This article considers whether the 2016 EU referendum can be perceived as an English nationalist movement. Specifically, attention is given to examining how memories of the former British Empire were nostalgically enveloped in anxieties regarding England’s location within the devolved UK state. The comments and work of Enoch Powell and George Orwell are used to help explore the link between nostalgia and anxiety in accounts of English nationalism. Despite their opposing political orientations, when considered together, it is argued (...) that both men provide a unique cross-political perspective on Englishness, empire and nostalgia. By way of exploring these themes in relation to the EU referendum, Aughey’s assertion that English nationalism can be perceived as both a ‘mood’ and ‘movement’ is used to highlight how a sense of English anxiety regarding its lack of national sovereignty (mood), as well as a desire to reclaim this sovereignty by renegotiating trade relations with the ‘Anglo-sphere’ (movement), were conjoined in the popular referendum slogan, ‘take back control’. In conclusion, it is argued that the contextualization of the referendum can be predicated upon an orientation to empire that steers away from glorifying pro-imperial images of England/Britain, towards a more positive and progressive appropriation of the EU referendum as a statement of national change and belonging. (shrink)

Stephen Jay Gould argued that replaying the ‘tape of life’ would result in radically different evolutionary outcomes. Recently, biologists and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the theoretical importance of convergent evolution—the independent origination of similar biological forms and functions—which many interpret as evidence against Gould’s thesis. In this paper, we examine the evidentiary relevance of convergent evolution for the radical contingency debate. We show that under the right conditions, episodes of convergent evolution can constitute valid natural experiments (...) that support inferences regarding the deep counterfactual stability of macroevolutionary outcomes. However, we argue that proponents of convergence have problematically lumped causally heterogeneous phenomena into a single evidentiary basket, in effect treating all convergent events as if they are of equivalent theoretical import. As a result, the ‘critique from convergent evolution’ fails to engage with key claims of the radical contingency thesis. To remedy this, we develop ways to break down the heterogeneous set of convergent events based on the nature of the generalizations they support. Adopting this more nuanced approach to convergent evolution allows us to differentiate iterated evolutionary outcomes that are probably common among alternative evolutionary histories and subject to law-like generalizations, from those that do little to undermine and may even support, the Gouldian view of life. (shrink)

There is a tension between John Locke’s awareness of the fundamental importance of a shared public language and the manner in which his theorizing appears limited to offering a psychologistic account of the idiolects of individual speakers. I argue that a correct understanding of Locke’s central notion of signification can resolve this tension. I start by examining a long standing objection to Locke’s view, according to which his theory of meaning systematically gets the subject matter of our discourse wrong, by (...) making our ideas the meanings of our words. By examining Locke’s definition of “truth”, I show that Lockean signification is an expression relation, rather than a descriptive or referential relation. Consequently, the sense in which our words signify our ideas is roughly that our utterances advertise our otherwise undisclosed mental lives to each other. While this resolves one aspect of the public/private tension, I close with a brief discussion of the remaining tension, and the role for normative constraints on signification to play in generating a genuinely shared public language. (shrink)

Two primary roles for propositions are to be i) the objects of the attitudes (especially belief) and ii) the primary bearers of truth and falsity. Interpreters of John Locke are in very broad agreement that propositions, as he presents them, serve this second role. However, whether Locke’s propositions can be said to serve the first role is a more difficult question, as Locke was frequently regarded as having overlooked the force/content distinction, meaning that many interpreters regard him as taking the (...) propositions not to be the objects of the attitudes, but instead, to be identical to the attitudes themselves. In this paper, I present the basics of Locke’s accounts of propositions, truth, and judgment. I then explain the interpretive divide between those scholars who interpret Locke as offering a more philosophically appealing proto-Fregean account of propositions (one which does recognize the force/content distinction), and those who defend the philosophically less satisfying account which identifies propositions with judgments on textual grounds. Finally, I defend the conflation account against one of it’s largest philosophical challenges, by showing how that view can address the Frege-Geach problem. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is show how an initially appealing objection to David Hume's account of judgment can only be put forward by philosophers who accept an account of judgment that has its own sizable share of problems. To demonstrate this, I situate the views of John Locke, David Hume, and Thomas Reid with respect to each other, so as to illustrate how the appealing objection is linked to unappealing features of Locke's account of judgment.

