In her book Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, Ann Hartle argues that Montaigne’s thought is dialectical in the Hegelian sense. Unlike Hegel’s progressive dialectic, however, Montaigne’s thought is, according to Hartle, circular in that the reconciliation of opposed terms comes not in the form of a newly emergent term, but in a return to the first term, where the meaning of the first is transformed as a result of its dialectical interaction with the second. This analysis motivates Hartle’s claim that (...) Montaigne is not a skeptic at all, let alone a Pyrrhonian skeptic. In this paper, I argue that Hartle’s circular-dialectical interpretation of Montaigne is not only compatible with Pyrrhonism, but is in fact an ideal model for understanding Sextus Empiricus’s skeptical therapy. (shrink)

Effective Altruism is a social movement which encourages people to do as much good as they can when helping others, given limited money, time, effort, and other resources. This paper first identifies a minimal philosophical view that underpins this movement, and then argues that there is an analogous minimal philosophical view which might underpin Effective Justice, a possible social movement that would encourage promoting justice most effectively, given limited resources. The latter minimal view reflects an insight about justice, and our (...) non-diminishing moral reason to promote more of it, that surprisingly has gone largely unnoticed and undiscussed. The Effective Altruism movement has led many to reconsider how best to help others, but relatively little attention has been paid to the differences in degrees of cost-effectiveness of activities designed to decrease injustice. This paper therefore not only furthers philosophical understanding of justice, but has potentially major practical implications. (shrink)

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the (...) compatibility of the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

The appeal to mechanisms in scientific explanation is commonplace in contemporary philosophy of science. In short, mechanists argue that an explanation of a phenomenon consists of citing the mechanism that brings the phenomenon about. In this paper, we present an argument that challenges the universality of mechanistic explanation: in explanations of the contemporary features of the eukaryotic cell, biologists appeal to its symbiogenetic origin and therefore the notion of symbiogenesis plays the main explanatory role. We defend the notion that symbiogenesis (...) is non-mechanistic in nature and that any attempt to explain some of the contemporary features of the eukaryotic cell mechanistically turns out to be at least insufficient and sometimes fails to address the question that is asked. Finally, we suggest that symbiogenesis is better understood as a pragmatic scientific law and present an alternative non-mechanistic model of scientific explanation. In the model we present, the use of scientific laws is supposed to be a minimal requirement of all scientific explanations, since the purpose of a scientific explanation is to make phenomena expectable. Therefore, this model would help to understand biologists’ appeal to the notion of symbiosis and thus is shown to be better, for the case under examination, than the mechanistic alternative. (shrink)

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which (...) allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's doxastic state. (shrink)

Anthology introduction Intro to Empowering Our Military Conscience.

This chapter provides the background to the American women philosophers’ works that are introduced and collected in Knowledge, Mind and Reality: An Introduction by Early Twentieth-Century American Women Philosophers. We describe the institutional context which made these works possible and their methodological and theoretical background. We also provide biographies for their authors.

Explaining the behaviour of ecosystems is one of the key challenges for the biological sciences. Since 2000, new-mechanicism has been the main model to account for the nature of scientific explanation in biology. The universality of the new-mechanist view in biology has been however put into question due to the existence of explanations that account for some biological phenomena in terms of their mathematical properties (mathematical explanations). Supporters of mathematical explanation have argued that the explanation of the behaviour of ecosystems (...) is usually provided in terms of their mathematical properties, and not in mechanistic terms. They have intensively studied the explanation of the properties of ecosystems that behave following the rules of a non-random network. However, no attention has been devoted to the study of the nature of the explanation in those that form a random network. In this paper, we cover that gap by analysing the explanation of the stability behaviour of the microbiome recently elaborated by Coyte and colleagues, to determine whether it fits with the model of explanation suggested by the new-mechanist or by the defenders of mathematical explanation. Our analysis of this case study supports three theses: (1) that the explanation is not given solely in terms of mechanisms, as the new-mechanists understand the concept; (2) that the mathematical properties that describe the system play an essential explanatory role, but they do not exhaust the explanation; (3) that a non-previously identified appeal to the type of interactions that the entities in the network can exhibit, as well as their abundance, is also necessary for Coyte and colleagues’ account to be fully explanatory. From the combination of these three theses we argue for the necessity of an integrative pluralist view of the nature of behaviour explanation when this is given by appealing to the existence of a random network. (shrink)

An exploration of the relational ontology of space, time and light.

