Philosophical Papers最新文献

{"title":"Decolonising Philosophy","authors":"Dylan B. Futter","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2248410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2248410","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractIn its attempt to deflate of the pretensions of ‘Western knowledge’, the epistemic decolonisation movement carries on the work of Socrates, who sought to persuade those who thought that they were wise but were not, that they were not. Yet in its determination to recover and elevate indigenous systems of thought, decolonisation seems opposed to this very work, which is always corrosive of inherited belief. Decolonisation both expresses and contradicts the spirit of Socratic philosophy. Notes1 Matolino Citation2020, p. 215.2 I sometimes use the term ‘decolonisation’ as shorthand for ‘the decolonisation movement’ and cognate phrases; context will make this clear. On the wrongs of colonialism, see, for example, Pillay Citation2015 and Matolino Citation2020, p. 213.3 On epistemicide, see Grosfoguel Citation2013 and Tobi Citation2020. See also Táíwò Citation2019, pp. 141–142 and, more generally, Valentini Citation2015.4 See wa Thiong’o Citation1986; Hountondji Citation1995; and Táíwò Citation2019. See also Wiredu Citation1998, pp. 17 and 22.5 Mitova Citation2020, p. 191. See also Mbembe Citation2015 and Etieyibo Citation2016.6 wa Thiong’o Citation1986, p. 87, as paraphrased by Mbembe Citation2015.7 Plato, Apology of Socrates, 38a and passim.8 Plato, Republic, book VII, 537e ff. For more on the relationship between inquiry and detachment, see section 6. On the conflict between philosophy and traditional belief, see also Oruka Citation1990, p. 44.9 This account is compatible with the analysis of Tobi Citation2020, pp. 259 ff.10 Cf. Táíwò Citation2019, p. 149.11 Matolino Citation2020, p. 221. I use the term ‘intellectual’ to mean ‘relating to ideas’ in the sense defined in the text.12 See Wiredu Citation2002, p. 58 and Ramose Citation2016. For Wiredu, decolonisation means ‘divesting African philosophical thinking of all undue influences emanating from our colonial past’ (Citation1998, p. 17).13 See Emmanuel Citation2019, pp. 1–3. I do not take a position on the merits of free trade or protectionism in economics.14 Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder, 22, and Nasr Citation1968.15 Emmanuel Citation2019, pp. 3 and 14.16 See Wiredu Citation2002, pp. 17 and 20. See also Etieyibo 2016, pp. 404–405.17 I do not claim that African philosophy is to be identified with traditional belief, only that it must begin with this. As Wiredu puts the point, decolonisation seeks to recover an African ‘philosophic inheritance in its true lineaments’ (Citation2002, p. 58); he speaks also of bringing ‘oneself to a vantage point for viewing African thought materials in their true light’ (ibid.). Cf. also Wiredu Citation1984, p. 34 and Eze Citation2001, p. 207. To be sure, the difficulty of reconciling a historical account of intellectual ownership with the demand for philosophical self-examination is a primary concern of this paper.18 See Wiredu Citation2002, p. 17.19 See Ndlovu-Gatsheni Citation2017, p. 51. Similarly, Eze remarks that ‘[t]heories … should be able to flow fro","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135926511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hostile Scaffolding","authors":"R. Timms, D. Spurrett","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2231652","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2231652","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Most accounts of cognitive scaffolding focus on ways that external structure can support or augment an agent’s cognitive capacities. We call cases where the interests of the user are served benign scaffolding and argue for the possibility and reality of hostile scaffolding. This is scaffolding which depends on the same capacities of an agent to make cognitive use of external structure as in benign cases, but which undermines or exploits the user while serving the interests of another agent. We develop criteria for scaffolding being hostile and show by reference to examples including the design features of electronic gambling machines and casino management systems that hostile scaffolding exists and can be highly effective. In cases where the scaffolding is deep and permits the offloading of significant cognitive work, hostile scaffolding exploitatively manipulates cognitive processing itself. Given the extent of human reliance on scaffolding this is an important and neglected vulnerability.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"52 1","pages":"53 - 82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45493338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Development and Modernity in Africa: An Intercultural Philosophical Perspective","authors":"A. Ajah","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2221975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2221975","url":null,"abstract":"Joseph Agbakoba’s Development and Modernity in Africa is at once courageous, deeply self-reflexive, epochal, and thoroughly awakening. It achieves a foundational representation and reconstruction of human agency in traditional Africa to guide contemporary Africa. This huge achievement is anchored on two main features that run throughout the text. One is that it refocuses Africans’ attention on themselves as the primary agents of every bit of their historical experiences—past, present, and the future. The other is that it highlights a connection among Africans’ existential concerns, epistemic concerns and creativity, and lingering epistemic orientation. These drive knowledge generation and research agenda on the continent. The book therefore qualifies as a mirror for self-understanding by Africans—about themselves, their actions, and what they have made or can make of themselves and context. The book contains an elaborate Introduction and seven tightly argued chapters. Chapters 1 to 3 focus on conceptual clarifications and philosophical analyses of concepts. Chapters 