This paper is a two-part project. First, I reject the analogous relationship between the Holocaust and slaughterhouses (found in the anti-meat novel The Lives of Animals) and cross-species analogical thinking entirely; instead, I opt for modes of analysis that can examine the specific circumstances of animals within slaughterhouses. Secondly, I assert that a socio-economic Marxist analysis is the best prism in which to recognize the suffering of pre-slaughter animals and the causation of their suffering (the ostensibly necessary circulation and production (...) of the meat-commodity). (shrink)

In Rita Indiana’s novel, Tentacle, the future of the Dominic Republic is postulated as bleak and dystopian: a nuclear ecological disaster has nearly ruined the ocean, colorism and racism are pervasive, Haitians are indiscriminately executed due to an unnamed “virus” (Indiana 3), and historical class divisions, as well as wealth inequalities, are maintained. The various issues that Indiana’s future-oriented Dominican Republic is facing emerge from political contingencies: they are the result of clear choices facilitated by the political leaders of the (...) Dominican Republic. Yet, while the text renders historical reality as contingent and liable to change, it also explicitly points out the limits of individual agency and action. Tentacle demonstrates the politico-ontological dismissal of subjects that is enacted through necropolitics. The text also recognizes the contingent nature of political formation and necropolitics, and by doing so, implicitly contests the essentialization of formerly colonized countries such as the Dominican Republic. Ultimately, I argue that the precarity of the political subject and the material-political-reality are not depicted in Tentacle as necessary or inevitable parts of some dialectic process of progression, but rather as potentially preventable or intervenable processes that evade individual agency. (shrink)

In Animals, Ethics, and Us, Dr. Madeleine L.H. Campbell offers insight into the moral landscape of human-animal relations through a specific ethical framework that rejects the rights of non-human animals, opting instead for a “qualified utilitarian approach” (2019, 9). For Campbell, animal ethics should not be bound to animal rights or the autonomy of individual animals; she asserts that animal rights should not factor into the moral consideration of animals at all. Since she does not confer animals a moral status (...) or form of rights and instead relies on the utilitarian approach, Campbell attempts to locate the justifying logic of necessity (or non-necessity) in each of these issues and demonstrate how the human use of animals in a particular situation is, or is not, legitimate. There are some notable issues with this approach: Campbell’s moral framework can essentially justify anything done to animals—if it is ‘beneficial’ to humans in any capacity. In this review, I briefly summarize her argument and its applications, then delve into some criticisms of her views. (shrink)

Teddy Seidenfeld – CMU An old, wise, and widely held attitude in Statistics is that modest intervention in the design of an experiment followed by simple statistical analysis may yield much more of value than using very sophisticated statistical analysis on a poorly designed existing data set.

To be acquainted with something (in the philosophical sense of “acquainted” discussed here) is to be directly aware of it. The idea that we are acquainted with certain things we experience has been discussed throughout the history of Western Philosophy, but in the early 20th century it gained especially focused attention among analytic philosophers who drew their inspiration from Bertrand Russell's work on acquaintance. Since then, many philosophers—particularly those working on self‐knowledge or perception—have used the notion of acquaintance to explain (...) various facts about human experience and knowledge. In this paper, I offer an overview of this work, with particular focus on the resurgent literature on acquaintance in contemporary analytic philosophy. After more fully explaining what acquaintance is (or is supposed to be), I describe some reasons for thinking that we are indeed acquainted with certain things we experience, and then I survey some of the facts about experience and knowledge that acquaintance may help explain. (shrink)

本研究將先介紹筆者的語言學碩士論文（連，2023），如何分析《東吳哲學學報》2017年至2021年西方哲學論文摘要語體的修辭語步特徵與提供寫作建議，並試圖從哲學圈內人的角度，對連（2023）的哲學寫作 建議進行批判性的反思，探討哲學教師或新手哲學家可以如何看待華文哲學論文摘要的寫作建議。接著，筆者將問題聚焦在跨領域學科（應用語言學統計結果與哲學論文寫作）之間的哲學問題，即——哲學家應如何看待語言學家 針對哲學論文的研究結果。筆者將考慮領域間研究（IDR）的語言與詞語概念關係。而藉由討論上述跨領域研究中語義直覺分歧的問題，筆者提出了三種可能的哲學態度：(1)服從科學權威、(2)尊重特定領域用詞、(3 )質疑邊緣科學理論。筆者認為，上述三種態度對於哲學家如何看待「方法(M)」和「結論(C)」這兩項跨領域語義概念分歧和可能理論分歧有著重要的影響。筆者希冀藉由提出相關解決方案來尋求「理論統一」或「領域整 合」的可行性，最終得以促進跨領域合作與跨學門間良好學術交流的互動成長。 -/- 關鍵詞：領域間研究（IDR）、應用語言學、哲學寫作、語體分析、修辭語步 .