Thomas Reid's philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language all rely on his account of signs and signification. On Reid's view, some entities play a role of indicating other entities to our minds. In some cases, our sensitivity to this indication is learned through experience, whereas in others, the sensitivity is built in to our natural constitutions. Unlike representation, which was presumed to depend on resemblances and necessary connections, signification is the sort of relationship that can occur without any (...) intrinsic ties between the sign and the thing signified. Of particular interest is the priority Reid gives to natural signs. Reid deploys his robust account of natural signs in a way that allows him to sidestep some skeptical worries common in the early modern period, as well as in grounding “artificial” human languages like English or Cantonese on a more basic human capacity for communication, that is, itself, the result of our sensitivity to natural signs of other people's minds. (shrink)

This review article critiques Stephen Davies' The Artful Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution.

This article examines the fourteen conditions constituting Levinson and Alperson’s taxonomy of conditions for temporal arts. It claims that some of the conditions and several of the lists of arts exemplifying them need revision. It recommends adding a new condition concerned with the effects of the passage of time on gardens, environmental sculpture, and outdoor installations. The article concludes that gardens may be a model for understanding and appreciating other arts sharing the same bi-(multi-) modality.

Thomas Reid is notorious for rejecting the orthodox theory of conception (OTC), according to which conceiving of an object involves a mental relationship to an idea of that object. In this paper, I examine the question of what this rejection amounts to, when we limit our attention to bare conception (rather than the more widely discussed case of perception). I present some of the purported advantages of OTC, and assess whether they provide a genuine basis for preferring OTC to a (...) Reidian alternative. I argue that Reid’s approach is no worse off than OTC at explaining intentionality of our conceptions, and suggest that OTC diverges less from Reid’s view than it would at first seem. (shrink)

This conference paper contests the validity of some traditional concepts of gardens. It introduces the possibility of considering the passage of time in gardens as a musical, rhythmic phenomonen.

David Hume fancied himself the Newton of the mind, aiming to reinvent the study of human mental life in the same way that Newton had revolutionized physics. And it was his view that the novel account of belief he proposed in his Treatise of Human Nature was one of that work’s central philosophical contributions. From the earliest responses to the Treatise forward, however, there was deep pessimism about the prospects for his account. It is easy to understand the source of (...) this pessimism: The constraints he employed in theorizing stem from his Newtonian ambitions. Constraints such as his copy principle and his decision to rely only on variations in “force and vivacity” for differentiating types of mental states severely limit his available explanatory resources. However, it is one thing to regard an account as untenable, and quite another to understand where it fails. In this paper, I focus on one long-standing objection to Hume’s account — the objection that Hume cannot offer an account of negative belief or denial — as presented by Hume’s contemporary Thomas Reid, as well as more recently by Barry Stroud, and defend Hume from this objection. I argue that Hume both should and does endorse an account of negative belief based in relations of contrariety between contents, rather than between mental activities, and survey the different options available to Hume for spelling out an account of contrary contents. (shrink)

Editor's Intro to the journal issue. Wittgenstein's methods are more important than his solutions or views on particular problems. He also attacks processes which give rise to philosophical problems, such as Cartesian dualism and Platonism and other more narrow pictures or assumptions. His recommendations that progress be based on what we get from juxtaposing examples with philosophical temptations are still being absorbed by the discipline. This is more the case now, fifteen years aftr I wrote this introduction.

The thesis explores the adequacy of five well-known conceptions of art to the case of gardens. It concludes that, of those conceptions, the cluster theory is best suited to the case of gardens.

Smith proposes an account of how languages developed. He did so not as historian, but as a philosopher with a special concern about how a nominalist could account for general terms. Names for individuals are taken as fairly unproblematic – say ‘Thames’ and ‘Avon’ for each of the respective rivers. But whence the word ‘river,’ applicable to more than one, if all that exist are particular objects? Smith’s view is not the usual one, according to which people deploy a powerful (...) ability to abstract mentally, and subsequently affix a label to a general concept. He resisted this because he granted that such robust mental processes themselves presuppose the use of words. Rather, what holds the class together is the word itself, a “single appellation.”. (shrink)

