Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-20 of 377 documents


articles

1. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Jun Young Kim Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In this article, I examine Leibniz’s criticism of Spinoza’s notion of priority by nature based on the first proposition in Spinoza’s Ethics. Leibniz provides two counterexamples: first, the number 10’s being 6+3+1 is prior by nature to its being 6+4; second, a triangle’s property that two internal angles are equal to the exterior angle of the third is prior by nature to its property that the three internal angles equal two right angles. Leibniz argues that Spinoza’s notion cannot capture these priority relations. Although this text has received some scholarly attention, Leibniz’s objection in this text has not been fully explained yet. I argue that evaluating Leibniz’s objection relies on how to understand Spinoza’s notion of conception: first, whether conception is co-extensive with inherence and causation; second, whether conception is mental.
2. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Norman K. Swazo

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Heidegger’s thought presents us with the possibility of, as well as a call for, a “retrieval” (Wiederholung) of what is “unthought” (das Ungedachte) and “unsaid” (das Ungesagte) in the political philosophy of the ancient Greeks. A successful retrieval would lead to an “originary” (ursprünglich) political thinking that enables the “enactment” (Vollzug) of an originary politics, consistent with the possibility of a “second beginning” such as Heidegger deemed necessary and imminent. The task here is to identify “hermeneutic signposts” present in Heidegger’s reading of Plato’s Sophist as a basis for a “prolegomenon” to thinking the unthought. After the signposts are identified, a “Postscript” engages briefly several salient queries that arise from the effort to think about the political with reference to Heidegger’s thought, thus pointing to what remains to be thought beyond the signposting of this prolegomenon.
3. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Juan Garcia Torres Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Call ‘a substance’ a person who is at home in a relatively stable and unified sense-making framework: a social structure that to some degree specifies which categories are important for interpreting reality, which goals are worth pursing, which character traits are admirable, etc. Call ‘an accident’ a person who is not at home in one such framework. It is tempting to think that being a substance is preferable, but I present some considerations for thinking otherwise. Mexican philosophers Emilio Uranga and Jorge Portilla, I argue, present notions of accidentality as decolonial tools. Uranga’s account enables Mexicans to have positive valuation of their being independently of the approving gaze of the colonizers and their standards of value. Portilla’s thought distinguishes between pernicious accidentality resulting from the disintegration of sense-making frameworks and authentic accidentality as a condition for freedom, self-creation, and ultimately for individual and communal liberation.
4. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Paolo Pitari

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In Beyond Language (Oltre il linguaggio), Emanuele Severino argues that “language reveals the meaning that man confers to the world.” Accordingly, this article infers that reflecting on the meaning of the most important words of philosophy will enable us to understand the foundation of the concrete history of our civilization. Severino offers a unique analysis of these words and their history, and consequently an original framework for interpreting the world. What follows thus presents a discursive glossary according to Emanuele Severino with the aim to open new outlooks for understanding not only Severino’s thought, but also the problems of philosophy and our relationship with existence.
5. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Timothy Perrine

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Plantinga develops an ambitious theistic religious epistemology on which theists can have non-inferential knowledge of God. Central to his epistemology is the idea that human beings have a “sensus divinitatis” that produces such knowledge. Recently, several authors have urged an appropriation of the sensus divinitatis that is more friendly to internalist views, such as Phenomenal Conservativism. I argue that this appropriation is too timid and tepid in a variety of ways. It applies only to a small fraction of theistic beliefs; it fails to play the theological role Plantinga intended the sensus divinitatis to play; it fails to imply that most theistic beliefs, most of the time, are justified; when combined with a standard form of Evidentialism, it actually implies that most theistic beliefs are, if justified, inferentially justified; and it is consistent with substantive criticisms of theistic belief originating in work from the Cognitive Science of Religion.

book symposium

6. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Chris Heathwood

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
7. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Ben Bradley Orcid-ID

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
8. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Dale Dorsey

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

res phil short

9. Res Philosophica: Volume > 101 > Issue: 1
Scott Aikin, John Casey

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Arguments are weakly meta-argumentative when they call attention to themselves and purport to be successful as arguments. Arguments are strongly metaargumentative when they take arguments (themselves or other arguments) as objects for evaluation, clarification, or improvement and explicitly use concepts of argument analysis for the task. The ambitious meta-argumentation thesis is that all argumentation is weakly argumentative. The modest meta-argumentation thesis is that there are unique instances of strongly meta-argumentative argument. Here, we show how the two theses are connected and both are plausible.

articles

10. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 4
Jacob Stegenga, Tarun Menon

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The value-free ideal for science holds that values should not influence the core features of scientific reasoning. We defend the difference-to-inference model of value-permeation, which holds that value-permeation in science is problematic when values make a difference to the inferences made about a hypothesis. This view of value-permeation is superior to existing views, and it suggests a corresponding maxim—namely, that scientists should strive to eliminate differences to inference. This maxim is the basis of a novel value-free ideal for science.
11. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 4
S. Matthew Liao

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Most people think that, other things being equal, you are at liberty to decide for yourself whether to have children. However, there are some people, aptly called anti-natalists, who believe that it is always morally wrong to have children. Anti-natalists are attracted to at least two types of arguments. According to the Positives Are Irrelevant Argument, unless a life contains no negative things at all, it is irrelevant that life also contains positive things. According to the Positives Are Insufficient Argument, while life does contain some positive things, as a matter of fact, almost everyone’s life contains more negative things than positive things. In this article, I first offer new reasons to reject these arguments. I then offer a positive, human rights account of why not only is it not wrong to bring people into existence, but parents in fact have a human right to do so.
12. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 4
Rebecca L. Walker

