A review of William Lane Craig, Erik J. Wielenberg, and Adam Lloyd Johnson's "A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?".

Review of Karel Lambert, Meinong and the Principle of Independence: Its Place in Meinong's Theory of Objects and Its Significance in Contemporary Philosophical Logic.

Since Chenyang Li’s (1994) groundbreaking article there has been interest in reading early Confucian ethics through the lens of care ethics. In this paper, I examine the prospects for dialogue between the two in light of recent work in both fields. I argue that, despite some similarities, early Confucian ethics is not best understood as a form of care ethics, of the kind articulated by Nel Noddings (1984, 2002) and others. Reasons include incongruence deriving from the absence in the Chinese (...) texts of a developed account of need, and doubts about whether the parent-child relationship in Confucian thought is best characterized by ‘care’. More importantly, care is merely one value directing the Confucian commitment to family and personal bonds, with different kinds of relationship, including the five relationships presented in the Mencius, entailing different idealized modes of relating to others. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between friendship and morality. Two ideas have been influential in the history of moral philosophy: the impartial standpoint and close friendship. These two perspectives on thought and action can conflict, however, and such a case is presented here. In an attempt to resolve these tensions, and understand the assumption that gives rise to it, I explore an alternative conception of moral conduct and friendship suggested by early Confucian thought. Within this account, moral conduct is that (...) which aims at harmony, understood as the appropriate blending of different elements. This suggests a conception of friendship that realizes harmony through a focus on shared activities, and the quality of interaction achieved between people as they participate in shared social events. This account offers a novel way of conceptualizing friendship, which also avoids the tension between the impartial standpoint and close friendship. (shrink)

Ideas found in the early Daoist texts can inform current debates about disability, since the latter often involve assumptions about personhood and agency that Daoist texts do not share. The two canonical texts of classical Daoism, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, do not explicitly discuss disability as an object of theory or offer a model of it. They do, however, provide conceptual resources that can enrich contemporary discussions of disability. Two particular ideas are discussed here. Classical Daoist thinking about the (...) body undermines normative assumptions about it that attributions of ‘disabled’ often depend upon; and Daoism vividly problematises the common inferential leap from perceived and pronounced incapacity to a more general judgment of “useless”. In conclusion, I suggest that Daoism’s skepticism and particularistic approach to experience suggest caution about the value of appealing to theoretical models of disability. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory is a vast labyrinth that anyone interested in modern aesthetic theory must at some time enter. Because of his immense difficulty of the same order as Derrida - Adorno's reception has been slowed by the lack of a comprehensive and comprehensible account of the intentions of his aesthetics. This is the first book to put Aesthetic Theory into context and outline the main ideas and relevant debates, offering readers a valuable guide through this huge, difficult, but (...) revelatory work. Its extended argument is that, despite Adorno's assumptions of autonomism, cognitivism, and aesthetic modernism, his idea of artistic truth content offers crucial insights for contemporary philosophical aesthetics.The eleven chapters are divided into three parts: Context, Content, and Critique. The first part offers a brief biography, describes Adorno's debates with Benjamin, Brecht, and Lukács, and outlines his philosophical program. The second part is an interpretation of Adorno's aesthetics, examining how he situates art in society, production, politics, and history and uncovering the social, political, and historical dimensions of his idea of artistic truth. The third part evaluates Adorno's contribution by confronting it with the critiques of Peter Bürger, Frederic Jameson, and Albrecht Wellmer.Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College. (shrink)

This paper considers whether theism is compatible with moral error theory. This issue is neglected, perhaps because it is widely assumed that these views are incompatible. I argue that this is mistaken. In so doing, I articulate the best argument for thinking that theism and moral error theory are incompatible. According to it, these views are incompatible because theism entails that God is morally good, and moral error theory entails that God is not. I reject this argument. Since it is (...) the best argument for thinking that theism and moral error theory are incompatible, I conclude that these views are compatible: one can coherently accept both views. (shrink)

This précis summarizes the main topics, arguments and conclusions of the book. Many interesting arguments and critiques have, of course, been omitted in order to make this summary appropriately brief.

