Pub Date : 2023-09-24DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2023.2248410
Dylan B. Futter
AbstractIn its attempt to deflate of the pretensions of ‘Western knowledge’, the epistemic decolonisation movement carries on the work of Socrates, who sought to persuade those who thought that they were wise but were not, that they were not. Yet in its determination to recover and elevate indigenous systems of thought, decolonisation seems opposed to this very work, which is always corrosive of inherited belief. Decolonisation both expresses and contradicts the spirit of Socratic philosophy. Notes1 Matolino Citation2020, p. 215.2 I sometimes use the term ‘decolonisation’ as shorthand for ‘the decolonisation movement’ and cognate phrases; context will make this clear. On the wrongs of colonialism, see, for example, Pillay Citation2015 and Matolino Citation2020, p. 213.3 On epistemicide, see Grosfoguel Citation2013 and Tobi Citation2020. See also Táíwò Citation2019, pp. 141–142 and, more generally, Valentini Citation2015.4 See wa Thiong’o Citation1986; Hountondji Citation1995; and Táíwò Citation2019. See also Wiredu Citation1998, pp. 17 and 22.5 Mitova Citation2020, p. 191. See also Mbembe Citation2015 and Etieyibo Citation2016.6 wa Thiong’o Citation1986, p. 87, as paraphrased by Mbembe Citation2015.7 Plato, Apology of Socrates, 38a and passim.8 Plato, Republic, book VII, 537e ff. For more on the relationship between inquiry and detachment, see section 6. On the conflict between philosophy and traditional belief, see also Oruka Citation1990, p. 44.9 This account is compatible with the analysis of Tobi Citation2020, pp. 259 ff.10 Cf. Táíwò Citation2019, p. 149.11 Matolino Citation2020, p. 221. I use the term ‘intellectual’ to mean ‘relating to ideas’ in the sense defined in the text.12 See Wiredu Citation2002, p. 58 and Ramose Citation2016. For Wiredu, decolonisation means ‘divesting African philosophical thinking of all undue influences emanating from our colonial past’ (Citation1998, p. 17).13 See Emmanuel Citation2019, pp. 1–3. I do not take a position on the merits of free trade or protectionism in economics.14 Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder, 22, and Nasr Citation1968.15 Emmanuel Citation2019, pp. 3 and 14.16 See Wiredu Citation2002, pp. 17 and 20. See also Etieyibo 2016, pp. 404–405.17 I do not claim that African philosophy is to be identified with traditional belief, only that it must begin with this. As Wiredu puts the point, decolonisation seeks to recover an African ‘philosophic inheritance in its true lineaments’ (Citation2002, p. 58); he speaks also of bringing ‘oneself to a vantage point for viewing African thought materials in their true light’ (ibid.). Cf. also Wiredu Citation1984, p. 34 and Eze Citation2001, p. 207. To be sure, the difficulty of reconciling a historical account of intellectual ownership with the demand for philosophical self-examination is a primary concern of this paper.18 See Wiredu Citation2002, p. 17.19 See Ndlovu-Gatsheni Citation2017, p. 51. Similarly, Eze remarks that ‘[t]heories … should be able to flow fro
