This chapter contains sections titled: Nietzsche's Understanding of the Aphorism How Aphorisms Reconfigure the “Habits of the Senses” The Art of Exegesis.

Well-Being and Death addresses philosophical questions about death and the good life: what makes a life go well? Is death bad for the one who dies? How is this possible if we go out of existence when we die? Is it worse to die as an infant or as a young adult? Is it bad for animals and fetuses to die? Can the dead be harmed? Is there any way to make death less bad for us? Ben Bradley defends the (...) following views: pleasure, rather than achievement or the satisfaction of desire, is what makes life go well; death is generally bad for its victim, in virtue of depriving the victim of more of a good life; death is bad for its victim at times after death, in particular at all those times at which the victim would have been living well; death is worse the earlier it occurs, and hence it is worse to die as an infant than as an adult; death is usually bad for animals and fetuses, in just the same way it is bad for adult humans; things that happen after someone has died cannot harm that person; the only sensible way to make death less bad is to live so long that no more good life is possible. (shrink)

Attempts to formalize the diagnostic process are by no means a recent undertaking; what is new is the availability of an engine to process these formalizations. The digital computer has therefore been increasingly turned to in the expectation of developing systems which will assist or replace the physician in diagnosis. Such efforts involve a number of assumptions regarding the nature of the diagnostic process: e.g. where it begins, and where it ends. ‘Diagnosis’ appears to include a number of quite different (...) cognitive processes, some of which seem more subject to formalization than others. Underlying the difficulties inherent in these efforts at formalization, is the hierarchical structure of medical knowledge including that of diseases. (By ‘hierarchical structure’, I mean no more than that our descriptions of clinical objects necessarily refer to different levels of organization; atomic, molecular, cellular, physiological system, entire patient.) Since diagnosis is in part a form of classification, measures of similarity between the clinical findings of a particular patient and a potential disease, are needed. This is complicated by the fact that some diseases are described using the vocabularies of physics and chemistry, others with the vocabulary of psychology, and most, with terms taken from a number of different hierarchical levels. The differences between the descriptions made using these vocabularies will be seen to exert systematic (if not uniform) influences upon the diagnostic process. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This book explores the role of causal constraints in science, shifting our attention from causal relations between individual events--the focus of most philosophical treatments of causation--to a broad family of concepts and principles generating constraints on possible change. Yemima Ben-Menahem looks at determinism, locality, stability, symmetry principles, conservation laws, and the principle of least action-causal constraints that serve to distinguish events and processes that our best scientific theories mandate or allow from those they rule out. Ben-Menahem's approach reveals that causation (...) is just as relevant to explaining why certain events fail to occur as it is to explaining events that do occur. She investigates the conceptual differences between, and interrelations of, members of the causal family, thereby clarifying problems at the heart of the philosophy of science. Ben-Menahem argues that the distinction between determinism and stability is pertinent to the philosophy of history and the foundations of statistical mechanics, and that the interplay of determinism and locality is crucial for understanding quantum mechanics. Providing historical perspective, she traces the causal constraints of contemporary science to traditional intuitions about causation, and demonstrates how the teleological appearance of some constraints is explained away in current scientific theories such as quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This paper considers whether an analogy between distance and dissimilarlity supports the thesis that degree of dissimilarity is distance in a metric space. A straightforward way to justify the thesis would be to define degree of dissimilarity as a function of number of properties in common and not in common. But, infamously, this approach has problems with infinity. An alternative approach would be to prove representation and uniqueness theorems, according to which if comparative dissimilarity meets certain qualitative conditions, then it (...) is representable by distance in a metric space. I will argue that this approach faces equally severe problems with infinity. (shrink)

This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence (...) that p; that, nonetheless, rational thinking is closed under entailment; that thinking does not supervene on credence; and that in many cases what one thinks on certain matters is, in a very literal sense, a choice. Finally, since there are strong reasons to believe that thinking just is believing, there are strong reasons to think that all this goes for belief as well. (shrink)

The shortest stories are zero words long. There is no maximum length.

