Technology’s impact on pedagogy has been profound, but while resources such as PowerPoint and class management software make teacher’s jobs easier it is not always clear that technology enhances student learning. This essay presents several web-based assignments that make use of current technology to enhance both student learning and appreciation for philosophical analysis. A web-page creation assignment is introduced that demonstrates how traditional textual analysis can be situated in a unique online context that facilitates greater student engagement and learning. The (...) essay also introduces two novel uses of wikis. A collaborative assignment involving Wikipedia is presented, while the second proposed use of the wiki allows instructors to “close the loop” connecting work done in and outside of class. The latter use of wikis allows instructors to gauge student reactions to a reading before class in order to maximize time spent in class discussing that reading. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 225-226 [Access article in PDF] John H. Zammito. Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. x + 576. Cloth, $68.00. Paper, $29.00. Zammito's book continues two recent trends in the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy, viz., the reassessment both of Kant's pre-Critical thought and of his contemporaries. Zammito situates Kant's later pre-Critical (...) work within the "popular philosophy" tradition, especially those elements of the tradition that could be broadly construed as anthropological in focus. If Zammito is correct, during the late 1760s Kant was a popular philosopher of a sort whose influence was greater than generally recognized. In this light, he reexamines Kant's influence on Johann Herder as well as Herder's reception of Kant. The terminus of the study is the emergence of anthropology as a discipline and the roles that Kant and Herder played therein.Zammito's interpretation of this period (roughly, 1762 to 1773) marshals a vast array of material (notes and a bibliography number nearly 200 pages), which sheds light on both the intellectual climate of the time and Kant's and Herder's place within the same. Beginning with a useful survey of the Aufklärung during the 1760s, Zammito focuses on the growth of "popular philosophy" (which opposed the "school philosophy" and focused on the ethical and socio-historical dimension of the Aufklärung). Popular philosophy emerged as a self-styled defense of enlightenment values at a time when both the university and scholar faced crises of self-image and self-justification. Zammito juxtaposes these crises with the breakdown of Kant's attempt to construct a system of metaphysics. His point is that an "altogether different Kant," to use Vorländer's expression, emerged during the mid and late 1760s, a Kant qua popular philosopher.Zammito's Kant of this period was an essayist more interested in the "vocation of man" than in traditional metaphysics. Focusing on the period from the Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime to the curious Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, he outlines Kant's encounter with popular philosophy. The discussion of Rousseau's influence on Kant is both useful and fascinating, and supports Zammito's interpretation nicely. Furthermore, by placing Kant in the context of his contemporaries Zammito sheds light on the scope and originality of Kant's work of this period. But Zammito's point is also that Kant faced personal and professional crises that led to this experiment with popular philosophy. He discusses at some length Kant's relation with women and an alleged "repression" that was thereby produced. These are some of the weaker (because more speculative) sections of the book. [End Page 225] Zammito claims that we must read Kant's texts of this period with the eyes of a psychologist as well as those of a philosopher, but such excursions detract from the clarity of this effort at intellectual history.Kant's "critical turn" is given an interesting interpretation. His foray into popular philosophy seemed to be leading him toward anthropology as a foundational discipline. But, as Zammito claims, though this might have been the logical extension of Kant's focus during this period, Kant's more traditional interest in providing a foundation for metaphysics and meeting the skeptic's challenge won out. Zammito is deft in addressing the clash of these interests, and explicates how Kant's anthropology lectures from 1772-73 provide a touchstone for understanding why metaphysics trumped anthropology for Kant. As Zammito concludes, "Kant created the 'critical philosophy' at the cost of forsaking the 'science' of anthropology" (348).Herder's own development is discussed in the context of this Kantian backdrop. "It [is] possible," Zammito claims, "to see Herder as fulfilling the promise that Kant abandoned" (7). Indeed, Zammito sees in Herder's hermeneutic historicism a "road not taken" by Kant, a road that privileged anthropology over philosophy. The discussion of Herder is illuminating, and does a fine job of detailing his... (shrink)

