Nigeria agriculture, food security and dietary intake have not been exempted from the disruptions in countless sectors around the world due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The country first experienced the outbreak on February 27, 2020, and the experience since then has shown negative effects not only on the socioeconomic conditions but also on agriculture, food security and dietary intake. Long term in-depth analysis of the effects of this pandemic on food security and dietary intake using quantitative data is still (...) very difficult due to paucity of data and the great level of the improbability of the trajectory of the spread of the Virus. This study is a rapid assessment of the short and long-term potential effects of the disease. It relied on a review of situation reports especially by the Nigeria Centre of Disease Control and other reports around the world on COVID-19, personal observations, and public opinion via mobile telephone survey of Lagos and Oyo States, Nigeria. Findings show that food demand and supply shocks caused by COVID-19 outbreak affect agriculture, food and dietary intake negatively through COVID-19 policies. It leads to a reduction in household income coupled with hike in food prices. Owing to the Nigeria’s crude farming practice, there was a scarcity of hired labour required for production process during 2020 farming season. This implies a high likelihood of low output and further surge in food prices in the future. Food access was also compromised with the accumulation of unsold fresh produce by the smallholder farmers and the low salary earners during movement restrictions and of loss income as a result of international border closure. Food and dietary intake is affected as people are shifting diets to more affordable and low quality foods, while food stability is not guaranteed due to market insecurity, prompting an extraordinary level of indecision. The study concludes that the shock of COVID-19 is not only a demand management problem but a multidimensional crisis requiring monetary, fiscal, and health policy responses with global collaboration and cooperation. (shrink)

Perception and intuition are our basic sources of knowledge. They are also capacities we deliberately improve in ways that draw on our knowledge. Elijah Chudnoff explores how this happens, developing an account of the epistemology of expert perception and expert intuition, and a rationalist view of the role of intuition in philosophy.

Late British Empiricism was a research project built around a two-part psychological theory: that thoughts represent their objects by qualitatively resembling them and that thought proceeds by traversing associative links between ideas. The work of Hume, and then of Mill, were the project's highwater marks ; twentieth-century philosophers no longer find the psychology convincing. The problem, as far as the philosophers were concerned, was not so much that the account seemed false upon introspection, nor that the discipline of psychology had (...) itself moved on, but that the psychological theory did not make good on its explanatory obligations: most importantly, a thought's being a mental picture is not a satisfactory account of why it has the content it does. But this reason for rejecting Empiricist psychology, that it could not do its assigned philosophical job, leaves open the possibility of minds for which it is nonetheless a satisfactory description. (shrink)

Elijah Chudnoff elaborates and defends a view of intuition according to which intuition purports to, and reveals, how matters stand in abstract reality by making us aware of that reality through the intellect. He explores the experience of having an intuition; justification for beliefs that derives from intuition; and contact with abstract reality.

Moral distress is now being recognized as a frequent experience for many health care providers, and there's good evidence that it has a negative impact on the health care work environment. However, contemporary discussions of moral distress have several problems. First, they tend to rely on inadequate characterizations of moral distress. As a result, subsequent investigations regarding the frequency and consequences of moral distress often proceed without a clear understanding of the phenomenon being discussed, and thereby risk substantially misrepresenting the (...) nature, frequency, and possible consequences of moral distress. These discussions also minimize the intrinsically harmful aspects of moral distress. This is a serious omission. Moral distress doesn't just have a negative impact on the health care work environment; it also directly harms the one who experiences it. In this paper, I claim that these problems can be addressed by first clarifying our understanding of moral distress, and then identifying what makes moral distress intrinsically harmful. I begin by identifying three common mistakes that characterizations of moral distress tend to make, and explaining why these mistakes are problematic. Next, I offer an account of moral distress that avoids these mistakes. Then, I defend the claim that moral distress is intrinsically harmful to the subject who experiences it. I conclude by explaining how acknowledging this aspect of moral distress should reshape our discussions about how best to deal with this phenomenon. (shrink)

