The ‘great divide’ in the metaphysics of science is between Humean approaches—which reduce scientific laws (and related modalities) to patterns of occurrent facts—and anti-Humean approaches—where laws stand apart from the patterns of events, making those events hold. There is a vast literature on this debate, with many problems raised for the Humean. But a major problem comes right at the start—what’s the motivation for Humeanism in the first place? This is rather unclear. In fact Maudlin, and other anti-Humeans, claim that (...) there is no good motivation for Humeanism. I criticize a few influential approaches to motivating Humeanism—in particular those based on empiricism, pragmatism, and fidelity to science. In their place I suggest a different type of motivation, which has not received much attention in the literature, that rests on considerations of the role of unification in scientific understanding. (shrink)

In this discussion note I reply to some criticisms that Marc Lange (2022) has directed at my Humean view of scientific laws (Bhogal, 2020) -- about whether Humean views can make sense of the apparent fact that laws are counterfactually invariant. The key idea of my response is that the Humean should think of their reduction of the laws to the Humean mosaic as closely related to other views where we reduce one domain to another but still allow that (...) the higher-level domain can be `autonomous' of the lower-level in some respects -- like, for example, the view that the special sciences reduce to physics but can still can work autonomously of physics. (shrink)

This is the first definitive graduate and advanced undergraduate level treatment of behavioral economics that describes the cutting edge of the subject. It carefully outlines the evidence, describes the relevant theory, and provides interesting and economically relevant applications of the theory. Behavioral economics is not only the fastest growing area in economics but it is rapidly going mainstream, and it is most likely to be the future of economics. The field has lacked a definitive treatment- this is it. The book (...) covers most areas in economics, which accounts for its length. Behavioral economics not only explains the evidence much better, it is fun to do relative to the dismal science of traditional economics; this book conveys both these aspects. (shrink)

At the core of the recent debate over moral debunking arguments is a disagreement between explanationist and modalist approaches. Explanationists think that the lack of an explanatory connection between our moral beliefs and the moral truths, given a non-naturalist realist conception of morality, is a reason to reject non-naturalism. Modalists disagree. They say that, given non-naturalism, our beliefs have the appropriate modal features with respect to truth -- in particular they are safe and sensitive -- so there is no problem. (...) -/- There is something of a stand-off here. I argue, though, that by looking at the role explanatory and modal factors have to play in theory choice more generally, and, in particular, by considering the practice of theory choice in science, we can see that the explanationist is right. The lack of an explanatory connection between our moral beliefs and the moral truths is a reason to reject non-naturalist realism about morality. (shrink)

This book carries forward the discourse on the mind’s engagement with the world. It reviews the semantic and metaphysical debates around internalism and externalism, the location of content, and the indeterminacy of meaning in language. The volume analyses the writings of Jackson, Chomsky, Putnam, Quine, Bilgrami and others, to reconcile opposing theories of language and the mind. It ventures into Cartesian ontology and Fregean semantics to understand how mental content becomes world-oriented in our linguistic communication. Further, the author explores the (...) liaison between the mind and the world from the phenomenological perspective, particularly, Husserl’s linguistic turn and Heidegger’s intersubjective entreaty for Dasein. The book conceives thought as a biological and socio-linguistic product which engages with the mind-world question through the conceptual and causal apparatuses of language. A major intervention in the field of philosophy of language, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers interested in philosophy, phenomenology, epistemology, and metaphysics . (shrink)

The nominal ground that entwines human beings and animal behaviours is unwilling to admit moral valuing as a non-human act. Just to nail it down explicitly, two clauses ramify the moral conscience of human beings as follows: a) Can non-humans be moral beings?, b) Unconscious animal behaviours go beyond any moral judgments. My approach aims to rebuff these anthropomorphic clauses by justifying animals’ moral beings and animals’ moral behaviours from a meta-ethical stance. A meta-ethical outlook may enable an analysis of (...) ethical and normative views through the limit of moral motives and reasoning. Animals’ sense of moral motives and their apparatus of getting involved in moral acts cannot be compared with human actions. In human moral engagement, we abide by moral paradigmatic theories and their diversified attitudes that could have conceptual and linguistic use in our societal discourses. However, animals’ intentional apparatus may have the propensity to choose an act following the moral consequences (care, utility, responsibility, etc.) in their life-forms. (shrink)

