In a short note written in 1929, Frank Ramsey put forward a reliabilist account of knowledge anticipating those given by Armstrong (1973) and Goldman (1967), among others, a few decades later. Some think that the note comprises the bulk of what Ramsey has to say about epistemology. But Ramsey’s ideas about epistemology extend beyond the note. Relatively little attention has been paid to his reliabilist account of reasonable belief. Even less attention has been paid to his reliabilist account of reasonable (...) degree of belief. In this paper, I spell out these aspects of Ramsey’s epistemology in more detail than has been done so far. I argue that Ramsey anticipates contemporary reliabilist accounts of justified belief and justified degree of belief. I also flesh out Ramsey’s reasons for being a reliabilist. This is worth doing if only because Ramsey has one of the earliest arguments for reliabilism, but it has received scarce attention. Also, Ramsey calls his reliabilism “a kind of pragmatism,” and examining the argument will help us clarify Ramsey’s pragmatist commitments and better understand his version of reliabilism. I argue that when viewed through contemporary lenses, Ramsey’s reliabilism contains revisionist elements: he’s not opposed to what we now call “concep- tual engineering.”. (shrink)

This article offers a critical overview of a set of normative theories, namely Tianxia 天下 (all-under-heaven), whose purpose is to provide a renewed conceptual framework for the improvement of the world system. First, the article introduces the origins, main features, and differences within Tianxia, before discussing two major criticisms leveled against it. The article then argues that the most powerful parts of these criticisms come from the challenges posed against Tianxia’s legitimacy. The article elaborates on this and introduces two additional (...) challenges of the same kind which were not discussed before. While the article leaves open the question of whether Tianxia is a realistic utopia, it insists that meaningful discussion of Tianxia must take legitimacy challenges seriously. It ends with a discussion concerning whether China can be understood as a civilization-state and how this understanding affects Tianxia’s reception as a realistic utopia. (shrink)

The article explores the inner logic and defining features of Daoist freedom. It argues that Daoist freedom can be meaningfully understood as psychological hygiene, and it suggests that Daoist xuan-jie (懸解) can be rendered possible only if one can rid oneself of intensional suffering—an idea ultimately inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche. This comparative approach enables the article to contribute to the received way of understanding Daoist freedom by stressing its dialectics: by being at ease with one’s social and political environment, Daoist (...) freedom demands social criticism, calling for room for people to be able to act spontaneously so that all can nurture their distinctive natures and have a full and free exercise of their natural abilities. The article aims to achieve two objectives at once: it aims to argue for the understanding of Daoist freedom as psychological hygiene, and it defends this reading by bringing two dimensions of Daoist freedom into a consistent whole. In a constantly changing and increasingly pluralistic world, psychological hygiene and social criticism are both necessary for leading a robust and healthy human life. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author draws on ideas from Michael Freeden’s theory of ideology to show that the so-called anarchist tradition is best regarded as a constellation of diffuse and evolving concepts rather than a bounded historical reality. This, in turn, allows one to distinguish between what he calls “anarchist” thought (i.e., thought that emerges within and in response to historical anarchist movements) and “anarchistic” thought (i.e., thought that emerges outside historical anarchist movements but is conceptually harmonious with various fundamental (...) “anarchist” commitments). (shrink)

