There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring to someone involves preferring to make any decision (...) using their opinions instead of your own. In a slogan, deferring opinions is deferring decisions. Generalizing the proposal of Dorst (2020a), we first formulate a new principle that shows exactly how your opinions must relate to an expert’s for this to be so. We then build off the results of Levinstein (2019) and Campbell-Moore (2020) to show that this principle is also equivalent to the constraint that you must always expect the expert’s estimates to be more accurate than your own. Finally, we characterize the conditions an expert’s opinions must meet to be worthy of deference in this sense, showing how they sit naturally between the too-strong constraints of Reflection and the too-weak constraints of New Reflection. (shrink)

It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it (...) would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices. (shrink)

I argue that a standard formulation of hinge epistemology is host to epistemic relativism and show that two leading hinge approaches (Coliva’s acceptance account and Pritchard’s nondoxastic account) are vulnerable to a form of incommensurability that leads to relativism. Building on both accounts, I introduce a new, minimally epistemic conception of hinges that avoids epistemic relativism and rationally resolves hinge disagreements. According to my proposed account, putative cases of epistemic incommensurability are rationally resolvable: hinges are propositions that are the objects (...) of our belief-like attitudes and are rationally revisable in virtue of our overarching commitment to avoid systematic deception in our epistemic practices. (shrink)

We address a long-standing debate over whether classical magnetic forces can do work, ultimately answering the question in the affirmative. In detail, we couple a classical particle with intrinsic spin and elementary dipole moments to the electromagnetic field, derive the appropriate generalization of the Lorentz force law, show that the particle's dipole moments must be collinear with its spin axis, and argue that the magnetic field does mechanical work on the particle's elementary magnetic dipole moment. As consistency checks, we calculate (...) the overall system's energy-momentum and angular momentum, and show that their local conservation equations lead to the same force law and therefore the same conclusions about magnetic forces and work. We also compute the system's Belinfante-Rosenfeld energy-momentum tensor. (shrink)

According to the fitting attitude (FA) analysis of value concepts, to conceive of an object as having a given value is to conceive of it as being such that a certain evaluative attitude taken towards it would be fitting. Among the challenges that this analysis has to face, two are especially pressing. The first is a psychological challenge: the FA analysis must call upon attitudes that shed light on our value concepts while not presupposing the mastery of these concepts. The (...) second challenge is normative: the FA analysis must account for the fittingness of the relevant attitudes in terms of a kind of normativity intimately related to these attitudes, but again without presupposing the mastery of the relevant value concepts. In this paper, we show that real progress is possible if we pay close attention to the nature of the attitudes recruited by the analysis. More specifically, we claim that an FA analysis that appeals to emotions conceived as evaluative attitudes — as opposed to, for instance, evaluative judgements or evaluative perceptions — has the best prospects of meeting the two challenges and of putting the FA analysis on a strong footing. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of the concept of recognition and its connection with identity and respect. This is related to the question of how women are or are not adequately recognised or respected for their achievements in sport and whether eliminating sex segregation in sport is a solution. This will require an analysis of the concept of excellence in sport, as well as the relationship between fairness and inclusion in an activity that is fundamentally about bodily movement. I argue (...) that attempts to address the problem of women’s recognition in sport need to do so in ways that neither eliminate sport as a fairness regulated system for developing individual excellence in bodily movement nor that prevent women’s achievement of sporting excellence, with the regard that belongs to them. Doing this requires us to decide whether sport is about champions or about individual excellence. (shrink)

