Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self-locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different hypotheses concerning who one is within that possible world, so long as those hypotheses are compatible with one’s evidence. My first goal is to defend a more precise version of this principle. After responding to several existing criticisms of such a principle, I argue (...) that existing formulations of the principle are crucially ambiguous, and I go on to defend a particular disambiguation of the principle. According to the disambiguation I defend, how we should apply this restricted principle of indifference sensitively depends on our background metaphysical beliefs. My second goal is to apply this disambiguated principle to classical skeptical problems in epistemology. In particular, I argue that Eternalism threatens to lead us to external world skepticism, and Modal Realism threatens to lead us to inductive skepticism. (shrink)

An indifference principle says that your credences should be distributed uniformly over each of the possibilities you recognise. A chance deference principle says that your credences should be aligned with the chances. My thesis is that, if we are anti-Humeans about chance, then these two principles are incompatible. Anti-Humeans think that it is possible for the actual frequencies to depart from the chances. So long as you recognise possibilities like this, you cannot both spread your credences evenly and defer to (...) the chances. I discuss some weaker forms of indifference which will allow anti-Humeans to defer to the chances. (shrink)

I argue against motivational internalism. First I recharacterise the issue over moral motivation. Second I describe the indifference argument against motivation internalism. Third I consider appeals to irrationality that are often made in the face of this argument, and I show that they are ineffective. Lastly, I draw the motivational externalist conclusion and reflect on the nature of the issue.

Critics of the Fine-Tuning Argument for Theism have recently argued that even if the universe is fine-tuned for life, certain features of the universe are still surprising given theism, because God should be indifferent between those features and their contraries. In the first section of this paper, I summarize this sort of Indifference Objection to the Fine-Tuning Argument. In the second section, I explain why contrary to initial appearances, these objections fail. In the third section, I present the Argument from (...) Compatibility, which attempts to turn the tables by arguing that the paradigmatic features are more surprising given atheism than they are given theism. (shrink)

Stephen Makin offers an account of indifference arguments and the pre-Socratic atomism underpinned by this sort of reasoning. Used by Parmenides, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle and Leibniz, as well as some contemporary philosophers, indifference arguments start from claims about a balance of reasons or an absence of asymmetries. While some provide plausible support for strong conclusion, others produce no conviction.

This paper examines whether social workers and other direct service practitioners can find utility in ethnomethodology despite or even because of the policy of “indifference”. Garfinkel, the father of ethnomethodology, sets out “ethnomethodological indifference” to insist that EM studies do not supplement, formulate remedies, develop humanistic arguments, or encourage discussions of theory. While at first blush such limits on EM might appear to be a barrier for most social workers this paper argues against first impressions. It is argued that EM (...) provides an important redirection for social work practice and research. Additionally, it is proposed that by approaching EM through Dorothy Smith’s Institutional Ethnography social workers can bridge Garfinkel’s quest for haeccities with extended social relations and actual courses of actions to find congruence between EM and accomplished professional practice. (shrink)

Many theorists have proposed that we can use the principle of indifference to defeat the inductive sceptic. But any such theorist must confront the objection that different ways of applying the principle of indifference lead to incompatible probability assignments. Huemer offers the explanatory priority proviso as a strategy for overcoming this objection. With this proposal, Huemer claims that we can defend induction in a way that is not question-begging against the sceptic. But in this article, I argue that the opposite (...) is true: if anything, Huemer’s use of the principle of indifference supports the rationality of inductive scepticism. (shrink)

Indifference, Necessity, and Descartes's Derivation of the Laws of Motion BLAKE D. DUTTON WHILE WORKING ON Le Monde, his first comprehensive scientific treatise, Des- cartes writes the following to Mersenne: "I think that all those to whom God has given the use of this reason have an obligation to employ it principally in the endeavor to know him and to know themselves. This is the task with which I began my studies; and I can say that I would not have (...) been able to discover the foundations of physics if I had not looked for them along that road" . ' As the letter makes clear, knowl- edge of the foundations of Cartesian physics is inextricably linked to the knowledge of God. Unfortunately, Descartes never explains why this is the case, and the relation in which his theistic doctrine stands to his physics remains unspecified. In what follows I wish to clarify that relation by examining some of the problems surrounding Descartes's attempt to locate the metaphysical founda- tions of his physics in his doctrine of God. I begin my analysis with a discussion of the doctrine of divine indifference and argue that this doctrine is of great importance to any interpretation of the foundations of Cartesian physics, insofar as it provides Descartes with a rationale for dismissing the appeal to final causation in scientific explanation. Insofar as this is the case, it supplies an important piece of his justification for mechanism... (shrink)

