Search

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]

In the 2020 Yale Law Journal article, "Commonsense Consent," Roseanna Sommers argues that deception is compatible with the layperson's intuitive sense of consent. That is, unlike the canonical understanding of consent defended by legal scholars and philosophers, the notion of consent defended by the folk is not invalidated by deception. In this study, I find that while respondents do appear to attribute consent to victims of deception, they do so in a limited number of contexts – i.e., they attribute de re consent to victims of de dicto deception and attribute de dicto consent to victims of de re deception. When the two varieties of consent and deception are properly disambiguated and matched type for type however, we see the reverse phenomenon – i.e., participants refrain from attributing de dicto consent to de dicto deception and refrain from attributing de re consent to de re deception. If this is right, rather than saying, as Sommers does, that deception generally fails to invalidate commonsense consent, we should refine our understanding of commonsense consent to include two varieties of consent, each of which is in fact invalidated by its own variety of deception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-traumatic growth (PTG) has been a key topic of research by psychologists over the last 25 years. But the idea that a person can benefit from adversity has been around for much longer, and is a stable in many mainstream cultures, and in theological and recent philosophical thinking. However, there has been, to date, little overlap between psychological research into PTG, and philosophical thinking about similar ideas. This is unfortunate, both because philosophers are not taking up potential sources of empirical support, and because psychological research into PTG is subject to a range of criticisms and concerns. In this paper, we aim to show how philosophical thinking can address some of these, and as a result put psychological research into PTG on a firmer theoretical footing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions about the role of universities have long been framed in terms of questions of what is good for the public, as well as how and whether higher education serves that good. Today, the language of 'societal impact' has become an accepted way for policymakers to frame the matter, but just who is included in the underlying definition of society that this formulation presupposes? In this paper, we consider how 'society' has been constructed in discussions of the societal impact of humanities research in Denmark, through an engagement with legislation, national political commentary, and institutional policy. We draw on the work of Martin Heidegger and Simone Weil to analyse, through an ontology of policy approach, the vision of society these policies construct. We conclude with proposals for alternative societies and forms of policy that these philosophers make possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers suppose that sometimes we think we are saying or thinking something meaningful when we're not saying or thinking anything at all: we are producing nonsense. But what is nonsense? An account of nonsense must, I argue, meet two constraints. The first constraint requires that nonsense can be rationally engaged with, not just mentioned. In particular, we can reason with nonsense and use it within that-clauses. An account which fails to meet this constraint cannot explain why nonsense appears meaningful. The second constraint requires that nonsense does not express thoughts. An account which fails to meet this constraint undercuts the critical force of the concept of nonsense. I offer an account which meets both constraints. The central idea is that to be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It may be true that we are epistemically in the dark about various things. Does this fact ground the truth of fallibilism? No. Still, even the most zealous skeptic will probably grant that it is not clear that one can be incognizant of their own occurrent phenomenal conscious mental goings-on. Even so, this does not entail infallibilism. Philosophers who argue that occurrent conscious experiences play an important epistemic role in the justification of introspective knowledge assume that there are occurrent beliefs. But this assumption is false. This paper argues that there are no occurrent beliefs. And it considers the epistemic consequences this result has for views that attempt to show that at least some phenomenal beliefs are infallible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The method of cases (MOC), as standardly construed, involves an evidential appeal to intuitions. Philosophers, however, often argue for their case verdicts, they offer reasons for accepting their truth. According to Max Deutsch and Herman Cappelen – whose ground-breaking case studies first drew attention to this underappreciated phenomenon – their reason-giving would constitute compelling evidence that, contrary to the received view, philosophers relying on MOC regard arguments, not intuitions, as their main justificatory source. This explanatory hypothesis has met with substantial resistance among metaphilosophers. The main goal of this paper is to broaden the theoretical playing field by considering a yet unexplored alternative hypothesis. I argue that said phenomenon in fact admits of an alternative, intuition-friendly explanation in light of a fundamental distinction in justification theory which has been entirely overlooked by the current debate – i.e. the one between justifying a belief and being justified in holding it. This distinction, I suggest, allows one to naturally construe philosophers' justifying activity as a dialectically motivated kind of proactive reasoning geared toward the goal of maximizing consensus over their verdicts. Once thus construed, it remains compatible with philosophers thinking of intuitions as the main source of their justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of British translators of European philosophers from 1907 to 1915 in addressing Edwardian political crises. In an age of fragmentation between the main parties as well as crises within political groups, cultural and political magazines were a ‘counter public sphere’ in which intellectuals could discuss the conflicts of public life. This article will show