A brief primer contrasting conservativism from progressivism, and outlining the major schools of conservative thought.

Plantinga develops an ambitious theistic religious epistemology on which theists can have non-inferential knowledge of God. Central to his epistemology is the idea that human beings have a “sensus divinitatis” that produces such knowledge. Recently, several authors have urged an appropriation of the sensus divinitatis that is more friendly to internalist views, such as Phenomenal Conservativism. I argue that this appropriation is too timid and tepid in a variety of ways. It applies only to a small fraction of theistic (...) beliefs; it fails to play the theological role Plantinga intended the sensus divinitatis to play; it fails to imply that most theistic beliefs, most of the time, are justified; when combined with a standard form of Evidentialism, it actually implies that most theistic beliefs are, if justified, inferentially justified; and it is consistent with substantive criticisms of theistic belief originating in work from the Cognitive Science of Religion. (shrink)

This paper interrogates the concept of sexuality within the purview of an African context by evaluating the position revolving around a conception of an African sexuality as opposed to a multivariated conceptualisation of sexualities within Africa. The paper raises critical questions as regards the concepts of an African sexuality ranging from; what constitutes the grounds for a conceptualisation of African sexuality? To what extent do the viability or non-viability of such ground answer the deep challenges as it relates to alternative (...) sexualities? How does the question of sexuality play a role in determining the ideological framework upon which intra-socio-cultural interrogations are properly built? To this end, the baseline argument of this paper, seeks to create a point of synergy between the concept of African sexuality and the dynamics of sexualities in Africa, by presenting a moderate call for the decolonization of African minds, most especially as it pertains to issues of sexuality, through an analysis of the diverse patterns within which sexuality has been conceived within the African setting. Furthermore, in reclaiming the sanctity of an African perspective, this paper argues for cultural conservatism as both a historic African phenomenon, and a more pragmatic approach towards attaining a mentally decolonized post-colonial Africa. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Philosophy of Enlightenment and Political Conservatism This study aims at giving an explanatory understanding of conservativism in regard to the philosophy of politics, and at discussing its place and future within our historical period. This study asserts that conservative philosophy of politics came about as a reaction against continental enlightenment, and became a political stance within French Revolution. This artical mainly considers the formation of conservative theory, and the relation between conservativism and the philosophy of enlightenment. Moreover, (...) reactions to the philosophy of enlightenment arisen by religious, romantic and conservative thinkers have also been mentioned. Within the history of western thought, political conservativism emphasizes a serious tradition of thought, assumed to bear a rich philosophical heredity. Moreover, among modern philosophies of politics, it also stresses a highly comprehensive doctrine, and a philosophy of politics which has completely marked our historical period. Keywords: Conservativism, Philosophy of Enlightenment, Edmund Burke, French Revolution. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it's possible that the contents of some visual experiences are influenced by the subject's prior beliefs, hopes, suspicions, desires, fears or other mental states, and that this possibility places constraints on the theory of perceptual justification that 'dogmatism' or 'phenomenal conservativism' cannot respect.

This paper is about two topics: metaepistemological absolutism and the epistemic principles governing perceptual warrant. Our aim is to highlight—by taking the debate between dogmatists and conservativists about perceptual warrant as a case study—a surprising and hitherto unnoticed problem with metaepistemological absolutism, at least as it has been influentially defended by Paul Boghossian as the principal metaepistemological contrast point to relativism. What we find is that the metaepistemological commitments at play on both sides of this dogmatism/conservativism debate do not (...) line up with epistemic relativism nor do they line up with absolutism, at least as Boghossian articulates this position. What this case study reveals is the need in metaepistemological option space for the recognition of a weaker and less tendentious form of absolutism, what we call “environment relativism”. On this view, epistemic principles are knowable, objective, and they can serve as the basis of particular epistemic evaluations, but their validity is relative to the wider global environment in which they are applied. (shrink)

