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

In his recent book Constructing the World, David Chalmers defends A Priori Scrutability, the thesis that there is a compact class of truths such that for any truth p, a Laplacian intellect could know a priori that if the truths in that class hold, then p. In this paper, I develop an objection to Chalmers’ thesis that focuses on his treatment of a so-called that’s-all truth. My objection draws on Theodore Sider’s discussion of border-sensitive properties, and also on the (...) causal phenomenon of double prevention. (shrink)

What is the aim of philosophy? There may be too many philosophical branches, traditions, practices, and programs to admit of a single overarching aim. Here I focus on a fairly traditional philosophical project that has recently received increasingly sophisticated articulation, especially by Frank Jackson (1998) and David Chalmers (2012). In §1, I present the project and suggest that it is usefully thought of as ‘total axiomatics’: the project of attempting to axiomatize the total theory of the world. In §2, I (...) raise a problem for the project that I call the ‘problem of multiple axiomatizations.’ I consider some initially alluring but ultimately unpromising approaches to this problem in §3. In §4, I defend a surprising approach to the problem, according to which competing axiomatizations of the total theory of the world are effectively evaluated for their aesthetic virtues. (shrink)

Consider the idea that suffering of some specific kind is deserved by those who are guilty of moral wrongdoing. Feeling guilty is a prime example. It might be said that it is noninstrumentally good that one who is guilty feel guilty (at the right time and to the right degree), or that feeling guilty (at the right time and to the right degree) is apt or fitting for one who is guilty. Each of these claims constitutes an interesting thesis about (...) desert, given certain understandings of what desert is. After examining these claims, the paper briefly explores the idea that an offender might deserve certain forms of treatment by others. The paper concludes by contrasting the modest theses on which it focuses with a far bolder one, to the effect that if we are morally responsible, then it makes sense to suppose that some of us might deserve to suffer eternal torment. The more modest theses do not commit one to anything of this sort. (shrink)

The theses and program below ask about judgment and tradition in a self-consciously plural world. The little program points down a path I am exploring in a pair of texts, one on notions of identity in the history of philosophy, and one on the identity of buildings and places. The underlying issue of those texts is: what will replace the old notion of a particular identity? Places, persons, and communities do not and have never had such simple identities as (...) our concepts often made them out to have. But our world today defies the application of universal categories and judgments to fixed particulars. Our places and identities become complexly multiplied, they interpenetrate, the electronic no-place / all-place opens before us. Yet at the same time exclusions and particularities assert themselves everywhere. If universal judgment seems unlikely, relativism is one response, but relativism remains within the horizon of universals and particulars. What kinds of identity can provide standpoints for describing and judging today? (shrink)

Confabulation is typically understood to be dysfunctional. But this understanding neglects the phenomenon’s potential benefits. In fact, we think that the benefits of non-clinical confabulation provide a better foundation for a general account of confabulation. In this paper, we start from these benefits to develop a social teleological account of confabulation. Central to our account is the idea that confabulation manifests a kind of willful ignorance. By understanding confabulation in this way, we can provide principled explanations for the difference between (...) clinical and non-clinical cases of confabulation and the extent to which confabulation is rational. (shrink)

I make some proposals regarding which paradoxes Dr. Johnson was referring to in a preface.

