What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

Law is ‘sovereign’, it has been said. Since the poet Pindar expressed this fulminating thought in the 6th century B.C., the whole western tradition, from Aristotle to Cicero, from Heidegger to Schmitt, hasn’t stopped raising questions about the ambivalent relationship connecting law, strength and violence...

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. Consequently, all your future behaviors and thoughts must also be predetermined and already exist in a future portion of (...) the static dimension of time in our block universe. Because consciousness must be an aspect of physical reality, then the physical reality of the brain must be capable of producing your subjective experience of the world. Our conscious subjective experience of ourselves and the world around us is a construct of our own brain’s neural network containing ideas and concepts representing the physical reality of the world and ourselves. Moreover, our conscious minds must exist at all points in our existence within our block universe whether our past, present or future selves, because our block universe always exists because nothing within physics can cause our universe not to exist in the absence of cause and effect in physics. One should be concerned with every moment of your conscious life to guard against conscious experiences you would not want endlessly repeated in our block universe. (shrink)

Philosophy in the West divides into three parts: Analytic Philosophy (AP), Continental Philosophy (CP), and History of Philosophy (HP). But all three parts are in a bad way. AP is sceptical about the claim that philosophy can be a science, and hence is uninterested in the real world. CP is never pursued in a properly theoretical way, and its practice is tailor-made for particular political and ethical conclusions. HP is mostly developed on a regionalist basis: (...) what is studied is determined by the nation or culture to which a philosopher belongs, rather than by the objective value of that philosopher’s work. Progress in philosophy can only be attained by avoiding these pitfalls. (shrink)

Analytic theology is often seen as an outgrowth of analytic philosophy of religion. It isn’t fully clear, however, whether it differs from analytic philosophy of religion in some important way. Is analytic theology really just a sub-field of analytic philosophy of religion, or can it be distinguished from the latter in virtue of fundamental differences at the level of subject matter or metholodology? These are pressing questions for the burgeoning field of analytic theology. The aim of this (...) article, then, will be to map out several forms that analytic theology might (and in some cases actually does) take before examining the extent to which each can be thought to be distinct from analytic philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This paper argues that early modern experimental philosophy emerged as the dominant member of a pair of methods in natural philosophy, the speculative versus the experimental, and that this pairing derives from an overarching distinction between speculative and operative philosophy that can be ultimately traced back to Aristotle. The paper examines the traditional classification of natural philosophy as a speculative discipline from the Stagirite to the seventeenth century; medieval and early modern attempts to articulate a scientia (...) experimentalis; and the tensions in the classification of natural magic and mechanics that led to the introduction of an operative part of natural philosophy in the writings of Francis Bacon and John Johnston. The paper concludes with a summary of the salient discontinuities between the experimental/speculative distinction of the mid-seventeenth century and its predecessors and a statement of the developments that led to the ascendance of experimental philosophy from the 1660s. (shrink)

The anglophone philosophy profession has a well-known problem with gender equity. A sig-nificant aspect of the problem is the fact that there are simply so many more male philoso-phers than female philosophers among students and faculty alike. The problem is at its stark-est at the faculty level, where only 22% - 24% of philosophers are female in the United States (Van Camp 2014), the United Kingdom (Beebee & Saul 2011) and Australia (Goddard 2008).<1> While this is a result of (...) the percentage of women declining at each point through-out the standard career trajectory, recent large-scale studies in the United States (Paxton et al. 2012) and Australia (Goddard et al. 2008) have identified a key drop-off point as the transi-tion between taking introductory classes and majoring in philosophy. So why do dispropor-tionately few female students choose to major in philosophy? (shrink)

Discussions of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Z tend to treat it either as an independent treatise on substance and essence or as preliminary to the main conclusions of the Metaphysics. I argue instead that Z is central to Aristotle’s project of first philosophy in the Metaphysics: the first philosopher seeks the first causes of being qua being, especially substances, and in Z, Aristotle establishes that essences or forms are the first causes of being of perceptible substances. I also argue that the (...) centrality of Z to first philosophy is compatible with its status as theology. (shrink)

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

An outstanding reference source to the key issues, problems, and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising 42 chapters it is essential reading for students and researchers within philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of psychology and ethics.

