Pub Date : 2023-06-16DOI: 10.1017/S003181912300013X
Nicholas Rimell
Abstract Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that, despite appearances, the success of Don Marquis's well-known future-like-ours argument against abortion does not turn, in an important way, on the metaphysics of identity. I argue that this is false. The success of Marquis's argument turns on precisely two issues: first, whether it is prima facie seriously wrong to deprive something of a future like ours; second, whether, in a counterfactual circumstance in which an abortion does not occur, the foetus is numerically identical with something that, later on, experiences a life like ours. Since the former claim is plausible (albeit disputable), the success of Marquis's argument does turn on the metaphysics of identity in an important way. Before defending a positive argument for this position, I consider what I take to be the most promising way of challenging it. This involves a recent objection to Marquis by Tim Burkhardt (2021). Burkhardt claims that his objection floats free of the metaphysics of identity. I argue that it fails to do so, and that in fact it fails outright. I end by considering the relationship between my arguments and the question of what matters in survival.
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Pub Date : 2023-05-15DOI: 10.1017/S0031819123000141
P. Le Morvan
Abstract This paper discusses two important emphases of epistemology – of virtue and vice epistemology in particular – one concerning agency and patiency, and the other concerning self-regard and other-regard. The paper offers, for the first time in the literature, a framework in which four types of epistemological work can be categorized according to their respective dual emphases: Type 1 (agent/self-regarding), Type 2 (agent/other-regarding), Type 3 (patient/self-regarding), and Type 4 (patient/other-regarding). The paper also shows how four ways of doing epistemology can be categorized in terms of these four types and draws particular attention to one dubbed other-centering.
{"title":"Two Emphases of Virtue and Vice Epistemology","authors":"P. Le Morvan","doi":"10.1017/S0031819123000141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819123000141","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper discusses two important emphases of epistemology – of virtue and vice epistemology in particular – one concerning agency and patiency, and the other concerning self-regard and other-regard. The paper offers, for the first time in the literature, a framework in which four types of epistemological work can be categorized according to their respective dual emphases: Type 1 (agent/self-regarding), Type 2 (agent/other-regarding), Type 3 (patient/self-regarding), and Type 4 (patient/other-regarding). The paper also shows how four ways of doing epistemology can be categorized in terms of these four types and draws particular attention to one dubbed other-centering.","PeriodicalId":54197,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY","volume":"98 1","pages":"371 - 397"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43903379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-09DOI: 10.1017/S0031819123000116
Cathy Mason
Attention, Iris Murdoch tells us in ‘The Idea of Perfection’, is ‘the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality’ (Murdoch, 1999, p. 327).1 She takes this to be the characteristic and proper mark of moral agents, a claim that is both descriptive – a claim about what in fact characterises us as agents – and normative – a claim about how we should act, what we need to do more of in order to become better moral agents. Silvia Caprioglio Panizza followsMurdoch inmaking both of these claims. Her new book The Ethics of Attention is an extended discussion of the role and importance of attention within our moral lives. Panizza here draws on the work of Murdoch and Simone Weil to explore the nature andmoral importance of attention. This commonplace and recognisable activity, she suggests, is both essential for accessing moral truth and also morally significant in and of itself. Moreover, it is ‘fundamental to morality’ (p. 16) in that many of the other things we care about morally (such as moral knowledge andmoralmotivation) arewell understood as depending on attention. The first chapter outlines Panizza’s conception of attention and makes a case for its moral significance. Her basic understanding of attention is that it is a ‘truth-seeking engagement of the individual with reality’ (p. 24), though she stresses that this is a non-exhaustive characterization of it. This notion of attention as engagement underlies her explanation of why attention is inherently morally significant: it is morally significant, she suggests, because in attending we engage with reality, with truth, rather than with our own selfish concerns and
