Philosophical debates about the metaphysics of time typically revolve around two contrasting views of time. On the A-theory, time is something that itself undergoes change, as captured by the idea of the passage of time; on the B-theory, all there is to time is events standing in before/after or simultaneity relations to each other, and these temporal relations are unchanging. Philosophers typically regard the A-theory as being supported by our experience of time, and they take it that the B-theory clashes (...) with how we experience time and therefore faces the burden of having to explain away that clash. In this paper, we investigate empirically whether these intuitions about the experience of time are shared by the general public. We asked directly for people’s subjective reports of their experience of time—in particular, whether they believe themselves to have a phenomenology as of time’s passing—and we probed their understanding of what time’s passage in fact is. We find that a majority of participants do share the aforementioned intuitions, but interestingly a minority do not. (shrink)

Recent studies have suggested that while both adults and children hold past-future hedonic preferences – preferring painful experiences to be in the past and pleasurable experiences to lie in the future – these preferences are abandoned when the quantity of pain or pleasure under consideration is greater in the past than in the future. We examined whether such preferences might be affected by the utility people assign to experiential memories, since the recollection of events can itself be pleasurable or aversive, (...) and we examined the developmental trajectory of the value that people assign to experiential memories of past painful experiences. Using a task in which we manipulated hypothetical memory loss in a series of brief vignettes, we found that for some adults, but not for children, the disutility attached to the recollection of painful past events outweighed the disutility of living through future painful events. Between middle childhood and adulthood, experiential memory appears to assume a more important role in determining the value that people assign to past experiences and in mitigating bias toward the future. (shrink)

It seems self-evident that people prefer painful experiences to be in the past and pleasurable experiences to lie in the future. Indeed, it has been claimed that, for hedonic goods, this preference is absolute (Sullivan, 2018). Yet very little is known about the extent to which people demonstrate explicit preferences regarding the temporal location of hedonic experiences, about the developmental trajectory of such preferences, and about whether such preferences are impervious to differences in the quantity of envisaged past and future (...) pain or pleasure. We find consistent evidence that, all else being equal, adults and children aged 7 and over prefer pleasure to lie in the future and pain in the past and believe that other people will too. They also predict that other people will be happier when pleasure is in the future rather than the past but sadder when pain is the future rather than the past. Younger children have the same temporal preferences as adults for their own painful experiences, but prefer their pleasure to lie in the past, and do not predict that others’ levels of happiness or sadness vary dependent on whether experiences lie in the past or the future. However, from the age of 7, temporal preferences were typically abandoned at the earliest opportunity when the quantity of past pain or pleasure was greater than the quantity located in the future. Past-future preferences for hedonic goods emerge early developmentally but are surprisingly flexible. (shrink)

People hold intuitive theories of the physical world, such as theories of matter, energy, and motion, in the sense that they have a coherent conceptual structure supporting a network of beliefs about the domain. It is not yet clear whether people can also be said to hold a shared intuitive theory of time. Yet, philosophical debates about the metaphysical nature of time often revolve around the idea that people hold one or more “common sense” assumptions about time: that there is (...) an objective “now”; that the past, present, and future are fundamentally different in nature; and that time passes or flows. We empirically explored the question of whether people indeed share some or all of these assumptions by asking adults to what extent they agreed with a set of brief statements about time. Across two analyses, subsets of people's beliefs about time were found consistently to covary in ways that suggested stable underlying conceptual dimensions related to aspects of the “common sense” assumptions described by philosophers. However, distinct subsets of participants showed three mutually incompatible profiles of response, the most frequent of which did not closely match all of philosophers’ claims about common sense time. These exploratory studies provide a useful starting point in attempts to characterize intuitive theories of time. (shrink)

We address Dubourg and Baumard's claim that imaginary worlds are most appealing early in the lifespan when the exploratory drive is highest. Preschool-age children prefer fictions set in the real world, and fantastical information can be difficult for children to represent in real time. We speculate that a drive to explore imaginary worlds may emerge after children acquire substantial real-world skills and knowledge. An account of age effects on fictional preferences should encompass developmental change.

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

This book provides practical and research-based chapters that offer greater clarity about the particular kinds of teacher reflection that matter and avoids talking about teacher reflection generically, which implies that all kinds of reflection are of equal value.

