Spinoza’s attitude toward nonhuman animals is uncharacteristically cruel. This essay elaborates upon this ostensible idiosyncrasy in reference to Hasana Sharp’s commendable desire to revitalize a basis for animal ethics from within the bounds of his system. Despite our favoring an ethics beginning from animal affect, this essay argues that an animal ethic adequate to the demands of our historical moment cannot be developed from within the confines of strict adherence to Spinoza’s system—and this is not yet to speak of a (...) more robust animal ethics which would advocate actual care and compassion for the animals themselves. We argue that on the assumption of Spinoza’s ontological biocentrism, in the presence of Spinozist determinism and the absence of an axiological biocentrism, an anthropocentric axiology necessarily follows. Any Spinozist animal ethic must fall back, therefore, upon appeals to the maximization of human pleasure and power; hence Spinoza’s ruthless injunction to “use (the animals) at our pleasure.” These are the very ontological and ethical assumptions which have incited human self-exaltation in the modern period, in pursuit of power and pleasure even despite the destructive long-term consequences for all the living. We suggest that an adequate animal ethic would require either an abandonment of Spinoza’s ontological biocentrism or the adoption of an axiological biocentrism. (shrink)

Перевод статьи: Davies T., Chandler R. Online deliberation design: Choices, criteria, and evidence // Democracy in motion: Evaluating the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement / Nabatchi T., Weiksner M., Gastil J., Leighninger M. (eds.). -- Oxford: Oxford univ. press, 2013. -- P. 103-131. А. Кулик. -/- Вниманию читателей предлагается обзор эмпирических исследований в области дизайна онлайн-форумов, предназначенных для вовлечения граждан в делиберацию. Размерности дизайна определены для различных характеристик делиберации: назначения, целевой аудитории, разобщенности участников в пространстве и во (...) времени, среды коммуникации и организации делиберативного процесса. После краткого обзора критериев оценки вариантов дизайна рассматриваются эмпирические данные, соотносящиеся с каждым из вариантов. Эффективность онлайн-делиберации зависит от того, насколько условия коммуникации соотносятся с заданиями делиберации. Компромиссы, как, например, между анонимным или идентифицируемым участием, предполагают различные дизайны в зависимости от цели делиберации и состава участников. Выводы исследования получены на материале существующих технологий и могут измениться по мере коэволюции технологий и пользователей. (shrink)

In this chapter, I survey what I call Lewisian approaches to modality: approaches that analyze modality in terms of concrete possible worlds and their parts. I take the following four theses to be characteristic of Lewisian approaches to modality. (1) There is no primitive modality. (2) There exists a plurality of concrete possible worlds. (3) Actuality is an indexical concept. (4) Modality de re is to be analyzed in terms of counterparts, not transworld identity. After an introductory section in which (...) I motivate analyzing modality in terms of possible worlds, I devote one section to each of these four theses. For each thesis, I take Lewis’s interpretation and defense as my starting point. I then consider and endorse alternative ways of accepting the thesis, some of which disagree substantially with Lewis’s interpretation or defense. There is more than one way to be a Lewisian about modality. (shrink)

It is well known that classical, aka ‘sharp’, Bayesian decision theory, which models belief states as single probability functions, faces a number of serious difficulties with respect to its handling of agnosticism. These difficulties have led to the increasing popularity of so-called ‘imprecise’ models of decision-making, which represent belief states as sets of probability functions. In a recent paper, however, Adam Elga has argued in favour of a putative normative principle of sequential choice that he claims to be borne out (...) by the sharp model but not by any promising incarnation of its imprecise counterpart. After first pointing out that Elga has fallen short of establishing that his principle is indeed uniquely borne out by the sharp model, I cast aspersions on its plausibility. I show that a slight weakening of the principle is satisfied by at least one, but interestingly not all, varieties of the imprecise model and point out that Elga has failed to motivate his stronger commitment. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Schweitzer end up defending radically similar, yet critically opposed conclusions about the human animal and its place in nature, particularly with regard to the ethical awareness that does or does not follow from this situatedness. Arthur Schopenhauer’s notion of the will accounts for their similar foundational assumptions. But what accounts for the fact that their shared desire to affirm the will to life leads to fundamentally opposed ethical conclusions? What keeps Schweitzer’s ascetic ethic of reverence for (...) life from evolving into Nietzsche’s anti-ascetic vision of a second innocence beyond good and evil? We argue that situating the notion of reverence for life within an environmental virtue ethics, as one environmental virtue among many, aiming at ecological conversion, better articulates and motivates the disposition demanded by the ethics of reverence for life. (shrink)

