This volume presents a series of influential essays by Paul Boghossian on the theory of content and on its relation to the phenomenon of a priori knowledge. The essays are organized under four headings: the nature of content; content and self-knowledge; knowledge, content, and the a priori; and colour concepts.

In this chapter a new problem about rule-following is outlined, one that is distinct both from Kripke’s and Wright’s versions of the problem. This new problem cannot be correctly responsed to, as Kripke’s can, by invoking Wright’s Intentional Account of rule-following. The upshot might be called, following Kant, an antinomy of pure reason: we both must — and cannot — make sense of someone’s following a rule. The chapter explores various ways out of this antinomy without here endorsing any of (...) them. (shrink)

In the latest edition of their popular overview text, Erickson and Murphy continue to provide a comprehensive, affordable, and accessible introduction to anthropological theory from antiquity to the present.

One prominent argument against the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select a deaf embryo with the aim of creating a deaf child is that it violates the child’s right to an open future. This paper challenges the open future argument against deaf embryo selection, criticizing its major premise that deafness limits a child’s opportunity range in ways that compromise their future autonomy. I argue that this premise is not justified and is supported by negative presumptions about deaf embodiments that (...) are suspect and in need of further argumentation. First, available interpretations of the open future concept fail to justify the devaluation of deaf traits as inherently autonomy-diminishing. Second, arguing against deaf embryo selection requires demonstrating that a deaf trait generally constrains opportunity ranges independent of social context. But such analyses neglect important social and relational components of autonomy. For these reasons, merely appealing to the child’s right to an open future does not sufficiently support the conclusion that deaf embryo selection is wrong. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, the doctrine of informed consent has become a focal point in discussions of medical ethics. The literature of informed consent explores the evolution of the principle of autonomy, purportedly emerging from the mists of 19th Century medical practice, and finding its earliest articulation in legal cases where wronged citizens asserted their rights against medical authority. A commonplace, if not obligatory, feature of that literature is a reference to the case of Mary Schloendorff and the opinion (...) written by Judge Benjamin Cardozo by which the case is remembered. Commentators today applaud the prescience of Cardozo for an early articulation of what eventually would become bioethical orthodoxy concerning informed consent and its place as a bulwark of patient autonomy. They inevitably quote Cardozo's famous statement, “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body.”. (shrink)

Only in recent years have developmental psychologists begun advocating and exploring dual-process theories and their applicability to cognitive development. In this paper, a dual-process model of developments in two processing systems—an “analytic” and an “experiential” system—is discussed. We emphasise the importance of “metacognitive intercession” and developments in this ability to override experiential processing. In each of two studies of sunk cost decisions, age-related developments in normative decisions were observed, as were declines in the use of a “waste not” heuristic. In (...) the second study, children and adolescents were presented with arguments for normative and non-normative sunk cost decisions. Following argument evaluation, participants were re-presented the original problems and a set of novel, transfer problems. Results indicated that post-argument improvements were most apparent during adolescence. Age-related improvements were most noticeable on the transfer problems. In general, the findings suggest that the ability to metacognitively intercede (i.e., reflect on arguments; inhibit experientially produced responses) emerges towards middle adolescence. However, even by the end of adolescence, in the absence of significant contextual cues and motivation, this ability is infrequently utilised. (shrink)

Philosophers and ethicists debate this controversial moral principle illustrating its application to current moral dilemmas such as war, suicide, nuclear power, affirmative action, and morphine use for terminal cancer patients.

For nearly a century, and until very recently, the majority of U.S. states required a blood test for marriage license applicants. The tests identified people with conditions formerly designated as "venereal diseases," most importantly gonorrhea and syphilis. Those who tested positive were barred from civil marriage. Although the premarital testing requirement is no longer a feature of state law, numerous related enactments are common features of law in most states.The historical literature describing the rise and fall of laws prescribing marriage (...) restrictions related to VD has treated those enactments as public health measures, meant primarily to forestall the spread of disease to intimate partners. But laws to... (shrink)

These essays examine the ways in which the consideration of ethical questions is shaped by the structures of knowledge and communication at work in clinical ...

This paper warns against destructive effects of subjectivist thinking. Subjectivist accounts, as Alan Sokal exposed, promote a distorted view of scientific practice. For example, Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity relied on data produced by Fizeau, a physicist trained in classical mechanics. Einstein's use of Fizeau's results shows that the ontological foundation of uncontroversial data transcends conventional speculations. Einstein's employment of Fizeau's results mitigates against ideas such as paradigm shifts and revolutionary science. Instead, the ontology of shared horizons of fact (...) remains largely unadulterated. The descriptions scientists use accommodate received view shifts, but the horizon of fact remains unimpeachably the same. The apt performance of science shows what it means to move further away from error. The only direction away from error is toward truth. To deny the reality of this directionality flies in the face of common sense and prudent science. (shrink)

