This article reviews and develops an epistemological tradition in philosophy of science, called convergentism, which holds that inference methods should be assessed in terms of their abilities to converge to the truth. This tradition is compared with three competing ones: (1) explanationism, which holds that theory choice should be guided by a theory's overall balance of explanatory virtues, such as simplicity and fit with data; (2) instrumentalism, according to which scientific inference should be driven by the goal of obtaining useful (...) models, rather than true theories; (3) Bayesianism, which features a shift of focus from all-or-nothing beliefs to degrees of belief. (shrink)

We articulate a distinction between ontology, understood as involving existence questions, and metaphysics, understood as either providing for metaphysical profiles of entities or else as dealing with fundamentality and/or grounding and dependence questions. The distinction, we argue, allows a better understanding of the roles of metaontology and metametaphysics when it comes to discussing the relations between ontology and science on the one hand, and metaphysics and science on the other. We argue that while ontology, as understood in this paper, may (...) have reasonable perspectives for naturalization, given its relation to science, the same cannot be said for metaphysics, given that it is typically understood as an additional theoretical layer over science, not participating in the scientific investigation. That may result either in skepticism over metaphysics, or else on accepting that metaphysics is an autonomous branch of investigation, depending on one’s concern for metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Amie Thomasson’s Easy Ontology rests on a vicious circularity that is highly damaging. Easy Ontology invokes the idea of application conditions that give rise to analytic entailments. Such entailments can be used to answer ontological questions easily. I argue that the application conditions for basic terms are only circularly specifiable showing that Thomasson misses her self-set goal of preventing such a circularity. Using this circularity, I go on to show that Easy Ontology as a (...) whole collapses. (shrink)

The existence of fundamental moral disagreements is a central problem for moral realism and has often been contrasted with an alleged absence of disagreement in mathematics. However, mathematicians do in fact disagree on fundamental questions, for example on which set-theoretic axioms are true, and some philosophers have argued that this increases the plausibility of moral vis-à-vis mathematical realism. I argue that the analogy between mathematical and moral disagreement is not as straightforward as those arguments present it. In particular, I argue (...) that pluralist accounts of mathematics render fundamental mathematical disagreements compatible with mathematical realism in a way in which moral disagreements and moral realism are not. 11. (shrink)

