Philosophers' Carnival #167

This post is not one of my usual essays on sport and philosophy, but rather the latest edition of Philosophers' Carnival, a digest of each month's best posts from the philosophy blogosphere, which I was very pleased to be asked to host for September.

First up, as ever was, we have Hilary Putnam, who a few months ago delightfully started blogging on his own site Sardonic Comment, and whose latest post puts empirical pressure on the transparency argument for representationalism about sensory experience.

Then I would like to take you to two posts which in different ways query the cogency of western attitudes to eastern philosophy. Eric Schwitzgebel's The Splintered Mind argues that there's no good reason for us not to know our classical Chinese philosophy, while in The Indian Philosophy Blog Amod Lele objects to the apparently self-hating double standard that disallows western but not internal reinventions of Indian philosophical traditions.

On the mathematical philosophy blog M-Phi, Richard Pettigrew puts L.A. Paul's recent book Transformative Experience through the wringer of meta-decision-theory. There are two posts, on epistemically and personally transformative experiences respectively, and both of them are followed by some illuminating exchanges between Laurie herself and Richard.

Last month's host of the Carnival, John Danaher of Philosophical Disquisitions, makes a start on constructing an ethical framework for the use of enhancement drugs, and encapsulates his conclusions in the flow chart below.

Over at the communal blog PEA Soup, Antti Kauppinen wonders about the status of rage as a moral emotion--an excellent topic, indeed one which moved me to chip in with a Comment myself.

'Aesthetics is for the artist as Ornithology is for the birds' said Barnet Newman in 1954, and this month James Harold was the guest blogger on Aesthetics for Birds, arguing that ethical criticism of art should stop bracketing the causal consequences of works of art.

To wrap up, allow me to give a plug to your two hosts, namely Tristan Haze, who runs Philosophers' Carnival, and myself.

Tristan's own blog is Sprachlogik. He has been developing the idea that meaning is 'granular' and here he enlists some of Quine's thoughts in support of this theme. And right now you are on my own blog, More Important Than That, where my most recent post (right below) explores the significance of team reasoning in sport and elsewhere.

Oh, and don't forget that next month Philosophers' Carnival will be hosted by Tristan himself on Sprachlogik--he does this every October--and that you can propose any posts that grab your attention over the next month by filling in the nomination form.