This paper validates Odera Oruka’s assertion that Philosophic Sagacity is a pervasive phenomenon among African peoples. It argues that whereas Oruka mostly focused on the Kenyan social environment in defense of his thesis, his observations are also applicable to African communities outside Kenya’s borders, especially in their precolonial settings, where there were people who interrogated the rationale of their cultures’ beliefs and practices. Towards this end, the paper deploys textual exegesis on Chinua Achebe’s epic novel, Things Fall Apart, set among (...) the Igbo of South-Eastern Nigeria. (shrink)

Igbo metaphysics places emphasis on accommodation and respect for all entities in nature irrespective of their ontological placement or status. The belief is that all that is or exists must be accorded their due. It is this consciousness that defines their relationship with the environment, which is basically holistic (ecocentric) to such an extent that environment in all its nature, either as animate (sentient or less sentient) or inanimate, are intricately accommodated in the scheme of things. Human beings are at (...) times prefixed with the attributes of these metaphysical entities. Thus, although there is the inevitable metaphysical duality found in reality, the relationships, for the Igbo, are complimentary, friendly, and non-competitive. (shrink)

In three parts, this article sketches the version of African environmental ethics that was developed and promoted by Chigbo Ekwealo who was a renowned environmental philosopher in Africa. The first part is a sketch of the principles and doctrine of his environmental ethics. The second part traces the intellectual history of his environmental ethics, the influences on it and its influence on the global environmental ethics movement. The third part is a critique of his environmental ethics based on (...) contemporary and global circumstances. It is demonstrated how Ekwealo’s environmental ethics attempted to consciously depart from earlier versions of African environmental ethics in terms of its rejection of the neo-materialist, polemical, and supernatural features of other views. This article contributes to a reconstruction of the environmental thought of one of the founders of the African environmental movement whose thoughts are not accessible to most contemporary environmental philosophers today. (shrink)

In most liberal democracies for example, the central bank is as independent as the supreme court, yet deals with a wide range of economic, social, and political issues. How do these public servants make these policy decisions? What normative principles inform their judgments? In The Machinery of Government, Joseph Heath attempts to answer these questions. He looks to the actual practice of public administration to see how normative questions are addressed. More broadly, he attempts to provide the outlines of (...) a "philosophy of the executive" by taking seriously the claim to political authority of the most neglected of the three branches of the state. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: There is an abundance of scholarship on John Dewey. Dewey's writings are vast, so scholars try to find the crux that connects their many themes into a distinctive vision for philosophy and life. Many claim that the democratic way of life is the center of Dewey's philosophical vision. Others claim that Dewey's response to Darwin was the impetus for a philosophical experimentalism that could envision a better life (...) by responding to the needs in an age of modern industry. Some claim that the crux is a dynamic and non-mechanistic naturalism that Dewey develops to critically undo the dualisms of tradition, most especially the distinction between nature and culture. There has even been an effort to interpret each of these themes within Dewey's theory about the conditions for aesthetics in life, the life of art within an experience, and an experience of life as art. Arguably, no strategy is more preferable than another because each is plausible. Each plausibly selects a crux that connects the many themes across an array of writings, since Dewey's philosophy is multimodal by design and shuns reductionism for pluralism. Even amidst plurality, through many modes of activity and existence, each of these themes and all of Dewey's writings have a concern for meaning in life and how life is a process of meaning-making. And yet, meaning, for Dewey, is irreducible to verbal or written language and is made by more than propositions, but extends beyond the divide of nature and culture to potentially encompass all of life and life's processes. This expansive conception of meaning has more in common with semiotics, especially those of Charles Sanders Peirce, than any philosophy of language. And yet almost no scholar has sought to semiotically interpret Dewey's philosophy as a whole. Perhaps, though, Dewey's multimodal and pluralistic vision for philosophy and life also has a semiotic crux that intersects with the others in ways that are fundamentally important. There are scholars who have dealt with semiotic themes or insights with implications for semiotics in Dewey's writings. None have sought to semiotically interpret Dewey's philosophy as a whole, or, as a consequence, to chronologically survey Dewey's writings to determine if there is a conceivably Deweyan approach to semiotics that might contrast with or contribute to the more dominant approaches. There is a reason scholars may not have sought a Deweyan approach to semiotics. Dewey did not have an explicit theory of semiotics. There is no attempt to devise a doctrine of signs in Dewey's writings. Never did Dewey try to classify the fundamental types of sign, analyze the relations of signification by which they differ, or methodically explain how the logic of signification works. This contrasts sharply with Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce has an explicit theory of semiotics that divides the fundamental types of sign into icons, indices, and symbols by their distinct relations of signification that are at work in the logic of inference by the categories. During his second year at Johns Hopkins, Dewey was actually Peirce's student in a class on logic. This already suggests the possibility of influence. Dewey's writings around 1883 even espouse the central thesis of Peirce's semiotics. All signs, however else their significations may differ, are triadic relations for both Peirce and Dewey. Whether and how far Peirce's logic was an influence on Dewey at Johns... (shrink)

