Recent Philosophy Research Articles

Our New Fragility: Pandemic, Ethics, and the “Biomedical Others”

This paper is dedicated to the concept of fragility as a constitutive structure of the contemporary subject of the pandemic period. COVID-19 has once again actualized the problems of modern philosophy: the boundaries between human and animal, nature and culture, “self” and “alien”. Based on Levinasian phenomenological ethics, I propose the concept of bioethics as the embodied science of “biomedical Others” — people whose experience cannot be normalized and inscribed in the intersubjective structure of the life world of healthy individuals. The negative consequences of coronavirus for psychophysical health show that during a pandemic every person can become different — by contracting an infection or interrupting habitual social ties due to self-isolation. This proves the work of destructive plasticity — a transformation of the subject in which she becomes radically different, examples of which can be considered not only with the brain injuries or neurodegenerative diseases but also with the consequences of coronavirus. The transformed subject is such a “biomedical Other”, she needs an empathic and hospitable bio-ethics based on an expanded understanding of the boundaries of “self” and “other”. This subject represents the “grounding” of contingency, which has become an important concept of recent philosophy. A brief outline of bio-ethics illustrates an attempt to “phenomenologize” contingency, linking it with the anthropological possibility of plastic transformation, which can have both creative and destructive dimensions. Bioethics works with contingency, without turning it into a metaphysical concept and without trying to fit it into the framework of biomedically drawn normativity. Immune hospitality provides a framework for the acceptance of “biomedical Others” as the realization of the diversity of the forms of human embodiment.

Conceptual Art and Aesthetic Ideas

AbstractThis paper considers whether Kant’s aesthetics withstands the challenge of conceptual art. I begin by looking at two competing views of conceptual art by recent philosophers, before settling on an ‘inclusive’ view of the form: conceptual art includes both ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ non-perceptual art (NPA). I then set out two kinds of conceptual complexity that I argue are implicated by all aesthetic judgements of art (as art) on Kant’s view: the concept of art itself, and the idea the work is meant to express (dependent beauty and aesthetic ideas, respectively). I go on to demonstrate the applicability of Kant’s aesthetics to conceptual art by considering two works by Lawrence Weiner, which I take to be a work of work of weak and strong NPA respectively.

What Makes Heavy Metal ‘Heavy’?

AbstractIn this article, I raise a simple but surprisingly vexing question: What makes heavy metal heavy? We commonly describe music as “heavy,” whether as criticism or praise. But what does “heavy” mean? How is it applied as an aesthetic term? Drawing on sociological and musicological studies of heavy metal, as well as recent work on the aesthetics of rock music, I discuss the relevant musical properties of heaviness. The modest aim of this article, however, is to show the difficulty, if not impossibility, of this seemingly straightforward task. I first address the difficulties of identifying the defining features, or “Gestalt,” of heavy metal that would allow us to treat heaviness as a genre concept. Next, I discuss both the merits and the limits of analyzing heaviness in terms of an aesthetics of “noise” in rock music developed in recent philosophy of music. In the remaining sections, I consider other nonaesthetic features relevant to aesthetic judgments of heaviness and show that the term ‘heavy’ is conceptually inarticulable, if not irreducible. This, I conclude, has partly to do with the radically different, sometimes incompatible, musical properties present in the perception of musical heaviness.

Emotions and Values in Practice: The Case of Elderly Care

Abstract The moral and epistemic significance of emotions has been increasingly emphasized in recent philosophy. The focus has been mostly on metaethical questions. We add a new perspective by considering the practical importance of gauging, reacting to, enhancing, or reducing the emotions of others and oneself. We focus particularly on the collective aspect of emotion development and regulation, how emotions are entangled with values, and how they may be used constructively for handling otherwise difficult situations. We use the case of elderly care, drawing on a qualitative study from a Danish municipality, to illustrate the complex and multifarious ways in which emotions shape the normative landscape in which attempts to maintain or improve well-being take place.

Methodological worries on recent experimental philosophy of music

ABSTRACT This paper discusses methodological issues of two recent experiments conducted by Christopher Bartel, and Elzė S. Mikalonytė and Vilius Dranseika, respectively, about the repeatability and individuation of musical works. I argue, first, that the reliability of their results about people’s intuitions in our everyday musical practices can be questioned due to the use of descriptions instead of musical stimuli of the works and performances involved in the cases tested. This procedure is prone to place participants in an epistemic situation in which their mental capacities for their everyday judgments are not deployed and makes their judgments more vulnerable to the problem of “filling in”. I provide empirical data of an experiment that implements musical stimuli, obtaining large effect sizes regarding the results obtained by Bartel, Mikalonytė and Dranseika. In addition, I argue that the results of three scenarios of the experiment conducted by Mikalonytė and Dranseika are suspicious of being influenced by presentation effects that favor the contextualist intuition that the composer is a relevant parameter in work-individuation. Formal and superficial aspects of the description of their cases would cause these effects. I supply empirical data of an experiment that neutralizes those effects, obtaining moderate and large effect sizes regarding the results of Mikalonytė and Dranseika.

