About this topic
Summary Conceptual analysis is one of the main traditional methods of philosophy, arguably dating back to Plato's early dialogues. The basic idea is that questions like 'What is knowledge?', 'What is justice?', or 'What is truth?' can be answered solely on the basis of one's grasp of the relevant concepts. The ideal result of a conceptual analysis would be a definition or analysis of the relevant X that is typically formulated as a necessary biconditional that states necessary and sufficient conditions for being X. For example, a typical formulation of the classical analysis of knowledge as justified true belief is: S knows that p iff (1) p is true, (2) S believes that p, and (3) S is justified in believing that p. Here, conditions (1) to (3) state individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for knowing that p. The standard procedure for testing such an analysis is by means of counterexamples, typically in the form of hypothetical cases as they are used in thought experiments. A counterexample may speak against the necessity of some of the conditions, or against the sufficiency of the conditions. For example, the classical analysis of knowledge was refuted by Gettier's (1963) famous counterexamples against the sufficiency of conditions (1) to (3). In such a situation, the analysis has to be refined until it is no longer subject to counterexamples, in which case it would constitute a successful conceptual analysis. Almost all of the elements of this traditional conception of conceptual analysis are controversial, but it still continues to guide a considerable amount of philosophical research.
Key works A good statement of the traditional conception of conceptual analysis is Grice's "Postwar Oxford Philosophy" in Grice 1989. Unfortunately, there are not many focussed discussions of the method of conceptual analysis, which often tend to be intertwined with other philosophical issues. Important contributions by some of the main proponents of conceptual analysis in the last few decades are Lewis 1970, Lewis 1994, Strawson 1992, Bealer 1998, Jackson 1998Peacocke 1998Chalmers & Jackson 2001, Goldman 2007, Jenkins 2008, Henderson & Horgan 2011, and Chalmers 2012. Critical discussions that bear on the method of conceptual analysis can be found in Putnam 1970, Putnam 1975, Ramsey 1992, Millikan 1993, Block & Stalnaker 1999, Weinberg et al 2001, Laurence & Margolis 2003, Williamson 2000, Williamson 2007, Kornblith 2007, and Haslanger 2012.
Introductions There is no easy and systematic introduction to conceptual analysis, but the following might be helpful points of entry to the contemporary debate: Grice 1989Strawson 1992Hanna 1998Jackson 1998, Braddon-Mitchell & Nola 2009, Daly 2010, and Kipper 2012.
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  1. PHILOSOPHY AS NEGATIVE SCIENCE.Steven James Bartlett - manuscript
    Starting with Kant’s undeveloped proposal of a “negative science,” the author describes how philosophy may be developed and strengthened by means of a systematic approach that seeks to identify and eliminate a widespread but seldom recognized form of systemic and propagating conceptual error. ¶¶¶¶¶ -/- The paper builds upon the author’s book, CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON: HORIZONS OF POSSIBILITY AND MEANING (Studies in Theory and Behavior, 2021). ¶¶¶¶¶ -/- The author’s purpose is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the (...)
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  2. Empiricism and tensions with Chris Daly.Terence Rajivan Edward - manuscript
    In his review of Chris Daly’s book Philosophical Methods, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa debates with Daly over the value of using the word “tension,” which Daly describes as a weasel word. Ichikawa disagrees. I raise a worry that Ichikawa’s response will not convince Daly and try to help Ichikawa out. Then I outline a traditional empiricist objection to Daly.
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  3. Moved by the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, by M*l*n K*ndera.Terence Rajivan Edward - manuscript
    This paper offers a brief analysis of what it is to be moved by a death. It is written as an imitation of a famous European writer and it has an analysis of some newspaper material as well, which was just some gentle fun, if it be permitted.
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  4. Philosophical Intuition and the Need for an Explanation.Alexander S. Harper - manuscript
    Traditionally, intuitions about cases have been taken as strong evidence for a philosophical position. I argue that intuitions about concept deployment have epistemic value while intuitions about matters of fact have none. I argue this by use of the explanationist criterion which contends that S is justified in believing only those propositions which are part of the best explanation of S’s making the judgements she makes. This criterion accords with scientific practice. Bealer suggests, as a defence of intuition, that naturalists (...)
