In this paper I am concerned with the question of whether degrees of belief can figure in reasoning processes that are executed by humans. It is generally accepted that outright beliefs and intentions can be part of reasoning processes, but the role of degrees of belief remains unclear. The literature on subjective Bayesianism, which seems to be the natural place to look for discussions of the role of degrees of belief in reasoning, does not address the question of whether degrees (...) of belief play a role in real agents’ reasoning processes. On the other hand, the philosophical literature on reasoning, which relies much less heavily on idealizing assumptions about reasoners than Bayesianism, is almost exclusively concerned with outright belief. One possible explanation for why no philosopher has yet developed an account of reasoning with degrees of belief is that reasoning with degrees of belief is not possible for humans. In this paper, I will consider three arguments for this claim. I will show why these arguments are flawed, and conclude that, at least as far as these arguments are concerned, it seems like there is no good reason why the topic of reasoning with degrees of belief has received so little attention. (shrink)

Writing philosophy well is an essential skill in our discipline. Philosophical writing must aim for clarity, precision, and rigor, but in doing so, it can often wind up dry, long-winded and boring. It can take many drafts to produce a paper that is suitable for publication in a journal, and many aspiring (and accomplished!) academic philosophers find the process of writing arduous and frustrating. Still, some people make it look easy – if you’ve read anything by Alan Hájek, you’ve probably (...) noticed his breezy style that effortlessly communicates complex ideas in simple terms. His concise and witty prose makes even formal epistemology, a notoriously complicated, math-heavy subject, accessible and engaging to readers. However, while it might look effortless, Hájek’s spirited style is in fact born out of deep and thoughtful engagement with the craft of writing. His motto is: “Work hard for your readers, so that they don’t have to.” Hájek’s approach is decidedly anti-genius: he believes that having good ideas and communicating them well can be taught, and he has devoted considerable energy to helping his graduate students improve their writing. He has written multiple articles about philosophical creativity, as well as an unpublished lengthy manuscript on the mechanics of writing. I have benefited myself from his advice – at least I believe I have, readers may judge for themselves. My aim in this article is to share a few of his insights that I have found most helpful for myself and for my students. I won’t try to summarize all of Hájek’s advice, and I also don’t claim that all of this is totally new. Rather, I will offer a small collection of greatest hits. I will cover eight aspects of philosophical writing, and for each one, I will explain the basic idea, and then discuss some ways of implementing it for oneself and one’s students. (shrink)

Epistemic permissivism is the view that it is possible for two people to rationally hold incompatible attitudes toward some proposition on the basis of one body of evidence. In this paper, I defend a particular version of permissivism – unacknowledged permissivism (UP) – which says that permissivism is true, but that no one can ever rationally believe that she is in a permissive case. I show that counter to what virtually all authors who have discussed UP claim, UP is an (...) attractive view: it is compatible with the intuitive motivations for permissivism and avoids a significant challenge to permissivism: the arbitrariness objection. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive examination of Gottfried Leibniz's views on the nature of agents and their actions. Julia Jorati offers a fresh look at controversial topics including Leibniz's doctrines of teleology, the causation of spontaneous changes within substances, divine concurrence, freedom, and contingency, and also discusses widely neglected issues such as his theories of moral responsibility, control, attributability, and compulsion. Rather than focusing exclusively on human agency, she explores the activities of non-rational substances and the differences between distinctive (...) types of actions, showing how the will, appetitions, and teleology are key to Leibniz's discussions of agency. Her book reveals that Leibniz has a nuanced and compelling philosophy of action which has relevance for present-day discussions of agency. It will be of interest to scholars and students of early modern philosophy as well as to metaphysicians and philosophers of action. (shrink)

Hohwy et al.’s (2008) model of binocular rivalry (BR) is taken as a classic illustration of predictive coding’s explanatory power. I revisit the account and show that it cannot explain the role of reward in BR. I then consider a more recent version of Bayesian model averaging, which recasts the role of reward in (BR) in terms of optimism bias. If we accept this account, however, then we must reconsider our conception of perception. On this latter view, I argue, organisms (...) engage in what amounts to policy-driven, motivated perception. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that neo-Hobbesian contractarianism cannot yield direct moral standing for marginal humans and animals. However, it has been argued that marginal humans and animals can have a form of direct moral standing under neo-Hobbesian contractarianism: secondary moral standing. I will argue that, even if such standing is direct, this account is unsatisfactory because it is counterintuitive and fragile.