Reid argues that Hume’s claim that justice is an artificial virtue is inconsistent with the fact that gratitude is a natural sentiment. This chapter shows that Reid’s argument succeeds only given a philosophy of mind and action that Hume rejects. Among other things, Reid assumes that one can conceive of one of a pair of contradictories only if one can conceive of the other—a claim that Hume denies. So, in the case of justice, the disagreement between Hume and Reid is, (...) at bottom, a disagreement over their respective conceptions of how the human mind works at its most fundamental level. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem: Can a synergy be derived from Keiji Nishitani’s conceptualization of Śūnyatā and Paul Tillich’s concept of Being Itself, as philosophies about Ultimate Reality, with the application of Wesley Wildman’s procedures based on the methodology of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project? The paper defines philosophy of religion and argues that it is justified as an academic discipline. A review of the literature demonstrates that both Nishitani and Tillich share common philosophical ground in phenomenological existentialism and nihilism. (...) The paper proceeds to discuss the biographies and religious philosophies of both Keiji Nishitani and Paul Tillich. Subsequently, the paper details the Comparative Religious Ideas Project (CRIP) methodology and then applies Wildman’s procedures to these two philosophers. The thesis concludes that a synergy exists about Ultimate Reality between the contemporary religious philosophies of Nishitani’s description of Buddhism and Tillich’s explanation of Christianity. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the prospects for using the distinction between rejection and denial to resolve Saul Kripke’s puzzle about belief. One puzzle Kripke presents in A Puzzle About Belief poses what would have seemed a fairly straightforward question about the beliefs of the bilingual Pierre, who is disposed to sincerely and reflectively assent to the French sentence Londres est jolie, but not to the English sentence London is pretty, both of which he understands perfectly well. The question to (...) be answered is whether Pierre believes that London is pretty, and Kripke argues, of each answer, that it is unacceptable. On my proposal, either answer to the question is to be rejected, but neither answer is to be denied, using the resource of partially-defined predicates. After demonstrating how this serves as a solution to the puzzle, I illustrate some philosophical motivations—independent of Kripke’s puzzle —for adopting a view on which belief is a partially defined predicate. I conclude that there are decent prospects for the proposed response to Kripke’s puzzle. (shrink)

Philosophers have routinely taken a pessimistic view of the account of cognition offered by David Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature, claiming that Hume's limited explanatory resources cannot capture the rich complexity of our thought, judgment, and reasoning. I provide a qualified defense of Hume's attempt to analyze a cognitive activity in terms of objectual conception, ie conceiving or imagining an object. I defend Hume from objections offered by his contemporary Thomas Reid (and echoed by various recent Hume scholars), (...) presenting an interpretation of the account that resolves these worries. (shrink)

Browne 1 (this issue ) argues that what may appear to be a benevolent practice-disclosing the sex of a fetus to expecting parents who wish to know-is in fact an epistemically problematic and, as a result, ethically questionable medical practice. Browne worries that not only will the disclosure of fetal sex encourage sex-selective abortions (an issue we will not take up here), but also that it will convey a misleading and pernicious message about the relationship between sex and gender. More (...) specifically, she contends that the practice of disclosure is problematic because (1) it purports to establish the gender of the developing baby based on information about the baby's sex, whereas this is not a warranted inference because while sex is determined by biological factors, gender is determined by social factors and (2) it conflates (biological) sex with (social) gender or encourages such conflation or reduction and thereby promotes 'essentialistic' thinking about gender that is closely linked to sexism and social injustice. If (1) is true, then disclosing fetal sex amounts to misinforming or misleading prospective parents-and since misinforming patients is wrong, the act of disclosing is also wrong. However, beyond the wrongs of misinforming patients, the practice also perpetuates the harms associated with a rigidly gendered society through endorsing the message in (2), thus lending the authority of the medical profession to the gender-essentialist ideas that have underpinned, and continue to drive, sexism and social injustice. This analysis leads Browne to recommend that clinicians be prohibited from informing parents about the sex of their developing fetus. -/- We agree with Browne that gender essentialism-the notion that 'femaleness' and 'maleness' carve out distinct natural classes with innate, immutable properties-is not only a false metaphysical thesis, but also a pernicious idea insofar as the sexist attitudes it fosters motivate policies that systematically violate the human rights of women, as well as those of the LGBTQ community. However, we do not think that the disclosure of fetal sex misinforms prospective parents about the gender of their baby, nor do we believe that such disclosure presupposes or promotes gender essentialism properly understood. (shrink)

