When are morally good actions beautiful, when indeed they are? In this paper, it is argued that morally good actions are beautiful when they appear to express the deep or true self, and in turn tend to give rise to an emotion which is characterised by feelings of being moved, unity, inspiration, and meaningfulness, inter alia. In advancing the case for this claim, it is revealed that there are additional sources of well-formedness in play in the context of moral beauty (...) in addition to those that have tended to be focused on to date: one which is connected to imagining a deep location for the goodness concerned, and another which is connected to imagining that the goodness stems from capacities which are essential to the person. (shrink)

What is the nature of the concept BEAUTY? Does it differ fundamentally from nearby concepts such as PRETTINESS? It is argued that BEAUTY, but not PRETTINESS, is a dual-character concept. Across a number of contexts, it is proposed that BEAUTY has a descriptive sense that is characterised by, inter alia, having intrinsically pleasing appearances; and a normative sense associated with deeply-held values. This account is supported across two, pre-registered, studies (N=500), and by drawing on analysis of corpus data. It is (...) suggested that this can help to explain why beauty, unlike prettiness, is thought to be deep in both the sense of being important, and in the sense of being less closely tied to sensory surfaces. (shrink)

Why are moral actions beautiful, when indeed they are? This paper assesses the view, found most notably in Schiller, that moral actions are beautiful just when they present the appearance of freedom by appearing to be the result of internal harmony (the Schillerian Internal Harmony Thesis). I argue that while this thesis can accommodate some of the beauty involved in contrasts of the ‘continent’ and the ‘fully’ virtuous, it cannot account for all of the beauty in such contrasts, and so (...) needs to be weakened considerably (to the Internal Harmony Thesis). To account for the remaining beauty that cannot be fully accommodated even by this revised thesis, as well as the beauty contained in contrasts that involve agents who experience internal conflict as a result of being sensitive to different sources of moral value to an appropriate extent, a number of further theses need to be posited: namely, that the beauty of some moral actions is to be accommodated in terms of internal disharmony (the Internal Disharmony Thesis), and in terms of a felt harmony between the appreciator of the action and the executor of the action (the Affective Harmony Thesis). As such, in contrast to Schiller, I suggest that we need to take a pluralist and context-sensitive approach to accommodating the beauty of moral actions. (shrink)

What is a language? What do scientific grammars tell us about the structure of individual languages and human language in general? What kind of science is linguistics? These and other questions are the subject of Ryan M. Nefdt's Language, Science, and Structure. -/- Linguistics presents a unique and challenging subject matter for the philosophy of science. As a special science, its formalisation and naturalisation inspired what many consider to be a scientific revolution in the study of mind and language. (...) Yet radical internal theory change, multiple competing frameworks, and issues of modelling and realism have largely gone unaddressed in the field. Nefdt develops a structural realist perspective on the philosophy of linguistics which aims to confront the aforementioned topics in new ways while expanding the outlook toward new scientific connections and novel philosophical insights. On this view, languages are real patterns which emerge from complex biological systems. Nefdt's exploration of this novel view will be especially valuable to those working in formal and computational linguistics, cognitive science, and the philosophies of science, mathematics, and language. (shrink)

Most accounts of cognitive scaffolding focus on ways that external structure can support or augment an agent’s cognitive capacities. We call cases where the interests of the user are served benign scaffolding and argue for the possibility and reality of hostile scaffolding. This is scaffolding which depends on the same capacities of an agent to make cognitive use of external structure as in benign cases, but that undermines or exploits the user while serving the interests of another agent. We develop (...) criteria for scaffolding being hostile and show by reference to examples including the design features of electronic gambling machines and casino management systems that hostile scaffolding exists and can be highly effective. In cases where the scaffolding is deep and permits the offloading of significant cognitive work, hostile scaffolding exploitatively manipulates cognitive processing itself. Given the extent of human reliance on scaffolding this is an important and neglected vulnerability. [This is an updated version of the paper, added in February 2023.]. (shrink)

This volume concerns the status and ambitions of metaphysics as a discipline.

