) advances a highly sophisticated and mathematized account of social well-being in the utilitarian tradition of his 19th-century contemporaries. This article illustrates how his usage of the ‘calculus of variations’ was combined with findings from empirical psychology and economic theory to construct a consequentialist axiological framework. A conclusion is drawn that Edgeworth is a methodological predecessor to several important methods, ideas, and issues that continue to be discussed in (...) contemporary social well-being studies. (shrink)

The history of economic thought witnessed several prominent economists who took seriously models and concepts in physics for the elucidation and prediction of economic phenomena. Econophysics is an emerging discipline at the intersection of heterodox economics and the physics of complex systems, with practitioners typically engaged in two overlapping but distinct methodological programs. The first is to export mathematical methods used in physics for the purposes of studying economic phenomena. The second is to export mechanisms in physics into economics. A (...) conclusion is drawn that physics transfer is often justified at the level of mathematical transfer but unjustified at the level of mechanistic transfer. (shrink)

En aquest article pretenc fer una crítica al nihilisme mereològic, al·ludint que les expressions «simples agrupats en-tant-que-F» tenen unes conseqüències desastroses per als seus compromisos ontològics. Primer, explicaré què és el nihilisme mereològic -que és part de l’eliminativisme- el qual pretén negar l’existència dels objectes compostos (objectes amb parts pròpies) i l’estratègia de la paràfrasi: l’ús que fan de les expressions «simples agrupats en-tant-que-F» per referir-se als objectes ordinaris sense comprometre’s amb l’existència d’objectes compostos, però posaré l’èmfasi en aquells nihilistes (...) mereològics que pretenen explicar l’existència de les propietats emergents. Seguidament, presentaré una classe de crítiques, les de Bennett i Tallant, sobre l’ús d’aquesta estratègia per part dels nihilistes, i quina és la resposta crítica que ofereix Brenner sobre aquesta classe de crítica. Finalment, presentaré la meva crítica on mostraré que el nihilisme mereològic utilitzant l’estratègia de la paràfrasi s’està comprometent amb l’existència d’objectes compostos i que la crítica de Brenner no funciona amb la meva postura. -/- In this paper I intend to critique mereological nihilism, alluding that the expression «simples arranged F-wise» has disastrous consequences for its ontological commitments. First, I will explain what mereological nihilism is -which is part of Eliminativism- which tries to deny the existence of composite objects (objects with proper parts) and the Paraphrase Strategy: the use they make of the expression «simples arranged F-wise» to refer to ordinary objects without committing to the existence of composite objects, and I put the focus on the mereological nihilist that pretends to explain the existence of emergent properties. Second, I will present a kind of criticism, by Bennett and Tallant, of the use of this strategy by nihilism and which is the response of Brenner about this kind of criticism. Finally, I will present my criticism where I will show that nihilism by using the Paraphrase Strategy is committing itself to the existence of composite objects and that the Brenner’s critique does not work with my position. (shrink)

Coincidenţa contrariilor reprezintă un punct esenţial în gândirea umanităţii, echivalând, în cele din urmă, cu dorinţa omului de a aduna într-un tot unitar pe cele ce se opun în univers. Această preocupare a stat la baza scrierilor unor gânditori importanţi, între care se numără Sfântul Dionisie Areopagitul, Meister Eckhart, Nicolaus Cusanus sau Mircea Eliade. Deşi au scris în perioade de timp diferite şi au aparţinut unor tradiţii diferite, operele lor stau mărturie faptului că motivul coincidentia oppositorum a fost şi continuă (...) să fie o constantă în viaţa omului în dorinţa acestuia de a atinge Absolutul. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the question of filtration through the perspective of “too much information”. It concerns Western society within the context of new media and digital culture. The main aim of this paper is to apply a philosophical reading on the video game concept of Selection for Societal Sanity within the problematics of cultural filtration, control of behaviors and desire, and a problematization of trans-individuation that the selected narrative conveys. The idea of Selection for Societal Sanity, which derives from (...) the first postmodern video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001), is applied into a philosophical framework based on select concepts from Bernard Stiegler’s writing and incorporating them with current events such as post-truth or fake news in order to explore the role of techne and filtration within social organizations and individual psyches. Alternate forms of behavior, which contest cultural paradigms, are re-problematized as tension between calculability and incalculability, or market value versus social bonding. (shrink)

