What does it mean to know how to do something? This book develops a comprehensive account of know-how, a crucial epistemic goal for all who care about getting things right, not only with respect to the facts, but also with respect to practice. It proposes a novel interpretation of the seminal work of Gilbert Ryle, according to which know-how is a competence, a complex ability to do well in an activity in virtue of guidance by an understanding of what it (...) takes to do so. This idea is developed into a full-fledged account, Rylean responsibilism, which understands know-how in terms of the normative guidance and responsible control of one's acts. Within the complex current debate about know-how, this view occupies a middle ground position between the intellectualist claim that know-how just is propositional or objectual knowledge and the anti-intellectualist claim that know-how just is ability. In genuine know-how, practical ability and guiding intellect are both necessary, but essentially intertwined. (shrink)

The question of whether Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) justifies the existence of metaphysical indeterminacy has recently come to the fore. Metaphysical indeterminacy has been argued to emerge from three sources: coherent superpositions, the indefinite number of branches in the quantum multiverse and the nature of these branches. This paper reviews the evidence and concludes that those arguments don’t rely on EQM alone and rest on metaphysical auxiliary assumptions that transcend the physics of EQM. We show how EQM can be ontologically (...) interpreted without positing metaphysical indeterminacy by adopting a deflationary attitude towards branches. Two ways of developing the deflationary view are then proposed: one where branches are eliminated, and another where they are reduced to the universal quantum state. (shrink)

Pain asymbolia is a rare condition caused by brain damage, usually in adulthood. Asymbolics feel pain but appear indifferent to it, and indifferent also to visual and verbal threats. How should we make sense of this? Nikola Grahek thinks asymbolics’ pains are abnormal, lacking a component that make normal pains unpleasant and motivating. Colin Klein thinks that what is abnormal is not asymbolics’ pains, but asymbolics: they have a psychological deficit making them unresponsive to unpleasant pain. I argue that an (...) illuminating account requires elements of both views. Asymbolic pains are indeed abnormal, but they are abnormal because asymbolics are. I agree with Klein that asymbolics are incapable of caring about their bodily integrity; but I argue against him that, if this is to explain not only their indifference to visual and verbal threat, but also their indifference to pain, we must do the following: (i) take asymbolics’ lack of bodily care not as an alternative to, but as an explanation of their pains’ missing a component, and (ii) claim that the missing component consists in evaluative content. Asymbolia, I conclude, reveals not only that unpleasant pain is composite, but that its ‘hedomotive component’ is evaluative. (shrink)

This article defends the view that having a language just is knowing how to engage in communication with it. It also argues that, despite claims to the contrary, this view is compatible and complementary with the Chomskyan conception of language on which humans have languages in virtue of being in brain states realizing tacit knowledge of grammars for those languages.

This article uses the case study of ethnobiological classification to develop a positive and a negative thesis about the state of natural kind debates. On the one hand, I argue that current accounts of natural kinds can be integrated in a multidimensional framework that advances understanding of classificatory practices in ethnobiology. On the other hand, I argue that such a multidimensional framework does not leave any substantial work for the notion “natural kind” and that attempts to formulate a general account (...) of naturalness have become an obstacle to understanding classificatory practices. (shrink)

Psychological and philosophical studies have extended J. J. Gibson’s notion of affordances. Affordances are possibilities for bodily action presented to us by the objects of our perception. Recent work has argued that we should extend the actions afforded by perception to mental action. I argue that we can extend the notion of affordance itself. What I call ‘Introspective Affordances’ are possibilities for mental action presented to us by introspectively accessible states. While there are some prima facie worries concerning the non-perceptual (...) nature of introspection, I will argue that our internal mental lives share enough commonalities with experiences in our environment to warrant this extension. I will demonstrate the value of introspective affordances by showing how they allow us to explain an underexplored aspect of thought insertion. (shrink)