The language of rights pervades modern social and political discourse and yet there is deep disagreement amongst citizens, politicians and philosophers about just what they mean. Who has them? Who should have them? Who can claim them? What are the grounds upon which they can be claimed? How are they related to other important moral and political values such as community, virtue, autonomy, democracy and social justice? In this book, Duncan Ivison offers a unique and accessible integration of, and (...) introduction to, the history and philosophy of rights. He focuses especially on the politics of rights: the fact that rights have always been, and will remain, deeply contested. He discusses not only the historical contexts in which some of the leading philosophers of rights formed their arguments, but also the moral and logical issues they raise for thinking about the nature of rights more generally. At each step, Ivison also considers various deep criticisms of rights, including those made by communitarian, feminist, Marxist and postmodern critics. The book is aimed at students and readers coming to these issues for the first time, but also at more knowledgeable readers looking for a distinctive integration of history and theory as applied to questions about the nature of rights today. (shrink)

In this paper, I expand my upon earlier linguistic research (Lian, 2023), which delved into the genre of abstracts from Western philosophical papers. I engage with the philosophical ramifications emanating from the guidelines established for crafting philosophy paper abstracts (Lian, 2023) and underscore their significance in the domain of academic philosophical writing. A pivotal focus of this research is to navigate the intricate philosophical challenges posed by cross-disciplinary investigations bridging applied linguistic statistics with philosophical paper composition, specifically, the nuanced interpretation (...) of linguistic findings in a manner palatable to philosophers. My exploration probes into the dynamics of various concepts within Inter-Disciplinary Research (IDR), highlighting the complexities in reconciling semantic intuitions related to the notions of "Method (M)" and "Conclusion (C)". I delineate three philosophical stances: (1) deferring to scientific authority, (2) recognizing domain-specific terminologies, and (3) interrogating peripheral scientific theories. I posit that these stances significantly influence the ways philosophers engage with and resolve the cross-disciplinary semantic and theoretical contentions stemming from the rhetorical structures of "Method (M)" and "Conclusion (C)". This work proposes avenues to attain either "theoretical coherence" or "disciplinary synthesis", thereby fostering enhanced cross-disciplinary collaboration and fortifying academic discourse across diverse fields. -/- Keywords: Inter-Disciplinary Research (IDR), Applied linguistics, Philosophical writing, Genre Analysis, Rhetorical Moves . (shrink)

First published in the International Encyclopaedia of Social and Behavioural Sciences (Pergamon Press, 2001); reprinted in the 2nd edition (2015). An overview of different justifications of multiculturalism in contemporary political theory, as well as various challenges to and critiques of those arguments.

Grey zone attacks tend to paralyze response for two reasons. First, they present us with choice scenarios of inherently dilemmatic structure, e.g., Prisoners’ Dilemmas and games of chicken, complicated by difficult conditions of choice, such as choice under risk or amid vagueness. Second, they exploit our uncertainty about how much we do or should care about the things under attack¬—each attack is small in effect, but their effects accumulate: how should we decide whether to treat a given attack as something (...) meriting a serious response rather than a mere irritation to be ignored? This chapter brings standard decision theoretic tools to bear on the issues, tools such as the maximization of expected utility principle, and the precautionary principle. But it also develops three innovations. It shows that seeing it as possible to make choices not just of actions given our values, but also choices of values themselves, can extricate us from certain kinds of decision paralysis. It shows how we can rationally regard ourselves as having bright decision lines even when nothing in the circumstance of choice has these lines in its structure. And it shows how certain conflict escalation risks from the former two strategies can be managed by both parties seeing that cooperation can yield a sharable surplus of goods, and that cooperation can be rational upon a rationally defensible change in their values so that each comes to derive utility from the success of both parties. This yields cooperative solutions to what amount to Prisoners’ Dilemmas. The Cold War was prosecuted on the logic of strategic rationality and that part of game theory that is deterrence theory. We need a new logic from decision theorists for the games that constitute grey zone conflict. (shrink)

