Results for 'Donald A. Wells'

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  1. Exploring the Work of Edward S. Casey: Giving Voice to Place, Memory, and Imagination.Donald A. Landes & Azucena Cruz-Pierre (eds.) - 2013 - New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    From his initial writings on imagination and memory, to his recent studies of the glance and the edge, the work of American philosopher Edward S. Casey continues to shape 20th-century philosophy. In this first study dedicated to his rich body of work, distinguished scholars from philosophy, urban studies and architecture as well as artists engage with Casey's research and ideas to explore the key themes and variations of his contribution to the humanities. -/- Structured into three major parts, the volume (...)
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  2. A Pyrrhonian Interpretation of Hume on Assent.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2018 - In Diego E. Machuca & Baron Reed (eds.), Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 380-394.
    How is it possible for David Hume to be both withering skeptic and constructive theorist? I recommend an answer like the Pyrrhonian answer to the question how it is possible to suspend all judgment yet engage in active daily life. Sextus Empiricus distinguishes two kinds of assent: one suspended across the board and one involved with daily living. The first is an act of will based on appreciation of reasons; the second is a causal effect of appearances. Hume makes the (...)
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  3. Identity, Continued Existence, and the External World.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2006 - In Saul Traiger (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s Treatise. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 114–132.
    To the question whether Hume believed in mind-independent physical objects (or as he would put it, bodies), the answer is Yes and No. It is Yes when Hume writes “We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ’tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.” However the answer is No after inquiring into the causes of (...)
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  4.  90
    “Cunning of Reason” and the Igbo concept of Chi: Towards a philosophical rapprochement with Hegel.Donald Mark C. Ude - 2021 - South African Journal of Philosophy 40 (1):34-45.
    The central argument of this article is that there is a remarkable conceptual parallel between Hegel’s famous notion of the “cunning of Reason” and the philosophically profound concept of Chi in Igbo metaphysics. By way of establishing this parallel, the article advances the following subsidiary but complementary points: Chi is also “cunning” in its dynamics; both principles (i.e. Chi and Reason/Spirit) are non-deterministic because they try to maintain a dialectic balance between destiny and individual responsibility; both possess divine attributes; and (...)
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  5. The vagueness argument for mereological universalism.Donald Smith - 2006 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (3):357–368.
    In this paper, I critically discuss one of the more influential arguments for mereological universalism, what I will call ‘the Vagueness Argument’. I argue that a premise of the Vagueness Argument is not well supported and that there are at least two good reasons for thinking that the premise in question is false.
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  6. An Examination of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory’s Nomological Network: A Meta-Analytic Review.Joshua D. Miller & Donald R. Lynam - 2012 - Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment 3 (3):305–326.
    Since its publication, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory and its revision (Lilien- feld & Andrews, 1996; Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005) have become increasingly popular such that it is now among the most frequently used self-report inventories for the assessment of psychopathy. The current meta-analysis examined the relations between the two PPI factors (factor 1: Fearless Dominance; factor 2: Self-Centered Impulsivity), as well as their relations with other validated measures of psychopathy, internalizing and externalizing forms of psychopathology, general personality traits, and antisocial (...)
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  7. Hume on Space and Time.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2016 - In Paul Russell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of David Hume. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Understanding Hume’s theory of space and time requires suspending our own. When theorizing, we think of space as one huge array of locations, which external objects might or might not occupy. Time adds another dimension to this vast array. For Hume, in contrast, space is extension in general, where being extended is having parts arranged one right next to the other like the pearls on a necklace. Time is duration in general, where having duration is having parts occurring one aft (...)
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  8. Hume on Abstraction and Identity.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2017 - In Stefano Di Bella & Tad M. Schmaltz (eds.), The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 285-304.
    Hume’s critique of traditional abstraction entails a result that undercuts his account of the idea of identity. To save his account of identity, Hume would have to accept abstraction as well. What links these two discussions is (1) Hume’s widely shared assumption that traditional abstraction is separating in the mind what are inseparable in reality, (2) his principle that what are different are mentally separable, and (3) his principle that we cannot conceive of the impossible. Given these, it will turn (...)
