The 'Why ain'cha rich?' argument for one-boxing in Newcomb's problem allegedly vindicates evidential decision theory and undermines causal decision theory. But there is a good response to the argument on behalf of causal decision theory. I develop this response. Then I pose a new problem and use it to give a new 'Why ain'cha rich?' argument. Unlike the old argument, the new argument targets evidential decision theory. And unlike the old argument, the new argument is sound.

Suppose that you have to take a test tomorrow but you do not want to study. Unfortunately you should study, since you care about passing and you expect to pass only if you study. Is there anything you can do to make it the case that you should not study? Is there any way for you to ‘rationalize’ slacking off? I suggest that such rationalization is impossible. Then I show that if evidential decision theory is true, rationalization is not only (...) possible but sometimes advisable. (shrink)

This essay argues that gun control in America is a philosophical as well as a policy debate. This explains the depth of acrimony it causes. It also explains why the technocratic public health argument favored by the gun control movement has been so unsuccessful in persuading opponents and motivating supporters. My analysis also yields some positive advice for advocates of gun control: take the political philosophy of the gun rights movement seriously and take up the challenge of showing that a (...) society without guns is a better society, not merely a safer one. (shrink)

Whether or not capitalism is compatible with ethics is a long standing dispute. We take up an approach to virtue ethics inspired by Adam Smith and consider how market competition influences the virtues most associated with modern commercial society. Up to a point, competition nurtures and supports such virtues as prudence, temperance, civility, industriousness and honesty. But there are also various mechanisms by which competition can have deleterious effects on the institutions and incentives necessary for sustaining even these most commercially (...) friendly of virtues. It is often supposed that if competitive markets are good, more competition must always be better. However, in the long run competition enhancing policies that neglect the nurturing and support of the bourgeois virtues may undermine the continued flourishing of modern commercial society. (shrink)

The discipline of academic philosophy suffers from serious problems of diversity and inclusion whose acknowledgement and amelioration are often resisted by members of our profession. In this paper, I distinguish four main modes of resistance—naiveté, conservatism, pride, and hostility—and describe how and why they manifest by using them as the basis for a typology of types of ‘resister’. This typology can hopefully be useful to those of us trying to counteract such resistance in ways sensitive to the different motives and (...) strategies that these resisters tend to employ. (shrink)

Human development is meant to be transformational in that it aims to improve people's lives by enhancing their capabilities. But who does it target: people as they are or the people they will become? This paper argues that the human development approach relies on an understanding of personal identity as dynamic rather than as static collections of preferences, and that this distinguishes human development from conventional approaches to development. Nevertheless, this dynamic understanding of personal identity is presently poorly conceptualized and (...) this has implications for development practice. We identify a danger of paternalism and propose institutionalizing two procedural principles as side constraints on development policies and projects: the principle of free prior informed consent and the principle of democratic development. -/- . (shrink)

Michael Sandel’s latest book is not a scholarly work but is clearly intended as a work of public philosophy—a contribution to public rather than academic discourse. The book makes two moves. The first, which takes up most of it, is to demonstrate by means of a great many examples, mostly culled from newspaper stories, that markets and money corrupt—degrade—the goods they are used to allocate. The second follows from the first as Sandel’s proposed solution: we as a society should deliberate (...) together about the proper meaning and purpose of various goods, relationships, and activities (such as baseball and education) and how they should be valued. -/- Public philosophy is a different genre from academic philosophy, but that does not mean that it cannot be held to high standards. In my view, while this book does provide food for thought and food for conversation, it nevertheless has significant failings as a work of public philosophy rather than journalistic social activism on the model of Naomi Klein’s No logo (1999). (shrink)

Adam Smith is respected as the father of contemporary economics for his work on systemizing classical economics as an independent field of study in The Wealth of Nations. But he was also a significant moral philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, with its characteristic concern for integrating sentiments and rationality. This article considers Adam Smith as a key moral philosopher of commercial society whose critical reflection upon the particular ethical challenges posed by the new pressures and possibilities of commercial society remains (...) relevant today. The discussion has three parts. First I address the artificial separation between self-interest and morality often attributed to Smith, in which his work on economics is stripped of its ethical context. Second I outline Smith’s ethical approach to economics, focusing on his vigorous but qualified defence of commercial society for its contributions to prosperity, justice, and freedom. Third I outline Smith’s moral philosophy proper as combining a naturalistic account of moral psychology with a virtue ethics based on propriety in commercial society. (shrink)

