An important feature of so-called rational decision making, at least in times of crisis, is arational: that is, our ability to decide manifests features of our characters or the values we hold rather than our reasoning abilities.1 Such a position stands in obvious opposition to the Western philosophical tradition. Consider, by comparison, the view of Immanuel Kant, who held that reason could, and perhaps sometimes ought to, operate independently of (and in opposition to) our sentiments. Contrary to Kant, William James (...) argues in "The Sentiment of Rationality" that arational mental states and phenomena—such as feelings, emotions, values, and attitudes—are indispensable to practical rationality (317). The attempt to .. (shrink)

“The Ethics of Belief,” by W.K. Clifford, explains the potential harm of believing just anything. In this chapter Stan Marsh shows off his critical thinking skills as he takes on TV psychics, various cults, and unsupported religious beliefs in a way that would've made Clifford proud. The chapter examines how Stan exposes the frauds and harms they bring, while defending scientific thinking and a healthy skepticism. Beliefs are acquired in various ways, most notably by observation and authority. Many people say (...) their beliefs, especially their religious beliefs, are based on faith. Stan realizes it's wrong to dismiss someone with unsupported beliefs as being stupid. He reminds us of Clifford's point that settling for easy answers not only weakens the mind, it prevents from finding real answers. In science, philosophy, and every rational pursuit where we require answers to questions, the spirit of inquiry—combined with hard work—is what leads to progress. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel's interest in F. H. Jacobi's thought is persistent. It relies essentially on the issue of the nature of knowledge and truth, and the way we may apprehend it, either immediately or mediately. One of the central concepts at play in Jacobi's thought is that of perception as a hold on truth (Wahr-nehmen). Based on that concept of perception, extensively discussed in the second chapter ofThe Phenomenology of Spirit, I clarify and open new perspectives for the understanding (...) of Hegel's critique of Jacobi. (shrink)

'Insurrectionist Ethics' is the name given to denote the myriad forms of justification for radical social transformation in the interest of freedom for oppressed people. It is a set of advocacy systems that usually aim at liberation for specified populations under siege in a given society. While the identities of these beleaguered groups is always intersectional, one salient criterion of group membership is often chosen to be the rallying point for solidarity. Whether the movement is “Black Lives Matter, (...) “Gay Pride”, or “Poor People’s Campaign,” at the nucleus of each is a cry for emancipation. The contributions in this volume put forward bold, forcefully argued, provocative claims that challenge in a fundamental and radical way the presuppositions, values, and beliefs that underwrite the systems and structures that insurrectionist ethics calls into question. The volume begins with a section defining and theorizing what insurrectionist ethics is, and then moves to a section studying insurrectionist ethics across the Americas. Additional sections focus on applications of and correctives to insurrectionist ethics, pragmatism and naturalism, and the past, present, and future of insurrectionist ethics. (shrink)

When Socrates says, for the only time in the Socratic literature, that he strives to “know himself” (Phdr. 229e), he does not what this “self” is, or how he is to know it. Recent scholarship is split between taking it as one’s concrete personality and as the nature of (human) souls in general. This paper turns for answers to the immediate context of Socrates’ remark about selfknowledge: his long diatribe about myth-rectification. It argues that the latter, a civic (...) task that Socrates’ dismisses as too laborious, nevertheless serves as a model for the more personal former task. Both involve piecemeal acknowledgement and adjustment of one’s commitments for the sake of living successfully. Both require looking simultaneously to general facts about people (or the world) and to particular facts about oneself (or one’s city). Socrates’ hope that he differs from Typhon (230a) means that he hopes he is amenable to rectification. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Graf and Komatsu (1994) argued that the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991) is limited in its ability to separate and measure conscious and unconscious forms of memory and so should be "handIed with caution". Given that the study of unconscious influences has always posed a difficult problem for memory researchers, we agree with the general emphasis on caution. In this paper, we too advocate caution, especially as it applies to the use of indirect tests, assessing (...) Graf and Komatsu’s critique, and using the process dissociation procedure. We address the substantive issues raised by Graf and Komatsu and also point out the errors, both factual and logical, in their paper. Any method proposing to provide separate measures of conscious and unconscious influences requires judicious use and a careful examination of its underlying assumptions. The assumptions underlying the process dissociation framework are supported by a large number of experiments spanning a diverse range of.. (shrink)

