Pam is an eighteen-year-old with a history of depression. She has been hospitalized for the past six months for severe weight loss and dehydration. When admitted, she was diagnosed with acute inflammation of the pancreas and gall bladder, but it became clear that these issues were secondary to a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. Her weight upon admission was seventy-six pounds. Pam refuses to accept this diagnosis and will not cooperate with any provider who refers to “anorexia” or attempts to discuss (...) her eating disorder. As a pragmatic strategy for providing care, the medical team has largely avoided referring to anorexia or eating disorders when treating her. But Pam is not the only problem. Pam’s.. (shrink)

"Articulating a fresh vision for teaching, one that focuses on ensuring justice, believing people, and believing in people, this how-to offers evidence-based insights and draws from the author's own rich experiences as a professor to provide practical tips for reshaping syllabi, assessing student performance, and creating trust and belonging in the classroom"-Provided by publisher.

The central characteristic of denials is that they perform a non-monotonic correction operation on discourse structure. A second characteristic is that they may be used to object to various kinds of information including presuppositions and implicatures. In this paper we first use standard DRT to capture these features, implement an earlier proposal of van der Sandt (1991) in DRT and point out a shortcoming of that approach. We then adopt Layered DRT. LDRT is an extension of standard DRT designed to (...) represent and interpret different types of information conveyed in a conversation by distributing them over separate layers of the same LDRS. We will then show how LDRT allows us to solve the problems of the classic monostratal system. The resulting system makes use of a directed reverse anaphora mechanism to locate, remove and negate the material objected to. (shrink)

The scientific community, we hold, often provides society with knowledge—that the HIV virus causes AIDS, that anthropogenic climate change is underway, that the MMR vaccine is safe. Some deny that we have this knowledge, however, and work to undermine it in others. It has been common to refer to such agents as “denialists”. At first glance, then, denialism appears to be a form of skepticism. But while we know that various denialist strategies for suppressing belief are generally effective, little is (...) known about which strategies are most effective. We see this as an important first step toward their remediation. This paper leverages the approximate comparison to various forms of philosophical skepticism to design an experimental test of the efficacy of four broad strategies of denial at suppressing belief in specific scientific claims. Our results suggest that assertive strategies are more effective at suppressing belief than questioning strategies. (shrink)

This paper uses the strengthened liar paradox as a springboard to illuminate two more general topics: i) the negation operator and the speech act of denial among speakers of English and ii) some ways the potential for acceptable language change is constrained by linguistic meaning. The general and special problems interact in reciprocally illuminating ways. The ultimate objective of the paper is, however, less to solve certain problems than to create others, by illustrating how the issues that form the topic (...) of this paper are more intricate than previously realised, and that they are related in delicate and somewhat surprising ways. (shrink)

Climate change has become one of the most pressing problems that can threaten the existence and development of humans around the globe. Almost all climate scientists have agreed that climate change is happening and is caused mainly by greenhouse gas emissions induced by anthropogenic activities. However, some groups still deny this fact or do not believe that climate change results from human activities. This article examines climate change denialism and its skeptical arguments, as well as the roles of scientists and (...) science communication in addressing the issues. Through this article, we call for the active participation of scientists in science communication activities with the public, the initiation of new science communication sectors specified for climate change, and more attention to social sciences and humanities in addressing climate change issues. (shrink)

Understanding transitional justice and dealing with the past as elements of intergenerational justice puts our focus on the establishment of sustainable, peaceful, social relationships among groups or members thereof within an intergenerational polity or society after violent conflicts, such as genocide or other crimes against humanity. However, what if this process is undermined by institutionally supported denialism? This paper addresses the question of the normative importance of genocide recognition negatively, by examining the way in which subsequent genocide denialism might be (...) considered as a perpetuation of injustice against genocide survivors and their descendants. I will argue that genocide denialism can be considered as a continuation of genocidal violence in epistemic form, that is, an epistemic injustice, whereby members of the victim group are negatively discriminated against with regard to their credibility and intelligibility. Institutional genocide denialism, then, does not just prevent societies from dealing with their genocidal past, but in the first instance constitutes renewed humiliation and violation of the epistemic authority of genocide survivors and their descendants, thus becoming an instance of intergenerational injustice. (shrink)

