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Κυριακή 13 Οκτωβρίου 2013

Philpapers.org

Oct 3rd 2013 GMT
  1. David M. Holley (2013). Religious Disagreements and Epistemic Rationality. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 74 (1):33-48.
Richard Feldman has argued that in cases of religious disagreement between epistemic peers who have shared all relevant evidence, epistemic rationality requires suspense of judgment. I argue that Feldman’s postulation of completely shared evidence is unrealistic for the kinds of disputes he is considering, since different starting points will typically produce different assessments of what the evidence is and how it should be weighed. Feldman argues that there cannot be equally reasonable starting points, but his extension of the postulate of completely shared evidence to evidence for starting points involves an illicit assimilation of ordinary cases of evidence assessment to cases in which substantial agreement about background assumptions is lacking. I also clarify why even if Feldman were correct about what epistemic norms require, his conclusion would not show that we should actually suspend judgment about religious or anti-religious truth claims.

  1. Fabrizio Cariani (2013). Epistemic and Deontic Should. Thought 2 (1):73-84.
Probabilistic theories of “should” and “ought” face a predicament. At first blush, it seems that such theories must provide different lexical entries for the epistemic and the deontic interpretations of these modals. I show that there is a new style of premise semantics that can avoid this consequence in an attractively conservative way.

  1. Klemens Kappel & Emil F. L. Moeller (forthcoming). Epistemic Expressivism and the Argument From Motivation. Synthese:1-19.
This paper explores in detail an argument for epistemic expressivism, what we call the Argument from Motivation. While the Argument from Motivation has sometimes been anticipated, it has never been set out in detail. The argument has three premises, roughly, that certain judgments expressed in attributions of knowledge are intrinsically motivating in a distinct way (P1); that motivation for action requires desire-like states or conative attitudes (HTM); and that the semantic content of knowledge attributions cannot be specified without reference to the intrinsically motivating judgments that such attributions express (P2). We argue that these premises entail a version of ecumenical expressivism. Since the argument from motivation has not been explicitly stated before, there is no current discussion of the argument. In this paper we therefore consider and reject various objections that one might propose to the argument, including some that stem from the idea that knowledge is factive, or that knowledge involves evidence that rules out relevant alternatives. Other objections to (P1) specifically might be derived from cases of apparent lack of epistemic motivation considered in in Kvanvig (The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, 2003) and Brown (Nous 42(2):167–189, 2008), as well as from general forms of externalism about epistemic motivation. We consider these and find them wanting. Finally, the paper offers some critical remarks about the prospect of denying (P2).

Oct 2nd 2013 GMT
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In this article I examine the compatibility of a leading trope bundle theory of substance, so-called Nuclear Theory, with trope theory more generally. Peter Simons (1994) originally proposed Nuclear Theory (NT), and continues to develop (1998, 2000) and maintain (2002/03) the view. Recently, building on Simons’s theory, Markku Keinänen (2011) has proposed what he calls the Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT). Although the latter is supposed to shore up some of NT’s weaknesses, it continues to maintain NT’s central tenet, the premise that tropes are variously existentially interdependent. I argue that the central tenet of NT frustrates several important aims of trope theory. If my arguments go through, they also implicate SNT. Because of this, I largely set aside other aspects of NT and SNT and focus on their shared central tenet.

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My general aim in this paper is to shed light on the controversial concept of a bare particular. I do so by arguing that bare particulars are best understood in terms of the individuative work they do within the framework of a realist constituent ontology. I argue that outside such a framework, it is not clear that the notion of a bare particular is either motivated or coherent. This is suggested by reflection on standard objections to bare particulars. However, within the framework of a realist constituent ontology, bare particulars provide for a coherent theory of individuation—one with a potentially significant theoretical price tag, but one that also has advantages over rival theories.

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The “Morbid Fear of the Subjective” (copyright by Roy Wood Sellars) represents a key-element of the American naturalist debate of the Mid-twentieth century. On the one hand, we are witnessing to the unconditional trust in the objectivity of scientific discourse, while on the other (and as a consequence) there is the attempt to exorcise the myth of the “subjective” and of its metaphysical privateness. This theoretical roadmap quickly assumed the shape of an even sociological contrast between the “democraticity” of natural sciences and the fanaticism implicit in supernatural metaphysical systems. In between these two extremes stood phenomenology, in its early days on American soil. Its notion of “evidence”, which is less easily to naturalize than it might seem, was in fact hardly consistent with the widespread concept of “natural experience” of the world.

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In tactile-visual sensory substitution (TVSS), images from a video camera are converted into patterns of vibrotactile stimulation that visually impaired subjects can use to perform tasks ordinarily guided by seeing. A main finding in early experiments conducted by Paul Bach-y-Rita and colleagues is that subjects equipped with a TVSS device engaged in distal attribution – attributed the cause of the stimulations they received to objects in the external, three-dimensional scene – only when they had active control over how the camera moved. Subjects who received visual input passively experienced only a changing pattern of tactile stimulation. Why was this the case? According to proponents of the sensorimotor contingency theory, active control of the camera is necessary for the emergence of distal attribution because it enables the subject to acquire knowledge of the laws of sensorimotor contingency that govern use of the TVSS device. This chapter, by contrast, approaches distal attribution as a solution to a causal inference problem faced by the subject’s perceptual systems. Given all of the available endogenous and exogenous evidence available to those systems, what is the most probable source of stimulation in the substituting modality? From this perspective, active control over the camera’s movements matters for rather different reasons. First, when the subject is unaware of how (or even whether) the camera is moving, all of the evidence at her disposal is consistent with the default haptic interpretation of incoming vibrotactile stimulation: the most probable cause of that stimulation is bodily contact with an object of some kind. It is thus unsurprising that a passively stimulated subject does not learn to discriminate the spatial layout of the external scene by means of TVSS. Second, when the subject has the ability to guide camera movement, she also has a significant amount of voluntary control over whether and how incoming vibrotactile stimulation undergoes change. In consequence, the situation is now one that conflicts with the default haptic interpretation: it is not typically possible to modify sensations on the surface of one’s back by moving a camera mounted on a tripod or on one’s head. Last, active control over the camera’s movements generates proprioceptive and efference-copy based information about the camera’s body-relative position necessary to make use of the spatial cues present in the stimulation that the subject receives for purposes of egocentric object localization.

