Can art, religion, or philosophy afford ineffable insights? If so, what are they? The idea of ineffability has puzzled philosophers from Laozi to Wittgenstein. In Ineffability and its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion and Philosophy, Silvia Jonas examines different ways of thinking about what ineffable insights might involve metaphysically, and shows which of these are in fact incoherent. Jonas discusses the concepts of ineffable properties and objects, ineffable propositions, ineffable content, and ineffable knowledge, examining the metaphysical pitfalls (...) involved in these concepts. Ultimately, she defends the idea that ineffable insights as found in aesthetic, religious, and philosophical contexts are best understood in terms of self-acquaintance, a particular kind of non-propositional knowledge. Ineffability as a philosophical topic is as old as the history of philosophy itself, but contributions to the exploration of ineffability have been sparse. The theory developed by Jonas makes the concept tangible and usable in many different philosophical contexts. (shrink)

My aim in this essay is largely defensive. I aim to discuss some problems for moral error theory and to offer plausible solutions. A full positive defense of moral error theory would require substantial investigations of rival metaethical views, but that is beyond the scope of this essay. I will, however, try to motivate moral error theory and to clarify its commitments. Moral error theorists typically accept two claims – one conceptual and one ontological – about moral facts. The conceptual (...) claim is that moral facts are or entail facts about categorical reasons (and correspondingly that moral claims are or entail claims about categorical reasons); the ontological claim is that there are no categorical reasons – and consequently no moral facts – in reality. I accept this version of moral error theory and I try to unpack what it amounts to in Section 2.1 In the course of doing so I consider two preliminary objections: that moral error theory is (probably) false because its implications are intuitively unacceptable (what I call the Moorean objection) and that the general motivation for moral error theory is self-undermining in that it rests on a hidden appeal to norms. The above characterization seems to entail the standard formulation of moral error theory, according to which first-order moral claims are uniformly false. Critics have argued that the standard formulation is incoherent since – by the law of excluded middle – the negation of a false claim is true. Hence if ‘Torture is wrong’ is false, ‘Torture is not wrong’ is true. Contrary to what moral error theorists contend, then, moral error theory seems to carry first-order moral implications that by the theory’s own lights are uniformly false. In Section 3 I suggest a formulation that is consistent with the standard formulation of moral error theory, free of first-order moral implications, and subject to no logical difficulties. In Section 4 I consider and rebut Stephen Finlay’s recent attack on moral error theory. According to Finlay the conceptual claim is false because all moral claims – and indeed all normative claims – are, or should be understood as, relativized to some moral standard or system of ends. Moral error theorists thus attribute to ordinary speakers an error that simply isn’t there. I argue that Finlay’s view has some very implausible implications and that it does not avoid commitment to various forms of error theory. This becomes especially clear when we focus on fundamental moral claims. In Section 5 I consider the worry that error theorists’ rejection of categorical reasons proves too much; in particular, the worry that error theorists’ qualms about categorical reasons apply equally to claims about hypothetical reasons, that is, claims to the effect that there is reason to take the means to one’s ends. In my view error theorists such as Mackie and Joyce have failed to pay due consideration to this problem. What the challenge establishes, I submit, is that error theorists cannot just take for granted that hypothetical reasons are metaphysically unproblematic; they must offer an account of hypothetical reasons that shows that they are. I argue that the only plausible account available to error theorists is one according to which claims about hypothetical reasons reduce to non-normative claims about relations between means and ends. (shrink)

erster Teilband. Grundlegung -- zweiter Teilband. Tragweite und Aktualität einer Zukunftsethik.

Die Demut wird gegenwärtig entweder als ein verstaubtes Erbe des Christentums wahrgenommen oder vermehrt als ein säkulares „Modewort“ verstanden, das als mahnender Aufruf für die Rückgewinnung eines verlorenen Maßes zum Einsatz kommt. Jonas Puchta unternimmt den Versuch, unter Berücksichtigung der christlichen Tradition und ihrer Kritiker die Demut auf Grundlage einschlägiger Erfahrungen des Menschseins auf den Begriff zu bringen.