Is God a person, like you and me eventually, but only much better and without our human deficiencies? When you read some of the philosophers of religion, including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, or Open Theists, God appears as such a person, in a sense closer to Superman than to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. It is also a theory that a Christian pastoral theology today tends to impose, insisting that God is close to us and attentive to all of (...) us. But this modern account of God could be a deep and even tragic mistake. One God in three persons, the formula of the Trinity, does not mean that God is a person. On this matters we need an effort in the epistemology of theology to examine more precisely what we can pretend to know about God, and especially how we could pretend to know that God is person. (shrink)

critical analyses of the arguments and attitudes favoring the various popular datings of the inception of a human being's life.

The past two centuries have been an extraordinary era for criticism and reform of institutions and social practices. Unprecedented egalitarian and humanitarian movements have arisen to protest and improve the condition of victims of every variety of evil, personal and impersonal, natural and social. The beneficiaries of these movements belong to all manner of groups: racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, the poor, the insane, the orphaned, the handicapped, the homosexual, the young, the elderly, the female, the animal, the unborn, and (...) so on. Many of these movements had few followers and fewer victories until deep into this century, but most had precursors in the last century, which challenged the moral legitimacy of accepted practices. (shrink)

A phenomenological exploration of the meta-physics of categories, relations, and signs as encountered in physics and the natural sciences.

This paper argues for a treatment of belief as essentially sensitive to certain features of context. The first part gives an argument that we must take belief to be context-sensitive in the same way that assertion is, if we are to preserve appealing principles tying belief to sincere assertion. In particular, whether an agent counts as believing that p in a context depends on the space of alternative possibilities the agent is considering in that context. One and the same doxastic (...) state may amount to belief that p in one context but not another. The second part of the paper gives a formal treatment of doxastic states, according to which belief is context-sensitive along just these lines. The model is applied to characterize (but not to refute) skeptical arguments. (shrink)

Contra Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan, neither classical just war theory nor the contemporary rules of war require or support any notion of combatant moral equality. Nations rightly accept prohibitions against punishing enemy combatants without recognizing any legal or moral right of aggressors to kill. The notion of combatant moral equality has real import only in our interpersonal -- and intrapersonal -- attitudes, since the notion effectively preempts any ground for conscientious objection. Walzer is criticized for over-emphasizing our collective responses (...) to war conduct and slighting our personal, extra-political responses. (shrink)

A formal model of the processes of digestion in a hypothetical cell is developed and discussed as a case study of how the threefold logic of Peircean semiotics works within Rosen’s paradigm of relational ontology. The formal model is used to demonstrate several fundamental differences between a relational description of biological processes and a mechanistic description. The formal model produces a logic of embodied generalization that is mediated and determined by the cell through its interactions with the environment. Specifically, the (...) synchronization of the functions of pattern recognition and semantic attribution results in an open and adaptive learning system that is stabilized by a hermeneutical circle. The relational principles of biosemiotics demonstrated through this case study are applicable to other biological systems, as well as to the relational ontology of systems theory, artificial intelligence systems, and relativistic quantum theory. (shrink)

