In the last book of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius develops his solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and free choice. Interpreters standardly hold that this problem and his solution to it presuppose causal indeterminism. In this paper, I argue that Boethius, following a Neoplatonist view found in Proclus, is a causal determinist and compatibilist and maintains that God’s providential knowledge ensures the occurrence of all the events he knows. This alternative interpretation offers a better fit with Boethius’s text (...) and its historical antecedents and provides resources to address the main criticisms of his solution. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an analysis of Plotinus’ argument for the existence of a quasi-psychic entity, the so-called ‘trace of soul’, that functions as an immanent cause of life for an organism’s body. I argue that Plotinus posits this entity primarily in order to account for the body’s possession of certain quasi-psychic states that are instrumental in his account of soul-body interaction. Since these quasi-psychic states imply that an organism’s body has vitality of its own , and Platonic souls (...) are no part or aspect of any body, Plotinus draws the conclusion that the soul must be a cause of the body’s life by imparting a quasi-psychic qualification to it. In so doing, Plotinus introduces elements of hylomorphism into Platonist psychology, and addresses a problem for the animation of the body that Platonic soul-body dualism may plausibly be thought to face. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that Plotinus denies deliberative forethought about the physical cosmos to the demiurge on the basis of certain basic and widely shared Platonic and Aristotelian assumptions about the character of divine thought. We then discuss how Plotinus can nonetheless maintain that the cosmos is «providentially» ordered.

In Ennead 3.6, Plotinus maintains that the soul is unaffectable. This thesis is widely taken to imply that his soul is exempt from change and free from emotional ‘affections’. Yet these claims are difficult to reconcile with evidence that Plotinian souls acquire dispositional states, such as virtues, and are subjects of emotional ‘affections’, such as anger. This paper offers an alternative account that aims to address these difficulties. In denying affections to soul, Plotinus is offering a distinction between the soul’s (...) self-actuated motions (or "activities") and the passive motions (or "affections") of bodies. But this distinction does not imply the soul’s changelessness, since Plotinus regards psychic motions that culminate in the soul’s acquisition of new dispositional states as changes. As for emotional ‘affections’, these (as activities) are merely homonymous with the affections denied to soul, and so do not violate the ban on the soul’s affectability. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the foundations of Plotinus’ innovative theory that prime matter is unaffectable. I begin by showing that Plotinus’ main arguments for this thesis (in Ennead 3.6) all rely upon the controversial assumption that the properties prime matter underlies are not properties of prime matter itself. It is then argued that prime matter’s privation of sensible qualities has its conceptual basis in an idiosyncratic understanding of form-matter composition generally, and its primary doctrinal basis in Aristotle’s critical reports (...) on the Platonists’ substratum in Physics 1.9. While Plotinus finds Platonic authority for unaffectible matter in the Receptacle passage of the Timaeus, it is Aristotle’s testimony that provides the crucial impetus for reading that text in this way. On this basis, Plotinus develops a Platonist conception of form’s inherence in matter with distinctively non-Aristotelian features. (shrink)

In developing his theory of aether in De Caelo 1, Aristotle argues, in DC 1.4, that one circular motion cannot be contrary to another. In this paper, I discuss how Aristotle can maintain this position and accept the existence of celestial spheres that rotate in contrary directions, as he does in his revision of the Eudoxan theory in Metaphysics 12.8.

Plotinus maintains that there is a single first principle, the One (or the Good), from which all other things derive. He is usually thought to hold this view on the grounds that any other thing’s existence depends on its participation in a paradigm of unity. This paper argues that Plotinus has a further, independent argument for adopting a single first principle, according to which principle pluralism is committed (unacceptably) to attributing good cosmic states of affairs to chance. This argument exhibits (...) similarities to ancient design arguments, but is used to draw the more radical conclusion that there is only one non-derivative existent. (shrink)

The young Spinoza and the mature Leibniz both characterize the soul as a self-moving spiritual automaton. Though it is unclear if Leibniz’s use of the term was suggested to him from his reading of Spinoza, Leibniz was aware of its presence in Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Considering Leibniz’s staunch opposition to Spinozism, the question arises as to why he was willing to adopt this term. I propose an answer to this question by comparing the spiritual automaton (...) in both philosophers. For Spinoza, the soul acts as a spiritual automaton when it overcomes imaginative ideas and produces true ideas. For Leibniz, the soul acts as a spiritual automaton when it spontaneously produces its perceptions according to the universal harmony preestablished by God. Thus, for Leibniz contra Spinoza, the spiritual automaton is a means to render intelligible a providential order in which everything happens for the best. (shrink)

