Computer and information ethics, as well as other fields of applied ethics, need ethical theories which coherently unify deontological and consequentialist aspects of ethical analysis. The proposed theory of just consequentialism emphasizes consequences of policies within the constraints of justice. This makes just consequentialism a practical and theoretically sound approach to ethical problems of computer and information ethics.

Hume held that we have no rational justification for our inductive beliefs. A more radical view is that we have no rational justification for any of our beliefs. This dissertation has two goals pertaining to this more radical view. // The first goal is to find a basis for constructive epistemology that is consistent with this view. This goal is first sought by considering externalist theories of knowledge since these do not require rational justification for knowledge. Externalist theories are defended (...) against the usual objections, partly via a strategy of immunizing them from counterexample-based objections by arguing that epistemologies can be successful even if they fail to explicate ordinary epistemic notions. But a new objection to externalist theories is then brought to light. The objection begins as an attack against a dogma of contemporary epistemology, that the chief benefit of possessing knowledge is having a true belief. It is argued that there are many other benefits to having knowledge , and that externalist theories are defective because externalist knowledge lacks these benefits. A mixed internalist/externalist theory, bilevel reliabilism, is then presented as a solution to this difficulty. //The second goal is to provide an explanation of the function and origin of human epistemic practices that is consistent with the no-rational-justification view. Providing such an explanation is problematic for holders of this view because, if it is correct, it seems, prima facie, that there is no reason to have epistemic practices. This goal is achieved by arguing that epistemic practices, despite appearing to have rational justification as their goal, chiefly function to promote the existence of bilevel reliabilist knowledge, a very useful type of belief that is not rationally justified. It is then argued that the explanation of the origin of epistemic practices is that they arise from natural human inductive tendencies. (shrink)

This chapter both explains the origins of emotivism in C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, R. B. Braithwaite, Austin Duncan-Jones, A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson (along with the endorsement by Frank P. Ramsey, and the summary of C. D. Broad), and looks at MacIntyre's criticisms of emotivism as the inevitable result of Moore's attack on naturalistic ethics and his ushering in the fact/value, which was a historical product of the Enlightenment.

[A. W. Moore] Criteria of ineffability are presented which, it is claimed, preclude the possibility of truths that are ineffable, but not the possibility of other things that are ineffable—not even the possibility of other things that are non-trivially ineffable. Specifically, they do not preclude the possibility of states of understanding that are ineffable. This, it is argued, allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and those who adopt the (...) new reading recently championed by Cora Diamond, James Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

Self-verifying judgments like _I exist_ seem rational, and self-defeating ones like _It will rain, but I don’t believe it will rain_ seem irrational_._ But one’s evidence might support a self-defeating judgment, and fail to support a self-verifying one. This paper explains how it can be rational to defy one’s evidence if judgment is construed as a mental performance or act, akin to inner assertion. The explanation comes at significant cost, however. Instead of causing or constituting beliefs, judgments turn out to (...) be mere epiphenomena, and self-verification and self-defeat lack the broader philosophical import often claimed for them. (shrink)

Is self-knowledge a requirement of rationality, like consistency, or means-ends coherence? Many claim so, citing the evident impropriety of asserting, and the alleged irrationality of believing, Moore-paradoxical propositions of the form < p, but I don't believe that p>. If there were nothing irrational about failing to know one's own beliefs, they claim, then there would be nothing irrational about Moore-paradoxical assertions or beliefs. This article considers a few ways the data surrounding Moore's paradox might be marshaled (...) to support rational requirements to know one's beliefs, and finds that none succeed. (shrink)

This paper critically examines currently influential transparency accounts of our knowledge of our own beliefs that say that self-ascriptions of belief typically are arrived at by “looking outward” onto the world. For example, one version of the transparency account says that one self-ascribes beliefs via an inference from a premise to the conclusion that one believes that premise. This rule of inference reliably yields accurate self-ascriptions because you cannot infer a conclusion from a premise without believing the premise, and so (...) you cannot infer from a premise that you believe the premise unless you do believe it. I argue that this procedure cannot be a source of justification, however, because one can be justified in inferring from p that q only if p amounts to strong evidence that q is true. This is incompatible with the transparency account because p often is not very strong evidence that you believe that p. For example, unless you are a weather expert, the fact that it will rain is not very strong evidence that you believe it will rain. After showing how this intuitive problem can be made precise, I conclude with a broader lesson about the nature of inferential justification: that beliefs, when justified, must be underwritten by beliefs, when justified, must be underwritten by evidential relationships between the facts or propositions which those beliefs represent. (shrink)

