No False Lemmas (NFL) says: necessarily, S’s belief that p is knowledge only if it is not inferred from any falsehood. Its proponents argue that alleged counterexamples to NFL are really cases of knowledge despite falsehood, wherein the false premise is inessential to the inference; perhaps some nearby truth does the justificatory heavy-lifting. We argue that there can be cases of inferential knowledge from a blindspot premise. Given that in such cases the relevant falsehood is essential to the inference, one (...) cannot employ the knowledge despite falsehood strategy to defend NFL. We conclude by discussing how cases of knowledge from blindspots exemplify one way in which we can gain inferential knowledge defectively or non-ideally. (shrink)

The Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Philosophy series serves undergraduate college students who have had little or no exposure to philosophy, as well as the curious lay reader. Following this first primer volume, which introduces both the discipline and the topics of the remaining nine volumes, each handbook will usher the reader into a subfield of philosophy, and explore fifteen to thirty topics in that subfield. Every chapter in each volume will use vehicles such as film to facilitate understanding of philosophical issues; (...) for example, the film Dead Man Walking may be used as an introduction to issues related to the death penalty. (shrink)

Many moral error theorists reject moral realism on the grounds that moral realism implies the existence of categorical normativity, yet categorical normativity does not exist. Call this the Metaphysical Argument. In response, some moral realists have emphasized a parity between moral normativity and epistemic normativity. They argue that if one kind of normativity is rejected, then both must be rejected. Therefore, one cannot be a moral error theorist without also being an epistemic error theorist. Call this the Parity Argument. In (...) this paper, we address three possible responses to the Parity Argument from moral error theorists: (1) accept the parity but still reject epistemic error theory, (2) reject the parity, (3) accept the parity and defend epistemic error theory. We argue that there are problems with each of these responses, so the Parity Argument stands as a strong counterargument to the Metaphysical Argument. We conclude by drawing some lessons for any future challenges to the Parity Argument. (shrink)

"Covers such topics as the nature of the God of theism, evidence and arguments supporting the existence of God, evidence and arguments challenging the existing of God, death and postdeath survival, and philosophy of religion's expanding horizons"--.

This volume serves as a primer to the study of philosophy, discussing some of the challenges from various forms of skepticism that philosophers have faced when, in the footsteps of Socrates, they have tried to gain knowledge. The primer also provides a sample of the diverse philosophical traditions that have developed through the centuries in different parts of the world.

The Exchange of Words is a philosophical exploration of human testimony, specifically as a form of intersubjective understanding in which speakers communicate by making themselves accountable for the truth of what they say. This account weaves together themes from philosophy of language, moral psychology, action theory, and epistemology, for a new approach to this basic human phenomenon.

Reasons-responsive accounts of praiseworthiness say, roughly, that an agent is praiseworthy for an action just in case the reasons that explain why they acted are also the reasons that explain why the action is right. In this paper, we argue that reasons-responsive accounts imply that some actions of non-human animals are praiseworthy. Trying to exclude non-human animals, we argue, risks neglecting cases of inadvertent virtue in human action and undermining the anti-intellectualist commitments that are typically associated with reasons-responsive accounts. Of (...) course, this could be taken as a reason to reject reasons-responsive accounts, rather than as a reason to attribute praiseworthiness to non-human animal action. We respond to two reasons that one might resist the implication that non-human animal action can be praiseworthy. The first appeals to intuition: it’s too counterintuitive to attribute praiseworthiness to non-human animal action. In response, we argue that once the factors that determine an action’s praiseworthiness are disambiguated from the factors that determine whether an agent should be praised, the intuitive objection loses much of its force. The second appeals to empirical evidence: attributing praiseworthiness to non-human animal action involves a problematic kind of anthropomorphizing. First, we point out that this objection is mostly an _a priori_ objection in _a posteriori_ clothes: whether we give anthropomorphic vs. anthropectic explanations is a methodological choice, not an empirical one. Second, we argue that considerations from the literature on rational analysis and radical interpretation actually support anthropomorphic explanations over anthropectic explanations. (shrink)

