One version of the problem of evil concludes that personalistic forms of theism should be rejected since the acts that one would expect a God with person-like qualities to perform, notably acts that would prevent egregious evils, do not occur. Given the evils that exist in the world, it is argued, if God exists as a person or like a person, God’s record of action is akin to that of a negligent parent. One way of responding to this “argument from (...) neglect” is to maintain that there is a good reason for the apparent neglect—namely, that God could not intervene even once with respect to suffering without thereby incurring the responsibility of doing so on every occasion, which would be deleterious. So God never responds to evil. It is argued in this paper that a profoundly integrated, personalistic model of God and the God-world relation—one that is reflected in a soul-body analogy—provides a way of addressing the argument from neglect without affirming the not-even-once principle. (shrink)

Review of Chad Meister's "Introducing Philosophy of Religion".

This review provides a brief summary and analysis of T.J. Mawson's monograph, Monotheism and the Meaning of Life (part of the Cambridge Elements series, edited by Chad Meister and Paul Moser).

Aristotle analyses a large range of objects as composites of matter and form. But how exactly should we understand the relation between the matter and form of a composite? Some commentators have argued that forms themselves are somehow material, that is, forms are impure. Others have denied that claim and argued for the purity of forms. In this paper, I develop a new purist interpretation of Metaphysics Z.10-11, a text central to the debate, which I call 'hierarchical purism'. I argue (...) that hierarchical purism can overcome the difficulties faced by previous versions of purism as well as by impurism. Roughly, on hierarchical purism, each composite can be considered and defined in two different ways: From the perspective of metaphysics, composites are considered only insofar as they have forms and defined purely formally. From the perspective of physics, composites are considered insofar as they have forms and matter and defined with reference to both. Moreover, while the metaphysical definition is a definition in the strict sense of 'definition', the physical definition is a definition in a loose sense. Analogous points hold for intelligible composites and geometry. Finally, neither sort of definitional practice implies that, for Aristotle, forms are impure. (shrink)

David Lewis (1986) criticizes moderate views of composition on the grounds that a restriction on composition must be vague, and vague composition leads, via a precisificational theory of vagueness, to an absurd vagueness of existence. I show how to resist this argument. Unlike the usual resistance, however, I do not jettison precisificational views of vagueness. Instead, I blur the connection between composition and existence that Lewis assumes. On the resulting view, in troublesome cases of vague composition, there is an object, (...) which definitely exists, about which it is vague whether the relevant borderline parts compose it. (shrink)

The ancient puzzle of Dion and Theon has given rise to a surprising array of apparently implausible views. For example, in order to solve the puzzle, several philosophers have been led to deny the existence of their own feet, others have denied that objects can gain and lose parts, and large numbers of philosophers have embraced the thesis that distinct objects can occupy the same space, having all their material parts in common. In this paper, I argue for an alternative (...) approach: I claim that human beings have ordinary parts—hands, heads, feet, and so on—but no extraordinary parts, such as ‘foot-complements’, the existence of which is essential to the puzzle. I rebut three objections to this approach: an objection that it is unacceptably metaphysically arbitrary, an objection that the view is incompatible with versions of the puzzle involving decapitation, and an objection concerning masses of matter. If we can believe that there are such things as hands and feet without involving ourselves in paradox, and without accepting large numbers of co-located material objects that share all their material parts, then that is what we should do. My view is the only known alternative which allows this. (shrink)

Some argue that procreation is immoral due to its negative environmental impact. Since living an “eco-gluttonous” lifestyle of excessive resource consumption is wrong in virtue of the fact that it increases greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact, then bringing another human being into existence must also be wrong, for exactly this same reason. I support this position. It has recently been the subject of criticism, however, primarily on the grounds that such a position (1) is guilty of “double-counting” environmental impacts, (...) and (2) that it over-generalizes to condemn other clearly permissible behaviors, such as saving lives, or certain instances of adoption and immigration. Here, I will defend the environmental argument against procreation from these criticisms. I will do this, first, under the assumption that our individual consumption and emissions cause significant harm. I will then address the problem of causal impotence, and argue that, even if our individual contributions to environmental problems ultimately make no difference to the amount of harm that occurs, procreation is still immoral for many, if not most, of those living in the developed world. (shrink)

