Changing our minds isn't easy. Even when we recognize our views are disputed by intelligent and informed people, we rarely doubt our rightness. Why is this so? How can we become more open-minded, putting ourselves in a better position to tolerate conflict, advance collective inquiry, and learn from differing perspectives in a complex world? -/- Nathan Ballantyne defends the indispensable role of epistemology in tackling these issues. For early modern philosophers, the point of reflecting on inquiry was to understand (...) how our beliefs are often distorted by prejudice and self-interest, and to improve the foundations of human knowledge. Ballantyne seeks to recover and modernize this classical tradition by vigorously defending an interdisciplinary approach to epistemology, blending philosophical theorizing with insights from the social and cognitive sciences. -/- Many of us need tools to help us think more circumspectly about our controversial views. Ballantyne develops a method for distinguishing between our reasonable and unreasonable opinions, in light of evidence about bias, information overload, and rival experts. This method guides us to greater intellectual openness--in the spirit of skeptics from Socrates to Montaigne to Bertrand Russell--making us more inclined to admit that sometimes we don't have the right answers. With vibrant prose and fascinating examples from science and history, Ballantyne shows how epistemology can help us know our limits. (shrink)

Some people have supposed that utility is good in itself, non-in-strumentally good, as distinct from good because conducive to other good things. And in modern versions of this view, utility often means want-satisfaction, as distinct from pleasure or happiness. For your want that p to be satisfied, is it necessary that you know or believe that p, or sufficient merely that p is true? However that question is answered, there are problems with the view that want-satisfaction is a non-instrumental good. (...) What if you want something only because you have a false belief? What if the time at which you want that p is fifty or five hundred years before the time to which p itself refers? To meet these difficulties, qualifications have to be introduced, and much has been written about how exactly these qualifications are to be framed.1 There is however what may be a rather more serious objection to the view that want-satisfaction is a non-instrumental good, or rather to the combination of that view with the principle that it is sufficient for your want that p to be satisfied simply that p is true. The objection is that this combination forces you to give undue weight to the mere acquisition of desires when you come to make judgements about changes in the value of things. It forces you to say that for any true proposition p, which initially you do not want to be true, your mere acquisition of a desire that p will, other things being equal, make the world better. Non-instrumental value can be increased merely by multiplying desires, even though everything else remains the same. Surely, however, improving the world is not as easy as that. (shrink)

Practical Truth is Mentioned Only Once in Aristotle’s entire corpus.1 However, this one mention shows practical truth to be central to the development of Aristotle’s conception of practical reason: because practical truth is a distinct type of truth, he claims, practical reason has its own unique function of being concerned with practical truth, and this unique function makes practical reason distinct from both theoretical and technical reason. Unfortunately, commentators of the Nicomachean Ethics2 rarely discuss practical truth, and when they do, (...) their interpretations fail to preserve the importance of this idea for Aristotle’s theory as a whole. Some commentators, like Sarah Broadie, prefer to understand .. (shrink)

These essays engage Jin Y. Park’s recent translation of the work of Kim Iryŏp, a Buddhist nun and public intellectual in early twentieth-century Korea. Park’s translation of Iryŏp’s Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun was the subject of two book panels at recent conferences: the first a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the second at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association on a group program session sponsored by the (...) International Society for Buddhist Philosophy. This exchange also includes a response from Park. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Apeiron Jahrgang: 47 Heft: 2 Seiten: 230-244.

