The standard account of ontological commitment is quantificational. There are many old and well-chewed-over challenges to the account, but recently Kit Fine added a new challenge. Fine claimed that the ‘‘quantificational account gets the basic logic of ontological commitment wrong’’ and offered an alternative account that used an existence predicate. While Fine’s argument does point to a real lacuna in the standard approach, I show that his own account also gets ‘‘the basic logic of ontological commitment wrong’’. (...) In response, I offer a full quantificational account, using the resources of plural logic, and argue that it leads to a complete theory of natural language ontological commitment. (shrink)

This new essay collection by distinguished philosopher Margaret Gilbert provides a richly textured argument for the importance of joint commitment in our personal and public lives. Topics covered by this diverse range of essays range from marital love to patriotism, from promissory obligation to the unity of the European Union.

How can we capture the intuitive distinction between lying and misleading? According to a traditional view, the difference boils down to whether the speaker is saying (as opposed to implying) something that they believe to be false. This view is subject to known objections; to overcome them, an alternative view has emerged. For the alternative view, what matters is whether the speaker can consistently deny that they are committed to knowing the relevant proposition. We point out serious flaws for this (...) alternative view, and sketch a simpler alternative that incorporates key insights of the traditional view. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a particular kind of ‘internal’ commitment typically made in the context of romantic love relationships that has striking meta-normative implications for how we understand the role of the will in practical normativity. Internal commitments cannot plausibly explain the reasons we have in committed relationships on the usual model – as triggering reasons that are already there, in the way that making a promise triggers a reason via a pre-existing norm of the form ‘If (...) you make a promise to x, then you have a reason to x’. Instead, internal commitments are that in virtue of which one has the special reasons of committed relationships; they are the grounds of such reasons. In this way, the will is a source of practical normativity. (shrink)

Develops a logical analysis of dialogue in which two or more parties attempt to advance their own interests. It includes a classification of the major types of dialogues and a discussion of several important informal fallacies.

This paper addresses some connections between conceptions of the will and the theory of practical reason. The first two sections argue against the idea that volitional commitments should be understood along the lines of endorsement of normative principles. A normative account of volition cannot make sense of akrasia, and it obscures an important difference between belief and intention. Sections three and four draw on the non-normative conception of the will in an account of instrumental rationality. The central problem is to (...) explain the grip of instrumental requirements even in cases in which agents do not fully endorse the ends they are pursuing. The solution I propose appeals to coherence constraints on the beliefs that condition the distinctive volitional stance of intention. (shrink)

Discourse carries thin commitment to objects of a certain sort iff it says or implies that there are such objects. It carries a thick commitment to such objects iff an account of what determines truth-values for its sentences say or implies that there are such objects. This paper presents two model-theoretic semantics for mathematical discourse, one reflecting thick commitment to mathematical objects, the other reflecting only a thin commitment to them. According to the latter view, for (...) example, the semantic role of number-words is not designation but rather the encoding of cardinality-quantifiers. I also present some reasons for preferring this view. (shrink)

Between innocence and commitment: speculation and experience -- Reasonable commitment -- Some comparisons -- Commitment to reason and to scientific realism -- Humanist commitment -- Humanism and the cosmic agent -- Commitment to God -- Corollaries.

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

Despite the importance of commitment in moral and political philosophy, there has hitherto been little extended analysis of it. Marcel Lieberman examines the conditions under which commitment is possible, and offers at the same time an indirect argument for moral realism. He argues that realist evaluative beliefs are functionally required for commitment - especially regarding its role in self-understanding - and since it is only within a realist framework that such beliefs make sense, realism about values is (...) a condition for the possibility of commitment itself. His ambitious study addresses questions that are of great interest to analytic philosophers but also makes many connections with continental philosophy and with folk psychology, sociology and cognitive science, and will be seen as a distinctive intervention in the debate about moral realism. (shrink)

This paper develops an alternative for (what feminists call) ‘the sex/gender distinction’. I do so in order to avoid certain problematic implications that the distinction underpins. First, the sex/gender distinction paradigmatically holds that some social conditions determine one’s gender (whether one is a woman or a man), and that some biological conditions determine one’s sex (whether one is female or male). Further, sex and gender come apart. Since gender is socially constructed, this implies that women exist mind-dependently, or due to (...) productive human social activities; thus, it should be possible to do away with them just by altering the social conditions on which gender depends. In addition, some feminists take gender to depend on oppressive social conditions. Changing our social environments, then, would not only unwittingly eradicate women; doing away with women should be feminism’s political goal. I argue that both implications are unacceptable. In response, I argue for a view that has ontological commitments which are more congenial to ordinary thinking, and that doesn’t have the goal of eradicating women. (shrink)

