Ultimate reality is often characterized in terms of a variety of what are thought to be incompatible concepts, like God, Dao, Brahman, etc. This book examines the plausibility of a genuine religious pluralism, arguing against relativism but in favor of the authenticity of a plurality of the world's major religious traditions.

Critics often suggest that Socrates’ portrait of the philosopher’s inspired madness in his second speech in Plato’s Phaedrus is incompatible with the other types of divine madness outlined in the same speech, namely poetic, prophetic, and purificatory madness. This incompatibility is frequently taken to show that Socrates’ characterisation of philosophers as mad is disingenuous or misleading in some way. While philosophical madness and the other types of divine madness are distinguished by the non-philosophical crowd’s different interpretations of them, I aim (...) to show that they are not, in fact, presented as incompatible. Socrates’ pair of speeches demonstrates that madness can be divided into harmful and beneficial kinds, and in Socrates’ key discussion of philosophical madness (249c4-e4), I argue that the crowd correctly recognises that the philosopher is mad on the basis of his eccentricity, but wrongly assumes that the philosopher’s madness is of the harmful type because it fails to realise that the philosopher is enthused. Socrates’ second speech provides information about human souls and gods which shows that philosophical madness belongs to the beneficial type and so falls under the heading of divine enthusiasm after all. Importantly, human souls and gods are shown in the speech to be roughly isomorphic. Both philosophical and other kinds of divine madness involve having something divine inside a human body (entheos): in the former a human soul has become godlike; in the latter a human soul has been displaced by a god. Because of this, I propose that philosophy is presented as a genuine form of divine madness alongside the other more conventional examples. (shrink)

The three major philosophical responses to religious diversity includes exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. These isms reflect distinct philosophical attitudes and presuppositions held by religious zealots, secular heathens, and all those wimpy fence‐sitting agnostics in between. To make their significance available to the uninitiated, this chapter explores these philosophical positions through the wisdom of the God Machine's high priests: Stephen Colbert, Rob Corddry, and Ed Helms. By examining the philosophical responses to religious diversity, one can begin to understand how the responses (...) often hinder—but sometimes help—attempts to reconcile contentious differences between the world's major religious traditions. The chapter outlines and provides illustrations of the philosophical solutions to the problem of religious diversity. (shrink)

Considered together, Butler and Whitehead draw from a wide palette of disciplines to develop distinctive theories of becoming, of syntactical violence, and creative opportunities of limitation. The contributors of this volume offer a unique contribution to and for the humanities in the struggles of politics, economy, ecology, and the arts.

This essay explores the theological and anthropological significance of birth, in order to discern what might be lost with the adoption of complete ectogestation (“artificial wombs”). Specifically, it considers both Saint Augustine and Karl Barth’s respective accounts of humanity’s whence—that is, their theological answer to the question of the nature and significance of our origins as individuals. I suggest that Augustine’s account of his origins emphasizes both his epistemic and biological dependency on his mother and nurses, while Barth’s stresses the (...) individual’s immediate derivation from God. Those disparate answers affect how they construe the relationships of parents and children and work themselves throughout their theological visions and imaginations. I conclude that careful consideration of humanity’s whence cannot answer whether we ought to pursue ectogestation; but it does help us account for how our understanding of God and ourselves might be altered if we gestate human life outside the womb. (shrink)

This book examines a main theme in religious epistemology, namely, the possibility of knowledge of God. Most often philosophers consider the rationality or justification of propositional belief about God, particularly beliefs about the existence and nature of God; and they will assess the conditions under which, if there is a God, such propositional beliefs would be knowledge, particularly in light of counter-evidence or the availability of religious disagreement. This book surveys such familiar areas, then turns toward newer and less-developed terrain: (...) interpersonal epistemology, namely what it is to know another person. It then explores the prospects for understanding what it might take to know God relationally, the contours of which are significant for many theistic traditions. (shrink)

This essay addresses ‘the God‐haunted Atheist paradox’ in Sartre's early philosophy and argues against a series of efforts to show that Sartre maintains a ‘secular theology’. It shows that if Sartre's ontology is correct, the God of ‘classic theism’ cannot possibly exist. It argues against two sophisticated efforts to show that theological influences infiltrate Sartre's early ontology and permeate his moral psychology. It also rejects the claim that Sartre's (Existentialism is a Humanism, 1946/2007, Yale University Press) distinction between secular and (...) religious existentialism ‘has no basis in fact’. It shows that Sartre appropriates religious language in order to give debunking secular explanations for religious phenomena and that he inverts traditional Christian values. It concludes that Sartre is an anti‐theologian. (shrink)