Much recent work in virtue epistemology has focused on the analysis of such intellectual virtues as responsibility, conscientiousness, honesty, courage, open-mindedness, firmness, humility, charity, and wisdom. Absent from the literature is an extended examination of perseverance as an intellectual virtue. The present paper aims to fill this void. In Sect. 1, I clarify the concept of an intellectual virtue, and distinguish intellectual virtues from other personal traits and properties. In Sect. 2, I provide a conceptual analysis of intellectually virtuous perseverance (...) that places perseverance in opposition to its vice-counterparts, intransigence and irresolution. The virtue is a matter of continuing in one’s intellectual activities for an appropriate amount of time, in the pursuit of intellectual goods, despite obstacles to one’s attainment of those goods. In Sect. 3, I explore relations between intellectually virtuous perseverance and other intellectual virtues. I argue that such perseverance is necessary for the possession and exercise of several other intellectual virtues, including courage. These connections highlight the importance of perseverance in a comprehensive account of such virtues. (shrink)

Aristotle holds that rational agents can think true thoughts about their practical ends. Specifically, we can think true thoughts about whether our ends are good and able to be brought about in action. But what makes these thoughts true? What sort of thing is a practical end, such that it both is good, and also may be brought about in the future? These questions are difficult to answer. They are metaphysical questions about Aristotle’s practical philosophy: they ask what practical ends (...) are, such that they can make true certain parts of our practical thinking. What is more, key claims in Aristotle’s account of rational agency seem to make it impossible for thoughts about our practical ends to ever, in fact, be true. Given the ways in which we think about our ends, there seems to be nothing in the world to which these thoughts truthfully correspond. In this paper, I identify and solve two puzzles for Aristotle’s claim that we can think true thoughts about our practical ends. These puzzles have not been discussed in recent literature, but they have potentially wide-reaching consequences for Aristotle’s account of rational agency and motivation. My solution offers a novel account of the metaphysics of practical ends, which explains how these ends can be truth-makers for our thoughts about them. I argue that we should understand practical ends on the model of first actualities, which are also second potentialities. The idea that some actualities are also potentialities is a complicated one, but as I hope to show, it yields a straightforward and illuminating conception of practical ends. It also adds a crucial metaphysical component to Aristotle’s account of rational agency, one which shows how this account is internally consistent. (shrink)

L. Nathan Oaklander is one of the leading philosophers of time defending the tenseless or B-Theory of time. He has remained at the forefront of this field since the early 1980s and today he is arguably the most formidable opponent of the tensed or A-theory of time. Much of the direction of the debate in this field for the past twenty years or so, especially in regards to the new tenseless theory of time, has been influenced by Oaklander's work. (...) This book presents a carefully argued defense of the tenseless theory of time. The topics discussed include: the ontology of A- and B-theories of time; presentism; the open future theory; the A/B theory; defending the B-theory of time; temporal experience; temporal semantics; and time, identity, responsibility, and freedom. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the exploration of the concept of human dignity. This concept is taken as the ultimate basis of the entitlement of man to his special position in the interhuman context and also as what can be described as the metaphysical orbit. The thesis of the book is that the concept is eclectic, so that it is mandatory to explore its various components, analyzed here: man and morality and eventually the attribution of sancity to human life as (...) such. The method pursued explores these various aspects by analyzing the most prominent expressions of the various views of philosophers, and adding critical comments to the analysis. (shrink)

One problem facing those who attempt to reconcile divine foreknowledge with human freedom is to explain how a temporal God can have knowledge of the future, if the future does not exist. In her recent book, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge , Linda Zagzebski attempts to provide an explanation by making use of a fourdimensional model in which the past, present and future exist. In this note I argue that the model Zagzebski offers to support the coplausibility of divine (...) foreknowledge and human freedom is inconsistent with the A-theory of time she propounds. (shrink)

Locke's Education for Liberty presents an analysis of the crucial but often underestimated place of education and the family within Lockean liberalism. Nathan Tarcov shows that Locke's neglected work Some Thoughts Concerning Education compares with Plato's Republic and Rousseau's Emile as a treatise on education embodying a comprehensive vision of moral and social life. Locke believed that the family can be the agency, not the enemy, of individual liberty and equality. Tarcov's superb reevaluation reveals to the modern reader a (...) breadth and unity heretofore unrecognized in Locke's thought. (shrink)

