This has been available under Teaching Materials, but items in that category are not easily located, so I have added it here. This short dialogue can be used to introduce students to the core claims of Stoic moral philosophy and to position Stoic moral philosophy in relation to its ancient alternatives: Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Peripatetic thought. The dialogue form is meant to make this fun and easy. -/- This little dialogue may also be of interest to readers who have encountered (...) various popular books on "How to Stoic". Such readers should know that Stoicism is a school of _philosophy_. The Stoics themselves would not recommend that you try to Stoic Yourself unless and until you were convinced of the _truth_ of the central claims of the school -- a truth that the ancient Stoics sought to establish by _arguments_. To treat Stoicism simply as self-help, without due regard to whether its central claims can be shown to be true, would be to treat those ancient philosophers with contempt. (shrink)

This third and final volume concludes Hermias' commentary on Plato's Phaedrus. Here, Plato delivers a celebrated critique of writing, and its relationship to orality. Hermias follows him, and adds a general account of good writing. In addition, this volume offers the first English translation of the brief Introduction to Hermogenes' On Styles, which manuscripts attribute-probably mistakenly-to Hermias' teacher Syrianus. Baltzly and Share discuss the Introduction's authorship and its relation to the genuine commentaries of Syrianus on the rhetorical treatises of (...) Hermogenes. They illuminate the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric in the Neoplatonic schools, and provide a novel explanation of Neoplatonic commentaries as performances of Platonic literacy in ancient elite education. This translation offers novel evidence of interest for students of ancient philosophy, rhetorical education, and literature more broadly. It is accompanied by explanatory notes, an introduction, and scholarly apparatus, including indices, glossaries, and bibliography. (shrink)

The idea that there is a coherent and morally relevant concept of sexual perversions has been increasingly called into question. In what follows, I will be concerned with two recent attacks on the notion of sexual perversion: those of Graham Priest and Igor Primoratz. Priest’s paper is the deeper of the two. Primoratz goes methodically through various accounts of sexual perversion and finds difficulties in them. This is no small task, of course, but unlike Priest he does not attempt (...) to provide any diagnosis of why any attempt to analyse the concept of sexual perversion must fail. Priest argues that sexual perversion is an “inapplicable concept”: the presuppositions that would allow us to make sense of the notion have been rightly rejected. Without the theoretical backdrop of an Aristotelian moral teleology, we cannot provide a satisfactory account of sexual perversion, for only such a teleological world-view allows us to give some sense to the idea that a sexual practice might be morally wrong because it is unnatural. Priest surveys accounts of perversion that don’t appeal to any idea of unnaturalness and rejects them—rightly I believe. But, Priest argues, Aristotle’s own moral teleology is part and parcel of his wider views about purpose in nature. This natural teleology has been shown to be explanatorily superfluous. Though some sciences still talk of functions, this can be understood in terms of contributions to evolutionary survival. Though there is considerable disagreement about the details of the right account of function, all versions of this scientifically respectable teleology are morally neutral: it would not follow from the fact that homosexual intercourse does nothing to propagate the agents’ genetic material to future generations that it is therefore morally wrong. Here too I think Priest is right. He also considers what he calls “Aristotelian revivalism” in Roger Scruton’s account of sexual perversion. I think Priest sells Aristotelianism short. I have no interest in defending Scruton’s own understanding of the Aristotelian moral framework nor his particular account of sexual perversion. I shall, however, argue that Aristotelian moral philosophy provides a more useful framework for thinking about these issues than Priest implies, and attempt to defend an account of sexual perversion within the context of this framework. (shrink)

Proclus' commentary on Plato's dialogue Timaeus is arguably the most important commentary on a text of Plato, offering unparalleled insights into eight centuries of Platonic interpretation. It has had an enormous influence on subsequent Plato scholarship. This edition offers the first new English translation of the work for nearly two centuries, building on significant recent advances in scholarship on Neoplatonic commentators. It provides an invaluable record of early interpretations of Plato's dialogue, while also presenting Proclus' own views on the meaning (...) and significance of Platonic philosophy. The present volume, the fifth in the edition, presents Proclus' commentary on the Timaeus, dealing with Proclus' account of static and flowing time; we see Proclus situating Plato's account of the motions of the stars and planets in relation to the astronomical theories of his day. The volume includes a substantial introduction, as well as notes that will shed new light on the text. (shrink)

The Platonic dialogues contain passages that seem to point in quite opposite directions on the question of the moral equality of women with men. Rep. V defends the view that sexual difference need not be relevant to a person’s capacity for philosophy and thus for virtue. Tim. 42a-c, however, makes incarnation in a female body a punishment for failure to master the challenges of embodiment. This paper examines the different ways in which two subsequent Platonists, Proclus (d. 485 CE) (...) and Theodore of Asine (d. c. 360 CE), dealt with this tension. (shrink)

In the present volume Proclus comments on the creation of the body of the universe in Plato's Timaeus.