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Aim of this work is to dispel the myth of naturalism's "vagueness". Naturalism marks a significant “Atlantic” shift in the philosophical culture of the pre-war age (from the Thirties to Forties): from “old Europe to dynamic America” (as the historian Larrabee said). The controversy with visionary and fascist European theories was indeed very strong in the academic culture of the '30-'40s. The idea was to oppose to the former the virtue of a liberal democracy, supported by the liberality of the scientific method. In short, the cultural fight was between naturalism and metaphysics (considered as theology). Naturalizing the "spirit" was the great ambition of American naturalistic programs of the Forties. They culminated with the publication of the ideological manifesto “Naturalism and the Human Spirit” (New York, 1944), edited by the John Dewey's group of Columbia. From Ernest Nagel to Sydney Hook, to Roy Wood Sellars, William Sheldon and Arthur E. Murphy,etc., all thegreatest exponents of the American philosophical debate participated, in one way or another, to the naturalistic project. This latter aimed to be more than a simple "doctrine", by presenting itself as an expression of a new “mental attitude”, a fresh way of considering traditional unsolved problems. All this leaded to a production of a new form of rhetoric, which in turn carried itself a hidden ideology. Objective rationality embodied by scientific procedures became thereafter the totem to play against everything that would present itself as “just-subjective”, metaphysical, all- encompassing. A new idea of philosophy therefore began to emerge, one that was less metaphysical and more humanistic and democratic, which concerned itself with “restricted, but manageable questions” (E. Nagel).

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Thomas Ede Zimmermann (2012). Context Dependence. In C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger & P. Portner (eds.), Handbook of Semantics. Volume 3. de Gruyter.
Linguistic expressions frequently make reference to the situation in which they are uttered. In fact, there are expressions whose whole point of use is to relate to their context of utterance. It is such expressions that this article is primarily about. However, rather than presenting the richness of pertinent phenomena (cf. Anderson & Keenan 1985), it concentrates on the theoretical tools provided by the (standard) two-dimensional analysis of context dependence, essentially originating with Kaplan (1989)--with a little help from Stalnaker (1978) and Lewis (1979a, 1980), and various predecessors including Kamp (1971) and Vlach (1973). The current article overlaps in content with the account in Zimmermann (1991), which is however much broader (and at times deeper)..

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JOTIRAO GOVINDRAO PHULE occupies a unique position among the social reformers of Maharashtra in the nineteenth century. While other reformers concentrated more on reforming the social institutions of family and marriage with special emphasis on the status and right of women, Jotirao Phule revolted against the unjust caste system under which millions of people had suffered for centuries and developed a critique of Indian social order and Hinduism. During this period, number of social and political thinkers started movement against such systems and methods. These thinkers aimed at upliftment of the status of women socially, economically, educationally and politically. Of these socio-political thinkers Mahatma Phule, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and such other have organized movement for striving equality for dalits, backward classes and women. As such, Mahatma Phule was an earliest leader, who strongly opposed gender inequality. He was in the real sense a great thinker finder of truth. He was of the view that every individual should search for the truth and mould accordingly, only then the human society can remain happy. He said that British rule provided an opportunity for the masses to get themselves liberated from the slavery of the Brahmins. But at the same time, he also criticized the British bureaucracy for its policy of supporting higher education and for its tendency to rely upon Brahmin subordinates. Interestingly, Mahatma Phule nurtured a favourable perspective of the British Rule in India because he thought it at least introduced the modern notions of justice and equality into the Indian society. He also criticized the economic policy of the British rule in many respects it was unfavorable to the poor peasants. He suggested a number of solutions to improve the conditions of the agriculture sector. In place of exploitative Indian social order, Phule wanted to establish a society founded on principles of individual liberty and equality and in place of Hinduism he would have liked to put universal religion. In this paper my attempt is to give an analysis of ideas of Mahatma Phule with his core philosophical outlook.

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Oct 1st 2013 GMT
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  1. Jeesoo Nam (2013). Biomedical Enhancements as Justice. Bioethics 27 (8).
Biomedical enhancements, the applications of medical technology to make better those who are neither ill nor deficient, have made great strides in the past few decades. Using Amartya Sen's capability approach as my framework, I argue in this article that far from being simply permissible, we have a prima facie moral obligation to use these new developments for the end goal of promoting social justice. In terms of both range and magnitude, the use of biomedical enhancements will mark a radical advance in how we compensate the most disadvantaged members of society.

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Mark Schroeder has recently offered a solution to the problem of distinguishing between the so-called "right" and "wrong" kinds of reasons for attitudes like belief and admiration. Schroeder tries out two different strategies for making his solution work: the alethic strategy and the background-facts strategy. In this paper I argue that neither of Schroeder's two strategies will do the trick. We are still left with the problem of distinguishing the right from the wrong kinds of reasons.

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Pablo Gilabert (forthcoming). Human Rights, Human Dignity, and Power. In Rowan Cruft, Matthew Liao & Massimo Renzo (eds.), The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights. Oxford University Press.

