There are many different oughts. There is a moral ought, a prudential ought, an epistemic ought, the legal ought, the ought of etiquette, and so on. These oughts can prescribe incompatible actions. What I morally ought to do may be different from what I self-interestedly ought to do. Philosophers have claimed that these conflicts are resolved by an authoritative ought, or by facts about what one ought to do simpliciter or all-things-considered. However, the only coherent notion of an ought simpliciter (...) has preposterous first-order normative commitments. It is more reasonable to reject the ought simpliciter in favor of the form of normative pluralism advocated in (Tiffany 2007). (shrink)

Appealing to imagination for modal justification is very common. But not everyone thinks that all imaginings provide modal justification. Recently, Gregory and Kung :620–663, 2010) have independently argued that, whereas imaginings with sensory imageries can justify modal beliefs, those without sensory imageries don’t because of such imaginings’ extreme liberty. In this essay, I defend the general modal epistemological relevance of imagining. I argue, first, that when the objections that target the liberal nature of non-sensory imaginings are adequately developed, those objections (...) also threaten the sensory imaginings. So, if we think that non-sensory imaginings are too liberal for modal justification, we should say the same about sensory imaginings. I’ll finish my defense by showing that, when it comes to deciding between saying that all imaginings are prima facie justificatory and saying that no imaginings are justificatory, there is an independent reason for accepting the former. (shrink)

The doctrine of inerrant divine “middle knowledge” of future contingent events, first developed by the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, has resurfaced as a prominent position within contemporary debates over divine foreknowledge, creaturely freedom, and the ontological status of possibilities. As yet, the only substantive response to the new Molinism from a process perspective has come in a brief section on “Hartshorne and the Challenge of Molinism,” in an essay on Hartshorne’s view of “The Logic of Future Contingents” (...) by George W. Shields and Donald W. Viney, in Shields’ edited anthology Process and Analysis.Shields and Viney offer an insightful critique of Molinism. However, their use of Hartshorne’s understanding of possibility presents problems for those, like me, who prefer Whitehead’s more robustly realist notion of eternal objects. Here, I defend Whitehead’s Platonism from the main lines of criticism leveled against itby Hartshorne, while demonstrating that a “thick” conception of the objective content of the possible within the context of the divine understanding need not crossover into a deterministic conception of God’s foreknowledge, à la Molina. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article, we explore what are ethical forms of holding service users responsible in mental health care contexts. Hanna Pickard has provided an account of how service users should be held responsible for morally wrong or seriously harmful conduct within contexts of mental health care, called the clinical stance. From a clinical stance one holds a person responsible for harm, but refrains from emotionally blaming the person and only considers the person responsible for this conduct in a detached (...) sense. Her account is based on what are considered best practices in the treatment of people with borderline personality disorder and addiction. We ask if this account generalizes across different diagnostic criteria and different clinical contexts. To begin to answer this question, we compare the clinical stance to an account of what are considered best practices in the treatment of service users at a specialized clinic for people with autism spectrum disorder in the Netherlands. We refer to this alternative account as the nurturing stance and highlight relevant similarities and differences between the clinical stance and the nurturing stance. We conclude with suggestions for further research and theorizing. (shrink)

In an effort to theorize educational logics that are oppositional to capitalism, this article explores what it means to study like a communist. I begin by drawing out the tight connection between learning and capitalism, demonstrating that education is not a subset but a motor of political-economic relations. Next, I turn to the concept of study, which is being developed as an educational alternative to learning. While studying represents an educational challenge to capitalism, I argue that there are political limitations (...) to studying for which we need to account. Specifically, studying is not in itself political, but only represents the possibility of politics. To make this claim and to address these limitations, I turn to Jodi Dean’s work on the communist Party. Dean posits the Party not as a master, director, or prophet, but as an infrastructure of affective intensity that maintains a gap in the order of things. I show that the Party is one way to organize and to defend study. Throughout the article, I illuminate the ways in which educational philosophers can contribute to political movement building by showing, developing, and refining the educational components of politics that many organizers and theorists neglect. (shrink)

Deliberation often begins with the question ‘What do I want to do?’ rather than the question of what one ought to do. This paper takes that question at face value, as a question about which of one’s desires is strongest, which sometimes guides action. The paper aims to explain which properties of a desire make that desire strong, in the sense of ‘strength’ relevant to this deliberative question. Both motivational force and phenomenological intensity seem relevant to a desire’s strength; however, (...) accounting for the strength of a desire in these terms opens up significant indeterminacy about what we want. The paper argues that this indeterminacy is often resolved simply by posing the question ‘What do I want to do?’ to oneself: there is reason to believe that one’s answer will play a verdictive role, partially determining what the agent most wants. Self-reflective beliefs can play a self-fulfilling role, and surprisingly this seems to follow from basic platitudes about the belief-desire model. (shrink)

