In this chapter we use methods of corpus linguistics to investigate the ways in which mathematicians describe their work as explanatory in their research papers. We analyse use of the words explain/explanation (and various related words and expressions) in a large corpus of texts containing research papers in mathematics and in physical sciences, comparing this with their use in corpora of general, day-to-day English. We find that although mathematicians do use this family of words, such use is considerably less prevalent (...) in mathematics papers than in physics papers or in general English. Furthermore, we find that the proportion with which mathematicians use expressions related to ‘explaining why’ and ‘explaining how’ is significantly different to the equivalent proportion in physics and in general English. We discuss possible accounts for these differences. (shrink)

Infusing contemporary critical terrorism studies (CTS) with concepts and methodologies from philosophy and critical theory via a Baradian posthumanist agential realist perspective and (counter)terrorist cases and vignettes, this chapter argues for a retheorisation of (counter)terrorism. It does so, firstly, by reconceptualising terrorism and counterterrorism as complex assemblages consisting not only of discursive-material components – an entanglement now largely accepted within CTS and critical security studies (CSS) – but also of affective layers and more-than-human phenomena. Secondly, by analysing European urban (counter)terrorist (...) cases from the UK, Germany, France, and Spain, together with these cases’ surprising spacetime-jumping interlinkages underwriting what we here conceptualise as queer(ing) spacetimematterings, this chapter zooms in on the intra-actions taking place between human and more-than-human agential phenomena and their risk-managed urban environments. Lastly, extra analytical attention is paid to how, in this neoliberal day and age – here rephrased as control society-driven ‘situationscaping times’ – very specific macro- and micropolitical violence-preventing measures and efforts are employed in the fight against various manifestations of urban terror and terrorism. (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)

In this existential reading of Kim Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie of 2016, I focus on the rise of selfie culture and public discourse around emerging digital representations of women's bodies. The selfie is a relatively new phenomenon, and is particularly curious because of the subject/object paradox it creates; in taking a selfie, a person asserts control over their own image, but at the same time, becomes object in their own gaze. My argument is that selfies, like other assertions of (...) bodily subjectivity in digital spaces, are a threat to patriarchal structures that paint women as immanent, object, as reflected in public discourse around Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie. I draw on both Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's work on subjectivity in existentialism and phenomenology, as well as Amy Shields Dobson's work on post-feminism and young women's projections of self, in order to delineate what it is about the selfie that creates this paradox. I also make reference to the work of Elisabeth Grosz and Frantz Fanon in relation to a colonial hierarchy that prioritises body over mind, as well as Laura Mulvey's work on the male gaze. (shrink)

We investigated whether mathematicians typically agree about the qualities of mathematical proofs. Between-mathematician consensus in proof appraisals is an implicit assumption of many arguments made by philosophers of mathematics, but to our knowledge the issue has not previously been empirically investigated. We asked a group of mathematicians to assess a specific proof on four dimensions, using the framework identified by Inglis and Aberdein (2015). We found widespread disagreement between our participants about the aesthetics, intricacy, precision and utility of the proof, (...) suggesting that a priori assumptions about the consistency of mathematical proof appraisals are unreasonable. (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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

Eve Sedgwick critiques paranoid methodologies for denying a plurality of affective approaches. Instead, she emphasizes affects such as hope, but her description of hope's openness does not address how hope can avoid discourses that appear to offer amelioration while deceptively masking subjugation. In this context, I will argue that suspicion in feminist political philosophy, as shown in the earlier work of Carole Pateman and Judith Butler, provides a cautious approach toward hope's openness without precluding hope altogether. This analysis will reconsider (...) the domination and empowerment debates in relation to affect, pointing toward compatibilities between the two perspectives. First, I will expand Sedgwick's analysis of hope to explain its potential as a feminist political affect. Second, I will examine the techniques of suspicion employed by Pateman and Butler and how they risk denying possibilities for hope. This will lead to a discussion of how Amy Allen's theory of power indicates that suspicion is compatible with hope. Finally, I will explain how the suspicious approaches of Pateman and Butler illuminate hope as an inherently risky, fragile project. This will show that suspicion does not necessarily take up the totalizing position of paranoia, but rather can productively ensure that hope is not led astray. (shrink)

