PhilPapers-Oct 25th 2013

Oct 25th 2013 GMT

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Matthias Unterhuber (2013). Possible Worlds Semantics for Indicative and Counterfactual Conditionals? A Formal Philosophical Inquiry Into Chellas-Segerberg Semantics. Ontos.

Conditional structures lie at the heart of the sciences, humanities, and everyday reasoning. It is hence not surprising that conditional logics – logics specifically designed to account for natural language conditionals – are an active and interdisciplinary area. The present book gives a formal and a philosophical account of indicative and counterfactual conditionals in terms of Chellas-Segerberg semantics. For that purpose a range of topics are discussed such as Bennett’s arguments against truth value based semantics for indicative conditionals.

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Mehmet Karabela (2013). Ibn Al-Rawandi. In Ibrahim Kalin (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam. Oxford University Press.

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Matthew Frise (forthcoming). What God Only Knows: A Reply to Rob Lovering. Religious Studies.

Rob Lovering has recently argued that God is not omniscient on the grounds that (1) in order to be omniscient a subject must not only know all truths always but also know what it's like not to know a truth, and (2) God cannot fulfil both of these requirements. I show that Lovering's argument is unsuccessful since he inadequately supports (1) and (2), and since there are several serious doubts about (2). I also show that Lovering does not otherwise indicate that God is not maximally great.

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Alejandra Mancilla (2013). Det Vi Eide Førfast Eiendom. Hugo Grotius Og Suum (What We Own Before Property: Hugo Grotius and the Suum). Arr, Idéhistorisk Tiddskrift 3:3-14.

At the basis of modern natural law theories, the concept of the suum, or what belongs to the person (in Latin, his, her, its, their own), has received little scholarly attention despite its importance both in explaining and justifying not only the genealogy of property, but also that of morality and war.1 In this paper I examine Hugo Grotius's what it is, what things it includes, what rights it gives rise to and how it is extended in the transition from the state of nature to civil society. I then briefly point out how bringing this concept back to the fore could help to illuminate the current discussion on the foundations of basic human rights, and to evaluate cases where these seem to clash with property rights.

5. Kyle Fruh & Marcus Hedahl (forthcoming). Coping with Climate Change: What Justice Demands of Surfers, Mormons, and the Rest of Us. Ethics, Policy and Environment.

6. Daniel Steel (forthcoming). Precaution and Proportionality: A Reply to Turner. Ethics, Policy and Environment.

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Alejandra Mancilla (2012). Samuel Pufendorf and the Right of Necessity. Aporia 3:47-64.

From the end of the twelfth century until the middle of the eighteenth century, the concept of a right of necessity –i.e. the moral prerogative of an agent, given certain conditions, to use or take someone else’s property in order to get out of his plight– was common among moral and political philosophers, who took it to be a valid exception to the standard moral and legal rules. In this essay, I analyze Samuel Pufendorf’s account of such a right, founded on the basic instinct of self-preservation and on the notion that, in civil society, we have certain minimal duties of humanity towards each other. I review Pufendorf’s secularized account of natural law, his conception of the civil state, and the function of private property. I then turn to his criticism of Grotius’s understanding of the right of necessity as a retreat to the pre-civil right of common use, and defend his account against some recent criticisms. Finally, I examine the conditions deemed necessary and jointly sufficient for this right to be claimable, and conclude by pointing to the main strengths of this account. Keywords: Samuel Pufendorf, Hugo Grotius, right of necessity, duty of humanity, private property.

Oct 24th 2013 GMT

1. Robert Huseby (forthcoming). Should the Beneficiaries Pay? Politics, Philosophy and Economics:1470594-13506366.

Many theorists claim that if an agent benefits from an action that harms others, that agent has a moral duty to compensate those who are harmed, even if the agent did not cause the harm herself. In the debate on climate justice, this idea is commonly referred to as the beneficiary-pays principle (BPP). This paper argues that the BPP is implausible, both in the context of climate change and as a normative principle more generally. It should therefore be rejected.

2. Pradeep P. Gokhale (2013). An Exclusive Volume on Exclusion. Philosophy East and West 63 (4):605-616.

Apoha theory could perhaps be understood as a part of the Buddhist program of emancipating people from the clutches of attachment. Diṅnāga and thereafter Dharmakīrti, when they developed their epistemology of perception, inference, and language, pointed out that through perception we are associated with unique particulars, which are momentary. We try to give an enduring status to them through thought and language by constructing universals. Thus, thought and language amount to false constructions, and they also mark our attachment to the world. Hence, the realization that helps in preventing such an attachment would imply that inference and language do not really ‘refer to’ or ‘associate themselves with’ what is ..

