Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052-1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. Andrew Quintman traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangnyön Heruka, or the "Madman of Western Tibet." Quintman imagines these works as (...) a kind of physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics. (shrink)

Vagueness is the study of concepts that admit borderline cases. The epistemology of vagueness concerns attitudes we should have towards propositions we know to be borderline. On this basis Andrew Bacon develops a new theory of vagueness in which vagueness is fundamentally a property of propositions, explicated in terms of its role in thought.

The fallacy fallacy is either the misdiagnosis of fallacy or the supposition that the conclusion of a fallacy must be a falsehood. This paper explores the relevance of these and related errors of reasoning for the appraisal of arguments, especially within virtue theories of argumentation. In particular, the fallacy fallacy exemplifies the Owl of Minerva problem, whereby tools devised to understand a norm make possible new ways of violating the norm. Fallacies are such tools and so are vices. Hence a (...) similar problem arises with argumentative vices. Fortunately, both instances of the problem have a common remedy. (shrink)

Clinicians have good moral and professional reasons to contribute to pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs). We argue that clinicians have a defeasible duty to participate in this research that takes place in usual care settings and does not involve substantive deviation from their ordinary care practices. However, a variety of countervailing reasons may excuse clinicians from this duty in particular cases. Yet because there is a moral default in favor of participating, clinicians who wish to opt out of this research must (...) justify their refusal. Reasons to refuse include that the trial is badly designed in some way, that the trial activities will violate the clinician’s conscience, or that the trial will impose excessive burdens on the clinician. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Miranda Fricker has characterized epistemic injustice as “a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower” (2007, Epistemic injustice: Power & the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 20). Gaslighting, where one agent seeks to gain control over another by undermining the other’s conception of herself as an independent locus of judgment and deliberation, would thus seem to be a paradigm example. Yet, in the most thorough analysis of gaslighting to date (...) (Abramson, K. 2014. “Turning up the lights on gaslighting.” Philosophical Perspectives 28, Ethics: 1–30), the idea that gaslighting has crucial epistemic dimensions is rather roundly rejected on grounds that gaslighting works by means of a strategy of assertion and manipulation that is not properly understood in epistemic terms. I argue that Abramson’s focus on the gaslighter and on the moral wrongness of his actions leads her to downplay ways in which gaslighters nevertheless deploy genuinely epistemic strategies, and to devote less attention to the standpoint and reasoning processes of the victim, for whom the experience of gaslighting has substantial and essential epistemic features. Taking these features into account reveals that all gaslighting has epistemic dimensions and helps to clarify what resistance to gaslighting might look like. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an “infodemic” of misinformation and conspiracy theory. This article points to three explanatory factors: the challenge of forming accurate beliefs when overwhelmed with information, an implausibly individualistic conception of epistemic virtue, and an adversarial information environment that suborns epistemic dependence. Normally we cope with the problems of informational excess by relying on other people, including sociotechnical systems that mediate testimony and evidence. But when we attempt to engage in epistemic “superheroics” - withholding trust (...) from others and trying to figure it all out for ourselves – these can malfunction in ways that make us vulnerable to forming irrational beliefs. Some epistemic systems are prone to coalescing audiences around false conspiracy theories. This analysis affords a new perspective on philosophical efforts to understand conspiracy theories and other epistemic projects prone to collective irrationality. (shrink)

Disagreements that resist rational resolution, often termed “deep disagreements”, have been the focus of much work in epistemology and informal logic. In this paper, I argue that they also deserve the attention of philosophers of mathematics. I link the question of whether there can be deep disagreements in mathematics to a more familiar debate over whether there can be revolutions in mathematics. I propose an affirmative answer to both questions, using the controversy over Shinichi Mochizuki’s work on the abc conjecture (...) as a potential example of both phenomena. I conclude by investigating the prospects for the resolution of mathematical deep disagreements in virtue-theoretic approaches to informal logic and mathematical practice. (shrink)

