Introduction to our edited volume on Wittgensteinian ethics with papers by Oskari Kuusela, Edward Harcourt, Anne-Marie Christensen, Sabina Lovibond, Alexander Miller, Benjamin De Mesel, Cora Diamond, Lars Hertzberg, Jeremy Johnson, Craig Taylor, Alice Crary, Lynette Reid.

Did Plato intend the laws of the Laws to change? While most scholars agree that there is to be legal change in Magnesia, I contend that this issue has been clouded by confusing three distinct questions: (1) whether there are legal mechanisms for changing the law in Magnesia, (2) what the attitudes of Magnesian citizens towards innovation and legal change are, and (3) whether Plato thinks the law is always the ultimate political authority. Once we separate these issues and look (...) at the relevant texts more closely, we see that the Athenian Visitor is primarily concerned with supplementing the original lawgiver’s laws and that any innovation that occurs should be consistent with this lawcode. This does not settle the question about whether it is always right to act in accordance with the existing laws, though it does provide a valuable framework for understanding a central aspect of Platonic political philosophy. Thus, although Plato’s ideal places knowledge above the law, in practice the laws of Magnesia will be fixed and authoritative for those people living under them. (shrink)

Plato is often acknowledged as the first philosophical critic of democracy and his Republic is regularly taken as a paradigm of an anti-democratic work. While it is true that Plato objected to much about the democracy of his own time, Plato’s political theorizing also reveals an interest in improving democratic institutions. This chapter explores three themes in Plato’s thinking about democracy: firstly, Plato's insistence that rulers should be knowledgeable and his claim that most people are politically incompetent (§1); secondly, Plato's (...) criticisms of oratory and the corrupting effects of public rhetoric (§2); thirdly, Plato's use of democratic institutions in the Laws (§3). Once we appreciate these different evaluations of democratic practices, we can see that Plato was not simply ‘anti-democratic’ or ‘pro-democratic’ but thought some democratic practices should be abandoned, some reformed, and some adopted. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to provide a complete and exhaustive list of all of the offices and major political roles proposed within the constitution of Magnesia, detailing the title of the office, number of offices, method of appointment, age or gender restrictions, length of term, and explicit responsibilities assigned to that office. This tabulation is intended to be useful for new readers of the Laws and to scholars of various methodological approaches interested in the political arrangements of Magnesia.

When people now talk about a relationship as being “Platonic”, they mean that the relationship is a non-sexual friendship. But what did Plato himself say about different kinds of relationship, and how did his name come to be associated with non-sexual relationships? While Plato’s Symposium has been the center of attention for his views on love, I argue that the Phaedrus and Laws VIII provide a much clearer account of Plato’s views. In these dialogues, Plato distinguishes between two kinds of (...) love and three kinds of lover. The two kinds of love are fundamentally oriented towards different objects: one kind of love is focused on the body of the beloved and seeks to extract as much bodily pleasure from them as possible, whereas the other kind of love is focused on the soul and seeks to benefit the beloved by improving their character. There is a lover for each kind of love, and a third kind of lover who is torn between these two opposing objects of love. Notably, in the kind of love directed towards the soul, the lovers will not engage in sexual activity. I argue that this is because Plato thinks that the natural function of sex is the procreation of good children and that engaging in such an intensely pleasurable activity risks making the lovers intemperate and lacking in self-control. Thus Plato thinks that the best kind of relationship is one of love (and not just friendship) but is nonetheless non-sexual. (shrink)

Kristie Miller and James Norton present a new account of metaphysical explanation, not as a philosophical technicality but as a feature of everyday life. This is the notion that we all use in ordinary contexts when we give explanations of a certain sort: Miller and Norton build their account on investigation of these explanatory practices.

