We can learn much about perceptual experience by thinking about how it can mislead us. In this paper, I explore whether, and how, olfactory experience can mislead. I argue that, in the case of olfactory experience, the traditional distinction between illusion and hallucination does not apply. Integral to the traditional distinction is a notion of ‘object-failure’—the failure of an experience to present objects accurately. I argue that there are no such presented objects in olfactory experience. As a result, olfactory experience (...) can only mislead by means of a kind of property hallucination. The implications of my arguments are twofold. First, we see that accounts of representational content cannot always be based on the visual model. And, secondly, we see that we must recast the notion of nonveridicality, allowing for a notion of non-veridical experience that is disengaged from any particular object. (shrink)

Much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision. Recently, however, philosophers have begun to correct this ‘tunnel vision’ by considering other modalities. Nevertheless, relatively little has been written about the chemical senses—olfaction and gustation. The focus of this paper is olfaction. In this paper, I consider the question: does human olfactory experience represents objects as thus and so? If we take visual experience as the paradigm of how experience can achieve object representation, we might think that the (...) answer to this question is no. I argue that olfactory experience does indeed represent objects—just not in a way that is easily read from the dominant visual case. (shrink)

I offer a reading of Murdoch's conception of concrete universality as it appears in 'The Idea of Perfection', the first essay in the Sovereignty of Good. I show that it has British Idealist overtones that are inflected by Wittgenstein, a thought I try to illuminate by drawing an analogy with Wittgenstein's discussion of the metre stick in Paris in Philosophical Investigations §50. In the last part of the paper, I appeal to the work of Murdoch's erstwhile tutor Donald MacKinnon to (...) respond to an objection to my strategy, which I draw from Murdoch's later work, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. (shrink)

Much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision. Recently, however, philosophers have begun to correct this ‘tunnel vision’ by considering other modalities. Nevertheless, relatively little has been written about the chemical senses—olfaction and gustation. The focus of this paper is olfaction. In light of new physiological and psychophysical research on olfaction, I consider whether olfactory experience is object-based. In particular, I explore the claim that “odor objects” constitute sensory individuals. It isn’t obvious—at least at the outset—whether they (...) meet the widely accepted principles of object individuation and recognition at work in the visual and auditory cases. Among the general issues I consider, then, is whether these traditional principles form necessary, or simply sufficient, conditions on object perception. As we see, at the very least, considering the object-recognition model of olfaction challenges us to look more closely at well-entrenched models of object perception. But the payoff of doing so is high. We not only learn something about a modality that philosophers have historically neglected; by asking new questions and challenging old assumptions, we also further our understanding of perception in general. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spinoza and the Theory of Organism HANS JONAS I CARTESIANDUALISMlanded speculation on the nature of life in an impasse: intelligible as, on principles of mechanics, the correlation of structure and function became within the res extensa, that of structure-plus-function with feeling or experience (modes of the res cogitans) was lost in the bifurcation, and thereby the fact of life itself became unintelligible at the same time that the (...) explanation of its bodily performance seemed to be assured. The impasse became manifest in Occasionalism : its tour de force of an extraneous, divine "synchronization" of the outer and the inner world (the latter denied to animals) not only suffered from its extreme artificiality, the common failing of such ad hoc constructions, but even at so high a cost failed to accomplish its theoretical purpose by its own terms. For the animal machine, like any machine, raises beyond the question of the "how" that of the "what for" of its functioning---of the purpose for which it had thus been constructed by its maker.1 Its performance, however devoid of immanent teleology, must serve an end, and that end must be someone's end. This end may (directly) be itself, as indeed Descartes had implied when declaring self-preservation to be the effect of the functioning of the organic automaton. In that case the existence as such of the machine would be its end--either terminally, or in turn to benefit something else. In the former case, the machine would have to be more than a machine, for a mere machine cannot enioy its existence. But since, by the rigorous conception of the res extensa, it cannot be more than a machine, its function and/or existence must serve something other than itself. Automata in Descartes ' time were mainly for entertainment (rather than work). But the raison d'etre of the living kingdom could not well be seen in God's indulging his mechanical abilities or in the amusement of celestial spectators--especially since mere complexity of arrangement does not create new quality and thus add something to the unrelieved sameness of the simple substratum that might enrich the spectrum of being. For quality, beyond the primitive determinations of the extended per se, is the subjective creature of sensation, the confused representation of quantity in a mind; and thus organisms cannot harbor it because as mere machines they lack mentality, and pure spirits cannot because they lack sensuality, or the privilege of confusion and thereby of illusion with its possible enjoyment. And as to their intellectual enjoyment, even that, deprived of the thrill of discovery by the same token, would pale in the contemplation of what to sufficiently large The concept of "machine," adopted for its strict confinementto efficientcause, is still a finalisticconcept,even thoughthe final cause is no longer internal to the entity, as a mode of its own operation,but external to it as antecedent design. [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY intellects is nothing but the ever-repeated exemplification of the same few, elementary (and ultimately trivial) truths. There remained, then, the time-honored--Stoic as well as Christian--idea that plants and animals are for the benefit of Man. Indeed, since the existence of a living world is the necessary condition for the existence of any of its members, the self-justifying nature of at least one such member (= species) would justify the existence of the whole. In Stoicism, Man provided this end by his possession of reason, which makes him the culmination of a terrestrial scale of being that is also self-justifying throughout all its grades (the end as the best of many that are good in degrees) ; in Christianity, by his possession of an immortal soul, which makes him the sole imago Dei in creation (the end as the sole issue at stake) ; and Cartesian dualism radicalized this latter position by making man even the sole possessor of inwardness or "soul" of any kind, thus the only one of whom "end" can meaningfully be predicated as he alone can entertain ends. All other life then, the product of physical necessity, can be considered his means. However, this traditional idea, in its anthropocentric vanity never a... (shrink)

