In conversation, speakers often felicitously underspecify the content of their speech acts, leaving audiences uncertain about what they mean. This paper discusses how such underspecification and the resulting uncertainty can be used deliberately, and manipulatively, to achieve a range of noncommunicative conversational goals—including minimizing conversational conflict, manufacturing acceptance or perceived agreement, and gaining or bolstering status. I argue that speakers who manipulatively underspecify their speech acts in this way are engaged in a mock speech act that I call _pied piping_. (...) In pied piping, a speaker leaves open a range of interpretations for a speech act while preserving both plausible deniability and plausible assertability; depending on how the audience responds, the speaker can retroactively commit to any of the interpretations left open, and so try to retroactively update the common ground. I go on to develop a model of how pied-piping functions that incorporates game-theoretic elements into the more traditional common-ground framework in order to capture the uncertainty of updating. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical proof for the case against axiomatization.

This essay introduces this special issue on virtue ethics in relation to military AI. It describes the current situation of military AI ethics as following that of AI ethics in general, caught between consequentialism and deontology. Virtue ethics serves as an alternative that can address some of the weaknesses of these dominant forms of ethics. The essay describes how the articles in the issue exemplify the value of virtue-related approaches for these questions, before ending with thoughts for further research.

Der moralische Kontraktualismus scheint als Konzeption einer nicht-konsequentialistischen intergenerationellen Ethik sehr vielversprechend. Eine zentrale theoretische Herausforderung stellt jedoch das Nichtidentitätsproblem dar. Spezifisch ist zu klären, ob zukünftige Personen einen Einwand gegen die Prinzipien unseres Handelns haben, wenn unser Handeln negative Folgen für die Lebensqualität zukünftiger Personen hat, die Existenz der konkreten Personen aber von diesem Handeln abhängt und ihr Leben für sie insgesamt lebenswert ist. Eine prominente Antwort besteht darin, die Einwände zukünftiger Personen “nicht-komparativ” zu verstehen. Ihr Einwand bestehe also (...) nicht darin, dass sie durch unser Handeln schlechter gestellt werden, als sie es andernfalls wären, sondern darin, dass sie dadurch in relevanter Form schlecht dastehen. Es ist bislang unklar, wie genau eine solche Position im Rahmen des moralischen Kontraktualismus aussehen könnte, ob sie eine Lösung des Nichtidentitätsproblems darstellt und ob ihre substanziellen Implikationen überzeugen. Dieser Beitrag prüft daher kritisch die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen eines nicht-komparativen kontraktualistischen Ansatzes. Es wird dafür argumentiert, dass nicht-komparative Einwände mit Bezug auf das Wohlergehen der zukünftigen Personen nicht plausibel sind, solange ihr Leben nicht überwiegend schlecht für sie ist. Der hier diskutierte Ansatz kann für den moralischen Kontraktualismus also höchstens eine Teilantwort auf das Nichtidentitätsproblem darstellen. (shrink)

Empiricist views of depth perception isolate forms of experience with implications for embodied cognitive science, psychoacoustics, and musical performance, including experience of perception in multiple modalities, and experience of bodily movement. Continuity between empiricism and embodied cognitive science suggests that such forms of experience are important for understanding spatial perception in further research. This paper also discusses implications of embodied views of auditory depth perception for spatial aspects of aesthetic experience and musical performance, like “feeling surrounded by sound”.

The work of Michèle Le Dœuff creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The conversations in this book explore how this philosophy can be enacted and explored, and show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking. Introduced and curated by the late philosopher, Pamela Sue Anderson, In (...) Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff explores themes like contemporary feminism, joy in philosophy, memory, the significance of friendship to thinking and a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary. Le Dœuff's interlocutors, including Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Fallaize and Meenda Dhanda, are some of the most significant thinkers in the fields of feminism and continental thought and provide insights and ways into considering philosophy as a profoundly dialogical exercise. (shrink)

In the six books of mus., the only substantial part of his early disciplinary project that survives, Augustine presents an educational ascent from sensible matter to self-knowledge and the knowledge of God through a single arithmetical discipline: music. Much scholarship has expressed doubts concerning the unity of mus. with the preface of mus. 6 (= mus. 6, 1, 1), leading to a view of mus. as a bifurcated work in which mus. 6, 1, 1 represents a later rejection of the (...) disciplinary vision contained in the rest of the mus. and other early works such as ord. My argument to the contrary has four sections. First, I outline the composition history of mus. Second, I provide a brief review of scholarship treating mus. 6, 1, 1 and its relation to the rest of mus. and early works like ord. Third, I argue that the vision of the disciplines in ord. and the rest of mus. is entirely coherent with mus. 6, 1, 1. I conclude by suggesting that recent scholarship has overly emphasized a negative shift in Augustine’s later thought regarding the disciplines. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine that being is the first conception of the intellect is supported by his position that the intellect grasps the more universal or common prior to grasping the less universal or common in an act of confused cognition. John Duns Scotus argues to the contrary that the intellect grasps the less common before the more common or universal in its first acts of confused cognition. This paper engages Scotus’s criticism at Quaestiones De Anima 16 that Aquinas’s main argument (...) in ST I, 85.3 falls into a fallacy. The paper also proposes a solution to Scotus’s charge that Aquinas’s argument falls into a fallacy as well as a line of further inquiry into an ambiguity within the position of Scotus on one of the modes of confused cognition that is key both to his own position and to his critique of Aquinas. (shrink)

