Consider the kinds of macroscopic concrete objects that common sense and the sciences allege to exist: tables, raindrops, tectonic plates, galaxies, and the rest. Are there any such things? Opinions differ. Ontological liberals say they do; ontological radicals say they don't. Liberalism seems favored by its plausible acquiescence to the dictates of common sense abetted by science; radicalism by its ontological parsimony. Priority theorists claim we can have the virtues of both views. They hold that tables, raindrops, etc., exist, but (...) they aren't fundamental. The ontological liberal's ontology provides the correct inventory of existent individuals. The ontological radical's more restricted ontology provides the correct inventory of fundamental individuals. The priority theorist claims that the derivative individuals are "no addition in being" to the fundamental ones, so we can have our cake and eat it too. It would be nice if priority theorists were right. In this paper I argue, with regret, that they are not. One upshot is that the sort of explanations which underwrite the priority theorist's distinction between fundamental and derivative individuals do not mitigate our ontological commitments. Another is that we still have to choose between the charms of liberalism and radicalism. (shrink)

John Searle has proposed one of the most influential contemporary accounts of social ontology. According to Searle, institutional facts are created by the collective assignment of a specific kind of function —status-function— to pre-existing objects. Thus, a piece of paper counts as money in a certain context because people collectively recognize it as money, and impose a status upon it, which in turn enables that piece of paper to deliver certain functions (means of payment, etc.). The first part of this (...) essay presents Searle’s theory of social ontology and summarizes his views on money. The second part centers on criticisms of his views and compares his theory with its main competitors, including the theories of Tuomela, Guala and Hindriks, and Smit, Buekens and Duplessis. The conclusion attempts to see what may remain of Searle’s theory after careful examination. (shrink)

This paper establishes a sound and complete semantics for the impure logic of ground. Fine (Review of Symbolic Logic, 5(1), 1–25, 2012a) sets out a system for the pure logic of ground, one in which the formulas between which ground-theoretic claims hold have no internal logical complexity; and it provides a sound and complete semantics for the system. Fine (2012b) [§§6-8] sets out a system for an impure logic of ground, one that extends the rules of the original pure system (...) with rules for the truth-functional connectives, the first-order quantifiers, and λ-abstraction. However, no semantics has yet been provided for this system. The present paper partly fills this lacuna by providing a sound and complete semantics for a system GG containing the truth-functional operators that is closely related to the truth-functional part of the system of Fine (2012b). (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in the "Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics", often refers to contradictions as deserving special study. He is said to have predicted that there will be mathematical investigations of calculi containing contradictions and that people will pride themselves on having emancipated themselves from consistency. This paper examines a way of taking this prediction seriously. It starts by demonstrating that the easy way of understanding the role of contradictions in a discourse, namely in terms of pure convention within a (...) specific linguistic community, is naive and therefore to be avoided. A number of steps will then be taken to formulate and justify what will be called a ‘containment-account’ of contradiction. This term refers to a way of understanding how a contradiction in a discourse can be contained without allowing it to infect the entire discourse with inconsistency. The account builds on work done by N. Rescher and involves complex ontologies that are either over-determined or under-determined at some points. These worlds are such that, for some P, they allow us to deny simultaneously both that P and that -P. They likewise allow us to hold both that P and that -P. The ontological status of P and that of -P are considered independent issues, so as to block the inference from P and -P to the conjunction (P & -P). In this way, the task of containment is carried out by the complexity of the ontology determining the possible worlds under consideration. The paper proceeds by countering the objection that such possible worlds are useless fictions. This is carried out by highlighting three significant areas of application, one in philosophy of science, one in philosophy of religion, and one in the area of epistemology. In general, one may say that, in some language-games, a contradiction can be a useful instrument to attest that rationality goes beyond ratiocination, in other words to indicate that there is more to discourse and practice than what can be expressed in precise algorithmic trees. The upshot of the entire argument is that the proposed ‘containment-account’ of contradiction can be an adequate illustration of how Wittgenstein’s prediction is not sterile, but a possible source of inspiration. (shrink)

