Part I: The Life of Cognitive Science:. William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen, and George Graham. Part II: Areas of Study in Cognitive Science:. 1. Analogy: Dedre Gentner. 2. Animal Cognition: Herbert L. Roitblat. 3. Attention: A.H.C. Van Der Heijden. 4. Brain Mapping: Jennifer Mundale. 5. Cognitive Anthropology: Charles W. Nuckolls. 6. Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Adele Abrahamsen. 7. Conceptual Change: Nancy J. Nersessian. 8. Conceptual Organization: Douglas Medin and Sandra R. Waxman. 9. Consciousness: Owen Flanagan. 10. Decision Making: J. Frank (...) Yates and Paul A. Estin. 11. Emotions: Paul E. Griffiths. 12. Imagery and Spatial Representation: Rita E. Anderson. 13. Language Evolution and Neuromechanisms: Terrence W. Deacon. 14. Language Processing: Kathryn Bock and Susan M. Garnsey. 15. Linguistics Theory: D. Terence Langendoen. 16. Machine Learning: Paul Thagard. 17. Memory: Henry L. Roediger III and Lyn M. Goff. 18. Perception: Cees Van Leeuwen. 19. Perception: Color: Austen Clark. 20. Problem Solving: Kevin Dunbar. 21. Reasoning: Lance J. Rips. 22. Social Cognition: Alan J. Lambert and Alison L. Chasteen. 23. Unconscious Intelligence: Rhianon Allen and Arthur S. Reber. 24. Understanding Texts: Art Graesser and Pam Tipping. 25. Word Meaning: Barbara C. Malt. Part III: Methodologies of Cognitive Science:. 26. Artificial Intelligence: Ron Sun. 27. Behavioral Experimentation: Alexander Pollatsek and Keith Rayner. 28. Cognitive Ethology: Marc Bekoff. 29. Deficits and Pathologies: Christopher D. Frith. 30. Ethnomethodology: Barry Saferstein. 31. Functional Analysis: Brian Macwhinney. 32. Neuroimaging: Randy L. Buckner and Steven E. Petersen. 33. Protocal Analysis: K. Anders Ericsson. 34. Single Neuron Electrophysiology: B. E. Stein, M.T. Wallace, and T.R. Stanford. 35. Structural Analysis: Robert Frank. Part IV: Stances in Cognitive Science:. 36. Case-based Reasoning: David B. Leake. 37. Cognitive Linguistics: Michael Tomasello. 38. Connectionism, Artificial Life, and Dynamical Systems: Jeffrey L. Elman. 39. Embodied, Situated, and Distributed Cognition: Andy Clark. 40. Mediated Action: James V. Wertsch. 41. Neurobiological Modeling: P. Read Montague and Peter Dayan. 42. Production Systems: Christian D. Schunn and David Klahr. Part V: Controversies in Cognitive Science:. 43. The Binding Problem: Valerie Gray Hardcastle. 44. Heuristics and Satisficing: Robert C. Richardson. 45. Innate Knowledge: Barbara Landau. 46. Innateness and Emergentism: Elizabeth Bates, Jeffrey L. Elman, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett. 47. Intentionality: Gilbert Harman. 48. Levels of Explanation and Cognition Architectures: Robert N. McCauley. 49. Modularity: Irene Appelbaum. 50. Representation and Computation: Robert S. Stufflebeam. 51. Representations: Dorrit Billman. 52. Rules: Terence Horgan and John Tienson. 53. Stage Theories Refuted: Donald G. Mackay. Part VI: Cognitive Science in the Real World:. 54. Education: John T. Bruer. 55. Ethics: Mark L. Johnson. 56. Everyday Life Environments: Alex Kirlik. 57. Institutions and Economics: Douglass C. North. 58. Legal Reasoning: Edwina L. Rissland. 59. Mental Retardation: Norman W. Bray, Kevin D. Reilly, Lisa F. Huffman, Lisa A. Grupe, Mark F. Villa, Kathryn L. Fletcher, and Vivek Anumolu. 60. Science: William F. Brewer and Punyashloke Mishra. Selective Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science: William Bechtel and Tadeusz Zawidzki. (shrink)