The special composition question is the question, ‘When do some things compose something?’ The answers to this question in the literature have largely been at odds with common sense, either by allowing that any two things compose something, or by denying the existence of most ordinary composite objects. I propose a new ‘series-style’ answer to the special composition question that accords much more closely with common sense, and I defend this answer from van Inwagen's objections. Specifically, I will argue that (...) the proposed answer entails the transitivity of parthood, that it is non-circular, and that it casts some light on the ancient puzzle about the Ship of Theseus. (shrink)

Discussions of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Z tend to treat it either as an independent treatise on substance and essence or as preliminary to the main conclusions of the Metaphysics. I argue instead that Z is central to Aristotle’s project of first philosophy in the Metaphysics: the first philosopher seeks the first causes of being qua being, especially substances, and in Z, Aristotle establishes that essences or forms are the first causes of being of perceptible substances. I also argue that the centrality (...) of Z to first philosophy is compatible with its status as theology. (shrink)

According to the traditional bundle theory, particulars are bundles of compresent universals. I think we should reject the bundle theory for a variety of reasons. But I will argue for the thesis at the core of the bundle theory: that all the facts about particulars are grounded in facts about universals. I begin by showing how to meet the main objection to this thesis (which is also the main objection to the bundle theory): that it is inconsistent with the possibility (...) of distinct qualitative indiscernibles. Here, the key idea appeals to a non-standard theory of haecceities as non-well-founded properties of a certain sort. I will then defend this theory from a number of objections, and finally argue that we should accept it on the basis of considerations of parsimony about the fundamental. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there are universals. I begin (Sect. 1) by proposing a sufficient condition for a thing’s being a universal. I then argue (Sect. 2) that some truths exist necessarily. Finally, I argue (Sects. 3 and 4) that these truths are structured entities having constituents that meet the proposed sufficient condition for being universals.

Sackris and Beebe (2014) report the results of a series of studies that seem to show that there are cases in which many people are willing to attribute knowledge to a protagonist even when her belief is unjustified. These results provide some reason to conclude that the folk concept of knowledge does not treat justification as necessary for its deployment. In this paper, we report a series of results that can be seen as supporting this conclusion by going some way (...) towards ruling out an alternative account of Sackris and Beebe’s results—the possibility that the knowledge attributions that they witnessed largely stem from protagonist projection, a phenomenon in language use and interpretation in which the speaker uses words that the relevant protagonist might use to describe her own situation and the listener interprets the speaker accordingly. With that said, we do caution the reader against drawing the conclusion too strongly, on the basis of results like those reported here and by Sackris and Beebe. There are alternative possibilities regarding what drives the observed knowledge attributions in cases of unjustified true belief that must be ruled out before, on the basis of such results, we can conclude with much confidence that the folk concept of knowledge does not treat justification as necessary for its deployment. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the claim recently defended by Josh Weisberg that a certain version of the self-representational approach to phenomenal consciousness cannot avoid a set of problems that have plagued higher-order approaches. These problems arise specifically for theories that allow for higher-order misrepresentation or—in the domain of self-representational theories—self-misrepresentation. In response to Weisberg, I articulate a self-representational theory of phenomenal consciousness according to which it is contingently impossible for self-representations tokened in the context of a conscious mental (...) state to misrepresent their objects. This contingent infallibility allows the theory to both acknowledge the (logical) possibility of self-misrepresentation and avoid the problems of self-misrepresentation. Expanding further on Weisberg’s work, I consider and reveal the shortcomings of three other self-representational models—put forward by Kreigel, Van Gulick, and Gennaro—in order to show that each indicates the need for this sort of infallibility. I then argue that contingent infallibility is in principle acceptable on naturalistic grounds only if we attribute (1) a neo-Fregean kind of directly referring, indexical content to self-representational mental states and (2) a certain ontological structure to the complex conscious mental states of which these indexical self-representations are a part. In these sections I draw on ideas from the work of Perry and Kaplan to articulate the context-dependent semantic structure of inner-representational states. (shrink)

This paper provides a qualified defense of Martin Heidegger’s controversial assertion that humans and animals differ in kind, not just degree. He has good reasons to defend the human difference, and his thesis is compatible with the evolution of humans from other animals. He argues that the human environment is the world of meaning and truth, an environment which peculiarly makes possible truthful activities such as biology. But the ability to be open to truth cannot be a feature of human (...) biology, without making such pursuits as biology, mathematics, and philosophy a biological function of a certain species, homo sapiens. To deny the human difference amounts to species relativism which leaves the normativity of truth unexplained. To reconcile the human evolutionary heritage and the uniquely human openness to meaning and truth, the paper amplifies a distinction occasionally made by Heidegger between condition and cause. (shrink)