The idea that some objects are metaphysically “cheap” has wide appeal. An influential version of the idea builds on abstractionist views in the philosophy of mathematics, on which numbers and other mathematical objects are abstracted from other phenomena. For example, Hume’s Principle states that two collections have the same number just in case they are equinumerous, in the sense that they can be correlated one-to-one: (HP) #xx=#yy iff xx≈yy. The principal aim of this article is to use the notion of (...) grounding to develop this sort of abstractionism. The appeal to grounding enables a unified response to the two main challenges that confront abstractionism. First, we must explicate the metaphor of meta- physical “cheapness.” Second, we must rebut the “bad company” objection, which rejects abstraction principles like (HP) as tarnished by their similarity to inconsistent principles like Frege’s Basic Law V. By enforcing a simple requirement that all abstraction be properly grounded, we propose a unified solution to these two hard, and prima facie unrelated, problems. On our view, grounded abstraction simultaneously ensures “cheap” abstracta and permissible abstraction. (shrink)

Quassim Cassam has argued that psychological and epistemological analyses of conspiracy theories threaten to overlook the political nature of such theories. According to Cassam, conspiracy theories are a form of political propaganda. I develop a limited critique of Cassam's analysis.This paper advances two core theses. First, acceptance of conspiracy theories requires a rejection of epistemic authority that renders conspiracy theorists susceptible to co-option by certain political programs while insulating such programs from criticism. I argue that the contrarian nature of conspiracy (...) theories partially accounts for the prominence of such theories in populist movements.Second, the contrarian nature of conspiracy theories partially accounts for their attractiveness, especially among those to whom populism already appeals. I argue that for those who resent what appears from their perspective as the shaping of the epistemic landscape by alien perspectives, conspiracy theorizing may facilitate the reassertion of epistemic autonomy. (shrink)

Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink over the past few years exploring the nature and significance of grounding. Kit Fine has made several seminal contributions to this discussion, including an exact treatment of the formal features of grounding [Fine, 2012a]. He has specified a language in which grounding claims may be expressed, proposed a system of axioms which capture the relevant formal features, and offered a semantics which interprets the language. Unfortunately, the semantics Fine offers faces a number of (...) problems. In this paper, I review the problems and offer an alternative that avoids them. I offer a semantics for the pure logic of ground that is motivated by ideas already present in the grounding literature, and for which a natural axiomatization capturing central formal features of grounding is sound and complete. I also show how the semantics I offer avoids the problems faced by Fine’s semantics. (shrink)

Though the study of grounding is still in the early stages, Kit Fine, in ”The Pure Logic of Ground”, has made a seminal attempt at formalization. Formalization of this sort is supposed to bring clarity and precision to our theorizing, as it has to the study of other metaphysically important phenomena, like modality and vagueness. Unfortunately, as I will argue, Fine ties the formal treatment of grounding to the obscure notion of a weak ground. The obscurity of weak ground, together (...) with its centrality in Fine’s system, threatens to undermine the extent to which this formalization offers clarity and precision. In this paper, I show how to overcome this problem. I describe a system, the logic of strict ground (LSG) and demonstrate its adequacy; I specify a translation scheme for interpreting Fine’s weak grounding claims; I show that the interpretation verifies all of the principles of Fine’s system; and I show that derivability in Fine’s system can be exactly characterized in terms of derivability in LSG. I conclude that Fine’s system is reducible to LSG. (shrink)

This paper explores how realism is crucial in understanding rule-following. The strategy involves starting from what has been achieved by Wittgenstein and others as regards semantic normativity and then applying it to other areas, including moral deliberation. The result shows that realism in rule-following involves not only the weak claim that rules are independent of the individual rule-follower, as conventions are. It involves also the stronger claim that conventional rules are constrained by non-conventional constraints. These constraints depend neither on the (...) individual nor on the group. They arise from the nature of things. Human rule-followers are constrained first by being material beings, secondly by being living organisms, and thirdly by being rational. (shrink)

This paper describes the ways in which trolls and bots impede the acquisition of knowledge online. I distinguish between three ways in which trolls and bots can impede knowledge acquisition, namely, by deceiving, by encouraging misplaced skepticism, and by interfering with the acquisition of warrant concerning persons and content encountered online. I argue that these threats are difficult to resist simultaneously. I argue, further, that the threat that trolls and bots pose to knowledge acquisition goes beyond the mere threat of (...) online misinformation, or the more familiar threat posed by liars offline. Trolls and bots are, in effect, fake persons. Consequently, trolls and bots can systemically interfere with knowledge acquisition by manipulating the signals whereby individuals acquire knowledge from one another online. I conclude with a brief discussion of some possible remedies for the problem of fake persons. (shrink)

