Recent decades have seen substantial increases in the average amount of money spent on wedding ceremonies in economically developed countries. This article develops an account of wedding expenditure as a form of positional competition where participation involves purchasing services in a market. The main emphasis is on the role that conspicuously expensive weddings can play in enabling certain kinds of signalling, most notably the signalling of commitment to a personal relationship and a distinct signalling of personal wealth. The (...) analysis seeks to demonstrate how wedding expenditure is both similar to but distinct from the positional consumption associated with markets in other goods and services. While much of the work in this article is descriptive, it aims to complement more normatively engaged work on the moral status of marriage, and on the proper evaluation and response to excessive positional consumption. (shrink)

Fifty years before the present volume appeared, artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science (Cogsci) emerged from a couple of small-scale academic encounters on the East Coast of the United States. Wedded together like Siamese twins, these nascent research programs appeared to rest on some general assumptions regarding the human mind, and closely connected methodological principles, which set them at such a distance from phenomenology that no contact between the two approaches seemed conceivable. Soon however contact was made, in the form (...) of a head-on critique of the AI/Cogsci project mostly inspired by arguments from phenomenology. For a while, it seemed like nothing would come of it: AI/Cogsci bloomed while the small troop of critical phenomenologists kept objecting. Then AI and Cogsci went their separate ways. AI underwent a deep transformation and all but surrendered to the phenomenological critique. Cogsci meanwhile pursued the initial program with a far richer collection of problems, concepts and methods, and was for a long time quite unconcerned by suggestions and objections from phenomenology. The last decade and half has seen a remarkable reversal: on the one hand, a few cognitive scientists have been actively pursuing the goal of reconciliating Cogsci, whether empirically or foundationally, with some of the insights procured by phenomenology; on the other, many cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind who think of themselves as, respectively, mainstream and analytic, and have no or little acquaintance with, and often little sympathy for, phenomenology, have been actively pursuing research programs geared toward some of the key issues identified by phenomenological critics of early AI/Cogsci. It might seem then as if those critics were now vindicated. But while these new directions are undoubtedly promising, it is not yet clear that phenomenology and Cogsci can be truly reconciled. Some suspect that Cogsci must distort beyond recognition those phenomenological themes it means to weave into its fabric, while phenomenology may be losing touch with its roots by tuning onto the logic of Cogsci which is, after all, an empirical science. To the present writer, it is far too early for anything like a verdict, as the task of clarifying the issues and gaining a much deeper understanding of the issues on both sides has barely begun. But whatever emerges from this exploration will probably have deep consequences for both Cogsci and philosophy.. (shrink)