Does the formation of delusions involve abnormal reasoning? According to the prominent ‘two-factor’ theory of delusions (e.g. Coltheart, 2007), the answer is yes. The second factor in this theory is supposed to affect a deluded individual's ability to evaluate candidates for belief. However, most published accounts of the two-factor theory have not said much about the nature of this second factor. In an effort to remedy this shortcoming, Coltheart, Menzies and Sutton (2010) recently put forward a Bayesian account of inference (...) in delusions. I outline some criticisms of this important account, and sketch an alternative account of delusional inference that, I argue, avoids these criticisms. Specifically, I argue that the second factor in delusion formation involves a systematic deviation from Bayesian updating, a deviation that may be characterized as a bias towards ‘explanatory adequacy’. I present a numerical model of this idea and show that my alternative account is broadly consistent with prominent prediction error models of delusion formation (e.g. Corlett, Murray et al., 2007). (shrink)

In this article, we examine the effects of time spent in household labor on the gender gap in earnings. We identify that part of the gender gap in earnings directly attributable to women's greater household labor time. After controlling for years of work experience, hours worked per week, occupation, industry, union membership, and education, we find that household labor time can directly account for 8.2 percent of the gender gap in earnings. In addition to the direct effect of women's household (...) responsibilities on earnings, they also may affect occupational location, work experience, and number of hours worked per week, and through these variables, their earnings. These findings indicate that we cannot truly understand women's earnings relative to those of men without considering the impact of their unpaid labor on their paid work. (shrink)

: In recent literature supporting a hybrid view between metaethical cognitivism and noncognitivist expressivism, much has been made of an analogy between moral terms and pejoratives. The analogy is based on the plausible idea that pejorative slurs are used to express both a descriptive belief and a negative attitude. The analogy looks promising insofar as it encourages the kinds of features we should want from a hybrid expressivist view for moral language. But the analogy between moral terms and pejorative slurs (...) is also problematic. In this paper, I argue for two main ways in which we should distinguish between two different types of pejorative terms: slurs, on the one hand, and what I call general pejorative terms, on the other. I examine the problems with the analogy between slurs and moral terms and conclude that general pejorative terms like ‘jerk’ are a better candidate on which to model the potential dual-use behavior of moral terms. So if hybrid theorists are looking for a dual-use model for moral language, they should be careful to base their analogies on general pejoratives, rather than slurs. (shrink)

In South Africa, ideas around fatherhood, parenthood and family life are greatly shifting as people find themselves caught up between traditional and contemporary understandings of fatherhood and motherhood. Even though more than 70% of young South Africans stated in a national survey that parenthood is one of the top four defining features of adulthood, father absence is on the increase. Some in-depth literature study was conducted regarding South African research on fatherhood and father absence, and the role of both Christian (...) churches and secular organisations in addressing some of these challenges brought on by rapidly growing figures of father absence. The article concludes with some suggestions on the development of a new paradigm in understanding fatherhood in South Africa, with special reference to the role of Christian churches in assisting men to construct a narrative around fatherhood, which will lead to satisfying relationships with their children, their partners and especially with God. (shrink)

Why must incompatibility be symmetric? An odd question, but recent work in the semantics of non-classical logic, which appeals to the notion of incompatibility as a primitive and defines negation in terms of it, has brought this question to the fore. Francesco Berto proposes such a semantics for negation argues that, since incompatibility must be symmetric, double negation introduction must be a law of negation. However, he offers no argument for the claim that incompatibility really must be symmetric. Here, I (...) provide such an argument, showing that, insofar as we think of incompatibility in normative pragmatic terms, it can play its basic pragmatic function only if it is symmetric. The upshot is that we can vindicate Berto’s claim about the symmetry of incompatibility but only if we, pace Berto, think about incompatibility, in the first instance, as a pragmatic relation between acts rather than a semantic relation between contents. (shrink)

