This chapter explores the debate between contemporary projectivists or expressivists, and the advocates of sensibility theory. Both positions are best viewed as forms of sentimentalism — the theory that evaluative concepts must be explicated by appeal to the sentiments. It argues that the sophisticated interpretation of such notions as “true” and “objective” that are offered by defenders of these competing views ultimately undermines the significance of their meta-ethical disputes over “cognitivism” and “realism” about value. Their fundamental disagreement lies in moral (...) psychology; it concerns how best to understand the emotions to which sentimentalist theories must appeal. (shrink)

According to Cicero, “all emotions spring from the roots of error: they should not be pruned or clipped here and there, but yanked out” (Cicero 2002: 60). The Stoic enthusiasm for the extirpation of emotion is radical in two respects, both of which can be expressed with the claim that emotional responses are never appropriate. First, the Stoics held that emotions are incompatible with virtue , since the virtuous man will retain his equanimity whatever his fate. Grief is always vicious, (...) both bad and bad for you, even when directed at events commonly considered tragic, such as the loss of one’s child. (shrink)

This volume has a two-fold purpose: reference and research. As a work of reference, it is designed to provide accessible, objective, and accurate summaries of contemporary developments within the problem of evil. As a work of research, it is designed to advance the dialectic within the problem of evil by offering novel insights, criticisms and responses from top scholars in the field. As such, the volume will serve as a guide to both specialists within the philosophy of religion and nonspecialists (...) alike. Each section of the book opens with an historical essay that frames the essays that follow in a rich historical context. The volume is subdivided into three parts. Part one sketches various “Problems of Evil,” particularly those that have morphed into arguments for atheism. Part two includes responses to problems of evil that go some way towards explaining why our world would have certain evils in it on the assumption that it was created by God. Part three includes responses to evil that admit no explanation for the evils in our world but insist that the problem of evil is not an evidential problem for theists nonetheless. In other words, part two includes theodicies, and part three includes various skeptical replies including defenses and skeptical theism. (shrink)

Anderson's theory is plausible and largely consistent with the data. However, it remains underspecified on several fronts, and we highlight areas for potential improvement. Reuse is described as duplicating a functional component, preserving one function and tinkering to add another function. This is a promising model, but Anderson neglects other reasonable alternatives and we highlight several. Evidence cited in support of reuse fails to uniquely support it among a broader set of multi-use theories. We suggest that a more stringent criterion (...) for direct support of reuse may be satisfied by focusing on previous adaptive functions (original use). (shrink)

Are the places that superhuman beings purportedly act and dwell randomly or arbitrarily distributed? Inspired by theoretical work in cognitive science of religion, descriptions of superhuman beings were solicited from informants in 20 countries on five continents, resulting in 108 usable descriptions, including information about these beings’ properties, their dwelling location, and whether they were the target of rituals. Whether superhuman beings are the subject of religious and ritual practices appeared to co-vary in relation to both features of physical geography (...) and cognitive factors. Good gods were more likely the focus of religious practices than evil gods, and where the gods are thought to dwell mattered. If either the being was thought to dwell in a dangerous place or a resource rich place, it was more likely to have practices directed at it. (shrink)

Rational Sentimentalism develops a novel theory of the sentimental values. These values, which include the funny, the disgusting, and the shameful, are profoundly important because they set standards for emotional responses that are part of our shared human nature. Yet moral philosophers have neglected them relative to their prominence in human mental life. The theory is sentimentalist because it holds that these values are emotion-dependent—contrary to some prominent accounts of the funny and the disgusting. Its rational aspect arises from its (...) insistence that the shameful (e.g.) is not whatever elicits shame but what makes shame fitting. Shameful traits provide reasons to be ashamed that do not depend on whether one is disposed to be ashamed of them. Furthermore, these reasons to be ashamed issue in reasons to act as shame dictates: to conceal. Sentimentalism requires a compatible theory of emotion and emotional fittingness. The book explicates a motivational theory of emotion that explains the peculiarities of emotional motivation, as other theories cannot. It argues that a class of emotions are psychological kinds with the same goal across cultures, despite differences in their elicitors. It then develops an account of fittingness that helps to differentiate reasons of fit, which bear on the sentimental values, from other considerations for or against having an emotion. Some significant and controversial conclusions emerge from rational sentimentalism. The sentimental values conflict with one another, and with morality, but nevertheless provide practical reasons that apply to humans—though not to all rational agents. (shrink)

