Contextualism,relativism and ordinary speakers’ judgments

Some authors have recently claimed that relativism about knowledge sentences accommodates the context sensitivity of our use of such sentences as well as contextualism, while avoiding the counterintuitive consequences of contextualism regarding our inter-contextual judgments, that is, our judgments about knowledge claims made in other contexts. I argue that relativism, like contextualism, involves an error theory regarding a certain class of inter-contextual judgments.

Means-end coherence,stringency, and subjective reasons

Intentions matter. They have some kind of normative impact on our agency. Something goes wrong when an agent intends some end and fails to carry out the means she believes to be necessary for it, and something goes right when, intending the end, she adopts the means she thinks are required. This has even been claimed to be one of the only uncontroversial truths in ethical theory. But not only is there widespread disagreement about why this is so, there is widespread disagreement about in what sense it is so. In this paper I explore an underdeveloped answer to the question of in what sense it is so, and argue that resolving an apparent difficulty with this view leads to an attractive picture about why it is so.

Love and the Problem of Evil

The focus of this paper is the virtual certainty that much of what we must prize in loving any human person would not have existed in a world that did not contain much of the evil that has occurred in the history of the actual world. It is argued that the appropriate response to this fact must be some form of ambivalence, but that lovers have reason to prefer an ambivalence that contextualizes regretted evils in the framework of what we welcome in human life.

Subjectification

For Martin Heidegger the death that comes singularly for each of us summons us to exist on our own and speak in our own name. But Gilles Delueze and Félix Guattari argue that it is a specific social machinery that summons us to speak in our own name and answer for what we do and are. This summons is a death sentence. They enjoin us to flee this subjectification, this subjection. They do recognize that the release of becomings in all directions can become destructive and self-destructive. There are several weaknesses in their conception.

Visualizations in Mathematics

In this paper we discuss visualizations in mathematics from a historical and didactical perspective. We consider historical debates from the 17th and 19th centuries regarding the role of intuition and visualizations in mathematics. We also consider the problem of what a visualization in mathematical learning can achieve. In an empirical study we investigate what mathematical conclusions university students made on the basis of a visualization. We emphasize that a visualization in mathematics should always be considered in its proper context.

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Luminous enough for a cognitive home

In this paper I argue that there is no viable alternative to construing our knowledge and justified belief as resting on a foundation restricted to truths about our internal states. Against Williamson and others I defend the claim that the internal life of a cognizer really does constitute a special sort of cognitive home that is importantly different from the rest of what we think we know and justifiably believe.

Wittgenstein on Meaning and Life

This is a paper about the way language meshes with life. It focuses on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work, and compares it with Leo Tolstoy and Saint Augustine’s confessions. My aim is to better understand in this way what it means to have meaning in language, as well as meaning in life.

Bioethics policies and the compass of common morality

Even if there is a common morality, many would argue that it provides little guidance in resolving moral disputes, because universally accepted norms are both general in content and few in number. However, if we supplement common morality with commonly accepted factual beliefs and culture-specific norms and utilize coherentist reasoning, we can limit the range of acceptable answers to disputed issues. Moreover, in the arena of public policy, where one must take into account both legal and moral norms, the constraints on acceptable answers will narrow the extent of reasonable disagreement even further. A consideration of the debate over legalization of assisted dying supports this claim.

Revisiting the Censure Theory of Punishment

This paper is a rejoinder to Thaddeus Metz’s article “Censure Theory Still Best Accounts for Punishment of the Guilty: Reply to Montague.” In his article, Metz attempts to answer objections to censure theory that I had raised previously. I argue in my rejoinder that Metz’s defense of censure theory remains seriously problematic despite what he says in his reply.

How is Moral Disagreement a Problem for Realism?

Moral disagreement is widely held to pose a threat for metaethical realism and objectivity. In this paper I attempt to understand how it is that moral disagreement is supposed to present a problem for metaethical realism. I do this by going through several distinct (though often related) arguments from disagreement, carefully distinguishing between them, and critically evaluating their merits. My conclusions are rather skeptical: Some of the arguments I discuss fail rather clearly. Others supply with a challenge to realism, but not one we have any reason to believe realism cannot address successfully. Others beg the question against the moral realist, and yet others raise serious objections to realism, but ones that—when carefully stated—can be seen not to be essentially related to moral disagreement. Arguments based on moral disagreement itself have almost no weight, I conclude, against moral realism.