When central authority fails in socially crucial tasks, mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots organization frequently arise as people take up slack on the basis of informal networks and civil society organizations. We can learn something important about the possibility of horizontal organization by studying such experiments. In this paper we focus on the rationality, care, and effectiveness of grassroots measures to respond to the pandemic and show how they illustrate core elements of anarchist thought. We do not argue for the (...) correctness of any version of anarchist politics, nor claim that the bulk of this grassroots work was done with anarchist ideas explicitly in mind. Nonetheless, the current pandemic, like many social crises before it, serves as a sort experiment in political implementation. -/- Two things have been striking in the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic: the chaos, incompetence, irrationality, and often cruel misguidedness of the centralized government response; and the rationality, care, and effectiveness of grassroots measures in many parts of the country. In this paper we focus on the latter—especially the case of Washington, DC—to illustrate core features of anarchist politics. We do not argue for the correctness of any version of anarchist politics here, but merely illustrate guiding ideas that have been a part of anarchist theory and practice for well over a century. We also do not claim that the bulk of this grassroots work was done with anarchist ideas in mind, or explicitly out of a commitment to anarchist politics. Some was, and some arises out of related ideological commitments, but most simply functions out of no more than a desire to support one another. -/- The current pandemic, like many social crises before it, rather than providing a stand-alone argument or functioning as an implementation of any political theory, serves as a sort of laboratory experiment. When central authority fails in socially crucial tasks, mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots organization frequently arise as people take up slack on the basis of informal networks and civil society organizations. We can learn something important about the possibility of horizontal organization by studying such experiments, including how it arises through spontaneous action. If political thought is best illustrated through its implementation in practice, the functioning of grassroots individuals and organizations in a time of crisis is one way to understand the political mechanisms core to anarchist thought. (shrink)

The notions of a commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal and a commutative falling neutrosophic ideal are introduced, and several properties are investigated. Characterizations of a commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal are obtained. Relations between commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal and (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal are discussed. Conditions for an (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal to be a commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal are established. Relations between commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal, falling neutrosophic ideal and commutative falling neutrosophic ideal are considered. Conditions for a falling neutrosophic ideal to be (...) commutative are provided. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that what has been called “philosophical anarchism” in the academic literature bears little to no relationship with the historical anarchist tradition and, for this reason, ought not to be considered a genuine form of anarchism. As I will demonstrate, the classical anarchism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is to be distinguished from other political theories in regarding all hierarchical institutions and relationships—including, but not limited to, the state—as incorrigibly dominative or oppressive and, for (...) this reason, immoral. Lastly, I argue that defenders of such institutions and relationships must take the challenge posed by classical anarchism seriously by engaging substantively with actual anarchist positions. (shrink)

Reliabilists hold that a belief is doxastically justified if and only if it is caused by a reliable process. But since such a process is one that tends to produce a high ratio of true to false beliefs, reliabilism is on the face of it applicable to binary beliefs, but not to degrees of confidence or credences. For while beliefs admit of truth or falsity, the same cannot be said of credences in general. A natural question now arises: Can reliability (...) theories of justified belief be extended or modified to account for justified credence? In this paper, I address this question. I begin by showing that, as it stands, reliabilism cannot account for justified credence. I then consider three ways in which the reliabilist may try to do so by extending or modifying her theory, but I argue that such attempts face certain problems. After that, I turn to a version of reliabilism that incorporates evidentialist elements and argue that it allows us to avoid the problems that the other theories face. If I am right, this gives reliabilists a reason, aside from those given recently by Comesaña and Goldman, to move towards such a kind of hybrid theory. (shrink)

The study of anarchism as a philosophical, political, and social movement has burgeoned both in the academy and in the global activist community in recent years. Taking advantage of this boom in anarchist scholarship, Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl have compiled twenty-six cutting-edge essays on this timely topic in New Perspectives on Anarchism.

A number of philosophers have argued that it is hard for finite agents like us to reason and make decisions relying solely on our credences and preferences. They hold that for us to cope with our cognitive limitations, we need binary beliefs as well. For they think that such beliefs, by disposing us to treat certain propositions as true, help us cut down on the number of possibilities we need to consider when we reason. But using Ross and Schroeder as (...) my stalking horse, I argue that such an appeal to binary beliefs does not work. I begin by explaining why there’s supposedly a problem for an account of reasoning that invokes only credences and preferences. I then argue that Ross and Schroeder’s account of belief—as well as other similar accounts—does not help solve the problem. Finally, I consider an alternative approach to solving the problem. This approach, unlike the accounts I criticise, does not hold that having a disposition to treat a proposition as true is necessary for believing it. (shrink)

This essay critically examines one of the dominant tendencies in recent theoretical discussions of anarchism, postanarchism, and argues that this tradition fails to engage sufficiently with anarchism’s history. Through an examination of late 19th-century anarchist political thought—as represented by one of its foremost exponents, Peter Kropotkin—we demonstrate the extent to which postanarchism has tended to oversimplify and misrepresent the historical tradition of anarchism. The article concludes by arguing that all political-theoretical discussions of anarchism going forward should begin with a fresh (...) appraisal of the actual content of anarchist political thought, based on a rigorous analysis of its political, social, and cultural history. (shrink)

