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Teaching & Learning Guide for: Objectionable Commemorations: Ethical and Political Issues Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Chong‐Ming Lim, Ten‐Herng Lai
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Mental Files Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Rachel Goodman
The so‐called ‘mental files theory’ in the philosophy of mind stems from an analogy comparing object‐concepts to ‘files’, and the mind to a ‘filing system’. Though this analogy appears in philosophy of mind and language from the 1970s onward, it remains unclear to many how it should be interpreted. The central commitments of the mental files theory therefore also remain unclear. Based on influential
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Justice and Housing Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Daniel Halliday, Marco Meyer
This article surveys various topics that link questions about housing with considerations of economic justice. Housing has received increasing attention from philosophers within the last decade. In political philosophy, some aspects of a topic attract more attention than others. Presently, philosophical reflection focuses on the value of a home; homelessness; gentrification; segregation; and spatial
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Corrective Duties/Corrective Justice Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Giulio Fornaroli
In this paper, I assess critically the recent debate on corrective duties across moral and legal philosophy. Two prominent positions have emerged: the Kantian rights‐based view (holding that what triggers corrections is a failure to respect others' right to freedom) and the so‐called continuity view (correcting means attempting to do what one was supposed to do before). Neither position, I try to show
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-24
No abstract is available for this article.
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Routes to relevance: Philosophies of relevant logics Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-20 Shawn Standefer
Relevant logics are a family of non‐classical logics characterized by the behavior of their implication connectives. Unlike some other non‐classical logics, such as intuitionistic logic, there are multiple philosophical views motivating relevant logics. Further, different views seem to motivate different logics. In this article, we survey five major views motivating the adoption of relevant logics:
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Artificial Intelligence: Arguments for Catastrophic Risk Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-10 Adam Bales, William D'Alessandro, Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini
Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology's transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument — the Problem of Power-Seeking — claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely
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Objectionable Commemorations: Ethical and Political Issues Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-03 Chong-Ming Lim, Ten-Herng Lai
The term, "objectionable commemorations”, refers to a broad category of public artefacts – such as, and especially, memorials, monuments and statues – that are regarded as morally problematic in virtue of what or whom they honour. In this regard, they are a special class of public artefacts that are subject to public contestation. In this paper, we survey the general ethical and political issues on
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A Feminist and Decolonial Approach to Kinship: An Ambiguous and Ambivalent Account Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-03 Ruthanne Soohee Crapo Kim
This article briefly traces newer kinship studies at the edges of kinship formations and argues that a feminist, decolonial examination of kinship interrupts cultural relatedness as a capital set of social relations meant to satiate the ache to belong to or progenerate a group. Examining the coordinated relationship between kinning and de-kinning, the author exposes the suffering the social contract
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What is Philosophy of the Geosciences? Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-06 Miguel Ohnesorge, Aja Watkins
The philosophy of the geosciences is an emerging subfield in philosophy of science. Although past and present geoscientific disciplines differ substantially, we argue that they frequently face common epistemological and ethical problems. We survey several of these problems that have already attracted sustained philosophical interest, related to the use of measurements, data, and models to study relatively
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2024-01-29
No abstract is available for this article.
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Logical Pluralism and Paradoxical Assertions in the Philosophy of Religion Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-30 Noah Friedman-Biglin, Anand Jayprakash Vaidya
Many authors show how useful logic can be as a tool for building theories that can account for problems in the philosophy of religion, such as paradoxical assertions. As a consequence, one's philosophy of logic is crucial as well, since it determines which logics, from the set of available and constructible logics, one can use to build a theory. In this paper, we present the relatively recent debate
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-26
No abstract is available for this article.
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Proportionality in Causation, Part I: Theories Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Ezra Rubenstein
A much-discussed idea in the causation literature is that it is preferable to invoke causes which are proportional to—neither too general nor too specific for—the effect. This article presents various ways of understanding this idea. In what sense are such causal claims ‘preferable’? And what is it for one event to be ‘proportional’ to another? In a companion article, ‘Proportionality in Causation
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Proportionality in Causation, Part II: Applications and Challenges Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Ezra Rubenstein
In ‘Proportionality in Causation, Part I: Theories’, I presented various ways of understanding the idea that causes which are ‘proportional’ to their effects are in some sense preferable. In this companion article, I discuss the principal applications of the resulting theories of proportionality, and the challenges they face.