在试图消除“西方知识”的自命不凡的过程中，认识论的去殖民化运动继承了苏格拉底的工作，苏格拉底试图说服那些认为自己聪明但实际上并不聪明的人，他们其实并不聪明。然而，在恢复和提升本土思想体系的决心中，非殖民化似乎与这项工作背道而驰，因为它总是会腐蚀传统的信仰。非殖民化既表达了苏格拉底哲学的精神，又与之相矛盾。注1 Matolino Citation2020，第215.2页。我有时使用“去殖民化”一词作为“去殖民化运动”和相关短语的简称;背景会让你明白这一点。关于殖民主义的错误，参见Pillay Citation2015和Matolino Citation2020，第213.3页。关于知识灭绝，参见Grosfoguel Citation2013和Tobi Citation2020。参见Táíwò Citation2019, pp. 141-142，以及更普遍的Valentini Citation2015.4参见wa Thiong 'o Citation1986;Hountondji Citation1995;和Táíwò Citation2019。参见Wiredu Citation1998，第17和22.5页。Mitova Citation2020，第191页。参见Mbembe Citation2015和Etieyibo Citation2016.6和Thiong 'o Citation1986, p. 87，由Mbembe Citation2015.7改写，柏拉图，苏格拉底的道歉，38a和passim8柏拉图，《理想国》第七卷，537页后。更多关于询问和超然的关系，见第6节。关于哲学与传统信仰之间的冲突，也见Oruka Citation1990，第44.9页。这种说法与Tobi Citation2020, pp. 259 off .10的分析是一致的参见Táíwò Citation2019, p. 149.11。Matolino Citation2020, p. 221。我使用“知识分子”一词是指在文中定义的意义上的“与思想有关”参见Wiredu Citation2002，第58页和Ramose Citation2016。对Wiredu来说，去殖民化意味着“摆脱非洲哲学思想中源自我们殖民历史的所有不当影响”(Citation1998，第17页)参见《Emmanuel Citation2019》第1-3页。在经济学上，我对自由贸易或保护主义的优点不持立场普鲁塔克，《老卡托的一生》，22，和Nasr Citation1968.15。Emmanuel Citation2019，第3和14.16页。参见Wiredu Citation2002，第17和20页。也见Etieyibo 2016, pp. 404-405.17。我并不是说非洲哲学要等同于传统信仰，只是说它必须从传统信仰开始。正如Wiredu所指出的那样，去殖民化寻求恢复非洲“真实面貌的哲学遗产”(Citation2002，第58页);他还谈到了“把自己带到一个有利的位置，以观察非洲思想材料的真实面貌”(同上)。参见Wiredu Citation1984，第34页和Eze Citation2001，第207页。可以肯定的是，调和知识所有权的历史叙述与哲学自我反省的要求的困难是本文的主要关注点见Wiredu Citation2002，第17.19页。见Ndlovu-Gatsheni Citation2017，第51页。同样，Eze评论说“理论……应该能够从一个地方流向另一个地方，正是因为没有一种文化或探究传统垄断了知识的生产”(Citation2001, p. 209)。再比较一下Wiredu的说法，即“当代非洲哲学家有责任在公共信仰之下进行深入研究，尽可能地找到其潜在的原因”(Wiredu Citation2002, p. 26)《Emmanuel Citation2019》第4页。另见Etieyibo 2016和Matolino Citation2020，第213页。法农的作品，试图“将黑人从殖民环境中萌芽的复杂武器库中解放出来”(Citation2008, p. 14)，当然是具有开创性的Wiredu Citation2002, p. 22.22;引文2002，第56页。关于Wiredu关于非殖民化立场的详细讨论，见Futter Citation2023.23。见Wiredu Citation2002，第54和58页。另见Wiredu Citation2004，第4.24页根据Emmanuel的说法，在Wiredu的叙述中“没有仅仅因为非洲的起源就给予非洲思想特权”(同上，第8页)。我不相信这是真的，因为文本中给出了原因。当然，Wiredu致力于在非洲思想被挖掘出来之后对其进行批判性评价，详见下文第6节。另见Hountondji Citation1995.25 Wiredu 1996, p. 136.26如上所述，在我看来，非殖民化致力于将非洲哲学描述为民族哲学。当然，这意味着不同的(见Agada Citation2020)关于民族哲学的恢复和重新定义，以回应Paulin Hountondji的著名批评，见Hallen Citation2010.27但见Eze Citation2001.28根据普鲁塔克，卡托认为苏格拉底是“作为一个强大的喋喋不休的人，他试图尽其所能，通过废除其国家的习俗，成为他国家的暴君，并通过引诱他的同胞们发表与法律相悖的意见”(《老加图的生平》，23)Ndlovu-Gatsheni Citation2017，第51.30页参见Lear Citation2003.31 Cf. Táíwò Citation1998，第4页。 参见柏拉图，《斐多篇》65d-66a和《理想国》514a-517c和wa Thiong 'o Citation1986, p. 87.33 Wiredu Citation1998, p. 20.34我在本节稍后讨论了主张祖先方法的想法这些问题，稍微重新定义一下，借用自Wiredu Citation1998，第23页。在理论和论证的层面上也可以提出类似的问题参见Wiredu Citation2002, p. 61.37参见Wiredu Citation1984, p. 33.38关于这一点的进一步讨论，参见Futter Citation2016a.39参见Metz Citation2007和Ramose Citation2007。参见Futter Citation2016b.40参见Hadot Citation1995;Hadot Citation1995, p. 73.42 Cf. Hountondji Citation1970, p. 122.43我在这里绕过哲学普遍论者和特殊论者之间的争论。参见Eze Citation2001和Jones Citation2001和Matolino Citation2015的回应。再比较一下Hountondji的主张:“如果哲学必须算作哲学，那么任何地方的哲学都必须带有批判性和分析性的印记(引自《Agada Citation2020》，第7页)。李尔引文，199
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2023.2231652
R. Timms, D. Spurrett