Scholars often argue that Charles Sanders Peirce was responsible for Josiah Royce's semiotic turn in _The Problem of Christianity_ of 1913. Thus scholars tend to assume that a _Roycean_ approach to semiotics was a later development and derives almost entirely from Peirce's semiotics. Far from a later development, Royce probably read Peirce much earlier. Indeed, even before Royce had read Peirce, the kernel of a Rocyean approach to semiotics is found in the dissertation of 1878. Thus the present essay will (...) prove that a Roycean approach to semiotics did not have a basis in Peirce's semiotics, whether early or later, but rather grew out of Royce's earliest writings. The first part will reconstruct the early pragmatism in the dissertation of 1878 and find that the kernal of a Roycean approach to semiotics was the idea of a _mediating third_. The second part will show how the disseration's pragmatism develops into a phenomenology of time that contains Royce's earliest semiosic insights. The third part will explain how the early pragmatism and phenomenology come together in the argument on the possibility of error from Royce's _The Religious Aspect of Philosophy_ of 1885. The possibility of error is Royce's original argument for absolute idealism, so the essay will conclude that a Roycean approach to semiotics entails a semiotics of the absolute. (shrink)

We normally assume that there’s just one conscious individual per animal. Some question this, suggesting that there may be nonhuman taxonomic groups whose normal, adult members house more than one conscious subject. Call this the multitudes view (“MV)”. Our aim is methodological: we hope to understand how we might assess whether MV is true. To that end, we distinguish two strategies for counting conscious subjects: the duplication strategy and the mind-first strategy. We use human split-brain patients and octopuses to illustrate (...) the prospects and limitations of each approach, as some have argued that both sets of individuals contain multitudes. We’ll contend that while the duplication strategy is applicable to split-brain patients, it isn’t apt for octopuses. The mind-first strategy fairs better here, but there’s a catch: it requires, in a way the duplication strategy does not, numerous contentious assumptions about the nature of mentality, the individuation of minds, and consciousness to simply get off the ground. These difficulties clarify just what it would take to establish MV. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on John Locke as a representative figure of English Enlightenment theorizing about the legitimacy of cognitive authority and examine the way in which a greater attention to the cultural milieu in which Locke worked can lead to a profound reexamination of his writings on cognitive authority. In particular, I suggest that an inattention to the rise of a culture of reading and the growing availability of books in Early Modern England has led historians of philosophy (...) largely to misrepresent Locke's theory of testimonial justification. At the core of my paper are two interrelated claims. First, with respect to the history of ideas, I argue that the Locke's interest in testimony as a source of justification was in fact greater than that of his Scholastic forebears, and that this fact has a simple, if as yet unacknowledged, cultural cause -- viz., the rise of the book as a mass commodity in the late 17th century. Second, with respect to the history of philosophy more particularly, I argue that this failure to acknowledge the cultural movements that led to a consideration of testimony as a topic of interest to epistemologists in the Modern era has led to a misreading of Locke's work on the subject. Indeed, Locke, though usually read as having attempted to denigrate testimony as a legitimate source of justification, in fact sought to devise an epistemology that would do justice to the centrality of testimony in the intellectual lives of growing numbers of his contemporaries in 17th and 18th century England and Scotland. (shrink)

Birch (2022a) proposes a theory-light methodology for studying whether invertebrates have the capacity for (phenomenal) consciousness. The success of any such methodology turns on the positive markers it proposes, and whether they are genuinely ecumenical. After providing an account of what it is for a marker to be ecumenical, it is argued that one of the more influential set of markers offered—unlimited associative learning—clearly counts as positive evidence for consciousness on only a small handful of theories, rendering Birch’s theory-light approach (...) tacitly theory-heavy. What emerges is a broader lesson concerning what exactly is required for the theory-light framework to be successful. (shrink)

Provides a set of normative measure sto assess the value of nature and proposes the new discipline of foundational ecology as a response to environmental crisis.

The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy surveys the role of money in the history of ideas. Volume 2: Modern Thought examines the treatment of money in the writings of philosophers from the emergence of capitalism through the 20th century. The volume is divided into sections on Early Modernity, Late Modernity, and the Twentieth Century. Volume 2 presents an alternative history of modern philosophy in which monetary relations are both an explicit theme and an implicit condition of philosophical reflection.

A thesis familiar by being as often disputed as defended has it that intentional action is action for a reason. The present paper contributes to the defence of a weaker version of it, namely: Acting with an intention or a purpose is acting (as things appear to one) for a reason.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 473-479, May 2022.

The Specter of Capital provides a searching historical analysis and critique of the role of classical and neoclassical economic theory in creating the economic conditions which produced the global financial crisis.

