This paper argues that open-mindedness is a corrective virtue. It serves as a corrective to the epistemic vice of confirmation bias. Specifically, open-mindedness is the epistemically virtuous disposition to resist the negative effects of confirmation bias on our ability to reason well and to evaluate evidence and arguments. As part of the defense and presentation of our account, we explore four discussions of open-mindedness in the recent literature. All four approaches have strengths and shed light on aspects of the virtue of open-mindedness. Each mentions various symptoms of confirmation bias and some explore aspects of the corrective role of open-mindedness. However, ours is the first to explicitly identify open-mindedness as a corrective virtue to the specific epistemic vice of confirmation bias. We show how the corrective account also permits a response to the concern that open-mindedness might not actually count as a virtue.

Debate between the A- and B-theories has rested on the supposition that there is a clear difference between A- and B-time. I argue that this supposition is mistaken for two reasons. (1) We cannot distinguish the two conceptions of time by means of Bergsonian intuition. (2) Unless we can do so, we cannot distinguish them at all. I defend (1) by imagining various ways to intuit the two kinds of time, and maintaining that none of them works. I defend (2) by showing that the issue is an experiential one, unlike metaphysical issues that are less connected to experience. My conclusion is that no progress will be made in the debate between the two theories until it becomes clear what the difference is between the two kinds of time.

Some hold that perceptual contents are an unresolvable mixture of what is received from the world and the contributions of our own conceptual resources. This is a broadly Kantian outlook. On some versions, such as that of John McDowell, it is offered as a defense of direct realism. My counterclaims are, first, that the defense works only by underestimating the force of the particular antirealist challenge; second, that we must take more seriously the fact that we share perceptual faculties with other creatures to whom we are unwilling to accord similar conceptual faculties; third, if we dispense with certain unwarranted assumptions associated with notions of the ‘Given’, that the predicament from which Kantianism is supposed to save us needn't arise; and, finally, once we are clear on these matters, and how we may be viewed as selective and selected detectors of scenes, stubborn challenges to direct realism from this quarter should dissipate.

In ordinary life everyone assumes that he has a great deal of knowledge about other minds or persons. This assumption has naturally aroused the curiosity of philosophers; though perhaps they have not been as curious about it as they ought to have been, for they have devoted many volumes to our consciousness of the material world, but very few to our consciousness of one another. It was thought at one time that each of us derives his knowledge of other minds from the observation of other human organisms. I observe (it was said) that there are a number of bodies which resemble my own fairly closely in their shape, size, and manner of movement; I conclude by analogy that each of these bodies is animated by a

The whole numbers and the chemical elements vary discretely: 5 is the next number to 4 and there is no number between them; silver is next to gold in the atomic table and there is no element between them. On the other hand, colours vary continuously: between red and yellow there is another colour, orange, between orange and yellow there is another colour, and so on. Between any two colours, no matter how close, there is an intermediate colour–indeed, an infinite number of intermediate colours. A surface may change gradually over time from red to yellow, assuming all the colours in between. Or again, a surface may be red at one edge and yellow at the other, changing gradually (over space) and assuming all the colours in between.

Is the assimilation of these two formulations of the moral principle by Kant and some of his expositors justified?

In the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason Kant claims that his view of morality agrees with the ancient command that man should love his neighbour as himself. Also in the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals he regards the Golden Rule as a deduction, though with several limitations, from the second version of the Categorical Imperative.

The prevailing view among contemporary analytic philosophers seems to be that, as philosophers, we primarily issue assertions. Following certain suggestions from the work of Rudolf Carnap and Sally Haslanger, I argue that the non-assertoric speech act of stipulation plays a key role in philosophical inquiry. I give a detailed account of the pragmatic structure of stipulations and argue that they are best analyzed as generating a shared inferential entitlement for speaker and audience, a license to censure those who give uptake to the stipulation but do not abide by this entitlement, and as justified on the basis of the speaker and audience's shared ends. In presenting this account, I develop a novel taxonomy for making sense of criticisms of speech act performances generally and clarify the notions of successful speech act performance and uptake. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of this view of stipulation for recasting and advancing philosophical disputes, I apply my account to two case studies – the first concerns Iris Marion Young's analysis of the concept of oppression and the second involves Saul Kripke's and Hilary Putnam's accounts of the concept of reference.

