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21. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Anthony Kelley

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According to subjectivism about ill-being, the token states of affairs that are basically bad for you must be suitably connected, under the proper conditions, to your negative attitudes. This article explores the prospects for this family of theories and addresses some of its challenges. This article (i) shows that subjectivism about ill-being can be derived from a more general doctrine that requires a negatively valenced relationship between any welfare subject and the token states that are of basic harm to that subject and (ii) responds to some objections, including the objection that subjectivists about ill-being cannot plausibly explain the badness of pain.

22. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Jennifer Hawkins

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What is the best way to account for the badness of pain and what sort of theory of welfare is best suited to accommodate this view? I argue that unpleasant sensory experiences are prudentially bad in the absence of contrary attitudes, but good when the object of positive attitudes. Pain is bad unless it is liked, enjoyed, valued etc. Interestingly, this view is incompatible with either pure objectivist or pure subjectivist understandings of welfare. However, there is a kind of welfare theory that can incorporate this view of the badness of pain and which is very, very close to being a form of subjectivism. Moreover, this hybrid account of welfare is entirely compatible with the deep motivations of subjectivism. I therefore argue that those who lean towards welfare subjectivism should adopt this account of pain, and that we should revise our understanding of subjectivism to count such theories as subjective.

23. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Valerie Tiberius, Orcid-ID Colin G. DeYoung Orcid-ID

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The idea that what is intrinsically good for people must be something they want or care about is a compelling one. Goal-fulfillment theories of well-being, which make this idea their central tenet, have a lot going for them. They offer a good explanation of why we tend to be motivated to pursue what’s good for us, and they seem to best explain how well-being is especially related to individual subjects. Yet such theories have been under attack recently for not being able to account for robust or basic bads, such as pain and nausea. This paper argues that a psychologically informed goal-fulfillment theory can accommodate intuitions about robust bads by relying on aversions. Attending to aversion highlights a different sort of problem for goal-fulfillment theories, which comes from the possibility of a person who is so depressed that they have no goals or desires at all. We end the paper with a discussion of how empirically informed goal-fulfillment theories can account for the badness of the most serious form of depression.

24. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Jason Raibley Orcid-ID

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Adequate theories of well-being must also explain ill-being. While it is formally possible to explain ill-being without postulating robust bads, certain experiential states do qualify as robust bads and thus require theoretical recognition. Experiential bads are recognized by some hedonists, experientialists, and pluralists, but these theories face well-known difficulties. This paper considers whether perfectionist and value-fulfillment accounts of well-being can accommodate such bads. Perfectionists might propose that we all have the avoidance of negative experiential states as a standing end, so that failure to avoid them is robustly bad. This view is unacceptable. A version of the value-fulfillment theory can instead say that such experiential states are intrinsically aversive, so that enduring them represents diminished agential functioning. After explaining this version of the value-fulfillment theory, this paper considers possible objections to it relating to “hurts so good” experiences, appropriate negative emotions, and the aggregative value of experiential goods.

25. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Guy Fletcher Orcid-ID

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This paper examines perfectionist attempts to explain the prudential badness of pain (its badness for those who experience it). It starts by considering simple perfectionist explanations, finding them wanting, before considering the most sophisticated perfectionist attempt to explain prudential badness: Gwen Bradford’s tripartite perfectionism. The paper argues that Bradford’s view, though an improvement on earlier perfectionist proposals, still does not satisfactorily explain the full set of prudentially bad pains. It ends by showing how this provides grounds for a general kind of pessimism about perfectionism and the badness of pain and how this case undermines a general purported advantage of perfectionism over the objective list theory.

26. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Antti Kauppinen

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There is something important missing in our lives if we are thoroughly ignorant or misled about reality—even if intervention or fantastic luck prevents unhappiness and practical failure. But why? I argue that perfectionism about well-being offers the most promising explanation. My version says, roughly, that we flourish when we exercise our self-defining capacities successfully according to their constitutive aims. One of them is Reason, our capacity for normative self-governance. In its practical use, Reason’s formal constitutive aim is competently realizing self-chosen valuable ends that are in harmony with each other. In its theoretical use, Reason formally aims at competently grasping fundamental enough subject matters, or a kind of understanding. Because success by reason’s own standards requires many things to go right, there are many different ways in which we can fall short. Some of them constitute partial success, but others, like incompetent inquiry that fails to yield understanding of its target, are robust failures that amount to epistemic or agential unflourishing, and thus to a form of ill-being.

27. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Anne Baril

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In this article, I will consider whether, and in what way, doxastic states can harm. I’ll first consider whether, and in what way, a person’s doxastic state can harm her, before turning to the question of whether, and in what way, it can harm someone else.

28. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Teresa Bruno-Niño Orcid-ID

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Theories of well-being that I call “loving-the-good” claim that one intrinsically benefits if and only if one loves what is objectively good. For these views, well-being comes to be when the correct connection between world and mind obtains. Intuitively, ill-being is the opposite of well-being. I explore the resources of loving-the-good views to explain ill-being, especially whether they can do so and also meet the theoretical virtues of continuity and unity. Continuity is met when ill-being theory mirrors the well-being theory. Unity is met when all instances of a phenomenon are given the same kind of explanation. I argue that, strikingly, the key insight of loving-the-good theories of well-being does not seem plausible for ill-being. A consequence is that loving-the-good theories face significant problems to meet continuity. I examine alternatives for these views to meet unity. I argue that plausible explanations of ill-being do not meet unity either.

29. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Cheryl Abbate

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Animal welfare theorists tend to assume that most animals in captivity—especially those living in our homes and in sanctuaries—can, with sufficient care and environmental enrichment, live genuinely good lives. This misguided belief stems from the view that animal well-being should be assessed only in terms of the felt experiences of animals. Against this view, I argue that in assessing how well an animal’s life is going, we ought to consider two distinct kinds of welfare: experiential welfare and subject welfare. Once we take seriously the notion of subject welfare, which pertains to the non-sentient nature of animals, we will be forced to accept the unfortunate reality that most, if not all, animals in confinement—including those living in our homes and in sanctuaries—fare quite poorly and live lives that should be characterized as having overall ill-being.

30. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Molly Gardner Orcid-ID

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This article advances some considerations that undermine the overall justification for what I call “beneficent interventions,” or interventions aimed at reducing the suffering of wild animals. I first appeal to Susan Wolf’s (2010) account of meaning in life to argue that wild animals can and do have meaning in their lives. I then argue that the meaning in animal lives can offset their suffering, making their lives more worth living. This source of positive value in the lives of wild animals undermines some of the justification for those beneficent interventions that aim to reduce wild animal suffering by reducing the numbers of wild animals who either suffer or inflict suffering upon others.

31. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46
Roger Crisp Orcid-ID

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Many, probably most, people are optimists about the future, believing that the extinction of sentient life on earth would be, overall, bad. This paper suggests that pessimism about the future is no less reasonable than optimism. The argument rests on the possibility of ‘discontinuities’ in value, in particular the possibility that there may be some things so bad—such as agonizing torture—such that no amount of good can compensate for them. The ‘spectrum’ problem often raised in connection with alleged discontinuities is then discussed, along with the claim that moments of agonizing torture, spread out over a long period, can be compensated by great goods. Some difficulties with articulating the badness of agonizing torture are explained. The paper ends with a discussion of the ethical implications of pessimism, concluding that, as far as sentient life on earth is concerned, pessimists may agree with optimists that it should be protected, but for quite different reasons.

32. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46

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33. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 46

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historical perspectives

34. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 45
Julianne Chung

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Doubt (especially self-doubt) is often considered to be an enemy of creativity. But, might it be its friend, too? We see, in the Zhuangzi (a fourth century BCE Daoist philosophical classic), a number of explorations that point toward an interesting affirmative answer to this question. To explain how the text can be interpreted as suggesting such an answer, this paper proceeds in two parts. First, in section one, I clarify what is meant by “doubt” for the purposes of this paper, as well as several ways in which it can be directed toward its relevant target: entire perspectives (rather than merely individual propositions or sets of propositions). Following that, in section two, I outline a conception of creativity suggested by aspects of the Zhuangzi, and explain how doubt (in the sense discussed in section one) can engender creativity (in the sense discussed in section two), as well as a few reasons that this matters. I then close by briefly discussing two caveats.
35. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 45
Diego E. Machuca Orcid-ID