We articulate a distinction between ontology, understood as involving existence questions, and metaphysics, understood as either providing for metaphysical profiles of entities or else as dealing with fundamentality and/or grounding and dependence questions. The distinction, we argue, allows a better understanding of the roles of metaontology and metametaphysics when it comes to discussing the relations between ontology and science on the one hand, and metaphysics and science on the other. We argue that while ontology, as understood in this paper, may (...) have reasonable perspectives for naturalization, given its relation to science, the same cannot be said for metaphysics, given that it is typically understood as an additional theoretical layer over science, not participating in the scientific investigation. That may result either in skepticism over metaphysics, or else on accepting that metaphysics is an autonomous branch of investigation, depending on one’s concern for metaphysics. (shrink)

In "What the Nose Doesn't Know", I argue that there are no olfactory illusions. Central to the traditional notions of illusion and hallucination is a notion of object-failure—the failure of an experience to represent particular objects. Because there are no presented objects in the case of olfactory experience, I argue that the traditional ways of categorizing non-veridical experience do not apply to the olfactory case. In their place, I propose a novel notion of non-veridical experience for the olfactory case. In (...) his (2011), Stevenson responds to my claim that there are no olfactory illusions. Although he agrees that it is natural—or at least commonplace—to think there are no olfactory illusions, he argues that there are and provides examples of them, many of which he suggests have analogues in the visual and auditory domains. In this paper, I examine the nature of the disagreement between us. I argue that Stevenson fails to argue against my conclusion that there are no olfactory illusions. (shrink)

This paper concerns how extant theorists of predictive coding conceptualize and explain possible instances of cognitive penetration. §I offers brief clarification of the predictive coding framework and relevant mechanisms, and a brief characterization of cognitive penetration and some challenges that come with defining it. §II develops more precise ways that the predictive coding framework can explain, and of course thereby allow for, genuine top-down causal effects on perceptual experience, of the kind discussed in the context of cognitive penetration. §III develops (...) these insights further with an eye towards tracking one extant criterion for cognitive penetration, namely, that the relevant cognitive effects on perception must be sufficiently direct. Throughout these discussions, we extend the analyses of the predictive coding models, as we know them. So one open question that surfaces is how much of the extended analyses are genuinely just part of the predictive coding models, or something that must be added to them in order to generate these additional explanatory benefits. In §IV, we analyze and criticize a claim made by some theorists of predictive coding, namely, that (interesting) instances of cognitive penetration tend to occur in perceptual circumstances involving substantial noise or uncertainty. It is here that our analysis is most critical. We argue that, when applied, the claim fails to explain (or perhaps even be consistent with) a large range of important and uncontroversially interesting possible cases of cognitive penetration. We conclude with a general speculation about how the recent work on the predictive mind may influence the current dialectic concerning top-down effects on perception. (shrink)

