In this article I consider when the question of whether entities exist subjectively (only in the minds of subjects) or objectively (in themselves, independently of the minds of subjects) is important, both theoretically and practically. I argue that when it comes to the metaphysics underlying three types of moral questions, broadly conceived, the subjectivity question does not matter practically, although it is widely thought to matter. Subjectivism does not matter in these moral questions in the same way(s) it matters in (...) some nonmoral metaphysical issues. The moral questions I consider are the meaning of life, normative ethics, and the free‐will problem. The nonmoral issues I address are the existence of God, the traditional mind/body problem, and personal identity. I explain the difference by noting that certain metaphysical issues on the fact side of the fact/value distinction impinge on persons' lives more prominently than do the metaphysics behind the three moral questions. (shrink)

The strategic/terror bomber thought experiment is often employed in the contemporary debate on the principle of double effect (PDE). It is taken to show the intuitive appeal of PDE. In this paper, it is argued, however, that the thought experiment is used in a confused way. What is taken to be one thought experiments in fact is a series of subtly differing examples. Those differences, although subtle, bear on the applicability of these examples in the argumentation for PDE. The (...) main objectives of this paper are to provide a precise description and analysis of the variants of strategic/terror bomber thought experiments. The analysis shows that some variants are flawed mainly because of underdetermination of the cases by their descriptions and problems with rationality of the presented agents. This result seems to cast some new doubts on employment of the strategic/terror bomber thought experiment as an argumentative device supporting PDE. (shrink)

Why is it so important to study Nietzsche? Many works about Nietzsche’s thought have been published over the years, from every conceivable position, including analytical philosophy.1 One more essay on Nietzsche may seem a bit repetitive. Yet, as Giuseppe Fornari wrote in the preface of Il Caso Nietzsche (The Nietzsche Case), it is fundamental to analyze Nietzsche deeply, because the most important themes of his works are still hidden among the pages of his books.2 René Girard has made an original (...) contribution to understanding Nietzsche by underlining the close connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the personal relationships he established during his life. In particular, Girard’s .. (shrink)

Philip Cam’s Double Trouble can be found in his 1998 collection Twister, Quibbler, Puzzler, Cheat. This story is an especial favourite of mine, which I have used successfully with classes from mid-primary to senior secondary.This paper consists of two parts: the story in full; and an exploration of the philosophical background to many of the ideas contained in the story, including some references to discussions of the ideas in the philosophical tradition to support facilitators who use the story within (...) a community of inquiry. I will consider three central issues in some detail, and four other emergent issues more briefly. In conclusion, I offer some more general thoughts as to how facilitators can prepare for using the story. (shrink)

I argue against the Doctrine of Double Effect’s explanation of the moral difference between terror bombing and strategic bombing. I show that the standard thought-experiment of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber which dominates this debate is underdetermined in three crucial respects: (1) the non-psychological worlds of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber; (2) the psychologies of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber; and (3) the structure of the thought-experiment, especially in relation to its similarity with the Trolley Problem. (1) If the (...) two worlds are not identical, then it may be these differences between the two worlds and not the Doctrine of Double Effect to explain the moral difference; (2a) if Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber have the same causal beliefs, then why does Terror Bomber set out to kill the children? It may then be this unwarranted and immoral choice and not the Doctrine of Double Effect that explains the moral difference; (2b) if the two have different causal beliefs, then we can’t rule out the counterfactual that, had Strategic Bomber had the same beliefs as Terror Bomber, she would have also acted as Terror Bomber did. Finally, (3) the Strategic Bomber scenario could also be constructed so as to be structurally equivalent to the Fat Man scenario in the Trolley Problem: but then the Doctrine of Double Effect would give different answers to two symmetrical cases. (shrink)

This book explores the possible relations between Western types of rationality and Buddhism. It also examines some cliche;s about Buddhism and questions the old antinomies of Western culture (“faith and reason,” or “idealism and materialism”). The use of the Buddhist notion of the Two Truths as a hermeneutic device leads to a double or multiple exposure that will call into question our mental habits and force us to ask questions differently, to think “in a new key.” Double Exposure (...) is somewhat of an oddity. Written by a specialist for nonspecialists, it is not a book of vulgarization. Although it aims at a better integration of Western and Buddhist thought, it is not an exercise in comparative philosophy or religion. It is neither a contribution to Buddhist scholarship in the narrow sense, nor a contribution to some vague Western “spirituality.” Cutting across traditional disciplines and blurring established genres, it provides a leisurely but deeply insightful stroll through philosophical and literary texts, dreams, poetry, and paradoxes. (shrink)