The claim that ordinary ethical discourse is typically true and that ethical facts are typically knowable seems in tension with the claim that ordinary ethical discourse is about features of reality friendly to a scientific worldview. Cornell Realism attempts to dispel this tension by claiming that ordinary ethical discourse is, in fact, discourse about the same kinds of things that scientific discourse is about: natural properties. We offer two novel arguments in reply. First, we identify a key assumption that we (...) find unlikely to be true. Second, we identify two features of typical natural properties that ethical properties lack. We conclude that Cornell Realism falls short of dispelling the tension between ethical conservativism and ethical naturalism. (shrink)

Epistemic conservatism maintains that some beliefs are immediately justified simply because they are believed. The intuitive implausibility of this claim sets the burden of proof against it. Some epistemic conservatives have sought to lessen this burden by limiting its scope, but I show that they cannot remove it entirely. The only hope for epistemic conservativism is to appeal to its theoretical fruit. However, such a defense is undercut by the introduction of phenomenal conservatism, which accomplishes the same work from (...) a more intuitive starting point. Thus, if one opts for conservatism, better to choose the phenomenal kind. (shrink)

Arnošt Kolman (1892–1979) was a Czech mathematician, philosopher and Communist official. In this paper, we would like to look at Kolman’s arguments against logical positivism which revolve around the notion of the fetishization of mathematics. Kolman derives his notion of fetishism from Marx’s conception of commodity fetishism. Kolman is aiming to show the fact that an entity (system, structure, logical construction) acquires besides its real existence another formal existence. Fetishism means the fantastic detachment of the physical characteristics of real things (...) or phenomena from these things. We identify Kolman’s two main arguments against logical positivism. In the first argument, Kolman applied Lenin’s arguments against Mach’s empiricism-criticism onto Russell’s neutral monism, i.e. mathematical fetishism is internally related to political conservativism. Kolman’s second main argument is that logical and mathematical fetishes are epistemologically deprived of any historical and dynamic dimension. In the final parts of our paper we place Kolman’s thinking into the context of his time, and furthermore we identify some tenets of mathematical fetishism appearing in Alain Badiou’s mathematical ontology today. (shrink)

In this paper I maintain that Spinoza systematizes independently credible accounts of belief-formation, affect, and desire into an intriguing general theory of how the mind works. His account also explains disparate downstream psychological phenomena, including: (1) emotional responses to fiction; (2) belief perseverance; (3) the reduction of cognitive dissonance; (4) epistemic conservativism that opens us up to confirmation bias, identity protection, and intolerance. Given the promise of Spinoza’s program, I conclude with a plea for further philosophical engagement.

The Bayesian maxim for rational learning could be described as conservative change from one probabilistic belief or credence function to another in response to newinformation. Roughly: ‘Hold fixed any credences that are not directly affected by the learning experience.’ This is precisely articulated for the case when we learn that some proposition that we had previously entertained is indeed true (the rule of conditionalisation). But can this conservative-change maxim be extended to revising one’s credences in response to entertaining propositions or (...) concepts of which one was previously unaware? The economists Karni and Vierø (2013, 2015) make a proposal in this spirit. Philosophers have adopted effectively the same rule: revision in response to growing awareness should not affect the relative probabilities of propositions in one’s ‘old’ epistemic state. The rule is compelling, but only under the assumptions that its advocates introduce. It is not a general requirement of rationality, or so we argue. We provide informal counterexamples. And we show that, when awareness grows, the boundary between one’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ epistemic commitments is blurred. Accordingly, there is no general notion of conservative change in this setting. (shrink)

Timothy Hsiao asks a good question: Why believe animals deserve moral consideration? His answer is that we should not. He considers various other answers and finds them wanting. In this paper I consider an answer Hsiao has not yet discussed: We should accept a conservative view about how to form beliefs. And such a view will instruct us to believe that animals deserve moral consideration. I think conservatives like Hsiao do best to answer his question in a way that upholds (...) the moral status of animals. Since my answer is one Hsiao has not yet addressed, it is compatible with the main points he makes against various other motivations in his many papers on this topic. So my paper should be understood as an invitation to Hsiao to consider another answer. (shrink)

Book review of John Rist's *Real Ethics*.