Analysis of sites of newly integrated DNA in cellular genomes is important to several fields, but methods for analyzing and visualizing these datasets are still under development. Here, we describe tools for data analysis and visualization that take as input integration site data from our INSPIIRED pipeline. Paired-end sequencing allows inference of the numbers of transduced cells as well as the distributions of integration sites in target genomes. We present interactive heatmaps that allow comparison of distributions of integration sites to (...) genomic features and that support numerous user-defined statistical tests. To summarize integration site data from human gene therapy samples, we developed a reproducible report format that catalogs sample population structure, longitudinal dynamics, and integration frequency near cancer-associated genes. We also introduce a novel summary statistic, the UC50, which provides a single number summarizing possible clonal expansion. Using these tools, we characterize ongoing longitudinal characterization of a patient from the first trial to treat severe combined immunodeficiency-X1, showing successful reconstitution for 15 years accompanied by persistence of a cell clone with an integration site near the cancer-associated gene CCND2. Software is available at https://github.com/BushmanLab/INSPIIRED. (shrink)

For the mature Leibniz, a living being is a created substance composed of an infinitely complex organic body and a simple, immaterial soul. Soul and body do not interact directly, but rather their states correspond according to a harmony preestablished by God. I show that Leibniz’s theory faces challenges with respect to the question of whether substances need to possess knowledge of how they bring about their effects, and I argue that, to address these challenges, Leibniz turns to a concept (...) of “divine preformation” that he attributes to both soul and body. Insofar as divine preformation provides Leibniz with an explanation for how soul and body can both act without possessing explicit knowledge of what they are doing, it serves as a key tool for justifying the theory of preestablished harmony. (shrink)

Leibniz standardly associates “mechanism” with extended material bodies and their aggregates. In this paper, I identify and analyze a further distinct sense of “mechanism” in Leibniz that extends, by analogy, beyond the domain of material bodies and applies to the operations of immaterial substances such as the monads that serve, for Leibniz, as the metaphysical foundations of physical reality. I argue that in this sense, Leibniz understands “mechanism” as an intelligible process that is capable of providing a sufficient reason for (...) a series of changes. I then apply these findings to enrich our understanding of Leibniz’s well-known mill argument in Monadology ¶17: although material machines and mechanisms cannot produce perceptions, the perceptual activity of immaterial monads is to be understood as “mechanical” according to this analogical sense. (shrink)

This paper seeks to highlight the importance of spatial cognition in Bergson’s Données immédiates by engaging with Robert Watt’s reconstruction of Bergson’s argument that every idea of number involves the idea of space. We focus on the second stage of Watt’s reconstruction, where Bergson argues that only space can provide the distinction required for our counting of otherwise identical items. Watt bases his reconstruction on a premise regarding the possibility that identical objects, in the absence of spatial distinction, might remain (...) identical across different “temporal locations”. Our paper raises the prospect that Bergson is committed to a stronger thesis, namely one implying that identical objects would necessarily remain indistinguishable without the intervention of space. The paper thus concludes by emphasizing the indispensability of space for knowledge according to Bergson. (shrink)