The fact that we can hear a particular passage of music as expressing a “tranquil gratitude” is a central aspect of the phenomenology of musical experience; without it we would be hard pressed to explain how purely instrumental music could move us in the way that it does. The trouble, here as so often elsewhere in philosophy, is that what seems necessary also seems impossible: for how could a mere series of nonlinguistic sounds, however lovely, express a state of mind? (...) One of the central tasks of the philosophy of music is to remove this mystery.... (shrink)

Following Oliver Ramsbotham’s observation that conflict resolution and analysis have not taken radical disagreement seriously enough, and in light of his lament that he has not yet found an adequate philosophy of radical disagreement, this article claims that the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre provides some coreelements of any adequate philosophy of radical disagreement. MacIntyre’s theory suggests that the problem of radical disagreement is in fact more radical thanRamsbotham affirms. Ramsbotham’s account of the strategic engagement of discourses (SED) approach is critiqued (...) in light of MacIntyre’s diagnosis of radical disagreement, which calls into question its theoretical and philosophical basis. The main problem is held to be that of internal radical disagreement, which SED appears to skirt over. This is elucidated through a brief exploration of two philosophical approaches to moral-political disagreement in relation to Israeli peace activism and the Colombian conflict. (shrink)

In this article, I show how it is possible, working from a Thomistic perspective, to affirm the existence of animal rights. To start, I show how it is possible to ascribe indirect rights to animals—in particular, the indirect right to not be treated cruelly by us. Then, I show how it is possible to ascribe some direct rights to animals using the same reasoning that Aquinas offers in defending the claim that animals have indirect rights. Next, I draw on elements (...) of Aquinas’s metaphysical worldview in order to buttress the claim that animals have direct rights. I then respond to an attempt to ground the ethical treatment of animals, but not direct rights for animals, in natural law. In conclusion, I affirm that it is permissible to use animals to further the human good so long as in doing so we respect the direct rights that they possess. (shrink)

The focus of discussion about the ethical issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has been on the great suffering to which it has given rise. However, there may be some unexpected positive outcomes that also emerge from the global disaster. The rupturing of entrenched systems and processes, the challenging of certainties that seemed beyond question, and the disruption of the assumed consensus of modernity may contribute to a rediscovery of the challenges that compose an ethical life. Elements of such a (...) process are evident in the surge of community support and mutual caring, of spontaneous acts of joyous solidarity, of suspension of past conflicts, and exploration of new forms of reconciliation. The experiences are tentative and the outcomes uncertain, but at least for a moment the hope of a new way forward has been raised. (shrink)

Kalle Pihlainen’s book reworks seven essays published over the last dozen years. Pihlainen’s Preface and Hayden White’s Foreword articulate a cri de cœur. Both fear that something important has been missed. White’s Foreword somewhat cryptically characterizes Pihlainen’s book as “metacritical,” and locates Pihlainen in the role of being a “serious reader” for the community of theorists of history. What does it mean to be a “serious” reader? White never says. But following White’s hint, Pihlainen can be read as updating Marx’s (...) conception of the task of unmasking sources of alienation by focusing on the reasons for the estrangement of histories from a wider audience. For him, “the core case is that the ‘historical’ nature of history itself needs to be acknowledged”. It remains unacknowledged so long as the source of meaning in history continues to be displaced. For even those who emphasize narrative form tend to talk as if meanings were imposed by some factor other than human intervention, as if form magically imbues content with significance. But this is one more symptom, if such is needed, of collective bad faith, a denial that only people make meaning. By taking disembodied literary forms as repositories of significance, responsibility for meaning is once again deflected or deferred. In this key regard, Pihlainen’s claim to place “decided emphasis on its [historical theory’s] ethical-political momentum” signals that the issues he intends to foreground are not epistemological or discursive. Pihlainen rightly suspects that all the talk of “narrativism” and “discourse” serves only to evade confronting the truly difficult moral and political challenges that writing represents. His various chapters identify these evasions and the challenges that remain. (shrink)

For a long time, the natural sciences owed their success to the strategy of reducing phenomena to a few effective causes. Today, an additional approach is emerging: thinking in terms of complex systems.It explains a kind of illusory world that is beginning to establish itself between reality and humans, e.g., passionate gamers: the world of simulation. The most explosive example is so-called artificial intelligence. It claims to be able to emulate human characteristics. This bold claim confronts us with old and (...) new questions: Can machines really learn? Are they even intelligent? Can a robot be more than wires, transistors and programs? And last but not least: Who are we – the humans? (shrink)

In True Detective, the description of time as a "flat circle" is one of the most mysterious aspects of the story. The idea of the flat circle ultimately helps Rust to overcome his bleak interpretation of reality, although for a long time it anchors him in his dreary worldview. A philosophical pessimist is likely to view knowledge and meaning as inherently flawed. Rust tells Marty all about his philosophical pessimism in the first episode of season one. A metaphysical claim tries (...) to describe the true nature of reality. Friedrich Nietzsche calls his theory "eternal recurrence", however differ in name aside, there are numerous similarities between his theory and Rust's. The flat circle is really a thought experiment that Rust remains trapped within insofar as he remains a philosophical pessimist, at least up to the point of his near‐death experience, where he "sees the light". (shrink)

