Written over the course of two months in early 2008, Art as "Night" is a series of essays in part inspired by a January 2007 visit to the Velázquez exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, London, with subsequent forays into related themes and art-historical judgments for and against theories of meta-painting. Art as "Night" proposes a type of a-historical dark knowledge crossing painting since Velázquez, but reaching back to the Renaissance, especially Titian and Caravaggio. As a (...) form of formalism, this "night" is also closely allied with forms of intellection that come to reside in art as pure visual agency or material knowledge while invoking moral agency, a function of art more or less bracketed in modern art for ethical and/or political agency. Not a theory of meta-painting, Art as "Night" restores coordinates arguably lost in painting since the separation of natural and moral philosophy in the Baroque era. It is with Velázquez that we see a turning point, an emphasis on the specific resources of painting as a form of speculative intellect, while it is with contemporary works by Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer that we see the return of the same after the collapse of modernism, and after subsequent postmodern maneuvers to make art discursive yet without the austerities of the formal means present in Art as Art. Art as "Night" argues for a nondiscursive form of intellection fully embodied in the work of art – and, foremost, painting. A synoptic and intentionally elusive and allusive survey of painting, through the collapse of the art market in late 2007, Art as "Night" suggests by way of this critique of an elective "night" crossing painting that the art world is an endlessly deferred version of pleroma , a fully synthetic world given to an exploration and appropriation of the given through classical mimesis and epistemology and its complete incorporation and transfiguration in a theory of knowledge and art as pure speculative agency. In effect, Art as "Night" is an incarnational theory of art as absolute knowledge. (shrink)

Connecting research and production, art research represents a breaking of the barrier between creation and academia. However, there is also a contradiction contained in this kind of research deriving from its methods, since the process of art-based practice must, by its very nature, involve the subjectivity of the artist. I use my own studies as the research object to discuss this issue, and this article presents the problems I encountered during my artistic practice and research of ambiguous roles. This paper (...) has two main points of focus. First, I explore how the fallacy of self-referentiality is presented in paintings and films, and, second, I draw on my short film practice during my master’s study period to explain how the shots present a continuum in relation to the “absent one” and produce interface effects. However, the second point is not necessarily the result of the first one. This kind of connection and contradiction between practice and cognition in the process of art research is that I will analyse and discuss here. (shrink)

ABSTRACT -/- One increasingly reads about different aspects of the death of philosophy. One reason or cause being its institutionalization, as just another academic discipline, while research universities demand their tenured professionals to produve endless streams of really irrelevant publications, resulting in dealing with more detailed, microscopic issues and fabricated ‘problems’. The professionalization of philosophers created other problems of this socio-cultural practice. The dying out of philosophy is not only cased by external social and cultural factors, but also by internal (...) factors such as its methods and those concerning its subject-matter. I have explored the above in the context of meta-philosophy. In the process I also investigated the nature, the subject-matter and theories of philosophy of art, aesthetics and theory of art. It is mostly about these explorations of art that the contents of this piece is concerned with. All this is an exercise with words as the verbal means are the traditional instruments of doing philosophy. These tools not only enable the doing of philosophy but also creates limitations and limits to philosophizing. This will remain the case until the discourse develops other (for example visual, auditory, computational, etc) means to develop its many levelled and multi-dimensional practice - and in the process questions and overcomes its anthropo-centered bias. (shrink)

Paintings of music are a significant presence in modern art. They are cross-modal representations, aimed at representing music, say, musical works or forms, using colors, lines, and shapes in the visual modality. This article aims to provide a conceptual framework for understanding paintings of music. Using examples from modern art, the article addresses the question of what a painting of music is. Implications for the aesthetic appreciation of paintings of music are also drawn.

The meta-ethical commitments of folk respondents – specifically their commitment to the objectivity of moral claims – have recently become subject to empirical scrutiny. Experimental findings suggest that people are meta-ethical pluralists: There is both inter- and intrapersonal variation with regard to people’s objectivist commitments. What meta-ethical implications, if any, do these findings have? I point out that current research does not directly address traditional meta-ethical questions: The methods used and distinctions drawn by experimenters do not (...) perfectly match those of meta-ethicists. However, I go on to argue that, in spite of this mismatch, the research findings should be of interest to moral philosophers, including meta-ethicists. Not only do these findings extend the field of moral psychology with new data and hypotheses, but they also provide tentative evidence that touches on the adequacy of theses in moral semantics and moral metaphysics. Specifically, they put pressure on argum... (shrink)

