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Questions and analyses centered on race have become more prominent in philosophy. By employing a ‘critical philosophy of race’, thinkers become enabled to address how race and racism continue to operate in subtle and unintended ways, including within concepts, theories, principles, practices, and methodologies otherwise purported to be race-neutral. Yet, North American sports philosophy provides few examples of work that grapples with race, racism, or theories of race. In this essay, I ask why and conclude that the shortage of discussions that include explicit references to race or ethnicity in North American sport philosophy is due to the dominance and normalization of white epistemologies – white ways of experiencing, seeing, and knowing the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance or vacuity of the statement, “Everything has just doubled in size,” attracted considerable attention last century from scientists and philosophers. Presenting his conventionalism in geometry, Poincaré insisted on the emptiness of a hypothesis that all objects have doubled in size overnight. Such expansion could have meaning, he argued, “only for those who reason as if space were absolute … it would be better to say that space being relative, nothing at all has happened.” The logical empiricists concurred, viewing the universal doubling hypothesis as illustrating the intrinsic metrical amorphousness of continuous manifolds. It is striking, therefore, to find Kant invoking a universal contraction in space and time to support his famous doctrine of transcendental idealism. In one of several completely neglected passages, he writes: “The proof that the things in space and time are mere appearances can also be grounded on the fact that the whole world could be contained in a nutshell and the entirety of elapsed time in a second without the least difference being met with.” Kant's “also” may suggest an idealist argument distinct from any proposed in published works. Here I ask: What is the meaning of Kant's Nutshell Argument for Idealism? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers often understand social categories as conferred or as social kinds. The relationship between conferralism and a social kind approach to social ontology remains unclear. Conferralism is often interpreted as a way of understanding the nature of social kinds, rather than as an alternative to a social kind approach. In this paper, I argue that these two approaches are in fact radically different, and I identify the challenges unique to each approach. The social kind approach requires social kinds to be identifiable on the basis of kind-specific social properties or relations while the conferralist approach does not, instead taking institutional classification practices and communal attitudes to be reality-conferring. While these are not mutually exclusive approaches to social ontology – some social categories are conferred and constitute social kinds – they are genuinely different. I use the debate about the existence of social races as a case study to show why it is useful to distinguish between social kind and conferralist approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper argues that people can deserve the option to give. Discussions of desert tend to focus on the benefits and burdens that people might, in some sense, receive, like wealth and jobs. But intuitively, people can also deserve the ability to decide what to do with their wealth or to select who gets a job. Shaping distributive policies and outcomes in accordance with desert is more complicated than philosophers have realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how a formative approach to pedagogy might intervene in the conditions of higher education teaching practices, discourses, and organisational priorities today. While the higher education sector is resolutely turned towards the accumulation of skills or ‘content’ to produce a credentialed job-ready graduate, we do these graduates a disservice if how we educate fails to take account of their formation as persons, citizens, workers, neighbours, and indeed as graduates. This is a focus on what education philosopher Gert Biesta calls subjectification. Through education’s contribution to the making of populations, the neglect of this formative role of pedagogy has wider significance in the knowledge societies in which universities are operating. We first lodge the mattering of pedagogy within a contemporary moment in which calls to reform capitalism and redress democratic deconsolidation butt up against the fortunes of public knowledge and the consequences of hyper-individualist cultures. We then outline pedagogy as a formative cultural technology and provide examples and discussion from our own classroom practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars of, and participants in, social movements, electoral politics, and organized labor are deeply engaged in contrasting different theories of how political actors should organize, little recent philosophical work has asked what social organizing is. This paper aims to answer this question in a way that can make sense of typical organizing‐related claims and debates. It is intuitive that what social organizing does is bring about some kind of collectivity. However, I argue that the varieties of collectivity most amply theorized by analytic philosophers in recent years, including grouphood and collective intentionality, are not the right kinds to embed in a theory of social organizing. I ultimately argue that the sort of collectivity that organizing characteristically brings about is a special kind of causal complementarity among agents' actions— and that while this can exist alongside grouphood and collective intentionality, it is not the same thing as either. The notion of social organizing that emerges is one that can clarify, without trivializing, a number of pressing contemporary debates about how normal people should conduct themselves as interconnected political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paradoxical nature of intentional self-deception has led many