This essay falls into three parts. Section 1 describes how Politics Book I, which includes Aristotle’s famous claims that the human being is by nature a political animal (politikon zōon) and that the polis (city-state) is natural and naturally prior to the individual, and his infamous claim that it is just to enslave those who are slaves by nature, may be connected with the rest of the Politics, which is about politeiai (constitutions). Section 2 examines Aristotle’s ideal politeia in Politics (...) VII-VIII in the light of his criticisms of other politeiai in Book II. Section 3 discusses non-ideal constitutions in Politics III-VI. (shrink)

Miller analyzes the relationship between consent and autonomy by offering three pictures. For autonomy, Miller distinguishes between procedural, substantive, and weak substantive autonomy. The corresponding views of consent are what Miller has termed as consensual minimalism, consensual idealism, and consensual realism. The requirements of sexual consent under consensual minimalism are a voluntary informed agreement. However, feminist critiques reveal the inadequacies of this simple position. Consensual idealism, which corresponds with substantive autonomy, offers a robust picture where consent and (...) autonomy must be based on non-oppression. However, this view is considered too ideal and it ignores context. Weak substantive autonomy takes into account the context in the sexual domain. Correspondingly, consensual realism takes into account the context and still fulfills the requirements of consent. (shrink)

It has been widely argued that words are analogous to species such that words, like species, are natural kinds. In this paper, I consider the metaphysics of word-kinds. After arguing against an essentialist approach, I argue that word-kinds are homeostatic property clusters, in line with the dominant approach to other biological and psychological kinds.

It is often assumed that it seems to each of us as though time flows, or passes. On that assumption it follows either that time does in fact pass, and then, pretty plausibly, we have mechanisms that detect its passage, or that time does not pass, and we are subject to a pervasive phenomenal illusion. If the former is the case, we are faced with the explanatory task of spelling out which perceptual or cognitive mechanism (or combination thereof) allows us (...) to detect and track time’s passage (§2.1) If the latter, then we are faced with the task of explaining how, and why, we are subject to a pervasive phenomenal illusion (§2.2). There is, however, a third, somewhat less discussed, explanatory project. Rather than assuming that it seems to each of us as though time passes, and then attempting to explain why it seems that way, we jettison that assumption. According to these views it does not seem to us as though time passes; instead, we come to falsely believe that it seems to us as though time passes (§3). This view requires that we explain how we come to have systematically false beliefs about the way our experiences seem to us. This paper aims to motivate this third explanatory strategy and say something about what kind of cognitive mechanisms might be responsible for our having a false belief that it seems as though time passes, (§3.1) and why we might have evolved (some of) those mechanisms (§3.2). In particular, the paper does not aim to argue for this view: rather, it aims to present it as a viable contender alongside other more common views. (shrink)

I begin by defending Heinrich Gustav Hotho’s foundational edition of the Lectures on Aesthetics (LA) contra Gethmann-Siebert and others who argue for a non-systematic view of Hegel’s aesthetics generally and music specifically. I defend Hegel against the common conceit that his comprehension of music was somehow deficient and introduce the Hegelian idea of absolute agency as performative in art and music. Reference to Kant’s transcendental aesthetics then allows us to grasp how, in Hegel, meaningful tones arise from the vibratory oscillation (...) between selfhood’s presiding unity and its temporal self-positing. I then trace back further elements of musical architecture, such as rhythm, harmony and melody to the temporal oscillation arising from within selfhood. The fundamental ambiguity within temporal oscillation is the source of meaningfulness in music, the feeling that its experience is meaningful without telling us exactly what that meaning is. Meaningfulness forms the absolute Ur-Ton of beautiful music, which arises as determinate tones within selfhood and resonates into the soul of the listener. The temporal vanishing of musical tones within a compositional framework is a pre-linguistic expression of meaning, performative of the ambiguous oscillation between the human and the divine. (shrink)

Temporal dynamists typically hold that it seems to us as though time robustly passes, and that its seeming so is explained by the fact that time does robustly pass. Temporal non-dynamists hold that time does not robustly pass. Some non-dynamists nevertheless hold that it seems as though it does: we have an illusory phenomenal state whose content represents robust passage. Call these phenomenal passage illusionists. Other non-dynamists argue that the phenomenal state in question is veridical, and represents something other than (...) robust passage. Call this the veridical passage-less view. This paper argues against in favour of the latter view over the former, by arguing that we should reject passage illusionism. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a psychological explanation for ‘grounding observations’—observations that are thought to provide evidence that there exists a relation of ground. Our explanation does not appeal to the presence of any such relation. Instead, it appeals to certain evolved cognitive mechanisms, along with the traditional modal relations of supervenience, necessitation and entailment. We then consider what, if any, metaphysical conclusions we can draw from the obtaining of such an explanation, and, in particular, if it tells us anything (...) about whether we ought to posit a relation of ground. (shrink)