Discussions of political obligation and political authority have long focused on the idea that the commands of genuine authorities constitute content-independent reasons. Despite its centrality in these debates, the notion of content-independence is unclear and controversial, with some claiming that it is incoherent, useless, or increasingly irrelevant. I clarify content-independence by focusing on how reasons can depend on features of their source or container. I then solve the long-standing puzzle of whether the fact that laws can constitute content-independent reasons is (...) consistent with the fact that some laws must fail to bind due to their egregiously unjust content. Finally I defend my understanding of content-independence against challenges and show why it retains a place of special importance for questions about the law and political obligation. Content-independence highlights that it is some feature of the law or law-making process in general that is supposed to generate moral obligations for citizens, not the merits of particular laws. (shrink)

Epistemic trespassers judge matters outside their field of expertise. Trespassing is ubiquitous in this age of interdisciplinary research and recognizing this will require us to be more intellectually modest.

Aus dem Inhalt I. Unity and Hierarchy II. Beyond Unity towards Totality III. Cognition and Action IV. On some Transformations of the Concept of Ideal V. Ethics instead of the Dogmatic Dress VI. From Religion to Speculation VII. Religion and its Misplacement VIII. Will and Social Contract IX. Architectonics and Edifice Print-on-Demand-Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1984.

Nathan Carlin revisits the role of religion in bioethics, an increasingly secular enterprise, and argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich's method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care.

There are certain uses of and and or that cannot be explained by their normal meanings as truth-functional connectives, even with sophisticated pragmatic resources. These include examples such as The cops show up, and a fight will break out (‘If the cops show up, a fight will break out’), and I have no friends, or I would throw a party (‘I have no friends. If I did have friends, I would throw a party.’). We argue that these uses are indeed (...) distinct from the more ordinary uses of and and or, but that they are nonetheless related in a principled way. To explain them we give an analysis of what we call the dynamic effects of connectives, which arise in all their uses. The special uses at issue are then argued to be instances where the connectives exhibit their dynamic effects without their truth-conditional meaning. (shrink)

This paper argues that the inclusion of “fields” in speculative realist ontologies better explains human experience, encourages the inclusion of systems thinking, and avoids some of the unusual conclusions speculative realists currently accept. The paper begins by summarizing the philosophies of Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman, as well as major criticisms of each. Second, it explores the “math as structure” theories of Stewart Shapiro and Michael Resnik, and the ways relativity and quantum physics account for objects. Using these ideas, the (...) paper argues that Meillassoux’s reference to math and Harman’s account of objects are insufficient without including a concept of “fields.” Third, the paper defines a concept of “field” and discusses how it can be applied to speculative realism. Finally, the paper shows how incorporating the concept of “fields” allows speculative realism to answer critics more effectively by showing how transcendental structures are embedded in reality. (shrink)

Shadow Philosophy: Plato’s Cave and Cinema is an accessible and exciting new contribution to film-philosophy, which shows that to take film seriously is also to engage with the fundamental questions of philosophy. Nathan Andersen brings Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange into philosophical conversation with Plato’s Republic , comparing their contributions to themes such as the nature of experience and meaning, the character of justice, the contrast between appearance and reality, the importance of art, and the impact of images. (...) At the heart of the book is a novel account of the analogy between Plato’s allegory of the cave and cinema, developed in conjunction with a provocative interpretation of the most powerful image from A Clockwork Orange , in which the lead character is strapped to a chair and forced to watch violent films. Key features of the book include: a comprehensive bibliography of suggested readings on Plato, on film, on philosophy, and on the philosophy of film a list of suggested films that can be explored following the approach in this book, including brief descriptions of each film, and suggestions regarding its philosophical implications a summary of Plato’s Republic , book by book, highlighting both dramatic context and subject matter. Offering a close reading of the controversial classic film A Clockwork Orange , and an introductory account of the central themes of the philosophical classic The Republic , this book will be of interest to both scholars and students of philosophy and film, as well as to readers of Plato and fans of Stanley Kubrick. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE TRANSMUTATIONS OF THE CONCEPT Over the ages the term "alienation" has been used with different and even contradictory meanings, ...

