Roughly sixty years ago, certain interpreters dragged the study of Plato’s dialogues into the modern world by subjecting them to analytic philosophical methods. So goes the prevailing history of Plato scholarship. With this development, specialists could explain their research to their colleagues using familiar modern categories, and — what is perhaps just another way of …
Philosophy as Drama: Plato’s Thinking through Dialogue Read More »
Dialetheism (or, more simply, “glut theory” as dual of familiar truth-value “gap theories”) is the view according to which there are true contradictions. Quite a hard view to legitimate, which explains why it seems to have only very few genuine supporters. Yet, it is not, or it is supposed not to be, confused with the …
This timely collection of essays explores a bustling area of moral epistemology, namely, how higher-order evidence affects the rationality of moral beliefs. Arguments from disagreement between moral peers and evolutionary debunking arguments both employ higher-order evidence to try to establish that some/many/all of our moral beliefs are unjustified and do not amount to knowledge. Epistemology …
Set theory is widely regarded as the foundation for (nearly) all of mathematics. This raises the question of what a set is and what sets there are. According to the famous iterative conception, sets are “formed” in stages: we start at stage zero with some individuals, or nonsets; at stage one, we form all sets of …
Conceptions of Set and the Foundations of Mathematics Read More »
In this well-argued, engaging book, Peter Carruthers makes a comprehensive case for a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness, and considers the upshot for animals: are they phenomenally conscious, and does it matter morally? His answer: there is no fact of the matter about whether animals are phenomenally conscious, but this doesn’t change anything morally, …
Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest Read More »
Tony Milligan tells a story about the idea of implied truths in fiction. “I knew it wouldn’t work.” “Teething troubles my friend. A few adjustments here and there, and all shall be well.” “Where are we anyway?” “Little Dorrit.” “Let me get this straight. Instead of travelling back into the heady atmosphere of 19th century …
Roger Caldwell considers whether it’s possible to consider Derrida. In all commentaries on Derrida sooner or later you will find the assurance that his argumentation is rigorous. This is surprising, in two respects. Firstly, commentators on philosophers such as Hume or Kant rarely feel the need to reassure the reader in this way. And secondly, …
What’s in a name? Marnie Binder asks if it matters who’s writing, and other questions of authorship. “By certain manners of the spirit even great spirits betray that they come from the mob or semi-mob; it is above all the gait and stride of their thoughts that betray them; they cannot walk. There is something …
Nancy Bunge considers Emerson as a philosopher, to show that he is a poet. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) not only made influential arguments for a distinctively American literature, his early admirers and students include Walt Whitman, generally considered America’s best poet, and Henry David Thoreau, who established American environmental literature with Walden. As a result, …
Why Emerson is Much Too Smart to be a Philosopher Read More »
Neil Lefebvre and Melissa Schehlein give an intuitive solution to the famous Liar Paradox. This Subtitle is False This article is about a well-known paradox that dates back to ancient times, known as the Liar Paradox, or sometimes, Epimenides’ Paradox. It can take many forms, but one of the most common is the following sentence: …