DNA possesses a double nature: it is both an analog chemical compound and a digital carrier of information. By distinguishing these two aspects, this paper aims to reevaluate the legally and politically influential idea that the human genome forms part of the common heritage of mankind, an idea which is thought to conflict with the practice of patenting DNA. The paper explores the lines of reasoning that lead to the common heritage idea, articulates and motivates what emerges as the (...) most viable version of it, and assesses the extent to which this version conflicts with gene-patenting practices as exemplified by the U.S. regime. It concludes that the genome is best thought of as a repository of information to which humanity has a fiduciary relationship, and that on this view, the perceived conflict with gene-patenting largely dissolves. (shrink)

The ‘doctrine of double effect’ claims that it is in some sense morally less problematic to bring about a negatively evaluated state of affairs as a ‘side effect’ of one’s pursuit of another, morally unobjectionable aim than it is to bring it about in order to achieve that aim. In a first step, this chapter discusses the descriptive difference on which the claim is built. That difference is shown to derive from the attitudinal distinction between intention and ‘acceptance’, a (...) distinction that is in turn claimed to ground in a feature of the decisions that generate the attitudes in question. The resulting analysis is then plugged into two different normative principles that may each be thought to specify the intuitions behind the doctrine of double effect, but which have frequently been conflated. The first concerns the permissibility of bringing about the merely accepted state of affairs, the second its reduced attributability. It is argued that examination of the intuitions behind the two principles supports neither version of the doctrine. Rather, the intuitions are best captured in an attribution principle based on subjective probabilities and a principle of attitude evaluation, neither of which make explicit reference to the attitude of intending. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an analysis of the thought experiment “Two worlds for one ego” in which Husserl imagines an ego that lives two alternated lives. The thought experiment is designed to question the apodicticity of the world’s singularity. If the ego of the thought experiment is a fully concrete social subject, then the world’s singularity proves to be apodictic. If we were to, conversely, conduct the same experiment with an abstract ego, then the counter‑scenario of a doubling of (...) the world would be tenable if and only if this subject was the sole subject of both worlds. This means, in turn, that a more concrete phenomenological conduction of the experiment demonstrates the limits of methodological solipsism. The paper is tripartite. Firstly, I set out the experiment’s terminological terrain and discuss the systematic questions addressed as well as the phenomenological methods involved. In a second step, I analyse Husserl’s conduction of the thought experiment. Finally, I discuss some of the experiment’s possible applications to anthropology. (shrink)

This book shows that in the naturalistic and Darwinian explanation of life and its evolution, a decisive factor is overlooked, namely the human, knowing mind. The questions about life and its evolution can be answered if consciousness is taken into account not as a spectator, but as an integral part of reality. In the first-person-perception of cognition, the forces and laws of organic development can be observed and explored. It becomes apparent that evolution was not a random event, but the (...) organic overall process of the becoming of man. (shrink)

The paper provides an analysis of Martin Buber’s intellectual conversion and shows how it facilitates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of nationalism. Buber, who is today known mainly as a key representative of dialogical philosophy, was in the 1910s part of the double wave of German and Jewish nationalism which strongly affected the German-speaking Jewish public. Buber provided intellectual support for this wave of nationalism and interpreted World War I as a unique chance for the spiritual unification of (...) European Jewry. Consequent to his conflict with Gustav Landauer Buber underwent a complex intellectual and existential transformation. He abandoned key concepts of his pre-dialogical thought and laid the foundations of his dialogical thought. He rejected his endorsement of Geman nationalism and substantially reevaluated his political positions. The analysis of Buber’s intellectual development sheds light on some important aspects of the dynamics of nationalism. (shrink)

This book explores the possible relations between Western types of rationality and Buddhism. It also examines some clichés about Buddhism and questions the old antinomies of Western culture. The use of the Buddhist notion of the Two Truths as a hermeneutic device leads to a double or multiple exposure that will call into question our mental habits and force us to ask questions differently, to think "in a new key." _Double Exposure_ is somewhat of an oddity. Written by a (...) specialist for nonspecialists, it is not a book of vulgarization. Although it aims at a better integration of Western and Buddhist thought, it is not an exercise in comparative philosophy or religion. It is neither a contribution to Buddhist scholarship in the narrow sense, nor a contribution to some vague Western "spirituality." Cutting across traditional disciplines and blurring established genres, it provides a leisurely but deeply insightful stroll through philosophical and literary texts, dreams, poetry, and paradoxes. (shrink)

