Gabriel Vacariu (November 2018) UNBELIEVABLE similarities between Ferraris’s ideas (2012) and my ideas (2002-2008).

Gabriel Vacariu (2020) Unbelievable similarities - selected authors (Sean Carroll, Frank Wilczek, Carlo Rovelli, Kastner, Kauffman et all, Lee Somlin, Markus Gabriel) from much bigger manuscript (Gabriel Vacariu, (June 2020 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE SIMILARITIES between the ideas of some people (2011-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!) here -/- (During last 4 years, I have sent this updated manuscript to (...) thousands of people from many countries in each year! They have no chances!!!) All my main ideas (the mind-brain problem, main problems of cognitive science and quantum mechanics, Einstein’s relativity vs. quantum mechanics, etc.) from my Springer’s book (2016) can be found in my PhD thesis (2007), UNSW (Sydney, Australia, officially posted on university’s website, FREE, by the university’s Staff in 2007) . (shrink)

Me, Gabriel Vacariu, professor at Department of Theoretical Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Bucharest University, Romania, I declare that I have had the worst promotion during my entire career at this department even if I have had the best CV during my career (since 1998). With this memorandum, I want to find the criteria for the promotion at my department and faculty (from Bucharest University). From what I know, my promotion depends on the will of the chief of the department and (...) of my colleagues. If my colleagues do not want my promotion, I will never be promoted! I emphasize that, in relationship with my colleagues, I have had the worst promotion even if I have had the best CV. (shrink)

Cursul va contine patru parti pe urmatoarele filme si lucrarile: I. Andrei Tarkovski: “Solaris”, “Calauza”, “Nostalghia”, “Sacrificiul” - Friedrich Nietzsche si “eterna reintoarcere” - Mircea Eliade si “eterna reintoarcere” II. Wong Kar-wai: “In the mood for love”, “2046” III. Cristi Puiu: “Sieranevada” IV. Constantin Brancusi: Ansamblul de la Targu Jiu + sculpturile principale (Pasarea in zbor, Mlle Pogany, etc.).

We reconstruct as much as we can the part of al-Fārābī's treatment of modal logic that is missing from the surviving pages of his Long Commentary on the Prior Analytics. We use as a basis the quotations from this work in Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Rushd and Maimonides, together with relevant material from al-Fārābī's other writings. We present a case that al-Fārābī's treatment of the dictum de omni had a decisive effect on the development and presentation of Ibn Sīnā's modal logic. (...) We give further evidence that the Harmonisation of the Opinions of Plato and Aristotle was not written by al-Fārābī. (shrink)

When I read this paragraph about her book: -/- In Form, Matter, Substance, Kathrin Koslicki develops a contemporary defence of the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism. According to this approach, objects are compounds of matter (hule) and form (morphe or eidos) and a living organism is not exhausted by the body, cells, organs, tissue, and the like that compose it. Koslicki argues that a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects is well equipped to compete with alternative approaches when measured against a (...) wide range of criteria of success. However, a plausible application of the doctrine of hylomorphism to the special case of concrete particular objects hinges on how hylomorphists conceive of the matter composing a concrete particular object, its form, and the hylomorphic relations which hold between a matter-form compound, its matter and its form. Koslicki offers detailed answers to the questions surrounding this approach to the metaphysics of concrete particular objects. As a result, matter-form compounds emerge as occupying the privileged ontological status traditionally associated with substances, despite their metaphysical complexity, due to their high degree of unity. (shrink)

On January 2023, I received an email from somebody regarding Velmans’s article 2008. After I took a look at the paper, I started to read his book 2000. Therefore, in this section, I will investigate Velmans’ works from 2000 and 2008. I emphasize that the main difference between Spinoza’s (Velmans) dual aspect theory and my EDWs approach is the framework of thinking: Spinoza, Velmans and everybody until me had been working within the unicorn world (the Universe/world), while my EDWs assumes (...) the rejection of the the universe/world; I replace this eternal and wrong notion with the EDWs. (see my previous works; my first five books and a book from 2022 and many of my articles are FREE on internet at my webpage and other pages). (shrink)

For the general public, there is an intuitive appeal to an animal's living in the wild rather than in captivity. Rarely is it an appeal informed by careful scientific or ethical analysis, however. This paper discusses how animal release projects ought to be conducted, guided by the question, "what are the duties of humans toward animals that are to be released?" It studies the ethical responsibilities of caretakers, practical elements of a responsible release, and proper selection of candidate animals for (...) release, and what marine science tells us about how best these requirements might be achieved. (shrink)

Many people published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas, long time after I published my ideas at Synthese (USA, 2005) and Springer (2015) and posted FREE on different webpages!!!!