This paper sketches a phenomenological-structural account of consciousness that distinguishes phenomenal consciousness, subjectivity, and the self. On this account, minimal subjectivity is an inherent feature of human phenomenal consciousness. This minimal subjectivity is then understood as, in Indian Buddhist terms, mere reflexive awareness (svasamvedanamātra), or in Western phenomenological terms, minimal pre-reflective self-awareness. This minimal subjectivity is also distinguished from the richer phenomenon of the sense of self. It is possible to have consciousness without a sense of self, but that consciousness (...) would still be minimally subjective. (shrink)

Recent work has argued that belief is weak: the level of rational credence required for belief is relatively low. That literature has contrasted belief with assertion, arguing that the latter requires an epistemic state much stronger than (weak) belief---perhaps knowledge or even certainty. We argue that this is wrong: assertion is just as weak as belief. We first present a variety of new arguments for this, and then show that the standard arguments for stronger norms are not convincing. Finally, we (...) sketch an alternative picture on which the fundamental norm of assertion is to say what you believe, but both belief and assertion are weak. To help make sense of this, we propose that both belief and assertion involve navigating a tradeoff between accuracy and informativity, and so it can makes sense to believe/say something you only have weak evidence for, if it is informative enough. (shrink)

Assertion is governed by an epistemic norm requiring knowledge. This idea has been hotly debated in recent years, garnering attention in epistemology, philosophy of language, and linguistics. This chapter presents and extends the main arguments in favor of the knowledge norm, from faulty conjunctions, several conversational patterns, judgments of permission, excuse, and blame, and from showing how. (Paired with a chapter by Peter J. Graham and Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen, "Knowledge is Not Our Norm of Assertion.").

Epistemologists often claim that in addition to belief and disbelief there is a third, neutral, doxastic attitude. Various terms are used: ‘suspending judgment’, ‘withholding’, ‘agnosticism’. It is also common to claim that the factors relevant to the justification of these attitudes are epistemic in the narrow sense of being factors that bear on the strength or weakness of one’s epistemic position with respect to the target proposition. This paper addresses two challenges to such traditionalism about doxastic attitudes. The first concerns (...) the relevance of non-epistemic factors we might call "future-comparative" – e.g., that you’ll have more decisive evidence on whether p tomorrow – to the justification of suspending judgment. The second, from Jane Friedman, is to explain the point of the neutral attitude without appealing to inquiry and thus taking goal-related factors, which are not epistemic, such as the value of the goal or the prospects for finding means to achieve it, to bear on the justification of the neutral attitude. My defense of traditionalism relies on distinguishing three ways of being neutral on a question: agnosticism, inquiry and suspension of judgment. Traditionalism is saved because, of these, agnosticism alone is a genuine doxastic attitude. (shrink)

Implicit in much of the recent literature on conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics is the assumption that when speakers argue that we should talk or think about a concept in a specific way, they are doing so as inquirers—as speakers who are invested in arriving at the correct or best view of this concept. In this paper I question that assumption and argue that philosophers have been too quick to project idealized versions of themselves into the contexts of conceptual articulation (...) and conceptual dispute. Speakers often engage in this activity to further interests of theirs that have nothing to do with inquiry, instead carrying out what I call ‘conceptual domination’. Speakers are engaged in conceptual domination when they aim to bring about and enforce widespread uptake for a view of a concept by exploiting institutions and institutional authority. They do so because this view best serves interests that are either irrelevant to or actively interfere with inquiry concerning this concept—paradigmatically their material interests. I consider sources of evidence for assessing whether speakers are engaging in conceptual domination, analyze two case studies, and consider how to push back against conceptual dominators. (shrink)

Doxastic involuntarists, as I categorize them, say that it’s impossible to form a belief as an intentional action. But what exactly is it to form a belief, as opposed to simply getting yourself to have one? This question has been insufficiently addressed, and the lacuna threatens the involuntarists’ position: if the question isn’t answered, their view will lack any clear content; but, after considering some straightforward ways of answering it, I argue that they would make involuntarism either false or insignificant. (...) I also examine several involuntarist arguments, and find them faltering at just this point: inadequate attention to belief-formation results in unsound arguments or insignificant conclusions. The viability of involuntarism as a meaningful position, I conclude, turns on whether the notion of belief-formation can be further developed. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore various views on which mind-body dualism is true, but the soul is located in the body. I argue that this sort of dualism (which I call 'somatic dualism') once was a not-uncommon view in the philosophy of mind. I also argue that it has the resources to reply to some of the problems thought to affect Cartesian dualism.

