The paper studies equilibrium contracts under adverse selection when there is repeated interaction between a principal and an agent over an infinite horizon, without commitment across periods. We show the second-best contract is offered in a perfect Bayesian equilibrium of the infinite horizon model. Unlike the equilibrium contracts in the finite-horizon, the equilibrium contracts in the infinite horizon are not subject to either the ratchet effect or take-the-money-and-run strategy, but rely on a carrot and stick strategy. We study two important (...) applications, one of which is about the optimal regulation of a publicly-held firm. This application has a mixture of both moral hazard and adverse selection. The other application is to the problem of optimal nonlinear pricing when the valuation of the buyers are drawn from a continuum. (shrink)

Games and Decision Making, Second Edition, is a unique blend of decision theory and game theory. From classical optimization to modern game theory, authors Charalambos D. Aliprantis and Subir K. Chakrabarti show the importance of mathematical knowledge in understanding and analyzing issues in decision making. Through an imaginative selection of topics, Aliprantis and Chakrabarti treat decision and game theory as part of one body of knowledge. They move from problems involving the individual decision-maker to progressively more complex (...) problems such as sequential rationality, auctions, and bargaining. By building each chapter on material presented earlier, the authors offer a self-contained and comprehensive treatment of these topics. Successfully class-tested in an advanced undergraduate course at the Krannert School of Management and in a graduate course in economics at Indiana University, Games and Decision Making, Second Edition, is an essential text for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of decision theory and game theory. The book is accessible to students who have a good basic understanding of elementary calculus and probability theory. (shrink)

This paper is historical and is devoted to an old controversy in the Indian philosophical tradition with the Vedantins (and others) holding that cognitive states are self-revealing and the Nyaya taking the opposite position. I have summarized the major Vedantin arguments for their viewpoint and offered a critique from the Nyaya perspective. This throws light on a major philosophical controversy in the Indian tradition, a controversy that has not been studied in-depth in the Western tradition. Notably the problem of induction, (...) a major problem in contemporary epistemology, has been studied in-depth in the Western tradition since its introduction by David Hume in the 18th century but the said problem has been studied deeply in Indian tradition for centuries earlier. I have argued in my Classical Indian Philosophy of Induction (2010) that the older Indian contribution on this problem is fully relevant for the very best that contemporary philosophers have offered on this. I hope that this paper will draw the attention of contemporary Western epistemologists who would get involved in this critically important epistemological debate and address a lacuna in the Western tradition. (shrink)

Never before, in any anthology, have contemporary epistemologists and philosophers of language come together to address the single most neglected important issue at the confluence of these two branches of philosophy, namely: Can we know facts from reliable reports? Besides Hume's subversive discussion of miracles and the literature thereon, testimony has been bypassed by most Western philosophers; whereas in classical Indian theories of evidence and knowledge philosophical debates have raged for centuries about the status of word-generated knowledge. `Is the response (...) "I was told by an expert on the subject" as respectable as "I saw" or "I inferred" in answer to "How do you know?"' is a question answered in diverse and subtle ways by Buddhists, Vaisesikas and Naiyayikas. For the first time this book makes available the riches of those debates, translating from Sanskrit some contemporary Indian Pandits' reactions to Western analytic accounts of meaning and knowledge. For advanced undergraduates in philosophy, for researchers - in Australia, Asia, Europe or America - on epistemology, theory of meaning, Indian or comparative philosophy, as well as for specialists interested in this relatively fresh topic of knowledge transmission and epistemic dependence this book will be a feast. After its publication analytic philosophy and Indian philosophy will have no excuse for shunning each other. (shrink)

The phenomenon of consciousness has always been a central question for philosophers and scientists. Emerging in the past decade are new approaches to the understanding of consciousness in a scientific light. This book presents a series of essays by leading thinkers giving an account of the current ideas prevalent in the scientific study of consciousness. The value of the book lies in the discussion of this interesting though complex subject from different points of view ranging from physics, computer science to (...) the cognitive sciences. Reviews of controversial ideas related to the philosophy of mind from western and eastern sources including classical Indian first person methodologies provide a breadth of coverage that has seldom been attempted in a book before. Additionally, chapters relating to the new approaches in computational modelling of higher order cognitive function and consciousness are included. The book is of great value for established as well as young researchers from a wide cross-section of interdisciplinary scientific backgrounds, aiming to pursue research in this field, as well as an informed public. * Presents the latest developments in the scientific study of consciousness * Critically reviews different theoretical and philosophical explanations related to the subject * An important book for both students and researchers in designing research projects on consciousness. (shrink)

