The paper argues that Spinoza may have deepened his conception of poetry as not only a resource for the understanding but as the highest peak of the understanding. I begin by reviewing selected literature on Spinoza’s views on language and show how Spinoza’s presentation of his philosophy builds on a conception of what language can do. I then make a succinct case for a reading of Ethics Part 5 Proposition 24, where we find an attempt at a poetic expression of (...) thought, as Spinoza explores what he considers the highest form of knowledge: intuitive science. (shrink)

Understandings of play are frequently tied to a sense of instinctual gratification—a something that must be completed, that all humans, young or old, should or need to partake in. Indeed, for many, play is characterised as a unique activity that stands apart from the ordinary and every day. While such assessments prefigure a clear demarcation between the fun of play and the more laborious, boring aspects of profane life, what this distinction alludes to is a greater sense of the creativity (...) that underlies play. Drawing from a Lacanian perspective, the following chapter will determine that an essential aspect of play and sport is the creativity it provides, namely, by considering how the act of creativity is intricately tied to the very lack that constitutes the Lacanian subject. To do so, the concept of sublimation is used to consider how the codified rules and regulations that sport both asserts and requires renders apparent the importance of the limit. Rather than conceiving of this limit as a barrier to creativity, what is revealed in sublimation is how this limit proves constitutive of our very creativity. That is, the ability to sublimate—to creatively perform unique displays of physical or artistic expression— lies in the mundanity and utter importance of the playful and sporting activity and, more importantly, the inherent restrictions and constraints these activities impose. It is in accordance with the limit that one’s creativity can expose an emancipatory potential in the context of play and sport. (shrink)

In order to better understand the topic of hope, this paper argues that two separate theories are needed: One for hoping, and the other for hopefulness. This bifurcated approach is warranted by the observation that the word ‘hope’ is polysemous: It is sometimes used to refer to hoping and sometimes, to feeling or being hopeful. Moreover, these two senses of 'hope' are distinct, as a person can hope for some outcome yet not simultaneously feel hopeful about it. I argue that (...) this distinction between hoping and hopefulness is not always observed or fully appreciated in the literature and has consequently caused much confusion. This paper then sketches what theorizing about hope looks like in light of this clarification and discusses some of its implications. (shrink)

This article considers two different ways of formulating a desire-satisfaction theory of prudential value. The first version of the theory (the object view) assigns basic prudential value to the state of affairs that is the object of a person’s desire. The second version (the combo view) assigns basic prudential value to the compound state of affairs in which (a) a person desires some state of affairs and (b) this state of affairs obtains. My aims in this article are twofold. First, (...) I aim to highlight that these are not mere notational variants, but in fact have quite different implications, so that this distinction is not one that the theorist of prudential value should ignore. More positively, I argue that the object view is better able to capture what is distinctive and appealing about subjective theories of prudential value, on any plausible account of what the central subjectivist insight is. (shrink)

Etiquette and other merely formal normative standards like legality, honor, and rules of games are taken less seriously than they should be. While these standards are not intrinsically reason-providing in the way morality is often taken to be, they also play an important role in our practical lives: we collectively treat them as important for assessing the behavior of ourselves and others and as licensing particular forms of sanction for violations. This chapter develops a novel account of the normativity of (...) formal standards where the role they play in our practical lives explains a distinctive kind of reason to obey them. We have this kind of reason to be polite because etiquette is important to us. We also have this kind of reason to be moral because morality is important to us. This parallel suggests that the importance we assign to morality is insufficient to justify it being substantive. (shrink)

It is regrettably common for theorists to attempt to characterize the Humean dictum that one can’t get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ just in broadly logical terms. We here address an important new class of such approaches which appeal to model-theoretic machinery. Our complaint about these recent attempts is that they interfere with substantive debates about the nature of the ethical. This problem, developed in detail for Daniel Singer’s and Gillian Russell and Greg Restall’s accounts of Hume’s dictum, is of (...) a general type arising for the use of model-theoretic structures in cashing out substantive philosophical claims: the question of whether an abstract model-theoretic structure successfully interprets something often involves taking a stand on non-trivial issues surrounding the thing. In the particular case of Hume’s dictum, given reasonable conceptual or metaphysical claims about the ethical, Singer’s and Russell and Restall’s accounts treat obviously ethical claims as descriptive and vice versa. Consequently, their model-theoretic characterizations of Hume’s dictum are not metaethically neutral. This encourages skepticism about whether model-theoretic machinery suffices to provide an illuminating distinction between the ethical and the descriptive. (shrink)