Discusses the encounter between German philosophy and Judaism in the 18th-19th centuries, focusing on the Hegelian and Kantian systems, and analyzes their negative evaluation of Judaism. Explores also the views of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and Jewish responses.

We think we know what healers do: they build on patients' irrational beliefs and treat them in a 'symbolic' way. If they get results, it's thanks to their capacity to listen, rather than any influence on a clinical level. At the same time, we also think we know what modern medicine is: a highly technical and rational process, but one that scarcely listens to patients at all. In this book, ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan and philosopher Isabelle Stengers argue that this (...) commonly posed opposition between traditional and modern medicine is misleading. They show instead that healers are interesting precisely because they don't listen to patients, using techniques of 'divination' rather than 'diagnosis'. Healers construct genuine therapeutic strategies by identifying the origins of symptoms in external forces, outside of the mind of the sufferer, and in this regard African healers are virtuosos. Though it may claim otherwise, modern medicine, for its part, is characterised by empiricism rather than rationality. What appears to be the pursuit of rationality is ultimately only a means to dismiss and exclude other forms of treatment. Blurring the distinctions between traditional and modern practices and drawing on perspectives from across the globe, this ethnopsychiatric manifesto encourages us to think in radically new ways about illness, challenging accepted notions on the relationship between sufferer and symptom. It will be of great interest to those working in medicine and healthcare, as well as anthropologists, social scientists and those in the humanities more broadly. (shrink)

Some rules seem more important than others. The moral rule to keep promises seems more important than the aesthetic rule not to wear brown with black or the pool rule not to scratch on the eight ball. A worrying number of metaethicists are increasingly tempted to explain this difference by appealing to something they call “authoritative normativity” – it’s because moral rules are “authoritatively normatively” that they are especially important. The authors of this chapter argue for three claims concerning “authoritative (...) normativity”: (1) that motivation for it originates in a parochial conception of “normative flavours”; (2) that arguments against alternative ways of explaining e.g., morality’s importance are overblown; and (3) that there are strong reasons against theorizing in terms of “authoritative normativity”. The overarching aim is not to show that “authoritative normativity” is incoherent or entirely unmotivated. Rather, it is to discuss some of “authoritative normativity’s” deeper commitments to correct the impression that is it largely benign or that it is entailed by familiar and popular “metanormative” positions. Authoritative normativity, it seems to us, is a solution in search of a problem. (shrink)

A key question has been underexplored in the literature on conscientious objection: if a physician is required to perform ‘medical activities,’ what is a medical activity? This paper explores the question by employing a teleological evaluation of medicine and examining the analogy of military conscripts, commonly cited in the conscientious objection debate. It argues that physicians (and other healthcare professionals) can only be expected to perform and support medical acts – acts directed towards their patients’ health. That is, physicians cannot (...) be forced to provide or support services that are not medical in nature, even if such activities support other socially desirable pursuits. This does not necessarily mean that medical professionals cannot or should not provide non-medical services, but only that they are under no obligation to provide them. (shrink)

Higginbotham (1986) observed that quantified conditionals have a stronger meaning than might be expected, as attested by the apparent equivalence of examples like No student will pass if he goofs off and Every student will fail if he goofs off. Higginbotham's observation follows straightforwardly given the validity of conditional excluded middle (CEM; as observed by von Fintel & Iatridou 2002), and as such could be taken as evidence thereof (e.g. Williams forthcoming). However, the empirical status of CEM has been disputed, (...) and it is invalid under many prominent theories of conditionals—notably Lewis (1973) for counterfactuals, also Kratzer (1979, 1991). More acutely, Higginbotham's observation holds even for quantified counterparts of conditionals that appear not to obey CEM (Higginbotham 2003), and the standard way of explaining (away) such apparent counterexamples to the principle, à la Stalnaker (1981), does not directly yield an account of our apparent truth-conditional intuitions about the quantified counterparts (Leslie 2009). This article provides an explanation for the latter intuitions within Stalnaker's framework, the upshot being that CEM does remain a viable explanation, in principle, for Higginbotham's observation. (shrink)