In her seminal article ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (1958) Elizabeth Anscombe argued that we need a new ethics, one that uses virtue terms to generate absolute prohibitions against certain act-types. Leading contemporary virtue ethicists have not taken up Anscombe's challenge in justifying absolute prohibitions and have generally downplayed the role of rule-following in their normative theories. That they have not done so is primarily because contemporary virtue ethicists have focused on what is sufficient for characterizing the deliberation and action of the (...) fully virtuous person, and rule-following is inadequate for this task. In this article, I take up Anscombe's challenge by showing that rule-following is necessary for virtuous agency, and that virtue ethics can justify absolute prohibitions. First, I offer a possibility proof by showing how virtue ethics can generate absolute prohibitions in three ways: by considering actions that directly manifest vice or that cannot be performed virtuously; actions that are prohibited by one's institutional roles and practical identities; and actions that are prohibited by the prescriptions of the wise. I then seek to show why virtue ethicists should incorporate rule-following and absolute prohibitions into their theories. I emphasize the central role that rules have in the development of virtue, then motivate the stronger view that fully virtuous agents follow moral rules by considering the importance of hope, uncertainty about consequences, and taking responsibility for what eventuates. Finally, I provide an account of what Anscombe called a ‘corrupt mind’, explaining how our understanding of virtue is corrupted if we think that virtue may require us to do vicious actions. (shrink)

Hegel reads the poet Novalis as an expression of terminal irony, a pathological case of Gemüt, where the conscious mind is alienated from reality and turns its negativity inwards on the contents of its own natural soul. The condition of self-feeling, presented in Hegel’s “Anthropology”, is a self-consumption that manifests itself somatically in the physical disease (consumption) from which Novalis dies. The poet’s literary production represents a pathological fixation that impedes the dynamic organicity of Hegelian Science. As such, Novalis’s mental (...) illness and death constitute an expression of romantic irony and an ongoing threat to Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

Commentators have often been puzzled by the structure of the _Symposium_; in particular, it is unclear what the relationship is between Socrates’ speech and that of the other symposiasts. This chapter seeks to make a contribution to that debate by highlighting parallels between the first four speeches of the _Symposium_ and the goals of the early education in the Republic. In both dialogues, I contend, we see Plato concerned with educating people through (a) activating and cultivating spirited motivations, (b) becoming (...) lawful and taking virtue as a goal, (c) harmonizing the opposing forces in their soul, and (d) minimizing the appetites and making them orderly. While these are familiar points from the moral education of the Republic, I argue that they also map onto the first four speeches of the _Symposium_ respectively. Because in the _Republic_ this moral education is necessary to make progress on the epistemic ascent, we can speculate that there is a similar point to be made in the _Symposium_ – without first training our character adequately, we will not be able to climb the ladder of love. While the positive effects of Eros described in the early speeches of the _Symposium_ are only imitations of the ideal education regime of Kallipolis, they nevertheless improve one’s character in such a way that better prepares the soul for philosophy. Finally, I argue that the importance of this moral education is dramatized at the end of the _Symposium_ through Agathon’s amicable refutation by Socrates on the one hand, and the drunken entrance of Alcibiades on the other. Agathon shows potential for philosophy whereas Alcibiades is the exemplar of what happens when somebody comes to philosophy without a harmonized soul. (shrink)

Kate Crawford presents AI as “both reflecting and producing social relations and understandings of the world”; or again, as “a form of exercising power, and a way of seeing… as a manifestation of highly organized capital backed by vast systems of extraction and logistics, with supply chains that wrap around the entire planet”. I interpret these material insights through a Marxist understanding of ideology, with reference to Marx/Engels, Guy Debord and Louis Althusser. In the German Ideology, Marx and Engels present (...) ideology as the alienated and alienating discourse of exchange, dissimulating the material forces of production and its science. Guy Debord presents the spectacle as the further representation of capital. The spectacle is a total Weltanschauung, pure appearance, where “whatever appears is good and where what is good, appears.” Above all, the spectacle is ideology, representing “the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life”. Louis Althusser presents ideology as essential for the reproduction of labor-power and capital. His notion of “interpellation” explains the subjective uptake of ideology, how we respond, “yes!” to its call. The algorithms of AI are enactments of surplus value generating capital as data. The AI data-world is the spectacle, “the autonomous movement of non-life” (Debord) where the proletariat/consumer is the producer of their own ideological subjection. Is resistance possible? What form might it take? And if AI is understood as ideology, i.e. as a language that obscures the true conditions of real life, then what are those true conditions? What is “real life”? (shrink)

