Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

This study investigated changes in the prevalence of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ≥19-year-old population in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2019 and 2020 was included. The histories of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts were compared between the 2019 and 2020 cohorts using multiple logistic regression analysis with complex sampling. The prevalence of depression was not significantly different between the 2019 and 2020 groups (4.1% vs. 4.5%, p = 0.326). The prevalence (...) of stress and suicide attempts was also not significantly different between groups (all p > 0.05). The rates of depression, stress, and suicide attempts were not associated with the 2020 group compared to the 2019 group (all p > 0.05). The 19- to 39-year-old group in the 2020 group indicated a higher rate of depression (diagnosed by physicians) than the 19- to 39-year-old group in the 2019 group (adjusted odds ratio = 1.58, 95% confidence intervals = 1.00–2.50, p = 0.049). The risks of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts were not related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Korean adults. A young adult population demonstrated an increased risk of depression associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

In this paper the concept of temporality in the theories of Bergson, Husserl, and Heidegger is analyzed from a phenomenological perspective. Husserl and Heidegger studied the problems of consciousness and existence in the framework of their analysis of time. Bergson, as one of the proto-phenomenological forerunners, reveals the core connections of the phenomenological concept of temporality to the wider range of philosophy. Based on their theories on time, I suggest a three dimensional system for understanding of time in relation to (...) motion and existence. (shrink)

This paper explores the phenomenological concept “we” based on a pre-existing understanding of traditional phenomenology alongside a new aspect of the concept by introducing an analysis of “we” in Korean. The central questions of this paper are whether the “we” can be understood as more than a collection of individuals, whether the “we” can precede both “I” and “thou,” and whether the “we” as an extension of the “I” or an extended self should necessarily mean the plural of the “I.”.

In this paper, violence is analyzed as phenomenon through which a defective state of our understanding of Being reveals itself.

Subtractive schooling is a type of pedagogy that subtracts from the student aspects of her identity in order to assimilate and reshape her identity to fit the American mainstream. Here, I question the value of assimilation as it takes place in our public school systems. Currently, immigrant children are often made to feel inadequate for being culturally different. This is detrimental to their development as students given that at their young age they do not yet have the emotional maturity (...) to know that their experience, language and culture are legitimate and valuable. My goal is to shift the focus of subtractive schooling to one that fosters the growth of students through recognition. I suggest that John Dewey’s and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of recognition is a helpful approach to this problem. Both Dewey and Freire’s pedagogy emphasize recognition as central to their pedagogy. (shrink)

In this existential reading of Kim Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie of 2016, I focus on the rise of selfie culture and public discourse around emerging digital representations of women's bodies. The selfie is a relatively new phenomenon, and is particularly curious because of the subject/object paradox it creates; in taking a selfie, a person asserts control over their own image, but at the same time, becomes object in their own gaze. My argument is that selfies, like other assertions of (...) bodily subjectivity in digital spaces, are a threat to patriarchal structures that paint women as immanent, object, as reflected in public discourse around Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie. I draw on both Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's work on subjectivity in existentialism and phenomenology, as well as Amy Shields Dobson's work on post-feminism and young women's projections of self, in order to delineate what it is about the selfie that creates this paradox. I also make reference to the work of Elisabeth Grosz and Frantz Fanon in relation to a colonial hierarchy that prioritises body over mind, as well as Laura Mulvey's work on the male gaze. (shrink)

Sleep onset is associated with marked changes in behavioral, physiological, and subjective phenomena. In daily life though subjective experience is the main criterion in terms of which we identify it. But very few studies have focused on these experiences. This study seeks to identify the subjective variables that reflect sleep onset. Twenty young subjects took an afternoon nap in the laboratory while polysomnographic recordings were made. They were awakened four times in order to assess subjective experiences that correlate with (...) the (1) appearance of slow eye movement, (2) initiation of stage 1 sleep, (3) initiation of stage 2 sleep, and (4) 5 min after the start of stage 2 sleep. A logistic regression identified control over and logic of thought as the two variables that predict the perception of having fallen asleep. For sleep perception, these two variables accurately classified 91.7% of the cases; for the waking state, 84.1%. (shrink)

