Vlastos, G. Introduction: the paradox of Socrates.--Lacey, A. R. Our knowledge of Socrates.--Dover, K. J. Socrates in the Clouds.--Robinson, R. Elenchus.--Robinson, R. Elenchus, direct and indirect.--Robinson, R. Socratic definition.--Nakhnikian, G. Elenctic definitions.--Cohen, S. M. Socrates on the definition of piety: Euthyphro 10A-11B.--Santas, G. Socrates at work on virtue and knowledge in Plato's Laches.--Burnyeat, M. F. Virtues in action.--Walsh, J. J. The Socratic denial of Akrasia.--Santas, G. Plato's Protagoras and explanations of weakness.--Woozley, A. D. Socrates on disobeying the law.--Allen, R. E. (...) Plato's earlier theory of forms. (shrink)

Visualizings, the simplest imaginings which employ visual imagery, have certain characteristic features; they are perspectival, for instance. Also, it seems that some but not all of our visualizings are imaginings of seeings. But it has been forcefully argued, for example by M.G.F. Martin and Christopher Peacocke, that all visualizings are imaginings of visual sensations. I block these arguments by providing an account of visualizings which allows for their perspectival nature and other features they typically have, but which also explains how (...) we can visualize things without thereby imagining visual sensations. (shrink)

What happens to the inner light of consciousness with the death of the individual body and brain? Reductive materialism assumes it simply fades to black. Others think of consciousness as indicating a continuation of self, a transformation, an awakening or even alternatives based on the quality of life experience. In this issue, speculation drawn from theoretic research are presented. -/- Table of Contents Epigraph: From “The Immortal”, Jorge Luis Borges iii Editor’s Introduction: I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day, (...) class='Hi'>Gregory M. Nixon iv-xi Research Essays The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument Teed Rockwell 862-881 Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology, Steve Bindeman 882-899 The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death, Bernardo Kastrup 900-909 Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon—A Hypothesis, Eva Déli 910-930 The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death, Bryon K. Ehlmann 931-950 Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway, Contzen Pereira & J Shashi Kiran Reddy 951-968 On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death, Massimo Pregnolato & Alfredo Pereira Jr. 969-991 Science and Postmortem Survival, Edward F. Kelly 992-1011 Explorations ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics, Chris H. Hardy 1012-1035 Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? Radivoj Stankovich (with Micho Durdevich) 1036-1050 Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death, Ken Bausch 1051-1063 Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm, Ronald Peter Glasberg 1064-1077 Living With Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness, Donald Brackett 1078-1098 Mysticism, Consciousness, Death, Mike Sosteric 1099-1118 What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James, Jonathan Bricklin 1119-1140 Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? Roger Cook 1141-1153 It’s the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World, James P. Kowall & Pradeep B. Deshpande 1154-1208 Statements A Feminine Vision for the World Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology, Lorna Green 1209-1217 The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife, Iona Miller 1218-1228 Are We Really “such stuff as dreams are made on”? Chris Nunn 1229-1225 Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not), Deepak Chopra 1226-1230 Life After Death? An Improbable Essay, Stuart Kauffman 1231-1236. (shrink)

Dilation occurs when an interval probability estimate of some event E is properly included in the interval probability estimate of E conditional on every event F of some partition, which means that one’s initial estimate of E becomes less precise no matter how an experiment turns out. Critics maintain that dilation is a pathological feature of imprecise probability models, while others have thought the problem is with Bayesian updating. However, two points are often overlooked: (1) knowing that E is stochastically (...) independent of F (for all F in a partition of the underlying state space) is sufficient to avoid dilation, but (2) stochastic independence is not the only independence concept at play within imprecise probability models. In this paper we give a simple characterization of dilation formulated in terms of deviation from stochastic independence, propose a measure of dilation, and distinguish between proper and improper dilation. Through this we revisit the most sensational examples of dilation, which play up independence between dilator and dilatee, and find the sensationalism undermined by either fallacious reasoning with imprecise probabilities or improperly constructed imprecise probability models. (shrink)