Future-biased individuals systematically prefer positively valenced events to be in the future (positive future-bias) and negatively valenced events to be in the past (negative future-bias). The most extreme form of future-bias is absolute future-bias, whereby we completely discount the value of past events when forming our preferences. Various authors have thought that we are absolutely future-biased (Sullivan (2018:58); Parfit (1984:173) and that future-bias (absolute or otherwise) is at least rationally permissible (Prior (1959), Hare (2007; 2008), Kauppinen (2018), Heathwood (2008)). The (...) permissibility of future-bias is often held to be grounded in the structure of the temporal dimension. In this paper I consider several proposals for grounding the permissibility of such preferences and evaluate these in the light of the preferences we would have, and judge that we should have, in various time-travel scenarios. I argue that what we learn by considering these scenarios is that these preferences really have nothing to do with temporal structure. So if something grounds their permissibility, it is not temporal structure. (shrink)

Social inequality may obstruct the generation of knowledge, as the rich and powerful may bring about social acceptance of skewed views that suit their interests. Epistemic equality in the context of justification is a means of preventing such obstruction. Drawing on social epistemology and theories of equality and distributive justice, we provide an account of epistemic equality. We regard participation in, and influence over a knowledge-generating discourse in an epistemic community as a limited good that needs to be justly distributed (...) among putative members of the community. We argue that rather than trying to operationally formulate an exact criterion for distributing this good, epistemic equality may be realized by insisting on active participation of members of three groups in addition to credited experts: relevant disempowered groups, relevant uncredited experts, and relevant stakeholders. Meeting these conditions fulfills the political, moral, and epistemic aims of epistemic equality. (shrink)

In this paper I outline and defend a new approach to personal-identity—personal-identity non-cognitivism—and argue that it has several advantages over its cognitivist rivals. On this view utterances of personal-identity sentences express a non-cognitive attitude towards relevant person-stages. The resulting view offers a pleasingly nuanced picture of what we are doing when we utter such sentences.

Growing concern with the panpsychist's ostensive inability to solve the ‘combination problem’ has led some authors to adopt a view titled ‘Cosmopsychism’. This position turns panpsychism on its head: rather than many tiny atomic minds, there is instead one cosmos-sized mind. It is supposed that this view voids the combination problem, however I argue that it does not. I argue that there is a ‘de-combination problem’ facing the cosmopsychist, which is equivalent to the combination problem as they are both concerned (...) with subjects being proper parts of other subjects. I then propose two methods for both theorists to avoid the problem of subject-subject proper parthood relations: a distinction between absolute and relative phenomenal unity, and a modification of the essential nature of subjects. Of these two options, I find the latter option wanting and propose that the first should be adopted. (shrink)

Temporal non-dynamists hold that there is no temporal passage, but concede that many of us judge that it seems as though time passes. Phenomenal Illusionists suppose that things do seem this way, even though things are not this way. They attempt to explain how it is that we are subject to a pervasive phenomenal illusion. More recently, Cognitive Error Theorists have argued that our experiences do not seem that way; rather, we are subject to an error that leads us mistakenly (...) to believe that our experiences seem that way. Cognitive Error Theory is a relatively new view and little has been said to explain why we make such an error, or where, in the cognitive architecture, such an error might creep in. In this paper we remedy this by offering a number of hypotheses about the source of error. In so doing we aim to show that Cognitive Error Theory is a plausible competitor to Phenomenal Illusion Theory. (shrink)

Here is a common view. There exist things, and there exists stuff, where roughly, ‘thing’ is a count noun, and ‘stuff’ is a mass noun. Syntactically, ‘thing’ functions as a singular referring term that takes ‘a’ and ‘every’ and is subject to pluralisation, while ‘stuff’ functions as a plural referring term that takes ‘some’ and is not subject to pluralisation. Hence there exists a thing, and some stuff. Usual versions of the common view endorse two principles about portions of stuff. (...) The first principle is that (temporal) mereological essentialism is true of portions (parcels, masses, quantities) of stuff, where mereological essentialism is the thesis that for any persisting object or portion of stuff, that object or stuff has the same parts at every time at which it exists. The second principle is that portions of stuff obey a principle of stuff composition: for any two portions of stuff P1 and P2, there exists a portion of stuff that is the fusion of P1 and P2. I argue that these two principles are inconsistent. In particular, since I am sympathetic to PSC, I argue that mereological essentialism is false of portions of stuff. (shrink)

