As the editors fully perceived, the new critical edition of the so-called commentary of Bernardus Silvestris on the Aeneid of Vergil was but a stage in the development of a basic knowledge of this important work. We could not, with the data available to us, solve certain major problems relating to author and text. We could not, for example, confidently name the author, nor could we adequately describe the genesis of the work. Recently, two studies have appeared — the first (...) by E. R. Smits, the second by Christopher Baswell — which seek to address these questions. The present article will in the main be a critique of these studies. In my view the two scholars perform a valuable service in bringing forward new material to which others may react, but the principal suggestion of Smits must be rejected and the conclusions of Baswell require modification. (shrink)

Because higher education brings members of academic communities in direct contact with students, the reflective higher education student is in an excellent position for developing two important intellectual virtues: confidence and humility. However, academic communities differ as to whether their members reach consensus, and their teaching practices reflect this difference. In this essay, Ward Jones argues that both consensus‐reaching and non‐consensus‐reaching communities can encourage the development of intellectual confidence and humility in their students, although each will do so (...) in very different ways. (shrink)

Reprint of an article first appearing in the South African Journal of Philosophy (2015).

The neologism post-truth is commonly used to characterize a polity in which false and biased beliefs have corrupted public opinion and policymaking. Simplifying and broadening our use of the adjective beyond its current narrow meaning could make post-truth a useful addition to the lexicons of history, politics, and philosophy. Its current use, however, is unhelpful and distracting (at best), and experienced as demeaning and humiliating (at worst). Contemporary polities are better characterized as post-trust. A polity becames post-trust when testimony from (...) either a community of knowledge workers or a social group of complainants—such as women who give testimony of sexual assault—loses influence upon public opinion and policymaking. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Most explanations of beliefs are epistemically or pragmatically rationalizing. The distinction between these two types involves the explainer's differing expectations of how the believer will behave in the face of counter-evidence. This feature suggests that rationalizing explanations portray beliefs as either a consequence of the believer's following a norm, or part of a sub-intentional goal-oriented system. Which properly characterizes pragmatic believing? If there were pragmatic norms for believing, I argue, they would not be consciously followable. Yet an unallowable norm is (...) not a norm at all, and so I conclude that there are no such norms and that pragmatic believing is a sub-intentional, and not a norm-driven, process. /// La mayoría de las explicaciones de las creencias racionalizan de forma epistémica o pragmática. La distinción entre estas dos involucra las diferentes expectativas del que explica acerca de cómo se comportará el creyente frente a evidencia contraria. Este rasgo sugiere que las explicaciones racionalizadoras toman las creencias o bien como una consecuencia de que el creyente siga una norma, o bien como parte de su sistema subintencional orientado a fines. ¿Cuàl caracteriza de manera apropiada el creer pragmático? Aquí argumento que si hubiera normas pragmáticas para creer, no se podrían seguir conscientemente; sin embargo, una norma no seguible no es una norma en ningún sentido, por lo que concluyo que no existen tales normas y que el creer pragmático es un proceso subintencional y no un proceso guiado por normas. (shrink)

Dark comedies invite us to laugh at something which is, at least ostensibly, not funny at all. They take an act or event that would, under most descriptions or presentations, invite pity or anger, and give it characteristics that invite amusement. It is essential to the humour of the kidnapping in The King of Comedy that it is a kidnapping. The immorality of this event is crucial to its humour.

Previous studies have shown that children retreat from argument‐structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., *Don’t giggle me) by inferring that frequently encountered verbs are unlikely to be grammatical in unattested constructions, and by making use of syntax‐semantics correspondences (e.g., verbs denoting internally caused actions such as giggling cannot normally be used causatively). The present study tested a new account based on a unitary learning mechanism that combines both of these processes. Seventy‐two participants (ages 5–6, 9–10, and adults) rated overgeneralization errors with higher (...) (*The funny man’s joke giggled Bart) and lower (*The funny man giggled Bart) degrees of direct external causation. The errors with more‐direct causation were rated as less unacceptable than those with less‐direct causation. This finding is consistent with the new account, under which children acquire—in an incremental and probabilistic fashion—the meaning of particular constructions (e.g., transitive causative = direct external causation) and particular verbs, rejecting generalizations where the incompatibility between the two is too great. (shrink)

Authenticity is a formidable word, a dangerous word, a word whereby fortunes, careers, and reputations can be won or lost. But what has authenticity to do with art? The essays in this book focus on their turbulent relationship ranging across the fields of literature and the visual arts and philosophy, and covering topics as diverse as fictional biography, portraiture, copies and forgeries, war photography, letters as testimony and texts in translation. The reader encounters erasmus, Rousseau, Heidegger, Beckett, Borges, and Houellebecq; (...) engages with subjects as varied as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, da Vinci's La Belle Ferronniere, and Million Dollar Baby. (shrink)