This chapter is a substantially expanded version of (and so substantially supersedes) “Words Fail Me. (Stanley Cavell’s Life Out of Music)” that appeared in Inheriting Stanley Cavell: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Bloomsbury, 2020). It offers to read Cavell’s claim that “philosophy, of a certain ambition, tends perpetually to intersect the autobiographical.” Its guiding thought is that a life that finds a home in philosophy from out of its devotion to music (as is true of, among others, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, all (...) philosophers Cavell wrote about and cared about) will take on a certain character. In Cavell’s case, his distinctive orientation in philosophy—call this his lifelong coming to terms with his abandoning a life in music—is guided in part by (1) an interest in those moments in experience where words seem to run out, or veer toward nonsense, leaving in their wake touchstones of ecstasy; and (2) an interest in the education of the senses, without which interest we risk their starvation. These twin claims are illustrated through an interweaving of remarks and reminiscences of Cavell on music that culminate in a reading of his last published pieces devoted to music, primarily “Impressions of Revolution.”. (shrink)

This essay examines narratives of fundamental change, which portray a break in the continuity between a pre-transition and post-transition transgender subject, in accounts of transgender transitions. Narratives of fundamental change highlight the various changes that occur during transition and its disruptive effects upon a trans subject’s continuous identity. First, this essay considers the historical appearance of fundamental change narratives in the social sciences, the media, and their use by families of trans people, partners of trans people, and trans people themselves. (...) After this is a consideration of Mark Johnson’s account of narrative as a meaning-making activity that occurs in the context of social norms. Johnson’s account is then applied to narratives of fundamental change to explain why these narratives occur, especially in relation to social norms and lived experience. The essay concludes by considering the trajectory of fundamental change narratives, looking at emerging transgender narratives, which stress a more integrated, complex account of transgender lives. (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)

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)

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)

This essay considers the dependency of trans youth by bridging transgender studies with feminist care ethics to emphasize a trans wisdom about solidarity through dependency. The first major section of the essay argues for reworking Sara Ruddick's philosophy of mothering in the context of trans and gender‐creative youth. This requires, first, stressing a more robust interaction among her divisions of preservative love, nurturance for growth, and training for acceptability, and second, creating a more nuanced account of “nature” in relation to (...) nurturance for growth to avoid casting transition as contrary to a trans youth's healthy development. In the second major section of the essay, I depart from Ruddick's framework to emphasize the difference of care for trans youth by trans and/or queer communities and through mutual caregiving, stressing a trans wisdom about dependency and solidarity found in the work of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Turning to Eva Feder Kittay's links between dependency work and equality, I argue that Rivera and Johnson's work contains a distinct knowledge derived from practice necessitating the connection between solidarity and dependency in particular communities. I then call for more work on trans care ethics, trans ethics, and trans wisdom more broadly. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Berkeley’s ‘esse is percipi’ has been criticized for implying epistemological solipsism, the main argument being that different minds cannot harbor numerically one and the same idea. Similarly, C. J. Boström, the dominating Swedish philosopher in the nineteenth century, was early scorned because his principle of esse est percipi allegedly contradicts the simultaneous claim that two spirits can perceive the same thing under qualitatively different appearances. Whereas the criticism against Berkeley is here regarded as valid, it is argued that Boström successfully (...) defended himself by employing a dual concept of meaning, resembling Frege’s Sinn and Bedeutung some thirty years later, and by postulating an ontology that permits human minds to share in the divine ideas that constitute reality. (shrink)