This article narrates the researcher's intention in using a mixed methodology for investigating the correlation between two key research concepts that form part of a larger research study. The larger study aims to reflect on how South African men understand their masculine role from and within their specific religion/spirituality by measuring the nature of the relationship between the constructs of masculine ideology and religious orientation in the development of a male gender identity. Subsequently, the first level of exploration includes the (...) distribution of two inventory scales to a wide selection of men in South Africa for determining the nature and degree of correlation between the two concepts of 'masculinity' and 'religiosity/spirituality' from this specific sample of men. The research question to be answered is as follows: is there a correlation between the results of the two inventory scales which measures male attitude norms, on the one hand, and religious orientation, on the other hand, of a selected sample of South African men? This question is answered through the administration of two widely validated and reliable inventory scales aimed at measuring male ideology and representations and religious orientation, respectively. Consequently, the researcher aims to motivate her choice of employing these scales before a post-foundational practical theological and narrative approach to research is used in 'thickening' the discourses resulting from these inventories, and narrates what she aims to achieve through the employment of these specific methodologies. Therefore, this article does not aim to narrate any research findings but forms part of Phase 1 of the larger research project delineated into different phases. The researcher concludes with a suggested research methodology, which aims at the decolonisation of the constructs of masculinity and religiosity and/or spirituality in the specific context of postcolonial and post-apartheid South Africa. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for an association between impurity and explanatory power in contemporary mathematics. This proposal is defended against the ancient and influential idea that purity and explanation go hand-in-hand (Aristotle, Bolzano) and recent suggestions that purity/impurity ascriptions and explanatory power are more or less distinct (Section 1). This is done by analyzing a central and deep result of additive number theory, Szemerédi’s theorem, and various of its proofs (Section 2). In particular, I focus upon the radically impure (...) (ergodic) proof due to Furstenberg (Section 3). Furstenberg’s ergodic proof is striking because it utilizes intuitively foreign and infinitary resources to prove a finitary combinatorial result and does so in a perspicuous fashion. I claim that Furstenberg’s proof is explanatory in light of its clear expression of a crucial structural result, which provides the “reason why” Szemerédi’s theorem is true. This is, however, rather surprising: how can such intuitively different conceptual resources “get a grip on” the theorem to be proved? I account for this phenomenon by articulating a new construal of the content of a mathematical statement, which I call structural content (Section 4). I argue that the availability of structural content saves intuitive epistemic distinctions made in mathematical practice and simultaneously explicates the intervention of surprising and explanatorily rich conceptual resources. Structural content also disarms general arguments for thinking that impurity and explanatory power might come apart. Finally, I sketch a proposal that, once structural content is in hand, impure resources lead to explanatory proofs via suitably understood varieties of simplification and unification (Section 5). (shrink)

Invaluable wisdom on living a good life from the founder of modern economics Adam Smith is best known today as the founder of modern economics, but he was also an uncommonly brilliant philosopher who was especially interested in the perennial question of how to live a good life. Our Great Purpose is a short and illuminating guide to Smith's incomparable wisdom on how to live well, written by one of today's leading Smith scholars. In this inspiring and entertaining book, (...) class='Hi'>Ryan Patrick Hanley describes Smith's vision of "the excellent and praiseworthy character," and draws on the philosopher's writings to show how each of us can go about developing one. For Smith, an excellent character is distinguished by qualities such as prudence, self-command, justice, and benevolence—virtues that have been extolled since antiquity. Yet Smith wrote not for the ancient polis but for the world of market society—our world—which rewards self-interest more than virtue. Hanley shows how Smith set forth a vision of the worthy life that is uniquely suited to us today. Full of invaluable insights on topics ranging from happiness and moderation to love and friendship, Our Great Purpose enables modern readers to see Smith in an entirely new light—and along the way, learn what it truly means to live a good life. (shrink)

Ryan Recalls is not a typical autobiography for while it contains personal memoirs and preoccupations, it also contains book reviews, book launches, published and unpublished papers as well as various newspaper articles put together by the author" --Page 2 of cover.