This essay in the form of theses presents a new, post–secular type of religiosity that emerged in Russia in the aftermath of the collapse of Soviet dogmatic atheism. Poor faith is faith without any temples, dogma or rites, as integrally standing before God as God Himself is integral and undivided. According to the results of the largest sociological survey in Russia almost 60,000 respondents in 2012, one in four people fall into the category of ‘poor religion’— a simple belief (...) in God without any affiliation to a belief system or denomination. This proportion, 25 %, comes second only to Orthodox Christian believers (41 %) and exceeds Muslims (6.5 %). The poor faith manifested itself as an indivisible sense of God, outside historical, national and confessional traditions. Thus minimal religion became the next stage of apophaticism after it had crossed the line of atheism and reclaimed its religious content. Paradoxically, this "faith as such," "faith in general" was prepared by the atheist denial of all faiths, of all positive distinctions among historical religions. In 95 theses, this essay introduces major aspects of this new a–theology in comparison with Protestantism and other trans–religious teaching: the ethics and theology of singularity, creativity and resurrection; interaction with science and the views on theodicy; the dynamics and stages of poor faith; its similarity and distinction from spirituality; its place among post–secular trends, including "poor messianism." -/- "faith as such," "faith in general" was prepared by the atheist denial of all faiths. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with six linguistic moves that we commonly make, each of which is considered in turn. These are: stating rules of representation; representing things categorically; mentioning expressions; saying truly or falsely how things are; saying vaguely how things are; and stating rules of rules of representation. A common-sense view is defended of what is involved in our doing each of these six things against a much more sceptical view emanating from the idea that linguistic behavior is fundamentally (...) messy. Both the fifth move and the sixth move involve vague concepts, and much of the essay is concerned with developing an approach to various problems and puzzles that attach to such concepts, most notably the sorites paradoxes. (shrink)

There is a controversy concerning whether to give Section 1.4.1 of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature a skeptical or naturalistic reading. I divide the overall interpretation of this section into seven smaller interpretative theses, none of which alone determine either a skeptical or naturalistic reading, but which together better support what has been called the naturalistic interpretation.

Starting from the sensuous perception of what is seen, an attempt is made at re-casting a Husserlian theory of constitution of the object of intuition, as one leaves the natural attitude through a transcendental method, by positing several theses so as to avoid the aporias of philosophical binary oppositions such as rationalism and empiri-cism, realism and idealism, logicism and psychologism, subjectivism and objectivism, transcendentalism and ontologism, metaphysics and positivism. Throughout fifty-five theses on constitution, the Husserlian proposal of continuously (...) reforming philosophizing by transcendental reduction is revisited, leaving the latter incomplete as new conversions are required by noetic-noematic correlations between world and consciousness. (shrink)

This paper is a response to replies by Dan López de Sa and Mark Jago to my ‘Truthmaking, Entailment, and the Conjuction Thesis’. In that paper, my main aim was to argue against the Entailment Principle by arguing against the Conjunction Thesis, which is entailed by the Entailment Principle. In the course of so doing, although not essential for my project in that paper, I defended the Disjunction Thesis. López de Sa has objected both to my defence of the Disjunction (...) Thesis and my case against the Conjunction Thesis. I shall show that his objections are unfounded and based on serious misunderstandings of my position, what the relevant debate is, and some fundamental notions of Truthmaker Theory. Jago argues that accepting the Disjunction Thesis and rejecting the Conjunction Thesis is hard to maintain. But I show that Jago has not shown that accepting the Disjunction Thesis while rejecting the Conjunction Thesis is impossible or even hard to maintain. Jago believes that, to accept the Disjunction Thesis while rejecting the Conjunction Thesis, one needs to reject his axiom (T3), which says that all the truthmakers for <P&P> are truthmakers for <P>. I argue that there are reasons to reject such a principle, and the version of it that says that what makes <P&P> true makes <P> true. (shrink)

This paper responds to two seemingly contradictory views that Jeanette Edwards identifies in an article on the impact of new reproductive technologies in the northwest of England. I argue that they are probably not contradictory. But I do so by modifying how the views are formulated and reflect on the significance of this for anthropology at home.

on synchronicity, the Fermi Paradox, the Turing Test, and more.

As an answer to the title question, some stories you can operate on and then get something good. I explain why I find a story about a tiger attack good, because of this reason, “courageously” presenting what I take to be something good. In the appendix, I present an attempt to clarify a distinction.

