Procédant à une analyse comparative du traitement qu’Aristote réserve à la philia dans les livres VIII et IX de l’ Éthique à Nicomaque et dans le livre VII de l’ Éthique à Eudème, je soutiens dans cet article qu’à bien des égards, l’approche « eudémienne » se révèle plus claire et cohérente. Plusieurs sujets sur lesquels les deux Éthiques offrent des traitements différents sont successivement examinés (par exemple, la méthode endoxique, la théorie du « focal meaning », la question (...) de l’amour de soi, celle de l’auto-suffisance). Je suggère pour finir que la façon la plus simple de rendre compte de ces différences est de faire l’hypothèse que le traitement de l’amitié dans l’ Éthique à Nicomaque précède celui de l’ Éthique à Eudème. (shrink)

First published in 1973, Sir Anthony Kenny’s classic introduction to Wittgenstein was widely praised for offering a lucid and historically informed account of the philosopher’s core concerns. Kenny's study is also remarkable for demonstrating the continuity between Wittgenstein’s early and late writings. Focusing on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind and language, Kenny closely examines the works of the middle years. He exposes apparent conflicts and then goes on to reconcile them, providing a persuasive argument for the unity of (...) Wittgenstein’s thought. This revised edition includes an extensive new introduction in which Kenny outlines developments in Wittgenstein scholarship since the book was first published and assesses Wittgenstein’s influence in the latter part of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Written by Anthony Kenny, a leading figure in contemporary philosophy, this volume guides the reader through a concise and accessible explanation and assessment of Frege's radical and lasting contributions to our understanding of language, meaning, and the foundations of arithmetic.

Sir Anthony Kenny's engaging new multi-volume history of Western philosophy now advances into the modern era. The Rise of Modern Philosophy captures the fascinating story of the emergence, from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, of the great ideas and intellectual systems that shaped modern thought. Kenny introduces us to some of the world's most original and influential thinkers and helps us gain an understanding of their famous works. The great minds we meet include Rene Descartes, (...) traditionally seen as the founder of modern philosophy; the great British philosophers Hobbes, Locke, and Hume; continental thinkers such as Spinoza, Liebniz, and Hegel; and the towering figure of Immanuel Kant, who perhaps more than any other made philosophy what it is today. Kenny first tells the story of modern philosophy chronologically: his lively, accessible narrative brings the philosophers to life and fills in the historical and intellectual background to their work. It is ideal as the first thing to read for someone new to this wonderfully creative period. Kenny then backtracks to look closely at each of the main areas of philosophical exploration in this period: knowledge and understanding; the nature of the physical universe; metaphysics (the most fundamental questions there are about existence); mind and soul; the nature and content of morality; political philosophy; and God. The book also features many intriguing and beautiful illustrations which evoke the human and social side of philosophy. Anyone who is interested in the evolution of modern thought will find this a book a treasure. (shrink)

According to proper functionalist theories of warrant, a belief is warranted only if it is formed by cognitive faculties that are properly functioning according to a good, truth-aimed design plan, one that is often thought to be specified either by intentional design or by natural selection. A formidable challenge to proper functionalist theories is the Swampman objection, according to which there are scenarios involving creatures who have warranted beliefs but whose cognitive faculties are not properly functioning, or are poorly designed, (...) or are not aimed at truth. In this paper, we draw lessons from cognitive science in order to develop a novel argument for the conclusion that the Swampman objection fails against proper functionalist theories of warrant. Our argument not only shows that the underlying, central intuition motivating Swampman-like scenarios is false but also motivates proper function as a necessary condition for warrant, thereby lending support to the claim that any theory of knowledge that lacks a proper function requirement is false. (shrink)

We introduce a family of rules for adjusting one's credences in response to learning the credences of others. These rules have a number of desirable features. 1. They yield the posterior credences that would result from updating by standard Bayesian conditionalization on one's peers' reported credences if one's likelihood function takes a particular simple form. 2. In the simplest form, they are symmetric among the agents in the group. 3. They map neatly onto the familiar Condorcet voting results. 4. They (...) preserve shared agreement about independence in a wide range of cases. 5. They commute with conditionalization and with multiple peer updates. Importantly, these rules have a surprising property that we call synergy - peer testimony of credences can provide mutually supporting evidence raising an individual's credence higher than any peer's initial prior report. At first, this may seem to be a strike against them. We argue, however, that synergy is actually a desirable feature and the failure of other updating rules to yield synergy is a strike against them. (shrink)

