In recent decades, Western philosophy, including personalism, has had to face the question of how to respect the otherness of the personal Other, a challenge issued most famously by Emmanuel Levinas. In his Totality and Infinity, Levinas's conclusions about alterity are stark. The Other is beyond all conceptualization and precedes my activity as a subject. It is the Other who founds my own independent subjectivity as an "I."1 These are indeed radical conclusions, but they raise the question, Does the very (...) term Other itself fully capture the alterity Levinas wishes to do justice to? The term Other (autrui) has a certain unavoidable generality and abstractness to it. Any person who is not myself, the world's population minus one, can be referred to by this term. Yet the Other is always richly distinguished in each case, for each Other is unique. I will argue that the personalist philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand reveals that the alterity of the Other rests on the more fundamental uniqueness of the content of our personhood. This content, which is a value, is disclosed in love, and it is indicated in the personal name. It is the name that, better than the term Other, captures the alterity of the personal Other. (shrink)

When working with garden archaeology and garden archaeobotany, the plant material is of great importance. It is important to be able to identify which plants have grown in a particular garden and which have not, which of the plants you find in the garden today that are newly introduced or have established themselves on their own, and which plants that may be remnants of earlier cultivation. During the past two years, my colleagues and I have been involved in a project (...) that deals with the latter kind of plants, that is, plants that were once actively cultivated and that have survived in their original place of cultivation until the present time(Persson, Ansebo & Solberg, this volume). When we started the project we simply called the plants we worked with ‘relict plants’. This is also the term that has been used unofficially in this field of research for some time. It was in no way an official term, however, and as it turned out, the term already had a different meaning in botany that was both older and better established. We were therefore in need of a better name for the plants we worked with. To single out the plants we were working with, we used the following working definition: “Plants that were once, but are no longer cultivated in a certain area, and where a part of the population still exists even though it is no longer actively maintained”. Although we still think this is a decent approximation, we have realized that there are several complicating factors we have had to think more about. We thus needed both a better name and a better definition. Both these tasks became important parts of the project. (shrink)

Although the view that sees proper names as referential singular terms is widely considered orthodoxy, there is a growing popularity to the view that proper names are predicates. This is partly because the orthodoxy faces two anomalies that Predicativism can solve: on the one hand, proper names can have multiple bearers. But multiple bearerhood is a problem to the idea that proper names have just one individual as referent. On the other hand, as Burge noted, proper names can have predicative (...) uses. But the view that proper names are singular terms arguably does not have the resources to deal with Burge’s cases. In this paper I argue that the Predicate View of proper names is mistaken. I first argue against the syntactic evidence used to support the view and against the predicativist’s methodology of inferring a semantic account for proper names based on incomplete syntactic data. I also show that Predicativism can neither explain the behaviour of proper names in full generality, nor claim the fundamentality of predicative names. In developing my own view, however, I accept the insight that proper names in some sense express generality. Hence I propose that proper names—albeit fundamentally singular referential terms—express generality in two senses. First, by being used as predicates, since then they are true of many individuals; and second, by being referentially related to many individuals. I respond to the problem of multiple bearerhood by proposing that proper names are polyreferential, and also explain the behaviour of proper names in light of the wider phenomenon I called category change, and show how Polyreferentialism can account for all uses of proper names. (shrink)

Fitch's Paradox and the Paradox of the Knower both make use of the Factivity Principle. The latter also makes use of a second principle, namely the Knowledge-of-Factivity Principle. Both the principle of factivity and the knowledge thereof have been the subject of various discussions, often in conjunction with a third principle known as Closure. In this paper, we examine the well-known Surprise Examination paradox considering both the principles on which this paradox rests and some formal characterisations of the surprise notion, (...) crucial in this paradox. Standard formalizations of the Surprise Examination paradox in modal logic do not seem, at first glance, to depend on either factivity or knowledge-of-factivity, but we will argue that both factivity and knowledge-of-factivity play a key implicit role in the paradox. Namely, they are implicitly, perhaps unintentionally, used in order to simplify the definition of surprise. We analyze modal logical formalizations of three versions of the paradox concluding that the Surprise Examination paradox is the result of two flaws: the assumption of knowledge-of-factivity, and the over-simplification of the definition of "surprise" accordingly. By fixing these two flaws, the Surprise Examination paradox vanishes. (shrink)

Both Kymlicka and Patten argue that the equal treatment of different national groups require that the state officially recognize the right of each to create its own autonomous government. After carefully examining their arguments, I show that they both make the false assumption that, in a multinational state, the state belongs only to the majority group but not the minority, and that a multination state can never treat minority groups equally. Both claims are inherently anti-pluralistic. Thus, the equal treatment of (...) different national cultures does not require that each be granted the right to self-government. (shrink)

Spontaneous activity levels prior to stimulus presentation can determine how that stimulus will be perceived. It has also been proposed that such spontaneous activity, particularly in the default-mode network (DMN), is involved in self-related processing. We therefore hypothesised that pre-stimulus activity levels in the DMN predict whether a stimulus is judged as self-related or not. Method: Participants were presented in the MRI scanner with a white noise stimulus that they were instructed contained their name or another. They then had (...) to respond with which name they thought they heard. Regions where there was an activity level difference between self and other response trials two seconds prior to the stimulus being presented were identified. Results: Pre-stimulus activity levels were higher in the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ), the right temporal pole (RTP), and the left superior temporal gyrus in trials where the participant responded that they heard their own name than trials where they responded that they heard another. Conclusion: Pre-stimulus spontaneous activity levels in particular brain regions, largely overlapping with the DMN, predict the subsequent judgement of stimuli as self-related. This extends our current knowledge of self-related processing and its apparent relationship with intrinsic brain activity in what can be termed a rest-self overlap. (shrink)