Roger White (2015) sketches an ingenious new solution to the problem of induction. He argues from the principle of indifference for the conclusion that the world is more likely to be induction- friendly than induction-unfriendly. But there is reason to be skeptical about the proposed indifference-based vindication of induction. It can be shown that, in the crucial test cases White concentrates on, the assumption of indifference renders induction no more accurate than random guessing. After discussing this result, the paper explains (...) why the indifference-based argument seemed so compelling, despite ultimately being unsound. (shrink)

Although largely neglected in Schelling scholarship, the concept of bliss assumes central importance throughout Schelling’s oeuvre. Focusing on his 1810–11 texts, the Stuttgart Seminars and the beginning of the Ages of the World, this paper traces the logic of bliss, in its connection with other key concepts such as indifference, the world or the system, at a crucial point in Schelling’s thinking. Bliss is shown, at once, to mark the zero point of the developmental narrative that Schelling constructs here and (...) to interrupt it at every step. As a result, bliss emerges here in its real utopian force but also its all-too-real ambivalence, indifference, and even violence, despite Schelling’s best efforts to theorize it as ‘love’; and Schelling himself emerges, in these texts, as one of modernity’s foremost thinkers not just of nature or freedom, but also of bliss in its modern afterlives. At stake in Schelling’s conception of bliss, I argue, is the very relationship between history and eternity, the not-yet and the already-here, the present, and the eschatological—as well as between Spinozian immanence and the Christian temporality of salvation, so important for modernity —not to mention the complex entanglement of indifference, violence, and love or the ideas of totality, nonproductivity, and nonrelation that Schellingian bliss involves. (shrink)

A powerful work of moral and political philosophy.The idea which I shall present here came to me more or less out of the blue. I was on a train some five years ago, on my way to spend a day at Headingley and I was reading a book about the death camp at Sobibor... The particular, not very appropriate, conjunction involved for me in this train journey... had the effect of fixing my thoughts on one of the more dreadful features (...) of human coexistence, when in the shape of a simple five-word phrase the idea occurred to me. In The Contract of Mutual Indifference, Norman Geras discusses a central aspect of the experience of the Holocaust with a view to exploring its most important contemporary implications. In a bold and powerful synthesis of memorial, literary record, historical reflection and political theory, he focuses on the figure of the bystander -- the bystander to the destruction of the Jews of Europe and the bystander to more recent atrocities -- to consider the moral consequences of looking on without active response at persecution and great suffering. Geras argues that the tragedy of European Jewry, so widely pondered by historians, social scientists, psychologists, theologians and others, has not yet found its proper reflection within political philosophy. Attempting to fill the gap, he adapts an old idea from within that tradition of enquiry, the idea of the social contract, to the task of thinking about the triangular relation between perpetrators, victims and bystanders, and draws a somber conclusion from it. Geras goes on to ask how far this conclusion may be offset by the hypothesis of a universal duty to bring aid. The Contract of Mutual Indifference is an original and challenging work, aimed at the complacent abstraction of much contemporary theory. It is supplemented by three shorter essays on the implications of the Jewish catastrophe for conceptions of human nature and progress and for certain types of Marxist explanation. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an alternative to hermeneutic fictionalism, an alternative I call indifferentism, with the same advantages as hermeneutic fictionalism with respect to ontological issues but avoiding some of the problems that face fictionalism. The difference between indifferentism and fictionalism is this. The fictionalist about ordinary utterances of a sentence S holds, with more orthodox views, that the speaker in some sense commits herself to the truth of S. It is only that for the fictionalist this is truth (...) in the relevant fiction. According to the indifferentist, by contrast, we are simply non-committal – or indifferent – with respect to some aspects of what is literally said in our assertive utterances. (shrink)

We utilize contemporary cognitive and social science of religion to defend a controversial thesis: the human cognitive apparatus gratuitously inclines humans to religious activity oriented around entities other than the God of classical theism. Using this thesis, we update and defend two arguments drawn from David Hume: (i) the argument from idolatry, which argues that the God of classical theism does not exist, and (ii) the argument from indifference, which argues that if the God of classical theism exists, God is (...) indifferent to our religious activity. (shrink)

