Here I outline an often under-appreciated position within Anglo-analytic epistemology, that of the apostate to operative metaphilosophical constraints. To help identify and promote awareness of metaphilosophical apostacy, here, I describe the form of metaphilosophical apostacy that I practice in Anglo-analytic epistemology (AAE). My apostasy with respect to AAE begins with significant, metaphilosophical divergences or deep senses of incongruence. A metaphilosophical divergence, on my account, refers to conflict at the level of inquiry-shaping assumptions, constraints, aims, and/or commitments. In this paper, (...) I claim that one way metaphilosophical apostasy emerges in Anglo-analytic epistemology is when inquiry-shaping divergences lead to conceptual indifference. Conceptual indifference, on my account, refers to disinterest that can follow from divergent metaphilosophical and/or aspirational aims and goals for one's favored investigations. To be clear, this is a paper for the growing population of epistemologists who find operative metaphilosophical constraints in AAE ill-fitting. (shrink)

Metaphysics is largely an a priori business, albeit a business that is sensitive to the findings of the physical sciences. But sometimes what the physical sciences tell us about our own world underdetermines what we should think about the metaphysics of how things actually are, and even how they could be. This chapter has two aims. The first is to defend a particular conception of the methodology of a priori metaphysics by, in part, exemplifying that methodology and revealing its results. (...) The second is to present a new account of holes. These two aims dovetail nicely. We are independently interested in providing a better analysis of the concept <hole> that yields a more plausible metaphysical story about holes. But focusing on holes is also a good way to explore the methodology we endorse: for this is an area of metaphysics that is sufficiently self-contained and narrow in focus that it provides a manageable case study, while at the same time raising interesting and deep issues about the nature of space. Ultimately we defend a new, functionalist, analysis of holes, which, unlike its rivals, neither misidentifies nor renders us implausibly eliminativist about holes under various different metaphysical suppositions about the nature of space. In the process, we set out the complex relations between the intension of “hole,” and its extension at various worlds under different suppositions about the nature of space. In explicating these relations our account exemplifies what we take to be the core methodology in a priori metaphysics. (shrink)

Too often, identifying practices of silencing is a seemingly impossible exercise. Here I claim that attempting to give a conceptual reading of the epistemic violence present when silencing occurs can help distinguish the different ways members of oppressed groups are silenced with respect to testimony. I offer an account of epistemic violence as the failure, owing to pernicious ignorance, of hearers to meet the vulnerabilities of speakers in linguistic exchanges. Ultimately, I illustrate that by focusing on the ways in which (...) hearers fail to meet speaker dependency in a linguistic exchange, efforts can be made to demarcate the different types of silencing people face when attempting to testify from oppressed positions in society. (shrink)

In this book Kristi A. Olson addresses the question of fair labor income distribution by proposing the solidarity solution, a new test she defines and defends. She takes as her starting point the envy test, discussed by the philosophers Ronald Dworkin and Philippe Van Parijs and by the economists Jan Tinbergen, Hal Varian, Marc Fleurbaey, Duncan Foley, and Serge-Christophe Kolm. According to the envy test, a distribution is fair when no one prefers someone else's circumstances to their own. After rejecting (...) the envy test, Olson distinguishes two types of envy: personal and impersonal. Impersonal envy makes a demand on others; personal envy, in contrast, does not. Using this distinction, Olson argues that fair labor-income bundles must be impersonal envy-free, but need not be personal envy-free. The book concludes by relating the solidarity solution to concrete problems such as the gender wage gap and taxation. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a version of universalism that is non-mereological. Broadly speaking, non-mereological universalism is the thesis that for any arbitrary set of objects and times, there is a persisting object which, at each of those times, will be constituted by those of the objects that exist at that time. I consider two general versions of non-mereological universalism, one which takes basic simples to be enduring objects, and the other which takes simples to be instantaneous objects. This yields (...) three versions of endurantism, of which I ultimately defend the version I call universalist endurantism. Universalist endurantism is the thesis that (i) for any arbitrary set S of instantaneous simples that exist at the same instant, there exists a fusion of the members of S, and (ii) for any arbitrary set S* of instantaneous fusions each of which exist at a different instant, there exists an enduring object O that is constituted by those fusions at those instants. Universalist endurantism is ‘non-mereological’ in that the relation that holds between instantaneous fusions and persisting objects is not the part/whole relation, but rather, is the relation of constitution, thus allowing that the persisting objects are three rather than four dimensional. I argue that universalist endurantism not only has the various benefits of mereological universalism in allowing vagueness to be explicated as semantic indeterminacy, but in addition allows the endurantist to hold that some properties are genuinely intrinsic and are exemplified simpliciter. (shrink)