Two major clarifications have greatly abetted the understanding and fruitful expansion of the theory of natural selection in recent years: the acknowledgment that interactors, not replicators, constitute the causal unit of selection; and the recognition that interactors are Darwinian individuals, and that such individuals exist with potency at several levels of organization (genes, organisms, demes, and species in particular), thus engendering a rich hierarchical theory of selection in contrast with Darwin’s own emphasis on the organismic level. But a piece of (...) the argument has been missing, and individuals at levels distinct from organisms have been denied potency (although granted existence within the undeniable logic of the theory), because they do not achieve individuality with the same devices used by organisms and therefore seem weak by comparison. We show here that different features define Darwinian individuality across scales of size and time. In particular, species-individuals may develop few emergent features as direct adaptations. The interactor approach works with emergent fitnesses, not with emergent features; and species, as a consequence of their different mechanism for achieving individuality (reproductive exclusivity among subparts, that is, among organisms), express many effects from other levels. Organisms, by contrast, suppress upwardly cascading effects, because the organismic style of individuality (by functional integration of subparts) does not permit much competition or differential reproduction of parts from within. Species do not suppress the operation of lower levels; such effects therefore become available as exaptations conferring emergent fitness—a primary source of the different strength that species achieve as effective Darwinian individuals in evolution. (shrink)

Literary studies are often seen as a discipline without method. Research articles in literature do not have method sections, nor do they list what type of evidence has been included in a particular project or by what procedures primary material was analyzed. Because of implicitness of questions of method and research design, writing in literary studies is difficult to teach and often relies on students' abilities to infer their own strategies for reading and writing. I analyze a textual corpus of (...) recent research articles from Canadian Literature and Studies in Canadian Literature in order to clarify typical discursive patterns that are used when discussing methods of literary scholarship. On the basis of these findings, we can ask: How can teaching in literary studies be adjusted in order to demystify the methodological practices of the discipline? (shrink)

Why did Kierkegaard prefer to write his masterpieces under different pseudonyms and what was the theatrical logic behind the constant playfulness of an author otherwise doomed to melancholy? What were the reasons of his ongoing philosophical, theological and aesthetic hide-and-seek that he did not want to finish until the very last, nearly tragic phase of his authorship? How much inspiration did Kierkegaard receive from theatrical performances, from playwrights and even from actors and actresses of 19th-century Copenhagen, which seemed to be (...) sometimes stronger than the influence exercised on him by his professors, masters and theologians of Denmark’s “Golden Age”? Can the difference between direct and indirect communication that basically characterized Kierkegaard’s oeuvre be described in theatrical terms or even to approach it as an ongoing dramatic dialogue? Should we rather call it a “polylogue” as different actors are present throughout the texts that were often polemic with each other, simultaneously reflecting certain issues from different angles and finally Kierkegaard denying that any of those were written by him? Could his own name be a pseudonym, as his brother suggested when giving the eulogy on the prodigal son, who learned to doubt from Socrates and from Descartes, yet could not give up his intention to question even the final axioms of human existence? The author tries to find answers to these questions by reconstructing the very special Kierkegaardian method, so familiar from the stage, in the spiritual, cultural and theatrical context of Kierkegaard’s Denmark. (shrink)

Among the contemporary philosophers using the concept of the Anthropocene, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers are prominent examples. The way they use this concept, however, diverts from the most common understanding of the Anthropocene. In fact, their use of this notion is a continuation of their earlier work around the concept of a ‘parliament of things.’ Although mainly seen as a sociology or philosophy of science, their work can be read as philosophy of technology as well. Similar to Latour’s claim (...) that science is Janus-headed, technology has two faces. Faced with the Anthropocene, we need to shift from technologies of control to technologies of negotiations, i.e., a parliament of things. What, however, does a ‘parliament of things’ mean? This paper wants to clarify what is conceptually at stake by framing Latour’s work within the philosophy of Michel Serres and Isabelle Stengers. Their philosophy implies a ‘postlinguistic turn,’ where one can ‘let things speak in their own name,’ without claiming knowledge of the thing in itself. The distinction between object and subject is abolished to go back to the world of ‘quasi-objects’ (Serres). Based on the philosophy of science of Latour and Stengers the possibility for a politics of quasi-objects or a ‘cosmopolitics’ (Stengers) is opened. It is in this framework that their use of the notion of the Anthropocene must be understood and a different view of technology can be conceptualized. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce offers a number of arguments against the rational application of theory to morality, suggesting instead that morality should be grounded in instinct. Peirce maintains that we currently lack the scientific knowledge that would justify a rational structuring of morality. This being the case, philosophically generated moralities cannot be otherwise than dogmatic and dangerous. In this paper, I contend that Peirce’s critique of what I call “dogmatic-philosophical morality” should be taken very seriously, but I also claim that the (...) purely instinctive morality Peirce endorses is liable to a danger of its own, namely fanaticism. Indeed, Peirce himself recognizes this danger. As an alternative, I sketch a form of “pragmatic morality” that attempts to sidestep the dogmatism of philosophical morality and the fanaticism of instinctive morality. This form of morality avoids philosophical dogmatism by treating extant instincts as the postulates and materials with which it works. It avoids instinctive fanaticism by allowing a role to reason. By exhibiting fallibilism, revisability, pluralism, and meliorism, this type of reasoning can avoid the dogmatism of the philosophical kind of morality Peirce critiques. (shrink)

In Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire: Rhetoric and Performance in a Theology of Eros Carl S. Hughes develops an original approach to Søren Kierkegaard’s religious writings. As is well known, Kierkegaard published these religious writings under his own name. Some interpreters take this to mean that he no longer relies on the poetics of indirect communication that underlies his pseudonymous works. According to them, the religious writings finally formulate Kierkegaard’s true views in a direct and unambiguous way. Others (...) have suggested that these religious writings are just as indirect as all the others. Hughes belongs to the second camp. In his illuminating book, he convincingly shows that the indirect method of writing is not undermining the religious content of Kierkegaard’s works, as is feared by many interpreters from the first camp, but is essential for sustaining it. That is why Hughes believes that Kierkegaard’s indirect mode of writing is of vital importance for contemporary theology as a discipline. (shrink)

The *Tractatus* contains an argument that there are simple, necessarily existent objects, which, being simple, are suited to be the referents of the names occuring in the final analysis of propositions. The argument is perplexing in its own right, but also for its invocation of the notion of "substance". I argue that if one locates Wittgenstein's conception of substance in the Kantian tradition to which his talk of "substance" alludes, what emerges is an argument that is very nearly--but not quite--cogent.