This is an introduction to my edited book, the Research Handbook on Liberalism (2024). Some chapters tackle broad, meta-level questions about the coherence and justificatory limits and possibilities of liberalism; others tackle conceptual issues; still others, specific institutional, cultural, historical, and political questions. This introductory chapter is intended to provide a general orientation to these discussions, but also highlight some recurring themes and challenges facing liberalism in an era of rampant inequality, illiberalism, rising autocracies, populism, and massive technological change. I (...) provide a taxonomy of five different kinds of liberalism in play in the field, along with three overarching challenges discussed in the book - the apparent insufficiency, complacency, and self-undermining nature of liberalism. Can contemporary liberalism survive? It can, but not without clearly grasping some of the fundamental challenges it faces today. (shrink)

When a belief is self-fulfilling, having it guarantees its truth. When a belief is self-defeating, having it guarantees its falsity. These are the cases of “self-impacting” beliefs to be examined below. Scenarios of self-defeating beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack sufficient reason to have any belief whatsoever. Scenarios of self-fulfilling beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack reason to have any one belief over another. Both scenarios have been used (...) independently to challenge Evidentialism, on which what we may rationally believe is all and only what fits our current evidence. Here we tie the two scenarios together and explore what a knowledge-sensitive evidentialist approach to one implies for the other. (shrink)

A common criticism of the use of algorithms in criminal justice is that algorithms and their determinations are in some sense ‘opaque’—that is, difficult or impossible to understand, whether because of their complexity or because of intellectual property protections. Scholars have noted some key problems with opacity, including that opacity can mask unfair treatment and threaten public accountability. In this paper, we explore a different but related concern with algorithmic opacity, which centers on the role of public trust in grounding (...) the legitimacy of criminal justice institutions. We argue that algorithmic opacity threatens the trustworthiness of criminal justice institutions, which in turn threatens their legitimacy. We first offer an account of institutional trustworthiness before showing how opacity threatens to undermine an institution’s trustworthiness. We then explore how threats to trustworthiness affect institutional legitimacy. Finally, we offer some policy recommendations to mitigate the threat to trustworthiness posed by the opacity problem. (shrink)

In the _True Intellectual System_, Cudworth attacks types of atheist position—atomic atheism, hylozoic atheism, etc. He generally uses ancient examples to illustrate those types, but also criticizes some of his contemporaries. We can identify direct criticisms of contemporaries by finding quotations, paraphrases, and accounts of their views in the text. My primary question in this paper is, 'how much of the _True Intellectual System_ is directly about or aimed at Spinoza?' My ultimate answer, contrary to some prominent voices in the (...) existing literature, is 'not very much at all'. (shrink)

When we experience the world – see, hear, feel, taste, or smell things – we gain all sorts of knowledge about the things around us. And this knowledge figures heavily in our reasoning about the world – about what to think and do in response to it. But what is the nature of this knowledge? On one commonly held view, all knowledge is constituted by beliefs in propositions. But in this paper I argue against this view. I argue that some (...) knowledge is constituted, not by beliefs in propositions, but by awareness of properties and objects. To make my case, I focus on the role of visual perception in reasoning. I start by introducing a principle about the relationship between knowledge and reasoning, which says that to learn something new by reasoning, one must know the bases of one’s reasoning. Then I argue that in some cases of genuine, knowledge-conferring reasoning, the bases of our reasoning are not propositions that we believe; rather, they’re properties or objects that we see. Thus, I conclude that some such knowledge is non-propositional and is rather what some call “knowledge of things”. (shrink)

Postcolonial Liberalism presents a compelling account of the challenges to liberal political theory by claims to cultural and political autonomy and land rights made by indigenous peoples today. It also confronts the sensitive issue of how liberalism has been used to justify and legitimate colonialism. Ivison argues that there is a pressing need to re-shape liberal thought to become more receptive to indigenous aspirations and modes of being. What is distinctive about the book is the middle way it charts between (...) separatism, on the one hand, and assimilation, on the other. These two options present a false dichotomy as to what might constitute a genuinely postcolonial liberal society. In defending this ideal, the book addresses important recent debates over the nature of public reason, justice in multicultural and multinational societies, collective responsibility for the past, and clashes between individual and group rights. (shrink)

As I walk into a restaurant to meet up with a friend, I look around and see all sorts of things in my immediate environment—tables, chairs, people, colors, shapes, etc. As a result, I know of these things. But what is the nature of this knowledge? Nowadays, the standard practice among philosophers is to treat all knowledge, aside maybe from “know-how”, as propositional. But in this paper I will argue that this is a mistake. I’ll argue that some knowledge is (...) constituted, not by beliefs toward propositions, but by awareness of properties and objects. Seeing isn’t believing, but it is knowing. After further characterizing this type of knowledge, I will make the case for it. Then I will consider a variety of objections. Finally, I will indicate how our recognition of this knowledge may answer other questions, and solve other problems, in philosophy. (shrink)

