While C. I. Lewis was traditionally interpreted as an epistemological foundationalist throughout his major works, virtually every recent treatment of Lewis's epistemology dissents. But the traditional interpretation is correct: Lewis believed that apprehensions of "the given" are certain independently of support from, and constitute the ultimate warrant for, objective empirical beliefs. This interpretation proves surprisingly capable of accommodating apparently contrary textual evidence. The non-foundationalist reading, by contrast, simply cannot explain Lewis's explicit opposition to coherentism and his insistence that only apprehensions (...) of the given enable us to answer the regress problem -- and so vindicate the possibility of empirical justification. (shrink)

Many have taken Sellars’s critique of empiricism in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (EPM) to be aimed at his teacher C. I. Lewis. But if so, why do the famous arguments of its opening sections carry so little force against Lewis’s views? Understandably, some respond by denying that Lewis’s epistemology is among the positions targeted by Sellars. But this is incorrect. Indeed, Sellars had earlier offered more trenchant (if already familiar) critiques of Lewis’s epistemology. What is original about EPM (...) is that it criticizes empiricist positions like Lewis’s not because of their foundationalism, but because of their psychologism about meaning. Since psychologism turns out to be unacceptable by Lewis’s own lights, EPM has a compelling (if implicit) critique of Lewis to offer after all, one that strikes at the heart of his philosophical system. (shrink)

This paper explores two related questions in late Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism. First, how can a philosopher contemplate the eternal Forms while engaging in practical agency in the world? Second, do Neoplatonists provide a consistent account of the philosopher’s progress through the ‘stages of virtue’ (βαθμοί τῶν ἀρετῶν), the conceptual structure that underpins late antique philosophical curricula and hagiography? These questions interact, I suggest, because later Platonists appeal to the stages of virtue and divine maniai (βαθμοί τῶν μανίων) to explain (...) the philosopher’s ability to alternate gracefully between contemplation and embodied agency, and even to engage in both activities at the same moment. I argue that apparently contradictory evidence for the highest stages of virtue can be reconciled satisfactorily, shedding light on two models of ethical and perceptual transformation that are consistent throughout later Neoplatonism. In the first, 'painterly' model, we alternate between a vision of the paradigmatic model and its expression in the media of place and time; in the second, 'dancerly' model, we contemplate in action all at once, like a dancer moving to the music. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce has commonly been interpreted as a proponent of an epistemic theory of truth. Such a theory has the apparent advantage of directly undercutting radical skepticism, but the disadvantage of implausibly entailing that there are no truths concerning irretrievably lost facts. Recently Andrew Howat has defended Peirce’s epistemic constraint on truth by recasting Peirce’s claim that all truths would be believed following sufficient inquiry, not as constitutive of truth, but as a Wittgensteinian hinge proposition. I begin with a (...) twofold historical reply to Howat: first, Peirce can at least plausibly be read as claiming that the claim in question is analytic of the concept <truth>; and second, while Peirce did think we must accept without evidence the further claim that there are any truths (so characterized), he regarded this further claim not as a Wittgensteinian hinge but as a reasonable hope. I then substantively defend the latter Peircean proposal, arguing that hopes, as against beliefs, are chiefly warranted pragmatically, and so can be warranted even to a sufficient level to render them properly action-guiding in cases where belief in the same proposition would remain unjustified. I conclude by suggesting, first, that this proposal is superior to Wittgenstein’s own epistemology in evading psychologism, and second, that it attractively vindicates the reasonableness of inquiry on Peircean grounds that don’t require an appeal to an implausible epistemic theory of truth. (shrink)

This paper examines the status of naturalism in the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and John Dewey. Despite the many points of overlap and agreement between Husserl’s and Dewey’s philosophical projects, there remains one glaring difference, namely, the place and status of naturalism in their approaches. For Husserl, naturalism is an enemy to be vanquished. For Dewey, naturalism is the only method that can put philosophy back in touch with the concerns of human beings. This paper will demonstrate the remarkable similarities (...) between Husserl’s and Dewey’s thought before contending that Dewey’s “naturalistic humanism” offers a conception of naturalism which is compatible with Husserlian phenomenology. Furthermore, reading these two philosophers together, this paper argues, can point the way forward to a naturalism which avoids the dismissal of the contributions made by knowing subjects carried out by dominant contemporary strains of reductive naturalism. (shrink)

Sellars was an inferentialist about meaning. He thus effectively accorded modality a categorial function, maintaining that any meaningful assertion involves implicit commitment to rules of material inference, which modal propositions explicitly endorse. But Sellars was also a modal anti-realist, construing modality as “entirely immanent to thought” (LRB §40), not present in the world an sich. These two commitments, Klemick argues, render it impossible in principle for us to describe the world an sich adequately, undermining Sellars’ scientific realism, on which, at (...) the “ideal outcome of scientific inquiry,” “the gulf between appearances and things-in-themselves [... can] be bridged” (SM II §51). Sellars’ attempt to ground his modal anti-realism in an ideal “pure description of the world” (CDCM §79) cannot succeed, given modality’s categorial function. Further, his subsequent deployment of picturing as a naturalistic criterion of ontological commitment founders on an analogue of the Kantian problem of noumenal affection: the descriptions of picturing relations that render this proposal intelligible are emptied of content by the denial that the in-itself is modally characterized. Sellars’ worthy aim of preserving the world’s independence of our conceptual activity, Klemick concludes, doesn’t require denying that it exhibits modal relations isomorphic to the semantic relations within our conceptual scheme. (shrink)