Causation and mnemonic roles: on Fernández’s Functionalism

Debates about causation have dominated recent philosophy of memory. While causal theorists have argued that an appropriate causal connection to a past experience is necessary for remembering, their opponents have argued that this necessity condition needs to be relaxed. Recently, Jordi Fernández (2018; 2019) has attempted to provide such a relaxation. On his functionalist theory of remembering, a given state need not be caused by a past experience to qualify as a memory; it only has to realize the relevant functional role in the subject’s mental economy. In this comment, I argue that Fernández’s theory doesn’t advance the debate about memory causation. I propose that this debate is best understood as being about the existence of systems, which support kinds of interactions that map onto the relations dictated by (causal) theories. Since Fernández’s functionalism tells us very little about this empirical question, the theoretical gains from endorsing it are minimal.

Attitudes and the (dis)continuity between memory and imagination

The current dispute between causalists and simulationists in philosophy of memory has led to opposing attempts to characterize the relationship between memory and imagination. In a recent overview of this debate, Perrin and Michaelian (2017) have suggested that the dispute over the (dis)continuity between memory and imagination boils down to the question of whether a causal connection to a past event is necessary for remembering. By developing an argument based on an analogy to perception, I argue that this dispute should instead be viewed as a dispute about the nature of the attitudes involved in remembering and imagining. The focus on attitudes, rather than on causal connections, suggests a new way of conceiving of the relationship between memory and imagination that has been overlooked in recent philosophy of memory.

How Can You Spot the Experts? An Essay in Social Epistemology

AbstractIn the history of western philosophy, people were often encouraged to seek knowledge by starting from their own minds and proceeding in a highly individualistic spirit. In recent contemporary philosophy, by contrast, there is a movement toward Social Epistemology, which urges people to seek knowledge from what others know. However, in selected fields some people are experts while others are laypersons. It is natural for self-acknowledged laypersons to seek help from the experts. But who, exactly, are the experts? Many people claiming to be experts are not the real thing. How can laypersons identify genuine experts? This essay explores the problems that arise, pointing out some of the mistakes that can be made and how to avoid them.

Are Events Things of the Past?

AbstractA popular claim in recent philosophy of mind and action is that events only exist once they are over. This has been taken to have the consequence that many temporal phenomena cannot be understood ‘from the inside’, as they are unfolding, purely in terms of events. However, as I argue here, the claim that events exist only when over is incoherent. I consider two ways of understanding the claim and the notion of existence it involves: one that ties existence to the logic of quantification, and another that assimilates the existence of an event to that of a continuant. The first of these, I argue, cannot be the right way to understand the target claim, as there are serious logical obstacles to regarding this notion of existence as temporally variable. The second, on the other hand, leaves it ultimately mysterious what the existence of an event could amount to. I close with the suggestion that the undeniable temporal asymmetries which parties to the debate are interested in are properly understood in perspectival, not ontological, terms.

Teilhard de Chardin et le « transhumain » : De la contradiction à la cohérence

After a brief description of what the contemporary trans-humanism is, we analyze the use of a trans-humanist-like vocabulary made by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. After exhibiting a contradiction in Teilhard’s vision of human evolution, we show how his thought contains also some interesting elements (ethics of fraternity, charity and reference to the human person and to an authentic transcendence) which could help us to correct some dangerous drifts of the recent trans-humanist philosophy.

The Structure of Causal Explanations in Population Biology.

The scope of this paper can be clarified by means of a well-known phenomenon that is usually called 'industrial melanism': the fact that the melanic form of the peppered moth became dominant in industrial areas in England in the second half of the nineteenth century. Such changes in relative phenotype frequencies are important explananda for population biologists. Apart from trying to explain such changes over time, population biologists also often try to explain differences between populations, e.g. why yellow shell colour is dominant in certain colonies of land snails and almost absent in other colonies. The causal explanations that are given to address such explananda are the objects of analysis in this paper. Our primary aim is to explicate their structure: we want to capture the typical ingredients of causal explanations in population biology, and their organisation. Based on this explication, we discuss how natural selection fits into recent mechanical philosophy of science, and engage in the debate on the nature of evolutionary theory.

Generative and Perceptive Models of Volition

In recent decades, scientists and philosophers have developed several naturalistic theories of consciousness, in which they try to work out some theoretical foundations for a satisfactory solution to the problem of voluntary acts, in particular the genesis of voluntary bodily movements. From the author’s point of view, depending on which concept of consciousness scientists rely on in their empirical studies of voluntary movements, volition can be understood either as a generative act or as a perceptual act. The first part of the article shows that nowadays there are two competing philosophical and scientific models of volition: the generative model (dualistic and casualistic types) and the perceptual model (strong and weak types). The second part of the article deals with some experimental data from cognitive psychology and neuroscience related to the study of voluntary movements and concludes that they are in favor of the perceptive model of volition.

