In recent decades, theories of representation have undergone a constructivist turn, as many theorists no longer view the represented subject as prior to but rather as an effect of representation. Whereas some critics have claimed that lacking an ontologically pre-given subject undermines the theory of representation, many democratic theorists have sought to reconceptualize representation and its democratic possibilities by turning away from ontological questions altogether. By focusing instead on how representatives come to know the public interest, many scholars now contend (...) that an epistemological account best explains how political representation can foster democratic participation. Yet, theorists of representation have not assessed whether this turn to epistemology has overcome the ontological problems that initially motivated it. This article tracks epistemological defenses of representation to outline two models of political representation that attempt to tackle the epistemological problem of constituent interest without positing a foundational ontology of the subject. I argue that both theoretical tendencies ultimately remain caught in the problems of ontology, thereby undercutting their normative aspirations to foster political participation. Turning to Hannah Arendt’s comments on public interest and her writings on council democracy, the article retheorizes the concept of political representation to avoid the ontological problems that beset current accounts. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the possibility of developing a Kantian account of the ethics of belief by deploying the tools provided by Kant's ethics. To do so, I reconstruct epistemic concepts and arguments on the model of their ethical counterparts, focusing on the notions of epistemic principle, epistemic maxim and epistemic universalizability test. On this basis, I suggest that there is an analogy between our position as moral agents and as cognizers: our actions and our thoughts are subject to (...) the same rational norm. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore Kant’s account of normativity through the prism of the distinction between the natural and the human sciences. Although the pragmatic orientation of the human sciences is often defined in contrast with the theoretical orientation of the natural sciences, I show that they are in fact regulated by one and the same norm, namely reason’s demand for autonomy.

If updating with E has the same result across all epistemically possible worlds, then the agent has no uncertainty as to the behavior of the update, and we may call it a transparent update. If an agent is uncertain about the behavior of an update, we may call it opaque. In order to model the uncertainty an agent has about the result of an update, the same update must behave differently across different possible worlds. In this paper, I study opaque (...) updates using a simple system of dynamic epistemic logic suitably modified for that purpose. The paper highlights the connection between opaque updates and the dynamic-epistemic principles Perfect-Recall and No-Miracles. I argue that opaque updates are central to contemporary discussions in epistemology, in particular to externalist theories of knowledge and to the related problem of epistemic bootstrapping, or easy knowledge. Opaque updates allow us to explicitly investigate a dynamic form of uncertainty, using simple and precise logical tools. (shrink)

While it is well known that Kant’s transcendental idealism forbids the transcendent use of reason and its ideas, what had been underexplored until the last decade or so is his account of the positive use of reason’s ideas as it is expounded in the “Appendix” of the Critique of Pure Reason. The main difficulty faced by his account is that while there is no doubt that for Kant we need to rely on the ideas of reason in order to gain (...) knowledge of the empirical world, the justificatory grounds for our use remain unclear. Commentators have suggested various ways of addressing this worry. Some emphasize that reason’s demand for systematicity is purely methodological; others that the assumption that nature itself is systematically unified is transcendentally necessary. Some simply deem Kant’s account “extremely self-contradictory.” What is clear is that if neither the presupposition of nature’s systematic unity nor the command to seek this unity have any justification, reason’s regulative function, which plays a crucial role in Kant’s account of cognition, also lacks justification. This would be a disastrous result, for it would threaten the very possibility of cognition and its progress. This chapter proposes to tackle this problem from a new angle by exploring the role of reason’s feelings in Kant’s account. While the relationship between practical reason and feeling has been explored at length in the literature, the relationship between theoretical reason and feeling has not, and my aim is to suggest that doing so can shed new light on reason’s cognitive activity. For focusing on the fact that theoretical reason’s need manifests itself as a feeling will enable me to reassess how this need is met through reason’s regulative use of its ideas. (shrink)

I critically discuss two kinds of argument in favour of ontological pluralism and argue that they fail to show that ways of being are explanatorily fruitful.

This paper argues that contrary to what is often thought, virtue for Kant is not just a matter of strength of will; it has an essential affective dimension. To support this claim, I show that certain affective dispositions, namely moral feelings and desires, are virtuous in the sense that they are constitutive of virtue at the affective level. There is thus an intrinsic connection between an agent’s practice of virtue and the cultivation of her affective dispositions.