Since 2015, incredible many have published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas published between 2002-2008!!! There were others who published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas even earlier (since 2008, in general), but the number has an incredible jump after 2014. Why? In 2014, I have sent emails to thousands of people (many countries, many domains (Physics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science)) regarding the UNBELIEVABLE similarities between my ideas (2002-2008) and Markus Gabriel’s ideas (his book from 2013). Is it this a (...) coincidence? I don’t believe so… Why so many people from so many countries from so many domains on so many topics have published UNBELIEVALBE similar ideas to my ideas (2002-2008 and later)? Because I have changed EVERYTHING! (shrink)

Many people (many countries, many domains, many topics) have published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas (published long time ago).

Mentionez ca, in raport cu colegii mei, la acest departament si facultate, eu am avut am avut cea mai slaba promovarea de-a lungul carierei mele, desi CVul meu a fost, inca de la inceput, cel mai bun raportat la cei din generatia mea sau apropiati de generatia mea. La ora actuala, raportat la criteriile INTERNATIONALE, CVul meu este cel mai bun de la aceasta facultate.

Over the last two centuries, the relationship between philosophy and science has completely broken down, so the question we are confronted with is: How can we develop a new philosophy, which will influence science decisively? The physicists of the last century rejected their contemporary philosophy. They considered that “philosophy today is dead” (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010). However, we believe that the great scientific problems are always philosophical, and only philosophical problems. Therefore, these problems can be solved only by philosophers and (...) scientists who operate at the greatest level of thinking: that of the “paradigm of thinking”. In fact, these great scientific problems can usually be solved by changing the “paradigm of thinking” for scientists. This book furnished more applications of the “epistemologically different worlds” (that replaced the “world”/”universe” – in their previous books (2008, 2010, 2011, etc.), the authors indicated that the notion of the world/universe is wrong). Following Aristotle’s “Prime Mover” (or the “Unmoved Mover”), we stop the regress ad infinitum by discovering the first EW, the EW0 (the Hypernothing). Even if one EW does not exist for any EDW, the Hypernothing was the first EW and all other EDWs correspond to the EW0. Chapter 2 is about the “Hypernothing”. The other chapters continue our works of applying the EDWs to different concepts/areas of Physics: quantum mechanics, elementary particles, thermodynamics (with its main notion, “entropy”), etc. In the last chapter, knowing that Einstein’s special and general theory of relativity are very correct (but in a book 2016 we showed that “spacetime” cannot ontologically exist), we re-write both theories without “spacetime”. Content, Introduction and Chapter 1, FREE at https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gabriel+vacariu&rh=i %3Aaps%2Ck%3Agabriel+vacariu . (shrink)

It is well-known the UNBELIEVABLE similarities between markus gabriel’s ideas from his book 2013 and my ideas (2002, 2005, 2008, etc.) (see my article or my manuscript). Not amazing, markus gabriel (mg) publishes (2017) more UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas (2002, 2005, 2008)! So, let me investigate mg’s ideas from his last book 2017: -/- Markus Gabriel (2017) I am not a brain. Philosophy of Mind for the Twenty-First Century, Polity Press -/- I draw the attention that markus gabriel (...) has never written an article on the Philosophy of Mind! However, we see now even in the title of his book that he talks about the Philosophy of mind for 21th Century! (shrink)

RESUMEN -/- En este ensayo propongo una interpretación de la relación entre la ciencia y el Ideal Ascético en La Genealogía de la Moral, que busca explicar la enigmática alianza entre ambos que Nietzsche establece al final del tercer tratado de la mencionada obra. Según Nietzsche, contrario a lo que se cree, la ciencia moderna no es realmente un antagonista del Ideal Ascético sino más bien su forma más reciente y más noble. Argüiré que, para Nietzsche, el Ideal Ascético ha (...) sido hasta el momento la única respuesta que el ser humano ha dado a su forma especial de existencia, que consiste en encontrarse en la situación de ser el único animal capacitado para la independencia y la soberanía. El Ideal Ascético expresa una huida de la responsabilidad y la carga (el sufrimiento) que esa capacidad para la soberanía comporta. Así pues, la ciencia, como expresión última de dicho ideal, representa al igual que éste una evasión de la independencia y una declaración de guerra contra la libertad de la voluntad, es decir, contra la autonomía. (shrink)

