What We Can Learn From Literary Authors

That we can learn something from literature, as cognitivists claim, seems to be a commonplace. However, when one considers matters more deeply, it turns out to be a problematic claim. In this paper, by focusing on general revelatory facts about the world and the human spirit, I hold that the cognitivist claim can be vindicated if one takes it as follows. We do not learn such facts from literature, if by “literature” one means the truth-conditional contents that one may ascribe to textual sentences in their fictional use, i.e., in the use in which one makes believe that things unfold in a certain way. What we improperly call learning from literature amounts to knowing actually true conversational implicatures concerning the above facts as meant by literary authors. So, in one and the same shot, we learn both a general revelatory fact and the fact that such a fact is meant via a true conversational implicature by an author. The author draws that implicature from the different truth-conditional content a sentence possesses when the sentence is interpreted in a fictional context, meant as Kaplan’s (1989) narrow context, i.e., a set of circumstantial parameters (agent, space, time, and world).

Williamson on the Distinction between the A Priori and the A Posteriori Once Again1

This essay responds to Williamson’s reformulated argument against the feasibility of a top-down characterization of the a priori–a posteriori distinction, arguing that Williamson fails to show that sense experience plays an irreducibly epistemic role in his new Mathematician example. Williamson’s example turns on the problematic claim that there is something intermediate between reading a proof lazily, deferring to the authority of its author, and reading it while checking its soundness for oneself. Furthermore, it is argued that Williamson’s defense of his Central argument is vitiated by a serious misreading of Boghossian’s initial criticism: that criticism was not meant to supply an alternative account of the way in which certain a priori propositions are known.

The Identity of Freedom and Morality

This chapter offers an interpretation of Kant’s problematic claim that there is a deep and underlying unity and identity between freedom and morality, which identity underlies the categorical imperative. It is standard to say that there is a problem in Kant’s account of the relationship between freedom and morality. The problem is that, at times, Kant uses freedom to ground belief in morality, but that, at other times, he uses morality to ground belief in freedom, opening himself up to the suspicion that nothing outside of this small loop is grounding either commitment. It is argued that this seeming problem disappears if we consider freedom and morality, and the grounds for believing in them, to be different aspects of a single claim, whereby freedom and morality in a fundamental sense are the same, albeit that our limited finite nature encounters them as distinct. The chapter suggests that there is no vicious circle in Kant’s thought, but rather different aspects of a non-obvious identity claim. Theology, I suggest, is familiar with such non-obvious identity claims.

Devalued women, valued men: motherhood, class and neoliberal feminism in the creative media industries

This article contributes to the literature on gender inequality in the creative workforce. Motherhood has been attributed as a determining factor of female under-employment or unequal representation in the creative industries, a problematic claim that distracts attention from operational excluding structures. The article considers why motherhood has become an identified explanation for female under-representation by considering the question: what sort of mother are we referring to when we talk of the creative worker? Revising the genealogy of literature on maternal practice from second wave up to recent concepts of neoliberal feminism, this article explores how class-based practices associated with motherhood have an influence on how all women are valued as creative workers. This is in direct contrast to men whose employment value increases following parenthood. The term ‘value’ explores how individual choices emerge in response to wider structural issues, providing a framework to consider the relationship between gender and class in the context of the neoliberal, creative industry.

‘The Christian Right and Homophobic Discourse: A Response to ‘Evidence’ that Lesbian and Gay Parenting Damages Children’

This ‘rapid response’ piece, submitted under the ‘Sexuality and the Church’ theme, examines claims by Christian writers that lesbian and gay parenting is bad for children. The author analyses aspects of what he terms a ‘Christian homophobic discourse’ in order to demonstrate the problematic claim to neutrality made by these writers. In addition, the author shows how the Christian writers’ view of research rests upon a series of positivist assumptions. Claims that research evidence shows children of lesbian or gay parents demonstrate gender or sexual identity confusion are disputed, and the author argues that the Christian writers present their own moral interpretations rather than the ‘facts of the matter’. The author argues that the Christian writers construct a version of homosexuality as highly diseased and dangerous, before concluding that it is both epistemologically and morally misguided to see ‘sexuality’ as an object or variable which influences the development of children.