The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein cites the Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Koehler almost as often as he cites William James in his posthumously published writings on the philosophy of psychology. Yet, few treatments of the Wittgenstein–Koehler relation in the philosophical literature could be called sustained discussions. Moreover, most of them treat Koehler as a mere whipping boy for Wittgenstein, one more opportunity to criticize the practice of psychologists. This article emphasizes how much the two thinkers agreed, and the extent to which some (...) of Wittgenstein’s work not only agreed with but also has a logical structure parallel to some of Koehler’s text. Both thinkers hold that the theoretician should strive to recognize and resist the impulse to step in and purify, distill, streamline, or exclude phenomena: common, everyday experience for Koehler and common, everyday uses of words for Wittgenstein. They both aim to counteract the tendency to discount and disparage what is ordinary and common. (shrink)

The fundamental reason for this research study is to point out the challenges encountered by the teachers, students, schools, and parents in facing and handling the oral speech communication subjects during the pandemic. Given that, most of the medium of instruction used is distance learning. It poses issues and concerns on how our respondents dealt with the situation. A descriptive- survey research design was used to obtain themes and phenomena to the questions provided. The questionnaire includes questions that seek to (...) gather information on their basic profile, current experiences, and behavior towards the problem. It was found out that the different problems encountered by the teachers, students, school, and parents include the validity of the issue, the lack of motivation which was a very complicated problem because it deals with emotional readiness and stability, and the difficulty in comprehending the topics of the module because lessons are not explained personally by the teachers. Therefore, oral speech communication requires an in-depth shift of lesson delivery to cater to the needs for improvement. (shrink)

The purpose of the study. This study aims to identify the prevalence of participants in physical activities, the motivation needed by the students to engage in the activity, challenges encountered by the implementors, health benefits, and recommendations and suggestions needed for the improvement of the implementation. -/- Materials and methods. A systematic analysis of the data from different articles was conducted using Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) scoping review framework. -/- Results. It was found that the implementation of active recreational activities (...) offers different health benefits to the youth, physical literacy and orientation and motivation played a vital role in the implementation of the recreational activities. -/- Conclusions. Therefore, the implementation of active recreational activities must be strengthened in schools not just for the sake of participation but because they are motivated to. And engagement in these activities must not only be limited to school grounds but also engaged at home and in the community. (shrink)

This study aims to identify the following factors that affect the physical inactivity of the students in saint joseph college aged 12- 16 years old. It aims to understand the impact of this crisis and how to address this pressing issue. A descriptive- survey research design was utilized to document the respondents' behavior, demographics, and experiences correlated to the questions provided. The questionnaire includes 15-item questions that seek to gather information on their basic profile, current experiences, and behavior towards physical (...) activities. The study discovers that teenagers aged 12-16 years old are inactive in physical activities and sports due to some reasons like exposure to too much time to gadgets, whether the activity provides a fun and offers socialization, lack of motivation, occupied schedules for other matters, the covid- 19 pandemic, costly sports equipment on the sports of their interest, the unavailability of playing area, and lastly health concerns. Therefore, physical inactivity only alleviates certain issues, physically, mentally, spiritually, and socially. Physical inactivity is the result of demotivated individuals, physical illiteracy, prolonged screen time, and health issues. (shrink)

The research study aimed at assessing the various difficulties that speech teachers had in delivering lessons during the distance learning era. The various phenomena and themes that emerged from the survey were determined using a descriptive research design. The survey was conducted to collect information about the various characteristics and behavior of speech teachers. It also explored the factors that influenced their decisions and actions when it came to addressing the pandemic. The repeated themes that emerged, include low motivation, altered (...) activities, unstable internet connection, comprehension, questionable output integrity, delayed submissions, in-person monitoring, and the system of communicating with inactive students in online mode. (shrink)

Schools worldwide have started opening doors to welcome back students who, for almost two years, have been stuck studying at home. This study looks at the standpoint of Filipino students on going back to regular face-to-face schooling. There were 2,274 students of different tiers of education (high school, collegiate, graduate) from different major island groups of the Philippines (Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao) who participated in the study. The study used a mixed-method of descriptive statistics to present the quantitative data gathered and (...) thematic analysis of qualitative responses from the subjects. The majority of all the respondents favored going back to the physical classroom, and little only favored staying using the distance mode. In the qualitative analysis, the recurring reasons of the students varied from personal, economic, and fear of getting the virus. It was concluded that Filipino students want to go back to schooling. Moreover, a sizeable amount preferred hybrid while a small number preferred to stay in online or distance mode. Educational institutions should always observe the covid 19 protocol when students go back. (shrink)