This introductory chapter discusses the relevance of this volume. It contends that there is a deeply ethico-normative dimension to Deleuzian–Guattarian philosophy but that it has tended to be ignored, overlooked, downplayed, and misunderstood in the literature. This book makes a preliminary contribution to the task of uncovering and elucidating that dimension, not only for the sake of enriching Deleuze–Guattari scholarship, but also in the hope of promoting a more engaged philosophical practice based in, and responding to, Deleuzian–Guattarian ethics.

In Naturalizing the Mind, Fred Dretske articulates and defends a naturalistic theory of the mind which he calls «the Representation Thesis.» In brief, this thesis states that «(1) All mental facts are representational facts, and (2) All representational facts are facts about information functions.» From this it follows that introspective knowledge, the mind's direct knowledge of its own states, is a case of «displaced perception»-that is, knowledge of mental (i.e., representational) facts through an awareness of external (i.e., physical) objects. In (...) an earlier work, Dretske presents a general account of knowledge which is intended to circumvent Gettier-type counterexamples. According to this view, S knows that P if and only if: (1) S believes, without doubt, reservation, or question, that P is the case; (2) P is the case; (3) S has a reason, R, for believing that P such that, if P were not the case, then S would not have R (i.e., S has a conclusive reason, R, for believing that P). In this paper, my aim is to explore the relation between these two theories. After summarizing both in brief detail, I argue that Dretske's account of introspective knowledge cannot be reconciled with his account of knowledge broadly construed. (shrink)

The comfort women case in South Korea has been a polemic issue in the context of inherited responsibility. The Japanese government who emphasizes on state as an agent for taking the responsibility tends either to deny collective responsibility of historic wrongdoings or to limit the scope of its roles to superficial ways such as reparation. Meanwhile South Korea demands not only reparation but official apology, emotional compassion, and material compensation on the ground that nation, not state, should be accountable for (...) historic injustice, but this claim still encounters a difficulty of application to cases originated in multinational countries. Based on these observations, I will develop two arguments: (1) that reciprocal nondomination conceptualized with civic responsibility will better the comfort women case in the context of inherited responsibility because this contains full ground of deliberation in which those who come from regardless of state or nation can participate; (2) that reciprocal nondomination embodied with civic responsibility can be operated as a regulative principle which prompts both victims and wrongdoers to have their deliberative stances and to reach an agreement conducive to transitional justice. (shrink)

We have been left with a big challenge, to articulate consciousness and also to prove it in an artificial agent against a biological standard. After introducing Boltuc’s h-consciousness in the last paper, we briefly reviewed some salient neurology in order to sketch less of a standard than a series of targets for artificial consciousness, “most-consciousness” and “myth-consciousness.” With these targets on the horizon, we began reviewing the research program pursued by Jun Tani and colleagues in the isolation of the formal (...) dynamics essential to either. In this paper, we describe in detail Tani’s research program, in order to make the clearest case for artificial consciousness in these systems. In the next paper, the third in the series, we will return to Boltuc’s naturalistic non-reductionism in light of the neurorobotics models introduced (alongside some others), and evaluate them more completely. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Deleuze's political writings and Derrida's early (pre-1985) work on deconstruction affirms the tactical orientation which Todd May in particular has associated with 'poststructuralist anarchism.' Deconstructive philosophy, no less than Deleuzean philosophy, seeks to avoid closure, entrapment, and structure; it seeks to open up rather than foreclose possibilities, to liberate rather than interrupt the flows and movements which produce life. To this extent, it is rightfully called an anarchism -- not the utopian anarchism of the (...) nineteenth century, perhaps, but the provisional and preconditional anarchism which is, and will continue to be, the foundation of postmodern politics. (shrink)