In the Buddhist view there can be no affirmation without negation and positive universals that in the Nyaya view are independent and eternal common characters shared by all members of a natural class should be replaced by difference from others that is a negative entity and a non-entity, e.g. what is meant by a cow is not that it is possessed of cow-ness but that it is not a non-cow. Udayana points out that cognition of a negative entity presupposes cognition (...) of what is negated, the negatum. Thus, cognition of cow if the same as not-not cow presupposes cognition of not-cow, but cognition of not-cow presupposes cognition of cow; hence the Buddhist view is open to the charge of mutual dependence. This difficulty does not arise in the Nyaya view. Even if there is no affirmation without negation, negation is not necessarily the content of affirmation. So far as common experience goes, cognition of positive entities does not always require cognition of negative entities, e.g. a cow may be recognized as a cow and possessed of cow-ness without reference to non-cows. (shrink)

As against the Buddhist view that everything is momentary Udayana argues that recognitive perception, such as that this is the same pot I saw before, provides evidence for permanence. Such recognitive perception is common experience and cannot be set aside without compelling evidence. The Buddhist objects that such experience is not reliable; even a burning flame is recognized to be the same, but it is clear from fuel consumption that it is not. Udayana agrees that in the case of a (...) burning flame it cannot be the same flame because then it would have to have opposed features (such as being fueled by more oil before and less oil now). But there is no compelling evidence for the claim that the pot or I would have to have opposed features if enduring. The Buddhist claim that anything enduring must have opposed features such as being both capable and incapable of being productive is groundless. Such features are not opposed and may be explained as being due to availability or non-availability of auxiliary causal conditions and so on. (shrink)

Jnanasri, a famous 10th century Buddhist philosopher, holds that internal states like cognition alone are real and that there is no external, independent physical world. He argues that one may perceive something, say, a horse, irrespective of whether there is a horse or not. Accordingly, one cannot justifiably move from cognition to the external, independent existence of the object of cognition. Udayana points out that one misperceives only something that one in the ultimate analysis has perceived before. While the previous (...) perception may be false, it cannot be false always for then there is a vicious infinite regress. So true perceptions must also be admitted. The best explanation of true perception is that it is perceiving something where and when it is and that of false perception is that it is perception of something that is elsewhere or elsewhen or both. Thus, the Nyaya claims, the object of misperception too is external and independent of perception. Since the Nyaya position is not refuted, the above argument of Jnanasri suffers from assuming the bone of contention. (shrink)

