Results for 'Pessimism'

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Bibliography: Pessimism in Normative Ethics
  1.  38
    Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860–1900.Frederick C. Beiser - 2016 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    Weltschmerz is a study of the pessimism that dominated German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Pessimism was essentially the theory that life is not worth living, and was introduced into German philosophy by Schopenhauer. Frederick C. Beiser examines the intense and long controversy that arose from Schopenhauer's pessimism, which changed the agenda of philosophy in Germany away from the logic of the sciences and toward an examination of the value of life. He examines (...)
  2.  14
    Hope, Pessimism, and the Shape of a Just Climate Future.Dominic Lenzi - 2023 - Ethics and International Affairs 37 (3):344-361.
    The urgency of climate change has never been greater, nor the moral case for responding to it more compelling. This review essay critically compares Darrel Moellendorf's Mobilizing Hope and Catriona McKinnon's Climate Change and Political Theory. Moellendorf's book defends the moral importance of poverty alleviation through sustainable economic growth and argues for a mass climate movement based on the promise of a more prosperous future. By contrast, McKinnon provides a political vocabulary to articulate the many faces of climate injustice, and (...)
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  3. Hopeful Pessimism: The Kantian Mind at the End of All Things.Andrew Chignell - 2023 - In Katerina Mihaylova & Anna Ezekiel (eds.), Hope and the Kantian Legacy: New Contributions to the History of Optimism. London, Vereinigtes Königreich: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 35-52.
  4. Pessimistic Inductions: Four Varieties.K. Brad Wray - 2015 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (1):61-73.
    The pessimistic induction plays an important role in the contemporary realism/anti-realism debate in philosophy of science. But there is some disagreement about the structure and aim of the argument. And a number of scholars have noted that there is more than one type of PI in the philosophical literature. I review four different versions of the PI. I aim to show that PIs have been appealed to by philosophers of science for a variety of reasons. Even some realists have appealed (...)
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  5. The Pessimistic Induction: A Bad Argument Gone Too Far.Moti Mizrahi - 2013 - Synthese 190 (15):3209-3226.
    In this paper, I consider the pessimistic induction construed as a deductive argument (specifically, reductio ad absurdum) and as an inductive argument (specifically, inductive generalization). I argue that both formulations of the pessimistic induction are fallacious. I also consider another possible interpretation of the pessimistic induction, namely, as pointing to counterexamples to the scientific realist’s thesis that success is a reliable mark of (approximate) truth. I argue that this interpretation of the pessimistic induction fails, too. If this is correct, then (...)
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  6. Pessimism and procreation.Daniel Pallies - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    The pessimistic hypothesis is the hypothesis that life is bad for us, in the sense that we are worse off for having come into existence. Suppose this hypothesis turns out to be correct — existence turns out to be more of a burden than a gift. A natural next thought is that we should stop having children. But I contend that this is a mistake; procreation would often be permissible even if the pessimistic hypothesis turned out to be correct. Roughly, (...)
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  7.  72
    Testimonial Pessimism.Rachel Elizabeth Fraser - 2018 - In Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne & Dani Rabinowitz (eds.), Knowledge, Belief, and God: New Insights in Religious Epistemology. Oxford University Press. pp. 203-227.
  8. The pessimistic induction and the exponential growth of science reassessed.K. Brad Wray - 2013 - Synthese 190 (18):4321-4330.
    My aim is to evaluate a new realist strategy for addressing the pessimistic induction, Ludwig Fahrbach’s (Synthese 180:139–155, 2011) appeal to the exponential growth of science. Fahrbach aims to show that, given the exponential growth of science, the history of science supports realism. I argue that Fahrbach is mistaken. I aim to show that earlier generations of scientists could construct a similar argument, but one that aims to show that the theories that they accepted are likely true. The problem with (...)
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  9. Motivational pessimism and motivated cognition.Stephen Gadsby - 2024 - Synthese 203 (4):1-18.