philosophers to view self-deception as predominantly non-intentional. I propose that approaching self-deception from an agency-theoretic perspective allows us to rescue the idea that self-deception can at least be driven by intention. By modeling the ‘acting as if’ method of self-deception with agential layering, developed by Nguyen [2020. Games: Agency as Art. New York: Oxford University Press], I argue that intention-driven self-deception is no more mysterious than other activities that involve self-effacing ends: ends we must pursue indirectly. That is, self-deception can occur when agents pursue the self-effacing end of forming what they take to be an epistemically unjustified belief by submerging themselves in a layer of agency in which they can act as if they already hold that belief. By intentionally adopting this pretense and shaping their agency around it, they forget that their agency is layered at all, and may thereby form a full-fledged belief. This model avoids objections to views that treat self-deception itself as intentional and does so while appealing only to resources already used to explain our everyday activities. I then apply my model to a core case of bad faith from Sartre to show that intention-driven self-deception can clarify how we are responsible for inauthenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Georges Bataille made no secret of the importance Friedrich Nietzsche’s life and work held for him. But Bataille’s encounter with Nietzsche remained paradoxical: he rejected or ignored most of Nietzsche’s major concepts while nevertheless insisting on the value of Nietzsche’s thought and experience as a necessary counterpoint to the political, religious, and social currents of modernity. This paper demonstrates the extent to which Bataille owes the content and to some degree also the form of his idiosyncratic reading of Nietzsche to the influence and example of the Russian emigré philosopher Lev Shestov (1866–1938). In 1925, Georges Bataille published a translation of Shestov’s The Idea of the Good in Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching, co-signed with Shestov’s daughter Tatiana Beresovski-Chestov. The translation was the product of a period during which Bataille also spent time with the older man and benefited from his tutelage. It was Shestov’s interpretation of the meaning of the death of God in Nietzsche’s life and thought that would have the most decisive influence on Bataille’s own life and work and make him, in his turn, a philosopher of tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the neo-Confucian response to the question, “How to achieve the state of oneness,” as put forth by Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao. While both philosophers achieve this state through internal affectivity, their interpretations diverge significantly. Cheng Yi views internal affectivity as an inherent goodness that emanates from the pre-manifested mind but warns against emotional instability and desires. He thus rejects the notion of “teaching benevolence through perception.” (yijue xunren) and instead emphasizing the primacy of the unmanifested mind in attaining oneness. Conversely, Cheng Hao stresses the inward perception of bodily sensations and supports “teaching benevolence through perception.” He argues that through sensory arousal and the transformation of vital energy, the mind and body can achieve harmony, thereby embodying the benevolence present in “heaven, earth, and all things.” This divergence in their approaches to oneness reflects their differing responses to Buddhism and contrasting views on human nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT I interpret the rich conceptual insights and empirical findings of the special issue Childhood, Migration and the Pursuit of Happiness in Middle‐Class East Asia through the lens of understanding migration as a journey of narrative quests. Drawing from moral philosopher McIntyre's theory of narrative self and the pursuit of a good life, I highlight the dialectic and dialogic aspects of ‘narrative quests’ across multiple cases of East Asian educational migration (educational migration broadly construed). I highlight key features, central themes and tensions of narrative quests among these migrant families. I also pose questions for expanding further inquiry under this theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention has become an important focal point of recent work in ethics and epistemology, yet philosophers continue to be noncommittal about what attention is. In this paper, I defend attention as selection for action in a weak form, namely that selection for action is sufficient for attention. I show that selection for action in this conception captures how we, the folk, experience it and how the cognitive scientist studies it. That is, selection for action pulls empirical and folk‐psychology together. Accordingly, philosophers who take seriously either source have reason to work with selection for action as their starting conception of attention. This conception provides a way to bridge empirical and philosophical concerns where attention is central. The theoretical advantages of selection for action have been obscured by the common opinion that it is easily refuted. I defend the position against many of the published objections and then deploy it to provide a foundation for the intuitive, but inchoate, idea of attention being gradable, something of which there can be more or less. An analysis of the gradability of attention is then applied to consider recent work on the harms due to a surplus of attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One way in which philosophers have often sought to distinguish moral judgments from non-moral judgments is by using the “moral-conventional” distinction. I seek to raise serious questions about the significance of the moral-conventional distinction, at least for philosophers interested in moral judgment. I survey recent developments in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science that have led many to the conclusion that moral judgment is not a distinctive kind of judgment or the result of a