This volume inaugurates a new critical edition of the writings of the great English philosopher and sage Francis Bacon - the first such complete edition for more than a hundred years. It contains six of Bacon's Latin scientific works, each accompanied by entirely new facing-page translations which, together with the extensive introduction and commentaries, offer fresh insights into one of the great minds of the early seventeenth century.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' ObjectsGraham ParkesSpirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' Objects. Edited by Stephen Little. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago in association with University of California Press, 1999. Pp. 112.Let me introduce Spirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection (...) of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' Objects (edited by Stephen Little) with this quotation:The purest essence of the energy of the heaven-earth world coalesces into rock. It emerges, bearing the soil. Its formations are wonderful and fantastic. Some with cavernous cliffs, revealing their interior; some with peaks and summits in sharp-edged layers.... Within the size of a fist can be assembled the beauty of a thousand cliffs. Rocks large enough to be set up in great courtyards, small enough to be set upon a stand. Like gazing upon the peaks of Song Shan, or facing the entire range of the Meng mountains; sitting quietly, your imagination purified.... The Sage [Confucius] once said, "the humane man loves mountains," and the love of stones has the same meaning. Thus, longevity through quietude is achieved through this love.This passage articulates the very different understanding of stone—as "essential energy" rather than mere matter—that underlies the traditional Chinese passion for rock collecting and appreciating, for which even the terms "petromania" and "litholatry" seem too weak. It comes from the preface to the earliest surviving Chinese manual on the topic, Du Wan's Stone Compendium of Cloudy Forest, compiled in the early twelfth century, and is quoted by Stephen Little in his erudite and informative introduction to this magnificent catalog for a unique collection of "spirit" or "strange stones" (guai shi) and other scholars' articles. This essay nicely complements and amplifies ideas set forth some fifteen years ago by John Hay, in his now classic introduction to the catalog Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art (New York: China House Gallery, China Institute in America, 1985).Most cultures appear to begin with a natural reverence for stone in its natural state—one thinks of the Druids, the Indian tradition, the Polynesians, Native Americans, and Australian aboriginal culture—and many seem to retain that reverence as they develop. Indeed, when seen in a global perspective, the general lack of interest in (or respect for) rock in its unhewn state that characterizes the European and Anglo-American traditions seems idiosyncratic. But Chinese culture definitely has the longest and most enthusiastic tradition of collecting stones and arranging rocks in gardens: "strange stones" figure among articles of tribute offered to the mythical emperor Yu (mid-second millennium B.C.E.), and the emperor Wu Di (second century B.C.E.) is recorded as having had rocks arranged in the gardens of his palace. [End Page 306]Stephen Little's essay gives an eloquent account of the development of the practice of stone collecting in China, delineating its relationships with poetry and painting and other arts and practices, and containing numerous translations of passages from primary sources otherwise inaccessible to the non-reader of Chinese. Most of the rocks in the catalog are of the well-known Lingbi (sonorous) and Ying types, but other kinds are represented, too. The editor also supplies a context for appreciating the paintings, scrolls, and other articles from scholars' desks that are in the catalog: brush rests, inkstones, brush holders, and so forth. The sixty-six items from the collection are represented in excellent black-and-white photographs.The book is beautifully designed and produced—and is indeed a work of art in itself with its handsome, dark blue Chinese-style case. All in all, this a stylish and informative contribution to the growing literature on a philosophically fascinating topic. [End Page 307]Graham Parkes University of Hawai'iCopyright © 2001 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

Is freedom a Western concept? As a multifaceted human experience it seems fairly transcultural. Freedom is hardly a focus of philosophical discourses in China as it is in the West, and I suppose this partly accounts for the difficulty in tracking freedom and closely related notions of agency, choice, and autonomy in Chinese philosophy.Over four decades ago Herbert Fingarette raised the controversial idea about the absence of freedom in Confucian ethics. Although not intending to denigrate, Fingarette raised a polemic that (...) has lingered to the present.1 A. C. Graham noted the sour upshot of the issue when writing that "the claim that the concept of moral choice is foreign to Confucius has offended... (shrink)