According to a straightforward reading of Enn. 6.2.21, all principles (logoi) in nature have their origin in corresponding features of a divine Intellect. But interpreters have often advocated more restricted readings of Intellect’s contents. Restricted readings are based in part on other textual evidence, and in part on the grounds that a more expansive reading would seem to require Intellect to think objects of trivial value (‘the value problem’) or whose purposes depend upon facts about sensible reality to which it (...) has no access (‘the teleology problem’). This paper argues that restricted readings are not well founded, and that Plotinus is committed to a more expansive conception of Intellect’s contents by his understanding of Plato’s paradeigmatism. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Leibniz’s use of analogies in both natural philosophical and metaphysical contexts. Through an examination of Leibniz’s notes on scientific methodology, I show that Leibniz explicitly recognizes the utility of analogies as heuristic tools that aid us in conceiving unfamiliar theoretical domains. I further argue that Leibniz uses the notion of a self-moving machine or automaton to help capture the activities of the immaterial soul. My account helps resist the conventional image of Leibniz as an arch-rationalist unconcerned with (...) methods of empirical discovery and contributes to ongoing discussions on the nature of immaterial substance and mind in Leibniz. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that Plotinus denies deliberative forethought about the physical cosmos to the demiurge on the basis of certain basic and widely shared Platonic and Aristotelian assumptions about the character of divine thought. We then discuss how Plotinus can nonetheless maintain that the cosmos is «providentially» ordered. -/- [Note: This paper is a French translation (prepared by Mathilde Brémond) of a paper that appears in A. Marmodoro and B. Prince (eds.), Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, (...) 2015).]. (shrink)

Plotinus, following certain Platonic cues, maintains that ‘we’ and ‘the true human being’ correspond to the rational part of the embodied human soul. This view is counterintuitive because it is natural to see ourselves and our humanity as including parts of the human organism additional to reason. In this paper, I propose that Plotinus’ view that we are our rational part is best understood as expressing a teleological claim. Since our proper end is an activity of the rational part of (...) soul, it is appropriate to identify our nature with that part of the organism alone. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss how Plotinus seeks to reconcile (1) the transcendence of providential thought with its creation of an optimal cosmos, (2) providence's comprehensive oversight with the existence of evils, and (3) fate with human autonomy and moral responsibility.

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 100 Heft: 2 Seiten: 232-235.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ChatGPT:a psychomachiaChristopher Norris (bio)The human mind is not, like ChatGPT and its ilk, a lumbering statistical engine for pattern matching, gorging on hundreds of terabytes of data and extrapolating the most likely conversational response or most probable answer to a scientific question. On the contrary, the human mind is a surprisingly efficient and even elegant system that operates with small amounts of information; it seeks not to infer brute (...) correlations among data points but to create explanations.—Satya P. MohantyIt remains to be seen whether AI poems will eventually go beyond intended or unintended parody and trigger emotional responses in human readers that run deeper than wry amusement.... Current AI poets are in essence mining the metaphors that humans have already formed and planted in texts–in the view of Robert Frost, 'The richest accumulation of the ages is the noble metaphors we have rolled up." Could AI create genuinely novel metaphors, rather than only variations of those we humans have come up with already?—Keith HolyoakeNoteThis poem started out as a debate in clearly-marked dialogue form (alternating roman and italic print) between an advocate of ChatGPT who thinks that 'strong' AI is, or will soon be, capable of writing 'authentic' poetry, and a poet who resists that claim on various grounds, personal and philosophical. The opening, strict-form sonnet proposes that the issue be tested by running it (the poem itself) past the software and seeing what results as the sonnet-sequence unfolds from that speculative source-point. As it goes along, the sonnet-forms multiply, the contending viewpoints seem to merge or even change sides, the roman-italic alternation breaks down, and the project (theirs or mine?) loses its intended clarity of theme and treatment. I include the poem here as a kind of performative commentary on the way that thematic concerns or intentions may get lost once the AI software really starts doing its wondrous, intriguing, or humanly ominous thing.One way to test this thing, ChatGPT:Let's run a really strict-form poem on it,Like a Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnet,Then input 'do thou likewise,' just to seeWhat comes out. Does the poem rhyme and scan [End Page 77] Correctly yet, as claimed, hit off the styleConvincingly, and thereby close the fileOn what's unique about the species 'man'?If so, you'll find it difficult to tellWhat's what with this example of the kind,Along with other cases you may findWorth putting to the online test as well.And don't get spooked if, like myself, you're proneTo think you're someone (something?) else's clone.You crease me up, you poets, with your fearsThat some new bit of software (albeit oneOf quite superior powers) might have outdoneYou in those self-apportioned special spheresOf excellence where you and some few peers,Each special, each unique, affect to shunAll thought that your fine poems may just runOn lines devised by AI gadgeteers.A nice idea, last refuge of the weakIn mind but good in heart, the valiant fewTo whose deluded faith it falls to holdOut still for what you fantasists may seekYet scarcely hope to find: new ways to doThe genius thing, transmute base stuff to gold!Read slowly, sensitively; don't permitYourself, dear reader, nobbled as no doubtYou've been by those who have the techno-clout,To take that stuff on board and let a bitOf pseudo-Keats, spoof Yeats, identikit'Stuffed-owl'-grade Wordsworth, or what else they toutAs the real deal demand you read withoutDiscerning what no moving finger's writ.Just hearken, let your quickened sense respondTo all that yet eludes the furthest reachOf AI artefacts. They had you connedAt first, though soon you missed the living speechUn-missed by those who cannot hear beyondWhat any tin-eared programmer could teach.Let's bring the reader in on this, I say.We've need of them, we disputants with much [End Page 78] At stake in different ways, they there to payOur... (shrink)