Since 2023, the UK government's response to the “migrant crisis” has revolved around two controversial flagship policies: the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda, and the detention of migrants aboard a giant barge. In this short article, I examine the colonial and gendered dimensions of the two policies, finding them to be examples of the coloniality of gender. What this indicates, I suggest, is that the purpose of these policies is not merely to deter potential migrants—particularly LGBTQIA+ migrants—but also to (...) create a political narrative that allows the Conservative Party to garner right-wing votes by participating in high-profile culture wars; namely, the debate over transgender rights and the debate over how the UK should reckon with its imperial past. (shrink)

Pragmatist responses to skepticism about empirical justification have mostly been underwhelming, either presupposing implausible theses like relativism or anti-realism, or else showing our basic empirical beliefs to be merely psychologically inevitable rather than rationally warranted. In this paper I defend a better one: a modified version of an argument by Wilfrid Sellars that we are pragmatically warranted in accepting that our perceptual beliefs are likely to be true, since their likely truth is necessary for the satisfaction of our goal of (...) effective agency. On the version of the argument I defend, the great good for human life of control over our empirical circumstances renders our goal of effective agency reasonable. But only if our perceptual beliefs are likely to be true—and only if we accept that this is so, assuming it as a premise for inference and a guide for action—will the success of our actions be due to our effective agency, not mere luck. Since we’re warranted in taking the necessary means to our reasonable ends, we’re warranted in accepting that our perceptual beliefs are generally justified, and so that skepticism about empirical justification is false. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Jean-Paul Sartre had a contentious theoretical relationship with psychoanalysis. Nowhere is this more evident than in his criticisms of the concept of the unconscious. For him, the unconscious represents a hidden psychological depth that is anathema to the notion of human freedom. In this paper, I argue that Lacan’s conception of the unconscious-structured-like-a-language overcomes many of Sartre’s most damning objections. I demonstrate that Lacan shares with Sartre a concern to rid the psyche of hidden depths. Both thinkers (...) therefore reject the depth psychological conception of the unconscious and arrive at strikingly similar positions on the nature of the unconscious. In this way, I show that the conceptual analogues that Sartre develops in order to avoid the psychoanalytic unconscious lead him to a position on the unconscious with which Lacan could be in agreement. This indicates that Sartre’s philosophical position is not as at odds with Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis as is typically thought. (shrink)

In “The Fixation of Belief,” Peirce apparently accepts the causal claim that real physical objects cause us to reach an indefeasible “final opinion” concerning them. In “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” he apparently accepts the constitutive claim that for physical objects to be real just is for them to be represented in that opinion. These claims initially seem inconsistent, since causal claims are explanatory and since equivalent claims cannot explain one another. Contrary to prominent suggestions that Peirce rejected the (...) constitutive claim, however, he actually accepted both, reconciling them via a Humean denial that causal claims are genuinely explanatory. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical interpretation and evaluation of Wilfrid Sellars’s treatment of skepticism about empirical justification. It defends three central claims. First, against the suggestion that Sellars’s work simply bypasses traditional skeptical problems, I make the novel interpretive claim that Sellars not only addresses skepticism about empirical justification, but offers two independent (albeit sketchy) arguments against it: a transcendental argument that the likely truth of our perceptual beliefs is a necessary condition of the possibility of empirical content, and a (...) pragmatic argument that we’re warranted in accepting their likely truth in virtue of our aim of being effective agents. To the extent these have previously been distinctly formulated by commentators, the transcendental argument has been regarded as forceful, while the pragmatic argument has been dismissed as non-responsive. My second and third claims challenge this understanding. I argue, second, that examination of the literature relating to transcendental arguments from semantic externalism like Sellars’s (especially concerning the McKinsey paradox) suggests that such arguments are unpromising, while, third, a modified version of his pragmatic argument represents a powerful skeptical solution to skepticism about empirical justification, one that answers the worry that such skepticism would undermine the rationality of all our practical commitments. (shrink)

