Since the publication of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein’s interpreters have endeavored to reconcile his general constructivist/anti-realist attitude towards mathematics with his confessed anti-revisionary philosophy. In this article, the author revisits the issue and presents a solution. The basic idea consists in exploring the fact that the so-called “non-constructive results” could be interpreted so that they do not appear non-constructive at all. The author substantiates this solution by showing how the translation of mathematical results, given (...) by the possibility of translation between logics, can be seen as a tool for partially implementing the solution Wittgenstein had in mind. (shrink)

In the article the author describes theoretical reasons that stood behind Kołakowski's transition from being an orthodox Marxist to become an actual leader of the polish revisionist movement. His intention is to concentrate on those aspects of Kołakowski's thought that have not changed, apart from any biographical and psychological reasons. (1) First of those features is Kołakowski's inability of completability, the anti-code disposition. (2) The second trait is the moral attitude, an intention to influence on people's morality by convincing (...) them that social and internal (necessarily bound with social) changes are desirable; that an existential calm demolishes morality. (3) Third feature concerns the fact that Kołakowski did not attempt to create his own philosophy, he was rather a historian of ideas, a skeptic, and a critic. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that the neurocomputational framework of predictive processing entails a globally inferentialist and representationalist view of cognition. Here, I contend that this is not correct. I argue that, given the theoretical commitments these philosophers endorse, no structure within predictive processing systems can be rightfully identified as a representational vehicle. To do so, I first examine some of the theoretical commitments these philosophers share, and show that these commitments provide a set of necessary conditions the satisfaction of which allows (...) us to identify representational vehicles. Having done so, I introduce a predictive processing system capable of active inference, in the form of a simple robotic “brain”. I examine it thoroughly, and show that, given the necessary conditions highlighted above, none of its components qualifies as a representational vehicle. I then consider and allay some worries my claim could raise. I consider whether the anti-representationalist verdict thus obtained could be generalized, and provide some reasons favoring a positive answer. I further consider whether my arguments here could be blocked by allowing the same representational vehicle to possess multiple contents, and whether my arguments entail some extreme form of revisionism, answering in the negative in both cases. A quick conclusion follows. (shrink)

Modern and contemporary politics of P. R. China contain many elements similar to neo-Nazism if not anti-communist. The derivation from Communist doctrines was a less-known debate inside the CPC party leadership soon after the declaration on the founding of People’s Republic of China - notably between Mao, Zedong and the state leadership which resulted in the criminalization of the first president Liu, Shaoqi. The researcher, as a self-identified cisgender homosexual male and Christian, observed the cultural revisionist developments of the (...) P. R. C. regime from early childhood to date. The article enumerates some elements of the Chinese culture’s characteristics in taming and eliminating psychological and social identity formation that constitutes the regime stability in its dictatorial diplomatic rhetorics. It adopts the Christian theology and queer theology in a Gestalt recombination for the non-identity problem albeit with predominant militarization of religion approaches by the “United Front Working Group” for populist enslavement. The article hypothesizes a receptive psychosocial identity from such population in general, and the similar for Buddhist cultural origins. With the influences of designed propaganda media in media psychology, the political responses in mass psychological phenomena from the suppressed regime is considered to be a reflection on their inner senses of helplessness from the active and reactive failures of identity formation. The amplification of such phenomena is contributed by the nationalism propagandas and a gaslighting technique applied to International relations, which results in subjective Stockholm syndrome in some portions of the population. Relative intersubjectivity and absolute personal identity will be discussed in the conclusions, and its implications to dictatorial politics. (shrink)

There is an enduring story about empiricism, which runs as follows: from Locke onwards to Carnap, empiricism is the doctrine in which raw sense-data are received through the passive mechanism of perception; experience is the effect produced by external reality on the mind or ‘receptors’. Empiricism on this view is the ‘handmaiden’ of experimental natural science, seeking to redefine philosophy and its methods in conformity with the results of modern science. Secondly, there is a story about materialism, popularized initially by (...) Marx and Engels and later restated as standard, ‘textbook’ history of philosophy in the English-speaking world. It portrays materialism as explicitly mechanistic, seeking to reduce the world of qualities, sensations, and purposive behaviour to a quantitative, usually deterministic physical scheme. Building on some recent scholarship, I aim to articulate the contrarian view according to which neither of these stories is true. On the contrary, empiricism turns out to be less ‘science-friendly’ and more concerned with moral matters; materialism reveals itself to be, in at least a large number of cases, a ‘vital’, anti-mechanistic doctrine which focuses on the unique properties of organic beings. This revision of two key philosophical episodes should reveal that our history of early modern philosophy is dependent to a great extent on ‘special interests’, whether positivistic or Kantian, and by extension lead us to rethink the relation and distinction between ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’ in this period. (shrink)

