While the image of the slave as the antithesis of the freeman is central to republican freedom, it is striking to note that slaves themselves have not contributed to how this condition is understood. The result is a one-sided conception of both freedom and slavery, which leaves republicanism unable to provide an equal and robust protection for historically outcast people. I draw on the work of Frederick Douglass – long overlooked as a significant contributor to republican theory – to show (...) one way why this is so. Focusing the American Revolution, the subsequent republican government established new political institutions to maintain the collective interests of the whole population. The political revolution was held in place by processes of public reason that reflected the values and ideas of the people that had rebelled. The black population, however, had not been part of this revolution. After emancipation, black Americans were required to accept terms of citizenship that had already been defined, leaving them socially dominated, subject to the prejudices and biases within the prevailing ideas of public discourse. Douglass argued that republican freedom under law is always dependent on a more fundamental revolution, that he calls a ‘radical revolution in thought’, in which the entire system of social norms and practices are reworked together by members of all constituent social groups – women and men, black and white, rich and poor – so that it reflects a genuinely collaborative achievement. Only then can we begin the republican project of contestatory freedom as independence or non-domination that today’s republicans take for granted. (shrink)

A letter replying to Bayne et al. "Tests for consciousness in humans and beyond", 2024, arguing that the search for consciousness "beyond" healthy adult humans should begin with other animals.

Although they were never to meet and corresponded only briefly, Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft shared a mutual admiration and a strong intellectual bond. Macaulay’s work had a profound and lasting effect on Wollstonecraft, and she developed and expanded on many of Macaulay’s ideas. While she often took these in a different direction, there remains a great synergy between their ideas to the extent that we can understand Wollstonecraft’s own feminist arguments by approaching them through the frameworks and ideas that (...) Macaulay provided. These included the principles of classical republicanism, particularly in its understanding of the values of freedom, equality and virtue, and an understanding of reason as grounded in immutable principles that apply equally to both sexes. On the question of women’s freedom and social equality with men, I argue that though Macaulay sets up the problem in far richer and more detailed philosophical terms, in the end it is Wollstonecraft that has the more compelling account of its far-reaching social implications and of how this might be addressed. (shrink)

Catharine Macaulay was one of the most significant republican writers of her generation. Although there has been a revival of interest in Macaulay amongst feminists and intellectual historians, neo-republican writers have yet to examine the theoretical content of her work in any depth. Since she anticipates and addresses a number of themes that still preoccupy republicans, this neglect represents a serious loss to the discipline. I examine Macaulay’s conception of freedom, showing how she uses the often misunderstood notion of virtue (...) to reconcile the individual and collective elements inherent in the republican model. In her own analysis of the deep-rooted social obstacles that stand in the way of women becoming free, Macaulay identifies a serious problem that confronts all republicans, namely how to secure freedom in the face of entrenched structural imbalances that systematically disadvantage certain classes of person. In the end, I conclude that Macaulay herself cannot overcome the issues she raises. This in no way diminishes the importance of her work since her diagnosis is as relevant today as in her own time. (shrink)

In Wollstonecraft’s early writings, she articulates the foundational theological and philosophical principles that would underpin her work throughout her career. One difference between her early and later work lies in the way that the values to which she refers are combined. Whereas Wollstonecraft at first appeals to the separate ideals of independence, equality, and virtue, from the 1790s onwards she integrates these into a characteristic republican framework that was in common use amongst dissenting theorists at the time. The set of (...) values on which Wollstonecraft draws, and the version of the republican framework that she develops, closely resemble those of Richard Price with whose work she was familiar. Examining the structural similarities between their respective models, I argue, gives us an insight into the systematic manner of aspects of Wollstonecraft’s own thought. It also allows us to see how Wollstonecraft goes beyond the republicanism of Price and others as she develops her own feminist solutions to the problems of structural domination. (shrink)

In spite of its everyday connotations, the term independence as republicans understand it is not a celebration of individualism or self-reliance but embodies an acknowledgement of the importance of personal and social relationships in people’s lives. It reflects our connectedness rather than separateness and is in this regard a relational ideal. Properly understood, independence is a useful concept in addressing a fundamental problem in social philosophy that has preoccupied theorists of relational autonomy, namely how to reconcile the idea of individual (...) human agency with the inevitable and necessary influence of other people, both directly and indirectly. I derive my account from the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay, whose contributions have remained largely overlooked by current republican theorists. I have three purposes in this chapter. First, I set out the relational character of independence. Secondly, I outline a republican approach to the problem of structural social threats to agency. Finally, I hope to establish the basis for a fruitful dialogue between republicans and relational autonomy theorists on the requirements and dynamics of individual agency and freedom in oppressive social situations. I identify three distinctive features of the internal logic of freedom as independence that give it a relational character: it always locates the person within a community; there is a mediating role played by the notion of arbitrariness in connecting individual and collective perspectives; a causal relationship exists linking each person’s freedom as independence such that that the dependence of one class of persons jeopardizes the independence of the whole community. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of Michael Polanyi's concept of Tacit Knowledge for religious belief in general, and Christianity in particular, by investigating the relationship of tacit knowledge to commitment in scientific investigation, and extrapolating that relationship to commitments in the area of religious belief.