A natural suggestion and increasingly popular account of how to revise our logical beliefs treats revision of logic analogously to the revision of scientific theories. I investigate this approach and argue that simple applications of abductive methodology to logic result in revision-cycles, developing a detailed case study of an actual dispute with this property. This is problematic if we take abductive methodology to provide justification for revising our logical framework. I then generalize the case study, pointing to similarities with more (...) recent and popular heterodox logics such as naïve logics of truth. I use this discussion to motivate a constraint—logical partisanhood—on the uses of such methodology: roughly: both the proposed alternative and our actual background logic must be able to agree that moving to the alternative logic is no worse than staying put. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the senses in which paintings do and do not depict various temporal phenomena, such as motion, stasis and duration. I begin by explaining the popular – though not uncontroversial – assumption that depiction, as a pictorial form of representation, is a matter of an experiential resemblance between the pictorial representation and that which it is a depiction of. Given this assumption, I illustrate a tension between two plausible claims: that paintings do not depict motion in (...) the sense that video recordings do, and that paintings do not merely depict objects but may depict those objects as engaged in various activities, such as moving. To resolve the tension, I demonstrate that we need to recognise an ambiguity in talk of the appearance of motion, and distinguish between the depiction of motion and the depiction of an object as an object that is moving. Armed with this distinction, I argue that there is an important sense in which paintings depict neither motion, duration, nor – perhaps more controversially – stasis. (shrink)

Sometimes a fact can play a role in a grounding explanation, but the particular content of that fact make no difference to the explanation—any fact would do in its place. I call these facts vacuous grounds. I show that applying the distinction between-vacuous grounds allows us to give a principled solution to Kit Fine and Stephen Kramer’s paradox of ground. This paradox shows that on minimal assumptions about grounding and minimal assumptions about logic, we can show that grounding is reflexive, (...) contra the intuitive character of grounds. I argue that we should never have accepted that grounding is irreflexive in the first place; the intuitions that support the irreflexive intuition plausibly only require that grounding be non-vacuously irreflexive. Fine and Kramer’s paradox relies, essentially, on a case of vacuous grounding and is thus no problem for this account. (shrink)

Is perception cognitively penetrable, and what are the epistemological consequences if it is? I address the latter of these two questions, partly by reference to recent work by Athanassios Raftopoulos and Susanna Seigel. Against the usual, circularity, readings of cognitive penetrability, I argue that cognitive penetration can be epistemically virtuous, when---and only when---it increases the reliability of perception.

I argue that certain species of belief, such as mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs, are insulated from a form of Harman-style debunking argument whereas moral beliefs, the primary target of such arguments, are not. Harman-style arguments have been misunderstood as attempts to directly undermine our moral beliefs. They are rather best given as burden-shifting arguments, concluding that we need additional reasons to maintain our moral beliefs. If we understand them this way, then we can see why moral beliefs are vulnerable (...) to such arguments while mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs are not—the very construction of Harman-style skeptical arguments requires the truth of significant fragments of our mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs, but requires no such thing of our moral beliefs. Given this property, Harman-style skeptical arguments against logical, mathematical, and normative beliefs are self-effacing; doubting these beliefs on the basis of such arguments results in the loss of our reasons for doubt. But we can cleanly doubt the truth of morality. (shrink)

The paper offers a solution to the generality problem for a reliabilist epistemology, by developing an “algorithm and parameters” scheme for type-individuating cognitive processes. Algorithms are detailed procedures for mapping inputs to outputs. Parameters are psychological variables that systematically affect processing. The relevant process type for a given token is given by the complete algorithmic characterization of the token, along with the values of all the causally relevant parameters. The typing that results is far removed from the typings of folk (...) psychology, and from much of the epistemology literature. But it is principled and empirically grounded, and shows good prospects for yielding the desired epistemological verdicts. The paper articulates and elaborates the theory, drawing out some of its consequences. Toward the end, the fleshed-out theory is applied to two important case studies: hallucination and cognitive penetration of perception. (shrink)