I would like to propose a demonstrative transparency model of our immediate, introspective self-knowledge of experiences. It is a model entirely in line with transparency. It rests on three elements: mental demonstration, the capacity to apply concepts to what is given in experience, and ordinary inference. The model avoids inner sense, acquaintance, and any special kind of normativity or rationality. The crucial and new ingredient is mental demonstration. By mental demonstration we can refer indexically to the contents of (...) our own experiences in a unique way. This allows for the application of ordinary, non-mental concepts in order to arrive at a judgment about what it is that one is experiencing. In a transparent way one can then move inferentially to the self-ascription of an experience with such a content. I compare the demonstrative model with other accounts of introspective self-knowledge. (shrink)

Before the semester begins, a teacher tells his students: “There will be exactly one exam this semester. It will not take place on a day that is an immediate-successor of a day that you are currently in a position to know is not the exam-day”. Both the students and the teacher know – it is common knowledge – that no exam can be given on the first day of the semester. Since the teacher is truthful and reliable, it (...) seems that the students can know that what he says is true. However, in that case, assuming the students can know that they know whatever it is they know (KK) and assuming their knowledge is closed under entailment (closure), the students can reason from what they know to the conclusion that no exam will take place during the semester. This conclusion contradicts what they supposedly know: that there will be an exam. This puzzle, we argue, gives rise to a new consideration for the rejection of KK. We discuss unique features of the argument, especially in comparison to Timothy Williamson's rejection of KK in light of other versions of the surprise exam paradox. (shrink)

Immediate experience is not, currently, a fashionable topic in philosophy. Few, if any, contemporary philosophers offer commentaries on, or discussions of, immediate experience, especially the conception of it that was generally accepted in the early part of the twentieth century. Immediate experience has come to be identified with the immediately given and since ‘the given’ has been labelled a myth, immediate experience shares its fate.

In 1828, G. W. F. Hegel published a critical review of Johann Georg Hamann, a retrospective of the life and works of one of Germany’s most enigmatic and challenging thinkers and writers. While Hegel’s review had enjoyed a central place in Hamann studies since its appearance, Hegel on Hamann is the first English translation of the important work. Philosophers, theologians, and literary critics welcome Anderson’s stunning translation since Hamann is gaining renewed attention, not only as a key figure of German (...) intellectual history, but also as an early forerunner of postmodern thought. Relationships between Enlightenment, Counter Enlightenment, and Idealism come to the fore as Hegel reflects on Hamann’s critiques of his contemporaries Immanuel Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, J. G. Herder, and F. H. Jacobi. Hegel on Hamann also includes an introduction to Hegel’s review by Anderson, as well as an essay on the role of friendship in Hamann’s life, in Hegel’s thought, and in German intellectual culture more broadly. Rounding out the volume are its extensive annotations and bibliography, which facilitate further study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophy in English and German. This book is essential both for readers of Hegel or Hamann and for those interested in the history of German thought, the philosophy of religion, language and hermeneutics, or friendship as a philosophical category. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage rassemble les oeuvres philosophiques de François Hemsterhuis, l'un des représentants les plus importants du mouvement d'idées appelé le siècle des lumières. Ses écrits portent sur des sujets variés tels que l'esthétique, l'éthique, la métaphysique, etc. Ils sont accompagnés d'une préface de Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, autre figure marquante du mouvement. Cet ouvrage est un témoignage passionnant de la philosophie du XVIIIe siècle. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base (...) of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

I show first that freedom is the lever that brings about the sublation (Aufhebung) of religion into absolute knowing. Then I prove that exteriority, with its intrinsic contingency and opacity, is an essential moment of absolute knowing.