I demonstrate that a "speech act" theory of meaning for imperatives is—contra a dominant position in philosophy and linguistics—theoretically desirable. A speech act-theoretic account of the meaning of an imperative !φ is characterized, broadly, by the following claims. -/- LINGUISTIC MEANING AS USE !φ’s meaning is a matter of the speech act an utterance of it conventionally functions to express—what a speaker conventionally uses it to do (its conventional discourse function, CDF). -/- IMPERATIVE USE AS PRACTICAL !φ's CDF is to (...) express a practical (non-representational) state of mind—one concerning an agent's preferences and plans, rather than her beliefs. -/- Opposed to speech act accounts is a preponderance of views which deny that a sentence's linguistic meaning is a matter of what speech act it is used to perform, or its CDF. On such accounts, meaning is, instead, a matter of "static" properties of the sentence—e.g., how it depicts the world as being (or, more neutrally, the properties of a model-theoretic object with which the semantic value of the sentence co-varies). On one version of a static account, an imperative 'shut the window!' might, for instance, depict the world as being such that the window must be shut. -/- Static accounts are traditionally motivated against speech act-theoretic accounts by appeal to supposedly irremediable explanatory deficiencies in the latter. Whatever a static account loses in saying (prima facie counterintuitively) that an imperative conventionally represents, or expresses a picture of the world, is said to be offset by its ability to explain a variety of phenomena for which speech act-theoretic accounts are said to lack good explanations (even, in many cases, the bare ability to offer something that might meet basic criteria on what a good explanation should be like). -/- I aim to turn the tables on static accounts. I do this by showing that speech act accounts are capable of giving explanations of phenomena which fans of static accounts have alleged them unable to give. Indeed, for a variety of absolutely fundamental phenomena having to do with the conventional meaning of imperatives (and other types of practical language), speech act accounts provide natural and theoretically satisfying explanations, where a representational account provides none. (shrink)

One of the most plausible and widely discussed examples of strong emergence is molecular structure. The only detailed account of it, which has been very influential, is due to Robin Hendry and is formulated in terms of downward causation. This paper explains Hendry’s account of the strong emergence of molecular structure and argues that it is coherent only if one assumes a diachronic reflexive notion of downward causation. However, in the context of this notion of downward causation, the strong emergence (...) of molecular structure faces three challenges that have not been met and which have so far remained unnoticed. First, the putative empirical evidence presented for the strong emergence of molecular structure equally undermines supervenience, which is one of the main tenets of strong emergence. Secondly, it is ambiguous how the assumption of determinate nuclear positions is invoked for the support of strong emergence, as the role of this assumption in Hendry’s argument can be interpreted in more than one way. Lastly, there are understandings of causation which render the postulation of a downward causal relation between a molecule’s structure and its quantum mechanical entities, untenable. (shrink)

The conceptualisation of kinship and its study remain contested within anthropology. This paper draws on recent cognitive science, developmental cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of science to offer a novel argument for a view of kinship as progeneratively or reproductively constrained. I shall argue that kinship involves a form of extended cognition that incorporates progenerative facts, going on to show how the resulting articulation of kinship’s progenerative nature can be readily expressed by an influential conception of kinds, the homeostatic property (...) cluster view. Identifying the distinctive role that our extended cognitive access to progenerative facts plays in kinship delivers an integrative, progenerativist view that avoids standard performativist criticisms of progenerativism as being ethnocentric, epistemically naïve, and reductive. (shrink)

Newton published his deduction of universal gravity in Principia (first ed., 1687). To establish the universality (the particle-to-particle nature) of gravity, Newton must establish the additivity of mass. I call ‘additivity’ the property a body's quantity of matter has just in case, if gravitational force is proportional to that quantity, the force can be taken to be the sum of forces proportional to each particle's quantity of matter. Newton's argument for additivity is obscure. I analyze and assess manuscript versions of (...) Newton's initial argument within his initial deduction, dating from early 1685. Newton's strategy depends on distinguishing two quantities of matter, which I call ‘active’ and ‘passive’, by how they are measured. These measurement procedures frame conditions on the additivity of each quantity so measured. While Newton has direct evidence for the additivity of passive quantity of matter, he does not for that of the active quantity. Instead, he tries to infer the latter from the former via conceptual analyses of the third law of motion grounded largely on analogies to magnetic attractions. The conditions needed to establish passive additivity frustrate Newton's attempted inference to active additivity. (shrink)

The linguistic foundations of science and technology include many terms that have been borrowed from ancient languages. In the case of terms with origins in the Greek language, the modern meaning can often differ significantly from the original one. Here we use the PubMed database to demonstrate the prevalence of words of Greek origin in the language of modern science, and call for scientists to exercise care when coining new terms.