Mental or computer simulation of cause and effect of certain behaviors is a recognized approach to changing one’s attitude or triggering an action. Meanwhile, psychology research results suggest that frequency of simulation may affect the corresponding persuasiveness. This paper argues that with always-on sensing and data-driven visualization technologies, interactive tangible systems can be designed to simulate hypothetical outcomes of real-life behaviors in everyday contexts, which repeatedly stimulate users’ imagination of behavioral consequences and thereby behavioral intentions. To investigate the effect, a (...) working prototype of Incingarette, including a smart ashtray in connection with a digital picture frame, was built. When the ashtray is used for smoking, the digital picture is incrementally covered by virtual dust. Field trials involved participants in five daily smoking sessions. Post-session surveys show increasingly stronger perceived causality between smoking and the simulated outcomes, increasingly more vivid mental imagery of consequences, and increasingly intense intention to reduce smoking. Results suggest that repeatedly presenting simulated outcomes cognitively linked to real-life behaviors can increase behavioral intentions. (shrink)

One of the twentieth-century's most exciting and challenging intellectuals, Gilles Deleuze's writings covered literature, art, psychoanalysis, philosophy, genetics, film and social theory. This book not only introduces Deleuze's ideas, it also demonstrates the ways in which his work can provide new readings of literary texts. This guide goes on to cover his work in various fields, his theory of literature and his overarching project of a new concept of becoming.

Automated Influence is the use of Artificial Intelligence to collect, integrate, and analyse people’s data in order to deliver targeted interventions that shape their behaviour. We consider three central objections against Automated Influence, focusing on privacy, exploitation, and manipulation, showing in each case how a structural version of that objection has more purchase than its interactional counterpart. By rejecting the interactional focus of “AI Ethics” in favour of a more structural, political philosophy of AI, we show that the real problem (...) with Automated Influence is the crisis of legitimacy that it precipitates. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that "degree of belief" or "credence" is a more fundamental state grounding belief. Many other philosophers have been skeptical about the notion of "degree of belief", and take belief to be the only meaningful notion in the vicinity. This paper shows that one can take belief to be fundamental, and ground a notion of "degree of belief" in the patterns of belief, assuming that an agent has a collection of beliefs that isn't dominated by some other (...) collection in terms of the overall balance of truth and falsity that it could contain. (shrink)

This popular selection of Wittgenstein’s key writings has now been updated to include new material relevant to recent debates about the philosopher. Follows the evolution of Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus through to the Philosophical Investigations. Excerpts are arranged by topic and introduce readers to all the central concerns of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Now includes a new chapter on ‘Sense, Nonsense and Philosophy’ incorporating material relevant to recent debates about Wittgenstein.

Bill D'Alessandro talks to Kenny Easwaran about fractal music, Zoom conferences, being a good referee, teaching in math and philosophy, the rationalist community and its relationship to academia, decision-theoretic pluralism, and the city of Manhattan, Kansas.

A familiar part of debates about supererogatory actions concerns the role that cost should play. Two camps have emerged: one claiming that extreme cost is a necessary condition for when an action is supererogatory, while the other denies that it should be part of our definition of supererogation. In this paper, I propose an alternative position. I argue that it is comparative cost that is central to the supererogatory and that it is needed to explain a feature that all accounts (...) agree is central to the very notion of supererogation: optionality. Perhaps because of this agreement on its importance, few attempts have been made to clarify and explain the notion of optionality. I argue that giving an account of the optionality of supererogatory requires drawing a line between doing the bare minimum permissible and going beyond the bare minimum and that this line ought to be drawn based on comparative cost of alternative permissible acts. Having outlined my account and motivated it, I discuss and reject two concerns that might be raised: firstly, that it is extreme cost, not comparative cost, that matters and, secondly, that in fact no cost is needed for an act to be supererogatory. (shrink)

Cross-situational learning is a mechanism for learning the meaning of words across multiple exposures, despite exposure-by-exposure uncertainty as to the word's true meaning. We present experimental evidence showing that humans learn words effectively using cross-situational learning, even at high levels of referential uncertainty. Both overall success rates and the time taken to learn words are affected by the degree of referential uncertainty, with greater referential uncertainty leading to less reliable, slower learning. Words are also learned less successfully and more slowly (...) if they are presented interleaved with occurrences of other words, although this effect is relatively weak. We present additional analyses of participants’ trial-by-trial behavior showing that participants make use of various cross-situational learning strategies, depending on the difficulty of the word-learning task. When referential uncertainty is low, participants generally apply a rigorous eliminative approach to cross-situational learning. When referential uncertainty is high, or exposures to different words are interleaved, participants apply a frequentist approximation to this eliminative approach. We further suggest that these two ways of exploiting cross-situational information reside on a continuum of learning strategies, underpinned by a single simple associative learning mechanism. (shrink)