Let intentionalism be the view that what proposition is expressed in context by a sentence containing indexicals depends on the speaker’s intentions. It has recently been argued that intentionalism makes communicative success mysterious and that there are counterexamples to the intentionalist view in the form of cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct interpretation. In this paper, I argue that these objections can be met, once we acknowledge that we may distinguish what determines the correct interpretation (...) from the evidence that is available to the audience, as well as from the standards by which we judge whether or not a given interpretation is reasonable. With these distinctions in place, we see that intentionalism does not render communicative success mysterious, and that cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct one can easily be accommodated. The distinction is also useful in treating the Humpty Dumpty problem for intentionalism, since it turns out that this can be treated as an extreme special case of mismatch. (shrink)

I argue that recent attempts to deflect Access Problems for realism about a priori domains such as mathematics, logic, morality, and modality using arguments from evolution result in two kinds of explanatory overkill: the Access Problem is eliminated for contentious domains, and realist belief becomes viciously immune to arguments from dispensability, and to non-rebutting counter-arguments more generally.

The existence of fundamental moral disagreements is a central problem for moral realism and has often been contrasted with an alleged absence of disagreement in mathematics. However, mathematicians do in fact disagree on fundamental questions, for example on which set-theoretic axioms are true, and some philosophers have argued that this increases the plausibility of moral vis-à-vis mathematical realism. I argue that the analogy between mathematical and moral disagreement is not as straightforward as those arguments present it. In particular, I argue (...) that pluralist accounts of mathematics render fundamental mathematical disagreements compatible with mathematical realism in a way in which moral disagreements and moral realism are not. 11. (shrink)

During the last couple of decades, several attempts have been made to come up with a theory that can handle the various semantic, logical and philosophical problems raised by the vagueness of natural languages. One of the most influential ideas that have come into fashion in recent years is the idea that vagueness should be analysed as a form of context sensitivity. Such contextualist theories of vagueness have gained some popularity, but many philosophers have remained sceptical of the prospects of (...) finding a tenable contextualist solution to the problems of vagueness. This paper provides an introduction to the most popular contextualist accounts, and a discussion of some of the most important arguments for and against them. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present a new reconstruction of Aristotle's assertoric logic as he develops it in Prior Analytics, A1-7. This reconstruction will be much closer to Aristotle's original...

In the debate over what determines the reference of an indexical expression on a given occasion of use, we can distinguish between two generic positions. According to the first, the reference is determined by internal factors, such as the speaker’s intentions. According to the second, the reference is determined by external factors, like conventions or what a competent and attentive audience would take the reference to be. It has recently been argued that the first position is untenable, since there are (...) cases of mismatch where the intuitively correct reference differs from the one that would be determined by the relevant internal factors. The aim of this paper is to show that, contrary to this line of argument, it is the proponent of the second position that should be worried, since this position yields counterintuitive consequences regarding communicative success in cases of mismatch. (shrink)

Scientific realism is typically associated with metaphysics. One current incarnation of such an association concerns the requirement of a metaphysical characterization of the entities one is being a realist about. This is sometimes called “Chakravartty’s Challenge”, and codifies the claim that without a metaphysical characterization, one does not have a clear picture of the realistic commitments one is engaged with. The required connection between metaphysics and science naturally raises the question of whether such a demand is appropriately fulfilled, and how (...) metaphysics engages with science in order to produce what is called “scientific metaphysics”. Here, we map some of the options available in the literature, generating a conceptual spectrum according to how each view approximates science and metaphysics. This is done with the purpose of enlightening the current debate on the possibility of epistemic warrant that science could grant to such a metaphysics, and how different positions differently address the thorny issue concerning such a warrant. (shrink)

I propose a pragmatic approach to the kind of reference-shifting occurring in indexicals as used in e.g. written notes and answering machine messages. I proceed in two steps. First, I prepare the ground by showing that the arguments against such a pragmatic approach raised in the recent literature fail. Second, I take a first few steps towards implementing this approach, by sketching a pragmatic theory of reference-shifting, and showing how it can handle cases of the relevant kind. While the immediate (...) scope of the paper is restricted to indexicals and reference-shifting, and the discussion is confined to a specific range of theories and cases, the approach proposed is compatible with a fairly broad range of more or less semantically conservative theories, and many of the conclusions drawn are significant for the evaluation of pragmatic explanations in philosophy more generally. The overall goal is to offer a new perspective on the issues under discussion, and to prompt philosophers to reconsider some of the established methods by which pragmatic explanations are evaluated. (shrink)

Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (QM) works perfectly well for all practical purposes. Once one admits, however, that a successful scientific theory is supposed not only to make predictions but also to tell us a story about the world in which we live, a philosophical problem emerges: in the specific case of QM, it is not possible to associate with the theory a unique scientific image of the world; there are several images. The fact that the theory may be compatible with distinct (...) ontologies, and that those ontologies may themselves be associated with a plurality of metaphysical approaches, gives rise to the problem of metaphysical underdetermination. This paper concludes that the available metametaphysical criteria fail to deliver objectivity in theory choice, and it puts forward its own criterion based on a tension between two methods of metaphysical inquiry: one that is closely related to science and another that is not. (shrink)

It is frequently claimed that breeding animals that we know will have unavoidable health problems is at least prima facie wrong, because it harms the animals concerned. However, if we take ‘harm’ to mean ‘makes worse off’, this claim appears false. Breeding an animal that will have unavoidable health problems does not make any particular individual animal worse off, since an animal bred without such problems would be a different individual animal. Yet, the intuition that there is something ethically wrong (...) about breeding animals—such as purebred pedigree dogs—in ways that seem negatively to affect welfare remains powerful. In this paper, an animal version of what is sometimes called the non-identity problem is explored, along with a number of possible ways of understanding what might be wrong with such breeding practices, if it is not that they harm the animal itself. These possibilities include harms to others, placeholder arguments, non-comparative ideas of harm, an ‘impersonal’ approach, and concerns about human attitudes and dispositions. (shrink)

I introduce a perceptual phenomenon so far overlooked in the philosophical literature: ‘visual evanescence’. ‘Evanescent’ objects are those that due to their structured visible appearances have a tendency to vanish or evanesce from sight at certain places and for certain ‘biologically apt’ perceivers. Paradigmatically evanescent objects are those associated with certain forms of animal camouflage. I show that reflection on visual evanescence helps create conceptual room for a treatment of looks statements not explicit in the contemporary literature, one which takes (...) its cue from the relatively neglected philosophy of perception of G.E.M. Anscombe. In sensory contexts in which evanescence is known to have occurred, the use of ‘looks invisible’ seems to be intelligible, a fact that sensationalist and objectivist treatments of the nature of looks, as I call them, cannot obviously accommodate - at least, as I explain, when coupled with what Cora Diamond (1981) describes as a ‘natural’ understanding of nonsense. Focusing on a number of imaginative scenarios in which the statement ‘looks invisible’ is permissible, I oppose these ontological treatments with the grammatical approach I draw from Anscombe and in doing so I uncover a degree of unity across the cases I consider: something can intelligibly be said to ‘look invisible’ if one can see or appears to see the entirety of the region that the ‘invisible’ thing occupies. The region ‘looks empty’ but is full. (shrink)

What is it that makes a mental state conscious? Recent commentators have proposed that for Kant, consciousness results from differentiation: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is distinguished, by means of our conceptual capacities, from other states and/or things. I argue instead that Kant’s conception of state consciousness is sensory: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is accompanied by an inner sensation. Interpreting state consciousness as inner sensation reveals an underappreciated influence of Crusius on Kant’s view, (...) solves some long-standing puzzles concerning Kant’s difficult doctrine of self-affection, and sheds light on his theory of inner experience. (shrink)

Pluralist mathematical realism, the view that there exists more than one mathematical universe, has become an influential position in the philosophy of mathematics. I argue that, if mathematical pluralism is true (and we have good reason to believe that it is), then mathematical realism cannot (easily) be justified by arguments from the indispensability of mathematics to science. This is because any justificatory chain of inferences from mathematical applications in science to the total body of mathematical theorems can cover at most (...) one mathematical universe. Indispensability arguments may thus lose their central role in the debate about mathematical ontology. (shrink)