A friend of my sent me the address where this paper has been posted by Adam Frank. Reading it, I realized that more than 90% of the main ideas of this paper (about the mind-brain problem, quantum mechanics (microparticles-wave relationship, Schrodinger equation, probabilities, “perceiving subject in physics”, the idea about consciousness and Nagel, etc. etc.) are UNBELIEVABLE similar to my ideas from my paper 2005 or my book 2008!!!

My books (2023-2007): only covers and contents .

In this article, I link the empirical hypothesis that neural representations of sensory stimulation near the body involve a unique motor component to the idea that the perceptual field is structured by skillful bodily activity. The neurophenomenological view that emerges is illuminating in its own right, though it may also have practical consequences. I argue that recent experiments attempting to alter the scope of these near space sensorimotor representations are actually equivocal in what they show. I propose resolving this ambiguity (...) by treating these representations as responsive to the development or degeneration of know-how—which can be isolated as an appropriate object for scientific investigation. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate the UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas of Brukner’s article (2015) and my ideas (2002-2008) In this article, I investigate the UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas of Brukner’s article (2015) and my ideas (2002-2008) I emphasize that this paragraph is not from my works!! Instead of “objectivity of the ‘facts of the world’, I used EDWs! All the ideas from this paragraph (and the philosophical ideas referring to QM from this article, can be found in my works 2002-2008!

Interpretations of Kant’s account of the forms of “taking-to-be-true” (Fürwahrhalten) have generally focused on three such forms: opinion (Meinung), belief (Glaube), and knowledge (Wissen). A second distinction that has received comparatively less attention is that between conviction (Überzeugung) and persuasion (Überredung). Kant appears to use the distinction between the subjective and the objective sufficiency of a taking-to-be-true to characterize all of these forms. However, it is impossible to account for the differences between them by relying on this latter distinction alone. (...) In turn, this makes it difficult to fit all of these forms into a single classification of taking-to-be-true. In this chapter, I propose a new approach to conviction and persuasion that dissolves these problems. Conviction and persuasion are not single forms of taking-to-be-true with distinctive characteristics, yet it is not useful to treat them as “classes” of taking-to-be-true either. Rather, they are “operators” that determine whether a taking-to-be-true is apt or inapt, depending on whether it rests on a correct evaluation of the grounds we have. (shrink)

Many ideas from Georg Nortoff’s works (published one paper in 2010, mainly his book in 2011, other papers in 2012, 2103, 2014, especially those related to Kant’s philosophy and the notion of the “observer”, the mind-brain problem, default mode network, the self, the mental states and their “correspondence” to the brain) are surprisingly very similar to my ideas published in my article from 2002, 2005 and my book from 2008. In two papers from 2002 (also my paper from 2005 and (...) my book 2008), following Kant’s philosophy, I introduced the notion of the “observer” for the mind-brain problem. After 2010 (mainly his book 2011 and other papers after this book), Nortoff also uses Kant’s philosophy (even if his knowledge about Kant’s philosophy is very superficial!) and the notion of the “observer” for the mind-brain problem in a methodology very similar to my methodology. Moreover, instead of EDWs, Nortoff uses a kind of “transdisciplinary” view, quite close to parallelism – the closest approach to my EDWs! In his works until 2014, Northoff’s conclusion within the unicorn world was different than my conclusion. However, in his book 2014 (two volumes) using notions like “correlations” and even “correspondences” many times, his conclusion is very closed to my EDWs! This dramatic change of framework in 3 years is quite unbelievable!!! Incredible many ideas from this book are very similar to my ideas from 2005 and 2008! (shrink)