Ordinary judgments about personal identity are complicated by the fact that phrases like “same person” and “different person” have multiple uses in ordinary English. This complication calls into question the significance of recent experimental work on this topic. For example, Tobia (2015) found that judgments of personal identity were significantly affected by whether the moral change described in a vignette was for the better or for the worse, while Strohminger and Nichols (2014) found that loss of moral conscience had more (...) of an effect on identity judgments than loss of biographical memory. In each case, however, there are grounds for questioning whether the judgments elicited in these experiments engaged a concept of numerical personal identity at all (cf. Berniūnas and Dranseika 2016; Dranseika 2017; Starmans and Bloom 2018). In two pre-registered studies we validate this criticism while also showing a way to address it: instead of attempting to engage the concept of numerical identity through specialized language or the terms of an imaginary philosophical debate, we should consider instead how the identity of a person is described through the connected use of proper names, definite descriptions, and the personal pronouns “I”, “you”, “he”, and “she”. When the experiments above are revisited in this way, there is no evidence that the differences in question had an effect on ordinary identity judgments. (shrink)

An overview of how friendship has been represented and assessed in the Confucian tradition, and particularly in classical Confucian texts such as the Analects and the Mencius. Themes covered include the relationship between the family and friendship, the ambivalence towards friendship in imperial China, and the connection between friendship and the Confucian ideal of personal cultivation. The chapter finishes by exploring novel conceptions of friendship and human relatedness suggested by the Confucian tradition.

Li Zehou’s work can be understood as an account of a Chinese modernity, a vision for Chinese society that seeks to integrate three distinct philosophical approaches. These are Chinese history and culture, which Li understands as largely Confucian; Marxism, which has exerted such influence on a modernizing China; and Western learning more generally, as expressed by figures such as Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. Li also frequently expresses the hope that a Chinese modernity will be one in which the importance (...) of the individual is recognized, and rights and freedoms upheld (e.g., Li and Cauvel 2006, p. 182). But this stance raises an important question: how are individuality and freedom understood in Li’s philosophical system? In this paper, I want to examine what resources Li offers to help us conceptualize their place in a modernity with Chinese characteristics. Confucian culture is often regarded as authoritarian and hierarchical, less interested than more liberal traditions in an ideal such as freedom. So how does freedom relate to the Confucian root of Chinese culture, as construed by Li? In this paper I explore how Li Zehou’s study of Confucian aesthetics can deliver a novel conception of freedom, one grounded in Confucian thinking about personal cultivation, and aimed at the free creation of delight (樂). (shrink)

In this essay I offer an alternative perspective on how to organize class material for courses in Chinese philosophy for predominately American students. Instead of selecting topics taken from common themes in Western discourses, I suggest a variety of organizational strategies based on themes from the Chinese texts themselves, such as tradition, ritual, family, and guanxi (關係), which are rooted in the Chinese tradition but flexible enough to organize a broad range of philosophical material.

This thesis argues that theists can and should be expressivists about morality.

[Andrew Williams] It is difficult for prioritarians to explain the degree to which justice requires redress for misfortune in a way that avoids imposing unreasonably high costs on more advantaged individuals whilst also economising on intuitionist appeals to judgment. An appeal to hypothetical insurance may be able to solve the problems of cost and judgment more successfully, and can also be defended from critics who claim that resource egalitarianism is best understood to favour the ex post elimination of envy (...) over individual endowments. /// [Michael Otsuka] Inequality is intrinsically bad when and because it is unfair. It follows that the ideal of equality is not necessarily realised by a distribution of resources which is envy-free prior to the resolution of risks against which people have an equal opportunity to insure. Even if the upshot of such an ex ante envyfree distribution is just, it is not necessarily fair. (shrink)