The major part of this paper is devoted to the task of showing that Husserl's account of knowledge and truth in terms of a synthesis of fulfilment falls prey neither to a form of “metaphysics of presence” nor to a “myth of interiority” or mentalism. Husserl's presentation of the desire to know, his awareness of irreducible forms of absence at the heart of the intuitive presence of the object of knowledge and his formulation of general rules concerning the possible (...) accomplishment of a synthesis of fulfilment are therefore carefully examined. Special attention is also given to the fact that the determination of knowledge and truth provided by the Sixth Logical Investigation rests on an account of an original interweaving between the thing, consciousness, and language. Unlike in Husserl's earlier and later works, no attempt is thereby made to subordinate any of these three elements involved in all knowledge to one of the others. (shrink)

In this paper I raise three questions regarding the status and function of Absolute Knowing in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. First, can Hegel’s Absolute Knowing be understood as an epiphany? Secondly, how does epiphany make sense of the teleological elements that activate and mobilise the movement towards Absolute Knowing? And thirdly, how does such an interpretation shift the focus from a closed reading of Hegel’s text – that views Absolute Knowing as consummately realised – to an open reading that keeps (...) the Absolute within its purview, but also seeks to foreground its aporias? I pursue these questions through an examination of the key constituents of knowledge: the subject of knowledge, its object, and the process through which knowledge is attained. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

You can see me doing this or that. And your seeing me doing this or that is the source, or even the form, of your knowing what I am doing. As well as the source, or the form, of my knowing what you are doing might be my seeing you doing this or that. However, it would be strange to say that one is looking for what one is doing in order to know it. Nevertheless, it would also be strange (...) to say that one does not know what one is doing when one is doing this or that. So, what is the source, or even the form, of one's knowledge of what one is doing, given that one knows what one is doing? Or is there something strange about this being an assumption? When, then, do we say that one knows, and then also: that one does not know, what one is doing? (shrink)

There was a time when, in the Liberal Arts, philosophy and education enjoyed the most intimate and productive relationship. Drawing together philosophy and nature they sought to understand the greatest of human mysteries. This meant thinking about both the macrocosm and the microcosm and especially the relation between them. In this relation lies the most fundamental vocation of Liberal Arts education—Know Thyself. In my article I attempt to retrieve the philosophical education that lies between the individual and the universe. I (...) explore the macrocosm through Newton and Einstein, the microcosm through Heisenberg and Zizek, and the relation between them in the structure of the modern Kant/Hegel philosophical experience. The result—only relatively overambitious—is an educational theory of the uncertainty of the universe and everything in it. (shrink)

Walking through the supermarket, I see the avocados. I know they are avocados. Similarly, if you see a pumpkin on my office desk, you can know it’s a pumpkin from its looks. The phenomenology in such cases is that of “just seeing” that such and such. This phenomenology might suggest that the knowledge gained is immediate. This paper argues, to the contrary, that in these target cases, the knowledge is mediate, depending as it does on one’s knowledge of what (...) the relevant kind of thing looks like. To make the case requires examining the nature of knowing what Fs look like. Is such knowledge to be understood as knowledge of a fact, or rather as a kind of ability? From the conclusion that the knowledge in the target cases is not immediate, the paper concludes that perception does not afford us immediate knowledge concerning objects’ kinds. (shrink)

