Carrie Jenkins

In his contribution to this volume (Chapter 8), Laurence BonJour questions whether there is any substantive difference between his rationalist view (according to which we can know certain truths a priori through the application of pure rational insight) and the current author’s empiricist view (according to which we can know such truths through the examination of empirically grounded concepts). BonJour further argues that the rationalism he defends is both intuitively obvious and unmysterious. While the current author acknowledges some points of similarity between BonJour’s proposal and theirs, this chapter argues that they differ substantively as regards the epistemological role played by experience in the knowledge in question. It also argues that there is nothing intuitively obvious about BonJour’s substantive and controversial epistemological claims, and that his attempts to render them unmysterious rest on a misunderstanding of where the mystery is located.

This chapter explores the epistemological advantages that traditional forms of anti-realism are supposed to have over realism, arguing that quasi-realism does not in any straightforward way inherit these advantages. At first glance, the quasi-realist appears to be in serious trouble when it comes to providing a convincing epistemology. Some existing (and nearby) strategies for addressing this problem are explored, but there are grounds for dissatisfaction with all of them. The chapter draws upon an account of knowledge developed by the author in earlier work in order to offer the quasi-realist a new and more promising strategy. In the final section, this strategy is applied to address a specific epistemological objection to quasi-realism recently pressed by Sharon Street.

This paper identifies a phenomenon called hermeneutic dismissiveness, which it positions in relation to willful hermeneutical ignorance (Pohlhaus 2012), hermeneutical clashes (Falbo 2022), and ameliorative conceptual engineering (e.g. Haslanger 2000). It then develops a generalized version of Iris Murdoch's (1970) notion of unselfing, for which I use the term decentering: this involves decentering not just one's (individual) self but also the (collective) “we”s with which one identifies. Hermeneutic decentering is then discussed as a kind of work that might serve to counteract hermeneutic dismissiveness, through an application of what Murdoch calls “attention to reality inspired by, consisting of, love” (Murdoch 1969: 65). The paper concludes with a brief discussion of some of the obstacles to hermeneutic decentering, and reflections on how these might be addressed.

Trends in popular music hold wide sway, and the chart-topping songs of the day form an audible background to many public spaces. Because of this, we argue, there is a philosophically significant role in the social construction of romantic love that is distinctively played by popular music. In this chapter, we review some reasons for including a discussion of popular music in a volume on art, then discuss popular music’s connections to romantic love, as well the power and significance of such music. Next we outline our take on social construction, together with its connections to contingency and change. Finally, we discuss the social construction of romantic love in particular, and the role of popular music within that process. We conclude that romantic love as currently constructed includes damaging elements, and it is our aim to highlight the role of popular music in sustaining these.

I discuss a certain kind of emotionally charged negative reaction to defences of non-monogamous love, which I call collective-identity reactions. Expanding on work by Audrey Yap and Jonathan Ichikawa, who consider defensive reactions grounded in individual identity, I argue that collective-identity reactions are characteristically associated with claims about who we are, and motivated by a sense that the relevant we is in some way under threat. Looking into which we might be threatened by defences of non-monogamy, and why, reveals that this apparently personal subject matter is in fact entangled with global political issues like capitalism and American cultural imperialism. I conclude with some thoughts about ameliorative strategies for situations structurally similar to this one.

There is a New Idea in epistemology. It goes by the name of ‘knowledge first,’ and it is particularly associated with Timothy Williamson’s book Knowledge and Its Limits. In slogan form, to put knowledge first is to treat knowledge as basic or fundamental, and to explain other states—belief, justification, maybe even content itself—in terms of knowledge, instead of vice versa. The idea has proven enormously interesting, and equally controversial. But deep foundational questions about its actual content remain relatively unexplored. We think that a wide variety of views travel under the banner of ‘knowledge first’ (and that the slogan doesn’t help much with differentiating them). Furthermore, we think it is far from straightforward to draw connections between certain of these views; they are more independent than they are often assumed to be. Our project here is exploratory and clarificatory. We mean to tease apart various ‘knowledge first’ claims, and explore what connections they do or do not have with one another. Our taxonomy is offered in §2, and connections are explored in §3. The result, we hope, will be a clearer understanding of just what the knowledge first theses are. We conclude, in §4, with some brief suggestions as to how we think the various theses might be evaluated.

