Starting from the basic premises of Schank's notion of indexing in story telling and the representational approach of language, this paper investigates whether fairy tales create initial indexes for children, that may be re-indexed later in adult life, by reshaping their pre-existing experiences. More specifically, it focuses on the way fairy tales present several concepts already familiar to children, and whether this representation matches children’s pre-existing experiences. The data collected comes from several of Grimm Brothers' (...) class='Hi'>fairy tales and consists of a corpus of 62839 word tokens. The fairy tales included were thematically related to general areas of everyday experience: femininity, blackness, whiteness, day, night, being young, ageing. The following semantically contradictory lexical pairs were examined in the expanded concordance, in relation to their collocations and semantic associations: old - young, woman - maiden, day - night, white - black. These were then compared with an adults’ and a children’s dictionary to check whether the collocations, semantic associations of the selected words as portrayed in the data, matched the societally accepted meanings found in dictionaries. The comparison indicated that, although the connotative meanings were included in the majority of denotative meanings that make up words' definitions in the adult dictionary examined, only five of them matched the connotative meanings of the words examined in the data. On the other hand, the way the above concepts/words were presented in the children’s dictionary, was very simple, probably reflecting children’s experiences. It seems, thus, that the concepts - at least some of them - presented in the fairy tales examined, do not “officially” relate to children's but to adults' experiences, functioning as an index that re-shapes children’s pre-existing concepts. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer revisits Wittgenstein’s parenthetical allusion in the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ to the Grimms’ fairytale “The Golden Lads”, confirming that it does not work well as an illustration of the notion of “internal identity” that figures in Wittgenstein’s picture theory. He then proposes alternative ways of understanding the relationship of identity apparent in “The Golden Lads”.

Although Disney films are sometimes denigrated as popular or “low” art forms, this article argues that they often engage deeply with, and thereby communicate, significant moral truths. The capitalistic enterprise of contemporary modern cinema demands that cinematic moral pedagogy be sublimated into non-partisan forms, often by substituting secular proxies for otherwise divine or spiritual components. By adapting Søren Kierkegaard’s tripartite existential anthropology of the self, I analyze the subjective experiences of the protagonists in three recent animated fairy tales—Disney’s (...) Frozen, Moana, and Tangled—to demonstrate how these princess movies bridge the imaginative gap between the mundane and the divine. (shrink)

Aided by Michel Foucault’s concept of panopticon and a discussion on the function of fairy tales and modern fiction, this paper aims to deal with the question: If human beings truly are civilized, then why do we glorify the Other in our literature? History has shown that human beings have been forming and developing societies for thousands of years. This development also constantly shows that societies have been dealing with or acting upon violent impulses in order to produce (...) a certain level of normalcy; and considering how modern societies have relied upon surveillance and discipline to produce normalization, we could say that this process of production of the normal would also produce the unacceptable non-normal, the Other. However, from the fairy tales to the more modern forms of fiction, we keep on finding this paradox: the portrayal of the non-normal Other to the point of acceptability. (shrink)

In fairy tales, villains usually come to a bad end, snared in a trap of their own making, or visited with a disaster nicely suited to their particular villainy. Read a story of this kind to children and you will be struck by the profound satisfaction with which this predictable of events is greeted. Yet, if children cheer when the villain is done in, they are just as satisfied when the hero manages to get the villain by the (...) throat but takes pity and spares him. These tales of retribution and mercy, even reduced to their barest bones, seem to have an intrinsic significance; they strike some inner chord, resonate with something fundamental in our inarticulate understanding of the world, reveal something about the basic make-up of the world. This is not to suggest that they are 'realistic' in the ordinary sense. They do not tell us what 'really happens' in the world of experience, where the villain all too often flourishes and the innocent are trampled underfoot. Rather, fairy tales reveal to us the injustice of the human world by testifying to the true nature of justice. If we did not know that villains ought to get their comeuppance, we would have no reason to think it wrong that they often escape to enjoy their spoils. Tales of retribution and mercy speak of the reality of a world beyond the world of everyday experience; so doing, they show the world of experience in its true light. In the best sense of the word, they are 'myths': stories that, even when told in their simplest form, carry a profound inner significance. (shrink)

