Psychedelic experiences are often compared to “transformative experiences” due to their potential to change how people think and behave. This study empirically examines whether psychedelic experiences constitute transformative experiences. Given psychedelics’ prospective applications as treatments for mental health disorders, this study also explores neuroethical issues raised by the possibility of biomedically directed transformation—namely, consent and moral psychopharmacology. To achieve these aims, we used both inductive and deductive coding techniques to analyze transcripts from interviews with 26 participants in psychedelic retreats. Results (...) indicate that psychedelic experiences can constitute transformative experiences. Twenty participants reported experiences or insights that were seemingly inaccessible or impossible to attain if not for the psychoactive effects of psychedelics. All participants besides one reported some change in identity, values, beliefs, desires, and behavior—changes in behavior being the most common. Participants also reported feeling capable deciding to use psychedelics in part due to information seeking prior to their retreats. Finally, several participants reported an enhanced capacity for enacting changes in their lives. Our results underscore both the importance of subjective embodiment to transformation and the role of transformative agency in shaping outcomes of the psychedelic experience. We examine our results relative to neuroethical issues and advocate for centering the person in psychedelic research and neuroethical inquiry about psychedelics to avoid pitfalls associated with psychedelics’ potential as moral psychopharmacological agents. (shrink)

David Lewis has argued that “having an experience is the best way or perhaps the only way, of coming to know what that experience is like”; when an experience is of a sufficiently new sort, mere science lessons are not enough. Developing this Lewisian line, L.A. Paul has suggested that some experiences are epistemically transformative. Until an individual has such an experience it remains epistemically inaccessible to her. No amount of stories and theories and testimony from others can teach her (...) what it is like to have it, nor is she able to achieve this knowledge by way of imaginative projection. It’s this last claim that is the focus of this paper. In particular, I explore the case for the claim that some experiences are in principle imaginatively inaccessible to someone who has not undergone the experience itself or one relevantly similar. As I will suggest, this case is not as strong as is often thought. Close attention to the mechanisms of imagination, and in particular, to cases of skilled imaginers, suggests how techniques of imaginative scaffolding can sometimes be used to give us epistemic access to experiences we have not had, even ones that are radically different from any that we have had before. As a result, considerably fewer experiences remain imaginatively out of reach than proponents of transformative experience would have us believe. Experience may well be the best teacher, but this paper aims to show that imagination comes in a close second. (shrink)

In this open peer commentary, we categorize the possible “neuroscience in national security” definitions of misuse of science and identify which, if any, are uniquely presented by advances in neuroscience. To define misuse, we first define what we would consider appropriate use: the application of reasonably safe and effective technology, based on valid and reliable scientific research, to serve a legitimate end. This definition presents distinct opportunities for assessing misuse: misuse is the application of invalid or unreliable science, or is (...) the use of reliable scientific methods to serve illegitimate ends. Ultimately, we conclude that while national security is often a politicized issue, assessing the state of scientific progress should not be. (shrink)

Book Information: Thomasson, Amie L., Fiction and Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. xii, 175, $49.95.

Review of Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America – By Amy L. Fairchild, Ronald Bayer, and James Colgrove.

Depuis Gintis est un économiste senior et j’ai lu certains de ses livres précédents avec intérêt, je m’attendais à un peu plus de perspicacité dans le comportement. Malheureusement, il fait les mains mortes de la sélection de groupe et la phénoménologie dans les pièces maîtresses de ses théories du comportement, et cela invalide en grande partie le travail. Pire encore, puisqu’il montre un si mauvais jugement ici, il remet en question tout son travail précédent. La tentative de ressusciter la sélection (...) de groupe par ses amis à Harvard, Nowak et Wilson, il y a quelques années, c’était l’un des principaux scandales en biologie au cours de la dernière décennie, et j’ai raconté la triste histoire dans mon article 'Altruism, Jesus and the End of the World-how the Templeton Foundation bought a Harvard Professorship and attacked Evolution, Rationality and Civilization -- A review of E.O. Wilson 'The Social Conquest of Earth' (2012) et Nowak and Highfield 'SuperCooperators' (2012).' Contrairement à Nowak, Gintis ne semble pas être motivé par le fanatisme religieux, mais par le fort désir de générer une alternative aux sombres réalités de la nature humaine, facilitée par le manque (quasi universel) de compréhension de la biologie humaine fondamentale et le slateisme vierge des scientifiques comportementaux, d’autres universitaires et du grand public. Gintis attaque à juste titre (comme il l’a fait à maintes reprises) les économistes, les sociologues et d’autres scientifiques du comportement pour ne pas avoir un cadre cohérent pour décrire le comportement. Bien sûr, le cadre nécessaire pour comprendre le comportement est évolutif. Malheureusement, il ne parvient pas à en fournir un lui-même (selon ses nombreux critiques et je suis d’accord), et la tentative de greffer le cadavre pourri de la sélection de groupe sur toutes les théories économiques et psychologiques qu’il a généré dans ses décennies de travail, n’a fait qu’invalider tout son projet. Bien que Gintis fasse un vaillant effort pour comprendre et expliquer la génétique, comme Wilson et Nowak, il est loin d’être un expert, et comme eux, le calcul l’aveugle juste aux impossibilités biologiques et bien sûr c’est la norme en science. Comme Wittgenstein l’a noté sur la première page de la culture et de la valeur « Il n’y a pas de dénomination religieuse dans laquelle l’utilisation abusive des expressions métaphysiques a été responsable de tant de péchés qu’il l’a en mathématiques. » Il a toujours été clair que un gène qui provoque un comportement qui diminue sa propre fréquence ne peut pas persister, mais c’est le cœur de la notion de sélection de groupe. En outre, il a été bien connu et souvent démontré que la sélection de groupe réduit juste à la condition physique inclusive (sélection de parents), qui, comme Dawkins l’a noté, est juste un autre nom pour l’évolution par sélection naturelle. Comme Wilson, Gintis a travaillé dans cette arène pendant environ 50 ans et n’a toujours pas compris, mais après le scandale a éclaté, il ne m’a fallu que 3 jours pour trouver, lire et comprendre le travail professionnel le plus pertinent, comme détaillé dans mon article. Il est ahurissant de se rendre compte que Gintis et Wilson n’ont pas été en mesure d’y parvenir en près d’un demi-siècle. Je discute des erreurs de sélection de groupe et de phénoménologie qui sont la norme dans le milieu universitaire comme des cas spéciaux de l’échec quasi universel de comprendre la nature humaine qui détruisent l’Amérique et le monde. Ceux qui souhaitent un cadre complet à jour pour le comportement humain de la vue moderne de deux systemes peuvent consulter mon livre 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Ceux qui s’intéressent à plus de mes écrits peuvent voir «Talking Monkeys --Philosophie, Psychologie, Science, Religion et Politique sur une planète condamnée --Articles et revues 2006-2019 3e ed (2019) et Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2020) et autres. (shrink)