The desire-satisfaction theory of welfare says that what is basically good for a subject is the satisfaction of his desires. One challenge to this view is the existence of quirky desires, such as a desire to count blades of grass. It is hard to see why anyone would desire such things, and thus hard to believe that the satisfaction of such desires could be basically good for anyone. This suggests that only some desires are basically good when satisfied, and that (...) desire satisfactionists owe us an account of which desires these are, and why. In "Quirky Desires and Well-Being," Donald Bruckner proposes such an account: a desire is welfare-relevant (i.e., such that its satisfaction would be basically good for its subject) if and only if and because its subject could describe its object in a way that makes it comprehensible what about the object attracts him or appeals to him. We are inclined to view quirky desires as welfare-irrelevant because we assume that their objects cannot be described in such a way. But if there were a quirky desire whose object could be so described by the subject whose desire it is, then this desire would be relevant to that subject's welfare. I will argue that while Bruckner's view delivers plausible verdicts about the cases to which it is meant to apply, its account of what makes a desire welfare-relevant is unmotivated and implausible. Desire satisfactionists can retain what is plausible about his view while endorsing a better explanation of why welfare-relevant desires have that status if they accept the following account instead: a desire is welfare-relevant if and only if and because something about its object attracts, or appeals to, the subject who has the desire. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spinoza and the Theory of Organism HANS JONAS I CARTESIANDUALISMlanded speculation on the nature of life in an impasse: intelligible as, on principles of mechanics, the correlation of structure and function became within the res extensa, that of structure-plus-function with feeling or experience (modes of the res cogitans) was lost in the bifurcation, and thereby the fact of life itself became unintelligible at the same time that the (...) explanation of its bodily performance seemed to be assured. The impasse became manifest in Occasionalism : its tour de force of an extraneous, divine "synchronization" of the outer and the inner world (the latter denied to animals) not only suffered from its extreme artificiality, the common failing of such ad hoc constructions, but even at so high a cost failed to accomplish its theoretical purpose by its own terms. For the animal machine, like any machine, raises beyond the question of the "how" that of the "what for" of its functioning---of the purpose for which it had thus been constructed by its maker.1 Its performance, however devoid of immanent teleology, must serve an end, and that end must be someone's end. This end may (directly) be itself, as indeed Descartes had implied when declaring self-preservation to be the effect of the functioning of the organic automaton. In that case the existence as such of the machine would be its end--either terminally, or in turn to benefit something else. In the former case, the machine would have to be more than a machine, for a mere machine cannot enioy its existence. But since, by the rigorous conception of the res extensa, it cannot be more than a machine, its function and/or existence must serve something other than itself. Automata in Descartes ' time were mainly for entertainment (rather than work). But the raison d'etre of the living kingdom could not well be seen in God's indulging his mechanical abilities or in the amusement of celestial spectators--especially since mere complexity of arrangement does not create new quality and thus add something to the unrelieved sameness of the simple substratum that might enrich the spectrum of being. For quality, beyond the primitive determinations of the extended per se, is the subjective creature of sensation, the confused representation of quantity in a mind; and thus organisms cannot harbor it because as mere machines they lack mentality, and pure spirits cannot because they lack sensuality, or the privilege of confusion and thereby of illusion with its possible enjoyment. And as to their intellectual enjoyment, even that, deprived of the thrill of discovery by the same token, would pale in the contemplation of what to sufficiently large The concept of "machine," adopted for its strict confinementto efficientcause, is still a finalisticconcept,even thoughthe final cause is no longer internal to the entity, as a mode of its own operation,but external to it as antecedent design. [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY intellects is nothing but the ever-repeated exemplification of the same few, elementary (and ultimately trivial) truths. There remained, then, the time-honored--Stoic as well as Christian--idea that plants and animals are for the benefit of Man. Indeed, since the existence of a living world is the necessary condition for the existence of any of its members, the self-justifying nature of at least one such member (= species) would justify the existence of the whole. In Stoicism, Man provided this end by his possession of reason, which makes him the culmination of a terrestrial scale of being that is also self-justifying throughout all its grades (the end as the best of many that are good in degrees) ; in Christianity, by his possession of an immortal soul, which makes him the sole imago Dei in creation (the end as the sole issue at stake) ; and Cartesian dualism radicalized this latter position by making man even the sole possessor of inwardness or "soul" of any kind, thus the only one of whom "end" can meaningfully be predicated as he alone can entertain ends. All other life then, the product of physical necessity, can be considered his means. However, this traditional idea, in its anthropocentric vanity never a... (shrink)

Metaphysical rationalism, the doctrine which affirms the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR), is out of favor today. The best argument against it is that it appears to lead to necessitarianism, the claim that all truths are necessarily true. Whatever the intuitive appeal of the PSR, the intuitive appeal of the claim that things could have been otherwise is greater. This problem did not go unnoticed by the great metaphysical rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz. Spinoza’s response was to embrace necessitarianism. Leibniz’s (...) response was to argue that, despite appearances, rationalism does not lead to necessitarianism. This paper examines the debate between these two rationalists and concludes that Leibniz has persuasive grounds for his opinion. This has significant implications both for the plausibility of the PSR and for our understanding of modality. (shrink)

Cover Date: July 2006.Source Info: 115(3), 317-354. Language: English. Journal Announcement: 41-2. Subject: ACTION; CAUSATION; METAPHYSICS; REPRESENTATION; TELEOLOGY. Subject Person: SPINOZA, BENEDICT DE (BARUCH). Update Code: 20130315.