As a philosopher of action, I might be expected to believe that the will is a good thing. Actually, I believe that the will is a great thing - awesome, in fact. But I'm not thereby committed to its being something good. When I say that the will is awesome, I mean literally that it is a proper object of awe, a response that restrains us from abusing the will and moves us rather to use it respectfully, in a way (...) that does it justice. To say that the will is a good thing, however, would imply that having a will is better than not having one, or that using it is better than not using it - neither of which I am prepared to assert as a general rule. Speaking metaphorically, I would say that the will is like a magic wand. In fairy tales, the character who looks upon a magic wand as an unalloyed good is destined to be sadder but wiser in the end. Being a magician isn't better than being an ordinary human, just different; and a magician must value his powers by respecting them and therefore using them appropriately, even sparingly, not by using them as much as possible. (shrink)

Elisabeth Meru, born in Hamburg, is a poetess by heart, a storyteller by nature, a forwarding merchant / financial accountant by training, and a Sikh by choice. She is currently settled in Munich, Germany. During the past three decades, she has authored numerous short stories, articles, and poetic compositions for various newspapers, journals, and radio broadcasts. With over a dozen books, both in English and German languages, to her credit to date, she is a prolific author who specializes in writing (...) on Sikh history, tradition, and culture. Her 24-year-long spiritual quest brought her to the Gurdwara in Munich, wherein she heard Gurbani Kirtan for the first time. Therein she felt as if she had reached home. After continuous devotion and dedication to Sikhi for about seven years, she converted to Sikhism. Due to her love for Sikhi, Punjabi and Punjabiat, she learned Gurmukhi. Her first book in German, “Aus dem Herzen des Sikhismus - Guru Nanak Dev Ji - In deinem stillen Rosengarten” was published in 2009. The English version of the book "From the Heart of Sikhism - Guru Nanak Dev Ji - In your quiet rose garden" was published in 2010. These books describe the legends about the ten Gurus, their wisdom and teachings, and her poems, fables and a fairytale in German style. Elisabeth’s second set of books “Sikhism - Wellspring of Love” (in English) and “Sikhismus - Quell der Liebe” (in German), were published in 2010. This book contains her poems and stories about Sikhism. The stories are rooted in the spirit of fairy tales. Her next book, in German, “Sikhs und Sikhismus: Religion, Riten und der Goldene Tempel ” was published in 2011. In Feb. 2012,she with her team published the German edition of “Guru Granth Sahib Ji Essenz und Sikh Terminologie von A - Z.” It is a must-book for German-speaking Sikhs and all those who want a quick overview of basic terms in Sikhism. Another of her book, in German, “Sikhs ... der Bart ist ab,” was published in 2017. (shrink)

In this essay, I read Woolf’s To the Lighthouse together with philosopher Cora Diamond’s writing on literature and moral life, writing marked by her inheritance from Wittgenstein. I first attend to Woolf’s commitment (one she shares with Wittgenstein) to grappling with what I take to be signature issues of modernism: question, quest, and a longing for vision or revised understanding as a way of confronting the difficulty of reality. I then probe Woolf’s engagement with these issues by reading her novel (...) in light of Diamond’s essay “The Difficulty of Philosophy and the Difficulty of Reality.” Diamond’s insights about literature’s capacity for ethical instruction, and her discussion in that essay of the experience of an ordinary sublime so painful or astonishing that it resists our understanding and categories of thought, illuminate a new philosophical context in which to understand more clearly and profoundly the stakes and aims of Woolf’s novel. Reading Woolf alongside Diamond also prompts us to recognize important ways in which matters that lie at the heart of To the Lighthouseintersect with the Wittgensteinian preoccupations that inform Diamond’s own thinking—concerns about the ethics of difficulty; skepticism about what other people think and feel; the search for communicative and existential clarity; the capacity of literature and fairy tale to convey a sense of beauty or of the “terrible” in the world; the status of expressions of our ethical experience as necessarily nonsensical; a longing for the sense of wholeness, transformative understanding, wonder, safety, and peace to stave off illusion or despair. One important subsidiary effect of looking at Woolf and Diamond together is that doing so also allows us to make significant oblique connections between Woolf’s thinking and Wittgenstein’s, connections that continue to bring into focus the philosophical sympathies that attest to the mutual relevance of their peculiar brands of modernism. (shrink)