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  5. A conceptual analysis of fake news.Nikil S. Mukerji - manuscript
    In this paper, I offer a conceptual analysis of fake news. In essence, I suggest analysing this notion as a species of Frankfurtian bullshit. This construal, I argue, allows us to distinguish it from similar phenomena like bad or biased journalism and satire. First, I introduce four test cases. The first three are, intuitively, not cases of fake news, while the fourth one is. A correct conceptual analysis should, hence, exclude the first three while including the fourth. Next, I go (...)
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  6. Isbell Conjugacy for Developing Cognitive Science.Venkata Rayudu Posina, Posina Venkata Rayudu & Sisir Roy - manuscript
    What is cognition? Equivalently, what is cognition good for? Or, what is it that would not be but for human cognition? But for human cognition, there would not be science. Based on this kinship between individual cognition and collective science, here we put forward Isbell conjugacy---the adjointness between objective geometry and subjective algebra---as a scientific method for developing cognitive science. We begin with the correspondence between categorical perception and category theory. Next, we show how the Gestalt maxim is subsumed by (...)
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  7. The Counterexample Method and Armchair Philosophy.Peyman Pourghannad & Davood Hosseini - manuscript
    According to a bedrock assumption in the current methodology of armchair philosophy, we may refute a theory aiming at analyzing a concept by providing a counterexample in which it intuitively seems that a hypothetical or real situation does not fit with what the theory implies. In this paper, we shall argue that this assumption is at most either untenable or otherwise useless in bringing about what is commonly expected from it.
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  8. Circular definitions of 'good' and the good of circular definitions.Garcia Andrés - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
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  9. How to Use Thought Experiments.Elijah Chudnoff - forthcoming - In Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup, John Turri & Blake Roeber (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
    Thought experiments figure prominently in contemporary epistemology. Beyond that humdrum observation, controversy abounds. The aim of this paper is to make progress on two fronts. On the descriptive front, the aim is to illuminate what the practice of using thought experiments involves. On the normative front, the aim is to illuminate what the practice of using thought experiments should involve. Thought experiments result in judgments that are passed on to further philosophical reasoning. What are these judgments? What is the point (...)
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  10. Epistemic Non-Factualism and Methodology.Justin Clarke-Doane - forthcoming - In Michael Klenk (ed.), Higher Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology.
    I discuss methodology in epistemology. I argue that settling the facts, even the epistemic facts, fails to settle the questions of intellectual policy at the center of our epistemic lives. An upshot is that the standard methodology of analyzing concepts like knowledge, justification, rationality, and so on is misconceived. More generally, any epistemic method that seeks to issue in intellectual policy by settling the facts, whether by way of abductive theorizing or empirical investigation, no matter how reliable, is inapt. The (...)
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  11. Strawson's Metacritique.Anil Gomes - forthcoming - In P.F. Strawson and His Legacy. Oxford University Press.
    What is the status of the claims which make up Kant’s arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason? This question seemed to Kant’s contemporaries to require a metacritique. Strawson’s criticisms of Kant should be understood in this context: as raising a metacritical challenge about Kant’s grounds for the claims which make up his arguments. What about the claims which make up Strawson’s own arguments in The Bounds of Sense? I argue in this chapter, against what I take to be the (...)
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  12. James, intentionality and analysis.Henry Jackman - forthcoming - In Oxford Handbook of William James. New York: Oxford University Press.
    James was always interested in the problem of how our thoughts come to be about the world. Nevertheless, if one takes James to be trying to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a thought's being about an object, counterexamples to his account will be embarrassingly easy to find. James, however, was not aiming for this sort of analysis of intentionality. Rather than trying to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for every case of a thought's being about an object, James focused (...)
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  13. We Should Move on from Signalling-Based Analyses of Biological Deception.Vladimir Krstic - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-21.
    This paper argues that extant signalling-based analyses cannot explain a range of cases of biological (and psychological) deception, such as those in which the deceiver does not send a signal at all, but that Artiga and Paternotte’s (Philos Stud 175:579–600, 2018) functional and my (Krstić in The analysis of self-deception: rehabilitating the traditionalist account. PhD Dissertation, University of Auckland, 2018: §3; Krstić and Saville in Australas J Philos 97:830–835, 2019) manipulativist analyses can. Therefore, the latter views should be given preference. (...)