In this dissertation, I defend an interpretation of the methodological development of transcendental philosophy from Kant's first Critique to Fichte's later Jena-period Wissenschaftslehre. Both Kant and Fichte claim that experience is founded upon certain a priori subjective structures and capacities. However, I argue that the methodology of Kant's first Critique includes a number of assumptions and explicit doctrines that limit his ability to explain experience. The chief problem of Kant's theory of method is, I claim, his distinction between the methods (...) of philosophy and mathematics, whereby the method of construction is limited to mathematics. I argue that Fichte attempts to solve Kant's problem by expanding the method of construction to philosophy itself. As a method, construction has two aspects. First, the task of the philosopher is to reconstruct discursively the spontaneous process whereby subjectivity is self-constructing. By "self-construction," I refer to a functional structure wherein subjectivity is the achievement of a range of proto-conscious, primitive mental activities. Second, the method of the philosopher is similar to the method of geometric construction, viz., the postulation of a task to be completed regarding which one---beginning from putatively self-evident resources---creatively and imaginatively seeks out a solution. Fichte turns to construction since there is no algorithm for philosophical reflection and he revises Kant's important doctrines regarding intellectual intuition and the productive imagination. However, though Fichte's solution to Kant's problem is promising, the notion of construction itself generates a number of problems. (shrink)