An astonishing volume and diversity of evidence is available for many hypotheses in the biomedical and social sciences. Some of this evidence—usually from randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—is amalgamated by meta-analysis. Despite the ongoing debate regarding whether or not RCTs are the ‘gold-standard’ of evidence, it is usually meta-analysis which is considered the best source of evidence: meta-analysis is thought by many to be the platinum standard of evidence. However, I argue that meta-analysis falls far short of (...) that standard. Different meta-analyses of the same evidence can reach contradictory conclusions. Meta-analysis fails to provide objective grounds for intersubjective assessments of hypotheses because numerous decisions must be made when performing a meta-analysis which allow wide latitude for subjective idiosyncrasies to influence its outcome. I end by suggesting that an older tradition of evidence in medicine—the plurality of reasoning strategies appealed to by the epidemiologist Sir Bradford Hill—is a superior strategy for assessing a large volume and diversity of evidence. (shrink)

A work of Vietnamese art crossed a million-dollar mark in the international art market in early 2017. The event was reluctantly seen as a sign of maturity from the Vietnamese art amidst the many existing problems. Even though the Vietnamese media has discussed the issues enthusiastically, there is a lack of literature from the Vietnamese academics examining the subject, and even rarer in from the market perspective. This paper aims to contribute an insightful perspective on the Vietnamese art market, and (...) hesitantly the Vietnamese art as well, through the lens of fake, forgery and copy artworks. 35 cases of fake, forgery and copy paintings were found on the news and from the experts' wisdom. Through the examples, we argue that the Vietnamese art market is a temporary reaction to the immaturely rising of the Vietnamese art and the economy. Therefore, the art market is unable to function healthily unless the Vietnamese art and the economy developed. (shrink)

We distinguish and discuss two different accounts of the subject matter of theories of reference, meta-externalism and meta-internalism. We argue that a form of the meta- internalist view, “moderate meta-internalism”, is the most plausible account of the subject matter of theories of reference. In the second part of the paper we explain how this account also helps to answer the questions of what kind of concept reference is, and what role intuitions have in the study of (...) the reference relation. (shrink)

The nominal ground that entwines human beings and animal behaviours is unwilling to admit moral valuing as a non-human act. Just to nail it down explicitly, two clauses ramify the moral conscience of human beings as follows: a) Can non-humans be moral beings?, b) Unconscious animal behaviours go beyond any moral judgments. My approach aims to rebuff these anthropomorphic clauses by justifying animals’ moral beings and animals’ moral behaviours from a meta-ethical stance. A meta-ethical outlook may enable an (...) analysis of ethical and normative views through the limit of moral motives and reasoning. Animals’ sense of moral motives and their apparatus of getting involved in moral acts cannot be compared with human actions. In human moral engagement, we abide by moral paradigmatic theories and their diversified attitudes that could have conceptual and linguistic use in our societal discourses. However, animals’ intentional apparatus may have the propensity to choose an act following the moral consequences (care, utility, responsibility, etc.) in their life-forms. (shrink)

Many classically valid meta-inferences fail in a standard supervaluationist framework. This allegedly prevents supervaluationism from offering an account of good deductive reasoning. We provide a proof system for supervaluationist logic which includes supervaluationistically acceptable versions of the classical meta-inferences. The proof system emerges naturally by thinking of truth as licensing assertion, falsity as licensing negative assertion and lack of truth-value as licensing rejection and weak assertion. Moreover, the proof system respects well-known criteria for the admissibility of inference rules. (...) Thus, supervaluationists can provide an account of good deductive reasoning. Our proof system moreover brings to light how one can revise the standard supervaluationist framework to make room for higher-order vagueness. We prove that the resulting logic is sound and complete with respect to the consequence relation that preserves truth in a model of the non-normal modal logic _NT_. Finally, we extend our approach to a first-order setting and show that supervaluationism can treat vagueness in the same way at every order. The failure of conditional proof and other meta-inferences is a crucial ingredient in this treatment and hence should be embraced, not lamented. (shrink)

[Winner of the American Philosophical Association’s 2024 Journal of Value Inquiry Prize.] My thesis is that certain non-verbal paintings such as Picasso’s GUERNICA make (simple) arguments. If this is correct and the arguments are reasonably good, it would indicate one way that non-literary art can be cognitively valuable, since argument can provide the justification needed for knowledge or understanding. The focus is on painting, but my findings seem applicable to comparable visual art forms (a sculpture is also considered). My (...) approach largely consists of identifying pertinent features of viable literary cognitivism and then showing how they or close analogues can be applied to non-verbal painting. The two main features are the requirements, first, that the relevant knowledge is provided significantly in virtue of the distinctive essential feature of literary fictions, i.e., their fictionality, and second, that the knowledge stems primarily from the content of the work, not from what the auditor brings to the work. Some ways that literary fiction has been taken to be argumentative are explained, and striking similarities are found between argumentative literary fiction and argumentative painting. Potential objections are addressed, and I examine a proposed way to express, in a schematized format, both the power of an argumentative painting and its relatively simple associated propositional content. (shrink)

I present and I implement what I take to be the best approach to solve the meta-problem: the evidential approach. The main tenet of this approach is to explain our problematic phenomenal intuitions by putting our representations of phenomenal states in perspective within the larger frame of the cognitive processes we use to conceive of evidence.

