A defence of anti-criterialism

According to philosophical orthodoxy, there are informative criteria of identity over time. Anti-criterialism rejects this orthodoxy and claims that there are no such criteria. This paper examines anti-criterialism in the light of recent attacks on the thesis by Matt Duncan, Sydney Shoemaker and Dean Zimmerman. It is argued that those attacks are not successful. Along the way, a novel strategy to defend anti-criterialism against the critics’ most challenging objection is developed. Under-appreciated difficulties for criterialism are also raised which, I claim, there is no obvious way to solve. It is concluded that anti-criterialism may be a much stronger rival to criterialism than is often supposed.     

Conservatism. A defence

Conservatism has an essence, or so I argue. Typical of the conservative attitude is to take what is an established fact or order to be worthy of preservation, precisely because it is well established. The question what fact is established must be answered in a context, and people of different political bent answer it differently. This is why we have left‐wing as well as right‐wing conservatism, sharing a common rationale. In my Conservatism for Our Time I discuss various different aspects of this rationale, and my answer to certain strictures raised by Robert Grant concerns several of them. The most important concerns a conservative or traditionalist criticism of rationalism. This criticism has been developed by ‐ among others ‐Michael Oakeshott. In my book, and in my answer to Grant, I defend and elaborate on this criticism.     

Divine retribution: A defence

The concept of divine justice has been the subject of considerable scrutiny in recent philosophical theology, as it bears upon the notion of punishment with respect to the doctrine of eternal damnation. In this essay, I set out a version of the traditional retributive view of divine punishment and defend it against one of the most important and influential contemporary detractors from this position, Thomas Talbott. I will show that, contrary to Talbott’s argument, punishment may satisfy divine justice, and that perfect justice is commensurate with retribution, rather than, as he suggests, reconciliation and restoration.     

A defence of informational structural realism

This is the revised version of an invited keynote lecture delivered at the 1st Australian Computing and Philosophy Conference (CAP@AU; the Australian National University in Canberra, 31 October–2 November, 2003). The paper is divided into two parts. The first part defends an informational approach to structural realism. It does so in three steps. First, it is shown that, within the debate about structural realism (SR), epistemic (ESR) and ontic (OSR) structural realism are reconcilable. It follows that a version of OSR is defensible from a structuralist-friendly position. Second, it is argued that a version of OSR is also plausible, because not all relata (structured entities) are logically prior to relations (structures). Third, it is shown that a version of OSR is also applicable to both sub-observable (unobservable and instrumentally-only observable) and observable entities, by developing its ontology of structural objects in terms of informational objects. The outcome is informational structural realism, a version of OSR supporting the ontological commitment to a view of the world as the totality of informational objects dynamically interacting with each other. The paper has been discussed by several colleagues and, in the second half, ten objections that have been moved to the proposal are answered in order to clarify it further.     

Gradable adjectives: A defence of pluralism

This paper attacks the Implicit Reference Class Theory of gradable adjectives and proposes instead a ‘pluralist’ approach to the semantics of those terms, according to which they can be governed by a variety of different types of standards, one, but only one, of which is the group-indexed standards utilized by the Implicit Reference Class Theory.     

A defence of the conditional analysis of phenomenal concepts

A recent strategy for defending physicalism about the mind against the zombie argument relies on the so-called conditional analysis of phenomenal concepts. According to this analysis, what kinds of states our phenomenal concepts refer to depends crucially on whether the actual world is merely physical or not. John Hawthorne, David Braddon-Mitchell and Robert Stalnaker have claimed, independently, that this analysis explains the conceivability of zombies in a way consistent with physicalism, thus blocking the zombie argument. Torin Alter has recently presented three arguments against the conditional analysis strategy. This paper defends the conditional analysis strategy against Alter’s objections.

Psychoanalyzing fleeting emotive migrant encounters: A case from Singapore

In existing scholarship on migrant encounters, there is a tendency to dismiss fleeting encounters between random strangers in public spaces as superficial, or to treat such encounters as insipid and ambivalent events. Little attention has been given to fleeting encounters that are antagonistic and emotively charged. This paper focuses on one such encounter that took place in a public bus in Singapore in 2012, involving intensely emotive verbal exchanges between a female migrant from China and an elderly local Chinese-Singaporean woman. Interpreting this encounter as a form of situational stratification, the paper draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis to decode the symbolic logics underlying the heated verbal exchange, thereby revealing how migrant diversities in the Southeast Asian city-state are textured by the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, race/ethnicity. The paper argues that psychoanalysis deserves more attention as an under-utilized perspective for reading fleeting encounters.     

Information constraints in medical encounters

This article describes three kinds of information constraints in medical encounters that have not been discussed at length in the medical ethics literature: constraints from the concept of a disease, from the diffusion of medical innovation, and from withholding information. It describes how these limit the reliance rational people can justifiably put in their doctors, and even the reliance doctors can have on their own advice. It notes the implications of these constraints for the value of informed consent, identifies several procedural steps that could increase the value of the latter and improve diffusion of innovation, and argues that recognition of these constraints should lead us to devise protections which intrude on but can improve these encounters.     

In defence of fact-dependency

G.A. Cohen and David Estlund claim that, because of their fact-dependent nature, constructivist theories of justice do not qualify as moral theories about fundamental values such as justice. In this paper, I defend fact-dependent, constructivist theories of justice against this fact-independency critique. I argue that constructivists can invoke facts among the grounds for accepting fundamental principles of justice while maintaining that the foundation of morality has to be non-empirical. My claim is that constructivists ultimately account for the normativity of fact-dependent principles by referring to a fact-independent, moral conception of the person, which is not a principle of justice.1^?1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Dutch Conference for Practical Philosophy, the practical philosophy seminar at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the seminar of the Horizon research group at Utrecht University. I am grateful for the comments and questions I received on these occasions.     

A percept-genetic study of some defence mechanisms in the PN-test

Abstract.— Two hypotheses, namely that percept-genetic analysis can reveal mechanisms of defence (Kragh & Smith, 1970) and that defence mechanisms can be seen in the responses to the Patte Noire Test (Corman, 1966) were put to experimental verification. Card 14, the oral card of the PN-test, together with other stimuli were presented to 9 subjects for percept-genetic analysis of the responses. Evidence is presented demonstrating clear defence mechanisms, supporting the validity of percept-genetic theory and this part of the PN-test.