The problem of other minds has a distinguished philosophical history stretching back more than two hundred years. Taken at face value, it is an epistemological question: it concerns how we can have knowledge of, or at least justified belief in, the existence of minds other than our own. In recent decades, philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists and primatologists have debated a related question: how we actually go about attributing mental states to others (regardless of whether we ever achieve knowledge or rational (...) justification in this domain). Until the mid-nineties, the latter debate – which sometimes goes under the name of the “mindreading” debate – was characterized by a fairly clear-cut opposition between two theoretical outlooks: “theory-theory” (TT) and “simulation theory” (ST). Theory-theorists typically argued that we attribute mental states to others on the basis of a “theory of mind” that is either constructed in early infancy and subsequently revised and modified (Gopnik 1996), or else is the result of maturation of innate mindreading “modules” (Baron-Cohen 1995). (shrink)

In bioethics, the predominant categorization of various types of influence has been a tripartite classification of rational persuasion (meaning influence by reason and argument), coercion (meaning influence by irresistible threats—or on a few accounts, offers), and manipulation (meaning everything in between). The standard ethical analysis in bioethics has been that rational persuasion is always permissible, and coercion is almost always impermissible save a few cases such as imminent threat to self or others. However, many forms of influence fall into the (...) broad middle terrain—and this terrain is in desperate need of conceptual refining and ethical analysis in light of recent interest in using principles from behavioral science to influence health decisions and behaviors. This paper aims to address the neglected space between rational persuasion and coercion in bioethics. First, I argue for conceptual revisions that include removing the “manipulation” label and relabeling this space “nonargumentative]influence,” with two subtypes: “reason-bypassing” and “reason-countering.” Second, I argue that bioethicists have made the mistake of relying heavily on the conceptual categories themselves for normative work and instead should assess the ethical permissibility of a particular instance of influence by asking several key ethical questions, which I elucidate, that relate to (1) the impact of the form of influence on autonomy and (2) the relationship between the influencer and the influenced. Finally, I apply my analysis to two examples of nonargumentative influence in health care and health policy: (1) governmental agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) trying to influence the public to be healthier using nonargumentative measures such as vivid images on cigarette packages to make more salient the negative effects of smoking, and (2) a physician framing a surgery in terms of survival rates instead of mortality rates to influence her patient to consent to the surgery. (shrink)

This paper provides an argument for a more socially relevant philosophy of science (SRPOS). Our aims in this paper are to characterize this body of work in philosophy of science, to argue for its importance, and to demonstrate that there are significant opportunities for philosophy of science to engage with and support this type of research. The impetus of this project was a keen sense of missed opportunities for philosophy of science to have a broader social impact. We illustrate various (...) ways in which SRPOS can provide social benefits, as well as benefits to scientific practice and philosophy itself. Also, SRPOS is consistent with some historical and contemporary goals of philosophy of science. We’re calling for an expansion of philosophy of science to include more of this type of work. In order to support this expansion, we characterize philosophy of science as an epistemic community and examine the culture and practices of philosophy of science that can help or hinder research in this area. (shrink)

Historically, republicans were of different minds about markets: some, such as Rousseau, reviled them, while others, like Adam Smith, praised them. The recent republican resurgence has revived this issue. Classical liberals such as Gerald Gaus contend that neo-republicanism is inherently hostile to markets, while neo-republicans like Richard Dagger and Philip Pettit reject this characterization—though with less enthusiasm than one might expect. I argue here that the right republican attitude toward competitive markets is celebratory rather than acquiescent and that republicanism demands (...) such markets for the same reason it requires the rule of law: because both are essential institutions for protecting individuals from arbitrary interference. I reveal how competition restrains—and in the limit, even eradicates—market power and thereby helps us realize “market freedom,” i.e., freedom as non-domination in the context of economic exchange. Finally, I show that such freedom necessitates “Anglo-Nordic” economic policies. (shrink)

This introduction to the Journal of Business Research special issue on anti-consumption briefly defines and highlights the importance of anticonsumption research, provides an overview of the latest studies in the area, and suggests an agenda for future research on anti-consumption.

Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? We consider this problem for beliefs in three different domains: religion, morality, and commonsense and scientific claims about matters of empirical fact. We identify replies to evolutionary scepticism that work in some domains but not in others. One reply is that evolution can be (...) expected to design systems that produce true beliefs in some domain. This reply works for commonsense beliefs and can be extended to scientific beliefs. But it does not work for moral or religious beliefs. An alternative reply which has been used defend moral beliefs is that their truth does not consist in their tracking some external state of affairs. Whether or not it is successful in the case of moral beliefs, this reply is less plausible for religious beliefs. So religious beliefs emerge as particularly vulnerable to evolutionary debunking. (shrink)

In his article “Nudging and Informed Consent,” Shlomo Cohen (2013) argues, among other things, that 1) “to the extent that the nudge-influenced decision making is rational—in whatever sense,” there...

Contemporary republicans have adopted a less-than-charitable attitude toward private beneficence, especially when it is directed to the poor, worrying that rich patrons may be in a position to exercise arbitrary power over their impoverished clients. These concerns have led them to support impartial public provision by way of state welfare programs, including an unconditional basic income (UBI). In contrast to this administrative model of public welfare, I will propose a competitive model in which the state regulates and subsidizes a decentralized (...) and nonstatist provision of support for the poor. This model will fix the historically objectionable features of private provision by having the state prevent collusion among private charities, deliver information to recipients about alternative sources of assistance, and give substantial grants to charities as well as tax incentives and vouchers to donors. I will contend that such an approach would do a better job of minimizing domination of the poor than traditional welfare states and may prove more politically feasible than a UBI, at least in the near term in certain national contexts. (shrink)

Modern military organizations are paternalistic organizations. They typically recognize a duty of care toward military personnel and are willing to ignore or violate the consent of military personnel in order to uphold that duty of care. In this paper, we consider the case for paternalism in the military and distinguish it from the case for paternalism in medicine. We argue that one can consistently reject paternalism in medicine but uphold paternalism in the military. We consider two well-known arguments for the (...) conclusion that military organizations should not be entitled to use experimental drugs on troops without first obtaining the informed consent of those troops. We argue that both of these are unsuccessful, in the absence of an argument for the rejection of paternalism in the military altogether. The case for military paternalism is widely accepted. However, we consider three ways in which it could be challenged. (shrink)

A liberal antinomy of parenting exists: strong liberal intuitions militate in favor of both denying special resources to parenting projects (on grounds of project-neutrality) and granting them (on grounds of respect for personhood). I show that we can reconcile these two claims by rejecting a premise common to both--viz. that liberalism is necessarily committed to extensive procreative liberties--and limiting procreation and subsequent parenting to adults who meet certain psychological and especially financial criteria. I also defend this argument, which provides a (...) Kantian complement to utilitarian arguments for restricting procreation, against a variety of objections. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers (1998) defend the hypothesis of an ‘Extended Mind’, maintaining that beliefs and other paradigmatic mental states can be implemented outside the central nervous system or body. Aspects of the problem of ‘language acquisition’ are considered in the light of the extended mind hypothesis. Rather than ‘language’ as typically understood, the object of study is something called ‘utterance-activity’, a term of art intended to refer to the full range of kinetic and prosodic features of the on-line behaviour of (...) interacting humans. It is argued that utterance activity is plausibly regarded as jointly controlled by the embodied activity of interacting people, and that it contributes to the control of their behaviour. By means of specific examples it is suggested that this complex joint control facilitates easier learning of at least some features of language. This in turn suggests a striking form of the extended mind, in which infants’ cognitive powers are augmented by those of the people with whom they interact. (shrink)

We present a deductive theory of space-time which is realistic, objective, and relational. It is realistic because it assumes the existence of physical things endowed with concrete properties. It is objective because it can be formulated without any reference to cognoscent subjects or sensorial fields. Finally, it is relational because it assumes that space-time is not a thing but a complex of relations among things. In this way, the original program of Leibniz is consummated, in the sense that space is (...) ultimately an order of coexistents, and time is an order of succesives. In this context, we show that the metric and topological properties of Minkowskian space-time are reduced to relational properties of concrete things. We also sketch how our theory can be extended to encompass a Riemannian space-time. (shrink)

