Ölümcül Hastalık Umutsuzluk adlı eserinde umutsuzluğu, ben’in bir hastalığı ve kendine yönelen bir ilişkinin sonucu olarak ele alan Danimarkalı filozof Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, bu hastalığın kişide üç farklı şekilde görülebileceğini öne sürmüştür: “(a) bir ben’i olduğunun farkında olmayan umutsuz kişi, (b) kendisi olmak isteyen umutsuz kişi ve (c) kendisi olmak istemeyen umutsuz kişi.” Kierkegaard’a göre kendi ben’ininden kurtulmak isteyen kişi, “olmak istediği ben” hâline gelemediği için olduğu ben’ine katlanamamakta ve bu nedenle umutsuzluk yaşamaktadır. Bu çalışma kapsamında Kierkegaard’ın benlik ve umutsuzluk (...) ilişkisi üzerine yaptığı bu tespitin, sosyal psikoloji alanının önde gelen araştırmacılarından biri olan Edward Tory Higgins’ın Benlik Uyuşmazlıkları Kuramı üzerinden okunabileceği öngörülmektedir. Higgins, geliştirdiği kuramda çoklu bir benlik ayrımına gitmekte ve benliği gerçek benlik, ideal benlik ve olması gereken benlik olmak üzere üç alana ayırmaktadır. Bu ayrıma göre gerçek benlik, kişinin sahip olduğunu düşündüğü özelliklerin; ideal benlik, kişinin kendisi olmak için idealde sahip olmayı arzu ettiği özelliklerin; olması gereken benlik ise kişinin taşımak zorunda olduğunu düşündüğü özelliklerin bir bütününü temsil etmektedir. Söz konusu özellikler, kişinin kendi kişisel bakış açısına dayalı olabileceği gibi başkalarının bakış açısından da kaynaklanabilmektedir. Higgins’a göre ikili benlik durumları arasındaki uyuşmazlık (örneğin gerçek benlik-ideal benlik ya da gerçek benlik-olması gereken benlik) kişide, kendi beklentilerini ya da başkalarının beklentilerini karşılamada yetersiz kaldığı yönünde negatif duyuşlar yaratmaktadır. Bu duyuşlar arasında depresyonun bir parçası olan umutsuzluk da yer almaktadır. Şimdiki çalışma Kierkegaard’ın tasvir ettiği “olmak istediği ben hâline gelemediği için olduğu ben’ine katlanamayıp umutsuzluğa yakalanan” kişinin içinde bulunduğu durumu, Higgins’ın öne sürdüğü “gerçek benlik-ideal benlik uyuşmazlığının depresyonla (dolayısıyla umutsuzlukla) ilişkili olabileceği” argümanıyla ilişkili bir biçimde ele almayı ve bu yolla benlik ve umutsuzluk ilişkisini felsefe ve psikoloji disiplinlerinin kesişiminde incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. (shrink)

‘I know his name.’ ‘I know something about him.’ ‘I know him.’ Consider how these uses of ‘know’ differ. The first two instances of know, seem to point to knowledge about something. Yet in the latter claim, the subject of the assertion is not a singular fact, but another person. I call these knowledge claims interpersonal knowledge. In the following paper, I provide an account for these interpersonal knowledge claims which employs the Conversational Contextualist view of language by synthesizing Allan (...) Gibbard’s Norm-Expressivist account for ‘good’ with an account of knowledge based in social epistemology. Under my theory ‘knowing someone claims’ amount to endorsements of our beliefs; as such, there is no truth-apt interpersonal knowledge. What is occurring is a self-assessment of our relationship to another person, based on our non-cognitive attitude towards the fact that we should know them. Therefore interpersonal knowledge claims are self-affirmations that assert we are doing what we believe we should, in an attempt to embody our perceived relationship with another person. -/- . (shrink)

[The version of this paper published by Oxford online in 2019 was not copy-edited and has some sense-obscuring typos. I have posted a corrected (but not the final published) version on this site. The version published in print in 2020 has these corrections.] Which is more fundamental, assertion or testimony? Should we understand assertion as basic, treating testimony as what you get when you add an interpersonal addressee? Or should we understand testimony as basic, treating mere assertion -- assertion without (...) testimony -- as what you get when you subtract that interpersonal relation? In this chapter, I’ll argue for the subtractive approach and for the more general thesis that its treatment of the interpersonal element in assertion makes understanding that interpersonal element the key to understanding how assertion expresses belief. My theory of belief-expression in assertion treats it as internalizing the transmission of belief in testimony. How we understand that internalizing move depends on how we conceptualize the interpersonal element in testimony. Since what I’ll call the Command Model does not give us the conceptual resources to make this move, we should adopt an alternative that I’ll call the Custodial Model, on which a testifier aims not to convince her addressee but to reason with him – to give him reasons to believe what she tells him grounded in her trustworthiness in thus attempting to influence him. The subtractive approach to assertion thus rests on a key distinction between the aims of reasoning and persuasion. (shrink)

Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education presents what the late Lawrence Kohlberg regarded as the definitive statement of his educational theory. Addressing the sociology and social psychology of schooling, the authors propose that school culture become the center of moral education and research. They discuss how schools can develop as just and cohesive communities by involving students in democracy, and they focus on the moral decisions teachers and students face as they democratically resolve problems. As the authors put it: "...we (...) propose an educational renewal of our democratic society.... We have attempted to establish schools that do more than just teach about democratic citizenship, that are themselves democratic societies.". (shrink)

This article traces the development of Sartre's metaphysics with three interrelated aims in mind. The first is to situate Sartre's metaphysical views in relation to those of his predecessors, his contemporaries, and current continental philosophy. The second is to show that Sartre's project informs some of the key changes he makes to his existentialism during his career. The third is to bring Sartre the metaphysician into dialogue with key thinkers in the current realism/antirealism debate in Continental philosophy by showing that (...) the defense of materialism he offers in his later work preserves many hard-won insights of phenomenology and has significant advantages over many contemporary articulations of realism. (shrink)

Because obituaries are succinct and explicitly intended to summarize their subjects’ lives, they may be expected to include only the features that the author finds most salient but also to signal to others in the community the socially-recognized aspects of the deceased’s character. We begin by reviewing studies 1 and 2, in which obituaries were carefully read and labeled. We then report study 3, which further develops these results with a semi-automated, large-scale semantic analysis of several thousand obituaries. Geography, gender, (...) and elite status all turn out to be associated with the virtues and values associated with the deceased. (shrink)

I argue that absolutism, the view that absolutely unrestricted quantification is possible, is to blame for both the paradoxes that arise in naive set theory and variants of these paradoxes that arise in plural logic and in semantics. The solution is restrictivism, the view that absolutely unrestricted quantification is not possible. -/- It is generally thought that absolutism is true and that restrictivism is not only false, but inexpressible. As a result, the paradoxes are blamed, not on illicit quantification, but (...) on the logical conception of set which motivates naive set theory. The accepted solution is to replace this with the iterative conception of set. -/- I show that this picture is doubly mistaken. After a close examination of the paradoxes in chapters 2--3, I argue in chapters 4 and 5 that it is possible to rescue naive set theory by restricting quantification over sets and that the resulting restrictivist set theory is expressible. In chapters 6 and 7, I argue that it is the iterative conception of set and the thesis of absolutism that should be rejected. (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)

The essay explores the systematic relationship in the work of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) between his monadology, his metaphysics as presented in works such as De la causa, principio et uno, the mythopoeic cosmology of Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante, and practical works like De vinculis in genere. Bruno subverts the conceptual regime of the Aristotelian substantial forms and its accompanying cosmology with a metaphysics of individuality that privileges individual unity (singularity) over formal unity and particulars over substantial forms without (...) sacrificing a metaphysical perspective on the cosmos. The particular is individuated as a unique site of desire, continually transforming but able to entrain itself and others through phantasmatic ‘bonding’, the new source of regularity in Bruno’s polycentric universe. Bruno thus tries to do justice to the demands of intelligibility as well as transformative eros. The essay concludes with a note on Bruno’s geometry as it relates to his general conception of form. (shrink)

When Milan Kundera introduces the concept of graphomania, he seems to register only two extremes: the person who writes for a few known people and the person who writes for a very large audience. Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem provides a way of making sense of this conceptualization of the situation, though in a way that breaks with Kundera’s emphasis on a writer’s craving for audience attention.