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  9.  94
    Hume on Abstraction and Identity.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2017 - In Stefano Di Bella & Tad M. Schmaltz (eds.), The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 285-304.
    Hume’s critique of traditional abstraction entails a result that undercuts his account of the idea of identity. To save his account of identity, Hume would have to accept abstraction as well. What links these two discussions is (1) Hume’s widely shared assumption that traditional abstraction is separating in the mind what are inseparable in reality, (2) his principle that what are different are mentally separable, and (3) his principle that we cannot conceive of the impossible. Given these, it will turn (...)
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  10. Critical Rationalism and the Internet.Donald Gillies - 2023 - Journal of Philosophical Investigations at University of Tabriz 17 (42):80-90.
    The aim of this paper is to consider whether critical rationalism has any ideas which could usefully be applied to the internet. Today we tend to take the internet for granted and it is easy to forget that it was only about two decades ago that it began to be used to any significant extent. Accordingly in section 1 of the paper, there is a brief consideration of the history of the internet. At first sight this makes it looks implausible (...)
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  11. Non-Tuism.Donald C. Hubin - 1991 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (4):441 - 468.
    Contractarians view justice as being defined by a contract made by rational individuals. No one supposes that this contract is actual, and the fact that it is merely hypothetical raises a number of questions both about the assumptions under which it would be actual and about the force of hypothetical agreement that is contingent on these assumptions.Particular contractarian theories must specify the circumstances of the agreement and the endowments, beliefs, desires, and degree and type of rationality of the agents. How (...)
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  12. The Evils of Inductive Skepticism.Donald Cary Williams - manuscript
    An extract from Williams' The Ground of Induction (1947): "The sober amateur who takes the time to follow recent philosophical discussion will hardly resist the impression that much of it, in its dread of superstition and dogmatic reaction, has been oriented purposely toward skepticism: that a conclusion is admired in proportion as it is skeptical; that a jejune argument for skepticism will be admitted where a scrupulous defense of knowledge is derided or ignored; that an affirmative theory is a mere (...)
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  13. Donald C. Williams’s defence of real metaphysics.A. R. J. Fisher - 2017 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (2):332-355.
    In the middle of last century metaphysics was widely criticized, ridiculed, and committed to the flames. During this period a handful of philosophers, against several anti-metaphysical trends, defended metaphysics and articulated novel metaphysical doctrines. Donald C. Williams was one of these philosophers. But while his contributions to metaphysics are well known his defence of metaphysics is not and yet it played a key part in the development and revival of metaphysics. In this paper I present his defence of metaphysics (...)
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  14. Enacting and exploring ideas in fiction: The Overstory and The Portable Veblen.Donald Nordberg - forthcoming - New Writing.
    Philosophically engaged fiction often employs ideas in ways that reflect the exploitation-exploration dilemma in developmental psychology: by exploiting well articulated theories by enacting their conflicts, or by exploring the uncertainties of puzzling ontologies or moral complexities. We can see this in action in many works, but some novels of ideas seek to defy such categorization, with lessons for readers and writers. This paper analyzes two recent works – The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018) and Elizabeth McKenzie’s The Portable Veblen (2016) (...)
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  15. Evidence and simplicity: why we should reject homeopathy.Scott Sehon & Donald Stanley - 2010 - Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 16 (2):276-281.
    Homeopathic medications are used by millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on these remedies in the USA alone. In the UK, the NHS covers homeopathic treatments. Nonetheless, homeopathy is held in considerable disrepute by much of the medical and scientific community.Many proponents of homeopathy are well aware of these criticisms but remain unimpressed. The differences of opinion run deep, and the debate seems deadlocked. We aim to shed some light on this situation. We briefly recap some of (...)