Phenomenology is about subjective aspects of the mind, such as the conscious states associated with vision and touch, and the conscious states associated with emotions and moods, such as feelings of elation or sadness. These states have a distinctive first-person ‘feel’ to them, called their phenomenal character. In this respect they are often taken to be radically different from mental states and processes associated with thought. This is the first book to fully question this orthodoxy and explore the prospects of (...) cognitive phenomenology, applying phenomenology to the study of thought and cognition. Does cognition have its own phenomenal character? Can introspection tell us either way? If consciousness flows in an unbroken ‘stream’ as William James argued, how might a punctuated sequence of thoughts fit into it? Elijah Chudnoff begins with a clarification of the nature of the debate about cognitive phenomenology and the network of concepts and theses that are involved in it. He then examines the following topics: • Introspection and knowledge of our own thoughts • Phenomenal contrast arguments • The value of consciousness • The temporal structure of experience • The holistic character of experience and the interdependence of sensory and cognitive states • The relationship between phenomenal character and mental representation -/- Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading, and a glossary, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a clear and informative introduction to and assessment of cognitive phenomenology, whether philosophy student or advanced researcher. It will also be valuable reading for those in related subjects such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and epistemology. (shrink)

__Hard Truths__ is a groundbreaking new work in which noted philosopher Elijah Millgram advances a new approach to truth and its role in our day-to-day reasoning. Takes up the hard truths of real reasoning and draws out their implications for logic and metaphysics Introduces and takes issue with prevailing views of the purpose of truth and the way we reason, including deflationism about truth, possible worlds treatments of modality, and antipsychologism in philosophy of logic Develops philosophically ambitious ideas in (...) a style accessible to non-specialists Will make us rethink the place of metaphysics in our daily lives. (shrink)

Human beings have always been specialists, but over the past two centuries division of labor has become deeper, ubiquitous, and much more fluid. The form it now takes brings in its wake a series of problems that are simultaneously philosophical and practical, having to do with coordinating the activities of experts in different disciplines who do not understand one another. Because these problems are unrecognized, and because we do not have solutions for them, we are on the verge of an (...) age in which decisions that depend on understanding more than one discipline at a time will be made badly. Since so many decisions do require multidisciplinary knowledge, these philosophical problems are urgent.Some of the puzzles that have traditionally been on philosophers' agendas have to do with intellectual devices developed to handle less extreme forms of specialization. Two of these, necessity and the practical `ought', are given extended treatment in Elijah Millgram's The Great Endarkenment. In this collection of essays, both previously published and new, Millgram pays special attention to ways a focus on cognitive function reframes familiar debates in metaethics and metaphysics. Consequences of hyperspecialization for the theory of practical rationality, for our conception of agency, and for ethics are laid out and discussed. An Afterword considers whether and how philosophers can contribute to solving the very pressing problems created by contemporary division of labor."These always interesting, often brilliant, and contentious essays focus on the question of how we need to reason practically, if we are to flourish, given Millgram's account of our human nature and of the environments that we inhabit. The originality of his thought is matched by his clarity and his wit."--Alasdair MacIntyre, University of Notre Dame. (shrink)

I am going to argue that linking Hume’s name with instrumentalism is as inappropriate as linking Aristotle’s: that, as a matter of textual point, the Hume of the Treatise is not an instrumentalist at all, and that the view of practical reasoning that he does have is incompatible with, and far more minimal than, instrumentalism. Then I will consider Hume’s reasons for his view, and argue that they make sense when they are seen against the background of his semantic theory. (...) And finally, I will try to say why it is that Hume has nonetheless been read as he has. (shrink)

Ethics Done Right examines how practical reasoning can be put into the service of ethical and moral theory. Elijah Millgram shows that the key to thinking about ethics is to understand generally how to make decisions. The papers in this volume support a methodological approach and trace the connections between two kinds of theory in utilitarianism, in Kantian ethics, in virtue ethics, in Hume's moral philosophy, and in moral particularism. Unlike other studies of ethics, Ethics Done Right does not (...) advocate a particular moral theory. Rather, it offers a tool that enables one to decide for oneself. (shrink)

The Gettier Problem is the problem of revising the view that knowledge is justified true belief in a way that is immune to Gettier counter-examples. The “Gettier Problem problem”, according to Lycan, is the problem of saying what is misguided about trying to solve the Gettier Problem. In this paper I take up the Gettier Problem problem. I distinguish giving conditions that are necessary and sufficient for knowledge from giving conditions that explain why one knows when one does know. I (...) argue that the problem with the Gettier Problem is that it requires us to articulate conditions that suffice for knowledge even if those conditions are non-explanatory. After defending this view, I take up two related methodological issues, one about the evidence that can be given in favor of an account of knowledge, and one about the role that investigating justification might play in investigating knowledge. (shrink)

