This paper examines the epistemological foundations of Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy in Leviathan, arguing that the sovereign operates according to "Perception Theory" (PT)—the view that knowledge is simply whatever one perceives to be true or false. Drawing on Plato's critiques of relativism in the Republic and Theaetetus and Aristotle's analysis of the Principle of Non-Contradiction in the Metaphysics, I demonstrate that Hobbes's sovereign embodies a fundamental paradox: while attempting to establish absolute political authority through a covenant that transfers subjects' rights (...) and deliberative powers, the sovereign becomes the sole arbiter of truth and justice through voluntarism and relativism. Though Hobbes avoids the theoretical contradictions of PT by making subjects' perceptions identical to the sovereign's through the covenant, this mechanism merely obscures rather than resolves the deeper problem. The result is that subjects receive only an illusion of freedom, self-sovereignty, and truth while the sovereign alone possesses genuine autonomy. This analysis reveals tensions within Hobbes's liberal foundations and contributes to ongoing debates about relativism, voluntarism, and the grounds of political authority, demonstrating how ancient epistemological critiques illuminate fundamental problems in early modern political philosophy. (shrink)

R. K. Elliott; VIII—Aesthetic Theory and the Experience of Art, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 June 1967, Pages 111–126, https:/.

R K Elliott; Education, Love of One’s Subject, and the Love of Truth, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 135–153, https:/.

R K Elliott; Versions of Creativity, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 5, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 139–152, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1971.

Can a pain-belief such as “I feel pain” be fallibly justified and luckily true? In this discussion note, I provide a Gettier-type example to show that a belief about one’s own pain can be held on fallible justification and a matter of epistemic luck for its believer. This example underscores the significance of introspection and direct awareness in such epistemic situations. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, the example suggests that one can, at the same time and with regard to the same body (...) part, though in different respects, both know and not know “I feel pain.” The knowledge is possessed in terms of acquaintance; the lack of knowledge is explainable in terms of non-introspective justification. (shrink)

Elliot R. Wolfson is Professor of Religious Studies and the Marsha and Jay Glazer Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

R K Elliott; The Concept of Development: A Reply to Professor Hamlyn, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 9, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 40–48, https://d.

R K Elliott; Aestheticism, Imagination and Schooling: a reply to Ruby Meager, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 33–42.

R K Elliott; D. W. Hamlyn on Knowledge and the Beginnings of Understanding, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 109–116.

R K Elliott; Objectivity and Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 49–62, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.19.

R K Elliott; Education and Justification, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 7–27, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1.

R K Elliott; The Concept of Creativity, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 5, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 97–104, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.19.

R.K. Elliott's essays on aesthetics put forward a number of common themes that together constitute a unified approach to aesthetics. Throughout his writing, Elliott combines analytic rigour with sympathy for ideas in continental philosophy. This book, the first to gather together Elliott's key essays, powerfully illuminates the unifying role of imagination and the aesthetic in human experience.

R K Elliott; Louis Arnaud Reid: a remembrance, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 3–6, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-97.

In this paper, I challenge a traditional assumption concerning the nature and aims of education. According to epistemic infallibilism, propositional knowledge requires epistemic certainty. Though some philosophers accept infallibilism, others consider it implausible because it does not recognize ordinary cases of supposed knowledge. On this objection, we possess many items of propositional knowledge, notwithstanding the fallibleness of these items. Infallibilism is inconsistent with such items and thus considered unwarranted. I articulate this kind of objection to infallibilism as it concerns education. (...) I then offer a cumulative case defense of infallibilism and evaluate that defense. This examination suggests that much of what we commonly consider as education does not provide knowledge, and therefore that the traditional assumption is incorrect. My paper has interdisciplinary interests with respect to epistemology, philosophy of education, philosophy of science, and pedagogical practice. (shrink)

Approximately 50 years have passed since Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote A Defense of Abortion (1971). Her article has significantly shaped the philosophical literature on abortion. In this paper, I will summarize some of the interesting and important work done on the topic since Thomson's article. I will highlight Thomson as a defender of the claim that abortion is morally permissible and Don Marquis as an influential opponent of that claim. I will start by articulating Thomson's case, focusing on the violinist (...) analogy. I will underscore key questions, concepts, and objections the analogy raises. I will then examine briefly how philosophers have addressed some of these issues. Next, I will outline Marquis’ work, provide a similar commentary on it, and discuss some of its main responses. I will then survey other philosophers who have addressed abortion beyond the scope of providing specific replies to Thomson or Marquis. I will close by highlighting significant points of agreement and disagreement in the literature, as well as crucial gaps in the current research. The paper is not an attempt to address every work on the topic over the last five decades, nor is it aimed at taking a position on the moral permissibility of abortion. My goal is to provide an overview of the dialectic. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that fallibilistic justification is insufficient for propositional knowledge if veritic luck is involved. I provide a thought experiment to demonstrate that even very strong non-factive evidence is insufficient for knowledge if veritic luck is present. I then distinguish between precise justification (PJ), which I suggest is required for knowledge in cases of veritic luck, and loose justification (LJ), which is sufficient for practical cases in which beliefs are reasonable to hold even if they fall short (...) of being items of knowledge. In addition, I provide a reason for holding that PJ is required for all items of propositional knowledge, and not only for cases of veritic luck. Lastly, I propose that Gettier-style cases pertain to an ambiguity between PJ and LJ. (shrink)