The concept of imagination is notoriously ambiguous. Thus one must be cautious not to use ‘imagination’ as a placeholder for diverse phenomena and processes that perhaps have not much more in common than that they are difficult to assign to some other, better defined domain, such as perception, conceptual thought, or artistic production. However, this challenge also comes with great opportunities: the fecundity and openness of ‘imagination’ appeal to researchers from different disciplines with different approaches and questions, and it draws (...) together fields of enquiry that are initially considered far apart. Hence, arguably, the field of imagination is particularly poised for interdisciplinary enquiry. In the section on Imagination in Interdisciplinary Research, I will talk about some of the issues that have already entered that field of interdisciplinary inquiry. (shrink)

Summary Linus Pauling played a key role in creating valence-bond theory, one of two competing theories of the chemical bond that appeared in the first half of the 20th century. While the chemical community preferred his theory over molecular-orbital theory for a number of years, valence-bond theory began to fall into disuse during the 1950s. This shift in the chemical community's perception of Pauling's theory motivated Pauling to defend the theory, and he did so in a peculiar way. Rather than (...) publishing a defence of the full theory in leading journals of the day, Pauling published a defence of a particular model of the double bond predicted by the theory in a revised edition of his famous textbook, The Nature of the Chemical Bond. This paper explores that peculiar choice by considering both the circumstances that brought about the defence and the mathematical apparatus Pauling employed, using new discoveries from the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers archive. (shrink)

Special Issue, n. I, ch. 1, On the Transcendental.

This article examines why firms engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Specifically, it investigates the relationship between a firm's motivation to engage in CSR and the depth of its commitment. I propose that the enduring debate over CSR and financial performance is misaligned, and that scholars should instead focus on the underlying components of CSR engagement. This research sheds light on the motivational antecedents of a firm's engagement in CSR and their effect on CSR commitment. Despite calls for scientific investigation (...) of this linkage, it has received scant attention in the literature. Pursuing this area of research requires the construction of measures of CSR motivation and CSR commitment, as prior work generally lacks objective analysis. I present measures and a research methodology that test hypotheses about how CSR motivation relates to different levels of CSR commitment. The results of this research both validate and challenge current theory. This refined understanding of CSR engagement may enhance firm transparency and accountability to stakeholders. It may reduce the uncertainty in both internal and external assessments of firm CSR and the potential for social and financial impact. (shrink)

I describe a suite of reinforcement learning environments in which artificial agents learn to value and respond to moral content and contexts. I illustrate the core principles of the framework by characterizing one such environment, or “gridworld,” in which an agent learns to trade-off between monetary profit and fair dealing, as applied in a standard behavioral economic paradigm. I then highlight the core technical and philosophical advantages of the learning approach for modeling moral cognition, and for addressing the so-called value (...) alignment problem in AI. (shrink)

I will then uphold that new political actors are incarnating and realizing this refoundation of humanism which the globalized world direly needs. I take as examples two of these experiences which cruelly lack a means of expression in today’s codes of humanism: adolescents in want of ideals and maternal passion at the cross-roads of biology and meaning. At these crossroads of body and meaning, of biology and sublimation it is perhaps dance more than other trans-linguistic experience that informs and accompanies (...) the process of transhumanisation as it counters the crisis and exceeds the impending threat of apocalypse. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher’s account of scientific realism in 'The Advancement of Science' (AS) differs from his account in 'Science, Truth and Democracy' (STD). We demonstrate that (1) contrary to appearance, Kitcher in AS proposes a so-called Kantian realism that is accompanied not by a correspondence theory, but by a hybrid conception of truth. (2) Also, we point out that Kitcher does not pertain to the “promiscuous realism” proposed in STD stringently, but falls back on his Kantian realism of AS at points. (...) Here, we question Kitcher’s claim that his promiscuous-realist conception stems initially from commonsensical be-liefs. (shrink)

O presente estudo investigou os fatores que influenciam a ocorrência do aleitamento materno exclusivo e a sua interrupção precoce, e os aspectos emocionais envolvidos nestesprocessos. Participaram do estudo 3 mães primíparas com bebês com até 18 meses de idade que diferiam noperíodo de manutenção ..