John Searle claims that social-scientific laws are impossible because social phenomena are physically open-ended. William Butchard and Robert D’Amico have recently argued that, by Searle’s own lights, money is a social phenomena that is physically closed. However, Butchard and D’Amico rely on a limited set of data in order to draw this conclusion, and fail to appreciate the implications of Searle’s theory of social ontology with regard to the physical open-endedness of money. Money is not physically open-ended in the strong (...) sense that Butchard and D’Amico require, and their argument for the possibility of social-scientific laws fails as a result. (shrink)

There is a felt difference between following an argument to its conclusion and keeping up with an argument in your judgments while failing to see how its conclusion follows from its premises. In the first case there’s what I’m calling an inferential seeming, in the second case there isn’t. Inferential seemings exhibit a cluster of functional and normative characteristics whose integration in one mental state is puzzling. Several recent accounts of inferring suggest inferential seemings play a significant role in the (...) process, but none provides a fully satisfactory understanding of inferential seemings themselves. In this paper I critically examine theoretical options on offer in the existing literature, then develop an alternative view. I discuss implications for recent debates about general principles governing inference, such as Fumerton’s Principle of Inferential Justification and Boghossian’s Taking Condition. (shrink)

Experiences justify beliefs about our environment. Sometimes the justification is immediate: seeing a red light immediately justifies believing there is a red light. Other times the justification is mediate: seeing a red light justifies believing one should brake in a way that is mediated by background knowledge of traffic signals. How does this distinction map onto the distinction between what is and what isn't part of the content of experience? Epistemic egalitarians think that experiences immediately justify whatever is part of (...) their content. Epistemic elitists deny this and think that there is some further constraint the contents of experience must satisfy to be immediately justified. Here I defend epistemic elitism, propose a phenomenological account of what the further constraint is, and explore the resulting view's consequences for our knowledge of other minds, and in particular for perceptual theories of this knowledge. (shrink)

This essay explores the validity of Gregory Boyd’s open theistic account of the nature of the future. In particular, it is an investigation into whether Boyd’s logical square of opposition for future contingents provides a model of reality for free will theists that can preserve both bivalence and a classical conception of omniscience. In what follows, I argue that it can.

First impressions suggest the following contrast between perception and memory: perception generates new beliefs and reasons, justification, or evidence for those beliefs; memory preserves old beliefs and reasons, justification, or evidence for those beliefs. In this paper, I argue that reflection on perceptual learning gives us reason to adopt an alternative picture on which perception plays both generative and preservative epistemic roles.

What I have tried to do is elicit and disarm the motivations most likely to give rise to the [counterexamples to the principle crucial to Williams' argument]. Only one of these motivations is still viable: the instrumentalist theory of practical reasoning. But because internalism and instrumentalism are, as it has turned out, so very tightly linked, in disarming the motivations for the objection, I have also inventoried, and given reason to reject, what I have found to be the most common (...) conversationally adduced defences of instrumentalism: the appeals to imagination, to dispositional desires, and so on. The issue remaining from the debate over internalism turns out to be whether [instrumentalism is false---i.e. whether] there are patterns of practical inference that are not directed toward the satisfaction of desire. (shrink)

This paper is a result of a remarks delivered at the 2014 conference of the Florida Philosophical Association during a book symposium on Elijah Chudnoff's Intuition.

Choosing the right plan is often choosing the more coherent plan: but what is coherence? We argue that coherence-directed practical inference ought to be represented computationally. To that end, we advance a theory of deliberative coherence, and describe its implementation in a program modelled on Thagard's ECHO. We explain how the theory can be tested and extended, and consider its bearing on instrumentalist accounts of practical rationality.

Menopause, with its physical and emotional changes, appears to be an inevitable road for women to travel. The moment of choice for women at menopause involves not only whether they will embrace the new self or try to cling to identities from earlier life but also how the society in which they live views women after menopause. Amongst other things, many African marriages face difficulties when the moment of menopause arrives. This situation is often characterised by a second marriage or (...) a situation where husband and wife no longer share a room. Whenever this happens, it testifies to the idea that the sole purpose of marriage amongst African people is procreation - hence, when the period for that is passed, the bedroom setup changes. This is one of the ways in which senior women are deemed unfit for sexual encounters, a gender-equality concern. This article aims to unveil and discuss how some Africans use menopause as an excuse to exclude women from sexual intercourse, and how pastoral caregivers can help in such situations. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5.

