Arthur Danto’s recent book, Andy Warhol, leads the reader through the story of the iconic American’s artistic life highlighted by a philosophical commentary, a commentary that merges Danto’s aesthetic theory with the artist himself. Inspired by Warhol’s Brillo Box installation, art that in Danto’s eyes was indiscernible from the everyday boxes it represented, Danto developed a theory that is able to differentiate art from non-art by employing the body of conceptual art theory manifest in what he termed the ‘artworld’. (...) The strength of Danto’s theory is found in its ability to explain the art of the post-modern era. His body of work weaves philosophy, art history and art criticism together, merging his aesthetic philosophy with his extensive knowledge of the world of art. Danto’s essentialist theory of embodied meaning provides him with a critical tool that succeeds in explaining the currents of contemporary art, a task that many great thinkers of art history were unable to do. If Warhol inspired Danto to create a philosophy of art, it is appropriate that Danto write a tribute to Warhol that traces how Warhol brought philosophy into art. Danto’s account of ‘Warhol as philosopher’ positions him as a pivotal figure in the history of twentieth-century art, effecting a sea change in how art was made and viewed. Warhol achieved this by conceiving of works that embodied the answers to a series of philosophical puzzles surrounding the nature of art. Warhol, as Danto describes him, manifests himself in his art because he had transformed himself, in a way, into an icon of the times. This pragmatist notion that art should undermine the dichotomies that exist between art and life would, by some accounts, position Warhol to be the philosopher that Danto claims him to be, for he dissolved the philosophical questions posted by late modern aesthetic thinkers by creating art that imploded the accepted notions of art at the time. One of Danto’s greatest contributions to aesthetics is his theory’s ability to distinguish art from non-art, recognizing that it is the artist’s intention that levels the sublimity of art into the commonplace, thereby transfiguring the everyday. However, acknowledging this achievement, I argue that Warhol’s philosophical contribution actually manifests itself in a manner different from that proposed by Danto. Danto maintains that the internal drive of art leads to the unfolding of art theoretical concepts that ineluctably shift the terrain of world of art. I would agree with Danto that Warhol, almost as Hegel viewed Napoleon as Geist on a horse, pushed forward the boundaries of art through the actualization of art’s internal drive. But I would disagree that the conceptual nature of art is one that unfolds merely as a relation of concepts that artists trace through a connection to the meaning of history they forge using their unmediated grasp of style. Rather, I would argue that the artist’s style is not bound so narrowly to the meanings they express. Through their aesthetic articulations, artists initiate a process of social interaction. This process employs the philosophical logic which Danto attributes to Warhol indirectly, and through it, it is able to transfigure the vocabulary of art—the concepts of the artworld—by superseding the language of modernism. Warhol’s philosophical contribution is seen in his mastery of both the medium of art and the underlying logic of the medium’s expression and reception. (shrink)

To escape from the labyrinth of the continuum, Leibniz maintains, we must think very differently about the nature of space, time, bodies, and substances; and in particular we must posit an infinity of simple substances or monads. The main aim of this historically rich and interpretively provocative book is to explain why Leibniz says such things by examining his purported solution and how he arrived at it. Each of the book’s seven chapters focuses on a different “Ariadnean thread” that supposedly (...) helped Leibniz find his way out of the labyrinth. They concern the themes of “composition, aggregation, atoms, forms, motion, substance, and continuation in existence” (6). (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s analytic theory of art relies on a form of artistic interpretation that requires access to the art theoretical concepts of the artworld, ‘an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld’. Art, in what Danto refers to as post-history, has become theoretical, yet it is here contended that his explanation of the artist’s creative style lacks a theoretical dimension. This article examines Danto’s account of style in light of the role the artistic (...) metaphor plays in the interpretation of the artwork, arguing that it is unable to account for the metaphorical power he claims is embedded within the work of art. An artist’s style issues from a unique perspective, the way an artist inhabits a specific spot in history. Though each person has such a perspective, when applied aesthetically, it is the key to the articulation of a unique historical meaning in the work of art. At the same time, artists’ knowledge of their contribution remains cut off from this perspective, for they are unaware of their self-manifestation of the historical concept of style. This article makes the case that Danto’s notion of style, based on Sartre’s notion of being-for-itself, cannot fulfil the role he allots it in his theory because, at some level, artists must apprehend their style to create a work of art capable of functioning critically as a countertext. It is only through the apprehension of their style, and dialogical activity that takes place between the artist and the beholders, that the unseen body of artworld theory is formed. Without this, when oriented to the aesthetic, style provides no concept or theory for the mind to behold. This article presents an alternative approach to style that recognizes the role of theory in the creation of metaphor, which would circumvent this problem. (shrink)

This book presents Robert S. Hartman’s formal theory of value and critically examines many other twentieth century value theorists in its light, including A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, Brand Blanshard, Paul Edwards, Albert Einstein, William K. Frankena, R.M. Hare, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, G.E. Moore, P.H. Nowell-Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Charles Stevenson, Paul W. Taylor, Stephen E. Toulmin, and J.O. Urmson.