This chapter considers and responds to various ‘naturalistic’ challenges to the a priori. Two are challenges to the very existence of the a priori; one of these is due to—or at least developed from—Quine and the other is due to Maddy. A third challenge, due to Papineau, is not to the existence of the a priori but to its significance in philosophy. En route to the discussion of these challenges, this chapter begins by clarifying that the word ‘naturalism’ is used for a wide variety of different theses (and other things), and offers the beginnings of a structure for classifying these which is put to use in the remainder of the chapter.

Epistemological naturalism has often been taken to be inimical to a priori knowledge, armchair knowledge, and epistemic normativity. This chapter argues that the relationship between epistemological naturalism and these other commitments is in fact considerably subtler than it is widely assumed to be. The chapter begins with a brief classificatory sketch of different kinds of naturalism, then focuses on forms of naturalism that have been especially significant in epistemology. Finally, one form of epistemological naturalism (labeled “lightweight epistemological naturalism”) is singled out for further examination, and found to be consistent with robust (nondeflated, noninstrumental) epistemic normativity, consistent with a priori knowledge, and noncommittal with respect to the prospects of negative experimental philosophy's critique of armchair knowledge.

Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams have developed a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy, via which they defend the theoretical legitimacy of vague objects. In this paper, we argue that while the Barnes–Williams theory supplies a viable account of genuine metaphysical vagueness, it cannot underwrite an account of genuinely vague objects. First we clarify the distinction between these two key theses. Then we argue that the Barnes–Williams theory of metaphysical vagueness not only fails to deliver genuinely vague objects, it in fact provides grounds for rejecting them.

This chapter attempts to put structure on some of the different philosophical uses of ‘intuition’. It argues that ‘intuition’-hood is associated with four bundles of symptoms: a commonsensicality bundle; an a prioricity and immediacy bundle, and a metaphilosophical bundle. Tentatively suggesting that the word ‘intuition’ as used by philosophers is best regarded as ambiguous, the chapter offers a much simpler view concerning the meaning of ‘intuition’ in philosophy. With some of the attacks on ‘intuition’ as an epistemic source explored, the chapter concludes that one significant kind of philosophical ‘intuition’, related to a prioricity and conceptual truth, can be defended against a range of typical epistemological challenges.

Friends of Wright-entitlement cannot appeal to direct epistemic consequentialism (believe or accept what maximizes expected epistemic value) in order to account for the epistemic rationality of accepting Wright-entitled propositions. The tenability of direct consequentialism is undermined by the “Truth Fairy”: a powerful being who offers you great epistemic reward (in terms of true beliefs) if you accept a proposition p for which you have evidence neither for nor against. However, this chapter argues that a form of indirect epistemic consequentialism seems promising as a way to deal with the Truth Fairy problem. The relevant form of indirect consequentialism accommodates evidentialism but allows for exceptions in the case of anti-sceptical hypotheses. Since these are the kind of propositions to which Wright-entitlement is supposed to apply—i.e. cornerstone propositions—indirect consequentialism is entitlement-friendly.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify what metaontological realism, as discussed in contemporary metaontological literature, amounts to. Although metaontological debates are of relatively long standing, the terms ‘realism’ and ‘anti‐realism’ have only recently come to be regularly applied to metaontological positions. The new usage is not fully stable. This paper aims to: (1) distinguish three key claims associated with the term ‘realism’ in metaontology, and give some initial reasons why it is important to be very clear about the differences between these claims; (2) argue that the three ‘realist’ claims are independent of one other; and (3) argue that the label ‘ontological realism’ is best attached to just one of the three claims, namely the claim that the facts of ontology are objective.

