The _Critique of Religion and Religion’s Critique: On Dialectical Religiology_, is a book compiled in honour of Rudolf J. Siebert, Critical Theorist of Society and Religion. It is meant to both illuminate and interrogate his critical approach to the study of religion: Dialectical Religiology.

In our essay we trace the evolution of the critical theory of religion, or comparative dialectical religiology, out of the critical theory of society of the Institute for Social Research or the Frankfurt School. For us, the history of religions reflects the history of humanity’s intellectual and spiritual evolution. As we developed our critical theory of religion, we have tried to supersede concretely the great accomplishments of three generations of critical theorists, particularly in the field of religion. One main theme (...) of our critical theory of religion is the dialectic of two modes of existence: having and being; egoism and altruism. As we determinately negated the critical theory of society into our comparative dialectical religiology, we also penetrated deeper into its roots in the works of Kant and Hegel, Marx and Freud, Judaism and Christianity, particularly into the mystical theology of the great dialectician Meister Eckhart and of his many modern followers. We conclude our essay with the vision of the City of Being. (shrink)

In Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory: A View from the Wretched, Dustin J. Byrd and Seyed Javad Miri bring together a collection of essays by a variety of scholars who explore the lasting influence of Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist, revolutionary, and social theorist. Fanon's work not only gave voice to the "wretched" in the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), but also shaped the radical resistance to colonialism, empire, and racism throughout much of the world. His seminal works, such (...) as Black Skin, White Masks, and The Wretched of the Earth, were read by The Black Panther Party in the United States, anti-imperialists in Africa and Asia, and anti-monarchist revolutionaries in the Middle East. Today, many revolutionaries and scholars have returned to Fanon's work, as it continues to shed light on the nature of colonial domination, racism, and class oppression. Contributors include: Syed Farid Alatas, Rose Brewer, Dustin J. Byrd, Sean Chabot, Richard Curtis, Nigel C. Gibson, Ali Harfouch, Timothy Kerswell, Seyed Javad Miri, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pramod K. Nayar, Elena Flores Ruiz, Majid Sharifi, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib and Esmaeil Zeiny. (shrink)

"The Critical Theory of Religion: From the Frankfurt School to Emancipatory Islamic Thought" is a collection of essay of Dr. Dustin J. Byrd, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Olivet College. The book concerns the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society and how it relates to religion, especially Islam, in the contemporary world.

In his book, The Frankfurt School and the Dialectics of Religion: Translating Critical Faith into Critical Theory, Dustin J. Byrd argues that at the core of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory is a secularized theology. Unlike their predecessors, especially Feuerbach, Marx, Lenin, Freud, and Nietzsche, who argued for an abstract negation of religion, the first generation of Critical Theorists followed Hegel's logic and attempted to rescue and preserve the revolutionary, emancipatory, and liberational aspects of religion in their secular (...) non-conformist philosophy. They saw in both Judaism and Christianity certain conceptual and semantic elements that could be enlisted into their struggle for a future reconciled society, one beyond the slaughterbench of history. In order to rescue religion, theological concepts had to go through the process of determinate negation, wherein such materials migrate from the depth of the religious mythos into publicly accessible reasoning, thus making the revolutionary impulse of prophetic religion accessible to the secular world. Byrd also argues that this determinate negation of religion remains relevant to today's post-secular societies, especially in regard to religious Muslims attempting to find their place in Western countries, which are often hostile to religion and religiosity. Examining the strengths and weaknesses of Habermas' famous "translation proviso," he argues that both religious and secular citizens of the West can learn from the Frankfurt School's dialectical approach to religion in order to find a space wherein both religious faith and secular reason can not only co-exist, but also join together in the process of creating a more reconciled future society. (shrink)

In an application of the personality dynamics framework, we advance understanding on the relationship between baseline leader humility and team psychological safety by exploring the roles of humility variability and attractor strength. Specifically, we examine how the consistency of leader-expressed humility across team members operates as a boundary condition in the relationship between leader-expressed humility and team psychological safety. We also explore how the agreement between leader self-reported humility and leader-expressed humility operates as an attractor to predict such a consistency. (...) We test the hypothesized model through a sample of 85 teams, rated by 354 team members. The findings suggest that consistency reinforces, while inconsistency weakens, the effect of leader-expressed humility on team psychological safety. The findings also reveal that SOA relates to the consistency of leader-expressed humility, depending on the level at which the agreement occurs. We conclude that to better understand the outcomes of humble leadership, it is necessary to take into account not only the baseline of humility expressed by the leader, but also his/her humility variability and the strength of the attractor. (shrink)

Islam in the Post-Secular Society offers an interpretation of the struggles that Muslims face within secular western society, and attempts to find a path for a future reconciliation.

