One of the main features of Gilles Deleuze’s lectures of 1981 concerns the importance accorded to the notion of modulation as a philosophical definition of painting. The novelty of such a framework lies in the correspondences established between analogical operations and artistic spaces of Western art. This article establishes the main moments of this analysis and thus point out its main technical, historical, and aesthetic implications. Ultimately, the notion of modulation is considered as the conceptual operator of a “heterogenetic” history of art within the framework of Deleuze’s philosophy.

Looking at Canadian provincial pediatric health care policies and laws, the best interest standard (BIS) enjoys support. Within philosophy, however, the BIS faces serious opposition. Granted, there remain a few fervent defenders of the BIS in the contemporary literature; however, I argue that while some authors nominally defend the BIS, my analysis reveals that what they really defend is at best a watered down version of it. In this article, I argue that not only must the BIS be understood narrowly, but a substitute decision-maker (SDM) must satisfy the BIS — for an SDM is her patient's fiduciary.

Social conventionalism — the position that social conventions governing language use determine or constitute the meanings of our words — has faced two major problems. The first is the Agreement Problem: how could speakers agree to use words in certain ways without already speaking meaningfully? The second is the Novelty Problem: how can conventions fix the meanings of innovative uses of words? David Lewis famously responded to the Agreement Problem but his account flounders on the Novelty Problem. Josh Armstrong emends Lewis’ account to solve the Novelty Problem. I argue that Armstrong's emendation fails and that neither he nor Lewis has an adequate response to the Agreement Problem.

Given the rising trend of politicizing formerly mundane topics, philosophers should guard against the concepts we develop being misunderstood or misconstrued to support arguments we never intended. To demonstrate my assertion, I develop the case study of Alex Kacelnik's notion of “biological rationality” (B-rationality) and show ways in which I believe it is vulnerable to misuse and ways I would suggest re-engineering it to be more resistant. I conclude by urging scholars — especially those working on normatively laden topics — to design our concepts such that they are less likely to become associated with harmful discourse or even oppressive policies.

Response-dependence about moral responsibility argues that someone is morally responsible if and only if, and because, they're an appropriate target of reactive attitudes. But if we can be partially morally responsible, and if reactive attitudes are too coarse-grained to register small differences in normatively significant features of agents, then response-dependence is false. Shawn Wang dubs this the “Granularity Challenge.” This article rejects the second premise of the Granularity Challenge. Human emotions are fine-grained enough to register small differences in normatively significant features of agents. One illustrative example of this, I argue, is how children gradually emerge as partially responsible agents.

Philosophers and psychologists acclaim Edward C. Tolman's “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men” as an early, transformative instance of representationalist explanation. The article is said to mark a move by Tolman to renounce his behaviorism and to herald a new, cognitivist psychology. I argue, opposingly, that framing the text with reference to later psychology badly distorts its meaning. The text is better understood with respect to the contexts of its age and deeper currents in the history of psychology. Tolman is not upturning behaviorism; he is re-litigating an intramural debate between behaviorists pertaining to the place of physiology in psychology.

La noétique de Pierre d'Auriol présente une théorie originale de l'intention, en partie fondée sur une relecture de la thèse des deux sujets de l'intellection prônée par Averroès. Auriol pose que l'intention possède deux sujets, mais varie dans le schéma qu'il produit en se confrontant aux difficultés qu'entraîne son affirmation. Cet article propose de tracer la genèse, les développements et les conséquences de cette théorie.

Les discussions récentes au sujet des rapports entre sciences et sociétés concourent aux impératifs politiques pour la diffusion des connaissances qui transcendent les disciplines. Je soutiens qu'un argument pour la diffusion des résultats de la recherche en sciences, technologie, ingénierie et mathématiques (STIM) serait valable pour les sciences humaines et sociales (SHS). Je précise les conséquences de cette transposition en prenant l'exemple de la recherche en philosophie. J'aboutis à la conclusion que l'obstacle principal à la diffusion des résultats dans ce domaine est la reconnaissance d'une expertise philosophique.

This article concerns the criteria for when a group can collectively hold a belief. By proposing a cognitive non-summative account of group belief (GB), I highlight three necessary features at the individual level: commonality, mutuality, and group-based considerations. My account asserts that group G believes proposition p if and only if a sufficient majority of its members believe (1) pG, where pG is “Given some G-based considerations, p,” and (2) “the majority of G also believe that pG.” The article critiques three significant accounts of GB: Anthony Quinton's simple summative account, Margaret Gilbert's and Raimo Tuomela's conative non-summative views, and Jennifer Lackey's modified summativism.

Is there a necessary connection between law and morality? Elizabeth Anscombe's theory of civil authority provides the basis for a unique intervention into this debate. Her distinction between the rights internal to a practice and the external justification of said practice avoids the traditional objections to both legal positivism and natural law theories.