Many philosophers have become worried about the use of standard real numbers for the probability function that represents an agent's credences. They point out that real numbers can't capture the distinction between certain extremely unlikely events and genuinely impossible ones—they are both represented by credence 0, which violates a principle known as “regularity.” Following Skyrms 1980 and Lewis 1980, they recommend that we should instead use a much richer set of numbers, called the “hyperreals.” This essay argues that this popular (...) view is the result of two mistakes. The first mistake, which this essay calls the “numerical fallacy,” is to assume that a distinction that isn't represented by different numbers isn't represented at all in a mathematical representation. In this case, the essay claims that although the real numbers do not make all relevant distinctions, the full mathematical structure of a probability function does. The second mistake is that the hyperreals make too many distinctions. They have a much more complex structure than credences in ordinary propositions can have, so they make distinctions that don't exist among credences. While they might be useful for generating certain mathematical models, they will not appear in a faithful mathematical representation of credences of ordinary propositions. (shrink)

Anthony Kenny on his personal struggles with belief.

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Sir Anthony Kenny has encountered some of the most notable and influential leaders of the post-war world. In these brilliantly vivid vignettes Kenny offers telling and often unexpected insights into the achievements, flaws and foibles of sixty public figures—past and present—each of whom has contributed in decisive ways to British political, spiritual, and cultural heritage.

Expected accuracy arguments have been used by several authors (Leitgeb and Pettigrew, and Greaves and Wallace) to support the diachronic principle of conditionalization, in updates where there are only finitely many possible propositions to learn. I show that these arguments can be extended to infinite cases, giving an argument not just for conditionalization but also for principles known as ‘conglomerability’ and ‘reflection’. This shows that the expected accuracy approach is stronger than has been realized. I also argue that we should (...) be careful to distinguish diachronic update principles from related synchronic principles for conditional probability. (shrink)

Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an assistant (...) or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. (shrink)

This article examines the artistic potential of forms of image-making that involve registering the features of real objects using mind-independent processes. According to skeptics, these processes limit an agent’s intentional control over the features of the resultant “automatic images,” which in turn limits the artistic potential of the work, and the form as a whole. I argue that this is true only if intentional control is understood to mean that an agent produces the features of the work by their own (...) bodily movements alone. Not only is this an unrealistic standard to uphold, but I show that a definition of intentional control based on the skeptic’s position does not prohibit an agent from realizing the features of an image by means beyond their own actions. An agent can exercise intentional control over the features of an image if they successfully anticipate the effect that the remote consequences of their actions will have on these. This, I argue, entails that to exert intentional control over the features of an image is to exercise “creative agency,” which is a species of executive agency. Consequently, I defend the idea that the origin of automatic images in creative agency grounds their artistic significance. (shrink)

Standing in San Marco Cathedral in Venice, you immediately notice the exquisitely decorated spandrels: the triangular spaces bounded on either side by adjoining arches and by the dome above. You would be forgiven for seeing them as the starting point from which to understand the surrounding architecture. To do so would, however, be a mistake. It is a similar mistaken inference that evolutionary biologists have been accused of making in assuming a special adaptive purpose for such biological features as fingerprints (...) and chins. I argue that a mistake of just this sort is being made by ethicists who appeal to the intrinsic value of supererogatory acts in their efforts to make space for supererogation in ethical theory. Many cases of supererogatory action are simply spandrels: by-products of uncontroversial commitments elsewhere in our moral thought. This is not to downplay their value but rather to show that their value need not be the justification for making room for the supererogatory. I demonstrate this by examining two areas: rights and the distribution of burdens among a group. My argument has significance for those who take themselves to be defends of the possibility of supererogatory actions, as well as those who are committed to the contrary and those who believe themselves to be indifferent on the matter. (shrink)

Smith gives an excellent overview on research in language evolution, in which he discusses several recent models of how linguistic systems and the cognitive capacities involved in language learning may have co‐evolved. He illustrates how combined pressures on language learning and communication/use produce compositionally structured languages. Once in place, a (culturally transmitted) communication system creates new selection pressures on the capacity for acquiring these systems.