Obituaries are an especially rich resource for identifying people’s values. Because obituaries are succinct and explicitly intended to summarize their subjects’ lives, they may be expected to include only the features that the author(s) find most salient, not only for themselves as relatives or friends of the deceased, but also to signal to others in the community the socially-recognized aspects of the deceased’s character. We report three approaches to the scientific study of virtue and value through obituaries. We begin by (...) reviewing studies 1 and 2, in which obituaries were carefully read and labeled. We then report study 3, which further develops these results with a semi-automated, large-scale semantic analysis of several thousand obituaries. Finally, we present the results of study 4 in which individuals were asked to write prospective obituaries. Geography, gender, and elite status all turn out to influence the virtues and values associated with the deceased. (shrink)

I present an example in which the all-or-nothing problem involves adults, rather than children in danger.

Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem concerns a situation in which it is morally permissible to do nothing and to save two people but not to save only one. This description seems to entail that we should do nothing rather than save only one. I object to Horton’s solution and challenge a principle he draws attention to, which is required to generate the problem but which Horton regards as beyond dispute.

Progress in philosophy is difficult to achieve because our methods are evidentially and rhetorically weak. In the last two decades, experimental philosophers have begun to employ the methods of the social sciences to address philosophical questions. However, the adequacy of these methods has been called into question by repeated failures of replication. Experimental philosophers need to incorporate more robust methods to achieve a multi-modal perspective. In this chapter, we describe and showcase cutting-edge methods for data-mining and visualization. Big data is (...) a useful investigatory tool for moral psychology, and it fits well with the Ramsification method the first author advances in a series of recent papers. The guiding insight of these papers is that we can infer the meaning and structure of concepts from patterns of assertions and inferential associations in natural language. (shrink)

This paper presents what I call “the flowchart solution” to Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem. Rather than three options – don’t save any child, save one, or save two – there is a flowchart with a choice of don’t save or save, and then within save, save one or save two.

In this chapter, I will make the case that we can accurately describe Ghazali’s position as a natural law theory. Kevin Reinhart (1995), on whose translation of al-Mustaṣfā I will be depending in what follows, has also treated this topic. Though he did not specifically compare Ghazali’s position there with natural law theory, like Hourani (1985) he interprets Ghazali’s position as subjectivist on key points rendering it incompatible with natural law theory. Thus, I will begin with a prima facie case (...) for this incompatibility roughly along the lines one finds in Reinhart, and argue that a closer examination of the relevant text of al-Mustaṣfā along with the parallel section of al-Iqtiṣād, also cited by Hourani, shows that Ghazali’s position is not conclusively subjectivist, but instead is compatible with a natural law theory. I will examine key sections of Ghazali’s Kimiya al-Sa’dāt that quite clearly express a natural law theory of morality. (shrink)

It’s a popular idea that memory resembles testimony insofar as each can ‘preserve’ epistemic warrant. But how does such ‘preservation’ do its epistemic work? I have elsewhere developed an assurance theory of testimonial warrant. Here, I develop an assurance theory of preservative memory. How could the ‘preservation’ of warrant through memory work through an assurance? What would even count as an intrapersonal assurance? I explain each form of preservation by contrasting the relation that preserves warrant with a pathological alternative. My (...) assurance theory of testimony theorizes the illocutionary norms governing the speech act of telling by explaining what goes wrong when there’s what Austin calls an ‘abuse.’ But what norms govern an intrapersonal memory relation? There are two sides in a memory relation: the earlier self judges that p, then memory keeps the later self in epistemic touch with that judgment by ‘preserving’ its warrant. But this is not an illocutionary relation. (When you ‘tell yourself that p,’ you are trying to ‘convince yourself’ that p and as such typically do not yet even judge that p.) I argue that the earlier self nonetheless offers an assurance by extending an invitation to trust. Your earlier self judges that p in part by projecting a future in which you will continue to trust yourself on the question whether p when you lose access to the evidence that informed the judgment. That projection of trust in yourself posits a worthiness of trust that ought to lead others to accept your testimony that p. Assurance in memory and assurance in testimony thus ought to work together. This aspect of the parallel emerges vividly when we see how it breaks down in the pathology of gaslighting – more than merely illocutionary abuse! – which targets specifically how testimony and memory work together in inviting trust relations. (shrink)

Fragments is a verse and narrative work of phenomenological and existential ontology focusing on mind-world unity and mind-world dislocation in the experience of self through time. Pivotal experiential and historical moments -- moments when normative guardrails and unreflective models of the world may be compromised -- are approached as fundamental markers of how we transact with evolving versions of ourselves and world.

