Reposted by International Journal of Philosophical Studies
Is God unable to stop Manchester City from winning trophies, and thus not omnipotent, or unwilling, and thus morally bankrupt?
I assume He knows about it because it's, like, on the news all the time.
#philsky
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"Article
The Faceless Interface: Digital Empathy, Care, and the Other within the Logic of the Metasimulacrum
[by] Rastyam T. Aliev
Published online: 01 Feb 2026"
ABSTRACT
The article offers a phenomenological and normative analysis of digital empathy. It clarifies empathy as an embodied, imaginative, and fictional experience of the Other, and as a virtue that navigates a middle path between Proximism and Distantism. It then revisits Thomas Fuchs’s concept of the Virtual Other and introduces the Tamed Other – a media-constructed alterity, pre-sanitized and optimized for interface processing. On this basis, it develops the notion of a metasimulacrum of empathy, in which the sign of care precedes affect, regulates it, and becomes an operational unit within platform-based regimes of attention. Different configurations of mediation generate distinct ‘theaters of suffering’ and regimes of visibility. Genuine online empathy appears only as an exception within architectures oriented toward the managed visibility of the Other, calling for a rethinking of the ethics of digital care.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreicctce5nftctvkvac7wn7nckyfehbk3deyvsl7ixsy7w2myjb2g4i)
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"Article
Motivation and Time in Phenomenology
[by] Peter Antich, Nikos Soueltzis & Christos Hadjioannou
Published online: 28 Jan 2026"
Introduction
Both temporality and motivation are essential to the life of consciousness. We live in and through time in an at least minimally coherent and meaningful way. Phenomenology has been centrally concerned with the theme of temporality as the fundamental structure of experience and transcendence. It can be safely claimed that temporality marks the limits and possibilities of phenomenology. On the other hand, motivation, as Husserl puts it, is the 'lawfulness of the life of the spirit' (Husserl 1989, 231); it is a concept that aims to indicate mental 'causality,' taken in a non-naturalistic, phenomenological way. We might also say that motivation is the kind of grounding relationship that experiences can bear towards each other. Motivation defines phenomenology's own way of grasping our consciousness' coherence, both the constitution of its unity as well as its capacity to transcend itself and relate to a world. Both temporality and motivation, then, are basic forms of the way experience itself is passively and internally constituted, as well as the way different experiences and intentional acts connect with one another.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreib6dmw53tfkht6phlrlhi3pi2sgygkh5k4cy3ip63el5kcpsds2fu)
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"Article
Self-affections of Imagination and Reason in Kant's Sublime"
[by] Luigi Filieri
Published online: 21 Jan 2026"
ABSTRACT
In this article, I provide a detailed reconstruction of the way in which imagination and reason affect the inner sense in Kant’s account of the sublime. My aim is to show how two different forms of self-affection combine with each other. In Section 2, I isolate and follow Kant’s argumentative strategy for the transition from the displeasure due to the representational failure of the imagination to the counterbalancing appeal to reason – and the related pleasure. Drawing on this reconstruction, in Section 3 I frame the transition according to two complementary schemes meant to show the structural differences at each step of the sublime, as well as the way they consistently belong to each other. Section 4 draws some key implications from Section 3 in order to stress the relevance of the distinction and reciprocity between the failure of the imagination and the arousal of reason.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreidhfvhndkzbwjhnp7msemx6u5obnm2wn6u66adsgtq563b56eaaia)
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'Article
Frege, Heidegger, and Heraclitus in Dialogues of Paradox
[by] Lee Braver
Published online: 20 Jan 2026'
ANSTRACT
ABSTRACT
Frege attempts to root out all ambiguity from language, whereas Heidegger seeks it out. I explain Frege’s reasons and the problems he repeatedly encountered in his attempts. I then use Heidegger’s 1943/4 lectures on Heraclitus to explain Heidegger’s views and reasons for them, and attempt to put those into practice. I try to read a Heraclitus who speaks of Fregean logic and who could have helped Frege with the paradoxes and problems he kept encountering, and a Heidegger who advises Frege on the same. Finally, I try to read a Frege who embraces ambiguity and speaks with Heidegger of Being.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreihv25q6zfyspdw4qo2d3hxj7cqubetzekjni7dqxxy3sek7xtfgm4)