The critical realist and Bourdieusian conceptions of action fundamentally disagree on a number of fronts: the synthetic versus dualistic relationship between structure and agency; the social nature of the self/body; the link between morphogenesis and reflexivity. Despite these differences, this article argues that re-reading Bourdieu’s theories with attention to some of the core tenets of critical realism (emergence, the stratification of reality, and conjunctural causality) can provide insights into how the habitus is capable of reflexivity and social change. In particular, (...) this article reworks Bourdieu’s theory of habitus by suggesting that social selves are always situated at the intersection of multiple and competing social locations (or field positions) and that the habitus itself is always layered. Reflexivity arises from horizontal disjunctures (between field positions) and vertical disjunctures (across temporal sedimentation). (shrink)

Bayesianism is a collection of positions in several related fields, centered on the interpretation of probability as something like degree of belief, as contrasted with relative frequency, or objective chance. However, Bayesianism is far from a unified movement. Bayesians are divided about the nature of the probability functions they discuss; about the normative force of this probability function for ordinary and scientific reasoning and decision making; and about what relation (if any) holds between Bayesian and non-Bayesian concepts.

To the extent that we have reasons to avoid these “bad B -properties”, these arguments provide reasons not to have an incoherent credence function b — and perhaps even reasons to have a coherent one. But, note that these two traditional arguments for probabilism involve what might be called “pragmatic” reasons (not) to be (in)coherent. In the case of the Dutch Book argument, the “bad” property is pragmatically bad (to the extent that one values money). But, it is not clear (...) whether the DBA pinpoints any epistemic defect of incoherent agents. The same can be said for Representation Theorem arguments, since they involve the structure of an agent’s preferences. (shrink)

Naive versions of decision theory take probabilities and utilities as primitive and use expected value to give norms on rational decision. However, standard decision theory takes rational preference as primitive and uses it to construct probability and utility. This paper shows how to justify a version of the naive theory, by taking dominance as the most basic normatively required preference relation, and then extending it by various conditions under which agents should be indifferent between acts. The resulting theory can make (...) all the decisions of classical expected utility theory, plus more in cases where expected utilities are infinite or undefined. Although the theory requires similarly strong assumptions to classical expected utility theory, versions of the theory can be developed with slightly weaker assumptions, without having to prove a new representation theorem for the weaker theory. This alternate foundation is particularly useful if probability is prior to preference, as suggested by the recent program to base probabilism on accuracy and alethic considerations rather than pragmatic ones. (shrink)

oise Baylis, 1234 Le Marchant Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3P7. Tel.: (902)-494–2873; Fax: (902)-494-2924; Email: francoise.baylis{at}dal.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract Recently, there has been a growing interest in public health and public health ethics. Much of this interest has been tied to efforts to draw up national and international plans to deal with a global pandemic. It is common for these plans to state the importance of drawing upon a well-developed (...) ethics framework and we argue that this framework should reflect the values and insights of feminist relational theory. More specifically, we argue that pandemic planning must be squarely situated in the larger realm of public health and that an ethics framework for public health will be one that recognizes the need to pay particular attention to the vulnerability of subpopulations lacking in social and economic power. We propose an ethics framework for public health that builds on the notions of relational personhood (including relational autonomy and social justice) and relational solidarity. In this way, we aim for a public health ethics that, as appropriate, promotes the public interest and the common good. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

To what extent is the choice of what to say driven by seemingly irrelevant cues in the visual world being described? Among such cues, how does prior description affect how we process spatial scenes? When people describe where objects are located their use of spatial language is often associated with a choice of reference frame. Two experiments employing between-participants designs (N = 490) examined the effects of visual cueing and previous description on reference frame choice as reflected in spatial prepositions (...) (in front of, to the left of, etc.) to describe pictures of object pairs. Experiment 1 examined the effects of visual and linguistic cues on spatial description choice through movement of object(s) in spatial scenes, showing sizeable effects of visual cueing on reference frame choice. Experiment 2 monitored eye movements of participants following a linguistic example description, revealing two findings: eye movement “signatures” associated with distinct reference frames as expressed in language, and transfer of these eye movement patterns just prior to spatial description for different (later) picture descriptions. Both verbal description and visual cueing similarly influence language production choice through manipulation of visual attention, suggesting a unified theory of constraints affecting spatial language choice. (shrink)

In the first paper, I discussed the basic claims of Bayesianism (that degrees of belief are important, that they obey the axioms of probability theory, and that they are rationally updated by either standard or Jeffrey conditionalization) and the arguments that are often used to support them. In this paper, I will discuss some applications these ideas have had in confirmation theory, epistemol- ogy, and statistics, and criticisms of these applications.