This sixth volume of Collected Papers includes 74 papers comprising 974 pages on (theoretic and applied) neutrosophics, written between 2015-2021 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 121 co-authors from 19 countries: Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Abdel Nasser H. Zaied, Abduallah Gamal, Amir Abdullah, Firoz Ahmad, Nadeem Ahmad, Ahmad Yusuf Adhami, Ahmed Aboelfetouh, Ahmed Mostafa Khalil, Shariful Alam, W. Alharbi, Ali Hassan, Mumtaz Ali, Amira S. Ashour, Asmaa Atef, Assia Bakali, Ayoub Bahnasse, A. A. Azzam, Willem K.M. Brauers, Bui (...) Cong Cuong, Fausto Cavallaro, Ahmet Çevik, Robby I. Chandra, Kalaivani Chandran, Victor Chang, Chang Su Kim, Jyotir Moy Chatterjee, Victor Christianto, Chunxin Bo, Mihaela Colhon, Shyamal Dalapati, Arindam Dey, Dunqian Cao, Fahad Alsharari, Faruk Karaaslan, Aleksandra Fedajev, Daniela Gîfu, Hina Gulzar, Haitham A. El-Ghareeb, Masooma Raza Hashmi, Hewayda El-Ghawalby, Hoang Viet Long, Le Hoang Son, F. Nirmala Irudayam, Branislav Ivanov, S. Jafari, Jeong Gon Lee, Milena Jevtić, Sudan Jha, Junhui Kim, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Darjan Karabašević, Songül Karabatak, Abdullah Kargın, M. Karthika, Ieva Meidute-Kavaliauskiene, Madad Khan, Majid Khan, Manju Khari, Kifayat Ullah, K. Kishore, Kul Hur, Santanu Kumar Patro, Prem Kumar Singh, Raghvendra Kumar, Tapan Kumar Roy, Malayalan Lathamaheswari, Luu Quoc Dat, T. Madhumathi, Tahir Mahmood, Mladjan Maksimovic, Gunasekaran Manogaran, Nivetha Martin, M. Kasi Mayan, Mai Mohamed, Mohamed Talea, Muhammad Akram, Muhammad Gulistan, Raja Muhammad Hashim, Muhammad Riaz, Muhammad Saeed, Rana Muhammad Zulqarnain, Nada A. Nabeeh, Deivanayagampillai Nagarajan, Xenia Negrea, Nguyen Xuan Thao, Jagan M. Obbineni, Angelo de Oliveira, M. Parimala, Gabrijela Popovic, Ishaani Priyadarshini, Yaser Saber, Mehmet Șahin, Said Broumi, A. A. Salama, M. Saleh, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Dönüș Șengür, Shio Gai Quek, Songtao Shao, Dragiša Stanujkić, Surapati Pramanik, Swathi Sundari Sundaramoorthy, Mirela Teodorescu, Selçuk Topal, Muhammed Turhan, Alptekin Ulutaș, Luige Vlădăreanu, Victor Vlădăreanu, Ştefan Vlăduţescu, Dan Valeriu Voinea, Volkan Duran, Navneet Yadav, Yanhui Guo, Naveed Yaqoob, Yongquan Zhou, Young Bae Jun, Xiaohong Zhang, Xiao Long Xin, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas. (shrink)

