The debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists depends in large part on what ordinary people mean by ‘free will’, a matter on which previous experimental philosophy studies have yielded conflicting results. In Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner (2005, 2006), most participants judged that agents in deterministic scenarios could have free will and be morally responsible. Nichols and Knobe (2007), though, suggest that these apparent compatibilist responses are performance errors produced by using concrete scenarios, and that their abstract scenarios reveal the folk (...) theory of free will for what it actually is—incompatibilist. Here, we argue that the results of two new studies suggest just the opposite. Most participants only give apparent incompatibilist judgments when they mistakenly interpret determinism to imply that agents’ mental states are bypassed in the causal chains that lead to their behavior. Determinism does not entail bypassing, so these responses do not reflect genuine incompatibilist intuitions. When participants understand what determinism does mean, the vast majority take it to be compatible with free will. Further results indicate that most people’s concepts of choice and the ability to do otherwise do not commit them to incompatibilism, either, putting pressure on incompatibilist arguments that rely on transfer principles, such as the Consequence Argument. We discuss the implications of these findings for philosophical debates about free will, and suggest that incompatibilism appears to be either false, or else a thesis about something other than what most people mean by ‘free will’. (shrink)

2021 marks Dylan's 80th birthday and his 60th year in the music world. It invites us to look back on his career and the multitudes that it contains. Is he a song and dance man? A political hero? A protest singer? A self-portrait artist who has yet to paint his masterpiece? Is he Shakespeare in the alley? The greatest living exponent of American music? An ironsmith? Internet radio DJ? Poet (who knows it)? Is he a spiritual and religious parking (...) meter? Judas? The voice of a generation or a false prophet, jokerman, and thief? Dylan is all these and none. The essays in this book explore the Nobel laureate’s masks, collectively reflecting upon their meaning through time, change, movement, and age. They are written by wonderful and diverse set of contributors, all here for his 80th birthday bash: celebrated Dylanologists like Michael Gray and Laura Tenschert; recording artists such as Robyn Hitchcock, Barb Jungr, Amy Rigby, and Emma Swift; and 'the professors’ who all like his looks: David Boucher, Anne Margaret Daniel, Ray Monk, Galen Strawson, and more. Read it on your toaster! (shrink)

This paper locates a source of contingency for Leibniz in the fact that God can do otherwise, absolutely speaking. This interpretative line has been previously thought to be a dead-end because it appears inconsistent with Leibniz’s own conception of God, as the ens perfectissimum, or the most perfect being (Adams, 1994). This paper points out that the best argument on offer which seeks to demonstrate this inconsistency fails. The paper then argues that the supposition that God does otherwise implies for (...) Leibniz (at least) that God would not be praiseworthy, which is an absurd implication—or a violation of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR)—but that this is not, strictly speaking, an inconsistency—or a violation of the principle of contradiction (POC). While praiseworthiness is a perfection—and is compossible with God’s other perfections—and so God must instantiate it, this paper argues that, given the nature of praiseworthiness for Leibniz, it in fact makes sense to say that praiseworthiness is merely a contingent perfection of God. (shrink)

The standard view in epistemology is that propositional knowledge entails belief. Positive arguments are seldom given for this entailment thesis, however; instead, its truth is typically assumed. Against the entailment thesis, Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel (Noûs, forthcoming) report that a non-trivial percentage of people think that there can be propositional knowledge without belief. In this paper, we add further fuel to the fire, presenting the results of four new studies. Based on our results, we argue that the entailment thesis does not (...) deserve the default status that it is typically granted. We conclude by considering the alternative account of knowledge that Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel propose to explain their results, arguing that it does not explain ours. In its place we offer a different explanation of both sets of findings—the conviction account, according to which belief, but not knowledge, requires mental assent. (shrink)