In this article, I examine a distinctive position in moral philosophy that, following Bernard Williams, I label “postanalytic”. In one of his final essays, “What Might Philosophy Become?”, Williams sets out a program for extending moral philosophy beyond its traditional “limits” in a way that will transform it into an embodied, historical, and political form of reflective practice.1 This programmatic intent has been shared by a number of moral philosophers since, some of whom are expressly influenced by Williams’s late work. (...) In what follows, I limit myself to a discussion of just two: Raimond Gaita and Christopher Hamilton, contemporary moral philosophers who are wedded to the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Talmud Meets Church HistoryDaniel Boyarin (bio)Virginia Burrus. Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts. New York: Edwin Mellen, 1987.———. ‘“Equipped for Victory’: Ambrose and the Gendering of Orthodoxy.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4.4 (1996): 461–75.———. The Making Of A Heretic: Gender, Authority, And The Priscillianist Controversy. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.———. “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius.” Journal (...) of Early Christian Studies 3.1 (1995): 25–46.———. “Word and Flesh: The Bodies and Sexuality of Ascetic Women in Christian Antiquity.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10.1 (1994): 27–51.[1] Prologue: Morningside Heights, 1941—A Talmudist Meets a Church HistorianIn 1944, my teacher Saul Lieberman published a classic essay in which he treated talmudic martyrology in the context of patristic literature. 1 The article had been written under the inspiration of his meeting and friendship with Henri Gregoire, the great Belgian church historian, then a refugee from the Nazis in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in New York, where Lieberman, the great Lithuanian talmudist, had also found refuge and where the two met. Nearly a half-century later, this student of Lieberman’s met another church historian, Virginia Burrus, in Morningside Heights under happier circumstances, when both of us were participants at a conference on asceticism at Union Theological Seminary, and a similar intellectual interaction began. This paper represents some of the first fruits of that second encounter and aspires to modestly continue the enterprise begun by the first.[2] Intertextuality and InterdisciplinarityAveril Cameron has recently written:The myth of early Christianity as the resort of the poor and underprivileged is precisely that, and a very convenient one it has been. It is a myth that rests, moreover, on the fallacy of an original Christianity uncontaminated by external influences; but its holders then have to explain how this “new” faith could make [End Page 52] the leap to center stage. Thus, we have been told, “the naiveté of the early Christian speech came in the course of time to wed itself to the cultures of the world.” But while much of current New Testament scholarship is directed at the internal (that is, theological) articulation of the texts, there is also a perceptible trend towards a mode of interpretation that balances the external and internal factors operative in the literary texts. It is thus less a question of the degree of “influence” of Greco-Roman or Jewish literary or philosophical elements on early Christian writing than of their integral relationship.[37–38]Judaism also (and Jewish scholarship) has had a stake in inscribing itself as pure and uncontaminated, for reasons that Philip Alexander has articulated: “The attempt to [lay down a norm for Judaism in the first century] barely conceals apologetic motives—in the case of Christianity a desire to prove that Christianity transcended or transformed Judaism, in the case of Jews a desire to suggest that Christianity was an alien form of Judaism which deviated from the true path” [3]. Indeed, the very distinctness of Judaism has been articulated by Jews as precisely its distance from a “syncretistic” Christianity whose defining feature is that it is somehow a composite of Judaism and Hellenism. 2In this essay, in conversation with some of the work of Burrus, I wish to begin to suggest a few of the ways that study of the Talmud can be further enriched through the engagement of talmudic scholars with the recent sophisticated (and especially gender-oriented) work being done on early Christianity. Indeed, I will be hinting (and in future work explicitly arguing) that we have to begin seriously thinking about Judaeo-Christianity as a single cultural system: contentious, dialectical, polemical, and sometimes friendly, but—I hasten to add—not moralistic in the homogenized “family values” sense implied by the modern usage of this term. I put forth here, as a case in point, that the richest contexts for understanding the sets of cultural tensions that gave rise to a particular talmudic text are to be uncovered in contemporary patristic literature. From the point of view of a New Historicist approach to talmudic literature, this suggests that the... (shrink)

In pointing out the strange phenomenological structure of anxiety, Kierkegaard re-opens the door to reflection on “nothingness.” This tradition has been fruitful, but it has remained wedded to interpreting this nothingness in light of the distinction between anxiety and fear. Thus, anxiety is understood exclusively as the transcendence of this or that possibility towards an encounter with the freedom of possibility itself. Kierkegaard’s original formulation, however, states that anxiety is “altogether different than fear and similar concepts.” In this article I (...) take up Kierkegaard’s hint and argue that, interpreted in the light of guilt, his distinction is revelatory in ways that he himself did not anticipate. While we may be guilty for this or that sin, in anxiety we stand before our sinfulness itself. Anxiety ought to counsel us to be resolute in the face of possibility, but also to make a genealogical critique of our entanglement in the illusions of our past. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

In this book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: what is the special moral importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? Daniels' theory has implications for national and global health policy: can we meet health needs fairly in ageing societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or (...) meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict? When is an effort to reduce health disparities, or to set priorities in realising a human right to health, fair? What do richer, healthier societies owe poorer, sicker societies? Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly explores the many ways that social justice is good for the health of populations in developed and developing countries. (shrink)

In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the relation of consciousness, the will, and our intentional and voluntary actions. Wegner claims that our experience and common sense view according to which we can influence our behavior roughly the way we experience that we do it is an illusion.

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

How should medical services be distributed within society? Who should pay for them? Is it right that large amounts should be spent on sophisticated technology and expensive operations, or would the resources be better employed in, for instance, less costly preventive measures? These and others are the questions addreses in this book. Norman Daniels examines some of the dilemmas thrown up by conflicting demands for medical attention, and goes on to advance a theory of justice in the distribution of health (...) care. The central argument is that health care, both preventive and acute, has a crucial effect on equality of opportunity, and that a principle guaranteeing equality of opportunity must underly the distribution of health-care services. Access to care, preventive measures, treatment of the elderly, and the obligations of doctors and medical administrations are fully discussed, and the theory is shown to underwrite various practical policies in the area. (shrink)

Précis for a book symposium, with contributions from Meg Wallace, Louis deRosset, and Chris Tillman and Joshua Spencer.