The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief (...) in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met. (shrink)

A key question for research on the evolutionary origins of morality concerns just what the target of an evolutionary explanation of morality should be. Some researchers focus on behaviors, others on systems of norms, yet others on moral emotions. Richard Joyce (2006) offers an evolutionary explanation for the trait of making moral judgments. Here, I defend Joyce’s account of moral judgment against two objections from Stephen Stich (2008). Stich’s first objection concerns the supposed universality of moral judgments as Joyce conceives (...) of them. I respond by undermining the empirical evidence upon which this objection is based. Stich’s second objection concerns the extent of the moral domain, which he takes to include far more than the considerations of harm and fairness central to Joyce’s account. In response, I outline several strategies for reconciling Stich’s observations with Joyce’s account. (shrink)

One prominent argument in international law and religious thought for abolishing capital punishment is that it violates individuals’ right to life. Notably, this _right-to-life argument_ emerged from normative and legal frameworks that recognize deadly force against aggressors as justified when necessary to stop their unjust threat of grave harm. Can capital punishment be necessary in this sense—and thus justified defensive killing? If so, the right-to-life argument would have to admit certain exceptions where executions are justified. Drawing on work by Hugo (...) Bedau, I identify a thought experiment where executions are justified defensive killing but explain why they cannot be in our world. A state’s obligations to its prisoners include the _obligation to use nonlethal incapacitation_ (ONI), which applies as long as prisoners pose no imminent threat. ONI precludes executions for reasons of future dangerousness. By subjecting the right-to-life argument to closer scrutiny, this article ultimately places it on firmer ground. (shrink)

This paper argues against definitions of depiction in terms of the syntactic and semantic properties of symbol systems. In particular, it is argued that John Kulvicki's definition of depictive symbol systems in terms of relative repleteness, semantic richness, syntactic sensitivity and transparency is susceptible to similar counterexamples as Nelson Goodman's in terms of syntactic density, semantic density and relative repleteness. The general moral drawn is that defining depiction requires attention not merely to descriptive questions about syntax and semantics, but also (...) to foundational questions about what makes it the case that depictions have the syntactic and semantic properties they do. (shrink)

In recent years Mullins and Craig have argued that there is a problem for a timeless God creating, with Mullins formulating the argument as follows: (1) If God begins to be related to creation, then God changes. (2) God begins to be related to creation. (3) Therefore, God changes. (4) If God changes, then God is neither immutable nor timeless. (5) Therefore, God is neither immutable nor timeless. In this paper I argue that all the premises, (1), (2), and (4) (...) are false, and then provide a revised formulation of the argument which more clearly represents what Mullins and Craig wish to argue, given the explication and commentary they give when discussing this objection to timelessness. I then call into question this argument, and conclude by stating what I think Mullins and Craig should really be arguing given the specific views they have about creation ex nihilo and in virtue of what timelessness requires. (shrink)

This paper examines the implications of the context-sensitivity of counterfactuals for the correctness of emotions and attitudes towards death. I argue that the correctness of an attitude such as fear must be explained by appeal to its causal relations to certain preferences.

Descartes was the first to hold that, when we perceive, the representation need not resemble what it represents but should correspond to it. Descartes developed this ground-breaking, influential conception in his work on analytic geometry and then transferred it to his theory of perception. I trace the development of the idea in Descartes’ early mathematical works; his articulation of it in Rules for the Direction of the Mind; his first suggestions there to apply this kind of representation-by-correspondence in the scientific (...) inquiry of colours; and, finally, the transfer of the idea to the theory of perception in The World. (shrink)

The skills involved in contributing competently in workplace interaction include enacting attentive listenership and providing appropriate feedback to the talk of others. These sociopragmatic skills are often overlooked, and when non-native-like listener feedback does attract attention, cultural differences are commonly cited to account for differences observed. In this paper, we analyse data from recordings made by Chinese skilled migrants in New Zealand workplaces, focussing on their interactions with New Zealand mentors in authentic workplace encounters. We examine the range, frequency and (...) placement of minimal audible feedback in their workplace talk, including a discussion of repetition and collaborative completions. The analysis provides evidence that overall, these learners have acquired appropriate norms for listenership in the New Zealand workplace contexts in which they have been placed, and supports an explanation which focuses on the negotiation and development of interactional norms in the process of joining a new social group. (shrink)

This important book brings together leading environmental thinkers to debate a central conflict within environmental philosophy: Should we appreciate nature ...

