Pub Date : 2018-11-29DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1462667
A. Schinkel
Abstract This paper explores the connection between wonder and meaning, in particular ‘the meaning of life’, a connection that, despite strong intrinsic connections between wonder and the (philosophical) search for meaning has not yet received any sustained attention. Does wonder ‘merely’ inspire our search for meaning, or does it also point the way towards meaning? In exploring this question I first engage with Hannah Arendt, then examine the suggestion (by Josef Pieper and Rachel Carson, among others) that the meaning wonder points us to lies in connecting us with the mystery of existence. Can there be meaning in mystery, or is wonder––as a state of being lost for words in the face of mystery––rather antithetical to meaning? This discussion leads to the idea, emphasized in recent writing on wonder, that wonder (also) depends on the meaning we ascribe to things. In the final section I discuss wonder as a potential source of meaning in life, then return to the question whether it can also point towards a deeper meaning of life. I conclude that no purely rational justification can be given for this view, but that this need not detract from the importance of wonder in our lives.
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Pub Date : 2018-09-19DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1450643
Munamato Chemhuru
Abstract The question of what an African ecofeminist environmental ethical view ought to look like remains unanswered in much of philosophical writing on African environmental ethics. I consider what an African ecofeminist environmental ethics ought to look like if values salient in African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu are seriously considered. After considering how African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu foster communitarian living, relational living, harmonious living, interrelatedness and interdependence between human beings and various aspects of nature, I reveal how African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu could be interpreted from an ecofeminist environmental perspective. I suggest that this underexplored ecofeminist environmental ethical view in African philosophical thinking might be reasonably taken as an alternative to anthropocentric environmentalism. I urge other ethical theorists on African environmentalism not to neglect this non-anthropocentric African environmentalism that is salient in African ecofeminist environmentalism.
{"title":"Interpreting Ecofeminist Environmentalism in African Communitarian Philosophy and Ubuntu: An Alternative to Anthropocentrism","authors":"Munamato Chemhuru","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2018.1450643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450643","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The question of what an African ecofeminist environmental ethical view ought to look like remains unanswered in much of philosophical writing on African environmental ethics. I consider what an African ecofeminist environmental ethics ought to look like if values salient in African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu are seriously considered. After considering how African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu foster communitarian living, relational living, harmonious living, interrelatedness and interdependence between human beings and various aspects of nature, I reveal how African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu could be interpreted from an ecofeminist environmental perspective. I suggest that this underexplored ecofeminist environmental ethical view in African philosophical thinking might be reasonably taken as an alternative to anthropocentric environmentalism. I urge other ethical theorists on African environmentalism not to neglect this non-anthropocentric African environmentalism that is salient in African ecofeminist environmentalism.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"48 1","pages":"241 - 264"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2018-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450643","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41738965","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 : 2018-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1450642
P. Ikuenobe
Abstract I critically examine how, from a Western cultural perspective of romantic love and Judeo-Christian tradition, certain liberal cultural values and prejudices are used presumptuously to criticize polygamy in African traditions. These criticisms assume, circularly, the superiority of Western cultural monogamous values over African cultural traditional practice of polygamy. I argue that these arguments are specious and particularly unreasonable from an intercultural philosophical perspective. A plausible liberal justification for Western legal imposition of monogamy is to prevent harm. I argue that if polygamy is so harmful as to warrant legal restriction based on the liberal principle of harm, such harm also exists in monogamy. The harm that is falsely associated with polygamy is not the result of polygamy per se but other factors relating to the social-cultural context of the marriage or the character of the individuals in the marriage.
{"title":"The Monogamous Conception of Romantic Love and Western Critiques of Polygamy in African Traditions","authors":"P. Ikuenobe","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2018.1450642","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450642","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I critically examine how, from a Western cultural perspective of romantic love and Judeo-Christian tradition, certain liberal cultural values and prejudices are used presumptuously to criticize polygamy in African traditions. These criticisms assume, circularly, the superiority of Western cultural monogamous values over African cultural traditional practice of polygamy. I argue that these arguments are specious and particularly unreasonable from an intercultural philosophical perspective. A plausible liberal justification for Western legal imposition of monogamy is to prevent harm. I argue that if polygamy is so harmful as to warrant legal restriction based on the liberal principle of harm, such harm also exists in monogamy. The harm that is falsely associated with polygamy is not the result of polygamy per se but other factors relating to the social-cultural context of the marriage or the character of the individuals in the marriage.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"47 1","pages":"373 - 401"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450642","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42989469","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 : 2018-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1450159
M. Zouhar
Abstract It is sometimes argued that conceptualism cannot explain (dis)agreements concerning matters of personal taste because it treats sentences involving predicates of taste as indexical. I aim to weaken this charge. Given the idea that people sometimes use indexical sentences to express (dis)agreements about taste, two kinds of (dis)agreement are distinguished, namely doxastic and non-doxastic. Taste (dis)agreements are better explained in terms of the later kind, in which case they become amenable to contextualist treatment. It is argued that if something instantiates a taste property (like being tasty for A), it has to instantiate a corresponding attitudinal property (like being liked by A). Based on this, utterances of taste sentences express propositions that concern tastiness of something (e.g., that X is tasty for A) and these propositions entail other propositions that concern non-doxastic attitudes the speakers bear toward something (e.g., that X is liked by A). One speaker is claimed to (dis)agree with another speaker provided their respective entailed propositions feature (in)compatible non-doxastic attitudes. Although this explanation is similar to hybrid accounts that are currently growing in popularity, it departs from them in some notable respects.