S'étonnant qu'un simple physicien sache traiter des rapports de la physique et de la métaphysique, Edmond Domet de Vorges s'était demandé si Pierre Duhem n'avait pas bénéficié de l'aide de quelque théologien dans l'élaboration de son articulation de ces deux disci­plines. Faisant suite à cette question très perti­nente, cet article liste d'abord les intellectuels catholiques qui étaient en relation avec Duhem avant la publication, en 1893, de son article Physique et métaphysique et qui auraient effec­tivement pu l'aider à concevoir une (...) telle articulation. Se con­sacrant ensuite spécifiquement à l'un d'entre eux, à savoir Maurice Blondel, il étudie les similitudes et divergences existant entre les pensées du physicien bordelais et du philosophe d'Aix pour conclure que Blondel ne peut pas être celui qui aurait inspiré Duhem. À l'appui de cette conclusion, il fait notamment état d'une lettre inédite adressée par Duhem à Ambroise Gar­deil et dans laquelle celui-ci porte un jugement sévère à l'en­droit de son «pauvre ami» Blondel. ––– One might be surprised to find that a simple physician could be able explain with clarity the subtle relationship between physics and metaphysics. It is with this question in mind that Edmond Domet de Vorges asked himself if it might not have been with the aid of theologians that Pierre Duhem was able to find and express his subtle articulation between the two disciplines. Following in the footsteps of this pertinent question, this article begins by listing the catholic intellectuals who were acquain­tances of Pierre Duhem before the publication in 1893 of “Physique et métaphysique”, who may have been able to help him arrive at the relationship between the two sciences expressed in his publication. This line of questioning is followed by a specific study of one of these men, namely Maurice Blondel. The similarities and differences in the opinions of the physician from Bordeaux and the philosopher from Aix are explored with the resulting conclusion that Blondel could not have been he who inspired Duhem. This conclusion can be confirmed by a previously unpublished letter from Duhem to Ambroise Gardeil which contains a very severe judgement with regards to his “poor friend” Blondel. (shrink)

L'isolement social (désocialisation) implique une absence totale ou presque totale de contact entre un individu et la société. Cela peut être un problème pour les personnes de tout âge, bien que les symptômes puissent différer selon le groupe d'âge. L'isolement social peut inclure le fait de rester à la maison pendant de longues périodes et le manque de communication face à face avec la famille, les connaissances, les amis ou les collègues. L'isolement social peut conduire à des sentiments de solitude, (...) de peur des autres ou de mauvaise estime de soi. Nous ne pouvons pas exister indépendamment de nos relations avec les autres. Notre propre humanité est réduite lorsque les autres sont traités sans dignité et sans respect. Dans le même temps, causer du tort à une autre personne peut également affecter la perception de soi-même. Il s'avère que l'humanité d'une personne dépend de l'humanité de ceux qui l'entourent. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14145.79203. (shrink)

To solve the ship of Theseus puzzle, you need several keys. First of all, we need to fix the application condition of the physical object—it is a vehicle or an object memory; then the identification criterion—the ship was named The Ship of Theseus when he boarded it; and finally the re-application criterion—a ship (or an object memory) when it is the same ship (or object memory) as before. The degree of change from the previous and reference states must be given. (...) The identity of physical objects over time can be expressed by the uniformity of the time slices of the persisting objects. Uniformity exists from the point of view that these instances are temporal cross-sections of the same object; they may differ in other characteristics; there are no general a priori principles independent of practice. The definition of identity is decided by the community of language users. The two states of an object are the same as long as the rate of change of state remains below the threshold value relative to the reference. The two states of an object are similar as long as the change is below a threshold value with respect to each other. Similarity can be described by a tolerance relationship. The mathematical relation describing uniformity is formally an equivalence relation, just as the relation describing identity is an equivalence relation. A physical object is identical to an equivalence class when we speak of the object's identity over time and identical or not identical to an element of the equivalence class when we speak of the object having changed or ceased to exist. (shrink)

On compte, parmi les nombreux ennemis de Kevin Mulligan, une foule de personnes bigarrées et (selon notre professeur) profondément vicieuses : les philosophes continentaux, les pharisiens, les amis de l’Europe, des Droits de l’Homme, du politiquement correct, des lettres, des études genres et bien sûr, les gauchistes. On peut faire remonter le terme "gauchiste" à Lénine (1920) qui en usait pour designer cette gauche (communiste) qui, pour rester fidèle à son idéologie, refusait de participer aux élections et, par conséquent, était (...) condamnée à rester éternellement un groupuscule. Pour Vladimir Illich, le vice des gauchistes est prudentiel : parce qu’ils sont focalisés sur leur idéologie, les gauchistes n’agissent pas pour prendre le pouvoir. Ce vice est doublé d’une faute épistémique : en s’arc-boutant (comme des enfants) sur leurs principes – quitte à ne jamais voir leurs idées aboutir –, les gauchistes sont bêtes. Le reproche de Lénine n’est pas très éloigné de celui que l’on fait habituellement à la gauche : elle a de grands rêves irréalisables qu’elle ne cherche jamais à concrétiser – ou de manière magistralement infantile. Cette vision du gauchiste comme un brave hippie un peu benêt sous-estime largement, à mon sens, les vices instanciés par les personnes atteintes de cette maladie politique. -/- Dans cet article, je vous propose d’explorer avec moi tous les vices du gauchisme en regardant, pour commencer, (I) ce que sont la gauche et la droite, puis en avançant pas à pas, (II) une définition en conditions nécessaires et suffisantes du gauchisme. Il conviendra également de ne pas oublier son opposé, tout aussi dangereux (et trop méconnu), le droitisme. C’est pourquoi, une fois que nous aurons caractérisé le gauchisme, je proposerai (III) une définition du droitisme en détaillant ses vices les plus inavouables. Nous pourrons alors (IV) identifier ce qu’est, en général, cette maladie infantile de la politique, suite à quoi (V) je vous prescrirai un vaccin pour vous en prémunir. Avant de débuter, il convient de préciser que si nous parlons ici de gauchisme et de droitisme, nous ne faisons aucune assomption concernant la gauche et la droite ; une personne de gauche n’est pas nécessairement un gauchiste ; de même, tout homme ou femme de droite qui se respecte cherche à tout prix à éviter les droitistes (et vice versa). (shrink)