Traditional critical thinking courses introduce students to tools for analyzing and evaluating arguments and reasoning. There are, however, good reasons to think that those courses fail to motivate students to make full use of those tools. It is this motivational problem that is the focus of the present paper. In what follows, I present several proposals for overcoming student resistance to the discipline of critical thinking. I offer a three-step strategy for challenging students’ presumption of competency regarding critical thinking, thereby (...) motivating them to embrace the tools we offer. I also sketch how this strategy can be applied in sections of a critical thinking course. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 302-303 [Access article in PDF] Sedgwick, Sally, ed. The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 338. Cloth, $59.95. This collection consists almost entirely of papers from a 1995 conference at Dartmouth on "The Idea of a System of Transcendental Idealism in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel." Four categories of (...) papers address: (1) the relation between Kant's three Critiques and the Opus Postumum; (2) Fichte's reception of the Critical Philosophy; (3) Schelling's Naturphilosophie as a reaction to Kant and Fichte; and (4) Hegel's indebtedness to and famous departure from Kantianism.In "The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy," Paul Guyer argues that, appearances aside, Kant's thought from the first Critique to the Opus Postumum forms a continuous and self-consistent project. Indeed, Guyer claims that Kant's conception of transcendental philosophy remained essentially unchanged throughout this period (this despite frequent—and often flattering—remarks in the Opus Postumum concerning Spinoza). In contrast, Jeffrey Edwards' "Spinozism, Freedom, and Transcendental Dynamics in Kant's Final System of Transcendental Idealism" points to a conceptual tension present in Kant's late attempt to find common ground between Spinoza and transcendental idealism. Edwards argues that Kant's notion in the Opus Postumum of a dynamical form of matter leads him to embrace a realist (quasi-Spinozistic) conception of space. Finally, in "Is the Critique of Judgment Post-Critical?" Henry Allison challenges the view (common from Hegel to Guyer) that a profound change in Kant's project occurs in the Critique of Judgment, viz., that something profoundly un-transcendental emerges with Kant's notions of the intuitive intellect and purposiveness of nature.Günter Zöller, in "From Critique to Metacritique: Fichte's Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism," offers an interpretation of the development of notions of "system" and "transcendental idealism" from Kant to Fichte. This is an indispensable paper for anyone concerned with the fine points of this development and, [End Page 302] indeed, Zöller's treatment is throughout a model of clarity. In "The Spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre," Daniel Breazeale offers an outstanding survey of the defining features of Fichte's early Jena Wissenschaftslehre. The breadth and depth of Breazeale's paper is a signal achievement, one that puts before the reader's eyes the lay of the often convoluted and confusing land that is the Wissenschaftslehre. Furthermore, Breazeale's discussion of the subdivisions of the Wissenschaftslehre (i.e., the particular sciences grounded by the "science of science") is of particular benefit for understanding the totality of Fichte's conception of philosophy."The 'I' as Principle of Philosophy" by Allen Wood, and "The Practical Foundation of Philosophy in Kant, Fichte, and After" by Karl Ameriks offer differing evaluations of the kind of "primacy of the practical" that each author locates in Fichte. Ameriks rejects Wood's sympathetic reading of the fundamentally practical character of the Fichtean "I." What is at stake for the authors is the success or failure of Fichte's attempt to account for the unity of theoretical and practical reason. It is important to note however that, unlike Kant, Fichte does not subscribe to the "primacy of the practical" thesis; indeed, Fichte holds the two aspects of reason to be "equiprimordial." As such, some of Wood's and Ameriks' claims are either misleading or simply wrong. This point aside, a common criticism of Fichte is that he reduces the world to the bare posit of the "I," a view of which Robert Pippin's "Fichte's Alleged Subjective, Psychological, One-Sided Idealism" quickly disposes. Instead, Pippin presents a "normative non-psychologistic" interpretation of Fichtean idealism.Regarding Schelling's Kant-reception, Manfred Baum's "The Beginnings of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature" locates the origins of Schelling's Naturphilosophie in his youthful interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. Baum's analyses, which abound with rich historical and philological information, are complemented by Dieter Sturma's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 302-303 [Access article in PDF] Sedgwick, Sally, ed. The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 338. Cloth, $59.95. This collection consists almost entirely of papers from a 1995 conference at Dartmouth on "The Idea of a System of Transcendental Idealism in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel." Four categories of (...) papers address: (1) the relation between Kant's three Critiques and the Opus Postumum; (2) Fichte's reception of the Critical Philosophy; (3) Schelling's Naturphilosophie as a reaction to Kant and Fichte; and (4) Hegel's indebtedness to and famous departure from Kantianism.In "The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy," Paul Guyer argues that, appearances aside, Kant's thought from the first Critique to the Opus Postumum forms a continuous and self-consistent project. Indeed, Guyer claims that Kant's conception of transcendental philosophy remained essentially unchanged throughout this period (this despite frequent—and often flattering—remarks in the Opus Postumum concerning Spinoza). In contrast, Jeffrey Edwards' "Spinozism, Freedom, and Transcendental Dynamics in Kant's Final System of Transcendental Idealism" points to a conceptual tension present in Kant's late attempt to find common ground between Spinoza and transcendental idealism. Edwards argues that Kant's notion in the Opus Postumum of a dynamical form of matter leads him to embrace a realist (quasi-Spinozistic) conception of space. Finally, in "Is the Critique of Judgment Post-Critical?" Henry Allison challenges the view (common from Hegel to Guyer) that a profound change in Kant's project occurs in the Critique of Judgment, viz., that something profoundly un-transcendental emerges with Kant's notions of the intuitive intellect and purposiveness of nature.Günter Zöller, in "From Critique to Metacritique: Fichte's Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism," offers an interpretation of the development of notions of "system" and "transcendental idealism" from Kant to Fichte. This is an indispensable paper for anyone concerned with the fine points of this development and, [End Page 302] indeed, Zöller's treatment is throughout a model of clarity. In "The Spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre," Daniel Breazeale offers an outstanding survey of the defining features of Fichte's early Jena Wissenschaftslehre. The breadth and depth of Breazeale's paper is a signal achievement, one that puts before the reader's eyes the lay of the often convoluted and confusing land that is the Wissenschaftslehre. Furthermore, Breazeale's discussion of the subdivisions of the Wissenschaftslehre (i.e., the particular sciences grounded by the "science of science") is of particular benefit for understanding the totality of Fichte's conception of philosophy."The 'I' as Principle of Philosophy" by Allen Wood, and "The Practical Foundation of Philosophy in Kant, Fichte, and After" by Karl Ameriks offer differing evaluations of the kind of "primacy of the practical" that each author locates in Fichte. Ameriks rejects Wood's sympathetic reading of the fundamentally practical character of the Fichtean "I." What is at stake for the authors is the success or failure of Fichte's attempt to account for the unity of theoretical and practical reason. It is important to note however that, unlike Kant, Fichte does not subscribe to the "primacy of the practical" thesis; indeed, Fichte holds the two aspects of reason to be "equiprimordial." As such, some of Wood's and Ameriks' claims are either misleading or simply wrong. This point aside, a common criticism of Fichte is that he reduces the world to the bare posit of the "I," a view of which Robert Pippin's "Fichte's Alleged Subjective, Psychological, One-Sided Idealism" quickly disposes. Instead, Pippin presents a "normative non-psychologistic" interpretation of Fichtean idealism.Regarding Schelling's Kant-reception, Manfred Baum's "The Beginnings of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature" locates the origins of Schelling's Naturphilosophie in his youthful interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. Baum's analyses, which abound with rich historical and philological information, are complemented by Dieter Sturma's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 443-445 [Access article in PDF] Martin Schönfeld. The Philosophy of the Young Kant: The Precritical Project. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xv + 348. Cloth, $55.00. Kant's precritical philosophy has often been judged as lacking continuity, originality, and, indeed, philosophical relevance. Martin Schönfeld's impressive new study disputes this assessment, claiming instead that "the philosophy of the young Kant reveals (...) a greater unity and a more interesting coherence than previously assumed" (245). The author further argues that Kant's precritical thought is philosophically interesting in its own right. Schönfeld is to be commended for his successful refutation of the standard caricature and for deftly defending his reading of this formative period in Kant's thought. Recent years have seen a number of similar attempts to rehabilitate Kant's precritical thought, but Schönfeld's study will no doubt become the standard against which future scholarship is measured. [End Page 443]Schönfeld locates the unity of Kant's precritical philosophy in his purported "grand synthesis of the Newtonian model of nature with three assumptions of metaphysics: the purposive development of nature, the possibility of a morally relevant freedom, and the existence of God" (209). Schönfeld divides Kant's precritical philosophy into three periods comprising (1) Kant's initial failure during the 1740s to formulate a non-Newtonian philosophy of nature, (2) his conversion to Newtonianism in the 1750s (and the constructive philosophizing of this period), and (3) the period of intense self-criticism in the 1760s leading to the collapse of the precritical project. The originality of Schönfeld's typology is evident since many scholars claim that Kant was a Newtonian ab initio. In addition, Schönfeld claims that the precritical project ends with the "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer" (1766), a departure from the orthodox extension of the project to the "Inaugural Dissertation" (1770).Such readings are driven by the author's generally trenchant analyses of Kant's attempt to construct a unified philosophy of nature. In this regard, Schönfeld's analysis of Kant's attempt to reconcile physical processes and purposiveness in the "Universal Natural History" (1755) is particularly insightful; and Kant's attempts to account for the compatibility of determinism and human freedom in the "New Elucidation" (1755) and to formulate a theory of active matter in the "Physical Monadology" (1766) receive readings of a similarly high caliber. In addition, Schönfeld's extensive bibliography and his many references to thinkers now long-forgotten—yet indispensable for understanding Kant's early thought (e.g., Georg Bilfinger, a Wolffian thinker and source for Kant's lifelong strategy of seeking a via media between opposing positions)—are invaluable research tools.Also deserving mention is Schönfeld's examination of the "Dreams" essay. Once thought to be a mere critique of Swedenborg's mysticism, this work actually marks the beginning of Kant's doubts regarding the very possibility of speculative metaphysics. The precritical philosophy is largely concerned with the nature of real interaction between substances—contra occasionalist and pre-established harmony theories—and with Kant's interpretation of physical influx that grounds the same. Yet Kant realizes in the "Dreams" that his own account of a commercium of substances (as well as his claims regarding the soul) seems to lead quite naturally to the notion of a divine influx governing the interaction of disembodied spirits (regarding which Swedenborg purported to have first-hand experience). This realization, Schönfeld argues, motivates the collapse of the precritical project and Kant's recognition that an examination of mental capabilities must precede any speculation regarding nonsensible objects. It is to Schönfeld's credit that he takes this text, which is usually either ignored or ridiculed, seriously and presents a comprehensive and cogent reading of the same.Though generally successful in defending his reading of the precritical Kant, some of Schönfeld's positions are rather suspect. Indeed, Schönfeld claims that "in the 1740s, Kant either rejected Newtonian ideas out of hand, or he... (shrink)