{"title":"Conversations about Taste, Contextualism, and Non-Doxastic Attitudes","authors":"M. Zouhar","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2018.1450159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450159","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is sometimes argued that conceptualism cannot explain (dis)agreements concerning matters of personal taste because it treats sentences involving predicates of taste as indexical. I aim to weaken this charge. Given the idea that people sometimes use indexical sentences to express (dis)agreements about taste, two kinds of (dis)agreement are distinguished, namely doxastic and non-doxastic. Taste (dis)agreements are better explained in terms of the later kind, in which case they become amenable to contextualist treatment. It is argued that if something instantiates a taste property (like being tasty for A), it has to instantiate a corresponding attitudinal property (like being liked by A). Based on this, utterances of taste sentences express propositions that concern tastiness of something (e.g., that X is tasty for A) and these propositions entail other propositions that concern non-doxastic attitudes the speakers bear toward something (e.g., that X is liked by A). One speaker is claimed to (dis)agree with another speaker provided their respective entailed propositions feature (in)compatible non-doxastic attitudes. Although this explanation is similar to hybrid accounts that are currently growing in popularity, it departs from them in some notable respects.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"47 1","pages":"429 - 460"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450159","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46416598","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 : 2018-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1450160
Alla Choifer
Abstract Characterizing the first- and third-person perspectives is essential to the study of consciousness, yet we lack a rigorous definition of or criteria for these two perspectives. Our intuitive understanding of how personal pronouns help to specify the perspectives gives rise to mutually exclusive notions of the first-person perspective. This contradiction thwarts our progress in studying consciousness. We can resolve the current ambiguity of the first-person perspective by introducing a new distinction between the first-person and third-person perspectives, based on two modes of consciousness: reflective and non-reflective. The purpose of this paper is to explain this new proposal, to elucidate the grounds for it, and to briefly suggest benefits from its use.
{"title":"A New Understanding of the First-Person and Third-Person Perspectives","authors":"Alla Choifer","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2018.1450160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450160","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Characterizing the first- and third-person perspectives is essential to the study of consciousness, yet we lack a rigorous definition of or criteria for these two perspectives. Our intuitive understanding of how personal pronouns help to specify the perspectives gives rise to mutually exclusive notions of the first-person perspective. This contradiction thwarts our progress in studying consciousness. We can resolve the current ambiguity of the first-person perspective by introducing a new distinction between the first-person and third-person perspectives, based on two modes of consciousness: reflective and non-reflective. The purpose of this paper is to explain this new proposal, to elucidate the grounds for it, and to briefly suggest benefits from its use.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"47 1","pages":"333 - 371"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450160","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49269194","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 : 2018-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1512374
D. Futter
To misquote the greatest of Plato’s students: to love Plato is to love truth more.1In this extraordinary book, Laurence Bloom takes the fundamental principle of discursive reasoning as a ‘springboa...
{"title":"The Principle of Non-Contradiction in Plato’s Republic: An Argument for Form","authors":"D. Futter","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2018.1512374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1512374","url":null,"abstract":"To misquote the greatest of Plato’s students: to love Plato is to love truth more.1In this extraordinary book, Laurence Bloom takes the fundamental principle of discursive reasoning as a ‘springboa...","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"47 1","pages":"461 - 466"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/05568641.2018.1512374","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47102489","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 : 2018-09-02DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1424027
Charles A. Repp
Abstract Philosophers once dismissed questions about meaning in life as conceptually confused. Only language and related phenomena, it was thought, can have meaning; thus, to ask about the meaning of life is to misapply the concept. Recent work by Susan Wolf, Thaddeus Metz, Aaron Smuts, and others has brought new attention and respectability to the topic. However, while talk of life meaning is no longer considered nonsense, most theorists continue to assume that such talk has nothing to do with meaning in the ‘sign’ sense that applies to language. In this paper I argue that this assumption is not well justified and that reflection on the example of Sherlock Holmes's life can help us to see why.