This book critiques Ayn Rand’s secular philosophy of religion while simultaneously highlighting the fundamental contradiction of the Tea Party movement’s dual basis, that is, Randian economics and conservative Christianity.

Cognitive reflection, or the ability to inhibit intuitive and incorrect responses in favour of correct responses, predicts performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. The present study examined interventions to improve cognitive reflection. In two experiments, college students (N = 491) were assigned to one of three conditions, completed two versions of a cognitive reflection test (CRT), and then completed transfer tasks. Between the two CRTs, some participants were provided with elaborative feedback, others were instructed to consider additional responses for (...) their initial responses and the final group was a control. In both experiments, CRT performance increased between the first and second CRT in the feedback and instruction groups, but not in the control group. There was little evidence, however, for transfer to other tasks. These results suggest that cognitive reflection performance can be improved with brief interventions but that this improvement may not transfer to related tasks. (shrink)

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on published Abstracts to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered (...) substantially. Far more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on published Abstracts to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered (...) substantially.Far more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

Broadening access to both computational and educational resources is crit- ical to diffusing machine learning (ML) innovation. However, today, most ML resources and experts are siloed in a few countries and organizations. In this article, we describe our pedagogical approach to increasing access to applied ML through a massive open online course (MOOC) on Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML). We suggest that TinyML, applied ML on resource-constrained embedded devices, is an attractive means to widen access because TinyML leverages low-cost and globally (...) accessible hardware and encourages the development of complete, self-contained applications, from data collection to deployment. To this end, a collaboration between academia and industry produced a four part MOOC that provides application-oriented instruction on how to develop solutions using TinyML. The series is openly available on the edX MOOC platform, has no prerequisites beyond basic programming, and is designed for global learners from a variety of backgrounds. It introduces real-world applications, ML algorithms, data-set engineering, and the ethi- cal considerations of these technologies through hands-on programming and deployment of TinyML applications in both the cloud and on their own microcontrollers. To facili- tate continued learning, community building, and collaboration beyond the courses, we launched a standalone website, a forum, a chat, and an optional course-project com- petition. We also open-sourced the course materials, hoping they will inspire the next generation of ML practitioners and educators and further broaden access to cutting-edge ML technologies. (shrink)

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on publisheds to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered substantially.Far (...) more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne and Travis Dumsday have defended what J. L. Schellenberg calls “the responsibility argument” as a response to the problem of divine hiddenness. Schellenberg, meanwhile, has levied various objections against the responsibility argument. In this paper, I develop a version of the responsibility argument and discuss some advantages it has over those defended by either Swinburne or Dumsday. I then show how my version can withstand Schellenberg’s criticisms.

Propositions are central to at least most theorizing about the connection between our mental lives and the world: we use them in our theories of an array of attitudes including belief, desire, hope, fear, knowledge, and understanding. Unfortunately, when we press on these theories, we encounter a relatively neglected family of paradoxes first studied by Arthur Prior. I argue that these paradoxes present a fatal problem for most familiar resolutions of paradoxes. In particular, I argue that truth-value gap, contextualist, situation (...) theoretic, revision theoretic, ramified, and dialetheist approaches to the paradoxes must deny us the conceptual resources that they themselves make use of, on pain of contradiction. I then detail the costs of the extant strategies that avoid this issue: Hartry Field’s paracomplete approach; Andrew Bacon’s classical treatment of indeterminacy; a generalization of ideas from Prior, Nicholas J.J. Smith, and Hartley Slater; and free logics as recently explored by Bacon, John Hawthorne, and Gabriel Uzquiano. I argue that none of these is perfect, and that each restricts the theories we can endorse in a variety of areas of philosophy. I spell these restrictions out, showing, I hope, that the further investigation of these paradoxes must be a part of future research on propositional attitudes. (shrink)