Subjective perception of sleep is not necessarily consistent with electroencephalography (EEG) indications of sleep. The mismatch between subjective reports and objective measures is often referred to as “sleep state misperception.” Previous studies evince that this mismatch is found in both patients with insomnia and in normal sleepers, but the neurophysiological mechanism remains unclear. The aim of the study is to explore the neurophysiological basis of this mechanism, from the perspective of both EEG power and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) fluctuations. (...) Thirty-six healthy young adults participated in the study. Simultaneous EEG and fMRI recordings were conducted while the participants were trying to fall asleep in an MRI scanner at approximately 9:00 pm. They were awakened after achieving stable N1 or N2 sleep, or after 90 min without falling into stable sleep. Next they were asked to recall their conscious experiences from the moment immediately prior to awakening. Sixty-one instances of scheduled awakenings were collected: 21 of these after having achieved stable stage N2 sleep; 12, during stage N1 sleep; and, 20 during the waking state. Relative to those awakenings without subjective–objective discrepancy (n = 27), these awakenings with discrepancy (n = 14) were associated with lower θ power, as well as higher α, β, and γ power. Moreover, we found that participants who exhibited the discrepancy, compared with those who did not, evinced a higher amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation levels in the prefrontal cortex. These results lend support to the conjecture that the subjective–objective discrepancy is associated with central nervous system hyperarousal. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to do two things: first, introduce Juche, the official philosophy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“North Korea”), and second, defend Juche against Alzo David-West’s allegation that it is a nonsensical philosophy. I organize David-West’s complaints into two major strands—that Juche’s axiom is too vague to be of philosophical use and that Juche makes too stark a distinction between human vs. everything else—and offer responses to both strands. My goal isn’t to defend the regime, (...) but to present its ideology in the most charitable way so its merits and demerits can be seen more clearly in future engagements. (shrink)

In Beyond Art (2014), Dominic Lopes proposed a new theory of art, the buck passing theory. Rather than attempting to define art in terms of exhibited or genetic featured shared by all artworks, Lopes passes the buck to theories of individual arts. He proposes that we seek theories of music, painting, poetry, and other arts. Once we have these theories, we know everything there is to know about the theory of art. This essay presents two challenges to the theory. First, (...) this essay argues that Lopes is wrong in supposing that theories of arts were developed to deal with the ‘hard cases’ – developments such as Duchamp’s readymades and conceptual art. This is a problem since Lopes holds that the buck passing theory’s capacity to deal with the hard cases is one of its virtues. Second, this essay argues that the buck passing theory has no account of which activities are arts and no account of what makes some activity an art. (shrink)

In “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions”, Weinberg, Nichols and Stich famously argue from empirical data that East Asians and Westerners have different intuitions about Gettier -style cases. We attempted to replicate their study about the Car case, but failed to detect a cross - cultural difference. Our study used the same methods and case taken verbatim, but sampled an East Asian population 2.5 times greater than NEI’s 23 participants. We found no evidence supporting the existence of cross - cultural difference about (...) the intuition concerning the Gettier car case. Taken together with the failures of both of the existing replication studies, our results provide strong evidence that the purported cross - cultural difference in Gettier intuitions does not exist. (shrink)

Feminist social theory and female body experience are the twin themes of Iris Marion Young's twelve outstanding essays written over the past decade and brought together here. Her contributions to social theory raise critical questions about women and citizenship, the relations of capitalism and women's oppression, and the differences between a feminist theory that emphasizes women's difference and one that assumes a gender-neutral humanity. Loosely following a phenomenological method of description, Young's essays on female embodiment discuss female movement, (...) pregnancy, clothing, and the breasted body. In an introduction that situates her work in the context of shifts in feminist theory and politics over the past decade, Young emphasizes the rootedness of her theorizing in a dedicated and seasoned political activism. (shrink)

There is ongoing debate on whether Juche (주체/主體), the North Korean state ideology, is indigenous, Marxist-Leninist, or Confucian—or if it’s a real philosophy at all. In this article, I introduce Juche and show how characteristics that philosophers identify to be unique or pronounced in premodern Korean philosophy can be found in Juche as well. Intellectual adaptation, pragmaticism, and an emphasis on continual improvement are prominent in both premodern Korean thought and Juche. Juche should be understood as a politically inflected outgrowth (...) that is embedded within the larger context of Korean philosophy. (shrink)