Although several important methodologies implicitly assume the truth of epistemic conservatism, the view that holding a belief confers some measure of justification on the belief, recent criticisms have led some to conclude that epistemic conservatism is an implausible view. That conclusion is mistaken. In this article, I propose a new formulation of epistemic conservatism that is not susceptible to the criticisms leveled at earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism. In addition to withstanding these criticisms, this formulation of epistemic conservatism has several (...) benefits. First, this formulation has the benefits of earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism, that is to say it makes sense of our intuitions about justification in regard to both memory beliefs and beliefs for which we have forgotten our evidence. Second, it provides a good way of responding to the skeptic’s challenge concerning the possibility of possessing knowledge of the external world posed by the Alternative Hypotheses argument. Third, it provides responses to both forms of a new skeptical problem plaguing basic knowledge structure theories, the Problem of Easy Knowledge formulated by Stewart Cohen. I argue that given the many benefits of this formulation of epistemic conservatism and the fact that it is not vulnerable to the criticisms that undermine earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism, this formulation of epistemic conservatism is a plausible view to maintain. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that liberalism and religious belief conflict. Liberalism, its proponents and critics maintain, requires the privatization of religious belief, since liberals often argue that citizens of faith must repress their fundamental commitments when participating in public life. Critics of liberalism complain that privatization is objectionable because it requires citizens of faith to violate their integrity. The liberal political tradition has always sought to carve out social space for individuals to live by their own lights. If liberalism requires (...) citizens to violate their integrity, liberals have cause for concern. I seek to rebut this integrity objection to liberalism. I focus on the dominant form of philosophical liberalism: public reason liberalism. I argue that the integrity objection undermines the mainstream conception of public reason liberalism, but not public reason liberalism itself. The paper opens by outlining the structure of public reason liberalism and the integrity objection (§§2 and 3). It then analyses two versions of the objection and argues that the second version is successful against the mainstream conception of public reason (§4). I argue in response that public reason liberalism need not endorse principles of restraint—the civic restrictions on religious expression typically associated with it. I then sketch a conception of public reason liberalism that eschews principles of restraint (§5). This alternative promises to reconcile public reason liberals and their faith-friendly critics by putting the integrity objection to rest. (shrink)

