Let's exist again (like we did last summer)

ABSTRACT

This paper is a defence of a psychological view of personal identity against the attack Peter Unger launches against it in his Identity, Consciousness and Value. Unger attempts to undermine the traditional support which a psychological criterion of identity has drawn from thought-experiments, and to show that such a criterion has totally unacceptable implications—in particular, that it allows that persons can go out of and come back into existence. I respond to both aspects of this criticism, arguing that the relevant thought- experiments (and the support they appear to offer) survive Unger's attack intact, and that he does not establish his case against intermittent existence.     

The Relatively Happy Fish

Zhuangzi and Hui Shi's discussion about whether Zhuangzi knows ‘fish’s happiness' is a Daoist staple. The interpretations, however, portray it as humorous miscommunication between a mystic and a logician. I argue for a fine inferential analysis that explains the argument in a way that informs Zhuangzi philosophical lament at Hui Shi's passing. It also reverses the dominant image of the two thinkers. Zhuangzi emerges as the superior dialectician, the clearer, more analytic epistemologist. Hui Shi's arguments betray his tendency (manifest elsewhere) to misstate the conclusions of their shared relativism leading him but not Zhuangzi to intuitive mysticism.     

The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of the Sense of Touch

In this essay, I review Matthew Fulkerson's The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of the Sense of Touch. In this first philosophical book on the sense of touch, Fulkerson provides an account of the nature and content of tactual experience. Central to Fulkerson's view is the claim that exploratory action plays a fundamental role in touch. In this review, I put pressure on two of his arguments: (1) the argument that tactual experience is unisensory and (2) the argument that tactual experience does not depend on explicit bodily awareness.     

Philosophical Diversity and Disagreement

Widespread and lasting consensus has not been philosophy's fate. Indeed, one of philosophy's most striking features is its ability to accommodate “not only different answers to philosophical questions” but also “total disagreement on what questions are philosophical” (Rorty 1995 , 58). It is therefore hardly surprising that philosophers' responses to this metaphilosophical predicament have been similarly varied. This article considers two recent diagnoses of philosophical diversity: Kornblith and Rescher (respectively) claim that taking philosophical disagreement seriously does not lead to metaphilosophical scepticism. The article argues that their confidence is misplaced in so far as both wrongly assume that ordinary, first‐order philosophical practice and second‐order metaphilosophical reflection are separate enterprises.     

Practical knowledge and the subjectivity of truth in Kant and Kierkegaard: The cover of skepticism

Kant developed a distinctive method of philosophical argumentation, the method of transcendental argumentation, which continues to have contemporary philosophical promise. Yet there is considerable disagreement among Kant's interpreters concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. On ambitious interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to establish certain necessary features of the world from the conditions of our thinking about or experiencing the world; they are world‐directed. On modest interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to show that certain beliefs have a special status that renders them invulnerable to skeptical doubts; they are belief‐directed. This paper brings Kierkegaard's thesis of the “subjectivity of truth” to bear on these questions concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. I focus on Kant's argument for the postulate of God's existence in his Critique of Practical Reason and show that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us construe the argument as both belief and world directed. Yet I also argue that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us understand the source of our dissatisfaction with Kant's transcendental arguments: It can help us understand that dissatisfaction as an expression of what Stanley Cavell calls the “cover of skepticism,” the conversion of metaphysical finitude into intellectual lack.     

Cinematic Philosophy: Experiential Affirmation in Memento

This article demonstrates that Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) meets both conditions of Paisley Livingston's bold thesis of cinema as philosophy. I delineate my argument in terms of Aaron Smuts's clarifications of Livingston's conditions. The results condition, which is concerned with the nature of the philosophical content, is developed in relation to Berys Gaut's conception of narrational confirmation, which I designate ‘experiential affirmation.’ Because experiential affirmation is a function of cinematic depiction, it meets Livingston's means condition, which is concerned with the capacities of the medium or art form. I address two objections to my argument and conclude with a brief commentary on the implications for the broader relationship between film and philosophy.     

Philosophical Autobiography

An examination of the genre of philosophical autobiography sheds light on the role of personal judgment alongside objective rationality in philosophy. Building on Monk's conception of philosophical biography, philosophical autobiography can be seen as any autobiography that reveals some interplay between life and thought. It is argued that almost all autobiographies by philosophers are philosophical because the recounting of one's own life is almost invariably a form of extended speech act of self-revelation. When a philosopher is the autobiographer, this self-revelation illuminates the interplay between thought, life, and personality. Understanding how this works allows us to address three problems of biography raised by Honderich: how to give an account of something as large and complex as a human life; how a life-story is also a judgment; and how we can justify identifying one part of a causal circumstance as 'the cause'. There is also a new ethical problem raised about the autobiographer's right to make public details of a shared private life.     