While it seems to be evident that the vision of the eternal return of the same is the solution to the riddle mentioned in "On the vision and the riddle," exactly what constitutes the riddle is anything but clear. Li ke all good riddles the solution demands a paradigm shift. Nietzsche's riddle is solved by a radical rethinking of the concept of time, from a straight line to a circle. I give a detailed account of how Nietzsche's riddle is formulated (...) in such a way tha t the eternal return of the same is the only possible solution. (shrink)

No serious discussion of the forces shaping Schleiermacher could overlook the influence that Romanticism had on the formulation of his thought. Seeing the Enlightenment’s confidence in human reason as an obstacle to the effective communication of the gospel, he contrastingly understood Romanticism as an ally, for it emphasized passion over reason — imagination and inspiration over logic. The Enlightenment’s enshrinement of human reason as the autonomous source for truth had advanced naturalistic rationalism as its sole determinant. With the ascendancy of (...) this rationalism came an attendant depreciation of other avenues of knowledge, leaving no possibility for its existence outside of the empirical. This state of affairs produced a climate that had starved the soul. -/- In the Romanticists, Schleiermacher found others that shared his views: a great value placed on inward feeling and the importance of the growth of the individual. Schleiermacher’s efforts sought to gain a hearing among his contemporaries by contextualizing the Christian faith within the paradigm of Romanticism, bringing about the emergence of a movement that would embrace a subjectified view of truth. -/- This work advances the proposal that much of the thought currently associated with postmodernism finds its first cogent expression in the writings of the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Widely hailed as the Father of Modern Theology, his influences in the areas of thought that would eventually combine to produce postmodernism have been ignored by both Christian and non-Christian scholars. (shrink)

In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of Unlimited (...) Associative Learning in the evolution of, and detection of, consciousness and a metaphysical claim about consciousness as a mode of being—in a manner that will hopefully overcome some of the initial resistance of potential readers to tackle a book of this length. (shrink)

Kant’s discussion of the highest good is subject to continuous disagreement between the proponents of two interpretations of this concept. According to the secular interpretation, Kant conceived of the highest good as a political ideal which can be realized through human agency alone, albeit only from the Critique of the Power of Judgement onwards. By way of contrast, proponents of the theological interpretation find Kant’s treatment of the highest good in his later works to be wholly coherent with the discussions (...) of this concept found in the second Critique. In their view, however, Kant never conceived of the highest good as a political ideal, and some go as far as to argue that it is the work of God alone. In this article, I defend a theologico-political account of the highest good that avoids the pitfalls of both readings. (shrink)

This is a study of Plato's use of the character Socrates to model what philosophy is. The study focuses on the Apology, and finds that philosophy there is the love of wisdom, where wisdom is expertise about how to live, of the sort that only gods can fully have, and where Socrates loves wisdom in three ways, first by honoring wisdom as the gods' possession, testing human claims to it, second by pursuing wisdom, examining himself as he examines others, to (...) achieve a more well justified set of beliefs about how to live, and third by trying to live wisely, insofar as he can, which includes exhorting others to care about living wisely than anything else. The essay also includes some suggestions about how Plato criticizes and revises this model of philosophy outside the Apology. (shrink)

This article looks at Francis Fukuyama’s analysis of Hegel in "The End of History and the Last Man." It argues that Fukuyama’s “Last Man” thesis has been unduly neglected due to the focus on his “End of History” thesis. The “Last Man” (a term borrowed from Nietzsche) is a person who lashes out for attention because they do not receive any special, individual recognition in a society where all seem to get some level of recognition (e.g. having their basic biological (...) needs met by the welfare state, having certain rights, etc.). I argue that Fukuyama’s analysis on this topic has proved prescient. The “Last Man problem” has manifested in various ways across our culture, particularly in the context of the “Alt-Right” movement. However, I argue that Fukuyama has misread and oversimplified Hegel, who can help us to explain this phenomenon. (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of how the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, particularly their treatment of the "Problem of the One and the Many," can help inform Sam Harris's attempt to ground ethics in the empirical sciences in his 2010 book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. -/- The paper shows how Aristotle and Aquinas's thought can: • Explaining how the sciences are organized and why they will not produce multiple, competing measures of goodness (...) and well-being; • Resolving the “moral paradoxes” that Harris finds himself unable to find a solution to, by demonstrating how the human good essentially involves a “common good,” and how goodness always relates to the whole; • Providing us with a better explanation for why selfless behavior is good and why it is “good for us” to be virtuous; • Providing Harris with a better definition of freedom as self-determination; and • Showing how neither a recognition that the sciences must play a major role in ethics, nor naturalistic explanations of human behavior, need to preclude our orientation towards a transcendent good. (shrink)