Kant's 'practical philosophy' comprehends a diverse group of his writings on ethics, politics, law, religion, and the philosophy of history and culture. Kristi E. Sweet demonstrates the unity and interdependence of these writings by showing how they take as their animating principle the human desire for what Kant calls the unconditioned - understood in the context of his practical thought as human freedom. She traces the relationship between this desire for freedom and the multiple forms of finitude that confront human (...) beings in different aspects of practical life, and stresses the interdependence of the pursuit of individual moral goodness and the formation of community through the state, religion, culture and history. This study of Kant's approach to practical life discovers that doing our duty, itself the realization of our individual freedom, requires that we set for ourselves and pursue a whole constellation of social, political and other communal ends. (shrink)

I argue that two competing accounts of persistence, three and four dimensionalism, are in fact metaphysically equivalent. I begin by clearly defining three and four dimensionalism, and then I show that the two theories are intertranslatable and equally simple. Through consideration of a number of different cases where intuitions about persistence are contradictory, I then go on to show that both theories describe these cases in the same manner. Further consideration of some empirical issues arising from the theory of special (...) relativity lead me to conclude that the two theories are equally explanatory, and thus finally that they are metaphysically equivalent. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Judgment seems not to be an obviously unified work. Unlike other attempts to comprehend it as a unity, which treat it as serving either practical or theoretical interests, Kristi Sweet's book posits it as examining a genuinely independent sphere of human life. In her in-depth account of Kant's Critical philosophical system, Sweet argues that the Critique addresses the question: for what may I hope? The answer is given in Kant's account of 'territory,' a region of experience that (...) both underlies and mediates between freedom and nature. Territory forms the context in which purposiveness without a purpose, the Ideal of Beauty, the sensus communis, genius and aesthetic ideas, and Kant's conception of life and proof of God are best interpreted. Encounters in this sphere are shown to refer us to a larger, more cosmic sense of a whole to which both freedom and nature belong. (shrink)