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Nora Berenstain & James Ladyman (2012). Ontic Structural Realism and Modality. In Elaine Landry & Dean Rickles (eds.), Structural Realism: Structure, Object, and Causality. Springer.

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Virtues are dispositions to see, think, desire, deliberate, or act well, with different philosophers emphasizing different permutations of these activities. Virtue has been an object of philosophical concern for thousands of years whereas situationism—the psychological theory according to which a great deal of human perception, thought, motivation, deliberation, and behavior are explained not by character or personality dispositions but by seemingly trivial and normatively irrelevant situational influences—was a development of the 20th century. Some philosophers, especially John Doris and Gilbert Harman but also Mark Alfano and Peter Vranas, have argued that there is a tension between these two independently attractive positions. Normative ethics seems incomplete or even indefensible if it refers only to the rightness or wrongness of actions and the goodness or badness of states; we care not only about these punctate phenomena but also about laudable, longitudinal dispositions like honesty, courage, compassion, open-mindedness, and curiosity. However, according to these philosophers, decades-worth of psychological research provides robust support for situationism. Given the plausible assumption that a credible moral ideal is one that most people can aspire to and perhaps even attain, virtue theory and situationism appear to be on a collision course. The dispute between virtue ethicists and situationists unfolded over the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. It continues today: Some disputants have attempted to find a middle way, and the empirical adequacy of virtue epistemology has also been called into question.

  1. Terrell Ward Bynum (forthcoming). On the Possibility of Quantum Informational Structural Realism. Minds and Machines:1-17.
In The Philosophy of Information, Luciano Floridi presents an ontological theory of Being qua Being, which he calls “Informational Structural Realism”, a theory which applies, he says, to every possible world. He identifies primordial information (“dedomena”) as the foundation of any structure in any possible world. The present essay examines Floridi’s defense of that theory, as well as his refutation of “Digital Ontology” (which some people might confuse with his own). Then, using Floridi’s ontology as a starting point, the present essay adds quantum features to dedomena, yielding an ontological theory for our own universe, Quantum Informational Structural Realism, which provides a metaphysical interpretation of key quantum phenomena, and diminishes the “weirdness” or “spookiness” of quantum mechanics.

  1. Amos Golan (forthcoming). Information Dynamics. Minds and Machines:1-18.
Though we have access to a wealth of information, the main issue is always how to process the available information. How to make sense of all we observe and know. Just like the English alphabet: we know there are 26 letters but unless we put these letters together in a meaningful way, they convey no information. There are infinitely many ways of putting these letters together. Only a small number of those make sense. Only some of those convey exactly what we wish to convey though the message may be interpreted differently by different individuals. That same issue comes up with information: how can we process the information we have? How can we infer and reason under conditions of incomplete observed information? In his seminal book on the philosophy of information, Floridi (2011a) raises a number of open questions. I discuss here one of these questions. That question is how to process information. To do so, I take the more realistic view that information is always limited, incomplete and possibly noisy. I define types of information, relate it to Floridi’s definitions and discuss a basic formulation for processing information under a unified framework. I relate it to some of the basic concepts discussed in the book.

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We present and discuss a counterexample to the following plausible principle: if you know that a coin is fair, and for all you know it is going to be flipped, then for all you know it will land tails.

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Cian Dorr (forthcoming). Reading Writing the Book of the World. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

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Reductive intellectualists (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a; 2011b; Brogaard 2008; 2009; 2011) hold that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. For this thesis to hold water, it is obviously important that knowledge-how and knowledge-that have the same epistemic properties. In particular, knowledge-how ought to be compatible with epistemic luck to the same extent as knowledge-that. It is argued, contra reductive intellectualism, that knowledge-how is compatible with a species of epistemic luck which is not compatible with knowledge-that, and thus it is claimed that knowledge-how and knowledge-that come apart.

Sep 30th 2013 GMT
  1. Corey Lee Wrenn (forthcoming). Abolition Then and Now: Tactical Comparisons Between the Human Rights Movement and the Modern Nonhuman Animal Rights Movement in the United States. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics:1-24.
This article discusses critical comparisons between the human and nonhuman abolitionist movements in the United States. The modern nonhuman abolitionist movement is, in some ways, an extension of the anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the ongoing human Civil Rights movement. As such, there is considerable overlap between the two movements, specifically in the need to simultaneously address property status and oppressive ideology. Despite intentional appropriation of terminology and numerous similarities in mobilization efforts, there has been disappointingly little academic discussion on this relationship. There are significant contentions regarding mobilization and goal attainment in the human abolitionist movement that speak to modern collective action on behalf of other animals. This article will explore the human abolitionist movement and discuss possible applications of movement organization, tactical repertoires, and goal attainment to the current nonhuman animal rights movement. Specifically, the utility of violence and legislative activism in the antislavery movement are discussed as potentially problematic approaches to abolishing nonhuman animal exploitation. Alternatively, the nonhuman animal rights focus on consumer resistance and nonviolence represent an important divergence in abolitionist mobilization.

  1. Jean V. McHale (2013). Faith, Belief, Fundamental Rights and Delivering Health Care in a Modern NHS: An Unrealistic Aspiration? Health Care Analysis 21 (3):224-236.
This paper considers the way in which English law safeguards fundamental rights to respect for faith and belief in relation to the delivery of health care. It explores the implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010. It explores some of the challenges in attempting to reconcile fundamental rights to faith and belief and the delivery of health care, both now and in the future and whether this is a realistic aspiration in a state funded health care service.