Suppose Alice asserts p, and the Caterpillar wants to disagree. If the Caterpillar accepts classical logic, he has an easy way to indicate this disagreement: he can simply assert ¬p. Sometimes, though, things are not so easy. For example, suppose the Cheshire Cat is a paracompletist who thinks that p ∨ ¬p fails (in familiar (if possibly misleading) language, the Cheshire Cat thinks p is a gap). Then he surely disagrees with Alice's assertion of p, but should himself be unwilling (...) to assert ¬p. So he cannot simply use the classical solution. Dually, suppose the Mad Hatter is a dialetheist who thinks that p ∧ ¬p holds (that is, he thinks p is a glut). Then he may assert ¬p, but it should not be taken to indicate that he disagrees with Alice; he doesn't. So he too can't use the classical solution. The Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter, then, have a common problem, and philosophers with opinions like theirs have adopted a common solution to this problem: appeal to denial. Denial, these philosophers suppose, is a speech act like assertion, but it is not to be understood as in any way reducing to assertion. Importantly, denial is something different from the assertion of a negation; this is what allows it to work even in cases where assertion of negation does not. Just as importantly, denial must express disagreement, since this is the job it's being enlisted to do. (shrink)

Negation, denial and falsity lie at the heart of debates about logic. We set out the classical account of the relationship between negation and denial, owing to Frege and Geach. We then challenge this on the basis that it does not permit an adequate account of falsity. A dialetheic alternative is minuted and criticised before a novel rejectivist account is proposed according to which falsity is the aim of the speech‐act of denial, whilst negation embeds deniability into assertoric contexts.

I discuss Greg Restall’s attempt to generate an account of logical consequence from the incoherence of certain packages of assertions and denials. I take up his justification of the cut rule and argue that, in order to avoid counterexamples to cut, he needs, at least, to introduce a notion of logical form. I then suggest a few problems that will arise for his account if a notion of logical form is assumed. I close by sketching what I take to be (...) the most natural minimal way of distinguishing content and form and suggest further problems arising for this route. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Saying No Will‐to‐Life: Affirmation and Denial A Summary of Schopenhauer's Argument for the Denial of the Will Nietzsche's Projects The Schopenhauerian Basis to Nietzsche's Pessimism Diagnosing Nihilism Diagnosing Asceticism The Appeal of Nietzsche's Values Notes References Further Reading.

This article offers an argument of genocide denial as an injustice perpetrated not only against direct victims and survivors of genocide, but also against future members of the victim group. In particular, I argue that in cases of persistent and systematic denial, i.e. denialism, it perpetrates an epistemic injustice against them: testimonial oppression. First, I offer an account of testimonial oppression and introduce Kristie Dotson’s notion of testimonial smothering as one form of testimonial oppression, a mechanism of coerced silencing particularly (...) pertinent to genocide denialism. Secondly, I turn to the epistemology of genocide denialism and, using the example of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, show how it presents what Linda Martín Alcoff calls a substantive practice of ignorance. Thirdly, I apply these considerations to individual practices of genocide denial and analyse the particular characteristics of testimony on genocide, the speaker vulnerabilities involved and the conditions under which hearers will reliably fail to meet the dependencies of a speaker testifying to genocide. Finally, I explore the harms that testimonial oppression perpetrates on members of the victim group, insofar as it systematically deprives them of epistemic recognition. (shrink)

Sentences containing predicates of personal taste exhibit two striking features: whether they are true seems to lie in the eye of the beholder and whether they are true can be—and often is—subject to disagreement. In the last decade, there has been a lively debate about how to account for these two features. In this paper, I shall argue for two claims: first, I shall show that even the most promising approaches so far offered by proponents of so-called indexical contextualism fail (...) to account for the disagreement feature. They might be able to account for some disagreement data, but they have trouble accounting for two kinds of disagreement data that caused the estrangement from indexical contextualism and the migration to relativism in the first place: the denial and the retraction data. Second, I shall show that we still do not have to abandon indexical contextualism, because what I shall call the superiority approach—a new pragmatically extended version of indexical contextualism—can very well account for the data. (shrink)

Climate science denial is serious. It facilitates political procrastination and brings us ever closer to a world beset by growing food insecurity, heatwaves, floods, storms, fires and extensive los...

