This book revisits the encounter between Chinese and Western philosophy while unfolding questions about the way "comparative philosophy" is conducted today. In the vulgate of intellectual history, "Western thought" has constructed a substantialist view of reality that puts "relations" and "processes" into a subordinate position. The same view explains for the primacy given to the autonomy of individual beings. In contrast, according to the same vulgate, Chinese thought has been mainly stressing the fluidity of all phenomena and forms of life (...) so as to best adapt to their overarching patterns. I label such vision the Disneyland of comparative philosophy. It deciphers texts, partly in function of concepts that it extracts from them, partly according to notions that are superimposed over these texts. The two first chapters are focused upon the Western version of the "Disneyland of comparative philosophy." The third chapter shifts to Chinese narratives about local, comparative and global philosophies. In contrast to these approaches, the fourth chapter offers a blueprint as to the way to engage different philosophical traditions into tasks they define and share together. A last chapter presents four cases of ongoing transcultural philosophical dialogues and the promises they bear. Once it develops outside pre-formatted narratives, the web shaped by our philosophies and wisdoms suggests the outlines of a world that we could inhabit together. (shrink)

In this book, Benoît Dubreuil explores the creation and destruction of hierarchies in human evolution. Combining the methods of archaeology, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience and primatology, he offers a natural history of hierarchies from the point of view of both cultural and biological evolution. This volume explains why dominance hierarchies typical of primate societies disappeared in the human lineage and why the emergence of large-scale societies during the Neolithic period implied increased social differentiation, the creation of status hierarchies, and, eventually, (...) political centralisation. (shrink)

Je voudrais d'abord remercier Kai Nielsen d'avoir bien voulu me communiquer, deux semaines avant cette rencontre, le texte de son exposé. Cela m'a donné le temps d'absorber le choc de sa critique, de préparer une réplique qui soit autre chose qu'une riposte et puisse contribuer à clarifier quelque peu le débat dans lequel nous sommes tous deux engagés.

This volume offer a manifold approach to a less evident and until now much neglected undercurrent in the work of Hannah Arendt., namely her ambiguous relation to the Judeo-Christian relligious heritage. Arendt's dissertation was dedicated to the concept of love in the works of Augustine, where she set her tone and developmed her frame for approaching theological matters. Her understanding of secularity might provide a model for the reconciliation of secularization and the persistence of religious belief in the contemporary world. (...) Thought Hannah Arendt wad certainly and outspokenly a secular thinker, her work also harbors ways of understanding secularization as the possibility of a new, maybe even messianic, attitude towards finite life and earthly reality. She famously depicts this attitude as "faith in and hope for the world". --Book cover. (shrink)

When one tries to determine what the iconic dimension of thought consists in for Peirce and what its range is, one might have the impression that his remarks on this matter are inconsistent. For instance, on the one hand he writes the following: Remember it is by icons only that we really reason, and abstract statements are valueless in reasoning except so far as they aid us to construct diagrams. The sectaries of the opinion I am combating seem, on the (...) contrary, to suppose that reasoning is performed with abstract "judgments," and that an icon is of use only as enabling me to frame abstract statements as premisses. In an apparently similar fashion, Peirce argues that the predicate of a... (shrink)

Introduction: the Study of Argumentation Although our overall organization of the readings suggests one way of dividing our selected literature, ...

The recent literature on social norms has stressed the centrality of emotions in explaining punishment and norm enforcement. This article discusses four negative emotions (righteous anger, indignation, contempt, and disgust) and examines their relationship to punitive behavior. I argue that righteous anger and indignation are both punitive emotions strictly speaking, but induce punishments of different intensity and have distinct elicitors. Contempt and disgust, for their part, cannot be straightforwardly considered punitive emotions, although they often blend with a colder form of (...) indignation to favor low-cost, indirect, and collective forms of punishment such as mockery, exclusion, and ostracism. (shrink)