Two theses are central to recent work on the epistemology of disagreement: Conciliationism:?In a revealed peer disagreement over P, each thinker should give at least some weight to her peer's attitude. Uniqueness:?For any given proposition and total body of evidence, the evidence fully justifies exactly one level of confidence in the proposition. 1This paper is the product of full and equal collaboration between its authors. Does Conciliationism commit one to Uniqueness? Thomas Kelly 2010 has argued that it does. After some (...) scene-setting (?1), in ?2 we explain and criticize Kelly's argument, thereby defeating his larger argument that Conciliationism deserves no dialectical special treatment. But we argue further that Conciliationists are committed to a disjunction, one of whose disjuncts is Uniqueness, that amounts to an ?extremely strong and unobvious position? (??3?4). If we are correct, theorists should not treat Conciliationism as a default position in debates about the epistemic significance of disagreement. (shrink)

The Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm says that an event is overall harmful for someone if and only if it makes her worse off than she otherwise would have been. I defend this account from two common objections.

Two theses figure centrally in work on the epistemology of disagreement: Equal Weight (‘EW’) and Uniqueness (‘U’). According to EW, you should give precisely as much weight to the attitude of a disagreeing epistemic peer as you give to your own attitude. U has it that, for any given proposition and total body of evidence, some doxastic attitude is the one the evidence makes rational (justifies) toward that proposition. Although EW has received considerable discussion, the case for U has not (...) been critically evaluated. Endorsing U, we argue, commits one to the highly controversial thesis that whatever fixes your rational attitudes can do so only by fixing what evidence you have. This commitment imposes a relatively demanding requirement on justified belief in U, one that we argue is not satisfied by what is currently the strongest available case for U, due to Roger White [2005]. Our challenge to U makes more trouble for its proponents than do the worries about U expressed by Gideon Rosen [2001] and Thomas Kelly [2010]. Moreover, if Kelly [2010] is correct in thinking that EW “carries with it a commitment to” U—a claim which we accept for reasons similar to Kelly’s but is beyond this paper’s scope (but see Ballantyne and Coffman [forthcoming])—then our challenge to U bears importantly on EW: to the extent that our challenge to U succeeds, EW also suffers. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a vision of rhetoric as metaphysical enactment. This position contrasts with traditionally accepted views of rhetoric as phenomenological practice, evidenced prominently in contemporary rhetorical theory. I advance a framework that employs metaphorical accommodation and indicates a way that rhetoric can be situated as a perpetually productive force. The analytic tradition affords a method and vocabulary that when placed in conversation with rhetorical studies offers an alternative for viewing rhetoric as metaphysical enactment. I determine that rhetorical theory (...) should engage with rhetoric as a measure of action, activity, and vitality that raises our awareness and connects us. (shrink)

While a growing body of scholarship identifies urban agriculture’s broad suite of benefits and drivers, it remains unclear how motivations to engage in urban agriculture interrelate or how they differ across cities and types of organizations. In this paper, we draw on survey responses collected from more than 250 UA organizations and businesses from 84 cities across the United States and Canada. Synthesizing the results of our quantitative analysis of responses, qualitative analysis of textual data excerpted from open-ended responses, and (...) a review of existing literature, we describe six motivational frames that appear to guide organizations and businesses in their UA practice: Entrepreneurial, Sustainable Development, Educational, Eco-Centric, DIY Secessionist, and Radical. Identifying how practitioners stack functions and frame their work is a first step in helping to differentiate the diverse and often contradictory efforts transforming urban food environments. We demonstrate that a wide range of objectives drive UA and that political orientations and discourses differ by geography, organizational type and size, and funding regime. These six paradigms provide a basic framework for understanding UA that can guide more in-depth studies of the gap between intentions and outcomes, while helping link historically and geographically specific insights to wider social and political economic processes. (shrink)