Indifference is sometimes said to be a virtue. Perhaps more frequently it is said to be a vice. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper presents a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically significant forms of indifference in terms of how subjects of indifference are variously related to their objects in different circumstances; and how an indifferent orientation can be either more or less (...) dynamic, or more or less sensitive to the nature and state of its object. The resulting analysis is located in a wider context of moral psychology and ethical theory; in particular with respect to work on the virtues of care, empathy and other forms of affective engagement. During the course of this discussion, a number of recent claims associated with the ethics of care and empathy are shown to be either misleading or implausible. (shrink)

Nigel Clark’s ‘ex-orbitant globality’ concerns the incalculability of other-than-human forces we typically fail to acknowledge, yet which haunt all considerations of environmental change. This article considers Gaia theory as a useful heuristic to register the ubiquity of bacteria to environmental activity and regulation. Bacteria are Gaia theory’s fundamental actants, and through symbiosis and symbiogenesis, connect life and matter in biophysical and biosocial entanglements. Emphasizing symbiosis might invoke the expectation of a re-inscription of the human insofar as the ubiquitous inter-connectivity of (...) life ultimately connects everything to the human. I want to argue toward the opposite conclusion: that bacterial liveliness suggests a profound indifference to human life. As such, symbiosis does not efface difference, nor its vigorous refusal to be absorbed within human formulations of world-remaking, including environmental change. Bacterial indifference’s radical asymmetry suggests the need for non-human centred theories of globality. (shrink)

This essay seeks to establish the sense in which Derrida’s stated indifference to questions of legitimate descent can function as an ethical or political principle, as he argues in “Marx and Sons.” We track Derrida’s response to accusations of a lack of fealty in texts such as “Marx and Sons,” “Biodegradables: Seven Diary Fragments,” and “Limited Inc a b c … ” alongside his problematization of a certain sense of inheritance or heritage. We argue that Derrida reveals the necessity of (...) troubling established legitimate inheritances as an ethical and political first principle. As such, we argue that Derrida’s reading of Marx is not just one faithful reading among others, but an indifference to the paradigm of fealty in inheritance. (shrink)

This paper examines whether social workers and other direct service practitioners can find utility in ethnomethodology despite or even because of the policy of “indifference”. Garfinkel, the father of ethnomethodology, sets out “ethnomethodological indifference” to insist that EM studies do not supplement, formulate remedies, develop humanistic arguments, or encourage discussions of theory. While at first blush such limits on EM might appear to be a barrier for most social workers this paper argues against first impressions. It is argued that EM (...) provides an important redirection for social work practice and research. Additionally, it is proposed that by approaching EM through Dorothy Smith’s Institutional Ethnography social workers can bridge Garfinkel’s quest for haeccities with extended social relations and actual courses of actions to find congruence between EM and accomplished professional practice. (shrink)

The principle of indifference states that in the absence of any relevant evidence, a rational agent will distribute their credence equally among all the possible outcomes under consideration. Despite its intuitive plausibility, PI famously falls prey to paradox, and so is widely rejected as a principle of ideal rationality. In this article, I present a novel rehabilitation of PI in terms of the epistemology of comparative confidence judgments. In particular, I consider two natural comparative reformulations of PI and argue that (...) while one of them prescribes the adoption of patently irrational epistemic states, the other provides a consistent formulation of PI that overcomes the most salient limitations of existing formulations. (shrink)

The successes scored by the big bang model of cosmic evolution in the 1960’s led to an intensive application of quantum theory to the problem of how the expansion might have begun and what its likely first stages were. It seemed as though an incredibly precise setting of the initial conditions would have been needed in order that a long-lived galactic universe containing heavy elements might develop. One response was to suppose that the fine-tuning could somehow be explained by the (...) presence of humans in the universe. This ran quite counter to the traditional supposition, according to which an initial "chaos" was sufficient. This essay outlines the history of the two principles, argues that the so-called "weak" anthropic principle is banal, distinguishes between two sorts of anthropic explanation, and assesses the prospects of the anthropic turn in cosmology. (edited). (shrink)

In this lucid and insightful study, Stephen Makin investigates a form of argument widespread in ancient Greek philosophy, where the absence of a reason for one alternative to be the case rather than another is used to establish substantive conclusions—where the alternatives are “indifferent”. Examples abound: Anaximander engages in such reasoning to show that the Earth does not move; Zeno of Elea to show that what is cannot be divided; Democritus to argue for finite divisibility, on the one hand, and (...) the infinite variety of atoms and worlds, on the other; not to mention the extensive use of such arguments in ancient skepticism. (shrink)

According to an influential view, ‘the amount of blame people deserve varies with the extent of their indifference’. That is, the more wrongdoers act from a lack of moral concern, the more they would be blameworthy. This paper argues for the exact opposite claim: the more wrongdoers act from indifference, the less they are blameworthy – that is, in a properly interpersonal way.

