People are manifestly polarized. On many topics, extreme perspectives are much easier to find than ‘reasonable’, ‘moderate’ perspectives. A natural reaction to this situation is that something epistemically irrational is afoot. Here, I question this natural reaction. I argue that often polarization is epistemically innocuous. In particular, I argue that certain mechanisms that underlie polarization are rational, and polarized beliefs are often fully justified. Additionally, even reflective subjects, who recognize themselves as in a polarized or polarizing situation shouldn’t necessarily reduce (...) confidence in the relevant beliefs. Finally, I draw attention to some often overlooked epistemic _benefits_ associated with polarization. A fuller understanding of the epistemology of polarization requires incorporating both the potential costs and the potential benefits, and being more precise about exactly what is—and is not—epistemically objectionable in these situations. (shrink)

The failure of psychiatry to validate its diagnostic constructs is often attributed to the prioritizing of reliability over validity in the structure and content of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Here I argue that in fact what has retarded biomedical approaches to psychopathology is unwarranted optimism about diagnostic discrimination: the assumption that our diagnostic tests group patients together in ways that allow for relevant facts about mental disorder to be discovered. I consider the Research Domain Criteria framework (...) as a new paradigm for classifying objects of psychiatric research that solves some of the challenges brought on by this assumption. (shrink)

When we look around us, some things look “alive,” others do not. What is it to “look alive”—to perceive animacy? Empirical work supports the view that animacy is genuinely perceptual. We should construe perception of animacy as perception of agents and behavior. This proposal explains how static and dynamic animacy cues relate, and explains how animacy perception relates to social cognition more broadly. Animacy perception draws attention to objects that are apt to be well‐understood folk psychologically, enabling us to marshal (...) our folk psychological resources efficiently. (shrink)

In this chapter, I juxtapose the mindshaping research program with the literature on the metaphysics of social construction. I suggest that these research programs are remarkably congenial. The practices of interest to mindshaping theorists are more or less straightforward instances of the processes that are taken to be essential to social construction. As such, a constructionist metaphysics of psychological kinds is readily available. I discuss some recent constructionist treatments of particular psychological kinds against this backdrop, before considering how the constructionist (...) outlook interacts with more orthodox viewpoints in the metaphysics of mind. (shrink)

How do we know about other minds on the basis of perception? The two most common answers to this question are that we literally perceive others’ mental states, or that we infer their mental states on the basis of perceiving something else. In this paper, I argue for a different answer. On my view, we don’t perceive mental states, and yet perceptual experiences often immediately justify mental state attributions. In a slogan: other minds are neither seen nor inferred. I argue (...) that this view offers the best explanation of our deeply equivocal intuitions about perception-based mental state attributions, and also holds substantial interest for the epistemology of perception more generally. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly interested in engaging with scientific communities, policy makers, and members of the public; however, the nature of this engagement has not been systematically examined. Instead of delineating a specific kind of engaged philosophy of science, as previous accounts have done, this article draws on literature from outside the discipline to develop a framework for analyzing different forms of broadly engaged philosophy of science according to two key dimensions: social interaction and epistemic integration. Clarifying the many (...) forms of engagement available to philosophers of science can advance future scholarship on engagement and promote more strategic engagement efforts. (shrink)

There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the “stakes” or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to “low” stakes cases are compared with responses to “high stakes” cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary properties—they are scalar: whether a situation is “high” or “low” stakes is a matter of degree. So far, no experimental work has investigated the (...) scalar nature of stakes effects on knowledge: do stakes effects increase as the stakes get higher? Do stakes effects only appear once a certain threshold of stakes has been crossed? Does the effect plateau at a certain point? To address these questions, we conducted experiments that probe for the scalarity of stakes effects using several experimental approaches. We found evidence of scalar stakes effects using an “evidence seeking” experimental design, but no evidence of scalar effects using a traditional “evidence-fixed” experimental design. In addition, using the evidence-seeking design, we uncovered a large, but previously unnoticed framing effect on whether participants are skeptical about whether someone can know something, no matter how much evidence they have. The rate of skeptical responses and the rate at which participants were willing to attribute “lazy knowledge”—that someone can know something without having to check—were themselves subject to a stakes effect: participants were more skeptical when the stakes were higher, and more prone to attribute lazy knowledge when the stakes were lower. We argue that the novel skeptical stakes effect provides resources to respond to criticisms of the evidence-seeking approach that argue that it does not target knowledge. (shrink)