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  16. Ontology of plays for autonomous teaming and collaboration.David Kasmier, Eric Merrell, Robert Kelly, Barry Smith, Curtis Heisey, Donald Evan Maki, Marc Brittain, Ronald Ankner & Kevin Bush - 2021 - Proceedings of the 14Th Seminar on Ontology Research in Brazil (Ontobras 2021), Ceur 3050, 9-22.
    We propose a domain-level ontology of plays for the facilitation of play-based collaborative autonomy among unmanned and manned-unmanned aircraft teams in the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) mission domain. We define a play as a type of plan that prescribes some pattern of intentional acts that are intended to reliably result in some goal in some competitive context, and which specifies one or more roles that are realized by those prescribed intentional acts. The ontology is well suited to be extended (...)
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  17. The Ghost in the Machine has an American accent: value conflict in GPT-3.Rebecca Johnson, Giada Pistilli, Natalia Menedez-Gonzalez, Leslye Denisse Dias Duran, Enrico Panai, Julija Kalpokiene & Donald Jay Bertulfo - manuscript
    The alignment problem in the context of large language models must consider the plurality of human values in our world. Whilst there are many resonant and overlapping values amongst the world’s cultures, there are also many conflicting, yet equally valid, values. It is important to observe which cultural values a model exhibits, particularly when there is a value conflict between input prompts and generated outputs. We discuss how the co- creation of language and cultural value impacts large language models (LLMs). (...)
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  18. Sobre a possibilidade de pensarmos o mundo: o debate entre John McDowell e Donald Davidson.Marco Aurelio Sousa Alves - 2008 - Dissertation, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
    The thesis evaluates a contemporary debate concerning the very possibility of thinking about the world. In the first chapter, McDowell's critique of Davidson is presented, focusing on the coherentism defended by the latter. The critique of the myth of the given (as it appears in Sellars and Wittgenstein), as well as the necessity of a minimal empiricism (which McDowell finds in Quine and Kant), lead to an oscillation in contemporary thinking between two equally unsatisfactory ways of understanding the empirical content (...)
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  19. There’s A Nice Knockdown Argument For You: Donald Davidson And Modest Intentionalism.Kalle Puolakka - 2006 - Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 3 (1):15-24.
    It might come as a surprise for someone who has only a superficial knowledge of Donald Davidson’s philosophy that he has claimed literary language to be ‘a prime test of the adequacy of any view on the nature of language’.1 The claim, however, captures well the transformation that has happened in Davidson’s thinking on language since he began in the 1960’s to develop a truth-conditional semantic theory for natural languages in the lines of Alfred Tarski’s semantic conception of truth. (...)
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  20. Between Sensibility and Understanding: Kant and Merleau-Ponty and the Critique of Reason.Donald A. Landes - 2015 - Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29 (3):335-345.
    ABSTRACT Whether explicitly or implicitly, Kant's critical project weighs heavily upon Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. This article argues that we can understand Merleau-Ponty's text as a phenomenological rewriting of the Critique of Pure Reason from within the paradoxical structures of lived experience, effectively merging Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. Although he was influenced by Husserl's and Heidegger's interpretations of Kant's first version of the Transcendental Deduction, Merleau-Ponty develops a unique position between Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger via an embodied and (...)
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  21. Which Direction Do We Punch: The Powers and Perils of Humour Against the New Conspiracism.Chris A. Kramer - 2022 - In Rashi Bhargava & Richa Chilana (eds.), Punching Up in Stand-Up Comedy. Routledge Chapman & Hall. pp. 235-254.
    This chapter will evaluate humor used with the specific intent to reveal glaring epistemic errors that lead to injustice; flaws in reasoning so transparent that straightforward logic, argument, and evidence seem ineffectual against them, and in some cases, just silly to think such tools would be needed. Laughter seems to be one of the only sane responses. In particular, I will assess how humor can combat conspiracy theories, propaganda, lies, and bullshit. The last one I view in Harry Frankfurt's sense (...)
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  22. The Technology of Metaphor.Martin A. Coleman - 2000 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (3):379-392.