이 글은 ｢프리드리히 쾹펜에게 보낸 세 편지들｣(1803)에서 야코비의 헤겔 비판을 집중적으로 살펴본다. 헤겔은 ｢믿음과 앎｣(1802)에서 야코비 철학이 지니는 절대적 유한성의 이성과 절대적 피안의 추상적 무한자를 비판한 바 있다. 먼저 후자와 관련해 야코비는 당시 헤겔이 셸링과 공유하고 있던 절대적 무차별자로서의 절대자 또한 무한과 유한의 절대적 중심에서 초월적 비행을 하지 못한 채 머물 수밖에 없다고 응수한다. 이러한 비판은 헤겔로 하여금 유한자의 자기 지양을 통해 무한성에 도달하는 절대자 철학을 고민하게 했다. 다음으로 야코비는 형용사적 이성과 명사적 이성을 구별하는 자신의 본래 입장을 강조하며, 헤겔이 셸링과 (...) 함께 언급한 주관적 이성과 객관적 이성은 인간이 지닌 형용사적 이성, 따라서 유한한 이성에 지나지 않는다고 반박한다. 반면에 자신이 주장하는 명사적 이성은 인간이 귀속하는 이성으로서 유한자들의 필연적 제약들을 벗어나 초자연적 무제약자를 전제하는 능력이다. 야코비에 따르면 이 이성의 출처는 바로 자유로운 신이며, 신으로부터 이 이성을 부여받은 인간 또한 이 때문에 자유로울 수 있는 것이다. 헤겔은 야코비가 정신이라 부르기도 하는 이 이성 개념을 수용하고, 사변적 학문을 유한한 이성의 자유로운 자기 지양 과정으로 구상함으로써 철학 체계를 모색할 수 있었다. 이를 통해 야코비가 주장하는 절대자에 대한 예감과 무지의 철학은 사변적 학문의 수난을 통해 헤겔의 절대자에 대한 앎의 철학으로 발전할 수 있었다. (shrink)

In light of an historical obsession with human error, Krueger & Funder (K&F) suggest that social psychologists should emphasize the strengths of social perception. In our view, however, absolute levels of accuracy (or error) in any given experiment are less important than underlying processes. We discuss the use of the process-dissociation procedure for gaining insight into the mechanisms underlying accuracy and error.

While it is recognized that instruction between co-workers is a central component of everyday workplace interaction and learning, this study investigates the ways in which such instructional events are practically initiated in interaction. We analyse recordings of everyday work at a radio station, where journalists prepare and broadcast local news. In our data, a distinction can be made between two interactional contexts from which instructional interactions emerge: searches, where one party is looking for a suitable helper; and established interactions, where (...) the initiation of instruction is prefigured by immediate prior interaction. A further finding is that these two contexts are associated with two different ways of initiating instruction. Direct requests are used in established interactions. In searches, we instead find questions regarding the other person’s procedural knowledge – what we term know-how questions. We finally discuss the ways in which instructional configurations are assembled without reference to institutionally defined instructor/instructed roles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Hermeneutics by Paul ReddingTerry PinkardPaul Redding. Hegel’s Hermeneutics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi + 262. Cloth, $39.95. Paper, $16.95.Following on the heels of fruitful reception of Kant at work in the last several decades in English-speaking philosophy, one of the most productive lines of interpretation of [End Page 327] Hegel has tried to reconstruct Hegel’s thought in light of its relation to Kantianism. Paul Redding’s (...) new work carries this line further. As Redding sets matters up, Hegel builds explicitly on the unfinished “Copernican” move in Kant’s work, which, as the “Copernican” metaphor suggests, stresses the way in which our particular perspectives on the world must be understood as located within a set of conditions that, although not themselves experienced, are conditions of that experience. It calls, that is, for an investigation of how and whether “subjective” and “objective” points of view relate to each other. The “communicative” interpretation of Kant’s “Copernican” move sets up the Hegelian development of it: For one agent to be able to understand the claims of another’s experience, he must be able to conceive the other as an object-agent in the world and a subjective-agent that has a point of view on the world, and the other must likewise see him in the same way. Redding’s thesis is that Hegel appropriated the way that Kant, Fichte, and Schelling tried to provide such an account, and without falling into the pitfalls they did, developed a recognitive, “intersubjective,” theory of consciousness that successfully gives the proper account of how these two points of view are both necessary and relate to each other.Redding’s interpretation thus lays great weight on the short section of “master and servitude” in the Phenomenology as the key to the structure of all of Hegel’s thought. Each agent can recognize his own point of view only by virtue of recognizing the points of view of other agents, and this kind of recognition can arise when “an intention is common to subjects facing each other from opposed points of view” (111). The structure of recognition that emerges is, of course, quite complex and full of self-reflexive moments, but what emerges is Geist, spirit, the “I that is a We and the We that is an I,” which is not itself an entity having a point of view but a structure of self-conscious, mutually recognizing beings. Thus, at the basis of Hegel’s philosophy is a hermeneutical theory of how agents address and understand each other—that is, how they interpret each other’s acts, intentions, and expressions. Redding puts this interpretation to work in a short account of the progression of the Phenomenology, which he takes to be an account of the way in which the European community has historically failed to realize the kind of institutional and social structures of mutual recognition that would create the “conditions adequate for rational and free intentionality” (141) until modern times. The end of the Phenomenology—“absolute knowing”—is thus not the achieving of a “body of complete or final knowledge” but of the “(tragic) insight that particular and determinate bodies of knowledge are always conditioned and so perspectival” and thus calling for hermeneutical activities of interpretation (140).To make good on his account of the central status of “recognition” (and therefore of “hermeneutics”) to Hegel’s enterprise, Redding gives a short but quite insightful sketch of how Hegel’s notorious Science of Logic might be understood as a formalization of the logic of such recognitive practice, an account of how it is that agents can adopt these complex patterns of recognizing their own points of view as being recognized by others. Hegel’s Logic depends on the rejection of there being any “immediate” truths that can serve as absolute starting points or premises and from which we can then derive “mediated” true conclusions. There are no such “truths” outside of the circle of thought; this is, Redding argues, “characteristic of that ‘hermeneutic circle’ within [End Page 328] which, according to Heidegger and Gadamer, thought always moves,” namely, “a structure of reciprocal recognition... [as... (shrink)