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"Article
What is Mechanic Deconstruction? Late Derrida’s Reflections on the “Machine”
[by] Yuchen Sun
Published Online: 29 Dec 2025
ABSTRACT
This paper adopts a polyphonic structure, examining a distinctive shift in late Derridean philosophy through three key concepts: religion, solitude, and life (−machine) – particularly in contrast to his early framework epitomized by différance or supplément. We synthesize these threads into what Derrida himself termed ‘mechanic deconstruction’. The first two sections focus on close readings of two late Derridean texts, Papier Machine and La bête et le souverain, Volume II, while the final section situates the possibility of a deconstructive life (−machine) within a broader intellectual history, drawing on contemporary scientific developments such as cybernetics. In the first section, we focus on Derrida’s claim that Catholicism functions as a mechanic religion, contextualizing this argument through a comparative reading of late Bergson’s mysticism. The second section interrogates the notion of ‘worldless solitude’ (solitude sans monde), interpreting it as a form of absolute finitude that transcends the traditional dichotomy between the finite and the infinite. Ultimately, we contend that this machine-like deconstruction – anticipated by Derrida – not only transcends his early logic of différance and its subsequent iterations in deconstructionist philosophies of technology (e.g. Bernard Stiegler’s), but also reframes pivotal questions in the history of philosophy.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreifekdsmkea55nwu6rr4iiamymn4qhjllonr4jigxohllksce2o5lu)
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"Article
Moorean Skepticism
[by] Emily Tilton
Published Online: 29 Dec 2025
ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
Moore is a skeptic, and Descartes is the ultimate social epistemologist. Jonathan Ichikawa misses this, and as a result he inherits the problems of insularity and exclusion that plague other Moorean skeptics.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreihttrv3lxn6snbpv7usv3uc3ry4xwbtini373oirsynomw3oaidvy)
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Article
Expectations as Emotional Motivations for Interest: An Analysis from the Perspective of Husserl’s Phenomenology of Attention
[by] Andrea Scanziani
Published online: 25 Dec 2025
ABSTRACT
The goal of this article is to identify a sense of motivation in Husserl’s work that develops from the manuscripts of 1893 and 1898 and later assumes fundamental relevance in his genetic phenomenology. This is the sense of motivation that drives the explicative movement accompanied by a certain degree of interest in an object of experience, as well as the preference attributed to certain objects within the horizon of experience. At the level of basic experiences such as doxic acts, both preference and the direction of experience are associated with a form of attention. In his early analyses of attention and interest, Husserl identifies an initial sense of motivation linked to the tension generated by ‘expectations’, which set in motion the rhythm of continuous tension and resolution. This rhythm culminates in a ‘pleasure in noticing’ that defines interest. Therefore, this work reconstructs the path that leads Husserl to define emotional expectations within the act of noticing, and pleasure as the affective motivation for the development of experience. Finally, it follows Husserl in his genetic identification of motivation in the ‘pleasure affection’, which reveals its origin in instinct.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreidcl5cyc2a6ptisxrdjwtbcntsyerxi4edib47ftqxub56sytquwe)
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Article
Facticity, Motivation, and Temporality in the Early Heidegger
[by] Yorgos G. Filippopoulos
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the concept of motivation in the early Heidegger, situating its emergence within the development of his project of Urwissenschaft, formed at the intersection of Neo-Kantian philosophy and Husserlian phenomenology. Whereas Husserl conceives motivation as a connective structure between acts of consciousness, Heidegger – drawing on Rickert’s analysis of value-motivation – reworks the notion through his reinterpretation of the core phenomenological concept of Erlebnis, a move that marks his hermeneutical turn toward factical life. I argue that Heidegger’s delineation of the field of facticity, in decisive contrast to the theoretical attitude, uncovers an originary level of factical living in which motivation appears as an intrinsic feature of life’s own ‘movedness’ (Bewegtheit). From this originary ground – and through this intrinsic motivation – theoretical inquiry first arises by way of a motivated distancing from the immediate flow of life. The paper concludes by showing that Heidegger’s earliest conception of temporality – well before Being and Time – emerges phenomenologically from this motivational structure of factical life and from the way life’s movedness articulates its own temporal unfolding.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreibcs74pvrhmraxhnkqjywojktafusmgneazwyruxx2tmr5sbphn54)