Gregory S. Kavka was a prominent and influential figure in contemporary moral and political philosophy. The essays in this volume are concerned with fundamental issues of rational commitment and social justice to which Kavka devoted his work as a philosopher. The essays take Kavka's work as a point of departure and seek to advance the respective debates. The topics include: the relationship between intention and moral action as part of which Kavka's famous 'toxin puzzle' is a focus of discussion, (...) the nature of deterrence, the rationality of morals, contractarian ethics, and the contemporary relevance of Hobbes' political thought. Incorporating important philosophical statements of problems and fresh contributions to the ongoing debate about rational intention this volume will interest not just philosophers but also political scientists and economists. (shrink)

This paper addresses some connections between conceptions of the will and the theory of practical reason. The first two sections argue against the idea that volitional commitments should be understood along the lines of endorsement of normative principles. A normative account of volition cannot make sense of akrasia, and it obscures an important difference between belief and intention. Sections three and four draw on the non-normative conception of the will in an account of instrumental rationality. The central problem is to (...) explain the grip of instrumental requirements even in cases in which agents do not fully endorse the ends they are pursuing. The solution I propose appeals to coherence constraints on the beliefs that condition the distinctive volitional stance of intention. (shrink)

Disagreement over what exists is so fundamental that it tends to hinder or even to block dialogue among disputants. The various controversies between believers and atheists, or realists and nominalists, are only two kinds of examples. Interested in contributing to the intelligibility of the debate on ontology, in 1939 Willard van Orman Quine began a series of works which introduces the notion of ontological commitment and proposes an allegedly objective criterion to identify the exact conditions under which a theoretical (...) discourse signals an assumption of existence. I intend to present the concept of ontological commitment and the Quinean criterion, to expose and evaluate some of the many criticisms to which the criterion has subject and to situate it in the context of Quine’s philosophy. As a product of such analyses, I hope to contribute to the discussion on the application and relevance of the notion of ontological commitment. (shrink)

We often use sentences that seem conditional in nature when we reason about normative issues, e.g. ‘If you have promised to do something, you should keep your promise’ and ‘If you have done something bad, you should apologize’. We seem to think that promise-making in some sense commits us to promise-keeping and that acting bad in some sense creates an obligation to apologize. It is, however, not obvious how we should symbolize such sentences in a formal language. The purpose of (...) this essay is to investigate some different possible formalizations of different conditional obligation sentences. I consider seven different interpretations of the concept of commitment or conditional obligation and I say something about the logical properties of these different interpretations. (shrink)

First-order normative theories concerning what’s right and wrong, good and bad, etc. and metanormative theories concerning the nature of first-order normative thought and talk are widely regarded as independent theoretical enterprises. This paper argues that several debates in metanormative theory involve views that have first-order normative implications, even as the implications in question may not be immediately recognizable as normative. I first make my claim more precise by outlining a general recipe for generating this result. I then apply this recipe (...) to three debates in metaethics: the modal status of basic normative principles, normative vagueness and indeterminacy, and the determination of reference for normative predicates. In each case I argue that certain views on each issue carry first-order normative commitments, in accordance with my recipe. (shrink)

This chapter argues that there is a particular kind of ‘internal’ commitment typically made in the context of romantic love relationships that has striking meta-normative implications for how we understand the role of the will in practical normativity. Internal commitments cannot plausibly explain the reasons we have in committed relationships on the usual model—as triggering reasons that are already there, in the way that making a promise triggers a reason via a pre-existing norm of the form ‘If you make (...) a promise to x, then you have a reason to x’. Instead, internal commitments are that in virtue of which one has the special reasons of committed relationships; they are the grounds of such reasons. In this way, the will is a source of practical normativity. (shrink)

On the truthmaker view of ontological commitment [Heil (From an ontological point of view, 2003); Armstrong (Truth and truthmakers, 2004); Cameron (Philosophical Studies, 2008)], a theory is committed to the entities needed in the world for the theory to be made true. I argue that this view puts truthmaking to the wrong task. None of the leading accounts of truthmaking—via necessitation, supervenience, or grounding—can provide a viable measure of ontological commitment. But the grounding account does provide a needed (...) constraint on what is fundamental. So I conclude that truthmaker commitments are not a rival to quantifier commitments, but a needed complement. The quantifier commitments are what a theory says exists, while the truthmaker commitments are what a theory says is fundamental. (shrink)

I propose a way of thinking aboout content, and a related way of thinking about ontological commitment. (This is part of a series of four closely related papers. The other three are ‘On Specifying Truth-Conditions’, ‘An Actualist’s Guide to Quantifying In’ and ‘An Account of Possibility’.).