What do we owe each other when we act together? According to normativists about collective action, necessarily something and potentially quite a bit. They contend that collective action inherently involves a special normative status amongst participants, which may, for example, involve mutual obligations to receive the concurrence of the others before leaving. We build on recent empirical work whose results lend plausibility to a normativist account by further investigating the specific package of mutual obligations associated with collective action according to (...) our everyday understanding. However, our results cast doubt on a proposed obligation to seek the permission of co-actors before exiting a collective action, and suggest instead that this obligation is a function of explicit promising. We then discuss how our results pave the path for a new normativism, a theory that neither under- nor overshoots the target given by our common conception of the interpersonal obligations present in collective action.*. (shrink)

How we understand the nature and role of grief depends on what we take its object to be and vice versa. This paper focuses on recent claims by philosophers that grief is frequently or even inherently irrational or inappropriate in one or another respect, all of which hinge on assumptions concerning the proper object of grief. By emphasizing the temporally extended structure of grief, we offer an alternative account of its object that undermines these assumptions and dissolves the apparent problems. (...) The principal object of grief, we suggest, is a loss of life possibilities, which is experienced, understood, and engaged with over a prolonged period. Other descriptions of grief's object identify more specific aspects of this loss in ways that do not respect a straightforward distinction between concrete and formal objects. (shrink)

Shared agency is a distinctive kind of sociality that involves interdependent planning, practical reasoning, and action between participants. Philosophical reflection suggests that agents engage in this form of sociality when a special structure of interrelated psychological attitudes exists between them, a set of attitudes that constitutes a collective intention. I defend a new way to understand collective intention as a combination of individual conditional intentions. Revising an initial statement of the conditional intention account in response to several challenges leads to (...) a specification of the properties these intentions need to have in order to be genuine commitments. I then show how a structure of conditional intentions with these properties settles a collection of agents on engaging in social interactions that display all the features typically associated with shared agency. (shrink)

Various claims have been made concerning the role of narrative in grief. In this paper, we emphasize the need for a discerning approach, which acknowledges that narratives of different kinds relate to grief in different ways. We focus specifically on the positive contributions that narrative can make to sustaining, restoring and revising a sense of who one is. We argue that, although it is right to suggest that narratives provide structure and coherence, they also play a complementary role in disrupting (...) established structure and opening up new possibilities. We add that both of these roles point to the importance of interpersonal, social and cultural factors in shaping the trajectory of grief. We conclude by briefly considering the implications for distinguishing between typical and pathological forms of grief. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett is one of the most influential thinkers at the interface between philosophy and science. This book is the first comprehensive examination of Dennett ’s ideas on the nature of thought, consciousness, free will, and the significance of Darwinism. A highly original introduction to contemporary thinking about the relationship between mind and science. This is the first comprehensive examination of Dennett ’s ideas on the nature of thought, consciousness, free will, and the significance of Darwinism. Examines Dennett ’s unique (...) response to the question of when and how science should affect the conception that we have of ourselves. Casts new light on specific controversies: Could robots ever think, feel, and enjoy freedom? Does Dennett really explain consciousness? Are mental states real or merely ‘useful fictions’? Do we have free will? Is the self a ‘centre of narrative gravity’? (shrink)

It's often thought that when we reason to new judgments in inference, we aim at believing the truth, and that this aim of ours can explain important psychological and normative features of belief. I reject this picture: the structure of aimed activity shows that inference is not guided by a truth‐aim. This finding clears the way for a positive understanding of how epistemic goods feature in our doxastic lives. We can indeed make sense of many of our inquisitive and deliberative (...) activities as undertaken in pursuit of such goods; but the evidence‐guided inferences in which those activities culminate will require a different theoretical approach. (shrink)

