In recent years, campaigns across the globe have called for the removal of objects symbolic of white supremacy. This paper examines the ethics of altering or removing such objects. Do these strategies sanitize history, destroy heritage and suppress freedom of speech? Or are they important steps towards justice? Does removing monuments and renaming schools reflect a lack of parity and unfairly erase local identities? Or can it sometimes be morally required, as an expression of respect for the memories of people (...) who endured past injustices; a recognition of this history's ongoing legacies; and a repudiation of unjust social hierarchies? (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to review Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Gay Science" in English Translation. It compares and contrasts the translations by Thomas Common, Walter Kaufmann, Josefine Nauckhoff, and R. Kevin Hill. First, I argue in favor of translating the work's title "Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft" as "The Gay Science" or perhaps more precisely as "The Gay Knowledge". Nietzsche who is likely the greatest stylist in the German language wrote with philological precision and succinctness. This exactitude and awareness of the (...) shaping influence of linguistic means on the contents expressed therefore needs to be reflected throughout in any kind of rendition of Nietzsche's artful texts and the evaluation and assessment thereof. (shrink)

In this paper, I advance a lesser known counterfactual principle of grounding in a new kind of way by appealing to properties and the work they do. I then show that this new way of arguing for this principle is superior to another way, describe some of the work this principle can do, defend my use of this principle, and conclude with remarks on why principles like it are needed.

Cheerfulness and seriousness are an integral part of philosophizing in Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Jaspers. The main reason for this lies in the fact that both regard philosophers as being inseparable from their respective philosophies. Yet also the fact that their respective philosophies have multiple meanings shifts the focus away from truth toward style and rhetoric, that is, from the true and false to mood and laughter as well as to passionate interpretation and playful conversation.

Michèle Le Dœuff considers the relationship between Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir as a paradigmatic case of what she calls an "erotico-theoretical transference" relationship: De Beauvoir devoted herself to Sartre theoretically by adopting his existentialist perspective for the analysis of reality in general and the analysis of women's oppression in particular. The latter is especially strange since Sartre used strongly sexist metaphors and adopted a macho attitude towards women. In her book Hipparchia's Choice, Le Dœuff speaks in this context (...) of "theoretical masculinism." She convincingly shows in this book that Sartre without using images could not have closed his existentialist philosophy: without the feminine drawback he would not have been able to explain why man cannot become god. Sartre not only understands gaining knowledge as a rape of a woman he also fears that the possessed feminine (body) could reverse its position from being dominated to the dominating force by appropriating the masculine through slime. In Being and Nothingness Sartre states that "slime is the revenge of the In-itself. A sickly–sweet, feminine revenge." Despite of the fact that De Beauvoir used Sartre's heterosexist ontology and metaphysics she managed to provide a highly influential depiction of women's condition and offered an original approach to the understanding of selfhood which places woman inside the subject. (shrink)

The statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it fail to share all of their kind and modal properties. Therefore, by Leibniz’s Law, the statue is not the lump. Question: What grounds the kind and modal differences between the statue and the lump? In virtue of what is it that the lump of clay, but not the statue, can survive being smashed? This is the grounding problem. Now a number of solutions to the grounding problem require that we substantially (...) revise our view of reality. In this paper, I provide a solution to this problem that does not require such a revision. I then show how my solution to the grounding problem can solve a related problem and answer a related question. The upshot is that the solution I offer is not only non-revisionary, but also fruitful. (shrink)

Standard approaches to ontological simplicity focus either on the number of things or types a theory posits or on the number of fundamental things or types a theory posits. In this paper, I suggest a ground-theoretic approach that focuses on the number of something else. After getting clear on what this approach amounts to, I motivate it, defend it, and complete it.