In English, in order to speak about Arthur’s attitudes, we use sentences like “Arthur believes that natural language is messy”. For sentences of this kind we have a standard theory, according to which the ‘that’-clause ‘that natural language is messy’ denotes a proposition. As Prior showed for the first time, the standard theory appears to be at odds with some linguistic data. Geach and Prior both assumed that linguistic data are to be taken as reliable guides to a correct semantic (...) account and I will start by raising some worries concerning their methodology. Because of these data, Prior and Geach suggested some non-standard accounts. I will then show that if we take linguistic data seriously, their non-standard accounts do not fare any better than the standard theory. My general conclusion will thus not only be that Prior’s and Geach’s methodology is disputable, but also that their conclusions do not seem to follow even if we grant the reliability of their methodology. (shrink)

Legal positivism's ``separation thesis'' is usually taken in one of two ways: as an analytic claim about the nature of law – roughly, as some version of the Social Thesis; or as a substantive claim about the moral value of law – roughly, as some version of the Value Thesis. In this paper I argue that we should recognize a third kind of positivist separation thesis, one which complements, but is distinct from, positivism's analytic and moral claims. The Neutrality Thesis (...) says that the correct analytic claim about the nature of law does not by itself entail any substantive claims about the moral value of law. I give careful formulations of these three separation theses, explain the relationships between them, and sketch the role that each plays in the positivist approach to law. (shrink)

In some German-language contributions to the debate on free will, it is assumed or claimed that determinism is not an empirically verifiable thesis. Peter Bieri, for example, thinks that one must presuppose determinism in order to understand the world as a conceivable world. Determinism would then not be an empirical thesis, but rather a condition without which the conceivability of the world cannot be thought (Bieri 2001, 15/16). Geert Keil writes that determinism "can neither be verified nor falsified experimentally and (...) therefore determinism [is] a metaphysical thesis, not a scientific one" (Keil 2018, 58). In contrast to these two claims, I will argue that determinism is most usefully conceived as an empirical thesis whose verification faces many difficulties. These difficulties, however, are not fundamentally different from those faced by other empirical theses. (shrink)

Rodriguez-Pereyra (2006) argues for the disjunction thesis but against the conjunction thesis. I argue that accepting the disjunction thesis undermines his argument against the conjunction thesis.

This article argues for a much more profound interconnection between philosophical romanticism and Walter Benjamin’s theses "On The Concept of History" than has been acknowledged up to now. It particularly reveals a number of parallels between Benjamin’s historical approach and the philosophy of history of the two principal thinkers of Early German Romanticism, Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, who had already formed the object of Benjamin’s doctoral thesis. It examines Benjamin’s final philosophical work in the light of three central topics (...) inherited from Early German Romanticism, which have been less explored in romanticism studies and Benjamin scholarship, yet are decisive for helping clarify what is at stake in Benjamin’s text: the relation to prophecy; the question of messianism; and the heliotropism of the past. -/- _____________ Cet article défend l’idée d’un lien entre la philosophie romantique et les thèses de Walter Benjamin Sur le concept d’histoire bien plus profond qu’on ne l’a admis jusqu’à présent. Il met plus particulièrement en lumière des parallèles entre la démarche historique de Benjamin et la philosophie de l’histoire des deux principaux penseurs du premier romantisme allemand, Friedrich Schlegel et Novalis, auxquels Benjamin avait déjà consacré sa thèse de doctorat. L’article examine le dernier écrit majeur de Benjamin à la lumière de trois thématiques centrales héritées du romantisme, qui ont été peu approfondies tant dans les études romantiques que dans le commentaire benjaminien et qui sont pourtant décisives pour éclaircir ce qui est en jeu dans ce texte : le rapport à la prophétie ; la question du messianisme ; et l’héliotropisme du passé. (shrink)