What is the phenomenology of hope? A common view is that hope has a generally positive and pleasant affective tone. This rosy depiction, however, has recently been challenged. Certain hopes, it has been objected, are such that they are either entirely negative in valence or neutral in tone. In this paper, I argue that this challenge has only limited success. In particular, I show that it only applies to one sense of hope but leaves another sense—one that is implicitly but (...) widely employed in the hope literature—untouched. Moreover, I argue that hope construed in this latter sense is inherently positively valenced. The paper concludes by discussing some of the implications of this defense of hope's positive phenomenology, including the ontological question of whether hope is an emotion. (shrink)

Ned Block posed his thought experiment of the homunculi-headed robot in his paper ‘Troubles with Functionalism’ to try to defeat functionalism, a leading theory within the philosophy of mind, which concerns the nature of mental states. The robot was meant to defeat functionalism by showing how functionalism attributes mental states inappropriately, as beings such as the robot would have had mental states under functionalism, despite possessing no qualia. Block’s argument rests upon two incorrect assumptions of qualia that this paper exposes (...) as being incorrect. Firstly, Block presupposes that due to qualia being an innate part of human beings, it cannot be accounted for under functionalism. Secondly, Block applies too narrow a perspective onto what qualia can be, and where and how it can subsist, to be considered valid. I attack these two incorrect presuppositions to exhibit how Block’s robot cannot be considered to have defeated functionalism. (shrink)

Philosophical debates about the metaphysics of time typically revolve around two contrasting views of time. On the A-theory, time is something that itself undergoes change, as captured by the idea of the passage of time; on the B-theory, all there is to time is events standing in before/after or simultaneity relations to each other, and these temporal relations are unchanging. Philosophers typically regard the A-theory as being supported by our experience of time, and they take it that the B-theory clashes (...) with how we experience time and therefore faces the burden of having to explain away that clash. In this paper, we investigate empirically whether these intuitions about the experience of time are shared by the general public. We asked directly for people’s subjective reports of their experience of time—in particular, whether they believe themselves to have a phenomenology as of time’s passing—and we probed their understanding of what time’s passage in fact is. We find that a majority of participants do share the aforementioned intuitions, but interestingly a minority do not. (shrink)

Despite the widespread presence of public arts funding in liberal societies, some liberals find it unjustified. According to the Neutrality Objection, arts funding preferences some ways of life. One way to motivate this challenge is to say that a public goods-styled justification, although it could relieve arts funding of these worries of partiality, cannot be argued for coherently or is, in the end, too susceptible to impressions of partiality. I argue that diversity-based arts funding can overcome this challenge, because it (...) invests in non-excludable infrastructure that fosters cultural literacy. We all have some interest as citizens in living in a society which fosters cultural literacy, seeing as this helps others to understand us, supports us to understand ourselves, and helps alleviate confusion and alienation we feel toward social difference. While some of these benefits can be enjoyed by those who make and consume art, they are also gained by those who don’t, because arts funding affects the makeup of public spaces and the communicative practices we all use to make sense of the world. (shrink)

Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears explores the intersection of sport and psychoanalysis, emphasizing the often-overlooked psycho-social dimensions underpinning the experience of sport. By challenging the idea that sport offers an “escape” from reality—a realm separate to the politics of everyday life—each chapter critically considers the unconscious desires, fantasies, and fears that underpin the sporting spectacle for both participants and spectators. Indeed, beyond simply applying psychoanalysis to sport, this book proposes how sport can (...) be used to pose questions to psychoanalysis, thus using sport as a medium to elucidate key psychoanalytic ideas and concepts. This volume addresses a diverse range of theorists, including Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Norman O. Brown, and Frantz Fanon, and applies them across a variety of topics and sports, including NFL coaching, Manny Pacquiao, play, football, basketball, baseball, poker, and the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, therefore providing a unique understanding of the cultural, social, and psychic significance of sports. A timely and relevant collection, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners interested in understanding sport from both the cultural and clinical application of psychoanalytic theory as well as academics and practitioners in sport studies, psychology, sociology, education, and cultural studies. (shrink)

This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false.