    According to Larry Hickman, John Dewey’s general philosophical project of analyzing and critiquing human experience may be understood in terms of technological inquiry (Hickman 1990, 1). Following this, I contend that technology provides a model for Dewey’s analysis of language and meaning, and this analysis suggests a treatment of linguistic metaphor as a way of meeting new demands of experience with old tools of a known and understood language. An account of metaphor consistent with Dewey’s views on language and meaning (...)
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  23. How Did Donald Trump Turn the Republican Party into the People's Party?Kobby Barda - manuscript
    The accepted working assumption on the eve of the 2020 Presidential Election in the US was that his image, as well as the perception that he holds negative opinions regarding immigrants and immigration while supported by white supremacists, would result in voters casting their ballot based on racial or ethnic considerations to vote against him. This paper was aimed at examining that linkage, to see if it took place in reality, or rather if voting needs to be looked at as (...)
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  24. A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness.Walter Veit - 2023 - New York: Routledge.
    This book attempts to advance Donald Griffin's vision of the "final, crowning chapter of the Darwinian revolution" by developing a philosophy for the science of animal consciousness. It advocates a Darwinian bottom-up approach that treats consciousness as a complex, evolved, and multidimensional phenomenon in nature rather than a mysterious all-or-nothing property immune to the tools of science and restricted to a single species. -/- The so-called emergence of a science of consciousness in the 1990s has at best been a (...)
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  25. No Need to Speak the same Language? Review of Ramberg, Donald Davidson's Philosophy of Language.H. G. Callaway & J. van Brakel - 1996 - Dialectica, Vol. 50, No.1, 1996, Pp. 63-71 50 (1):63-72.
    The book is an “introductory” reconstruction of Davidson on interpretation —a claim to be taken with a grain of salt. Writing introductory books has become an idol of the tribe. This is a concise book and reflects much study. It has many virtues along with some flaws. Ramberg assembles themes and puzzles from Davidson into a more or less coherent viewpoint. A special virtue is the innovative treatment of incommensurability and of the relation of Davidson’s work to hermeneutic themes. The (...)
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  26. Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetorical Tropes in Donald Trump’s First Speech to the UN.Bahram Kazemian - 2021 - Theory and Practice in Language Studies (TPLS) 11 (10):1224-1236.
    Language and politics go hand in hand and learning and comprehending political genre is to learn a language created for codifying, extending and transmitting political discourse in any text/talk. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Fairclough’s CDA and Rhetoric, the current study aims at investigating Donald Trump’s First Speech, from the point of frequency and functions of some rhetorical strategies (Parallelism, Anaphora and the Power of Three, Antithesis and Expletive, etc.), Nominalization, Passivization, We-groups and Modality as well as Lexical (...)
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  27. A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism.Lajos Brons - 2022 - Earth: punctum.
    In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno’o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic views that were radically anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary. Taking the idea of such a “radical Buddhism” seriously, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism asks (...)
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  28. Holistic and conceptual character of the mental in Donald Davidson’s work.Milos Bogdanovic - 2020 - Theoria 63 (e.g. 1):e.g. 123-142.
    In this paper, we will try to confront Quine’s and Davidson’s holistic position through Davidson’s thesis of the mental as a non-ontological category. In this regard, since Davidson came to this position through the thesis of the mental as a decidedly conceptual category, we will try to show how this approach does not, nevertheless, rule out the possibility of its interpretation in ontological terms. However, in what follows we will draw attention to the fact that the mental can be interpreted (...)
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  29. A Gricean Theory of Malaprops.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2017 - Mind and Language 32 (4):446-462.
    Gricean intentionalists hold that what a speaker says and means by a linguistic utterance is determined by the speaker's communicative intention. On this view, one cannot really say anything without meaning it as well. Conventionalists argue, however, that malapropisms provide powerful counterexamples to this claim. I present two arguments against the conventionalist and sketch a new Gricean theory of speech errors, called the misarticulation theory. On this view, malapropisms are understood as a special case of mispronunciation. I argue that the (...)