This selective overview of the history of American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century begins with certain enduring themes that were developed by the two main founders of classical American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839--1914) and William James. Against the background of the pervasive influence of Kantian and Hegelian idealism in America in the decades surrounding the turn of the century, pragmatism and related philosophical outlooks emphasizing naturalism and realism were dominant during the first three decades of the century. Beginning (...) in the 1930s and 1940s, however, the middle third of the century witnessed the rising influence in America of what would become known as “‘analytic philosophy’,” with its primary roots in Europe: in the Cambridge philosophical analysis of Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein; logical empiricism and positivism on the continent; and linguistic analysis and ordinary- language philosophy at Oxford. This overview stresses the persistence of pragmatist themes throughout much of the century, while emphasizing the mid-century transformations that resulted from developments primarily in analytic philosophy. These combined influences resulted at the turn of the millennium in the flourishing, among other developments, of distinctively analytic styles of pragmatism and naturalism. (shrink)

An interview with The philosopher James Moore on the occasion of his ACM Making a Difference Award, in 2003.

I argue that the familiar picture of the rise of analytic philosophy through the early work of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell is incomplete and to some degree erroneous. Archival evidence suggests that a considerable influence on Moore, especially evident in his 1899 paper ‘The nature of judgment,’ comes from the literature in nineteenth-century empirical psychology rather than nineteenth-century neo-Hegelianism, as is widely believed. I argue that the conceptual influences of Moore’s paper are more likely to (...) have had their source in the work of two of Moore’s teachers, G. F. Stout and James Ward. What may be called an anti-psychologism about psychology characterizes the work of these and other psychologists of the period. I argue that the anti-psychologism that is the main aim of Moore’s early theory of judgment is an adaptation of this notion, which is significantly dissimilar from the notion defended by Bradley, traditionally thought to have been a key influence on Moore.Keywords: G. E. Moore; Bertrand Russell; Propositions; Anti-psychologism; Early analytic philosophy; G. F. Stout. (shrink)

James Levine has recently argued that there is a tension between Russell’s Moorean semantical framework and Russell’s Peano-inspired analytical practice. According to Levine, this discrepancy runs deep in Russell’s thought from 1900 to 1918, and underlies many of the doctrinal changes occurring during this period. In this paper, I suggest that, contrary to what Levine claims, there is no incompatibility between Moore’s theory of meaning and the idea of informative conceptual analysis. I show this by relating Moore’s (...) view of meaning to his Sidgwick-inspired criticism of the so-called naturalistic fallacy. I maintain that Moore’s semantical framework has a methodological intent: following Sidgwick, Moore wants to block any attempt to justify ethical principles through setting ad hoc conditions on the meaning of the terms involved. Thus, far from grounding philosophical knowledge on subjective intuitions, as Levine suggests, Moore’s framework would provide us with the means to make room for a discursive and dialectic conception of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

This essay involves exploration of certain repercussions of Bernard Williams’ view that there is, in Wittgenstein’s later work, a transcendental idealism akin to that found in the Tractatus—sharing with it the feature that it cannot be satisfactorily stated. It is argued that, if Williams is right, then Wittgenstein’s later work precludes a philosophically substantial theory of meaning; for such a theory would force us to try to state the idealism. In a postscript written for the reprint of the essay, reasons (...) are given for thinking that Williams is not right: Wittgenstein’s later work actually helps us to repudiate as ill-conceived all those questions whose answers invite us to embrace any such idealism. But the main thesis of the essay remains intact. Indeed the idea that Wittgenstein’s later work precludes a philosophically substantial theory of meaning is reinforced. (shrink)