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  14. Ordinary Language Philosophy and Ideal Language Philosophy.Sebastian Lutz - forthcoming - In The Cambridge Companion to Analytic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    According to ordinary language philosophy (OLP), philosophical problems can be solved by investigating ordinary language, often because the problems stem from its misuse. According to ideal language philosophy (ILP), on the other hand, philosophical problems exist because ordinary language is flawed and has to be improved or replaced by constructed languages that do not exhibit these flaws. OLP and ILP together make up linguistic philosophy, the view that philosophical problems are problems of language. Linguistic philosophy is opposed to what may (...)
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  15. Nonsense: a user's guide.Manish Oza - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Many philosophers suppose that sometimes we think we are saying or thinking something meaningful when in fact we’re not saying or thinking anything at all: we are producing nonsense. But what is nonsense? An account of nonsense must, I argue, meet two constraints. The first constraint requires that nonsense can be rationally engaged with, not just mentioned. In particular, we can reason with nonsense and use it within that-clauses. An account which fails to meet this constraint cannot explain why nonsense (...)
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  16. Defending Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering.Matthieu Queloz - forthcoming - Analysis.
    In this paper, I respond to three critical notices of The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering, written by Cheryl Misak, Alexander Prescott-Couch, and Paul Roth, respectively. After contrasting genealogical conceptual reverse-engineering with conceptual reverse-engineering, I discuss pragmatic genealogy’s relation to history. I argue that it would be a mistake to understand pragmatic genealogy as a fiction (or a model, or an idealization) as opposed to a form of historical explanation. That would be to rely on precisely the (...)
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  17. On the connection between Nonstandard Analysis and Constructive Analysis.Sam Sanders - forthcoming - Logique Et Analyse.
    Constructive Analysis and Nonstandard Analysis are often characterized as completely antipodal approaches to analysis. We discuss the possibility of capturing the central notion of Constructive Analysis (i.e. algorithm, finite procedure or explicit construction) by a simple concept inside Nonstandard Analysis. To this end, we introduce Omega-invariance and argue that it partially satisfies our goal. Our results provide a dual approach to Erik Palmgren's development of Nonstandard Analysis inside constructive mathematics.
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  18. Kinds of Kinds: Normativity, Scope and Implementation in Conceptual Engineering.Sarah Sawyer - forthcoming - In Manuel Gustavo Isaac, Steffen Koch & Kevin Scharp (eds.), New Perspectives on Conceptual Engineering. Synthese Library.
    In this paper I distinguish three kinds of kinds: traditional philosophical kinds such as truth, knowledge, and causation; natural science kinds such as spin, charge and mass; and social kinds such as class, poverty, and marriage. The three-fold taxonomy I work with represents an idealised abstraction from the wide variety of kinds that there are and the messy phenomena that underlie them. However, the kinds I identify are discrete, and the three-fold taxonomy is useful when it comes to understanding claims (...)
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  19. Concept Revision, Concept Application and the Role of Intuitions in Gettier Cases.Krzysztof Sękowski - forthcoming - Episteme:1-19.
    The aim of the paper is to determine the role of intuitions in Gettier cases. Critics of the Method of Cases argue that arguments developed within this method contains a premise that is justified by its intuitiveness; they also argue that intuitions are unreliable source of evidence. By contrast, Max Deutsch argues that this critique is unsound since intuitions do not serve as evidence for premises. In Gettier cases, an intuitive premise is justified by other arguments called G-Grounds. I propose (...)
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  20. Review of Thomas Kelly’s Bias: A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, x + 288 pp. [REVIEW]Lennart B. Ackermans - 2024 - Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 16 (2):280–286.
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  21. Definition and Dispute: A Defence of Temporal Externalism.Derek Ball - 2024 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Many of our deepest disagreements turn on matters of definition. Philosophers discuss the definitions of knowledge, art, truth, and freedom, and social and political questions about personhood, health and disease, marriage and gender are also commonly thought of as turning in part on definitions. This book contributes to our understanding of how we engage with questions and disagreements of this kind. It argues that disputes about matters of definition are not just about the meanings of words or our concepts, and (...)