Abstract Most accounts of cognitive scaffolding focus on ways that external structure can support or augment an agent’s cognitive capacities. We call cases where the interests of the user are served benign scaffolding and argue for the possibility and reality of hostile scaffolding. This is scaffolding which depends on the same capacities of an agent to make cognitive use of external structure as in benign cases, but which undermines or exploits the user while serving the interests of another agent. We develop criteria for scaffolding being hostile and show by reference to examples including the design features of electronic gambling machines and casino management systems that hostile scaffolding exists and can be highly effective. In cases where the scaffolding is deep and permits the offloading of significant cognitive work, hostile scaffolding exploitatively manipulates cognitive processing itself. Given the extent of human reliance on scaffolding this is an important and neglected vulnerability.
{"title":"Hostile Scaffolding","authors":"R. Timms, D. Spurrett","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2231652","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2231652","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Most accounts of cognitive scaffolding focus on ways that external structure can support or augment an agent’s cognitive capacities. We call cases where the interests of the user are served benign scaffolding and argue for the possibility and reality of hostile scaffolding. This is scaffolding which depends on the same capacities of an agent to make cognitive use of external structure as in benign cases, but which undermines or exploits the user while serving the interests of another agent. We develop criteria for scaffolding being hostile and show by reference to examples including the design features of electronic gambling machines and casino management systems that hostile scaffolding exists and can be highly effective. In cases where the scaffolding is deep and permits the offloading of significant cognitive work, hostile scaffolding exploitatively manipulates cognitive processing itself. Given the extent of human reliance on scaffolding this is an important and neglected vulnerability.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"52 1","pages":"53 - 82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45493338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2023.2221975
A. Ajah
Joseph Agbakoba’s Development and Modernity in Africa is at once courageous, deeply self-reflexive, epochal, and thoroughly awakening. It achieves a foundational representation and reconstruction of human agency in traditional Africa to guide contemporary Africa. This huge achievement is anchored on two main features that run throughout the text. One is that it refocuses Africans’ attention on themselves as the primary agents of every bit of their historical experiences—past, present, and the future. The other is that it highlights a connection among Africans’ existential concerns, epistemic concerns and creativity, and lingering epistemic orientation. These drive knowledge generation and research agenda on the continent. The book therefore qualifies as a mirror for self-understanding by Africans—about themselves, their actions, and what they have made or can make of themselves and context. The book