Mind

Prescott-Couch, Alexander

2024 Mind

doi: 10.1093/mind/fzae008

How is Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality relevant to his revaluation of values? I consider and reject three accounts: contingency accounts, pedigree accounts, and unmasking accounts. I then propose an alternative account. On this view, Nietzsche provides a ‘deconstructive genealogy’ that indicates whether and where we should expect to find unity in our current moral practices. Moreover, Nietzsche’s history contributes to a critique of contemporary morality because it reveals that morality is unlikely to have the kind of unity required by many of its defenders. After explaining and defending this account of genealogical critique in GM, I show how it can be generalized to domains besides morality.

Carter, Sam; Hawthorne, John

2024 Mind

doi: 10.1093/mind/fzad070

Inquiry aims at knowledge. Your inquiry into a question succeeds just in case you come to know the answer. However, combined with a common picture on which misleading evidence can lead knowledge to be lost, this view threatens to recommend a novel form of dogmatism. At least in some cases, individuals who know the answer to a question appear required to avoid evidence bearing on it. In this paper, we’ll aim to do two things. First, we’ll present an argument for this novel form of dogmatism and show that it presents a substantive challenge. Second, we’ll consider a way those who take knowledge to be the aim of inquiry can mount a response. In the course of doing so, we’ll try to get clearer on the normative connections between inquiry, knowledge and evidence gathering.

Montminy, Martin; Russo, Andrew

2024 Mind

doi: 10.1093/mind/fzae033

According to the worm theory, persons are (maximal) aggregates of person-stages existing at different times. Personites, on the other hand, are non-maximal aggregates of stages that are very much like persons. Their existence appears to make instances of prudential self-sacrifice morally problematic: the personites that exist at the time of the sacrifice but not at the time of the reward seem not to receive future compensation for their sacrifice. Instances of punishment appear to give rise to a similar problem. We argue that these impressions arise from a mistaken assumption about the primary bearers of properties such as suffering, receiving compensation (in the future) and having (previously) committed a crime. According to the worm theory, stages, rather than persons or personites, possess these properties. Persons and personites have these properties only derivatively. As we show, once this clarification and related ones are made, the apparent moral problems raised by the existence of personites dissolve.

Clarke, Timothy

2024 Mind

doi: 10.1093/mind/fzae030

The topic of this paper is Aristotle’s ‘proof by refutation’ of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (Metaphysics Γ 4, 1006a11–1007a20). I consider a worry which has often been raised in connection with this proof. The worry is that, faced with an opponent who is prepared to tolerate contradictions, the argument is dialectically powerless: it is incapable of getting them to abandon their position. In reply, I argue that the proof needs to be seen in its proper context, that is, as part of Aristotle’s response to an opponent who demands a demonstration of the principle. This allows us to clarify the purpose of the argument and answer the worry about its effectiveness.

Russell, Francey

2024 Mind

doi: 10.1093/mind/fzae003

Throughout his lectures and published writings on anthropology, Kant describes a form of unintentional, unstructured, obscure, and pleasurable imaginative mental activity, which he calls fantasy (Phantasie), where we ‘take pleasure in letting our mind wander about in obscurity’ (LA 25:480). In the context of his pragmatic anthropology, Kant is concerned not only to describe this form of mental activity as a fact of human psychology, but more importantly, to criticize and discourage it. But must we share Kant’s negative evaluation? Could fantasy play a positive role in some kinds of experience? In this paper I first reconstruct Kant’s conception of fantasy, and then consider what role fantasy might play in aesthetic experience. Precisely because of his anxieties about fantasy, Kant is careful to distinguish between the lawless freedom of the imagination in fantasy and the ‘free lawfulness’ of the imagination in aesthetic judgment. Departing from Kant, and with help from Susan Sontag, I argue that certain aesthetic objects, especially certain works of modernist art, positively invite fantasy, making fantasy part of proper aesthetic appreciation. I conclude by suggesting that while fantasy can indeed play a positive role in aesthetic appreciation, there is still reason to regard fantasy as ‘normatively ambiguous’.

Ninan, Dilip

2024 Mind

doi: 10.1093/mind/fzae021

This essay argues for a relationist treatment of intentional identity sentences like (1):(1) Hob believes that a witch blighted Bob’s mare and Nob believes that she killed Cob’s sow.According to relationism, facts of the form a believes that ϕ and b believes that ψ are not in general reducible to facts of the form c believes that χ. I first argue that extant, non-relationist treatments of intentional identity are unsatisfactory, and then go on to motivate and explore a relationist alternative in some detail. I show that the general thesis of relationism can be directly motivated via cases already discussed in the literature, and then develop a particular version of relationism couched in the possible worlds framework. The resulting theory avoids the problems facing its non-relationist rivals, and yields a natural account of the truth conditions of (1), truth conditions which can be generated in a compositional manner by a version of dynamic semantics. The theory also helps us to cleanly separate semantic questions about intentional identity from metasemantic ones.

Thong, Joshua

2024 Mind

doi: 10.1093/mind/fzae023

This paper is a discussion note on Isaacs, Hájek and Hawthorne (2022), which claims to offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities, based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurability. In this note, I clarify some consequences of that proposal. In particular, I show that if the proposal is applied to a bounded 3-dimensional space, then one has to reject at least one of the following:• If A is at most as probable as B and B is at most as probable as C, then A is at  most as probable as C.• Let A∩C=B∩C=∅. A is at most as probable as B if and only if (A∪C) is at  most as probable as (B∪C).But rejecting either statement seems unattractive.