A MINOR MATTER? THE FRANCISCAN THESIS AND PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY1

The Franciscan thesis maintains that the primary motive of the Incarnation is to glorify the triune God in the person of Jesus Christ: though Christ atones for human sins, his coming isn't relative to our need for redemption but rather has an absolute primacy. The Franciscan thesis is sometimes associated with the counterfactual claim that Christ would have come even if humans hadn't sinned. In recent work on the Franciscan thesis, an attempt is made to prove the counterfactual claim on the basis of a purely logical argument drawn from the writings of Bl. John Duns Scotus. After showing that this proof fails, I construct an axiological argument for the Franciscan thesis that disentangles it from unsubstantiated counterfactual claims while respecting the subtle interplay between natural and revealed theology. I then provide a metaphysical interpretation of the axiological argument that builds upon Scotist notions. Seen through this interpretive lens, Scotus's logical argument can be understood not as attempting to prove a counterfactual claim but as articulating Scotus's vision of what is required of any created order that is radically contingent on God's will yet perfectly glorifies its Creator. Thus understood, the Franciscan thesis challenges a powerful and influential picture in philosophical theology.     

Language and the use of language

Antony Flew's ‘A Strong Programme for the Sociology of Belief (Inquiry 25 {1982], 365–78) critically assesses the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge defended in David Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery. I argue that Flew's rejection of the epistemological relativism evident in Bloor's work begs the question against the relativist and ignores Bloor's focus on the social relativity of mathematical knowledge. Bloor attempts to establish such relativity via a sociological analysis of Frege's theory of number. But this analysis only succeeds if the rejection of an explanatory theory entails that there are reasonable grounds for the rejection of the set of propositions which that theory was intended to explain. I argue against such an entailment, and thus against Bloor's attempt to relativize mathematical knowledge.     

“The Experience of Left and Right” Meets the Physics of Left and Right

I consider an argument, due to Geoffrey Lee, that we can know a priori from the left‐right asymmetrical character of experience that our brains are left‐right asymmetrical. Lee's argument assumes a premise he calls relationism, which I show is well‐supported by the best philosophical picture of spacetime. I explain why Lee's relationism is compatible with left‐right asymmetrical laws. I then show that the conclusion of Lee's argument is not as strong or surprising as he makes it out to be.     

NON‐RELATIVE REASONS AND HUMEAN THOUGHT: IF WHAT IS A REASON FOR YOU IS A REASON FOR ME,WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE THE HUMEAN?

Abstract: A variety of strategies have been used to oppose the influential Humean thesis that all of an agent's reasons for action are provided by the agent's current wants. Among these strategies is the attempt to show that it is a conceptual truth that reasons for action are non‐relative. I introduce the notion of a basic reason‐giving consideration and show that the non‐relativity thesis can be understood as a corollary of the more fundamental thesis that basic reason‐giving considerations are generalizable. I then consider the relationship between the generalizability thesis and the Humean thesis that all of an agent's reasons for action are provided by the agent's current wants. I argue that, contrary to a common assumption, there is a subtle and clearly motivated version of the Humean thesis that does not deny, and so is not threatened by, the generalizability thesis.     

Ethical Criticism in Perspective: A Defense of Radical Moralism

I defend the ethical fittingness theory (EFT), the thesis that whenever it is legitimate ethically to evaluate a representational artwork for the perspective it embodies, such evaluation systematically bears on the work's artistic value. EFT is a form of radical moralism, claiming that the systematic relationship between the selected type of ethical evaluation and artistic evaluation always obtains, for works of any kind. The argument for EFT spells out the implications of ethically judging an artwork for its perspective, where such an ethical evaluation is understood as an assessment of how well the work's ethical perspective fits extra‐fictional reality—how appropriate, correct, or true the perspective is. The argument shows that the ethical legitimacy of judging a work for its perspective ipso facto proves the judgment's art‐critical relevance. Hence, the argument effectively amounts to a reductio ad absurdum of theories that admit the legitimacy of ethically judging artworks this way, but deny or qualify the judgment's relevance to artistic merit. Since EFT is stated conditionally, the argument need not indicate how often artworks are subject to this type of ethical evaluation. Nonetheless, I make a case for the relevance of EFT to actual art criticism and contemporary philosophical debate.     

I. Epistemological relativism in its latest form

Gerald Doppelt's recent ‘Kuhn's Epistemological Relativism: An Interpretation and Defense’ (Inquiry, Vol. 21 [1978], pp. 33–86) offers a reconstruction of Thomas Kuhn's views concerning theory choice in science in which Kuhn's ‘incommensurability thesis’, and his epistemological relativism, are defended. It is argued that Doppelt's reconstruction fails to provide an adequate defense, and that both Kuhn's incommensurability thesis, and his epistemological relativism, as reconstructed by Doppelt, remain philosophically unacceptable.     