Quand nous lisons un livre passionnant, quand nous passons une bonne soirée avec des amis ou quand nous dégustons des mets raffinés, nous nous trouvons parfois dans un état de plaisir. La notion de plaisir traverse de nombreux champs de recherche en philosophie. Une question centrale reste sans doute celle de sa nature : qu’est-ce donc que le plaisir ? Pour y répondre, une comparaison avec d'autres entités mentales plus familières se révèle fructueuse, et permet de mettre à jour ses (...) spécificités propres. La définition du plaisir doit rendre compte de sa diversité, puisque le plaisir semble toujours se présenter sous des formes multiples : qu'y a-t-il de commun parmi toutes les instances de plaisir ? Par ailleurs, le plaisir semble souvent avoir un objet, ce qui soulève une série de questions : Quel type de chose peut être un objet du plaisir ? Dans quelle mesure l'objet du plaisir constitue-t-il le plaisir lui-même ? Plus généralement, quelle est la nature du lien entre le plaisir et son objet ? Ces questions seront abordées dans la Section 1. Au-delà de ces questions définitionnelles, des questions plus spécifiques se posent concernant la manière dont on peut rendre compte du plaisir dans une optique naturaliste : dans quelle mesure le plaisir est-il une entité qui s’intègre dans une image unifiée du monde dans lequel on vit ? Puisqu'il est généralement entendu que la science manifeste cette ambition unificatrice, comment peut-on rendre compte du plaisir de manière scientifique ? La Section 2 est dédiée à ces questions. Une des principales difficultés rencontrées est que le plaisir ne semble pas neutre. Il paraît plutôt avoir une valeur affective positive, dans un sens qui reste bien sûr à éclaircir. Cette valeur se manifeste d'abord dans le fait que le plaisir est susceptible d'orienter nos actions et réactions : nous sommes typiquement attirés par le plaisir, de la même manière que nous cherchons à éviter la souffrance. C'est l'aspect motivationnel du plaisir. La valeur affective du plaisir semble cependant aller au-delà de son rôle motivationnel, pour donner lieu à des caractéristiques normatives. Non seulement le plaisir motive certaines actions, mais il les justifierait aussi, en fournissant des raisons d'agir qui semblent valides. Plus encore, le plaisir semble bon pour nous, ou nous faire du bien. Il semble donc avoir une valeur prudentielle, en ce qu'il contribuerait à rendre notre vie meilleure. Cela pourrait alors justifier son intégration dans le domaine de la morale. Ces considérations seront l’objet de la Section 3. (shrink)

This special issue of HYPATIA: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy entitled "Women, Art, and Aesthetics" highlights the expanded range of topics at center stage in feminist philosophical inquiry to date (2003): recontextualizing women artists (essays by Patricia Locke, Eleanor Heartney, and Michelle Meagher), bodies and beauty (Ann J. Cahill, Sheila Lintott, Janell Hobson, Richard Shusterman, Joanna Frueh), art, ethics, politics, law (A. W. Eaton, Amy Mullin, L. Ryan Musgrave, Teresa Winterhalter), and review essays by Estella Lauter and Flo Leibowitz. Annotated (...) bibliography by Joshua Shaw. (shrink)

This is an anthology that is coming out in Farsi. -/- Table of Contents (in English): -/- 1. (2021). “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy.” The Cambridge Kant Lexicon, ed. Julian Wuerth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 691-695. 2. (2010). “Kant and Lying to the Murderer at the Door . . . One More Time: Kant’s Legal Philosophy and Lies to Murderers and Nazis.” The Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 41(4), pp. 403-421. 3. (2006). “Kant and Dependency Relations: (...) Kant on the State’s Right to Redistribute Resources to Protect the Rights of Dependents.” Dialogue – Canadian Philosophical Review, Vol. 45, pp. 257-284. 4. (2011). “A Kantian Conception of Global Justice.” Review of International Studies, Vol. 37(5), pp. 2043-2057. 5. (2010). “Kant’s Non-Absolutist Conception of Political Legitimacy: How Public Right ‘Concludes’ Private Right in ‘The Doctrine of Right.’”Kant-Studien, Vol. 3, pp. 331-351. 6. (2008). “Kant’s Non-Voluntarist Conception of Political Obligations: Why Justice Is Impossible in the State of Nature.” Kantian Review, Vol. 13(2), pp. 1-45. 7. (2021). “Kant and Arendt on Barbaric and Totalitarian Evil.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 121 (2), pp. 221-248. 8. (2020). “Kantian Care.” Caring for Liberalism: Dependency and Political Theory, ed. Asha L. Bhandary and Amy Baehr, New York: Routledge, pp. 50-74. 9. (2020). “Kant and Moral Responsibility for Animals.” Kant & Animals, ed. Lucy Allais and John Callanan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 157-175. -/- Thanks to all the original publishers of these articles for permitting them to be reprinted in translation here. Photo cover: pluspointsphere(.com). (shrink)