In this chapter, I make the case for platonic realism, the thesis that there are properties that lack spatial locations. After criticizing the one-over-many argument for realism and Lewis's argument for realism, I endorse a modal argument that derives the existence of platonic properties from considerations involving necessary truth. I then defend this argument from various objections. Finally, I argue that epistemic considerations and considerations of parsimony favor a weak form of platonic realism on which there are platonic properties, but (...) each property could have had an instance, and would have been located in its instances if it had any. (shrink)

According to epistemic utility theory, epistemic rationality is teleological: epistemic norms are instrumental norms that have the aim of acquiring accuracy. What’s definitive of these norms is that they can be expected to lead to the acquisition of accuracy when followed. While there’s much to be said in favor of this approach, it turns out that it faces a couple of worrisome extensional problems involving the future. The first problem involves credences about the future, and the second problem involves future (...) credences. Examining prominent solutions to a different extensional problem for this approach reinforces the severity of the two problems involving the future. Reflecting on these problems reveals the source: the teleological assumption that epistemic rationality aims at acquiring accuracy. (shrink)

In Metaphysics Z.6, Aristotle argues that each substance is the same as its essence. In this paper, I defend an identity reading of that claim. First, I provide a general argument for the identity reading, based on Aristotle’s account of sameness in number and identity. Second, I respond to the recent charge that the identity reading is incoherent, by arguing that the claim in Z.6 is restricted to primary substances and hence to forms.

Two principles in epistemology are apparent examples of the close connection between rationality and truth. First, adding a disjunct to what it is rational to believe yields a proposition that’s also rational to believe. Second, what’s likely if believed is rational to believe. While these principles are accepted by many, it turns out that they clash. In light of this clash, we must relinquish the second principle. Reflecting on its rationale, though, reveals that there are two distinct ways to understand (...) the connection between rationality and truth. Rationality is fundamentally a guide to the belief-independent truth, rather than a guide to acquiring true beliefs. And this in turn has important implications for current discussions of permissivism, epistemic reasons, and epistemic consequentialism. (shrink)

A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen (LU) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU. Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid (...) view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that it can also be deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid a objection raised by Walter Hopp—that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold one of two extreme views about our capacity to have phenomenally conscious experience : either that inner-sense enables us to know our experience and its properties infallibly or the contrary conviction that inner-sense is utterly fallible and the evidence it provides completely defeasible. Both of these are in error. This paper presents an alternative conception of inner-sense, modeled on disjunctive conceptions of perceptual awareness, that avoids both erroneous extremes, but that builds on the commonsense intuitions that motivate (...) them. (shrink)

We present three experiments that explore the robustness of the _authentic-apparent effect_—the finding that participants are less likely to attribute knowledge to the protagonist in apparent- than in authentic-evidence Gettier cases. The results go some way towards suggesting that the effect is robust to assessments of the justificatory status of the protagonist’s belief. However, not all of the results are consistent with an effect invariant across two demographic contexts: American and Indian nationalities.

Some propositions are not likely to be true overall, but are likely to be true if you believe them. Appealing to the platitude that belief aims at truth, it has become increasingly popular to defend the view that such propositions are epistemically rational to believe. However, I argue that this view runs into trouble when we consider the connection between what’s epistemically rational to believe and what’s practically rational to do. I conclude by discussing how rejecting the view bears on (...) three other epistemological issues. First, we’re able to uncover a flaw in a common argument for permissivism. Second, we can generate a problem for prominent versions of epistemic consequentialism. Finally, we can better understand the connection between epistemic rationality and truth: epistemic rationality is a guide to true propositions rather than true beliefs. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a theory on which each of a thing’s abundant properties is immanent in that thing. On the version of the theory I will propose, universals are abundant, each instantiated universal is immanent, and each uninstantiated universal is such that it could have been instantiated, in which case it would have been immanent. After setting out the theory, I will defend it from David Lewis’s argument that such a combination of immanence and abundance is absurd. I (...) will then advocate the theory on the grounds that it accomplishes all of Lewis’s “new work” while providing a gain in parsimony and a new account of fine-grained content. I will close with a discussion of how the theory also affords a new reply to two objections to uninstantiated universals: Armstrong’s charge that they are inconsistent with naturalism, and a Benacerraf-Field-style objection about epistemic access. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates Amie Thomasson’s (2003; 2005; 2006) view of the conscious mind and the interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction that it adopts. In Thomasson’s view, the phenomenological method is not an introspectionist method, but rather a “transparent” or “extrospectionist” method for acquiring epistemically privileged self-knowledge. I argue that Thomasson’s reading of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction is correct. But the view of consciousness that she pairs with it—a view of consciousness as “transparent” in the sense that first-order, world-oriented experience is (...) in no way given to itself—is not compatible with it. Rather, Thomasson’s view is, from a Husserlian vantage point, self-undermining in the same way that any genuinely skeptical view is self-undermining: it undermines the conditions of its own possibility. This is one of the motives Husserl has for developing a same-order view of self-consciousness as the complement to his transparent method for self-knowledge acquisition. (shrink)

