Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

One of the primary objections to the biological approach revolves around what is known as the transplant intuition. That is, the allegedly widely shared intuition that if we had our cerebrum transplanted into a different body, we would be transferred to that body along with our cerebrum. Drawing upon our understanding of brain death, this paper argues that either (1) the transplant intuition should be rejected, and the biological approach has the advantage of being consistent with that rejection; or (2) the psychological approach, the biological approach’s main rival, cannot…

Considerable interest has been recently devoted to analyzing picture perception and its differences from vis-à-vis perception. However, an exhaustive theory of picture perception requires explaining the difference between these two perceptual states and the one we are in when facing pictorial illusions like trompe l’oeils, which foster the impression of being in front of a real object available for interaction. One standard story is that these illusions prevent the viewer from perceiving the surface, which is instead possible with usual pictures, this causing the pictorial space to be perceived as…

This paper presents a conceptual analysis of Wittgenstein’s use of the notions of habit and custom. References to habit and custom abound in Wittgenstein’s writings already from the 1930s, but no particular focus has been placed on his actual use of these notions. The aim of the paper is to provide a preliminary conceptual tool useful for developing a fruitful engagement between Wittgenstein’s “post-tractarian” philosophy and contributions to the philosophy of habit. To do this, I will first trace relevant occurrences in Wittgenstein’s writings. Secondly, I will map the use…

This paper outlines my theory of moral perception, extends the theory beyond its previous statements, and defends it from a number of objections posed in the literature. The paper distinguishes the perceptible from the perceptual; develops a structural analogy between perception and action; explains how moral perception, despite its normative status, can be causal in the way appropriate to genuine perception; clarifies the respects in which moral perception is representational; and indicates how it provides an objective basis for moral knowledge. In the light of this account of moral perception,…

I describe my engagement with Habermas’s ideas, and sketch a way of reading of Hegel that I take to be consonant with the deepest lessons I have learned from Habermas. I read Hegel as having a social, linguistic theory of normativity, and an exclusively retrospective conception of progress and the sense in which history exhibits teleological normativity.

The paper advances a broadly Wittgensteinian conception of the nature and limits of philosophy. It differs from Wittgenstein over the claims that (i) philosophical problems arise only when language is idling; (ii) that philosophy does not result in new knowledge: it does. But the new knowledge does not concern the nature of the world, but the character of our forms of description of the world, and its form is not discovery but realisation. (iii) in the domain of practical philosophy further considerations come into play that are not budgeted for…

The paper reexamines Moore’s early (1890s-1903) metaphysics and critically examines some recent discussion (Bell, MacBride) of both Moore’s metaphysics and the significance of the latter for his more well-known works of the early 20th century. In doing so it focuses on (1) the distinction between natural and non-natural properties, (2) problems regarding universals, relations, particulars, “tropes” and predication, and (3) the matter of “intentionality”—both as issues and as they arise in Moore’s early writings.

In the present article, I will concentrate sustainedly on a central strand of Jonathan Quong’s critique of Joseph Raz’s autonomy-centered liberal perfectionism. Rightly taking Raz to have offered the most elaborate and prominent version of autonomy-centered perfectionism in the contemporary debates over such matters, Quong devotes much of the first half of his book to contesting a number of Raz’s positions. This article will defend Raz against one of Quong’s chief objections, an allegation of internal inconsistency.

A traditional conception of ontology takes existence to be its proprietary subject matter—ontology is the study of what exists (§ 1). Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that ontology is better thought of rather as the study of what is basic or fundamental in reality (§ 2). My goal here is twofold. First, I want to argue that while Schaffer’s characterization is quite plausible for some ontological questions, for others it is not (§ 3). More importantly, I want to offer a unified characterization of ontology that covers both existence and…