In the recent literature on the issue, a number of commentators have argued that Kant’s aesthetic theory commits him to the position that nothing is ugly. For instance, in ‘Why Kant finds nothing ugly’, Shier argues that ‘within Kant’s aesthetics, there cannot be any negative judgments of taste’ (Shier (1998): 413). And in ‘Kant’s problems with ugliness’, Thomson claims that ‘Kant’s aesthetic theory precludes […] ugliness’ (Thomson (1992): 107). In other words, as it is presented in some of the literature, (...) Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment seems to preclude him from accounting for the possibility of ugliness. A number of reasons have been put forward to explain why there can be no ugliness for Kant. Some have to do with his account of experience in general. Others have to do with the very nature of the free play between imagination and understanding. Of course, the real source of the problem is that the Critique of Judgment does not actually discuss ugliness, so commentators are left with the task of filling in the gaps. This paper aims to argue that Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment commits him not only to the existence of the ugly, but to the distinction between two kinds of ugliness. To support this claim, I will start from the premise that if there is to be room for ugliness, it should be defined as the contrary of beauty. However, I will suggest that Kant’s account of beauty can be negated in two ways, one that gives rise to impure ugliness and the other to pure ugliness. I will examine them in turn, first by showing that impure ugliness is the contrary of beauty insofar as it contravenes our interests and produces a desire to dispose of it, whereas beauty is necessarily disinterested for Kant. In the second section, I will use Kant’s definition of judgments of pure beauty to carve a space for an account of pure ugliness. For, it should present all the characteristics that make it “pure” whilst replacing the characteristics that make it beautiful with the ones that make it ugly. On this basis, I will define pure ugliness as the disinterested displeasure caused by the experience of what I will call “foul play” between the imagination and the understanding. (shrink)

I defend a neo-Kantian view wherein we are capable of being completely autonomous and impartial and argue that this ability can ground normativity. As this view includes an existentialist conception of the self, I defend radical choice, a primary component of that conception, against arguments many take to be definitive. I call the ability to use radical choice “existentialist voluntarism” and bring it into a current debate in normative philosophy, arguing that it allows that we can be distanced from all (...) ends at once so as to be completely impartial. Finally, I indicate how this can be the source of normativity as it provides a purely impartial reason for being rational. (shrink)

In line with familiar portrayals of Kant's ethics, interpreters of his philosophy of education focus essentially on its intellectual dimension: the notions of moral catechism, ethical gymnastics and ethical ascetics, to name but a few. By doing so, they usually emphasise Kant's negative stance towards the role of feelings in moral education. Yet there seem to be noteworthy exceptions: Kant writes that the inclinations to be honoured and loved are to be preserved as far as possible. This statement is not (...) only at odds with Kant's general claim that education should not encourage feelings, but more importantly, it encourages a feeling that is in many ways paradigmatically un-Kantian. How are we to understand the fact that of all feelings, the love of honour should be preserved? To answer this question, I begin by clarifying the reasons behind Kant's negative stance towards feelings in moral education. I then turn to his account of the feeling of love of honour. After distinguishing between its good and its bad forms, I consider two ways of making sense of the positive role Kant assigns to it. The first, modest reading will suggest that the feeling of love of honour is morally useful because it has two functions: an epistemic one, and a motivational one. The second, more ambitious reading will suggest that the feeling of love of honour enables the child to experience her inner worth as bearer of value. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that for Kant, a combination of epigenesis and monogenesis is the condition of possibility of anthropology as he conceives of it and that moreover, this has crucial implications for the biological dimension of his account of human nature. More precisely, I begin by arguing that Kant’s conception of mankind as a natural species is based on two premises: firstly the biological unity of the human species (monogenesis of the human races); and secondly (...) the existence of ‘seeds’ which may or may not develop depending on the environment (epigenesis of human natural predispositions). I then turn to Kant’s account of man’s natural predispositions and show that far from being limited to the issue of races, it encompasses unexpected human features such as gender, temperaments and nations. These predispositions, I argue, are means to the realisation of Nature’s overall purpose for the human species. This allows me to conclude that man’s biological determinism leads to the species’ preservation, cultivation and civilisation. (shrink)

On my interpretation of Kant, feeling plays a central role in the mind: it has the distinct function of tracking and evaluating our activity in relation to ourselves and the world so as to orient us. In this article, I set out to defend this view against a number of objections raised by Melissa Merritt and Uri Eran. I conclude with some reflections on the fact that, despite being very different, Merritt and Eran’s respective views of Kantian feelings turn out (...) to have something potentially problematic in common: they blur the boundary between feelings and other kinds of mental states. (shrink)