I observe that the “concept-generator” theory of Percus and Sauerland (2003), Anand (2006), and Charlow and Sharvit (2014) does not predict an intuitive true interpretation of the sentence “Plato did not believe that Hesperus was Phosphorus”. In response, I present a simple theory of attitude reports which employs a fine-grained semantics for names, according to which names which intuitively name the same thing may have distinct compositional semantic values. This simple theory solves the problem with the concept-generator theory, but, (...) as I go on to show, it has problems of its own. I present three examples which the concept-generator theory can accommodate, but the simple fine-grained theory cannot. These examples motivate the full theory of the paper, which combines the basic ideas behind the concept-generator theory with a fine-grained semantics for names. The examples themselves are of interest independently of my theory: two of them constrain the original concept-generator theory more tightly than previously discussed examples had. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 231-266. -/- Abstract: In this essay I defend my interpretation of the unheard words that Zarathustra whispers into Life’s ear in “The Other Dance Song” and that have long kept commentators puzzled. I argue that what Zarathustra whispers is that he knows that Life is pregnant with his child. Zarathustra’s ability to make Life pregnant depends on his overcoming of Eternal Recurrence which threatens to strangle him with disgust of human (...) beings and all of existence, thereby making him into a spiritual eunuch whose will has turned into not-willing. The insemination of Life is a transfiguring act that raises Life from her blind animality (or materiality) into the level of a spiritually fertile existence, which is the condition of human freedom. This act is performed with the help of our capacity for theoretical knowledge, which is why it requires love of Wisdom. However, love of Wisdom can make us infertile, and thus unfree, when pursued for its own sake (knowledge can choke). I conclude by considering who might be the child of Zarathustra and Life. -/- Zusammenfassung: In diesem Aufsatz verteidige ich meine Interpretation der unhörbaren Wörter, die Zarathustra in „Das andere Tanzlied“ in das Ohr des Lebens flüstert und seit langem Kommentatoren ratlos machen. Was Zarathustra flüstert, ist, so meine These, dass er weiß, dass das Leben mit seinem Kind schwanger ist. Zarathustras Fähigkeit, das Leben zu schwängern, hängt von seiner Überwindung des Gedankens der ewigen Wiederkehr ab, der ihn durch den Überdruss am Menschen und an allem Dasein zu erwürgen bedroht und ihn dabei zu einem spirituellen Eunuchen macht, dessen Wollen zum Nicht-Wollen geworden ist. Die Befruchtung des Lebens ist eine umgestaltende Tat, die das Leben von seiner blinden Tiernatur (oder Stofflichkeit) auf die Ebene eines spirituell fruchtbaren Daseins erhebt, was die Voraussetzung menschlicher Freiheit ist. Dieser Akt wird mit Hilfe unserer Fähigkeit zu theoretischem Wissen ausgeführt, weshalb er Liebe zur Weisheit erfordert. Liebe zur Weisheit kann uns jedoch unfruchtbar und damit unfrei machen, wenn sie um ihrer selbst willen verfolgt wird (Wissen kann ersticken). Ich schließe mit der Überlegung ab, wer Zarathustras und des Lebens Kind sein könnte. (shrink)

We think that Central Asia should come up with its own AI Ethics Principles which we propose to name as “Nomadic AI Principles”.

In this paper I investigate where the boundaries of conscious mental life lie in Cavendish’s theory, and why. Cavendish argues for a wholly material yet wholly thinking universe. She claims that all matter is capable of “self-knowledge” and “perception” (OEP, p. 138), so that every part of nature “must have its own knowledge and perception, according to its own particular nature” (OEP, p. 141). It is unclear, however, whether the universal capacity of matter to know and perceive also implies the (...) presence of consciousness. I show that Cavendish’s use of the notions of “self-knowledge” and “perception” implies the attribution of consciousness to all bodies. I identify one condition under which the ubiquitous presence of consciousness is intuitively required in Cavendish’s system: namely the presence of intentional agency in every part of nature, which Cavendish conceives as necessary, alongside the capacity of self-motion, to account for the orderly behavior of any body. (shrink)

Based on a question posed by global philosophy of religion project regarding the absence of literal attribution of omnibenevolence to God in the Qur’ān, this paper aims to examine how to understand perfect goodness in Islam. I will first discuss the concept of perfect goodness and suggest that perfect goodness is not an independent attribute on its own and it is predicated on other moral attributes of God without which the concept of perfect goodness could hardly be understood. I will (...) examine perfect goodness by a specific emphasis on the attribute of justice as one of the conditions to be satisfied by a perfectly morally good being. In so doing, I will appeal to the distinctions made among great-making properties by Daniel Hill, and Al-Ghazālī’s definition of justice by applying them to God’s moral attributes. I will argue that justice has a crucial role in maximality-optimality balance between great-making properties and it seems quite difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of goodness without justice. Having said that, I will claim that the conceptual frame I suggest sheds light on why omnibenevolence is not literally attributed to God in the Qur’ān. Then, I will briefly show how the divine attributes mentioned in the Qur’ān and the discussions about divine names and attributes in the Islamic tradition supports the understanding of perfect goodness I defend. Consequently, I will try to show that far from indicating that the Islamic concept of God doesn’t involve perfect goodness, the Qur’ān establishes the proper meaning of perfect goodness by focusing on its constitutive attributes, and thus provides us with a sound conception of it. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s name has become almost synonymous with militant atheism. Born into a pious Christian family, this son of a Lutheran pastor declared himself the Antichrist. But could this have been yet another of his masks of hardness? Nietzsche rarely revealed his innermost self in the published writings, and this can be gleaned mainly from his private letters and the accounts of friends. These sources bring to light the philosopher’s inner struggle with his own, deeply religious nature.Losing his father at (...) a young age was a calamity from which Nietzsche never recovered, and I argue that his famous thought-image “God is dead” was a transfiguration of the painful memory of this loss. In this essay, I trace Nietzsche’s tortuous path from an ardent devotee of God to a vociferous critic of Christianity, a path that was punctuated with veiled longings for a loving deity. Deep in his heart, he remained faithful to Christian ideals. Rather like Cordelia, the only truly loving daughter of King Lear, Nietzsche refused to utter words of intense affection and reverence, as these had been blatantly devalued and corrupted. Instead, he adopted a mask of a wrongdoer and a blasphemer who took not the punishment but the guilt.Nietzsche’s attitude to religion is discussed from the perspective of his life, his personality, and his mental condition. The discussion draws on psychoanalytical concepts of Freud, Erikson, Winnicott and Kohut. This is not an exclusive reading, but complementary to other studies in this field. (shrink)