Plato's Tim. 90b1-c6 describes a pathway to the soul's salvation via the study of the heavens. This paper poses three questions about this theme in Platonism: 1. The epistemological question: How is the paradigmatic function of the visible heavenly bodies to be reconciled with various Platonic misgivings about the faculty of perception? 2. The metaphysical question: How can »assimilation« to the motions of bodies in the realm of Becoming provide for the salvation of souls when souls are »higher«- a (...) mid-point between Being and Becoming? 3. The psychological question: What can it mean for an incorporeal soul to utilise the motions of a body for an ethical and cognitive paradigm? And provides an account of how Proclus and some of his fellow Neoplatonists answered these questions. (shrink)

In this paper we look at two kinds of relations that give rise to reasons for action of a distinctive sort: friendship and erotic love. We argue that what is common to these different relations of affection is that the people in them exhibit dispositions toward mutual direction by one another and interpretation of one another (in a sense that we describe in detail below). This mutual responsiveness is, in part, a matter of responding to reasons that arise from the (...) relation of love or friendship. These reasons are frequently distinct from – and may be opposed to – normative reasons arising from prudence or even morality. Yet reasons of love are normative: they too may obligate us. They may make demands on us that conflict with our present desires and require considerable sacrifice. (shrink)

Plato’s Phaedrus is a dialogue of journeys, a tale of transitions. It begins with Socrates’ question, ‘Where to and from whence, my dear Phaedrus?’ and concludes with the Socrates’ decision, ‘Let’s go’ (sc. back into the city from whence they’ve come). In the speech that forms its centre-piece Socrates narrates another famous journey—the descent of the soul into the body and its reascent to the realm of Forms through erotic madness. It is not too implausible to suppose that (...) Plato himself saw fit to relate his powerful images of the human soul’s fall and re-ascent by dramatic means that highlight the movement from one place to another. This explains how Hermias of Alexandria -- author of the longest sustained work on the Phaedrus to survive from antiquity related the physical journey to the Ilissus to the soul's descent and ascent. This seemingly implausible allegorising gains a certain kind of sense when we consider that the Neoplatonic commentary tradition formed part of a philosophic way of life with an ethical telos. (shrink)

Lengthy review of the 2020 Brill Companion to Hellenistic Astronomy with special reference to Neoplatonism.

The commentary on Plato's Republic by Proclus (d. 485 CE), which takes the form of a series of essays, is the only sustained treatment of the dialogue to survive from antiquity. This three-volume edition presents the first complete English translation of Proclus' text, together with a general introduction that argues for the unity of Proclus' Commentary and orients the reader to the use which the Neoplatonists made of Plato's Republic in their educational program. Each volume is completed by a (...) Greek word index and an English-Greek glossary that will help non-specialists to track the occurrence of key terms throughout the translated text. The second volume of the edition presents Proclus' essays on the tripartite soul and the virtues, female philosopher rulers, and the metaphysics and epistemology of the central books of the Republic. The longest of the essays in Volume II interprets the nature and significance of the 'marriage number' whose miscalculation leads to the degeneration of the ideal city-state. (shrink)

This article tackles the sole surviving ancient commentary on what was perhaps the second most important Platonic work, with special interest for the manner in which the ancients tackled the setting of Plato's dialogues, Socratic ignorance, Socratic eros, the central myth-like Palinode, and the question of oral as against written teaching.