The level of enjoyment in participating in sports activities is one component that causes young athletes to decide to stop or become more motivated to pursue sports activities. Practicing and participating in competitions are the main activities in sports coaching interactions towards optimal performance. This study aims to determine the effect of modifying the match rules implemented in youth soccer competitions on the level of enjoyment of players. Using an experimental method with 20 soccer schools participating in a competition with (...) modified game rules. Players registered by his team amounted to an average of 13.8 players aged 9-12 years. The number of players who are willing to fill out the pleasure level questionnaire is 238 players. Each player was asked to fill out a questionnaire before and after the competition, the questionnaire was analyzed using the mean and percentage test technique. The results of data analysis showed the average score before participating in the competition was 4.10 while after participating in the competition it was 4.47, which means an increase of 8.88%. The results showed that the level of enjoyment of the players increased after participating in the competition. Modification of the rule of the game in competition affects the level of enjoyment of players in the interaction of youth soccer coaching. Coaches, administrators, and match organizers are expected to have a positive paradigm of thinking and policy making towards the organization of competitions for young soccer players. (shrink)

This paper attempts to fill an epistemological gap in our theorizing about love with a sketch of an epistemology of love that unfolds by addressing Whitney Houston’s famous epistemological questions pertaining to how we can know whether another loves us. After arguing for three possible sources of the knowledge of love, it offers initial answers to how the knowledge of the presence or absence of another’s love can be acquired from the relevant possible sources previously established. These initial answers, though, (...) are unsatisfying because they invite more difficult questions that are then addressed, such as those pertaining to the kinds of things that constitute love’s expressions along with how to detect these expressions given the possibility of false positives. Addressing these questions ultimately leads to a sharpened, Aristotle-inspired account of how to acquire the knowledge of the presence or absence of another’s love by inferring it, respectively, from the successful or failed detection of love’s expressions. (shrink)

This study aims to find out the factors that hinder students in learning Integrated Art Education. A descriptive research design was utilized in the conduct of the study. The researcher prepared a questionnaire with 15 closed-ended- questions that could be answered objectively. The study discovered that the students would learn more when they feel that they belong to a certain group. Interests in a subject also matter, the more you are interested in a particular subject, the more you will learn (...) the material. Parent support marks an impact on the student's interest in learning Arts. Therefore, personal interest in a subject must be given attention and managed properly. Parent's support also plays a vital role in reinforcing the students on what to pursue in order to maintain their motivation. (shrink)

This study aims to find out the experiences encountered by the parents at a very young age considering their maturity and financial capabilities. This study highlights the form of gathering data which is conducted using an interview. This is done in a dyad form wherein only one respondent is involved in the interview. The term qualitative research refers to the collection and analysis of non-numerical data and is sometimes based on a phenomenon which could be in a form of a (...) survey questionnaire or an interview. Based on the data and analysis; poverty is the main reason for entering a marriage. Generally, the kind of life wished by everybody to have was not merely dictated by fate, it was a manifestation of personal choice. Each individual has their own choices in what to pursue and to sacrifice, the only sure thing that a person can do is to prepare for the consequences that await in the process. (shrink)

This paper defends the thesis that romantic partnership is a form of friendship by arguing that such partnership is a romantic kind of close friendship. Despite its modest philosophical popularity, the thesis that romantic partnership is a form of friendship stands in need of an adequate defense, and so the paper first reconstructs and critically evaluates previous philosophical attempts to vindicate the thesis in order to motivate the need for a fresh defense of it. To substantiate the thesis, the paper (...) then offers accounts of romantic partnership and close friendship before explaining how romantic partnership counts as a romantic form of close friendship in light of these accounts. The paper then responds to critics of the romantic-partnership-as-friendship position. (shrink)

