What Is Music? Is There a Definitive Answer?

Philosophers frequently defend definitions by appealing to intuitions and contemporary folk classificatory norms. I raise methodological concerns that undermine some of these defenses. Focusing on Andrew Kania's recent definition of music, I argue that the way in which it has been developed leads to problems, and I show that a number of other definitions of interest to philosophers of art (and others) run into similar problems.     

Is Mother Other?

Abstract

The discourse of maternality figures a contentious site for feminist theology. If figured in terms of a fecund womb, maternality risks reinscribing women in a masculine symbolic order of world-making that has long conflated women’s differences with motherhood, narrowly defined in terms of fecundity. After considering the ways identifying female sexual difference with motherhood reifies a masculine model of subjectivity, this paper turns to Lynne Huffer’s reading of feminist psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray to suggest that maternality has the potential to interrupt the self-same movement of masculine discourse and engender an ethical space of difference of and for the other. Examining Irigaray’s interweaving of maternality with pleasure to create space for women’s desires, this paper concludes that the ambiguity of desires through which maternality is constituted challenges the care-driven, natality-centered discourse of maternality itself. As a scene of unresolved desire between flesh and discourse, immanence and transcendence, self and other, maternality can be narrated to disrupt views of mother as origin that would otherwise return motherhood to a figure of sameness and to construct a possibility of desire for intersubjective becoming that is at once beyond narration and entirely concrete. Maternality thus presents desires unrecognizable within a prevailing symbolic framework in a way that bears witness to the disruptiveness of those desires and engenders radical alterity.     

Is Phosphorus Hesperus?

It is argued that philosophers who adopt the perdurance theory of persistence and who subscribe to the principle of Unrestricted Mereological Composition (UMC) are in a position to regard “Phosphorus is Hesperus” as false.     

Is open-mindedness truth-conducive?

What makes an intellectual virtue a virtue? A straightforward and influential answer to this question has been given by virtue-reliabilists: a trait is a virtue only insofar as it is truth-conducive. In this paper I shall contend that recent arguments advanced by Jack Kwong in defence of the reliabilist view are good as far as they go, in that they advance the debate by usefully clarifying ways in how best to understand the nature of open-mindedness. But I shall argue that these considerations do not establish the desired conclusions that open-mindedness is truth-conducive. To establish these much stronger conclusions we would need an adequate reply to what I shall call Montmarquet’s objection. I argue that Linda Zagzebski’s reply to Montmarquet’s objection, to which Kwong defers, is inadequate. I conclude that it is contingent if open-mindedness is truth-conducive, and if a necessary tie to truth is what makes an intellectual virtue a virtue, then the status of open-mindedness as an intellectual virtue is jeopardised. We either need an adequate reliabilist response to Montmarquet’s objection, or else seek alternative accounts of what it is that makes a virtue a virtue. I conclude by briefly outlining some alternatives.

     

What Is Dissent?

Res Publica - Dissent is a word we come across frequently these days. We read it in the newspapers, use it in discussions with friends and colleagues—perhaps even engage in the...     

Is identity non-contingent?

I present a novel argument against the non-contingency of identity. I first argue that the necessity of distinctness is intimately connected with numerous paradoxes of recombination. In particular, I argue that those who reject the necessity of distinctness have natural solutions to various paradoxes of recombination which have plagued the metaphysics of modality. Moreover, I argue that adding the necessity of distinctness to modest, paradox-free assumptions is sufficient to reinstate the paradoxes. Given that identity is non-contingent only if distinctness is necessary, I suggest this constitutes new evidence against the non-contingency of identity.     

What Is Ineffable?

In this essay, I argue, via a revision of Freud's notions of primary and secondary process, that experiences of resonant form lie at the root of many serious ineffability claims. I suggest further that Western European culture's resistance to the perception of resonant form underlies some of its present crises.     

Is Divorce Promise-Breaking?

Wedding vows seem to be promises. So they go: “I promise to love, honour, and cherish ....” But this poses a problem. Divorce is not widely seen as a serious moral wrong, but breaking a promise is. I first consider, and defend against preliminary objections, a ‘hard-line’ response: divorce is indeed prima facie impermissible promise-breaking. I next consider the ‘hardship’ response—the hardship of failed marriages overrides the prima facie duty to keep promises. However, this would release promisors in far too many cases. I resolve the triad by considering the content of the vows. Vows concerning love are not promises at all. We cannot promise to do acts the performance of which is outside our control, and love involves states of mind outside our control. Vows concerning spousal roles are complicated by diverse social understandings of marriage and the centrality of emotion to the roles.     

Is Science Neurotic?

Neurosis can be interpreted as a methodological condition from which any aim-pursuing entity can suffer. If such an entity pursues a problematic aim B but represents to itself that it is pursuing a different aim C and, as a result, fails to solve the problems associated with B which, if solved, would lead to the pursuit of aim A, then the entity may be said to be "rationalistically neurotic." Natural science is neurotic in this sense insofar as its basic aim is represented as improving knowledge of factual truth as such (aim C), when actually the aim of science is to improve knowledge of explanatory truth (aim B). Science itself does not suffer significantly from this neurosis, but philosophy of science does. Much more serious is the rationalistic neurosis of the social sciences and academic inquiry more generally. freeing social science and academic inquiry from neurosis would have far-reaching beneficial, intellectual, institutional and cultural consequences.     

Is Incompatibilism Intuitive?

Incompatibilists believe free will is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim that this view is supported by ordinary intuitions. We challenge the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive to most laypersons and discuss the significance of this challenge to the free will debate. After explaining why incompatibilists should want their view to accord with pretheoretical intuitions, we suggest that determining whether incompatibilism is in fact intuitive calls for empirical testing. We then present the results of our studies, which put significant pressure on the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive. Finally, we consider and respond to several potential objections to our approach.     

Is compatibilism intuitive?

Eddy Nahmias, with various collaborators, has used experimental data to argue for the claim that folk intuition is generally compatibilist. We try to undermine this claim in two ways. First, we argue that the various formulations of determinism he uses are not conceptually equivalent, jeopardizing the kinds of conclusions that can be drawn from the resulting data. Second, prompted by these conceptual worries we supplement the typical quantitative surveys that dominate the extant literature with short qualitative interviews. This, in turn, guides us to make a minor modification to the quantitative survey that provides better access to the relevant folk intuitions.     

What Is Love?

SUMMARY

A theory to explain the phenomena of love is suggested. The construct of love is dissected into physiological and psychodynamic components. Love is explained first via its adaptive function, then by its physiological arousal which is interpreted as either anxiety or excitement, which is activated via goodness-of-fit of each individual's internal love model. The leap to love is contingent on the complex constellation of the above-mentioned idiosyncratic components finding synthesis within individuals and between mates. Intimacy can be nurtured, but love, similar to humans and life itself, appears to be greater than the sum of its parts.