Aristotle grants perceptible qualities the power to generate sense perception in animals. But it is unclear whether, for him, these qualities can produce any effect other than perception. In this paper I address this issue through a novel approach. To show that they can produce non-perceptual effects, I explore contexts in his extant works where qualities appear to do causal work in nature without leading to perception in animals. This inquiry aims to demonstrate that Aristotle’s realism about qualities survives a (...) potential threat posed by views that dispute the qualities’ causal efficacy outside perception. (shrink)

Bryan C. Reece’s Aristotle on Happiness, Virtue, and Wisdom (2023) has the ambitious goal of vindicating the coherence of the Nicomachean Ethics. Since Jaeger’s claim a hundred years ago that Arist...

Volume 32, Issue 6, December 2024, Page 1502-1507.

Korean Women Philosophers and the Ideal of a Female Sage explores the lives of two Korean women Confucian scholars of the late Joseon Dynasty, Im Yunjidang (1721–1793) and Gang Jeongildang (1772–18...

Volume 32, Issue 6, December 2024, Page 1508-1512.

This paper undertakes an in-depth examination of the intriguing argument for the existential import of negative propositions by the fifteenth-century Ottoman scholar Hatibzâde Mehmed (d. 1496) and the counterarguments by his disciple, Taşköprizâde Kâsım (d. 1513). It argues that this discussion is a significant example of Ottoman scholars engaging in long-standing disputes concerning the nature and ontological ground of negative propositions, which date back to Plato and Aristotle. It is also intended to underline the need for considering not only logic (...) texts but also works primarily associated with other disciplines in order to attain a comprehensive picture of logical discussions in the post-classical period of Islamic thought. (shrink)

This paper undertakes an in-depth examination of the intriguing argument for the existential import of negative propositions by the fifteenth-century Ottoman scholar Hatibzâde Mehmed (d. 1496) and the counterarguments by his disciple, Taşköprizâde Kâsım (d. 1513). It argues that this discussion is a significant example of Ottoman scholars engaging in long-standing disputes concerning the nature and ontological ground of negative propositions, which date back to Plato and Aristotle. It is also intended to underline the need for considering not only logic (...) texts but also works primarily associated with other disciplines in order to attain a comprehensive picture of logical discussions in the post-classical period of Islamic thought. (shrink)

I argue for a substantive interpretation of Carlos Vaz Ferreira’s account of intellectual flourishing as intellectual liberation. For Vaz Ferreira, I argue, there is an inescapable master-slave dynamic between language and language users, so that flourishing intellectually essentially involves a type of mastery of language that frees up thinking from enslaving linguistic/conceptual confusions and thus facilitates the acquisition of truth. Central to this project are Vaz Ferreira’s most interesting, and radical, views on the nature of language signification and thus on (...) human’s ability to accurately describe and know reality, for failing to keep these linguistic limitations in mind, Vaz Ferreira argues, is a central way for language to enslave humans to confused thinking and thus prevent their intellectual flourishing. (shrink)

Augustine maintains that the mind at least consists of memory, intellect, and will (De Trinitate 10.9.13 & 10.11.17). While it is easy to understand the intellect and will as essential to the mind’s activities, memory proves more difficult to understand. It is not immediately clear, for example, whether a human mind could operate without memory, whether people without memory have minds, and what distinguishes memory from the intellect. To understand the role of memory and its respective activities, this article addresses (...) Augustine’s philosophy of mind and places it in the context of human teleology. By philosophy of mind, I mean an account of what is necessary for the constitution of a mind and to execute a mental act. I argue that, for Augustine, memory is necessary to have a human mind, to execute any mental act, and thus to know God. (shrink)

Editions of difficult, obscure Latin philosophical texts from the Middle Ages rarely receive reviews in general History of Philosophy journals. An exception might be made for an important new editi...

Ethics plays an essential role in the philosophical framework of Abū Bakr al-Rāzī. Although most of his philosophical works have become extinct, two surviving works serve as primary sources for understanding his ethical theory. Although sharing certain foundational principles, these two works diverge in terms of ethical standards and exhibit distinct logical approaches to ethics, a facet that has largely remained unexplored within contemporary scholarly discourse. I aim to extract and reconstruct both of his ethical decision-making systems by shedding light (...) on the place of ethics in his philosophy, explaining the interconnection of the two ethical frameworks, reconstructing both of these ethical systems, and finally presenting them in patterns. (shrink)

It is often assumed that Epicurean happiness can be achieved by everyone alike. This paper offers a corrective to this view. While it is true that the Epicureans abolish traditional differences among people like those between the sexes, social classes, and so on, they also maintain that there are people who are incapable of achieving happiness because they lack a certain bodily make-up or because they do not have the right ethnic or cultural origin.