I will clarify when and how a tension arises between epistemic environmentalism (a new focus on assessing and improving the epistemic environment) and respect for epistemic autonomy (allowing, empowering, and requiring people to each govern their own beliefs). Using the example of participatory conceptual engineering (improving the linguistic environment through rational discussion with broad participation), I will also identify an option for avoiding the tension—namely, participatory environmentalism. This means a new focus on how people can each contribute to improving the (...) shared epistemic environment through rational deliberation and thereby govern their own beliefs that are shaped by that environment. (shrink)

In his lecture “Philosophy and the Unheard,” Cavell invites us to observe a pervasive analogy between Schoenberg’s idea of the twelve-tone row and Wittgenstein’s idea of grammar, which is supposed to encapsulate an expansive, sweeping philosophical program—Cavell’s own. For Cavell, the analogy evinces not only the kind of reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigation, which is attuned to Wittgenstein’s seemingly paradoxical amalgamation of embrace and resistance in regarding to the conditions of modernity, but also a kind of philosophy of music, which (...) is illuminated by musical procedure. In this essay I probe into Cavell’s analogy, which, I contend, rests on Cavell’s interpretation (contra Von Wright) of Spengler’s influence on Wittgenstein. I argue that Cavell delineated the analogy in a way which does not consider a deeply felt gradation in Wittgenstein’s philosophical attitude toward modern music. This ultimately renders Schoenberg’s composition with twelve-tone incommensurate with Wittgenstein’s Spenglerian scheme of musical decline. I also argue that “Schoenbergian unheard” is not analogous to its purported Wittgensteinian counterpart. While the former inheres in comprehensibility—namely, correct, conscious application of the kind of contrived rules that would ensure coherence—the latter inheres in transparency, namely, a familiar physiognomy, which is internally related to the preconditions as well as the lived, embodied realities of musical intelligibility. From Wittgenstein’s perspective, the Schoenbergian idea of the row with its unforeseen yet pervasive consequences turns out to be tantamount to an idea of grammar for music for the meaning-blind. I conclude that in this “tale of two unheards,” Cavell invariably remains on the side of Wittgenstein. Philosophy, as it mattered most to him, has no business with music for the meaning-blind. (shrink)

In 1915, a student named Walter Benjamin published his first article, entitled “The life of students”. In this reflection on the condition of student life, Benjamin touched upon one of the most puzzling features of the university: its disconnection from the real world. Benjamin draws our attention to the “huge gulf between ideas and life”, which the university was supposed to bridge through its connection with the state. Benjamin claims, however, that there is no such bridge. On the one hand, (...) we have university life, which is all about living and breathing theory, about “the will to submit to a principle, to identify completely with an idea”, as Benjamin puts it. On the other, in the world, we have the unchangeable rites and practices, institutions, marriage, family, jobs, legal systems, and tacit rules of proper behaviour, a way of life to which everyone assents by dedicating their own life to it. Benjamin is saddened that the world remains the same no matter how many students pass through the university, where they engage in an intense theoretical life. The university stage of life ends abruptly, when the graduates are cast away, back to the other side of the gulf, on the shore of the old world, which cannot be changed by the abstract theories smuggled out from the university. (shrink)

This book explores a question central to philosophy--namely, what does it take for a belief to be justified or rational? According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one's evidence. In this book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one's evidence must normically support it--roughly, one's evidence must make the falsity of that proposition (...) abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here. (shrink)

McMahan’s own example of a symmetrical defense case, namely his tactical bomber example, opens the door wide open for soldiers to defend their fellow-citizens (on grounds of their special obligations towards them) even if as part of this defense they target non-liable soldiers. So the soldiers on both sides would be permitted to kill each other and, given how McMahan defines “justification,” they would also be justified in doing so and hence not be liable. Thus, we arrive, against McMahan’s intentions, (...) at a moral equality of combatants. In addition, his own account of liability cannot deal adequately with symmetrical defense cases in the first place. This undermines his presupposition that justification defeats liability, which is central to his defense of the moral inequality of combatants. I shall argue that McMahan’s attempts to counter these objections fail and that therefore his general claim of the moral inequality of combatants remains unpersuasive. (shrink)

(The Kindle book can be ordered for $3.21 from Amazon) -/- Thinking is a fundamental activity of our species – those that give names to other creatures and call themselves humans. Textbooks tell us that there is about 1.2 kg of matter called the brain inside the human body. It sounds small but actually is proportionally the biggest among all animals on Earth. -/- I became more aware of thinking at around 5th grade upon hearing about an ancient paradox. It (...) can be summarized as follows. -/- ¤ -/- Once upon a time, there was a stupid king. In his kingdom lived a sage who was highly respected for his intelligence. The King did not appreciate this fact. Maybe the Sage made fun of the King’s intellect, but I am not so sure. Anyway, one day, the King summoned the Sage, intending to kill him. -/- The King said, “Wise man, I heard you earn a living by thinking and arguing. Now I give you two options to die.” -/- The Sage said, “Please tell me the choices, Your Majesty.” -/- The King continued, “You live by your tongue, so I will let you say one sentence before you die. If what you say is true, you will die by hanging. If what you say is false, you will die by beheading.” -/- Little did the King know that this was a stupid order. After a short while, the Sage confidently spoke his “last words”, which actually were what saved his life: -/- “Your Majesty, I am about to be beheaded!” -/- ¤ -/- As a “wild animal” going out into life from a young age, my brain spent a lot of time and energy looking for food. Now that I have become older, my body no longer needs so much sustenance. However, my mind craves a different type of nourishment: food for thought. -/- Food for thought can directly lead to food (on the table). My main job as a scientist exemplifies what I have just stated. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it has been “thought for food” all along, like in such a sequence as TFFTTTFTFFTTFFFT... -/- In the hyper-chaotic infosphere today, we are surrounded by the noises of information, not only as wavy shores or waterfalls but also mega-tsunamis, through Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, etc. More than ever, tranquility and calmness are necessary. Like what you have seen in wilderness video clips, predators such as lions, bears, and alligators act lightning-fast when catching prey. But when food is served, the natural world returns to its peaceful, soothing silence. -/- This short book is in its own tidy infosphere, where each little story is also brief and self-contained. Despite this small appearance, I hope the content inside carries the value of tranquility and life observation. The book is petite, but pretty sure not malnourished. A not-too-small detail is that the way the content was shaped and distilled reflects some innovations of mine and my research team: the mindsponge theory, a new theory of serendipity, the bayesvl R package, the BMF analytics, as well as other experiences from working in the field of science. After all, scientific works were my main source of food (before this book sells well – if it does). -/- Welcome to the priceless sober moments – with a chicken-burger price tag! -/- I hope this book will bring readers some moments of calmness, peaceful smiles, and maybe a couple of good laughs too. -/- ~~~ -/- *This update: December 12, 2023 (Third edition, with additions). (shrink)

