It is unfortunate for the philosophical community generally, and for those philosophers who pursue various versions of idealism in particular, that a logician of Kurt Goedel’s genius published very little of non-mathematical philosophical interest. Amongst his unpublished papers at Princeton there are, however, several versions of a paper he wrote on the relevance of contemporary relativity to the philosophy of Kant. The purpose of the present paper is to give a partial exposition and defence of Goedel’s view that contemporary (...) relativity supports a neo-Kantian idealistic position with regard to time. (shrink)

A review of Hao Wang's Reflections on Kurt Goedel, emphasising Goedel's reaction against his Vienna Circle background.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM–5; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013) defines melancholia as “A mental state characterized by very severe depressi...

This paper considers the place of reasons in the metaphysics of epistemic normativity and defends a middle ground between two popular extremes in the literature. Against members of the ‘reasons first’ movement, we argue that reasons are not the sole fundamental constituents of epistemic normativity. We suggest instead that the virtue-theoretic property of competence is the key building block. To support this approach, we note that reasons must be possessed to play a role in the analysis of central epistemically normative (...) properties, and argue that the relation of possession must be analyzed in terms of competence. But while we diverge with reasons-firsters on this score, we also distance ourselves from those who deny reasons any important role in epistemology. For we maintain that possessed reasons do help to ground deontic facts in the epistemic domain (e.g., facts about what one epistemically ought to believe, may believe, or is justified in believing). Indeed, we present an argument that the possession of sufficient epistemic reasons is necessary and sufficient for propositional justification, and that proper basing on such reasons yields doxastic justification. But since possession and proper basing are themselves grounded in competence, reasons are not the end of the explanatory road: competence enables them to do their work, putting them—and us—in the middle. (shrink)

It is often claimed that humans are rational, linguistic, cultural, or moral creatures. What these characterizations may all have in common is the more fundamental claim that humans are normative animals, in the sense that they are creatures whose lives are structured at a fundamental level by their relationships to norms. The various capacities singled out by discussion of rational, linguistic, cultural, or moral animals might then all essentially involve an orientation to obligations, permissions and prohibitions. And, if this is (...) so, then perhaps it is a basic susceptibility, or proclivity to normative or deontic regulation of thought and behavior that enables humans to develop the various specific features of their life form. This volume of new essays investigates the claim that humans are essentially normative animals in this sense. The contributors do so by looking at the nature and relations of three types of norms, or putative norms-social, moral, and linguistic-and asking whether they might all be different expressions of one basic structure unique to humankind. These questions are posed by philosophers, primatologists, behavioral biologists, psychologists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists, who have collaborated on this topic for many years. The contributors are committed to the idea that understanding normativity is a two-way process, involving a close interaction between conceptual clarification and empirical research. (shrink)

Anger, disgust, elevation, sympathy, relief. If the subjective experience of each of these emotions is the same whether elicited by moral or nonmoral events, then what makes moral emotions unique? We suggest that the configuration of moral emotions is special—a configuration given by the underlying structure of morality. Research suggests that people divide the moral world along the two dimensions of valence (help/harm) and moral type (agent/patient). The intersection of these two dimensions gives four moral exemplars—heroes, villains, victims and beneficiaries—each (...) of which elicits unique emotions. For example, victims (harm/patient) elicit sympathy and sadness. Dividing moral emotions into these four quadrants provides predictions about which emotions reinforce, oppose and complement each other. (shrink)

The Adventure of the Human Intellect presents the latest scholarship on the beginnings of intellectual history on a broad scope, encompassing ten eminent ancient or early civilizations from both the Old and New Worlds. Borrows themes from The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (1946), updating an old topic with a new approach and up-to-date theoretical underpinning, evidence, and scholarship Provides a broad scope of studies, including discussion of highly developed ancient or early civilizations in China, India, West Asia, the Mediterranean, (...) and the Americas Examines the world view of ten ancient or early societies, reconstructed from their own texts, concerning the place of human beings in society and state, in nature and cosmos, in space and time, in life and death, and in relation to those in power and the world of the divine Considers a diversity of sources representing a wide array of particular responses to differing environments, circumstances, and intellectual challenges Reflects a more inclusive and nuanced historiographical attitude with respect to non-elites, gender, and local variations Brings together leading specialists in the field, and is edited by an internationally renowned scholar. (shrink)

We argue that we can avoid epistemic dilemmas by properly understanding the nature and epistemology of the suspension of judgment, with a particular focus on conflicts between higher-order evidence and first-order evidence.