I argue that according to Socrates in the Phaedo we should not merely evaluate bodily pleasures and desires as worthless or bad, but actively avoid them. We need to avoid them because they change our values and make us believe falsehoods. This change in values and acceptance of falsehoods undermines the soul’s proper activity, making virtue and happiness impossible for us. I situate this account of why we should avoid bodily pleasures within Plato’s project in the Phaedo of providing Pythagorean (...) and Orphic ideas with clearer meanings and better justifications. (shrink)

Eleanor Knox has argued that our concept of spacetime applies to whichever structure plays a certain functional role in the laws (the role of determining local inertial structure). I raise two complications for this approach. First, our spacetime concept seems to have the structure of a cluster concept, which means that Knox's inertial criteria for spacetime cannot succeed with complete generality. Second, the notion of metaphysical fundamentality may feature in the spacetime concept, in which case spacetime functionalism may be uninformative (...) in the absence of answers to fundamental metaphysical questions like the substantivalist/relationist debate. (shrink)

The paper considers contemporary models of presumption in terms of their ability to contribute to a working theory of presumption for argumentation. Beginning with the Whatelian model, we consider its contemporary developments and alternatives, as proposed by Sidgwick, Kauffeld, Cronkhite, Rescher, Walton, Freeman, Ullmann-Margalit, and Hansen. Based on these accounts, we present a picture of presumptions characterized by their nature, function, foundation and force. On our account, presumption is a modal status that is attached to a claim and has the (...) effect of shifting, in a dialogue, a burden of proof set at a local level. Presumptions can be analysed and evaluated inferentially as components of rule-based structures. Presumptions are defeasible, and the force of a presumption is a function of its normative foundation. This picture seeks to provide a framework to guide the development of specific theories of presumption. (shrink)

I argue that some important elements of the current cosmological model are 'conventionalist’ in the sense defined by Karl Popper. These elements include dark matter and dark energy; both are auxiliary hypotheses that were invoked in response to observations that falsified the standard model as it existed at the time.

Ethnobiology has a long tradition of metaphysical debates about the “naturalness,” “objectivity”, “reality”, and “universality” of classifications. Especially the work of Brent Berlin has been influential in developing a “convergence metaphysics” that explains cross-cultural similarities of knowledge systems through shared recognition of objective discontinuities in nature. Despite its influence on the development of the field, convergence metaphysics has largely fallen out of favor as contemporary ethnobiologists tend to emphasize the locality and diversity of classificatory practices. The aim of this article (...) is twofold: First, I provide a historical account of the rise and fall of convergence metaphysics in ethnobiology. I show how convergence metaphysics emerged as an innovative theoretical program in the wake of the “cognitive revolution” and the “modern evolutionary synthesis” but failed to incorporate both theoretical insights and political concerns that gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. Second, I develop a positive proposal of how to engage with metaphysical issues in ethnobiology. By integrating traditional research on convergence of classifications with more nuanced accounts of distinctly local categories, a revamped metaphysics of ethnobiological classification can make substantial contributions to debates about ontological difference in anthropology and about the relation between applied and theoretical ethnobiology. (shrink)

This paper offers a probabilistic treatment of the conditions for argument cogency as endorsed in informal logic: acceptability, relevance, and sufficiency. Treating a natural language argument as a reason-claim-complex, our analysis identifies content features of defeasible argument on which the RSA conditions depend, namely: change in the commitment to the reason, the reason’s sensitivity and selectivity to the claim, one’s prior commitment to the claim, and the contextually determined thresholds of acceptability for reasons and for claims. Results contrast with, and (...) may indeed serve to correct, the informal understanding and applications of the RSA criteria concerning their conceptual dependence, their function as update-thresholds, and their status as obligatory rather than permissive norms, but also show how these formal and informal normative approachs can in fact align. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience claims that perception is constituted by bodily interaction with the environment, drawing on practical knowledge of the systematic ways that sensory inputs are disposed to change as a result of movement. Despite the theory’s associations with enactivism, it is sometimes claimed that the appeal to ‘knowledge’ means that the theory is committed to giving an essential theoretical role to internal representation, and therefore to a form of orthodox cognitive science. This paper defends the role (...) ascribed to knowledge by the theory, but argues that this knowledge can and should be identified with bodily skill rather than representation. Making the further argument that the notion of ‘representation hunger’ can be replaced with ‘prima facie representation hunger’, it concludes that although the theory could optionally be developed scientifically in part by reference to internal representation, it makes a strong and natural fit with anti-representationalist embodied or enactive cognitive science. (shrink)