The main focus of this paper is to explore the role of African myths, folklore and popular wisdom in discovering self-identity, which are arguably deployed in the novels of the Nobel Prize winning African-American writer and thinker, Toni Morrison, who is quite frequently labelled as a mythical symbolist. In Song of Solomon, Morrison stirs together folk and fairy tale, magic and root medicine, history and imagination, flight and naming for a distinctive fictional concoction. In this novel, she shows impact (...) of slavery on the identity of African Americans and suggests how a strong and complete identity can be constructed. Thus Morrison demonstrates that both an understanding of one’s heritage and ancestral past is necessary and helps to unite with own community. So the paper examines the transformation of the character, Milkman, from an unconcerned man into culturally aware African American and how the sources of Myths, folklore and cultures lay the stepping stone for the development of a complete and coherent identity. (shrink)

This book on the topic of ethics and poetry consists of contributions from different continents on the subject of applied ethics related to poetry. It should gather a favourable reception from philosophers, ethicists, theologians and anthropologists from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America and allows for a comparison of the healing power of words from various religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions. The first part of this book presents original poems that express ethical emotions and aphorism related to a philosophical questioning (...) of the grounding of our values for life. The poems are written by twelve authors coming from four continents, for whom poetic emotions are sources of artistic inspiration and that can be used for conflict resolution. In the second part, which features short essays, nine authors tackle how poems, symbolic representations, metaphorical narratives and lies impact the space of possibilities, in which we are moved to action, knowledge formation, and how we imagine the world together. (shrink)

We examine that both science and religion were original products of the human imagination. However, the approaches taken to develop these two explanations of life, were entirely different. The precepts of evolution are well established through the scientific method. This approach has led to the accumulation of immense amounts of evidence for biological evolution, and much scientific progress has been made to understand the pathways taken for the appearance of organisms and their macromolecular constituents. The existence of spiritual beings has (...) not and presumably cannot be documented via a scientific approach, no more than a fairy tale or a myth. However, science, education and knowledge coupled to proper actions are exactly what are needed to make the correct decisions so as to preserve and improve our common, shared biosphere which is currently confronted with two immense problems: human population growth and climate change. (shrink)

Many scholars in various fields of knowledge have already investigated the nature of emotions with humans and even animals. There exist several theories and suggestions how emotions sway the moods and refer to the maturity of a persona. This article aims to pursue some issues relating to how emotions had been working on the lengthy itinerary of civilization and what they had led it to. For the positive emotions contain the fundamental components or ‘vitamins’ to generate a healthy social and (...) cultural environment, or in simple terms ‘societal happiness’, the policy of spreading and adopting them in different times, in singular spheres is to be traced. (shrink)

By considering the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a case study, I bring Tolkien’s explication of mythopoesis in “On Fairy Stories” to bear on the current popularity of superhero films to argue that such works qualify as cinematic examples of Tolkienesque fantasy tales. After summarizing Tolkien’s criteria for the genre in Nietzschean aesthetic terms, I both demonstrate how the builders of the MCU have crafted a sub-created fictional world and defend the existence of fairy stories (...) in visual media from Tolkien’s own criticism of such a possibility. (shrink)