how translators of Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, and Henri Bergson opened up debate between intellectuals across the political spectrum in the avant-garde magazine The New Age through the worship of intellectual heroes not bound to any tradition. The translators Oscar Levy, Millicent Murby, and T. E. Hulme all sought to create cultural icons to overcome splits in their different political projects. Whilst Edwardian intellectuals played with tropes of British insularity and philistinism, scholarship has neglected how the geographical concept of insularity was projected onto a reality that was ideological disintegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to experimental philosophers, the diversity and sensitivity of intuitions have posed a severe threat to the traditional philosophical methodology, which relies extensively on intuitions triggered by thought experiments. However, defenders of traditional armchair philosophical methodology argue that experimental philosophers misunderstand the importance of intuitions for philosophy. What philosophers genuinely rely on are arguments, which provide a reliable foundation for their judgments on thought experiments. However, a recent cross-cultural experiment conducted by Wysocki (2017) indicates that arguments do not affect the judgments about Gettier cases as philosophers once expected. That poses a challenge to those philosophers who contend that judgments are based on arguments. In this paper, we expand the experimental investigation of the effect of arguments on judgments about thought experiments. We report the result of three experiments in which eleven thought experiments drawn from multiple philosophical subdisciplines were used. It turns out that arguments have significant impacts on Chinese participants’ judgments in response to most of these thought experiments. These results present new resources for defending the traditional methodology but also bring new challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many natural languages include plural terms, i.e. terms which denote many individuals at once. Are there also superplural terms, i.e. terms which denote many pluralities of individuals at once? Some philosophers say ‘Yes’, citing a range of sentence types which apparently can't be analyzed in a first-order plural logic, but which can be analyzed in a superplural one. We argue that all the data presented in favor of the superplural can, in fact, be analyzed using only first-order resources. The key is to add to ordinary plural logic a new notion of a generalized cover. A generalized cover reflects how interlocutors in a conversation may divide a salient plurality into many subpluralities, which can then be involved in reference and predication. With generalized covers in place, all the apparently troublesome sentences can be easily handled. Our approach can also be extended to account, not only for linguistic data which seem to favor the superplural but also for other phenomena involving plurals. The result is a unified approach to natural language plurals on which superplurals are analyzed away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plato and Aristotle, as Pascal illustrates in fragment Sellier 457 of Pensées, possess insight into the flaws of human social interactions and adeptly navigate them through intelligent dissimulation similar to Socratic irony and the pedagogy of play when dealing with authority. As honnêtes hommes, avant la lettre, they are virtuous individuals ahead of their time, recognizing the limitations of philosophy and not taking philosophical discourse too seriously in their pensée de derrière. Besides emphasizing the futility of social life as part of the human condition, not so much interested in Plato and Aristotle as historical role models, Pascal portrays the two philosophers’ character traits as consisting of a miscellaneous mixture of Socrates, Pyrrhonians, and honnêtes hommes, and claims the inadequacy and inefficacy of pagan philosophy without God wholesale in altering human behaviours. For Pascal, Plato and Aristotle, like honnêtes hommes and philosophers of other schools, are susceptible to criticism for indulging in self-love inherent to human nature, a flaw only Christianity can fully explain through the doctrine of the Fall and offer a meaningful remedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium resonates with contemporary environmental debates, highlighting the balance between technology and ecology, especially within Elven societies. Using Rosi Braidotti's sense of posthumanism, this paper analyses the technologic natures of the three Elven communities in Middle-earth: the Sindar, Nandor, and Noldor. Contrary to prevailing ecocritical beliefs that Elves depict a simplistic relationship with nature, this research posits that their profound bond stems from advanced technology, understood as either craftmanship or magic, promoting symbiotic Earth interactions in line with techno-optimistic yet symbiotic views of environmentalism. Challenging the idea that all Elven communities share a uniform relationship with Arda, the study also emphasises distinctions in their technological and environmental alignments within Tolkien's earlier works, especially The Silmarillion. Drawing on Chinese philosopher Yuk Hui's concept of “cosmotechnics”, the paper suggests the Sindar and Nandor adopt an eco-centric posthumanist approach, creating cities synergized with controlled forests, while the Noldor prioritise a harmonious relationship between innovative technology and nature. The study culminates by analysing the convergence of these varied cosmotechnics in Caras Galadhon, Lothlórien's capital. This research provides a fresh perspective on Tolkien's portrayal of technology and ecology, emphasising the intricate and multifaceted nature of his Elven societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will argue for two interrelated theses. First, if we take phenomenological psychopathology seriously, and want to understand what it is like to undergo various psychopathological experiences, we cannot treat madpeople's testimony as mere data for sane clinicians, philosophers, and other scholars to analyze and interpret. Madpeople must be involved with analysis an interpretation too. Second, sane clinicians and scholars must open their minds to the possibility that there may be experiences that other people have, which