In 1601 certain Jesuits in Alcalá de Henares defended the following thesis: "It is not by faith that we confess that this man, for example, Clement VIII, is Pope." During 1602 this fact became known in Rome and the Pope urged that the Spanish Inquisition imprison these Jesuits. To defend themselves, they alleged that the thesis was not unusual among scholars, indicating the names of several authors who defended it, among them, the eminent professor emeritus of Salamanca Domingo Báñez. However, (...) he convened an academic act in Valladolid on July 2, 1602 to show that his position was not such. Shortly thereafter, the Jesuits held another event in the same town to challenge the thesis of their coreligionists, underscoring their opposition even more than Báñez. New, partly unknown material on the subject is copied in these pages: the letters from the nuncio to the head of the Vatican State, with annotations written by the Pope, and a letter from the King of Spain to his ambassador; the complete text of the theses defended by Báñez and by the Jesuits in July 1602, as well as two unpublished letters from Báñez on the occasion of his act, one to the master general of his Order and the other to the Pope. (shrink)

This paper describes five theses on the characteristics of post-truth politics: (1) post-truth politics are populist politics, (2) post-truth politics are nativist politics, (3) post-truth politics are zero-sum game politics, (4) post-truth politics is emotional politics that anti-rational-factual-scientific truth, and (5) post-truth politics is autocracy politics. After describing the six theses, this paper shows conclusions and reflections on post-truth politics.

Is there, according to Bakhtin, such a thing as nobody’s or neutral words? Going over Bakhtin’s writings we might encounter an intriguing variety of answers to this question, ranging from a clear negative – there is no such thing – to a radical positive – all words are neutral, are “nobody’s” – and with a few other variants in between. This paper examines this puzzle both in its own right and from the perspective of what it can teach us about (...) reading Bakhtin’s texts. I propose that Bakhtin’s conception of language has remained stable (even if not quite unchanged) in works from all periods, and link this conception to his early ethical philosophy (with an emphasis on the influence of Søren Kierkegaard on it). Bakhtin is firmly committed to the position that nobody’s words exist only in the abstract world of theory, and not in language as we speak it. This description also pertains to his own writing, which I maintain should be approached with a view to how other people’s voices are manipulated in it, rather than in the more literal fashion, in which scholarly works are usually studied. (shrink)

The paper seeks to show that Quine’s theses concerning the underdetermination of scientific theories by experience and the indeterminacy of reference cannot be reconciled if some of Quine’s central assumptions are accepted. The argument is this. Quine holds that the thesis about reference is not just a special case of the other thesis. In order to make sense of this comment we must distinguish between factual and epistemic indeterminacy. Something is factual indeterminate if it is not determined by the (...) facts. Epistemic indeterminacy, on the other hand, is due to the lack of evidence. Quine’s claim about the relationship between the two theses is best understood as saying that reference is factually indeterminate, whereas the underdetermination of scientific theories is merely epistemic. But the latter cannot be sustained in light of Quine’s verificationism, holism and naturalism. (shrink)

Reading Freud- Theses on Freud’s Civilization and it’s Discontents.

Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, (semi-)autonomous ve- hicles, autoregulatory weapon systems, enhancement, reproductive technologies and human- oid robotics – these technologies (and many others) are no longer speculative visions of the future; they have already found their way into our lives or are on the verge of a breakthrough. These rapid technological developments awaken a need for orientation: what distinguishes hu- man from machine and human intelligence from artificial intelligence, how far should the body be allowed to (...) be changed and what are the dangers and opportunities presented by these technologies? Many of these questions are also addressed to theology. For example, questions about the image of humanity, the understanding of creation, the ethics of technological body interventions or the moral status of robots. What does theology have to say about these technological developments? It is the right time for theology to scientifically explore tech- nologization and AI and to formulate answers. As technology changes the various areas of human life, society and the world around us, the places and topics of theology are also undergoing transformation. Puzio, Anna: Theology Meets AI: Examining Perspectives, Tasks, and Theses on the Intersection of Technology and Religion. In: Puzio, Anna/Kunkel, Nicole/Klinge, Hendrik (Hg.): Alexa, How Do You Feel About Religion? Theological Approaches to Technology and Artificial Intelligence (Theology and AI 1). Darmstadt: wbg 2023, S. 29–41. DOI: 10.53186/1030373. (shrink)