There is substantial textual evidence that Kant held the doctrine of double affection: subjects are causally affected both by things in themselves and by appearances. However, Kant commentators have been loath to attribute this view to him, for the doctrine of double affection is widely thought to face insuperable problems. I begin by explaining what I take to be the most serious problem faced by the doctrine of double affection: appearances cannot cause the very experience in virtue (...) of which they have their empirical properties. My solution consists in distinguishing the sense of ‘experience’ in which empirical objects cause experience from the sense of ‘experience’ in which experience determines empirical objects. I call the latter “universal experience”. I develop my conception of universal experience, and then I explain how it solves the problem of double affection. I conclude by addressing several objections. (shrink)

Clinical delusions are commonly thought of and characterized as beliefs, both by psychiatrists and by the general population. That fact is encoded in the definition of delusion in the Glossary of Technical Terms of the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders :A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly held despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.Although almost (...) every aspect of this definition is debatable, describing delusion as a type of aberrant belief has engendered a specialized discussion in itself, engaging philosophers... (shrink)

This article offers a close reading of Hannah Arendt's book On Revolution. It exposes the ambivalence of Arendt with regard to tragedy and mimesis. This ambivalence is not just her own; it is inherent in the treatment of tragedy and mimesis throughout the history of political thought. In spite of Arendt's argument that privileges the limited American Revolution against the boundless French one, in her rhetoric and in her storytelling Arendt presents a unitary but dialectical picture of revolution, where suffering (...) and foundation are inseparably intertwined. The founding public action of revolutionaries implies a crisis of mimetic passions (of fear and pity) which threatens to undo, but also set the stage for, revolution. This negative, passionate and passive side of revolution helps us to come to terms with the non-productive but emancipatory revolutions in the Eastern Europe of 1989-91. (shrink)

This article offers a philosophical reflection on ambivalences inherent in the notion of craft analogy in the thought of Zhuangzi and Aristotle. Does it make sense to establish the analogy between the structure of the good conduct of life and the structure of the successful performance of craft? In turn, what are the reasons for rejecting this analogy? This study shows that both philosophers had strong reasons both for their commitment to some aspects of the analogy and for its decisive (...) denial in other respects. However, their particular reasons for this ambiguous view on the craft analogy are remarkably different and even opposite. This divergence owes to some central cosmological and ontological commitments that undergird their theories of action; while Aristotle’s conception of the human world calls for conscious interference and deliberate action, Zhuangzi’s view is that ideal action should spontaneously follow the order immanent in all things. (shrink)

Abstract In criticising the Italian idealist philosopher Benedetto Croce ? described by Eric Hobsbawm as the first ?post?Marxist? ? Antonio Gramsci elaborated a distinct theory of history. For Gramsci, philosophers such as Croce developed a subjective account of history based on the progression of philosophical thought rather than problems posed by historical development. This essay develops a ?double reading? of Gramsci. First, it presents an overview of a dominant post?Marxist reading of Gramsci?s approach to historical materialism, which constructs a (...) closed and particularistic understanding of his theory of history. Second, it offers a reading that exposes and unsettles problems within post?Marxism by demonstrating how Gramsci?s focus on changes in social relations threatens the assumptions about both traditional idealism and materialism. It is this theory of history that throws into relief certain features necessary to understanding history as more than just a completely contingent system of articulatory practices. The method of a double reading therefore affords insight into the internal tensions and questionable assumptions of history understood as an association of discourses (first reading). It also avoids developing an account that relies on an ?extrinsic history? of objective forces by combining an appreciation of ethico?political principles alongside economic factors within the struggle over hegemony relevant to contemporary global political economy (second reading). (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how things go with the "Nothing" in the work of Alain Badiou, a topic which is evidently central to his thought, and which has received a great deal of attention in the commentary to date. As this problem is inaccessible outside of Badiou’s deployment of mathematics, I will suggest how accounts of Badiou’s work remain flawed insofar as they evade his mathematical demonstrations, and I attempt to clarify how mathematics operates in his system. I then (...) examine the consequences that such a use of mathematics has for Badiou’s doctrine of the nothing. I conclude with a discussion of some of the difficulties that the nothing continues to pose to Badiou, which have not (yet) been satisfactorily resolved. These difficulties devolve from the problematic of the incessantly doubling void. (shrink)