Recent years have seen the global emergence of populist political formations, leading certain scholars to term our present age the “age of populism” and some politicians, such as Hungary’s current prime minister Viktor Orbán, to proclaim that “the era of liberal democracy is over”. Contemporary forms of populism are characterized by ‘us’ (often ‘the people’ in an ethnic or communal sense) versus ‘them’ (usually liberal elites, the establishment, minorities, or immigrants) forms of binary thinking. For some, the rise of contemporary (...) populism inherently represents the resurgence of forms of reactionary populist nationalism, ranging from the ‘radical’ to the ‘extreme’ right, and the revitalization of forms of ideology that may be termed ‘neo-fascist’. The great challenge for contemporary democracies is that, in contrast to dictators who seize power via coups, the aforementioned political movements come to power via the ballot box. In light of the revitalization of such political formations, the current special issue serves to critically investigate contemporary forms of far-right populism and fascism in the Global South. Many contributors cast a critical perspective upon the political dimensions of the current proliferation of extreme forms of reactionary politics and the social conditions that gave rise, and are in the process of giving rise, to such movements. Other contributors explore the historical and theoretical roots of current forms of far-right populism and fascism (FRP/F), critical engagement with present-day problems that are resultant of their preponderance, as well as analyses of the cultural forces and tendencies that have led to, and are leading to, their contemporary ascendance. Some contributors also consider the question of whether it is possible to develop a general theory of FRP/F in contemporary society, present inquiries into the future development of FRP/F, or investigate opportunities for opposition to FRP/F in the present context. (shrink)

This paper concerns the Black Box. It is not the engineer’s black box that can be opened to reveal its mechanism, but rather one whose operations are inferred through input from (and output to) a companion observer. We are observers ourselves, and we attempt to understand minds through interactions with their host organisms. To this end, Ranulph Glanville followed W. Ross Ashby in elaborating the Black Box. The Black Box and its observer together form a system having different properties (...) than either component alone, making it a greater Black Box to any further-external observer. How far into this greater box can a further-external observer probe? The answer is crucial to understanding Black Boxes, and so an answer is offered here. It employs von Foerster’s machines, abstract entities having mechano-electrical bases, just like putative Black Boxes. Von Foerster follows Turing, Ashby, E. F. Moore, and G. H. Mealy in recognizing archetype machines that he calls trivial (predictable) and non-trivial (non-predictable). It is argued here that non-trivial machines are the only true Black Boxes. But non-trivial machines can be concatenated from trivial machines. Hence, the utter core of any greater Black Box (a non-trivial machine) may involve two (or more) White Boxes (trivial machines). This is how an unpredictable thing emerges from predictable parts. Interactions of White Boxes—of trivial machines—may be the ultimate source of the mind. Keywords: . (shrink)

Creativity pervades human life. It is the mark of individuality, the vehicle of self-expression, and the engine of progress in every human endeavor. It also raises a wealth of neglected and yet evocative philosophical questions: What is the role of consciousness in the creative process? How does the audience for a work for art influence its creation? How can creativity emerge through childhood pretending? Do great works of literature give us insight into human nature? Can a computer program really be (...) creative? How do we define creativity in the first place? Is it a virtue? What is the difference between creativity in science and art? Can creativity be taught? The new essays that comprise The Philosophy of Creativity take up these and other key questions and, in doing so, illustrate the value of interdisciplinary exchange. Written by leading philosophers and psychologists involved in studying creativity, the essays integrate philosophical insights with empirical research. CONTENTS I. Introduction Introducing The Philosophy of Creativity Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Barry Kaufman II. The Concept of Creativity 1. An Experiential Account of Creativity Bence Nanay III. Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art 2. Creativity and Insight Gregory Currie 3. The Creative Audience: Some Ways in which Readers, Viewers and/or Listeners Use their Imaginations to Engage Fictional Artworks Noël Carroll 4. The Products of Musical Creativity Christopher Peacocke IV. Ethics & Value Theory 5. Performing Oneself Owen Flanagan 6. Creativity as a Virtue of Character Matthew Kieran V. Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science 7. Creativity and Not So Dumb Luck Simon Blackburn 8. The Role of Imagination in Creativity Dustin Stokes 9. Creativity, Consciousness, and Free Will: Evidence from Psychology Experiments Roy F. Baumeister, Brandon J. Schmeichel, and C. Nathan DeWall 10. The Origins of Creativity Elizabeth Picciuto and Peter Carruthers 11. Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: a Contradiction in Terms? Margaret Boden VI. Philosophy of Science 12. Hierarchies of Creative Domains: Disciplinary Constraints on Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention Dean Keith Simonton VII. Philosophy of Education (& Education of Philosophy) 13. Educating for Creativity Berys Gaut 14. Philosophical Heuristics Alan Hájek. (shrink)