This philosophical investigation interrogates the relationship between G.W.F. Hegel’s concept of the master-slave dialectic in The Phenomenology of Spirit and the critique and reformulation of it by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks. As a means of contextualization and expansion of Hegel’s original textual account, I consider Susan Buck-Morss’ seminal defense through grounding the dialectic in Hegel’s possible historical knowledge of the Haitian Revolution. I maintain that despite a compelling picture, Buck-Morss’ insights are unable to fully vindicate Hegel from (...) the rebukes of Fanon, and as a result, Hegel’s phenomenology necessitates a concrete analysis of the actual conscious experiences of the racialized and colonized subject in order to realize its aims. In pursuit of this critical methodology, I develop the upshot and positive movement of Fanon’s critique through what I describe as a “phenomenology of flesh” in conversation with Maurice Merleau Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible. (shrink)

This article reexamines Vico’s early critique of Cartesian reasoning and of how the Cartesian method, which comes from epistemology, creates problems for the sciences once embedded into their methodologies and given a foundational role. The focus will be on De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709), where Vico argues against generalizing the Cartesian method and overemphasizing clarity and distinctness in the search for truth. To this end, Vico’s relation to Cartesianism is first carefully contextualized. Then, Vico is presented as a hylomorphist (...) when it comes to how scientific disciplines and their instruments interrelate, something key for understanding why he questions the “instrumentalization” of the Cartesian method in the first place. Afterwards, Vico’s account of the impossibility of maximal scientific progress when the Cartesian method is prioritized across the sciences is presented, as probabilistic reasoning and the importance of the imagination and memory take centerstage. Lastly, the article looks at Vico’s opposition to the geometrical method’s role in physics and his defense of visual thinking in mathematics. The hope throughout is to advance a picture of the early Vico as being not only a neo- Baconian pragmatist, but a hypermodern ”meta-Cartesian” thinker concerned with humanity’s optimizing its creative potential in order to achieve scientific advances. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

The artform of standup comedy can be seen as having much in common with the discipline of philosophy, particularly with the way philosophy is carried out or “performed,” whether professionally or otherwise. There are, for instance, certain basic similarities between how standup comedians and philosophers value ideals of clarity and precision when it comes to the issue of determining what kind of language is best to employ if one seeks to either effectively deliver a funny joke, as in the case (...) of standup comedy, or if one seeks to effectively articulate and present an argument that can later be assessed as sound, as in the case of philosophy. The reason this is of note is because it is rooted in another similarity that serves not only to bring these two activities significantly closer but to isolate standup comedy from most artforms when it comes to how it conceives of matters pertaining to interpretation and purpose. More specifically, this is the fact that standup comedians and philosophers alike hope, and even expect on some level, that, in the best of cases, their respective jokes and reasoned arguments will compel some form of unanimous approval from those who properly understand and engage with their content. When this observation is combined with the additional observation that jokes can also serve as vehicles for imparting wisdom of a genuinely philosophical nature despite the fact that generating laughter rather than seeking truth per se represents standup comedy’s ostensive primary goal, this leads one to wonder how porous the boundaries that otherwise serve to distinguish these two activities might be. In particular, in light of the nature and scope of the many similarities that can be said to exist between them, which I lay out and discuss in the article, it seems that standup comedy could even be reasonably argued to be the artform closest to philosophy. (shrink)

This paper explores how popular understandings of physical/mental supervenience can be employed to help support Robert Sokolowski’s enactivist theory of perception. The paper also investigates how the relationship between the world and our perceptions of it ties into the development and evolution of language and the terms we use to “say things about things.”.

This essay argues that Plato in the Republic needs an account of why and how the three distinct parts of the soul are parts of one soul, and it draws on the Phaedrus and Gorgias to develop an account of compositional unity that fits what is said in the Republic.

An analytic investigation of Antioch's "Sexual Offense Policy.".

This wide ranging discourse covers many disciplines of science and the human condition in an attempt to fully understand the manifestation of time. Time's Paradigm is, at its inception, a philosophical debate between the theories of 'Presentism' and 'The Block Model', beginning with a pronounced psychological analysis of 'free will' in an environment where the past and the future already exist. It lays the foundation for the argument that time is a cyclical, contained progression, rather than a meandering voyage into (...) infinity, bringing into question the validity of a commensurate 'Big Bang'. Following, the proposal widens to encompass physics. It tackles clock rates and time dilation, acausality and the nuisance of a universal clock, and demonstrates that conscious consideration creates the present moment - time's flow - separating the solid state past and future whose reality is devoid of space. Arguments relating to Quantum Physics theory, including the Uncertainty Principle and a Superposition of States, lend credibility to key areas involving cognitive awareness. It is posited that defined points in time and space prohibit progress in linear models for progression. Thus motile paradoxes can be resolved with the absence of infinities; temporal perception, it is concluded, being the result of uncertainty. Time's Paradigm takes the bold step of asking us to consider a tangible dimension of time, representing an intimate extension of our three, known spatial dimensions. Chaos theory is briefly introduced leading to the configuration of a fractal fourth dimension of time whose assumption demands only one direction of flow. Further, it asks whether our universe is expanding or contracting. It considers the simple physics of bodies contracting in a fourth dimension of time (UC), and how that marries comfortably with standard scientific models such as Special Relativity. The rate at which matter is contracting in the universe is illustrated in a reduction factor of 1.618... coinciding with Fibonacci's Ratio and countering Time Dilation. Lastly the more complex aspects of relativistic velocities are tackled together with the conundrum of Zero Velocity and The Speed of Light being attributes of the same event in Cyclical Space-Time, and ultimately, the prospect of superluminal velocities by interaction with parallel time-zones in a multi-layered block universe. (shrink)

