A measure of coherence is said to be truth conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher likelihood of truth. Recent impossibility results strongly indicate that there are no (non-trivial) probabilistic coherence measures that are truth conducive. Indeed, this holds even if truth conduciveness is understood in a weak ceteris paribus sense (Bovens & Hartmann, 2003, Bayesian epistemology. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Olsson, 2005, Against coherence: Truth probability and justification. Oxford: (...) Oxford University Press). This raises the problem of how coherence could nonetheless be an epistemically important property. Our proposal is that coherence may be linked in a certain way to reliability. We define a measure of coherence to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher probability that the information sources are reliable. Restricting ourselves to the most basic case, we investigate which coherence measures in the literature are reliability conducive. It turns out that, while a number of measures fail to be reliability conducive, except possibly in a trivial and uninteresting sense, Shogenji’s measure and several measures generated by Douven and Meijs’s recipe are notable exceptions to this rule. (shrink)

Nietzsche says "good Europeans" must not only cultivate a "supra-national" view, but also "supra-European" perspective to transcend their European biases and see beyond the horizon of Western culture. The volume takes up such conceptual frontier crossings and syntheses. Emphasizing Nietzsche's genealogy of European culture and his reflections upon the constitution of Europe in the broadest sense, its essays examine peoples and nations, values and arts, knowledge and religion. Nietzsche's apprehensions about the crises of nihilism and decadence and their implications for (...) Europe's future are investigated in this context. Concerning the crossing of notional frontiers, contributors examine Nietzsche's hoped-for dismantling of Europe's state borders, the overcoming of national prejudices and rivalries, and the propagation of a revitalizing "supra-European" perspective on the continent, its culture and future. They also illuminate lines of syntheses, notably the syncretism of the ancient Greeks and its possible example for the European culture to-be. Finally certain of Europe's current problems are considered via the critical apparatus furnished by Nietzsche's philosophy and the diagnostic tools it provides. (shrink)

Political advertising to recruit the support of voters is an inherent part of politics. Today, ads are distributed via television and online, including social media. This type of advertisement attempts to recruit support by presenting convincing arguments and evoking various emotions about the candidate, opponents, and policy proposals. We discuss recent arguments and evidence that a specific social emotion, namely the concept kama muta, plays a role in political advertisements. In vernacular language, kama muta is typically labeled as being moved (...) or touched. We compare kama muta and anger theoretically and discuss how they can influence voters’ willingness to support a candidate. We then, for the first time, compare kama muta and anger empirically in the same study. Specifically, we showed American participants short political ads during the 2018 United States midterm election campaigns. All participants saw both kama muta- and anger-evoking ads from both Democratic or Republican candidates. In total, everybody watched eight ads. We assessed participants’ degree of being moved and angered by the videos and their motivation for three types of political support: ideational, financial, and personal. The emotional impact of an ad depended on its perceived source: Participants felt especially angry after watching the anger-evoking ads and especially moved by moving ads if they identified with the political party that had produced the video. Both emotions mediated were associated with increased intentions to provide support. Importantly, if one of the two emotions was evoked, its effect on political support was enhanced if participants identified with the party that had produced the ad. We discuss limitations of the method and implications of the results for future research and practice. (shrink)

Let us by ‘first-order beliefs’ mean beliefs about the world, such as the belief that it will rain tomorrow, and by ‘second-order beliefs’ let us mean beliefs about the reliability of first-order, belief-forming processes. In formal epistemology, coherence has been studied, with much ingenuity and precision, for sets of first-order beliefs. However, to the best of our knowledge, sets including second-order beliefs have not yet received serious attention in that literature. In informal epistemology, by contrast, sets of the latter kind (...) play an important role in some respectable coherence theories of knowledge and justification. In this paper, we extend the formal treatment of coherence to second-order beliefs. Our main conclusion is that while extending the framework to second-order beliefs sheds doubt on the generality of the notorious impossibility results for coherentism, another problem crops up that might be no less damaging to the coherentist project: facts of coherence turn out to be epistemically accessible only to agents who have a good deal of insight into matters external to their own belief states. (shrink)

Grounded procedures of separation are conceptualized as a learned concept. The simultaneous cultural universality of the general idea and immense diversity of its implementations might be better understood through the lens of dual inheritance theories. By drawing on examples from developmental psychology and emotion theorizing, we argue that an innate blueprint might underlie learned implementations of cleansing that vary widely.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1898 Edition.