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Article
Third-person Encounters: Beauvoir, Walther, and the ‘We’ of Social Identities
[by] Tris Hedges
Published online: 22 Dec 2025
ABSTRACT
Upon entering Harlem for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir recounts how ‘a force pulls me back … fear. Not mine but that of others – the fear of all those whites who never take the risk of going to Harlem’. But of what are they fearful? The risk, Beauvoir describes, is not that of an external danger but themselves. These passages detail the phenomenon of having one’s collective being, one’s unity to certain others, revealed to oneself through a third-person encounter. In this paper, (2) I make sense of Beauvoir’s reflections through Gerda Walther’s social ontology, (3) to show how we consistently undergo pre-reflective we-experiences qua social identities. (4) I then demonstrate how this pre-reflective ‘we’ is made reflective by the external Third; and (5) how we may reflectively disavow ourselves of this ‘we’ when we find it uncomfortable, alienating, and inappropriate. These novel inroads into the phenomenology of collective intentionality leads me (6) to argue that while members of dominant groups enjoy the privilege of having their collective being remain in the unremarkable background, members who inhabit social identities that are stigmatised and oppressed are systematically forced back upon themselves through third-person encounters.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreidduapdnpelrutwzxjdgozo3u2zrhsphfpnbbocxtawgutglfxqce)
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A Stalemate in Naturalizing Ethics: Insights from Theories of Punishment
[by] Andrea Lavazza, Sofia Bonicalzi & Mario De Caro
Published online: 19 Dec 2025
ABSTRACT
This essay critically examines whether ethical naturalization – understood as the grounding of moral inquiry in empirical sciences – can resolve enduring normative disputes. Focusing specifically on the conflict between retributivist and consequentialist justifications of punishment, we investigate whether naturalistic approaches (drawing on evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics), in addition to explaining the origins and persistence of moral intuitions and practices, can also justify their normative authority. Scientific naturalists seek to reduce or replace normative ethics with descriptive accounts, often deploying evolutionary debunking arguments to challenge moral realism. Liberal naturalists, by contrast, integrate empirical insights without eliminating irreducible normativity. Through analysis of punishment theories, this article argues that, while naturalization sheds light on the evolutionary roots of retributive intuitions (e.g. adaptive cooperation mechanisms) and highlights neuroscientific challenges to free will, thus reinforcing consequentialist explanations, it nevertheless fails to adjudicate which theory is morally superior, since empirical explanations do not bridge the is-ought gap (Hume’s problem). The resulting stalemate highlights naturalization’s explanatory adequacy but normative insufficiency. The essay concludes by advocating a pluralistic integration in line with liberal naturalism, where science informs, but does not replace, philosophical reflection on ethical justification.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreidaozpnihatcflp3g4gl3yewk44rexfegetw22sd7qf5yk5pj4ndi)
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WORLDS APART Heidegger and Analytic Philosophy
[by] David R. Cerbone
Published online: 19 Dec 2025
ABSTRACT
An examination of the concept and role of ’world’ in Heidegger and in analytic philosophy. My basic claim is that the notion of world is as motley and varied in analytic philosophy as it is in everyday language. This by itself makes any comparison between Heidegger and analytic philosophy on the notion of world more than a little fraught. More than that, if one looks at particular cases in analytic philosophy (Putnam, McDowell, Sider, Lewis, Goodman), whatever Heidegger is after with the notion of world does not align with – and in some cases diverges massively – from how the notion is deployed in analytic philosophy. This should make us cautious about trying to attribute theses couched in the language of analytic philosophy (e.g. the internalism-externalism) debate to Heidegger. To the extent that comparisons can be made, they primarily illustrate the ways in which, from Heidegger’s perspective, analytic philosophy fails to recognize the questions and problems that motivate his philosophy.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreifex4ymggfhe7bjtfbmdfimh6uvjbjfmf5rv2jk25iycwgi7wfomq)
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Article
''Condemned to Proceeding': Time, Motivation and the Human Heart in Merleau-Ponty and Zambrano