It is often assumed that Epicurean happiness can be achieved by everyone alike. This paper offers a corrective to this view. While it is true that the Epicureans abolish traditional differences among people like those between the sexes, social classes, and so on, they also maintain that there are people who are incapable of achieving happiness because they lack a certain bodily make-up or because they do not have the right ethnic or cultural origin.

In this paper, I offer a systematic account of Kant’s view on ‘phenomenal substance’. Several studies have recently analysed Kant’s notion of substance. However, I submit that more needs to be said about how this notion is reconceptualized within the critical framework to vindicate a genuine and legitimate sense of substance in the phenomenal realm. More specifically, I show that Kant’s transcendental idealism does not commit him to a rejection of substantiality in phenomena. Rather, Kant isolates a general notion of (...) substance (as ultimate subject) and argues that (i) the relationality of phenomena is compatible with this notion; and that (ii) matter and all its parts are the ultimate subjects of everything existing in space (as what is independently movable in space). I suggest that vindicating a genuine and legitimate notion of phenomenal substance has far-ranging consequences for the interpretation of Kant’s empirical realism. (shrink)

Volume 32, Issue 6, December 2024, Page 1498-1502.

I argue for a substantive interpretation of Carlos Vaz Ferreira’s account of intellectual flourishing as intellectual liberation. For Vaz Ferreira, I argue, there is an inescapable master-slave dynamic between language and language users, so that flourishing intellectually essentially involves a type of mastery of language that frees up thinking from enslaving linguistic/conceptual confusions and thus facilitates the acquisition of truth. Central to this project are Vaz Ferreira’s most interesting, and radical, views on the nature of language signification and thus on (...) human’s ability to accurately describe and know reality, for failing to keep these linguistic limitations in mind, Vaz Ferreira argues, is a central way for language to enslave humans to confused thinking and thus prevent their intellectual flourishing. (shrink)

Spoken sentences have parts. Therefore they take time to speak. For instance, when you say, ‘Socrates is running’, you begin by uttering the subject term Socrates, before carrying on to the predicate. But are the corresponding thoughts also composite? And are such thoughts extended across time, like their spoken counterparts? Peter Abelard gave an affirmative response to both questions. Alberic of Paris denied the first and, as a corollary, denied the second. Here, I first set out Abelard’s account. I then (...) present a series of arguments against Abelard, reconstructed from (sometimes fragmentary) manuscripts associated with Alberic’s school. I conclude with an observation about present philosophy of language: this twelfth-century debate points to some undefended (and largely unstated) assumptions common to more recent thinking about propositions. (shrink)

Locke bases his moral and political philosophy on his doctrine of the ‘law of nature’. Scholars have debated the content and grounding of this law and its relationship to Christian theology. The ambiguities of the Lockean natural law’s content are traceable to an unclear grammatical construction in a crucial passage of the Treatises of Government, which can be resolved by following out a related set of arguments in that work. The ambiguities of the Lockean natural law’s grounding can then be (...) resolved by the hypothesis, strongly supported by textual evidence, that Locke relies tacitly on the reasoning of a parallel passage in Hobbes. Lockean natural law rests on neither atheistic nor specifically Christian premises but on a hypothetical natural theology. Locke’s conclusions from that natural theology represent an attempt to follow out Hobbesian logic while also tightening it up on one important point on which Hobbes himself appears to vacillate. (shrink)

At Euthydemus 278–282, Socrates produces an argument that has almost universally been agreed to entail that wisdom is sufficient for happiness, necessary for happiness, or both. According to these standard readings, this is because Socrates ties wisdom to correct use of one's assets. Since wisdom is necessary or sufficient for correct use and correct use is necessary or sufficient for happiness, wisdom bears the same relation(s) to happiness, mutatis mutandis. I propose a split-level reading of this passage. On the level (...) of natures, Socrates aims to establish that a causal-explanatory relation holds between the nature of wisdom and correctness such that wisdom by nature always produces correctness; ignorance, conversely, by nature never produces correctness. However, on the level of individuals, the causal relations are defeasible such that the wise sometimes fail and the ignorant sometimes succeed. Thus this reading does not entail that having wisdom is necessary or sufficient for correct use or for happiness. If this split-level reading is correct, then this passage, the locus classicus for the necessity and sufficiency theses, fails to establish either. (shrink)