Tim Maudlin has influentially argued that Humeanism about laws of nature stands in conflict with quantum mechanics. Specifically Humeanism implies the principle Separability: the complete physical state of a world is determined by the intrinsic physical state of each space-time point. Maudlin argues Separability is violated by the entangled states posited by QM. We argue that Maudlin only establishes that a stronger principle, which we call Strong Separability, is in tension with QM. Separability is not in tension with QM. Moreover, (...) while the Humean requires Separability to capture the core tenets of her view, there's no Humean-specific motivation for accepting Strong Separability. We go on to give a Humean account of entangled states which satisfies Separability. The core idea is that certain quantum states depend upon the Humean mosaic in much the same way as the laws do. In fact, we offer a variant of the Best System account on which the systemization procedure that generates the laws also serves to ground these states. We show how this account works by applying it to the example of Bohmian Mechanics. The 3N-dimensional configuration space, the world particle in it and the wave function on it are part of the best system of the Humean mosaic, which consists of N particles moving in 3-dimensional space. We argue that this account is superior to the Humean account of Bohmian Mechanics defended by Loewer and Albert, which takes the 3N-dimensional space, and its inhabitants, as fundamental. (shrink)

Here is a puzzling phenomenon. Moral theories are typically thought to be necessary. If act utilitarianism is true, for example, then it is necessarily true. However, scientific theories are typically thought to be contingent. If quantum field theory is true, it’s not necessarily true — the world could have been Newtonian. My aim is to explore this discrepancy between domains. -/- In particular, I explore the role of what I call `internality’ intuitions in motivating necessitism about both moral and scientific (...) domains. In effect, these internality intuitions tell against the explanatory role of certain `external’ entities – like moral or scientific principles. I’ll suggest that perhaps these internality intuitions are more compelling in the moral case than the scientific case. If so, this would rationalize the combination of moral necessitism and scientific contingentism. (shrink)

Humeanism about laws of nature is, roughly, the view that the laws of nature are just patterns, or ways of describing patterns, in the mosaic of events. In this paper I survey some of the (many!) objections that have been raised to Humeanism, considering how the Humean might respond. And I consider how we might make a positive case for Humeanism. The common thread running through all this is that the viability of the Humean view relies on the Humean having (...) an importantly different conception of explanation to the anti-Humean. (shrink)

Humeanism about laws of nature — the view that the laws reduce to the Humean mosaic — is a popular view, but currently existing versions face powerful objections. The non-supervenience objection, the non-fundamentality objection and the explanatory circularity objection have all been thought to cause problems for the Humean. However, these objections share a guiding thought — they are all based on the idea that there is a certain kind of divergence between the practice of science and the metaphysical picture (...) suggested by Humeanism. -/- I suggest that the Humean can respond to these objections not by rejecting this divergence, but by arguing that is appropriate. In particular the Humean can, in the spirit of Loewer (2012), distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanation — this is motivated by differing aims of explanation in science and metaphysics. And they can further leverage this into distinctions between scientific and metaphysical fundamentality and scientific and metaphysical possibility. We can use these distinctions to respond to the objections that the Humean faces. (shrink)

The translation of the Guru Granth Sahib (GGS), or Sikh ‘scripture’, within the discourse of (European) colonial/modernity was enacted by the use of hermeneutics—which oversaw the shift from the openness of praxis to the closure of representation and knowledge. Such a shift demoted certain indigenous interpretive frames, wherein the GGS is assumed to enunciate an excess that far transcends the foreign demand to fix the text’s ‘call’ into singular meanings (beyond time), but rather transforms the hermeneutic desire into a process (...) of learning (Sikhi) through multiple meanings (in time). Thus the GGS is not translated according to a particular life-world, but actively transforms the life-world of those that respond to its excessive call. How should hermeneutics be reformed in this case? If the GGS as text demands interpretation, then the text as Guru demands engagement, and together they would necessarily call forth a radicalization of hermeneutics via a certain poetic reticence to all philosophical messengers. (shrink)

