Drawing on Douglas Walton’s typology of dialogues, I analyse a representative sample of philosophical dialogues, finding that over 95% of them instantiate a type of dialogue aimed at persuading one’s opponent. I then argue that this goal entails the prudential requirement that any assertion questioned in philosophical dialogue be either supported or else retracted, and that no assertion is privileged over the burden of proof imposed by its questioning. This in turn renders it prudent to avoid the employment of premises that, if questioned, could never be supported. Such unsupportable premises in particular include bridge premises across inference barriers (e.g. Hume’s is/ought separation). Dialogical Empiricism is the resultant thesis that any assertion questioned in philosophical dialogue must prudently be supported by the asserting party without crossing any inference barrier. I focus on the inference barrier between psychological or linguistic content and the world beyond such content, arguing that much common philosophical evidence consists of psycho-linguistic content (e.g. intuitions) and thus cannot prudently be employed in support of hypotheses expressing claims about the world beyond such content. Since many philosophical dialogues, from metaphysics through to ethics, rely upon such psycho-linguistic evidence for claims about the world beyond content, these dialogues prudently can no longer be conducted. In closing I consider avenues of escape from the foregoing prudential restrictions that remain open.

This thesis deals with the Frege-Geach problem, which is arguably the main objection faced by the expressivist view on moral discourse. The key idea of the Frege-Geach objection is that the expressivist cannot give an account of the meaning of conditionals sentences involving moral predicates and the validity of arguments involving moral sentences. After all, as traditionally understood, validity requires truth-aptness. Philosophers such as Crispin Wright and G. F. Schueler challenged the very idea according to which desire-like attitudes can stand in logical relations. They held that if the components of the moral modus ponens are not truth-apt, the argument cannot be properly categorised as ‘valid’. After presenting and critically examining five different attempts to solve the Frege-Geach problem, I provide a new way solution to it. My main goal is to develop an expressivist framework within which it is possible to give an account of evaluative conditionals and validity without relying on the contentious assumption that desire-like attitudes can stand in logical relations. My position is influenced by Grice’s notion of conversational implicature and Vranas’ logic of prescriptions. I further argue that there is a relation between the evaluative and the prescriptive domains of discourse, and that a plausible way of understanding this relation is via the conversational implicature. I follow Peter Vranas with respect to the question whether prescriptions can have a logic, and show how to get from evaluations (‘x is bad) to prescriptions (‘don’t do x!’). Finally, I trace a distinction between two levels of validity – the psychological and the logical one – and show that the moral modus ponens is valid in both senses. My thesis therefore concludes that the Frege-Geach problem is not a knockdown objection against expressivism.

No description available.

Moral judgements have a dyadic nature. Normally we experience some pressure to act in line with our moral judgements, even if it's regularly overcome by fear, selfishness, laziness, or other forces. This is evidence that moral judgements are desire-like, as expressivists contend. On the other hand, moral judgements also have the features of beliefs. They can be true or false, as cognitivists maintain, and justified and reasoned about in the way other beliefs are. Rather than deny one of these two aspects, this thesis is ultimately a defence of higher-order expressivism according to which moral judgements are hybrid mental states composed of beliefs and desires. However, only two of the chapters (2 and 3) contain arguments in favour of this specific kind of expressivism. The first chapter - What is Expressivism? - argues for a general characterisation that will be useful for friends and foes alike, and the final two chapters address problems that are common to all expressivists. After we find out what expressivism is, I turn to the problems with pure versions according to which moral judgements are only desire-like states. I argue in chapter 2, The Problem with Purity, that pure expressivists are unlikely to be able to solve the Frege-Geach problem but higher-order (and other hybrid) expressivists can. In chapter 3, Metaphysics for Expressivists, I make a case for the inescapability of metaphysics even on the expressivist picture, which puts more pressure on pure versions of expressivism. I then show why higher-order expressivists must think moral properties are reducible to bog-standard descriptive ones. I end by arguing that this expressivist take on moral naturalism is better than cognitivist versions of naturalism. Chapter 4 is about how to understand moral disagreement. If moral judgements are desire-like, why does it make sense to say that two people morally disagree? I propose An Assertoric Theory of Disagreement whereby people express disagreement by asserting inconsistent things (and the problem of inconsistency is addressed in chapter 2). Finally, chapter 5, Error and the Limits of Quasi-Realism, is about how to understand the thought that our moral beliefs might be mistaken. I defend the standard expressivist construal of it being a case of thinking we might change our minds after we've gathered more evidence, cohered our beliefs and generally improved our epistemic situation. I then argue this yields a transcendental argument against scepticism: it tells us that it is incoherent to believe we might be utterly unable to access the moral truth. The upshot is that expressivists cannot "mimic" realism completely, but if this simply means that our door is closed to radical scepticism whereas theirs is open, this is all the better for expressivism.

