Juliana Kazemi

Could something God revealed to you in a dream ever amount to knowledge? According to Ernest Sosa’s account of the epistemic limitations of dreams, perceptions and beliefs in dreams—and hence, any genuine knowledge based on them—are imagined phenomena that do not carry over into an epistemic agent’s waking life. Contra Sosa, I suggest that dream-to-reality crossover can be rational, and by analogy to a number of scientific discoveries made in dreams, I outline the circumstances under which divinely bestowed dreams yield apt belief within a virtue epistemology framework. Specifically, I suggest that a two-part skill of divine dream interpretation is an epistemic competence manifested whenever knowledge is acquired from a divine dream.

Faced with the puzzle of what nonbelievers are doing when they participate in liturgical rites, Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that in order for a participant to count as worshiping, she must lack the intention not to worship—this we call the Negative Intention (NI) principle. Wolterstorff prefers this principle over a competing one that holds that worshiping requires a positive intention to worship (PI). He does so on the grounds that many liturgical participants, such as infants or the mentally impaired, lack positive intentions to worship. Here we raise several objections to Wolterstorff’s view. We argue that it fails to cohere with intuitions regarding the religious affiliation of casual yoga enthusiasts on the one hand, and potential religious martyrs on the other. Wolterstorff’s view makes it difficult for the former to not count as participants in religions that they do not avow, while risking the trivialization of religious martyrdom in the process. We conclude by canvasing two potential alternatives: one on which conventions determine the success (or failure) of a given ritual act, and another on which ritual significance is inherited via imitation.

This paper investigates a reference to the voice of the legendary musician Orpheus in Plato’s Protagoras. I propose that the Orpheus image does serious philosophical work in the text. Understanding the mythic and religious elements of the Orpheus tradition can help us conceptualize the harms of sophistry from a Platonic viewpoint. In the light of the image, the sophist emerges as a quasi-magical manipulator of rhetorical beauty who charms his students into subrational creatures. Furthermore, the image provides insight into Plato’s conception of the difference between sophistic and Socratic education. Playing on the tradition of Orpheus as (failed) psychopomp, I suggest that the sophist employs a descent-style education which holds students captive in an underworld of glamorous but empty sensibles. In sharp contrast, Socratic ascent-style education pulls students upwards to active contemplation of ultimate reality.