The Prometheus myth has long now provided inspiration for those who envision solutions to environmental issues. Prometheus is the figure par excellence of human forethought and progress in the anthropocene. In this article, we introduce the concept of ambient Prometheanism to describe the way of thinking that foregrounds foresight and anticipation and advances technological solutions developed by capital and energy-intensive projects. We question this stance, arguing that ambient Prometheanism, with its emphasis on technofix, leads to the economisation and depoliticisation of (...) planetary environmental issues. Following Bernard Stiegler, we recover from the myth the figure of Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, as well as his associated faculty, epimetheia to theorise what we call an ‘Epimethean politics’. Thinking the anthropocene from the perspective of ambient Prometheanism and Epimetheanism means to consider the role of technology in climate politics, and in particular to make the case for the importance of afterthought in face of unintended consequences and accumulated errors. To substantiate our argument, we outline the challenge posed by emerging solutions focussed on technological intensification and socio-economic acceleration. An Epimethean politics of the climate requires to use reflexivity as a capacity to anticipate, but also to mobilise epimetheia to account for accidents and past mistakes. Such a politics builds from an alternative conception of technology, one that radically differs from ambient Prometheanism. Finally we read as actualisations of Epimethean politics contemporary eco-political struggles and their imperatives for multispecies living and convivial livelihoods. (shrink)

The progressive dominance of historical-critical methods in the reading of ancient Chinese classics has led scholars to privilege micro levels of textual analysis. Consequently, the question as to whether laws of composition could be identified in this corpus has often been ignored, or considered irrelevant. Working on Chinese number symbolism as well as on rules governing “ring composition” in other cultural contexts, this article aims at fashioning anew the question of the possibility of an ancient Chinese “structural rhetoric” and at (...) envisioning the patterns that might have governed it. It specifically applies the approach it propounds to Huainanzi 淮南子, showing how numerology frames its structure and argument, the text being built after the image of the “roundness” of the Way and of the Ruler. It then endeavors to apply these results to the unearthing of “inter-structural” patterns that would help us to locate Huainanzi, Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋, the versions at hand of Zhuangzi 莊子, Lunyu 論語, or yet Laozi 老子 into a textual universe that shares correlated rhetorical features. (shrink)

There clearly seems to be something problematic with certain forms of epistemic dependence. However, it has proved surprisingly difficult to articulate what this problem is exactly. My aim in this paper is to make clear when it is problematic to rely on others or on artefacts and technologies that are external to us for the acquisition and maintenance of our beliefs, and why. In order to do so, I focus on the neuromedia thought experiment. After having rejected different ways in (...) which one might want to capture the intuition in question, I argue that this device deprives us of understanding and therefore of the most valuable epistemic good. I then address the question of whether the moral of the story is that we should not develop, be equipped with, or use devices such as the neuromedia. (shrink)

Resumo: Se Nietzsche critica o próprio conceito de verdade, ele emprega, no entanto, com muita regularidade essa expressão, como em Ecce homo e em O Anticristo. Apontar essa tensão é insuficiente: há uma contradição ou antes uma polissemia? Este estudo, que distingue o perspectivismo e o relativismo, examina os diferentes sentidos de “verdade” na obra de Nietzsche a fim de construir uma resposta a essa questão. Ela mostra que a verdade depende da interpretação em busca de justiça, ainda que essa (...) orientação continue problemática.: Though Nietzsche critiques the very concept of truth, he nonetheless uses the word very regularly, even in such late texts as Ecce Homo or The Antichrist. Merely taking note of this tension is not enough: is it contradictory, or rather a case of polysemy? This study, which distinguishes, along the way, between perspectivism and relativism, examines the different meanings of “truth” in Nietzsche’s work, so as to figure out an answer to this question. It shows that truth is a matter of interpretation in search of justice, even if this movement itself remains something of a problem. (shrink)

This paper deals with the philosophical purpose of the Gorgias. I argue that this dialogue, both in its form and content, yields a dramatic demonstration that the success of the Socratic inquiry depends on the character of his interlocutors and their sense of what is shameful or not. To read the Gorgias is to inquire whether Socrates’ refutations have demonstrated anything. Although there is no definition of justice, happiness or the art of rhetoric, the dialogue nevertheless shows that justice and (...) trustworthiness concern both the practitioners of rhetoric and those of dialectic. (shrink)

Research has demonstrated that people readily pay more attention to negative than to positive and/or neutral stimuli. However, evidence from recent studies indicated that such an attention bias to negative information is not obligatory but sensitive to various factors. Two experiments using intergroup evaluative tasks (Study 1: a gender-related groups evaluative task and Study 2: a minimal-related groups evaluative task) was conducted to determine whether motivation to strive for a positive social identity - a part of one's self-concept - drives (...) attention toward affective stimuli. Using the P1 component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as a neural index of attention, we confirmed that attention bias toward negative stimuli is not mandatory but it can depend on a motivational focus on affective outcomes. Results showed that social identity-based motivation is likely to bias attention toward affectively incongruent information. Thereby, early onset processes - reflected by the P1 component - appeared susceptible to top-down attentional influences induced by the individual's motivation to strive for a positive social identity. (shrink)