3. C. K. Raju (2013). The Harmony Principle. Philosophy East and West 63 (4):586-604.

I once wrote to Daya ji about what seemed to me a paradox in contemporary Indian philosophy. It is one thing that Indian philosophers in academia do not engage with science, or even with its history and philosophy. It is quite another thing that they do not engage with ethics. Ethics, after all, is at the core of philosophy. Without an ethical principle one often does not know how to respond to something fundamentally new, such as the bewildering variety of new developments in science and technology that impinge on our daily life. I was disappointed that Indian philosophers remain engaged in the study of Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and the like, or are immersed in Sanskrit texts—neither of which provide much guidance ..

4. Daniel Raveh (2013). Philosophical Miscellanea: Excerpts From an Ongoing Dialogue with Daya Krishna. Philosophy East and West 63 (4):491-512.

Conversation, dialogue, debate, and discussion are everywhere, not just in knowledge but in all that man does or seeks, as in these man finds and feels and discovers what being human is.Questions give birth only to other questions.I would like to open with short pieces from two letters written by Daya Krishna (henceforth DK) to his friend, writer-poet-thinker Rameshchandra Shah,3 sometime in 2006. They reveal the entwinement of the personal and the philosophical in DK’s thought and illuminate his modes of thinking at the time. They also work as an overture to my dialogue with DK in the essay that follows.Dear R. C. Shah,Ancestral Voices4 reached me a few days ago just as I, along with many others, was trying to ..

5. Prabal Kumar Sen (2013). Daya Krishna on Some Indian Theories of Negation: A Critique. Philosophy East and West 63 (4):543-561.

Contrary Thinking, an anthology of selected essays by Daya Krishna, contains, among others, two essays that deal with problems pertaining to negation: “Negation: Can Philosophy Ever Recover from It?” and “Some Problems Regarding Thinking about Abhāva in the Indian Tradition.” These essays comprise part 5 of this book, and the editorial introduction to this part concludes with the following remark:With characteristic philosophical irony, Daya Krishna raises the problem that non-being itself is non-existent and that negation is nothing at all.In both these essays, we find some observations by Daya Krishna regarding the views about negation (abhāva) that are admitted by the Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika schools, and the way in ..

6. Michael McGhee (2013). Learning to Converse: Reflections on a Small Experiment. Philosophy East and West 63 (4):530-542.

The three of us sweated in the heat and swayed with the rhythms of the crowded suburban train as we talked—or rather shouted to make ourselves heard—hanging by straps in the crush as we trundled back toward Andheri West. We were two Indians, Probal Dasgupta and Prabodh Parikh, and one Britisher, myself—all around the same age, in our late thirties. It was 1985, and Probal and I had traveled down from Pune on the Deccan Express to meet Prabodh in Bombay—and it was also a chance for me to meet the incomparable M. P. Rege. The polymath and inexhaustible Probal had been a kind (but challenging) friend, and had gently but firmly introduced me—opened my eyes—to the real-life of India, including the nature, diversity ..

7. Sibesh Bhattacharya (2013). The Descent of the Transcendent: Viewing Culture with G. C. Pande. Philosophy East and West 63 (4):513-529.

Govind Chandra Pande’s interest ranged over a wide area. His early works were on Buddhism, and the very first of his publications established a secure reputation for him as a leading scholar of Buddhism.1 Other works on Buddhism and other śramaṇa traditions followed to reinforce his reputation.2 It is therefore not surprising that, to many, this still remains his primary identity. By training and profession he was a historian. And he encouraged some of his early research scholars to undertake research in one area that turned out in many respects to be breaking new ground. The area we are referring to is the socioeconomic history of early India.3 It has now become a very coveted field. During the early phase of his ..

8. Anand Jayprakash Vaidya (2013). Nyāya Perceptual Theory: Disjunctivism or Anti-Individualism? Philosophy East and West 63 (4):562-585.

Misperception is part of the human condition. Consider a classic case of coming to confirm that one has had a misperception. On a stroll through the woods you see, in the distance, what seems to be a person. As you draw near, what looked like a person now appears to be a wooden post with a hat on it. On arrival you touch the post to confirm that it is not a person. From a pre-theoretical perspective, what has happened? On your approach you judged that there was a person, based on what you saw. When near, you judged that it was a post and not a person, and then by touch you confirmed that what you initially saw was a misperception.In examining cases of misperception it is important to ask: what role does concept ..

9. Ramesh K. Sharma (2013). Is Nyāya Realist or Idealist? Carrying on a Conversation Started by Daya Krishna. Philosophy East and West 63 (4):465-490.

Scholarly disquisitions on Nyāya(-Vaiśeṣika) philosophy in the English language generally agree in calling it “metaphysical realism” or simply “realism.” Metaphysical realism or realism as understood in the West is the doctrine that (1) substances (particulars)/things and events exist independently of the knowing/thinking mind, and that (2) they exemplify properties/qualities and enter into relations—in short, universals—independently of the concepts by which we know them and, Nyāya would add, even of the language with which we describe them. This mind-independent world is supposed to be something correspondence with which renders our particular beliefs/cognitions determinately true or false. Thus, realism, in all ..