This research study aims to highlight the personal experiences encountered by the participants, compare the differences between both narrations, and lastly identify common phenomena. This study utilized the auto-ethnographical research study. Ellis and Bochner (2000) describe autoethnography as "an autobiographical form of writing that exhibits several levels of awareness, linking the personal to the cultural". Autoethnography may include a wide variety of topics, from personal research experiences to parallel explorations of the researcher's and participants' experiences, as well as the researcher's (...) experience while undertaking a particular piece of research (Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Maso, 2001). It appears that practice teaching enables interns to experience the actual classroom teaching and school paperwork preparation. Aside from the technical aspects of the internship process, it prepares the student-teachers as well in the different course of school activities that will immerse them in the process of management. Generally, the personal experiences of the different interns vary from the school environment, protocols, and learning resources of the school assigned. The different practice- teaching experiences narrated by the interns that will have a common phenomenon will be a strong determinant of a certain situation. (shrink)

Most accounts of cognitive scaffolding focus on ways that external structure can support or augment an agent’s cognitive capacities. We call cases where the interests of the user are served benign scaffolding and argue for the possibility and reality of hostile scaffolding. This is scaffolding which depends on the same capacities of an agent to make cognitive use of external structure as in benign cases, but that undermines or exploits the user while serving the interests of another agent. We develop (...) criteria for scaffolding being hostile and show by reference to examples including the design features of electronic gambling machines and casino management systems that hostile scaffolding exists and can be highly effective. In cases where the scaffolding is deep and permits the offloading of significant cognitive work, hostile scaffolding exploitatively manipulates cognitive processing itself. Given the extent of human reliance on scaffolding this is an important and neglected vulnerability. [This is an updated version of the paper, added in February 2023.]. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to determine the variables influencing college students' engagement in swimming activities, as well as the significant themes that often appear in these occurrences. A descriptive research design was used to identify the factors influencing college students' perception of participating in swimming activities. Descriptive research is a type of nonexperimental study that aims to describe the features of phenomena as it occurs. It was found out that participating in swimming activities provides various benefits, some of (...) these include helping build endurance, muscle strength, and cardiovascular fitness, enhanced swimming skills, and maintaining a healthy weight. As a result, the implementation of active recreational activities in schools must be reinforced, not simply for the purpose of participation, but also because students are driven to do so. And these activities must be carried out not just on school grounds, but also at home and in the community. (shrink)

Does religious belief differ in any interesting way from other kinds of belief? For now, take ‘belief’ to mean how one takes the world to be, on the basis of which they act. Call beliefs like this ‘ordinary beliefs’. There are also more complicated, or abstract, beliefs. Call such beliefs ‘non-ordinary beliefs’. Are religious beliefs different in any significant or interesting way from what we call ‘standard belief’? Our analysis shows that they are not. Although the content of religious belief (...) is different, and sometimes so is the function, religious beliefs are still mental, dispositional attitudes that aim to provide a correct representation of the world. Therefore, religious beliefs are best understood as a sub-category of standard beliefs, alongside ordinary and non-ordinary beliefs. This account of religious belief provides further insight into the meaning of belief and supports a revision of a strict demarcation between standard and non-standard beliefs. (shrink)

An educator, to climb up into academic ranking must take a longer route of getting formal education such as master’s or doctorate. In this paper, the authors discuss their journey, challenges, and aspirations in taking post-graduate studies like the Doctor of Education (EdD). Using autoethnography as the research design, which allow writers to narrate their personal experiences and used thematic analysis to analyze them. The authors experienced hardship in finding universities that would fit to their need especially that one of (...) them graduated with a non-thesis master’s degree. The other author, who is overseas found it also difficult to look for a university that would accept his situation and could offer flexibility in attending the classes due to the time zone difference and workday schedule. While both authors are enrolled in private education financing the studies could be a burden to one of the authors, so he sought support from his employer and agreed to render a service after, while the other one can cover the fees from his overseas job. (shrink)

In this article, robust evidence is provided showing that an individual’s moral character can contribute to the aesthetic quality of their appearance, as well as being beautiful or ugly itself. It is argued that this evidence supports two main conclusions. First, moral beauty and ugliness reside on the inside, and beauty and ugliness are not perception-dependent as a result; and, second, aesthetic perception is affected by moral information, and thus moral beauty and ugliness are on the outside as well.