This paper provides an argument for a more socially relevant philosophy of science (SRPOS). Our aims in this paper are to characterize this body of work in philosophy of science, to argue for its importance, and to demonstrate that there are significant opportunities for philosophy of science to engage with and support this type of research. The impetus of this project was a keen sense of missed opportunities for philosophy of science to have a broader social impact. We illustrate various (...) ways in which SRPOS can provide social benefits, as well as benefits to scientific practice and philosophy itself. Also, SRPOS is consistent with some historical and contemporary goals of philosophy of science. We’re calling for an expansion of philosophy of science to include more of this type of work. In order to support this expansion, we characterize philosophy of science as an epistemic community and examine the culture and practices of philosophy of science that can help or hinder research in this area. (shrink)

1 Some philosophers defend the thesis that women are adult human females. Call this the adult human female thesis (AHF). There are two versions of this thesis—one modal and one definitional. Accord...

Constitutivist accounts in metaethics explain the normative standards in a domain by appealing to the constitutive features of its members. The success of these accounts turns on whether they can explain the connection between normative standards and the nature of individuals they authoritatively govern. Many such explanations presuppose that any member of a norm-governed kind must minimally satisfy the norms governing its kind. I call this the Threshold Commitment, and argue that constitutivists should reject it. First, it requires constitutivists to (...) restrict the scope of their explanatory ambitions, because it is not plausibly true of social kinds. Second, despite the frequent reliance on physical artifacts in constitutivists’ illustrations of the Threshold Commitment, it counter-intuitively entails that physical artifacts can cease to exist without being physically destroyed. Third, it misconstrues the normative force of authoritative norms on very defective kind-members because it locates this force not in the norm, but in the threat of non-existence. Fortunately, constitutivism can be decoupled from the Threshold Commitment, and I close by sketching a promising alternative account. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for the importance of doing scientifically- and socially-engaged work, suggesting that we need to reduce barriers to extra-disciplinary engagement and broaden our impact. Yet, we currently lack empirical data to inform these discussions, leaving a number of important questions unanswered. How common is it for philosophers of science to engage other communities, and in what ways are they engaging? What barriers are most prevalent when it comes to broadly disseminating one’s work or collaborating with (...) others? To what extent do philosophers of science actually value an engaged approach? Our project addresses this gap in our collective knowledge by providing empirical data regarding the state of philosophy of science today. We report the results of a survey of 299 philosophers of science about their attitudes towards and experiences with engaging those outside the discipline. Our data suggest that a significant majority of philosophers of science think it is important for non-philosophers to read and make use of their work; most are engaging with communities outside the discipline; and many think philosophy of science, as a discipline, has an obligation to ensure it has a broader impact. Interestingly, however, many of these same philosophers believe engaged work is generally undervalued in the discipline. We think these findings call for cautious optimism on the part of those who value engaged work—while there seems to be more interest in engaging other communities than many assume, significant barriers still remain. (shrink)

This paper makes a case for the centrality of the passion of curiosity to Hobbes’s account of human nature. Hobbes describes curiosity as one of only a few capacities differentiating human beings from animals, and I argue that it is in fact the fundamen- tal cause of humanity’s uniqueness, generating other important difference-makers such as language, science and politics. I qualify Philip Pettit’s (2008) claim that Hobbes believes language to be the essence of human difference, contending that Pettit grants language (...) too central a place in Hobbes’s psychology. Language is, for Hobbes, a tech- nology adopted on account of curiosity. Further, curiosity is necessary not only for linguistic but also for scientific activity. Only after what he calls original knowledge has been gathered are names employed to generate the conditional propositions that con- stitute science. Finally, curiosity can resolve another puzzle of Hobbesian psychology that Pettit leaves unanswered: our tendency towards strife. Hobbes believes that inso- far as human beings have an implacable hunger for knowledge of the future, we are unable to rest content with present gains and must always aspire to secure the best possible outcome for ourselves. (shrink)