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societallevel analyses. At the individual- level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub- dimensions and two sets of values dimensions. At the societal- level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each (...) society, we report the Cronbach' s? statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency as well as report interrater agreement analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country span sp. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While claiming to be a much-needed corrective to the dual disappointments of structuralism and post-structuralism, one is starting to get the sense that affect may have simply inverted, rather than resolved, the binary of form/feeling. Yet emerging within and against the affective turn is a re-turn to structure as the condition of possibility for affectivity. From this re-turn, which I'll term affective formalism, is culled the transdisciplinary exemplars reviewed here: Ruth Leys's The Ascent of Affect, Gary Genosko's Critical (...) Semiotics, Eugenie Brinkema's The Forms of the Affects, with a nod to Eve Sedgwick's Touching Feeling. Far from caging affect, these new books suggest a return to form, once again, with feeling. (shrink)

This article considers two arguments that purport to show that inductive reasoning is unjustified: the argument adduced by Sextus Empiricus and the (better known and more formidable) argument given by Hume in the Treatise. While Sextus’ argument can quite easily be rebutted, a close examination of the premises of Hume’s argument shows that they are seemingly cogent. Because the sceptical claim is very unintuitive, the sceptical argument constitutes a paradox. And since attributions of justification are theoretical, and the claim that (...) they are never (or seldom) true isn’t preposterous, the correct response to the paradox may well be to admit that the sceptic has exposed our error in making them. (shrink)

Ruth Garrett Millikan presents a strikingly original account of how we get to grips with the world in thought. Her question is Kant's 'How is knowledge possible?', answered from a contemporary naturalist standpoint. We begin with an understanding of what the world is like prior to cognition, then develop a theory of cognition within that world.

Are counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents automatically true? That is, is Conjunction Conditionalization: if (X & Y), then (X > Y) valid? Stalnaker and Lewis think so, but many others disagree. We note here that the extant arguments for Conjunction Conditionalization are unpersuasive, before presenting a family of more compelling arguments. These arguments rely on some standard theorems of the logic of counterfactuals as well as a plausible and popular semantic claim about certain semifactuals. Denying Conjunction Conditionalization, then, requires (...) rejecting other aspects of the standard logic of counterfactuals, or else our intuitive picture of semifactuals. (shrink)

Totalitarianism is perhaps unanimously regarded as one of the greatest political evils of the last century and has been the grounds for much of Anglo-American political theory since. Confucianism, meanwhile, has been gaining credibility in the past decades among sympathizers of democratic theory in spite of criticisms of it being anti-democratic or authoritarian. I consider how certain key concepts in the classical Confucian texts of the Mencius and the Xunzi might or might not be appropriated for ‘legitimising’ totalitarian regimes. Under (...) an Arendtian approach to understanding totalitarianism, it is precisely an unproblematised relation to a normative History and Nature that underlies the potential compatibility or incompatibility. I argue against a longstanding prejudice that if any form of Confucianism would be totalitarian, it would have to be Xunzian. Against this, I hope to show that if any form of Confucianism would be totalitarian, it might well be a naturalistic Mencian Confucianism instead of a constructivist Xunzian one. (shrink)

Ugar and Malele write that generic machine learning (ML) technologies for mental health diagnosis would be challenging to implement in sub-Saharan Africa due to cultural specificities in how those conditions are diagnosed. For example, they say that in South Africa, the appearance of ‘schizophrenia’ might be understood as a type of spiritual possession, rather than a mental disorder caused by a brain dysfunction. Hence, a generic ML system is likely to ‘misdiagnose’ persons whose symptomatology matches that of schizophrenia in the (...) South African context. The authors thus claim that ‘a generic or universal design cannot be effective given the heterogeneity of value judgements in defining what mental health disorders are in different contexts’.1 Should we take this to mean that ML systems ‘should not be designed with a generalised perception of mental disorders,’1 as the authors suggest? On the contrary, my view is that generic ML can be useful, with the caveat that issues of cultural sensitivity may engender translational challenges in various national and cultural contexts. Yet, if it can be demonstrated that a generic ML system can reliably and accurately pick up on shared symptomatologies across cultures despite what any individual or community might believe about their actual causes, this aspect is surely the function and value of diagnostic ML which we should take to matter. Cultural gaps in aetiological understandings of mental health conditions make it all the more important to advance generic ML as a calibrating diagnostic tool. In this commentary, therefore, I will endeavour to make a case for generic ML in mental healthcare. ### Aetiological (mis)understanding across cultures The fundamental complexity to which Ugar and Malele direct our attention is the fact that mental health conditions are attributed to variable causal explanations, rather than a …. (shrink)