This thesis provides an account of the nature of intellectual vice. An intellectual vice is an aspect of someone’s character that makes them a bad intellectual agent, or bad knower. Previous accounts of the intellectual vices have tended to identify them with either the disposition to have bad epistemic motivations, or the disposition to produce bad epistemic effects. I argue for a new view that can overcome the difficulties faced by both of these accounts. According to this view, there are two distinct forms of intellectual vice: vices that involve motivations towards bad epistemic ends, and vices that involve some entrenched pattern of bad judgement.

Some have claimed that human life is inevitably meaningless because we are mortal. Others have claimed the opposite: that life would be meaningless if we never died, and our being mortal is actually an essential condition for our lives to have any meaning at all. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the arguments that have or could be used to support these claims, and come to a conclusion about which position, if either, is correct. Part One provides an introduction to the problem and an overview of various accounts of meaningfulness which can be found in the literature before outlining a broader and more defensible amalgam theory of meaningfulness. According to this theory, a life is ideally meaningful if and only if, and to the extent that, it contains sufficient degrees of purposefulness, significance, and coherence. In Part Two, the thesis moves on to systematically consider arguments that immortal life would be meaningless because it would lack each of these three essential ingredients of meaningfulness. In every case, immortality is defended against such arguments. Part Three covers the counterpart arguments which might be aimed at mortal life and reaches a comparable conclusion. Part Four summarises the findings and lessons of the thesis. In short, mortality can affect the meaningfulness of our lives in various ways, as would its absence. Nevertheless, mortality is neither entirely destructive of life’s meaningfulness nor one of its necessary conditions; a life can be meaningful whether or not it ends in death.

This thesis argues that Bergson and Plotinus replicate the Pythagorean tradition by proposing a philosophy of dynamic transformation underpinned by two fundamental and interlinked premises: a universe generated and governed by a natural law of musical harmonics, and the concept of kairos as time signifying the emergence of qualitative change.

This thesis evaluates two current theories of propositional faith, and explores the prospects of each theory for responding to the perennial problem of faith and reason (PFR). According to the first theory – the non-doxastic theory of faith (NDT) – faith that p does not require belief that p. NDT can be used to respond to the PFR when we accept that beliefs held on faith do not meet the required standards for epistemic justification, but deny that all instances of faith require belief. Where someone’s faith does not involve belief, her faith may be adequately responsive to the epistemic reasons in her possession. According to the second theory – the divine testimony theory (DTT) – faith requires trusting the testimony of a divine being where this involves believing the testimony. One can look to defend DTT by drawing from the significant resources that have recently been developed in the philosophy of testimony to assess the standards of justification in contexts of divine testimony. DTT takes the PFR head on, but addresses it from a fresh perspective. In this thesis I defend three claims. First, NDT is untenable as a theory of faith and hence fails as a response to the PFR. Second, DTT is defensible as a theory of faith. Third, by using the resources from the epistemology of testimony one can use DTT to defend the justification of propositional faith held on divine testimony, and hence can adequately respond to the PFR. Chapter 1 presents a version of the PFR by setting out a fairly typical account of epistemic justification, and shows precisely how NDT and DTT can be used to respond to the PFR. Chapter 2 defends DTT as a theory of faith within the Abrahamic religions by giving an analysis of both trust and trust in testimony, and tying these accounts to Abrahamic faith. Chapter 3 presents the non-doxastic theory of faith as both an objection to DTT, and as a response to the PFR in its own right. NDT is rejected on the grounds that the arguments used in its favour ultimately fail, and that it cannot distinguish faith from kinds of pretence like fictionalism. Chapter 4 looks at several ways by which God might be thought to speak to people, and Chapter 5 develops an epistemological theory of faith in divine testimony. By using the resources from general theories of testimony, Chapter 5 considers and rejects several ways of defending DTT before augmenting the work of Alvin Plantinga to give a robust and defensible theory of the justification of beliefs held on divine testimony, and a promising response to the PFR. The Conclusion suggests ways of advancing the research from this thesis.