This article makes a case for the capacity of "social practice" accounts of agency and freedom to criticize, resist, and transform systemic forms of power and domination from within the context of religious and political practices and institutions. I first examine criticisms that Michel Foucault's analysis of systemic power results in normative aimlessness, and then I contrast that account with the description of agency and innovative practice that pragmatist philosopher Robert Brandom identifies as "expressive freedom." I argue that Brandom can (...) provide a normative trajectory for Foucault's diagnoses of power and domination, helping to resolve its apparent lack of ethical direction. I demonstrate that Foucault, in turn, presents Brandom with insights that might overcome the charges of abstraction and conservatism that his pragmatic inferentialism frequently encounters. The result is a vindication of social practice as an analytical lens for social criticism that is at once both immanent and radical. (shrink)

In this paper I consider two related issues raised by Aristotle 's treatment of hearing and sounds. The first concerns the kinds of changes Aristotle takes to occur, in both perceptual medium and sense organs, when a perceiver hears a sounding object. The second issue concerns Aristotle 's views on the nature and location of the proper objects of auditory perception. I argue that Aristotle 's views on these topics are not what they have sometimes been taken to be, and (...) that when rightly understood they compare favourably in many respects with leading contemporary accounts. (shrink)

this requirement for adaptations. Emergent characters are always potential adaptations. Not all selection processes produce adaptations, however. The key issue, in delineating a selection process, is the relationship between a character and fitness. The emergent character approach is more restrictive than alternative schemas that delineate selection..

In Republic 8–9, Socrates describes four main kinds of vicious people, all of whose souls are “ruled” by an element other than reason, and in some of whom reason is said to be “enslaved.” What role does reason play in such souls? In this paper, I argue, based on Republic 8–9 and related passages, and in contrast to some common alternative views, that for Plato the “enslavement” of reason consists in this: instead of determining for itself what is good, reason (...) is forced to desire and pursue as good a goal determined by the soul’s ruler. (shrink)

In this paper, we show how an internal tension in Wilfrid Sellars’s understanding of truth, as well as an external tension in his account of meaning attribution, can be resolved while adhering to a Sellarsian spirit, by appealing to the particular fictionalist accounts of truth-talk and proposition-talk that we have developed elsewhere.

This commentary continues an exchange on eugenics in Monash Bioethics Review between Anomaly (2018), Wilson (2019), and Veit, Anomaly, Agar, Singer, Fleischman, and Minerva (2021). The eponymous question, “Can ‘Eugenics’ be Defended?”, is multiply ambiguous and does not receive a clear answer from Veit et al.. Despite their stated desire to move beyond mere semantics to matters of substance, Veit et al. concentrate on several uses of the term “eugenics” that pull in opposite directions. I argue, first, that Veit et (...) al. (2021) makes much the same error as does Anomaly (2018) in characterizing eugenics; second, that the paper misunderstands the relationship between eugenics and enhancement; and third, that it distorts the views expressed in my “Eugenics Undefended”. (shrink)

The dual role of olfaction in both smelling and tasting, i.e. flavour perception, makes it an important test case for philosophical theories of sensory individuation. Indeed, the psychologist Paul Rozin claimed that olfaction is a “dual sense”, leading some scientists and philosophers to propose that we have not one, but two senses of smell: orthonasal and retronasal olfaction. In this paper I consider how best to understand Rozin’s claim, and upon what grounds one might judge there to be one or (...) two distinct olfactory modalities. I conclude that while Rozin may be right that humans have dual occurrences of an olfactory ‘sense’, the concept of a sense-modality, and hence the ‘sense’ of smell, is ambiguous between two different notions: a physiological sensory channel and an experiential modality, along the lines suggested by J. J. Gibson. Furthermore, recognising that these are complementary rather than competing conceptions of a sense-modality enables the formulation of a powerful ‘dual-concept’ framework for posing and addressing questions concerning the complex architecture of human multisensory experience. (shrink)

Art museums are built to elicit a wide variety of feelings, emotions, and moods from their visitors. While these effects are primarily achieved through the artworks on display, museums commonly deploy numerous other affect-inducing resources as well, including architectural solutions, audio guides, lighting fixtures, and informational texts. Art museums can thus be regarded as spaces that are designed to influence affective experiencing through multiple structures and mechanisms. At face value, this may seem like a somewhat self-evident and trivial statement to (...) make. However, in this article, I argue that niche construction theory enables us to make several illuminating observations about the ways in which art museums are engineered to influence our feelings. To expound on this claim, I single out for discussion the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which for its entire lifespan (1939–52)—and prior to its evolution into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—was expressly organized to kindle in its visitors a special, spiritual form of aesthetic experience: a liberating feeling of cosmic rhythm and order, no less. -/- The argument will proceed as follows: In Part 1, I introduce the basics of niche construction theory and specify the sense in which I apply it to museums and aesthetic affective experiencing. In Part 2, I outline the origins and ethos of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, after which I pin down the type of affective experience it fostered by drawing from visitors’ self-reported reactions to the artworks on display. Then, in Part 3, I use niche construction theory to explain how the Museum consciously fashioned itself, by means of various mutually supportive resources and technologies, into a fertile setting for the specified feelings. Finally, in Part 4, I extend beyond the discussed case to assess the implications of niche construction theory for a broader understanding of how art museums make us feel. In other words, by tracing the early steps of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting towards the present-day Guggenheim, I call attention to the general variation in affective niches as regards their structure, technologies, and affective aims. Overall, the article elucidates the functioning of art museums as affective niches and furthers the conceptual development of niche construction theory in aesthetics. (shrink)