In the Phaedrus, Socrates insists that every proper logos must have the unity of an organic living thing. And yet it is hard to say what imposes any such unity on the various speeches and topics that are dealt with in this very dialogue. This chapter situates the view of Hermias of Alexandria in relation to modern debates about what, if anything, unifies the Phaedrus. For the ancient Neoplatonists, the question of unity was bound up with the question (...) of each dialogue's "skopos". We argue that Hermias' answer to this question -- that the skopos of the Phaedrus is 'beauty at every level' -- is not as wildly implausible as Neoplatonic readings of Plato's dialogues are often thought to be. (shrink)

This commentary records, through notes taken by Hermias, Syrianus' seminar on Plato's Phaedrus, one of the world's most influential celebrations of erotic beauty and love. It is the only Neoplatonic commentary on Plato's Phaedrus to have survived in its entirety. Further interest comes from the recorded interventions by Syrianus' pupils - including those by Proclus, his eventual successor as head of the Athenian school, who went on to teach Hermias' father, Ammonius. The second of two volumes of Hermias' commentary, the (...) chapters translated here begin with a discussion of how the discarnate soul is visualised as a winged chariot team whose charioteer may gain some glimpse of beauty itself, which can explain subsequent erotic longing. This volume provides a translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, an introduction detailing the significance and context of the treatise and a scholarly apparatus including multiple indexes, glossaries and a bibliography. (shrink)

Lengthy critical notice of J. B. Kennedy, The Musical Structure of Plato's Dialogues (Acumen, 2011). -/- We approached the prospect of reviewing Kennedy’s book with excitement and optimism, but we’ve left rather disappointed. The case doesn’t hang together, we think, because it requires us to suppose that Plato composed to a pattern that his readers wouldn’t be looking for. They wouldn’t be looking for it musically, because it is not musically significant. Moreover, if he expected them to be looking (...) for such a pattern in the stichometry, then the evidence available to us suggests that his expectations went wholly unfulfilled. Plato may have been a perverse writer in many ways – for instance, by disparaging philosophical writing in a philosophical text – but we think Kennedy’s hypothesis requires us to attribute a touch too much perversity to one of our favourite authors. (shrink)

Later versions of Platonic ethics fit the frame of eudaimonism and specify a telos based on Theaetetus 176B and Timaeus 90A-D: 'likeness to god in so far as possible'. This paper examines the development of this idea from the middle Platonist Alcinous to the Neoplatonist Proclus. It examines the way in which Proclus makes this specification of human happiness a bit less "other worldy".

In his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Alexander of Aphrodisias quotes from Aristotle's now-lost work On the Ideas -- his account of the arguments offered by Plato for the theory of Forms and his criticisms of those arguments. This paper considers one of these arguments, the Argument from Relatives (ta pros ti). It considers how Plato argued for Forms or Ideas such as the Large Itself, the Just Itself and so on and whether Plato supposed that there were Forms corresponding to (...) sortal terms like Man. (shrink)

Surveys the ideals of friendship in ancient Greco-Roman philosophy. The notion of the best friendship inevitably reflects the various conceptions of a good life.

It is an axiom of late neoplatonic metaphysics that all things are in all, but in each in an appropriate manner (ὀικείως, ET 103). These manners or modes of being are indicated by adverbial forms such as παραδειματικῶς or εἰκονικῶς. Thus, for example, the Forms are in the World Soul in the mode of images, while the objects in the sensible realm below Soul are in it in the manner of paradigms (in Tim. II 150.27). Among the many modes of (...) being distinguished by Proclus we find existence ὁλικῶς and μερικῶς – in the manner of a whole and in the manner of a part. This paper investigates the nature and significance of these mereological modes of being. (shrink)

In Plato’s dialogues we often find Socrates talking at length about poetry. Sometimes he proposes censorship of certain works because what they say is false or harmful. Other times we find him interpreting the poets or rejecting potential interpretations of them. This raises the question of whether there is any consistent account to be given of Socrates’ practice as a literary critic. One might think that Plato himself in the Ion answers the question that I have raised. Rhapsody, at least (...) in the Ion , is portrayed as the activity of interpreting and evaluating the works of the poets. At first glance at least, Plato seems to conclude that this activity cannot meet the standards of a τέχνη. Rhapsodes are divine madmen. Thus, there cannot be a systematic Platonic account of literary criticism because this activity is inherently irrational and, subsequently, not something that one could engage in in a systematic way, guided by a theory of any sort. In the first part of the paper I argue that the Ion does not simply consign the Interpretation of poetry to the irrational and, as a result, does not pose an obstacle to the possibility of a Platonic literary criticism. In the second part of the paper I turn to the task of finding an account of the purpose of reading poetry and strategies for fulfilling this purpose that make systematic sense of Socrates’ multifarious remarks about poetry. (shrink)

The longevity of Aristotelian natural science consists not so much in the fact that Aristotle’s solutions to puzzles were accepted by generations of philosophers, but by the fact that the presuppositions that made these puzzles look puzzling were. In what follows I consider some Neoplatonic responses to two puzzles that Aristotle poses in De Caelo Book 2, Chapter 12. Both Proclus and Simplicius rejected Aristotle’s solutions to the puzzles he posed. In one case, but not in the other, they also (...) reassessed the relative importance of the presuppositions that created the puzzle. (shrink)

Translation and commentary on the only surviving sustained work on Plato's Phaedrus from antiquity.