In this chapter, we start by spelling out three important features that distinguish expressives—utterances that express emotions and other affects—from descriptives, including those that describe emotions (Section 1). Drawing on recent insights from the philosophy of emotion and value (2), we show how these three features derive from the nature of affects, concentrating on emotions (3). We then spell out how theories of non-natural meaning and communication in the philosophy of language allow claims that expressives inherit their meaning (...) from specificities of emotions—namely, from being felt, evaluative attitudes toward propositional or non-propositional contents (4). (shrink)

Zero provides a challenge for philosophers of mathematics with realist inclinations. On the one hand it is a bona fide cardinal number, yet on the other it is linked to ideas of nothingness and non-being. This paper provides an analysis of the epistemology and metaphysics of zero. We develop several constraints and then argue that a satisfactory account of zero can be obtained by integrating an account of numbers as properties of collections, work on the philosophy of absences, and (...) recent work in numerical cognition and ontogenetic studies. (shrink)

The Gestalt psychologists adopted a set of positions on mind-body issues that seem like an odd mix. They sought to combine a version of naturalism and physiological reductionism with an insistence on the reality of the phenomenal and the attribution of meanings to objects as natural characteristics. After reviewing basic positions in contemporary philosophy of mind, we examine the Gestalt position, characterizing it m terms of phenomenal realism and programmatic reductionism. We then distinguish Gestalt philosophy of mind from (...) instrumentalism and computational functionalism, and examine Gestalt attributions of meaning and value to perceived objects. Finally, we consider a metatheoretical moral from Gestalt theory, which commends the search for commensurate description of mental phenomena and their physiological counterparts. (shrink)

This essay offers some reflections on Samir Okasha’s new monograph Agents and Goals in Evolution, his style of doing philosophy, and the broader philosophy of nature project of trying to make sense of agency and rationality as natural phenomena.

This article is in three parts. The first discusses trends in philosophy. The second defends reliance on intuitions in philosophy from some doubts that have recently been raised. The third discusses Philip Kitcher's contention that contemporary analytic philosophy does not have its priorities straight. While the three parts are independent, there is a common theme. Each part defends what is regarded as orthodoxy from attacks. Of course there are other reasonable challenges to philosophical methodology. The article's aim (...) is just to respond to some charges that have been made. (shrink)

The first part of the chapter surveys some of the main ways in which the Sorites Paradox has figured in arguments in practical philosophy in recent decades, with special attention to arguments where the paradox is used as a basis for criticism. Not coincidentally, the relevant arguments all involve the transitivity of value in some way. The second part of the chapter is more probative, focusing on two main themes. First, I further address the relationship between the Sorites Paradox (...) and the main arguments discussed in the first part, by elucidating in what sense they rely on (something like) tolerance principles. Second, I briefly discuss the prospect of rejecting the respective principles, aiming to show that we can do so for some of the arguments but not for others. The reason is that in the latter cases the principles do not function as independent premises in the reasoning but, rather, follow from certain fundamental features of the relevant scenarios. I also argue that not even adopting what is arguably the most radical way to block the Sorites Paradox – that of weakening the consequence relation – suffices to invalidate these arguments. (shrink)

The theory of knowledge in early twentieth-century Anglo American philosophy was oriented toward phenomenally described cognition. There was a healthy respect for the mind-body problem, which meant that phenomena in both the mental and physical domains were taken seriously. Bertrand Russell's developing position on sense-data and momentary particulars drew upon, and ultimately became like, the neutral monism of Ernst Mach and William James. Due to a more recent behaviorist and physicalist inspired "fear of the mental", this development has been (...) down-played in historical work on early analytic philosophy. Such neglect assumes that the "linguistic turn" is a proper and permanent effect of twentieth-century philosophy, an assumption that distorts early analytic historiography, and begs a substantive philosophical question about thought and cognition. (shrink)

Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to debates concerning general scientific methodology and theory choice, the demarcation of science from non-science, the nature of probability and quantum mechanics, and the methodology of the social sciences. His work is notable for its wide influence both within the philosophy of science, within science itself, and within a broader social context. Popper’s early work attempts to solve the problem (...) of demarcation and offer a clear criterion that distinguishes scientific theories from metaphysical or mythological claims. Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival or by maintaining the theory as is and changing an auxiliary hypothesis. In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions. While Popper recognizes that scientists can and do hold onto theories in the face of failed predictions when there are no predictively superior rivals to turn to. He holds that scientific practice is characterized by its continual effort to test theories against experience and make revisions based on the outcomes of these tests. By contrast, theories that are permanently immunized from falsification by the introduction of untestable ad hoc hypotheses can no longer be classified as scientific. Among other things, Popper argues that his falsificationist proposal allows for a solution of the problem of induction, since inductive reasoning plays no role in his account of theory choice. Along with his general proposals regarding falsification and scientific methodology, Popper is notable for his work on probability and quantum mechanics and on the methodology of the social sciences. Popper defends a propensity theory of probability, according to which probabilities are interpreted as objective, mind-independent properties of experimental setups. Popper then uses this theory to provide a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, though its applicability goes beyond this specific case. With respect to the social sciences, Popper argued against the historicist attempt to formulate universal laws covering the whole of human history and instead argued in favor of methodological individualism and situational logic. Table of Contents 1. Background 2. Falsification and the Criterion of Demarcation a. Popper on Physics and Psychoanalysis b. Auxiliary and Ad Hoc Hypotheses c. Basic Sentences and the Role of Convention d. Induction, Corroboration, and Verisimilitude 3. Criticisms of Falsificationism 4. Realism, Quantum Mechanics, and Probability 5. Methodology in the Social Sciences 6. Popper’s Legacy 7. References and Further Reading a. Primary Sources b. Secondary Sources -/- . (shrink)

That philosophy is an outlier in the humanities when it comes to the underrepresentation of women has been the occasion for much discussion about possible effects of subtle forms of prejudice, including implicit bias and stereotype threat. While these ideas have become familiar to the philosophical community, there has only recently been a surge of interest in acquiring field-specific data. This paper adds to quantitative findings bearing on hypotheses about the effects of unconscious prejudice on two important stages along (...) career pathways: tenure-track hiring and early career publishing. (shrink)

I propose an approach to naturalized philosophy of science that takes the social nature of scientific practice seriously. I criticize several prominent naturalistic approaches for adopting "cognitive individualism", which limits the study of science to an examination of the internal psychological mechanisms of scientists. I argue that this limits the explanatory capacity of these approaches. I then propose a three-level model of the social nature of scientific practice, and use the model to defend the claim that scientific knowledge is (...) socially produced. (shrink)

Perception is the ultimate source of our knowledge about contingent facts. It is an extremely important philosophical development that starting in the last quarter of the twentieth century, philosophers have begun to change how they think of perception. The traditional view of perception focussed on sensory receptors; it has become clear, however, that perceptual systems radically transform the output of these receptors, yielding content concerning objects and events in the external world. Adequate understanding of this process requires that we think (...) of perception in new ways—how it operates, the differences among the modalities, and integration of content provided by the individual senses. Philosophers have developed new analytic tools, and opened themselves up to new ways of thinking about the relationship of perception to knowledge. The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception is a collection of entries by leading researchers that reviews these new directions in philosophical thought. The Introduction to the Handbook reviews the history of the subject from its beginnings in ancient Greece to the nineteenth century, and the way that science and philosophy have together produced new conceptions during the last hundred years. It shows how the new thinking about perception has led to a complex web of theories. (shrink)

This paper outlines and discusses the relative merits and problems of two current interpretations of Philosophy of Information (PI), the metaphysical approach and the analytical approach. The paper argues that both approaches complement one another, being normative and mutually compatible.