False consciousness requires a general explanation for why, and how, oppressed individuals believe propositions against, as opposed to aligned with, their own well-being in virtue of their oppressed status. This involves four explanatory desiderata: belief acquisition, content prevalence, limitation, and systematicity. A social constructionist approach satisfies these by understanding the concept of false consciousness as regulating social research rather than as determining the exact mechanisms for all instances: the concept attunes us to a complex of mechanisms conducing oppressed individuals to (...) mistake social understandings of themselves as natural self-understandings—the limits lie where these overlap (sometimes), or are entirely absent. (shrink)

Shun Kwong-loi argues that the distinction between first- and third-person points of view does not play as explanatory a role in our moral psychology as has been supposed by contemporary philosophical discussions. He draws insightfully from the Confucian tradition to better elucidate our everyday experiences of moral emotions, arguing that it offers an alternative and more faithful perspective on our experiences of anger and compassion. However, unlike the distinction between first- and third-person points of view, Shun’s descriptions of anger and (...) compassion leave unarticulated what would be necessary to differentiate these responses from non-moral responses. Here, I make a friendly suggestion on how this explanatory gap might be filled, providing complementary grounding for Shun’s observations by way of K. C. Bhattacharyya’s phenomenological analysis of feeling. It fills the gap by means of a gradation in the possible depth of emotional responses found in the a priori structure of a feeling experience for any subject. The payoff of such a comparison between Shun’s explication of Confucian moral psychology and Bhattacharyya’s explication of rasa theory is not only a possible phenomenological grounding for the former but also a potential way to articulate a missing ethics in Bhattacharyya’s thought. (shrink)

The debate over Hypothetical Syllogism is locked in stalemate. Although putative natural language counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism abound, many philosophers defend Hypothetical Syllogism, arguing that the alleged counterexamples involve an illicit shift in context. The proper lesson to draw from the putative counterexamples, they argue, is that natural language conditionals are context-sensitive conditionals which obey Hypothetical Syllogism. In order to make progress on the issue, I consider and improve upon Morreau’s proof of the invalidity of Hypothetical Syllogism. The improved proof (...) relies upon the semantic claim that conditionals with antecedents irrelevant to the obtaining of an already true consequent are themselves true. Moreover, this semantic insight allows us to provide compelling counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism that are resistant to the usual contextualist response. (shrink)

This interview deals with the major themes in the work of Ruth Millikan. Her most fundamental idea is that the intentionality of inner and outer representations can be understood in analogy to biological functions. Another innovative feature is the view that thought and language stand parallel to each other. Thirdly, the basic ideas concerning the ontology and the epistemology of concepts are explained. Millikan aims at clarifying her position by contrasting it with Dretske, Fodor, Sellars, and Brandom. Finally, the (...) interview addresses topics that pose problems for her account as well as questions she does not treat in her work. (shrink)

Dorothy Edgington’s work has been at the centre of a range of ongoing debates in philosophical logic, philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics, and epistemology. This work has focused, although by no means exclusively, on the overlapping areas of conditionals, probability, and paradox. In what follows, I briefly sketch some themes from these three areas relevant to Dorothy’s work, highlighting how some of Dorothy’s work and some of the contributions of this volume fit in to these debates.

A list of groceries, Professor Anscombe once suggested, might be used as a shopping list, telling what to buy, or it might be used as an inventory list, telling what has been bought (Anscombe 1957). If used as a shopping list, the world is supposed to conform to the representation: if the list does not match what is in the grocery bag, it is what is in the bag that is at fault. But if used as an inventory list, the (...) representation is supposed to conform to the world: if the list does not match what is in the bag, it is the list that is at fault. The first kind of representation, where the world is supposed to conform to the list, can be called "directive"; it represents or directs what is to be done. The second, where the list is supposed to conform to the world, can be called "descriptive"; it represents or describes what is the case. I wish to propose that there exist representations that face both these ways at once. With apologies to Dr. Doolittle, I call them pushmi-pullyu representations or PPRs. (shrink)

This article explores the characteristics of narratives told by women and men about the birth of children. The comparison focuses on the way speakers use evaluation devices to structure their experiences and to negotiate a relationship with their audience. Findings indicate that, while there are subtle contrasts between the narratives that suggest that male speakers emphasize informative meaning and women provoke an affectual response related to the disclosure of internalized expectations, there are significant macro-level similarities with both women and men (...) making use of anecodotal structures. It is argued that understanding these similarities and dissimilarities in terms of gender difference alone is overly simplistic and that gender should be understood as interacting in complex ways with a range of further potential variables connected with context. (shrink)

The future is kid stuff -- Sinthom-osexuality -- Compassion's compulsion -- No future.