I focus on the monastery life in Europe and its predomination of vita contemplativa upon vita activa. It is not hard to distinguish within Christianity its Manichaean component whose characteristic feature is a grudge against matter, body and sexuality. This complexity of ideas brought about the contempt of vital elements of human existence, so that its animal past, still present in Zivilisationsprozess. An alternative anthropology inspired by an evolutionism should based on the presumption that only through the appreciation of an (...) animal dimension of us—instead of monastic desire of becoming an angel—will it be possible to create new perspectives for renegotiation of the human–animal boundaries. (shrink)

In the late 1980s, a new conceptual framework appeared in the science, technology, and innovation studies: the National Innovation System. The framework suggests that the research system's ultimate goal is innovation, and that the system is part of a larger system composed of sectors such as government, university, and industry and their environment. The framework also emphasized the relationships between the components or sectors, as the ``cause'' that explains the performance of innovation systems. Most authors agree that the framework came (...) from researchers like Freeman, Nelson, and Lundvall. In this article, the author want to go further back in time and show what the ``system approach'' owes to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and its very early works from the 1960s. This article develops the idea that the system approach was fundamental to OECD work, and that, although not using the term National Innovation System as such, the organization considerably influenced the above-mentioned authors. (shrink)

Cette étude considére le § 301 du Gai Savoir, à partir du § 98 même ouvrage. Dans le sillage de la «nouvelle justice» brièvement présentée dans le § 289, ce § 301 remaine en profondeur l'opposition traditionelle entre l'actif et le contemplatif; suivre pas à pas ect aphorisme permet ainsi de constituer «l'homme juste» en problime qui est cet «homme juste»? Brutus? Shakespeare? Le «poète»? Et donc: comment appréhender la «nouvelle justice»?Diese Untersuchung befasst sich mit dem § 301 der Fröhlichen (...) Wissenschaft, gestützt auf § 98 desselben Werks. Im Zuge der "neuen Gerechtigkrit", die in § 289 kurz dargestellt worden war, formt dieser § 301 den traditionellen Gegensatz zwischen dem Aktiven und dem Contemplativen grundlegend um. Die schrittweise Betrachtung dieses Aphorismus erlaubt dann, den "gerechten Menschen" zum Problem zu machen: wer ist dieser "gerechter Mensch"? Brutus? Shakespeare? Der "Dichter"? Und somit: wie ist die "neue gerechtigkeit" aufzufassen? This articles considers § 301 of The Gay Science in the light of § 98 of the same work. In the wake of the "new justice" briefly presented in § 289, § 301 is an in-depth reconsideration of the traditional opposition between the active and the contemplative; thus a step by step approach to this aphorism allows one to establish "the just man" as a problem: who is that "just man"? Brutus? Shakespeare? The "poet"? Hence, how is the notion of "new justice" to be grasped? (shrink)

It is widely agreed that humans have specific abilities for cooperation and culture that evolved since their split with their last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Many uncertainties remain, however, about the exact moment in the human lineage when these abilities evolved. This article argues that cooperation and culture did not evolve in one step in the human lineage and that the capacity to stick to long-term and risky cooperative arrangements evolved before properly modern culture. I present evidence that Homo heidelbergensis (...) became increasingly able to secure contributions form others in two demanding Paleolithic public good games (PPGGs): cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding. I argue that the temptation to defect is high in these PPGGs and that the evolution of human cooperation in Homo heidelberngensis is best explained by the emergence of modern-like abilities for inhibitory control and goal maintenance. These executive functions are localized in the prefrontal cortex and allow humans to stick to social norms in the face of competing motivations. This scenario is consistent with data on brain evolution that indicate that the largest growth of the prefrontal cortex in human evolution occurred in Homo heidelbergensis and was followed by relative stasis in this part of the brain. One implication of this argument is that subsequent behavioral innovations, including the evolution of symbolism, art, and properly cumulative culture in modern Homo sapiens , are unlikely to be related to a reorganization of the prefrontal cortex, despite frequent claims to the contrary in the literature on the evolution of human culture and cognition. (shrink)

The infinite pigeonhole principle for 2-partitions asserts the existence, for every set A, of an infinite subset of A or of its complement. In this paper, we study the infinite pigeonhole pr...