In this article I defend a new argument against moralist theories of legitimacy and in favour of realist theories. Moralist theories, I argue, are vulnerable to ideological and wishful thinking because they do not connect the demands of legitimacy with the interests of rulers. Realist theories, however, generally do manage to make this connection. This is because satisfying the usual realist criteria for legitimacy – the creation of a stable political order that transcends brute coercion – is usually necessary for (...) rulers to preserve their rule. (shrink)

This book explores the key motif of the religious Other in devotional (bhakti) literatures and practices from across the Indian subcontinent. The primary aim of this book is to reconsider and challenge inherited notions of the bhakta's or devotee's Other and unmask processes of representation that involve adoption, appropriation, and rejection of different social and religious agents. The book considers the ways in which bhakti might be conceived as having an inter-regional impact--as a force, discourse, network, mythology, ethic--while critically engaging (...) with extant scholarly narratives about what bhakti is and tracing when and how those narratives have been used. The sheer diversity of South Asia's devotional traditions renders them an especially rich resource for examining social and religious fault lines, thereby furthering scholarly understanding of how communalism and sectarianism originate and develop on local or regional levels, with wider geographic implications. Bringing together studies from a subcontinent-wide variety of linguistic, geographical, and historical frames for the first time, this book will be an important contribution to the literature on bhakti, and it will be of interest to scholars of South Asian Religion and Asian Religion. (shrink)

Bryan Norton 's convergence hypothesis, which predicts that nonanthropocentric and human-based philosophical positions will actually converge on long-sighted, multi-value environmental policy, has drawn a number of criticisms from within environmental philosophy. In particular, nonanthropocentric theorists like J. Baird Callicott and Laura Westra have rejected the accuracy of Norton 's thesis, refusing to believe that his model's contextual appeals to a plurality of human and environmental values will be able adequately to provide for the protection of ecological integrity. These theoretical criticisms (...) of convergence, however, have made no real attempt to engage the empirical validity of the hypothesis, the dimension that Norton clearly takes to be the centerpiece of his project. Accordingly, the present paper attempts to provide an empirical analysis of the convergence argument, by means of a study of the Vermont public's environmental commitments and their attitudes toward national forest policy. Our findings support a generalized version of Norton 's thesis, and lead us to suggest that environmental philosophers should try to be more inclusive and empirically minded in their discussions about public moral claims regarding nature. (shrink)

The distinction between perception and cognition has always had a firm footing in both cognitive science and folk psychology. However, there is little agreement as to how the distinction should be drawn. In fact, a number of theorists have recently argued that, given the ubiquity of top-down influences, we should jettison the distinction altogether. I reject this approach, and defend a pluralist account of the distinction. At the heart of my account is the claim that each legitimate way of marking (...) a border between perception and cognition deploys a notion I call ‘stimulus-control.’ Thus, rather than being a grab bag of unrelated kinds, the various categories of the perceptual are unified into a superordinate natural kind. (shrink)

Lucid, learned, and incomparably rich in thought and detail, Art Without Borders is a monumental accomplishment, on par with the artistic achievements ...

This paper defends the simple view that in asserting that p, one lies iff one knows that p is false. Along the way it draws some morals about deception, knowledge, Gettier cases, belief, assertion, and the relationship between first- and higher-order norms.

This paper considers some puzzling knowledge ascriptions and argues that they present prima facie counterexamples to credence, belief, and justification conditions on knowledge, as well as to many of the standard meta-semantic assumptions about the context-sensitivity of ‘know’. It argues that these ascriptions provide new evidence in favor of contextualist theories of knowledge—in particular those that take the interpretation of ‘know’ to be sensitive to the mechanisms of constraint.