This paper presents a paradox based on the following assumptions: that emotions are warranted when you are justified in thinking that the emotion is fitting, that there are warranted cases of past-directed fear, that fear is fitting in the face of its formal object: dangerousness, and that this formal object consists in a probability of damage or harm to something of value. The paper then discusses three likely solutions: (1) denying that past-directed fear can be warranted, (2) using an alternative (...) formulation of fear's formal object, and (3) giving up warrant as justified as fittingness. Finally, it provides a case for the third solution and presents a warrant-based approach to fittingness and the appropriateness of emotions in general. (shrink)

Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (QM) works perfectly well for all practical purposes. Once one admits, however, that a successful scientific theory is supposed not only to make predictions but also to tell us a story about the world in which we live, a philosophical problem emerges: in the specific case of QM, it is not possible to associate with the theory a unique scientific image of the world; there are several images. The fact that the theory may be compatible with distinct (...) ontologies, and that those ontologies may themselves be associated with a plurality of metaphysical approaches, gives rise to the problem of metaphysical underdetermination. This paper concludes that the available metametaphysical criteria fail to deliver objectivity in theory choice, and it puts forward its own criterion based on a tension between two methods of metaphysical inquiry: one that is closely related to science and another that is not. (shrink)

Aristotle counts as the founder of formal logic. The logic he develops dominated until Frege and others introduced a new logic. This new logic is taken to be more powerful and better capable of capturing inference patterns. The new logic differs from Aristotelian logic in significant respects. It has been argued by Fred Sommers and Hanoch Ben-Yami that the new logic is not well equipped as a logic of natural language, and that a logic closer to Aristotle's is better suited (...) for this task. Each of them developed their own formalism - Sommers in form of term logic, Ben-Yami in form of his Quantified Argument Calculus (QUARC). I discuss Aristotle's logic - a term logic - and attempt a comparison between Aristotelian logic and (i) the new logic, (ii) Sommers' term logic, and (iii) Ben-Yami's QUARC. I consider differences between the systems, and show how they are related to and diverge from the new logic. (shrink)

This paper concerns how extant theorists of predictive coding conceptualize and explain possible instances of cognitive penetration. §I offers brief clarification of the predictive coding framework and relevant mechanisms, and a brief characterization of cognitive penetration and some challenges that come with defining it. §II develops more precise ways that the predictive coding framework can explain, and of course thereby allow for, genuine top-down causal effects on perceptual experience, of the kind discussed in the context of cognitive penetration. §III develops (...) these insights further with an eye towards tracking one extant criterion for cognitive penetration, namely, that the relevant cognitive effects on perception must be sufficiently direct. Throughout these discussions, we extend the analyses of the predictive coding models, as we know them. So one open question that surfaces is how much of the extended analyses are genuinely just part of the predictive coding models, or something that must be added to them in order to generate these additional explanatory benefits. In §IV, we analyze and criticize a claim made by some theorists of predictive coding, namely, that (interesting) instances of cognitive penetration tend to occur in perceptual circumstances involving substantial noise or uncertainty. It is here that our analysis is most critical. We argue that, when applied, the claim fails to explain (or perhaps even be consistent with) a large range of important and uncontroversially interesting possible cases of cognitive penetration. We conclude with a general speculation about how the recent work on the predictive mind may influence the current dialectic concerning top-down effects on perception. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce, elucidate and defend the usefulness of a variant of grounding, or metaphysical explanation, that has the feature that the grounds explain of some states of affairs that one of them obtains without explaining which one obtains. I will dub this variant arbitrary grounding. After informally elucidating the basic idea in the first section, I will provide three metaphysical hypotheses that are best formulated in terms of arbitrary grounding in the second section. The (...) third section will be concerned with the relation between arbitrary grounding and non-arbitrary grounding. The fourth section will compare arbitrary grounding to two extant proposals in the literature. (shrink)