These then are the four main strands in Aristotle's thought concerning the law, or in other words, the four elements he might have distinguished in his conception of law. The analysis I have attempted seems to me to reflect both Aristotle's view of the complex nature of law and also what he would look upon as the different grounds for its validity. I think that the several elements in his doctrine are fundamentally independent of one another, and similarly that they do not compete with one another since they embody answers to different questions concerning law. Also the recurrent theme of my own comments has been the assumption that 'law' is a complex term, comprising in its application a number of different definitions concerning rules and validity, authority and obligation, sources of law, and the like. In my opinion it is the merit of Aristotle's conception of law that he appears to recognise the multiple meaning of the word ‘law’ and, accordingly, the need for a multiple definition.

It is not my intention in this brief essay to give an exhaustive critical analysis of the theory of art championed by Croce and his follower Collingwood; I intend only to point out certain confusions in and misunderstandings of their theory, and to make a few critical comments in the light of them. Nor do I wish to imply that the theories of Croce and Collingwood are identical; but although they diverge on some points, and although each develops views that the other discusses only briefly, they are so substantially alike on all important points (at any rate, on any that will be discussed in this essay) that, as reviewers were quick to point out on the appearance of Collingwood's The Principles of Art, the two can for all practical purposes be considered as one theory.

Piety is not a theme that normally attracts the modern mind. In our own age rebellion has a more prominent position and the theme of impiety strikes a more sympathetic note. We are led to examine Plato's Euthyphro as much for the hints we find on the subject of impiety as for whatever it might contain on the seemingly drab subject of the holy. The Euthyphro is also a dialogue concerned with justice, a recurrent theme in the Platonic corpus, and it questions the accepted relationship of justice to piety and orthodoxy. The secular implications of the argument, which seem to be the more important to Socrates, himself, are as relevant to modern politics and religion as they were to the life of ancient Athens.

Cognitive science is held, not only by its practitioners, to offer something distinctively new in the philosophy of mind. This novelty is seen as the product of two factors. First, philosophy of mind takes itself to have well and truly jettisoned the ‘old paradigm’, the theory of the mind as embodied soul, easily and completely known through introspection but not amenable to scientific inquiry. This is replaced by the ‘new paradigm’, the theory of mind as neurally-instantiated computational mechanism, relatively opaque to introspection and the proper subject of detailed empirical investigation. Second, in the constitutive disciplines of cognitive science (cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science etc.) we have for the first time the theoretical, experimental and technological resources to begin this investigation. My concern here is to show that, despite its scientific and philosophical sophistication, the new (computational) paradigm is in certain striking ways very similar to the old paradigm and that Wittgenstein's criticisms of the former apply to much of the latter.

Despite the efforts of Bosanquet, Muirhead, Basch, and many others, it is still frequently stated or implied, in both popular and scholarly literature, that Hegel (a) constructed his philosophy of the State with an eye to pleasing the reactionary and conservative rulers of Prussia in his day, and (b) condoned, supported, and, through his teaching, became partly responsible for some of the most criticized features in “Prussianism” and even of present-day National-Socialism.5 Ijn this article I propose to give reasons for denying (i) that Hegel the man is justly accused of servility to the Prussian Government, and (ii) that there is any warrant in the text of his Philosophie des Rechts for the charge that Hegel the philosopher was an exponent of “Prussianism” and “ frightfulness.”

The role normative ethics has in guiding action is unclear. Once moral theorists hoped that they could devise a decision procedure that would enable agents to solve difficult moral problems. Repeated attacks by anti-theorists seemingly dashed this hope. Although the dispute between moral theorists and anti-theorists rages no longer, no decisive victor has emerged. To determine how we ought to make moral decisions, I argue, we must first examine how we do decide in moral situations. Intuitionism correctly captures the essence of the moral element in such situations, finding itself located somewhere between moral theory and anti-theory. In order that intuitionism may constitute an improvement over predecessors in normative ethics we must proceed with awareness of the limits imposed by the still dominant framework of modern moral theory. I argue that the deliberatively open system of intuitionism, interlocked in practice with prudential considerations, allows us to constructively move normative ethics beyond those limits.