The paper begins with a clarification of the notions of intuition (and, in particular, modal intuition), modal error, conceivability, metaphysical possibility, and epistemic possibility. It is argued that two-dimensionalism is the wrong framework for modal epistemology and that a certain nonreductionist approach to the theory of concepts and propositions is required instead. Finally, there is an examination of moderate rationalism’s impact on modal arguments in the philosophy of mind -- for example, Yablo’s disembodiment argument and Chalmers’s zombie argument. A less (...) vulnerable style of modal argument is defended, which nevertheless wins the same anti-materialist conclusions sought by these other arguments. (shrink)

Radical empiricism is the view that a person's experiences (sensory and introspective), or a person's observations, constitute the person's evidence. This view leads to epistemic self-defeat. There are three arguments, concerning respectively: (1) epistemic starting points; (2) epistemic norms; (3) terms of epistemic appraisal. The source of self-defeat is traced to the fact that empiricism does not count a priori intuition as evidence (where a priori intuition is not a form of belief but rather a form of seeming, specifically intellectual (...) as opposed to sensory). Moderate rationalism, by contrast, avoids self-defeat. (shrink)

The paper investigates Ernst Cassirer’s structuralist account of geometrical knowledge developed in his Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff. The aim here is twofold. First, to give a closer study of several developments in projective geometry that form the direct background for Cassirer’s philosophical remarks on geometrical concept formation. Specifically, the paper will survey different attempts to justify the principle of duality in projective geometry as well as Felix Klein’s generalization of the use of geometrical transformations in his Erlangen program. The second aim (...) is to analyze the specific character of Cassirer’s geometrical structuralism formulated in 1910 as well as in subsequent writings. As will be argued, his account of modern geometry is best described as a “methodological structuralism”, that is, as a view mainly concerned with the role of structural methods in modern mathematical practice. (shrink)

Behavioural flexibility is often treated as the gold standard of evidence for more sophisticated or complex forms of animal cognition, such as planning, metacognition and mindreading. However, the evidential link between behavioural flexibility and complex cognition has not been explicitly or systematically defended. Such a defence is particularly pressing because observed flexible behaviours can frequently be explained by putatively simpler cognitive mechanisms. This leaves complex cognition hypotheses open to ‘deflationary’ challenges that are accorded greater evidential weight precisely because they offer (...) putatively simpler explanations of equal explanatory power. This paper challenges the blanket preference for simpler explanations, and shows that once this preference is dispensed with, and the full spectrum of evidence—including evolutionary, ecological and phylogenetic data—is accorded its proper weight, an argument in support of the prevailing assumption that behavioural flexibility can serve as evidence for complex cognitive mechanisms may begin to take shape. An adaptive model of cognitive-behavioural evolution is proposed, according to which the existence of convergent trait–environment clusters in phylogenetically disparate lineages may serve as evidence for the same trait–environment clusters in other lineages. This, in turn, could permit inferences of cognitive complexity in cases of experimental underdetermination, thereby placing the common view that behavioural flexibility can serve as evidence for complex cognition on firmer grounds. (shrink)

This study provides a unified theory of properties, relations, and propositions (PRPs). Two conceptions of PRPs have emerged in the history of philosophy. The author explores both of these traditional conceptions and shows how they can be captured by a single theory.

Scientific essentialism is the view that some necessities can be known only with the aid of empirical science. The thesis of the paper is that scientific essentialism does not extend to the central questions of philosophy and that these questions can be answered a priori. The argument is that the evidence required for the defense of scientific essentialism is reliable only if the intuitions required by philosophy to answer its central questions is also reliable. Included is an outline of a (...) modal reliabilist theory of basic evidence and a concept-possession account of the reliability of a priori intuition. (shrink)