Ethnobiology has become increasingly concerned with applied and normative questions about biocultural diversity and the livelihoods of local communities. While this development has created new opportunities for connecting ethnobiological research with ecological and social sciences, it also raises questions about the role of cognitive perspectives in current ethnobiology. In fact, there are clear signs of institutional separation as research on folkbiological cognition has increasingly found its home in the cognitive science community, weakening its ties to institutionalized ethnobiology. Rather than accepting (...) this separation as inevitable disciplinary specialization, this short perspective article argues for a systemic perspective that addresses mutual influences and causal entanglement of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in socio-ecological dynamics. Such an integrative perspective requires a new conversation about cognition in ethnobiology beyond traditional polarization around issues of cognitive universals and cultural relativity. (shrink)

This paper is an explication of Gadamer's idea of "application." I argue that the relation between the first and third persons in application contains a viable conception of the normativity of understanding. Application includes a measure for understanding. The thing that is to be understood must be allowed to address me, and such involvement responds to the text’s meaning. While this measure is not expressible in principled rules, application is normatively accountable both to the text’s third-person claim to meaning and (...) to my first-person involvement with the text. The participation of the interpreter with the item of her understanding forms a normative standard. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore anomalous dualism about consciousness, a view that has not previously been explored in any detail. We can classify theories of consciousness along two dimensions: first, a theory might be physicalist or dualist; second, a theory might endorse any of the three following views regarding causal relations between phenomenal properties (properties that characterize states of our consciousness) and physical properties: nomism (the two kinds of property interact through deterministic laws), acausalism (they do not causally interact), and (...) anomalism (they interact but not through deterministic laws). I suggest that a kind of anomalous dualism, nonreductive anomalous panpsychism, promises to offer the best overall answer to two pressing issues for dualist views, the problem of mental causation and the mapping problem (the problem of predicting mind-body associations). (shrink)

If there is content that we reason on, cognitive content, it is in the head and accessible to reasoning mechanisms. This paper discusses the phenomenal theory of cognitive content, according to which cognitive contents are the contents of phenomenal consciousness. I begin by distinguishing cognitive content from the closely associated notion of narrow content. I then argue, drawing on prior work, that the phenomenal theory can plausibly account for the cognitive contents of many relatively simple mental states. My main focus (...) in this paper is the question whether the phenomenal theory can account for the apparently abstract and complex cognitive contents of "high-level" thoughts. It might seem dubious that the theory can account for such cognitive contents, because cognitive phenomenology is too scarce and too thin. However, I argue there are in fact few abstract or complex cognitive contents, so the phenomenal theory's predictions are correct. This position explains some apparently irrational behavior that is otherwise hard to explain, and it makes sense of the central role of inner speech and other forms of consciousness in reasoning. (shrink)

Truthmaker theorists claim that for every truth, there is something in virtue of which it is true—or, more cautiously, that for every truth in some specified class of truths, there is something in virtue of which it is true. I argue that it is hard to see how the thought that truth is grounded in reality lends any support to truthmaker theory.