Spoken sentences have parts. Therefore they take time to speak. For instance, when you say, “Socrates is running”, you begin by uttering the subject term ("Socrates"), before carrying on to the predicate. But are the corresponding predications in thought also composite? And are such thoughts extended across time, like their spoken counterparts? Peter Abelard gave an affirmative response to both questions. Alberic of Paris denied the first and, as a corollary, denied the second. Here, I first set out Abelard’s account. (...) I then present a series of arguments against Abelard, reconstructed from (sometimes fragmentary) manuscripts associated with Alberic’s school. I conclude with an observation about present philosophy of language: this twelfth-century debate points to some undefended (and largely unstated) assumptions common to our latest thinking about propositions. I highlight this by presenting recent accounts of two philosophers with radically different outlooks: Jeffrey King and Peter Hanks. Both their accounts take many of the same things for granted, as the Alberican criticisms make plain. (shrink)

Spoken sentences have parts. Therefore they take time to speak. For instance, when you say, ‘Socrates is running’, you begin by uttering the subject term Socrates, before carrying on to the predicate. But are the corresponding thoughts also composite? And are such thoughts extended across time, like their spoken counterparts? Peter Abelard gave an affirmative response to both questions. Alberic of Paris denied the first and, as a corollary, denied the second. Here, I first set out Abelard’s account. I then (...) present a series of arguments against Abelard, reconstructed from (sometimes fragmentary) manuscripts associated with Alberic’s school. I conclude with an observation about present philosophy of language: this twelfth-century debate points to some undefended (and largely unstated) assumptions common to more recent thinking about propositions. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse conceptions of induction and certainty in Wolff and Crusius, highlighting their competing conceptions of physics. We discuss (i) the perspective of Wolff, who assigned induction an important role in physics, but argued that physics should be an axiomatic science containing certain statements, and (ii) the perspective of Crusius, who adopted parts of the ideal of axiomatic physics but criticized the scope of Wolff’s ideal of certain science. Against interpretations that take Wolff’s proofs in physics to (...) be based on empirical statements that are probable, we show how inductively established statements, coupled with assumptions concerning the uniformity of nature, can be certain according to Wolff. We examine Crusius’ little known work on physics and show that he attacked Wolff, arguing that many statements of physics are probable. We provide a discussion of the reception of methodological rules similar to Newton’s Regulae Philosophandi, discussing different interpretations of such rules. We conclude by briefly hinting at how the debate between Wolff and Crusius provides historical context for understanding Kant’s philosophy of natural science. (shrink)

Classical Islamic philosophy has in recent years started to receive the sort of attention that this rich period and tradition in the history of philosophy deserves. A consequence of this has been that people working in the field are beginning to approach it in a more philosophically thematic way, and in such a way that its insights look relevant to contemporary research. Questions concerning the mind (Ar. dhihn), the intellect (Ar. ʿaql), or the soul (Ar. nafs), occupied a central place (...) in the thought of many classical Islamic philosophers. The issue’s aim is to shed light on the period’s contribution to the broader history of philosophy and its relevance to contemporary debates in the field. (shrink)

Critical Review of The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine, edited by Sean Morris, Cambridge University Press, 2023.Scholarly opinion concerning the Carnap–Quine relationship and their centra...

In Thinking with Assent: Renewing a Traditional Account of Knowledge and Belief, Maria Rosa Antognazza offers a historical narrative of pre-modern epistemology. She argues that until very recently, philosophers generally held that “knowing and believing are distinct in kind in the strong sense that they are mutually exclusive mental states”. This paper tests, and ultimately confirms, that account by applying it two thinkers of the Islamic world, al-Fārābī (d.950 CE) and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, d.1037 CE). It is shown that both (...) of them used the term ‘assent (taṣdīq)’ as an umbrella term covering two very different states, knowledge and belief. In the case of Ibn Sīnā, this contrast is ultimately tied to his sharp distinction between immaterial intellective thinking and embodied thinking that uses a physical organ. (shrink)