A well-known theory about under which circumstances a statement is true in a fiction is The Reality Principle, which originate in the work of David Lewis: (RP) Where p1... pn are the primary fictional truths of a fiction F , it is true in F that q iff the following holds: were p1 ... pn the case, q would have been the case (Walton 1990: 44). RP has been subjected to a number of counterexamples, up to a point where, in (...) the words of Stacie Friend “it is widely recognized that the Reality Principle […] cannot be a universal inference rule for implied story-truths” (Friend 2017: 33). This chapter argues that the strength of these counterexamples is widely overestimated, and that they do not, on closer scrutiny, constitute reasons for rejecting RP. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is not to show that the answer to the question in the title is ‘no’, but to show that it is ‘probably not’, at least on one particular theory of memory. Assuming that an experience will only be an episodic memory if we are ‘disposed to take the relevant experience into account when judging about the past’ (Debus 2010, p. 25), there are many obstacles to answering the question in the affirmative. If one holds that (...) it is possible to have episodic memories during dreams, they will have to accept more implications than may be palatable. Specifically, they will have to believe, contra Sosa (2007), that we can actually make judgments during dreams and not just imagine doing so; that we retain a fairly high degree of rationality during dreams; and that there is a respectable sense in which we can refer to the past at all when we dream. (shrink)

(Updated 5/23/24) This unpublished paper, which readers should feel free to cite, is posted primarily for the historical record. In recent work that has, deservedly, received some attention, Paul R. Daniels presents and defends a non-standard theory of persistence that he dubs transdurantism, according to which persisting objects are temporally extended simples. This is exactly what I do in work dating back to Spring 2004. (This work includes this version of this paper, as well as later version that was presented (...) to the University of Rochester's Philosophy Department in 2005.) While this might be a total coincidence, I doubt that it is, especially given that 'transdurantism' appears as a name for a theory of persistence associated with me in at least two places in the literature, one of which includes a citation of this paper. The paper begins with a discussion of what I call 'locative relations' (the relations borne by material objects to the regions of space and time they occupy), which draws relevant distinctions that others have failed to draw. The results of this discussion are then used in constructing spatial analogues for the three established theories of persistence--endurantism, perdurantism, and exdurantism--as well as for transdurantism. Next, these four views concerning persistence are explicitly formulated and a defense of their formulation is offered. Finally, transdurantism's advantages and disadvantages relative to the other theories are discussed. The main goal of the paper is to challenge the trichotomy between the established theories by arguing that transdurantism is also a viable view concerning persistence through time. [Note: Befitting its status as a historical document, with the exception of some light editing to fix typos that might impede understanding, no changes have been made to the paper.]. (shrink)

Nico Silins (2012, 2013, 2020) argues that conscious judgments justify self-attribution of belief in the content judged. In defending his view, he makes use of Moore’s Paradox, seeking to show how his theory can explain what seems irrational or absurd about sentences of the form, ‘p and I do not believe that p’. I show why his argument strategy is not available to defend the view that conscious judgments can justify the self-attribution of belief in the content judged. I then (...) propose an amended version of his theory, which holds that sincerely asserting a proposition—whether aloud or silently—justifies self-ascribing belief in the proposition expressed. In doing so, I draw on an argument which I made in Gregory (2018) that there is something it is like to make a sincere assertion which is different from what it is like to make an insincere assertion. The phenomenology of sincere assertion provides immediate justification for self-ascription of belief in a proposition which has been sincerely asserted; nonetheless, it may be that we need to interpret our own assertions in order to determine which propositions they express. This paves the way for showing how two competing schools of thought about self-knowledge—one which holds that self-knowledge is immediate and one which holds that self-knowledge is inferential—might be combined. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that if one adopts conditional probabilities as the primitive concept of probability, one must deal with the fact that even in very ordinary circumstances at least some probability values may be imprecise, and that some probability questions may fail to have numerically precise answers.