The twentieth-century Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd left behind an impressive canon of philosophical works and has continued to influence a scholarly community in Europe and North America, which has extended, critiqued, and applied his thought in many academic fields. Jonathan Chaplin introduces Dooyeweerd for the first time to many English readers by critically expounding Dooyeweerd's social and political thought and by exhibiting its pertinence to contemporary civil society debates. Chaplin begins by contextualizing Dooyeweerd's thought, first in relation to present-day debates (...) and then in relation to the work of the Dutch philosopher Abraham Kuyper. Chaplin outlines the distinctive theory of historical and cultural development that serves as an essential backdrop to Dooyeweerd's substantive social philosophy; examines Dooyeweerd's notion of societal structural principles; and sets forth his complex classification of particular types of social structure and their various interrelationships. Chaplin provides a detailed examination of Dooyeweerd's theory of the state, its definitive nature, and its proper role vis-a-vis other elements of society. Dooyeweerd's contributions, Chaplin concludes, assist us in mapping the ways in which state and civil society should be related to achieve justice and the public good. "This superb study simultaneously introduces and critically engages the work of one of the most important and neglected Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, while showing its connection to the pluralist tradition and bringing it to bear on the contemporary debate about civil society. More than just providing an overview of Dooyeweerd's thought, it seeks to advance his intellectual project and show its contemporary relevance. It is essential reading not only for those interested in the neo-Calvinist tradition, but for anyone interested in Christian social thought, structural pluralism, or the nature and fate of civil society." --_Kenneth L. Grasso, Texas State University _ "The subtlety, scope, and insightfulness of Dooyeweerd's social philosophy were unparalleled among Protestant thinkers in the past century. Yet his contributions are not well known. Jonathan Chaplin promises to remedy this neglect. His lucid and masterful study brings a new and transformative voice to contemporary debates about the future of a democratic society." --_Lambert Zuidervaart, Institute for Christian Studies and University of Toronto_ "Finally, an authoritative book that brings to brilliant light and life Herman Dooyeweerd's Christian philosophy of law, politics, and society. For the past half century, the profound and original teachings of this prolific Dutch sage have been lost on most readers. Jonathan Chaplin has rescued Dooyeweerd from his own obscure prose, poor translations, and cultic mystique to reveal his astonishing and engaging insights into our lives as persons and peoples, rulers and citizens, preachers and parishioners, parents and children. This will be the go-to book on Dooyeweerd for many years to come." --_John Witte, Jr., Emory University_ "Herman Dooyeweerd was both deep and original. Much of his writing is an articulation of rather undeveloped lines of thought in his Dutch predecessor, Abraham Kuyper. In the course of his exposition, Chaplin effectively highlights Dooyeweerd's significance for a theory of civil society and for present-day social theory in general." --_Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale University and the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia_. (shrink)

What does it take for one proposition to be closer to the truth than another. In this, the first published monograph on the topic, Oddie develops a comprehensive theory that takes the likeness in truthlikeness seriously.

Prince of Networks is the first treatment of Bruno Latour specifically as a philosopher. It has been eagerly awaited by readers of both Latour and Harman since their public discussion at the London School of Economics in February 2008. Part One covers four key works that display Latour’s underrated contributions to metaphysics: Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora’s Hope. Harman contends that Latour is one of the central figures of contemporary philosophy, with a highly original (...) ontology centered in four key concepts: actants, irreduction, translation, and alliance. In Part Two, Harman summarizes Latour’s most important philosophical insights, including his status as the first ‘secular occasionalist.’ The problem of translation between entities is no longer solved by the fiat of God (Malebranche) or habit (Hume), but by local mediators. Working from his own ‘object-oriented’ perspective, Harman also criticizes the Latourian focus on the relational character of actors at the expense of their cryptic autonomous reality. This book forms a remarkable interface between Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and the Speculative Realism of Harman and his confederates. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with the emergence of new trends in the humanities following the long postmodernist interval. (shrink)

Following recent developments in the literature on axiomatic theories of truth, we investigate an alternative to the widespread habit of formalizing the syntax of the object-language into the object-language itself. We first argue for the proposed revision, elaborating philosophical evidences in favor of it. Secondly, we present a general framework for axiomatic theories of truth with theories of syntax. Different choices of the object theory O will be considered. Moreover, some strengthenings of these theories will be introduced: we will consider (...) extending the theories by the addition of coding axioms or by extending the schemas of O, if present, to the entire vocabulary of our theory of truth. Finally, we touch on the philosophical consequences that the theories described can have on the debate about the metaphysical status of the truth predicate and on the formalization of our informal metatheoretic reasoning. (shrink)