Assume for the sake of argument that doing philosophy is intrinsically valuable, where ‘doing philosophy’ refers to the practice of forging arguments for and against the truth of theses in the domains of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc. The practice of the history of philosophy is devoted instead to discovering arguments for and against the truth of ‘authorial’ propositions, i.e. propositions that state the belief of some historical figure about a philosophical proposition. I explore arguments to think that doing history of (...) philosophy is valuable, specifically, valuable in such a way that its value does not reduce to the value of doing philosophy. Most such arguments proffered by historians of philosophy fail egregiously, as I show. I then offer a proposal about what makes doing history of philosophy uniquely valuable, but it is one that many historians will not find agreeable. (shrink)

When are morally good actions beautiful, when indeed they are? In this paper, it is argued that morally good actions are beautiful when they appear to express the deep or true self, and in turn tend to give rise to an emotion which is characterised by feelings of being moved, unity, inspiration, and meaningfulness, inter alia. In advancing the case for this claim, it is revealed that there are additional sources of well-formedness in play in the context of moral beauty (...) in addition to those that have tended to be focused on to date: one which is connected to imagining a deep location for the goodness concerned, and another which is connected to imagining that the goodness stems from capacities which are essential to the person. (shrink)

What is the nature of the concept BEAUTY? Does it differ fundamentally from nearby concepts such as PRETTINESS? It is argued that BEAUTY, but not PRETTINESS, is a dual-character concept. Across a number of contexts, it is proposed that BEAUTY has a descriptive sense that is characterised by, inter alia, having intrinsically pleasing appearances; and a normative sense associated with deeply-held values. This account is supported across two, pre-registered, studies (N=500), and by drawing on analysis of corpus data. It is (...) suggested that this can help to explain why beauty, unlike prettiness, is thought to be deep in both the sense of being important, and in the sense of being less closely tied to sensory surfaces. (shrink)

According to the most important objection to the existence of moral beauty, true judgements of moral beauty are not possible as moral judgements require being motivated to act in line with the moral judgement made, and judgements of beauty require not being motivated to act in any way. Here, I clarify the argument underlying the objection, and show that it does not show that moral beauty does not exist. I present two responses: namely, that the beauty of moral beauty does (...) not lie in the moral goodness per se (the “adjacent properties” response); and that only a dispositional motivation to act is required for the moral judgements that are typically made as part of judgements of moral beauty, whereas aesthetic judgements only rule out state motivations to act (the “equivocation of motivation required” response). In addressing the objection, I show how moral beauty is consistent with disinterestedness, and so should be accepted more widely; and also clarify where the beauty in moral beauty resides, and how the moral-aesthetic distinction should be drawn. (shrink)

Which traits are beautiful? And is their beauty perceptual? It is argued that moral virtues are partly beautiful to the extent that they tend to give rise to a certain emotion— ecstasy—and that compassion tends to be more beautiful than fair-mindedness because it tends to give rise to this emotion to a greater extent. It is then argued, on the basis that emotions are best thought of as a special, evaluative, kind of perception, that this argument suggests that moral virtues (...) are partly beautiful to the extent that they tend to give rise to a certain kind of evaluative perceptual experience. (shrink)

Why are moral actions beautiful, when indeed they are? This paper assesses the view, found most notably in Schiller, that moral actions are beautiful just when they present the appearance of freedom by appearing to be the result of internal harmony (the Schillerian Internal Harmony Thesis). I argue that while this thesis can accommodate some of the beauty involved in contrasts of the ‘continent’ and the ‘fully’ virtuous, it cannot account for all of the beauty in such contrasts, and so (...) needs to be weakened considerably (to the Internal Harmony Thesis). To account for the remaining beauty that cannot be fully accommodated even by this revised thesis, as well as the beauty contained in contrasts that involve agents who experience internal conflict as a result of being sensitive to different sources of moral value to an appropriate extent, a number of further theses need to be posited: namely, that the beauty of some moral actions is to be accommodated in terms of internal disharmony (the Internal Disharmony Thesis), and in terms of a felt harmony between the appreciator of the action and the executor of the action (the Affective Harmony Thesis). As such, in contrast to Schiller, I suggest that we need to take a pluralist and context-sensitive approach to accommodating the beauty of moral actions. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of moral evidentialism, the view that we have a moral obligation to form the doxastic attitude that is best supported by our evidence. I will argue that two popular arguments against moral evidentialism are weak. I will also argue that our commitments to the moral evaluation of actions require us to take doxastic obligations seriously.