When does a model explain? When does it promote understanding? A dominant approach to scientific explanation is the interventionist view (Woodward 2003). According to this view, when X explains Y, intervening on X can produce, prevent or alter Y in some predictable way. In this paper, I argue for two claims. First, I reject a position that many interventionist theorists endorse. This position is that to explain some phenomenon by providing a model is also to understand that phenomenon (Woodward 2003, (...) Ylikoski and Kuorikoski 2010, Kuorikoski and Ylikoski 2015). While endorsing the interventionist view, I argue that explaining and understanding are distinct scientific achievements. Second, I defend a novel theory of scientific understanding. According to this view, when some model M promotes understanding, M makes available a distinctive mental state. This state is of the same psychological kind as when we grasp events in a narrative as bearing on some ultimate conclusion. To conclude, I show that, given this view, mechanistic explanations often provide a powerful source of understanding that many causal-historical models lack. This paper will be of interest to both philosophers of science and epistemologists engaged in the topics of explanation and understanding. (shrink)

In light of recent criticisms by Woodward (2017) and Rescorla (2018), we examine the relationship between mechanistic explanation and phenomenological laws. We disambiguate several uses of the phrase “phenomenological law” and show how a mechanistic theory of explanation sorts them into those that are and are not explanatory. We also distinguish the problem of phenomenological laws from arguments about the explanatory power of purely phenomenal models, showing that Woodward and Rescorla conflate these problems. Finally, we argue that the temptation to (...) pit mechanistic and interventionist theories of explanation against one another occludes important and scientifically relevant research questions. (shrink)

A book review of Gilles Deleuze's "Negotiations.".

The predominant interpretation of Wittgenstein's later remarks on religion takes him to hold that all religious utterances are non-scientific, and to hold that the way to show that religious utterances are non-scientific is to identify and characterise the grammatical rules governing their use. This paper claims that though this does capture one strand of Wittgenstein's later thought on religion, there is an alternative strand of that thought which is quite different and more nuanced. In this alternative strand Wittgenstein stresses that (...) religious utterances and beliefs can come in both scientific and non-scientific varieties. More than that, he claims that the grammar of religious utterances, and the logic of religious beliefs, is often complex – in that individual utterances and beliefs will often be mixed between, indeterminate between, or fluid between being scientific and being non-scientific. This complexity means that it will often be unhelpful to try to pin down one particular grammar or logic for a given utterance or belief. Wittgenstein therefore suggests a new method of grammatical and logical investigation, which is less likely to distort complex grammars or logics by being overly simplistic or rigid. This method is to use simple examples of utterances and beliefs as objects of comparison, so as to illuminate the different aspects of the more complex actual utterances and beliefs under examination. This alternative strand in Wittgenstein's later remarks on religion is a manifestation of a broader strand of Wittgenstein's later thought as a whole, which was first described by Friedrich Waismann, and later developed by Gordon Baker and Oskari Kuusela. The paper concludes by providing examples of religious beliefs which are logically mixed, indeterminate, and fluid, and showing how simple objects of comparison can be used to illuminate them. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approaches see the solution to the problem of harmful distrust as consisting primarily in trying to persuade individual citizens to trust science and that both approaches face two general (...) problems, which I call the problem of overidealizing science and the problem of overburdening citizens. I then argue that in order to avoid these problems we need to embrace a (thoroughly) social approach to public trust in science, which emphasizes the social dimensions of the reception, transmission, and uptake of scientific knowledge in society and the ways in which social forces influence both positively and negatively the trustworthiness of science. (shrink)

What is it for a picture to depict a scene? The most orthodox philosophical theory of pictorial representation holds that depiction is grounded in resemblance. A picture represents a scene in virtue of being similar to that scene in certain ways. This essay presents evidence against this claim: curvilinear perspective is one common style of depiction in which successful pictorial representation depends as much on a picture's systematic differences with the scene depicted as on the similarities; it cannot be analyzed (...) in terms of similarity alone. The same problem arises for many other kinds of depiction. The essay concludes that depiction in general is not grounded in resemblance but geometrical transformation. (shrink)