In this article, I expound and defend an interpretation of Sellars as a metaethical quasi-realist. Sellars analyzes moral discourse in non-cognitivist terms: in particular, he analyzes “ought”-statements as expressions of collective intentions deriving from a collective commitment to provide for the general welfare. But he also endorses a functional-role theory of meaning, on which a statement’s meaning is grounded in its being governed by semantical rules concerning language entry, intra-linguistic, and language departure transitions, and a theory of truth as correct (...) assertibility relative to such semantical rules. On these non-representationalist theories, even though moral statements are expressions of intentions and not fundamentally descriptive, they nevertheless count as assertorically meaningful, and some count as positively true. I further argue that this interpretation is capable not only of explaining Sellars’ explicitly metaethical writings, but also of unifying his scientific realism with his commitment to the ineliminable and indispensable role of the language of intentions: if this linguistic framework does not play an explanatory role, but only an expressive role, this explains both why Sellars’ commitment to it does not contravene his naturalism, as well as why, given the necessity of such language for our practical engagement with the world, the scientific image of humans in the world will only be completed once such language supplements it to enable us to relate practically to it. (shrink)

The proliferation of work by autistic writers continues apace, defying a long and multidisciplinary tradition of constructing autistic people as lacking the capacity for narration. To study neurodivergent literature, then, is to witness the refusal of these exclusionary narrative conventions, and to register the ideological presuppositions that underpin pathologization. In this article, I engage with recent insights from Neurodiversity Studies to explore the connections between narrative neuronormativity and other discourses of oppression, especially those that have generated racialized, gendered, and colonial (...) narratives of desubjectification. Focusing on the neuroqueer movement—an emergent practice of disidentification that refuses the interpellations of neuronormativity, ableism, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity—I discuss the concept of allism, arguing that this satirical critique of pathologization harbors a deconstructive force that denaturalizes the dialectic of recognition. Pursuing the discursive context and theoretical implications of this critique, I provide a short genealogy of narrative neuronormativity, connecting the operation of the dialectic in the early novel to the clinical texts of child psychology. To demonstrate the neuroqueer subversion of this tradition, I then read An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon, a text that stages a disidentification with storytelling. Protagonist Aster’s neuroqueer refusal indexes the concomitance of the construction of Blackness as an ontological foil for whiteness and the construction of autism as a standard of disordered sociality that neuronorms can be measured against. My reading of Unkindness suggests that the extant techniques of literary narratorship are political instruments that will, unless repurposed, continue to disseminate these dispossessive dialectics. (shrink)

I take up two questions raised by Luz Christopher Seiberth's meticulous reconstruction of Wilfrid Sellars's theory of intentionality. The first is whether we should regard Sellars as a transcendental phenomenalist in the most interesting sense of the term: as denying that even an ideally adequate conceptual structure would enable us to represent worldly objects as they are in themselves. I agree with Seiberth that the answer is probably yes, but I suggest that this is due not to Sellars's rejection of (...) the Myth of the Given or appeal to image-models (as Seiberth maintains), but to his view of modality as categorial but as absent from the world an sich. The second is whether, as Richard Rorty complained, Sellars's appeal to picturing lands his theory of intentionality in intractable skepticism. Pace Seiberth, I argue that the transcendental role of picturing does not mitigate this problem, and I suggest that Sellars's most fruitful resource for doing so is not his semantic externalism, but his purely pragmatic response to skepticism. (shrink)

Russell is often accused of having a naive ‘Fido’–Fido theory of meaning of the sort Wittgenstein attacked at the beginning of the Philosophical Investigations. In this paper I argue that he never held such a theory though I concede that, prior to 1918, he said various things that might lead a very careless reader to suppose that he had. However, in The Analysis of Mind, a book which we know Wittgenstein studied closely, Russell put forward an account of understanding an (...) utterance which clearly anticipates the use theory of meaning usually attributed to Wittgenstein. The paper concludes with some problems for understanding the use theory of meaning as presented by both Russell and, derivatively, Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Russell’s rejection in 1898 of the doctrine of internal relations — the view that all relations are grounded in the intrinsic properties of the terms related — was a decisive part of his break with Hegelianism and opened the way for his turn to analytic philosophy. Before rejecting it, Russell had given the doctrine little thought, though it played an essential role in the most intractable of the problems facing his attempt to construct a Hegelian dialectic of the sciences. I (...) argue that it was Russell’s early reading of Leibniz, in preparation for his lectures on Leibniz given at Cambridge in 1899, that most probably alerted him to the role the doctrine was playing in his own philosophy. Leibniz defended a similar doctrine and extricated it from difficulties like those faced by Russell by means of devices that were not open to Russell. Russell would have come across these views of Leibniz in writings by Leibniz that he read in the summer of 1898, just before he rejected the doctrine of internal relations. (shrink)

Proclus argues that place (topos) is a body of light, identified as the luminous vehicle of the soul, which mediates between soul and body and facilitates motion. Simplicius (in Phys. 611,10–13) suggests that this theory is original to Proclus, and unique in describing light as a body. This paper focuses on the function of this theory as a bridge between Proclus’ physics and metaphysics, allowing the Aristotelian physical notion of “natural place” to serve as a mechanism for the descent and (...) ascent of the soul. (shrink)

The article delves into the mystery that underlies the true nature of reality..Do we view reality as it is or is reality an illusion in the sense that it's a product of our senses rather than a fundamental part of the universe? These are some of the questions that have puzzled great thinkers for millennia.. The true nature of reality seems to be utterly elusive just as Brian Greene said "sometimes nature guards her secrets by the unbreakable grip of physical (...) law, sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon". (shrink)

The focus of this article is the "good-will theory", which explains the effect humans can have on the safety of AI, along with how it is in the best interest of a superintelligent AI to work alongside humans and not overpower them. Future papers dealing with the good-will theory will be published, but discuss different talking points in regards to possible or real objections to the theory.