Iris Murdoch在《完美的理念》（The Idea of Perfect）一书中告诉我们]，注意力是“对个人现实的公正和充满爱的凝视”（Murdoch，1999，第327页），为了成为更好的道德代理人，我们需要做更多的事情。Silvia Caprioglio Panizza追随Murdoch对这两种说法的理解。她的新书《注意力的伦理学》对注意力在我们道德生活中的作用和重要性进行了深入的讨论。帕尼扎在这里借鉴默多克和西蒙娜·威尔的作品，探讨注意力的本质和口头重要性。她认为，这种常见且可识别的活动对获取道德真理至关重要，本身也具有道德意义。此外，它是“道德的基础”（第16页），因为我们在道德上关心的许多其他事情（如道德知识和道德运动）都被很好地理解为依赖于注意力。第一章概述了帕尼扎的注意观，并举例说明其道德意义。她对注意力的基本理解是，它是“个人与现实的真诚接触”（第24页），尽管她强调这是对它的非详尽描述。这种将注意力视为参与的概念是她解释为什么注意力本质上具有道德意义的基础：她认为，它具有道德意义，因为在参与时，我们与现实接触，用真理，而不是我们自己的自私
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Pub Date : 2023-05-08DOI: 10.1017/S0031819123000086
T. Keiling
Unless one were to doubt that we know anything at all, we have knowledge of things, and these things exist. Arguably, the first move of idealism in philosophy is to take as paradigmatic this kind of overlap between what we know and what there is. It triggers an enquiry into what it means to know something and what that something, or anything, really,must be like for us to know it. In both epistemology and ontology, asking these sorts of questions is the approach of transcendental philosophy. In Kant’s formulation, we ask for the ‘conditions of possibility of the objects of experience’, of those things that exist and that we know. But things may go wrong, or stall. What if I presume that something exists, like the solution to a problem or the cause of something I see happening – but I cannot bring them clearly into view? In these cases, we know that there is something to be known, but don’t know how; we reach a limit of knowledge. Andwhat about the casewhere something completely unexpected happens? Here, something comes into being from beyond the limits of what we can know. But expected or not, once it is here, it no doubt exists, calling into question the notion that being and knowing are in principle co-extensive. The Kantian idealist’s response to these kinds of cases is that they don’t really matter. What counts is the good case, where cognition succeeds. Especially its very opposite, the case of something we don’t know and can’t even anticipate – why care? And how could we even think about that? Kate Withy’s book on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger shows that he did care, and it makes a good case that we should, too. The argument Withy sees Heidegger pursuing is a variation on the transcendental line of questioning, but with a crucial shift from clear success at knowing to limit cases. In fact, Heidegger takes these cases to provide an answer to the ontological question: for something to exist means for it to be, to some extent or in some respect, inaccessible to us. It is precisely the fact that things,
{"title":"Heidegger on Being Self-Concealing by Katherine Withy (Oxford University Press, 2022). ISBN 9780192859846","authors":"T. Keiling","doi":"10.1017/S0031819123000086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819123000086","url":null,"abstract":"Unless one were to doubt that we know anything at all, we have knowledge of things, and these things exist. Arguably, the first move of idealism in philosophy is to take as paradigmatic this kind of overlap between what we know and what there is. It triggers an enquiry into what it means to know something and what that something, or anything, really,must be like for us to know it. In both epistemology and ontology, asking these sorts of questions is the approach of transcendental philosophy. In Kant’s formulation, we ask for the ‘conditions of possibility of the objects of experience’, of those things that exist and that we know. But things may go wrong, or stall. What if I presume that something exists, like the solution to a problem or the cause of something I see happening – but I cannot bring them clearly into view? In these cases, we know that there is something to be known, but don’t know how; we reach a limit of knowledge. Andwhat about the casewhere something completely unexpected happens? Here, something comes into being from beyond the limits of what we can know. But expected or not, once it is here, it no doubt exists, calling into question the notion that being and knowing are in principle co-extensive. The Kantian idealist’s response to these kinds of cases is that they don’t really matter. What counts is the good case, where cognition succeeds. Especially its very opposite, the case of something we don’t know and can’t even anticipate – why care? And how could we even think about that? Kate Withy’s book on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger shows that he did care, and it makes a good case that we should, too. The argument Withy sees Heidegger pursuing is a variation on the transcendental line of questioning, but with a crucial shift from clear success at knowing to limit cases. In fact, Heidegger takes these cases to provide an answer to the ontological question: for something to exist means for it to be, to some extent or in some respect, inaccessible to us. It is precisely the fact that things,","PeriodicalId":54197,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY","volume":"98 1","pages":"399 - 403"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45209044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0031819122000390