In my commentary, I will argue that the conclusions drawn in the paper Noncommutative causality in algebraic quantum field theory by Gábor Hofer-Szaboó are incorrect. As proven by J.S. Bell, a local common causal explanation of correlations violating the Bell inequality is impossible.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Future of Environmental PhilosophyJ. Baird Callicott (bio)The old guy in The Graduate had just one word for Dustin Hoffman's character, Ben: "plastics." This old guy has three words for the future pursuit of environmental philosophers, young and old: global climate change (GCC).GCC is emerging as the central environmental concern of the 21st century. Back in the 20th century, E. O. Wilson's mantra was (I paraphrase) 'abrupt mass (...) anthropogenic species extinction is the crime for which posterity is least likely to forgive us.' In view of the multifaceted catastrophe graphically depicted in the recent acclaimed film, An Inconvenient Truth (AIT), Wilson's dictum seems quaint. Rather, a world whose very geography will be anthropogenically altered by risen sea levels, whose weather will be increasingly violent and erratic, whose seas will be stagnant and acidified by carbonic acid, etc., etc., is the crime for which posterity is least likely to forgive us—if there is any posterity to make a judgment.According to Al Gore in AIT anthropogenic GCC is a "moral" and "ethical" issue. But he doesn't elaborate. And at the end of the film he provides a lame list of things you and you and you and you—all of us individually AND voluntarily—can do to mitigate GCC, such as swap out halogen light bulbs for compact florescent ones and drive a hybrid car. Think "tragedy of the commons" for the efficacy of that approach to an adequate ethical response to the challenge of GCC.Gore's naivete apart, environmental ethics (EE) as we know it is singularly ill-prepared for dealing with GCC. The problem is one of scale, temporal as well as spatial. Spatially, EE concern was focused on the scale of biotic communities, ecosystems, and landscapes. And the relevant science was ecology. Temporally, the scale was also ecological: It might take Prince William Sound half a century, perhaps even a whole century, to fully recover from the Exxon Valdez spill. In temperate climates, after a clearcut a mature forest might spring up in a century and, through ecological succession, if left alone it will return to old growth in 300 years. Back in the 20th century that seemed like a long time, and we lamented that the ecological temporal scale and the economic temporal scale of [End Page 119] industries like the timber business and the oil business were out of phase, the former measured in decades the latter in quarters. But now, elderly environmental philosophers like me will personally witness little more than the initial environmental consequences of GCC—the occasional Katrina, the occasional hottest year on record, the disappearance of glaciers in Glacier National Park. We won't live to see (I hope) the cessation of the Gulf Stream or sea-levels rise more than a few centimeters. And the rectification of these consequences will be completed, if they ever are, only after thousands of years have elapsed.How then do we scale EE up to meet the moral challenge of GCC? Spatially we have a huge leap to make from the landscape scale to the biospheric scale. We have to become conversant with a new set of sciences; the relevant sciences are not ecology and conservation biology, but biogeochemistry and earth-systems science.Is a GCC EE even possible? Maybe ethics has temporal-scale limits? We used to marvel at the long view of the Iroquois who considered the consequences of present policies out seven generations. Wow! At 25 years per generation that is all of 250 years (adding on the 75-year life-span of the 7th generation). Can we have ethical concern for the 37th generation, a thousand years out? Or the 121st generation 3000 years out?J. Baird Callicott J. Baird Callicott is Regents Professor of Philosophy and Religion Studies in the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas. From 1997–2000 he served the International Society for Environmental Ethics as president. He is author, editor, or co-editor of a score of books and more than a hundred journal articles and book chapters. Callicott's research proceeds on six major fronts: theoretical environmental ethics, land ethics, the philosophy of... (shrink)

In contrast to the traditional view of Kant as a pure retributivist, the recent interpretations of Kant's theory of punishment (for instance Byrd's) propose a mixed theory of retributivism and general prevention. Although both elements are literally right, I try to show the shortcomings of each. I then argue that Kant's theory of punishment is not consistent with his own concept of law. Thus I propose another justification for punishment: special deterrence and rehabilitation. Kant's critique of utilitarianism does not (...) affect this alternative, which moreover has textual support in Kant and is fully consistent with his concept of law. (shrink)