Rawls offers three arguments for the priority of liberty in Theory, two of which share a common error: the belief that once we have shown the instrumental value of the basic liberties for some essential purpose (e.g., securing self-respect), we have automatically shown the reason for their lexical priority. The third argument, however, does not share this error and can be reconstructed along Kantian lines: beginning with the Kantian conception of autonomy endorsed by Rawls in section 40 of Theory, we (...) can explain our highest-order interest in rationality, justify the lexical priority of all basic liberties, and reinterpret Rawls’ threshold condition for the application of the priority of liberty. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this Kantian reconstruction will not work within the radically different framework of Political Liberalism. (shrink)

I wish to defend the claim that given the content and structure of any moral theory we are likely to find palatable, there is no way of uniquely breaking down that theory into either consequentialist or deontological elements. Indeed, once we examine the actual structure of any such theory more closely, we see that it can be classified in either way arbitrarily. Hence if we ignore the metaethical pronouncements often made by adherents of the consequentialist-deontological distinction, we are quickly led (...) to the conclusion that this distinction contributes nothing of consequence to an understanding of moral theory. I will try to show that there are basically two reasons for this. First, what we mean by the terms endemic to the consequentialist-deontological distinction have no unique references to particular states of affairs in actual cases of moral decision making. Hence we may justify any such concrete moral decision by reference to typically consequentialist or deontological reasoning indifferently. Second, scrutiny of actual and viable moral theories reveals a much finer-grained structure than the consequentialist-deontological taxonomy can capture. And it is this structure, rather than simple attention to consequences or principles, that determines practical moral decision making. We would thus do better to develop the richer vocabulary of causes and constituents, goals and effects, states and events (mental, social, or physical). So in the end, the consequentialist-deontological distinction is irrelevant at the normative level of actual moral reasoning, whereas at the metaethical level it crudely schematizes two opposing types of dummy theory, neither of which is convincing, upon reflection, to any practicing moral philosopher. (shrink)

This article argues, against contemporary experimentalist criticism, that conceptual analysis has epistemic value, with a structure that encourages the development of interesting hypotheses which are of the right form to be valuable in diverse areas of philosophy. The article shows, by analysis of the Gettier programme, that conceptual analysis shares the proofs and refutations form Lakatos identified in mathematics. Upon discovery of a counterexample, this structure aids the search for a replacement hypothesis. The search is guided by heuristics. The heuristics (...) of conceptual analysis are similar to those in other interesting areas of scholarship, and so hypotheses generated by it are of the right form to be applicable to diverse areas. The article shows that the explanationist criterion in epistemology was developed and applied in this way. The epistemic value of conceptual analysis is oblique because it contributes not towards the main purpose of conceptual analysis but towards the reliable development of epistemically valuable hypotheses in philosophy and scholarship. (shrink)

As the journal is effectively defunct, I am uploading a full-text copy, but only of my abstract and article, and some journal front matter. -/- Note that the pagination in the PDF version differs from the official pagination because A4 and 8.5" x 11" differ. -/- Traditionally, imperatives have been handled with deontic logics, not the logic of propositions which bear truth values. Yet, an imperative is issued by the speaker to cause (stay) actions which change the state of affairs, (...) which is, in turn, described by propositions that bear truth values. Thus, ultimately, imperatives affect truth values. In this paper, we put forward an idea that allows us to reason with imperatives using classical logic by constructing a one-to-one correspondence between imperatives and a particular class of declaratives. (shrink)