This paper begins by exploring the anti-colonial work of Tunisian scholar Albert Memmi in his classic book The Colonizer and the Colonized and determining whether the characteristics of colonization that he names can be successfully applied to the current relationship between modern humans and the “natural world”. After considering what we found to be the five key characteristics: manufacturing the colonial, alienation and unknowability, violence, psychological strategies, and language, history, and metaphor we draw clear parallels, through selected examples, to the (...) exploitative relationships enacted in many realms of the modern human/nature relationship. In so doing the paper posits that the beings that comprise the “natural world” are colonized. It then continues from that position to explore the possibility of cultivating practices of listening to the voices of these colonized others to inform anti-colonial ecopedagogy as allies. We employ the term “shut-up” as an anti-colonial gesture to remind ourselves as much as others of the importance of first listening to the colonized other before engaging in “post-colonial” theorizing about prospective relationships or liberatory solutions “for” them. Given the fast-paced and cacophonic urban life many humans increasingly inhabit, and the disciplined and reiterative practice required to learn to listen to other voices, we suggest caution and care when importing postcolonial theory into “environmental” contexts and seek to instigate further discussion as to how we might enact solidarity with other beings as anti-colonial allies in education. To this end, we conclude the paper with some educational implications based on research at a place-based school and focus on the role history, language and metaphor play in manufacturing a colonial relationship, but also provide a potential means for changing relationships with the diverse beings with whom we share the planet. (shrink)

This paper provides a survey of philosophical discussion of the "the Turing Test". In particular, it provides a very careful and thorough discussion of the famous 1950 paper that was published in Mind.

This paper begins by exploring the anti-colonial work of Tunisian scholar Albert Memmi in his classic book The Colonizer and the Colonized and determining whether the characteristics of colonization that he names can be successfully applied to the current relationship between modern humans and the “natural world”. After considering what we found to be the five key characteristics: manufacturing the colonial, alienation and unknowability, violence, psychological strategies, and language, history, and metaphor we draw clear parallels, through selected examples, to the (...) exploitative relationships enacted in many realms of the modern human/nature relationship. In so doing the paper posits that the beings that comprise the “natural world” are colonized. It then continues from that position to explore the possibility of cultivating practices of listening to the voices of these colonized others to inform anti-colonial ecopedagogy as allies. We employ the term “shut-up” as an anti-colonial gesture to remind ourselves as much as others of the importance of first listening to the colonized other before engaging in “post-colonial” theorizing about prospective relationships or liberatory solutions “for” them. Given the fast-paced and cacophonic urban life many humans increasingly inhabit, and the disciplined and reiterative practice required to learn to listen to other voices, we suggest caution and care when importing postcolonial theory into “environmental” contexts and seek to instigate further discussion as to how we might enact solidarity with other beings as anti-colonial allies in education. To this end, we conclude the paper with some educational implications based on research at a place-based school and focus on the role history, language and metaphor play in manufacturing a colonial relationship, but also provide a potential means for changing relationships with the diverse beings with whom we share the planet. (shrink)

The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: (...) “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter. (shrink)

The dominance of the Abrahamic tradition in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion has led some to call for greater exploration of alternatives to the traditional conception of God, such as Pantheism, Ultimism, and Axiarchism. While we think this call for alternatives is important, we go in a different direction. Rather than explore and defend alternative conceptions of God, we defend a range of fairly traditional but non-religious conceptions of God. This range of views, from deism to philosophical theism, enjoys a (...) variety of benefits over its religious competitors and deserves greater attention. (shrink)

The rise of mobile communication applications and technologies presents promising therapeutic and accessibility-related interventions for neurodivergent users. However, top-down approaches in human-computer interaction research often prioritize the needs and goals of allistic and neurotypical researchers and secondary stakeholders in media creation. Furthermore, media technologies are created with a one-size-fits-all approach, with the intent of rehabilitating or curing neurodivergent ways of being. This article imagines neuroqueer technoscience as an extension of crip technoscience that amplifies new styles of relationality, self-expression, and communication (...) practices within the development of information and communication technologies. Using an interdisciplinary framework informed by crip technoscience and human-computer interaction research, the author presents three tenets for mediating neuroqueer subjectivities. (shrink)