In The Decline of the West Spengler puts forward a type of philosophical anthropology, an account of the structures of human experiential consciousness and a method of “physiognomic” analysis, which I argue has dimensions that can be understood as akin to existential phenomenology. Humanity, for Spengler, is witness to the creative flux of “Becoming” and constructs a world of phenomena bounded by death, underpinned by the two prime feelings of dread and longing and structured by the two forms of Destiny (...) (Time) and Direction (Space). Human existence, Spengler argues, is future-directed and open in the sense that there is a certain degree of freedom in the ways in which humanity can actualize its existential possibilities. In the course of elaborating the existential implications of this future-orientation, Spengler introduces the concept of care (Sorge), the fundamental experiential structure. (shrink)

This paper argues against the common justification for the necessity of the state through the particular difficulty of private property right. Instead, I argue that the necessity of the state is internal to the concept of right in general. In order to show this, I point out how Kants adoption of hylomorphic language for the concept of right, where there is a formal and material aspect of right, allows us to understand the Rechtslehre as progressing through a syllogistic deduction from (...) innate right (major), private right (minor) to public right (conclusion). Material right is made necessary through its subsumption under formal right in the civil condition. (shrink)

The theory of lower previsions is designed around the principles of coherence and sure-loss avoidance, thus steers clear of all the updating anomalies highlighted in Gong and Meng's "Judicious Judgment Meets Unsettling Updating: Dilation, Sure Loss, and Simpson's Paradox" except dilation. In fact, the traditional problem with the theory of imprecise probability is that coherent inference is too complicated rather than unsettling. Progress has been made simplifying coherent inference by demoting sets of probabilities from fundamental building blocks to secondary representations (...) that are derived or discarded as needed. (shrink)

Report submitted by Gregory B. Sadler, Pilot Project Coordinator to Sonya Brown, WAC Activity Director, Fayetteville State University, June 28 2011. -/- A Pilot program focused on improving student performance in carrying out Close Readings in humanities-based discipline courses was developed and implemented under the auspices of Writing Across the Curriculum and Title III at Fayetteville State University in Winter and Spring 2011. Five faculty were involved in the Pilot, myself as the coordinator, and four other faculty from four (...) different disciplines as participants. -/- The central idea behind the Pilot was that by focusing on the lower-order skills which are scaffolded as components into the higher-order activity of Close Reading of texts, and redesigning courses to emphasize development of these lower-order skills, student performances in Close Readings would also be improved. This did turn out to be the case. Most of the supporting data is qualitative rather than quantitative. -/- It is recommended that similar activities be continued, but that participating faculty be required to provide much more prescriptively structured and detailed assessment data and information about their course design. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the under-researched figure A.W. Rehberg in his exchange with Kant over the relationship between theory and practice in the philosophy of right. I argue that Rehberg raises, what I call, two problems of political matter which attempt to show that Kant's overly formal approach to political theory cannot justifiably determine political practice. The first problem is the problem of positive determinations of right, rather than merely negative prohibitions. Rehberg takes this to mean that Kant cannot determine (...) us to a specific form of constitution. I argue that Kant's innovation of intelligible property functions as a response to this critique in that it provides the possibility of synthetic propositions of right a priori. Second, Rehberg insists that an a priori system of right cannot relate to already formed historical communities. Here Kant's response comes close to agreeing with Rehberg as Kant takes prudential or historical reasoning to harmonize with the demands of a priori right in order to applied to the sensible world. Kant, in this instance, comes closer to Rehberg by denying centralized enlightened monarchy and the reliance on natural and historical development for the application of right. (shrink)