This monograph contributes to the scientific misconduct debate from an oblique perspective, by analysing seven novels devoted to this issue, namely: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1925), The affair by C.P. Snow (1960), Cantor’s Dilemma by Carl Djerassi (1989), Perlmann’s Silence by Pascal Mercier (1995), Intuition by Allegra Goodman (2006), Solar by Ian McEwan (2010) and Derailment by Diederik Stapel (2012). Scientific misconduct, i.e. fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, but also other questionable research practices, have become a focus of concern for academic communities (...) worldwide, but also for managers, funders and publishers of research. The aforementioned novels offer intriguing windows into integrity challenges emerging in contemporary research practices. They are analysed from a continental philosophical perspective, providing a stage where various voices, positions and modes of discourse are mutually exposed to one another, so that they critically address and question one another. They force us to start from the admission that we do not really know what misconduct is. Subsequently, by providing case histories of misconduct, they address integrity challenges not only in terms of individual deviance but also in terms of systemic crisis, due to current transformations in the ways in which knowledge is produced. Rather than functioning as moral vignettes, the author argues that misconduct novels challenge us to reconsider some of the basic conceptual building blocks of integrity discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that morality might bear on belief in at least two conceptually distinct ways. The first is that morality might bear on belief by bearing on questions of justification. The claim that it does is the doctrine of moral encroachment. The second, is that morality might bear on belief given the central role belief plays in mediating and thereby constituting our relationships with one another. The claim that it does is the doctrine of doxastic wronging. Though (...) conceptually distinct, the two doctrines overlap in important ways. This paper provides clarification on the relationship between the two, providing reasons throughout that we should accept both. (shrink)

Utterances within the context of telling fictional tales that appear to be assertions are nevertheless not to be taken at face value. The present paper attempts to explain exactly what such 'pseudo-assertions' are, and how they behave. Many pseudo-assertions can take on multiple roles, both within fictions and in what I call 'participatory criticism' of a fiction, especially when they occur discourse-initially. This fact, taken together with problems for replacement accounts of pseudo-assertion based on the implicit prefixing of an (...) 'in the fiction' operator, suggest that pseudo-assertion is best understood as a kind of make-believe. This proposal is elaborated and defended, and some applications to fictionalism are tentatively explored. (shrink)

So-called “traditional epistemology” and “Bayesian epistemology” share a word, but it may often seem that the enterprises hardly share a subject matter. They differ in their central concepts. They differ in their main concerns. They differ in their main theoretical moves. And they often differ in their methodology. However, in the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to build bridges between the two epistemologies. Indeed, many would say that there is just one branch of philosophy (...) here—epistemology. There is a common subject matter after all. In this paper, we begin by playing the role of a “bad cop,” emphasizing many apparent points of disconnection, and even conflict, between the approaches to epistemology. We then switch role, playing a “good cop” who insists that the approaches are engaged in common projects after all. We look at various ways in which the gaps between them have been bridged, and we consider the prospects for bridging them further. We conclude that this is an exciting time for epistemology, as the two traditions can learn, and have started learning, from each other. (shrink)

A material simple is a material object that has no proper parts. Some philosophers have argued for the possibility of extended simples. Some have even argued for the possibility of heterogeneous simples or simples that have intrinsic variations across their surfaces. There is a puzzle, though, that is meant to show that extended, heterogeneous simples are impossible. Although several plausible responses have been given to this puzzle, I wish to reopen the case against extended, heterogeneous simples. In this paper, I (...) briefly canvass responses to this puzzle which may be made in defense of extended, heterogeneous simples. I then present a new version of this puzzle which targets simples that occupy atomic yet extended regions of space. It seems that none of the traditional responses can be used to successfully save this particular kind of extended simple from the new puzzle. I also consider some non-traditional defenses of heterogeneous extended simples and argue that they too are unsuccessful. Finally, I will argue that a substantial case can be made against the possibility of extended heterogeneous simples of any kind. (shrink)

This chapter has two aims. First, I distinguish between two forms of testimonial injustice: identity-based testimonial injustice and content-based testimonial injustice. Second, I utilize this distinction to develop a partial explanation for the persistent lack of diverse practitioners in academic philosophy. Specifically, I argue that both identity-based and content-based testimonial injustice are prevalent in philosophical discourse and that this prevalence introduces barriers to participation for those targeted. As I show, the dual and compounding effects of identity-based and content-based testimonial injustice (...) in philosophy plausibly contribute to a lack of diversity in the social identities of practitioners and the discourses in which practitioners are engaged. (shrink)