The Irrelevance of Democracy to the Public Justification of Political Authority

Democracy can be a means to independently valuable ends and/or it can be intrinsically (or non-instrumentally) valuable. One powerful non-instrumental defence of democracy is based on the idea that only it can publicly justify political authority. I contend that this is an argument about the reasonable acceptability of political authority and about the requirements of publicity and that satisfying these requirements has nothing to do with whether a society is democratic or not. Democracy, then, plays no role in publicly justifying political authority. I also show that any non-instrumental defence of democracy must make claims about what justice requires and make several further claims that require substantial justification.

The phenomenology of negation

Negation is a fundamental component of communication (no-answers), cognition (logical negation), perception (different color), attitude (dislike), emotion (hatred), and volition (disagreement). Its many uses make it difficult to provide an integrated definition of the concept. The aim of this paper is to show that an integrated definition of the concept can be arrived at by means of a phenomenological method structuring it into three general essences labelled lack, otherness and obstruction.

Trumping the causal influence account of causation

Here is a simple counterexample to David Lewis’s causal influence account of causation, one that is especially illuminating due to its connection to what Lewis himself writes: it is a variant of his trumping example

Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics

In this introduction we discuss the motivation behind the workshop “Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics” of which this special issue constitutes the proceedings. We elaborate on historical and empirical aspects of the desired new epistemology, connect it to the public image of mathematics, and give a summary and an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

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Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) know what can be seen from where

Visual perspective taking research has established that chimpanzees recognize what others can or cannot see in the presence of occluding barriers. Less is known about chimpanzees’ appreciation of what they themselves can or cannot see in similar situations. Additionally, it is unclear whether chimpanzees must rely on others’ gaze cues to solve such tasks or whether they have a more general appreciation of what can be seen from where. Hence, we investigated chimpanzees’ ability to anticipate what they would or would not be able to see from different visual perspectives. Food was hidden among arrays of open containers, with different containers providing visual access from unique viewing perspectives. Chimpanzees immediately adopted the correct perspective for each container type. Follow-up experiments showed that they were not simply moving to align themselves with visible openings. Our study thus suggests that chimpanzees have good visual perspective taking abilities with regard to themselves as well as others, and that both likely reflect a more general knowledge, at least implicit, of what can be seen from where.

Early Modern Intentionalism: Replies to LoLordo’s Comments

I clarify Locke’s intentionalism and explain what we might gain by paying more attention to the role of linguistic intentions in the work of the British empiricists.

Reliabilism in philosophy

The following three propositions appear to be individually defensible but jointly inconsistent: (1) reliability is a necessary condition on epistemic justification; (2) on contested matters in philosophy, my beliefs are not reliably formed; (3) some of these beliefs are epistemically justified. I explore the nature and scope of the problem, examine and reject some candidate solutions, compare the issue with ones arising in discussions about disagreement, and offer a brief assessment of our predicament.

Efficacious Surroundings: Temple Space and Buddhist Well-being

This essay argues that the prospect of health and well-being from a Buddhist perspective must take into account an understanding of religiosity as a process of becoming, a culturally and contextually defined praxis of what and who it is we are and would like to become. It is in this process of becoming that a space of healing is made possible. It is not simply that Buddhist temple space is ‘good’ in some sort of clinical manner, but rather that it is active in its will to achieve a space of becoming healthy and whole.

Disembodied Minds and the Problem of Identification and Individuation

We consider and reject a variety of attempts to provide a ground for identifying and differentiating disembodied minds. Until such a ground is provided, we must withhold inclusion of disembodied minds from our picture of the world.

Explanation and Understanding: Action as “Historical Structure”

The first part of this essay is basically historical. It introduces the explanation–understanding divide, focusing in particular on the general–unique distinction. The second part is more philosophical and it presents two different claims on action. In the first place, I will try to say what it means to understand an action. Secondly, we will focus on the explanation of action as it is seen in some explanatory sciences. I will try to argue that in some cases these sciences commit what I call an “external contradiction”.