This paper presents the strongest version of a non-perdurantist four-dimensionalism: a theory according to which persisting objects are four-dimensionally extended in space-time, but not in virtue of having maximal temporal parts. The aims of considering such a view are twofold. First, to evaluate whether such an account could provide a plausible middle ground between the two main competitor accounts of persistence: three-dimensionalism and perdurantist four-dimensionalism. Second, to see what light such a theory sheds on the debate between these two competitor (...) theories. I conclude that despite prima facie reasons to suppose that non-perdurantist four-dimensionalism might be a credible alternative to either other account of persistence, ultimately the view is unsuccessful. The reasons for its failure illuminate the sometimes stagnant debate between three-dimensionalists and perdurantists, providing new reasons to prefer a perdurantist metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of strong conventionalism minus the ontological commitments of that view. It defends the claim that strictly speaking there are no persons, whilst explicating how to make sense of talk that is about (or purportedly about) persons, by appealing to features in common to conventionalist accounts of personal identity. This view has the many benefits of conventionalist accounts in being flexible enough to deal with problem cases, whilst also avoiding the various worries associated with the existence (...) of both persons and human animals occupying the same place at the same time to which conventionalist accounts are committed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Womb as Synecdoche: Introduction to Irigaray’s Deconstruction of Plato’s CaveKristi L. Krumnow (bio)“Le prisonnier n’était déjà plus dans une matrice mais dans une caverne, tentative de figuration, de métaphorisation, de la cavité utérine.”(347)1Entering the used bookstore in a university city not too far from Paris, I was anxious to find a copy of a certain Luce Irigaray book. When asked, the bookstore owner politely mocked me about wanting one (...) of her books. What could I possibly want that for? After all, the study of Irigaray was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s, but today, “C’est bien passé, Madame,” he enlightened me. While the bookshop owner was correct in assessing a time frame of the academic popularity of Irigaray’s work, I would argue that the work she did at the onset of 1970s feminism is no more passé than the philosophers she deconstructed. For this reason, I read Irigaray’s work alongside the work of founder-philosopher-father Plato, in order to highlight the timeless relevance of a supposed irrelevant work as “passé” as Luce Irigaray’s Spéculum de l’autre femme. In this analysis, I argue that the negligence of her reading of Plato’s cave and subsequent amnesia of it clearly substantiate her steadfast claim that masculine universality eradicates the feminine and does so quite ironically and even jarringly, as shown by the critical dismissal of Plato’s cave in Spéculum.2Irigaray’s work does indeed come out of a French national context highly invested in the studies of antiquity and, by the postwar ’60s and ’70s, in the questioning of social, cultural, and political institutions (Egéa-Kuehne 200; Leonard, “Irigaray’s Cave” 159–64; Leonard, “Classics” 143; Leonard,Athens 1–14), but this historical fact does not marginalize her work nor subject it to a mere temporal estrangement of feminism, as the male bookstore owner had insinuated. It certainly is a point of fact that Irigaray questioned the father of Western philosophical truth. In fact, reconsidering Plato was tempting to someone, like Luce Irigaray, invested in cultural and academic revolutions, someone who questioned and doubted, like other cultural revolutionaries3 of the late 1960s and early ’70s. The bookstore owner seemed to be saying that the tide has returned to normal, that is, the “normal” that signifies complacency, the “normal” that no longer questions the supposed truth-bearers. He seemed to be pontificating, “it is no longer status quo not to be status quo,” or more precisely, “The revolution is over. Now, go home, girls.” [End Page 69]Spéculum de l’autre femme, the WholeLuce Irigaray’s work Spéculum de l’autre femme [Speculum of the Other Woman]4 is anything but status quo. In an idiosyncratic prose indicative of her deconstructive project, Irigaray daringly reads untouched historical and philosophical works, ones that for millennia have remained a critical and foundational part of Western discourse. Her methodology is complex and knotty because the rhetoric used twists and winds through its own words, sentences, scenes, and discourse, thereby intentionally effecting an implosion within language.5 While on the one hand she innocently participates in an evaluation of Platonism that Derrida made fashionable a few years prior with “deconstruction” of “La Pharmacie de Platon” (Leonard, Athens 190), what she unveils by rereading Plato’s work à la Derrida is the proliferation and predominance of certain philosophical images and ideas. She names this proliferation “patriarchy,” referencing the “phallus” as the symbol of patriarchy and its dominant masculine discourse, thereby calling every thing masculine-related “phallologic,” all of which are neologisms borrowed and employed from either Derrida or her teacher Lacan. Inevitably, she centers her whole argument on certain Western texts as the cause and consequent advancement of the masculine. Spéculum appears daunting in its 462-page French original,6 although no less truncated, albeit ordered, footnoted, and proportionally spaced, in the English translation (Gill 9). In order to facilitate comprehension of a charged and impressive topic, Irigaray relies on images to elucidate her reading by employing ambitious albeit ancient Greek philosophical metaphors of light, sun, and vision. As she does... (shrink)

This essay unpacks the Utopian impulse in Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita's novella Lunar Braceros 2125–2148 (2009). As speculative fiction that has strong, explicit critiques on labour and globalisation, Lunar Braceros crafts a future-historical and future-present world where racialised forms of labour exploitation are the norm. The novella offers the radical response of worker revolution that can only ever be a potential and desire. The novella does this by presenting an ambivalent labour politics that results in the dismantling of the (...) family as a heteronormative unit and that depend on the figure of the lost radical mother. The intervention this essay makes into Latina/o studies and feminist studies is to rearticulate the figure of motherhood through a specific lens of radicalism that is both queer and proletarian. By thinking about Latina radicalism through the intersections of labour, gender and non-normative sexuality in the novella, we see that the lost mother figure disrupts capitalist patriarchy by offering radical potentiality. (shrink)

This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, I gesture to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, I advocate that the discipline of professional philosophy be cast according to (...) a culture of praxis. Finally, I provide a comparative exercise using Graham Priest’s definition of philosophy and Audre Lorde’s observations of the limitations of philosophical theorizing to show how these two disparate accounts can be understood as philosophical engagement with a shift to a culture of praxis perspective. (shrink)

This paper has three main sections. The first section provides a general characterisation of presentism, eternalism and growing blockism. It presents a pair of core, defining claims that jointly capture each of these three views. This makes clear the respects in which the different views agree, and the respects in which they disagree, about the nature of time. The second section takes these characterisations and considers whether we really do have three distinct views, or whether defenders of these views are (...) somehow talking past one another when they claim to disagree. The third section looks at the key objections to each view and considers some of the replies that can be made to those objections. The paper concludes by offering some thoughts about how future research might help us resolve the debate between defenders of these three views. (shrink)