By creating certain marks on paper, or by making certain sounds-breathing past a moving tongue-or by articulation of hands and bodies, language users can give expression to their mental lives. With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning. This fact can be quite mystifying, yet a science of linguistic meaning-semantics-has emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Semantics is the study of meaning. But what exactly is "meaning"? (...) What is the exact target of semantic theory? Much of the early work in natural language semantics was accompanied by extensive reflection on the aims of semantic theory, and the form a theory must take to meet those aims. But this meta-theoretical reflection has not kept pace with recent theoretical innovations. This volume re-addresses these questions concerning the foundations of natural language semantics in light of the current state-of-the-art in semantic theorising. (shrink)

Common philosophical accounts of creativity align creative products and processes with a particular kind of agency: namely, that deserving of praise or blame. Considering evolutionary examples, we explore two ways of denying that creativity requires forms of agency. First, we argue that decoupling creativity from praiseworthiness comes at little cost: accepting that evolutionary processes are non-agential, they nonetheless exhibit many of the same characteristics and value associated with creativity. Second, we develop a ‘product-first’ account of creativity by which a process (...) is creative just in case it gives rise to products deserving of certain forms of aesthetic engagement. (shrink)

In order to defend the regress argument for foundationalism against Post’s objection that relevant forms of inferential justification are not transitive, Lydia McGrew and Timothy McGrew define a relation E of positive evidence, which, they contend, has the following features: It is a necessary condition for any inferential justification; it is transitive and irreflexive; and it enables both a strengthened regress argument proof against Post’s objection and an argument that nothing can ever appear in its own justificational ancestry. In reply, (...) we construct in their own terms both a counterexample to the would-be transitivity of E, and a related objection to their never-in-its-own-ancestry argument. We also rebut their rejection of certain counterexamples to the would-be transitivity of some forms of inferential justification. By doing so, and by questioning their transitivity claim for E, we aim to further the project of undermining the circularity arguments advanced by a zoo of skeptics, relativists, antirealists and internalists against realism and externalism. (shrink)

Mark Schroeder’s expressivist program has made substantial progress in providing a compositional semantics for normative terms. This paper argues that it risks achieving this semantic progress at the cost of abandoning a key theoretical motivation for embracing expressivism in the first place. The problem can be summarized as a dilemma. Either Schroeder must allow that there are cases in which agents are in disagreement with one another, or can make valid inferences, but that these disagreements or inferences are not expressible (...) in natural language; or his version of expressivism must abandon one of the key theoretical advantages expressivist theories seemed to possess over cognitivism, the ability to provide a very straightforward explanation of the action- and attitude-guiding role of normative judgments. (shrink)

Millians about proper names typically claim that it is knowable apriori that Hesperus is Phosphorus. We argue that they should claim instead that it is knowable only aposteriori that Hesperus is Hesperus, since the Kripke-Putnam epistemic arguments against descriptivism are special cases of Quinean arguments that nothing is knowable apriori, and Millians have no resources to resist the more general Quinean arguments.

In pro and con arguments, an arguer acknowledges that there are points against the conclu-sion reached. Such points have been called ‘counter-considerations.’ Their significance is explored here in the light of recent comments by Rongdong Jin, Hans Hansen and others. A conception of connector words such as “although”, “nevertheless,” and “but” is developed, as is a new model recognizing the need for an ‘on balance’ judgment in these arguments.

I argue for a re-appropriation of the religious/philosophical concept of ‘anxiety’ regarding human finitude and fallibility as an ‘epistemic virtue’ thatshould frame the relationship between personal (including religious) belief and political participation and procedures. I contend that moral justificationsof liberal norms based on ‘respect for persons’ and ‘tolerance’ are insufficient without relation to such a (complementary) epistemic basis. Furthermore, Iargue that a careful examination of the internal logic of religious belief, per se, undermines traditional understandings of ‘faith’ (as being categoricallyopposed (...) to ‘doubt’) and reveals support for liberal norms as an necessary implication thereof. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOlder adults have greater difficulty than younger adults perceiving vocal emotions. To better characterise this effect, we explored its relation to age differences in sensory, cognitive and emotional functioning. Additionally, we examined the role of speaker age and listener sex. Participants aged 19–34 years and 60–85 years categorised neutral sentences spoken by ten younger and ten older speakers with a happy, neutral, sad, or angry voice. Acoustic analyses indicated that expressions from younger and older speakers denoted the intended emotion with (...) similar accuracy. As expected, younger participants outperformed older participants and this effect was statistically mediated by an age-related decline in both optimism and working-memory. Additionally, age differences in emotion perception were larger for younger as compared to older speakers and a better perception of younger as compared to older speakers was greater in younger as compared to older participants. Last, a female perception... (shrink)