Our culture is conflicted about morally judging and condemning. We can't avoid it altogether, yet many layfolk today are loathe to do it for reasons neither they nor philosophers well understand. Their resistance is often confused (by themselves and by theorists) with some species of antiobjectivism. But unlike a nonobjectivist, most people think that (a) for us to judge and condemn is generally (objectively) morally wrong , yet (b) for God to do so is (objectively) proper, and (c) so too (...) for certain persons in certain relations (e.g., self-condemnation, parental child rearing.) Certainly, religious (e.g., Christian) critics of judging and condemning without doubting the objective truth of their tradition's core moral teachings. Most puzzling is that (a) merely judging and condemning in one's heart may be improper, and (b) someone else with no more evidence or expertise might properly judge and condemn the same action. The answer is in condemning's complex structure of presuppostions. Condemning and judging are acts, and attitudes initiated by the act. Condemnation is motivated by two judgments presumed to justify it, a criticism of a target, and a judgment that the criticism justifies some negative response toward the target. Unlike nonpunitive penalties, punishments are motivated and explained by condemnation. Condemnation is an act of a hostile will, wishing some evil for its target, not (just) as a means to some good. Its root is in damning, an act akin to cursing. It declares a degraded status. The hostility makes it harder to justify condemnation than criticism, and punishment than nonpunitive penalties. Condemning claims objectivity and authority. It involves reflexive evaluation, regarding itself justified, approving its hostile feelings toward the target. Condemners presume themselves entitled to sit in judgment, pass judgment, and cast the condemned down. Those presumptions inhere in sitting in judgment, assuming jurisdiction. Unlike mathematical or scientific judgments, passing moral judgment seems to be a political act subject to extraepistemic constraints. "Who are you to judge?" may properly challenge your right to pass judgment. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion of the Cracow Circle (1934-1944) are the principal precursors of what is now called the analytic philosophy of religion. The widespread claim that the analytic philosophy of religion was from the beginning an Anglo-American affair is an ill-informed one. It is demonstrable that the enterprise, although not the label "analytic philosophy of religion," appeared in Poland in the 1930’s. Józef Bochenski’s postwar work is a development of the Cracow Circle’s prewar work in the analytic philosophy of religion, (...) or at least of important elements of that earlier work. Bochenski’s approach in his ’Logic of Religion’ is quite original and might still be profitably studied and discussed by philosophers of religion of the analytic persuasion. (shrink)

critical analysis of moral status of human beings. Argues that humans have special moral status simply by being members of our species.

Thompson Clarke’s seminal paper “The Legacy of Skepticism” (1972) is notoriously difficult in both substance and presentation. Despite the paper’s importance to skepticism studies in the nearly half-century since its publication, no attempt has been made in the secondary literature to provide an account, based on a close reading of the text, of just what Clarke’s argument is. Furthermore, much of the existing literature betrays (or so it seems to me) fundamental misunderstandings of Clarke’s thought. In this essay, I attempt (...) to explain—concisely but comprehensively—Clarke’s overall argument in “The Legacy of Skepticism.”. (shrink)

Critique of prevailing textbook conception of sufficient conditions and necessary conditions as a truth functional relation of material implication (p->q)/(~q->~p). Explanation of common sense conception of condition as correlative of consequence, involving dependence. Utility of this conception exhibited in resolving puzzles regarding ontology, truth, and fatalism.

Critical analysis of development of concept of jus ante bellum.

In this paper Animalism is analysed. It will be argued that Animalism is correct in claiming (i) that being of a certain sort of animal S is a fundamental individuative substance sortal concept (animal of the species Homo Sapiens), (ii) that this implies that Animalism is correct in claiming that persons such as us are, by necessity, human beings, (iii) that remaining the same animal is a necessary condition for our identity over time. Contrary to Animalism it will be argued (...) that this does not imply that person should be understood as a phased sortal concept. It will be argued that Animalism rests upon a prior conception of person, and that this implies that person must be understood as a basic substance sortal concept through which we have to individuate ourselves and others. It is further argued that this, together with the insights of Animalism, implies that persons, by necessity, are beings of a biological nature. (shrink)

Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, purports to be an individual who admires faith but cannot attain to its unearthly standards. The discontinuity between Kierkegaard, who self-identified as a religious author, and de Silentio, who approaches Abraham in self-doubt, is apparent—and as a result, some have argued for an utter dissociation between these two authors. I argue that such dissociation undermines the potency of the work, especially with regard to the perspective on faith presented therein. The (...) significance of de Silentio’s perspective becomes clear when set against the backdrop of Kierkegaard’s view of the relationship between anxiety and faith; in this light, de Silentio turns out to represent an early stage of the individual’s religious development, and Kierkegaard turns out to have recently surpassed this stage before writing the work. (shrink)

According to theological fictionalism, God has the same status as a fictional character in a novel or a movie. Such a claim has been defended by Robin Le Poidevin on the basis of Kendall Walton’s theory of make believe. But it is not only a philosophical esoteric account of religious beliefs, it is now an exoteric view, sometimes accepted by "believers" themselves, and so could even be considered a postmodern heresy. But theological fictionalism does not work: faith is real assent (...) and not make believe; belief is different from acceptance; belief and faith are dispositional, but make believe seems to presuppose an account of beliefs as occurrent states; we cannot anymore imagine at will than we can believe at will. (shrink)

By identifying the formal role of light in relativity theory with the formal role of text in Gadamer’s theory of hermeneutics, the two theories are brought into relationship. Through this fusion, the privileging of “space” in physics and the privileging of “time” in hermeneutics are reciprocally interrogated as horizons of truth.