In this essay, I address an objection to purpose theory (PT). PT holds that fulfilling the purpose God has assigned for humans is a way for human life to be objectively meaningful. According to the objection, PT entails the absurdity that God is irrational. There are at least two versions. I refer to them as Irrationality Objection-1 (IO-1), raised elsewhere by Thaddeus Metz, and Irrationality Objection-2 (IO-2), which I raise in this essay. I summarize IO-1 and replies to it by (...) Metz. I then articulate IO-2 and support the following thesis: if God has middle knowledge (MK), IO-2 fails. (shrink)

In this essay, I assess Timothy Blank’s “The Open Theistic Multiverse.” In his article, Blank attempts to show that Open Theism explains how God can plan the creation of a multiverse containing creatures with libertarian freedom. I underscore some benefits of Blank’s article while arguing that, despite its strengths, his paper fails to provide a sufficient explanation of God’s precreational planning.

In this article, I contend that (a) disagreement over the definition of ‘good person’ indicates a challenge for the probabilistic argument from evil (PAE) and (b) the debate between value monism and value pluralism exposes obstacles for the PAE. I also highlight areas for further axiological inquiry with respect to the problem of evil and related problems. My goal is not to argue that the PAE fails, but to examine the axiology of the argument, to investigate some of its vulnerabilities, (...) and to motivate novel evaluations of it by reframing it as an axiological rather than moral issue. (shrink)

This paper locates the contributions of Kauffman and Ayala to this symposium in the context of recent discussions of the adequacy of the Modern Synthesis. The neglect of morphology and development described by Kauffman is understandable in view of the belief that selection is the most powerful evolutionary force. His idea that properties of order may be explained by nonselective mechanisms is also examined. The paper subsequently takes up Ayala's criticism of S.J. Gould's view that macroevolution is a process "decoupled" (...) from microevolution. It is argued that the idea of species selection makes Gould's antireductionism ontological in character; this contrasts with Ayala's contention that the decoupling is merely epistemological. (shrink)

According to purpose theory (PT), God’s existence, telic creation of human beings, and human libertarian free will are necessary conditions for human life to be objectively meaningful. In this paper, I raise and respond to four objections to PT: two concerning insufficiencies and two regarding ambiguities in the theory. I conclude that PT-advocates have relatively effective replies to the second insufficiency objection and to both ambiguity objections, but that PT is vulnerable to the first insufficiency objection.

In this paper I shall not be concerned with the imagination as insight, but only with certain aspects of ‘magical’ imagination, that division of the concept which centres upon the notion of an image. In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein makes the extremely interesting remark that when a printed triangle is seen, for instance, as a mountain, it is as if an image came into contact, and for a time remained in contact, with the visual impression . He goes on to (...) say that in a picture a triangular figure may have some such aspect permanently — in the pictorial context we would read the figure at once as a mountain — but that we can make a distinction between ‘regarding’ and ‘seeing’ the figure as the thing meant. I take him to be contrasting those common experiences in which we see a figure in a picture as depicting a person, or as a ‘picture-person’, with those rarer experiences, referred to by art-critics when they talk of ‘presence’, in which it seems as if the person depicted in the picture is there before us ‘in the flesh’, and I assume that, like Sartre, Wittgenstein would suppose that imagination plays a part in experiences of this latter kind. In this paper I shall be concerned not with this sense of the presence of the object depicted, but chiefly with types of imaginal experience in which the image which seems to come into contact with what is perceived is an image of something which is not depicted or described in the work, but which nevertheless achieves a certain strength of presence. I shall consider, also, some types of imaginal experience which we would not naturally describe as an image's coming into contact with what is perceived. Though I shall relate some of the examples I discuss to my starting-point in Wittgenstein, I do not claim to be elaborating Wittgenstein's remark in a manner which would have been acceptable to him. My aims are to give some indication of the nature and scope of the imaginal experience of art, to defend the aesthetic relevance of this type of experience, and to suggest why the imaginal experience of art has been, and still is, valued. (shrink)

First, this collection seeks to examine exactly what Levinass writings mean for both Jews and Christians. Second, it takes a snapshot of the current state of Jewish-Christian dialogue, using Levinas as the rationale for the discussion. Three generations of Levinas scholars are represented. Contributors: Leora Batnitzky, Jeffrey Bloechl, Richard A. Cohen, Paul Franks, Robert Gibbs, Kevin Hart, Dana Hollander, Robyn Horner, Jeffrey L. Kosky, Jean-Luc Marion, Michael Purcell, Michael A. Signer, Merold Westphal, Elliott R. Wolfson, Edith Wyschogrod.

Elliot R. Wolfson intervenes in the debate over Martin Heidegger and Nazism from a unique perspective, as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy who has been profoundly influenced by Heidegger's work. He reveals crucial aspects of Heidegger's thinking that betray an affinity with dimensions of Jewish thought.