Considering questions at the intersection of time and fiction deepens our understanding of fiction, introduces new questions for philosophy of time, and brings analytic philosophy in discussion with narratology. Philosophers debate whether fictional time can be tensed, whether fictional time can branch, repeat, pause, rewind, or skip and whether fictional time travel is possible. Much of the way we answer these questions will depend on our overall commitment to the nature of fiction. It’s also unclear what, if anything, we can (...) learn about the metaphysics of time from fiction. This chapter will introduce readers to discussions that are shaping the debates in this domain. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher’s The Ethical Project trios to vindicates ethics through an analysis of its evolutionary and cultural history, a history which in turn, he thinks, supports a particular conception of the role of moral thinking and normative practices in human social life. As Kitcher sees it, that role could hardly be more central: most of what makes human life human, and preferable to the fraught and impoverished societies of the great apes, depends on moral cognition. Prom this view of the (...) role of the ethical project as a social technology, Kitcher derives an account of moral progress and even moral truth: a normative analogue of the idea that truth is the convergence of rational enquiry. To Kitcher’s history, I present an anti-history. Most of what is good about human social life depends on the expansion of our social emotions, not on our capacities to articulate and internalise explicit norms. Indeed, since the Holocene and the origins of complex society, normative thought and normative institutions have been more prominent as tools of exploitation and oppression than as mechanisms of a social peace that balances individual desire with collective co-operation. I argue that the vindication project fails in its own terms: even given Kitcher’s distinctive pragmatic concept of vindication, history debunks rather than vindicates moral cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a Bayesian analysis of the well-known surprise exam paradox. Central to our analysis is a probabilistic account of what it means for the student to accept the teacher's announcement that he will receive a surprise exam. According to this account, the student can be said to have accepted the teacher's announcement provided he adopts a subjective probability distribution relative to which he expects to receive the exam on a day on which he expects not to (...) receive it. We show that as long as expectation is not equated with subjective certainty there will be contexts in which it is possible for the student to accept the teacher's announcement, in this sense. In addition, we show how a Bayesian modeling of the scenario can yield plausible explanations of the following three intuitive claims: (1) the teacher's announcement becomes easier to accept the more days there are in class; (2) a strict interpretation of the teacher's announcement does not provide the student with any categorical information as to the date of the exam; and (3) the teacher's announcement contains less information about the date of the exam the more days there are in class. To conclude, we show how the surprise exam paradox can be seen as one among the larger class of paradoxes of doxastic fallibilism, foremost among which is the paradox of the preface. (shrink)

In men and women sexual arousal culminates in orgasm, with female orgasm solely from sexual intercourse often regarded as a unique feature of human sexuality. However, orgasm from sexual intercourse occurs more reliably in men than in women, likely reflecting the different types of physical stimulation men and women require for orgasm. In men, orgasms are under strong selective pressure as orgasms are coupled with ejaculation and thus contribute to male reproductive success. By contrast, women's orgasms in intercourse are highly (...) variable and are under little selective pressure as they are not a reproductive necessity. The proximal mechanisms producing variability in women's orgasms are little understood. In 1924 Marie Bonaparte proposed that a shorter distance between a woman's clitoris and her urethral meatus (CUMD) increased her likelihood of experiencing orgasm in intercourse. She based this on her published data that were never statistically analyzed. In 1940 Landis and colleagues published similar data suggesting the same relationship, but these data too were never fully analyzed. We analyzed raw data from these two studies and found that both demonstrate a strong inverse relationship between CUMD and orgasm during intercourse. Unresolved is whether this increased likelihood of orgasm with shorter CUMD reflects increased penile–clitoral contact during sexual intercourse or increased penile stimulation of internal aspects of the clitoris. CUMD likely reflects prenatal androgen exposure, with higher androgen levels producing larger distances. Thus these results suggest that women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse. . (shrink)

In this study, we examine the philosophical bases of one of the leading clinical psychological methods of therapy for anxiety, anger, and depression, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). We trace this method back to its philosophical roots in the Stoic, Buddhist, Taoist, and Existentialist philosophical traditions. We start by discussing the tenets of CBT, and then we expand on the philosophical traditions that ground this approach. Given that CBT has had a clinically measured positive effect on the psychological well-being of individuals, (...) it becomes important to study the philosophical foundations on which this therapy is based. (shrink)

These comments, which take the form of criticism and response, were the basis of a zoom conversation at the Eastern APA, January 2021. Josh is putting them up on philpapers (with permission from all involved) in case they are helpful to people interested in the themes of this book.

Part of a book symposium for Peter Langland-Hassan's Explaining Imagination (2020).