Our ability to locate moral responsibility is often thought to be a necessary condition for conducting morally permissible medical practice, engaging in a just war, and other high-stakes endeavors. Yet, with increasing reliance upon artificially intelligent systems, we may be facing a wideningresponsibility gap, which, some argue, cannot be bridged by traditional concepts of responsibility. How then, if at all, can we make use of crucial emerging technologies? According to Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach, the advent of so-called ‘artificial moral (...) agents’ (AMAs) is inevitable. Still, this notion may seem to push back the problem, leaving those who have an interest in developing autonomous technology with a dilemma. We may need to scale-back our efforts at deploying AMAs (or at least maintain human oversight); otherwise, we must rapidly and drastically update our moral and legal norms in a way that ensures responsibility for potentially avoidable harms. This paper invokes contemporary accounts of responsibility in order to show how artificially intelligent systems might be held responsible. Although many theorists are concerned enough to develop artificial conceptions ofagencyor to exploit our present inability to regulate valuable innovations, the proposal here highlights the importance of—and outlines a plausible foundation for—a workable notion ofartificial moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be possible (...) in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which (...) have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the consequences of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity, persistence, and individuality. (shrink)

Contemporary social theory and natural law : Jurgen Habermas -- A natural-law critique of modern social theory : Karl Lowith, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin -- Natural law and the question of universalism -- Modern natural law I : Hobbes and Rousseau on the state of nature and social life -- Modern natural law II : Kant and Hegel on proceduralism and ethical life -- Classical social theory I : Marx, Tonnies and Durkheim on alienation, community and society -- Classical (...) social theory II : Simmel and Weber on the universality of sociability and reasonableness -- Social theory as the natural law of 'artificial' social relations. (shrink)

Supporters of open borders sometimes argue that the state has no pro tanto right to restrict immigration, because such a right would also entail a right to exclude existing citizens for whatever reasons justify excluding immigrants. These arguments can be defeated by suggesting that people have a right to stay put. I present a new form of the exclusion argument against closed borders which escapes this “right to stay put” reply. I do this by describing a kind of exclusion that (...) has not been discussed in depth, which I call “territorial exclusion.” Territorial exclusion is the process according to which the group that wishes to exclude current citizens secedes from the territory in which those citizens reside. I argue that the wrongness of territorial exclusion explains why there is no pro tanto right for a state to exclude immigrants, because otherwise there would be a pro tanto right for the state to kick people out by seceding from the territory they inhabit. Because kicking people out like this is typically wrong, borders cannot be closed. (shrink)

I defend the cosmopolitan instrumentalist theory of secession, according to which a group has a right to secede only if this would promote cosmopolitan justice. I argue that the theory is preferable to other theories of secession because it is an entailment of cosmopolitanism, which is independently attractive, and because, unlike other theories of secession, it allows us to give the answers we want to give in cases like secession of the rich or secession that would make things worse for (...) minorities. I defend the view against the objections that it allows for colonialism and annexation, that it is not a distinct theory, and that it is impractical. (shrink)

Responsible research practices are critical to maintaining integrity in research and the provision of institutional trainings is an important means of promoting research integrity. However, studies show contrasting results on the efficacy of institutional training and that these approaches may not be fully effective in promoting research integrity among individuals and improving the overall climate in research integrity. Therefore, a more comprehensive multi-dimensional learning strategy seems to be needed. This includes continuous and tailored training at different institutional levels, the incorporation (...) of training sessions focusing on the development of the moral character of researchers, and the use of different mentoring practices. With this comprehensive approach, research institutions can foster a culture of integrity in research, improve the overall research integrity climate and promote responsible research practices by individuals. (shrink)

This chapter introduces readers to the view that praise is a form of address, or is communicative in the sense of seeking uptake from its target. The proposal that praise is communicative will seem counterintuitive if we take blame to be our paradigm of what it is for a responsibility-response to be communicative. This is because blame is communicative in a manner that intuitively presupposes some normative failure; it involves calling its target to account (or answer) for some wrongdoing. But, (...) the ‘rightdoer’ already properly regarded the relevant reasons in acting praiseworthily. So, there is nothing for which the praiseworthy agent must similarly account or answer for. How then could praise be communicative in sense of seeking uptake from its target? This chapter develops the view that praise is communicative in that it invites the praiseworthy agent to accept credit by co-valuing their action in the evaluative terms supplied by the praiser. This proposal is defended against three objections, namely that it is descriptively inadequate regarding our actual practices, that it is morally mistaken about when we owe others a response, and that it implies redundant communication. (shrink)