Este artigo objetiva discutir o tema da autoficção e apresentar a possibilidade de utilizá-lo para a interpretação de obras filosóficas, destacadamente o livro Ecce homo de Friedrich Nietzsche e, secundariamente, Testo junkie de Paul B. Preciado. Para tanto, primeiro, abordarei a relação entre filosofia e literatura no contexto que alguns pensadores contemporâneos têm nomeado cultura literária. Em um segundo momento, traçarei uma breve história da formação da noção de autoficção e da consolidação do termo para demarcar um subgênero literário. Em (...) seguida, apresentarei elementos de Ecce homo que me parecem permitir enquadrá- lo no campo da autoficção. Na última parte, serão retomadas as articulações entre literatura e filosofia, analisando- se brevemente um exemplar de autoficção no pensamento contemporâneo, Testo junkie, para sugerir que a aproximação de tal subgênero contribui para a compreensão tanto do lugar da filosofia na cultura literária quanto aspectos de nosso tempo. (shrink)

O tendinţă relativ nouă în filosofia contemporană a matematicii este reprezentată de nemulţumirea manifestată de un număr din ce în ce mai mare de filosofi faţă de viziunea tradiţională asupra matematicii ca având un statut special ce poate fi surprins doar cu ajutorul unei epistemologii speciale. Această nemulţumire i-a determinat pe mulţi să propună o nouă perspectivă asupra matematicii – una care ia în serios aspecte până acum neglijate de filosofia matematicii, precum latura sociologică, istorică şi empirică a cercetării matematice (...) şi care acordă astfel o atenţie deosebită practicii matematice. (shrink)

It is common to distinguish two great families of representation. Symbolic representations include logical and mathematical symbols, words, and complex linguistic expressions. Iconic representations include dials, diagrams, maps, pictures, 3-dimensional models, and depictive gestures. This essay describes and motivates a new way of distinguishing iconic from symbolic representation. It locates the difference not in the signs themselves, nor in the contents they express, but in the semantic rules by which signs are associated with contents. The two kinds of rule have (...) divergent forms, occupying opposite poles on a spectrum of naturalness. Symbolic rules are composed entirely of primitive juxtapositions of sign types with contents, while iconic rules determine contents entirely by uniform natural relations with sign types. This distinction is marked explicitly in the formal semantics of familiar sign systems, both for atomic first-order representations, like words, pixel colors, and dials, and for complex second-order representations, like sentences, diagrams, and pictures. (shrink)

Normative political theorists have been growing more and more aware of the many difficult questions raised by the discretionary power inevitably left to public administrators. This article aims to advance a novel normative principle, called ‘principle of restraint’, regulating reform of established administrative agencies. I argue that the ability of public administrators to exercise their power in accordance with the requirements of public reason is protected by an attitude of restraint on the part of potential reformers. Specifically, they should refrain (...) from any reform of an administrative agency that involves a switch to a considerably more loosely interconnected system of values underlying the work of that agency. To illustrate the importance of the principle of restraint, I examine a case from British health policy, showing that a recent reform of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence well exemplifies the serious problems brought by any violation of that principle. (shrink)

A semantics of pictorial representation should provide an account of how pictorial signs are associated with the contents they express. Unlike the familiar semantics of spoken languages, this problem has a distinctively spatial cast for depiction. Pictures themselves are two-dimensional artifacts, and their contents take the form of pictorial spaces, perspectival arrangements of objects and properties in three dimensions. A basic challenge is to explain how pictures are associated with the particular pictorial spaces they express. Inspiration here comes from recent (...) proposals that analyze depiction in terms of geometrical projection. In this essay, I will argue that, for a central class of pictures, the projection-based theory of depiction provides the best explanation for how pictures express pictorial spaces, while rival perceptual and resemblance theories fall short. Since the composition of pictorial space is itself the basis for all other aspects of pictorial content, the proposal provides a natural foundation for further pictorial semantics. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is defined by the idea that laws and policies should be justifiable to each person who is subject to them. But what does it mean for reasons to be public or, in other words, suitable for this process of justification? In response to this question, Kevin Vallier has recently developed the traditional distinction between consensus and convergence public reason into a classification distinguishing three main approaches: shareability, accessibility and intelligibility. The goal of this paper is to defend (...) the accessibility approach by demonstrating its ability to strike an appealing middle course in terms of inclusivity between shareability and intelligibility. We first argue against Vallier that accessibility can exclude religious reasons from public justification. Second, we use scientific reasons as a case study to show that accessibility excludes considerably fewer reasons than shareability. Throughout the paper, we connect our discussion of accessibility to John Rawls’s model of public reason, so as to give substance to the accessibility approach and to further our understanding of Rawls’s influential model. (shrink)

