Generating group interaction is a necessary part of teaching philosophy, but there are many obstacles to creating it in a traditional classroom. We propose that philosophy courses can be improved by turning to hybrid models that integrate classroom discussion with online message boards, or forums. Using anecdotes and a comprehensive survey, we argue that using forums helps instructors overcome time constraints in the classroom, helps some students overcome anxiety over contributing, improves discussion, reduces the need to review, and gives instructors (...) a better view of how their students encounter philosophy. We also provide examples of how to use forums and forum assignments. (shrink)

Have you ever wondered what the phrase “God is dead” means? You’ll find out in _Existentialism For Dummies_, a handy guide to Nietzsche, Sartre, and Kierkegaard’s favorite philosophy. See how existentialist ideas have influenced everything from film and literature to world events and discover whether or not existentialism is still relevant today. You’ll find an introduction to existentialism and understand how it fits into the history of philosophy. This insightful guide will expose you to existentialism’s ideas about the absurdity of (...) life and the ways that existentialism guides politics, solidarity, and respect for others. There’s even a section on religious existentialism. You’ll be able to reviewkey existential themes and writings. Find out how to: Trace the influence of existentialism Distinguish each philosopher’s specific ideas Explain what it means to say that “God is dead” See culture through an existentialist lens Understand the existentialist notion of time, finitude, and death Navigate the absurdity of life Master the art of individuality Complete with lists of the ten greatest existential films, ten great existential aphorisms, and ten common misconceptions about existentialism, _Existentialism_ _For Dummies_ is your one-stop guide to a very influential school of thought. (shrink)

In most sports ethics, doping is addressed from a deontological or consequentialist perspective. It is suggested here that a virtue-ethical analysis informed by Confucianism can capture intuitions about the need to cultivate flourishing in sports. Specifically, it is argued that the Confucian virtues of zhong 忠 and shu 恕, necessary for Confucian ren 仁, can help us to articulate an account of flourishing in sports. As each Confucian virtue is articulated and then applied to sports, consideration is given to how (...) it will alter the approach to doping as an ethical issue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:18 HUME AND THE STANDARD OF TASTE David Hume's critical theories, although fragmentary, have drawn increasingly serious attention in the twentieth century, yet even in 1976 Peter Jones, in reassessing Hume's aesthetics, can describe one of the most substantial of his critical essays, "Of the Standard of Taste," as underrated. Jones praises it as "subtle and highly complex," but while I agree with that judgment I also find the (...) essay quite puzzling. I am struck by certain features which look like structural weaknesses and by what seem to be inconsistencies, even contradictions, in Hume's argument. But perhaps the gravest difficulty facing interpretation of this essay is the irony which Hume seems to use, for this raises the question of just how seriously we are to take some of the more conventional views contained in "Of the Standard of Taste." I can begin to illustrate my uneasiness by considering Hume's use of a tall tale from Don Quixote, Part II, chapter xiii. Hume introduces this in a lighthearted way as part of his definition of delicacy of taste. It is the story of Sancho Panza's two kinsmen, who are such sensitive judges of wine that they can detect the taint of iron and leather imparted to a hogshead by the presence in it of a key on a thong. Now there are some interesting differences between Hume's version of this tale and the original. For example, where Hume has the two tasters deliberate over their wine before pronouncing it good, except for the slight taste of leather or iron, Cervantes says the first merely tried it with the tip of his tongue and the second just sniffed it, without tasting any at all. Further, Hume says "both 2 were ridiculed for their judgment," but there is no such 19 reaction mentioned in the original. Lastly, Hume calls the cause of the taint of iron "an old key," where 3 Cervantes describes it as "little." In short, while in the original interest is in the sensitivity of the taste of Sancho' s kinsmen for its own sake, Hume's emphasis is more on the relation of their taste to that of other people. He makes the procedure of tasting the wine as normal as possible and he gives prominence to the reactions of other people. Hume both tones down the more fabulous aspects of the story, making it less extraordinary and hence a better starting-point for a generalization about taste, and makes more explicit the conflict of opinion about the wine. He is using the story not just to define delicacy of taste but also to relate it to the problem of aesthetic judgment and the standard of taste. This is confirmed by the application Hume makes of his example. First, he uses the analogy between physical and aesthetic taste to claim that delicacy in both consists of the ability to detect minute effects and make fine discriminations. But the crucial question is what serves, like the key on the thong in the story, to confirm to outsiders that a man's aesthetic judgment is in fact more delicate than his neighbours'. Hume's answer is "the general rules of beauty... to produce these general rules or avowed patterns of composition is like finding the key with the leathern thong; which justified the verdict of Sancho' s kinsmen, and confounded those pretended judges who had condemned them" (273). But of course producing a general rule is not exactly like finding a physical key on a thong, and Hume's use of the word "avowed" here, which he repeats later, raises the difficulty of how the principles of art become accepted, and by whom. But, that apart, there is something odd about the discussion since the avowed principle is used, with support from examples, to 20 convince a bad critic that he is wrong, on the grounds that his judgment does not accord with the general judgment. This is the opposite of Sancho's story, in which his kinsmen were in a minority, derided, adds Hume, by the dull majority, and only vindicated by the discovery of the tainting key and thong. The aesthetic equivalent of... (shrink)