The rich have two defining capabilities: independence from and command over others. These make being wealthy very pleasant indeed, but they are also toxic to democracy. First, I analyse the mechanisms by which the presence of very wealthy individuals undermines the two pillars of liberal democracy, equality of citizenship and legitimate social choice. Second, I make a radical proposal. If we value the preservation of democracy we must limit the amount of wealth any individual can have and still be a (...) citizen of our polity. (shrink)

ExtractIn a democracy people are free to express their opinions and question those of others. This is an important personal freedom, and also essential to the very idea of government by discussion. But it has also been held to be instrumentally important because in open public debate true ideas will conquer false ones by their merit, and the people will see the truth for themselves. In other words, democracy has an epistemic function as a kind of truth machine. From this (...) it follows that in a democracy there should be no dogma: no knowledge protected from public challenge and debate. Yet this whole argument is founded on embarrassing misconceptions of the nature of truth and of the working of democracy.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.DEMOCRACY IS NOT A TRUTH MACHINEVolume 12, Issue 33Thomas WellsDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000309Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle email.@free.kindle.com@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. DEMOCRACY IS NOT A TRUTH MACHINEVolume 12, Issue 33Thomas WellsDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000309Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. DEMOCRACY IS NOT A TRUTH MACHINEVolume 12, Issue 33Thomas WellsDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000309Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

Introduction to the Inaugural Issue of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics.

GILBERT JEAN FACCARELLO (Paris, 1950) is professor of economics at Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris, and a member of the Triangle research centre (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and CNRS). He is presently chair of the ESHET Council (European Society for the History of Economic Thought). He completed his doctoral research in economics at Université de Paris X Nanterre. He has previously taught at the Université de Paris-Dauphine, Université du Maine and École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay/Saint-Cloud (now École Normale Supérieure de Lyon). (...) He is a co-founder of The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, which he co-edited for 20 years with J. L. Cardoso, Heinz D. Kurz, and A. Murphy. With Alain Béraud, he edited the Nouvelle histoire de la pensée économique (La Découverte, 3 volumes, 1992-2000) and, together with Heinz D. Kurz, he is presently editing a Handbook of the History of Economic Analysis (3 volumes, forthcoming with Edward Elgar). -/- EJPE interviewed Gilbert Faccarello about his research career in the history of economic thought, where he has focused especially on old and new classical and Marxian political economy, and French political economy during the 18th and 19th centuries. G. Faccarello discusses his interest not only in the logical structure and context of the economic ideas of past thinkers but also the links between economic thought, philosophy, and religion. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years the Indian philosopher-economist Amartya Sen has developed an original normative approach to the evaluation of individual and social well-being. The foundational concern of this ‘capability approach’ is the real freedom of individuals to achieve the kind of lives they have reason to value. This freedom is analysed in terms of an individual’s ‘capability’ to achieve combinations of such intrinsically valuable ‘beings and doings’ (‘functionings’) as being sufficiently nourished and freely expressing one’s political views. In this (...) account, ‘development’ is conceived as the expansion of individuals’ capability, and thus as a concept that goes beyond the economic growth of third world countries. My thesis is a philosophical examination of Sen’s capability approach. In the first part (chapters 1-3) I present and defend my interpretation of Sen’s work. (shrink)

The analytical notion of ‘scientific style of reasoning’, introduced by Ian Hacking in the middle of the 1980s, has become widespread in the literature of the history and philosophy of science. However, scholars have rarely made explicit the philosophical assumptions and the research objectives underlying the notion of style: what are its philosophical roots? How does the notion of style fit into the area of research of historical epistemology? What does a comparison between Hacking’s project on styles of thinking and (...) other similar projects suggest? My aim in this paper is to answer these questions. Hacking has denied that his project of styles of thinking falls into the field of historical epistemology. I shall challenge his remark by tracing out the connections of the notion of style with historical epistemology and, more in general, with a tradition of thought born in France in the beginning of twentieth-century. (shrink)