The background to the present discussion is the prevalence of political and personal criticisms in philosophical discussions about Africa. As philosophers in South Africa—both white and black—continue to philosophise seriously about Africa, responses to their work sometimes take the form of political and personal criticisms of, if not attacks on, the philosopher exploring and defending considerations about the African continent. One of us (TM) has been the target of such critiques in light of his work. Our aim in this conversation (...) is not to diminish or deflect such critiques. On the contrary, our aim is to understand them, to make them as strong as possible, and to bring them into the cooler realm of philosophical discussion. (shrink)

It has at various times been said, both before and since the fall of apartheid, that philosophers in South Africa are neglecting to do certain sorts of work. Behind this accusation lies a general claim that philosophers have responsibilities to their contexts. This essay is dedicated to (i) defending this claim against objections, and (ii) offering a positive argument for there being moral pressure on philosophers to increase understanding. My aim is not to accuse any philosopher or community of philosophers (...) of neglect. It is rather to defend an understanding of both philosophy and ethical responsibilities that makes room for philosophers to have moral responsibilities. Whether or not it has ever in fact been appropriate to accuse philosophers in South Africa, or indeed anywhere else, of neglect, philosophers do indeed have responsibilities to their contexts. (shrink)

Philosophy, as I use it here, is a conversation, one stretching back through various canonical European and Ancient Greek texts at least to Thales. Has this conversation progressed? The main objection to philosophy's having a linear progression is dissensus – the fact that philosophers all disagree but still accept each other as peers. In this chapter, I argue that we should conceive of philosophy as being capable of a branching kind of progression: philosophy progresses when it gives us more ways (...) of conceiving of ourselves. (shrink)

It has often been claimed that our believing some proposition is dependent upon our not being committed to a non-epistemic explanation of why we believe that proposition. Very roughly, I cannot believe that p and also accept a non-epistemic explanation of my believing that p. Those who have asserted such a claim have drawn from it a range of implications: doxastic involuntarism, the unacceptability of Humean naturalism, doxastic freedom, restrictions upon the effectiveness of practical (Pascalian) arguments, as well as others. (...) If any of these implications are right, then we would do well to have a precise statement of the nature of this phenomenon central to first-person doxastic explanations, as well as of our reasons for believing that it holds. Both of these are lacking in the literature. This paper is an attempt to elucidate and defend this claim. (shrink)

Religious Conversion, Serf- Deception, and Pascal's Wager WARD E.JONES BLAISE PASCAL'S Pens~es is a sustained attempt to convert, to lead its reader to form the belief in the articles of faith. Pascal does not hope to convert by a direct presentation of evidence or argument, but rather attempts to induce in the reader a desire for belief in the articles of faith. He hopes that this desire will lead the reader to put herself in a situation in which (...) she will form the belief. Pascal, in other words, wants the reader to take control over her belief, to form it because she wants to do so. We commonly put ourselves in a situation for the purpose of forming beliefs. This is what happens when we choose to go, say, to university; choos- ing to learn is choosing to form beliefs in a given field. Pascal urges something more paradoxical. ~ He wants to induce us to form a particular belief . His dual aim is to induce the unbeliever to want a belief, and then to induce her to do what she can to gain that belief. Now if I want a particular belief, I might place myself in a situation in which nonrational or pragmatic determinants would bring about the belief. I might, that is, visit a hypnotist or a brainwasher, choosing some process which will either directly bring about the desired belief without involving my epistemic capabilities, or one which will diminish my epistemic capabilities. Alternatively, I might search for evidence for the.. (shrink)

Shame is one of the more painful consequences of loving someone; my beloved’s doing something immoral can cause me to be ashamed of her. The guiding thought behind this paper is that explaining this phenomenon can tell us something about what it means to love. The phenomenon of beloved-induced shame has been largely neglected by philosophers working on shame, most of whom conceive of shame as being a reflexive attitude. Bennett Helm has recently suggested that in order to account for (...) beloved-induced shame, we should deny the reflexivity of shame. After arguing that Helm’s account is inadequate, I proceed to develop an account of beloved-induced shame that rightly preserves its reflexivity. A familiar feature of love is that it involves an evaluative dependence; when I love someone, my well-being depends upon her life’s going well. I argue that loving someone also involves a persistent tendency to believe that her life is going well, in the sense that she is a good person, that she is not prone to wickedness. Lovers are inclined, more strongly than they otherwise would be, to give their beloveds the moral benefit of the doubt. These two features of loving—an evaluative dependence and a persistent tendency to believe in the beloved’s moral goodness—provide the conditions for a lover to experience shame when he discovers that his beloved has morally transgressed. (shrink)

At the end of Lecture 3 of The Empirical Stance, Bas van Fraassen suggests that we see the change of view involved in scientific revolutions as being, at least in part, emotional. In this paper, I explore one plausible way of cashing out this suggestion. Someone’s emotional approval of a description of the world, I argue, thereby shows that she takes herself to have reason to take that description seriously. This is true even if she is convinced—as a scientific community (...) is when it considers alternative theories—that this description is false, that it is not the way the world is. (shrink)