Humean accounts of chance have a problem with undermining futures: they have to accept that some series of events are physically possible and have a nonzero chance but are inconsistent with the chances being what they are. This contradicts basic platitudes about chances (such as those given by Bigelow et al. (1993) and Schaffer (2007)) and leads to inconsistency between plausible constraints on credences. We show how Humeans can avoid these contradictions by drawing on metaphysically impossible worlds that are, nevertheless, (...) scientifically possible. One major advantage of our approach is that one single move deals with these both problems, whereas previous Humean approaches to undermining (such as that given by Lewis (1994), Thau (1994), and Hall (1994)) have only addressed the connection between credence and chance. Furthermore, our approach connects more closely with the way we employ stochastic scientific theories. And it’s part of a unified solution to other challenges that the Humean faces. (shrink)

I give an account of what makes an event a coincidence. -/- I start by critically discussing a couple of other approaches to the notion of coincidence -- particularly that of Lando (2017) -- before developing my own view. The central idea of my view is that the correct understanding of coincidences is closely related to our understanding of the correct 'level' or 'grain' of explanation. Coincidences have a kind of explanatory deficiency — if they did not have this deficiency (...) they would not be coincidences. This deficiency, I claim, is the same explanatory deficiency as when we give low-level explanations of special science phenomena. Such explanations are typically too specific and not robust enough. I claim that there is this same badness in purported explanations of coincidences. -/- I cash out this idea sketching an account of explanatory goodness — an account of what makes explanations better or worse -- and using that to give a more precise account of coincidences. (shrink)

Some properties – like charge – are natural, some – like grue are unnatural. The distinction between natural and unnatural properties is normally taken as primitive. However, Barry Loewer’s Package Deal Account (PDA) aims to provide an reductive account of natural properties, integrated with a reductive account of laws of nature. In addition, the account seems to be able to apply to natural properties at the level of fundamental physics, and higher-level, special science, properties. -/- If the account is successful, (...) then, it looks to be incredibly powerful and attractive. The PDA, however, is somewhat underexplored in the literature. So the first aim of the paper is to understand the PDA better -- to map the connections between naturalness and laws on the traditional BSA and to consider how those connections have to adapted in order to develop different versions of the PDA. -/- The second aim is to start to evaluate different versions of the PDA. In particular, perhaps the most promising version of the PDA construes it as an instance of a larger approach to Humeanism — one that has been very visible in the recent literature — that focuses on the role of 'ideal observers' or 'ideal scientists'. While such an approach might be feasible, I claim, it gets its proponents much less than they were originally hoping for. (shrink)

There is a tension in our theorizing about laws of nature: our practice of using and reasoning with laws of nature suggests that laws are universal generalizations, but if laws are universal generalizations then we face the problem of explanatory circularity. In this paper I elucidate this tension and show how it motivates a view of laws that I call Minimal Anti-Humeanism. This view says that the laws are the universal generalizations that are not grounded in their instances. I argue (...) that this view has a variety of advantages that could make it attractive to people with both Humean and anti-Humean inclinations. (shrink)

This paper attempts to revisit how ‘acquaintance’ could bring about belief and how belief becomes knowledge in our language system due to the credential undertaking of truth, justification, evidence, and causal or conceptual preservation. My quest in this paper is to interrogate belief and the cessation of belief (I call this the ‘death of belief’) from the perspective of the doxastic approach of externalism and internalism in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. I will attempt to make sense (...) of the nominal appeal (an approach that conserves the process of continuing belief through evidence and conceptualization) to both of these ideas in a sophisticated manner. The linguistic form of using words seems allied to the context sensitivity of the speakers involved in social practices. A tripartite structure pivots the model of linguistic belief, where minds are causally entrenched in a world that stimulates conceptual or internal states, representing how objectivity works. The entanglements of concepts with pictures hinge on conceptual prerequisites to impact the world. (shrink)

Views which deny that there are necessary connections between distinct existences have often been criticized for leading to inductive skepticism. If there is no glue holding the world together then there seems to be no basis on which to infer from past to future. However, deniers of necessary connections have typically been unconcerned. After all, they say, everyone has a problem with induction. But, if we look at the connection between induction and explanation, we can develop the problem of induction (...) in a way that hits deniers of necessary connections, but not their opponents. The denier of necessary connections faces an `internal' problem with induction -- skepticism about important inductive inferences naturally flows from their position in a way that it doesn't for those who accept necessary connections. This is a major problem, perhaps a fatal one, for the denial of necessary connections. (shrink)