The fields of gender and social movements have traditionally consisted of separate literatures. Recently, however, a number of scholars have begun a fruitful exploration of the ways in which gender shapes political protest. This study adds three things to this ongoing discussion. First, the authors offer a systematic typology of the various ways in which movements are gendered and apply that typology to a wide variety of movements, including those that do not center on gender issues in any obvious way. (...) Second, the authors discuss the process by which movements become gendered. In doing so, they go beyond current scholarship by bringing “others” squarely into the gendered analysis. The article concludes by speculating about the outcomes of these processes and suggests that movements that draw on feminine stereotypes face a double bind that hampers their success. Illustrations come from movements in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. (shrink)

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Katherine Hawley.1Bitcoin was invented to serve as a digital currency that demands no trust in financial institutions, such as commercial and central banks. This paper discusses metaphysical aspects of bitcoin, in particular the view that bitcoin is socially constructed, non-concrete, and genuinely exists. If bitcoin is socially constructed, then one may worry that this reintroduces trust in the communities responsible for the social construction. Although we may have to rely on certain communities, (...) I argue that social construction doesn’t imply a demand for trust because the relevant communities don’t take on any relevant commitments. Bitcoin is indeed trust-free. (shrink)

Consequentialist theories determine rightness solely based on real or expected consequences. Although such theories are popular, they often have difficulty with generalizing intuitions, which demand concern for questions like “What if everybody did that?” Rule consequentialism attempts to incorporate these intuitions by shifting the locus of evaluation from the consequences of acts to those of rules. However, detailed rule-consequentialist theories seem ad hoc or arbitrary compared to act consequentialist ones. We claim that generalizing can be better incorporated into consequentialism by (...) keeping the locus of evaluation on acts but adjusting the decision theory behind act selection. Specifically, we should adjust which types of dependencies the theory takes to be decision-relevant. Using this strategy, we formulate a new theory, generalized act consequentialism, which we argue is more compelling than rule consequentialism both in modeling the actual reasoning of generalizers and in delivering correct verdicts. (shrink)

We study the structure of families of theories in the language of arithmetic extended to allow these families to refer to one another and to themselves. If a theory contains schemata expressing its own truth and expressing a specific Turing index for itself, and contains some other mild axioms, then that theory is untrue. We exhibit some families of true self-referential theories that barely avoid this forbidden pattern.

This very short paper provides a panpsychic solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness. It was presented to the Philosophical Society of the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education (OUDCE) on 18th August 2019, and posted on Twitter (@ATBollands) on the 20th August, 2019. It solves the Hard Problem by 1) making the case for Panpsychism, and 2) solving the Combination Problem (Panpsychism's equivalent of the Hard Problem). -/- The paper aims to be clear, concise, to-the-point and accessible to the (...) general educated reader. It is short on discussion and elaboration, and does not seek to defend its argument against all reasonable objections. However, by keeping its argument to under 2 pages, it ensures the casual reader is not discouraged from taking a look, allowing them to engage with both the Hard Problem and this Short Solution. (shrink)

The discovery of mirror neurons in both primates and humans has led to an enormous amount of research and speculation as to how conscious beings are able to interact so effortlessly among one another. Mirror neurons might provide an embodied basis for passive synthesis and the eventual process of further communalization through empathy, as envisioned by Edmund Husserl. I consider the possibility of a phenomenological and scientific investigation of laughter as a point of connection that might in the future bridge (...) the gap Husserl feared had grown too expansive between the worlds of science and philosophy. Part I will describe some implications of the discovery of mirror neurons. Part II will address Husserl’s concept of embodiment as it relates to neuroscience and empathy. Part III will be a primer to investigating laughter phenomenologically. Part IV will be a continuation of the study of laughter and empathy as possible elements helpful in broadening the scope of what Husserl calls the Life-World. (shrink)