Theoretiker der Künstlichen Intelligenz und deren Wegbegleiter in der Philosophie des Geistes haben auf unterschiedliche Weise auf Kritik am ursprünglichen Theorieziel der KI reagiert. Eine dieser Reaktionen ist die Zurücknahme dieses Theorieziels zugunsten der Verfolgung kleinerformatiger Projekte. Eine andere Reaktion ist die Propagierung konnektionistischer Systeme, die mit ihrer dezentralen Arbeitsweise die neuronalen Netze des menschlichen Gehirns besser simulieren sollen. Eine weitere ist die sogenannte robot reply. Die Roboterantwort besteht aus zwei Elementen. Sie enthält (a) das Zugeständnis, daß das Systemverhalten eines (...) wie auch immer programmierten konventionellen Digitalrechners mit von Neumann-Architektur nicht schon menschenähnliche Intelligenz aufweist, und (b) die Behauptung, daß es für bestimmte Arten von Maschinen doch zur Intelligenz reicht. In die Liga der intelligenten Wesen könnten Maschinen genau dann aufsteigen, wenn sie Roboter sind. Damit ist gemeint: wenn sie über Wahrnehmungskomponenten (Rezeptoren) und Handlungskomponenten (Effektoren) verfügen, mithilfe deren sie aktiv in kausale Interaktionen mit ihrer Umwelt eintreten können. Im Beitrag wird für die These argumentiert, daß der Roboterantwort eine richtige Intuition zugrunde liegt, von der die Roboterfreunde sich aber zu einer kurzschlüssigen Folgerung verleiten lassen. Es ist richtig, mentale Zustände und Handlungskompetenz eng aneinander zu binden. Einem Wesen, dem man Handlungsfähigkeit zuerkennt, kann man mentale Zustände nicht absprechen. Doch Handelnkönnen und Geisthaben sind nicht hinreichend unabhängig voneinander, als daß man das eine als Rechtfertigung für die Zuerkennung des anderen verwenden könnte. Man sollte Robotern beides absprechen. (shrink)

Gershom Scholem's commentary on Walter Benjamin's "Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice", first published in German and English in Metaphysics of the Profane, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, pp. 174-180, with permission of Suhrkamp Verlag.

When deciding how ‘death’ should be defined, it is helpful to consider cases in which vital functions are restored to an organism long after those vital functions have ceased. Here I consider whether such restoration cases can be used to refute termination theses. Focusing largely on the termination thesis applied to human animals, I develop a line of argument from the possibility of human restoration to the conclusion that in many actual cases, human animals continue to exist after they (...) die. The line of reasoning developed here can be extended to show that other organisms survive death in many actual cases. This line of reasoning improves on other arguments that have been offered against termination theses. And if my argument regarding human animals surviving death is successful, then assuming that human persons are animals, we can also conclude that human persons in many actual cases continue to exist after death. (shrink)