This special issue of Sophia, titled Living without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism, deals with the intricate issue of approaching atheism—methodologically as well as conceptually—from the perspective of cultural pluralism. What does ‘atheism’ mean in different cultural contexts? Can this term be applied appropriately to different religious discourses which conceptualize God/gods/Goddess/goddesses in hugely divergent ways? Or would that rather be a sort of hegemonic homogenization of all possible modalities of living without God, as Jessica Frazier argues? Is my ‘God’ (...) the same as yours? If not, then how can your atheism be the same as mine? In other words, this issue of Sophia raises the question: Is it not high time that we proposed a comparative study of atheism alongside that of religions, rather than believing that atheism is centered in the ‘Western’ experience? Besides, how can we explore the modalities of atheist religiosity such as we find in Buddhism and Jainism and also, arguably, in certain forms of Hinduism, as far as the Indic traditions are concerned? How might these negotiations of atheism across the multicultural spectrum interrogate our tendency to place atheism within the context of the binary opposition of science and religion? Besides, there is a need to focus on the philosophical negotiations between atheism, theism and agnosticism and the discourses that emerge from such dialogues, including that of postsecularity. (shrink)

Many moral debunking arguments are driven by the idea that the correlation between our moral beliefs and the moral truths is a big coincidence, given a robustly realist conception of morality.One influential response is that the correlation is not a coincidence because there is a common explainer of our moral beliefs and the moral truths. For example, the reason that I believe that I should feed my child is because feeding my child helps them to survive, and natural selection instills (...) in me beliefs and dispositions that help my children survive since that is conductive to my genes continuing through the generations. Similarly, the reason that it's morally good to feed my child is because it helps them to survive, and survival is morally valuable.But if we look at some cases from scientific practice, and from everyday life, we can see, I argue, why this response fails. A correlation can be coincidental even if there is a common explainer. I give an account of the nature of coincidence that draws upon recent literature on scientific explanation and argue that the correlation between moral belief and moral truth is a coincidence, even given such common explainers. And I use this to defend a certain form of debunking argument. (shrink)

This chapter critiques the notion of identity, a philosophical reaction in the Quinean sense that vindicates another significant hypothesis, which is called the “No entity without identity” theorem. Here, the identification of an entity relies upon its identity. The first segment of this chapter revisits the following question: How do we encounter the concept of a subjective “mind”? Could we “infer” or “experience” the concept of “mind” in our daily lives? Every entity has some characteristics that prompt comparison with similar (...) entities. Although I think that other minds have a subjective periphery and that other minds have an objective periphery lurking behind this (privileged access), we can construe the relationship in a subjective way (individual mind). In the second section of the chapter, I address a different point by considering why the idea of “other minds” causes philosophical dilemmas. Can “other minds” exist as a substance in one’s own mind? The category of human knowledge encompasses the reality of minds and other minds. The other minds remain an accompanying part of the individual mind since the expression, belief, and mental content of the individual mind merge in the linguistic expression in a split manner that we may ascribe as privileged access (subjective incorrigible knowledge) and corrigible knowledge. But I think that the relation between minds and other minds sounds especially idiosyncratic in its own identity. Despite becoming diverse, the individual mind can still be intimate by blending and attunement between the subjective and objective dichotomy. (shrink)

This fictionalized script traces the contours of the conversation that seeks to fathom the crisis unleashed by the outbreak and global spread of the coronavirus and the ensuing anxieties created in our current social living. The scenario of deepened isolation of the self from the other is considered, and it is proposed that isolation, while an unavoidable requirement, does not mean it is some mental lassitude but rather may be seen as an enthusiastic concern toward recovering physical and mental wellbeing (...) of the larger communities concerned to control the possible avenues of transmission of the contagion. The conversation meanders around the issue of quarantine, its attraction or otherwise, and who benefits from this restriction, its effects on one’s mental constitution, etc. Philosophers have been known to isolate themselves in other contexts and situations give us a taste of what is to come in the dialogue to resist the calamity of the coronavirus and its grim effects that engulf the entire humanity. (shrink)

This thematic volume entitled Human Minds and Cultures deciphers different aspects of human minds and cultures that differ in their methodological patterns. It exhibits humanity as a universal, underlying cultural multiplicity coping with diverse prospects of normative morality, semiotics, and socio-linguistic human affairs. Two major concerns that the thematic volume anticipates here are as follows.