Would the Ontological Argument Greater Than Which None Can Be Conceived proue the existence of God? Might an ontological argument prove the actuality of the world (as Robert Nozick once suggested)? Should you believe that you’re actual, even if you’re not? And what happens if we attempt to answer these questions, having adopted Nozick’s mature view of the function of argument?

The inception of democracy in South Africa faced the oppression of women as one of the challenges. The duty to improve women’s position in society is not the responsibility of a few people alone, but of everyone. According to the researcher, the church has not done enough pastorally in this regard. In denouncing the oppression of women, the Christian community should also support the victims of abuse. This article intends to unmask collusion with patriarchal societies including the Jewish society in (...) Jesus’ time by mapping out the forms of harassment and embarrassment inflicted upon women. The study shows how pastoral care can help victims of oppression. A re-reading of John 8:1–11 will inform the, how can the verses above be used in counselling the victims of gender oppression. This study will formulate pastoral guidelines from Jesus’ response to the Pharisees, the Scribes and the woman. (shrink)

According to the most popular non-skeptical views about intuition, intuitions justify beliefs because they are based on understanding. More precisely: if intuiting that p justifies you in believing that p it does so because your intuition is based on your understanding of the proposition that p. The aim of this paper is to raise some challenges for accounts of intuitive justification along these lines. I pursue this project from a non-skeptical perspective. I argue that there are cases in which intuiting (...) that p justifies you in believing that p, but such that there is no compelling reason to think this is because your intuition is based on your understanding of the proposition that p. (shrink)

You can be convinced that something is true but still desire to see it for yourself. A trusted critic makes some observations about a movie, now you want to watch it with them in mind. A proof demonstrates the validity of a formula, but you are not satisfied until you see how the formula works. In these cases, we place special value on knowing by what Sosa (2021) calls “firsthand insight” a truth that we might already know in some other (...) way such as by testimony, the balance of evidence, or proof. This phenomenon raises two questions. First, what is the nature of firsthand insight? Second, what value motivates us to pursue firsthand insight when other kinds of knowledge are readily available? In the two central parts of this paper, I develop answers to these questions. I argue that firsthand insight that a proposition is true is knowledge based on experience of what makes that proposition true, and I argue that desires for firsthand insight are motivated by concerns with alienation. In a concluding section, I briefly illustrate how the resulting view of the nature and value of firsthand insight might bear on broader topics in the theory of value. (shrink)

Dogmatists and phenomenal conservatives think that if it perceptually seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. Increasingly, writers about these views have argued that perceptual seemings are composed of two other states: a sensation followed by a seeming. In this article we critically examine this movement. First we argue that there are no compelling reasons to think of perceptual seemings as so composed. Second we argue that even if they were (...) so composed, this underlying disunity in metaphysical or psychological structure would fall below the threshold of epistemic significance. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational phenomenology as it occurs perception, (...) and I make a case for thinking that it is present in a wide variety of logical, mathematical, and philosophical intuitions. (shrink)

I argue that complete metaphysical grounds need not amount to metaphysically sufficient conditions for what they ground. I presented this at the Pacific APA in 2011. A version was R&Red somewhere but I never got around to Ring it, so it remains unpublished. It is cited every once in a while, so I'm uploading it here.

What are intuitions? According to doxastic views, they are doxastic attitudes or dispositions, such as judgments or inclinations to make judgments. According to perceptualist views, they are—like perceptual experiences—pre-doxastic experiences that—unlike perceptual experiences—represent abstract matters as being a certain way. In this paper I argue against doxasticism and in favor of perceptualism. I describe two features that militate against doxasticist views of perception itself: perception is belief-independent and perception is presentational. Then I argue that intuitions also have both features. The (...) upshot is that intuitions are importantly similar to perceptual experiences, and so should not be identified with doxastic attitudes or dispositions. I consider a popular argument from the introspective absence of sui generis intuition experiences in favor of doxasticism. I develop a conception of intuition experiences that helps to defuse this argument. (shrink)