The chapter traces the history of psychiatric ethics with a focus on the emergence of autonomy and how assumptions and thresholds surrounding informed consent and decision-making capacity have changed over the centuries. Innovators like Philippe PInel and William Tuke are featured in this account of how the 'mad' and the abuses of the 'domestication paradigm' of madness eventually gave way to more humanitarian approaches of treating the 'mad', like moral treatment. The chapter closes with a brief reflection regarding the limits (...) of autonomy and the decline of paternalism in psychiatric ethics. (shrink)

A raft of new philosophical problems concerning truth have recently been discovered by several theorists. These problems concern the question of how ascriptions of truth are to be grounded. Most previous commentators have taken the problems to shed light on the theory of ground. In this paper, I argue that they also shed light on the theory of truth. In particular, I argue that the notion of ground can be deployed to clearly articulate one strand of deflationary thinking about truth, (...) according to which truth is “metaphysically lightweight.” I offer a ground-theoretic explication of the lightness of truth and show how it yields a novel solution to the problems concerning how truth is grounded. So, the theory of truth and the theory of ground interact fruitfully: we can apply the notion of ground to offer a clear explication of the deflationist claim that truth is “metaphysically lightweight” that both captures the motivations for that claim and solves the problems. (shrink)

Research in experimental philosophy has increasingly been turning to corpus methods to produce evidence for empirical claims, as they open up new possibilities for testing linguistic claims or studying concepts across time and cultures. The present article reviews the quasi-experimental studies that have been done using textual data from corpora in philosophy, with an eye for the modeling and experimental design that enable statistical inference. I find that most studies forego comparisons that could control for confounds, and that only a (...) little less than half employ statistical testing methods to control for chance results. Furthermore, at least some researchers make modeling decisions that either do not take into account the nature of corpora and of the word-concept relationship, or undermine the experiment's capacity to answer research questions. I suggest that corpus methods could both provide more powerful evidence and gain more mainstream acceptance by improving their modeling practices. (shrink)

There is a curious bifurcation in the literature on ground and its logic. On the one hand, there has been a great deal of work that presumes that logical complexity invariably yields grounding. So, for instance, it is widely presumed that any fact stated by a true conjunction is grounded in those stated by its conjuncts, that any fact stated by a true disjunction is grounded in that stated by any of its true disjuncts, and that any fact stated by (...) a true double negation is grounded in that stated by the doubly-negated formula. This commitment is encapsulated in the system GG axiomatized and semantically characterized by [deRosset and Fine, 2023] (following [Fine, 2012]). On the other hand, there has been a great deal of important formal work on “flatter” theories of ground, yielding logics very different from GG [Correia, 2010] [Fine, 2016, 2017b]. For instance, these theories identify the fact stated by a self-conjunction $$(\phi \wedge \phi )$$ with that stated by its conjunct $$\phi $$. Since, in these systems, no fact grounds itself, the “flatter” theories are inconsistent with the principles of GG. This bifurcation raises the question of whether there is a single notion of ground suited to fulfill the philosophical ambitions of grounding enthusiasts. There is, at present, no unified semantic framework employing a single conception of ground for simultaneously characterizing both GG and the “flatter” approaches. This paper fills this gap by specifying such a framework and demonstrating its adequacy. (shrink)

A standard view of reference holds that a speaker's use of a name refers to a certain thing in virtue of the speaker's associating a condition with that use that singles the referent out. This view has been criticized by Saul Kripke as empirically inadequate. Recently, however, it has been argued that a version of the standard view, a /response-based theory of reference/, survives the charge of empirical inadequacy by allowing that associated conditions may be largely or even entirely implicit. (...) This paper argues that response-based theories of reference are prey to a variant of the empirical inadequacy objection, because they are ill-suited to accommodate the successful use of proper names by pre-school children. Further, I argue that there is reason to believe that normal adults are, by and large, no different from children with respect to how the referents of their names are determined. I conclude that speakers typically refer /positionally/: the referent of a use of a proper name is typically determined by aspects of the speaker's position, rather than by associated conditions present, however implicitly, in her psychology. (shrink)