In this entry, we survey key discussions on the role of narrative in theology and philosophy of religion. We begin with epistemological questions about whether and how narrative offers genuine understanding of reality. We explore how narrative intersects with the problems of evil and divine hiddenness. We discuss narrative's role in theological reflection and practice in general, and in black and feminist theologies specifically. We close by briefly exploring the role of narrative in theorization about life's meaning.

Over recent decades, pain has received increasing attention as – with ever greater sophistication and rigour – theorists have tried to answer the deep and difficult questions it poses. What is pain’s nature? What is its point? In what sense is it bad? The papers collected in this volume are a contribution to that effort ...

This paper presents social and political dimensions of forgiveness within Jacques Derrida’s philosophy. Derrida’s philosophy of forgiveness is an example of how philosophy can help us understand and resolve contemporary social and political issues. Derrida believes that traditional concept of forgiveness should be broadened beyond the bounds of the rational and the imaginable. According to Derrida, traditional concept of forgiveness needs rethinking because of the phenomenon of proliferation of scenes of forgiveness after the Second World War that (...) produced globalization of forgiveness and trivialized and decharacterized this term. According to Derrida, the act of forgiveness can only be thought beyond the limits of common sense and in the space of the impossible, and that is the forgiveness of something that common sense cannot forgive. Derrida’s philosophy of forgiveness has wide social and political implications as it transcends binary oppositions: present/past, self/other, friend/enemy and so forth. All concepts within Derrida’s philosophy of politics (friendship, enemy, hospitality, forgiveness, justice, and so on) are significant for societies eroded with traumas of wars and ethno-national divisions and conflicts. (shrink)

Religious faith may manifest itself, among other things, as a mode of seeing the ordinary world, which invests that world imaginatively with an unseen depth of divine intention and spiritual significance. While such seeing may well be truthful, it is also unavoidably constructive, involving the imagination in its philosophical sense of the capacity to organize underdetermined or ambiguous sense date into a whole or gestalt. One of the characteristic ways in which biblical narratives inspire and teach is by renewing their (...) characters’ and readers’ imagination. The texts do so not inexorably but in a similar way as works of art. This paper therefore investigates the ways in which works of art engage and develop the imagination, and thereby enable renewed perceptual and cognitive engagement with the world. The paper introduces predictive processing as a helpful psychological theory for analyzing this dynamic, and outlines questions for further research. (shrink)

Black holes are arguably the most extraordinary physical objects we know in the universe. Despite our thorough knowledge of black hole dynamics and our ability to solve Einstein’s equations in situations of ever increasing complexity, the deeper implications of the very existence of black holes for our understanding of space, time, causality, information, and many other things remain poorly understood. In this paper I survey some of these problems. If something is going to be clear from my presentation, I hope (...) it will be that around black holes science and metaphysics become more interwoven than anywhere else in the universe. (shrink)

What is a philosophy class like? What roles do teachers and students play? Questions like these have been answered time and again by philosophers using images and metaphors. As philosophers continue to develop pedagogical approaches in a more conscious way, it is worth evaluating traditional metaphors used to understand and structure philosophy classes. In this article, we examine two common metaphors—the sage on the stage, and philosophy as combat—and show why they fail pedagogically. Then we propose five (...) metaphors—teaching philosophy as world-traveling, wondering, conducting an orchestra, storytelling, and coaching—that can better respond to the needs of increasingly diverse student bodies. Further, these metaphors find their ground in long-standing beliefs about what philosophy is, how it is done, and what it can do for those willing to engage in it. While no single one of them is comprehensive, we think that these models can help us enliven our own thinking about our teaching and the roles we and our students play in our classrooms. (shrink)

This is one of several papers by the author that seek to throw light on the psychology of philosophers. In this paper, certain of the defining properties of clinical narcissism are discussed in their application to the ideological position-taking character of many philosophers and the philosophies they propound. ●●●●● -/- 2022 UPDATE: The approach of this paper has been updated and developed further in Chapters 1 and 2 of the author’s 2021 book _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and (...) Meaning_. The book is available both in a printed edition (under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6 from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers) and an Open Access eBook edition (available under the book's title through Philpapers and other philosophy archives). (shrink)

If you’ve got millions of dollars to donate, don’t donate them to academic philosophy. Producing philosophical articles and books faces diminishing returns and diverts money and attention from more important causes. Many philosophy books and articles contradict each other; at best, only some can be correct. Philosophy classes are poor at instilling critical thinking skills. Resources that would be spent on philosophy would be better spent elsewhere.