This book puts forward a harmonious analysis of similarities and differences between two concepts—human minds and cultures—and strives for a multicultural spectrum of philosophical explorations that could assist them in pondering the striking pursuit of envisaging human minds and cultures as an essential appraisal of philosophy and the social sciences. The book hinges on a theoretical understanding of the indispensable liaison between the dichotomy of minds and objectivity residing in semantic-ontological conjectures. -/- The ethnographic sense of cultures confines the scope (...) of cultural scientism, an evolutionary paradigm on the functionalist turn, where one could enthral the cultural phenomenon from the contentment of the conflict of scientific quandaries. Hence, cultural relativism concedes that cultures have some descriptive contents, like customs, beliefs, moral codes, other minds, etc., that are followed by an individual or a group of people. However, the notion of societal semiotics embarks on the ‘semiotic conception of culture’ that deploys modernity and values centred on ethical conjectures. -/- Human Minds and Cultures conspicuously attune the cultural edifice of moral minds and cope with the enduring prospects of ethics, genders, laws, and socio-political affairs. Essential reading for anyone with a sparkling interest in human minds and cultures. (shrink)

This book deals with the intricate issue of approaching atheism—methodologically as well as conceptually—from the perspective of cultural pluralism. What does ‘atheism’ mean in different cultural contexts? Can this term be applied appropriately to different religious discourses which conceptualize God/gods/Goddess/goddesses (and also godlessness) in hugely divergent ways? Is my ‘God’ the same as yours? If not, then how can your atheism be the same as mine? In other words, this volume raises the question: Is it not high time that we (...) proposed a comparative study of atheism(s) alongside that of religions, rather than believing that atheism is centered in the ‘Western’ experience? Apart from answering these questions, the book highlights the much-needed focus on the philosophical negotiations between atheism, theism and agnosticism. The fine chapters collected here present pluralist negotiations with the notion of atheism and its ethical, theological, literary and scientific corollaries. (shrink)

Principles of Behavioral Economics, written by an acknowledged leader in the field, provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the most exciting areas of modern economics. It demonstrates how models of economic theory can be enriched by using interdisciplinary insights from psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience to build the basis for a more empirically supported set of economic principles. Unique in its level of rigor and lucidity, the book highlights the important link between theoretical and empirical economics by demonstrating (...) the usefulness of a range of data sources such as observational data, lab data, survey data, and neuroeconomic data. This field-defining textbook argues that behavioral economics is not just a supplement to mainstream economics. Taking behavioral economics seriously requires a total rethink, and eventual transformation, of every area of economics. (shrink)

Some patterns call out for explanation, in the sense that we have a pro tanto reason to reject theories that do not give them an appropriate explanation. I argue that certain modal patterns call out for explanation in this way—and this provides a reason to reject certain theories of modality that fail to explain such patterns. However, I also consider a response to this argument, which claims that the modal patterns do not need explanation. This response might be viable but (...) it involves some substantial commitments about the nature of explanation. (shrink)

Humeanism – the idea that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences – and Nomic Essentialism – the idea that properties essentially play the nomic roles that they do – are two of the most important and influential positions in the metaphysics of science. Traditionally, it has been thought that these positions were incompatible competitors. We disagree. We argue that there is an attractive version of Humeanism that captures the idea that, for example, mass essentially plays the role that (...) it actually does in the laws of nature. In this paper we consider the arguments that have lead many to conclude that Humeanism cannot be combined with Nomic Essentialism; we identify the weaknesses in these arguments; and we argue in detail that a version of Humeanism based on a variant of the Best System account of laws captures the key intuitions behind nomic essentialism. (shrink)