Nietzsche and "The birth of tragedy"" provides a clear account of the text and explores the philosophical, literary and historical influences bearing upon it. Each chapter examines part of the text, explaining the ideas presented and assessing relevant scholarly points of interpretation. The book will be an invaluable guide to readers in philosophy, literary studies and classical studies coming to "The birth of tragedy" for the first time.

This volume provides a detailed account of the syntax of expressive language, that is, utterances that express, rather than describe, the emotions and attitudes of the speaker... Daniel Gutzmann demonstrates that expressivity has strong syntactic reflexes that interact with the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of these utterances, and argues that expressivity is in fact a syntactic feature on a par with other established features such as tense and gender. Evidence for this claim is drawn from three detailed case studies (...) of expressive adjectives, intensifiers, and vocatives; their puzzling properties are accounted for through a minimalist approach to syntactic features and agreement, which shows that expressivity can partake in agreement operations, trigger movement, and be selected for syntactically. The analysis not only supports the hypothesis of expressive syntax, but also highlights the hidden role that grammar may play in phenomena that are traditionally considered to be solely semantic in nature" -- Publisher. (shrink)

Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that explains (...) and predicts the decisions of agents who, like ourselves, fail to be logically omniscient: that is, of agents whose beliefs may not be deductively closed, or even consistent. (Winner of the 2021 Isaac Levi Prize.). (shrink)

After 50 years of debate, the ethics of aggregation has reached a curious stalemate, with both sides arguing that only their theory treats people as equals. I argue that, on the issue of equality, both sides are wrong. From the premise that “each counts for one,” we cannot derive the conclusion that “more count for more”—or its negation. The familiar arguments from equality to aggregation presuppose more than equality: the Kamm/Scanlon “Balancing Argument” rests on what social choice theorists call “(Positive) (...) Responsiveness,” Kamm’s “Aggregation Argument” assumes that “equal” lives are fungible, and Hsieh et al. have it that spreading goods broadly best approximates equality. In each case, the crucial premise is not equality itself but a further idea that Taurek, I argue, can safely reject. I conclude with a conjecture: there is no theory-neutral argument that settles the question of whether the numbers count. (shrink)

This paper presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault’s critical project. It is well known that Foucault’s genealogical critique does not focus on issues of justification, but instead tackles “aspectival captivity,” that is, apparently inevitable limits of thought that constrain the agent’s freedom but that, in fact, can be transformed. However, it has not been recognized that, according to Foucault, critique can proceed along two distinct paths. In a key passage of “What Is Critique?,” Foucault states that critique is tasked (...) with questioning truth about its effects of power and with questioning power about its discourses of truth. We show that this “double movement” organizes Foucault’s critical project as a whole, giving it a significantly wider scope and a more complex structure than has been previously acknowledged. At the heart of the above-mentioned bifurcation lies an apparent tension between two contrastive roles Foucault assigns to truth-telling in the context of critique: on the one hand, truth-telling (as avowal) is a target of critique; on the other, truth-telling (as parrhesia) is one of critique’s methods. We argue that combining these two dimensions in a unified account is crucial for understanding and re-evaluating Foucault’s critical project as a whole. By showing that truth-telling remains an essential element of Foucauldian critique, this paper also rectifies some influential misinterpretations according to which Foucault’s critical project seeks to eliminate truth from the picture. (shrink)

This chapter draws on insights from non-equilibrium thermodynamics to demonstrate the ontological inadequacy of the machine conception of the organism. The thermodynamic character of living systems underlies the importance of metabolism and calls for the adoption of a processual view, exemplified by the Heraclitean metaphor of the stream of life. This alternative conception is explored in its various historical formulations and the extent to which it captures the nature of living systems is examined. Following this, the chapter considers the metaphysical (...) implications of reconceptualizing the organism from complex machine to flowing stream. What do we learn when we reject the mechanical and embrace the processual? Three key lessons for biological ontology are identified. The first is that activity is a necessary condition for existence. The second is that persistence is grounded in the continuous self-maintenance of form. And the third is that order does not entail design. (shrink)

