The scientific positivism of Michael Oakeshott

Seventeenth-century philosopher Margaret Cavendish wrote not only several philosophical treatises, but also many fictional works. I argue for taking the latter as serious objects of study for historians of philosophy, and sketch a method for doing so. Cavendish's fiction is full of conflicting viewpoints, and many authors have argued that this demonstrates that she did not intend her literary works to serve serious philosophical purpose. But if we consider philosophers more central to the canon, such as Plato or Kierkegaard, who sometimes used literary forms to do serious philosophy, we see that these arguments are unfounded. Like those philosophers, Cavendish had several philosophical motivations for pursuing value-theoretic issues through the flexible formats of literary genres. This suggests that Cavendish's literary corpus may be fruitful and largely unexplored ground for the history of philosophy.     

Turning up the volume on the property view of sound

In the present article, I show that sounds are properties that are not physical in a narrow sense. First, I argue that sounds are properties using Moorean-style arguments and defend this property view from various arguments against it that make use of salient disanalogies between sounds and colors. The first disanalogy is that we talk of objects making sounds but not of objects making colors. The second is that we count and quantify over sounds but not colors. The third is that sounds can survive qualitative change in their auditory properties, but colors cannot survive change in their chromatic properties. Next, I provide a taxonomy of property views of sound. As the property view of sound has been so rarely discussed, many of the views available have never been articulated. My taxonomy will articulate these views and how they are related to one another. I taxonomize sounds according to three characteristics: dispositional/non-dispositional, relational/non-relational and reductive/non-reductive. Finally, mirroring a popular argument in the color literature, I argue that physical views in the narrow sense are unable to accommodate the similarity and difference relations in which sounds essentially stand. I end replying to three objections.     

Does a single session of reading literary fiction prime enhanced mentalising performance? Four replication experiments of Kidd and Castano (2013)

Prior experiments indicated that reading literary fiction improves mentalising performance relative to reading popular fiction, non-fiction, or not reading. However, the experiments had relatively small sample sizes and hence low statistical power. To address this limitation, the present authors conducted four high-powered replication experiments (combined N?=?1006) testing the causal impact of reading literary fiction on mentalising. Relative to the original research, the present experiments used the same literary texts in the reading manipulation; the same mentalising task; and the same kind of participant samples. Moreover, one experiment was pre-registered as a direct replication. In none of the experiments did reading literary fiction have any effect on mentalising relative to control conditions. The results replicate earlier findings that familiarity with fiction is positively correlated with mentalising. Taken together, the present findings call into question whether a single session of reading fiction leads to immediate improvements in mentalising.     

On the adolescent neurosis

The author discusses the lifelong impact of adolescence in shaping the adult psyche. Some patients may appear to be as influenced by conflicts of adolescence and the individual solutions arrived at during this period as they are by conflicts and solutions of the oedipal phase, the author maintains. The subphases of early, middle, and late adolescence are discussed both in terms of a review of the psychoanalytic literature and of representative works of literary fiction. Illustrative clinical vignettes are presented as well.     

Real Representation of Fictional Objects

Assuming there are fictional objects, what sorts of properties do they have? Intuitively, most of their properties involve being represented—appearing in works of fiction, being depicted as clever, being portrayed by actors, being admired or feared, and so on. But several philosophers, including Saul Kripke, Peter van Inwagen, Kendall Walton, and Amie Thomasson, argue that even if there are fictional objects, they are not really represented in some or all of these cases. I reconstruct four kinds of arguments for this unexpected conclusion; they concern the semantics of names, pragmatic force, creation, and representations’ qualitative content. But I find all the arguments flawed. I then argue for the contrary, employing a new perspective: representation of fictional objects begins with the works of fiction that originate them. A work of fiction represents its “native” objects because our culture bestows that property on it (and on other works of fiction). I sketch conditions for such property bestowal and argue that they are satisfied in this case.     

Imagination and insight: a new acount of the content of thought experiments

This paper motivates, explains, and defends a new account of the content of thought experiments. I begin by briefly surveying and critiquing three influential accounts of thought experiments: James Robert Brown’s Platonist account, John Norton’s deflationist account that treats them as picturesque arguments, and a cluster of views that I group together as mental model accounts. I use this analysis to motivate a set of six desiderata for a new approach. I propose that we treat thought experiments primarily as aesthetic objects, specifically fictions, and then use this analysis to characterize their content and ultimately assess their epistemic success. Taking my starting point from Kendall Walton’s account of representation (Mimesis as make-believe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1990), I argue that the best way to understand the content of thought experiments is to treat them as props for imagining fictional worlds. Ultimately, I maintain that, in terms of their form and content, thought experiments share more with literary fictions and pictorial representations than with either argumentation or observations of the Platonic realm. Moreover, while they inspire imaginings, thought experiments themselves are not mental kinds. My approach redirects attention towards what fixes the content of any given thought experiment and scrutinizes the assumptions, cognitive capacities and conventions that generate them. This view helps to explain what seems plausible about Brown’s, Norton’s, and the mental modelers’ views.     