In some cases where we are faced with a decision of whether to prioritize identified lives over statistical lives, we have no basis for assigning specific probabilities to possible outcomes. Is there any reason to prioritize either statistical or identified lives in such cases? The ‘uncertainty argument’ purports to show that, provided we embrace ex ante contractualism, we should prioritize saving identified lives in such cases. The argument faces two serious problems. First, it relies on the principle of indifference, and (...) as such it leads to inconsistent assignments of epistemic probability to possible outcomes. Moreover, even if the uncertainty argument can be reformulated in order to avoid reliance on the principle of indifference, the uncertainty in such cases still undermines any judgment of which course of action – saving a statistical, or rather an identified life – involves the greater burden. The indeterminacy involved in the statistical group might be thought to undermine the argument that application of the principle of indifference leads to inconsistency in this case, but the thought that it does rests on a misunderstanding of the relationship between indeterminacy and reference. (shrink)

The ecological crisis demonstrates the inadequacy of current modes of thought to grasp the nature of reality and to act accordingly. A more sophisticated metaphysical system is necessary. Arran Gare, a prominent Australian philosopher, has produced such a system, which takes into account the post modern sciences of non-linear thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and complexity theory. The present article promotes a cosmology based on Gare's metaphysics. In contrast to modern science, the postmodern account offered here will come to terms with a (...) world governed by indifference, which is the same indifference that Albert Camus describes as "absurd". Camus will be interpreted in light of Gare's metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper is about some of the ways in which people sometimes speak while be- ing indifferent toward what they say. We argue that what Harry Frankfurt called ‘bullshitting’ is a mode of speech marked by indifference toward inquiry, the coop- erative project of reaching truth in discourse. On this view bullshitting is character- ized by indifference toward the project of advancing inquiry by making progress on specific subinquiries, represented by so-called questions under discussion. This ac- count preserves the central (...) insight of Frankfurt’s influential analysis of bullshitting in seeing the characteristic of bullshitting as indifference toward truth and falsity. Yet we show that speaking with indifference toward truth is a wider phenomenon than the one Frankfurt identified. The account offered in this paper thereby agrees with various critics of Frankfurt who argue that bullshitting is compatible with not being indifferent toward the truth-value of one’s assertions. Further, we argue that, while bullshitting and lying are not mutually exclusive, most lies are not instances of bullshitting. The account thereby avoids the problem that Frankfurt’s view ulti- mately is insufficient to adequately distinguish bullshitting and lying. (shrink)

The pivotal point in the Austrian literature on homogeneity, choice and indifference was constituted by Nozick’s On Austrian Methodology. Nozick provoked a long debate on the above notions within Austrianism. The aim of this paper is to elaborate such an account of homogeneity that would take the sting out of Nozick’s challenge and allow for non-trivial formulation of the law of diminishing marginal utility. Hence, we shall first take a closer look at the debate on indifference within the Austrian camp, (...) while defending and building upon the Hoppean account vis-à-vis Block’s criticism. Our justification of the Hoppean position shall consist in showing that his account of the correct description of an action is not an ad hoc move aimed at solving just one problem of indifference but is highly intuitive and widely applicable. We conclude by restating the above-mentioned law, thus demonstrating that the Nozickian objection can be successfully replied. (shrink)