Without taking a position on the overall justification of anti-doping regulations, I analyse the possible justification of Therapeutic Use Exemptions from such rules. TUEs are a creative way to prevent the unfair exclusion of athletes with a chronic condition, and they have the potential to be the least bad option. But they cannot be competitively neutral. Their justification must rest, instead, on the relevance of intentions to permissibility. I illustrate this by means of a set of thought experiments in which (...) only an athlete’s intentions vary. I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect sheds some light on TUEs and illustrate this by applying different readings of the DDE to the thought experiment. This underpins a justification of anti-doping exemptions very different from the approach adopted by the World Anti-Doping Agency. I argue for three changes to bring TUEs in line with this understanding: rewriting of the regulations, transparency, and a greater role for athletes in determining what exemptions are allowed, and when. (shrink)

Litotes, “a figure of speech in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary” has had some tough reviews. For Pope and Swift, litotes—stock examples include “no mean feat”, “no small problem”, and “not bad at all”—is “the peculiar talent of Ladies, Whisperers, and Backbiters”; for Orwell, it is a means to affect “an appearance of profundity” that we can deport from English “by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across (...) a not ungreen field.” But such ridicule is not without equivocation, given that litotes, or “logical” double negation, may or may not be semantically redundant. When the negation of a logical contrary yields an unexcluded middle, it contributes to expressive power: someone who is not unhappy may not be happy either, and an occurrence may not be infrequent without being frequent. But if something is not possible, what can it be but possible? Why does Crashaw’s “not impossible she” survive rhetorically while Orwell’s “not unsmall rabbit” is doomed? How is Robbie being “not not friends” with Mary on 7th Heaven distinct from being friends with her, if not not-p reduces to p? The key is recognizing in litotes a corollary of MaxContrary, the tendency for contradictory sentential negation ¬p to strengthen pragmatically to a contrary ©p, as when the formal contradictory Fr. “Il ne faut pas partir” is reinterpreted as expressing a contrary. Just as the Law of Excluded Middle can apply where it “shouldn’t”, resulting in pragmatically presupposed disjunctions between semantic contraries, so that “p v ©p” amounts to an instance of “p v ¬p”, the Law of Double Negation can fail to apply where it “should”. When not not-p conveys ¬©p, the negation of a virtual contrary, the middle between p and not-p is no longer excluded, rendering the Fregean dictum that “Wrapping up a thought in double negation does not alter its truth value” not unproblematic. (shrink)

There are some interesting similarities between Aristotle’s ‘mixed actions’ in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics and the actions often thought to be justifiable with the Doctrine of Double Effect. Here I analyse these similarities by comparing Aristotle’s examples of mixed actions with standard cases from the literature on double effect such as, amongst others, strategic bombing, the trolley problem, and craniotomy. I find that, despite some common features such as the dilemmatic structure and the inevitability of a (...) bad effect, Aristotle’s mixed actions do not count as cases justifiable through application of the Doctrine of Double Effect because they fail to meet the crucial necessary condition of the Doctrine according to which the bad effect can only be a merely foreseen side-effect and not an intended means. (shrink)

It has been almost 20 years since the field of bioethics was galvanized by a controversial series of multinational AZT trials employing placebo controls on pregnant HIV-positive women in the developing world even though a standard of care existed in the sponsor countries. The trove of ethical investigations that followed was thoughtful and challenging, yet an important and problematic methodological assumption was left unexplored. In this article, I revisit the famous “double standard of care” case study in order to (...) offer novel consideration of the placebo orthodoxy that underlies much of the ethical debate. This majority view found in medical research is that placebo-controlled trials are methodologically superior to comparative trials that use active controls. I challenge this orthodoxy and argue that lives were unnecessarily lost in these trials as a result. Furthermore, current HIV research on vaccines and microbicides is now poised to repeat the error of subscribing to the placebo orthodoxy. (shrink)