I offer a new, limited solution to divine hiddenness based on a particular epistemic paradox: sometimes, knowing about a desired outcome or relevant features of that desired outcome would prevent the outcome in question from occurring. I call these cases epistemically self-defeating situations. This solution, in essence, says that divine hiddenness or silence is a necessary feature of at least some morally excellent or desirable states of affairs. Given the nature of the paradox, an omniscient being cannot completely eliminate hiddenness, (...) just as an omnipotent being cannot create a rock so heavy that they cannot lift it. Epistemically self-defeating situations provide an undercutting defeater for the assumption that any nonresistant nonbeliever could always, at any time, be in conscious relationship with a perfectly loving God. Thankfully, silence is a temporary feature of epistemically self-defeating situations: once the outcome is achieved, agents can know in full. (shrink)

Certain kinds of prediction, foreknowledge, and future‐oriented action appear to require settled future truths. But open futurists think that the future is metaphysically unsettled: if it is open whether p is true, then it cannot currently be settled that p is true. So, open futurists—and libertarians who adopt the position—face the objection that their view makes rational action and deliberation impossible. I defuse the epistemic concern: open futurism does not entail obviously counterintuitive epistemic consequences or prevent rational action.

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.

Philosophy has long either dismissed or paid only minimal attention to creativity, and even with the rise of research on imagination, the creative imagination has largely been ignored as well. The aim of this volume is to correct this neglect. By bringing together existing research in various sub-disciplines, we also aim to open up new avenues of research. The chapters in Part I provide some framing and history on the philosophical study of imagination and creativity, along with an overview of (...) the empirical literature. Part II explores imagination and creativity as they manifest in, and in turn shape, the individual. Part III surveys the role of imagination and creativity across a wide variety of artistic domains, and the chapters of Part IV turn to societal domains. Part V focuses on the interplay of imagination and creativity with regard to particular features of creative subjects and different kinds of creative subjects. *** -/- Part I: Theories and Approaches 1. Theories of Imagination (Peter Kung) 2. Theories of Creativity (Julia Langkau) 3. Historical Treatments of Imagination in the Western Tradition (Lucia Oliveri) 4. Historical Treatments of Creativity in the Western Tradition (Elliot Paul) 5. Non-Western Treatments of Imagination (Reza Hadisi and Jing Iris Hu) 6. Non-Western Treatments of Creativity (Nicolas B. Verger and Vlad Glăveanu) 7. Empirical Treatments of Imagination and Creativity (Dustin Stokes) 8. Experimental Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity (Michael T. Stuart) 9. The Relationship between Imagination and Creativity (Margherita Arcangeli) -/- Part II: Imagination and Creativity in Mind and Action 10. Imagination, Creativity, and Skill (Amy Kind) 11. Imagination, Creativity, and Attention (Bence Nanay) 12. Imagination, Creativity, and Agency (Caterina Moruzzi) 13. Imagination, Creativity, and Emotion (Julien Deonna and Fabrice Teroni) 14. Imagination, Creativity, and Embodiment (Adriana Clavel-Vázquez and María Jimena Clavel Vázquez) 15. Imagination, Creativity, and Gender (Luke Roelofs) 16. Imagination, Creativity, and Race (Nicholas Whittaker) 17. Imagination, Creativity, and Child Development (Thalia Goldstein, Anna Sofia Caruso, Darian Stapleton, and Lamin Fatty) -/- Part III: Imagination and Creativity in the Arts 18. Imagination, Creativity, and the Visual Arts (Claire Anscomb) 19. Imagination, Creativity, and Music (Matteo Ravasio) 20. Imagination, Creativity, and Fiction (Hannah H. Kim) 21. Imagination, Creativity, and Dance (David Davies and Anna Pakes) 22. Imagination, Creativity, and the Culinary Arts (Patrik Engisch) 23. Imagination, Creativity, and Film (Murray Smith) 24. Imagination, Creativity, and Acting (Tzachi Zamir) 25. Imagination, creativity, and fashion (Laura T. Di Summa) -/- Part IV: Imagination and Creativity in Society 26. Imagination and Creativity in the Scientific Realm (Alice Murphy) 27. Imagination and Creativity in the Moral Realm (Tim Mulgan) 28. Imagination and Creativity in the Political Realm (Avshalom Schwartz) 29. Imagination and Creativity in the Law (Maksymilian Del Mar) 30. Imagination and Creativity in the Religious Realm (Neil Van Leeuwen) 31. Imagination and Creativity in Business (Eric Peterson) 32. Imagination and Creativity in Times of Crisis (Jennifer Fraser and Noah Stemeroff) Part V: Emerging Issues in Imagination and Creativity Research 33. Imagination, Creativity, and Aphantasia (Andrea Blomkvist) 34. Imagination, Creativity, and Neurodivergence (Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa) 35. Imagination, Creativity, and Non-Human Animals (Henry Shevlin) 36. Imagination, Creativity, and Artificial Intelligence (Peter Langland-Hassan) 37. Collective Imagination and Collective Creativity (Nick Wiltsher) . (shrink)