According to the person-affecting view, the ethics of welfare should be cashed out in terms of how the individuals are affected. While the narrow version fails to solve the non-identity problem, the wide version is subject to the repugnant conclusion. A middle view promises to do better – the Interpersonal Comparative View of Welfare (ICV). It modifies the narrow view by abstracting away from individuals’ identities to account for interpersonal gains and losses. The paper assesses ICV’s merits and flaws. ICV (...) solves the non-identity problem, avoids the repugnant conclusion, and seems to accommodate the person-affecting intuition. But it cuts too many things along the way: ICV obstructs the advantage of the wide view to account for all future individuals’ welfare, abandons the intuitions that underlie the narrow view, and even violates its own presuppositions by turning out to be merely pseudo person-affecting. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss some of the challenges related to formulating and adopting a realist position regarding non-relativistic quantum mechanics. In a standard approach to ontology, the ontological commitments of scientific theories can be extracted from them. Scientific realism is the standpoint that our best scientific theories are approximately true, and thus, their ontological commitments, roughly speaking, correspond to reality. Quantum mechanics complicates this view by introducing an interpretational requirement that links a particular conception of how reality should be (...) to the theory. This generates comprehensive difficulties: when we separate theory and interpretation, we have a clear conception of theory but not of interpretation and how to extract its ontology. On the other hand, if we somehow identify theory and interpretation, we have a reasonably clear conception of the desired ontology but lose our best characterizations of theory, rendering our methods for extracting ontology ineffective. Our aim is to map out the challenges for future rigorous realist approaches to quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Let intentionalism be the view that what proposition is expressed in context by a sentence containing indexicals depends on the speaker’s intentions. It has recently been argued that intentionalism makes communicative success mysterious and that there are counterexamples to the intentionalist view in the form of cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct interpretation. In this paper, I argue that these objections can be met, once we acknowledge that we may distinguish what determines the correct interpretation (...) from the evidence that is available to the audience, as well as from the standards by which we judge whether or not a given interpretation is reasonable. With these distinctions in place, we see that intentionalism does not render communicative success mysterious, and that cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct one can easily be accommodated. The distinction is also useful in treating the Humpty Dumpty problem for intentionalism, since it turns out that this can be treated as an extreme special case of mismatch. (shrink)

While I find Huaping Lu-Adler’s excavation of Kant’s long-overlooked linguistic Orientalism both enlightening and thought-provoking, I disagree with her diagnosis of its theoretical and practical relevance. On the one hand, while I agree that Kant’s positionality renders all his writings and teachings presumptively impactful, there is reason to doubt that his peculiar construction of the linguistic Oriental Other had much actual impact on his disciples. On the other hand, while I agree that the Kantian ideal of public reason is inapt (...) for rectifying the linguistic-epistemic injustices of global knowledge production, I disagree on why it is so. In particular, I argue for a shift in theoretical and practical focuses, from linguistic biases and prejudices, to the structural epistemic constraints of linguistic diversity, as well as to other political-structural conditions shaping global knowledge production. (shrink)

This chapter explains Franz Brentano's metaethical theory and how it purports to deal with such difficulties. Brentano explains correctness in emotions by analogy with correctness in judgements. For a judgement to be correct is for it to concord with a judgement made by someone who judges with self-evidence (Evidenz). Self-evident judgements are guaranteed to be correct, and they are based either on "inner perception" or on presentations of objects that are rejected apodictically. Brentano's metaethical theory concerns first and foremost the (...) psychology of valuing and of moral judgement. Brentano is clearly a cognitivist about evaluative and moral judgement; such judgements are judgements about the correctness of feelings, and judgements are cognitive acts. However, one aspect of his position that seems congenial to contemporary expressivism. This has to do with expressivist treatments of disagreement. Brentano's views seem akin to the kind of foundationalist intuitionism that is traditionally associated with non-naturalism. (shrink)

I argue that recent attempts to deflect Access Problems for realism about a priori domains such as mathematics, logic, morality, and modality using arguments from evolution result in two kinds of explanatory overkill: the Access Problem is eliminated for contentious domains, and realist belief becomes viciously immune to arguments from dispensability, and to non-rebutting counter-arguments more generally.

Ever since its beginnings, standard quantum mechanics has been associated with a metaphysical view according to which the theory deals with non-individual objects, i.e., objects deprived of individuality in some sense of the term. We shall examine the grounds of the claim according to which quantum mechanics is so closely connected with a metaphysics of non-individuals. In particular, we discuss the attempts to learn the ‘metaphysical lessons’ required by quantum mechanics coming from four distinct roads: from the formalism of the (...) theory, treating separately the case of the physics and the underlying logic; from the ontology of the theory, understood as the furniture of the world according to the theory; and, at last, we analyze whether a metaphysics of non-individuals is indispensable from a purely metaphysical point of view. We argue that neither non-individuality nor individuality is to be found imposed on us in any of these levels so that it should be seen as a metaphysical addition to the theory, rather than as a lesson from it. (shrink)

