This paper develops Virtue Constitutivism (VC), a Spinozist contribution to the metaethical project of grounding practical normativity in the constitutive features of agency. I argue that what Spinoza identifies, in non-moralistic terms, as virtue—the power to be the adequate cause of one’s own actions (E3Def2)—is uniquely suited to this role. This feature exhibits a twofold structure: a conative dimension operating as the constitutive aim, the conatus as conscious desire striving for self-preservation and increased power; and a cognitive dimension operating as the constitutive principle, the dictates of reason, concretely instantiated in what I call beacon practices—patterns of activity that, under conditions of adequate cognition, render adequate striving publicly legible and reliably enable its successful realization. On this basis, I advance three claims. First, VC meets the inescapability challenge without generating relativism, grounding normativity in the intentional structure of desire, prior to any reflective standpoint. Second, beacon practices deliver content-determinacy while resisting reduction to socially successful but power-diminishing customs. Third, VC integrates the central insights of Kantian, Humean, Nietzschean, Aristotelian, and Vellemanian constitutivism while avoiding their characteristic vulnerabilities. The result is an account that is objective without being mind-independent, universal without being abstract, and content-determinate without being relativist.
This is a review of Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen PSYCHOPATHY UNMASKED: THE RISE AND FALL OF A DANGEROUS DIAGNOSIS, MIT Press, 2025.
In a recent article, Montminy and Russo (M&R) (2024) defend a perdurantist solution to forward- and backward-looking cases of Johnston’s Personite Problem (2016, 2017), specifically addressing the issue of compensation for personites—non-maximal fusions of Rinterrelated person-stages that overlap with a perduring person, the maximal fusion of those stages—by appealing to a revised understanding of temporal properties within a perdurantist framework. In this paper we address an overlooked problem with M&R’s account: when applied consistently, it yields a counterintuitive grounding overdetermination (overgrounding) of temporal properties. The problem becomes especially vivid in fission scenarios that are followed by fusion.
In this paper we argue that the literature on affective states has converged onto two interrelated, but ultimately distinct (and non-derivative) notions of affect: one that characterizes affective states as those with a certain functional profile, and one that characterizes them based on their phenomenology. We argue that, given explanatory gap issues, neither concept can be derived from the other, resulting in a pluralist consensus as to what affect is. We also examine Almagro’s proposal to understand affective polarization as a non-individualistic phenomenon and how consistent his usage is with the two presented notions. We conclude that Almagro might have identified a certain form of polarization that, although related, doesn’t clearly fit the category of affective polarization.
This paper develops Virtue Constitutivism (VC), a Spinozist contribution to the metaethical project of grounding practical normativity in the constitutive features of agency. I argue that what Spinoza identifies, in non-moralistic terms, as virtue—the power to be the adequate cause of one’s own actions (E3Def2)—is uniquely suited to this role. This feature exhibits a twofold structure: a conative dimension operating as the constitutive aim, the conatus as conscious desire striving for self-preservation and increased power; and a cognitive dimension operating as the constitutive principle, the dictates of reason, concretely instantiated in what I call beacon practices—patterns of activity that, under conditions of adequate cognition, render adequate striving publicly legible and reliably enable its successful realization. On this basis, I advance three claims. First, VC meets the inescapability challenge without generating relativism, grounding normativity in the intentional structure of desire, prior to any reflective standpoint. Second, beacon practices deliver content-determinacy while resisting reduction to socially successful but power-diminishing customs. Third, VC integrates the central insights of Kantian, Humean, Nietzschean, Aristotelian, and Vellemanian constitutivism while avoiding their characteristic vulnerabilities. The result is an account that is objective without being mind-independent, universal without being abstract, and content-determinate without being relativist.
The following is a short synopsis of the book The Rise of Polarization: Affects, Politics, and Philosophy. It presents an overview of the book’s central claims concerning the nature and significance of affective polarization.
This paper provides responses to some of the many interesting points raised by the five contributions to this book symposium on my book The Rise of Polarization. These contributions are authored by Michael P. Lynch (“Political Narratives and Concrete Democratic Hope”), Neftalí Villanueva (“A Plea for Neutrality”), Aarón Álvarez-González and Aida Roige (“Conceptual Foundations of Affective Polarization: Two Notions of Affect”), Jason Tosta (“Constructing and Invoking Partisan Identities Through Narratives”), and Patrizia Pedrini and Jacopo Marchetti (“Performative Contingency and Affective Polarization”).