they nevertheless cannot conceive of. I look at influential texts in which philosophers attempt to analyze and understand depersonalization and thought insertion. They go astray because they keep using their own powers of conceivability as a guide to what is or is not humanly possible to experience. Several experiences labeled inconceivable and therefore impossible by these philosophers, are experiences I have had myself. Philosophers and others would be less likely to make this mistake if they would converse and collaborate more with the madpeople concerned. When this is not feasible, they should nevertheless strive to keep an open mind. Fantastical fiction may have a role to play here, by showing how bizarre experiences may nevertheless be prima facie conceivable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the non-human turn in justice theory remains in its infancy, several projects have emerged, including Earth system justice, multispecies justice, and planetary justice. Crucially, candidate theories must provide convincing responses to the who, what, and how of justice. The question of who can prove particularly challenging, as philosophers continue to debate the moral relevance of properties of entities or the relations between them. Scholars of environmental politics seeking to develop more-than-human justice theories must carefully attend to issues inherent in this debate, including conceptual inconsistencies. Recent work by Winter and Schlosberg advancing a materialist perspective on multispecies and planetary justice demonstrates the difficult task of participating in this conversation, as evidenced by their application of the term 'subjects of justice.' In this brief essay, I identify three flaws in their use of this phrase and explain why the treatment of subjects matters to justice theory in the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers hold there are genuine cases of culpable ignorance. This paper argues that there are conditions that can render knowledge epistemically culpable too. First, we contrast culpable ignorance with morally culpable knowledge. Second, we examine the nature of epistemically culpable knowledge using a key example. We then highlight empirical support for the claim that there are real-world conditions that make epistemically culpable knowledge possible. Next, we survey three kinds of epistemic culpability fostered by culpable knowledge. Finally, we address the benefits objection and argue that it fails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although virtues and vices are typically thought of as individual qualities, a growing body of philosophical inquiry suggests that they can comprise collective qualities as well. In this paper, I expand upon the work of philosopher Miranda Fricker to question whether arts organizations can be considered institutionally virtuous and/or vicious. I begin with a discussion of collective epistemology, as offered by Margaret Gilbert, which lays the foundation for how collectives can function as "plural subjects" in pursuit of a common belief or goal. From here, I offer a brief overview of virtue/vice epistemology, which I then connect to Fricker's model of collective, and by extension, institutional virtue. Throughout, I provide illustrations of arts organizations who might themselves be said to possess institutional virtue and/or vice. I conclude by elaborating on the accountability of individuals working on behalf of, and sometimes in opposition to, the inner ethos of arts organizations—particularly when those organizations might fall into the harmful realm of institutional vice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are all used to drawing straight lines to represent time, and above them, we plot historical events or physical or economic data. What to us is a self-evident convention, is however of an astonishingly recent date: it emerged only in the second half of the eighteenth century. To us, this late date seems paradoxical and cries out for an explanation. How else did earlier periods measure change, if not as a function of time? it will be argued that since Antiquity, time was taken to measure change, and change to occur in space. 'Our' idea of representing time as an independent dimension would have seemed aberrant. But then, a second issue arises. Did not medieval natural philosophers employ timelines, Oresme's diagram of the mean speed theorem being the most famous case? However, as will be shown, our interpretation of his diagram is probably wrong. This insight, in turn, takes care of a third paradox, namely Galileo's initial inability to represent the law of free fall correctly. This article will document that the timeline first emerged in the late sixteenth century in works on chronology, made its first appearance in physics in Galileo's diagrams, and had its general breakthrough in the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows the implications of Gadamer's hermeneutics after Truth and Method in which the forming of social life, and with it the idea of worldly understanding, receives greater attention. I argue that the emphasis in his later writings on worldly understanding draws less on the idea of the hermeneutic circle and problematic of the Geisteswissenschaften in which the concept of tradition is prominent than on the movement in language and the encounter with the other. As in the example of translation, I argue that this movement has the character of passage from one place to another that holds within it an element of opacity. The development of this issue draws on a comparative analysis with the work of the Caribbean philosopher Édouard Glissant. From this analysis I show how Gadamer's hermeneutics addresses the issue of understanding across cultures and in mixed cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Donald Davidson issued his challenge to anticausalism in 1963, most philosophers have espoused the view that our actions are causally explained by the reasons why we do them. This Davidsonian consensus, however, rests on a faulty argument. Davidson’s challenge has been met, in more than one way, by anticausalists such as C. Ginet, G. Wilson, and S. Sehon. Hence I endeavor to support causalism with a stronger argument. Our actions are correlated with our motivating reasons; to wit, we often do what we have reason to do. In yet other words, we are often rational. Our frequent rationality is