In a recent article on Reid’s theory of single and double vision, James Van Cleve considers an argument against direct realism presented by Hume. Hume argues for the mind-dependent nature of the objects of our perception from the phenomenon of double vision. Reid does not address this particular argument, but Van Cleve considers possible answers Reid might have given to Hume. He finds fault with all these answers. Against Van Cleve, I argue that both appearances in double vision could be (...) considered visible figures of the object, and show how this solution might preserve Reid’s direct realism. However, this solution is not compatible with the single appearance of an object predicted by Reid’s theory of single and double vision. This consequence will appear evident once we consider the critique of Reid’s theory of single and double vision formulated by William Charles Wells (1757-1817). Wells argues that Reid’s theory is either incomplete or incompatible with other claims made by Reid. It is incomplete since it fails to specify the unique direction in which we the object in single vision; if it not incomplete and is compatible with the law of monocular direction given by Reid, then it is incompatible with Reid’s claim that we do not perceive immediately distance by sight. (shrink)

Ian Rumfitt has proposed systems of bilateral logic for primitive speech acts of assertion and denial, with the purpose of ‘exploring the possibility of specifying the classically intended senses for the connectives in terms of their deductive use’ : 810f). Rumfitt formalises two systems of bilateral logic and gives two arguments for their classical nature. I assess both arguments and conclude that only one system satisfies the meaning-theoretical requirements Rumfitt imposes in his arguments. I then formalise an intuitionist system of (...) bilateral logic which also meets those requirements. Thus Rumfitt cannot claim that only classical bilateral rules of inference succeed in imparting a coherent sense onto the connectives. My system can be extended to classical logic by adding the intuitionistically unacceptable half of a structural rule Rumfitt uses to codify the relation between assertion and denial. Thus there is a clear sense in which, in the bilateral framework, the difference between classicism and intuitionism is not one of the rules of inference governing negation, but rather one of the relation between assertion and denial. (shrink)

In his book The Boundary Stones of Thought, Ian Rumfitt considers five arguments in favour of intuitionistic logic over classical logic. Two of these arguments are based on reflections concerning the meaning of statements in general, due to Michael Dummett and John McDowell. The remaining three are more specific, concerning statements about the infinite and the infinitesimal, statements involving vague terms, and statements about sets.Rumfitt is sympathetic to the premisses of many of these arguments, and takes some of them to (...) be effective challenges to Bivalence, the following principle: Each statement is either true or false.However, he argues that counterexamples to Bivalence do not immediately lead to counterexamples to Excluded Middle, and so do not immediately refute classical logic; here, Excluded Middle is taken to be the following principle: For each statement A, is true.Much... (shrink)

Why is there Philosophy of Mathematics at all? Ian Hacking. in Metascience (2015).

Book Reviews Brian Epstein, Economics and Philosophy, FirstView Article.

Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein (1993) is one of the very few films made about a philosopher’s life. Almost a parody of a late twentieth-century art-house movie, it contains a mimetic performance by Karl Johnson in the title role, plus cameos by Michael Gough (Bertrand Russell) and the ubiquitous Tilda Swinton (Russell’s lover, Ottoline Morrell). There is a green Martian (played by Nabil Shaban) who quizzes the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, and a collection of handsome young men sitting on deckchairs, looking puzzled and (...) gazing adoringly at the Master. The action, such as it is, takes place against a theatrical black background with a few props, and the whole thing lasts a brisk seventy minutes... (shrink)

This article develops an account of local epistemic practices on the basis of case studies from ethnobiology. I argue that current debates about objectivity often stand in the way of a more adequate understanding of local knowledge and ethnobiological practices in general. While local knowledge about the biological world often meets criteria for objectivity in philosophy of science, general debates about the objectivity of local knowledge can also obscure their unique epistemic features. In modification of Ian Hacking’s suggestion to discuss (...) “ground level questions” instead of objectivity, I propose an account that focuses on both epistemic virtues and vices of local epistemic practices. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta y analiza dos posturas acerca de las representaciones y clasificaciones científicas que Ian Hacking en ¿La construcción social de qué? denomina realismo o estructurismo inherente y nominalismo. La primera sostiene que las divisiones del conocimiento científico expresan o reflejan divisiones estructurales de la realidad a la que se refieren, en tanto que la segunda considera que toda división o estructura atribuida por la ciencia a la realidad se encuentra sólo en las representaciones mismas. Se sostiene que tal (...) criterio clasificatorio resulta pertinente y fructífero para las discusiones actuales acerca de la naturaleza del conocimiento científico, que pone de relieve diversas cuestiones profundas e intensamente debatidas a lo largo de la historia de la filosofía, y que el empleo del término “nominalismo” –a pesar de su polisemia y de ser poco utilizado actualmente en la filosofía de la cienciaes acertado por cuanto la discusión es en gran medida semántica, ya que se basa en dos concepciones contrapuestas acerca de la naturaleza del lenguaje humano. (shrink)