A compelling idea holds that reality has a layered structure. We often disagree about what inhabits the bottom layer, but we agree that higher up we find chemical, biological, geological, psychological, sociological, economic, /etc./, entities: molecules, human beings, diamonds, mental states, cities, interest rates, and so on. How is this intuitive talk of a layered structure of entities to be understood? Traditionally, philosophers have proposed to understand layered structure in terms of either reduction or supervenience. But these traditional views face (...) well-known problems. A plausible alternative is that layered structure is to be explicated by appeal to explanations of a certain sort, termed / grounding explanations/. Grounding explanations tell us what obtains in virtue of what. Unfortunately, the use of grounding explanations to articulate the layered conception faces a problem, which I call /the collapse/. The collapse turns on the question of how to ground the facts stated by the explanations themselves. In this paper I make a suggestion about how to ground explanations that avoids the collapse. Briefly, the suggestion is that the fact stated by a grounding explanation is grounded in its /explanans/. (shrink)

Polanyi’s concept of “embeddedness” has been the subject of debate. Various authors have argued that it reveals a contradiction. They contend that Polanyi states that all economies are always embedded, while simultaneously maintaining that the modern market economy is exceptional because it is disembedded. Others claim that there is no contradiction in Polanyi’s thought but that he is merely describing a contradiction of the market economy. In this text, I argue that both sides fail to discern two different concepts: “institutedness” (...) and “embeddedness.” “Institutedness” denotes the idea that economic behavior is always dependent on and the result of certain forms of social organization. In turn, the distinction between embeddedness and disembeddedness is inspired by the Aristotelian distinction between natural and unnatural economic behavior. This distinction refers to the finality of economic behavior: is it directed at the thriving of an ethical community or is it instead directed at wealth acquisition as an end in itself? I argue that both institutedness and (dis)embeddedness fulfill a crucial, though different, role in Polanyi’s critique of market capitalism. I conclude by giving a preliminary outline of what could be the implications for a (neo-)Polanyian political economy of my analysis. (shrink)

Among the most remarkable developments in metaphysics since the 1950’s is the explosion of philosophical interest in possible worlds. This paper proposes an explanation of what possible worlds are, and argues that this proposal, the interpreted models conception, should be attractive to anyone who thinks that modal facts are primitive, and so not to be explained in terms of some non-modal notion of “possible world.” I articulate three constraints on any acceptable primitivist explanation of the nature of possible worlds, and (...) show that the interpreted models conception meets the three constraints. (shrink)

A central task of schooling is to cultivate reasonableness in students. In this chapter we show how the teaching of reasonableness can be practiced successfully in secondary schools, using materials from the Western Australian curriculum. The discussion proceeds in four stages. We first defend the claim that the teaching of reasonable is a key aim of schooling. Here we offer an account of reasonableness, which we take to be both a skill and a disposition. Students learn reasonableness through the practice (...) of specific skills such as open and curious questioning, clarifying, and categorizing, and evaluating the merits of each contribution toward the problem or question under consideration. Reasonableness comes about as a joint commitment between the individual and the group to be honest in their views, to take care of those views, and for everyone to recognize that each member is a partial bearer of truth. Secondly, we discuss the pedagogies that cultivate reasonableness. The Philosophical Community of Inquiry is a natural pedagogy for this purpose. This can be supplemented with the thinking tools approach of Cam’s Twenty Thinking Tools or Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. In addition, we introduce our own two skill-building exercises, the Reasoning Game and the Argument Game. Thirdly, we show how this approach can be applied not just in Philosophy classes, but in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We argue that our approach brings these subjects to life, it develops understanding and reasonableness, and it bumps up student engagement. Fourthly, we discuss the assessment of reasonableness. In this type of learning environment, the way students perform in the philosophical community of inquiry is the focus of assessment. The desirable qualities of being reasonable become the assessment criteria for an on-balanced judgment about the student. (shrink)

The epistemic virtues and vices are typically defined in terms of effects or motivations related to the epistemic states of their possessors. However, philosophers have recently begun to consider _other-regarding_ epistemic virtues, traits oriented toward the epistemic flourishing of others. In a similar vein, this paper discusses _outward-facing_ epistemic vices, properties oriented toward the epistemic languishing of others. I argue for the existence of both reliabilist and responsibilist outward-facing vices, and illustrate how such vices negatively bear on the epistemic prospects (...) of others. I pay special attention to how outward-facing epistemic vices may manifest in online activities that promote the epistemic languishing of others by negatively influencing the online epistemic environment. (shrink)

This chapter serves as an opinionated introduction to the problem of convergence (that there is no clear convergence to the truth in philosophy) and the problem of peer disagreement (that disagreement with a peer rationally demands suspending one’s beliefs), and some of the issues they give rise to, namely, philosophical skepticism and progress in philosophy. After introducing both topics and surveying the various positions in the literature we explore the prospects of an alternative, hinge-theoretic account.