Getting a graduate education is one of the most important parts of a professional in a field. It allows them to climb higher in the professional rankings or even get higher pay for their academic work. All graduate students are adults and self-directed due to their past experiences in work or practice. However, when the pandemic hit the world, these self-directed learners were not spared from shutting of schools. In the Philippines, most graduate schools deliver their lessons through the traditional (...) mode or face-to-face until the pandemic that they shifted in the emerging online learning modality. Using the mixed method of quantitative and qualitative type of study the researchers were able to gather 419 graduate students from various regions of the archipelago to take part in the study. The researchers found out that upon experiencing the benefits of online learning, graduate students want to continue this modality even in the future. More than a third of the respondents also claimed that they want the blended or hybrid type of graduate studies as opposed to going back to the more traditional face-to-face classes. The reasons for these can vary on each learner’s situation. (shrink)

In The Conditions for Ethical Chemical Restraint, Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) propose ethical standards for the use of chemical restraints, which they consider normatively distinct from physica...

This paper aims to describe the common situations happening in an actual classroom encounter in a Philippine school. It also points out the external expectations of the fresh graduates of education from the training to the actual real teaching. This article used an auto-ethnographical study that highlights the personal experience of the author to highlight the events of most teachers. It was noted that teaching is not only all about the subject matter but more about building a relationship with the (...) students as well. Therefore, building relationships with students requires approaches to be used, reflective stage, observation, and personal encounters as the best way to start learning. Because this is the time when you will start to understand and learn their nature when they are on the verge of a non-threatening atmosphere. (shrink)

I offer the first sustained defence of the claim that ugliness is constituted by the disposition to disgust. I advance three main lines of argument in support of this thesis. First, ugliness and disgustingness tend to lie in the same kinds of things and properties (the argument from ostensions). Second, the thesis is better placed than all existing accounts to accommodate the following facts: ugliness is narrowly and systematically distributed in a heterogenous set of things, ugliness is sometimes enjoyed, and (...) ugliness sits opposed to beauty across a neutral midpoint (the argument from proposed intensions). And third, ugliness and disgustingness function in the same way in both giving rise to representations of contamination (the argument from the law of contagion). In making these arguments, I show why prominent objections to the thesis do not succeed, cast light on some of the artistic functions of ugliness, and, in addition, demonstrate why a dispositional account of disgustingness is correct, and present a novel problem for warrant-based accounts of disgustingness (the ‘too many reasons’ problem). (shrink)

I argue that the main existing accounts of the relationship between the beauty of environmental entities and their moral standing are mistaken in important ways. Beauty does not, as has been suggested by optimists, confer intrinsic moral standing. Nor is it the case, as has been suggested by pessimists, that beauty at best provides an anthropocentric source of moral standing that is commensurate with other sources of pleasure. I present arguments and evidence that show that the appreciation of beauty tends (...) to cause a transformational state of mind that is more valuable than mere pleasure, but that leads us to falsely represent beautiful entities as being sentient and, in turn, as having intrinsic moral standing. To this extent, beauty is not, then, a source of intrinsic moral standing; it’s a source of a more important anthropocentric value than has hitherto been acknowledged. (shrink)