Questo saggio mette in discussione l'interpretazione predominante sull'ultimo Scheler e basata sulla tesi di un dualismo sostanziale fra Geist e Leben riconducibile a quello cartesiano. Questa interpretazione non tiene conto che Scheler in Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos critica espressamente il dualismo cartesiano. In secondo luogo, attraverso una precisa analisi dei testi, si mette in luce come dopo il 1924, il termine Geist assuma nel testo scheleriano un significato molto diverso da quello del periodo intermedio, e venga caratterizzato come (...) un attributo completamente impotente. Il problema delle interpretazioni dualistiche è quello di sovrapporre questi due concetti di Geist e in particolare di continuare ad applicare al concetto di Geist sviluppato dopo il 1924 le stesse caratteristiche che Scheler attribuiva al Geist nel periodo intermedio, quando lo identificava ancora con la persona, cioè con un centro dotato di forza. A causa di questa indistinzione le interpretazioni dualistiche non riescono a rispondere alla domanda fondamentale: con quali forze uno spirito originariamente impotente e senza forze potrebbe contrapporsi dualisticamente alla vita? Scheler stesso anticipa possibili obiezioni in questo senso e afferma che «non lo spirito, ma solo l'intelletto ipersublimato, che Klages confonde con lo spirito, è in un certo senso ostile alla vita» (Max Scheler, GW IX, 150). In realtà il vero punto debole della relazione fra Geist e Drang non è il dualismo, tanto che Scheler stesso interpreta il rapporto nel senso di una compenetrazione (Durchdringung), un termine ripreso da Schelling, ma piuttosto il fatto che questa compenetrazione sfocia in una metafisica astratta che non ha più il suo fulcro nel concetto di persona ma in quello di Geist. (shrink)

What is the purpose of Friesen’s 95 theses and what is the audience he has in mind? The title refers to a major church historical event and suggests that — like in 1517 — we are dealing with a concise statement of a new and radical doctrine that is unfolded in opposition to an established canon. But who is the opponent in this case? What is the established canon that is rejected? And what is new or radical in the (...) summary? Dooyeweerd’s philosophy was definitely new and radical at the time of its conception. It still has an enormous potential for the special sciences. It offers important resources for any critique of ‘immanence’ philosophies. However, on first reading and without knowledge of the context, Friesen does not seem to aim at offering a new or radical interpretation of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. I read the 95 theses as an attempt to wipe off the dust, to provide the overall picture, doing justice to aspects that were neglected or were wrongly understood in the reformational tradition. However, the audience he has in mind seems to be one that is already familiar with the basic concepts and the thrust of Dooyeweerdian thinking; not an audience that is opposed to reformational philosophical thinking, but one that might be helped by a succinct summary in order to encourage further study and discussion. (shrink)

I present two interpretations of Max Beerbohm’s pastiche “The Feast.” Both interpretations seem as if they cannot survive forceful questioning, which asks, “Why should we think that?” And yet we, or at least I, find them worth attending to. Why? I propose an answer.

How is political change possible when even the most radical revolutions only reproduce sovereign power? Via the analysis of the contradictory meanings of stasis, Vardoulakis argues that the opportunity for political change is located in the agonistic relation between sovereignty and democracy and thus demands a radical rethinking.

In this paper, I argue that all expressions for abstract objects are meaningless. My argument closely follows David Lewis’ argument against the intelligibility of certain theories of possible worlds, but modifies it in order to yield a general conclusion about language pertaining to abstract objects. If my Lewisian argument is sound, not only can we not know that abstract objects exist, we cannot even refer to or think about them. However, while the Lewisian argument strongly motivates nominalism, it also undermines (...) certain nominalist theories. (shrink)

R. M. Chisholm interprets Brentano’s theory of intentionality through the lens of two theses: the ontological thesis, according to which the intentionality of the mental designates the fact that there is an immanent object in the act; and the psychological thesis, according to which intentionality consists of the direction of the mental act toward the extra-mental object. In my paper I interpret Chisholm’s and Brentano’s theses on intentionality from two perspectives: intentionality as the most salient distinguishing feature separating (...) the mental from the physical (Chisholm’s ontological thesis), and intentionality as a theory of the way in which mental acts with their content are related to extra-mental but theoretically-constructed objects of physics (Chisholm’s psychological thesis). Thus, an important issue of my paper is also to show that Chisholm’s well-known ontological and psychological theses on Brentanian intentionality rest on presuppositions that do not fit the program of Brentanian psychology. (shrink)

Peer commentary on Herta Nagl-Docekal, “The Feminist Transformation of Philosophy”.

