Introduction: Review Symposium on Morton’s Moving Up without Losing Your Way

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Moving Without Being Where You’re Not; A Non-Bivalent Way

The classical response to Zeno’s paradoxes goes like this: ‘Motion cannot properly be defined within an instant. Only over a period’ (Vlastos.) I show that this ob-jection is exactly what it takes for Zeno to be right. If motion cannot be defined at an instant, even though the object is always moving at that instant, motion cannot be defined at all, for any longer period of time identical in content to that instant. The nonclassical response introduces discontinuity, to evade the paradox of infinite proximity of any point of a distance with any ‘next’. But it introduces the wrong sort of discontinuity because, rather than assuming the discontinuity of motion, as Quantum Theory does, it assumes the discontinuity of space. Due then to the resulting spacetime disorder, though all else is certainly lost, the Tortoise now turns up at least as fast as Achilles and hence not even this much is rescued. Zeno rejects motion because he shows that a moving object must be where it is not. Hence motion, if to occur, must violate the Law of Contradiction (LNC). Applying the concept of quantum discontinuity, I produce an alternative. If an object is to move discontinuously between two boundary points, A and B, what actually obtains is, rather, that it is nowhere at all in-between A and B. And cannot therefore be at two places in-between A and B. And cannot therefore be where it is not. Thus, LNC is conserved. However, in these conditions, the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) fails. To mitigate the undesirability of this effect, I show that LEM fails because LNC holds. Thus, the resulting nonbivalent logic, which is also appropriate for quantized transitions of all kinds, will always turn up nonbivalent, because consistent. And this is not too bad, considering.     

Author’s Index: Without Distortions

Science and Engineering Ethics -     

Husserl’s Way to Authentic Being

In a journal entry from 1906, Husserl complains of lacking “internal stability” and of his desire to “achieve” it. My claim in this paper is that the “phenomenological method,” which he made public in his 1907 lectures Die Idee der Phänomenologie was, and is, a means to achieve the inner harmony that Husserl longed for. I do not provide an analysis of why Husserl might have felt the way he did; my aim is to show what internal stability might be and how one might achieve it. I conclude that the phenomenological method is the means, the “how,” to internal stability, which I characterize as “clarity” and “harmony” regarding our beliefs and, and ultimately, our authentic comportment.     

A Review of Sam Harris’s Free Will

The Psychological Record -     

A Book Review of Richard Easterlin’s An Economist’s Lessons on Happiness

Journal of Happiness Studies -     

It’s Not You,It’s Your (Old) Vagina: Osphena’s Articulation of Sexual Dysfunction

Released to an American market in 2013 the pharmaceutical drug Osphena was heralded as an innovative, hormone-free therapeutic option to cure two dysfunctions associated with menopausal women’s bodies: vaginal atrophy and dyspareunia. Yet a critical examination of the drug, its advertising, and associated discourses presents an opportunity to explore not only the medicalization of aging but also direct-to-consumer advertising’s role in perpetuating ideologies concerned with normalcy, normal bodies, normal sex, and normal gender performance. This project undertakes a critical feminist analysis of Osphena’s advertising campaign and the public’s response, incorporating Foucaultian theory and a bioethical perspective, and ultimately re-contextualizing them within medical discourses that highlight the pharmaceutical benefits associated with widespread adoption of the “deficiency” perspective that the drug perpetuates. I claim that the Osphena campaign is a clear contemporary illustration that the age-old rhetoric of women’s bodies as requiring medical intervention to resist aging is far from passé, and suggest that images and rhetoric of empowerment would be more readily accepted without relying upon dated and clichéd depictions of female sexuality.     

Hume’s definitions of ‘Cause’: Without idealizations,within the bounds of science

Interpreters have found it exceedingly difficult to understand how Hume could be right in claiming that his two definitions of ‘cause’ are essentially the same. As J. A. Robinson points out, the definitions do not even seem to be extensionally equivalent. Don Garrett offers an influential solution to this interpretative problem, one that attributes to Hume the reliance on an ideal observer. I argue that the theoretical need for an ideal observer stems from an idealized concept of definition, which many interpreters, including Garrett, attribute to Hume. I argue that this idealized concept of definition indeed demands an unlimited or infinite ideal observer. But there is substantial textual evidence indicating that Hume disallows the employment of idealizations in general in the sciences. Thus Hume would reject the idealized concept of definition and its corresponding ideal observer. I then put forward an expert-relative reading of Hume’s definitions of ‘cause’, which also renders both definitions extensionally equivalent. On the expert-relative reading, the meaning of ‘cause’ changes with better observations and experiments, but it also allows Humean definitions to play important roles within our normative practices. Finally, I consider and reject Henry Allison’s argument that idealized definitions and their corresponding infinite minds are necessary for expert reflection on the limitations of current science.     

Fischer’s Way: The Next Level

I present an analogy between analytic philosophy and a particular sort of computer game, and analyze some aspects of John Martin Fischer's My Way in the light of this analogy. I set out the different levels of the free will question, and explore how well Fischer does on them. On the compatibility level, he succeeds, in my view, in confronting the "metaphysical challenge" and the "manipulation challenge", but does less well with the "moral arbitrariness challenge". The compatibilist perspective captures only part of the moral and personal truth on the compatibility issue, and is shown to be inherently shallow. On the next levels we see that Fischer confronts particular dangers: the very virtues that make his minimalist position so resilient on the second (compatibility) level, render it too impoverished when it comes to the third, which asks about the very importance of taking moral responsibility seriously. Connecting to other positions (such as P.F. Strawson's version of naturalism) may be an imperative, but would also be risky. Likewise, on the fourth level, where we confront the difficulty of deciding how to deal with the previous conclusions, it is doubtful how well Fischer can do, given his previous philosophical commitments.

Review of G. Felicitas Munzel’s Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy: Toward Education for Freedom

Studies in Philosophy and Education -