Sometimes constitutions fail. The unprecedented election of Donald Trump, a populist insurgent who lacks the prior political experience or military service of all presidents before him, is such a sharp break in American historical experience that it raises questions as to whether something is deeply amiss with the constitutional order. Constitutional failure is not uncommon. A path-breaking global study of national constitutions shows that on average, they last only nineteen years. The U.S. Constitution is an uncommon outlier and, as such, (...) is accounted by many a long-running success story. But could a bell be tolling for American constitutionalism? In this Essay, I assess the meaning of Trump’s shocking rise for the future of our constitutional order. The shock, of course, was not the election of a Republican president. There have been many Republican presidents since Lincoln, each making their own distinctive contribution to the American tradition. Yet, there are good reasons to think this time around is different. The efficacy and, perhaps, stability of our constitutional order are in question, and we should try to understand why. (shrink)

The article tries to answer the questions ; what is consciousness? Why would a collection of matter be conscious? It attempts to describe a universal consciousness that is a fundamental part of building blocks of nature. It applies a counterintuitive view of consciousness in that consciousness is not a product of a brain but a fundamental part of the universe.. Panpsychism.

There seems to be confusion and disagreement among scholars about the meaning of interpersonal forgiveness. In this essay we shall venture to clarify the meaning of forgiveness by examining various literary works. In particular, we shall discuss instances of forgiveness from Homer’s The Iliad, Euripides’ Hippolytus, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and we shall focus on the changes that the concept of forgiveness has gone through throughout the centuries, in the hope of being able to understand, and therefore, of being able (...) to use more accurately, contemporary notions of forgiveness. We shall also explore the relationship between forgiveness and concepts that are closely associated with it, such as anger/resentment, hurt, clemency, desert/merit, excuse, etc. (shrink)

The pandemic has been the most vivid agent of change that many of us have known. But it has not changed everything: plenty of the institutions, norms, and practices that sustain racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy have either weathered the storm of the crisis or been nourished by its effects. And yet enough has changed for us to see that the pandemic has profoundly recontextualised those structures and systems of violence, bringing us into a fresh negotiation with, for example, (...) the question of how we discuss and imagine freedom. Responding in part to this unexpected provocation, activist-scholars Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson forged a collaboration from the lockdown of 2020, corresponding by letter to create their forthcoming book, Rehearsals for Living, due to be published by Haymarket Books (US) and Knopf (Canada) in 2022. In this interview, we asked them to explain the epistolary form of the book and expand on the concept of “rehearsal”, before inviting them to reflect on a series of issues that animate our current crises: the politics of recognition; the notion of apocalypse; ways to disrupt linear temporalities; practises of reciprocity against proprietary logics; the gendered violence of state apparatuses; and worldbuilding as a method of resistance. In their expansive answers, Robyn and Leanne draw on their experiences as organisers and educators, commenting on anticolonial struggles, the Movement for Black Lives, and the rise of abolition discourse. Stressing the need to build a multiplicity of shared homespaces in the face of racial/colonial capitalism and organized abandonment, they challenge us to rethink the predicaments and possibilities of the present, enabling us to imagine futures liberated of extractivist, carceral governance – “planting more liberatory futures in the present”, as Robyn puts it. The task of sowing those seeds is a collective praxis of rewriting the narratives that constitute us, refusing to hear that nothing can change and insisting that everything must. (shrink)

This Element offers the first detailed study of Catharine Trotter Cockburn's philosophy and covers her contributions to philosophical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and philosophy of religion. It examines not only Cockburn's view that sensation and reflection are the sources of knowledge, but also how she draws attention to the limitations of human understanding and how she approaches metaphysical debates through this lens. In the area of moral philosophy, this Element argues that it is helpful to take seriously (...) Cockburn's distinction between questions concerning the metaphysical foundation of morality and questions concerning the practice of morality. Moreover, this Element examines Cockburn's religious views and considers her understanding of the relation between morality and religion and her religious views concerning the resurrection and the afterlife. (shrink)

In her Remarks Upon Some Writers (1743), Catharine Trotter Cockburn takes a seemingly radical stance by asserting that it is possible for atheists to be virtuous. In this paper, I examine whether or not Cockburn’s views concerning atheism commit her to a naturalistic ethics and a so-called radical enlightenment position on the independence of morality and religion. First, I examine her response to William Warburton’s critique of Pierre Bayle’s arguments concerning the possibility of a society of virtuous atheists. I (...) argue that this response shows Cockburn vacillating between a moral naturalism, on the one hand, and a theistic morality, on the other. Second, I draw on Cockburn’s letters to her niece Ann Arbuthnot, and her opinions concerning mystical ideas about “the will of God” in north-east Scotland in the mid-eighteenth century. I maintain that these letters give us a fuller appreciation of Cockburn’s naturalistic position. My conclusion is that Cockburn’s ideas concerning atheism prompt us to consider the close interplay between secular and religious principles in so-called radical ideas of the period. (shrink)