Lots of folks nowadays think there is an intimate connection between what we assert and what we know. Talk of this connection is largely oriented around Timothy Williamson’s claim that you shouldn’t assert p unless you know p. Hereafter, I will treat this claim as follows: -/- (KNA) Don’t assert that p unless so asserting expresses your knowledge that p. -/- (KNA) is for “Knowledge Norm of Assertion”. -/- A primary aim here is to defend the KNA. However, getting in (...) the best position to do so requires attention to an older strain in the discussion of how knowledge and assertion are interrelated. This older strain is oriented less around explicit norms of assertion, and more around what assertion does. Said G.E. Moore, “by asserting p positively you imply, though you don’t assert, that you know that p” (1962: 277). Peter Unger put it this way: “If someone asserts, states, or declares that something is so, then it follows that he represents himself as knowing that it is so” (1975: 253). I will abbreviate this claim as -/- (ARK) Asserting that p represents the speaker as knowing that p. -/- (ARK) for “Assertion Represents Knowledge”. -/- The central contention of this paper is this: if ARK is true, we should accept the KNA too. S shouldn’t assert that p unless p expresses S’s knowledge because, given ARK, when S asserts that p, S gives her interlocutors entitlement to infer that S knows that p. An assertion that p that does not express knowledge that p is thus defective, however blameless or praiseworthy it may be for other reasons. (As we’ll see, you can accomplish noble, worthy things through infelicitous assertions.) The argument will proceed as follows. §1 musters some of the best evidence for thinking that ARK is true. Some of this evidence is re-appropriated from arguments for the KNA; yet more is extracted from proposed counterexamples to the KNA that (plausibly) apply ARK. §2 builds on Ishani Maitra’s (2011) treatment of constitutive rules to make the case for treating ARK, rather than the KNA, as the constitutive rule of assertion. §3 builds on the results of the previous sections to show the advantages of a KNA grounded in ARK. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Buddha is a philosophical introduction to the teaching of the Buddha. It carefully guides readers through the basic ideas and practices of the Buddha, including kamma , rebirth, the not-self doctrine, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, ethics, meditation, non-attachment, and Nibbâna . The book includes an account of the life of the Buddha as well as comparisons of his teaching with practical and theoretical aspects of some Western philosophical outlooks, both ancient and modern. Most (...) distinctively, Philosophy of the Buddha explores how Buddhist enlightenment could enable us to overcome suffering in our lives and reach our full potential for compassion and tranquillity. This is one of the first books to introduce the philosophy of the Buddha to students of Western philosophy. Christopher W. Gowans' style is exceptionally clear and appropriate for anyone looking for a comprehensive introduction to this growing area of interest. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Nietzsche's thinking on the notions of nobility and the affirmation of life and I subject his reflections on these to criticism. I argue that we can find at least two understandings of these notions in Nietzsche's work which I call a 'worldly' and an 'inward' conception and I explain what I mean by each of these. Drawing on Homer and Dostoyevsky, the work of both of whom was crucial for Nietzsche in developing and exploring his (...) notion of worldly nobility and affirmation, I then go on to argue that Nietzsche provides us with no concrete examples of worldly nobles and that, given his historicism, he cannot. Thus Nietzsche's thinking here is broken-backed. I turn, therefore, to explore the inward notions of nobility and affirmation. Discussing Montaigne and Napoleon in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy, I argue that we can make good sense in Nietzschean terms of someone's affirming his own life in an inward sense. This, however, opens up the difference between someone's affirming his own life and his affirming life überhaupt, and I argue that Nietzsche needs to be able to make sense not just of the former but also of the latter. Referring once again to Dostoyevsky, I suggest that Nietzsche can only do so by accepting the idea that all human beings possess dignity qua human beings. This thought is, however, one that he rejects. Thus Nietzsche's reflections in this area cannot be rendered finally plausible since they depend upon something which can find no room in his philosophy. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question, how an abstract practice like ‘violence’ can be measured. On a methodological level, there are two possibilities: On the one hand, a quantitative approach that tries to determine homicide rates allegedly allowing comparisons over regions and time. On the other hand, there is a qualitative approach that analyses key concepts like ‘cruelty’ in order to define the limits of acceptable violence. However, both approaches have clear shortcomings. This article proposes another perspective: Using the example (...) of France in the later Middle Ages, it scrutinises contemporary ideas of violence as they were expressed in chronicles and treatises. By focussing on decidedly negative descriptions of violent acts, we can pinpoint several characteristics that show which cultural aspects were of special importance for the contemporaries, e. g. the social standing of the people involved, the context of the act itself as well as the physical integrity of the nobles’ bodies. (shrink)