In this paper I look at three versions of the charge that liberalism’s emphasis on individuals is detrimental to community—that it encourages a pernicious disregard of others by fostering a particular understanding of the individual and the relation she has with her society. According to that understanding, individuals are fundamentally independent entities who only enter into relations by choice and society is seen as nothing more than a venture voluntarily entered into in order to better oneself. Communitarian critics argue that (...) since liberals neglect the degree to which individuals are dependent upon their society for their self-understanding and understanding of the good, they encourage individuals to maintain a personal distance from others in their society. The detrimental effect this distancing is said to have on communities is often called “asocial individualism” or “asocialism.” I argue that all three versions of the charge fail against liberalism and that liberalism—with its insistence on the normative import of individuals—is not detrimental to communities, but can actually foster strong communities. (shrink)

Liberalism, historically, is closely associated with increased toleration, so it is unsurprising that a variety of contemporary authors (Hampton, Kukathas, Barry, Ten) consider toleration to be “the substantive heart of liberalism” (Hampton 1989, 802). The precise role of toleration in liberalism, though, is unclear; different liberals have different views. In this essay, I will discuss three sorts of liberal theories and indicate how they approach questions of toleration, arguing that one of them supports toleration of more sorts of activities (including (...) speech acts and lifestyles) than the others. While I think this is reason to favor that sort of theory, I will not defend that claim. Some reasonably think (and defend the view) that though toleration is of value, its limits should be drawn more narrowly. (shrink)

A dynamic epistemic logic is presented in which the single agent can reason about his knowledge stages before and after announcements. The logic is generated by reinterpreting multi agent private announcements in a single agent environment. It is shown that a knowability principle is valid for such logic: any initially true ϕ can be known after a certain number of announcements.

Molyneux asked whether a newly sighted person could distinguish a sphere from a cube by sight alone, given that she was antecedently able to do so by touch. This, we contend, is a question about general ideas. To answer it, we must ask (a) whether spatial locations identified by touch can be identified also by sight, and (b) whether the integration of spatial locations into an idea of shape persists through changes of modality. Posed this way, Molyneux’s Question goes substantially (...) beyond question (a), about spatial locations, alone; for a positive answer to (a) leaves open whether a perceiver might cross-identify locations, but not be able to identify the shapes that collections of locations comprise. We further emphasize that MQ targets general ideas so as to distinguish it from corresponding questions about experiences of shape and about the property of tangible (vs. visual) shape. After proposing a generalized formulation of MQ, we extend earlier work (“Many Molyneux Questions,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 2020) by showing that MQ does not admit a single answer across the board. Some integrative data-processes transfer across modalities; others do not. Seeing where and how such transfer succeeds and fails in individual cases has much to offer to our understanding of perception and its modalities. (shrink)

Within the ambit of modernity, "to be" a "person" means "to have" "a body." But what exactly do we mean when we say: ‘I have a body’? Who or what is this ‘I’ that ‘has’ ‘a body’ anyway? And how and why does this ‘having’, this possessing, of ‘a body’ confer legal and psychological personhood on us? Does such bodily possession necessarily define a mode of ‘self ownership’? Is distinguishing between the notions of ‘being an organism’, or even ‘being alive’, (...) and ‘having a body’ just a matter of semantics? Or are there pragmatic, bio-political consequences to the ways we construe our vitality and embodiment? Can thinking about ‘the body’ as a (or even, the) matter of ‘self possession’ tell us something interesting about how ‘personhood’ informs our lives? After all, what is ‘the nature’ of ‘the body’, if it can be possessed in such a manner? And does this proprietary way of thinking exhaust the possibilities for how we can imagine what it means to be an organism, a person, a citizen or a human? (shrink)