10. Jay Garfield & Arindam Chakrabarti (2013). Remembering Daya Krishna and G. C. Pande: Two Giants of Post-Independence Indian Philosophy. Philosophy East and West 63 (4):458-464.

Daya Krishna(Photo courtesy of Jay Garfield)Govind Chandra Pande(Photo courtesy of his daughter amita sharma)Daya Krishna was the public face of Indian philosophy in the first half-century after Indian independence. Nobody on the Indian scene in that period came close to him in influence or in contribution to the profession. Nobody else in the world thought as hard or as fruitfully about the relation of Indian philosophy to that of the rest of the world, and nobody else dared to think as creatively and even as heretically about the history of Indian philosophy itself. To be sure, the Indian philosophical scene during this period was always a vibrant and creative matrix of thought, and many contributed to that ..

11. Christopher Pincock (2013). Review of B. Linsky, The Evolution of Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell's Manuscripts and Notes for the Second Edition. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 9 (1):106-108.

Review by: Christopher Pincock The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 106-108, March 2013.

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Clayton Littlejohn (2013). Are Epistemic Reasons Ever Reasons to Promote? Logos and Episteme 4 (3).

In trying to distinguish the right kinds of reasons from the wrong, epistemologists often appeal to the connection to truth to explain why practical considerations cannot constitute reasons. The view they typically opt for is one on which only evidence can constitute a reason to believe. Talbot has shown that these approaches don’t exclude the possibility that there are non-evidential reasons for belief that can justify a belief without being evidence for that belief. He thinksthat there are indeed such reasons and that they are theright kind of reasons to justify belief. The existence of such truth promoting non-epistemic reasons is said tofollow from the fact that we have an epistemic end that involves the attainment of true belief. I shall argue thatthere are no such reasons precisely because there is anepistemic end that has normative authority.

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Fiora Salis (ed.) (forthcoming). Book Symposium on François Recanati's Mental Files. Disputatio 5 (36).

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Robert K. Garcia (forthcoming). Closing in on Causal Closure. Journal of Consciousness Studies.

I examine the meaning and merits of a premise in the Exclusion Argument, the causal closure principle that all physical effects have physical causes. I do so by addressing two questions. First, if we grant the other premises, exactly what kind of closure principle is required to make the Exclusion Argument valid? Second, what are the merits of the requisite closure principle? Concerning the first, I argue that the Exclusion Argument requires a strong, “stringently pure” version of closure. The latter employs two qualifications concerning the physical sufficiency and relative proximity of the physical cause required for every physical effect. The second question is addressed in two steps. I begin by challenging the adequacy of the empirical support offered by David Papineau for closure. Then I assess the merits of “level” and “domain” versions of stringently pure closure. I argue that a domain version lacks adequate and non-question-begging support within the context of the Exclusion Argument. And I argue that the level version leads to a puzzling metaphysics of the physical domain. Thus, we have grounds for rejecting the version of closure required for the Exclusion Argument. This means we can resist the Exclusion Argument while avoiding the implausible implications that come with rejecting one of its other premises. That is, because there are grounds to reject causal closure, one can reasonably affirm the non-overdeterminative causal efficacy of conscious mental states while denying that the latter are identical with physical states.

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Erich Rast (2013). Review of Fenstad's "Grammar, Geometry & Brain". Studia Logica 101 (5).

Oct 23rd 2013 GMT

1. Bob Hale (2013). Review of G. Duke: Dummett on Abstract Objects. Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 2 (2).

Review of G. Duke: Dummett onObjects References G. Frege. Über Sinn und Bedeutung. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 100, 25–50, 1892. Translated in G.Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic and Philosophy, edited by B. McGuinness. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 157–77. G. Frege. Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Breslau, Verlag von W. Koebner, 1884. Translated by J.L. Austin as The Foundations of Arithmetic, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, second revised edition 1953. M. Dummett. Frege: Philosophy of Language. London, Duckworth, 1973. M. Dummett. Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics. London: Duckworth, 1991. B. Hale. Abstract Objects. Oxford: Basil Blackwells, 1987. B. Hale. Dummett's critique of Wright's attempt to resuscitate Frege. Philosophia Mathematica 2 (2):122–47 , 1994 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/philmat/2.2.122 B. Hale and C. Wright. The Reason's Proper Study: Essays towards a Neo-Fregean Philosophy of Mathematics. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. B. Hale and C. Wright. The Metaontology of Abstraction. In D. Chalmers, D. Manley & R. Wasserman, editors, Metametaphysics: New essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 178–213, 2009. C. Wright. Frege’s Conception of Numbers as Objects. Scots Philosophical Monographs. Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press, 1983.

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Matthew R. Dasti (forthcoming). Divine Self, Human Self by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (Bloomsbury 2013). Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

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Toby Handfield, Genealogical Explanations of Chance and Morals.

