Posts

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we get right into it with Josh Knobe (Yale University) about the notion of a person’s true self. Click here to listen to our conversation. Who are you, deep down, in your core? Maybe it isn’t fully clear what would count as an answer to that question, but it’s still a question we ask all the time. There seems to be some kind of folk intuition that we’re all guided by an inner force, and that this inner force is who we really are. My superficial behavior upon waking up, when I’m in a cranky mood, isn’t indicative of who I really am. Only my behavior once I’ve had my coffee tells you about my ’true self.' ...

For those of you who want to delve further into our esteemed guest’s views about blame and forgiveness, check out the following two papers: ‘What’s the Point of Blame?,’ Miranda Fricker ‘Forgiveness—an ordered pluralism,’ Miranda Fricker Happy reading! Matt Teichman ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, Emily and Matt chat with Miranda Fricker (CUNY Graduate Center) about blame and forgiveness. Click here to listen to our conversation. We have a lot of conflicting feelings about blame. When someone does something bad, we feel a strong urge to blame them, and when it all goes down as intended, the person deserves the blame, and they learn that what they did was wrong, we intuitively feel that justice has been done. On the other hand, we also have the sense that blaming can be a corrosive or self-destructive activity–a feeling that is manifested in common expressions like ’let’s not play the blame game.’ So what’s the deal? Is blaming people a useful activity or isn’t it? ...

To whet your appetite for Agnes Callard’s incredible forthcoming book on aspiration, here is a chapter-by-chapter summary. Happy reading! Matt Teichman ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we sit down with Agnes Callard (University of Chicago) to talk about aspiration. Click here to listen to our conversation. Have you ever wanted to get into something? Maybe you find it really boring to sit through an opera right now, but you think you might be missing something and want to learn how to appreciate opera. Or maybe you don’t know anything about how to play football, but you’d really like to learn. In this episode, Agnes Callard argues that both examples are cases of having one set of values, wanting to have a different set of values, and going through the long process of revising the values you’re living according to. You don’t currently know anything about what makes a great opera great, but you hope that after this process is over, you’ll be able to just see it. And you don’t know what being an athlete fully involves, but you want to be in a position where you can truly recognize what makes a great play worthy of admiration. ...

Those of you who are interested in following up on Spinoza will definitely enjoy this incredible graphic book by Ben and Steven Nadler: ‘The Graphic Spinoza,’ Ben Nadler and Steven Nadler Happy reading! Matt Teichman ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, we delve back into the early modern period with Steven Nadler, William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy, Evjue-Bascom Professor of the Humanities, and Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Click here to listen to our conversation. ...

If you’d like to delve further into Jennifer Lackey’s views about credibility excesses, she has generously made her excellent paper ‘Credibility and the Distribution of Epistemic Goods’ available for you to download. Enjoy! Matt Teichman ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we talk to Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern University) about what it means to be too trustful of another person. Click here to listen to our conversation. For some time, feminist authors have been concerned about the fact that women tend to be believed less than men, simply because they’re women. The mere fact that someone is a woman should have of course have no bearing on whether you believe them–you should believe them if what they’re saying is plausible and well supported by evidence, and you should disbelieve them if what they’re saying is implausible and unsupported by evidence. This intuition has led a lot of people to conclude that the only basis for determining whether you should believe another person is whether what they’re saying is plausible and well supported. It’s a good intuition, but Jennifer Lackey argues that that can’t be the whole picture. For instance, what if I’m in a classroom, and I am given a level of credibility that exactly corresponds to my actual reliability, but everyone else in the classroom is treated as a super-reliable mega-genius? It seems like that’s still going to be bad in all sorts of ways, and in particular it’s still going to be bad for me, even though I’m getting the level of credibility that I deserve as an individual. ...

Meghan Sullivan’s book on time biases is due out any moment now. (Of course, according to her argument, we should feel indifferent to when it comes out, but I can’t help but feel anticipation!) If, like me, you are having trouble resisting the pull of that particular time bias, check out her and Preston Greene’s excellent article from last year that explores a number of the arguments we discussed. ‘Against Time Bias,’ Preston Greene and Meghan Sullivan ...