Composition as identity, as I understand it, is a theory of the composite structure of reality. The theory’s underlying logic is irreducibly plural; its fundamental primitive is a generalized identity relation that takes either plural or singular arguments. Strong versions of the theory that incorporate a generalized version of the indiscernibility of identicals are incompatible with the framework of plural logic, and should be rejected. Weak versions of the theory that are based on the idea that composition is merely analogous (...) to identity are too weak to be interesting, lacking in metaphysical consequence. I defend a moderate version according to which composition is a kind of identity, and argue that the difference is metaphysically substantial, not merely terminological. I then consider whether the notion of generalized identity, though fundamental, can be elucidated in modal terms by reverse engineering Hume’s Dictum. Unfortunately, for realists about possible worlds, such as myself,... (shrink)

This article re-examines the theoretical basis for environmental and heritage interpretation in tourist settings in the light of hermeneutic philosophy. It notes that the pioneering vision of heritage interpretation formulated by Freeman Tilden envisaged a broadly educational, ethically informed and transformative art. By contrast, current cognitive psychological attempts to reduce interpretation to the monological transmission of information, targeting universal but individuated cognitive structures, are found to be wanting. Despite growing signs of diversity, this information processing approach to interpretation remains dominant. (...) The article then presents the alternative paradigm of hermeneutics through the works of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, to provide a broader interpretation of interpretation. This not only captures the essence of Tilden’s definition but construes heritage interpretation as a more inclusive, culturally situated, critically reflexive and dialogical practice. (shrink)

Social work is a contested tradition, torn between the demands of social governance and autonomy. Today, this struggle is reflected in the division between the dominant, neoliberal agenda of service provision and the resistance offered by various critical perspectives employed by disparate groups of practitioners serving diverse communities. Critical social work challenges oppressive conditions and discourses, in addition to addressing their consequences in individuals’ lives. However, very few recent critical theorists informing critical social work have advocated revolution. A challenging exception (...) can be found in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–97), whose explication of ontological underdetermination and creation evades the pitfalls of both structural determinism and post-structural relativism, enabling an understanding of society as the contested creation of collective imaginaries in action and a politics of radical transformation. On this basis, we argue that Castoriadis’s radical-democratic revisioning of revolutionary praxis can help in reimagining critical social work’s emancipatory potential. (shrink)

This article provides a discussion of the principle of transmission of evidential support across entailment from the perspective of belief revision theory in the AGM tradition. After outlining and briefly defending a small number of basic principles of belief change, which include a number of belief contraction analogues of the Darwiche-Pearl postulates for iterated revision, a proposal is then made concerning the connection between evidential beliefs and belief change policies in rational agents. This proposal is found to be suffcient to (...) establish the truth of a much-discussed intuition regarding transmission failure. (shrink)

The term 'fascism' continues to be very much in currency in Philippines society. To the Filipino people, its meaning is often drawn from pained memory of wholesale deprivation of democratic rights and large-scale human rights abuses. Yet, to many, the fear of fascism has still to give way to a deeper understanding of this menace. This may hold true even among those belonging to the progressive movement. One Marxist philosopher and theoretician who gave extended treatment of the issues surrounding the (...) character and conditions giving rise to fascism was Nicos Poulantzas, whose theory is employed here to interrogate the debates about fascism in the post-Marcos Philippines context. (shrink)

Although the demographics on male versus female death-row prisoners suggest that males are the criminal justice system’s primary targets, the author argues that the system still discriminates against women. Utilizing postmodern scholarship, he argues that female prisoners are punished primarily for violating dominant norms of gender correctness.

