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Issue Information Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-27
No abstract is available for this article.
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Gratitude: Its Nature and Normativity Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-19 Max Lewis
Gratitude is a pervasive, if often overlooked, aspect of our daily lives. At its core, it is a response to being benefitted. Yet, several philosophical puzzles surround this ostensibly ordinary emotion. This article is an overview of the major philosophical debates concerning gratitude. We start with personal gratitude, i.e., gratitude directed to an agent for something they have done. We consider
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Conventionalist Accounts of Personal Identity Over Time Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-10 David Mark Kovacs
Conventionalism about personal identity over time is the view that personal identity is in some sense dependent on our beliefs, desires, social practices, or language use (collectively: on our “conventions”). This paper provides an opinionated survey of the state of the art about personal identity conventionalism. First, it offers a taxonomy of possible types of conventionalism along four different
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Anti‐Exceptionalism about Logic (Part I): From Naturalism to Anti‐Exceptionalism Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-10 Ben Martin, Ole Thomassen Hjortland
According to anti‐exceptionalism about logic (AEL), logic is not as exceptional in terms of its epistemology and subject matter as has been conventionally thought. Whereas logic's epistemology has often been considered distinct from those of the recognised sciences, in virtue of being both non‐inferential and a priori, it is in fact neither. Logics are justified on the basis of similar mechanisms of
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Spinoza's theory of attributes Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-07 Antonio Salgado Borge
Any account of Spinoza's understanding of attribute must be able to satisfy his definition criterion; that is, it must coherently accommodate the elements involved in his definition of attribute as “what the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting its essence” (E1d4). But this is not enough. There are several available readings that satisfy this criterion and are mutually incompatible. To
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Agent Causation and Motivating Reasons Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-01 Joseph Martinez
Agent causation, roughly stated, is the view that an agent can stand in direct causal relation to (at least some subset of) her actions. Although agent causation has had a patchy reputation throughout much of contemporary analytic philosophy, it is now considered by many to be a viable theoretical option in various domains in action theory. That said, agent‐causalists continue to grapple with a number
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Mereological Models of Spacetime Emergence Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-23 Jessica Pohlmann
Recent work in quantum gravity has prompted a re‐evaluation of the fundamental nature of spacetime. Spacetime is potentially emergent from non‐spatiotemporal entities posited by a theory of quantum gravity. Recent efforts have sought to interpret the relationship between spacetime and the fundamental entities through a mereological framework. These frameworks propose that spacetime can be conceived
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Varieties of Bias Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-22 Gabbrielle M. Johnson
The concept of bias is pervasive in both popular discourse and empirical theorizing within philosophy, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. This widespread application threatens to render the concept too heterogeneous and unwieldy for systematic investigation. This article explores recent philosophical literature attempting to identify a single theoretical category—termed ‘bias’—that could
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The deliberative constraint on reasons Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-20 Conner Schultz
Must reasons be able to feature in our deliberation? Proponents of a deliberative constraint on reasons endorse an affirmative answer to this question. Deliberative constraints enjoy broad appeal and have been deployed as premises in support of a variety of controversial philosophical positions. Yet, despite their uses, deliberative constraints have not received systematic philosophical attention.
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Norms of Reasoning Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-20 Conor McHugh
When we reason, we can be assessed against diverse norms. Unfortunately different types of such norms are often conflated. This article distinguishes some different types of norms to which we are subject when we reason, and shows how this can help to clarify certain philosophical debates. It then considers, briefly, ‘norms of starting points’, and, at more length, ‘norms of transitions’. In closing
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Fake News! Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-28 James Owen Weatherall, Cailin O’Connor
We review several topics of philosophical interest connected to misleading online content. First we consider proposed definitions of different types of misleading content. Then we consider the epistemology of misinformation, focusing on approaches from virtue epistemology and social epistemology. Finally we discuss how misinformation is related to belief polarization, and argue that models of rational
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Causal Models and Metaphysics—Part 2: Interpreting Causal Models Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-27 Jennifer McDonald
This paper addresses the question of what constitutes an apt interpreted model for the purpose of analyzing causation. I first collect universally adopted aptness principles into a basic account, flagging open questions and choice points along the way. I then explore various additional aptness principles that have been proposed in the literature but have not been widely adopted, the motivations behind
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Etiology of injustice: An introduction Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-27 Susan Erck
To formulate a plan of action for bringing about a decisive and reasonably stable end to an injustice, it is helpful to understand the factors and conditions that critically make the difference in causing that injustice. This intuitively seems correct regarding active and ongoing problems. But what precisely is involved in this kind of explanatory endeavor, and what is its role in practical efforts
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-27
No abstract is available for this article.