The violation of Bell’s inequality has shown that quantum theory and relativity are in tension: reality is nonlocal. Nonetheless, many have argued that GRW-type theories are to be preferred to pilot-wave theories as they are more compatible with relativity: while relativistic pilot-wave theories require a preferred slicing of space-time, foliation-free relativistic GRW-type theories have been proposed. In this paper I discuss various meanings of ‘relativistic invariance,’ and I show how GRW-type theories, while being more relativistic in one sense, are less (...) relativistic in another. If so, the initial claim that GRW-type theories have a greater compatibility with relativity is unwarranted: both type of theories violate relativity, one way or another. (shrink)

Vallentyne 2010 and Zwolinski 2008 are internet encyclopaedia articles on “libertarianism” which include various serious faults. Vallentyne 2010 has the following ones. It does not properly explain mainstream libertarianism or consider criticisms of it. Instead, it mainly discusses self-ownership and natural-resource egalitarianism. Every aspect of the alleged “strict sense” of “libertarianism” is dubi ous, at best. So- called “left - libertarianism” is not made sense of as any kind of liberty-based libertarianism. Problems arise because self-ownership is assumed to be libertarian (...) without an explicit theory of libertarian liberty. The replies to “five impor tant objections to full self- ownership” are confused and mistaken; both as regards philosophical analysis and as regards empirical assumptions. The long discussion about various ways to “Appropriate Natural Resources” is rendered muddled and barren by the lack of a clear libertarian theory of liberty, the mere presumption of some form of egalitarianism, and the inclusion of various non-libertarian criteria. The remaining sections are largely uninformed by any relevant libertarian literature. It reaches a justificationist conclusion that cites mistaken welfare concerns and ignores the productivity of free markets. Zwolinski 2008 shares some errors with Vallentyne 2010, but also includes the following ones. It is even less clear about what libertarian liberty is. It fails to understand that libertarianism (private-property anarchy and, possibly, minarchy) is a subset of classical liberalism. It asserts that libertarianism is about “the proper role of government.” It assumes (illogical) justificationist/foundationalist epistemology and does not mention critical-rationalist libertarianism. It eventually faults justificationism and unwittingly assumes something approaching critical rationalism. Finally, it embraces John Rawls’s “overlapping consensus” as a “justification” (i.e., defence) of libertarianism oblivious to the similar position in Lester 1996 and 2000. (shrink)

In this paper, I am dealing with the phenomena of “life” and “death.” The questions that I attempt to answer are “What is life, and what is death?” “Is it bad to die?” and “Is there life after death?” The method that I am using in this paper is that of phenomenology. The latter I understand as an inquiry into meaning, that is, what makes this or that phenomenon as such. Thus, I am approaching the phenomena in question from the (...) point of view of their meaning in the first place. I claim that ordinarily we constitute phenomena of “life” and “death” in a twofold way. When it comes to “life,” one can specify “life-as-biological,” and “life-as-a-possibility” senses. The former I understand as a cluster of biological processes that unfold in physical time. By “life-as-a-possibility,” I understand a cluster of projects, potentials that depend on our subjectivity. I claim that we essentially perceive life-as-biological through life-as-possibility. When it comes to “death,” I argue that we essentially constitute this phenomenon in a similar manner. On the one hand, we perceive “death” in the “death-as-biological/physical” sense which signifies the end of the organism’s biological processes. On the other hand, we constitute “death” as the “existential/practical death”/“death-of-possibility.” By that I mean an annihilation of all possibilities, and projects. In short, it is a situation when one’s life suddenly loses all its meaning and value: death of meaning. I argue that what constitutes the significance of “death-as-biological” for us is what I call the “existential/practical death” or “death-of-possibility.” I use the phenomena of mourning and suicide to illustrate my point better. -/- Reflecting on whether it is bad to die, I claim that if we accept the hypotheses I am defending in the paper, it appears that death is bad because it entails the loss of all possibilities. I also want to show that people’s desire for immortality is in fact reasonable, because the more one lives, the more possibilities one is able to realize. In other words, people’s desire for immortality is grounded in the essential understanding of the phenomenon of “life” as a possibility. -/- Reflecting on whether there is life after death, my answer is twofold. Since there is no scientific evidence of life after physical/biological death, I think there is no reason to believe in such as well. But when it comes to the question whether there is life after the existential/practical death, my answer is positive: “Yes, there is!” I try to show that it is always possible to find the meaning of life even in the light of the most terrible events. In this sense, there is always a light in the end of the tunnel. (shrink)