Most of the arguments usually appealed to in order to support the view that some abstraction principles are analytic depend on ascribing to them some sort of existential parsimony or ontological neutrality, whereas the opposite arguments, aiming to deny this view, contend this ascription. As a result, other virtues that these principles might have are often overlooked. Among them, there is an epistemic virtue which I take these principles to have, when regarded in the appropriate settings, and which I suggest (...) to call ‘epistemic economy’. My purpose is to isolate and clarify this notion by appealing to some examples concerning the definition of natural and real numbers. (shrink)

In an age where issues like climate change and the unintended consequences of technological innovation are high on the ethical and political agenda, questions about the nature and extent of our responsibilities to future generations have never been more important, yet simultaneously so difficult to answer. This book takes a unique approach to the problem by drawing on diverse traditions of thinking about care (including developmental psychology, phenomenology and feminist ethics) to explore the nature and meaning of our relationship with (...) the future. Demonstrating that many influential perspectives on intergenerational ethics, including positions advanced by John Rawls, Brian Barry, and Ulrich Beck are undermined by problems relating to uncertainty, it shows that an approach based on care ethics can confront the uncertain future successfully and give a viable account of the nature and scope of future-oriented responsibilities. (shrink)

Frege's definition of the real numbers, as envisaged in the second volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, is fatally flawed by the inconsistency of Frege's ill-fated Basic Law V. We restate Frege's definition in a consistent logical framework and investigate whether it can provide a logical foundation of real analysis. Our conclusion will deem it doubtful that such a foundation along the lines of Frege's own indications is possible at all.

The chapter advances a reformulation of the classical problem of the nature of mathematical objects (if any), here called “Plato’s problem,” in line with the program of a philosophy of mathematical practice. It then provides a sketch of a platonist solution, following the same perspective. This solution disregards as nonsensical the question of the existence of abstract, and specifically mathematical, objects, by rather focusing on the modalities of our access to them: objects (in general, both concrete and abstract) are regarded (...) as individual contents that we have (or can have) a de re epistemic access to. The question of the existence of mathematical objects is then replaced by that of the modalities of our de re epistemic access to individual mathematical contents. (shrink)

Part I of Frege’s Grundgesetze is devoted to the “exposition [Darlegung]” of his formal system.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Suppose we believe that God created the world. Then surely we want it to be the case that he intended, in some sense at least, to create THIS world. Moreover, most theists want to hold that God didn't just guess or hope that the world would take one course or another; rather, he KNEW precisely what was going to take place in the world he planned to create. In particular, of each person P, God knew that P was to exist. (...) Call this the "standard" conception. Most theists find the standard conception appealing. Unfortunately, the view seems to conflict with the equally appealing idea — call it "temporal actualism" — that there are no "future" individuals beyond those that already exist in the present moment. For, on this view, for any historical person P, prior to creation, there was no such person as P and hence nothing about P for God to know. Hence, in particular, God couldn't have known that P was to exist. This is of course not a new problem. But past solutions to it are highly problematic. In this paper, after canvassing previous approaches, I will propose a solution that seems to preserve both temporal actualism and a suitably robust form of the standard conception while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. (shrink)