Some philosophers defend the view that epistemic agents believe by lending credence. Others defend the view that such agents lend credence by believing. It can strongly appear that the disagreement between them is notational, that nothing of substance turns on whether we are agents of one sort or the other. But that is demonstrably not so. Only one of these types of epistemic agent, at most, could manifest a human-like configuration of attitudes; and it turns out that not both types (...) of agent are possible. (shrink)

In this paper, three theories of progress and the aim of science are discussed: the theory of progress as increasing explanatory power, advocated by Popper in The logic of scientific discovery ; the theory of progress as approximation to the truth, introduced by Popper in Conjectures and refutations ; the theory of progress as a steady increase of competing alternatives, which Feyerabend put forward in the essay “Reply to criticism. Comments on Smart, Sellars and Putnam” and defended as late as (...) the last edition of Against method. It is argued that, contrary to what Feyerabend scholars have predominantly assumed, Feyerabend's changing attitude towards falsificationism—which he often advocated at the beginning of his career, and vociferously attacked in the 1970s and 1980s—must be explained by taking into account not only Feyerabend's very peculiar view of the aim of science, but also Popper's changing account of progress. (shrink)

The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a United States taken over by a fundamentalist dictatorship called Gilead that also resembles Plato’s ideal city. Attempts to explain Gilead’s debt to Plato face two challenges. First, aspects of Gilead that recall Plato also contain features that differ, at times dramatically, from the Platonic original. Second, Gilead invokes distorted versions of ideas from philosophies other than Plato’s. I explore two ways of making sense of Gilead’s distorted philosophical appropriations. The explanations differ over whether such distortions (...) are best explained by the nature of the philosophies they misrepresent, or by the nature of Gilead. The explanation that emphasizes Gilead’s own agency is ultimately best able to make sense of how illiberal regimes misappropriate philosophical concepts, both in the novel and in reality, in order to limit the political imagination of their subjects. (shrink)

This paper considers Norton’s Material Theory of Induction. The material theory aims inter alia to neutralize Hume’s Problem of Induction. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the material theory's capacity to achieve this end. After pulling apart two versions of the theory, I argue that neither version satisfactorily neutralizes the problem.

Pseudoskepticism, which typically is portraying someone's work as despicable with scientifically unsound polemics, is a modern day threat to the traditional standard of discussion in science and popular science. This essay gives seven tell-tale signs by which pseudoskepticism can be recognized.

In this paper I argue that selection of the best theory of content is not a matter for mere philosophical reflection on the consequences of each theory for our intuitive judgments about content. Rather, the theories must be judged in a different way that is based on the putative roles of content attribution in the behavioural sciences. The ultimate test of any theory of content will be the success of the sciences that adopt it. Furthermore, alternative semantic theories may be (...) seen as complementary rather than antagonistic. Different approaches to content specification may well be compatible, reflecting different but perhaps equally legitimate explanatory goals. (shrink)

I argue that trends of diagnosing anti-Muslim attitudes and activism as “Islamophobia” in European and the U.S. contexts may actually aid and abet more subtle varieties of the very stigmatization and exclusion that the “phobia” moniker aims to isolate and oppose. My comparative purpose is to draw into relief—to make explicit and subject to critical analysis— features of normative public discourse in these two sociopolitical contexts broadly perceived to be peaceful, prosperous, liberal-democratic. The features I focus on function under the (...) auspices of tolerant and nonexclusionary forms of “civic nationalism” that, in effect, fuel the conflict in question. (shrink)

This short paper has two parts. First,we prove a generalisation of Aumann’s surprising impossibility result in the context of rational decision making. We then move, in the second part, to discuss the interpretational meaning of some formal setups of epistemic models, and we do so by means of presenting an interesting puzzle in epistemic logic. The aim is to highlight certain problematic aspects of these epistemic systems concerning first/third-person asymmetry which underlies both parts of the story. This asymmetry, we argue, (...) reveals certain limits of what epistemic models can be. (shrink)