Cinema, thought and time -- Deleuze's cinema books -- Technology -- Essences -- Space and time -- Bergson, time, and life -- The movement-image -- The history of time and space and the history of cinema -- The movement-image and semiotics -- Styles of sign -- The whole of movement -- Image and life -- Becoming-inhuman, becoming imperceptible -- The deduction of the movement-image -- Art and time -- Destruction of the sensory motor apparatus and the spiritual automaton -- Time (...) and money -- Art and history -- Monument -- Framing, territorialization, and the plane of composition -- Politics and the origin of meaning -- Transcending life and the genesis of sense -- Beyond symbolic and imaginary -- Shit and money -- Exchange, gift, and theft -- The fiction of mind -- Collective investment and group fantasy -- The time of man -- The intense germinal influx. (shrink)

There has been some debate as to whether or not it is possible to keep a promise, and thus fulfil a duty, to supererogate. In this paper, I argue, in agreement with Jason Kawall, that such promises cannot be kept. However, I disagree with Kawall’s diagnosis of the problem and provide an alternative account. In the first section, I examine the debate between Kawall and David Heyd, who rejects Kawall’s claim that promises to supererogate cannot be kept. I disagree with (...) Heyd’s argument, as it fails to get to the heart of the problem Kawall articulates. Kawall’s argument however fails to make clear the problem with promising to supererogate because his discussion relies on the plausibility of the following claim: that supererogatory actions cannot also fulfil obligations. I argue that this view is mistaken because there are clear examples of supererogatory actions that also fulfil obligations. In the final section, I give my alternative account of the problem, identifying exactly what is wrong with fulfilling a duty, and thus keeping a promise, to supererogate. My diagnosis emphasises the importance of identifying non-supererogatory actions when it comes to understanding the way in which supererogatory actions go above and beyond the call of duty. (shrink)

Ten new graduate speech pathologists recounted their experiences in managing workplace ethical dilemmas in semi-structured interviews. Their stories were analysed for elements that described the nature and management of the ethical dilemmas. Ethical reasoning themes were generated to reflect the participants’ approaches to managing these dilemmas. Finally, a conceptual model, the Dynamic Model of Ethical Reasoning, was developed. This model incorporates the elements of awareness, independent problem solving, supported problem solving, and decision and outcome evaluation. Features of the model demonstrate (...) the complexity of ethical reasoning and the challenges that new graduates encounter when managing ethical dilemmas. The results have implications for preparing new graduates to manage ethical dilemmas in the workplace. (shrink)