● Sergio Cremaschi, The non-existing Island. I discuss the way in which the cleavage between the Continental and the Anglo-American philosophies originated, the (self-)images of both philosophical worlds, the converging rediscoveries from the Seventies, as well as recent ecumenic or anti-ecumenic strategies. I argue that pragmatism provides an important counter-instance to both the familiar self-images and to the fashionable ecumenic or anti-ecumenic strategies. My conclusions are: (i) the only place where Continental philosophy exists (as Euro-Communism one decade ago) is America; (...) (ii) less obviously, also analytic philosophy does not exist, or does no more exist as a current or a paradigm; what does exist is, on the one hand, philosophy of language and, on the other, philosophy of mind, that is, two disciplines; (iii) the dissolution of analytic philosophy as a school has been extremely fruitful, precisely in so far as it has left room for disciplines and research programmes; (iv) what is left, of the Anglo-American/Continental cleavage is primarily differences in styles, depending partly on intellectual traditions, partly owing to sociology, history, institutional frameworks; these differences should not be blurred by rash ecumenism; besides, theoretical differences are alive as ever, but within both camps; finally, there is indeed a lag (not a difference) in the appropriation of intellectual techniques by most schools of 'Continental' philosophy, and this should be overcome through appropriation of what the best 'analytic' philosophers have produced. ● Michael Strauss, Language and sense-perception: an aspect of analytic philosophy. To test an assertion about one fact by comparing it with perceived reality seems quite unproblematic. But the very possibility of such a procedure is incompatible with the intellectualistic basis of logical positivism and atomism (as it is for example to be found in Russell's Analysis of Mind). According to the intellectualistic approach pure sensation is meaningless. Sensation receives its meaning and order from the intellect through interpretation, which is performed with the help of linguistic tools, i.e. words and sentences. Before being interpreted, sensation is not a picture or a representation, it is neither true nor false, neither an illusion nor knowledge; it does not tell us anything; it is a lifeless and order-less matter. But how can a thought (or a proposition) be compared with such a lifeless matter? This difficulty confronts the intellectualist, if on the one hand he admits the necessity of comparing thought with sense-perception, and on the other hand presupposes that we possess only intellectual and no immediate perceptual understanding of what we see and hear. In this paper I give a critical exposition of three attempts, made by Russell, Neurath and Wittgenstein, to solve this problem. The first attempt adheres to strict conventionalism, the second tends to naturalism and the third leads to an amended, very moderate version of conventionalism. This amended conventionalism looks at sense impressions as being a peculiar language, which includes primary symbols, i.e. symbols not founded on convention and not being in need of interpretation. ● Ernst Tugendhat, Phenomenology and language analysis. The paper, first published in German in 1970, by which Tugendhat gave a start to the German rediscovery of analytic philosophy. The author stages a confrontation between phenomenology and language analysis. He argues that language analysis does not differ from phenomenology as far as the topics dealt with are concerned; instead, both currents are quite different in method. The author argues that language-analytic philosophy does not simply lay out of the mainstream of transcendental philosophy, but that instead it challenges this tradition on the very level of foundations. The author criticizes the linguistic-analytic approach centred on the subject as well as any object-centred approach, while proposing inter-subjective understanding through language as the new universal framework. This is, when construed in so general terms, the same program of hermeneutics, though in a more basic version. ● Jürgen Habermas, Language game, intention and meaning. On a few suggestions by Sellars and Wittgenstein. The paper, first published in German in 1975, in which Habermas announces his own linguistic turn through a discovery of speech acts. In this essay the author wants to work out a categorical framework for a communicative theory of society; he takes Wittgenstein's concept of language game as a Leitfade and, besides, he takes advantage also of Wilfried Sellars's quasi-transcendental account of the genesis of intentionality. His goal is to single out the problems connected with a theory of consciousness oriented in a logical-linguistic sense. ● Zvie Bar-On, Isomorphism of speech acts and intentional states. This essay presents the problem of the formal relationship between speech acts and intentional states as an essential part of the perennial philosophical question of the relation between language and thought. I attempt to show how this problem had been dealt with by two prominent philosophers of different camps in our century, Edmund Husserl and John Searle. Both of them wrote extensively about the theory of intentionality. I point out an interesting, as it were unintended, continuity of their work on that theory. Searle started where Husserl left off 80 years earlier. Their meeting point could be used as the first clue in our search. They both adopted in effect the same distinction between two basic aspects of the intentional experience: its content or matter, and its quality or mode. Husserl did not yet have the concept of a speech act as contradistinguished from an intentional state. The working hypothesis, however, which he suggested, could be used as a second clue for the further elaboration of the theory. The relationship of the two levels, the mental and the linguistic, which remained for Husserl in the background only, became the cornerstone of Searle' s inquiry. He employed the speech act as the model and analysed the intentional experience by means of the conceptual apparatus of his own theory of speech acts. This procedure enabled him to mark out a number of parallelisms and correlations between the two levels. This procedure explains the phenomenon of the partial isomorphism of speech acts and intentional states. ● Roberta de Monticelli, Ontology. A dialogue among the linguistic philosopher, the naturalist, and the phenomenological philosopher. This paper proposes a comparison between two main ways of conceiving the role and scope of that fundamental part of philosophy (or of "first" philosophy) which is traditionally called "ontology". One way, originated within the analytic tradition, consists of two main streams, namely philosophy of language and (contemporary) philosophy of mind, the former yielding "reduced ontology" and the latter "neo-Aristotelian ontology". The other way of conceiving ontology is exemplified by "phenomenological ontology" (more precisely, the Husserlian, not the Heideggerian version). Ontology as a theory of reference ("reduced" ontology, or ontology as depending on semantics) is presented and justified on the basis of some classical thesis of traditional philosophy of language (from Frege to Quine). "Reduced ontology" is shown to be identifiable with one level of a traditional, Aristotelian ontology, namely the one which corresponds to one of the four "senses of being" listed in Aristotle's Metaphysics: "being" as "being true". This identification is justified on the basis of Franz Brentano's "rules for translation" of the Aristotelian table of judgements in terms of (positive and negative) existential judgments such as are easily translatable into sentences of first order predicate logic. The second part of the paper is concerned with "neo-Aristotelian ontology", i.e. with naturalism and physicalism as the main ontological options underlying most of contemporary discussion in the philosophy of mind. The qualification of such options as "neo-Aristotelian" is justified; the relationships between "neo-Aristotelian ontology" and "reduced ontology" are discussed. In the third part the fundamental tenet of "phenomenological ontology" is identified by the thesis that a logical theory of existence and being does capture a sense of "existing" and "being" which, even though not the basic one, is grounded in the basic one. An attempt is done of further clarifying this "more basic" sense of "being". An argument making use of this supposedly "more basic" sense is advanced in favour of a "phenomenological ontology". ● Kuno Lorenz, Analytic Roots in Dialogic Constructivism. Both in the Vienna Circle ad in Russell's early philosophy the division of knowledge into two kinds (or two levels), perceptual and conceptual, plays a vital role. Constructivism in philosophy, in trying to provide a pragmatic foundation - a knowing-how - to perceptual as well as conceptual competences, discovered that this is dependent on semiotic tools. Therefore, the "principle of method" had to be amended by the "principle of dialogue". Analytic philosophy being an heir of classical empiricism, conceptually grasping the "given", and constructive philosophy being an heir of classical rationalism, perceptually providing the "constructed", merge into dialogical constructivism, a contemporary development of ideas derived especially from the works of Charles S. Peirce (his pragmatic maxim as a means of giving meaning to signs) and of Ludwig Wittgenstein (his language games as tools of comparison for understanding ways of life). 7. Albrecht Wellmer, "Autonomy of meaning" and "principle of charity" from the viewpoint of the pragmatics of language. In this essay I present an interpretation of the principle of the autonomy of meaning and of the principle of charity, the two main principles of Davidson's semantic view of truth, showing how both principles may fit in a perspective dictated by the pragmatics of language. I argue that (I) the principle of the autonomy of meaning may be thoroughly reformulated in terms of the pragmatics of language, (ii) the principle of charity needs a supplement in terms of pragmatics of language in order to become really enlightening as a principle of interpretation. Besides, I argue that: (i) on the one hand, the fundamental thesis of Habermas on the pragmatic theory of meaning ("we understand a speech act when we know what makes it admissible") is correlated with the seemingly intentionalist thesis according to which we understand a speech act when we know what a speaker means; (ii) on the other hand, to say that the meaning competence of a competent speaker is basically a competence about a potential of reasons (or also of possible justifications) which is inherently connected with the meaning of statements, or with their use in utterances. ● Rüdiger Bubner, The convergence of analytic and hermeneutic philosophy This paper argues that the analytic philosophy does not exist, at least as understood by its original programs. Differences in the analytic camp have always been bigger than they were believed to be. Now these differences are coming to the fore thanks to a process of dissolution of dogmatism. Philosophical analysis is led by its own inner logic towards questions that may be fairly qualified as hermeneutic. Recent developments in analytic philosophy, e.g. Davidson, seem to indicate a growing convergence of themes between philosophical analysis and hermeneutics; thus, the familiar opposition of Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy might soon belong to history. The fact of an ongoing appropriation of analytical techniques by present-day German philosophers may provide a basis for a powerful argument for the unity of philosophizing, beyond its strained images privileging one technique of thinking and rejecting the remainder. Actual philosophical practice should take the dialogue between the two camps more seriously; in fact, the processes described so far are no danger to philosophical work. They may be a danger for parochial approaches to philosophizing; indeed, contrary to what happens in the natural sciences, Thomas Kuhn's "normal science" developing within the framework of one fixed paradigm is not typical for philosophical thinking. And in philosophy innovating revolutions are symptoms more of vitality than of crisis. ● Karl-Otto Apel, The impact of analytic philosophy on my intellectual biography. In my paper I try to reconstruct the history of my Auseinandersetzung mit - as I called it - "language-analytical" philosophy (including even Peircean semiotics) since the late Fifties. The heuristics of my study was predetermined by two main motives of my beginnings: the hermeneutic turn of phenomenology and the transformation of "transcendental philosophy" in the light of the "language a priori". Thus, I took issue with the early and the later Wittgenstein, logical positivism, and post-Wittgensteinian and post-empiricist philosophy of science (i.e. G.H. von Wright and the renewal of the "explanation vs understanding controversy" as well as the debate between Th. Kuhn and Popper/Lakatos); besides, with speech act theory and the debate about "transcendental arguments" since Strawson. The "pragmatic turn", started already by C.L. Morris and the later Carnap, led me to study also the relationship between Wittgensteinian "use" theory of meaning and of truth. This resulted on my side in something like a program of "transcendental semiotics", i.e. "transcendental pragmatics" and "transcendental hermeneutics". ● Ben-Ami Scharfstein, A doubt on both their houses: the blindness to non-western philosophies. The burden of my criticism is that contemporary European philosophers of all kinds have continued to think as if there were no true philosophy but that of the West. For the most part, the existentialists have been oblivious of their Eastern congeners; the hermeneuticians have yet to stretch their horizons beyond the most familiar ones; and the analysts remain unaware of the analyses and linguistic sensitivities of the ancient non-European philosophers. Briefly, ignorance still blinds almost all contemporary Western philosophers to the rich, variegated philosophical traditions outside of their familiar orbit. Both Continental and Anglo-Americans have lost the breadth of view that once characterized such thinkers as Herder and the Humboldts. The blindness that has resulted is not simply that of individual Western philosophers but of our whole, still parochial philosophical culture. (shrink)