This chapter focuses exclusively on normative reasons. Normative reasons count in favor of actions and attitudes like beliefs, desires, feelings, and emotions. Section 11.2 explores the common ground concerning the metaphysics of reasons. We shall see that the really controversial metaphysical issues in metanormative theorizing about reasons arise with respect to the metaphysics of the reason relation. The two subsequent sections therefore go beyond the common ground and consider competing accounts of the reason relation. Robust and quietist versions of non-naturalism (...) are considered in section 11.3 and naturalism is considered in section 11.4. Section 11.5 summarizes and gives a brief comparative assessment of the accounts considered. (shrink)

This paper revisits Richard Price’s Review of the Principal Questions in Morals. Price was a defender of rationalism about ethics and he anticipated many views and arguments that became influential as the metaethical and ethical debates evolved over the later centuries. The paper explores and assesses Price’s arguments in favour of rationalism and against sentimentalism, with a view to how they bear on the modern metaethical debate.

Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. Part I explores the historical context of the debate; Part II assesses J. L. Mackie's famous arguments; Part III defends error theory against challenges and considers its implications for our moral thinking.

Critical thinking is considered to be a central epistemic aim of education. The claim may be about skills, but also about the state of justified belief. In opposition to this latter view, Alvin Goldman claimed that justification is only a means to true belief and that the only fundamental epistemic aim of education is true belief. Harvey Siegel’s response defended the view that justified belief is in fact a fundamental epistemic aim of education. In a recent article, Alessia Marabini and (...) Luca Moretti analyse Siegel’s arguments, reject all of them, and provide two new ones. I defend one of Siegel’s arguments against their objection, raise some doubts about one of their own arguments, and give an additional argument against Goldman’s view. (shrink)

The book develops the metaphysics of meaning along the lines set up by Paul Grice, defining the three central notions of what is meant, said and implicated. The Gricean notion of what is said is threatened by semantic underdetermination: If the sentence underdetermines the thought it is used to express, what is said cannot be the proposition expressed by the sentence and meant by the speaker. This leads to a number of questions: How far does semantic underdetermination reach? Do we (...) have to extend or restrict the Gricean notion? Is what is said semantic or pragmatic? Keeping these metaphysical questions separate from the epistemological question of how the hearer understands what is meant, which is best explained by generalizing the Gricean theory of implicature derivation and combining it with a game-theoretic model, the book provides an original defense of a Gricean view in the ongoing debate about semantics and pragmatics. (shrink)

Error theories have been proposed and defended in several different areas of philosophy. In addition to ethics, there are error theories about numbers, color, free will, and personal identity. Moral error theories differ in scope. Theories at one end of the spectrum take normative judgments in general—of which moral judgments are a subclass—to be uniformly false, whereas theories at the other end of the spectrum take only a subclass of moral judgments—example those concerning duty and obligation, but not those concerning (...) virtue and vice—to be uniformly false. Moral error theorists typically join forces with non-naturalist realists, against naturalism and non-cognitivism. Facts that are normative in the reason-implying sense are irreducibly normative, and they are very different. Many non-naturalist realists and error theorists maintain that it is impossible to give a plausible naturalistic account of moral facts, precisely because they are irreducibly normative; moral naturalism therefore falls prey to the "normativity objection". (shrink)

Moral nihilism is the view that there are no moral facts or moral truths. It is the ontological component of moral error theory, which is the best-known and most comprehensive metaethical theory that involves moral nihilism. My main aim is to discuss some consequences of endorsing moral error theory or believing to some degree that moral error theory is true. In §2, I consider the implications for ordinary moral thought and discourse and the epistemological consequences for moral theorizing. In §3, (...) I consider a recent challenge, according to which moral judgments do not have the epistemic profile that moral error theory alleges. I shall argue in §3–5 that the challenge can be met and that there is evidence that moral error theory is in fact correct about the epistemic profile of moral judgments. (shrink)