It is widely supposed that Epicurus' identification of aponia (painlessness) and the absence of anxiety (ataraxia) yields as a consequence the claim that the most pleasant life is one that requires little in the way of resources or power. This paper argues that the remarks in Cicero which attempt to reconstruct Epicurus' reasons for thinking that aponia and ataraxia are the limit of pleasure are best interpreted if we suppose that the inference runs the other direction. Epicurus supposed that it (...) was a pre-theoretical constraint on any account of human happiness that it should be natural. Moreover, its naturalness means its in-principle availability to most humans. (shrink)

In previous chapters, it has become clear that Proclus’ metaphysics is often relevant to human life. In this chapter, that relation is elaborated on in detail, starting from the notion of a ‘textual community’. In the first section, the author presents the Neoplatonic goal of human life, assimilation to the divine. In the second section, he elaborates the scale of virtues through which, according to Proclus, one may reach that assimilation. The third section is devoted to establishing the interesting hypothesis (...) that the philosophical curriculum was in fact considered a mystagogy, aimed at internalizing semantic associations and thereby acquiring the different virtues. In the last section the author turns to Proclus’ political philosophy, and specifically the analogical relation between the philosopher-ruler and the demiurge. (shrink)

Covers Essays 1 to 6 in Proclus' Commentary and includes a general introduction to the work as a whole.

31 chapters covering the Old Academy to Late Antiquity. See attached TOC.

We all have different “tastes” for different tastes: some of us have a sweet tooth, while others prefer more subtle flavors; some crave spicy foods, while others cannot stand them. As Bourdieu and others have pointed out, these varying judgments seem to be more than mere preferences; often they reflect (and partially constitute) differences of class and culture. But I want to suggest that we’ve possibly overlooked another important source of these divergent gastronomic evaluations, other than hierarchy and caste: mere (...) interpersonal variability with respect to brute gustatory sensations. After all, we all know about “supertasters and cilantro-haters”; how likely is it, though, that the interpersonal heterogeneity of gustatory sensation is limited to this one dimension? In this paper, I make the case that we should take this possibility more seriously, and offer some thoughts on how we might start getting a better handle on the nature and scope of interpersonal gustatory variability—including by suggesting some diagnostics that can help us get at (what I call) some of the “non-flavor dimensions” of our gustatory experience. I conclude by developing some implications for the prospects of an “alimentary aesthetics”: namely, that—should our gustatory experiences turn out to be quite heterogeneous—then they do not seem well-suited to serve as the basic ingredients of bona fide aesthetic judgment about food and drink. (shrink)

The pluralist liberal defends a conception of liberal politics grounded in the thesis of value pluralism. Since he argues from a particular metaphysical thesis – value pluralism – to a particular understanding of politics – liberalism – his account will feature two separable, but interrelated, components: a distinctive justification of liberalism, and a conception of politics with distinctive content. The particular flavor of liberalism to which the pluralist is led is a species of what I term “accommodationism” – an (...) understanding that sees as a polity’s central task the accommodation of many divergent conceptions of the good life. I argue that the pluralist liberal’s case is hampered by four difficulties. Two of these difficulties challenge the justification of liberalism in terms of value pluralism, and two of them plague the particular accommodationist understanding of liberalism to which the pluralist is led. I conclude by arguing that classical liberalism is a view that is immune to these latter two criticisms. In fact, I suggest a more general claim: that classical liberalism provides the most promising resources for the articulation and defense of a conception of politics dedicated to accommodating the diverse and heterogeneous versions of human flourishing countenanced by value pluralism. (shrink)

