Showing papers in "The Journal of Philosophy in 2002"

Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation

Abstract: Introduction 1. EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY 2. The Emotions as Value Judgements in Chrysippus 3. Seneca's Defence: Third Movements as Harmonizing Chrysippus and Zeno 4. Seneca's Defence: First Movements as Answering Posidonius 5. The Arts: First Movements and Controversies on Drama and Music. Aristotle, Philodemus, and the Stoics 6. Posidonius on the Irrational Forces in Emotion: Galen's Report 7. Posidonius: Judgements Insufficient for Emotion. Exhaustion and Lack of Imagination 8. Posidonius: Judgements Not Necessary for Emotion. Disowned Judgements, Animals, and Music 9. Aspasius and Other Objections to Chrysippus 10. What is Missing from the Judgemental Analysis? Brain Research and Limitations on Stoic Cognitive Therapy 11. THE ROLE OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY IN STOIC COGNITIVE THERAPY 12. Stoic Indifference: A Barrier to Therapy? 13. The Case for and against Eradication of Emotion 14. The Traditions of Moderation and Eradication 15. How the Ancient Exercises Work 16. Exercises Concerned with Time and the Self 17. Physiology and the Non-Cognitive: Galen's Alternative Approach to Emotion 18. Sex, Love, and Marriage in Pagan Philosophy and the Use of Catharsis 19. Catharsis and the Classification of Therapies 20. EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF 21. The Concept of Will 22. FIRST MOVEMENTS AS BAD THOUGHTS: ORIGEN AND HIS LEGACY 23. From First Movements to the Seven Cardinal Sins: Evagrius 24. First Movements in Augustine: Adaptation and Misunderstanding 25. Christians on Moderation versus Eradication 26. Augustine on Lust and the Will Bibliography of Secondary Sources Mentioned Index of Ancient Thinkers Index Locorum Subject and Name Index

Two ways of thinking about fitness and natural selection

Abstract: Etude de la relation entre l'adaptation, la selection naturelle, et les autres facteurs explicatifs de la theorie evolutionniste. Rejetant la notion de presentation informelle chez P. Kitcher, l'A. presente un modele causal coherent, inspire de la structure statistique de la genese des populations.

Why There Is No Issue Between Habermas and Rawls

Abstract: Au-dela de leur desaccord concernant l'interpretation epistemique de la notion de point de vue moral, l'A. tente de reconcilier la theorie morale d'Habermas, fondee sur la distinction entre forme nomologique et forme dialogique, avec la theorie de la justice de Rawls, fondee sur le principe d'impartialite et d'equilibre reflexif.

Taking luck seriously

Abstract: Suppose someone were to say to you, "Look, I grant that moral responsibility requires freedom and that freedom requires alternate possibilities. Nonetheless, it's perfectly possible for someone to be morally responsible even in the absence of alternate possibilities." You would be mystified. You would, in G. E. Moore's1 gentle phrase, "be entitled to laugh at him and to distrust his future statements" about moral responsibility (ibid., p. 13). So, too, if he were to say, "I grant that moral responsibility requires freedom and that freedom is incompatible with causal determinism. Still, it's perfectly possible for someone to be morally responsible even if determinism is true."

The Harder Problem of Consciousness

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present another problem of consciousness. The Harder Problem as I will call it is more epistemological than the Hard Problem. A second difference: the Hard Problem could arise for someone who has no conception of another person, whereas the Harder Problem is tied closely to the problem of other minds. Finally, the Harder Problem reveals an epistemic tension or at least discomfort in our ordinary conception of consciousness that is not suggested by the Hard Problem, and so in one respect it is harder. Perhaps the Harder Problem includes the Hard Problem and is best thought of as an epistemic add-on to it. Or perhaps they are in some other way facets of a single problem. Then my point is that this single problem breaks into two parts, one of which is more epistemic, involves other minds, and involves an epistemic discomfort.

What Is the Problem of Coherence and Truth

Abstract: General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal

Making Sense of the Senses: Individuating Modalities in Humans and Other Animals

Abstract: Soulignant l'existence de modalites sensorielles distinctes dans l'experience perceptive humaine, l'A. developpe une approche neuroethologique de l'information sensible sur le monde physique transmise au systeme nerveux par la sensation. D'Aristote a H. P. Grice, l'A. etudie la difference entre les sens de l'homme et ceux de l'animal.

De Facto Dependence

Abstract: Etude du probleme de preemption qui se pose aux theories de la causation fondees sur la dependance. Examinant le lien de dependance de facto qui existe de maniere contrefactuelle entre la cause et l'effet, l'A. compare les differentes reponses apportees a la preemption en termes d'analogie, de nature instrinseque, de besoins actuels, d'evenements en contrepartie, d'ancetre et d'accelerateur.