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 16 Heft: 1 Seiten: 65-88.

Allusions to a cosmogony contained in a Vedic hymn present striking analogies to a cosmogony attributed to the Pythagoreans by Aristotle, Simplicius and Stobaeus. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the extent to which they are similar and to which their differences respond to different cultural premises.

A consideration of Confucian ethics as a living ethical tradition with contemporary relevance.

En What Emotions Really Are y en otros artículos, Griffiths afirma que las clases naturales de los organismos vivos en Biología son cladistas. La afirmación está inmersa en una nueva teoría acerca de las clases naturales. En este trabajo examinaré los argumentos esgrimidos por Griffiths para sostener el estatus privilegiado de las clasificaciones cladistas frente a otras clasificaciones. No se discutirá la teoría de las clases naturales ofrecida, de cuyos méritos no dudo, sino su capacidad para ofrecer una solución en (...) la cuestión particular de qué sistema de clasificación de organismos debería utilizarse en Biología. In What emotions really are and in other papers Griffiths states that in Biology, natural classes ofliving organisms are clades. This assertion is made within the bounds of a new theory of natural classes. In this paper I wiIl consider the arguments employed by Griffiths to support the privileged status of the cladistic classification over other classifications. It is not Griffith's theory of natural classes what will be discussed, but his ability to offer a solution to the particular issue ofwhich classification system of organisms should be used in Biology. (shrink)

Es escasa la investigación sobre las competencias necesarias para educar eficazmente en los primeros años de vida, y sobre los factores que influyen en la adquisición de una identidad docente de calidad para trabajar en Educación Infantil (EI). Los resultados de la presente revisión integradora apuntan que (1) el profesorado excelente de EI atiende a la diversidad de su alumnado, (2) las comunidades de práctica contribuyen a la adquisición de una identidad docente excelente, y (3) ciertas deficiencias en los programas (...) de formación docente y determinados factores contextuales obstaculizan un desempeño docente excelente. (shrink)

This paper investigates a novel question about the relationship between belief and deliberation: Is it ever rationally permissible to believe an answer to a question Q prior to concluding one’s deliberation about Q? This question differs from a more commonly discussed one, insofar as it asks about the rationality of believing that p before settling on p as the answer to some question Q. By contrast, recent literature in this area has focused on whether it can ever be rational to (...) keep inquiring into a question after one has adopted a belief that answers it. I argue that it is possible for rational agents to hold beliefs of a certain kind, namely transitional beliefs, prior to settling on an answer to a question. Developing the argument for this view can help us better understand the nature of belief and its relation to inquiry and deliberation. In particular, it follows that many common claims about what beliefs are don’t identify important features of belief itself, but of attitudes that are held as conclusions of deliberations more generally. Further, the view has the surprising consequence that it is typically beneficial to have transitional beliefs that are epistemically akratic. (shrink)

Black activists made extremely compelling arguments for slavery reparations in Massachusetts 250 years ago. They demanded reparations in the form of cash payments, land, or tax exemption, as compensation for the labor that was stolen from them, their pain and suffering, and to make up for the lack of generational wealth and equal opportunities of Black and multiracial families. Their arguments, and the arguments of many others who continued the fight for reparations, have not yet convinced the government. Nevertheless, those (...) who support reparations for slavery today can learn a lot from these courageous people and their strategies. Indeed, present-day activists can use the fact that there were already demands for reparations in the 1770s to support their argument that the city of Boston, or other political entities, should pay reparations now. And even those who oppose reparations should be aware of the long and fascinating history of pro-reparations activism. (shrink)

