Amid the ongoing political turmoil, symbolized by the recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, books and articles abound today to encourage us to re-read anti-totalitarian classics ‘for our times’. But what do we find in this body of work originally written in response to Nazism and Stalinism? Do we find a democratic consensus forged by a shared anti-totalitarian commitment? I doubt it. Considering the cases of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt, this article highlights discord beneath what may today (...) appear like a post-war democratic consensus. I argue that the anti-totalitarian literature of the last century encompassed multiple political philosophies, which sometimes differed irreconcilably from each other. (shrink)

A brief presentation of life, activity and publications of an Italian philosopher, the founder with Guido Calogero of the Liberal-Socialist movement under the Fascist regime and the theorist of non-violence and omnicracy as the key ideas for a new left, beyond reformism and third-International state-socialism.

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the thesis that logic is not special. In this paper, I consider, and reject, a challenge to this thesis. According to this challenge, there are basic logical principles, and part of what makes such principles basic is that they are epistemically exceptional. Thus, according to this challenge, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to reject anti-exceptionalism about logic. I argue that this challenge fails, and that the exceptionalist positions motivated by it are (...) thus unfounded. I make this case by disambiguating two senses of ‘basic’ and showing that, once this disambiguation is taken into account, the best reason we have for thinking that there are basic principles actually implies that those principles do not require a special epistemology. Consequently, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to accept, rather than reject, anti-exceptionalism concerning the epistemology of logic. I conclude by explaining how an abductivist, anti-exceptionalist approach to the epistemology of logic can accommodate the notion of basic logical principles. (shrink)

This paper begins by applying a version of Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument to normative properties. This argument suggests that there must be at least some unknowable normative facts in normative Sorites sequences, or otherwise we get a contradiction given certain plausible assumptions concerning safety requirements on knowledge and our doxastic dispositions. This paper then focuses on the question of how the defenders of different forms of metaethical anti-realism (namely, error theorists, subjectivists, relativists, contextualists, expressivists, response dependence theorists, and (...) constructivists) could respond to the explanatory challenge created by the previous argument. It argues that, with two exceptions, the metaethical anti-realists need not challenge the argument itself, but rather they can find ways to explain how the unknowable normative facts can obtain. These explanations are based on the idea that our own attitudes on which the normative facts are grounded need not be transparent to us either. Reaching this conclusion also illuminates how metaethical anti-realists can make sense of instances of normative vagueness more generally. (shrink)

In ordinary language, in the medical sciences, and in the overlap between them, we frequently make claims which imply that we might have had different gametic origins from the ones we actually have. Such statements seem intuitively true and coherent. But they counterfactually ascribe different DNA to their referents and therefore contradict material-origin essentialism, which Kripke and his followers argue is intuitively obvious. In this paper I argue, using examples from ordinary language and from philosophy of medicine and bioethics, that (...) statements which attribute alternative material origins to their referents are useful, common in political and medical reasoning, and in many cases best interpreted literally. So we must replace the doctrine of material-origin essentialism with one that can make sense of ordinary discourse and the language of the medical sciences. I propose an anti-essentialist account of such counterfactuals according to which individuals’ modal properties are relative to a given inquiry. (shrink)

That believing truly as a matter of luck does not generally constitute knowing has become epistemic commonplace. Accounts of knowledge incorporating this anti-luck idea frequently rely on one or another of a safety or sensitivity condition. Sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge have a well-known problem with necessary truths, to wit, that any believed necessary truth trivially counts as knowledge on such accounts. In this paper, we argue that safety-based accounts similarly trivialize knowledge of necessary truths and that two ways of (...) responding to this problem for safety, issuing from work by Williamson and Pritchard, are of dubious success. (shrink)

There is a tension in our theorizing about laws of nature: our practice of using and reasoning with laws of nature suggests that laws are universal generalizations, but if laws are universal generalizations then we face the problem of explanatory circularity. In this paper I elucidate this tension and show how it motivates a view of laws that I call Minimal Anti-Humeanism. This view says that the laws are the universal generalizations that are not grounded in their instances. I (...) argue that this view has a variety of advantages that could make it attractive to people with both Humean and anti-Humean inclinations. (shrink)

