Concealmente and Exposure: and Other Essays

Abstract

Civilization depends on conventions of reticence and concealment to manage the boundary between the unruly inner life and the limited public space. These social norms protect individual autonomy and permit peaceful interaction among persons with conflicting values, as naked exposure—regardless of whether it incurs disapproval—is inherently disqualifying. Within political theory, a liberal social order is justified through institutional structures that ensure fairness and equality, particularly by mitigating the effects of the “natural lottery” and hereditary class, while strictly prioritizing individual liberties. This liberal framework must remain neutral toward competing comprehensive conceptions of the good to maintain pluralistic stability, distinguishing between public justice and personal conduct.

In the realm of metaphysics and epistemology, subjectivism and radical pragmatism are rejected in favor of an objective realism. Skepticism is countered by the argument that the content of thought is necessarily linked to the external world, rendering a total mismatch between appearance and reality conceptually impossible. The mind-body problem is addressed through a proposed psychophysical identity that avoids both dualism and reductionist functionalism. Under this view, mental and physical states are necessary manifestations of a single underlying process, a connection that remains conceptually opaque only due to the limitations of current scientific frameworks. Resolution requires a new theoretical construction capable of reconciling the subjective first-person perspective with the objective third-person physical order, acknowledging that conscious states possess both phenomenological and physiological essences by necessity. – AI-generated abstract.