This is a review of Michael Kelly's _Iconoclasm in Aesthetics_.

Kit Fine has proposed a new solution to what he calls ‘a familiar puzzle’ concerning modality and existence. The puzzle concerns the argument from the alleged truths ‘It is necessary that Socrates is a man’ and ‘It is possible that Socrates does not exist’ to the apparent falsehood ‘It is possible that Socrates is a man and does not exist’. We discuss in detail Fine’s setting up of the ‘puzzle’ and his rejection, with which we concur, of two mooted solutions (...) to it. (One of these uses standard, Kripkean, notions, and the other rests on work done by Arthur Prior.) We set out, and reject, the philosophy of modality underlying Fine’s new solution, and we defend an alternative response to the alleged puzzle. Our solution follows the work of David Wiggins in distinguishing between the sentential operator ‘It is necessary that’ and the predicate modifier ‘necessarily’. We briefly provide this distinction with a possible- world semantics on which it is neither a necessary truth, in some sense, that Socrates exists nor true, in some sense, that Socrates necessarily exists. (shrink)

In 1989, Cambridge University Press announced the publication of a new, three-volume book series: The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts. The first volume – edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, and dedicated to logic and the philosophy of language – contained 15 medieval texts, of which 15 were composed by Christian authors. The second volume in the series, this time focusing on ethics and political philosophy, appeared in 2000. Seventeen of the 17 texts included in this collection – (...) edited by Arthur S McGrade, John Kilcullen and Matthew Kempshall – were authored by Christian writers. Late-medieval Jewish or Islamic texts on ethics or politics? Not in our school. (shrink)

David McCarthy has recently suggested that our compensation and liability practices may be interpreted as reflecting a fundamental norm to hold people liable for imposing risk of harm on others. Independently, closely related ideas have been criticised by Stephen R. Perry and Arthur Ripstein as incompatible with central features of negligence law. We aim to show that these objections are unsuccessful against McCarthy’s Risk–liability theory, and that such an approach is a promising means both for understanding the moral (...) basis of liability for negligence and for reasoning about possible reforms of the institution of negligence law. (shrink)