Kim’s causal exclusion argument purports to demonstrate that the non-reductive physicalist must treat mental properties (and macro-level properties in general) as causally inert. A number of authors have attempted to resist Kim’s conclusion by utilizing the conceptual resources of Woodward’s interventionist conception of causation. The viability of these responses has been challenged by Gebharter, who argues that the causal exclusion argument is vindicated by the theory of causal Bayesian networks (CBNs). Since the interventionist conception of causation relies crucially on CBNs (...) for its foundations, Gebharter’s argument appears to cast significant doubt on interventionism’s anti-reductionist credentials. In the present article, we both (1) demonstrate that Gebharter’s CBN-theoretic formulation of the exclusion argument relies on some unmotivated and philosophically significant assumptions (especially regarding the relationship between CBNs and the metaphysics of causal relevance), and (2) use Bayesian networks to develop a general theory of causal inference for multi-level systems that can serve as the foundation for an anti-reductionist interventionist account of causation.1. (shrink)

Our era is characterized by a significant conflict between populism and anti-populism, both politically and culturally. Populist groups and leaders often portray themselves as the true voices of the common people, gaining electoral support or even taking power by framing society as a battle between the ordinary people and the elite, challenging the political and economic establishment. Conversely, parties within the liberal political spectrum counteract the rise of populism by articulating a strong anti-populist discourse, sometimes successfully dominating the (...) political arena. However, despite the increase in studies on populism, there are not many publications regarding anti-populism. This article seeks to examine the anti-populist discourse in Argentina and Greece, two countries with many similarities in political, economic, and cultural aspects. By analyzing the key ideas of anti-populist discourse, we aim to highlight the common anti-populist logic marked by typical paths of modernization, which not only opposes populism but also frequently disregards or opposes specific social groups, such as minorities. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy of science, the no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are regarded as the strongest arguments for and against scientific realism, respectively. In this paper, I construct a new argument for scientific realism which I call the anti-induction for scientific realism. It holds that, since past theories were false, present theories are true. I provide an example from the history of science to show that anti-inductions sometimes work in science. The anti-induction for scientific realism has (...) several advantages over the no-miracles argument as a positive argument for scientific realism. (shrink)

The anti-counterfeiting trade agreement was originally meant to harmonise and enforce intellectual property rights provisions in existing trade agreements within a wider group of countries. This was commendable in itself, so ACTA’s failure was all the more disappointing. In this article, I wish to contribute to the post-ACTA debate by proposing a specific analysis of the ethical reasons why ACTA failed, and what we can learn from them. I argue that five kinds of objections—namely, secret negotiations, lack of consultation, (...) vagueness of formulation, negotiations outside any international body, and the creation of a new governing body outside already existing forums—had only indirect ethical implications. This takes nothing away from their seriousness but it does make them less compelling, because agreements should be evaluated, ethically, for what they are, rather than for the alleged reasons why they are being proposed. I then argue that ACTA would have caused three ethical problems: an excessive and misplaced kind of responsibility, a radical decrease in freedom of expression, and a severe reduction in information privacy. I conclude by indicating three lessons that can help us in shaping a potential ACTA 2.0. First, we should acknowledge the increasingly vital importance of the framework of implicit expectations, attitudes, and practices that can facilitate and promote morally good decisions and actions. ACTA failed to perceive that it would have undermined the very framework that it was supposed to foster, namely one promoting some of the best and most successful aspects of our information society. Second, we should realise that, in advanced information societies, any regulation affecting how people deal with information is now bound to influence the whole ‘onlife’ habitat within which they live. So enforcing IPR becomes an environmental problem. Third, since legal documents, such as ACTA, emerge from within the infosphere that they affect, we should apply to the process itself, which one day may lead to a post-ACTA treaty, the very framework and ethical values that we would like to see promoted by it. (shrink)