Leibniz's metaphysics appears to go a long way towards monism: it supports a strong dependence of limited things on the absolute or God and understands this dependence not only as causal dependence but also as a pervasive ontological dependence which involves the communality of nature between absolute and limited. Yet, Leibniz stops short of affirming monism. Why? This paper takes a fresh look at Leibniz's reasons for opposing monism through the lens of a virtually unknown text of 1698 on the (...) metaphysical foundations of the infinite. Against the backdrop of the present-day monistic proposals of Jonathan Schaffer and Michael Della Rocca, the paper identifies and evaluates four different types of monism: 1. Whole-Part Monism; 2. World-Animal Monism; 3. God-Nature Monism and 4. Eleatic Monism. It argues that Leibniz's opposition to Whole-Part Monism, World-Animal Monism, and God-Nature Monism, is due to his conceptions of the infinite and of what it is to be “an absolutely absolute Being”. Furthermore, it argues that the only type of monism which could preserve Leibniz's demanding notions of real infinite and absolute is Eleatic Monism. The latter, however, is also rejected by Leibniz due to our first-hand experience of what it is to be a substance. (shrink)

What is the highest good actually good for in Kant’s third Critique? While there are well-worked out answers to this question in the literature that focus on the highest good’s practical importance, this paper argues that there is an important function for the highest good that has to do exclusively with contemplation. This important function becomes clear once one notices that coherent [konsequent] thinking, for Kant, was synonymous with "bündiges" thinking, and that both are connected with the highest good in (...) the third Critique’s moral proof for God’s existence. I show that the original meaning of "bündig," which is from the carpentry trade and has been forgotten, illuminates the stakes of the highest good in Kant’s system. For us, as proverbial carpenters of reason, coherence is essential for the intellectual activity of constructing a philosophical worldview in his transcendental idealism. I motivate the reading further by showing how this function can neatly reconstruct Kant’s proof for God’s existence in the third Critique. I conclude by sketching Kant’s reasons for why the project of creating a coherent worldview grounded in the highest good is worth the labor costs. (shrink)

Kant describes intellectual intuition as a kind of non-sensible intuition that creates its objects and provides knowledge of them as noumena. Although he precludes intellectual intuition from the human mind, Reinhold attributes it to the human mind. Pioneering research has already shown that Reinhold deviates from Kant in this way to explain the possibility of a priori self-cognition. It has also already shown that Fichte follows Reinhold by deviating from Kant in the same way. Yet, other aspects of Reinhold’s doctrine (...) of intellectual intuition remain largely overlooked. Among the few Reinhold scholars who study it, the extant view is that intellectual intuition does not yield cognition of an absolute knower, and that only Fichte makes this assertion. However, this view ignores Reinhold’s claim that I must attribute all my representations to an absolute knower to explain the unity of experience. In this paper, I argue that we must take this claim seriously, and I show that, for Reinhold, my cognition of myself as an absolute knower in intellectual intuition enables me to attribute all my representations to myself as such a knower, and he does so prior to Fichte. (shrink)

A little over a year ago, we lost one of the leading historians of philosophy of her generation, Prof. Maria Rosa Antognazza. So many in this community also lost a dear friend.Rosa, as she was know...

This paper argues that the concept of dignity played an important role in the political thought of Edmund Burke. It seeks to show that, in contrast with the egalitarian and individual version of dignity associated with Immanuel Kant, Burke devised a conception of dignity that rested on reverence, grandeur and formality, to be manifested through institutions, customs, and social relations. Burkean dignity was thus closely linked with the ancient constitution. In his thought, dignity played an essential role in maintaining social (...) stability and ensuring wise governance. This conviction informed Burke’s opposition to the French Revolution, which he feared would destroy the conditions necessary for dignity to thrive. Unpicking Burke’s understanding of dignity thus gives us new insights into the intricacies of his political thought and another perspective on his opposition to the French Revolution. (shrink)

This article considers Ottobah Cugoano’s philosophical response to the moral and legal contradictions of the practice of human trafficking in his Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787). It analyses Cugoano’s critique of the origins of slavery in general and the practices of ancient slavery, from which seventeenth-century proslavery advocates drew political, theological, and moral justifications of the African slave trade. According to Cugoano’s analysis, there is a necessary (...) moral dependency of the laws of civilization (positive law) on natural law. This distinction has significant philosophical and ethical ramifications that extend beyond the debate over abolition in Cugoano’s time, specifically ramifications for conceptions of slavery in the early modern tradition of natural law theory. (shrink)