This textbook provides an up to date, accessible introductory account of the philosophy of education with a focus on the conceptual and normative questions raised by educational policy and practice. The key concepts explored in this book include learning, teaching, indoctrination, knowledge, equality, intelligence, virtue, and rights. Getting clear on the meanings of these words is vital if we are to explain what we are doing and why as educators. Such conceptual analysis helps us when it comes to the normative (...) questions which have to do with what should or should not be done, educationally speaking. -/- Each chapter firstly examines one key concept which is then connected to a theorised aim of education. The aims considered are rationality (i.e. critical thinking), epistemic, social justice, vocational, flourishing, and political (i.e. citizenship). These aims of education are all hotly debated so their strengths and weaknesses will be considered. Each chapter concludes with a third section connecting the key concept and aim of education under discussion to an applied example. -/- The applied examples include religious schools, attainment gaps in education, the educational impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the curriculum, teaching ethics in schools as a form of moral education, and citizenship education. These applied examples are drawn from vital social and political issues within education. By critically engaging with and then building upon extant literature, this book will demonstrate how conceptual and normative issues within education have real world implications. Such arguments are treated in an analytical philosophical manner and thus engage readers and scholars from philosophy departments and those with a background in education. -/- At the end of each chapter, there will be pedagogical resources designed to support the teacher and the student using this textbook. These include a chapter summary, a list of suggested recommended and further readings and online resources, as well as a list of study and research questions. (shrink)

This paper develops an incomplete information model of extended deterrence relationships. It postulates players who are fully informed about the costs of war and all other relevant variables, save for the values their opponents place on the issues at stake, i.e., the pawn. We provide consistent and intuitively satisfying parallel definitions for two types of players, Hard and Soft, in terms of the parameters of our model. We also answer several particular questions about the strategy choices of players in an (...) extended deterrence relationship and, by identifying all the Perfect Bayesian Equilibria of the game model we construct, specify typical behavior patterns.Our most general finding is that an Extended Deterrence Game always has a unique Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium with a rather simple form. A challenger initiates for certain if the pawn is valuable enough to it and never challenges otherwise, Likewise, a defender always resists if the pawn is valuable enough and never resists otherwise. (shrink)

Study on social consciousness in the works of Malayāḷasvāmi, 1865-1962, philosopher of Vedanta.

Recent experimental work by T.D. Wilson et al. indicates that a consequence of asking subjects to reflect on their attitudes is that they not only reduce the consistency between their attitudes and behavior, but they perform actions which they come to regret. Wilson interprets this work via intra-psychic concepts, and arrives at the conclusion that it is rational to avoid deliberating about a wide range of attitudes and behaviors. This consequence has objectionable implications for philosophical theories of deliberative practical rationality. (...) I respond to this challenge by reinterpreting the experimental results in a way which is not only consistent with a certain theory of deliberative practical rationality but in which the results lend support to that theory. My interpretive focus is on attending closely to the social circumstances of subjects in the experiments[1]. (shrink)

Historical studies suggest that all ideas, including the philosophical, scientific, and religious, are relative to the culture in which they are formulated. After clarifying the concept of relativism, and exploring the epistemological reasons why knowledge is relative, Kaufman argues that these admissions are not fatal to the achievement of valid knowledge in philosophy and theology.--D. D. O.

Ne vers 1180 a Aurillac, mort le 30 mars 1249, Guillaume d'Auvergne est nomme eveque de Paris des 1228. Son oeuvre est contemporaine de la querelle de l'aristotelisme qui gagne la faculte de theologie, et du bouleversement de l'histoire theorique qui l'accompagne. Quelle est la cause efficiente de la pensee? D'ou vient l'intelligible necessairement present dans l'ame qui pense? C'est a cela que repondent les neuf premieres parties du chapitre sept du De anima, ecrit vers 1240. La noetique de Guillaume (...) d'Auvergne, complexe, s'y deploie et sensiblement se demarque de l' augustinisme avicennisant qui traditionnellement la caracterise. L'ame, dans son rapport au sensible, est principium agens, lectrice, en tant qu'elle pense, d'un livre dont elle-meme est l'auteur, et dont la verite se passe en partie de l'illumination divine. (shrink)

MARXISM AND LIBERALISM edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Jeffrey Paul and John Ahrens New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. 223 pp., $14?95 (paper) LIBERALISM by John Gray Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. 106 pp., $9.95 (paper).

Propositions are essentially without form.