I argue that uniquely human forms of ‘Theory of Mind’ are a product of cultural evolution. Specifically, propositional attitude psychology is a linguistically constructed folk model of the human mind, invented by our ancestors for a range of tasks and refined over successive generations of users. The construction of these folk models gave humans new tools for thinking and reasoning about mental states—and so imbued us with abilities not shared by non-linguistic species. I also argue that uniquely human forms of (...) ToM are not required for language development, such that an account of the cultural origins of ToM does not jeopardise the explanation of language development. Finally, I sketch a historical model of the cultural evolution of mental state talk. (shrink)

The argument from reason states that if naturalism is true, then our beliefs are caused by physical processes rather than being causally based in their reasons, so our beliefs are not knowledge—including the belief in naturalism itself. Recent critics of the argument from reason provide dual process replies to the argument from reason—our beliefs can have both a naturalistic cause/ explanation and be caused/explained by its reasons, thereby showing that naturalism can accommodate knowledge. In this paper I consider three dual (...) process replies and conclude that none of them are successful. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim once refrained from excluding distinct mental causes of effects that depend upon the sufficient physical cause of the effect. At that time, Kim also refrained from excluding distinct mental explanations of effects that depend upon complete physical explanations of the effect. More recently, he has excluded distinct mental causes of effects that depend upon the sufficient cause of the effect, since the physical cause is individually sufficient for the effect. But there has been, to this point, no parallel (...) shift in the explanatory realm, such that distinct mental explanations of effects that depend upon complete physical explanations of the effect are excluded since the physical explanation is objectively complete. In this paper I consider, defend, and apply this update to the principle of explanatory exclusion—an update, which, in the final analysis, demonstrates a significant advantage that non-reductive physicalism has over reductive physicalism. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy brings empirical methods to philosophy. These methods are used to probe how people think about philosophically interesting things such as knowledge, morality, and freedom. This paper explores the contribution that qualitative methods have to make in this enterprise. I argue that qualitative methods have the potential to make a much greater contribution than they have so far. Along the way, I acknowledge a few types of resistance that proponents of qualitative methods in experimental philosophy might encounter, and provide (...) reasons to think they are ill-founded. (shrink)

Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk morality presumes that moral judgments are objectively true or false. Some researchers report findings that they take to indicate folk commitment to objectivism (Goodwin & Darley, 2008, 2010, 2012; Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003; Wainryb et al., 2004), while others report findings that may reveal a more variable commitment to objectivism (Beebe, 2014; Beebe et al., 2015; Beebe & Sackris, 2016; Sarkissian, et al., 2011; Wright, (...) 2018; Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013; Wright, McWhite, & Grandjean, 2014). However, the various probes that have been used to examine folk moral objectivism almost always fail to be good direct measures of objectivism. Some critics (Beebe, 2015; Pölzler, 2017, 2018) have suggested that the problems with existing probes are serious enough that they should be viewed as largely incapable of shedding any light on folk metaethical commitments. Building upon the work of Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe (2018), I argue that many of the existing probes can be seen as good measures of the extent to which people think that the truth of one moral judgment excludes the possibility that a judgment made by a disagreeing party is also true and that the best explanation of the findings obtained using these measures is significant folk support for indexical moral relativism—the view that the content of moral judgments is context-sensitive. If my thesis is correct, many contemporary moral philosophers are deeply mistaken about the metaethical contours of folk morality in one very important respect. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Hume’s account of an important class of causal belief which he calls “general rules”. I argue that he understands general rules, like all causal beliefs, as lively ideas which are habitually associated with our impressions or memories. However, I argue, he believes that they are unlike any reflectively produced causal beliefs in that they are produced quickly and automatically, such that they occur independently of any other processes of reasoning. Given this, I argue, Hume appears (...) to understand general rules as relatively simple beliefs, expressible only via generic sentences, like “birds lay eggs”. (shrink)

Aesthetic internalism claims a link between judgement and motivation: aesthetic judgements bring with them motivations to act in characteristic ways. Critics object that there is a difference between merely liking something and judging it to be aesthetically good, and that it is our likings, not our aesthetic judgements, that motivate us. This paper develops a version of aesthetic internalism that can respond to this criticism. Wholehearted aesthetic judgements are characterized by stability, attention, and motivation. Making such judgements is an important (...) part of a good life, and so at least some aesthetic judgements are motivating. So we have reason to think that this version of aesthetic internalism is true. This paper defends wholehearted aesthetic internalism against objections, and assesses an argument from aesthetic internalism to aesthetic non-cognitivism. While wholehearted aesthetic internalism can only offer qualified support to non-cognitivism, it nonetheless offers a number of fruitful avenues for further work. (shrink)