In the worlds of philosophy, linguistics, and communications theory, a view has developed which understands conscious experience as experience which is 'reflected' back upon itself through language. This indicates that the consciousness we experience is possible only because we have culturally invented language and subsequently evolved to accommodate it. This accords with the conclusions of Daniel Dennett (1991), but the 'hermeneutic objection' would go further and deny that the objective sciences themselves have escaped the hermeneutic circle. -/- The consciousness we (...) humans experience is developed only within the context of crossing the 'symbolic threshold' (Percy 1975; Deacon 1997) and one of the earliest and most important symbols we acquire is that of the self, or 'the subject of experience'. It is only when we achieve self-awareness that the world, as such, comes to exist for us as an object (which contains categories and sub-categories of objects). Any consciousness imputed to prelinguistic stages of development is based on projection and guesswork, since we can know nothing directly of it. It can be said that any experience which does not separate an inner subject from an outer world is probably a continuum of sensation in which environmental stimulus and instinctive response are experienced as a unity; it may be 'lived experience' but it is experience 'lived' non-consciously. -/- Speech requires assertion and by learning to speak we find ourselves asserting, in essence, our selves into the world. The narrative form of language allows us to develop life stories, self-knowledge, and, most important, narrative memory coincident with narrative time. All this is made possible with the intersubjective 'net' of language which allows us to know ourselves by first identifying with the viewpoint of others; and, later, such allows us to identify with other minds as we anticipate their reception our communication. These three, assertion, narrative, and intersubjectivity are the essence of what language is and are the keystones that make culture possible outside of nature. (shrink)

We emerge into everythingness. The senses mingle incestuously. Nothing is distinct or differentiated. Everything is no-thing. How is it we come to be as distinct entities? Let me personalize: In what manner did I become an "I"? Is the motive force behind this much-maligned, much-altered, much-abused body my soul? my genes? me?

[This is a commentary article on Michel Bitbol's TA: "The Tangled Dialectic of Body and Consciousness: A Metaphysical Counterpart of Radical Neurophenomenology".] -/- A summary of the major metaphysical positions reveals them to be variable enough that they do not deny experience to the researcher. Further, Merleau-Ponty’s intra-ontology and related terms are fleshed out.

There are numerous contexts in which philosophers and others use model-theoretic methods in assessing the validity of ordinary arguments; consider, for example, the use of models built upon 'possible worlds' in examinations of modal arguments. But the relevant uses of model-theoretic techniques may seem to assume controversial semantic or metaphysical accounts of ordinary concepts. So, numerous philosophers have suggested that standard uses of model-theoretic methods in assessing the validity of modal arguments commit one to accepting that modal claims are to (...) be analysed in terms of possible worlds. The paper provides a very general account of how uses of model-theoretic methods in demonstrating facts about validity and invalidity may in fact often be uncoupled from controversial semantic or metaphysical theses, applying the resulting techniques to some modal cases in particular. (shrink)

Earl Conee and Richard Feldman have recently argued that the evidential support relation should be understood in terms of explanatory coherence: roughly, one's evidence supports a proposition if and only if that proposition is part of the best available explanation of the evidence. Their thesis has been criticized through alleged counterexamples, perhaps the most important of which are cases where a subject has a justified belief about the future. Kevin McCain has defended the thesis against Byerly's counterexample. I argue that (...) McCain's defense is inadequate before pointing toward a more promising solution for explanationism. The Byerly–McCain exchange is important because it casts light on the difficult issues of the standards for justification and the nature of epistemic support. Furthermore, McCain's defense of explanationism about epistemic support represents an important recent development of the burgeoning explanationist program in epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The field of of imprecise probability has matured, in no small part because of Teddy Seidenfeld’s decades of original scholarship and essential contributions to building and sustaining the ISIPTA community. Although the basic idea behind imprecise probability is (at least) 150 years old, a mature mathematical theory has only taken full form in the last 30 years. Interest in imprecise probability during this period has also grown, but many of the ideas that the mature theory serves can be difficult to (...) apprehend to those new to the subject. Although these fundamental ideas are common knowledge in the ISIPTA community, they are expressed, when they are expressed at all, obliquely, over the course of years with students and colleagues. -/- A single essay cannot convey the store of common knowledge from any research community, let alone the ISIPTA community. But, this essay nevertheless is an attempt to guide those familiar with the basic Bayesian framework to appreciate some of the elegant and powerful ideas that underpin the contemporary theory of lower previsions, which is the theory that most people associate with the term ‘imprecise probabilities’. (shrink)

The paper examines the relationships between the contents of imaginative episodes and the mental images that often play a central role within them. It considers, for example, whether the presence of mental imagery is required for a mental episode to count as an imagining.