I argue that denial plays a central but insufficiently recognized role in addiction. The puzzle inherent in addiction is why drug use persists despite negative consequences. The orthodox conception of addiction resolves this puzzle by appeal to compulsion; but there is increasing evidence that addicts are not compelled to use but retain choice and control over their consumption in many circumstances. Denial offers an alternative explanation: there is no puzzle as to why drug use persists despite negative consequences if these (...) consequences are not straightforwardly known. I describe the nature of the causal knowledge that one's drug use is causing negative consequences; map the conceptual landscape of denial and explain how it can block such knowledge; and explore some of the processes and mechanisms that have been studied by philosophy and the cognitive sciences and which may underpin denial in addiction, including well-established information-processing biases, motivational influences on belief formation and self-deception, and cognitive deficits with respect to insight and self-awareness. I conclude by suggesting that addiction is as much a disorder of cognition as a disorder of conation. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer’s system appears to bethe first one which is concerned with Christian as well as Buddhist saintsand claims that there is an association between them. In recent research,this association has been the source of many special problems,but it actually has never been discussed in general why this association is so important, or why it was necessary for Schopenhauer to relate to Buddhistor Hinduist as well as to Christian saints. Moreover, this issue seems toreveal other (...) problems which are topics in recent discussion. The paper addresses these problems and argues for a descriptive interpretation of Schopenhauer's concept of the denial of the Will-to-live. (shrink)

The analysis of the temporal structure of canonical general relativity and the connected interpretational questions with regard to the role of time within the theory both rest upon the need to respect the fundamentally dual role of the Hamiltonian constraints found within the formalism. Any consistent philosophical approach towards the theory must pay dues to the role of these constraints in both generating dynamics, in the context of phase space, and generating unphysical symmetry transformations, in the context of a hypersurface (...) embedded within a solution. A first denial of time in the terms of a position of reductive temporal relationalism can be shown to be troubled by failure on the first count, and a second denial in the terms of Machian temporal relationalism can be found to be hampered by failure on the second. A third denial of time, consistent with both of the Hamiltonian constraints roles, is constituted by the implementation of a scheme for constructing observables in terms of correlations and leads to a radical Parmenidean timelessness. The motivation for and implications of each of these three denials are investigated. (shrink)

Holocaust denial (HD) is the activity of denying the occurrence of key events and processes which constitute the Holocaust. Should it be tolerated? HD brings into particularly sharp focus many difficult questions faced by defenders of content-neutral liberal principles protecting freedom of expression. I argue that there are insufficient grounds for the legal prohibition of HD, but that society has the right and the duty to expel and exclude deniers from the Academy.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

A comprehensive account of denial viewed not only psychoanalytically but also philosophically.

At least since [Frege, 1960] and [Geach, 1965], there has been some consensus about the relation between negation, the speech act of denial, and the attitude of rejection: a denial, the consensus has had it, is the assertion of a negation, and a rejection is a belief in a negation. Recently, though, there have been notable deviations from this orthodox view. Rejectivists have maintained that negation is to be explained in terms of denial or rejection, rather than vice versa. Some (...) other theorists have maintained that negation is a separate phenomenon from denial, and that neither is to be explained in terms of the other. In this paper, I present and consider these heterodox theories of the relation between negation, denial, and rejection. (shrink)

This paper develops an understanding of climate denial as an expression of alienation in the sense described by Marx. We first argue for an expanded and differentiated conception of climate denial, theorizing four distinct types that go beyond the simple rejection of an anthropogenic warming trend: naturalist denialism, technological denialism, gradualist denialism, and politicized denialism. We then claim that these forms of climate denial illustrate and are illustrative of Marx’s concept of alienation from species-being (Gattungswesen). The article is intended as (...) a contribution to the growing literature on climate denial as a social and ideological problem rather than as an individual epistemic or moral issue. (shrink)