This volume is about the many ways we perceive. Contributors explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. They consider how the senses extract perceptual content from receptoral information. They consider what kinds of objects we perceive and whether multiple senses ever perceive a single event. They consider how many senses we have, what makes one sense distinct from another, and whether and why distinguishing senses may be useful. (...) They consider the extent to which the senses act in concert, rather than as discrete modalities, and whether this influence is epistemically pernicious, neutral, or beneficial. They explore both the familiar five sense modalities and other candidate sense modalities, including a sense for flavour, inner senses (e.g., a sense for pain), and various senses that may result from using sensory substitution devices. Contributors often represent competing views, and the methods they deploy sometimes differ from one essay to the next—with some drawing upon the sciences and engineering and others relying upon conceptual analysis. All contributors agree, nonetheless, that traditional theorizing about the senses is hampered by a neglect of the senses other than vision, and by the misconception that vision is a passive receptacle for an image thrown by a lens. And many contributors believe that it is unduly restrictive to think of perception as a collation of contents provided by individual sense modalities; they think that to understand perception properly, we need to build into our accounts the idea that the senses work together. The ambition of the volume is to begin to develop better paradigms for understanding the senses, and thereby to move toward a better understanding of perception. (shrink)

This paper takes up the problem of correlationism from a phenomenological perspective. Speculative realists, such as Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman, seek to establish new forms of Continental realism largely because, in their view, phenomenology cannot adequately account for the real. To counter these claims, I will use what I call a “critical phenomenological approach”, which critically delimits the real from the intentional relation, and thus makes possible a phenomenological theory of the real. This approach to realism establishes not only (...) that the real is independent from the intentional relation but also that the intentional relation itself is contingent with regard to the real. Furthermore, it also shows that the human being is exposed to the real in an originary way that calls into question the adequacy of Meillassoux’s and Harman’s forms of realism. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will investigate the ramifications of moral knowledge for naturalism (roughly, the view that all that exists is the natural world). Specifically, we will draw attention to a certain problem we face if the world is purely naturalistic. We will then show how theism provides resources for solving this problem. We’ll argue that the fact that we have lots of moral knowledge fi ts better with theism than with naturalism. Specifically, we’ll present reasons to think that (1) (...) naturalists who think we have lots of moral knowledge will have trouble rationally maintaining both their naturalism and their belief that we have such knowledge and (2) theism better explains the fact that we have lots of moral knowledge than naturalism does. (shrink)

Perception is typically distinguished from cognition. For example, seeing is importantly different from believing. And while what one sees clearly influences what one thinks, it is debatable whether what one believes and otherwise thinks can influence, in some direct and non-trivial way, what one sees. The latter possible relation is the cognitive penetration of perception. Cognitive penetration, if it occurs, has implications for philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. This paper offers an analysis of the phenomenon, (...) its theoretical consequences, and a variety of experimental results and possible interpretations of them. The paper concludes by proposing some constraints for analyses and definitions of cognitive penetrability. (shrink)

Structuralism and quidditism are competing views of the metaphysics of property individuation: structuralists claim that properties are individuated by their nomological roles; quidditists claim that they are individuated by something else. This paper (1) refutes what many see as the best reason to accept structuralism over quidditism and (2) offers a methodological argument in favor of a quidditism. The standard charge against quidditism is that it commits us to something ontologically otiose: intrinsic aspects of properties, so-called ‘quiddities’. Here I grant (...) that quiddities are ontologically otiose, but deny that quidditism requires them. According to a view I call ‘austere quidditism’, properties are individuated by bare numerical identity. I argue that, as far as ontological parsimony is concerned, austere quidditism and structuralism are on a par. But is austere quidditism a coherent alternative to structuralism? To see that it is, we must get clear on what exactly we mean by ‘property individuation’. What we discover is that structuralism is a counterpart theory for properties, and that austere quidditism is simply the rejection of counterpart theory. I conclude with a methodological argument to the effect that counterpart theory for properties ought to be rejected. This paper begins by situating the debate between structuralists and quidditists within the context of a debate over the epistemic limits of fundamental science. At the center of this debate is David Lewis’s posthumously published ‘Ramseyan Humility’ (2008). In the appendix I explain the precise role of austere quidditism in Lewis’s argument. (shrink)

This paper considers an orectic penetration hypothesis which says that desires and desire-like states may influence perceptual experience in a non-externally mediated way. This hypothesis is clarified with a definition, which serves further to distinguish the interesting target phenomenon from trivial and non-genuine instances of desire-influenced perception. Orectic penetration is an interesting possible case of the cognitive penetrability of perceptual experience. The orectic penetration hypothesis is thus incompatible with the more common thesis that perception is cognitively impenetrable. It is of (...) importance to issues in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, epistemology, and general philosophy of science. The plausibility of orectic perception can be motivated by some classic experimental studies, and some new experimental research inspired by those same studies. The general suggestion is that orectic penetration thus defined, and evidenced by the relevant studies, cannot be deflected by the standard strategies of the cognitive impenetrability theorist. (shrink)

Dustin McWherter defends the possibility of critical ontology by pitting Roy Bhaskar's attempt to rehabilitate ontology in the philosophy of science against Kant's attempt to replace traditional ontology with an account of cognitive experience.

