If we were to write down all those things that we ordinarily categorise as disabilities, the resulting list might appear to be extremely heterogeneous. What do disabilities have in common? In this paper I defend the view that disabilities should be understood as particular kinds of inability. I show how we should formulate this view, and in the process defend the view from various objections. For example, I show how the view can allow that common kinds of inability are not (...) disabilities, can allow that minor kinds of inability are rightly not described as disabilities, and can allow that socially imposed inabilities need not be disabilities. In the second half of the paper, I show that this theory is superior to rival theories. I criticize the wellbeing theory of disability (Kahane and Savulescu 2009, Savulescu and Kahane 2011, Harris 2001) and conventionalist theories of disability (e.g. Barnes 2016). Finally, I show how the inability theory is consistent with the best versions of the social model of disability. (shrink)

In Beyond Physicalism, an interdisciplinary group of physical scientists, behavioral and social scientists, and humanists from the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research argue that physicalism must be replaced by an expanded scientific naturalism that accommodates something spiritual at the heart of nature.

To explain the origin of anything, we must be clear about that which we are explaining. There seem to be two main meanings for the term consciousness. One might be called open in that it equates consciousness with awareness and experience and considers rudimentary sensations to have evolved at a specific point in the evolution of increasing complexity. But certainly the foundation for such sensation is a physical body. It is unclear, however, exactly what the physical requirements are for a (...) “central experiencer” to emerge in the course of evolution. Some suggest that it would require a basic brain, others a central nervous system, and others stipulate only a cellular membrane. The open definition is most often assumed by the so-called hard sciences. -/- The closed meaning of consciousness differentiates between a special sort of experience, i.e., conscious experience, and a special sort of awareness (i.e., self-awareness). This is the approach of psychoanalysis and psychology that accepts the existence of an unconscious mind. It is also the view of most phenomenological philosophers and psychologists (Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, etc.). This entry discusses several scientific and philosophical views of consciousness and its origins. (shrink)

Preface/Introduction: The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects — how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself. -/- (...) What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my websty awaiting its call. “From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the recently closed Karl Jaspers Forum (for discussion purposes only). -/- I have put them in a different sequence here, for reasons of logical sense. Up first, “Panexperientialism” deals with an idea difficult for many to accept, namely that conscious experience is a particular mode of symbolically reflected experience that is largely unique to our species. However, I aver that experienced sensation in itself (as found, for example, in autonomic sensory response systems) goes “all the way down” into nature, and thus the title, panexperientialism. -/- Understanding this idea is helpful to dealing with the focus on language in Part I of “Hollows”, next, since here speech and general symbolic interaction in general are found to be the catalysts for the creation of our consciously experienced world (our “lived reality”). In Part II, however, I explore how experienced sensations must be coeval with existence, and, with even greater temerity, how all this sensational existence might have arisen within some literally inconceivable background of awareness-in-itself that yet has a dynamism that occasionally breaks into existence as experiential events and entities. (The latter may sound wacky, but physicists and cosmologists are themselves attempting to come to terms with that which seethes with vast potential energy in what they refer to as the quantum vacuum.) -/- “Myth and Mind” was put third since it deals with a major lacuna in “Hollows” — that presumed prehistoric period when members of our species made the painful crossing of the symbolic threshold into the beginnings of cultural consciousness. Speech plays a central role here, too, but I look more at narrative structures from the dawn of self-awareness when ritual and myth became vital to human survival. Why would fantastic stories and bizarre rituals be necessary? I speculate that growing foresight led to the unavoidable realization of certain mortality, from which, in turn, emerged the secondary realization that we were now alive. In contrast to our yet-to-come death, we have life here and now, and by ritually identifying with a symbolically expanded mythic, i.e., sacred, reality, we may continue to live on after bodily death, just as our ancestors and loved ones must also do. Language and mythmaking are necessary to avoid mortal despair and they remain at the core of human consciousness. -/- As Ernst Cassirer (1944) has noted, language and myth are “twin creatures”, both metaphoric webs over a reality we can never wholly comprehend. We live in the symbolic and construct our works of imagination and wars of conquest to make life meaningful, to feel immortal, and to sense that we ourselves participate in a reality greater than ourselves. No doubt we do, but this does not mean our culturally constructed self-identities survive the death of our bodies, and it does not imply that our symbolic concepts can ever indicate the ultimate truth. We simply must symbolize an extended reality that was sacred to our ancestors: “Is it not our way, as illusory as it may be, to force continuance on our world and our life in the face of their inevitable ending? Are we not compelled to extend those imaginary horizons as far as we can despite the terror and the sometime joy their extension incites? Is their closure not a form of death?” (Crapanzano, p. 210) -/- Of course, this leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being forced to admit that this venture of mine must inevitably be another attempt at meaningful mythmaking. But what else could it be? This is certainly not a scientific proof though it is indeed an academically rigorous exploration. (Just try to count the citations!) I hope the reader will judge my thesis on the basis of its coherence, the sense of meaning it evokes, my intellectual responsibility, and, finally, the engagement it inspires. If you have read my expositions and found yourself immersed in the timeless questions I here call forth, I would call these writings successful (even if you violently disagree with my answers). -/- I am very grateful to Huping Hu for granting me this special issue of JCER in which to present my ideas in some detail. He has patiently dealt with my exuberant approach and allowed the many changes I kept coming up with right until the final publication date. I also wish to thank the many potential commentators who politely replied to my invitation, and, even more, I thank those who made time to write actual commentaries. -/- References -/- Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven/London: Yale UP. -/- Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press. -/- Gregory M. Nixon University of Northern British Columbia Prince George, British Columbia, Canada Email: [email protected] Websty: http://members.shaw.ca/doknyx. (shrink)