easily explained if causalism is correct, but looks like a staggering coincidence otherwise. Anticausalism thus appears to be ill-equipped to account for the very existence of rational behavior, and so far no attempts in this direction have succeeded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between trust and inquiry to argue for the view that A trusts B to act in some way only if A believes, in a way that she cannot distinguish from knowledge, for reasons of trust, that B will (or has) act(ed) in this way. Call such beliefs ‘outright trusting beliefs’. To support this view, I shall argue, by way of various examples, that the conditions under which inquiry erodes trust are the same as the conditions under which inquiry erodes outright trusting belief. This congruence is easily explained abductively if we take trust to involve such a belief constitutively. While philosophers have sometimes thought that the relationship between trust and inquiry threatens or complicates the doxastic account of trust, the argument presented here suggests, surprisingly, that this relationship supports and even strengthens this account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article focuses on a method of moral self-cultivation advocated by the Chinese Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi: deep reading. To Zhu Xi, reading is not only an intellectual activity of learning knowledge, but also a spiritual exercise. Through meticulous, thorough, and unbiased reading, people can gradually cultivate their minds to have three virtues, carefulness (xixin), patience (naixin), and modesty (xuxin). I argue that these three virtues are like the three civic virtues (attentiveness, seriousness and humility) recently proposed by political philosopher Mary Scudder, who argues that these virtues can help people become ‘listening citizens’. Listening citizens are more eager to actively listen to others’ viewpoints and engage in democratic deliberation, which in turn can create a healthy public culture. In sum, while the goal of becoming a sage through deep reading may not be relevant today, Zhu Xi’s teachings highlight the value of deep reading in fostering good citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article examines the intersection of theology, social media technologies, and human responses to global crises and disaster. It highlights the way in which social media has become a primary platform for engaging with such events, while also considering its effects on mental health. Responding to the needs of others is theologically important, but this raises crucial questions about how tomanage practical engagement with social media amidst the poor mental health outcomes associated with it. This article offers a theological response which emphasises the centrality of the body anddraws on the work of philosopher Albert Borgmann to outline the importance of “focal things” in human experience. Borgmann’s concept is proposed as a potential antidote to the mental health issues and distractions fostered by social media, offering one possible pathway to more meaningful and embodied responses to crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We live in an institutional world, where our identity is significantly shaped by our membership in institutional groups (from sports clubs and condo boards to state and international organisations). As such, then, understanding what those groups are and how they affect our reality through their actions is imperative. To that end, some philosophers have taken on the task of elucidating ‘institutional agency' (the capacity of institutional groups to act). Most recently, for example, Michael Bratman has introduced a theory of institutional agency, according to which an institutional group can act if the relevant participants act on an institutional intention (viz., a decision output that satisfies certain rationality constraints). Crucially, he develops this approach on the assumption that ‘planning agency' is the core capacity involved across various forms of human practical organization: individual, social, and institutional. However, this paper shows that while true that planning agency may be a basic element of individual and shared intentionality, it is not so relevant for institutional intentionality. In fact, contra Bratman’s intuitions, it argues that institutional agency is constructed out-of-group attitudes and actions, for which group agency, but not planning agency, is the core capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds new light on Alexander von Humboldt’s political position in the revolutionary decade between 1789 and 1799. The young naturalist interacted with both supporters and opponents of the revolution. In July 1790, he even participated in the preparations for the Festival of the Federation in Paris together with Georg Forster. However, Humboldt remained detached from Europe’s polarized politics. He avoided taking a firm stance and distanced himself from revolutionary violence. Continuous emotional and physical crises, in addition to his immersion into scientific studies, fuelled this retreat. While steeped in Enlightenment ideas and committed to a cosmopolitan understanding of liberty, Humboldt absorbed the critique of the French Revolution and the skeptical take on rationalism that the philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Alexander’s brother, articulated.By recognizing these influences and reexamining autobiographical sources, we can identify the various intellectual and political contexts in which Alexander von Humboldt operated during the 1790s. This polycentric approach leads to a nuanced understanding of Humboldt’s political thinking in revolutionary Europe. It explains his caution in political matters and revises the conventional image of Humboldt as a fervent supporter of the French Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I discuss theological aesthetics in light of various descriptions of experiences of transcendence that art can provide for human beings. The American author Patti Smith describes, e.g. how works of art "call her" so that she must respond with art productions of her own. This looks similar to what German sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls "resonance". He describes art as one of the places where an experience of vertical resonance can take place. Smith's experiences also correspond to the description of the basic experience of transcendence of human beings as they are interpreted by the Danish philosopher Dorthe Jørgensen. However, she reduces these experiences to be immanent in nature because they are objectless. I suggest that systematic theology can contribute with a distinct theological interpretation of aesthetic experiences through a three-fold argument. First, to combine beauty and infinity in the being of God. Second, to reinterpret the notion of the incarnation as God's continuous presence in the world. And third, by combining natural theology's point that creation speaks of God with a reinterpretation of the artefacts that humans can create. As such, this paper proposes how systematic theology can contribute to the interpretation of aesthetic experiences of transcendence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There 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]