Jnanasri argues: whatever does not reveal reliably presence or absence of something does not have that thing as the content. For example, perception of a cow does not reveal presence or absence of a horse and does not also have a horse as the content. The point is that perception does not provide reliable evidence for external objects for perception does not reveal reliably their presence or absence and does not have them as the content. Udayana claims that the general (...) premise is false. Something may be perceived and be the content even if it is not revealed where it is present or absent (as is the case in the Nyaya view in misperception). Further, it has been argued that a substance and its features are different and that a substance may be the content of perception or be perceived even if some or most of its features are not perceived. Since these positions are argued for and not refuted, Jnanasri has made gratuitous assumptions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Jitendra Nath MohantyArindam Chakrabarti (bio)The only philosopher in the global history of philosophy who read and taught (in the original Sanskrit, German, and English) Patañjali, Vyāsa, Śaṅkara, Gangeśa, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Frege, Wittgenstein, Hume, McTaggart, Russell, Davidson, and Dummett with equal expertise, depth, and hermeneutic originality is no more. Jitendra Nath Mohanty, who passed away on the 7th of March 2023, was emeritus professor of philosophy (...) at Temple University, Philadelphia. In the last decade of his life, he used to spend long periods in his home in Kolkata, the city where he studied as an undergraduate. Born in in 1928 in Cuttack, Orissa, India, Mohanty ranked first in all public examinations and in his B.A. at Presidency College, Kolkata and his M.A. examination at the University of Calcutta. After receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1954, he came back to India and continued his traditional-style tutelage under two great Sanskrit Pandits: Ananta Tarkatirtha (for Navya Nyāya) and Mahamahopadhyaya Yogendranath Bagchi (for Advaita Vedānta). In his long academic career, he taught at the University of Burdwan, the University of Calcutta, the New School for Social Research, the University of Oklahoma, Emory University, and Temple University and held visiting professorships at All Souls College Oxford and Jadavpur University, Kolkata.JNM was trained equally thoroughly in three distinct traditions and styles of philosophy. Even great modern Indian philosophers of the twentieth century, such as K. C. Bhattacharya, B. N. Seal, R. D. Ranade, Radhakrishnan, B. K. Matilal, Daya Krishna, and R. C. Gandhi, could claim scholarly fluency in at most two traditions (of course the "Indian tradition" itself is a maddeningly complex plurality of traditions often sharing very little in common—e.g., Abhidharma Buddhism and Mādhva Dualist Vedānta). But Mohanty was well-versed in and collected insights and inspiration from European (Continental) Phenomenology, and Analytic Anglo-American Philosophy and several of the diverse Sanskrit Indian Philosophical schools of thought. More importantly, as can be demonstrated in detail, it is his expertise in the pluralistic yet both logically and phenomenologically rigorous styles of classical Indian philosophies that made him uniquely capable of doing the bridgework between continental and analytic philosophies of the West—between Husserl and Frege, for example. [End Page 1]Within philosophy in general his interests ranged from metaphysics to epistemology, ethics, social philosophy, philosophy of physics (especially Time), Logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of language and mind. Among his numerous publications, the following books achieved bench-mark status in their respective fields: Gaṅgeśa's Theory of Truth: Containing the Text of Gaṅgeśa's Prāmāṇya (jñapti) vāda (Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati, India, 1966); Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An Essay on the Nature of Indian Philosophical Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Classical Indian Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2002); The Self and its Other (Oxford University Press, 2000); Logic, Truth, and the Modalities (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999; Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 1999); The Concept of Intentionality (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1972); Phenomenology: Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 1997); Husserl and Frege (Indiana University Press, 1982); Edmund Husserl's Theory of Meaning (Springer, 1976); and The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A Historical Development (Yale University Press, 2008). His charming and inspiring intellectual autobiography was published in 2012 by Oxford University press with the title Between Two Worlds: East and West, an Autobiography. Some of his classic papers are collected in the volume edited with an introduction by Purushottama Billimoria: J. N. Mohanty: Essays on Indian Philosophy Traditional and Modern (New York and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002). Philosophy East and West is going to publish a special issue devoted to JNM's life-time achievements in different branches and traditions of philosophy. [End Page 2]Arindam Chakrabarti Philosophy Department, University of Hawai'[email protected] © 2024 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

M. K. Gandhi's a series of talks delivered to ashramites at Sabarmati during 1926 and 1927, provides a singular instance in Indian intellectual thought in which the Bhagavad Gita's message of action is transformed into a theory of non-violent resistance. This essay argues that Gandhi's reading of the Gita has to be placed within an identifiable general understanding of the political that emerged among the so-called in the Congress towards the beginning of the twentieth century. Gandhi, we argue, wrested from (...) the their vocabulary and their pre-eminent political text, the Gita, and put them to use in the cause of non-violent politics. But, more importantly, his discourses on the Gita after 1920 suggest an acceptance, on his part, of politics as it actually was. This is where he departed from the projects of Tilak or Aurobindo. The Gita, in Gandhi's hand, became a talismanic device that allowed the satyagrahi his or her involvement in political action while providing protection from the necessary and unavoidable venality of politics and its propensity to violence. (shrink)

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone--even the philosophers of the Enlightenment--could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes argues (...) that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today. (shrink)

In Rahul Banerjee and Bikas K. Chakrabarti (eds.), Progress in Brain Research, 168: 215-246. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Electronic offprint available upon request.