Recent work in philosophy of language has raised significant problems for the traditional theory of propositions, engendering serious skepticism about its general workability. These problems are, I believe, tied to fundamental misconceptions about how the theory should be developed. The goal of this paper is to show how to develop the traditional theory in a way which solves the problems and puts this skepticism to rest. The problems fall into two groups. The first has to do with reductionism, specifically attempts (...) to reduce propositions to extensional entities-either extensional functions or sets. The second group concerns problems of fine grained content-both traditional 'Cicero'/'Tully' puzzles and recent variations on them which confront scientific essentialism. After characterizing the problems, I outline a non-reductionist approach-the algebraic approach-which avoids the problems associated with reductionism. I then go on to show how the theory can incorporate non-Platonic (as well as Platonic) modes of presentation. When these are implemented nondescriptively, they yield the sort of fine-grained distinctions which have been eluding us. The paper closes by applying the theory to a cluster of remaining puzzles, including a pair of new puzzles facing scientific essentialism. (shrink)

Social scientists, political scientists and philosophers debate key concepts such as democracy, power and autonomy. Contested concepts like these pose questions: Are terms such as “democracy” hopelessly ambiguous? How can two theorists defend alternative accounts of democracy without talking past each other? How can we understand debates in which theorists disagree about what democracy is? This paper first discusses the popular strategy to answer these questions by appealing to Rawls’s distinction between concepts and conceptions. According to this approach, defenders of (...) rival conceptions of, e.g. justice can disagree without talking past each other because they share the concept of justice. It is argued that this idea is attractive but limited in application and that it fails to do justice to the dynamic and normative aspects of concept formation. Reflective equilibrium is then suggested as an alternative approach. It replaces the static contrast between a conceptual ‘core’ and competing conceptions by a dynamic perspective of concept formation as a partly normative undertaking: pre-theoretic language use and commitments can provide a shared starting point for developing alternative accounts which yield different concepts of, e.g. justice. This perspective provides a new understanding of how it is possible that different theorists defend rival accounts of, e.g. justice, without talking past each other. (shrink)

The paper elaborates upon various points and arguments in the author’s “A Priori Knowledge and the Scope of Philosophy” (Philosophical Studies, 1993), in which the author defends the autonomy of philosophy from the empirical sciences. It provides, for example, an extended defense of the modal reliabilist theory of basic evidence, including a new argument against evolutionary explanations of the reliability of intuitions. It also contains a fuller discussion of how to neutralize the threat of scientific essentialism to the autonomy of (...) philosophy. (shrink)

Functionalism would be mistaken if there existed a system of deviant relations (an “anti-mind”) that had the same functional roles as the standard mental relations. In this paper such a system is constructed, using “Quinean transformations” of the sort associated with Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. For example, a mapping m from particularistic propositions (e.g., that there exists a rabbit) to universalistic propositions (that rabbithood is manifested). Using m, a deviant relation thinking* is defined: x thinks* p iff (...) x thinks m(p). Such deviant relations satisfy the commonly discussed functionalist psychological principles. Finally, a more complicated system of deviant relations is constructed, one satisfying sophisticated principles dealing with the self-conscious rational mind. (shrink)

It is argued that, because of scientific essentialism, two currently popular arguments against the mind-body identity thesis -- the multiple-realizability argument and the Nagel-Jackson knowledge argument -- are unsatisfactory as they stand and that their problems are incurable. It is then argued that a refutation of the identity thesis in its full generality can be achieved by weaving together two traditional Cartesian arguments -- the modal argument and the certainty argument. This argument establishes, not just the falsity of the identity (...) thesis, but also the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment. (shrink)

Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics furnishes an innovative conceptual model and methodology for brand equity planning, with view to addressing a crucial gap in the marketing and semiotic literatures concerning how advertising multimodal textual elements may be transformed into brand associations, with an emphasis on rhetorical relata as modes of connectivity between a brand’s surface and depth grammar. The scope of this project is inter-disciplinary, spanning research areas such as brand equity, structuralist semiotics, textual semiotics, visual and film (...) semiotics, multimodal rhetoric, film theory, psychoanalysis. The proposed connectionist conceptual model of the brand trajectory of signification is operationalized through a methodological framework that encompasses a structuralist semiotic interpretative approach to the textual formation of brand equity, supported by quantitative content analysis with the aid of the software Atlas.ti and the application of multivariate mapping techniques. (shrink)