The Ersatz pluriverse

Abstract: While many are impressed with the utility of possible worlds in linguistics and philosophy, few can accept the modal realism of David Lewis, who regards possible worlds as sui generis entities of a kind with the concrete world we inhabit.1 Not all uses of possible worlds require exotic ontology. Consider, for instance, the use of Kripke models to establish formal results in modal logic. These models contain sets often regarded for heuristic reasons as sets of “possible worlds”. But the “worlds” in these sets can be anything at all; they can be numbers, or people, or sh. The set of worlds, together with the accessibility relation and the rest of the model, is used as a purely formal structure.2 One can even go beyond establishing results about formal systems and apply Kripke models to English, as Charles Chihara has recently argued.3 Chihara shows, for instance, how to use Kripke models (plus primitive modal notions) to give an account of validity for English modal sentences. In other cases worlds are not really needed at all. It is often vivid to give a counterexample thus: “There is a possible world in which P. Since your theory implies that in all worlds, not-P, your theory is wrong.” But the counterexample could just as easily be given using modal operators: “Possibly, P. Since your theory implies that it is necessary that not-P, your theory is wrong.”

Egalitarianism Against the Veil of Ignorance

Abstract: J. Rawls and R. Dworkin have each used veils of ignorance to justify equality (Rawls) or to compute what equality entails (Dworkin). J. Harsanyi has also derived a distributive ethic from a veil of ignorance argument, which, although not egalitarian, is believed by Harsanyi to be not excessively inegalitarian. Harsanyi's analysis does not determine a unique social choice function, but rather a family of such functions. Here, by appending more information to Harsanyi's environment, and an Axiom of Neutrality, I uniquely determine a social welfare function by extending Harsanyi's argument. I show that this function is strongly inegalitarian, in that it recommends resource transfers from disabled to able individuals. Some concluding remarks are offered against using the veil of ignorance in studying the distributive ethics.

Self-Locating Belief in Big Worlds: Cosmology’s Missing Link to Observation

Abstract: Current cosmological theories say that the world is so big that all possible observations are in fact made. But then, how can such theories be tested? What could count as negative evidence? To answer that, we need to consider observation selection effects.

Trust Out of Distrust

Abstract: The paper aims to establish the possibility of trust from within a Hobbesian framework. It shows that distrust situations can be structured in two ways, the first referred to as Hard and the second as Soft, both of which are compatible with Hobbes’s stark assumptions about human nature. In Hard distrust situations (which are prisoner’s-dilemma structured) the distrust strategy is dominant; in the Soft variety (which are stag-hunt structured) trust is an equilibrium choice. In order to establish the possibility of trust there is no need to claim that the state of nature is Soft rather than Hard, nor even that Soft is likelier. Game theoretical considerations show that all that is needed to give trust a chance is the ambiguity or uncertainty on the part of the players as to which of the two basic situations of distrust in fact obtains: which game was picked by Nature for them to play.

Causation: Influence Versus Sufficiency

Abstract: Rejetant l'ancienne theorie de la dependance causale des evenements au profit de la these de D. Lewis, l'A. defend une approche contrefactuelle de la cause definie comme partie necessaire de la condition suffisante. Soulevant le probleme de la coupure tardive, de l'essence de la cause, et de son caractere intrinseque, l'A. developpe une analyse de la causation directe en termes de sufisance contrefactuelle.

Value-pluralist egalitarianism

Abstract: Au-dela des differentes definitions de l'egalite des chances en termes de ressources, de bien-etre et d'acces aux avantages chez A. Sen, R. Dworkin et G. A. Cohen, l'A. montre que les penseurs egalitaristes partagent une meme conception de la pluralite des valeurs, qui s'oppose aux theories aristotelicienne, kantienne et utilitariste, a l'exception de la theorie des ordres lexicaux de J. Rawls.

Review of Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and Bodies

Abstract: Locke’s view that continuants are numerically distinct from their constituting hunks of matter is popular enough to be called the “standard account”.1 It was given its de nitive contemporary statement by David Wiggins in Sameness and Substance2, and has been defended by many since. Baker’s interesting book contributes new arguments for this view, a new de nition of ‘constitution’, and a sustained application to persons and human animals. Much of what she says develops this view in new and important ways. But in some cases she does not advance the position, and in others she takes steps backwards. According to Baker, a person is numerically distinct from her constituting animal. One of Baker’s leading arguments is surprisingly unconvincing. Persons differ in important ways from non-human animals. Only persons are moral agents, modify their goals, have wars, culture, etc. If persons were identical to animals—if we were “nothing but animals”, as she puts it—then the manifest discontinuity between humans and non-human animals would be located “within the domain of biology”. “But from a biological point of view, human animals...are biologically continuous with non-human animals.” (p. 17) The argument fails: why should identifying persons with animals preclude saying that these particular animals have radically distinctive features that are of little interest to biologists? The traditional case for non-identity (which Baker accepts) is more powerful: a person and her constituting animal differ by having different persistence conditions. If my memories were transferred to a new body and my old body destroyed, I the person might survive, but the human animal who constituted me would perish. Therefore, before the transfer, I and the animal that constituted me would be numerically distinct but extremely similar things located in exactly the same place. This consequence—the central thesis of the Wiggins view—is surprising: so surprising that some reject the Wiggins view on that basis. The usual response, that the consequence is unremarkable because the animal constitutes the person, only invites the question: what is constitution? Baker’s de nition, greatly simpli ed, is this: x constitutes y iff i) x and

The maxims problem

Abstract: soulevant le probleme des maximes au sein des morales formalistes fondee sur le lien conceptuel entre la liberte et les principes d'action, l'A. examine les deux presupposes de la tradition kantienne: le premier definissant le choix en termes de maximes, le second definissant celles-ci en termes de prescriptions.