This is a review of David Chalmers's /Constructing the World/. The short, short version: there are issues, but you should definitely read the book.

Susan Haack has recently attempted to discredit religion by showing that science is an extended and enhanced version of common sense while religion is not. I argue that Haack’s account is misguided not because science is not an extended version of common sense, as she says. It is misguided because she assumes a very restricted, and thus inadequate, account of common sense. After reviewing several more realistic models of common sense, I conclude that common sense is rich enough to allow (...) various kinds of extensions. Just as science can be correctly seen as an enhanced version of common sense, so also religion. (shrink)

This paper argues that Kwasi Wiredu’s consensual democracy is an inadequate alternative to liberal democracy in contemporary Africa because it neglects the beliefs in supernatural realities underpinning governance and political decisions in traditional societies on the continent. The paper holds that as evident in their worldviews and activities, traditional Africans do not depersonalise entities or segregate physical realities from spiritual ones. Deploying historical and conceptual analyses, the paper contends that, essentially, the deficiency of Wiredu’s argument lies in his declining to (...) acknowledge the roles oaths and covenants play in the sustenance of Africa’s traditional governance systems. The paper thus holds that Wiredu’s discountenancing of the role of beliefs in supernatural realities in African societies generally may have resulted in this gap in his understanding of indigenous African political thought and practice. (shrink)

These last decades, the many contributions to the literary output on science and religion have dealt with topics that are on the cutting edge of scientific discovery, topics mainly in the area of theoretical physics, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology. Philosophers of religion, responding to this trend, have therefore struggled with intricate arguments, and have often made use of the highly technical language of these sciences. The overall result was that truly original philosophical contributions, ones that present new perspectives regarding (...) this area, have been very rare. Of these few new research programs, one seems to be particularly promising, especially because of the way it has been throwing new light on how science relates to other disciplines. The originality of this research-area lies in the fact that it refers not to particular scientific discoveries, considered individually, but to the general dynamics of the practical side of science. The crucial concept is expertise, which involves the appeal to authority for the justification of arguments. Many people like to think that scientific knowledge is far from all this, that it is purely objective and that it floats way above the murky waters of subjectivism. Those who are directly involved in scientific practice however know that science is not so clean. Appeal to authority remains very much part of the natural sciences, whether we like it or not. Some philosophers have recently ventured into these somewhat dark caverns of scientific thought and practice, and the result of their work has become very significant. In this paper, I will first offer a brief overview of this philosophical work, and then explore how the new insights regarding scientific expertise and scientific appeal to authority can throw light not only on how science works but also on the issue of authoritative knowhow within the Church. To avoid getting lost within the dim world of abstract principles, I will focus on one particular concrete case, the one of Vatican astronomers. This is a particularly interesting case because this group’s complex role lies precisely at the intersection between theological and scientific expertise. (shrink)

An introduction to the special issue of the Journal “Forum Philosophicum” that contains nine studies dealing with a cluster of metaphysical questions of cross-cultural importance: H. Watzka, “A new realistic spirit: the analytical and the existential approaches to ontology”; P. Gilbert, “Voilà pourquoi je ne suis pas ‘ontologue’; P. Favraux, “La pertinence de l’ontologie pour la théologie”; E. Charmetant, "Naturalisme contemporain et ontologie humaine : vers un essentialisme différent"; J. Bremer, "Aristotle on touch”; T. Walsh, "Bonum est causa mali: a (...) problem and an opportunity for metaphysics in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Hegel”; A. J. Carroll, “Disenchantment, rationality and the modernity of Max Weber”; G. Karuvelil, “Religious experience: reframing the question”; L. Caruana “Universal claims”. (shrink)

Some thoughts on moral relativism, and its relation to moral phenomenology and truth.