Previous research has demonstrated that reversing the contrast of the eye region, which includes the eyebrows, affects the N170 ERP. To selectively assess the impact of just the eyes, the present study evaluated the N170 in response to reversing contrast polarity of just the iris and sclera in upright and inverted face stimuli. Contrast reversal of the eyes increased the amplitude of the N170 for upright faces, but not for inverted faces, suggesting that the contrast of eyes is an important (...) contributor to the N170 ERP. (shrink)

This study sought to determine if hues overlayed on a video recording of a piano performance would systematically influence perception of its emotional arousal level. The hues were artificially added to a series of four short video excerpts of different performances using video editing software. Over two experiments 106 participants were sorted into 4 conditions, with each viewing different combinations of musical excerpts and hue combinations. Participants rated the emotional arousal depicted by each excerpt. Results indicated that the overall arousal (...) ratings were consistent with the nominal arousal of the selected excerpts. However, hues added to video produced no significant effect on arousal ratings, contrary to predictions. This could be due to the domination of the combined effects of other channels of information over the emotional effects of the hypothesized influence of hue on perceived performance. To our knowledge this is the first study to investigate the impact of these hues upon perceived arousal of music performance, and has implications for musical performers and stage lighting. Further research that investigates reactions during live performance and manipulation of a wider range of lighting hues, saturation and brightness levels, and editing techniques, is recommended to further scrutinize the veracity of the findings. (shrink)

C. G. Carus was the last and perhaps—besides G. H. Schubert—the most important representative of late Romantic philosophical anthropology. The present book is a welcome reprint of his most popular writing, a fascinating, imaginative, more speculative than experimental treatise on the different psychic functions. Carus' main thesis—avowedly inspired by the Schellingian Naturphilosophie—is the living unity of the body and the soul, which is itself, however, only a superior manifestation of a life-penetrated Universe. Like the other Romantic "scientists" gravitating around (...) Schelling, Carus was entirely forgotten during the second half of the nineteenth century; but he is now being read again.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This dissertation is comprised of two big essays. The first seeks to understand what is at stake in the project of music analysis writ large. I argue for adopting a conception of musical analysis as a practical activity oriented toward the having of what Dewey calls "integral experiences." I cash out this idea with help from Wittgenstein's notion of aspect perception ("seeing as"), whose musical applications I demonstrate in a discussion of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. I then use my model of (...) music analysis to give a reading of David Lewin's analysis of Schubert's "Morgengruss." The second essay seeks to understand what is at stake in the project of Schenkerian musical analysis in particular. I offer an extended reconstruction of Schenker's theory of organic unity in response to objections to Schenker's "necessitarian" language, i.e. his penchant for claiming that a musical masterwork must be as it is (in some to-be-determined sense of "must"). I accomplish this by giving a normative reading of Schenker's theory of absolute music, a reading which understands Schenker's musical absolutism as at root a theory of the proper norms of musical hearing. I then argue that the observance of these norms induces one to explain musical structures teleologically. Schenker's necessitarian language, I contend, makes sense once it is situated within the context of Kant's theory of biological explanation, as set out in his Critique of Teleological Judgment, the second half of his Critique of the Power of Judgment. (shrink)