When a technique purports to provide information that is not available to the unaided senses, it is natural to think that the only way to validate that technique is by appealing to a theory of the processes that lead from the object of study to the raw data. In fact, scientists have a variety of strategies for validating their techniques. Those strategies can yield multiple independent arguments that support the validity of the technique. Thus, it is possible to produce a (...) robust body of data with a single technique. I illustrate and support these claims with a historical case study. *Received September 2009; revised October 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

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

Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until creatively determined in the present. But time’s arrow is unnecessary in Einstein’s so-called block universe, so there is no creative unfolding in an actual present. How can there be an actual present when there is no universal moment of simultaneity? Events in various places will have different presents according to the position, velocity, and nature of the perceiver. Standing against (...) this view is traditional common sense since we normally experience time’s arrow as reality and the present as our place in the stream of consciousness, but we err to imagine we are living in the actual present. The present of our daily experience is actually a specious present, according to E. Robert Kelly (later popularized by William James), or duration, according to Henri Bergson, an habitus, as elucidated by Kerby (1991), or, simply, the psychological present (Adams, 2010) – all terms indicating that our experienced present so consists of the past overlapping into the future that any potential for acting from the creative moment is crowded out. Yet, for philosophers of process from Herakleitos onward, it is the philosophies of change or process that treat time’s arrow and the creative fire of the actual present as realities. In this essay, I examine the most well known but possibly least understood process cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead to seek out this elusive but actual present. In doing so, I will also ask if process philosophy is itself an example of the creative imagination and if this relates to doing science. I conclude Whitehead's process philosophy falls short of allowing for the actual creative spontaneity of a dynamic (eternal) present. (shrink)

The article argues that Hobbes articulates a modern problematic of reason, where the shared rationality of human beings is an integral part of the danger they present to each other, and where reason suggests a solution, the social contract and the laws of nature, enforced and interpreted by absolute sovereign authority. This solution reflects a tension in modern reason itself, since it requires the alienation of self-determination of the rational human subject precisely to preserve the condition for the possibility of (...) the rationality of the rational human subject, i.e. one’s life, which is threatened by the very rationality of other human subjects. I discuss interpretations of Hobbes which stress the other motives of conflict, i.e. competition and vanity, and acknowledge that they play a role in the threat subjects present to each other, but argue that the danger presented precisely by shared rationality, which I discuss with some reference to the Hegelian dialectic of consciousness and mutual recognition, has been underplayed by Hobbes’ interpretation. (shrink)

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

Academic study of religion, embracing what at the University of Dhaka is called World Religions and Culture, is a relatively new eld of scholarship in the world. It is only beginning to emerge in Bangladesh and other South asian countries. as distinguished om the theological study of reli‐ gion, which favours one’s own faith tradition, academic study of religion uses the same descriptive, analytic and critical academic criteria and methods to study any form of religious life, including one’s own. In (...) this paper, there has been an e ort to discuss the basic di erences between these two sorts of study. The paper then explores the brief history of academic study of religion in the modern world and how it came into being at Dhaka University (DU) as the Department of World Religions & Culture (WRC) under the faculty of arts. Finally, the crucial role of late Professor Dr. Joseph T. O’Connell (1940–2012) in forming the Department and its a liated Centre for Inter‐religious & Intercultural Dialogue (CIID) as an academic place for the study, teaching and doing research on the di erent religious issues for the promotion of multi‐religious and multi‐ cultural peace and harmony in Bangladesh is discussed. The paper has been written on the bases of the o cial documents of Dhaka University as for the existence of WRC and CIID, academic activities and works of faculty members of WRC, especially of Professor Dr. Joseph T. O’Connell, along with other primary and secondary literary sources relevant to the academic study of religion. (shrink)

Analyzing geometric properties of high-dimensional loss functions, such as local curvature and the existence of other optima around a certain point in loss space, can help provide a better understanding of the interplay between neural network structure, implementation attributes, and learning performance. In this work, we combine concepts from high-dimensional probability and differential geometry to study how curvature properties in lower-dimensional loss representations depend on those in the original loss space. We show that saddle points in the original space are (...) rarely correctly identified as such in expected lower-dimensional representations if random projections are used. The principal curvature in the expected lower-dimensional representation is proportional to the mean curvature in the original loss space. Hence, the mean curvature in the original loss space determines if saddle points appear, on average, as either minima, maxima, or almost flat regions. We use the connection between expected curvature in random projections and mean curvature in the original space (i.e., the normalized Hessian trace) to compute Hutchinson-type trace estimates without calculating Hessian-vector products as in the original Hutchinson method. Because random projections are not suitable to correctly identify saddle information, we propose to study projections along dominant Hessian directions that are associated with the largest and smallest principal curvatures. We connect our findings to the ongoing debate on loss landscape flatness and generalizability. Finally, for different common image classifiers and a function approximator, we show and compare random and Hessian projections of loss landscapes with up to about 7×10^6 parameters. (shrink)