. The uniform prior distribution is often seen as a mathematical description of noninformativeness. This paper uses the well-known Three Prisoners Paradox to examine the impossibility of maintaining noninformativeness throughout hierarchization. The Paradox has been solved by Bayesian conditioning over the choice made by the Warder when asked to name a prisoner who will be shot. We generalize the paradox to situations of N prisoners, k executions and m announcements made by the Warder. We then extend the consequences of hierarchically (...) placing uniform and symmetrical priors for the probability p of the Warder naming Prisoner B, say. We prove that breaks of indifference and neutrality caused by assignment of uniform and symmetrical priors in lieu of degenerate indifference probabilities hold in general. Speaking of unknown probabilities or of probability of a probability must be forbidden as meaningless. Bruno de Finetti, 1977 I regard the use of hierarchical chains as a technique helping you to sharpen your subjective probabilities. I. J. Good, 1981. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, voluntarists—that is, philosophers committed to some version of the freedom of indifference—have worried about its metaphysical credentials, but only a few, at least to my knowledge, have attempted to argue for more than its mere existence. Freedom of indifference is the option to choose between opposites in a given situation. In this paper, I present the ambitious attempt of the German pre-Kantian philosopher Christian August Crusius (1715–1775) to argue for the claim that we have freedom (...) of indifference as a matter of hypothetical necessity. The point is that, in his view, there can be no actual world without freedom of indifference. This is not a logical but a metaphysical truth. I argue that a possible (motivational) reason for Crusius’s choice to tread this slippery path is that he attempts to bestow some metaphysical dignity on the freedom of indifference. As a consequence, this metaphysical value of freedom of indifference shapes the relation between the divine and free, rational agents in a way that is completely different from a rationalist’s conception such as Leibniz’s. In this paper, I give a plausible interpretation of a metaphysical argument that has been neglected in the relevant literature. (shrink)

Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference offers a powerful intervention to the field of climate justice scholarship by addressing a neglected aspect of the field of climate justice, namely systemic racisms. Building on the work of Black feminist theorists, the work develops an ecointersectional approach designed to reveal the depth and complexities of racial climates overlooked even in the environmental justice literature. The book’s conception of ecological indifference underscores the disposition of seeing the environment as a resource for human consumption and enjoyment, (...) a resource that is usable, fungible, disposable, and without intrinsic worth or standing. The many examples in the book offer new insights demonstrating that systemic racisms emerge out of and give rise to environmental degradation; that is, they are often mutually constitutive. The ecointersectional analyses provided throughout the book reveal that ecological indifference and climate injustice are two sides of the same coin. Three distinctive but interrelated domains in which the intersections between systemic racisms and ecological indifference are manifest are identified: (1) differential distribution of harms/benefits due to systemic racisms, (2) racist institutions and practices fueling or causing environmental degradation, and (3) the basic social structures that generate environmental degradation being the same ones that generate systemic oppression of certain groups of people. One of the aims of Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference is to underscore that any effort to protect the environment must also be a fight against systemic racisms and other forms of systemic inequity. (shrink)

In their paper published in 2017 in Philosophical Psychology, Ronja Rutschmann and Alex Wiegmann introduce a novel kind of lies, the indifferent lies. According to them, these lies are not intended to deceive simply because the liars do not care whether their audience is going to believe them or not. It seems as if indifferent lies avoid the objections raised against other kinds of lies supposedly not intended to deceive. I argue that this is not correct. Indifferent lies, too, are (...) either intended to deceive or are not lies at all, since they do not involve genuine assertions. (shrink)

In his late philosophy, Quine generalized the structuralist view in the philosophy of mathematics that mathematical theories are indifferent to the ontology we choose for them. According to his ‘global structuralism’, the choice of objects does not matter to any scientific theory. In the literature, this doctrine is mainly understood as an epistemological thesis claiming that the empirical evidence for a theory does not depend on the choice of its objects. The present paper proposes a new interpretation suggested by Quine’s (...) recently published Kant Lectures from 1980 according to which his global structuralism is a semantic thesis that belongs to his theory of ontological reduction. It claims that a theory can always be reformulated in such a way that its truth does not presuppose the existence of the original objects, but only of some objects that can be considered as their proxies. Quine derives this claim from the principle of the semantic primacy of sentences, which is supposed to license the ontological reductions he uses to establish his global structuralism. It is argued that these reductions do not actually work because they do not account for some hidden ontological commitments that are not detected by his criterion of ontological commitment. (shrink)

In his essay, "Über Gegenstandstheorie", Meinong presents a clear formulation of his somewhat paradoxical Ontology. I have attempted to construct an explicit differentiation between Meinong's objects which are indifferent to being, and objects upon which a type of being is predicated. I argue that once a clear distinction between Meinongian objects and objects of a higher order is effected, not only do paradoxical inconsistencies fade, but also the Ontology itself gains intuitive appeal.

In capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history of modern philosophy. Indifference and Repetition examines how modern philosophy, largely coextensive with a particular boost in capitalism’s development, registers the reductive and regressive tendencies produced by capitalism’s effect on individuals and society. Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern, especially rationalist philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim (...) that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead the subjects of these interpretations to no longer act and think freely. They are often unwillingly led into unfreedom. It is thus possible that even “freedom” enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk. (shrink)

Nozick (1977) was a critique of the view of Austrian economics which rejected the notion of indifference in human action. This author claimed that this stance was incompatible with the notion of the supply of a good, and, also, with diminishing marginal utility, both of which were strongly supported by this praxeological school of thought. Block (1980) was an attempt to rescue the Austrian school from this brilliant intellectual challenge. Hoppe (2005; 2009) rejected Nozick’s challenge, and, also, Block’s (1980) response. (...) Block (2009a) and Block and Barnett (2010), defended Block’s (1980) analysis of indifference. The latest contribution to this ongoing discussion is Wysocki (2021) who maintains that Hoppe was correct in his rejection of Nozick, while Block was not. The present paper is a rejoinder to Wysocki (2021). (shrink)

This article explores the maternal experiences of a heterogeneous group of 26 mothers from Granada. The aim is to analyse the needs and demands that these women express with regard to childrearing, using a qualitative methodology. The authors conducted in-depth interviews and analysed the discourses of the mothers following the hermeneutical method. The variables used for sample selection and the themes that emerged during the interviews revealed that the discourses of the mothers revolve around three dimensions: indifference, demands and resignation (...) regarding support for childrearing. The lack of paternal involvement in childrearing appears as a transversal dimension. This article shows that the material conditions of existence marked the differences in the responses of the women regarding support for childrearing, while the sexual division of labour and gender inequalities unified their discourses. (shrink)

There are two basic positions where tolerance as political strategy and moral viewpoint is rejected or made redundant. We are hostile to tolerance when we hold that we are defending an objective truth—religious or secular—which should also be defended and maintained by means of political and legal power. And tolerance become superfluous also when the affirmation of plurality becomes total, and tolerance identical to a vive la difference. As recent developments in my own country—the Netherlands—have demonstrated, the political outcome of (...) this last position is remarkably enough not necessarily an all-inclusive relativistic tolerance. It may just as well be one of intolerance towards ‘believers’ of all kinds, in short: tolerance becomes polemical and belligerent. Turning to religious fundamentalism or ultra-orthodoxy could then become a possible reaction to this relativistic and subjectivist position, as demonstrated in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Penitent. Between these two positions of hostility or indifference towards tolerance, we can situate that democratic attitude which may rightly be called ‘tolerance’. As ethical position, the tolerant citizen accepts the democratic disjunction between my truth and the symmetrical justice between citizens. As political strategy, a tolerant democratic regime is based upon a political act of exclusion of what I will here call ‘political fundamentalism’. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, James Hawthorne, Jürgen Landes, Christian Wallmann, and Jon Williamson argue that the principal principle entails the principle of indifference. In this paper, I argue that it does not. Lewis’s version of the principal principle notoriously depends on a notion of admissibility, which Lewis uses to restrict its application. HLWW base their argument on certain intuitions concerning when one proposition is admissible for another: Conditions 1 and 2. There are two ways of reading their (...) argument, depending on how you understand the status of these conditions. Reading 1: The correct account of admissibility is determined independently of these two principles, and yet these two principles follow from that correct account. Reading 2: The correct account of admissibility is determined in part by these two principles, so that the principles follow from that account but only because the correct account is constrained so that it must satisfy them. HLWWshow that, given an account of admissibility on which Conditions 1 and 2 hold, the principal principle entails the principle of indifference. I argue that, on either reading of the argument, it fails. First, I argue that there is a plausible account of admissibility on which Conditions 1 and 2 are false. That defeats reading 1. Next, I argue that the intuitions that lead us to assent to Condition 2 also lead us to assent to other very closely related principles that are inconsistent with Condition 2. This, I claim, casts doubt on the reliability of those intuitions, and thus removes our justification for Condition 2. This defeats the second reading of the HLWW argument. Thus, the argument fails. (shrink)

In Bayesian epistemology, the problem of the priors is this: How should we set our credences (or degrees of belief) in the absence of evidence? That is, how should we set our prior or initial credences, the credences with which we begin our credal life? David Lewis liked to call an agent at the beginning of her credal journey a superbaby. The problem of the priors asks for the norms that govern these superbabies. -/- The Principle of Indifference gives a (...) very restrictive answer. It demands that such an agent divide her credences equally over all possibilities. That is, according to the Principle of Indifference, only one initial credence function is permissible, namely, the uniform distribution. In this paper, we offer a novel argument for the Principle of Indifference. I call it the Argument from Accuracy. (shrink)