About death, grief, mourning, life after death and immortality. Why should we die like humans to survive as a species. -/- "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears (...) out the old to make way for the new." (Steve Jobs) -/- CONTENTS: -/- Death - Philosophy of death - Religions - - Animism - - Atheism - - Buddhism - - Christianity - - Hinduism - - Islam - - Jainism - - Jehovah's Witnesses - - Judaism - - Latter-day Saints - - Spiritism - Symbolism - Personification of Death - - Notable personifications - - In mythologies - - - Hindu mythology - - - In Japan - - - Slavic paganism - - - Lithuanian paganism - - In the three monotheistic religions - - - Judaism - - - Christianity - - - In Mexico - - - Islam - Axiochos - - The characters of dialogue - - Dialogue - - Prologue - - Arguments - - Citations - Paradise - - Greco-Roman mythology - - Mesopotamian mythology and influences - - According to Judaism - - According to Christianity - - - According to Catholicism - - - According to Protestantism - - - According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - - According to Islam - - According to Hinduism - - According to modern spiritualities - - - According to the esoteric - Hell - - Mesopotamian origins - - According to Christianity - - - Names appearing in the biblical texts - - - Medieval artistic representations - - - Concepts according to Christian movements - - According to Judaism - - According to Islam - - According to Buddhism - - According to Hinduism - - According to modern esotericism - - - According to Aïvanhov - - - According to Allan Kardec - - Philosophy - - - Jewish Kabbalah - - - Sartre - - - Popular wisdom Funerals - The funeral ritual: a rite of passage - Prehistory - Ancient death customs - - The family bereavement - - Mummification - - Sarcophagi - - Funerals - - Ancient Greece - - Ancient Rome - - Celts, Germans and Scandinavians - Religious funeral rites - - Buddhism - - Judaism - Christianity - - Protestantism - - Islam - Funeral rites by continent - - In Africa - - In Europe - The contemporary era - Mourning (Grief) - - Steps - - - Death of a close - - Loss events without mourning value (white factors) - - Duration and manifestations - - Risks - - Colors - Graveyards (Cemeteries) - - First cemeteries - - Cemeteries today - Funerary art - Dolmens - - Types of dolmens - - Function - - Location - Passage graves - Cenotaphs - - Famous cenotaphs - Lanterns of the Dead Afterlife - History - Questions about death and immortality - Testimonials - - Spiritualistic experiences - - Popular literature on the afterlife - - "Memories" and reminiscences - - Early studies of the science of the 19th century and early 20th century - Types of scenarios - Some religious and philosophical concepts - - Afterlife in Buddhism - - Afterlife in Christianity - - According to Hinduism - - According to Islam - - According to Judaism - - According to Mormonism - - According to the ancient philosophies - - According to Spiritism - - According to Native American traditions - - According to Vedism - - According to Esotericism - In science - Near-death experiences - - Clinical death - - NDE frequency - - Effects of depth of NDE on survival - - Near-death experiences and shared-death experience - - - The first contemporary testimonials - - - Experience according to Moody - - - The concept of "shared death" - - - The NDE scales - - The study of Pim van Lommel - - Spiritual and patient point of view - - - Survivalists studies - - - The religious understanding of the phenomenon - - Scientific views - - - Physiological explanation - - - Psychological explanation - Reincarnation - - Religions - - - In Hinduism - - - In Jainism - - - In Buddhism - - - In Judaism - - - In Christianity - - - In Islam - - In contemporary times - - - Esotericism - - - Works of the psychiatrist Ian Stevenson - - - Radical increase in life expectancy and artificial reincarnation - - Criticism - - - Arthur Schopenhauer - - - Ramana Maharshi - - - Rene Guenon - - - Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy - Metempsychosis - - Theories - - Ideas - Maschalismos Immortality - Immortality of the soul and religious traditions - - Buddhism - - Christianity - - Islam - - Mormonism - Contemporary perception of the immortality of the body - - Observation in the animal kingdom - - Perspectives for mankind - Immortality in science - - Alexis Carrel - - Jean Rostand - - Hayflick limit - - Étienne-Émile Baulieu and DHEA - - Aubrey de Grey - - Professor Skulachev - - Regenerative medicine - - Professor Christopher Jaeger - Eternal Return - - According to the Mesopotamians - - According to Heraclitus and the Stoics - Fountain of Youth - - History of myth and relatives myths - - - In Roman mythology, Germanic, Celtic and Irish - - - In the Middle-East - - - In Spain - - - In the Bible - - The fountain in art and literature - - Painting - - - Literature and cinema - - Persistent of the myth until today - Senescence - - Why do we age? - - Gene regulation - - Cellular senescence Undead - Ghoul - Lich - Mummy - Skeleton - Vampire - Zombie - Other legendary creatures - Creatures specific to a particular universe - Spiritism - - Point out - - Origins of spiritism - - - The traditions through the ages - - - Advent of Christianity in Europe - - - The survival of necromancy - - - The precursors - - - Relations of spiritualism to science - Mediumship - - History - - Skeptical point of view - - Favorable doctor's viewpoint - Ghosts - - Appearance - - Belief in ghosts - - Origin - - - Duality and return dead - - - Ancient roots - - Typology - - - Poltergeists - - - Revenants - - - Ghosts - - - Banshees - - - Apparitions of crisis - - - Phantasms of the living - - - Vision of his own double - - - Ghost armies - - - Ghosts of animals - - - Means of transport - - Science perspective - - - Hallucinations - - - Sleep paralysis - - - Induced ghosts - - - Aches and infrasounds - - - Magnetic fields - Vampires - - Characteristics - - - Vampire transformation - - - Identification - - - Faculties - - Protection against the vampires - - - Precautions at death and burial - - - Apotropaic objects and places - - Destruction of vampires - Zombie - - The concept - - Africa and voodoo - - - West Africa - - - South Africa - - - In Haiti (and the Caribbean) - - - Scientific research - - The "revenants" in the Western imaginary Death in art - Memento mori - - History - - - Antiquity - - - Christianity - - - Mexican syncretism - - Performing arts - - - In painting - - - In literature - - - In movies - - - In video games - - - In Japanese animation - - - In music - The iconography of Weighing of souls (Particular judgment) - - Origin - - Written sources - - Weighing in Romanesque art - - Weighing in Gothic art - - Weighing in the late Middle Ages: to a new iconography - - Weighing of souls or actions? - Poems - - Charlotte Brontë, “On the Death of Anne Brontë” - - Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee” - - Edna St. Vincent Millay, “And you as well must die” - - Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death” - - Emily Dickinson, “If I Should Die” - - Lord Byron, “Epitaph to a Dog” - - Pablo Neruda, “Only Death” - - Stephen Crane, “God Lay Dead in Heaven” - - W. B. Yeats, “He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead” - - Rainer Maria Rilke, “Death” - Paintings - - The Three Dead Kings - - The Death of Nelson - - Beata Beatrix - Sculptures - - The Kiss of Death - - Background - - Imagery - - Angel of Grief - - Fallen Astronaut - Quotes References About the author - Nicolae Sfetcu - - By the same author - - Contact Publishing House - MultiMedia Publishing -/- DOI: 10.58679/TW44411. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to show that the information carried by a structural representation can be decomposed into the information carried by its component parts. In particular, the relations between the components of a structural representation carry quantifiable information about the relations between components of their signifieds. It follows that the information carried by cognitive structural representations, including cognitive maps, can in principle be quantified and decomposed. This is perhaps surprising given that the formal tools of communication theory (...) have typically only been applied to simpler representation-like states without significant structure, such as detectors or indicators. In the final section I consider using computational complexity theory to capture the processing advantages afforded by structural representation. (shrink)