This volume explores evidentialism, a major theory of epistemic justification. It contains more than 20 papers that examine its nuances, its challenges, as well as its future directions. Written by leading and up-and-coming epistemologists, the papers cover a wide array of topics related to evidentialism. The contributors present both sides of the theory: some are advocates of evidentialism, while others are critics. This provides readers with a comprehensive, and cutting-edge, understanding of this epistemic theory. Overall, the book is organized into (...) six parts: The Nature of Evidence, Understanding Evidentialism, Problems for Evidentialism, Evidentialism and Social Epistemology, New Directions for Evidentialism, and Explanationist Evidentialism. Readers will find insightful discussion on such issues as the ontology of evidence, phenomenal dogmatism, how experiences yield evidence, the new evil demon problem, probability, norms of credibility, intellectual virtues, wisdom, epistemic justification, and more. This title provides authoritative coverage of evidentialism, from the latest developments to the most recent philosophical criticisms. It will appeal to researchers and graduate students searching for more information on this prominent epistemological theory. (shrink)

Introduction: religion and politics as human universals -- Catholic integralism and the integralists -- History --Symmetry -- Transition -- Stability -- Justice -- Confucian and Islamic anti-liberalisms -- Epilogue: reconciliation.

Matthew McGrath has recently challenged all theories that allow for immediate perceptual justification. This challenge comes by way of arguing for what he calls the “Looks View” of visual justification, which entails that our visual beliefs that are allegedly immediately justified are in fact mediately justified based on our independent beliefs about the looks of things. This paper shows that McGrath’s arguments are unsound or, at the very least, that they do not cause genuine concern for the species of dogmatism (...) called “Phenomenal Explanationism”, recently introduced and defended by Kevin McCain and Luca Moretti. (shrink)

