Here I speak in favor of the view that life's meaning can be found in the pursuit of pleasure. I first present an argument for this view that is grounded in a traditional concept of meaning. To help ease remaining concerns about accepting it, I then draw attention to four things the view does not imply: (1) that we have a reason to take hedonistic theories of meaning seriously; (2) that meaning can be found in the deeply immoral, the deeply (...) ignorant, or the deeply repulsive pursuit of pleasure; (3) that there is a significantly easier route to meaning than the pursuit of morality, the pursuit of knowledge, or the pursuit of art; and (4) that meaning can be found in pursuits that involve only baser aspects of human nature. (shrink)

The M → W thesis that a meaningful life must be a worthwhile life follows from an appealing approach to the axiology of life. Yet one of the most prominent voices in the recent philosophy of life literature, Thaddeus Metz, has raised multiple objections to that thesis. With a view to preserving the appeal of the axiological approach from which it follows, I here defend the M → W thesis from Metz’s objections. My defense yields some interesting insights about both (...) a meaningful life and a worthwhile life: a meaningful life should be firmly distinguished from a life with meaning, the value of a meaningful life must outweigh whatever disvalue the life has, a worthwhile life at a given time needn’t be a life worth continuing at that time, and the M → W thesis doesn’t preclude the possibility of something being part of what constitutes the meaningfulness of a life without also being part of what constitutes the worthwhileness of the life. (shrink)

To forestall scepticism about meaning in life as a distinct final value, I sketch a preliminary characterization of meaning as superlative final value in life. I then make the case that this characterization helps us better appreciate a neglected substantive account of meaning, namely, Richard Taylor's creativity account. After laying out the creativity account, I argue that it is not just very compelling, but more compelling under the superlativeness characterization than the most prominent of the recent substantive accounts.

Conjoined with the claim that there is a moral right to privacy, each of the major contemporary accounts of privacy implies a duty of ignorance for those against whom the right is held. In this paper I consider and respond to a compelling argument that challenges these accounts (or the claim about a right to privacy) in the light of this implication. A crucial premise of the argument is that we cannot ever be morally obligated to become ignorant of information (...) we currently know. The plausibility of this premise, I suggest, derives from the thought that there are no epistemically ways in which we can cause ourselves to become ignorant of what we already know. Drawing on some recent work in the epistemology and psychology of self-deception and forgetting, I seek to undermine this thought, and thus provide a defense against the challenging argument, by arguing that there are indeed such ways. (shrink)

Despite their differences, the three most prominent accounts of informational privacy on the contemporary scene—the Control Theory, the Limited Access Theory, and the Narrow Ignorance Theory—all hold that an individual’s informational privacy is at least partly a function of a kind of inability of others to know personal facts about her. This common commitment, I argue, renders the accounts vulnerable to compelling counterexamples. I articulate a new account of informational privacy—the Broad Ignorance Theory—that avoids the commitment by rendering an individual’s (...) informational privacy exclusively a function of others’ ignorance ofpersonal facts about her. I then go on to answer four objections to the Broad Ignorance Theory: that it paradoxically renders private what is in the public domain, that it fails to explain the oddity of attributions of informational privacy to individuals unable to control whether others know various personal facts about them, that it conflates informational privacy and secrecy, and that it conflicts with intuitions about informational privacy losses stemming from false or unjustified beliefs. In the final section of the paper I consider the plausibility of expanding the Broad Ignorance Theory into an account of privacy in general. (shrink)

As an evaluative view in the philosophy of life, nihilism maintains that no lives are, all things considered, worth living. Prominent defenders of the view hold that, even so, it can be all-things-considered better for us to continue living than for us to cease living, thus endorsing a 'soft' nihilism that appears more palatable than its 'hard' counterpart. In support of an intuitive assumption about what nihilism implies, I argue that soft nihilism is incoherent.