Habits form a crucial part of the everyday conceptual scheme used to explain normal human activity. However, they have been neglected in debates concerning folk-psychology which have concentrated on propositional attitudes such as beliefs. But propositional attitudes are just one of the many mental states. In this paper, I seek to expand the debate by considering mental states other than propositional attitudes. I conclude that the case for the autonomy and plausibility of the folk-psychological explanation is strengthened when one considers (...) an example from the non-propositional-attitude mental states: habits. My main target is the radical eliminativist program. As regards habits, eliminativists could argue in two distinct but related ways. They can either abandon the concept "habit" altogether or retain the folk-psychological term "habit" by reducing it to the causal chain of the observed behavior pattern, as is sometimes done in social theory. I contend that both of these strategies are defective. The correct way to talk about habits is in terms of manifestations and activating conditions, not in terms of causal chains. Hence, if eliminativists take up either of the two arguments given above, they will not succeed. Correspondingly, by the added generality gained through the consideration of habits, the case for folk-psychology is strengthened. (shrink)

Humanity has begun to move from the natural world intothe cyber world. Issues surrounding this mentalmigration are debated in philosophical dialogue. Thelead character is Becket Geist, a romantic philosopherwith views tempered by 20th century science. He openswith a monologue in which he argues that loss of theworld in exchange for the cyber world is dark andinevitable. His chief adversary is Fortran McCyborg,a cyborg with leanings toward Scottish philosophy. The moderating force is Nonette Naturski who championsnaturalism, conservation of humanist ideals, andprudent (...) conclusions. The ensuing dialogue examineseight counter-arguments to Geist''s vision. Thearguments and Geist''s replies lead to unanticipatedchanges in position that cascade to a chillingclose. (shrink)

Some thoughts on our moral experience and moral phenomenology, asking whether it can be justified or whether it is misleading.

The question of whether the term ”art,” or art as an array of objects, can be defined depends upon the sense of “art” and its extension. The generic sense of “art” is its broadest meaning having its widest extension. I argue that the term is very much like the generic term “science.” Uses of both terms don’t depend upon rigorous definition. Rather, the terms organize an enormous number of varied and sometimes incompatible sub-categories. Most informative topics in art and science (...) are under these sub-categories. As dynamic areas of activity, art and science continue to evolve without an efficacious generic sense. We can dispense with it for these purposes. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

This paper examines Hilary Putnam’s arguments against what he calls metaphysical realism and in favour of internal realism. A key notion is the one of conceptual scheme, whose role is to explain how we inevitably find ourselves adopting one viewpoint among possible others. To ensure the possibility of agreement between all inquirers for some basic issues, is Putnam committed to having just one conceptual scheme for all human inquirers? The paper argues that the answer is no, on condition that all (...) inquirers are assumed to have a kind of cognitive faculty that is common to all. (shrink)

A major source of latter-day skepticism about necessity is the work of David Hume. Hume is widely taken to have endorsed the Humean claim: there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. The Humean claim is defended on the grounds that necessary connections between wholly distinct things would be mysterious and inexplicable. Philosophers deploy this claim in the service of a wide variety of philosophical projects. But Saul Kripke has argued that it is false. According to Kripke, there are necessary (...) connections between distinct existences; in particular, there are necessary connections between material objects and their material origins. In this paper I argue that the primary motivation for the Humean claim, Hume's datum, also motivates the key premise in an argument for the necessity of origins. The very considerations that the Humean takes to show that necessary connections between wholly distinct things would be mysterious and inexplicable indicate that there must be some such necessary connections. Thus, in the absence of alternative support, there is no reason to believe the Humean claim. (shrink)

In Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary, Daniel Z. Korman defends a view he calls conservatism. Conservatives hold that there are ordinary objects, but no extraordinary objects. But Korman never explicitly characterizes what would qualify an object as ordinary in the relevant sense. We have some paradigm cases of ordinary objects, including tables, dogs, and trees; and we have some paradigm cases of extraordinary objects of sorts familiar from the philosophical literature. Here I attempt to fill this gap, surveying a (...) number of attempts to characterize the commitments of conservatism. All fail. In particular, no specification of what it takes for an object to be ordinary is both plausible and consistent with the conservative verdicts on the paradigms. I argue that this is no coincidence, since it turns out to be implausible in light of the results of settled science to deny the existence of one of Korman's paradigms of an extraordinary object. The upshot is that plausibility requires being a little more liberal than conservatism seems to allow. (shrink)

Claims are universal when they are not dependent on when and where they are made. Mathematics and the natural sciences are the typical disciplines that allow such claims to be made. Is the striving for universal claims in other disciplines justified? Those who attempt to answer this question in the affirmative often argue that it is justified when mathematics and the natural sciences are taken as the model for other disciplines. In this paper I challenge this position and analyze the (...) issue by looking at it from a new angle, a perspective that involves two key concepts: violence and loyalty. The result of this analysis throws light on the broader question concerning what the search for truth might mean in a pluralistic world. (shrink)