A state-based reason for one to intend to perform an action F is a reason for one to intend to F which is not a reason for one to F. Are there any state-based reasons to intend? According to the Explanatory Argument, the answer is no, because state-based reasons do not satisfy a certain explanatory constraint. I argue that whether or not the constraint is correct, the Explanatory Argument is unsound, because state-based reasons do satisfy the constraint. The considerations that (...) undermine the Explanatory Argument also generate a strong, positive case for the existence of state-based reasons to intend. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is the political theory which holds that coercive laws and policies are justified when and only when they are grounded in reasons of the public. The standard interpretation of public reason liberalism, consensus accounts, claim that the reasons persons share or that persons can derive from shared values determine which policies can be justified. In this paper, I argue that consensus approaches cannot justify fair educational policies and preserving cultural goods. Consensus approaches can resolve some controversies about (...) teaching values in the educational system, such as curriculum choice. But they cannot determine which culture goods, e.g., architecture, artwork, or language ought to be preserved in the education system. Consensus approaches cannot fairly resolve competing claims about these kinds of disputes. -/- I propose that convergence accounts of public reason, which allow individuals to draw on their own comprehensive doctrines in limited ways, can remedy these weaknesses in the mainline public reason tradition. The convergence approach can justify a pluralist state that can advance valuable community goods. John Henry Newman’s advocacy of liberal arts education finds resonance in other cultures, notably among Confucians, illustrating that there can be a shared moral vision and inquiry into the good life across deep substantive disagreements about educational values and policies, once we expand our notion of justification to be more inclusive. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on expressively rich languages that can formalise talk about probability. These languages have sentences that say something about probabilities of probabilities, but also sentences that say something about the probability of themselves. For example: (π): “The probability of the sentence labelled π is not greater than 1/2.” Such sentences lead to philosophical and technical challenges; but can be useful. For example they bear a close connection to situations where ones confidence in something can affect whether it is (...) the case or not. The motivating interpretation of probability as an agent's degrees of belief will be focused on throughout the thesis. -/- This thesis aims to answer two questions relevant to such frameworks, which correspond to the two parts of the thesis: “How can one develop a formal semantics for this framework?” and “What rational constraints are there on an agent once such expressive frameworks are considered?”. (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have investigated various ways in which non‐epistemic evaluations can affect knowledge attributions. For example, several teams of researchers (Beebe and Buckwalter 2010; Beebe and Jensen 2012; Schaffer and Knobe 2012; Beebe and Shea 2013; Buckwalter 2014b; Turri 2014) report that the goodness or badness of an agent’s action can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. These findings raise important questions about how patterns of folk knowledge attributions should influence philosophical theorizing about knowledge.

The ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas is typically associated with a punishing conception of responsibility rather than freedom. In this chapter, our aim is to explore Levinas’s often overlooked theory of freedom. Specifically, we compare Levinas’s account of freedom to the Kantian (and Fichtean) idea of freedom as autonomy and the Hegelian idea of freedom as relational. Based on these comparisons, we suggest that Levinas offers a distinctive conception of freedom—“finite freedom.” In contrast to Kantian autonomy, finite freedom constitutively involves (...) standing in certain social relations with others. And in contrast to Hegelian relational freedom, the social relations involved in finite freedom are not defined by mutual recognition, but by feelings of separation and even antagonism. Along the way, we promote a reading Levinas’s Totality and Infinity as a Hegel-style story of Bildung (development), and show how, on Levinas’s view, freedom can develop or mature in the life of the individual. (shrink)

This chapter considers possible moral grounds for recognizing and realizing economic and social rights (ESRs) as human rights. It begins by suggesting that ESRs fall into three families: (1) welfareoriented ESRs, which protect adequate income, education, health, and safe and healthful working conditions; (2) freedom-oriented ESRs, which prohibit slavery, ensure free choice of employment, and protect workers’ freedoms to organize and strike: and (3) fairness-oriented ESRs, which require nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in the workplace along with fair remuneration for one’s (...) work. To accommodate the normative diversity found in these three families, the chapter suggests a pluralistic justicatory framework that appeals to three kinds of moral reasons: human welfare, freedom, and fairness. A final section considers the possibility of subsuming all three of these approaches to justication under the idea of human dignity or the associated idea of equal respect for persons. (shrink)