Williamson (2000) argues that the KK principle is inconsistent with knowledge of margin for error in cases of inexact perceptual observations. This paper argues, primarily by analogy to a different scenario, that Williamson’s argument is fallacious. Margin for error principles describe the agent’s knowledge as a result of an inexact perceptual event, not the agent’s knowledge state in general. Therefore, epistemic agents can use their knowledge of margin for error at most once after a perceptual event, but not more. This (...) insight blocks a crucial step in Williamson’s original argument. Along the way, the value of standard epistemic logic for analyzing margin for error reasoning is challenged. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that for Kant, a combination of epigenesis and monogenesis is the condition of possibility of anthropology as he conceives of it and that moreover, this has crucial implications for the biological dimension of his account of human nature. More precisely, I begin by arguing that Kant’s conception of mankind as a natural species is based on two premises: firstly the biological unity of the human species (monogenesis of the human races); and secondly (...) the existence of ‘seeds’ which may or may not develop depending on the environment (epigenesis of human natural predispositions). I then turn to Kant’s account of man’s natural predispositions and show that far from being limited to the issue of races, it encompasses unexpected human features such as gender, temperaments and nations. These predispositions, I argue, are means to the realisation of Nature’s overall purpose for the human species. This allows me to conclude that man’s biological determinism leads to the species’ preservation, cultivation and civilisation. (shrink)

Orthodox decision theory gives no advice to agents who hold two goods to be incommensurate in value because such agents will have incomplete preferences. According to standard treatments, rationality requires complete preferences, so such agents are irrational. Experience shows, however, that incomplete preferences are ubiquitous in ordinary life. In this paper, we aim to do two things: (1) show that there is a good case for revising decision theory so as to allow it to apply non-vacuously to agents with incomplete (...) preferences, and (2) to identify one substantive criterion that any such non-standard decision theory must obey. Our criterion, Competitiveness, is a weaker version of a dominance principle. Despite its modesty, Competitiveness is incompatible with prospectism, a recently developed decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences. We spend the final part of the paper showing why Competitiveness should be retained, and prospectism rejected. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend what may seem a surprising view: that John Stuart Mill’s famous harm principle would, if taken to be what justifies government action, disallow the existence of corporations. My claim is not that harmful activities of currently existing corporations warrants their losing corporate status according to the harm principle. The claim, rather, is that taken strictly, the harm principle and the legal possibility of incorporation are mutually exclusive. This view may be surprising—and I do not at (...) all mean to attribute it to Mill—but if I am right, it should be obvious. It should also encourage us to think more about the nature of the markets within which business occurs. (shrink)

As has been noted in the recent literature on Kant’s ethics, Kant holds that although natural drives such as feelings, emotions and inclinations cannot lead directly to moral worth, they nevertheless play some kind of role vis-à-vis morality. The issue is thus to understand this role within the limits set by Kant’s account of freedom, and it is usually tackled by examining the relationship between moral and non-moral motivation in the Groundwork, the Critique of Practical Reason, and more recently, the (...) Anthropology. In this respect, the aim of this paper is to argue that the Observations is a peculiar work, for by contrast with later works, its focus is not on the ways in which nature helps human beings become more moral, or better moral agents, but rather on how it ensures that the human species survives and flourishes independently of its morality, and in particular despite its lack thereof. In this sense, the Observations emphasizes first that the human species can, and does, function independently of its moral worth; and second, that it is intended to function beautifully has a whole in spite of its lack of moral worth. On this basis, I will conclude that the Kant of the Observations is more akin to a Mandeville than a Rousseau – he describes the functioning of the species, spelling out its survival mechanisms through natural drives, rather than explains that and how it ought to perfect itself. (shrink)

Deepfakes are algorithmically modified video and audio recordings that project one person’s appearance on to that of another, creating an apparent recording of an event that never took place. Many scholars and journalists have begun attending to the political risks of deepfake deception. Here we investigate other ways in which deepfakes have the potential to cause deeper harms than have been appreciated. First, we consider a form of objectification that occurs in deepfaked ‘frankenporn’ that digitally fuses the parts of different (...) women to create pliable characters incapable of giving consent to their depiction. Next, we develop the idea of ‘illocutionary wronging’, in which an individual is forced to engage in speech acts they would prefer to avoid in order to deny or correct the misleading evidence of a publicized deepfake. Finally, we consider the risk that deepfakes may facilitate campaigns of ‘panoptic gaslighting’, where many systematically altered recordings of a single person's life undermine their memory, eroding their sense of self and ability to engage with others. Taken together, these harms illustrate the roles that social epistemology and technological vulnerabilities play in human ethical life. (shrink)