Objective chance and morality are rarely discussed together. In this paper, I argue that there is a surprising similarity in the epistemic standing of our beliefs about both objective chance and objective morality. The key similarity is that both of these sorts of belief are undermined -- in a limited, but important way -- by plausible genealogical accounts of the concepts that feature in these beliefs. The paper presents a brief account of Richard Joyce's evolutionary hypothesis of the genealogy of morality, and refines the debunking argument which he consequently mounts against moral beliefs. The evolutionary hypothesis in question suggests that we could easily have failed to believe that moral judgments have a peculiarly categorical force. This aspect of our moral belief, then, is unreliable. The paper then turns to chance, and presents a more speculative hypothesis about the cultural evolution of ideas about chance, as a peculiarly physical and objective form of probability. It is argued that, in the same way that our beliefs about morality could easily have lacked the commitment to inescapable force, our beliefs about chance could easily have lacked various idiosyncratic commitments. By a similar argument then, these aspects of our chance beliefs are unreliable. In the final section of the paper, I review some recent objections to genealogical debunking arguments, due to Roger White and Guy Kahane, showing how the form of argument developed in this paper is immune to these criticisms.

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Amie Thomasson (2012). Research Problems and Methods in Metaphysics. In Robert Barnard & Neil Manson (eds.), The Continuum Companion to Metaphysics. Continuum International.

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Gregor Schiemann (2012). Mehr Seinsschichten für Die Welt? Vergleich Und Kritik der Schichtenkonzeptionen von Nicolai Hartmann Und Werner Heisenberg. In G. Hertung & M. Wunsch (eds.), Nicolai Hartmann – Von der Systemphilosophie zur Systemetischen Philosophi.

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Joseph S. Fulda (2013). The Limits of Consent. Sexuality and Culture 17 (4):659-665.

This journal has frequently taken the position that /consent/, or at least /informed consent/, is all that from a secular viewpoint is necessary for an activity to be ethical. We argue to the contrary, that /consent/ is and /only/ is a /political/ criterion for determining /criminality/—even for a libertarian. Consensual behavior can be /unethical/—although it should not be criminalized—if the consent will never be truly revocable in the future of if such revocability is severely compromised. We give three examples, one from common experience, and two from the areas normally covered in this journal.

Note: I was asked my the senior chief editor to limit categories to five, and have never exceeded (below) six; proper fine-grained categorization of this piece would exceed ten categories, so I have done my best with five.

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Luis Rosa (forthcoming). Justification and Cognitive Algorithms. Philosophia.

In this paper, we offer an alternative interpretation for the claim that ‘S is justified in believing that φ’. First, we present what seems to be a common way of interpreting this claim: as an attribution of propositional justification. According to this interpretation, being justified is just a matter of having confirming evidence. We present a type of case that does not fit well with the standard concept, where considerations about cognition are made relevant. The concept of cognitive algorithm is presented and explained. Finally, the new reading of ‘S is justified in believing that φ’ is fleshed out. According to this interpretation, being justified in believing that φ is not just a matter of having evidence in favor of φ, but also of having a cognitive algorithm available such that it allows one to form belief in φ on the basis of the relevant evidence.

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Gregor Schiemann (forthcoming). Lebensweltliche Und Physikalische Zeit. In G. Hartung (ed.), Mensch und Zeit – Zur Frage der Synchronisation von Zeitstrukturen. Velbrück.

9. Terrence Twomey (forthcoming). How Domesticating Fire Facilitated the Evolution of Human Cooperation. Biology and Philosophy:1-11.

Controlled fire use by early humans could have facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. Individuals with regular access to the benefits of domestic fire would have been at an advantage over those with limited or no access. However, a campfire would have been relatively costly for an individual to maintain and open to free riders. By cooperating, individuals could have reduced maintenance costs, minimized free riding and lessened the risk of being without fire. Cooperators were more likely to survive and reproduce than uncooperative individuals because the former would have been better able to maximize a fire’s returns and enjoy regular access to its benefits. This is how the emergence of controlled fire use in Pleistocene human populations could have facilitated the evolution of cooperation.

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Miriam Kyselo (2013). Enaktivismus. In A. Stephan & S. Walter (eds.), Handbuch Kognitionswissenschaft. J.B. Metzler.

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Iulian D. Toader (forthcoming). Why Did Weyl Think That Formalism's Victory Against Intuitionism Entails a Defeat of Pure Phenomenology? History and Philosophy of Logic.

It has been contended that it is unjustified to believe, as Weyl did, that formalism's victory against intuitionism entails a defeat of the phenomenological approach to mathematics. The reason for this contention, recently put forth by Paolo Mancosu and Thomas Ryckman, is that, unlike intuitionistic Anschauung, phenomenological intuition could ground classical mathematics. I argue that this indicates a misinterpretation of Weyl's view, for he did not take formalism to prevail over intuitionism with respect to grounding classical mathematics. I also point out that the contention is false: if intuitionism fails, in the way Weyl thought it did, i.e., with respect to supporting scientific objectivity, then one should also reject the phenomenological approach, in the same respect.