I distinguish two ways of developing anti-exceptionalist approaches to logical revision. The first emphasizes comparing the theoretical virtuousness of developed bodies of logical theories, such as classical and intuitionistic logic. I'll call this whole theory comparison. The second attempts local repairs to problematic bits of our logical theories, such as dropping excluded middle to deal with intuitions about vagueness. I'll call this the piecemeal approach. I then briefly discuss a problem I've developed elsewhere for comparisons of logical theories. Essentially, the (...) problem is that a pair of logics may each evaluate the alternative as superior to themselves, resulting in oscillation between logical options. The piecemeal approach offers a way out of this problem andthereby might seem a preferable to whole theory comparisons. I go on to show that reflective equilibrium, the best known piecemeal method, has deep problems of its own when applied to logic. (shrink)

Introspective evidence is still treated with great suspicion in cognitive science. This work is designed to encourage cognitive scientists to take more account of the subject's unique perspective.

Can beliefs that are not consciously formulated serve as part of an agent's evidence for other beliefs? A common view says no, any belief that is psychologically immediate is also epistemically immediate. I argue that some unconscious beliefs can serve as evidence, but other unconscious beliefs cannot. Person-level beliefs can serve as evidence, but subpersonal beliefs cannot. I try to clarify the nature of the personal/subpersonal distinction and to show how my proposal illuminates various epistemological problems and provides a principled (...) framework for solving other problems. (shrink)

This paper develops a view on which: (a) all fundamental facts are absolute, (b) some facts do not supervene on the fundamental facts, and (c) only relative facts fail to supervene on the fundamental facts.

This is an opinionated overview of the Frege-Geach problem, in both its historical and contemporary guises. Covers Higher-order Attitude approaches, Tree-tying, Gibbard-style solutions, and Schroeder's recent A-type expressivist solution.

Nominalists are confronted with a grave difficulty: if abstract objects do not exist, what explains the success of theories that invoke them? In this paper, I make headway on this problem. I develop a formal language in which certain platonistic claims about properties and certain nominalistic claims can be expressed, develop a formal language in which only certain nominalistic claims can be expressed, describe a function mapping sentences of the first language to sentences of the second language, and prove some (...) facts about that function and facts about some sound logics for those languages. In doing so, I prove that, given some plausible metaphysical assumptions, a large class of sentences about properties of concrete objects are “safe” on nominalistic grounds. Whenever some true sentences about concrete objects and some sentences belonging to this class that are true according to platonists collectively entail a conclusion about concrete objects, some nominalistically acceptable sentences are true and entail the same conclusion. Because the proof can itself be formulated without abstract objects, it provides a nominalistic explanation of the success of theories that invoke properties of concrete objects. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem is supposed to show that straightforward versions of reliabilism are false: reliability is not necessary for justification after all. I argue that it does no such thing. The reliabilist can count a number of beliefs as justified even in demon worlds, others as unjustified but having positive epistemic status nonetheless. The remaining beliefs---primarily perceptual beliefs---are not, on further reflection, intuitively justified after all. The reliabilist is right to count these beliefs as unjustified in demon worlds, (...) and it is a challenge for the internalist to be able to do so as well. (shrink)

Goldman, though still a reliabilist, has made some recent concessions to evidentialist epistemologies. I agree that reliabilism is most plausible when it incorporates certain evidentialist elements, but I try to minimize the evidentialist component. I argue that fewer beliefs require evidence than Goldman thinks, that Goldman should construe evidential fit in process reliabilist terms, rather than the way he does, and that this process reliabilist understanding of evidence illuminates such important epistemological concepts as propositional justification, ex ante justification, and defeat.