The pragmatist faces the challenge of accounting for the possibility of rational conceptual change. Some pragmatists have tried to meet this challenge by appealing to Neurathian imagery—imagery that risks being too figurative to be helpful. I argue that we can develop a clearer view of what rationally constrained conceptual revision looks like for the pragmatist. I do so by examining the work of the pragmatist who in recent years has addressed this issue most directly, Richard Rorty. His attempts to solve (...) the puzzle ultimately fall short, but prove instructive. Rorty characterizes inter-language transitions in exclusively causal terms because, along with the very philosophical traditions he criticizes, he uncritically privileges the role of truth claims or assertions in our pragmatics. I show that if we instead broaden our pragmatic imaginations, we encounter various non-assertoric speech acts involved in speakers aiming to change how we make sense of our language and concepts. With these acts in view, we are able to arrive at a demystified view of rational conceptual change from a pragmatist perspective and identify future lines of inquiry for pragmatist projects. (shrink)

This paper argues that a class of popular views of collective intention, which I call “quasi-psychologism”, faces a problem explaining common intuitions about collective action. Views in this class hold that collective intentions are realized in or constituted by individual, mental, participatory intentions. I argue that this metaphysical commitment entails persistence conditions that are in tension with a purported obligation to notify co-actors before leaving a collective action attested to by participants in experimental research about the interpersonal normativity of collective (...) action. I then explore the possibilities open to quasi-psychologists for responding to this research. (shrink)

Matti Eklund has argued that a new problem in metanormative theory arises when we consider the possibility of "normative counterparts"—normative concepts with the same normative roles as OUGHT and RIGHT, but with different extensions. I distinguish two versions of the problem, and propose a solution: when we attend to the attitudinal commitments involved in the possession and application of some normative concepts, we find that tolerance for the possibility of normative counterparts is rationally ruled out.

Although belief formation is sometimes automatic, there are occasions in which we have the power to put it off, to wait on belief-formation. Waiting in this sense seems assessable by epistemic norms. This paper explores what form such norms might take: the nature and their content. A key question is how these norms relate to epistemic norms on belief-formation: could we have cases in which one ought to believe that p but also ought to wait on forming a belief on (...) whether p? Plausibly not. But if not, how can we explain this impossibility? I suggest that the best resolution is to view the traditional core norms on belief as themselves conditional in a certain sense, one that I think has independent plausibility. The results of this investigation may also tell us something about epistemic norms on suspension, on the assumption, which I defend elsewhere, that suspension is waiting. (shrink)

It has become increasingly difficult for individuals to exercise meaningful control over the personal data they disclose to companies or to understand and track the ways in which that data is exchanged and used. These developments have led to an emerging consensus that existing privacy and data protection laws offer individuals insufficient protections against harms stemming from current data practices. However, an effective and ethically justified way forward remains elusive. To inform policy in this area, we propose the Ethical Data (...) Practices framework. The framework outlines six principles relevant to the collection and use of personal data—minimizing harm, fairly distributing benefits and burdens, respecting autonomy, transparency, accountability, and inclusion—and translates these principles into action-guiding practical imperatives for companies that process personal data. In addition to informing policy, the practical imperatives can be voluntarily adopted by companies to promote ethical data practices. (shrink)

Recent debates within the autism advocacy community have raised difficult questions about who can credibly act as a representative of a particular population and what responsibilities that...

‘Gender disappointment’ is regularly reported by those whose child’s sex does not match the sex that they, the parent, desired. With symptoms ranging from mere fleeting sadness to documented cases of serious depression, alienation from one’s child, and emotional suffering, it is clear that so-called ‘gender disappointment’ is a serious issue, that has, as yet, seen little philosophical attention (though see Hendl and Browne 2020). In this chapter I explore gender disappointment, not from the perspective of a parent who ended (...) up with the child of the wrong sex at birth, but rather, from the perspective of a different kind of gender disappointment: the transgender person who grew up and only then disappointed their parents by turning out to be the ‘wrong’ gender. This perspective, I argue, reveals a great deal about the shared gender essentialism at the heart of patriarchal and cissexist ideology. Moreover, I will argue that it reveals the underlying propertarian relationship of parents to their children under contemporary capitalism – a troubling relationship that legitimates the treatment of children as objects to be designed and controlled as commodities at the whims of parents. In this way I disagree with Whyman when he writes that “a preference for having a child of one sex over the other should be considered one of those irrational things of which some sense can nevertheless be made – like aesthetic taste” (Whyman 2021, 113-114). I argue, to the contrary, that the desire for a child of one particular gender is not akin to a mere unproblematic aesthetic preference. Instead, and following the rich feminist tradition of thinking about the patriarchal origins of sexual desire, I argue that we must see these desires as troubling reflections of dominant patriarchal and cissexist ideology, underwritten by a particular neoliberal capitalist mode of production. Moreover, we can seek to change those desires. (shrink)