At the heart of Zaller's model of public opinion lies the hypothesis that the greater one's level of political awareness, the more one is able to deduce political preferences from abstract values. Due to data limitations, Zaller relied on liberal/conservative scales as proxy measures of abstract values. However, measures of values correlate robustly with ideological scales only among the politically aware; the politically unaware do not hold genuine ideological orientations. Consequently, citizens may be better able than Zaller allows to connect (...) values to policies without elite input. (shrink)

Experiences—visual, emotional, or otherwise—play a role in providing us with justification to believe claims about the world. Some accounts of how experiences provide justification emphasize the role of the experiences’ distinctive phenomenology, i.e. ‘what it is like’ to have the experience. Other accounts emphasize the justificatory role to the experiences’ etiology. A number of authors have used cases of cognitively penetrated visual experience to raise an epistemic challenge for theories of perceptual justification that emphasize the justificatory role of phenomenology rather (...) than etiology. Proponents of the challenge argue that cognitively penetrated visual experiences can fail to provide the usual justification because they have improper etiologies. However, extant arguments for the challenge’s key claims are subject to formidable objections. In this paper, I present the challenge’s key claims, raise objections to previous attempts to establish them, and then offer a novel argument in support of the challenge. My argument relies on an analogy between cognitively penetrated visual and emotional experiences. I argue that some emotional experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their improper etiologies and conclude that analogous cognitively penetrated visual experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their etiologies, as well. (shrink)

Loss is an inevitable part of life and grief is a natural part of the healing process. In this sense, the grieving process is universal. People commonly associate certain losses with strong feelings of grief. Although the concept of grief is a direct reminder of death, grief and loss can happen in different ways – death, divorce, deployment or other situations of abandonment. Different effects can influence how people understand and approach the grief process such as importance and place of (...) the loss in life, cultural background, belief systems, etc. Having mentally retarded child is also a shocking and unexpected situation for parents who are dreaming about a healthy baby. Parents can experience grief at this process. In 1969, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced what became known as the “five stages of grief.” These stages of grief were based on her studies of the feelings of patients facing terminal illness, but many people have generalized them to other types of negative life changes and losses, such as the death of a loved one, losses of dreams or unexpected disability situations. In this article, grief reactions of mothers who learns that she has a mentally retarded child during birth was investigated. It was determined that the five stages of grief proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) are experienced by mothers. Also it was observed that, mothers need grief counseling in this process. (shrink)

This paper concerns how extant theorists of predictive coding conceptualize and explain possible instances of cognitive penetration. §I offers brief clarification of the predictive coding framework and relevant mechanisms, and a brief characterization of cognitive penetration and some challenges that come with defining it. §II develops more precise ways that the predictive coding framework can explain, and of course thereby allow for, genuine top-down causal effects on perceptual experience, of the kind discussed in the context of cognitive penetration. §III develops (...) these insights further with an eye towards tracking one extant criterion for cognitive penetration, namely, that the relevant cognitive effects on perception must be sufficiently direct. Throughout these discussions, we extend the analyses of the predictive coding models, as we know them. So one open question that surfaces is how much of the extended analyses are genuinely just part of the predictive coding models, or something that must be added to them in order to generate these additional explanatory benefits. In §IV, we analyze and criticize a claim made by some theorists of predictive coding, namely, that (interesting) instances of cognitive penetration tend to occur in perceptual circumstances involving substantial noise or uncertainty. It is here that our analysis is most critical. We argue that, when applied, the claim fails to explain (or perhaps even be consistent with) a large range of important and uncontroversially interesting possible cases of cognitive penetration. We conclude with a general speculation about how the recent work on the predictive mind may influence the current dialectic concerning top-down effects on perception. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to work out Quine's account of explication. Quine does not provide a general account, but considers a paradigmatic example which does not fit other examples he claims to be explications. Besides working out Quine's account of explication and explaining this tension, I show how it connects to other notions such as paraphrase and ontological commitment. Furthermore, I relate Quinean explication to Carnap's conception and argue that Quinean explication is much narrower because its main (...) purpose is to be a criterion of theory choice. (shrink)