A recent, seemingly appealing version of the powerful qualities view defines properties’ qualitativity via an essentialist claim and their powerfulness via a grounding claim. Roughly, this approach holds that properties are qualities because they have qualitative essences, while they are powerful because their instances or essences ground causal-modal facts. I argue that this theory should be replaced with one that defines the powerfulness of qualities in terms of both a grounding claim and a ‘meta-grounding’ claim. Specifically, I formulate and (...) defend a view on which qualities are powerful just if instances of those qualitiesat least partiallyground dispositionsin virtue of the essences of those qualities. (shrink)

Philosophical theories of explanation characterize the difference between correct and incorrect explanations. While remaining neutral as to which of these ‘first-order’ theories is right, this paper asks the ‘meta-explanatory’ question: is the difference between correct and incorrect explanation real, i.e., objective or mind-independent? After offering a framework for distinguishing realist from anti-realist views, I sketch three distinct paths to explanatory anti-realism.

This paper provides a thorough analysis of two often informally stated claims. First, successful argumentation in the sense of persuasive argumentation requires agreement between the interlocutors about the rationality of arguments. Second, a general agreement about rationality of arguments cannot itself be established via argumentation, since such an attempt leads to an infinite meta‐regress. Hence, agreement about the rationality of arguments is a precondition for successful argumentation. As the paper argues, these plausible claims hold under the assumption that interlocutors (...) are subjectively rational and follow their own standards of rationality when engaging in argumentation. (shrink)

This article clarifies the nature of meta-emotions, and it surveys the prospects of applying a version of the perceptualist model of emotions to them. It first considers central aspects of their intentionality and phenomenal character. It then applies the perceptualist model to meta-emotions, addressing issues of evaluative content and the normative dimension of meta-emotional experience. Finally, in considering challenges and objections, it assesses the perceptualist model, concluding that its application to meta-emotions is an attractive extension of (...) the theory, insofar as it captures some distinctive features of meta-emotions—specifically their normative dimension—while locating them within the domain of occurrent affective experiences. (shrink)

How, if at all, consciousness can be part of the physical universe remains a baffling problem. This article outlines a new, developing philosophical theory of how it could do so, and offers a preliminary mathematical formulation of a physical grounding for key aspects of the theory. Because the philosophical side has radical elements, so does the physical-theory side. The philosophical side is radical, first, in proposing that the productivity or dynamism in the universe that many believe to be responsible for (...) its systematic regularities is actually itself a physical constituent of the universe, along with more familiar entities. Indeed, it proposes that instances of dynamism can themselves take part in physical interactions with other entities, this interaction then being “meta-dynamism” (a type of meta-causation). Secondly, the theory is radical, and unique, in arguing that consciousness is necessarily partly constituted of meta-dynamic auto-sensitivity, in other words it must react via meta-dynamism to its own dynamism, and also in conjecturing that some specific form of this sensitivity is sufficient for and indeed constitutive of consciousness. The article proposes a way for physical laws to be modified to accommodate meta-dynamism, via the radical step of including elements that explicitly refer to dynamism itself. Additionally, laws become, explicitly, temporally non-local in referring directly to quantity values holding at times prior to a given instant of application of the law. The approach therefore implicitly brings in considerations about what information determines states. Because of the temporal non-locality, and also because of the deep connections between dynamism and time-flow, the approach also implicitly connects to the topic of entropy insofar as this is related to time. (shrink)

The epistemological debate about radical skepticism has focused on whether our beliefs in apparently obvious claims, such as the claim that we have hands, amount to knowledge. Arguably, however, our concept of knowledge is only one of many knowledge-like concepts that there are. If this is correct, it follows that even if our beliefs satisfy our concept of knowledge, there are many other relevantly similar concepts that they fail to satisfy. And this might give us pause. After all, we might (...) wonder: What is so great about the concept of knowledge that we happen to have? Might it be more important, epistemically speaking, to investigate whether our beliefs satisfy some other relevantly similar concept instead? And how should questions such as these even be understood? This paper discusses the epistemological significance of these issues. In particular, a novel skeptical stance called ‘meta-skepticism’ is introduced, which is a kind of skepticism about the idea that some knowledge-like concepts are epistemically more important than others. It suggested that it is unclear whether this form of skepticism can be avoided. (shrink)