Many philosophers now see meaning in life as a key evaluative category that stands alongside well-being and moral goodness. Our lives are assessed not only by how well they go for us and how morally good they are, but also by their meaningfulness. In this article, I raise a challenge to this view. Theories of meaning in life closely resemble theories of well-being, and there is a suspicion that the former collapse into the latter. I develop this challenge showing that (...) it is formidable. I then answer it by offering a novel account of what meaning in life is and how it differs from well-being. The account I offer is able to resist the strongest form of the challenge while also having much intuitive appeal. (shrink)

The recent emergence of machine-manipulated media raises an important societal question: How can we know whether a video that we watch is real or fake? In two online studies with 15,016 participants, we present authentic videos and deepfakes and ask participants to identify which is which. We compare the performance of ordinary human observers with the leading computer vision deepfake detection model and find them similarly accurate, while making different kinds of mistakes. Together, participants with access to the model’s prediction (...) are more accurate than either alone, but inaccurate model predictions often decrease participants’ accuracy. To probe the relative strengths and weaknesses of humans and machines as detectors of deepfakes, we examine human and machine performance across video-level features, and we evaluate the impact of preregistered randomized interventions on deepfake detection. We find that manipulations designed to disrupt visual processing of faces hinder human participants’ performance while mostly not affecting the model’s performance, suggesting a role for specialized cognitive capacities in explaining human deepfake detection performance. -/- . (shrink)

In ‘Knowing What Things Look Like,’ I argued against the immediacy of visual objectual knowledge, i.e. visual knowledge that a thing is F, for an object category F, such as avocado, tree, desk, etc. Joseph Shieber proposes a challenging dilemma in reply. Either knowing what Fs look like requires having concepts such as looks or it doesn’t. Either way my argument fails. If knowing what Fs look like doesn’t require having such concepts, then he claims we can give an immediacy-friendly (...) anti-intellectualist account of knowing what Fs look like, one that I neglected. If it does require having such concepts, then knowledge of what Fs look like plays no important role in ordinary cases of knowing things to be F by their looks. I argue for several claims. First, Shieber's anti-intellectualist proposal fails for independent reasons. Second, I give reasons for thinking that knowing what Fs look like doesn't require having a general concept of looks, which lessens worries about nonhuman animals having such knowledge. Finally, I consider the possibility, important to Shieber's argument, that nonhuman animals are simply incapable of knowing what Fs look like. I argue the implications for human knowledge are far from clear. (shrink)

The public’s trust in the technology sector is waning and, in response, technology companies and state governments have started to champion “tech ethics”. That is, they have pledged to design, develop, distribute, and employ new technologies in an ethical manner. In this paper, I observe that tech ethics is already subject to a widespread pathology in that technology companies, the primary executors of tech ethics, are incentivized to pursue it half-heartedly or even disingenuously. Next, I highlight two emerging strategies which (...) might be used to combat this problem, but argue that both are subject to practical limitations. In response, I suggest an additional way of augmenting the practice of tech ethics. This is to employ “trust audits,” a new form of public participation in the socio-technical environment. In the remainder of the paper, I offer a description of how trust audits work, what they might look like in practice, and how they can fit in alongside those other strategies for improving tech ethics. (shrink)

In 2005, Charles Mills published “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology” in Hypatia: a withering critique of much of contemporary political philosophy and ethics. For Mills such work in philosophy failed to attend to the realities of social life and politics, and in remaining silent on actual issues of domination and oppression served an ideological role in supporting the interests of white bourgeois men. Around the time that Charles Mills launched his broadside against ideal theory, trans theorists had been fighting their own (...) battle against the abstraction of theory from the realities of trans lives and oppression. Vivian Namaste (2000) and Jay Prosser (1998) argued that contemporary gender theory failed to justice to the actuality of trans life, retreating instead to understanding trans life through literary archetypes and idealized radical figures. In this chapter I’ll compare Mills’ critique of ideal theory with the transfeminist critique of 1990s gender theory, arguing that they share much in common. Centrally, both critiques share an underlying commitment to theory needing to be grounded in the actuality of oppression and power relations. This common thread, I suggest, must continue to guide transfeminist thought and action: contra Marquis Bey (2022) transfeminist thought and praxis must continue to be about trans lives, about the oppression of trans women, and about ways of actually achieving liberation from our current dire position. (shrink)

This book explores how ancient philosophers, particularly Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Sextus Empiricus, understood relativity and how their theories of the phenomenon affected, and were affected by, their broader philosophical outlooks.