The paper identifies the phenomenal rise of increasingly invasive forms of elective cosmetic surgery targeted primarily at women and explores its significance in the context of contemporary biotechnology. A Foucauldian analysis of the significance of the normalization of technologized women's bodies is argued for. Three "Paradoxes of Choice" affecting women who "elect" cosmetic surgery are examined. Finally, two utopian feminist political responses are discussed: a Response of Refusal and a Response of Appropriation.

It is common to think that clarity is an essential ingredient of good teaching, meaning, in part, that good teachers always make it as easy as possible to follow what they say. We disagree. What we argue is that there are cases in which a philosophy teacher needs to forego clarity, making strategic use of obscurity in the undergraduate classroom.

Open Access: What if it doesn’t get better? Against more hopeful and optimistic views that it is not just ideal but possible to put an end to what John Rawls calls “the great evils of human history,” I aver that when it comes to evils caused by human beings, the situation is hopeless. We are better off with the heavy knowledge that evils recur than we are with idealizations of progress, perfection, and completeness; an appropriate ethic for living with such (...) heavy knowledge, which I call an ‘Imperfectionist Ethic,’ could include resisting evils, improving the lives of victims, and even enjoying ourselves. Better conceptions of the objects of hope, and the good life, inform a praxis-centered, nonideal ethic, supportive of sustained moral motivation, resilience, and even cheer. I connect elements of stoic and pessimistic philosophy in order to outline some normative recommendations for living with evils. A praxis-centered ethic would helpfully adjust our expectations from changing an uncontrollable future, to developing better skills for living in a world that exceeds our control. (shrink)

Online shaming is a subject of import for social philosophy in the Internet age, and not simply because shaming seems generally bad. I argue that social philosophers are well-placed to address the imaginal relationships we entertain when we engage in social media; activity in cyberspace results in more relationships than one previously had, entailing new and more responsibilities, and our relational behaviors admit of ethical assessment. I consider the stresses of social media, including the indefinite expansion of our relationships and (...) responsibilities, and the gap between the experiences of those shamed and the shamers’ appreciation of the magnitude of what they do when they shame; I connect these to the literature suggesting that some intuitions fail to guide our ethics. I conclude that we each have more power than we believe we do or than we think carefully about exerting in our online imaginal relations. Whether we are the shamers or the shamed, we are unable to control the extent to which intangible words in cyberspace take the form of imaginal relationships that burden or brighten our self-perceptions. (shrink)

In recent work, Michael Smith argues that particular desires are constitutive of ideal agency and draws on his dispositional account of reasons to establish the normative significance of those desires. In a sustained critique, Michael Bukowski objects that Smith’s recent arguments that particular desires are constitutive of ideal agency rely on indefensible premises and his dispositional account of reasons is unable to establish the normative significance of such desires. On the contrary, I argue not only that Smith has the resources (...) to respond to these objections but also that the form of Smith’s constitutivist explanation has unappreciated explanatory strengths. (shrink)

We advance the understanding of the philosophy and psychology of curiosity by operationalizing and constructing an empirical measure of Nietzsche’s conception of inquisitive curiosity, expressed by the German term Wissbegier, (“thirst for knowledge” or “need/impetus to know”) and Neugier (“curiosity” or “inquisitiveness”). First, we show that existing empirical measures of curiosity do not tap the construct of inquisitive curiosity, though they may tap related constructs such as idle curiosity and phenomenological curiosity. Next, we map the concept of inquisitive curiosity and (...) connect it to related concepts, such as open-mindedness and intellectual humility. The bulk of the paper reports four studies: an Anglophone exploratory factor analysis, an Anglophone confirmatory factor analysis, an informant study, and a Germanophone exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. (shrink)

This paper presents the history of the Frankfurt School’s inclusion of normative concerns in social science research programs during the period 1930-1955. After examining the relevant methodology, I present a model of how such a program could look today. I argue that such an approach is both valuable to contemporary social science programs and overlooked by current philosophers and social scientists.