The first decade of event-related potential (ERP) research had established that the most consistent correlates of the onset of visual consciousness are the early visual awareness negativity (VAN), a posterior negative component in the N2 time range, and the late positivity (LP), an anterior positive component in the P3 time range. Two earlier extensive reviews ten years ago had concluded that VAN is the earliest and most reliable correlate of visual phenomenal consciousness, whereas LP probably reflects later processes associated with (...) reflective/access consciousness. This article provides an update to those earlier reviews. ERP and MEG studies that have appeared since 2010 and directly compared ERPs between aware and unaware conditions are reviewed, and important new developments in the field are discussed. The result corroborates VAN as the earliest and most consistent signature of visual phenomenal consciousness, and casts further doubt on LP as an ERP correlate of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Recently, Wilcox (JGPS 51: 65–87, 2020) argued against the so-called wide interval view and in favor of the principle of indifference as the correct response to unspecific evidence. Embedded in a formal model of the beliefs of an agent, the former presupposes imprecise probabilities and the latter numerically precise degrees of belief. His argument is illustrated by a thought experiment that comes with a fundamental intuition. According to Wilcox, the wide interval view is incompatible with this intuition and, thus, undermined. (...) In contrast, I show that the intuition behind the thought experiment is, in fact, compatible with the wide interval view if it is embedded into a specific conception of imprecise probabilities as model of belief. This conception is an extension of a framework which I call modified supervaluationism (MSV) and which I recently presented elsewhere (Karge 2021, 175–191). To accommodate the thought experiment’s fundamental intuition, it introduces a notion of second-order beliefs. (shrink)

Why is wrong to punish criminals who have been entrapped by the state? The paper begins by presenting some criticisms of existing answers to this question. First, they fail to put the target, or victim, of entrapment at the centre of the moral explanation. Second, they fail to account for the intuitive relation between the reasons not to entrap and the reasons not to punish. Third, they struggle to account for the existence of agent-neutral reasons not to punish entrapped offenders. (...) Lastly, they are ill-equipped to explain why entrapment seems problematic also outside the legal context. In response, the paper develops a novel account of entrapment: the Manipulation Account. According to this, entrapment always involves a particular kind of manipulation (manipulation-by-hidden-intentions) which morally taints punishment. In short, I suggest that both the initial entrapment and the subsequent punishment involve wrongful manipulation. Lastly, the paper presents some untraditional, but ultimately welcoming, implications of the account. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present a new reconstruction of Aristotle's assertoric logic as he develops it in Prior Analytics, A1-7. This reconstruction will be much closer to Aristotle's original...

Any complete theory of “what we owe to each other” must be able to adequately accommodate directed or bipolar obligations, that is, those obligations that are owed to a particular individual and in virtue of which another individual stands to be wronged. Bipolar obligations receive their moral importance from their intimate connection to a particular form of recognition respect that we owe to each other: respect of another as a source of valid claims to whom in particular we owe certain (...) treatment and, at the very least, an apology if we fail to accord that treatment. While some of the most prominent accounts of interpersonal morality fail to adequately accommodate bipolar obligations, I here investigate a recent proposal that explicitly seeks to improve on these accounts—Stephen Darwall’s second-personal theory of morality. Ultimately, I object to Darwall’s theory on the grounds that his second-personal theory normatively ties bipolar obligations too closely to non-directed moral obligations or those that we are under, period. The problem for Darwall’s account is that any obligations that at first appear to be bipolar and owed to someone in particular turn out to be instances of non-directed moral obligations period that have their normative source in the representative authority of the moral community. Adequately accommodating bipolar obligations requires taking seriously a novel second-personal approach, according to which we locate the normative sources of our interpersonal obligations in the claims and demands particular persons and deliberate from what I call the pairwise or bipolar standpoint. (shrink)