In recent years, campaigns across the globe have called for the removal of objects symbolic of white supremacy. This paper examines the ethics of altering or removing such objects. Do these strategies sanitize history, destroy heritage and suppress freedom of speech? Or are they important steps towards justice? Does removing monuments and renaming schools reflect a lack of parity and unfairly erase local identities? Or can it sometimes be morally required, as an expression of respect for the memories of people (...) who endured past injustices; a recognition of this history's ongoing legacies; and a repudiation of unjust social hierarchies? (shrink)

Decision theory and folk psychology both purport to represent the same phenomena: our belief-like and desire- and preference-like states. They also purport to do the same work with these representations: explain and predict our actions. But they do so with different sets of concepts. There's much at stake in whether one of these two sets of concepts can be accounted for with the other. Without such an account, we'd have two competing representations and systems of prediction and explanation, a dubious (...) dualism. Folk psychology structures our daily lives and has proven fruitful in the study of mind and ethics, while decision theory is pervasive in various disciplines, including the quantitative social sciences, especially economics, and philosophy. My interest is in accounting for folk psychology with decision theory -- in particular, for believe and wanting, which decision theory omits. Many have attempted this task for belief. (The Lockean Thesis says that there is such an account.) I take up the parallel task for wanting, which has received far less attention. I propose necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in terms of decision theory, for when you're truly said to want; I give an analogue of the Lockean Thesis for wanting. My account is an alternative to orthodox accounts that link wanting to preference (e.g. Stalnaker (1984), Lewis (1986)), which I argue are false. I argue further that want ascriptions are context-sensitive. My account explains this context-sensitivity, makes sense of conflicting desires, and accommodates phenomena that motivate traditional theses on which 'want' has multiple senses (e.g. all-things-considered vs. pro tanto). (shrink)

In this article, I examine the ethical and political dimensions of Hannah Arendt’s fundamental categories of thinking, judgment, and action, with the aim of uncovering and defending the coherence of the otherwise enigmatic nature of their interplay. In so doing, I attempt to resolve many of the tensions and ambiguities that appear to permeate Arendt’s account of judgment, by offering an analysis of its aesthetic structure that will later allow me to offer a new interpretation of the precise relation that (...) holds between thinking and judgment, as well as of judgment’s relation with regard to both morality and politics in general, making extended use of a writing analogy that involves thought experimentation. In this light, the category of judgment will be shown to serve as the bridge that seamlessly connects Arendt’s private conception of thinking, which is personal, contemplative, and anti-teleological, with the intersubjective realm of political action in the public sphere. The nexus binding the three categories together will be shown to consist specifically of an ontogenetic chain of interdependence that begins with thinking and culminates in action, where each successor category in the sequence can be viewed as a higher-order version of its immediate predecessor category. From this, I then explain the way they are able to collectively create a positive feedback loop that turns on the axis of our progress as thinkers, as well as on the state of our moral development as individuals, and which, in the process, creates potential openings for genuine political progress. (shrink)

Close attention to Kant’s comments on animal minds has resulted in radically different readings of key passages in Kant. A major disputed text for understanding Kant on animals is his criticism of G. F. Meier’s view in the 1762 ‘False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures’. In this article, I argue that Kant’s criticism of Meier should be read as an intervention into an ongoing debate between Meier and H. S. Reimarus on animal minds. Specifically, while broadly aligning himself with (...) Reimarus, Kant distinguishes himself from both Meier and Reimarus on the role of judgement in human consciousness. (shrink)

In this article, I re-examine Kant’s many senses of cognition, thought, and object in order to better understand his account of logic, and, in particular, transcendental logic. In laying out the multiple and conflicting ways Kant defines each of those terms, the relation between transcendental logic and pure general logic can be revealed as analogous to, and, indeed, linked to, the isomorphism that exists between the categories of the understanding and the logical forms of judgment, which are equivalent if one (...) ignores the manifold of intuition. This means transcendental logic is a general logic, even as a logic of (some) cognizing. (shrink)