I want to examine the implications of a metaphysical thesis which is presupposed in various objections to Rawls' theory of justice.Although their criticisms differ in many respects, they concur in employing what I shall refer to as the continuity thesis. This consists of the following claims conjointly: (1) The parties in the original position (henceforth the OP) are, and know themselves to be, fully mature persons who will be among the members of the well-ordered society (henceforth the WOS) which is (...) generated by their choice of principles of justice. (2) The OP is a conscious event among others, integrated (compatibly with the constraints on knowledge and motivation imposed on the parties) into the regular continuity of experience that comprises each of their ongoing constitutes lives. (3) The parties in the OP thus are, and regard themselves as, psychologically continuing persons, partially determined in personality and interests by prior experiences, capable of recollection and regret concerning the past, anticipation and apprehensiveness regarding the future, and so on. Although the continuity thesis as stated above is not at odds with any of the conditions that define the OP, its exegetical validity is a matter for discussion. I shall be concerned to argue that if it is indeed contained in or a consequence of Rawls' theory, then it casts into doubt the capacity of the OP to generate or justify any principles of justice at all. On the other hand, if the continuity thesis is viewed as dispensable and unnecessary to the Rawlsian enterprise, then Rawls is correct in maintaining the irrelevance of the question of personal identity to the construction of his moral theory. In this case, the contract-theoretic, instrumentalist justification for the two principles of justice (henceforth the 2PJ) needs to be supplanted by a modified conception of wide reflective equilibrium. The considerations that form the bulk of this discussion then may be understood as providing a rationale for Rawls' recent revisions in the model of justification on which his theory of justice rests, and for his increasing emphasis on us as moral mediators between the OP and the WOS. Now I want to consider the question of whether or not, given the textual evidence, anything like the continuity thesis is stated or implied by Rawls, and what problems for his theory, if any, turn on a positive or negative answer to this question. -/- . (shrink)

This has been made available gratis by the publisher. -/- This piece gives the raison d'etre for the development of the converters mentioned in the title. Three reasons are given, one linguistic, one philosophical, and one practical. It is suggested that at least /two/ independent converters are needed. -/- This piece ties together the extended paper "Abstracts from Logical Form I/II," and the short piece providing the comprehensive theory alluded to in the abstract of that extended paper in "Pragmatics, Montague, (...) and 'Abstracts from Logical Form'" by motivating the entire project from beginning to end. (shrink)

As the journal is effectively defunct, I am uploading a full-text copy, but only of my abstract and article, and some journal front matter. -/- Note that the pagination in the PDF version differs from the official pagination because A4 and 8.5" x 11" differ. -/- Note also that this is not a mere repetition of the argument in /Mind/, nor merely an application of it; there are subtle differences. -/- Finally, although Christians are likely to take this as applicable (...) to a God who can enter time, Jewish readers who wish a full understanding of its intent are referred to M.R. II:13:3. Note that /some/ free will, however miniscule, must remain, exactly as argued. Also, Maimonides speaks differently, albeit metaphorically, elsewhere, and nothing here contradicts his statements. (shrink)

In Analysis, Vol. 45, June 1984, George Rea published a paper attacking my claim that there could be ‘indeterminate minds'. This paper is a reply to his attack. I claim, again, that such ‘minds’ are possible – entities such that it is indeterminate whether or not these entities are people with minds. -/- .

The religious right often aligns its patriarchal opposition to same-sex marriage with the defence of religious freedom. In this article, I identify resources for confronting such prejudicial religiosity by surveying two predominant feminist approaches to same-sex marriage that are often assumed to be at odds: discourse ethics and queer critical theory. This comparative analysis opens up to view commitments that may not be fully recognizable from within either feminist framework: commitments to ideals of selfhood, to specific conceptions of justice, and (...) to particular definitions of secularism. I conclude by examining the "postsecular" turn in feminism, suggesting that we can see the same-sex marriage debate not in terms of an impasse between differing feminist approaches, but in terms of shared existential and ethical affinities. (shrink)

Uses erotetic logic to model the courtroom objection "Improper Cross!". -/- Readers downloading the article should also please download the erratum et corrigendum, which is locally available.

Proves two simple identities relating the biconditional and exclusive disjunction. -/- The PDF has been made available gratis by the publisher.

In the first part of this article we briefly describe the design and development of a Consciousness Studies concentration at Goddard College, a student centered, progressive educational institution in the northeastern United States. We emphasize the tensions we experienced between different orientations in Consciousness Studies and especially the one related to the scientific and transpersonal ends of the spectrum of consciousness. In the second part, we relate the scientific‐transpersonal issue that we experienced at Goddard to the broader theory and practice (...) of Consciousness Studies. We also link the latter to the so‐called explanatory gap between third and first person forms of consciousness and the call for first person methods of exploring consciousness. Our conclusion is that the scientific approach has the edge and is at risk of assimilating other approaches to the detriment of Consciousness Studies. In our view, the future development of Consciousness Studies, both in theory and practice, requires several different approaches from the scientific to the transpersonal and privileging one is to narrow the field of possibilities and to risk falling prey to one‐sidedness. (shrink)

This paper deals with Austinian ifs of every stripe within classical logic. It is argued that they are truth-functional and the theory of conditional elements is used. Ellipsis is key. Corrects an error in Fulda (2010) in translation and therefore scope. -/- The PDF is made available gratis by the Publisher.

