Welcome to the newest iteration of the Philosophers' Carnival! As is always the case when we host the carnival here at Siris, where the golden chain is of a truly universal scope, we have a well rounded set of posts on a diverse selection of topics, any one of which is worth a bit of your time. If you find a topic dear to your heart not represented, though, please consider writing up a post on it and submit it as a suggestion for the next Philosophers' Carnival, which you can do through the link above.
* Throughout July, Catarina Dutilh Novaes blogged on the dialogical account of reductio ad absurdum:
Part I -- Problems with reductio proofs: cognitive aspects
Part II -- Problems with reductio proofs: assuming the impossible
Part III -- Problems with reductio proofs: "jumping to conclusions"
Part IV -- A precis of the dialogical account of deduction
Part V -- Dialectical refutations and reductio ad absurdum
Part VI -- Reductio arguments from a dialogical perspective: final considerations
* Sandrine Berges calls attention to an early analytic philosopher, Eleanor Bisbee. Has anyone read her papers in analytic philosophy or her dissertation on instrumentalism in Plato's philosophy? If so, comment at Feminist History of Philosophy to get a discussion going!
* Also at Feminist History of Philosophy, Emily Thomas discusses the British Idealist Hilda Oakeley, discussing her notion of 'creative memory' as an example of her insights.
* Deborah Mayo takes the anniversary of Jerzy Neyman's death to reflect on the philosophy underlying Neyman's statistical work, particularly with respect to hypothesis testing.
* Guy Longworth argues against a particular way to draw an analogy between telling and promising.
* At Sardonic comment, Hilary Putnam reflects on Davidson's "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs", giving his answer to the question, "The truth-evaluable content of a sentence on a particular occasion is given by its truth-condition, as specified by a passing theory that does WHAT?"
* The Carnap Blog argues that "Carnap’s pluralism was consistently linguistic."
* In the aftermath of the recent Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which cited Confucius as part of its account of the moral underpinnings of marriage, an extensive discussion of what Confucian moral philosophy might have to say about same-sex marriage took place among Confucian scholars. At Warp, Weft, and Way, Max Fong summarizes some of this discussion, looking at various arguments that have been put forward.
* Jacob Archambault discusses the way in which much history of philosophy research is constrained to trying to interact with past philosophy in ways that conflate it with present concerns or expectations of the future, as contrasted with recognizing it as (one's own) past.
* A discussion at The Indian Philosophy Blog considers the relationship between metaphysics and ethics in Śāntideva (and more generally), using Amod Lele's open-access The Metaphysical Basis of Śāntideva’s Ethics as the starting point for discussion.
* Eric Schwitzgebel, at The Splintered Mind, argues against intellectualism about belief, where that is understood as the position according to which "what we really believe is the thing we sincerely endorse, despite any other seemingly contrary aspects of our psychology."
* At Certain Doubts, Ralph Wedgewood argues that "if the notions of a belief’s being “justified” or “rational” are normative at all, then the permissibility of a belief is sufficient for the belief’s being justified or rational."
* Terence Blake reflects on the fortieth anniversary of Feyerabend's Against Method and on a number of oversimplifications and myths that have grown up around Feyerabend's work.
* At wo's weblog, Wolfgang Schwarz discusses the difficulty of constructing appropriate cases of transition between non-skeptical and skeptical scenarios for investigation of evidentialism and conservatism.
* Kirsten Walsh investigates the relations between Newton's and Bacon's philosophical approaches to scientific inquiry by examining whether Newton makes use of Bacon-like crucial instances in book 3 of the Principia -- a question that could go either way, depending on exactly how one interprets the evidence. How would you interpret the evidence?
* At Philosophical Percolations, Jon Cogburn raises a worry, drawing from an idea in Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, for David Roden's Speculative Posthumanism (the view that descendents of current humans could cease to be human through technical alteration): Can it avoid collapsing into some form of trivial posthumanism?
* Alex Pruss argues that the kind of chance with which fear is concerned is an epistemic probability.
* Elisa Freschi uses Jorgensen's dilemma as a jumping-off point for thinking about the various ways in which schools of Indian philosophy approached questions of deontic logic.
* Richard Yetter Chappell argues that "any moral theory will have fittingness implications, even if they aren’t explicit in canonical statements of the theory."
* Tristan Haze gives an account of the analytic/synthetic distinction in order to consider the question of how the analytic relates to the a priori.
* M. A. D. Moore draws on the Theaetetus for clues as to how Plato's dialogues were composed -- in particular, the oral aspect of the dialogue form is likely not to be a mere literary conceit.
If you are in the mood for something a bit lighter, you might try some philosophical poetry, like James Beattie's "The Modern Tippling Philosophers", recently noted at The Mod Squad, or some comics, like one portraying Star Trek but with philosophers, from Existential Comics.
May your summer have a gentle -- but thoroughly philosophical -- landing!