One of the aims of the encyclical "Laudato Si’" is to help us “marvel at the manifold connections existing among creatures”, to show how we are also involved, and to motivate us thereby to care for our common home. Are there new dimensions of beauty available to us today because of recent advances in biology? In this paper I seek to answer this question by first recalling the basic criteria for beauty, as expressed by Aristotle and Aquinas, and then evaluating (...) their applicability as regards three ways in which some prominent twentieth century philosophers of biology have sought to overcome the limitations of reductionism. The overall argument refers especially to the works of Jakob von Uexküll and Georges Canguilhem. The results indicate that harmony, proportion, and integrity in the natural order should be more evident than ever before, especially as regards the way the organism and its environment codetermine each other. This insight allows a deeper appreciation of the message of "Laudato Si’". (shrink)

Many people assume that serious reflection on animal ethics arose because of recent technological progress, the sharp rise in human population, and consequent pressure on global ecology. They consequently believe that this sub-discipline is relatively new and that traditional religions have little or nothing to offer. In spite of this however, we are currently seeing a heightened awareness of religion’s important role in all areas of individual and communal life, for better or for worse. As regards our relations with nature (...) in general and with animals in particular, and as regards the foundational idea of creaturehood, religious traditions have played, and are still playing, a central role in molding the subliminal conscience of billions of people, guiding their moral dispositions that often remain unarticulated. This paper therefore explores our relation to animals by referring not only to the binary conceptual structure animality-humanity, as philosophers often do, but by referring also to the triple conceptual structure animality-humanity-divinity. After critically evaluating some of the relevant attitudes that derive from the major world religions, the paper tries to determine the extent to which the doctrine of these religions converge on some useful central principles regarding animal ethics and animal production. The result of this research supplies added support to the claim that the study of religious outlooks in this area serves to rediscover neglected perspectives and thereby to enlarge the horizon of current philosophical work. (shrink)

Louis Pojman and Robert Westmoreland have compiled the best material on the subject of equality, ranging from classical works by Aristotle, Hobbes and Rousseau to contemporary works by John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, Michael Walzer, Harry Frankfurt, Bernard Williams and Robert Nozick; and including such topics as: the concept of equality; equal opportunity; Welfare egalitarianism; resources; equal human rights and complex equality.

This article argues for epistemic decolonization by developing a relational model of knowledge, which we locate within indigenous knowledges. We live in a time of ongoing global, epistemic coloniality, embedded in and shaped by colonial ideas and practices. Epistemological decolonization requires taking nondominant knowledges and their epistemes seriously to open up the possibility of interrogating and dismantling the hegemony of the Western knowledge tradition. We here ask two related questions: What are the decolonial affordances of indigenous knowledges? And how do (...) these compare to other contemporary critiques of epistemic coloniality, specifically those mounted by posthumanism? In answer, we develop three definitional senses of relational with reference to indigenous knowledges. First, we define indigenous knowledges in relation to Western knowledge, with which they share a dialectical origin at the moment of colonial contact. Second, indigenous knowledges are relational in their ontological and axiological orientations. Third, relationality in indigenous knowledge suggests a trialectic space, rather than a dialectic space. We argue for the necessity of an anticolonial framework, which assigns priority to indigenous people’s perceptions and ways of knowing for theorizing recurring colonial relations and their (imperialistic) manifestations in producing and reproducing knowledge. (shrink)

Alternative currencies are means of payment that circulate alongside—as an alternative or complement to—official currencies. While these currencies have existed for a long time, both society and academia have shown a renewed interest in their potential to decentralize the governance of monetary affairs and to bring people and organizations together in more ethical or sustainable ways. This article is a review of the ethical and philosophical implications of these alternative monetary projects. We first discuss various classifications of these currencies before (...) analyzing the ethical challenges linked to the way they tackle social and environmental issues. We also examine the incentive-based and coercive mechanisms used by these currencies from an ethical perspective and debate the promises and perils of monetary decentralization and democracy. We conclude by identifying an agenda for future research. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree. A lot. Pervasive disagreement is part of the territory; consensus is hard to find. Some think this should lead us to embrace philosophical skepticism: skepticism about the extent to which we can know, or justifiably believe, the philosophical views we defend and advance. Most philosophers in the literature fall into one camp or the other: philosophical skepticism or philosophical anti-skepticism. Drawing on the insights of hinge epistemology, this paper proposes another way forward, an intermediate position that appeals both (...) to skeptical and anti-skeptical intuitions concerning the possibility and scope of philosophical knowledge. The main advantage of our account is that it’s able to recover some philosophical knowledge while also being compatible with philosophical skepticism. (shrink)