I argue that recent attempts to show that meaning and content are not normative fail. The two most important arguments anti-normativists have presented are what I call the ‘argument from constitution’ and the ‘argument from guidance’. Both of these arguments suffer from the same basic problem: they overlook the possibility of focusing on assessability by norms, rather than compliance with norms or guidance by norms. Moreover, I argue that the anti-normativists arguments fail even if we ignore this basic (...) problem. Thus, we have not been given good reasons to think that normativism is false. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the nascent field of ethics of collegiality may considerably benefit from a symbiosis with virtue and vice epistemology. We start by bringing the epistemic virtue and vice perspective to the table by showing that competence, deemed as an essential characteristic of a good colleague (Betzler & Löschke 2021), should be construed broadly to encompass epistemic competence. By endorsing the anti-individualistic stance in epistemology as well as context-specificity of epistemic traits, we (...) show how the individual vice of a colleague can have a positive epistemic outcome for the team while individual virtue can be damaging if all team members share it, thereby contributing to the negative epistemic outcome. We argue that the evaluation and analysis of collegial relationships should be done through one’s contribution to the team dynamics: without this collectivist perspective, the ethics of collegiality cannot aspire to become encompassing normative theory. (shrink)

Sellars was an inferentialist about meaning. He thus effectively accorded modality a categorial function, maintaining that any meaningful assertion involves implicit commitment to rules of material inference, which modal propositions explicitly endorse. But Sellars was also a modal anti-realist, construing modality as “entirely immanent to thought” (LRB §40), not present in the world an sich. These two commitments, Klemick argues, render it impossible in principle for us to describe the world an sich adequately, undermining Sellars’ scientific realism, on which, (...) at the “ideal outcome of scientific inquiry,” “the gulf between appearances and things-in-themselves [... can] be bridged” (SM II §51). Sellars’ attempt to ground his modal anti-realism in an ideal “pure description of the world” (CDCM §79) cannot succeed, given modality’s categorial function. Further, his subsequent deployment of picturing as a naturalistic criterion of ontological commitment founders on an analogue of the Kantian problem of noumenal affection: the descriptions of picturing relations that render this proposal intelligible are emptied of content by the denial that the in-itself is modally characterized. Sellars’ worthy aim of preserving the world’s independence of our conceptual activity, Klemick concludes, doesn’t require denying that it exhibits modal relations isomorphic to the semantic relations within our conceptual scheme. (shrink)

Intellectualists disagree with anti-intellectualists about the relationship between knowledge and truth. According to intellectualists, this relationship is intimate. Knowledge entails true belief, and in fact everything required for knowledge is somehow relevant to the probability that the belief in question is true. According to anti-intellectualists, this relationship isn’t intimate. Or, at least, it’s not as intimate as intellectualists think. Factors that aren’t in any way relevant to the probability that a belief is true can make a difference to (...) whether it counts as knowledge. In this paper, I give a new argument for anti-intellectualism and draw out consequences of this argument for the pragmatic encroachment debate. The standard purist objection to pragmatism is that pragmatism entails anti-intellectualism. As I show, anti-intellectualism follows from premises that are plausible even if purism is true, so the standard purist objection to pragmatism fails. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

Anti-intellectualism involves general mistrust of scholars, academics, and ex- perts, often as pretentious or power-motivated. While scholars have described currents of anti-intellectualism in American public life, evangelical Christianity, in responses to COVID, and rural identity, to my knowledge none have looked at how anti-intellectualism specifically manifests in the New Atheism movement. In this work, we explore the way anti-intellectualism is commonly found and expressed in New Atheism and the modern Skeptical Movement, including scientific skepticism more generally.

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the doctrine that logic does not require its own epistemology, for its methods are continuous with those of science. Although most recently urged by Williamson, the idea goes back at least to Lakatos, who wanted to adapt Popper's falsicationism and extend it not only to mathematics but to logic as well. But one needs to be careful here to distinguish the empirical from the a posteriori. Lakatos coined the term 'quasi-empirical' `for the counterinstances to putative (...) mathematical and logical theses. Mathematics and logic may both be a posteriori, but it does not follow that they are empirical. Indeed, as Williamson has demonstrated, what counts as empirical knowledge, and the role of experience in acquiring knowledge, are both unclear. Moreover, knowledge, even of necessary truths, is fallible. Nonetheless, logical consequence holds in virtue of the meaning of the logical terms, just as consequence in general holds in virtue of the meanings of the concepts involved; and so logic is both analytic and necessary. In this respect, it is exceptional. But its methodologyand its epistemology are the same as those of mathematics and science in being fallibilist, and counterexamples to seemingly analytic truths are as likely as those in any scientic endeavour. What is needed is a new account of the evidential basis of knowledge, one which is, perhaps surprisingly, found in Aristotle. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant viewed himself as the first person to have properly defined the concept of a human ‘race’. He distinguished four human ‘races’ and ranked the.