The history of holography, the technology of three-dimensional imaging that grew rapidly during the 1960s, has been written primarily by its historical actors and, like many new inventions, its concepts and activities became surrounded by myths and myth-making. The first historical account was disseminated by the central character of this paper, George W. Stroke, while a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan. His claims embroiled several workers active in the field of holography and information processing during the (...) 1960s, but transcended personality conflicts: they influenced the early historiography of holography and the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Physics to Dennis Gabor in 1971. An extended discussion of these episodes, based on archival research, publications analysis and interviews with participants, reveals the importance and extraordinary allure of intellectual priority for practicing scientists, and how its history and explanations are woven from multiple accounts and contemporary interpretations. (shrink)

Why is there Philosophy of Mathematics at all? Ian Hacking. in Metascience (2015).

In episode 6 of the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, the Republic of Gilead welcomes a trade delegation of the United Mexican States. Offred’s hope that the ensuing trade agreement between Gilead and Mexico would eventually bring the sexual exploitation she and the other handmaids suffer to public are quickly dashed. During a chance encounter at the house of Offred’s master, the Mexican ambassador Mrs Castillo confides in Offred that Mexico is suffering a fertility crisis just like Gilead. Her (...) country is seriously considering trading with Gilead in handmaids. My article will use this episode as a starting point to reflect on the correlation between women’s social and economic status. I will illustrate how The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates that markets are socially embedded and thereby reproduce and amplify social and political inequalities. This series thereby also functions as a powerful validation of the asymmetry thesis concerning markets in reproductive labour. (shrink)

In accordance with Leo Strauss’s ingenious suggestion, the Athenian Stranger of Plato’s Laws is best understood as an alternative ‘Socrates’, fleeing from the hemlock to Crete. Situated between Crito and Phaedo, Laws effectively tests the reader’s loyalty to the real Socrates who obeys Athenian law and dies cheerfully in Athens. Having separated Plato from the Stranger, a nuanced defence of Karl Popper’s suspicions about Laws confronts the apologetic readings of both Strauss and Christopher Bobonich. As hinted by his preference for (...) wine, the antidote for hemlock, the Athenian Stranger repeatedly proves himself the opposite of Socrates, particularly with respect to piety. Once the Stranger is recognized as ‘an unreliable narrator’, this apparently ponderous product of Plato’s senility becomes the taut thriller of an innovative teacher at the peak of his powers. (shrink)

There is an important distinction between two different kinds of expressions of gratitude: propositional expressions of gratitude and prepositional expressions of gratitude. I argue that there is a corresponding distinction between two different kinds of expression of resentment: propositional expressions of resentment and prepositional expressions of resentment. I then argue that theists should suppose neither that propositional expressions of gratitude are prepositional expressions of gratitude to God, nor that propositional expressions of resentment are prepositional expressions of resentment of God.

The presence of symmetries in physical theories implies a pernicious form of underdetermination. In order to avoid this theoretical vice, philosophers often espouse a principle called Leibniz Equivalence, which states that symmetry-related models represent the same state of affairs. Moreover, philosophers have claimed that the existence of non-trivial symmetries motivates us to accept the Invariance Principle, which states that quantities that vary under a theory’s symmetries aren’t physically real. Leibniz Equivalence and the Invariance Principle are often seen as part of (...) the same package. I argue that this is a mistake: Leibniz Equivalence and the Invariance Principle are orthogonal to each other. This means that it is possible to hold that symmetry-related models represent the same state of affairs whilst having a realist attitude towards variant quantities. Various arguments have been presented in favour of the Invariance Principle: a rejection of the Invariance Principle is inter alia supposed to cause indeterminism, undetectability or failure of reference. I respond that these arguments at best support Leibniz Equivalence. (shrink)

