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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
On The Indispensable Premises Of The Indispensability Argument, Andrea Sereni, Marco Panza
On The Indispensable Premises Of The Indispensability Argument, Andrea Sereni, Marco Panza
MPP Published Research
We identify four different minimal versions of the indispensability argument, falling under four different varieties: an epistemic argument for semantic realism, an epistemic argument for platonism and a non-epistemic version of both. We argue that most current formulations of the argument can be reconstructed by building upon the suggested minimal versions. Part of our discussion relies on a clarification of the notion of (in)dispensability as relational in character. We then present some substantive consequences of our inquiry for the philosophical significance of the indispensability argument, the most relevant of which being that both naturalism and confirmational holism can be dispensed …
Epistemic Categories And Causal Kinds, P.D. Magnus
Epistemic Categories And Causal Kinds, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Within philosophy of science, debates about realism often turn on whether posited entities exist or whether scientific claims are true. Natural kinds tend to be investigated by philosophers of language or metaphysicians, for whom semantic or ontological considerations can overshadow scientific ones. Since science crucially involves dividing the world up into categories of things, however, issues concerning classification ought to be central for philosophy of science. Muhammad Ali Khalidi's book fills that gap, and I commend it to readers with an interest in scientific taxonomy and natural kinds. He works through general issues to craft a useful philosophical conception and …
Moral Motivation And The Authority Of Morality: A Defense Of Naturalist Moral Realism, Lily Eva Frank
Moral Motivation And The Authority Of Morality: A Defense Of Naturalist Moral Realism, Lily Eva Frank
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Moral realism has been continuously accused of positing the existence of queer properties, facts, judgments, and beliefs. One of these queer features is supposed to be the normative force of morality-that is the way in which morality guides our actions. Critics of moral realism argue that nothing else in the world has this feature. This is a reason to doubt that moral facts and properties exist at all. This objection can be interpreted in at least two ways. One way to interpret it has to do with moral motivation, this is the internalism objection. The other has to do with …
Scientism, Satire, And Sacrificial Ceremony In Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" And C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength", Jonathan Smalt
Scientism, Satire, And Sacrificial Ceremony In Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" And C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength", Jonathan Smalt
Masters Theses
Though the nineteenth-century Victorian belief that science alone could provide utopia for man weakened in the epistemological uncertainty of the postmodern era, this belief still continues today. In order to understand our current scientific milieu--and the dangers of propagating scientism--we must first trace the rise of scientism in the nineteenth-century. Though removed, Fyodor Dostoevsky, in Notes From Underground (1864), and C.S. Lewis, in That Hideous Strength (1965), are united in their critiques of scientism as a conceptual framework for human residency. For Dostoevsky, the Crystal Palace of London's Great Exhibition (1862) embodied the nineteenth-century goal to found utopia through the …
Nature's Goodness: An Aristotelian Account, Nathan K. Metzger
Nature's Goodness: An Aristotelian Account, Nathan K. Metzger
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Neo-Aristotelians have made major headway in moral theory, and it is now commonplace to find philosophers defending the reality of goodness through a teleological analysis of human being. Whatever the merits of this approach, it has suffered from a lack of a sustained defense of its pre-modern metaphysical panorama: the Aristotelian conception of the human good gets traction only if its decidedly pre-modern and `robust' philosophy of nature is defensible in its own right. In this dissertation, I aim to give a partial breakdown of the particular sort of metaphysical project that the Aristotelian moral theorist assumes, but does not …
Brain And Aesthetic Attitude: How To Integrate "Old" And "New" Aesthetics, Gianluca Consoli
Brain And Aesthetic Attitude: How To Integrate "Old" And "New" Aesthetics, Gianluca Consoli
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
At present, various efforts are being put forward to naturalize aesthetics. One of the most controversial disciplines of aesthetics is neuroaesthetics. The first applications of neuroimaging of the aesthetic experience of paintings occurred ten years ago. Over this decade, neuroscientific findings have determined three common centers of visual aesthetic experience: top-down processing; reward and evaluation; and cortical sensory processing. Undoubtedly, these common centers require better identification and further investigation. However, the experimental data currently available make it possible to falsify or corroborate traditional philosophical theories of aesthetic perception and evaluation. Within an integrated approach to aesthetics, this selective function might …