Present-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive events to be located in the present rather than the non-present, and for negative events to be located in the non-present rather than the present. Very little attention has been given to present-bias in the contemporary literature on time biases. This may be because it is often assumed that present-bias is not a distinctive psychological kind; that what explains people’s being present-biased is just what explains them displaying various other time-biases. (...) According to this view, there is no need to investigate present-bias independently of investigating these other biases, since present-bias is really just a manifestation of these other biases. We call this the manifestation thesis. We take up the question of whether the manifestation thesis is true, and argue that it is not. Thus, by failing to investigate present-bias in its own right we are failing fully to understand the spectrum of ways in which people display time biases. In turn, we suggest, this may have implications for the ways we evaluate whether present-bias is rationally permissible. (shrink)

The turn of the nineteenth century marked a rich and exciting explosion of philosophical energy and talent. The enormity of the revolution set off in philosophy by Immanuel Kant was comparable, in Kant's own estimation, with the Copernican Revolution that ended the Middle Ages. The movement he set in motion, the fast-moving and often cantankerous dialectic of "German Idealism," inspired some of the most creative philosophers in modern times: including G. W. F. Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer as well as those (...) who reacted against Kant--Marx and Kierkegaard, for example. This volume traces the emergence of German Idealism from Kant and his predecessors through the first half of the nineteenth century, ending with the irrationalism of Kierkegaard. It provides a broad, scholarly introduction to this period for students of philosophy and related disciplines, as well as some original interpretations of these authors. Also included is a glossary of technical terms as well as a chronological table of philosophical, scientific and other important cultural events. (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)

This paper argues that the relevant unit of analysis for assessing the justice of an immigration policy is the socially-situated individual (as opposed to the individual simpliciter or the nation-state, for example). This methodological principle is demonstrated indirectly by showing how some liberal, cosmopolitan defenses of "open borders" and the alleged right of immigration fail by their own standards, owing to the implicit adoption of an inappropriate unit of analysis.

In a world befuddled by the concept of ‘fake news’, where words like ‘post-truth’ are common parlance, it is essential that we consider exactly what we think we know, what we do not and how we come to acquire such knowledge. The analysis of truth should come from an unbiased perspective and be critical of the various shibboleths that we take to heart. Appearance and Inference aims to identify the nonsense in as many knowledge-related platitudes or false assumptions as possible (...) in just over a hundred pages. Intentionally short and aphoristic, Appearance and Inference will undoubtedly provoke debate, whether or not its readers have previously considered the nature of knowledge. It is also expected to excite its academically astute readers to develop some of the analyses further. It aims to encourage the reader to think through a number of difficult matters and to exercise their own judgment, instead of supplying answers in a pre-packaged form. Inspired by the aphoristic philosophical style of philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, this is a book on the theory of knowledge, written by a philosopher who has had the benefit of a scientific and forensic training. It is designed for both the professional philosopher and the general reader. (shrink)

The Way of Humanity, second edition, presents a Confucian vision for personal and social transformation intended to bring about a worldwide social order of harmony, dignity, and justice for all peoples, beyond divisive sectarianism and nationalism. It is based on ideals for human flourishing gleaned from Confucian and Neo-Confucian thought as distilled by a highly respected elder philosopher in South Korea, Yi Dong Jun, PhD (Haengchon, literary name). He is Professor Emeritus of the College of Confucian Studies and Eastern Philosophy (...) at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. This work is the first detailed presentation of a contemporary Korean philosopher’s perspective on Confucianism as grounded in daily life, its implications for personal spiritual development, and its potential to contribute to world development. The book holistically presents Master Haengchon’s insights through vivid stories, philosophical essays, numerous illustrations, audio recordings of Confucian chanting, recommendations for further reading, and, new to the second edition, poems inspired by Confucian classics about ideals for an opening of the world to wellbeing and justice for all peoples. There are two recordings of chants included as supplemental.mp3 files. For open access to the ebook and associated audio files, go to the University of Kansas ScholarWorks website: The Way of Humanity, second edition, presents a Confucian vision for personal and social transformation intended to bring about a worldwide social order of harmony, dignity, and justice for all peoples, beyond divisive sectarianism and nationalism. It is based on ideals for human flourishing gleaned from Confucian and Neo-Confucian thought as distilled by a highly respected elder philosopher in South Korea, Yi Dong Jun, PhD (Haengchon, literary name). He is Professor Emeritus of the College of Confucian Studies and Eastern Philosophy at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. This work is the first detailed presentation of a contemporary Korean philosopher’s perspective on Confucianism as grounded in daily life, its implications for personal spiritual development, and its potential to contribute to world development. The book holistically presents Master Haengchon’s insights through vivid stories, philosophical essays, numerous illustrations, audio recordings of Confucian chanting, recommendations for further reading, and, new to the second edition, poems inspired by Confucian classics about ideals for an opening of the world to wellbeing and justice for all peoples. There are two recordings of chants included as supplemental files in this record. Each has been made available in.wav format and.mp3 format. The files in the.mp3 format are much smaller and suitable for downloading in situations where bandwidth is restricted. The ebook is available here on ResearchGate. But for access to the ebook and associated audio files, search the University of Kansas Libraries ScholarWorks website. (shrink)