The study of color expanded rapidly in the 20th century. With this expansion came fragmentation, as philosophers, physicists, physiologists, psychologists, and others explored the subject in vastly different ways. There are at least two ways in which the study of color became contentious. The first was with regard to the definitional question: what is color? The second was with the location question: are colors inside the head or out in the world? In this chapter, we summarize the most prominent answers (...) that color scientists and philosophers gave to the definitional and location questions in the 20th century. We identify some of the different points at which their work intersected, as well as the most prominent schisms between them. One overarching theme of the chapter is the surprising proliferation of different views on color. Whereas some assume that progress in science must take the form of convergence, the 20th century history of color exhibited a marked divergence in views. This chapter leaves it an open question whether an ultimate unification of views is possible, or whether the only thing that ties together the study of “color” is the shared inheritance of a word. (shrink)

As Kevin Mulligan, more than anyone else, has demonstrated, there is a distinction within the philosophy of the German-speaking world between two principal currents: of idealism / transcendentalism, characteristic of Northern Germany; and of realism / objectivism, characteristic of Austria and the South. We explore some of the implications of this distinction with reference to the influence of Austrian (and German) philosophy on philosophical developments in Hungary, focusing on the work of Ákos von Pauler, and especially on Pauler’s (...) reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. (shrink)

German supporters of the Kantian philosophy in the late 19th century took one of two forks in the road: the fork leading to Baden, and the Southwest School of neo-Kantian philosophy, and the fork leading to Marburg, and the Marburg School, founded by Hermann Cohen. Between 1876, when Cohen came to Marburg, and 1918, the year of Cohen's death, Cohen, with his Marburg School, had a profound influence on German academia.

This article, addressed to Yoga Therapists, sorts out the historical roots of our idea of Yoga, elucidates the colonial interference and distortion of Yoga, and shows that trauma and therapy are the primary focus of Yoga. However, unlike most philosophies of therapy, Yoga's solution is primarily moral philosophical---Yoga itself being a basic ethical theory, in addition to Virtue Theory, Consequentialism and Deontology. This article goes some way to elucidating that it is quite ironic (and absurd) that many feel the need (...) to bring being “trauma-informed” into the title of Yoga education. That’s like the vacuous “chai tea” moniker (“chai” being the Hindi word for tea). Decolonizing our understanding of Yoga involves retrieving the original theory as the primary explanation of the topic, which allows us to understand how various activities, called "yoga," can be ways of practicing the moral philosophy of Yoga. The idea that "yoga" means many things and projects relies upon a contra logical methodology of interpretation which violates constraints of basic reasoning. Putting aside interpretation for explication is part of critical thinking but also our own self therapy. (Originally published in Yoga Therapy Today, a publication of the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Shared with permission.). (shrink)

Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology—the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. After a brief overview of the field, the book progresses systematically while placing central ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context. The chapters cover the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, (...) Bayesian epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies. Along the way, instructors and students will encounter a wealth of additional resources and tools: chapter learning outcomes, key terms, images of philosophers and related art, useful diagrams and tables, boxes containing excerpts and other supplementary material, questions for reflection, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary. For an undergraduate survey epistemology course, Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology is ideal when used as a main text paired with primary sources and scholarly articles. For an introductory philosophy course, select book chapters are best used in combination with chapters from other books in the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series (edited by Christina Hendricks). (shrink)

The paper seeks to indicate ways in which the crude distinction between Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy may have to be amended in light of recent developments in Eastern Europe. As is well known, the philosophy of science is to no small part a product of the universities of the Habsburg Empire (in Vienna, Prague, Lemberg/Lwow, etc.). Logic, too, has played a more significant role in Eastern Europe (not least in Poland) than in the philosophical cultures of Germany or (...) France. For these and other reasons, a shift in the center of gravity of Continental philosophy is currently being realized, as younger Eastern European philosophers in newly liberalized institutions begin to return to their roots in their native pre-Communist intellectual traditions. (shrink)

A brief primer contrasting conservativism from progressivism, and outlining the major schools of conservative thought.