The verb 'imagine' admits of perspectival modification: we can imagine things from above, from a distant point of view, or from the point of view of a Russian. But in such cases, there need be no person, either real or imagined, who is above or distant from what is imagined, or who has the point of view of a Russian. We call this the puzzle of perspectival displacement. This paper sets out the puzzle, shows how it does not just concern (...) language, but also states of imagining themselves, and then presents a solution. The solution draws on the idea that many reports of imagining conceal a distinctive kind of question, and such concealed questions have an extra argument place for (what we will call) an experiencer from whose perspective things are imagined. This solution has a range of advantages over other proposals in the literature, and helps to advance two debates concerning perspectival engagement with fiction. (shrink)

If “Big Gods” evolved in part because of their ability to morally regulate groups of people who cannot count on kin or reciprocal altruism to get along, then powerful gods would tend to be good gods. If the mechanism for this cooperation is some kind of fear of supernatural punishment, then we may expect that mighty gods tend to be punishing gods. The present study is a statistical analysis of superhuman being concepts from 20 countries on five continents to explore (...) whether the goodness of a god is related to its mightiness. Gods that looked more like the God of classical theism and gods that were low in anthropomorphism were more likely to be regarded as morally good and to be the target of religious practices. Mighty gods were not, however, especially likely to punish or to be a “high god.”. (shrink)

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one’s rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is (...) wrong to be envious. These two senses of ‘appropriate’ have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy. (shrink)

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one's rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is (...) wrong to be envious. These two senses of `appropriate' have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy. (shrink)

Vendler’s :161–173, 1979) puzzle about imagination is that the sentences ‘Imagine swimming in that water’ and ‘Imagine yourself swimming in that water’ seem at once semantically different and semantically the same. They seem semantically different, since the first requires you to imagine ’from the inside’, while the second allows you to imagine ’from the outside.’ They seem semantically the same, since despite superficial dissimilarity, there is good reason to think that they are syntactically and lexically identical. This paper sets out (...) the puzzle and offers a novel solution. Our proposal is that, just as there is knowledge-wh, there is also imagining-wh and that the inside/outside distinction Vendler points to is properly understood as a distinction within imagining-wh. In particular, to imagine swimming from the inside is to imagine what it feels like to swim, while to imagine swimming from the outside is to imagine what it looks like to swim. We show that this proposal is well grounded in both the semantics and syntax of ‘imagine.’ We also argue it makes better sense than its rivals of the data Vendler found so puzzling. (shrink)

According to the resemblance account of 'what it's like' and similar constructions, a sentence such as 'there is something it’s like to have a toothache' means 'there is something having a toothache resembles'. This account has proved controversial in the literature; some writers endorse it, many reject it. We show that this conflict is illusory. Drawing on the semantics of intensional transitive verbs, we show that there are two versions of the resemblance account, depending on whether 'resembles' is construed notionally (...) or relationally. While well-known criticisms of the resemblance account undermine its relational version, they do not touch its notional version. On the contrary, the notional version is equivalent to various accounts usually interpreted as rivals to resemblance. We end by noting that this resolution of the controversy (a) explains why 'like', which is a comparative, appears in a construction that concerns the properties of events, and (b) removes any pressure to suppose that 'like' is ambiguous between a comparative and a non-comparative sense. (shrink)

There is good reason to think that, in every case of perceptual consciousness, there is something of which we are conscious; but there is also good reason to think that, in some cases of perceptual consciousness—for instance, hallucinations—there is nothing of which we are conscious. This paper resolves this inconsistency—which we call the presentation problem—by (a) arguing that ‘conscious of’ and related expressions function as intensional transitive verbs and (b) defending a particular semantic approach to such verbs, on which they (...) have readings that lack direct objects or themes. The paper further argues that this approach serves not only as a linguistic proposal about the semantics of ‘conscious of’, but also as a proposal about the metaphysics of conscious states. (shrink)