A close reading of Mary Robinson’s late-eighteenth-century poem “London’s Summer Morning,” which captures all the noises and smells of a busy London street, is not enough to convince the reader that it isn’t all a dream. But whose dream? René Descartes and Wallace Stevens suggest that it may not matter.

In this paper I identify Schleiermacher as an intermediary between the two stages of the religious set forth in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Gesturing toward categories integral to the Kierkegaardian project at large, I also argue that he occupies a pivotal role between Socratic ignorance and second immediacy. These schemata uncover answers to a dilemma that has recently been articulated: whereas Kierkegaard administers highest praise to Schleiermacher at the beginning of his pseudonymous authorship, he becomes inexplicably hostile toward him at the (...) end of his life and authorship. (shrink)

This article discusses whether a sense of humor is a political virtue. It argues that a sense of humor is conducive to the central political virtues. We must first, however, delineate different types of humor (benevolent or malicious) and the different political virtues (sociability, prudence, and justice) to which they correspond. Generally speaking, a sense of humor is politically virtuous when it encourages good will toward fellow citizens, an awareness of the limits of power, and a tendency not to take (...) oneself too seriously or when it condemns moral or intellectual vice. An analysis of President Donald Trumps deeply flawed sense of humor is used to ground this account. (shrink)

Bill Cosby’s immorality has raised intriguing aesthetic and ethical issues. Do the crimes that he has been convicted of lessen the aesthetic value of his stand-up and, even if we can enjoy it, should we? This article first discusses the intimate relationship between the comedian and audience. The art form itself is structurally intimate, and at the same time the comedian claims to express an authentic self on stage. After drawing an analogy between the question of the moral character of (...) comedians and the aesthetic value of their stand-up and the debate over the ethical criticism of art, this article argues that it is reasonable to find a comedian’s performance less funny, because stand-up’s artistic success relies on this intimacy. It contrasts the comedy of Bill Cosby with that of Louis C.K. C.K.’s moral flaws are much more present in his comedy, and it is therefore more difficult to find him funny. Last, it is ethically permissible to enjoy their comedy, if no harm to others results, both because it does not corrupt the audience’s character and because amusement is valuable. (shrink)

Between Schelling’s Über Dante in philosophischer Beziehung (1803) and the Dantean drafts of die Weltalter (1811-1815) stand the transitional texts of his middle period, the Philosophie und Religion (1804) and Freiheitsschrift (1809). His short essay on Dante contrasts an ancient conception of the closed cosmos with the modern universe as dynamic and expanding, then claims to extract from the Divine Comedy its eternal, threefold form. This article considers these schemata as they relate to the Philosophie und Religion and the Freiheitsschrift, (...) disclosing an enduring Dantean influence which first predicts, then persists throughout this stage of Schelling’s philosophical development. (shrink)

Dave Chappelle took an extended leave from comedy for moral reasons. I argue that, while he had every right to leave comedy because of his moral concerns, he was not obliged to do so. To make this case, I present Chappelle’s argument that the potential negative consequences of his racial humor obliged him to leave. Next, I argue against Chappelle’s argument about avoidable harms as the harms are not his responsibility, he was not being negligent, and the benefits of his (...) humor outweigh the harms. I also argue in support of the intuition that another’s failure of comprehension or moral character, even if that failure will predictably result in harms to others, should not convert moral acts into immoral ones. (shrink)

Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, purports to be an individual who admires faith but cannot attain to its unearthly standards. The discontinuity between Kierkegaard, who self-identified as a religious author, and de Silentio, who approaches Abraham in self-doubt, is apparent—and as a result, some have argued for an utter dissociation between these two authors. I argue that such dissociation undermines the potency of the work, especially with regard to the perspective on faith presented therein. The (...) significance of de Silentio’s perspective becomes clear when set against the backdrop of Kierkegaard’s view of the relationship between anxiety and faith; in this light, de Silentio turns out to represent an early stage of the individual’s religious development, and Kierkegaard turns out to have recently surpassed this stage before writing the work. (shrink)