This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that (...) a saying/showing distinction arises there too. In particular, in the final sub-section of the essay, it is suggested that we can see in Wittgenstein’s later work an inducement to say what we are shown. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson’s work provides numerous ways to rethink and improve our approach to metaphysics. This chapter is my attempt to begin to sketch why I still think the easy approach leaves room for substantive metaphysical work, and why I do not think that metaphysics need rely on any ‘epistemically metaphysical’ knowledge. After distinguishing two possible forms of deflationism, I argue that the easy ontologist needs to accept (implicitly or explicitly) that there are worldly constraints on what sorts of entities could (...) exist, and could co-exist. I argue this leaves room for a substantive role for metaphysics if (following the work of E.J. Lowe) we take metaphysics to be concerned with the possible ways that reality could be. I explain how this conception does not need to appeal to any ‘epistemically metaphysical’ knowledge, and need only make use of conceptual and/or empirical means to arrive at views on what could exist (and co-exist). Thus, the answer I propose to the question posed in the title, at least in my view, is no-one. Or, at least, no-one should be afraid of conceptual analysis. Not even metaphysicians. (shrink)

Kant was engaged in a lifelong struggle to achieve what he calls in the 1756 Physical Monadology (PM) a “marriage” of metaphysics and geometry (1:475). On one hand, this involved showing that metaphysics and geometry are complementary, despite the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between these disciplines and between their respective advocates, the Leibnizian-Wolffians and the Newtonians. On the other hand, this involved defining the terms of their union, which meant among other things, articulating their respective roles in grounding Newtonian natural science. (...) In this paper, consider how Kant’s project of marrying metaphysics and geometry evolves from the pre-Critical to the Critical period and how key discussions in the Prolegomena are related to the lifelong marriage project. (shrink)

Moss (2018) argues that rational agents are best thought of not as having degrees of belief in various propositions but as having beliefs in probabilistic contents, or probabilistic beliefs. Probabilistic contents are sets of probability functions. Probabilistic belief states, in turn, are modeled by sets of probabilistic contents, or sets of sets of probability functions. We argue that this Mossean framework is of considerable interest quite independently of its role in Moss’ account of probabilistic knowledge or her semantics for epistemic (...) modals and probability operators. It is an extremely general model of uncertainty. Indeed, it is at least as general and expressively powerful as every other current imprecise probability framework, including lower probabilities, lower previsions, sets of probabilities, sets of desirable gambles, and choice functions. In addition, we partially answer an important question that Moss leaves open, viz., why should rational agents have consistent probabilistic beliefs? We show that an important subclass of Mossean believers avoid Dutch bookability iff they have consistent probabilistic beliefs. (shrink)

This chapter moves from the most fundamental parts of Aquinas’s metaphysics to Aquinas’s thought about the created world, and especially the way in which things in the created world are able to act as beings in their own right, without altering their dependence on the creator. The result is an account of the causality of creatures that does not impugn their connection to the more basic causality of the Deity and that allows this part of Aquinas’s account to be compatible (...) with accounts of causality in modern science. (shrink)

I argue that if minds supervene on the intrinsic physical properties of things like brains, then typical human brains host many minds at once. Support comes from science-nonfiction realities that, unlike split-brain cases, have received little direct attention from philosophers. One of these realities is that some patients are functioning (albeit impaired) and phenomenally conscious by all medical and commonsense accounts despite the fact that they have undergone a hemispherectomy: an entire brain hemisphere has been fully detached. Another is the (...) Wada test, in which a patient has each hemisphere anesthetized, one after the other, while the other hemisphere is awake and functioning—again, phenomenally conscious by any standard. I will argue that hemispherectomies, Wada tests, and related procedures each present cases in which the minds that exist after the detachment (or anesthetization) of a hemisphere are surviving minds which must be associated with the surviving (or un-anesthetized) hemisphere. I will argue that such surviving minds existed before the medical procedure, instantiated by the then-intact hemisphere that was due to survive the loss of its complementary hemisphere. If so, then the typical subject has at least three minds: a “left hemisphere mind”, a “right hemisphere mind”, and a “whole brain mind”. But the argument generalizes to cases in which smaller portions of the brain are lost, yielding a great number of additional minds, some overlapping. Some important ethical implications are raised and briefly examined. (shrink)