David Lewis—famously—never tasted vegemite. Did he have any knowledge of what it's like to taste vegemite? Most say 'no'; I say 'yes'. I argue that knowledge of what it’s like varies along a spectrum from more exact to more approximate, and that phenomenal concepts vary along a spectrum in how precisely they characterize what it’s like to undergo their target experiences. This degreed picture contrasts with the standard all-or-nothing picture, where phenomenal concepts and phenomenal knowledge lack any such degreed structure. (...) I motivate the degreed picture by appeal to (1) limits in epistemic abilities such as recognition, imagination, and inference, and (2) the semantics of ‘knows what it’s like’ expressions. I argue that approximate phenomenal knowledge cannot be explained merely via determinable or vague phenomenal concepts. I develop a framework for systematizing approximate knowledge of phenomenal character. And I explain how my view challenges some standard assumptions about the acquisition conditions, requirements for mastery, and referential mechanisms of phenomenal concepts. (shrink)

The second edition of Andrew Skinner's essays has been updated to take account of his latest thinking on Adam Smith's system of social and moral science and his experience of teaching Smith to a student audience. The material from the first edition has been extensively rewritten in the light of recent scholarship, and four new essays have been included. Each essay can be read as a self-contained unit, supported by a full bibliography and notes; the book as a whole (...) expounds a single coherent argument which demonstrates how Smith's works are inter-related. (shrink)

In this paper I will introduce a new compatibilist account of free action: indirect conscious control compatibilism, or just indirect compatibilism for short. On this account, actions are free either when they are caused by compatibilist‐friendly conscious psychological processes, or else by sub‐personal level processes influenced in particular ways by compatibilist‐friendly conscious psychological processes. This view is motivated by a problem faced by a certain family of compatibilist views, which I call conscious control views. These views hold that we act (...) freely when we act in a way that is caused by certain conscious psychological processes. One problem for such views is that current neuroscience suggests that most of our actions are not caused by such processes. Instead, many of the actions we typically suppose are free are caused by sub‐personal level processes and hence would count as not free according to contemporary conscious control views. I argue, contra these views, that many actions caused by these sub‐personal level processes are indirectly free. Further, most of the actions we ordinarily judge to be free are free in this indirect manner. (shrink)

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non-semantic, non-intentional, and non-phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases without giving (...) up their core commitments. (shrink)

We suggest that there is confusion between why consciousness developed and what additional functions, through continued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent past events, it seems like a terrible system—prone to forgetting and false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory developed to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good system. We (...) argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accomplish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound implications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in general. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness. Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contributes to this conscious memory system. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the relationship of sport to art. I do not intend to argue that sport is one of the arts. I will rather argue that sport and art have a commonality, in that both are alienated philosophy. This is to propose – in an argument that has its roots in Hegel's aesthetics – that sport and art may both be interpreted as a way of reflecting upon metaphysical and normative issues, albeit in media that are alien (...) to philosophy's conceptual language. The medium of art is the manipulation of sensuous materials, such as stone, paint, or sound. The medium of sport is the pursuit of a physical challenge, at which the athlete may fail. I will develop this argument by borrowing from the philosophy of art of Arthur C. Danto. In particular, I will suggest that a parallel to his concept of ‘artworld’ can be seen in a ‘sportworld’. As the artworld is an ‘atmosphere of theory’ and a ‘knowledge of history’ through which an event is interpreted and thereby constituted as art, so a sportworld is the atmosphere of theory through which an event is constituted as sport. I will argue that much of the existing discussion of the relationship between sport and art is grounded in an ill-conceived aesthetics. In order to be appreciated and appropriately interpreted, sport must be understood within a modernist aesthetics and hermeneutics. As such, the core issue of an aesthetics of sport is not that of beauty, but rather of the meaning of the sport, and what I shall call the capacity of sport to ‘speak as a world’ – to bring to consciousness through play the taken-for-granted cultural conditions through which our social lives are constituted, and within which metaphysical and normative problems are articulated. I will propose that the hermeneutics of music provides a useful model for the interpretation of sport. (shrink)

This book brings together an international group of scholars to discuss the ramifications of Heidegger's Black Notebooks for philosophy and the humanities. In contrast to both those who seek to exonerate Heidegger and those who simply condemn him, they urge careful reading and rereading of his work to turn Heideggerian thought against itself.