As the gap between the world’s rich and poor grows wider and the limitations of institutional solutions such as foreign aid continue to be exposed, students of development are shifting their focus toward individualistic business-based solutions that seek to draw members of marginalized communities into the global marketplace. This focus on the individual, however, raises three interconnected issues: it privileges a view of the human person as individualistic versus relational, it proposes isolated solutions that are not scalable, and it can (...) leave would-be change agents feeling hopeless. Drawing on insights from sociology, political philosophy, and Catholic social thought, the current paper presents an alternative path to educating for an inclusive economy by arguing that our greatest structural challenges require us not to abandon institutional solutions but rather to develop better institutions rooted in a fuller notion of the human person. Specifically, by cultivating a mindset of relationality through immersion experiences and mindfulness practices, we propose that business education can empower students to develop hope-filled solidarity with the marginalized, understand their role in the global economic system, and as future business leaders, build virtuous institutions for the common good. (shrink)

The literature on the wrong kind of reason problem largely assumes that such reasons pose only a theoretical problem for certain theories of value rather than a practical problem. Since the normative force of the canonical examples is obvious, the only difficulty is to identify what reasons of the right and wrong kind have in common without circularity. This chapter argues that in addition to the obvious WKRs on which the literature focuses, there are also more interesting WKRs that do (...) not overtly refer to the advantages of having some evaluative attitude. Instead they refer to features of the object that bear on the propriety of having certain attitudes toward it. What is interesting about these cases is that their normative force is opaque. It can be clear that some consideration bears on whether or not to feel shame, pity, or amusement, for example, but unclear just how it does so—specifically, whether the consideration helps make the object of the attitude shameful, pitiable, or funny. The problems caused by WKRs are ubiquitous, and they outstrip the wrong kind of reason problem as it has ordinarily been conceived, since extant solutions to the technical problem offer no help resolving the opacity of normative force. (shrink)

This volume examines the implications of developments in the science of ethics for philosophical theorizing about moral psychology and human agency. These ten new essays in empirically informed philosophy illuminate such topics as responsibility, the self, and the role in morality of mental states such as desire, emotion, and moral judgement.

What is the significance of Arendt considering the title Amor Mundi for what we now are familiar with as The Human Condition? Read alongside Native American philosophers, it is clear that The Human Condition does not explain what it is like to love the world. Instead, it is a powerful genealogy of world alienation and earth alienation in the Western tradition. In other words, The Human Condition shows how Western thought lost and/or undermines amor mundi. By comparing and contrasting Arendt (...) with Vine Deloria Jr. and Daniel Wildcat, we can better understand what Arendt means by the distinction between ‘world’ and ‘earth’ and see the limitations of her concept of world. My claim is that reading these thinkers together enriches our understanding of world alienation, earth alienation, and amor mundi. (shrink)

BackgroundThe demand for peer reviewers is often perceived as disproportionate to the supply and availability of reviewers. Considering characteristics associated with peer review behaviour can allow for the development of solutions to manage the growing demand for peer reviewers. The objective of this research was to compare characteristics among two groups of reviewers registered in Publons.MethodsA descriptive cross-sectional study design was used to compare characteristics between individuals completing at least 100 peer reviews from January 2018 to December 2018 as and (...) a control group of peer reviewers completing between 1 and 18 peer reviews over the same time period. Data was provided by Publons, which offers a repository of peer reviewer activities in addition to tracking peer reviewer publications and research metrics. Mann Whitney tests and chi-square tests were conducted comparing characteristics of mega peer reviewers to the control group of reviewers.ResultsA total of 1596 peer reviewers had data provided by Publons. A total of 396 M peer reviewers and a random sample of 1200 control group reviewers were included. A greater proportion of mega peer reviews were male as compared to the control reviewers. Mega peer reviewers demonstrated a significantly greater average number of total publications, citations, receipt of Publons awards, and a higher average h index as compared to the control group of reviewers.ConclusionsMega peer reviewers registered in the Publons database also had a higher number of publications and citations as compared to a control group of reviewers. Additional research that considers motivations associated with peer review behaviour should be conducted to help inform peer reviewing activity. (shrink)