[This is a paper that was originally written in 2017 and doesn't fully represent Silva's current thinking about the relation between belief and degrees of confidence. See On Believing and Being Convinced for more.] Can there be knowledge and rational belief in the absence of a rational degree of confidence? Yes, and cases of "mistuned knowledge" demonstrate this. In this paper we leverage this normative possibility in support of advancing our understanding of the metaphysical relation between belief and credence. It (...) is generally assumed that a Lockean metaphysics of belief that reduces outright belief to degrees of confidence would immediately effect a unification of coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. Scott Sturgeon has suggested that the unification is effected by understanding the relation between outright belief and confidence as an instance of the determinable-determinate relation. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned knowledge”—knowledge and rational belief in the absence of rational confidence. We contend that there are genuine cases of mistuned knowledge and that, therefore, epistemological unification must forego token identity of belief and high confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence even without token-identity. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification. (shrink)

A powerful argument against the counterfactual comparative account of harm is that it cannot distinguish harming from failing to benefit. In reply to this problem, I suggest a new account of harm. The account is a counterfactual comparative one, but it counts as harms only those events that make a person occupy his level of well-being at the world at which the event occurs. This account distinguishes harming from failing to benefit in a way that accommodates our intuitions about the (...) standard problem cases. In laying the groundwork for this account, I also demonstrate that rival accounts of harm are able to distinguish harming from failing to benefit only if, and because, they also appeal to the distinction between making upshots happen and allowing upshots to happen. One important implication of my discussion is that preserving the moral asymmetry between harming and failing to benefit requires a commitment to the existence of a metaphysical and moral distinction between making and allowing. (shrink)

In his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals David Hume said that a group of earlier modern philosophers, beginning with Malebranche, held that morality was founded on relations. In this paper I follow up on that suggestion by investigating pre-Humean views in moral philosophy according to which morality is founded on relations. I do that by looking at the work of Nicolas Malebranche, John Locke, and Samuel Clarke. Each of them talked prominently about relations in their accounts of basic aspects (...) of morality. Beyond that, each of them turns out to have held both metaphysical and epistemological views that might be described as founding morality on relations. Despite the definite differences between the three philosophers’ approaches, Hume does seem to have noticed a genuine connection here—even though he himself tended to ignore significant versions of this approach when criticizing it. (shrink)

The classical theory of probability has long been abandoned and is seen by most philosophers as a non-contender—a mere precursor to newer and better theories. In this paper I argue that this is a mistake. The main reasons for its rejection—all related to the notorious principle of indifference—are that it is circular, of limited applicability, inconsistent, and dependent upon unjustified empirical assumptions. I argue that none of these claims is true and that the classical theory remains to be refuted.

Thomas Hobbes often includes powers and abilities in his descriptions of the world. Meanwhile, Hobbes’s philosophical picture of the world appears quite reductive, and he seems sometimes to say that nothing exists but bodies in motion. In more extreme versions of such a picture, there would be no room for powers. Hobbes is not an eliminativist about powers, but his view does tend toward ontological minimalism. It would be good to have an account of what Hobbes thinks powers are, and (...) how they fit into his understanding of the world. In this chapter, I investigate Hobbes’s account of the metaphysics of powers and abilities. Section 1 considers three important aspects of Hobbes’s account of powers: the connection between powers and causes; the modal aspects of powers; and the connection between powers and motions. Sections 2 and 3 then consider interpretive arguments about whether Hobbes identifies powers with underlying corporeal features. (shrink)

This article examines the concept of historical injustice in the context of contemporary political theory. It examines the moral consequences of historical injustice for the descendants of both the perpetrators and the victims and outlines the six questions that any plausible defence of the idea of making reparations for past injustices must deal with. It suggests that taking historical injustice seriously is compatible with moral cosmopolitanism and it also helps with the understanding the nature of various kinds of inequalities that (...) persist today. (shrink)

Stoicism deserves everything that Broic$ are doing to its movement. This is because Stoics stuff the value of everything into their own heads, thus denying that external things are good and that other people have intrinsic value. Stoics are psychopathic narcissists and axiological solipsists. And this makes Stoicism easy to coopt into bro-y, shallow, self-help-y garbage.