The aim of this contribution is to critically explore the understanding, the goals and the meaning of education in the philosophy of education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his educational novel Emile: or On Education [Emile ou De l’éducation] (1762) he depicts his account of the natural education. Rousseau argues that all humans share one and the same development process which is independent of their social background. He regards education as an active process of perfection which is curiosity-driven and intrinsic to (...) each child. Rousseau’s educational goals are autarky, happiness and freedom. (shrink)

Drawing on findings from the study of prejudice and prejudice reduction, we identify a number of mechanisms through which religious communities may influence the intergroup attitudes of their members. We hypothesize that religious participation could in principle either reduce or promote prejudice with respect to any given target group. A religious community’s influence on intergroup attitudes will depend upon the specific beliefs, attitudes, and practices found within the community, as well as on interactions between the religious community and the larger (...) social environment in which it is embedded. Basing our proposals on findings from the literature on prejudice formation and prejudice reduction allows us to outline useful directions for future studies of religion and prejudice. (shrink)

In Nietzsche, ‘European nihilism’ has at its core valuelessness, meaninglessness and senselessness. This article argues that Nietzsche is not replacing God with the nothing, but rather that he regards ‘European nihilism’ as an ‘in-between state’ that is necessary for getting beyond Christian morality. An important characteristic of a Nietzschean philosopher is his ‘will to responsibility’. One of his responsibilities consists of the creation of the values and the concepts that are needed in order to overcome the intermediate state of nihilism. (...) For prevailing over nihilism in science, Nietzsche suggests drawing on philosophy for the creation of values and drawing on art in order to create beautiful surfaces that are based on these values. He regards science as a cultural system that rests on contingent grounds. Therefore, his work is concerned with the responsible construction of the narratives of science in such a way that they enhance agency and promote a life-affirming future. (shrink)

In this paper, I both propose and discuss a novel account of truthmaking. I begin by showing what truthmaking is not: it is not grounding and it is not correspondence. I then show what truthmaking is by offering an account that appeals both to grounding and what I call ‘deep correspondence’. After I present the account and show that it is an account that unifies, I put it to work by showing how it can overcome an objection to truthmaking, how (...) we can get truthmaking from correspondence, what it says about truthmaker necessitation, and how it can explain a connection between truthmaker maximalism and pluralism about truth. (shrink)

Divine Simplicity has it that God is absolutely simple. God exhibits no metaphysical complexity; he has neither proper parts nor distinct intrinsic properties. Recently, Jeffrey Brower has put forward an account of divine simplicity that has it that God is the truthmaker for all intrinsic essential predications about him. This allows Brower to preserve the intuitive thought that God is not a property but a concrete being. In this paper, I provide two objections to Brower’s account that are meant to (...) show that whatever merits this account of divine simplicity has, plausibility is not one of them. (shrink)

As it is presently employed, grounding permits grounding many things from one ground. In this paper, I show why this is a mistake by pushing for a uniqueness principle on grounding. After arguing in favor of this principle, I say something about it and kinds of grounding, discuss a similar principle, and consider its import on a formal feature of grounding, ontology, and ontological simplicity.

Ang papel na ito ay isang pilosopikong pagsusuri sa konsepto ng espasyo sa Pilipinong pananaw. Ang konsepto ng espasyo sa Pilipinong pananaw ay nagsisilbing dahilan para masabi nating tayo ay nagmamahal sa karunungang nagmula at pinagyaman ng kamalayang Pilipino. Ang konsepto ng espasyo rin ang nagpapatibay sa katwiran na naglalantad sa pangangailangan nang agarang pananaliksik ng karunungang nakaligtaan sa kanluran. Kung ang mga Hapon ay matagumpay na pinagmunihan ang 'espasyo' gamit ang mga konseptong basho, aidagara, at zettai mu tungo sa (...) pagbibigay diin sa pagkamakabayan, ang ‘espasyo’ ay magsisilbing gabay sa mga Pilipino na lumingon sa kanilang pinanggalingan upang bigyan ng linaw ang layunin sa bawat tangkang pagbuo ng masasabing makataong ‘pilosopiya natin’. Tungo sa makataong espasyo sa pag-iral ng tao, nais galugarin ng diskursong ito ang mga sumusunod na paksa: 1] Lugar ay Espasyo; 2] Sa Pagitan ng ‘Ako’ at ng ‘Ikaw’; 3] Espasyo Bilang Bukal ng Kaalaman at pagkatuto; 4] Pagbuo ng Makataong Espasyo at Pagbuwag sa mga Mapang-aping Espasyo; 5] Salaysay ng mga Karanasan Tungo sa paghulma ng Makataong Espasyo; 6] Espasyo ng/para sa mga Peminista?; 7] Sa Pagitan ng Namatay at ng Namatayan; 8] Saan Matatagpuan ang Kapayapaan? (shrink)