This paper identifies, develops, and argues for an interpretation of Mary Astell’s understanding of self-government. On this interpretation, what is essential to self-government, according to Astell, is an agent’s responsiveness to her own reasoning. The paper identifies two aspects of her theory of self-government: an ‘authenticity’ criterion of what makes our motives our own and an account of the capacities required for responsiveness to our own reasoning. The authenticity criterion states that when our motives arise from some external source without (...) validation by our own understanding of the reasons supporting them, then they are not our own. The capacities requisite for responsiveness to our own reasoning are those of examining and evaluating our own motives and of resisting the social pressure to conform to others’ opinions. An upshot of this interpretation of Astell’s theory of self-government is that it reveals her insights into the ways ‘custom’ can undermine an individual’s ability to govern oneself. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ “myth of the given” had a momentous influence on 20th-century epistemology, putting under pressure the internalist foundationalism so prominent in early analytic philosophy. In this paper, I argue that the core themes in Sellars’ argument are anticipated in the work of the London philosopher and psychologist Beatrice Edgell (1871-1948). Indeed, in some respects Edgell’s argument against the myth of the given is even more compelling than Sellars’. The paper logically reconstructs and historically contextualizes Edgell’s line of argument, as (...) emerging out of a critique of Russell’s epistemology, with the goal of showing that the “myth of the given” effectively predated Sellars by four decades. (shrink)

Volume 32, Issue 3, May 2024, Page 647-665.

This article presents a detailed analysis of how the Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–1687) adapted the philosophy of the German mystic Jacob Böhme (1575–1624). For More, Böhme’s errors can be amended only by intervening radically in his philosophical system, discussing not what Böhme said, but what he should have said. In particular, the essay studies how and why More, in Censura, altered a scheme used by Böhme in his Clavis to explain visually the core of his philosophical insight. It claims (...) that this intervention, which consists mainly in moving the position of the Sun in the scheme, turns Böhme’s circular metaphysical system, in which the Sun, or fire, was the fulcrum of a perpetual movement, into a Neoplatonic system of emanation. In so doing, More fashions himself as a “Böhme redivivus”, showing to his readers that the only way of making sense of Böhme is to read him in Neoplatonic terms. The removal of the Sun from its original place in the scheme thus exemplifies More’s unease with Böhme’s conception of the Sun as fully embedded in the dynamic interplay of light and darkness, and shows that More’s interpretation of Böhme involves a full operation of rewriting. (shrink)

In this article I describe the contributions made by Samuel Alexander to the issue of relations which so vexed Bertrand Russell and F. H. Bradley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I provide a novel understanding of Alexander’s position concerning relations and describe the way in which he viewed his position as superior to those of Bradley and Russell. I offer, therefore, a more complete picture of a philosophical debate central to the relevant period, through the introduction of (...) a third character whose views have been largely omitted from available narratives. (shrink)

In The Metaphysics of Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway, Marcy P. Lascano holds up the metaphysical views of two early modern women philosophers alongside one another in order to demonstrate that...

ABSTRACT It used to be said that shame culture waned in early modernity, but there is a growing body of historiography on the vital role that recognition and the opinion of others continued to play. Honour mattered; for some it was the mark and the maker of your true self. While philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Hume, Smith, and Rousseau disagreed in their evaluations of the phenomenon, they were united in thinking that the great engine of recognition whirred like furious (...) clockwork through human society. When one listens to voices from the margins of power, however, to formerly enslaved black women and men, and white women, one hears a different story – that the machine is broken. I argue that, albeit from incomparable positions, they articulate a theory of misrecognition in the face of systematic power. Sensitive to the entanglements of epistemology and naturalised inequality, they offer a politics of vision that deconstructs the punitive lenses of gender and race which render people invisible and misunderstood, and in so doing they try to write themselves into view. They offer an account of the mysterious intractability of hegemonic ways of seeing that poses a challenge to both the putatively laissez-faire economy of recognition of their enlightened contemporaries, and to the emancipatory teleology of modern recognition theorists. (shrink)

Recognition has, over the past three decades, come to occupy a central place in moral and political philosophy, and critical theory; but to the extent that scholars have exhibited an interest in tr...

Stewart Duncan’s excellent book Materialism from Hobbes to Locke offers an insightful study of the debates concerning materialism during the seventeenth century. When we hear the expression ‘materialism’, we often associate with it the question of whether the human mind is an entirely material entity. Although the question of whether the human mind is material plays an important role throughout the seventeenth-century debates examined in this book, Duncan offers a broader understanding of materialism that is not restricted to the human (...) mind. According to Duncan, materialism is ‘a view about some object or a group of objects. Often that object is the human mind’ (2), but materialism can also concern other objects such as animal minds or God. This leads Duncan to introduce materialism as ‘the view that the thing in question is wholly material, and has no immaterial part’ (2). He deliberately leaves open what it means to be material, because different philosophers featured in his book disagree about this question. (shrink)