The world is occupied by many and varied things. What constitutes their thingness? In the Essay, Locke addresses this question in Book II, Chapter xxiii, titled ‘Of our Complex Ideas of Substance’, wherein the much-contested definition of ‘substratum’ appears—‘a supposed but unknown support of the Qualities’. Most significant in this definition are the dual qualifiers that Locke uses: ‘supposed’ and ‘unknown’. This paper examines this two-qualifier definition, illuminating the historical and philosophical significance it may have. There have been two rival (...) readings. The first takes Locke’s substratum to be a bare substratum; and the second identifies it with what Locke terms as ‘real essence’—i.e. ‘a real Constitution of the insensible Parts’. Critically reviewing these two major interpretations, I attribute to Locke a type of functionalism, according to which the status of a substratum is determined by its functional role of ‘uniting’ a bundle of qualities into an individual substance. (shrink)

The articles in this issue represent the pursuit of a new understanding of the human past, one that can replace the neo-saltationist view of a human revolution with models that can account for the complexities of the archaeological record and of human social lives. The articulation of archaeological, philosophical, and biological perspectives seems to offer a strong foundation for exploring available evidence, and this was the rationale for collecting these particular articles. Even at this preliminary stage there is a coherence (...) emerging in proposals: the origin and operation of symbolically rich, complexly signaling human social systems was the consequence of the long-term evolution of multiple components of perceiving and negotiating social interactions, a contingent outcome of myriad adaptive shifts rather than a single event. (shrink)

In the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, East Asia witnessed new academic trends emphasizing social practice and reform over theoretical considerations. These trends gave rise to Silhak 實學 (“Practical Learning”) in Korea in the late Joseon dynasty, Qixue 氣學 (“Learning of Vital Forces”) in China in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and Kogaku 古學 (“Ancient Learning”) in Japan in the Edo period. A concept of “East Asian Silhak 東亞實學 (East Asian Practical Learning)” can be conceived in the context (...) of strengthening the Confucian statecraft in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this academic trend, so-called East Asian Practical Learning, was manifested in the form of “pursuit of West-centered modernity” in the three East Asian countries. It would be appropriate to understand it as a “modern transformation of East Asian Confucian thought” rather than as the Confucian statecraft in the context of Confucianism. When attempting to incorporate the ideological transformation of Confucianism in East Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into the concept of Silhak, there are issues such as: the conceptual confusion between Silhak of the late Joseon dynasty of Korea and Kaozhengxue 考證學 (“Evidential Learning”) of the Qing dynasty of China; and their pursuit of modernity based on the premise of anti-Zhuzi studies. Given these complexities, this article underscores that the genesis of New Silhak in twenty-first-century East Asia lies in the simultaneous relationship between Zhuzi studies and Silhak, reflecting the Confucian ideal of neisheng waiwang 內聖外王 (“inner sage and outer king”). (shrink)

Philosophers have relied on visual metaphors to analyse ideas and explain their theories at least since Plato. Descartes is famous for his system of axes, and Wittgenstein for his first design of truth table diagrams. Today, visualisation is a form of ‘computer-aided seeing’ information in data. Hence, information is the fundamental ‘currency’ exchanged through a visualisation pipeline. In this article, we examine the types of information that may occur at different stages of a general visualization pipeline. We do so from (...) a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. The quantitative analysis is developed on the basis of Shannon’s information theory. The qualitative analysis is developed on the basis of Floridi’s taxonomy in the philosophy of information. We then discuss in detail how the condition of the ‘data processing inequality’ can be broken in a visualisation pipeline. This theoretic finding underlines the usefulness and importance of visualisation in dealing with the increasing problem of data deluge. We show that the subject of visualisation should be studied using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, preferably in an interdisciplinary synergy between information theory and the philosophy of information. (shrink)

