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One of the most influential intellectual battles in the history of ideas in the Western world took place in the 17th and 18th centuries and pitted a French mathematician against a Dutch philosopher. This short essay is certainly not the place to indulge in a counter-factual re-imagination of what international law would look like under the reign of a Spinozian epistemology. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the dispute between Burge and McDowell over methodology in the philosophy of perception. Burge (2005 , 2011) has argued that the disjunctivism posited by naive perceptual realists is incompatible with the results of current perceptual science, while McDowell (2010 , 2013) defends his disjunctivism by claiming an autonomous field of enquiry for perceptual epistemology, one that does not employ the classificatory schemes of the science. Here it is argued that the crucial point at issue in the dispute is Burge's acceptance, and McDowell's rejection, of the 'Cartesian idealization' of mind as a self-contained system. Burge's case against disjunctivism rests on the assumption of a clearly demarcated boundary between mind and world, a picture of the mind that McDowell's philosophy reacts against. This boundary is required for scientific, causal explanations of perceptual processing because it is a simplifying assumption that helps present scientists with a clearly demarcated object of investigation. Concurring with McDowell, I conclude that philosophers need not carve up their objects of investigation in the same way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cartesian thesis that some justifications are infallible faces a gradation puzzle. On the one hand, infallible justification tolerates absolutely no possibility for error. On the other hand, infallible justifications can vary in evidential force: e.g. two persons can both be infallible regarding their pains while the one with stronger pain is nevertheless more justified. However, if a type of justification is gradable in strength, why can it always be absolute? This paper explores the potential of this gradation challenge by rejecting Fumerton's recent 'semantic decision' solution. On Fumerton's suggestion, the putative gradation of infallible justifications is essentially semantic. It concerns only how we use the relevant term but not how well we perceive the truth. Regardless of its intuitive appeal, Fumerton's solution does not cover all the related situations. There is an irreducibly epistemic sense in which infallible justifications vary in degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paradox of pain refers to the idea that the folk concept of pain is paradoxical, treating pains as simultaneously mental states and bodily states (as described in papers by Hill and Borg et al.). By taking a close look at our pain terms, this paper argues that there is no paradox of pain. The air of paradox dissolves once we recognize that pain terms are polysemous and that there are two separate but related concepts of pain rather than one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining and Understanding are considered mutually exclusive in political research. In this view, Explaining involves making observations as an outsider, with emphasis on causal laws, generalizations, and predictions. Conversely, Understanding occurs from the inside, with emphasis on meaning-making. This research note addresses Explaining, Understanding, and the related concept of reflexivity in multi-method/mixed-method research involving fieldwork. Rather than taking for granted the dichotomy between Explaining and Understanding that stems from Cartesian anxiety, I argue for the non-mutually exclusive alternative of 'explanatory understanding' and propose analyticism as the appropriate methodological path. An analyticist methodology involves creating a model that is a general account of a phenomenon, which is then used in case-specific analytical narratives to reveal departures from the model. Since understanding requires adequate explanation, explanatory understanding helps us better make sense of the world. Therefore, Explaining and Understanding are not merely oppositional stances between identifying causes and making sense. We cannot identify causes without making sense, and making sense involves a degree of causal inference. Explanatory understanding also necessitates reflexivity, which I conceptualize as methodological and personal positionality. I apply these arguments to my study of post-election violence in West Africa, drawing on fieldwork experience in Ghana, Nigeria, and Côte d'Ivoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the earlier chapters of Interpreting Kant in Education, a reading of Kant was developed that contrasts sharply with the widespread 'Kantian' picture in education theory. Having discussed aspects of Kant's view in relation to empiricist and naturalist (mind‐independent) epistemologies, I turn in this sixth chapter to contrast them with Richard Rorty's social consensus (mind‐dependent) view of knowledge. Attention is drawn to empiricist understandings of epistemological concepts to illustrate the enduring influence of the Cartesian legacy, which, I argue, has shaped interpretations of Kant in education. Alternative understandings of some familiar concepts (previously introduced) are expanded on, with mind, world and their relation again being a point of discussion. Drawing on the work of John McDowell, I focus particularly on the ideas of objectivity and 'worldly constraint' as a basis for arguments developed in Part Two and in order to bring into view a richer and more acceptable picture of Kant's idealist view of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although explicitly challenging overly simplistic dichotomies between secular reason and religious affect, Charles Taylor's monumental genealogy A Secular Age (2007) downplays the role of the body in Descartes's theory of agency and mistakenly projects this understanding of the "Cartesian" self upon the public sphere of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through a careful reading of Descartes's last work, Les Passions de l'Âme (1649), and drawing on existing work by Cottingham (2012) , Kahn (2006) , and Kirkebøen (2001) , this article argues the Passions is better seen as an attempt to reinscribe politics in the body through Descartes's theory of the habit. A focus on the latter yields a complex understanding of the emergence of the public sphere, not as a neutral space for the free exchange of rational speech acts, but as a power-driven environment shaped by the manipulation of habit-creating experiences. The article ends by considering some implications for the genealogy of our "secular age." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines material published in the field of animal studies in 2018. Following on from concerns highlighted in last year's account, we find an amplified urgency and pressure being brought to bear on the conservative ideological foundations of much of today's pro-animal theory, along with increased emphasis being placed on guarding against an unwitting affirmation of certain normative functions as well as potential recuperation by incumbent power structures. Similarly, the pejorative charge of Kantian correlationism as reactionary and normative is coming under increasing pressure, with the indictment of conservative reaction being turned back against such scholars who employ the concept of correlationism in an attempt to bypass theory altogether. By way of contested conceptions of extinction and the diverse fables to which they give rise, I argue that animal studies has reached a point in its rapid evolution and growth whence it becomes imperative that we reconsider the directions and methodologies of the field as a whole, and as an academic discipline emerging from the era of high theory in Continental thought. In order to facilitate this, I have divided the chapter into four sections: Extinction (I), Extinction (II), Extinction 2.0, and Fragility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a response to some of the criticisms that have been made of G. L. S. Shackle's analysis of human decision-making because of its reliance on a Cartesian account of the mind. It is argued that the basis for a response can be found in the work on theoretical psychology developed by Shackle's fellow subjectivist, and one-time PhD supervisor, F. A. Hayek. In particular, the ideas advanced by Hayek in his 1952 book, The Sensory Order can be used to provide an account of the mind that avoids the shortcomings of Shackle's Cartesianism whilst still doing justice to his emphasis on genuine choice, expectations and the role of creativity and the imagination in human decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the stage theory in terms of time philosophy that views objects as instantaneous stages in 4D universe. Topics discussed include consideration of ordinary objects like chairs and tables, experience of presentism, changes in experience in life as time passes, cartesian theatre model of mind and worm theory.

This article argues against the strong “holist” position that the early Chinese lacked any concept of mind–body dualism, and more broadly against a “neo-Orientalist” trend that portrays Chinese thought as radically different from Western thought. In the first half, it makes the case against strong mind–body holism by drawing upon traditional archeological and textual evidence. In the second, it turns to resources from the sciences, arguing that large-scale quantitative–qualitative analyses of early Chinese texts suggest that they embrace a quite vigorous form of mind–body dualism, and further that a huge body of evidence coming out of the cognitive sciences suggests that this is not at all surprising. In this section, the role that deep humanistic knowledge can, and should, play in scientific approaches to culture is also explored. The article concludes by suggesting that a mutually informed, humanities–scientific approach to religious studies is the best way for our field to move forward. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]