Unmanaged recreation presents a challenge to both researchers and managers of outdoor recreation in the United States because it is shrouded in uncertainty resulting from disagreement over the definition of the problem, the strategies for resolving the problem, and the outcomes of management. Incomplete knowledge about recreation visitors’ values and relationships with one another, other stakeholders, and the land further complicate the problem. Uncertainty and social complexity make the unmanaged recreation issue a wicked problem. We describe the wickedness inherent in (...) unmanaged recreation and some of the implications of wickedness for addressing the problem for the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Conclusions about the nature of the problem are based on a problem appraisal that included a literature review and interviews of key informants. Addressing wickedness calls for institutional changes that allow for and reward the use of trust building, inclusive communication, and genuinely collaborative processes. (shrink)

Financial literacy is becoming a pivotal skill in navigating the marketplaces within the predominant rising digital branches of trading domains; however, there remains a concerning gap in the purchasing behavior of adolescents, who are its primary users. With this in mind, the main objective of our research is to determine whether there is a relationship between a student's level of financial literacy and their online purchase decision-making. The researchers employed an explanatory mixed approach and purposive sampling to identify respondents from (...) Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc. A 5-point Likert scale survey was utilized to collect data from 66 respondents, followed by semi-structured interviews with 10 selected participants. The results showed a moderately positive correlation between a student's financial literacy and online purchase decisions, as determined by the Pearson correlation coefficient. Thus, the thematic analysis revealed that respondents generally have good financial literacy, emphasizing factors like pricing, online reviews, and product ratings when making digital marketplace decisions. However, there are notable gaps in their understanding of basic financial concepts and their ability to apply them in real-life situations. To effectively enhance students’ financial literacy and online purchasing decisions, a holistic approach is necessary, including targeted interventions, practical applications, and continuous adaptation to evolving consumer behaviors. Educational institutions, policymakers, and stakeholders should work together to create comprehensive programs that provide students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to negotiate real-world financial situations and make sound judgments in the digital commerce ecosystem. By emphasizing practical learning, key financial concepts, and trustbuilding approaches, educators may empower students to become responsible consumers capable of managing their resources successfully and ethically. (shrink)

Causation is defined as a relation between facts: C causes E if and only if C and E are nomologically independent facts and C is a necessary part of a nomologically sufficient condition for E. The analysis is applied to problems of overdetermination, preemption, trumping, intransitivity, switching, and double prevention. Preventing and allowing are defined and distinguished from causing. The analysis explains the direction of causation in terms of the logical form of dynamic laws. Even in a universe that is (...) deterministic in both temporal directions, not every fact must have a cause and present facts may have no future causes. (shrink)

This study delved into the perceptions of Mathematics’ student teachers regarding the implementation of gamification in secondary schools at Nasugbu, Batangas. This research investigates the rising global trend of implementing gamification in education, particularly in Mathematics teaching, to address contemporary learner needs by examining student teachers' use of gamified activities, their design factors, encountered challenges, and perceived benefits. Purposive sampling was utilized in a multiple-case study approach to select ten (10) secondary school Mathematics’ student teachers engaged in practice teaching in (...) Nasugbu, Batangas. Qualitative findings revealed common gamified activities employed by student teachers, emphasizing the importance of student-centered design, alignment with learning objectives, student engagement, assessment, and adaptation to the classroom context. Challenges faced by student teachers in integrating gamification included technical limitations, sustaining engagement, time management, and addressing diverse learning styles. Despite these challenges, integrating gamification showed benefits such as increased engagement, improved learning outcomes, reduced math anxiety, and enhanced attitudes towards Mathematics. In conclusion, gamified activities play a significant role in enhancing student engagement and learning outcomes in Mathematics classrooms. The findings suggest student teachers to explore and integrate gamified activities into Mathematics lessons to create engaging environments supporting student success. (shrink)

In Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy, C.D. Broad advanced a distinctive ontology of things and processes. He argues that neither things nor processes are reduced to each other but instead are reduced to some further kind of entity: “absolute process.” This paper will present Broad's theory of absolute processes and argue that they are best understood as tropes by developing a version of Donald C. Williams's trope ontology. This process ontology of tropes is then defended against objections in the contemporary metaphysics (...) literature. (shrink)