Discussing Plato's views on knowledge, recollection, dialogue, and epiphany, this ambitious volume offers a systematic analysis of the ways that Platonic approaches to education can help students navigate today's increasingly complex moral environment. Though interest in Platonic education may have waned due to a perceived view of Platonic scholarship as wholly impractical, this volume addresses common misunderstandings of Plato's work and highlights the contemporary relevance of Plato's ideas to contemporary moral education. Building on philosophical interpretations, the book argues persuasively that (...) educators might employ Platonic themes and dialogue in the classroom. Split into two parts, the book looks first to contextualise Plato's theory of moral education within political, ethical, and educational frameworks. Equipped with this knowledge, part two then offers contemporary educators the strategies needed for implementing Plato's educational theory within the pluralistic, democratic classroom setting. A Platonic Theory of Moral Education will be of interest to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of: ethics; Plato scholarship; moral psychology; educational foundations; and the philosophy of education. This book would also benefit graduate students and scholars in teacher education. Mark E. Jonas is Professor of Education and Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, US. Yoshiaki Nakazawa is Assistant Professor of Education at University of Dallas, US. (shrink)

This article addresses the growing industry of retail socially responsible investment (SRI) profiled mutual funds. Very few previous studies have examined the final consumer of SRI profiled mutual funds. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to, in an exploratory manner, examine the impact of a number of pro-social, financial performance, and socio-demographic variables on SRI behavior in order to explain why investors choose to invest different proportions of their investment portfolio in SRI profiled funds. An ordinal logistic regression analysis (...) on 528 private investors revealed that two of the three pro-social variables had a positive impact on how much the consumer invested in SRI profiled funds. Moreover, there was proof of a non-altruistic motive for investing in SRI as consumers who perceive that financial return of SRI is equal or better than "regular" mutual funds, invested a greater proportion of their portfolio in SRI profiled mutual funds. Furthermore, the results showed that women and better-educated investors were more likely to invest a greater proportion of their investment portfolio in SRI. Overall, the findings indicate that both financial perceptions and pro-social attitudes are connected to consumer investment in SRI. (shrink)

According to T.M. Scanlon's buck-passing account of value, to be valuable is not to possess intrinsic value as a simple and unanalysable property, but rather to have other properties that provide reasons to take up an attitude in favour of their owner or against it. The 'wrong kind of reasons' objection to this view is that we may have reasons to respond for or against something without this having any bearing on its value. The challenge is to explain why such (...) reasons are of the wrong kind. This is what I set out to do, after illustrating the objection more thoroughly. (shrink)

Although the production and recognition of social actions have been central concerns for conversation analysis from the outset, it has recently been argued that CA is yet to develop a systematic analysis of ‘action formation’. As a partial remedy to this situation, John Heritage introduces ‘epistemic status’, which he claims is an unavoidable component of the production and recognition of social action. His proposal addresses the question how is social action produced and recognized? by reference to another question how is (...) relative knowledge recognized? Despite the importance placed on the latter question, it is not clear how it is to be answered in particular cases. We argue that the introduction of epistemic status builds on a reformulation of the action formation problem that unnecessarily de-emphasizes the importance of the sequential environment. Our re-analyses of key sequences cast doubts on the empirical grounding of the epistemic program, and question whether the fundamental role of epistemic status has been convincingly demonstrated. (shrink)