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  22. Procreative Justice Reconceived: Shifting the Moral Gaze.Emmalon Davis - 2024 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association (First View):1-23.
    This paper reconsiders Tommie Shelby's (2016) analysis of procreation in poor black communities. I identify three conceptual frames within which Shelby situates his analysis—feminization, choice-as-control, and moralization. I argue that these frames should be rejected on conceptual, empirical, and moral grounds. As I show, this framing engenders a flawed understanding of poor black women's procreative lives. I propose an alternative framework for reconceiving the relationship between poverty and procreative justice, one oriented around reproductive flourishing instead of reproductive responsibility. More generally, (...)
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  23. Trans Women, Cis Women, Alien Women, and Robot Women Are Women: They Are All (Simply) Adults Gendered Female.Marcus Arvan - 2023 - Hypatia 38 (2):373-389.
    Alex Byrne contends that women are (simply) adult human females, claiming that this thesis has considerably greater initial appeal than the justified true belief (JTB) theory of knowledge. This paper refutes Byrne’s thesis in the same way the JTB theory of knowledge is widely thought to have been refuted: through simple counterexamples. Lessons are drawn. One lesson is that women need not be human. A second lesson is that biology and physical phenotypes are both irrelevant to whether someone is a (...)
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  24. A RESEARCH ON THE ONTOLOGY OF VIRTUAL ACTIONS (Sanal Eylemlerin Ontolojisi Üzerine Bir Araştırma).Ergün Avcı - 2023 - Journal of Academic Social Science 11 (145):280-293.
    The study of the ontology of virtual actions is essentially an examination of the nature of actions in virtual environments directly. This article first examined traditional research on the subject and then showed that these researches ignored findings about the nature of virtual actions. Previous studies have dealt with virtual action mostly from an ethical, psychological, or legal framework and focused on the individual or social effects of virtual action. In addition, these studies discuss not the virtual action itself, but (...)
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  25. On Drugs.Sam Baron, Sara Linton & Maureen A. O’Malley - 2023 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 48 (6):551-564.
    Despite their centrality to medicine, drugs are not easily defined. We introduce two desiderata for a basic definition of medical drugs. It should: (a) capture everything considered to be a drug in medical contexts and (b) rule out anything that is not considered to be a drug. After canvassing a range of options, we find that no single definition of drugs can satisfy both desiderata. We conclude with three responses to our exploration of the drug concept: maintain a monistic concept, (...)
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  26. Thought Experiments and Conceptual Analysis in Ethics.Kamil Cekiera - 2023 - Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia 18 (1):29-43.
    In recent years a lot of metaphilosophical attention has been paid to the role of thought experiments in philosophical inquiry. According to the popular picture, thought experiments are among the most prominent methods for conceptual analysis. However, it is also often claimed that thought experiments in ethics differ from those that are used in other fields of philosophy as being of a different nature—they are not about the concepts, but rather about the things in the world (what those things exactly (...)
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  27. The Grounds and the Components of Concepts.Jan Claas - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (6):2409-2429.
    In this paper I investigate the idea that in conceptual analysis we are in a substantial way concerned with revealing metaphysical grounds. I argue that a recent proposal fails, according to which we aim to reveal what complex concepts are grounded in. The notion ofcomposition, rather than that ofgrounding, is the best way to understand the intuitive hierarchy of concepts. In an analysis we reveal thecomponentsorpartsof complex concepts and their structure. Finally, I propose an alternative role for grounding in our (...)
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  28. Introduction.Christian Coseru - 2023 - In Reasons and Empty Persons: Mind, Metaphysics, and Morality: Essays in Honor of Mark Siderits. Springer. pp. 1-15.
    Mark Siderits’ confluence approach to philosophy, first sketched in his landmark monograph, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy (2003), is emblematic of what has arguably become the most influential way of engaging historically and culturally distant Buddhist thinkers and texts systematically and constructively. For nearly half a century, and rather fittingly for someone enthralled by Madhyamaka, Siderits has successfully charted a middle ground between the text-based, exegetical approach to Buddhist philosophy still dominant in many parts of Europe and East Asia and (...)