specific, identifiable cognitive process. I argue that if this conclusion is largely correct, the moral-conventional distinction loses significance. If moral judgment does not correspond to a distinctive cognitive process, it is unclear how distinguishing between types of norms tracks anything of significance to human judgment formation. I then discuss the implications of abandoning the distinction for research in the field of moral psychology and tentatively propose a more modest way of conceiving of norm significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a review of "Language, Mind and Value" by Severin Schroeder, a book that delves into various topics in philosophy, particularly those related to Wittgenstein's philosophy. The book contains fifteen papers that cover areas such as language, mind, action, aesthetics, ethics, and religion. The reviewer highlights the concept of "nonsense" in philosophical criticism and the discussion of aspect-perception as particularly interesting points in the book. They also mention some criticisms of Schroeder's arguments and interpretations. The article references three academic articles that explore the concept of seeing aspects and its significance in philosophy, providing valuable insights for researchers interested in this topic. [Extracted from the article]

There is a substantial disagreement in the literature over whether ‘remembering’ is a normative concept. Some philosophers have attempted to defend the normativity of ‘remembering’ by highlighting its normative importance or its conceptual affinities with ‘knowing’ or ‘duties’. This paper will first reveal defects of these existing normativist arguments. After that, I will propose and defend a new normativist argument, according to which the concept ‘remembering’ is partly constituted by a paradigmatically normative concept, namely ‘rational’. To be more specific, I argue that full possession of the concept of ‘remembering’ requires having an inclination to believe that ‘if S remembers that p, then S would be (at least defeasibly) rational in holding a memory-based belief that p’. This, according to a persuasive constitutive account of normative concepts, suffices to demonstrate the normative nature of remembering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The celebrated Russian philosopher, Evald Ilyenkov, draws on Spinoza to solve a key philosophical problem: how exactly does the mind connect to the real world? However, the proposed solution has come under much criticism, for example in a recent special issue of Studies of East European Thought (74, 3). This paper aims to clearly explain the solution, overcoming misunderstandings that are evident in the special issue. The kernel of the solution is an argument that human cognition rests on practical activity. In practical activity humans do not act on a fixed structure within their own bodies, in the manner, say, that the activity of water is determined by its fixed structure, H2O. Instead, human practical activity directly connects with and continually adapts to the structures and causal powers of external bodies. Awareness of practical activity thereby gives the human mind access to a mode of activity that is in direct contact and ever-greater accordance with the objects of the real world. The paper will elaborate and develop this kernel, with particular attention to the notion of 'causal powers' that it contains, by drawing from the revival in philosophy and the social sciences of what has been termed 'causal powers realism'. The paper thereby opens new insights and connections regarding the Spinoza-Ilyenkov solution, alleviating the potential for misunderstandings evident in the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short interview explores the influence of Evald Ilyenkov's work on contemporary philosopher, art theorist, and writer Keti Chukhrov. The interview focuses on Evald Ilyenkov's contributions to Soviet culture, dialectics, and epistemology. She reflects on the distinct intellectual milieu of Soviet thinkers like Ilyenkov, Vygotsky, Davidov, and Lifshitz, who established connections between Marx and the broader world culture. The interview also addresses Žižek's interpretation of Ilyenkov's cosmology, emphasizing the ethical dimension of Ilyenkov's communist spirit. Furthermore, Chukhrov touches on Ilyenkov's critique of cybernetics and its relevance in contemporary discussions about AI and philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is dedicated to the philosophical legacy of Evald Ilyenkov in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine. The authors use the example of Ilyenkov and his legacy to show how drastically different the philosophical situation was in Soviet Ukraine in order to present a holistic viewpoint on Soviet philosophy. The authors highlight the differences between the political and philosophical circumstances in Russia and Ukraine from the 1950s to the 2010s. The Ukrainian philosophical tradition is characterized by its focus on pedagogics, aesthetics, and nonacademic forms of philosophical communication. The main organizational role in Ukrainian philosophy was played by Pavel Kopnin and Valeriy Bosenko, who introduced dialectics as logic to Kyiv universities and made an effort to create philosophical circles for students. Anatoliy Kanarskiy, the prominent Soviet philosopher who specialized in aesthetics adopted the same idea of organizing students into circles. All these personalities were connected with Ilyenkov and each other, thus proving the existence of a common tendency and tradition of thinking within the discourse of Soviet philosophy. The authors highlight that this specific tradition may be called a "Socratic tradition" with its focus on free thinking, on discussions and dialectics. This tradition goes beyond academic philosophy and roots itself in cybernetical studies by Viktor Hlushkov and exists in modern Ukraine in the form of various philosophical circles and literature clubs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soviet Marxism is often characterized by the term ontologism. The latter could be defined as a totalizing assertion about material