This title explores how human commitments, rooted in the story of God's love, are acts of free choice and love. Farley reflects on the concrete experiences of people who strive to be faithful to what they have claimed to love: 'My concern is to name something that I think is, after all, common to all of our lives - an experience, a reality, perhaps a problem, a challenge, something that is sometimes a source of joy, sometimes a cause of tragedy'. (...) Farley explores the nature nad meaning of commitment as it is played out in our lives, addressing love, fidelity, a sense of obligation, and covenant. (shrink)

According to commitment accounts of assertion, asserting is committing oneself to something’s being the case, where such commitment is understood in terms of norms governing a social practice. I elaborate and compare two version of such accounts, liability accounts (associated with C.S. Peirce) and dialectical norm accounts (associated with Robert Brandom), concluding that the latter are more defensible. I argue that both versions of commitment account possess a potential advantage over rival normative accounts of assertion in that (...) they needn’t presuppose any notion of an assertion’s correctness. Additionally, I show how dialectical norm accounts can explain relations between assertion and truth. After setting forth objections that have been raised against commitment accounts, I argue that responses are available on behalf of dialectical norm accounts. Finally, I propose that a liberalized dialectical norm account can illuminate phenomena sometimes seen as supporting truth relativism. (shrink)

Can it be rational to be religious? Robert Audi gives a persuasive positive answer through an account of rationality and a rich, nuanced understanding of what religious commitment means. It is not just a matter of belief, but of emotions and attitudes such as faith and hope, of one's outlook on the world, and of commitment to live in certain ways.

Can commitments be generated without promises, commissive speech acts or gestures that are conventionally interpreted as such? While we remain neutral with respect to the normative answer to this question, we propose a psychological answer. Specifically, we hypothesize that people at least believe that commitments are in place if one agent (the sender) has led a second agent (the recipient) to rely on her to do something, and if this is mutually known by the two agents. Crucially, this situation can (...) occur even if the sender has neither uttered a commissive speech act nor performed any action that would conventionally be interpreted as such. In a series of online experiments, we tested this hypothesis by presenting participants with vignettes describing everyday situations in which a recipient’s expectations were frustrated by the sender’s behavior, and then eliciting moral judgments about the sender’s actions and character. We manipulated whether the recipient’s reliance on the sender was mutually known, and if so, whether the sender verbally acknowledged this or not. The results show that moral judgments differed significantly according to whether the recipient’s reliance was mutually known, but not according to whether this was verbally acknowledged. (shrink)

This article introduces an “ordonomic” approach to corporate citizenship. We believe that ordonomics offers a conceptual framework for analyzing both the social structure and the semantics of moral commitments. We claim that such an analysis can provide theoretical guidance for the changing role of business in society, especially in regard to the expectation and trend that businesses take a political role and act as corporate citizens. The systematic raison d’être of corporate citizenship is that business firms can and—judged by the (...) criterion of prudent self-interest—“should” take on an active role in rule-finding discourses and rule-setting processes with the intent of realizing a win-win outcome of the economic game. We identify—and illustrate—four ways that corporate citizens can employ moral commitments as a factor of production to enhance their processes of economic value creation. (shrink)

Actualism is the doctrine that the only things there are, that have being in any sense, are the things that actually exist. In particular, actualism eschews possibilism, the doctrine that there are merely possible objects. It is widely held that one cannot both be an actualist and at the same time take possible world semantics seriously — that is, take it as the basis for a genuine theory of truth for modal languages, or look to it for insight into the (...) modal structure of reality. For possible world semantics, it is supposed, commits one to possibilism. In this paper I take issue with this view. To the contrary, I argue that one can take possible world semantics seriously without any commitment to possible worlds or possibilism and hence remain in full compliance with actualist scruples. Moreover, one can do so without without invoking either "ersatz" worlds or haecceities. (shrink)