On Wittgenstein's and Carnap's Conceptions of the Dissolution of Philosophical Problems,and against a Therapeutic Mix: How to Solve the Paradox of the Tractatus

In this article, I distinguish Wittgenstein's conception of the dissolution of philosophical problems from that of Carnap. I argue that the conception of dissolution assumed by the therapeutic interpretations of the Tractatus is more similar to Carnap's than to Wittgenstein's for whom dissolution involves spelling out an alternative in the context of which relevant problems do not arise. To clarify this I outline a non‐therapeutic resolute reading of the Tractatus that explains how Wittgenstein thought to be able to make a positive contribution to logic and the philosophy thereof without putting forward any (ineffable) theses. This explains why there is no paradox in the Tractatus.     

Zhuangzi and relativistic scepticism

Chad Hansen is one of the strongest proponents of the view that the important second chapter of Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters (The Qi Wu Lun) reveals Zhuangzi to be a relativistic sceptidst. Hansen argues that Zhuangzi is a sceptic because he is first and foremost a relativist. Hansen's argument is essentially that Zhuangzi's perspectivism, his belief that one's linguistic and conceptual perspective determines what one claims to know, makes him a thorough going relativist and sceptic. I agree that Zhuangzi is a perspectivist, but disagree with Hansen's portrayal of him as a relativistic sceptic. I first show that there is an important ambiguity in Hansen's argument. I then proceed to argue that important passages in the Qi Wu Lun (in particular the butterfly dream passage,) reveal serious problems with Hansen's interpretation of Zhuangzi's philosophical stance, I maintain that Zhuangzi is neither a sceptic nor a perspectival relativist. He is rather a perspectival realist.     

Unity,Objectivity, and the Passivity of Experience

In the section ‘Unity and Objectivity’ of The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson argues for the thesis that unity of consciousness requires experience of an objective world. My aim in this essay is to evaluate this claim. In the first and second parts of the essay, I explicate Strawson's thesis, reconstruct his argument, and identify the point at which the argument fails. Strawson's discussion nevertheless raises an important question: are there ways in which we must think of our experiences if we are to self‐ascribe them? In the third part of the essay, I use Kant's remarks concerning the passivity of experience to suggest one answer to this question: in self‐ascribing experiences, we must be capable of thinking of them as passive to their objects. This can be used to provide an alternative route from unity to objectivity.     

Anti-Naturalism: The Role of Non-Empirical Methods in Philosophy

Some naturalistic conceptions of philosophical methodologies interpret the doctrine that philosophy is continuous with science to mean that philosophical investigations must implement empirical methods and must not depart from the experimental results that the scientific application of those methods reveal. In this paper, I argue that while our answers to philosophical questions are certainly constrained by empirical considerations, this does not imply that the methods by which these questions are correctly settled are wholly captured by empirical methods. Many historical cases of successful answers to philosophical questions involve strategies and methods that allow the divergence from empirically established results. I develop this idea and then illustrate it with Frege's methodology in his Foundations of Arithmetic.     

Vicious Regresses,Conceptual Analysis,and Strong Awareness Internalism

That a philosophical thesis entails a vicious regress is commonly taken to be decisive evidence that the thesis is false. In this paper, I argue that the existence of a vicious regress is insufficient to reject a proposed analysis provided that certain constraints on the analysis are met. When a vicious regress is present, some further consequence of the thesis must be established that, together with the presence of the vicious regress, shows the thesis to be false. The argument is provided largely through the examination of Michael Bergmann's (2006) vicious regress argument against strong awareness internalism and a partial defense of that thesis against Bergmann. 1     

A Hasty Retreat From Evidence: The Recalcitrance of Relativism in Feminist Epistemology

While feminist epistemologists have made important contributions to the deconstruction of the traditional representationalist model, some elements of the Cartesian legacy remain. For example, relativism continues to play a role in the underdetermination thesis used by Longino and Keller. Both argue that because scientific theories are underdetermined by evidence, theory choice must be relative to interpretive frameworks. Utilizing Davidson's philosophy of language, I offer a nonrepresentationalist alternative to suggest how relativism can be more fully avoided.     

II. A reply to Siegel on Kuhnian relativism

Siegel argues that the Kuhnian relativism presented in ‘Kuhn's Epistemological Relativism’ fails because it neglects the possibility of rational choice in science between rival paradigms’ own incommensurable standards on the basis of ‘paradigm‐neutral external standards’. In reply, it is argued (1) that Siegel has given no reason to believe that there are such external standards in science, (2) that the mere ‘possibility’ of such standards in scientific debate is not sufficient to vitiate Kuhn's relativism, (3) that the actual existence of rational debate concerning the internal standards of rival paradigms does not entail (as Siegel claims) the existence of ‘paradigm‐neutral external standards’, and finally (4) that Kuhn's relativism concerning standards in science does not lead (as Siegel claims) to a ‘reductio’ which undermines the philosophical standards implicit in Kuhn's argument.