    I introduce and discuss an underappreciated form of motivated cognition: motivational pessimism, which involves the biasing of beliefs for the sake of self-motivation. I illustrate how motivational pessimism avoids explanatory issues that plague other (putative) forms of motivated cognition and discuss distinctions within the category, related to awareness, aetiology, and proximal goals.
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  10.  93
    Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit.Joshua Foa Dienstag - 2009 - Princeton University Press.
    Pessimism claims an impressive following--from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to Freud, Camus, and Foucault. Yet "pessimist" remains a term of abuse--an accusation of a bad attitude--or the diagnosis of an unhappy psychological state. Pessimism is thought of as an exclusively negative stance that inevitably leads to resignation or despair. Even when pessimism looks like utter truth, we are told that it makes the worst of a bad situation. Bad for the individual, worse for the species--who would actually (...)
  11. A Pessimistic Induction against Scientific Antirealism.Seungbae Park - 2014 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 21 (1):3-21.
    There are nine antirealist explanations of the success of science in the literature. I raise difficulties against all of them except the latest one, and then construct a pessimistic induction that the latest one will turn out to be problematic because its eight forerunners turned out to be problematic. This pessimistic induction is on a par with the traditional pessimistic induction that successful present scientific theories will be revealed to be false because successful past scientific theories were revealed to be (...)
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  12. Optimism about the pessimistic induction.Sherrilyn Roush - 2010 - In P. D. Magnus & Jacob Busch (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Science. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 29-58.
    How confident does the history of science allow us to be about our current well-tested scientific theories, and why? The scientific realist thinks we are well within our rights to believe our best-tested theories, or some aspects of them, are approximately true.2 Ambitious arguments have been made to this effect, such as that over historical time our scientific theories are converging to the truth, that the retention of concepts and claims is evidence for this, and that there can be no (...)
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  13. The Pessimistic Induction, the Flight to Reference and the Metaphysical Zoo.Michael A. Bishop - 2003 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 17 (2):161 – 178.
    Scientific realism says of our best scientific theories that (1) most of their important posits exist and (2) most of their central claims are approximately true. Antirealists sometimes offer the pessimistic induction in reply: since (1) and (2) are false about past successful theories, they are probably false about our own best theories too. The contemporary debate about this argument has turned (and become stuck) on the question, Do the central terms of successful scientific theories refer? For example, Larry Laudan (...)
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  14. The Pessimistic Induction and the Golden Rule.Seungbae Park - 2018 - Problemos 93:70-80.
    Nickles (2017) advocates scientific antirealism by appealing to the pessimistic induction over scientific theories, the illusion hypothesis (Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson, 2013), and Darwin’s evolutionary theory. He rejects Putnam’s (1975: 73) no-miracles argument on the grounds that it uses inference to the best explanation. I object that both the illusion hypothesis and evolutionary theory clash with the pessimistic induction and with his negative attitude towards inference to the best explanation. I also argue that Nickles’s positive philosophical theories are subject to (...)
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  15. Pessimistic aesthetics and the re-valuation of guilty pleasures: on the moral and metaphysical significance of escapism.Drew M. Dalton - 2024 - Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 16 (1):1-11.
    There is a previously unrecognized coupling which underlies the Western evaluation of aesthetic experiences. By and large, we are taught that for our aesthetic pleasures to have any “value” (i.e. to be good) they must do more than merely entertain, distract, or delight. Instead, they should confront us with some “truth” about the nature of our existence and/or guide us to some “reality” concerning the state of our world. This paper asks: 1) whence this prejudice concerning the value of our (...)
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  16. Being pessimistic about the objective present.Derek Lam - 2020 - Synthese (12):1-16.
    Some philosophers argue that non-presentist A-theories problematically imply that we cannot know that this moment is present. The problem is usually presented as arising from the combination of the A-theoretic ideology of a privileged presentness and a non-presentist ontology. The goal of this essay is to show that the epistemic problem can be rephrased as a pessimistic induction. By doing so, I will show that the epistemic problem, in fact, stems from the A-theoretic ideology alone. Hence, once it is properly (...)