This paper proposes epistemic environmentalism as a novel framework for accounting for the contribution of the environment – broadly construed – to epistemic standings and which can be used to improve or protect epistemic environments. The contribution of the environment to epistemic standings is explained through recent developments in epistemology and cognitive science, including embodied cognition, embedded cognition, extended cognition and distributed cognition. The paper examines how these developments support epistemic environmentalism, as well as contributes theoretical resources to make epistemic (...) assessments of dynamic environments. The epistemic environmentalist procedure from the assessment of an individual environment to changes made to that environment based on promoting the attainment of epistemic goods is also discussed. (shrink)

René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture provides a fresh and engaging introduction to and the application of René Girard's mimetic theory. From movies to social media, television to graphic novels, the contributors explore popular culture's theological depths and challenge readers to consider what culture reveals about them.

From the team that brought you The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy, a beautiful daily devotional of Stoic meditations—an instant Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestseller. Why have history's greatest minds—from George Washington to Frederick the Great to Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with today's top performers from Super Bowl-winning football coaches to CEOs and celebrities—embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for (...) living a better life, not a classroom exercise. The Daily Stoic offers 366 days of Stoic insights and exercises, featuring all-new translations from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the playwright Seneca, or slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus, as well as lesser-known luminaries like Zeno, Cleanthes, and Musonius Rufus. Every day of the year you'll find one of their pithy, powerful quotations, as well as historical anecdotes, provocative commentary, and a helpful glossary of Greek terms. By following these teachings over the course of a year (and, indeed, for years to come) you'll find the serenity, self-knowledge, and resilience you need to live well. (shrink)

This book explores the constraints which justice imposes on immigration policy. Like liberal nationalists, Ryan Pevnick argues that citizens have special claims to the institutions of their states. However, the source of these special claims is located in the citizenry's ownership of state institutions rather than in a shared national identity. Citizens contribute to the construction and maintenance of institutions, and as a result they have special claims to these institutions and a limited right to exclude outsiders. Pevnick shows (...) that the resulting view justifies a set of policies - including support for certain types of guest worker programs - which is distinct from those supported by either liberal nationalists or advocates of open borders. His book provides a framework for considering a number of connected topics including issues related to self-determination, the scope of distributive justice and the significance of shared national identity. (shrink)

What are the prospects for ambitious political reform in communities of traditional, passionate, and even self-righteous citizens? Can thoughtful legislators create a healthy society for citizens whose judgment is typically unsound? In a searching and provocative analysis, Ryan Balot addresses these timely - though universal - political questions by offering a novel interpretation of Plato's Laws. Turning to the ancient past is essential to reinvigorating our contemporary understanding of these all-important issues. Previous readers have either celebrated the work's idealism (...) or denounced its totalitarianism. Balot, by contrast, refuses to interpret the dialogue as a political blueprint, whether admirable or misguided. He shows instead that it constitutes Plato's greatest philosophical investigation of political life. In this transformative re-appraisal, Balot reveals that Plato's goal was to cultivate a tragic attitude toward our political passions, commitments, and aspirations. The result is a profound political inquiry with far-reaching consequences. (shrink)

This article explores the personal responsibility of soldiers for fighting in unjust wars. Its reference point is the position developed by Jeff McMahan in his recent Killing in War. I claim that McMahan fails to give sufficient importance to institutional justifications on this matter. I argue for this by developing what I call the argument to democratic duty, which I claim embodies much current thinking about the obligations of soldiers in a democratic culture. The upshot of my argument is that (...) soldiers are placed in a contradictory position, between personal and institutional obligations. This is one sense in which soldiers can be victimized by the institution of war itself. (shrink)

The question of what and how artworks mean things is conventionally satisfied by appealing to literature from either philosophy of art or philosophy of language. This book offers an alternative by positioning art as a type of meaning-making tool whose function can only be understood through the application of the philosophy of technology.

[T]he essays collected here... further determine the limits of experience as well as salvage something essential from that which takes place at the very limit of political and aesthetic experience. Included here are critical readings of such seminal figures as Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, Adorno, Foucault, Fanon, Lacoue-Labarthe, Badiou, and Rancière." -Cover.

Drawing on perspectives ranging from generative syntax, optimality theory, computational linguistics, sign language phonology, and language evolution studies, this book explores the current philosophical issues in theoretical linguistics. It is an essential read for linguists, cognitive scientists and philosophers working in language studies.