The desirable gambles framework offers the most comprehensive foundations for the theory of lower pre- visions, which in turn affords the most general ac- count of imprecise probabilities. Nevertheless, for all its generality, the theory of lower previsions rests on the notion of linear utility. This commitment to linearity is clearest in the coherence axioms for sets of desirable gambles. This paper considers two routes to relaxing this commitment. The first preserves the additive structure of the desirable gambles framework and (...) the machinery for coherent inference but detaches the interpretation of desirability from the multiplicative scale invariance axiom. The second strays from the additive combination axiom to accommodate repeated gambles that return rewards by a non-stationary processes that is not necessarily additive. Unlike the first approach, which is a conservative amendment to the desirable gambles framework, the second is a rad- ical departure. Yet, common to both is a method for describing rewards called discounted utility. (shrink)

(Open Access article, freely available to download from publisher's site.) Our visual experiences of objects as located in external space, and as having definite three-dimensional shapes, are closely linked to our implicit expectations about what things will look like from alternative viewpoints. What sorts of contents do these expectations involve? One standard answer is that they relate to what things will look like to us upon changing our positions. And what sorts of mental representations do the expectations call upon? A (...) standard answer is that they involve our powers of visual imagery; this answer requires us to allow for the possibility of unconscious visual imagery, however. The current paper presents an alternative model of the contents of our implicit visual expectations, one that regards them as wholly nonreflexive. It also argues that, once we ascribe the relevant contents to the expectations, there is no longer any reason for holding that they involve our powers of visual imagery. (shrink)

_Theurgy and the Soul_ is a study of Iamblichus of Syria, whose teachings set the final form of pagan spirituality prior to the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Gregory Shaw focuses on the theory and practice of theurgy, the most controversial and significant aspect of Iamblichus's Platonism. Theurgy literally means "divine action." Unlike previous Platonists who stressed the elevated status of the human soul, Iamblichus taught that the soul descended completely into the body and thereby required the performance of (...) theurgic rites—revealed by the gods—to unite the soul with the One. Iamblichus was once considered one of the great philosophers whose views on the soul and the importance of ritual profoundly influenced subsequent Platonists such as Proclus and Damascius. The Emperor Julian followed Iamblichus's teachings to guide the restoration of traditional pagan cults in his campaign against Christianity. Although Julian was unsuccessful, Iamblichus's ideas persisted well into the Middle Ages and beyond. His vision of a hierarchical cosmos united by divine ritual became the dominant world view for the entire medieval world and played an important role in the Renaissance Platonism of Marsilio Ficino. Even Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that he expected a reading of Iamblichus to cause a "revival in the churches." But modern scholars have dismissed him, seeing theurgy as ritual magic or "manipulation of the gods." Shaw, however, shows that theurgy was a subtle and intellectually sophisticated attempt to apply Platonic and Pythagorean teachings to the full expression of human existence in the material world. (shrink)

Most commentators on Spengler's philosophy tend to focus on the details of his cyclical theory of world-history, according to which history should be understood in terms of the rise and fall of great cultures. I argue that Spengler's philosophy of history is itself an expression of his primary concern with philosophical analysis of the structures of human consciousness, and that an awareness of Spengler's account of the existential structures of subjective consciousness enables one to grasp the reasoning behind some of (...) the key features of his philosophy of history, such as his cultural isolation hypothesis and critique of Eurocentric historiography. I further argue that the way to access Spengler's theory of consciousness, and the ways in which it informs his philosophy of history, is via his critical engagement with the Kant character that recurs in the first volume of The Decline of the West. (shrink)