Kining papel mobatbat sa lima ka mga mahinungdanong kabilin ni Jose Maria Sison nga mao ang mga mosunod: una, pagpaduso sa usa ka anti-rebisyonistang baroganan; ikaduha, pagpalambo sa teorya sa malanatong gubat sa katawhan ni Mao Zedong; ikatulo, pagpa-asdang sa Marxistang panglantaw mahitungod sa hisgotanang kalinaw; ikaupat, paghatag og Marxistang sukaranan sa tinuhuan o relihiyon isip pwersa sa katilingbanong kausaban; ug ikalima, ang pagpatin-aw sa papel sa burukrata kapitalismo isip tungtungan sa pasismo. Tumong niining papel ang padayong pagpahiluna ni (...) Sison isip usa ka importanteng teyorista dili lamang sa Pilipinas kon dili hasta sa tibuok kalibotan, hilabi na sa Pangkalibotanong Habagatan. Samtang ubay-ubay na ang mga nanag-unang pagtuon kabahin sa kamahinungdanon ni Jose Maria Sison isip Pilipinong Marxista ug makinasodnong iskolar, kini nga papel buot mosumpay sa mga pagtuon hilabi na human sa pagpanaw ni Sison niadtong Disyembre 2022. -/- This paper will argue the five important legacies of Jose Maria Sison. The five legacies are: first, the upholding of an anti- revisionist standpoint; second, the development of the Maoist theory of a protracted people’s war; third, the advancement of a Marxist view on the peace talks; fourth, the promotion of a Marxist view of faith or religion as a force for social change; and fifth, the clarification of bureaucrat capitalism as a basis of fascism. The paper aims to further position Sison as an important theorist not only in the Philippines but also the world over, especially in the Global South. While there are many previous studies concerning Sison as a Marxist and nationalist scholar, this paper furthers existing literature especially in the context after Sison’s death last December 2022. (shrink)

In this contribution we explore revisionists and anti-revisionists conceptions of the historical imagination. The focus will be on how these conceptions of the historical imagination determine how one ought to answer the question of whether or not it is in principle possible to know the past in its own terms rather than from the perspective of the present. The contrast that we are seeking to draw is that between a conception of the historical imagination which is revisionist in the (...) sense that it is committed to the claim that knowledge of the past is in principle impossible, and one which is anti-revisionist in the sense that it regards knowledge of the past in its own terms to be in principle possible. Revisionism, as we understand it here, is not the contingent claim that in some cases (where, for example, new evidence which was previously unavailable comes to light) the historical understanding of the past may be revised; rather, it represents an a priori claim about the impossibility of knowing the past in its own terms in all cases, and not just in some. Likewise, anti-revisionism, as we understand it here, is the view that historical knowledge is in principle possible; it is not the claim that it is always achieved as a matter of fact. The debate between revisionist and anti-revisionist conceptions of the historical imagination is therefore a second-order debate about the nature of historical knowing, about whether it is possible, and if so, about what its conditions of possibility are. It is not a first order debate about whether or not such knowledge has been achieved in any given case. (shrink)

‘Feminist logic’ may sound like an impossible, incoherent, or irrelevant project, but it is none of these. We begin by delineating three categories into which projects in feminist logic might fall: philosophical logic, philosophy of logic, and pedagogy. We then defuse two distinct objections to the very idea of feminist logic: the irrelevance argument and the independence argument. Having done so, we turn to a particular kind of project in feminist philosophy of logic: Valerie Plumwood's feminist argument for a relevance (...) logic. Plumwood's work serves as our primary case study as we turn to the project of considering three different ways we might understand her argument and revisionist arguments like it: as a priori theorizing, as ameliorative conceptual engineering, or as instances of anti-exceptionalist approaches to logic. After arguing that the anti-exceptionalist approach seems to provide the most promising means of understanding the kind of project undertaken in a feminist challenge to classical logic, we briefly address the consequences that this might have for logic instruction. Here, we argue for the perhaps unexpected conclusion that feminist programs ought to offer more, not less, instruction in logic for those who take interest. (shrink)

According to the “paradox of knowability”, the moderate thesis that all truths are knowable – ... – implies the seemingly preposterous claim that all truths are actually known – ... –, i.e. that we are omniscient. If Fitch’s argument were successful, it would amount to a knockdown rebuttal of anti-realism by reductio. In the paper I defend the nowadays rather neglected strategy of intuitionistic revisionism. Employing only intuitionistically acceptable rules of inference, the conclusion of the argument is, firstly, (...) not ..., but .... Secondly, even if there were an intuitionistically acceptable proof of ..., i.e. an argument based on a different set of premises, the conclusion would have to be interpreted in accordance with Heyting semantics, and read in this way, the apparently preposterous conclusion would be true on conceptual grounds and acceptable even from a realist point of view. Fitch’s argument, understood as an immanent critique of verificationism, fails because in a debate dealing with the justification of deduction there can be no interpreted formal language on which realists and anti-realists could agree. Thus, the underlying problem is that a satisfactory solution to the “problem of shared content” is not available. I conclude with some remarks on the proposals by J. Salerno and N. Tennant to reconstruct certain arguments in the debate on anti-realism by establishing aporias. (shrink)