There is a remarkable trend in contemporary environmentalism that emphasizes ‘accepting responsibility’ for the natural world in contrast to outdated preservationist thinking that shirks such responsibility. This approach is often explained and justified by reference to the anthropocene: this fundamentally new epoch—defined by human domination—requires active human intervention to avert planetary catastrophe. However, in this paper, I suggest this rhetoric encourages a flight from history. This often jubilant, sometimes anxious, yearning for unprecedented human innovation and—ultimately—control in our new millennia mirrors (...) the Futurist movement that took off near the beginning of the last century. Despite the significant differences in the details of how academics have defended this twenty-first-century environmental outlook, they all represent the true flight from history; they too quickly jettison the ideas of historical environmentalists and so misunderstand the environmental values at the heart of preservation that are more salient than ever. (shrink)

A characterization result of dilation in terms of positive and negative association admits an extremal counterexample, which we present together with a minor repair of the result. Dilation may be asymmetric whereas covariation itself is symmetric. Dilation is still characterized in terms of positive and negative covariation, however, once the event to be dilated has been specified.

Many have begun to despair that climate justice will prevail even in a minimal form. The affective dimensions of such despair, we suggest, threaten to make climate action appear too demanding. Thus, despair constitutes a moral challenge to individual climate action that has not yet received adequate attention. In response, we defend a duty to act in hope for a more just (climate) future. However, as we see it, this duty falls differentially upon the shoulders of more and less advantaged (...) agents in society. From arguments by Black thinkers like Derrick Bell, we draw a set of distinctions between two types of hope: one for ideal justice, and one for more modest change; and between two types of hopeful actions, those undertaken through formal political channels and those we call 'extra-political' actions; and between two sites of differential moral burdens, those of the privileged and those of the oppressed. Ours is a case for facing even bleak realities, demanding otherwise, and acting in hope to achieve a better future. (shrink)

Bernard Williams's motivational reasons-internalism fails to capture our first-order reasons judgements, while Derek Parfit's nonnaturalistic reasons-externalism cannot explain the nature or normative authority of reasons. This paper offers an intermediary view, reformulating scepticism about external reasons as the claim not that they don't exist but rather that they don't matter. The end-relational theory of normative reasons is proposed, according to which a reason for an action is a fact that explains why the action would be good relative to some end, (...) where the relevant end for any ascription of reasons is determined by the speaker's conversational context. Because these ends need not be the agent's ends, Williams is wrong to reject the existence of external reasons. But contra Parfit, a reason for action is only important for an agent if it is motivationally internal to that agent. (shrink)

A scholar of Hellenistic and Prussian history, Droysen developed a historical theory that at the time was unprecedented in range and depth, and which remains to the present day a valuable key for understanding history as both an idea and a professional practice. Arthur Alfaix Assis interprets Droysen’s theoretical project as an attempt to redefine the function of historiography within the context of a rising criticism of exemplar theories of history, and focuses on Droysen’s claim that the goal underlying (...) historical writing and reading should be the development of the subjective capacity to think historically. In addition, Assis examines the connections and disconnections between Droysen’s theory of historical thinking, his practice of historical thought, and his political activism. Ultimately, Assis not only shows how Droysen helped reinvent the relationship between historical knowledge and human agency, but also traces some of the contradictions and limitations inherent to that project. (shrink)

Holmes exists is false. How can this be, when there is no one for the sentence to misdescribe? Part of the answer is that a sentence’s topic depends on context. The king of France is bald, normally unevaluable, is false qua description of the bald people. Likewise Holmes exists is false qua description of the things that exist; it misdescribes those things as having Holmes among them. This does not explain, though, how Holmes does not exist differs in cognitive content (...) from, say, Vulcan does not exist. Our answer builds on an observation of Kripke’s: even if Holmes exists, he is not in this room, for we were all born too late. (shrink)

Many who suffer from eating disorders claim that they see themselves as “fat”. Despite decades of research into the phenomenon, behavioural evidence has failed to confirm that eating disorders involve visual misperception of own-body size. I illustrate the importance of this phenomenon for our understanding of perceptual processing, outline the challenges involved in experimentally confirming it, and provide solutions to those challenges.