4 to 6 are a historical presentation of and hermeneutic engagement with facts and fictions. Chapter 7 is a reconstructive project. There, Agbakoba highlights how to improve trans-cultural, complementary, and just understanding of Africa’s possible self-improvement today and in the future. In this book, which for now qualifies as his magnum opus, Agbakoba responds to several burning issues in African studies generally and philosophy in Africa, in particular. For each issue, Agbakoba highlights paths to improved human agency and development in Africa. By doing this, he weakens the lure of old and new scholarly trends that sustain irresponsibility and blame-gaming on the continent. The most recent of such trends is the search for what is described as decolonization. Four of the issues he responded to stand out. They are closely related, but I will try to keep them separate. First is the lingering question of Africans’ contributions to and degree of culpability for their past and present predicaments, and development crises. Agbakoba explains that transatlantic slavery would not have Philosophical Papers","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"52 1","pages":"83 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46419186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hobbes On Scientific Happiness","authors":"Yuval Eytan","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2237695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2237695","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Many consider Hobbes the father of political individualism, claiming that his new conception of happiness involved abandoning its metaphysical dimension, which had been central in ancient times and in the Middle Ages. Highlighting previous commentators’ inattention to the link between scientific knowledge and happiness in Hobbes’s thought, I demonstrate the inaccuracy of considering him the founder of a new ideal of happiness grounded in individual experience. Hobbes adopts the ancient principle that man’s happiness is necessarily conditional upon his submission to a normative system derived from the truth regarding his nature. His originality lies in an innovative understanding of human nature and scientific truth. This article suggests that progress in a person’s life, which is possible only in the realm of pleasures of the mind, is an objective element of Hobbes’s notion of happiness, which derives from his definition of humans as rational and curious beings. Leaving the state of nature freed man from the misery that results from constant war and the horror of violent death that accompanied it, but not from the misery whose source is ignorance regarding the purpose of life.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"52 1","pages":"1 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47589441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and beyond the Continent","authors":"F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2174898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2174898","url":null,"abstract":"Much of what is taught in the discipline of philosophy in most universities in African countries is European philosophy. This is the reality that Thaddeus Metz met when he moved to South Africa in 1999. The moral philosophy that was taught to students at the University of Witwatersrand did not stem from the local intellectual tradition. Metz took it upon himself to read and engage with scholars about indigenous Africa with a view to seeing what contributions sub-Saharan cultures could make to contemporary debates on the study of moral philosophy. His concern was that sub-Saharan ethical philosophy had been unjustly neglected around the world. In the text, he outlines the sub-Saharan communal ethic and goes on to make the claim that African tradition grounds a moral theory that is actually more attractive than the dominant modern Western moral theories. A Relational Moral Theory consists of parts of Metz’s previously published journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries that he has reviewed and revised, and put together as a monograph. Most texts which normally consist of revised and updated pieces previously published usually come out as a patchwork of edited pieces lacking a seamless unity. In his text, Metz carefully puts together the revised previously published pieces into a coherent thesis with a smooth flow. The book consists of an introductory chapter and twelve other chapters. It is divided into three broad parts, reflecting the three branches of the arm of knowledge that deals with moral principles—ethics. Part I is located within the branch of meta-ethics and is subtitled ‘African Ethics Without a Metaphysical Gound’. Part II finds grounding in the domain of normative ethics and is subtitled ‘Communality as the Ground of African Morality’. Part III is situated within the branch of applied ethics and is subtitled ‘Communality as the Ground of Morality Simpliciter’. Part I of the book is largely methodological and consists of two chapters, Chapters 2 and 3. In these, the author outlines the method he uses; this method is important in that it runs through the rest of the book. Chapter 2 justifies the author’s favored moral theory. In the chapter, the author outlines and then dismisses the moral claims of some renowned Philosophical Papers","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"477 - 481"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46218320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How Manipulation Arguments Mischaracterize Determinism","authors":"P. Torek","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2023.2209292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2209292","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I outline a heretofore neglected difference between manipulation scenarios and merely deterministic ones. Plausible scientific determinism does not imply that the relevant prior history of the universe is independent of us, while manipulation does. Owing to sensitive dependence of physical outcomes upon initial conditions, in order to trace a deterministic history, a microphysical level of analysis is required. But on this level physical laws are time-symmetrically deterministic, and causality, conceived asymmetrically, disappears. I then consider a revised scenario to resurrect the threat of manipulation even in the presence of time-symmetry and sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. To do so we posit a Designer-manipulator containing all the information of the manipulated and time-symmetrically related to him. The new scenario violates special relativity, but even waiving that objection, the scenario cannot meet its requirements. I argue that the Designer lacks agency enough to manipulate the target, both because her information lacks the robustness required to constitute knowledge of what she does, and because it leaves no room for desires for specific results.