In this paper I urge friends of truth-value gaps and truth-value gluts – proponents of paracomplete and paraconsistent logics – to consider theories not merely as sets of sentences, but as pairs of sets of sentences, or what I call ‘bitheories,’ which keep track not only of what holds according to the theory, but also what fails to hold according to the theory. I explain the connection between bitheories, sequents, and the speech acts of assertion and denial. I illustrate the (...) usefulness of bitheories by showing how they make available a technique for characterising different theories while abstracting away from logical vocabulary such as connectives or quanti- fiers, thereby making theoretical commitments independent of the choice of this or that particular non-classical logic. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

Business ethics denial refers to one of two claims about moral motivation in a business context: that there is no need for it, or that it is impossible. Neither of these radical claims is endorsed by serious theorists in the academic fields that study business ethics. Nevertheless, public commentators, as well as university students, often make claims that seem to imply that they subscribe to some form of business ethics denial. This paper fills a gap by making explicit both the (...) various forms that business ethics denial can take, and the reasons why such views are ultimately implausible. The paper argues that this type of serious engagement with business ethics denial should be an important part of the job description for teachers of business ethics. (shrink)

We cast doubts on the suggestion, recently made by Graham Priest, that glut theorists may express disagreement with the assertion of A by denying A. We show that, if denial is to serve as a means to express disagreement, it must be exclusive, in the sense of being correct only if what is denied is false only. Hence, it can’t be expressed in the glut theorist’s language, essentially for the same reasons why Boolean negation can’t be expressed in such a (...) language either. We then turn to an alternative proposal, recently defended by Beall (in Analysis 73(3):438–445, 2013; Rev Symb Log, 2014), for expressing truth and falsity only, and hence disagreement. According to this, the exclusive semantic status of A, that A is either true or false only, can be conveyed by adding to one’s theory a shrieking rule of the form A & ~A |- \bot, where \bot entails triviality. We argue, however, that the proposal doesn’t work either. The upshot is that glut theorists face a dilemma: they can either express denial, or disagreement, but not both. Along the way, we offer a bilateral logic of exclusive denial for glut theorists—an extension of the logic commonly called LP. (shrink)

Some philosophers consider that some of their colleagues deny that consciousness exists. We shall call the latter ‘deniers’, adopting a term that was initially meant pejoratively. What do the deniers deny? In order to answer this question, we shall examine arguments, both of some deniers and of their critics, and present denialism as a systematic highly non-trivial position that has had some interesting achievements. We will show that the denialist project concerns the epistemology of the mind and specifically of consciousness: (...) what can be known about it, and how it can be known. The main argument of denialism is that first-person reports about the mental realm are not always the best source of information about that realm, and are certainly not reliable. This leads the deniers to realize that the reference and meaning of mental terms as used in standard philosophical literature are vague and call for clarification, and that what many take to be empirical data in the study of the mind are actually heavily laden with theory. Denialism thus makes scientific and philosophical research clearer and more fruitful. (shrink)

Using the taking of the knee by the England men's football team at Euro 2020, this paper looks at political reactions to anti-racist protest. The taking of a knee in other sporting contexts has been met by considerable opprobrium from right-wing politicians and been weaponised as part of a reactionary ‘culture war’ against calls for action to address systemic racial discrimination. This paper offers an analysis of Conservative politicians’ responses to the England players’ actions and to the subsequent negative reactions (...) of fans. After defining soft hate speech and conceptualising booing as a strategy of denial of racism, the analysis reveals three main discursive strategies: delegitimising the players’ protests by linking it to Black Lives Matter; agreeing with the goals of the protests but not the means; and calculated ambivalence towards those who booed. I then show how this allowing of soft hate speech was juxtaposed to a condemnation of hard hate speech. I conclude, firstly, that this relies on a thin understanding of racism as a discursive repertoire rather than as a system of power, and secondly, that the ambivalence towards the booing acted as a gateway for racism. (shrink)

Vioxx and the fear of science -- Vaccines and the great denial -- The organic fetish -- The era of echinacea -- Race and the language of life -- Surfing the exponential.