Truthmaker says that things, broadly construed, are the ontological grounds of truth and, therefore, that things make truths true. Recently, there have been a number of arguments purporting to show that if one embraces Truthmaker, then one ought to embrace Truthmaker Maximalism—the view that all non-analytic propositions have truthmakers. But then if one embraces Truthmaker, one ought to think that negative existentials have truthmakers. I argue that this is false. I begin by arguing that recent attempts by Ross Cameron and (...) Jonathan Schaffer to provide negative existentials with truthmakers fail. I then argue that the conditional—if one embraces Truthmaker, the one ought to embrace Truthmaker Maximalism—is false by considering worlds where very little, if anything at all, exists. The conclusion is that thinking that negative existentials do not have truthmakers, and therefore rejecting Truthmaker Maximalism, need not worry Truthmaker embracers. (shrink)

As I will use the term, an object is a mereological sum of some things just in case those things compose it simply in virtue of existing. In the first half of this paper, I argue that there are no sums. The key premise for this conclusion relies on a constraint on what, in certain cases, it takes for something to ground, or metaphysically explain, something else. In the second half, I argue that in light of my argument against sums, (...) Universalism, which is perhaps the most widely accepted answer to the Special Composition Question, is false. (shrink)

In an attempt to critically examine the effects of the abrupt shift from the traditional classroom-based education to distance education in the Philippines, this paper articulates pedagogical concepts that are necessary for a transformative and humanizing academic modalities despite the departure from the old approaches due to the unexpected rise of the new normal in education. I discuss a deconstructive, revolutionary, and inclusive pedagogy that aims to renew certain approaches in order to prevent educational paralysis and give way to alternative (...) avenues that best fit the current and future situations notwithstanding the challenges that this pluralistic age poses to every academic site. (shrink)

Disgust has been a perennial feature of art from medieval visions of hell to postmodern travesties. The purpose of this chapter is to chart various ways in which disgust functions in artworks both in terms of content and style, canvassing cases in which the content and/or style is literally disgusting in contrast to cases where the disgust serves to characterize the content, often for moral or political or broader cultural purposes.

"Ontology" focuses on three ways ground and ontology are said to relate. One way involves ground's ability to provide a safe and sane way of admitting certain kinds of things in our theories. Another way involves ground's ability to show how we should measure ontological simplicity. And a third way involves ground's ability to restrict what things or kinds of things can depend on other things or kinds.

What is Comparative Philosophy? -/- Synkretic: Journal of Indo-pacific Philosophy.

The curious case of Bronze Age Pervert (BAP, for short), of unfortunate name, or “handle,” in his world. Author of the self-published Bronze Age Mindset (2018), BAP is present in 4Chan discussion threads and on YouTube, and he produces weekly subscription-only podcasts with approximately 6,500 paying clients (I am among them). He was banned from Twitter but reinstated in December 2022, and he now has over 100,000 followers. A Google search turns up scores of articles addressing or discussing his work, (...) all written in palatable forms. But BAP’s own subjects and rhetoric are for adults only. Who is BAP, what does he espouse, and what compels the attention of orthodox Catholics? (shrink)

The heart of Aristotelian Logic is the square of opposition. This study engaged on further [re]investigation and meta-logical analysis of the validity of the square of opposition. Further, in this paper, it has been modestly established, with greater clarity, the exposition of the strengths, more than the presentation of the defects, loopholes and weaknesses, of the Aristotelian Logic in a descriptive and speculative manner. The unconcealment of the breakdown of the square of opposition marked a rupture and the opening of (...) avenues of alternative reasoning. The critical and analytical exposition of the loopholes of the square of opposition led to a realization that things around us could have been and still be different; and there could have been better alternative reasoning than what we have called, adopted, and worshipped [Greek] logic. Results show that the downfall of the oppositional relationships in the square of opposition provided a proof of the logical illusion of Aristotle or the loophole of Traditional Logic. The laws of opposition, that have been considered the measures of logically deductive inferences, are practically almost totally logical deceptions. By implication, if the laws of subcontrariety, contrariety, and subalternation [and may be contradiction] have collapsed, the square of opposition has also collapsed; hence, Aristotle‟s square of opposition is a fallacy. This means that the square of opposition has errors and in itself an error. (shrink)