I claim that ‘cause and effect’ only appears to involve distinct existences insofar as we can’t adequately understand the relationship, or insofar as we are determined to look at the matters of fact involved from a logically deductive point of view. Since ‘cause and effect’ often represents the first stab at understanding what happens in a situation, this means it will often appear to involve distinct existences, and since logical deduction is the acme of what it is to perform adequate (...) reasoning, for philosophers, this re-enforces this appearance, to philosophers. In contrast I claim we can try to avoid drawing conclusions beyond objects or factors in a situation, by comparing them as we attempt to trace them about. In so far as we succeed, since we have not had to go beyond the continued existence of those factors, they themselves must appear sufficient to produce that part of the situations they continue into and so construct. I also claim if somethings appear themselves sufficient to bring something about this is inconsistent with the claim it depends on something else e.g. human understanding, or language. Two cases; 1) If we assume this object has, or continues to have some properties e.g. weight, then on this basis we can validly deduce such & such consequences. 2) The continued existence of this object with weight would (or is) itself be sufficient to bring about…. The first makes what we are up to depend on our mode of reasoning, or what we recognize as ‘our way and principles of reasoning’. The second discovers the situation to be autonomous. (shrink)

Nel 'Godel's Way' tre eminenti scienziati discutono questioni come l'indecidibilità, l'incompletezza, la casualità, la computabilità e la paracoerenza. Affronto questi problemi dal punto di vista di Wittgensteinian che ci sono due questioni fondamentali che hanno soluzioni completamente diverse. Ci sono le questioni scientifiche o empiriche, che sono fatti sul mondo che devono essere studiati in modo osservante e filosofico su come il linguaggio può essere usato in modo intelligibilmente (che include alcune domande in matematica e logica), che devono essere decise (...) cercando un modo in cui usiamoeffettivamente le parole in particolari contesti. Quando arriviamo a sapere su quale gioco di lingua stiamo giocando, questi argomenti sono visti come domande scientifiche e matematiche ordinarie come tutti gli altri. Le intuizioni di Wittgenstein sono state raramente eguagliate e mai superate e sono pertinenti oggi come lo erano 80 anni fa, quando ha dettato i Libri Blu e Marrone. Nonostante le sue mancanze - in realtà una serie di note piuttosto che un libro finito - questa è una fonte unica del lavoro di questi tre famosi studiosi che hanno lavorato ai bordi sanguinanti della fisica, della matematica e della filosofia per oltre mezzo secolo. Da Costa e Doria sono citati da Wolpert (vedi sotto o i miei articoli su Wolpert e la mia recensione di 'I limiti esterni della ragione' di Yanofsky) dal momento che hanno scritto sul calcolo universale, e tra i suoi numerosi successi, Da Costa è un pioniere della paracoerenza. Coloro che desiderano un quadro aggiornato completo per il comportamento umano dalla moderna vista a due systems possono consultare il mio libro 'La struttura logica dellafilosofia, psicologia, Mind e il linguaggio in Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Coloro che sono interessati a più dei miei scritti possono vedere 'TalkingMonkeys--Filosofia, Psicologia, Scienza, Religione e Politica su un Pianeta Condannato--Articoli e Recensioni 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) e Suicidal Utopian Delusions nel 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

En ' Godel’s Way ', tres eminentes científicos discuten temas como la indecisión, la incompleta, la aleatoriedad, la computabilidad y la paraconsistencia. Me acerco a estas cuestiones desde el punto de vista de Wittgensteinian de que hay dos cuestiones básicas que tienen soluciones completamente diferentes. Existen las cuestiones científicas o empíricas, que son hechos sobre el mundo que necesitan ser investigados observacionalmente y cuestiones filosóficas en cuanto a cómo el lenguaje se puede utilizar inteligiblemente (que incluyen ciertas preguntas en matemáticas (...) y lógica), que necesitan decidirse por unt cómo realmente usar palabras en contextos concretos. Cuando tenemos claro sobre qué juego de idiomas estamos jugando, estos temas son vistos como preguntas científicas y matemáticas ordinarias como cualquier otra. Las percepciones de Wittgenstein rara vez se han igualado y nunca superado y son tan pertinentes hoy como lo fueron hace 80 años cuando dictó los libros azul y marrón. A pesar de sus fallas — realmente una serie de notas en lugar de un libro terminado —, esta es una fuente única de la obra de estos tres eruditos famosos que han estado trabajando en los bordes sangrantes de la física, las matemáticas y la filosofía durante más de medio siglo. Da Costa y Doria son citados por Wolpert (ver abajo o mis artículos sobre Wolpert y mi reseña de ' los límites de la razón ' de Yanofsky) desde que escribieron en el cómputo universal, y entre sus muchos logros, da Costa es pionera en paraconsistencia. Aquellos que deseen un marco completo hasta la fecha para el comportamiento humano de la moderna dos sistemas punto de vista puede consultar mi libros Talking Monkeys 3ª ed (2019), Estructura Logica de Filosofia, Psicología, Mente y Lenguaje en Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Searle 2a ed (2019), Suicidio pela Democracia 4ª ed (2019), La Estructura Logica del Comportamiento Humano (2019), The Logical Structure de la Conciencia (2019, Entender las Conexiones entre Ciencia, Filosofía, Psicología, Religión, Política y Economía y Delirios Utópicos Suicidas en el siglo 21 5ª ed (2019), Observaciones sobre Imposibilidad, Incompletitud, Paraconsistencia, Indecidibilidad, Aleatoriedad, Computabilidad, Paradoja e Incertidumbre en Chaitin, Wittgenstein,. (shrink)