In this paper I describe a novel application of contemplative techniques to software engineering with the goal of augmenting the intellectual capabilities of knowledge workers within the field in four areas: flexibility, attention, creativity, and trust. The augmentation of software engineers’ intellectual capabilities is proposed as a third complement to the traditional focus of methodologies on the process and environmental factors of the software development endeavor. I argue that these capabilities have been shown to be open to improvement through the (...) practices traditionally used in spiritual traditions, but now used increasingly in other fields of knowledge work, such as in the medical profession and the education field. Historically, the intellectual capabilities of software engineers have been treated as a given within any particular software development effort. This is argued to be an aspect ripe for inclusion within software development methodologies. (shrink)

The chapter examines fifty years of philosophers working on lying - from the 1970s to the current day – focusing on how lying is defined (descriptively and normatively), whether lying involves an intention to deceive (Deceptionists) or not (Non-Deceptionists), why lying is wrong, and whether lying is worse than other forms of deception, including misleading with the truth. Philosophers discussed include Roderick Chisholm and Thomas Feehan, Alan Donagan, Sissela Boy, Charles Fried, David Simpson, David Simpson, Bernard Williams, Paul Faulkner, Thomas (...) Carson, Roy Sorensen, Don Fallis, Jennifer Saul, Andreas Stoke, Jonathan Webber and Clea Rees. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain why creativity is an artistic merit. Artworks and non-artworks can both be creative. But creativity does not help make many other creative things good of their kind. A creative explanation is not a better explanation in virtue of being creative. Why, then, is a creative artwork a better artwork in virtue of being creative? Understanding this will give us a better understanding of the nature of artistic merit. The approach adopted in this (...) paper is as follows. First, I say what creativity is and what an artistic merit is. Second, I identify reasons to doubt that creativity is an artistic merit. A good explanation of the merit of creativity should address these doubts. Third, I develop a theory of artistic merit that appeals to the final value of acting excellently – for example, virtuously or skilfully. Finally, I argue that this enables us to explain why creativity is an artistic merit. This account also enables us to argue that artistic merits give some things final value, and not merely instrumental value. It also provides reason to believe that ethical qualities of artworks enhance their artistic merit for the same reason creativity does. (shrink)

Quantity is the first category that Aristotle lists after substance. It has extraordinary epistemological clarity: "2+2=4" is the model of a self-evident and universally known truth. Continuous quantities such as the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle are as clearly known as discrete ones. The theory that mathematics was "the science of quantity" was once the leading philosophy of mathematics. The article looks at puzzles in the classification and epistemology of quantity.

This volume brings together diverse sets of standpoints on liberalism in an era of growing skepticism and distrust regarding liberal institutions. The essays in the volume: - Relate concerns for liberal institutions with classical themes in perfectionist politics, such as the priority of the common good in decision-making or the role of comprehensive doctrines. - Analyse how perfectionist intuitions about the political life affect our concepts of public reason or public justification. - Outline various moral duties we have toward other (...) persons that underlie the liberal institutions or notions of rights functioning across the contemporary political landscape. - Explore various aspects of pluralism from within influential religious or philosophical traditions, applying insights from those traditions to issues in contemporary politics. The comprehensive volume will be of great interest to scholars, students, and researchers of politics, especially those in political philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