Resolving to finish reading a novel, staying true to your punk style, or dedicating your life to an artistic project: these are examples of aesthetic commitments. I develop an account of the nature of such commitments, and I argue that they are significant insofar as they help us manage the temporally extended nature of our aesthetic agency and our relationships with aesthetic objects. At the same time, focusing on aesthetic commitments can give us a better grasp on the nature of (...) aesthetic normativity; this is because, in making aesthetic commitments, we are capable of giving aesthetic concerns the weight of obligation. I argue that appealing to aesthetic commitments allows us to account for the existence of aesthetic obligations as well as their grounding. I conclude by arguing that, although the aesthetic domain is a domain of play and freedom of choice, there is nevertheless an important place in it for both aesthetic commitments and the aesthetic obligations they generate. (shrink)

This essay presents an ideal for modern Western romantic love.The basic ideas are the following: people want to form a distinctive sort of plural subject with another, what Nozick has called a "We", they want to be loved for properties of certain kinds, and they want this love to establish and sustain a special sort of commitment to them over time.

Despite the importance of commitment in moral and political philosophy, there has hitherto been little extended analysis of it. Marcel Lieberman examines the conditions under which commitment is possible, and offers at the same time an indirect argument for moral realism. He argues that realist evaluative beliefs are functionally required for commitment - especially regarding its role in self-understanding - and since it is only within a realist framework that such beliefs make sense, realism about values is (...) a condition for the possibility of commitment itself. His ambitious study addresses questions that are of great interest to analytic philosophers but also makes many connections with continental philosophy and with folk psychology, sociology and cognitive science, and will be seen as a distinctive intervention in the debate about moral realism. (shrink)

This chapter has three principal aims. Firstly, to promote interest in the question of the function, or utility, of judgements of modality. Secondly, to endorse an alternative to orthodox contemporary methodology, advocating that we prioritize the question of function in modal philosophy. Thirdly, to consider among our modal judgements exactly which are the proper and exact source of various different kinds of substantial philosophical commitments in ontology, epistemology, and elsewhere. An illustration is offered, in the de dicto case, of how (...) minimal a philosophical theory of modality might be if constructed properly, and carefully, according to functional methodology. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze how the semantics of the Alternating-time Temporal Logic ATL$^*$ deals with agents' commitments to strategies in the process of formula evaluation. In (\acro{atl}$^*$), one can express statements about the strategic ability of an agent (or a coalition of agents) to achieve a goal $\phi$ such as: ``agent $i$ can choose a strategy such that, if $i$ follows this strategy then, no matter what other agents do, $\phi$ will always be true''. However, strategies in \acro{atl} are (...) \emph{revocable} in the sense that in the evaluation of the goal $\phi$ the agent $i$ is no longer restricted by the strategy she has chosen in order to reach the state where the goal is evaluated. -/- Here we discuss some alternatives leading to amendments of that semantics. In particular, we consider variants of \acro{atl}$^*$ where strategies, on the contrary, are \emph{irrevocable}. Unlike in the standard semantics of \acro{atl}, memory plays an essential role in the semantics based on irrevocable strategies. -/- Further, we propose and discuss various syntactic and semantics mechanisms for handling commitments to strategies and release from such commitments in the semantics of ATL$^*$, leading to more expressive and semantically refined versions of that logic. (shrink)

According to Margaret Gilbert, two or more people collectively believe that p if and only if they are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. But the way she construes joint commitment in her account – as a commitment of and by the several parties to “doing something as a body” – encourages the thought that the phenomenon accounted for is not that of genuine belief. I explain why this concern arises and explore a different way (...) of construing joint commitment, in order to avoid the concern. This leads me to propose a revised Gilbertian account of collective belief, according to which two or more people collectively believe that p if and only if they are jointly committed to p as true. (shrink)