The paper begins by reviewing two problems for fallibilism: the lottery problem, or the problem of explaining why fallible evidence, though otherwise excellent, is not enough to know that one will lose the lottery, and Gettier problems. It is then argued that both problems can be resolved if we note an important illocutionary force of knowledge attributions: namely, that when we attribute knowledge to someone we mean to give the person credit for getting things right. Alternatively, to say that a (...) person knows is to say that she got things right due to her own abilities, efforts and actions, rather than due to dumb luck, or blind chance, or something else. (shrink)

In Huckleberry Finn, a thirteen-year old white boy in antebellum Missouri escapes from his abusive father and befriends a runaway slave named Jim. On a familiar reading of the novel, both Huck and Jim are, in their own ways, morally impressive, transcending the unjust circumstances in which they find themselves in to treat each other as equals. Huck saves Jim’s life from two men looking for runaway slaves, and later Jim risks his chance at freedom to save Huck’s friend Tom. (...) I want to complicate the idea that Huck and Jim are morally commendable for what they do. More generally, I want to explore how oppression undermines the moral agency of the oppressed, and to some degree, the oppressor. In §1 I take a careful look at Jim’s choice, arguing that his enslavement compromises his moral agency. In §2 I show how Jim’s oppression also shapes the extent to which Huck can be praiseworthy for his action. In §3, I consider the consequences for thinking about the moral agency of the oppressed, and in §4 I explore the limitations of the concept of moral worth for theorizing in cases of oppression. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil: moral and natural. The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in cyberspace, (...) a new class of interesting and important examples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics. It is argued that this goes some way towards providing a methodological explanation of why cyberspace is central to so many of CE’s concerns; and it is shown how notions of good and evil can be formulated in cyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for an agent’s action to be morally good or evil can be determined even in the absence of biologically sentient participants and thus allows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil but conversely to ‘receive’ or ‘suffer from’ it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure, which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace in a formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve this purpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determined formally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approach is that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, and hence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively, in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics is proposed for that theory. It is argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its being non-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues such as AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a new perspective. In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

A well-ordered society faces a crisis whenever a sufficient number of noncompliers enter into the political system. This has the potential to destabilize liberal democratic political order. This article provides a formal analysis of two competing solutions to the problem of political stability offered in the public reason liberalism literature—namely, using public reason or using convergence discourse to restore liberal democratic political order in the well-ordered society. The formal analyses offered in this article show that using public reason fails completely, (...) and using convergent discourse, although doing better, has its own critical limitations that have not been previously recognized properly. (shrink)

The problem of other minds has a distinguished philosophical history stretching back more than two hundred years. Taken at face value, it is an epistemological question: it concerns how we can have knowledge of, or at least justified belief in, the existence of minds other than our own. In recent decades, philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists and primatologists have debated a related question: how we actually go about attributing mental states to others (regardless of whether we ever achieve knowledge or rational (...) justification in this domain). Until the mid-nineties, the latter debate – which sometimes goes under the name of the “mindreading” debate – was characterized by a fairly clear-cut opposition between two theoretical outlooks: “theory-theory” (TT) and “simulation theory” (ST). Theory-theorists typically argued that we attribute mental states to others on the basis of a “theory of mind” that is either constructed in early infancy and subsequently revised and modified (Gopnik 1996), or else is the result of maturation of innate mindreading “modules” (Baron-Cohen 1995). (shrink)

To become a public figure or celebrity, I claim, is to exist alongside a zombie version of yourself. This zombie shares the same name and physical likeness but operates independently of its flesh-and-blood counterpart. In fact, public figures do not have any special authority over the zombie version of themselves, and in some contexts, they enjoy less authority over their zombie counterparts than others do. In the US, for example, public figures are not legally entitled to protections against criticism (...) via parody, which can include unauthorized use of their likeness for offensive images, insulting jokes, and other forms of public mockery. As Michel Foucault observed, a work is entitled to become the “murderer” of its author, which suggests that the author’s name exists among the living dead. An artist’s works can bear their name yet operate independently of their attitudes or mental states. In June of 2019, the master rights to Taylor Swift’s first six albums were sold without her knowledge or consent, effectively “murdering” her rights as their author. Swift’s 2019 decision to re-record her first six studio albums can thus be understood as an act of institutional revenge, a way to get back at the people who have wielded power over her and the institutions that enable exploitation—a battle with her zombified works: the “stolen” original albums. In this chapter I sketch an institutional theory of celebrity names to explain the institutional, personal, and political significance of self-appropriation, using Taylor Swift’s act of re-recording her own music as a paradigm case. (shrink)