being as inherently dialectical, often coupled with an understanding of thought as mere reflection. This fundamental assertion is said to remain unchallenged among dogmatic party philosophers and critical Marxists alike. Far from an innocent misconception, Soviet ontologism is associated with some of the harshest historical events like the Lysenko affair, where the imposition of the dialectical optic onto the natural sciences resulted in an ideological blockade of research. Various sources of this peculiarity have been identified in Soviet Marxism, from the endorsement of dialectics of nature to the rejection of Cartesian metaphysics. However, a political account of Soviet ontologism is yet to be written. This article will address the question of ontologism as it has been theorized in relation to the philosophy of Evald Ilyenkov. Tracing the history of Russian ontologism from the nineteenth century, we will recover its nationalist dimension. Then, drawing on the philosophical controversies between Lenin and Bogdanov, which in turn will be linked to Ilyenkov's intervention, we will examine the various strands of ontological thinking in Soviet Marxism and identify Ilyenkov's position. Finally, we will ask what insights can the ontological thinking of Soviet Marxism provide in the context of contemporary philosophical turns towards ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Carolyne Larrington, legends of the past 'offer particular kinds of answers – beautiful and mysterious answers... – to very large questions through a kind of metaphorical thinking... which, in their stripped-down clarity, show us what's really important in an unfamiliar light'. The claim that 'what is really important [is disclosed] by casting it in an unfamiliar light' I take into a philosophical engagement with the figure of the ghost. Far from being of dubious interest for the philosopher of religion, the continuing fascination with ghosts and hauntings offers promising ground for the discussion of religion, for the study of ghosts holds out the possibility of engaging with the wonder and terror of the human condition. The figure of something that is dead yet alive is a creative representation of the fact that we who are alive are also mortal, destined to die. The resulting confrontation with death arouses anxiety, but also has the potential to enrich life. The wisdom of the ghost thus enables the possibility of returning philosophy of religion to the great themes of human existence – birth, suffering, loss, and death – which provide rich resources for understanding religion and its relation to the experience of being human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that the more apophatic strand of mysticism resonates more with the way contemporary philosophers are apt to think about mystical experience, the fact that apophatic mysticism was a bit of a fringe enterprise in the Middle Ages calls for explanation. The explanations that are suggested within the pages of Christina Van Dyke's A Hidden Wisdom are not typically historical-contextual explanations, but theological ones. This article examines apophatic mysticism in terms of three of the standard theological loci : creation, Incarnation, and Trinity. In each case we will find that some of the characteristic claims of the apophatic mystics are so much at odds with the mainstream of Christian theology that the mystery is not so much their being marginalized but rather their being largely tolerated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discussion of the metaphysics of spiritual experience requires that we are clear about the nature of metaphysics, and I take as my starting point the 'transcendent metaphysics' described and supposedly eliminated by A. J. Ayer. Most analytic philosophers agree with Ayer (and Kant) that transcendent metaphysics in the relevant sense is deeply problematic, and they associate it with platonism, theism, and religious thinking more generally. Assuming then that spiritual experience takes us into religious territory, and this territory is forbidden, a metaphysics of spiritual experience is going to involve transcendent metaphysics, and it will be similarly problematic. Ayer's conception of transcendent reality is itself deeply problematic, and I shall argue that his metaphysical framework helps to motivate atheistic spirituality by ruling out the possibility of an empirically grounded and hence defensible religious alternative. I shall challenge this framework, set out an alternative with the help of Arthur Schopenhauer, and spell out the implications for a metaphysics of spiritual experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Jean le Rond d'Alembert's views of metaphysical cosmology and argues that these constitute an important context for Kant's critical-period response to rational cosmology. D'Alembert is commonly taken to have dismissed cosmology from the roster of the legitimate sciences, and there is indeed evidence of his scepticism towards Maupertuis' cosmology no less than towards Wolff's cosmologia generalis. I argue, however, that a broadly Leibnizian cosmological perspective underpins d'Alembert's accounts of our knowledge and of the task of the philosopher. D'Alembert's work thus anticipates and helps bring into focus Kant's own nuanced engagement with the cosmological tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hannah Arendt's concept of enlarged mentality (also referred to as representative thinking) has received much attention from theorists and philosophers, but it has not been a central concept in the empirical political communication literature. This article explicates the concept of enlarged mentality and argues for its relevance to political communication theory and research. Specifically, we developed (Study 1) and validated (Study 2, Study 3) a 10-item survey instrument to measure orientation towards enlarged thinking among individuals. The Enlarged Mentality Scale was validated in two national samples (Singapore, United Kingdom) and was found to show predictive validity toward deliberative and political engagement variables. We offer suggestions on how the measure of enlarged mentality could be useful for different areas of political communication research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the text of a speech by philosopher Frédéric Neyrat, delivered before the American Comparative Literature Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Topics discussed include geocentrism of contemporary ecological thought, celestial democracy as a result of anarchist act, planetary philosophy, ecological isolation, postcolonial theory and earth system science approach to planetary thinking, and terrestrial and celestial elements of planetary liberation.