Intelligent Transportation Systems are expected to automate how parking slots are booked by trucks. The intrinsic dynamic nature of this problem, the need of explanations and the inclusion of private data justify an agent-based solution. Agents solving this problem act with a Believe Desire Intentions reasoning, and are implemented with JASON. Privacy of trucks becomes protected sharing a list of parkings ordered by preference. Furthermore, the process of assigning parking slots takes into account legal requirements on breaks and driving time (...) limits. Finally, the agent simulations use the distances, the number of trucks and parkings corresponding to the proportions of the current European Union data. The performance of the proposed solution is tested in these simulations with three different distances against an alternative with complete knowledge. The difference in efficiency, the number of illegal breaks and the traveled distances are measured in them. Comparing the results, we can conclude that the nonprivate alternative is slightly better in performance while both alternatives do not produce illegal breaks. In this way the simulations show that the proposed privacy protection does not impose a relevant handicap in efficiency. (shrink)

AI and people do not compete on a level-playing field. Self-driving vehicles may be safer than human drivers, but laws often penalize such technology. People may provide superior customer service, but businesses are automating to reduce their taxes. AI may innovate more effectively, but an antiquated legal framework constrains inventive AI. In The Reasonable Robot, Ryan Abbott argues that the law should not discriminate between AI and human behavior and proposes a new legal principle that will ultimately improve human (...) well-being. This work should be read by anyone interested in the rapidly evolving relationship between AI and the law. (shrink)

Are mandatory lockdown measures, which place restrictions on one’s freedom to move and assemble, justifiable? Offhand, such measures appear to compromise important rights to secure goals of public health. Proponents of such measures think the trade-off is worth it; opponents think it isn’t. However, one might think that casting the debate in these terms concedes too much to the opponents. Mandatory lockdown measures don’t infringe important rights because no one has a right to impose a risk of grievous harm on (...) others—and, in the context of a pandemic, participating in the prohibited activities (e.g., going out to the bar) does just that. -/- This chapter explores whether this defense of mandatory lockdown measures holds up. It, first, considers whether we have a right against risk imposition—and, if so, how such a right is best understood. It then considers the objection that, even if there is such a right, people who voluntarily choose to engage in the prohibited activities—at least if fully appraised of the risks involved—effectively waive it. The chapter argues that this objection fails. (shrink)

The professional training of pastoral therapists has been a topic of controversy for many years in South Africa. Up to date, the training of pastoral workers has been limited to the study of ministry and as such is limited by the primary aims and outcomes of this curriculum. In a post-apartheid, post-colonial South Africa, the need for pastoral workers is intensified by the needs of community- and faith-based organisations for trained and registered therapists to alleviate the counselling needs of their (...) beneficiaries on all social levels. This article discusses the current state of affairs of the training and curriculum related to the profession of pastoral therapy in the context of South Africa, the various sociopolitical and religious needs that are still left unanswered in the field, and makes recommendations for the registration and accreditation of the profession with a specific curriculum focused on multicultural, multi-spiritual and post-modern nuances. The author argues that such a curriculum, accredited by a statutory body, can operate as a national health resource, will be more cost-effective than other related health services and may transform the social justice landscape related to both the providers and beneficiaries of this type of care. (shrink)

Some authors argue that it is permissible for clinicians to conscientiously provide abortion services because clinicians are already allowed to conscientiously refuse to provide certain services. Call this the symmetry thesis. We argue that on either of the two main understandings of the aim of the medical profession—what we will call “pathocentric” and “interest‐centric” views—conscientious refusal and conscientious provision are mutually exclusive. On pathocentric views, refusing to provide a service that takes away from a patient's health is professionally justified because (...) there are compelling reasons, based on professional standards, to refuse to provide that service (e.g., it does not heal, and it is contrary to the goals of medicine). However, providing that same service is not professionally justified when providing that service would be contrary to the goals of medicine. Likewise, the thesis turns out false on interest‐centric views. Refusing to provide a service is not professionally justified when that service helps the patient fulfill her autonomous preferences because there are compelling reasons, based on professional standards, to provide that service (e.g., it helps her achieve her autonomous preferences, and it would be contrary to the goals of medicine to deny her that service). However, refusing to provide that same service is not professionally justified when refusing to provide that service would be contrary to the goals of medicine. As a result, on either of the two most plausible views on the goals of medicine, the symmetry thesis turns out false. (shrink)