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Meritocracy in the Political and Economic Spheres Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Benjamin Sachs-Cobbe, Alexander Douglas
The idea that our economic institutions should be designed meritocratically is back as a hot topic in western academic circles. At the same time political meritocracy is once again a subject of philosophical discussion, with some Western philosophers embracing epistocracy and Confucianism being revived among Eastern philosophers. This survey has the ambition, first, of putting differing strands of
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The Ontology and Aesthetics of Genre Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-20 Evan Malone
Genres inform our appreciative practices. What it takes for a work to be a good work of comedy is different than what it takes for a work to be a good work of horror, and a failure to recognize this will lead to a failure to appreciate comedies or works of horror particularly well. Likewise, it is not uncommon to hear people say that a film or novel is a good work, but not a good work of x (where x
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Eight Arguments for First-Person Realism Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-20 David Builes
According to First-Person Realism, one's own first-person perspective on the world is metaphysically privileged in some way. After clarifying First-Person Realism by reference to parallel debates in the metaphysics of modality and time, I survey eight different arguments in favor of First-Person Realism.
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Predictive coding I: Introduction Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-11-11 Mark Sprevak
Predictive coding – sometimes also known as ‘predictive processing’, ‘free energy minimisation’, or ‘prediction error minimisation’ – claims to offer a complete, unified theory of cognition that stretches all the way from cellular biology to phenomenology. However, the exact content of the view, and how it might achieve its ambitions, is not clear. This series of articles examines predictive coding
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The Transformative Power of Social Movements Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-11-10 Sahar Heydari Fard
Social movements possess transformative and progressive power. In this paper, I argue that how this is so, or even if this is so, depends on one's explanatory framework. I consider three such explanatory frameworks for social movements: methodological individualism, collectivism, and complexity theory. In evaluating the various appeals and weaknesses of these frameworks, I show that complexity theory
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-11-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Personal Beauty and Personal Agency Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-10-09 Madeline Martin-Seaver
We make choices about our own appearance and evaluate others' choices – every day. These choices are meaningful for us as individuals and as members of communities. But many features of personal appearance are due to luck, and many cultural beauty standards make some groups and individuals worse off (this is called “lookism”). So, how are we to square these two facets of personal appearance? And how
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Norms of Inquiry Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Eliran Haziza
This article provides an overview of recent work on norms of inquiry. After some preliminaries about inquiry in §1, I discuss in §2 the ignorance norm for inquiry, presenting arguments for and against, as well as some alternatives. In §3, I consider its relation to the aim of inquiry. In §4, I discuss positive norms on inquiry: norms that require having rather than lacking certain states. Finally,
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-10-03
No abstract is available for this article.
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-09-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Justice in Theory and Practice: Debates about Utopianism and Political Action Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Ben Laurence
This essay provide an overview of debates about the method of political philosophy that have recently gripped the field, focusing on the relationship of theory to practice. These debates can be usefully organized using two oppositions that together carve the field into three broad families of views. Call “practicalism” the view that the theory of justice exists to guide political action. Call “utopianism”
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Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Border Disputes: Recent Debates along the Perception–Cognition Border’ Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Sam Clarke, Jacob Beck
1 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION The idea that perception is distinct from cognition is not just intuitive, it is central to countless debates in philosophy and psychology. For example, when researchers ask which properties can be visually represented or visually experienced? They are assuming that there is a difference between properties being represented in (visual) perception, and them merely being represented
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Beauvoir and Sartre's “disagreement” about freedom Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-23 Kate Kirkpatrick
The French existentialists Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are renowned philosophers of freedom. But what “existentialist freedom” is is a matter of disagreement amongst their interpreters and, some argue, between Beauvoir and Sartre themselves. Since the late 1980s several scholars have argued that a Sartrean conception of freedom cannot justify the ethics of existentialism, adequately account
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Teaching & Learning Guide for: Theorizing Social Change Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Robin Zheng