In this paper I respond to and elaborate on some of the ideas put forth on my book The Philosophy of Curiosity (2012) as well as its follow-up “Curiosity and Ignorance” (2016) by Nenad Miščević, Erhan Demircioğlu, Mirela Fuš, Safi ye Yiğit, Danilo Šuster, Irem Günhan Altıparmak, and Aran Arslan.

Broadly speaking, two views of modernity are prevalent in contemporary debates. According to the first view, i.e. “modernization theory,” there is one single form of modernity, which is tantamount to liberal, capitalist modernity. The West has already and fully achieved modernity; non-Western societies have lagged behind and must simply catch up with the West. In contrast, according to the second view, “post-colonial theory,” there is no such thing as modernity. What the West erroneously calls “modernity” is nothing but a highly (...) parochial way of thought, and of economic and political organization, that developed by accident first in the West and then by the exercise of military violence or economic power was subsequently “universalized.” In this chapter, I argue that Hegel, read properly, provides a third conception of modernity, one which, contrary to the modernization theory, respects differences between societies, and yet, contrary to post-colonial theory, does not engage in dividing the human species into fundamentally different or incommensurate groups. I argue that Hegel’s theory of modernity must be sought at the conjunction of the Science of Logic (specifically the logic of the Concept) and the Philosophy of Right. I then elaborate on Hegel’s theory of modernity, thus construed. (shrink)

The question on the essence of man and his relationship to nature is certainly one of the most important themes in the philosophy of Hans Jonas. One of the ways by which Jonas approaches the issue consists in a comparison between the contemporary interpretation of man and forms of wisdom such as those conveyed by ancient Greek philosophy and the Jewish tradition. The reconstruction and discussion of these frameworks play a fundamental role in Jonas’s critique of the modern (...) mind. In the first section I introduce the anthropological problem in Hans Jonas’s oeuvre. Moreover, I clarify why it becomes essential for Jonas to resort to different forms of traditional wisdom. In the second and third sections I try to give an account (as complete as possible) of the two generalisations which Jonas shapes in order to criticise the modern concepts of man and nature. In the last section I show how Jonas links these generalisations to his own philosophical assessment of modernity. Finally, I focus on his methodology, which exemplifies how critical thinking may arise from a reconsideration of traditional contents. (shrink)

Memory is studied across a bewildering range of disciplines and subdisciplines in the neural, cognitive, and social sciences, and the term covers a wide range of related phenomena. In an integrative spirit, this chapter examines two case studies in memory research in which empirically-informed philosophy and philosophically informed sciences of the mind can be mutually informative, such that the interaction between psychology and philosophy can open up new research problems—and set new challenges—for our understanding of certain aspects of (...) memory. In each case, there is already enough interdisciplinary interaction on specific issues to give some confidence in the potential productivity of mutual exchange: but in each case, residual gulfs in research style and background assumptions remain to be addressed. (shrink)

It would be unkind but not inaccurate to say that most experimental philosophy is just psychology with worse methods and better theories. In Experimental Ethics: Towards an Empirical Moral Philosophy, Christoph Luetge, Hannes Rusch, and Matthias Uhl set out to make this comparison less invidious and more flattering. Their book has 16 chapters, organized into five sections and bookended by the editors’ own introduction and prospectus. Contributors hail from four countries (Germany, USA, Spain, and the United Kingdom) and (...) five disciplines (philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, economics, and sociology). While the chapters are of mixed quality and originality, there are several fine contributions to the field. These especially include Stephan Wolf and Alexander Lenger’s sophisticated attempt to operationalize the Rawlsian notion of a veil of ignorance, Nina Strohminger et al.’s survey of the methods available to experimental ethicists for studying implicit morality, Fernando Aguiar et al.’s exploration of the possibility of operationalizing reflective equilibrium in the lab, and Nikil Mukerji’s careful defusing of three debunking arguments about the reliability of philosophical intuitions. (shrink)