I propose a systematic survey of the various attitudes proponents of enaction (or enactivism) entertained or are entertaining towards representationalism and towards the use of the concept “mental representation” in cognitive science. For the sake of clarity, a set of distinctions between different varieties of representationalism and anti-representationalism are presented. I also recapitulate and discuss some anti-representationalist trends and strategies one can find the enactive literature, before focusing on some possible limitations of eliminativist versions of enactive anti-representationalism. (...) These limitations are here taken as opportunities for reflecting on the fate of enactivism in its relations with representationalism and anti-representationalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine John Rawls’ claim in the first edition of A Theory of Justice that Justice as Fairness cannot include considerations about the environment and non-human animals. The paper aims to resolve the tension in this statement, as the idea of a Rawlsian well-ordered society without concern for the rest of nature presents as a contradiction. Through a more charitable reading of Rawlsian theory that borrows from anti-capitalist and environmental justice frameworks, we can see how Rawlsian (...) justice connects tightly to these issues. I conclude that the Rawlsian well-ordered society must be committed to anti-capitalist environmental justice. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic takes logic to be, as the name suggests, unexceptional. Rather, in naturalist fashion, the anti-exceptionalist takes logic to be continuous with science, and considers logical theories to be adoptable and revisable accordingly. On the other hand, the Adoption Problem aims to show that there is something special about logic that sets it apart from scientific theories, such that it cannot be adopted in the way the anti-exceptionalist proposes. In this paper I assess the damage (...) the Adoption Problem causes for anti-exceptionalism, and show that it is also problematic for exceptionalist positions too. My diagnosis of why the Adoption Problem affects both positions is that the self-governance of basic logical rules of inference prevents them from being adoptable, regardless of whether logic is exceptional or not. (shrink)

This paper critically interrogates the anti-fat beliefs that are employed in environmental bioethics, particularly in response to climate change. Fat bodies have been associated with climate change because they are presumed to consume more resources and produce more greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we argue that such interpretations employ mistaken assumptions to justify placing disproportionate blame on already oppressed individuals, reinforcing weight stigma, which increases the vulnerability of fat people to a range of harms and disproportionately affects communities (...) of color. For these reasons, conceiving fat bodies as harmful to the environment is both misguided and unjust. (shrink)

This paper aims to show how the legacy of socialism with a human face represents a far more serious obstacle for the postsocialist transition than the heritage of rigid socialism. This is because an amalgamation of the perception of the autochthonous character of socialism accompanied by the perception of its soft, human face, creates an anti-capitalist mentality (Ludwig von Mises) that leaves an enormous impact on the long-term understandings of the concepts of individual, society, state, and reforms. This sort (...) of mentality is deeply entrenched in Serbia, where a full-scale process of “debolshevization” has never been initiated. The continuity with socialist legacy is apparent in key segments of the ill-fated transition: political, institutional, economic, symbolical, and no less moral. (shrink)

Anti-individualists hold that having a thought with a certain intentional content is a relational rather than an intrinsic property of the subject. Some anti-individualists also hold that thought-content serves to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective. Since there seems to be a tension between these two views, much discussed in the philosophical literature, attempts have been made to resolve it. In an attempt to reconcile these views, and in relation to perception-based demonstrative thoughts, Stalnaker (Our knowledge of the internal (...) world, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008) argues that an anti-individualist account of the facts that determine thought-content can be reconciled with a suitably qualified version of a principle of epistemic transparency. Acknowledging this, and in agreement with the view that thought-content should serve to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective, I argue that, his intentions notwithstanding, this view of transparency of thought-contents does not serve to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective on Stalnaker’s own terms and that the intricacies involved in his argumentation for saving his anti-individualist project are indirectly supportive of an individualist account of the subject’s cognitive perspective. In so doing, I leave intact some of his key claims that are plausible in their own right. (shrink)