This article takes issue with two prominent views in the current debate around epistemic partiality in friendship. Strong views of epistemic partiality hold that friendship may require biased beliefs in direct conflict with epistemic norms. Weak views hold that friendship may place normative expectations on belief formation but in a manner that does not violate these norms. It is argued that neither view succeeds in explaining the relationship between epistemic norms and friendship norms. Weak views inadvertently endorse a form of (...) motivated reasoning, failing to resolve the normative clash they seek to avoid. Strong views turn out to be incoherent once we consider the question of whether the requirement to form an epistemically partial belief is independent of whether the belief in question would be true. It is then argued that an epistemology of friendship should recognise the special role that understanding plays in friendship. On this view, friendship normatively requires understanding the truth about our friends. This entails that epistemic partiality, far from being a requirement, is in fact at odds with good friendship. (shrink)

Grief is often thought of as an emotional response to the death of someone we love. However, the term “grief” is also used when referring to losses of various other kinds, as with grief over illness, injury, unemployment, diminished abilities, relationship breakups, or loss of significant personal possessions. Complementing such uses, we propose that grief over a bereavement and other experiences of loss share a common phenomenological structure: one experiences the loss of certain possibilities that were integral to—and perhaps central (...) to—the unfolding structure of one’s life. Grief can thus be conceived of in a broad but still univocal way. To develop this position, we focus on the example of grief over involuntary childlessness, where lack of a concrete, historical object of emotion serves to make explicit the way in which grief concerns future possibilities. We go on to suggest that the phenomenological complexity, diversity, and prevalence of grief are obscured when approached via an abstract, simplified conception of bereavement. -/- . (shrink)

This paper sketches an account of what distinguishes emotional intentionality from other forms of intentionality. I focus on the ‘two-sided’ structure of emotional experience. Emotions such as being afraid of something and being angry about something involve intentional states with specific contents. However, experiencing an entity, event, or situation in a distinctively emotional way also includes a wider-ranging disturbance of the experiential world within which the object of emotion is encountered. I consider the nature of this disturbance and its relationship (...) to the localized content of an emotional experience. (shrink)

Does artificial intelligence (AI) pose existential risks to humanity? Some critics feel this question is getting too much attention, and want to push it aside in favour of conversations about the immediate risks of AI. These critics now include the journal Nature, where a recent editorial urges us to 'stop talking about tomorrow's AI doomsday when AI poses risks today.' We argue that this is a serious failure of judgement, on Nature's part. In science, as in everyday life, we expect (...) influential actors to consider the consequences of error. As the world's leading scientific journal, Nature is certainly an influential actor, especially so in the absence of robust global regulation of AI. Yet it has manifestly failed to consider the cost of error in this case. (shrink)

In this paper, we use antecedent-final conditionals to formulate two problems for parsing-based theories of presupposition projection and triviality of the kind given in Schlenker 2009. We show that, when it comes to antecedent-final conditionals, parsing-based theories predict filtering of presuppositions where there is in fact projection, and triviality judgments for sentences which are in fact felicitous. More concretely, these theories predict that presuppositions triggered in the antecedent of antecedent-final conditionals will be filtered (i.e. will not project) if the negation (...) of the consequent entails the presupposition. But this is wrong: John isn’t in Paris, if he regrets being in France intuitively presupposes that John is in France, contrary to this prediction. Likewise, parsing-based approaches to triviality predict that material entailed by the negation of the consequent will be redundant in the antecedent of the conditional; but John isn’t in Paris, if he’s in France and Mary is with him is intuitively felicitous, contrary to these predictions. Importantly, given that the trigger appears in sentence-final position, both incremental (left-to-right) and symmetric versions of such theories make the same predictions. These data constitute a challenge to the idea that presupposition projection and triviality should be computed on the basis of parsing. This issue is important because it relates to the more general question as to whether presupposition and triviality calculation should be thought of as a pragmatic post-compositional phenomenon or as part of compositional semantics (as in the more traditional dynamic approaches). We discuss a solution which allows us to maintain the parsing-based pragmatic approach; it is based on an analysis of conditionals which incorporates a presupposition that their antecedent is compatible with the context, together with a modification to Schlenker’s (2009) algorithm for calculating local contexts so that it takes into account presupposed material. As we will discuss, this solution works within a framework broadly similar to that of Schlenker’s (2009), but it doesn’t extend in an obvious way to other parsing-based accounts (e.g. parsing-based trivalent approaches). We conclude that a parsing-based theory can be maintained, but only if we adopt a substantial change of perspective on the framework. (shrink)

