Complex demonstratives as quantifiers: objections and replies

In “Complex Demonstratives: A Quantificational Account” (MIT Press 2001) (henceforth CD), I argued that complex demonstratives are quantifiers. Many philosophers had held that demonstratives, both simple and complex, are referring terms. Since the publication of CD various objections to the account of complex demonstratives I defended in it have been raised. In the present work, I lay out these objections and respond to them.

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.

Anti-Autonomism Defended: A Reply to Hill

In the current issue of this journal, Scott Hill critiques some of my work on the “is”-“ought” controversy, the Hume-inspired debate over whether an ethical conclusion can be soundly, or even validly, derived from only non-ethical premises. I’ve argued that it can be; Hill is unconvinced. I reply to Hill’s critique, focusing on four key questions to which he and I give different answers.

A (R)evaluation of Nietzsche’s Anti-democratic Pedagogy: The Overman,Perspectivism, and Self-overcoming

In this paper, I argue that Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of self-overcoming has been largely misinterpreted in the philosophy of education journals. The misinterpretation partially stems from a misconstruction of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, and leads to a conception of self-overcoming that is inconsistent with Nietzsche’s educational ideals. To show this, I examine some of the prominent features of the so-called “debate” of the 1980s surrounding Nietzsche’s conception of self-overcoming. I then offer an alternative conception that is more consistent with Nietzsche’s thought, and provides a more nuanced understanding of Nietzsche’s “anti-democratic” pedagogy. Ultimately, I argue that while Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is not egalitarian, it can be effectively utilized in “democratic” classrooms, assuming his concept of self-overcoming is properly construed.

Assertion,Moore, and Bayes

It is widely believed that the so-called knowledge account of assertion best explains why sentences such as “It’s raining in Paris but I don’t believe it” and “It’s raining in Paris but I don’t know it” appear odd to us. I argue that the rival rational credibility account of assertion explains that fact just as well. I do so by providing a broadly Bayesian analysis of the said type of sentences which shows that such sentences cannot express rationally held beliefs. As an interesting aside, it will be seen that these sentences also harbor a lesson for Bayesian epistemology itself.

Remarks on Grandi’s Comments

This note is a reply to some of Giovanni Grandi’s comments on my paper “Berkeley’s Contingent Necessities.”

Naturalistic Explanations of Apodictic Moral Claims: Brentano’s Ethical Intuitionism and Nietzsche’s Naturalism

In this article (1) I extract from Brentano’s works (three) formal arguments against “genealogical explanations” of ethical claims. Such explanation can also be designated as “naturalism” (not his appellation); (2) I counter these arguments, by showing how genealogical explanations of even apodictic moral claims are logically possible (albeit only if certain unlikely, stringent conditions are met); (3) I show how Nietzsche’s ethics meets these stringent conditions, but evolutionary ethics does not. My more general thesis is that naturalism and intuitionism in ethics need not be mutually incompatible.

The body in action

This article is about how to describe an agent’s awareness of her bodily movements when she is aware of executing an action for a reason. Against current orthodoxy, I want to defend the claim that the agent’s experience of moving has an epistemic place in the agent’s awareness of her own intentional action. In “The problem,” I describe why this should be thought to be problematic. In “Motives for denying epistemic role,” I state some of the main motives for denying that bodily awareness has any epistemic role to play in the content of the agent’s awareness of her own action. In “Kinaesthetic awareness and control,” I sketch how I think the experience of moving and the bodily sense of agency or control are best described. On this background, I move on to present, in “Arguments for epistemic role,” three arguments in favour of the claim that normally the experience of moving is epistemically important to one’s awareness of acting intentionally. In the final “Concluding remarks,” I round off by raising some of the worries that motivated the denial of my claim in the first place.

Emotional expressions of moral value

In “Moral Luck” Bernard Williams describes a lorry driver who, through no fault of his own, runs over a child, and feels “agent-regret.” I believe that the driver’s feeling is moral since the thought associated with this feeling is a negative moral evaluation of his action. I demonstrate that his action is not morally inadequate with respect his moral obligations. However, I show that his negative evaluation is nevertheless justified since he acted in way that does not live up to his moral values. I then use this distinctive negative moral evaluation to distinguish agent-regret from guilt and mere regret.