1 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION How do we remake our world into a new and better one? Philosophers have been surprisingly reticent on this question. Theories of justice tell us what an ideally justsociety would look like. Ethical theories tell us the morally right thing to do. But philosophers have virtually no such comparably systematic theories of social change, that is, theories telling us the right way
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Skeptical Theism: A Panoramic Overview (Part II) Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-18 Luis R. G. Oliveira
Skeptical theism, broadly construed, is an attempt to leverage our limited cognitive powers, in some specified sense, against “evidential” and “explanatory” arguments from evil. Since there are different versions of these kinds of arguments, there are correspondingly different versions of skeptical theism. In this paper, I consider four challenges to three central versions of skeptical theism: (a)
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The Epistemic Aims of Democracy Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-18 Robert Weston Siscoe
Many political philosophers have held that democracy has epistemic benefits. Most commonly, this case is made by arguing that democracies are better able to track the truth than other political arrangements. Truth, however, is not the only epistemic good that is politically valuable. A number of other epistemic goods – goods including evidence, intellectual virtue, epistemic justice, and empathetic
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Skeptical Theism: A Panoramic Overview (Part I) Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-16 Luis R. G. Oliveira
Skeptical theism, broadly construed, is an attempt to leverage our limited cognitive powers, in some specified sense, against “evidential” and “explanatory” arguments from evil. Since there are different versions of these kinds of arguments, there are correspondingly different versions of skeptical theism. In this paper, I briefly explain three versions of these arguments from evil (two from William
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Teaching & Learning Guide for: Relational Approaches to Personal Autonomy Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-11 J. Y. Lee
1 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION The concept of personal autonomy in contemporary moral and political philosophy is broadly associated with an agent's self-determining or self-governing capacities. However, scholars have long criticized the tendency in philosophy to idealize autonomy in an overtly atomistic and asocial manner, for example by assuming that autonomous individuals are totally independent decision-makers
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Aesthetic Snobbery Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Stephanie Patridge
This essay briefly introduces and contextualizes the extant work on aesthetic snobbery, and identifies some areas for further inquiry. Currently four kinds of snobbery have been identified—social contagion snobbery, attitudinal snobbery, contextual snobbery, and straight-up classist snobbery. Interestingly, each kind of snobbery is thought to manifest itself as a distinct epistemic failing, and for
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The Tractatus on Truth Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Daniele Mezzadri
The aim of this paper is to discuss Wittgenstein's conception of truth in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Section 1 sets the scene by exploring how the notion of truth is in the Tractatus intertwined with notions such as sense and picture. In section 2 I discuss a traditional interpretation that sees the Tractatus as committed to truth as correspondence. In sections 3 and 4 I discuss two more recent
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Modal Ontological Arguments Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Gregory R. P. Stacey
Inspired by the third chapter of Anselm's Proslogion, twentieth century philosophers including Charles Hartshorne and Alvin Plantinga developed “modal” ontological arguments for the existence of God. Such arguments use modal logic to infer God's existence from the premises that (i) God's existence is possible and (ii) if God exists, He exists necessarily. Like other ontological arguments, modal arguments
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Reading Fanon on Hegel Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-07-13 Brandon Hogan
Scholars who write about Fanon's engagement with Hegel in Black Skin, White Masks divide into roughly two groups. One group takes it that Fanon engages with Hegel to critique his philosophical views. This group takes it that Fanon views Hegel as irrelevant to the Black struggle against modern, anti-Black racism. It is easy to see why this reading is natural and tempting, given the widely held belief
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-07-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Morality of Belief II: Three Challenges and An Extension Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Rima Basu
In this paper I explore three challenges to the morality of belief. First, whether we have the necessary control over our beliefs to be held responsible for them, i.e., the challenge of doxastic involuntarism. Second, the question of whether belief is really the attitude that we care about in the cases used to motivate the morality of belief. Third, whether attitudes weaker than belief, such as credence
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THE MORALITY OF BELIEF I: HOW BELIEFS WRONG Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Rima Basu
It is no surprise that we should be careful when it comes to what we believe. Believing false things can be costly. The morality of belief, also known as doxastic wronging, takes things a step further by suggesting that certain beliefs can not only be costly, they can also wrong. This article surveys some accounts of how this could be so. That is, how beliefs wrong.