As the final installment of Public Culture’s Millennial Quartet, Cosmopolitanism assesses the pasts and possible futures of cosmopolitanism—or ways of thinking, feeling, and acting beyond one’s particular society. With contributions from distinguished scholars in disciplines such as literary studies, art history, South Asian studies, and anthropology, this volume recenters the history and theory of translocal political aspirations and cultural ideas from the usual Western vantage point to areas outside Europe, such as South Asia, China, and Africa. By examining new archives, (...) proposing new theoretical formulations, and suggesting new possibilities of political practice, the contributors critically probe the concept of cosmopolitanism. On the one hand, cosmopolitanism may be taken to promise a form of supraregional political solidarity, but on the other, these essays argue, it may erode precisely those intimate cultural differences that derive their meaning from particular places and traditions. Given that most cosmopolitan political formations—from the Roman empire and European imperialism to contemporary globalization—have been coercive and unequal, can there be a noncoercive and egalitarian cosmopolitan politics? Finally, the volume asks whether cosmopolitanism can promise any universalism that is not the unwarranted generalization of some Western particular. Contributors. Ackbar Abbas, Arjun Appadurai, Homi K. Bhabha, T. K. Biaya, Carol A. Breckenridge, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ousame Ndiaye Dago, Mamadou Diouf, Wu Hung, Walter D. Mignolo, Sheldon Pollock, Steven Randall. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Breaking EarthAlexis Rider (bio) and Paul A. Harris (bio)“He takes all that, the strata and the magma and the people and the power, in his imaginary hands. Everything. He holds it. He is not alone. The earth is with him. Then he breaks it.”― N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth SeasonBreaking Earth, a collection of visual and written essays brought together for this special issue of SubStance, is a disruptive (...) engagement with concepts and terms that have become touchstones for the geologic/planetary turn in the inhumanities. The project took initial inspiration in conversations the co-editors had about N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, in which geologic and human power interweave in complex webs among bodies born of chiasmic crossings of Anthro-progeny and Geo-orogeny. Conceived as a companion almanac to Jemisin’s trilogy—though references to that work are intentionally oblique—the volume pursues new ways of reading, and being with, the geos of this planet. In doing so, Breaking Earth seeks to reframe and deepen the discussions, both historical and philosophical, around the relationship between geology and humanity.The notion of the Anthropocene has, for several decades, monopolized said discussions. Since its articulation in the early 2000s, the concept has been equal parts galvanizing and problematic in thinking with the Earth (Crutzen). Proposed by an atmospheric chemist, incorporated (with caveats) into the geologic deep time of the planet by geologists, and taken up with vigor by humanists, social scientists, and artists, the Anthropocene has, for better or worse, broken significant new ground in Earth-oriented thought.The term’s core proposals—that humans are a geologic force and we have entered a wholly new period of Earth history—has compelled scholars to engage with a geologic tradition of mapping and classifying the history of said forces along a temporal scale. This tradition—exemplified in the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC) below (Figure 1)—relies on the translation of messiness and difference into abstracted orderly categories of strata and type. Of course, no geologist would claim that the ICC is a direct representation of the materiality of the rocky Earth we live on, so full of faults, fissures, and unconformities. But as writers, [End Page 3] artists, and activists have made clear, the repositioning of humans-as-strata is far riskier than imposing abstract order on a cliff face: it dangerously flattens out the messiness of human history and difference—obfuscating the uneven histories of extraction and oppression to which the mining of geophysical energies and resources is so clearly bound. The Anthropocene has therefore helped reveal the immense pitfalls of conflating a species with the geologic, and made clear the need for humanists—both within the academy and beyond—to develop a language and method for thinking about the changing Earth. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC), International Commission on Stratigraphy, 2023, www.stratigraphy.org.At the same time, the very act of attempting to identify the Anthropocene within stratigraphic nomenclature has usefully challenged old and brittle binaries. Contemporary rhetoric around how to conceive of change—backed often by disciplinary boundary-keeping—exemplifies such divisions. Take, for example, the grammatical distinction between political, social forces and physical, environmental forcings (Hulme). These seemingly inane suffixes recast agency and allow the natural and social worlds to exist in two separate spheres (albeit ones that overlap via extraction) where human action is more wholly filled with intent. Breaking this distinction via a reconceptualization of geologic agency underpins [End Page 4] what scholars, including Pratik Chakrabarti and Kathryn Yusoff, have been articulating so clearly: rocks have politics. To unpack this carefully and fully, however, requires moving beyond the collapse of anthropos into geos: there is too much texture, history, and action lost in such a sweeping and simple formulation.This collection takes these problematics of the Anthropocene as self-evident: it critically engages with the chronostratigraphic logic that implicitly upholds a view of time, history, and knowledge which operationalizes the extractive carbon capital economies fueled by colonialism and slavery. This assertion bears emphasizing, given the announcement from the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) in the summer of 2023 that the origin of... (shrink)