Business is not just war. Transferring the principle of double effect from war to business

Abstract

In this article the validity of transferring the Principle of Double Effect from the just war tradition to the domain of business is critically reviewed. If a case can be build for sufficient analogies between war and business, the principle of double effect can legitimately be transferred from war to business. If, on the other hand it can be shown that there are aspects in which business differ substantially from just war, then the transfer to business of a principle developed within the context of war becomes more problematic. After exploring the nature of arguments of analogy and fallacious arguments of weak analogy some important disanalogies between war and business are highlighted. Given these disanalogies it is then contended that the just war background of the Principle of Double Effect had some bearing on both the content and manner of application of the Principle of Double Effect. Finally it is argued that these disanalogies require some revisions to the Principle of Double Effect with regard to both its content and its manner of application before it can be applied meaningfully to foreseeable negative side-effects of business.     

Humanistic Themes in Science Fiction: An Interview With David A. Kyle

This article reviews how science fiction writers have employed a popular and specialized literary medium in order to offer creative insights into human behavior and social structures. David A. Kyle is introduced to readers as a science fiction writer, publisher, cofounder of Gnome Press, historian of the science fiction field, and an avid promoter of science fiction. Kyle offers candid insights related to how science fiction has encouraged a serious exploration of psychological, philosophical, educational, and sociological questions. His fundamental premise is that science fiction allows us to explore what it means to be human in a technological and scientifically oriented society. The article concludes with a summary of how literary figures, social scientists (psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, etc.), and teachers have also successfully used works of science fiction and literary criticism for various purposes.     

Does intention involve belief?

Cognitivists think that intention necessarily involves belief; noncognitivists deny this claim. I argue that both sides of the debate have so far overlooked that the beliefs involved in intention are first‐personal beliefs and therefore relevantly different from ordinary beliefs that stand in need of justification through evidence. This move substantially changes the cognitivist thesis, and in such a way that the noncognitivist objections can be avoided. In Section 2, I lay out the intuitions behind cognitivism and the arguments against it that motivate noncognitivist positions. Section 3 discusses and dismisses Velleman's cognitivist response to these arguments. In Section 4, I introduce the distinction between “ordinary” and “first‐personal beliefs.” In Section 5, I argue that intention invariably involves a first‐personal belief that one will do what one intends to do. Finally, in Section 6, I return to the noncognitivist objections and show how my proposal answers them.     

What Mary Didn't Read: On Literary Narratives and Knowledge

In the philosophy of art, one of the most important debates concerns the so‐called ‘cognitive value’ of literature. The main question is phrased in various ways. Can literary narratives provide knowledge? Can readers learn from works of literature? Most of the discussants agree on an affirmative answer, but it is contested what the relevant notions of truth and knowledge are and whether this knowledge and learning influence aesthetic or literary value. The issue takes on a wider, not only philosophical, importance as it is one of the central tenets of humanistic education that art and literature are valuable not only because the pleasure they afford. This paper offers a new line of argument in departing from propositional truth, arguing that literary narratives provide aesthetically significant knowledge, however, this knowledge cannot be captured in propositional form. My position depends crucially on Frank Jackson's influential knowledge argument. The paper describes a modified ‘What Mary Didn't Read’ case. In doing so, it is argued that the knowledge literary works provide should be understood as a type of experiential knowing of ‘what it is like’ analogous to what Mary acquires in the original case of seeing a new colour for the first time. 1 1 I would like to thank first and foremost David Weberman for his comments on the draft of this paper. Also, I am grateful to colleagues at the 7th In‐house Philosophy Graduate Conference of Central European University for a productive discussion. Thirdly, I am indebted to Howard Robinson and Philip Goff for illuminating debates about Jackson's thought experiment.
     

The Doomsday Argument and the Simulation Argument

The Doomsday Argument and the Simulation Argument share certain structural features, and hence are often discussed together (Bostrom 2003, Are you living in a computer simulation, Philosophical Quarterly, 53:243–255; Aranyosi 2004, The Doomsday Simulation Argument. Or why isn’t the end nigh, and you’re not living in a simulation, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/190/; Richmond 2008, Doomsday, Bishop Ussher and simulated worlds, Ratio, 21:201–217; Bostrom and Kulczycki 2011 A patch for the Simulation Argument, Analysis, 71:54–61). Both are cases where reflecting on one’s location among a set of possibilities yields a counter-intuitive conclusion—in the first case that the end of humankind is closer than you initially thought, and in the second case that it is more likely than you initially thought that you are living in a computer simulation. Indeed, the two arguments do have some structural similarities. But there are also significant disanalogies between the two arguments, and I argue that these disanalogies mean that the Simulation Argument succeeds and the Doomsday Argument fails.     

