Within half a century, the status of Duchamp’s readymades changed from iconoclastic object to iconic sculpture. This contribution focusses on two of Duchamp’s readymades, one from 1915 and thus dated at the very beginning of Duchamp’s occupation with this subject matter, while the other is dated 1967, the very last object to enter this particular category within Duchamp’s oeuvre. André Breton remarked that “future generations can do no less than make a systematic effort to go back the stream of Duchamp’s (...) thought and carefully describe its meanderings in search of the hidden treasure which was his mind.” It is with these suggestions in mind that, after the examination of an heretofore unknown readymade from the 1910’s and his collage Pollyperruque from the year before he passed away, final observations will examine the 100th anniversary of Duchamp’s Fountain to reassess the readymade’s potential as an analog object and social media phenomenon in the digital realm. (shrink)

The distinguished philosopher Louis Loeb examines the epistemological framework of Scottish philosopher David Hume, as employed in his celebrated work A Treatise of Human Nature. Loeb's project is to advance an integrated interpretation of Hume's accounts of belief and justification. His thesis is that Hume, in his Treatise, has a "stability-based" theory of justification which posits that his belief is justified if it is the result of a belief producing mechanism that engenders stable beliefs. But Loeb argues (...) that the striking corollary to this theory is that no belief generating mechanism is fully stable - or fully justified - for a fully reflective person. This carefully argued and original interpretation of Hume makes sense of seemingly contradictory ideas and will provoke serious discussion among Hume scholars. (shrink)

This volume will thus appeal to advanced students and scholars not just in the history of early modern philosophy but in epistemology and other core areas of ...

Gilbert Harman and Judith Thomson have argued that moral facts cannot explain our moral beliefs, claiming that such facts could not play a causal role in the formation of those beliefs. This paper shows these arguments to be misguided, for they would require that we abandon any number of intuitively plausible explanations in non‐moral contexts as well. But abandoning the causal strand in the argument over moral explanations does not spell immediate victory for the moral realist, since it must still (...) be shown that moral facts do figure in our best global explanatory theory. (shrink)

Experimental moral philosophy emerged as a methodology in the last decade of the twentieth century, as a branch of the larger experimental philosophy (X-Phi) approach. Experimental moral philosophy is the empirical study of moral intuitions, judgments, and behaviors. Like other forms of experimental philosophy, it involves gathering data using experimental methods and using these data to substantiate, undermine, or revise philosophical theories. In this case, the theories in question concern the nature of moral reasoning and judgment; the extent and sources (...) of moral obligations; the nature of a good person and a good life; even the scope and nature of moral theory itself. This entry begins with a brief look at the historical uses of empirical data in moral theory and goes on to ask what, if anything, is distinctive about experimental moral philosophy—how should we distinguish it from related work in empirical moral psychology? After discussing some strategies for answering this question, the entry examines two of the main projects within experimental moral philosophy, and then discusses some of the most prominent areas of research within the field. As we will see, in some cases experimental moral philosophy has opened up new avenues of investigation, while in other cases it has influenced longstanding debates within moral theory. (shrink)

Moral realism, the view that there are moral facts that are independent of our beliefs about them, has many defenders. But much less has been said about realism concerning other sorts of value. One of these, gastronomic realism is likely to seem implausible on its face. This paper argues, however, that much of the reasoning used to defend moral realism is about as well suited for defending gastronomic realism. Although these considerations do not directly undermine moral realism, they do suggest (...) that the two views should stand or fall together. And they rob moral realists of one ad hominem argument that often emerges in their debate with irrealists, that the irrealists cannot justify their widespread practice of taking their own moral values seriously. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In his Treatise, Hume confronted the tensions between his project of uncovering the causal operations of the human mind and the extreme skeptical tendencies of his system. Louis Loeb argues that Hume overreaches, and he advances a controversial interpretation of Hume's epistemological framework that shows how Hume could have avoided the more destructive positions in his work.

In this paper we will study four forcing notions, two of them giving a minimal degree of constructibility. These constructions give answers to questions in [Ih].

Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentleman. I am very honored by the invitation to give a keynote address at this very informative, national meeting, before such a distinguished audience.If you made a list of the hundreds of different activities that go on during the day in a major medical center and tried to rank order them in terms of degree of difficulty, or judgment required, or risk of error, or damage that can result from an error of omission or (...) an error of commission, at the top of the list one might consider the teaching of a surgical resident at the operating table by a senior experienced surgeon, hours on end, often emotionally draining. (shrink)

Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentleman. I am very honored by the invitation to give a keynote address at this very informative, national meeting, before such a distinguished audience.If you made a list of the hundreds of different activities that go on during the day in a major medical center and tried to rank order them in terms of degree of difficulty, or judgment required, or risk of error, or damage that can result from an error of omission or (...) an error of commission, at the top of the list one might consider the teaching of a surgical resident at the operating table by a senior experienced surgeon, hours on end, often emotionally draining. (shrink)

In this paper we will study four forcing notions, two of them giving a minimal degree of constructibility. These constructions give answers to questions in [Ih].

Since the mid-1970s, scholars have recognized that the skeptical interpretation of Hume’s central argument about induction is problematic. The science of human nature presupposes that inductive inference is justified and there are endorsements of induction throughout Treatise Book I. The recent suggestion that I.iii.6 is confined to the psychology of inductive inference cannot account for the epistemic flavor of its claims that neither a genuine demonstration nor a non-question-begging inductive argument can establish the uniformity principle. For Hume, that inductive inference (...) is justified is part of the data to be explained. Bad argument is therefore excluded as the cause of inductive inference; and there is no good argument to cause it. Does this reinstate the problem of induction, undermining Hume’s own assumption that induction is justified? It does so only if justification must derive from “reason”, from the availability of a cogent argument. Hume rejects this internalist thesis; induction’s favorable epistemic status derives from features of custom, the mechanism that generates inductive beliefs. Hume is attracted to this externalist posture because it provides a direct explanation of the epistemic achievements of children and non-human animals—creatures that must rely on custom unsupplemented by argument. (shrink)

Since the mid-1970s, scholars have recognized that the skeptical interpretation of Hume's central argument about induction is problematic. The science of human nature presupposes that inductive inference is justified and there are endorsements of induction throughout "Treatise" Book I. The recent suggestion that I.iii.6 is confined to the psychology of inductive inference cannot account for the epistemic flavor of its claims that neither a genuine demonstration nor a non-question-begging inductive argument can establish the uniformity principle. For Hume, that inductive inference (...) is justified is part of the data to be explained. Bad argument is therefore excluded as the cause of inductive inference; and there is no good argument to cause it. Does this reinstate the problem of induction, undermining Hume's own assumption that induction is justified? It does so only if justification must derive from "reason", from the availability of a cogent argument. Hume rejects this internalist thesis; induction's favorable epistemic status derives from features of custom, the mechanism that generates inductive beliefs. Hume is attracted to this externalist posture because it provides a direct explanation of the epistemic achievements of children and non-human animals — creatures that must rely on custom unsupplemented by argument. (shrink)

kerekh 1. Haḳdamot. Peraḳim 1-2 -- kerekh 3. Pereḳ 3 -- kerekh 4. Pereḳ 4 -- kerekh 5. Pereḳ 5 -- kerekh 6. Pereḳ 6. Mafteaḥ meḳorot -- kerekh 7. Mafteaḥ ʻarakhim.

We build models where all $\underset{\sim}{\triangle}^1_3$-sets of reals are measurable and (or) have the property of Baire and (or) are Ramsey. We will show that there is no implication between any of these properties for $\underset{\sim}{\triangle}^1_3$-sets of reals.

Insofar as the vulgar belief in body arises from the ”constancy” of perceptions, it is due to the propensity to attribute identity to related objects; insofar as it arises from ”coherence,” it is produced by custom and the galley, mechanisms allied with causal inference. Since constancy is a special case of coherence, Hume could have avoided this bipartite account, subsuming constancy under custom‐and‐galley. Convinced, however, by double vision and perceptual relativity that the vulgar belief is false, Hume sought to consign (...) it to the ”imagination” in a pejorative sense. Hume was also in the grip of a thesis about causation, that only changes have causes, so that he could not contemplate a role for causal inference in cases of constancy or unchanging objects. ”Of scepticism with regard to the senses” can be amended to provide a more positive account of the belief in body, as well as a more coherent account of the propensity to ascribe identity. (shrink)