  1. Iñigo González-Ricoy (2013). An Account of the Democratic Status of Constitutional Rights. Res Publica 19 (3):241-256.
The paper makes a twofold contribution. Firstly, it advances a preliminary account of the conditions that need to obtain for constitutional rights to be democratic. Secondly, in so doing, it defends precommitment-based theories from a criticism raised by Jeremy Waldron—namely, that constitutional rights do not become any more democratic when they are democratically adopted, for the people could adopt undemocratic policies without such policies becoming democratic as a result. The paper shows that the reductio applies to political rights, yet not to non-political rights, such as reproductive, environmental, or privacy rights. The democratic status of the former is process-independent. The latter, by contrast, are democratic precisely when they are adopted by democratic means.

  1. Charles R. Beitz (2013). Human Dignity in the Theory of Human Rights: Nothing But a Phrase? Philosophy and Public Affairs 41 (3):259-290.

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  1. Lucas Rosenblatt (2012). On the Possibility of a General Purge of Self-Reference. Análisis Filosófico 32 (1):53-59.
My aim in this paper is to gather some evident in favor of the view that a general purge of self-reference is possible. I do this by considering a modal-epistemic version of the Liar Paradox introduced by Roy Cook. Using yabloesque techniques, I show that it is possible to transform this circular paradoxical construction (and other constructions as well) into an infinitary construction lacking any sort of circularity. Moreover, contrary to Cook’s approach, I think that this can be done without using any controversial multimodal rules, i.e., the usual rules from normal epistemic and modal logic are enough to show the paradoxicality of the infinitary construction. Mi objetivo en este trabajo es ofrecer cierta evidencia a favor de la tesis según la cual una purga general de la autorreferencia es posible. Hago esto considerando una versión modal-epistémica de la Paradoja del mentiroso introducida por Roy Cook. usando técnicas yablescas, muestro que es posible transformar esta construcción paradójica circular (y también otras construcciones) en una construcción infinitaria que carece de cualquier forma de circularidad. más aún, en contra de la propuesta de Cook, muestro que esto puede hacerse sin utilizar ninguna regla multimodal controversial, esto es, las reglas usuales de la lógica modal y la lógica epistémica son suficientes para mostrar la paradojicidad de la construcción infinitaria.

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In this paper, I outline a reductio against Phenomenal Conservatism. If sound, this reductio shows that the phenomenal conservative is committed to the claim that appealing to appearances is not a trustworthy method of fixing belief.

  1. Christian Becker, Dieter Ewringmann, Malte Faber, Thomas Petersen & Angelika Zahrnt, Endangering the Natural Basis of Life is Unjust. On the Status and Future of the Sustainability Discourse.
The paper critically examines the status of the sustainability discourse and sustainability politics against the backdrop of considerations about the meaning of justice in the context of sustainability. We argue that the preservation of the natural basis of life is by itself a requirement of justice. However, the crucial role of the ecological dimension of sustainability has been neglected due to a problematic interpretation of the economic dimension, a limited understanding of justice, and an overemphasis of economic growth and growth politics. We propose to reposition the sustainability discourse and sustainability politics by prioritizing the long-term protection of the natural basis of life as the essential foundation of future development, welfare, and justice.

  1. Y. Allard-Tremblay (2013). Proceduralism, Judicial Review and the Refusal of Royal Assent. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 33 (2):379-400.
This article provides an exploration of the relationships between a procedural account of epistemic democracy, illegitimate laws and judicial review. I first explain how there can be illegitimate laws within a procedural account of democracy. I argue that even if democratic legitimacy is conceived procedurally, it does not imply that democracy could legitimately undermine itself or adopt grossly unjust laws. I then turn to the legitimacy of judicial review with regard to these illegitimate laws. I maintain that courts do not have a moral privilege on the overthrow of illegitimate laws; in this respect the refusal of royal assent has the same status. I also explain how the rule of the clear mistake fails to restrict the action of courts to only illegitimate laws. Finally, I argue for the positive epistemic inputs of weak judicial review.

  1. Martin Gunderson (2013). Human Rights and the Virtue of Democratic Civility. Social Philosophy Today 29:61-74.
Democratic civility is a core civic virtue of persons engaged in democratic deliberation. It is a complex trait that includes tolerance of diverse political views, openness regarding civic matters to reasons offered by others, willingness to seek compromise in an effort to find workable political solutions, and willingness to limit one’s individual interests for the public good when there are adequate reasons for doing so. Various writers have noted a tension between rights and civility. Insofar as rights trump general considerations of community welfare and entail claims that can be demanded, an emphasis on individual rights and standing on one’s rights can undermine the sort of civility required for political compromise. Similarly an emphasis on civility might require not standing on rights when doing so is at the expense of the welfare of the community. Notwithstanding this tension, I argue that human rights and democratic civility have a symbiotic relationship. In particular, I argue that democratic civility is important for determining the scope of human rights as they are implemented in institutional structures, and that human rights have an important role to play in shaping the virtue of democratic civility.

  1. Z. M. Eyadat (2013). Fiqh Al-Aqalliyyât and the Arab Spring Modern Islamic Theorizing. Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (8):733-753.
Due to the current shifting regional paradigms in the Middle East brought on by the series of popular uprisings known as the Arab Spring, this article focuses on the issue of minority rights within modern Islamic theorizing. Evaluating the writings of Islamic intellectuals such as Tariq Ramadan, Abdullah Ahmed An-Na’im and Rashid Al-Ghannushi, the article finds that there are indeed constructs available within modern Islamic theorizing that can help resolve current minority problems within Arab societies, albeit with the addition of human rights discourse on citizenship and multiculturalism. Noting that minority–majority relations are a global problem, as seen through case studies of the United States and Europe, human rights discourse, cultural relativism and religion are explored, concluding that Islamic theorizing is a blend of the three. Turning to usul al fiqh, it is concluded that traditional Islamic approaches to minority rights fail to incorporate anything but religious minorities and those religious minorities are second-class citizens under shariah interpretation. The rise of the Ottoman millet system eventually helped shape the collective identity for minority groups, but it still placed sole emphasis on religious minorities and treated all minorities as unequal subjects under the sultanate. Building on the constructs of modern Islamic theorizing and expanding to include the concepts of multiculturalism and territorial citizenship, this article asserts that for minority–majority struggle to be solved, modernist Islamic theorists must transcend the traditional Islamic minority paradigm and instead promulgate citizenship as a basis for equality in society, applying new ijtihad for a fresh, integrative interpretation of minorities within Islam and the civil state.