We find the claim that time is not real in both western and eastern philosophical traditions. In what follows I will call the view that time does not exist temporal error theory. Temporal error theory was made famous in western analytic philosophy in the early 1900s by John McTaggart (1908) and, in much the same tradition, temporal error theory was subsequently defended by Gödel (1949). The idea that time is not real, however, stretches back much further than that. It is (...) common to hear it said that according to Buddhist philosophy (as though that were a monolithic view) time is illusory. While it is not true that, in general, either contemporary or ancient Buddhist scholars have thought time to be illusory, there are certainly some schools of Buddhist thought, such as that of traditional Dzogchen practitioners, according to which there is no time. This paper is an attempt to set out a taxonomy of different views about what it takes for there to be time and, alongside that, a taxonomy of views about whether there is time or not, and if there is time what it is like. (shrink)

The student as consumer has emerged as a common motif and point of contestation in educational philosophy over the past two decades, as part of the critique of the neoliberal educational re...

Many metaphysicians tell us that our world is one in which persisting objects are four-dimensionally extended in time, and persist by being partially present at each moment at which they exist. Many normative theorists tell us that at least some of our core normative practices are justified only if the relation that holds between a person at one time, and that person at another time, is the relation of strict identity. If these metaphysicians are right about the nature of our (...) world, and these normative theorists are right about what justifies our normative practices, then we should be error theorists about the justification of at least some of our core normative practices and in turn, arguably we should eliminate those practices for which justification is lacking. This paper offers a way of resolving the tension between these two views that does not lead into the grips of error theory. It is a way that is amenable to “exceptionists” about persons: those who think there is something special about persons and the first-person perspective; that personhood cannot be explained naturalistically, and the first-person perspective is naturalistically irreducible. The conclusion is thus a conditional: given that one is an exceptionist, an attractive way to resolve this tension is to embrace the view that persons are sui generis ontological kinds. (shrink)

Kristie Miller and James Norton present a new account of metaphysical explanation, not as a philosophical technicality but as a feature of everyday life. This is the notion that we all use in ordinary contexts when we give explanations of a certain sort: Miller and Norton build their account on investigation of these explanatory practices.

In this paper, I explain Black feminist identity politics as a practice that is ‘on the way’ to settler decolonization in a US context for the fact that it makes demands that we attend to our “originating” stories and, in doing so, 1) generate potential for difficult coalitions for decolonization in settler colonial USA and 2) promoting a range of refusals (Simpson 2014) that aid in resisting the completion of settler colonialism in North America, which is still an uncompleted project. (...) Ultimately, I claim Black feminist identity politics, properly understood, is a practice that aids in retaining the possibility of decolonization in a settler colonial state by resisting the historical unknowing that facilitates settler futurity. It is not itself settler decolonization, but rather it is “on the way” to such decolonization as it keeps open the need for decolonial futurity. (shrink)

This article is a chronological narrative analysis of two local newspapers' coverage of a controwsial community issue over a 4 year period. The analysis places the newspapers' coverage in the context of social responsibility theory and argues that even the smallest local newspapers have an ethical responsibility not only to uphold basic precepts of good journalism, such as balance, fairness, and accuracy, but to make an extra effort to provide socially responsible coverage that gives voice to multiple perspectives in their (...) communities. (shrink)

There is a good deal of disagreement about composition. There is firstorder disagreement: there are radically different answers to the special composition question—the question of under what circumstances the xs compose a y. There is second-order disagreement: there are different answers to the question of whether first-order disagreement is real or merely semantic. Virtually all disputants with respect to both the first-and second-order issues agree that the answer or answers to the special composition question will take the form of a (...) necessary truth or truths even though, as I will argue, such answers do not appear to be good candidates to be necessary truths. This paper provides an analysis of the concept of as it pertains to concrete objects, that fulfils two functions. First, it explicates the sense in which claims about composition are contingent and the sense in which they are necessary, and second, it provides a way of understanding when first-order disputes are substantial and when they are merely semantic. (shrink)