Catharine Trotter Cockburn challenges voluntarist views held by British moral philosophers during the first half of the eighteenth century. After introducing her metaphysics of morality, namely, her account of human nature, and her account of moral motivation, which for her is a matter concerning the practice of morality, I analyze her arguments against theological voluntarism. I examine, first, how Cockburn rejects the view that God can by an arbitrary act of will change what is good or evil; second, how (...) she challenges views that understand the initial creation of the world solely in terms of divine will and draws attention to the role that the divine understanding plays in God’s creation; and third, how she argues that moral obligation does not require a superior lawmaker. I conclude by highlighting how Cockburn’s arguments not only challenge voluntarist views, but also offer support for her moral fitness theory. (shrink)

Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679- 1749) fu poetessa, drammaturga e filosofa. La vivacità intellettuale e la forte determinazione le permisero di aggirare il pregiudizio di genere e di sottrarsi alle dinamiche di marginalizzazione femminile tipiche dell’età moderna. Pur celandosi dietro l’anonimato, Cockburn prese parte attiva al dibattito filosofico del tempo, intervenendo soprattutto in materia di morale. Le sue opere filosofiche, scritte in difesa di Locke o di Clarke, custodiscono, nonostante il dichiarato intento apologetico, tratti di originalità e indipendenza, particolarmente evidenti (...) nella teoria dell’obbligo morale, nell’interpretazione modale della dottrina lockeana d’identità personale, nell’ipotesi di una natura ontologica dello spazio. (shrink)

My chapter examines Isaac Watts’s and Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s views concerning the metaphysics of the mind and their underlying accounts of powers and substances. In Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects Watts criticizes Locke’s account of substances and argues for his own preferred account of substance. Watts argues that there is no need to postulate an unknown substratum, as Locke does. Instead, Watts searches for a better explanation of what substances are. His proposal is that bodily substance just is solid (...) extension and that mental substance is identical with the power of thinking. This means that Watts believes that some powers can be substances. I will show how Watts defends his account of substances against various objections. Cockburn was not satisfied by Watts’s account of substance and disagrees with Watts’s understanding of powers. She believes that Watts is too quick to draw metaphysical conclusions. Cockburn takes seriously the limitations of human understanding and emphasizes that humans are ignorant about many metaphysical truths. I end by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Watts’s and Cockburn’s accounts of powers and substances. (shrink)

Dictionary entry discussing the main moral and meta-ethical doctrines found in the works of James Griffin.

Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s metaphysics dissolves the necessary relationship between immateriality, immortality and thought. While in her youth this leads her to admit the possibility of thinking matter, in her mature work, it allows her to conceive space as non-thinking immaterial substance that links non-thinking material substance and thinking immaterial substance. To ground this conception of space, she draws on the thesis of the great chain of being. However, the possibility of thinking matter is not consistent with the hierarchy of (...) beings, because within this frame matter occupies the lowest place. My aim is to evaluate whether there is any alternative within Trotter's philosophy to solve this contradiction. -/- La metafísica de Catharine Trotter Cockburn disuelve la relación necesaria entre inmaterialidad, inmortalidad y pensamiento. Mientras que en su juventud esto la lleva a admitir la posibilidad de la materia pensante, en su madurez le permite concebir al espacio como sustancia inmaterial no pensante que oficia como eslabón entre la sustancia material no pensante y la sustancia inmaterial pensante. Para ello, apela también a la tesis de la gran cadena del ser. Sin embargo, la posibilidad de la materia pensante no es consistente con la tesis de la jerarquía de seres, porque en ella la materia ocupa el lugar más bajo. Me propongo estudiar si existe alguna alternativa dentro de la filosofía de Trotter que permita resolver esta contradicción. (shrink)

Esta es la entrada que preparé sobre Catharine Trotter Cockburn para la Enciclopédia Mulheres na Filosofía, de la Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brasil). Es un panorama general de su vida y obra filosófica. This is the entry I wrote on Catharine Trotter Cockburn for the Encyclopedia Women in Philosophy, hosted by Campinas State University (Brasil). It presents an overview of her life and philosophical work.