Joseph Priestley was a man of many and varied intellectual interests. This thesis surveys his philosophical thought, with a central focus on his philosophical theology. The subject can be divided into two parts, natural theology and moral theology. Priestley's natural theology is a perhaps unique attempt to combine and harmonize materialism, determinism and theism, under the auspices of Newtonian methodology. His materialism is based on three arguments: that interaction between matter and spirit is impossible; that a dynamic theory of matter (...) breaks down the active/passive dichotomy assumed by many dualists; and that Newton's "Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy" require the rejection of the "hypothesis" of the soul. His determinism arises from his theory of causation. He attempts to show that the only acceptable account of causation is one in which every cause is invariably followed by the same effect, and that libertarianism violates this central assumption of scientific thought. His theism rests on the Argument from Design. He defends the Argument by trying to show that none of the alternatives to Design advanced in Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion constitute a plausible scientific hypothesis. His critics accused his synthesis of materialism, determinism and theism of leading to atheism or pantheism. His defence against these charges is that his system is essentially theistic, and that its ontology is determined by the Argument from Design. Priestley's moral theology is also in part a response to Hume's Dialogues. He offers a number of replies to the "problem of evil". Evil and adversity heighten our appreciation of good; they are a consequence of the finitude of the creation; they follow from the desirability of having a world governed by general laws; and they make possible the achievement of moral character. Character-formation is his main defence, and his methodology requires him to show that adversity leads more often than not to positive results. This requirement is embodied in his progressivist philosophy of history. History, he holds, exhibits temporal purpose and Design, just as nature exhibits atemporal purpose and Design. Priestley's political thought can be seen as arising from his moral theology, mediated by the notions of "luxury", which he regards as morally harmless, and "idleness", which is the main source of moral evil. His combination of liberalism and radicalism is examined both for internal consistency and as a response to the events of his day, ending with the French Revolution. Priestley is interesting partly for his unorthodoxy, partly for the inter-connectedness of his diverse concerns, and partly because he debated with distinguished contemporaries. Throughout the thesis his views are juxtaposed with those of Hume, Reid, Price, Boscovich, Burke and a number of other thinkers. (shrink)

In general relativity, a spacetime and a gravitational field form an indivisible unit: no field, no spacetime. This is a lesson of Einstein's hole argument. We use a simple transformation in a Schwartzschild pacetime to illustrate this.

Birch’s criterion for the precautionary principle imposes a high evidential standard that many cases will fail to meet. Reliable, relevant anecdotal evidence suggestive of animal sentience should also fall within the scope of the precautionary principle. This would minimize potential suffering (as happened in the case of cephalopods) while further evidence is gathered.

The semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce is irreducibly triadic, positing that a sign mediates between the object that determines it and the interpretant that it determines. He eventually holds that each sign has two objects and three interpretants, standardizing quickly on immediate and dynamical for the objects but experimenting with a variety of names for the interpretants. The two most prominent terminologies are immediate/dynamical/final and emotional/energetic/logical, and scholars have long debated how they are related to each other. This paper seeks (...) to shed new light on the matter by reviewing the numerous manuscript drafts where Peirce develops the latter nomenclature while attempting to introduce his pragmatism to a general audience. It then goes on to examine an additional set of interpretants, intentional/effectual/communicational, and shows that the three different trichotomies can be understood as complementary, rather than redundant or conflicting. (shrink)

The mature materialism of Joseph Priestley's Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit of 1777 is based on three main arguments: that Newton's widely-accepted scientific methodology requires the rejection of the 'hypothesis' of the soul; that a dynamic theory of matter breaks down the active/passive dichotomy assumed by many dualists; and that interaction between matter and spirit is impossible. In Matter and Spirit it is the first two arguments which are given greatest prominence; but it is the third argument which first (...) brought Priestley to take materialism seriously. It was an argument which had persistently troubled him in his dualist years, but it was not until 1774 in the Examination that he 'first entertained a serious doubt of the truth of the vulgar hypothesis'. Underlying this fact is an episode of some complexity which this article examines. (shrink)

The conditions of transport and slaughter at the end of their lives are a major challenge to the welfare of agricultural animals. • End-of-life experiences should be of a greater ethical concern than others of similar intensity and duration, due to their position in the animal’s life. • End-of-life welfare can have both internal importance to the animals and external ethical importance to human decision-makers. • We should pay extra care to ensure that the conditions during transport and slaughter are (...) as positive as possible. (shrink)