Featuring an exceptionally clear writing style and a wealth of real-world examples and exercises, Logic, Second Edition, shows how logic relates to everyday life, demonstrating its applications in such areas as the workplace, media and entertainment, politics, science and technology, student life, and elsewhere.Thoroughly revised and expanded in this second edition, the text now features 2600 exercises, more than 1000 of them new; three new chapters on legal arguments, moral arguments, and analyzing a long essay; enhanced pedagogy; and much more.FEATURES* (...) 2600 exercises--more than 1000 of them new--breathe new life into logic* Real-world examples help bring logic down to earth for students* A unique, extended explanation or model of the answer to the first question of each "Check Your Understanding" section shows students what is expected of their answers* An additional 25% of the exercises are answered at the back of the book* "Profiles in Logic" provide short sketches of logicians, philosophers, mathematicians, and others associated with logic* "Logic Challenge" problems present puzzles and paradoxes that end each chapter on a fun note* Additional pedagogical elements--marginal definitions, key terms, a glossary, reference boxes, and bulleted chapter summaries--make the material even more accessible* Detailed guides help students learn to create "truth tables" and Venn diagramsSUPPORT PACKAGEAn Instructor's Manual with Computerized Test Bank on CD includes: Solutions to all exercises in the book, enhanced by explanations and answers that elucidate the details of the correct answersKey Terms and a summary for each chapterA customizable Computerized Test Bank--with multiple-choice, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank questions--that allows instructors to give exams or homework problems that can be auto-gradedA traditional "pencil-and-paper" Test Bank and answer key containing the same questions as the Computerized Test BankPowerPoint-based lecture outlinesThe Instructor's Manual with Computerized Test Bank and the traditional Test Bank are also available in printed format.A Companion Website offers:Instructor Resources :A downloadable version of the Instructor's Manual PowerPoint-based lecture outlinesStudent Resources:Brief chapter summariesInteractive Flash Cards with key terms and definitionsWeb links and other media resourcesPractice quizzes with answers and explanations The Learning Management System Cartridges include, in a fully downloadable format:Instructor's Manual and Computerized Test Bank Student material from the companion websiteThe Perfect Text for Your Course... No Matter How You Teach ItYour course is unique; you have your own teaching philosophy and style. Whether you teach traditional Introduction to Logic, Critical Thinking/Informal Logic, or Formal Logic, Baronett: Logic, Second Edition, can be tailored to fulfill your course needs.We'll make it easy for you; choose one of our Alternate Editions or build the book you want, chapter by chapter.Option 1. Author Stan Baronett has suggested four Alternate Editions that may work for you. Each Alternate Edition comes in full color, with answers to problems, a full glossary, and an index. The books are in stock and available for ordering. Please see the ISBN information below.Logic: Concise EditionChapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8Order using ISBN: 978-0-19-994129-2Logic: An Emphasis on Critical Thinking and Informal LogicChapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13 A-E, 14, 15Order using ISBN: 978-0-19-994128-5Logic: An Emphasis on Formal LogicChapters 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9Order using ISBN: 978-0-19-994126-1Logic: With Diagramming used in Chapter 4. Informal FallaciesFull textOrder using ISBN: 978-0-19-997081-0Option 2. Create your own customized textbook by choosing the specific chapters that you need for your course. Please contact your Oxford University Press Sales Representative or call 800.280.0280 for details. (shrink)

Was love invented by European poets in the middle ages, as C. S. Lewis claimed, or is it part of human nature? Will winning the lottery really make you happy? Is it possible to build robots that have feelings? These are just some of the intriguing questions explored in this new guide to the latest thinking about the emotions. Drawing on a wide range of scientific research, from anthropology and psychology to neuroscience and artificial intelligence, Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (...) takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the human heart. Illustrating his points with entertaining examples from fiction, film, and popular culture, Dylan Evans ranges from the evolution of the emotions to the nature of love and happiness to the language of feelings, offering readers the most recent thinking on real life topics that touch us all. But Emotion is also a book filled with surprises. Readers will discover, for instance, that the basic emotions are felt the world over--whether we live in the shadow of Times Square or in the depths of the rain forest, we all feel the emotions of disgust, joy, surprise, anger, fear, and distress. We find out that, according to research, winning the lottery does not cause a lasting increase in happiness--a short-lived euphoria is followed in almost every case with a return to our usual emotional state, if not worse. And we meet Kismet, an MIT robot that can express a wide range of emotions, from fear to happiness. Fun to read and based on the latest scientific thinking, here is a stimulating look at our emotions. (shrink)