To reconcile the standard possible worlds model of knowledge with the intuition that ordinary agents fall far short of logical omniscience, a Stalnakerian strategy appeals to two components. The first is the idea that mathematical and logical knowledge is at bottom metalinguistic knowledge. The second is the idea that non-ideal minds are often fragmented. In this paper, we investigate this Stalnakerian reconciliation strategy and argue, ultimately, that it fails. We are not the first to complain about the Stalnakerian strategy. But (...) in contrast to existing complaints, we want to cause trouble for the strategy directly on its home turf. That is, we will advance our objection while granting both the plausibility of the fragmentation component—save for an extreme version of it—and that of the metalinguistic component. Once our central objection to the Stalnakerian strategy is in place, we will show how it negatively affects Adam Elga and Augustín Rayo’s recent attempt to apply the Stalnakerian strategy in the context of Bayesian decision theory. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with three specific questions. First, has there ever been a distinctive and independent ‘anarchist’ political philosophy, or is anarchism better viewed as a minor sect of another political philosophy — for example, socialism or liberalism — which cannot claim any critical and conceptual resources of its own? Second, if there has been such a distinctive and independent philosophy, what are its defining characteristics? Third, whether there is a distinctive and independent anarchist political philosophy or not, should (...) there be? (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with two distinct but related questions: (a) does Deleuzian philosophy offer an account of moral norms (i.e., a theory of normativity)? (b) does Deleuzian philosophy offer an account of moral values (i.e., a theory of the good)? These are important questions for at least two reasons. First, the moral- and value-theoretical aspects of Deleuzian philosophy have tended to be ignored, dismissed, overlooked, or otherwise overshadowed in the literature by the ontological, historical, and political aspects. Second, Deleuze (...) – along with other alleged “postmodernists” such as Foucault and Derrida – has occasionally been accused of moral relativism, skepticism, and even nihilism. The aim of what follows is to demonstrate the value and importance of Deleuze's (and Guattari's) contributions to ethics and to defend Deleuzian philosophy from the charges just mentioned. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which suspension of belief—or suspension, for short—is justified? Process reliabilists hold that our beliefs are justified if and only if these are produced or sustained by reliable cognitive processes. But they have said relatively little about suspension. Perhaps they think that we may easily extend an account of justified belief to deal with justified suspension. But it's not immediately clear how we may do so; in which case, evidentialism has a distinct advantage over reliabilism. In (...) this paper, I consider some proposals as to how process reliabilists might seek to account for justified suspension. Although several of these proposals do not work, two are promising. The first such proposal appeals to the notion of propositional justification; the second involves weaving evidentialist elements into reliabilism. I'll argue that the second proposal is better than the first. (shrink)

Anarchist philosophy has often played and continues to play a crucial role in interventions in working-class and labor movements. Anarchist philosophy influenced real-world struggles and touched the lives of real, flesh-and-blood workers, especially those belonging to the industrial, immigrant working classes of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Too often the writings, which were disseminated to, and hungrily consumed by, these workers are dismissed as “propaganda.” However, insofar as they articulate and define political, economic, and social concepts; subject political, economic, (...) and social institutions to trenchant critique against clear and well-defined normative standards; offer logical justifications of their own positions; and advance positive alternative proposals, why should these writings not be regarded as philosophical texts and analyzed accordingly? Obviously they should, and the fact that they have been so long ignored by political philosophers, historians, and other scholars reflects academic prejudice rather than the intellectual and philosophical merit of the writings. This article is a preliminary step toward giving anarchist philosophy the hearing it so richly deserves. (shrink)

In this, the first published collection of writings by Hippolyte Havel (1871–1950), Nathan Jun brings a crucial, yet largely forgotten revolutionary figure back into historical focus. Havel was a Czech anarchist at the center of New York’s political and artistic circles at the turn of the twentieth century. He was an editor of numerous publications, including Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth and his influence on several writers, artists, and intellectuals (including Eugene O’Neill, Joseph Stieglitz, and Sadakichi Hartmann) helped shape American modernism. (...) Proletarian Days provides an illuminating introduction to the man and his times. (shrink)

