Neutrality is a concept that has been under significant critique both within wider society and library and information science. Supporters cite it as a worldview that respects the choices of individuals and that no one view of the common good should prevail in a pluralistic society. Critics argue that it reflects an out-of-date concept that enshrines power structures created by those already powerful and limits the choices and opportunities for those without power. This panel reflects on the arguments and considers (...) what a library and information science ethic that does not build itself around neutrality might look like. (shrink)

This article provides the first account of Shestov's pervasive influence on Gilles Deleuze's philosophy (from Nietzsche et la philosophie to Milles plateaux), on Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of nomad thought and "thought from outside", leading to an interpretation of Shestov and Kierkegaard's unexpected mentions in Gilles Deleuze's treatise on cinema, Cinema 1 - L'Image mouvement, and Cinema 2 - L'Image-temps.

Chinese Communist monocultural policies, notably the re-education camps for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, have recently been condemned for violating human rights. In response to critics, the Chinese Communist Party frequently replied that one should not impose Western concepts of democracy, liberty, and human rights on the Chinese people. Nevertheless, instead of introducing Western philosophies criticizing the current Chinese Communist monoculturalism; with the help of a modern reinterpretation of the Classic of Rites, this paper aims to construct a Confucian Multiculturalism and (...) argues that: (1) the Classic of Rites explicitly warned against cultural assimilations of “barbarians” into the “civilized” Empire, (2) the Classic of Rites acknowledges cultural diversities, and (3) although the Classic of Rites does not explain clearly why the imperial court should tolerate cultural diversities, a Kantian reinterpretation of the Chinese concept of 敬 Jing implies the respects for minority rights. In doing so, this paper formulates Confucian Multiculturalism as a new model of the Chinese philosophy of culture which asserts cultural diversity. (shrink)

This chapter presents Boris de Schloezer's role as a translator and interpreter of Lev Shestov in France, following the two intellectuals' exile to Paris due to the bolshevik revolution in Russia and in Ukraine. The argument draws on previously unpublished correspondence between the two authors kept in the archives of the Mediatheque de Monaco and the Sorbonne University Library. The chapter also analyses Boris de Schloezer's conception of literary translation and his own fictional writings which were influenced by Lev Shestov's (...) existential thought. (shrink)

AbstractSimion and Kelp offer a prima facie very promising account of trustworthy AI. One benefit of the account is that it elegantly explains trustworthiness in the case of cancer diagnostic AIs, which involve the acquisition by the AI of a representational etiological function. In this brief note, I offer some reasons to think that their account cannot be extended — at least not straightforwardly — beyond such cases (i.e., to cases of AIs with non-representational etiological functions) without incurring the unwanted (...) cost of overpredicting untrustworthiness. (shrink)

The recent worsening political unrest in Hong Kong triggers international attention to the problem of Hong Kong subjectivity. Since Confucian values have already been rooted in Chinese languages and Chinese history education at secondary schools by the government early in the British Hong Kong period and Confucian values seem to be influential in the Hong Kong society dominated by the Chinese population, with the help of Tillich’s concepts of ultimate concerns and preliminary concerns, this paper aims to investigate how Confucian (...) ultimate concern may manifest in the preliminary concerns in the contemporary Hong Kong situation, so that Confucianism may contribute to the on-going political discussions. This paper argues that under the “One Country Two Systems” of the Basic Law, democracy and autonomy become Hong Kongese’s political concerns, which can be employed by Confucians to manfiest the ultimate concern of humanness through the virtue of reverence. 近年香港政治衝突加劇，使香港的主體性問題再次受到關注。鑒於自殖民地時代起，政府已經將儒學價值植入了中學中國語文與中國歷史教育，令儒學價值在香港這華人佔大多數的社會已舉有一定影響力，本文透過田立克終極關 懷與初始關懷的概念，嘗試探討儒學的終極關懷即「仁」如何能夠透過香港當前特殊的政治處境下的初始關懷去展現儒學價值，以讓儒家哲學亦可介入當前香港的政治討論。本文將指出，在《基本法》「一國兩制」的政治制度下 ，民主和自治成為香港的政治關懷；而透過「恭」的德性作為中介，儒學能夠使用香港人對民主和自治的政治關懷表達「仁」的價值。. (shrink)

A key project in mainstream epistemology investigates the sense in which beliefs are vulnerable to knowledge-undermining luck and/or risk. This chapter will explore a related but largely overlooked question of how and to what extent our grasping connections between propositions is vulnerable to understanding- undermining luck and risk. The result will be a better view of how our attempts to understand the world are vulnerable when they are, and how to better mitigate against such vulnerabilities.