According to the iterative conception of set, each set is a collection of sets formed prior to it. The notion of priority here plays an essential role in explanations of why contradiction-inducing sets, such as the Russell set, do not exist. Consequently, these explanations are successful only to the extent that a satisfactory priority relation is made out. I argue that attempts to do this have fallen short: understanding priority in a straightforwardly constructivist sense threatens the coherence of the empty (...) set and raises serious epistemological concerns; but the leading realist interpretations---ontological and modal interpretations of priority---are deeply problematic as well. I conclude that the purported explanatory virtues of the iterative conception are, at present, unfounded. (shrink)

The article investigates the treatment of modality in chapters 12 and 13 of De Interpretatione and gives a new interpretation of the puzzling table of modals to be found at the beginning of chapter 13, as well as dealing with some of Aristotle’s puzzles. This is achieved by extending Aristotle’s distinction between two senses of possibility, which (following Ackrill) I call ‘one-sided’ and ‘two-sided’, to the two notions of necessity and impossibility. The conclusion is reached that, while the two notions (...) of necessity and impossibility are logically incompatible when both are taken as one-sided, in their two-sided senses they are in fact equivalent. (shrink)

This is a sketch of the basis and role of consciousness and the minimally required elements and constraints of any setting that may produce consciousness. It proposes that consciousness (as we know it) is a biologically-mediated product of evolved recursive and hierarchically nested representational systems that obey information theoretic principles and Bayesian (probabilistic) feedback and feedforward predictive modeling processes.

Can a reason to believe testimony derive from the addressee’s trust itself or only from reliability in the speaker that the trust perhaps causes? I aim to cast suspicion on the former view, defended by Faulkner, in favor of the latter – despite agreeing with Faulkner’s emphasis on the second-personal normativity of testimonial assurance. Beyond my narrow disagreement with Faulkner lie two broader issues. I argue that Faulkner misappropriates Bernard Williams’s genealogy of testimony when he makes use of Williams’s genealogical (...) argument in his own preferred assurance view of testimony. Though Williams doesn’t clearly articulate it, there is a deep reason why Williams’s genealogy cannot underwrite an argument for trust-based testimonial reasons. Can a genealogical argument underwrite any version of the assurance view? I sketch an assurance view of testimonial reasons that rejects Faulkner’s thesis that such reasons could be grounded in trust. Then I examine what it would take for that assurance view to receive genealogical vindication. (shrink)

In a world befuddled by the concept of ‘fake news’, where words like ‘post-truth’ are common parlance, it is essential that we consider exactly what we think we know, what we do not and how we come to acquire such knowledge. The analysis of truth should come from an unbiased perspective and be critical of the various shibboleths that we take to heart. Appearance and Inference aims to identify the nonsense in as many knowledge-related platitudes or false assumptions as possible (...) in just over a hundred pages. Intentionally short and aphoristic, Appearance and Inference will undoubtedly provoke debate, whether or not its readers have previously considered the nature of knowledge. It is also expected to excite its academically astute readers to develop some of the analyses further. It aims to encourage the reader to think through a number of difficult matters and to exercise their own judgment, instead of supplying answers in a pre-packaged form. Inspired by the aphoristic philosophical style of philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, this is a book on the theory of knowledge, written by a philosopher who has had the benefit of a scientific and forensic training. It is designed for both the professional philosopher and the general reader. (shrink)