Matias Slavov
The topic of this book is vast. The author Heather Dyke has less than 80 pages to expound on the nature of time. Her starting point is the distinction between the common-sense conception and the scientific conception of time. The former includes two points: a special present moment and the understanding that time is dynamic. The latter eschews both points. Time begins with a brief historical exposition on the competing stances in the metaphysics of time. Dyke contrasts the Eleatic antichange view with Heraclitean realism about change. McTaggart’s challenge to the reality of time is mentioned and his standard distinction between the A-series and the B-series is discussed throughout the work. Dyke introduces two philosophical tendencies that are in tension. On the one hand, there is the third-person conception of the world, which aims at a subject-neutral characterization of reality. On the other hand, there is the first-person conception of the world, which is about a subjective-relative understanding. In virtue of this distinction, Dyke pursues a top-down analysis of time: ‘Our aim should be to resolve this tension by achieving an understanding of time as it is independently of us, which also accommodates and explains our experience of, and perspective on, time’ (p. 3). Her preferred metaphysics centres on the B-theory. The folk theory of time privileges the present. Whereas one might think that the place ‘here’ is dependent upon a specific location, and hence that it is essentially perspectival, the time ‘now’ is thought to exist independently of location. The absolute ‘now’ is not all that exists, as in that case we could not experience a changing world. There must be change as to what time is ‘now’. There is a continuous transformation between future, present, and past. This aspect is captured by notions like ‘Time marches on’ and ‘Time flows’. Dyke acknowledges that there are other features in the folk conception of time, but takes temporal passage as its central feature. When considering scientific approaches to time, Dyke starts with physics. It is evident that this science, and what it tells about time, has changed in the course of history. Yet she notes, in reference to Callender (2017), that whether we deal with Aristotelian, Newtonian, relativistic, or quantum physics, the ‘now’ has no
{"title":"Time by Heather Dyke (Cambridge University Press, 2021).","authors":"Matias Slavov","doi":"10.1017/S0031819122000390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819122000390","url":null,"abstract":"The topic of this book is vast. The author Heather Dyke has less than 80 pages to expound on the nature of time. Her starting point is the distinction between the common-sense conception and the scientific conception of time. The former includes two points: a special present moment and the understanding that time is dynamic. The latter eschews both points. Time begins with a brief historical exposition on the competing stances in the metaphysics of time. Dyke contrasts the Eleatic antichange view with Heraclitean realism about change. McTaggart’s challenge to the reality of time is mentioned and his standard distinction between the A-series and the B-series is discussed throughout the work. Dyke introduces two philosophical tendencies that are in tension. On the one hand, there is the third-person conception of the world, which aims at a subject-neutral characterization of reality. On the other hand, there is the first-person conception of the world, which is about a subjective-relative understanding. In virtue of this distinction, Dyke pursues a top-down analysis of time: ‘Our aim should be to resolve this tension by achieving an understanding of time as it is independently of us, which also accommodates and explains our experience of, and perspective on, time’ (p. 3). Her preferred metaphysics centres on the B-theory. The folk theory of time privileges the present. Whereas one might think that the place ‘here’ is dependent upon a specific location, and hence that it is essentially perspectival, the time ‘now’ is thought to exist independently of location. The absolute ‘now’ is not all that exists, as in that case we could not experience a changing world. There must be change as to what time is ‘now’. There is a continuous transformation between future, present, and past. This aspect is captured by notions like ‘Time marches on’ and ‘Time flows’. Dyke acknowledges that there are other features in the folk conception of time, but takes temporal passage as its central feature. When considering scientific approaches to time, Dyke starts with physics. It is evident that this science, and what it tells about time, has changed in the course of history. Yet she notes, in reference to Callender (2017), that whether we deal with Aristotelian, Newtonian, relativistic, or quantum physics, the ‘now’ has no","PeriodicalId":54197,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY","volume":"98 1","pages":"243 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42850370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0031819123000013