The Forrest-Armstrong argument, as reconfigured by David Lewis, is a reductio against an unrestricted principle of recombination. There is a gap in the argument which Lewis thought could be bridged by an appeal to recombination. After presenting the argument, I show that no plausible principle of recombination can bridge the gap. But other plausible principles of plenitude can bridge the gap, both principles of plenitude for world contents and principles of plenitude for world structures. I conclude that the Forrest-Armstrong argument, (...) when fortified in one of these ways, demands that unrestricted recombination be rejected. The appropriate restriction comes from a consideration of what world structures are possible. I argue that, although there are too many worlds to form a set, for any world, the individuals at that world do form a set. To defend it I invoke a principle of Limitation of Size together with an iterative conception of structure. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss full-blooded Platonism (the claim that all possible mathematical objects exist) as a response to the skeptical problem in the philosophy of mathematics as to how empirical beings can cognize non-empirical mathematical objects. I then attempt to develop an analogous position regarding the applicability of concepts to reality in response to the skeptical problem regarding how we can cognize an objective reality through human-constructed concepts. If all concepts meeting certain minimal conditions structure reality under some aspect, (...) then objective knowledge is possible, regardless of how these concepts arose historically. (shrink)

This essay argues that Schelling's late transition from Negative to Positive Philosophy constitutes a pointed inversion of the path of systematic ascent mapped by Hegel for the first time in the Phenomenology's Preface, which itself establishes Hegel's development out of and beyond Schelling's early philosophy; that a key notion to inspire the Hegelian vision articulated in the Preface returns to cap off the critique implicit in Schelling's late inversion, where this notion emerges from their divergent readings of Aristotle's Metaphysics; and (...) finally, that while Hegel's theorization of the end of all philosophizing represents his innovative enlargement from within the framework he finds in Aristotle, Schelling's vision of this same end facilitates the crisis of reason which opens unto revelation, and so is akin to the vision which carries Aquinas beyond Aristotle, albeit in Schelling's post‐Spinozist mode of thought. (shrink)

Antithetical desires displayed throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship indicate the disjunctive assumption that the individual exists either in a state of increasing autonomy, expressed negatively as striving for freedom from divine constraint, or in a state of self-annihilating submission, expressed positively in terms of kenotic unification. Proximity to the divine thereby entails forfeiture of individuality, contrary to the explicit aim of Kierkegaard’s authorial project, and aversion to materiality. This essay enunciates the conflict (I), traces the crescendo of loss that births the pseudonymous (...) authorship and ends in realized longing for death (II), and approaches a more holistic vision of psycho-spiritual development (III). (shrink)

Manifold expressions of a particular critique appear throughout Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous corpus: for Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms faith is categorically not a first immediacy, and it is certainly not the first immediate, the annulment of which concludes the first movement of Hegelian philosophy. Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms make it clear that he holds the Hegelian dogmaticians responsible for the promulgation of this misconception, but when Kierkegaard’s journals and papers are consulted another transgressor emerges: the renowned anti-idealist F.D.E. Schleiermacher. I address the extent (...) to which this particular indictment is justified; over-against Gerhard Schreiber, I argue that this characterization of Schleiermacher’s view of religion is indeed a de facto critique. I begin by presenting and demonstrating the ubiquity of the phenomenon at the heart of Schleiermacher’s conception of perfect God-consciousness, then proceed to apply criticisms raised by Kierkegaardian pseudonyms Judge William, Vigilius Haufniensis, Johannes Climacus, and Anti-Climacus, supplemented with concerns raised by Kierkegaard himself, in order to demonstrate that these criticisms do indeed apply to and problematize Schleiermacher’s view. (shrink)

Modern thought typically opposes the authority of tradition in the name of universal reason. Postmodernism begins with the insight that the sociohistorical context of tradition and its authority is inevitable, even in modernity. Modernity can no longer take itself for granted when it recognizes itself as a tradition that is opposed to traditions. The left-wing postmodernist response to this insight is to conclude that because tradition is inevitable, irrationality is inevitable. The right-wing postmodernist response is to see traditions as the (...) home of diverse forms of rationality. This requires an understanding of the Socratic, self-critical aspect of intellectual traditions, which include both modern sciences and the great world religions. (shrink)

