bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Enlightenment and the Spirit of the Vienna Circle
Authors: Scott Stephen 
Published: June 2016

I have two aims in this paper. My wide one is to discuss what it is for philosophy to enlighten. I am using the same concept of enlightenment that Kant wrote about: It is what brings a rational outlook to social and political life, in opposition to superstition, self-deception and other forms of immaturity. If philosophy is to do this, it is not sufficient for it to have a rational theory about society, nor is having such a theory even necessary, since philosophers can try to make a community more reasonable without formulating a social philosophy. The Vienna Circle is an example. The point of enlightenment is to change society rather than to develop research programs. The difference is between involvement with real life on the one hand and an idle theory on the other.My narrow aim is to display the self-image of the Vienna Circle as philosophers of enlightenment. They agreed that the important task of any philosophical school was to enlighten and that positivism did so because it expressed the scientific spirit. This is the second concept I discuss. I will show that what they meant by ‘the scientific spirit’ was a moral outlook present in socialism and hostile to fascism. This is not what people usually understand by it. I am also not giving the received historical view of the Circle. Rather the English and American idea is that positivism was entirely an academic movement. The social concerns of its advocates were incidental to its philosophical significance. The Frankfurt School's view is that it had a hidden alliance with technology. My purpose is to counter both these misinterpretations.
Women and Moral Madness
Authors: Morgan Kathryn Pauly 
Published: June 2016

In one of Marge Piercy’s poems, ‘For Strong Women,’ we find the following verse:A strong woman is a woman in whose heada voice is repeating, I told you so,ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,why aren’t you feminine, why aren’tyou soft, why aren’t you quiet,why aren’t you dead?Similarly, we might say that amoral womanis a woman in whose head a voice is repeating words like ‘immature,’ ‘pathological,’ ‘inadequate,’ ‘immoral,’ ‘evil.’ What I explore in this paper are various ways in which a woman’s moral voice and her sense of moral integrity can be twisted and destroyed by patriarchal ideology and lived experience.
Newcomb's Problem: The $1,000,000 Solution
Authors: Bach Kent 
Published: June 2016

The more you think about it, the more baffling Newcomb's Problem becomes. To most people, at first it is obvious which solution is correct (not that they agree on which one), but their confidence can be eroded easily. Only a puzzled few are torn between the two right from the start, and for years so was I. But at last, thanks to a certain metaargument, one solution came to seem obvious to me. And yet, imagining myself actually faced with Newcomb's choice, I started to worry that I might experience just enough last-minute ambivalence to unsettle my confidence in that argument. Fortunately, I have found a strategy to ensure making the right choice when the chips are down.Not only is Newcomb's Problem puzzling in its own right, it is philosophically significant. The appeal of both solutions reflects a conflict between two plausible conceptions of rational choice. In making a decision, should one consider all of its probabilistic consequences or only its causal consequences? Each conception has its supporters, but some philosophers find them both defensible and see no hope of resolving the conflict. I think the conflict can be resolved, at least in the context of Newcomb's Problem, by properly assessing the relevant counterfactual conditionals.
Remarks on Relational Theories of Motion
Authors: Earman John 
Published: June 2016

In a recent article in this journal, Barbara Lariviere offers a very useful distinction between two ways of understanding the claims that Leibniz, or relational theorists in general, might wish to make about the nature of motion and the structure of space and time; viz.,(L1) There is no real inertial structure to space-time.and(L2) There is a real inertial structure to space-time, but it is dynamical rather than absolute.Citing the authority of Weyl, the author argues that L1 is untenable; indeed, the argument purports to show that if L1 were true, then there would be no coherent basis for a theory of motion, not even a relational theory. My main goal in this note is to point out why this argument is mistaken while at the same time sketching the real reason why the relational conception of motion is untenable. In addition I will offer a few remarks about the relevance of L2 to the absolute-relational controvery.
Subjective Justification
Authors: de Pierris Graciela 
Published: June 2016

I wish to discuss in this paper some of the problems involved in determining whether subjects on particular occasions are justified in coming to believe a proposition. I will argue that in attributing actual justification to a particular subject–subjective justification–we have to take into account factual-psychological questions and that these are the source of fundamental difficulties. These factual-psychological questions concern the beliefs someone uses in the process of acquiring another belief and the actual connections she makes among her beliefs.But why should epistemologists be interested in making attributions of actual justification to particular subjects? After all, if the central goal of epistemology is to guide us in choosing rational strategies for supporting our beliefs, or to assess whether theories are well grounded or acceptable, epistemologists should be concerned with the justification a theory or proposition might have independently of anyone actually coming to believe it. This may be so, but it has to be shown that it is so. Moreover, the consideration of the factual-psychological questions involved in attributions of subjective justification seems to be necessary in some recent hybrid forms of naturalized epistemology. I call them ‘hybrid’ because, unlike Quine’s naturalized epistemology, they include in the epistemological task more than naturalistic explanations of how we acquire our language and beliefs. Besides taking into consideration the actual processes of our coming to believe or accept sentences, they also make use of epistemic notions like justification, warrant, relevant or right connection among beliefs, and so forth.
Consequentialism and History
Authors: Gomberg Paul 
Published: June 2016