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents: Rudolf HALLER: Zwei Vorworte in einem. Evelyn DÖLLING: Alexius Meinong: "Der blinde Seher Theiresias". Jaakko HINTIKKA: Meinong in a Long Perspective. Richard SYLVAN: Re-Exploring Item-Theory. Francesca MODENATO: Meinong's Theory of Objects: An Attempt at Overcoming Psychologism. Jan WOLE??N??SKI: Ways of Dealing with Non-existence. Karel LAMBERT: Substitution and the Expansion of the World. Terence PARSONS: Meinongian Semantics Generalized. Reinhardt GROSSMANN: Thoughts, Objectives and States of Affairs. Peter SIMONS: Meinong's Theory of Sense and Reference. Barry SMITH: More Things in (...) Heaven and Earth. Michele LENOCI: Meinongs unvollständige Gegenstände und das Universalienproblem. Maria E. REICHER: Gibt es unvollständige Gegenstände? Dale JACQUETTE: Meinong's Concept of Implexive Being and Nonbeing. Herbert HOCHBERG:s, Functions, Existence and Relations in the Russell-Meinong Dispute, the Bradley Paradox and the Realism-Nominalism Controversy. Jacek PA_NICZEK: Are Contradictions Still Lurking in Meinongian Theories of Objects? Marie-Luise SCHUBERT KALSI: Apriorische Elemente im Denken. Liliana ALBERTAZZI: Forms of Completion. Johann Ch. MAREK: Zwei Gegenstände und ein Inhalt. Zur Intentionalität bei Meinong. Wolfgang KÜNNE: Some Varieties of Thinking. Reflections on Meinong and Fodor. Alberto VOLTOLINI: Is Meaning Without Actually Existing Reference Naturalizable? Markus S. STEPANIANS: Russells Kritik an Meinongs Begriff des Annahmeschlusses. Nenad MIŠ_EVI_: Imagination and Necessity. R.D. ROLLINGER: Meinong on Perception: Two Questions Concerning Propositional Seeing. Wolfgang G. STOCK: Die Genese der Theorie der Vorstellungsproduktion der Grazer Schule. Rudolf HALLER: Über Meinongs Wissenschaftstheorie. Alfred SCHRAMM: Meinongs Wahrscheinlichkeit. Karl SCHUHMANN: Der Wertbegriff beim frühen Meinong. Wilhelm BAUMGARTNER: Wertpräsentation. Ursula ZEGLÉN: Meinong's Analysis of Lying. Seppo SAJAMA: Hitting Reality: France Veber's Concept of Zadevanje. Matja_ POTR_: Sensation According to Meinong and Veber. Róbert SOMOS: Zwei Schüler Brentanos: Ákos von Pauler und Meinong. J.C. NYÍRI: Palágyis Kritik an der Gegenstandstheorie. David M. ARMSTRONG: Reaction to Meinong. (shrink)

I am aware of the red and orange autumn leaves. Am I aware of my awareness of the leaves? Not so according to many philosophers. By contrast, many meditative traditions report an experience of awareness itself. I argue that such a pure awareness experience must have a non-sensory phenomenal character. I use Douglas Harding’s first-person experiments for assisting in recognising pure awareness. In particular, I investigate the gap where one cannot see one’s head. This is not a mere gap because (...) I seem to be looking from here. Critically, I claim, the experience of looking from here has a non-sensory phenomenal character. I argue that this sense of being aware cannot be reduced to egocentric visual-spatial relations nor the viewpoint because it continues when I close my eyes. Neither is a multisensory origin sufficient to explain why I seem to be at this central point rather than elsewhere. Traditionally, claims of a pure awareness experience have been restricted to highly trained individuals in very restricted circumstances. The innovation of Harding’s approach is that it reliably isolates a candidate for pure awareness using methods which can be replicated at any time. (shrink)

Decolonizing Universalism develops a genuinely anti-imperialist feminism. Against relativism/universalism debates that ask feminists to either reject normativity or reduce feminism to a Western conceit, Khader's nonideal universalism rediscovers the normative core of feminism in opposition to sexist oppression and reimagines the role of moral ideals in transnational feminist praxis.

Ancient Egypt, by L. Bull.--Ancient Mesopotamia, by E.A. Speiser.--Ancient Persia, by G.G. Cameron,--Ancient Israel, by M. Burrows.--The Hellenistic Orient, by C.B. Welles.--Earliest Christianity, by E. Dinkler.--Patristic Christianity, by R.H. Bainton.--Early Islam, by J. Obermann.--The twentieth-century West and the ancient Near East, by P. Schubert.