Withdrawal involves emotional pain that motivates much addictive behavior. In this paper, I argue that the emotional pain of withdrawal compels much addictive behavior. Researchers have noticed this possibility but it is widely underappreciated. Among philosophers, only Hanna Pickard has discussed emotional compulsion in addiction, and the emotional aspect of withdrawal has been almost completely neglected. Accounts of emotional compulsion in the philosophical literature (from Tappolet, Elster, and Furrow) probably do not capture how the distress of withdrawal compels, so I (...) propose a more suitable account of “pathodoxastic” compulsion in addiction. On this account, the emotional pain of withdrawal compels when it undermines the ability to believe that one can continue to endure it, and therefore the ability to intend abstinence. (shrink)

Body dissatisfaction has long been considered an integral component of and driving force behind anorexia nervosa. In this paper, I characterise body dissatisfaction in terms of problematic beliefs about body size and the value of thinness. I suggest two methods for understanding these beliefs. Regarding body size beliefs, I suggest focusing on certain forms of misleading phenomenal evidence that sufferers of anorexia nervosa are exposed to. Regarding beliefs about the value of thinness, I suggest focusing on the benefits of such (...) beliefs. (shrink)

Analyses of moral value judgements must meet a practicality requirement: moral speech acts characteristically express pro- or con-attitudes, indicate that speakers are motivated in certain ways, and exert influence on others' motivations. Nondescriptivists including Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard claim that no descriptivist analysis can satisfy this requirement. I argue first that while the practicality requirement is defeasible, it indeed demands a connection between value judgement and motivation that resembles a semantic or conceptual rather than merely contingent psychological link. I (...) then show how a form of descriptivism, the interest-relational theory, satisfies the requirement as a pragmatic and conversational feature of value judgement – thereby also accommodating its defeasibility. The word ``good'' is always indexed to some set of motivations: when this index is unarticulated in many contexts the speaker conversationally implicates possession of those motivations. (shrink)

In this paper, I first present an overview of Asay’s _A Theory of Truthmaking_, highlighting what I take to be some of its most attractive features, especially his re-invigoration of the ontological understanding of truthmaking and his defence of ontology-first truthmaking over explanation-first truthmaking. Then, I articulate what I take to be a puzzling potential inconsistency: (a) he appeals to considerations to do with aboutness in criticising how well ontological views account for truth while (b) ruling out aboutness from the (...) right account of truthmaking. He argues, instead, that necessitation is both necessary and sufficient for truthmaking (§3.3). I suggest that adding aboutness to one’s account in the right way is not just compatible with but important for ontology-first truthmaking. I do all this to invite Asay to clarify his position on these matters. Overall, Asay’s worldview displays the fruitfulness of an ontologically serious approach to metaphysics that puts truthmaking centre-stage. (shrink)

The present narrative review seeks to unravel where we are now, and where we need to go to delineate the active ingredients in psychotherapy delivered by conversational agents (e.g., chatbots). While psychotherapy delivered by conversational agents has shown promising effectiveness for depression, anxiety, and psychological distress across several randomized controlled trials, little emphasis has been placed on the therapeutic processes in these interventions. The theoretical framework of this narrative review is grounded in prominent perspectives on the active ingredients in psychotherapy. (...) Based on search terms derived from various theoretical perspectives, we conducted a systematic literature search of four scientific databases and identified 17 studies. Across the selected studies, three themes emerged: relationship variables, emotional venting, and cognitive factors. While methodological issues compromise the epistemic value of this evidence base, core questions also remain to be answered. Such questions include, but are not limited to, whether humans can form affectionate bonds to inanimate beings and whether these kind of mental health treatments should be understood as psychotherapy or something else. Researchers should therefore be cautious when applying theories of psychotherapy in the realm of conversational agents. We conclude the paper by introducing recommendations for future research, which we hope will help instigate methodologically sound studies in this field. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for two main theses. The first is that Spinoza held that space was not an independently existing thing such as absolute space This creates a problem for his account of individuation. The second thesis is that he can solve this problem by appealing to another doctrine he accepted, that there is absolute motion. I conclude that Spinoza was among the first early modern figures to reject absolute space but accept absolute motion.

Stephen Palmquist is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University. We invited him to answer the question "What norms or values define excellent philosophy of religion? as part of our "Philosophers of Religion on Philosophy of Religion" series. If we regard this as a philosophical (not a scientific) question, then the first step to answering it is to determine what norms or values define excellent philosophy, in general. Once that is established, we can inquire whether the (...) nature of religion brings with it any special features that make the task of doing excellent philosophy of religion unique. Unlike scientific explanations, excellent philosophical explanations must be multi-perspectival. A question that has only one right answer is not philosophical; instead, it is likely to be about facts. While we philosophers should care (deeply!) about any facts relevant to our inquiries, our peculiar way of interpreting facts means that answering a philosophical question cannot be done in one absolutely "right" way. This does not mean there are no right answers to philosophical questions; rather, there are many. But this does not make any answer equally good; for there would then be no such thing as excellent philosophy. The essentially perspectival nature of all genuinely philosophical questions means that the correctness of each purportedly "right" answer must be assessed in terms of its aptness for the perspective the questioner adopts when posing the question. A single question, such as "Does God exist?" can have many good answers, depending on whether the questioner assumes science, morality, aesthetics, or something else as the context. Each different type of inquiry has different boundary-conditions, so a good answer within each context is bound to differ from those in other contexts. Bad philosophy typically lacks depth: like a cyclops, its approach to answering questions is mono-perspectival. But if good philosophy acknowledges perspectives, what makes philosophy excellent? Good philosophy achieves excellence when it approaches a completeness whereby we begin to understand the range of relevant perspectives from which a given question can be asked, and the distinct boundary-conditions for answering it properly from each relevant perspective. Before applying this definition of excellent philosophy to the specific case at hand, we must pause to consider whether anything distinctive characterizes the range of philosophical topics and questions that typically come under the umbrella of philosophy of religion. In particular, does religion have features that make it especially difficult (or for that matter, easy) to think about philosophically, compared to other philosophical topics? Yes and no. (shrink)