While a number of empirical studies have appeared on impaired self-awareness (ISA) after traumatic brain injury (TBI) over the last 20 years, the relative role of denial (as a psychological method of coping) has typically not been addressed in these studies. We propose that this failure has limited our understanding of how ISA and denial differentially affect efforts to rehabilitate persons with TBI. In this selective review paper, we summarize early findings in the field and integrate those findings with more (...) recent observations (i.e., 1999–2019). We believe that this synthesis of information and expert clinical opinion will inform future research on ISA and denial as well as approaches to rehabilitation for persons with TBI. (shrink)

Humanity is under siege with Covid-19. Whilst the crisis aggravates, the world is also grappling with yet another challenge - a global misinformation conundrum. This arises from the spread of contagious conspiracy theories that obfuscate understanding the pandemic at best. Incidentally, the conspiracy theories have gone as viral as Covid-19 itself, spreading just as swiftly digitally as the virus does physically. The outcome has been a spectrum of attitudinal patterns, ranging from cynicism and skepticism to outright denialism and fatalism. Using (...) a conversational analysis that is predicated on extant literature and personal insights, the paper examines the import of conspiracy theories as a major complication of the Covid-19 challenge. The paper posits that the theories have produced narratives and attitudinal outcomes that not only misrepresent the pandemic but also complicate its mitigation. (shrink)

Denialism concerning free will and moral responsibility combines, in its minimal form, the rejection of libertarian free will and the rejection of compatibilism. I will address the more ambitiously “happy” or “optimistic” version of denialism, which also claims that we are better off without belief in free will and moral responsibility, and ought to try to radically reform our moral, social and personal lives without such beliefs. I argue that such denialism involves, for various reasons, a dangerous gamble, which it (...) would be morally irresponsible to follow. I conclude by reflecting upon the implications. (shrink)

Starting from the case of insurance claims, I investigate the dynamics of acceptance, rejection and denial. I show that disagreement can be more varied than one might think. I illustrate this by looking at the Warren/Sanders controversy in the 2020 democratic primaries and at religious agnosticism.

In this short paper, I compare and contrast the kind of symmetric treatment of negation favoured in different ways by Huw Price (in “Why ‘Not’?”) and by me (in “Multiple Conclusions”) with Robert Brandom’s analysis of scorekeeping in terms of commitment, entitlement and incompatibility. Both kinds of account are what Brandom calls a normative pragmatics. They are both semantic anti-realist accounts of meaning in the significance of vocabulary is explained in terms of our rule-governed (normative) practice (pragmatics). These accounts differ (...) from intuitionist semantic anti-realism by providing a way to distinguish the inferential significance of “A” and “A is warranted.” Although proof plays a central role, in neither accont is verification the primary bearer of meaning. Our accounts make these distinctions in terms of a subtle analysis of our practices. On the one hand according to Price and me, we assert as well as deny; on the other, Brandom distingushes downstream commitments from upstream entitlements and the notion of incompatibility definable in terms of these. In this paper I will examine a number connections between these different approaches, and end with a discussion of the kind of account of proof that might emerge from these considerations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Since the seventeenth century, scholars have been accusing each other of ‘dogmatism’. But what exactly did this mean? In exploring this question, this article focuses on philosophy and Biblical scholarship in nineteenth-century Germany. Scholars in both of these fields habitually contrasted Dogmatismus with Kritik, to the point of emplotting the history of their field as a gradual triumph of critical thinking over dogmatic belief. The article shows that charges of dogmatism derived much of their rhetorical force from such progressive (...) narratives. Especially neo-Kantian philosophers and Biblical scholars of liberal Protestant persuasion liked to depict their opponents as clinging to long-superseded modes of thought, thereby implying that these colleagues harked back to a past from which modern Wissenschaft had emancipated itself. This ‘denial of coevalness’, as Johannes Fabian calls it, demonstrates to what extent the vice of dogmatism was imbued with normative visions of how the field or, more broadly, German intellectual life should develop. (shrink)