Humankind, Animals and Misanthropy

Following in the tradition of Montaigne and Rousseau, a number of recent philosophers have argued that reflection on the relationship between humankind and certain animals yields good reasons for a misanthropic verdict on the former. One reason, of course, is the terrible treatment and exploitation of animals by human beings. Another reason—the one focused on and endorsed in this paper—is that humankind does very badly in the moral comparison with animal species that Hume thought was essential to any moral verdict on our species. I argue that animals are favored by such a comparison since they are free of the vices and moral failings of human beings. To the objection that, in that case, they are also without the virtues that we have, my reply is that this objection is mistaken. (Even if it weren’t, animals would come off better than humankind, since it is morally more important to be without vices than to have virtues.) Simply put, the “innocence” of animals—perhaps like that of young children—is incompatible with being morally vicious, but it is not incompatible with manifesting and exercising certain virtues. Innocence does not exclude experiencing benign moral emotions, such as compassion.

On the recent philosophy of decision theory

ABSTRACT In the philosophy of economics, the last fifteen years have witnessed an intense discussion about the epistemological status of economic models of decision making and their theoretical components, such as the concept of preference. In this article I offer a selective review of this discussion and indicate the directions in which I believe it should evolve.

Freedom to Choose Between Good and Evil: Theological Anthropology in Discussion with Philosophy

After a brief discussion of the terms determinism and free will, the paper sets out to compare some recent philosophical approaches to the problem of free will with a theological anthropology account of the notion. It aims to defend the claim, that even though different kind of questions are asked on both sides, they tackle similar issues and a complementary approach is needed. Recent philosophy considers the problem mostly from the standpoint of logic, naturalist evolutionary ontology and cognitive science. In the Christian theological tradition, the idea of free will has been discussed mostly from the perspective of the problem of sin and grace, thus on the grounds of soteriology, hamartiology and theological ethics. The paper shows similarities between the approaches, mainly between the problem of physical determinism and theological determinism and also divine foreknowledge.

Philosophical Posthumanism

Philosophical Posthumanism

Elemental Optics: Nicholas of Cusa, Omnivoyance and the Aquatic Gaze

There has been much recent debate about the nature of the omnivoyant image that introduces Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei. In this paper, I argue that Cusa’s concept of contraction and his ‘radical perspectivism’ lead us toward stretching the concept of omnivoyance beyond a simple dichotomy between a phenomenology of the image and a phenomenology of the icon. Instead of putting such emphasis on what is seen by the omnivoyant, we should think an omnivoyant optics starting from the material milieu from which it sees. To this end, I define the concept of omnivoyance through the concept of the elemental. Using both the concept of an element derived from Presocratic Ionian philosophy and recent French and American continental philosophy, I put these discourses into conversation with Cusa in several ways: (1) the way omnivoyance functions as a substratum of contracted seeing rather than as a transcendence, (2) its operation as a pure frontality without objectifiable aspects, and (3) the way in which omnivoyance implies not only a gaze that sees ‘all and each’ (Cusa’s formula for omnivoyance) but also a plurality of modes of vision. To help us understand this enlarged concept of omnivoyance, I use the example of animal vision, particularly the gaze of the whale. With respect to cetacean vision, I deploy Melville’s metaphysical speculations in Moby Dick as our primary guide.

Valid for What? On the Very Idea of Unconditional Validity

What is a valid measuring instrument? Recent philosophy has attended to logic of justification of measures, such as construct validation, but not to the question of what it means for an instrument to be a valid measure of a construct. A prominent approach grounds validity in the existence of a causal link between the attribute and its detectable manifestations. Some of its proponents claim that, therefore, validity does not depend on pragmatics and research context. In this paper, I cast doubt on the possibility of a context-independent causal account of validity (what I call unconditional validity). I assess several versions, arguing that all of them fail to judge the validity of measuring instruments correctly. Because different research purposes require different properties from measuring instruments, no account of validity succeeds without referring to the specific research purpose that creates the need for measurement in the first place.

The epistemic demands of friendship: friendship as inherently knowledge-involving

Many recent philosophers have been tempted by epistemic partialism. They hold that epistemic norms and those of friendship constitutively conflict. In this paper, I suggest that underpinning this claim is the assumption that friendship is not an epistemically rich state, an assumption that even opponents of epistemic partiality have not questioned. I argue that there is good reason to question this assumption, and instead regard friendship as essentially involving knowledge of the other. If we accept this account of friendship, the possibility of epistemic partialism does not arise.

Peter Browne on the Metaphysics of Knowledge

AbstractThe central unifying element in the philosophy of Peter Browne (d. 1735) is his theory of analogy. Although Browne's theory was originally developed to deal with some problems about religious language, Browne regards analogy as a general purpose cognitive mechanism whereby we substitute an idea we have to stand for an object of which we, strictly speaking, have no idea. According to Browne, all of our ideas are ideas of sense, and ideas of sense are ideas of material things. Hence we can conceive of spiritual things – including even our own spirit – only by analogy. One interesting application Browne makes of his theory is an account of how concepts such as knowledge can be correctly applied to beings that have no intrinsic properties in common, such as non-human animals, humans, angels, and God. I argue that this is best understood as what, in the contemporary literature, is known as a ‘multiple realizability’ problem and that Browne's solution to this problem has important similarities to functionalist theories in recent philosophy of mind.