The purpose of the study was to determine the demographic profiles in terms of age, sex, years in teaching, type of school and ethnicity, SOGIE, perception about the workplace climate in terms of the different gender prejudices faced by secondary science teachers at City of Dasmariñas, Cavite; the study aims to identify if there is a significant difference between perceptions of the participants about the gender prejudices when grouped according to demographic profile; determine if there is a substantial relationship between (...) SOGIE and perceptions about the gender prejudices. This study developed an action plan to promote awareness and make schools SOGIE-sensitive; the research design was quantitative, and an online questionnaire was the data-gathering tool. Descriptive statistics used were mean, median, and standard error; the second level was for relational statistics using Chi-square statistics, Mann-Whitney statistics, and Kruskal-Walli’s statistics. The study revealed that most science teachers in Dasmariñas City, Cavite, were female and young professionals. Science teachers at the secondary level have a diverse SOGIE; in addition, there is zero visibility for transgender people and intersex people. Generally, the secondary schools in the City of Dasmariñas, Cavite, are unsafe for people with diverse SOGIE, especially for transgender and intersex people. The study suggests that the action plan proposed in this study should be adopted by schools to address the issues of gender prejudices and to promote awareness of SOGIE. (shrink)

In Necessary Existence, Pruss and Rasmussen give an argument for a necessary being employing a modest causal principle. Here I note that, when applied to highly general and fundamental matters, the principle may well be false (or at least not so obvious).

In a 2014 paper in this journal, I put forward two objections to a version of divine simplicity I call ‘Divine Truthmaker Simplicity’. James Beebe and Timothy Pawl have come to Divine Truthmaker Simplicity’s defense. In this paper, I respond to Beebe and Pawl, consider an overlooked way of defending Divine Truthmaker Simplicity, and conclude by outlining an alternative account of God’s simplicity.

We created Justice: The Game, an educational, role-immersion game designed to be used in philosophy courses. We seek to describe Justice in sufficent detail so that it is understandable to readers not already familiar with role-immersion pedagogy. We hope some instructors will be sufficiently interested in using the game. In addition to describing the game we also evaluate it, thereby highlighting the pedagogical potential of role-immersion games designed to teach political philosophy. We analyze the game by drawing on our observations (...) as designers and playtesters of Justice, along with feedback from students obtained in focus-groups conducted shortly after playtesting ended. We present evidence that Justice, compared to conventional instructional methods alone, plausibly enhances student learning of philosophical skills and content by requiring them to practice those skills and put their content-area knowledge to use in a highly-motivating and engaging context. (shrink)

The growing proportion of elderly people in society, together with recent advances in robotics, makes the use of robots in elder care increasingly likely. We outline developments in the areas of robot applications for assisting the elderly and their carers, for monitoring their health and safety, and for providing them with companionship. Despite the possible benefits, we raise and discuss six main ethical concerns associated with: (1) the potential reduction in the amount of human contact; (2) an increase in the (...) feelings of objectification and loss of control; (3) a loss of privacy; (4) a loss of personal liberty; (5) deception and infantilisation; (6) the circumstances in which elderly people should be allowed to control robots. We conclude by balancing the care benefits against the ethical costs. If introduced with foresight and careful guidelines, robots and robotic technology could improve the lives of the elderly, reducing their dependence, and creating more opportunities for social interaction. (shrink)

Dialectics of Pedagogy: Implications of Paulo Freire's Philosophy of Transformative Education.

The dearth of resources inherent in the study of Logic effected and affected by lack of reading materials, the financial constraints characteristic of the plight of students, the utter difficulty in teaching the subject shorthanded by write-then-explain method, made possible this undertaking. This text is a compilation of scholarly works by noted logicians that have made their way through publication. This work pales in comparison to their works and no deliberate efforts were made to water-down portions of their book that (...) were not included herein. I beg one favor of my readers that this endeavor should not be interpreted as mimicry, instead as compilation with the purpose of putting together brilliant works for enlightenment of the young. Mere mention of the names of the authors that I have used in this project is not even Commensurate to the efforts they have laid. Notwithstanding this fact, it is out of deference and admiration that pages for bibliography are allotted. It is fervently prayed for that this work will ease the difficulty of comprehension on the part of students and likewise facilitate instruction because of its rudimentary and comprehensive substance. (shrink)