It seems clear that second order fuzziness (indeterminacy) is possible. There can be borderline cases of borderline cases. But how about third order cases? Is there no end of degrees of borderlinehood? I offer a somewhat strange little 'language game' that seems to suggest that the ascension ends with second order cases. (The 'game' is intended to be somewhat like a simplified version of color perception.).

It is often noted that if someone has a tertiary degree in a scientific field who promotes an anti-science-establishment, antiscience, or pseudoscience agenda, they are very often engineers, dentists, surgeons or medical practitioners. While this does not mean that all members of these professions or disciplines are antiscience, of course, the higher frequency of pseudoscience among them is indicative of what I call the “deductivist mindset” regarding science itself. Opposing this is the “inductivist mindset”, a view that has been deprecated (...) among philosophers since Popper. Roughly, the deductivist mindset tends to see problems as questions that can be resolved by deduction from known theory or principle, while the inductivist sees problems as questions to be resolved by discovery. These form cognitive poles, which nobody ever purely instantiates, but a cognitive tendency to be a deductivist may explain why some people find results that conflict with prior theoretical commitments, whether scientific or not, unacceptable. The deductivist tends to be a cognitive conservative, where the inductivist tends to be a cognitive progressive, and the conservative mindset leads to a ressentiment about modernism, and hence about certain scientific results, more often, or so I shall argue in this chapter. (shrink)

This paper identifies strands of reasoning underlying several theories of democratic authority. It shows why each of them fails to adequately explain or justify it. Yet, it does not claim (per philosophical anarchism) that democratic authority cannot be justified. Furthermore, it sketches an argument for a perspective on the justification of democratic authority that would effectively respond to three problems not resolved by alternative theories—the problem of the expert, the problem of specificity, and the problem of deference. Successfully resolving these (...) problems is at least evidence for the viability of a justification of democratic authority. This perspective integrates procedural concerns with those about the quality of democratic outcomes. It shows that democratic authority, if there is such a thing, requires reliable democratic procedures as the only sort citizens could rationally accept. (shrink)

Gives two pared-down versions of the argument from design, which may prove more persuasive as to a Creator, discusses briefly the mathematics underpinning disbelief and nonbelief and its misuse and some proper uses, moves to why the full argument is needed anyway, viz., to demonstrate Providence, offers a theory as to how miracles (open and hidden) occur, viz. the replacement of any particular mathematics underlying a natural law (save logic) by its most appropriate nonstandard variant. -/- Note: This is an (...) extended abstract; there are no present plans to complete it. (shrink)

Shows how, as a consequence of the Arrow Impossibility Theorem, objectivity in grading is chimerical, given a sufficiently knowledgeable teacher (of his students, not his subject) in a sufficiently small class. -/- PDF available from JStor only; permission to post full version previously granted by journal editors and publisher expired. -/- Unpublished reply posted gratis.

In 1951 John Rawls expressed these convictions about the fundamental issues in metaethics: [T]he objectivity or the subjectivity of moral knowledge turns, not on the question whether ideal value entities exist or whether moral judgments are caused by emotions or whether there is a variety of moral codes the world over, but simply on the question: does there exist a reasonable method for validating and invalidating given or proposed moral rules and those decisions made on the basis of them? For (...) to say of scientific knowledge that it is objective is to say that the propositions expressed therein may be evidenced to be true by a reasonable and reliable method, that is, by the rules and procedures of what we may call "inductive logic"; and, similarly, to establish the objectivity of moral rules, and the decisions based upon them, we must exhibit the decision procedure, which can be shown to be both reasonable and reliable, at least in some cases, for deciding between moral rules and lines of conduct consequent to them.1 In this passage Rawls reconfigured the issue of moral objectivity and so reoriented the practice of metaethics from linguistic analysis to rational methodology. In so doing, his work has provided inspiration to philosophers as disparate in normative views as Thomas Nagel,2 Richard Brandt3, Alan Gewirth4, and David Gauthier.5 Rawls replaced the Moorean question, Do moral terms refer? with the Rawlsian question, Can moral judgments be the outcome of a rational and reliable procedure? He later gave a resoundingly positive answer to this question6 and later still, a more tentative one.7 Rawls' considered qualification of his earlier enthusiasm about the extent to which moral philosophy could be "part of the theory of rational choice"8 is a tribute to the seriousness with which he took his critics' objections. (shrink)

Evaluates e-mail critically from four perspectives. Note: This is /not/ the full version. The full version is available upon written request only.