The aim of this article is to develop an understanding-based argument for an explicitly political specification of the concept of race. It is argued that a specification of race in terms of hierarchical social positions is best equipped to guide causal reasoning about racial inequality in the public sphere. Furthermore, the article provides evidence that biological and cultural specifications of race mislead public reasoning by encouraging confusions between correlates and causes of racial inequality. The article concludes with a more general (...) case for incorporating empirical evidence about public reasoning into philosophical debates about competing specifications of the concept of race. (shrink)

Working within the broad lines of general consensus that mark out the core features of John Stuart Mill’s (1806–1873) logic, as set forth in his A System of Logic (1843–1872), this chapter provides an introduction to Mill’s logical theory by reviewing his position on the relationship between induction and deduction, and the role of general premises and principles in reasoning. Locating induction, understood as a kind of analogical reasoning from particulars to particulars, as the basic form of inference that is (...) both free-standing and the sole load-bearing structure in Mill’s logic, the foundations of Mill’s logical system are briefly inspected. Several naturalistic features are identified, including its subject matter, human reasoning, its empiricism, which requires that only particular, experiential claims can function as basic reasons, and its ultimate foundations in ‘spontaneous’ inference. The chapter concludes by comparing Mill’s naturalized logic to Russell’s (1907) regressive method for identifying the premises of mathematics. (shrink)

Corruptionism is the view that following physical death, the human being ceases to exist but their soul persists in the afterlife. Survivalism holds that both the human being and their soul persist in the afterlife, as distinct entities, with the soul constituting the human. Each position has its defenders, most of whom appeal both to metaphysical considerations and to the authority of St Thomas Aquinas. Corruptionists claim that survivalism violates a basic principle of any plausible mereology, while survivalists tend to (...) reject the principle, though without as much detail as one would like. In this paper I examine both the key exegetical issues and the mereological question, arguing that Aquinas cannot be shown to have supported the principle in question, and that the principle should be rejected on independent grounds. If correct, some key planks in support of survivalism are established, with others to await further examination. (shrink)

in Robin Le Poidevin (ed.) Being: Developments in Contemporary Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peter van Inwagen claims that there are no tables or chairs. He also claims that sentences such as ‘There are chairs here’, which seem to imply their existence, are often true. This combination of views opens van Inwagen to a charge of self-contradiction. I explain the charge, and van Inwagen’s response to it, which involves the claim that sentences like ‘There are tables’ shift their truth-conditions between (...) different contexts of utterance. I present an alternative response which involves the negation of that claim, and argue that it is preferable to van Inwagen’s. (shrink)

Elimination controversies are ubiquitous in philosophy and the human sciences. For example, it has been suggested that human races, hysteria, intelligence, mental disorder, propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires, the self, and the super-ego should be eliminated from the list of respectable entities in the human sciences. I argue that eliminativist proposals are often presented in the framework of an oversimplified “phlogiston model” and suggest an alternative account that describes ontological elimination on a gradual scale between criticism of empirical (...) assumptions and conceptual choices. (shrink)

There has recently been emphasis put on providing two-factor accounts of monothematic delusions. Such accounts would explain (1) whether a delusional hypothesis (e.g. someone else is inserting thoughts into my mind) can be understood as a prima facie reasonable response to an experience and (2) why such a delusional hypothesis is believed and maintained given its implausibility and evidence against it. I argue that if we are to avoid obfuscating the cognitive mechanisms involved in monothematic delusion formation we should split (...) the first factor (1 above) into two factors: how abnormal experience can give rise to a delusional ‘proto-hypothesis’ and how a ‘proto-hypothesis’ in consort with normal experiences and background information, can be developed into a delusional hypothesis. In particular I will argue that a schizophrenic is faced with the unusual requirement of having to identify an introspectively accessible thought as one's own, and that this requirement of identification is the central experiential abnormality of thought insertion, auditory verbal hallucination, and alien control (i.e. passivity symptoms). Additionally, I will consider non-experiential factors which are required for the formation of a delusional hypothesis. (shrink)