Em "Godel's Way", três cientistas eminentes discutem questões como a undecidability, incompletude, aleatoriedade, computabilidade e paraconsistência. Eu abordar estas questões do ponto de vista Wittgensteinian que existem duas questões básicas que têm soluções completamente diferentes. Há as questões científicas ou empíricas, que são fatos sobre o mundo que precisam ser investigados observacionalmente e questões filosóficas sobre como a linguagem pode ser usada inteligìvelmente (que incluem certas questões em matemática e lógica), que precisam ser decidido por olhar uma como nós realmente (...) usar palavras em contextos específicos. Quando nós começ claros sobre que jogo da língua nós estamos jogando, estes tópicos são vistos para ser perguntas científicas e matemáticas ordinárias como qualquer outro. As idéias de Wittgenstein raramente foram igualadas e nunca ultrapassaram e são tão pertinentes hoje como eram 80 anos atrás, quando ele ditou os livros azul e marrom. Apesar de suas falhas-realmente uma série de notas em vez de um livro acabado-esta é uma fonte única do trabalho destes três estudiosos famosos que têm trabalhado nas bordas sangrantes da física, matemática e filosofia por mais de meio século. Da costa e Doria são citados por Wolpert (veja abaixo ou meus artigos sobre Wolpert e minha revisão de Yanofsky ' s "os limites exteriores da razão") desde que escreveu sobre a computação universal, e entre suas muitas realizações, da costa é um pioneiro em a paraconsistência. Aqueles que desejam um quadro até à data detalhado para o comportamento humano da opinião moderna dos dois sistemas consultar meu livros Falando Macacos 3ª Ed (2019), A Estrutura Lógica da Filosofia, Psicologia, Mente e Linguagem em Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle 2a Ed (2019), Suicídio Pela Democracia,4aEd(2019), Entendendo as Conexões entre Ciência, Filosofia, Psicologia, Religião, Política e Economia Artigos e Análises 2006-2019 (2019), Ilusões Utópicas Suicidas no 21St século 5a Ed (2019), A Estrutura Lógica do Comportamento Humano (2019), e A Estrutura Lógica da Consciência (2019) y outras. (shrink)

En ' Godel’s Way ', tres eminentes científicos discuten temas como la indecisión, la incompleta, la aleatoriedad, la computabilidad y la paracoherencia. Me acerco a estas cuestiones desde el punto de vista de Wittgensteinian de que hay dos cuestiones básicas que tienen soluciones completamente diferentes. Existen las cuestiones científicas o empíricas, que son hechos sobre el mundo que necesitan ser investigados Observacionalmente y cuestiones filosóficas en cuanto a cómo el lenguaje se puede utilizar inteligiblemente (que incluyen ciertas preguntas en matemáticas (...) y lógica), que necesitan decidirse por unt cómo realmente usar palabras en contextos concretos. Cuando tenemos claro sobre qué juego de idiomas estamos jugando, estos temas son vistos como preguntas científicas y matemáticas ordinarias como cualquier otra. Las percepciones de Wittgenstein rara vez se han igualado y nunca superado y son tan pertinentes hoy como lo fueron hace 80 años cuando dictó los libros azul y marrón. A pesar de sus fallas — realmente una serie de notas en lugar de un libro terminado —, esta es una fuente única de la obra de estos tres eruditos famosos que han estado trabajando en los bordes sangrantes de la física, las matemáticas y la filosofía durante más de medio siglo. Da Costa y Doria son citados por Wolpert (ver abajo o mis artículos sobre Wolpert y mi reseña de ' los límites de la razón ' de Yanofsky) desde que escribieron en el cómputo universal, y entre sus muchos logros, da Costa es pionera en paraconsistencia. -/- Aquellos que deseen un marco completo hasta la fecha para el comportamiento humano de la moderna dos sistemas punta da vista puede consultar mi libro 'La estructura lógica de la filosofía, la psicología, la mente y lenguaje en Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Searle ' 2a ED (2019). Los interesados en más de mis escritos pueden ver 'Monos parlantes--filosofía, psicología, ciencia, religión y política en un planeta condenado--artículos y reseñas 2006-2019 3rd ED (2019) y Delirios utópicos suicidas en el siglo 21 4a Ed (2019) y otras. (shrink)

Discussione a partire dal libro di M. NICHTERLEIN e J. R. MORSS, Deleuze e la psicologia, a cura di Pietro Barbetta ed Enrico Valtellina, Raffaello Cortina, Milano 2017.

q. 16 of John of Naples’ Quodlibet III – Utrum dolor vel passio damnatae animae separatae sit, sicut in subiecto immediato, in eius essentia vel potentia – evokes one of the most delicate debates, both from a theological and philosophical point of view, of scholastic eschatology between the end of the 13th century and the first decades of the 14th: that relating to the action of hellfire (considered, due to the auctoritas of Gregory the Great, corporeal and identical in (...) essence to sublunar fire) on an immaterial reality such as the soul in its state of separation (i.e. in the period between the individual death and the final judgement). The article retraces the way in which (in the well-known q. 2 of Quodlibet VI) John of Naples defends Thomas Aquinas from the suspicion of incurring, with his position, the condemnations of Tempier in 1270 and 1277, and how Aquinas himself tries to explain (especially in q. 26 of his Quaestiones disputatae de veritate) the passio or pain of the soul (both in the state of separation and in that of conjunction), through the double distinction between passio corporalis and passio animalis, and, within the former, between laesio and experimentalis perceptio laesionis. It then analyses q. 16 of Quodlibet III, in which John of Naples identifies the rational appetite – i.e. the will – as the immediate subject of the separate soul’s pain. In the appendix, an edition of John’s question is provided on the basis of the manuscripts Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, VII.B. 28 (= N) and Tortosa, Biblioteca de la Catedral, 244 (= T). (shrink)

