New items in your areas of interest
Oct 3rd 2013 GMT
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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Robert K. Garcia (forthcoming). Tropes and Dependency
Profiles: Problems for the Nuclear Theory of Substance. American Philosophical
Quarterly.
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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Antonio Nunziante (2013). The “Morbid Fear of the
Subjective”. Privateness and Objectivity in Mid-Twentieth Century American
Naturalism. Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and
Philosophy 1 (1-2):1-19.
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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Antonio Nunziante (2012). Lo Spirito Naturalizzato.
La Stagione Pre-Analitica Del Naturalismo Americano. Verifiche.
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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Hannes Rusch & Eckart Voland
(forthcoming). Evolutionary
Aesthetics: An Introduction to Key Concepts and Current Issues. Aisthesis.
Oct 1st 2013 GMT
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Caleb Cohoe (forthcoming). Review of "Alexander
of Aphrodisias on the Soul, Part I,” Trans. Victor Caston. Journal of the History of
Philosophy.
- 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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Nathaniel Sharadin (forthcoming). Schroeder on the Wrong
Kind of Reasons Problem for Attitudes. Journal of Ethics and Social
Philosophy.
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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Mark Alfano & Abrol Fairweather,
Situationism and
Virtue Theory. Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy.
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.
- 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.
- 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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Cian Dorr, Jeremy Goodman & John Hawthorne (forthcoming). Knowing Against the Odds. Philosophical Studies.
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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Georgios Steiris (2012). Harpocration, the Argive
Philosopher, and the Overall Philosophical Movement in Classical and Roman
Argos. Journal of Classical Studies Matica Srpska 14.
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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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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Kelly H. Ball (2013). "More or Less
Raped": Foucault, Causality, and Feminist Critiques of Sexual Violence. philoSOPHIA 3
(1):14.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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Margaret Moore (2012). Natural Resources,
Territorial Right, and Global Distributive Justice. Political Theory 40
(1):84 - 107.
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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Stephen K. White & Evan Robert Farr
(2012). "No-Saying"
in Habermas. Political Theory 40 (1):32 - 57.
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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Lori J. Marso (2012). Simone de Beauvoir and
Hannah Arendt: Judgments in Dark Times. Political Theory 40
(2):165 - 193.
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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Andrew F. March (2012). Speech and the Sacred:
Does the Defense of Free Speech Rest on a Mistake About Religion? Political Theory 40
(3):319 - 346.
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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Andrew Mason (2012). Legitimacy and
Disagreement: A Reply to Sleat. Political Theory 40
(5):657 - 662.
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Jane Mansbridge (2012). Conflict and Commonality
in Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Political Theory 40
(6):789 - 801.
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Laura Valentini (2012). Human Rights, Freedom, and
Political Authority. Political Theory 40 (5):573
- 601.
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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Maeve Cooke (2012). Realism and Idealism: Was
Habermas's Communicative Turn a Move in the Wrong Direction? Political Theory 40
(6):811 - 821.
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Andrew Stark (2012). Global Justice, Historical
Justice: Looking at the Two Debates in Tandem. Political Theory 40
(5):543 - 572.
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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Richard J. Bernstein (2012). The Normative Core of the
Public Sphere. Political Theory 40 (6):767 - 778.
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Seyla Benhabib (2012). Carl Schmitt's Critique of
Kant: Sovereignty and International Law. Political Theory 40
(6):688 - 713.
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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Michael David Kaulana Ing (2012). The Ancients Did Not Fix
Their Graves: Failure in Early Confucian Ritual. Philosophy East and West 62
(2):223 - 245.
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.
- 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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Mattia Gallotti & Chris Frith
(2013). Social
Cognition in the We-Mode. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17
(4):160-165.
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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.
- 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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Joachim Keppler (2012). A Conceptual Framework for
Consciousness Based on a Deep Understanding of Matter. Philosophy Study 2
(10):689-703.
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.
- 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
- 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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Diego E. Machuca (forthcoming). La Critique du Critère de
Vérité Épicurien Chez Sextus Empiricus: Un Scepticisme Sur le Monde Extérieur? In S.
Marchand & F. Verde (eds.), Épicurisme et scepticisme. Sapienza University Press.
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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..
- 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 pramāṇa 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 Abhidharmakośabhāṣya 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 pramāṇa. 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.
- 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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Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (forthcoming). Is the Next Decade in
Neuroscience a Decade of the MInd? In Charles Wolfe (ed.), Brain Theory.
Palgrave MacMillan.
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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Orlin Vakarelov, Information Networks Are
Better for Cognition Than Symbolic Dynamics. IACAP 2013 Proceedings.
- 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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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.