The use of drones in public healthcare is suggested as a means to improve efficiency under constrained resources and personnel. This paper begins by framing drones in healthcare as a social experiment where ethical guidelines are needed to protect those impacted while fully realizing the benefits the technology offers. Then we propose an ethical framework to facilitate the design, development, implementation, and assessment of drones used in public healthcare. Given the healthcare context, we structure the framework according to the four (...) bioethics principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice, plus a fifth principle from artificial intelligence ethics: explicability. These principles are abstract which makes operationalization a challenge; therefore, we suggest an approach of translation according to a values hierarchy whereby the top-level ethical principles are translated into relevant human values within the domain. The resulting framework is an applied ethics tool that facilitates awareness of relevant ethical issues during the design, development, implementation, and assessment of drones in public healthcare. (shrink)

Within philosophy of action, there are three broad views about what, in addition to beliefs, answer the question of “what to do?” and so determine an agent’s motivation: desires, judgments about values/reasons, or states of the will, such as intentions. We argue that recent work in decision theory vindicates the volitionalist. “What to do?” isn’t settled by “what do I value” or “what reasons are there?” Rational motivation further requires determining how to trade off the possibility of a good outcome (...) against the possibility of a bad one—i.e., determining how much of a risk to take. The risk attitudes that embody this tradeoff seem best understood as intentions: as self-governing policies to weight desires or reasons in certain ways. That we need to settle our risk attitudes before making most decisions corroborates Bratman’s claim that self-governing policies are required for resolving impasses of evaluative and normative underdetermination. Moreover, far from being rare or confined to tie-breakings, cases that are underdetermined but for one’s risk attitudes are typical of everyday decision-making. The will is required for most rational action. (shrink)

If someone brings about an outcome without intending to, is she causally and morally responsible for it? What if she acts intentionally, but as the result of manipulation by another agent? Previous research has shown that an agent's mental states can affect attributions of causal and moral responsibility to that agent, but little is known about what effect one agent's mental states can have on attributions to another agent. In Experiment 1, we replicate findings that manipulation lowers attributions of responsibility (...) to manipulated agents. Experiments 2–7 isolate which features of manipulation drive this effect, a crucial issue for both philosophical debates about free will and attributions of responsibility in situations involving social influence more generally. Our results suggest that “bypassing” a manipulated agent's mental states generates the greatest reduction in responsibility, and we explain our results in terms of the effects that one agent's mental states can have on the counterfactual relations between another agent and an outcome. (shrink)

A Cantor series expansion for a real number x with respect to a basic sequence $Q=(q_1,q_2,\dots )$, where $q_i \geq 2$, is a generalization of the base b expansion to an infinite sequence of bases. Ki and Linton in 1994 showed that for ordinary base b expansions the set of normal numbers is a $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete set, establishing the exact complexity of this set. In the case of Cantor series there are three natural notions of normality: normality, ratio (...) normality, and distribution normality. These notions are equivalent for base b expansions, but not for more general Cantor series expansions. We show that for any basic sequence the set of distribution normal numbers is $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete, and if Q is $1$ -divergent then the sets of normal and ratio normal numbers are $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete. We further show that all five non-trivial differences of these sets are $D_2(\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3)$ -complete if $\lim _i q_i=\infty $ and Q is $1$ -divergent. This shows that except for the trivial containment that every normal number is ratio normal, these three notions are as independent as possible. (shrink)