Greek ancient and early modern geometry necessarily uses diagrams. Among other things, these enter geometrical analysis. The paper distinguishes two sorts of geometrical analysis and shows that in one of them, dubbed “intra-confgurational” analysis, some diagrams necessarily enter as outcomes of a purely material gesture, namely not as result of a codifed constructive procedure, but as result of a free-hand drawing.

Aristotle attaches particular significance to the homonymy of many central concepts in philosophy and science: that is, to the diversity of ways of being common to a single general concept. His preoccupation with homonymy influences his approach to almost every subject that he considers, and it clearly structures the philosophical methodology that he employs both when criticizing others and when advancing his own positive theories. Where there is homonymy there is multiplicity: Aristotle aims to find the order within this multiplicity, (...) and believes that doing so is crucial to scientific inquiry and philosophical progress.Christopher Shields investigates and evaluates Aristotle's approach to questions about homonymy, characterizing the metaphysical and semantic commitments necessary to establish the homonymy of a given concept. Then, in a series of case-studies, Shields examines in detail some of Aristotle's principal applications of homonymy--to the body, sameness and oneness, life, goodness, and being. Shields's aim is not only to give a fuller understanding of Aristotle's methodology and to illuminate his specific doctrines in a variety of areas, but to show that this methodology remains fruitful today. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway presents a series of studies of themes from the work of the great American philosopher and pragmatist, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1913). These themes center on the question of how we are to investigate the world rationally. Hookway shows how Peirce's ideas about this continue to play an important role in contemporary philosophy.

Moral error theories are often rejected by appeal to ‘companions in guilt’ arguments. The most popular form of companions in guilt argument takes epistemic reasons for belief as a ‘companion’ and proceeds by analogy. I show that this strategy fails. I claim that the companions in guilt theorist must understand epistemic reasons as evidential support relations if her argument is to be dialectically effective. I then present a dilemma. Either epistemic reasons are evidential support relations or they are not. If (...) they are not, then the companions in guilt argument fails. If they are, then a reduction of epistemic reasons to evidential support relations becomes available and, consequently, epistemic reasons cease to be a viable ‘companion’ for moral reasons. I recommend this structure of argument over existing strategies within the literature and defend my claims against recent objections from companions in guilt theorists. (shrink)

This original new book argues for a reassessment of Plato's challenge to the arts. Plato was the first great figure in Western philosophy to assess the value of the arts; he argued in the Republic that traditionally accepted forms of poetry, drama, and music are unsound. While this view has been widely rejected, Janaway argues that Plato's hostile case is a more coherent and profound challenge to the arts than has sometimes been supposed. Denying that Plato advocates "good art" in (...) any modern sense, Janaway seeks both to understand Plato's critique in the context of his own philosophy and to locate him in today's philosophy of art, showing how issues in aesthetics arise from responses to his charges. (shrink)

What is mathematics about? And if it is about some sort of mathematical reality, how can we have access to it? This is the problem raised by Plato, which still today is the subject of lively philosophical disputes. This book traces the history of the problem, from its origins to its contemporary treatment. It discusses the answers given by Aristotle, Proclus and Kant, through Frege's and Russell's versions of logicism, Hilbert's formalism, Gödel's platonism, up to the the current debate on (...) Benacerraf's dilemma and the indispensability argument. Through the considerations of themes in the philosophy of language, ontology, and the philosophy of science, the book aims at offering an historically-informed introduction to the philosophy of mathematics, approached through the lenses of its most fundamental problem. (shrink)

Diagrams are ubiquitous in mathematics. From the most elementary class to the most advanced seminar, in both introductory textbooks and professional journals, diagrams are present, to introduce concepts, increase understanding, and prove results. They thus fulfill a variety of important roles in mathematical practice. Long overlooked by philosophers focused on foundational and ontological issues, these roles have come to receive attention in the past two decades, a trend in line with the growing philosophical interest in actual mathematical practice.