Many philosophers accept both of the following claims: (1) consciousness matters morally, and (2) species membership doesn’t matter morally. In other words, many reject speciesism but accept what we might call 'sentientism'. But do the reasons against speciesism yield analogous reasons against sentientism, just as the reasons against racism and sexism are thought to yield analogous reasons against speciesism? This paper argues that speciesism is disanalogous to sentientism (as well as racism and sexism). I make a case for the following (...) asymmetry: (a) some non-humans clearly have interests, but (b) no non-conscious entities clearly have interests. This asymmetry, I argue, renders sentientism resistant to the standard argument against speciesism. (shrink)

Although public law scholars have long addressed the problems of accountability generated by private decision-making and "privatization," they have largely ignored this phenomenon in the immigration context. Our ignorance is increasingly indefensible. Millions of employers - private parties - are required by law to screen their workers for unauthorized immigrants, and growing evidence suggests that they use their screening power to ignore workplace protections and to otherwise exploit these workers. This article is the first attempt to apply the insights generated (...) by the privatization literature to immigration law. It argues that our nation's employers have emerged as private immigration screeners who, like airport inspectors screening for ineligible entrants and law enforcement officers screening for criminal noncitizens, assist the Department of Homeland Security in identifying unauthorized workers for removal. More than just agents of exploitation, reframing employers as private screeners demonstrates that they are also agents of the state. Borrowing analytical concepts developing in the privatization literature, I argue that the high risk of abuse and the lack of readily available mechanisms for reducing that risk raise troubling implications over the kind of power that employers wield as private immigration screeners in the workplace. Reframing our nation's employers as private screeners gives theoretical coherence to the discretionary decision-making authority they actually wield, and explains why they have used that authority to exploit workers - as private parties carrying out public duties, they are incentivized to serve their own interests instead of verifying the immigration status of their workers in good faith. Examining the problem of private immigration screening also forces us to reconsider two aspects about immigration screening generally. First, although immigration law tends to reward unauthorized immigrants who lay low and tends to punish those who draw attention to themselves, I suggest that we ought to rethink this logic at least in the context of the workplace. Because workplace violations committed by employers are typically enforced by private parties, punishing unauthorized immigrants who attempt to assert these rights and thus draw attention to themselves, only encourages workplace violations by employers and fosters a culture of lawlessness. Second, thinking about how decision-making authority within immigration law should be allocated between the public and the private contributes to the current conversation over how similar decision-making authority should be allocated between federal entities and local entities. Although questions of accountability have lingered in the backdrop of the immigration federalism debate, I suggest that scholars would be well served to foreground these questions and answer them head-on. (shrink)

Two compelling principles, the Reasonable Range Principle and the Preservation of Irrelevant Evidence Principle, are necessary conditions that any response to peer disagreements ought to abide by. The Reasonable Range Principle maintains that a resolution to a peer disagreement should not fall outside the range of views expressed by the peers in their dispute, whereas the Preservation of Irrelevant Evidence Principle maintains that a resolution strategy should be able to preserve unanimous judgments of evidential irrelevance among the peers. No standard (...) Bayesian resolution strategy satisfies the PIE Principle, however, and we give a loss aversion argument in support of PIE and against Bayes. The theory of imprecise probability allows one to satisfy both principles, and we introduce the notion of a set-based credal judgment to frame and address a range of subtle issues that arise in peer disagreements. (shrink)

In this article, we illuminate the affective phenomenon of loneliness by exploring the question of how it relates to love and other forms of friendship. We reflect in particular on the question of how different forms of loneliness are relevant to human existence. Distinguishing three forms of loneliness, we first introduce two border cases of loneliness: unfelt loneliness in which one’s individuality is denied and one therefore cannot feel lonely; and existential loneliness in which the possibility of intimacy and existential (...) communication are denied and one therefore cannot but feel lonely. We then turn to loneliness that occurs within intimate friendships—even the most intimate ones. In our analysis, we pay attention especially to the role of communication. In order to do so, we repeatedly turn to poetic expressions of loneliness. We argue that loneliness cannot reflect only the absence or partial failure of communication but also the inherent limits of communication. These limits in turn point back to the nature of human existence and love itself. (shrink)