Neo-Fregean logicists claim that Hume’s Principle (HP) may be taken as an implicit definition of cardinal number, true simply by fiat. A long-standing problem for neo-Fregean logicism is that HP is not deductively conservative over pure axiomatic second-order logic. This seems to preclude HP from being true by fiat. In this paper, we study Richard Kimberly Heck’s Two-Sorted Frege Arithmetic (2FA), a variation on HP which has been thought to be deductively conservative over second-order logic. We show that it isn’t. (...) In fact, 2FA is not conservative over n-th order logic, for all $n \geq 2$. It follows that in the usual one-sorted setting, HP is not deductively Field-conservative over second- or higher-order logic. (shrink)

Dilation occurs when an interval probability estimate of some event E is properly included in the interval probability estimate of E conditional on every event F of some partition, which means that one’s initial estimate of E becomes less precise no matter how an experiment turns out. Critics maintain that dilation is a pathological feature of imprecise probability models, while others have thought the problem is with Bayesian updating. However, two points are often overlooked: (1) knowing that E is stochastically (...) independent of F (for all F in a partition of the underlying state space) is sufficient to avoid dilation, but (2) stochastic independence is not the only independence concept at play within imprecise probability models. In this paper we give a simple characterization of dilation formulated in terms of deviation from stochastic independence, propose a measure of dilation, and distinguish between proper and improper dilation. Through this we revisit the most sensational examples of dilation, which play up independence between dilator and dilatee, and find the sensationalism undermined by either fallacious reasoning with imprecise probabilities or improperly constructed imprecise probability models. (shrink)

Kripke, argued like this: it seems possible that E; the appearance can't be explained away as really pertaining to a "presentation" of E; so, pending a different explanation, it is possible that E. Textbook Kripkeans see in the contrast between E and its presentation intimations of a quite general distinction between two sorts of meaning. E's secondary or a posteriori meaning is the set of all worlds w which E, as employed here, truly describes. Its primary or a priori meaning (...) is the set of all w such that if w is actual, then E is true. "Conceivability error" occurs when a primary possibility is mistaken for a secondary one. Textbook Kripkeanism is rejected on the grounds that it makes meaning too modal and modality too much a matter of meaning. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky's Poverty of the Stimulus Argument is one of the most famous and controversial arguments in the study of language and the mind. Though widely endorsed by linguists, the argument has met with much resistance in philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophical critics have often failed to fully appreciate the power of the argument. In this paper, we provide a systematic presentation of the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument, clarifying its structure, content, and evidential base. We defend the argument against a variety (...) of philosophical criticisms, new and old, and argue that the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument continues to deserve its guiding role in the study of language and the mind. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss empirical evidence regarding anorexic patients’ distorted body representations. I fit this evidence into a broader framework for understanding how the spatial content of the body is tracked and represented. This framework is motivated by O’Shaughnessy’s (1980) long-term body image hypothesis. This hypothesis posits a representation that tracks changes in the spatial content of the body and supplies this content to other body representations. I argue that a similar kind of body representation might exist and, in (...) the case of anorexia, be distorted. Finally, I suggest that this body representation might become distorted through influence by affect. -/- . (shrink)

In "De l’Allemagne", Mme de Staël develops a sophisticated philosophical psychology that centers not on reason, but imagination. She does this by bringing French Enlightenment philosophy, particularly Rousseau and Diderot, into dialogue with German thinkers, including Kant and Herder. For Mme de Staël, imagination transcends the epistemic limits of sensibility and reason by incorporating sentiment.

Conceptual analysis is undergoing a revival in philosophy, and much of the credit goes to Frank Jackson. Jackson argues that conceptual analysis is needed as an integral component of so-called serious metaphysics and that it also does explanatory work in accounting for such phenomena as categorization, meaning change, communication, and linguistic understanding. He even goes so far as to argue that opponents of conceptual analysis are implicitly committed to it in practice. We show that he is wrong on all of (...) these points and that his case for conceptual analysis doesn't succeed. At the same time, we argue that the sorts of intuitions that figure in conceptual analysis may still have a significant role to play in philosophy. So naturalists needn't disregard intuitions altogether. (shrink)

The norms of simplicity, convenience, unfussiness, and self-control guide Diogenes the Cynic, Zeno of Citium, Chrysippus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius in approaching food. These norms generate the precept that meat and dainties are luxuries, so Stoics should eschew them. Considerations of justice, environmental harm, anthropogenic global climate change, sustainability, food security, feminism, harm to animals, personal health, and public health lead contemporary Stoics to condemn the meat industrial complex, debunk carnism, and select low input, plant-based foods.