Li Zehou’s work can be understood as an account of a Chinese modernity, a vision for Chinese society that seeks to integrate three distinct philosophical approaches. These are Chinese history and culture, which Li understands as largely Confucian; Marxism, which has exerted such influence on a modernizing China; and Western learning more generally, as expressed by figures such as Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. Li also frequently expresses the hope that a Chinese modernity will be one in which the importance (...) of the individual is recognized, and rights and freedoms upheld (e.g., 2006, p. 182). But this stance raises an important question: how are individuality and freedom understood in Li’s philosophical system? In this paper, I want to examine what resources Li offers to help us conceptualize their place in a modernity with Chinese characteristics. Confucian culture is often regarded as authoritarian and hierarchical, less interested than more liberal traditions in an ideal such as freedom. So how does freedom relate to the Confucian root of Chinese culture, as construed by Li? In this paper I explore how Li Zehou’s study of Confucian aesthetics can deliver a novel conception of freedom, one grounded in Confucian thinking about personal cultivation, and aimed at the free creation of delight (樂). (shrink)

Non-naturalism is the view that there are sui generis, non-natural moral properties. This paper poses a dilemma for theists who accept this view. Either God explains why non-moral properties make sui generis, non-natural moral properties obtain, or God does not explain this. If the former, then God is unacceptably involved in the explanation of his own moral goodness. If the latter, then God’s sovereignty, stature, and importance are undermined, and an unacceptable queerness is introduced into the world. This paper concludes (...) that theists have good reasons to reject non-naturalism on account of the unacceptable consequences of accepting either horn. (shrink)

To understand the details of LI Zehou’s work, it is helpful to first locate it within the social and historical contexts to which Li was responding. Specifically, his work can be understood as a contribution to the struggle to establish the intellectual foundations of a Chinese modernity. As China transitioned away from the long-lived dynastic system that had ended early in the twentieth century, there was intense debate in China about what forms of social and political order should take its (...) place. Marxism emerged as the governing ideology after the Communist revolution, but this did not settle the outstanding social questions. In the period of liberalization that followed Mao’s death, intellectuals like LI Zehou emerged and found a new role. Instead of being tasked with providing justifications for state policy and the ruling ideology, they were free, to some extent, to explore new ideas that could inform policy and popular consciousness. LI Zehou duly became one of the most active and widely read of Chinese thinkers during the 1980s and 1990s, offering a humanistic vision of Chinese society. What made LI Zehou’s contribution distinctive was the willingness to draw from all these disparate frameworks, in an attempt to synthesize them into a unified system of thought. (shrink)

An examination of Hall and Ames’s claim that the classical Confucian tradition be understood as constituting an aesthetic order. Some have argued that this claim is simply false. However, this claim should be understood not in terms of its literal truth or falsity, but in terms of its usefulness and suggestiveness. It is a general description that can guide inquiry into early Chinese thought. In what follows, I locate Hall and Ames’s “aesthetic order” within a broader interpretive lineage that understands (...) the Chinese tradition as an aesthetic tradition. I show how conceptions of “aesthetic” evolve within that lineage, how Hall and Ames built upon earlier New Confucians, and how their work might be extended further. (shrink)

The sense of form that provides the modern poet with a unique experience of the literary object has been crucial to various attempts to compare poetry to other cultural activities. In maintaining similar conceptions of the relationship between poetry and painting, Arthur Rimbaud and W. C. Williams establish a common basis for interpreting their creative work. And yet their poetry is more crucially concerned with the sudden emergence of visible "worlds" containing verbal objects that integrate a new kind of (...) literary text. This paper discusses the emergence of "aesthetic worlds" in the work of both poets and then examines how a common concern with Baroque form unites them in the phenomenological task of overcoming Cartesian dualism. (shrink)

As a matter of fact, few, if any, theists have been expressivists about morality. This is probably because expressivism is thought to have unacceptable theological implications. That is, it is thought to imply (1) that God’s goodness depends on our desire-like states, (2) that God’s goodness is not a real property, (3) that it is not true that God is good, and (4) that God’s moral thoughts have no explanation. I argue that expressivism has no such implications and conclude that (...) expressivism is theologically acceptable. (shrink)