contains an elaborate Introduction and seven tightly argued chapters. Chapters 1 to 3 focus on conceptual clarifications and philosophical analyses of concepts. Chapters 4 to 6 are a historical presentation of and hermeneutic engagement with facts and fictions. Chapter 7 is a reconstructive project. There, Agbakoba highlights how to improve trans-cultural, complementary, and just understanding of Africa’s possible self-improvement today and in the future. In this book, which for now qualifies as his magnum opus, Agbakoba responds to several burning issues in African studies generally and philosophy in Africa, in particular. For each issue, Agbakoba highlights paths to improved human agency and development in Africa. By doing this, he weakens the lure of old and new scholarly trends that sustain irresponsibility and blame-gaming on the continent. The most recent of such trends is the search for what is described as decolonization. Four of the issues he responded to stand out. They are closely related, but I will try to keep them separate. First is the lingering question of Africans’ contributions to and degree of culpability for their past and present predicaments, and development crises. Agbakoba explains that transatlantic slavery would not have Philosophical Papers
Joseph Agbakoba的《非洲的发展与现代性》是一部勇敢的、深刻的自我反思的、划时代的、彻底觉醒的作品。它实现了人类在传统非洲的基本代表和重建，以指导当代非洲。这一巨大成就是基于贯穿全文的两个主要特点。一个是，它将非洲人的注意力重新集中在他们自己身上，他们是过去、现在和未来每一段历史经历的主要推动者。另一个是，它强调了非洲人的生存关切、认识关切和创造力以及挥之不去的认识取向之间的联系。这些推动了非洲大陆的知识生成和研究议程。因此，这本书可以作为非洲人自我理解的一面镜子——关于他们自己、他们的行为，以及他们已经或可以对自己和环境做出什么。这本书包含了一个详尽的引言和七个争论不休的章节。第1章至第3章侧重于概念澄清和概念的哲学分析。第4章至第6章是对事实和虚构的历史呈现和解释学介入。第7章是一个重建项目。在那里，阿格巴科巴强调了如何提高对非洲今天和未来可能的自我完善的跨文化、互补和公正的理解。在这本目前被视为其代表作的书中，阿格巴科巴回应了非洲研究中的几个热点问题，尤其是非洲哲学。对于每一个问题，阿格巴科巴都强调了改善非洲人力资源和发展的途径。通过这样做，他削弱了新旧学术趋势的诱惑，这些趋势维持着欧洲大陆的不负责任和指责游戏。最近的这种趋势是寻求所谓的非殖民化。他回应的四个问题非常突出。他们关系密切，但我会尽量把他们分开。首先是非洲人对其过去和现在的困境以及发展危机的贡献和罪责程度这一挥之不去的问题。阿格巴科巴解释说，跨大西洋奴隶制不会有哲学论文
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2023.2237695
Yuval Eytan
Abstract Many consider Hobbes the father of political individualism, claiming that his new conception of happiness involved abandoning its metaphysical dimension, which had been central in ancient times and in the Middle Ages. Highlighting previous commentators’ inattention to the link between scientific knowledge and happiness in Hobbes’s thought, I demonstrate the inaccuracy of considering him the founder of a new ideal of happiness grounded in individual experience. Hobbes adopts the ancient principle that man’s happiness is necessarily conditional upon his submission to a normative system derived from the truth regarding his nature. His originality lies in an innovative understanding of human nature and scientific truth. This article suggests that progress in a person’s life, which is possible only in the realm of pleasures of the mind, is an objective element of Hobbes’s notion of happiness, which derives from his definition of humans as rational and curious beings. Leaving the state of nature freed man from the misery that results from constant war and the horror of violent death that accompanied it, but not from the misery whose source is ignorance regarding the purpose of life.