Explaining the supervenience of the moral on the natural is, perhaps, the central metaphysical challenge for the non-naturalist. However, Scanlon (2014) and Fogal and Risberg (2020) have developed a strategy which purports to explain supervenience rather simply. Fogal and Risberg call it the 'Divide and Conquer' strategy. The key idea is to postulate explanatory moral principles linking the natural and the moral. The moral principles are metaphysically necessary, so trivially supervene on the natural. All other moral facts are determined by (...) the necessary moral principles and the natural facts, so they supervene on the natural too. -/- I argue that there are two versions of the Divide and Conquer strategy and both fail. The first strategy doesn’t give an adequate explanation of supervenience because it doesn't properly identify what makes a difference to the holding of supervenience. The second perhaps does give an adequate explanation of supervenience, but only by introducing something similarly puzzling that needs explanation. -/- Consequently, non-naturalists need additional metaphysical machinery to develop their view -- just appealing to moral principles or metaphysical laws won't do the job. (shrink)

Animals, the beautiful creatures of God in the Stoic and especially in Porphyry’s sense, need to be treated as rational. We know that the Stoics ask for justice for all rational beings, but I think there is no significant proclamation from their side that directly talks in favour of animal justice. They claim the rationality of animals but do not confer any right to human beings. The later Neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry magnificently deciphers this idea in his writing On Abstinence from (...) Animal Food. Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus thinks that both animals and humans are made up of the same tissues, and like humans, animals have the same perception, reasoning, and appetites. In this paper, I will attempt to show another empathetic ground that considers rational animals as friends or reincarnated relatives of human beings, as Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Theophrastus occasionally put forth in their writings. My next effort would be to decipher how Porphyry illustrates Theophratus’ perspective, not in the way (the technical theory of justice) the Stoics argued. Porphyry’s stance seems more humanistic, looking for the pertinent reasons for treating animal rights from the contention of justice that Aristotle defied since the animals can deal with reasons in his early writings. The paper highlights how much we could make justificatory demand the empathetic concern for animals from the outlook of the mentioned Greek thinkers and modern animal rights thinkers as quasi-right animals, even if my own position undertakes the empathetic ground for animals as an undeserving humanitarian way. (shrink)

About this book Hilary Whitehall Putnam was one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. As student of Rudolph Carnap's and Hans Reichenbach's, he went on to become not only a major figure in North American analytic philosophy, who made significant contributions to the philosophy of mind, language, mathematics, and physics but also to the disciplines of logic, number theory, and computer science. He passed away on March 13, 2016. The present volume is a memorial (...) to his extraordinary intellectual contributions, honoring his contributions as a philosopher, a thinker, and a public intellectual. It features essays by an international team of leading philosophers, covering all aspects of Hilary Putnam's philosophy from his work in ethics and the history of philosophy to his contributions to the philosophy of science, logic, and mathematics. Each essay is an original contribution. -/- Author information James Conant, Univ. of Chicago/Univ. of Leipzig, USA/Germany; Sanjit Chakraborty, IISER Kolkata/VIT-AP University, India. (shrink)

Why do we value higher-level scientific explanations if, ultimately, the world is physical? An attractive answer is that physical explanations often cite facts that don’t make a difference to the event in question. I claim that to properly develop this view we need to commit to a type of deterministic chance. And in doing so, we see the theoretical utility of deterministic chance, giving us reason to accept a package of views including deterministic chance.

Under the influence of Hilary Putnam’s collapse of the fact/value dichotomy, a resurging approach that challenges the movements of American pragmatism and discourse ethics, I tease out in the first section of my paper the demand for the warranted assertibility hypothesis in Putnam’s sense that may be possible, relying on moral realism to get rid of ‘rampant Platonism’. Tracing back to ‘communicative action’ or the Habermasian way that puts forward the reciprocal understanding of discourse instigates the idea of life-world as (...) composed of ‘culturally transmitted and linguistically organized stock of interpretative patterns’, this section looks for whether Habermas’ psychoanalysis of prolonged discussion can accord with Putnam’s thick ethical terms or not. The last section of the paper pitfalls Putnam’s stance to accepting Habermas’ ‘discourse ethics’ that centers around the context of entangling ‘rational thoughts’ to ‘communication’, but he introduces the idea of fallibilism in a rational query that also attacks the Habermasian metaphysical idea of the validity of ethical statements that goes towards the truth. My next attempt is to see whether Putnam’s objective dictum towards morality that resonates the collapse of fact/value dichotomy from a universalistic stand can successfully evade Rorty’s naive realism and Habermas’ ‘sociologism about values’ respectively. This sort of claim insists on a universalizable pattern of culture-relative value. I consider that the idea of a fact/value dichotomy engages with the inextricable entanglement between the normative and descriptive content, besides the epistemic values having exclusively intertwined with the structure of factual discourse that intends towards collapsing the fact/value dichotomy, a subjective universalizability predilection. (shrink)