Andrew Cooper presents the first systematic study of Kant's account of natural history. Cooper contends that Kant made a decisive contribution to one of the most explosive and understudied revolutions in the history of science: the addition of time to the frame in which explanations are required, sought, and justified in natural science. Through addressing a wide range of Kant's works, Cooper challenges the claim that Kant's theory of science denies a developmental conception of nature and argues instead that (...) it establishes a method by which natural historians can genuinely dispute historical claims and potentially come to consensus. This method, Cooper argues, can be used to expose serious flaws in Kant's own historical reasoning, including the formation and defence of his racist views. The book will be valuable to philosophers seeking to discern both the power and limitations of Kant's theory of science, and to historians of science working on the fractured landscape of eighteenth-century Newtonianism. (shrink)

There are two kinds of time-bias: near-bias and future-bias. While philosophers typically hold that near-bias is rationally impermissible, many hold that future-bias is rationally permissible. Call this normative hybridism. According to arbitrariness objections, certain patterns of preference are rationally impermissible because they are arbitrary. While arbitrariness objections have been levelled against both near-bias and future-bias, the kind of arbitrariness in question has been different. In this paper we investigate whether there are forms of arbitrariness that are common to both kinds (...) of preferences, and hence whether there are versions of the arbitrariness objection that are objections both to near-bias and future-bias. If there are, then this might go some way towards undermining normative hybridism and to defending a thorough-going time-neutralism. (shrink)

The debate has continued in these terms to the present day. In Like-Minded, Andrew Sneddon argues that "reason" and "passion" do not satisfactorily capture all the important options for explaining the psychological foundations of morality.

This paper provides a new rationale for equating brain death with the death of the human organism, in light of well-known criticisms made by Alan D Shewmon, Franklin Miller and Robert Truog and a number of other writers. We claim that these criticisms can be answered, but only if we accept that we have slightly redefined the concept of death when equating brain death with death simpliciter. Accordingly, much of the paper defends the legitimacy of redefining death against objections, before (...) turning to the specific task of defending a new rationale for equating brain death with death as slightly redefined. (shrink)

An increasing amount of contemporary philosophy of mathematics posits, and theorizes in terms of special kinds of mathematical modality. The goal of this paper is to bring recent work on higher-order metaphysics to bear on the investigation of these modalities. The main focus of the paper will be views that posit mathematical contingency or indeterminacy about statements that concern the `width' of the set theoretic universe, such as Cantor's continuum hypothesis. Within a higher-order framework I show that contingency about the (...) width of the set-theoretic universe refutes two orthodoxies concerning the structure of modal reality: the view that the broadest necessity has a logic of S5, and the "Leibniz biconditionals" stating that what is possible, in the broadest sense of possible, is what is true in some possible world. Nonetheless, I suggest that the underlying picture of modal set-theory is coherent and has attractions. (shrink)

I offer a new deductive formulation of the Moral Argument for the existence of God which shows how one might argue for the conclusion that, if one affirms moral realism (traditionally understood as a metaethical view which acknowledges the existence of objective moral truths), one should affirm theism. The new formulation shows that these objective moral truths are either brute facts, or they are metaphysically grounded in an impersonal entity, a non-divine personal entity, or a divine personal entity i.e., God. (...) I illustrate how the alternatives to God can in principle be excluded based on the essential characteristics of those alternative hypotheses and of certain objective moral truths. I demonstrate that my deductive formulation is better than other formulations, and that it is helpful for future work on the Moral Argument. (shrink)

Drawing on work in International Relations, International Law and Global Governance, this book aims to provide a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the ...

The Yogācāra school of logic developed a theory of sign-inferences that has many features of the Stoic and Epicurean logical teachings with small inclusions of Aristotelian ideas. In the Nyāyabindu of Dharmakīrti, we can find the following schemes of formal reasoning: modus Barbara (Figure I) and modus Camenes (Figure IV) of the Aristotelian syllogistic, and all the inference rules of the Stoic logic: modus ponens, modus tollens, modus ponendo tollens, modus tollendo ponens I, modus tollendo ponens II. The three premises (...) of Yogācāra inference (if p, then q; there is an example that p and q occur together; p; then q) corresponds to the Epicurean doctrine of three premises with a necessary exemplification. Thus, the paper is a comparative study of Greek and Buddhist theory of sign-inferences, showing a deep similarity between them. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn his account of public reason Rawls assumes that some facts ought to be treated as ‘fixed’, or beyond reasonable disagreement. These include, for him, facts upon which there is a scientif...