On définit souvent la philosophie comme l’« amour de la sagesse ». En grec, le terme « philosophe » qui signifie « ami de la sa- gesse » (philós= ami, sophía= sagesse) se rapporte à une personne qui aspire à une connaissance globale des choses. (1) Mais que sait-on vraiment de la philosophie? Comment procède-t-elle, à quels thèmes s‘intéresse-t-elle?

Work in philosophy of mind often engages in descriptive phenomenology, i.e., in attempts to characterize the phenomenal character of our experience. Nagel’s famous discussion of what it’s like to be a bat demonstrates the difficulty of this enterprise (1974). But while Nagel located the difficulty in our absence of an objective vocabulary for describing experience, I argue that the problem runs deeper than that: we also lack an adequate subjective vocabulary for describing phenomenology. We struggle to describe our own phenomenal (...) states in terms we ourselves find adequately expressive. This paper aims to flesh out why our phenomenological vocabulary is so impoverished – what I call the impoverishment problem. As I suggest, this problem has both practical and philosophical import. After fleshing out the problem in more detail, I draw some suggestive morals from the discussion in an effort to point the way forward towards a solution. (shrink)

Imagination has been assigned an important explanatory role in a multitude of philosophical contexts. This paper examines four such contexts: mindreading, pretense, our engagement with fiction, and modal epistemology. Close attention to each of these contexts suggests that the mental activity of imagining is considerably more heterogeneous than previously realized. In short, no single mental activity can do all the explanatory work that has been assigned to imagining.

The puzzle of imaginative desire arises from the difficulty of accounting for the surprising behaviour of desire in imaginative activities such as our engagement with fiction and our games of pretend. Several philosophers have recently attempted to solve this puzzle by introducing a class of novel mental states—what they call desire-like imaginings or i-desires. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the i-desire solution to the puzzle of imaginative desire. The introduction of i-desires is both ontologically profligate and (...) unnecessary, and, most importantly, fails to make sense of what we are doing in the imaginative contexts in question. (shrink)

Underlying much current work in philosophy of imagination is the assumption that imagination is a skill. This assumption seems to entail not only that facility with imagining will vary from one person to another, but also that people can improve their own imaginative capacities and learn to be better imaginers. This paper takes up this issue. After showing why this is properly understood as a philosophical question, I discuss what it means to say that one imagining is better than another (...) and then discuss the kinds of imagination training and techniques that might be employed in an effort to get better at imagining. The discussion of these techniques draws insight from consideration of other skills-based activities, as well as from consideration of the creation of art and our engagement with literature and poetry. Over the course of this discussion, we also gain further insight into the nature of imagination. (shrink)

We often talk of people as being more or less imaginative than one another – as being better or worse at imagining – and we also compare various feats of imagination to one another in terms of how easy or hard they are. Facts such as these might be taken to suggest that imagination is often implicitly understood as a skill. This implicit understanding, however, has rarely (if ever) been made explicit in the philosophical literature. Such is the task of (...) this chapter. I first attempt to flesh out several conditions for an activity to count as a skill. I then attempt to show how imagination can meet such conditions. The chapter concludes with an attempt to answer various worries that might be raised to the claim that imagination should be thought of as a skill. (shrink)