This is a big book. Literally. Each of its almost 800 pages is 6.75” x 9.75” (rather than the somewhat more usual 5.75” x 8.75” sized page of an academic hardcover book), with words in a small font and short margins all-around. It would appear that the publisher used a number of production tricks to squeeze in as many words as possible. Which is understandable because Politics & Philosophy at Rome contains the collected papers (mostly published, but several unpublished) of (...) Miriam T. Griffin, one of the biggest and most important Anglophone scholars of Roman philosophy, who passed away shortly before the book was completed in 2018. Students of Cicero, Tacitus, and Seneca are especially in debt to her for the rigorous and richly contextualized studies she has produced of their ethical, historical, and political works. And all students of ancient Rome are in debt for the republication of fifty of her papers, which range over three areas (and are organized into three subsections in the book). The first part of the book includes ten papers on Roman history (in both the republican and imperial periods). The second part of the book includes seven published papers, five unpublished lectures, and three “occasional pieces” on Roman historiography (especially in the case of Tacitus). A third and final section of the book includes 25 papers on Roman politics and philosophy (which includes almost 400 pages of material). (shrink)

Rather than to focus upon a particular ‘right to life’, we should consider what rights there are pertaining to our lives and to our living. There are different sorts. There are, for instance, rights that constitute absences of particular duties and rights that correspond to the duties of other agents or agencies. There are also natural and non-natural rights and duties. Different people in different contexts can have different moral duties and different moral rights including rights to life. The question (...) of the moral rights there are to and pertaining to life is considered with reference to James Griffin’s account of human rights. Also considered is the question of who or what can be a bearer of them. (shrink)

The author seeks to make the fewest changes that would allow Christianity to withstand the challenges of the problem of evil . The project includes a critical review of the theodicies of John Hick and David Griffin, and also draws upon the thought of Sri Aurobindo. ;From Augustinian thought, the author retains the emphasis upon moral evil. He argues that any theodicy resolving moral evil also resolves natural evil, and that natural evil, as such, would not create major barriers (...) to religious faith. ;The author accepts John Hick's ideas of epistemic distance and soul-making, with supplementation. But he rejects Hick's use of the Greater Good Defense, instead positing that evil cannot be justified. The only question is whether it can be healed. ;David Griffin's strategy of adjusting divine traits to solve the POE is rejected. Instead, the author modifies Christian ideas of human identity and human destiny. Griffin's definition of evil is also rejected. Instead, the author defines evil as "a horrendous violation of an important human value." ;The author posits that Aurobindo correctly identified the Christian doctrine of "one lifetime only" as posing major problems for theodicy. The Indian view of multiple lifetimes helps to resolve dysteleological evil. Karma does not solve the POE all by itself, the author holds, but a revised notion of karma as "a law of appropriate experience" can make an essential contribution. The Indian view of human identity in terms of Self and ego personality is also adopted, again with some modification. ;The author uses an analogy of evil with a wound to argue that all evil can be healed, and must be healed in the process of psycho-spiritual growth. The conclusion is that evil may be ultimate to the ego personality, but is not ultimate to the soul, as such. From the perspective of the Soul or Self, suffering can be self-chosen for important and positive reasons. ;In short, a total picture of human identity and destiny gained by borrowing and revising Indian doctrines enables the author to suggest a new format for the interpretation of evil. (shrink)

This paper takes a new look at Francis Hutcheson's moral sense theory and examines it in light of the views of his rationalist critics and opponents who claim that there has to be an antecedent moral standard prior to any sense or affections. I examine how Gilbert Burnet, Samuel Clarke, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn each argue for the priority of reason over a moral sense and how Hutcheson responds or could respond to their views. Furthermore, I consider the proposal (...) that rather than regarding Hutcheson's moral sense theory as fundamentally opposed to moral rationalism, Hutcheson and Clarke endorse a shared moral metaphysics, as argued by Patricia Sheridan. Although I consider this proposal as too broad and believe it overlooks relevant metaphysical differences between Clarke and Hutcheson, I argue that the dispute between Hutcheson and his critics and opponents will not be settled without taking their underlying moral metaphysics into consideration. (shrink)

John Locke accepts that every perception gives me immediate and intuitive knowledge of my own existence. However, this knowledge is limited to the present moment when I have the perception. If I want to understand the necessary and sufficient conditions of my continued existence over time, Locke argues that it is important to clarify what ‘I’ refers to. While we often do not distinguish the concept of a person from that of a human being in ordinary language, Locke emphasizes that (...) this distinction is important if we want to engage with questions of identity over time. According to Locke, persons are thinking intelligent beings who can consider themselves as extended into the past and future and who are concerned for their happiness and accountable for their actions. Moreover, for Locke a self is a person, considered from a first-personal point of view. I show that the concept of self that he develops in the context of his discussion of persons and personal identity is richer and more complex than the I-concept that he invokes in his version of the cogito. I further argue that Locke’s moral and religious views explain why he emphasizes the need for a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings. In the final section I turn to the reception of Locke’s view by some of his early critics and defenders, including Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet, an anonymous author, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn. (shrink)

What grounds human rights? How do we determine that something is a genuine human right? This chapter offers a new answer: human beings have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. The fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life are certain goods, capacities, and options that human beings qua human beings need whatever else they qua individuals might need in order to pursue a characteristically good human life. This chapter explains how this Fundamental Conditions Approach is (...) better than James Griffin’s Agency Approach as well as Martha Nussbaum’s Central Capabilities Approach. It also shows how it can be compatible with the increasingly popular Political Conceptions of human rights defended by John Rawls, Charles Beitz, and Joseph Raz. (shrink)