This essay focuses on three interpretations of Aquinas influenced by Continental philosophy, those of John Caputo, Jean-Luc Marion, and John Milbank/Catherine Pickstock. The essay considers the well-worn question, whether Aquinas is an onto-theologian in Heidegger’s sense, but looks more broadly at the point of contact common to these interpretations: Aquinas’s relationship to modernity.As Continental thought has put into question the nature of philosophy through a critical look at modern philosophy—questioning its self-representation as progress and characterizing the present as post-modern—Aquinas is (...) of interest to Continental thought in his anti-modernity. The author considers three issues: (1) What does Continental philosophy bring to the study of Aquinas missing from analytic approaches? (2) What is highlighted about Aquinas as he is seen by Caputo, Marion, and Milbank/Pickstock? (3) Can Aquinas escape both the limitations of modernism and the deconstruction of postmodernism, as some claim, and would he want to? (shrink)

Philosophers from Hart to Lewis, Johnston and Bennett have expressed various degrees of reservation concerning the doctrine of double effect. A common concern is that, with regard to many activities that double effect is traditionally thought to prohibit, what might at first look to be a directly intended bad effect is really, on closer examination, a directly intended neutral effect that is closely connected to a foreseen bad effect. This essay examines the extent to which the commonsense concept (...) of intention supports a reasonably consistent and coherent application of double effect. Two important conclusions are these: (1) a number of traditionally proscribed activities involve a kind of “targeting” of innocents that can be taken to exhibit a direct intention to harm them; (2) a direct intention to harm need not involve a desire to harm in any ordinary sense of the latter expression. (shrink)

Hegel's concepts of force and power (absolute power, absolute force, infinite power, the power of the negative, the power of the Concept, etc.), scattered throughout the works, are doubled by other passages where Hegel speaks of various forms of impotence or powerlessness (Ohnmacht). What is powerlessness? In effect, for Hegel, powerlessness generally designates a defect or a deficiency, or a kind of laziness or contingent immaturity that prevents the Concept from fully realizing itself, even though its power is, on another (...) level, absolute. Powerlessness (Ohnmacht) is a lack of power (Macht). But how is absolute power related to a relative lack of power? If power is absolute, then why is it that a little power isn’t always enough? Or alternatively, why does powerlessness have a role to play at all in a system where the power of the Concept determines everything inexorably? How do these two terms relate to each other in Hegel’s thought, especially in the context of the Subjective Logic? (shrink)

The Rule of Double Effect (RDE) holds that it may be permissible to harm an individual while acting for the sake of a proportionate good, given that the harm is not an intended means to the good but merely a foreseen side-effect. Although frequently used in medical ethical reasoning, the rule has been repeatedly questioned in the past few decades. However, Daniel Sulmasy, a proponent who has done a lot of work lately defending the RDE, has recently presented a (...) reformulated and more detailed version of the rule. Thanks to its greater precision, this reinvented RDE avoids several problems thought to plague the traditional RDE. Although an improvement compared with the traditional version, we argue that Sulmasy's reinvented RDE will not stand closer scrutiny. Not only has the range of proper applicability narrowed significantly, but, more importantly, Sulmasy fails to establish that there is a morally relevant distinction between intended and foreseen effects. In particular, he fails to establish that there is any distinction that can account for the alleged moral difference between sedation therapy and euthanasia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Double Exposure: Cutting Across Buddhist and Western DiscoursesSteven HeineDouble Exposure: Cutting Across Buddhist and Western Discourses. By Bernard Faure. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp. xiv + 174. Hardcover $49.50. Paper $21.95.In some ways, Double Exposure: Cutting Across Buddhist and Western Discourses by Bernard Faure seems quite different from other publications by this author, including several books that were also translated from (...) the French such as Visions of Power and Will to Orthodoxy, which have a specific focus on the practice of Chan or on gender issues in Buddhism. Double Exposure deals with broad, wide-ranging philosophical themes concerning Buddhist thought set in comparative contexts with Western intellectual history since the Enlightenment, especially continental European philosophy. Faure is well known from previous works for his extensive explorations of poststructural theory in examining historical and doctrinal buddhological issues. Clearly, however, this book was intended primarily not for Buddhist studies scholars but for an audience of French intellectuals and cultural critics, encompassing but more diverse than the academic community, who wish to understand how the discourse of Buddhism pertains to, yet remains distinct from, their own recent history of thought. Rather than citing a particular set of poststructural thinkers to illuminate Buddhism, Faure does the converse and uses Buddhism to make key points about the development of Western thought.At the same time, Double Exposure is consistent with and an extension of Faure's earlier books in that it tracks the role of the twofold or double in its various manifestations both in Buddhist thought and in methodological approaches to interpreting Buddhism. Faure is endlessly fascinated by and delights in exposing the fact that the Buddhist tradition, nwhich claims to espouse a standpoint of nondualism, invariably and inevitably divvies reality up into an endless series of polarities and paradoxes regarding the apparent oppositions or contradictions between the realms of nirvāṇa and samsāṃra, karmic causality and transcendence of karma, ultimate and mundane reality (or two levels of truth), and sudden and gradual enlightenment. He asserts: "The history of Buddhism... seems to be governed by what Bergson, in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, suggested calling the 'law of dichotomy,' a law which apparently brings about a realization, by a mere splitting, of tendencies which began by being two views, so to speak, of one and the same tendency" (p. 124). [End Page 178]In addition to Bergson, Faure cites classical notions like the Platonic division between the ideal form and the world of concrete forms, the two-faced Roman god Janus who rules over past and future, and the Manichaean split between good and evil. Faure also emphasizes more recent French thinkers and scholars, including Emile Beneviste, Nayla Farouki, Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Henri Micheaux, among others, who in probing the "diabolical" sense of truth versus error, which are considered eternal contraries in Western thought, especially in Christianity, are useful for discussing parallels and differences with Buddhism.Double Exposure also discusses interpretive debates about whether Buddhism should be seen as epitomizing agnosticism versus mysticism, pragmatism versus supernaturalism, or rationalism versus mythology, as well as conflicts in using the method of psychology as opposed to anthropology and the impact of hidden, or not-so-hidden Orientalist and reverse Orientalist tendencies. Perhaps the best organized chapter in the book is "The Major Schools" (chapter 5), which offers a quick but insightful overview of early Buddhist realism, Yogācāra idealism, the Mādhyamika middle way, and Chan's compromise between immanence and transcendence. The most imaginative section is "External Thought" (chapter 8), which delves into a vast array of topics. These range from Tantric sexuality as a form of spiritual energy and Diderot's view of the perpetual shifting of ordinary thought to Zongmi's image of the bright pearl as a metaphor for sudden realization compared with Paul Claudel's own pearl metaphor in Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher, which evokes a gradual path of self-understanding.I think Faure's main aim in all his many publications is to explore and expose the wedges, gaps, and inconsistencies, without making a judgment other than to underscore that what... (shrink)