The question of possible moral conflict between commitment to family and to impartiality is particularly relevant to traditional Confucian thought, given the importance of familial bonds in that tradition. Classical Confucian ethics also appears to lack any developed theoretical commitment to impartiality as a regulative ideal and a standpoint for ethical judgment, or to universal equality. The Confucian prioritizing of family has prompted criticism of Confucian ethics, and doubts about its continuing relevance in China and beyond. This chapter assesses how (...) those sympathetic to the Confucian vision of the good life might respond. It first explores Confucian conceptions of love and the importance of familial love. Next, problems arising from this commitment to partiality are discussed, and how a modern Confucian ethics might respond. I explore what notions of impartiality—understood largely pragmatically, as a value that functions in everyday social life rather than as an explicit moral principle that guides deliberation or judgment—can be derived from an ethics that focuses on family commitments. (shrink)

The question of the cognitive role of fictionality is this: what is the correct cognitive attitude to take to p, when it is fictional that p? We began by considering one answer to this question, implicit in the work of Kendall Walton, that the correct response to a fictional proposition is to imagine that proposition. However, this approach is silent in cases of fictional incompleteness, where neither p nor its negation are fictional. We argue that that Waltonians should embrace a (...) pluralistic account of the cognitive role of fictional incompleteness: in some cases of fictional incompleteness, we are permitted to resolve the incompleteness during our engagement with the target fiction, and in other cases, we are obliged not to resolve the incompleteness. But though pluralism is accommodated by Walton’s wider account of fictionality, it puts tension on his motivating idea that fictionality stands to the imagination as truth stands to belief. And so we develop a rival conception of the cognitive role of fictionality that is built around a different analogy: on this evidentialist approach, (known) fictionality stands to the imagination as evidence stands to credence. (shrink)

In the article, ‘Being Good in a World of Need: Some Empirical Worries and an Uncomfortable Philosophical Possibility,’ Larry Temkin presents some concerns about the possible impact of international aid on the poorest people in the world, suggesting that the nature of the duties of beneficence of the global rich to the global poor are much more murky than some people have made out. -/- In this article, I’ll respond to Temkin from the perspective of effective altruism—one of the targets (...) he attacks. I’ll argue that Temkin’s critique has little empirical justification, given the conclusions he wants to reach, and is therefore impotent. (shrink)

What is the relation between meaning and use? This chapter first defends a non-reductionist understanding of Wittgenstein’s suggestion that ‘the meaning of a word is its use in the language’; facts about meaning cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, facts about use, characterized non-semantically. Nonetheless, it is contended, facts about meaning do supervene on non-semantic facts about use. That supervenience thesis is suggested by comments of Wittgenstein’s and is consistent with his view of meaning and rule-following. Semantic (...) supervenience is then defended against two criticisms: first, John McDowell’s suggestion that the supervenience thesis falsifies the epistemology of meaning and fails to accommodate common-sense truths about meaning; second, a series of counter-examples proposed by Stephen Kearns and Ofra Magidor, who argue that worlds may differ semantically without differing non-semantically. It is argued that neither criticism is convincing: we should accept the thesis that semantic facts supervene on non-semantic facts. (shrink)

Is there some general reason to expect organisms that have beliefs to have false beliefs? And after you observe that an organism occasionally occupies a given neural state that you think encodes a perceptual belief, how do you evaluate hypotheses about the semantic content that that state has, where some of those hypotheses attribute beliefs that are sometimes false while others attribute beliefs that are always true? To address the first of these questions, we discuss evolution by natural selection and (...) show how organisms that are risk-prone in the beliefs they form can be fitter than organisms that are risk-free. To address the second question, we discuss a problem that is widely recognized in statistics – the problem of over-fitting – and one influential device for addressing that problem, the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). We then use AIC to solve epistemological versions of the disjunction and distality problems, which are two key problems concerning what it is for a belief state to have one semantic content rather than another. (shrink)

Turner argues that computer programs must have purposes, that implementation is not a kind of semantics, and that computers might need to understand what they do. I respectfully disagree: Computer programs need not have purposes, implementation is a kind of semantic interpretation, and neither human computers nor computing machines need to understand what they do.