It is a reasonable worry that God would not truly love us and want our salvation if He fixed a definite point after which He will no longer offer us the graces to repent of our sins. I propose that Thomas Aquinas succeeds in showing us that God would not be cruel or arbitrary in setting up a world where embodied agents end up after death in a state where they will inevitably fail to repent of their sins. Aquinas proposes (...) that being disembodied is to be in a state where a person cannot be mistaken about what they want, given that they know themselves perfectly. If the disembodied state were like this, it would not be surprising that being in that state makes repentance impossible, since a soul would become fully integrated around whatever one desired, without any conflicting desires that could prompt repentance. Thus, humans would persist in whatever desires they had at the moment of death and disembodiment. I conclude by arguing that, while this scenario stands in need of fuller theodicy, Aquinas’ scenario is helpful in defending a view that God is not cruel or arbitrary for creating a world in which post-mortem repentance is impossible. (shrink)

I offer a two-tiered critique of epistemological contrastivism as developed by Jonathan Schaffer. First, I investigate the cornerstone of contrastivism, the notion of knowing the selected proposition p rather than the eliminated, or contrast, proposition q. Contrastivism imposes the ternicity constraint that the knowledge relation should span a knower and two propositions. However, contrastivism has yet to explain how to square this constraint with the required contrast between the selected and the eliminated propositions, and it is not immediately obvious how (...) to accomplish this. I offer up for consideration the binary proposal that to know that p rather than q is to know that the conjunction of p and the negation of q is true. Second, I argue that contrastivist objects of knowledge ought to be hyperpropositions rather than functions from possible worlds to truth-values, as assumed by Schaffer. (shrink)