Du film Her de Spike Jonze à 2001 L’Odyssée de l’espace de Stanley Kubrick, et des androïdes de Philip K. Dick à l’utopie intergalactique de la Culture de l’écrivain Iain M. Banks, il est impossible de comprendre aujourd’hui l’intelligence artificielle sans s’intéresser à ses puissants imaginaires. Ceux-ci, nourrissant bien des fantasmes de la Silicon Valley, sont essentiels à décrypter pour ne pas les subir, voire pour se les approprier et mieux les détourner, en faire des antidotes contre les multinationales (...) du numérique, puis cultiver grâce à eux nos propres machines rebelles de quelque futur. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:429 THE HUME LITERATURE FOR 1985 The Hume literature from 1925 to 1976 has been thoroughly covered in my book Fifty Years of Hume Scholarship: A Bibliographical Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 1978; £9.50), which also lists the main earlier writings on Hume. (The book is still in print.) Publications of the years 1977 to 1984 were listed in previous issues of Hume Studies. What follows here will bring the (...) record up to the end of 1985. Readers are invited to inform me of any omissions, and keenly requested to send me offprints of their own articles and reviews. Hardly any do so at present, and it would greatly ease the labour of collection. The intention is to maintain a complete bibliographical record of critical work on Hume, by the regular publication in Hume Studies of this annual bibliography, with addenda consisting of items omitted through ignorance in previous years. References to recently appearing reviews (of books from earlier lists) are given at the end. The following abbreviations of journal titles are used here: APQ American Philosophical Quarterly HPQ History of Philosophy Quarterly JHI Journal of the History of Ideas JHP Journal of the History of Philosophy JP Journal of Philosophy PAS Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society PB Philosophical Books PQ Philosophical Quarterly PR Philosophical Review RIP Revue Internationale de Philosophie RM Review of Metaphysics TLS Times Literary Supplement 430 Other abbreviations should be obvious enough, and mainly follow the British Standard (no. 4148). AGASSI, J. "The Unity of Hume's Thought", Hume Studies (10th Anniv. Issue), 87-109. AUSTIN, W. H. "Philo's Reversal", Phil. Topics 13, no. 2, 103-12. BADIA CABRERA, M. A. "Hume's Natural History of Religion: Positive Science or Metaphysical Vision of Religion", Diálogos 20, 71-8. BAIER, A. Postures of the Mind, ch. 10 ("Promises, Promises, Promises"), ch. 11 ("Civilizing Practices"). London, etc. BEHAN, D. P. "Hume's Labyrinth", HPg 2, 309-22. BENNETT, D. "Hume's Pride", in B. Vermazen, Essays on Davidson, 89-91. Oxford. BIRO, J. L. "Hume and Cognitive Science", HPQ 2, 257-74. BLANDINO, G. "Le causalitate. Discussion sur le criticas de D. Hume" [in Interlingua, with French and English], Aquinas 28, 247-57. BRICKE, J. "Locke, Hume and the Nature of Volitions", Hume Studies (10th Anniv. Issue), 15-51. BROOKS, D. "Hume's Bundle Theory of the Mind", S. African J. Phil. 4, 75-84. BROOKS, D. H. M. "Strawson, Hume, and the Unity of Consciousness", Mind 94, 583-6. CAMPBELL, K. "John Passmore and Hume's Moral Philosophy", Hume Studies 11, 109-24. CAPALDI, N. "The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Hume's Theory of the Self", in A.J. Holland, Philosophy, Its History and Historiography, 271-85, Dordrecht, etc. 431 CARLSON, G. R. "Hume and the Moral Realists", Australas. J. Phil. 63, 407-18. CHAKRABARTI, T. K. "Hume's Definitions of Cause", J. Indian Council Phil. Res., 67-75. CHEN, W. -S. Article (in Chinese) on Hume on personal identity, in Phil. Rev. (Taiwan) 8, 123-42. CLARK, S. R. L. "Hume, Animals and the Objectivity of Morals", P£ 35, 117-33. CLERO, J. P. La philosophie des passions chez David Hume. (301 pp.) Paris. DANIEL, S. C "The Problem of Identity of Objects in Hume's Philosophy", Indian Phil. Q. 12, 1916. DAVIE, W. "Hume on Morality, Action, and Character", HPQ 2, 337-48. DEWITT, R. "Hume's Probability Argument of I, iv, 1", Hume Studies 11, 125-40. DONNICI, R. "Husserl sull' etica di Hume. Dalle lezioni inedite del 1902", Rivista di storia della filosofia 40, 449-70. ENC, B. "Hume on Causal Necessity: A Study from the Perspective of Hume's Theory of Passions", HPQ 2, 235-56. FERREIRA, M.J. "Hume's Naturalism - 'Proof and Practice", P£ 35, 45-57. FLAGE, D.E. "Hume on Memory and Causation", Hume Studies (10th Anniv. Issue), 168-88. [11 (1985) 166-72] FLAGE, D.E. "Perchance to Dream: A Reply to Traiger", Hume Studies 11, 173-82. (on Traiger 1985b) FLAGE, D.E. "Hume's Ethics", Phil. Topics 13, no. 3, 71-88. FLEW, A. "Impressions and Experiences: Public or Private?", Hume Studies 11, 183-91. 432 FOGELIN, R.J. Hume's Skepticism... (shrink)