In this article, we explicate evidence-based nursing (EBN), critically appraise its framework and respond to nurses’ concern that EBN sidelines the caring elements of nursing practice. We use resources from care ethics, especially Vrinda Dalmiya’s work that considers care as crucial for both epistemology and ethics, to show how EBN is compatible with, and indeed can be enhanced by, the caring aspects of nursing practice. We demonstrate that caring can act as a bridge between ‘external’ evidence and the other pillars (...) of the EBN framework: clinical expertise; patient preferences and values. Drawing on an influential EBN handbook, section 1 presents the aims and features of EBN, including the normative principle that EBN should take place within a ‘context of caring’. We aim to understand this context and whether it can be neatly detached from the EBN framework, as the handbook seems to suggest. In section 2, we highlight the grounds for resistance to EBN from the nursing community, before mounting the argument that nursing practices can be understood fruitfully through feminist care ethics and/or virtue ethics lenses. In section 3, we deepen that analysis using Dalmiya’s concepts of care-knowing and care as a hybrid ethico-epistemic virtue, which are ideally suited to the complex practices of nursing. In section 4, we bring this rich understanding of care into conversation with EBN, showing that its framework cannot be adequately theorised without paying proper attention to care. Caring can be neither an innocuous background assumption of nor an afterthought to the EBN framework. (shrink)

Human behavior is frequently described both in abstract, general terms and in concrete, specific terms. We asked whether these two ways of framing equivalent behaviors shift the inferences people make about the biological and psychological bases of those behaviors. In five experiments, we manipulated whether behaviors are presented concretely (i.e. with reference to a specific person, instantiated in the particular context of that person’s life) or abstractly (i.e. with reference to a category of people or behaviors across generalized contexts). People (...) judged concretely framed behaviors to be less biologically based and, on some dimensions, more psychologically based than the same behaviors framed in the abstract. These findings held true for both mental disorders (Experiments 1 and 2) and everyday behaviors (Experiments 4 and 5) and yielded downstream consequences for the perceived efficacy of disorder treatments (Experiment 3). Implications for science educators, students of science, and members of the lay public are discussed. (shrink)

Kim Diaz's translation of Guillermo Hurtado's "Retratos de Luis Villoro".

This paper provides a critical examination of three related attempts to defend Composition as Identity (CI), namely the thesis that if some things compose something, then they are it. First, it will be argued against Donald Baxter’s view of composition as ‘loose identity’ that by construing composition as strictly a many-many relation, the view trivializes CI, and cannot be an option for the advocate of CI who takes composition as a genuine many-one relation. Second, it is argued against Baxter’s modified (...) view of composition as ‘cross-count identity’ that the ‘are’ in ‘they are it’ cannot be viewed as expressing cross-count identity. Lastly, it is argued against Aaron Cotnoir’s view of composition as ‘general identity’ that it amounts to resorting back to Baxter’s old view of composition as a many-many relation. (shrink)

A metaphor is an effective way to show how something is to be conceived. In this article, I look at two Neo-Confucian Korean philosophical contexts—the Four-Seven debate and Book of the Imperial Pivot—and suggest that metaphors are philosophically expedient in two further contexts: when both intellect and emotion must be addressed; and when the aim of philosophizing is to produce behavioral change. Because Neo-Confucians had a conception of the mind that closely connected it to the heart (心 xin), metaphor’s empathy-inducing (...) and perspective-giving capacities made it an especially helpful mode of philosophizing in the history of Korean philosophy. (shrink)

Imperialism rarely receives discussion in mainstream philosophy. In radical philosophy, where imperialism is analyzed with some frequency, European expansion is the paradigm. This essay considers the nature and specificity of American imperialism, especially its racialization structures, diplomatic history, and geographic trajectory, from pre‐twentieth century “Amerasia” to present‐day Eurasia. The essay begins with an account of imperialism generally, one which is couched in language consistent with left‐liberalism but compatible with a more radical discourse. This account is then used throughout the rest (...) of the essay to illumine, through consideration of US foreign policy, structures of American dominion in Latin America, the Pacific, and Asia—and subsequently Eurasia. The overall analytic and geographic portrait offers critical context for both philosophy of race, which tends to be domestically oriented, and just war theory, which tends to ignore wider structures of diplomatic domination. (shrink)