Just after my return from a symposium at the University of Navarre on the dialogue between faith and culture in Christian antiquity, I had the opportunity to read Peroli's book. His approach is strikingly in accord with many of the claims made at Navarre. The overall approach of his study may be summed up with the following words: early Christian thought effected an authentic inculturation, [[sic]] not just by expressing the faith in the dominant philosophical categories of the time, but (...) by transforming those very categories in order to rationally express Christian belief. This is precisely the core achievement of the philosophical anthropology of Gregory of Nissa. St. Gregory actively fed upon neo-Platonism. He made use of Platonic/neo-platonic thought in order to demonstrate the rationality of Christian faith, even in those areas of reflection where the faith might seem most distant from the reigning philosophical tenets. (shrink)

The 14 essays collected in this volume explore the various aspects of Augustine’s philosophy and its medieval reception: by considering his education and the development of his thought as conveyed by a series of philosophical images and styles, the volume reconstructs the recurring motifs of his intellectual journey (the anti-Manichean polemic, his political vision, the role of reason, and the theory of war) and their fortune in authors such as Thomas Aquinas, Nicole Oresme, Gregory of Rimini, and Robert Grosseteste.

The 14 essays collected in this volume explore the various aspects of Augustine’s philosophy and its medieval reception: by considering his education and the development of his thought as conveyed by a series of philosophical images and styles, the volume reconstructs the recurring motifs of his intellectual journey (the anti-Manichean polemic, his political vision, the role of reason, and the theory of war) and their fortune in authors such as Thomas Aquinas, Nicole Oresme, Gregory of Rimini, and Robert Grosseteste.

O elenchus é o método pelo qual Sócrates evidencia as incoerências entre a tese de seu interlocutor e seu sistema de crenças. Na visão de Gregory Vlastos, o método utilizado por Sócrates no Teeteto não é elêntico porque ele não visa a refutação direta da tese inicial de Teeteto. Argumentando contra a visão de Vlastos defendo que Sócrates constrói ao final da primeira parte do diálogo objeções fundamentadas em premissas aceitas por Teeteto que culminam no objetivo clássico do elenchus. (...) Além disso, argumento que mesmo que Sócrates não tivesse de fato refutado a tese original de Teeteto, ainda poderíamos defender que o método é elêntico, pois Teeteto consente com as premissas que igualam sua tese a tese de Protágoras. (shrink)

Among the medieval sources cited in early-modern philosophical and religious works, Gregory of Rimini (c. 1300–1358) appears more than once as the authoritative progenitor of doctrines that have consolidated over time. This can be said of the ‘etiamsi Deus non daretur’ argument, used, among others, by Hugo Grotius and Francisco Suárez, of which in this article we intend to verify the correctness of attribution to Gregory and the relevance of the connection with his ‘si Deus ipse non esset’. (...) This verification is carried out by means of an analysis of the Augustinian influences of Gregory’s positions: it is shown that of the various ‘etiamsi Deus non daretur’ arguments that Western culture would have known and experienced, Gregory’s ‘si Deus ipse non esset’ can be considered mostly as an anticipation of a formula, whose content and meaning, precisely because of the philosophical-moral framework and the Augustinian theological inspiration in which it was expressed, were very different from those that the authors of the following centuries would have attributed to it. (shrink)

This is a forthcoming section for the book "Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy", edited by Graham Oppy, Gregory Dawes, Evan Fales, Joseph Koterski, Mashhad Al-Allaf, Robert Fastiggi, and David Shatz. I was asked to write a brief essay on whether naturalism or theism can successfully explain the distribution of suffering in our world. Wheras another section covers the possibility that suffering is evidence against theism, my essay is concerned only with the ability for either naturalism or theism (...) to explain suffering. I argue that, for naturalists, suffering is not to be explained by either philosophers of religion or theologians. Instead, naturalists believe that suffering should be explained by the cognitive and social sciences, perhaps in conjunction with political philosophy and philosophy of mind. Moreover, naturalists may take suffering to be an important reason for action. In a world without a transcendent, supernatural being to watch over us, we can only depend upon each other to ameliorate existing conditions, to the extent that they can be ameliorated. On the other hand, theistic explanations of the distibution of suffering slip very easily into problematic theologies when they try to offer explicit explanations for suffering. For example, the world's most vulnerable people are often those who suffer the most, whereas oppressors are often able to prosper. That is, theistic explanations of our world's suffering easily slip into, e.g., the just world fallacy, racist ideology (i.e., that God favors some race(s) of people over others), or patriarchal ideology. Instead of offering an explicit explanation, theists should instead be skeptical theists -- i.e., they should argue that an explanation for our world's suffering is beyond our ken. While skeptical theism avoids the aforementioned problematic implications, if skeptical theism is true, then our world's suffering cannot be fully explained. (shrink)

The second half of the 20th century may fairly be considered a golden age for the study of ancient philosophy. This period witnessed the creation of four English-language journals for specialists and two professional societies. Throughout this period there were numerous regional and national conferences, reading groups, NEH-sponsored summer seminars and institutes on various aspects of ancient thought, successful graduate programs in ancient philosophy at a sizable number of American universities, and a steady supply of jobs for specialists in the (...) field. Seminal studies by Gregory Vlastos and G.E.L. Owen stimulated broad interest in ancient Greek philosophy by showing how the methods and issues explored by ancient thinkers were relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. On a less happy note, in recent years some influential analytic philosophers have discounted the value of work in the history of philosophy, and public funding for philosophy, along with other humanities fields, has declined sharply. -/- . (shrink)