This thesis defends the central claim that remorse ought to be considered a mitigating factor in sentencing decisions. I advocate a communicative approach to punishment, arguing that it is important that the state attempts to enter into a moral dialogue with those that it punishes and that this requires state actors to be receptive to offender-remorse. I contend that this requires us to accept a weak form of character retributivism and acknowledge that certain limited aspects of an offender's character impact upon their blameworthiness. In making these arguments I look at the nature of remorse and its relationship to apology, alongside the role that remorse currently plays within the courts. I also discuss the role of shame in the courts, the role of mercy in sentencing and argue that there is a correlation between remorse and reduced recidivism.

It is a relatively uncontroversial observation that huge advances in our scientific understanding of the ‘issues’ constitutive of our environmental crisis haven’t brought about the requisite attitudinal and behavioural changes to disrupt them at root. In this thesis, I pursue the suspicion that this problem may be traced back, in part, to the violence already implicit in the limited, objectivistic, and often dualistic models that natural scientists offer of those ‘issues’ and the more-than-human world more broadly. Since tackling the behavioural and attitudinal violence of our crisis situation also requires tackling the conceptual violence implicit in the basic terms of debate, I argue, then a specifically Merleau-Pontian ecophenomenology is uniquely well-equipped to attend to the task in hand. I begin by exploring the benefits of using phenomenological tools to disrupt the scientific naturalist stronghold on ontological and epistemological matters where the more-than-human world is concerned. Scientific naturalism’s problems appear to derive from its inability to fully acknowledge the intentional salience of the scientist’s situated embodiment to the phenomena she encounters and only subsequently carves up according to certain (meta-)theoretical assumptions and exclusionary apparatuses. By establishing a keener focus on the epistemic primacy of one’s phenomenological opening, I argue, a Merleau-Pontian ecophenomenology (suitably informed by ecofeminist and new materialist insights) promotes attention to a richer range of ontologically real phenomena than might be otherwise admitted. Moreover, whilst such an ecophenomenology needn’t be entirely hostile to important scientific insights about ‘environmental issues’, it may also foster a heightened kind of critical self-reflexivity about the problematic commitments and sedimented assumptions which underwrite them. Thus, by engaging with the environmental crisis ecophenomenologically, I argue, we may begin to disrupt the colonial violence which underpins it. I then defend Merleau-Pontian ecophenomenology against various iterations of the charge of ‘correlationism’, which holds that, insofar as they retain an ‘introverted’ focus on situated experience, ecophenomenologists themselves effectively subsume the more-than-human world into a problematically violent anthropocentric or androcentric purview. Since Merleau-Pontian ecophenomenologists deny the basic ontological presuppositions which underpin the charge, however, I argue that it is misdirected. Moreover, by acknowledging the indissoluble tension between one’s immanence and the more transcendental claims one might wish to make about the more-than-human world, Merleau-Pontian ecophenomenologists may establish a more fruitful praxis of critical self-reflexivity than their less phenomenologically-inclined peers. Over the final two chapters, I substantiate this claim with reference to how Merleau-Ponty’s later ontological turn (which aims to mitigate this tension) proves a retrograde one in terms of the onto-epistemological humility which is most valuable about the ecophenomenological project.