The Jewish religious tradition summons its adherents to save life. For religious Jews preservation of life is the ultimate religious commandment. At the same time Jewish law recognizes that the agony of a moribund person may not be stretched. When the time to die has come this has to be respected. The process of dying should not needlessly be prolonged. We discuss the position of two prominent Orthodox Jewish authorities – the late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi J David Bleich (...) – towards the role of life-sustaining treatment in end-of-life care. From the review, the characteristic halachic and heterogeneous character of Jewish ethical reasoning appears. The specificity of Jewish dealing with ethical dilemmas in health care indicates the importance for contemporary healthcare professionals of providing care which is sensitive to a patient’s culture and worldview. (shrink)

Ogni tentativo di ripensare le nostre categorie politiche deve muovere dalla consapevolezza che della distinzione classica fra zoé e bios, tra vita naturale ed esistenza politica (o tra l'uomo come semplice vivente e l'uomo come soggetto politico), non ne sappiamo piú nulla. Nel diritto romano arcaico homo sacer era un uomo che chiunque poteva uccidere senza commettere omicidio e che non doveva però essere messo a morte nelle forme prescritte dal rito. È la vita uccidibile e insacrificabile dell' 'uomo sacro' (...) a fornire qui la chiave per una rilettura critica della nostra tradizione politica. Quando la vita diventa la posta in gioco della politica e questa si trasforma in biopolitica, tutte le categorie fondamentali della nostra riflessione, dai diritti dell'uomo alla democrazia alla cittadinanza, entrano in un processo di svuotamento e di dislocazione il cui risultato sta oggi davanti ai nostri occhi. Seguendo il filo del rapporto costitutivo fra nuda vita e potere sovrano, da Aristotele ad Auschwitz, dall'Habeas corpus alle Dichiarazioni dei diritti, il libro di Agamben cerca di decifrare gli enigmi - prima di tutti il fascismo e il nazismo - che il nostro secolo ha proposto alla ragione storica. Fino a vedere, nel campo di concentramento, il paradigma biopolitico nascosto della modernità in cui città e casa sono diventate indiscernibili e la possibilità di distinguere tra il nostro corpo biologico e il nostro corpo politico ci è stata tolta una volta per tutte. (shrink)

Despite the recent backlash against epistemic consequentialism, an explicit systematic alternative has yet to emerge. This paper articulates and defends a novel alternative, Epistemic Kantianism, which rests on a requirement of respect for the truth. §1 tackles some preliminaries concerning the proper formulation of the epistemic consequentialism / non-consequentialism divide, explains where Epistemic Kantianism falls in the dialectical landscape, and shows how it can capture what seems attractive about epistemic consequentialism while yielding predictions that are harder for the latter to (...) secure in a principled way. §2 presents Epistemic Kantianism. §3 argues that it is uniquely poised to satisfy the desiderata set out in §1 on an ideal theory of epistemic justification. §4 gives three further arguments, suggesting that it (i) best explains the objective normative significance of the subject's perspective in epistemology, (ii) follows from the kind of axiology needed to solve the swamping problem together with modest assumptions about the relation between the evaluative and the deontic, and (iii) illuminates certain asymmetries in epistemic value and obligation. §5 takes stock and reassesses the score in the debate. (shrink)

Many meta-ethicists have thought that rationality requires us to heed apparent normative reasons, not objective normative reasons. But what are apparent reasons? There are two kinds of standard answers. On de dicto views, R is an apparent reason for S to \ when it appears to S that R is an objective reason to \ . On de re views, R is an apparent reason for S to \ when R’s truth would constitute an objective reason for S to \ (...) , and it appears to S that R. De re views are currently more popular because they avoid overintellectualizing rationality. But they face problems owing to the way in which they do so. Some assume that we can escape these problems by requiring more information to be apparent or by appealing to defeat. But these strategies fail. So, I defend a new view: apparent reasons are apparent facts that agents are competently attracted to treat like objective reasons, where competence is indirectly defined in terms of objective reasons and a competence/performance distinction is honored. Since one can treat X like an F without having the concept of an F, the view does not overintellectualize rationality. But it is also strong enough to dodge the pitfalls of de re views. (shrink)

Beim Wort 'Aufklarung' denken wir zunachst und zumeist an Immanuel Kant und sein beruhmtes Diktum vom 'Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmundigkeit'. Doch die europaische Aufklarungsbewegung war vieldimensional und bewegte sich nicht nur in einer Richtung. Der bohmische Philosoph Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) steht fur einen ganz anderen Pfad in der Geschichte der Aufklarung. Er war ein Philosoph der mitteleuropaischen Denkstromung, der eine Welt jenseits des Kapitalismus und der Ausbeutung des Planeten dachte. Er sah in der Aufklarung einen konkreten Auftrag (...) an jeden einzelnen Menschen, 'stets kluger, (moralisch) besser und damit glucklicher zu werden': Nicht die Welt zu beherrschen, sondern sie zu verstehen, das sei der Auftrag auf diesem Weg zum allgemeinen Gluck. Die Monographie stellt Leben und Werk dieses zu Unrecht vergessenen katholischen Denkers umfassend und quellengesattigt vor. (shrink)