Can one have imaginative access to experiential perspectives vastly different from one’s own? Can one successfully imagine what it’s like to live a life very different from one’s own? These questions are particularly pressing in contemporary society as we try to bridge racial, ethnic, and gender divides. Yet philosophers have often expressed considerable pessimism in this regard. It is often thought that the gulf between vastly different experiential perspectives cannot be bridged. This chapter explores the case for this pessimism. Though (...) the case is often less implicit, the chapter identifies two different arguments that can be found in the literature: the Epistemic Arrogance argument and the Too Big a Gulf argument. Both arguments are found to be considerably weaker than is usually thought. But even if the case for pessimism is unsuccessful, discussion of that case suggests the importance of treading carefully in taking up imaginative explorations of different experiential perspectives. The chapter thus concludes with a cautionary note in this regard. (shrink)

What is consciousness and why is it so philosophically and scientifically puzzling? For many years philosophers approached this question assuming a standard physicalist framework on which consciousness can be explained by contemporary physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. This book is a debate between two philosophers who are united in their rejection of this kind of "standard" physicalism - but who differ sharply in what lesson to draw from this. Amy Kind defends dualism 2.0, a thoroughly modern version of dualism (...) (the theory that there are two fundamentally different kinds of things in the world: those that are physical and those that are mental) decoupled from any religious or non-scientific connotations. Daniel Stoljar defends non-standard physicalism, a kind of physicalism different from both the standard version and dualism 2.0. The book presents a cutting-edge assessment of the philosophy of consciousness and provides a glimpse at what the future study of this area might bring. (shrink)

According to representationalism, the phenomenal character of a mental state reduces to its intentional content. Although representationalism seems plausible with respect to ordinary perceptual states, it seems considerably less plausible for states like moods. Here the problem for representationalism arises largely because moods seem to lack intentional content altogether. In this paper, I explore several possible options for identifying the intentional content of moods and suggest that none of them is wholly satisfactory. Importantly, however, I go on to argue that (...) the plausibility of representationalism should not be seen to rest on the question of whether moods have intentional content but rather on the question of whether the intentional content of moods, were there any, would be sufficient to determine their phenomenal character. As I argue, even if we concede to the representationalist that moods have intentional content, their phenomenal character outstrips their intentional content; thus, the representationalist reduction cannot succeed. Ultimately, then, I conclude that moods do indeed pose a serious objection to the representationalist theory. (shrink)

In this short essay I connect Perry Zurn’s work on curiosity with trans history, activism, and art to bridge trans curiosity with eco curiosity in the form of transecological curiosity. I discuss examples from trans art, literature, music, and ecopoetics.

The relationship between the phenomenology of imagination and the phenomenology of memory is an interestingly complicated one. On the one hand, there seem to be important similarities between the two, and there are even occasions in which we mistake an imagining for a memory or vice versa. On the other hand, there seem to be important differences between the two, and we can typically tell them apart. This paper explores various attempts to delineate a phenomenological marker differentiating imagination and memory, (...) with a special focus on two proposed markers that have generated considerable philosophical discussion: the feeling of pastness and the feeling of familiarity. As we will find, neither of them proves to be up to the task at hand. However, by way of a deeper exploration of the feeling of familiarity, we are able to tease out some important morals for efforts to differentiate imagination and memory on phenomenological grounds and, more generally, for efforts to engage in a descriptive phenomenological enterprise. (shrink)

In the same way that some people are better jugglers than others, some people are better imaginers than others. But while it might be obvious what someone can do if they want to improve their juggling skills, it’s less obvious what someone can do to improve their imaginative skills. This chapter explores this issue and argues that engagement with fiction can play a key role in the development of one’s imaginative skills. The chapter proceeds in three parts. First, using work (...) by Martha Nussbaum as a launching pad, I develop arguments to show how literature helps to cultivate our capacities for one type of imagination in particular, namely, empathetic imagination. Second, I consider the empirical case for these claims. Third, I show how we can extend the argument connecting fiction and empathetic imagination to imagination more broadly. Not only can fiction provide us with practice with respect to empathetic imagination, but it can also provide us with practice with respect to other kinds of imagination as well. (shrink)

In this essay, the focus is not on what imagination is but rather on what it is like. Rather than exploring the various accounts of imagination on offer in the philosophical literature, we will instead be exploring the various accounts of imaginative experience on offer in that literature. In particular, our focus in what follows will be on three different sorts of accounts that have played an especially prominent role in philosophical thinking about these issues: the impoverishment view (often associated (...) with Hume), the will-dependence view (often associated with Wittgenstein), and the nonexistence view (often associated with Sartre). While there are important insights to be drawn from each of these views, each seems to me to be importantly flawed in various ways. As I will suggest, close examination reveals that none of them gives us an adequate account of the character of imaginative experience. Ultimately, in the final section of this paper, I briefly explore what their failure teaches us about the project of giving an account of imaginative experience. (shrink)

How are we to understand the phenomenology of imagining? Attempts to answer this question often invoke descriptors concerning the “vivacity” or “vividness” of our imaginative states. Not only are particular imaginings often phenomenologically compared and contrasted with other imaginings on grounds of how vivid they are, but such imaginings are also often compared and contrasted with perceptions and memories on similar grounds. Yet however natural it may be to use “vividness” and cognate terms in discussions of imagination, it does not (...) take much reflection to see that these terms are ill understood. In this paper, I review both some relevant empirical literature as well as the philosophical literature attempt to get a handle on what it could mean, in an imaginative context, to talk of vividness. As I suggest, this notion ultimately proves to be so problematic as to be philosophically untenable. (shrink)

Our ordinary conception of imagination takes it to be essentially a conscious phenomenon, and traditionally that’s how it had been treated in the philosophical literature. In fact, this claim had often been taken to be so obvious as not to need any argumentative support. But lately in the philosophical literature on imagination we see increasing support for the view that imagining need not occur consciously. In this paper, I examine the case for unconscious imagination. I’ll consider four different arguments that (...) we can find in the recent literature—three of which are based on cases and one that is based on considerations relating to action guidance. To my mind, none of these arguments is successful. I conclude that the case for postulating unconscious imagining has not yet been well motivated. (shrink)

The effective altruism movement (EA) is one of the most influential philosophically savvy movements to emerge in recent years. Effective Altruism has historically been dedicated to finding out what charitable giving is the most overall-effective, that is, the most effective at promoting or maximizing the impartial good. But some members of EA want the movement to be more inclusive, allowing its members to give in the way that most effectively promotes their values, even when doing so isn’t overall-effective. When we (...) examine what it means to give according to one’s values, I argue, we will see that this is both inconsistent with what EA is like now and inconsistent with its central philosophical commitment to an objective standard that can be used to critically analyze one’s giving. While EA is not merely synonymous with act utilitarianism, it cannot be much more inclusive than it is right now. (shrink)

What is the best way to make sustained societal progress over time? Non-ideal theory done on its own faces the problem of second best, but ideal theory seems unable to cope with disagreement about how to make progress. If ideal theory gives up its claims to completeness, then we can use the method of incompletely theorized agreements to make progress over time.

