-
-
The Ethics of ExpectationsIn Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol 13., Oxford University Press. pp. 149-169. 2023.This chapter asks two questions about the ethics of expectations: one about the nature of expectations, and one about the wrongs of expectations. On the first question, expectations involve a rich constellation of attitudes ranging from beliefs to also include imaginings, hopes, fears, and dreams. As a result, sometimes expectations act like predictions, like your expectation of rain tomorrow, sometimes prescriptions, like the expectation that your students will do the reading, sometimes like pr…Read more
-
Existential AestheticsJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80. 2022.The aim of what I propose to call “existential aesthetics” is to investigate the various ways in which art and certain kinds of aesthetic practice or aesthetic experience can be of existential importance to people. Section I provides a definition of existential aesthetics, while Section II delineates this emerging field from cognate areas of research. Sections III and IV explore various subcategories and examples of existential aesthetics. Section V seeks to identify important avenues for future…Read more
-
Faith and the Structure of the MindSophia 53 (4): 467-477. 2014.Faith, broadly construed, is central to the political, social and personal life of any rational agent. I argue for two main claims: first, that a typology of faith based on the fine-grained Indic categories of bhakti, śraddhā, prasāda, abhisaṃpratyaya and abhilāṣa dissolves many of the philosophical problems associated with the nature of faith; second, that this typology of faith has elements that cannot be encompassed in a belief-desire psychology. The upshot is that the structure of the mind i…Read more
-
The Structure of Analog RepresentationNoûs 57 (1): 209-237. 2023.This paper develops a theory of analog representation. We first argue that the mark of the analog is to be found in the nature of a representational system’s interpretation function, rather than in its vehicles or contents alone. We then develop the rulebound structure theory of analog representation, according to which analog systems are those that use interpretive rules to map syntactic structural features onto semantic structural features. The theory involves three degree-theoretic measures t…Read more
-
Rational Relations Between Perception and Belief: The Case of ColorReview of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (4): 721-741. 2017.The present paper investigates the first step of rational belief acquisition. It, thus, focuses on justificatory relations between perceptual experiences and perceptual beliefs, and between their contents, respectively. In particular, the paper aims at outlining how it is possible to reason from the content of perceptual experiences to the content of perceptual beliefs. The paper thereby approaches this aim by combining a formal epistemology perspective with an eye towards recent advances in phi…Read more
-
Phenomenology without RepresentationEuropean Journal of Philosophy 21 (3): 1209-1237. 2013.
-
Aesthetic RationalityJournal of Philosophy 115 (3): 113-140. 2018.We argue that the aesthetic domain falls inside the scope of rationality, but does so in its own way. Aesthetic judgment is a stance neither on whether a proposition is to be believed nor on whether an action is to be done, but on whether an object is to be appreciated. Aesthetic judgment is simply appreciation. Correlatively, reasons supporting theoretical, practical and aesthetic judgments operate in fundamentally different ways. The irreducibility of the aesthetic domain is due to the fact th…Read more
Alfredo Vernazzani
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Universität Witten-Herdecke
-
-
Universität Witten-HerdeckeProfessor