The concept of morality underpins the moral responsibility that not only depends on the outward practices (or ‘output,’ in the case of humanoid robots) of the agents but on the internal attitudes (‘input’) that rational and responsible intentioned beings generate. The primary question that has initiated the extensive debate, i.e., ‘Can humanoid robots be moral?’, stems from the normative outlook where morality includes human conscience and socio-linguistic background. This paper advances the thesis that the conceptions of morality and creativity interplay (...) with linguistic human beings instead of non-linguistic humanoid robots, as humanoid robots are indeed docile automata that cannot be responsible for their actions. To eradicate human ethics in order to make way for humanoid robot ethics highlights the moral actions and adequacy that hinges the myth of creative agency and self-dependency, which a humanoid robot can scarcely express. (shrink)

This paper discusses Kant’s prospect of ‘hope’ that entangles with interrelated epistemic terms like belief, faith, knowledge, etc. The first part of the paper illustrates the boundary of knowing in the light of a Platonic analysis to highlight the distinction between empiricism and rationalism. Kant’s notion of ‘transcendent metaphysical knowledge’, a path-breaking way to look at the metaphysical thought, can fit with the regulative principle that seems favoruable to the experience-centric knowledge. The second part of the paper defines ‘hope’ as (...) an interwoven part of belief, besides ‘hope’ as a component of ‘happiness' can persuade the future behaviours of the individuals. Revisiting Kant’s three categorizations of hopes (eschatological hope, political hope, and hope for the kingdom of ends), the paper traces out Kant’s good will as a ‘hope’ and his conception of humanity. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a huge resurrection of interest in the idea of ‘analysis,’ encompassing on analytic philosophy. As with any major philosophical movement, it is futile to define or classify any precision of what makes someone an analytic thinker. However, drawing on the startling works by Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Dummett and Putnam I clear up some strands, portended by the observation that language is the sole medium of analytic philosophy, so the main focus of analytic philosophy is (...) to understand the structure of language, thought, and meaning. Analytic philosophy pursues a critical analysis on the interface between word and world interrelation in terms of natural language guided by analysis, reasons, clarity and reflective thoughts. In this paper, I will reflect on what this means and why analytic philosophy deserves an initial importance. (shrink)

The concept of morality underpins the moral responsibility that not only depends on the outward practices (or ‘output’, in the case of humanoid robots) of the agents but on the internal attitudes (‘input’) that rational and responsible intentioned beings generate. The primary question that has initiated extensive debate, i.e. ‘Can humanoid robots be moral?’, stems from the normative outlook where morality includes human conscience and socio-linguistic background. This paper advances the thesis that the conceptions of morality and creativity interplay with (...) linguistic human beings instead of non-linguistic humanoid robots, as humanoid robots are indeed docile automata that cannot be responsible for their actions. To eradicate human ethics in order to make way for humanoid robot ethics highlights the moral actions and adequacy that hinges the myth of creative agency and self-dependency, which a humanoid robot can scarcely express. (shrink)

This paper aims to exemplify the language acquisition model by tracing back to the Socratic model of language learning procedure that sets down inborn knowledge, a kind of implicit knowledge that becomes explicit in our language. Jotting down the claims in Meno, Plato triggers a representationalist outline basing on the deductive reasoning, where the conclusion follows from the premises (inborn knowledge) rather than experience. This revolution comes from the pen of Noam Chomsky, who amends the empiricist position on the creativity (...) of language by pinning down it with the innateness hypothesis. However, Chomsky never rejects the external world or the linguistic stipulation that relies on the objective reality. Wittgenstein’s model of language acquisition upholds a liaison centric appeal that stands between experience (use theory of meaning) and mentalism (mind based inner experiences). Wittgenstein’s Tractatus never demarcates the definite mental processes that entangle with the method of understanding and meaning. Wittgenstein’s ‘language game’ takes care of the model of language acquisition in a paradigmatic way. The way portrait language as the form of life and the process of language acquisition is nothing but a language game that relies on the activity of men. (shrink)