Epistemic injustice has received considerable attention in the philosophy of psychiatry in recent years. While testimonial injustice, and epistemic injustice more generally, have been widely discussed, hermeneutical injustice has received comparatively little attention. Furthermore, hermeneutical injustice has generally been framed in terms of conceptual lacuna, following Fricker’s (2007) approach. The aim of this paper is to expand the notion of hermeneutical injustice beyond the cases in which it results from a conceptual lacuna. I analyse instances in which hermeneutical injustice arises as a consequence of a distortion of available hermeneutical resources. In this scenario, there are available concepts that may contribute to making experiences intelligible; however, these concepts are distorted. Moreover, some of these conceptual resources, which could serve as a form of hermeneutical dissent against hermeneutical injustice, ultimately contribute to this very injustice due to their distortion. To illustrate this point, I focus on how these conceptual distortions affect those who are dealing with self-illness ambiguity, that is, the difficulty that people diagnosed with a psychiatric condition often experience in distinguishing oneself, or “who one is”, from the diagnosis. I analyse how hermeneutical injustice may arise from both the absence of and especially the distortion of the new hermeneutical tools developed by social movements such as the Neurodiversity Movement and Mad Pride.
Epistemic injustice has received considerable attention in the philosophy of psychiatry in recent years. While testimonial injustice, and epistemic injustice more generally, have been widely discussed, hermeneutical injustice has received comparatively little attention. Furthermore, hermeneutical injustice has generally been framed in terms of conceptual lacuna, following Fricker’s (2007) approach. The aim of this paper is to expand the notion of hermeneutical injustice beyond the cases in which it results from a conceptual lacuna. I analyse instances in which hermeneutical injustice arises as a consequence of a distortion of available hermeneutical resources. In this scenario, there are available concepts that may contribute to making experiences intelligible; however, these concepts are distorted. Moreover, some of these conceptual resources, which could serve as a form of hermeneutical dissent against hermeneutical injustice, ultimately contribute to this very injustice due to their distortion. To illustrate this point, I focus on how these conceptual distortions affect those who are dealing with self-illness ambiguity, that is, the difficulty that people diagnosed with a psychiatric condition often experience in distinguishing oneself, or “who one is”, from the diagnosis. I analyse how hermeneutical injustice may arise from both the absence of and especially the distortion of the new hermeneutical tools developed by social movements such as the Neurodiversity Movement and Mad Pride.
In a recent article, Montminy and Russo (M&R) (2024) defend a perdurantist solution to forward- and backward-looking cases of Johnston’s Personite Problem (2016, 2017), specifically addressing the issue of compensation for personites—non-maximal fusions of Rinterrelated person-stages that overlap with a perduring person, the maximal fusion of those stages—by appealing to a revised understanding of temporal properties within a perdurantist framework. In this paper we address an overlooked problem with M&R’s account: when applied consistently, it yields a counterintuitive grounding overdetermination (overgrounding) of temporal properties. The problem becomes especially vivid in fission scenarios that are followed by fusion.
One comparatively neglected response to David Chalmers’s zombie argument appeals to the conceivability of so-called shombies—entities physically and behaviourally indistinguishable from us that possess conscious experience just as we do—to reject dualism. In light of the resulting stalemate, the proponents of this strategy typically either deny the entailment from ideal conceivability to metaphysical possibility or urge that the debate over physicalism ought to be “de-prioritized”, since it cannot be settled on a priori, purely conceptual grounds. I argue that the battlefield in which “shombists” aim to challenge “zombists” is less neutral than they claim: the implicit assumptions underpinning Chalmers’s formulation of the zombie argument conflict with reductive versions of physicalism. Specifically, I contend that the conjunction of these assumptions—notably, the thesis I term phenomenal essentialism, according to which a subject, by virtue of referring to the way an experience phenomenally appears, is thereby able to grasp what that experience essentially is—with the ideal inconceivability of zombies (a consequence of the ideal conceivability of shombies, given the conceivability–possibility entailment) yields implications a physicalist ought to reject. Physicalists who deem zombies ideally inconceivable are thus committed to denying phenomenal essentialism and/or other assumptions of Chalmers’s argument. I conclude by arguing that phenomenal essentialism is highly plausible.