The new field of meta-research investigates industry bias, publication bias, contradictions between studies, and other trends in medical research. I argue that its findings should be used as meta-evidence for evaluating therapies. ‘Meta-evidence’ is evidence about the support that direct ‘first-order evidence’ provides the hypothesis. I consider three objections to my proposal: the irrelevance objection, the screening-off objection, and the underdetermination objection. I argue that meta-research evidence works by rationally revising our confidence in first-order evidence and, (...) consequently, in the hypothesis—typically, downward. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein has often been called a quietist. His work has inspired a rich and varied array of theories in moral philosophy. Some prominent meta-ethicists have also been called quietists, or ‘relaxed’ as opposed to ‘robust’ realists, sometimes with explicit reference to Wittgenstein in attempts to clarify their views. In this chapter, I compare and contrast these groups of theories and draw out their importance for contemporary meta-ethical debate. They represent countercultures to contemporary meta-ethics. That is, they (...) reject in different ways one or more of the common assumptions that, whilst not universally shared, shape how to understand and engage in contemporary meta-ethical debate. Despite striking similarities, I argue that the ‘quietist’ label has obscured the views it is used to describe, the crucial differences between them, and the challenge that they offer to the predominant culture of meta-ethical enquiry. That challenge is this: there are plausible different ways of understanding and doing meta-ethics to those of the meta-ethical orthodoxy. We ignore such heterodoxy at our own peril. (shrink)

Meta-induction, in its various forms, is an imitative prediction method, where the prediction methods and the predictions of other agents are imitated to the extent that those methods or agents have proven successful in the past. In past work, Schurz demonstrated the optimality of meta-induction as a method for predicting unknown events and quantities. However, much recent discussion, along with formal and empirical work, on the Wisdom of Crowds has extolled the virtue of diverse and independent judgment as (...) essential to maintenance of 'wise crowds'. This suggests that meta-inductive prediction methods could undermine the wisdom of the crowd inasmuch these methods recommend that agents imitate the predictions of other agents. In this article, we evaluate meta-inductive methods with a focus on the impact on a group's performance that may result from including meta-inductivists among its members. In addition to considering cases of global accessibility (i.e., cases where the judgments of all members of the group are available to all of the group's members), we consider cases where agents only have access to the judgments of other agents within their own local neighborhoods. (shrink)

Meta-metaphysics concerns the nature and methodology of metaphysics and metaphysical inquiry. The emergence of meta-metaphysics as a systematic area of study is relatively recent, going back to the late 1990s. But the issues pursued in meta-metaphysics are certainly not novel: an age old question about the nature of metaphysics is whether it is possible to obtain knowledge about metaphysical matters in the first place, and if it is, how this knowledge is obtained.

There are many psychic mechanisms by which people engage with their selves. We argue that an important yet hitherto neglected one is self-appraisal via meta-emotions. We discuss the intentional structure of meta-emotions and explore the phenomenology of a variety of examples. We then present a pilot study providing preliminary evidence that some facial displays may indicate the presence of meta-emotions. We conclude by arguing that meta-emotions have an important role to play in higher-order theories of psychic (...) harmony. (shrink)

In recent decades, several attempts have been made to characterize Buddhism as a systematically unified and consistent normative ethical theory. This has given rise to a growing interest in meta-ethical questions. Meta-ethics can be broadly or narrowly defined. Defined broadly, it is a domain of inquiry concerned with the nature and status of the fundamental or framing presuppositions of normative ethical theories, where this includes the cognitive and epistemic requirements of presupposed conceptions of ethical agency.1 Defined narrowly, it (...) concerns the justificatory status of fundamental moral claims or judgments, i.e., claims or judgments of the form ‘x is good, right, virtuous’ and ‘x is bad, wrong, vicious.’.. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe four broad ‘meta-methods’ employed in scientific and philosophical research of qualia. These are the theory-centred metamethod, the property-centred meta-method, the argument-centred meta-method, and the event-centred meta-method. Broadly speaking, the theory-centred meta-method is interested in the role of qualia as some theoretical entities picked out by our folk psychological theories; the property-centred meta-method is interested in some metaphysical properties of qualia that we immediately observe through introspection ; the argument-centred (...) class='Hi'>meta-method is interested in the role of qualia in some arguments for non-physicalism; the event-centred metamethod is interested in the role of qualia as some natural events whose nature is hidden and must be uncovered empirically. We will argue that the event-centred metamethod is the most promising route to a comprehensive scientific conception of qualia because of the flexibility of ontological and methodological assumptions it can provide. We also reveal the hidden influences of the different meta-methods and in doing so show why consideration of meta-methods has value for the study of consciousness. (shrink)