Why is there a long-standing debate about paraphrase in poetry? Everyone agrees that paraphrase can be useful; everyone agrees that paraphrase is no substitute for the poem itself. What is there to disagree about? Perhaps this: whether paraphrase can specify everything that counts as a contribution to the meaning of a poem. There are, we say, two ways to take the question; on one way of taking it, the answer is that paraphrase cannot. Does this entail that there is meaning (...) mysteriously locked in a poem, meaning that cannot be represented in any way other than via the poem itself? If that were so it would have profound implications for poetry’s capacity to convey insight. We suggest reasons for thinking that the entailment does not hold. Throughout, we connect the traditional debate over paraphrase, which has largely been conducted within the fields of philosophy and literary theory, with recent empirically oriented thinking about the communicability of meaning, represented by work in pragmatics. We end with a suggestion about what is to count as belonging to meaning, and what as merely among the things that determine meaning. (shrink)

Growing concern with the panpsychist's ostensive inability to solve the ‘combination problem’ has led some authors to adopt a view titled ‘Cosmopsychism’. This position turns panpsychism on its head: rather than many tiny atomic minds, there is instead one cosmos-sized mind. It is supposed that this view voids the combination problem, however I argue that it does not. I argue that there is a ‘de-combination problem’ facing the cosmopsychist, which is equivalent to the combination problem as they are both concerned (...) with subjects being proper parts of other subjects. I then propose two methods for both theorists to avoid the problem of subject-subject proper parthood relations: a distinction between absolute and relative phenomenal unity, and a modification of the essential nature of subjects. Of these two options, I find the latter option wanting and propose that the first should be adopted. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the prospects for a skeptical version of infallibilism. For the reasons given above, I think skeptical invariantism has a lot going for it. However, a satisfactory theory of knowledge must account for all of our desiderata, including that our ordinary knowledge attributions are appropriate. This last part will not be easy for the infallibilist invariantist. Indeed, I will argue that it is much more difficult than those sympathetic to skepticism have acknowledged, as there are serious (...) problems with regarding paradigmatic, typical knowledge attributions as loose talk, exaggerations, or otherwise practical uses of language. So, I do not think the pragmatic story that skeptical invariantism needs is one that works without a supplemental error theory of the sort left aside by purely pragmatic accounts of knowledge attributions. In its place, I will offer a compromise pragmatic and error view that I think delivers everything that skeptics can reasonably hope to get. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain the curious role played by the Argument from Absolute Terms in Peter Unger's book Ignorance, I provide a critical presentation of the argument, and I consider some outstanding issues and the argument’s contemporary significance.

In The Decline of the West, Spengler argues that cultures have lifecycles. Although he warns that the end of Faustian (western) culture is nigh, Spengler suggests that the death of the culture might be forestalled if a rapprochement can be brought about between the technologized powers of Reason and the remains of cultural life. This portrayal of Reason as a salvific force seems to contradict Spengler’s typical depiction of Reason as a violent anti-cultural force. This paper reconstructs Spengler’s account of (...) Reason as both killer and preserver of western culture and argues that in both roles it remains inherently violent. (shrink)

This paper argues that the recent renewal of interest in the philosophy of Oswald Spengler, particularly concerning its warnings of the imminent demise of Western Civilisation, is misplaced. Arguments concerning the accuracy of his predictions or cultural analysis have overlooked the necessity of evaluating the coherence of the philosophical system that Spengler used to generate and justify his speculative declarations. Such an evaluation indicates a number of apparent contradictions at the heart of Spengler’s historical model. The attempt to resolve these (...) contradictions has resulted in a sharp division of interpretation amongst Spengler commentators, into positivist and relativist camps. Neither interpretation, I suggest, is capable of rendering Spengler’s historical system coherent. It is therefore argued that Spengler’s philosophy is fundamentally flawed. (shrink)