The methods of intellectual history have not yet been applied to studying the invention of technology for printing texts and images ca. 1375–ca. 1450. One of the several conceptual developments in this period refl ecting the possibility of mechanical replication is a view of the relationship of eternity to durational time based on Gregory of Nyssa’s philosophy of time and William of Ockham’s. Th e article considers how changes in these ideas helped enable the conceptual possibilities of the dissemination (...) of ideas. It describes a direct connection of human perceptual knowledge to divine knowledge that enhanced the authority of printed production to transfer and reproduce the true and the good. (shrink)

Edited proceedings of an interdisciplinary symposium on consciousness held at the University of Cambridge in January 1978. Includes a foreword by Freeman Dyson. Chapter authors: G. Vesey, R.L. Gregory, H.C. Longuet-Higgins, N.K. Humphrey, H.B. Barlow, D.M. MacKay, B.D. Josephson, M. Roth, V.S. Ramachandran, S. Padfield, and (editorial summary only) E. Noakes. A scanned pdf is available from this web site (philpapers.org), while alternative versions more suitable for copying text are available from https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/245189. -/- Page numbering convention for the pdf (...) version viewed in a pdf viewer is as follows: 'go to page n' accesses the pair of scanned pages 2n and 2n+1. Applicable licence: CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit Gregory Kavka’s Toxin Puzzle and propose a novel solution to it. Like some previous accounts, mine postulates a tight link between intentions and reasons but, unlike them, in my account these are motivating rather than normative reasons, i.e. reasons that explain (rather than justify) the intended action. I argue that sensitivity to the absence of possible motivational explanations for the intended action is constitutive of deliberation-based intentions. Since ordinary rational agents display this sensitivity, when (...) placed in the toxin scenario they will believe that there is no motivational explanation for actually drinking the toxin and this is why they can’t form the intention to drink it in the first place. I thus argue that my Motivating-Explanatory Reason Principle correctly explains the toxin puzzle, thereby revealing itself as a genuine metaphysical constraint on intentions. I also explore at length the implications of my account for the nature of intention and rational agency. (shrink)

A Grã-Bretanha setecentista foi um dos períodos mais preocupados e que mais escreveu sobre galanteria, moral, modéstia, virtudes, cavalheirismo e boas maneiras; em uma palavra: polidez. Uma das razões que justifica a preocupação de grande parte dos autores britânicos com esse tema (Hume, Chesterfield, Gregory, Mandeville, Wollstonecraft, Fordyce, Shaftesbury – só para citar alguns) estaria atrelada a uma necessidade de evidenciar a diferença entre os povos bárbaros e os civilizados. As boas maneiras seriam um dos principais divisores de águas (...) entre a barbárie e a civilização, inculcadas principalmente através de textos de morais práticas, refletiriam a superioridade de caráter, o acúmulo de virtudes e de conhecimentos, tornando as faculdades mentais aptas para agirem sempre da melhor forma possível. Um dos pontos que usualmente são esquecidos ou ignorados por esses autores – e por seus comentadores – diz respeito ao caráter da hipocrisia exposto por Davidson. Meu objetivo será apresentar de que forma estas relações se constituíam através da compreensão da formação de caráter proporcionada aos considerados cavalheiros e mulheres de mérito e em que medida pode-se caracterizá-los como hipocrisia. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman notoriously distinguished between autographic works, whose instances should be identified by taking history of production into account, and allographic works, whose instances can be identified independently of history of production. Scholars such as Jerrold Levinson, Flint Schier, and Gregory Currie have criticized Goodman’s autographic/allographic distinction arguing that all works are such that their instances should be identified by taking history of production into account. I will address this objection by exploiting David Davies’ distinction between e-instances and p-instances (...) of a work, thereby restating the autographic/allographic distinction. Then, I will show that this way of restating this distinction leads us to effective accounts of relevant related phenomena such as forgery, plagiarism, and digital technologies. Finally, I will show the theoretical advantages of my account of the autographic/allographic distinction in comparison with an alternative account recently proposed by Jason D’Cruz and P.D. Magnus. (shrink)

A lo largo de la obra de Tomás de Aquino es posible encontrar cierta tensión textual en torno a la posibilidad de conocer de manera natural la esencia divina. Por un lado el teólogo parece afirmar que, precisamente, no podemos conocer acerca de Dios qué es, sino solo qué no es. Pero, por otra parte, existe evidencia textual de que habría sostenido la posibilidad de un conocimiento quiditativo imperfecto. En tanto y en cuanto el matiz más positivo suele aparecer con (...) mayor énfasis en el tratamiento de los problemas relativos al lenguaje, un gran número de comentadores (desde E. Gilson hasta, más recientemente, D. Burrell, G. Rocca y R. Accar) ha expresado una tentencia a circunscribir la tensión al ámbito linguistico o judicativo. Tomás, de acuerdo a estos autores, nunca habría sostenido que es posible tener un conocimiento quiditativo natural de la esencia divina. En palabras de E. Gilson: -/- “Hacer decir a Santo Tomás que tenemos un conocimiento por lo menos imperfecto de lo que Dios es, significa traicionar su pensamiento, tal como él lo ha formulado repetidas veces” 1 -/- El énfasis de estos autores, bien considerado, esta puesto en la tesis ciertamente defendida por Tomás de que la esencia divina es naturalmente incomprehensible. Los autores reaccionan específicamente contra la teoría del concepto análogo desarrollada originalmente por el cardenal Cayetano. Según interpretan, el concepto análogo se reduciría, en última instancia, precisamente, a un concepto comprehensivo. En este trabajo intentaremos volver a revisar la posición de Tomás sobre el conocimiento quiditativo natural desde sus bases. A nuestro entender el teólogo medieval ha sostenido desde sus obras más tempranas que es posible un conocimiento natural quiditativo -si bien imperfecto. Interpretamos que ese conocimiento incluye la posibilidad de representarnos, aunque de manera deficiente, la esencia divina. Defendemos, consecuentemente, la posibilidad de formarnos conceptos, siempre deficientes, claro, de la misma, distintos, por supuesto, de los conceptos análogos. Y sostenemos que la tesis de que la interpretación de la teoría epistemológica tomista en la que el sentido precede a la verdad judicativa no atenta contra la tesis de que Dios es, finalmente incomprehensible. (shrink)

