Holding One’s Own

There is a tension with regard to regulative norms of inquiry. One’s commitments must survive critical scrutiny, and if they do not survive, they should be revised. Alternately, for views to be adequately articulated and defended, their proponents must maintain a strong commitment to the views in question. A solution is proposed with the notion of holding one’s own as the virtue of being reason-responsive with the prospects of improving the view in question.

Knowing One’s Own Self: An Analysis of Vivekananda’s Approach to One’s Identity

A successful declaration of one’s identity in saying “ahaṃ Brahmāsmi” is a result of knowing one’s own self as indistinguishable from Brahman. The non-difference between oneself and the Brahman is one’s true identity, and it goes without saying, knowledge of one’s true identity constitutes the correct knowing of one’s own self. That the said non-difference is upheld by vedānta, and we need to put this ideal non-difference into practice is the crux of Vivekananda’s practical vedānta. Vivekananda gives certain reasons for the practicability of vedānta. This paper’s part I is an exposition of Vivekananda’s practical vedānta, focussing on those reasons for practical vedānta and orienting each towards an analytical understanding. In part II, a linguistic analysis of Vivekananda’s approach to one’s identity has been carried out after introducing J. Hintikka’s interpretation of Descartes’ “I think, therefore, I am” and G. Misra’s interpretation of sat (existence, reality or being) cit (consciousness, knowledge or cognition) ānanda (bliss, intense happiness or felicity). The latter’s interpretation displays a positivist’s linguistic analysis of vedānta, whereas the former’s does a speech act theorist’s analysis of Descartes’ cogito principle. The present analysis indicates that practical vedānta can be read in the light of analytic philosophy and Vivekananda’s approach to one’s identity can be understood in terms of speech acts.

     

Modifying Obsessive-Compulsive Beliefs about Controlling One’s Thoughts

Cognitive models of obsessive-compulsive disorder propose that beliefs about the importance of and need to control thoughts (ICT) are central to the maintenance of the disorder. Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretation (CBM-I) can be used to experimentally test this theory and may also have clinical utility as an adjunct therapeutic tool. The current study extended previous research to investigate whether two CBM-I sessions (one within and one outside the laboratory) would augment effects on obsessive-compulsive beliefs and behavior. We randomly allocated undergraduate participants high in ICT beliefs to a Positive (n = 30) or Control (n = 36) CBM-I condition and conducted multi-modal assessments immediately following the first training and at one-week follow-up. As predicted, participants in the Positive condition reported a reduction in obsessive-compulsive beliefs from baseline to follow-up (partial η ² = .42), whereas those in the Control condition did not. Participants responded more adaptively to the ICT relevant stressor task at follow-up compared to post-intervention, but there was no significant difference between conditions. Likewise, participants reported a reduction in obsessive symptoms over time that did not differ between conditions. The findings are considered in light of cognitive models of OCD, and clinical implications are discussed.     

Hakuin,Scepticism, and Seeing into One’s Own Nature

One of the most significant figures in the history of Japanese philosophy is the Zen master Hakuin. Yet, in the West, little attempt has been made to present and evaluate his thought in a way that would make it accessible to Western philosophers. This article attempts to redress this neglect. Here, it is shown how Hakuin uses kōan meditation to create ‘the great doubt’ or scepticism concerning the self. Hakuin’s method shares elements in common with both ancient Greek scepticism and Descartes. Kōan-induced scepticism leads to ‘the great death’ or a rejection of the self as a delusion. Hume’s similar rejection of the self helps to explain the basis of this delusion. The rejection of this delusion carries with it the realization that one is not separate from the rest of reality. This is the instant of seeing into one’s own nature and, for Hakuin, is the experience of nirvana.     

Moral Responsibility,Alternative Possibilities,and Acting on One’s Own

Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) have famously served as counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). The fine-grained version of the flicker defense has become one of the most popular responses to FSCs. Proponents of this defense argue that there is an alternative available to all agents in FSCs such that the cases do not show that PAP is false. Specifically, the agents could have done otherwise than decide on their own, and this available alternative is robust enough to ground moral responsibility. In this paper, I argue that, when relying on definitions of ‘on one’s own’ within the literature on FSCs, a case can be constructed in which the agent could not have done otherwise than make a decision on his own. Insofar as this new case is successful, it will be able to avoid arguments about robustness while showing that moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities of the type argued for by proponents of the fine-grained version of the flicker defense.

     

One’s own reasoning

Abstract

Responding to Cappelen and Dever’s claim that there is no distinctive role for perspectivality in epistemology, I argue that facts about the outcomes of one’s own reasoning processes may have a different evidential significance than facts about the outcomes of others’.     

Your Sexism Predicts My Sexism: Perceptions of Men’s (but not Women’s) Sexism Affects One’s Own Sexism Over Time

The effects of perceived normative (societal) levels of benevolent (BS) and hostile sexism (HS) on one’s own sexist attitudes were examined over a four-month period in an undergraduate New Zealand sample (76 women, 26 men). Perceptions of normative levels of men’s BS produced longitudinal change in one’s own BS, and this effect was invariant across gender. However, contrary to previous research suggesting that women endorse BS when men are high in HS for its protective benefits, women instead expressed subjectively positive paternalistic attitudes toward their gender to the extent that they perceived BS as normative in men. The transmission of patriarchical-defined ideologies is tempered by the degree to which such ideologies espouse benevolent versus more overtly hostile attitudes toward women.     