Camilla Kronqvist, Natan Elgabsi
Abstract One of the standard examples in contemporary moral psychology originates in the works of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He treats people's responses to the story of Julie and Mark, two siblings who decide to have casual, consensual, protected sex, as facts of human morality, providing evidence for his social intuitionist approach to moral judgements. We argue that Haidt's description of the facts of the story and the reactions of the respondents as ‘morally dumbfounded’ presupposes a view about moral reasoning that is more substantial than he acknowledges. Drawing on the philosophical work by Iris Murdoch and Cora Diamond, we explore how different descriptions of human morality, sexuality, and family relations engage us in evaluations about distinctive features of human life and language that go deeper than Haidt envisages. Thus, we show the need to attend to the concepts used to describe the facts of human moral psychology and the pictures of morality these concepts reveal about the researcher's own understanding of moral experience. This points to the particular responsibility any researcher into human moral psychology has for ensuring that the descriptions they offer are attuned to the complexities of the lives of those they form theories about and that these do not appear conceptually confounding.
{"title":"Dumbfounded by the Facts? Understanding the Moral Psychology of Sexual Relationships","authors":"Camilla Kronqvist, Natan Elgabsi","doi":"10.1017/S0031819123000013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819123000013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract One of the standard examples in contemporary moral psychology originates in the works of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He treats people's responses to the story of Julie and Mark, two siblings who decide to have casual, consensual, protected sex, as facts of human morality, providing evidence for his social intuitionist approach to moral judgements. We argue that Haidt's description of the facts of the story and the reactions of the respondents as ‘morally dumbfounded’ presupposes a view about moral reasoning that is more substantial than he acknowledges. Drawing on the philosophical work by Iris Murdoch and Cora Diamond, we explore how different descriptions of human morality, sexuality, and family relations engage us in evaluations about distinctive features of human life and language that go deeper than Haidt envisages. Thus, we show the need to attend to the concepts used to describe the facts of human moral psychology and the pictures of morality these concepts reveal about the researcher's own understanding of moral experience. This points to the particular responsibility any researcher into human moral psychology has for ensuring that the descriptions they offer are attuned to the complexities of the lives of those they form theories about and that these do not appear conceptually confounding.","PeriodicalId":54197,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY","volume":"98 1","pages":"147 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45171383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0031819123000037
Yili Zhou, Rhys Borchert
Abstract Many moral error theorists reject moral realism on the grounds that moral realism implies the existence of categorical normativity, yet categorical normativity does not exist. Call this the Metaphysical Argument. In response, some moral realists have emphasized a parity between moral normativity and epistemic normativity. They argue that if one kind of normativity is rejected, then both must be rejected. Therefore, one cannot be a moral error theorist without also being an epistemic error theorist. Call this the Parity Argument. In this paper, we address three possible responses to the Parity Argument from moral error theorists: (1) accept the parity but still reject epistemic error theory, (2) reject the parity, (3) accept the parity and defend epistemic error theory. We argue that there are problems with each of these responses, so the Parity Argument stands as a strong counterargument to the Metaphysical Argument. We conclude by drawing some lessons for any future challenges to the Parity Argument.
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