This is a conjecture about the conditions and operating structures that are required for the phenomenality of certain mental states. Specifically, full-blown phenomenality is assumed, as contrasted with constrained examples of phenomenal experience such as sensations of color and pain. Propositional attitudes and content, while not phenomenal per se, are standardly concurrent and may condition phenomenal states (e.g., when tied to false beliefs). It is conjectured that full phenomenality natively arises in coherent processes of situated sensory synthesis and representation (with (...) conceptual content) that are looped, mereologically whole and multi-dimensional. And that phenomenal states are typically phase-states within a parameterized conjoint structure of world and experiencer processes that are causally modulated across Markov blankets (which are conditionally independent and may be nested: cf. M. Kirchoff, et. al., 2017, 2018; and T. Burge, 2010, re: anti-individualism). Though they may, it is not accepted that phenomenally conscious states must be targets of higher-order representations (cf. A. Byrne, 2004). (shrink)

Whatever its ultimate philosophical merits, it is often thought that the growing block theory presents an intuitive picture of reality that accords well with our pre-reflective or folk view of time, and of the past, present, and future. This is partly motivated by the idea that we find it intuitive that, in some sense, the future is open and the past closed, and that the growing block theory is particularly well suited to accommodate this being so. In this paper, we (...) empirically investigate three claims. First, that people's intuitive or pre-reflective sense that the future is open is at least partly captured by there being truth-gaps for future contingents: what we call alethic openness. Second, that people, perhaps tacitly, believe that the fact that the future is alethically open is a reason to endorse the growing block theory; and third, that part of what explains why people tend to naively represent our world as a growing block is that they represent the future as alethically open. We found evidence in support of the first two claims. We consider the implications of these findings for several debates in the philosophy of time. (shrink)

This paper treats two questions about the relation between trust and the will. One question, about trust, is whether you can trust ‘at will.’ Can you trust despite acknowledging that you lack evidence of the trustee’s worthiness of your trust? Another question, about the will, is whether you can exercise your will at all without trust – at least, in yourself. I treat the second question as a guide to the first, arguing that the role of trust in the will (...) reveals how you can trust at will. The key lies in distinguishing two ways of being responsive to evidence. On the one hand, you cannot trust someone – whether another person or your own earlier self – whom you judge unworthy of your trust. On the other hand, trust does not require a positive assessment of trustworthiness. I thus take issue with Pamela Hieronymi’s analysis of trust as a “commitment-constituted attitude.” Your trust is indeed constrained by your responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness, but you need undertake no commitment akin to or involving a judgment that the trustee is trustworthy. We can see why trust is not a commitment-constituted attitude by seeing how trust itself plays a role in forming a commitment. (shrink)

This essay explores the possibility of constructing a structural realist interpretation of spacetime theories that can resolve the ontological debate between substantivalists and relationists. Drawing on various structuralist approaches in the philosophy of mathematics, as well as on the theoretical complexities of general relativity, our investigation will reveal that a structuralist approach can be beneficial to the spacetime theorist as a means of deflating some of the ontological disputes regarding similarly structured spacetimes.

Among the most popular strategies for justifying political obligations are those that appeal to the principle of fairness. These theories face the challenge, canonically articulated by Robert Nozick, of explaining how it is that persons are obligated to schemes when they receive goods that they do not ask for but cannot reject. John Simmons offers one defense of the principle of fairness, arguing that people could be bound by obligations of fairness if they voluntarily accept goods produced by a cooperative (...) scheme. Simmons, however, thinks that such a theory will do little work in justifying political obligations, since virtually no one voluntarily accepts state goods. This paper attempts to advance just such a theory by arguing that states are in fact genuine cooperative schemes and that Simmons is overly pessimistic in his appraisal of whether the majority of citizens accept the goods provided by their states. (shrink)

While many bibliometric techniques have been employed to represent the structure of academic research communities over the years, much of this work has been conducted on scientific fields as opposed to those in the humanities. Here we use graphing techniques to present two networks that allow us to explore the structure of a subset of the philosophy community by mapping the citations between philosophical texts on the topic of ontology (the study of what exists). We find a citation gap between (...) philosophers studying material and abstract objects, and between analytic and continental ontologists, but other predictions were not confirmed by this method. We conclude by considering several additional methods for further exploring both the structure of philosophy and other disciplines in the humanities. (shrink)