ABSTRACT: In this paper I defend an epistemic value pluralism according to which true belief, justified belief, and knowledge are all fundamental epistemic values. After laying out reasons to reject epistemic value monism in its central forms, I present my pluralist alternative and show how it can adequately explain the greater epistemic value of knowledge over both true belief and justified belief, despite their fundamentality. I conclude with a sketch of how this pluralism might be generalized beyond the epistemic domain (...) to the ethical. (shrink)

Despite their differences, the three most prominent accounts of informational privacy on the contemporary scene—the Control Theory, the Limited Access Theory, and the Narrow Ignorance Theory—all hold that an individual’s informational privacy is at least partly a function of a kind of inability of others to know personal facts about her. This common commitment, I argue, renders the accounts vulnerable to compelling counterexamples. I articulate a new account of informational privacy—the Broad Ignorance Theory—that avoids the commitment by rendering an individual’s (...) informational privacy exclusively a function of others’ ignorance ofpersonal facts about her. I then go on to answer four objections to the Broad Ignorance Theory: that it paradoxically renders private what is in the public domain, that it fails to explain the oddity of attributions of informational privacy to individuals unable to control whether others know various personal facts about them, that it conflates informational privacy and secrecy, and that it conflicts with intuitions about informational privacy losses stemming from false or unjustified beliefs. In the final section of the paper I consider the plausibility of expanding the Broad Ignorance Theory into an account of privacy in general. (shrink)

I argue that life’s meaning is not only a distinct, gradational final value of individual lives, but also an “extradimensional” final value: the realization of meaning in life brings final value along an additional evaluative dimension, much as the realization of depth in solids or width in plane geometric figures brings magnitude along an additional spatial dimension. I go on to consider the extent to which Metz’s (2013) fundamentality theory respects the principle that life’s meaning is an extradimensional final value, (...) and consequently suggest that the theory may stand in need of further refinement and supplementation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: There is an intuitive distinction between knowing someone in a detached manner and knowing someone in a more intimate fashion — personally. The latter seems to involve the specially active participation of the person known in a way that the former does not. In this paper I present a novel, communication account of knowing someone personally that successfully explains this participation. The account also illuminates the propositional and testimonial character of the personal knowledge of persons, the conditions of limited (...) transferability to which such knowledge is subject, and its distinctly meaningful role in everyday life. I conclude by considering a worry about self-knowledge that arises on the communication account. (shrink)

This fully updated, fourth edition of An Introduction to the Study of Education provides a comprehensive and reflective introduction to the study of education, inviting students to question what education is, who it is for and what purpose it serves. Taking the reader from the early years through to lifelong learning, it examines all forms of education and learning. This new edition includes ten completely new chapters and a step-by-step guide to essay writing. There is also a companion website to (...) accompany the book, featuring additional chapters which can be visited at www.routledge.com/cw/matheson.This fully updated, fourth edition provides: a full exploration of the historical, sociological, philosophical and psychological roots of education; a clear focus on the individual levels of education – preschool, compulsory, post-compulsory and lifelong learning; the latest debates within special educational needs; an in-depth examination of learning styles; insights into the historical development of education and the role of, and background to, research in education; a focus on current educational practice and diversity across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Written in a clear and accessible style, this is the essential core text for all beginning students on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Education Studies and all those interested in education today, where it came from and where it is going. (shrink)

As a belief source, testimony has long been held by theorists of the mind to play a deeply important role in human cognition. It is unclear, however, just why testimony has been afforded such cognitive importance. We distinguish three suggestions on the matter: the number claim, which takes testimony’s cognitive importance to be a function of the number of beliefs it typically yields, relative to other belief sources; the reliability claim, which ties the importance of testimony to its relative truth-conduciveness; (...) and the scope claim, according to which testimony’s importance is a function of its relative representational power, non-numerically conceived. After laying out these three suggestions, we go on to argue that there is little hope of grounding testimony’s cognitive importance in either the number claim or the reliability claim. We conclude with a tentative exploration of the basis and plausibility of the scope claim. (shrink)