In philosophical discourse, the notion of freedom demands rigorous examination. Traditionally, a distinction has been made between negative freedom (freedom from external constraints that impede one's self-realization) and positive freedom (freedom to utilize one's own capabilities). In the essay "A Strange Freedom: New Meanings of Liberalism and Humanism in the 21st Century [De vreemde vrijheid. Nieuwe betekenissen van vrijzinnigheid en humanisme in de 21ste eeuw]," philosopher and theologian Laurens ten Kate proposes a conceptualization of freedom that transcends this traditional dichotomy. (...) This is a creative freedom that is no longer bound to self-realization, but manifests itself precisely at the moment when the self is called into question. -/- The approximately seventy-page essay was published by Sjibbolet Publishers, a small, independent publishing house that emphasizes hermeneutics and is mostly known for publishing several translations of Giorgio Agamben's works into Dutch. In addition to these translations, Sjibbolet also publishes original Dutch-language philosophical works that merit inclusion in this category. The name Sjibbolet is derived from the work of Jacques Derrida and denotes the boundary between the self and the other. As the title "The Strange Freedom" suggests, this essay also explores this boundary. It is an expanded version of Ten Kate's inaugural address, delivered upon accepting the chair of Liberal Religiosity and Humanism [Vrijzinnige religiositeit en humanism]. Two closely intertwined themes are central to the work: the liberal condition and alien freedom. -/- In the Dutch word "vrijzinnigheid [liberal]” the root word "vrijheid [freedom]" is already present, accompanied by the root word "zin [sense]." In the first part of his essay, Ten Kate focuses primarily on sense in relation to what he terms the liberal condition. He states, "Freedom is not primarily a choice of a particular philosophy of life, but a situation to which everyone participates to some extent and to which one must relate (...)." According to Ten Kate, this is the situation in which the meaning of human life is no longer given nor received from above, but must be constructed. (shrink)

Anton Marty (1847-1914) is known to be the most faithful pupil of Franz Brentano. As a matter of fact, most of his philosophical ideas find their source in the works of his master. Yet, the faithfulness of Marty is not constant. As the rich correspondence between the two thinkers shows, Marty elaborates an original theory of intentionality from ca. 1904 onward. This theory is based on the idea that intentionality is a process of mental assimilation (ideelle Verähnlichung), a process at (...) the core of which lies a sui generis relation of “ideal similitude” holding between a thinking subject and its object. This study spells out the Martyian notion of mental assimilation and traces back Marty’s evolution from his earlier position (prominently described in the recently published Deskriptive Psychologie of 1893-1894) to his final view as it is found in the Untersuchungen of 1908. It turns out that besides Brentano, Husserl is a key figure in that evolution. Such a “genetic”elucidation of Marty’s last theory is required in order to reach the main goal of this paper, namely: the clarification of Marty’s degree of dependence upon Brentano with respect to the theory of intentionality. That being said, we do not merely intend to compare the mature Marty with Brentano: our “genetic” considerations will also allow us to describe the interaction between the two thinkers before 1904. Accordingly, we begin by presenting Brentano’s own position on intentionality in discussing its two currently competing readings, namely the “discontinuist” and the “continuist” one. Against a recent interpretation, we argue that Marty’s endorsement of a “discontinuist” reading is not based on a misunderstanding of Brentano’s position. (shrink)

In the dynamic choice literature, temptations are usually understood as temporary shifts in an agent’s preferences. What has been puzzling about these cases is that, on the one hand, an agent seems to do better by her own lights if she does not give into the temptation, and does so without engaging in costly commitment strategies. This seems to indicate that it is instrumentally irrational for her to give into temptation. On the other hand, resisting temptation also requires her to (...) act contrary to the preferences she has at the time of temptation. But that seems to be instrumentally irrational as well. I here consider the two most prominent types of argument why resisting temptation could nevertheless be instrumentally rational, namely two-tier and intra-personal cooperation arguments. I establish that the arguments either fail or are redundant. In particular, the arguments fail under the pervasive assumption in both decision theory and the wider literature on practical rationality that the agent’s preferences over the objects of choice are themselves the standard of instrumental rationality. And they either still fail or they become redundant when we give up that assumption. (shrink)

The frequent use of the term ‘metaphilosophy’ and the corresponding research in the 1960s may lead to the conclusion that there has been a development of a new discipline, a formation of a new kind of philosophical discourse. Such questions as, “What is philosophy?”, “What kind of questions does philosophy ask?”, “Which methods does it adopt to answer them?” and “Is there progress in philosophy?” are put at the center of attention. They constitute a separate research field. Just as the (...) laws of logic, nature and natural sciences, epistemology, morals, freedom and law, philosophy is one of its own normal topics. Several sources of the need for metaphilosophy can be named, such as the re-orientation in philosophy due to its diversity and possible dissent within itself, justification of philosophy and its relevance against the backdrop of the progress in sciences, or the re-evaluation of a research tradition, such as analytic philosophy or phenomenology. The overall goal of metaphilosophy could be understood as the development of theoretical means for a better understanding of philosophy and for a better philosophical practice. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate where the boundaries of conscious mental life lie in Cavendish’s theory, and why. Cavendish argues for a wholly material yet wholly thinking universe. She claims that all matter is capable of “self-knowledge” and “perception” (OEP, p. 138), so that every part of nature “must have its own knowledge and perception, according to its own particular nature” (OEP, p. 141). It is unclear, however, whether the universal capacity of matter to know and perceive also implies the (...) presence of consciousness. I show that Cavendish’s use of the notions of “self-knowledge” and “perception” implies the attribution of consciousness to all bodies. I identify one condition under which the ubiquitous presence of consciousness is intuitively required in Cavendish’s system: namely the presence of intentional agency in every part of nature, which Cavendish conceives as necessary, alongside the capacity of self-motion, to account for the orderly behavior of any body. (shrink)

Both proponents and critics of the desire theory of welfare have narrowly focused on the positive side of the theory while virtually ignoring its negative side. On the positive side, the desire theorist says that getting what you want is good for you. But what should the desire theorist say is bad for you? A common and plausible-sounding answer is that if getting what you want is good for you, then surely not getting what you want is bad for you. (...) I argue that this answer is a mistake that would commit desire theorists to a claim that is implausible by their own lights, namely that a state of affairs could be bad for you even if you were not at all bothered by it. The desire theorist should instead say that getting what you are averse to is bad for you. If desire satisfaction is good for you, then aversion satisfaction, not desire frustration, is bad for you. (shrink)

Sophocles’ Oedipus the King is an extended meditation on the limits of human intelligence, or more precisely, on how a man renowned for the power of his intellect could fail to know the most important truths. One could argue, however, that Sophocles intended for his audiences to take away a second, narrower lesson: namely that divinely inspired seers such as Tiresias have a surer claim on truth than do those who, like Oedipus, seek to gain knowledge through their own efforts. (...) Thus, the Oedipus can be seen as a defense of prophecy and a reaction against the complex of scientific and philosophical ideas known as “the 5th-century Enlightenment.” I offer some support for this reading of the Oedipus. I also argue that part of the cultural background of the Oedipus consisted of ideas about knowledge introduced into Greek thought by the outspoken critic of Greek popular religion, Xenophanes of Colophon. (shrink)