Animals, the beautiful creatures of God in the Stoic and especially in Porphyry’s sense, need to be treated as rational. We know that the Stoics ask for justice for all rational beings, but there is no significant proclamation from their side that openly talks in favour of animal justice. They claim the rationality of animals but do not confer any rights to human beings. The later Neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry magnificently deciphers this idea in his writing On Abstinence from Animal Food. (...) Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus thinks that both animals and humans are made up of the same tissues, and like a human, animals also have the same way of perception, reasoning and appetites. My next effort would be to decipher how Porphyry illustrates Theophrastus’ perspective not in the way (the technical theory of justice) the Stoics argued. Porphyry’s stance seems more humanistic that looks for the pertinent reasons for treating animal rights from the contention of justice that Aristotle, in his early writings, defied since animals can deal with reasons. The paper highlights how much we could justificatorily demand empathetic concern for animals from the outlook of the mentioned Greek thinkers and the modern animal rights thinkers as quasi-right of animals, even if my position undertakes the empathetic ground for animals in an undeserving humanitarian way. (shrink)

A collective understanding that traces a debate between 'what is science?’ and ‘what is a science about?’ has an extraction to the notion of scientific knowledge. The debate undertakes the pursuit of science that hardly extravagance the dogma of pseudo-science. Scientific conjectures invoke science as an intellectual activity poured by experiences and repetition of the objects that look independent of any idealist views (believes in the consensus of mind-dependence reality). The realistic machinery employs in an empiricist exposition of the objective (...) phenomenon by synchronizing the general method to make observational predictions that cover all the phenomena of the particular entity without any exception. The formation of science encloses several epistemological purviews and a succession of conjectures cum refutation that a newer theorem could reinstate. My attempt is to advocate a holistic plea of scientific conjectures that outruns the restricted regulation of experience or testable hypothesis to render the validity of a chain of logical reasoning (deductive or inductive) of basic scientific statements. The milieu of scientific intensification integrates speculation that loads efficiency towards a new experimental dimension where the reality is not itself objective or observers relative; in fact the observed phenomenon divulges in the constructive progression of preferred methods of falsifiability and uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on the resurrection of the journey of analytic philosophy from the perspective of ‘critical thinking,’ a tool of proper thought and understanding. To define an era of philosophy as analytic seems indeed a difficult attempt. However, my attempt would be to look up a few positions from the monumental thoughts of Frege, Russell, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Quine, and Putnam on their ‘analysis’ minded outlooks that developed in different ways based on logic, scientific spirit, conceptual, language etc. Analytic philosophers (...) intend to intertwine between word and world in terms of mind and language guided by critical analysis that I think remarkably encompassed by clarity, truth, analysis, accuracy, and open-mindedness. My attempt would be to resurrect the philosophical development of analytic philosophy in different periods that were enormously nourished by the idea of ‘critical thinking’ and the analysis of natural language. (shrink)

In this article I would like to discuss the concept of a priori mainly focusing on Kant’s Copernican revolution. How is metaphysics at all possible and how a priority takes place in Kantian metaphysics are the questions that I have addressed in the first part of my article. In this context, I have explained analytic, synthetic distinction from epistemological, metaphysical and semantical perspectives and I want to show how the concept of a priori and other associated notions are derived from (...) this different perspective. I end my discussion with an account of some fundamental objections raised by Quine and Kripke against Kantian analysis. Quine mainly wants to deny the traditional analytic and synthetic distinction. Besides, Kripke is trying to show that it is not true that the traditional account of the intimate relation between a priori and necessary proposition must be true, i.e., it is mistaken that a priori proposition must be necessary, it may be contingent. I would like to analyse and explain a few obstacles of Quine and Kripke following Putnam’s (externalist approach) and Quassim Cassam’s (non-empirical approach on a priority) line of different arguments. (shrink)