According to Veritism, true belief is the sole fundamental epistemic value. Epistemologists often take Veritism to entail that all other epistemic items can only have value by standing in certain instrumental relations—namely, by tending to produce a high ratio of true to false beliefs or by being products of sources with this tendency. Yet many value theorists outside epistemology deny that all derivative value is grounded in instrumental relations to fundamental value. Veritists, I believe, can and should follow suit. After (...) setting the stage in §1, I explain in §2 why Veritism should not take an Instrumentalist form. Instrumentalist Veritism faces a generalized version of the swamping problem. But this problem undermines Instrumentalism, not Veritism: granting Instrumentalism, similar problems arise for any economical epistemic axiology. I show in §3 how Veritism can take a less narrow form and solve the swamping problem. After answering some objections in §4, I consider in §5 what some would regard as a less radical alternative solution and argue that it either fails or collapses into mine. I close in §6 by taking stock and re-evaluating the overall prospects for Veritism, suggesting that it is a highly promising epistemic axiology when divorced from Instrumentalism. (shrink)

It is often assumed that believing that p for a normative reason consists in nothing more than (i) believing that p for a reason and (ii) that reason’s corresponding to a normative reason to believe that p, where (i) and (ii) are independent factors. This is the Composite View. In this paper, we argue against the Composite View on extensional and theoretical grounds. We advocate an alternative that we call the Prime View. On this view, believing for a normative reason (...) is a distinctive achievement that isn’t exhausted by the mere conjunction of (i) and (ii). Its being an achievement entails that (i) and (ii) are not independent when one believes for a normative reason: minimally, (i) must hold because (ii) holds. Apart from its intrinsic interest, our discussion has important upshots for central issues in epistemology, including the analysis of doxastic justification, the epistemology of perception, and the place of competence in epistemology. (shrink)

In diesem Streit - ausgelöst durch Emil Du Bois-Reymonds Vortrag 'Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens '(1872) - ging es nicht mehr um die Abgrenzung der Erklärungskompetenzen von Religion, Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft, sondern um die Frage, ob der so erfolgreichen Naturwissenschaft ebenfalls Erkenntnisgrenzen gesetzt seien: an den Problemen der Erkennbarkeit des Wesens der Materie und der Rückführbarkeit der subjektiven Qualitäten menschlichen Empfindens und Denkens auf materielle Zustände. Die Behauptung, es gebe Bereiche, die der Wissenschaft nicht nur mit den damaligen Mitteln, sondern (...) prinzipiell verschlossen blieben, schien ihren universalen Erklärungsanspruch zu unterminieren. Diese Debatte hat auch heute nichts an Brisanz verloren, auch wenn sie zumeist nicht mehr im direkten Rückgriff auf die damalige ausgetragen wird. (shrink)

1. T. - Die metaphysischen Urgesetze der Melodik.

According to a view I’ll call Epistemic Normativism, knowledge is normative in the same sense in which paradigmatically normative properties like justification are normative. This paper argues against EN in two stages and defends a positive non-normativist alternative. After clarifying the target in §1, I consider in §2 some arguments for EN from the premise that knowledge entails justification. I first raise some worries about inferring constitution from entailment. I then rehearse the reasons why some epistemologists reject the Entailment Thesis (...) and argue that a non-normativist picture provides the best explanation of all the intuitions surrounding this thesis, favorable and unfavorable. On this picture, human knowledge is a structured non-normative complex that has as one of its parts a justification-making property, analogous in role to good-making properties like pleasurableness. After giving three arguments against EN in §3 and answering an objection in §4, I turn in §5 to further develop the positive view sketched in §2. In §6, I take stock and conclude. (shrink)

Internalism holds that epistemic justification is determined by what is internal to the mind, not by facts about the mind-independent world. This paper introduces and defends a new kind of internalism that is rooted in rationalist ideas that have been neglected in recent epistemology, despite inspiring internalist projects in cognitive science. Ignoring rationalist insights has, I argue, damaged the prospects for internalism, by needlessly saddling internalists with empiricist burdens. Internalists can refuse these burdens by accepting a better philosophy of mind. (...) Rather than looking to 17th century rationalists, I look to Kant, and especially his idea that normativity is grounded in the constitution of agency and mind. A Kantian approach can avoid stock objections to internalism, I argue, and can also capture all the alleged benefits of externalism. The paper is structured as follows. In §2, I get back to basics and consider more ways to satisfy the core internalist template than have become standard. I draw attention to rationalist insights about how normativity could be grounded in the constitution of mind, and hypothesize that if internalism respects these insights, some problems disappear. I develop this hypothesis in §3 with a Kantian view. I further defend this view in §4. I conclude in §5 by explaining why Kantian internalism answers the latest challenges to internalism. (shrink)