Oct 22nd 2013 GMT

1. Lauren Wilcox (2013). The Image Before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction Between Civilian and Combatant. Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4):e14.

2. Turkuler Isiksel (2013). Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms. Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4):e10.

3. Lawrie Balfour (2013). In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4):e1.

4. Alexander Livingston (2013). Stuttering Conviction: Commitment and Hesitation in William James|[Rsquo]| Oration to Robert Gould Shaw. Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4):255.

5. Gulshan Khan (2013). Critical Republicanism: J|[Uuml]|Rgen Habermas and Chantal Mouffe. Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4):318.

6. Claudia Landwehr (2013). Procedural Justice and Democratic Institutional Design in Health-Care Priority-Setting. Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4):296.

7. Nick Malpas (2013). Responsibility for Justice. Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4):e5.

8. Banu Bargu (2013). Human Shields. Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4):277.

9. Kurtis G. Hagen (forthcoming). Bai, Tongdong, China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy:1-5.

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Uwe Steinhoff (forthcoming). Helen Frowe’s “Practical Account of Self-Defence”: A Critique. Public Reason.

Helen Frowe has recently offered what she calls a “practical” account of self-defense. Her account is supposed to be practical by being subjectivist about permissibility and objectivist about liability. I shall argue here that Frowe first makes up a problem that does not exist and then fails to solve it. To wit, her claim that objectivist accounts of permissibility cannot be action-guiding is wrong; and her own account of permissibility actually retains an objectivist (in the relevant sense) element. In addition, her attempt to restrict subjectivism primarily to “urgent” situations like self-defense contradicts her own point of departure and is either incoherent or futile. Finally, the only actual whole-heartedly objectivist account she criticizes is an easy target; while those objectivist accounts one finds in certain Western European jurisdictions are immune to her criticisms. Those accounts are also clearly superior to hers in terms of action-guidingness.

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Barbara Gail Montero (2013). Must Physicalism Imply the Supervenience of the Mental on the Physical? Journal of Philosophy 110 (2):93-110.

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Akiko Frischhut & Alexander Skiles (forthcoming). Time, Modality, and the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Thought.

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Jean-Rémy Martin & Jérôme Dokic (forthcoming). Seeing Absence or Absence of Seeing? Thought.

Imagine that in entering a café, you are struck by the absence of Pierre, with whom you have an appointment. Or imagine that you realize that your keys are missing because they are not hanging from the usual ring-holder. What is the nature of these absence experiences? In this paper we discuss a recent view defended by Farennikova (2012) according to which we literally perceive absences of things in much the same way as we perceive present things. We criticize and reject the perceptual interpretation of absence experiences but we also reject the cognitive view which reduces them to beliefs. We propose an intermediary, metacognitive account according to which absence experiences belong to a specific kind of affective experience, involving the feeling of surprise.

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Thaddeus Metz & Johannes Hirata (2013). Good Governance. In Ilona Boniwell & Dasho Karma Ura (eds.), Report on Wellbeing & Happiness. Centre for Bhutan Studies.

A critical discussion of the concept of good governance as it figures into Bhutan's Gross National Happiness project as part of a report to the UN General Assembly.

Oct 21st 2013 GMT

1. Somogy Varga (2013). The Marketization of Foreign Cultural Policy: The Cultural Nationalism of the Competition State. Constellations 20 (3):442-458.

2. Andrew Arato (2013). Framed. America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance. By Sanford Levinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Constellations 20 (3):503-507.

3. Raphaële Chappe, Willi Semmler & Ed Nell (2013). The U.S. Financial Culture of Risk. Constellations 20 (3):422-441.

4. Joerg Chet Tremmel (2013). The Convention of Representatives of All Generations Under the 'Veil of Ignorance'. Constellations 20 (3):483-502.

5. Cristiana Giordano (2013). Ticktin, Miriam, Casualties of Care. Immigration and Politics of Humanitarianism in France, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Constellations 20 (3):510-512.

6. Jiří Přibáň (2013). The Self‐Referential Semantics of Sovereignty: A Systems Theoretical Response to (Post)Sovereignty Studies. Constellations 20 (3):406-421.

7. Jonathan Trejo‐Mathys (2013). Towards a Critical Theory of the World Trade Organization: Thinking with Rawls Beyond Rawls. Constellations 20 (3):459-482.

8. Jeffrey A. Bernstein (2013). The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law. Edited by Leonard V. Kaplan and Rudy Koshar. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. Constellations 20 (3):508-509.

9. Craig Borowiak (2013). Disorienting Cosmopolitanism: Democratic Accountability and the Politics of Disruption. Constellations 20 (3):372-387.

10. Thomas Biebricher (2013). Critical Theories of the State: Governmentality and the Strategic‐Relational Approach. Constellations 20 (3):388-405.