Semiotics has been making progressively inroads into marketing research over the past thirty years. Despite the amply demonstrated conceptual appeal and empirical pertinence of semiotic perspectives in various marketing research streams, spanning consumer research, brand communications, branding and consumer cultural studies, there has been a marked deficit in terms of consolidating semiotic brand-related research under a coherent disciplinary umbrella with identifiable boundaries and research agenda. -/- The Handbook of Brand Semiotics furnishes a compass for the perplexed, a set of anchors (...) for the inquisitive and a solid corpus for scholars, while highlighting the conceptual richness and methodological diversity of semiotic perspectives. -/- Written by a team of expert scholars in various semiotics and branding related fields, such as John A. Bateman, David Machin, Xavier Ruiz Collantes, Kay L. O’Halloran, Dario Mangano, George Rossolatos, Merce Oliva, Per Ledin, Gianfranco Marrone, Francesco Mangiapane, Jennie Mazur, Carlos Scolari, Ilaria Ventura, and edited by George Rossolatos, Chief Editor of the International Journal of Marketing Semiotics, the Handbook is intended as a point of reference for researchers who wish to enter the ‘House of Brand Semiotics’ and explore its marvels. -/- The Handbook of Brand Semiotics, actively geared towards an inter-disciplinary dialogue between perspectives from marketing and semiotics, features the state-of-the-art, but also offers directions for future research in key streams, such as: -/- · Analyzing and designing brand language across media · Brand image, brand symbols, brand icons vs. iconicity · The contribution of semiotics to transmedia storytelling · Narrativity and rhetorical approaches to branding · Semiotic roadmap for designing brand identity · Semiotic roadmap for designing logos and packaging · Sociosemiotic accounts of building brand identity online · Multimodality and Multimodal critical discourse analysis · Challenging the omnipotence of cognitivism in brand- related research · Semiotics and (inter)cultural branding · Brand equity semiotics Comparative readings of structuralist, Peircean and sociosemiotic approaches to brandcomms . (shrink)

This paper provides a defense of two traditional theses: the Autonomy of Philosophy and the Authority of Philosophy. The first step is a defense of the evidential status of intuitions (intellectual seemings). Rival views (such as radical empiricism), which reject the evidential status of intuitions, are shown to be epistemically self-defeating. It is then argued that the only way to explain the evidential status of intuitions is to invoke modal reliabilism. This theory requires that intuitions have a certain qualified modal (...) tie to the truth. This result is then used as the basis of the defense of the Autonomy and Authority theses. The paper closes with a defense of the two theses against a potential threat from scientific essentialism. (shrink)

The topic of a priori knowledge is approached through the theory of evidence. A shortcoming in traditional formulations of moderate rationalism and moderate empiricism is that they fail to explain why rational intuition and phenomenal experience count as basic sources of evidence. This explanatory gap is filled by modal reliabilism -- the theory that there is a qualified modal tie between basic sources of evidence and the truth. This tie to the truth is then explained by the theory of concept (...) possession: this tie is a consequence of what, by definition, it is to possess (i.e., to understand) one’s concepts. A corollary of the overall account is that the a priori disciplines (logic, mathematics, philosophy) can be largely autonomous from the empirical sciences. (shrink)

The paper begins with an argument against eliminativism with respect to the propositional attitudes. There follows an argument that concepts are sui generis ante rem entities. A nonreductionist view of concepts and propositions is then sketched. This provides the background for a theory of concept possession, which forms the bulk of the paper. The central idea is that concept possession is to be analyzed in terms of a certain kind of pattern of reliability in one’s intuitions regarding the behavior of (...) the concept. The challenge is to find an analysis that is at once noncircular and fully general. Environmentalism, anti-individualism, holism, analyticity, etc. provide additional hurdles. The paper closes with a discussion of the theory’s implications for the Wittgenstein-Kripke puzzle about rule-following and the Benacerraf problem concerning mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

Professor Fletcher challenges the traditional account of the development of tort doctrine as a shift from an unmoral standard of strict liability for directly causing harm to a moral standard based on fault. He then sets out two paradigms of liability to serve as constructs for understanding competing ideological viewpoints about the proper role of tort sanctions. He asserts that the paradigm of reciprocity, which looks only to the degree of risk imposed by the parties to a lawsuit on each (...) other, and to the existence of possible excusing conditions, provides greater protection of individual interests than the paradigm of reasonableness, which assigns liability instrumentally on the basis of a utilitarian calculus. Finally, Professor Fletcher examines stylistic differences between the two paradigms which may explain the modern preference for the paradigm of reasonableness. (shrink)