It is well-documented that the alteration of portrait photographs can have a negative impact on a viewer’s self-esteem. One might think that providing written disclaimers warning of alteration might help to mitigate this effect, yet empirical studies have shown that viewers continue to feel like what they are seeing is real, and thus attainable, despite knowing it is not. I propose that this cognitive dissonance occurs because disclaimers fail to show viewers how to look at the contents of a photographic (...) image differently. Consequently, viewers have the same perceptual experience, where the picture appears to faithfully resemble a direct visual experience of the subject, which conflicts with their changing sense of warrant. However, I argue that the degree of perceived similarity, and so contact, may be subject to change depending on what a viewer is attentive to during their viewing of an image, including subtle but unrealistic signs of alteration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.4 (2003) 379-383 [Access article in PDF] Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology: Including Texts by Edmund Husserl. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Ed. Leonard Lawlor with Bettina Bergo. Trans. Leonard Lawlor. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2002. Pp. 192. $19.95 pbk. The most striking characteristic of this volume is the manner that it presents layers of interpretation to the reader, particularly in that the writing is not intended (...) as a postmodern fête, and has limited value as a hermeneutic enterprise. Ultimately the book's true contribution is the seventy-nine pages devoted to the translation and printing of lecture notes used by [End Page 379] Merleau-Ponty in a class he gave at College de France, shortly before his death. However, the explanation of why this is so will have to be withheld until the end of this review.The course that Merleau-Ponty gave was organized around three essays published by Edmund Husserl. These essays are included in the volume reviewed here and must be briefly dealt with, as they are the core of whatever thinking occurs within and around this book. Interesting essays all, they deal with three longstanding issues of philosophical debate. The first essay challenges the classical notion of a transcendent ideal. Husserl attempts to show, through an examination of geometry, that an ideal is first called into existence when it is called into the realm of human experience, and he does this without ever resorting to the quality of detached being that Plato attributes to ideals. Then, in his second essay, Husserl attempts to defeat modernist cosmology, arguing, against Galileo, that the earth is a fixed point in the universe. Finally, his third essay hearkens back to Heraclitus and Parmenides, examining how human experience is able to extract a sense of atemporal quiddity in a world that is constantly falling into a past. A reader might be baffled that an intellectual could make such claims, but they are made from within the framework of phenomenology, and, within this paradigm as Husserl explains it, the claims he makes do not seem ridiculous at all. "The Origins of Geometry," "The Originary Ark, The Earth, Does Not Move," and "The World of the Living Present,"— these are the three essays that Merleau-Ponty forms his lecture course around. At sixty pages within this volume, they constitute one third of the text itself. For intellectual worth, I would say that these essays are the finest contribution in the text, but that claim is discounted because much of the essay material was already available in English translation. Nevertheless, it only makes sense to have it included in this volume in order to conveniently work back and forth between Merleau-Ponty's notes and Husserl's actual essays.However, that brings us to a significant problem within the text itself. If readers are like me, they will realize that it is often difficult to draw conclusions from the notes of others. Like secretarial shorthand, notes rely on a reader's ability to read both what has been written and what has been withheld in an expressive passage. There is no code that will allow us to recover what Merleau-Ponty recovered as he looked down on his podium at these notes and then raised his head to speak to his class. All that we have are the fragments, and they do not make a coherent argument, lacking both the clarity and the painstaking thoroughness that we find in books [End Page 380] such as The Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and the Invisible. Certainly one cannot fault Merleau-Ponty for this—he did not write these notes for us, but for himself. His course might have been magnificent, even transcendent, but we will not know that from these fragments.I suppose it could be argued that the ambiguity inherent in such fragments liberates the text and opens it for some sort of radical hermeneutic exegesis; however, I sigh at the very thought of such an argument. Unless we intend to transform... (shrink)

In a series of papers, Don Fallis points out that although mathematicians are generally unwilling to accept merely probabilistic proofs, they do accept proofs that are incomplete, long and complicated, or partly carried out by computers. He argues that there are no epistemic grounds on which probabilistic proofs can be rejected while these other proofs are accepted. I defend the practice by presenting a property I call ‘transferability’, which probabilistic proofs lack and acceptable proofs have. I also consider what this (...) says about the similarities between mathematics and, on the one hand natural sciences, and on the other hand philosophy. (shrink)

The notion of supererogation—going above and beyond the call of duty—is typically discussed in a moral context. However, in this paper we argue for the existence of rationally supererogatory actions: that is, actions that go above and beyond the call of rational duty. In order to establish the existence of such actions, we first need to overcome the so-called paradox of supererogation: we need to provide some explanation for why, if some act is rationally optimal, it is not the case (...) that we are rationally required to carry out that act. We argue that a response to this ‘paradox’ can be found by reflecting on normative conflicts: cases where what is best according to some normative domain is different from what is best according to some other normative domain. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s interest in tragedy continues throughout his work. And yet scholarship on Nietzsche’s account of tragedy has focused almost exclusively on his first book, The Birth of Tragedy – a work which is in many ways discontinuous with his more mature philosophical views. In this paper, I aim to illuminate Nietzsche’s post-Birth of Tragedy views on tragedy by setting them in the context of a particular historical conversation. Ever since Plato banished the tragic poets from the kallipolis, various philosophers have (...) attempted to respond to his challenge to offer a ‘defense of poetry’. What Nietzsche offers, I argue, is a distinctive form of response to Plato’s challenge. I show how Nietzsche takes seriously Plato’s worries, and even ends up in partial agreement with him: tragedy is not (unqualifiedly) valuable; it can be spiritually dangerous. Key to Nietzsche’s account is a distinction he draws between two types of tragic audience. For the ‘lower types’, tragedy is – as Plato feared – dangerous. For the ‘higher types’, however, tragedy can act as a regenerative force. Finally, I discuss a distinctive form of value that tragedy makes available to a modern audience: tragedy can act as a stimulus towards the process of the revaluation of values. (shrink)