Can fictional narration yield knowledge in a way that depends crucially on its being fictional? This is the hard question of literary cognitivism. It is unexceptional that knowledge can be gained from fictional literature in ways that are not dependent on its fictionality (e.g., the science in science fiction). Sometimes fictional narratives are taken to exhibit the structure of suppositional argument, sometimes analogical argument. Of course, neither structure is unique to narratives. The thesis of literary cognitivism would be supported if (...) some novels exhibit a cogent and special argument structure restricted to fictional narratives. I contend that this is the case for a kind of transcendental argument. The reason is the inclusion and pattern of occurrence of the predicate ‘believable’ in the schema. Believability with respect to fictional stories is quite a different thing than it is with respect to nonfictional stories or anything else. (shrink)

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

We often ascribe possibility to the scenes that are displayed by mental or nonmental sensory images. The paper presents a novel argument for thinking that we are prima facie justified in ascribing metaphysical possibility to what is displayed by suitable visual images, and it argues that many of our imagery‐based ascriptions of metaphysical possibility are therefore prima facie justified. Some potential objections to the arguments are discussed, and some potential extensions of them, to cover nonvisual forms of imagery and nonmetaphysical (...) forms of possibility, are endorsed. (shrink)

I have read many recent discussions of the limits of computation and the universe as computer, hoping to find some comments on the amazing work of polymath physicist and decision theorist David Wolpert but have not found a single citation and so I present this very brief summary. Wolpert proved some stunning impossibility or incompleteness theorems (1992 to 2008-see arxiv.org) on the limits to inference (computation) that are so general they are independent of the device doing the computation, and even (...) independent of the laws of physics, so they apply across computers, physics, and human behavior. They make use of Cantor's diagonalization, the liar paradox and worldlines to provide what may be the ultimate theorem in Turing Machine Theory, and seemingly provide insights into impossibility, incompleteness, the limits of computation,and the universe as computer, in all possible universes and all beings or mechanisms, generating, among other things,a non- quantum mechanical uncertainty principle and a proof of monotheism. There are obvious connections to the classic work of Chaitin, Solomonoff, Komolgarov and Wittgenstein and to the notion that no program (and thus no device) can generate a sequence (or device) with greater complexity than it possesses. One might say this body of work implies atheism since there cannot be any entity more complex than the physical universe and from the Wittgensteinian viewpoint, ‘more complex’ is meaningless (has no conditions of satisfaction, i.e., truth-maker or test). Even a ‘God’ (i.e., a ‘device’ with limitless time/space and energy) cannot determine whether a given ‘number’ is ‘random’ nor can find a certain way to show that a given ‘formula’, ‘theorem’ or ‘sentence’ or ‘device’ (all these being complex language games) is part of a particular ‘system’. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016’ 662p (2016). -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX . (shrink)

GREGORY McELWAIN | : This paper explores the intersection of animal and environmental ethics through the thought of Mary Midgley. Midgley’s work offers a shift away from liberal individualist animal ethics toward a relational value system involving interdependence, care, sympathy, and other components of morality that were often overlooked or marginalized in hyperrationalist ethics, though which are now more widely recognized. This is most exemplified in her concept of “the mixed community,” which gained special attention in J. Baird Callicott’s (...) effort to create a “unified environmental ethics.” In this, Callicott saw the potential in Midgley’s thought for bringing animal and environmental ethics “back together again.” However, this paper argues that he oversimplified and misapplied her complex concept. This is primarily due to his attempt to harmonize her approach with a rigid dichotomy between domestic and wild animals—as well as one between individuals and collectives—in his conception of the land ethic in the tradition of Aldo Leopold. Throughout, this paper also highlights Midgley’s value as an early contributor to the convergence of animal and environmental ethics. | : Cet article explore l’intersection entre l’éthique animale et l’éthique environnementale par le biais de la pensée de Mary Midgley. Le travail de Midgley prend ses distances d’une éthique animale libérale individualiste pour se rapprocher d’un système de valeurs relationnel qui implique l’interdépendance, le soin, la sympathie, et d’autres éléments de la morale qui ont souvent été négligés ou marginalisés dans le contexte de l’éthique hyperrationnaliste, bien qu’actuellement plus largement reconnus. Le meilleur exemple de cela se retrouve dans son concept de « la communauté mixte », lequel a bénéficié d’une attention particulière chez J. Baird Callicot et son effort pour créer une « éthique environnementale unifiée ». En cela, Callicot a vu le potentiel de la pensée de Midgley’s pour une « réunification » de l’éthique animale et l’éthique environnementale. Or, cet article soutient qu’il a simplifié et appliqué à tort le concept complexe de Midgley, en raison de sa tentative de concilier l’approche de cette dernière avec une stricte dichotomie entre animaux sauvages et domestiques – en plus d’une autre entre individus et collectivités – suivant sa conception de l’éthique de la terre dans la tradition d’Aldo Leopold. Tout au long du texte, cet article met en relief l’importance de Midgley comme l’une des premiers théoriciens à avoir contribué à la convergence de l’éthique animale et de l’éthique environnementale. (shrink)