the proclivity of many people to classify human acts as good or bad calls into mind the import of ETHICS. The penchant for classification warrants the evaluation of the bases for saying that one is bad or good action. Normally, human act is ethical if it is in accordance with what one would relatively expect in view of the events or the circumstances and unethical if the action is not called for by the circumstances, or a person whose behavior is (...) disorderly and inconsistent. The same observations harbor on perception rather than on paradigms and frameworks which ethicists have somehow perfected to classify bad behavior into one division and good behavior into another. The study of ETHICS will therefore increase proficiency at least in moral decision making. Likewise, knowledge of the course will give students certain techniques for evaluating others’ action as moral or immoral, including their own. ETHICS is the science of action but the action herein alluded to is not the action that concerns those that are unconscious and spontaneous. Action here is that resulting from intellect and will herein referred to as human act. ETHICS is both a theoretical and a practical discipline. The language of ethics refers to rights, duties, and values. One of the goals of ethics is to explore the nature of moral experience, its universality, and its diversity. Another is to provide intellectual analysis of values, and value conflicts in order to define man’s duties. Also, it is oriented toward the determination of right decisions. In order to do that, it is necessary to go step by step, analyzing, first, the facts of the case, second, the values at stake, and third, the duties. In short, ETHICS has the very practical purpose of helping us to choose, decide, and act morally. It should enable us to discover defects in the action of others and to avoid defects in our own action. (shrink)

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) have been used, researched, and debated for many decades. It is a common practice in higher education institutions, with the supposed purpose of improving course quality and effectiveness, but with unintended consequences of encouraging and motivating poor teaching and causing grade inflation. There is strong evidence that SET “effectiveness” does not measure teaching effectiveness. This paper reviews empirical research examining common concerns about the usefulness (positive and negative) and accuracy of SETs. The findings reveal that (...) student satisfaction relates to their anticipated/expected grades in their courses; hence, they want to get good grades and their instructors want to get a good rating of SET, and this results in grade inflation. The key points are that SETs (1) allow students to speak their “mind”, (2) have no compelling correlation between quality of teaching and learning effectiveness, (3) reward easy, less demanding, and lazy teachers with a positive rating, (4) are biased against gender, attractiveness, ethnicity, race, etc., (5) are weaponized against “some” faculty members, and (6) are like asking convicts awaiting sentencing to evaluate the judge or jurors who convicted them. (shrink)

As a philosophy of mathematics, strict finitism has been traditionally concerned with the notion of feasibility, defended mostly by appealing to the physicality of mathematical practice. This has led the strict finitists to influence and be influenced by the field of computational complexity theory, under the widely held belief that this branch of mathematics is concerned with the study of what is “feasible in practice”. In this paper, I survey these ideas and contend that, contrary to popular belief, complexity theory (...) is not what the ultrafinitists think it is, and that it does not provide a theoretical framework in which to formalize their ideas —at least not while defending the material grounds for feasibility. I conclude that the subject matter of complexity theory is not proving physical resource bounds in computation, but rather proving the absence of exploitable properties in a search space. (shrink)

This text is the introduction to V. Amit & N. B. Salazar, Pacing Mobilities. Timing, Intensity, Tempo & Duration of Human Movements, New York/Oxford, Berghahn, 2020, 202 p. It is also available on Berghahn publisher website.