First published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

If it is within our power to provide a significantly better world for future generations at a comparatively small cost to ourselves, we have a strong moral reason to do so. One way of providing a significantly better world may involve replacing our species with something better. It is plausible that in the not‐too‐distant future, we will be able to create artificially intelligent creatures with whatever physical and psychological traits we choose. Granted this assumption, it is argued that we should (...) engineer our extinction so that our planet's resources can be devoted to making artificial creatures with better lives. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 609-614.

It is not unusual for the adjective ‘vulnerable’ to be applied to those in receipt of nursing practice without making clear what it is that persons thus described are actually vulnerable to. In this paper I argue that the way nursing has adopted the idea of vulnerability tends to imply that some people are in some way invulnerable. This is conceptually unsustainable and renders the idea of the vulnerable patient meaningless. The paper explores the meaning of vulnerability both in general (...) terms and in the context of nursing practice. It is argued that to be in receipt of nursing is to become, to a greater or lesser extent, more‐than‐ordinary vulnerable. Thus all patients are more‐than‐ordinarily vulnerable and this restricts their potential to flourish. Nurses are well placed to contribute to the flourishing of more‐than‐ordinarily vulnerable persons and my substantive claim is that this ‘protective’ function is indeed a legitimate and fundamental part of the role of nurses. (shrink)

A critical edition of the correspondence between Astell and John Norris of Bemerton, which had a profound significance in 18th-century intellectual and religious circles and which represents a crucial step in the development of Norris and Astell's opposition to John Locke.

Manipulations that draw attention to extensional or set-based considerations are neither sufficient nor necessary for enhanced use of base rates in intuitive judgments. Frequency formats are only one part of the puzzle of base-rate use and neglect. The conditions under which these and other manipulations promote base-rate use may be more parsimoniously organized under the broader notion of case-based judgment.

There is a puzzle about divine justice stemming from the fact that God seems required to judge on the basis of criteria that are vague. Justice is proportional, however, it seems God violates proportionality by sending those on the borderline of heaven to an eternity in hell. This is Ted Sider’s problem of Hell and Vagueness. On the face of things, this poses a challenge only to a narrow class of classical Christians, those that hold a retributive theory of divine (...) punishment. We show that this puzzle can be extended to the picture of divine judgement and the afterlife found in Mormon theology. This is significant because at first glance, the Mormon picture of the afterlife looks like it fails to co-operate with Sider’s puzzle. In Mormon theology, there are not two afterlife states, but three: a low, a middle, and a high kingdom. There is no afterlife state quite like Hell, and the states that function similarly to Hell aren’t places of eternal suffering. We argue that appearances are misleading. While it may be true that no place in the Mormon afterlife is bad in the sense that its inhabitants suffer eternal bodily harm, it is true that many of the places in the Mormon afterlife are bad in the sense that their inhabitants lack access to significant goods. This allows Sider’s puzzle to re-engage as a puzzle about distributive Justice. After setting out this alternative version of the puzzle, we argue that Mormon theology has sufficient resources to reject proportionality as a constraint on divine judgment by adopting a nuanced version of universalism called escapism. (shrink)

The commentary provides contextual information about the seminar which Bourdieu and Passeron gave in the École Normale Supérieure on 6 December 1963. It appears that the intended series of seminars was curtailed, perhaps because the initial seminar of 6 December exposed the extent to which Althusser was formally managing the intentions of his guest speakers and resisting the implications of their ongoing research on students and their studies. The commentary argues that the conflict between Althusser and Bourdieu/Passeron was inter-generational in (...) that Althusser’s attitudes had been shaped by his experience as a victim of Nazi oppression whereas those of Bourdieu/Passeron were defined, instead, by their unwilling participation in the French colonial oppression of indigenous Algerians. Althusser was intent on examining philosophically the validity of various contemporary versions of social science whereas Bourdieu and Passeron were engaged in educational research which was scrutinizing sociologically the validity of precisely this supposedly detached philosophical perspective. In short, the commentary is aligned with the Bourdieu/Passeron position in that it seeks to offer an historical sociology of the encounter of December 1963. (shrink)