Essentialism in philosophy is the position that things, especially kinds of things, have essences, or sets of properties, that all members of the kind must have, and the combination of which only members of the kind do, in fact, have. It is usually thought to derive from classical Greek philosophy and in particular from Aristotle’s notion of “what it is to be” something. In biology, it has been claimed that pre-evolutionary views of living kinds, or as they are sometimes called, (...) “natu-ral kinds”, are essentialist. This static view of living things presumes that no tran-sition is possible in time or form between kinds, and that variation is regarded as accidental or inessential noise rather than important information about taxa. In contrast it is held that Darwinian, and post-Darwinian, biology relies upon varia-tion as important and inevitable properties of taxa, and that taxa are not, therefore, kinds but historical individuals. Recent attempts have been made to undercut this account, and to reinstitute essentialism in biological kind terms. Others argue that essentialism has not ever been a historical reality in biology and its predecessors. In this chapter, I shall outline the many meanings of the notion of essentialism in psychology and social science as well as science, and discuss pro- and anti-essentialist views, and some recent historical revisionism. It turns out that nobody was essentialist to speak of in the sense that is antievolutionary in biology, and that much confusion rests on treating the one word, “essence” as meaning a single notion when in fact there are many. I shall also discuss the philosophical implica-tions of essentialism, and what that means one way or the other for evolutionary biology. Teaching about evolution relies upon narratives of change in the ways the living world is conceived by biologists. This is a core narrative issue. (shrink)

The problem of revisionism, or efforts to deny and censor the incontrovertible history of known genocides, is a growing one. It is now clear that denial is inevitably a phase of the genocidal process, extending far beyond the immediate politically expedient denials of governments who are currently engaging in genocidal massacre or have just recently done so—i.e., the Chinese government's abject denials of the killings of some 5,000 in Tiananmen Square, or the Sri Lanka government's denials of the state-organized (...) massacre of 5,000 Tamil. Denials of genocide continue long after the event by a variety of groups and people, including successor governments or successor enemies of the victim people, such as anti-Semites against Jews, Turks against Armenians, and bigots and celebrants of violence and murder of all sorts. But such denials also occur—and this is the most perplexing fact—among a variety of not obviously malevolent people, including intellectuals who, in the process of calling for a better world, effectively exonerate, support, encourage, and participate in denials of a known genocide, implicitly condoning and even celebrating its occurrence, meanings, and portents for the future. This article is an effort to study and analyze this latter phenomenon, which has been little recognized. Together with previous essays on the psychology of more explicit malevolent denials of genocide, the intention is to generate a broader psychological theory of denials of genocide and revisionism by proposing that there are also a variety of “innocent denials” of the factual reality or significance of known cases of genocide, and a variety of “innocent disavowals of violence” which in truth celebrate the violence. These “innocent denials” join with the well-known explicit bigots in creating a vast panorama of dangerous denials of genocides and implicit calls to new genocides in our world. (shrink)

Descartes is notorious for holding a strong anti-vacuist position. On his view, according to the standard reading, empty space not only does not exist in nature, but it is logically impossible. The very notion of a void or vacuum is an incoherent one. Recently Eric Palmer has proposed a revisionist reading of Descartes on empty space, arguing that he is more sanguine about its possibility. Palmer makes use of Descartes’ early correspondence with Marin Mersenne, including his commentary on Galileo’s (...) Two New Sciences. I argue that Palmer’s reading is mistaken, and that it relies on an understandable but faulty inference—i.e., that if Descartes considers the implications of an opposing view, he must find it at least coherent. Descartes, as I show from his correspondence and other texts, uses a variety of persuasive strategies, and levels charges of different logical strength, against positions which he takes to be incoherent. Thus we cannot infer from the fact that Descartes argues, e.g., that something is a superfluous theoretical entity, that he admits that entity’s coherence. He often chooses to argue a weaker thesis against an opponent so that he can use an argument to which the opponent is more likely to agree. (shrink)

We make choices about our own appearance and evaluate others' choices – every day. These choices are meaningful for us as individuals and as members of communities. But many features of personal appearance are due to luck, and many cultural beauty standards make some groups and individuals worse off (this is called “lookism”). So, how are we to square these two facets of personal appearance? And how are we to evaluate agency in the context of personal beauty? I identify three (...) ways of responding to these questions: beauty advo- cacy, beauty skepticism, and beauty revisionism. Advocates connect an honorific sense of beauty with personal charac- ter. Skeptics focus on beauty standards, and primarily offer a social critique of beauty standards. Some skeptics suggest embracing other aesthetic ideals – even ugliness. Revision- ists critique beauty standards, but retain an honorific sense of beauty. Each position offers tools to evaluate personal agency as aesthetic agency, whether first-personally or through our appreciation of others' appearance. (shrink)

Arguments pro and contra convergent realism – underdetermination of theory by observational evidence and pessimistic meta-induction from past falsity – are considered. It is argued that, to meet the counter-arguments challenge, convergent realism should be considerably changed with a help of modification of the propositions from this meta-programme “hard core” or “protecting belt”. Two well-known convergent realism rivals – “entity realism” of Nancy Cartwright and Ian Hacking and John Worrall’s “structural realism” – are considered. Entity realism’s main drawback is fundamental (...) laws underestimation. As for structural realism, its limitation of theoretical propositions by pure structural ones is ineffective. One always can transform propositions about objects into propositions about structures and vice versa. Both conceptions are kinds of “metaphysical revisionism” that tries to reformulate the good old convergent realism propositions using more decent language and applying ad hoc modifications of the solutions first obtained within the anti-realist epistemological meta-programmes. It is stated that to overcome the troubles of convergent realism one has to turn from classical or “metaphysical” realism to nonclassical or “internal” one and to coherent theory of truth. Internal realism has no troubles in solving the problem of empirically-equivalent theoretical descriptions and historical meta-induction problem, but gets the problem of scientific knowledge objectivity instead. Where does this objectivity come from? One of the answers is proposed by the scientific knowledge growth model elaborated by Rinat Nugayev and by Peter Galison. Each paradigm is a local viewpoint determined by the peculiarities of a culture into which its creator . was submerged. However, the meeting of the different paradigms leads to their interaction; as a result, the crossbred theoretical objects are constructed. Through these systems the infiltration of one paradigm on the other’s domain takes place. After the old paradigms’ grinding the new ones emerge that reconcile to each other much better than the old ones. Scientific theories reconcile results in elimination of many contingent details. In the process of competition more universal components survive. It is demonstrated that the process of objective knowledge genesis takes place in modern superstring theory too. The list of its drawbacks is rather long; it is clear that the theory cannot pretend on the role of the Theory of Everything. Nevertheless the process of argumentation pro and contra convergent realism – underdetermination of theory by observational evidence and pessimistic meta-induction from past falsity – are considered. It is argued that, to meet the counter-arguments challenge, convergent realism should be considerably changed with a help of modification of the propositions from this meta-programme “hard core” or “protecting belt”. It is stated that to overcome the troubles of convergent realism one has to turn from classical or “metaphysic” of quantum field theory and general relativity interpenetration have already begun. (shrink)