Despite the prevalence of human rights discourse, the very idea or concept of a human right remains obscure. In particular, it is unclear what is supposed to be special or distinctive about human rights. In this paper, we consider two recent attempts to answer this challenge, James Griffin’s “personhood account” and Charles Beitz’s “practice-based account”, and argue that neither is entirely satisfactory. We then conclude with a suggestion for what a more adequate account might look like – what we (...) call the “structural pluralist account” of human rights. (shrink)

This article examines the process theodicies of David Ray Griffin and Philip Clayton. It explains their differences on such issues as God’s primordial power and voluntary self-limitation, creativity as an independent metaphysical principle that limits God, creation out of nothing or out of chaos, and God’s voluntary causal naturalism. Difficulties with their positions are discussed. The Clayton-Knapp “no-not-once” principle is explained, and a more comprehensive process theodicy is outlined.

In order to develop a true biological science of consciousness, we have to remove humans from the center of reference and develop a bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, as Donald Griffin intended with his call for a “cognitive ethology.” In this article, I make use of the pathological complexity thesis (Veit 2022a, b, c ) to show that we can firmly ground a comparative study of animal consciousness by drawing on the resources of state-based behavioral life history theory. (...) By comparing the different life histories of gastropods and arthropods, we will be able to make better sense of the possible origins of consciousness and its function for organisms in their natural environments. (shrink)

According to James Griffin human rights should be grounded in an account of human dignity, based on “normative agency” – the human capacity to choose and pursue a conception of a worthwhile life. In this paper we take up Griffin’s insight that key legitimate human rights are designed to respect and protect this basic capacity, but reject his assumption that normative agency should always and everywhere be understood in a Western way. We argue that “normative agency” is an (...) indeterminate concept that can be differently understood in different cultural contexts and that thinking about human rights in East Asia should be guided by a Griffin-style approach coupled with an account of normative agency with East Asian characteristics. In developing this idea, we contrast our account with recent, moralized conceptions of Confucian dignity and respond to Griffin’s tacit worries about how to concretely implement views like ours in institutional practice. (shrink)

Why are there so few women included in the history of philosophy? What are the consequences Why are there so few women included in the history of philosophy? What are the consequences from the fact that men have designed the vast majority of contemporary political and ethical theories? How can discrimination as well as equal treatment based on gender be philosophically justified? Are women the second sex of philosophy? And what is feminist philosophy? -/- In Philosophy’s Second Sex, Tove Pettersen (...) introduces feminist philosophy for students and others who are interested in gender, feminism and philosophy. She shows what it is, and how it can be used both in analyzing various texts and of a gendered reality. -/- Pettersen discusses Plato, Aristotle, Hume and Kant's theories of gender. A separate chapter is devoted to women's place in the philosophy of history, in which Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Sophia and Harriet Taylor are presented. Simone de Beauvoir's ethics and her views on gender differences are discussed, and both care ethics and feminist ethics are presented. Other key themes are the connection between gender, justice (local and global) and political philosophy, and the relationship between feminist philosophy, postmodernism and relativism. -/- The book is structured as a collection of essays, which can be read independently of each other. Seen together, they nevertheless reveal a development from women’s position in ancient philosophy to the challenges feminist philosophy faces in our contemporary, globalized world. (shrink)

This book attempts to advance Donald Griffin's vision of the "final, crowning chapter of the Darwinian revolution" by developing a philosophy for the science of animal consciousness. It advocates a Darwinian bottom-up approach that treats consciousness as a complex, evolved, and multidimensional phenomenon in nature rather than a mysterious all-or-nothing property immune to the tools of science and restricted to a single species. -/- The so-called emergence of a science of consciousness in the 1990s has at best been a (...) science of human consciousness. This book aims to advance a true Darwinian science of consciousness in which its evolutionary origin, function, and phylogenetic diversity are moved from the field’s periphery to its very centre, thus enabling us to integrate consciousness into an evolutionary view of life. Accordingly, this book has two objectives: (i) to argue for the need and possibility of an evolutionary bottom-up approach that addresses the problem of consciousness in terms of the evolutionary origins of a new ecological lifestyle that made consciousness worth having and (ii) to articulate a thesis and beginnings of a theory of the place of consciousness as a complex evolved phenomenon in nature that can help us to answer the question of what it is like to be a bat, an octopus, or a crow. -/- A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in advancing our understanding of animal minds as well as anyone with a keen interest in how we can develop a science of animal consciousness. (shrink)

This chapter discusses methodology in feminist history of philosophy and shows that women philosophers made interesting and original contributions to the debates concerning the cosmological argument. I set forth and examine the arguments of Mary Astell, Damaris Masham, Catherine Trotter Cockburn, Emilie Du Châtelet, and Mary Shepherd, and discuss their involvement with philosophical issues and debates surrounding the cosmological argument. I argue that their contributions are original, philosophically interesting, and result from participation in the ongoing debates and controversies about (...) the cosmological argument, causal principles, and necessary existence. (shrink)

David Ray Griffin does not fully come to terms with the fact that science has already abandoned the narrow materialist view of bits of matter pushing each other around. Even as early as Newton's law of gravitation, and most obviously with quantum physics, science has embraced the view that the world consists of relationships (often described as laws) between different types of processes and states.