The propositional view of communication states that every literal assertoric utterance of an indicative sentence expresses a proposition, and the audience understands those utterances only if she entertains the proposition(s) the speaker expressed. According to an important objection due to Ray Buchanan, the propositional view is ill‐equipped to handle meaning underdeterminacy. Using resources from situation semantics and MacFarlane's nonindexical contextualism, this article develops a view of literal communication close to the propositional view which overcomes Buchanan's underdeterminacy considerations while accounting for (...) the kind of indifference that typically characterizes speakers' intentions. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument for the Principle of Indifference. This argument can be thought of in two ways: as a pragmatic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss, or as an epistemic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold in order to minimise worst-case expected inaccuracy. The question arises as to which interpretation is preferable. I show that the epistemic argument contradicts Evidentialism and suggest that the relative plausibility (...) of Evidentialism provides grounds to prefer the pragmatic interpretation. If this is right, it extends to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for the Principle of Indifference, and also to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for other norms of Bayesian epistemology. (shrink)

Cette étude a pour objet d’examiner la place et le rôle de l’indifférence au sein de la conception cartésienne de la liberté humaine. Notre analyse est principalement gouvernée par la distinction, au sein des affirmations cartésiennes au sujet de la liberté humaine entre 1641 et 1645, de deux dimensions conceptuelles qui déploient respectivement, d’une part, les notions relatives au libre arbitre, d’autre part, celles qui ont trait au rapport de la volonté à l’entendement et qui concernent donc les différents (...) degrés de la liberté. Cette distinction permet d’éclairer les rapports des termes « liberté » et « indifférence » au sein de la pensée de Descartes et de comparer sa position avec celles des courants théologiques majeurs de son époque. En outre, l’examen des diverses corrélations possibles entre les éléments de ces deux axes nous sert à analyser en quoi consistent les différents sens du « bien » que Descartes associe à la liberté, ainsi que les diverses formes du « bon usage » du libre arbitre. (shrink)

When pessimists claim that human life is meaningless, they often also assert that the universe is “blind to good and evil” and “indifferent to us”. How, if it all, is the indifference of the universe relevant to whether life is meaningful? To answer this question, and to know whether we should be concerned that the universe is indifferent, we need a clearer and deeper understanding of the concept of “cosmic indifference”, which I will seek to provide. I will argue that (...) the lives of many individuals are meaningful and that human life, in general, is somewhat meaningful, despite the indifference of the universe. Furthermore, I will seek to demonstrate that even if the universe cared about us, or had preferences for how we live our lives, that this likely would not enhance the quality of our lives. (shrink)

In his essay, "Über Gegenstandstheorie", Meinong presents a clear formulation of his somewhat paradoxical Ontology. I have attempted to construct an explicit differentiation between Meinong's objects which are indifferent to being, and objects upon which a type of being is predicated. I argue that once a clear distinction between Meinongian objects and objects of a higher order is effected, not only do paradoxical inconsistencies fade, but also the Ontology itself gains intuitive appeal.

Speaking about the state of the Hollywood film industry at the 2008 Academy Awards, the Oscars’ host – comedian Jon Stewart – made the following wry assessment: ‘Not all films did as well as Juno obviously. The films that were made about the Iraq War, let’s face it, did not do as well. But I’m telling you, if we stay the course and keep these movies in the theatres we can turn this around. I don’t care if it takes 100 (...) years. Withdrawing the Iraq movies would only embolden the audience. We cannot let the audience win.’ The films he is referring to include Home of the Brave (2006), In the Valley of Elah (2007) and Stop-Loss (2008) – all of which focus on the personal cost to American soldiers on their return to civilian life, as well as exposing the failure of the US invasion of Iraq at home and abroad. Despite their topical subject matter, these movies were, for the most part, commercial failures. This article seeks to investigate audience indifference (Jean Baudrillard claims a certain indifference is a fundamental consequence of the Western globalising ideology) to mainstream cinematic depictions of the post September 11 invasion of Iraq, via a consideration of the trauma and abjection depicted in these films. Baudrillard’s hypotheses on terrorism – as a symbolic challenge put forth by terrorism (embodied by the attack on the Twin Towers) – and the West’s incapacity to respond to it, forms the basis for our investigation of the limits of these films to incite and engage viewers. His writings offer a lens through which to consider how ‘terrorism’ operates symbolically, and fundamentally, the dilemmas this raises for a Western psyche grappling with how the ‘terrorist threat’ might be answered, engaged with, responded to. (shrink)