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  17. Baseball, pessimistic inductions and the turnover fallacy.Marc Lange - 2002 - Analysis 62 (4):281–285.
    Among the niftiest arguments for scientific anti-realism is the ‘pessimistic induction’ (also sometimes called ‘the disastrous historical meta-induction’). Although various versions of this argument differ in their details (see, for example, Poincare 1952: 160, Putnam 1978: 25, and Laudan 1981), the argument generally begins by recalling the many scientific theories that posit unobservable entities and that at one time or another were widely accepted. The anti-realist then argues that when these old theories were accepted, the evidence for them was quite (...)
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  18. The Pessimistic Meta-induction: Obsolete Through Scientific Progress?Florian Müller - 2015 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (4):393-412.
    Recently, Fahrbach and Park have argued that the pessimistic meta-induction about scientific theories is unsound. They claim that this very argument does not properly take into account scientific progress, particularly during the twentieth century. They also propose amended arguments in favour of scientific realism, which are supposed to properly reflect the history of science. I try to show that what I call the argument from scientific progress cannot explain satisfactorily why the current theories should have reached a degree of success (...)
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  19.  9
    Pessimism in Kant's Ethics and Rational Religion.Dennis Vanden Auweele - 2018 - Lanham: Lexington Books.
    Dennis Vanden Auweele explores Kant’s moral and religious philosophy and shows that a pessimistic undercurrent pervades them. This provides a new vantage point not only to comprehensively assess Kantian philosophy, but also to provide much needed context and reading assistance to the general premises of Kant's philosophy and rationality.
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  20.  70
    The pessimistic origin of Nietzsche’s thought of eternal recurrence.Scott Jenkins - 2020 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (1):20-41.
    ABSTRACTIn this article I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as the ideal of life affirmation opposed to philosophical pessimism, the view that life is not worth living. I first articulate Nietzsche’s psychological account of pessimism as a vengeful focus on the past and an aversion to time understood as transience. I then consider the question of why a person with the opposite psychological orientation – a creative relation to the future and an endorsement (...)
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  21.  28
    The pessimistic origin of Nietzsche’s thought of eternal recurrence.Scott Jenkins - 2020 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (1):20-41.
    In this article I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as the ideal of life affirmation opposed to philosophical pessimism, the view that life is not worth living. I first articulate Nietzsche’s psychological account of pessimism as a vengeful focus on the past and an aversion to time understood as transience. I then consider the question of why a person with the opposite psychological orientation – a creative relation to the future and an endorsement (...)
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  22. What Pessimism about Moral Deference Means for Disagreement.James Fritz - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1):121-136.
    Many writers have recently argued that there is something distinctively problematic about sustaining moral beliefs on the basis of others’ moral views. Call this claim pessimism about moral deference. Pessimism about moral deference, if true, seems to provide an attractive way to argue for a bold conclusion about moral disagreement: moral disagreement generally does not require belief revision. Call this claim steadfastness about moral disagreement. Perhaps the most prominent recent discussion of the connection between moral deference and moral (...)
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  23. What Pessimism Is.Paul Prescott - 2012 - Journal of Philosophical Research 37:337-356.
    On the standard view, pessimism is a philosophically intractable topic. Against the standard view, I hold that pessimism is a stance, or compound of attitudes, commitments and intentions. This stance is marked by certain beliefs—first and foremost, that the bad prevails over the good—which are subject to an important qualifying condition: they are always about outcomes and states of affairs in which one is personally invested. This serves to distinguish pessimism from other views with which it is (...)
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  24. Still Pessimistic about First-Person Authority.Wolfgang Barz - 2023 - Journal of Philosophical Research 48:133-148.
    This paper aims to support my (2018) skeptical position on the possibility of a correct and philosophically significant specification of first-person authority. For this purpose, I critically examine the proposals presented by Doyle (2021) and Winokur (2022) in response to my position and argue that while these proposals contain some ingenious ideas, they ultimately fall short of providing correct and philosophically significant specifications. Ultimately, the search for an adequate specification of first-person authority remains unresolved.
