An interview with Ed Casey where we discuss the intersections of his philosophical work with current political issues, including the Israel-Palestine conflict.

I am not sure who said that liberalism merely alternates between ethics and economics – was it Karl Kraus? – but at first glance the claim is plausible. In this paper I argue that there are varieties of liberalism which do not. Some depend on a nature-culture distinction and some appeal to simplicity in a way that seems aesthetic. In the appendix I introduce a problem for utilitarianism.

In this paper, I present some responses to an argument made by an economist in an online video: that when Britain leaves the European Union, it will be taking many high ranking universities with it, which will lead to an innovation deficit in the union. I present some responses by means of a pastiche of a widely read European fiction writer.

This paper identifies three positions on the relationship between language and experience, the third of which I was not acquainted with before from my reading. It seems absurd.

This paper objects to an explanation I extract from Jeanette Edwards, concerning a pattern she observes of questions asked and not asked. There are propositions accepted as axioms which apparently lead to that pattern. I present an axiomatization but it leads to different questions.

There are some premise-by-premise reconstructions in political philosophy which are flawed, because they omit at least one premise or misword at least one premise. This paper focuses on a reconstruction by Richard Child. The original argument is by Andrea Sangiovanni and is about whether egalitarian values of distributive justice apply both within a state and globally. Child’s reconstruction has been reproduced in a paper by Ian Davis, who approves of it. But I point out five logical problems with the reconstruction.

One response to the problem of logical omniscience in standard possible worlds models of belief is to extend the space of worlds so as to include impossible worlds. It is natural to think that essentially the same strategy can be applied to probabilistic models of partial belief, for which parallel problems also arise. In this paper, I note a difficulty with the inclusion of impossible worlds into probabilistic models. Under weak assumptions about the space of worlds, most of the propositions (...) which can be constructed from possible and impossible worlds are in an important sense inexpressible; leaving the probabilistic model committed to saying that agents in general have at least as many attitudes towards inexpressible propositions as they do towards expressible propositions. If it is reasonable to think that our attitudes are generally expressible, then a model with such commitments looks problematic. (shrink)

This essay explores the vexed issue of individual corporeal substance in Descartes' natural philosophy. Although Descartes' often referred to individual material objects as separate substances, the constraints on his definitions of matter and substance would seem to favor the opposite view; namely, that there exists only one corporeal substance, the plenum. In contrast to this standard interpretation, however, it will be demonstrated that Descartes' hypotheses make a fairly convincing case for the existence of individual material substances; and the key to (...) this new found individuation is a long neglected set of passages in the Principles of Philosophy. (shrink)

Imprecise probabilities are often modelled with representors, or sets of probability functions. In the recent literature, two ways of interpreting representors have emerged as especially prominent: vagueness interpretations, according to which each probability function in the set represents how the agent's beliefs would be if any vagueness were precisified away; and comparativist interpretations, according to which the set represents those comparative confidence relations that are common to all probability functions therein. I argue that these interpretations have some important limitations. I (...) also propose an alternative—the functional interpretation—according to which representors are best interpreted by reference to the roles they play in the theories that make use of them. (shrink)

Influenced by Martha Kuhlman, I am disposed to read Milan Kundera as personally disliking crowds. But I speculate that there is a practical reason for his writing against crowds, if we see him as part of a system of novelists.

Philosophers, and students of philosophy, are often advised to interpret other philosophers charitably. In this paper, I present an alternative to interpreting charitably. I call it “the simple-model technique” and use H.L.A. Hart responding to John Rawls to illustrate it.

This paper reflects on an article that appeared after the death of A.J. Ayer, which complains about what British philosophers focus on. I propose that the content of the philosophy curriculum can be predicted from a rational actor model.

Historian of anthropology George Stocking tells us: from the point of view of parts of the Victorian middle class, Victorian society was highly evolved yet also contained savage components. Why don’t they change their ways, or why didn’t they? There is a Quinean solution.

A textbook by Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen tells us that Gregory Bateson criticized the use of the term ‘function’ in social anthropology on the following grounds: it has no place outside of mathematics. But consulting the Bateson text referred to, he does not say that in his section on function and even endorses certain uses of the term “function” in anthropology. I look into these and his criticisms of functionalism, responding to the criticisms.

I propose that the film Temptation, from 1946, presents us with a person, or type of person, who was once observed: she is very involved in evaluating the significance of highly specialist inquiries, in this case Egyptology, and evaluating borderline cases of literature, regarding which it is difficult to assess their long-term value. The film assists with addressing how The Golden Bough was actually received. An appendix proposes that the film is of interest to Derrideans.

Henry Sidgwick raises a problem for the doctrine that all citizens have a right to as much freedom from intervention as possible, which begins with the observation that surely there is no intention to apply it to children. The writings of George Bernard Shaw suggest a solution to this problem, which I believe is now forgotten and which I in turn convey here.

One way of trying to justify the thesis of the underdetermination of scientific theories is by actual examples. In this paper, I present a paradox which arises from trying to justify the thesis in this way.