What role, if any, should our moral intuitions play in moral epistemology? We make, or are prepared to make, moral judgments about a variety of actual and hypothetical situations. Some of these moral judgments are more informed, reflective, and stable than others (call these ourconsideredmoral judgments); some we make more confidently than others; and some, though not all, are judgments about which there is substantial consensus. What bearing do our moral judgments have on philosophical ethics and the search for first (...) principles in ethics? Should these judgments constrain, or be constrained by, philosophical theorizing about morality? On the one hand, we might expect first principles to conform to our moral intuitions or at least to our considered moral judgments. After all, we begin the reflection that may lead to first principles from particular moral convictions. And some of our moral intuitions (e.g., that genocide is wrong) are more fixed and compelling than any putative first principle. If so, we might expect common moral beliefs to have an important evidential role in the construction and assessment of first principles. On the other hand, common moral beliefs often rest on poor information, reflect bias, or are otherwise mistaken. We often appeal to moral principles to justify our particular moral convictions or to resolve our disagreements. Insofar as this is true, we may expect first principles to provide a foundation on the basis of which to test common moral beliefs and, where necessary, form new moral convictions. (shrink)

The strongest arguments for the permissibility of geoengineering (also known as climate engineering) rely implicitly on non-ideal theory—roughly, the theory of justice as applied to situations of partial compliance with principles of ideal justice. In an ideally just world, such arguments acknowledge, humanity should not deploy geoengineering; but in our imperfect world, society may need to complement mitigation and adaptation with geoengineering to reduce injustices associated with anthropogenic climate change. We interpret research proponents’ arguments as an application of a particular (...) branch of non-ideal theory known as “clinical theory.” Clinical theory aims to identify politically feasible institutions or policies that would address existing (or impending) injustice without violating certain kinds of moral permissibility constraints. We argue for three implications of clinical theory: First, conditional on falling costs and feasibility, clinical theory provides strong support for some geoengineering techniques that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Second, if some kinds of carbon dioxide removal technologies are supported by clinical theory, then clinical theory further supports using those technologies to enable “overshoot” scenarios in which developing countries exceed the cumulative emissions caps that would apply in ideal circumstances. Third, because of tensions between political feasibility and moral permissibility, clinical theory provides only weak support for geoengineering techniques that aim to manage incoming solar radiation. (shrink)

Ontic structural realism (OSR) claims that all there is to the world is structure. But how can this slogan be turned into a worked-out metaphysics? Here I consider one potential answer: a metaphysical framework known as generalism (Dasgupta, 2009, 2016). According to the generalist, the most fundamental description of the world is not given in terms of individuals bearing properties, but rather, general facts about which states of affairs obtain. However, I contend that despite several apparent similarities between the positions, (...) generalism is unable to capture the two main motivations for OSR. I suggest instead that OSR should be construed as a meta-metaphysical position. (shrink)

It can seem natural to say that, when in pain, we undergo experiences which present to us certain experience-dependent particulars, namely pains. As part of his wider approach to mind and world, John McDowell has elaborated an interesting but neglected version of this account of pain. Here I set out McDowell’s account at length, and place it in context. I argue that his subjectivist conception of the objects of pain experience is incompatible with his requirement that such experience be presentational, (...) rationalizing, and classificatory. (shrink)

A high level of confidence in the identity of individuals is required to let them die as ordered by an advance directive. Thus, if we are animalists, then we should lack the confidence required to apply lethal advance directives to the cheerfully demented, or so I argue. In short, there is consensus among animalists that the best way to avoid serious objections to their account is to adopt an ontology that denies the existence of brains, hands, tables, chairs, iced-tea, and (...) lemonade. The adoption of such an ontology reduces the justificatory force of commonsense, which is key in arguing that we are animals and that we persist as long as we are biologically alive. With this loss of justification comes the loss of a high level of confidence that Quinn-pre-dementia’s lethal advanced directive applies to Quinn-post-dementia, via identity. If we do not have a high level of confidence that Quinn-pre-dementia’s advanced directive applies to Quinn-post- dementia, then it is not enough (on its own) to let Quinn-post-dementia die. (shrink)

The computational genomics community has come increasingly to rely on the methodology of creating annotations of scientific literature using terms from controlled structured vocabularies such as the Gene Ontology (GO). We here address the question of what such annotations signify and of how they are created by working biologists. Our goal is to promote a better understanding of how the results of experiments are captured in annotations in the hope that this will lead to better representations of biological reality through (...) both the annotation process and ontology development, and in more informed use of the GO resources by experimental scientists. (shrink)

