Philosophy

Race is a major axis of social injustice in America. Social injustice is due to both maldistribution of material resources and opportunities and non-recognition or misrecognition of people of color. One form of mis-recognition is the accusation that a person of color is not a real American, creating a conflict of identities (i.e., racial and American): a double-consciousness. This accusation has its origins in faulty ideas about race, identity, and race-group membership. This paper presents a new model of identity that addresses these faulty ideas and provides a conceptual structure within which one can consistently maintain a singleconsciousness while maintaining identifications with various domains of identity. Also discussed are the ramifications of such a model, implications for group action, a case study of Muslim-Americans, and the ramifications of President Obama's election. v

Race is a major axis of social injustice in America. Social injustice is due to both maldistribution of material resources and opportunities and non-recognition or misrecognition of people of color. One form of mis-recognition is the accusation that a person of color is not a real American, creating a conflict of identities (i.e., racial and American): a double-consciousness. This accusation has its origins in faulty ideas about race, identity, and race-group membership. This paper presents a new model of identity that addresses these faulty ideas and provides a conceptual structure within which one can consistently maintain a singleconsciousness while maintaining identifications with various domains of identity. Also discussed are the ramifications of such a model, implications for group action, a case study of Muslim-Americans, and the ramifications of President Obama's election. v

Modal rationalism includes the thesis that ideal primary positive conceivability entails primary possibility. Modal monism is the thesis that the space of logically possible worlds is coextensive with the space of metaphysically possible worlds. In this paper I explore the relation between the two theses. My aim is to show that the former thesis implies the latter thesis, and that problems with the latter make the former implausible as a complete picture of the epistemology of modality. My argument explores the relation between logical modality and metaphysical modality.

Modal epistemology has been dominated by a focus on establishing an account either of how we have modal knowledge or how we have justified beliefs about modality. One component of this focus has been that necessity and possibility are basic access points for modal reasoning. For example, knowing that P is necessary plays a role in deducing that P is essential, and knowing that both P and ¬P are possible plays a role in knowing that P is accidental. Chalmers and provide two good examples of contrasting views in modal epistemology that focus on providing an account of modal knowledge where necessity and possibility are basic access points for modal knowledge, and Yablo (1993) provides a good account of how we have justified beliefs about modality. In contrast to this tradition I argue for and outline a modal epistemology based on objectual understanding and essence, rather than knowledge or justification and necessity and possibility. The account employs a non-modal conception of essence and takes objectual understanding of essence, rather than knowledge of essence to be basic in modal reasoning. I begin by articulating account of objectual understanding, on which objectual understanding of F is not equivalent to propositional knowledge of F. I then argue that an epistemology of essence that uses property variation-in-imagination is better construed as a model that delivers objectual understanding of essence rather than knowledge of essence. I argue that this is so, since the latter and not the former runs into a version of the Meno paradox. I show how this account can be applied to two issues in modal epistemology: the Benacerraf problem for modality, and the architecture of modal knowledge.

The extended mind hypothesis for the case of belief, defended by Clark and Chalmers (1998), is an intriguing hypothesis about the nature of human minds that rests on functionalism about various components of mindedness. In this paper we present the Advaita Vedānta account of perception as continuous-part extension against the backdrop of panpsychism. We argue that this view is interesting because it allows us to see how an extended mind style hypothesis can be argued for against the backdrop of panpsychism, as opposed to functionalism.

Tim Crane (The problem of perception. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2011 ed). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ spr2011/entries/perception-problem/, 2011) distinguishes between the metaphysical problem of perception and the epistemological problem of perception. The metaphysical problem can be articulated as a function of the joint inconsistency between several theses concerning the nature of perception, such as the openness to the world thesis and the transparency of experience thesis. Disjunctivism holds that veridical and non-veridical perceptual experiences are distinct in some important way. Disjunctivism is often offered as a solution to the metaphysical problem of perception as well as a response to scepticism. In this comparative-philosophical-exploratory essay, I argue that on the basis of a specific reading of the Nya ¯ya misplacement theory of illusion one can generate a specific kind of disjunctivism about perception, which I call causal disjunctivism. Causal disjunctivism is distinct from Duncan Pritchard's epistemic disjunctivism, and John McDowell's metaphysical disjunctivism. The core idea of causal disjunctivism is that the processes that bring about veridical perception are distinct from the process that bring about non-veridical perception at the level of causal generation. Second, on the basis of causal disjunctivism, I go on to show that it offers a plausible solution to the metaphysical problem of perception.

Attention, Not Self (OUP 2017) by Jonardon Ganeri is a path breaking book in the field of cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary philosophy. In this review I attend to his discussion of attentional epistemology and the importance of the varieties of attention he discusses, in particular intimation.

Recently, Kit Fine's (1994) view that modal truths are true in virtue of, grounded in, or explained by essentialist truths has been under attack. In what follows we offer two responses to the wave of criticism against his view. While the first response is pretty straightforward, the second is based on the distinction between, what we call, Reductive Finean Essentialism and Non-Reductive Finean Essentialism. Engaging the work of Bob Hale on Non-Reductive Finean Essentialism, we aim to show that the arguments against Fine's view are unconvincing, while we acknowledge the presence of a deep standoff between the two views.