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  25. Forgivingness, pessimism, and environmental citizenship.Kathryn J. Norlock - 2010 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (1-2):29-42.
    Our attitudes toward human culpability for environmental problems have moral and emotional import, influencing our basic capacities for believing cooperative action and environmental repair are even possible. In this paper, I suggest that having the virtue of forgivingness as a response to environmental harm is generally good for moral character, preserving us from morally risky varieties of pessimism and despair. I define forgivingness as a forward-looking disposition based on Robin Dillon’s conception of preservative forgiveness, a preparation to be deeply (...)
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  26. Must Realists Be Pessimists About Democracy? Responding to Epistemic and Oligarchic Challenges.Gordon Arlen & Enzo Rossi - 2021 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 8 (1):27-49.
    In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...)
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  27. Pessimism About Russellian Monism.Amy Kind - 2015 - In Torin Alter & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), Consciousness in the Physical World: Perspectives on Russellian Monism. pp. 401-421.
    From the perspective of many philosophers of mind in these early years of the 21st Century, the debate between dualism and physicalism has seemed to have stalled, if not to have come to a complete standstill. There seems to be no way to settle the basic clash of intuitions that underlies it. Recently however, a growing number of proponents of Russellian monism have suggested that their view promises to show us a new way forward. Insofar as Russellian monism might allow (...)
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  28.  96
    Pessimism.George W. Harris - 2002 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5 (3):271-286.
    The problem of pessimism is the secular analogue to the evidential problem of evil facing traditional theism. The traditional theist must argue two things: that the evidence shows that this is on balance a good world and that it is the best possible world. Though the secular optimist who advocates any form of secular moral theory need not argue that the current and future world will likely be the best possible world, she nonetheless must argue that were there a (...)
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  29. Resisting Pessimism Traps: The Limits of Believing in Oneself.Jennifer M. Morton - 2021 - Wiley: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (3):728-746.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 728-746, May 2022.
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  30.  14
    Pessimism, Schopenhauer, and Schopenhauerianism in nineteenth century Romania. The case of the poet Mihai Eminescu.Ştefan Bolea & Ştefan-Sebastian Maftei - forthcoming - Studies in East European Thought:1-15.
    This article discusses the influence that Schopenhauer’s thought had on Mihai Eminescu’s work with reference to the idea of “pessimism.” It also considers Schopenhauer’s influence on Romanian philosophy and literature at the end of the nineteenth century. We shall examine Eminescu’s alleged “Schopenhauerian pessimism,” considering firstly “pessimism” as a part of Eminescu’s “myth.” Secondly, we shall cover the critical reception of Eminescu’s “Schopenhauerian pessimism,” discussing the existing literary and philosophical scholarship. Finding that there are issues for (...)
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  31. Afro-Pessimism and the (Un)Logic of Anti-Blackness.Annie Olaloku-Teriba - 2018 - Historical Materialism 26 (2):96-122.
    In the coming months and years, the left faces a historic juncture. On the one hand, racist violence is on the rise across the West, and the political class seems intent on mobilising both overt and subtle racism. On the other hand, strategies of anti-racist organising, which have developed on both sides of the Atlantic, have reached a theoretical impasse. I argue that now, more than ever, a serious project of historical and intellectual retrieval is necessary. This article interrogates the (...)
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  32. Pessimism, Political Critique, and the Contingently Bad Life.Patrick O'Donnell - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy of Life 12 (1):77-100.
    It is widely believed that philosophical pessimism is committed to fatalism about the sufferings that characterize the human condition, and that it encourages resignation and withdrawal from the political realm in response. This paper offers an explanation for and argument against this perception by distinguishing two functions that pessimism can serve. Pessimism’s skeptical mode suggests that fundamental cross-cultural constraints on the human condition bar us from the good life (however defined). These constraints are often represented as immune (...)