The paper argues for the centrality of believing the speaker (as distinct from believing the statement) in the epistemology of testimony, and develops a line of thought from Angus Ross which claims that in telling someone something, the kind of reason for belief that a speaker presents is of an essentially different kind from ordinary evidence. Investigating the nature of the audience's dependence on the speaker's free assurance leads to a discussion of Grice's formulation of non-natural meaning in an epistemological (...) light, concentrating on just how the recognition of the speaker's self-reflexive intention is supposed to count for his audience as a reason to believe P. This is understood as the speaker's explicitly assuming responsibility for the truth of his statement, and thereby constituting his utterance as a reason to believe. (shrink)

In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.

Richard Swinburne offers an original treatment of a question at the heart of epistemology: what makes a belief rational, or justified in holding? He maps the rival accounts of philosophers on epistemic justification ("internalist" and "externalist"), arguing that they are really accounts of different concepts. He distinguishes between synchronic justification (justification at a time) and diachronic justification (synchronic justification resulting from adequate investigation)--both internalist and externalist. He also argues that most kinds of justification are worth having because they are (...) indicative of truth; however, it is only justification of internalist kinds that can guide a believer's actions. Swinburne goes on to show the usefulness of the probability calculus in elucidating how empirical evidence makes beliefs probably true. (shrink)

Presents a collection of alphabetically-arranged entries that provide information on a wide range of topics related to philosophy, including ethics, religion, history, aesthetics, logic, metaphysics, from Aristotle and the Greek Academy, to modern concepts of feminist theory and philosophy of the mind.

Richard Swinburne presents a powerful new case for substance dualism and for libertarian free will. He argues that pure mental events are distinct from physical events and interact with them, and claims that no result from neuroscience or any other science could show that interaction does not take place. Swinburne goes on to argue for agent causation, and claims that it is we, and not our intentions, that cause our brain events. It is metaphysically possible that each of us (...) could acquire a new brain or continue to exist without a brain; and so we are essentially souls. Brain events and conscious events are so different from each other that it would not be possible to establish a scientific theory which would predict what each of us would do in situations of moral conflict. Hence, we should believe that things are as they seem to be: that we make choices independently of the causes which influence us. It follows that we are morally responsible for our actions. (shrink)

A distinctive feature of Juan Comesaña's epistemological account is the possibility of an agent possessing a false proposition as evidence. Comesaña argues that there are a number of theoretical virtues of his account once we accept this possibility, however, one might expect that there are particular vices of his account as well. Littlejohn and Dutant (2021) claim that a reflective agent who accepts Comesaña's view is rationally compelled to update their credences differently than unreflective agents, or else they will be (...) guilty of a problematic kind of doublethink: evidence in general can be false, but my evidence is never false. I argue that parallel reasoning applies to any epistemological view that says that it is possible for a rational agent to be wrong about what their evidence is. When a rational agent reflectively accepts that they could be wrong about their evidence they are rationally compelled to update their credences differently than unreflective agents, or else they will be guilty of a problematic kind of doublethink: even though rational agents in general are wrong about their evidence, I'm never wrong about my evidence. Reflecting on a particular challenge to Comesaña's view ultimately reveals a general challenge to fallibilism. (shrink)

This paper explores some aspects of the relation between different ways of achieving a consensus on the judgemental values of a group of indviduals; in particular, aggregation and deliberation. We argue firstly that the framing of an aggregation problem itself generates information that individuals are rationally obliged to take into account. And secondly that outputs of the deliberative process that this initiates is in tension with constraints on consensual values typically imposed by aggregation theory, at least when deliberation is modelled (...) as process of learning from others compatible with Bayesian updating principles. (shrink)