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  29. justifying what ? - two basic types of knowledge claims revisited.Friedrich Wilhelm Grafe - 2023 - Archive.Org.
    ”It is often assumed that knowledge claims must be justified. But what kind of justification is required for knowledge ? . . . ” (*) -/- presupposition: the kind of epistemic justification depends on the type of the knowledge claim and its respective knowledge claim tradeoff ’vague vs. precise’. -/- procedere: in two - almost purely logical - case studies I account for this tradeoff and question in each case what (if any) were its general outcome wrt justification -/- first (...)
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  30. A defence of conceptual analysis as a linguistic endeavour.Jumbly Grindrod - 2023 - Theoria 89 (4):516-534.
    In this paper, I outline and defend a traditional yet controversial view of conceptual analysis, particularly as it is used in epistemology. I will defend the view against a number of objections, all of which focus on the idea that conceptual analysis relies upon linguistic intuitions. Rather than trying to deny this claim, I will seek to vindicate the use of conceptual analysis within epistemology even given its reliance on linguistic intuitions. To do so, I first outline the view of (...)
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  31. Fantasy world of a village of birds and other animals with valuable life lessons.Giang Hoang - 2023 - Sm3D Portal.
    *Editorial Note: This column reprints the Book Review on Amazon with permission from Dr. Giang Hoang, Monash University, Australia. It has been slightly edited for house-style presentation.
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  32. A Strategy for Constructing Multiple Grounded Theories: The Constructivist Approach.Angelina Inesia-Forde - 2023 - Agpe the Royal Gondwana Research Journal of History, Science, Economic, Political and Social Science 4 (6):33-44.
    Grounded theory methodology is perceived as challenging due to its systematic and rigorous process. However, this is because most people do not realize that the strategies used in the grounded theory data analysis process are used by laypeople and professionals regularly, if not daily. This article aims to help others interested in grounded theory with a background in qualitative data analysis feel comfortable engaging in the methodology and constructing multiple theories in the same study. It shares my latest experience incorporating (...)
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  33. A Socratic Essentialist Defense of Non-Verbal Definitional Disputes.Kathrin Koslicki & Olivier Massin - 2023 - Ratio (4):1-15.
    In this paper, we argue that, in order to account for the apparently substantive nature of definitional disputes, a commitment to what we call ‘Socratic essentialism’ is needed. We defend Socratic essentialism against a prominent neo-Carnapian challenge according to which apparently substantive definitional disputes always in some way trace back to disagreements over how expressions belonging to a particular language or concepts belonging to a certain conceptual scheme are properly used. Socratic essentialism, we argue, is not threatened by the possibility (...)
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  34. Kant on Philosophy as Conceptual Analysis.Michael Lewin - 2023 - Con-Textos Kantianos 18:11-20.
    For Kant, philosophical investigations are inherently analytic. The proper method of philosophy is analysis, and the object of analysis are concepts. Hence, Kant’s short description of philosophy as “rational cognition […] from concepts” (KrV, A 837/B 865) can be substituted by “philosophy is conceptual analysis”. The article shows that Kant follows a representationalism about concepts and a combination of intensional and extensional feature semantics. Against the claim that Kant is a proponent of the concept-judgement-inversion, it is argued that concepts are (...)
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  35. Realitäten entfalten: Explikationsverständnisse als Grundlage der Begriffsgestaltung.Cyrill Mamin - 2023 - Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 71 (6):857-888.
    This paper is concerned with the relationship between paradigms of explication and the practice of conceptual engineering. It defends three interrelated claims: First, the predominant functionalist attitude in the present debate on conceptual engineering is due to its roots in Carnapian explication, which identifies the explicandum with a precursor concept. Second, alternative metaphysical paradigms of explication locate the explicandum in a part of a concept-independent reality (‘field explication‘, as I will call it). Third, field explication may be a better paradigm (...)
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  36. Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Analysis?James Miller - 2023 - In Miguel Garcia-Godinez (ed.), Thomasson on Ontology. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 85-108.