One of the first frameworks developed for understanding the relation of science and technology to the economy has been the linear model of innovation. The model postulated that innovation starts with basic research, is followed by applied research and development, and ends with production and diffusion. The precise source of the model remains nebulous, having never been documented. Several authors who have used, improved, or criticized the model in the past fifty years rarely acknowledged or cited any original source. The (...) model usually was taken for granted. According to others, however, it comes directly from V. Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier. This article traces the history of the linear model, suggesting that it developed in three steps corresponding to three scientific communities looking at science analytically. The article argues that statistics is a main reason the model is still alive despite criticisms, alternatives, and having been proclaimed dead. (shrink)

The current SARS-CoV-2 crisis raises questions about the challenges faced by nation states and international organisations in offering a coordinated international response to the pandemic, and reveals the great vulnerability of European countries, which are implementing lockdown measures and imposing restrictions on international travel, for the most part on a unilateral basis. Such measures run counter to the prevailing approach of the previous two centuries that developed an international public health space. This article examines the measures adopted by European states (...) in order to contain 19th-century cholera pandemics, which took shape through the development of an international maritime quarantine system, based primarily on the implementation of national regulations and local decision-making. This regime was quickly viewed as ineffective and out of step with liberal ideas that urged a “laissez-faire” approach to public health matters. In its stead, a long-term trend developed towards easing quarantine measures. Nation states supported the internationalisation of the fight against pandemics, which chiefly consisted of externalising quarantine measures to the East in order to eliminate them in Europe. This process was based on a subtle dialectical relationship between the construction of an international public health space and the affirmation of state sovereignty, and continued into the 20th century with the progressive creation of international institutions responsible for advancing global health. (shrink)

Benoit Mathot | : La négativité, comme catégorie fondamentale de l’existence humaine, connaît aujourd’hui une crise profonde qui la conduit à son effacement progressif des pratiques et des discours sociaux, culturels, religieux, au profit d’une logique de la coïncidence. Dans cette perspective, cet article a pour projet de proposer un parcours interdisciplinaire à travers la psychanalyse, les études littéraires et la théologie chrétienne, afin de montrer la centralité de ce phénomène. | : The negativity, as fundamental category of the human (...) existence, knows a deep crisis today which leads it to the progressive disappearance of the socials, cultural and religious practices and speeches, for the benefit of a logic of the coincidence. In this perspective, this article plans to propose an interdisciplinary work through the psychoanalysis, the literary studies and the Christian theology, to show the centrality of this phenomenon. (shrink)

We present a new approach to representation and acquisition of normative information for machine ethics. It combines an influential philosophical account of the fundamental structure of morality with argumentation theory and machine learning. According to the philosophical account, the deontic status of an action – whether it is required, forbidden, or permissible – is determined through the interaction of “normative reasons” of varying strengths or weights. We first provide a formal characterization of this account, by modeling it in(weighted) argumentation graphs. (...) We then use it to model ethical learning: the basic idea is to use a set of cases for which deontic statuses are known to estimate the weights of normative reasons in operation in these cases, and to use these weight estimates to determine the deontic statuses of actions in new cases. The result is an approach that has the advantages of both bottom-up and top-down approaches to machine ethics: normative information is acquired through the inter-action with training data, and its meaning is clear. We also report the results of some initial experiments with the model. (shrink)

English summary: Benoit Spinosa presents a much needed French biography and study of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Spinosa discusses Hobbes controversial Leviathan and his unique understanding of the political machine in the Early Modern period. French description: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), philosophe anglais, doit sa celebrite au Leviathan, a une conception de la souverainete politique longtemps jugee monstrueuse. Par-dela contresens et accusations, Hobbes est bien le premier penseur de la modernite a avoir voulu maitriser la machination politique comme la (...) science galileenne controlait les mecanismes naturels. Il eut l'idee d'un systeme global, allant du corps en general, chose physique, au corps politique engendre par la puissance humaine d'artifice, en passant par le corps humain, objet d'une anthropologie nouvelle qui s'appuie sur une vision originale du desir. Sans le langage, la science des corps serait pourtant impossible. C'est par l'imposition de noms, que les hommes peuvent se soustraire aux aleas de l'experience, construire des chaines de raisonnement et envisager ainsi les choix politiques que la necessite laisse ouverts. Dans un monde expose aux violences de la revolution et des conflits religieux, Hobbes a cherche les moyens rationnels de resister aux folies de l'histoire. La question n'est visiblement pas close. (shrink)