Drawing upon the thought of Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger, the paper argues that contemporary discussions of religious experience and religious thought as two separate parts of religious practice and tradition--with religious experience as the "heart" of religion--is erroneous. Instead, it is argued, religious experience and religious thought are woven together in practice, the one implicating the other.

Seit kurzem wird des öfteren in Deutschland die Ansicht geäußert, Deutschland solle nun seine fremdenfeindliche Vergangenheit im Zweiten Weltkrieg endlich hinter sich lassen und von nun ab als >>normalisiertes<< Land der Zukunft gegenübertreten. Diese Meinung entsteht aus der Voraussetzung, daß Deutschland durch seine Geschichte von Xenophobie und Genozid im Zweiten Weltkrieg als abnormal, als ungewöhnlich gekennzeichnet ist. Aber das ist nicht wahr. Deutschlands blutige Geschichte ist mit derjenigen der Vereinigten Staaten, Großbritanniens, der Niederlande, Rußlands, Chinas, Japans, der Türkei, Vietnams, Kambodschas, (...) Somalias, Ruandas, des Irak, des Kosovo, Bosniens, und anderer Länder vergleichbar. Zu vergleichen bedeutet weder zu relativieren, noch zu entschuldigen, sondern bloß anzuerkennen, daß die Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit, die in verschiedenen Ländern stattfinden, einige gemeinsame Eigenschaften haben. (shrink)

Note that this paper is 35 pages, and had been replaced in many places w/ a draft w/o authorization. -/- The academy, broadly construed to include faculty, administrators at all levels, and editors, referees, and publishers of academic work, is beset by more ills bespeaking of a fundamental lack of integrity than can possibly be enumerated in a single monograph; nevertheless, as the need is urgent, and everyone seems to prefer either silence or piecemeal treatments, myself heretofore included, five ills (...) are enumerated herein, then traced to seven deadly sins that beset the entire enterprise—although not in its entirety, of course—and some surprisingly simple, commonsensical, and practicable solutions are advanced. (shrink)

As these opening quotes acknowledge, the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) represents a core puzzle within the formal mathematics of game theory.3 Its rise in conspicuity is evident figure 2.1 above demonstrating a relatively steady rise in incidences of the phrase’s usage between 1960 to 1995, with a stable presence persisting into the twenty first century. This famous two-person “game,” with a stock narrative cast in terms of two prisoners who each independently must choose whether to remain silent or speak, each advancing (...) self-interest at the expense of the other and thereby achieving a mutually suboptimal outcome, mires any social interaction it is applied to into perplexity. The logic of this game proves the inverse of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: individuals acting on self interest will achieve a mutually suboptimal outcome. However, as this chapter illuminates, the assumptions underlying game theory drive this conclusion. (shrink)

Heidegger’s “Evening Conversation: In a Prisoner of War Camp in Russia, between a Younger and an Older Man”, one of three dialogues composed by Heidegger after the defeat of National Socialist Germany published in Country Path Conversations explores the being-historical situation and fate of the German people by turning to the early Daoist text of the Zhuangzi. My article traces how Heidegger interprets fundamental concepts from the Zhuangzi, mediated by way of Richard Wilhelm’s translation Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, (...) such as naturalness, letting/releasement, the unnecessary and the useless in the context of his hermeneutical and political situation. I consider to what extent this dialogue, along with his other discussions of the Zhuangzi and intensive engagement with the Daodejing from 1943 to 1950, constitute a “Daoist turn” in Heidegger’s thinking that helped shape his Postwar thought. (shrink)

What would it mean to bring post-secular accounts of learning together with existentialist philosophy, especially in the context of Existentialism classrooms? This essay explores the convergence of the post-secular with the existential, laying out several pedagogical examples of how students might "become" existentially more engaged as students and as post-secular actors.