Two lines of evidence indicate that there exists a reciprocal inhibitory relationship between opposed brain networks. First, most attention-demanding cognitive tasks activate a stereotypical set of brain areas, known as the task-positive network and simultaneously deactivate a different set of brain regions, commonly referred to as the task negative or defaultmode network. Second, functional connectivity analyses show that these same opposed networks are anti-correlated in the resting state. Wehypothesize that these reciprocally inhibitory effects reflect two incompatible cognitive modes, each of (...) which may be directed towards understanding the external world. Thus, engaging onemode activates one set of regions and suppresses activity in the other.Wetest this hypothesis by identifying two types of problem-solving task which, on the basis of prior work, have been consistently associated with the task positive and task negative regions: tasks requiring social cognition, i.e., reasoning about the mental states of other persons, and tasks requiring physical cognition, i.e., reasoning about the causal/mechanical properties of inanimate objects. Social and mechanical reasoning tasks were presented to neurologically normal participants during fMRI. Each task type was presented using both text and video clips. Regardless of presentation modality, we observed clear evidence of reciprocal suppression: social tasks deactivated regions associated with mechanical reasoning and mechanical tasks deactivated regions associated with social reasoning. These findings are not explained by self-referential processes, task engagement, mental simulation,mental time travel or external vs. internal attention, all factors previously hypothesized to explain default mode network activity. Analyses of resting state data revealed a close match between the regions our tasks identified as reciprocally inhibitory and regions of maximal anti-correlation in the resting state. These results indicate the reciprocal inhibition is not attributable to constraints inherent in the tasks, but is neural in origin. Hence, there is a physiological constraint on our ability to simultaneously engage two distinct cognitive modes. Furtherwork is needed tomore precisely characterize these opposing cognitive domains. (shrink)

I argue that metaethicists should be concerned with two kinds of alienation that can result from theories of normativity: alienation between an agent and her reasons, and alienation between an agent and the concrete others with whom morality is principally concerned. A theory that cannot avoid alienation risks failing to make sense of central features of our experience of being agents, in whose lives normativity plays an important role. The twin threats of alienation establish two desiderata for theories of normativity; (...) however, I argue that they are difficult to jointly satisfy. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom regarding the aims and shortcomings of Kantian constructivism is mistaken. The aim of metaethical constructivism is not to provide a naturalistic account of the objectivity of normative facts by deriving substantive morality from a conception of agency so thin as to be uncontroversial (a task at which it is generally regarded to have failed). Its aim is to explain the “grip” that normative facts have on us—to avoid what I call the problem of normative alienation. So understood, (...) Kantian constructivism faces two problems: that determinate normative facts cannot be derived from agency and that its individualistic conception of agency cannot account for the sociality of morality. I propose and elaborate a social conception of agency that is better able to address the latter problem while still avoiding normative alienation, and evaluate two different strategies for responding to the former problem. (shrink)

Covid-19 presents itself as a strange catastrophe. It has neither destroyed the planet nor has it erased humanity… but it has, in many ways, served to upend and alter what was previously considered ‘normal.’ As a result, what is perhaps the most notable characteristic of the Covid catastrophe is the very way it endures. Beyond any notion of catastrophic shock, the Covid catastrophe continues, indeed, it lingers in daily news cycles, changes to working environments and restrictions on travel. It is (...) an enduring presence, from which any determination of its ‘end’ is either nullified by an unending stream of Covid reports, or worse, ignored altogether. On this basis alone, is it even possible to discern an ‘end’ to Covid? (shrink)

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are at last coming to be recognised as serious global public health problems. Nevertheless, many women with personal histories of DVA decline to disclose them to healthcare practitioners. In the health sciences, recent empirical work has identified many factors that impede DVA disclosure, known as barriers to disclosure. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology on testimonial silencing, we might wonder why so many people withhold their testimony and whether there is some kind of epistemic (...) injustice afoot here. In this paper, I offer some philosophical reflections on DVA disclosure in clinical contexts and the associated barriers to disclosure. I argue that women with personal histories of DVA are vulnerable to a certain form of testimonial injustice in clinical contexts, namely, testimonial smothering, and that this may help to explain why they withhold that testimony. It is my contention that this can help explain the low rates of DVA disclosure by patients to healthcare practitioners. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new framework for thinking about hope, with certain unexpected consequences. Specifically, I argue that a shift in focus from locutions like “x hopes that” and “x is hoping that” to “x is hopeful that” and “x has hope that” can improve our understanding of hope. This approach, which emphasizes hopefulness as the central concept, turns out to be more revealing and fruitful in tackling some of the issues that philosophers have raised about hope, such as the (...) question of how hope can be distinguished from despair or how people can have differing strengths in hope. It also allows us to see that many current accounts of hope, far from being rivals, are actually compatible with one another. (shrink)

This paper develops a form of moral actualism that can explain the procreative asymmetry. Along the way, it defends and explains the attractive asymmetry: the claim that although an impermissible option can be self-conditionally permissible, a permissible option cannot be self-conditionally impermissible.