John Stuart Mill wrote in the opening chapter ofUtilitarianism, ‘A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong,’ thus explaining why he thought the work to follow was practically important. In Chapter 3, ‘On the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility,’ he answers the question, ‘What are the motives to obey the principle of utility?’ This principle is presented as a morality to beadopted. Yet before the nineteenth century was over Henry Sidgwick was proposing that it may well be best, from a utilitarian view, that the utilitarian doctrine is not too widely adopted. Perhaps it should be an esoteric morality.Moreover, Sidgwick argues, it seems contrary to self interest to adhere to an impartially benevolent morality. Devotion to utilitarian duty seems to require that the agent sacrifice his or her own happiness in a devotion to the relief of others that can only ‘partially mitigate’ their distress (502-3). Such a morality seems impossibly demanding. Sidgwick’s argument challenges Mill's claim that there is an adequate sanction for adoption of utilitarian morality.
Weakness of Will as a Species of Executive Cowardice
Authors: Swanton Christine 
Published: June 2016

In this paper, I am concerned to show that a wide and interesting range of phenomena commonly described as ‘weakness of will’ should be understood as manifesting a defect of what I shall call ‘executive cowardice’ rather than a strong kind of irrationality. More specifically, I claim that such cases should not be understood as an irrational bypassing of an all-things-considered judgment about the thing to do—a view succinctly described by Peacocke thus:
The akrates is irrational because although he intentionally does something for which he has some reason, there is a wider set of reasons he has relative to which he does not judge what he does to be rational.
Government in Foucault
Authors: Allen Barry 
Published: June 2016

The forms and specific situations of the government of men by one another in a given society are multiple; they are superimposed, they cross, impose their own limits, sometimes cancel one another out, sometimes reinforce one another. (Foucault [SP, 224])According to a commonplace in the critical discussion of Foucault's later work, he is supposed to have decided to take up Nietzsche's interpretation of power asWille zur Macht, ‘will to power.’ For instance, Habermas believes he has criticized Foucault when he says, ‘Nietzsche’s authority, from which this [Foucault’s] utterly unsociological concept of power is borrowed, is not enough to justify its systematic usage.’ Charles Taylor finds in Nietzsche ‘a doctrine which Foucault seems to have made his own,’ viz., that ‘there is no order of human life, or way we are, or human nature, that one can appeal to in order to judge or evaluate between ways of life.
The Constitutive A Priori
Authors: De Pierris Graciela 
Published: June 2016

The modem rationalist tradition initiated by Descartes has as one of its central tenets the independence of the human understanding from the senses. Regardless of the different ways in which independence from experience is understood, there is much common ground among the modem views on the a priori. Yet Kant, culminating this tradition, introduces an entirely new conception of the a priori never before articulated in the history of philosophy. This is the notion of elements in knowledge which are independent of experience but nevertheless closely connected, in a special way, with experience.Although for Kant the a priori has a privileged position in the structure of knowledge - as it has for other modem rationalist philosophers - one of the most striking, and often neglected, aspect of his conception of the a priori is the great extent to which it is opposed to foundationalism.
History and Personal Autonomy
Authors: Mele Alfred 
Published: June 2016

John Christman, in ‘Autonomy and Personal History,’ advances a novel genetic or historical account of individual autonomy. He formulates ‘the conditions of the [i.e., his] new model of autonomy’ as follows:(i) A person P is autonomous relative to some desire D if it is the case that P did not resist the development of D when attending to this process of development, or Pwould not haveresisted that development had P attended to the process;(ii) The lack of resistance to the development of D did not take place (or would not have) under the influence of factors that inhibit self-reflection;and(iii) The self-reflection involved in condition (i) [sic] is (minimally) rational and involves no self-deception. (11)
Virtues and Vices of Virtue Epistemology
Authors: Greco John 
Published: June 2016