  1. A. Hazlett (2013). Rationality and Religious Commitment, by Robert Audi. Mind 122 (485):249-253.

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Nina Emery (forthcoming). Chance, Possibility, and Explanation. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

  1. Mark Siderits & Jay L. Garfield (forthcoming). Defending the Semantic Interpretation: A Reply to Ferraro. Journal of Indian Philosophy:1-10.
In a recent article in this journal, Giuseppe Ferraro mounted a sustained attack on the semantic interpretation of the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness, an interpretation that has been championed by the authors. The present paper is their reply to that attack.

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The current statist order assumes that states have a right to make rules involving the transfer and/or extraction of natural resources within the territory. Cosmopolitan theories of global justice have questioned whether the state is justified in its control over natural resources, typically by pointing out that having resources is a matter of good luck, and this unfairness should be addressed. This paper argues that self-determination does generate a right over resources, which others should not interfere with. It does not entail, however, that there is no obligation on rich countries to redistribute to poor countries. Indeed, in some rare instances, it might be necessary for a particular political community to use its resources, but the presumption is that the collectively self-determining group (the political community) should have the right to decide that.

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Habermas's paradigm of communicative action is usually taken to be pretty much dominated by consensus, "Yes-saying." What if this were a radically one-sided perception? We take up this unorthodox position by arguing that "no-saying" in this paradigm is typically overlooked and underemphasized. To demonstrate this, we consider how negativity is figured at the most basic onto-ethical level in communicative action, as well as expressed in civil disobedience, a phenomenon to which Habermas assigns the remarkable role of "touchstone" (Prufstein) of constitutional democracy. Once the importance of no-saying is drawn out, the paradigm looks distinctly less hostile to dissensus and agonism in democratic life.

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This article compares Hannah Arendt's famous essay on Adolf Eichmann's trial in Israel in 1961 to Simone de Beauvoir's little studied piece, "An Eye for an Eye," on the trial of Robert Brasillach in France in 1945. Arendt and Beauvoir each determine the complicity of individuals acting within a political order that seeks to eliminate certain forms of otherness and difference, but come to differing conclusions about the significance of the crimes. I explain Beauvoir's account of ambiguity, on which she draws in her judgment of Brasillach and elaborates in her 1948 Ethics of Ambiguity, ana measure it against Arendt's account of Eichmann's thoughtlessness and its effects on the destruction of conditions of worldly plurality. Linking the failure of ethical judgment on the part of individuals to prior systemic political conditions, Beauvoir helps us recognize struggles over the meaning of bodies and conditions of inequality as central to politics.

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Some scholars have argued that religiously injurious speech poses a serious problem for secular liberal thought. It has been suggested that secular liberal thought and political practice often misrecognize the nature of the injury involved in speech that violates the sacred and that much secular thought about religious injury (and free exercise more generally) is premised on unacknowledged Protestant conceptions of what real religion is. In this essay, I argue against the ideas that secular liberalism tends to treat religion only as a matter of freely chosen belief and that the unchosen, habituated nature of much religious experience raises a problem for the defense of speech that violates the sacred. I argue that secular thought and practice should remain very concerned about the social and political harms of speech directed unambiguously at social groups but need not eliminate the gap between religious attachments and religious persons.

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In this article, I sketch a Kant-inspired liberal account of human rights: the freedom-centred view. This account conceptualizes human rights as entitlements that any political authority—any state in the first instance—must secure to qualify as a guarantor of its subjects' innate right to freedom. On this picture, when a state (or state-like institution) protects human rights, it reasonably qualifies as a moral agent to be treated with respect. By contrast, when a state (or state-like institution) fails to protect human rights, it loses its moral status and becomes liable to both internal and external interference. I argue that this account not only steers a middle course between so-called natural-law and political approaches to human rights but also satisfies three important theoretical desiderata— explanatory power, functional specificity, and critical capacity.

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The debates over global and historical justice much preoccupy contemporary political theory. Yet they have not been analyzed in tandem. And this, despite the fact that a number of theoretical frameworks, principal among them contractarianism and utilitarianism, configure arguments in both debates. In this essay, I show that such arguments, as advanced by either side in each of the two debates, all rest on a set of patterned assumptions about the nature of the self. Specifically, I argue, the debates over historical and global justice resemble each other as parallel contests over the physical, metasocial, metaphysical and social natures of the self. At their cores, the debates over historical and global justice thus display a common and symmetrical structure. I will also show that certain conceptions of the self underlying both the anti-historical justice and the anti-global justice positions are mutually inconsistent. Similar contradictions do not beset the pro-historical and pro-global justice positions.