Semantics assigns meanings to words and phrases, providing a framework for understanding language. Metasemantics, on the other hand, seeks to explain the origin of these meanings, exploring why certain meanings are ascribed to particular words, what does it even mean “to mean something”, or what is the ontological status of meanings. Although semantics and metasemantics may appear to provide a complete picture of language, it has been suggested that another theoretical level—above metasemantics—is necessary for our theories to avoid (mainly) the problem of indeterminacy. This additional level is called metametasemantics. This article examines two leading candidates for metametasemantics: Lewis’s Reference Magnetism and Millikan’s Biosemantics. While both theories successfully anchor metasemantics in non-linguistic facts to address the problem of indeterminacy, my analysis reveals crucial differences in their explanatory power and theoretical robustness. The paper develops a four-criteria framework for evaluating metametasemantic theories, distinguishing between threshold conditions (indeterminacy resolution) and gradable criteria (empirical grounding, theory comparison, and pluralism accommodation). Through systematic comparison, I demonstrate that while Magnetism provides an elegant solution to indeterminacy through natural properties, its reliance on the notion of “naturalness” creates significant theoretical challenges. Biosemantics, grounded in evolutionary biology, offers more rigorous criteria for adjudicating between alternative metasemantic theories while maintaining flexibility across linguistic domains. The analysis pays particular attention to how each theory handles persistent issues like functional indeterminacy and theoretical underdetermination.
Manuel Almagro’s criticisms of two-dimensional views of affective polarization motivate his theorization of partisan identities in his multi-dimension view. Particularly, he rejects individualist accounts of political identities in favor of an identity constructivist view in which narratives play a key role in shaping these identities. While Almagro does not explicitly provide the details of his constructivist view, this paper brings together scholarship on social construction with Almagro’s work to theorize the narrative construction of political identities. I explain how political identities are constitutively constructed by partisans using certain narratives, and how identities are discursively constructed within narrated world-views. Then, I use the socially constructed nature of political identities to raise a challenge to the diagnosis that partisans use narratives to express their identities. While the expressivist diagnosis is correct to show how partisans use narratives to express their attachments and other attitudes, I suggest it is mistaken to take political identities to be expressible, as attitudes are, given the non-internalized and socially constructed aspects of political identities. Instead, I offer an invocational model of identity participation that shows how partisans use narratives and express attitudes as ways of invoking political identities.
Almagro’s book contains a set of assumptions that are not compatible with one another. The first one, the distinction between the descriptive and the evaluative, is necessary to explain what’s going on in many of the examples discussed throughout this paper, in which affective attitudes are promoted under the guise of purely informative utterances. This assumption plays a crucial role inAlmagro’s book. Secondly, some of the book’s deeper insights rest on the idea that neutrality is nothing more than a myth, that there’s no epistemic vantage point. There can be epistemic nodes that are better than others, but not one from which our issues can be assessed in a way that should be convincing to everyone. Finally, the third assumption is the political turn in analytic philosophy, which invites us to evaluate our philosophical positions by paying attention to their practical consequences. When taken together, however, these assumptions turn out to be inconsistent, because the political turn may require us to reclaim neutrality.
This paper provides responses to some of the many interesting points raised by the five contributions to this book symposium on my book The Rise of Polarization. These contributions are authored by Michael P. Lynch (“Political Narratives and Concrete Democratic Hope”), Neftalí Villanueva (“A Plea for Neutrality”), Aarón Álvarez-González and Aida Roige (“Conceptual Foundations of Affective Polarization: Two Notions of Affect”), Jason Tosta (“Constructing and Invoking Partisan Identities Through Narratives”), and Patrizia Pedrini and Jacopo Marchetti (“Performative Contingency and Affective Polarization”).