The paper begins by reviewing two problems for fallibilism: the lottery problem, or the problem of explaining why fallible evidence, though otherwise excellent, is not enough to know that one will lose the lottery, and Gettier problems. It is then argued that both problems can be resolved if we note an important illocutionary force of knowledge attributions: namely, that when we attribute knowledge to someone we mean to give the person credit for getting things right. Alternatively, to say that a (...) person knows is to say that she got things right due to her own abilities, efforts and actions, rather than due to dumb luck, or blind chance, or something else. (shrink)

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY PRIZE for the best published book in the history of philosophy [Awarded in 2010] _______________ -/- Although it is widely recognized that David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) belongs among the greatest works of philosophy, there is little agreement about the correct way to interpret his fundamental intentions. It is an established orthodoxy among almost all commentators that skepticism and naturalism are the two dominant themes in this work. The difficulty has been, (...) however, that Hume's skeptical arguments and commitments appear to undermine and discredit his naturalistic ambition to contribute to "the science of man". This schism appears to leave his entire project broken-backed. The solution to this riddle depends on challenging another, closely related, point of orthodoxy: namely, that before Hume published the Treatise he removed almost all material concerned with problems of religion. Russell argues, contrary to this view, that irreligious aims and objectives are fundamental to the Treatise and account for its underlying unity and coherence. It is Hume's basic anti-Christian aims and objectives that serve to shape and direct both his skeptical and naturalistic commitments. When Hume's arguments are viewed from this perspective we can solve, not only puzzles arising from his discussion of various specific issues, we can also explain the intimate and intricate connections that hold his entire project together. This "irreligious" interpretation provides a comprehensive fresh account of the nature of Hume's fundamental aims and ambitions in the Treatise. It also presents a radically different picture of the way in which Hume's project was rooted in the debates and controversies of his own time, placing the Treatise in an irreligious or anti-Chrisitan philosophical tradition that includes Hobbes, Spinoza and freethinking followers. Considered in these terms, Hume's Treatise constitutes the crowning achievement of the Radical Enlightenment. (shrink)

Max Weber, who was a well-known sociologist both of his own time and of today, has been one of the most influential names – besides, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche - for Karl Jaspers, who is one of the original names that come into minds when the 20th-century existential philosophy is mentioned. In fact, it can easily be asserted that Weber had a huge personal role in Jaspers’ carrier as a philosopher. Karl Jaspers is known for his uniquely (...) discussed concepts such as freedom (Freiheit), communication (Kommunikation), Existenz, limit situations (Grenzsituationen), the encompassing (das Umgreifende), guilt (Schuld), and responsibility (Verantwortung). And it is obvious that Jaspers was affected by Weber considering his two specific concepts: guilt and responsibility. This is the case because Jaspers himself explains how and in what ways he was influenced by Weber. In this article, we will discuss Weber from the perspective of Jaspers. This discussion will be held in two aspects: i) personal features of Weber given by Jaspers, and ii) Weber’s effects on Jaspers from the viewpoint of Jaspers and what they share considering politics and ethics at the theoretical level. (shrink)

Physicians frequently ask whether they should give patients what they want, usually when there are considerations pointing against doing so, such as medicine’s values and physicians’ obligations. It has been argued that the source of medicine’s values and physicians’ obligations lies in what has been dubbed “the internal morality of medicine”: medicine is a practice with an end and norms that are definitive of this practice and that determine what physicians ought to do qua physicians. In this paper, I defend (...) the claim that medicine requires a morality that is internal to its practice, while rejecting the prevalent characterization of this morality and offering an alternative one. My approach to the internal morality of medicine is constructivist in nature: the norms of medicine are constructed by medical professionals, other professionals, and patients, given medicine’s end of “benefitting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care.” I make the case that patients should be involved in the construction of medicine’s morality not only because they have knowledge that is relevant to the internal morality of medicine—namely, their own values and preferences—but also because medicine is an inherently relational enterprise: in medicine the relationship between physician and patient is a constitutive component of the craft itself. The framework I propose provides an authoritative morality for medicine, while allowing for the incorporation, into that very morality, of qualified deference to patient values. (shrink)

Kant’s most prominent formulation of the Categorical Imperative, known as the Formula of Universal Law (FUL), is generally thought to demand that one act only on maxims that one can will as universal laws without this generating a contradiction. Kant's view is standardly summarized as requiring the 'universalizability' of one's maxims and described in terms of the distinction between 'contradictions in conception' and 'contradictions in the will'. Focusing on the underappreciated significance of the simultaneity condition included in the FUL, I (...) argue, by contrast, that the principle is better read as requiring that one be able to will two things simultaneously without self-contradiction, namely, that a maxim be one's own and that it be a universal law. This amounts to a new interpretation of the FUL with significant interpretive and philosophical advantages. (shrink)

In §12 of his 1837 magnum opus, the Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano remarks that “In the new logic textbooks one reads almost constantly that ‘in logic one must consider not the material of thought but the mere form of thought, for which reason logic deserves the title of a purely formal science’” (WL §12, 46).1 The sentence Bolzano quotes is his own summary of others’ philosophical views; he goes on to cite Jakob, Hoffbauer, Metz, and Krug as examples of thinkers who held (...) that logic abstracts from the matter of thought and considers only its form. Although Bolzano does not mention Kant by name here, Kant does of course hold that “pure general logic”, what Bolzano would consider logic in the traditional sense (the theory of propositions, representations, inferences, etc.), is formal. As Kant remarks in the Introduction to the 2nd edition of Kritik der reinen Vernunft , (pure general) logic is “justified in abstracting – is indeed obliged to abstract – from all objects of cognition and all of their differences; and in logic, therefore, the understanding has to do with nothing further than itself and its own form” (KrV, Bix).2. (shrink)