Atheism is a familiar kind of skepticism about religion. Moral error theory is an analogous kind of skepticism about morality, though less well known outside academic circles. Both kinds of skeptic face a "what next?" question: If we have decided that the subject matter (religion/morality) is mistaken, then what should we do with this way of talking and thinking? The natural assumption is that we should abolish the mistaken topic, just as we previously eliminated talk of, say, bodily humors and (...) unicorns. The fictionalist, however, offers a less obvious recommendation. According to the fictionalist, engaging in the topic in question provides pragmatic benefits that do not depend on its truth-in a way roughly analogous to engaging with a novel or a movie. The religious fictionalist maintains that even if we were atheists, we should carry on talking, thinking, and acting as if religion were true. The moral fictionalist maintains a similar view regarding moral talk, thought, and action. Both forms of fictionalism face serious challenges. Some challenges can be levelled at either form of fictionalism (or at any form of fictionalism), whereas others are problems unique to moral fictionalism or to religious fictionalism. There are important questions to be asked about the relationship between these two kinds of fictionalism. Could moral fictionalism be plausible even if religious fictionalism is not (or vice versa)? This is a volume of thirteen previously unpublished papers on the topics of religious fictionalism, moral fictionalism, and the relation between these views. (shrink)

The nature of evidence is a problem for epistemology, but I argue that this problem intersects with normative decision theory in a way that I think is underappreciated. Among some decision theorists, there is a presumption that one can always ignore the nature of evidence while theorizing about principles of rational choice. In slogan form: decision theory only cares about the credences agents actually have, not the credences they should have. I argue against this presumption. In particular, I argue that (...) if evidence can be unspecific, then an alleged counterexample to causal decision theory fails. This implies that what theory of decision we think is true may depend on our opinions regarding the nature of evidence. Even when we are theorizing about subjective theories of rationality, we cannot set aside questions about the objective nature of evidence. (shrink)

For introductory philosophy courses. This popular introductory text/reader on modern philosophy intersperses primary sources with commentary to keep students interested and critically engaged in what they are reading. Each chapter deals with a fundamental question about human existence, exploring the subject through representative readings by classic, modern, and contemporary philosophers--with at least two contrasting perspectives for each main position.

Rice's Theorem says that every nontrivia semantic property of programs is undecidable. In this spirit we show the following: Every nontrivia absolute counting property of circuits is UP-hard with respect to polynomial-time Turing reductions. For generators [31] we show a perfect analogue of Rice's Theorem.

This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators.... The importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of anicient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence... that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve (...) anti-Aristotelian marterial which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they presented Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian Church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators, that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. --From book jacket. (shrink)

Philosophy and literature enjoy a close, complex relationship. Elucidating the connections between these two fields, this book examines the ways philosophy deploys literary means to advance its practice, particularly as a way of life that extends beyond literary forms and words into physical deeds, nonlinguistic expression, and subjective moods and feelings.

_Heidegger_ is a classic introduction to Heidegger's notoriously difficult work. Truly accessible, it combines clarity of exposition with an authoritative handling of the subject-matter. Richard Polt has written a work that will become the standard text for students looking to understand one of the century's greatest minds.

This classic, provocative introduction to classical metaphysical questions focuses on appreciating the problems, rather than attempting to proffer answers.

The book begins with an overview that introduces the Theorem and the issues surrounding it, and explores how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of those issues.

Richard Kilvington (ca. 1302-1361) was one of the most original and influential thinkers among the Oxford Calculators. His impact on late medieval philosophy and theology remains unquestionable. His physical, logical, and ethical solutions were extensively debated and referred to, paving the way for new approaches in philosophy and theology. This volume presents a critical edition of question 4 from Kilvington's Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum, complete with an introduction to the edition and a guide to Kilvington's theological concepts.