The foundations of systematics lie in ontology, not in subjective epistemology. Systems and their elements should be distinguished from classes; only the latter are constructed from similarities. The term classification should be restricted to ordering into classes; ordering according to systematic relations may be called systematization.The theory of organization levels portrays the real world as a hierarchy of open systems, from energy quanta to ecosystems; followingHartmann these systems as extended in time are considered the primary units of reality. Organization levels (...) should be distinguished from levels of differentiation within each organization level.Certain biological systems, such as species, continue to be misinterpreted as classes, particularly by logicians unfamiliar with modern biological theory. Replacement of Aristotelian definitions of species by “polytypic” definitions achieves nothing, because species are individual systems which can be defined from an ontological viewpoint only as wholes. The dispute whether classes are real per se or only in individuals is of no scientific importance; irrespective of which view is taken, any ordering of physical objects into classes constitutes an hypothesis about the structure of the real world.The distinction between essential and contingent characters is relevant only to classification. There are no universal rules for evaluating characters for purposes of systematization. Character statements do not form separate linear sequences. The search for “unit characters” in an absolute sense is futile. All real characters are reducible to relations and are in principle measurable, although there are limitations on the extent to which this can be presently achieved.The concept of the sexual species is fundamental to theories of biosystematics. Sexual species may be defined as lineages consisting at any given time of series of populations between which genetic exchange can occur and delimited in time by two successive processes of speciation. Linnaean nomenclature needs modification; in its traditional form it is appropriate only to non-truncated hierarchies, whereas real phylogenies form truncated hierarchies. In consequence of the distinction between systematization and classification it is concluded that, while taxa may be classified into age classes or evolutionary grades, their limits as taxa can be no different in either case. Classification into evolutionary grades remains an imprecise endeavour, since no general measure of evolutionary differentiation has been devised.The spatial and temporal extent of ecosystems, the postulated basic units of ecosystematics, remains unclarified. Nevertheless there are grounds for expecting progress in this field as the energetic relations between organisms become better understood. Biotic communities are not “abstract” classes, but systematic units. Physiognomic classification should not be confused with systematization of plant communities; both approaches contribute to an understanding of vegetational structure. (shrink)

Logic, in one of the many sense of that term, is a theory about what follows from what and why. Arguably, the correct theory has to be determined by abduction. Over recent years, so called logical anti-exceptionalists have investigated this matter. Current discussions have been restricted to deductive logic. However, there are also, of course, various forms of non-deductive reasoning. Indeed, abduction itself is one of these. What is to be said about the way of choosing the best theory of (...) non-deductive inferences? It would seem clear that an anti-exceptionalist should hold that essentially the same method of choice should apply to non-deductive logic. A number of issues need to be faced in the process, not the least of which is the circularity involved in an abductive justification for a theory of abduction. This paper discusses matters. (shrink)

There have been several criticisms of Object-Oriented Ontology from the political Left. Perhaps the most frequent one has been that OOO’s aspiration to speak of objects apart from all their relations runs afoul of Marx’s critique of “commodity fetishism.” The main purpose of this article is to show that even a cursory reading of the sections on commodity in Marx’s Capital does not support such an accusation. For Marx, the sphere of entities that are not commodities is actually quite wide, (...) including all the beings of nature not subject to exchange, as well as bartered goods, and tithes and rents paid in kind to feudal lords. In short, the theory of commodity fetishism is a theory of v a l u e, not an anti-realist theory of b e i n g, and thus does not touch on OOO at all. In closing, I make some brief comments on Marx’s relation to Kantian formalism and to Heidegger’s famous account of present-at-hand and ready-to-hand. (shrink)