Middle age, for many, marks a key period for a radical reappraisal of one's life and way of living. The sense of time running out, both from the perspective that one's life has ground to a halt, and from the point of view of the greater closeness of death, and the sense of loneliness engendered by the compromised and wasteful nature of life, become ever clearer in mid-life, and can lead to a period of dramatic self doubt.In this book, the (...) philosopher Christopher Hamilton explores the moods, emotions and experiences of middle age in the contemporary world, seeking to describe and analyze that period of life philosophically. Hamilton draws on his own personal experiences of turning 40 as well as a wide range of sources - from the philosophical writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger to the literature of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Conrad and the films of Woody Allen - to offer us a philosophy of middle age.Some of the many fascinating themes explored include the strong sense of nostalgia experienced in mid-life, of loss for one's youth, and of regret, the sense that life has become boring, the recognition that one can never fully escape feelings of guilt, and - central to the experience of middle age - the question of what is the point of going on at all. In the light of the 'melancholy wisdom' of mid-life Hamilton suggests that pleasure becomes much more important than at previous stages of life and he shows that the enjoyment of pleasure can be something noble.Insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking, "Middle Age" is fascinating reading and for anyone heading for a 'mid-life crisis' it is much cheaper than buying a sports car. (shrink)

Middle age, for many, marks a key period for a radical reappraisal of one's life and way of living. The sense of time running out, both from the perspective that one's life has ground to a halt, and from the point of view of the greater closeness of death, and the sense of loneliness engendered by the compromised and wasteful nature of life, become ever clearer in mid-life, and can lead to a period of dramatic self doubt.In this book, the (...) philosopher Christopher Hamilton explores the moods, emotions and experiences of middle age in the contemporary world, seeking to describe and analyze that period of life philosophically. Hamilton draws on his own personal experiences of turning 40 as well as a wide range of sources - from the philosophical writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger to the literature of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Conrad and the films of Woody Allen - to offer us a philosophy of middle age.Some of the many fascinating themes explored include the strong sense of nostalgia experienced in mid-life, of loss for one's youth, and of regret, the sense that life has become boring, the recognition that one can never fully escape feelings of guilt, and - central to the experience of middle age - the question of what is the point of going on at all. In the light of the 'melancholy wisdom' of mid-life Hamilton suggests that pleasure becomes much more important than at previous stages of life and he shows that the enjoyment of pleasure can be something noble.Insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking, "Middle Age" is fascinating reading and for anyone heading for a 'mid-life crisis' it is much cheaper than buying a sports car. (shrink)

What accounts for our pleasure in tragic art? In a widely-cited essay, Susan Feagin argues that this pleasure has moral roots; it arises when we discover ourselves to be the sort of people who respond sympathetically to another’s suffering. Although critical of Feagin’s particular solution to the tragedy paradox, I too believe that our pleasure in tragedy often has moral roots. I trace those roots differently, however, by placing the concept of virtue front and center. I argue that a (...) class='Hi'>noble pleasure arises when we perceive virtue in tragic characters and when we practice it ourselves as audience members. My account draws on insights from the history of philosophy, most notably Aquinas’s conception of the virtues of charity and mercy in the Summa. (shrink)