In a well-known paper, Nick Bostrom presents a confrontation between a fictionalised Blaise Pascal and a mysterious mugger. The mugger persuades Pascal to hand over his wallet by exploiting Pascal's commitment to expected utility maximisation. He does so by offering Pascal an astronomically high reward such that, despite Pascal's low credence in the mugger's truthfulness, the expected utility of accepting the mugging is higher than rejecting it. In this article, I present another sort of high value, low credence mugging. This (...) time, the mugger utilises research on existential risk and the long-term potential of humanity to exploit Pascal's expected-utility-maximising descendant. This mugging is more insidious than Bostrom's original as it relies on plausible facts about the long-term future, as well as realistic credences about how our everyday actions could, albeit with infinitesimally low likelihood, affect the future of humanity. (shrink)

Corpus-driven Cognitive Semantics Introduction to the field Dylan Glynn Is quantitative empirical research possible for the study of semantics?1 More ...

In his article on The Liabilities of Mobility, Merker asserts that “Consciousness presents us with a stable arena for our actions—the world …” and argues for this property as providing evolutionary pressure for the evolution of consciousness. In this commentary, I will explore the implications of Merker’s ideas for consciousness in artificial agents as well as animals, and also meet some possible objections to his evolutionary pressure claim.

In _Did God Care?_ Dylan Burns offers the first comprehensive survey of providence in ancient philosophy, from Plato to Plotinus, that takes into full account the importance and innovations of early Christian thinkers, including Coptic Gnostic and Syriac sources.

I argue that believing that p implies having a credence of 1 in p. This is true because the belief that p involves representing p as being the case, representing p as being the case involves not allowing for the possibility of not-p, while having a credence that’s greater than 0 in not-p involves regarding not-p as a possibility.

: Radical meta-normative skepticism is the view that no standard, norm, or principle has objective authority or normative force. It does not deny that there are norms, standards of correctness, and principles of various kinds that render it possible that we succeed or fail in measuring up to their prerogatives. Rather, it denies that any norm has the status of commanding with objective authority, of giving rise to normative reasons to take seriously and follow its demands. Two powerful transcendental arguments (...) challenge this view. First, skepticism is said to be self-defeating: Settling what to accept, and in particular whether to accept skepticism, appears to be a reason-guided enterprise. How can skeptics coherently support their view by citing reasons in their favor after they just rejected them throughout? Second, there is the practical-deliberative version, most recently developed by David Enoch: We are essentially deliberative creatures. Yet deliberation appears to require that there are correct answers in the form of normative reasons to our practical questions. Thus confidence in the sensible nature of deliberation should inspire confidence in reasons. The essay undermines both transcendental arguments by demonstrating, first, how to support skepticism without deserting its tenets, and, second, how to deliberate in skeptical fashion. (shrink)

Jacques Lacan's thinking revolutionised the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and had a major impact in fields as diverse as film studies, literary criticism, feminist theory and philosophy. Yet his writings are notorious for their complexity and idiosyncratic style. Emphasising the clinical basis of Lacan's work, _An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis_ is an ideal companion to his ideas for readers in every discipline where his influence is felt. The _Dictionary _features: * over 200 entries, explaining Lacan's own terminology and (...) his use of common psychoanalytic expressions * details of the historical and institutional context of Lacan's work * reference to the origins of major concepts in the work of Freud, Saussure, Hegel and other key thinkers * a chronology of Lacan's life and works. (shrink)