This work brings together, for the first time in English translation, Hegel's journal publications from his years in Heidelberg (1816-18), writings which have been previously either untranslated or only partially translated into English. The Heidelberg years marked Hegel's return to university teaching and represented an important transition in his life and thought. The translated texts include his important reassessment of the works of the philosopher F. H. Jacobi, whose engagement with Spinozism, especially, was of decisive significance for the philosophical development (...) of German Idealism. They also include his most influential writing about contemporary political events, his essay on the constitutional assembly in his native Württemberg, which was written against the background of the dramatic political and social changes occurring in post-Napoleonic Germany. The translators have provided an introduction and notes that offer a scholarly commentary on the philosophical and political background of Hegel's Heidelberg writings. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In a sense it would be inappropriate to speak of “Hegel’s system of philosophy,” because Hegel thought that in the strict sense there is only one system of philosophy evolving in the Western world. In Hegel’s view, although at times philosophy’s history seems to be a chaotic series of crisscrossing interpretations of meanings and values, with no consensus, there has been a teleological development and consistent progress in philosophy and philosophizing from the beginning; Hegel held that his own version of (...) “German idealism” was simply bringing to final expression the latest refinements of an ongoing, perennial system. If we take Hegel at his word, then one of the best entries into his system would be through the history of philosophy, showing how systems and schools of thought prior to Hegel led up to his system. The most important currents to focus on, however, would be in modern philosophy, in which especially intensive changes led ultimately to German idealism and Hegel’s immediate predecessors. Fortunately, Hegel lectured extensively on the history of modern philosophy and structured his lectures in such a way as to throw light on the status of the “one system” of Western philosophy at the time — the status to which Hegel felt he had been contributing and was continuing to contribute. These lectures are of interest, first of all, as a systematic chronicle of philosophical positions in the heyday of modern philosophy, from Bacon to Hegel. Second, they are interesting because Hegel’s critical comments on his predecessors clarify his own positions: for example, the dialectic method and the importance of triplicity, the relationship of philosophy to the scientific method, the necessity for avoidance of the extremes of empiricism and of idealism, the subject/object problematic, the “identity” of rationality and reality, and the technical meaning in Hegel’s philosophy of “absolute,” “infinity,” and the “idea.”. (shrink)

In this paper I develop three different arguments against the thesis that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. Knowledge-that is widely thought to be subject to an anti-luck condition, a justified or warranted belief condition, and a belief condition, respectively. The arguments I give suggest that if either of these standard assumptions is correct then knowledge-how is not a kind of knowledge-that. In closing I identify a possible alternative to the standard Rylean and intellectualist accounts of knowledge-how. This alternative view (...) illustrates that even if the arguments given here succeed it might still be reasonable to hold that knowing how to do something is a matter of standing in an intentional relation to a proposition other than the knowledge-that relation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Richard Eldridge ON KNOWING HOW TO LIVE: COLERIDGE'S "FROST AT MIDNIGHT" How ought human beings to live? It is both hard to ignore this question and hard to see how to go about answering it rationally. Moral philosophers have typically presented their works as deserving serious attention because they have supposed them to contain well-argued answers to this question. One very general way of describing the strategy of moral (...) philosophers is to say that they have begun by attempting to specify precisely the sense of "ought" as it is used in this question. Thus "ought" has alternately been taken to mean such things as "would it be profitable for," "in society is it necessary for," "it is typical of ideal," and "would it be rational for." In concert, moral philosophy has alternately been conceived of as a part of a theory of happiness, a theory of civil society, a theory of perfection, or a theory of rationality. But which, if any, of these ways of doing moral philosophy is the correct one? The very proliferation of approaches and answers to the question of how human beings ought to live encourages a kind of despair about whether any rules of conduct can be rationally justified for people in general. Noticing this proliferation, philosophers of a skeptical cast of mind have denied that any rules about how human beings ought to live can be rationally defended. AU putative rational defenses of such rules, so it has been claimed, amount to nothing more than pieces of cant and dogma. Reflecting this intuition, "moralistic" has come sometimes to mean "priggishly preachy." Thus Richard Rorty has observed that "the attempt to answer... the moral agent's request for justifications [of answers to such questions as "What ought we to do with ourselves?" and "How ought we to live?"] with descriptions of a privileged domain [wherein such justifications can be discovered] is the philosopher's special form of bad faith — his special way of substituting pseudo-cognition for morad choice."1 Moral philosophers, or those who would attempt rationally to defend rules about how to live, so Rorty would apparently have it, talk not good scientific sense auid not liberating or entertaining poetic nonsense, but pure humbug. (Rorty adds that "the positivists were absolutely right in thinking it imperative to 213 214Philosophy and Literature extirpate metaphysics, when 'metaphysics' means die attempt to give knowledge of what science cannot know.") We are urged to take a pragmatic attitude toward moral rules. AU diere is to know about rules about how to live is that sometimes some people have made them up and found them useful, not that any of diem have any deeper rational basis. "[T]he claim that the customs of a given society are 'grounded in nature' is not one which [the pragmatist] knows how to argue about. He is a pragmatist because he catnnot see what it would be like for a custom to be so grounded."2 Rorty does not claim that naturalistic talk or the talk of what he calls "atoms-in-the-void science" is die only sensible kind of talk. The remarks of sociologists, psychoanalysts, critics, and so forth are not senseless, according to Rorty. But he does hold diat traditional philosophical talk of knowing morad rules through reflection or reasoning is senseless. The reason for diis is diat no one has ever succeeded in giving "ought" a clear sense in such a way that amy claims of the form "human beings ought to do *" can be rationally justified to everyone. Failing to possess incontrovertibly sound demonstrative arguments for claims diat all human beings ought to adopt certain rules of conduct and failing to possess a mediod, or even a glimmer of a mediod, for constructing such arguments, it may well seem difficult not to feel compelled to adopt Rorty's skeptical attitude toward moral philosophy. Rorty's attitude is not extraordinary ; it is increasingly shared by a public which fails to find in works of moral philosophy the sort of rational defense of rules about how to live which it has been promised. What form could a rational justification of a claim of die form "human beings... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to use a model from the origin of life studies to provide some depth and detail to our understanding of exploratory models by suggesting that some of these models should be understood as indeterminate. Models that are indeterminate are a type of exploratory model and therefore have extensive potential and can prompt new lines of research. They are distinctive in that, given the current state of scientific understanding, we cannot specify how and where (...) the model will be useful in understanding the natural world: in this case, the origin of life on Earth. The purpose of introducing indeterminacy is to emphasize the epistemic uncertainty associated with modeling, a feature of this practice that has been under emphasized in the literature in favor of attempts to understand the more specific epistemic successes afforded by models. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Werke: Bd. David Hume Uber Den Glauben Oder Idealismus Und Realismus: Ein GesprAch. Uber Die Unzertrennlichkeit Des Begriffes Der Freyheit Und Vorsehung Von Dem Begriffe Der Vernunft. Etwes, Das Lessing Gesagt Hat: Ein Commentar Zu Den Reisen Der PAbste. Anhang Zu Dem...; Volume 2 Of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Werke; Friedrich Von Roth Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Johann Georg Hamann, Friedrich von Roth, Friedrich KOppen G. Fleischer d. jUng, 1815. (shrink)