This essay considers Kant’s concept of the highest good from a systematic point of view. The two spheres of freedom and nature—of the practical and theoretical—need to be brought into a causal relation for the highest good to be achieved. Kant seems to offer numerous possibilities for how human beings are able to think that it is possible for the highest good to be attainable. I argue that it is only in the third Critique, however, that Kant articulates an answer (...) that also establishes freedom and nature within a larger system. The third Critique does this by positing a third, independent and mediating sphere of human experience that allows a transition between freedom and nature to be effected. This answer to the problem of the highest good is distinctive because the causal efficacy of reason in attaining its own demands is preserved. I examine Kant’s view by way of an analysis of his discussion of ‘territory’ and ‘domain’ in the Introduction to the text. (shrink)

Temporal non-dynamists hold that there is no temporal passage, but concede that many of us judge that it seems as though time passes. Phenomenal Illusionists suppose that things do seem this way, even though things are not this way. They attempt to explain how it is that we are subject to a pervasive phenomenal illusion. More recently, Cognitive Error Theorists have argued that our experiences do not seem that way; rather, we are subject to an error that leads us mistakenly (...) to believe that our experiences seem that way. Cognitive Error Theory is a relatively new view and little has been said to explain why we make such an error, or where, in the cognitive architecture, such an error might creep in. In this paper we remedy this by offering a number of hypotheses about the source of error. In so doing we aim to show that Cognitive Error Theory is a plausible competitor to Phenomenal Illusion Theory. (shrink)

Annual reports are an important element in the genre of corporate public discourse. The reporting practices mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for all publicly traded corporations are intended to render the annual reports a legitimate and trustworthy medium through which management communicates information related to the financial performance of the firm. The following discussion represents an inaugural attempt to investigate the ethical characteristics of the discourse found in corporate annual reports using Habermas' principles of communicative action. In preparing (...) the Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) portion of the report, managers are charged with providing narrative information for investors and other interested third parties relevant to assessing the firm's financial condition. Previous rhetorical studies of the narrative portions of annual reports argue that they serve as means for both legitimate and distorted communication. We investigate this communication medium through the lens of Habermas' norms for communicative action, which require communicators to be comprehensible, truthful, sincere, and legitimate. The study represents an initial attempt to operationalization Habermas' principles of communicative action and to employ a methodology that facilitates their application to research within a business context. From one perspective, consistent with agency theory as specified by neoclassical economics, it would seem that firms anticipating worse-than-expected financial performance would be less likely to exhibit the Habermasian principles necessary for undistorted communication because they would attempt to strategically influence the message being communicated about the firm's financial position. Instead, employing rhetorical analysis software, Diction 5.0, we found that firms expecting both good and bad earnings surprises exhibited a higher level of communicative action than a composite average firm. Although preliminary in nature, our findings suggest that firms anticipating large earnings surprises, either high or low, use the narrative portion of the annual report as a vehicle through which to communicate information about managements' veracity and trustworthiness as well as the firm's financial position. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a psychological explanation for ‘grounding observations’—observations that are thought to provide evidence that there exists a relation of ground. Our explanation does not appeal to the presence of any such relation. Instead, it appeals to certain evolved cognitive mechanisms, along with the traditional modal relations of supervenience, necessitation and entailment. We then consider what, if any, metaphysical conclusions we can draw from the obtaining of such an explanation, and, in particular, if it tells us anything (...) about whether we ought to posit a relation of ground. (shrink)

The value of tension is often underestimated. While it may be the case that tension causes destruction and harm, it is equally likely that it can open up new avenues for creation, adaption, and change. Tension can be used as a conceptual tool for thinking about the moments when bodies collide with time and space, and each makes its presence known. It is in tension that we see moments of opportunity arise. Body Tensions explores these moments through the use of (...) cross-chapter dialogue between inter-disciplinary and internationally located authors. Focusing on expressing and transgressing body tensions, the authors consider issues such as how humans embody time and space; where the limits of corporeality lie; and in what ways humans are able to re-imagine their bodies, environments, and cultures. (shrink)

Weiss, Propen, and Reid gather a diverse group of scholars to analyze the growing obsolescence of the human-object dichotomy in today's world. In doing so, Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman brings together diverse disciplines to foster a dialog on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.