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ admits many interpretations. In the philosophical literature on climate justice, it has typically been cashed out in terms of the following three principles: the ability to pay principle (APP), the beneficiary pays principle (BPP), and the contribution to problem principle (CPP). Many of these accounts have given prominence to the CPP and APP, but there are some who argue that the BPP deserves greater consideration. In this (...) paper, I want to ask whether the BPP must feature in any plausible account of remedial responsibility for climate change. I examine this question by looking at three different ways in which the BPP has been incorporated into accounts of climate burden-sharing. In each case, there are questions about the particular role that the BPP is assigned and it looks like either the BPP must be given equal prominence to the CPP, or the BPP might be redundant when it comes to specific task of remedying the injustices of climate change. I suggest in the conclusion one possible reason to maintain the BPP. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a noted empirical link between regret and insomnia. Drawing on Brian O’Shaughnessy analysis of wakeful consciousness, I sketch three candidate ways of excavating a conceptual connection. Regret involves a certain kind of temporal orientation that, for O’Shaughnessy, only the state of wakefulness makes possible. Regret involves mental activity – it is productive of and precipitates patterns of counterfactual thought and imagining. Further, picking up a cue from Bernard Williams’ celebrated conception of agent-regret in ‘Moral Luck’, (...) sometimes the mental activity that occurs in regret is affective and expressive – as I argue, it is expressive of the wish that things were otherwise were satisfied now. Finally, I take up the puzzle as to why occurrent regret is not merely incompatible with sleep – insofar as it necessitates wakefulness - but may preclude falling asleep and I offer a tentative solution, focusing on the self-conscious character of occurrent regret. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss some of the challenges related to formulating and adopting a realist position regarding non-relativistic quantum mechanics. In a standard approach to ontology, the ontological commitments of scientific theories can be extracted from them. Scientific realism is the standpoint that our best scientific theories are approximately true, and thus, their ontological commitments, roughly speaking, correspond to reality. Quantum mechanics complicates this view by introducing an interpretational requirement that links a particular conception of how reality should be (...) to the theory. This generates comprehensive difficulties: when we separate theory and interpretation, we have a clear conception of theory but not of interpretation and how to extract its ontology. On the other hand, if we somehow identify theory and interpretation, we have a reasonably clear conception of the desired ontology but lose our best characterizations of theory, rendering our methods for extracting ontology ineffective. Our aim is to map out the challenges for future rigorous realist approaches to quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Health institutions recommend that young infants be exclusively breastfed on demand, and it is widely held that parents who can breastfeed have an obligation to do so. This has been challenged in recent philosophical work, especially by Fiona Woollard. Woollard’s work critically engages with two distinct views of parental obligation that might ground such an obligation—based on maximal benefit and avoidance of significant harm—to reject an obligation to breastfeed. While agreeing with Woollard’s substantive conclusion, this paper (drawing on philosophical discussion (...) of the ‘right to rear’) argues that there are several more moderate views of parental obligation which might also be thought to ground parental obligation. We first show that an obligation to breastfeed might result not from a general obligation to maximally benefit one’s child, but from what we call ‘choice-specific’ obligations to maximise benefit within particular activities. We then develop this idea through two views of parental obligation—the Dual Interest view, and the Best Custodian view—to ground an obligation to exclusively breastfeed on demand, before showing how both these more moderate views fail. Finally, we argue that not only is there no general obligation to breastfeed children, but that it is often morally right not to do so. Since much advice from health institutions on this issue implies that exclusive breastfeeding on demand is the best option for all families, our argument drives the feeding debate forward by showing that this advice often misrepresents parents’ moral obligations in potentially harmful ways. (shrink)

This paper questions the adequacy of the explicit cancellability test for conversational implicature as it is commonly understood. The standard way of understanding this test relies on two assumptions: first, that that one can test whether a certain content is conversationally implicated, by checking whether that content is cancellable, and second, that a cancellation is successful only if it results in a felicitous utterance. While I accept the first of these assumptions, I reject the second one. I argue that a (...) cancellation can succeed even if it results in an infelicitous utterance, and that unless we take this possibility into account we run the risk of misdiagnosing philosophically significant cases. (shrink)

Sören Halldén’s logic of nonsense is one of the most well-known many-valued logics available in the literature. In this paper, we discuss Peter Woodruff’s as yet rather unexplored attempt to advance a version of such a logic built on the top of a constructive logical basis. We start by recalling the basics of Woodruff’s system and by bringing to light some of its notable features. We then go on to elaborate on some of the difficulties attached to it; on our (...) way to offer a possible solution to such difficulties, we discuss the relation between Woodruff’s system and two-dimensional semantics for many-valued logics, as developed by Hans Herzberger. (shrink)

This paper presents a paradox based on the following assumptions: that emotions are warranted when you are justified in thinking that the emotion is fitting, that there are warranted cases of past-directed fear, that fear is fitting in the face of its formal object: dangerousness, and that this formal object consists in a probability of damage or harm to something of value. The paper then discusses three likely solutions: (1) denying that past-directed fear can be warranted, (2) using an alternative (...) formulation of fear's formal object, and (3) giving up warrant as justified as fittingness. Finally, it provides a case for the third solution and presents a warrant-based approach to fittingness and the appropriateness of emotions in general. (shrink)