In the Protagoras, Socrates argues that all the virtues are the very same knowledge of human wellbeing so that virtue is all one. But elsewhere Socrates appears to endorse that the virtues-such as courage, temperance, and reverence-are different parts of a single whole. Ambiguity interpretations harmonize the conflicting texts by taking the virtue words to be equivocal, such as between theoretical and applied expertise, or between a power and its deeds. I argue that such interpretations have failed in their specifics (...) and in general, as I defend an alternative that takes into account Socrates' higher purpose in testing others, namely to show them their ignorance of virtue. (shrink)

Modal intuitions are the primary source of modal knowledge but also of modal error. According to the theory of modal error in this paper, modal intuitions retain their evidential force in spite of their fallibility, and erroneous modal intuitions are in principle identifiable and eliminable by subjecting our intuitions to a priori dialectic. After an inventory of standard sources of modal error, two further sources are examined in detail. The first source - namely, the failure to distinguish between metaphysical possibility (...) and various kinds of epistemic possibility - turns out to be comparatively easy to untangle and poses little threat to intuition-driven philosophical investigation. The second source is the local misunderstanding of one's concepts . This pathology may be understood on analogy with a patient who is given a clean bill of health at his annual check-up, despite his having a cold at the time of the check-up: although the patient's health is locally disrupted, his overall health is sufficiently good to enable him to overcome the cold without external intervention. Even when our understanding of certain pivotal concepts has lapsed locally, our larger body of intuitions is sufficiently reliable to allow us, without intervention, to ferret out the modal errors resulting from this lapse of understanding by means of dialectic and/or a process of a priori reflection. This source of modal error, and our capacity to overcome it, has wide-ranging implications for philosophical method - including, in particular, its promise for disarming skepticism about the classical method of intuition-driven investigation itself. Indeed, it is shown that skeptical accounts of modal error are ultimately self-defeating. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that there is an inconsistency in functionalism in psychology and philosophy of mind. Analogous inconsistencies can be expected in functionalisms in biology and social theory. (edited).

Sex toys promote a new consumptive ethos whose significance may be adequately outlined by attending to the institutional implications of this product category’s consumption. By drawing on Foucault’s theory of sexuality and the technologies of the self that materialize with the aid of discursive formations about sexuality, as well as on relevant sociological and ethnographic insights, I undertake a qualitative content analysis on a corpus of 100 sex toys’ product reviews from popular magazines and web sites in order to identify (...) how the discourse about sex toys is articulated in terms of three dominant categories of sexual scripts (Simon and Gagnon 2007, Sexual scripts. In Richard Parker & Peter Aggleton (eds.), Culture, society, and sexuality: A reader, 29–38. London: Routledge), namely, cultural scenarios, interpersonal and intrapsychic scripts. By opening up the discussion to a broader cultural terrain, I outline how the consumption experience of sex toys, as articulated in the reviews’ discursive formations, facilitates the emergence of new consumer trends, particularly with reference to orgasm-on-the-go and no-touch-orgasm, while redefining existing ones. (shrink)

This paper offers a brand storytelling, that is a narratological account of Covid-19 pandemic’s emergence phase. By adopting a fictional ontological standpoint, the virus’ deploying media story-world is identified with a process of narrative spacing. Subsequently, the brand’s personality is analyzed as a narrative place brand. The narrative model that is put forward aims at outlining the main episodes that make up the virus’ brand personality as process and structural components (actors, settings, actions, relationships). A series of deep or ontological (...) metaphors are singled out as the core DNA of this place brand, by applying metaphorical modeling to the tropical articulation of Covid-19’s narrative. The virus’ kernel is identified with terror, as a menacing force that wipes out existing regimes of signification due to its uncertain motives, origins and operational mode. In this context, familiar urban spaces, cultural practices and intersubjective communications are redefined, repurposed and reprogrammed. This process is called terrorealization, as the desertification and metaphorical sublation of all prior territorial significations. This study contributes to the narrative sub-stream of place branding by approaching a globally relevant sociocultural phenomenon from a brand storytelling perspective. (shrink)