The purpose of this discussion is twofold. First, I want to shed some light on Kant's concept of personhood as rational agency, by situating it in the context of the first Critique's conception of the self as defined by its rational dispositions. I hope to suggest that this concept of personhood cannot be simply grafted onto an essentially Humean conception of the self that is inherently inimical to it, as I believe Rawls, Gewirth, and others have tried to do. Instead (...) I will try to show how deeply embedded this concept of personhood is in Kant's conception of the self as rationally unified consciousness. Second, I want to deploy this embedded concept of personhood as the basis for an analysis of the phenomenon of xenophobia. (shrink)

The intentions of others often enter into your practical reasoning, even when you’re acting on your own. Given all the agents around you, you’ll come to grief if what they’re up to is never a consideration in what you decide to do and how you do it. There are occasions, however, when the intentions of another figure in your practical reasoning in a particularly intimate and decisive fashion. I will speak of there being on such occasions a practical intersubjectivity of (...) intentions holding between you and the other individual. I will try to identify this practical intersubjectivity, and to take some preliminary steps toward giving a philosophical account of it. Occasions of practical intersubjectivity are usually those where individuals share agency, or do things jointly, such as when they walk together, kiss, or paint a house together. I will not assume that all instances of practical intersubjectivity are instances of shared agency. But the converse is true: any instance of shared agency involves a practical intersubjectivity holding between the participants. An account of shared agency is inadequate if it fails to handle practical intersubjectivity. The paper is structured as follows. In section 1, I present an example to illustrate this idea of practical intersubjectivity, at least as it appears in the context of shared agency. Practical intersubjectivity is a normative phenomenon, and it is on this basis that in section 2 I distinguish it from the mere coordination of intentions some have recognized as essential for shared activity. The task of section 3 is to show how practical intersubjectivity cannot be adequately described in terms of ordinary intentions familiar from the study of individual agency. Such approaches fail to handle the rational dynamics of intention revision when practical.. (shrink)

Aesthetics is thought of as not only a theory of art or beauty, but also includes sensibility, experience, judgment, and relationships. This paper is a study of Bernard Stiegler’s notion of Aesthetic War (stasis) and symbolic misery. Symbolic violence is ensued through a loss of individuation and participation in the creation of symbols. As a struggle between market values against spirit values human life and consciousness within neoliberal hyperindustrial society has become calculable, which prevents people from creating affective and meaningful (...) attachments to symbols in relation to our retentional apparatuses, technology and memory. Such tension can be thought of as a dissonance between overlapping domains of social life, private and public. New Media is a reflection of aesthetic dissonance, an experience such as being bored and entertained at the same time, between antagonistic experiences, values, and behavior. Moreover, new media is at once a medium of customizing aesthetic experience individually as well as the threat and practice of prioritizing calculability and modeling of consumer behavior in favor of capitalistic effectiveness, which results in the simultaneous categorization of an individual as a data point, putting those who do not fit an algorithm’s premises at a disadvantage. (shrink)

Recording devices are generally taken to present problems for the standard Kaplanian semantics for indexicals. In this paper, I argue that the remote utterance view offers the best way for the Kaplanian semantics to handle the recalcitrant data that comes from the use of recording devices. Following Sidelle I argue that recording devices allow agents to perform utterances at a distance. Using the essential, but widely ignored, distinction between tokens and utterances, I develop the view beyond the initial sketch given (...) by Sidelle, and I answer the main objections raised against the view. The paper is structured as follows. Section 1 gives a succinct presentation of Kaplanian semantics and of the problem raised by the use recording devices, Section 2 presents the remote utterance view and Section 3 answers the objections put forward against the view and further develops it. I conclude that the remote utterance view can handle the data that comes from the use of recording devices with only modest modifications of the Kaplanian semantics. (shrink)