Several philosophers have claimed that S knows p only if S’ s belief is safe, where S's belief is safe iff (roughly) in nearby possible worlds in which S believes p, p is true. One widely held intuition many people have is that one cannot know that one's lottery ticket will lose a fair lottery prior to an announcement of the winner, regardless of how probable it is that it will lose. Duncan Pritchard has claimed that a chief advantage of (...) safety theory is that it can explain the lottery intuition without succumbing to skepticism. I argue that Pritchard is wrong. If a version of safety theory can explain the lottery intuition, it will also lead to skepticism. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Article Pages 1-26 DOI 10.1007/s10670-011-9305-z Authors Dylan Dodd, Department of Philosophy, Northern Institute of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK Journal Erkenntnis Online ISSN 1572-8420 Print ISSN 0165-0106. (shrink)

Dealing with the continuously increasing rates of families wanting to either significantly delay or completely postpone their infant's vaccines has created an alarmingly untenable dilemma for the general pediatricians dealing with these families on a daily basis. Pediatricians must decide whether to continue to provide substandard care by foregoing many or most of the infant's highly recommended protective vaccines, or whether to dismiss from the practice the family who refuses vaccines. Much has been written about why they should retain these (...) families, but this paper will discuss some reasonable rationales as to why nearly 40% of pediatricians choose dismissal of these families. (shrink)

Faith in the universal moral equality of people enjoys close to unanimous consensus in present moral and political philosophy. Yet its philosophical justification remains precarious. The search for the basis of equality encounters insurmountable difficulties. Nothing short of a miracle seems required to stabilize universal equality in moral status amidst a vast space of distinctions sprawling between people. The difficulties of stabilizing equality against differentiation are not specific to any particular choice regarding the basis of equality. To show this, I (...) will provide a general diagnosis of the difficulty together with its application to the arguably best attempt at a solution, namely to ground moral equality in a form of subjectivity. In his recent book Equality for Nonegalitarians, George Sher advances the view that “we are moral equals because we are equally centers of consciousness. …The fact that we are equals in this respect—that each is a world unto himself—…explains why each person’s interests are of equal moral importance”. Yet the worlds we are unto ourselves can no more withstand the force of differentiation than previous candidates suggested in the literature, and the reasons why run deeper than even some critics have recognized. The prospects for vindicating universal moral equality remain bleak. (shrink)

Memory of past episodes provides a sense of personal identity — the sense that I am the same person as someone in the past. We present a neurological case study of a patient who has accurate memories of scenes from his past, but for whom the memories lack the sense of mineness. On the basis of this case study, we propose that the sense of identity derives from two components, one delivering the content of the memory and the other generating (...) the sense of mineness. We argue that this new model of the sense of identity has implications for debates about quasi-memory. In addition, articulating the components of the sense of identity promises to bear on the extent to which this sense of identity provides evidence of personal identity. (shrink)

Over the last dozen years, the writings of Richard Taruskin have transformed the debate about "early music" and "authenticity." Text and Act collects for the first time the most important of Taruskin's essays and reviews from this period, many of which now classics in the field. Taking a wide-ranging cultural view of the phenomenon, he shows that the movement, far from reviving ancient traditions, in fact represents the only truly modern style of performance being offered today. He goes on to (...) contend that the movement is therefore far more valuable and even authentic than the historical verisimilitude for which it ostensibly strives could ever be. These essays cast fresh light on many aspects of contemporary music-making and music-thinking, mixing lighthearted debunking with impassioned argumentation. Taruskin ranges from theoretical speculation to practical criticism, and covers a repertory spanning from Bach to Stravinsky. Including a newly written introduction, Text and Act collects the very best of one of our most incisive musical thinkers. (shrink)

Logic and truth -- Inferences : assessment, recognition, and reconstruction -- Categorical statements and inferences -- Truth-functional statements -- Truth tables and proofs -- Natural deduction -- The logic of quantifiers -- Logic and language -- Applied inductive analysis.