This paper seeks to rehabilitate St. Augustine’s widely dismissed response to the alleged incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will. This requires taking a fresh look at his analysis in On Free Choice of the Will, and arguing its relevance to the current debate. Along the way, mistaken interpretations of Augustine are rebutted, his real solution is developed and defended, a reason for his not anticipating Boethius’s a temporalist solution is suggested, a favorable comparison with Ockham is made, rival solutions (...) are rejected, and the aporetic nature of the problem is explained. (shrink)

Richard Kraut's neo-Aristotelian account of well-being, Developmentalism, aspires to explain not only which things are good for us but why those things are good for us. The key move in attempting to make good on this second aspiration involves his claim that our ordinary intuitions about what is good for a person can be successfully explained and systematized by the idea that what benefi ts a living thing develops properly that living thing's potentialities, capacities, and faculties. I argue that Kraut's (...) understanding of such proper development plays no serious constraining role in shaping the details of the account. If this is correct, Developmentalism lacks the potential to explain or vindicate the intuitions about what is good for us that it champions. In effect, Kraut offers us a list of things that he claims benefits a person, but he lacks a theory of what those things have in common such that they benefit him. (shrink)

Many people argue that history makes a special difference to the subjects of biology and psychology, and that history does not make this special difference to other parts of the world. This paper will show that historical properties make no more or less of a difference to biology or psychology than to chemistry, physics, or other sciences. Although historical properties indeed make a certain kind of difference to biology and psychology, this paper will show that historical properties make the same (...) kind of difference to geology, sociology, astronomy, and other sciences. Similarly, many people argue that nonhistorical properties make a special difference to the nonbiological and the nonpsychological world. This paper will show that nonhistorical properties make the same difference to all things in the world when it comes to their causal behavior and that historical properties make the same difference to all things in the world when it comes to their distributions. Although history is special, it is special in the same way to all parts of the world. (shrink)

Agents' Abilities ist ein Geschenk von einem Buch, das man nicht genug loben kann. Und deswegen versuche ich es erst gar nicht. Stattdessen beschränke ich mich auf einige konstruktiv-kritische Bemerkungen, die in zwei miteinander verbundenen Bereichen Perspektiven der Weiterentwicklung und Verfeinerung aufzeigen sollen.

An internalist slogan says that justification depends on internal factors. But which factors are those? This paper examines some common motivations favoring internalism over externalism, and says they are compatible with including dispositional and even past mental states in the internal.

Philosophers think of pain less and less as a paradigmatic instance of mentality, for which they seek a general account, and increasingly as a rich and fruitful topic in its own right. Pain raises specific questions: about mentality and consciousness certainly, but also about embodiment, affect, motivation, and value, to name but a few. The growth of philosophical interest in pain has gone hand-in-hand with the growth of pain science, which burgeoned in the 1960s. This is no accident: developments in (...) pain science have prompted philosophers to take account of empirical data, and to revisit their assumptions about pain. Pain, in short, demands interdisciplinary investigation, hence while this entry focuses on the philosophy of pain, it makes liberal reference to empirical literature along the way. This entry’s focus is on physical pains, that is pains that are felt in bodily locations, not emotional suffering more broadly, such as grief or disappointment. The entry also does not address pain’s place in ethical theories; its focus is rather on issues that arise within philosophy of mind. Even so, part of what makes pain such an interesting and important topic is that the questions it raises span boundaries, and normative questions concerning pain’s badness, on the one hand, and its value, on the other, are never far away. (shrink)

Ted Sider has shown that my indeterminism argument for comparativist theories of quantity also applies to Mundy's absolutist theory. This is because Mundy's theory posits only "pure" relations, i.e. relations between values of the same quantity (between masses and other masses, or distances and other distances). It is straightforward to solve the problem by positing additional mixed relations.