This essay explains some basic concepts about BDSM, and it responds to two important objections to it. The first is the psychological objection—that BDSM practitioners suffer from mental disorders—and the second is the ethical objection—that BDSM practitioners have morally compromised desires because of the kinds of activities they desire to participate in, especially ones that involve roles that dip into tortured oppressive histories (e.g., "rape" scenes, "master-and-slave" scenes). The paper argues that both objections fail, and, more specifically focusing on the (...) ethical objection, argues that BDSM desires are psychologically, conceptually, and phenomenologically different from their seeming counterpart real-life desires that are truly ethically defective. Finally, the paper argues that BDSM practitioners, in having to always understand, explore, and justify their desires (especially to a majority that is hostile to them), have an interesting chance to lead rich, flourishing lives. (shrink)

We direct different attitudes towards states of affairs depending on where in time those states of affairs are located. Call this the type asymmetry. The type asymmetry appears fitting. For instance, it seems fitting to feel guilt or regret only about states of affairs that are past, and anticipation only of states of affairs that are future. It has been argued that the type asymmetry could only be fitting if there are tensed facts, and hence that since it is fitting, (...) there are tensed facts. In this paper I argue that tensed facts are not necessary to ground the fittingness of the type asymmetry, and thus we have no reason, arising from the fittingness of the asymmetry, to posit such facts. I also argue for a stronger conclusion: even if these facts obtain they are no part of what grounds the fittingness of the type asymmetry. These facts are explanatorily redundant. (shrink)

This paper deals with the problematic relationship between thought and nature in Hegel. This entails looking at the philosophy of nature and discovering to what extent it claims to incorporate natural otherness or contingency and how it does so. I briefly summarize other approaches to this question (Maker, Winfield, Braun, Wandschneider, Hoffheimer...) while putting forward my own solution. This is expressed in an argument articulated around the three Hegelian images (and their texts) in the paper’s title. We discover how the (...) relation between philosophy and nature is a dynamic one, mediated by the actual content of the positive natural sciences. In other words, thought and nature are mediated by the human activity of scientific knowing, within the systematic project of knowing all of nature. This raises the possibility of conceiving Hegel’s system as open to the future. (shrink)

What can Stoicism offer to contemporary debates about forgiveness? Given their outright rejection of a reactive attitudes framework for responding to wrongdoing and their bold suggestions of how to revise our moral practices, the Stoics provide a valuable lens through which to re-evaluate various central claims in the debates about forgiveness. In this chapter, I highlight four common assumptions that the Stoics would consider problematic: firstly, that forgiveness is opposed to justice; secondly, that anger and resentment are necessary for registering (...) wrongdoing; thirdly, that anger and resentment are generally reliable at tracking the severity of wrongdoing; fourthly, that reconciliation with wrongdoers is an option rather than an imperative of virtue. Insofar as the Stoics provide defensible and often compelling alternatives to these positions, Stoicism offers a number of philosophical resources to re-conceptualize the way we think about forgiveness and suggests ways in which forgiveness might be better integrated into a virtue ethical framework. (shrink)

Hegel's take on mental illness, as presented in the Subjective Spirit chapter of his Encyclopedia, is explored through his diagnosis of the romantic poet/philosopher Novalis, whose yearning (Sehnsucht) becomes a pathological condition where subjective negativity turns inward, creating a pathological condition of Gemüt. The mental condition manifests itself physiologically. Sehnsucht becomes Schwindsucht (consumption) bringing about the death of Novalis.