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  30. A Critique of Elie Halévy: Refutation of an Important Distortion of British Moral Philosophy.Francisco Vergara - 1998 - Philosophy 73 (283):97 - 111.
    The prestigious French publisher Presses Universitaires de France has recently brought out (November 1995) a new French edition of Elie Halévy's well known book "The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism", first published in France in three volumes as "La formation du radicalisme philosophique" (1901-1904) and translated into English in 1926. The prevailing opinion on this book is that it gives an excellent account of English utilitarianism. Thus, in the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Talcott Parsons speaks of it as the ‘virtually (...)
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  31. The Birth of the Post-Truth Era: A Genealogy of Corporate Public Relations, Propaganda, and Trump.Cory Wimberly - 2021 - Journal of Speculative Philosophy 35 (2):130-146.
    In the early 20th century, the most numerous and well-funded institutions in the United States—corporations—used public relations to make a widespread and fundamental change in the way they constitute and regulate their relations of knowledge with the public. Today, we can see this change reflected in a variety of areas such as journalism, political outreach, social media, and in the ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ administration of Donald J. Trump. This article traces practices of corporate truth-telling and knowledge production across (...)
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  32. Islam and Science: The Philosophical Grounds for a Genuine Debate.Ali Hossein Khani - 2020 - Zygon 55 (4):1011-1040.
    What does it take for Islam and science to engage in a genuine conversation with each other? This essay is an attempt to answer this question by clarifying the conditions which make having such a conversation possible and plausible. I will first distinguish between three notions of conversation: the trivial conversation (which requires sharing a common language and the meaning of its ordinary expressions), superficial conversation (in which although the language is shared, the communicators fail to share the meaning of (...)
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  33. Murder and Violence in Kantian Ethics.Donald Wilson - 2018 - In Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing & David Wagner (eds.), Natur und Freiheit: Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. De Gruyter. pp. 2257-2264.
    Acts of violence and murder have historically proved difficult to accommodate in standard accounts of the formula of universal law (FUL) version of Kant’s Categorical Imperative (CI). In “Murder and Mayhem,” Barbara Herman offers a distinctive account of the status of these acts that is intended to be appropriately didactic in comparison to accounts like the practical contradiction model. I argue that while Herman’s account is a promising one, the distinction she makes between coercive and non-coercive violence and her response (...)
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  34. (2 other versions)What Metaphors Mean.Donald Davidson - 1978 - Critical Inquiry 5 (1):31-47.
    The concept of metaphor as primarily a vehicle for conveying ideas, even if unusual ones, seems to me as wrong as the parent idea that a metaphor has a special meaning. I agree with the view that metaphors cannot be paraphrased, but I think this is not because metaphors say something too novel for literal expression but because there is nothing there to paraphrase. Paraphrase, whether possible or not, inappropriate to what is said: we try, in paraphrase, to say it (...)
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  35. Hume on Substance: A Critique of Locke.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2014 - In Paul Lodge & Tom Stoneham (eds.), Locke and Leibniz on Substance. New York: Routledge. pp. 45-62.
    The ancient theory of substance and accident is supposed to make sense of complex unities in a way that respects both their unity and their complexity. On Hume’s view such complex unities are only fictitiously unities. This result follows from his thoroughgoing critique of the theory of substance. I will characterize the theory Hume is critiquing as it is presented in Locke, presupposing what Bennett calls the “Leibnizian interpretation.” Locke uses the word ‘substance’ in two senses. Call substance in the (...)
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  36. Mental Causation, Exclusive Argument, and Non-reductive Physicalism.Xiaoyang Wang & Yuchen Wang - 2020 - Journal of Human Cognition 4 (2):53-67.
    Jeagwon Kim's exclusion argument is a well-known argument against non-reductive physicalism in the contemporary debate on mental causation. In this essay, we will first discuss two versions of the exclusion argument: the simple version and the sophisticated version. Secondly, we will take a conservative strategy to defend the kind of non-reductive physicalism initiated by Donald Davidson: the Token Identity Theory. Namely, we will explain where Kim failed to appropriately understand Davidson's work and argue that the simple version and the (...)