In this article, robust evidence is provided showing that an individual’s moral character can contribute to the aesthetic quality of their appearance, as well as being beautiful or ugly itself. It is argued that this evidence supports two main conclusions. First, moral beauty and ugliness reside on the inside, and beauty and ugliness are not perception-dependent as a result; and, second, aesthetic perception is affected by moral information, and thus moral beauty and ugliness are on the outside as well.

This paper proposes a reevaluation of assessment methods in philosophy higher education, advocating for a shift away from traditional written assessments towards oral evaluation. Drawing attention to the rising ethical concerns surrounding large language models (LLMs), we argue that a renewed focus on oral skills within philosophical pedagogy is both imperative and underexplored. This paper offers a case for redirecting attention to the neglected realm of oral evaluation, asserting that it holds significant promise for fostering students with some of our (...) traditional academic values that we want to maintain. We identify implications of this shift in emphasis which situates our discipline to contribute positively to solving some of the most pressing socio-political issues. Additionally, our proposal aims to demonstrate how philosophy can solidify its relevancy to the twenty-first century student and academy more broadly. (shrink)

Ryan Wasserman explores a range of fascinating puzzles raised by the possibility of time travel, with entertaining examples from physics, science fiction, and popular culture, and he draws out their implications for our understanding of time, tense, freedom, fatalism, causation, counterfactuals, laws of nature, persistence, change, and mereology.

Origen of Alexandria can be credited as the founder of a Christian speculative angelology, in which Christ the Logos is both the creator and the interpreter of the angels. He introduces the angels as the first created rational beings who, in contemplating the divine Word (Logos), freely choose to direct their will as holy angels in service to or wicked demons in antagonism against the love of God. The first created rational beings are divided into three orders: the angels, the (...) demons, and the neutral spirits of human souls. The angels remain closest in contemplation of the Logos, yet, due to their negligence, descend to unfold in the angelic hierarchy. The angels and demons thereafter guide the movements of all spirits, substances, and signs in the created world. The neutral spirits of human souls can choose to follow either the guidance of guardian angels or demons. And yet after the Incarnation, the angels are distinguished from the demons by their choice to follow Christ. Origen’s angelology has often been regarded as an early Christian alternative to Middle Platonic daemonologies. And after Karl Barth, his angelology has come to be dispensed from Christian theology. However, as Jean Daniélou has observed, Origen had previously departed from Platonic daemonology in affirming that angelic mediacy must pass away like the light of the stars before the brilliance of the Logos of Christ. He had, in this way, already assimilated the mediacy of the angels to the absolute mediation of Christ. And, in assimilating angelic to christic mediacy, Origen also attributes the reason with which the world is moved to the divine reason of the divine Word (Logos) of Christ in God. Origen’s angelology can thus be read both before and after Barth as a science of the angels. (shrink)

According to the most important objection to the existence of moral beauty, true judgements of moral beauty are not possible as moral judgements require being motivated to act in line with the moral judgement made, and judgements of beauty require not being motivated to act in any way. Here, I clarify the argument underlying the objection, and show that it does not show that moral beauty does not exist. I present two responses: namely, that the beauty of moral beauty does (...) not lie in the moral goodness per se (the “adjacent properties” response); and that only a dispositional motivation to act is required for the moral judgements that are typically made as part of judgements of moral beauty, whereas aesthetic judgements only rule out state motivations to act (the “equivocation of motivation required” response). In addressing the objection, I show how moral beauty is consistent with disinterestedness, and so should be accepted more widely; and also clarify where the beauty in moral beauty resides, and how the moral-aesthetic distinction should be drawn. (shrink)