I develop the foundation for cosmopolitan care, an underexplored variety of moral cosmopolitanism. I begin by offering a characterization of contemporary cosmopolitanism from the justice tradition. Rather than discussing the political, economic or cultural aspects of cosmopolitanism, I instead address its moral dimensions. I then employ a feminist philosophical perspective to provide a critical evaluation of the moral foundations of cosmopolitan justice, with an eye toward demonstrating the need for an alternative account of moral cosmopolitanism as cosmopolitan care. After providing (...) an explanation of how care ethics in connection with Kantian ethics generates a duty to care, I consider one main feature of cosmopolitan care, namely the theory of obligation it endorses. In developing this account, I place special emphasis on the practical ramifications of the theory by using it to analyze gender violence in conflict zones. (shrink)

Hegel's critique of the Early German Romantic figures of Fr. Schlegel, Novalis and Schleiermacher resonates to the very core of his work and is as essential to understanding his vision of Science as Plato's polemic against the Sophists is to comprehending his philosophy. Hegel's presentation of romantic irony may not be faithful to its Romantic conception but it is deeply insightful in apprehending irony's postmodern threat to systematic philosophy.

Romantic psychology is first specified in counter-distinction to Enlightenment-informed faculty-psychology, whose scientific paradigm is fundamentally materialistic and mechanistic. Romantic psychology is then presented through Fr. Schlegel’s theory and practice of the literary fragment. In the fragment, we discover selfhood that is self-positing, powered by electro-chemical forces and enlivened by the stimulating Other. Romantic psychology determines the self as an ironic system, complete and yet organically open to other selves. It is phenomenological in nature and its contemporary legacy can be found (...) in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical hermeneutics. (shrink)

According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis, technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech (...) or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of technology. (shrink)

This is a version of a book chapter included in a mss on Hegel and the Absolute. It deals with metaphysical issues in Big Bang cosmology (the Big Crunch, the Big Chill, the anthropic principle, singularities...) from a Hegelian point of view. If human consciousness is an undeniable feature of the universe, then can we not say that the universe possesses or has possessed consciousness and therefore is or has been conscious? Similarly, Hegel's Absolute knows itself through the self-knowing agency (...) of human thought. And so should we not attribute to the universe the same divine existence that Hegel's Encyclopedia evokes, in its last paragraph where he refers to Aristotle's self-contemplating, self-enjoying god? (shrink)

Through reference to Karl Löwith's reading of time in Hegel as fundamentally inspired by the temporality of Aristotle, the paper shows how the absolute "now" is thoroughly informed by historical time. Hegel's preferred tense is that of the Perfekt, the present perfect, where the present "now" is always also what it has been. Hegel thus reconciles Greek and Christian forms of temporality, the distinction that Löwith reads as unreconciled and tragic in Hegel's "young" followers: Feuerbach, Stirner, Bauer, Marx and Nietzsche. (...) Nonetheless, the Left Hegelian heritage is right in comprehending Hegelian time as fundamentally past-oriented. Their own stunted philosophical endeavors are aimed at the future. (shrink)

An increasingly popular theory of moral responsibility, Attributionism, identifies attitudes as the locus of direct responsibility. And yet, two agents with qualitatively identical attitudes may differ in their responsibility due to a difference in whether they act on those attitudes. On the most plausible interpretation of Attributionism, attitude duplicates differ in their responsibility only with respect to the scope of what they’re responsible for: one agent is responsible for only their attitudes, while the other is responsible for their attitudes and (...) for acting in a way that reflects those attitudes. Against this, I argue that attitude duplicates may also differ with respect to their degrees of praiseworthiness, and that this is best explained by either the effort or sacrifice instantiated in one’s actions—explanations unavailable to Attributionism. If this is correct, then Attributionism fails to provide an adequate account of praiseworthiness, and therefore fails as a theory of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The Greek gymnasium was replicated in the architecture, art, and activities of the Imperial Roman thermae. This mimēsis was rooted in sincere admiration of traditional Greek paideia – especially the glory of Athens’ Academy and Lyceum – but it did not manage to replicate the gymnasium’s educational impact. This article reconstructs the aesthetics of a visit to the Roman baths, explaining how they evoked a glorious Hellenic past, offering the opportunity to Romans to imagine being «Greek». But true Hellenic paideia (...) was always kept at arm’s length by an assumption of Roman cultural superiority. One may play at being a Greek athlete or philosopher, but one would never dedicate one’s life to it. The experience of the Imperial thermae celebrated Greek athletic culture, but it remained too superficial – too spectatorial – to effect the change of soul demanded by classical gymnastic education. (shrink)