Should you be willing to forego any sure good for a tiny probability of a vastly greater good? Fanatics say you should, anti-fanatics say you should not. Anti-fanaticism has great intuitive appeal. But, I argue, these intuitions are untenable, because satisfying them in their full generality is incompatible with three very plausible principles: acyclicity, a minimal dominance principle, and the principle that any outcome can be made better or worse. This argument against anti-fanaticism can be turned into (...) a positive argument for a weak version of fanaticism, but only from significantly more contentious premises. In combination, these facts suggest that those who find fanaticism counterintuitive should favor not anti-fanaticism, but an intermediate position that permits agents to have incomplete preferences that are neither fanatical nor anti-fanatical. (shrink)

Though one of anti-intellectualism’s key historical figures, Henri Bergson’s thought has not played a significant role in ongoing discussions of that topic. This paper attempts to help change this situation by discussing the notion at the centre of Bergson’s anti-intellectualism (namely, intuition) alongside the notion at the centre of a central form of contemporary anti-intellectualism (namely, know-how or skill). In doing so, it focuses on perhaps the most common objection to both Bergson and contemporary anti-intellectualists: that (...) their anti-intellectualisms are rather forms of irrationalism. It argues that in fact only a narrow charge of irrationalism applies to Bergsonian intuition and that a form of contemporary anti-intellectualism may offer help in responding to this remaining accusation. (shrink)

Legal anti-positivism is widely believed to be a general theory of law that generates far too many false negatives. If anti-positivism is true, certain rules bearing all the hallmarks of legality are not in fact legal. This impression, fostered by both positivists and anti-positivists, stems from an overly narrow conception of the kinds of moral facts that ground legal facts: roughly, facts about what is morally optimific—morally best or morally justified or morally obligatory given our social practices. (...) A less restrictive view of the kinds of moral properties that ground legality results in a form of anti-positivism that can accommodate any legal rule consistent with positivism, including the alleged counter-examples. This form of “inclusive” anti-positivism is not just invulnerable to extensional challenges from the positivist. It is the only account that withstands extensional objections, while incorporating, on purely conceptual grounds, a large part of the content of morality into law. (shrink)

Metaethics is traditionally understood as a non-moral discipline that examines moral judgements from a standpoint outside of ethics. This orthodox understanding has recently come under pressure from anti-Archimedeans, such as Ronald Dworkin and Matthew Kramer, who proclaim that rather than assessing morality from an external perspective, metaethical theses are themselves substantive moral claims. In this paper, I scrutinise this anti-Archimedean challenge as applied to the metaethical position of expressivism. More precisely, I examine the claim that expressivists do not (...) avoid moral commitments when accounting for moral thought, but instead presuppose them; they do not look at ethics from the outside, but operate from within ethics. This paper defends the non-moral status of expressivism against anti-Archimedeanism by rejecting a new anti-Archimedean challenge which, on the basis of Hume’s Law, aims to exploit expressivist explanations of supervenience in order to show that expressivism is a substantive moral position. (shrink)

Plausibly, mathematical claims are true, but the fundamental furniture of the world does not include mathematical objects. This can be made sense of by providing mathematical claims with paraphrases, which make clear how the truth of such claims does not require the fundamental existence of mathematical objects. This paper explores the consequences of this type of position for explanatory structure. There is an apparently straightforward relationship between this sort of structure, and the logical sort: i.e. logically complex claims are explained (...) by logically simpler ones. For example, disjunctions are explained by their (true) disjuncts, while generalizations are explained by their (true) instances. This would seem as plausible in the case of mathematics as elsewhere. Also, it would seem to be something that the anti-realist approaches at issue would want to preserve. It will be argued, however, that these approaches cannot do this: they lead not merely to violations of the familiar principles relating logical and explanatory structure, but even to reversals of these. That is, there are cases where generalizations explain their instances, or disjunctions their disjuncts. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that the neurocomputational framework of predictive processing entails a globally inferentialist and representationalist view of cognition. Here, I contend that this is not correct. I argue that, given the theoretical commitments these philosophers endorse, no structure within predictive processing systems can be rightfully identified as a representational vehicle. To do so, I first examine some of the theoretical commitments these philosophers share, and show that these commitments provide a set of necessary conditions the satisfaction of which allows (...) us to identify representational vehicles. Having done so, I introduce a predictive processing system capable of active inference, in the form of a simple robotic “brain”. I examine it thoroughly, and show that, given the necessary conditions highlighted above, none of its components qualifies as a representational vehicle. I then consider and allay some worries my claim could raise. I consider whether the anti-representationalist verdict thus obtained could be generalized, and provide some reasons favoring a positive answer. I further consider whether my arguments here could be blocked by allowing the same representational vehicle to possess multiple contents, and whether my arguments entail some extreme form of revisionism, answering in the negative in both cases. A quick conclusion follows. (shrink)

