Contemporary discussions of skepticism often frame the skeptic's argument around an instance of the closure principle. Roughly, the closure principle states that if a subject knows p, and knows that p entails q, then the subject knows q. The main contention of this paper is that the closure argument for skepticism is defective. We explore several possible classifications of the defect. The closure argument might plausibly be classified as begging the question, as exhibiting transmission failure, or as structurally inefficient. Interestingly, (...) perhaps, each of these has been proposed as the correct classification of Moore's proof of an external world. (shrink)

Ethicists generally agree that there are supererogatory acts, which are morally good, but not morally obligatory. It is sometimes claimed that, in addition to supererogatory acts, there are suberogatory acts, which are morally bad, but not morally impermissible. According to Julia Driver (1992), the distinction between impermissible acts and suberogatory acts is legitimate and unjustly neglected by ethicists. She argues that certain cases are best explained in terms of the suberogatory. Hallie Rose Liberto (2012) denies the suberogatory on the grounds (...) that Driver's cases can be explained without invoking it. In order to make good on this claim, Liberto suggests an account of moral impermissibility that purportedly eliminates the need to posit suberogatory acts. We defend the suberogatory. Our defense is twofold. First, we argue that Liberto's account of moral impermissibility is dubious. Second, we attempt to show that it is possible to construct an argument against the supererogatory that is exactly analogous to Liberto's argument against the suberogatory. The upshot is that if the suberogatory is denied for the reasons that Liberto suggests, then the supererogatory should be denied as well. Few ethicists, however, are willing to deny the supererogatory. (shrink)

Review of Foundations of Evidence Law, by Alex Stein.

Should we explicate truth in terms of meaning, or meaning in terms of truth? Ramsey, Prior and Strawson all favoured the former approach: a statement is true if and only if things are as the speaker, in making the statement, states them to be; similarly, a belief is true if and only if things are as a thinker with that belief thereby believes them to be. I defend this explication of truth against a range of objections.Ramsey formalized this account of (...) truth as follows: B is true =df ∃P; in §i, I defend this formula against the late Peter Geach's objection that its right‐hand side is ill‐formed. Davidson held that Ramsey and co. had the whole matter back to front: on his view, we should explicate meaning in terms of truth, not vice versa. In §ii, I argue that Ramsey's approach opens the way to a more promising approach to semantic theorizing than Davidson's. Ramsey presents his formula as a definition of truth, apparently contradicting Tarski's theorem that truth is indefinable. In §iii, I show that the contradiction is only apparent: Tarski assumes that the Liar‐like inscription he uses to prove his theorem has a content, but Ramsey can and should reject that assumption. As I explain in §iv, versions of the Liar Paradox may be generated without making any assumptions about truth: paradox arises when the impredicativity that is found when a statement's content depends on the contents of a collection of statements to which it belongs turns pathological. Since they do not succeed in saying anything, such pathological utterances or inscriptions pose no threat to the laws of logic, when these are understood as universal principles about the ways things may be said or thought to be. There is, though, a call for rules by following which we can be sure that any conclusion deduced from true premisses is true, and hence says something. Such rules cannot be purely formal, but in §v I propose a system of them: this opens the way to the construction of deductive theories even in circumstances where producing a well‐formed formula is no guarantee of saying anything. (shrink)

Answers the questions “How should we read Deleuze?” and “How should we read with Deleuze?” by showing us how his philosophy works.

In the first part of chapter 2 of book II of the Physics Aristotle addresses the issue of the difference between mathematics and physics. In the course of his discussion he says some things about astronomy and the ‘ ‘ more physical branches of mathematics”. In this paper I discuss historical issues concerning the text, translation, and interpretation of the passage, focusing on two cruxes, the first reference to astronomy at 193b25–26 and the reference to the more physical branches at 194a7–8. In (...) section I, I criticize Ross’s interpretation of the passage and point out that his alteration of has no warrant in the Greek manuscripts. In the next three sections I treat three other interpretations, all of which depart from Ross's: in section II that of Simplicius, which I commend; in section III that of Thomas Aquinas, which is importantly influenced by a mistranslation of, and in section IV that of Ibn Rushd, which is based on an Arabic text corresponding to that printed by Ross. In the concluding section of the paper I describe the modern history of the Greek text of our passage and translations of it from the early twelfth century until the appearance of Ross's text in 1936. (shrink)