Consider an infinite set of discrete, finite-sized solid balls (i.e., elements) extending in all directions forever. Here, infinite set is not meant so much in the abstract, mathematical sense but in more of a physical sense where the balls have physical size and physical location-type relationships with their neighbors. In this sense, the set is used as an analogy for our possibly infinite physical universe. Two observers are viewing this set. One observer is internal to the set and is of (...) the same finite size scale as the ball elements. Another observer is external to the set and is infinite in size relative to the balls and observer within the set. This observer is of the same size scale as the set as a whole. What do these sets look like to the two observers? The finite-sized (relative to the balls inside the set) observer within the set would view the set as a space composed of discrete, finite-sized objects. The external infinite-sized (relative to the inside the set) observer would view the very same set as a continuous space and would see no distinct elements within the set. How does this relate to us? First, the differing views of set N as being composed of a discrete versus continuous space may be related to the differing views of spacetime as discrete and continuous. Second, the perspective of the observer would have an impact on the assignment of a cardinality to an infinite set. (shrink)

As part of a review symposium on DARWIN'S ARGUMENT BY ANALOGY: FROM ARTIFICIAL TO NATURAL SELECTION (2021), the journal METASCIENCE invited Roger White, Jon Hodge and me to submit a response to the thoughtful commentaries on our book by Andrea Sullivan-Clarke, David Depew and Andrew Inkpen.

Professional Military Ethics Education (PMEE) must transmit and promote military professionalism, so it must continuously.

Analyses of quotation have assumed that quotations are referring expressions while disagreeing over details. That assumption is unnecessary and unacceptable in its implications. It entails a quasi-Parmenidean impossibility of meaningfully denying the meaningfulness or referential function of anything uttered, for it implies that: 'Kqxf' is not a meaningful expression 'The' is not a referring expression are, if meaningful, false. It also implies that ill formed constructions like: 'The' is 'the' are well formed tautologies. Such sentences make apparent the need for (...) what is commonly explicit, a genuine referring expression, a noun phrase, usually a description, to which the quotation is appositional. A quotation is not itself a word, though it may contain such. The markers signal that the enquoted material is like a sentence-embedded color patch, material displayed to facilitate reference to something identifiable by/with it specified by the noun phrase it subserves. (shrink)

Critical analysis of wide variety of conceptions and justifications of retribution and punishment. Emphasis is on pivotal role of condemnation.

Neither M. Walzer's collectivist conception of the "moral equality" of combatants, nor its antithetical individualist conceptions of responsibility are compatible with the ethos of military professionalism and its conception(s) of the responsibility of military professionals for service in an unjust war.

Critique of Alonzo Church's Translation Test. Church's test is based on a common misconception of the grammar of (so-called) quotations. His conclusion (that metalogical truths are actually contingent empirical truths) is a reductio of that conception. Chruch's argument begs the question by assuming that translation must preserve reference despite altering logical form of statements whose truth is explained by their form.

What should be a police department's policies and regulations on the use of deadly force? What is the relevance for this of the state law on capital punishment?

Critical analysis of Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision.

On ground shared by environmental hermeneutics, critical social theory, and environmentally minded feminism, this article attempts to conciliate between the nearly antithetical ethical viewpoints of environmental philosophers David Abram and Steven Vogel. It will demonstrate first that Abram’s linguistic arguments for extending ethical considerability to nonhuman nature succumb to two of Vogel’s debilitating critiques, which it labels the social constructivist critique and the discourse ethics critique, and secondly that Abram fails to guard against the problem of human-human oppression. The article (...) also points out, on the other hand, that while Vogel evades the problem of human-human oppression, his view fails to protect against the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. Operating within the boundaries that Vogel establishes, it will seek to avoid the pitfalls of Abram’s view, to address the underlying ideology that leads to both types of oppression, and to eliminate the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. To do so it draws upon the arguments of Trish Glazebrook, contending that Abram’s appeals to the “speech” of nature can be more effectively conceptualized as erotic appeals, and that engaging in this call-and-response eros promotes the development of virtues that undermine our current ideology and extend to both the human and the nonhuman. (shrink)