Since antiquity, scholars have observed a structural tension within Plato’s Phaedrus. The dialogue demands order in every linguistic composition, yet it presents itself as a disordered composition. Accordingly, one of the key problems of the Phaedrus is determining which—if any—aspect of the dialogue can supply a unifying thread for the dialogue’s major themes (love, rhetoric, writing, myth, philosophy, etc.). My dissertation argues that “soul-leading” (psuchagōgia)—a rare and ambiguous term used to define the innate power of words—resolves the dialogue’s structural tension. (...) I clarify the conceptual and dramatic features of soul-leading by focusing on the dialogue’s uniquely prevalent use of the semantic network of “leading” and “following.” By continuing to foreground the language and drama of leading and following, I offer a new interpretation of the dialogue as a whole: the Phaedrus is Plato’s articulation of how the soul can be led into communion with reality. Chapter 1 discusses scholarly disputes about the unity of the Phaedrus and proposes that soul-leading adequately satisfies the criteria put forward for what would count as a unifying element. I argue that soul-leading unifies the dialogue both thematically and non-thematically; moreover, soul-leading is a theme capacious enough to account for the other principal contenders for unity put forward. Chapter 2 develops the ambiguous character of soul-leading by examining how the dialogue showcases dangerous forms thereof. Love and language are dangerous when they lead the soul toward goods which can never truly fulfill it. In order to clarify how love and language can mislead the soul, Socrates develops a set of accounts of how the soul is led, both internally and externally, in the three speeches on love. If the soul is to be led into communion with reality (the proper end of soul-leading), it must be led internally by the right part of the soul and externally by the right object of desire. Chapter 3 argues that all souls can, in principle, be harmonized and directed in the way that Chapter 2 requires. I show that Plato’s view of philosophy is neither elitist (i.e., some are intrinsically incapable of philosophy) nor naively essentialist. All can come into communion with reality because all are by nature equipped to do so. While Plato recognizes that there are forces which tend to prohibit one from exercising one’s capability of being rightly led, none of them are intrinsic to human nature. Chapter 4 argues that successful soul-leading require neither the leader nor the follower to be already well-disposed to what’s ultimate in order for the pair to come to a communion with what’s ultimate. Plato’s depiction of soul-leading love shows that love can itself promote the formation needed for both leader and follower to come into contact with reality. Love can do so because it is always already bound up reality in its responsiveness to beauty. Beauty itself calls the lover to itself by shining through the beautiful beloved, who acts as a reminder of transcendent Beauty. The lover mediates this same experience for the beloved. Each comes to desire the other as well as Beauty itself. Chapter 5 argues that the drama of the lovers’ formation mythically depicted in the Palinode (Chapter 4) is written into the drama of the dialogue as a whole. In the relationship between Socrates and Phaedrus, we see an enactment of love’s formative role. Likewise, in the relationship between Phaedrus and Lysias, we see an enactment of the dangerous soul-leading discussed in Chapter 2. My focus on leading and following also allows me to show the thematic significance of the drama’s setting. Chapter 6 articulates the metaphysical conditions under which one can be led into communion with reality. Transcendent Beauty invites us into communion with itself and makes possible our ascent by providing us with divine guides and images which can transport us from our ordinary experiences to the true beings. Beauty accomplishes its work—leading us in a “divine dance” where we follow the gods up to Beauty and back down to each other—through images. When we handle images of reality rightly, they lead our souls into communion with reality. Further, when we have come into communion, we’ll be inspired to be co-workers of Beauty’s soul-leading work. When we articulate reality in language, we create new images that can serve to lead others toward reality. (shrink)

Expressivists about normative thought and discourse traditionally deny that there are nondeflationary normative propositions. However, it has recently been suggested that expressivists might avoid a number of problems by providing a theory of normative propositions compatible with expressivism. This paper explores the prospects for developing an expressivist theory of propositions within the framework of cognitive act theories of propositions. First, I argue that the only extant expressivist theory of cognitive propositions—Michael Ridge's ‘ecumenical expressivist’ theory—fails to explain identity conditions for normative (...) propositions. Second, I argue that this failure motivates a general constraint—the ‘unity requirement’—that any expressivist theory of propositions must provide a unified nonrepresentational explanation of that in virtue of which propositional attitudes have the content that they have. Third, I argue that conceptual role accounts of content provide a promising framework in which to develop an expressivist theory of cognitive propositions. (shrink)

Algorithmic systems and predictive analytics play an increasingly important role in various aspects of modern life. Scholarship on the moral ramifications of such systems is in its early stages, and much of it focuses on bias and harm. This paper argues that in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems it is essential to understand the relation between algorithms, autonomy, and agency. We draw on several recent cases in criminal sentencing and K–12 teacher evaluation to outline four key ways in (...) which issues of agency, autonomy, and respect for persons can conflict with algorithmic decision-making. Three of these involve failures to treat individual agents with the respect they deserve. The fourth involves distancing oneself from a morally suspect action by attributing one’s decision to take that action to an algorithm, thereby laundering one’s agency. (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach was a formidable figure in early-twentieth-century philosophy of science. Educated in Germany, he was influential in establishing the so-called Berlin Circle, a companion group to the Vienna Circle founded by his colleague Rudolph Carnap. The movement they founded—usually known as "logical positivism," although it is more precisely known as "scientific philosophy" or "logical empiricism"—was a form of epistemology that privileged scientific over metaphysical truths. Reichenbach, like other young philosophers of the exact sciences of his generation, was deeply impressed (...) by the far-reaching changes in physics brought about by Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Reichenbach responded to scientific advances by doing fundamental work in space-time theories, in quantum mechanics, in statistical mechanics, and in the development of probability theory—making him the most important philosopher of physics in the first generation of logical empiricism. Forced from his academic position by the Nazi race laws in 1933, Reichenbach wrote _Experience and Prediction_ at the University of Istanbul, where had had fled, expressly to introduce logical positivism to English speakers. In the two decades following World War II, during the explosion of scientific advances in North America, logical positivism was the reigning theory of the philosophy of science and Reichenbach was at the peak of his career. But, inevitably, support for logical positivism began to wane as it became obvious that the justification of scientific theories could not be entirely resolved by relying on strictly formal, technical processes. The growth of the discipline of the history of philosophy of science, which has created an audience of scholars eager for seminal classics in scientific philosophy, and the evidence supporting a historicist paradigm within logical positivism are two important reasons to make _Experience and Prediction_ available once again. "Hans Reichenbach's_ Experience and Prediction_ is one of the most important books in twentieth-century philosophy of science. Its author was, along with Rudolf Carnap, one of the two principal ambassadors to North America of the exciting new European philosophical movement known here under the names 'Logical Positivism' and 'Scientific Philosophy.' In 1938, when the book was published, Reichenbach was an exile from his native Germany, teaching in Istanbul, Turkey, and about to emigrate to the United States to take up a prestigious position at UCLA. He wrote_ Experience and Prediction_ in English as his calling card to his new American colleagues. More than any other single book,_ Experience and Prediction_ set the agenda for the new discipline of the philosophy of science that was to emerge after World War II as, perhaps, the most exciting new area in North American philosophy. Many of the problems still at the focus of discussion were given their classic formulations in this book. Long out of print,_ Experience and Prediction_ appears here in a new edition accompanied by a splendid historical introduction by the noted young philosopher and historian of the philosophy of science, Alan Richardson. A jewel of a book may once again be appreciated in its proper setting." —Don A. Howard, University of Notre Dame. (shrink)

