The aim of this paper is to argue that there are categorical properties as well as causal powers, and that the world would not exist as we know it without them. For categorical properties are needed to define the powers—to locate them, and to specify their laws of action. These categorical properties, I shall argue, are not dispositional. For their identities do not depend on what they dispose their bearers to do. They are, as Alexander Bird would say, ’quiddities’. But (...) there is nothing wrong with quiddities. And, in the second half of this paper, I shall defend the thesis that all categorical properties are quiddities. (shrink)

The article tries to show that what is often called 'Moderate Deontology' is incoherent.

What does it mean to understand the world religiously? How is such understanding to be distinguished from scientific understanding? What does it have to do with religious practice, transfiguring love, and spiritual well-being? New Models of Religious Understanding investigates these questions to set a new and exciting agenda for philosophy of religion. Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, the volume cuts across the supposed divide between analytic and continental approaches to the subject and engages the interest of a (...) broad range of philosophical and theological readers. (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium starts with a set of initial judgments about some subject matter and refines that set to arrive at an improved philosophical worldview. However, the method faces two, trenchant objections. The Garbage-In, Garbage-Out Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled reason to rely on some inputs to the method rather than others and putting garbage-in assures you of getting garbage-out. The Circularity Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled, (...) non-circular way of sorting whatever is put into the method. The moves required to avoid both objections are instructive. Reflective equilibrium requires a meta-justification, and we offer one that appeals to the epistemic goods that underwrite a view known as phenomenal conservatism. Reflective equilibrium calls on us to start with what seems most likely to be true and to alter that collection of judgments in the ways that seem most likely to get us to the truth. Proceeding in this way is epistemically defensible and unavoidable. Hence, reflective equilibrium is not just good, it’s phenomenal. (shrink)

I defend contextualist solutions to the sorites paradox (according to which solutions vague terms are indexicals) from a recent objection raised by Jason Stanley. Stanley's argument depends on the claim that indexical expressions always have invariant interpretations in "Verb Phrase" ellipsis. I argue that this claim is false.

Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium starts with a set of initial judgments about some subject matter and refines that set to arrive at an improved philosophical worldview. However, the method faces two, trenchant objections. The Garbage-In, Garbage-Out Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled reason to rely on some inputs to the method rather than others and putting garbage-in assures you of getting garbage-out. The Circularity Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled, (...) non-circular way of sorting whatever is put into the method. The moves required to avoid both objections are instructive. Reflective equilibrium requires a meta-justification, and we offer one that appeals to the epistemic goods that underwrite a view known as phenomenal conservatism. Reflective equilibrium calls on us to start with what seems most likely to be true and to alter that collection of judgments in the ways that seem most likely to get us to the truth. Proceeding in this way is epistemically defensible and unavoidable. Hence, reflective equilibrium is not just good, it’s phenomenal. (shrink)

Social contract thought has always contained multiple and mutually conflicting lines of argument; the minimalist contractarianism so influential today represents the weaker of two main constellations of claims. I make the case for a Kantian contract theory that emphasizes the bedrock principle of consent of the governed instead of the mere heuristic device of the exit from the state of nature. Such a shift in emphasis resolves two classic difficulties: tradi- tional contract theory’s ahistorical presumption of a pre-political settlement, and (...) its impossibly high demands on citizens seeking to practice self-rule. Kant’s solutions to these problems of property rights and citizenship are found in his political works, rather than the ethical works through which Kant’s political theory is usually interpreted. (shrink)

"The focus of any genuinely new piece of criticism or interpretation must be on the creative act of finding the new, but deconstruction puts the matter the other way around: its emphasis is on debunking the old. But aside from the fact that this program is inherently uninteresting, it is, in fact, not at all clear that it is possible.... [T]he naïvetê of the crowd is deconstruction's very starting point, and its subsequent move is as much an emotional as an (...) intellectual leap to a position that feels different as much in the one way as the other...." --From the book. (shrink)