According to Japanese theologian Kitamori Kazoh’s (1916-1998) Theology of the Pain of God, God’s pain is the essence of God. The pain of God is the paradox between God’s anger and God’s love. On the one hand, God hates sins while sin destroys God-man relationship, so God is therefore angry with humans. On the other hand, God is merciful and therefore gives His Son Jesus Christ to save the world and so manifests God’s love. This paradox constitutes God’s pain and (...) is manifested through God the Father’s sacrifice of God the Son, where Jesus died and was resurrected for the sinners, in order to save them. However, if Christ’s death and resurrection has already forgiven humans’ sins and reconciled the God-man relation, then God’s anger should perish, and therefore God’s pain should also cease to exist. Nevertheless, the absence of God’s pain has not prevented God’s existence. Therefore, God’s pain is not God’s essence. Since Kitamori is influenced by both the Kyoto School, Continental Philosophy (especially Kierkegaard) and Lutheran theology, this article aims to correct Kitamori’s theoretical weakness by arguing that the pain of God comes from the God- man relationship as an aidagara, and therefore as God’s pain is not persistent, it cannot be God’s essence. (shrink)

Mou Zongsan rarely discusses Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Nevertheless, in On the Characteristics of Chinese Philosophy, Mou uses Kierkegaard as an example to illustrate the fundamental ontological differences between Christianity and Confucianism. Mou claims that Confucians affirm moral subjectivity, while Christians urge one to deny one’s sinful self and to be integrated into God’s subjectivity. Therefore, Mou believes that Confucianism is characterized by self-affirmation, while Christianity is characterized by self-negation. As a response to this, this article argues that, even if one (...) agrees that Kierkegaard’s philosophy may represent this perspective of Christian ontology, “self-negation” can hardly outline the whole picture of Kierkegaard’s philosophy. By criticizing Mou’s oversimplified dichotomy of self-affirmation and self- negation, this article examines both Mou’s Confucian and Kierkegaard’s Christian perspectives on the ontological question of individual subjectivity, which can provide new insight to Confucian-Christian dialogue. (shrink)

In 1959, Lao Sze-Kwang (1927–2012), a well-known Chinese Kantian philosopher and author of the New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy, published On Existentialist Philosophy introducing existential philosophers to Chinese readers. This paper argues that Lao misinterpreted Kierkegaard’s ultimate philosophical quest of “how to become a Christian” as a question of ‘virtue completion,’ because he failed to recognize and acknowledge Kierke- gaard’s distinction between aesthetic, moral and religious passion. By describing and clarifying Lao’s misinterpretation, the paper then argues that (...) Lao’s trichotomy of the self fails to give due credit to the independence of religiousness from morality and aesthetics in Kierkegaard’s thought. (shrink)

Rachel Bespaloff's writings on rhythm, music and dance represent a significant moment in the evolution of her philosophical thought. These texts - not accessible to the public before this publication - have been completely forgotten. The fact that she began by teaching dance and eurythmy has been considered until now as a biographical episode relatively external to her philosophical work. However, it was through a reflection on dance and the role of music in rhythm that she came to question existential (...) temporality, the Heideggerian analysis of time and the relationship between music and philosophy, and then to prepare her great unfinished work, La Liberté et l'Instant. From a defence of the evolution of classical dance in contact with rhythm to a metaphysics of the instant conceived as the only possible place of freedom, engaged in a debate with Shestov, Fondane, Heidegger, Gabriel Marcel, Sartre and Camus, his path will never cease to deepen the mystery of temporality and of our authentic being in the world. This edition was compiled, introduced and annotated by Olivier Salazar-Ferrer, Senior Lecturer in Literature and Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. (shrink)

Analysis of the intellectual debates on poetry and Aesthetics between 1930-1940 with the dialogue between Albert Béguin and Marcel Raymond and Benjamin Fondane. This debate includes correspondences and intertextuality showing that there was a connection between Shestovian existential philosophy and the Geneva School of 'presence'.

Research questions in mainstream epistemology often take for granted a cognitive internalist picture of the mind. Perhaps this is unsurprising given the seemingly safe presumptions that knowledge entails belief and that the kind of belief that knowledge entails supervenes exclusively on brainbound cognition. It will be argued here that the most plausible version of the entailment thesis holds just that knowledge entails dispositional belief. However, regardless of whether occurrent belief supervenes only as the cognitive internalist permits, we should reject the (...) idea that dispositional belief supervenes only in cognitive internalist-friendly ways. These observations, taken together, reveal two things: first, that a cognitive internalist picture of the mind is much more dispensable in epistemology than has been assumed and, second, that pursuing questions in extended epistemology need not involve any radical departure from the commitments of more traditional epistemological projects. (shrink)

This book outlines and criticises the six main contemporary arguments for scepticism about the role of human enhancements in promoting well-being. It also defends important and concrete ways in which enhancement-permissive policies should be embraced with the aim of promoting well-being.