Are communicators perceived as committed to what they actually say (what is explicit), or to what they mean (including what is implicit)? Some research claims that explicit communication leads to a higher attribution of commitment and more accountability than implicit communication. Here we present theoretical arguments and experimental data to the contrary. We present three studies exploring whether the saying–meaning distinction affects commitment attribution in promises, and, crucially, whether commitment attribution is further modulated by the degree to (...) which the hearer will actually rely on the promise. Our results support the conclusion that people perceive communicators to be committed to ‘what is meant’, and not simply to ‘what is said’. Our findings add to the experimental literature showing that the saying–meaning distinction is not as pivotal to social relations as often assumed, and that its role in commitment attribution might be overestimated. The attribution of commitment is strongly dependent on the (mutually known) relevance of ‘what is meant’. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard recently proposed a Wittgensteinian solution to closure-based skepticism. According to Wittgenstein, all epistemic systems assume certain truths. The notions that we are not disembodied brains, that the Earth has existed for a long time and that one’s name is such-and-such all function as “hinge commitments.” Pritchard views a hinge commitment as a positive propositional attitude that is not a belief. Because closure principles concern only knowledge-apt beliefs, they do not apply to hinge commitments. Thus, from the fact (...) that a subject knows that he is sitting in a room, and the fact that the subject’s sitting in a room entails his bodily existence, it does not follow that the subject also knows that he is not an envatted brain. This paper rejects Pritchard’s non-belief reading of hinge commitments. I start by showing that the non-belief reading fails to solve the skeptical paradox because the reasons that Pritchard uses to support the non-belief reading do not exempt hinge propositions from closure principles. I then proceed to argue that the non-belief reading is false as it claims that hinge commitments, unlike ordinary beliefs, are rationally unresponsive—with the help of a scenario in which a subject’s experience is internally chaotic, we can safely conclude that the hinge commitment that one is not systematically mistaken about the world is equally responsive to one’s evidential situations. (shrink)

In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in which uncertainty (...) is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction. (shrink)

Abstract: The standard picture of rationality requires that the agent acts so as to realize her most preferred alternative in the light of her own desires and beliefs. However, there are circumstances where such an agent can predict that she will act against her preferences. The story of Ulysses and the Sirens is the paradigmatic example of such cases. In those circumstances the orthodoxy requires the agent to be ‘sophisticated’. That is to say, she should take into account her expected (...) future choices and prevent her future self to act in certain ways. She should ‘bind’ herself to a certain course of action. This is a form of causal commitment. It is generally recognized that this form of self-commitment is the only one that is available to a rational agent. Rational commitment, where the agent gives herself a reason to act in a certain way rather than making herself act in that way, is considered not feasible. In this paper, I question this verdict. I sketch the broad outlines of a model of rational commitment, which takes as its starting point Michael Bratman’s ‘planning theory’ of intention. There are two important objections against this theory (one by John Broome and one by the Dutch philosopher Govert den Hartogh.) Both criticisms claim that such a theory is a form of ‘bootstrapping’ reasons for action into existence. In the remainder of the paper, I will defend the theory against these objections. This way, I hope to establish that defending the feasibility of rational commitment is not an obvious mistake. (shrink)

Moore’s paradox, the infamous felt bizarreness of sincerely uttering something of the form “I believe grass is green, but it ain’t”—has attracted a lot of attention since its original discovery (Moore 1942). It is often taken to be a paradox of belief—in the sense that the locus of the inconsistency is the beliefs of someone who so sincerely utters. This claim has been labeled as the priority thesis: If you have an explanation of why a putative content could not be (...) coherently believed, you thereby have an explanation of why it cannot be coherently asserted. (Shoemaker 1995). The priority thesis, however, is insufficient to give a general explanation of Moore-paradoxical phenomena and, moreover, it’s false. I demonstrate this, then show how to give a commitment-theoretic account of Moore Paradoxicality, drawing on work by Bach and Harnish. The resulting account has the virtue of explaining not only cases of pragmatic incoherence involving assertions, but also cases of cognate incoherence arising for other speech acts, such as promising, guaranteeing, ordering, and the like. (shrink)

The discipline of religious ethics consists in critical reflection on religious varieties of ethical discourse, but to study a variety of ethical discourse, we must look at particular examples of it. Which examples should we be look- ing at? What varieties or traditions shall we take them to represent? In answering these questions, scholars reveal much about their normative commitments. When "religious ethics" replaced "theological ethics" as a cur- ricular rubric in some schools, many ethicists attempted to present their work (...) as value neutral, but it is better to admit that commitments matter and are unavoidable. The new traditionalists make no secret of their nor- mative commitments, which imply an indictment of modern ethical dis- course as a whole. Their candor is commendable, but their indictment can be challenged. Debunkers of modernity have trouble accounting for their own position. Their samples of modern ethical discourse are not repre- sentative. Many democratic voices evidently remain unacknowledged and unexplained. (shrink)