We scan Paul K. Feyerabend's work in philosophy of physics and of science more generally for insights that could be useful for the contemporary debate on the foundations of quantum mechanics. We take as our starting point what Feyerabend has actually written about quantum mechanics, but we extend our analysis to his general views on realism, objectivity, pluralism, and the relation between physics and philosophy, finding that these more general views could in fact offer many interesting insights for physicists and philosophers working on quantum foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal philosophers often ask whether a person has a reason to obey the law simply because it is the law. We ask the contrary question: does a person have a reason to disobey the law simply because it is the law? Many philosophers who have considered the question of disobedience have focused on injustice; others have defended disobedience on libertarian or anarchist grounds. In contrast, we argue that there is a content-independent reason to disobey the law even when it is not unjust, illegitimate, or otherwise undesirable. Legal philosophers generally agree that law claims peremptory authority, but they also generally agree that any duty to obey the law is substantially more limited. We argue that insofar as the law makes inflated claims to authority, it generates a content-independent reason to disobey. This anti-authoritarian principle is grounded in the virtue of clearly communicating one's political commitments to others within a democratic society. By disobeying, one communicates one's conviction that the law makes inflated claims to authority. We show how our account of disobedience as such is distinct from more familiar theories of anarchism and civil disobedience and argue that it is applicable whether one lives under conditions of justice or injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to introduce the work of the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder on empathy to contemporary tourism. Animals and humans share a language of nature, which was an essential point of departure for Herder in arguing that the sensual must be elevated alongside the empirical in arriving at deeper truths. Herder's philosophy is used as a benchmark to examine empathy-based programmes at the Seattle Aquarium, which also speaks of a language of nature through its animal-based empathy programming. A synthesis of these two bodies of knowledge, and conceptual framework, uncovers several comparatives over the ethos, pathos and logos of empathy at captive animal venues, where we must reconcile use as a function of institutional realities and the constructed care that goes into the facilitation of animal-human interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Portuguese elections occurred this March, and the left's decline has accompanied the far-right's growth, as in previous elections. Explanations for such phenomena are often carried out using quantitative and qualitative methods. Philosophical conceptual analysis, in contrast, is frequently dismissed as a method for analysing political change. In this paper, I will show how, by using conceptual analysis, it is possible to assist in explaining voting behaviour from the left on the far-right party Chega in Portugal. This methodology resembles philosophers and political theorists using concepts like 'class' and 'authoritarianism' to assist in explaining socio-political changes. I will use concepts, such as 'complex ideology' and 'anti-power/anti-system politics', which have helpful explanatory power to the phenomenon I address. Particularly, I argue that the right-wing party Chega can attract voters from the left because of its anti-system ideology, an ideological characteristic of left voters in Portugal. Thus, I argue that the rise of the far-right partly relates to the changing politics of some smaller left parties with parliamentary representation. These political changes within these parties create a space for specific anti-system ideologies that the far-right, in the case of Portugal, can fill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a theory of artistic medium through a conjoint reading of Martin Heidegger and Stanley Cavell. My thesis is that the concept of the medium such reading yields is a necessary dimension of the idea of art still operative in the contemporary "post-medium condition," in which the material bases of works are no longer bound to conventional identification within the system of the arts. I show that Rosalind Krauss's conception of "reinventing the medium" as the essential artistic task of this situation is adumbrated in a central tenet of Cavell's philosophy of art: an artistic medium is created—rather than applied—in a successful artistic instance. I further show that this notion, consistently associated with the figure of circularity in Cavell's text, is grounded in Heidegger's understanding of the artwork as a world-disclosing event, paradoxically creating its own conditions. In the last two sections of the paper, I explore the significance of artistic medium for both philosophers as the bearer of the transcendental claim for "material meaning" against the prevailing Cartesian paradigm of modernity. Finally, I argue that Heidegger's interpretation of the artwork's material basis as "coming-forth-concealing," furthered by Jean-Luc Nancy's notion of "matter-as-difference," makes the concept of the medium, so construed, universally applicable to the variety of arts in the