Several theorists have observed that attitude reports have what we call “revisionist” uses. For example, even if Pete has never met Ann and has no idea that she exists, Jane can still say to Jim ‘Pete believes Ann can learn to play tennis in ten lessons’ if Pete believes all 6-year-olds can learn to play tennis in ten lessons and it is part of Jane and Jim’s background knowledge that Ann is a 6-year-old. Jane’s assertion seems acceptable because the claim (...) she reports Pete as believing is entailed by Pete’s beliefs if they are revised in light of Jane and Jim’s background knowledge. We provide a semantic theory of revisionist reports based on this idea. We observe that the admissible “revisions” are limited in a striking way. Jane cannot say ‘Pete thinks Ann is a 6-year-old and can play tennis in ten lessons’ in the same context that she can say ‘Pete believes Ann can learn to play tennis ten lessons’, even though this too follows from Jane and Jim’s background knowledge together with what Pete believes. Our theory predicts the infelicity of these latter reports. It also has the resources to predict the truth of “exported” attitude reports and casts the relationship between these reports and “singular thought” in a new light. We conclude by discussing how revisionist reports make trouble for a simplistic view of the connection between the relations expressed by attitude verbs in natural language and the relations of most interest to philosophers of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the thesis that logic is not special. In this paper, I consider, and reject, a challenge to this thesis. According to this challenge, there are basic logical principles, and part of what makes such principles basic is that they are epistemically exceptional. Thus, according to this challenge, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to reject anti-exceptionalism about logic. I argue that this challenge fails, and that the exceptionalist positions motivated by it are (...) thus unfounded. I make this case by disambiguating two senses of ‘basic’ and showing that, once this disambiguation is taken into account, the best reason we have for thinking that there are basic principles actually implies that those principles do not require a special epistemology. Consequently, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to accept, rather than reject, anti-exceptionalism concerning the epistemology of logic. I conclude by explaining how an abductivist, anti-exceptionalist approach to the epistemology of logic can accommodate the notion of basic logical principles. (shrink)

Who and how revised Marxism in Poland? The simple answer is that it was done by young intellectuals seeing themselves as obligated to social and political activity, eager to participate in the process of the constitution of a new postwar Communist society. Marxism was for them a philosophical world-view and a political program rising hopes for a better socio-economic reality. Revisionists were committed Communists and their attitude toward Marxism was almost religious. Marxism, Promethean and scientific at the same time, was (...) supposed to replace religion, for which the radically secular revisionists saw no place in the new society. (See: Mikołajczyk 2013, p. 44-48) After the shock of 1956 they stuck by the slogan: ’socialism–yes, distortions–no,’ they thought that “Marxist socialism was possible without Leninist political forms, that Communism might be attacked within «the framework of Marxism»,” and they “believed for some time ... that Stalinism was curable in the sense that Communism could be restored or «democratized» without questioning its foundations” (Kolakowski 1978, p. 461). They saw themselves in an elitist way, i.e., as true and devoted Marxists fighting with dogmas, orthodoxy, myths, and unfounded faith both within Marxism-Leninism and outside it. They were willing to accept the position of sectarians, heretics, or apostates. Their political and ideological involvement forced them to attack pre-war but still active Polish philosophers of the Lvov-Warsaw School and other nonMarxist thinkers (Roman Ingarden, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Stanisław Ossowski), who were classified as “bourgeois thinkers” unable to understand and assimilate Marxism. (shrink)

This paper begins by applying a version of Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument to normative properties. This argument suggests that there must be at least some unknowable normative facts in normative Sorites sequences, or otherwise we get a contradiction given certain plausible assumptions concerning safety requirements on knowledge and our doxastic dispositions. This paper then focuses on the question of how the defenders of different forms of metaethical anti-realism (namely, error theorists, subjectivists, relativists, contextualists, expressivists, response dependence theorists, and (...) constructivists) could respond to the explanatory challenge created by the previous argument. It argues that, with two exceptions, the metaethical anti-realists need not challenge the argument itself, but rather they can find ways to explain how the unknowable normative facts can obtain. These explanations are based on the idea that our own attitudes on which the normative facts are grounded need not be transparent to us either. Reaching this conclusion also illuminates how metaethical anti-realists can make sense of instances of normative vagueness more generally. (shrink)