The teachings and actions of Jesus Christ (Yeshua Ha'Mashiach) and the apostles recorded in the New Testament are analyzed in regard to their ethical and political philosophy, with analysis of context vis-à-vis the Old Testament (Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible) being given. From this analysis, it is shown that Jesus is a libertarian anarchist, i.e., a consistent voluntaryist. The implications this has for the world are profound, and the ramifications of Jesus's anarchism to Christians' attitudes toward government (the state) and its (...) actions are explicated. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on lying. It it outlines the differences between different kinds of falsehoods in Plato (real falsehoods and falsehoods in words), the difference between myths and lies, the 'noble' (i.e., pedigree) lie in The Republic, and how Plato defended rulers lying to non-rulers about, for example, eugenics. It considers whether Socrates's opposition to lying is consistent with Socratic irony, and especially with his praise of his interlocutors as wise. Finally, it looks (...) at Aristotle's condemnation of lies, and asks whether lies to enemies, and self-deprecating lies by the magnanimous person, are not base. (shrink)

To approach the many challenges involved in the notion of engineering concepts, it is important to have a clear idea of the starting point – the concepts that people use in their everyday lives, in conversations and in expressing beliefs, desires, intentions and so forth. The first Section of this chapter introduces evidence that I have accumulated over the last many years concerning the flexibility, context-dependence, and vagueness of such common concepts. The concept engineer needs to understand the structure of (...) the “raw material” with which she is working. In Section 2, I summarise some results concerning the amount of individual variation that exists within a single relatively homogenous population of individuals, both in what examples are considered most typical of a category, and in what properties are considered most central to a category (Hampton & Passanisi, 2016). The demonstration of a significant degree of reliable variation in responses to these questions, that is stable over time, illustrates the potential for conceptual engineering interventions to affect individuals’ concepts. Concepts are rarely fixed or uniformly understood in the same way. I then discuss the different ways in which concepts track the world, and I speculate about how different conceptual domains are governed by different criteria of validity or acceptability. This reflection will lead to Section 3 in which I summarise some results from recent research (Thorne, Quilty-Dunn, Smortchova, Shea, & Hampton, 2021), investigating for the first time how people view the value of different familiar concepts. Knowing how people appraise concepts will be a key to developing ideas for improving the reliability and validity of the concepts that they commonly use. A final section contains some (largely speculative) discussion about the implications of work in psychology of concepts for the project of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus engages with the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy through the lens of the 15th century philosopher and theologian, Nicholas of Cusa. The volume comprises nineteen essays that break down the barriers between medieval and Renaissance studies, reinterpreting Cusanus’ place in the history of thought by exploring the archive that informed his thinking, while also interrogating his works by exploring them from the standpoint of their later reception by modern philosophers (...) and theologians. The volume also offers tribute to the career of Donald F. Duclow, a leading scholar in the field of Cusanus studies in particular and of the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy more generally. (shrink)

Analysis is given of the Omega Point cosmology, an extensively peer-reviewed proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) published in leading physics journals by professor of physics and mathematics Frank J. Tipler, which demonstrates that in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent, the universe must diverge to infinite computational power as it collapses into a final cosmological singularity, termed the Omega Point. The theorem is an intrinsic component of the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) describing (...) and unifying all the forces in physics, of which itself is also required by the known physical laws. With infinite computational resources, the dead can be resurrected--never to die again--via perfect computer emulation of the multiverse from its start at the Big Bang. Miracles are also physically allowed via electroweak quantum tunneling controlled by the Omega Point cosmological singularity. The Omega Point is a different aspect of the Big Bang cosmological singularity--the first cause--and the Omega Point has all the haecceities claimed for God in the traditional religions. -/- From this analysis, conclusions are drawn regarding the social, ethical, economic and political implications of the Omega Point cosmology. (shrink)

It is shown that libertarian anarchism (i.e., consistent liberalism) is unavoidably true.

There is good reason to believe that scientific realism requires a commitment to the objective modal structure of the physical world. Causality, equilibrium, laws of nature, and probability all feature prominently in scientific theory and explanation, and each one is a modal notion. If we are committed to the content of our best scientific theories, we must accept the modal nature of the physical world. But what does the scientific realist’s commitment to physical modality require? We consider whether scientific realism (...) is compatible with Humeanism about the laws of nature, and we conclude that it is not. We specifically identify three major problems for the best-systems account of lawhood: its central concept of strength cannot be formulated non-circularly, it cannot offer a satisfactory account of the laws of the special sciences, and it can offer no explanation of the success of inductive inference. In addition, Humeanism fails to be naturalistically motivated. For these reasons, we conclude that the scientific realist must embrace natural necessity. (shrink)