This paper explores experiences of surrender to an aspect of mind that is unconfined, empty of dualistic concepts, and lucidly aware. Ghent's concept of surrender, Farber's unconscious will, and Buddhist philosophers' essence of mind all link to creative processes described by Poincaré and Mozart. This impressionistic collage points to the spaciousness to know beyond our usual stories. From this essential mind more wholesome actions proceed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case of a pioneering woman physicist and philosopher illustrates that we must look beyond hagiography to gain an accurate picture of the history of quantum physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is anything good simpliciter? And can things count as 'good' independent of the context in which 'good' is used? Traditionally, a number of meta‐ethicists have given positive answers. But more recently, some philosophers have used observations based on natural language to argue that things can only count as 'good' relative to ends and contextual thresholds. I will use work from contemporary linguistics to argue that 'good' is ambiguous, and that it has a moral disambiguation that attributes a fixed degree of goodness. This implies that things can count as 'good' simpliciter, independent of context. Not only does this result provide support for the traditional view, but it also vindicates some aspects of the more recent view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Andrea Kelly Henderson, "Harriet Martineau's Realized Abstractions" (pp. 81–105) Critics have long noted—and often lamented—the formal incoherence of Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34). This essay argues that the tales' formal bifurcations can be understood not as a failing but as a conscious response to the absence of a contemporary consensus regarding the groundedness of economic abstractions. Martineau's aesthetic of what I call "realized abstraction" offers a solution of sorts to this epistemological problem: unable to mediate between abstractions and particulars, she simply insists on the importance of both. Berkeley the Banker, her tale devoted to banking and currency, vividly dramatizes this dichotomizing logic. In this work, the relationship of concrete value to its abstract representation in paper money is analogized to a troubled marriage, one in which the husband forces his virtuous wife to subscribe to his false representations. Martineau's story will explicitly argue for the usefulness of economic theory and paper money, but she resists the tendency of abstractions to render the concrete invisible in an act of metaphoric coverture; instead, she presents the abstract and the particular as autonomous realms. Martineau's aesthetic of juxtaposition thus aspires to virtues quite different from those of Romantic organic wholeness or realist transparency: her tales aim not only to educate readers in abstract principles and historical particulars but also to train them to discriminate between the two. In subsequent decades, philosophers of science would formulate compelling new ways to bind abstractions to particulars, and the success of that project would mean that despite the Illustrations's enormous popularity during the 1830s, they would seem to later generations to be marred by formal fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the work of one of Russia's greatest philosophers, Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), from the perspective of natural theology and attempts to distil the original natural theological arguments which we find in his work. Solovyov's arguments are rarely presented in clarity or with a detailed critical analysis. The current paper thus hopes to offer some amendment to this unfortunate deficiency in the secondary literature. It will become evident that Solovyov's relation to natural theology contained two distinct layers. There is, on the one hand, the external polemical and publicist layer of discourse, where Solovyov rejects natural theology outright. On the other hand, there is the deeper metaphysical layer, where Solovyov's own arguments, hidden within his elaborate metaphysical structures, can themselves be considered as a form of natural theology. The paper will conclude that, despite the overall failure of his arguments, Solovyov can still provide inspiration for Orthodox theologians by attempting a form of natural theology within an Orthodox context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neutrosophy is a branch of philosophy proposed in 1998 by Romanian philosopher and mathematician F. Smarandache, which studies the origin, nature, and scope of neutrality and its interaction with different spectra of ideas. Because it is a relatively new field, specific scientific production on this subject may be limited, but as it develops, new research and contributions are likely to emerge. This is why it is becoming more necessary to undertake studies to understand the evolution, impact, and scope of research, especially in a context where it had never been examined in depth before: in the Latin American region. This research aims to describe the scientific production of Latin American authors in the Scopus database referring to Neutrosophic Science in the period 2019-2023 by carrying out a bibliometric study of a descriptive nature. The scientific production in Neutrosophy assumes patterns of behavior that vary from international patterns with a marked social focus. Although productivity levels have not increased in recent years, the impact and recognition