According to proponents of irreducible cognitive phenomenology some cognitive states put one in phenomenal states for which no wholly sensory states suffice. One of the main approaches to defending the view that there is irreducible cognitive phenomenology is to give a phenomenal contrast argument. In this paper I distinguish three kinds of phenomenal contrast argument: what I call pure—represented by Strawson's Jack/Jacques argument—hypothetical—represented by Kriegel's Zoe argument—and glossed—first developed here. I argue that pure and hypothetical phenomenal contrast arguments face significant (...) difficulties, but that there is a sound glossed phenomenal contrast argument for irreducible cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)

Among the crimes in the South African black townships, mob justice has become a growing concern. Some questions that need to be asked are: Is our police force doing enough to protect the ordinary citizens of this country? If the situation continues, will all suspects be killed in the same manner or will there be a solution to change the situation? What is the impact of mob justice on the families of the victims and the witnesses of the brutal acts? (...) How long are we going to live as a traumatised nation as a result of these violent acts? Is there any hope that our nation will ever have the peace it deserves in the context of democracy? This article intends to investigate the impact of the mob justice system and find out what the role of the Christian church should be in the midst of this escalating violence. This study aims to unveil the negative impact of mob justice on the lives of many township South Africans and giving pastoral-biblical suggestions of the church's role in the elimination of this kind of brutality. (shrink)

Here are four examples of “seeing.” You see that something green is wriggling. You see that an iguana is in distress. You see that someone is wrongfully harming an iguana. You see that torturing animals is wrong. The first is an example of low-level perception. You visually represent color and motion. The second is an example of high-level perception. You visually represent kind properties and mental properties. The third is an example of moral perception. You have an impression of moral (...) properties. The fourth is an example of intuition. You intellectually grasp a general moral truth. Should moral perceptions be thought of as high-level perceptions or as intuitions? Most proponents of moral perception have thought of them as high-level perceptions. I give epistemological and methodological reasons for thinking that at least some are examples of what I call low-level intuitions—experiences in which we both apprehend abstract generalities and apply them to concrete particulars. (shrink)

A wave of recent philosophical work on practical rationality is organized by the following implicit argument: Practical reasoning is figuring out what to do; to do is to act; so the forms of practical inference can be derived from the structure or features of action. Now it is not as though earlier work, in analytic philosophy, had failed to register the connection between action and practical rationality; in fact, practical reasoning was usually picked out as, roughly, reasoning directed toward action. (...) But for much of the twentieth century, attention moved quickly away from this initial delineation of the subject area, to the interplay of beliefs and desires within the mind (Humean theories, including their Davidsonian and Williamsian variants), or to procedures for checking that a plan of action was supported by sufficient yet consistent reasons (Kantian theories), or to the ultrarefined sensibilities of the practically intelligent reasoner (Aristotelian theories). The hallmark of the emerging family of treatments to be surveyed here is, first, the sustained attention paid to answering the question, "What does it take to be an action (at all)?", and second, the use made of a distinction between full-fledged action and its lesser relatives. (Characterizations and terminology vary, but often the less robust alternative is called "mere activity" or "mere behavior".) Very schematically, these arguments for a theory of practical reasoning try to show that reasons brought to bear on choice must have some particular logical form, if action is not to lapse into something less than that. (shrink)

A blindfolded clairvoyant walks into a room and immediately knows how it is arranged. You walk in and immediately see how it is arranged. Though both of you represent the room as being arranged in the same way, you have different experiences. Your experience doesn’t just represent that the room is arranged a certain way; it also visually presents the very items in the room that make that representation true. Call the felt aspect of your experience made salient by this (...) contrast its presentational phenomenology. Many philosophers have observed that perceptual experiences have presentational phenomenology. In this paper I explore its nature, scope, and significance. I argue that in addition to perceptual experiences, presentational phenomenology can be found in intuitive, introspective, imaginative, and recollective experiences. I also argue that presentational phenomenology is epistemologically significant: it plays a central role in explaining why the experiences that have it justify beliefs and give us knowledge. (shrink)

The contemporary philosophical debate over practical reasoning---over how one ought to figure out what to do---has been almost entirely focused on whether there is more to it than means-ends reasoning. But a prior and very difficult question has to do with why instrumental deliberation is so important an aspect of our cognitive life. I consider an answer broached by Harry Frankfurt, that having ends is the alternative to being literally bored out of one’s mind, and adapt an argument from John (...) Stuart Mill’s political and psychological writings to show what more there is to not being bored than just having something to aim for. (shrink)

Itself a pleasure to read, this book is full of inventive arguments and conveys Millgram's bold thesis with elegance and force.