(In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Psychology of Forgiveness, edited by Glen Pettigrove and Robert Enright) This chapter discusses forgiveness conceived as primarily a volitional commitment, rather than an emotional transformation. As a commitment, forgiveness is distal, involving moral agency over time, and can take the form of a speech act or a chosen attitude. The purpose can be a commitment to repair or restore relationships with wrongdoers for their sake or the sake of the relationship, usually by forswearing (...) one’s hostile attitudes toward a particular wrongdoing; the commitment may also be to oneself for one’s own sake, to be a person with a virtue of forgivingness. It can be incident-specific, that is, a response to a particular occasion of harm, or a forward-looking disposition, an aim to cultivate the habit of being a forgiving person in advance. The enabling conditions of forgivingness as a virtue may be more basic master virtues including integrity and humility, motivations that also underpin commitments to be unforgiving, so this chapter concludes with some careful consideration of the ethics of unforgivingness to others, and the commitment to be unforgiving of oneself. (shrink)

Quilty-Dunn et al. argue that deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) optimized for image classification exemplify structural disanalogies to human vision. A different kind of artificial vision – found in reinforcement-learning agents navigating artificial three-dimensional environments – can be expected to be more human-like. Recent work suggests that language-like representations substantially improves these agents’ performance, lending some indirect support to the language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH).

A growing body of research suggests that students achieve learning outcomes at higher rates when instructors use active-learning methods rather than standard modes of instruction. To investigate how one such method might be used to teach philosophy, we observed two classes that employed Reacting to the Past, an educational role-immersion game. We chose to investigate Reacting because role-immersion games are considered a particularly effective active-learning strategy. Professors who have used Reacting to teach history, interdisciplinary humanities, and political theory agree that (...) it engages students and teaches general skills like collaboration and communication. We investigated whether it can be effective for teaching philosophical content and skills like analyzing, evaluating, crafting, and communicating arguments in addition to bringing the more general benefits of active learning to philosophy classrooms. Overall, we find Reacting to be a useful tool for achieving these ends. While we do not argue that Reacting is uniquely useful for teaching philosophy, we conclude that it is worthy of consideration by philosophers interested in creative active-learning strategies, especially given that it offers a prepackaged set of flexible, user-friendly tools for motivating and engaging students. (shrink)

Philosophers generally prescribe against complaining, or endorse only complaints directed to rectification of the circumstances. Notably, Aristotle and Kant aver that the importuning of others with one’s pains is effeminate and should never be done. In this paper, I reject the prohibition of complaint. The gendered aspects of Aristotle’s and Kant’s criticisms of complaint include their deploring a self-indulgent "softness" with respect to pain, yielding to feelings at the expense of remembering one’s duties to others and one’s own self-respect. I (...) argue that complaining may also take the form of mindful attention to shared suffering. A complainer may observe affective duties, such as commiseration and invitations to disclose pains. Against more contemporary views that justify only constructive complaints directed to change, I suggest that quotidian, unconstructive complaining sometimes fulfills important social functions, including the amelioration of loneliness and affective solidarity, for the sake of others as well as oneself. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss various hard cases that an account of moral ignorance should be able to deal with: ancient slave holders, Susan Wolf’s JoJo, psychopaths such as Robert Harris, and finally, moral outliers. All these agents are ignorant, but it is not at all clear that they are blameless on account of their ignorance. I argue that the discussion of this issue in recent literature has missed the complexities of these cases by focusing on the question of epistemic (...) fault. It is not clear that all blameworthy morally ignorant agents have committed an epistemic fault. There are other important issues that pull us in various directions: moral capacity, bad will, and formative circumstances. I argue that bad will is what is crucial, and moral ignorance itself can be a form of bad will. I argue that we should distinguish between two sorts of bad will, and correspondingly, two sorts of blameworthiness. Ordinary blameworthiness, requires moral knowledge, and is based on akratic action. The other kind of blameworthiness, objective blameworthiness, applies when the agent is morally ignorant, and when this indicates bad will. Objective blameworthiness can be undermined by unfortunate formative circumstances. (shrink)