Certain philosophers maintain that there is a ‘constitutive threshold for belief’: to believe that p just is to have a degree of confidence that p above a certain threshold. On the basis of this view, these philosophers defend what is known as ‘the Lockean Thesis ’, according to which it is rational to believe that p just in case it is rational to have a degree of confidence that p above the constitutive threshold for belief. While not directly speaking to (...) the controversy over the Lockean Thesis, this paper defends the general idea behind it—namely, the thesis that there is some threshold such that it is rational to believe that p if and only if it is rational to have a degree of confidence great than that threshold. This paper identifies the threshold in question—not with the alleged constitutive threshold for belief—but with what I call ‘the practical threshold for rational belief’. Roughly, the thesis defended here is that it is rational to believe that p if and only if it is rational to have a degree of confidence that p that rationalizes engaging in certain types of practical reasoning. (shrink)

Both patched versions of the Bostrom/Kulczycki simulation argument contain serious objective errors, discovered while attempting to formalize them in predicate logic. The English glosses of both versions involve badly misleading meanings of vague magnitude terms, which their impressiveness benefits from. We fix the errors, prove optimal versions of the arguments, and argue that both are much less impressive than they originally appeared. Finally, we provide a guide for readers to evaluate the simulation argument for themselves, using well-justified settings of the (...) argument parameters that have simple, accurate statements in English, which are easier to understand and critique than the statements in the original paper. (shrink)

One sceptical rejoinder to those who claim that sensory perception is cognitively penetrable is to appeal to the involvement of attention. So, while a phenomenon might initially look like one where, say, a perceiver’s beliefs are influencing her visual experience, another interpretation is that because the perceiver believes and desires as she does, she consequently shifts her spatial attention so as to change what she senses visually. But, the sceptic will urge, this is an entirely familiar phenomenon, and it hardly (...) involves some special or theoretically important cognitive effect on sensory perception. Even supposing that the sceptic is correct about cases that are accurately described in this way, the rejoinder oversimplifies the possible roles that attention may play in mediating cognition and perception. This paper aims to identify these different roles, and by emphasis on empirical research on feature-based and object-based attention. What emerges is a plausible and well- evidenced mental schema that describes attention -mediated cognitive penetration. At the very least, the burden of proof is shifted to the sceptic, as he then must show that there are no mental phenomena involving attention in the more nuanced ways described here. One additional benefit of this analysis is that it illuminates various features of attention and its relation to both cognition and phenomenal consciousness. Therefore the analysis should be of interest to a broad range of theorists of the mind, and not just those invested in the cognitive penetration debate. (shrink)

There are good, even if inconclusive, reasons to think that cognitive penetration of perception occurs: that cognitive states like belief causally affect, in a relatively direct way, the contents of perceptual experience. The supposed importance of – indeed as it is suggested here, what is definitive of – this possible phenomenon is that it would result in important epistemic and scientific consequences. One interesting and intuitive consequence entirely unremarked in the extant literature concerns the perception of art. Intuition has it (...) that knowledge about art changes how one aesthetically evaluates artworks. A profound explanation of this intuitive fact is that perceptual experiences vary with artistic expertise. Cognitive penetration provides an explanatory mechanism for this latter effect. What one knows or otherwise thinks about art may affect, in one of two ways sketched below, how one perceives art. Differences in aesthetic evaluation may follow, either because high-level aesthetic properties can be perceptually represented or because they causally depend on low-level perceptible properties. All of this lends credence to the hypothesis that the expert better judges art because she better perceives art. And she better perceives art because she better knows art. (shrink)

In recent years the doctrine of divine simplicity has become a topic of interest in the philosophical theological community. In particular, the modal collapse argument against divine simplicity has garnered various responses from proponents of divine simplicity. Some even claiming that the modal collapse argument is invalid. It is our contention that these responses have either misunderstood or misstated the argument, and have thus missed the force of the objection. Our main aim is to clarify what the modal collapse argument (...) in fact says, and explain why the recent responses do not succeed. In order to argue our case, we will proceed in several steps. First, we aim to systematically articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, articulate the Christian conviction that God is free to create any feasible world or no world at all. Third, argue that divine simplicity suffers a modal collapse and thus undermines God's freedom. Fourth, respond to potential objections to modal collapse. Fifth, we offer some concluding remarks. (shrink)