This article argues that blacks should reject integration on self-protective and solidarity grounds. It distinguishes two aspects of black devaluation: a ‘stigmatization’ aspect that has to do with the fact that blacks are subject to various forms of discrimination, and an aesthetic aspect (‘phenotypic devaluation’) that concerns the aesthetic devaluation of characteristically black phenotypic traits. It identifies four self-worth harms that integration may inflict, and suggests that these may outweigh the benefits of integration. Further, it argues that, while the integrating (...) process may reduce stigmatization, there is less reason to think that it can do the same for phenotypic devaluation. (shrink)

I defend a novel pragmatist account of truth that I call ‘truth from the agent point of view’ or ‘agential truth’, drawing on insights from Hilary Putnam. According to the agential view, as inquirers, when we take something to be truth-apt, we are taking ourselves and all other thinkers to be accountable to getting right a shared target that is independent of any individual's or community's view of that target. That we have this relationship to truth is what enables our (...) practices of disagreement and agreement, even when subject to the glare of self-conscious reflection, and represents a crucial ingredient in our capacity for rational thought. The resulting account shares elements with Huw Price's and Cheryl Misak's views, but also has important advantages over both. It also yields a surprising conclusion—that our best pragmatist account of truth may well be a version of the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reason, Passion, and Metaphysics in Bonaventure:Against Hylomorphic EnthusiasmMatthew J. DugandzicIntroductionContemporary commentators on Aquinas's understanding of the passions all agree that reason is supposed to be the ruler of the passions, but they disagree on the character of this rule. Some would ascribe a high degree of freedom to the passions, such that, even though reason is overall the ruler of the passions, sometimes the passions are right to resist (...) this rule.1 Others argue that the passions ought to obey reason slavishly, such that, if any passion is to be virtuous, it must result from "reason's immediate control,... [that is,] reason now commanding this or that passion."2 Many other thinkers would fall somewhere in between these two positions at various points, such that giving a full account of the range of these positions would be quite complicated, but these scholars could also be placed neatly into two categories according to how they would answer the following question: Are virtuous passions only those that arise in response to reason's immediate command, or can other passions be included, such as those that, for example, without [End Page 123] being explicitly commanded to do so by reason, prompt reason to do this or that, or even inform reason about some aspect of an object?3 Until recently, most scholars of Thomas Aquinas would have held the latter position, that the passions sometimes have some positive roles to play in the virtuous life even when they arise in the absence of an immediate command from reason.4 In recent years, however, the number of scholars who maintain the former position, holding that any passion that does not arise in response to reason's immediate command is not virtuous, has been growing.5 [End Page 124]My aim in this article is further to bolster the case of those who hold that, for Aquinas, the only passions that are virtuous are those that arise from reason's immediate command. I will do this by criticizing an argument that is commonly used by those who oppose this position, and which I refer to as "hylomorphic enthusiasm." Generally speaking, the logic of hylomorphic enthusiasm goes like this: Aquinas's understanding of the relationship between passion and reason is rooted in his hylomorphic view of the unity between body and soul, which unity implies that, for him, reason and passion have something of a collegial relationship, whereby reason rules the passions not despotically, but as a ruler who, though in charge, is nevertheless interested in hearing what his subjects have to say. Paul Gondreau, for example, says that, in Aquinas's view, reason rules over the passions as in a "constitutional monarchy," in which "citizens submit to the supreme authority of the monarch, yet without relinquishing all their political rights and privileges."6 For Gondreau, Aquinas's characterization of the relationship between reason and passion was unique for his time, and was due to his similarly unique "hylemorphic [sic] metaphysics of human nature."7 Bonaventure, on the other hand, did not share this hylomorphic view of the relationship between body and soul, but was rather a substance dualist, and so, consequently, he thought that reason cannot rule the passions politically, but can only "'tame' the passions by a kind of exterior imposition, or forced 'submission to reason' [obtemperat ratoini)]."8In sum, the position of the hylomorphic enthusiasts is this: Aquinas's hylomorphic view of the unity of body and soul implies a collegial view of reason's rulership over passion, while Bonaventure's more dualistic view of the relationship between body and soul implies that reason could rule the passions only despotically, rather than politically. There are a number of premises, both implicit and explicit, in this argument. For the sake of focusing this paper, I will choose to focus on two. First, I will focus on the explicit claim that Bonaventure held a dualistic view of the relationship [End Page 125] between body and soul; I maintain that Bonaventure's understanding of the relationship between body and soul is no more dualistic than Aquinas's. Second, an implicit premise of hylomorphic enthusiasm is that having a hylomorphic or... (shrink)