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Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism has gained increasing influence in the last few decades. This article focuses on Schmitt's analysis of international law in The Nomos of the Earth, in order to uncover the reasons for his appeal as a critic not only of liberalism but of American hegemonic aspirations as well. Schmitt saw the international legal order that developed after World War I, and particularly the "criminalization of aggressive war," as a smokescreen to hide U.S. aspirations to world dominance. By focusing on Schmitt's critique of Kant's concept of the "unjust enemy," the article shows the limits of Schmitt's views and concludes that Schmitt, as well as left critics of U.S. hegemony, misconstrue the relation between international law and democratic sovereignty as a model of top-down domination. As conflictual as the relationship between international norms and democratic sovereignty can be at times, this needs to be interpreted as one of mediation and not domination.

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The "Tangong Shang" chapter of the Liji provides a brief account of Confucius performing certain burial rites for his deceased parents. After finishing one portion of the rites, something awful occurs—heavy rains fall, causing the grave to collapse. Confucius' demonstration of reverence through the performance of these burial rites is thwarted; but whose fault is it that the grave collapsed? Could Confucius have prevented this failure? In this essay it is argued that contrary to most contemporary interpretations, unpreventable failures in ritual were causes of concern for the authors of early Confucian texts because they believed that meaningful aspects of life were vulnerable to these failures, and because they found themselves occasionally unable to recognize a clear distinction between preventable and unpreventable failures in ritual. This essay provides a persuasive reading of an early Confucian text that preserves rather than resolves the ambiguity between preventable and unpreventable failures in ritual. It argues for an openness to a tragic reading of early Confucian ritual theory. Contemporary interpreters, for the most part, have neglected such a reading; yet in the worldview of the Liji unpreventable failures in ritual were a real, yet uncertain, possibility.

  1. Ken Herold (forthcoming). Intuition, Computation, and Information. Minds and Machines:1-4.
Bynum (Putting information first: Luciano Floridi and the philosophy of information. NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) identifies Floridi’s focus in the philosophy of information (PI) on entities both as data structures and as information objects. One suggestion for examining the association between the former and the latter stems from Floridi’s Herbert A. Simon Lecture in Computing and Philosophy given at Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, open problems in the PI: the transduction or transception, and how we gain knowledge about the world as a complex, living, information environment. This paper addresses PI across a model of interoperating levels: perception (P)—intuition (N)—computation (C)—information (I), as factored by cognitive continuity (1), temporality (2), and constitution (3). How might we begin to characterize our experience of an abstract information object across such a matrix? Chudnoff’s rationalist distinctions between perception and intuition serve as a first rung of the ladder. Turing’s brief references to the utility of intuition, in an allied, rationalist-Cartesian sense, provide the next step up to computation. Floridi provides the final link from computation to information.

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Finn Janning (2013). Who Lives a Life Worth Living? Philosophical Papers and Review 4 (1):8-16.
For years, philosophers have thought about what makes a life worth living. Recent research in psychology has put new light on that. This paper places itself in-between philosophy and psychology, and the thoughts about well-being. The title of this paper raises one question: Who lives a life worth living? Based on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and subsidiary, recent studies in ‘positive psychology’, this work shows that the prerequisite for a life worth living is freedom; that is being free to enhance one’s capabilities. This form of freedom manifests itself as being strongly related to the logic of sense that is related to capacity. This relationship illustrate that a life can only be evaluated from its immanent mode of existence, and not by some transcendent ideas. Finally, this study discusses some of the differences between a philosophical approach and approaches like positive psychology. In conclusion, it is suggested that future debate about well-being should be less normative.

  1. Blain Neufeld (2013). Political Liberalism and Citizenship Education. Philosophy Compass 8 (9):781-797.
John Rawls claims that the kind of citizenship education required by political liberalism demands ‘far less’ than that required by comprehensive liberalism. Many educational and political theorists who have explored the implications of political liberalism for education policy have disputed Rawls's claim. Writing from a comprehensive liberal perspective, Amy Gutmann contends that the justificatory differences between political and comprehensive liberalism generally have no practical significance for citizenship education. Political liberals such as Stephen Macedo and Victoria Costa maintain that political liberalism requires a form of citizenship education that is far more demanding than that suggested by Rawls. Gordon Davis and Blain Neufeld, in contrast, defend Rawls's position. These different views have implications for the content of mandatory citizenship education, understanding of the ‘common school ideal,’ and the scope for educational choice within the framework of political liberalism. However, the differences between Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa, on the one hand, and Davis and Neufeld, on the other, might be attributable, at least in part, to their different foci. Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa focus on non-ideal theory, specifically the contemporary American context, whereas Davis and Neufeld begin, as does Rawls, within ideal theory, and consider non-ideal circumstances from that perspective.

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Peter Olsthoorn, Myriame Bollen & Robert Beeres (2013). Dual Loyalties in Military Medical Care – Between Ethics and Effectiveness. In Herman Amersfoort, Rene Moelker, Joseph Soeters & Desiree Verweij (eds.), Moral Responsibility & Military Effectiveness. Asser.

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Exploring the nature of slurs, and various treatments thereof, has consequences for feminist theory. In particular, if we adopt the idea that the word "woman" itself can count as a slur, and that slurs are composed, in part, of descriptive and evaluative content, then certain inferences about the social construction of sex and/or gender categories warrant closer examination. Those who make claims about the social construction of these categories must attend to the semantics of slurs, since arguably such claims, in part, depend upon certain treatments of the semantics of slurs.