According to Persson and Savulescu, the risks posed by a morally corrupt minority's potential to abuse cognitive enhancement make it such that we have an urgent imperative to first pursue moral enhancement of humankind – and, consequently, if we are a long way from safe, effective moral enhancement, then we have at least one good reason to consider opposing further cognitive enhancement. However, as Harris points out, such a proposal seems to support delaying life-saving cognitive progress. In this article, we (...) first show that Harris's worry can be expanded to show that Persson and Savulescu's proposal also threatens the development of moral enhancement – precisely what they suggest we have pro tanto reason to pursue. From there, we offer our own, alternative proposal – one on which cognitively enhanced researchers play a key role in the production of moral enhancement, and those in the general population who wish to be cognitively enhanced must first accept moral enhancement as an entry requirement. We engage with four substantive objections to our proposal and use these objections to refine and strengthen the details. (shrink)

An emerging line of research in bioethics questions whether enhanced love is less significant or valuable than otherwise, where "enhanced love" generally refers to cases where drugs (e.g., oxytocin, etc.) are relied on to maintain romantic relationships. Separate from these debates is a recent body of literature on the philosophy and psychology of "Virtual Reality (VR) dating," where romantic relationships are developed and sustained in a way that is mediated by VR. Interestingly, these discussions have proceeded largely independently from each (...) other. This article considers whether and to what extent philosophical arguments leveled against the value of enhanced love in the pharmacological case extend to cases where loving relationships are technologically mediated via VR rather than pharmacologically mediated. It will be argued that, while some worries about the pharmacological case do not extend over in a way that will be particularly problematic for VR, two (of the four arguments considered) are more prima facie serious. I conclude by suggesting why even these stronger argument strategies are not insurmountable and, thus, that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that VR-mediated love can largely withstand variations on the bioconservative critiques that target pharmacologically enhanced love. (shrink)

This essay presents a collage of free-floating notes, thoughts, quotes, memes, YouTube comments on the reception of pop music on the internet. Content and questioning concern music reaction videos on YouTube, centring on my engagement with a particular online reaction - that of YouTuber ‘TCtheTopCat’ as they film themselves listening and responding to the track 'Reborn', from the eponymous 2018 album ‘Kids See Ghosts’. As audiovisual, autobiographical narratives, what kind of accounts and experiences do music reaction videos instigate and circulate? (...) What kind of reactions do they action and re-action? How do concepts of 'otobiography' and 'sonic fiction' help towards understanding these online music experiences, iterations, exchanges? How do music reaction videos extend logics of autobiographical signing and countersigning already present in processes of music production and reception? To what extent do my musical listening, my engagement with reaction videos, and my writing about these things here in this zine / journal, constitute instances of my 'commodification of difference'? (shrink)

A critical presentation of Lev Shestov's thought in the context of French anthropology and philosophy of religion, with reference to Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Edmund Husserl, Jean Malaurie, as well as Pascal, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 21381 "Conversational Agent as Trustworthy Autonomous System ". First, we present the abstracts of the talks delivered by the Seminar’s attendees. Then we report on the origin and process of our six breakout groups. For each group, we describe its contributors, goals and key questions, key insights, and future research. The themes of the groups were derived from a pre-Seminar survey, which also led to a list of suggested readings (...) for the topic of trust in conversational agents. The list is included in this report for references. (shrink)

Pharmacological cognitive enhancements nontherapeutically improve cognitive functioning, though recent critics have challenged their use by claiming that cognitive success, aided by the use of cognitive enhancement, is less valuable than otherwise. We criticize two recent responses to this objection, due to Carter and Pritchard and Wang, and propose a different response on behalf of proponents of cognitive enhancement that is shown to be more promising.

A Telic Theory of Trust approaches trust as a kind of aimed performance, capable of not only success but also of competence and aptness. J. Adam Carter shows how this illuminate the nature of trust, the difference between good and bad trusting, and practices of cooperation in general.

Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland. By Martha McGill. Scottish Historical Review Monograph Series. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018. Hardcover. 255 pp. ISBN 978-1-78327-362-1. $90.00.

This chapter looks at the pervasiveness of ethical discourses and analyses within anarchism, and how the priority given to moral evaluation distinguished it from rival revolutionary movements, such as orthodox Marxism. It traces the different meta-ethical positions and normative formulations found within anarchist traditions. It argues that a practice-based anti-hierarchical virtue ethics is most consistent with anarchist core (but not fixed) commitments to materialism, anti-universalism and social solidarity.

Content, according to Bolzano, is intransparent: our knowledge of certain essential features of the contents of our contentful mental acts is often severely limited. In this paper, I identify various intransparency theses Bolzano is committed to and present and evaluate the defence he offers for his view. I argue that while his intransparency theses may be correct, his defence is unsuccessful. Moreover, I argue that improving on his defence would require substantially modifying his general epistemology of content.