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Shamelessly Blue: Pitch Complexes and the Social Otherwise Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-29 Andrea Dionne Warmack
Early american Black Blueswomen—such as Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone—perform Blues as a praxis that both critiques and transforms the ways in which american Black people were—and continue to be—excluded from the construct of the human subject. Merleau‐Ponty's account of inter‐subjectivity is predicated on his account of the human subject who is always‐already
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-29
No abstract is available for this article.
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Moral worth Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-29 Euan K. Metz
The concept of moral worth, of being creditworthy for doing the right thing, is often seen as essential feature of a moral theory. It forces us to provide a clear account of the relationship between moral motivation and moral action, raising important questions about the demands that morality makes of us. Work on moral worth has a long lineage, especially in Kantian scholarship. Recent years, however
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Amoralism in the Hanfeizi Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-29 Gabrièle Escoffier
This article surveys three possible ways to assess morality in the Hanfeizi. The first is the “traditional” outlook, according to which Han Fei disregards all moral considerations in politics. The second acknowledges the presence of moral questions in the text but maintains that it ultimately promotes amoralism as an essential feature of the Legalist state. A (less common) third way is to say that
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Causal Models and Metaphysics – Part 1: Using Causal Models Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-29 Jennifer McDonald
This paper provides a general introduction to the use of causal models in the metaphysics of causation, specifically structural equation models and directed acyclic graphs. It reviews the formal framework, lays out a method of interpretation capable of representing different underlying metaphysical relations, and describes the use of these models in analyzing causation.
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Pain Philosophy: Recent Debates and Future Challenges Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-29 Sabrina Coninx
In the last decades, pain has moved more and more into the foreground of philosophical discussion. Still, there exists substantial disagreement concerning the exact nature of pain. The paper provides an overview concerning central topics in recent pain philosophy, indicating remaining challenges and outlining promising directions for future research. Starting point is the assumption that broadly constructed
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How to be a perspectival pluralist Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-03 Olla Solomyak
The temporal, first‐personal, and modal domains in metaphysics involve a range of perspectives on reality: the perspective of the present as opposed to those of other times, the perspective of one's own self as opposed to those of other subjects, and the perspective of the actual world as opposed to those of other possible worlds. In each case, we can ask about the metaphysical standing of these various
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Which is More Important? Moral Virtue or Life itself?: An Exploration of a Confucian Theme Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-30 Sihao Chew
This paper examines a dilemma within the Confucian tradition wherein one is forced to choose between upholding moral virtue and preserving one's own life. The mainstream view valorises and exalts the act of sacrificing one's life in order to uphold moral virtue. There are many supporters of this view, spanning across different periods, including but not limited to Confucius, Mencius, the Cheng brothers
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Recent empirical work on religious experience: New directions Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-30 Wes Skolits
Novel developments in neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology have spawned a thriving empirical literature on religious experience. Previous literature in the cognitive science of religion has largely ignored empirical results from these fields, focusing narrowly on results from evolutionary psychology. Additionally, it has ignored the epistemological relevance of non‐paradigmatic cases of religious
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Rule‐Following II: Recent Work and New Puzzles Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-27 Indrek Reiland
“Rule‐following” is a name for a cluster of phenomena where we seem both guided and “normatively” constrained by something general in performing particular actions. Understanding the phenomenon is important because of its connection to meaning, representation, and content. This article gives an overview of the philosophical discussion of rule‐following with emphasis on Kripke's skeptical paradox and
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Reliability in Machine Learning Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-27 Thomas Grote, Konstantin Genin, Emily Sullivan
Issues of reliability are claiming center‐stage in the epistemology of machine learning. This paper unifies different branches in the literature and points to promising research directions, whilst also providing an accessible introduction to key concepts in statistics and machine learning – as far as they are concerned with reliability.
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-27
No abstract is available for this article.
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Imagination as a source of empirical justification Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Joshua Myers
Traditionally, philosophers have been skeptical that the imagination can justify beliefs about the actual world. After all, how could merely imagining something give you any reason to believe that it is true? However, within the past decade or so, a lively debate has emerged over whether the imagination can justify empirical belief and, if so, how. This paper provides a critical overview of the recent
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Symmetries and Representation Forthcoming in Philosophy Compass Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-18 Geoffrey Hall, Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez
It is often said in physics that if two models of a theory are related by a symmetry, then the two models provide (or could provide) two different representations of the very same situation, alike the case of two maps of different color for the very same city. It is also said that the situations represented by two models of a theory are indiscernible in some ways when the models in question are related
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Teaching & Learning Guide for: Objectionable Commemorations: Ethical and Political Issues Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Chong‐Ming Lim, Ten‐Herng Lai
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Mental Files Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-26
No abstract is available for this article.
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Proportionality in Causation, Part I: Theories Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Predictive coding I: Introduction Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-11-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Personal Beauty and Personal Agency Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-03
No abstract is available for this article.
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Issue Information Philosophy Compass (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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 (IF 2.1) 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)