Ce livre se consacre à la création d’une nouvelle figure rhétorique dans les œuvres des auteurs « politiques » sous Charles VI et Charles VII : celle de « la France », imaginée allégoriquement comme une femme noble. D. Delogu explore le développement de cette figure d’Eustache Deschamps et Christine de Pisan à Alain Chartier et Jean Juvénal des Ursins. Elle présente des lectures très fines d’un corpus de textes souvent négligés. Dès le début, elle démonte l’avis fréquemment répété (...) selon leque... (shrink)

La catégorie du banquet public existait dans la société romaine qui opposait convivium privatum et convivium publicum. Contrairement à l’idée reçue, le terme latin epulum ne désignait pas toujours, et pas seulement, le banquet public, car les mots convivium et cena pouvaient aussi s’y appliquer. À l’origine, les banquets publics – banquets rituels ou banquets d’investiture des prêtres et magistrats (cena aditialis) – ne concernaient que les prêtres et les magistrats, parfois les sénateurs (Epulum Iovis). Ces participants disposaient du epulandi (...) publice ius. En 217, le banquet des Saturnales fut ouvert au populus, mais ce cas resta isolé dans le cadre rituel. En revanche, à partir du début du IIe siècle, les nobles prirent l’habitude d’offrir des banquets au peuple lors de leurs funérailles familiales, puis au Ier siècle, les imperatores le firent d’abord lors de la Dîme d’Hercule puis lors de leurs triomphes. Dans ces circonstances, le convivium publicum devenait alors l’epulum populi romani et l’epulandi publice ius concernait les membres du populus, sans doute répertoriés sur une liste.Une telle évolution montre que la présence du populus n’était pas, sous la République, consubstantielle au banquet public. Elle montre aussi que le caractère public d’un banquet n’était pas déterminé par le statut du donateur ou l’origine des fonds mais par la qualité de représentants de la cité des bénéficiaires (magistrats, sénateurs ou citoyens), ainsi que par sa localisation dans un lieu public. (shrink)

Dans l’Antiquité romaine, la musique participe à sa façon à la construction du genre en introduisant une division sexuée des notes et des instruments de musique dans la théorie musicale et un partage des sexes lors de la pratique musicale. La question du costume du musicien et du travestissement offre aussi une autre occasion d’explorer le thème du genre. Êtres ambivalents par excellence, le musicien et le danseur se situent parfois en marge du monde masculin à cause de leur allure, (...) de leur habit et de la nature même de leur métier. L’histoire emblématique d’Achille caché dans le gynécée à Skyros ou celle, réelle, du noble Clodius travesti en femme utilisant tous deux les apparences de la musicienne en sont les manifestations les plus abouties qui servent d’exempla pour les Anciens dans la définition des frontières entre féminité et virilité. (shrink)

As the Nietzsche industry continues to thrive, offering Zarathustra zealots everything from coffee table photography books to quasi-fictional accounts of Nietzsche’s mad dance into insanity and posterity, Daniel Conway offers a sober account of Nietzsche’s late writings, choosing to address quite seriously the shrill excesses that mark Nietzsche’s work from 1885–8. Conway undertakes to present Nietzsche’s own decadence and inheriting readership as evidence of the failure of his later project. Nietzsche embarks on voyages toward terrible seas, seeking to unsterilize wisdom (...) and set his revaluation of values in motion by announcing his presence as “dynamite”; Conway exposes Nietzsche’s later works as just that, a tremendous power with erratic and often misguided aim. Whereas Kaufmann, Schacht, and others defend Nietzsche’s thought as apolitical, and gloss over or ignore altogether the vitriol and self-aggrandizement of Nietzsche’s last five works, Conway treats Nietzsche’s critique of modernity in light of Nietzsche’s self-referential motif. Unfortunately, Nietzsche crumbles under the burden of such scrutiny, as he emerges as the decaying embodiment of those upon whom he sets. Conway portrays Nietzsche as a cunning strategist who employs various techniques to obfuscate his own enervation. Nietzsche here is cast as the self-avowed decadent whose descent is marked by his solicitation of discipleship, and who knows full well that those worthy heirs will turn on him in an act of perfidy. The shameless shepherding of flatterers, reprobates, and misfits signals his decadence; Nietzsche recruits scions from the fringes of society instead of fostering his militia from within the latently noble ranks. Resuscitating the modern community is rejected as a futile project for Nietzsche; he casts himself as the neo-Christ figure whose immediate audience, owing to their own decadence, has a flash point too high for Nietzsche to ignite. The modern pilot light has been snuffed out, Nietzsche concedes, and a new one must be lit. (shrink)