central claim is that anti-love biomedical intervention can be justified without the “simultaneous consent” of recipients (where the simultaneous consent of a person S is understood as S’s consent at time t to an intervention at t) when it contributes to increased autonomy. We begin with an overview of earlier discussions of the ethics of anti-love biomedical intervention, focusing on the pioneering work of Earp and colleagues. We then present some cases in which paternalistic intervention may be effective. (...) We will then present an argument for the idea of anti-love biomedical intervention without simultaneous consent, based on an analogy between (biomedical intervention in) addiction and (biomedical intervention in) love. One premise of this argument is that love and addiction are importantly similar in that they can compromise the autonomous capacity for self-governing. The other premise of this argument is that biomedical intervention in addiction without simultaneous consent can be justified if the intervention is expected to restore the compromised capacity for self-governing. We will propose the “Ulysses contract”, a contract to enforce anti-love biomedical intervention when the recipient refuses it, as a possible measure of such paternalistic intervention and discuss its possible risks. (shrink)

Two central themes of Douglas Edwards’s The Metaphysics of Truth are anti-deflationism and substantial pluralism. In Part I of this paper I discuss Edwards’s grounds for rejecting deflationism and suggest a few additional grounds. In Part II I discuss Edward's truth-pluralism and respond to his criticism of my correspondence-pluralism. While these pluralisms share significant features, their differences also raise several important questions.

According to anti-atomism, we represent color properties (e.g., red) in virtue of representing color relations (e.g., redder than). I motivate anti-atomism with a puzzle involving a series of pairwise indistinguishable chips. I then develop two versions of anti-atomism.

This paper discusses a wide range of anti-naturalistic argument from reason due to Balfour, Haldane, Joad, Lewis, Taylor, Moreland, Plantinga, Reppert, and Hasker. I argue that none of these arguments poses a serious challenge to naturalists who are identity theorists. Further, I argue that some of these arguments do not even pose prima facie plausible challenges to naturalism. In the concluding part of my discussion, I draw attention to some distinctive differences between Hasker’s anti-naturalistic arguments and the other (...) anti-naturalistic arguments mentioned above. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey’s philosophy, developed in the 1920s in Cambridge, was in conversation with the debates surrounding intellectualism in the early twentieth century. Ramsey made his mark on the anti-intellectualist tradition via his notion of habit. He posited that human judgments take shape through habitual processes, and he rejected the separation between the domain of reason, on one hand, and the domain of habit, on the other. Ramsey also provided the ground to explore the nature of knowledge employed in acting (...) from habit. That ground was passed onto Margaret MacDonald who came up with the distinction between knowing that something is the case and knowing how to apply a rule (or habit), the distinction that set the stage for Gilbert Ryle’s philosophical project against intellectualism from the 1940s onward. Ramsey thus influenced Ryle’s account of knowledge through the channel of MacDonald. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, I discuss Benatar’s asymmetry argument for the claim that it would have been better for each of us to have never lived at all. In contrast to other commentators, I will argue that there is a way of interpreting the premises of his argument which makes all of them come out true. (This will require one departure from Benatar’s own presentation.) Once we see why the premises are true, we will, however, also realise (...) that the argument trades on an ambiguity that renders it invalid. In the second part of the paper, I consider whether discussions of how best to implement the anti-natalist conclusion crosses a moral barrier. I ask whether we can, independently of any philosophical argument, raise a legitimate moral objection to discussions of how best to end all life on earth. I discuss three views concerning the role of our pre-philosophical views and attitudes in philosophical debates: the external view according to which these attitudes set moral barriers to the content of philosophical debate whilst themselves standing outside this debate; the internal view according to which our intuitions are part of the material for philosophical reflection and play no further role; and the intermediate view according to which our pre-reflective views and attitudes, without themselves requiring philosophical validation, can play an important role when it comes to issues regarding the implementation of philosophical claims. (shrink)