The Hong and Page ‘diversity trumps ability’ result has been used to argue for the more general claim that a diverse set of agents is epistemically superior to a comparable group of experts. Here we extend Hong and Page’s model to landscapes of different degrees of randomness and demonstrate the sensitivity of the ‘diversity trumps ability’ result. This analysis offers a more nuanced picture of how diversity, ability, and expertise may relate. Although models of this sort can indeed be suggestive (...) for diversity policies, we advise against interpreting such results overly broadly. (shrink)

Les douze articles ici rassemblés entrent dans la série de ce que j'appelle, pensant à Schubert, mes 'impromptus' : des textes brefs, résolument subjectifs, écrits 'sur le champ et sans préparation' (comme dit le Dictionnaire de Littré), qui s'adressent au grand public et sont le plus souvent, malgré l'éventuelle légèreté de l'écriture, d'une tonalité quelque peu grave ou mélancolique. C'est encore le cas dans ce recueil, et d'autant plus, s'agissant de ce dernier point, que la plupart de ces minuscules (...) essais (pour reprendre cette fois le mot de Montaigne) portent sur des sujets en effet sombres ou douloureux : le pessimisme, le tragique, la mort des enfants, le handicap, l'agonie, le bagne, le suicide... J'ose croire qu'ils ne seront pas pour autant cause de tristesse, mais aideront plutôt à accepter, aussi joyeusement que possible, la part en toute vie de deuil, de chagrin ou de détresse. C'est la joie qui est bonne, mais d'autant plus méritoire et belle qu'elle est souvent difficile. Quant au dernier texte ('Maman'), qui est sans doute ce que j'ai publié de plus intime, il ne doit d'exister qu'aux lecteurs (et plus souvent aux lectrices) qui m'ont expressément demandé de l'écrire. Qu'ils en soient remerciés."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Open Access: What if it doesn’t get better? Against more hopeful and optimistic views that it is not just ideal but possible to put an end to what John Rawls calls “the great evils of human history,” I aver that when it comes to evils caused by human beings, the situation is hopeless. We are better off with the heavy knowledge that evils recur than we are with idealizations of progress, perfection, and completeness; an appropriate ethic for living with such (...) heavy knowledge, which I call an ‘Imperfectionist Ethic,’ could include resisting evils, improving the lives of victims, and even enjoying ourselves. Better conceptions of the objects of hope, and the good life, inform a praxis-centered, nonideal ethic, supportive of sustained moral motivation, resilience, and even cheer. I connect elements of stoic and pessimistic philosophy in order to outline some normative recommendations for living with evils. A praxis-centered ethic would helpfully adjust our expectations from changing an uncontrollable future, to developing better skills for living in a world that exceeds our control. (shrink)

A number of formal models, including a highly influential model from Hong and Page, purport to show that functionally diverse groups often beat groups of individually high-performing agents in solving problems. Thompson argues that in Hong and Page’s model, that the diverse groups are created by a random process explains their success, not the diversity. Here, I defend the diversity interpretation of the Hong and Page result. The failure of Thompson’s argument shows that to understand the value of functional diversity, (...) we should be clearer about how we conceive of and measure that diversity. (shrink)

We developed and tested a behavioral version of the Defining Issues Test-1 revised (DIT-1r), which is a measure of the development of moral judgment. We conducted a behavioral experiment using the behavioral Defining Issues Test (bDIT) to examine the relationship between participants’ moral developmental status, moral competence, and reaction time when making moral judgments. We found that when the judgments were made based on the preferred moral schema, the reaction time for moral judgments was significantly moderated by the moral developmental (...) status. In addition, as a participant becomes more confident with moral judgment, the participant differentiates the preferred versus other schemas better particularly when the participant’s abilities for moral judgment are more developed. (shrink)