Existing analyses of disinformation tend to embrace the view that disinformation is intended or otherwise functions to mislead its audience, that is, to produce false beliefs. I argue that this view is doubly mistaken. First, while paradigmatic disinformation campaigns aim to produce false beliefs in an audience, disinformation may in some cases be intended only to prevent its audience from forming true beliefs. Second, purveyors of disinformation need not intend to have any effect at all on their audience’s beliefs, aiming (...) instead to manipulate an audience’s behavior through alteration of sub-doxastic states. Ultimately, I argue that attention to such non-paradigmatic forms of disinformation is essential to understanding the threat disinformation poses and why this threat is so difficult to counter. (shrink)

This research paper assesses the possible relationship between motivation and academic performance of student athletes and utilized a descriptive design as it investigated the association between two constructs (variables) of student athletes, namely their motivation and academic performance. The research is descriptive correlational research with sixty (60) student athlete respondents coming from the various varsity teams in a selected university in the city of Manila. The descriptive nature and design of the study would require that descriptive statistics and measures of (...) association be utilized to analyze the relationship between the two constructs of the study – motivation and academic performance. The (SAMSAQ) was chosen as the research instrument to collate the necessary descriptive data, upon which a correlation analysis through the Pearson was administered. After the statistical analysis, the following were the conclusion of the study: (1) That there was a perfect positive relationship between responses of the student – athletes in the thirty (30) SAMSAQ items and their GPA’s; (2) That the relationship between motivation and academic performance of respondents, as represented by their mean scores of responses and GPA’s respectively are not of the same strength and significance for negatively and positively – structured queries of the SAMSAQ; (3) That the mean scores of responses in negative and positive impact queries of respondents and its relationship with their GPA’s, representatives of the measures of motivation and academic performance are incomparable as the Likert scale is inverted for the negatively structured queries, where behavior adverse to academic performance is sought. (shrink)

The scientific successes of the last 400 years strongly suggest a picture on which our scientific theories exhibit a layered structure of dependence and determination. Economics is dependent on and determined by psychology; psychology in its turn is, plausibly, dependent on and determined by biology; and so it goes. It is tempting to explain this layered structure of dependence and determination among our theories by appeal to a corresponding layered structure of dependence and determination among the entities putatively treated by (...) those theories. In this paper, I argue that we can resist this temptation: we can explain the sense in which, e.g., the biological truths are dependent on and determined by chemical truths without appealing to properly biological or chemical entities. This opens the door to a view on which, though there are more truths than just the purely physical truths, there are no entities, states, or properties other than the purely physical entities, states, and properties. I argue that some familiar strategies to explicate the idea of a layered structure of theories by appeal to reduction, ground, and truthmaking encounter difficulties. I then show how these difficulties point the way to a more satisfactory treatment which appeals to something very close to the notion of ground. Finally, I show how this treatment provides a theoretical setting in which we might fruitfully frame debates about which entities there really are. (shrink)

This paper addresses a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, i.e. superdeterminism. In short, superdeterminism i) takes the world to be fundamentally deterministic, ii) postulates hidden variables, and iii) contra Bell, saves locality at the cost of violating the principle of statistical independence. Superdeterminism currently enjoys little support in the physics and philosophy communities. Many take it to posit the ubiquitous occurrence of hard-to-digest conspiratorial and coincidental events; others object that violating the principle of statistical independence implies the death of the (...) scientific methodology. In this paper, we offer a defense to these and other objections. To counter the conspiracy objection, we draw upon the philosophical literature on time travel, and conclude that the picture of the world offered by the superdeterminist does not need to be particularly surprising or conspiratorial. We then move on to other recent objections, in particular those that focus on the methodology of science and the nature of the physical laws compatible with superdeterminism. A key ingredient of our arguments is that the principle of statistical independence may be violated in theory, but valid for practical purposes. Our overarching goal is to offer a defense of superdeterminism with respect to its main objections, so that it can earn its keep as a legitimate contender among the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)