In this paper I argue for a doctrine I call ?infallibilism?, which I stipulate to mean that If S knows that p, then the epistemic probability of p for S is 1. Some fallibilists will claim that this doctrine should be rejected because it leads to scepticism. Though it's not obvious that infallibilism does lead to scepticism, I argue that we should be willing to accept it even if it does. Infallibilism should be preferred because it has greater explanatory power (...) than fallibilism. In particular, I argue that an infallibilist can easily explain why assertions of ?p, but possibly not-p? (where the ?possibly? is read as referring to epistemic possibility) is infelicitous in terms of the knowledge rule of assertion. But a fallibilist cannot. Furthermore, an infallibilist can explain the infelicity of utterances of ?p, but I don't know that p? and ?p might be true, but I'm not willing to say that for all I know, p is true?, and why when a speaker thinks p is epistemically possible for her, she will agree (if asked) that for all she knows, p is true. The simplest explanation of these facts entails infallibilism. Fallibilists have tried and failed to explain the infelicity of ?p, but I don't know that p?, but have not even attempted to explain the last two facts. I close by considering two facts that seem to pose a problem for infallibilism, and argue that they don't. (shrink)

I argue that our current practice of ascribing the term “ memory ” to mental states and processes lacks epistemic warrant. Memory, according to the “received view”, is any state or process that results from the sequential stages of encoding, storage and retrieval. By these criteria, memory, or its footprint, can be seen in virtually every mental state we are capable of having. This, I argue, stretches the term to the breaking point. I draw on phenomenological, historical and conceptual considerations (...) to make the case that an act of memory entails a direct, non-inferential feeling of re-acquaintance with one’s past. It does so by linking content retrieved from storage with autonoetic awareness during retrieval. On this view, memory is not the content of experience, but the manner in which that content is experienced. I discuss some theoretical and practical implications and advantages of adopting this more nuanced view of memory. -/-. (shrink)

Scientists disagree about which capacities a functional analysis of consciousness should target. To address this disagreement, I propose that a good functional analysis should target the etiological functions of consciousness. The trouble is that most hypotheses about the etiological origins of consciousness presuppose particular functional analyses. In recent years, however, a small number of scientists have begun to offer evolutionary hypotheses that are relatively theory neutral. I argue that their hypotheses can serve an independent standard for evaluating among theories of (...) consciousness. (shrink)

Throughout a career spanning half a century, Stan Brakhage--the foremost experimental filmmaker in America, and perhaps the world--wrote controversial essays on the art of film and its intersections with poetry, music, dance, and painting. Published in small circulation literary and arts journals, they were gathered later into such books as Metaphors on Vision and Film at Wit's End. Beginning in 1989, and for a decade thereafter, Brakhage wrote the essays in Telling Time as an occasional column for Musicworks, a (...) Toronto quarterly. Ostensibly about the relation of film to music, they soon enlarged to explore primary concerns beyond film, including Brakhage's aesthetic theories based on the phenomenology of human cognition. In these essays he is as brilliant discussing Gertrude Stein or romantic love as he is on child psychology, astronomy, and physiology, all the while teasing out vital correspondences between the arts, and upending conventional ideas of how we perceive. His investigations of other artists are models of sympathetic intuition and generosity. Above all, he shares his theories, discoveries and understandings in the spirit of establishing a groundwork for many varieties of human liberation. His prose is filled with flashes of insight, elaborated metaphors, playful elisions, shorthand puns and neologisms, personal digressions, surprising epiphanies, leaps of faith, affronts to authority. He appeals to the imagination, and invites us to a more profound and personal experience of art. (shrink)

Faith in the universal moral equality of people enjoys close to unanimous consensus in present moral and political philosophy. Yet its philosophical justification remains precarious. The search for the basis of equality encounters insurmountable difficulties. Nothing short of a miracle seems required to stabilize universal equality in moral status amidst a vast space of distinctions sprawling between people. The difficulties of stabilizing equality against differentiation are not specific to any particular choice regarding the basis of equality. To show this, I (...) will provide a general diagnosis of the difficulty together with its application to the arguably best attempt at a solution, namely to ground moral equality in a form of subjectivity. In his recent book Equality for Nonegalitarians, George Sher advances the view that “we are moral equals because we are equally centers of consciousness. …The fact that we are equals in this respect—that each is a world unto himself—…explains why each person’s interests are of equal moral importance”. Yet the worlds we are unto ourselves can no more withstand the force of differentiation than previous candidates suggested in the literature, and the reasons why run deeper than even some critics have recognized. The prospects for vindicating universal moral equality remain bleak. (shrink)