from the international community have grown significantly, meaning the evolution of a process of transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This dialogue, taking place between Prof. Whether and Prof. What, focuses on the nature of the relationship between ontology, conceived as the branch of philosophy concerned with the question of what entities exist, and metaphysics, conceived as the complementary part of philosophy that seeks to explain, of those entities, what they are. Most philosophers claim that it is not possible to address the first question without at the same time addressing the second, since knowing whether an entity exists requires knowing what that entity is. Prof. Whether argues against this popular position and offers a detailed analysis of the idea according to which it is possible to do ontology without engaging in metaphysics. Prof. Whether and Prof. What agree that, rather than being merely possible, in some cases it is, for methodological reasons, even preferable to start with a metaphysics-free ontology, postponing any inquiry concerning the nature of the entities included in the ontological inventory to a later stage. However, Prof. What notes that it is not always possible to do ontology without metaphysics, because there are certain kinds of entities, such as universals and possible worlds, that necessarily need a prior metaphysical characterization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative philosophy is an important and growing field. Increasingly, philosophy instructors are looking to offer philosophy courses that span more than just one regional culture. Developing a syllabus for a course in comparative philosophy for the first time can be a daunting challenge. Among the many questions one has to ask is how much class time should be spent characterizing the cultural differences between the two philosophical traditions before examining the philosophical traditions themselves and what sort of materials should be covered from each tradition. Perhaps surprisingly, my answer to the first question is little to none. Characterizing cultures brings with it a danger of essentializing that should be avoided in the classroom. As to the sorts of materials to be covered, it is best to look at whole works from individual philosophers, rather than try to compare whole traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative to the commonplace focus onto developments in mathematics and physics, the life sciences appear to have received relatively sparse attention within the early history of analytic philosophy. This paper addresses two related aspects of this phenomenon. On the one hand, it asks: to the extent that the significance of the life sciences was indeed downplayed by early analytic philosophers, why was this the case? An answer to this question may be found in Bertrand Russell's 1914 discussions of the relation between biology and philosophy. Contrary to received views of the history of analytic philosophy, Russell presented his own 'logical atomism' in opposition not only to British Idealism, but also to 'evolutionism'. On the other hand, I will question whether this purported neglect of the life sciences does indeed accurately characterise the history of analytic philosophy. In answering this, I turn first to Susan Stebbing's criticisms of Russell's overlooking of biology, her influence on J.H. Woodger, and her critical discussion of T.H. Huxley's and C.H. Waddington's application of evolutionary views to philosophical questions. I then discuss the case of Moritz Schlick, whose evolutionist philosophy has been overlooked within recent debates concerning Logical Empiricism's relation to the philosophy of biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study aims to clarify the meaning, the epistemic construction, and the pragmatics of the term āgama occurring in Pātañjalayogaśāstra I.7 and its commentaries. Since āgama is a linguistic construction, this paper is also a contribution to the inquiry into the philosophy of language of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra. The inclusion of linguistic-philosophical arguments corroborates the Pātañjalayoga system of philosophy as a śāstra text and its logical and epistemological paradigm. The structure of the present work is as follows: a first part strictly dealing with textual sources, and a second where the content of textual sources is discussed. Relying on the early literature ranging from the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (c. 400 CE) to the Pātañjalayogasūtravṛtti of Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa (PYV, half of 17th—half of 18th cent. CE), to āgama can be accorded two principal meanings: as a generic verbal testimony, and as authoritative verbal teachings. Grounded on the evaluated textual material, the second part of this essay presents a hypothesis aiming at the understanding of verbal testimony: in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, āgama exhibits an epistemological, linguistic and psychological construction. In fact, as an epistemic theory of verbal testimony āgama functions following three main vectors being: (a) epistemological source and instance of valid cognition, namely a pramāṇa, (b) linguistically structured, āgama exhibits a propositional structure (vākya); and (c) a mental episode, placing āgama as one among the different mental events (cittavṛtti) described in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the unique practice of many philosophers in classical India to write on several philosophical and religious systems, each time adopting a sympathetic point of view for a different tradition. The article describes the development of this phenomenon in the context of interreligious debates between Buddhists, Jains, and Brahmins in the course of three distinct historical periods, transitioning from pluralism about views to pluralism about philosophical systems and culminating in the ideal of sarva-tantra-sva-tantra, a polyvocal philosopher and a polymath. Contrary to such approaches as nihilism, agnosticism, skepticism, and dogmatism, pluralism about views and systems was an attempt to justify the acceptance of several competing schools of thought. The article demonstrates that varieties of pluralism about views and systems played a role in forming and broadening philosophical alliances to defeat religious rivals, but also enhanced the scholarly reputation of erudite thinkers capable of "proving and refuting any system by will." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One debate that occupied Pratyabhijñā philosophers and their Buddhist interlocutors was the question of the reality of sambandha, or relation. A central treatise on the topic is Utpaladeva's (∼10th c.) Sambandhasiddhi [SS] ('Proof of Relation'), a response to Dharmakīrti's (∼7th c.) Sambandhaparīkṣā [SP] ('Analysis of Relation'). As the contrasting titles suggest, Dharmakīrti held that relations are merely conceptual constructions (kalpanā), inferred post hoc from discrete perceptual cognitions (pratyakṣa)—and thus ultimately unreal. Utpaladeva, on the other hand, attempted to 'prove' (siddhi) the truth (satya) of relation as a genuine 'division-non-division,' or 'unity-in-diversity' (bhedābheda). In this article, I reconstruct Utpala's 'proof' as a pragmatic argument to the effect that Dharmakīrti, in virtue of his nominalist metaphysics, mistakenly treats the general form of relation as an inferential concept, rather than the mode of 'intentional' action (śakti) manifest in reflexive judgment (vimarśa). In doing so, Utpala suggests that Dharmakīrti inadvertently renders the relational conditions for the recognition of determinate intentional content unintelligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay on Elster's (2020) book, I expose my concerns about the ability of behavioral tools to correctly address the transition phase between the absolutist regime and the democratic institutions inherited from the French Revolution. Rehabilitating the forgotten analyses of contemporary political philosophers Quinet, de Sade, and Leroux, I defend the view that a correct understanding of the French Revolution's essence lies in its political philosophical dimension, not in the supposed psychological traits of its actors. I suggest a renewed way to apprehend and model revolutions, combining three levels of analysis: political philosophy, macroeconomic dynamics, and complexity economics. (JEL D72, D74, N13, N43, Z13) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let p be an odd prime. We review the characterization of p-valued Maiorana-McFarland bent functions with the Reed-Muller and the Reed-Muller-Fourier Transforms. We show that both transforms generate the same characterization and, based on the orthogonality of vectors, we prove why this is possible. Following the Language Philosopher Ludwig von Wittgenstein we consider this as a case of Family Resemblance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the views of Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher, on the distinction between Stoics and non-Stoics. It delves into topics such as tranquility, rationality, and souls, as well as the negative aspects of passions, embodiment, and everyday people. The author argues that Epictetus held a sense of contempt towards everyday people but also emphasized the importance of learning from them and forming Stoic communities for support. The article acknowledges the challenging aspects of Epictetus' views but commends the author for presenting an honest analysis of his philosophy. It also discusses the concepts of ἰδιώτης and σωφροσύνη, highlighting their ethical and political implications in Stoicism. [Extracted from the article]

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Drawing on the aesthetics of engagement proposed by the philosopher Arnold Berleant, this article sets out an environmental aesthetic approach to the human geographic debate about ruins. By adopting a relational understanding of self and world, the focus is on the immersive and multisensory experience of ruins including (im)material, bodily and cognitive accounts. Sensitive recording is introduced as a method to make experiences accessible in their situativity and fragility. Based on an empirical case study in the derelict Beelitz sanatorium in Germany, the article reveals three central qualities of experience that can be encountered in the ruins: emotive, challenging and irritating qualities. Such experiential qualities bring to light the significance of situative tensions at the threshold of absence and presence, past and present, familiar and unfamiliar, or vitality and lifelessness. By describing such tensions, we gain greater insight into the disruption of the familiar. Therefore, we can assess the emergent qualities of experience with the concepts of ‘haunting’ and ‘uncanny’. Furthermore, we discover that encounters with the derelict place reveal qualities of wellbeing and connectedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often remarked that Iris Murdoch’s thought deeply influenced the landscape of twentieth-century moral philosophy. It is certainly true that she inspired a generation of Anglo-American philosophers who sought to critique the moral philosophy of their day. However, these philosophers drew almost exclusively from her early philosophical thought, most notably The Sovereignty of Good. When it came to Murdoch’s second book, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (MGM), moral philosophers and scholars alike found it hard to place within contemporary moral philosophy.Our aim in this paper is to offer a reading of MGM that is resolute in its commitment to do justice to the book’s resistance against domestication within standard moral philosophy, while taking Murdoch at her word when she writes that her “whole argument can be read as moral philosophy” (MGM, 740). This commitment allows us to read MGM as an integrated unity. More importantly, it allows us to reassess Murdoch’s place in twentieth-century philosophy and to propose MGM as one of the works seeking to transform it. Our hope is that our reading will interest any philosopher who feels that something essential is missing in current typical practices in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers and members of the public think it is wrong to procreate. If one wants children, it is permissible to adopt. But procreation is allegedly impermissible because there is some respect in which adoption is better than procreation. There are two prominent variants of such objections. First, we have a duty to help others. Adopting a child from a poor country satisfies that duty. But procreation does not. Second, adding another person to a wealthy nation through procreation contributes to climate change. But adopting does not. I show that such objections are unsound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Valuing something is complicated. Philosophers have offered different stories about what we do when we value something. However, we have not paid enough attention to the thought that, sometimes, valuing something is what makes us the kind of practical agents we are. In this paper, I offer a novel account of valuing, which I call thick valuing, to capture this special phenomenon in which our valuing makes us who we are. This requires us to recognize that the cognitive, motivational, and affective components of thick valuing do not merely co-occur. More importantly, it is key to focusing on how thickly valuing something partially constitutes, and indeed crucially expresses, our practical identities. Beyond that, the account sheds new light on how we can better understand in authenticity – to act without authenticity is to act from what one thickly values but where that which one thickly values are not values of one’s own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most philosophers agree that lies are assertions. Most also agree that to presuppose information is different from asserting it. In a series of papers, Viebahn [2020. “Lying with Presuppositions.” Noûs 54 (4): 731–751; “The Lying-Misleading Distinction: A Commitment-Based Approach.” Journal of Philosophy 118 (6): 298–319], along with an empirical study in Viebahn et al. [2021. “Can a Question be a lie? An Empirical Investigation.” Ergo 8 (7): 175–217], has recently argued that one can lie with presuppositions, and therefore one can assert that p by presupposing that p. The latter conclusion is a rejection of a cornerstone of modern philosophy of language and linguistics, and as such we should require strong reasons for accepting it. I argue here that the reasons for thinking that presuppositions can be lies are too weak to motivate giving up either the view that lies are assertions or the traditional distinction between presuppositions and assertions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThere is a tendency in recent curriculum reforms to put the major emphasis on the status and role of students. The OECD’s Education 2030 project, for example, presents the concept of ‘student agency’ as a key vision for future learning frameworks. The OECD’s discourse of student agency appears to serve as a catalyst for spreading the slogan that students should be the subjects of learning and specifically for expanding the scope of student freedom as never before. This study aims to rethink the meanings of student freedom and subjectivity within this discourse of student agency. To this end, I analyse the characteristics of student freedom that emerge in recent curriculum reforms and then present some criticisms of this conceptualization. In response, I suggest an alternative conceptualization of student freedom that puts the emphasis on students becoming subjects in learning. In doing so, I draw upon the philosophical ideas of Levinas and Cavell. Both are philosophers who provide a theoretical horizon that can overcome egocentrism and re-examine human freedom and subjectivity in relationships with others. In the light of this conceptualization, I provide an account of the ideas of student freedom and subjectivity that should guide curriculum reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptual experience is self‐locating. This claim aligns with our intuitions and is the dominant view in philosophy. To defend the claim, some philosophers have advanced perspectival accounts and others have advanced agentive accounts. Here, I explore tensions between the two accounts and propose a novel, integrative account: the top‐down view, which defends that visual experience is self‐locating in virtue of cognitive maps that modulate visual processing in a top‐down fashion. I assess recent neuroscientific evidence of spatial modulation in the visual cortex and show how it turns existing notions of self‐location upside‐down, shifting the focus from bottom‐up to top‐down processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Jamie Peck's remit for this initial set of Exchanges section contributions to present forward-positive approaches to economic geography, I offer American philosophical pragmatism, and more specifically, the neo-pragmatism of the American philosopher, Richard Rorty (1931–2007). Rather than providing a complete architectonic philosophy, pragmatism presents a set of ideas about ideas. Within the context of economic geography, I explore within this short paper three neo-pragmatist ideas: a reconceptualization of knowledge and truth; experimentation and creativity; and pluralism and conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genealogies are an increasingly important part of contemporary political philosophy. However, even recent genealogies differ a great deal in terms of their ends and methods. Strikingly, this has received virtually no discussion in the literature. This article begins to fill that gap. It does so by comparing and contrasting the genealogies of Bernard Williams, Quentin Skinner, and Raymond Geuss, exploring their different goals, methods, and value for political philosophy. This helps us better understand these different kinds of genealogy in their own right; shows the distinct value of each of these different kinds of genealogy to political philosophy; and enables political philosophers to better be able to select the kind of genealogical investigation most relevant to their interests and to employ the correct kind of genealogy better as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]