The disjunction problem and the distality problem each presents a challenge that any theory of mental content must address. Here we consider their bearing on purely probabilistic causal theories. In addition to considering these problems separately, we consider a third challenge—that a theory must solve both. We call this “the hard problem.” We consider 8 basic ppc theories along with 240 hybrids of them, and show that some can handle the disjunction problem and some can handle the distality problem, but (...) none can handle the hard problem. This is our main result. We then discuss three possible responses to that result, and argue that though the first two fail, the third has some promise. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that although Kant’s account of empirical schemata in the Critique of Pure Reason is primarily used to explain the shared content of intuitions and empirical concepts, it is also informed by methodological problems in natural history. I argue that empirical schemata, which are rules for determining the spatiotemporal form of objects, not only serve to connect individual intuitions with concepts, but also concern the very features of objects on the basis of which they were connected (...) and ordered in taxonomic systems based on similarity of form. I then suggest that Kant likely had scientific illustrations in mind in his discussion of empirical images in the Schematism chapter and that his account of schemata can help explain the epistemic function of these images in early modern science. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was, famously, not a fan of William Shakespeare. He wrote in 1946 that “Shakespeare's similes are, in the ordinary sense, bad.” But Wittgenstein’s opinion was not only one fueled by aesthetic dislike. This short website article argues that Wittgenstein sees in Shakespeare a fellow explorer of skepticism, but one willing to travel down dark alleys that Wittgenstein himself sought to avoid. (This article is a journalistic version of "To Not Understand, but Not Misunderstand: Wittgenstein on Shakespeare," in Wittgenstein (...) Reading, edited by Sascha Bru, Wolfgang Huemer, and Daniel Steuer [De Gruyter, 2013, 39-53].). (shrink)

This edited volume of twelve essays originated with a conference on translation held at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2009. A guiding hope of the conference and volume, summarized in the afterword, is that the humanities should pay greater attention to the practice of translation (301). By detailing its nuances and difficulties, the volume challenges the view, sometimes found in philosophy departments, that translation is a rather straightforward process, and significantly less important to the field than original research (...) or monographs. In addition, a second motivation is the relative dearth of translated Chinese texts available in English, compared to the numbers of Western canonical texts long since available in Chinese (1). In response, the volume offers practical and theoretical discussions of how to translate premodern China for the contemporary Western reader. (shrink)

Justiciability sets the boundaries of judicial review and the rule of law. A justiciable issue is that which is appropriate within a judicial forum. That is, where an "independent and impartial body" can remedy rights violations of identifiable claimants, the issue before it is justiciable. If it falls beyond what is judicially determinable, it is 'non-justiciable'. The principle is not fixed, as it does not permanently set the boundaries of that which is appropriate for judicial determination. Rather, it evolves "from (...) context to context," and expands and narrows along what falls within judicial competencies at a particular time. On an elementary level, it is distinct from jurisdiction, as it establishes boundaries of subject matter on policy or constitutional grounds, whereas jurisdiction is grounded in established legal rules. However, questions of jurisdiction can be subsumed under broader questions of justiciability. (shrink)

Under the UDHR, all persons have the right to "seek and to enjoy . . . asylum from persecution." From this designation as fundamental followed codification of the right in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating (collectively 'the Convention'), the "centrepiece" of treaties and customary norms that make up international refugee law. It defines and regulates the status and rights of refugees; its purpose is to safeguard the basic rights of persons "outside (...) their country of origin," who have fled due to a legitimate fear of persecution. Fundamentally, it guarantees that asylees and refugees enjoy rights without discrimination; without penalization for illegal territorial entry; and, without expulsion or return to "territories where . . . life or freedom would be threatened on account of . . . race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion," —or 'non-refoulement'. What follows is background on development of the principle of non-refoulement, evasive US Asylum Cooperative Agreements ('ACAs') and implementing legislation, and the resulting erosion to the right to asylum. (shrink)