This essay discusses short-circuited trans care by focusing on failures of t4t as an ethos both interpersonally and within particular trans scenes. The author begins by recounting an experience working at a bar/restaurant that appealed to its identity as a caring trans community space as part of its exploitation of trans workers. This dynamic inspires the main argument, that t4t can become an ethos of scenes and institutions beyond the interpersonal while short-circuiting practices of trans care. Short-circuited trans care is (...) then traced to t4t by drawing from Hil Malatino's work on trans care and t4t, Kai Cheng Thom's work on community dynamics, and trans literature to argue that practices of t4t often include abuse, expulsion, and assumptive care. This short-circuited trans care is linked to trans scenes by discussing the ethos of t4t in the history of Topside Press and trans cultural production. The author does not condemn t4t and to this effect offers a critique of tethering trans cultural production to prestige instead of care. Rather, the goal of this essay is to openly discuss aspects of t4t and trans care that are often obscured through the projection of a highly questionable “we” or universalized “trans community.”. (shrink)

In this essay, I depart from the historical exclusion of trans women’s ethical insights from care ethics by focusing on trans literature as a source of knowledge expressed by trans women about care. I open up with the systematic denial of trans women as ethical knowers by analyzing Marilyn Frye's characterization of trans women as mindless servile robots under patriarchy. I then turn to trans literature to counter this portrayal. Specifically, I discuss short stories by Casey Plett and Ryka Aoki (...) as sources of knowledge about assumptive and futurebound practices of care. I begin by arguing that the work of Maria Lugones considers the spatial dimensions of love, and that this suggests that care involves giving space to another on their own terms. I then turn to Plett’s story “Other Women” to unpack assumptive care as a short-circuited form of caring in which a relationship to the other on their own terms is closed off by transphobic assumptions. I contrast this with Plett’s story “Winning,” which describes a futurebound care in which another’s space is kept open, permitting action that allows them to flourish on their own terms. After this, I discuss Aoki’s “To the New World” as an engagement with both racist assumptive care and futurebound care aimed at self-care. I conclude that these stories provide a rich space for considering trans ethical knowledge about care. (shrink)

The vast advances in biometrics over the past several decades have brought with them a host of pressing concerns. Philosophical scrutiny has already been devoted to many of the relevant ethical and political issues, especially ones arising from matters of privacy, bias, and security in data collection. But philosophers have devoted surprisingly little attention to the relevant metaphysical issues, in particular, ones concerning matters of personal identity. This paper aims to take some initial steps to correct this oversight. After discussing (...) the philosophical problem of personal identity, the ways in which the notion of biometric identity connects with, or fails to connect with, the philosophical notion of personal identity is explored. Though there may be some good reasons to use biometric identity to track personal identity, it is contended that biometric identity is not the same thing as personal identity and thus that biometrics researchers should stop talking as if it were. (shrink)