Charles Taylor is one of the most influential and prolific philosophers in the English-speaking world today. The breadth of his writings is unique, ranging from reflections on artificial intelligence to analyses of contemporary multicultural societies. This thought-provoking introduction to Taylor's work outlines his ideas in a coherent and accessible way without reducing their richness and depth. His contribution to many of the enduring debates within Western philosophy is examined and the arguments of his critics assessed. Taylor's reflections on the topics (...) of moral theory, selfhood, political theory and epistemology form the core chapters within the book. Ruth Abbey engages with the secondary literature on Taylor's work and suggests that some criticisms by contemporaries have been based on misinterpretations and suggests ways in which a better understanding of Taylor's work leads to different criticisms of it. The book serves as an ideal companion to Taylor's ideas for students of philosophy and political theory, and will be welcomed by the non-specialist looking for an authoritative guide to Taylor's large and challenging body of work. (shrink)

Concepts are highly theoretical entities. One cannot study them empirically without committing oneself to substantial preliminary assumptions. Among the competing theories of concepts and categorization developed by psychologists in the last thirty years, the implicit theoretical assumption that what falls under a concept is determined by description () has never been seriously challenged. I present a nondescriptionist theory of our most basic concepts, which include (1) stuffs (gold, milk), (2) real kinds (cat, chair), and (3) individuals (Mama, Bill Clinton, the (...) Empire State Building). On the basis of something important that all three have in common, our earliest and most basic concepts of substances are identical in structure. The membership of the category like that of is a natural unit in nature, to which the concept does something like pointing, and continues to point despite large changes in the properties the thinker represents the unit as having. For example, large changes can occur in the way a child identifies cats and the things it is willing to call without affecting the extension of its word The difficulty is to cash in the metaphor of in this context. Having substance concepts need not depend on knowing words, but language interacts with substance concepts, completely transforming the conceptual repertoire. I will discuss how public language plays a crucial role in both the acquisition of substance concepts and their completed structure. (shrink)

A leading scholar in the psychology of thinking and reasoning argues that the counterfactual imagination—the creation of "if only" alternatives to ...

In this thesis, I present an account of the development of early Greek epistemology, according to which Protagoras' measure doctrine, and his argument from conflicting appearances, was the starting point for work on perception and knowledge by Plato in the Theaetetus, Aristotle in Metaphysics IV and Democritus. In Chapter One, I argue against the assumption that Protagoras' Aletheia contained a philosophical theory. It was probably not a treatise, but a virtuoso show-piece, with the aim of "knocking down" views according to (...) which truth is only known by gods, and, with difficulty, by privileged humans--namely, philosophers. For this, it need not have contained more than some well-chosen examples of perceptual and value beliefs, and arguments that one cannot decide which are true. In Chapter Two, I argue that Democritus should be seen as Protagoras' heir. Democritus argued Protagoras' general claim is self-refuting, but thought he was right about perceptual appearances. In Confirmations, he defended the senses, attributing to them knowledge and "power of proof." However, his theory led to an ancestor of the primary/secondary quality distinction, and this threatened to undermine the theory itself because of implications--that one can only know how things appear and not how things are by nature--which were later taken up in Pyrrhonist skepticism. In Chapter Three, I present a reading of the Secret Doctrine in Plato's Theaetetus as a defense and diagnosis of Protagoras' claim, in particular, an explanation of the global relativization which Protagoras' claim seems to recommend. This reading is meant to avoid the well-known difficulties concerning the prevailing interpretation of Protagoras' "Secret Doctrine" as a flux doctrine. I also argue that Plato developed the Secret Doctrine with Democritus in mind. In Chapter Four, I argue that Plato's "self-refutation argument" is aimed at relativism, but not relativism about truth. The latter, which Aristotle dismisses as eristical, is a position Protagoras can take, but Plato's argument works against it as well. In Chapter Five, I examine why Aristotle seems to treat Protagoras in Metaphysics IV as being committed to a denial of the principle of non-contradiction. (shrink)