I argue that much current thinking on externalities—at least among “lay political economists” (but even, on occasion, among professional economists)—is saddled with two analytical errors. The first is what I call coextensivism: the conflation of public goods and externalities. The second error is what I call externality profligacy: the conflation of economic and “social” externalities. The principal dangers presented by these two “dogmas on externalities” are that, while in their grips, we are under-disposed to seek negotiated, market-based solutions (of (...) a broadly Coasean nature) to challenges posed by economic externalities, and over-disposed to seek coercive, state-based solutions (of a broadly Pigouvian nature) to challenges posed by social externalities. (shrink)

The Progressive favors extending the legal institution of marriage so as to include same-sex unions along with heterosexual ones. The Traditionalist opposes such an extension, preferring to retain the legal institution of marriage in its present form. I argue that the Progressive ought to broaden her position, endorsing instead the Liberal case for extending the current institution so as to include polygamous unions as well—for any consideration favoring Progressivism over Traditionalism likewise favors Liberalism over Progressivism. Progressives inclined to resist (...) Liberalism are invited to consider an alternative position: the Libertarian stance that favors instead the ‘disestablishment’ of marriage. (shrink)

Though sometimes maligned, “trolleyology” offers an effective means of opening and framing, not only classes in ethics, but indeed any introductory philosophy course taking a broadly “puzzle-based” approach. When properly sequenced, a subset of the thought experiments that are trolleyology’s stock-in-trade can generate a series of puzzles illustrating the shortcomings of our untutored moral intuitions, and which thus motivate the very enterprise of moral theorizing. Students can be engaged in the attempt to resolve said puzzles, inasmuch as they’re accessible and (...) compelling, and their resolutions generally easy to achieve. Once thus engaged, students can be directed to the fact that they had already rolled up their sleeves and begun “doing philosophy.” In this way, engagement with trolleyological puzzles can serve as a “microcosm” for philosophy more broadly, illustrating the processes of critical thinking that are likewise the stock-in-trade of philosophers across many different domains of inquiry. (shrink)

Over the last decade, AI models of language and word meaning have been dominated by what we might call a statistics-of-occurrence, strategy: these models are deep neural net structures that have been trained on a large amount of unlabeled text with the aim of producing a model that exploits statistical information about word and phrase co-occurrence in order to generate behavior that is similar to what a human might produce, or representations that can be probed to exhibit behavior similar (...) to what a human might produce (meaningsemblant behavior). Examples of what we can call Statistics-of-Occurrence Models (SOMs) include: Word2Vec (CBOW and Skip-Gram), BERT, GPT-3, and, most recently, ChatGPT. Increasingly, there have been suggestions that such systems have semantic understanding, or at least a proto-version of it. This paper argues against such claims. I argue that a necessary condition for a system to possess semantic understanding is that it function in ways that are causally explainable by appeal to its semantic properties. I then argue that SOMs do not plausibly satisfy this Functioning Criterion. Rather, the best explanation of their meaning-semblant behavior is what I call the Statistical Hypothesis: SOMs do not themselves function to represent or produce meaningful text; they just reflect the semantic information that exists in the aggregate given strong correlations between word placement and meaningful use. I consider and rebut three main responses to the claim that SOMs fail to meet the Functioning Criterion. The result, I hope, is increased clarity about why and how one should make claims about AI systems having semantic understanding. (shrink)

Recent debate regarding transgender persons’ bathroom-utilization prerogatives raises broader issues concerning current practices of sex segregation more generally. I argue that the only consistently Progressive position on bathroom access is an outright opposition to any form of bathroom segregation. This opposition, in turn, entails a thorough-going rejection of all types of sex- and gender-segregation. I then suggest that Progressives uncomfortable with such wide-ranging implications may wish to consider the merits of a certain Traditionalist position on such matters—one that counsels (...) caution and legislative forbearance when it comes to overturning long-standing customs (such as those embodied in current practices of sex-segregation). (shrink)