Moral dilemmas can arise from uncertainty, including uncertainty of the real values involved. One interesting example of this is that of experimentation on human embryos and foetuses, If these have a moral stauts similar to that of human persons then there will be server constraitns on what may be done to them. If embryous have a moral status similar to that of other small clusters of cells, then constraints will be motivated largely by consideration for the persons into whom the (...) embryos may develop. If the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, the embryo having neither the full moral weight of persons, nor a completely negligible moral weight, then different kinds of constraints will be appropriate. On the face of it, in order to know what kinds of experiements, if any, we are morally justified in performing on embryos we have to know what the moral weight of the embryo is. But then an impasse threatens, for it seems implausible that we can settle with certainty the exact moral status of the human embryo. It is the purpose of this paper to show that moral uncertainty need not make rational moral justification impossible. I develop a framework which distinguishes between what is morally right/wrong, and what is morally justified/unjustified, and applies standard decision theoretic tools to the case of moral uncertainties. (This was the first published account of what has subsequently become known as Expected Moral Value Theory. An earlier version of the paper, "A decision theoretic argument against human embryo experimentation", was published in M. Fricke (ed.), Essays in honor of Bob Durrant. (University of Otago Press, 1986) 111-27.). (shrink)

The first attempt at a systematic approach to axiomatic theories of truth was undertaken by Friedman and Sheard (Ann Pure Appl Log 33:1–21, 1987). There twelve principles consisting of axioms, axiom schemata and rules of inference, each embodying a reasonable property of truth were isolated for study. Working with a base theory of truth conservative over PA, Friedman and Sheard raised the following questions. Which subsets of the Optional Axioms are consistent over the base theory? What are the proof-theoretic strengths (...) of the consistent theories? The first question was answered completely by Friedman and Sheard; all subsets of the Optional Axioms were classified as either consistent or inconsistent giving rise to nine maximal consistent theories of truth.They also determined the proof-theoretic strength of two subsets of the Optional Axioms. The aim of this paper is to continue the work begun by Friedman and Sheard. We will establish the proof-theoretic strength of all the remaining seven theories and relate their arithmetic part to well-known theories ranging from PA to the theory of ${\Sigma^1_1}$ dependent choice. (shrink)

Only too often critical realist contributions to understanding and explaining social phenomena fall into one of two discrete categories: exercises in philosophy or social theory, or empirical research that strikes as more or less atheoretical. This paper continues a long-term project to build bridges between abstruse issues of philosophy and theory and attempts to grasp the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of actual social events. The topic selected is elite professional rugby union and the principal theme is its emergence as an extreme (...) sport and the risk of serious injury. It is argued that the injurious nature of elite rugby has its causal genesis in the professionalization of the sport and that a critical realist-oriented sociology has an important contribution to make in framing and gasping how and why this is. (shrink)

Are things good because we desire them or do we desire them because they are good? Theories that countenance only desire-dependent values are idealist, those that countenance desire-independent values are realist. A value can be either subject-relative or subject-neutral. Subjectivism countenances only subject-relative and desire-dependent values. Subject-neutral idealism countenances at least some subject-neutral values. Realism repudiates the dependence of value on actual desires, but endorses an important relation between value and the fittingness of desires. Normative realism takes normative facts about (...) the fittingness of desires to ground the value facts, while axiological realism takes value facts to ground facts about fittingness. An important variant of axiological realism, namely representational realism, holds that desires are appearances of value, and that the fittingness of a desire is simply a matter of accurate representation. (shrink)

This article begins with a treatment of Friedrich Nietzsche’s early essay “On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense.” The essay is often read, in the deconstructive tradition, as a showcase example of the impossibility of making a literal philosophical claim: is Nietzsche’s claim that all truth is merely metaphorical itself a true statement, or merely a metaphorical one? The present article claims that this supposed paradox relies on the groundless assumption that all philosophy must ultimately be grounded in some (...) unshakeable literal truth. From here, we turn to Edmund Gettier’s famous critique of the widespread notion of knowledge as “justified true belief.” Expanding on Gettier’s point, it is argued that there can only be “justified untrue belief” or “unjustified true belief,” never a belief that is both justified and true at once. (shrink)

Too little attention has been paid by philosophers to the cognitive and epistemic dimensions of emotional disturbances such as depression, grief, and anxiety and to the possibility of justification or warrant for such conditions. The chief aim of the present paper is to help to remedy that deficiency with respect to depression. Taxonomy of depression reveals two distinct forms: depression (1) with intentionality and (2) without intentionality. Depression with intentionality can be justified or unjustified, warranted or unwarranted. I argue that (...) the effort of Aaron Beck to show that depressive reasoning is necessarily illogical and distorted is flawed. I identify an essential characteristic of that depression which is a mental illness. Finally, I describe the potential of depression to provide credal contact with important truths. (shrink)

Arguing for a new direction in postmodern theological thinking, away from the liberalism and nihilism of those who name themselves postmodern theologians, the ...