According to the trilemma claim, we cannot have all three of equality, Pareto, and freedom of occupational choice. In response to the trilemma, John Rawls famously sacrificed equality by introducing incentives. In contrast, GA Cohen and others argued that we can, in fact, have all three provided that individuals are properly motivated by an egalitarian ethos. The incentives debate, then, concerns the plausibility of the ethos solution versus the plausibility of the incentives solution. Considerable ink has been spilled on both (...) sides of the debate. Yet, in this essay, I argue that we cannot have this debate until we clarify the terms. Once we clarify the terms, however, we might discover that there is no debate to be had. This is because, depending on how equality, Pareto, and freedom of occupational choice are interpreted, there might not be a trilemma in the first place. Specifically, I use a small but crucial distinction in how equality, the egalitarian ethos, and Pareto are assessed – what I call the internal/external distinction – to disentangle the various paths each solution – the ethos or incentives – could take. I conclude that both solutions have gained illicit plausibility by virtue of not keeping the distinction straight. (shrink)

The concept of dignity is widely debated as to its efficacy as a ground upon which to base respect particularly in relation to human rights. Traditional concepts of inherent dignity associate dignity with the possession of rationality and autonomy, which consequently excludes non-rational humans from being viewed as possessing inherent dignity and therefore equal and inherent worth. This paper offers a theory of inherent dignity based on an account of a common humanity within which all humans might be seen as (...) possessing inherent worth and, therefore, deserving of being recognized and respected equally as ends in themselves. The theory is based on the communal practice and expectation of moral accountability, a practice that can be viewed as taking place universally both between and within human communities. (shrink)

In this paper I present a new definition of endurance. I argue that the three-dimensionalist ought to adopt a different understanding from the four-dimensionalist, of what it is to have a part simpliciter. With this new understanding it becomes possible to define endurance in a manner that both preserves the central endurantist intuitions, whilst avoiding commitment to any controversial metaphysical theses. Furthermore, since this endurantist definition is a mereological one, there is an elegant symmetry between the definitions of endurance and (...) perdurance in that the theories of three- and four-dimensionalism are both expressed in the language of mereology. Nevertheless, though both definitions are expressed within the same broad language, some of the terms of that language have subtly different meanings within the context of each theory. It is in understanding on the one hand that each theory is essentially a mereological theory and that therefore each shares some underlying theoretical similarities, and yet also that there are some subtle differences in the way each theory understands some of the terms of mereology, that allows us to see clearly what lies at the heart of the debate between these two accounts of persistence. (shrink)

Linguistically, we distinguish between thing terms and stuff terms, where, roughly, "thing" is a count noun, and "stuff" is a mass noun. Syntactically, "thing" functions as a singular referring term, that is, a term that refers to a single "entity" and hence takes "a" and "every" and is subject to pluralization, while "stuff" functions as a plural referring term, that is, it refers to a plurality of "entities" and hence takes "some" and is not subject to pluralization. There exists a (...) thing and some stuff. (shrink)

Moderate physiological or emotional arousal induced after learning modulates memory consolidation, helping to distinguish important memories from trivial ones. Yet, the contribution of subjective awareness or interpretation of arousal to this effect is uncertain. Alexithymia, which is an inability to describe or identify one’s emotional and arousal states even though physiological responses to arousal are intact, provides a tool to evaluate the role of arousal interpretation. Participants scoring high and low on alexithymia learned a list of 30 words, followed by (...) immediate recall. Participants then saw either an arousing or neutral video . Memory was tested 24-h later. Physiological response to arousal was comparable between groups, but subjective response to arousal was impaired in high alexithymia. Yet, delayed word recognition was enhanced by arousal regardless of alexithymia status. Thus, subjective response to arousal, i.e., cognitive appraisal, was not necessary for memory modulation to occur. (shrink)

Metaphysics is supposed to tell us about the metaphysical nature of our world: under what conditions composition occurs; how objects persist through time; whether properties are universals or tropes. It is near orthodoxy that whichever of these sorts of metaphysical claims is true is necessarily true. This paper looks at the debate between that orthodox view and a recently emerging view that claims like these are contingent, by focusing on the metaphysical debate between monists and pluralists about concrete particulars. This (...) paper argues that we should be contingentists about monism and pluralism, and it defends contingentism against some necessitarian objections by offering an epistemology of contingent metaphysical claims. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the thesis that time travel is logically possible, is inconsistent with the necessary truth of any of the usual ‘open futureobjective present’ models of the universe. It has been relatively uncontroversial until recently to hold that presentism is inconsistent with the possibility of time travel. I argue that recent arguments to the contrary do not show that presentism is consistent with time travel. Moreover, the necessary truth of other open future-objective present models which we (...) might, prima facie, have supposed to be more amenable to the possibility of time travel, turn out also to be inconsistent with this possibility. (shrink)