In this article, we reflect on our experiences teaching a PWOL course called Philosophy for Living. The course uses modules focused on different historical philosophical ways of life (Epicureanism, Stoicism, Confucianism, Existentialism, etc.) to engage students in exploring how philosophy can be a way of life and how its methods, virtues, and ideas can improve their own lives. We describe and compare our experiences with two central aspects of our approach: engagement with diversity and the use of immersive experiences and (...) assignments. In particular, we discuss how we recognize and center various forms of diversity in philosophy—cultural and gender diversity, but also diversity in how and in what forms philosophy can be done and what “philosophy as a way of life” can be. We also examine how the experimental and experiential aspects of immersive assignments promote deeper understanding and create possibilities for personal transformation. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss what motivated reasoning research tells us about the prospects for deliberative democracy. In section I, I introduce the results of several political psychology studies examining the problematic affective and cognitive processing of political information by individuals in nondeliberative, experimental environments. This is useful because these studies are often neglected in political philosophy literature. Section II has three stages. First, I sketch how the study results from section I question the practical viability of deliberative democracy. Second, (...) I briefly present the results of three empirical studies of political deliberation that can be interpreted to counter the findings of the studies in section I. Third, I show why this is a misinterpretation and that the study results from section I mean that it is implausible that sites of political deliberation would naturally emerge from the wide public sphere and coalesce into institutionalized forms of the practice such that deliberative democracy can satisfy its raison d’être. Finally, in section III, I conclude that viable conceptions of deliberative democracy should be limited to narrower aims. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the proposed use of combinatorial derivatives markets for event prediction, especially for catastrophic events such as terrorism, war, or political assasination. Following a presentation of the philosophical principles underlying these politico-economic tools, I examine case studies (U.S. DoD proposals) that evaluate their advantages and disadvantages in terms of both efficacy and moral considerations. I conclude that these markets are both fatally flawed due to internal conceptual contradictions and morally problematic.

In this paper, I argue that an utterance can function to conserve or maintain the truth of its asserted content, what I call conservative speech. Conservative utterances can work to preserve the truth of their asserted content in two ways. In the first, directive conservatives, the utterance serves as an indirect directive for interlocutors to act in ways that serve to maintain the asserted content. In the second, constitutive conservatives, serve to partly constitute the truth conditions of the asserted content (...) directly. Constitutive conservatives, I argue, are particularly important because they are a central tool for how social groups enforce and thereby maintain facts about group norms and values in the face of deviation. They thus have a central role to play in understanding the role of language in the abilities of social groups to create and maintain their norms and values. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary paper identifies principles of an affluent country (im)migration policy that avoids: (1) the positivist inclusion/exclusion mechanism of liberalism and communitarianism; and (2) the idealism of most cosmopolitan (im)migration theories. First, I: (a) critique the failure of liberalism and communitarianism to consider (im)migration under distributive justice; and (b) present cosmopolitan (im)migration approaches as a promising alternative. This paper’s central claim is that cosmopolitan (im)migration theory can determine normative shortcomings in (im)migration policy by coupling elements of Frankfurt School methodology to (...) case studies of (im)migration regimes. Lastly, I apply this analytical procedure to recent special changes in Spanish and UK immigration law. (shrink)

Anselm’s ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. This paper presents Iris Murdoch’s ontological argument for the existence of the Good. It discusses her interpretation of Anselm’s argument, her distinctive appropriation of it, as well as some of the merits of her version of the argument. In doing so, it also shows how the argument integrates some key Murdochian ideas: morality’s wide scope, the basicness of vision to morality, moral realism, and Platonism.