In this paper I first argue against one attractive formulation of the motivation argument, and against one attractive formulation of noncognitivism. I do so by example: I suggest that other-regarding normative judgments do not seem to have motivational powers and do not seem to be desires. After defending these two claims, I argue that other views can accommodate the motivational role of normative judgment without facing this objection. For example, desire-as-belief theories do so, since such theories only say that some (...) normative judgments constitute desires, not that all such judgments do so. In short, I argue that, if we are seeking a theory that explains the motivational role of normative judgement, some theories are better than others insofar as they do so without committing to the claim that all normative judgements play such a motivational role. (shrink)

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

This paper argues that Oswald Spengler has an innovative philosophical position on the nature and interrelation of mathematics and science. It further argues that his position in many ways parallels that of Martin Heidegger. Both held that an appreciation of the mathematical nature of contemporary science was critical to a proper appreciation of science, technology and modernity. Both also held that the fundamental feature of modern science is its mathematical nature, and that the mathematical operates as a projection that establishes (...) in advance the manner in which an object will present itself. They also assert that modern science, mathematics and metaphysics all have their roots in the ‘mathematical’, whose essence is itself nothing numerical. (shrink)

The concept of agency is of crucial importance in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and it is often used as an intuitive and rather uncontroversial term, in contrast to more abstract and theoretically heavy-weighted terms like “intentionality”, “rationality” or “mind”. However, most of the available definitions of agency are either too loose or unspecific to allow for a progressive scientific program. They implicitly and unproblematically assume the features that characterize agents, thus obscuring the full potential and challenge of modeling agency. (...) We identify three conditions that a system must meet in order to be considered as a genuine agent: a) a system must define its own individuality, b) it must be the active source of activity in its environment (interactionalasymmetry) and c) it must regulate this activity in relation to certain norms (normativity). We find that even minimal forms of proto-celular systems can already provide a paradigmatic example of genuine agency. By abstracting away some specific details of minimal models of living agency we define the kind of organization that is capable to meet the required conditions for agency (which is not restricted to living organisms). On this basis, we define agency as an autonomous organization that adaptively regulates its coupling with its environment and contributes to sustaining itself as a consequence. We find that spatiality and temporality are the two fundamental domains in which agency spans at different scales. We conclude by giving an outlook to the road that lies ahead in the pursuit to understand, model and synthesis agents. (shrink)

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about what a person values, whether a person is happy, whether a person has shown weakness of will, and whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed (...) asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non-moral in nature. (shrink)

Recent work on Natural Kind Essentialism has taken a deflationary turn. The assumptions about the grounds of essentialist truths concerning natural kinds familiar from the Kripke-Putnam framework are now considered questionable. The source of the problem, however, has not been sufficiently explicated. The paper focuses on the Twin Earth scenario, and it will be demonstrated that the essentialist principle at its core (which I call IDENT)—that necessarily, a sample of a chemical substance, A, is of the same kind as another (...) sample, B, if and only if A and B have the same microstructure—must be re-evaluated. The Twin Earth scenario also assumes the falsity of another essentialist principle (which I call INST): necessarily, there is a 1:1 correlation between (all of ) the chemical properties of a chemical substance and the microstructure of that substance. This assumption will be questioned, and it will be argued that, in fact, the best strategy for defending IDENT is to establish INST. The prospects for Natural Kind Essentialism and microstructural essentialism regarding chemical substances will be assessed with reference to recent work in the philosophy of chemistry. Finally, a weakened form of INST will be presented. (shrink)

In formal ontology, infinite regresses are generally considered a bad sign. One debate where such regresses come into play is the debate about fundamentality. Arguments in favour of some type of fundamentalism are many, but they generally share the idea that infinite chains of ontological dependence must be ruled out. Some motivations for this view are assessed in this article, with the conclusion that such infinite chains may not always be vicious. Indeed, there may even be room for a type (...) of fundamentalism combined with infinite descent as long as this descent is “boring,” that is, the same structure repeats ad infinitum. A start is made in the article towards a systematic account of this type of infinite descent. The philosophical prospects and scientific tenability of the account are briefly evaluated using an example from physics. (shrink)

Bracket out the wrong of committing a wrong, or conspiring or colluding or conniving with others in their committing one. Suppose you have done none of those things, and you find yourself merely benefiting from a wrong committed wholly by someone else. What, if anything, is wrong with that? What, if any, duties follow from it? If straightforward restitution were possible — if you could just ‘give back’ what you received as a result of the wrongdoing to its rightful owner (...) — then matters are morally more straightforward. But in real-world cases that is often impossible, and questions of ‘how much, from whom and to whom?’ become far more vexing. The beneficiary disgorging all benefits of the wrong is part of the story, but where that is not possible or will not suffice to compensate the victim of wrongdoing we discuss various ways of allocating the cost of making the victim whole, including supplementation from public coffers. (shrink)

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

It is argued that if we take grounding to be univocal, then there is a serious tension between truth-grounding and one commonly assumed structural principle for grounding, namely transitivity. The primary claim of the article is that truth-grounding cannot be transitive. Accordingly, it is either the case that grounding is not transitive or that truth-grounding is not grounding, or both.

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