In the Tractatus, it is stated that questions about logical formatting cannot be meaningfully formulated, since it is precisely the application of logical rules which enables the formulation of a question whatsoever; analogously, Wittgenstein’s celebrated infinite regress argument on rule-following seems to undermine any explanation of deduction, as relying on a logical argument. On the other hand, some recent mathematical developments of the Curry-Howard bridge between proof theory and type theory address the issue of describing the “subjective” side of logic, (...) that is, the concrete manipulation of rules and proofs in space and time. It is advocated that such developments can shed some light on the question of logical formatting and its apparently unintelligible paradoxes, thus reconsidering Wittgenstein’s verdict. (shrink)

It is long known that facial configurations play a critical role when inferring mental and emotional states from others. Nevertheless, there is still a scientific debate on how we infer emotions from facial configurations. The theory of constructed emotion (TCE) suggests that we may infer different emotions from the same facial configuration, depending on the context (e.g. provided by visual and lexical cues) in which they are perceived. For instance, a recent study found that participants were more accurate in inferring (...) mental and emotional states across three different datasets (i.e. RMET, static and dynamic emojis) when words were provided (i.e. forced-choice task), compared to when they were not (i.e. free-labelling task), suggesting that words serve as contexts that modulate the inference from facial configurations. The goal of the current within-subject study was to replicate and extend these findings by adding a fourth dataset (KDEF-dyn), consisting of morphed human faces (to increase the ecological validity). Replicating previous findings, we observed that words increased accuracy across the three (previously used) datasets, an effect that was also observed for the facial morphed stimuli. Our findings are in line with the TCE, providing support for the importance of contextual verbal cues in emotion perception. (shrink)

Proposition I.1 is, by far, the most popular example used to justify the thesis that many of Euclid’s geometric arguments are diagram-based. Many scholars have recently articulated this thesis in different ways and argued for it. My purpose is to reformulate it in a quite general way, by describing what I take to be the twofold role that diagrams play in Euclid’s plane geometry (EPG). Euclid’s arguments are object-dependent. They are about geometric objects. Hence, they cannot be diagram-based unless diagrams (...) are supposed to have an appropriate relation with these objects. I take this relation to be a quite peculiar sort of representation. Its peculiarity depends on the two following claims that I shall argue for: ( i ) The identity conditions of EPG objects are provided by the identity conditions of the diagrams that represent them; ( ii ) EPG objects inherit some properties and relations from these diagrams. (shrink)

Plato's Utopia Recast is an illuminating reappraisal of Plato's later works, which reveals radical changes in his ethical and political theory. Christopher Bobonich examines later dialogues, with a special emphasis upon the Laws, and argues that in these late works, Plato both rethinks and revises the basic ethical and poltical positions that he held in his better-known earlier works, such as the Republic. This book will change our understanding of Plato. His controversial moral and political theory, so influential in (...) Western thought, will henceforth be seen in a new light. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that data science is a coherent and novel approach to empirical problems that, in its most general form, does not build understanding about phenomena. Within the new type of mathematization at work in data science, mathematical methods are not selected because of any relevance for a problem at hand; mathematical methods are applied to a specific problem only by `forcing’, i.e. on the basis of their ability to reorganize the data for further analysis and the (...) intrinsic richness of their mathematical structure. In particular, we argue that deep learning neural networks are best understood within the context of forcing optimization methods. We finally explore the broader question of the appropriateness of data science methods in solving problems. We argue that this question should not be interpreted as a search for a correspondence between phenomena and specific solutions found by data science methods; rather, it is the internal structure of data science methods that is open to precise forms of understanding. (shrink)

DMet 10: Prime matter is the origin of all quantities. Hence it is the origin of every dimension of continuous quantity whatever. ...