This chapter conceptually analyzes the post-traumatic stress injuries called moral injury, moral fatigue or exhaustion, and broken spirit. It then identifies two puzzles. First, soldiers sometimes sustain moral injury even from doing right actions. Second, they experience moral exhaustion from making decisions even where the morally right choice is so obvious that it shouldn’t be stressful to make it; and even where rightness of decision is so murky that no decision could be morally faulted. The injuries result of mistaken moral (...) self-evaluation. Methods of preventing and treating these injuries are defended, including training in self-forgiveness, moral off-loading of actions and decisions to persons and devices less likely to feel inappropriate guilt, and the use of drugs to prevent such guilt. The foregoing has been about moral injury erroneously resulting from the non-violation of a correct moral code. But the chapter then introduces the concept of moral pseudo-injury—felt moral injury that has in reality resulted from violation of a false moral code, so that no one has really been morally injured. This can be used as a method in warfighting. And since the injuries it produces are illusory, this would be morally superior to physical violence. For it causes less injury to its victims, and should cause less guilt in those who must inflict it. Historical precedents are considered. Finally, our enemies often use moral pseudo-injury against us, in the form of terrorist violence against civilians. Terrorism causes comparatively few harms, yet we mistakenly see it as more morally horrific than conventional combat that causes much worse loss of life among armed forces members. Here we need the nuancing and clarifying power of philosophy to restore a sense of proportion, thence to prevent or therapize the moral pseudo-injury we may experience from these sorts of attacks. (This is a pre-penultimate version of the published version, available from OUP at the external link, which contains minor variances. The paper was earlier known as "PTSD Weaponized: A Theory of Moral Injury"; that now superseded version is archived under "past conferences" on the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law website.). (shrink)

How may nations protect their interests in space if its fragility makes military operations there self-defeating? This essay claims nations are in Prisoners Dilemmas on the matter, and applies David Gauthier’s theories about how it is rational to behave morally—cooperatively—in such dilemmas. Currently space-faring nations should i) enter into co-operative space sharing arrangements with other rational nations, ii) exclude—militarily, but with only terrestrial force—nations irrational or existentially opposed to other nations being in space, and iii) incentivize all nations into co-operation (...) by redistributing some space-generated wealth to nations that might otherwise ruin space. Further, since all nations are rationally incentivized to ever greater dependence on space, and since each, by threatening space, can hold hostage its benefits to all, each can demand resolution of terrestrial discontents with other nations. So each has a rational interest in treating others morally both in space and on terrestrial issues. (shrink)

What would it mean to have a suitably ‘realistic’ account of political liberty? On the one hand, I don’t think we can properly understand liberty without an underlying account of personhood or agency.2 In making sense of liberty, we need to ask: What kind of agency does it presuppose or promote? What kind of independence do we care most about? What does it mean to exercise control, or to be self-guiding, in the kind of world we live in today? At (...) the same time, a conception of moral and political personhood needs to be appropriately ‘realistic’: It shouldn’t be over-idealized (or over-simplified), nor demand more than can be reasonably expected, given the kind of creatures we are. (shrink)

Do factive mental states come in degrees? If so, what is their underlying structure, and what is their theoretical significance? Many have observed that ‘knows that’ is not a gradable verb and have taken this to be strong evidence that propositional knowledge does not come in degrees. This paper demonstrates that the adjective ‘aware that’ passes all the standard tests of gradability, and thus strongly motivates the idea that it refers to a factive mental state that comes in degrees. We (...) will explore a range of structural questions that have been overlooked in regard to our awareness of facts, showing that the degreed structure of awareness has significant implications for our understanding of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter looks at the discussion of materialism in John Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding, and then at parts of the Anglophone reaction to those discussions. It considers the early criticisms of Locke by Edward Stillingfleet and the anonymous author of three sets of Remarks on Locke’s Essay. It then looks at some other ways in which readers reacted to Locke’s discussions: the views of Anthony Collins and John Toland, which one might be tempted to think of as Lockean materialism; (...) William Carroll’s reading of Locke as a Spinozistic materialist; and the dualistic Lockeanism of William Duncan’s Lockean logic textbook. (shrink)

I can be aware of myself, and thereby come to know things about myself, in a variety of different ways. But is there some special way in which I—and only I—can learn about myself? Can I become aware of myself by introspecting? Do I somehow show up in my own conscious experiences? David Hume and most contemporary philosophers say no. They deny that the self shows up in experience. However, in this paper I appeal to research on schizophrenia—on thought insertion, (...) in particular—to argue that Hume and his follows are wrong: The self does, in fact, show up in experience. (shrink)