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  33.  16
    Pessimistic value iteration for multi-task data sharing in Offline Reinforcement Learning.Chenjia Bai, Lingxiao Wang, Jianye Hao, Zhuoran Yang, Bin Zhao, Zhen Wang & Xuelong Li - 2024 - Artificial Intelligence 326 (C):104048.
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  34. Optimism and Pessimism in the Predictive Brain.Zekun Sun & Chaz Firestone - 2020 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences (9):683-685.
  35. Miracles, pessimism and scientific realism.John Worrall - unknown
    Worrall argued that structural realism provides a ‘synthesis’ of the main pro-realist argument – the ‘No Miracles Argument’, and the main anti-realist argument – the ‘Pessimistic Induction’. More recently, however, it has been claimed that each of these arguments is an instance of the same probabilistic fallacy – sometimes called the ‘base-rate fallacy’. If correct, this clearly seems to undermine structural realism and Magnus and Callender have indeed claimed that both arguments are fallacious and ‘without [them] we lose the rationale (...)
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  36. Why Should We Be Pessimistic about Antirealists and Pessimists?Seungbae Park - 2017 - Foundations of Science 22 (3):613-625.
    The pessimistic induction over scientific theories holds that present theories will be overthrown as were past theories. The pessimistic induction over scientists holds that present scientists cannot conceive of future theories just as past scientists could not conceive of present theories. The pessimistic induction over realists :4321–4330, 2013) holds that present realists are wrong about present theories just as past realists were wrong about past theories. The pessimistic induction over antirealist theories :3–21, 2014) holds that the latest antirealist explanation of (...)
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  37.  54
    Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering.Mara van der Lugt - 2021 - Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
    An intellectual history of the philosophers who grappled with the problem of evil, and the case for why pessimism still holds moral value for us today In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, philosophers engaged in heated debates on the question of how God could have allowed evil and suffering in a creation that is supposedly good. Dark Matters traces how the competing philosophical traditions of optimism and pessimism arose from early modern debates about the problem of evil, and (...)
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  38.  41
    Baseball, pessimistic inductions and the turnover fallacy.M. Lange - 2002 - Analysis 62 (4):281-285.
  39. Pessimists, pollyannas, and the new compatibilism.Paul Russell - 2001 - In Robert Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press.
    THE aim of this chapter is to offer a critical examination of some recent contributions to compatibilist literature on freedom and responsibility that aim to provide broadly reasons-responsive accounts of moral agency. Although the views of several authors will be considered, discussion will be organized primarily around Daniel Dennett's "Elbow Room" (1984), an important work in the evolution of the "new compatibilism.".
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  40.  19
    Schopenhauer, Pessimism and Suicide.Dennis Vanden Auweele - 2014 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 76 (2):307-330.
    Schopenhauer’s argument against suicide is typically received negatively in the scholarly literature, insofar that it appears to be one of the numerous inconsistencies that haunt his philosophical system. Thus, after elaborating upon the unique characteristics of Schopenhauer’s argument against suicide, I will discuss the well-known objection to it. By offering a fresh outlook on Schopenhauer’s ethics, I will suggest a new way of appreciating Schopenhauer’s argument so as to rehabilitate his understanding of suicide within the framework of his pessimistic philosophy. (...)
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  41.  62
    Pessimism Counts in Favor of Biomedical Enhancement: A Lesson from the Anti-Natalist Philosophy of P. W. Zapffe.Ole Martin Moen - 2021 - Neuroethics 14 (2):315-325.
    According to the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, human life is filled with so much suffering that procreation is morally impermissible. In the first part of this paper I present Zapffe’s pessimism-based argument for anti-natalism, and contrast it with the arguments for anti-natalism proposed by Arthur Schopenhauer and David Benatar. In the second part I explore what Zapffe’s pessimism can teach us about biomedical enhancement. I make the case that pessimism counts in favor of pursuing biomedical enhancements. (...)
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  42.  18
    Pessimistic Fallibilism and Cognitive Vulnerability.Ángeles J. Perona - 2020 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 12 (1).