In 1956, a few writings of Wittgenstein that he didn't publish in his lifetime were revealed to the public. These writings were gathered in the book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). There, we can see that Wittgenstein had some discontentment with the way philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians were thinking about paradoxes, and he even registered a few polemic reasons to not accept Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

The question I wish to explore is this: Does idealism conflict with common sense? Unfortunately, the answer I give may seem like a rather banal one: It depends. What do we mean by ‘idealism’ and ‘common sense?’ I distinguish three main varieties of idealism: absolute idealism, Berkeleyan idealism, and dualistic idealism. After clarifying what is meant by common sense, I consider whether our three idealisms run afoul of it. The first does, but the latter two don’t. I conclude that while (...) Moore’s famous common sense critique is sound against external world skepticism, against Berkeleyan idealism and dualist idealism it is unavailing. (shrink)

Some of Dave Chappelle’s uses of storytelling about seemingly mundane events, like his experiences with his “white friend Chip” and the police, are examples of what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “Positive Propaganda.” This is in contrast to “Demagoguery,” the sort of propaganda described by Jason Stanley that obstructs empathic recognition of others, and undermines reasonable debate among citizens regarding policies that matter: the justice system, welfare, inequality, and race, for example. Some of Chappelle’s humor, especially in his most recent Netflix (...) specials, but also in his earlier standup performances and his series The Chappelle Show, is akin to art that appeals to emotion in the ways suggested by Du Bois in “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926). Beauty is essential to art, but, “I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent” (p. 22). The “one side” is that which appears to extoll American ideals, but in reality undermines them, perpetuating the subordinate status of “the other”--black citizens. Replace “beauty” with “humor” or “funny”, and we see striking parallels between Chappelle’s socio-political performances and Du Bois’ call for positive propaganda, each of which constitute “civic rhetoric” broadly construed. We no longer live in Du Bois’ America of explicit denial of rights. In many ways our situation is worse, as the mechanisms of exclusion are implicit, difficult to dislodge, because they are invisible. Chappelles’ humor draws attention to subtle undermining-propaganda in our liberal democracy, transforming it through his counter-propaganda into the spectacle that it should be; ubiquitous democracy-denying propaganda should be as obvious to whites as it is to minorities. In his words, we should all see that “that shit is fucking incredible” (Killin’ Them Softly). (shrink)

In addition to having an institutional site or scope, a theory of distributive justice might also have an institutional ‘reach’ or currency. It has the first when it applies to only social phenomena. It has the second when it distributes only socially produced goods. One objection to luck egalitarianism is that it has absurd implications. In response, Tan has defended a luck egalitarian account that has a strictly institutional reach. I argue, first, that Tan’s view contains two fatal ambiguities and, (...) second, that, to be sound, it requires an institutional currency. This second argument implies that virtually all extant luck egalitarian currencies are incompatible with his approach. I argue, third, that the alleged absurd implications often have little to do with the extent of luck egalitarianism’s reach. (shrink)

Modern philosophy can often appear to be mere cryptomnesia, redressed and resuited to fit the particular mouth from which it is espoused. This notion is but a sorrowful chimera binding the 21st-century mind to the confines of an eternal shadow, an eternal prison of doubt in the face of limitless potential. As a species, we are rapidly approaching the precipice of Yahweh's original position as instantiators of consciousness, as the I AM in relation to our artificial progeny. Could one fabricate (...) a candidate more fitting for a contra-analysis of our current situation than Hegel? One could not. (shrink)

Just as Quine and others have argued for a deflationism about the property of truth, Sinan Dogramaci has argued for a deflationism about rationality. Specifically, Dogramaci claims that we have no reason to think that the basic, deductive, epistemic rules we call “rational” have any sort of “unifying property.” A “unifying property” is a property that is necessary, sufficient, and explanatorily illuminating. My goal in this paper is to undermine Dogramaci’s argument for this radical position. I do this by first (...) outlining Dogramaci’s distinctive view on the function of our epistemically evaluative terms. This view, called epistemic communism, has it that the function of terms like “rational” is to support the coordination of our community on a single set of epistemic rules. I offer a reconstruction of Dogramaci’s argument from epistemic communism to deflationism about rationality. I next raise an objection to Dogramaci’s argument: different sets of epistemic rules do not equally support the coordinative function. Dogramaci has a response to this objection, but I argue that this response is less than satisfactory. I illustrate that this response is unsatisfactory by employing work by David Enoch and Joshua Schechter. After pushing my objection to Dogramaci’s argument, I develop, on Dogramaci’s behalf, an objection to my non-deflationary attempt to undermine his argument. In the final section of the paper, I reply to this objection offered on Dogramaci’s behalf and conclude that whether we are epistemic communists or not, we need not accept deflationism. (shrink)