This paper develops and defends a new account of therapeutic trust, its nature and its constitutive norms. Central to the view advanced is a distinction between two kinds of therapeutic trust – default therapeutic trust and overriding therapeutic trust – each which derives from a distinct kind of trusting competence. The new view is shown to have advantages over extant accounts of therapeutic trust, and its relation to standard (non-therapeutic) trust, as defended by Hieronymi, Frost-Arnold, and Jones.

To investigate the metaphysics of gender categories—categories like “woman,” “genderqueer,” and “man”—is to ask questions about what gender categories are and how they exist. This chapter offers a pluralist account of the metaphysics of gender categories, according to which there are several different varieties of gender categories. I begin by giving a brief overview of some feminist accounts of the metaphysics of gender categories and illustrating how certain moral and political considerations have been in play in these discussions as constraints (...) on acceptable accounts of gender categories. I then present my pluralist account of gender categories and highlight some of its virtues. Finally, I assess how my pluralist account fares relative to the moral and political considerations identified earlier in the chapter. I argue that although the account does not fare well, we should in fact revise our understanding of what those considerations are and how they should constrain our accounts of gender categories. I then show that, on this revised understanding, my pluralist account emerges as a viable position. (shrink)

In work on the ethics of cognitive enhancement use, there is a pervasive concern that such enhancement will—in some way—make us less authentic. Attempts to clarify what this concern amounts to and how to respond to it often lead to debates on the nature of the “true self” and what constitutes “genuine human activity”. This paper shows that a new and effective way to make progress on whether certain cases of cognitive enhancement problematically undermine authenticity is to make use of (...) considerations from the separate debate on the nature of authentic emotion. Drawing in particular on Wasserman and Liao, the present paper offers new conditions that can help us assess the impact of cognitive enhancements on authenticity. (shrink)

The chapter examines Cicero’s contribution to the genre of philosophical dialogue. It argues that he was the first to use speakers in dialogues as representatives of different philosophical schools; he adds a particular kind of preface in order to situate philosophical conversation within a specific historical and political setting; by these means he emphasizes the practical and contingent aspects of philosophy, sometimes at the expense of the abstract; he uses historical references to highlight the need for philosophy, and to keep (...) readers aware of the artificiality of his textual practice, and the conventional quality of the form itself. Passages from De finibus, including its account of the rape of Lucretia, are examined to show how these different aspects operate. (shrink)

It is often taken for granted that monitoring stands in some kind of tension with trusting (e.g., Hieronymi 2008; Wanderer and Townsend 2013; Nguyen forthcoming; McMyler 2011, Castelfranchi and Falcone 2000; Frey 1993; Dasgupta 1988, Litzky et al. 2006) — especially three-place trust (i.e., A trusts B to X), but sometimes also two-place trust (i.e., A trusts B, see, e.g., Baier 1986). Using a case study involving relationship breakdown, repair, and formation, I will argue there are some ways in which (...) monitoring can be conducive to two-place trust, and to instances of three-place trust that are likely to be repeated over time—especially when previously established two-place trust has broken down. The result, I hope, is not any kind of abandoning of the important idea that monitoring can undermine trust, but an appreciation of where the conflict between monitoring and trust doesn’t lie – one from which future work will hopefully be better positioned to illuminate where exactly the conflict is. (shrink)

Mari Mikkola’s Pornography: A Philosophical Introduction is a rich, thorough, and important book. With great skill and precision, Mikkola maps the conceptual terrain of pornography; summarises and assesses key debates in the existing literature; and contributes her own insights – chiefly, in my view, an appealing artefactual definition of pornography, and a strong case for a methodological commitment to discussing pornography in a way that is grounded in empirical reality. The result is much more than the promised ‘introduction’: it is (...) a key critical study that will, I am sure, play a major role in shaping future debates on this topic. I focus on a brief part of the book where Mikkola offers a critique of a paper of mine on pornography and social ontology. In short, I think Mikkola’s critique is correct, and I’ll attempt a re-working of the argument I made in that paper which, I hope, avoids the problems she identifies. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with Thomas Reid's account of the role of instinctive exertions in the development of one's conception of power. I consider whether such exertions can shed any light on the matter of how certain sensations can appear to us to possess spatial content. Reid denies that sensations have such content; I argue that the introduction of instinctive exertions into his account might allow Reid to avoid some of the less palatable consequences of denying spatial content to sensations.