[by] Pat McConville
ABSTRACT
Work on Merleau-Ponty has tended to overlook the role of the internal body in his phenomenology. In this paper, I examine the role of the heart as a temporalising and motivating organ for human experience by aligning his work with phenomenologist and writer, María Zambrano. In the first part, I consider some of Merleau-Ponty’s comments on temporality and the organs, especially the heart. In the second part, I consider two interpretations of the heart as a temporalising organ which might shed light on the Merleau-Ponty’s view: as affective background, or as interoceptive timekeeper. In the third part, I make a case for the compatibility of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology with Zambrano’s with reference to their joint use of philosophical metaphor. In the fourth part, I offer a reading of Zambrano’s essay ‘The Metaphor of the Heart’ and argue that her account is sympathetic to and complementary with the temporality of the heart Merleau-Ponty suggests. In the fifth and final part, I situate this account of the heart in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of motivation. Ultimately, I conclude that the heart forms a prepersonal background resulting in the body-subject being motivated and oriented to their own, personal future.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreiddlzumhjx76fqjsefoohhoth3avwgime4yqeg54imt5xiqhj5bxq)
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Article
Giving a Second Chance [by] Yotam Benziman
Published online: 18 Dec 2025
ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
The phenomenon is common. We were reckless, or careless, or perhaps lost our temper. We have wronged somebody. Yet we ask, and are given, a second chance. In this paper I analyze this notion, which has not been discussed as such in ethical theory. Forgiveness, a related concept, has been analyzed thoroughly. However, prevalent analyses of forgiveness present it as entailing some playing down the wrongdoing that has caused the damage to begin with. It has to do with diminishing our resentment, with separating the person from the act, and the past wrong from choices to be made in the future. I show why the notion of asking for a second chance is better suited to deal with wrongdoing. It entails the opposite of downplaying the wrong. The wrongdoer wishes to interpret the wrong, to build on it, to learn a lesson, to shape the second chance so as not to repeat the mistakes of the first. It is the guilty as such whom we give a second chance, thus avoiding what is known as the paradox of forgiveness. A second chance, as opposed to forgiveness, can also be granted by third parties, rather than by the offended themselves.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreicczr4fazggvqpcoy4tib5nk5grpzfrwqrprh6hfzjxwivzw3wpei)
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Article
On the Dynamic of Temporality in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
[by] Vanessa Ossino
Published Online: 18 Dec 2025
Abstract
The paper elaborates on the notion of ‘time itself’ as developed by Merleau-Ponty in the Temporality chapter of Phenomenology of Perception. More specifically, by considering the processual structure of time, his conceptualization of the dynamic of temporality is questioned in light of the operative logic of motivation. The question being addressed is whether the processual dynamic of time can be understood as a motivational unity, especially with regard to Merleau-Ponty’s approximation to Heidegger’s concept of time. It is argued that while the concept of motivation is a necessary step for Merleau-Ponty towards his understanding of temporality, it is not sufficient for its description. This is because it fails to adequately capture the ontological scope of Merleau-Ponty’s project.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreicglw7ogbbwxlct7w2wmfbffnzfdbyt263ycriovkb5hzzaxjtlza)
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Article
Are Normative Explanatory Reasons Fundamentally Distinct from Normative Justificatory Reasons? A Critique of Logins’s Erotetic View of Reasons
[by] Byeong D. Lee
Published online: 18 Dec 2025
Abstract:
On Logins’s Erotetic View of reasons, normative reasons are the possible appropriate answers to normative ‘Why?’ questions. These questions can be interpreted in two ways: as requiring either an argument/reasoning or an explanation. Consequently, this view posits not only normative reasoning reasons but also normative explanatory reasons. Against this view, this paper argues for two claims. First, putative normative explanatory reasons are not fundamentally distinct from normative justificatory reasons. Second, although normative ‘Why?’ questions could sometimes guide someone normatively, these questions themselves are not genuinely normative.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7oz7gjqbwpc2g5gzavod5axu/bafkreib3ucfnlhmdx5aosduggsdvbo3endrgbd5lm4x4rtit2rfegqnriu)