The semantics of racial slurs has recently become a locus of debate amongst philosophers. While everyone agrees that slurs are offensive, there is disagreement about the linguistic mechanism responsible for this offensiveness. This paper places the debate about racial slurs into the context of a larger issue concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics, and argues that even on minimalist assumptions, the offensiveness of slur words is more plausibly due to their semantic content rather than any pragmatic mechanism. Finally, I (...) note that slurs make a good test case for expanding our semantic theories beyond the truth conditional tradition of Frege, which will be necessary in order to broaden the types of expressions handled by semantic theories. (shrink)

The first case of COVID-19 in Iran was officially reported by the Iranian Government in February 19, 2020. In order to control and prevent the infection, the Government closed all the universities and requested the people to stay at home. Consequently, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), like other universities, cancelled all the face-to-face classes in different Schools, and since the exact date for the resolution of this calamity could not be determined, TUMS decided to proceed the education flow through (...) the available Learning Management System (LMS). As one of the departments of the university, TUMS Department of Foreign Languages devised a plan and prepared itself for the new situation. This paper is a narrative account of the transition. Through reading this narration as a case of educational solution in the preset particular situation, language professors can adopt and implement efficient strategies and approaches in their educational settings. (shrink)

Recent empirical work on the concept of intentionality suggests that people’s assessments of whether an action is intentional are subject to uncertainty. Some researchers have gone so far as to claim that different people employ different concepts of intentional action. These possibilities have motivated a good deal of work in the relatively new field of experimental philosophy. The findings from this empirical research may prove to be relevant to medical ethics. In this article, we address this issue head on. We (...) first describe a study we conducted on intention ascription. Drawing on recent work in experimental philosophy, we investigated the possibility that the ascription of intentions to clinical actors in clinical settings is influenced by prior judgments about the goodness or badness of the consequences of the action in question. Our study was modeled on experimental studies in other contexts that have shown that people, when presented with a range of scenarios, are more likely to classify a side effect of an action as intended if the side effect is negative or reflects poorly on the actor than if it is positive or reflects well on the actor. We investigated whether this asymmetry in intention ascriptions was also present among physicians who were asked to ascribe intentions to clinical actors in certain well-defined clinical scenarios. After describing the study and its results, we discuss its implications for medical ethics. (shrink)

I identify two mutually exclusive notions of formalism in Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: a thin concept of aesthetic formalism and a thick concept of aesthetic formalism. Arguably there is textual support for both concepts in Kant’s third critique. I offer interpretations of three key elements in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement which support a thick formalism. The three key elements are: Harmony of the Faculties, Aesthetic Ideas and Sensus Communis. I interpret these concepts in relation to the conditions for (...) theoretical Reason, the conditions for moral motivation and the conditions for intersubjectivity, respectively. I conclude that there is no support for a thin concept of aesthetic formalism when the key elements of Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement are understood in the context of his broader critical aims. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

Autorka przedstawia analizę pojęcia wstrząsu jako kategorii estetycznej użytej przez Th. Adorno w kontekście niemożności odbioru muzyki nowej. Nawiązując do Filozofii nowej muzyki oraz Teorii estetycznej autorka wyznacza kilka sposobów opisu i rozumienia wstrząsu, jakie znaleźć można u Adorno. Przy okazji śledząc tok myślenia filozofa zadaje sobie pytanie o to, czy wstrząs, o którym pisze Adorno jest zasadniczo czymś negatywnym, czym też może autor widzi w tym, gwałtownym sposobie reakcji na muzykę nową – ratunek.