In this fine collection, Bob Dylan at 80, Gary Browning and Constantine Sandis have curated a book which is Janus-faced. It develops a simple premise, to reflect on the career of Dylan and the mult...

Historically, it has been presumed that being an experienced researcher was enough in itself to guarantee effective supervision. This has always been a dubious presumption, and it has become an untenable one in the light of global developments in the doctorate itself and in the candidate population which have transformed demands upon expectations of supervisors. This handbook will assist both new and experienced supervisors to respond to these changes. Divided into six parts the book looks at the following issues: * (...) Changing contexts of doctoral supervision * Recruiting, selecting and working with doctoral candidates * Supporting the research project * Supporting candidates of all nationalities and academic backgrounds * Supporting completion of projects and examination * Evaluation and dissemination of practice. A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors focuses on the practical needs of supervisors, draws examples from a wide range of countries and uses self-interrogation as a means of encouraging readers to reflect upon their practice, making it an essential read for anyone involved in doctoral supervision. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers argue that assertion is governed by an epistemic norm. In particular, many defend the knowledge account of assertion, which says that one should assert only what one knows. Here, I defend a non‐normative alternative to the knowledge account that I call the repK account of assertion. According to the repK account, assertion represents knowledge, but it is not governed by a constitutive epistemic rule. I show that the repK account offers a more straightforward interpretation of the conversational (...) patterns and intuitions that motivate the knowledge account. It does so in terms of ordinary normative principles that philosophers already accept, none of which are constitutive to assertion. I then contend that the repK account is preferable to the knowledge account because it is simpler, its implications are less contentious, and it avoids a problem for normative accounts of assertion recently raised by Peter Pagin. I also argue that the repK account offers a satisfying explanation of selfless assertion, a counterexample to the knowledge account posed by Jennifer Lackey. (shrink)

_ _From the frozen landscapes of the Antarctic to the haunted houses of childhood, the memory of places we experience is fundamental to a sense of self. Drawing on influences as diverse as Merleau-Ponty, Freud, and J. G. Ballard, _The Memory of Place___ __charts the memorial landscape that is written into the body and its experience of the world._ Dylan Trigg’s _The Memory of Place_ _ __offers a lively and original intervention into contemporary debates within “place studies,” an interdisciplinary (...) field at the intersection of philosophy, geography, architecture, urban design, and environmental studies. Through a series of provocative investigations, Trigg analyzes monuments in the representation of public memory; “transitional” contexts, such as airports and highway rest stops; and the “ruins” of both memory and place in sites such as Auschwitz. While developing these original analyses, Trigg engages in thoughtful and innovative ways with the philosophical and literary tradition, from Gaston Bachelard to Pierre Nora, H. P. Lovecraft to Martin Heidegger. Breathing a strange new life into phenomenology, _The Memory of Place___ __argues that the eerie disquiet of the uncanny is at the core of the remembering body, and thus of ourselves. The result is a compelling and novel rethinking of memory and place that should spark new conversations across the field of place studies. Edward S. Casey, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University and widely recognized as the leading scholar on phenomenology of place, calls _The Memory of Place _“genuinely unique and a signal addition to phenomenological literature. It fills a significant gap, and it does so with eloquence and force.” He predicts that Trigg’s book will be “immediately recognized as a major original work in phenomenology.”. (shrink)