For many, striving to attain first place in an athletic competition is explicable. Less explicable is striving to attain first place in a virtue (aretē) competition. Yet this latter dynamic appears in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. There is 4.3’s magnanimity, the crown of the virtues, which seemingly manifests itself in outdoing one’s peers in virtue. Such one-upmanship also seems operant with 9.8’s praiseworthy self-lover, who seeks to get as much of the fine (to kalon) as possible for herself. Contrary to many (...) interpreters, this paper argues that praiseworthy self-love and magnanimity involve one-upmanship. The relevant exemplars are not simply striving to be the best that they can be in respect to virtue (in virtuous activity), but to be better than others. The paper argues that Aristotle’s axiology, which sets activity (energeia) above state (hexis) and potentiality (dunamis), engenders one-upmanship. For only the level of activity substantially differentiates individuals, settling for inferiority is obviously objectionable, and equal achievement for Aristotle is not static but involves matching and surpassing the achievements of others. The paper concludes that modern discomfort with these dynamics is due to an axiology Nietzsche attributes to Christianity, one that bases human value fundamentally on non-differentiating potentiality. (shrink)

The Mohists may have been the first consequentialists on earth. Their most important principles are that right action is what benefits the world and that the underlying outlook for benefiting the world is inclusive care, whereby each person receives equal consideration. The early Mohists are clearly objective-list consequentialists, whereby benefiting the world amounts to promoting the most basic goods. Stephens argues that the later Mohists shift to a preference-satisfaction consequentialism whereby benefiting the world amounts to promoting what happens to please (...) individual people. Stephens argues that while the direct texts are ambiguous between an objective-list interpretation and a preference-satisfaction interpretation, the latter better explains later Mohist engagement with opponents. I argue that the direct texts actually preclude Stephens’ preference-satisfaction interpretation, which moreover has the later Mohists concede an implausible amount to their opponents. (shrink)

This article examines the definitions of place or location (topos) and as a consequence, space, in Byzantine philosophy, from Maximos the Confessor to Photios. These philosophers draw, on one hand, on the Aristotelian, Platonic, and Neoplatonic sources, and on the other hand, on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Firstly, Maximos the Confessor sets out a novel definition in which place is conceptually inseparable from time, is needed for substances to exist, and in which place is the boundary between the created and uncreated. (...) In Anastasios of Sinai’s writing, God is the archetypical place for all things and is likewise necessary for substances. John of Damascus, in contrast, extends Aristotle’s definition of place in the Physics in new directions, by investigating the place of angels, which is determined by their incorporeal limits. Finally, Photios produces a systematic and astute account of how the properties of the containing and contained bodies come together to make places. The article concludes with an evaluation of these theories, and briefly considers their relationship to theories of place and location in modern physics. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson is increasingly recognised as an important predecessor of ordinary language philosophy. He emphasizes the authority of ordinary language in philosophical theorizing. At the same time, however, he circumscribes the limits of that authority and identifies cases in which it threatens to mislead us. My aim is to consider in detail one case where, according to Cook Wilson, ordinary language has misled philosophical theorizing. Judgement was one of the core notions of the logic, epistemology, and philosophy of mind (...) of Cook Wilson’s time. Cook Wilson rejects this notion, in the form developed by his contemporaries, in part because it is based on a problematic analogy between ordinary language and the thoughts expressed in that language. Cook Wilson’s discussion of judgement also highlights the extent to which Cook Wilson was critical of, but also responsive to, his contemporaries. In addition, variants of the language-thought analogy Cook Wilson opposes continue to feature in 21st century epistemology and philosophy of mind. Cook Wilson’s criticism of the analogy thus raises questions about recent work as well as the theories of his contemporaries. (shrink)

This paper argues that Nietzsche is a panpsychist. Panpsychism holds that mental features are ubiquitous and fundamental in reality. I first argue that Nietzsche’s rejection of Cartesian dualism leads him to substance monism. To better understand his monism, I examine Nietzsche’s rejection of Newtonian atomism. Nietzsche holds that bundles of forces, or will to power, are more fundamental than hard, extended atoms. So, will to power is fundamental. I then investigate Nietzsche’s remarks on organic and inorganic nature to show that (...) he believes both are will to power. So, will to power is ubiquitous. The final step to panpsychism is to show that Nietzsche believes will to power exhibits mental qualities. If all goes well, it should emerge that Nietzsche thinks mental features are fundamental and ubiquitous in reality. (shrink)