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One of the main challenges in consciousness research is widely known as the hard problem of consciousness. In order to tackle this problem, I utilize an approach from theoretical physics, called stochastic electrodynamics (SED), which goes one step beyond quantum theory and sheds new light on the reality behind matter. According to this approach, matter is a resonant oscillator that is orchestrated by an all-pervasive stochastic radiation field, called zero-point field (ZPF). The properties of matter are not intrinsic but acquired by dynamic interaction with the ZPF, which in turn picks up information about the material system as soon as an ordered state, i.e., a stable attractor, is reached. I point out that these principles apply also to macroscopic biological systems. From this perspective, long-range correlations in the brain, such as neural gamma synchrony, can be interpreted in terms of order phenomena induced and stabilized by the ZPF, suggesting that every attractor in the brain goes along with an information state in the ZPF. In order to build the bridge to consciousness, I employ additional input from Eastern philosophy. From a comparison between SED and Eastern philosophy I draw the conclusion that the ZPF is an appropriate candidate for the substrate of consciousness, implying that information states in the ZPF are associated with conscious states. On this basis I develop a conceptual framework for consciousness that is fully consistent with physics, neurophysiology, and Eastern philosophy. I argue that this conceptual framework has many interesting features and opens a door to a theory of consciousness. Particularly, it solves the problem of how matter and consciousness communicate in a causally closed functional chain, it gives a physical grounding to existing approaches regarding the connection between consciousness and information, and it gives clear direction to future models and experiments.

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Joachim Keppler (2013). A New Perspective on the Functioning of the Brain and the Mechanisms Behind Conscious Processes. Frontiers in Psychology, Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 4 (Article 242):1-6.
An essential prerequisite for the development of a theory of consciousness is the clarification of the fundamental mechanisms underlying conscious processes. In this article I present an approach that sheds new light on these mechanisms. This approach builds on stochastic electrodynamics (SED), a promising theoretical framework that provides a deeper understanding of quantum systems and reveals the origin of quantum phenomena. I outline the most important concepts and findings of SED and interpret the neurophysiological body of evidence in the context of these findings, indicating that the functioning of the brain rests upon exactly the same principles that are characteristic for quantum systems. On this basis, I construct a new hypothesis on the mechanisms behind conscious processes and discuss the new perspectives this hypothesis opens up for consciousness research. In particular, it offers the possibility of elucidating the relationship between brain and consciousness, of specifying the connection between consciousness and information, and of answering the question of what distinguishes conscious processes from unconscious processes.

  1. Giuliano Torrengo (forthcoming). Ostrich Presentism. Philosophical Studies:1-22.
Ostrich presentists maintain that we can use all the expressive resources of the tensed language to provide an explanation of why true claims about the past are true, without thereby paying any price in terms of ontology or basic ideology. I clarify the position by making a distinction between three kinds of explanation, which has general interest and applicability. I then criticize the ostrich position because it requires an unconstrained version of the third form of explanation, which is out of place in metaphysics.

Sep 29th 2013 GMT
  1. Gillian Brock (2013). Contemporary Cosmopolitanism: Some Current Issues. Philosophy Compass 8 (8):689-698.
In this article, we survey some current debates among cosmopolitans and their critics. We begin by surveying some distinctions typically drawn among kinds of cosmopolitanisms, before canvassing some of the diverse varieties of cosmopolitan justice, exploring positions on the content of cosmopolitan duties of justice, and a prominent debate between cosmopolitans and defenders of statist accounts of global justice. We then explore some common concerns about cosmopolitanism – such as whether cosmopolitan commitments are necessarily in tension with other affiliations people typically have and how we should deal with issues concerning a perceived lack of authority in the global domain – and whether these can be addressed. We also look briefly at how the concern with feasibility has led some to take up the challenge of devising public policy that is cosmopolitan in outlook, before offering some concluding remarks on future directions in these debates.

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This paper outlines a truth-conditional view of logical form, that is, a view according to which logical form is essentially a matter of truth-conditions. Section 1 provides some preliminary clarifications. Section 2 shows that the main motivation for the view is the fact that fundamental logical relations such as entailment or contradiction can formally be explained only if truth-conditions are formally represented. Sections 3 and 4 articulate the view and dwell on its affinity with a conception of logical form that has been defended in the past. Sections 5-7 draw attention to its impact on three major issues that concern, respectively, the extension of the domain of formal explanation, the semantics of tensed discourse, and the analysis of quantification..

  1. Birgit Kellner (forthcoming). Changing Frames in Buddhist Thought: The Concept of Ākāra in Abhidharma and in Buddhist Epistemological Analysis. Journal of Indian Philosophy:1-21.
It has been argued that the use of the concept of ākāra—a mental “form,” “appearance” or “aspect”—in Buddhist epistemological analysis or pramāa exhibits continuities with earlier Buddhist thinking about mental processes, in particular in Abhidharma. A detailed inquiry into uses of the term ākāra in pertinent contexts in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāya brings to light different semantic nuances and functions of this term. The characteristic use of ākāra in Buddhist epistemological discourse turns out to be continuous with only some of the nuances it has in Abhidharma. Moreover, ākāra becomes associated with novel explanatory functions in Buddhist pramāa. These discoveries underscore the need to pay closer attention to the reuse of terms and concepts, ideas and arguments in Buddhist philosophy, and to the often subtle adaptations and transformations that formed an integral part of its history.

  1. Jennifer Greenwood (forthcoming). Is Mind Extended or Scaffolded? Ruminations on Sterelney's (2010) Extended Stomach. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-22.
In his paper, in this journal, Sterelney (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9:465–481, 2010) claims that cases of extended mind are limiting cases of environmental scaffolding and that a niche construction model is a more helpful, general framework for understanding human action. He further claims that extended mind cases fit into a corner of a 3D space of environmental scaffolds of cognitive competence. He identifies three dimensions which determine where a resource fits into this space and suggests that extended mind models seem plausible when a resource is highly reliable, individualised/entrenched and a single-user resource. Sterelney also claims that the most important cognition-enhancing resources are provided collectively by one generation to the next. In this paper, I argue that Sterelney is both right and wrong and this because he focuses primarily on external, physical resources and construes scaffolding as exclusively unidirectional and diachronic. Using examples of unfamiliar tool use, visual processing and human emotional ontogenesis, I argue, respectively, that extended mind cases include those which fail to meet Sterelney’s dimensional criteria; that the most important cognition—enhancing resources are those which actually build brains; that these are provided on a one-to-one basis in emotional ontogenesis; and, this depends on bidirectional and synchronic (if disproportionate) cognitive scaffolding.