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of place (...) to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, Open-mindedness (...) adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model’s cross-cultural generalizability. (shrink)

In this case discussion, Barnhill and Devine collect and present a significant amount of recent research on the various reasons why people struggle to succeed in weight loss programmes. Specifically, the authors focus on what they call ‘behavioural weight loss interventions’, which are ‘research, clinical or public health efforts to promote individual healthy eating and physical activity behaviours’. As defined, this is a very broad category of interventions and presumably includes all kinds of dieting and weight loss programmes or promotion (...) efforts short of private or independently chosen programmes. The authors argue, in a nutshell, that these clinical, research, and public health interventions have low efficacy, and while they may have some health or other benefits, the balance of evidence presented shows that they harm people in multiple ways. (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer's “The World as Will and Representation” is a continuation and completion of the Kantian philosophical project. Schopenhauer proposes that rather than causality being an empirical consequence, as Kant implies in his Critique of Pure Reason, causality is an a priori phenomenon, happening independent of any knowledge of causality itself. Therefore, he challenges Kantian rationalism with pessimism. To begin this work stating the stark contrast between Kant’s epistemology and Schopenhauer’s, I note the few yet crucial characteristics to consciously consider (...) from Schopenhauer’s aesthetics: (1) there is no rationality to nature; (2) there is no ‘purposeness’ in life; and (3) human beings are not fundamentally rational. These each are expanded upon and discussed in unison with Kant's sentiments. In describing Schopenhauer's philosophy of the human experience, it is useful to refer to his interest in Indian philosophies and religions, which is briefly mentioned in this work by way of the famous paradox proposed by Nāgārjuna. The major point of divergence, it appears, between the two great minds reveals itself in their conception of the human experience and perception. Kant describes a reality consisting of mental representations whose nature is suggested to be a posteriori, Schopenhauer understands reality to be noumenal and its perception by sentient life to be indirect, subject-dependent, and consequently a priori. (shrink)

In this introductory essay, I describe feminist ethics as a kind of approach to morality that says we ought to pay attention to the facts on the ground and empirical information in order to know whether and how a moral problem is a gendered problem. One of the best accounts of feminist ethics is by Hilde Lindemann, who wrote that feminist ethics aims “to understand, criticize, and correct how gender operates within our moral and social beliefs and practices.” She doesn’t (...) define feminism as a theory about women, and neither do I. The term 'feminist' has more to do with the sources of this approach to ethics than the ultimate goals of such theorists; women were influential and early advocates of the view that sometimes a moral problem is a problem because it is gendered. (shrink)

Our attitudes toward human culpability for environmental problems have moral and emotional import, influencing our basic capacities for believing cooperative action and environmental repair are even possible. In this paper, I suggest that having the virtue of forgivingness as a response to environmental harm is generally good for moral character, preserving us from morally risky varieties of pessimism and despair. I define forgivingness as a forward-looking disposition based on Robin Dillon’s conception of preservative forgiveness, a preparation to be deeply and (...) abidingly accepting yet expecting human error. As with other virtues, however, preservative forgiveness is available to some of us more than others; in the second half of this paper, I consider the deep challenge posed by rational pessimism, especially on the part of those who have been given many reasons not to hope for the very moral improvements for which they strive. I conclude that for those of us with the power roles and personal resources especially conducive to environmental activism, preservative forgiveness inclines us to remain engaged in environmental activism with fellow flawed human beings, recognizing our own mutual depredations while committing us to cooperatively respond. (shrink)

In this review essay, I consider the challenge advanced by editors Eva Kittay and Ellen Feder in their collection, The Subject of Care, that “we must take account of the fact of dependency in our very conceptions of the self,” as well as Kittay’s own statements in her contribution that independence is a fiction and that we are all, ultimately, dependents of a sort. I distinguish broader and narrower senses of dependency as used by different contributors, to develop a conception (...) of what I refer to as dependency-in-relation which is neither inevitable nor derivative. I conclude that human dependence upon nonhumans is a neglected aspect of dependency in this collection, but the collection is persuasive that we are all, at least, interdependent if not actually dependents. (shrink)

Despite contemporary moral philosophers' renewed attention to the moral significance of emotions, the attitudinal repertoire with which they equip the mature moral agent remains stunted. One attitude moral philosophers neglect (if not disown) is contempt. While acknowledging the nastiness of contempt, I here correct the neglect by providing an account of the moral psychology of contempt. In the process, I defend the moral propriety of certain tokens of properly person-focused contempt against some prominent objections -- among them, objections stemming from (...) Kantian worries that contempt is incompatible with the respect we owe to persons as such. (shrink)