Robert Koons has recently defended what he claims is a successful argument for the existence of a necessary first cause, and which he develops by taking “a new look” at traditional arguments from contingency. I argue that Koons’ argument is less than successful; in particular, I claim that his attempt to “shift the burden of proof” to non-theists amounts to nothing more than an ill-disguised begging of one of the central questions upon which theists and non-theists disagree. I also argue (...) that his interesting attempt to bridge (part of) the familiar gap between the claim that there is a necessary first cause and the claim that God exists is beset with numerous difficulties. (shrink)

A recent political critique of Speculative Realism by Catherine Malabou finds fault with this loosely arranged movement for its focus on reality in its own right, apart from the subject. Malabou responds with a radical ontological claim, holding effectively – if not always explicitly – that subject and object mutually generate one another amidst a primal void. After criticizing this idea, I point to some of the difficult political consequences of such a position, though Malabou defines it positively as an (...) anarchic awakening that generates new collectivities unconstrained by any thing-in-itself. By contrast, I contend that nonhuman constraints and collaborators are an intimate part of the human political sphere. More generally, it is shown that there are consequences for which sorts of relations are taken to be the primary political relations. (shrink)

The Hungarian-born philosopher of science Imre Lakatos introduces the methodology of scientific research programs, and also makes a famous distinction between “progressive” and “degenerating” programs. Although Lakatos does not give extensive guidance as to whether philosophical rather than scientific theories could also be judged in this way, he does give some intriguing hints in his discussion of a debate on induction between Rudolf Carnap and Karl Popper. After considering two extant but misguided attempts to use “degenerating” as a polemical term (...) in philosophy, this article gathers the aforementioned hints from Lakatos and a few others from Alfred North Whitehead in an effort to identify what a “progressive philosophy” might look like. (shrink)

This article is a response to Martin Orensanz’s argument that object-oriented ontology ought to accept the existence of matter as both a sensual and a real object. That matter can exist as a sensual object is a point immediately granted, since “sensual object” is such a broad term that nothing could be excluded from this designation. Yet I argue that this is not the case with respect to real objects, which must exist independently of any other entity that might encounter (...) them. This leads to a related debate on whether parthood is transitive, in which Orensanz takes up a recent argument of Daniel Korman while I defend the modified Aristotelian position that only the proximate parts of an object can be said to belong to it in the strict sense. (shrink)

Among challenges to Molinism, the challenge posed by divine prophecy of human free action has received insufficient attention. We argue that this challenge is a significant addition to the array of challenges that confront Molinism.

This paper compares the roles classical and intuitionistic logic play in restricting the free use of truth principles in arithmetic. We consider fifteen of the most commonly used axiomatic principles of truth and classify every subset of them as either consistent or inconsistent over a weak purely intuitionistic theory of truth.

A rather promising value theory for environmental philosophers combines the well-known fitting attitude (FA) account of value with the rather less well-known account of value as richness. If the value of an entity is proportional to its degree of richness (which has been cashed out in terms of unified complexity and organic unity), then since natural entities, such as species or ecosystems, exhibit varying degrees of richness quite independently of what we happen to feel about them, they also possess differing (...) degrees of mind-independent and subject-independent value. In particular, their value is not dependent on the desires or preferences of humans. The fitting attitudes account of value, at least as it is standardly developed, demands isomorphic evaluative responses on the part of all valuers. In particular, it entails that all valuers should have isomorphic preferences. But this seems absurd. I consider three different strategies with which the fitting attitude theorist can deflect this challenge. The first makes use of an account of non-standard value relations in terms of permissible preference orderings. The second appeals to value appearances and the associated notions of value distance and value perspective. The third involves an account of the ultimate bearers of value as properties, rather than as propositions or states of affairs. These strategies are not all mutually incompatible. While it isn’t possible to combine the first and second strategies, it is possible to combine the first and third strategies, and also to combine the second and the third. (shrink)