This paper presents two reasons for writing philosophy fast: to succeed in certain competitions; and to realize new and better ideas.

In this paper, I present the possibility of some other analytic political philosophy, in contrast to what is usually given this label. I do so by rejecting what I call the dualism between craftsmanship and vision.

This paper argues against a thesis that Shashi Tharoor seems to accept: that R.K. Narayan’s style is bound up with a very specific context, of people left behind by the times in South India. It cannot deal with other subject matter. I present a little fiction to challenge the thesis.

P.E. Easterling presents a brief description of the life of Sophocles according to which he was “evidently a classic from the start.” I note a concern about the description, that all classics would seem to be classics from the start.

This document gathers together, in summary form, objections scattered across many papers and multiple online databases. Nevertheless, it omits some objections, notably complicated ones.

Why did human beings first begin making art? In this paper, I present two accounts of its origins, one of which connects the arts to the desire for group demarcation and another to scientific impulses.

I observe common ground and differences between the first page of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and Christina Rossetti’s Commonplace.

This is my response to a premise-by-premise argument in Anca Gheaus’s “Biological Parenthood: Gestational, Not Genetic.”.

In this paper, I draw attention to an obstacle to determining to what extent the portrait of normal science as a problem-solving activity applies outside the natural sciences. I give two examples from social anthropology, one from the heyday of British structural-functionalism and one from recent British anthropology, “responding” to Marilyn Strathern’s problem of the feminist fieldworker. (NOTE: there is a duplicate of this but neither may be showing on my profile. A proverb: the guest hates the other guest; the (...) host hates them both.). (shrink)

Why are some disciplines lacking in members from certain groups, for example why has there been female underrepresentation in English-speaking analytic philosophy or a shortage of ethnic minorities? In this paper, I distinguish between two versions of the hostile atmosphere hypothesis.

According to the preference-centric approach to understanding partial belief, the connection between partial beliefs and preferences is key to understanding what partial beliefs are and how they’re measured. As Ramsey put it, the ‘degree of a belief is a causal property of it, which we can express vaguely as the extent to which we are prepared to act on it’ The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays, Routledge, Oxon, pp 156–198, 1931). But this idea is not as popular as (...) it once was. Nowadays, the preference-centric approach is frequently dismissed out-of-hand as behaviouristic, unpalatably anti-realist, and/or prone to devastating counterexamples. Cases like Eriksson and Hájek’s :183–213, 2007) preferenceless Zen monk and Christensen’s :356–376, 2001) other roles argument have suggested to many that any account of partial belief that ties them too closely to preferences is irretrievably flawed. In this paper I provide a defence of preference-centric accounts of partial belief. (shrink)

The professor of psychopathology Simon Baron-Cohen is well-known for his thesis that males are on average better at systematizing than empathizing and females are on average better at empathizing than systematizing. In this paper, I note an ambiguity in how he defines systematizing.

Comparativism is the view that comparative confidences (e.g., being more confident that P than that Q) are more fundamental than degrees of belief (e.g., believing that P with some strength x). In this paper, I outline the basis for a new, non-probabilistic version of comparativism inspired by a suggestion made by Frank Ramsey in `Probability and Partial Belief'. I show how, and to what extent, `Ramseyan comparativism' might be used to weaken the (unrealistically strong) probabilistic coherence conditions that comparativism traditionally (...) relies on. (shrink)

Perceptual experience is often said to be transparent; that is, when we have a perceptual experience we seem to be aware of properties of the objects around us, and never seem to be aware of properties of the experience itself. This is a introspective fact. It is also often said that we can infer a metaphysical fact from this introspective fact, e.g. a fact about the nature of perceptual experience. A transparency theory fills in the details for these two facts, (...) and bridges the gap between them. We have three aims: to scrutinize Michael Tye’s transparency theory :137–151, 2002; Consciousness revisited: materialism without phenomenal concepts, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009; Philos Stud 170:39–57, 2014a), introduce a new transparency theory, and advance a meta-theoretical hypothesis about the interest, and import, of transparency theories. (shrink)

The expression “The owl of Minerva flies at dusk” is used to convey that philosophers are only able to identify the assumptions that are made within a period of history, a period of which they are part, when that period is coming to an end and those assumptions will soon no longer be made. In this paper, I support a rival view according to which those involved in a historical period can know their assumptions earlier, given appropriate talent and effort.

This paper offers a cheap solution to Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory. An ideal theory cannot be sound by definition, since in the relevant sense of “ideal theory” it involves false propositions.

I present a sense of the term “ideal theory” based on Joseph Raz’s response to the situation of a lifeguard faced with three drowning on one side and two on the other and unable to save all. From what is of value, such a theory builds up a conception of an ideal political state or an aspect of it which we have reason to realize, but ignoring whether it is possible for us to realize this.