With respect to climate change, what is wanted is an account that morally condemns the production of ‘luxury’ greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., joyriding in an SUV), but not ‘subsistence’ emissions (e.g., cooking meals). Now, our individual greenhouse gas emissions either cause harm, or they do not—and those who condemn the production of luxury emissions generally stake their position on the grounds that they do cause harm. Meanwhile, those seeking to defend the moral permissibility of luxury emissions generally do so by (...) arguing that our individual emissions do not cause harm. Here, I argue that, if our individual emissions do cause harm, then this entails too much. For, it entails not only that our luxury emissions are morally impermissible, but that our subsistence emissions are too. This is an undesirable result. Therefore, I propose that we embrace our other option. Namely, I propose that we accept that our individual emissions do not cause harm; or at least, that they make no perceptible difference with respect to the harms associated with climate change. The result of this admission is not as bad as you might think. For, I argue, even if we are individually causally impotent with respect to the harms of climate change, there remains a plausible route toward the moral condemnation of our individual luxury emissions—contrary to what others have argued. What is more, only by accepting our individual causal impotence can we successfully ground the permissibility of our individual subsistence emissions. (shrink)

This article will offer an alternative understanding of managerial decision-making drawing from Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason rather than simply Being and Nothingness. I will begin with a brief explanation of Sartre’s account of freedom in Being and Nothingness. I will then show in the second section how Andrew West uses Sartre’s conception of radical freedom from Being and Nothingness for a managerial decision-making model. In the third section, I will explore a more robust account of freedom from Sartre’s Critique (...) of Dialectical Reason. I will attempt to show that freedom is not simply a matter of choosing (or not choosing) to perform an action, but entails external constraints—including other people. Finally, I will provide the implications of this account of freedom for managerial decision-making. I will show that it’s unreasonable to place full responsibility and/or blame on managers given their constraints. This does not absolve them from responsibility, but better accounts for the way in which we ought to hold them responsible. (shrink)

Kripke raises the question concerning how the reference to God might be fixed, and Augustine makes it the leading question of the Confessions: How can I call upon God and not someone else instead? In this paper, I argue that this question is the central concern of Anselm’s Proslogion, which explicitly adopts the dialogical form of Augustine’s Confessions. Anselm does not define God but instead fixes the reference to God through an ostension or indexical description. The same linguistic formulation, “God (...) is that than which nothing greater can be thought,” has three functions: as an ostension, it points out God as that being and not another; as a criterion for selection, it ostensibly picks out a referent that exists rather than not; finally, as a rule for analysis, it provides a principle to clarify the necessary properties of the God that has been so ostended. (shrink)

This paper addresses two problems concerning the deferred ostension of extinct and fictive kinds. First, the sampled item, the fossil or the depiction, is not a sample of the referent. Nonetheless, the retained characteristic shape, understood via analogy with living creatures, enables the reference to be fixed. Second, though both extinct and fictive kinds are targets of deferred ostension, there is an important difference in the sample. Fossilization is a natural causal process that makes fossils to be reflections of their (...) originals. As reflections, fossils embed their referents in the primary existential world of perceived things. Images of artificial kinds, by contrast, leave their referents in the secondary existential world of mere appearance. In this way, the paper widens the scope of the Kripke-Putnam account of ostension for naming kinds by drawing on Quine’s concept of deferred ostension for absent referents. (shrink)