The most obvious use of philosophy within Cicero’s speeches is as a source of invective: Stoicism against Cato in the Pro Murena, Epicureanism in In Pisonem. However, even here Cicero is careful to show that philosophical adherence itself is not a fault; but only faulty adherence. Elsewhere in the speeches, Cicero draws on Stoic theories of society in constructing his views of the relationship between the res publica, crisis, and tyranny and in articulating the justification for tyrant killing: this line (...) of argument can be traced from the Catilinarians through Pro Milone down to the Philippics. (shrink)

The value of knowledge has always been a central topic within epistemology. Going all the way back to Plato’s Meno, philosophers have asked, why is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief? Interest in this question has grown in recent years, with theorists proposing a range of answers. But some reject the premise of the question and claim that the value of knowledge is ‘swamped’ by the value of true belief. And others argue that statuses other than knowledge, such as (...) justification or understanding, are distinctively valuable. We will call the general question of why knowledge is valuable the value problem. (shrink)

Contemporary debates about epistemic luck and its relation to knowledge have traditionally proceeded against a tacit background commitment to cognitive internalism, the thesis that cognitive processes play out inside the head. In particular, safety-based approaches reveal this commitment by taking for granted a traditional internalist construal of what I call the cognitive fixedness thesis—viz., the thesis that the cognitive process that is being employed in the actual world is always ‘held fixed’ when we go out to nearby possible worlds to (...) assess whether the target belief is lucky in a way that is incompatible with knowledge. However, for those inclined to replace cognitive internalism with the extended mind thesis, a very different, ‘active externalist’ version of the cognitive fixedness thesis becomes the relevant one for the purposes of assessing a belief’s safety. The aim here will be to develop this point in a way that draws out some of the important ramifications it has for how we think about safety, luck and knowledge. (shrink)

Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them. More precisely, ‘relativism’ covers views which maintain that—at a level of high abstraction—at least some class of things have properties they have not simpliciter, but only relative to a given framework of assessment, and correspondingly, that the truth of (...) claims attributing these properties holds only once the relevant framework of assessment is specified or supplied. Relativists characteristically insist, furthermore, that if something is only relatively so, then there can be no framework-independent vantage point from which the matter of whether the thing in question is so can be established. Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy has felt the need to respond to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of philosophy and to the division between the so-called ‘analytic and continental’ camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate going back to Plato and a still developing large body of writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many ways in which ‘relativism’ has been defined, explained, defended and criticized. (shrink)

Is it ever wrong to cheat in a dream? It has been argued that the conjunction of reasonable claims about dreams with Evaluational Internalism (the view that moral evaluation is determined by factors ‘internal’ to agency, such as intentions) entails a positive answer. This implausible result seemingly provides reason to favour an alternative theory of moral evaluation. I here argue that a wide range of Evaluational Externalist views (which base moral evaluation on factors ‘external’ to agency, such as harms produced) (...) are similarly committed to morality in dreams. I end by identifying implications for theorising about dreams and morality. (shrink)

Whereas epistemology is the philosophical theory of knowledge, its nature and scope, metaepistemology takes a step back from particular substantive debates in epistemology in order to inquire into the assumptions and commitments made by those who engage in these debates. This entry will focus on a selection of these assumptions and commitments, including whether there are objective epistemic facts; and how to characterize the subject matter and the methodology of epistemology.

This is an introduction to Marina Ogden's study of the parable of the Angel of Death in Lev Shestov's philosophy which deals with the dialogue between existential thought and Freudian psychoanalysis in the interpretation of memory, trauma and rebirth.

Here I reply to Georgi Gardiner's recent essay on the virtues of attention.

I reply to Lani Watson's recent article on the social virtue of questioning.

Here I reply to criticisms by Jeroen de Ridder and S. Kate Devitt to my "Collective (Telic) Virtue Epistemology".

Presentation of the special issue devoted to Shestov and Kierkegaard.

An introduction to Lev Shestov's life, existential philosophy and legacy in the context of late 20th-C French thought.

This article analyzes the crisis of reality which concerns the ontology in the shestovian irrationalism as it is assumed by Benjamin Fondane in his philosophical essays and in his existential poetics. From a crisis of reality which is suffered by the poetry in the margins of the vanguards, Fondane is to think not only the philosophy of the tragedy in La Conscience malheureuse as an analysis at the bosom of the derrealization provoked by the rationalism, but as well to develop (...) a poetics of an ontological reversal in relation to a poetry of the disaster, under antiplatonic principles, which offer an exit for the religious irrationalism, bringing out an «existential» poetry conceived as act and substantiation. (shrink)

Ethical descriptivism is the view that all ethical properties are descriptive properties. Frank Jackson has proposed an argument for this view which begins with the premise that the ethical supervenes on the descriptive, any worlds that differ ethically must differ also descriptively. This paper observes that Jackson's argument has a curious structure, taking a linguistic detour between metaphysical starting and ending points, and raises some worries stemming from this. It then proposes an improved version of the argument, which avoids these (...) worries, and responds to some potential objections to this version of the argument. (shrink)

Editorship of the special issue of the Lev Shestov Journal which was published with the support of the Conseil National du Livre.