Many theorists have recently observed that the response to the same-sex marriage controversy most congruent with basic liberal principles is neither the retention of the institution of marriage in its present form, nor its extension so as to include same-sex unions along with heterosexual ones, but rather the ‘dis-establishment’ of marriage. Less commonly observed, however, is the fact that there are two competing models for how the state might effect a regime of disestablished marriage. On the one hand, (...) there is a ‘deflationary’ approach, on which the state ceases to confer marital status, but does remain in the status-conferring business. On this approach, the state would still bestow a certain ‘thinner’, more ‘neutral’ legal status – as it does when it creates civil unions, for instance. Call this the ‘Status Model’ of disestablished marriage. On the other hand, there is an ‘eliminativist’ approach, on which the state ceases to confer any sort of status at all – not even the thin or neutral status of ‘civilly-unioned’. There simply are no registered domestic partnerships. What there is, is contract law, and individuals entering into contracts for life-partnership – contractual arrangements which might assume any of a wide variety of forms. Call this the ‘Contract Model’ of disestablished marriage. In this paper, I explore the merits of these competing models. After briefly discussing what it means to speak of ‘disestablishing marriage’, and examining the case for disestablishment, I proceed to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each model. My tentative conclusion is that the Contract Model is the one that best instantiates cardinal liberal virtues. (shrink)

Dispositional Essentialism, as commonly conceived, consists in the claims that at least some of the fundamental properties essentially confer certain causal-nomological roles on their bearers, and that these properties give rise to the natural modalities. As such, the view is generally taken to be committed to a realist conception of properties as either universals or tropes, and to be thus incompatible with nominalism as understood in the strict sense. Pace this common assumption of the ontological import of Dispositional Essentialism, (...) the aim of this paper is to explore a nominalist version of the view, Austere Nominalist Dispositional Essentialism. The core features of the proposed account are that it eschews all kinds of properties, takes certain predicative truths as fundamental, and employs the so-called generic notion of essence. As I will argue, the account is significantly closer to the core idea behind Dispositional Essentialism than the only nominalist account in the vicinity of Dispositional Essentialism that has been offered so far—Ann Whittle’s Causal Nominalism—and is immune to crucial problems that affect this view. (shrink)

The thesis of Weak Unrestricted Composition says that every pair of objects has a fusion. This thesis has been argued by Contessa and Smith to be compatible with the world being junky and hence to evade an argument against the necessity of Strong Unrestricted Composition proposed by Bohn. However, neither Weak Unrestricted Composition alone nor the different variants of it that have been proposed in the literature can provide us with a satisfying answer to the special composition question, (...) or so we will argue. We will then go on to explore an alternative family of purely mereological rules in the vicinity of Weak Unrestricted Composition, Cardinal Composition: A plurality of pairwise non-overlapping objects composes an object iff the objects in the plurality are of cardinality smaller than $$\kappa $$ κ. As we will show, all the instances for infinite $$\kappa $$ κ s determine fusion and are compatible with junk, and every instance for a $$\kappa > \aleph _0$$ κ > ℵ 0 is furthermore compatible with gunk and dense chains of parthood. (shrink)

I argue that epistemic failings are a significant and underappreciated moral hazard in the financial services industry. I argue further that an analysis of these epistemic failings and their means of redress is best developed by identifying policies and procedures that are likely to facilitate good judgment. These policies and procedures are “best epistemic practices.” I explain how best epistemic practices support good reasoning, thereby facilitating accurate judgments about risk and reward. Failures to promote and adhere to best epistemic practices (...) contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. I identify and discuss some of the ways in which best epistemic practices were violated in the events that led to the crisis, with a focus on the role of the credit rating agencies. I go on to discuss some of the ways in which these failings have been redressed. I conclude by observing how proactive regulation for best epistemic practices might help us to anticipate and avoid future crises. (shrink)

Structural analogies connect Williamson’s epistemology and action theory: for example, action is the direction-of-fit mirror image of knowledge, and knowledge stands to belief as action stands to intention. These structural analogies, for Williamson, are meant to illuminate more generally how ‘mirrors’ reversing direction of fit should be understood as connecting the spectrum of our cognitive and practically oriented mental states. This paper has two central aims, one negative and the other positive. The negative aim is to highlight some intractable problems (...) with Williamson’s preferred analogical picture, which links the cognitive and the practical through the nexus of direction-of-fit mirroring. The positive aim of the paper is to propose a better alternative. In particular, we show that an achievement-theoretic proposal captures what is in common across the range of attitudes that exhibit the kind of structure that knowledge-belief, action-desire/intention do, while at the same time avoiding the problems shown to face Williamson’s proposed picture. Moreover, we draw attention to several key theoretical benefits of embracing our proposed achievement-theoretic picture, including some of the key benefits of the knowledge-first programme that Williamson’s own analogies were designed to secure. (shrink)