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

In 1753, the Berlin Academy announced that the focus of the prize essay contest of 1755 would be optimism, with entrants required (among other things) ‘to put forward arguments that will be thought most fitting to confirm or destroy this system’. In line with these instructions, entrants submitted essays that were either pro- or anti-optimism. This was to the dismay of one of the judges of the contest, André-Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716–1764), who had, by his own admission, (...) surreptitiously attempted to influence the entrants by sketching out a ‘middle point’ between the polarized pro- and anti-optimist positions in a series of books published between 1754 and 1755, namely Thoughts on Freedom, The Diogenes of d’Alembert, and On Chance under the Rule of Providence. The aim of this essay is to elucidate and historically contextualize Prémontval’s highly original ‘middle point’, as outlined implicitly in the aforementioned books and much more explicitly in a series of essays published after the essay contest had concluded. (shrink)

Inflammation is said to be a healthy component of the body's immune system's reaction. Inflammation is characterised by four key symptoms: pain, redness, heat or warmth and swelling. As secondary metabolites, plants may produce a wide range of phytochemical compounds, which possess anti-inflammatory characteristics. Herbal remedies are important therapies for a wide range of ailments all over the world. There are around 7,500 species of medicinal plants, including representatives from over 17,000 flowering plant species. Even though synthetic chemistry has (...) developed its expectations, the use of natural ingredients in the manufacture of drugs used in contemporary medicine is unparalleled. By interfering with the biology of inflammation, anti-inflammatory medications may assist to minimising tissue damage and increase patient comfort. Because of the bulky figure of species reachable for study, the effective development of novel naturally taking place anti-inflammatory drugs is mostly dependent on a multidisciplinary approach to discovering new chemicals. Despite the statistic that many review papers have been produced in this field, the conventional of them simply examined the issue from an area perspective. Several non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have been shown to reduce inflammation and pain by decreasing the isoform of the cyclooxygenase enzyme's digestion of arachidonic acid, hence lowering prostaglandin production. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have a host of harmful effects. There are, however, medicinal herbs with anti-inflammatory pharmacological properties that have few or no negative effects. (shrink)

Marton ( 2019 ) argues that that it follows from the standard antirealist theory of truth, which states that truth and possible knowledge are equivalent, that knowing possibilities is equivalent to the possibility of knowing, whereas these notions should be distinct. Moreover, he argues that the usual strategies of dealing with the Church–Fitch paradox of knowability are either not able to deal with his modal-epistemic collapse result or they only do so at a high price. Against this, I argue that (...) Marton’s paper does not present any seriously novel challenge to anti-realism not already found in the Church–Fitch result. Furthermore, Edgington ( 1985 ) reformulated antirealist theory of truth can deal with his modal-epistemic collapse argument at no cost. (shrink)

It is often presupposed that an anti-individualist about representational mental states must choose between two accounts of no-reference cases. One option is said to be an ‘illusion of thought’ version according to which the subject in a no-reference case fails to think a first-order thought but rather has the illusion of having one. The other is a ‘descriptive’ version according to which one thinks an empty thought via a description. While this presupposition is not uncommon, it rarely surfaces in (...) an explicit manner. Often, it is visible only when a theorist argues directly from the falsity of one of the two views to the truth of the other. However, Jessica Brown’s recent work on anti-individualism clearly illustrates the presupposition. In contention with Brown’s and others presupposition, arguments for two conclusions about the nature of anti-individualism are set forth. First, the choice between the illusion and descriptive version of anti-individualism is a dilemma. Each version of anti-individualism is prone to problems. Second, the choice is a false dilemma. There is another, less problematic, anti-individualistic account of reference failure. (shrink)

Since the publication of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein’s interpreters have endeavored to reconcile his general constructivist/anti-realist attitude towards mathematics with his confessed anti-revisionary philosophy. In this article, the author revisits the issue and presents a solution. The basic idea consists in exploring the fact that the so-called “non-constructive results” could be interpreted so that they do not appear non-constructive at all. The author substantiates this solution by showing how the translation of mathematical results, given (...) by the possibility of translation between logics, can be seen as a tool for partially implementing the solution Wittgenstein had in mind. (shrink)