Determinism is established in quantum mechanics by tracing the probabilities in the Born rules back to the absolute (overall) phase constants of the wave functions and recognizing these phase constants as pseudorandom numbers. The reduction process (collapse) is independent of measurement. It occurs when two wavepackets overlap in ordinary space and satisfy a certain criterion, which depends on the phase constants of both wavepackets. Reduction means contraction of the wavepackets to the place of overlap. The measurement apparatus fans out the (...) incoming wavepacket into spatially separated eigenpackets of the chosen observable. When one of these eigenpackets together with a wavepacket located in the apparatus satisfy the criterion, the reduction associates the place of contraction with an eigenvalue of the observable. The theory is nonlocal and contextual. Keywords:. (shrink)

Radical concept nativism is the thesis that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. Notoriously endorsed by Jerry Fodor (1975, 1981), radical concept nativism has had few supporters. However, it has proven difficult to say exactly what’s wrong with Fodor’s argument. We show that previous responses are inadequate on a number of grounds. Chief among these is that they typically do not achieve sufficient distance from Fodor’s dialectic, and, as a result, they do not illuminate the central question of how new (...) primitive concepts are acquired. To achieve a fully satisfactory response to Fodor’s argument, one has to juxtapose questions about conceptual content with questions about cognitive development. To this end, we formulate a general schema for thinking about how concepts are acquired and then present a detailed illustration. (shrink)

A central tenet of truthmaker theory is that necessitation is necessary for truthmaking (NEC). This paper defends NEC in a novel, piecemeal way, namely by responding to a potential counterexample involving a changing past. If Carter won a race at t1 but is later disqualified at t2, then Carter no longer won at t1. A wholly past event seems to have changed in the future. The event makes ‘Carter won the race at t1’ (RACE) true between t1‐2 but fails to (...) make it true at t2. So, we have a potential counterexample to necessitation: a truthmaker of RACE fails in another context to make the same truthbearer RACE true. I argue that the best solution to this challenge is not that there are different truthbearers at t1‐2 and t2 (the semantic response), or that RACE was never true because of the future disqualification or will always be true despite the future disqualification. The best solution is to accept that the past can change: past events can change based on what happens in the future (e.g., via their effects). This paper's novel defence of necessitation will illustrate the importance of utilising explicitly ontological and commonsensical tools in accounting for truth. (shrink)

Sufferers of eating disorders often hold false beliefs about their own body size. Such beliefs appear to violate norms of rationality, being neither grounded by nor responsive to appropriate forms of evidence. I defend the rationality of these beliefs. I argue that they are in fact supported by appropriate evidence, emanating from proprioceptive misperception of bodily boundaries. This argument has far‐reaching implications for the explanation and treatment of eating disorders, as well as debates over the relationship between rationality and human (...) psychology. (shrink)

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

After a long hiatus, psychology and philosophy are returning to formal study of imagination. While excellent work is being done in the current environment, this article argues for a stronger thesis than usually adopted. Imagination is not just a peripheral feature of cognition or a domain for aesthetic research. It is instead the core operating system or cognitive capacity for humans and has epistemic and therapeutic functions that ground all our sense-making activities. A sketch of imagination as embodied cognition is (...) offered, followed by suggestions of how to organize imagination studies into a more rigorous science–humanities research area. (shrink)

This is a revised version of a paper that was originally presented at the first Kant in Asia international conference (on the theme "The Unity of Human Personhood") in May of 2009. It was published as Chapter 64 in Cultivating Personhood: Kant and Asian Philosophy, ed. Stephen R. Palmquist (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), pp.811-821. I argue that Kant and the Yijing both employ a form of architectonic reasoning, though their respective understandings of the logical structure of human reasoning (...) are incommensurable. A more thoroughly revised version of the paper was later published in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy and was followed by a series of several other articles arguing that there is a way of arranging the Yijing's 64 hexagrams such that their form is compatible with the form of Kant's table of categories. (shrink)

The computational paradigm, which has dominated psychology and artificial intelligence since the cognitive revolution, has been a source of intense debate. Recently, several cognitive scientists have argued against this paradigm, not by objecting to computation, but rather by objecting to the notion of representation. Our analysis of these objections reveals that it is not the notion of representation per se that is causing the problem, but rather specific properties of representations as they are used in various psychological theories. Our analysis (...) suggests that all theorists accept the idea that cognitive processing involves internal information-carrying states that mediate cognitive processing. These mediating states are a superordinate category of representations. We discuss five properties that can be added to mediating states and examine their importance in various cognitive models. Finally, three methodological lessons are drawn from our analysis and discussion. (shrink)