According to representationalism, the qualitative character of our phenomenal mental states supervenes on the intentional content of such states. Strong representationalism makes a further claim: the qualitative character of our phenomenal mental states _consists in_ the intentional content of such states. Although strong representationalism has greatly increased in popularity over the last decade, I find the view deeply implausible. In what follows, I will attempt to argue against strong representationalism by a two-step argument. First, I suggest that strong representationalism must (...) be _unrestricted_ in order to serve as an adequate theory of qualia, i.e., it must apply to all qualitative mental states. Second, I present considerations to show that an unrestricted form of strong representationalism is problematic. (shrink)

This essay develops a concept of curiotization, through which people are reduced to a curio for the fascination of others. I argue that trans people as they have appeared in media, philosophy, and narratives of history are curiotized as forever fascinating, new, titillating, and controversial. In contrast to the narrative of momentous trans progress in the mid-2010s, I point out that frameworks such as the "Transgender Tipping Point" worked to position its "trans moment" as unprecedented and always on the threshold (...) of arrival. To work through a specific example, I point to decades of renewed fascination over trans women being capable of breastfeeding and the long history of trans fascination in popular music. I conclude by emphasizing the obscured world-historical presence of transsexuality as it coincides with the history of pharmaceuticals, hormone technologies, and birth control. In contrast to a "goldfish memory optics" through which trans people become eternally new, fascinating, and debatable, I stress the importance of restoring the complexity of "trans" and its histories back into an understanding of the present. (shrink)

One common response to the knowledge argument is the ability hypothesis. Proponents of the ability hypothesis accept that Mary learns what seeing red is like when she exits her black-and-white room, but they deny that the kind of knowledge she gains is propositional in nature. Rather, she acquires a cluster of abilities that she previously lacked, in particular, the abilities to recognize, remember, and imagine the color red. For proponents of the ability hypothesis, knowing what an experience is like simply (...) consists in the possession of these abilities. Criticisms of the ability hypothesis tend to focus on this last claim. Such critics tend to accept that Mary gains these abilities when she leaves the room, but they deny that such abilities constitute knowledge of what an experience is like. To my mind, however, this critical strategy grants too much. Focusing specifically on imaginative ability, I argue that Mary does not gain this ability when she leaves the room for she already had the ability to imagine red while she was inside it. Moreover, despite what some have thought, the ability hypothesis cannot be easily rescued by recasting it in terms of a more restrictive imaginative ability. My purpose here is not to take sides in the debate about physicalism, i.e., my criticism of the ability hypothesis is not offered in an attempt to defend the anti-physicalist conclusion of the knowledge argument. Rather, my purpose is to redeem the imagination from the misleading picture of it that discussion of the knowledge argument has fostered. (shrink)

Narrativists about well-being claim that our lives go better for us if they make good stories—if they exhibit cohesion, thematic consistency, and narrative arc. Yet narrativism leads to mistaken assessments of well-being: prioritizing narrative makes it harder to balance and change pursuits, pushes us toward one-dimensionality, and can’t make sense of the diversity of good lives. Some ways of softening key narrativist claims mean that the view can’t tell us very much about how to live a good life that we (...) can’t find in other theories of well-being; while there are smaller-scale ways we can incorporate narrativist insights into our views of well-being, narrativism should not be a universal organizing principle for our lives. (shrink)

Pruss (2016) argues that Christian philosophers should reject Open Futurism, where Open Futurism is the thesis that “there are no true undetermined contingent propositions about the future” (461). First, Pruss argues “on probabilistic grounds that there are some statements about infinite futures that Open Futurism cannot handle” (461). In other words, he argues that either the future is finite or that Open Futurism is false. Next, Pruss argues that since Christians are committed to a belief in everlasting life, they must (...) deny that the future is finite. From here, Pruss concludes that Christians must reject Open Futurism. In practice, Pruss’s argument extends to anyone who endorses everlasting life. In this essay, I respond to Pruss’s argument on behalf of Open Futurism: pace Pruss, the open futurist can consistently believe in everlasting life while also accepting the basic principles of probability theory. (shrink)

When we can’t live up to the ultimate standards of morality, how can moral theory give us guidance? We can distinguish between ideal and non-ideal theory to see that there are different versions of the voluntarist constraint, ‘ought implies can.’ Ideal moral theory identifies the best standard, so its demands are constrained by one version. Non-ideal theory tells us what to do given our psychological and motivational shortcomings and so is constrained by others. Moral theory can now both provide an (...) ultimate standard and give us guidance; this view also gives us new insights into demandingness and blame. (shrink)

Recent treatments of imagination have increasingly treated imagining as a skill. Insofar as imaginative accuracy is one of the factors that underwrites this skill, it is important to understand what it means to say that an imagining is accurate. This paper takes up that task. The discussion proceeds in four parts. First, I address two worries that may naturally arise about the coherence ofthe notion of imaginative accuracy. Second, with those worries addressed, I turn to an exploration of what is (...) meant by imaginative accuracy. My discussion relies on two key points: first, that accuracy is best understood in terms of aim; and second, that imaginings aim at the representation of fictional states of affairs. I call this line of thought _the fictionality approach_. Third, I look more closely at six different types of imaginings in an effort to develop and clarify the fictionality approach. Finally, I turn to what I call the calibration objection. Given the nature of imagination, there seems to be no way to calibrate one’s judgments of imaginative accuracy. After showing how much of the force of the calibration objection can be defused, I offer some brief concluding remarks. (shrink)

Karl Marx claims that alienation inheres in all wage labor. I raise questions about the applicability of this claim to subjects of patriarchy. In the first section, I discuss industrial wage labor and its allure for women who were trying to escape the norms of familial patriarchy. In the second section, I extend this criticism of Marx’s claim by considering the racially enslaved subjects of the Antebellum American South, for whom economicallyrecognized wage labor was still a bloody political battle. Finally, (...) I turn to the identification of working class women and sexuality, in order to show how wage labor offered liberation from narrow bourgeois sexual strictures. I conclude by reassessing the viability of Marx’s critique of alienation, taking into account the standpoints from which wage labor itself was a considerable political achievement. (shrink)

From the perspective of many philosophers of mind in these early years of the 21st Century, the debate between dualism and physicalism has seemed to have stalled, if not to have come to a complete standstill. There seems to be no way to settle the basic clash of intuitions that underlies it. Recently however, a growing number of proponents of Russellian monism have suggested that their view promises to show us a new way forward. Insofar as Russellian monism might allow (...) us to break out of the current gridlock, it's no wonder that it's become "hot stuff." To my mind, however, the excitement about Russellian monism is misplaced. Though some version of Russellian monism might well be true, I do not believe that it enables us to break free of the dualism/physicalism divide. As I will argue, once we properly understand what's required to flesh out an adequate monistic story, we will see that we are in an important way right back where we started. (shrink)