Philosophers ask just whose expression, if anyone’s, we hear in lyric poetry. Walton provides a novel possibility: it’s the reader who “uses” the poem (just as a speech giver uses a speech) who makes the language expressive. But worries arise once we consider poems in particular social or political settings, those which require a strong self-other distinction, or those with expressions that should not be disassociated from the subjects whose experience they draw from. One way to meet this challenge is (...) to consider the poem expressive of a plural subject, which frees us from looking for a particular individual whose voice we hear in the work, whether she be fictional or actual. Some lyrics give voice to a group whose experience is attended to in the work. This may be done through a posited fictional speaker, but the ontology of the speaker is shown to be less important. Attending to a group whose concerns are voiced allows us to explain how poems can manage to address our-worldly concerns even when lacking actual persons whose expressions we encounter in the poems. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 This is a pre-print. Please cite only the revised published version. This paper presents an original, ambitious, truth-directed transcendental argument for the existence of an ‘external world’. It begins with a double-headed starting-point: Stroud’s own remarks on the necessary conditions of language in general, and Hegel’s critique of the “fear of error.” The paper argues that the sceptical challenge requires a particular critical concept of thought as that which may diverge from reality, and that this (...) concept is possible only through reflection on situations of error, in which how things are thought to be diverges from how things really are with independent items in an objective world. The existence of such a world is therefore a necessary condition of the possibility of scepticism: such scepticism is therefore false. I defend the argument against objections from Stroud’s sceptic and others. Drawing on Heidegger, the paper concludes by indicating that the chain of necessary conditions includes practical engagement with the world. (shrink)

Keith DeRose has argued that the two main problems facing subject-sensitive invariantism come from the appropriateness of certain third-person denials of knowledge and the inappropriateness of now you know it, now you don't claims. I argue that proponents of SSI can adequately address both problems. First, I argue that the debate between contextualism and SSI has failed to account for an important pragmatic feature of third-person denials of knowledge. Appealing to these pragmatic features, I show that straightforward third-person denials are (...) inappropriate in the relevant cases. And while there are certain denials that are appropriate, they pose no problems for SSI. Next, I offer an explanation, compatible with SSI, of the oddity of now you know it, now you don't claims. To conclude, I discuss the intuitiveness of purism, whose rejection is the source of many problems for SSI. I propose to explain away the intuitiveness of purism as a side-effect of the narrow focus of previous epistemological inquiries. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of John Rawls and Thomas Pogge, I argue that the U.S. is in part responsible for the immigration of Mexicans and Central Americans into the U.S. By seeking to further its national interests through its foreign policies, the U.S. has created economic and politically oppressive conditions that Mexican and Central American people seek to escape. The significance of this project is to highlight the role of the U.S. in illegal immigration so that we may first acknowledge (...) our responsibility in order to seek lasting humane solutions. (shrink)

One of the best-known aspects of José Carlos Mariátegui’s philosophy is his concept of a revolutionary myth. What does this revolutionary myth entail, how and why did Mariátegui develop this idea? The following article situates Mariátegui’s thought in both the historical and intellectual context of the 1920’s in order to answer these questions. This is relevant because Mariátegui’s philosophy and his revolutionary myth have influenced several Latin American revolutionaries such as Ernesto Che Guevara and Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). Mariátegui’s ideas (...) have thus changed the lives and history of Latin Americans and it is important that we neither demonize nor idolize Mariátegui’s intellectual work without first attempting to understand it. (shrink)

Mind &Language, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 90-114, February 2020.

S. C. Gibb holds that some mental events enable physical events to take place by acting as ‘double preventers’ which prevent other mental events from effecting change in the physical domain. She argues that this enables a dualist account of psychophysical interaction consistent with the causal relevance of mental events, their distinctness from physical events, the causal closure of the physical and the exclusion of systematic overdetermination. While accepting the causal powers metaphysic, this paper argues that: Closure is maintained only (...) on the assumption of an implausible pre-ordained harmony between preventing and double-preventing mental events. Distinctness is preserved only at the cost of positing brute unexplained powers of mental and physical events to causally interact with each other. Exclusion is systematically violated in a substantial number of everyday cases. The case for Relevance made by the Double Prevention model is accordingly too weak to sustain a dualist approach to mental causation. (shrink)