The greater good -- The intellectual and the existential -- The problem of evil and the problem of the slightest toothache -- The God of love -- Is God an agent? -- The real God.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 55-59 [Access article in PDF] One Stage Is Not Enough Andrew W. Young and Karel W. de Pauw Keywords: delusions, Cotard delusion, Capgras delusion, cognitive neuropsychiatry. WE WELCOME THE OPPORTUNITY to offer our reflections on Philip Gerrans' interesting paper. Our opinion is that on fundamental issues we agree quite a bit—but there are clear differences when it comes to details.The most basic (...) issue concerns the nature of the enterprise. Like Gerrans, we think that it is possible to create testable accounts of the formation and maintenance of what would otherwise seem bizarre and inexplicable delusions, and that these accounts should be grounded in theoretical models of factors that underpin our everyday perception and reasoning. This general approach certainly forms part of what has been called cognitive neuropsychiatry. However, we disagree with Gerrans in that we see cognitive neuropsychiatry as an attempt to draw on the underlying logic of cognitive neuropsychology, rather than (as Gerrans implies) its current methods. The underlying logic of cognitive neuropsychological approaches has been to try to understand the effects of brain injury in terms of disruption of different components of theoretical models of normal abilities. In this approach, a model of normal performance is tested by its ability to account for the effects of brain injury. Where the model of normal performance also provides a convincing account of brain injury it is retained, and when it fails to account for effects of brain injury, it is revised or abandoned. In cognitive neuropsychiatry, the key theoretical move has been to argue that an adequate model of normal performance should be able to account for any disordered pattern (Ellis and Young 1990). The same logic of seeking to explain disordered performance by reference to models of normal function is then attempted, but for disorders that would usually fall within the province of psychiatry.In our opinion, however, cognitive neuropsychiatry will not simply involve importing the methods of cognitive neuropsychology into the new domain; they will need to be developed and adapted to fit the new agenda (Young 2000).In cognitive neuropsychology, progress has often come from the careful investigation of people with stable, selective deficits of fundamental cognitive functions involved in sensory analysis, memory, and verbal or motor output. In contrast, delusional beliefs can be relatively unstable; often they are only held for a few weeks or even days. When the delusions change, patients may modify or abandon them as suddenly as they seemed to form them, or they may give them up much more slowly and reluctantly. At the very least, this creates difficulties in the timing of investigations and in interpreting the relation of deficits and symptoms, which may be recorded on separate dates. These methodological problems [End Page 55] are exacerbated by the fact that deficits linked to complex abnormal experiences such as delusions may be multifaceted and diffuse, even when the delusions themselves have a specific content or theme. Such complications do not invalidate cognitive neuropsychiatry, but they do mean it will need to develop its own methods for dealing with them and making appropriate inferences.One of the key complexities that has surfaced already involves the idea that delusional beliefs might reflect the interaction of two or more contributory factors. Gerrans discusses a particular variant of this idea, which had been suggested by Young and Leafhead (1996) as an approach to understanding the Cotard delusion: The Cotard delusion represents a depressed person's attempt to account for abnormal perceptual experiences. It follows that the delusion is based on an unfortunate interaction between different contributory factors. One set of factors creates the abnormal perceptual experiences, which are characterised by lack of emotional responses and feelings of emptiness, depersonalisation and derealisation. The other factors result in a misinterpretation of these perceptual changes, in which the patients' depressed moods lead them correctly to attribute the changes to themselves, but to exaggerate their consequences. (Young and Leafhead, 1996, 166) Gerrans describes this as a two-stage account, but argues that a one-stage account based only on abnormal perceptual... (shrink)

Andrew Davis; Ability and Learning, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 45–55, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1988.t.

My last editorial was written before the world became aware of the covid-19 pandemic, and the impact that it would have on our lives. (Editorials are written some three months before publication, l...