It is not mere coincidence that several of Plato’s dialogues are set in gymnasia and palaistrai (wrestling schools), employ the gymnastic language of stripping, wrestling, tripping, even helping opponents to their feet, and imitate in argumentative form the athletic contests (agōnes) commonly associated with that place. The main explanation for this is, of course, historical. Sophists, orators, and intellectuals of all stripes, including the historical Socrates, really did frequent Athens’ gymnasia and palaistrai in search of ready audiences and potential students. (...) Perhaps they were following the example of Pythagoras, who may have been a boxing coach (gymnastēs) and was, in any case, associated with the extraordinary Olympic success of athletes from his adopted Croton—success so great it generated the saying that the last of the Crotonites was the first among all other Greeks. After his visit to Western Greece, Plato famously established his school in or adjacent to the Academy gymnasium in Athens, and he may have held the public office of Gymnasiarch there. In this essay, I would like to argue that there are also symbolic reasons for Plato setting some of his dialogues in gymnasia. These dialogues function as virtual gymnasia in which readers are coached by the character of Socrates toward an innovative ideal of aretē (virtue, excellence). (shrink)

This paper has three main sections. The first section provides a general characterisation of presentism, eternalism and growing blockism. It presents a pair of core, defining claims that jointly capture each of these three views. This makes clear the respects in which the different views agree, and the respects in which they disagree, about the nature of time. The second section takes these characterisations and considers whether we really do have three distinct views, or whether defenders of these views are (...) somehow talking past one another when they claim to disagree. The third section looks at the key objections to each view and considers some of the replies that can be made to those objections. The paper concludes by offering some thoughts about how future research might help us resolve the debate between defenders of these three views. (shrink)

In the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel describes at length and in detail the particular workings of animal digestion and excretion, referring to the empirical research of his day (Berzelius, Spallanzani, Traviranus). By becoming engaged in the scientific disputes and insights of the time—regarding, for example, the mechanical versus chemical nature of digestion, immediate digestive assimilation and the chemical composition of feces—Hegel arrives at the novel idea that what the animal excretes as superfluous is its own particular entanglement with inorganic otherness. (...) The animal’s subsequent feeling of triumph and satisfaction constitutes the affirmation of individual purposiveness, a form of immediate ideality that Hegel presents as animal subjectivity. (shrink)

David Lewis is a natural target for those who believe that findings in quantum physics threaten the tenability of traditional metaphysical reductionism. Such philosophers point to allegedly holistic entities they take both to be the subjects of some claims of quantum mechanics and to be incompatible with Lewisian metaphysics. According to one popular argument, the non-separability argument from quantum entanglement, any realist interpretation of quantum theory is straightforwardly inconsistent with the reductive conviction that the complete physical state of the world (...) supervenes on the intrinsic properties of and spatio-temporal relations between its point-sized constituents. Here I defend Lewis's metaphysical doctrine, and traditional reductionism more generally, against this alleged threat from quantum holism. After presenting the non-separability argument from entanglement, I show that Bohmian mechanics, an interpretation of quantum mechanics explicitly recognized as a realist one by proponents of the non-separability argument, plausibly rejects a key premise of that argument. Another holistic worry for Humeanism persists, however, the trouble being the apparently holistic character of the Bohmian pilot wave. I present a Humean strategy for addressing the holistic threat from the pilot wave by drawing on resources from the Humean best system account of laws. (shrink)

One argument for the moving spotlight theory is that it better explains certain aspects of our temporal phenomenology than does any static theory of time. Call this the argument from passage phenomenology. In this paper it is argued that insofar as moving spotlight theorists take this to be a sound argument they ought embrace a new version of the moving spotlight theory according to which the moving spotlight is a cresting wave of causal efficacy. On this view it is more (...) than just presentness that is temporary: a range of other fundamental properties are also temporary because presentness synchronically changes the fundamental properties that are instantiated in the present moment, from those instantiated when that moment is future, or past. On this view having experiences as of presentness co-varies with the presence of presentness, allowing the moving spotlight theorist to provide a compelling explanation for why we have the temporal phenomenology we do, and to explain how we can know that we are present by reflecting on the nature of said phenomenology. (shrink)

Kaplan (1990; 2011) argues that there are no unspoken words. Hawthorne and Lepore (2011) put forward examples that purport to show that there can be such words. Here, I argue that Kaplan is correct, if we grant him a minor variation. While Hawthorne and Lepore might be right that there can be unspoken words, I will argue that they fail to show that there can be uninstantiated words.