The context for biological emergence is modular hierarchical structures; their existence is what enables functional complexity to arise. Because of the openness of organisms to their environment, complete initial data (position, momentum) of all particles making up their structure is insufficient to determine future outcomes, because unpredictable new matter, energy, and information impacts each organism from the exterior. Consequently, through Darwinian evolution, life has developed processes to handle this issue functionally on short time scales as well on longer developmental timescales. (...) Symbolism and technology are the transforming factors handling this issue at the social levels, which is where the most sophisticated outcomes of openness occur. Considering the cosmological context, the issue is, should the universe itself be regarded as an open system over time? I make the case that is indeed so, because radically new outcomes occur such as the existence of aircraft, iPads, and the internet, which could not plausibly have been encoded in some form of data on the Last Scattering Surface in the expanding universe. (shrink)

Self-consciousness constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to functionalism. Either the standard functional definitions of mental relations wrongly require the contents of self-consciousness to be propositions involving “realizations” rather than mental properties and relations themselves. Or else these definitions are circular. The only way to save functional definitions is to expunge the standard functionalist requirement that mental properties be second-order and to accept that they are first-order. But even the resulting “ideological” functionalism, which aims only at conceptual clarification, fails unless it incorporates (...) the thesis that the mental properties are fully “natural” universals. Accordingly, mental properties are sui generis: first-order, nonphysical, natural universals. (shrink)

We investigate an enrichment of the propositional modal language L with a "universal" modality ■ having semantics x ⊧ ■φ iff ∀y(y ⊧ φ), and a countable set of "names" - a special kind of propositional variables ranging over singleton sets of worlds. The obtained language ℒ $_{c}$ proves to have a great expressive power. It is equivalent with respect to modal definability to another enrichment ℒ(⍯) of ℒ, where ⍯ is an additional modality with the semantics x ⊧ ⍯φ (...) iff Vy(y ≠ x → y ⊧ φ). Model-theoretic characterizations of modal definability in these languages are obtained. Further we consider deductive systems in ℒ $_{c}$ . Strong completeness of the normal ℒ $_{c}$ logics is proved with respect to models in which all worlds are named. Every ℒ $_{c}$ -logic axiomatized by formulae containing only names (but not propositional variables) is proved to be strongly frame-complete. Problems concerning transfer of properties ([in]completeness, filtration, finite model property etc.) from ℒ to ℒ $_{c}$ are discussed. Finally, further perspectives for names in multimodal environment are briefly sketched. (shrink)

This paper argues that participation in an intimate relationship can generate additional or stronger reasons for one to act paternalistically toward the intimate. Moreover, participation in such a relationship can also weaken or cancel some of the presumptive reasons of respect one would otherwise have not to interfere. The paper also reflects, more generally, on the nature of intimate relationships, the normative significance of paternalism, and the normative differences between paternalism in larger-scale institutional contexts and paternalism in closer, interpersonal ones. (...) -/- . (shrink)

"Translating Key Terms Terms in Lu Cheng's Records in the Chuan xi lu: Some Preliminary Considerations" Draft paper for the 2024 Conference on [Wang] Yangming's Learning of Mind, Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Updated October 4, 2024. The final version will appear in the conference volume. -/- Criticism and suggestions welcome. Please do email.

SummaryHolm Tetens develops in his book „Gott denken. Ein Versuch über rationale Theologie“ theoretical and practical arguments against a naturalistic and in favour of a theistic understanding of reality. In my paper I focus on Teten’s claim that we are rationally justified to hope for the truth of classical theism. I distinguish between rationally justified and unjustified forms of hope and argue that we are rationally justified to hope for the redemption of reality as promised by classical theism. However, this (...) hope has a weaker basis of justification than Tetens seems to assume because serious objections to classical theism ought to be taken into consideration as well. (shrink)

Presented here is an argument for the existence of universals. Like Church's translation- test argument, the argument turns on considerations from intensional logic. But whereas Church's argument turns on the fine-grained informational content of intensional sentences, this argument turns on the distinctive logical features of 'that'-clauses embedded within modal contexts. And unlike Church's argument, this argument applies against truth-conditions nominalism and also against conceptualism and in re realism. So if the argument is successful, it serves as a defense of full (...) ante rem realism. The argument emphasizes the need for a unified treatment of intensional statements -- modal statements as well as statements of assertion and belief. The larger philosophical moral will be that ante rem universals are uniquely suited to carry a certain kind of modal information. Linguistic entities, mind-dependent universals, and instance-dependent universals are incapable of serving that function. (shrink)