Recapitulating two recent trends in Heidegger-scholarship, this paper argues that the transcendental theme in Heidegger’s thought clarifies and relates the two basic questions of his philosophical itinerary. The preparatory question, which belongs to Being and Time , I.1–2, draws from the transcendental tradition to target the condition for the possibility of our openness to things: How must we be to access entities? The preliminary answer is that we are essentially opened up ecstatically and horizonally by timeliness. The fundamental question, which (...) belongs to the unpublished Being and Time , I.3, and the rest of Heidegger’s path of thinking, is accessed by means of the first. In a turn of perspective, it targets that in terms of which we relate to the givenness of being. Heidegger first attempts to handle this question using the transcendental language of temporal horizon before happening upon the terminologically more fitting “event of appropriation” and thereafter criticizing transcendental terms. By reconstructing the preparatory question and its reversal, we can see that Heidegger’s later criticism of transcendence in fact relies on its initial success. The turn from timeliness to appropriation (initially by means of transcendental temporality) happens within the domain initially disclosed by the preparatory question. (shrink)

By showing how the person appears, this paper calls into question the Cartesian prejudice that restricts appearance to objects. The paper recapitulates the origin of the term “person,” which originally designated the masks and characters donned by actors and only subsequently came to designate each particular human being. By concealing a face, the mask establishes a character who speaks with words of his own. The mask points to the face and to speech as ways the person appears. It belongs to (...) the very nature of the person not only to appear but also to be aware of how one appears, and to have the ability to modulate thatappearance as the situation requires. This ability means one thing in art and another in life, and the paper explores the significance of this contrast. (shrink)

In the Timaeus, Plato’s Timaeus offers an account of the sensible world in terms of “images” of forms. Often, images are taken to be particulars: either objects or particular property instances (tropes). Contrary to this trend, I argue that images are general characteristics which are immanent in the receptacle, or bundles of such characteristics. Thus, the entire sensible world can be analysed in terms of immanent general characteristics, the receptacle, and forms. Hence, for Timaeus, fundamentally, there are no sensible particulars. (...) I end by arguing that my interpretation is compatible with Timaeus’ construction of sensible entities from triangles. (shrink)

The third deduction in Plato’s Parmenides is often given a constructive reading on which Plato’s Parmenides, or even Plato himself, presents us with a positive account of the relation between parts and wholes. However, I argue that there is a hitch in the third deduction which threatens to undermine the mereology of the third deduction by the lights of the dialogue. Roughly, even if the Others partake of the One, the account of the third deduction leads to an ontology of (...) gunk, that is, an ontology on which there are no mereological atoms (except for the One). Hence, it is unclear whether the participation relation between the Others and the One is sufficient to impose the sort of structure on the Others which, in the context of this deduction, Parmenides (or Plato) seems to hope for. Instead of the constructive reading of the third deduction, I therefore offer an aporetic reading on which the third deduction raises further difficulties for the participation relation at the heart of young Socrates’ theory of Forms. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger rejects the traditional definition of the human being as the “rational animal” in part because he thinks it fits us into a genus that obscures our difference in kind. Thomas Aquinas shares with Heidegger the concern about the human difference, and yet he appropriates the definition, “rational animal” by conceiving animality in terms of the specifically human power of understanding being. Humans are not just distinct in their openness to being, but, thanks to that openness, they are distinct (...) in their animality, a distinction that changes the very significance of animality itself. Heidegger also thinks the traditional definition closes us to the experience of our essence, but again Aquinas has resources for bringing out the experiential character of rational animality. Aquinas’ inclusion of animation has significance for what Heidegger calls fundamental ontology; by virtue of the human animate body, particular beings can be pointed out and designated as such. (shrink)

Devin Henry offers a comprehensive study of Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of substantial generation. In particular, he argues that, in Generation of Animals, Aristotle defends a view that Henry calls “reproductive hylomorphism” : an application of the hylomorphic model of substantial generation to the central case of the generation of animals. In this review, I explain Henry's view and offer some criticisms of his two-stage model of reproductive hylomorphism that distinguishes embryogenesis from morphogenesis.