Like philosophy itself, Dune explores everything from politics to art to life to reality, but above all, the novels ponder the mysteries of mind. Voyaging through psychic expanses, Frank Herbert hits upon some of the same insights discovered by indigenous people from the Americas. Many of these ideas are repeated in mainstream American and European philosophical traditions like pragmatism and existential phenomenology. These outlooks share a regard for mind as ecological, which is more or less to say that minds extend (...) beyond the brain into the rest of the body and the surrounding environment. -/- The cross-cultural strands in Dune tie closely to Herbert’s life and interests. An outdoorsman born in the Pacific West, he had an abiding bond with a friend from the Quileute tribe, Howie Hansen. Herbert advocated for aboriginal rights and crafted well-intentioned if slightly stereotypical tales about indigenous characters, partly based on his visits with Northwest tribes. Carl Jung (1875-1961), whose idea of collective consciousness echoes aboriginal views, was among Herbert’s European influences. So was existential phenomenology, especially as developed by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). The names of characters in one of Herbert’s novels—The Santaroga Barrier—in fact coincide with terms that Heidegger used to articulate how emotionally colored coping with our environment defines our existence. Many indigenous philosophers have treated phenomenology and its American cousin pragmatism in approving ways. Indeed, the ideas of North America’s first inhabitants seem to have been absorbed by pragmatists and even earlier by transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). -/- These different philosophies all advance a place-based psychology. Anne Waters, herself of mixed tribal heritage, generalizes the mindset of her people this way: “American Indian consciousness, and hence American Indian identity is … interdependent with our land base.” Lee Hester, a Choctaw thinker, adds that practices—not mere beliefs—are most important for native thought. American transcendentalists and pragmatists, as well as European phenomenologists, similarly see hands-on practices and environmental interactions as the core of experience. Extending this a little, they sometimes suggest experience isn’t individual but instead cultural. “Culture” is here understood as interactions within communities that define our worlds and experiences, as when we talk about the “French experience,” “culture” or “world,” or the “experience of parenthood.” This theme also shows up in indigenous thought. -/- Exploring the Dune universe, we find everything from land-based concepts of personal identity, to the idea of sharpening the mind through hands-on training, to collective notions of experience in cooperative tribes or through the genetic memory of central characters. The stories explore fate versus free will in cosmic contexts, introducing views from indigenous thought and the pragmatic philosophy of William James (1842-1910). Different forms of spiritualism mingle to shape minds and cultural mixtures around the globe, and the same occurs in the Dune series. The customs and personalities of characters fuse elements from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, and especially Islam. The series not only highlights that religion shapes psychology, but also that faith connects to place, especially paralleling Judeo-Christian-Islamic desert faiths. In capturing these points, the Dune novels show that “our values, our lifestyles and even the ways we think and feel have been strongly influenced by our locations in history and geography. The study of the human mind is fundamentally the study of place.”. (shrink)

Kornblith’s “Epistemic Normativity” is a classic in the now voluminous literature on the source of epistemic normativity. His account is as simple as it is bold: the source is desire, not a desire for true belief, or knowledge, but any set of desires. No matter what desires you have, so long as you are a being of a kind that employs beliefs in cost-benefit analysis, certain sorts of truth-centered epistemic norms will have normative force for you. We can distinguish two (...) questions about epistemic normativity, both under discussion in Kornblith’s paper, but which he does not clearly distinguish: (i) why should we care about having beliefs that satisfy epistemic norms? (ii) how do epistemic considerations have reason-giving force with respect to particular propositions? I will argue that Kornblith’s proposal goes some distance toward answering the first question but is less helpful in answering the second. (shrink)