This thesis focuses on Abelard’s solution to the problem of understanding universals as presented in the Tractatus de Intellectibus. He examines this issue by asking what is understood when we consider the term ‘man’, a problem I call the ‘homo intelligitur [man is understood]’ problem. This is an important question, since earlier in the Treatise, Abelard states that understandings paying attention [attendens] to things otherwise than they are are empty, and thus, cannot be true. The challenge is therefore to explain (...) how understandings about universals, such as genera and species, can be sound, given that Abelard is a nominalist and, as such, does not believe in the existence of universal entities. His own answer to the problem is that such understandings attend to natures. However, since natures are, on his view, nothing more than the individuals they belong to, it is unclear how his solution is intended to work. I propose two ways to understand Abelard’s solution to the ‘homo intelligitur’ problem, identifying their respective merits and drawbacks. The first one is to treat ‘nature’ as meaning ‘status’. I explore this solution in Chapters 2 and 3, and conclude that while it has the advantage of establishing links between De Intellectibus and previous logical works by Abelard, it has some significant drawbacks, most notably that it is unclear how we can have epistemic access to status given that status are not things, which renders unclear how the criteria for the soundness of understandings can be met. The second one involves treating natures as referring to behaviors typical of members of a given genus or species. These behaviors come from the particular essential forms possessed by individuals, i.e. their differentiae understood as analogous to nuclear tropes in Peter Simons’ trope theory. I conclude that this solution is more intuitive than the first one and has the advantage of not depending on a specific interpretation of the evolution of Abelard’s thought. However, it is unclear how to treat behaviors and regularities in his ontology. (shrink)

W. Matthews Grant's "Dual Sources Account" aims at explaining how God causes all creaturely actions while leaving them free in a robust libertarian sense. It includes an account of predestination that is supposed to allow for the possibility that some created persons ultimately spend eternity in hell. I argue here that the resources Grant provides for understanding why God might permit created persons to end up in hell are, for two different reasons, insufficient. I then provide possible solutions to these (...) two problems, compatible with Grant's account overall, that help show why God might allow hell. (shrink)

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross‐cultural principles of law? In a between‐subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also (...) whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross‐culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

Despite considerable growth in understanding of various aspects of sporting and exercise embodiment over the last decade, in-depth investigations of embodied affectual experiences in running remain limited. Furthermore, within the corpus of literature investigating pleasure and the hedonic dimension in running, much of this research has focused on experiences of pleasure in relation to performance and achievement, or on specific affective states, such as enjoyment, derived after completing a run. We directly address this gap in the qualitative literature on sporting (...) and exercise embodiment by contributing novel insights on the mind-body pleasures of running via focusing analytic attention towards the pleasures recalled by runners as experienced during positive, rewarding running experiences. Applying conceptual insights drawn from sociological phenomenology, we analyse data from an in-depth, event-focused interview study with distance runners who reported positive, rewarding experiences in recent recreational runs. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we present findings in relation to three themes: (1) ‘running feels like it should’; (2) sensory engagements; and (3) time out. The study contributes fresh perspectives, both conceptually and in relation to data-collection approach, to a small literature on the lived experience of pleasure in sport, exercise and physical cultures. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

There has been considerable debate in legal philosophy about how to attribute purposes to rules. Separately, within cognitive science, there has been a growing body of research concerned with questions about how people ordinarily attribute purposes. Here, we argue that these two separate fields might be connected by experimental jurisprudence. Across four studies, we find evidence for the claim that people use the same criteria to attribute purposes to physical objects and to rules. In both cases, purpose attributions appear to (...) be governed not so much by original intention or by moral value as by current practice. We argue that these findings in the cognitive science of purpose attribution have implications for jurisprudential questions involving purposivist legal interpretation. (shrink)

Academic excellence and intelligence are commonly lauded as commendable attributes synonymous with success. However, a disconcerting trend has surfaced within educational institutions, challenging the prevailing narrative of scholastic accomplishment—smart shaming. This research delves into the increasing concern of smart shaming within educational settings, particularly at Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc., questioning the predominant emphasis on academic excellence and intelligence. A qualitative case study design, along with judgmental sampling, was employed to examine fifteen (15) student leaders who had experienced smart (...) shaming on campus. Thematic analysis revealed that sarcastic remarks including "edi wow," "Okay ikaw na matalino," "bidabida," and "sipsip" were a prevalent manifestation of smart shaming, adversely affecting emotional well-being, academic and leadership prowess, mental health, and self-perception. Coping mechanisms, predominantly centered around ignoring and focusing on goals, were identified. The findings underscore the imperative for educators to remain vigilant regarding instances of smart shaming in classrooms, promoting open communication to ensure student well-being. Additionally, guidance counselors play a pivotal role in aiding students in effectively navigating the repercussions of smart shaming. This study advocates for proactive programs and interventions to address and alleviate the deleterious effects of smart shaming on students. (shrink)

