{"title":"Reconciling Moral Responsibility with Multiplicity in Conway’s <i>Principles</i>","authors":"Hope Sample","doi":"10.1080/09672559.2023.2237026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2023.2237026","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTAnne Conway’s commitment to the moral responsibility of creatures, or created beings, is seemingly in tension with her unique metaphysics. Conway is committed to individual moral responsibility. Conway insists that an innocent person ought not be punished for someone else’s sin. Interesting recent work highlights a unique aspect of Conway’s position that creatures are multiplicities: not only are creatures integrated into the larger whole of creation, but also their parts are mutually integrated into one another. The latter, which I will call ‘ontological overlap,’ renders the boundaries between creatures unclear. However, creatures must be distinct enough from each other to provide a proper subject for individual moral responsibility. This contribution suggests that Conway’s account of vital power can resolve an apparent tension between ontological overlap and individual moral responsibility and, more broadly, that Conway has a relational metaphysics of moral subjecthood.KEYWORDS: Anne Conwaymoral responsiblitymultiplicitymetaphysicsparthoodpowers AcknowledgmentsThis paper greatly benefitted from the extensive feedback of two anonymous referees, Ruth Boeker, and Graham Clay. I had a helpful discussion of an earlier version of this paper at Carleton College and St. Olaf’s joint colloquium series. Finally, I would like to give a special thanks to Jason Decker, Dan Groll, Andrew Knoll, Anna Moltchanova, and Sue Sample for their feedback.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. References to Conway’s Principles are to Conway (Citation1996), The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, ed. and tr. Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse, hereafter cited in the text as ‘CC’, followed by page, chapter, and section number.2. For further analysis of Conway on the multiplicity of creatures, see Jasper Reid (Citation2020).3. Conway imagines an interlocutor who objects that God is responsible for sin if ‘motion and being come from the same cause, God the creator, who nevertheless remains unmoved’ (CC 58; VIII.2). She replies that although the captain is not responsible for the existence of the wind, they are appropriately praised or blamed and punished according to how they use their power to direct the ship.4. Hutton (Citation2004) provides a thorough background on Conway’s religious, personal, and philosophical context.5. See Hutton (Citation1996) for an analysis of Conway’s account of universal salvation.6. That in turn raises interesting issues concerning Conway’s modal commitments. For the purposes of this discussion, their success is at least inevitable in the sense that all creatures will succeed in the limit.7. Thanks to Anna Moltchanova for discussion of this point.8. See Jessica Gordon-Roth (Citation2018) for an interpretation of Conway that has it that she vacillates between token existence monism and type monism for the created world. Emily Thomas (Citation2020) argues that the ","PeriodicalId":51828,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135747867","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":"Herder and the Limits of <i>Einfühlung</i>","authors":"Roey Reichert","doi":"10.1080/09672559.2023.2250182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2023.2250182","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The fifth chapter of Experience Embodied is devoted to Herder’s theory of cognition and the epistemic merits of the capacity for ‘sympathy’, or ‘empathy’ – what Herder calls Einfühlung, and which Waldow renders more accurately as ‘affective immersion’. I situate Waldow’s reading of Herder as a member of the epistemological tradition within the debate on Herder’s relationship to the Enlightenment. Waldow’s reading, I contend, is congruent with the view of Herder as an Enlightenment, rather than anti-Enlightenment, figure. I focus on what Waldow calls ‘the problem of the conceivability of difference’ (Waldow 2020, 185) and how she charts Herder’s proposed method of Einfühlung and the need for ‘affective immersion’ to address this problem. However, I also identify three potential problems, which Waldow does not address, that can arise when Einfühlung is taken too far: the first is that it may lead to relativism, and thus to incoherence; the second is reductionism, which can eliminate, rather than draw attention to, difference – thereby achieving the opposite goal; while the third is that relying solely on Einfühlung as a method can lead us into error, as it is speculative and lacks an external truth criterion.","PeriodicalId":51828,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135748185","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":"An Interview with John McDowell on his 2013 Agnes Cuming Lectures (UCD), ‘Two Questions About Perception’","authors":"James D. O’Shea, J. Mcdowell","doi":"10.1080/09672559.2023.2204696","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2023.2204696","url":null,"abstract":"In 2013 John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, delivered the Agnes Cuming Lectures that are hosted annually by the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin, on the topic: ‘Two Questions about Perception’ (23–24 April). The following lightly edited interview with McDowell (JM) by O’Shea (JOS) (https://youtu. be/fSXw2mJTF-Y) occurred after the first of his two lectures, which were entitled: ‘Can Cognitive Science Determine Epistemology?’ (https://youtu. be/m8y8673RmII), and ‘Are the Senses Silent?’ (https://youtu.be/ fBQHEGg5JSo). Each talk carried further some important debates about the fundamental nature of perceptual knowledge that McDowell has continued to have with, in the first case, Tyler Burge (cf. Burge 2003, 2005, 2011, 2022; McDowell 1982, 1994, 2008, 2010, 2011; Burge 2011), and in the second case with Charles Travis (McDowell 2009, 2013; McDowell 2018; Travis 2004, 2013, 2018; McDowell 2018 see also Gersel et al. 2018). In the first lecture McDowell argued against Burge that cognitive science, while doing significant work on the problems with which it is concerned, does not address in its terms some of the most important problems in epistemology concerning the nature of perceptual knowledge. In the second lecture McDowell responded to Travis’s influential 1994 paper, ‘The Silence of the Senses’ by arguing in light of insights from both Kant and Wilfrid Sellars that the senses are not ‘silent’ in the way that Travis contends, which concerns the nature and role of sensibility in our perceptual knowledge of given environmental realities. The interview contains discussion of the topics raised in both of the lectures. Of particular interest in the interview is how each of them relates to McDowell’s well-known embrace and development of Sellars’s famous critique of the ‘myth of the given’ (Sellars 1956), including some of the ways in which McDowell has found it necessary to","PeriodicalId":51828,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"1 - 17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42842176","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":"Pavlos Kontos’s Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason","authors":"Giulio Di Basilio","doi":"10.1080/09672559.2023.2214754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2023.2214754","url":null,"abstract":"Bernasconi, R. 2001. “Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant’s Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race.” In Race, edited by R. Bernasconi, 11–36. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Mason, M. 2003. “Contempt as a Moral Attitude.” Ethics 113 (2): 234–272. doi:10.1086/342860. Mills, C. W. 1997. The Racial Contract. NY: Cornell University Press. Shorter-Bourhanou, J. I. 2022. “Reinventing Kant?” Kantian Review 27 (4): 529–540. doi:10. 1017/S1369415422000346. Stockdale, K. 2021. Hope Under Oppression. Oxford: Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":51828,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"98 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41337694","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":"Action as Abductive Performance: An Improvisational Model","authors":"A. Bertinetto, P. Grüneberg","doi":"10.1080/09672559.2023.2186466","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2023.2186466","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT According to Gilbert Ryle, improvisation is a basic feature of ordinary action. In this paper, we take this idea seriously. Action is improvisation, in that it is situated: It is shaped by attentive responses to environmental circumstances. This is a crucial aspect of agency. However, it is neglected by causal theories of action (Bratman; Mele) and only partially addressed by Thompson’s process-oriented theory. By resorting to Kant’s theory of judgment, we argue for understanding action performance in terms of improvisational shaping of action in situ. The focus on improvisation points to a situated kind of practical rationality entailing the reciprocal shaping of intention and action instead of the ordinary instrumental kind of rationality of action as unidirectionally determined by intention.","PeriodicalId":51828,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"36 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44582064","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":"Rousseau and the Spirit of Autonomy: A Pathos of Vigour","authors":"Étienne Cardin-Trudeau","doi":"10.1080/09672559.2023.2199029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2023.2199029","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Rousseau’s political project consists in ensuring that the citizens of the social contract, in uniting with each other, preserve their ability to self-legislate, or be autonomous. For this to work, however, members of the social contract would need to feel intrinsically linked to the political whole. This essay investigates what that feeling might be and how it can be grown. I argue that Rousseau develops a model of the energy or character of the being capable of autonomy, capable of experiencing themselves as part of the whole. That energy is a pathos of vigour, a strong sentiment and way of being that I develop from Rousseau’s educational precepts in Émile, which makes the citizen feel free and robust in dependence and boundedness. Autonomy, then, comes from the active exercise of oneself, physically and mentally, in an environment bounded by things, and this results in a sentiment of vigour, a vitality that produces confidence and poise, which then entices further activity.","PeriodicalId":51828,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"68 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46962079","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":"Thomas Reid, Common Sense, and Pragmatism","authors":"Peter Baumann","doi":"10.1080/09672559.2023.2209591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2023.2209591","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper deals with a less well-known connection between Thomas Reid’s conception of common sense and pragmatism. The paper starts with an exposition of the different principles of common sense one can find in Reid’s writings and a discussion of their epistemic status. The main focus of the paper is on what one may call ‘Reid’s dilemma of common sense’. I argue that Reid’s writings not only present us with a dilemma of common sense but that they also offer a way out of the dilemma, one that is pragmatist in a certain sense. I also discuss the question whether the proposed way out can work.","PeriodicalId":51828,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"54 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41919357","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":"Blame, Nudging, and the Actual Moral Relationship","authors":"Nicholas Sars","doi":"10.1080/09672559.2023.2169740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2023.2169740","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT T. M. Scanlon posits a universal moral relationship in response to the worry that his relational approach to blame cannot answer the question of how strangers can fittingly blame one another. However, commentators have noted that appealing to universal moral standards seems to explicitly deviate from a relational approach’s basis in actual relationship norms. This paper argues that Scanlon’s idea of a moral relationship can nevertheless provide a basis for response to the problem of strangers if we recognize that actual and ideal moral relationships both play a role within the relational approach. An interesting consequence of this recognition is that it seems to undermine the moral relationship’s universality. However, a presumptive case for assuming the relationship exists even between strangers can be found in seeing our blaming practices as akin to public policy nudges, where blame operates like an opt-out choice architecture with respect to the moral relationship. On this understanding, though the moral relationship is escapable, individuals are naturally encouraged to participate through the expression of interpersonal attitudes that communicate relational norms and expectations.","PeriodicalId":51828,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"18 - 35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48322870","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}