Student relativism is a widespread phenomenon in introductory philosophy courses. It is a pressing issue for teachers because it seems to undermine the very purpose of philosophy. Since the 1980s there is a debate about how to understand and how to deal with student relativism. However, there is as yet no comprehensive presentation of the debate. The first aim of the article is to offer a classification of the strategies for dealing with student relativism and a presentation and short assessment (...) of the main strategies from the debate. The second aim is to present a new strategy based on the theory of conceptual change and drawing on the results from empirical research in developmental psychology on epistemic cognition. I call it the epistemic conceptual change strategy. (shrink)

This article is about how human freedom is understood in the philosophy of Nicolas Malebranche. According to Malebranche, the most important proponent of occasionalism in the modern period, God is the sole and real cause of the universe and all its functioning. In addition, according to him, people are free and responsible for their own actions. In this case, what it means for man to be free in this vision where God is the only reason for everything needs to be (...) explained. While Malebranche's basic views on occasionalism and human freedom are included in many of his works, these views are especially found in his famous six-volume book titled The Search after Truth and in the book of explanations he wrote for this book, Elucidations of the Search after Truth. In the article, the subject is discussed through Malebranche's basic texts. Firstly, the relationship between the human soul and God has been tried to be explained in order to explain Malebranche's understanding of freedom. At this point Malebranche; unlike the Aristotelian thinkers of the Middle Ages, seems to follow an Augustinian line. In this line, the human soul is towards God and in need of His light. Secondly, what freedom means according to him is examined. In Malebranche, it is seen that freedom is the power of man, who is naturally inclined towards the general good, that is, God, to stop his tendency towards this general good in worldly special goods, or to not consent to this and to move towards the better with attention and research. This view emerges on the basis of Malebranche's view of vision in God and the distinction between soul and body. In other words, since human beings are incomplete and limited in their knowledge, they may sometimes not go towards what they really need to reach and may accept any worldly good as true good for themselves. Or since this good is not the general good and will never satisfy him, he may not consent to it and seek out the general good. Freedom is precisely the power either to stop at the particular good or to pay attention and search beyond it. Then, how this power was reconciled with Malebranche's occasionalism was discussed and three prominent issues were examined. Firstly, Malebranche claimed that man has no causal contribution to the tendency towards general or particular goods, and that this occurs only with the influence of God. Secondly, although it seems that a power is attributed to humans in freedom, it can be said that this power is not a positive action that brings about any change. Third, there is the claim that since God is the only true cause, attention and investigation are not a cause of human knowledge but only an occasional, intermediary cause. With these claims, it has been seen that Malebranche associates freedom with sin because he treats it as a stop, that man cannot make any changes, and therefore he evaluates freedom as only the power to want, not the power to act. As a result, it can be said that it is debatable whether a power that does not cause any action or change, but only the desire to consent or not, can be called freedom. In this regard, Malebranche has moved freedom to a negative or incomplete place. Although this study specifically discusses the nature of freedom and its relationship with God through Malebranche's philosophy, it is aimed to contribute to studies on the nature of freedom. It has been seen that further studies on freedom of action and desire can be carried out, especially in the fields of religion and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Organizations that develop and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) systems need to manage the associated risks—for economic, legal, and ethical reasons. However, it is not always clear who is responsible for AI risk management. The three lines of defense (3LoD) model, which is considered best practice in many industries, might offer a solution. It is a risk management framework that helps organizations to assign and coordinate risk management roles and responsibilities. In this article, I suggest ways in which AI companies could (...) implement the model. I also discuss how the model could help reduce risks from AI: it could identify and close gaps in risk coverage, increase the effectiveness of risk management practices, and enable the board of directors to oversee management more effectively. The article is intended to inform decision-makers at leading AI companies, regulators, and standard-setting bodies. (shrink)

This paper develops an analytical approach to comparative political economy that focuses on the relative importance of different components of aggregate demand—in the first instance, exports and household consumption—and dynamic relations among the “demand drivers” of growth. We illustrate this approach by comparing patterns of economic growth in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom over the period 1994–2007. Our discussion emphasizes that export-led growth and consumption-led growth have different implications for distributive conflict.