Most donated organs in the United States come from brain dead donors, while a small percentage come from patients who die in “controlled,” or expected, circumstances, typically after the family or surrogate makes a decision to withdraw life support. The number of organs available for transplant could be substantially if donations were permitted in “uncontrolled” circumstances–that is, from people who die unexpectedly, often outside the hospital. According to projections from the Institute of Medicine, establishing programs permitting “uncontrolled donation after circulatory (...) determination of death,” or uDCDD, throughout the United States has the potential to provide 22,000 more donation opportunities annually. In contrast, U.S. controlled donation after circulatory determination of death, or cDCDD, cases have increased progressively over the past decade from 87 to 848 donors, but currently account for only 10.6 percent of all deceased donors. Following the IOM recommendations, several projects exploring the feasibility of uDCDD were funded by the federal government, including a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that supported a pilot project in New York City in which the authors of this article participated.A key feature of our protocol, and indeed of many uDCDD protocols, is the initiation of preservation methods such as chest compressions and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation shortly after death in order to perfuse and preserve the donor's organs. Critics of uDCDD argue that the means of determining death deviates from generally ascribed principles. They assert that reinstituting circulation in order to preserve organs has the effect of “undoing” the prior determination of death. The result is that cDCDD is widely accepted and practiced routinely even though it only marginally increases the number of organs available for transplantation, and uDCDD is widely considered unacceptable despite being ethically embraced and proven to significantly increase organ donation opportunities in other countries. This article explores the evolution of this counterintuitive state of affairs and calls for a policy that, in line with the IOM report, allows for both cDCDD and uDCDD protocols. (shrink)

You can perceive things, in many respects, as they really are. For example, you can correctly see a coin as circular from most angles. Nonetheless, your perception of the world is perspectival. The coin looks different when slanted than when head-on, and there is some respect in which the slanted coin looks similar to a head-on ellipse. Many hold that perception is perspectival because you perceive certain properties that correspond to the “looks” of things. I argue that this view is (...) misguided. I consider the two standard versions of this view. What I call the PLURALIST APPROACH fails to give a unified account of the perspectival character of perception, while what I call the PERSPECTIVAL PROPERTIES APPROACH violates central commitments of contemporary psychology. I propose instead that perception is perspectival because of the way perceptual states are structured from their parts. (shrink)

According to Phenomenal Conservatism (PC), if a subject S has an appearance that P, in the absence of defeaters, S has justification for believing P by virtue of her appearance's inherent justifying power. McCain and Moretti (2021) have argued that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness: if S becomes reflectively aware of an appearance, the appearance loses its inherent justifying power. This limits the explanatory power of PC and reduces its antisceptical bite. This paper provides a novel (...) argument to the same conclusion and contends that it does not apply to Phenomenal Explanationism, the appearance-based account of justification alternative to PC defended by McCain and Moretti (2021). (shrink)

Introduction -- Organization, society and politics -- An Aristotelian perspective -- The politics -- The public good -- The rhetoric -- Talk and texts -- The Nichomachean ethics -- Decision making and ethics -- The Poetics -- Bolshevism to ballet in three steps -- What is "public interest"?: a case study -- Where do we go from here?

Experimental philosophy of consciousness aims to investigate and explain our thinking about phenomenally conscious states. Based on empirical studies, researchers have argued (a) that we lack a folk concept of consciousness, (b) that we do not think entities like Microsoft feel regret, (c) that unfelt pains are widely accepted, and (d) that people do not attribute phenomenally conscious states to duplicated hamsters. In this article, I review these and other intriguing claims about people’s understanding of phenomenal consciousness. In doing so, (...) I also show why experimental philosophy of consciousness is challenging, although perhaps not quite as daunting as studying phenomenal consciousness itself. (shrink)

A keen athlete in his late forties, philosophy professor Kevin Aho hadn't given much thought to his own mortality, until he suffered a sudden heart attack that left him fighting for his life. Confronted with death for the first time, he realized that the things he thought gave his life meaning, such as his independence or his ability to plan his own future, were in tatters. Aho turned to those thinkers who have reflected deeply on the meaning of life (...) and the anxiety of living when every heartbeat might be your last: the existentialists. Armed with insights from the likes of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and de Beauvoir, he found new meaning and comfort in a view of life that strives for authenticity and accepts aging and death as part of what makes life worthwhile. Existentialism asks us to face the frailty of our existence and to live with a sense of urgency and gratitude toward its manifold beauties. It is only then that we can be released from patterns of self-deception and begin to appreciate what truly matters in our fleeting, precious lives. (shrink)

In this chapter I defend Explanationist Evidentialism, the theory developed and argued for in Evidentialism and Epistemic Justification, from the objections raised by Richard Fumerton, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Matthias Steup. Ultimately, I conclude that although each of these philosophers presents interesting challenges, none of the challenges succeed in undermining Explanationist Evidentialism. It remains a viable theory of epistemic justification.