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Casey Rentmeester (2013). Perspectivism Narrow and Wide: An Examination of Nietzsche's Limited Perspectivism From a Daoist Lens. Kritike 7 (1):1-21.

Western liberal intellectuals often find themselves in a precarious situation with regard to whether or not they should celebrate and endorse Friedrich Nietzsche as a philosopher who we should all unequivocally embrace into our Western philosophical canon. While his critique of the Western philosophical tradition and his own creative insights are unprecedented and immensely important, his blatant inegalitarianism and remarks against women are often too difficult to stomach. This paper attempts to introduce Western philosophers to Chuang Tzu, a Chinese thinker who shares much of Nietzsche’s style and philosophy, but also espouses a thoroughgoing egalitarianism. It does so by comparing Nietzsche and Chuang Tzu in regard to their methods, style, and philosophical beliefs, with a particular emphasis on the naturalism and perspectivism found in each thinker’s philosophy. The hope is to provide Western liberal-minded intellectuals interested in Nietzsche and in equality with another perspective to bolster their thinking.

12. Rachael L. Brown (2013). Learning, Evolvability and Exploratory Behaviour: Extending the Evolutionary Reach of Learning. Biology and Philosophy 28 (6):933-955.

Traditional accounts of the role of learning in evolution have concentrated upon its capacity as a source of fitness to individuals. In this paper I use a case study from invasive species biology—the role of conditioned taste aversion in mitigating the impact of cane toads on the native species of Northern Australia—to highlight a role for learning beyond this—as a source of evolvability to populations. This has two benefits. First, it highlights an otherwise under-appreciated role for learning in evolution that does not rely on social learning as an inheritance channel nor “special” evolutionary processes such as genetic accommodation (both of which many are skeptical about). Second, and more significantly, it makes clear important and interesting parallels between learning and exploratory behaviour in development. These parallels motivate the applicability of results from existing research into learning and learning evolution to our understanding of the evolution of evolvability more generally.

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Jason Stanley (forthcoming). Constructing Meanings. Analysis.

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María G. Navarro (forthcoming). El Razonamiento Ordinario y Sus Heurísticas. In Magda Bandera (ed.), La Uni en la calle. Libro de textos. La marea ediciones.

Las heurísticas son procedimientos de estimación utilizados por todos nosotros al razonar en nuestra vida ordinaria.

15. Thomas Christiano (2013). Introduction to Symposium on Exploitation. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 12 (4):333-334.

16. Vida Panitch (forthcoming). Global Surrogacy: Exploitation to Empowerment. Journal of Global Ethics.

17. J. Angelo Corlett (forthcoming). Economic Exploitation in Intercollegiate Athletics. Http.

(2013). Economic Exploitation in Intercollegiate Athletics. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 295-312. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2013.824499.

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Sam Cowling (2013). The Modal View of Essence. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (2):248-266.

(2013). The modal view of essence. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 248-266.

19. Jesse M. Mulder (forthcoming). The Essentialist Inference. Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

Oct 19th 2013 GMT

1. Ariel Caticha (forthcoming). Towards an Informational Pragmatic Realism. Minds and Machines:1-34.

I discuss the design of the method of entropic inference as a general framework for reasoning under conditions of uncertainty. The main contribution of this discussion is to emphasize the pragmatic elements in the derivation. More specifically: (1) Probability theory is designed as the uniquely natural tool for representing states of incomplete information. (2) An epistemic notion of information is defined in terms of its relation to the Bayesian beliefs of ideally rational agents. (3) The method of updating from a prior to a posterior probability distribution is designed through an eliminative induction process that singles out the logarithmic relative entropy as the unique tool for inference. The resulting framework includes as special cases both MaxEnt and Bayes’ rule. It therefore unifies entropic and Bayesian methods into a single general inference scheme. I find that similar pragmatic elements are an integral part of Putnam’s internal realism, of Floridi’s informational structural realism, and also of van Fraasen’s empiricist structuralism. I conclude with the conjecture that their valuable insights can be incorporated into a single coherent doctrine—an informational pragmatic realism.

2. Elizabeth Woo Li (forthcoming). Chen, Lai 陳來, Ancient Religion and Ethics: Sources of Confucian Thought 宗教與倫理: 儒家思想的根源, Yunchen Wenhua 允辰文化, Taipei 台北, 2005, 375 Pages; and The World of Ancient Thought and Culture: Religion, Ethics, and Social Thought in the Spring and Autumn Period 古代思想文化世界—春秋時代的宗教、倫理與社會思想, Sanlian Shudian 三聯書店, Beijing 北京, 2002, 418 Pages. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy:1-5.

3. Aaron Stalnaker (forthcoming). Confucianism, Democracy, and the Virtue of Deference. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy:1-19.

Some democratic theorists have argued that contemporary people should practice only a civility that recognizes others as equal persons, and eschew any form of deference to authority as a feudalistic cultural holdover that ought to be abandoned in the modern era. Against such views, this essay engages early Confucian views of ethics and society, including their analyses of different sorts of authority and status, in order to argue that, properly understood, deference is indeed a virtue of considerable importance for contemporary democratic societies and the citizens who constitute them.