The paper discusses the version of entity realism presented by Ian Hacking in his book, Representing and Intervening. Hacking holds that an ontological form of scientific realism, entity realism, may be defended on the basis of experimental practices which involve the manipulation of unobservable entities. There is much to be said in favour of the entity realist position that Hacking defends, especially the pragmatist orientation of his approach to realism. But there are problems with the position. The paper explores two (...) issues that reflect negatively on Hacking’s version of the entity realist position. The first issue relates to the role of description in fixing the reference of theoretical terms. The second issue relates to Hacking’s claim that the argument for entity realism based on experiment is a different kind of argument from the standard argument for scientific realism based on the success of science. (shrink)

Differenti sono i modi di conoscere che sono emersi nel corso della storia umana. Ian Hacking ha proposto una nozione, quella di "stile di pensiero" ("style of reasoning"), che fornisce un modello per caratterizzarli ed esaminare la loro genesi e il loro sviluppo. L'articolo mette in luce alcune implicazioni di questa nozione concernenti l'evoluzione del nostro sapere.

The question of how psychiatric classifications are made up and to what they refer has attracted the attention of philosophers in recent years. In this paper, I review the claims of authors who discuss psychiatric classification in terms referring both to the philosophical tradition of natural kinds and to the sociological tradition of social constructionism — especially those of Ian Hacking and his critics. I examine both the ontological and the social aspects of what it means for something to be (...) a mental disorder, and how the ontological status of these disorders hinges on social causation. Finally, I conclude by suggesting a way in which the biological and the social may be reconciled in an integrative model of variation in psychiatric disorder. (shrink)

This paper examines the ways in which social scientific discourse and classification interact with the objects of social scientific investigation. I examine this interaction in the context of the traditional philosophical project of demarcating the social sciences from the natural sciences. I begin by reviewing Ian Hacking’s work on interactive classification and argue that there are additional forms of interaction that must be treated.

The question as to whether Ian Hacking’s project of scientific styles of thinking entails epistemic relativism has received considerable attention. However, scholars have never discussed it vis-à-vis Wittgenstein. This is unfortunate: not only is Wittgenstein the philosopher who, together with Foucault, has influenced Hacking the most, but he has also faced the same accusation of ‘relativism’. I shall explore the conceptual similarities and differences between Hacking’s notion of style of thinking and Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. It is a (...) fact that whether or not the latter entails epistemic relativism is still a controversial question. From my comparative analysis, it will emerge that there are stronger reasons to conclude that Hacking’s notion of style leads to epistemic relativism than there are to reach the same conclusion in the case of Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. This point will be at odds with the anti-relativistic stance that Hacking has taken in his more recent writings. (shrink)

Ian Hacking defines a “style of scientific thinking” loosely as a “way to find things out about the world” characterised by five hallmark features of a number of scientific template styles. Most prominently, these are autonomy and “self-authentication”: a scientific style of thinking, according to Hacking, is not good because it helps us find out the truth in some domain, it itself defines the criteria for truth-telling in its domain. I argue that Renaissance medicine, Mediaeval “demonology”, and magical thinking pass (...) muster as scientific according to Hacking's criteria. However, application of these thought styles to the entities they introduce generates statements that logically imply a set of “ordinary” statements—or what Bernard Williams calls “plain truths”—which, contra the claims of autonomy and self-authentication, allows styles to be assessed from a style- independent perspective. Using Williams’ notion of plain truth, I show that Renaissance medicine, demonology, and magical thinking, in reality issue in many plain falsehoods. This confronts us with what I call Hacking's dilemma: either define stricter necessary conditions on being a style of scientific thinking, or concede that some styles albeit scientific are not as good at finding things out about the world as others. I make three suggestions to deal with the dilemma. (shrink)