Trust is a crucial condition for the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic institutions in conditions of deep diversity and enduring injustices. Liberal democratic societies require forms of engagement and deliberation that require trustful relations between citizens: trust is a necessary condition for securing and sustaining just institutions and practices. Establishing trust is hard when there is a lingering suspicion that the institutions citizens are subject to are illegitimate or undermine their ability to participate and deliberate on equal terms. The promise (...) of participation, the appeal to deliberation and inclusion, in other words, is experienced as a form of bad faith. In this paper, I offer four conditions required for democratic trust and discuss them in relation to a series of examples of both democratic mistrust and attempts at rebuilding trust. (shrink)

David Gauthier thinks agents facing a prisoner's dilemma ('pd') should find it rational to dispose themselves to co-operate with those inclined to reciprocate (i.e., to acquire a constrained maximizer--'cm'--disposition), and to co-operate with other 'cmers'. Richmond Campbell argues that since dominance reasoning shows it remains to the agent's advantage to defect, his co-operation is only rational if cm "determines" him to co-operate, forcing him not to cheat. I argue that if cm "forces" the agent to co-operate, he is not acting (...) at all, never mind rationally. Thus, neither author has shown that co-operation is rational action in a pd. (shrink)

The debate over the constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples is a deeply political one. That might appear to be a controversial claim. After all, there has been much talk about minimising the scope for disagreement between ‘constitutional conservatives’ and supporters of more expansive constitutional recognition. And there is concern to ensure that any potential referendum enjoys the maximum conditions and opportunity for success. However, my argument shall be that any form of constitutional recognition of Australia’s First Peoples needs to be (...) seen as part of an ongoing transformation in the relations between Indigenous peoples and the Australian state. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the rhetorical moves of article abstracts in Taiwanese Chinese philosophy journals. The most common theory for the discourse analysis of research abstracts is proposed by Hyland（2000）. Most of the research abstracts in the field of social sciences and natural sciences are composed of Hyland’s five rhetorical moves: introduction, purpose, method, results, and conclusion. Therefore, the question to be explored in this research is how to compose the rhetorical moves of abstracts of Chinese philosophy journal articles. (...) What is the frequency and order of each rhetorical move in the abstract of each paper? Do they reflect some particular type of distribution? Are there any rhetorical moves that occur exceptionally rarely? Does the abstract of research articles in Chinese philosophy journals apply the framework of the same five rhetorical moves? What are the conventions of the philosophy writing community reflected in the rhetorical moves of abstracts of academic journal articles in philosophy? -/- To answer the above questions, this research collected the abstracts of 18 papers from the representative Chinese philosophy journal "SOOCHOW JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES " in Taiwan in the past five years (2017-2021) and used the five moves of Hyland（2000） one by one to answer the above questions. The rhetorical moves of each abstract were analyzed and presented in tables to show the frequency, order, and type of each rhetorical move. -/- The results of this study found that "method (M)" and "conclusion (C)" are not the rhetorical moves that constitute the abstract of articles in Taiwanese philosophy journals, but the rhetorical move "purpose (P)" is "necessary" to appear. In the Purpose move, the subject is usually "this article"; the verbs are "argue" or "inquire." Although "introduction (I)" is a "conventional" move, the total number of words in the introduction is the highest in the whole abstract. This study also shows rhetorical move variation of the abstracts of philosophy journal articles, reflecting the writing culture and conventions of the academic philosophy community. -/- Finally, this study proposes three teaching guidelines for abstract writing of academic papers in philosophy, which will be useful for philosophy scholars and graduate students to consult when writing and submitting abstracts of philosophy in conference or journal papers. -/- Keywords: philosophy, journal article, abstract, discourse analysis, rhetorical move . (shrink)

It is argued that standard accounts of the epistemology of religious commitmentfail to be properly sensitive to certain important features of the nature of religious conviction. Once one takes these features of religious conviction seriously, then it becomes clear that we are not to conceive of the epistemology of religious conviction along completely rational lines.But the moral to extract from this is not fideism, or even a more moderate proposal that casts the epistemic standing of basic religious beliefs along nonrational (...) lines. Rather, one needs to recognise that in an important sense religious convictions are not beliefs at all, but that this is compatible with the idea that many other religious commitments are beliefs. This picture of the nature of religious commitment is shown to fit snugly with the Wittgensteinian account of hinge commitments, such that all rational belief essentially presupposes certain basic arational hinge commitments, along lines originally suggested by John Henry Newman. We are thus able to marshal a parity-style argument in defence of religious commitment. Although religious belief presupposes basic arational religious convictions, it is not on this score epistemically amiss since all belief presupposes basic arational convictions, or hinge commitments. The resulting view of the epistemology of religious commitment is a position I call quasi-fideism. (shrink)