Tough anti-terrorism policies are often defended by focusing on a fixed minority of the population who prefer violent outcomes, and arguing that toughness reduces the risk of terrorism from this group. This reasoning implicitly assumes that tough policies do not increase the group of 'potential terrorists', i.e., of people with violent preferences. Preferences and their level of violence are treated as stable, exogenously fixed features. To avoid this unrealis- tic assumption, I formulate a model in which policies can 'brutalise' (...) or 'appease' someone's personality, i.e., his preferences. This follows the endogenous prefer- ences approach, popular elsewhere in political science and economics. I formally decompose the effect of toughness into a (desirable) deterrence effect and an (un- desirable) provocation effect. Whether toughness is overall effi cient depends on which effect overweighs. I show that neglecting provocation typically leads to toughness exaggeration. This suggests that some tough anti-terrorism policies observable in the present and past can be explained by a neglect of provocation. (shrink)

Anti-luck epistemologists tell us that knowledge is incompatible with epistemic luck and that epistemic luck is just a special case of luck in general. Much work has been done on the intricacies of the first claim. In this paper, I scrutinize the second claim. I argue that it does not survive scrutiny. I then offer an analysis of luck that explains the relevant data and avoids the problems from which the current views of luck suffer. However, this analysis of (...) luck is of no help to the anti-luck epistemologist for it uses knowledge to explain luck, making this account of knowledge circular. The main lesson is that the only viable analysis of luck is not suited for the anti-luck epistemologist's coveted noncircular analysis of knowledge. (shrink)

In Ancient Greece, when philosophy began, it included all the theoretical knowledge. But later, in the time of Aristotle, specialized sciences started to emerge and the scope of philosophy grew smaller and smaller. The question is what to do when philosophy has lost its competence to deal with any relevant topic. The paper discusses three possible views of the relation between philosophy and science: anti-scientism, conceptual analysis and naturalism. All these approaches deal with various disadvantages. For anti-scientism it (...) is mainly the inability to explain the unprecedented success of modern science. Proponents of conceptual analysis are confronted with Quine’s attack on analytic statements and its consequences for a priori truths. Finally, naturalistic philosophers might be threatened by hegemony of science and its universal application of hypothetico-deductive method. The worst scenario for naturalistic philosophers is not as bad as some worry. Philosophers can solve their traditional problems using the knowledge of well-established special sciences, even though they might play the role of high-end science journalists. (shrink)

Priest holds anti-exceptionalism about logic. That is, he holds that logic, as a theory, does not have any exceptional status in relation to the theories of empirical sciences. Crucial to Priest’s anti-exceptionalism is the existence of ‘data’ that can force the revision of logical theory. He claims that classical logic is inadequate to the available data and, thus, needs to be revised. But what kind of data can overturn classical logic? Priest claims that the data is our intuitions (...) about the validity of inferences. In order to make sense of this claim, I will appeal to the Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher Candrakīrti. I will then pose a problem for Priest’s anti-exceptionalism. Finally, I will suggest a way out of the problem for Priest. Whether or not he accepts my solution, I will let him decide. (shrink)

Suppose one believes that the historical record of discarded scientific theories provides good evidence against scientific realism. Should one adopt Kyle Stanford’s specific version of this view, based on the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives? I present reasons for answering this question in the negative. In particular, Stanford’s challenge cannot use many of the prima facie strongest pieces of historical evidence against realism, namely: superseded theories whose successors were explicitly conceived, and superseded theories that were not the result of elimination-of-alternatives inferences. (...) Attempts to accommodate and within Stanford’s framework are incompatible with other commitments Stanford holds, such as anti-realism being piecemeal instead of global. As separate lines of criticism, I argue that there are problems with Stanford’s claim that the PUA is the most important challenge to realism, and with his view of instrumentalist theory endorsement. (shrink)

Call ‘radical moral theorizing’ the project of developing a moral theory that not only tries to conform to our existing moral judgments, but also manifests various theoretical virtues: consistency, simplicity, explanatory depth, and so on. Many moral philosophers assume that radical moral theorizing does not require any particular metaethical commitments. In this paper, I argue against this assumption. The most natural justification for radical moral theorizing presupposes moral realism, broadly construed; in contrast, there may be no justification for radical moral (...) theorizing if moral anti-realism is true. (shrink)