Perceptual disjunctivism is a controversial thesis about perception. One familiar characterization of the thesis maintains that there is no common epistemic kind that is present in both veridical and non-veridical cases of perception. For example, the good case, in which one sees a yellow lemon, and the bad case, in which one hallucinates a yellow lemon, share a specific first-person phenomenology, being indistinguishable from the first-person point of view; however, seeing a yellow lemon and hallucinating a yellow lemon do not, (...) according to the disjunctivist, share a common epistemic kind. There are two types of disjunctivism: epistemological vs. metaphysical. John McDowell, 243–255, 2011, Philosophical Explorations, 16, 259–279, 2013) has articulated, refined, and defended one kind of disjunctivism. Tyler Burge, 1–78, 2005, Philosophical Explorations, 13, 43–80, 2011) has objected to many forms of disjunctivism, arguing that they are all inconsistent with the proximality principle in the vision sciences. PP requires an ability-general kind in common between relevantly similar perceptual states, such as seeing a yellow lemon and hallucinating a yellow lemon, which disjunctivism denies. Against the background of this debate some analytic epistemologists, such as Michael Martin, Alan Millar, 176–198, 2007), Berit Brogaard, 46–73, 2011), Duncan Pritchard, and Heather Logue, 105–133, 2013) remain attracted to some version of disjunctivism. Brogaard and Pritchard each have gone on to articulate and defend a version. Pritchard’s, for example, defends epistemological disjunctivism. Martin, Millar, and Logue, by contrast, have defended the idea that the disjunctivist is right about something, but perhaps not wholly correct about the nature of perception. In what follows, I articulate and defend the view that an interesting kind of disjunctivism is to be found through a reading of the Nyāya School of classical Indian philosophy. I articulate a version of perceptual disjunctivism informed by Nyāya perceptual theory that is not derivable from any single Nyāya philosopher. The view I offer is inspired by work on disjunctivism both in Anglo-analytic philosophy and in Nyāya scholarship, such as by Dasti and Phillips, 535–540, 2010), Ganeri, 541–550, 2010), Dasti, 1–15, 2012), Phillips, Vaidya, 562–585, 2013), and Schiller, 1–18, 2019). Importantly, the causal account I offer is distinct from Grice’s single-factor causal theory of perception by crucially involving a multi-factor causal theory of perception. My work on Nyāya perceptual theory derives primarily from Jaysankar Shaw’s account of Nyāya on the sources of knowledge, which is distinct from Stephen Phillips’ well-known account of Nyāya epistemology. Shaw’s theory has been developed and refined through textual analysis and dialectical engagement with the twentieth century Nyāya Pundit Philosopher, Viśvabandhu Tarkatīrtha. Like other modern Nyāya scholars, such as B. K. Matilal, A. Chakrabarti, 1–8, 2010), M. Chadha, J. Ganeri, and S. Phillips, 104–113, 2001, 2012), J. Shaw’s account shows how Nyāya epistemology is a living and continuing form of Indian philosophy. My goal here is twofold. On the one hand, I articulate multi-factor causal disjunctivism and show how it can be applied to the McDowell-Burge debate over the viability of disjunctivism and naïve realism. On the other hand, I aim to start a cross-cultural epistemological conversation with those that have contributed to the Anglo-analytic debate in anthologies, such as Haddock and Macpherson, Byrne and Logue, and introductions, such as Soteriou. The hope is that a cross-cultural epistemological investigation into disjunctivism will lead to better epistemic theorizing about the nature of perception. (shrink)