Faith music has existed with the emergence of belief since the archaic period and has been a tool in showing devotion to the sacred in almost all beliefs. Music is sometimes used individually, sometimes together with collective rituals, sometimes only with human voices, sometimes only with instruments and sometimes with musical accompaniment, in order to spread the belief, convey religious information and reinforce the teachings, purify, communicate with the spirits and present their devotion to them. In the study, the hymn (...) "Ya Hannân Ya Mennan", which was performed in the tarawih prayers during Ramadan for centuries and constituted the ancient tradition of a city, was evaluated ethnomusicologically within the ethnology of faith music. The hymn "Ya Hannân", which is a type of Ramadan hymns, has settled in the memory of the people and created a culture as the public hymn used in mosque music during Ramadan in the city. It is so embedded in the cultural codes of the divine city that it is seen as a part of the tarawih prayer for some people, especially children, who have not left the province. When people who grew up with this culture go to the tarawih prayer outside of Sivas, they expect to listen to the hymn "Ya Hannân" in their sense of belonging when the hymns begin. It also concerns the discipline of sociology of religion because of the hymn that costs the whole city. (shrink)

What is the purpose of perception? And how might the answer to this question help distinguish perception from other mental processes? Block’s landmark book, The.

Crossing Borders: Essays In Honour of Ian H. Angus is a collection of original and cutting-edge essays by eighteen outstanding and diverse Canadian and International scholars that engage with Professor Ian Angus's rich contributions to three distinct, albeit overlapping, fields: Canadian Studies, Phenomenology and Critical Theory, and Communication and Media Studies. These contributions are distinct, unique, and have had resonance across the intellectual landscape over the thirty years that Angus has been teaching communications, philosophy, Canadian Studies, theory, and humanities first (...) in the United States and then in Canada. (shrink)

Often we feel there is something odd about death, and especially about our own. This latter at least we often feel beyond our ken. Well, I think in a sense it may be; but in another, clearly is not. Among those who have felt this strangeness is Ramchandra Gandhi who, in an excellent recent work, The Availability of Religious Ideas , maintained – There is no difficulty in seeing that I cannot intelligibly conceive of my own death – the ceasing (...) to be, for good, of myself, my consciousness. I can conceive of temporary lapses into unconsciousness, always overcome by a return to consciousness. The difficulty is this: in asking myself the question 'What will it be like to be irreversibly unconscious?' , I want both to remain self-conscious and visualize actual loss of capacity for self-consciousness. This cannot be done. (shrink)

Nance reads these texts against the social and cultural conditions of their making, establishing a solid historical basis for the interpretation of key beliefs and doctrines.

The place of reason in the Islamic tradition has attracted much debate, among both classical scholars and modern researchers. One of the main areas of disagreement is the definition of reason, with scholars from various disciplines oftentimes offering different definitions, which, in turn, undergird their corresponding understanding of rationalism. Starting in the classical period, Muslim scholars have credited al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī with making a particularly powerful contribution to the discussion by defining reason as an “instinct” and elaborating on this definition; many (...) recent scholars concur with this assessment. This article studies al-Muḥāsibī’s theory of reason through his major work on the subject, Māʾiyyat al-ʿaql. More specifically, it examines the concluding, analytical section of this work, titled “Masʾala fī al-ʿaql”, which bears an unusual resemblance to a work by al-Muḥāsibī’s contemporary al-Jāḥiẓ, “Ḥujaj al-nubuwwa”. By analyzing the similarities between these texts through a detailed comparison, the article attempts to verify the authorship of this critical section of al-Muḥāsibī’s work, thereby casting light on other contributions to the study of reason in Islam that were eclipsed by the scholarly concentration on al-Muḥāsibī’s output. For this comparison, the text of “Masʾala fī al-ʿaql” is fully edited and translated. (shrink)