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
A person of good character treats other sentient beings with care and compassion. Yet virtue ethics apparently has trouble accounting for the moral status of nonhuman animals because of its focus on excellent character traits, rather than the moral “patient,” and because of its non-codifiability, at least in some forms. The task of this article is to answer the question: How can virtue ethics account for the moral value of nonhuman animals in the context of biomedical research? I argue that it can do so through attention to animal good lives, human-animal bonds, and the virtues themselves. The virtue ethics resources I draw on to support nonhuman animal value are not the same as those typically brought to bear in moral status discussions, but I suggest that moral status as usually conceived has its own problems as a tool for use in practical contexts like animal research.
13. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 4
Lisa M. Rasmussen Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The research enterprise depends on trust, especially trust in data reliability and ethical conduct of research. This trust is accomplished via systems, or “architectures,” that do the work of ensuring trustworthiness in research when individuals are not able to assess it for themselves. In the United States and many other countries, national laws or regulations constitute the research ethics trust architecture. But new research methods, such as citizen science, DIY biology, biohacking, or corporate research, avoid such regulations because they draw on new means of funding, disseminating, and conducting research. This challenges the sufficiency of the traditional approach and requires us to revisit how we generate trust in the research enterprise. In this article, I discuss how new research challenges the existing trust architecture, offer some necessary elements of trust architecture in general, and use citizen science as a case study to illustrate how new, ethically meaningful trust architectures could be built.
14. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 4
David Hershenov

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The Rational Substance View is a pro-life position which maintains that all humans are moral equals and have a right to life in virtue of their kind membership. Healthy embryos, newborns, children, adults, and as the cognitively impaired all essentially have a root or radical capacity for rationality, though it may not be developed or have its operations blocked. Their being substances with a rational nature is the basis of their moral status and what makes it wrong to kill them. I will argue that the view is committed to some bad biology, and suspect metaphysics, and is unable to escape all the reductios of potentiality. I will offer the Healthy Development View as an alternative to the Rational Substance View. It is a pro-life view that avoids the problematic biology and metaphysics and reductios of potentiality. It understands our rational development to be a contingent rather than an essential trait.
15. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 4
Ana S. Iltis

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Socio-cultural shifts during the 1960s and 1970s included widespread secularization, challenges to authority and tradition, and an emphasis on individual choice. Healthcare and biomedical research advances accompanied these social changes, giving rise to numerous ethical and policy questions. The contemporary bioethics project emerged in this context with (at least) three aims: (1) to offer practical answers to these questions (often) in ways that (2) facilitate or support particular practices or goals (e.g., organ donation or human research) and that (3) appear broadly applicable and legitimately enforceable. Philosophical thinking, which involves investigating and disambiguating concepts and categories, articulating conceptually clear definitions, and mapping arguments to identify premises, detect fallacies, and describe their logical implications, can undermine the practical goals of the bioethics project. This tension between the goals of bioethics and philosophical thinking might help to explain what some scholars see as a disinterest in philosophical thinking in bioethics today.
16. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 3
Richard Brian Davis Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In this article, I critically assess Peter van Inwagen’s rejection of C. S. Lewis’s argument against Naturalism. Van Inwagen argues that Lewis (1960) errs on two fronts. First, he falsely assumes that Naturalism implies Spinozism: that the only way the world could be is the way it is. Second, the central premise of Lewis’s argument is asserted without proof. I argue that van Inwagen is mistaken on both counts.
17. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 3
Chang Liu Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In neo-Aristotelian accounts, the task of metaphysics is to explore the space of metaphysical possibilities, and our knowledge of metaphysical possibilities is ultimately grounded on our knowledge concerning the essence of entities. Eidetic variation, as established by Husserlian phenomenology, is a method of identifying a specific pattern of phenomenological givenness that is constitutive of the identity and condition of existence of a kind of entities. Thus, Husserlian phenomenology provides us with a method to acquire knowledge concerning the general essence of entities.
18. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 3
Alexander T. Englert Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Kant’s claim that we must postulate the immortality of the soul is polarizing. While much attention has been paid to two standard arguments in its defense (one moral-psychological, the other rational), I contend that a favorite argument of Kant’s from the apogee of his critical period—namely, the teleological argument—deserves renewed attention. This article reconstructs the argument and exhibits what makes it unique (though not necessarily superior) in relation to the other arguments. In particular, its form (as third-personal or descriptive, beginning from observations) and related force of assent (as a subjectively universal reflective judgment) set it apart from the other arguments. My goal is to establish that any engagement with Kant’s immortality postulate must include equal consideration of the teleological argument to be complete.
19. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 3
Daniele Mezzadri Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In this article I engage with a recent debate vis-à-vis Kant’s conception of logic, which deals with whether Kant saw logical laws as normative for, or rather as constitutive of, the faculty of understanding. On the former view, logical laws provide norms for the correct exercise of the understanding; on the latter, they define the necessary structure of the faculty of understanding per se. I claim that these two positions are not mutually exclusive, as Kant held both a normative and a constitutive conception of logic. I also sketch a parallelism between Kant’s conceptions of logic and of ethics: Kant’s twofold conception of logic parallels his view of moral laws as normative (for the human will) but constitutive (of a holy will).

discussion

20. Res Philosophica: Volume > 100 > Issue: 3
Tristan Grøtvedt Haze Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article proposes a way of blocking the zombie argument against materialism. The central idea—which can be motivated in various ways, but which I will motivate by drawing on recent work by Wolfgang Schwarz—is that sentences reporting conscious experience are modally inert, roughly in the sense that adding them to a description of a metaphysically possible scenario always results in a description of a metaphysically possible scenario. This is notable in that it leads to a way of blocking the zombie argument, which is perfectly compatible with modal rationalism and with the view that conceivability entails possibility.