India 1 is a delightful and dialogical examination of the classical philosophical debate between relativism and absolutism about truth. The book is by far one of the best introductions to the debate for philosophers and non-philosophers. As a philosopher I was left wondering: why did 20 th century philosophy ever leave the dialogue format as a way of conveying philosophy to the masses? Krausz's work reminded me of Arend Heyting's dialogue Disputation. In this dialogue Heyting introduces the intuitionist theory of mathematics. He does this through a character that is involved in a casual debate with other mathematicians at a bar. Each of the interlocutors represents a different position in the foundations of mathematics, such as Formalism and Logicism. A great contribution of Krausz's dialogue is that it is cross-cultural. It engages ideas from well-known philosophers in both Western and Eastern philosophy. However, and to the benefit of non-philosophers, the book makes no name-wise reference to key philosophers from either tradition. Instead, the knowledgeable reader can see insights from Parmenides, Plato, Nagarjuna, Wittgenstein, Davidson, Putnam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all at play. While the novice reader is introduced to complex ideas, such as reference frame, universalism, foundationalism, absolute relativism, bivalence, and self-realization without the excess jargon and namedropping that often makes presentation of these ideas inaccessible. The work is ostensibly a dialogue between four discussants: Adam, Ronnie, Nina, and Barbara who all knew each other in college, and are meeting for a reunion in India on the banks of the Ganges River. The dialogue takes place over four days, each day being a continuation and further examination of the debate between relativism and absolutism about truth. In what follows, I will give a short synopsis of the topics that are discussed on ________________________ VAIDYA, ANAND J.:

There are three theories in the epistemology of modality that have received sustained attention over the past 20 years (1998–2018): conceivability-theory, counterfactual-theory, and deduction-theory. In this paper we argue that all three face what we callthe problem of modal epistemic friction(PMEF). One consequence of the problem is that for any of the three accounts to yieldmodal knowledge, the account must provide an epistemology of essence. We discuss an attempt to fend off the problem within the context of the internalism versus externalism debate about epistemic justification. We then investigate the effects that the PMEF has on reductive and non-reductive theories of the relation between essence and modality.

Functional beauty has been a sadly neglected topic in recent aesthetic theory. Parsons and Carlson seek to remedy this, arguing that it is an important aspect of aesthetic experience. However their purpose is much deeper than that: one could say that they are attempting a major revision of aesthetics itself, unifying it by placing functional beauty at its core. Carlson has long been a strong advocate for the aesthetics of nature and has promoted a well-known theory that natural phenomena are only appropriately appreciated from a base of scientific and common sense knowledge. He has also written more generally on environmental aesthetics, including the aesthetics of the built environment. Parsons, a younger colleague, has taken a similar position about the aesthetics of nature in his writings. Now they are teaming together to talk about the role of functional beauty in aesthetics as a whole.

A diferencia de Melchionne (2013) y Naukkarinen (2013), abogo por una definición expansiva de la estética cotidiana que, además de las experiencias más comunes y cotidianas, incluya los festivales, el turismo y un sinnúmero de actividades llevadas a cabo diariamente por artistas y profesionales de diversas áreas. Establezco continuidades entre las estéticas de la vida diaria, del arte y de la naturaleza. Por ejemplo, el acto de mirar a través de una ventana puede involucrar aspectos de las tres estéticas. Aunque coincido con Melchionne (2013) en que la estética cotidiana está muy ligada a las preguntas por la búsqueda del bienestar subjetivo, asumo una aproximación más expansiva basada en estudios sicológicos recientes sobre la experiencia del asombro; ello con el fin de enfatizar la importancia de esa experiencia en tal búsqueda, vinculando así, los aspectos más sobresalientes de la estética cotidiana, la estética del arte y la estética de la naturaleza.

Since George Dickie's famous paper "The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude" it has long been considered suspect to advocate or even talk about the concept of the aesthetic attitude. There are in fact current advocates of the concept, but their numbers are small. Dickie's attack on the aesthetic attitude was part of a general critique by analytic aestheticians of Romantic and Idealist traditions in aesthetics. Although it is true that Romanticism and Idealism often suffered from unguarded speculation and the use of vague if not meaningless terminology it is not clear that these modes of aesthetics a r e i n themselves without value. The Phenomenological tradition with its emphasis placed on analysis of experience may provide some useful avenues for reappropriating these traditions. In this paper I shall give a critique of Dickie's rejection of the aesthetic attitude from a Romantic/Phenomenological standpoint. I will begin by examining Dickie's main complaint against the aesthetic attitude, i.e., that it posits special mental entities where all that is needed is the notion of attending or not attending to the aesthetic object. I will then criticize his more recent distinction between "dependent " and "independent" aesthetic and will defend the concept of a general aesthetic that covers art and non-art domains. This idea of a general aesthetic will be based on recognition of the role that inspiration plays in the experience of the artist. In the second part I will introduce the concept of a "background penumbra" in the constitution and reconstitution of the aesthetic object. This will help me distinguish between the aesthetic attitude of the artist-insearch-of-inspiration and that of the typical art-viewer (i.e.,

How does Richard Shusterman’s Thinking Through the Body apply to the issues of everyday aesthetics? As it turns out, many chapters contribute significantly to everyday aesthetics, in particular the work on architecture, self-styling, the body as background, lovemaking, and the process of making a photographic portrait. Shusterman’s concentration on the art of living has special importance to everyday aesthetics. Current debates within the field of everyday aesthetics also raise problems for somaesthetics. I also question the limits of somaesthetics and Shusterman’s rejection of defamiliarization in making the ordinary extraordinary.