In this essay, we aim at framing the ‘negative emotion’ of indifference, starting from its diachronic declination, which seems to beneficiate from a form of justification from the moral point of view (§1). In order to prevent indifference as an outcome – together with its intrinsic motivational strength –, we introduce a methodological account to frame the struggle of motivation internal to the single agent, by classifying different forms of ‘reasons to act’ (§2). We will develop a two-move strategy. Firstly, (...) we deploy what we could call a positive emotion – the sense of solidarity diachronically understood – against that negative one, in order to show that indifference is not the sole possible destination for the humankind (§3). Secondly, to integrate and strengthen the motivational role of that positive emotion, we will rehabilitate a moral approach aimed at setting up a unique normative linkage among generations, by reshaping the interplay between ‘wide’ and ‘narrow obligations’ presented by Kant (§4). The ultimate goal is to contrast the moral strength which is offered by indifference as negative emotion by articulating a motivational path devoted at legitimizing the diachronic moral commitment and duties of justice among generations. (shrink)

My essay attempts humbly to honor and celebrate the voice of Charles Scott by thematizing one of the major insights of his body of work, namely the significance of the middle voice. I attempt in various ways to show the significance of the middle voice in the work of Charles Scott and to offer some commentary on what is meant by the middle voice. Finally, I ask about the implications of a middle-voiced philosophy for an understanding of the self of (...) human beings and for an understanding of the theme of indifference in relation to the lives of things that Scott addresses in his later work. (shrink)

The idea of preserving conditional beliefs emerged recently as a new paradigm apt to guide the revision of epistemic states. Conditionals are substantially different from propositional beliefs and need specific treatment. In this paper, we present a new approach to conditionals, capturing particularly well their dynamic part as revision policies. We thoroughly axiomatize a principle of conditional preservation as an indifference property with respect to conditional structures of worlds. This principle is developed in a semi-quantitative setting, so as to reveal (...) its fundamental meaning for belief revision in quantitative as well as in qualitative frameworks. In fact, it is shown to cover other proposed approaches to conditional preservation. (shrink)

After listing a series of topics in Scott’s Living with Indifference that I would have wanted to address but, if only for reasons of space, could not, I focus on the uses of narrative or fiction in Scott’s book. I am particularly interested in the relation of fiction to trauma. It is the resilience of fiction that perhaps enables it to speak—or to write—so eloquently about traumatic occurrences. As a writer of fiction, I am gripped by the proximity and even (...) intimacy of fiction and trauma in Scott’s thinking. (shrink)

In his essay, "Über Gegenstandstheorie", Meinong presents a clear formulation of his somewhat paradoxical Ontology. I have attempted to construct an explicit differentiation between Meinong's objects which are indifferent to being, and objects upon which a type of being is predicated. I argue that once a clear distinction between Meinongian objects and objects of a higher order is effected, not only do paradoxical inconsistencies fade, but also the Ontology itself gains intuitive appeal.

This essay explores four questions: Is there an indifferent dimension to our lives?; what is the relation of indifference to our everyday differentiated meanings, interpretations, preferences, and values?; is it possible to develop an attunement to an indifferent dimension of life and, if so, how?; and, is a life marked by or attuned to indifference better than a life without it? In response, through a concrete example and analysis of a novel and a poem, I characterize indifference as both negation (...) and as a kind of power, engaging the views developed by Charles Scott. I conclude by linking indifference to a project of description, and show the limits to this project, whether it is labeled phenomenological or pragmatic. (shrink)

This paper argues in the first place that nominalists are right in insisting against ontological realists that semantic universality does not require commitment to universal entities. However, Ockham, in his zeal to get rid of Scotus’s universal entities, swept under the carpet the issue of universal representational content of genuinely universal symbols, conflating it with the mere indifference of the information content of non-distinctive singular representations. Buridan did come up with an abstractionist theory of the formation of genuinely universal representational (...) content to solve the resulting issues, however, the paper argues further, his solution is committed to attributing the sort of “aspectuality” to universal absolute concepts that his Ockhamist semantics denies to them. The conclusion of the paper suggests how Aquinas’s “moderate realism” can provide a consistent solution without the ontological extravaganza of ontological realists, without conflating the mere indifference of singular representation with genuine universality, and without having to deny aspectuality to our quidditative universal concepts formed by abstraction. (shrink)