The traditional problem of other minds is epistemological. What justification can be given for thinking that the world is populated with other minds? More recently, some philosophers have argued for a second problem of other minds that is conceptual. How can we conceive of the point of view of another mind in relation to our own? This article retraces the logic of the epistemological and conceptual problems, and it argues for a third problem of other minds. This is the phenomenological (...) problem which concerns the philosophical question of experience. How is another mind experienced as another mind? The article offers dialectical and motivational justification for regarding these as three distinct problems. First, it argues that while the phenomenological problem cannot be reduced to the other problems, it is logically presupposed by them. Second, the article examines how the three problems are motivated by everyday experiences in three distinct ways. (shrink)

I join the growing ranks of theorists who reject the terms of traditional debates about the nature of emotion, debates that have long focused on the question of whether emotions should be understood as either cognitive or somatic kinds of states. Here, I propose and defend a way of incorporating both into a single theory, which I label the “Integrated Representational Theory” of emotion. In Section 2 I begin to construct the theory, defining and explaining emotions in terms of three (...) pieces of content: representations of the emoter’s body, something in the world, and a relevance relation between the objects of these first two pieces of content. I describe four general advantages I think the IRT offers. Finally, in Section 3, I elucidate and defend my account by contrasting it with another, similar proposal: Barlassina and Newen’s Impure Somatic Theory. In so doing, I explain two additional advantages of my view: first, it supports a unified explanation of all types of emotional response; and second, it offers the best framework for explaining how the representational contents of an emotion are integrated. (shrink)

There has been a persistent misunderstanding of the nature of cosmopolitanism in Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace,” viewing it as a qualitative break from the bellicose natural law tradition preceding it. This misunderstanding is in part due to Kant’s explicitly critical comments about colonialism as well as his attempt to rhetorically distance his cosmopolitanism from traditional natural law theory. In this paper, I argue that the necessary foundation for Kant’s cosmopolitan subjectivity and right was forged in the experience of (...) European colonialism and the (pre-Kantian) theory it engendered. It is in this context that we witness the universalization of subjectivity and the subjectivization of right, emerging from the justificatory needs of extra-national jurisdiction and resource appropriation. This form of cosmopolitanism, whose emergence necessarily tracks the rise of global capitalism, continues to exert great and often uncritical influence on theories and practices of peace today. (shrink)

What justifies one interlocutor to challenge the conversational expectations of the other? Paul Grice approaches conversation as one instance of joint action that, like all such action, is governed by the Cooperative Principle. He thinks the expectations of the interlocutors must align, although he acknowledges that expectations can and do shift in the course of a conversation through a process he finds strange. Martin Heidegger analyzes discourse as governed by the normativity of care for self and for another. It is (...) the structure of care that warrants disrupting the presumed cooperative horizon of a conversation in order to occasion some new insight. The chapter expands Heidegger’s ontological conception of care to make sense of the exigencies of conversation. Conversation requires taking cognizance of (1) the human good, (2) the specifics of the conversational context, and (3) one’s responsibilities for the other. This threefold understanding can provide directives for subverting the interlocutor’s expectation for the purposes of a given conversation. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the difficulty of acquiring phenomenological terms by examining Carnap’s and Derrida’s criticisms of phenomenological speech; their criticisms show that any account of how phenomenological speech is acquired must clarify its distinction from ordinary speech about things while not falling prey to an esoteric separation. The chapter then reviews the way Husserl, Scheler, and Heidegger offer “indication” as the way to distinguish but not separate the one and the other, and it argues that indication, even with the support (...) of analogy, metaphor, and metonym, suffers from Quinean indeterminacy and therefore requires some other resources for its successful enactment. Finally, the chapter outlines a novel solution to the problem of phenomenological speech by approaching the question as one of genesis and acquisition: ordinary language embeds certain experiential terms, such as “presence” and “absence,” that, when inflected, introduce the learner into the transcendental dimension of experience. The chapter demonstrates that the question of language learning or acquisition is necessary for unraveling the nature of phenomenological language and clarifying its relation to ordinary speech. (shrink)

The introduction argues that nothing could be more natural than the phenomenological treatment of language; after all, its breakthrough in method consists in a renewed appreciation for the power of speech to unlock the truth of things. Interest in the phenomenology of language has increased in the last two decades due to the publication of new phenomenological texts and due to dialogue with other disciplines and approaches. At the same time, the phenomenological contribution cannot be fully appreciated apart from its (...) transcendental method. Only in light of its unique approach do the properly phenomenological themes come to the fore; among these are presence and absence, the pre-predicative, and embodied intersubjectivity. Phenomenology’s analysis of language is a vital one within the philosophy of language; it shows that language belongs to experience, and it shows how language arises from and gives voice to joint experience. (shrink)