History and the modern sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a methodological naturalism that disregards talk of divine agency. Some religious thinkers argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism: a non-negotiable and a priori commitment to a materialist metaphysics. In response to this charge, I make a sharp distinction between procedural requirements and metaphysical commitments. The procedural requirement of history and the sciences—that proposed explanations appeal to publicly-accessible bodies of evidence—is non-negotiable, but has no metaphysical implications. The metaphysical (...) commitment is naturalistic, but is both a posteriori and provisional, arising from the fact that for more than 400 years no proposed theistic explanation has been shown capable of meeting the procedural requirement. I argue that there is nothing to prevent religious thinkers from seeking to overturn this metaphysically naturalistic stance. But in order to do so they would need to show that their proposed theistic explanations are the best available explanations of a range of phenomena. Until this has been done, the metaphysical naturalism of history and the sciences remains defensible. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish four ways to ask the question whether morality must be grounded in God. One asks whether or not God is the ultimate source for moral goodness, values, or standards. A second way asks whether a minimal morality, purified of any explicit reference to God, could not be worked out on bases of common human experience and rational reflection. A third way asks whether some kind of divine revelation is required for morality to be adequately understood (...) or worked out. A fourth way asks whether a person requires practical engagement with God in adequately live out a sufficiently moral life. I then examine Anselm of Canterbury's responses to each of these questions. -/- The first part examines the issue of God as the origin of moral value and standards. The second part shift to a vantage point taking Anselm’s God out of the picture, in order to outline a morality based upon the exercise of a natural human practical rationality. The third and fourth part address what Anselm would see as shortcomings of such an approach to morality. The third part focuses on guidance and assistance Anselm thinks Christianity provides to human reason in developing a more adequate morality. The fourth part looks at the indispensable role Anselm accords to God and to Christianity, understood not only as belief or practice, but as community and experience. (shrink)

Defences of inference to the best explanation (IBE) frequently associate IBE with scientific realism, the idea that it is reasonable to believe our best scientific theories. I argue that this linkage is unfortunate. IBE does not warrant belief, since the fact that a theory is the best available explanation does not show it to be (even probably) true. What IBE does warrant is acceptance: taking a proposition as a premise in theoretical and/or practical reasoning. We ought to accept our best (...) scientific theories since they are the theories that are most likely to lead to the goal of science, which is that of knowledge. In support of this claim I invoke Bill Lycan's Panglossian reflections regarding Mother Nature.1. (shrink)

This chapter is a work in applied metaphysics. Recent discussions of monism and metaphysical dependence are deployed to develop a view—the doctrine of divine priority (DDP)—that is a viable alternative to the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). DDS and the traditional motivation for it are discussed, then DDP is introduced by way of an analogy involving Jonathan Schaffer’s distinction between two forms of monism. It is argued that DDP is an alternative to DDS by showing that it is consistent with (...) the traditional motivation for the latter view, and argued that DDP is a viable alternative by showing that objections to its peculiar implications rest on assumptions that can reasonably be rejected. In the concluding section, the findings of the main discussion are summarized and DDP’s potential theological import is illustrated with a brief discussion of a possible solution to the Problem of the Trinity it affords. (shrink)

‘Irony,’ says Quintilian, is that figure of speech or trope ‘in which something contrary to what is said is to be understood’ . His formula has stood the test of time. It passes intact into Dr Johnson's dictionary . It survives virtually intact in ours:Irony is the use of words to express something other than, and especially the opposite of, [their] literal meaning.

Philip Goff has recently argued that due to the ‘subject-summing problem’, panpsychism cannot explain consciousness. The subject-summing problem is a problem which is analogous to the physicalist's explanatory gap; it is a gap between the micro-experiential facts and the macro-experiential facts. Goff also suggests that there could be a solution by way of a ‘phenomenal bonding relation’, but believes that this solution is not up to scratch because we cannot form a positive not-merely-role-playing concept of this relation. In this paper, (...) I argue that the phenomenal bonding solution is up to scratch. I argue that the panpsychist, by carefully inspecting their phenomenology and scrutinising their concepts, can form a positive concept of the phenomenal bonding relation. By doing this they can start to get around their explanatory gap. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard has argued that luck is fundamentally a modal notion: an event is lucky when it occurs in the actual world, but does not occur in more than half of the relevant nearby possible worlds. Jennifer Lackey has provided counterexamples to accounts which, like Pritchard’s, only allow for the existence of improbable lucky events. Neil Levy has responded to Lackey by offering a modal account of luck which attempts to respect the intuition that some lucky events occur in more (...) than half of the relevant nearby possible worlds. But his account rejects that events which are as likely as those in Lackey’s examples are lucky. Instead, they are merely fortunate. I argue that Levy’s argument to this effect fails. I then offer a substitute account of the improbability condition which respects this intuition. This condition says that the relevant notion of probability for luck is epistemic. (shrink)