Recent work by Ian Aitken and others has sought to re-establish a "Realist approach" to the documentary film in reaction to the postmodernist, pragmatist approach popular in the 1970s and 80s. The Saussurian/Lacanian orientation o f the semiotics that played a large role in the older film theory is rejected and replaced by an analytic theory of representation based on the work of Mary Hesse, Hilary Putnam and W.V.O. Quine. Although this may seem a setback vis-a-vis semiotics, it actually opens (...) up Realist Film Theory to an application o f the doctrine of signs more closely aligned to traditional realism, that of Pierce and Poinsot. This presentation outlines how Realist Film Theory can be enriched and developed by such an application. In particular, Aitken's model for the processing of the truth-value communicated through a documentary film can be strengthened in this manner. We will look at a short filmic example to illustrate the resulting development of the theory, manifesting how the documentary film is anchored in both reliablyrepresenting reality and creatively organizing and construing it. (shrink)

This is just an initial finding and needs to be verified by a larger, more thorough study. Part 1 of this paper demonstrates that we unconsciously select words based on letter sounds that we like or dislike. Part 2 demonstrates that there may be harmony and dissonance in the pattern of frequency of letter usage, at least in the case of the vowels. To the best of my knowledge this is a new idea/discovery. The following paper contains graphs of the (...) data collected from 15 classic works of literature including 4 works of HG Wells and 4 works of Jane Austen. Also a separate analysis is done using just the vowels from Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Eminem Recovery album. (shrink)

The forceful impact of Michel Foucault’s work in the humanities and social sciences is apparent from the sheer abundance of its uses, appropriations, and refigurations. This article calls for greater self-conscious reflexivity about the relationship between our uses of Foucault and the opportunities afforded by his work. We argue for a clearer distinction between analytics and concepts in Foucault-inspired work. In so doing we draw on key moments of methodological self-reflection in Foucault’s Collège de France lectures and elsewhere. This distinction (...) helps identify different ways that Foucault might be put to productive use today as well as what can go wrong therein, a concern we develop with reference to Giorgio Agamben’s post-Foucaultian contributions to political theory. We are eager to open up a possibility that has been infrequently explored despite Foucault’s contemporary influence—-the idea that critique in and through Foucault is empirical critique. This idea can help facilitate a gain in reflexivity in the broader landscapes of contemporary theory, inquiry, and critique. (shrink)

This article uses the case study of ethnobiological classification to develop a positive and a negative thesis about the state of natural kind debates. On the one hand, I argue that current accounts of natural kinds can be integrated in a multidimensional framework that advances understanding of classificatory practices in ethnobiology. On the other hand, I argue that such a multidimensional framework does not leave any substantial work for the notion “natural kind” and that attempts to formulate a general account (...) of naturalness have become an obstacle to understanding classificatory practices. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: With this article, I advance a historicist and relativist feminist philosophy of disability. I argue that Foucault’s insights offer the most astute tools with which to engage in this intellectual enterprise. Genealogy, the technique of investigation that Friedrich Nietzsche famously introduced and that Foucault took up and adapted in his own work, demonstrates that Foucault’s historicist approach has greater explanatory power and transgressive potential for analyses of disability than his critics in disability studies have thus far recognized. I show (...) how a feminist philosophy of disability that employs Foucault’s technique of genealogy avoids ahistorical, teleological, and transcultural assumptions that beleaguer much work in disability studies. The article also situates feminist philosophical work on disability squarely in age-old debates in (Eurocentric) Western philosophy about universalism vs. relativism, materialism vs. idealism, realism vs. nominalism, and freewill vs. determinism, as well as contributes to ongoing discussions in (Western) feminist philosophy and theory about (among other things) essentialism vs. constructivism, identity, race, sexuality, agency, and experience. (shrink)

I reject both (a) inevitabilism about the historical development of the sciences and (b) what Ian Hacking calls the "put up or shut up" argument against those who make contingentist claims. Each position is guilty of a lack of humility about our epistemic capacities.