The ontological paradigms of Schelling and the late Merleau-Ponty bear striking resemblances to Spinoza’s ontology. Both were developed in response to transcendental models of a Cartesian mold, resisting tendencies to exalt the human ego to the neglect or the detriment of the more-than-human world. As such, thinkers with environmental concerns have sought to derive favorable ethical prescriptions on their basis. We begin by discerning a deadlock between two such thinkers: Ted Toadvine and Sean McGrath. With ecological responsibility in mind, both (...) actually resist Spinozist reduction of the human being to the status of a mere mode among modes. But despite having the same general aim, they end up endorsing contrary practical conclusions. Our objective is to pinpoint the reasons behind this deadlock, indicative of two strands of post-Spinozist environmental thought which stand in tension, and to begin to propose an integrative way forward. The ethical weight afforded by Toadvine to the notion of resistance in the work of the late Merleau-Ponty, namely nature’s resistance to harmonizing, unifying pretensions, invites inquiry into two Merleau-Pontean notions he does not address: the barbarian principle, and the proposal to “Do a Psychoanalysis of Nature.” We trace these to their origins in the works of Schelling’s middle period, arguing that the Schellingian location of resistance in Spirit’s dark ground—alternately conceived as primordial Dionysiac madness, bottled-up within the substratum of consciousness—lends to an understanding of the human, and human responsibility, that harbors favorable implications for environmental ethics. (shrink)

Seeking to determine what it is that incites Kierkegaard’s enthusiasm during Schelling’s early lectures at Berlin, then what it is that thoroughly extinguishes his hope in months to follow, I establish: first, that the criticisms of Hegel in Schelling’s negative philosophy depend upon Kantian distinctions and reflect Kant’s critical methodology; secondly, that the leveling function Schelling assigns to these distinctions corresponds to the notion of irony as a destructive force found in The Concept of Irony; finally, that Kierkegaard will come (...) to concretize an account that adheres more closely to Kant’s transition from negative to positive than to Schelling’s. (shrink)

This chapter reviews empirical evidence bearing on the design of online forums for deliberative civic engagement. Dimensions of design are defined for different aspects of the deliberation: its purpose, the target population, the spatiotemporal distance separating participants, the communication medium, and the deliberative process to be followed. After a brief overview of criteria for evaluating different design options, empirical findings are organized around design choices. Research has evolved away from treating technology for online deliberation dichotomously (either present or not) toward (...) nuanced findings that differentiate between technological features, ways of using them, and cultural settings. The effectiveness of online deliberation depends on how well the communicative environment is matched to the deliberative task. Tradeoffs, e.g. between rich and lean media and between anonymous and identifiable participation, suggest different designs depending on the purpose and participants. Findings are limited by existing technologies, and may change as technologies and users co-evolve. (shrink)

As boundaries between domesticity and the undomesticated increasingly blur for cohabitants of Vancouver Island, home to North America’s densest cougar population, predatorial problems become more and more pressing. Rosemary-Claire Collard responds on a pragmatic plane, arguing that the encounter between human and cougar is only ever destructive, that contact results in death and almost always for the cougar. Advocating for vigilance in policing boundaries separating cougar from civilization, therefore, she looks to Foucault’s analysis of modern biopower in the first volume (...) of his History of Sexuality for support in favor of a more contemporary notion of biosecurity. In response to Collard’s arguments, concerned with ethical conclusions drawn on the basis of her policy-based proposal, I challenge the prohibition she places on encounter. In the first section, “Becoming Killable,” I address her use of Donna Haraway’s phraseology, and in the second section, “Biological Dangers,” I scrutinize her reading of Foucault, arguing that the appeals she makes distort the mode of argumentation at work for each thinker. The final section, “Facing Cougar, Facing Death,” advocates further ethical possibilities generated on the basis of Foucault’s correlation between overcoming the fear of death and resisting abuses of power with respect to others. My contention is that our transgressing boundaries constructed to separate humanity from the inhumane curtails tendencies toward the marginalization and subjugation of those animal others whose very existence brings us face to face with the fact of our own mortality. (shrink)