Human subjects seem to have a type of introspective access to their mental states that allows them to immediately judge the types and intensities of their occurrent emotions, as well as what those emotions are about or “directed at”. Such judgments manifest what I call “emotion-direction beliefs”, which, if reliably produced, may constitute emotion-direction knowledge. Many psychologists have argued that the “directed emotions” such beliefs represent have a componential structure, one that includes feelings of emotional responses and related but independent (...) representations of what those feelings are about. I argue that such componentiality may help to explain how emotion-direction knowledge is achievable. I begin by developing a hybrid view of introspection that combines David Chalmers’ phenomenal realism with Alvin Goldman’s “partial redeployment” account of meta-belief content. I then provide a process-reliabilist account of introspectively gained emotion-direction knowledge that outlines the minimum conditions of reliably forming emotion-direction beliefs, and specifies several ways in which the warrant of such beliefs could be defeated by relevant counterfactual alternatives. The overall account suggests how distinct introspective processes might be epistemically synergistic. (shrink)

This essay extends my engagements with questions of epistemic agency and the politics of epistemic location, in Epistemic Responsibility and in Ecological Thinking to consider how questions of understanding and of certainty play diversely into human and other ecological circumstances. In so doing, it opens lines of inquiry not immediately available in standard western-northern approaches to epistemology with their concentration on medium-sized physical objects in their presupposed neutrality and replicability. Working from a tacit assumption that knowing and knowers are always (...) situated, and that they are enabled or restricted in so being, the book engages with specific epistemic situations in order to show how “situatedness” indeed makes knowledge possible, while regarding it as an enabling rather than a constraining modality. (shrink)