Under what conditions are two utterances utterances of the same word? What are words? That these questions have not received much attention is rather surprising: after all, philosophers and linguists frequently appeal to considerations about word and sentence identity in connection with a variety of puzzles and problems that are foundational to the very subject matter of philosophy of language and linguistics.1 Kaplan’s attention to words is thus to be applauded. And there is no doubt that his discussion contains many (...) useful insights. Nevertheless, we find his picture deeply flawed for a variety of crosscutting reasons. Our aim in this paper is to further advance an understanding of the nature of words, both by remedying the problems with Kaplan’s account, and also by achieving a suitable perspective on what the metaphysical investigation of word identity can hope to achieve. Our discussion divides into four parts. In Part One, we examine and critique Kaplan’s discussion of a contrast integral to his own account: that between the type-token and the stage-continuant conceptions of words. In Part Two, we present three constraints on any account of words and two further themes in Kaplan’s discussion central to his conception of words – the role of repetition and the constitutive authority of intentions. While these ideas have laudable motivations, we argue they are far from the best way of making good on the insights that drive them. The final two sections take a skeptical turn. In Part Three, we express doubt about Kaplan’s presumption of the importance of what he calls ‘common currency names’, thus raising a suspicion that he may be in pursuit of chimera. Finally, in Part Four, we express pessimism about whether interesting answers to question above will be forthcoming, and suggest that the legitimacy of our word ontology need not depend on the availability of such answers. Along the way, we tease apart a number of metaphysical questions in the vicinity of the topic of word individuation – questions that are often not disentangled – and consider how the discussion of the previous parts bears on them.. (shrink)

Thus far most of the scholarship on the axial age has followed Karl Jaspers’ denial that nature could be a significant source and continuing influence in the historical development of human consciousness. Yet more than a half century before Jaspers, the originator of the first nuanced theory of what Jaspers termed the axial age, John Stuart-Glennie, mapped out a contrasting philosophy of history that allowed a central role to nature in historical human development. This essay concerns issues related to my (...) book, From the Axial Age to the Moral Revolution, and begins with a discussion of how I came to uncover the forgotten work of John Stuart-Glennie. Although Jaspers and Stuart-Glennie each drew similar conclusions regarding many of the facts of the moral revolution respectively the Axial Age, there are significant differences in their philosophies of history, concerning, for example the problem, whether history can be regarded deterministically or as an open whole, and whether nature can be a source of profound spiritual significance and even transcendence or whether that realm is limited to historical consciousness. I also briefly discuss two other overlooked contributors, namely D. H. Lawrence, who wrote on the phenomena twenty years before Jaspers, and Lewis Mumford, who is one of the first writers to draw from Jaspers' work. I then respond to four diverse scholarly essays on my book, delineating in the process my own philosophy of history as a progress in precision, paradoxically counteracted by a regressive contraction of mind. (shrink)

This book examines the epistemic function of perception and the relation between language and conceptual thought, and provides new ways of conceptualizing the Buddhist defense of the reflexivity thesis of consciousness: namely, that each cognitive event is to be understood as involving a pre-reflective implicit awareness of its own occurrence.

More than thirty-five years after its first release in 1971, Don McLean’s “American Pie” still resonates deeply with music listeners and consumers of popular culture. In a 2001 public poll sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America, McLean’s eight-and-a-half-minute masterpiece was ranked number 5 among the 365 “most memorable” songs of the twentieth century. In 2002, the song was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1997, Garth brooks performed “American Pie” (...) at a concert in Central Park, and in 2000, pop icon Madonna performed her own version of “American Pie” on the soundtrack of her movie The Next Best Thing. In 1999, American Pie became the title of a popular – and irreverently comical – coming-of-age movie starring Jason Biggs (the movie American Pie was followed by American Pie 2 in 2001, American Wedding in 2003, and American Pie Present – Band Camp in 2005). Like the movie to which it lent its name, the song “American Pie” presents a coming-of-age narrative; and, also like the movie, the song appealed strongly and immediately to its contemporary audience. Three months after its release in November of 1971, the song reached the number one slot on the charts in January of 1972, and it remained in the Top 40 for a total of seventeen weeks (longer than any other single during the year of 1972). Unlike the movie, however, the song “American Pie” is highly nuanced and sophisticated, containing multiple allusions and layers of meaning which challenge and heighten our understanding of rock ’n’ roll music and the possibility of self-reflection and self-critique in popular culture. (shrink)

There is a certain metaphor that has enjoyed tremendous longevity in the evolution of ageing literature. According to this metaphor, nature has a certain goal or purpose, the perpetuation of the species, or, alternatively, the reproductive success of the individual. In relation to this goal, the individual organism has a function, job, or task, namely, to breed and, in some species, to raise its brood to maturity. On this picture, those who cannot, or can no longer, reproduce are somehow invisible (...) to, or even dispensable to, the evolutionary process. Here, I argue that the metaphor should be discarded, not on the grounds that it is a metaphor, but on the grounds that this particular metaphor distorts our understanding of the evolution of ageing. One reason the metaphor is problematic is that it frames senescence and death as nature’s verdict on the value of older individuals. Instead, we should explore a different metaphor: the lengthy post-reproductive period in humans and some other animals is not an accident of culture, but designed by nature for the purpose of supporting and guiding younger generations. On this alternate picture, different stages of life have their own evolutionary rationales, their distinctive design features, their special mandates. (shrink)

In order to select an area of ignorance and make it the target of inquiry, one first has to be aware of one’s own lack of knowledge in this particular area. In this paper, I explore this connection between ignorance and the aims of research. I emphasize the importance of distinguishing between all the things we don’t know—our total ignorance—and the totality of what we know we don’t know—our conscious ignorance. I argue that while our total ignorance may be conceptualized (...) as a set of true propositions that are unknown to us, our conscious ignorance is best understood as a set of questions. This enables us to identify the preconditions that have to be satisfied in order for a question to be an element of our conscious ignorance. The analysis reveals that conscious ignorance is a complex ability that can often require quite an amount of knowledge and competence. Items of conscious ignorance can, of course, differ in many important respects. To stress one of these differences, I introduce the notion of deep ignorance to signify cases in which we not only fail to know the correct answer to a given question, but cannot even name any plausible candidate answers. I argue that items of deep ignorance should be expected to possess particular attractiveness as targets of research (provided they are not entirely intractable). Finally, I suggest that in light of my analysis, some of the strategies of ignorance-mongers that have engaged agnotologists’ interests over the past years can be understood as attempts to undermine not only knowledge, but also conscious ignorance at the same time—or, in cases where that is not possible, to at least counteract the impression that the ignorance in question is deep. (shrink)