After a number of decades of research into the dynamics of rational belief, the belief revision theory community remains split on the appropriate handling of sequences of changes in view, the issue of so-called iterated revision. It has long been suggested that the matter is at least partly settled by facts pertaining to the results of various single revisions of one’s initial state of belief. Recent work has pushed this thesis further, offering various strong principles that ultimately result in a (...) wholesale reduction of iterated to one-shot revision. The present paper offers grounds to hold that these principles should be significantly weakened and that the reductionist thesis should ultimately be rejected. Furthermore, the considerations provided suggest a close connection between the logic of iterated belief change and the logic of evidential relevance. (shrink)

Despite accepting Robert Talisse's pluralist critique of models of democratic legitimacy that rely on substantive images of the common good, there is insufficient reason to dismiss Dewey's thought from future attempts at a pragmatist philosophy of democracy. First, Dewey's use of substantive arguments does not prevent him from also making epistemic arguments that proceed from the general conditions of inquiry. Second, Dewey's account of the mean-ends transaction shows that ends-in-view are developed from within the process of democratic inquiry, not imposed (...) from without. Third, Talisse's model does not satisfy another general norm of inquiry - that of charity. (shrink)

On ground shared by environmental hermeneutics, critical social theory, and environmentally minded feminism, this article attempts to conciliate between the nearly antithetical ethical viewpoints of environmental philosophers David Abram and Steven Vogel. It will demonstrate first that Abram’s linguistic arguments for extending ethical considerability to nonhuman nature succumb to two of Vogel’s debilitating critiques, which it labels the social constructivist critique and the discourse ethics critique, and secondly that Abram fails to guard against the problem of human-human oppression. The article (...) also points out, on the other hand, that while Vogel evades the problem of human-human oppression, his view fails to protect against the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. Operating within the boundaries that Vogel establishes, it will seek to avoid the pitfalls of Abram’s view, to address the underlying ideology that leads to both types of oppression, and to eliminate the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. To do so it draws upon the arguments of Trish Glazebrook, contending that Abram’s appeals to the “speech” of nature can be more effectively conceptualized as erotic appeals, and that engaging in this call-and-response eros promotes the development of virtues that undermine our current ideology and extend to both the human and the nonhuman. (shrink)

Research on the use of propranolol as a pharmacological memory dampening treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder is continuing and justifies a second look at the legal and ethical issues raised in the past. We summarize the general ethical and legal issues raised in the literature so far, and we select two for in-depth reconsideration. We address the concern that a traumatized witness may be less effective in a prosecution emerging from the traumatic event after memory dampening treatment. We analyze this (...) issue in relation to sexual assault, where the suggestion that corroborating evidence may remedy any memory defects is less likely to be helpful. We also consider the clinical ethical question about a physician's obligation to discuss potential legal consequences of memory dampening treatment. We conclude that this latter question reflects a general problem related to novel medical treatments where the broader socio-legal consequences may be poorly understood, and suggest that issues of this sort could usefully be addressed through the promulgation of practice guidelines. (shrink)

As the ongoing literature on the paradoxes of the Lottery and the Preface reminds us, the nature of the relation between probability and rational acceptability remains far from settled. This article provides a novel perspective on the matter by exploiting a recently noted structural parallel with the problem of judgment aggregation. After offering a number of general desiderata on the relation between finite probability models and sets of accepted sentences in a Boolean sentential language, it is noted that a number (...) of these constraints will be satisfied if and only if acceptable sentences are true under all valuations in a distinguished non-empty set W. Drawing inspiration from distance-based aggregation procedures, various scoring rule based membership conditions for W are discussed and a possible point of contact with ranking theory is considered. The paper closes with various suggestions for further research. (shrink)

Contemporary comedy audiences are accused by some comedians of being too morally sensitive to appreciate humor. To get closer to an idea of what this means, I will first briefly present the argument over audience sensitivity as found in the non-philosophical literature. Second, I then turn to the philosophical literature and begin from the idea that “funny” is a response-dependent property. I present a criticism of this response-dependence account of “funny” based in the claim that funniness is not de- termined (...) by what normal audiences actually laugh at, but by what merits laughter. Third, I argue that excessive or deficient moral sensitivity distorts audience receptivity to humor. Fourth, I turn to candidates for ideally sensitive audiences. I conclude by returning to the particular cases of supposed oversensitivity or undersensitivity to jokes to see how we might judge them. (shrink)