In her commentary, Kennett helpfully reiterates Pickard’s criticism of Strawsonian theories of blame. Angry forms of blame like resentment are, according to Pickard, characterized by a sense of entitlement and are counterproductive to therapy. Some disagree that entitlement is a necessary condition for emotional blame, but also more permissive understandings of Strawsonian emotional blame have been considered inappropriate and counterproductive in a therapeutic relationship and on a psychiatric ward.We proposed to bracket definitional issues about the meaning of emotional blame and (...) instead looked at the possible therapeutic role of negative affect in clinical settings. Our paper conceptualizes... (shrink)

Natural history specimens were collected for diverse reasons, but modern, and likely future, uses often diverge from why they were collected. For example, specimens are sometimes integrated into conservation decision-making, where some practitioners claim that specimens may be necessary or extremely important for conservation in general. This is an overstatement. To correct this, I engage with the current literature on specimen collection to show that while specimens have epistemic shortcomings, they can be useful for conservation projects depending on the questions (...) or values of scientists and conservation decision-makers. This modest approach acknowledges that specimens provide a unique information channel while demarcating where and when values intercede into conservation planning. In light of the specimen’s utility for future, sometimes unknown, projects, I also make recommendations for modern specimen collection. (shrink)

Obesity continues to be a global issue. In recent years, researchers have started to question the role of our novel yet ubiquitous use of digital media in the development of obesity. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak affecting almost all aspects of society, many people have moved their social eating activities into the digital space, making the question as relevant as ever. The bombardment of appetizing food images and photography – colloquially referred to as “food porn” – has become a significant (...) aspect of the digital food experience. This review presents an overview of whether and how the viewing, creating, and online sharing of digital food photography can influence consumer eating behavior. Moreover, this review provides an outlook of future research opportunities, both to close the gaps in our scientific understanding of the physiological and psychological interaction between digital food photography and actual eating behavior, and, from a practical viewpoint, to optimize our digital food media habits to support an obesity-preventive lifestyle. We do not want to rest on the idea that food imagery’s current prevalence is a core negative influence per se. Instead, we offer the view that active participation in food photography, in conjunction with a selective use of food-related digital media, might contribute to healthy body weight management and enhanced meal pleasure. (shrink)

The hard problem of consciousness is to explain why certain physical states are conscious: why do they feel the way they do, rather than some other way or no way at all? Arthur Reber claims to solve the hard problem. But he does not: even if we grant that amoebae are conscious, we can ask why such organisms feel the way they do, and Reber’s theory provides no answer. Still, Reber’s theory may be methodologically useful: we do not yet have (...) a satisfactory theory of consciousness, but perhaps the study of simple minds is a way to go about finding one. (shrink)

Third-order exclusion is a form of epistemic oppression in which the epistemic lifeway of a dominant group disrupts the epistemic agency of members of marginalized groups. In this paper we apply situated perspectives in order to argue that philosophy as a discipline imposes third-order exclusions on members of marginalized groups who are interested in participating in philosophy. We examine a number of specific aspects of the epistemic lifeway embodied by academic philosophy and show how this produces inaccessibility to the discipline. (...) In addition to critiquing the discipline and its methods we also use this discussion to elaborate on third-order exclusion itself. We conclude by proposing an intersectional pedagogy as a step toward creating a more accessible discipline. (shrink)