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-06-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Perceptual learning Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-05-27 Zoe Jenkin
Perception provides us with access to the external world, but that access is shaped by our own experiential histories. Through perceptual learning, we can enhance our capacities for perceptual discrimination, categorization, and attention to salient properties. We can also encode harmful biases and stereotypes. This article reviews interdisciplinary research on perceptual learning, with an emphasis
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Border Disputes: Recent Debates along the Perception–Cognition Border Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-05-28 Sam Clarke, Jacob Beck
The distinction between perception and cognition frames countless debates in philosophy and cognitive science. But what, if anything, does this distinction actually amount to? In this introductory article, we summarize recent work on this question. We first briefly consider the possibility that a perception-cognition border should be eliminated from our scientific ontology, and then introduce and critically
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Rationally Facing Death: Fear and Other Alternatives Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-05-26 Michael Cholbi
Explaining what emotions or attitudes it is rational for humans to have toward our own deaths and toward their mortality has been a central task within most philosophical traditions. This article critically examines the rationality of five emotions or attitudes that might be taken toward death: fear, insofar as death can harm us by reducing our overall level of well-being; the related attitude of existential
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Women and Stoic ethics in early modern England Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-05-23 Jacqueline Broad, Diana G. Barnes
This paper provides an overview of women's engagement with Stoic ethics in early modern England (c. 1600–1700). It builds on recent literature in the field by demonstrating that there is a positive gender-inclusive narrative to be told about Stoic philosophy in this time—one that incorporates women's specific concerns and responds to women's lived experiences. To support this claim, we take an interdisciplinary
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-04-26
No abstract is available for this article.
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Teaching & Learning Guide for: Theistic Arguments from Horrendous Evils Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Daryl Ooi
1 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION In recent years, much of the debate within the philosophy of religion has focused on the problem of horrendous evils. Horrendous evils constitute a unique class of evils which presumably poses a stronger objection to the existence of omni-God than other classes of evils. However, while the existence of horrendous evils has generally been taken to be evidence against the existence
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Experiential Attitude Reports Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Kristina Liefke
One can remember events and one can remember facts: to remember an event (e.g. the barista's pouring my coffee this morning), one needs to have personally witnessed this event. To remember a fact (e.g. that the barista was trained in Italy), it suffices to have learned this fact from some other source. The distinction between event-directed (i.e. experiential) and fact-directed (or propositional) attitudes
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Evolving Concepts of Functional Localization Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Joseph B. McCaffrey
Functional localization is a central aim of cognitive neuroscience. But the nature and extent of functional localization in the human brain have been subjects of fierce theoretical debate since the 19th Century. In this essay, I first examine how concepts of functional localization have changed over time. I then analyze contemporary challenges to functional localization drawing from research on neural
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Relational approaches to personal autonomy Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Ji-Young Lee
Individualistic traditions of autonomy have long been critiqued by feminists for their atomistic and asocial presentation of human agents. Relational approaches to autonomy were developed as an alternative to these views. Relational accounts generally capture a more socially informed picture of human agents, and aim to differentiate between social phenomena that are conducive to our agency versus those
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-03-29
No abstract is available for this article.
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The Beginning of Hegel's Logic Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Robb Dunphy
This article discusses two topics, both commonly referred to using the label “the beginning of Hegel's Logic”: (1) Hegel's justification for the claim that a science of logic must begin by considering the concept of “pure being”. (2) Hegel's discussion of the concepts “being”, “nothing”, and “becoming” in the first chapter of his Logic. Discussing recent work on both of these topics, two primary claims
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-03-11
No abstract is available for this article.
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‘From Time Into Eternity’: Schelling on Intellectual Intuition Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-02-22 G. Anthony Bruno
Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s,
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Berkeley's Gland Tour into Speculative Fiction Part 2: Margaret Cavendish and Berkeley's Attitudes Towards Women Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Clare Marie Moriarty, Lisa Walters
In Part 1, we explored how Berkeley drew from Homeric literature and used literary techniques such as satire to challenge his “freethinking” philosophical opponents in “The Pineal Gland” story published in The Guardian in 1713. Echoing the grand tours Berkeley undertook in subsequent years, Part 1 and 2 both present a “gland tour” of some motivations, influences and legacies of Berkeley's text. In
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Berkeley's Gland Tour into Speculative Fiction Part 1: Homer, Descartes and Pope Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Clare Marie Moriarty, Lisa Walters
Berkeley is best known for his immaterialism and the texts that extol it—the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. He made his case by treatise, then by dialogue, and this tendency towards stylistic experimentation did not end there; this paper explores an early speculative fiction project that pursued his theological and philosophical agendas. Berkeley used
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-02-07
No abstract is available for this article.
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Teaching & Learning Guide for: Jürgen Habermas and the Public Intellectual in Modern Democratic Life Philosophy Compass Pub Date : 2023-02-07 Peter J. Verovšek
This guide accompanies the following article(s): Peter J. Verovšek, “Jürgen Habermas and the Public Intellectual in Modern Democratic Life,” Philosophy Compass, 17(4), (2022) e12818. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12818.