The sixteen essays in this volume confront the current debate about the relationship between philosophy and its history. On the one hand intellectual historians commonly accuse philosophers of writing bad - anachronistic - history of philosophy, and on the other, philosophers have accused intellectual historians of writing bad - antiquarian - history of philosophy. The essays here address this controversy and ask what purpose the history of philosophy should serve. Part I contains more purely theoretical and methodological discussion, of such (...) questions as whether there are 'timeless' philosophical problems, whether the issues of one epoch are commensurable with those of another, and what style is appropriate to the historiography of the subject. The essays in Part II consider a number of case-histories. They present important revisionist scholarship and original contributions on topics drawn from ancient, early modern and more recent philosophy. All the essays have been specially commissioned, and the contributors include many of the leading figures in the field. The volume as a whole will be of vital interest to everyone concerned with the study of philosophy and of its history. (shrink)

This Element, written for researchers and students in philosophy and the behavioral sciences, reviews and critically assesses extant work on number concepts in developmental psychology and cognitive science. It has four main aims. First, it characterizes the core commitments of mainstream number cognition research, including the commitment to representationalism, the hypothesis that there exist certain number-specific cognitive systems, and the key milestones in the development of number cognition. Second, it provides a taxonomy of influential views within mainstream number cognition research, (...) along with the central challenges these views face. Third, it identifies and critically assesses a series of core philosophical assumptions often adopted by number cognition researchers. Finally, the Element articulates and defends a novel version of pluralism about number concepts. (shrink)

Disagreement is common: even informed, intelligent, and generally reasonable people often come to different conclusions when confronted with what seems to be the same evidence. Can the competing conclusions be reasonable? If not, what can we reasonably think about the situation? This volume examines the epistemology of disagreement. Philosophical questions about disagreement arise in various areas, notably politics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion: but this will be the first book focusing on the general epistemic issues arising from informed (...) disagreement. Ten leading philosophers offer specially written essays which together will offer a starting-point for future work on this topic. (shrink)

Thinking through the body: educating for the humanities -- The body as background -- Self-knowledge and its discontents: from Socrates to somaesthetics -- Muscle memory and the somaesthetic pathologies of everyday life -- Somaesthetics in the philosophy classroom: a practical approach -- Somaesthetics and the limits of aesthetics -- Somaesthetics and Burke's sublime -- Pragmatism and cultural politics: from textualism to somaesthetics -- Body consciousness and performance -- Somaesthetics and architecture: a critical option -- Photography as performative process -- Asian (...) ars erotica and the question of sexual aesthetics -- Philosophy as awakened life : everyday aesthetics of embodiment in American transcendentalism and Japanese Zen practice -- Somatic style. (shrink)

Richard Kilvington s commentary on Aristotle s Nicomachean Ethics (14th century) offers a unique perspective of argumentation by applying concepts and terminology from the fields of logic and physics to ethical dilemmas.".

In his final work, Richard Rorty provides the definitive statement of his political thought. Rorty equates pragmatism with anti-authoritarianism, arguing that because there is no authority we can rely on to ascertain truth, we can only do so intersubjectively. It follows that we must learn to think and care about what others think and care about.

Our existence is increasingly lived at a distance. As we move from flesh to image, we are in danger of losing touch with each other and ourselves. How can we combine the physical with the virtual, our embodied experience with our global connectivity? How can we come back to our senses? Richard Kearney offers a timely call for the cultivation of the basic human need to touch and be touched. He argues that touch is our most primordial sense, foundational (...) to our individual and common selves. Kearney explores the role of touch, from ancient wisdom traditions to modern therapies. He demonstrates that a fundamental aspect of touch is interdependence, its inherently reciprocal nature, which offers a crucial corrective to our fixation with control. Making the case for the complementarity of touch and technology, this book is a passionate plea to recover a tangible sense of community and the joys of life with others. (shrink)

Abstract An analysis of welfare?state restructuring under conservative governments during the 1980s undermines the notion that the nation?state is being rendered obsolete by economic globalization. The nation?state is still the principal site of political conflict. Yet this conflict has to be analyzed in light of global economic and cultural pressures. Conservative attempts to restructure the welfare state were parallel events within a larger transition in the world economy, but they had decisively distinct national trajectories.