I argue that the phenomenon underlying Bernard Williams’ (1976) “agent-regret” is considerably broader than appreciated by Williams and others. Agent-regret— an anguished response that agents have for harms they have caused, even if faultlessly— I maintain, is a species of a more general response to harms that need not be one’s fault, but which nonetheless impact one’s practical identity in a special way. This broader genus includes as a species what I call “relation-regret”, a pained response to harm caused by (...) a person to whom one is intimately related, as a co-member of a group partly constitutive of one’s practical identity (e.g. one’s family). After providing an account of the moral psychology of relation-regret, I attend to its normative significance, proposing in particular that acceptance of relation-regret provides us with reasons for accepting a novel form of moral luck, namely associative luck: the luck of being vulnerable to responsibility-responses in virtue of one’s attachments to others, despite one’s personal faultlessness. (shrink)

We propose to analyze well-known cases of "imaginative resistance" from the philosophical literature (Gendler, Walton, Weatherson) as involving the inference that particular content should be attributed to either: (i) a character rather than the narrator or, (ii) an unreliable, irrational, opinionated, and/or morally deviant "first person" narrator who was originally perceived to be a typical impersonal, omniscient, "effaced" narrator. We model the latter type of attribution in terms of two independently motivated linguistic mechanisms: accommodation of a discourse referent (Lewis, Stalnaker, (...) Kamp) and 'cautious' updating as a model of non-cooperative information exchange (Eckardt). (shrink)

As a strategy for exploring the relationship between understanding and knowledge, we consider whether epistemic luck – which is typically thought to undermine knowledge – undermines understanding. Questions about the etiology of understanding have also been at the heart of recent theoretical debates within epistemology. Kvanvig (2003) put forward the argument that there could be lucky understanding and produced an example that he deemed persuasive. Grimm (2006) responded with a case that, he argued, demonstrated that there could not be lucky (...) understanding. In this paper, we empirically examine how participants' patterns of understanding attributions line up with the predictions of Kvanvig and Grimm. We argue that the data challenge Kvanvig's position. People do not differentiate between knowing-why and understanding-why on the basis of proper etiology: attributions of knowledge and understanding involve comparable (and minimal) roles for epistemic luck. We thus posit that folk knowledge and understanding are etiologically symmetrical. (shrink)

The article addresses the pervasive global challenge of delayed justice, emphasizing its role as a catalyst for widespread judicial reforms. The study defines international and national court approaches to reasonable trial durations by employing systematic and comparative legal methods. It delves into essential technology courts and parties use to ensure timely proceedings, categorizing associated risks and problems. The authors advocate for the multi-door courthouse system, illustrating its efficacy in reducing delays. Furthermore, the article classifies technologies facilitating reasonable trial durations, acknowledging (...) and offering solutions for the challenges they present. This research contributes to the dynamic landscape of judicial reform, offering a holistic perspective on the multifaceted aspects of timely justice. (shrink)

How does causation in the physical world relate to implication in logic? This article presents implication as fundamentally a relation of inclusion between propositions. Given this, it is argued that an event cannot “causally imply” another, also given the laws of nature. Then, by applying the notion of inclusion to physical objects, a relation “within the possibilities of” is developed, which generates a partial order on sets of entities and is independent of time. Based on this, it is shown that (...) changes of physical objects in time (at any rate, a great many of them) imply, and thus counterfactually depend on, what we call “causes” – an asymmetric dependence which is robust despite the perspectival nature of the concept of “cause”. (shrink)