I critically analyze Kevin Elliott’s A Tapestry of Values in order to tease out his views on the nature and status of values or value judgments in the text. I show there is a tension in Elliott’s view that is closely connected to a major lacuna in the philosophical literature on values in science: the need for a better theory of values.

Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but his dissatisfaction with how others understood and appropriated it prompted him to rename his own doctrine “pragmaticism” and to compose several variants of his original maxim defining it, as well as numerous restatements and elaborations. This paper presents an extensive selection of such formulations, followed by analysis and commentary demonstrating that for Peirce the ultimate meaning of an intellectual concept is properly expressed as a conditional proposition about the deliberate, self-controlled (...) conduct of its interpreters, not the law-governed behavior of its object. (shrink)

One of the biggest problems in applications of animal welfare science is our ability to make comparisons between different individuals, particularly different species. Although welfare science provides methods for measuring the welfare of individual animals, there’s no established method for comparing measures between individuals. This problem occurs because of the underdetermination of the conclusions given the data, arising from two sources of variation that we cannot distinguish – variation in the underlying target variable (welfare experience) and in the relationship of (...) measured indicators to the target. In this paper I describe the similarity assumptions that underlie our current applications of interspecies comparisons and examine in which cases they are justified, as well as describing alternative methods we may use when they are not. In the end, all our available options for making interspecies comparisons are imperfect, and we need to make explicit context-specific decisions about which will be best for the task at hand while acknowledging their potential limitations. Future developments in our understanding of the biology of sentience will help strengthen our methods of making welfare comparisons. (shrink)

Pascal’s Wager involves expected utilities. In this chapter, we examine the Wager in light of two main features of expected utility theory: utilities and probabilities. We discuss infinite and finite utilities, and zero, infinitesimal, extremely low, imprecise, and undefined probabilities. These have all come up in recent literature regarding Pascal’s Wager. We consider the problems each creates and suggest prospects for the Wager in light of these problems.

In his magnum opus, David Hume asserts that a person is “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” (Treatise 252) Hume is clearly proud of his bold thesis, as is borne out by his categorical arguments and analyses on the self. Contributions like this will, in his opinion, help establish a new science of human nature, “which will not be inferior in certainty, (...) and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension.” (Treatise xix) Unfortunately for Hume, the bundle theory of the self subsequently elicits substantial criticism and hostility from numerous critics, both philosophical and non-philosophical. As confident as the young Scot is about the merits of his theory when he first proposes it, the sharp critical responses to his thought on the self ultimately compel him to withdraw his controversial views from public scrutiny. The irony is that the author of the bundle theory of the self himself acknowledges that his account of the self is seriously defective. In his appendix to the Treatise, Hume decries the labyrinth that his views on the self have driven him into. Five years in the making, Hume's Labyrinth: A Search for the Self explores in detail both Hume's views on the self and his critical reservations on an account of the self that would subsequently become highly influential in the philosophy of mind. -/- Central to Hume's Labyrinth is the suggestion that a careful analysis of the appendix to the Treatise throws an invaluable light on a number of elements fundamental to Hume's views on the self, not least of which is the role of Berkeley s views on language. While Hume often acknowledges the significance of Berkeley's philosophy in the Treatise, the argument here is that Berkeley's account of terms is the foundation of Hume's philosophy of the mind, with its contentious bundle theory of the self. And when this influence is assayed a new dimension of Hume's views on the self emerges. For now it appears that the bundle theory of the self is nothing but a heuristic device adopted by Hume to help further philosophical investigations into the mind. In short, it turns out that Hume is a pragmatist, intent on presenting an account of the self that researchers interested in the problems of human nature will find useful. (shrink)

David Rosenthal explains conscious mentality in terms of two independent, though complementary, theories—the higher-order thought (“HOT”) theory of consciousness and quality-space theory (“QST”) about mental qualities. It is natural to understand this combination of views as constituting a kind of representationalism about experience—that is, a version of the view that an experience’s conscious character is identical with certain of its representational properties. At times, however, Rosenthal seems to resist this characterization of his view. We explore here whether and to what (...) extent it makes sense to construe Rosenthal’s views as representationalist. Our goal is not merely terminological—discerning how best to use the expression ‘representationalism’. Rather, we argue that understanding Rosenthal’s account as a kind of representationalism permits us not only to make sense of broader debates within the philosophy of mind, but also to extend and clarify aspects of the view itself. (shrink)