The paper considers three questions. First, what is the connection between economics and agency? It is argued that causation and explanation in economics fundamentally depend on agency. So a philosophical understanding of economic explanation must be sensitive to an understanding of agency. Second, what is the connection between agency and causation? A causal view of agency-involving explanation is defended against a number of arguments from the resurgent noncausalist tradition in the literature on agency and action-explanation. If agency is fundamental to (...) economic explanation, it is argued, then so is causation. Third, what is the connection between causal explanation and the natural sciences? It is argued that, though the explanations given in economics and other social sciences are causal explanations, they are different in kind from the causal explanations of the natural sciences. On the one hand, then, the causal explanations of the social sciences are irreducible to those found in the natural sciences. On the other hand, the causal relations described by the social sciences are not completely autonomous; they do not float free of, or operate independently from, the causal relations charted by the natural sciences. (shrink)

Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Published in Clifford, W.K. “L’ètica de la creença”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 129–150. // Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on William James’s “The Will to Believe”. Published in James, William. “La voluntat de creure”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 151–172. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Introducció. El debat entre W. K. Clifford i William James”. Quaderns (...) de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 123–127]. (shrink)

While epistemic democrats have claimed that majority rule recruits the wisdom of the crowd to identify correct answers to political problems, the conjecture remains abstract. This article illustrates how majority rule leverages the epistemic capacity of the electorate to practically enhance the instrumental value of elections. To do so, we identify a set of sufficient conditions that effect such a majority rule mechanism, even when the decision in question is multidimensional. We then look to the case of sociotropic economic voting (...) in US presidential elections to provide empirical tractability for these conditions. We find that absent such an epistemic capacity a number of presidential elections might well have been decided differently. By generating clear conditions for the plausibility of claims made by epistemic democrats, and demonstrating their correspondence to empirical data, this article strengthens the broader instrumental grounds recommending democracy. (shrink)

A growing number of linguistic attempts to explain how languages change use cultural-evolutionary models involving selection or drift. Developmental constraints and biases, which take center stage in evolutionary developmental biology or evo-devo, seem to be absent within this framework, even though linguistics is home to numerous notions of constraint. In this paper, we show how these evo-devo concepts could be applied to linguistic change and why they should. This requires some conceptual groundwork, due to important differences between linguistic and biotic (...) evolution. In biological evolution, development generates the organism's variable traits on which selection and drift act. In linguistic evolution by analogy, we say development generates the linguistic variants on which selection and drift can act. “Linguistic development” then picks out how individual speakers produce and comprehend language. It involves much more than just learning. Using this broad notion of development, we distinguish between different types of bias that could operate in the processes of linguistic innovation and transmission, which correspond to genetic mutation and biological reproduction, respectively. Having thus sharpened our conceptual toolbox, we then reanalyze two well-documented cases of linguistic change and show that, in both these cases, linguists have only considered Neo-Darwinian evolutionary explanations, falsely deploying an exclusive disjunction of selection and drift. We show that there is at least a third relevant alternative in these examples, namely developmental constraint or bias in the sense we explicate here. (shrink)

We argue in Roche and Sober (2013) that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in that Pr(H | O&EXPL) = Pr(H | O), where H is a hypothesis, O is an observation, and EXPL is the proposition that if H and O were true, then H would explain O. This is a “screening-off” thesis. Here we clarify that thesis, reply to criticisms advanced by Lange (2017), consider alternative formulations of Inference to the Best Explanation, discuss a strengthened screening-off thesis, and consider how (...) it bears on the claim that unification is evidentially relevant. (shrink)

For Rousseau, humankind is in a perpetual state of decay—decadency from an earlier, natural, primitive, and perfect state. For Rousseau, the natural man, or man in the state of beast, was of an era where humankind was unencumbered by that which is now entirely associated with society—that is, “. . . establishment of laws and of the right of property . . . the institution of magistracy . . . and the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power.” For Kant, humankind (...) is in its natural state. For Kant, nature brings about conditions that continually develop and refine humankind’s dispositions, purposefully setting about societies in order to facilitate a foundation within all civilized society, whereby all of humankind’s goals may be achieved. All matters have their place—placed there by nature, as though with purpose. For Kant, nature intended for humankind to employ reason, to acquiesce to coercion for social cohesion, and to strive to build a society that is ever-increasingly progressing towards perfection. Nature uses humankind’s dispositions, including ‘antagonistic’ behavior to gradually bring about a, “perfectly just civil constitution.” Humankind’s highest goal yet to be achieved is for that just civil constitution to emerge from trial and error (in the form of wars, revolutions, secessions, abdications), over time, ultimately providing for development of other dispositions within a perfect society. (shrink)

