Asian journal of philosophy最新文献

One of the main targets of Material Objects in Confucian and Aristotelian Metaphysics is structural hylomorphism, a recent variant of hylomorphism espoused by authors such as Kit Fine, William Jaworski, and Kathrin Koslicki. Fr. Rooney raises at least three, and perhaps as many as five, different objections against structural hylomorphism in the book. My aim in this essay is twofold. First, I try to draw out some of the implicit premises and assumptions found within several of these objections in order to make them more perspicuous to those readers wishing to understand them better. Second, I offer a variety of replies on behalf of the structural hylomorphist to what I see as the three main objections against that sort of view. For each of the objections that I cover, I argue either that it raises no serious concerns for structural hylomorphism, or that there are ways that structural hylomorphists might navigate around these objections which Rooney has not considered, or that the main thrust of the objection targets Rooney’s preferred hylomorphic theory of material objects just as much as it targets structural hylomorphism.

The Consistency Theorem—which says that any positive property can be possibly satisfied by an actual, non-conceptual, individual—is a key step in Gödel’s ontological proof of the existence of God. We show how this theorem (with supporting lemmas) provides insight into the question of Why is there something instead of nothing?

One important challenge to J. L. Schellenberg’s divine hiddenness problem for theism does not concern its argumentative soundness. Instead, it asserts that the highlighted issue surrounding non-belief is merely one of the alleged evils or imperfections in the world, and thus, the argument, whether sound or not, fails to offer evidence against God beyond what is already addressed by the existing problem of evil. Schellenberg, throughout his career, has proposed several lines of thought concerning the relationship between the two problems facing theism. In this paper, I examine these lines of thought and argue that each faces certain shortcomings when considered a potential solution to the overlap challenge. The general lesson is that, while the divine hiddenness problem should not be regarded as merely a problem of evil in disguise, it remains difficult to formulate a hiddenness argument that is sufficiently independent of the problem of evil. The paper ends with some suggestions for how an independent hiddenness argument—and, more generally, related arguments in the philosophy of religion—might be formulated in the face of this challenge.

Jorgensen Bolinger (2020) argues that contested slurs present a puzzle to semantic accounts of derogatory words, and support socio-pragmatic or uptake-centric accounts. Her argument relies on the assumption that contested slurs are genuinely derogatory and that disagreeing parties are not linguistically incompetent. This paper argues that cross-linguistic and cross-dialectic disagreements involving contested slurs are consistent with semantic theories of slurs. The argument is based on three types of case: first, intra-linguistic cross-dialectic disagreements, cross-linguistic disagreements, and, finally, intra-linguistic non-derogatory words that can be used to derogate and in-group uses of derogatory words. The cases put into question the assumption that contested slurs are derogatory tout court and show that in relevant intra-linguistic cases of contestation, stubborn speakers need not be linguistically incompetent.

We do not usually mistake memory for perception. However, this does not mean that we know how we distinguish between the two. Here, I explain Bergson’s original conception of the memory–perception distinction by examining his criticism of associationism. First, I elucidate the problem by introducing the terminology used in this paper. Second, I present an overview of associationism. Associationism is an influential philosophical perspective on memory which Bergson criticized in his Matter and Memory. Next, I reconstruct Bergson’s argument against associationism. Through this argument, Bergson shows his original view about the difference between perception and memory: there is not only a difference in degree between these two experiences but also a difference in their nature. I then elucidate Bergson’s original perspectives by analyzing his ideas on the distinction between perception and memory. Bergson held that for someone to recognize the experience of an event as a memory, they must be aware of their ability to select the content of the experience that occurs at different points in time. By contrast, when S is aware that they have no control over the temporal extension of an experience, which originally had a definite temporal extension, then they recognize the experience as a perception.

In this paper I present a dilemma for Casati’s dialetheist interpretation of Heidegger. On the one hand, Casati’s main argument in favour of the ontological difference requires that loops of grounding are vicious; on the other hand, the two para-consistent models of the grounding relation discussed in chapter 6 require that loops of grounding are not vicious. We thus face a dilemma: either loops of grounding are vicious (and must therefore be rejected), or they are not. If the former, then Casati can exploit them to argue for the ontological difference, but then he cannot accept the two para-consistent models, since they validate loops. By contrast, if Casati thinks that loops of grounding are not vicious, then he has no problem with the models, but he loses his main argument for the ontological difference. After discussing the prospects of responding to this dilemma, I scrutinize Casati’s second argument in favour of the ontological difference and argue that it can be resisted.

In a recent paper, Simon Goldstein and Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini argue that some current AI systems, namely artificial language agents, are plausible bearers of wellbeing. Central to their case is the claim that possession of mental states such as beliefs and desires is a precondition of wellbeing on several prominent accounts of wellbeing and that language agents possess such mental states. In this paper, I raise several issues for Goldstein and Kirk-Giannini’s case for language agent cognition and hence wellbeing. In particular, I argue that a careful look at both the behavioral outputs and the architecture of language agents raises doubts as to whether they possess mental states of the sort relevant to wellbeing. A broader lesson of my discussion is that work on AI wellbeing requires deeper engagement with philosophical and cognitive scientific work on the nature of states such as belief and desire.

What are the accuracy conditions of episodic memories? On a standard view introduced by Bernecker (2010), there are two accuracy conditions that an episodic memory must meet: truth and authenticity. An episodic memory is true if it is accurate with regard to the remembered event; an episodic memory is authentic if it is accurate with regard to one’s original experience of this event. Recently, however, this standard authenticist view has been put under pressure by theorists who claim that the authenticity condition should be abandoned. Here, we provide a response to this recent anti-authenticist trend, which we call veridicalism. Veridicalism offers a moderate reply to worries about authenticity and offers an original account of the content of episodic memory. We claim that both truth and authenticity can be accuracy conditions for our memories, but their inclusion depends on the content of memory, which in turn depends on the context of remembering. To vindicate this veridicalist claim, we contribute both to the authenticity debate, by showing that recent anti-authenticist arguments fail, and to the delineation debate, by arguing that the content of episodic memories is delineated in a context-sensitive way, which thereby motivates the moderate character of our authenticism.

This discussion of Miriam Schleifer McCormick’s book, Belief as Emotion, focuses on two key aspects of Schleifer McCormick’s view. I examine the picture of emotions and their fittingness conditions that emerges from the book, especially the claim that belief’s formal object as an emotion is accuracy and what this entails for belief’s world-directedness. I then turn to the central normative move Schleifer McCormick makes in suggesting that viewing belief as an emotion allows us to license right-kind, practical reasons for belief. I raise questions about this move, which lead us back to a reflection on belief’s formal object. I close with a methodological point, touching briefly on the chapter on trust.