Hume assigns a pivotal role to stability in understanding normativity in a variety of theoretical contexts, including the passions, justice, and moral judgment; in epistemology, he seeks to sustain his pretheoretical epistemic intuitions in terms of a stability‐based theory of justification. A distinctive feature of Hume's naturalism is that he tends to ground epistemic obligation in the desire to relieve the discomfort or felt uneasiness in unsettled states. Since he rejects the Pyrrhonian claim that ataraxia or quietude results from an (...) equipollence of opposing arguments where belief is suspended, if tranquillity is to be secured, it will have to be within a system of beliefs. In this regard, a series of hopeful results ultimately give way to a destructive conclusion, a negative assessment of the prospects for stability in belief, and hence for justified belief, at least for the reflective person. This overall interpretive perspective is compared to that of Kemp Smith, MacNabb and Passmore, Garrett, and the reflexive approval interpretation of Baier and Korsgaard. (shrink)

Locke confines ”sensitive knowledge” to objects we presently perceive or that we remember perceiving. Hume's causal theory of assurance, the claim that the relation of causation extends assurance beyond memory and present perception, is a constructive attempt to remedy this severe limitation in the scope of Locke's third degree of knowledge. Throughout Part iii and well into Part iv of Book I, Hume endorses causal inference and also distinctions among degrees of probabilistic evidence. As even Beattie recognized, Hume is not (...) advancing the skeptical problem of induction in Treatise I.iii.6; rather, Hume's objective is to show that inferences about unobserved causes and effects of objects that have been perceived are due to a faculty of association, not to ”reason” construed as a nonassociative faculty. Distinctions between justified inferences and unjustified ones are in turn drawn within the imagination or faculty of association. (shrink)

Hume's claim in ”Of the modern philosophy” that causal inference is implicated in an ineliminable, ”manifest contradiction” draws on a highly artificial version of an argument from perceptual relativity. Hume's statement of a ”very dangerous dilemma” draws on a mistaken argument in ”Of scepticism with regard to reason” for the conclusion that all probability, including evidence based on causal inference, reduces to zero. Contrary to Hume's own assessment, his stability‐based theory of justification has little to fear from these episodes. At (...) the same time, Hume's theory of justification requires an account of the conditions under which contradictory beliefs either continue to oscillate or lead to a conflicted resolution, rather than canceling out. Hume's treatments of the probability of causes, the direct passions, education, and contradictions involving demonstration and other belief‐forming mechanisms show that this is a matter Hume does not satisfactorily address. (shrink)

In Treatise I.iii.5–10, Hume's claim that association by the relation of cause and effect produces belief is often intertwined – though without his remarking on this fact – with the claim that belief based on causal inference is justified. To explain this, I offer the hypothesis that, in Hume's view, stability plays a double role: whether belief is justified depends upon considerations of stability, and fixity, a species of stability is also essential to belief itself. Hume identifies belief with steadiness, (...) an infixed disposition, rather than vivacity or a lively idea. To establish that a state is a belief is thus to establish that it is stable, other things being equal. In one version of this stability‐based interpretation, the justification of a belief is a matter of its stability in the belief system of a fully reflective person; in a second version, justification is to be assessed in terms of the degree to which the person who holds the belief is reflective. (shrink)

In Treatise I.4, Hume appeals to a propensity to ascribe identity to related objects to explain the belief in the continued existence of perceptions, in material substances or substrata, in souls, and in the double existence of perceptions and objects. The propensity contributes to contradictions, and hence uneasiness that we seek to relieve, resulting in conflicted and unstable doxastic states. For this reason, beliefs produced by the propensity are unjustified, due merely to the ”imagination.” Further, although the metaphysical beliefs do (...) not satisfy the constraints of Locke's meaning empiricism, they are not entirely devoid of content; they involve ”fictions” or conceptual confusions that obscure underlying conflicts. Unfortunately, the propensity is characterized by irresistibility and unavoidability in producing the belief in body, whereas it is weak and avoidable in producing the belief in material substrata. (shrink)

Attributing the stability‐based theory to Hume explains his equation of degree of belief with degree of evidence in his treatment of philosophical probability. In his discussion of the fourth kind of unphilosophical probability, Hume uncovers contradictions that arise from accidental or rash generalizations; his response, that stability can be restored by appeal to higher‐order generalizations or general rules, facilitates his analysis of causation. Hume's first three kinds of unphilosophical probability involve variation in degrees of confidence that parallels variation in moral (...) judgments due to the operation of sympathy. Such variation and fluctuation in sentiment and degree of confidence feel like contradictions in that they give rise to uneasiness or discomfort that we seek to relieve. Hume thus identifies psychological pressures that motivate corrections to variable judgments about probability and virtue and vice, resulting in more stable judgments that have normative standing. (shrink)