Since it was inspired by Bernard and developed and named by Cannon, the conceptof homeostasis has been invoked by many as the central theoretical framework for physiology. Ithas also been the target of numerous criticisms that have elicited the introduction of a plethoraof alternative concepts. We argue that many of the criticisms actually target the more restrictiveaccount of homeostasis advanced by the cyberneticists. What was crucial to Bernard and Cannonwas a focus on the maintenance of the organism as the goal (...) of physiological regulation. We analysehow Bernard’s and Cannon’s broad conception of what was required to maintain the organismwas narrowed to negative feedback, characterized in terms of setpoints, by the cyberneticistsand demonstrate how many of the alternative concepts challenge the role of setpoints – treatingthem as variable in light of circumstances or in anticipation of future circumstances, or asdispensable altogether. To support our analysis, we draw on the experimental and theoreticalwork on thermoregulation, a phenomenon that has been considered as a paradigmatic example ofhomeostasis and has been a common focus of those advancing alternative concepts. To integratethe insights advanced by the original proponents of homeostasis and the theorists proposingreplacement notions we advance a framework in which regulation is viewed from the perspectiveof maintaining the organism. (shrink)

In his new book, Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History, Steve Fuller returns to core themes of his program of social epistemology that he first outlined in his 1988 book, Social Epistemology. He develops a new, unorthodox theology and philosophy building upon his testimony in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in defense of intelligent design, leading to a call for maximal human experimentation. Beginning from the theological premise rooted in the Abrahamic religious tradition that we are created in the (...) image of God, Fuller argues that the spark of the divine within us distinguishes us from animals. I argue that Fuller’s recent work takes us away from key insights of his original work. In contrast, I advocate for a program of social epistemology rooted in evolutionary science rather than intelligent design, emphasize a precautionary and ecological approach rather than a proactionary approach that favors risky human experimentation, and attend to our material and sociological embeddedness rather than a transhumanist repudiation of the body. (shrink)

What methodological approaches do research programs use to investigate the world? Elisabeth Lloyd’s Logic of Research Questions (LRQ) characterizes such approaches in terms of the questions that the researchers ask and causal factors they consider. She uses the Logic of Research Questions Framework to criticize adaptationist programs in evolutionary biology for dogmatically assuming selection explanations of the traits of organisms. I argue that Lloyd’s general criticism of methodological adaptationism is an artefact of the impoverished LRQ. My Ordered Factors Proposal extends (...) the LRQ to characterize approaches with sequences of questions and factors. I highlight the importance that ordering one’s investigation plays in approaches at the level of adaptationism by analyzing two research programs in community ecology: competitionists and neutralists. Competitionists and neutralists take opposed starting points and use explanatory and developmental heuristics to consider more factors in due time. On the Ordered Factors Proposal, these approaches are not only the ecological factors they are open to considering but also the order in which they will consider them. My disagreement with Lloyd’s over how to characterize methodological approaches reflects different views about methodological monism and pluralism. (shrink)

This essay disambiguates the relationship between phenomenology and explanation, whereby we uncover a fundamentally new way to understand the function of phenomenology within the sciences. These objectives are accomplished in two stages. First, we propose an original way to interpret Husserl's claim that his phenomenology is non-explanatory. We demonstrate, contra accepted interpretations, that Husserl did not think phenomenology is non-explanatory, because it is descriptive or because it does not deal with causes. Instead, we demonstrate that Husserl concluded that phenomenology is (...) non-explanatory, because it engages in a dialectical process of conceptual clarification. To substantiate this interpretation, we examine how Husserl understood the function of explanation in three different tiers of standard science and how he grasped the role of phenomenology in pure logic. Having properly clarified Husserl's conclusion—that phenomenology is non-explanatory—we then execute our second task, namely to challenge just that idea. We argue that Husserl has—despite his claims to the contrary—de facto and inadvertently described his phenomenology as an explanatory nomological science. Our paper therefore not only clears up a longstanding misinterpretation of Husserl, but opens a new area of debate concerning the status of phenomenology within the scientific nexus. (shrink)