Many so-called problems in contemporary philosophy of mind depend for their expression on a collection of inter-defined technical terms, a few of which are qualia, phenomenal property, and what-it’s-like-ness. I express my scepticism about Keith Frankish’s illusionism, the view that people are generally subject to a systematic illusion that any properties are phenomenal, and scout the relative merits of two alternatives to Frankish’s illusionism. The first is phenomenal meta-illusionism, the view that illusionists such as Frankish, in holding their view, (...) are themselves thereby under an illusion. The second is qualia quietism, the view that nothing worth saying is said by employing any of the aforementioned inter-defined technical terms. (shrink)

Solving the meta-problem of consciousness requires, among other things, explaining why we are so reluctant to endorse various forms of illusionism about the phenomenal. I will try to tackle this task in two steps. The first consists in clarifying how the concept of consciousness precludes the possibility of any distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality'. The second consists in spelling out our reasons for recognizing the existence of something that satisfies that concept.

Eliminative reasoning is a method that has been employed in many significant episodes in the history of science. It has also been advocated by some philosophers as an important means for justifying well-established scientific theories. Arguments for how eliminative reasoning is able to do so, however, have generally relied on a too narrow conception of evidence, and have therefore tended to lapse into merely heuristic or pragmatic justifications for their conclusions. This paper shows how a broader conception of evidence not (...) only can supply the needed justification but also illuminates the methodological significance of eliminative reasoning in a variety of contexts. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the importance of pursuing Buddhist Meta-Ethics. Most contemporary studies of the nature of Buddhist Ethics proceed in isolation from the highly sophisticated epistemological theories developed within the Buddhist tradition. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that an intimate relationship holds between ethics and epistemology in Buddhism. To show this, I focus on Damien Keown's influential virtue ethical theorisation of Buddhist Ethics and demonstrate the conflicts that arise when it is brought into (...) dialogue with a contemporary exposition of two prominent Buddhist epistemological theories; namely, Dunne´s exposition of the views of Dharmakīrti and Candrakīrti. I highlight certain points of conflict between these ethical and epistemological theories and will argue that the resolution of this conflict requires revision (either in interpretation of theories or in the theories themselves) by all parties. I shall conclude by arguing for substantive revision to these theories via an engagement with this conflict and, in so doing, hope to exemplify some of the virtues of engaging with a meta-ethical methodology for the advancement of the respective domains of inquiry. (shrink)

A common starting point for ‘going hybrid’ is the thought that moral discourse somehow combines belief and desire-like aspects, or is both descriptive and expressive. Hybrid meta-ethical theories aim to give an account of moral discourse that is sufficiently sensitive to both its cognitive and its affective, or descriptive and expressive, dimensions. They hold at least one of the following: moral thought: moral judgements have belief and desire-like aspects or elements; moral language: moral utterances both ascribe properties and express (...) desire-like attitudes. This entry concerns hybrid theories of moral language. The main division within such theories is between those treating the expression of desire-like attitudes as semantic and those treating it as pragmatic. This entry exclusively focuses on pragmatic forms of and examines the prospects for treating moral attitude expression as working via certain standard pragmatic mechanisms. I explain these mechanisms, outline the properties that standardly define them, and test to see whether moral attitude expression matches them. At the end, I briefly explain a more minimal pragmatic alternative. The main conclusions are that we should disregard presupposition and conventional implicature views and that the most plausible options for a pragmatic hybrid view are a generalised conversational implicature view and a more minimal pragmatic view. (shrink)

Recently, it has been proposed to understand a logic as containing not only a validity canon for inferences but also a validity canon for metainferences of any finite level. Then, it has been shown that it is possible to construct infinite hierarchies of "increasingly classical" logics—that is, logics that are classical at the level of inferences and of increasingly higher metainferences—all of which admit a transparent truth predicate. In this paper, we extend this line of investigation by taking a somehow (...) different route. We explore logics that are different from classical logic at the level of inferences, but recover some important aspects of classical logic at every metainferential level. We dub such systems meta-classical non-classical logics. We argue that the systems presented deserve to be regarded as logics in their own right and, moreover, are potentially useful for the non-classical logician. (shrink)