I aim in this paper to provide defense of one way to look at what should be regulated in the market place. In particular, I discuss what should be tolerated and argue against corporate welfare. I begin by endorsing John Stuart Mill’s harm principle as a normative principle of toleration. I call strict commitment to the harm principle when considering the regulatory structure of markets market libertarianism and oppose that to promotionism, the view that endorses government interference to promote business (...) interests. I next discuss the widespread use of promotionist policies, arguing against them and for market libertarianism. I also consider problems for my view, recognizing that one of my responses may leave some thinking the paper is a reductio of the market libertarian view because of the sort of slow-growth state it endorses. Others will recognize it as a view promoted by some of the U.S. founding fathers and find it attractive in its own right. (shrink)

Whether Social Media Companies (hereafter, SMCs) such as Twitter and Facebook limit speech is an empirical question. No one disputes that they do. Whether they “censor” speech is a conceptual question, the answer to which is a matter of dispute. Whether they may do so is a moral question, also a matter of dispute. We address both of these latter questions and hope to illuminate whether it is morally permissible for SMCs to restrict speech on their platforms. This could be (...) part of a larger argument, when we do not explicitly offer here, that states ought not to forbid SMCs from censoring. We do not focus on legal statutes or precedent. We argue that nonstate actors can (as a conceptual matter) and may (as a moral matter) impede the freedoms of others to express themselves. That is, barring rare emergencies, nonstate actors may censor individuals even when states may not. (shrink)

The task of this paper is to provide what is necessary for a conceptual analysis of toleration such that one would have a clear definition of this central liberal tenet. First, notions related to but different from toleration are discussed; this provides guidance by introducing the likely definitional conditions of toleration. Next, those conditions are explicated and defended. Putting the conditions together, we can say an agent tolerates when she intentionally and on principle refrains from interfering with an opposed other (...) (or their behavior, etc.), though she believes she has the power to interfere. This definition is neither normatively loaded nor sufficient for moral or political theory. Readers may also prefer a definition made with some subset of the conditions rather than all. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend an account of harm as event-based but also in the mold of the account offered by Joel Feinberg in his magnum opus, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law.3 The analysis I offer is meant, that is, to be serviceable in a project like Feinberg’s–that is, it is one of normative political philosophy—and, importantly here, useful for determining when speech might rightly be limited. On the account defended here, to undergo a harm is to be (...) the subject of an event wherein one’s interests are wrongfully set back and wherein the status of the undergoing of the harm derives from its being the sort of event that it is (namely, a setting back of interests), independently of the badness of any resulting state. (shrink)

The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where ‘theory of mind’ and moral judgment meet. Preschool children’s judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side-effect is brought about 'on purpose' when the side-effect itself is morally bad but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of ‘on-purpose’ (as opposed to purpose influencing moral judgment). Judgments of intentional action are usually (...) assumed to be purely factual. That these judgments are sometimes partly normative — even in preschoolers — challenges current understanding. Young children’s judgments regarding foreseen side-effects depend upon whether the children process the idea that the character does not care about the side-effect. As soon as preschoolers effectively process the ‘theory of mind’ concept, NOT CARE THAT P, children show the side-effect effect.idea.. (shrink)

Do facts about what an agent would freely do in certain circumstances at least partly determine any of her moral obligations? Actualists answer ‘yes’, while possibilists answer ‘no’. We defend two novel hybrid accounts that are alternatives to actualism and possibilism: Dual Obligations Hybridism and Single Obligation Hybridism. By positing two moral ‘oughts’, each account retains the benefits of actualism and possibilism, yet is immune from the prima facie problems that face actualism and possibilism. We conclude by highlighting one substantive (...) difference between our two hybrid accounts. (shrink)

In recent years, a new generation of activists has reinvigorated debate over the public commemorative landscape. While this debate is in no way limited to statues, it frequently crystallizes around public representations of historical figures who expressed support for the oppression of certain groups or contributed to their past or present oppression. In this paper, I consider what should be done about such representations. A number of philosophers have articulated arguments for modifying or removing public monuments. Joanna Burch-Brown (2017) grounds (...) her argument for removal in what I call the “honorific” function of such representations—the ways in which they express and tend to cultivate admiration for their subjects. In the first two sections of the paper, I develop a novel argument for modifying these representations based on this insight. I argue that leaving such representations unmodified in the public space tends to undermine the dignity of members of oppressed groups as well as their assurance that society and government are committed to their rights and constitutional entitlements. In the paper’s third section, I develop a “balancing test” for determining whether the relevant moral and pragmatic considerations favor making a particular representation inaccessible to the public, or recontextualizing it for public consumption. Unlike some of the existing philosophical treatments of honorific representations that focus on particular monuments, this balancing test is designed for general application to any honorific representation that satisfies the presumptive case for modification. To conclude, I offer some reasons why weak forms of recontextualization that do not involve altering institutional context may often be an insufficient remedy for the problems I describe. (shrink)