A collaborative undertaking between an artist and a philosopher, this monograph attempts to deepen our understanding of "contemplative seeing" by addressing the works of Plato, Thoreau, Heidegger, and more. The authors explore what it means to "see" reality and contemplate how viewing reality philosophically and artfully is a form of spirituality. In this way, by developing a new conception of active visual engagement, the authors propose a way of seeing that unites both critical scrutiny and spiritual involvement, as opposed to (...) simple passive reception. (shrink)

In this debate article I respond to Alison Assiter's various objections and points regarding my work on Kant's empirical realism, his relation to ontology, and related issues. Although Assiter raises some very interesting and important issues, I do not find her ontological interpretation of Kant sufficiently supported textually, and I think her objections to my work are too dependent on omissions and mistaken assumptions to provide an effective challenge.

Nick Bostrom has famously defended the credibility of the simulation hypothesis – the hypothesis that we live in a computer simulation. Barry Dainton has recently employed the simulation hypothesis to defend the ‘simulation solution’ to the problem of natural evil. The simulation solution claims that apparently natural evils are in fact the result of wrong actions on the part of the people who create our simulation. In this way, it treats apparently natural evils as actually being moral evils, allowing them (...) to be explained via the free will theodicy. Other theodicies which assimilate apparently natural evils to moral ones include Fall theodicies, which attribute apparently natural evils to the biblical Fall, and diabolical theodicies, which attribute them to the activity of demons. Unfortunately, Dainton fails to give compelling reasons for preferring the simulation solution to Fall or diabolical theodicies. He gives one argument against diabolical theodicies, but it has no force against their best version, and he does not discuss Fall theodicies at all. In this article, I attempt to rectify this. I discuss several problems faced by Fall and diabolical theodicies which the simulation solution avoids. These provide some reason to prefer the simulation solution to these alternatives. (shrink)

The belief bias in reasoning occurs when individuals are more willing to accept conclusions that are consistent with their beliefs than conclusions that are inconsistent. The present study...

According to a number of recent philosophers, knowledge has an intimate relationship with rationality. Some philosophers hold, in particular, that rational agents do things for good motivating reasons, and that p can be one’s motivating reason for -ing (acting/believing/fearing/etc.) only if one knows that p. This paper argues against this view and in favor of the view that p cannot be one’s motivating reason for -ing—in the relevant sense—unless there is an appropriate explanatory connection between the fact that p and (...) one’s -ing. I argue that this view offers a better account of the cases alleged to support the knowledge view. (shrink)

A fiction may prescribe imagining that a pig can talk or tell the future. A fiction may prescribe imagining that torturing innocent persons is a good thing. We generally comply with imaginative prescriptions like the former, but not always with prescriptions like the latter: we imagine non-evaluative fictions without difficulty but sometimes resist imagining value-rich fictions. Thus arises the puzzle of imaginative resistance. Most analyses of the phenomenon focus on the content of the relevant imaginings. The present analysis focuses instead (...) on the character of certain kinds of imaginings, arguing that we resist in such cases given the rich evaluative character of the imaginings prescribed, and the agent-dependent constraints on imagining in such ways. (shrink)

Computer programs are generating artworks of astonishing novelty and aesthetic value. By the standard definition of creativity, these programs would count as being creative. But if you still hesitate to call a program creative, that's for good reason, we argue. It's because real creativity requires AGENTS who are responsible for what they make, and it's not at all clear that these programs are agents. -/- (The title was imposed by the editor. It was supposed to be called, "ARE COMPUTERS CREATIVE?").

Educational Theory, Volume 71, Issue 3, Page 409-429, June 2021.

This paper attempts to answer two questions: What is epistemic agency? And what are the motivations for having this concept? In response to the first question, it is argued that epistemic agency is the agency one has over one’s belief-forming practices, or doxastic dispositions, which can directly affect the way one forms a belief and indirectly affect the beliefs one forms. In response to the second question, it is suggested that the above conception of epistemic agency is either implicitly endorsed (...) by those theorists sympathetic to epistemic normativity or, at minimum, this conception can make sense of the legitimacy of the normative notions applicable to how and what one should believe. It is further contended that belief formation in some respects is a skill that can be intentionally developed and refined. Accepting this contention and the existence of certain epistemic norms provide inconclusive yet good reasons to endorse this concept. Recent challenges to this concept by Hillary Kornblith and Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij are also considered. (shrink)