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"457 - 475"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42396423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Anything Can Be Meaningful","authors":"C. M. Stevenson","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2022.2079552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2022.2079552","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is widely held that for a life to be conferred meaning it requires the appropriate type of agency. Call this the agency requirement. The agency requirement is primarily motivated in the philosophical literature by the assumption that there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that humans have the capacity for meaning whereas animals do not; and that difference must come down to their agency or lack thereof. This paper aims to undercut the motivation for the agency requirement by arguing our pre-theoretical intuitions actually run opposite; that animals, and even objects, can have meaningful lives/existences. The argument is twofold. First, I extend an existing argument for animals as having a capacity for meaning to objects. Second, I argue maintaining that only humans have the capacity for meaning results in the more counterintuitive upshot that all animals and objects have, by definition, meaningless existences. Since we pre-theoretically believe that anything can be meaningful—even things which by definition lack agency—then we have strong reason for being sceptical about an agency requirement for meaning in life.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"427 - 455"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48840937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Moral Responsibility and Character Formation","authors":"D. Goldstick","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2022.2107056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2022.2107056","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Freedom-determinism compatibilism says a deed is correctly censurable if and only if it flows from a bad character, irrespective of what caused that character. In the relevant sense, the doer could have done otherwise whenever with a better character s/he would have. But commonsense considers that unavoidable early brutalizing experiences can at least mitigate blame. The reconciliation is that when a partly formed bad character causes early choices productive of a more fully formed character which leads then to subsequent misdeeds, blame for them is augmented on account of that, but it is not thus augmented if the early brutalization was instead unavoidable. Properly viewed, the case is one, not of reduced blame, but just of unaugmented blame.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"357 - 365"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48727387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sometimes I Am Fictional: Narrative and Identification","authors":"Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2022.2103021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2022.2103021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Most analytical philosophers consider that we cannot identify with fictional characters in a literal sense. Specifically, Carroll and Gaut argue that doing so would imply a high degree of irrationality. In this paper I stand for the claim that we can identify with fictional characters thanks to a suspension of disbelief. First, I rely on narrative theories of personal identity to propose a model of how the process of identification might happen in real life. Then, I explain how this model can be adapted to account for the suspension of disbelief that occurs in the special case of identification with fictional characters.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"403 - 425"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43506639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is Blame a Moral Attitude?","authors":"Roger G. López","doi":"10.1080/05568641.2022.2118156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2022.2118156","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present article challenges a widespread view of blame as an inherently moral attitude. I begin by pointing out some features of blame that are not readily explained by, and not obviously compatible with, a moral orientation. To account for those features, I elucidate Nietzsche’s insights that blame responds to frustration and can serve as a bulwark against unwelcome self-perception, drawing as well on modern psychoanalysis’s inheritance of those insights. In the second half of the paper, I critically examine three of the most thorough attempts to root blame in moral foundations, those of George Sher, T.M. Scanlon and Miranda Fricker. I argue that each of these authors overestimates the prevalence and centrality of the influence morality can have on blame, to conclude that blame and morality only dovetail contingently some of the time.","PeriodicalId":46780,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Papers","volume":"51 1","pages":"367 - 401"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42565204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}