This volume of collected essays brings together conversations, papers, and debates from the Third Annual North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nathan Jun and Jorell A. Meléndez aspire to go beyond a simple collection of papers and instead aim to maintain a dialogue among different academic fields with the sole task of comprehending and re-thinking anarchist studies. With over twenty-one chapters written by a diverse range of activists, organizers, musicians, artists, poets, and academics, this book (...) transgresses the apparent simplicity of the study of anarchism with a dynamic and interdisciplinary approach that crystallizes and emulates the heterogeneous nature of the anarchist ideal. From theory and philosophy to historical analyses, methodologies, and perspectives, from different manifestations in the arts, media, and culture to religion, ethics, and spirituality, from the intersectionality of animal liberation and queer struggles to contemporary praxis and organizing, the authors explore different topics from a critical perspective that is often lacking in their respective academic fields. This book is a must-buy for critical teachers, students, and activists interested in studying anarchism and the different ways in which we can transform our reality. (shrink)

How we define the anarchist canon—let alone how we decide which thinkers, theories, and texts should count as canonical—depends very much on what we take the purpose of the anarchist canon to be. In this essay, I distinguish between thinkers, theories, or texts that are “anarchist,” by virtue of belonging to actually-existing historical anarchist movements, and those which are “anarchist” in virtue of expressing “anarchistic” (or “anarchic”) ideas. I argue that the anarchist canon is best conceived as a repository of (...) historically-expressed anarchistic ideas and, for this reason, should include both kinds of theories, thinkers, and texts. (shrink)

This chapter draws upon Michael Freeden's morphological approach to examine the various ways freedom has been conceptualized within the anarchist tradition. It determines how and to what extent these conceptions serve to differentiate anarchism from liberalism and other ideologies that claim freedom as a core concept. The chapter explores the role they play in the formulation of diverse anarchist tendencies. It argues that prevailing anarchist conceptions of freedom uniformly obviate the "assumed tension between the freedom of the individual and the (...) good of society" as well as "between negative and positive definitions of the concept". The rejection of such dichotomies is a unifying theme in anarchism more generally and a key aspect of its ideological distinctiveness. When anarchism is defined solely in terms of what it opposes, the underlying motivations for that opposition tend to be obscured. For social anarchists, any concept of freedom that lacks an explicitly teleological dimension is an abstraction devoid of concrete moral significance. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is a twofold one. My first task is mainly negative: I want to show that the heated debate over whether pleasure is a sensation misallocates the central task in understanding pleasure and has been based on an unexamined conception of sensation, despite the long philosophical tradition and topical opinions that hold the opposite . My second task is to bring out attention to a relatively uncharted territory in our investigation of pleasure. I shall argue, Gilbert (...) Ryle's Aristotelian insight on the pleasure in intelligent activities, when properly understood, should have led us, and Ryle himself, to investigate pleasure in connection with intentional action and practical rationality. (shrink)

This chapter draws upon Michael Freeden’s morphological theory of ideology to examine diverse conceptions of the State within the anarchist tradition. Its principal aim in so doing is twofold: first, to determine how and to what extent these conceptions serve to distinguish anarchism from other libertarian ideologies, and second, to explore the role they play in the formulation of diverse anarchist tendencies. As I shall argue, the particular meaning and degree of relative significance that a given conception assigns to the (...) State depends on the internal arrangement of its ‘micro-components’ and/or on its relation to other concepts within the ideological morphology. Both of these factors must be taken into account in order to understand anarchism’s internal diversity as well as its distinctiveness among ideologies. (shrink)

Fredegisus of Tours was an Anglo-Saxon scholar who studied under Alcuin of York and later served at the court of Charlemagne. Although he was apparently well respected by his peers, specific details concerning his life are scarce. His only surviving work is a brief epistle entitled De Nihil et Tenebris. This article provides a new translation of the letter, based on Migne 1851 edition, along with biographical information about its author, a brief critical history of the text, and a commentary (...) on Fredegisus’s significance in the history of Western philosophy. The author argues, against extant critical accounts, that Fredegisus evinces a much higher level of philosophical sophistication than is usually attributed to him. This is evidenced by certain crucial similarities between the De Nihil and Augustine’s De Magistro, as well as the decidedly Platonic overtones of Fredegisus’s doctrine of nothingness. (shrink)

