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81. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
R. Michael Olson Doing Some Good to Friends: Socrates’ Just Treatment of Polemarchus
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In this article I interpret the conversation that takes place between Socrates and Polemarchus in Book One of the Republic according to its dramatic logic by examining the rhetorical artfulness that informs Socrates’ argumentative tactics. After first examining Polemarchus’s character as obedient spiritedness, I then turn to the argument, showing that Socrates does not undermine Polemarchus’s original opinion but, rather, by making legitimate use of the analogy between justice and technē, moves him to attend to the useful knowledge implicit in his understanding of friendship, a knowledge by virtue of which he will be a more responsive guardian of what he values. Finally, I contend that Socrates enacts the definition of justice in question and indirectly argues for his own just art of rhetoric, which he employs in conversation with Polemarchus in his aim to be responsible to political life and to do it some good.
82. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
Nathan L. King McGrath on Moral Knowledge
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Sarah McGrath has recently defended a disagreement-based argument for skepticism about moral knowledge. If sound, the argument shows that our beliefs about controversial moral issues do not amount to knowledge. In this paper, I argue that McGrath fails to establish her skeptical conclusion. I defend two main claims. First, the key premise of McGrath’s argument is inadequately supported. Second, there is good reason to think that this premise is false.
83. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
Hans Muller, Bana Bashour Why Alief is Not a Legitimate Psychological Category
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We defend the view that belief is a psychological category against a recent attempt to recast it as a normative one. Tamar Gendler has argued that to properly understand how beliefs function in the regulation and production of action, we need to contrast beliefs with a class of psychological states and processes she calls “aliefs.” We agree with Gendler that affective states as well as habits and instincts deserve more attention than they receive in the contemporary philosophical psychology literature. But we argue that it is a serious error to align beliefs with the norm of rationality, while building a contrasting category whose members are characterized primarily by their failure to measure up to that normative standard, since these latter ones cannot constitute a distinct psychological category. First, we demonstrate that Gendler gets unwarranted conclusions about the existence of aliefs from belief-discordant cases. Next, we argue that the concept of alief is insufficiently clear. Aliefs cannot be distinguished from other types of states, such as beliefs. Also, when grouping many states under the category of aliefs, Gendler overlooks important differences between phenomena that are clearly distinct, such as habits and instincts. Aliefs simply do not constitute a legitimate psychological category.
84. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
William A. Rottschaefer Why Wilfrid Sellars Is Right (and Right-Wing): Thinking With O’Shea on Sellars, Norms, and Nature
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Scholars of Wilfrid Sellars’s thought split into Right- and Left-wing Sellarsians. Right-wing Sellarsians urge Sellars’s scientific realism and the prominence of the scientific image of man in the synoptic vision. Left-wing Sellarsians emphasize the prominence of the logical space of reasons over that of causes, rejecting Sellars’s scientism. In his recent book James O’Shea attempts to reconcile these Sellarsian images, arguing that one best understands the Sellarsian synoptic image in terms of a norm/nature meta-principle that endorses the conceptual irreducibility and causal reducibility of norms. In this paper, I argue that O’Shea’s norm/nature meta-principle renders Sellars’s synoptic vision a Left-wing one. In its stead, I present a Sellarsian ideal: the view that Sellars ought to have held, whether he did so or not. My synoptic Sellarsian vision is based in part on the claim that Sellars found norms in nature and on a scientifically based philosophical account of norms in nature, whether these norms be biological, psychological, social, cultural or personal. I maintain then that Sellars was a Right-wing Sellarsian and that, if he wasn’t, he should have been. Indeed, a Sellars redivivus would be the leader of his party!
85. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
Jorn Sonderholm World Poverty and Not Respecting Individual Freedom Enough
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Nicole Hassoun has recently defended the view that the relatively affluent members of the world’s population are, prima facie, obligated to ensure that the global institutional system enables all people to meet their basic needs. This paper is a critical discussion of Hassoun’s argument in favor of this view. Hassoun’s argument is first presented. In sections three and four, I try to bring out a number of formal and informal problems with the argument. Section five discusses a number of possible replies to the worries raised in section four. The conclusion of the paper is that Hassoun’s argument should be rejected. There are two independent and individually sufficient reasons for this conclusion: the argument is invalid and contains at least one false premise.
86. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
William A. Rottschaefer The Middle Does Not Hold: Why It’s Always Better to Be Right with the Right-Wing-Sellarsians
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This paper continues the dialogue between my right-wing-Sellars and James O’Shea’s middle-Sellars. In it, I reply to O’Shea’s middle-Sellars critique of my right-wing-Sellarsian criticism of his recent attempt (Wilfrid Sellars: Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn) to develop an understanding of Sellars’s overall view that avoids the problems of both right and left-wing-Sellarsians. In his contribution to this issue O’Shea argues that Sellars follows a middle way between left and right-wing-Sellarsians by advocating a refined Kantian naturalist account of human knowledge. In so doing he finds my right-wing interpretation of Sellars is not true to the real Sellars. Here I show that O’Shea’s critique of my right-wing-Sellars fails and that the real Sellars is a right-wing-Sellars, a scientific naturalist.
87. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
Ronald P. Endicott Flat Versus Dimensioned: The What and The How of Functional Realization
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I resolve an argument over “flat” versus “dimensioned” theories of realization. The theories concern, in part, whether realized and realizing properties are instantiated by the same individual (the flat theory) or different individuals in a part-whole relationship (the dimensioned theory). Carl Gillett has argued that the two views conflict, and that flat theories should be rejected on grounds that they fail to capture scientific cases involving a dimensioned relation between individuals and their constituent parts. I argue on the contrary that the two types of theory complement one another, even on the same range of scientific cases. I illustrate the point with two popular functionalist versions of flat and dimensioned positions—causal-role functionalism and a functional analysis by decomposition—that combine into a larger picture I call “comprehensive functional realization.” I also respond to some possible objections to this synthesis of functionalist views.
88. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
Chris Tucker No Justified Higher-Level Belief, No Problem: A Reply to Cling
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It is somewhat popular to claim that an argument justifies its conclusion only if the subject has a justified belief that the premise supports the conclusion. Andrew Cling gives a novel argument for this requirement, which he calls “(JCC).” He claims that any otherwise plausible theory that rejects (JCC) is committed to distinguishing arbitrarily between arguments that provide doxastic justification for their conclusions and those that don’t. In this paper, I show that Cling’s argument fails, and I explain how the opponent of (JCC) can justify her apparently arbitrary distinctions.
89. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
Maura Tumulty Modeling Expressing on Demonstrating
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We can increase our understanding of expression by considering an analogy to demonstrative reference. The connections between a demonstrative phrase and its referent, in a case of fully successful communication with that phrase, are analogous to the connections between an expressible state and the behavior that expresses it. The connections in each case serve to maintain a certain status for the connected elements: as actions of persons; or as objects, events, or states significant to persons. The analogy to demonstrative reference helps show that a positive account of expression can make conceptual connections between expressed states and expressive behaviors without courting reductive behaviorism. A general account of expression as marked by these connections is compared to accounts of expression offered by Dorit Bar-On and Mitchell Green. Bar-On’s account turns out to be compatible with the account proposed here, once some of its consequences are fully appreciated. Green’s account rules out, as not expressive, some behaviors like crouching (in fear) that intuitively seem expressive. When Green’s account is altered to allow such behaviors back in, the resulting account also fits the one proposed.
90. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
James R. O’Shea How to Be a Kantian and a Naturalist about Human Knowledge: Sellars’s Middle Way
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The contention in this paper is that central to Sellars’s famous attempt to fuse the “manifest image” and the “scientific image” of the human being in the world was an attempt to marry a particularly strong form of scientific naturalism with various modified Kantian a priori principles about the unity of the self and the structure of human knowledge. The modified Kantian aspects of Sellars’s view have been emphasized by current “left wing” Sellarsians, while the scientific naturalist aspects have been championed by “right wing” Sellarsians, the latter including William Rottschaefer’s constructive criticisms of my own reconciling interpretation of Sellars. In this paper I focus first on how (1) Sellars’s Kantian conception of the necessary a priori unity of the thinking self does not conflict with his ideal scientific naturalist conception of persons as “bundles” or pluralities of scientifically postulated processes. This then prepares the way for a more comprehensive discussion of how (2) Sellars’s modified Kantian account of the substantive a priori principles that make possible any conceptualized knowledge of a world does not conflict with his simultaneous demand for an ideal scientific explanation and evolutionary account of those same conceptual capacities. Sellars’s own attempted via media synthesis—what I call his “Kantian scientific naturalism”—merits another look from both the left and the right.
91. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
J. Adam Carter Radical Skepticism, Closure, and Robust Knowledge
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The Neo-Moorean response to the radical skeptical challenge boldly maintains that we can know we’re not the victims of radical skeptical hypotheses; accordingly, our everyday knowledge that would otherwise be threatened by our inability to rule out such hypotheses stands unthreatened. Given the leverage such an approach has against the skeptic from the very start, the Neo-Moorean line is an especially popular one; as we shall see, though, it faces several commonly overlooked problems. An initial problem is that this particular brand of anti-skeptical strategy is available only to a theory of knowledge that will compromise itself to especially weak epistemic standards—indeed, standards as weak as our epistemic grounds are for accepting the denials of skeptical hypotheses. With this said, the aim here is to investigate whether the Neo-Moorean line could be advanced against the skeptic in a way that wouldn’t require wholesale lowering of epistemic standards. Unfortunately, as we’ll see, Sosa’s (2007; 2009) view as well as what I argue to be the other two most plausible contender-views for maintaining a Neo-Moorean line—Greco’s and Pritchard’s—run (for similar reasons) into dead ends. The way forward, I’ll argue, is to take on board a unique variety of robust virtue epistemology accord­ing to which knowledge is thought to be situated a certain way within a gradient balance between ability and luck.
92. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 36
Zina Giannopoulou Socrates and Godlikeness in Plato’s Theaetetus
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In this paper I argue that in the digression in Plato’s Theaetetus godlikeness may be construed as Socrates’ ethical achievement, part and parcel of his art of mental mid­wifery. Although the philosophical life of contemplation and detachment from earthly affairs exemplifies the human ideal of godlikeness, Socrates’ godlikeness is an inferior but legitimate species of the genus. This is the case because Socratic godlikeness abides by the two requirements for godlikeness that Socrates sets forth in the digression: first, it is a kind of escape from the phenomenal world; and second, it allows Socrates to become just and pious with wisdom. The crucial difference between Socrates and the philosopher that prevents the former from being as godlike as the latter is his epistemic barrenness, on account of which he cannot define the constitutive virtues of godlikeness, i.e., justice, piety, and wisdom. As a barren midwife of the intellect, Socrates practices godlikeness but does not have a philosophical understanding of its nature. Nevertheless, by extolling the life of the philosopher he urges others to aspire to what he can never attain, philosophical godlikeness.
93. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Alan R. Rhoda In Defense of Weak Inferential Internalism: Reply to Alexander
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David Alexander has argued that “weak inferential internalism” (WII), a position which amounts to a qualified endorsement of Richard Fumerton’s controversial “principle of inferential justification,” is subject to a fatal dilemma: Either it collapses into externalism or it must make an arbitrary epistemic distinction between persons who believe the same proposition for the same reasons. In this paper, I argue that the dilemma is a false one, for weak inferential internalism does not entail internalism simpliciter. Indeed, WII is compatible with modest externalism, and so is consistent with what Armstrong calls “Type II justification,” the rejection of which leads to the arbitrary epistemic distinctions to which he rightly objects.
94. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Gaven Kerr Aquinas's Argument for the Existence of God in De Ente et Essentia Cap. IV: An Interpretation and Defense
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Aquinas’s name is practically synonymous with attempts at proving the existence of God. In this article I offer an interpretation and defense of a much neglected argument from Aquinas’s works, that of De Ente et Essentia Cap. IV. Therein Aquinas presents quite a youthful and in my view compelling argument for the existence of God. To begin with, I present an interpretation of the argument and on the basis of this interpretation I suggest that the argument has a prima facie plausibility to it. Thereafter I consider several criticisms that are relevant to the argument, yet not compelling in my view. I conclude that the argument from the De Ente survives the criticisms leveled against it in this paper, in which case if one accepts the methodological framework that Aquinas adopts, then one ought to accept that Aquinas’s argument for God in the De Ente succeeds in what it sets out to do: to establish the existence of a single, immaterial, self-subsisting act of being, which we understand to be God.
95. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
John M. Valentine A Note on Sartre and the Spirit of Seriousness
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At the end of Being and Nothingness, Sartre defines the spirit of seriousness in the following way: “The spirit of seriousness has two characteristics: it considers values as transcendent givens independent of human subjectivity, and it transfers the quality of ‘desirable’ from the ontological structure of things to their simple material constitution.” My aim in this paper is to show how Sartre is susceptible to a tu quoque in terms of how he describes the threataspect of the world of objects. That is, in works such as Nausea, Sartre appears to regard the world of objects as inherently threatening, and thus he has transferred the quality of threatening from the ontological structure of things to their simple material constitution.
96. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Scott Wisor Property Rights and the Resource Curse: A Reply to Wenar
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In “Property Rights and the Resource Curse” Leif Wenar argues that the purchase and sale of resources from certain countries constitutes a violation of property rights, and the priority in reforming global trade should be on protecting these property rights. Specifically, Wenar argues that the U.S. and other western liberal democracies should not be complicit in the trade of so-called cursed resources, and the extant legal system can be used to end the trade in cursed resources by prohibiting the importation of cursed resources, litigating against companies that operate in resource-cursed countries, and imposing trade tariffs on third party countries’ exports if they trade in cursed resources. In this paper, I show that while Wenar is correct that the trade in cursed resources is morally objectionable and therefore creates additional moral obligations for participants in that trade, his normative assessment fails to take account of the complexity of the resource curse and his prescriptive proposal for clean trade will not reduce harm in resource-cursed countries. I suggest that the reduction of harm, rather than the enforcement of property rights, should be the normative and practical focus in evaluating and reforming trade in natural resources.
97. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Paul Prescott What Pessimism Is
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On the standing view, pessimism is a philosophically intractable topic. Against the standing view, I hold that pessimism is a stance, or compound of attitudes, commitments and intentions. This stance is marked by certain beliefs—first and foremost, that the bad prevails over the good—which are subject to an important qualifying condition: they are always about outcomes and states of affairs in which one is personally invested. This serves to distinguish pessimism from other views with which it is routinely conflated— including skepticism and nihilism—and to allow for the extent to which pessimism necessarily involves more than the intellectual endorsement of a doctrine.
98. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
David Alexander Weak Inferential Internalism is Indistinguishable from Externalism: A Reply to Rhoda
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In “Weak Inferential Internalism” I defended the frequently voiced criticism that any internalist account of inferential justification generates a vicious regress. My defense involved criticizing a recent form of internalism, “Weak Inferential Internalism” (WII), defended by Hookway and Rhoda. I argued that while WII does not generate a vicious regress, the position is only distinguishable from externalism insofar as it makes an arbitrary distinction between individuals who believe for the very same reason. Either way, WII is not a defensible internalist account of inferential justification. In his “In Defense of Weak Inferential Internalism,” Rhoda has responded to my dilemma argument. He argues that it is mistaken to assume that WII must be incompatible with externalism, and that contrary to my claims, WII is distinguishable from externalism in several ways. In this reply, I explain why none of Rhoda’s replies suggest that there is a defensible internalist account of inferential justification.
99. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Jason Waller Spinoza on Conatus and Persistence through Time
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This paper concerns Spinoza’s theory of conatus and an important consequence of this theory concerning how bodies persist through time. I first argue that a conatus is the self-maintaining activity of a mode and not (as many scholars maintain) a tendency toward self-preservation or some kind of force. I then argue that it follows from this theory of conatus that bodies persist through time by having temporal parts. I conclude the paper by arguing that attributing a temporal parts (or ‘four-dimensional’) metaphysic to Spinoza is not as implausible or anachronistic as it might first seem to be.
100. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37
Mikael Janvid Towards a Default and Challenge Model of A Priori Warrant
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This paper outlines a default and challenge account of a priori warrant by unfolding the three stages of the epistemic dialectic in which such warrant comes to the fore. Among the virtues of this account is that it does not rely on controversial assumptions regarding non-experiential sources of warrant, like intellectual intuition, but instead relies on features of our epistemic practice, more precisely, its default and challenge structure. What distinguishes beliefs to which you are warranted a priori is not that their source of warrant resides in some intellectual faculty, but rather the characteristic ways in which these beliefs can be successfully defended against challenges. The paper ends in a discussion of whether a priori warranted beliefs are empirically indefeasible, arguing that it is misguided to demand such indefeasibility of a priori warranted beliefs since that demand is not made for other sources of warrant. The question that rather should be posed is whether beliefs for which a priori warrant is provided qualify as knowledge on a consistent basis, and this question can be given an affirmative answer even in the face of empirical defeasibility.