Scientific realism is typically associated with metaphysics. One current incarnation of such an association concerns the requirement of a metaphysical characterization of the entities one is being a realist about. This is sometimes called “Chakravartty’s Challenge”, and codifies the claim that without a metaphysical characterization, one does not have a clear picture of the realistic commitments one is engaged with. The required connection between metaphysics and science naturally raises the question of whether such a demand is appropriately fulfilled, and how (...) metaphysics engages with science in order to produce what is called “scientific metaphysics”. Here, we map some of the options available in the literature, generating a conceptual spectrum according to how each view approximates science and metaphysics. This is done with the purpose of enlightening the current debate on the possibility of epistemic warrant that science could grant to such a metaphysics, and how different positions differently address the thorny issue concerning such a warrant. (shrink)

This paper explores why victims who provoke their aggressors seem to compromise their right to self-defence. First, it argues that one proposed answer – the victims are partially responsible for the threats they face – fails. It faces counterexamples that it cannot adequately address. Second, the paper develops the Protective Duty View according to which we incur protective duties towards others when we interfere with their reasonable opportunities to avoid suffering harm. Since provokers wrongfully interfere with prospective aggressors’ opportunities to (...) avoid posing a threat and thus to be defensively harmed, they incur protective duties towards the aggressors. This can require that they significantly limit or even refrain from using defensive force. The paper ends by drawing out some of the implications of the Protective Duty View for issues related to war and punishment. (shrink)

In the debate over what determines the reference of an indexical expression on a given occasion of use, we can distinguish between two generic positions. According to the first, the reference is determined by internal factors, such as the speaker’s intentions. According to the second, the reference is determined by external factors, like conventions or what a competent and attentive audience would take the reference to be. It has recently been argued that the first position is untenable, since there are (...) cases of mismatch where the intuitively correct reference differs from the one that would be determined by the relevant internal factors. The aim of this paper is to show that, contrary to this line of argument, it is the proponent of the second position that should be worried, since this position yields counterintuitive consequences regarding communicative success in cases of mismatch. (shrink)

Evaluative studies of inductive inferences have been pursued extensively with mathematical rigor in many disciplines, such as statistics, econometrics, computer science, and formal epistemology. Attempts have been made in those disciplines to justify many different kinds of inductive inferences, to varying extents. But somehow those disciplines have said almost nothing to justify a most familiar kind of induction, an example of which is this: “We’ve seen this many ravens and they all are black, so all ravens are black.” This is (...) enumerative induction in itsfullstrength. For it does not settle with a weaker conclusion (such as “the ravens observed in the future will all be black”); nor does it proceed with any additional premise (such as the statistical IID assumption). The goal of this paper is to take some initial steps toward a justification for the full version of enumerative induction, against counterinduction, and against the skeptical policy. The idea is to explore various epistemic ideals, mathematically defined as different modes of convergence to the truth, and look for one that is weak enough to be achievable and strong enough to justify a norm that governs both the long run and the short run. So the proposal is learning-theoretic in essence, but a Bayesian version is developed as well. (shrink)

This paper presents an original dialectical logic symbol system designed to transcend the limitations of traditional logical symbols in capturing subjectivity, qualitative aspects, and contradictions inherent in the human mind. By introducing new symbols, such as “ὄ” (being) and “⌀” (nothing), and arranging them based on principles of symmetry, the system’s operations capture complex dialectical relationships essential to both Hegelian philosophy and Buddhist thought. The operations of this system are primarily structured around the categories found in Hegel’s Logic, and it (...) allows users to incorporate their own subjectivity into the logical processes, opening up new possibilities in the philosophy of subjectivity. This symbol system also has the potential to help us explore fundamental questions of language and to precisely describe processes of consciousness transformation through symbols. This form of logic offers a new, irreducible tool for qualitative methods, and it will spark a new philosophical reflection on its relationship with traditional logic and mathematical symbols. (shrink)

There has long been an impression that reliabilism implies externalism and that frequentist statistics is externalist because it is reliabilist. I argue, however, that frequentist statistics can be plausibly understood as a form of internalist reliabilism -- internalist in the conventional sense but reliabilist in certain unconventional yet intriguing ways. More importantly, I develop the thesis that reliabilism does not imply externalism, not by stretching the meaning of 'reliabilism' merely to break the implication, but in order to better understand frequentist (...) statistics, which represents one of the most sustained attempts by scientists to develop an epistemology for their own use. (shrink)