Kaum ein anderes semantisches Feld durchzieht Platons Werk von den ersten Dialogen an bis zum Spätwerk so prägend und zugleich so spannungsreich wie das der Mimesis. Von der Sprachphilosophie über die Ästhetik und Moralpsychologie bis hin zur Metaphysik, Kosmologie und Theologie: in erstaunlich vielen Themenbereichen gewinnt die Semantik der Mimesis bei Platon hohe Relevanz. Der Tagungsband „Platonic Mimesis Revisited“ bietet eine umfassende und kontextsensible Neubetrachtung der Mimesis in allen einschlägigen Dialogen. Anders als frühere monographische Behandlungen des Themas vereint er eine (...) bedeutende Auswahl wissenschaftlicher Perspektiven aus Philosophie und Philologie und gibt so einen breiten Einblick in moderne Forschungsansätze.Mit Beiträgen vonMichele Abbate, Alexandra V. Alván Leon, Laura Candiotto, Andrea Capra, Elenio Cicchini, Michael Erler, Francesco Fronterotta, José Antonio Giménez Salinas, Stephen Halliwell, Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Lidia Palumbo, Anna Pavani, Julia Pfefferkorn, Antonino Spinelli, Benedikt Strobel und Justin Vlasits. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s On Certainty has been a source of inspiration for philosophers concerned with the notion of deep disagreement (see Fogelin in Informal Logic 25(1):3–11, 2005; Pritchard in Topoi 40:1117–1125, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9612-y ). While Wittgenstein’s examples of certainties do not include moral certainties, some philosophers have argued that an analogy can be drawn between certainty regarding the empirical world and moral certainty (Goodman in Metaphilosophy 13:138–148,1982; Hermann in On moral certainty, justification, and practice: A Wittgensteinian perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2015; Pleasants (...) in Inquiry 51(3):241–267, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201740802120673 ). Moral certainty manifests itself in our fundamental ways of feeling, thinking, and acting morally. It is closely related to an “agreement in form of life” (Wittgenstein in Philosophical investigations, Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Third ed., Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1968, § 241.), which makes moral disagreements possible in the first place. In this paper, I aim to shed light on the phenomenon of moral deep disagreement by relating it not only to the notion of moral certainty but also to the concept of deep disruption as it is currently developed and discussed in the philosophy of technology. I argue that certainty, deep disagreement, and deep disruption are all located at the level of “bedrock practices” (Williams in Wittgenstein, mind and meaning, Routledge, Milton Park, 1999, p. 198), and that the fundamentality of their objects should be understood in terms of relationality and interconnectedness. Deep disagreements can occur through deep technology-induced disruption and can take the form of a disruption of deep conceptual agreement. Conceptual common ground can be re-established by continuous interaction and a collective process of moral articulation. Deep disruption and moral deep disagreement can lead to moral progress, for instance in the form of recognising and correcting an epistemic injustice. (shrink)

This book examines cultural recognition and the struggle for identity in America's schools. In particular, the contributing authors focus on the recognition and misrecognition as antagonistic cultural forces that work to shape, and at times distort identity.

In the original publication of the article.

One of the assumptions that impregnate academic discourse, even that of social scientists committed to the re-incorporation of their disciplines, is its extra-corporeal character. This article analyzes the scholastic construction of producing and perceiving oral, written or silent discourses as non-corporeal acts. First, it argues that there is a certain continuity between monastic rituals that build the spirit as something different from and higher than the body and academic rituals that train people to place the source of discourse in the (...) mind. Second, it explores how the separation of discourse from the discourse-producing body is currently built and reproduced through participation in university and academic rituals. It holds that such participation installs in the bodies of academics an identification with the habit of producing discourses. Finally, it suggests that the fact that attempts to re-incorporate body to social life are performed by academics who have been trained in disembodying their discourses conditions the results of such attempts. (shrink)

Bilder in Kunst und Wissenschaft sind Orte des Denkens und Forschens.