Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

ABOUT

Eric Schliesser is professor of Political Science, with a focus on Political Theory, at the University of Amsterdam. He was previously affiliated with Syracuse University, Leiden University, and Ghent University among others. Schliesser has published on early modern philosophy, philosophy of economics, the history of analytic philosophy, the history of feminism, and metaphilosophy. His publications include his monograph, Ad...

ABSTRACT

To act rightly is to act in accordance with moral demands. But what grounds moral demands? Much contemporary moral philosophy tends to take a non-relational approach to answering this question. According to non-relational moral theories, to act rightly is to act in a way that honours or promotes the (non-relational) moral properties of individuals, for example their well-being or their rights. According to relational mora...

ABSTRACT

Many of our practices presuppose moral responsibility. Arguably, agents can only be morally responsible if they are able to act otherwise than they do. Compatibilists and incompatibilists traditionally disagree about whether determinism precludes the ability to do otherwise, often reaching an impasse because they endorse different readings of “able to do otherwise”. I argue that the correct reading of “able to do otherwis...

ABSTRACT

Christine Korsgaard famously argued that even if we accept the metaphysical theory that there are no selves or persons, the practical standpoint requires us to think of ourselves as unified over time. It is the ability to choose and deliberate, make plans and act that requires me to construct an identity for myself. This practical requirement is antithetical to the Buddhist no-self view. Buddhists argue that it is primari...

In this podcast, Aristotelian Society officers Dr Jess Leech and Dr Ellie Robson talk to Peter Momtchiloff - commissioning editor for philosophy at Oxford University Press from 1993-2023. Following three decades in this role, we get Peter's thoughts on what he has seen and learned from his time at OUP including questions like: What are some of your most memorable encounters in the job? What are some of the biggest changes you’ve wi...

The partiality we display, insofar as we form and sustain personal attachments, is not normatively fundamental. It is a byproduct of the deference and responsiveness that are essential to our engagement with the world. We cannot form and sustain valuable personal relationships without seeing ourselves as answerable to the other participants in those relationships. And we cannot develop and sustain valuable projects without respondi...

At a climactic—and, indeed, incendiary—moment in Bernard Williams’ classic essay, “Internal and External Reasons,” Williams says that those who advance moral criticisms by appealing to so-called external reasons are engaging in “bluff”. Williams thus alleges that condemning certain actions of others as somehow not only immoral, but also irrational or contrary to reason is nothing more than a kind of pretense. To say that a favor...

When we doubt a belief, we examine how things look from a perspective in which that belief is set aside. Sometimes we care about what that perspective recommends and, as a result, we abandon the belief we've been doubting. Other times we don't: we recognize that a perspective in which a certain belief is set aside recommends abandoning it, but we go on believing it anyway. Why is this? In this paper, I'll consider and then reject s...

In the interpretation of Parmenides of Elea, there is a certain vulgate, one widely represented in general histories of philosophy and indeed assumed by philosophers broadly. The metaphysical tenor and thrust of the philosophy of Parmenides, according to this vulgate, is holistic monism: "all things are one," in Greek, hen to pan. As it may be recalled, Parmenides reached his metaphysical conclusions by initially reflecting on the ...

In this paper I give answers to two apparently unrelated questions and aim to convince you that these different concerns are, in fact, intertwined. The first question is, why is dualism so tenacious? The second is, what is really at issue in the debate between Burge and McDowell? Regarding the first question, various contemporary philosophers have cast Descartes as the originator of a pernicious idea about the radical difference be...

Common-sense (or folk) psychology holds that (generally) we do what we do for the reasons we have. This common-sense approach is embodied in claims like “I went to the kitchen because I wanted a drink” or “She took a coat because she thought it might rain and she hoped to stay dry”. However, the veracity of these common-sense psychological explanations has been challenged by experimental evidence (primarily from behavioural economi...

This paper is about whether it is rational to intrinsically desire the vague. A proposition is inconsequential if neither it, nor its negation is rational to intrinsically desire. The objects of intrinsic desire are propositions, and the contradictory of propositional vagueness is propositional precision. Every vague proposition is not precise, and every precise proposition is not vague. The question to be pursued thus can be posed...

Photography is highly valued as a recording medium. Traditionally it has been claimed that photography is fundamentally a causal recording process, and that every photograph is the causal imprint of the world in front of the camera. In this paper I seek to challenge that traditional view. I claim that it is based on a ‘single-stage’ misconception of the process that defines photographs as mind-independent images and leaves no room ...

Aesthetic beautification is a familiar artistic phenomenon: Even as they face death, heroes and heroines in operas still sing glorious music. Characters in Shakespearean tragedies still deliver beautifully eloquent speeches in the throes of despair. Even depicting suffering and horror, paintings can still remain a transfixing delight for the eyes. In such cases, the work of art represents or expresses something we would, in ordinar...

Nietzsche’s attitude toward science is ambivalent: he remarks approvingly on its rigorous methodology and adventurous spirit, but also points out its limitations and rebukes scientists for encroaching onto philosophers’ territory. What does Nietzsche think is science’s proper role and relationship with philosophy? I argue that, according to Nietzsche, philosophy should set goals for science. Philosophers’ distinctive task is to ‘cr...

Metaphysicians are in the business of making and defending modal claims – claims about how things must be or cannot be. Wittgenstein’s opposition to necessity claims, along with his various negative remarks about ‘metaphysical’ uses of language, makes it seem almost a truism that Wittgenstein was opposed to metaphysics. In this paper I want to make a case for rejecting that apparent truism. My thesis is that it is illuminating to c...

According to the doxastic wrongs thesis, merely entertaining certain beliefs about others can wrong them, even if one does not act on those beliefs. Beliefs based on socially salient characteristics such as race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc., and which turn out to be false and are negatively valenced are prime candidates for the charge of doxastic wronging. My aim, in this paper, is to show that a plausible, Kantian...