Four-dimensionalism and eternalism are theories on time, change, and persistence. Christian philosophers and theologians have adopted four-dimensional eternalism for various reasons. In this paper I shall attempt to argue that four-dimensional eternalism conflicts with Christian thought. Section I will lay out two varieties of four-dimensionalism—perdurantism and stage theory—along with the typically associated ontologies of time of eternalism and growing block. I shall contrast this with presentism and endurantism. Section II will look at some of the purported theological benefits of adopting (...) four-dimensionalism and eternalism. Section III will examine arguments against four-dimensional eternalism from the problem of evil. Section IV will argue that four-dimensional eternalism causes problems for Christian eschatology. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for an association between impurity and explanatory power in contemporary mathematics. This proposal is defended against the ancient and influential idea that purity and explanation go hand-in-hand (Aristotle, Bolzano) and recent suggestions that purity/impurity ascriptions and explanatory power are more or less distinct (Section 1). This is done by analyzing a central and deep result of additive number theory, Szemerédi’s theorem, and various of its proofs (Section 2). In particular, I focus upon the radically impure (...) (ergodic) proof due to Furstenberg (Section 3). Furstenberg’s ergodic proof is striking because it utilizes intuitively foreign and infinitary resources to prove a finitary combinatorial result and does so in a perspicuous fashion. I claim that Furstenberg’s proof is explanatory in light of its clear expression of a crucial structural result, which provides the “reason why” Szemerédi’s theorem is true. This is, however, rather surprising: how can such intuitively different conceptual resources “get a grip on” the theorem to be proved? I account for this phenomenon by articulating a new construal of the content of a mathematical statement, which I call structural content (Section 4). I argue that the availability of structural content saves intuitive epistemic distinctions made in mathematical practice and simultaneously explicates the intervention of surprising and explanatorily rich conceptual resources. Structural content also disarms general arguments for thinking that impurity and explanatory power might come apart. Finally, I sketch a proposal that, once structural content is in hand, impure resources lead to explanatory proofs via suitably understood varieties of simplification and unification (Section 5). (shrink)

The puzzle of petitionary prayer: if we ask for the best thing, God was already going to do it, and if we ask for something that's not the best, God's not going to grant our request. In this paper, we give a new solution to the puzzle.

Given that conspiracies exist, can we be justified in dismissing conspiracy theories without concerning ourselves with specific details? I answer this question by focusing on contrarian conspiracy theories, theories about conspiracies that conflict with testimony from reliable sources of information. For example, theories that say the CIA masterminded the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 9/11 was an inside job, or the Freemasons are secretly running the world are contrarian conspiracy theories. When someone argues for a contrarian conspiracy theory, their options (...) are to appeal to eyewitness testimony, incriminating documents, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, allegedly scientific evidence, anomalies, or considerations of cui bono (who benefits). Most laypeople don’t know how to adequately respond to arguments for contrarian conspiracy theories, but this doesn’t mean that it’s dogmatic to reject them. I argue that many laypeople are defeasibly justified in rejecting a variety of contrarian conspiracy theories based on testimony and this justification is rarely defeated by arguments for contrarian conspiracy theories even if we don’t know how to respond to these arguments. (shrink)

Until fairly recently in the storied history of epistemology, it was believed, widely and almost uncontestedly, that the architecture of human knowledge was such that our beliefs rested on an ultimate, self-justifying bedrock of truth. But with the rise of the modern age via the Enlightenment, there arose in tandem certain thinkers, most notably René Descarte, who began to object that this foundation is simultaneously far smaller and far stronger than it was originally thought to be. Thus, according to this (...) new view, the foundation for human knowledge doesn’t turn out to support very much, but what it does support, it supports all but invincibly. Descartes’ system provoked a number of detractors who, instead of returning to the old view, began to question not only whether any such foundation existed at all, but whether one was even necessary. Their project, instead, was to dispense with the idea of a justifying foundation altogether, formulating in its place a system in which the only thing needed to justify a belief were other beliefs. As we will see, this move has proven calamitous to their pursuit of truth and clarity. In this essay, I intend to chart a course between Descartes and his detractors, addressing a few shortcomings of each, while aiming for something like that old foundational understanding of human knowledge. (shrink)

It is common in metaethics today to draw a distinction between “naturalist” and “non-naturalist” versions of moral realism, where the former view maintains that moral properties are natural properties, while the latter view maintains that they are non-natural properties instead. The nature of the disagreement here can be understood in different ways, but the most common way is to understand it as a metaphysical disagreement. In particular, the disagreement here is about the reducibility of moral properties, where the “naturalists” maintain (...) that moral properties are in some way reducible to the lower-level natural properties on which they supervene, while the “non-naturalists” maintain that moral properties are sui generis and robustly irreducible. In this paper I present a novel version of realist ethical naturalism—a view that I call Emergentist Ethical Naturalism—that reveals this common way of understanding the distinction between naturalism and non-naturalism to be flawed by combining a commitment to ethical naturalism with a commitment to the sui generis and robustly irreducible nature of moral properties that typically defines non-naturalism. Then, after presenting the theory and addressing a few worries that one might have about it, I show how it offers some novel, emergence-based responses to the various supervenience challenges that plague moral realism and thereby gives the ethical naturalist a robustly non-reductive option for dealing with these challenges. (shrink)

Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects (ELSA) originated in the 4thEuropean Research Framework Programme (1994) andresponsible research and innovation (RRI) from the EC researchagenda in 2010. ELSA has received renewed attention inEuropean funding schemes and research. This raises the questionof how these two approaches to social responsibility relate toone another and if there is the possibility to align. There is aneed to evaluate the relationship/overlap between ELSA and RRIbecause there is a possibility that new ELSA research will reinventthe wheel if it (...) does not engage with the body of literaturealready present in RRI research. This provides unneeded extrabureaucracy, reformulations of research agendas, extrainvestment, and an overabundance of frameworks to implement,and ELSA research does not take advantage of the body ofresearch developed in RRI. This paper evaluates how ELSA andRRI diverge, are complementary, and can be aligned. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians argue that distributive justice should be understood in terms of our capacity to be responsible for our choices. Both proponents and critics assume that the theory must rely on a comprehensive conception of responsibility. I respond to luck egalitarianism’s critics by developing a political conception of responsibility that remains agnostic on the metaphysics of free choice. I construct this political conception by developing a novel reading of John Rawls’ distinction between the political and the comprehensive. A surprising consequence (...) is that many responsibility-based objections to luck egalitarianism turn out to be objections to Rawls’ political liberalism as well. (shrink)

In this paper I present an in-class game designed to simulate the dynamics of the state of nature. I first explain the mechanics of the game, and how to administer it in the classroom. Then I address how the game can help introduce students to a number of important topics in political philosophy. In broad terms, the game serves to generate discussion regarding to main questions. (1) How does civil society come about? (2) Is the state of nature and the (...) arrangement which arises from it fair? In so doing I suggest how the game can further student understanding of figures such as Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Marx, and Rawls. (shrink)

We argue that explanationist views in epistemology continue to face persistent challenges to both their necessity and their sufficiency. This is so despite arguments offered by Kevin McCain in a paper recently published in this journal which attempt to show otherwise. We highlight ways in which McCain’s attempted solutions to problems we had previously raised go awry, while also presenting a novel challenge for all contemporary explanationist views.

Kopec and Titelbaum collect five alleged counterexamples to Uniqueness, the thesis that it is impossible for agents who have the same total evidence to be ideally rational in having different doxastic attitudes toward the same proposition. I argue that four of the alleged counterexamples fail, and that Uniqueness should be slightly modified to accommodate the fifth example.

It is well-known that the global structure of every space-time model for relativistic cosmology is observationally underdetermined. In order to alleviate the severity of this underdetermination, it has been proposed that we adopt the Cosmological Principle because the Principle restricts our attention to a distinguished class of space-time models (spatially homogeneous and isotropic models). I argue that, even assuming the Cosmological Principle, the topology of space remains observationally underdetermined. Nonetheless, I argue that we can muster reasons to prefer various topological (...) properties over others. In particular, I favor the adoption of multiply connected universe models on grounds of (i) simplicity, (ii) Machian considerations, and (iii) explanatory power. We are able to appeal to such grounds because multiply connected topologies open up the possibility of finite universe models (consistent with our best data), which in turn avoid thorny issues concerning the postulation of an actually infinite universe. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a recently articulated, emergentist conception of ethical naturalism and its commitment to causal efficacy, or the idea that moral properties have causal powers, along with its supporting commitment to moral causation. After I reconstruct the theory, I explain how it offers some interesting theoretical benefits to moral realists in virtue of its commitment to causal efficacy. Then, after locating some examples of moral causation in support of this commitment, I present and respond to five objections to (...) such causation, which all threaten to undermine this support. Lastly, I consider a very serious problem that the theory faces in virtue of positing emergent moral properties as responsible for moral causation – namely, the problem of downward moral causation. I describe this problem in detail and argue that, as it stands, it does not spell doom for the theory. (shrink)