Molyneux's Question (MQ) concerns whether a newly sighted man would recognize/distinguish a sphere and a cube by vision, assuming he could previously do this by touch. We argue that (MQ) splits into questions about (a) shared representations of space in different perceptual systems, and about (b) shared ways of constructing higher dimensional spatiotemporal features from information about lower dimensional ones, most of the technical difficulty centring on (b). So understood, MQ resists any monolithic answer: everything depends on the constraints faced (...) by particular perceptual systems in extracting features of higher dimensionality from those of lower. Each individual question of this type is empirical and must be investigated separately. We present several variations on MQ based on different levels of dimensional integration—some of these are familiar, some novel adaptations of problems known elsewhere, and some completely novel. Organizing these cases in this way is useful because it unifies a set of disparate questions about intermodal transfer that have held philosophical and psychological interest, suggests a new range of questions of the same type, sheds light on similarities and differences between members of the family, and allows us to formulate a much-augmented set of principles and questions concerning the intermodal transfer of spatiotemporal organization. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to extract from Kant's writings an account of the nature of the emotions and their function – and to do so despite the fact that Kant neither uses the term ‘emotion’ nor offers a systematic treatment of it. Kant's position, as I interpret it, challenges the contemporary trends that define emotions in terms of other mental states and defines them instead first and foremost as ‘feelings’. Although Kant's views on the nature of feelings have (...) drawn surprisingly little attention, I argue that the faculty of feeling has the distinct role of making us aware of the way our faculties relate to each other and to the world. As I show, feelings are affective appraisals of our activity, and as such they play an indispensable orientational function in the Kantian mind. After spelling out Kant's distinction between feeling and desire, I turn to the distinction between feeling and cognition and show that while feelings are non-cognitive states, they have a form of derived-intentionality. §4 argues that what feelings are about, in this derived sense, is our relationship to ourselves and the world: they function as affective appraisals of the state of our agency. §5 shows that this function is necessary to the activity of the mind insofar as it is orientational. Finally, §6 discusses the examples of epistemic pleasure and moral contentment and argues that they manifest the conditions of cognitive and moral agency respectively. (shrink)

Review of John Kekes' *A Case for Conservatism*.

The motivational constraint on normative reasons says that a consideration is a normative reason for an agent to act only if it is logically possible for the agent to act for that reason, or at least to be moved so to act. The claim figures Zelig-like in philosophical debates about practical reasons: on hand, occasionally prominent, but never the focus of discussion. However, because it is entailed by a number of prominent views about normative reasons—including various forms of internalism and (...) some views that closely connect reasons to good practical reasoning—its truth or falsehood has important implications. Mark Schroeder (2007) and Julia Markovits (2014) have recently criticized the Motivational Constraint on the grounds of so-called “elusive reasons”: reasons for some agent to act that are such that it is logically impossible both that they are normative reasons for that agent and the agent is moved to act for those reasons. In response, a number of philosophers (Sinclair 2016; Ridge and McKeever 2012; Paakkunainen 2017) have attempted to reconcile blindspot reasons with the motivational constraint. My aim in this paper is to show that these conciliatory strategies fail to overcome the challenge posed by elusive reasons. First, I examine each strategy and argue that it unsuccessful on its own terms. Second, I adduce another type of elusive reason not heretofore discussed in the literature, and I argue that these strategies also cannot make this kind of reason consistent with the motivational constraint. Finally, I defend the existence of this kind of reason against an important objection. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has fruitfully exploited formal resources to shed considerable light on the nature of knowledge. In the paper under examination, Williamson turns his attention to Gettier cases, showing how they can be motivated formally. At the same time, he disparages the kind of justification he thinks gives rise to these cases. He favors instead his own notion of justification for which Gettier cases cannot arise. We take issue both with his disparagement of the kind of justification that figures in (...) Gettier cases and the specifics of the formal motivation. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, psychological explanation canlegitimately be given in terms of belief and desire, but not in termsof knowledge. To explain why someone does what they do (so the common wisdom holds) you can appeal to what they think or what they want, but not what they know. Timothy Williamson has recently argued against this view. Knowledge, Williamson insists, plays an essential role in ordinary psychological explanation.Williamson's argument works on two fronts.First, he argues against the claim that, unlike knowledge, (...) belief is``composite'' (representable as a conjunction of a narrow and a broadcondition). Belief's failure to be composite, Williamson thinks, undermines the usual motivations for psychological explanation in terms of belief rather than knowledge.Unfortunately, we claim, the motivations Williamson argues against donot depend on the claim that belief is composite, so what he saysleaves the case for a psychology of belief unscathed.Second, Williamson argues that knowledge can sometimes provide abetter explanation of action than belief can.We argue that, in the cases considered, explanations that cite beliefs(but not knowledge) are no less successful than explanations that citeknowledge. Thus, we conclude that Williamson's arguments fail both coming andgoing: they fail to undermine a psychology of belief, and they fail tomotivate a psychology of knowledge. (shrink)