That believing truly as a matter of luck does not generally constitute knowing has become epistemic commonplace. Accounts of knowledge incorporating this anti-luck idea frequently rely on one or another of a safety or sensitivity condition. Sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge have a well-known problem with necessary truths, to wit, that any believed necessary truth trivially counts as knowledge on such accounts. In this paper, we argue that safety-based accounts similarly trivialize knowledge of necessary truths and that two ways of (...) responding to this problem for safety, issuing from work by Williamson and Pritchard, are of dubious success. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy of science, the no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are regarded as the strongest arguments for and against scientific realism, respectively. In this paper, I construct a new argument for scientific realism which I call the anti-induction for scientific realism. It holds that, since past theories were false, present theories are true. I provide an example from the history of science to show that anti-inductions sometimes work in science. The anti-induction for scientific realism has (...) several advantages over the no-miracles argument as a positive argument for scientific realism. (shrink)

Contemporary just war theory is divided into two broad camps: revisionists and traditionalists. Traditionalists seek to provide moral foundations for something close to current international law, and in particular the laws of armed conflict. Although they propose improvements, they do so cautiously. Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction—it lacks deeper moral foundations. In this article, I present the contemporary history of analytical just war theory, from the origins of contemporary traditionalist just war theory in Michael (...) Walzer's work to the revisionist critique of Walzer and the subsequent revival of traditionalism. I discuss central questions of methodology, as well as consider the morality of resorting to war and the morality of conduct in war. I show that although the revisionists exposed philosophical shortcomings in Walzer's arguments, their radical conclusions should prompt us not to reject the broad contemporary consensus, but instead to seek better arguments to underpin it. (shrink)

Our era is characterized by a significant conflict between populism and anti-populism, both politically and culturally. Populist groups and leaders often portray themselves as the true voices of the common people, gaining electoral support or even taking power by framing society as a battle between the ordinary people and the elite, challenging the political and economic establishment. Conversely, parties within the liberal political spectrum counteract the rise of populism by articulating a strong anti-populist discourse, sometimes successfully dominating the (...) political arena. However, despite the increase in studies on populism, there are not many publications regarding anti-populism. This article seeks to examine the anti-populist discourse in Argentina and Greece, two countries with many similarities in political, economic, and cultural aspects. By analyzing the key ideas of anti-populist discourse, we aim to highlight the common anti-populist logic marked by typical paths of modernization, which not only opposes populism but also frequently disregards or opposes specific social groups, such as minorities. (shrink)

There is a tension in our theorizing about laws of nature: our practice of using and reasoning with laws of nature suggests that laws are universal generalizations, but if laws are universal generalizations then we face the problem of explanatory circularity. In this paper I elucidate this tension and show how it motivates a view of laws that I call Minimal Anti-Humeanism. This view says that the laws are the universal generalizations that are not grounded in their instances. I (...) argue that this view has a variety of advantages that could make it attractive to people with both Humean and anti-Humean inclinations. (shrink)

In the literature on supervaluationism, a central source of concern has been the acceptability, or otherwise, of its alleged logical revisionism. I attack the presupposition of this debate: arguing that when properly construed, there is no sense in which supervaluational consequence is revisionary. I provide new considerations supporting the claim that the supervaluational consequence should be characterized in a ‘global’ way. But pace Williamson (1994) and Keefe (2000), I argue that supervaluationism does not give rise to counterexamples to familiar (...) inference-patterns such as reductio and conditional proof. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

In ordinary language, in the medical sciences, and in the overlap between them, we frequently make claims which imply that we might have had different gametic origins from the ones we actually have. Such statements seem intuitively true and coherent. But they counterfactually ascribe different DNA to their referents and therefore contradict material-origin essentialism, which Kripke and his followers argue is intuitively obvious. In this paper I argue, using examples from ordinary language and from philosophy of medicine and bioethics, that (...) statements which attribute alternative material origins to their referents are useful, common in political and medical reasoning, and in many cases best interpreted literally. So we must replace the doctrine of material-origin essentialism with one that can make sense of ordinary discourse and the language of the medical sciences. I propose an anti-essentialist account of such counterfactuals according to which individuals’ modal properties are relative to a given inquiry. (shrink)

This paper seeks to determine the extent of anti-corruption information disclosure in the sustainability reports originating from Gulf countries. Focus primarily on the fight against corruption, this study utilizes a deeply-rooted content analysis technique of corporate sustainability reporting, covering 66 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) firms during 2014. Strengthened by the application of institutional theory, insight into the results points to a state of limited maturity regarding the disclosure of anti-corruption procedures in the region. More specifically, the results highlight (...) the compliance in the reporting of conduct code, while reporting information on whistle-blowing was significantly less in comparison. Firms in Qatar and UAE ultimately release better informed reports; inclusive of detailed information on internal anti-corruption practices. (shrink)