This paper is the reprinting under a new title of the “Foreword” of Paul A. Weiss's Life, Order, and Understanding: A Theme in Three Variations, published in 1970 as volume 8 supplement of The Graduate Journal of the University of Texas (Austin, Texas, #5.00 [hardcover], #2.50 [paperback], 157 pages). We reprint this paper here for two reasons. The first is that its beautiful, scientifically grounded imagery of living systems in relation to wave dynamics provides a significant supplement to this (...) issue of Zygon on human values in the context of thermodynamics. The second is that it is hoped this foreword will serve better than would a book review to introduce Zygon readers to the philosophical and scientific wisdom contained in Life, Order, and Understanding.–Editor. (shrink)

When Benjamin Franklin suggested that man is by nature a tool-making animal, he summed up what was for his fellow Americans the common sense of the matter. It is not, then, surprising that, when Britain's colonists in North America broke with the mother country over the issue of an unrepresentative parliament's right to tax and govern the colonies, they defended their right to the property they owned on the ground that it was in a most thorough-going sense an extension of (...) themselves: the fruits of their own labor. This understanding they learned from John Locke, who based the argument of his Two Treatises of Government on the unorthodox account of providence and of man's place within the natural world that Sir Francis Bacon had been the first to articulate. All of this helps explain why the framers of the American constitution included within it a clause giving sanction to property in ideas of practical use. (shrink)

The Universe is One places the ancient synthesis of Stoicism, Platonism, Judaism, and Christianity in active dialogue with modern process science in order to conjoin science, philosophy, and theology into the human quest for meaning. Paul A. Olivier proposes a comprehensive theory of knowledge, which he expands into a theory of life, correlating modern process science and the western-Judeo-Christian heritage into a grand theory of the Universe. He brings together the ideas of influential thinkers from the world of science (...) with those from the world of New Testament studies. Olivier clearly explains concepts from diverse fields to construct a satisfying theory of knowledge and life. He accomplishes this through an examination of the dominance of polarity in all aspects of the universe, such as chaos and order, predictability and unpredictability. Through this complex blend of opposites Olivier develops his theory as an interaction of Word and Spirit that provides the Universe with everything necessary to account for its creation and ongoing evolution. The Universe continually creates and sustains itself out of its own internal necessity coupled paradoxically with the fluidity of its own inherent unpredictability. (shrink)

The Supreme Court decided Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky in 2019. Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion in the case claimed there was a direct connection between the legalization of abortion, in the late 20th Century, and the beginnings of the birth control movement a full three quarters of a century earlier. “Many eugenicists,” Thomas argued, “supported legalizing abortion.”Justice Samuel Alito highlighted similar claims in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, citing a brief entitled “The Eugenic Era Lives on through (...) the Abortion Movement.” That brief was an echo of Justice Thomas’ misguided attempt at history in the Box opinion. Similar claims reoccur in Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s opinion in the Texas mifepristone case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration.These false claims are the focus of this article. There is no evidence that early leaders of the eugenics movement supported abortion as part of the movement for birth control. It is accurate to describe those leaders as anti-abortion, and their followers as people who condemned abortion for moral, legal, and medical reasons. (shrink)

Reply to Schiffer's comment on Externalism and Inference.

PETRIVERSE. Noun.A world composed of rocks; e.g., a rock garden.Words composed of rocks; i.e., verse written in and/or about stone. [Latin petra, rock; Old English vers, from Latin versus a furrow]The Petriverse of Pierre Jardin is a xeriscape in the California Heights neighborhood of Long Beach, California, where many residents have taken advantage of a city program that subsidizes the conversion of grass lawns into drought-tolerant landscapes. The garden was conceived in 2009 when Pierre Jardin coined the neologism 'petriverse' to (...) denote both a world composed of rocks and words composed of rocks. The site has become known for two distinctive features: it presents constantly changing, eye-catching displays of... (shrink)

I argue that when we interpret a literary work, we engage with at least two different kinds of meaning, each requiring a distinct mode of interpretation. These kinds of meaning are literary varieties of what Paul Grice called nonnatural and natural meaning. The long-standing debate that began with Beardsley and Wimsatt's attack on the intentional fallacy is, I argue, really a debate about nonnatural meaning in literature. I contend that natural meaning has been largely neglected in our theorizing about (...) literary interpretation and that this comes at a serious cost, resulting in an inadequate account of what interpretation involves. I argue, first, that by recognizing that literary meaning includes both nonnatural and natural meaning, we are better placed to understand the interpreter's relationship with the author, and, second, that recognition of the distinction between nonnatural and natural meaning advances the established debate about literary meaning, offering support for actual intentionalism. The more inclusive view of literary meaning helps resolve an apparent difficulty raised by Noël Carroll. (shrink)