This article is the first English translation of Gadamer's early essay “On the Idea of a System in Philosophy” (“Zur Systemidee in der Philosophie”) from 1924. Influenced by Marburg Neo-Kantianism and Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology, Gadamer is concerned with the problems that arise with the idea of systematicity in philosophy. In particular, he focuses on conceiving of an idea of a system that does justice to the historical variability of philosophical thoughts. He shows that systematicity and history are, in fact, not (...) in tension but deeply intertwined because of the foundation philosophy has in factical and historical human life. Gadamer, therefore, already anticipates some of the most characteristic ideas of his later magnum opus Truth and Method. The translator's Introduction contextualises this essay in both its relation to Marburg Neo-Kantians and Heidegger's thought, highlights the most significant continuities to Gadamer's mature philosophy, and provides an overview of the essay's main arguments. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) holds that the senses, imagination, and passions aim at survival and the satisfaction of the body’s needs, rather than truth or the good of the mind. Each of these faculties makes a distinctive and, indeed, an indispensable contribution to the preservation of life. Commentators have largely focused on how the senses keep us alive. By comparison, the imagination and passions have been neglected. In this paper, I reconstruct Malebranche’s account of how the imagination contributes to the preservation (...) of the body by compensating for the limitations of the senses. First, the imagination represents non-actual states of affairs, such as probable or possible future states. Second, the imagination forges new and often helpful associations based on past experiences. Third, the imagination (mis)represents that objects will cause pleasure and pain, thereby imbuing them with emotional significance they would otherwise lack. Together, these features flesh out Malebranche’s view that the imagination is necessary for the preservation of life. (shrink)

Compare two conceptions of validity: under an example of a modal conception, an argument is valid just in case it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false; under an example of a topic-neutral conception, an argument is valid just in case there are no arguments of the same logical form with true premises and a false conclusion. This taxonomy of positions suggests a project in the philosophy of logic: the reductive analysis of the modal conception (...) of logical consequence to the topic-neutral conception. Such a project would dispel the alleged obscurity of the notion of necessity employed in the modal conception in favour of the clarity of an account of logical consequence given in terms of tractable notions of logical form, universal generalization and truth simpliciter. In a series of publications, John Etchemendy has characterized the model-theoretic definition of logical consequence as truth preservation in all models as intended to provide just such an analysis. In this paper, I will argue that Aristotle intends to provide an account of a modal conception of logical consequence in topic-neutral terms and so is engaged in a project comparable to the one described above. That Aristotle would be engaged in this sort of project is controversial. Under the standard reading of the Prior Analytics, Aristotle does not and cannot provide an account of logical consequence. Rather, he must take the validity of the first figure syllogisms (such as the syllogism known by its medieval mnemonic ‘Barbara’: A belongs to all B; B belongs to all C; so A belongs to all C) as obvious and not needing justification; he then establishes the validity of the other syllogisms by showing that they stand in a suitable relation to the first figure syllogisms. I will argue that Aristotle does attempt to provide an account of logical consequence—namely, by appeal to certain mereological theorems. For example, he defends the status of Barbara as a syllogism by appeal to the transitivity of mereological containment. There are, as I will discuss, reasons to doubt the success of this account. But the attempt is not implausible given certain theses Aristotle holds in semantics, mereology and the theory of relations. (shrink)

This paper shows that Spinoza went through a drastic change in his view on divine teleology, and that this change is worth paying attention to. In the Short Treatise (KV), Spinoza endorsed a version of divine teleology. As is widely recognized, however, he explicitly rejects divine teleology in the Ethics. I argue that this marks a significant change in his view. To illustrate the significance, I argue that Spinoza consistently maintains the following two premises in both the KV and the (...) Ethics: (1) human beings act on account of some end; (2) human actions are actions of God. While the endorsement of divine teleology is consistent with these two, the rejection of divine teleology results in a trilemma. The trilemma, to be sure, can be resolved by introducing referential opacity to divine action contexts. I argue, however, that it is worth asking why Spinoza revised his view in this way. (shrink)

What, if anything, changes between Hume's moral theory as presented in the Treatise of Human Nature and then in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals? This question has received increased attention, especially focused on Hume's presentation of sympathy and humanity, and the connection of those principles to Hume's account of moral sentiments. While there is a strong consensus that Hume is making important stylistic changes to the presentation of his views, scholars are divided on the question of whether there (...) are also substantive changes to the views. This paper sides with those who hold that there are substantive changes, offering new evidence for that position. I argue that Hume revised his Treatise account of sympathy to better accommodate cases of affective difference and incapacity. After presenting these cases, I show that Hume's Treatise account of the sympathy mechanism and its role in the production of moral sentiments is more seriously threatened by the problem of affective difference and incapacity than the corresponding account in the second Enquiry. This gives us persuasive evidence in support of the interpretations that hold that there are substantive changes in the second Enquiry, while also helping to explain Hume's motivation for such changes. (shrink)