Unquestionably, Restorative Justice (hereafter RJ) has finally gathered some real momentum. It has become a sine qua non topic in many national and international policy and statutory agendas. However, as the restorative practice expands to deal with crimes, ages and situations it has never addressed before (at least in its contemporary version), and as its application starts to make sense not only to national but also to regional and international bodies and fora, new theoretical problems are posed. In the fast-growing (...) literature many theories and Schools have been evoked to support RJ's claims. This paper will take the discussion a step back by looking at questions of meta-theoretical character. In particular, the paper will ask: Does RJ have a place in the “world of theories,” and if it does, then what kind of theory is it, and on what level should it be placed? Second, does RJ theory need a philosophy, and why? Finally, how can restorative practices be morally justified? (shrink)

In dit artikel wordt de dominante metafysische oriëntatie in de hedendaagse meta-ethiek kritisch onder de loep genomen. Het hedendaagse debat, dat zich voornamelijk richt op de vraag hoe moraliteit metafysisch gezien 'in de werkelijkheid past', wordt gekenmerkt door een reeks complexe en soms esoterische discussies die, zo wordt betoogd, weinig bijdragen aan ons filosofische begrip van ethiek. Deze focus op metafysische grondslagen heeft geleid tot een tunnelvisie, waarin het debat gevangen zit tussen steeds ingewikkeldere vormen van non-cognitivisme, herconceptualisaties van (...) 'objectiviteit' en metafysische acrobatiek. Als alternatief wordt voorgesteld de aandacht in de meta-ethiek te verleggen naar het domein van praktisch redeneren. Door ons te concentreren op de patronen van geldige praktische argumentatie en het soort overwegingen dat mensen daadwerkelijk overtuigt, kunnen we wellicht een beter inzicht krijgen in de aard van ethische normativiteit en de rol ervan in ons leven. Het artikel pleit voor een meer pragmatische en minder metafysisch beladen benadering van de meta-ethiek, die zich richt op de daadwerkelijke praktijken van moreel redeneren en argumenteren. (shrink)

This paper has two aims: First, to provide an elucidation of the kind of meta-ethical programme at work in Mary Midgley's (1919-2018) Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (published in 1978). Second, to make the case for Midgley's placement within the philosophical and philosophical-historical canon, specifically, as an important figure within the meta-ethical movement of ‘Neo-Aristotelian naturalism'. On historical and systematic grounds, I argue that Midgley should be classified as a neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalist notwithstanding the distinctive (...) features of Midgley’s specific brand of neo-Aristotelianism. In doing so, I suggest a more generally applicable family resemblance approach to the history of philosophy in order to classify and re-introduce into the canon figures in the history of philosophy that are in danger of falling into oblivion. (shrink)

Attempting to compare scientific theories requires a philosophical model of meaning. Yet different scientific theories have at times—particularly in early chemistry—pre-supposed disparate theories of meaning. When two theories of meaning are incommensurable, we must say that the scientific theories that rely upon them are meta-incommensurable. Meta- incommensurability is a more profound sceptical threat to science since, unlike first-order incommensurability, it implies complete incomparability.

One popular approach to statistical mechanics understands statistical mechanical probabilities as measures of rational indifference. Naive formulations of this ``indifference approach'' face reversibility worries - while they yield the right prescriptions regarding future events, they yield the wrong prescriptions regarding past events. This paper begins by showing how the indifference approach can overcome the standard reversibility worries by appealing to the Past Hypothesis. But, the paper argues, positing a Past Hypothesis doesn't free the indifference approach from all reversibility worries. For (...) while appealing to the Past Hypothesis allows it to escape one kind of reversibility worry, it makes it susceptible to another - the Meta-Reversibility Objection. And there is no easy way for the indifference approach to escape the Meta-Reversibility Objection. As a result, reversibility worries pose a steep challenge to the viability of the indifference approach. (shrink)

In this paper, partly historical and partly theoretical, after having shortly outlined the development of the meta-ethics in the 1900?s starting from the Tractatus of Wittgenstein, I argue it is possible to sustain that emotivism and intuitionism are unsatisfactory ethical conceptions, while on the contrary, reason (intended in a logical-deductive sense) plays an effective role both in ethical discussions and in choices. There are some characteristics of the ethical language (prescriptivity, universalizability and predominance) that cannot be eluded (pain the (...) non significativity of the same language) by those who want to morally reason, i.e. by those who intend to regulate their own behaviour on the basis of knowledged and coherent principles. These characteristics can be found whether or not all possible ontological-metaphysics foundations of morals are taken into account. Furthermore the deontic logic systems allow the formalization of ethical theories and - at least in principle - a rigorous critical discussion of the same, but obviously nothing can be affirmed on the value of truth of the axioms of a system. In the deontic logic systems Hume?s law is assumed as an implicit result of inferential (conventional) rules and the acceptance of Hume?s law as a logical-linguistic thesis does not involve the cancellation of values (nihilism) or ethical relativism or indifferentism. (shrink)