Do famous athletes have special obligations to act virtuously? A number of philosophers have investigated this question by examining whether famous athletes are subject to special role model obligations (Wellman 2003; Feezel 2005; Spurgin 2012). In this paper we will take a different approach and give a positive response to this question by arguing for the position that sport and gaming celebrities are ‘ambassadors of the game’: moral agents whose vocations as rule-followers have unique implications for their non-lusory lives. According (...) to this idea, the actions of a game’s players and other stakeholders—especially the actions of its stars—directly affect the value of the game itself, a fact which generates additional moral reasons to behave in a virtuous manner. We will begin by explaining the three main positions one may take with respect to the question: moral exceptionalism, moral generalism, and moral exemplarism. We will argue that no convincing case for moral exemplarism has thus far been made, which gives us reason to look for new ways to defend this position. We then provide our own ‘ambassadors of the game’ account and argue that it gives us good reason to think that sport and game celebrities are subject to special obligations to act virtuously. (shrink)

According to commonsense psychology, one is conscious of everything that one pays attention to, but one does not pay attention to all the things that one is conscious of. Recent lines of research purport to show that commonsense is mistaken on both of these points: Mack and Rock (1998) tell us that attention is necessary for consciousness, while Kentridge and Heywood (2001) claim that consciousness is not necessary for attention. If these lines of research were successful they would have important (...) implications regarding the prospects of using attention research to inform us about consciousness. The present essay shows that these lines of research are not successful, and that the commonsense picture of the relationship between attention and consciousness can be. (shrink)

According to the snapshot view of temporal experience, instances of movement and change cannot, strictly speaking, be objects of sensory perception. Perceptual consciousness instead consists of a succession of individual momentary experiences, none of which is itself an experience of movement or change. The snapshot view is often presented as an intuitively appealing view of the nature of temporal experience, even by philosophers who ultimately reject it. Yet, it is puzzling how this can be so, given that its central claim (...) – that we can never just perceive things moving or changing – clearly flies in the face of our common sense view of the phenomenology of experience. In this paper, I offer a diagnosis of how it is possible that the deep conflict between the snapshot view and our phenomenological intuitions can sometimes go unnoticed. The materials for this diagnosis can, I think, be found in some passages in Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, in which he criticises John Locke’s account of the origins of the idea of succession, as presented in chapter 14 of book II of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. As I argue, a crucial aspect of Reid’s criticisms can be seen to turn on the idea that Locke fails to distinguish between two quite different variants of the snapshot view, which I call the memory theory and the mirroring theory of temporal experience, respectively. It is the failure to distinguish between these two different variants of the snapshot view, I suggest, that can also make the snapshot view appear more compatible with our phenomenological intuitions than it in fact is. (shrink)

The psychological writing of Jung and the post-Jungians is all too often ignored as anachronistic, archaic and mystic. In Jung and the Postmodern, Christopher Hauke challenges this, arguing that Jungian psychology is more relevant now than ever before - not only can it be a response to modernity, but it can offer a critique of modernity and Enlightenment values which brings it in line with the postmodern critique of contemporary culture. After introducing Jungians to postmodern themes in Jameson, Baudrillard, (...) Jencks and Foucault, the author introduces postmodernists to Jung's cultural critique and post-Jungian discussions of representation, individuation, consciousness, and the alternatives to Enlightenment rationality. He also takes a totally fresh approach to topics such as hysteria and the body, Jung and Nietzsche, architecture and affect, Princess Diana and the 'death' of the subject, postmodern science and synchronicity, and to psychosis and alternative 'rationalities'. Jung and the Postmodern is vital reading for everyone interested in contemporary culture, not only Jungians and other psychotherapists who want to explore the social relevance of their discipline, but anyone who shares a assionate concern for where we are heading in postmodern times. (shrink)

The indispensability argument comes in many different versions that all reduce to a general valid schema. Providing a sound IA amounts to providing a full interpretation of the schema according to which all its premises are true. Hence, arguing whether IA is sound results in wondering whether the schema admits such an interpretation. We discuss in full details all the parameters on which the specification of the general schema may depend. In doing this, we consider how different versions of IA (...) can be obtained, also through different specifications of the notion of indispensability. We then distinguish between schematic and genuine IA, and argue that no genuine sound IA is available or easily forthcoming. We then submit that this holds also in the particularly relevant case in which indispensability is conceived as explanatory indispensability. (shrink)