{"title":"Hobbes On Scientific Happiness","authors":"Yuval Eytan","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2237695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2237695","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Many consider Hobbes the father of political individualism, claiming that his new conception of happiness involved abandoning its metaphysical dimension, which had been central in ancient times and in the Middle Ages. Highlighting previous commentators’ inattention to the link between scientific knowledge and happiness in Hobbes’s thought, I demonstrate the inaccuracy of considering him the founder of a new ideal of happiness grounded in individual experience. Hobbes adopts the ancient principle that man’s happiness is necessarily conditional upon his submission to a normative system derived from the truth regarding his nature. His originality lies in an innovative understanding of human nature and scientific truth. This article suggests that progress in a person’s life, which is possible only in the realm of pleasures of the mind, is an objective element of Hobbes’s notion of happiness, which derives from his definition of humans as rational and curious beings. Leaving the state of nature freed man from the misery that results from constant war and the horror of violent death that accompanied it, but not from the misery whose source is ignorance regarding the purpose of life.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"52 1","pages":"1 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47589441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2023.2174898
F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo
Much of what is taught in the discipline of philosophy in most universities in African countries is European philosophy. This is the reality that Thaddeus Metz met when he moved to South Africa in 1999. The moral philosophy that was taught to students at the University of Witwatersrand did not stem from the local intellectual tradition. Metz took it upon himself to read and engage with scholars about indigenous Africa with a view to seeing what contributions sub-Saharan cultures could make to contemporary debates on the study of moral philosophy. His concern was that sub-Saharan ethical philosophy had been unjustly neglected around the world. In the text, he outlines the sub-Saharan communal ethic and goes on to make the claim that African tradition grounds a moral theory that is actually more attractive than the dominant modern Western moral theories. A Relational Moral Theory consists of parts of Metz’s previously published journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries that he has reviewed and revised, and put together as a monograph. Most texts which normally consist of revised and updated pieces previously published usually come out as a patchwork of edited pieces lacking a seamless unity. In his text, Metz carefully puts together the revised previously published pieces into a coherent thesis with a smooth flow. The book consists of an introductory chapter and twelve other chapters. It is divided into three broad parts, reflecting the three branches of the arm of knowledge that deals with moral principles—ethics. Part I is located within the branch of meta-ethics and is subtitled ‘African Ethics Without a Metaphysical Gound’. Part II finds grounding in the domain of normative ethics and is subtitled ‘Communality as the Ground of African Morality’. Part III is situated within the branch of applied ethics and is subtitled ‘Communality as the Ground of Morality Simpliciter’. Part I of the book is largely methodological and consists of two chapters, Chapters 2 and 3. In these, the author outlines the method he uses; this method is important in that it runs through the rest of the book. Chapter 2 justifies the author’s favored moral theory. In the chapter, the author outlines and then dismisses the moral claims of some renowned Philosophical Papers
{"title":"A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and beyond the Continent","authors":"F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2174898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2174898","url":null,"abstract":"Much of what is taught in the discipline of philosophy in most universities in African countries is European philosophy. This is the reality that Thaddeus Metz met when he moved to South Africa in 1999. The moral philosophy that was taught to students at the University of Witwatersrand did not stem from the local intellectual tradition. Metz took it upon himself to read and engage with scholars about indigenous Africa with a view to seeing what contributions sub-Saharan cultures could make to contemporary debates on the study of moral philosophy. His concern was that sub-Saharan ethical philosophy had been unjustly neglected around the world. In the text, he outlines the sub-Saharan communal ethic and goes on to make the claim that African tradition grounds a moral theory that is actually more attractive than the dominant modern Western moral theories. A Relational Moral Theory consists of parts of Metz’s previously published journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries that he has reviewed and revised, and put together as a monograph. Most texts which normally consist of revised and updated pieces previously published usually come out as a patchwork of edited pieces lacking a seamless unity. In his text, Metz carefully puts together the revised previously published pieces into a coherent thesis with a smooth flow. The book consists of an introductory chapter and twelve other chapters. It is divided into three broad parts, reflecting the three branches of the arm of knowledge that deals with moral principles—ethics. Part I is located within the branch of meta-ethics and is subtitled ‘African Ethics Without a Metaphysical Gound’. Part II finds grounding in the domain of normative ethics and is subtitled ‘Communality as the Ground of African Morality’. Part III is situated within the branch of applied ethics and is subtitled ‘Communality as the Ground of Morality Simpliciter’. Part I of the book is largely methodological and consists of two chapters, Chapters 2 and 3. In these, the author outlines the method he uses; this method is important in that it runs through the rest of the book. Chapter 2 justifies the author’s favored moral theory. In the chapter, the author outlines and then dismisses the moral claims of some renowned Philosophical Papers","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"477 - 481"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46218320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2023.2209292
P. Torek
Abstract I outline a heretofore neglected difference between manipulation scenarios and merely deterministic ones. Plausible scientific determinism does not imply that the relevant prior history of the universe is independent of us, while manipulation does. Owing to sensitive dependence of physical outcomes upon initial conditions, in order to trace a deterministic history, a microphysical level of analysis is required. But on this level physical laws are time-symmetrically deterministic, and causality, conceived asymmetrically, disappears. I then consider a revised scenario to resurrect the threat of manipulation even in the presence of time-symmetry and sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. To do so we posit a Designer-manipulator containing all the information of the manipulated and time-symmetrically related to him. The new scenario violates special relativity, but even waiving that objection, the scenario cannot meet its requirements. I argue that the Designer lacks agency enough to manipulate the target, both because her information lacks the robustness required to constitute knowledge of what she does, and because it leaves no room for desires for specific results.
