Modern sociology and anthropology proposed from their very beginnings a scientific study of religion. This paper discusses attempts to understand religion in this ‘scientific’ way. I start with a classical canon of anthropology and sociology of religion, in the works of E. B. Tylor (1832–1917), Max Weber (1864–1920) and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). Science aims to be a discourse that transcends local identities; it is deeply cosmopolitan. To offer a local metaphysics as its basis would produce a discourse that was not recognizable as a contribution to the cosmopolitan conversation of the sciences. So, a science of religion cannot appeal to the entities invoked in any particular religion; hence the methodological atheism of these three founding fathers. This cosmopolitan ideal, the calling of the scientist, on the one hand, and the concern to understand the ideas of other cultures, on the other, can pull in different directions. Understanding requires us to appeal to our own concepts but not to our own truths. In the explanations, though, truth – the universal shared reality – has to matter, because the scientific story of religion has to work for people of all faiths and none, precisely because it is cosmopolitan. Not everything we call a religion will have historical Christianity's laser-like focus on ontological truth-claims. But as long as there are people making truth-claims in the name of religion, there will be the possibility of a tension between the very idea of a science of religion and some of the multifarious collections of beliefs, practices and institutions that make up what we now call ‘religions’.

The main aim of this paper is to advance, clarify, and defend a definition of relativism. On the definition, relativism does not contrast with absolutism, is not the same as pluralism, contrasts with universalism and nihilism, and is compatible with both moral objectivity and moral subjectivity. Advantages of the definition are noted, but the bulk of the paper is devoted to detailed discussions of the concepts that figure in the definition or are entailed by it. Such concepts include those of a moral code, of conflict between moral codes, and of a convention.

In several recent publications in the philosophy of chemistry we have made use of a repertoire of analytical concepts to guide our investigations. Perhaps studies of other sophisticated knowledge garnering practices could benefit from adopting this analytical scheme if we want to understand their merits and drawbacks. Our suggestions for shaping methodologies for philosophical studies in particular fields of interest includes both the natural sciences, legal systems in action, economies and their management, warfare, preparing the dishes of a cuisine, and so on. Adopting our proposals would encourage philosophers to examine our world seen as fields of material and cultural/social entities affording opportunities for action. At a certain level of analysis, the products of such action, appear to be perfectly identical entities, fungibles. There are no fungibles in nature. They must therefore be thought of as constituents of iconic models. Our scheme for critically examining the practices of investigators is meant to ensure the intelligibility both of the relevant discourse and the trustworthiness of the practices of the discipline in question. The Third Wittgenstein's ‘hinges’ that function as necessities and yet are vulnerable to empirical assessment provide a generic frame for analyses of human practices.

This essay aims to develop the so-called ‘transformational view’ of human development (advocated by McDowell and Bakhurst) by advancing a play-based model of learning. I first consider challenges to this view posed by Luntley and Rödl who argue that the learning encounter must presuppose some rational faculty already present in the prelinguistic child. Rödl in particular considers joint attentional episodes in which child and adult attend to objects in their environment together as signifying a uniquely rational consciousness active in the human child. I however argue on phenomenological grounds that this intellectualist treatment is implausible and unconvincing. I propose a play-centered treatment (inspired primarily from Huizinga) that is more sensitive to the life of the child. This perspective of play I maintain scaffolds a shared normative space which enables self-conscious, responsive, and intelligible thought and action. This account motivates what I call a participatory play model of learning which is constitutively non-intellectual but is nonetheless intelligent. It is non-intellectual because it emphasizes building co-reactive relationships and participation in shared cultural practices. But it is also intelligent because it makes possible a distinctively human mode of understanding grounded on an interactive, relational, and imaginatively reflexive engagement with the world.