The Socratic Paradox (that only Socrates is wise, and only because only he recognizes our lack of wisdom) is explained, elaborated and defended. His philosophical scepticism is distinguished from others (Pyrrhonian, Cartesian, Humean, Kripkean Wittgenstein, etc.): the doubt concerns our understanding of our beliefs, not our justification for them; the doubt is a posteriori and inductive, not a priori. Post-Socratic philosophy confirms this scepticism: contra-Descartes, our ideas are not transparent to us; contra-Verificationism, no criterion distinguishes sense from nonsense. The import (...) of this scepticism for professional ethicists is examined. (shrink)

Analyticity is a bogus explanatory concept, and is so even granting genuine synonomy. Definitions can't explain the truth of a statement, let alone its necessity and/or our a priori knowledge of it. The illusion of an explanation is revealed by exposing diverse confusions: e.g., between nominal, conceptual and real definitions, and correspondingly between notational, conceptual, and objectual readings of alleged analytic truths, and between speaking a language and operating a calculus. The putative explananda of analyticity are (alleged) truths about essential (...) properties. Real definitions (a la Socrates) are the (alleged) explananda, not the explanans of analyticity. Their truth can be explained neither by conceptual definitions (a la Kant), nor by nominal definitions (a la Frege). The Quinean assault on synonomy is unsuccessful and in any case misplaced, because analyticity turns on the explanatory import of synonomy, not its existence. Synonym substitution in a logical truth cannot yield a necessary truth for it doesn't preserve logical form. Self-identity statements (for properties and/or individuals) differ in logical form from alter-identity statements. (shrink)

Spinoza’s attitude toward nonhuman animals is uncharacteristically cruel. This essay elaborates upon this ostensible idiosyncrasy in reference to Hasana Sharp’s commendable desire to revitalize a basis for animal ethics from within the bounds of his system. Despite our favoring an ethics beginning from animal affect, this essay argues that an animal ethic adequate to the demands of our historical moment cannot be developed from within the confines of strict adherence to Spinoza’s system—and this is not yet to speak of a (...) more robust animal ethics which would advocate actual care and compassion for the animals themselves. We argue that on the assumption of Spinoza’s ontological biocentrism, in the presence of Spinozist determinism and the absence of an axiological biocentrism, an anthropocentric axiology necessarily follows. Any Spinozist animal ethic must fall back, therefore, upon appeals to the maximization of human pleasure and power; hence Spinoza’s ruthless injunction to “use (the animals) at our pleasure.” These are the very ontological and ethical assumptions which have incited human self-exaltation in the modern period, in pursuit of power and pleasure even despite the destructive long-term consequences for all the living. We suggest that an adequate animal ethic would require either an abandonment of Spinoza’s ontological biocentrism or the adoption of an axiological biocentrism. (shrink)

This article examines the question of whether the atheist and the believer can understand each other, to the point of being friends intellectually. The answer is no. The atheist and the believer can be best enemies, but their epistemic disagreement is definitely radical. For it is not a disagreement on religious belief itself, but about what allows the believer to believe. The article examines some aspects of John Greco’s concept of ”friendly theism’, the discussion of conciliationism and anti-conciliatonism, and the (...) epistemic role of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

abortion argument and fact-value distinction.

a collection of poems as companion to a collection of philosophical études.

-/- 在一系列《全球研究报告》的调研过程中,我们一直希望对亚洲地区的研究现状进行一个描述,不仅限于中国、日本和韩国这些持续发展且颇受关注的国家。 -/- 这份《全球研究报告》调查了被称为南亚和东亚（S&E Asia）的地区,包括东盟集团及更广泛的地区。 .

Jonathan Adams, David Pendlebury, Gordon Rogers, Martin Szomszor. 全球研究报告——东南亚[J]. 科学观察, 2020, 15(3): 54-65.