The spreading of false information on social media platforms is becoming increasingly common and thus, is creating an epistemic environment where people don’t know what to believe. Within this essay, I will argue that measures should be taken to address and reduce the spreading of false information on social media platforms, furthermore, accountability mechanisms should be implicated in order to do so.

Philosophers often find themselves in disagreement with contemporary philosophers they know full well to be their epistemic superiors on the topics relevant to the disagreement. This looks epistemically irresponsible. I offer a detailed investigation of this problem of the reflective epistemic renegade. I argue that although in some cases the renegade is not epistemically blameworthy, and the renegade situation is significantly less common than most would think, in a troublesome number of cases in which the situation arises the renegade is (...) blameworthy in her disagreement with recognized epistemic superiors. I also offer some thoughts on what it would mean for philosophical practice for us to refrain from being renegades. Finally, I show how a new kind of radical skepticism emerges from modest theses regarding the renegade. (shrink)

In the past few years, a number of philosophers ; Horgan and Tienson 2002; Pitt 2004) have maintained the following three theses: there is a distinctive sort of phenomenology characteristic of conscious thought, as opposed to other sorts of conscious mental states; different conscious thoughts have different phenomenologies; and thoughts with the same phenomenology have the same intentional content. The last of these three claims is open to at least two different interpretations. It might mean that the phenomenology of (...) a thought expresses its intentional content, where intentional content is understood as propositional, and propositions are understood as mind-and language-independent abstract entities. And it might mean that the phenomenology of a thought is its intentional content—that is, that the phenomenology of a thought, like the phenomenology of a sensation, constitutes its content. The second sort of view is a kind of psychologism. Psychologistic views hold that one or another sort of thing—numbers, sentences, propositions, etc.—that we can think or know about is in fact a kind of mental thing. Since Frege, psychologism has been in bad repute among analytic philosophers. It is widely held that Frege showed that such views are untenable, since, among other things, they subjectivize what is in fact objective, and, hence, relativize such things as consistency and truth to the peculiarities of human psychology. The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of the thesis that intentional mental content is phenomenological and to try to reach a conclusion about whether it yields a tenable view of mind, thought and meaning. I believe the thesis is not so obviously wrong as it will strike many philosophers of mind and language. In fact, it can be defended against the standard objections to psychologism, and it can provide the basis for a novel and interesting account of mentality. (shrink)

Buck-passers about value accept two theses about value, a negative thesis and a positive. The negative thesis is that the fact that something is valuable is not itself a reason to promote or appreciate it. The positive thesis is that the fact that something is valuable consists in the fact that there are other reasons to promote or appreciate it. Buck-passers suppose that the negative thesis follows from the positive one, and sometimes insist on it as if it is (...) the central part of their view. But as I'll explain here, what we say about the negative thesis is orthogonal to what we say about the positive one. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends an account of model-based science that I dub model pluralism. I argue that despite a growing awareness in the philosophy of science literature of the multiplicity, diversity, and richness of models and modeling practices, more radical conclusions follow from this recognition than have previously been inferred. Going against the tendency within the literature to generalize from single models, I explicate and defend the following two core theses: any successful analysis of models must target sets (...) of models, their multiplicity of functions within science, and their scientific context and history and for almost any aspect x of phenomenon y, scientists require multiple models to achieve scientific goal z. (shrink)