Boghossian claims that we can acquire a priori knowledge by means of a certain form of argument, our grasp of whose premises relies on the existence of implicit definitions. I discuss an objection to his ‘analytic theory of the a priori’. The worry is that in order to employ this kind of argument we must already know its conclusion. Boghossian has responded to this type of objection in recent work, but I argue that his responses are unconvincing. Along the way, I resist Ebert’s reasons for thinking that Boghossian’s argument fails to transmit warrant from its premises to its conclusion.

Earp et al. offer a very interesting summary of, and ethical commentary on, recent multidisciplinary research suggesting that at least some cases of what we call ‘romantic love’ involve phenomena that physically and/or psychologically resemble cases of what we call ‘addiction.’ They draw a conceptual distinction between what they call ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ concepts of addiction. On the narrow conception, only extreme, harmful, or abnormal cases of love would count as addiction. On the broad conception, even ordinary or normal cases of love could qualify.After distinguishing the two conceptions over the course of the first half of their paper, the authors argue that for labelling and treatment purposes it does...

This paper builds on some important recent work by Amie Thomasson, wherein she argues that recent disputes about the existence of ordinary objects have arisen due to eliminiativist metaphysicians’ misunderstandings. Some, she argues, are mistaken about how the language of quantification works, while others neglect the existence and significance of certain analytic entailments. Thomasson claims that once these misunderstandings are cleared away, it is trivially easy to answer existence questions about ordinary objects using everyday empirical methods of investigation. She reveals how two conflicting metaontologies can lead to different positions in the first-order debate. In this paper, I bring a third metaontological perspective to the table: one that enables us to maintain that ontological disputes about ordinary objects are not trivially easy to settle, even if we agree with Thomasson that they are merely verbal. These are serious verbal disputes

This is a big-picture book, 2 written with a breadth of focus which I find admirable. It exhibits what's come to be known as the ‘intersubdiscplinary’ approach to philosophy, which is not restricted by traditional boundaries within the discipline but rather proceeds with an eye to all sorts of areas of philosophy where relevant arguments, results, analogies and strategies might be lurking. I approve of this way of doing philosophy; it seems to me that all too often that wheels are reinvented, or crucial points missed, because of a lack of this sort of intersubdisciplinarity.To help guide us through such a broad landscape, this book needed to be well-signposted and clearly written, and it is. It cannot be denied, however, that the ambitious scale of The Nature of Normativity won't be to every taste. For one thing, not everyone likes big pictures. For another, this is a deep, dense and in many ways difficult book, which can only really be appreciated by sitting down with it for hours on end. It will not repay the casual skim-reader, nor is it likely to appeal to those who prefer dipping into philosophy books over reading them wholesale.The book is also long . The view under construction has a great many interlocking elements, including non-reductive normative naturalism, normative realism, a priorist intuitionism, normative internalism, the normativity of intentionality, conceptual-role semantics, contextualism, possible-worlds semantics, and certain ideas about ‘planning’ derived from the recent work of Allan Gibbard. It will be a tough read for specialists who do not share Wedgwood's familiarity with a wide range of subdisciplines, who will either have to content themselves with a superficial reading of many passages or else hunt down the necessary background material to …

We discuss explanation of an earlier event by a later event, and argue that prima facie cases of backwards event explanation are ubiquitous. Some examples: (1) I am tidying my flat because my brother is coming to visit tomorrow. (2) The scarlet pimpernels are closing because it is about to rain. (3) The volcano is smoking because it is going to erupt soon. We then look at various ways people might attempt to explain away these prima facie cases by arguing that in each case the 'real' explanation is something else. We argue that none of the explaining-away strategies are successful, and so any plausible account of explanation should either make room for backwards explanation, or have a good story to tell about why it doesn't have to