Introduction to Lev Shestov's existential thought and his critique of the idea of the good in the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.

The chapter analyses the relationship between Benjamin Fondane and Lev Shestov as reflected in the former's volume of memoirs - Rencontres avec Léon Chestov, published after the author's untimely death at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

‘Bad’ epistemic behavior is unfortunately commonplace. Take, for example, those who believe in conspiracy theories, trust untrustworthy news sites or refuse to take seriously the opinion of their epistemic peers. Sometimes this kind of behavior is sporadic or “out of character”; however, more concerning are those cases that display deeply embedded character traits, attitudes and thinking styles. When this is the case, these character traits, attitudes and thinking styles are identified by vice epistemologists as epistemic or intellectual vices. Considering that (...) these vices often block or subvert the acquisition of epistemic goods such as knowledge or truth, it is important for epistemologists to understand how these kinds of traits can be most effectively mitigated. One currently unexplored way in which we might go about doing so is by employing epistemically paternalistic strategies, particularly the strategy of “epistemic nudging” —the practice of altering an agent’s decision-making capacities toward a desired outcome... (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position (...) – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking. In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education. (shrink)

This paper offers a defence of the Communicative Theory of Punishment against recent criticisms due to Matt Matravers. According to the Communicative Theory, the intentional imposition of suffering by the judiciary is justified because it is intrinsic to the condemnation and censure that an offender deserves as a result of wrongdoing. Matravers raises a number of worries about this idea – grounded in his thought that suffering isn’t necessary for censure, and as a consequence sometimes the imposition of suffering can (...) be unjust. I respond by arguing that the imposition of suffering is an essential part of a suite of emotional responses that wrongdoing merits. As a result, and contrary to what Matravers suggests, words are not enough for censure and condemnation. (shrink)

Emotions are important for virtue, both moral and intellectual. This chapter aims to explain the significance of emotion for intellectual virtue along two dimensions. The first claim is that epistemic emotions can motivate intellectual inquiry, and thereby constitute ways of 'being for' intellectual goods. As a result, such emotions can constitute the motivational components of intellectual virtue. The second claim is that other emotions, rather than motivating intellectual inquiry and questioning, instead play a vital role in the regulation and control (...) of intellectual activities. Emotions are usually characterized, in philosophy and psychology, as having a number of components or elements. Thus emotions are held to involve elements of perception, appraisal, feeling, attention, valence, facial expression, and motivation. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel, functionalist, unified account of the epistemic normativity of reasoning. On this view, epistemic norms drop out of epistemic functions. I argue that practical reasoning serves a prudential function of generating prudentially permissible action, and the epistemic function of generating knowledge of what one ought to do. This picture, if right, goes a long way towards normatively divorcing action and practical reasoning. At the same time, it unifies reasoning epistemically: practical and theoretical reasoning will turn out (...) to be governed by the same epistemic norm—knowledge—in virtue of serving the same epistemic function: generating knowledge of the conclusion. (shrink)

According to one prominent view of exercising abilities, a subject, S, counts as exercising an ability to ϕ if and only if S successfully ϕs. Such an ‘exercise-success’ thesis looks initially very plausible for abilities, perhaps even obviously or analytically true. In this paper, however, I will be defending the position that one can in fact exercise an ability to do one thing by doing some entirely distinct thing, and in doing so I’ll highlight various reasons that favor the alternative (...) approach I develop over views that hold that the exercise of an ability is a success notion in the sense Millar maintains. (shrink)

I outline two ways of reading what is at issue in the exclusion problem faced by non-reductive physicalism, the “vertical” versus “horizontal”, and argue that the vertical reading is to be preferred to the horizontal. I discuss the implications: that those who have pursued solutions to the horizontal reading of the problem have taken a wrong turn.

What is knowledge? Why is it valuable? How much of it do we have, and what ways of thinking are good ways to use to get more of it? These are just a few questions that are asked in epistemology, roughly, the philosophical theory of knowledge. This is Epistemology is a comprehensive introduction to the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and scope of human knowledge. Exploring both classic debates and contemporary issues in epistemology, this rigorous yet accessible textbook provides (...) readers with the foundation necessary to start doing epistemology. Organized around 11 key subtopics, and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this volume exposes readers to diverse, often contentious perspectives—guiding readers through crucial debates including Hume’s problem of induction, Descartes’ engagement with radical skepticism, rationalist and empiricist evaluations of a priori justification, and many more. The authors avoid complex technical terms and jargon in favor of an easy-to-follow, informal writing style with engaging chapters designed to stimulate student interest and encourage class discussion. Throughout the text, a wealth of up-to-date references and links to online resources are provided to enable further investigation of an array of epistemological topics. A balanced and authoritative addition to the acclaimed This is Philosophy series, This is Epistemology is a perfect primary textbook for philosophy undergraduates, and a valuable resource for general readers with interest in this important branch of philosophy. (shrink)