We live in times of an increasing polarization in which the margins of the political spectrum begin to dominate our social imagination again. While the neoliberal iteration of the capitalist project suggests an extreme individualism as the normative default position, the devastating impact of the globalized economy on many has reignited the pursuit of socialist alternatives. In this constellation, Simmel’s social theory of modernity can be a useful resource to undercut the return of the old battle between opposite economic systems. (...) This paper argues that two kinds of pluralism can be derived from his conceptualization of the social effects of the money economy. In contrast to one-size-fits-all concepts of freedom, Simmel embraces a social pluralism which acknowledges a plurality of cultural spheres as relevant for the self-actualization of modern individuals, attributing different combinations of independence and embeddedness to them. Moreover, he rejects the social extremes of socialism and individualism, since they fail to properly integrate individual freedom into the social whole without undermining it. Instead Simmel gives us the vision of a pluralist economy in which democratic worker’s cooperatives are combined with an overall liberal market to satisfy both the longing for community and the strive for individual distinction. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a novel reading of Spinoza’s position in his exchangewith Boyle about Boyle’s experiment with nitre. Boyle claimed to have shownthrough experiments that nitre ceased to be nitre after heating. Spinozadisagreed and proposed the alternative hypothesis that nitre has changed itsstate and not its nature. Spinoza’s position was construed in the literature asrational scepticism denying that experiments can yield knowledge ofessences because all sensory experience is underdetermined and open tomultiple interpretations. I argue for an alternative (...) reading of Spinoza’sposition which focuses on Bacon’s notion of crucial instance. According tothis reading, Spinoza did not deny the possibility of knowing byexperimentation whether nitre has changed its nature, he asked for a crucialinstance, i.e. an experiment that would refute the hypothesis that nitre haschanged merely its state. Spinoza’s argumentative strategy shows that,contrary to the mainstream reading, the representational content of sensoryideas can be determined even if it does not represent the essence of theobject: we can know with absolute, rather than merely moral, certaintywhether nitre ceased to be nitre without knowing what nitre is. (shrink)

Textor’s The Disappearance of the Soul and the Turn Against Metaphysics examines the voluntarist background of Schlick’s epistemology, including his conception of knowledge as essentially involving judgements that relate at least two terms, and his connected objection against according intuition epistemic status. Textor interprets Schlick’s conception of intuition in light of Schopenhauer’s distinction between ordinary and extra-ordinary cognition. Thus Textor argues that Schlick takes intuition to be a form of ‘steady contemplation’ (Disappearance, 348) of an object that is ‘either a (...) universal or a particular’ (332). I suggest an alternative interpretation, according to which Schlick takes intuition to be an immersion into the contents of the stream of consciousness, which he claims to be a formless ‘Heraclitian flux’ (General Theory, 31, 156). This interpretation allows for a defence, against Textor’s objections, of Schlick’s thesis that the aim of knowledge is prediction. If the kind of flux given in pure intuition is genuinely ‘Heraclitian’ – that is to say, if the stream of consciousness is ever-changing and unrepeatable – then it is simply impossible for ‘the devotee of intuition’ (150) to predict its course. By contrast, the process of re-cognition that constitutes knowledge is intimately tied to prediction. (shrink)

In his discussion of simple esteem—one of the moral entities meant to regulate human actions—Pufendorf invokes a juridical commonplace: the rule that, before evidence to the contrary, we should presume others to be good. This argumentative strategy is an illuminating example for understanding his method of commonplaces. The present paper has three goals: (1) to analyze how Pufendorf adopted from legal humanism the view that presumptions should be based on considerations of what comes about most easily in nature; (2) to (...) show that Pufendorf’s inclusion of ethical aspects in the juridical presumption of goodness is an application of this view of forming presumptions; (3) to argue that Pufendorf did not regard juridical and philosophical commonplaces as expressions of a particular stage of intellectual history but rather as the result of reflection about human needs and abilities. (shrink)

Henri Bergson is usually considered to be a ‘continental’ philosopher. This stimulating book is an attempt to introduce his philosophy into contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Therefore,...