This chapter explains Franz Brentano's metaethical theory and how it purports to deal with such difficulties. Brentano explains correctness in emotions by analogy with correctness in judgements. For a judgement to be correct is for it to concord with a judgement made by someone who judges with self-evidence (Evidenz). Self-evident judgements are guaranteed to be correct, and they are based either on "inner perception" or on presentations of objects that are rejected apodictically. Brentano's metaethical theory concerns first and foremost the (...) psychology of valuing and of moral judgement. Brentano is clearly a cognitivist about evaluative and moral judgement; such judgements are judgements about the correctness of feelings, and judgements are cognitive acts. However, one aspect of his position that seems congenial to contemporary expressivism. This has to do with expressivist treatments of disagreement. Brentano's views seem akin to the kind of foundationalist intuitionism that is traditionally associated with non-naturalism. (shrink)

Ever since its beginnings, standard quantum mechanics has been associated with a metaphysical view according to which the theory deals with non-individual objects, i.e., objects deprived of individuality in some sense of the term. We shall examine the grounds of the claim according to which quantum mechanics is so closely connected with a metaphysics of non-individuals. In particular, we discuss the attempts to learn the ‘metaphysical lessons’ required by quantum mechanics coming from four distinct roads: from the formalism of the (...) theory, treating separately the case of the physics and the underlying logic; from the ontology of the theory, understood as the furniture of the world according to the theory; and, at last, we analyze whether a metaphysics of non-individuals is indispensable from a purely metaphysical point of view. We argue that neither non-individuality nor individuality is to be found imposed on us in any of these levels so that it should be seen as a metaphysical addition to the theory, rather than as a lesson from it. (shrink)

Anscombe’s published writings, lectures and notes on sensation point toward a sophisticated critique of sense-data, representationalist and direct realist theories of perception (in both their historical and contemporary forms), and a novel analysis of the concept of sensation. Her philosophy of perception begins with the traditional question, ‘What are the objects of sensation?’, but the response is a grammatical rather than ontological enquiry. What, she asks, are the characteristics of the grammatical object of sensation verbs? Anscombe’s answer is: sensation verbs (...) take ‘intentional objects’, where an ‘intentional object’ is a description which has the characteristics of the concept of intention—characteristics elucidated in great detail in her Intention. This simple manoeuvre allows Anscombe to reject two opposing positions in the philosophy of perception - that the objects of sensation are sense-data and that the objects of sensation are tables and chairs (etc). Both views, she argues, fail to recognise the grammatical fact that the verbs of sensation take intentional objects. This chapter outlines the case for a grammatical methodology in philosophy of perception, by framing an analysis of the ways in which the sense-data and direct-realist theories of perception arise out of the theoretical demands that are generated when the grammar of the concept of sensation is left unexplored. Along the way, it will be shown that Anscombe’s philosophy of perception should not be read as fore-running contemporary representationalism, and that reading it as such in fact runs counter not only to the letter but the spirit of Ancombe’s proposal. (shrink)

Does Kant hold that we can have intuitions independently of concepts? A striking passage from § 13 of the Critique of Pure Reason appears to say so explicitly. However, it also conjures up a scenario where the categories are inapplicable to objects of intuition, a scenario presumably shown impossible by the following Transcendental Deduction. The seemingly non-conceptualist claim concerning intuition have therefore been read, by conceptualist interpreters of Kant, as similarly counterpossible. I argue that the passage in question best supports (...) an underappreciated middle position where intuition requires a pre-conceptual use of the understanding. Such pre-conceptual use of the understanding faces both textual and systematic objections. I show that these objections can be rebutted. (shrink)

I consider the first part of Marty’s Raum und Zeit, which treats of both the nature of space and spatial perception. I begin by sketching two charges that Marty raises against Kantian and Brentanian conceptions of space (and spatial perception) respectively, before detailing what I take to be a characteristically Martyan picture of space perception, though set against the backdrop of contemporary philosophy of perception. Marty has it that spatial relations are non-real but existent, causally inert relations that are grounded (...) in space, which is itself non-real but existent. Objects do not inhere in space in the way properties inhere in substances. Rather, there is a ‘non-real’ relation of ‘fulfillment’ (Erfüllung) that holds between objects and places in space, which itself subsists. I consider whether any contemporary philosophy of perception is equipped to make sense of Martyan space perception and I suggest that the most promising conception is Naïve Realism. I then outline a difficulty for this theoretical translation. Naïve Realism is a direct theory of perception whereby S is said to perceive O just in case S stands in a psychological relation of acquaintance with O, where this relation is both non-representational and explanatorily primitive. For Marty however, all relations are non-real and, insofar as they are grounded, are neither fundamental, nor brute or primitive in an explanatory sense. I close by detailing what I thereby take a distinctively Martyan form of Naïve Realism to involve. The central theoretical tenet that phenomenal character is fundamentally constituted by worldly objects is preserved; but the manifestly relational structure of the acquaintance relation, construed in particular as a relation of awareness, is treated as derivative. I make headway in spelling out the latter claim by bringing Marty into fleeting conversation with another Thomist - G.E.M. Anscombe. (shrink)