If phenomenal consciousness is illusory and reduces to a perceptual interface between a belief-driven ego system and a lattice platform of both singular and hybrid connectionally-constructed concepts where phenomena themselves are sensation- induced constructs of complexes of things in the world then in order to communicate in terms of true meanings we would require a translation system between the complexes of things that have importance for creatures of different biologies whether evolved or synthetic. In this paper I investigate and propose (...) an ontological scheme that can act in some way to bridge this gap and potentially allow humans to talk with robots about themselves and the world. (shrink)

Unlike his theory of justice as fairness, John Rawls’s political liberalism has generally been spared from critiques regarding what is due to the disabled. This paper demonstrates that, due to the account of the basic ideas of society and persons provided by Rawls, political liberalism requires that the interests of numerous individuals with disabilities should be put aside when the most fundamental issues of justice are settled. The aim is to accommodate within public reason the due concern for the disabled (...) while upholding political liberalism. To achieve this aim, a revision of the basic ideas of persons and society is proposed. The idea of persons should be regarded as more fundamental than that of social cooperation, and persons should be defined in terms of minimal moral powers. (shrink)

Universal Generalization, if it is not the most poorly understood inference rule in natural deduction, then it is the least well explained or justified. The inference rule is, prima facie, quite ambitious: on the basis of a fact established of one thing, I may infer that the fact holds of every thing in the class to which the one belongs—a class which may contain indefinitely many things. How can such an inference be made with any confidence as to its validity (...) or ability to preserve truth from premise to conclusion? My goal in this paper is to explain how Universal Generalization works in a way that makes sense of its ability to preserve truth. In doing so, I shall review common accounts of Universal Generalization and explain why they are inadequate or are explanatorily unsatisfying. Happily, my account makes no ontological or epistemological presumptions and therefore should be compatible with whichever ontological or epistemological schemes the reader prefers. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the relation between modern transhumanism and Nietzsche’s philosophy of the superhuman. Following Loeb, I argue that transhumanists cannot claim affinity to Nietzsche’s philosophy until they incorporate the doctrine of eternal recurrence to their project of technological enhancement. This doctrine liberates us from resentment against time by teaching us reconciliation with time and something higher than all reconciliation. Unlike Loeb, however, I claim that this “something higher” is not a new skill (prospective memory), but rather a (...) love for the past in the form of loving that aspect of it that is still with us, namely, the will to power itself, which is the engine of all life. Love of the past is thus equivalent to love of life. Since human beings are conscious incarnations of the will to power, in our case, love of life manifests itself as love of our humanity or love for that aspect of ourselves that connects us to each other, for we recognize it to be the same in all of us. Thus, learning this kind of love enables us to joyfully coordinate our wills in the pursuit of Zarathustra’s superhuman ideal without turning it into a destructive mockery of itself. While learning this kind of love would facilitate a joyful version of transhumanism, I conclude by suggesting that it is unlikely to be achieved through technological interventions of the sort envisioned by transhumanists. Instead, it requires the kind of participatory pedagogical program that Nietzsche thought his Zarathustra would fulfill. (shrink)

The victims of severe injustice are allowed to employ disruption and violence to seek political change. This article argues for this conclusion from within Rawlsian political liberalism, which, however, has been criticised for allegedly imposing public reason’s suffocating norms of civility on the oppressed. It develops a novel view of the applicability of public reason in non-ideal circumstances – the “no self-sacrifice view” – that focuses on the excessive costs of following public reason when suffering from severe injustice. On this (...) view, those treated in what Rawls describes as less than a reasonably just way are relieved of the duty of public reason and therefore entitled to employ disruption and violence. In contrast, their privileged fellow citizens must still obey public reason’s civility unless they have been authorised by the oppressed to join their fight. This article also starts exploring from within political liberalism the normative principles governing disruptive and violent protest. (shrink)

The article considers the philosophical potential of Heraclitean ambiguity and implications for how one might engage philosophically with Heraclitus. While works on Heraclitus most commonly offer new interpretations or dispute or add nuance to established interpretations, this work somewhat sidesteps interpretive disputes to consider the philosophical value and relevance of Heraclitus’s fragments themselves. Specifically, a hermeneutical tool proposed by William Desmond called a “companioning approach,” is supported. Desmond’s companioning approach is considered in the context of Pierre Hadot’s account of the (...) history of hermeneutical practices to show that it merely defines and legitimizes a longstanding hermeneutical activity. Further, a recent work by A. V. Halapsis shows that Heraclitus’s ambiguity may have been a consequence of his anthropological commitments and that he may have intended to allow for something like a companioning engagement. (shrink)