What is it that makes a mental state conscious? Recent commentators have proposed that for Kant, consciousness results from differentiation: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is distinguished, by means of our conceptual capacities, from other states and/or things. I argue instead that Kant’s conception of state consciousness is sensory: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is accompanied by an inner sensation. Interpreting state consciousness as inner sensation reveals an underappreciated influence of Crusius on Kant’s view, (...) solves some long-standing puzzles concerning Kant’s difficult doctrine of self-affection, and sheds light on his theory of inner experience. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present a new reconstruction of Aristotle's assertoric logic as he develops it in Prior Analytics, A1-7. This reconstruction will be much closer to Aristotle's original...

In ‘Equity and Marxist Buddhism,’ Tzu-wei Hung engages with the Marxist Buddhism developed by Taiwanese philosopher Lin Qiu-wu in the 1920s, brings this underexplored theory to the table and discusses a few merits and insights of the theory. Building on Hung’s analysis, this paper paper elaborates on the lessons and insights that Taiwanese Marxist Buddhism provides for modern times. The first three lessons are distinctive points that Taiwanese Marxist Buddhism brings to the discussion on combining Marxism and Buddhism: the connections (...) between the ethical and political, the responsibility for pursuing social justice and the nonviolence means towards social justice. The last lesson comes at the meta-philosophical level, focusing on how Hung’s engagement with Taiwanese Marxist Buddhism sheds light on the issue of diversifying the discipline philosophy. Overall, I argue that Taiwanese Marxist Buddhism not only makes contributions to theoretical frameworks while providing a practical means for pursuing equity and social justice, but it also manifests the epistemic and moral values for engaging with under-represented philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Habermas’ ‘ethics of citizenship’ raises a number of relevant concerns about the dangers of a secularistic exclusion of religious contributions to public deliberation, on the one hand, and the dangers of religious conflict and sectarianism in politics, on the other. Agreeing largely with these concerns, the paper identities four problems with Habermas’ approach, and attempts to overcome them: the full exclusion of religious reasons from parliamentary debate; the full inclusion of religious reasons in the informal public sphere; the philosophical distinction (...) between secular and religious reasons; and the sociological distinction between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ religions. The result is a revised version of the ethics of citizenship, which I call moderate inclusivism. Most notably, moderate inclusivism implies a replacement of Habermas’ ‘institutional translation proviso’ with a more flexible ‘conversational translation proviso’. (shrink)

This paper questions the adequacy of the explicit cancellability test for conversational implicature as it is commonly understood. The standard way of understanding this test relies on two assumptions: first, that that one can test whether a certain content is conversationally implicated, by checking whether that content is cancellable, and second, that a cancellation is successful only if it results in a felicitous utterance. While I accept the first of these assumptions, I reject the second one. I argue that a (...) cancellation can succeed even if it results in an infelicitous utterance, and that unless we take this possibility into account we run the risk of misdiagnosing philosophically significant cases. (shrink)

Pluralist mathematical realism, the view that there exists more than one mathematical universe, has become an influential position in the philosophy of mathematics. I argue that, if mathematical pluralism is true (and we have good reason to believe that it is), then mathematical realism cannot (easily) be justified by arguments from the indispensability of mathematics to science. This is because any justificatory chain of inferences from mathematical applications in science to the total body of mathematical theorems can cover at most (...) one mathematical universe. Indispensability arguments may thus lose their central role in the debate about mathematical ontology. (shrink)

During the last couple of decades, several attempts have been made to come up with a theory that can handle the various semantic, logical and philosophical problems raised by the vagueness of natural languages. One of the most influential ideas that have come into fashion in recent years is the idea that vagueness should be analysed as a form of context sensitivity. Such contextualist theories of vagueness have gained some popularity, but many philosophers have remained sceptical of the prospects of (...) finding a tenable contextualist solution to the problems of vagueness. This paper provides an introduction to the most popular contextualist accounts, and a discussion of some of the most important arguments for and against them. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Tim Henning argues that the result that we should save the greatest number in rescue cases can be established on procedural grounds without making use of the aggregation of interests. He first argues that we ought to respect the affected persons' equal claims to have a say in the rescue decision and that this can only be achieved by the majority rule, which consists in giving each affected person an equal vote. Then he argues for the (...) second claim that if everyone votes in their self-interest, then the greatest number will be saved. I present a class of cases in which the second claim fails. This establishes that even if self-interested voting is assumed, the majority rule does not always lead to the greatest number being saved. (shrink)