Contemporary metaphysics is dominated by the view that every object belongs to a kind permanently in the sense that it cannot cease to belong to that kind without thereby ceasing to exist. For example, some philosophers think that a person is destroyed if they cease to be a person, a statue is destroyed if it ceases to be a statue, and so on. I believe that this standard view is false. Being a person, or a statue, or etc., is like (...) being a child: just as I did not cease to exist when I ceased to be a child, so people and statues need not cease to exist when they cease to be people and statues. Borrowing a term from Daniel Korman (who uses it in a similar but perhaps not identical way), I call this view phasalism because it entails that the kind-properties which ordinary objects instantiate are phase sortal properties, i.e., kind-properties that an object can instantiate for a temporary phase of its career. This dissertation is a partial defense of phasalism. I develop a phasalist metaphysics in detail, highlighting its virtues and rebutting objections along the way. After some stage-setting (Chapter 1), I defend a phasalist criterion of identity over time for ordinary objects (Chapter 2), as well as a phasalist account of the role that sortal properties play in the identity over time of ordinary objects (Chapter 3). Then I defend a phasalist-friendly approach to the identity over time of lumps, hunks, pieces, etc. of matter (Chapter 4). The material in these chapters amounts to a phasalist solution to certain material coincidence puzzles, such as the puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay. I go on to show that familiar puzzles about undetached parts (Chapter 5) and fission (Chapter 6) can be solved within the confines of my phasalist metaphysics as well. (shrink)

We elucidate the epistemological futility of using concepts such as unconscious thinking in research. Focusing on Newell & Shanks' (N&S's) use of the lens model as a framework, we clarify issues with regard to unconscious-thought theory (UTT) and self-insight studies. We examine these key points: Brunswikian psychology is absent in UTT; research on self-insight did not emerge to explore the unconscious; the accuracy of judgments does not necessitate the unconscious; and the prescriptive claim of UTT is unfounded.

_Environmental Philosophy in Desperate Times_ examines environmental philosophy in the context of climate denial, inaction, and thoughtlessness. It introduces readers to the varied theories and movements of environmental philosophy. But more than that, it seeks to unsettle our received understanding of the world and our role in it, especially through consideration of Indigenous, feminist, and radical voices.

Nietzsche, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics is the first of three volumes meant to address Nietzsche's relation to Kant and Kantian philosophy. This volume addresses how Nietzsche rejects, adopts, and reformulates Kantian epistemology and metaphysics. In what follows I go through the book chapter by chapter, providing a brief summary before a brief commentary.In their helpful introduction, Brusotti and Siemens do an impressive job of elucidating the young Nietzsche's acquaintances with Kant. This section is a "must-read." They then lay (...) the groundwork for Nietzsche's later criticisms of Kant and provide an instructive outline of the volume's contributions. There is one lacuna, however. The title of the volume... (shrink)

While The Wizard of Oz (1939) constructs an elaborate mythic world filled with witches, wizards, and magic, this essay argues that Victor Fleming's classic film also carries with it a message that is profoundly atheistic. The film persistently deconstructs ostensibly supernatural experiences by revealing their materialist underpinnings. Further, this essay interrogates Oz's epistemology by connecting it with Slavoj Žižek's concept of decaffeinated belief, as well as Daniel Dennett's notion of belief in belief.

The focus of this paper is a fascinating but hitherto unstudied 1742 manuscript treatise by Johannes Daniel Schlichting (1705–1765) titled “Sapientiæ Problema” that contains something extremely rare in the mid-eighteenth century: a full-blown speculative cosmogony. As this article reveals, Schlichting developed a distinctive vital liquid matter in an effort to account for the generation of all natural bodies and combat the stamina-based theories that were dominant in his day. He hoped that his treatise would be published in the Philosophical (...) Transactions of the Royal Society, but an accompanying abridgment by the FRS Henry Baker (1698–1774) strongly implies that Schlichting’s speculative bent and desire to divulge causal explanations were unacceptable to the Englishman and generally ill-suited to the intellectual climate of mid-century England. (shrink)