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar as ponderações de Nietzsche sobre a filosofia nascente de Tales de Mileto com base em trechos selecionados dos ensaios nietzschianos do período da juventude intitulados A filosofia na época trágica dos gregos e Sobre verdade e mentira no sentido extramoral, da obra do período de transição A gaia ciência, assim como da obra do período mais tardio de sua vida intitulada Genealogia da moral, uma polêmica. Os trechos são suficientes para enfatizar o “erro” (...) presente na hipótese da água e as implicações da “intuição filosófica” de Tales para a representação da phýsis. Nietzsche pondera que a contemplação de Tales foi movida por uma crença ilógica, fantasiosa e indemonstrável, que encontramos em todos os filósofos, de que é possível acessar a realidade objetiva pelo “conhecimento”. Pondera ainda que o “filosofar indemonstrável” de Tales tem ainda o seu valor em pretender ser em todo caso não místico e não alegórico. Essas ponderações de Nietzsche sobre o filosofar de Tales servem neste trabalho para consolidar a perspectiva nietzschiana de que o conhecimento em suas formas de representar a “vida”, desde Tales, é movido pela crença ilógica na “verdade”, não na “aparência”. (shrink)

In the literature on expert trust, it is often assumed that track records are the gold standard for evaluating expertise, and the difficulty of expert identification arises from either the lack of access to track records, or the inability to assess them. I show, using a computational model, that even in an idealized environment where agents have a God’s eye view on track records, they may fail to identify experts. Under plausible conditions, selecting testimony based on track records ends up (...) reducing overall accuracy, and preventing the community from identifying the real experts. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider recent attempts to metaphysically explain agentive modality in terms of conditionals. We suggest that the best recent accounts face counterexamples, and more worryingly, they take some agentive modality for granted. In particular, the ability to perform basic actions features as a primitive in these theories. While it is perfectly acceptable for a semantics of agentive modal claims to take some modality for granted in getting the extension of action claims correct, a metaphysical explanation of agentive (...) modality cannot, at least not in the way that conditional approaches to agentive modality do. We argue that this problem was present even in the classical conditional analysis. By a pessimistic induction, we suggest that, probably, no conditional approach to agentive modality will succeed. (shrink)

Case studies about institutional pressures encouraging dishonesty in the US Navy.

The paper compares two theories of the nature of logic: Penelope Maddy's and my own. The two theories share a significant element: they both view logic as grounded not just in the mind (language, concepts, conventions, etc.), but also, and crucially, in the world. But the two theories differ in significant ways as well. Most distinctly, one is an anti-holist, "austere naturalist" theory while the other is a non-naturalist "foundational-holistic" theory. This methodological difference affects their questions, goals, orientations, the scope (...) of their investigations, their logical realism (the way they ground logic in the world), their explanation of the modal force of logic, and their approach to the relation between logic and mathematics. The paper is not polemic. One of its goal is a perspicuous description and analysis of the two theories, explaining their differences as well as commonalities. Another goal is showing that and how (i) a grounding of logic is possible, (ii) logical realism can be arrived at from different perspectives and using different methodologies, and (iii) grounding logic in the world is compatible with a central role for the human mind in logic. (shrink)

J. R. R. Tolkien’s four functions of fantasy stories, as developed in his Andrew Lang lecture “On Fairy Stories” (1939), have become a key conceptual tool for discussing human beings’ attraction to fantasy stories, particularly when attempting to push the analysis beyond the literary into the aesthetic, and beyond the aesthetic into the existential. Applying this interpretive key to an analysis of the expanding genre of post-apocalyptic fiction reveals that post-apocalyptic stories, despite superficial differences, are surprisingly close to (...) class='Hi'>fairy stories in their aesthetic core and orientation, and that post-apocalyptic stories are well-suited to fulfill—albeit with their own distinctive aesthetic feel—the functions of Enchantment, Recovery, Escape and Consolation. Furthermore, in exploring the function of Consolation, a number of motifs come to surface that suggest the presence of a religious dimension common to many of the most celebrated exponents of the genre. (shrink)

Two popular, yet highly controversial concepts of non-human agency from two different fields of knowledge are compared in this essay: the theory of the Selfish Gene, introduced into neo-Darwinian evolutionary biology by Richard Dawkins, and Actor-Network Theory, as brought forward in Science & Technology Studies by Bruno Latour. It is argued that the two theories, despite all apparent differences, share key motifs and motivations when they try to forward knowledge in their respective fields by adopting a vocabulary that aims at (...) metaphorical redescriptions of the origins of intentionality – in both senses: as purposefulness of action and as meaning. (shrink)