Introduksiyon Sentro ng kabuoang aklat na ito ang paglalakbay –partikular na ang paglalakbay ng mga Pilipino gamit ang pananaw at wikang F/Pilipino. Sa ilang pagkakataon, isa ang paglalakbay sa hindi gaanong nabibigyan ng pansin sa pag-aaral ng lipunan, sa kabila ng pinagyayaman na itong matagal sa Kanluran at marahil isa ng ganap na diskurso. Mababakas ito sa kanilang pagpapakahulugan sa mga taong naglalakbay. Halimbawa nito ang mga Pranses na voyageur at Anglo-Amerikanong katumbas sa paglalakbay bilang trip, travel, at voyage (Almario (...) 2010, 1274-1275, 1325) at sa napakaraming kasingkahulugan gaya ng adventurer, commuter, migrant, passenger, pilgrim, sailor, tourist, drifter, excursionist, globe-trotter, itinerant, voyager, navigator, nomad, sightseer, tripper, vagabond, wanderer, expeditionist, jetsetter, at iba pa (Thesaurus 2022). Sa Pilipinas, madalas pa ngang gamitin ang mga Espanyol-Filipino na mga salita katulad ng biyahe (viaje); ekspedisyon (expedicion); nabegasyon (navigacion); at embarkasyon (embarcacion) (Almario 2010, 181, 322, 328, 806) –sa kabila ng mayaman ang mga Pilipino sa konseptong ito. (shrink)

The dissertation traces the development of what I call “the problem of partiality” through the work of certain key figures in the British Moralist tradition: John Locke, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Anthony Ashley Cooper (the Third Earl of Shaftesbury), Francis Hutcheson, John Gay, David Hume, Joseph Butler, and Adam Smith. On the one hand, we are committed to impartiality as a constitutive norm of moral judgment and conduct. On the other hand, we are committed to the idea that it is (...) permissible, or even obligatory, to expend disproportionate resources promoting the good of our loved ones over the good of strangers. However, these two commitments conflict with one another. This problem challenges us to provide an account of the scope and limits of reasonable partiality that does justice to both commitments. I argue that confronting this tension is a central project of early modern ethics. I offer a rereading of the British Moralist tradition, centered on debates about partiality, and thereby shift discussion of the tradition away from concerns about meta-ethics and moral epistemology, to issues of practical ethics. The topic of partiality remains central in contemporary ethics, as is evident in ongoing debates about the place of empathy in moral judgment, and the role of love in shaping our moral commitments. Though the aim of the dissertation is not to settle questions about the scope and limits of reasonable partiality, the focus here remains fixed on how the concept of partiality was problematized in our ethical thought, and how it informs our discussions in normative ethics and moral psychology. Alongside building a bridge between early modern scholarship and recent work in ethics, the dissertation casts light on two understudied figures in the British Moralist tradition – Cockburn and Gay – who contributed greatly to debates about partiality. By examining their contributions, I reconsider their place in the history of modern ethics and therefore provide a more contextualized account of philosophical thought in the period. (shrink)

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and (...) the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine? Paul O’Connor -/- 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age Arpad Szakolczai -/- 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market Tom Boland -/- 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence Agnes Horvath -/- 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation? Daniel Gati -/- 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void Ray Griffin -/- 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal Stephen Turner -/- 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics Marius Ion Benta -/- 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0 Thomas S.J. Smith -/- 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate Janos Mark Szakolczai -/- 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena Paul O’Connor -/- Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social? Marius Ion Benta. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the psychological mechanisms behind the construction of preference, especially the actual processes used by humans when they make decisions in their everyday lives or in business situations. The chapter uses cognitive psychological techniques to break down these processes and set them in their social context. When attributes are compatible with the response scale, they are assigned greater weight because they are most easily mapped onto the response. For instance, when subjects are asked to set a price (...) for a gamble this task is compatible with the information about the gamble payoff, which is also expressed in monetary values (e.g., dollars). Conversely, when the task requires a choice the payoff information is not easily mapped onto the response anymore and loses some of its salience. In fact, Slovic, Griffin, and Tversky (1990) could show that using non-monetary outcomes attenuates preference reversals when no compatibility between the pricing task and the outcome attribute was possible. An assumption of the compatibility effect is that response modes compatible with specific characteristics of the options (e.g., payoffs) draw attention to them. One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed—not merely revealed—in the process of elicitation (see e.g. Slovic). This conception is derived in part from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation often give rise to systematically different responses. These "preference reversals" violate the principle of procedure invariance fundamental to theories of rational choice and raise difficult questions about the nature of human values. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? Describing and explaining such failures of invariance will require choice models of far greater complexity than the traditional models -/- . (shrink)