Hegel uses the term Einsicht (‘insight’) throughout several key subsections of Chapter Six of the Phenomenology of Spirit (notably in ‘Faith and Pure Insight’ and ‘The Struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition’). Nowhere else in his work does the term enjoy such a sustained treatment. Commentators generally accept Hegel’s use of the term in the Phenomenology as simply referring to the type of counter-religious reasoning found in the French Enlightenment. I show how Hegel derives the term, through the lens of (...) Kant’s essay, ‘What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?’ from the Pantheismusstreit, the philosophical debate between Mendelssohn and Jacobi about knowledge of God. The Aufklärung provenance of Einsicht shows how a deep complicity between faith and reason, in the form of immediate knowing, leads beyond the Terror to a happier outcome in the Morality section. Finally, passing reference to Einsicht in the Vorbegriff of the Encyclopaedia Logic confirms its role in the ethical and political vocation of Hegel’s Science. (shrink)

The organic trope is a popular way of accepting the systematicity of Hegelian science. It allows for diversity and difference within the living whole, where each organ contributes to the life of the holistic "one", which, in turn, ensures the vitality of each organ. For example, in the Philosophy of Right, the organic state maintains itself in relation to the various institutions and corporations that constitute its organs. However, one element of the organic trope remains largely ignored: excretion. Briefly, if (...) we take Hegel's system as organic, then what does it excrete? What constitutes its excrement? This book chapter examines Hegel's philosophical, syllogistic interpretation of animal digestion and excretion in the Philosophy of Nature and then attempts to apply it to the organic system of science, as an individual, purposive life form whose subjectivity arises through the excretion of what is deemed superfluous. (shrink)

It has been a common assumption that words are substances that instantiate or have properties. In this paper, I question the assumption that our ontology of words requires posting substances by outlining a bundle theory of words, wherein words are bundles of various sorts of properties (such as semantic, phonetic, orthographic, and grammatical properties). I argue that this view can better account for certain phenomena than substance theories, is ontologically more parsimonious, and coheres with claims in linguistics.

The GRW dynamics propose a novel, relevantly “observer”-independent replacement for orthodox “measurement”-induced collapse. Yet the tails problem shows that this dynamical innovation is not enough: a principled alternative to the orthodox account demands some corresponding ontological advancement as well. In fact, there are three rival fundamental ontologies on offer for the GRW dynamics. Debate about the relative merits of these candidates is a microcosm of broader disagreement about the role of ontology in our physical theorizing. According to imprimitivists, the GRW (...) dynamics directly describe (only) some (element’s) undulation in an unfamiliar high-dimensional physical field. Primitivists resist this GRW0 proposal on the grounds that it fails to secure comprehensible contact with our data about macroscopic objects in ordinary lowdimensional space-time. They expect an adequate fundamental ontology to include at least some spatiotemporally localized entities—intuitively, concrete constituents of our familiar macroscopic landscape. The most compelling case goes by way of distributional basing: minimally, primitivists expect a theory’s predictions immediately about spatiotemporal distributions of fundamental entities to provide a supervenience base for data about configurations of macroscopic objects. But while the background intuition is familiar, the distributional model is surprisingly subtle. Lack of clarity about its details generates serious confusion for both sides of our debate. (shrink)

Many think that sentences about what metaphysically explains what are true iff there exist grounding relations. This suggests that sceptics about grounding should be error theorists about metaphysical explanation. We think there is a better option: a theory of metaphysical explanation which offers truth conditions for claims about what metaphysically explains what that are not couched in terms of grounding relations, but are instead couched in terms of, inter alia, psychological facts. We do not argue that our account is superior (...) to grounding-based accounts. Rather, we offer it to those already ill-disposed towards grounding. (shrink)

What are words? What makes two token words tokens of the same word-type? Are words abstract entities, or are they (merely) collections of tokens? The ontology of words tries to provide answers to these, and related questions. This article provides an overview of some of the most prominent views proposed in the literature, with a particular focus on the debate between type-realist, nominalist, and eliminativist ontologies of words.