n this article, I try to defend the thesis that imagination against reason, moral progress through imagination not the reason, the emergence of literary culture after philosophical culture from Hegel onwards, contingency of language, the usefulness of literature (poetry, novels and stories, etc.) in enhancing empathy with one another and ultimately reducing philosophy to poetry in Richard Rorty's writings point to one thing: the priority of literature to philosophy. The literary or post-physical culture that Rorty defends is opposed (...) to the Enlightenment and the philosophical and religious culture. Rorty prefers literary culture among the religious culture and philosophical culture. The literary culture Rorty envisages is a radically historicist and nominalist one. Rorty’s romanticised version of pragmatism aims precisely at dealing with this literary or post-physical culture or, in generally, the literature. (shrink)

This paper is based on a criterion recently proposed by Richard Fumerton for demarcating philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I suggest to extend it to a demarcation criterion between philosophy and science in general, and put it in the context of the historical changes of boundaries between the philosophical and the scientifi c fi eld. I point to a number of philosophical claims and approaches that have been made utterly obsolete by the advancement of science, and conjecture (...) that a similar thing may happen in the future with today’s philosophy of mind: under the supposition that cognitive science manages to progress very successfully in a certain direction, our concepts for mental states could change, and the type of philosophical interest we put in them, thus reshaping thewhole debate on the subject. (shrink)

This introductory article outlines how this special issue contributes to existing scholarship that calls for a rethinking and re-evaluation of common assumptions about early modern philosophy. One way of challenging existing narratives is by questioning what role systems or systematicity play during this period. Another way of rethinking early modern philosophy is by considering assumptions about the role of philosophy itself and how philosophy can effect change in those who form philosophical beliefs or engage in philosophical (...) argumentation. A further way of advancing early modern scholarship is by examining the tight links between early modern views on metaphysics and epistemology, on the one hand, and moral, social, and political philosophy, on the other hand. Moreover, there are ongoing debates whether and how the traditional distinction between rationalism and empiricism, which has been questioned for several reasons, should be replaced. It has been proposed to replace it with a distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy, but this distinction cannot easily accommodate early modern debates concerning moral, social, and political philosophy. In addition to highlighting several ways how early modern philosophy has and can be rethought, we summarize how the papers in this special issue contribute to these ongoing efforts. (shrink)

This article aims to present a detailed analysis of the “Christian natural philosophy” elaborated by the German humanist philosopher and theologian Otto Casmann (1562–1607) in his various works. To this end, Casmann’s general idea of philosophia Christiana is discussed and critically evaluated. Regarding natural philosophy, or physics, attention is paid mainly to topics such as cosmogony and cosmology, which Casmann promised to have developed biblically and independently of the pagan (namely Aristotelian) tradition. However, when Casmann’s natural philosophy (...) is analyzed in detail, his resolute emphasis on the literal reading of the Bible, the cornerstone of his entire concept, turns out to be problematic. Similarly, despite his resolutions, his natural‑philosophical views are, to a considerable extent, still dependent on Aristotelian terms and concepts. (shrink)

It is no surprise that the philosophy of religion, the many disciplines counted within the study of religion and theology, and religion-specific studies, all have their own methods and interests, and often proceed necessarily as conversations among small groups of experts. But the intellectual cogency and credibility of such studies also entails a problematization of the boundaries that divide them. While disciplinary distinctions are necessary and valuable, a freer flow of ideas and questions across boundaries is to the benefit (...) of all concerned. In particular, the philosophy of religion proceeds more fruitfully if, among its several dimensions, it is also intentionally comparative and inter-religious, vulnerable to the questions raised by insiders to traditions, and open to the implications of ideas for religious practice. (shrink)