Anti-realism is plagued by Fitch’s paradox: the remarkable result that if one accepts that all truths are knowable, minimal assumptions about the nature of knowledge entail that every truth is known. Dorothy Edgington suggests to address this problem by understanding p is knowable to be a counterfactual claim, but her proposal must contend with a forceful objection by Timothy Williamson. I revisit Edgington’s basic idea and find that Williamson’s objection is obviated by a refined understanding of counterfactual knowability that is (...) grounded in possible courses of inquiry. I arrive at a precise definition of knowability that is not just a technical avoidance of paradox, but is metaphysically sound and does justice to the anti-realist idea. (shrink)

Malthus did not leave us with a systematic treatment of colonization, but from remarks scattered throughout his publications and correspondence it is possible to assemble a fairly coherent account of his views on the advantages and disadvantages of colonies, and on the reasons why some have failed and others succeeded. Included in these scattered remarks are some comparisons between his own views on colonies and those of Adam Smith. The question of the relationship between Malthus and Adam Smith is a (...) rather complex and subtle one, and cannot be given the full consideration it deserves in one short paper. But, as a general summary, it can be said that Malthus had a high regard for Smith and considered himself a follower and disciple of Smith, by contrast with Ricardo, James Mill, and McCulloch etc., whom he considered as exponents of a ‘New System of Political Economy”. His own Principles of Political Economy was conceived as a collection of ‘tracts or essays”, not as a new systematic treatise replacing the Wealth of Nations, Joseph Gamier in his article ‘Malthus” in the Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, 1852, saw that the title of the Principles was in fact a misnomer: ‘Malgré son titre, le livre sur les Principes n'est point un traité complet, mais seulement une collection de dissertations.” In what was probably intended as a criticism of Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817, Malthus stated that the ‘present period … seems to be unpropitious to the publication of a new systematic treatise on political economy”, and, referring to Smith's work, stated that ‘the treatise which we already possess is still of the very highest value”. Nevertheless, despite professing his affiliation, Malthus did not hesitate to criticize Smith when he disagreed with him. He recognized that the Wealth of Nations contained ‘controverted points” and that it would require some ‘additions … which the more advanced stage of the science has rendered necessary”. (shrink)

We are moral equals, but in virtue of what? The most plausible answers to this question have pointed to our higher agential capacities, but we vary in the degrees to which we possess those capacities. How could they ground our equal moral standing, then? This chapter argues that they do so only indirectly. Our moral equality is most directly grounded in a social practice of equality, a practice that serves the purpose of mitigating our tendencies toward control and domination that (...) interpreters of Rousseau call “inflamed amour-propre.” We qualify as participants in this practice of equality by possessing certain agential capacities, but it is our participation in the practice, and not the capacities themselves, that makes us moral equals. This chapter thus proposes moving from a capacity-based to practice-based view of moral equality. Doing so avoids problems for other accounts that, like the one defended here, ignore (above a threshold) the varying degrees to which we possess the pertinent agential capacities, such as Ian Carter’s account of “opacity respect.”​. (shrink)

Augustine and William James both argue that religious faith can be both practical and rational even in the absence of knowledge. Augustine argues that religious faith is trust and that trust is a normal, proper, and even necessary way of believing. Beginning with faith, we then work towards knowledge by means of philosophical contemplation. James’ “The Will to Believe” makes pragmatic arguments for the rationality of faith. Although we do not know (yet) whether God exists, faith is a choice between (...) the risk of believing something false and the risk of not believing something true, and in the absence of convincing evidence we may decide for ourselves which risk we prefer. We may be able to experience God in the future and thereby gain knowledge, yet this may be contingent on our willingness to believe. There are key differences, however. Augustine is a Christian with a neo-Platonic bent, James an empiricist defending the religion of your choice. These differences may be less significant than they first appear. After explaining Augustine and then James I draw out the major points of comparison and contrast and suggest a few reasons their insights might be at least partially synthesized. -/- This is the accepted version of the following article: Mark J. Boone, “Augustine and William James on the Rationality of Faith,” The Heythrop Journal (online edition December 2018), which has been published in final form at [See First URL]. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Wiley Self-Archiving Policy [See Second URL]. (shrink)