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  37. Oneness, Aspects, and the Neo-Confucians.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2017 - In Philip J. Ivanhoe, Owen Flanagan, Victoria S. Harrison, Hagop Sarkissian & Eric Schwitzgebel (eds.), The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self. New York, NY, USA: Columbia University Press.
    Confucius gave counsel that is notoriously hard to follow: "What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose on others" (Huang 1997: 15.24). People tend to be concerned with themselves and to be indifferent to most others. We are distinct from others so our self-concern does not include them, or so it seems. Were we to realize this distinctness is merely apparent--that our true self includes others--Confucius's counsel would be easier to follow. Concern for our true self would extend (...)
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  38. Identity, Discernibility, and Composition.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2014 - In Aaron J. Cotnoir & Donald L. M. Baxter (eds.), Composition as Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 244-253.
    There is more than one way to say that composition is identity. Yi has distinguished the Weak Composition thesis from the Strong Composition thesis and attributed the former to David Lewis while noting that Lewis associates something like the latter with me. Weak Composition is the thesis that the relation between the parts collectively and their whole is closely analogous to identity. Strong Composition is the thesis that the relation between the parts collectively and their whole is identity. Yi is (...)
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  39. The Other Explanatory Gap.Julie Yoo - manuscript
    One of the driving questions in philosophy of mind is whether a person can be understood in purely physical terms. In this presentation, I wish to continue the project initiated by Donald Davidson, whose subtle position on this question has left many more perplexed than enlightened. The main reason for this perplexity is Davidson’s rather obscure pronouncements about the normativity of intentionality and its role in supporting psychophysical anomalism – the claim that there are no laws bridging our intentional (...)
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  40. Many-one identity.Donald L. M. Baxter - 1988 - Philosophical Papers 17 (3):193-216.
    Two things become one thing, something having parts, and something becoming something else, are cases of many things being identical with one thing. This apparent contradiction introduces others concerning transitivity of identity, discernibility of identicals, existence, and vague existence. I resolve the contradictions with a theory that identity, number, and existence are relative to standards for counting. What are many on some standard are one and the same on another. The theory gives an account of the discernibility of identicals using (...)
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  41. Social Complexes and Aspects.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2018 - ProtoSociology 35:155-166.
    Is a social complex identical to many united people or is it a group entity in addition to the people? For specificity, I will assume that a social complex is a plural subject in Margaret Gilbert’s sense. By appeal to my theory of Aspects, according to which there can be qualitative difference without numerical difference, I give an answer that is a middle way between metaphysical individualism and metaphysical holism. This answer will enable answers to two additional metaphysical questions: (i) (...)
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  42. The “ethnophilosophy” problem: How the idea of “social imaginaries” may remedy it.Donald Mark C. Ude - 2024 - Philosophical Forum 55 (1):71-86.
    The work argues that engaging Africa's cultural and epistemic resources as social imaginaries, and not as metaphysical or ontological “essences,” could help practitioners of African philosophy overcome the cluster of shortcomings and undesirable features associated with “ethnophilosophy.” A number of points are outlined to buttress this claim. First, the framework of social imaginaries does not operate with the false assumption that Africa's cultural forms and epistemic resources are static and immutable. Second, this framework does not lend itself to sweeping generalizations (...)
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  43. Identity in the loose and popular sense.Donald L. M. Baxter - 1988 - Mind 97 (388):575-582.
    This essay interprets Butler’s distinction between identity in the loose and popular sense and in the strict and philosophical sense. Suppose there are different standards for counting the same things. Then what are two distinct things counting strictly may be one and the same thing counting loosely. Within a given standard identity is one-one. But across standards it is many-one. An alternative interpretation using the parts-whole relation fails, because that relation should be understood as many-one identity. Another alternative making identity (...)