If one believes, as Hume did, that all events are loose and separate, then the problem of induction is probably insoluble. Anything could happen. But if one thinks, as scientific essentialists do, that the laws of nature are immanent in the world, and depend on the essential natures of things, then there are strong constraints on what could possibly happen. Given these constraints, the problem of induction may be soluble. For these constraints greatly strengthen the case for conceptual and theoretical (...) conservatism, and rule out Goodmanesque inferences based on alternative descriptions of the world. This may not, in itself, solve the problem, but it significantly changes its nature. (shrink)

Bodies and Other Objects is written for students, scholars and anyone with an interest in embodied cognition - the claim that the human mind cannot be understood without regard for the actions and capacities of the body. The impulse to write this book was a dissatisfaction with the inconsistent, and often shallow, use of the term 'embodied cognition'. This text attempts to reframe cognitive science with a unified theory of embodied cognition in which sensorimotor elements provide the basis for cognition, (...) including symbolic exchanges that arise within a society of agents. It draws ideas and evidence from experimental psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and anthropology in reaching the conclusion that human cognition is best understood as the means by which exchanges within a constantly evolving network of skilful bodies and objects are regulated so as to further human interests. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to come to grips with problems of the epistemological basis of ethical beliefs by building on criticisms of approaches to this problem which have been attempted in the recent past. Because of the extensive discussions and criticism of these various alternatives, the book is useful to all who are concerned with the epistemology of ethics.

This searching examination of the life and philosophy of the twentieth-century Indian intellectual Jarava Lal Mehta details, among other things, his engagement with the oeuvres of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jacques Derrida. It shows how Mehta’s sense of cross-cultural philosophy and religious thought were affected by these engagements, and maps the two key contributions Mehta made to the sum of human ideas. First, Mehta outlined what the author dubs a ‘postcolonial hermeneutics’ that uses the ‘ethnotrope’ of the pilgrim to (...) challenge the philosophical hermeneutic emphasis on supplementation and augmentation. For Mehta, the hermeneutic encounter ruptures, rather than supplements, the self. Secondly, Mehta extended this concept of hermeneutics to interrogate the Hindu tradition, arriving at the concept of the ‘negative messianic’. In contrast to Derrida's emphasis on the 'one to come', Mehta shows how the Hindu bhakti model represents the very opposite, that is, the 'withdrawn other,' identifying thereby the ethical pitfalls of deconstructivism's emphasis on the messianic tradition. This is the only full-length study in English of this high-profile Hindu philosopher. (shrink)

La autoetnografía es un enfoque de investigación y escritura que busca describir y analizar sistemáticamente la experiencia personal con el fin de comprender la experiencia cultural. Esta aproximación desafía las formas canónicas de hacer investigación y de representar a los otros, a la vez que considera a la investigación como un acto político, socialmente justo y socialmente consciente. Para hacer y escribir autoetnografía, el investigador aplica los principios de la autobiografía y de la etnografía. Así, como método, la autoetnografía es, (...) a la vez, proceso y producto. (shrink)

In this editorial, we introduce the main themes discussed in this special issue and advocate for a more integrative history of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries through a reconsideration of the language of 'ancient' and 'modern'. We discuss how the essays collected in this special issue seek to go beyond the recurring metaphor of quarrel and competition between antiquity and modernity, and the related representations of key individuals and groups as ‘pioneers’ of modern approaches, in order to move towards a more (...) complex relationship of crossfertilization of 'ancient' and 'modern' knowledges. Each essay maintains that an appreciation of knowledge making as a fully embodied practice is vital for understanding the complex and sometimes contradictory role played by classical authors in the knowledge making of later periods. In different ways, all the essays demonstrate how ancient authors not only provided scholars in later ages (working in a range of disciplines) with a rich supply of evidence for their own works; more interestingly, perhaps, much of what has been viewed as innovation involved scholars drawing on ancient authors and techniques in new ways. (shrink)