How far, if at all, do our intrapersonal and our interpersonal epistemic obligations run in parallel? This paper treats the question as addressing the stability of doxastic commitment in the two dimensions. In the background lies an analogy between doxastic and practical commitment. We’ll pursue the question of doxastic stability by coining a doxastic analogue of Gregory Kavka’s much-discussed toxin case. In this new case, you foresee that you will rationally abandon a doxastic commitment by undergoing a shift in the (...) context in which you doxastically deliberate. The case reveals an important stability condition on doxastic commitment that plays no role in cases modeled on Ulysses and the Sirens, the scenario that has shaped previous attempts to draw an analogy between doxastic and practical commitment. The stability condition thereby revealed is not diachronic -- it does not involve a shift in belief -- but we can construct specifically diachronic cases that reveal an important intrapersonal epistemic obligation. This obligation arises when you expect the shift in belief by ‘projecting’ yourself into a future doxastic context -- thus vindicating a restricted, but only this restricted, application of Bas van Fraassen’s Reflection Principle. Despite some important differences, we can use these diachronic cases as a model for interpersonal cases that reveal an important role for doxastic context in the epistemology of disagreement. But the roles played by projection and context in disagreement ensure that there is no general obligation to be responsive to the opinion of an epistemic peer who disagrees with you. (shrink)

If by “demon” one understands an evil occult being, then its equivalent in the Islamic narrative is the intersection of the category jinn with that of the shayātīn: a demon is a shaytān from among the jinn. The literature in the Islamic tradition on these subjects is vast. In what follows, we will select some key elements from it to provide a brief summary: first on the nature of the jinn, their nature, and their relationship to God and human beings; (...) second, on the origin, nature, and role of Shaytān (Satan himself) and the shayātīn in the moral drama of Islam. Then, we will take a closer look at the relationship between jinn and humankind, according to Islam, and the phenomena of the demonic as it manifests itself in that relation. In the process, I will entertain, tentatively, some philosophical speculation as to the nature of that ultimately mysterious relation and phenomena, drawn from what we find in the religious sources. (shrink)

This essay examines Hobbes’ philosophy of space, with emphasis placed on the variety of interpretations that his concept of imaginary space has elicited from commentators. The process by which the idea of space is acquired from experience, as well as the role of nominalism, will be offered as important factors in tracking down the elusive content of Hobbes’ conception of imaginary space.

This paper examines Descartes' problematic relational theory of motion, especially when viewed within the context of his dynamics, the Cartesian natural laws. The work of various commentators on Cartesian motion is also surveyed, with particular emphasis placed upon the recent important texts of Garber and Des Chene. In contrast to the methodology of most previous interpretations, however, this essay employs a modern "spacetime" approach to the problem. By this means, the role of dynamics in Descartes' theory, which has often been (...) neglected in favor of kinematic factors, is shown to be central to finding a solution to the puzzle of Cartesian motion. (shrink)

It is tempting to interpret Marilyn Strathern as saying that the concept of nature is a social construction, because in her essay “No Nature, No Culture: the Hagen Case” she tells us that the Hagen people do not describe the world using this concept. However, I point out an obstacle to interpreting her in this way, an obstacle which leads me to reject this interpretation. Interpreting her in this way makes her inconsistent. The inconsistency is owing to a commitment that (...) she shares with previous British anthropologists, a commitment which points to an incompatibility between two intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Timelines is an inquiry into the nature of time, both as an apparent feature of the external physical world and as a fundamental feature of our experience of ourselves in the world. The organization of this book makes it easy to consider a single topic or to read straight through, starting with introductory content and running through rigorous treatments of current research and controversy in philosophy and science. Its format is unique, where each topic is covered by one page of (...) 'front notes' and a facing page of analysis, defense and commentary. Facing pages consist of short essays and citations as well as compact verse compositions that are intended to capture aspects of our temporal experience that are difficult to address with normal descriptive sentences. The principal argument of Timelines is that our coventional ideas about time are largely mistaken and that what we think of as independent physical time is actually our calibration of a certain relation between events. Namely, the relation between time-keeping events and the causal sequential differences of physical processes which are real and independent of us. (shrink)