Reductionism as an approach to the epistemology of testimony places certain demands on the recipient of testimony that its competitor, antireductionism, does not. After laying out the two approaches and their respective demands on the recipient of testimony, I argue that reductionism also places certain anonymity-shedding demands on the testifier that antireductionism does not. The difficulty of deciding between the approaches leads to a worry about the extent to which the current state of affairs in epistemology can offer secure advice (...) on the sorts of anonymity constraints that a networked society should place on its testifiers. This worry can be mitigated, I further argue, upon recognition of the fact that the two approaches stand on common ground when it comes to cases of known testimonial conflict. (shrink)

Ignorance theorists about privacy hold that it amounts to others’ ignorance of one’s personal information. I argue that ignorance theorists should adopt a distributive reductionist approach to the right to privacy, according to which it is reducible to elements that, despite having something significant in common, are distributed across more fundamental rights to person, liberty, and property. The distributed reductionism that I present carries two important features. First, it is better suited than its competitors to explain a sense of scatter (...) that many have about the right to privacy. Second, it warrants caution about claims to the effect that the right to privacy is sharply to be distinguished from such rights as the right to liberty and the right to property. (shrink)

This work explores a wide range of issues and questions in education, such as - how does education define the way people see themselves culturally? The authors discuss such topics as education and training, reflective practice and governance.

There is a Barthian objection to the project of natural validation theology (i.e. to the attempt to establish, on purely natural bases, whether God exists) according to which, far from being required to engage in the project, the theologian is required to abstain from engaging in it. By considering the motivation for an analogous objection to validation projects in metaphysics and epistemology, voiced by representatives of the comman sense tradition in modern Western philosophy, I argue that this objection is plausibly (...) motivated by the thought that engaging in natural validation theology inappropriately commits one to the irrelevance of putatively nonnatural belief-sources. (shrink)

Book Reviews David Matheson, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review/Revue canadienne de philosophie, FirstView Article.

The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions. By Benatar David.

In this paper I consider whether the reasons on which our testimonial beliefs are directly based—“testimonial reasons”—are basic reasons for belief. After laying out a Dretske-inspired psychologistic conception of reasons for belief in general and a corresponding conception of basic reasons for belief, I present a prima facie case against the basicality of testimonial reasons. I then respond to a challenge from Audi to this case. To the extent that my response is successful, the viability of an important kind of (...) inferentialism about testimonial belief is preserved. (shrink)

There are some notions which most of us think we know what they are and assume that others share the same or similar ideas. These can include ideas such as fairness, equality and justice. They are terms which are easy to use and to feel that we understand what we mean by them but notoriously difficult to explain to others, other than by appealing to common sense and asserting that ‘everyone’ knows what justice, fairness, equality and so on actually are. (...) Some terms, such as professionalism, are even best described by their absence. To define professionalism per se is notoriously difficult but unprofessional somehow appears easier, even if in reality unprofessional is more often exemplified than defined. In this morass of potential confusion, there are the phenomena which we recognise when we see them but would be hard put to describe in anything even vaguely resembling objective terms. Among these slippery concepts is the concept of education. Education is what might be termed an essentially contested concept. It is one with a vast range of definitions, none of which is totally satisfactory. For example, we have the common equation between education and school. In this case, what about higher education? Where does further education fit in? And, for that matter, where do we place things we teach ourselves? We can discuss education that includes all of these arenas for learning or we can exclude at least some of them. We may even do as Abbs does and claim that ‘education and school can refer, and often do refer, to antithetical activities’. Or we can go even further and align ourselves with Illich and assert that school is not only the antithesis of education but that its main function is to provide custodial day care for young people. This chapter has its function to consider what education might be. I intend to do this by considering a well-known attempt at defining education. I will then consider some of the things that education can be for and, lastly, I will consider what it might mean to be educated before briefly considering Education Studies itself. (shrink)

Book Reviews David Matheson, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review/Revue canadienne de philosophie, FirstView Article.

Book Reviews David Matheson, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review/Revue canadienne de philosophie, FirstView Article.