In this paper we argue that the literature on affective states has converged onto two interrelated, but ultimately distinct (and non- derivative) notions of affect: one that characterizes affective states as those with a certain functional profile, and one that characterizes them based on their phenomenology. We argue that, given explanatory gap issues, neither concept can be derived from the other, resulting in a pluralist consensus as to what affect is. We also examine Almagro’s proposal to understand affective polarization as a non-individualistic phenomenon and how consistent his usage is with the two presented notions. We conclude that Almagro might have identified a certain form of polarization that, although related, doesn’t clearly fit the category of affective polarization.
A central thesis of Manuel Almagro’s The Rise of Polarization concerns the power of narrative to drive the phenomenon known as affective polarization. Societies are affectively polarized to the degree that they are divided in their emotional attitudes towards each other—to the degree, in other words, they see the other side as untrustworthy, ignorant or hateful. While other views of polarization tend to emphasize the importance of identity politics and misinformation as drivers of affective polarization, Almagro argues that people’s rational engagement with, and commitment to, political narratives is a further dimension of polarized societies. As such, Almagro’s book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand our current political dynamics. Yet, Almagro’s focus on the importance of what he calls “abstract” political narratives also raises some complex questions about the nature of narratives, the possibility of political criticism and the power of authoritarian movements. In this essay, I ask some of these questions, exploring the extent to which Almagro’s account can answer them. I end by suggesting that, at least in the United States, the weaponization of narratives has reached a new turning point.
Recent philosophical approaches to affective polarization have moved beyond purely identitarian and emotivist frameworks, emphasizing instead its multi-dimensional structure. In The Rise of Polarization (2025), Manuel Almagro identifies five core dimensions—identity, emotion, narrative, credence, and linguistic expression—and argues that political attitudes are shaped not only by ideological commitments but also by life-course contingencies, including socio-economic trajectories and biographical exposures that influence partisan attachments.This paper builds on Almagro’s analysis while introducing performative contingency as an additional and analytically distinct dimension of affective polarization. Drawing on Greg Myers’ work (2004), we argue that political opinions should not be understood solely as relatively stable attitudes articulated through linguistic practices, but also as socially enacted within specific discursive contexts that shape whether, where, and how political views are expressed. While Almagro explicitly recognizes the context- sensitivity of political utterances, our contribution consists in making this performative dimension analytically explicit as a distinct aspect of affective polarization. Integrating performative contingency refines the philosophical understanding of affective polarization by highlighting the synchronic contingencies of opinion expression alongside the diachronic contingencies of socialization emphasized in existing accounts. As discussed by Myers (2004), measuring polarization solely through survey responses or public statements risks conflating stable partisan commitments with context-driven performances. Likewise, interventions aimed at mitigating polarization must address not only belief revision and emotional regulation but also the institutional and discursive formats—media architectures, debate structures, and civic forums—that shape the public enactment of political opinion.While performative contingency may not always be the primary driver of polarization, we argue that it constitutes a pervasive and analytically indispensable dimension of the phenomenon.
The following provides the author's responses to the four commentaries on Madness: A Philosophical Exploration, written by Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Eleanor Palafox-Harris and Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Miguel N & uacute;& ntilde;ez de Prado Gordillo, and Sofia Jeppsson and Paul Lodge.
Given the pervasive presence of stereotypes' negative effects, there is a widely shared view according to which almost all stereotypes are harmful. However, some scholars have claimed that we should distinguish between stereotypes: those with and those without statistical support. In her book, Katherine Puddifoot claims that the statistical criterion falls short of what we need to develop a full theory of the epistemology of stereotyping, so she advocates for a Multifactorial view. While I share Puddifoot's discomfort with the accuracy criterion, in these comments I will put forward some critical considerations. Firstly, I will introduce a methodological concern regarding the discussion about the normative versus non- normative conception of stereotypes. Secondly, I will introduce some doubts about the extent to which the additional factors pointed out by Puddifoot's Multifactor view, are actually a challenge to the accuracy criterion. Thirdly, I will also critically comment on the argument that not having stereotypes or having egalitarian stereotypes that do not reflect some aspect of social reality improves our chances of attaining certain epistemic ends regarding the perceptions of individuals. Finally, I will briefly introduce a further factor of deception: the normativity of stereotypes, which is not considered within Puddifoot's proposal.