In reflective explorations of the nature of truth in the philosophical concern with truth (as conceived in people’s pre-theoretic understanding of truth), there are two seemingly opposed strategic directions of explaining the relationship between the two closely related but distinct basic semantic notions, truth (with sentential truth bearers) and reference (with referring terms at the subject position): by virtue of which to hook up to the world in the fundamental relationship between language, thought and the world; eventually which one is (...) more fundamental in this connection, explaining truth by virtue of reference or explaining reference by virtue of truth. In this essay, through elaborating a holistic double-reference explanatory basis of truth, I explain how our pre-theoretic “way-things-are-capturing” understanding of truth fundamentally plays its normative-basis role for a unifying pluralist account of truth through the complementary interplay of its vertical “double-reference-based” dimension and horizontal “sentential-predication-based” dimension. For illustration and for a relatively complete understanding, in Appendix, I present a sample version of the suggested unifying pluralist account of truth which consists of the referentially enhanced base account, as explained in this essay, and sample accounts of some distinct types of perspective elaborations. (shrink)

The human soul is for pre-modern philosophers the cause of both thinking and life. This double aspect of the soul, which makes man a rational animal, expresses itself above all in human action. Deadly Thought: 'Hamlet' and the Human Soul traces Hamlet's famous inability to act to his inability to hold together these twin aspects of the soul.

When I was first studying Hegel I encountered quite divergent readings of his views on religion. The teacher who first presented Hegel to me was a Jesuit, Quentin Lauer at Fordham University, who read Hegel as a Christian theologian providing a better metaphysical system for understanding the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. When I studied at Yale, Kenley Dove read Hegel as the first thoroughly atheistic philosopher, who presented the conditions of thought without reference to any foundational absolute being. (...) Meanwhile, also at Yale, John Findlay read us a deeply Neo-Platonic Hegel who taught about absolute forms held in a cosmic mind. In giving my own reading I want to talk about the ways Hegel redefines both metaphysics and religion. I would like to approach these issues by way of the medieval controversy over double truth, which was a previous conflict between religion and science. (shrink)