_Challenges conventional understandings of Heidegger’s account of the body._.

There is growing interest in understanding and eliciting division of labor within groups of scientists. This paper illustrates the need for this division of labor through a historical example, and a formal model is presented to better analyze situations of this type. Analysis of this model reveals that a division of labor can be maintained in two different ways: by limiting information or by endowing the scientists with extreme beliefs. If both features are present however, cognitive diversity is maintained indefinitely, (...) and as a result agents fail to converge to the truth. Beyond the mechanisms for creating diversity suggested here, this shows that the real epistemic goal is not diversity but transient diversity. (shrink)

Was David Hume radically sceptical about our attempts to understand the world or was he merely approaching philosophical problems from a scientific perspective? Most philosophers today believe that Hume's outlook was more scientific than radically sceptical and that his scepticism was more limited than previously supposed. If these philosophers are correct, then Hume's approach to philosophy mirrors the approach of many contemporary philosophers. This similarity between Hume and many aspects of contemporary philosophy suggests that we should try to understand Hume (...) not as an historical relic but as a partner in a continuing philosophical dialogue. When we look closely at Hume's thoughts about human understanding, we find that Hume's scepticism emerges very insistently in the context of Hume's scientific approach. This book tries to come to terms with Hume's scepticism in a way that sheds light on contemporary philosophy and its relationship to science. (shrink)

The rise of modern science and the proclaimed 'death' of God in the nineteenth century led to a radical questioning of divine action and authorship - Bultmann's celebrated 'demythologizing'. Remythologizing Theology moves in another direction that begins by taking seriously the biblical accounts of God's speaking. It establishes divine communicative action as the formal and material principle of theology, and suggests that interpersonal dialogue, rather than impersonal causality, is the keystone of God's relationship with the world. This original contribution to (...) the theology of divine action and authorship develops a new vision of Christian theism. It also revisits several long-standing controversies such as the relations of God's sovereignty to human freedom, time to eternity, and suffering to love. Groundbreaking and thought-provoking, it brings theology into fruitful dialogue with philosophy, literary theory, and biblical studies"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In response to the intellectual movement of New Atheism, this volume articulates a "New Theist" response that has at its core a desire to engage in productive and depolarizing dialogue. To ensure this book is of interest to atheists and theists alike, a team of experts in the field of philosophy of religion offer an assessment of the strongest New Atheist arguments. The chapters address the most pertinent questions about God, including politics and morality, and each essay shows how a (...) reflective theist might deal with points raised by the New Atheists. This volume is a serious academic engagement with the questions asked by New Atheism. As such, it will be of significant interest to scholars working in the philosophy of religion and theology, as well as those engaged in religious studies generally. (shrink)

Fan (2010) did a good job in applying his interpretation of Confucian ethics of giftedness to genetic enhancement. To him, it is God-like Heaven that gives lives to us and our ancestors as gifts th...

Are philosophers regularly led into error by misleading pictures, grammatical appearances, illusions and fictions? An affirmative answer to this question lies at the heart of the writings of the later Wittgenstein on mind and language. Another affirmative answer was given much earlier by Anton Marty. The two Austrian philosophers think that philosophers regularly succumb to certain temptations which lie in natural language. Many of the examples given by the two philosophers are indeed the same. I set out the similarities between (...) the two accounts of misleading pictures and argue that many aspects of the two accounts can be defended independently of the very different conceptions of the philosophy of Marty and Wittgenstein. The paper shows how important it is to consider Wittgenstein’s Austrian predecessors if he is to be understood. (shrink)