In the paper, certain rational postulates for protocols describing real communicating are introduced.These rational postulates, on the one hand, allow assigning a certain typology of real systems of interactions, which is consistent with the reality of epistemic argumentation in systems of communicating, and on the other one – defining rules of using argumentation in real situations. Moreover, the presented postulates for protocols characterize information networks and administering knowledge in real interactivity systems. Due to the epistemic character of the considerations, the (...) problem undertaken in the paper concerns working out fundamental assumptions that refer to building of epistemic logics. They allow establishing the correctness of the discourse defined by rational postulates of protocols of real communication. In the context of the presented problem there are the following two research questions distinguished: 1) How do we determine the rule of building of real dynamic epistemic logics? and 2) How should we define semantics for these logics? Within the framework of considerations relating to the research questions asked, certain epistemic operators, relativized to types of communicating, are introduced. Basic logical relations between using these operators are established for these operators. The relations are presented by a diagram called the square of epis temic operators. On the basis of these logical relations some axioms for real dynamic epistemic logics are presented. The semantics of real dynamic epistem ic logics is extended by the methods of lower and upper approximation of formula evaluating. This allows defining ‘approximation Kripke models’. The results of conceptualization of knowledge on real premises of epistemic argum entation presented in this paper can be applied to rhetoric in real systems of interaction. (shrink)

The paradox of an island, we are told, is at once to be isolated from and open to the rest of the world. It seems the paradox is easily solved by clarifying isolated and open to the rest of the world.

The dilemma I present for Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory concerns a theory which includes idealizations but also an account of how you apply the theory to less ideal reality. If this does not count as an ideal theory, then theories of justice need not be ideal. If it does, then ideal theories can be action guiding.

Various tribes deny that pregnancy is caused by sexual relations. Is this irrational? I present a puzzle involving testimony which some tribes might once have faced.

In this paper I make some distinctions, which I hope are of help for Laura Valentini and others. Are the recommendations of a theory of what the government should do possible and are they feasible? Is the project of the theorist possibility-sensitive and is the project feasibility-sensitive?

I distinguish two senses of the word “deconstruction.” Then I quote a passage by a critic from the 1860s which, together with trends of that time, gives rise to the question of whether deconstructive interpretation existed in the nineteenth century.

A review of some major topics of debate in normative decision theory from circa 2007 to 2019. Topics discussed include the ongoing debate between causal and evidential decision theory, decision instability, risk-weighted expected utility theory, decision-making with incomplete preferences, and decision-making with imprecise credences.

This paper is a pastiche of the Lacanian philosopher Renata Salecl, my fourth attempt, combined with a note. In it I present a response I anticipate from analytic philosophy to the thesis that the signifier has priority over the signified: that this thesis is either trivially true or obviously false.

I draw attention to how one of Donald Davidson’s arguments against the claim that others have an alternative conceptual scheme does not look compatible with his rejection of analytic truths – how his rejection of the third dogma of empiricism depends on accepting the first. The appendix contests Davidson’s approach to organizing the Pacific Ocean.

In “Conceptual Differences Between Children and Adults,” Susan Carey discusses phlogiston theory in order to defend the view that there can be non-translatability between scientific languages. I present an objection to her defence.

Jeanette Edwards sounds as if she wishes to reject the question “Why did you do fieldwork there?” I propose a metaphysical route to this, which is to say, “The self before fieldwork is not my self,” but this conflicts with the traditional Lockean account of personal identity.

When evaluating R.K. Narayan, Shashi Tharoor seems to commit himself to these theses: Narayan has a natural style of writing, or a style which is second nature to him; to go significantly beyond his limited range he would have to experiment more with language, reducing the accessibility of his fictions. I cast doubt on the first of these by speculating that Narayan’s middle-of-the-road style required suppressing linguistic innovations in earlier drafts.

I propose a solution to the paradox of the kalela dance, as presented by Richard Werbner, based on a variety of liberalism I once identified.

In this paper, I draw attention to a revolution in the metaphysical commitments of Western astrology. Although I do not wish to promote astrology, I propose a rational route to this revolution. But there is a strong argument, from a Popperian perspective, that my proposal fails to establish rationality. I then consider whether we should say that astrology is either false or unfalsifiable, drawing attention to some surprising findings from schizophrenia research. Also, in a footnote I present “Tompkins’ paradox.”.

In De gravitatione, Newton contends that Descartes' physics is fundamentally untenable since the "fixed" spatial landmarks required to ground the concept of inertial motion cannot be secured in the constantly changing Cartesian plenum. Likewise, it is has often been alleged that the collision rules in Descartes' Principles of Philosophy undermine the "relational" view of space and motion advanced in this text. This paper attempts to meet these challenges by investigating the theory of connected gears (or "kinematics of mechanisms") for a (...) potential Cartesian method of positing the permanent reference frames necessary to uphold Descartes' conservation law for the quantity of motion. In particular, the insights gained from an examination of the kinematics of mechanisms will provide the Cartesian with much needed resources to counter the two threats posed above. (shrink)