In a recent pair of publications, Richard Bradley has offered two novel no-go theorems involving the principle of Preservation for conditionals, which guarantees that one’s prior conditional beliefs will exhibit a certain degree of inertia in the face of a change in one’s non-conditional beliefs. We first note that Bradley’s original discussions of these results—in which he finds motivation for rejecting Preservation, first in a principle of Commutativity, then in a doxastic analogue of the rule of modus ponens —are problematic (...) in a significant number of respects. We then turn to a recent U-turn on his part, in which he winds up rescinding his commitment to modus ponens, on the grounds of a tension with the rule of Import-Export for conditionals. Here we offer an important positive contribution to the literature, settling the following crucial question that Bradley leaves unanswered: assuming that one gives up on full-blown modus ponens on the grounds of its incompatibility with Import-Export, what weakened version of the principle should one be settling for instead? Our discussion of the issue turns out to unearth an interesting connection between epistemic undermining and the apparent failures of modus ponens in McGee’s famous counterexamples. (shrink)

The Onion, a widely known satirical newspaper, frequently finds its articles taken as the literal truth. One article from May 2011, “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex,” featured teenage girls gushing over the amusement park amenities like a ten-screen theater, nightclub and “lazy river” and a fake PR representative touting, “Whether she’s a high school junior who doesn’t want to go to prom pregnant, a go-getter professional who can’t be bothered with the time commitment of raising a child, or a (...) prostitute who knows getting an abortion is the easiest form of birth control—all are welcome” and “Our hope is for this facility to become a regular destination where a woman in her second trimester can whoop it up at karaoke and then kick back while we vacuum out the contents of her uterus.”The Onion, “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex” . Given the extremity and arguable tastelessness of this joke, it is nearly impossible to imagine this as anything .. (shrink)

It is tempting to dismiss the first half of Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. At first blush, it would not seem to be essential to Dewey’s foremost concern to provide a naturalized account of knowing that avoids the hoary philosophical dualisms of body/mind, thing/person, material/ideal, and practical/theoretical. The load-bearing chapters would seem to be in the latter philosophical half in which he takes on the task of developing a positive account rather than the early historical...

This chapter pursues an understanding of what Cicero thought 'Italic' philosophy to be, and proceeds to develop a broader account of how Cicero's version compares with the surviving textual evidence and testimonia from the Hellenistic period of the philosophy of the 'Italic' philosophers, including the Lucanians 'Ocellus', 'Eccelus', and 'Aresas/Aesara', and the Rudian Ennius. Special focus is placed on their theories of cosmology, psychology, and law. Collocation of 'Italic' with 'Pythagorean' philosophy of this era aids in building a more comprehensive (...) view of what Hellenistic Pythagoreanism may have looked like. Uploaded here is the pre-publication version; please email me for the printed version. (shrink)

When did kosmos come to mean *the* kosmos, in the sense of ‘world-order’? I venture a new answer by examining later evidence often underutilised or dismissed by scholars. Two late doxographical accounts in which Pythagoras is said to be first to call the heavens kosmos (in the anonymous Life of Pythagoras and the fragments of Favorinus) exhibit heurematographical tendencies that place their claims in a dialectic with the early Peripatetics about the first discoverers of the mathematical structure of the universe. (...) Likewise, Xenophon and Plato refer to ‘wise men’ who nominate kosmos as the object of scientific inquiry into nature as a whole and the cosmic ‘communion’ (koinônia) between all living beings, respectively. Again, later testimonies help in identifying the anonymous ‘wise men’ by associating them with the Pythagoreans and, especially, Empedocles. As Horky argues, not only is Empedocles the earliest surviving source to use kosmos to refer to a harmonic ‘world-order’ and to illustrate cosmic ‘communities’ between oppositional pairs, but also his cosmology realises the mutual correspondence of these aspects in the cycle of love and strife. Thus, if later figures posited Pythagoras as the first to refer to the universal ‘world-order’ as the kosmos, they did so because they believed Empedocles to have been a Pythagorean natural scientist, whose combined focus on cosmology and ethics exemplified a distinctively Pythagorean approach to philosophy. (shrink)