post-medium condition, and grounds the ontological necessity of this multiplicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the controversy between ancient Greek dramatists and their fellow philosophers over the vertical axis, with special reference to Socrates. I begin with a discussion of the vertical axis in Greek theatre, and turn to Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus to discuss the vertical as a manifestation of the tragic preference ascribed to our "divine" upper body over our "bestial" lower body. Then, I discuss the deus ex machina as an image of divine vertical intervention in the horizontal human plot, and claim that Plato's and Aristotle's philosophical critique of this theatrical convention fails to notice that the dramatists made a subversive use of the illogicality of this convention. The second part of the article is dedicated to the vertical as an expression of man's desire to transcend the boundaries of the human sphere. I discuss the negative treatment of this desire by Greek dramatists, who regard it as an unworthy aspiration, compared to its positive treatment by Greek philosophers, who presents it as a worthy aspiration, since it is only through such an ascent that one can get a glimpse of the eternal. In this context, I examine two representations of Socrates: his deus ex machina appearance in Aristophanes' Clouds, implying the hubristic stance of philosophers; and his habit of long immobile standings as introduced in Plato's Symposium, implying the philosophers' superiority over the dramatists. However, the publicly-visible nature of Socrates' standstills also turns them into a display of philosophizing, meaning that Socrates of the Symposium is a philosopher who (perhaps unfairly) theatricalizes his verticality so as to challenge the art of theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main work of philosopher Günter Figal (1949–2024) was to undertake the continuation of hermeneutical philosophy after the deaths of its three major proponents: Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. Figal's philosophical project combines both phenomenology and hermeneutics and presents the task of philosophy as being essentially hermeneutical. He also proposes that aesthetics is phenomenology, as nothing is more phenomenal than the work of art, which is out there to be interpreted. His contribution to aesthetics is generally based on his notions of the objectivity [Gegenständlichkeit] and spatiality of artworks. The objectivity of artworks makes obvious their spatiality, and space makes the objectness of the art object most apparent. Both objectivity and spatiality are also essential to the hermeneutics of art. Figal's contribution to aesthetics, however, is underexplored. The present study thus aims to undertake a conceptual analysis of Figal's contributions to aesthetics, especially his concepts of objectivity [Gegenständlichkeit] and spatiality of art. In so doing, the present study aims to present an account of Figal's aesthetics, highlighting its place in the German aesthetic tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the scholarly analysis of impartiality in the early modern period. While previous studies have focused on impartiality in law, history, philosophy and aesthetics, this article analyzes impartial and cold or even cold-blooded self-examinations and self-observations, primarily in the work of the eighteenth-century German philosophers and writers Georg Friedrich Meier and Karl Philipp Moritz. The article is particularly concerned with the relation between the therapeutic and epistemic meanings and functions of these concepts. Without suggesting a linear development, it details how, over time, therapeutic connotations tended to be challenged and partly replaced by epistemic ones. It further argues that this development was intimately connected to the culture of sensibility and, in particular, to the growing interest in the unique, individual and often sensual experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Paul Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative was published, it was hailed as a major contribution to the philosophy of history. In the four decades since, Ricoeur’s brand of narrativism has fallen out of favour, and many of the claims he makes about historical narrative have been sharply criticized. Nevertheless, I argue that Ricoeur’s narrativism remains a powerful resource for philosophical reflections on the study of history. After reconstructing Ricoeur’s narrativism and placing it in its larger context, I discuss two sorts of criticism that have been directed at it: one made by literary theorists such as Monika Fludernik and another made by philosophers such as Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen. I defend Ricoeur from both sorts of criticism, arguing that when his approach is compared to its competitors, it fares remarkably well. I conclude with some suggestions about how philosophers of history might build on Ricoeur’s legacy today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the characteristic aspects of Daniel Dennett’s thought is his belief in the explanatory power of science. For Dennett, in order to make progress with certain philosophical problems, e.g. questions about the nature of consciousness, philosophers need to engage with the findings of empirical science. In this paper, I will take up the question of the relation between science and philosophy and I will start by giving a general overview of Dennett’s view of this relation while also addressing the question of whether he can properly be said to embrace scientism. In the second part of this paper, I will argue that philosophical thinking is continuous with science and that, though at the level of theoretical frameworks the intension of the words “philosophy” and “science” are the same, there is a distinction that can be made in practice if we look at the extensions of the terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her most renowned work – The Symbolic Order of the Mother – the Italian philosopher Luisa Muraro urges women to resist living within an improper dimension, namely the one they experience within the paternal symbolic order. In her attempt to completely avoid such a life, she prescribed to women the necessity, or rather the duty, of loving their mothers or learning to do so. However, this duty is here questioned as a risky and once