Rather infamously, Kit Fine provided a series of counter‐examples which purport to show that attempts to understand essence in terms of metaphysical necessity are ‘fundamentally misguided’. Here, my aim is to put forward a new version of modalism that is, I argue, immune to Fine's counter‐examples. The core of this new modalist account is a sparseness restriction, such that an object's essential properties are those sparse properties it has in every world in which it exists. After first motivating this sparseness (...) restriction, I proceed to show how the resulting sparse modalism circumvents Fine's original counter‐examples. After dismissing a potential problem concerning the membership relation, I conclude that, as at least one form of modalism is viable, the project of understanding essence in terms of metaphysical necessity is not so fundamentally misguided after all. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Most of what we believe comes to us from the word of others, but we do not always believe what we are told. We often reject thinkers' reports by attributing biases to them. We may call this debunking. In this essay, I consider how debunking might work and then examine whether, and how often, it can help to preserve rational belief in the face of disagreement.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a claim of metaphysical modality, in possession of good alethic standing, must be in want of an essentialist foundation. Or at least so say the advocates of the reductive-essence-first view, according to which all modality is to be reductively defined in terms of essence. Here, I contest this bit of current wisdom. In particular, I offer two puzzles—one concerning the essences of non-compossible, complementary entities, and a second involving entities whose essences are modally (...) ‘loaded’—that together strongly call into question the possibility of reducing modality to essence. (shrink)

I argue that reflection on philosophers who could have been working among us but aren’t can lead us to give up our philosophical beliefs.

I defend the widely-held view that morally worthy action need not be motivated by a desire to promote rightness as such. Some have recently come to reject this view, arguing that desires for rightness as such are necessary for avoiding a certain kind of luck thought incompatible with morally worthy action. I show that those who defend desires for rightness as such on the basis of this argument misunderstand the relationship between moral worth and the kind of luck that their (...) argument employs. Consequently, the argument provides no reason to doubt the popular view that a desire for rightness as such is no part of virtue. I conclude by suggesting that a family of worries about merely accidentally right action presuppose one side of the recent debate about objectivism and perspectivism about moral rightness. (shrink)

I argue that there is moral luck, i.e., that factors beyond our control can affect how laudable or culpable we are.

Drawing on work in the Philosophy of Race, this chapter argues that the existence of races in heaven is either incompatible or only questionably compatible with the mainstream Christian view of the afterlife. However, it also argues that there is a phenomenon adjacent and related to race that can exist in the afterlife, namely racial identity. If one thinks of racial identity as a kind of practical identity, it turns out that racial identity is primarily psychological. Thus, its existence in (...) heaven is compatible with the mainstream Christian view that people with some semblance of human psychology continue on after death. Furthermore, the chapter offers reasons to think that we will need racial identities in the afterlife to facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation. Finally, it suggests that preserving racial identities from this life to the next is, on balance, preferable. (shrink)

Recent work on the nature of luck widely endorses the thesis that an event is good or bad luck for an individual only if it is significant for that individual. In this paper, I explore this thesis, showing that it raises questions about interests, well-being, and the philosophical uses of luck. In Sect. 1, I examine several accounts of significance, due to Pritchard (2005), Coffman (2007), and Rescher (1995). Then in Sect. 2 I consider what some theorists want to ‘do’ (...) with luck, taking important examples from epistemology (explaining Gettier-style examples) and political philosophy (offering a rationale for the just distribution of resources in society), while suggesting implications for significance. Drawing together lessons from Sects. 1 and 2, I develop a new account of significance in Sect. 3 before concluding with reflections on the debate in Sect. 4. (shrink)

Rachel Carson begins her revolutionary book Silent Spring with a quote from E.B. White that reads 'we would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively'. While White's advice can account for an instrumental relationship towards nature, I believe that the more important relationship offered in his recommendation is one of appreciation or gratitude. But how are we to understand gratitude as appreciating Nature non-instrumentally when it has traditionally always been understood (...) as a response to a benefit received? My motivation is to modify our traditional conception of gratitude alongside Simon Hailwood's account of the 'Otherness of Nature' to see how we can truly show gratitude for Nature rather than simply reflecting on how Nature serves human interests. (shrink)