This book takes the discursive and postmodern turn in psychotherapy a significant step forward and will be of interest to all those working in mental health who want to work wiht clients in ways that will facilitate challenges to oppression and processes of emancipation. It achieves this by: · reflecting on the role of psychotherapy in contemporary culture · developing critiques of language in psychotherapy that unravel its claims to personal truth · the reworking of a place in the transforative (...) therapeutic practice Deconstruction is brought to bear on the key conceptual and pragmatic issues that therapists and clinical psychologists face, and the project of therapy is opened up to critical attention and reconstruction. The book provides clear reviews of different viewpoints and will help readers to orient themselves on the complex terrain of debates. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the impact of disability on one of life’s goods: achievement. Contra Campbell, Nyholm, and Walter, I argue that construing the magnitude of achievements in terms of subjective effort trivializes what it means to achieve. This poses a problem for the authors’ argument that disability, in general, does not reduce access to this good. I draw on an alternative construal of achievement that I have proposed elsewhere in order to show that, indeed, many disabilities do not (...) restrict access to achievement. I defend this argument against an objection that it problematically relativizes the achievements of persons with disability, and I close with general lessons for future work. (shrink)

In this essay collection, leading physicists, philosophers, and historians attempt to fill the empty theoretical ground in the foundations of information and address the related question of the limits to our knowledge of the world. Over recent decades, our practical approach to information and its exploitation has radically outpaced our theoretical understanding - to such a degree that reflection on the foundations may seem futile. But it is exactly fields such as quantum information, which are shifting the boundaries of the (...) physically possible, that make a foundational understanding of information increasingly important. One of the recurring themes of the book is the claim by Eddington and Wheeler that information involves interaction and putting agents or observers centre stage. Thus, physical reality, in their view, is shaped by the questions we choose to put to it and is built up from the information residing at its core. This is the root of Wheeler's famous phrase "it from bit." After reading the stimulating essays collected in this volume, readers will be in a good position to decide whether they agree with this view. (shrink)

In days past, epistemologists expended a good deal of effort trying to analyze the basing relation—the relation between a belief and its basis. No satisfying account was offered, and the project was largely abandoned. Younger epistemologists, however, have begun to yearn for an adequate theory of basing. I aim to deliver one. After establishing some data and arguing that traditional accounts of basing are unsatisfying, I introduce a novel theory of the basing relation: the dispositional theory. It begins with the (...) pedestrian observation that beliefs stand or fall with their bases. The theory I offer is an elucidation and refinement of this thought. (shrink)

This paper addresses the following questions: what is Fichte’s first principle of right, how does he argue for it, and how does it function as the first principle of his substantive political theory? To answer these questions, the paper offers an overview of the main steps of Fichte’s derivation of the principle of right, explains its relationship to Fichte’s account of individual personhood, and then specifies some of the senses in which the resulting principle serves as the foundation of the (...) rest of Fichte’s political and economic theory. I focus on the developmental logic of Fichte’s account of the “summons” and the “relation of right.” This developmental logic, I argue, is both recapitulated and completed within Fichte’s political theory and political economy. (shrink)

Introductions to the theory of knowledge are plentiful, but none introduce students to the most recent debates that exercise contemporary philosophers. Ian Evans and Nicholas D. Smith aim to change that. Their book guides the reader through the standard theories of knowledge while simultaneously using these as a springboard to introduce current debates. Each chapter concludes with a “Current Trends” section pointing the reader to the best literature dominating current philosophical discussion. These include: the puzzle of reasonable disagreement; the so-called (...) “problem of easy knowledge”; the intellectual virtues; and new theories in the philosophy of language relating to knowledge. Chapters include discussions of skepticism, the truth condition, belief and acceptance, justification, internalism versus externalism, epistemic evaluation, and epistemic contextualism. Evans and Smith do not merely offer a review of existing theories and debates; they also offer a novel theory that takes seriously the claim that knowledge is not unique to humans. Surveying current scientific literature in animal ethology, they discover surprising sophistication and diversity in non-human cognition. In their final analysis the authors provide a unified account of knowledge that manages to respect and explain this diversity. They argue that animals know when they make appropriate use of the cognitive processes available to animals of that kind, in environments within which those processes are veridically well-adapted. _Knowledge_ is a lively and accessible volume, ideal for undergraduate and post-graduate students. It is also set to spark debate among scholars for its novel approaches to traditional topics and its thoroughgoing commitment to naturalism. (shrink)