The paper offers a running commentary on ps-Archytas’ On Intellect and Sense Perception (composed ca. 80 BCE), with the aim to provide a clear description of Hellenistic/post-Hellenistic Pythagorean epistemology. Through an analysis of the process of knowledge and of the faculties that this involves, ps-Archytas presents an original epistemological theory which, although grounded in Aristotelian and Platonic theories, results in a peculiar Pythagorean criteriology that accounts for the acquisition and production of knowledge, as well as for the specific competences of (...) each cognitive faculty. (shrink)

Recent attempts to legislate climate science out of existence raises the question of whether citizens are obliged to obey such laws. The authority of democratic law is rooted in both truth and popular consent, but neither is sufficient and they may conflict. These are reconciled in theory and, more importantly, in practice once we incorporate insights from the pragmatist theory of inquiry.

Three of the chief questions this essay addresses are: 1. What justifies considering Hegel and Maimonides together in a probe of the philosophical psychology of prophetic intelligence? 2. What bearing does intellectual intuition as Hegel and Maimonides understand it have on prophecy approached from this standpoint? 3. How does the relation between intelligence and intuition and prophecy, when explored in light of the answer to the first two questions, deepen our contemporary understanding of prophecy in ways that are both philosophically (...) and religiously significant? (shrink)

This chapter makes the argument for both the practicality and impracticality of philosophy as it relates to liberal education. An exploration of the history of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals that a study of philosophy cultivates a skill set of logic and critical thinking that are crucial for those who study science and mathematics. It also situates philosophy as a unifying discipline for liberal education and STEM studies (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The study of philosophy also (...) is impractical, as is liberal education, in that it does not prepare students for any specific profession. But it is this impracticality that makes philosophy, and liberal education, central to its identity and value: it creates an individual who is more empathic, open-minded, and self-aware that would not be possible if philosophy and liberal education were subordinated to some practical goal. (shrink)

Our concept of knowing of other persons ought to include respect for them. Since respect implies considering whether what they say is true, I propose that believing others’ words is a necessary condition of knowing them. I explore the contribution such belief makes to knowledge of other persons, as well as some surprising but welcome implications, including theological consequences.

When agents violate norms, they are typically judged to be more of a cause of resulting outcomes. In this paper, we suggest that norm violations also affect the causality attributed to other agents, a phenomenon we refer to as "causal superseding." We propose and test a counterfactual reasoning model of this phenomenon in four experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 provide an initial demonstration of the causal superseding effect and distinguish it from previously studied effects. Experiment 3 shows that this causal (...) superseding effect is dependent on a particular event structure, following a prediction of our counterfactual model. Experiment 4 demonstrates that causal superseding can occur with violations of non-moral norms. We propose a model of the superseding effect based on the idea of counterfactual sufficiency. (shrink)

In 1889, the German philologist Friedrich Blass isolated a section of Chapter 20 from Iamblichus’ Exhortation to Philosophy (mid- or late 3rd Century CE) as an extract from a lost sophistic or philosophical treatise from the late 5th Century BCE. In this article, I introduce the text, which is now known as 'Anonymus Iamblichi' (or 'the anonymous work preserved in Iamblichus') by appeal to its two main contexts (source preservation and original historical composition), translate and discuss all eight surviving fragments (...) in their entirety, and provide some closing remarks about its importance to this history of democratic thought. The text itself presents a series of very carefully interwoven arguments concerning the three “parts” of excellence (ἀρετή) – wisdom, courage, and eloquence – and their successful application in society. In the course of presenting this case, Anonymus Iamblichi comments on the conditions under which one should learn to be excellent (Fragments 1-2) and the ends to which one should direct one’s excellence (Fragments 3-4); he provides an anthropological discussion of the weaknesses of human psychology and its effects on the good man (Fragments 5-6) and an hypothetical thought experiment concerning the “Superman” (which naturally solicits comparison with Nietzsche’s übermensch) and his inability to overcome the multitude in a lawless state (Fragments 6 and 8); and a positive defense of law and justice, reflecting a pro-democratic philosophical perspective (Fragments 7-8) – a rara avis indeed in ancient philosophy. (shrink)