This special issue of Minds and Machines contains a number of responses to Luciano Floridi’s groundbreaking Philosophy of Information (Oxford 2011). The essays contained here have been grouped by topic; essays 1–5 concern epistemological features of Floridi’s approach, and essays 6–8 address his metaphysics.In “On Floridi’s Method of Levels ofion”, Jan van Leeuwen addresses Floridi’s operational definition of a level of abstraction. Emphasizing the link between Floridi’s notion of abstraction and that used in computer science, van Leeuven notes that the (...) method of levels of abstraction may require supplementation in the form of annotation. Annotations, which exist “outside” the formal limits of the levels of abstraction to which they are attached, specify what perspective should be taken towards those levels. Annotations so understood both facilitate the expression of semantic information and elucidate the relationship between levels of abstraction. van Leeuwen then uses a case. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Tolstoy’s Art and Thought, 1847–1880John GoodliffeTolstoy’s Art and Thought, 1847–1880, by Donna Tussing Orwin; viii & 296 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, $35.00.In the opening words of the introduction, “this book is an attempt to reconstruct the ideas that led Tolstoy to write the masterpieces of his youth and middle age” (p. 3). Covering the first three decades of Tolstoy’s creative life, it focuses first on his (...) “initial vision” in the 1850s, principally derived from Rousseau’s belief in the superiority of natural morality over the artificial values created by so-called civilization. Then, by way of an analysis of The Cossacks (1863), it seeks to show how Tolstoy came to see that “natural morality was not enough” (p. 96). So, in War and Peace, he tried to depict a world in which human beings were at one with nature, where everything, even war, was natural and part of God’s purpose, so that there was no dichotomy between what is natural and what is civilized. The key word for War and Peace is thus sopriaganie—“linkage.”By the 1870s, when Tolstoy was writing Anna Karenina, he no longer saw God as directly involved in human affairs. Now God was “farther away, but higher and more indubitable” (from a letter to the poet Fet). From this shift in thinking is derived the “drama” of Anna Karenina, as distinct from the “epic” oneness of War and Peace. Whereas in the latter work Tolstoy wanted to see all aspects of life, human or otherwise, in harmony, in Anna Karenina, partly under the baleful influence of Schopenhauer, he came to depict an essential disharmony in life, which he and Levin sought vainly to resolve. Having reached this impasse, Tolstoy abandoned fiction as a medium for his ideas and turned to direct expression of them in essays, tracts, and the like.In writing her book Orwin set herself the virtually impossible task of presenting Tolstoy’s work “as he may have understood it himself” (p. 5). She succeeds in this as well as may be reasonably expected, largely through a detailed analysis of the relevant works of fiction and by drawing on Tolstoy’s correspondence with, for example, N. N. Strakhov. This type of approach is a risky one, since it inevitably treats the fictional texts principally as vehicles for philosophy, when clearly they are much more than that. It is to her credit that, in spite of this, Orwin generally succeeds in her task, although her bias is evident in the bold statement that without “moral law,” Anna Karenina would be Dallas (p. 207)! The other risk is that of treating the fictional texts as though they are somehow separate from Tolstoy the human being, as opposed to Tolstoy the thinker. In her conclusion Orwin refers belatedly and almost incidentally to Tolstoy’s marriage, his family and his growing older. But these factors were surely more crucial for the development of his ideas than she seems to have allowed for; the optimism of War and Peace reflecting the harmony of the early years of his marriage and the darker notes of Anna [End Page 166] Karenina indicating growing disillusion as the relationship between him and his wife lost its early bloom and Tolstoy approached his fifties.Deserving of fuller treatment too were the currents of thought in Russian intellectual circles in the 1860s and 70s which formed an essential background for Tolstoy’s ideas. These too are accorded only quite brief mention. In fact, the commentary on the fictional works, impressive in its depth, tends to be almost too detailed, in places verging on the repetitious. The book could have been more satisfactory if the detailed textual commentary had been more concise and the broader considerations given more extensive analysis. But Orwin’s decision to use a comparatively narrow focus was clearly deliberate and, if we accept its limitations, we can still recognize the importance of her book for Tolstoy studies.John GoodliffeUniversity of Canterbury, New ZealandCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Jerrold Levinson maintains that he is a realist about aesthetic properties. This paper considers his positive arguments for such a view. An argument from Roger Scruton, that aesthetic realism would entail the absurd claim that many aesthetic predicates were ambiguous, is also considered and it is argued that Levinson is in no worse position with respect to this argument than anyone else. However, Levinson cannot account for the phenomenon of aesthetic autonomy: namely, that we cannot be put in a position (...) to make an aesthetic judgement by testimony alone. Finally, Levinson's views on the ontology of aesthetic properties are considered and found wanting. (shrink)

The Iliad and Beowulf provide rich sources of historical information. The novels of Henry Fielding and Henry James may be instructive in the art of moral living. Some go further and argue that Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe played a part in ameliorating the lives of those existing in harsh circumstances. However, as Derek Attridge argues in this outstanding and acclaimed book, none of these capacities is distinctive of literature. What is the singularity of literature? Do the terms (...) "literature" and "the literary" refer to actual entities found in cultures at certain times, or are they merely expressions characteristic of such cultures? Attridge argues that this resistance to definition and reduction is not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. Derek Attridge provides a rich new vocabulary for literature, rethinking such terms as "invention," "singularity," "otherness," "alterity," "performance" and "form." He returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues for the ethical importance of literature, demonstrating how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a "responsible," creative mode of reading. The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the author. (shrink)