In recent years there has been a general attempt – inspired by P. F. Strawson – to naturalise Kant's notion of the transcendental self. The argument being that self-consciousness should refer to neither a kind of noumenal nor mental self but that the self-conscious subject must conceive of itself as an embodied entity, a person among persons that regards itself as an element of the objective order of the world. While Kant does not make room for the notion of an embodied transcendental self, this is where we need to go as our bodily awareness is central both for self-knowledge and the possibility of cognition and thus a transcendental condition for knowledge claims. In this paper I should like to single out Quassim Cassam's work Self and World to see whether such a position is tenable. Cassam's main claim is that we can only become aware of ourselves as subjects if we are at the very same time aware of ourselves as objects located in the spatio-temporal world. We could not be self-conscious and ascribe experiences to ourselves unless we are also aware of ourselves as a physical object among other physical objects in the world. The central claim is that when we self-refer we do not refer to two distinct entities, one possessing only mental, and the other possessing only physical features, rather we refer to a subject that is both mental and physical at the very same time. Awareness of ourselves qua subject is just awareness of ourselves qua object. This paper will focus on this claim alone and will ask whether it is tenable. The answer will be negative. Drawing on the work of Edmund Husserl, I shall argue that there is an inherent flaw in Cassam's position which he has inherited from Gareth Evans’ depiction of the self. The contention will be that our awareness of ourselves qua subject is not compatible with the awareness of ourselves qua object.

Moral injury describes the effects of violence on veterans beyond what trauma discourse can describe. I put moral injury in conversation with a separate but related concept, dirty hands. Focusing on Michael Walzer's framing of dirty hands and Jonathan Shay's understanding of moral injury, I argue that moral injury can be seen as part of the dirt of a political leader's dirty hands decisions. Such comparison can focus more attention on the broader institutional context in which such dirty hands decisions are executed, while contributing to the growing vocabulary of moral conflict, trauma, and harm.

Since 2014, British schools have been required to ‘actively promote’ the value of ‘mutual respect’ to the children in their care. This is relatively unproblematic: liberals are agreed that good citizenship education will involve teaching mutual respect. However, there is disagreement over how ‘respect’ should be understood and what it should imply for norms of respectful classroom discussion. Some political liberals have indicated that when engaging in discussion in the classroom, students should provide only neutral reasons to defend their views. This paper provides a number of arguments against this claim. For example, I argue that this norm relies on a distorted understanding of what it is to respect others and that it stifles the development of civic and epistemic virtue in the next generation of citizens. Even from within the perspective of political liberalism, there are good reasons to favour critical discussion of non-neutral reasons. Education policy should therefore accord greater priority to discussion of students’ actual motivating reasons than to discussion constrained by a norm of neutral discourse.

Peter van Inwagen has given an answer to the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’. His answer is: Because there being nothing is as improbable as anything can be: it has probability 0. Here I shall examine his argument for this answer and I shall argue that it does not work because no good reasons have been given for two of the argument's premises and that the conclusion of the argument does not constitute an answer to the question van Inwagen wanted to answer.

I here discuss an argument frequently dismissed as a fallacy – the slippery slope or camel's nose. The argument has three forms – analogical, argumentative, and prudential. None of these provides a deductive guarantee, but all can provide considerations capable of influencing the intellect. Our evaluation of such arguments reflects our background social and evaluative assumptions.

This paper examines the role of knowledge in education. It proposes that the arguments of Paul Hirst on liberal education can be updated using the idea of a ‘space of reasons’ drawn from the epistemology associated with John McDowell. It further argues that for education to flourish within the space of reasons the idea of ‘epistemic freedom’ needs to be both recognised and developed. Such freedom is particularly exemplified in the ability to form judgements. It is noted that education at all levels has been subjected to processes of ‘rationalisation’, processes identified by Max Weber over one hundred years ago: these processes severely restrict epistemic freedom. However, the paper argues that Alistair McIntyre's concept of a practice can be used to inform our thinking about subject disciplines. The pursuit of knowledge can therefore be seen in terms of practices which operate within the space of reasons. Moreover, we can see the idea of a practice as a counterweight to rationalisation

Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument has had an extraordinary influence, but examination reveals it to be nothing but multi-layered confusion. Section 1 argues that it is quite unclear what exactly Wittgenstein took to be his target, but one approach clearly leads to an infinite regress. Section 2 argues that his comments on the ‘private object’ commit him to the rejection of the principle ‘like cause, like effect’, with disastrous results, and to the absurdity that, although I may be woefully inept in identifying my sensations, the relation between the private object and the public world miraculously changes in such a way that this ineptitude is never discovered. Section 3 argues that Wittgenstein has nothing remotely acceptable to say about what it is to speak of sensations. Sections 4 and 5 argue that Wittgenstein's rejection of the notion of privileged access means that he cannot distinguish between genuine manifestations of consciousness and agency and mere mechanical or computerised happenings (‘mind the gap’; ‘doors closing’), a distinction which ultimately rests on the primacy of the first-person perspective.

‘Real’ and ‘really’ are deflated and minimalized in parallel to the minimalist and de-flationary treatment of truth. J.L. Austin's insightful comment that with ‘real’: ‘The negative wears the trousers’ is elucidated and developed. There follows a discussion of the bearing of the point on Plato's claims about knowledge, belief and ignorance. It is maintained that it is implausible to hope that acquaintance with a Form for various Fs is going to provide complete knowledge of the wardrobe of Austinian trousers, especially inasmuch as that wardrobe grows and changes with the vicissitudes of socio-industrial-commercial-technological life.

Moral exemplars are often held up as objects to be admired. Such admiration is thought beneficial to the admirer, inducing him or her to emulate virtuous conduct, and deemed flattering to the admired. This paper offers a critical examination of admiration from a broadly Kantian perspective, arguing that admiration – even of genuine moral exemplars – violates the duty of self-respect. It also provides an explanation for the fact that moral exemplars themselves typically shun admiration. Lastly, it questions the assumption that admiration leads to emulation on the basis of scientific findings that indicate that admiration induces passivity in the admirer rather than an incentive to self-improvement.

In response to widespread doubts among professional philosophers (Russell, Horwich, Dietrich, McGinn, Chalmers), Stoljar argues for a ‘reasonable optimism’ about progress in philosophy. He defends the large and surprising claim that ‘there is progress on all or reasonably many of the big questions’. However, Stoljar's caveats and admitted avoidance of historical evidence permits overlooking persistent controversies in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that are essentially unchanged since the 17th Century. Stoljar suggests that his claims are commonplace in philosophy departments and, indeed, the evidence I adduce constitutes an indictment of the widely shared view among professional analytic philosophers.

In what sense does love presuppose appreciation of the other's character? First, I argue that loving appreciation is more often a source of truthful vision than of bias and idealisation. Second, using the example of Elizabeth Bennett, I show that the tendency to forfeit love for those who lose our good opinion can be an expression of undue moralism and pride. Nonjudgmental responses to the other's flaws show how virtuous love can combine both realistic vision of the other's flaws and appreciation of the other that does not stand on balancing flaws with qualities. Such love is in the end connected with a conception of goodness inspired by Kierkegaard and Weil.

According to A-theories of time, the metaphysical ground of change and dynamicity is provided by a continuous shifting in which events are past, present and future (A-determinations). It is often claimed that these theories make better sense of our experience of dynamicity than their rival, the B-theories; according to the latter, dynamicity is grounded solely in the irreducible earlier-than relations (B-relations) which obtain between events or states of affairs. In this paper, I argue that the experience of time's dynamicity, on the contrary, cannot be accounted for solely in terms of representations of irreducible A-determinations, because any representation which is adequate to ground these experiences must itself involve representation of irreducible B-relations, while it needs not involve representation of A-determinations. Even if, as a matter of contingent fact, our experiences of dynamicity consisted of representations of successions of A-determinations, what would account for them being experiences of dynamicity would be solely the B-theoretic relations of succession, rather than the irrelevant A-theoretic nature of the relata.