The shape of a life hypothesis holds that the temporal sequence of good or bad times in a life can itself be a valuable feature of that life. This is generally thought to be incompatible with additivism about lifetime well-being, which holds that lifetime well-being is fully determined by momentary well-being. This paper examines Dale Dorsey’s recent argument that these views are in fact compatible. I argue that accepting the conjunction of these views requires stronger commitments than Dorsey recognizes. After (...) arguing that these commitments are problematic, I conclude that we should reject the compatibility claim. (shrink)

Hume warns his readers that his view on necessity will not be understood by his critics. As he sees it, his view is paradoxical: Necessity is "nothing but an internal impression of the mind, or a determination to carry our thought from one object to another". Recent critics find it difficult to accept Hume's view and have done their best to interpret it in their way. My paper is a critical investigation of the attempts by Pears, Baier and Stoud to (...) "rescue" Hume from his own folly. (shrink)

In the Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Philosophy leads Boethius through a series of obstacles that prevent him from finding happiness within his prison cell: the role that luck and misfortune play in our affairs, the false paths to happiness in comparison with the true journey, the problem of evil and the disproportion between people’s lives and eschatological deserts, and, finally, whether God’s providential order necessitates our outcomes or if we can choose freely to pursue the happy life. As the pair (...) discuss each problem, the same argumentative move and countermove play out. Boethius, forgetful of what he had learned from Philosophy long ago on account of his grief, blames the very nature of reality itself for each of the problems that beset him. He thinks that Fortune has taken from him all that is good and that God’s providence only extends to the non-human world. Philosophy, by contrast, argues in each case that the problem at hand is, in fact, no problem at all when we see reality rightly. In each case, Philosophy shows that it isn’t reality that’s to blame for the problem at hand but instead human ignorance’s misunderstanding of the true nature of reality. Boethius’s conversation with Philosophy showcases a puzzling feature of self-knowledge: on the one hand, too much attention to the world (e.g., fortune’s wiles) is the problem and self-inquiry (e.g., the nature of one’s desires) is the solution, but on the other hand, too much attention to one’s self (e.g., attention to passions and limitations) is the problem and turning toward recognizing the true structure of the world is the solution. Philosophy seems to indicate that both poles are true, and the task is to determine how best to clarify how. After showcasing the dialogue’s argumentative pattern, I argue that, in Boethius’s case, each of his problems, as well as his misery in general, are caused by his ignorance and self-deception. Boethius’s ignorance is, in this case, the more proximate cause of his misery, but underlying his ignorance is an act of self-deception that causes him to be ignorant in the first place. As Philosophy tells Boethius early on, he already knows what she plans to teach him (more accurately, of what she plans to remind him). Nevertheless, he has forgotten what he has known and, as a result, is more the architect of his own misery than is Fortune or any of the events that have befallen him. Wounded by grief, he has allowed his affective response to his misfortune to becloud his understanding. As Philosophy says, he is unhappy because he has “forgotten what he is.” He has forgotten himself precisely because of the way in which he has allowed his affective responses to rule in his soul. Hence, while the ultimate cure for Boethius’s misery will be a newly rediscovered knowledge that reality itself is providentially structured, Philosophy must begin by soothing Boethius’s passions and undoing the damage that they have wrought on his understanding of the world. Philosophy cannot turn Boethius’s intellect until she has first turned his passions (cf. Republic 518b-d), which, while still wrongly-turned and governing the soul, are liable to lead to tremendous intellectual mistakes precisely because they are blind to the true nature of reality (cf. Phaedrus 247c). I argue in conclusion that the Consolation is unified by the theme of self-deception as the primary cause of philosophical misery. Boethius is upset primarily because he has convinced himself that he is otherwise than he is and that reality is otherwise than it is rather than because of what has happened to him, contrary to his own view of things. Philosophy’s argumentative strategy suggests that self-deception can only be undone by attending to it as a problem besetting the whole soul, not just the intellectual part of the soul. We thus have good warrant for thinking that simply rational responses to ignorance will be fruitless when ignorance is caused by or accompanied by a moral failing. (shrink)

In the appendix to his Treatise Hume admits that his philosophy of mind is defective. Reluctantly he asserts that his thought has ensnared him in a labyrinth. Referring specifically to the section in the Treatise on personal identity and the self, the young Scot admits that he is “involv’d in such a labyrinth, that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent.” (Treatise 633) My paper is a critical investigation of (...) this characterization of Hume’s predicament. I argue (1) that at best Hume is facing a dilemma, not a labyrinth, and (2) that the dilemma can be solved, and (3) that the resolution to Hume’s problem can be found in his conception of intelligibility. (shrink)

In this article I briefly explore Saint Augustine’s semiotics. I show how Augustine’s early, bipartite semiotics matured into a tripartite model that maps on to the Holy Trinity, and how this shift allows the Holy Spirit to take on a more distinct role in Augustine’s understanding of meaning. Further, this shift in Augustine’s thinking may help inform contemporary debates in the Augustine literature over how closely Augustine hews to Plotinus’ cosmology.