The analytical notion of ‘scientific style of reasoning’, introduced by Ian Hacking in the middle of the 1980s, has become widespread in the literature of the history and philosophy of science. However, scholars have rarely made explicit the philosophical assumptions and the research objectives underlying the notion of style: what are its philosophical roots? How does the notion of style fit into the area of research of historical epistemology? What does a comparison between Hacking’s project on styles of thinking and (...) other similar projects suggest? My aim in this paper is to answer these questions. Hacking has denied that his project of styles of thinking falls into the field of historical epistemology. I shall challenge his remark by tracing out the connections of the notion of style with historical epistemology and, more in general, with a tradition of thought born in France in the beginning of twentieth-century. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of J. G. Fichte's transcendental argument for the necessity of mutual recognition in Foundations of Natural Right. Fichte's argument purports to show that, as a condition of the possibility of self-consciousness, we must take ourselves to stand in relations of mutual recognition with other agents like ourselves. After reconstructing the steps of Fichte's argument, I present what I call the ‘modal dilemma’, which highlights a serious ambiguity in Fichte's deduction. According to the modal (...) dilemma, the conclusion to Fichte's transcendental argument—that as a condition of the possibility of our self-consciousness, we must recognize and be recognized by others—expresses either metaphysical or normative necessity. However, no normative conclusion follows from Fichte's premises, and the metaphysical claim that does follow from his argument appears to be implausibly strong. Thus the argument looks like a failure on either interpretation of the conclusion's modality. In the penultimate section of the paper, I propose a new interpretation of the argument that avoids the modal dilemma and provides a normative grounding of Fichte's concept of right. (shrink)

My paper reconstructs Fichte's property theory and political economy in Foundations of Natural Right and The Closed Commercial State. Fichte's theory of property requires the rejection of the classical liberal theory of property rights. Fichte's alternative theory of property, in conjunction with his republican account of the state's role in guaranteeing individual rights, further requires the rejection of a market economy in favor of a planned economy. For Fichte's view entails the normative necessity of a political economy in which the (...) production and transfer of goods and services, across large sectors of the economy, are mandated by the state in advance in accordance with an economic plan. As a result, Fichte reconceives his contractualism as necessarily including the negotiation of a state‐enforced plan for eco- nomic activity. Thus, Fichte's new theory of property in Foundations of Natural Right has extremely wide‐ranging implications for the rest of his political and economic thought. The negotiation of fair terms of political associa- tion characteristic of classical contractualist thought becomes in Fichte's hands the negotiation of an economic plan that defines each individual's socioeconomic rights. I conclude with some brief remarks on the sense in which Fichte's theory serves as a cautionary tale for later socialists. (shrink)

Classical logic has been attacked by adherents of rival, anti-realist logical systems: Ian Rumfitt comes to its defence. He considers the nature of logic, and how to arbitrate between different logics. He argues that classical logic may dispense with the principle of bivalence, and may thus be liberated from the dead hand of classical semantics.

Why save endangered species without clear aesthetic, economic, or ecosystemic value? This book takes on this challenging question through an account of the intrinsic goods of species. Ian A. Smith argues that a species’ intrinsic value stems from its ability to flourish—its organisms continuing to reproduce successfully and it avoiding extinction—which helps to demonstrate a further claim, that humans ought to preserve species that we have endangered. He shows our need to exercise humility in our relations with endangered species through (...) the preservation of their intrinsic goods, which in turn rectifies our degradation of their importance. Unique in its appeal to virtue ethics and to species concepts, _The Intrinsic Value of Endangered Species_ is an important resource for scholars working in environmental ethics and the philosophy of biology. (shrink)