    In this text, the relationship between fallibilism and cognitive vulnerability is examined using Richard Rorty’s thinking as an example. First, some of Rorty’s central ideas are collected and commented on, especially the substitution of objectivity for solidarity, since it affects relevant issues of epistemology and of reflection on rationality. Next, the notions of fallibilism and cognitive vulnerability are examined, which will be connected to an existential dimension of vulnerability. Examples of all those things are also given from Rorty’s thinking and (...)
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  43. A Confutation of the Pessimistic Induction.Seungbae Park - 2010 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 42 (1):75-84.
    The pessimistic induction holds that successful past scientific theories are completely false, so successful current ones are completely false too. I object that past science did not perform as poorly as the pessimistic induction depicts. A close study of the history of science entitles us to construct an optimistic induction that would neutralize the pessimistic induction. Also, even if past theories were completely false, it does not even inductively follow that the current theories will also turn out to be completely (...)
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  44. Cosmic Pessimism.Eugene Thacker - 2012 - Continent 2 (2):66-75.
    continent. 2.2 (2012): 66–75 ~*~ We’re Doomed. Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a poetry written in the graveyard of philosophy. Pessimism is a lyrical failure of philosophical thinking, each attempt at clear and coherent thought, sullen and submerged in the hidden joy of its own futility. The closest pessimism comes to philosophical argument is the droll and laconic “We’ll never make it,” or simply: “We’re doomed.” Every effort doomed (...)
     
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  45. Pessimistic Induction.Sherrilyn Roush - 2012 - In Byron Kaldis (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences.
  46. Global and Local Pessimistic Meta-inductions.Samuel Ruhmkorff - 2013 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 27 (4):409-428.
    The global pessimistic meta-induction argues from the falsity of scientific theories accepted in the past to the likely falsity of currently accepted scientific theories. I contend that this argument commits a statistical error previously unmentioned in the literature and is self-undermining. I then compare the global pessimistic meta-induction to a local pessimistic meta-induction based on recent negative assessments of the reliability of medical research. If there is any future in drawing pessimistic conclusions from the history of science, it lies in (...)
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  47.  15
    Hobbesian pessimism or Schopenhauerian mechanism: the construction of the individual in Thomas Hobbes and Arthur Schopenhauer.Patricia Costa da Silva Baehr - 2024 - Griot 24 (1):62-70.
    It is rare that we have Arthur Schopenhauer and Thomas Hobbes in the same publication, and when this occurs, it is usually aimed at exploring their dissenting political views. However, this study is based on the belief that both philosophers have significant similarities in their theories about the creation of the individual as a human being. Schopenhauer and Hobbes have, in their constructions, the pessimistic view of human nature and, furthermore, there are prominent similarities in the construction of the human (...)
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  48.  46
    Pessimism about the Future.Roger Crisp - 2022 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 46:373-385.
    Many, probably most, people are optimists about the future, believing that the extinction of sentient life on earth would be, overall, bad. This paper suggests that pessimism about the future is no less reasonable than optimism. The argument rests on the possibility of ‘discontinuities’ in value, in particular the possibility that there may be some things so bad—such as agonizing torture—such that no amount of good can compensate for them. The ‘spectrum’ problem often raised in connection with alleged discontinuities (...)
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  49.  47
    Pessimism About Motivating Modal Personism.Adam James Roberts - 2018 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (3):630-633.
    In ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’, Shelly Kagan sketches an account on which both actually being a person and possibly being a person are relevant to one's moral status, labelling this view ‘modal personism’ and supporting its conclusions with appeals to intuitions about a range of marginal cases. I tender a pessimistic response to Kagan's concern about motivating modal personism: that is, of being able to ‘go beyond the mere appeal to brute intuition, eventually offering an account of why modal personhood (...)
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  50. Schopenhauer, pessimism and philosophy.R. Avilacrespo - 1989 - Pensamiento 45 (177):57-75.
     
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