The ‘God beyond God’ in Fiction for Young People

In this article, the author focusses upon two major works of children's fiction which illustrate a post‐Christian concept of spirituality permeating common life. He shows how the narrative, imagery and ideas constitute a challenge to orthodox thought, not only about the way life is, but also about what children should know and think. The central thesis is that literature is the most effective medium for quickening those imaginative powers fundamental to dynamic engagement with ultimate questions, a thesis exemplified in the examination of these works.     

阅读改变人生吗?阅读文学小说提升社会认知的争议

阅读文学小说曾经被认为只是大众消遣娱乐的方式,但最近的研究表明,阅读文学小说能够提升个体的社会认知。然而,有些研究并未发现阅读文学小说能够提升社会认知。本文首先批判性地分析支持和质疑“阅读文学小说提升社会认知”的相关证据,随后提出未来的研究将如何解决这一争论,包括开发新的研究工具和技术、明确文学与小说的操作性定义、确定读者的关键特征、创新研究设计等多个方面。     

Fan fiction and early Christian apocrypha

This article applies insights from the study of contemporary fan fiction to the early Christian Jesus tradition, in particular to so-called apocryphal literature. Both fan fiction and the apocrypha are representative of hypertextual literary practices where authors rewrite already existing narrative universes. In modern-day fandom, fan fiction is used for myth maintenance, for social and cultural identification and criticism, and for sharing interpretations of the shared narrative universe within the fan community. The article introduces the reader to fan fiction and fan fiction studies and discusses how these modern phenomena may shed heuristic light on the literary strategies and functions of early Christian apocrypha.     

On thought experiments as a priori science

Against Norton's claim that all thought experiments can be reduced to explicit arguments, I defend Brown's position that certain thought experiments yield a priori knowledge. They do this, I argue, not by allowing us to perceive “Platonic universals” (Brown), even though they may contain non‐propositional components that are epistemically indispensable, but by helping to identify certain tacit presuppositions or “natural interpretations” (Feyerabend's term) that lead to a contradiction when the phenomenon is described in terms of them, and by suggesting a new natural interpretation in terms of which the phenomenon can be redescribed free of contradiction.     

Objective Content

We conceive of many general terms we use as having satisfaction conditions that are objective in that the thought that something meets them neither entails nor is entailed by the thought that we are currently in a position in which we are ready, or warranted, to apply those terms to it. How do we manage to use a given term in such a way that it is thereby endowed, and conceived to be endowed, with satisfaction conditions that are objective in this sense? In the first half of the paper, I present a number of interrelated problems for some extant metasemantical accounts of how use determines objective satisfaction conditions. In the second half, I then propose a novel account that avoids all of these problems.     

Eluding Wilson’s “Elusive Narrators”

George Wilson has defended the thesis that even impersonal third-person fictional narratives should be taken to contain fictional narrations and have fictional narrators. This, he argues, is necessary if we are to explain how readers can take themselves, in their imaginative engagement with fictions, to have knowledge of the things they are imagining. I argue that there is at least one class of impersonal third-person fictional narratives—thought experiments—to which Wilson’s model fails to apply, and that this reveals more general problems with his argument. I further argue that there is no good reason to think that Wilson’s account applies more restrictedly to those impersonal third-person fictional narratives that feature in standard works of literary fiction.     

Naturalism, Reduction and Normativity: Pressing from Below

David Papineau's model of scientific reduction, contrary to his intent, appears to enable a naturalist realist account of the primitive normativity involved in a biological adaptation's being "for" this or that (say the eye's being for seeing). By disabling the crucial anti-naturalist arguments against any such reduction, his model would support a cogni-tivist semantics for normative claims like "The heart is for pumping blood, and defective if it doesn't." No moral claim would follow, certainly. Nonetheless, by thus "pressing from below" we may learn something about moral normativity. For instance, suppose non-cognitivists like Mackie are right that the semantics of normative claims should be "unified": if the semantics of moral claims is non-cognitivist, so too is that of all normative claims. Then, assuming that a naturalist reduction does yield a sound cognitivist account of the primitive normativity, it would follow that our semantics of moral claims is cognitivist as well.     

Discriminating utopian from dystopian literature: Why is walden two considered a dystopia?

Skinner thought of Walden Two as a utopia, but many literary critics consider it a dystopia. The present paper examines works by several authors of utopian literature in an effort to determine what elements lead critics to classify works as "dystopian." Common elements seem to include (a) suspicion of scientific social planning, (b) the unhappiness of the characters portrayed, (c) suspicion of sources of control of behavior outside the individual, (d) violation of a presumed inherent need to struggle, and (e) suspicion of behavioral methods of governance. The elements Walden Two shares with other utopias and dystopias are examined, and the conclusion is offered that Walden Two could not be considered a dystopia for any of the traditional reasons. Instead, the negative view of Walden Two seems to be an outgrowth of literary devices and general negative reactions to behavioral determinism.