Critognatus’ speech has long been recognized as heavily by Caesar's hand, although few have questioned whether any speech was delivered by the Arvernian noble at all; and it has long puzzled readers with its contradictory manner and fierce criticism of Rome. But the etymologizing wordplay across several languages demonstrated below (along with other distinctly comical elements) renders it more than likely that both the speech and the speaker are products of the author's imagination. In its Nabokovian mode, it offers (...) a glimpse of Caesar the linguist and introduces a playfulness into the dire situation before Alesia that suggests that the ‘Barley-Muncher’ and his speech should be reconsidered in a different, more humorous light. (shrink)

In Minimal Rationality, Christopher Cherniak boldly challenges the myth of Man the the Rational Animal and the central role that the "perfectly rational...

This study takes inquiry as the starting point for epistemological theorising. It uses this idea to develop new and systematic answers to some of the most fundamental questions in epistemology, including about the nature of core epistemic phenomena as well as their value and the extent to which we possess them.

During Advent we prayerfully consider how Jesus was born to save us from death through his incarnation, death, and resurrection. Remembering this in light of your own death can change your life. Mememto mori or "remember your death" is a phrase long associated with the practice of remembering the unpredictable and inevitable end of one's life. This book is the latest in a series of books by Sr. Theresa Alethia Noble, FSP, that explores the traditional Christian practice of meditation (...) on death in light of Christ. This book will help you to connsider the four Last Things: death, judgment, hell, and heaven in the context of Advent. -- Adapted from back cover. (shrink)

The coherence objection to the doctrine of the Incarnation maintains that it is impossible for one individual to have both the attributes of God and the attributes of a human being. This article examines Thomas Aquinas’s answer to this objection. I challenge the dominant, mereological interpretation of Aquinas’s position and, in light of this challenge, develop and defend a new alternative interpretation of Aquinas’s response to this important objection to Christian doctrine.

Assertion is the central vehicle for the sharing of knowledge. Whether knowledge is shared successfully often depends on the quality of assertions: good assertions lead to successful knowledge sharing, while bad ones don't. In Sharing Knowledge, Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion investigate the relation between knowledge sharing and assertion, and develop an account of what it is to assert well. More specifically, they argue that the function of assertion is to share knowledge with others. It is this function that supports (...) a central norm of assertion according to which a good assertion is one that has the disposition to generate knowledge in others. The book uses this functionalist approach to motivate further norms of assertion on both the speaker and the hearer side and investigates ramifications of this view for other questions about assertion. (shrink)

Highlights of a difficult history -- The preliminary identification of our topic -- Approaches -- Bradley's protest -- James's disjunctive theory -- The source of Bradley's dissatisfaction -- Behaviourism and after -- Heirs of Bradley in the twentieth century -- The underlying metaphysical issue -- Explanatory tactics -- The basic distinction -- Metaphysical categories and taxonomies -- Adverbialism, multiple realizability, and natural kinds -- Adverbialism and levels of explanation -- Taxonomies and supervenience relations -- Rejecting the process : first view (...) -- Supervenience-failure -- The modal commitments of the process : first view -- The interference argument : a putative problem for adverbialist accounts -- Cognitive unison -- The problem with attitude based adverbialism -- Gilbert Ryle and Alan White -- White's argument against disposition-based adverbialism -- The cognitive unison theory -- Tasks -- Cognitive processes -- Potential service of a task -- Superordinate tasks -- Some features of the theory -- Divided attention -- Degrees of attention and merely partial attention -- The causal life of attention -- Mental causation -- How to respond to mental causation objections -- The causal role of attention -- Attention as an enabling condition -- Counterfactuals -- The causal relevance of attention per se -- Counterfactuals and causally relevant properties -- Objections to counterfactual analysis of causation and of causal relevance -- The extrinsicness of unison -- The privative character of unison and the problem of absence causation -- Causal exclusion -- Consequences for cognitive psychology -- Psychology and metaphysics -- The metaphysical commitments of the process-identifying project -- The diverse explanatory construals of current psychological results -- Reasons for deflation -- Inductively unreliable properties -- Questions without answers -- The positive payoff -- Philosophical work for the theory of attention -- Putting attention to philosophical work -- Attention and reference -- Attention and consciousness -- Prospects for optimism. (shrink)