Peter Carruthers argues that the global workspace theory implies there are no facts of the matter about animal consciousness. The argument is easily extended to other cognitive theories of consciousness, posing a general problem for consciousness studies. But the argument proves too much, for it also implies that there are no facts of the matter about human consciousness. A key assumption of the argument is that scientific theories of consciousness must explain away the explanatory gap. I criticize this assumption and (...) point to an alternative strategy for defending scientific theories of consciousness, one that better reflects the ongoing scientific practice. I argue there are introspectable inferential connections from phenomenal concepts to functional concepts that scientists can use to individuate the global workspace in terms of capacities that animals and humans share. (shrink)

Ksiazka Roberta Paula Wolfa Apologia anarchizmu, ktora ukazala sie w roku 1970, stala sie niezwyklym wydarzeniem w rozwoju dwudziestowiecznej filozofii zachodniej: oto bowiem szacowny filozof, reprezentujacy (mniej wiecej) glowny nurt swej dziedziny, przedstawial argumenty zyczliwe wobec anarchizmu.

Virtue ethics prescribes cultivating global and behaviorally efficacious character traits, but John Doris and others argue that situationist social psychology shows this to be infeasible. Here, I show how certain versions of virtue ethics that ‘go mental’ can withstand this challenge as well as Doris’ further objections. The defense turns on an account of which psychological materials constitute character traits and which the situationist research shows to be problematically variable. Many situationist results may be driven by impulsive akrasia produced by (...) low-level , emotionally induced ignorance about one’s situation, and some may be driven by a further subtype: modal akrasia. Many subjects in the infamous Milgram experiments, e.g., seem to have recognized what the virtuous thing to do was and that they should do it, and only failed to do it because their emotions prevented them from seeing that they could. If the primary constituents of character traits are higher-level mental dispositions involved in deliberation, though, then the results don’t show that these psychological materials are problematically variable. (shrink)

In the course of making nearly 400 films over the past 50 years, "Stan Brakhage" became synonymous with independent American filmmaking, particularly its avant-garde component. This major collection of writings draws primarily upon two long out-of-print books--Metaphors on Vision and Brakhage Scrapbook. Brakhage examines filmmaking in relation to social and professional contexts, the nature of influence and collaboration, the aesthetics of personal experience, and the conditions under which various films were made. Brakhage discusses his predecessors and contemporaries, relates film (...) to dance and poetry, and in "A Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book" provides a manual for the novice filmmaker. Lectures, interviews, essays, and manifestos document Brakhage's personal vision and public persona. (shrink)

Concessive knowledge attributions (CKAs) are knowledge attributions of the form ‘S knows p, but it’s possible that q’, where q obviously entails not-p (Rysiew, Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 35:477–514, 2001). The significance of CKAs has been widely discussed recently. It’s agreed by all that CKAs are infelicitous, at least typically. But the agreement ends there. Different writers have invoked them in their defenses of all sorts of philosophical theses; to name just a few: contextualism, invariantism, fallibilism, infallibilism, and that the knowledge (...) rules for assertion and practical reasoning are false. In fact, there is a lot of confusion about CKAs and their significance. I try to clear some of this confusion up, as well as show what their significance is with respect to the debate between fallibilists and infallibilists about knowledge in particular. (shrink)

In this paper, I use a comparative analysis of mysticism in Zen and the Abrahamic faiths to formulate a phenomenological account of mysticism “as such.” I argue that, while Zen Buddhism is distinct from other forms of mystical experience in important ways, it can still be fit into a general phenomenological category of mystical experience. First, I explicate the phenomenological accounts of mysticism provided by Anthony Steinbock and Angela Bello. Second, I offer an account of Zen mysticism which both coheres (...) with and problematizes these accounts, arguing that Zen demonstrates the inadequacy of these accounts as descriptions of mysticism as a universal religious category. Lastly, I use this investigation to propose that Zen mysticism does generally cohere with the mystical experiences of other religions, but only if we devise a new formula for speaking phenomenologically about mystical experience as such which captures this phenomenon in all of its manifestations. (shrink)