This paper explores the socio-epistemic practice of shopping for experts. I argue that expert shopping is particularly likely to occur on what Thi Nguyen calls cognitive islands. To support my argument, I focus on macroeconomics. First, I make a prima-facie case for thinking that macroeconomics is a cognitive island. Then, I argue that ordinary people are particularly likely to engage in expert shopping when it comes to macroeconomic matters. In particular, I distinguish between two kinds of expert shopping, which I (...) call cynical and wishful, and introduce the notion of assisted expert shopping, which occurs when people or organizations shop for experts on behalf of other people. I argue that assisted expert shopping can sometime result in what I call a propagandistic use of expertise. Finally, I critically examine some possible reasons for optimism and find them wanting. I conclude by suggesting that that much of what I said about shopping for macroeconomic experts might also apply mutatis mutandis to other policy-relevant domains of expertise. (shrink)

Ground offers the hope of vindicating and illuminating an classic philosophical idea: the layered conception, according to which reality is structured by relations of dependence, with physical phenomena on the bottom, upon which chemistry, then biology, and psychology reside. However, ground can only make good on this promise if it is appropriately formally behaved. The paradigm of good formal behavior can be found in the currently dominant grounding orthodoxy, which holds that ground is transitive, antisymmetric, irreflexive, and foundational. However, heretics (...) have recently challenged the orthodoxy. In this paper, I examine ground’s ability to vindicate the layered conception upon various relaxations of the orthodox assumptions. I argue that highly unorthodox views of ground can still vindicate the layered conception and that, in some ways, the heretical views enable ground to better serve as a guide to reality’s layering than do orthodox views of ground. (shrink)

This article discusses the growth of the populist radical right as a concrete example of the scenario where liberal democratic ideas are losing support in broadly liberal democratic societies. Our goal is to enrich John Rawls’ influential theory of political liberalism. We argue that even in that underexplored scenario, Rawlsian political liberalism can offer an appealing account of how to promote the legitimacy and stability of liberal democratic institutions provided it places partisanship centre stage. Specifically, we propose a brand-new moral (...) duty binding ‘reasonable’ partisans committed to pluralism. This duty establishes conditions where partisans must strategically transform society’s public reason (i.e. transform the visions for society their parties campaign on) in ways that promise to attract back support from illiberal and antidemocratic competitors. While this strategic behaviour might seem impermissible, we show that Rawls’ distinctive account of sincerity in democratic deliberation is uniquely placed to justify it as perfectly ethical. (shrink)

I develop an interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of motor intentionality, one that emerges out of a reading of his presentation of a now classic case study in neuropathology—patient Johann Schneider—in Phenomenology of Perception. I begin with Merleau-Ponty's prescriptions for how we should use the pathological as a guide to the normal, a method I call triangulation. I then turn to his presentation of Schneider's unusual case. I argue that we should treat all of Schneider's behaviors as pathological, not only (...) his abstract movements, as is commonly acknowledged in the secondary literature, but also crucially his concrete movements. Using these facts of Schneider's illness, I reconstruct a ‘fundamental function’ of consciousness, as Merleau-Ponty called it, in which there are two kinds of bodily agency: the power of the body to be solicited by a situation and the power of the body to project a situation. I propose that these powers became dissociated in Schneider's case, as evidenced by his abstract and concrete movements, while in the normal case, these powers comprise a dynamic unity, enacted as motor intentionality. I also discuss how my interpretation complements Merleau-Ponty's assertion that motor intentions exist between mind and matter. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to make sense of some puzzling claims that Peirce makes in the Cambridge conferences lectures. I identify four tasks that a successful interpretation of those claims must accomplish. First, we must provide a plausible reading of the “no belief in science” thesis. Second, we must provide a compelling interpretation of the “no science in vital matters” thesis. Third, we must explain Peirce’s distinction between two forms of holding for true. Fourth, we should be able to (...) solve the conflict with “The fixation of belief.” I start by analysing Christopher Hookway’s reading of Peirce’s claims because he clearly identifies these tasks and offers an interpretation with considerable merits. However, I identify a problem in Hookway’s reading, since he fails to account for a normative dimension of the “no science in vital matters” thesis. Finally, I sketch my attempt to accomplish these four tasks while also avoiding this latter problem. (shrink)