4. Sungmoon Kim (forthcoming). Confucianism and Acceptable Inequalities. Philosophy and Social Criticism:0191453713507015.

In this article, I explore an alternative model of Confucian distributive justice, namely the ‘family model’, by challenging the central claim of recent sufficientarian justifications of Confucian justice offered by Confucian political theorists – roughly, that inequalities of wealth and income beyond the threshold of sufficiency do not matter if they reflect different merits. I argue (1) that the telos of Confucian virtue politics – moral self-cultivation and fiduciary society – puts significant moral and institutional constraints on inequality even if it meets the threshold of sufficiency and largely results from differing individual merits; (2) that the Confucian moral ideal of the family state establishes and gives justification to the ‘family model’ of distributive justice that shifts the focus from desert to vulnerability and from causal responsibility to remedial responsibility. The article concludes by presenting Confucian democracy as the socio-political institution and practice that can best realize the Confucian intuition of the family model of justice.

Oct 18th 2013 GMT

1. Stephen John (forthcoming). Efficiency, Responsibility and Disability: Philosophical Lessons From the Savings Argument for Pre-Natal Diagnosis. Politics, Philosophy and Economics:1470594-13505412.

Pre-natal-diagnosis technologies allow parents to discover whether their child is likely to suffer from serious disability. One argument for state funding of access to such technologies is that doing so would be “cost-effective”, in the sense that the expected financial costs of such a programme would be outweighed by expected “benefits”, stemming from the births of fewer children with serious disabilities. This argument is extremely controversial. This paper argues that the argument may not be as unacceptable as is often assumed. In doing so, it sets out a more general framework for assessing the relevance of efficiency calculations to policy-making. The final section also investigates the relationship between the paper’s arguments and claims about parental responsibility for child-bearing and rearing, with reference to Scanlon’s work on “substantive responsibility”.

2. DIRECT SUBMISSION

Erin C. Tarver (2013). The Dismissal of Feminist Philosophy and Hostility to Women in the Profession. APA Newsletter on Feminist Philosophy 12 (2):8-11.

3. Catherine Kendig (2013). Towards a Multidimensional Metaconception of Species. Ratio 26 (3).

Species concepts aim to define the species category. Many of these rely on defining species in terms of natural lineages and groupings. A dominant gene-centred metaconception has shaped notions of what constitutes both a natural lineage and a natural grouping. I suggest that relying on this metaconception provides an incomplete understanding of what constitute natural lineages and groupings. If we take seriously the role of epigenetic, behavioural, cultural, and ecological inheritance systems, rather than exclusively genetic inheritance, a broader notion of what constitutes a natural grouping or lineage may be required. I conclude by outlining an alternative metaconception that is a de-centred metaschema for species.

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Nicholas Tebben (2013). Peer Disagreement and the Limits of Coherent Error Attribution. Logos and Episteme 4 (2):179-197.

I argue that, in an important range of cases, judging that one disagrees with an epistemic peer requires attributing, either to one's peer or to oneself, a failure of rationality. There are limits, however, to how much irrationality one can coherently attribute, either to oneself or to another. I argue that these limitations on the coherent attribution of rational error put constraints on permissible responses to peer disagreement. In particular, they provide reason to respond to one-off disagreements with a single peer by maintaining one's beliefs, and they provide reason to moderate one's beliefs when faced with repeated disagreement, or disagreement with multiple peers. Finally, I argue that, though peer disagreement is rare, the occasions on which it does occur tend to be especially important, and the kind of response supported here is correspondingly important. In particular, how leading researchers spend their time and effort depends, in part, on how they respond to peer disagreement. And only a response of the kind supported here strikes the right balance between allowing individual researchers to freely pursue what seems to them to be worthwhile projects, and requiring that they pursue those research projects that the community of experts as a whole believes to be likely to yield significant results.

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Tim Connolly (forthcoming). Sagehood and Supererogation in the Analects. Journal of Chinese Philosophy.

6. Aj Julius (2013). The Possibility of Exchange. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 12 (4):361-374.

I first characterize a moral mistake in coercion. The principle of independence with which I criticize coercion seems also to condemn exchange. I propose an account of exchange from which it follows that exchange upholds independence after all. In support of that account I argue that, of the accounts of exchange that occur to me, only this one has the consequence that, on general assumptions, a person can take part in exchange while acting, intending, and believing with sufficient reason. I argue that the hiring of very poor people by very rich people for labor from which the rich draw a substantial surplus does not give rise to an exchange of this kind. These instances of the wage labor relation resemble coercion insofar as they violate independence.

