Rewatching, Film, and New Television

Those of us who are captivated by new television (the sort of serialized television that began largely in the early 1990s), often find ourselves rewatching episodes or whole series. Why? What is the philosophical significance of the phenomenon of rewatching? In what follows, I engage with the ontology of television series in order to think about these questions around rewatching. I conclude by reflecting on what the entire discussion might suggest about the medium of new television, about ourselves, and also about our world and the possibilities of art in it.

‘Conserere Sapientiam’, To Engage in Wisdom: The Rhetoric of Philosophical Debate and the Speech of Caecilius in Minucius Felix’s Octavius

Here I will elucidate both the rhetorical and philosophical significance of the introduction to Minucius Felix’s Octavius—in effect, to give voice to what Minucius Felix hoped to do in having Caecilius and Octavius conserere sapientiam (‘engage in wisdom’). I draw special attention to the introduction to the dialogue because (i) Minucius’ rhetorical care in establishing an appropriate otium (in other words, a locus amoenus) for his dialogue participants has been underappreciated (ii) because Caecilius’ arguments have, in general, been given short-shrift, and, (iii) because the view that the introductory parts should, instead, be read with suspicion has found a recent prominent voice in an influential recent article (Powell 2007).

All-In Abilities in Context

This chapter considers a significant challenge, initially raised in chapter one, that of showing why attributions of all-in abilities are not invariant. This is crucial to the wider project of showing why a contextualist analysis of agential modals has significant implications for both freedom and moral responsibility, since it is highly plausible to think that our attributions of freedom and moral responsibility concern these all-in abilities. The chapter begins by arguing that the notions which comprise the characterizations of an all-in ability should be understood contextually. After answering an objection to the proposed argument for a contextualist account of all-in abilities, semantic evidence in favour of the view is then offered. The chapter ends by discussing the wider philosophical significance of a contextualist account of agential modals which embraces all-in abilities.

Laughter in early China: The Zhuangzi and beyond

Traditionally, in both East and West, laughter, and in particular its causes, have been studied under the category of humour. However, ideas on and practices of laughter itself have been largely ignored. This paper intends to lead readers beyond the topic of humour and focus on the act of laughter in the Zhuangzi as a starting point for the study of laughter in early China. It examines frequently ignored areas, such as how laughter draws readers into the text; how it functions to exclude people with different social value judgements; how it is used as a tool to challenge political power; how it serves rhetorical functions as a means to construct a conversation among people of different social or political status; and how it is used as an important signal and marker for a change of perspective. By examining questions such as: “What are the types of laughter?”, “What are the functions of laughter?”, and “How does laughter operate in different situations, and between different persons?” we can see a new idea of laughter in the Zhuangzi with multi-layered philosophical significance. Using the Zhuangzi as a case study, we can envision a series of well-crafted, intentional practices of laughter for various purposes throughout early Chinese texts.

On the philosophical significance of the reform of the International System of Units (SI): A double-adjustment account of scientific enquiry

The philosophical significance attached to the construction of systems of units has traditionally been confined to the notion of convention, while their adoption was considered to be the exclusive province of the history and sociology of science. Against this tradition, a close articulation between history, philosophy, and sociology of science is needed in order to analyse the recent reform of the International system of units (SI). In the new SI, units are redefined on the basis of certain fundamental constants of nature, established by physical theories, whose values are fixed without uncertainty. The purpose of this article is to show that the redefinition of SI units, far from being a convention, involves a holistic reconstruction of our concepts of quantities from accepted theoretical laws. Fixing the values of the defining constants stabilizes these laws within the framework of physics through a twofold adjustment procedure that ensures both a semantic coordination between theory and world and an intersubjective coordination between human agents required by social activities. This double adjustment results in closely entwining the pursuit of truth as correspondence and truth as coherence which turn out to be complementary, thus highlighting the anthropological underpinnings of scientific realism.

The Doing of Justice and the Priority of Acting from Virtue

Aristotle famously distinguishes between merely doing a virtuous action and acting in the way in which a virtuous person would. Against an interpretation prominent in recent scholarship, I argue that ‘acting virtuously,’ in the sense of exercising a virtue actually possessed, is prior to ‘virtuous action,’ understood generically. I propose that the latter notion is best understood as a derivative abstraction from the former, building upon a reading of a neglected distinction between per se and coincidentally just action in Nicomachean Ethics 5, and thus shed light on the meaning and philosophical significance of the priority of acting from virtue.

Brentano and the Medieval Distinction Between First and Second Intentions

Brentano’s account of intentionality has often been traced back to its scholastic sources. This is justified by his claim that objects of thought have a specific mode of being—namely, “intentional inexistence” (intentionale Inexistenz)—and that mental acts have an “intentional relation” (intentionale Beziehung) to these objects. These technical terms in Brentano do indeed recall the medieval notions of esse intentionale, which is a mode of being, and of intentio, which is a “tending towards” (tendere in) of mental acts. However, within the lexical family of intentio there is another distinction that plays an important role in medieval philosophy—namely, the distinction between first and second intentions (intentio prima and intentio secunda), which are, roughly speaking, concepts of things and concepts of concepts respectively. What is less well-known is that Brentano explicitly borrowed this distinction as well, and used it in his account of intentionality. This paper explores this little-known chapter in the scholastic-Austrian history of intentionality by evaluating both the historical accuracy and the philosophical significance of Brentano’s borrowing of the scholastic distinction between first and second intentions.

Taking Plurals at Face Value

Plural logic is a logical system in which plural terms and predicates figure as primitive expressions alongside the singular resources of ordinary first-order logic. The philosophical significance of this system depends on two of its alleged features: being pure logic and providing more expressive power than first-order logic. This chapter first introduces the language and axioms of plural logic and then analyzes this logic’s main philosophical applications in metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, and semantics.

Introduction

English and other natural languages contain plural expressions. Plural logic is based on the idea of taking these expressions at face value rather than eliminating them in favor of singular resources. This logic has great potential significance in logic, philosophy, linguistics, and beyond, but it also raises some hard questions. Three such questions will figure centrally in the book as a whole. Are primitive plural resources legitimate? If so, what is their relation to singular resources, and what is their philosophical significance?

Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology

The book offers a systematic account of Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology. The main theme is the nature of and relation between unconscious and conscious mind. Whereas Nietzsche takes consciousness to be a mere ‘surface’—as he writes in Ecce Homo—that evolved in the course of human socialization, he sees the bedrock of human psychology as constituted by unconscious drives and affects. But how does he conceive of such basic psychological items and what does he mean exactly when he talks about consciousness and says it is a ‘surface’? And how does such a conception of human psychology inform his views about self, self-knowledge, and will? These are some of the questions that are addressed in this book. This is done by combining a historical approach with conceptual analysis. On the one hand, Nietzsche’s claims are carefully reconstructed by taking into account the intellectual context in which they emerged. On the other hand, in order to work out their philosophical significance, the claims are discussed in the light of contemporary debates such as those about higher-order theories of consciousness and mind-reading.