I argue that Gauthier's constrained-maximizer rationality is problematic. But standard Maximizing Rationality means one's preferences are only rational if it would not maximize on them to adopt new ones. In the Prisoner's Dilemma, it maximizes to adopt conditionally cooperative preferences. (These are detailed, with a view to avoiding problems of circularity of definition.) Morality then maximizes. I distinguish the roles played in rational choices and their bases by preferences, dispositions, moral and rational principles, the aim of rational action, and rational (...) decision rules. I argue that Maximizing Rationality necessarily structures conclusive reasons for action. Thus conations of any sort can base rational choices only if the conations are structured like a coherent preference function; rational actions maximize on such functions. Maximization-constraining dispositions cannot integrate into a coherent preference function. (shrink)

This paper reviews six attempts to give cooperative solutions to Prisoners Dilemmas: symmetry (agents are in identical situations, so should choose the same way, so should both choose cooperation because that’s better for each), mechanism (each agent should delegate the decision to a machine which will choose cooperation for them provided the other does likewise), inducement (the agents should make a side bet which pays off only upon both cooperating), resolution (each agent should resolve to cooperate, then act on the (...) resolution), alternative principle (rationality requires not dominance reasoning and so defecting, but constrained maximization or resolution compliance or “sophisticated” choosing, and so cooperation), and preference revision (each agent should acquire conditional preferences to cooperate, then cooperate provided the other agent has acquired similar preferences). It distinguishes one-stage from two-stage games, as well as endogenously available solutions (ones available to agents in the circumstances of the game merely due to the nature of rationality) from solutions requiring exogenous devices. It contrasts Edward McClennen’s endogenous solution, which is some combination of resolution and alternative principle solution, with David Gauthier’s endogenous alternative principle solution. It argues that all have problems, ones best solved by the endogenous preference revision solution defended by Duncan MacIntosh. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that recidivism scoring algorithms like COMPAS have significant racial bias: Black defendants are roughly twice as likely as white defendants to be mistakenly classified as medium- or high-risk. This has led some to call for abolishing COMPAS. But many others have argued that algorithms should instead be given access to a defendant's race, which, perhaps counterintuitively, is likely to improve outcomes. This approach can involve either establishing race-sensitive risk thresholds, or distinct racial ‘tracks’. Is there a (...) moral difference between these two approaches? We first consider Deborah Hellman's view that the use of distinct racial tracks (but not distinct thresholds) does not constitute disparate treatment since the effects on individuals are indirect and does not rely on a racial generalization. We argue that this is mistaken: the use of different racial tracks seems both to have direct effects on and to rely on a racial generalization. We then offer an alternative understanding of the distinction between these two approaches—namely, that the use of different cut points is to the counterfactual comparative disadvantage, ex ante, of all white defendants, while the use of different racial tracks can in principle be to the advantage of all groups, though some defendants in both groups will fare worse. Does this mean that the use of cut points is impermissible? Ultimately, we argue, while there are reasons to be skeptical of the use of distinct cut points, it is an open question whether these reasons suffice to make a difference to their moral permissibility. (shrink)

Subjectivity is that feature of consciousness whereby there is something it is like for a subject to undergo an experience. One persistent challenge in the study of consciousness is to explain how subjectivity relates to, or arises from, purely physical brain processes. But, in order to address this challenge, it seems we must have a clear explanation of what subjectivity is in the first place. This has proven challenging in its own right. For the nature of subjectivity itself seems to (...) resist straightforward characterization. In this paper, I won't address how subjectivity relates to the physical. Instead, I'll address subjectivity itself. I'll do this by introducing and defending a model of subjectivity based on self-acquaintance. My model does not purport to reduce, eliminate, or naturalize subjectivity, but it does make subjectivity more tractable, less paradoxical, and perhaps less dubious to those averse to obscurity. (shrink)

An exploration of RA Duff's 'communicative theory of punishment' in contexts of deep legal and cultural pluralism.