Proponents of “truth-value glut” responses to the paradoxes of self-reference, such as Priest [6, 7] argue that “truth-value gap” analyses of the paradoxes fall foul of the strengthened liar paradox: “this sentence is not true.” If we pay attention to the role of assertion and denial and the behaviour of negation in both “gap” and “glut” analyses, we see that the situation with these approaches has a pleasing symmetry: gap approaches take some denials to fail to be expressible by negation, (...) and glut approaches take some negations to not express denials. But in the light of this symmetry, considerations against a gap view point to parallel considerations against a glut view. Those who find some reason to prefer one view over another (and this is almost everyone) must find some reason to break this symmetry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Denial of PeterRené Girard, Mimetic Desire, and ConversionWilliam E. Cain (bio)Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.—René GirardI believe in commitment … We must be committed to one position and follow it through.—René GirardIn many books and essays throughout his long career, (...) the literary critic and cultural theorist René Girard presented, developed, and extended provocative ideas about, and insights into, mimetic desire. Our desires are not our own, Girard emphasizes; they do not come from within. We form our desires on the desires that we perceive in others; they are our models; we imitate them. Always, we seek to be aligned with the words and deeds of an envied model or, more generally, with those of a dominant group or crowd. [End Page 101]As Girard defines it, desire is extremely potent and controlling. We cannot resist its force, and all too often it propels individuals and societies into rivalry, hatred, and violence. There are descriptions of this formidable power in Sophocles, Shakespeare, and other great writers of the Western tradition, as Girard has demonstrated. But, even more, Girard maintains that we witness the operation, that is, the revelation, of mimetic desire—its origins, its consequences—in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.The temptation and sin of Adam and Eve, the story of Joseph and his brothers, the judgment of Solomon, the story of Job, the crucifixion of Jesus—these are some of Girard's recurring examples. However, the Biblical episode that may have mattered the most to him, one that he invoked repeatedly, is the Denial of St. Peter.The details of this story differ somewhat from one gospel to the next—Girard prefers the version of it in the gospel of Mark—but the core of it is this: At the Last Supper, Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times; Peter swore that he would not, but when the time of testing came, he did. When others confronted him, the fearful Peter, desiring to belong, desperate to be safely within the group, denied that he knew who Jesus was: "I do not know the man you speak of" (Mark 14:71).1Girard's explications of the Denial bring into focus his theory of mimetic desire. His reiterated point about St. Peter is really a point about us—that we are the same as this disciple: We would have betrayed Jesus too. In New Testament studies, some have claimed that "the story about Peter is simply a concretizing of the general denial of all the disciples."2 In our own times of test and trial, we have acted and will act as Peter did.Consider Girard's treatment of the Denial in Le Sacrifice (2003; English trans. 2011).3 The mob that calls for Jesus's death, Girard explains, "is constituted and nourished by swallowing up everything that passes within its reach. It is the black hole of violent mimeticism; where mimeticism is most dense, the mob emerges."4"The major example," he continues, "is that of Peter's denial":Peter cannot help but imitate their hostility. If we psychologize this denial, if we attribute it to the suggestible temperament of the apostle, we seek to prove (unconsciously) that in Peter's place, we would not have denied Jesus. It should be recalled that before his denial Peter, too, vows never to deny Jesus. He is too preoccupied with the opinion others have of him not to blindly adopt the politically correct attitude of the milieu at the center of which he has the misfortune of finding himself.5 [End Page 102] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1."All the actors and witnesses of the crucifixion," Girard concludes, "are already hostile to Jesus or they become so, for mimeticism spares no one."6We cannot resist the influence of the mob: Inevitably we succumb to it. No more than Peter would we have remained steadfast. There is nothing inherent in Peter as an individual that explains why he... (shrink)

Drawing from religion and the human sciences, particularly psychology after Freud, the author attempts to demonstrate that the fear of death is man's central ...

This paper suggests that some climate denialism is bullshit. Those who spread it do not display a proper concern for the truth. This paper also shows that this bullshit is harmful in some significant ways. It undermines the epistemic demands imposed on us by what we care about, by the social roles we occupy, and by morality. It is also harmful because it corrodes epistemic trust.

This article argues that some denialists of Japan’s military sexual slavery are responsible for past epistemic injustices. In the literature on epistemic responsibility, backward- and forward-looki...