Our social identity affects what we believe. But, how should we epistemically evaluate this doxastic impact? Achieving a robust picture of the epistemic significance of social identity requires us to explore the understudied intersection of irrelevant influences and standpoint epistemology, which leads us to cases of double higher-order evidence. Reflecting on social identity through the lens of irrelevant influences gives us higher-order evidence of error, while reflecting through the lens of standpoint advantage gives us higher-order evidence of accuracy. We must weigh the strength of each piece of higher-order evidence case by case to epistemically evaluate the doxastic impact of social identity.

After some preliminary remarks about Plato’s use of the adverb nun, I explain what the nun is by offering a close textual analysis of the key passage in which it is explicitly addressed (Parm. 151e3–153b7). Its metaxu nature, between duration and limit, requires one to consider another temporal notion of the second part of the Parmenides that is metaxu, namely the exaiphnês. I explain why the nun does not conceptually overlap with the exaiphnês, arguing moreover that there is no model where both notions fit, but rather a model accounting for a switch and another one accounting for continuous change.

Philosophers have struggled to explain the mismatch of emotions and their objects across time, as when we stop grieving or feeling angry despite the persistence of the underlying cause. I argue for a sceptical approach that says that these emotional changes often lack rational fit. The key observation is that our emotions must periodically reset for purely functional reasons that have nothing to do with fit. I compare this account to David Hume’s sceptical approach in matters of belief, and conclude that resistance to it rests on a confusion similar to one that he identifies.

The neo-Kantian transcendentalist reading of the epistemic status of logical axioms in Frege argues that he is committed to the neo-Kantian idea that we are epistemically justified in accepting logical axioms because accepting them is necessary for achieving epistemically crucial goals. However, I show that Frege hesitates to be fully committed to neo-Kantian transcendentalism because he struggles to accept the idea that such a teleological reason can constitute an epistemic warrant. This interpretation shows some crucial aspects of his philosophy of logic, such as his understanding of the relationship between the simplicity and the sufficiency of logical systems.

I raise some questions about Jeremy Fantl's The Limitations of the Open Mind. I ask what type of applied epistemology Fantl's book represents, whether there might be a better conception of open-mindedness than the one he embraces, and whether he is correct that someone's being an amateur makes it easier for their knowledge to survive the dismissal of relevant counterarguments.

Cet article vise à élucider la nature de l'enquête. Je présente tout d'abord les desiderata communs à toute théorie de l'enquête. Je catégorise ensuite l'enquête comme un processus structuré en me concentrant sur ses composantes essentielles : des attitudes de questionnement guidant des actions. Enfin, je me penche sur l'objection récente selon laquelle les attitudes de questionnement ne sont pas nécessaires à l'enquête. Je défends la thèse selon laquelle l'enquête est un processus structuré essentiellement constitué d'attitudes de questionnement ayant deux rôles fonctionnels précis, soit d'initier et de guider le déploiement de capacités cognitives en vue d'un but épistémique.

This article was written before Andrea Robin Skinner, daughter of Alice Munro, wrote an essay in the Toronto Star on July 7, 2024, describing her mother's silence in the face of her abuse at the hands of Munro's husband/Skinner's stepfather, Gerald Fremlin. I wish to honour Skinner's story and her courage in coming forward, as well as her wish that “… this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother.” I, like so many others, will continue to grapple with Munro's writing and her reflections on intimate human relationships — as well as her literary legacy — following these revelations.

I introduce the book symposium on Jeremy Fantl's The Limitations of the Open Mind. The symposium began as a session at the 2023 American Philosophical Association meeting in Montreal; it features replies to Fantl's book by Nathan Ballantyne and Miriam Schleifer McCormick with replies to the replies by Fantl.

I survey my career in philosophy, which encompasses 44 years of teaching in Halifax, but begins in London, England with a thesis on self-deception. I describe a practice of using works of literature as a guide to conceptual analysis, and pause in Vienna to translate On Last Things (Weininger, 2001). A line of Wittgenstein's is the basis for reflections on the concept of a Last Judgement. I discuss in some detail a paper of mine for the Atlantic Region Philosophers’ Association in 2018, “One Last Thing,” which takes as its basis The Sense of an Ending, a novel by Julian Barnes. I conclude with some claims about Wittgenstein's relation to religion. I add an Appendix, in which I comment briefly on each of the other articles that make up this symposium.

In this article, I summarize the main takeaways from The Limitations of the Open Mind and reply to concerns raised by Miriam Schleifer McCormick and Nathan Ballantyne. In reply to McCormick, I emphasize potential difficulties involved in helping people change their minds while representing yourself as taking an “objective stance” toward them. In reply to Ballantyne, I clarify my reasons for thinking that open-mindedness is a matter of being willing to change your mind and that amateurs can in some ways and in some situations be more immune to misleading arguments than experts can.