It’s often thought that the phenomenon of risk aggregation poses a problem for multi-premise closure but not for single-premise closure. But recently, Lasonen-Aarnio and Schechter have challenged this thought. Lasonen-Aarnio argues that, insofar as risk aggregation poses a problem for multi-premise closure, it poses a similar problem for single-premise closure. For she thinks that, there being such a thing as deductive risk, risk may aggregate over a single premise and the deduction itself. Schechter argues that single-premise closure succumbs to risk (...) aggregation outright. For he thinks that there could be a long sequence of competent single-premise deductions such that, even though we are justified in believing the initial premise of the sequence, intutively, we are not justified in believing the final conclusion. This intuition, Schechter thinks, vitiates single-premise closure. In this paper, I defend single-premise closure against the arguments offered by Lasonen-Aarnio and Schechter. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that there are two more or less distinct theories of the State in Hegel. The first, and better known, is developed in the Philosophy of Right, wherein Hegel endorses the notion of a coercive, centralised, and hierarchical 'Ideal State'. This is precisely the theory which certain radical Hegelians of the nineteenth century (e.g., Marx and Bakunin) viewed with such deep suspicion. The second, which has not received as much attention by commentators, appears in the Phenomenology (...) and other early writings. Although this theory introduces many of the key components of Hegel's later political philosophy, it is nonetheless far more radical in its political implications--most important, in its gesturing toward a society which makes room for the realisation of the stateless, classless vision of anarchist communism. The point is not to demonstrate that Hegel is inconsistent or self-contradictory, but show that there are elements of creative tension within his political theory which are not only sufficient to vindicate him from the criticisms of Marx and Bakunin, but also to re-contextualise him as a radical precursor. As I shall argue, the kind of society that emerges in the final chapters of the Phenomenology need not contain the elements of coercion and class struggle which appear in the Philosophy of Right and repulse Marx and Bakunin. On the contrary, such a society may be understood as prefiguring the classless, stateless society which both Marx and Bakunin ultimately endorse. (shrink)

Anarchism and Political Modernity looks at the place of 'classical anarchism' in the postmodern political discourse, claiming that anarchism presents a vision of political postmodernity. The book seeks to foster a better understanding of why and how anarchism is growing in the present. To do so, it first looks at its origins and history, offering a different view from the two traditions that characterize modern political theory: socialism and liberalism. Such an examination leads to a better understanding of how anarchism (...) connects with newer political trends and why it is a powerful force in contemporary social and political movements. This new volume in the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series offers a novel philosophical engagement with anarchism and contests a number of positions established in postanarchist theory. Its new approach makes a valuable contribution to an established debate about anarchism and political theory. It offers a new perspective on the emerging area of anarchist studies that will be of interest to students and theorists in political theory and anarchist studies. (shrink)

Eleven top Deleuze scholars reclaim Deleuzian philosophy as moral philosophy Ethics plays a crucial, if subtle, role in Gilles Deleuze's philosophical project. Michel Foucault claimed that Anti-Oedipus was `a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time'. But what is the nature of the immanent ethics that is developed in Deleuze's thought? How does it differ from previous conceptions of ethics? And what paths does it open for future thought, given (...) the ethical challenges facing humanity in so many domains? Each of the eleven essays in this collection explores the ethical dimension of Deleuze's thought along a new and singular trajectory, and in so doing, attempts to reclaim his philosophy as an ethical philosophy. (shrink)

Xunzi’s pessimistic understanding of human nature and his endorsement of the intrinsically valuable virtue of yi (義) put him in a vulnerable position. To defend this position, Xunzi needs to conquer what the essay calls “the compatibility problems,” the first of which concerns the compatibility between bad human nature and virtue, while the second is between Xunzi’s functional understanding of virtue and his understanding of virtue as possessing intrinsic value. If Xunzi’s moral philosophy were to fail to solve these two (...) problems, it would be guilty of inconsistency. In reconstructing a genealogy of Xunzi’s philosophy, I argue that he can successfully resolve the two compatibility problems, and his genealogy perspicuously shows that virtue can grow out of vicious human nature. (shrink)