Non‐governmental aid programs are an important source of health care for many people in the developing world. Despite the central role non‐governmental organizations play in the delivery of these vital services, for the most part they either lack formal systems of accountability to their recipients altogether, or have only very weak requirements in this regard. This is because most NGOs are both self‐mandating and self‐regulating. What is needed in terms of accountability is some means by which all the relevant stakeholders (...) can have their interests represented and considered. An ideally accountable decision‐making process for NGOs should identify acceptable justifications and rule out unacceptable ones. Thus, the point of this paper is to evaluate three prominent types of justification given for decisions taken at the Dutch headquarters of Médecins sans Frontières. They are: population health justifications, mandate‐based justifications and advocacy‐based justifications. The central question at issue is whether these justifications are sufficiently robust to answer the concerns and objections that various stakeholders may have. I am particularly concerned with the legitimacy these justifications have in the eyes of project beneficiaries. I argue that special responsibilities to certain communities can arise out of long‐term engagement with them, but that this type of priority needs to be constrained such that it does not exclude other potential beneficiaries to an undesirable extent. Finally, I suggest several new institutional mechanisms that would enhance the overall equity of decisions and so would ultimately contribute to the legitimacy of the organization as a whole. (shrink)

This paper argues that a priori justification is, in principle, compatible with naturalism—if the a priori is understood in a way that is free of the inessential properties that, historically, have been associated with the concept. I argue that empirical indefeasibility is essential to the primary notion of the a priori ; however, the indefeasibility requirement should be interpreted in such a way that we can be fallibilist about apriori-justified claims. This fallibilist notion of the a priori accords (...) with the naturalist’s commitment to scientific methodology in that it allows for apriori-justified claims to be sensitive to further conceptual developments and the expansion of evidence. The fallibilist apriorist allows that an a priori claim is revisable in only a purely epistemic sense. This modal claim is weaker than what is required for a revisability thesis to establish empiricism, so fallibilist apriorism represents a distinct position. (shrink)

When organizations solve collective action problems or realize values, they do so by means of institutions. These are commonly regarded as self-stabilizing. Yet, they can also be subject to endogenous processes of decay, or so we argue. We explain this in terms of psychological and cultural processes, which can change even if the formal structures remain unchanged. One key implication is that the extent to which norms, values, and ideals motivate individuals to comply with institutions is limited.

When two actors have the same mental state but one happens to harm another person (unlucky actor) and the other one does not (lucky actor), the latter elicits a milder moral judgement. To understand how this outcome effect would affect post-harm interactions between victims and perpetrators, we examined how the social role from which transgressions are perceived moderates the outcome effect, and how outcome effects on moral judgements transfer to agentic and communal interpersonal goals. Three vignette experiments (N = 950) (...) revealed similar outcome effects on moral judgement across social roles. In contrast, outcome effects on agentic and communal goals varied by social role: victims exhibited the strongest outcome effects and perpetrators the weakest, with bystanders falling in between. Moral judgement did not mediate the effects of outcome severity on interpersonal goals. We discuss the possibility that outcome severity raises normative expectations regarding post-harm interactions that are unrelated to moral considerations. (shrink)

The notion of subjective indistinguishability has long played a central role in explanations of the force of Cartesian sceptical hypotheses. I argue that sceptical hypotheses do not need to be subjectively indistinguishable to be compelling and I provide an alternative diagnosis of their force that explains why this is the case. My diagnosis focuses on the relation between one’s experiences and third-personal accounts of the circumstances in which these experiences occur. This relation is characterized by a distinctive gap that leaves (...) room for questions about the nature of one’s circumstances, providing sceptical hypotheses with a foothold. I argue that this gap lends sceptical hypotheses their force and renders the stipulation of subjective indistinguishability unnecessary. (shrink)

When it originated in the late 19th century, psychometrics was a field with both a scientific and a social mission: psychometrics provided new methods for research into individual differences, and at the same time, these psychometric instruments were considered a means to create a new social order. In contrast, contemporary psychometrics - due to its highly technical nature and its limited involvement in substantive psychological research - has created the impression of being a value-free discipline. In this article, we (...) develop a contrasting characterization of contemporary psychometrics as a value-laden discipline. We expose four such values: that individual differences are quantitative (rather than qualitative), that measurement should be objective in a specific sense, that test items should be fair, and that utility of a model is more important than its truth. Our goal is not to criticize psychometrics for employing these values, but rather to bring them into the open and to show that these values are not inevitable and are in need of systematic evaluation. (shrink)