Relative to an ordinary context, an utterance of the sentence ‘Everything is in the car’ communicates a proposition about a restricted domain. But how does this work? One possibility is that quantifier expressions like 'everything' are context sensitive and range over different domains in different contexts. Another possibility is that quantifier expressions are not context sensitive, but have a fixed, absolutely general meaning, and ordinary utterances communicate a restricted content via Gricean mechanisms. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, the (...) latter view has both a number of methodological and also intuitive advantages over the former. I then reply to three objections to the latter view: the binding argument (due to Stanley and Szabo), the availability-based attack (due to Recanati), and an argument based on Recanati’s scope principle. (shrink)

Phenomenologists turn to Augustine to remedy the neglect of life, love, and language in the Cartesian cogito: (1) concerning life, Edmund Husserl appropriates Augustine’s analysis of distentio animi, Edith Stein of vivo, and Hannah Arendt of initium; (2) concerning love, Max Scheler appropriates Augustine’s analysis of ordo amoris, Martin Heidegger of curare, and Dietrich von Hildebrand of affectiones; (3) concerning language, Ludwig Wittgenstein appropriates Augustine’s analysis of ostendere, Hans-Georg Gadamer of verbum cordis, and Jean-Luc Marion of confessio. Phenomenology’s non-Cartesian Augustinianism (...) can tell us something about phenomenology, namely that it is engaged in the project of recontextualizing the cogito, and something about Augustine, namely how radically different his project is than Descartes’s. Phenomenology presents an Augustine that is well positioned for the debates of our times concerning mind and world, desire and the human person, and language and embodiment. (shrink)

I will argue that internalism about justification entails the apparently absurd conclusion that it is possible to know specific facts about the external world—for example, that there is a tree in the quad—on the basis of introspection and a priori reflection. After a brief characterization of internalism (§1), I will set out the problem (§2). I will then discuss three replies: one that denies the form of doxastic voluntarism involved in the problem (§3), one that denies that knowledge of higher-order (...) facts about justification can justify corresponding first-order beliefs (§4), and, finally, one that involves biting the bullet (§5). I will argue that each reply fails. (shrink)

An inverse akratic act is one who believes X, all things considered, is the correct act, and yet performs ~X, where ~X is the correct act. A famous example of such a person is Huck Finn. He believes that he is wrong in helping Jim, and yet continues to do so. In this paper I investigate Huck’s nature to see why he performs such acts contrary to his beliefs. In doing so, I explore the nature of empathy and show how (...) powerful Huck’s empathic feelings are. Drawing from Martin L. Hoffman, I show the relationship between empathy and a principle of justice. This relationship leads to Huck acting virtuously, as Rosalind Hursthouse maintains. (shrink)

This document contains the appendices, which provides the stimulus materials, for the four studies reported in: Gonnerman, Mortensen, & Robbins (forthcoming). KNOWING HOW as a philosophical hybrid. Synthese. -/- .

This paper provides a new, comprehensive overview of Martin Heidegger’s interpretations of Immanuel Kant. Its aim is to identify Heidegger’s motive in interpreting Kant and to distinguish, for the first time, the four phases of Heidegger’s reading of Kant. The promise of the “phenomenological Kant” gave Heidegger entrance to a rich domain of investigation. In four phases and with reference to Husserl, Heidegger interpreted Kant as first falling short of phenomenology (1919-1925), then approaching phenomenology (1925-1927), then advancing phenomenology (1927-1929), and (...) finally recovering phenomenology (1930 and after). By identifying this motive and these four phases, the paper sets aside a number of common misinterpretations concerning the significance of the 1925 turn to Kant, the relation of the Kant-interpretation to Husserl, the relation of the 1929 'Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics' to 'Being and Time,' and Heidegger’s regard for Kant in his later writings. The paper thereby clarifies Heidegger’s path of thinking and its indebtedness to transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

At first blush, phenomenology seems to be concerned preeminently with questions of knowledge, truth, and perception, and yet closer inspection reveals that the analyses of these phenomena remain bound up with language and that consequently phenomenology is, inextricably, a philosophy of language. Drawing on the insights of a variety of phenomenological authors, including Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, this collection of essays by leading scholars articulates the distinctively phenomenological contribution to language by examining two sets of questions. The first (...) set of questions concerns the relatedness of language to experience. Studies exhibit the first-person character of the philosophy of language by focusing on lived experience, the issue of reference, and disclosive speech. The second set of questions concerns the relatedness of language to intersubjective experience. Studies exhibit the second-person character of the philosophy of language by focusing on language acquisition, culture, and conversation. This book will be of interest to scholars of phenomenology and philosophy of language. (shrink)