    Amie Thomasson’s work provides numerous ways to rethink and improve our approach to metaphysics. This chapter is my attempt to begin to sketch why I still think the easy approach leaves room for substantive metaphysical work, and why I do not think that metaphysics need rely on any ‘epistemically metaphysical’ knowledge. After distinguishing two possible forms of deflationism, I argue that the easy ontologist needs to accept (implicitly or explicitly) that there are worldly constraints on what sorts of entities could (...)
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  37. Cancel Culture: an Essentially Contested Concept?Claudio Novelli - 2023 - Athena - Critical Inquiries in Law, Philosophy and Globalization 1 (2):I-X.
    Cancel culture is a form of societal self-defense that becomes prominent particularly during periods of substantial moral upheaval. It can lead to the polarization of incompatible viewpoints if it is indiscriminately demonized. In this brief editorial letter, I consider framing cancel culture as an essentially contested concept (ECC), according to the theory of Walter B. Gallie, with the aim of establishing a groundwork for a more productive discourse on it. In particular, I propose that intermediate agreements and principles of reasonableness (...)
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  38. Towards a Conceptual Framework for Conspiracy Theory Theories.Niki Pfeifer - 2023 - Social Epistemology 37 (4):510-521.
    I present a conceptual framework for classifying generalist and particularist approaches to conspiracy theories (CTs). Specifically, I exploit a probabilistic version of the hexagon of opposition which allows for systematically visualising the logical relations among basic philosophical positions concerning CTs. The probabilistic interpretation can also account for positions, which make weaker claims about CTs: e.g. instead of claiming ‘every CT is suspicious’ some theorists might prefer to claim ‘most CTs are suspicious’ and then ask about logical consequences of such claims. (...)
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  39. Edenic Idealism.Robert Smithson - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (1):16-33.
    ABSTRACT According to edenic idealism, our ordinary object terms refer to items in the manifest world—the world of primitive objects and properties presented in experience. I motivate edenic idealism as a response to scenarios where it is difficult to match the objects in experience with corresponding items in the external world. I argue that edenic idealism has important semantic advantages over realism: it is the most intuitive view of what we are actually talking about when we use terms for objects.
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  40. The Form in Formal Thought Disorder: A Model of Dyssyntax in Semantic Networking.Farshad Badie & Luis M. Augusto - 2022 - MDPI AI 3:353–370.
    Formal thought disorder (FTD) is a clinical mental condition that is typically diagnosable by the speech productions of patients. However, this has been a vexing condition for the clinical community, as it is not at all easy to determine what “formal” means in the plethora of symptoms exhibited. We present a logic-based model for the syntax–semantics interface in semantic networking that can not only explain, but also diagnose, FTD. Our model is based on description logic (DL), which is well known (...)
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  41. Demarcating Contextualism and Contrastivism.Jon Bebb - 2022 - Philosophy 97 (1):23-49.
    In this paper I argue that there is a significant but often overlooked metaphysical distinction to be made between contextualism and contrastivism. The orthodox view is that contrastivism is merely a form of contextualism. This is a mistake. The contextualist view is incompatible with certain naturalist claims about the metaphysical nature of concepts within whichever domain is being investigated, while the contrastivist view is compatible with these claims. So, choosing one view over the other will involve choosing to affirm or (...)
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  42. The dilemma of analytic philosophy in Chinese.Yuanfan Huang - 2022 - Philosophical Forum 53 (3):175-186.
    Although a sizable number of works on analytic philosophy are published in non-Western languages, the literature continues to be written mainly in Western languages, especially English and German. This article makes a case for discussing analytic philosophy in Chinese and argues that it entails a dilemma: it can fulfill either the audience-service or knowledge-service functions but not both at the same time. This is problematic because a standard original or critical philosophical article should fulfill both functions. Then, to challenge the (...)
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  43. "Men" and "Women" in Everyday English.Edward Jarvis - 2022 - Journal of Controversial Ideas 2 (1).
    What kind of distinction are the words “men” and “women” used to mark in everyday English—one of biological sex, social role, or something else, such as gender identity? Consensus on this question would clarify and thereby improve public discussions about the relative interests of transgender and cisgender people, where the same sentence can seem to some to state an obvious truth but to others a logical or metaphysical impossibility (“Transwomen are women” and “Some men have cervixes” are topical examples). It (...)