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  44. Desires, Whims and Values.Donald C. Hubin - 2003 - The Journal of Ethics 7 (3):315-335.
    Neo-Humean instrumentalists hold that anagent's reasons for acting are grounded in theagent's desires. Numerous objections have beenleveled against this view, but the mostcompelling concerns the problem of ``aliendesires'' – desires with which the agent doesnot identify. The standard version ofneo-Humeanism holds that these desires, likeany others, generate reasons for acting. Avariant of neo-Humeanism that grounds anagent's reasons on her values, rather than allof her desires, avoids this implication, but atthe cost of denying that we have reasons to acton innocent whims. (...)
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  45. Chisholm's Phenomenal Argument Revisited: A Dilemma for Perdurantism.Donald Smith - 2010 - American Philosophical Quarterly 47 (1):31.
    According to perdurantism, objects persist by being spread out over time, just as composite three-dimensional objects are spread out over space. Just as a composite three-dimensional object is spread out over space by having spatial parts, objects persist, according to perdurantism, by having temporal parts. Perdurantism can be stated more precisely by saying what exactly a temporal part is. In the sequel, Theodore Sider's definition of "instantaneous temporal part" shall be assumed: x is an instantaneous temporal part of y at (...)
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  46. The Groundless Normativity of Instrumental Rationality.Donald C. Hubin - 2001 - Journal of Philosophy 98 (9):445.
    Neo-Humean instrumentalist theories of reasons for acting have been presented with a dilemma: either they are normatively trivial and, hence, inadequate as a normative theory or they covertly commit themselves to a noninstrumentalist normative principle. The claimed result is that no purely instrumentalist theory of reasons for acting can be normatively adequate. This dilemma dissolves when we understand what question neo-Humean instrumentalists are addressing. The dilemma presupposes that neo-Humeans are attempting to address the question of how to act, 'simpliciter'. Instead, (...)
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  47. The Moral Justification of Benefit/Cost Analysis.Donald C. Hubin - 1994 - Economics and Philosophy 10 (2):169-194.
    Benefit/cost analysis is a technique for evaluating programs, procedures, and actions; it is not a moral theory. There is significant controversy over the moral justification of benefit/cost analysis. When a procedure for evaluating social policy is challenged on moral grounds, defenders frequently seek a justification by construing the procedure as the practical embodiment of a correct moral theory. This has the apparent advantage of avoiding difficult empirical questions concerning such matters as the consequences of using the procedure. So, for example, (...)
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  48. Aspects and the Alteration of Temporal Simples.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2016 - Manuscrito 39 (4):169-181.
    ABSTRACT According to David Lewis, alteration is "qualitative difference between temporal parts of something." It follows that moments, since they are simple and lack temporal parts, cannot alter from future to present to past. Here then is another way to put McTaggart's paradox about change in tense. I will appeal to my theory of Aspects to rebut the thought behind this rendition of McTaggart. On my theory, it is possible that qualitatively differing things be numerically identical. I call these differing, (...)
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  49. Instantiation as partial identity.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2001 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4):449 – 464.
    Construing the instantiation of a universal by a particular in terms of my theory of aspects resolves the basic mystery of this "non-relational tie", and gives theoretical unity to the four characteristics of instantiation discerned by Armstrong. Taking aspects as distinct in a way akin to Scotus's formal distinction, I suggest that instantiation is the sharing of an aspect by a universal and a particular--a kind of partial identity. This approach allows me to address Plato's multiple location and One over (...)
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  50. Mereology without weak supplementation.Donald Smith - 2009 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (3):505 – 511.
    According to the Weak Supplementation Principle (WSP)—a widely received principle of mereology—an object with a proper part, p , has another distinct proper part that doesn't overlap p . In a recent article in this journal, Nikk Effingham and Jon Robson employ WSP in an objection to endurantism. I defend endurantism in a way that bears on mereology in general. First, I argue that denying WSP can be motivated apart from the truth of endurantism. I then go on to offer (...)
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