Aristotle counts as the founder of formal logic. The logic he develops dominated until Frege and others introduced a new logic. This new logic is taken to be more powerful and better capable of capturing inference patterns. The new logic differs from Aristotelian logic in significant respects. It has been argued by Fred Sommers and Hanoch Ben-Yami that the new logic is not well equipped as a logic of natural language, and that a logic closer to Aristotle's is better suited (...) for this task. Each of them developed their own formalism - Sommers in form of term logic, Ben-Yami in form of his Quantified Argument Calculus (QUARC). I discuss Aristotle's logic - a term logic - and attempt a comparison between Aristotelian logic and (i) the new logic, (ii) Sommers' term logic, and (iii) Ben-Yami's QUARC. I consider differences between the systems, and show how they are related to and diverge from the new logic. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Amie Thomasson’s Easy Ontology rests on a vicious circularity that is highly damaging. Easy Ontology invokes the idea of application conditions that give rise to analytic entailments. Such entailments can be used to answer ontological questions easily. I argue that the application conditions for basic terms are only circularly specifiable showing that Thomasson misses her self-set goal of preventing such a circularity. Using this circularity, I go on to show that Easy Ontology as a (...) whole collapses. (shrink)

This entry considers the philosophical subject called 'metaphysics'. There have been many conceptions of metaphysics, and metaphysics has faced severe criticism throughout the history of philosophy and continues to do so. Besides discussing some major trends in analytic metaphysics - understood as 'metaphysics done by analytic philosophers' - we consider some of the criticisms and possible responses.

This paper explores why victims who provoke their aggressors seem to compromise their right to self-defence. First, it argues that one proposed answer – the victims are partially responsible for the threats they face – fails. It faces counterexamples that it cannot adequately address. Second, the paper develops the Protective Duty View according to which we incur protective duties towards others when we interfere with their reasonable opportunities to avoid suffering harm. Since provokers wrongfully interfere with prospective aggressors’ opportunities to (...) avoid posing a threat and thus to be defensively harmed, they incur protective duties towards the aggressors. This can require that they significantly limit or even refrain from using defensive force. The paper ends by drawing out some of the implications of the Protective Duty View for issues related to war and punishment. (shrink)

This paper involves constructive exegesis. I consider the contrast between morality and art as sketched in Philippa Foot's 1972 paper of the same name, ‘Morality and Art’. I then consider how her views might have shifted against the background of the conceptual landscape afforded by Natural Goodness, though the topic of the relation of art and morality is not explicitly explored in that work. The method is to set out some textual fragments from Natural Goodness that can be arranged for (...) a tentative Footian ‘aesthetics’. I bring them into conversation with some ideas from Iris Murdoch to elucidate what I think the import may be, for Foot, of depicting human form. (shrink)

According to the communication desideratum (CD), a notion of semantic content must be adequately related to communication. In the recent debate on indexical reference, (CD) has been invoked in arguments against the view that intentions determine the semantic content of indexicals and demonstratives (intentionalism). In this paper, I argue that the interpretations of (CD) that these arguments rely on are questionable, and suggest an alternative interpretation, which is compatible with (strong) intentionalism. Moreover, I suggest an approach that combines elements of (...) intentionalism with other subjectivist approaches, and discuss the role of intuitions in developing and evaluating theories of indexical reference. (shrink)

According to extension-shifting theories of vagueness, the extensions of vague predicates have sharp boundaries, which shift as a function of certain psychological factors. Such theories have been claimed to provide an attractive explanation of the appeal of soritical reasoning. I challenge this claim: the demand for such an explanation need not constrain the semantics of vague predicates at all.