This paper weaves together a number of separate strands each relating to an aspect of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. The first strand introduces his radical and incoherent idea of a private object. Wittgenstein in § 258 and related passages is not investigating a perfectly ordinary notion of first person privacy; but his critics have treated his question, whether a private language is possible, solely in terms of their quite separate question of how our ordinary sensation terms can be understood, in a (...) philosophical context, to acquire meaning. Yet it is no part of his intention to demonstrate logically that ordinary sensations are not intrinsically meaningful. This is a tempting yet misleading picture, the picture also expressed through the idea of Augustine’s child who is conceptually articulateprior to learning how to talk. This picture lies behind the born Crusoe, an idea at the centre of the dichotomy between language as essentially shared and essentially shareable, a dichotomy considered here to result from a misconception of two quite separate but related aspects of Wittgenstein’s treatment offollowing a rule. The notion of a misleading picture, in both its pre-theoretical and philosophical aspects, also plays a crucial role in a treatment of Saul Kripke’s well-known “Postscript: Wittgenstein and Other Minds.”. (shrink)

Open theists argue that God's relationship to time, as conceived in classical theism, is erroneous. They explain that it is contradictory for an atemporal being to act in a temporal universe, including experiencing its temporal successions. Contrary to the atemporalists, redemptive history has shown that God interacts with humans in time. This relational nature of God nullifies the classical notion of God as timelessly eternal. Therefore, it lacks a philosophical and theological basis. Because God is in time, He does not (...) know all future contingencies and, therefore, changes. This study examines open theism's appropriation of the A and B theories of time to the divine-human relationship. The study argues that divine temporality does not solve the tension of divine-human relationships, especially in relation to the future. Further, historical divine temporality does not negate the fact of divine atemporality. It mainly stems from God's choice to create temporal creatures and His relationship with them. Furthermore, if it is not logically and metaphysically contradictory for an omnipresent being to act in space, then it follows that an atemporal being can act in time. Whether time is understood from the metric or psychological point of view, it does not transcend God, and therefore, the limitation it places on human creatures with respect to the future does not apply to God. Lastly, although a few philosophers reject the notion of eternity as timelessly eternal, the doctrine has a philosophical and theological basis in the Scripture. (shrink)

The normative phenomenon is ubiquitous in human interactions, emerging in a wide range of fields studied by social science and considered as one of the essential traits of human’s way of life. The modern subjectivist tradition of social science has been based on a model in which elements like self, freedom and reason play the most relevant roles in explaining normativity by connecting beliefs to behaviors by means of motives that are non-reducible to preferences, desires or impulses. In this paper (...) I will discuss normativity in general in order to turn into normativity as it is conceived in social science and then with a focus on normativity based on reasons. I will argue in favor of a naturalistic approach to normativity by means of a defense of a concept of will, which can provide a bridge between social and natural science, rather than giving further reason to sustain a dualistic approach to them. Moreover, I will claim that mental qualities usually alleged to be essential for assigning personality, agency, and moral responsibility, such as rationality, self-consciousness, and freedom, are neither sufficient nor necessary for a naturalistic characterization of moral agents, or for explaining normativity in human evaluative practices. (shrink)

This brief elucidation of two quotes from the Genealogy will be apt for more accessible interpretation following the completion of my next paper. Stay tuned for some hard-fought philosophy.

The purpose of this book is to further an understanding of religion -- not of the kind that might come from psychological or sociological enquiry -- but an understanding from the inside, so to speak, of the subject-matter of such explanatory enquiries. An understanding of the kind possessed by someone who, firmly believing in a religion, has thought about the nature of religion. The book aims to increase this kind of understanding where it already exists, and in its absence, at (...) bringing about some degree of it without presupposing in a reader any religious belief at all. (shrink)

“Trends in Logic XVI: Consistency, Contradiction, Paraconsistency, and Reasoning - 40 years of CLE” is being organized by the Centre for Logic, Epistemology and the History of Science at the State University of Campinas (CLEUnicamp) from September 12th to 15th, 2016, with the auspices of the Brazilian Logic Society, Studia Logica and the Polish Academy of Sciences. The conference is intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of CLE, and is centered around the areas of logic, epistemology, philosophy and history of (...) science, while bringing together scholars in the fields of philosophy, logic, mathematics, computer science and other disciplines who have contributed significantly to what Studia Logica is today and to what CLE has achieved in its four decades of existence. It intends to celebrate CLE’s strong influence in Brazil and Latin America and the tradition of investigating formal methods inspired by, and devoted to, philosophical views, as well as philosophical problems approached by means of formal methods. The title of the event commemorates one of the three main areas of CLE, what has been called the “Brazilian school of paraconsistency”, combining such a pluralist view about logic and reasoning. (shrink)

Two experiments are reported which demonstrated intransitivity in category judgments, thus challenging a widely held assumption that the relation between categorized sets is one of class inclusion. Subjects consistently accepted the truth of certain category statements, in spite of being aware of the existence of counterexamples. Implications for semantic memory theory are discussed.