In this article author traces relation between argumentation and cultural practice. The first part focuses on definition of argumentation in informal logic tradition. In particular, it discusses argument in terms of verbal and social activity involving the use of everyday language. Author claims that there is no argumentation beyond language. The second part explains persuasive argumentation as a form of cultural practice. The persuasive arguments found in “social practice” can be understood as a social activity, analysable within the context of (...) a given cultural system. Author refers to an approach taking the argumentative expression as a certain type of communicative practice, directed towards respecting, recognising or accepting specific actions. The inclusion of persuasive argumentation in the “circuit of cultural activities” to be studied makes it possible to compare this type of argumentation with other social practices, and to posit a clear historical dimension in the study of argumentation. It also makes it possible to view persuasive argumentation as one of many cultural activities aimed at changing or perpetuating behaviours, attitudes, thinking, etc. The third part of the paper concerns the problem of humanistic interpretation of persuasive argumentation. Author attempts to develop this intuition, at the same time demonstrating the problems that arise from this approach. In conclusion, author tries to analyze argumentation in terms of culture theory and humanistic interpretation. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is often understood as a rival to existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. But some have disputed the position that virtue ethics is a genuine normative ethical rival. This chapter aims to crystallize the nature of this dispute by providing criteria that determine the degree to which a normative ethical theory is complete, and then investigating virtue ethics through the lens of these criteria. In doing so, it’s argued that no existing account of virtue ethics is a complete (...) normative ethical view that rivals existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. Moreover, it is argued that one of the most significant challenges facing virtue ethics consists in offering an account of the right-making features of actions, while remaining a distinctively virtue ethical view. (shrink)

Attempting to settle various debates from recent literature regarding its precise nature, I offer a detailed conceptual analysis of toleration. I begin by isolating toleration from other notions; this provides us some guidance by introducing the eight definitional conditions of toleration that I then explicate and defend. Together, these eight conditions indicate that toleration is an agent’s intentional and principled refraining from interfering with an opposed other (or their behavior, etc.) in situations of diversity, where the agent believes she has (...) the power to interfere. This non-normative definition can serve as a preliminary to normative discussions of toleration. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 131-136, June 2022.

I draw upon Helen Steward's concept of agential settling to argue that freedom requires an ability to change the truth‐value of tenseless future contingents over time from false to true and that this ability requires a metaphysically open future.

Significant variations in the way objects appear across different viewing conditions pose a challenge to the view that they have some true, determinate color. This view would seem to require that we break the symmetry between multiple appearances in favor of a single variant. A wide range of philosophical and non-philosophical writers have held that the symmetry can be broken by appealing to daylight viewing conditions—that the appearances of objects in daylight have a stronger, and perhaps unique, claim to reveal (...) their true colors. In this note we argue that, whatever else its merits, this appeal to daylight is not a satisfactory answer to the problem posed by perceptual variation. (shrink)

Cases of inexact observations have been used extensively in the recent literature on higher-order evidence and higher-order knowledge. I argue that the received understanding of inexact observations is mistaken. Although it is convenient to assume that such cases can be modeled statically, they should be analyzed as dynamic cases that involve change of knowledge. Consequently, the underlying logic should be dynamic epistemic logic, not its static counterpart. When reasoning about inexact knowledge, it is easy to confuse the initial situation, the (...) observation process, and the result of the observation; I analyze the three separately. This dynamic approach has far reaching implications: Williamson’s influential argument against the KK principle loses its force, and new insights can be gained regarding synchronic and diachronic introspection principles. (shrink)

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! -/- There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain (...) property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. -/- An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. -/- What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. -/- Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. -/- Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze? (shrink)