This study in moral, political, and legal philosophy contends that it is morally impermissible to circumcise male minors without a medical indication (nontherapeutic circumcision). Male minors have a moral anticipatory autonomy right-in-trust not to be circumcised. This right depends on norms of autonomy and bodily integrity. These norms generate three direct non-consequentialist arguments against nontherapeutic circumcision: (1) the loss of nonrenewable functional tissue, (2) genital salience, and (3) limits on a parental right to permanently modify their sons' bodies. An indirect (...) argument holds (4) that if it is morally impermissible to remove the female prepuce (clitoral hood), then it is also morally impermissible to remove the male prepuce (foreskin). Although there is debate across medical cultures, a reasonable understanding supports the claim that nontherapeutic circumcision causes some harms and imposes unwarranted risks on male minors. The overall moral case applies to secular circumcisions and, with some qualifications, to religious circumcisions in Judaism and Islam. Arguments of political philosophy that invoke the freedom of religion, toleration, multiculturalism, and social meaning qualify somewhat, but do not eliminate, the case against circumcising male minors without a medical indication. Nevertheless, the arguments deployed in this study do not warrant legal interference at this time with secular and religious practices of nontherapeutic circumcision. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the fact that AI is predominantly portrayed as white—in colour, ethnicity, or both. We first illustrate the prevalent Whiteness of real and imagined intelligent machines in four categories: humanoid robots, chatbots and virtual assistants, stock images of AI, and portrayals of AI in film and television. We then offer three interpretations of the Whiteness of AI, drawing on critical race theory, particularly the idea of the White racial frame. First, we examine the extent to which this (...) Whiteness might simply reflect the predominantly White milieus from which these artefacts arise. Second, we argue that to imagine machines that are intelligent, professional, or powerful is to imagine White machines because the White racial frame ascribes these attributes predominantly to White people. Third, we argue that AI racialised as White allows for a full erasure of people of colour from the White utopian imaginary. Finally, we examine potential consequences of the racialisation of AI, arguing it could exacerbate bias and misdirect concern. (shrink)

I introduce and discuss an underappreciated form of motivated cognition: motivational pessimism, which involves the biasing of beliefs for the sake of self-motivation. I illustrate how motivational pessimism avoids explanatory issues that plague other (putative) forms of motivated cognition and discuss distinctions within the category, related to awareness, aetiology, and proximal goals.

Leibniz often refers to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) as something like a first principle. In some texts, however, he attempts to give positive arguments in its favor. I examine two such arguments, and find them wanting. The first argument has two defects. First, it is question-begging; and second, when the question-begging step is excised, the principle one can in fact derive is highly counter-intuitive. The second argument is valid, but has the defect of only reaching a nearly trivial (...) conclusion. (shrink)

I am grateful to Donald Ainslie, Lisa Austin, Michael Blake, Abraham Drassinower, David Dyzenhaus, George Fletcher, Robert Gibbs, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Sari Kisilevsky, Dennis Klimchuk, Christopher Morris, Scott Shapiro, Horacio Spector, Sergio Tenenbaum, Malcolm Thorburn, Ernest Weinrib, Karen Weisman, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for comments, and audiences in the UCLA Philosophy Department and Columbia Law School for their questions.

Models are the coin of the realm in current philosophy of science, as they are in science itself, having replaced laws and theories as the primary strategy. Logical Positivism tried to erase the older neo-Kantian distinction between ideal constructions and reality. It returns in the case of models. Nowak’s concept of idealization pro- vided an alternative account of this issue. It construed model application as concretizations of hypotheses which improve by accounting for exceptions. This appears to account for physical law. (...) But it raises the problem of uniqueness: is the result unique, as physical law should be? Neo-Kantianism failed this test. Its solutions were circular justifications for claims of uniqueness. Nowak inherited the problem without resolving it. (shrink)

It has long been known that in the context of axiomatic second-order logic (SOL), Hume's Principle (HP) is mutually interpretable with "the universe is Dedekind infinite" (DI). I offer a more fine-grained analysis of the logical strength of HP, measured by deductive implications rather than interpretability. The main result is that HP is not deductively conservative over SOL + DI. That is, SOL + HP proves additional theorems in the language of pure second-order logic that are not provable from SOL (...) + DI alone. Arguably, then, HP is not just a pure axiom of infinity, but rather it carries additional logical content. On the other hand, I show that HP is $\Pi^1_1$ conservative over SOL + DI, and that HP is conservative over SOL + DI + "the universe is well ordered" (WO). Next, I show that SOL + HP does not prove any of the simplest and most natural versions of the axiom of choice, including WO and weaker principles. Lastly, I discuss other axioms of infinity. I show that HP does not prove the Splitting or Pairing principles (axioms of infinity stronger than DI). (shrink)