This paper explores anti-natalism and attitudes towards environmental preservation. Anti-natalisms of a certain kind, what I call “compassion-based anti-natalisms”, adhere to the principle of minimising suffering, and this goes hand-in-hand with the common belief that protecting the environment from destruction is the right thing to do. However, I argue that environmental preservation is, in fact, antithetical to the anti-natalist’s aims. This is because environmental preservation is, as I argue, primarily for future generations and has, therefore, pro-natalist (...) attachments: environmental preservation promotes and enables future generations. As a result, environmental preservation conflicts with three of the anti-natalist’s fundamental values: the goal of extinction, an overall reduction in suffering, and adherence to a duty of non-procreation. Because of this, I discuss two possible attitudes the anti-natalist might take towards environmental preservation: Destruction and Apathy. Destruction involves the active degradation and destruction of the environment to bring about extinction as soon as possible. Apathy is to be “hands-off” towards preservation and degrade the environment more slowly. I state that Apathy is the most suitable attitude for the anti-natalist to take towards the environment because it ascertains a sensible balance within the anti-natalist’s values and does not introduce new, morally objectionable outcomes. Finally, I discuss some practical limitations to Apathy and how the anti-natalist might best act in the context of the real world. I conclude that anti-natalists might have to compromise on their values and, paradoxically, support environmental preservation. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the doctrine that logic does not require its own epistemology, for its methods are continuous with those of science. Although most recently urged by Williamson, the idea goes back at least to Lakatos, who wanted to adapt Popper's falsicationism and extend it not only to mathematics but to logic as well. But one needs to be careful here to distinguish the empirical from the a posteriori. Lakatos coined the term 'quasi-empirical' `for the counterinstances to putative (...) mathematical and logical theses. Mathematics and logic may both be a posteriori, but it does not follow that they are empirical. Indeed, as Williamson has demonstrated, what counts as empirical knowledge, and the role of experience in acquiring knowledge, are both unclear. Moreover, knowledge, even of necessary truths, is fallible. Nonetheless, logical consequence holds in virtue of the meaning of the logical terms, just as consequence in general holds in virtue of the meanings of the concepts involved; and so logic is both analytic and necessary. In this respect, it is exceptional. But its methodologyand its epistemology are the same as those of mathematics and science in being fallibilist, and counterexamples to seemingly analytic truths are as likely as those in any scientic endeavour. What is needed is a new account of the evidential basis of knowledge, one which is, perhaps surprisingly, found in Aristotle. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the nascent field of ethics of collegiality may considerably benefit from a symbiosis with virtue and vice epistemology. We start by bringing the epistemic virtue and vice perspective to the table by showing that competence, deemed as an essential characteristic of a good colleague (Betzler & Löschke 2021), should be construed broadly to encompass epistemic competence. By endorsing the anti-individualistic stance in epistemology as well as context-specificity of epistemic traits, we (...) show how the individual vice of a colleague can have a positive epistemic outcome for the team while individual virtue can be damaging if all team members share it, thereby contributing to the negative epistemic outcome. We argue that the evaluation and analysis of collegial relationships should be done through one’s contribution to the team dynamics: without this collectivist perspective, the ethics of collegiality cannot aspire to become encompassing normative theory. (shrink)

I propose a systematic survey of the various attitudes proponents of enaction (or enactivism) entertained or are entertaining towards representationalism and towards the use of the concept “mental representation” in cognitive science. For the sake of clarity, a set of distinctions between different varieties of representationalism and anti-representationalism are presented. I also recapitulate and discuss some anti-representationalist trends and strategies one can find the enactive literature, before focusing on some possible limitations of eliminativist versions of enactive anti-representationalism. (...) These limitations are here taken as opportunities for reflecting on the fate of enactivism in its relations with representationalism and anti-representationalism. (shrink)

Should you be willing to forego any sure good for a tiny probability of a vastly greater good? Fanatics say you should, anti‐fanatics say you should not. Anti‐fanaticism has great intuitive appeal. But, I argue, these intuitions are untenable, because satisfying them in their full generality is incompatible with three very plausible principles: acyclicity, a minimal dominance principle, and the principle that any outcome can be made better or worse. This argument against anti‐fanaticism can be turned into (...) a positive argument for a weak version of fanaticism, but only from significantly more contentious premises. In combination, these facts suggest that those who find fanaticism counterintuitive should favor not anti‐fanaticism, but an intermediate position that permits agents to have incomplete preferences that are neither fanatical nor anti‐fanatical. (shrink)

Anti‐exceptionalism about logic is the view that logic is not special; it is just like empirical sci‐ ence in many respects. In particular, it is thought that an anti‐exceptionalist must also hold that logical theories are completely a posteriori. However, it is not clear what it means to say that logical theories are a posteriori, for the a priori/a posteriori divide has been explored from different perspectives in contemporary philosophy. The central claim of this paper is to argue (...) that logical anti‐exceptionalism is quite compatible with the a priori, if the a priori/a posteriori divide is understood in the lines recently developed by Tuomas Tahko. The con‐ ception advanced by Tahko is characterized by an interplay between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, generating a bootstrapping relation in which one kind of knowledge constantly substantiates the other. We further present some of the advantages of the bootstrapping approach over the current epistemology associated with anti‐exceptionalism. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant viewed himself as the first person to have properly defined the concept of a human ‘race’. He distinguished four human ‘races’ and ranked the.