7. Hui-Chieh Loy (forthcoming). On the Argument for Jian'ai. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy:1-18.

In all three versions of the “Jian’ai” 兼愛 Chapter in the Mozi 墨子, variations of a central argument may be found. This argument proceeds by advancing a diagnosis for what causes the various evils that beset the world, and it is on this basis that the Mohists propose jian’ai as the solution. The study examines this main argument in some detail, with the aim of improving both our understanding of the Mohist ethical doctrine and also our appreciation of their argumentative practices. The study shows that distinct ethical injunctions of varying degrees of stringency can be derived from the argument, though they all embody an underlying notion of impartiality. This impartiality—while in many ways recognizably attractive to us—puts Mohist jian’ai in tension with certain notions regarding the ethical significance of special relations. In addition, the paper argues that the Mohists main argument for jian’ai contains a critical flaw.

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Errol Lord (forthcoming). Epistemic Reasons, Evidence, and Defeaters. In Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. Oxford University Press.

The post-Gettier literature contained many views that tried to solve the Gettier problem by appealing to the notion of defeat. Unfortunately, all of these views are false. The failure of these views greatly contributed to a general distrust of reasons in epistemology. However, reasons are making a comeback in epistemology, both in general and in the context of the Gettier problem. There are two main aims of this paper. First, I will argue against a natural defeat based resolution of the Gettier problem. Second, I will defend my own defeat based solution. This solution appeals to a modal anti-luck condition. I will argue that this condition captures anti-luck intuitions and has virtues that rival modal anti-luck conditions lack.

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Hannes Rusch (2013). Asymmetries in Altruistic Behavior During Violent Intergroup Conflict. Evolutionary Psychology 11 (5):973-993.

Recent theoretical and experimental investigations of altruistic behavior in intergroup conflict in humans frequently make use of the assumption that warfare can be modeled as a symmetrical n-person prisoner’s dilemma, abstracting away the strategic differences between attack and defense. In contrast, some empirical studies on intergroup conflict in hunter-gatherer societies and chimpanzees indicate that fitness relevant risks and potential benefits of attacks and defenses might have differed substantially under ancestral conditions. Drawing on these studies, it is hypothesized that the success of defenses was much more important for individual and kin survival and that a disposition to act altruistically during intergroup conflict is thus more likely to evolve for the strategic situation of defense. It is then investigated empirically if such asymmetries in the occurrence of altruistic behavior during intergroup conflict can be found. Analyzing detailed historical case data from 20th century wars, this study finds that altruistic behavior towards members of the in-group indeed seems to occur more frequently when soldiers are defending themselves and their comrades against enemy attacks. It is proposed that this asymmetry reflects adaptive behavioral responses to the materially different strategic character of attacks and defenses under ancestral conditions. If true, this would call for a refinement of theories of the evolutionary interaction of intergroup conflict and altruism.

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Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther & Fabrizzio Guerrero McManus (forthcoming). Review of Michael Ruse, The Philosophy of Human Evolution. 2012. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978052113372. $26.99 Paperback. Evolution.

Oct 17th 2013 GMT

1. DIRECT SUBMISSION

Endre Begby (forthcoming). The Epistemology of Prejudice. Thought.

According to a common view, prejudice always involves some form of epistemic culpability, i.e., a failure to respond to evidence in the appropriate way. I argue that the common view wrongfully assumes that prejudices always involve universal generalizations. After motivating the more plausible thesis that prejudices typically involve a species of generic judgment, I show that standard examples provide no grounds for positing a strong connection between prejudice and epistemic culpability. More generally, the common view fails to recognize the extent to which prejudices are epistemically insidious: once they are internalized as background beliefs, they quite reasonably come to control the assessment and interpretation of new evidence. This property of insidiousness helps explain why prejudices are so recalcitrant to empirical counterevidence and also why they are frequently invisible to introspective reflection.

2. Alexander Brown (forthcoming). What Should Egalitarians Believe If They Really Are Egalitarian? A Reply to Martin O'Neill. European Journal of Political Theory:1474885113506710.

In his article, ‘What Should Egalitarians Believe?’, Martin O’Neill argues, amongst other things, that egalitarians should reject both Telic and Deontic Egalitarianism and that they should adopt in their place a version of Non-Intrinsic Egalitarianism, specifically, the Pluralist Non-Intrinsic Egalitarian View. The central purpose of my article is to challenge O’Neill’s assumption that he can defend each of the various propositions that make up his position simultaneously. I do this with two arguments. First, I argue that in order to justify why egalitarians should adopt a version of Non-Intrinsic Egalitarianism, O’Neill is bound to rely on forms of egalitarianism that are either Telic or Deontic, and so he is no longer able to affirm that egalitarians should reject both Telic and Deontic Egalitarianism. Second, I argue that by allowing the inclusion of non-egalitarian reasons into the Pluralist Non-Intrinsic Egalitarian View, O’Neill opens the floodgates to an indefinite number of other non-egalitarian reasons, such that it is scarcely credible that the Pluralist Non-Intrinsic Egalitarian View really is an egalitarian view after all.