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  44. Conceptual Engineering: Begriffe auf dem Prüfstand.Steffen Koch - 2022 - In Niklas Grouls & Laura Martena (eds.), Anspruch und Methode der Philosophie. Stimmen aus der Gegenwart. WBG Academic. pp. 101-130.
    Begriffe sind die Bausteine unserer Gedanken. Wir nutzen sie, um Ordnung in die Vielzahl der uns umgebenden Einzeldinge zu bringen, um Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen, um Überzeugungen, Hoffnungen oder Wünsche zu formen, um uns miteinander zu verständigen. Viele unserer begrifflichen Gebilde unterliegen Korrektheitsbedingungen. Überzeugungen können falsch sein, Theorien ebenso. Doch wie sieht es mit unseren Begriffen selbst aus? Können auch diese in einem bestimmten Sinne falsch oder ungeeignet sein? Sollten wir gar versuchen, unser begriffliches Repertoire aktiv umzugestalten, indem wir z. B. (...)
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  45. Mackie and the Meaning of Moral Terms.Tammo Lossau - 2022 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 10 (1):1-13.
    Moral error theory is comprised of two parts: a denial of the existence of objective values, and a claim about the ways in which we attempt to make reference to such objective values. John Mackie is sometimes presented as endorsing the view that we necessarily presuppose such objective values in our moral language and thought. In a series of recent papers, though, Victor Moberger (2017), Selim Berker (2019), and Michael Ridge (2020) point out that Mackie does not seem to commit (...)
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  46. The Concept of Life's Meaning.Thaddeus Metz - 2022 - In Iddo Landau (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life. Oxford University Press. pp. 27-42.
    I critically discuss views about what at least analytic philosophers have in mind when reflecting on what makes life meaningful. I first demonstrate that there has been a standard view of that, according to which meaningfulness centrally involves the actions of human persons, ones that exhibit a high desirability characteristically present in ‘the good, the true, and the beautiful’ and absent from the cases of Sisyphus or the Experience Machine. Then, I address five challenges to the standard view that have (...)
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  47. Uloga intuicija u epistemologiji.Jelena Mijić - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Belgrade
    Predmet ove disertacije se u najširem smislu može posmatrati kao odgovor na meta-epistemološko pitanje o zadatku epistemologije i načinu na koji bi epistemološki projekat trebalo voditi. U radu prikazujemo i kritički analiziramo debatu savremenih metafilozofa o ulozi, a posledično i prirodi intuicija u savremenoj analitičkoj filozofiji. Osnovni cilj našeg rada je da odbranimo stav da epistemičke intuicije igraju ulogu evidencije u okviru metoda analize pojma znanja. Ovaj stav deo je standardne slike o epistemološkoj metodologiji koja se poslednjih godina dovodi u (...)
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  48. Merely verbal disputes and common ground.James Miller - 2022 - Theoria (1):114-123.
    In this paper I offer a new characterisation of what makes a dispute merely verbal. This new characterisation builds on the framework initially outlined by Jenkins and additionally makes use of Stalnaker's notion of ‘common ground’. I argue that this ‘common ground account’ can better classify disputes as merely verbal, and can better explain cases of playing devil's advocate. (Paper published Open Access).
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  49. For and Against Scientism: Science, Methodology, and the Future of Philosophy.Moti Mizrahi (ed.) - 2022 - Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
    The term scientism is used in several ways. It is used to denote an epistemological thesis according to which science is the source of our knowledge about the world and ourselves. Relatedly, it is used to denote a methodological thesis according to which the methods of science are superior to the methods of non-scientific fields or areas of inquiry, or even used to put forward a metaphysical thesis that what exists is what science says exists. In recent decades, the term (...)
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  50. Astrophotography: Concepts and Flows.Yang Immanuel Pachankis - 2022 - USA: Indie Connecticut.
    What is the concept in art? The materialism limitations of art renders art to the irreducible symbolism Kosuth put in his thesis with One and Three Chairs. The impossibilities of art and the unreachable cause of communication makes the personal public and the public personal. I approached the question with a cosmological consciousness -- a hypothesis I never dreamed of proving, yet proven from the beginning aimlessly and purposelessly. -/- In the book, I attempt to give an overview of how (...)
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