Once we establish that the fundamental subject matter of the study of humour is a mental state – which I will call finding funny – then it immediately follows that we need to find the content and function of this mental state. The main contender for the content of finding funny is the incongruous (the incongruity thesis ); the main contenders for the function of finding funny are grounded either in its generally being an enjoyable state (the gratification thesis ) (...) or its tendency to lead to biased social attitudes (the favouritism thesis ). While all three of these families of claims are well-supported and individually plausible, the situation looks different once we attempt to unify our accounts of the content and function of finding funny . While functions based in the gratification thesis readily combine with the incongruity thesis, it is not at all clear how the phenomenon described by the favouritism thesis arises from a state with this content. The upshot is that we may have to sideline the favouritism thesis in our theory of humour. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 25(2) 2006: 126-137. (shrink)

Carl Mika claims in the symposium’s lead essay that we need more myth today. In fact, an “unscientific” attitude can potentially reorient the alienation from the world. For Mika, a philosophical mātauranga Māori incorporates such a way of being in the world. Through it, an unmediated and co-existent relationship with the world can be built up. Some of Mika’s co-symposiasts invite Mika to substantiate aspects about this bold claim. Carwyn Jones nudges Mika to discuss the parallels between tikanga Māori—a (...) system that seeks to incorporate Māori law—and the common-law tradition that is adopted in New Zealand today. W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz agrees with Mika that to understand the world through an indifferent “scientific” investigation is to understand the world only partially, while the Māori scientist Ocean Ripeka Mercier illustrates how she seeks to develop a third space in her work that reconciles the fear of the unknown with the propensity to control the world through knowing. Helen Verran invites Mika to think about whether, and how, his understanding of a philosophical mātauranga Māori can help to facilitate the cultivation of a naturalism that is able to generate a cosmopolitics in New Zealand. (shrink)

IntroductionA central concern of theoretical speculation about education is the kind of epistemic states that education can and should aim to achieve. One such epistemic state, long neglected in both education theory and philosophy, is wisdom. Might wisdom be something that educators should aim for? And might it be something that their students can achieve? My answer will be a qualified yes.One qualification derives from the fact that in the present paper I will only be concerned with the potentiality of (...) wisdom to be an aim of higher education . Because my argument will depend upon some of the particular features of HE, it may not be extendable to primary or secondary education. A second qualification is that I will defend a place for only one kind of wisdom – what I will call epistemic wisdom – as an aim of HE. The limitation to epistemic wisdom, as we will see, derives in large part from the fact that in this paper I am seeking to establish wisdom as an achievable aim of all disc .. (shrink)

Associated with Bayesianism is the claim that insofar as thereis anything like scientific theory-commitment, it is not a doxastic commitment to the truth of the theory or any proposition involving the theory, but is rather an essentiallypractical commitment to behaving in accordance with a theory. While there are a number of a priori reasons to think that this should be true, there is stronga posteriori reason to think that it is not in fact true of current scientific practice.After outlining a (...) feature that distinguishes doxastic from practical commitment, I presentempirical evidence that suggests that, like perhaps all other theoretical commitment,scientific theory-commitment is doxastic. (shrink)

After a thorough examination of the claim that "the underdetermination of theory by evidence forces us to seek sociological explanations of scientists' cognitive choices", Samir Okasha concludes that the only significant problem with this argument is that the thesis of underdetermination is not adequately supported. Against Okasha, I argue (1) that there is a very good reason to question the inference from the underdetermination of a theory to a sociological account of that theory's acceptance, and (2) that Okasha's own objection (...) to the argument is too weak. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper, I explore what Jean Améry calls the ?aesthetic view of death?. I address the following three questions. To what extent, and how, do we take an aesthetic view of death? Why do we take an aesthetic view of death? Third, for those whose deaths are impending and have some choice over how they die?most prominently the elderly and the terminally ill?what would it mean for them to take an aesthetic view of their own impending deaths, and, (...) in particular, what would it mean for them to act in the light of such a view? (shrink)

This volume of contributed, previously unpublished essays focuses on general theoretical, meta-ethical and aesthetic issues in philosophy and the ways in which ...

This is a programmatic paper, calling for the renewal and modernisation of the therapeutic approach to philosophy found in Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics; and, in particular, for an application of the therapeutic approach to the life of poverty. The general assumption behind a therapeutic approach to philosophy is that it is possible for someone to be exposed to philosophical work which leads her to an improved understanding of herself and her situation, and for her life to be improved by this (...) understanding. After offering a sketch of how, given the current nature of academic philosophy, such work will be carried out and disseminated, I suggest three areas in which philosophical discourse could have a therapeutic affect on the poor. (shrink)

Dark comedies invite us to laugh at something which is, at least ostensibly, not funny at all. They take an act or event that would, under most descriptions or presentations, invite pity or anger, and give it characteristics that invite amusement. It is essential to the humour of the kidnapping in The King of Comedy that it is a kidnapping. The immorality of this event is crucial to its humour.