Our experiences with many sorts of evils yield debates about the role of forgiveness as a possible moral response. These debates include (1) the preliminary question whether evils are, by definition, unforgivable, (2) the contention that evils may be forgivable but that forgiveness cannot entail reconciliation with one’s evildoer, (3) the concern that only direct victims of evils are in a position to decide if forgiveness is appropriate, (4) the conceptual worry that forgiveness of evil may not be genuine or (...) complete if hard feelings recur, (5) the interest of many in holding that forgiveness is never required, and (6) the concern that analyses of evil ought to prioritize the suffering, and credit the perspectives, of victims of evils, in tension with the possibility that forgiveness concerns the well-being of offenders. In this paper, I critically evaluate these concerns from the perspective of nonideal theory. I conclude that crediting victims’ perspectives is importantly basic to empirically informed moral theory, and that objections to forgiveness including (1) evil’s unforgivability ignore victims’ differing accounts. When we take actualities and experiences to be informative and central, some of the usual debates become less pressing, perhaps even moot. (shrink)

Many recent philosophers have been tempted by epistemic partialism. They hold that epistemic norms and those of friendship constitutively conflict. In this paper, I suggest that underpinning this claim is the assumption that friendship is not an epistemically rich state, an assumption that even opponents of epistemic partiality have not questioned. I argue that there is good reason to question this assumption, and instead regard friendship as essentially involving knowledge of the other. If we accept this account of friendship, the (...) possibility of epistemic partialism does not arise. (shrink)

What’s the difference between those psychological posits that are ‘me” and those that are not? Distinguishing between these psychological kinds is important in many domains, but an account of what the distinction consists in is challenging. I argue for Psychological Constructionism: those psychological posits that correspond to the kinds within folk psychology are personal, and those that don’t, aren’t. I suggest that only constructionism can answer a fundamental challenge in characterizing the personal level – the plurality problem. The things that (...) plausibly qualify as personal are motley. Other attempts at accounting for the personal level either cannot accommodate this plurality, or cannot explain what unifies the personal. Given arguments others have given for a pluralistic conception of folk psychology, constructionism explains and predicts this plurality in a systematic and unified way, thereby solving the plurality problem. (shrink)

Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac emphasizes values of receptivity and perceptivity that appear to be mutually reinforcing, critical to an ecological conscience, and cultivatable through concrete and embodied experience. His priorities bear striking similarities to elements of the ethics of care elaborated by feminist philosophers, especially Nel Noddings, who notably recommended receptivity, direct and personal experience, and even shared Leopold’s attentiveness to joy and play as sources of moral motivation. These commonalities are so fundamental that ecofeminists can and should (...) see Leopold as a philosophical ally. The three ecofeminist scholars who have devoted the most concerted attention to Leopold’s work argue that his Land Ethic is not, and does not provide a basis for, an ecofeminist ethic. I dispute the main criticisms of these scholars, and conclude that ecofeminists should attend more often to Leopold’s work, which extends possibilities for excellent praxis. (shrink)

Among the many ontological questions the philosophy of religion endeavors to address, perhaps the most controversial is the existence of God. Unraveling this complex question has puzzled philosophers for ages and has kept the spark lit in this theological debate to this day. Along with arguments for—and against—God, there are topics which inevitably follow from such a debate, namely the divine attributes of God and divine action. This essay will briefly expand upon arguments for God’s existence evidenced by some of (...) the most notable theories and concepts about His attributes and how He relates to His creations, namely humans. In addition to assertions made by credible philosophers and theologians, the claims in this essay will also be informed by my own understanding of Christian faith and values. (shrink)

Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. Thus, we conclude that social entities are not justifiably excluded (...) from metaphysical inquiry. Finally, we ask how focusing on social entities could change the character of metaphysical inquiry. We suggest that starting from examples of social entities might lead metaphysicians to rethink the assumption that describing reality in terms of intrinsic, independent, and individualistic features is preferable to describing it in terms of relational, dependent, and non-individualistic features. (shrink)