To what extent are cognitive capacities, especially perceptual capacities, informationally encapsulated and to what extent are they cognitively penetrable? And why does this matter? Two reasons we care about encapsulation/penetrability are: (a) encapsulation is sometimes held to be definitional of modularity, and (b) penetrability has epistemological implications independent of modularity. I argue that modularity does not require encapsulation; that modularity may have epistemological implications independently of encapsulation; and that the epistemological implications of the cognitive penetrability of perception are messier than (...) is sometimes thought. (shrink)

Stewart Cohen argues that much contemporary epistemological theorizing is hampered by the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ is a term of art and one that is never given any serious explication in a non-tendentious, theory-neutral way. He suggests that epistemologists are therefore better off theorizing in terms of rationality, rather than in terms of ‘epistemic justification’. Against this, I argue that even if the term ‘epistemic justification’ is not broadly known, the concept it picks out is quite familiar, and partly because (...) it’s a term of art, justification talk is a better vehicle for philosophical theorizing. ‘Rational’ is too unclear for our philosophical purposes, and the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ gets fleshed out by appeal to substantive, controversial theses is no obstacle to its playing the needed role in epistemological theorizing. (shrink)

Exploring the relationship between humans and AI chatbots, as well as the ethical concerns surrounding their use, this paper argues that our relations with chatbots are not solely based on their function as a source of knowledge, but, rather, on the desire for the subject not to know. It is argued that, outside of the very fears and anxieties that underscore our adoption of AI, the desire not to know reveals the potential to embrace the very loss AI avers. Consequently, (...) rather than proposing a knowledge that seeks to disavow loss, we can instead recognize the potential in loss itself: an opportunity to assert and define the gap inherent to both the subject and AI we create. (shrink)

Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This article introduces, explores and outlines the psychoanalytic significance of this peculiarity. It explores how the emotions stirred by sport are intertwined with a realm of fiction and fantasy. Despite its lack of practical utility, sport carries an undeniable gravity, encapsulating (...) the aspirations of communities, nations and continents. As a result, psychoanalysis can be used to critically reflect on the purpose and meaning of sport: that is, why do we need sport, and why, for large sections of the world’s population, do we rely on it? Ultimately, while psychoanalysis maintains a unique relation to a variety of unexpected fields of study – including art, culture and neuroscience – we seek to add to this expanding list of inquiry by including sport in this critical domain. By utilising sport as a platform to elucidate psychoanalytic concepts, it is recognised that sport can also prompt questions for psychoanalysis. In so doing, theoretical discussions on the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport through psychoanalytic theory are introduced and applied. (shrink)

In 2021, the men’s English national football team reached their first final at a major international tournament since winning the World Cup in 1966. This success followed their previous achievement of reaching the semi-finals (knocked-out by Croatia) at the 2018 World Cup. True to form, the defeats proved unfalteringly English; with the 2021 final echoing previous tournament defeats, as England lost to Italy on penalties. However, what resonated with the predictability of an English defeat, was the accompanying chant, ‘it’s coming (...) home’. A ubiquitous presence throughout the course of both tournaments—while chanted at England football matches, it was also repeated across social media, the press and commercial advertising—the chant originates from the 1996 single, Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home), performed by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds. In what follows critical attention will be given to examining how the song offers what will be argued is a melancholic outlook. By re-approaching examples of English nostalgia and hubris, this chapter will expose how illustrations of English melancholy offer the potential for promoting collective forms of expression, which, when contextualized alongside England’s lack of footballing success (for the men’s team, at least), can be offset against a melancholic mediation that is cognizant of the centrality of loss—both for the subject and our collective sporting endeavours. (shrink)