In recent years, virtue epistemology has won the attention of a wide range of philosophers. A developed form of the position has been expounded forcefully by Ernest Sosa and represents the most plausible version of reliabilism to date. Through the person of Alvin Plantinga, virtue epistemology has taken philosophy of religion by storm, evoking objections and defenses in a wide variety of journals and volumes. Historically, virtue epistemology has its roots in the work of Thomas Reid, and the explosion of Reid scholarship in the last few years is perhaps both a cause and an effect of recent interest in the position.In this paper I want to examine the virtues and vices of virtue epistemology. My conclusion will be that the position is correct, when qualified appropriately. The central claim of virtue epistemology is that, Gettier problems aside, knowledge is true belief which results from a cognitive virtue. In section one I will clarify this claim with some brief remarks about the nature of virtues in general, and cognitive virtues in particular. In section two I will consider two objections to the theory of knowledge which results. In section three of the paper I will argue that virtue epistemology can be qualified so as to avoid the objections raised in section two. Finally, I will argue that the amendments which solve the objections of section two also allow us to solve a version of the dreaded generality problem.
Lewis on ‘Might’ and ‘Would’ Counterfactual Conditionals
Authors: DeRose Keith 
Published: June 2016

Letting denote ‘would’ counterfactual conditionals like
(A) If I had looked in my pocket, I would have found a penny and letting denote ‘might’ counterfactual conditionals like(B) If I had looked in my pocket, I might have found a penny,David Lewis’s thesis (LT) regarding the connection between these two types of conditionals is that
Are Thought Experiments Just What You Thought?
Authors: Norton John D. 
Published: June 2016

Whatever the original intent, the introduction of the term ‘thought experiment’ has proved to be one of the great public relations coups of science writing. For generations of readers of scientific literature, the term has planted the seed of hope that the fragment of text they have just read is more than mundane. Because it was a thought experiment, does it not tap into that infallible font of all wisdom in empiricist science, the experiment? And because it was conducted in thought, does it not miraculously escape the need for the elaborate laboratories and bloated budgets of experimental science?These questions in effect pose the epistemological problem of thought experiments in the sciences:Thought experiments are supposed to give us information about our physical world. From where can this information come?One enticing response to the problem is to imagine that thought experiments draw from some special source of knowledge of the world that transcends our ordinary epistemic resources.
Monkish Virtues, Artificial Lives: On Hume's Genealogy of Morals
Authors: Lottenbach Hans 
Published: June 2016

The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,The monk's humility, the hero's pride,All, all alike, find Reason on their side.(Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle II, 172-4)Hume's moral philosophy is often interpreted as an example of a naturalistic approach to ethics. J.L. Mackie, for instance, writes that in Hume the questions of moral philosophy are answered ‘in sociological and psychological terms, by constructing and defending a causal hypothesis.’ Similarly, Páll S. Árdal claims that Hume ‘is concerned with an attempt to discover those psychological laws that explain human emotions (including moral emotions) and the behaviour of people in society.’ I argue in this essay that if Hume is read in this way as developing a general explanatory theory of moral sentiments, he faces an inescapable dilemma. Section I presents the dilemma. In sections II and ill, I argue why for Hume — interpreted as a proponent of general psychological laws — there is no way out of this dilemma.
On Singular Propositions
Authors: Cartwright Richard L. 
Published: June 2016

A designator a of an object x is rigid in Kripke's sense if and only if (i) for every possible world w, if x exists in w, then a designates x with respect to w and (ii) there is no possible world with respect to which a designates something other than x. Alternatively, but to the same effect, a is rigid just in case neither the sentence:a might have existed and not have been anor the sentence:Something other than a might have been ahas an interpretation on which it is true. This alternative seems to me preferable: the concept of designation with respect to a world is difficult and occasions certain problems (about which something will be said later), but these problems do not arise on this explanation.
Kantian Tunes on a Humean Instrument: Why Hume is not Really a Skeptic About Practical Reasoning
Authors: Radcliffe Elizabeth S. 
Published: June 2016

The theory that practical reasoning is wholly instrumental says that the only practical function of reason is to tell agents the means to their ends, while their ends are fixed by something other than reason itself. In this essay I argue that Hume has an instrumentalist theory of practical reasoning. This thesis may sound as unexciting as the contention that Kant is a rationalist about morality. For who would have thought otherwise? After all, isn't the ‘instrumentalist’ line in contemporary discussions of this topic descended directly from Hume himself? Contrast the following recent comment from Robert Audi's book on practical reasoning, holding the standard line, with the comment from Christine Korsgaard following it:Hume's conception of practical reasoning, so far as we can formulate it, can be located within … the foundationalist account of motivation in which reason plays the instrumentalist role … by virtue of arousing and directing our desires.
Toleration and the Skeptical Inquirer in Locke
Authors: Black Sam 
Published: June 2016