What is the explanatory role of ‘status-truths’ such as essence-truths, necessity-truths and law-truths? A plausible principle, suggested by various authors, is Ground by Status, according to which status truths ground their prejacents. For instance, if it is essential to a that p, then this grounds the fact that p. But Ground by Status faces a forceful objection: it is inconsistent with widely accepted principles regarding the logic of grounding (Glazier in Philos Stud 174(11):2871–2889, 2017a, Synthese 174(198):1409–1424, 2017b; Kappes in (...) Synthese 199(1–2):2575–2595, 2020, Philos Stud 178(4):1267–1284, 2021). I defend Ground by Status against this objection. (shrink)

Implicit in feminist and other critiques of ideal theorizing is a particular view of what normative theory should be like. Although I agree with the rejection of ideal theorizing that oppression theorists (and other theorists of justice) have advocated, the proposed alternative of nonideal theorizing is also problematic. Nonideal theorizing permits one to address oppression by first describing (nonideal) oppressive conditions, and then prescribing the best action that is possible or feasible given the conditions. Borrowing an insight from the (...) "moral dilemmas debate"— namely that moral wrongdoing or failure can be unavoidable—I suggest that offering (only) action-guidance under non-ideal conditions obscures the presence and significance of unavoidable moral failure. An adequate normative theory should be able to issue a further, non-action-guiding evaluative chim, namely that the best that is possible under oppressive conditions is not good enough, and may constitute a moral failure. I find exclusively action-guiding nonideal theory to be both insufficiently nonidealizing (because it idealizes the moral agent by falsely characterizing the agent as always able to avoid moral wrongdoing) and meanwhile too strongly adapted to the nonideal (because normative expectations are lowered and detrimentally adapted to options that, while the best possible, are still unacceptable). (shrink)

Purpose of review: What is the relationship between rationality and mental health? By considering the psychological literature on depressive realism and unrealistic optimism it was hypothesized that, in the context of judgments about the self, accurate cognitions are psychologically maladaptive and inaccurate cognitions are psychologically adaptive. Recent studies recommend being cautious in drawing any general conclusion about style of thinking and mental health. Recent findings: Recent investigations suggest that people with depressive symptoms are more accurate than controls in tasks (...) involving time perception and estimates of personal circumstances, but not in other tasks. Unrealistic optimism remains a robust phenomenon across a variety of tasks and domains, and researchers are starting to explore its neural bases. However, the challenge is to determine to what extent and in what way unrealistic optimism is beneficial. Summary: We should revisit the hypothesis that optimistic cognitions are psychologically adaptive, whereas realistic thinking is not. Realistic beliefs and expectations can be conducive to wellbeing and good functioning, and wildly optimistic cognitions have considerable psychological costs. (shrink)

In this paper we address the ethics of adopting delusional beliefs and we apply consequentialist and deontological considerations to the epistemic evaluation of delusions. Delusions are characterised by their epistemic shortcomings and they are often defined as false and irrational beliefs. Despite this, when agents are overwhelmed by negative emotions due to the effects of trauma or previous adversities, or when they are subject to anxiety and stress as a result of hypersalient experience, the adoption of a delusional belief can (...) prevent a serious epistemic harm from occurring. For instance, delusions can allow agents to remain in touch with their environment overcoming the disruptive effect of negative emotions and anxiety. Moreover, agents are not blameworthy for adopting their delusions if their ability to believe otherwise is compromised. There is evidence suggesting that no evidence-related action that would counterfactually lead them to believe otherwise is typically available to them. The lack of ability to believe otherwise, together with some other conditions, implies that the agents are not blameworthy for their delusions. The examination of the epistemic status of delusions prompts us to acknowledge the complexity and contextual nature of epistemic evaluation, establish connections between consequentialist and deontological frameworks in epistemology, and introduce the notion of epistemic innocence into the vocabulary of epistemic evaluation. (shrink)

We engage with the nature and the value of achievement through a critical examination of an argument according to which biomedical “enhancement” of our capacities is impermissible because enhancing ourselves in this way would threaten our achievements. We call this the argument against enhancement from achievement. We assess three versions of it, each admitting to a strong or a weak reading. We argue that strong readings fail, and that weak readings, while in some cases successful in showing that enhancement (...) interferes with the nature or value of achievement, fail to establish that enhancement poses an unusual threat to achievement. (shrink)