Expressivists explain the expression relation which obtains between sincere moral assertion and the conative or affective attitude thereby expressed by appeal to the relation which obtains between sincere assertion and belief. In fact, they often explicitly take the relation between moral assertion and their favored conative or affective attitude to be exactly the same as the relation between assertion and the belief thereby expressed. If this is correct, then we can use the identity of the expression relation in the two (...) cases to test the expressivist account as a descriptive or hermeneutic account of moral discourse. I formulate one such test, drawing on a standard explanation of Moore's paradox. I show that if expressivism is correct as a descriptive account of moral discourse, then we should expect versions of Moore's paradox where we explicitly deny that we possess certain affective or conative attitudes. I then argue that the constructions that mirror Moore's paradox are not incoherent. It follows that expressivism is either incorrect as a hermeneutic account of moral discourse or that the expression relation which holds between sincere moral assertion and affective or conative attitudes is not identical to the relation which holds between sincere non-moral assertion and belief. A number of objections are canvassed and rejected. (shrink)

I investigate syntactic notions of theoretical equivalence between logical theories and a recent objection thereto. I show that this recent criticism of syntactic accounts, as extensionally inadequate, is unwarranted by developing an account which is plausibly extensionally adequate and more philosophically motivated. This is important for recent anti-exceptionalist treatments of logic since syntactic accounts require less theoretical baggage than semantic accounts.

This paper develops a hybridization of Newcomb’s Problem and the Frustrater (Spencer and Wells’s 2019 paper ‘Why take both boxes?’), underscoring how difficult it is to reconcile the rationality of taking both boxes in Newcomb’s Problem and the rationality of taking the envelope in the Frustrater.

Consequentialists often assume rational monism: the thesis that options are always made rationally permissible by the maximization of the selfsame quantity. This essay argues that consequentialists should reject rational monism and instead accept rational pluralism: the thesis that, on different occasions, options are made rationally permissible by the maximization of different quantities. The essay then develops a systematic form of rational pluralism which, unlike its rivals, is capable of handling both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory and the (...) unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory. (shrink)

Why do promises give rise to reasons? I consider a quadruple of possibilities which I think will not work, then sketch the explanation of the normativity of promising I find more plausible—that it is constitutive of the practice of promising that promise-breaking implies liability for blame and that we take liability for blame to be a bad thing. This effects a reduction of the normativity of promising to conventionalism about liability together with instrumental normativity and desire-based reasons. This is important (...) for a number of reasons, but the most important reason is that this style of account can be extended to account for nearly all normativity—one notable exception being instrumental normativity itself. Success in the case of promises suggests a general reduction of normativity to conventions and instrumental normativity. But success in the cases of promises is already quite interesting and does not depend essentially the general claim about normativity. (shrink)

The Psychosis of Race offers a unique and detailed account of the psychoanalytic significance of race, and the ongoing impact of racism in contemporary society. Moving beyond the well-trodden assertion that race is a social construction, and working against demands that simply call for more representational equality, The Psychosis of Race explores how the delusions, anxieties, and paranoia that frame our race relations can afford new insights into how we see, think, and understand race's pervasive appeal. With examples drawn from (...) politics and popular culture--such as Candyman, Get Out, and the music of Kendrick Lamar--critical attention is given to introducing as well as explicating on several key concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis and the study of psychosis, including foreclosure, phallus, the Name-of-the-Father, sinthome, and the objet petit a. By elaborating a cultural mode to psychosis and its understanding, an original and critical exposition of the effects of racialization, as well as our ability to discern the very limits of our capacity to think through, or even beyond, the idea of race, is provided. The Psychosis of Race speaks to an emerging area in the study of psychoanalysis and race, and will appeal to scholars and academics across the fields of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and the arts and humanities. (shrink)

Seeking a decision theory that can handle both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory and the unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory, some philosophers recently have turned to ‘graded ratifiability’. However, the graded ratifiability approach to decision theory is, despite its virtues, unsatisfactory; for it conflicts with the platitude that it is always rationally permissible for an agent to knowingly choose their best option.