In a recent and provocative paper, Matthew Fisher, Mariel Goddu and Frank Keil (2015) have argued, on the basis of experimental evidence, that ‘searching the internet leads people to conflate information that can be found online with knowledge “in the head”’ (2015, 675), specifically, by inclining us to conflate mere access to information for personal knowledge (2015, 674). This chapter has three central aims. First, we briefly detail Fisher et al.’s results and show how, on the basis of recent work (...) in virtue epistemology (e.g., Tiberius and Walker 1998; Roberts and Wood 2007; Tanesini 2016), their interpretation of the data supports the thesis that searching the internet is conducive to the vice of intellectual arrogance. Second, we argue that this arrogance interpretation of the data rests on an implicit commitment to cognitive internalism. Thirdly, we show how the data can be given a very different explanation in light of the hypothesis of extended cognition (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) – one which challenges the extent to which Fisher et al. are entitled to insist that subjects are actually conflating access to knowledge for personal knowledge in the first place. We conclude by suggesting how, against the background of extended cognition rather than cognitive internalism, we have some reason to think that searching the internet might actually foster (in certain circumstances) virtuous intellectual humility. (shrink)

Talk of epistemic dilemmas is old talk in epistemology. But are there such things? In this paper I argue for modest skepticism about epistemic dilemmas. In order to do that, I first point out that not all normative conflicts constitute dilemmas: more needs to be the case. Second, I look into the moral dilemmas literature for inspiration and identify a set of conditions that need to be at work for a mere normative conflict to be a genuine normative dilemma. Last, (...) I argue that, while our epistemic life is peppered with epistemic normative conflict, epistemic dilemmas are much harder to find than we thought. (shrink)

It is argued that trust is a performative kind and that the evaluative normativity of trust is a special case of the evaluative normativity of performances generally. The view is shown to have advantages over competitor views, e.g., according to which good trusting is principally a matter of good believing (e.g., Hieronymi, 2008; McMyler, 2011), or good affect (e.g., Baier, 1986; Jones, 1996), or good conation (e.g., Holton, 1994). Moreover, the view can be easily extended to explain good (and bad) (...) distrust, where the latter is understood as aimed (narrow-scoped) forbearance from trusting. The overarching framework—which assimilates the evaluative norms of trusting (and distrusting) to performance-theoretic norms—supplies us with an entirely new lens to view traditional philosophical problems about what is involved in trusting and distrusting well and badly, and thus, places our capacity to make progress on problems in this area on a new footing. (shrink)

Conversational Pressure: Normativity in Speech Exchanges. By Sanford C. Goldberg.

This article develops and defends a full account of the nature and normativity of resistance to evidence, according to which resistance to evidence is an instance of input-level epistemic malfunctioning. At the core of this epistemic normative picture lies the notion of knowledge indicators, as evidential probability increasing facts that one is in a position to know; resistance to evidence is construed as a failure to uptake knowledge indicators.

This paper develops a novel account of the nature of blame: on this account, blame is a species of performance with a constitutive aim. The argument for the claim that blame is an action is speech-act theoretic: it relies on the nature of performatives and the parallelism between mental and spoken blame. I argue that the view scores well on prior plausibility and theoretical fruitfulness, in that: it rests on claims that are widely accepted across sub-disciplines, it explains the normativity (...) of blaming and it accounts for associated psychological phenomena. (shrink)

Information we use to structure our lives is increasingly stored digitally, rather than in biomemory. (Just think: if your online calendar went down, would you know where you are supposed be and at what time next week?) Likewise, with breakthroughs such as those from Google DeepMind and OpenAI, discoveries at the frontiers of knowledge are increasingly due to machine learning (often, applied to massive datasets, extracted from a fast-growing datasphere) rather than to brainbound cognition. It’s hard to deny that knowledge (...) retention and production is becoming increasingly – in various ways – digitised. -/- Digital Knowledge: A Philosophical Investigation is the first book to squarely and rigorously investigate digital knowledge: what it is, how to make sense of it in connection with received theories of knowledge, and where it is going. Key questions J Adam Carter examines along the way are the following: -/- How is mere digital information converted into reliable digital knowledge? To what extent can digital knowledge be vindicated against sceptical challenges, and in what ways might digital knowledge stand distinctively subject to defeat? What is the epistemically optimal way for us to decide which tasks to outsource entirely to intelligent machines, and to what extent is further outsourcing appropriate (or not) to verify the results of that same outsourced cognition? Are there any ways in which the expansion of the datasphere threatens to make knowledge more, rather than easy, to come by? If so, are there any promising ways to safeguard, epistemically, against such threats? Using fascinating examples throughout, such as the recent chess match between Stockfish and Google’s AlphaZero, smartphones and personalisation, Digital Knowledge: A Philosophical Investigation is an ideal for researchers investigating this fascinating area of research at the intersection of traditional mainstream epistemology, the philosophy of cognitive science, the philosophy of technology, and computer science. (shrink)

Autonomous Knowledge: Radical Enhancement, Autonomy, and the Future of Knowing motivates and develops a new research programme in epistemology that is centred around the concept of epistemic autonomy.