British art historian Charles Harrison presumes the existence of a patriarchal world with power in the hands of men who dominate the representation of women and femininity. He applauds the ground-breaking work of feminist theorists who have questioned this imbalance of power since the 1970s. He stops short, however, of accepting their claims that all women have been represented by male artists as images of “utter passivity” (p. 4), routinely reduced by the male gaze to the status of exploited sexual (...) objects, or that women’s subjectivity is eroded by the visual treatment they receive at the hands of male artists such as Manet and Picasso. He wants to show that what is depicted in the picture plane by the (typically male) artist and enjoyed by the (typically male) spectator is more nuanced than just a simple privileged understanding between two men. He adds a third (and possibly fourth or more) party to the mix when he significantly redefines and expands our concept of the gaze: “A gaze may also be conceived of as a function of a painting’s represented content” (p. 9). In other words, a gaze may be “addressed outward by a represented figure,” and regardless of who and where, “the assumption conveyed by the term [‘gaze’] is that some differential and usually asymmetrical relation will be at stake in any exchange between one who directs the gaze and another at whom it is directed. In fact, it is just this difference—in age, in sex, in class, in interest, in power —that the operation of the gaze tends to mark” (p. 9). Referring to a woman depicted within the picture plane, he asks us to consider, “What does it feel like to look like this?” (p. 21) in order to entertain our many emotional responses and interpretations. When he adds, “What does it feel like to whom?” the sexual difference of the spectator also clearly comes into play. (shrink)

Four issues or problems philosophers should be concerned about when doing philosophy.

Remhof contends that Nietzsche is a metaphysician. According to his Meta-Metaphysical Argument, Nietzsche’s texts satisfy the criteria for an adequate conception of metaphysics. According to his Constructivist Argument, Nietzsche adopts a metaphysical position on which concepts’ application conditions constitute the identity conditions of their objects. This article critically appraises these arguments. I maintain that the criteria advanced in the Meta-Metaphysical Argument are collectively insufficient for delineating metaphysics as a distinct field of inquiry and that the Constructivist Argument attributes (...) a position to Nietzsche that remains vulnerable to his evaluative and psychological indictments of two-world metaphysics. I conclude by discussing how these objections might help non-metaphysical readers of Nietzsche resist Remhof’s interpretation. (shrink)

An account of meta-epistemic defeaters—distinct from traditional epistemic defeaters—is motivated and defended, drawing from case studies involving epistemic error-theory and epistemic relativism. Mechanisms of traditional epistemic defeat and meta-epistemic defeat are compared and contrasted, and some new puzzles are introduced.

According to the influential thesis of attentional transparency, in having or reflecting on an ordinary visual experience, we can attend only outwards, to qualities the experience represents, never to intrinsic qualities of the experience itself, i.e., to “mental paint.” According to the competing view, attentional semitransparency, although we usually attend outwards, to qualities the experience represents, we can also attend inwards, to mental paint. So far, philosophers have debated this topic in strictly armchair means, especially phenomenological reflection. My aim in (...) this paper is to show how to design an experiment, using the change detection paradigm for studying visual working memory that, if yielding positive results, would support AS. The structure of the argument is as follows. In standard change detection tasks, which involve attention to qualities the experience represents, there exists a known object integration effect (Luck and Vogel in Nature 390(6657):279–281, 1997). I formulate a hypothesis I call “the turn-off hypothesis,” according to which this effect does not exist in change detection tasks where subjects are instructed to attend to mental paint. I argue that, given AS, we have some reason to expect the turn-off hypothesis to be true, but given AT, we do not. Consequently, the truth of the turn-off hypothesis would support AS. I further argue that one can straightforwardly test the turn-off hypothesis, taking the standard change detection paradigm and instructing participants to attend inwards. (shrink)

There is wide research about the Philosophy for/with Children program. However, there is not any known attempt to investigate how a philosophical discussion can be implemented through a museum workshop. The present research aims to discuss aesthetic and epistemological issues with primary school children through a temporary art exhibition in a museum in Cyprus. Certainly, paintings have been used successfully to connect philosophical topics with the experiences of the children. We suggest, though, that this is not as innovative as the (...) conduction of a dialogue in a museum. Results were mostly positive. Pupils participated in the discussion and they gave intensive definitions of beautiful paintings and counterexamples for given definitions. The structure of inductive arguments and the difference between belief and knowledge were discussed. Progress in the analysis of inductive arguments was slightly noticeable, but it is likely that this was due to limited time spent on analysing those arguments. Furthermore, more sessions are needed to make generalisations for the effectiveness of the Philosophy for Children program in a museum instead of a traditional classroom. Even though there is discussion about the different stimuli of the discussion, it might be worth considering the effectiveness of different contexts where the discussion can take place. (shrink)