It is widely thought that grounding is a hyperintensional phenomenon. Unfortunately, the term ‘hyperintensionality’ has been doing double-duty, picking out two distinct phenomena. This paper clears up this conceptual confusion. We call the two resulting notions hyperintensionalityGRND and hyperintensionalityTRAD. While it is clear that grounding is hyperintensionalGRND, the interesting question is whether it is hyperintensionalTRAD. We argue that given well-accepted constraints on the logical form of grounding, to wit, that grounding is irreflexive and asymmetric, grounding is hyperintensionalTRAD only if one (...) endorses a sentential operator view of grounding. We argue that proponents of the sentential operator view will need to distinguish two importantly different kinds of hyperintensionalityTRAD—weak and strong—and we offer them a way to do so. (shrink)

As a contribution to a wider discussion on moral discernment in theological anthropology, this paper seeks to answer the question “What is the impact of mental illness on an individual’s ability to make moral decisions?” Written from a clinical psychiatric perspective, it considers recent contributions from psychology, neuropsychology and imaging technology. It notes that the popular conception that mental illness necessarily robs an individual of moral responsibility is largely unfounded. Most people who suffer from mental health problems do not lose (...) the capacity to make moral decisions, and mental illness on its own rarely explains anti-social or criminal behaviour. Moreover, the assumptions of some scientists, that recent developments in neuropsychology and brain imaging suggest biological determinism, must be treated with caution. (shrink)

Does the Australian state exercise legitimate power over the indigenous peoples within its borders? To say that the state’s political decisions are legitimate is to say that it has the right to impose those decisions on indigenous peoples and that they have a (at least a prima facie) duty to obey. In this paper, I consider the general normative frameworks within which these questions are often grasped in contemporary political theory. Two dominant modes of dealing with political legitimacy are through (...) the politics of ‘recognition’ and ‘justification’. I argue that in order to address the fundamental challenges posed by indigenous peoples to liberal settler states today we need to pluralise our conceptions of political legitimacy. (shrink)

In Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage provides a genealogy of the multiple foundations of international political thought. But he also enables political theorists to reflect on the nature of the pluralisation of our concepts: that is, the way various components come together in particular circumstances to form a concept that either becomes dominant or is rendered to the margins. Armitage claims that concepts can ‘never entirely escape their origins’. In this paper I explore this claim from the perspective (...) of contemporary debates about the nature of cosmopolitan political thought. (shrink)

This is an earlier version of the argument presented as the appendix to the author's final book, Peri Physeos.

Contemporary theories of consciousness are based on widely different concepts of its nature, most or all of which probably embody aspects of the truth about it. Starting with a concept of consciousness indicated by the phrase “the feeling of what happens” (the title of a book by Antonio Damásio), we attempt to build a framework capable of supporting and resolving divergent views. We picture consciousness in terms of Reality experiencing itself from the perspective of cognitive agents. Each conscious experience is (...) regarded as composed of momentary feeling events that are combined by recognition and evaluation into extended conscious episodes that bind cognitive contents with a wide range of apparent durations (0.1 secs to 2 or more secs, for us humans, depending on circumstances and context). Three necessary conditions for the existence of consciousness are identified: a) a ground of Reality, envisaged as an universal field of potentiality encompassing all possible manifestations, whether material or 'mental'; b) a transitional zone, leading to; c) a manifest world with its fundamental divisions into material, 'informational' and quale-endowed aspects. We explore ideas about the nature of these necessary conditions, how they may relate to one another and whether our suggestions have empirical implications. (shrink)

We study the representation of sets of desirable gambles by sets of probability mass functions. Sets of desirable gambles are a very general uncertainty model, that may be non-Archimedean, and therefore not representable by a set of probability mass functions. Recently, Cozman (2018) has shown that imposing the additional requirement of even convexity on sets of desirable gambles guarantees that they are representable by a set of probability mass functions. Already more that 20 years earlier, Seidenfeld et al. (1995) gave (...) an axiomatisation of binary preferences—on horse lotteries, rather than on gambles—that also leads to a unique representation in terms of sets of probability mass functions. To reach this goal, they use two devices, which we will call ‘SSK–Archimedeanity’ and ‘SSK–extension’. In this paper, we will make the arguments of Seidenfeld et al. (1995) explicit in the language of gambles, and show how their ideas imply even convexity and allow for conservative reasoning with evenly convex sets of desirable gambles, by deriving an equivalence between the SSK–Archimedean natural extension, the SSK–extension, and the evenly convex natural extension. (shrink)

When it comes to personal identity, two approaches have long ruled the roost. The first is the psychological approach, which has it that our persistence through time consists in the continuance of certain of our psychological traits, such as our memories, beliefs, desires, or personality. The second is the biological approach, according to which personal persistence consists in continuity in our physical or biological makeup. Amid the bipartite reign of these approaches, a third contender has emerged: the phenomenal approach. On (...) this approach, personal persistence consists in continuity in phenomenal consciousness or the capacity for phenomenal consciousness. In this paper I will introduce and defend a new argument for the phenomenal approach. In the process, I will argue against the psychological and biological approaches. I will also address some lingering questions and outline further ways to develop the phenomenal approach. (shrink)