I argue that the social dimension of alienation, as discussed by Williams and Railton, has been underappreciated. The lesson typically drawn from their exchange is that moral theory poses a threat to the internal integrity of the agent, but there is a parallel risk that moral theory will implicitly construe agents as constitutively alienated from one another. I argue that a satisfying account of agency will need to make room for what I call ‘genuine ethical contact’ with others, both as (...) concrete objects in the world external to ourselves and as subjects who can recognize us reciprocally. (shrink)

Epistemic terms of various syntactic categories can uniformly be used to do the same thing—to hedge. This essay clarifies hedging as a phenomenon and explains how hedging happens by advancing the positional theory. The guiding idea is that, in uttering declaratives, speakers signal what their epistemic position is towards the content put into play by the declarative. The default signal is that the speaker knows. But when an epistemic term hedges, the term overrides the default. The non-default signal sent is (...) that the speaker or someone else occupies the position indicated by the term. To make that idea precise, the positional theory treats hedging as a discourse function. Terms hedge because of how a declarative containing an epistemic term is situated within a discourse. (shrink)

Lecture Notes On Eric Schmid's "Prospectus to a Homotopic Metatheory of Language" Presented at the Book Release Event at Triest Gallery (NYC) on January 19, 2024 -/- Prospectus to a Homotopic Metatheory of Language by Eric Schmid proposes that mathematics does not involve the discovery of a synthetic a priori. In other words, mathematics is not a stable transcendent object of knowledge. Instead, Schmid defines math as a language that depends on an infinitely large network topology of inferences. Importantly, this (...) metatheory can be applied not just to the disciplinary specific languages of computer & natural science, but also ordinary & public languages. Mathematics is not the discovery of transcendent concepts, but a dynamic evolving language of inquiry. (shrink)

Is it possible to remain a sports fan when prominent sports teams and events are utilized to “sportswash” human rights abuses and other controversies? Indeed, while there is an abundance of analyses critiquing different instances of sportswashing, the exploration of the role of sportswashing and its connection to the “sports fan” presents an essential and necessary area of investigation and theoretical inquiry. To unpick this dilemma, this article proposes the concept of “fetishistic disavowal” to help theorize the impact of sportswashing, (...) as well as its relation to the sports fan and critical sports academic. This argues that, as spectators and fans of sport—and, moreover, as critical academics—we often acknowledge and accept that sport is used to perpetuate and even maintain a variety of social, economic, and political inequalities. Yet, while we are aware of such knowledge, we nonetheless remain fully capable of disavowing this very knowledge as an accepted part of sport. Given this, it is argued that the fetishization of sport can provide a suitable conduit for the fetishistic disavowal that sportswashing requires, with the concept offering a unique way of approaching sport’s inherent contradictions, while also theorizing how subjects relate to these contradictions as part of their involvement in and with sport. Where sportswashing directly implicates the fan in its implementation—relying upon a level of fetishistic disavowal between the fan and their club and proffering a disavowed acknowledgement of the effects of sportswashing and its interpellation through sport—this article outlines how applications of fetishistic disavowal provide a unique theoretical lens through which analyses of sport, and its ethical significance, can be critiqued. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been described as a “non-argumentocentric” way of doing philosophy, reflecting that the philosophical focus is on generating adequate descriptions of experience. But it should not be described as an argument-free zone, regardless of whether this is intended as a descriptive claim about the work of the “usual suspects” or a normative claim about how phenomenology ought to be properly practiced. If phenomenology is always at least partly in the business of arguments, then it is worth giving further attention (...) to the role and form of phenomenological argumentation, how it interacts with its more strictly descriptive component, and the status of phenomenological claims regarding conditions for various kinds of experience. I contend that different versions of phenomenological reasoning encroach upon argument forms that are commonly thought to be antithetical to phenomenology, notably abductive reasoning, understood in terms of its role in both hypothesis generation and in terms of justification. This paper identifies two main steps to making this case. The first step takes seriously the consequences of the intrinsically dialectical aspect of phenomenology in intersection with other modes of philosophy, the natural attitude, and non-philosophy. The second step focuses on transcendental reflection and arguments about the conditions/structures they contain. Together, these two steps aim to rescue phenomenology from the objection that it has an “ostrich epistemology” with regard to the ostensible purity of description, the intuition of essences, or the “conditions” ascertained through transcendental reflection. (shrink)