In this chapter, I investigate a problem for Kant’s claim that metaphysics can reach the status of science. The problem arises when one considers Kant’s account of the “architectonic unity” of metaphysics in the Architectonic of Pure Reason. Attaining architectonic unity is a condition for becoming a science for any body of cognitions that purports to be such. This is achieved when the cognitions belonging to a science are systematically organized according to the “idea of reason” which lies at the (...) basis of that science. However, Kant suggests that nobody can ever legitimately claim to have matched the idea of the philosopher, where this appears to imply that nobody can justifiably claim that she has fully grasped the idea of metaphysics. This generates a problem. I suggest that when Kant claims that the idea of the philosopher must remain an ideal or an archetype, he has a particular conception of philosophy in mind, that is, philosophy as a doctrine of wisdom. According to this understanding, philosophy must provide an example of how one can become virtuous. However, this is only a partial solution to our problem, for reasons that will be illustrated. (shrink)

How should broadly liberal democratic societies stop illiberal and antidemocratic views from gaining influence while honouring liberal democratic values? This question has become particularly pressing after the recent successes of right-wing populist leaders and parties across Europe, in the US, and beyond. This book develops a normative account of liberal democratic self-defence that denounces the failures of real-world societies without excusing those supporting illiberal and antidemocratic political actors. This account is innovative in focusing not only on the role of the (...) state but also on the duties of nonstate actors including citizens, partisans, and municipalities. Consequently, it also addresses cases where the central government has at least been partly captured by illiberal and antidemocratic agents. Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti's approach builds on John Rawls's treatment of political liberalism and his awareness of the need to 'contain' unreasonable views, that is, views denying that society should treat every person as free and equal through a mutually acceptable system of social cooperation where pluralism is to be expected. The authors offer original solutions to vexed problems within political liberalism by putting forward a new account of the relation between ideal and non-ideal theory, explaining why it is justifiable to exclude unreasonable persons from the constituency of public reason, and showing that the strictures of public reason do not apply to those suffering from severe injustice. In doing so, the book further politicizes political liberalism and turns it into a framework that can insightfully respond to the challenges of real politics. (shrink)

Carnap’s seminal ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ makes important use of the notion of a framework and the related distinction between internal and external questions. But what exactly is a framework? And what role does the internal/external distinction play in Carnap’s metaontology? In an influential series of papers, Matti Eklund has recently defended a bracingly straightforward interpretation: A Carnapian framework, Eklund says, is just a natural language. To ask an internal question, then, is just to ask a question in, say, English. (...) To try to ask an external question is to try, absurdly, to ask a question in no language at all. Finding that so trivial an I/e distinction can’t help to explain Carnap’s deflationary metaontology, Eklund is led to attribute to Carnap a view he calls ontological pluralism. In this paper, I show that Eklund misreads Carnap, and I argue that this misreading obscures fundamental features of Carnap’s philosophy. I then defend an account of frameworks as what Carnap called semantical systems, and I place this account in the context of Carnap’s philosophical program of explication. Finally, I discuss the role that frameworks and the I/e distinction play in ESO, showing that ESO provides no reason to attribute the doctrine of ontological pluralism to Carnap. (shrink)

Norman Daniels’s theory of ‘accountability for reasonableness’ is an influential conception of fairness in healthcare resource allocation. Although it is widely thought that this theory provides a consistent extension of John Rawls’s general conception of justice, this paper shows that accountability for reasonableness has important points of contact with both utilitarianism and intuitionism, the main targets of Rawls’s argument. My aim is to demonstrate that its overlap with utilitarianism and intuitionism leaves accountability for reasonableness open to damaging critiques. The important (...) role that utilitarian-like cost-effectiveness calculations are allowed to play in resource allocation processes disregards the separateness of persons and is seriously unfair towards individuals whose interests are sacrificed for the sake of groups. Furthermore, the function played by intuitions in settling frequent value conflicts opens the door for sheer custom and vested interests to steer decision-making. (shrink)