Michel Foucault was at times critical of the Marxist tradition, and at other times more sympathetic. After his dismissal of Marx in The Order of Things , he conceded the existence of a more compelling, non-humanist version of this discourse. Louis Althusser’s innovations are crucial for the existence of this second Marxism. While consideration of the relation between Foucault and Althusser varies between those who emphasize relations between State and capital, and conversely those who inscribe Marxist considerations into a micro-political (...) account, the distinction between the two thinkers takes place earlier in the development of their respective outlooks. Foucault initially emphasized Marxism as an anthropological eschatology; he revises this argument, commending the possibility of an epistemological mutation of history inherent in Marx’s thought. I locate crucial distinctions between Foucault and Althusser in the early work of the 1960s as inflecting relations in the seemingly more proximate work of the 1970s. In this approach, we can better examine Foucault’s non-Marxist contentions in order to consider the reciprocal distinctions and contributions between these two forms of anti-humanism, providing the necessary groundwork for debates regarding the nature of subjectivity, the State, and revolution. (shrink)

It is a truism that Nietzsche is a critic of morality. But what does Nietzsche have against this institution of morality? I consider the prominent interpretation of Brian Leiter’s that Nietzsche takes morality to task for its bad effects in hampering the flourishing of great individuals and cultures. There are good reasons, I argue, to resist this reading as the best, and certainly as the exclusive, account of the grounds for Nietzsche’s criticism of morality. I go on to propose an (...) alternative construal that sees Nietzsche as objecting to the expressive character of moral values themselves . My project, in the first instance, is the exegetical one of understanding what is going on in Nietzsche’s texts when he criticizes morality. Nonetheless, there are important philosophical lessons to be learned here from Nietzsche’s work, if not necessarily about the actual failings of morality itself, the.. (shrink)

One of the key achievements of critical realism has been to expose the modernist myth of universal reason, which holds that authentic knowledge claims must be objectively ‘pure’, uncontaminated by the subjectivity of local place, specific time and particular culture. Wright aims to address the lack of any substantial and sustained engagement between critical realism and theological critical realism with particular regard to: (a) the distinctive ontological claims of Christianity; (b) their epistemic warrant and intellectual legitimacy; and (c) scrutiny of (...) the primary source of the ontological claims of Christianity, namely the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, it functions as a prolegomena to a much needed wider debate, guided by the under-labouring services of critical realism, between Christianity and various other religious and secular worldviews. This important new text will help stimulate a debate that has yet to get out of first gear. This book will appeal to academics, graduate and post-graduate students especially, but also Christian clergy, ministers and informed laity, and members of the general public concerned with the nature of religion and its place in contemporary society. (shrink)

A number of egalitarians have reached the conclusion that inequalities are just provided that they are the outcome of holding people appropriately responsible for their choices, and that only inequalities which can be traced back to the circumstances in which people happen to find themselves are objectionable. But this form of egalitarianism needs to be supplemented with an account of when it is appropriate to hold people responsible for their choices that is properly sensitive to the profound effects of socialisation. (...) Two of the most promising attempts to develop such an account-those of Ronald Dworkin and John Roemer-are found to be problematic in the light of a range of cases where gender socialisation influences values and aspirations. (shrink)

Yarkoni recommends that psychology researchers should take care to align their statistical models to the verbal theories they are studying and testing. This principle applies not just to qualitative theories in psychology but also to more quantitative sciences: there, too, mismatch between open-ended theories and specific statistical models have led to confusion.

Andrew Davis; Ability and Learning, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 45–55, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1988.t.

Many skeptics throughout the centuries have accused the New Testament characterization of the incarnation as being incoherent. The reason is that it appears impossible that any person can exemplify human properties such as ignorance, fatigability, and spatial limitation, as the New Testament testifies of Jesus, while possessing divine properties such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence at the same time. This paper proposes a possible model which asserts that at the incarnation, the Logo's mind was divided into conscious and preconscious, and (...) the divine properties were transferred from the conscious into the preconscious, which became part A of Jesus' preconscious. Simultaneously, the conscious acquired newly created human properties, while a human preconscious which would become part B of Jesus' preconscious and a human body were also created. It is demonstrated that this model does not suffer from the problems that beset other models such as Apollinarianism, two-consciousness Christology, and ontological Kenoticism, and that based on this model the full attributes of divinity and humanity of Jesus as testified by the Scriptures could have simultaneously coexisted in one person without contradiction. (shrink)