Until now, philosophical debate about human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research has largely been limited to its ethical dimensions and implications. Although the importance and urgency of these ethical debates should not be underestimated, the almost undivided attention that mainstream and feminist philosophers have paid to the ethical dimensions of hESC research suggests that the only philosophically interesting questions and concerns about it are by and large ethical in nature. My argument goes some distance to challenge the assumption that ethical (...) considerations alone must be foregrounded in philosophical discussions about hESC research by introducing a critical stance on the epistemological and ontological assumptions that underlie and condition it. A central aim of the paper is to show how Foucault's insights into knowledge-power, taken in combination with Hacking's claims about styles of reasoning, can make these assumptions evident, as well as cast light on their potentially deleterious implications for disabled people. Arguing in this way also enables me to draw out constitutive effects of research on stem cells, that is, to indicate how the discursive practices surrounding research on stem cells, as well as the technology itself, contribute to the constitution of impairment. (shrink)

, Looping Effects, the Self, Psychopathology.

Practices – specific, recurrent types of human action and activity – are perhaps the most fundamental "building blocks" of social reality. This book argues that the detailed empirical study of practices is essential to effective social-scientific inquiry. It develops a philosophical infrastructure for understanding human practices, and argues that practice theory should be the analytical centrepiece of social theory and the philosophy of the social sciences. -/- What would social scientists’ research look like if they took these insights seriously? To (...) answer this question, the book offers an analytical framework to guide empirical research on practices in different times and places. The author explores how practices can be identified, characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts and how they might change over time and space. -/- The Constitution of Social Practices lies at the intersection of philosophy, social theory, cultural theory and the social sciences. It is essential reading for scholars in social theory and the philosophy of social science, as well as the broad range of researchers and students across the social sciences and humanities whose work stands to benefit from serious consideration of practices. (shrink)

Short paper about debate on cognitive meaning of religious use of language in early analytic philosophy of religion. Published in Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Janusz Salamon, Cracow: WAM, 2016.

This is a sequel to my paper, ‘What is Scientific Realism?’, which appeared in an earlier issue of this journal (Sankey, 2000a). A number of papers by other authors on topics relating to scientific realism have followed in subsequent issues. In this paper I revisit some of the themes developed in my earlier paper in the light of these later papers. I begin by restating the key ideas of the earlier paper. Next, I mention a number of afterthoughts which I (...) have had since the appearance of the paper. I then offer some comments on three of these subsequent papers. I hope these comments advance the discussion by clarifying and developing a number of key points. (shrink)

Indicative judgments pertain to what is true. Epistemic modal judgments pertain to what must or might be true relative to a body of information. A standard view is that epistemic modals implicitly quantify over alternative possibilities, or ways things could turn out. On this view, a proposition must be true just in case it is true in all the possibilities consistent with the available information, and a proposition might be true just in case it is true in at least one (...) possibility consistent with the available information. I report three experiments testing this view of epistemic modals. The results show that although modal judgments are sensitive to information about alternative possibilities, the standard quantification theory mischaracterizes the ordinary meaning of modals. I then report two more experiments testing the hypothesis that epistemic modals express willingness to attribute knowledge based on the available information. The results support this hypothesis. The results also show that the difference between “inside” and “outside” probabilistic information, familiar from the judgment and decision-making literature, affects epistemic modal judgments. (shrink)

Panentheism has recently become a widely accepted and appreciated concept among scholars in the science-theology dialogue, and its theological repercussions have been discussed to great extent. Yet, there remains to be studied in more detail the notion of the philosophical foundations of the term. A prominent gap in our understanding of these foundations is the potential similarity between the metaphysics of Hegel and Whitehead, their understanding of the transcendence and immanence of God, and their respective versions of panentheism. In this (...) article, I present a critical reflection on the possible resemblance between process thought and Hegelian metaphysics and philosophy of God. In the last section I refer to those who use panentheism within the science-theology dialogue. I try to specify which of the two versions of panentheism, that of Hegel or Whitehead, is more popular among those scholars. (shrink)

This paper deals with the theme of Atonement. It is a rudimentary paper which has been prepared in a hurry in these trying times; especially for the use of students all over the world during the ongoing pandemic of COVID 19. It deals with the title of Atonement. The article should be cited properly if referred to by anyone. It is made open access since the author believes any knowledge worth sharing should be freely available to all.