This article presents preliminary considerations and results from a research project designed to investigate the relation between gestures, graphic traces and perceptions. More specifically, the project aims to test the hypothesis that graphic traces, including handwriting, can set up graphetic empathy between writers and readers of traces across long temporal and spatial distances. Insofar as a graphic trace is lawfully related to the gesture by which it came into being, the trace itself will hold information about the gesture, which may (...) resonate with the sensorimotor system of a perceiver, as if they themselves performed the gesture. If this is in fact so, it will have important and hitherto unanticipated implications for our understanding of the embodiment of reading. As part of the article we will present and discuss the results of a neurophenomenological trial study through which we attempt to operationalize the gesture-trace and trace–perception relations respectively. (shrink)

A critical presentation of Lev Shestov's life and work from his formative years and early writings on Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nietzsche to his European reception and interactions with French and German philosophers and writers, following his exile in 1921. The chapter provides an interpretation of his conception of temporal existence, death, faith and non-systematic philosophical reflection from the point of view of his legacy and influence on prominent postmodern writers and philosophers.

A critical and historical presentation of the Romanian avant-garde in Paris, with specific reference to Benjamin Fondane's literary work and existential philosophy, from the point of view of Gilles Deleuze's conception of nomadism and outside thought. This article is a contribution to a Festschrift published in honour of Mircea Martin, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Bucharest, and a prominent figure of post-World War II East European literary criticism, theory, and comparative studies.

Pain is ubiquitous. It is also surprisingly complex. In this chapter, we first provide a truncated overview of the neuroscience of pain. This overview reveals four surprising empirical discoveries about the nature of pain with relevance for ethics. In particular, we discuss the ways in which these discoveries both inform putative normative ethical principles concerning pain and illuminate metaethical debates concerning a realist, naturalist moral metaphysics, moral epistemology, and moral motivation. Taken as a whole, the chapter supports the surprising conclusion (...) that the sciences have revealed that pain is less significant than one might have thought, while other neurological kinds may be more significance than has hitherto been recognised. (shrink)

Although therapists often work with clients with whom they share a great many beliefs, there remain many cases where the therapist and client have very little in common. Spirituality is, especially in the latter kind of case, one specific area in which clashes and similarities may be important. However, recent evidence suggests spirituality is to a surprising extent ignored in therapy when exploring it would be therapeutically relevant and, even more, that counsellors often struggle when training to more effectively engage (...) with client spirituality. These results are problematic, especially when taken together. In this paper, I attempt to address this vexing issue in a way that brings together work on counselling and spirituality with recent discussions of intellectual virtue in contemporary epistemology. In particular, I show why it is important for the therapist to cultivate and maintain the virtue of intellectual humility with respect to spirituality in a counselling context. To this end, I explore, with reference to a particularly promising model of intellectual humility, how the therapist can be attentive to—and own—their limitations in a productive way when dealing with a wide range of spiritual backgrounds. (shrink)

Recent literature suggests that intellectual humility is valuable to its possessor not only morally, but also epistemically-viz., from a point of view where epistemic aims such as true belief, knowledge and understanding are what matters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, epistemologists working on intellectual humility have focused almost exclusively on its ramifications for how we go about forming, maintaining and evaluating our own beliefs, and by extension, ourselves as inquirers. Less explored by contrast is how intellectual humility might have implications for how we (...) should conduct our practice of asserting. The present entry aims to rectify this oversight by connecting these two topics in a way that sharpens how it is that intellectual humility places several distinctive kinds of demands on assertion, and more generally, on how we communicate what we believe and know. (shrink)

Tyler Burge notably offers a truth‐first account of perceptual entitlement in terms of a priori necessary representational functions and norms: on his account, epistemic normativity turns on natural norms, which turn on representational functions. This paper has two aims: first, it criticises Tyler Burge's truth‐first a priori derivation on functionalist and value‐theoretic grounds. Second, it develops a novel, knowledge‐first a priori derivation of perceptual entitlement. According to the view developed here, it is a priori that we are entitled to believe (...) the deliverances of our perceptual belief formation system, in virtue of the latter's constitutive function of generating knowledge. (shrink)