The immediate infinite mode of extension is one of the more mysterious elements of Spinoza’s ontology. Despite its importance to Spinoza’s metaphysical system, Spinoza tells us very little about this mode. In the effort to make some progress on this question, I examine three prominent hypotheses about this mode’s identity: the Force Interpretation, the Nomic Interpretation, and the Kinetic Interpretation. I argue, first, that both the Force Interpretation and the Nomic Interpretation are subject to a number of serious objections. Second, I argue that in spite of scholars’ claims to the contrary, the Kinetic Interpretation is a live option.

In Part I of Parmenides, Socrates introduces a Theory of Forms to explain opposites compresent in ordinary things, and claims that Forms cannot have opposite features. In Part II, Parmenides relies on Socrates’ claim and derives unacceptable consequences—that the Form of Oneness does not exist, and if that is so, then nothing exists: a clearly false conclusion. To avoid it, Socrates must give up his thesis in Part I and find a way to preserve the explanatory role of Forms. This paper aims to articulate the structure of the exercise in Part II.

This paper argues that individual rational judgment, of the kind required for rational justification in empirical knowledge or morals, is in fundamental part socially and historically based, although this is consistent with realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and with strict objectivity about basic moral principles. To judge fully rationally that one judges, and thus to justify one’s judgment rationally, requires recognizing one’s inherent fallibility and hence our mutual interdependence for assessing our own and each others’ judgments and their justification. This provides a pragmatic account of rational justification which dispatches the distinction between “rational” and “historical” knowledge.

In this article, I suggest an original solution to the Liar Paradox, based on the pragmatic theory of speech acts. This solution implies making a distinction between two concepts of truth: the intentional truth of a speaker’s utterances directed toward an addressee with the objective of obtaining a consensual agreement; the effective truth objectively recognized by the addressee in the speaker’s utterances. In view of reaching this new solution to the classic paradox, I conduct a critical review of solutions put forward by Tarski, Kripke and Strawson.

The most important challenge to the deflationary views of truth is the success argument. Kitcher defends this argument by demanding that a proper account of successful action should explain why one and the same action can be not only psychologically pertinent but also effectively pertinent, and by arguing that correspondence truth is required to meet this explanatory demand. In this paper, I argue that a proper account of successful action should explain why an agent’s action is an appropriate means to attain his goal, and that a deflationist can meet Kitcher’s explanatory demand by this appropriate-means requirement.

This article shows how Plato’s Parmenides explores the relationship between place and the geometric forms that are inscribed in it, independently of sensation, becoming and causality. The analysis concurs with essential points of what is said in the Timaeus about khôra, this receptacle deprived of any intrinsic qualities, on which every sensitive reality is drawn.

In Plato’s Apology, Socrates claims that phthonos and diabolē caused Aristophanes to become one of his accusers. Either Socrates is blowing things out of proportion because Aristophanes was clearly just kidding around, or we are wrong to pass Aristophanes’ humour off as ‘just kidding around.’ In this paper, I defend the second alternative. I argue that Aristophanes is a specific kind of social conservative and that Socrates was the sort of social liberal that bothered Aristophanes. I conclude that Clouds is not innocent, but is, as Socrates claimed, driven by phthonos and diabolē.

Concept-individuating possession conditions constitute one of the fundamental, albeit rather unattended, polemical territories between Fregean and anti-individualistic standpoints. In this paper, I outline a compatibilist theory of cognitive value that encompasses both anti-individualistic and individualistic possession conditions. I argue that this general approach to the compatibility of Fregean and anti-individualistic accounts of concept possession suffices to call into question the claims that cognitive value must have deference and transparency among its fundamental features.

In this paper, Plato’s notion of the sudden moment is fully explored. In the Parmenides, the “now” (nun) and the “sudden” (exaiphnês), it is argued, refer to one and the same entity from the distinct perspectives of timeless Being and temporal Becoming, respectively. This interpretation tallies well with, and enriches, the Platonic views on time and eternity found in the Timaeus. Finally, the paper highlights the pivotal role of the third deduction, where the sudden moment appears, for an understanding of the entire dialectical exercise of the Parmenides.

It is commonly held that nature is knowable in itself and that death has no explanatory priority in knowing nature. I reject both claims as they undermine an account of the unity of human life, failing, respectively, to thematize the limitations of finite understanding and to acknowledge what’s most certain about finite existence. I use Kant’s idea of the thing in itself and Heidegger’s idea of death to solve two structurally analogous antinomies these failures leave intact. I conclude that to think these ideas is to represent the telos that unifies our living as, respectively, finite knowers and finite beings.

This paper suggests that reference to phenomenal qualities is best understood as involving iconicity, that is, a passage from sign-vehicle to object that exploits a similarity between the two. This contrasts with a version of the ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ that takes indexicality to be central. However, since it is doubtful that phenomenal qualities are capable of causally interacting with anything, indexical reference seems inappropriate. While a theorist like David Papineau is independently coming to something akin to iconicity, I think some of the awkwardness that plagues his account would be remedied by transitioning to a more inclusive philosophy of signs.