The aim of this paper is to introduce, elucidate and defend the usefulness of a variant of grounding, or metaphysical explanation, that has the feature that the grounds explain of some states of affairs that one of them obtains without explaining which one obtains. I will dub this variant arbitrary grounding. After informally elucidating the basic idea in the first section, I will provide three metaphysical hypotheses that are best formulated in terms of arbitrary grounding in the second section. The (...) third section will be concerned with the relation between arbitrary grounding and non-arbitrary grounding. The fourth section will compare arbitrary grounding to two extant proposals in the literature. (shrink)

Particular persons have claims against being made worse off than they could have been. The literature, however, has focused primarily on only two-option cases; yet, these cases fail to capture all of the morally relevant factors, especially when a person’s existence is in question. This paper explores how to assess claims in multiple-option choice sets. We scrutinize the only extant proposal, offered by Michael Otsuka, which we call the Weakening View. In light of its problems, we develop an alternative: the (...) Combining View. The Weakening View holds that a person’s claim against a loss of well-being relative to one distribution is weakened by the availability of further alternatives relative to which the person gains well-being. By contrast, our view holds that a person has an overall claim for or against a certain distribution relative to the whole option set, where overall claims are second-order functions of the different pairwise claims. Finally, we defend the Combining View by exploring its implications for the impact of a person’s possible non-existence on their overall claims, and we develop a proposal for how the number of distributions relative to which a person gains or loses welfare influences the strength of their overall claims. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

Habermas’ ‘ethics of citizenship’ raises a number of relevant concerns about the dangers of a secularistic exclusion of religious contributions to public deliberation, on the one hand, and the dangers of religious conflict and sectarianism in politics, on the other. Agreeing largely with these concerns, the paper identities four problems with Habermas’ approach, and attempts to overcome them: the full exclusion of religious reasons from parliamentary debate; the full inclusion of religious reasons in the informal public sphere; the philosophical distinction (...) between secular and religious reasons; and the sociological distinction between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ religions. The result is a revised version of the ethics of citizenship, which I call moderate inclusivism. Most notably, moderate inclusivism implies a replacement of Habermas’ ‘institutional translation proviso’ with a more flexible ‘conversational translation proviso’. (shrink)

According to the person-affecting view, the ethics of welfare should be cashed out in terms of how the individuals are affected. While the narrow version fails to solve the non-identity problem, the wide version is subject to the repugnant conclusion. A middle view promises to do better – the Interpersonal Comparative View of Welfare (ICV). It modifies the narrow view by abstracting away from individuals’ identities to account for interpersonal gains and losses. The paper assesses ICV’s merits and flaws. ICV (...) solves the non-identity problem, avoids the repugnant conclusion, and seems to accommodate the person-affecting intuition. But it cuts too many things along the way: ICV obstructs the advantage of the wide view to account for all future individuals’ welfare, abandons the intuitions that underlie the narrow view, and even violates its own presuppositions by turning out to be merely pseudo person-affecting. (shrink)

This book questions what sovereignty looks like when it is de-ontologised; when the nothingness at the heart of claims to sovereignty is unmasked and laid bare. Drawing on critical thinkers in political theology, such as Schmitt, Agamben, Nancy, Blanchot, Paulhan, The Politics of Nothing asks what happens to the political when considered in the frame of the productive potential of the nothing? The answers are framed in terms of the deep intellectual histories at our disposal for considering these fundamental questions, (...) carving out trajectories inspired by, for example, Peter Lombard, Shakespeare and Spinoza. This book offers a series of sensitive and creative reflections that suggest the possibilities offered by thinking through sovereignty via the frame of nihilism. This book was originally published as a special issue of Culture, Theory and Critique. (shrink)

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s seminal essay “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”, published in 1954, is one of the texts which has had most influence on architectural thinking in the second half of 20th and early 21st century. What much of modern and postmodern architectural thinking extracts from Heidegger’s text and revolves around is the understanding of building and dwelling as more or less abstract forms of being without taking into account the people inhabiting space. In these traditions little has been said (...) about what the Danish architect Jørn Utzon adds to the term “being” and announces as the most important aspect of architecture: Well-being understood as human well-being. The present paper means to re-interpret Heidegger’s text critically in order to rethink dwelling and building within an architectural context, presenting Jørn Utzon’s work and thinking as a lifelong search for the architecture of well-being. (shrink)

Modal dispositionalists hold that dispositions provide the foundation of metaphysical necessity and possibility. According to the kind of modal dispositionalism that can be found in the present literature, a proposition p is possible just in case some things are disposed to be such that p. In the first part of this paper I show that combining this classic form of dispositionalism with the assumptions that the laws of nature are necessary and deterministic and that all dispositions are forward-looking in time (...) leads to the unattractive conclusion that every truth is necessary. I argue that the classic dispositionalist should be troubled by this result and in the second part of the paper I suggest a novel variant of dispositionalism that avoids it. This extended form of dispositionalism allows that some propositions are only indirectly underwritten by dispositions. (shrink)