Han Solo‐orphan, laconically cool Corellian smuggler, Rebel general, and martyr for the Resistance, is one of the most‐loved characters in the Star Wars universe. His emotional and moral development throughout the original trilogy into a trusted friend, Leia's lover, and a warrior for Rebel values is inspiring. In the sequel trilogy, he's returned to smuggling and reluctantly re‐assumes the mantle of father to Ben Solo, an alienated and ultimately patricidal son, but even death fails to stop him from offering fatherly (...) advice to bring Kylo Ren back to the light side. In a universe of tyrants, freedom‐fighters, Force‐sensitives, Jedi, and Sith, everybody seems to be peddling a philosophy. But Han Solo is a scoundrel, a skeptic, and a Corellian who seems to want to evade a philosophical life. Skepticism, anti‐authoritarianism, and a desire to demystify–to strip away pretensions to reveal the true, but often ugly face of reality. (shrink)

The paper seeks to develop an account of indexical phenomena based on the highly general theory of structure and dependence set forth by Husserl in his Logical Investigations. Husserl here defends an Aristotelian theory of meaning, viewing meanings as species or universals having as their instances certain sorts of concrete meaning acts. Indexical phenomena are seen to involve the combination of such acts of meaning with acts of perception, a thesis here developed in some detail and contrasted with accounts of (...) indexicals suggested by Frege, Wittgenstein and by the later Husserl himself in his Ideas I. Implications are drawn also for our understanding of the categorial grammar sketched by Husserl in his 4th Logical Investigation, as also for our understanding of the nature of proper names and other candidate indexical expressions. (shrink)

Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon--the legacy of P.T. Barnum's 'humbug' culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump's 'fake news'. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and (...) 'What Is It?', an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans like Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. This brilliant and timely work asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of 'truthiness' where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art."--Dust jacket flap. (shrink)

Increasingly, epistemologists are becoming interested in social structures and their effect on epistemic enterprises, but little attention has been paid to the proper distribution of experimental results among scientists. This paper will analyze a model first suggested by two economists, which nicely captures one type of learning situation faced by scientists. The results of a computer simulation study of this model provide two interesting conclusions. First, in some contexts, a community of scientists is, as a whole, more reliable when its (...) members are less aware of their colleagues' experimental results. Second, there is a robust tradeoff between the reliability of a community and the speed with which it reaches a correct conclusion. ‡The author would like to thank Brian Skyrms, Kyle Stanford, Jeffrey Barrett, Bruce Glymour, and the participants in the Social Dynamics Seminar at University of California–Irvine for their helpful comments. Generous financial support was provided by the School of Social Science and Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at UCI. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Baker Hall 135, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity.

Kevin Scharp proposes an original theory of the nature and logic of truth on which truth is an inconsistent concept that should be replaced for certain theoretical purposes. He argues that truth is best understood as an inconsistent concept, and proposes a detailed theory of inconsistent concepts that can be applied to the case of truth. Truth also happens to be a useful concept, but its inconsistency inhibits its utility; as such, it should be replaced with consistent concepts that (...) can do truth's job without giving rise to paradoxes. To this end, Scharp offers a pair of replacements, which he dubs ascending truth and descending truth, along with an axiomatic theory of them and a new kind of possible-worlds semantics for this theory. He goes to develop Davidson's idea that truth is best understood as the core of a measurement system for rational phenomena, and offers a semantic theory that treats truth predicates as assessment-sensitive and solves the problems posed by the liar and other paradoxes. (shrink)

The standard view in philosophy treats pains as phenomenally conscious mental states. This view has a number of corollaries, including that it is generally taken to rule out the existence of unfelt pains. The primary argument in support of the standard view is that it supposedly corresponds with the commonsense conception of pain. In this paper, we challenge this doctrine about the commonsense conception of pain, and with it the support offered for the standard view, by presenting the results of (...) a series of new empirical studies that indicate that lay people not only tend to believe that unfelt pains are possible, but actually, quite common. (shrink)

Introduction -- Theory before theory, 1915-1960 -- French theory, 1949-1968 -- Screen theory, 1969-1996 -- Post-theory, 1996-2015 -- Summary.