The early 21st century has witnessed a significant rise in extreme nationalism, racism, and xenophobia, deeply affecting the rights of minorities such as the Roma, who have historically faced systemic discrimination and racism. Given that many political leaders who downplay minority rights often engage in populist discourse, a debate has emerged about the relationship between populism and minority rights. While many scholars argue that populism inherently undermines liberal principles like the protection of minorities, the question remains whether populism is necessarily (...) anti-pluralist and anti-minority. What about the case of left-wing populism? Furthermore, why is the relationship between anti-populism and minorities often overlooked? In this article, we examine the relationship between populism, anti-populism, and minorities through the case of two different governmental discourses in crisis-ridden Greece. Specifically, we focus on the governmental political discourse and policies of the populist SYRIZA (2015-2019) and the anti-populist ND (2019-2023) on Roma, with the aim of showing that populism is not necessarily anti-pluralist, while anti-populism is not always pluralist, as both phenomena can follow inclusionary or exclusionary logics. (shrink)

The anti-counterfeiting trade agreement was originally meant to harmonise and enforce intellectual property rights provisions in existing trade agreements within a wider group of countries. This was commendable in itself, so ACTA’s failure was all the more disappointing. In this article, I wish to contribute to the post-ACTA debate by proposing a specific analysis of the ethical reasons why ACTA failed, and what we can learn from them. I argue that five kinds of objections—namely, secret negotiations, lack of consultation, (...) vagueness of formulation, negotiations outside any international body, and the creation of a new governing body outside already existing forums—had only indirect ethical implications. This takes nothing away from their seriousness but it does make them less compelling, because agreements should be evaluated, ethically, for what they are, rather than for the alleged reasons why they are being proposed. I then argue that ACTA would have caused three ethical problems: an excessive and misplaced kind of responsibility, a radical decrease in freedom of expression, and a severe reduction in information privacy. I conclude by indicating three lessons that can help us in shaping a potential ACTA 2.0. First, we should acknowledge the increasingly vital importance of the framework of implicit expectations, attitudes, and practices that can facilitate and promote morally good decisions and actions. ACTA failed to perceive that it would have undermined the very framework that it was supposed to foster, namely one promoting some of the best and most successful aspects of our information society. Second, we should realise that, in advanced information societies, any regulation affecting how people deal with information is now bound to influence the whole ‘onlife’ habitat within which they live. So enforcing IPR becomes an environmental problem. Third, since legal documents, such as ACTA, emerge from within the infosphere that they affect, we should apply to the process itself, which one day may lead to a post-ACTA treaty, the very framework and ethical values that we would like to see promoted by it. (shrink)

Two central themes of Douglas Edwards’s The Metaphysics of Truth are anti-deflationism and substantial pluralism. In Part I of this paper I discuss Edwards’s grounds for rejecting deflationism and suggest a few additional grounds. In Part II I discuss Edward's truth-pluralism and respond to his criticism of my correspondence-pluralism. While these pluralisms share significant features, their differences also raise several important questions.

Modern analytical just war theory starts with Michael Walzer's defense of key tenets of the laws of war in his Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer advocates noncombatant immunity, proportionality, and combatant equality: combatants in war must target only combatants; unintentional harms that they inflict on noncombatants must be proportionate to the military objective secured; and combatants who abide by these principles fight permissibly, regardless of their aims. In recent years, the revisionist school of just war theory, led by Jeff McMahan, (...) has radically undermined Walzer's defense of these principles. This essay situates Walzer's and the revisionists’ arguments, before illustrating the disturbing vision of the morality of war that results from revisionist premises. It concludes by showing how broadly Walzerian conclusions can be defended using more reliable foundations. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic takes logic to be, as the name suggests, unexceptional. Rather, in naturalist fashion, the anti-exceptionalist takes logic to be continuous with science, and considers logical theories to be adoptable and revisable accordingly. On the other hand, the Adoption Problem aims to show that there is something special about logic that sets it apart from scientific theories, such that it cannot be adopted in the way the anti-exceptionalist proposes. In this paper I assess the damage (...) the Adoption Problem causes for anti-exceptionalism, and show that it is also problematic for exceptionalist positions too. My diagnosis of why the Adoption Problem affects both positions is that the self-governance of basic logical rules of inference prevents them from being adoptable, regardless of whether logic is exceptional or not. (shrink)

Metaethics is traditionally understood as a non-moral discipline that examines moral judgements from a standpoint outside of ethics. This orthodox understanding has recently come under pressure from anti-Archimedeans, such as Ronald Dworkin and Matthew Kramer, who proclaim that rather than assessing morality from an external perspective, metaethical theses are themselves substantive moral claims. In this paper, I scrutinise this anti-Archimedean challenge as applied to the metaethical position of expressivism. More precisely, I examine the claim that expressivists do not (...) avoid moral commitments when accounting for moral thought, but instead presuppose them; they do not look at ethics from the outside, but operate from within ethics. This paper defends the non-moral status of expressivism against anti-Archimedeanism by rejecting a new anti-Archimedean challenge which, on the basis of Hume’s Law, aims to exploit expressivist explanations of supervenience in order to show that expressivism is a substantive moral position. (shrink)