This essay meditates on the short film American Reflexxx and the violent laughter directed at a non-trans woman in public space when she was assumed to be trans. Drawing from work on the ideological and institutional dimensions of transphobia by Talia Bettcher and Viviane Namaste, alongside Sara Ahmed's writing on the cultural politics of disgust, I reverse engineer this specific instance of laughter into a meditation on the social meaning of transphobic laughter in public space. I then look at racialized (...) transphobic laughter directed against Tyra Hunter and Miriam Rivera to emphasize transmisogynist laughter as a denial of contact, intimacy, and care. Building on Kate Manne's work on misogyny, I conclude that a key aspect of transmisogyny is the use of transfeminine people as a source of dehumanized, disavowed, and disposable care and intimacy. Laughter and accompanying violence against trans women serves to reinforce this dynamic. (shrink)

I offer a new interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety in Being and Time as an account of the relationship between individual agents and the public normative practices of their communities. According to a prominent recent interpretation, Heidegger’s discussions of anxiety, death and the “call of conscience” together explain how we can respond to the norms of our practices as reasons and subject them to critical reflection. I argue that this is only part of the story. Anxiety is an occasion (...) for Dasein to take responsibility for its ongoing activity of interpreting the possibilities for living and acting made available by the normative practices of its community, which is presupposed and overlooked from the perspective of everyday Dasein. Public normativity underdetermines Dasein’s conception of what it would mean to take up any of the possibilities available in its world as a way of living its own life. (shrink)

This paper examines whether, and how, Foucauldian genealogy travels to contexts and problematizations beyond the method's European site of articulation. Our particular focus is on the work of Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez, whose work includes both a systematic defense of the usefulness of Foucauldian inquiry for decolonial study and genealogical inquiry in a Foucauldian spirit but in a context beyond Foucault's own horizon of study. We show that taking up Foucault's work in the context of Latin America leads Castro-Gómez to (...) significantly change Foucauldian concepts, categories, and methods. We further survey the potential synergies of decolonial thought and Foucauldian critique, while also highlighting how their joint mobilization requires a revision and problematization of key commitments of both approaches. (shrink)

Examines Marx's account in Capital of a machine burned at the stake in a public square in 1685 as an emblem of modern attitudes to technology.

This essay looks at the history of confrontations between trans people and non-trans philosophers. It argues that trans contentions within philosophy should be considered alongside the intersection of transness with social class, patterns of anti-trans employment discrimination, affective injustice against trans employees, and the discipline of philosophy as an exclusive prestige-driven workplace. It concludes that philosophy should better study cis philosophers and the ways that they encounter trans people in the world, as colleagues, and as objects of inquiry.

Traditionally, imagination has been considered to be a primitive mental state type (or group of types), irreducible to other mental state types. In particular, it has been thought to be distinct from other mental states such as belief, perception, and memory, among others. Recently, however, the category of imagination has come under attack, with challenges emerging from a multitude of different directions. Some philosophers have argued that we should not recognize belief and imagination as distinct states but rather on a (...) continuum, whereas other philosophers have argued something similar with respect to belief and memory. And some philosophers have suggested that we can reduce imagination to other mental states, whether mental imagery, belief, supposition, or some combination. In this paper, I address some of these challenges in an attempt to show we need to maintain imagination as a distinct – and indeed, robust – category in our taxonomy of mind. (shrink)

In The Matter of Consciousness, in the course of his extended discussion and defense of Frank Jackson’s famous knowledge argument, Torin Alter dismisses some objections on the grounds that they are cases of cheating. Though some opponents of the knowledge argument offer various scenarios in which Mary might come to know what seeing red is like while still in the room, Alter argues that the proposed scenarios are irrelevant. In his view, the Mary case is offered to defend the claim (...) that phenomenal facts cannot be a priori deduced from physical facts. Thus, a proposed scenario constitutes an objection to the knowledge argument only if it presents a case in which Mary’s learning inside the room comes about via a priori deduction from physical facts. Call this the deducibility standard. In what follows, I’ll explore a series of relevant cases in an effort to clarify this standard. Doing so enables us to better understand how cheating should be assessed in this context and thereby also to get clearer on the argumentative dialectic surrounding the Mary case. (shrink)

Philosophers in the Western tradition have both theorized about imagination and used imagination in their theorizing about other matters. In this chapter, I first provide a brief overview of philosophical theorizing about imagination with a special focus on its relation to other mental states such as belief and perception. I then turn to a discussion of the methodological role that imagination has played in philosophy. I here focus on the imaginability principle, i.e., the claim that the imaginability of a given (...) scenario entails that such a scenario is in some sense possible. Relying on this kind of principle, philosophers have used imagination to justify theories in domains such as philosophy of mind, metaphysics and ethics. (shrink)

This essay argues that trans philosophy - and perhaps philosophy more broadly - should be understood according to the interplay of social, material, and emotional circulations. It opens by bridging insights from underemployed library work during the COVID-19 pandemic with Sara Ahmed’s analysis of the circulation of emotions in relation to texts and archives. The first major section diagnoses Martha Nussbaum’s confusing analysis of “the new trans scholarship” to establish that trans philosophy is differentially circulated across the discipline of philosophy. (...) The second major section argues that trans philosophy can be understood through the interplay of four different circulations: (1) trans philosophy as creating a space; (2) trans philosophy as the trans question; (3) trans philosophy as the gender wars; and (4) trans philosophy as the trans cult. I conclude that trans philosophy is a field that has yet to clearly form as it continues to twist and multiply according to affect, professional dynamics, political intrigue, who gets thrown away, and who is granted the space, time, energy, and money to write and publish. (shrink)

This essay argues that humor can be used as an unstable weapon against oppressive language and concepts. Drawing from radical feminist Marilyn Frye, I discuss the difficulty of challenging systematic oppression from within and explore the capabilities of humor for this task. This requires expanding Cynthia Willett’s and Julie Willett’s approach to fumerism beyond affect to fully examine the work of humor in manipulating language, concepts, and imagery. For this expansion, I bring in research on feminist linguistics alongside other philosophers (...) of political humor to consider the connection between humor and world-making. I then link this with feminist world-breaking through Monique Wittig’s analysis of war machines and Trojan horses against heteropatriarchal language. Finally, I draw out the instability of humor as a war machine by investigating a bit where comedian Patti Harrison disguised herself as an official corporate brand platform to challenge the compulsory commodification of LGBTQ rights. (shrink)