again normative move, reaffirming the essentialist nature of second-wave Italian feminism. My aim is to demonstrate how, in fact, it is within Italian feminism, and more precisely in the writings of Carla Lonzi, that we can find an alternative approach. This alternative does not conceive of difference as something given in terms of content, but rather as the possibility of living in a dimension of authenticity, where subjectivity is capable of articulating its own desires and principle of pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the ongoing project of recovering and (re)integrating early modern European women philosophers, scholars have been re-examining not only who counts as a philosopher, but what kinds of works are properly understood as philosophical. Madeleine de Scudéry is best remembered as a novelist, but some scholars have argued that her dialogues are richly philosophical. Here, I examine an early and overlooked text from Scudéry – Illustrious Women – which is a collection of speeches of historical women who find themselves in dire circumstances. I argue that Illustrious Women offers a sophisticated critique of patriarchal power: Scudéry exposes the conflict between epistemic and practical agency under conditions of gendered oppression and illustrates specific manifestations of this harm concerning control, autonomy, and consent. In so doing, particularly through the genre of oratory, Scudéry’s Illustrious Women is both a work of seventeenth-century feminist resistance and a subversive educational tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David Hume was a great philosopher of religion and of common life. In this essay, I interpret him as making extreme religious skepticism one part of his overall rhetorical form. In all his religious writings, however, Hume always takes a step back from Pyrrhonian style results to a position that is more compatible with common life. The great twentieth-century religious studies scholar, Ninian Smart, offers seven dimensions of religion which show the extent to which it is thoroughly entwined with the practices and beliefs of ordinary human life, and this connection to ordinary life makes Smart's divisions a nice match for Hume and his philosophy of common life. I elucidate the ways in which Hume's philosophy contributes to our understanding of religion in terms of Smart's dimensions, and in each case, I argue that Hume treats religion not from the perspective of a hostile enemy, but as a student of religion who grounds it in common life and seeks to correct it from that vantage point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in the topic of a meaningful life among philosophers, psychologists, and the general public. Yet despite this interest, the thinker who is perhaps most closely associated with meaning and mental health, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, has been largely overlooked by academic researchers. This article offers some redress to this situation by exploring the status of his central idea, the Will to Meaning, by locating it within contemporary philosophical discussions of Meaning in Life, and examining the coherence of the difference elements of Frankl's published works. A combination of biographical, historical and philosophical analysis, including reference to the thinkers who helped his ideas, such as Kierkegaard and Scheler, provides a constructively critical account of Frankl's existential theory of meaning. It is suggested that Frankl's theory, with amendments, provides a useful contribution to contemporary discussions in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers and psychologists assume that mental imagery is a cognitive state, that it represents things as being a certain way. However, I argue that imagery is a conative state: it represents things as to be made a certain way. I challenge the traditional assumption by targeting an increasingly popular cognitive account that identifies mental imagery, such as inner speech, with predictions of sensory input. This predictive account faces both empirical and theoretical problems. The account not only fails to capture the salience effects exhibited by mental imagery, it also cannot explain why subjects should not spend their lives minimizing prediction error by engaging in fantasy. These shortcomings highlight what I call the conative profile of imagery, which includes its salience, motivational, and performance effects. I argue that an alternative, conative view of imagery, according to which mental images are goal states, is best able to account for its conative profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prevalent assumption in metaethics is that people believe in moral objectivity. If this assumption were true then people should believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, objective moral knowledge, and objective moral error. We developed surveys to investigate whether these predictions hold. Our results suggest that, neither abstractly nor concretely, people dominantly believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, knowledge and error. They attribute less objectivity to these phenomena than in the case of science and no more, or only slightly more, than in the cases of social conventions and personal preferences. This finding was obtained for a regular sample as well as for a sample of people who are particularly likely to be reflective and informed (philosophers and philosophy students). Our paper hence contributes to recent empirical challenges to the thesis that people believe in moral objectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some philosophers claim that there are certain laws that restrict what kinds of things we can perceptually represent. Those laws do not apply, however, to beliefs. To be a representationalist is to hold that there is a similarity between perception and belief. If this is the case, why do the laws apply to one kind of mental state, but not the other? I argue that the puzzle is not a puzzle for representationalists in general, but only for some forms of representationalism that hold excessive analogies between perception and belief. I will consider three kinds of views: a view that identifies perception with belief; a view that claims that perception and belief share the same kind of content, viz. propositions; and the view that belief and perception are both intentional states, but do not