: Perhaps the central problem which preoccupies Spinoza as a moral philosopher is the conflict between reason and passion. He belongs to a long tradition that sees the key to happiness and virtue as mastery and control by reason over the passions. This mastery, however, is hard won, as the passions often overwhelm its power and subvert its rule. When reason succumbs to passion, we act against our better judgment. Such action is often termed 'akratic'. Many commentators have complained that (...) the psychological principles that Spinoza appeals to in his account of akrasia are mere ad hoc modifications to his philosophical psychology. I show, on the contrary, that these principles follow from some of the most important and interesting aspects of Spinoza's philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In “Confucianism and Same-Sex Marriage,” published recently in Politics and Religion, Professor Tongdong Bai argues for a “moderate Confucian position on same-sex marriage,” one that supports its legalization and yet endeavors “to use public opinion and social and political policies to encourage heterosexual marriages, and to prevent same-sex marriages from becoming the majority form of marriages” (Bai 2021:146). Against the backdrop of downright homophobia prevalent among vocal Confucians in mainland China today, Bai claims that his pro-legalization rendition “show[s] a different (...) version of Confucianism that challenges the received perception of Confucianism that it is deeply conservative, a perception that often lies at the core of the rejection of its contemporary relevance, especially by the so-called ‘liberals’ in China and elsewhere” (Bai 2021:133). Furthermore, Bai claims that his moderate Confucianism is normatively preferrable to “the typical liberal or individualist position” of a marriage equality supporter, because the specter of polygamy – the conservative trope of invoking polygamy as a reductio ad absurdum against same-sex marriage – imposes “a serious challenge” to liberals but not to moderate Confucians (Bai 2021:146, 153). -/- Both of Bai’s claims falter upon scrutiny, however. Granted, it is applaudable that Bai tries to dissuade his more conservative Confucian colleagues from opposing the legalization of same-sex marriage. But as Section 1 of this Response will show, the alternative rendition of Confucianism he presents, along with the way he presents it, is premised on a highly contested conception of what shared Confucian values are; does injustice to Confucians who embrace marriage equality more unreservedly (i.e., without caveats à la Bai); fails to produce new arguments that “enrich the theoretical basis for same-sex marriage” (Bai 2021:133); and, ironically, reinforces – rather than “challenges” – the “received perception” of Confucianism as deeply conservative. Meanwhile, Section 2 will show that Bai’s comparison between liberalism and moderate Confucianism relies both upon an apparent unfamiliarity with the extensive and nuanced liberal discussions on polygamy, and upon fallacious methods of assessing comparative normative valence. -/- Finally, Section 3 will offer some concluding thoughts from the perspective of decolonial theory, examining the dynamic of spectacularized postcoloniality that propels the production and consumption of dubious theoretical projects like Bai’s. As it turns out, this case serves not only as a cautionary tale of how not to conduct comparative normative theorizing, but also as a cautionary tale of how not to let the spectacle of postcoloniality derail the pursuit of academic decolonization. (shrink)

This entry considers the philosophical subject called 'metaphysics'. There have been many conceptions of metaphysics, and metaphysics has faced severe criticism throughout the history of philosophy and continues to do so. Besides discussing some major trends in analytic metaphysics - understood as 'metaphysics done by analytic philosophers' - we consider some of the criticisms and possible responses.