I consider the argument, thought to clinch the moral case for use of a human embryo solely as a means, that (i) only a human individual can be a person, (ii) because it can happen at any time before formation of the primitive streak that an embryo splits into monozygotic twins, no embryo in which the primitive streak has not formed is a human individual, and therefore (iii) no embryo in which the primitive streak has not formed is a person. I explore the following proffered arguments for (ii): (a) indivisibility is a necessary condition of individuality, (b) nonidentity of an embryo with successor twins impugns the embryo’s individuality, and (c) totipotency of an embryo’s constituents is inconsistent with the embryo’s being a human individual. These arguments are tested and found wanting; so too is an alternative to (a), the argument that indivisibility is intrinsic to personhood. Whereupon (ii) is unsustained. In search of ways to rehabilitate the nonindividuation argument, I canvass alternative metaphysical views and inquire further into biological individuality, but find that the argument cannot be saved. I conclude by analyzing where this leaves matters concerning the morality of embryo use.

It is accepted that first-person thoughts are immune to error through misidentification. I argue that there is also immunity to error through misascription, failure to recognise which has resulted in mistaken claims that first-person thoughts involving the self-ascription of bodily states are, at best, circumstantially immune to error through misidentification relative to ‘I’ and, at worst, subject to error. Central to my thesis is that, first, ‘I’ is immune to error through misidentification absolutely, and that if there is any problem with first-person thoughts this cannot be with the self-identification component, but only with the self-ascriptive component. Secondly, the ‘know who’, or ‘know what’, or ‘know which’ requirement is appropriately relevant to considerations of different self-ascriptive properties, and thus its inapproriateness in self-identification does not entail that ‘I’ may fail to refer and identify.

This paper considers the sorts of evaluations that underlie the emotion of embarrassment, by questioning what unifies the various kinds of situations in which this emotion typically arises. It examines the difference between embarrassment and shame, and then addresses problems with the accounts of embarrassment proposed by previous authors, in particular Solomon, Taylor and Goffman. It proposes a new model, on which the emotion involves viewing an interpersonal situation, in which you are involved, as containing an exposure to which you are averse. This may either be your own exposure to others, or others' exposure to yourself. The emotion thus reflects the value we attach to placing limits on the sorts of interactions and contact we have with other people.

Most definitions of radical emergentism characterize it epistemologically. This leads to misunderstandings and makes it hard to assess the doctrine's metaphysical worth. This paper puts forward purely metaphysical characterizations of emergentism and property emergence. It explores the nature of the necessitation relation between base and emergent and argues that emergentism entails a Humean account of causation and related relations. Then it presents arguments against emergentism, both as a wider metaphysic and as an account of consciousness. These maintain that emergentism makes implausible claims about how the world works. The paper also stresses the doctrine's contemporary relevance: most current property dualists endorse views effectively identical to classical emergentism less its historical commitment to novel emergent forces.

Wittgenstein's Ph.D. viva, held in June 1929, was a charade, for the dissertation presented by Wittgenstein was his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which had achieved the status of a classic in the seven years since its publication and was widely acclaimed as a masterpiece. The viva was treated by all participants as something of a joke, and the doctorate was duly awarded. But suppose that the viva had been properly conducted, and Wittgenstein had been subjected to searching criticism of the content of his dissertation, and the examiners had looked carefully at the question of how original were the ideas... ? I here present, in the form of a drama, that counterfactual viva.

There is no right to blackmail. So says the law and so say most moral observers. A few libertarian voices have been raised in defence of blackmail (e.g. Mack) but such a defence is liable to be treated as a reductio of the defender's own free market philosophy. However, it is surprisingly difficult to say just what is wrong with blackmail.

The general thesis which I should wish to sustain on this topic is by no means new. It is, briefly, that even in the Republic, where the views on art which Plato propounds are notoriously unsatisfactory to the modern mind, this unsatisfactoriness is not due to any lack of aesthetic sympathy on Plato's part, but on the contrary to what is almost an excess of it. The position as far as I can understand it is this: the true artist (at least for the period of Platonic thought of which the Republic marks the culmination) is the philosopher, and true artistic insight is episteme. The work of art par excellence is primarily the philosopher's own life-that is, the philosopher himself.