The emotion of anger has a long love–hate relationship with morality. On the one hand, anger often motivates us to sanction wrongdoing and uphold demanding moral standards. On the other hand, it can prompt aggression behaviors that are at odds with morality and even lead to moral disasters. This article describes this complex relationship. I argue that the intensity of anger elicited by moral transgressions is highly sensitive to key variables, including the identity of the person wronged, the nature of (...) the wrongdoing, and expectations about what should and will be done. Depending on the context, we sometimes experience more anger than would be commendable and sometimes less. These characteristics of anger, in turn, explain the ubiquity of norms and discourses aimed at governing the expression of this emotion. (shrink)

In his most recent books, Piketty offers a global history of inequality in its economic, social, political, and intellectual dimensions, arguing that history is moved by the struggle of ideologies. To take part in this battle of ideas, he conceives a new ideal model of society, ‘participative socialism’, as an egalitarian alternative to the dominant neoproprietarian ideology and to the dangerous resurgence of nationalism and populism. This paper provides a new interpretation of Piketty’s view of history and of his participatory (...) socialism in light of Paul Ricoeur’s study of the dialectics of ideology and utopia. First, I present Ricoeur’s singular analysis of ideology and utopia, which he sees as two inseparable facets of social imagination. Then I show how Ricoeur’s concepts can be fruitfully applied to Piketty’s conception of history and to his conception of a new form of socialism for the 21st century, drawing lessons from history and forming a ‘good’ or ‘realist’ utopia. Finally, I demonstrate that this interpretation of Piketty’s socialism can help to better understand some of the criticisms he has received. (shrink)

Mise en rapport de trois écrivains français qu'apparemment tout sépare mais dont les questions récurrentes - Dieu, le néant, le livre, l'histoire- se retrouvent en chacun d'eux.

Dans la théologie contemporaine, la notion d’hospitalité dépend, en premier lieu, de la réception que le thème, compris en sens divers, a connue dans la société et la culture (1. Polysémie, plasticité, tensions). Son actualité est due à une réalité géopolitique du début du xxi e siècle qui concerne Europe et Amérique du nord, à savoir la crise migratoire, en même temps qu’au flot de réflexions et de prises de position que cette crise a généré (2. Actualité politique). À propos (...) des migrations, on doit se demander si la théologie contemporaine apporte une réponse à la mesure des enjeux (3. Contribution théologique). Enfin il paraît utile d’indiquer deux réflexions originales ayant trait à l’hospitalité, dues à Jean-Yves Lacoste et Jean-Louis Chrétien, que la théologie contemporaine peut à bon droit regarder comme des promesses (4. Pierres d’attente). (shrink)

This article deals with the nature and the evolution of the relationships between the Belgian French-speaking Green party Ecolo and the new social movements in Wallonia and Brussels, from the larger identified sectors of these movements to various other movements. To start with, the status of these movements in the emergence of the Greenparty is scrutinised. Then, on the basis of a survey conducted amongst members of the party elite, different modalities of the party/movements links are analysed: joint activism, selective (...) communication channels between the elites, structural links. The bottom line is that, altogether, the links are tighter than one might expect, but that the Green party new social movements linkage remains ambiguous in many respects. (shrink)

J'ai choisi de travailler un portrait de Bachelard pour retrouver son humanité, sa qualité de coeur, d'âme, ce qui est trop souvent absent dans les ouvrages traitant de ses travaux, ses livres. Fils de cordonnier, le chant des outils, le parfum des cuirs, l'attitude de l'artisan appliqué à faire et à parfaire son travail : le quotidien resta vivant en sa mémoire. Il n'avait pas oublié d'où il venait, l'admiration vient de là. Son humanité porte aussi la mort prématurée de (...) son épouse, Jeanne, le 20 juin 1920. Marié le 8 juillet 1914, mobilisé le 2 août de la même année jusqu'au 16 mars 1919, il a vécu 38 mois dans les tranchées. De leur union est née une fille, Suzanne. On peut dire qu'en dépassant ses peines, son deuil, il est devenu un fin guetteur de la beauté de vivre et du monde. La poésie a été pour lui une matière lui donnant de vibrer et respirer l'Univers. "La sagesse, dit-on, a pour origine et pour creuset de savoir lutter". Au long de son oeuvre, Bachelard a plaidé pour "la liberté, les hautes valeurs morales". En écrivant "Le visage de Bachelard", peu à peu, s'est instauré un dialogue, s'est imposée une façon de maïeutique ouvrant à des réflexions sur la vie, l'amitié, l'amour, agressivité, égocentrisme, haine, racisme, "la mauvaise foi" selon Sartre, "l'illusion" selon Pascal. En outre, il ressort en rapprochant plusieurs de leurs pensées que Gaston Bachelard et Léonard de Vinci étaient et restent en parenté de génie. Benoît Aubierge. (shrink)