The ethics of autonomous cars and automated driving have been a subject of discussion in research for a number of years :28–58, 2016). As levels of automation progress, with partially automated driving already becoming standard in new cars from a number of manufacturers, the question of ethical and legal standards becomes virulent. For exam-ple, while automated and autonomous cars, being equipped with appropriate detection sensors, processors, and intelligent mapping material, have a chance of being much safer than human-driven cars in (...) many regards, situations will arise in which accidents cannot be completely avoided. Such situations will have to be dealt with when programming the software of these vehicles. In several instances, internationally, regulations have been passed, based on legal considerations of road safety, mostly. However, to date, there have been few, if any, cases of a broader ethics code for autonomous or automated driving preceding actual regulation and being based on a broadly composed ethics committee of independent experts. In July 2016, the German Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Alexander Dobrindt, appointed a national ethics committee for automated and connected driving, which began its work in September 2016. In June 2017, this committee presented a code of ethics which was published in German and in English. It consists of 20 ethical guidelines. Having been a member of this committee, I will present the main ethical topics of these guidelines and the discussions that lay behind them. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that a proper understanding of the historicity of love requires an appreciation of the irreplaceability of the beloved. I do this through a consideration of ideas that were first put forward by Robert Kraut in “Love De Re” (1986). I also evaluate Amelie Rorty's criticisms of Kraut's thesis in “The Historicity of Psychological Attitudes: Love is Not Love Which Alters Not When It Alteration Finds” (1986). I argue that Rorty fundamentally misunderstands Kraut's Kripkean analogy, and (...) I go on to criticize her claim that concern over the proper object of love should be best understood as a concern over constancy. This leads me to an elaboration of the distinct senses in which love can be seen as historical. I end with a further defense of the irreplaceability of the beloved and a discussion of the relevance of recent debates over the importance of personal identity for an adequate account of the historical dimension of love. (shrink)

This handbook article gives a critical overview of recent discussions of epistemic authority. It favors an account that brings into balance the dictates of rational deference with the ideals of intellectual self-governance. A plausible starting point is the conjecture that neither should rational deference to authorities collapse into total epistemic submission, nor the ideal of mature intellectual self-governance be conflated with (illusions of) epistemic autarky.

Suppose you ask yourself whether your father's record collection includes a certain recording of The Trout and venture to find out. At that time, you embark on an inquiry into whether your father owns the relevant recording. Your inquiry is a project with a specific goal: finding out whether your father owns the recording. This fact about your inquiry generalizes: inquiry is a goal-directed enterprise. A specific inquiry can be individuated by the question it aims to answer and by who (...) aims to answer the question. Your inquiry into whether your father owns the recording differs from your inquiry into how many records your father owns because different questions are being asked. Your inquiry into whether your father owns the recording differs from my inquiry into whether he does because different people are inquiring. The goal of inquiry into a given question by an agent, α, can be characterized, neutrally, as α's having the answer to that question. I will here focus only on inquiries into whether questions and characterize the goal of inquiry into whether φ by α as α's having the answer to the question whether φ. (shrink)

This paper is built around a single, simple idea. It is widely agreed that there is a distinctive kind of awareness each of us has of his own bodily actions. This action-awareness is different from any perceptual awareness a subject may have of his own actions; it can exist in the absence of such perceptual awareness. The single, simple idea around which this paper is built is that the distinctive awareness that subjects have of their own mental actions is a (...) form of action-awareness. Subjects’ awareness of their own mental actions is a species of the same genus that also includes the distinctive awareness of bodily actions. More specifically, I claim. (shrink)