share the same type of content. I will argue that the laws of appearance rule out views that identify perception with belief, and that consider propositions to be the contents of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper gives, in the first place, a performative reading of Frege's account of non-alethic modalities. Second, it asks the question whether there is an influence of Kant's writings on Frege's notion of assertive force. It is generally acknowledged that the Neo-Kantian tradition has been essential to Frege's development. The paper shows that it can also be fruitful to look at more direct influences of Kant himself, especially on the early Frege. The paper shows that Kant's notion of assertoric modality must have been an inspiration for Frege to make the distinction between judgement, including the assertoric force, and judgeable content. Kant's logical I may also have played a role in Frege's account of judgement in terms of the judging agent, the first person. The conclusion of the paper, though, is that Frege is not a Kantian philosopher, as his idea of logic as providing a positive standard of objectivity is completely new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint attention occurs when two (or more) individuals attend together to some object. It has been identified by psychologists as an early form of our joint engagement, and is thought to provide us with an understanding of other minds that is basic in that sophisticated conceptual resources are not involved. Accordingly, it has also attracted the interest of philosophers. Moreover, a very recent trend in the psychological and philosophical literature on joint attention consists of developing the suggestion that it holds partially in virtue of communication: it is because we share our thoughts or feelings about an object that our individual attention becomes joint. This paper unpacks the communicative suggestion in a way that accounts for joint attention's basicness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Must We Mean What We Say?', Stanley Cavell defends the method of ordinary language philosophy while arguing that the special status of philosophical claims about language arises from the fact that these statements are expressions of self-knowledge. Recently, Nat Hansen (2017) has explored Cavell's position in relation to empirical research on linguistic usage. This paper challenges Hansen's reading of Cavell, and presents an alternative interpretation that withstands some of Hansen's objections. For Cavell, claims about 'what we say' are claims about observable matters of fact, but nevertheless they are not, and cannot ever be, observation-based claims. The point of observing ordinary usage is to remind the philosopher of what is contained within the practical mastery that she already possesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the many titles ascribed to Eckhart – philosopher, theologian, mystic – this paper argues that in his 'Sermons and Lectures on Ecclesiastes' we see that these are all aspects of the Meister which can, and should be, subsumed under the title of Dominican. Eckhart was living out the vision of Dominic, the founder of the Order, that vision of able men who, rooted in the contemplative discipline inherited from Augustine, could articulate the faith in intellectual terms. In his work on Ecclesiastes, he was passionately concerned that those for whom he was responsible should be people of deep faith and integrity as well as intellectually able. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian realists argue for the unique claim that universals are perceptible. The possibility of allowing perceptual access to universals puts pressure on the Nyāya theory of perception. The Nyāya philosophers introduced the notion of nirvikalpaka pratyakṣa (non-conceptual perception) to accommodate the perceptibility of universals. Since there is no direct introspective evidence for non-conceptual perception, it is difficult, if not impossible, to specify the content of nirvikalpaka pratyakṣa or non-conceptual perception. This paper addresses this concern by turning to Ned Block's work in contemporary philosophy of perception. Using Block's arguments, I propose that we have an independent empirical route to specify the content of a non-conceptual perception which is not subject to the ‘myth of the given’ objection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the problem of how to elucidate the concept of nonsense. Viewed from a general philosophical standpoint this matters because the concept is used by certain philosophers in their criticism of philosophical questions and theses. I start with a presentation of examples of utterances considered nonsense, along with Baier's classification of kinds of nonsense. I then present various approaches, pointing out that none of them are completely satisfactory. I subsequently propose an approach that is a modification of the austere conception: while consistent with the latter in that it treats nonsense as a lack of something, it differs by holding that a determination of the nature of various instances of nonsense can only be accomplished by examining how we show that some given utterance is nonsense. This approach places the emphasis on distinguishing the question of the meaninglessness of an utterance from the question of the incorrectness of linguistic expressions. The advantage of my conception is that on the one hand, it does not deny that there is an important non-psychological difference between philosophical nonsense and gibberish, while on the other it avoids the absurdity that philosophical utterances are nonsense because what they say is nonsensical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophical tradition holds that sounds, like colors, are sensible properties. Recently, however, there is a growing consensus in favor of the view that sounds are particulars, not properties. This article bucks the trend: it argues for the Event-Property View of Sounds – a widely overlooked and intuitively plausible version of the traditional view that not only avoids the difficulties that have led philosophers to opt for particularist alternatives, but does justice to the best insights of recent philosophical and empirical work on audition. In other words, it saves the truth in tradition by transforming it in light of new insight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]