Arthur Fine has recently argued that standard realist and anti-realist interpretations of science should be replaced by "natural ontological attitude" (NOA). I ask whether Fine's own justification for NOA can meet the standards of argument that underlie his criticisms of realism and anti-realism. Fine vacillates between two different ways of advocating NOA. The more minimalist defense ("why not try NOA?") begs the question against both realists and antirealists. A stronger program, based on Fine's arguments for a "no-theory" of truth, has (...) promise, but the arguments must be developed in a stronger, more general form if they are to justify NOA. (shrink)

Countering the common assumption in affect theory that deconstruction is incompatible with studies of affect, this essay theorises a deconstructive approach to reading for affect in texts and examines the role affect has always played in deconstructive reading. It reads Derrida alongside Deleuze who has been influential in affect theory in order to explicate what deconstruction adds to existing poststructural theories of affect: namely, how affect functions at the scene of reading, shaping the reading itself and coming into view through (...) textual forms. In its second half, the essay turns to Cixous' ‘Savoir,’ demonstrating through a reading of that text what a deconstructive reading of affect looks like in practice and exploring the ethics of such an approach. (shrink)

The ArgumentBy the beginning of the fourteenth century, medicine had acquired a cultural role in addition to its traditional functions as a therapeutic art. Medical subject matter infiltrated the religious discourse via the new thirteenth-century encyclopedic literature. Preachers came to employ in their moral analogies a wider range of medical topics, using sophisticated medical examples and citations attributed to recognized medical authorities. These developments coincided with the growing prestige of medicine as an academic discipline.

On September 17, 1994, Karl Popper died at the age of 92.He was described as the official opposition of the “ Vienna Circle”, the philosophical club which in the inter-war period was glamorous and which espoused the then popular doctrine of logical positivism, so-called. His relations with that club were friendly-hostile, to use the term with which he liked to characterize the relations between scientific researchers. He is the last of that generation (unless it is Carl G. Hempel, who, however, (...) sees himself as too young to belong there). The public aspect of Popper’s friendly-hostile relations with his Viennese peers was unfortunately more hostile than friendly. Somehow, philosophers have managed to keep the accounts open for too long. The end of the era is the time to close accounts so as to be able to go on with the job at hand, since the intermingling of personal affairs with objective knowledge is unhealthy. Yet most of the leading heirs of the “ Vienna Circle” still coast around the issues raised by Popper, and so they can neither overlook him nor quote him correctly. If past evidence is reliable here, then this will alter just about now. Is it? (shrink)

A great deal of research has demonstrated that learning is influenced by the learner’s prior background knowledge (e.g. Murphy, 2002; Keil, 1990), but little is known about the processes by which prior knowledge is deployed. We explore the role of explanation in deploying prior knowledge by examining the joint effects of eliciting explanations and providing prior knowledge in a task where each should aid learning. Three hypotheses are considered: that explanation and prior knowledge have independent and additive effects on learning, (...) that their joint effects on learning are subadditive, and that their effects are superadditive. A category learning experiment finds evidence for a superadditive effect: explaining drives the discovery of regularities, while prior knowledge constrains which regularities learners discover. This is consistent with an account of explanation’s effects on learning proposed in Williams & Lombrozo (in press). (shrink)

This book presents and evaluates the understanding of political form in the work of Pierre Manent. The study of political form is Manent's central philosophical task. Manent places himself in the classical political tradition, with its foundations in human nature and in a politics that accords with nature; he also situates himself within a triangle of faith, philosophy, and politics. The book first examines the major influences on Manent; the overarching questions that guide his work on political form, the "theologico-political (...) question" and the question of the "modern difference" with the ancient view of man and politics; and his two intertwined paths of inquiry into political events and political thought. It includes a bibliography and an index. (shrink)

Bruno de Finetti is one of the founding fathers of the subjectivist school of probability, where probabilities are interpreted as rational degrees of belief. His work on the relation between the theorems of probability and rationality is among the corner stones of modern subjective probability theory. De Finetti maintained that rationality requires that degrees of belief be coherent, and he argued that the whole of probability theory could be derived from these coherence conditions. De Finetti’s interpretation of probability has been (...) highly influential in science. This paper focuses on the application of this interpretation to quantum mechanics. We argue that de Finetti held that the coherence conditions of degrees of belief in events depend on their verifiability. Accordingly, the standard coherence conditions of degrees of belief that are familiar from the literature on subjective probability only apply to degrees of belief in events which could be jointly verified; and the coherence conditions of degrees of belief in events that cannot be jointly verified are weaker. While the most obvious explanation of de Finetti’s verificationism is the influence of positivism, we argue that it could be motivated by the radical subjectivist and instrumental nature of probability in his interpretation; for as it turns out, in this interpretation it is difficult to make sense of the idea of coherent degrees of belief in, and accordingly probabilities of unverifiable events. We then consider the application of this interpretation to quantum mechanics, concentrating on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment and Bell’s theorem. (shrink)