This article argues for the need to recover the concept of political myth in order to understand the crucial phenomena of our epoch. By drawing on Blumenberg’s philosophical reflections on myth, it proposes to understand political myth as the continual process of work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group can provide significance to their political conditions and experience. In order to show how this understanding of political myth can throw light on important aspects of (...) contemporary politics, the article analyses the work on one of the most conspicuous political myths of our time: the clash of civilizations. By reconstructing the mechanisms through which this myth works, the article shows how a paradigm that has been strongly criticized as too simplistic and scientifically inadequate could have turned into a successful political myth, i.e. into a self-fulfilling prophecy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT : Many philosophers and psychologists think that moral norms have a different nature as rules from convention: while we are obliged to respect moral norms because of what they are in themselves, our respect for conventions depends on our attitude toward a particular social context. I question this distinction between moral norms and conventions and argue that conventions depend on social context because the context structures the agents’ expectations, sets reference points for the assessment of gains and losses, and (...) helps the observer to infer the presence and the seriousness of harms. (shrink)

It is clear enough that utilitarianism contributed to the softening of many penal systems in the world by arguing that very cruel punishments should be excluded every time a less cruel one would be just as effective. But does utilitarianism as such oppose the death penalty ? It is well known that Beccaria and Bentham criticized capital punishment on utilitarian grounds. But the fact that John Stuart Mill held a speech in favour of the death penalty at the House of (...) Commons in 1868 suggests that there is no necessity for a utilitarian thinker to oppose it. Otherwise, it would be possible to claim that John Stuart Mill betrayed, so to speak, the principle of utility by defending such a punishment. But nothing, it seems, allows us to say so. On the contrary, we would like to suggest that Mill’s disagreement with Bentham and Beccaria originates from his own empirical judgement on the following question : is death penalty the most cruel punishment for murder ? In other words, whether we like it or not, there is no way we can hold that Mill was less faithful than Beccaria and Bentham to the principle of utility when supporting the death penalty. (shrink)

Following a common assumption, when one inquires into a question, one has an inquisitive attitude towards it. More precisely, I shall assume that there is an inquisitive attitude towards Q that all of those who inquire into Q have in common and in virtue of which they can be said to be in an inquisitive state of mind towards Q. This paper is about the nature of this attitude. I elucidate it by examining whether it boils down to doubt, curiosity, (...) epistemic desire, or wondering. I shall do this by examining whether having these attitudes is necessary and sufficient for being in an inquisitive state of mind. The test will prove negative for the first three, but the case of wondering is more complex. (shrink)

My main intention in this article is to settle the question whether having the ability to \ is, as Ryleans think, necessary for knowing how to \, and to determine the kind of role played by procedural knowledge in knowing how to \ and in acquiring and possessing the ability to \. I shall argue, in a seemingly anti-Rylean fashion, that when it comes to know-hows that are ordinarily categorised as physical skills, or—to be, for the moment, philosophically neutral—as enabling (...) one to possess such skills, it is necessary to have procedural knowledge of how to \ in order to possess those know-hows. However, I shall contend that this knowledge cannot be acquired without acquiring the kind of ability to \ in which having the skill to \ consists. And that having acquired the ability to \ is not only necessary but also sufficient for having acquired procedural knowledge of how to succeed in \-ing. (shrink)

In this paper I raise a paradox of belief inspired by Kripke’s ‘paradox of knowledge', which states that knowledge seems to make permissible an intuitively unacceptable form of dogmatism. This paradox of belief is based on an intuitively correct principle of doxastic coherence. My aim is to show that this paradox contributes to elucidating the puzzling nature of belief.