From an early age, humans exhibit a tendency to identify, adopt, and enforce the norms of their local communities. Norms are the social rules that mark out what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden in different situations for various community members. These rules are informal in the sense that although they are sometimes represented in formal laws, such as the rule governing which side of the road to drive on, they need not be explicitly codified to effectively influence behavior. There (...) are rules that forbid theft or the breaking of promises, but also rules which govern how close it is appropriate to stand to someone while talking to them, or how loud one should talk during the conversation. Thus understood, norms regulate a wide range of activity. They exhibit cultural variability in their prescriptions and proscriptions, but the presence of norms in general appears to be culturally universal. Some norms exhibit characteristics that are often associated with morality, such as a rule that applies to everyone and prohibits causing unnecessary harm. Others norms apply only to certain people, such as those that delimit appropriate clothing for members of different genders, or those concerning the expectations and responsibilities ascribed to individuals who occupy positions of leadership. The norms that prevail in a community can be more or less fair, reasonable, or impartial, and can be subject to critique and change. This entry provides an overview of interdisciplinary research into the psychological capacity for norm-guided cognition, motivation, and behavior. The notions of a norm and normativity occur in an enormous range of research that spans the humanities and behavioral sciences. Researchers primarily concerned with the psychology distinctive of norm-governed behavior take what can be called “cognitive-evolutionary” approaches to their subject matter. These approaches, common in the cognitive sciences, draw on a variety of resources and evidence to investigate different psychological capacities. This entry describes how these have been used to construct accounts of those cognitive and motivational features of minds that underpin the capacity to acquire, conform to, and enforce norms. It also describes how theories of the selective pressures and adaptive challenges prominent in recent human evolution have helped to inform and constrain theorizing about this psychological capacity, as well as how its features can influence the transmission and cultural evolution of norms. By way of organization, the entry starts with basics and proceeds to add subsequent layers of intricacy and detail. Researchers taking cognitive-evolutionary approaches to norms come from a wide range of disciplines, and have formulated, explored, and debated positions on a large number of different issues. In order to present a comprehensible overview of these interconnected literatures, the entry starts by laying out main contours and central tenets, the key landmarks in the conceptual space common to different theories and claims. It goes on to provide a more detailed description of the kinds of theoretical resources that researchers have employed, and identifies important dimensions along which more specific accounts of the psychology of norms have varied. It then canvasses different sources of empirical evidence that have begun to illuminate other philosophically interesting features of the capacity for norms. Finally, it ends with a discussion of the relationship between norm cognition and morality, with a few illustrations drawn from recent debates in moral theory. (shrink)

My subject is the kind of Epistemic Conservatism (EC) that says that an agent is in some measure justified in maintaining a belief simply in virtue of the fact that the agent has that belief. Quine’s alternative to positivist foundationalism, Chisholmian particularism, Rawls’s reflective equilibrium, and Bayesianism all seem to rely on EC. I argue that, in order to evaluate EC, we must consider an agent holding a bare belief, that is, a belief stripped of all personal memory and epistemic (...) context. Taking a stylistic cue from Peter Strawson, I argue that, though it does not seem to be self-contradictory to suppose that someone has a bare belief, and so it is not absolutely inconceivable that bare beliefs exist, it is, for us as we are, practically inconceivable that bare beliefs exist. It does not seem practically feasible, then, to evaluate EC on its own terms. (shrink)

This article focuses on the main methods used in analytic metaphysics. It first considers five important sources of constraints on metaphysical theorizing: linguistic and conceptual analysis, consulting intuitions, employing the findings of science, respecting folk opinion, and applying theoretical virtues in metaphysical theory choice such as preferring simpler theories, or preferring more explanatory theories. It then examines the role of formal methods in metaphysics as well as the role of metaphysical communities, traditions, and the place of the history of metaphysics (...) in contemporary work. It also discusses the issue of whether metaphysics should be seen as an enterprise that will yield knowledge of metaphysical matters or whether it should have more modest epistemic goals. Finally, it explores the question of how much of metaphysics is a priori. (shrink)

In this paper I try to defend McDowell’s empiricism from a certain objection made by Davidson, Stroud and Glüer. The objection states that experiences cannot be reasons because they are—as McDowell conceives them—inert. I argue that, even though there is something correct in the objection, that is not sufficient for rejecting the epistemological character that McDowell attributes to experiences. My strategy consists basically in showing that experiences involve a constitutive attitude of acceptance of their contents.

This Handbook maps a central terrain of philosophy, and provides the definitive guide to it. An illustrious team of philosophers explore the concept of a reason to do or believe something, in order to determine what these reasons are and how they work. And they investigate the nature of 'normative' claims about what we ought to do or believe.

Daniel Whistler argues that Hemsterhuis' philosophy matters and that its exclusion from the canon of modern philosophy has been unjust. This is not just because of its influence on later thinkers, but is primarily because Hemsterhuis' philosophy contains a rich assemblage of ideas and philosophical practices.