After a long time, people are still debating over “Cartesian-like Dualism” (CLD), i.e. towards the separation of “res-extensa” from “res-cogitans”. Since we suspect that this is due to a general attraction of mind towards the darkness of metaphysics, we have investigated the mental origin of this attraction. In human mind, we can envisage three different functional levels emerging one from the other like in a Matrioska; the three levels cause the arousal of as many forms of “dualisms”: 1) The 1st-level (...) corresponds to the “Dual-state” of mind, an archetypic dualism made of Unconscious Mind (UM, the domain of biophysical/biochemical signals) and Conscious Mind (CM, the domain of thoughts, images and sounds), genetically committed to reciprocal and fruitful interactions. 2) the 2nd-level corresponds to “Double-perspective” dualism; it emerges from CM’s splitting into two opposite perspectives: the 1st-order perspective (1PP) (subjective, emotional, Self-oriented, etc.) and the 3rd-order perspective (3PP) (rational, objective, Self-detached, etc.), that are in psychological contraposition. During individual growth, Ego-sense installs in CM with the illusion of possessing FW, and dominates 1PP. Conversely, 3PP is typically interested in scientific argumentations and investigations; so, 3PP confutes 1PP’s convictions on scien-tific bases (e.g. 1PP’s conviction that the binomial Ego-FW is real). Yet, on the one hand, 3PP hasn’t got a scientific alternative to explain “who we really are”, on the other hand, 1PP exhibits a great success in everyday life cognition. Then, we necessarily step over the dualism of the 3rd-level, “Cartesian-like Dualism” (CLD). The emotional origin of this CLD holds back 1PP’s trick to claim its supremacy over 3PP. (shrink)

The difficulty is serious, and unless we find a satisfactory solution we must admit that Descartes' thought moves in a vicious circle, or that the ideas, the building blocks of his philosophy, contain incompatible elements inasmuch as they appear both as self-sufficient and as dependent on extrinsic support. The problem of the cartesian circle, as it is customarily called, is therefore more than a special difficulty and would seem to warrant a careful re-examination in the light of recent contributions to (...) the study of Descartes' philosophy. (shrink)

Expressions typically thought to be rigid designators can refer to distinct individuals in the consequents of counterfactuals. This occurs in counteridenticals, such as “If I were you, I would arrest me”, as well as more ordinary counterfactuals with clearly possible antecedents, like “If I were a police officer, I would arrest me”. I argue that in response we should drop rigidity and deal with de re modal predication using something more flexible, such as counterpart theory.

“Double-halfers” think that throughout the Sleeping Beauty Problem, Beauty should keep her credence that a fair coin flip came up heads equal to 1/2. I introduce a new wrinkle to the problem that shows even double-halfers can't keep Beauty's credences equal to the objective chances for all coin-flip propositions. This leaves no way to deny that self-locating information generates an unexpected kind of inadmissible evidence.

This paper describes a scenario in which a person in his afterlife will with probability 1 spend twice as many days in Heaven as in Hell, but, even though Heaven is as good as Hell is bad, his expected utility for any given day in that afterlife is negative.

Some have argued that no analysis of counterfactual conditionals can succeed without appealing to causal notions. Such authors claim that, in determining what would transpire had some events gone differently, we hold fixed everything that is causally independent from those events. Call this view Causal Independence. Some have argued that we need Causal Independence to accommodate intuitive judgments about certain kinds of counterfactuals in indeterministic worlds. The aim of this paper is to show that, contra these authors, Causal Independence systematically (...) delivers counterintuitive results for a certain subset of such counterfactuals-namely, those involving causation by double prevention. I conclude that intuitions about such counterfactuals do not motivate Causal Independence, at least in any form in which it has thus far been articulated. However, I suggest that a refined Causal Independence thesis that presupposes a kind of causal pluralism might be able to accommodate these intuitions, though such a refined version of Causal Independence may not conflict with reductive analyses of causal notions that appeal to counterfactuals after all. (shrink)

In this paper, I will explore how the work of Wallace Stevens constitutes a phenomenology that resonates strongly with that of William James. I will, first, explore two explicit references to James in the essays of Stevens that constitute a misrepresentation of a rather duplicitous quote from James’ personal letters. Second, I will consider Stevens’ little known lecture-turned-essay, “A Collect of Philosophy,” and the poem, “Large Red Man Reading,” as texts that are both about a conception of poetryphilosophy as well (...) as being performances of poetry-philosophy. Finally, I will compare James’ and Stevens’ thought on the imagination, highlighting both form and content and the poetic-philosophical union or blend that makes possible those similarities. (shrink)