What is involved in the consciousness of a conscious, "occurrent" propositional attitude, such as a thought, a sudden conjecture or a conscious decision? And what is the relation of such consciousness to attention? I hope the intrinsic interest of these questions provides sufficient motivation to allow me to start by addressing them. We will not have a full understanding either of consciousness in general, nor of attention in general, until we have answers to these questions. I think there are constitutive (...) features of these states which can be identified by broadly philosophical investigation, and in the early part of this paper I will try to do some of that identification. -/- Beyond the intrinsic interest of the topic, the nature of such conscious attitudes is highly pertinent to a philosophical account of psychological self-knowledge. So I will also say something about the significance of the constitutive features of these conscious attitudes for a philosophical account of how it can be that a thinker has a distinctive kind of knowledge of some of his mental states. The general challenge in this area is to find anything intermediate between the unexceptionable but uninformative, on the one hand, and the absolutely unbelievable on the other. (shrink)

This paper examines the debate between permissive and impermissive forms of Bayesianism. It briefly discusses some considerations that might be offered by both sides of the debate, and then replies to some new arguments in favor of impermissivism offered by Roger White. First, it argues that White’s (Oxford studies in epistemology, vol 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–186, 2010) defense of Indifference Principles is unsuccessful. Second, it contends that White’s (Philos Perspect 19:445–459, 2005) arguments against permissive views do not (...) succeed. (shrink)

In apparent motion experiments, participants are presented with what is in fact a succession of two brief stationary stimuli at two different locations, but they report an impression of movement. Philosophers have recently debated whether apparent motion provides evidence in favour of a particular account of the nature of temporal experience. I argue that the existing discussion in this area is premised on a mistaken view of the phenomenology of apparent motion and, as a result, the space of possible philosophical (...) positions has not yet been fully explored. In particular, I argue that the existence of apparent motion is compatible with an account of the nature of temporal experience that involves a version of direct realism. In doing so, I also argue against two other claims often made about apparent motion, viz. that apparent motion is the psychological phenomenon that underlies motion experience in the cinema, and that apparent motion is subjectively indistinguishable from real motion. (shrink)

Recent discussions on Fregean and neo-Fregean foundations for arithmetic and real analysis pay much attention to what is called either ‘Application Constraint’ ($AC$) or ‘Frege Constraint’ ($FC$), the requirement that a mathematical theory be so outlined that it immediately allows explaining for its applicability. We distinguish between two constraints, which we, respectively, denote by the latter of these two names, by showing how$AC$generalizes Frege’s views while$FC$comes closer to his original conceptions. Different authors diverge on the interpretation of$FC$and on whether it (...) applies to definitions of both natural and real numbers. Our aim is to trace the origins of$FC$and to explore how different understandings of it can be faithful to Frege’s views about such definitions and to his foundational program. After rehearsing the essential elements of the relevant debate (§1), we appropriately distinguish$AC$from$FC$(§2). We discuss six rationales which may motivate the adoption of different instances of$AC$and$FC$(§3). We turn to the possible interpretations of$FC$(§4), and advance a Semantic$FC$(§4.1), arguing that while it suits Frege’s definition of natural numbers (4.1.1), it cannot reasonably be imposed on definitions of real numbers (§4.1.2), for reasons only partly similar to those offered by Crispin Wright (§4.1.3). We then rehearse a recent exchange between Bob Hale and Vadim Batitzky to shed light on Frege’s conception of real numbers and magnitudes (§4.2). We argue that an Architectonic version of$FC$is indeed faithful to Frege’s definition of real numbers, and compatible with his views on natural ones. Finally, we consider how attributing different instances of$FC$to Frege and appreciating the role of the Architectonic$FC$can provide a more perspicuous understanding of his foundational program, by questioning common pictures of his logicism (§5). (shrink)