This paper examines East Asian literati’s sisŏhwa (poetry, calligraphy and painting) mainly done by ink and wash painting and focuses on their painting theories related to integrative learning and artistic practice. The literati expressed their philosophical ideas using visual and textual language according to Illyul theory based on the Sŏhwa Same Origin theory. They delivered their intentions through symbolic meaning of the visible in terms of the Uisang theory, and put emphasis on ki in their pictorial space (...) using the Kiunsaengdong theory in a monistic universe. The literati’s process of sisŏhwa practice unifies the mind/spirit with body/material and connects humans with nature/the universe. It also enables the creation of a representation of nature according to Shitao’s Oneness of Brushstroke theory. Ultimately it trained them for aesthetic harmony and spiritual enlightenment. As a result, Sisŏhwa Contemplative Practice theory was formed. This paper suggests that this theory should be reconstructed as the basic discipline in education. (shrink)

Call the following claim Asymmetry: rationality often requires a more steadfast response to pure moral disagreement than it does to otherwise analogous non-moral disagreement. This paper briefly motivates Asymmetry and explores its implications for meta-ethics. Some philosophers have thought that anti-realists are better-placed than realists to explain Asymmetry because, if anti-realism is true, disagreement cannot provide evidence against the reliability of one's thinking about objective moral facts. This paper argues that this simple diagnosis fails to support otherwise plausible anti-realisms. (...) It closes by discussing an alternative explanation for Asymmetry, which appeals to the moral importance of steadfastness. (shrink)

What determines the meaning of a context-sensitive expression in a context? It is standardly assumed that, for a given expression type, there will be a unitary answer to this question; most of the literature on the subject involves arguments designed to show that one particular metasemantic proposal is superior to a specific set of alternatives. The task of the present essay will be to explore whether this is a warranted assumption, or whether the quest for the one true metasemantics might (...) be a Quixotic one. We argue that there are good reasons—much better than are commonly appreciated—for thinking the latter, but that there nevertheless remains significant scope for metasemantic theorizing. We conclude by outlining our preferred option, metasemantic pluralism. (shrink)

Harman famously argues that a particular class of antifunctionalist arguments from the intrinsic properties of mental states or events (in particular, visual experiences) can be defused by distinguishing “properties of the object of experience from properties of the experience of an object” and by realizing that the latter are not introspectively accessible (or are transparent). More specifically, Harman argues that we are or can be introspectively aware only of the properties of the object of an experience but not the properties (...) of the experience of an object and hence that the fact that functionalism leaves out the properties of the experience of an object does not show that it leaves out anything mentally relevant. In this paper, I argue that Harman’s attempt to defuse the anti-functionalist arguments in question is unsuccessful. After making a distinction between the thesis of experiencing-act transparency and the thesis of mental-paint transparency, (and casting some doubt on the former,) I mainly target the latter and argue that it is false. The thesis of mental-paint transparency is false, I claim, not because mental paint involves some introspectively accessible properties that are different from the properties of the objects of experiences but because what I call the identity thesis is true, viz. that mental paint is the same as (an array of) properties of the object of experience. The identification of mental paint with properties of the object of experience entails that the antifunctionalist arguments Harman criticizes cannot be rightly accused of committing the fallacy of confusing the two. (shrink)

This paper explores two related questions in late Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism. First, how can a philosopher contemplate the eternal Forms while engaging in practical agency in the world? Second, do Neoplatonists provide a consistent account of the philosopher’s progress through the ‘stages of virtue’ (βαθμοί τῶν ἀρετῶν), the conceptual structure that underpins late antique philosophical curricula and hagiography? These questions interact, I suggest, because later Platonists appeal to the stages of virtue and divine maniai (βαθμοί τῶν μανίων) to explain (...) the philosopher’s ability to alternate gracefully between contemplation and embodied agency, and even to engage in both activities at the same moment. I argue that apparently contradictory evidence for the highest stages of virtue can be reconciled satisfactorily, shedding light on two models of ethical and perceptual transformation that are consistent throughout later Neoplatonism. In the first, 'painterly' model, we alternate between a vision of the paradigmatic model and its expression in the media of place and time; in the second, 'dancerly' model, we contemplate in action all at once, like a dancer moving to the music. (shrink)

‘Painting’ names both a practice and its products. Both practice and product can, but need not, be art. When painting is art, in what does its artistic interest lie? This is the question an aesthetics of painting seeks to answer. While that answer might be sought in features found in other arts, here we investigate whether painting is of distinctive interest, containing phenomena of artistic value not to be found in most, or perhaps any, other art (...) forms. (shrink)