1.The judicial system in the nations is generally considered as an important public institution to promote the liberty and social justice. The role and influence of public policy and administration can hold a considerable power in the shaping of Korean judicial system. The current literature in this field is just on legal theory, and little is known about the processes, actions and interactions of players relating with the elements of public policy studies. 2. The study’s purposes were: (a) to examine (...) the phenomenon inherent in the public administration of Korean judicial system (b) to generate a theory on its phenotype in the national and comparative or interdisciplinary viewpoints. 3. Based on the grounded theory approach as well as hermeneutics and heuristics, the kind of tools, i.e., concepts, terms, essences as well as inter-relational understanding or themes were employed. The theories and tenets generally on the elements of public policy, as stems from Sabatier & Mooney, Walzer, Habermas & Foucault, Weber &Turner, Simons, Bourdieu and so, provided the backdrop for this study. 4. Research questions focused on the policy process and actions, interactions of players within the public policy aspect of Korean judicial system and its phenotype in terms of national and comparative or interdisciplinary viewpoints. 5. Research participants consisted of a purposive sample of 30 Korean lawyers, legal historians, law professors and civic leadership who responded with the individual in-depth interviews. They were preliminarily surveyed with the written questions leading to select major occurrences or events, and deeply investigated through the interviews at next. The data collection consisted of public documentation, record, personal writings, and texts of Korean source 6. The findings indicated that the public administration of Korean judicial system in view of public policy elements is (i) unique, but sharable (ii) inevitable, but struggled, (iii) static, but transformative (iv) general, but professional. 7. Implications for positive social change include deeper understanding of Korean judicial system in terms of public policy studies and importance of public policy on its shaping. (shrink)

Recent work in philosophy of race involves Native American, Africana, and Latin American critiques of the sociohistorical specificity underlying allegedly universalist moral and political philosophy in the U.S. and the West generally. Joining the discussion, this essay explores American orientalism in terms of the imperialist expansion of the U.S. across the Pacific since the late 19th century. Toward this end, Hawai'i, Guam, and thereby the U.S. itself are conceptualized as geopolitical gestalts. No full story of the Rawlsian basic structure of (...) 20th-century America will be complete without attention to the dynamics of U.S. imperialism in the Asia-Pacific. (shrink)

How can we ameliorate the current immigration policies toward Mexican people immigrating to the United States? This study re-examines how the development of scenarios assisted South Africa to dismantle apartheid without engaging in a bloody civil war. Following the scenario approach, we articulate positions taken by different interest groups involved in the debate concerning immigration from Mexico. Next, we formulate a set of scenarios which are evaluated as to how well each contributes to the well-being of the populace both of (...) Mexico and of the United States. The South African scenario model has proven to be an effective tool in times of political disagreement. It fosters a common language among competing groups, non-hierarchal communication among groups, and acknowledgement of the concerns of each group involved. (shrink)

This paper argues that the standard formulations of the question of how consciousness emerges, both synchronically and diachronically, from the physical world necessarily use a concept of the physical without either a clear grasp of the concept or an understanding of the necessary conditions of its possibility. This concept will be elucidated and some of the necessary conditions of its possibility explored, clarifying the place of the mental and the physical as abstractions from the totality of an agent engaged in (...) the life world. The notion of a disruption or breakdown in the agent’s normal engagements in the world will play a key role in the argument, which in turn provides a transcendental underpinning to recent enactive and embodied theories of mind by exploring some of the necessary conditions of being an agent in the world. (shrink)

There is consensus within the chemosciences that olfactory perception is of the molecular structure of chemical compounds, yet within philosophical theories of smell there is little agreement about the nature of smell. The paper critically assesses the current state of debate regarding smells within philosophy in the hopes of setting it upon firm scientific footing. The theories to be covered are: Naïve Realism, Hedonic Theories, Process Theory, Odor Theories, and non-Objectivist Theories. The aforementioned theories will be evaluated based on their (...) explanations of the (a) the olfactory quality of a smell, (b) smells as distal entities, and (c) our experience of smells as intentional objects. The paper concludes with a defense of Molecular Structure Theory that demonstrating its superiority in accounting for each of these three aspects of smell. (shrink)