Kim’s causal exclusion argument purports to demonstrate that the non-reductive physicalist must treat mental properties (and macro-level properties in general) as causally inert. A number of authors have attempted to resist Kim’s conclusion by utilizing the conceptual resources of Woodward’s interventionist conception of causation. The viability of these responses has been challenged by Gebharter, who argues that the causal exclusion argument is vindicated by the theory of causal Bayesian networks (CBNs). Since the interventionist conception of causation relies crucially on CBNs (...) for its foundations, Gebharter’s argument appears to cast significant doubt on interventionism’s anti-reductionist credentials. In the present article, we both (1) demonstrate that Gebharter’s CBN-theoretic formulation of the exclusion argument relies on some unmotivated and philosophically significant assumptions (especially regarding the relationship between CBNs and the metaphysics of causal relevance), and (2) use Bayesian networks to develop a general theory of causal inference for multi-level systems that can serve as the foundation for an anti-reductionist interventionist account of causation.1. (shrink)

Priest holds anti-exceptionalism about logic. That is, he holds that logic, as a theory, does not have any exceptional status in relation to the theories of empirical sciences. Crucial to Priest’s anti-exceptionalism is the existence of ‘data’ that can force the revision of logical theory. He claims that classical logic is inadequate to the available data and, thus, needs to be revised. But what kind of data can overturn classical logic? Priest claims that the data is our intuitions (...) about the validity of inferences. In order to make sense of this claim, I will appeal to the Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher Candrakīrti. I will then pose a problem for Priest’s anti-exceptionalism. Finally, I will suggest a way out of the problem for Priest. Whether or not he accepts my solution, I will let him decide. (shrink)

I argue that recent attempts to show that meaning and content are not normative fail. The two most important arguments anti-normativists have presented are what I call the ‘argument from constitution’ and the ‘argument from guidance’. Both of these arguments suffer from the same basic problem: they overlook the possibility of focusing on assessability by norms, rather than compliance with norms or guidance by norms. Moreover, I argue that the anti-normativists arguments fail even if we ignore this basic (...) problem. Thus, we have not been given good reasons to think that normativism is false. (shrink)

In this note, written for a Book Symposium on Joseph Raz’ 'Morality of Freedom', I examine the extent to which the book succeeds in meeting what he calls the ‘‘revisionist challenge’’ to theories of liberty. Raz locates the revisionist challenge in the work of Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls. It has two separable aspects. The first is to deny that liberty is intrinsically valuable, and to claim rather that ‘‘those who wrote and talked of the value of liberty really cherished (...) not liberty but something else,’’ such as justice or equality. The second is to claim that this ‘‘something else’’ need refers not to one particular value, but rather to a ‘‘complex of values’’, such as might be captured by Rawls’ list of the basic liberties. Raz’ ultimate goal is to defend a conception of personal liberty on which is not only intrinsically valuable, but has a unity provided by an underlying 'core' in the ideal of personal autonomy. I suggest that Raz' formulation of the ideal of personal freedom, while undoubtedly impressive, does not fully respond to the revisionist challenge. (shrink)

Krzysztof Pomian’s works on history are one of the most interesting theoretical achievements of contemporary humanities. Being one of the prominent revisionists, Pomian took part in an important period of Polish history. Revisionist movement has also played an important role in shaping some basic ideas of Pomian’s later work. Article shows the meaning of revisionism in Polish tradition concerning historiography, and more specifically the meaning of Pomian’s ideas on historiography.

Intellectualists disagree with anti-intellectualists about the relationship between knowledge and truth. According to intellectualists, this relationship is intimate. Knowledge entails true belief, and in fact everything required for knowledge is somehow relevant to the probability that the belief in question is true. According to anti-intellectualists, this relationship isn’t intimate. Or, at least, it’s not as intimate as intellectualists think. Factors that aren’t in any way relevant to the probability that a belief is true can make a difference to (...) whether it counts as knowledge. In this paper, I give a new argument for anti-intellectualism and draw out consequences of this argument for the pragmatic encroachment debate. The standard purist objection to pragmatism is that pragmatism entails anti-intellectualism. As I show, anti-intellectualism follows from premises that are plausible even if purism is true, so the standard purist objection to pragmatism fails. (shrink)

According to anti-atomism, we represent color properties (e.g., red) in virtue of representing color relations (e.g., redder than). I motivate anti-atomism with a puzzle involving a series of pairwise indistinguishable chips. I then develop two versions of anti-atomism.

Call ‘radical moral theorizing’ the project of developing a moral theory that not only tries to conform to our existing moral judgments, but also manifests various theoretical virtues: consistency, simplicity, explanatory depth, and so on. Many moral philosophers assume that radical moral theorizing does not require any particular metaethical commitments. In this paper, I argue against this assumption. The most natural justification for radical moral theorizing presupposes moral realism, broadly construed; in contrast, there may be no justification for radical moral (...) theorizing if moral anti-realism is true. (shrink)

Plausibly, mathematical claims are true, but the fundamental furniture of the world does not include mathematical objects. This can be made sense of by providing mathematical claims with paraphrases, which make clear how the truth of such claims does not require the fundamental existence of mathematical objects. This paper explores the consequences of this type of position for explanatory structure. There is an apparently straightforward relationship between this sort of structure, and the logical sort: i.e. logically complex claims are explained (...) by logically simpler ones. For example, disjunctions are explained by their (true) disjuncts, while generalizations are explained by their (true) instances. This would seem as plausible in the case of mathematics as elsewhere. Also, it would seem to be something that the anti-realist approaches at issue would want to preserve. It will be argued, however, that these approaches cannot do this: they lead not merely to violations of the familiar principles relating logical and explanatory structure, but even to reversals of these. That is, there are cases where generalizations explain their instances, or disjunctions their disjuncts. (shrink)