MORAL COMMITMENT OF THE REALISTIC, MODERNIST AND POSTMODERN NOVEL S u m m a r y The present paper discusses moral ideas expressed in the contemporary novel of the realistic, modernist and postmodern conventions. More precisely, it tries to define how the poetics of a given convention determines the novel’s ethical thought. It is argued that both the modernist and postmodern fiction, which are often perceived as amoral or relativist, are morally committed, though perhaps not as much as the (...) realistic convention. The shape of this moral commitment is consistent with the dominant of each convention (epistemological in modernism and ontological in postmodernism). These theoretical considerations are subsequently illustrated with three case studies of Virginia Woolf’s novels (each of which represents a different convention). Throughout the whole essay the emphasis falls on the meaning of the novelistic form, i.e. on the way that the novel’s form conveys the novel’s interpretation of reality. (shrink)

Committing the Future to Memory: History, Experience, Trauma by Sarah Clift explores alternatives to the linear temporality of modern historiography through an examination of canonical philosophies of history, memory and identity. Close readings of John Locke and G.W.F. Hegel are set alongside explorations of Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Maurice Blanchot, in order to set the book's exploration of philosophical modernity in the context of contemporary interest in finitude, identity and the temporalities of trauma.

In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in which uncertainty (...) is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction. (shrink)

Conceptualization and measurement of organizational commitment involve different dimensions that include economic, affective, as well as moral aspects labelled in the literature as: ‘continuance’, ‘affective’ and ‘normative’ commitment. This multidimensional framework emerges from the convergence of different research lines. Using Aristotle’s philosophical framework, that explicitly considers the role of the will in human commitment, it is proposed a rational explanation of the existence of mentioned dimensions in organizational commitment. Such a theoretical proposal may offer a more (...) accurate definition of ‘affective commitment’ that distinguishes feelings from rational judgments. The use of a philosophical explanation coherent with psychological findings also allows the discovery of a wider moral concept of ‘normative commitment’. (shrink)

This research is aimed at explaining and analyzing the ontological status of semantical objects of religious language. This ontological status concern how every term in religious language refers to an object and how we interpret those terms, whether it represents the object itself or merely its sensual or constructive properties. This finding lies in the disputation between religious realism and non-realism. The results of this research are (1) every believer is exactly a realist because he or she has the ontological (...) commitment to the object of the utterance, but (2) God exists independently from human thought and consciousness, (3) it is possible to put God as the object of intentional and semantic but only represents sensible qualities of the real object, and (4) the meaning of religious language depends on believer's ontological commitment on God's existence. (shrink)

The proper evaluation of a theory's virtues seems to require taking into account what the theory is indirectly or implicitly committed to, in addition to what it explicitly says. Most extant proposals for criteria of theory choice in the literature spell out the relevant notion of implicit commitment via some notion of entailment. I show that such criteria behave implausibly in application to theories that differ over matters of entailment. A recent defence by Howard Peacock of such a criterion (...) against this objection is examined and rejected. I go on to a develop a better proposal on which, roughly speaking, a theory is counted committed to a claim if and only if its best fully explicit extension is explicitly committed to the claim. Such extensions in turn are evaluated by ordinary standards of theory choice adapted to the case of theories assumed to articulate their intended content in a fully explicit fashion. (shrink)

In Commit to Win, Heidi Reeder, PhD, unpacks over forty years of research by psychologists and economists to show that the key to reaching any goal, whether it' to hit the gym more often or to finally quit that dead-end job, isn' motivation, willpower, or determination. It' commitment. Busting the myths most of us believe about commitment, Reeder shows that it all comes down to four variables: treasures, troubles, contributions, and choices. Together, these variables make up a formula (...) that not only measures how committed we are, but also shows which factors we can change to get our commitment level in sync with what we want to do. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemology has explored the notion of a hinge commitment as set out in Wittgenstein’s final notebooks, published as On Certainty. These are usually understood as essentially groundless certainties that provide the necessary framework within which rational evaluations can take place. John Greco has recently offered a striking account of hinge commitments as a distinctive kind of knowledge that he calls ‘common knowledge’. According to Greco, this is knowledge that members of the community get to have without incurring any (...) epistemic burden, and as such is fundamentally different from other kinds of knowledge. I offer a critique of Greco’s proposal. While I agree that there is a variety of knowledge that counts as common knowledge, I contend that it is not to be understood as knowledge that one gets for free as Greco suggests. Moreover, I argue that our hinge commitments do not count as common knowledge—either in Greco’s sense of the term or in the alternative manner that I set out—because properly understood they are not in the market for knowledge at all. In defence of this claim, I suggest that Greco’s conception of a hinge commitment is both missing some crucial elements and also too broad in its extension, in that it encompasses both instances of common knowledge and hinge commitments proper. (shrink)