{"title":"How Manipulation Arguments Mischaracterize Determinism","authors":"P. Torek","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2209292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2209292","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I outline a heretofore neglected difference between manipulation scenarios and merely deterministic ones. Plausible scientific determinism does not imply that the relevant prior history of the universe is independent of us, while manipulation does. Owing to sensitive dependence of physical outcomes upon initial conditions, in order to trace a deterministic history, a microphysical level of analysis is required. But on this level physical laws are time-symmetrically deterministic, and causality, conceived asymmetrically, disappears. I then consider a revised scenario to resurrect the threat of manipulation even in the presence of time-symmetry and sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. To do so we posit a Designer-manipulator containing all the information of the manipulated and time-symmetrically related to him. The new scenario violates special relativity, but even waiving that objection, the scenario cannot meet its requirements. I argue that the Designer lacks agency enough to manipulate the target, both because her information lacks the robustness required to constitute knowledge of what she does, and because it leaves no room for desires for specific results.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"457 - 475"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42396423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2022.2079552
C. M. Stevenson
Abstract It is widely held that for a life to be conferred meaning it requires the appropriate type of agency. Call this the agency requirement. The agency requirement is primarily motivated in the philosophical literature by the assumption that there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that humans have the capacity for meaning whereas animals do not; and that difference must come down to their agency or lack thereof. This paper aims to undercut the motivation for the agency requirement by arguing our pre-theoretical intuitions actually run opposite; that animals, and even objects, can have meaningful lives/existences. The argument is twofold. First, I extend an existing argument for animals as having a capacity for meaning to objects. Second, I argue maintaining that only humans have the capacity for meaning results in the more counterintuitive upshot that all animals and objects have, by definition, meaningless existences. Since we pre-theoretically believe that anything can be meaningful—even things which by definition lack agency—then we have strong reason for being sceptical about an agency requirement for meaning in life.
{"title":"Anything Can Be Meaningful","authors":"C. M. Stevenson","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2022.2079552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2022.2079552","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is widely held that for a life to be conferred meaning it requires the appropriate type of agency. Call this the agency requirement. The agency requirement is primarily motivated in the philosophical literature by the assumption that there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that humans have the capacity for meaning whereas animals do not; and that difference must come down to their agency or lack thereof. This paper aims to undercut the motivation for the agency requirement by arguing our pre-theoretical intuitions actually run opposite; that animals, and even objects, can have meaningful lives/existences. The argument is twofold. First, I extend an existing argument for animals as having a capacity for meaning to objects. Second, I argue maintaining that only humans have the capacity for meaning results in the more counterintuitive upshot that all animals and objects have, by definition, meaningless existences. Since we pre-theoretically believe that anything can be meaningful—even things which by definition lack agency—then we have strong reason for being sceptical about an agency requirement for meaning in life.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"427 - 455"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48840937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2022.2107056
D. Goldstick
Abstract Freedom-determinism compatibilism says a deed is correctly censurable if and only if it flows from a bad character, irrespective of what caused that character. In the relevant sense, the doer could have done otherwise whenever with a better character s/he would have. But commonsense considers that unavoidable early brutalizing experiences can at least mitigate blame. The reconciliation is that when a partly formed bad character causes early choices productive of a more fully formed character which leads then to subsequent misdeeds, blame for them is augmented on account of that, but it is not thus augmented if the early brutalization was instead unavoidable. Properly viewed, the case is one, not of reduced blame, but just of unaugmented blame.