{"title":"Life Meaning and Sign Meaning","authors":"Charles A. Repp","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2018.1424027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1424027","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Philosophers once dismissed questions about meaning in life as conceptually confused. Only language and related phenomena, it was thought, can have meaning; thus, to ask about the meaning of life is to misapply the concept. Recent work by Susan Wolf, Thaddeus Metz, Aaron Smuts, and others has brought new attention and respectability to the topic. However, while talk of life meaning is no longer considered nonsense, most theorists continue to assume that such talk has nothing to do with meaning in the ‘sign’ sense that applies to language. In this paper I argue that this assumption is not well justified and that reflection on the example of Sherlock Holmes's life can help us to see why.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"47 1","pages":"403 - 427"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/05568641.2018.1424027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45332504","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 : 2018-05-04DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1446761
Jon Orman
Philosophers whoopenly reject the very possibility of the academicdisciplines they philosophise about are something of a rarity. It is also not surprising that their arguments tend either to be ignored or all too conveniently sidestepped by the vast majority of dutiful practitioners of the disciplines in question. Excommunication is often an easier fate towhich to condemn the intellectual heretic or arch-sceptic than decisive refutation. To reject the possibility of a discipline is, however, not necessarily to deny the existence of its basic subject matter nor even to disclaim the propriety of an interest in it. The philosopher here is not quite in the same position as the man in the street who thinks palmistry and horoscopes are a load of old cobblers, which is not to say that there may not be people who regard themselves as philosophers of such pursuits. It is more a case of taking issue with the onto-epistemological assumptions––i.e., the theory––which underlie the programmes and methodologies typically formulated and deemed formulable in order to give an account of the subject matter in question. For instance, it is notable that what are seen as some of the most radical––and in some quarters even scandalous––theories to have emerged from those fields of inquiry concerned with humandoings and society are those which reject the possibility of a scientific account of their subjectmatter. It hardly needs saying that this situation is
{"title":"Theorised to Death: Diagnosing the Social Pseudosciences","authors":"Jon Orman","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2018.1446761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1446761","url":null,"abstract":"Philosophers whoopenly reject the very possibility of the academicdisciplines they philosophise about are something of a rarity. It is also not surprising that their arguments tend either to be ignored or all too conveniently sidestepped by the vast majority of dutiful practitioners of the disciplines in question. Excommunication is often an easier fate towhich to condemn the intellectual heretic or arch-sceptic than decisive refutation. To reject the possibility of a discipline is, however, not necessarily to deny the existence of its basic subject matter nor even to disclaim the propriety of an interest in it. The philosopher here is not quite in the same position as the man in the street who thinks palmistry and horoscopes are a load of old cobblers, which is not to say that there may not be people who regard themselves as philosophers of such pursuits. It is more a case of taking issue with the onto-epistemological assumptions––i.e., the theory––which underlie the programmes and methodologies typically formulated and deemed formulable in order to give an account of the subject matter in question. For instance, it is notable that what are seen as some of the most radical––and in some quarters even scandalous––theories to have emerged from those fields of inquiry concerned with humandoings and society are those which reject the possibility of a scientific account of their subjectmatter. It hardly needs saying that this situation is","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"47 1","pages":"313 - 332"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2018-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/05568641.2018.1446761","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45083705","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 : 2018-05-04DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2017.1422989
C. Douskos
Abstract A central point of contention in the ongoing debate between Humean and anti-Humean accounts of moral motivation concerns the theoretical credentials of the idea of mental states that are cognitive and motivational at the same time. Humeans claim that this idea is incoherent and thereby unintelligible (M. Smith, The Moral Problem, Blackwell 1994). I start by developing a linguistic argument against this claim. The semantics of certain ‘learning to’ and ‘knowing to’ ascriptions points to a dispositional state that has both motivational and cognitive properties: habitual knowledge, as we may call it. But there is nothing unintelligible or incoherent about such ascriptions as they figure in the explanation and assessment of action. This suggests that the idea of a state that has both cognitive and motivational properties is not an artefact of philosophical speculation. Moreover, I suggest that action explanations that appeal to habitual knowledge, which are a variety of habit explanation, present distinctive problems for Humean accounts. The discussion bears on the relationship between habitual knowledge and knowing-how, and its possible significance for anti-Humean accounts of moral motivation.
在休谟和反休谟关于道德动机的争论中，一个争论的焦点是关于同时具有认知性和动机性的精神状态这一观点的理论依据。休谟主义者声称这种观点是不连贯的，因此是不可理解的(M. Smith, The Moral Problem, Blackwell 1994)。我首先提出了一个反对这种说法的语言学论证。某些“学习到”和“知道到”归属的语义指向一种同时具有动机和认知特性的性格状态:我们可以称之为习惯性知识。但是，在解释和评价行动时，这些归因并没有什么不可理解或不连贯的地方。这表明，既具有认知特性又具有动机特性的国家概念并不是哲学思辨的产物。此外，我认为诉诸习惯知识的行为解释是各种习惯解释，这给休谟的解释带来了独特的问题。本文讨论了习惯知识与知识之间的关系，以及它对反休谟道德动机解释的可能意义。
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