Existence and Non-existence in Sabzawari’s Ontology

Sabzawari is one of the greatest Muslim philosophers of the nineteenth century. He belongs to Sadrian Existentialism, which became a dominant philosophical tradition during the Qajar dynasty in Iran. This paper critically analyses Sabzawari??s ontological discussion on the dichotomy of existence and quiddity and the relation between existence and non-existence. It argues against Sabzawari by advocating the idea that ??Existence?? rather than quiddity is the ground for identity as well as for diversity, and that non-existence, like existence, is able to produce an effect.     

Worries about Pritchard’s safety

I take issue with two claims that Duncan Pritchard makes in his recent book, Epistemic Luck. The first concerns his safety-based response to the lottery problem; the second his account of the relationship between safety and intellectual virtue.     

Vendler’s puzzle about imagination

Synthese - Vendler’s (Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 84(2):161–173, 1979) puzzle about imagination is that the sentences ‘Imagine swimming in that water’ and...     

Who’s right about rights?

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Three questions about Leplin’s reliabilism

Jarrett Leplin’s paper is multifaceted; it’s rich with ideas, and I won’t even try to touch on all of them. Instead, I’d like to raise three questions about the paper: one about its definition of reliable method, one about its solution to the generality problem, and one about its answer to clairvoyance-type objections.     

Living with Gratitude: Spouse’s Gratitude on One’s Depression

Research has shown that gratitude makes people happier (McCullough and Tsang in Psychol Gratitude, Oxford University Press, pp 123–141, 2004; Wood et al. in Clin Psychol Rev 30(7):890–905, 2010), healthier (McCullough et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol, 86(2):295–309, 2004), more considerate (Bartlett and DeSteno in Psychol Sci 17(4):319–325, 2006), and better evaluated (Gordon et al. in Pers Individ Differ 50(3):339–343, 2011), enabling more stable relationships (Algoe et al. in Pers Relationsh 17(2):217–233, 2010; Algoe et al. in Emotion 8(3):425–429, 2008; Lambert et al. in Psychol Sci 21(4):574–580, 2010). However, no study has extended research beyond individual persons to investigate the impact of one’s gratitude on the mental well-being of those who surround her or him. Thus, we tested this possibility and found in Study 1 that within marriage, husbands’ depositional gratitude negatively correlated with their wives’ depressive emotion. The results of Study 2 validated Study 1 by showing that a wife’s depression would be relatively palliated if her husband was assigned to express appreciation to her and not share daily hassles. While a causal relationship was demonstrated as hypothesized, a difference between genders also emerged. We discuss in particular the latter in terms of its mechanism, limitations, and practical implications for marriage.     

Changing One’s Mind on Moral Matters

Contemporary moral philosophy assumes an account of what it means to legitimately change one’s mind in ethics, and I wish to challenge this account by enlarging the category of the legitimate. I am just as eager to avoid illegitimate mind-changing brought on by deceit or brainwashing, but I claim that legitimacy should be defined in terms of transparency of method. A social reformer should not be embarrassed to admit that he acquired many beliefs about justice while reading Dickens. As such, appeals to the heart and the imagination are just as legitimate, within limits, as appeals to the mind; and showing can be as legitimate as telling. To demonstrate this, I consider the example of a vegetarian trying to ‘convert’ a carnivore. I then ask what it means when the carnivore claims to have been previously mistaken.     

Young children’s talk about learning events

In order to understand children’s conception of knowledge acquisition better, everyday uses of the terms “learn” and “teach” were examined. Longitudinal data obtained from CHILDES (MacWhinney & Snow, 1990) included 329 target term uses and related references by children (N=5, aged 2;4–7;3) and 431 by adults talking with them. Each reference was coded for mention of what was learned, when, how, and where learning occurred, who learned, and who taught/told, among other topics. Children and adults referred most frequently to what was learned and who learned/taught, and less frequently to when, how, and where learning occurred, a pattern that did not change as children aged. Consistent with earlier experimental reports, children talked mostly about their own learning, rarely mentioning sources of knowledge besides other people (e.g., teachers). Behavior learning was mentioned more than fact learning. Implications for characterizations of children’s developing conceptions of knowledge acquisition, for past and future experimental research, and for education were discussed.     

What’s so Transparent about Transparency?

Representationalists often use intuitions about the transparency ofexperience to defend their view that qualitative content isrepresentational content. According to these intuitions, wecannot attend to our experience except by attending to theobject of that experience. Although the transparency intuitionappears to be widely shared, even among non-representationalists,in this paper I suggest that there are two ambiguities inherent indiscussions of transparency. One concerns the strength of thetransparency intuition, while the other concerns its scope. Oncewe bring these two ambiguities to the surface, we can see that therepresentationalists claim that experience is transparent turnsout to be considerably more controversial than ordinarily supposed.While the phenomenological data may support some kind of experientialtransparency, I argue that it does not support the kind of transparencyneeded for representationalism.