In 1997, Rusmir Mahmutćehajić, one of Bosnia’s leading public intellectuals, was scheduled to lecture on Bosnia at Stanford University but was unexpectedly denied an entry visa by American authorities. This book, first published in Bosnia in 1998, is an expanded version of that lecture. It is an indictment of the partition of Bosnia, formalized in 1995 by the Dayton Accord. It is also a plea for Bosnia’s communities to reject ethnic segregation and restore mutual trust. For the first time, English-speaking (...) readers can hear this important voice of dissent from within Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mahmutćehajić argues for the history and reality of a Bosnia-Herzegovina based upon a model of “unity in diversity.” He shows that ethnic and religious cultures have coexisted in Bosnia for centuries. Partitioning of Bosnia, therefore, should have been unthinkable except that a multi-ethnic, multi-faith Bosnia stood squarely in the way of Croatian and Serbian leaders determined to enact their own nationalist programs. The decisive moment came when the international community accepted the Serb-Croat argument that ancient ethnic hatreds were endemic to Bosnia. At that point, ethnic segregation became not only acceptable but desirable. With the complicity of Western powers, Serbs and Croats proceeded to carve out ethnically cleansed states. Mahmutćehajić examines the reasons why Western liberal democracies have regarded with sympathy the struggles of Serbia and Croatia for national recognition, while viewing Bosnia’s multicultural society with suspicion. As one of Bosnia's former political leaders in the early peace talks, he describes with authority how the parties were often physically aligned during formal talks, with Bosniak negotiators on one side of the table and everybody else—Serb, Croat, and international representatives—on the other. In the end, justice was subverted and the final solution justified on the basis of an intractable “conflict of civilizations." Mahmutćehajić confronts the religious dimension of the Bosnian dilemma with refreshing honesty. As a Bosniak committed to interreligious dialogue, he calls for more than simple toleration among Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians. He remembers that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all share the same deity, and it is this common transcendent perspective that should open the door to the acceptance and celebration of religious diversity. Only in this way will Bosnia reclaim its unique civilization. _The Denial of Bosnia_ has dire implications for the future of a Europe searching for a viable post–Cold War order. Will Europe accept ethnic segregation as a solution to the contradictions of ethnic diversity or find a way to protect and build upon this diversity? Bosnia, though currently divided and shaken to its foundations, could become a model for European progress. The greatest danger is for Bosnia to be declared just another ethnoreligious entity, in this case a “Muslim State” ghettoized inside of Europe. If protected and allowed to develop, however, Bosnia too could find a place in the new European order. (shrink)

In his essay “Logical Empiricism”, in the anthology Twentieth Century Philosophy, Professor Feigl writes: “All forms of empiricism agree in repudiating the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge.” Schlick makes the same point even more forcibly: “The empiricism which I represent believes itself to be clear on the point that, as a matter of principle, all propositions are either synthetic a posteriori or tautologous; synthetic a priori propositions seem to it to be a logical impossibility.” The denial of synthetic a (...) prioris is a major thesis of the logical empiricist position, being found in the writings of most of the leaders of the movement. The reason for its importance is fairly clear. It provides a formula on which the empiricists can base their critique of traditional philosophy. To use Ayer's phrase, denial of the synthetic a priori results in “the elimination of metaphysics”. The philosophical tradition to which the empiricists are opposed and whose “metaphysics” they wish to eliminate can be called, somewhat loosely, rationalism. (shrink)

The Ambivalence of Denial: Danger and Appeal of Rituals. Edited by Ute Hüsken and Udo Simon. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016. Pp. 315. €38.

The traditional debate about moral dilemmas concerns whether there are circumstances in which an agent is subject to two obligations that cannot both be fulfilled. Realists maintain there are. Irrealists deny this. Here I defend an alternative, methodologically-oriented position wherein the denial of genuine moral dilemmas functions as a regulative ideal for moral deliberation and practice. That is, moral inquiry and deliberation operate on the implicit assumption that there are no genuine moral dilemmas. This view is superior to both realism (...) and irrealism in accounting for moral residue and other crucial phenomenological dimensions of our experience of moral dilemmas. (shrink)