The call to make artificial intelligence (AI) more democratic, or to “democratize AI,” is sometimes framed as a promising response for mitigating algorithmic injustice or making AI more aligned with social justice. However, the notion of “democratizing AI” is elusive, as the phrase has been associated with multiple meanings and practices, and the extent to which it may help mitigate algorithmic injustice is still underexplored. In this paper, based on a socio-technical understanding of algorithmic injustice, I examine three notable notions (...) of democratizing AI and their associated measures—democratizing AI use, democratizing AI development, and democratizing AI governance—regarding their respective prospects and limits in response to algorithmic injustice. My examinations reveal that while some versions of democratizing AI bear the prospect of mitigating the concern of algorithmic injustice, others are somewhat limited and might even function to perpetuate unjust power hierarchies. This analysis thus urges a more fine-grained discussion on how to democratize AI and suggests that closer scrutiny of the power dynamics embedded in the socio-technical structure can help guide such explorations. (shrink)

Forgiveness is mostly seen as a virtuous human response to wrongful conduct. But what happens when there is no acknowledgement of wrongdoing on the part of the wrongdoer? Does the forgiveness of the unrepentant still count as forgiveness? The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, for instance, is a figure who highly promotes the value of forgiveness. His homeland has been occupied by China since 1950, yet he maintains that he forgives and feels no enmity towards the Chinese government. The Chinese authorities, for (...) their part, have never admitted to wrongful invasion of the ‘roof of the world’, hence there has been no acceptance of the Dalai Lama’s forgiveness. Can the Dalai Lama’s forgiving under these circumstances, however, still be seen as forgiveness? In the present contribution, I shed light on the Buddhist view on forgiveness in the hope of inspiring ideas that might contribute to the pursuit of peace. Firstly, I explore certain matters surrounding the general idea of forgiveness and subsequently introduce Buddhist perspectives. Secondly, I respond to the key question of this paper by highlighting the Dalai Lama’s views as a means to elaborate on the Buddhist stance. I conclude by comparing Buddhist points of view with some contemporary philosophical perspectives and illustrating some distinguishing features of the Buddhist notion of forgiveness. From the above, I endeavour to establish that the Buddhist take on forgiveness is ultimately unconditional. (shrink)

One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is not only contingent which objects there are, but also contingent which semantic values there are for higher-order variables to quantify over. Objections against higher-order contingentism along these lines have been presented in Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modal logic (...) as metaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2013, ch. 7), and Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017). This paper presents a way for contingentists to respond to these challenges. The upshot is that the contingentist can account for the meaningfulness of the problematic modal claims by pretending necessitism to be true, but in some cases it turns out to be indeterminate whether they are true. I defend this strategy against the objections against pretence-strategies presented in Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017, §4). Furthermore, I defend the plausibility of the resulting indeterminacy from the contingentist’s perspective. (shrink)

This paper calls for a paradigm shift in studying academic dependency, towards the paradigm of brokered dependency. Using Chinese academia as an example, I demonstrate how the neocolonial condition of academic dependency is always mediated through blockage-brokerage mechanisms. The two most salient blockage-brokerage mechanisms of dependency in the Chinese context are linguistic barrier and authoritarian malepistemization, and the effects of the latter consist of three layers: institutional, informational and incorporational. On top of their domestic impacts, those mechanisms jointly exacerbate spectacularized (...) postcoloniality in anglophone-hegemonic global academic publishing. The paradigm of brokered dependency not only represents a more nuanced approach to the study of academic dependency, but also underscores the fact that the dismantling of the neocolonial condition cannot be conceived and pursued in isolation from comprehending and confronting the authoritarian condition, especially when the latter pertains under the disguise of anticolonialism. (shrink)

The problem of theory choice and model selection is hard but still important when useful truths are underdetermined, perhaps not by all kinds of data but by the kinds of data we can have access to ethically or practicably—even if we have an infinity of such data. This article addresses a crucial instance of that problem: the problem of inferring causal structures from nonexperimental, nontemporal data without assuming the so-called causal Faithfulness condition or the like. A new account of epistemic (...) evaluation is developed to solve that problem and justify a standard practice of causal inference in data science. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to clarify all terms related to causality within Buddhist teachings and make the following bold claims: 1. ‘cause.’” 2. “The mere doctrinal explanation of Dependent Origination does not define “The sequence of ‘consciousness, contact, feeling, perception, and thought’ is based on the meaning of ‘accumulation’ (集) as aggregation, rather than being the true sequence of Dependent Origination.” 3. “Therefore, we have the terms ‘contact with ignorance’ (無明觸) and ‘contact with wisdom’ (明觸).”.