In discussing whether legal systems are necessarily coercive, legal philosophers usually appeal to thought experiments involving angels or other morally driven beings who need no coercion to organise their social lives. Such appeals have invited criticism. Critics have not only challenged the relevance of such thought experiments to our understanding of legal systems; they have also argued that, contrary to the intuitions of most legal philosophers, the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’ would not hold that there is law in a (...) society of angels because the view that law is necessarily coercive ‘enjoys widespread support among laypersons’. This is obviously an empirical claim. Critics, however, never systematically polled the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’. We boarded that bus. This article discusses findings from five empirical studies on the relationship between law and coercion. (shrink)

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)

Noel Carroll, a central figure in analytic (Anglo-American) philosophy of art, and spouse of renowned dance scholar Sally Banes (who co-authored several of these essays), offers us something remarkable in his new book—namely, a collection of thirty years of his theoretical essays and dance reviews. Carroll wrote some of the pieces while he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and there have been some dramatic changes since then in both the art world and Carroll’s philosophical views. (...) Thus, he modestly characterizes the book as “an archeological artifact” of a “somewhat confessional” variety (p. 267). Inspired by Carroll, I too will adopt an archeological stance, with a promise that the reader’s patience will be repaid with something surprising at the end of the dig. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider Noël Carroll’s Content Theory (CT) (2015) and argue that a key problem with CT is that it can be interpreted in two distinct ways: as a descriptive theory of aesthetic experience and as a normative prescriptive theory. Although CT is presented as a descriptive theory of experience, much of what Carroll says implies that CT can also be understood as a theory about how one ought to look at artworks. We argue that when understood as (...) a descriptive theory, CT fails to qualify as a meaningful theory of aesthetic experience. We then interpret the theory prescriptively. Ultimately, this second interpretation is also found lacking: if the aim of the theory is to instruct one on how to view art, it is no longer an attempt to characterize the experience of art. We conclude by arguing that the main flaw in CT is its approach: we cannot meaningfully characterize an experience by enumerating the objects that supposedly cause said experience, and any theory that takes such an approach is likely to be unsuccessful. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the possible thought experimenting qualities of Soren Kierkegaard's novel Fear and Trembling and in which way it can be explanatory. Kierkegaard's preference for pseudonyms, indirect communication, Socratic interrogation, and performativity are identified as features that provide the narrative with its thought experimenting quality. It is also proposed that this literary fiction functions as a Socratic-theological thought experiment due to its influences from both philosophy and theology. In addition, I suggest three functional levels of the fictional (...) narrative that, in different ways, influence its possible explanatory force. As a theoretical background for the investigation, two accounts of literary cognitivism are explored: Noel Carroll's Argument Account and Catherine Elgin's Exemplification Account. In relation to Carroll's proposal, I conclude that Fear and Trembling develops a philosophical argumentation that is dependent on the reader's own existential contribution. In relation to Elgin's thought, the relation between truth and explanatory force is acknowledged. At the end of the article, I argue that it is more accurate to see the explanatory force of Fear and Trembling in relation to its exploratory function. (shrink)

Medium specificity is a theory, or rather a cluster of arguments, in aesthetics that rests on the idea that media are the physical material that makes up artworks, and that this material contains specific and unique features capable of 1) differentiating media from one another, and 2) determining the aesthetic potential and goals of each medium. As such, medium specificity is essential for aestheticians interested in matters of aesthetic ontology and value. However, as Noël Carroll has vehemently and convincingly argued, (...) the theory of medium specificity is inherently flawed and its many applications in art history ill-motivated. Famously, he concluded that we should ‘forget the medium’ entirely. In this thesis, I reject his conclusion and argue that reconstructing a theory of medium specificity, while taking Carroll’s objections into account, is possible. To do so, I offer a reconceptualization of the main theoretical components of medium specificity and ground this new theory in empirical research. I first redefine the medium not as the physical material that makes up artworks but as sets of practices – not the material itself but how one uses the material. I then show that what makes media specific and unique is not certain physical features, but the human responses, which can be empirically investigated, to the combination of practices that constitute media. This relation is one of response-dependence, albeit of a novel kind, which I develop by appealing to social metaphysics. The resulting theory is more complex but also much more flexible and fine-grained than the original and provides insight into a variety of current aesthetic theories. (shrink)