In this paper we critically examine and seek to extend Philip Kitcher’s Ethical Project to weave together a distinctive naturalistic conception of how ethics came to occupy the place it does in our lives and how the existing ethical project should be revised and extended into the future. Although we endorse his insight that ethical progress is better conceived of as the improvement of an existing state than an incremental approach towards a fixed endpoint, we nonetheless go on to argue (...) that the metaethical apparatus Kitcher constructs around this creative metaethical proposal simply cannot do the work that he demands of it. The prospect of fundamental conflict between different functions of the ethical project requires Kitcher to appeal to a particular normative stance in order to judge specific changes in the ethical project to be genuinely progressive, and we argue that the virtues of continuity and coherence to which he appeals can only specify rather than justify the normative stance he favors. We conclude by suggesting an alternative approach for ethical naturalists that seems to us ultimately more promising than Kitcher’s own. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs the life and activity of the author of a famous novel for boys as well as of a textbook of arithmetic and of essays on educational issues, who was also the sister of a famous economist. The bulk of the paper is dedicated to Alfred Dudley, a novel for boys about wealth, status, speculation, poverty, manual work, emigration and the role of virtue in making a decent society possible. Also the author’s educational views are discussed, highlighting her (...) opposition to Benthamite programs and her proposal for an inter-denominational religious education, and arguing that her contributions to plans for a general education system were meant to respond to what had been Smith’s, Malthus’s, and perhaps also her brother’s question, namely, how may wealth and virtue go together? (shrink)

CATEGORY: Philosophy play; historical fiction; comedy; social criticism. -/- STORYLINE: Tim, a physics professor with a certain taste for young female university students, recently got a new appointment at a London university. But, as it turns out, he is still unsatisfied. Why? Is it because Rachael unexpectedly left him under strange circumstances? Or does it have to do with his sudden departure from another university? Or is it his research? When Tim meets Christianus for a brown-bag discussion on philosophy and (...) science, new facts and perspectives are revealed. -/- TOPICS: In the course of the play, Tim and Christianus discuss different metaphysical, epistemological, and ontological ideas. Many of these are either related to isssues in the philosophy of science (explanation, methodology, scientific investigation, etc.), or to issues in human psychology and the philosophy of mind (the self vs. the mind, dualism, ‘Who am I?’, etc.). In one scene, for example, Tim tries to invoke ‘Ockham’s Razor’ (or ‘Occam’s Razor’) to quickly dismiss some of Christianus’s metaphysical ideas (see Scene VII: Ockham’s Raisin; Scene XIII: The Raisin Tale Revisited); in another scene, Christianus introduces his ‘Postman’ scenario, and the idea that successful (‘scientific’) prediction or forecasting is not necessarily a sure sign of true understanding (see Scene XV: The Postman Always Turns Twice). -/- NOTES: This work features elaborate footnotes and comments (including full bibliographical references) by the author, to enhance the reader's experience of the play and its philosophizing characters. (shrink)

Recent epistemology of modality has seen a growing trend towards metaphysics-first approaches. Contrastingly, this paper offers a more philosophically modest account of justifying modal claims, focusing on the practices of scientific modal inferences. Two ways of making such inferences are identified and analyzed: actualist-manipulationist modality and relative modality. In AM, what is observed to be or not to be the case in actuality or under manipulations, allows us to make modal inferences. AM-based inferences are fallible, but the same holds for (...) practically all empirical inquiry. In RM, modal inferences are evaluated relative to what is kept fixed in a system, like a theory or a model. RM-based inferences are more certain but framework-dependent. While elements from both AM and RM can be found in some existing accounts of modality, it is worth highlighting them in their own right and isolating their features for closer scrutiny. This helps to establish their relevant epistemologies that are free from some strong philosophical assumptions often attached to them in the literature. We close by showing how combining these two routes amounts to a view that accounts for a rich variety of modal inferences in science. (shrink)