It is a noteworthy achievement of Western liberal democracies that they have largely relinquished the use of force against citizens whose lifestyles offend their members’ sensibilities, or alternatively which violate their members’ sense of truth. Toleration has become a central virtue in our public institutions. Powerful majorities are given over to restraint. They do not, by and large, expect the state to crush eccentrics, nonconformists, and other uncongenial minorities in their midst. What precipitated this remarkable evolution in our political culture?The road to toleration originates in the debates provoked by religious dissent in the early modem period. This road was paved in part by a grudging appreciation of the necessity forpragmaticaccommodation. The wars of religion that had devastated the Continent educated the political classes about the costs of persecution. A policy of state-imposed religious intolerance was widely understood to beimprudent.In the early modem period there occurs, however, a shift in the arguments adduced in support of the duty of toleration.
Autonomy beyond Voluntarism: In Defense of Hierarchy
Authors: Cuypers Stefaan E. 
Published: June 2016

We haveconflictingpre-philosophical intuitions about what it means ‘to be true to ourselves.’ On the one hand, autonomy and authenticity seem closely connected to the lucidity of reflectiveness; on the other, they seem tightly interwoven with the immediacy of unreflectiveness. As opposed to a ‘Platonic’ intuition about the inferiority of the unexamined life, we have an equally strong ‘Nietzschean’ intuition about the corrosiveness of the examined life. Broadly speaking, the first intuition is more akin to the tradition of the Enlightenment, and the second, more to that of Romanticism; the one is reminiscent of Descartes and Hume, the other of Rousseau and Herder.The use of the technical term ‘autonomy’ and the concomitant term ‘self’ is primarily limited to philosophy, while in daily life ‘freedom’ and ‘person,’ respectively, are used instead. Unfortunately, in their deployment of these technical terms philosophers have generally failed to acknowledge the two modes of ‘being true to ourselves’ associated with the Enlightenment and Romanticism, for they usually employ the concept of autonomy in a unitary way.
Parfit on Pains, Pleasures, and the Time of their Occurrence
Authors: Moller Dan 
Published: June 2016

Consider our attitude toward painful and pleasant experiences depending on when they occur. A striking but rarely discussed feature of our attitude which Derek Parfit has emphasized is that we strongly wish painful experiences to lie in our past and pleasant experiences to lie in our future. Our asymmetrical attitudes toward future and past pains and pleasures can be forcefully illustrated by means of a thought-experiment described by Derek Parfit which I will paraphrase as follows:You are in the hospital to have an extremely painful but completely safe Operation for which you can be given no anesthetic. In order to ease recovery, you know that the hospital will give you drugs that cause you to forget your Operation as soon as it is completed. You wake up, not remembering having gone to sleep, and ask the nurse if your Operation has been completed. She tells you that there were two patients for this Operation and she cannot remember which you are: either you already had your Operation and it was the longest such Operation ever performed, lasting ten hours, or else you are the other patient in which case your Operation is imminent, but will last only one hour.
Bursting Bealer's Bubble: How the Starting Points Argument Begs the Question of Foundationalism Against Quine
Authors: Shaffer Michael J. , Warnick Jason A. 
Published: June 2016

In his 1993 article George Bealer offers three separate arguments that are directed against the internal coherence of empiricism, specifically Quine's version of empiricism. In doing so, Bealer identifies three fundamental principles of Quine's empiricism. First, the principle of empiricism states that:(i) A person's experiences and/or observations comprise the person'sprima facieevidence.Second, the principle of holism states that:(ii) A theory is justified (acceptable, more reasonable than its competitors, legitimate, warranted) for a person if and only if it is, or belongs to, the simplest comprehensive theory that explains all, or most, of the person'sprima facieevidence.
Error field optimization in DIII-D using extremum seeking control
Authors: Lanctot M.J. , Olofsson K.E.J. , Capella M. , Humphreys D.A. , Eidietis N. , Hanson J.M. , Paz-Soldan C. , Strait E.J. , Walker M.L. 
Published: June 2016

Abstract
DIII-D experiments have demonstrated a new real-time approach to tokamak error field control based on maximizing the toroidal angular momentum. This approach uses extremum seeking control theory to optimize the error field in real time without inducing instabilities. Slowly-rotating n  =  1 fields (the dither), generated by external coils, are used to perturb the angular momentum, monitored in real-time using a charge-exchange spectroscopy diagnostic. Simple signal processing of the rotation measurements extracts information about the rotation gradient with respect to the control coil currents. This information is used to converge the control coil currents to a point that maximizes the toroidal angular momentum. The technique is well-suited for multi-coil, multi-harmonic error field optimizations in disruption sensitive devices as it does not require triggering locked tearing modes or plasma current disruptions. Control simulations highlight the importance of the initial search direction on the rate of the convergence, and identify future algorithm upgrades that may allow more rapid convergence that projects to convergence times in ITER on the order of tens of seconds.