Kazimir Malevich’s style of Suprematist painting represents the inauguration of nothing less than a new form of culture premised upon a demolition of the Western tradition’s reifying habits of objective thought. In ridding his canvases of all objects and mimetic conventions, Malevich sought to reconfigure human perception in such a way as to open consciousness to alternative modes of organization and signification. In this paper, I argue that Malevich’s revolutionary aesthetic strategy can be illuminated by a return to the very (...) basis of this tradition, namely by a reconsideration of Aristotle’s account in De Anima III.2 of the initial possibility of objective perception as such. (shrink)

In this article, an account of the architecture of the cognitive contamination system is offered, according to which the contamination system can generate contamination represen- tations in circumstances that do not satisfy the norms of contamination, including in cases of mere visual contact with disgusting objects. It is argued that this architecture is important for explaining the content, logic, distribution, and persistence of maternal impression beliefs – according to which fetal defects are caused by the pregnant mother’s experiences and actions (...) – which in turn provide important evidence of the architecture of the cognitive contamination system. (shrink)

It is usually accepted that whether or not indirect discrimination is a form of immoral discrimination, it appears to be structurally different from direct discrimination. First, it seems that either one involves the agent focusing on different things while making a decision. Second, it seems that the victim’s group membership is relevant to the outcomes of either sort of action in different ways. In virtue of these two facts, it is usually concluded that indirect discrimination is structurally different from direct (...) discrimination. I argue against the notion that indirect discrimination and direct discrimination have significantly different structures. I first argue that both kinds of discrimination involve similar decision-making processes. Second, I analyze how being in a social group affects personal identity, and from there argue that indirect discrimination and direct discrimination are about group membership similarly. In virtue of these two arguments, I conclude that direct and indirect discrimination are structurally similar. (shrink)

Bilateral proof systems, which provide rules for both affirming and denying sentences, have been prominent in the development of proof-theoretic semantics for classical logic in recent years. However, such systems provide a substantial amount of freedom in the formulation of the rules, and, as a result, a number of different sets of rules have been put forward as definitive of the meanings of the classical connectives. In this paper, I argue that a single general schema for bilateral proof rules has (...) a reasonable claim to inferentially articulating the core meaning of all of the classical connectives. I propose this schema in the context of a bilateral sequent calculus in which each connective is given exactly two rules: a rule for affirmation and a rule for denial. Positive and negative rules for all of the classical connectives are given by a single rule schema, harmony between these positive and negative rules is established at the schematic level by a pair of elimination theorems, and the truth-conditions for all of the classical connectives are read off at once from the schema itself. (shrink)

It is widely held that agent-neutral consequentialism is incompatible with deontic constraints. Recently, Kieran Setiya has challenged this orthodoxy by presenting a form of agent-neutral consequentialism that he claims can capture deontic constraints. In this reply, we argue against Setiya's proposal by pointing to features of deontic constraints that his account fails to capture.

Let’s say that you regard two things as on a par when you don’t prefer one to other and aren’t indifferent between them. What does rationality require of you when choosing between risky options whose outcomes you regard as on a par? According to Prospectism, you are required to choose the option with the best prospects, where an option’s prospects is a probability-distribution over its potential outcomes. In this paper, I argue that Prospectism violates a dominance principle—which I call The (...) Principle of Predominance—because it sometimes requires you to do something that’s no better than the alternatives and might be worse. I argue that this undermines the strongest argument that’s been given in favor of Prospectism. (shrink)

Business and Economic textbooks warn against committing the Sunk Cost Fallacy: you, rationally, shouldn't let unrecoverable costs influence your current decisions. In this paper, I argue that this isn't, in general, correct. Sometimes it's perfectly reasonable to wish to carry on with a project because of the resources you've already sunk into it. The reason? Given that we're social creatures, it's not unreasonable to care about wanting to act in such a way so that a plausible story can be told (...) about you according to which your diachronic behavior doesn't reveal that you've suffered, what I will call, diachronic misfortune. Acting so as to hide that you've suffered diachronic misfortune involves striving to make yourself easily understood while disguising any shortcomings that might damage your reputation as a desirable teammate. And making yourself easily understood to others while hiding your flaws will, sometimes, put pressure on you to honor sunk costs. (shrink)