Between conflict and reconciliation: the hard truth

In the context of the fairly recent Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC), I examine phenomenologically the nature of truth as the essential condition for overcoming social and political conflicts, and as an instrument for enforcing so-called “transitional justice” periods and promoting reconciliation. I also briefly approach the limits of this truth’s possibility of being recognized, if its evaluative and practical dimensions and its appeal to an “intelligence of emotions” do not prevail over its merely theoretical claims. Though not expounding Schutz’s and Husserl’s contributions, and meditating on phenomena they did not deal with, I carry out this reflection inspired by their work and methodological approach. The case study used as an intuitive illustration is the recent Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The tragedy of a comic: fundamentalists crusading against fundamentalists

Christian Fundamentalists used to read the apocalyptic scenario through the “red” filter of communism, but since the 1980s the target has shifted to the “green tide” of Islam. One of the more colorful Fundamentalist diatribes against Islam is cartoon evangelist Jack Chick’s The Prophet, a comic book that calls Islam a Satanic plot hatched by the Catholic church. This article examines the rhetoric of Christian Fundamentalist diatribe against Islam in light of apocalyptic scenarios drawn out of biblical prophecy. Chick’s comic and the millenarian Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth are placed in the context of doctrinal attacks on Islam in medieval Christendom. In tracing the usage of “Islamic fundamentalism,” I argue that the term “fundamentalism” is problematic for cross-cultural studies of religious expression and movements.

The Ethics of Academic Journal Editing

This paper amounts to a reply to Professor Donald G. Brown’s thoughtful comment on my “Ethical Issues in Journal Peer-Review”, which appeared in this journal.

Mathematizing phenomenology

Husserl is well known for his critique of the “mathematizing tendencies” of modern science, and is particularly emphatic that mathematics and phenomenology are distinct and in some sense incompatible. But Husserl himself uses mathematical methods in phenomenology. In the first half of the paper I give a detailed analysis of this tension, showing how those Husserlian doctrines which seem to speak against application of mathematics to phenomenology do not in fact do so. In the second half of the paper I focus on a particular example of Husserl’s “mathematized phenomenology”: his use of concepts from what is today called dynamical systems theory.

Cocchiarella’s Formal Ontology and the Paradoxes of Hyperintensionality

This is a critical discussion of Nino B. Cocchiarella’s book “Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism.” It focuses on paradoxes of hyperintensionality that may arise in formal systems of intensional logic.

Ambiguous Individuality: Georg Simmel on the “Who” and the “What” of the Individual

The essay discusses the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel’s theorizing about the individual. Whereas it is typically within the context of the modern metropolis and the mature money economy that Simmel’s ideas have been discussed in the secondary literature, I render those ideas in another light by addressing the ontological and existential issues crucial to his conception of the individual. In Simmel, the individual is divided between the “what” and the “who,” between the qualities which make one something individual and one’s non-repeatable and finite existence which makes one someone singular. I argue that whereas the first dimension can be understood sociologically, in terms of social relations, the latter is not accessible to sociology as such, but must be treated philosophically. Therefore, if we wish to address this duality that lies at the heart of individuality, a “philosophical turn” for sociology is called for.

Ultimacy and alternative possibilities

I explore a key feature of Robert Kane’s libertarianism (about which I have been puzzled for some time). Kane claims that we should separate issues of alternative possibilities from issues of ultimacy, but he further argues that they are connected in a certain way. I call into question this connection, and I continue to argue for a strict separation of considerations pertaining to alternative possibilities and “actual-sequence” considerations.

Character,blameworthiness, and blame: comments on George Sher’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">In Praise of Blame</Emphasis>

In his recent book, In Praise of Blame, George Sher argues (among other things) that a bad act can reflect negatively on a person if that act results in an appropriate way from that person’s “character,” and defends a novel “two-tiered” account of what it is to blame someone. In these brief comments, I raise some questions and doubts about each of these aspects of his rich and thought-provoking account.