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The Pyrrhonian skeptic’s stance, as described by Sextus Empiricus, is in good part defined by his suspending judgment or belief about all the matters he has so far investigated. Most interpreters of Pyrrhonism maintain that it is a mistake to understand this form of skepticism in terms of doubt because suspension as conceived of by the Pyrrhonist is markedly different from the state of doubt. In this article, I expound the reasons that have been offered in support of that prevailing view and assess their strength.
36. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 45
Katja Maria Vogt

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In the terms of ancient epistemology, Pyrrho is a dogmatist, not a skeptic, simply on account of putting forward a metaphysical theory. His most contested claim is that things are indifferent, unmeasured, and indeterminate—or, on a competing reconstruction, that things are indifferentiable, unmeasurable, and indeterminable. This paper argues that Pyrrho’s position, which I call Pyrrhonian Indeterminacy, belongs to a rich tradition of revisionist metaphysics that includes ancient atomism, flux metaphysics, Plato’s analysis of becoming, and today’s discussions of indeterminacy and vagueness. This tradition, my argument continues, makes room for a kind of metaphysics that proceeds in epistemological terms. Pyrrho’s indeterminacy claim says that things are indeterminate insofar as they do not have features by reference to which we can determine them to be such-and-such. We should not waver or be inclined to see things one way or another—we should see things, and describe them, as “no more this than that.”
37. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 45
Anand Jayprakash Vaidya Orcid-ID

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In this paper I present the distinction between perceptual, reflective, and speculative doubt by engaging with the work of (mostly) early naiyāyikas. I argue that the definition of the causes of doubt offered by Gautama Akṣapāda in the Nyāya-Sūtra, and commented upon by later naiyāyikas leads to a distinction between perceptual and reflective doubt, but not to a notion of speculative doubt. I then move on to critically assess J.N. Mohanty’s comparison of Descartes’s method of doubt with the Nyāya theory of doubt through the lens of Janet Broughton’s work on Descartes’s Method of Doubt.
38. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 45
Andrew Chignell Orcid-ID

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For Kant, knowledge (Wissen) involves certainty (Gewissheit). If “certainty” requires that the grounds for a given propositional attitude guarantee its truth, then this is an infallibilist view of epistemic justification. Such a view says you can’t have epistemic justification for an attitude unless the attitude is also true. Here I want to defend an alternative fallibilist interpretation. Even if a subject has grounds that would be sufficient for knowledge if the proposition were true, the proposition might not be true. And so there is sometimes still rational room for doubt. The goal of this paper is to present four different models of what “certainty” amounts to, for Kant, each of which is compatible with fallibilism.
39. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 45
Andrea Kern Orcid-ID

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Kant’s conception of the relation between knowledge and doubt stands opposed to much of contemporary epistemology. For Kant denies that it is possible for one to have knowledge of how things are without having a ground for one’s judgment that guarantees its truth. Knowledge, according to him, is judgment that is based on a ground that the judger recognizes to guarantee the truth of her judgment. A judgment that is based on such a ground, trivially, excludes any doubt the judger might have had with respect to it. Therefore knowledge implies certainty. Much of contemporary epistemology has no room for the idea of a truth-guaranteeing ground. By contrast, Kant thinks that the rejection of the idea of a truth-guaranteeing ground has a devastating effect. It does not only render unintelligible the idea of knowledge, but, because of that, the very idea of a subject that is able to be ignorant about things, to have doubts about them or even to err about them. The paper defends the Kantian account of knowledge with the aim to show that ignorance, doubt and error can only characterize, and hence trouble, a subject that knows herself to have a capacity that enables her to overcome any possible doubt and error.
40. Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume > 45
Annalisa Coliva

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There is nowadays a tendency, to be dated back to Gordon Baker’s reading, to interpret the later Wittgenstein as proposing a thoroughly therapeutic view of philosophy. Accordingly, he was not dealing with philosophical problems to show how they originated in a misunderstanding of our language. For that would have presupposed his advancing theses about how language works. Rather, his therapeutic method was in the service of liberating philosophers from the kind of intellectual prejudices that would prompt them to ask philosophical questions. The article examines the complex interconnections between Wittgenstein and Waismann to show how the thorough-going therapeutic reading of Wittgenstein proposed by Baker is in fact a projection of Waismann’s ideas onto Wittgenstein. Moreover, by looking at Wittgenstein’s complex anti-skeptical strategies in On Certainty, it shows that his aim was not to provide therapy against philosophers’ inclinations, but to show that skeptical doubts are misguided and nonsensical.