{"title":"Moral Responsibility and Character Formation","authors":"D. Goldstick","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2022.2107056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2022.2107056","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Freedom-determinism compatibilism says a deed is correctly censurable if and only if it flows from a bad character, irrespective of what caused that character. In the relevant sense, the doer could have done otherwise whenever with a better character s/he would have. But commonsense considers that unavoidable early brutalizing experiences can at least mitigate blame. The reconciliation is that when a partly formed bad character causes early choices productive of a more fully formed character which leads then to subsequent misdeeds, blame for them is augmented on account of that, but it is not thus augmented if the early brutalization was instead unavoidable. Properly viewed, the case is one, not of reduced blame, but just of unaugmented blame.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"357 - 365"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48727387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2022.2103021
Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera
Abstract Most analytical philosophers consider that we cannot identify with fictional characters in a literal sense. Specifically, Carroll and Gaut argue that doing so would imply a high degree of irrationality. In this paper I stand for the claim that we can identify with fictional characters thanks to a suspension of disbelief. First, I rely on narrative theories of personal identity to propose a model of how the process of identification might happen in real life. Then, I explain how this model can be adapted to account for the suspension of disbelief that occurs in the special case of identification with fictional characters.
{"title":"Sometimes I Am Fictional: Narrative and Identification","authors":"Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2022.2103021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2022.2103021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Most analytical philosophers consider that we cannot identify with fictional characters in a literal sense. Specifically, Carroll and Gaut argue that doing so would imply a high degree of irrationality. In this paper I stand for the claim that we can identify with fictional characters thanks to a suspension of disbelief. First, I rely on narrative theories of personal identity to propose a model of how the process of identification might happen in real life. Then, I explain how this model can be adapted to account for the suspension of disbelief that occurs in the special case of identification with fictional characters.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"403 - 425"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43506639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2022.2118156
Roger G. López
Abstract The present article challenges a widespread view of blame as an inherently moral attitude. I begin by pointing out some features of blame that are not readily explained by, and not obviously compatible with, a moral orientation. To account for those features, I elucidate Nietzsche’s insights that blame responds to frustration and can serve as a bulwark against unwelcome self-perception, drawing as well on modern psychoanalysis’s inheritance of those insights. In the second half of the paper, I critically examine three of the most thorough attempts to root blame in moral foundations, those of George Sher, T.M. Scanlon and Miranda Fricker. I argue that each of these authors overestimates the prevalence and centrality of the influence morality can have on blame, to conclude that blame and morality only dovetail contingently some of the time.
{"title":"Is Blame a Moral Attitude?","authors":"Roger G. López","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2022.2118156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2022.2118156","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present article challenges a widespread view of blame as an inherently moral attitude. I begin by pointing out some features of blame that are not readily explained by, and not obviously compatible with, a moral orientation. To account for those features, I elucidate Nietzsche’s insights that blame responds to frustration and can serve as a bulwark against unwelcome self-perception, drawing as well on modern psychoanalysis’s inheritance of those insights. In the second half of the paper, I critically examine three of the most thorough attempts to root blame in moral foundations, those of George Sher, T.M. Scanlon and Miranda Fricker. I argue that each of these authors overestimates the prevalence and centrality of the influence morality can have on blame, to conclude that blame and morality only dovetail contingently some of the time.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"367 - 401"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42565204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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