We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information.” Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain, (...) issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science” is unique. (shrink)

Most characterizations of mystical experience emphasize its private, esoteric, and non-sensory nature. Such an understanding is far removed from the original meaning of the term mystikos. For the ancient Greeks, the ”mystical’ was that which led participants into the awareness of a higher reality, as in the initiatory rites of the ancient mystery cults. This usage was taken over by the early Church, which similarly designated the Christian sacraments and their rites as ”mystical’ because they draw participants into a higher (...) level of reality. I argue that the Divine Liturgy is a form of ”mystical experience’ in this sense, and that philosophers have missed a great deal by excluding such communal acts from the scope of mystical experience. (shrink)

Les Cahiers philosophiques de Strasbourg 52 contains an Introduction and 9 new research articles in French & English on Friedrich Schiller's philosophy in relation to German Idealism. All fully available online on Open-Edition and as free e-book. -/- Edited and introduced by Henny Blomme, Laure Cahen-Maurel, & David W. Wood. With contributions by Frederick C. Beiser, María del Rosario Acosta López, Cody Staton, Jeremy D. Hovda, Laure Cahen-Maurel, Quentin Landenne, Katia Hay, Louis Carré, and Charlotte Morel. -/- SOMMAIRE / (...) CONTENTS -/- Introduction: Friedrich Schiller, a German Idealist? (Henny Blomme, Laure Cahen-Maurel & David W. Wood) -/- 1. Frederick C. Beiser. Schiller’s Humanism -/- 2. María del Rosario Acosta López. Une dimension esthétique de la critique : la temporalité du beau dans les lettres de Schiller Sur l’éducation esthétique -/- 3. Cody Staton. In Search of Play: Schiller’s Drive Theory as a Turn Away from Kant -/- 4. Jeremy D. Hovda. Bildung between Kant and Schiller -/- 5. Laure Cahen-Maurel. Fichte avec Schiller : La querelle des Heures à la lumière de Grâce et Dignité -/- 6. Quentin Landenne. La Bildung chez Schiller et Fichte, entre esthétique et politique -/- 7. Katia Hay. On the Tragic-Sublime and Tragic Freedom: Thinking with Schiller and Schelling -/- 8. Louis Carré. Vicissitudes de l’État organique : Kant, Hegel, Schiller -/- 9. Charlotte Morel. Conjoindre idéalisme et réalisme après Hegel : Les lectures de Schiller par Lotze et Lange -/- Résumés / Abstracts. (shrink)

As healthcare technologies rapidly progress, a paramount concern arises: are individuals adequately prepared for the current challenges accompanying these advancements? Despite regulatory measures in place, the persistent issue of privacy demands heightened attention and prioritization. This essay aims to consistently underscore the significance of privacy in the evolving landscape of healthcare technologies, fostering a future where the advantages of these innovations are managed with responsibility. We present an ethical analysis addressing privacy apprehensions in emerging healthcare technologies, accompanied by recommendations for (...) viable solutions to address these pressing concerns. It is concluded that hasty acceptance of new healthcare technology should be resisted, advocating instead for the allocation of resources and time to address privacy issues associated with emerging healthcare innovations. This commitment is indispensable for the well-being of patients, healthcare providers, technology enterprises, policymakers, activists, and the public. (shrink)

Wittgenstein constantly invokes teaching, training and learning in his later work. It is therefore interesting to consider what role these notions play for him there. I argue that their use is central to Wittgenstein’s attempt to refute cognitivist assumptions, and to show how normative practices can be understood without the threat of circularity, grounded not in a kind of seeing, but in doing, and the natural reactions of an organism. This can generate a worry that Wittgenstein’s position is quietist and (...) anti-critical: critique, as a challenge to the taken-for-granted grammar of our language game, is technically meaningless. I argue that Wittgenstein does not rule out critique. His own practice demonstrates that critique is possible, but takes place within a language game, and its status as critique is always subject to challenge in the agora of a discourse. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of perception and consciousness is frequently presented as a variety of anti-representationalist cognitive science, and there is thus a temptation to suppose that those who take representation as bedrock should reject the approach. This paper argues that the sensorimotor approach is compatible with representationalism, and moreover that representationalism about phenomenal qualities, such as that advocated by Tye, would be more complete and less vulnerable to criticism if it incorporated the sensorimotor account of conscious feel. The paper concludes (...) by arguing that the project of naturalizing phenomenal qualities would nonetheless be better served by abandoning ‘representation’ talk altogether, a move that would require only a small modification of existing representationalist accounts. (shrink)