How do we determine whether individuals accept the actual consistency of a political argument instead of just its rhetorical good looks? This article answers this question by proposing an interpretation of political argument within the constraints of political liberalism. It utilises modern developments in the philosophy of logic and language to reclaim ‘meaningless nonsense’ from use as a partisan war cry and to build up political argument as something more than a power struggle between competing conceptions of the good. Standard (...) solutions for ‘clarifying’ meaning through descriptive definition encounter difficulties with the biases of status quo idioms (long noted by theorists like William Connolly and Quentin Skinner), as well as partisan translations and circularity. Collectively called linguistic gerrymandering, these difficulties threaten political liberalism’s underlying coherency. The proposed interpretation of political argument overcomes this with a new brand of conceptual analysis that can falsifiably determine whether rhetoric has hijacked political argument. (shrink)

Amy Olberding, The Wrong of Rudeness: Learning Modern Civility from Ancient Chinese Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2019, 183pp., $29.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780190880965. Reviewed byAndrew Lambert, City University of New York, College of Staten Island.

The United States carceral system, as currently designed and implemented, is widely considered to be an immoral and inhumane system of criminal punishment. There are a number of pressing issues related to this topic, but in this essay, I will focus upon the problem of prison violence. Inadequate supervision has resulted in unsafe prison conditions where inmates are regularly threatened with rape, assault, and other forms of physical violence. Such callous disregard and exposure to unreasonable risk constitutes a severe violation (...) of the rights of prisoners by the state. While there have been numerous legal, political, and activist efforts to draw attention to this issue—with the goal of reforming and making prisons safer—my goal is different. I argue that inmates who are victims of prison violence should have their sentences automatically reduced. Two distinct arguments are advanced in support of this claim. First, I argue that acts of prison violence are a sort of state-mediated harm which can thus be appropriately described as punishment-constituting. Second, and more straightforwardly, I argue that the compensation owed to prisoners who are victims of prison violence may naturally take the form of a reduced sentence. (shrink)

It is now well-known that Newton–Cartan theory is the correct geometrical setting for modelling the quantum Hall effect. In addition, in recent years edge modes for the Newton–Cartan quantum Hall effect have been derived. However, the existence of these edge modes has, as of yet, been derived using only orthodox methodologies involving the breaking of gauge-invariance; it would be preferable to derive the existence of such edge modes in a gauge-invariant manner. In this article, we employ recent work by Donnelly (...) and Freidel in order to accomplish exactly this task. Our results agree with known physics, but afford greater conceptual insight into the existence of these edge modes: in particular, they connect them to subtle aspects of Newton–Cartan geometry and pave the way for further applications of Newton–Cartan theory in condensed matter physics. (shrink)

We advance an account that grounds cognition, specifically decision-making, in an activity all organisms as autonomous systems must perform to keep themselves viable—controlling their production mechanisms. Production mechanisms, as we characterize them, perform activities such as procuring resources from their environment, putting these resources to use to construct and repair the organism's body and moving through the environment. Given the variable nature of the environment and the continual degradation of the organism, these production mechanisms must be regulated by control mechanisms (...) that select when a production is required and how it should be carried out. To operate on production mechanisms, control mechanisms need to procure information through measurement processes and evaluate possible actions. They are making decisions. In all organisms, these decisions are made by multiple different control mechanisms that are organized not hierarchically but heterarchically. In many cases, they employ internal models of features of the environment with which the organism must deal. Cognition, in the form of decision-making, is thus fundamental to living systems which must control their production mechanisms. (shrink)