Sep 28th 2013 GMT
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In 2007, ten world-renowned neuroscientists proposed “A Decade of the Mind Initiative.” The contention was that, despite the successes of the Decade of the Brain, “a fundamental understanding of how the brain gives rise to the mind [was] still lacking” (2007, 1321). The primary aims of the decade of the mind were “to build on the progress of the recent Decade of the Brain (1990-99)” by focusing on “four broad but intertwined areas” of research, including: healing and protecting, understanding, enriching, and modeling the mind. These four aims were to be the result of “transdisciplinary and multiagency” research spanning “across disparate fields, such as cognitive science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.” The proposal for a decade of the mind prompted many questions (See Spitzer 2008). In this chapter, I address three of them: (1) How do proponents of this new decade conceive of the mind? (2) Why should a decade be devoted to understanding it? (3) What should this decade look like?

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Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (forthcoming). Stabilizing Mental Disorders: Prospects and Problems. In Harold Kincaid & Jacqueline Sullivan (eds.), Classifying Psychopathology: Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds. MIT.

Sep 27th 2013 GMT
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  1. Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry (2013). Prove It! The Burden of Proof Game in Science Vs. Pseudoscience Disputes. Philosophia:1-16.
The concept of burden of proof is used in a wide range of discourses, from philosophy to law, science, skepticism, and even in everyday reasoning. This paper provides an analysis of the proper deployment of burden of proof, focusing in particular on skeptical discussions of pseudoscience and the paranormal, where burden of proof assignments are most poignant and relatively clear-cut. We argue that burden of proof is often misapplied or used as a mere rhetorical gambit, with little appreciation of the underlying principles. The paper elaborates on an important distinction between evidential and prudential varieties of burdens of proof, which is cashed out in terms of Bayesian probabilities and error management theory. Finally, we explore the relationship between burden of proof and several (alleged) informal logical fallacies. This allows us to get a firmer grip on the concept and its applications in different domains, and also to clear up some confusions with regard to when exactly some fallacies (ad hominem, ad ignorantiam, and petitio principii) may or may not occur.

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Francisco Gil-White (2001) argues that the ubiquity of racialism — the view that so-called ‘races’ have biological ‘essences’ — can be explained as a byproduct of a shared mental module dedicated to ethnic cognition. Gil-White’s theory has been endorsed, with some revisions, by Edouard Machery and Luc Faucher (2005a). In this skeptical response I argue that our developmental environments contain a wealth, rather than a poverty of racialist stimulus, rendering a nativist explanation of racialism redundant. I also argue that we should not theorize racialism in isolation from racism, as value judgments may play a role in essentialist thinking about the ‘other’.

Sep 26th 2013 GMT
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Jacob Beck (forthcoming). Sense, Mentalese, and Ontology. Protosociology, 30 (Special Issue: Concepts.
Modes of presentation are often posited to accommodate Frege’s puzzle. Philosophers differ, however, in whether they follow Frege in identifying modes of presentation with Fregean senses, or instead take them to be formally individuated symbols of “Mentalese”. Building on Fodor, Margolis and Laurence defend the latter view by arguing that the mind-independence of Fregean senses renders them ontologically suspect in a way that Mentalese symbols are not. This paper shows how Fregeans can withstand this objection. Along the way, a clearer understanding emerges of what senses must be to serve as an ontologically benign alternative to symbols of Mentalese.

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Jason Swartwood (2013). Cultivating Practical Wisdom. Dissertation, University of Minnesota
Practical wisdom (hereafter simply “wisdom”) is the intellectual virtue that enables a person to make reliably good decisions about how, all-things-considered, to live and conduct herself. Because wisdom is such an important and high-level achievement, we should wonder: what is the nature of wisdom? What kinds of skills, habits and capacities does it involve? Can real people actually develop it? If so, how? I argue that we can answer these questions by modeling wisdom on expert decision-making skill in complex areas like firefighting. I develop this expert skill model of wisdom using philosophical argument informed by relevant empirical research. I begin in Chapter 1 by examining the historical roots of analogies between wisdom and practical skills in order to motivate the expert skill model. In Chapter 2, I provide the core argument for the expert skill model. I then use the remaining chapters to pull out the implications of the expert skill model. In Chapter 3, I show that the expert skill model yields practical guidance about how to develop wisdom. In Chapter 4, I address the objection, due to Daniel Jacobson, that wisdom is not a skill that humans could actually develop, since skill development requires a kind of feedback in practice that is not available for all-things-considered decisions about how to live. Finally, in Chapter 5, I apply the expert skill model to the question, much discussed by virtue ethicists, of whether a wise person deliberates using a comprehensive and systematic conception of the good life.

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In this paper I argue that if one subscribes to dispositionalism — the view that natural properties are irreducibly dispositional in character — then one ought to favour a Platonic view of properties. That is, dispositionalists ought to view properties as transcendent universals. I argue for this on the grounds that only with transcendent universals in play can two central dispositionalist platitudes be accounted for in a satisfactory way. Given that dispositionalism is becoming an increasingly influential view in the metaphysics of science, my argument, if successful, suggests that Platonism will see something of a revival in contemporary metaphysics. This new kind of Platonism is shown to have some striking metaphysical and epistemological consequences.