In our article (Zawadzki and Adamczyk 2021), we analyzed threats that novel memory modifying interventions may pose in the future. More specifically, we discussed how optogenetics’ potential for reversible erasure/deactivation of memory “may impact authenticity by producing changes at different levels of personality.” Our article has received many thoughtful open peer commentaries for which we would like to express our great appreciation. We have identified two main threads of objections. They are related to the potential applicability of optogenetics as a (...) therapeutic memory modification technology (MMT) in humans—applicability thread, and the normative value of authenticity, that is, the assumption that preserving authenticity is valuable (either in general or in the particular approach we adopted)—normative thread. Both of these threads concern fundamental issues: The former deals with the scientific credibility of the case vignette on which our discussion is based, and the latter deals with the normative weight of our considerations. We think that addressing both of them can be instructive in a broader context as they reflect a more general disagreement among neuroethicists about the very purpose and method of our discipline. (shrink)

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to _The Ethical (...) Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

The author introduces and critically analyzes two recent, curious findings and their accompanying explanations regarding how the folk intuits the capabilities of the dead and those in a persistent vegetative state. The dead are intuited to survive death, whereas PVS patients are intuited as more dead than the dead. Current explanations of these curious findings rely on how the folk is said to conceive of death and the dead: either as the annihilation of the person, or that person’s continuation as (...) a disembodied being. The author argues that these two conceptions are incompatible and inconsistent with each other and the evidence. Contrariwise, the author argues that the folk intuition about dead-survivors and the living dead are more easily explained by appealing to cross-culturally established concepts: the folk biological concept of death the existential concept of death, and the concept of social death. (shrink)

The covariant Klein-Gordon equation requires twice the boundary conditions of the Schrödinger equation and does not have an accepted single-particle interpretation. Instead of interpreting its solution as a probability wave determined by an initial boundary condition, this paper considers the possibility that the solutions are determined by both an initial and a final boundary condition. By constructing an invariant joint probability distribution from the size of the solution space, it is shown that the usual measurement probabilities can nearly be recovered (...) in the non-relativistic limit, provided that neither boundary constrains the energy to a precision near ℏ/t 0 (where t 0 is the time duration between the boundary conditions). Otherwise, deviations from standard quantum mechanics are predicted. (shrink)

J. L. Austin (1911-1960) exercised in Post-war Oxford an intellectual authority similar to that of Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Although he completed no books of his own and published only seven papers, Austin became through lectures and talks one of the acknowledged leaders in what is called ‘Oxford philosophy’ or ‘ordinary language philosophy’. Few would dispute that among analytic philosophers Austin stands out as a great and original philosophical genius. Three volumes of his writing, published after his death, have become classics (...) in analytical philosophy: Philosophical Papers ; Sense and Sensibilia ; and How to Do Things with Words . First published in 1969, this book is a collection of critical essays on Austin’s philosophy written by well-known philosophers, many of whom knew Austin personally. A number of essays included were especially written for this volume, but the majority have appeared previously in various journals or books, not all easy to obtain. (shrink)