Practical commitment is Janus-faced, looking outward toward the expectations it creates and inward toward their basis in the agent’s will. This paper criticizes Kantian attempts to link these facets and proposes an alternative. Contra David Velleman, the availability of a conspiratorial perspective (not yours, not your interlocutor’s) is what allows you to understand yourself as making a lying promise – as committing yourself ‘outwardly’ with the deceptive reasoning that Velleman argues cannot provide a basis for self-understanding. Moreover, the intrapersonal availability (...) of such a third perspective is what enables you to commit yourself ‘inwardly.’ Here I offer an alternative to Christine Korsgaard’s account of practical commitment, on which committing yourself requires identifying yourself with a principle. You needn’t identify yourself with a principle, I argue, because the unity at which you aim when you commit yourself is a unity not with your acting self but with a later perspective, where the relation is one of self-intelligibility, not self-justification, and therefore needn’t be mediated by principles. This ‘twice-future’ perspective – neither your present intending nor your (once-)future acting but a third perspective that looks back on that relation – plays the intrapersonal role played in interpersonal commitment by potential co-conspirators. Kantians are therefore right to link your ability to commit yourself with your ability credibly to express that commitment to others. But the linkage generates a strikingly unKantian result. The nature of agency cannot provide an apriori basis for honesty because what enables you to commit yourself is what also enables you to lie. (shrink)

Very little attention has been paid towards examining John Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy as a self-standing theory. Nevertheless, it offers a highly original way of thinking about state legitimacy. In this paper, I will offer a sketch of what such an account might look like. At its heart is the idea that the legitimacy of the state resides not in the consent of the governed, nor in the state’s conformity with the appropriate principles of justice, but rather in citizens’ (...) endorsement of the state and its underlying constitutional principles on the basis of their own comprehensive conceptions of justice. Such an account offers a stable middle ground between popular alternatives, and has a way of not just solving, but dissolving, the problem of legitimacy. (shrink)

How must you think about time when you form an intention? Obviously, you must think about the time of action. Must you frame the action in any broader prospect or retrospect? In this essay I argue that you must: you thereby commit yourself to a specific prospect of a future retrospect – a retrospect, indeed, on that very prospect. In forming an intention you project a future from which you will not ask regretfully, referring back to your follow-through on that (...) intention, “What on earth was I thinking?” I argue that this broader attitude expresses the self-accountability necessary for practical commitment. (shrink)

This paper investigates the question of, and the degree to which, Newton’s theory of space constitutes a third-way between the traditional substantivalist and relationist ontologies, i.e., that Newton judged that space is neither a type of substance/entity nor purely a relation among such substances. A non-substantivalist reading of Newton has been famously defended by Howard Stein, among others; but, as will be demonstrated, these claims are problematic on various grounds, especially as regards Newton’s alleged rejection of the traditional substance/accident dichotomy (...) concerning space. Nevertheless, our analysis of the metaphysical foundations of Newton’s spatial theory will strive to uncover its unique and innovative characteristics, most notably, the distinctive role that Newton’s “immaterialist” spatial ontology plays in his dynamics. (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)

Plotinus’ famous treatise against the Gnostics (33), together with contemporary and thematically related treatises on Intelligible Beauty (31), on Number (34), and on Free Will and the Will of the One (39), can be seen as providing the essential components of a Plotinian defense of polytheism against conceptual moves that, while associated for him primarily with Gnostic sectarians overlapping with Platonic philosophical circles, will become typical of monotheism in its era of hegemony. When Plotinus’ Gnostics ‘contract’ divinity into a single (...) God, they not only devalue the cosmos for its multiplicity and diversity, but also multiply intelligible principles unreasonably. This is because they have foreclosed the distinction, which is to become increasingly explicit in the later antique Platonists, between the intelligible and that which is given existentially, the domain belonging to Plotinus’ indeterminate multiplicity of ‘intelligible Gods’, as opposed to the dialectically determinate number of intelligible principles. Plotinus is prescient in recognizing that incipient monotheism threatens to erase the distinction between philosophy and theology, and between both of these and psychology, the final outcome of which can only be solipsism or nihilism. The defense of polytheism is seen in this fashion to be essential to the preservation of the space for philosophical discourse. (shrink)

This paper investigates Newton’s ontology of space in order to determine its commitment, if any, to both Cambridge neo-Platonism, which posits an incorporeal basis for space, and substantivalism, which regards space as a form of substance or entity. A non-substantivalist interpretation of Newton’s theory has been famously championed by Howard Stein and Robert DiSalle, among others, while both Stein and the early work of J. E. McGuire have downplayed the influence of Cambridge neo-Platonism on various aspects of Newton’s own spatial (...) hypotheses. Both of these assertions will be shown to be problematic on various grounds, with special emphasis placed on Stein’s influential case for a non-substantivalist reading. Our analysis will strive, nonetheless, to reveal the unique or forward-looking aspects of Newton’s approach, most notably, his critical assessment of substance ontologies, that help to distinguish his theory of space from his neo-Platonic contemporaries and predecessors. (shrink)