Deleuze argued that a fundamental mutation in the concept of time occurred in Kant. In antiquity, the concept of time was subordinated to the concept of movement: time was a ‘measure’ of movement. In Kant, this relation is inverted: time is no longer subordinated to movement but assumes an autonomy of its own: time becomes "the pure and empty form" of everything that moves and changes. What is essential in the theory of time is not the distinction between objective ‘clock (...) time’ (or physical time) and the subjective experience of ‘time consciousness,’ since both of them measure movements, whether the movement of extensive objects or intensive states. What is fundamental is rather the relation between time and movement, since time can only assume its own concept when it ceases to be subordinate to movement, whether that movement is objective or subjective. This article examines how Kant inverted the relation between time and movement, and how Deleuze’s own theory of time builds on Kant’s revolution and extends it further. (shrink)

This essay surveys a number of prominent, recurring, and new directions in the growing scholarly discourse on the theme “Heidegger and Judaism” arranged under three headings. The first, the contrastive framing, encompasses cases in which the relationship between Heidegger and Judaism is perceived as antithetical. The second, the conjunctive framing, encompasses views claiming the existence of affinities and parallels between Heidegger and Judaism, grouped under three subheadings: “Heidegger and biblical thinking,” “Heidegger and Kabbalah,” and “Heidegger and the Jewish nation.” The (...) third, historical perspectives, uses the approach of intellectual history to explore visions of Judaism that are developed as part of engagements with Heidegger’s philosophy. (shrink)

Having concepts is a distinctive sort of cognitive capacity. One thing that conceptual thought requires is obeying the Generality Constraint: concepts ought to be freely recombinable with other concepts to form novel thoughts, independent of what they are concepts of. Having concepts, then, constrains cognitive architecture in interesting ways. In recent years, spurred on by the rise of evolutionary psychology, massively modular models of the mind have gained prominence. I argue that these architectures are incapable of satisfying the Generality Constraint, (...) and hence incapable of underpinning conceptual thought. I develop this argument with respect to two well-articulated proposals, due to Dan Sperber and Peter Carruthers. Neither proposal gives us a satisfactory explanation of Generality within the confines of a genuinely modular architecture. Massively modular minds may display considerable behavioral and cognitive flexibility, but not humanlike conceptualized thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Frank Hofmann’s reply to my (2022) argument against “evidential minimalism” (EM). According to defenders of EM, there is a close connection between evidence and normative reasons for belief: evidence is either itself, or (under certain “minimal” conditions) gives rise to, a normative reason for belief. In my (2022), I argued against EM by showing that there are cases where: (i) S possesses strong evidence E for the truth of p at time t, (ii) all (...) minimal conditions for the normativity of E are met at t, (iii) S doesn’t believe p at t, yet (iv) S isn’t criticizable on account of (i)-(iii) at t. I then appealed to a linking claim connecting criticizability with the existence of normative reasons for belief. Hofmann’s reply invokes a distinction between two different kinds of epistemic criticism: a strong and a weak form. I will argue that Hofmann’s distinction fails to save EM from my argument. (shrink)

Philosophers debate about which logical system, if any, is the One True Logic. This involves a disagreement concerning the sufficient conditions that may single out the correct logic among various candidates. This paper discusses whether there are necessary conditions for the correct logic; that is, I discuss whether there are features such that if a logic is correct, then it has those features, although having them might not be sufficient to single out the correct logic. Traditional rationalist arguments suggest that (...) the necessary conditions of thought are necessary and sufficient conditions singling out the correct logical and mathematical theories. In the contemporary debate, Chalmers advocates a view along this line. Jago, analogously, suggests that the necessary conditions for thought—or, as he calls them, our basic epistemic expectations—single out a family of logical and mathematical theories. Warren and Williamson, on the other hand, argue that there are no necessary conditions of thought. I argue that there are necessary conditions for thought, and these are necessary but not sufficient conditions to be the correct logic; indeed, these are features that all logics—correct or incorrect—share. No view we can understand is ruled out by the necessary conditions for thought, but we cannot understand quite any view. Human linguistic and conceptual abilities are genetically constrained, and these constraints are our best guide to the boundaries of logic. Arguing for this, I tackle two dogmas of modern rationalism: namely, the view that the biological constraints of human cognition have no bearing on the boundaries of the epistemic space, and the view that the boundaries of thought coincide with the boundaries of language. (shrink)