This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that ‘decisional privacy’ ought to be respected in the realm of artificial reproduction (AR). On this view, it is considered an unjust infringement of individual liberty for the state to interfere with individual or group freedom artificially to produce a child. It is our contention that a proper evaluation of AR and of the relevance of welfare will be sensitive not only to the rights of ‘commissioning parties’ to AR (...) but also to public policy considerations. We argue that AR has implications for the common good, by involving matters of human reproduction, kinship, race, parenthood and identity. In this paper we challenge presuppositions concerning decisional privacy. We examine the essential commodification of human life implicit in AR and the systematicity that makes this possible. We address the objection that it is an ethically neutral way of having children and consider the problem of ‘existential debt’. After examining objections to the thesis that AR is illegitimate for reasons of public policy and the common good, we return to the issue of decisional privacy in the light of considerations concerning the legitimate role of the state in matters affecting human reproduction. (shrink)

The radical mean suggested by Socrates in order to carry out the program of the Republic - the relegation to the fields of all inhabitants over the age of 10 - has perplexed modern commentators who have seen in it an ironical remark, a reductio ad absurdum presented in order to establish the very impossibility of Kallipolis or, on the contrary, a sign of the totalitarian and criminal character of the Platonic city. But it is far from evident, in view (...) of political or military events prior and contemporary with the redaction of the Republic, that this solution could offend the moral conscience of fourth-century Greeks. This practice even seems to be the logical consequence of a certain oligarchic or aristocratic ideology, common by the end of the 5th c. and at the beginning of the 4th c., which associated, on the one hand, rural organization with the ‘best regime’ and, on the other, urban centralisation with democracy. The actual practices of the Lacedaemonian city, which maintained its primitive organization in komai, and even tried to impose it to other cities, could also serve as a model for the opponents of Athenian democracy. All of Plato's political models, from the Republic to the Laws, present cities whose essential, if not exclusive, productive activity is agriculture. The displacement of the population to the countryside seems, from this perspective, a rather serious proposal of the philosopher. * * Agradezco a Héctor Zagal y a María-Elena García-Peláez por sus observaciones y sugerencias al texto en español. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is twofold: on the one hand, we present the outlines of a history of university collections in Germany. On the other hand, we discuss this history as a case study of the changing attitudes of the sciences towards their material heritage. Based on data from 1094 German university collections, we distinguish three periods that are by no means homogeneous but offer a helpful starting point for a discussion of the entangled institutional and epistemic factors in (...) the history of university collections. In the 19th century, university collections were institutionalized and widely recognized as indispensable in research and teaching. During the 20th century, university collection became increasingly marginalized both on an institutional and theoretical level. Towards the end of the 20th century, the situation of university collections improved partly because of their reconsideration as material heritage. (shrink)

This essay endeavors to define the concept of indefinite extensibility in the setting of category theory. I argue that the generative property of indefinite extensibility for set-theoretic truths in category theory is identifiable with the Grothendieck Universe Axiom and the elementary embeddings in Vopenka's principle. The interaction between the interpretational and objective modalities of indefinite extensibility is defined via the epistemic interpretation of two-dimensional semantics. The semantics can be defined intensionally or hyperintensionally. By characterizing the modal profile of $\Omega$-logical validity, (...) and thus the generic invariance of mathematical truth, modal coalgebras are further capable of capturing the notion of definiteness for set-theoretic truths, in order to yield a non-circular definition of indefinite extensibility. (shrink)